"Natasha, let us in," Tony knocked lazily on her door. "I can just have JARVIS let us in, but I'd rather you just open the door."
She was in a bit of a trance, hearing him but not quite fully aware of what he was saying as she walked to her bathroom.
"Calm down, Stark. Won't JARVIS tell you if anything happens anyway?"
The men gathered outside of her room nod silently, admitting that she was right. None of them moved, just leaned against various walls and silently exchanged meaning through glances. Hearing no further protests, she slid to the floor of the bathroom, her bony spine leaning against the side of the bathtub as she assembled what she needed to do this without getting caught. She had a roll of toilet paper at her side, which would be messier, but she could flush away the evidence. She had the blade stolen from Steve's bathroom. Now all she had to deal with was making sure that her vitals remained the same. Typically when she cut, her heart would be racing before she did anything because she would be having some kind of flashback or panic, then she would calm down as soon as the cool blade ripped a neat line into her flesh. At least, that's how it felt to her. Her heart was beating normally now, so if she could keep it that way, they would never find out.
She had failed to account for the fact that, while the cuts made her feel calm, they did elevate her heart rate as a pain response. She had barely made three cuts before a literal siren started blaring through the tower, indicating that her vitals had spiked out of the normal range. Seconds later, the doors all clicked signaling that they were unlocked and Natasha stuffed the blade quickly back into the side of her bra. Her teammates were in the bathroom with her as soon as her hands returned from her chest and Tony immediately let out a sigh at the sight of the blood on her arm.
"Where is it?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"We can see the blood, Lady Natasha."
"Stand up, Red. Bruce, can you please take her to the lab and clean the cuts?" The other men stayed and searched every inch of her room for whatever she had used to harm herself.
"Nat, you can't keep doing this," Bruce told her gently. "This is going to sting." He warns her as he sprays the wounds with rubbing alcohol to disinfect the cuts thoroughly. She swore quietly, but loved the additional pain that it brought her temporarily. "One of these days, you'll cut the wrong spot and nick a vein or cut too deeply and need stitches. There is no version of this where things end well. Do you get that? Do you understand that this ends with you stopping or dying? Because those are the two ways this ends, Nat. If you are not recovering, you are dying."
"Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing."
"You can't possibly think that. What about the team? What about SHIELD? What about all the good you've done and will do? What about your future, Nat?"
"What future? You know just as well as I do that this career isn't one where you retire happily at age 65 and live happily ever after. This is my future. And what about the team? And SHIELD? What about me, Bruce? Why do I always have to take care of everyone else? Why can't I be selfish just this once and care about ME? Doesn't anybody care about me?"
"Of course we do. We care about what's best for you. And this," he motions to her arms as he wraps them. "Is not what's best for you."
"Well neither is being kept up by flashbacks all night or living with the things that have happened to me, so."
"I am not going to watch you destroy yourself."
"Then don't watch." She yanks her arm out of his grasp and goes back up to her room where Tony, Clint, and Thor are still searching for her blade. She ignores their questions and their presence all together, opting to lay on her bed and pretend to be asleep for the rest of the afternoon. At some point, she did fall asleep and woke several hours later, a scream stuck in her throat and the moonlight streaming in through her windows. Steve was leaning against the doorframe when she sat up and made a move to sit on the edge of her bed as she wiped the grogginess from her eyes.
"You missed dinner," he mused lightly. "JARVIS let us know that your heart rate was elevated, but that you were still sleeping so I came to check on you."
"Great, so I've pissed everyone off yet again." She sighed. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable earlier, I just… It's hard to talk about."
"I know. Well, I don't really know, but I can imagine. It's hard for me to talk about Peggy, but talking about her also helps me feel a little better when I'm alone later and the thoughts creep in."
"Listen, Steve, I know what you're trying to do and I appreciate it, but that's just not really how this works for me."
"I know, it must be much harder for you. Sometimes it's that hard for me when I think about… the war." He adjusts his position on the bed and turns his head to the floor instead of facing her. "I lost my best friend and the things I saw… I don't think that I could ever forget that. It keeps me up more nights than not. It's not… the same. But I do understand why you don't want to talk about what happened. I get it."
"Steve, I didn't even think… If you ever need to talk, I'm here. I can listen."
"I don't want to be a burden to the team. Even when I tried to see counselors, it was too much for most of them to handle."
"I think I'm a bit more used to hearing those kinds of things."
"You shouldn't be."
"Steve, don-"
"No, Nat. You shouldn't have seen those things, done those things, had those things happen to you… I can never apologize enough to you for having to go through that. And for not protecting you when it happened with Loki."
"Steve, that wasn't your fault, you couldn't have done anything. I could hav left the program sooner, I could have fought him sooner, it was my-"
"Stop." He says firmly. "It was not your fault. I don't know how many times you need to hear that, but I will say it to you until you start believing it. What happened to you was not your fault. You were a kid. It was not your fault."
"I wasn't a kid in New York."
"If it was Pepper, or Jane, or anyone else… Would you tell them it was their fault that they were assaulted?"
"No, of course not. They're not trained, they don't-"
"No, that's all there is. It would not have been their fault and it. Wasn't. Yours." She sighs in frustration, but something at the back of her mind was telling her to believe him. Now he and Clint had both tried to convince her that it wasn't her fault, it was possible that they were both wrong, but the logical side of her brain was insistent that it was highly unlikely that they were both lying to her. "And Nat?"
"Hmm?" She mused, still being pulled from her thoughts by his words.
"Can you please give me back my razor blade?"
"How did-"
"I kept count after we found out, Nat. I'm sorry, but we have to be careful with you. We can't lose you, we care too much about you."
She slowly lifted her shirt and he quickly averted his eyes out of habit as she retrieved the blade from its hiding spot on her person.
"Thank you."