It had been three days since Natasha's incident and no one was doing well or getting much sleep. Tony and Clint refused to leave the lab, Tony because he didn't want to give Clint the opportunity to figure out why exactly she was there in the first place and Clint because he refused to leave Tony alone with her. The only time they left was once a day, when Bruce demanded they leave so that he could care for his patient and change her bandages. The rest of the team was clueless, save for knowing that Natasha had some kind of accident that required Bruce to treat her here rather than a doctor at SHIELD headquarters. They trusted Banner enough to not mention the details to anyone outside of the Tower who asked, but everyone was concerned about the assassin. When she finally began to stir, Tony had to physically hold Clint back from getting too close and asking every question he could think of.

"-int?" Natasha said wearily. "Where's Clint? What happened?"

"I'm right here," he replied, breaking out of Tony's grasp. "Something happened and Tony won't tell me, so Bruce has been treating you at the Tower so that you wouldn't have to go to SHIELD. No Nat," he said, when she tried to push herself up to sit. "You need to keep resting."

"He's right," Tony's voice came from behind Clint. "Katniss, can you leave for five minutes now, so that I can talk to her about what happened?"

"I'm not leaving you alone with her, anything you need to say, you can say with me, right Tash?"

"Barton," she cleared her throat. "I need to talk to Stark. You can come back in a few minutes, then we can… Talk."

"Tash, you are my partner. I need to know what's going on with you."

"I will tell you anything you need to know," she said and Tony scoffed at her response. She glared at him, "Do you have something you need to say, Stark?"

"I think your partner would be interested in what I have to say. And I happen to think he does need to know," he replied, daring her with his eyes to test his word.

"Didn't you just ask me to leave, Stark?"

"I've changed my mind."

"Don't do this, Stark," Natasha said warningly, as he advanced toward her and pulled off the blanket that was covering her abdomen. There was some blood still leaking onto the bandages and the shock in Clint's face could not be missed as he saw the dozens of lines still visible above the waistline of her pants.

"What happened?" He gasped, lightly fingering the cuts. "Who did this? Is this Viktoriya? Someone else from the Red Room? I swear, I will hunt down every last one of them if I have to. Is this what you meant? During New York, when you told me I knew you had been unmade like… Like Loki did to me?" He still struggled to admit the power Loki had yielded over him at the time, refusing to admit his loss of control. "This is so much worse, Tash. God, I will find whoever did this to you and kill them in a heartbeat."

"Well, let's hope that's not true," Stark says, ignoring Natasha's obviously furious face. "Because she's sitting right in front of you."

"Wha-" Clint begins, before realization dawns on his face. "Tash…"

If she felt like her legs could hold up her weight, she would have run. This was so much worse than when she kissed him before this happened. She should never have called Stark to help her and she could feel the anger boiling inside her at the thought that he had not only discovered, but revealed her deepest secret to the man that she loved, the man she would die for. It was impossible to stop a panic attack once it began, she had learned, but she did not even feel this one start before she found herself struggling to get air into chest. She had sat up and clutched her stomach, trying to hide the rest of the scars from her partner and was now rocking back and forth. She hated this feeling, being out of control of her emotions, and she only knew one thing that would fix it.

"Stark," she choked out between gasps for air. Her eyes were glassy and she couldn't get them to focus on any one thing in the room, constantly looking around for anything sharp enough to stop this attack. "I need…" Her eyes locked on a small beaker on Banner's side of the lab. If she could just break it and grab one piece, she could use that and be calm in a few seconds. As if on cue, Stark and Clint made eye contact with each other and silently nodded an agreement of how to handle the situation. As soon as Natasha made a move to get off the bed, Clint grabbed her from behind, sat on the table with her, and pulled her into his lap. She thrashed at his grasp and tried, weakly, to fight him to let her go, but she still had little strength. He held her firmly and stroked her hair, muttering quietly in Russian into her ear to soothe her while Stark took everything breakable from the lab.

"You'll be okay," he muttered, pulling her hands from her arms when she attempted to use her nails to draw blood. "Everything is going to be okay."

The minutes passed slowly, but eventually she collapsed against him, sobbing into his chest. Tony returned moments later and took a seat next to the makeshift bed, quietly waiting for her to regain her composure. By the time she had begun to calm down, Bruce had entered the lab for his daily checkup on his patient.

"Natasha, you're awake," he said, as she lifted her head off of Clint's chest to see him.

"Yeah," she said, taking a breath to steady her voice. "Thank you, for this. I, uh, I can go back to my room now, so I won't keep troubling you." She said, hesitantly, but when she tried to stand, her legs collapsed under her and Clint lifted her back onto the table with two arms under hers to support her.

"You'll need to stay for at least another day so that I can monitor your vitals and you can regain another strength to at least walk on your own," Bruce said, visibly assessing her progress and giving a somewhat disdainful look. Natasha seemed to have noticed this and scowled back at him, stating that she would be just fine recovering on her own and accidentally letting it slip that she had actually done worse before.

"That doesn't exactly work in your favor," Stark said quietly.

"I don't give a damn what you think, you meddling asshole."

"Tash," Clint said from behind her, running his fingers through her hair as she sunk further into herself. "We all just want to help you."

"You don't want to help," she said, nearly jumping out of his lap at those words. "You just want to take it away from me and probably make me see a shrink who thinks they can fix me. Well, guess what? You can't. None of you can fix me. You couldn't fix me after Budapest, you couldn't fix me after New York, and you can't fix me now. I can't be fixed, don't worry, they made sure of that. I just want to go back to the way things were before this all got fucked up because nosy old Tony had to go poking around where he didn't belong. I'll stay in the hospital for another night if it will keep you from going to SHIELD, but I am sure as hell not talking to any of you or anyone afterward. I can handle myself."