After Bruce had spent what felt like hours poking and prodding at his ribs, Clint was released with strict orders and threats to never harm himself in any way again, or face the wrath of Tony, Natasha, and SHIELD. Unsurprisingly, he returned to his floor to find that everything was slightly out of place, his lighter and cigarettes had vanished, and there were no potentially harmful objects left in his quarters. He sighed and laid on his back, wishing for anything that would present itself as a solution or remove the heavy weight sitting on his chest, knowing that he had hurt his best friend and the woman he loved more than life itself. Of course he had known that burning himself wouldn't fix anything and would likely only make things worse in the end, but that was a risk he had been willing to take for the single second of relief that the hot ash brought him as he realized that for a split second, his mind was focused on the pain of the burn and not the crushing guilt of his actions. He briefly allowed his mind to wonder if this was how Natasha felt - after everything she had been through, she had found brief and fleeting reprieve in her habits and, although they were harmful, perhaps they stopped the thoughts and they had taken them away from her without a second thought. There were so many thoughts flooding his mind that he knew he was not going to sleep that night and instead ventured to the roof to contemplate the world from his favorite spot: his nest.
Meanwhile, Natasha was tossing and turning constantly in Thor's bed, getting no restful sleep. Her interactions in the hours before sleeping had brought a memory to the forefront of her brain and she was reliving it in her fitful dreams.
It was a few months, or maybe years, after she had begun her sexual training and only she and one classmate remained. Despite years of warnings not to become friends and the innate knowledge that only one of them could survive to be the widow of their class. They shared a few moments whenever they could, letting each other cry for a few moments, a forbidden activity by any of their superiors. It turned into a sort of routine between them and today was Natasha's turn to comfort the other girl. She hugged her closely, allowing their small frames to nearly bruise each other from pure force of bones crushing together with minimal cushion.
"What is this?" There was only one widow in the class above the two girls as the rest were on their missions and long-term assignments. She was not well-liked and rumor had it that she had been quite brutal and merciless when executing her classmates. The girls quickly separated and began attempting to explain their actions and pleading with the older girl not to turn them in. She simply smiled and walked away slowly.
"What are we going to do?" Natasha asked the other girl quietly, in a panicked whisper.
"We punish ourselves for it. Before they can. No eating, give yourself a few cuts, and maybe even offer yourself to one of them. Just for good measure. Tash, I know it's unpleasant and awful, but we have to do it. We still have weeks before one of us has to die, we have to make it until then."
"But we already ate today and they probably won't give us more for at least a few days. That won't show them anything."
"You have to get rid of it."
"Get rid of it?"
"Show them that we are disciplined and we do not even need the luxuries they give us. You have to throw up. Cut. Submit for extra training. Flirt. Anything. We have to fix this."
Natasha was more than confused about the logic - how would it make things better by making her own life worse? Wouldn't it be easier to just… give up? At least then, maybe the other young girl could live.
"What if I just… tell them it was all my idea?"
"You'd be killed."
"Well… Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing, you could live."
"You're the only good thing about this place - why would I want to live if you're not here anymore?"
"You know that we can't both make it out here…"
"We're supposed to have time! I need you!"
They were both openly crying now and they knew that every moment they were not caught was sheer luck at this point. If they did not stop soon, they would be found and they would both be killed; decisions had to be made and they had to be made quickly if even one of them wanted to survive beyond this particular day.
"Okay, so we'll both do our best. No more of this, we have to go show them what we can do and how much better we are, show them it was a fluke, one hard day and just one little mistake. It will be okay, it has to be."
They briefly touched their foreheads together, wiped each others eyes with their thumbs, then separated and went off in separate directions, Natasha toward her room and the other girl down a long, narrow hallway that led to the classrooms and training rooms. After she had ridded herself of the minimal food in her stomach, she began to cut her thighs with a small knife usually kept on her thigh in a small holster. Though her principal concern was ensuring that they both survived this stint, Natasha was secondarily concerned about the new lack of outlet they both faced. Of course, there really was no escape in the Red Room, but they had found solace in one another and the temporary relief that offered could not easily be replaced. She noticed quickly, though, that harming herself appeared to offer some reprieve. What was normally a painful punishment reserved for missteps and failures was acting as the same sort of escape from the hell she was living as crying with her classmate had.
The relief was short-lived, as her door burst open seconds later and the knife fell to the ground with a loud clatter. Still bleeding, with a throat too raw to protest, she was dragged down a series of hallways she had not recalled seeing before and sat in a small room across from a woman she had never met before. The man who drug her here called the woman a name, an odd sign of respect for women here, but Natasha only heard the beginning - Vik - before she was hit over the head with a large metal pipe and passed out cold. When she woke, the woman was gonna and her classmate was sitting, chained to a chair across the room from Natasha.
"You've already killed her, now we're just going to finish with a bullet to the head."
"No," she cried. "We have more time, we don't know which of us is best yet."
"It's okay Nat," the girl rasped, clearly struggling to breathe. "I chose this."
"Your friend told us a very interesting story about how she was crying to and was so weak. Of course, we know you've done this too, but you never broke. We can't have pathetic, weak little girls who want to save their friends more than do their job." The voice was piped into the room and came from a female. Probably the one from earlier, Natasha thought to herself.
"I won't do this to you," she whispered, refusing to pick up the gun.
"They'll kill us both if you don't let me do this. I made this choice, this isn't yours. I'm sorry you're the one who has to do it, but it's not your fault. You have to keep fighting and get out, you deserve so much better than this. Someday, you'll be out. Just promise me you'll find my sister and tell her I love her. Please."
"I will," Natasha promised, as a tear slid down her cheek and she cocked the gun. "I'll find Megan and I'll tell her. I won't let her forget you, Sasha."
As her body slumped and fell out of the chair, Natasha was roughly pulled from the room again and thrown back into her own quarters. A man followed her and spit toward her face as she lay on the ground.
"Get up, get on the bed."
She stumbled up from where she had fallen on the floor, weak from emotion, lack of food, and the blood loss visible on her floor. He handcuffed her to the bed roughly and gave a sickly smile before moving from the doorframe to reveal her first assailant of the night, who lifted her up like a rag doll above the bed, her arms still pulling behind her, and dislocated her shoulder before slamming her body back onto the bed roughly, knocking her unconscious once again. Natasha missed three days of classes and, by the time she returned, she was limping, covered in bruises, and could barely handle taking a few steps without screaming from the pain in her lower half.