"You're pushing too hard," she tells him, voice communicating mild censure and complete understanding at the same time. "Take it slow."
From the bed Clint growls in frustration, fighting to push through the shaky lethargy that makes him want to sink back against the pillows and catch his breath. She is right and he knows it but that doesn't mean that he has to like it. Never has he had to fight so hard to do something so simple, not even after the bombing in Kabul and the painful recuperation that followed. This state of helplessness is unnatural to him and he hates it.
For twenty one days, he has been largely immobile, reliant at first on the nurses in that Bolivian hospital and then on Natasha for almost everything and he now wants nothing more than to be able to move around under his own steam. That is why he is pushing too hard, trying to force his body into action when he knows deep down that it's too soon, that the stitches in his chest have barely healed and the muscle damage will still take weeks before it is healed enough for even the most simple workout drill to be possible.
"Easy for you to say," he grumbles, easing back down and giving in to exhaustion. "It's not so long ago that I could have done this in my sleep."
"And you will again," she reassures him, massaging his feet to help him relax, "once that gunshot wound is fully healed."
At first he hadn't been able to remember the details of what happened before he woke in that hospital room, Natasha at his side, but now he remembers all of it with icy clarity. It isn't the first time he's been injured in the line of duty, he's pretty sure that it won't be the last, but it is the first time he took a bullet, or two. For the first time he understands what Natasha herself must have felt when she took that bullet, the burning, blazing pain that seems to spread from the entry wound until the entire body feels like it is running on battery acid. Clint remembers it vividly, the heat of the wound, the smell of hot metal on the air and then a strange cold that chased away everything but the curiosity as to whether he was going to live or die.
Natasha doesn't tell him that the man who shot him, the police officer who posed as a colleague in order to get close to him, is no longer a concern. She doesn't need to tell him, he knew the moment he woke up one morning to find her gone and Fury sitting in her place at his side. They've been partners too long for her to hide from him and he could read it in her face when she came back to him, a predatory gleam in her eye that told him all he needed to know.
Clint would have liked to take down his attacker himself, to chase him across the rooftops until he had the vantage point he needed to put an arrow through the bastards eye, but it was not to be. Time was a luxury that they didn't have and he trusts that Natasha exacted the price that she feels is appropriate for his suffering. He would like to say that he feels hatred for the guy that shot him, that he wishes his death was slow and painful but that isn't how he feels, not really. Mostly now, he just feels the frustration of knowing that she will have to return to duty without him.
"When do you go back?" he asks, bringing up the topic that he dreads most because it seems like there is no time like the present to rip off the band aid that is beginning to itch.
Natasha shakes her head, red curls swaying around her shoulders, framing her face like fire in the early morning sunlight. "I'm not going back," she tells him, folding the blankets at the foot of the bed and avoiding his eyes. Something cold settles over him, a sudden feeling that he might know what is happening here.
"And how do you suppose Fury will feel about that?" he asks, already sure that he knows the answer.
Natasha shrugs and the arrow pendant around her neck catches the light. "He knows that he's losing me for a while, just until you're feeling better," she tells him, "we had a discussion about it."
A discussion. There is no way that Fury would suggest she stay here with him throughout what promises to be a lengthy recuperation, he can't afford to have two of his best assets out of the field for any length of time. The only way that the director would agree to such an action is if Natasha laid an ultimatum at his feet and the thought she would do that for him makes him fear for her future. There are reasons why it is against protocols for agents to become romantically involved and he will not see her compromised by her feelings for him.
"How did you swing that?"
"Quite simple really," she tells him, looking up into his face for the first time since the start of their conversation. "When he picked me and drove me out to the airfield for the flight to Bolivia I told him not to expect me back until you were back on your feet. I also told him that if you didn't make it I would never work in the field again."
Clint feels the breath in his lungs freeze, the reality of her words sinking in. "You weren't serious though Nat?" he splutters. "SHIELD needs you."
She offers a delicate shrug, the shoulder of her oversized sweater slipping down to reveal inch after inch of creamy skin as she moves to sit at his side. "I meant every word," she tells him, bringing his fingers to her lips where she can kiss them gently, a habit that she has when they are talking about things that trouble him. "I meant it then and I still do. We do this together or we don't do it all because my life with SHIELD is only an extension of my life with you, I have no interest in having one without the other."
She has only told him that she loves him once, and that was when he was hooked up to monitors in a hospital bed, but the words she speaks to him now are all he needs to hear to know that she is in this for the long haul. No, Natasha doesn't say 'I love you' but he's learned to read between the lines and he hears it all the same.