Holy crap it's been soooo long since I've updated, like a week. Sorry for the long wait. School got in the way. I swear there should a law against stressing students out the first week of a semester.

Hope you like it! Hopefully the next chapter will be along shortly.

"Natalia!"

The man sounded distant, like she was underwater. She groaned, squeezing shut her eyes and turning away from the unpleasant voice; her head hurt and it was far too early. Was it too much to ask for just another hour of sleep?

"ukhoditʹ" she buried her head into the pillow. The white hot pain between her eyes was unbearable. Leave me alone!

"Natalia! prosnutʹsya!" an iron vice clamped around her arm and yanked her from her bed. She was thrown to the cold hard ground. She opened her eyes, intent on kicking the guy's ass, but immediately regretted it.

Nothing made sense. Instead of coming face to face with an assailant, she was alone in a room that leaned to the left unnaturally. It was disorienting.

Her vision swam and the ground shifted beneath her, writhing and moving as if alive. She looked down to discover thousands of tiny spiders, black as sin, crawling their way up her body. A strangled scream tore from her throat as she desperately clawed at her skin.

It was undignified, some part of her mind tried to tell her. She always maintained her composure, no matter the situation. Grit your teeth and push forward.

But she's just a child? Isn't she? Small and afraid. This isn't a place for children…

The ground shifted again, becoming hard frozen snow beneath her feet. She was running, hard and fast. Her feet were numb and bleeding, it felt like pins and needles being pushed into her skin, and she couldn't breathe.

She had to stop. Had to catch her breath. But she couldn't. She had no control. On and on she ran through an endless frozen wasteland.

The world tilted again and spun out of control, like a nightmarish merry-go-round. She had always hated them as a child. Why would anyone want to spin around until they threw up?

She was going to be sick.

Night terrors and memories melted together. She could no longer discern up from down. And she couldn't fucking breathe. She was choking. Suffocating.

Oh God!

Icy fingers held her, squeezing the life out of her; bringing her to the edge of death and then releasing her just long enough to deny her the relief of oblivion.

Dead here or dead there. Dead is dead.

The fire would have been a better.

It didn't make any sense.

SHIELD was very thorough, especially when dealing with someone as volatile as the Black Widow. If she'd been on anything when she came in, it should have shown up on the tox screen. Plus she'd been on base for nearly a month, so she should have gone into withdrawal a lot sooner. There was no possible way she could have gotten ahold of anything, they only had a small pharmacy on base and inventory hadn't turned up anything missing.

Yet here she was, lying sedated in a hospital bed, pale as death. Red streaks on her arms and neck stood out against her white skin. He had barely stepped through the doors with her in his arms when she suddenly went rigid. For a moment it seemed the whole world had gone deathly silent.

Then a horrible scream pierced the air, and she struggled and twisted violent in his arms. She dug her nails into his skin, drawing blood. He got a knee to the nose before he finally decided to drop her legs and focus on restraining her arms. She had started to tear at her own flesh with her nails, screaming and sobbing.

By the time the medical personnel had jumped into to assist and succeed in sedating her, he was covered in her blood.

It had been horrific.

To make matters even worse, people were being fucking ridiculous.

He stuck around while they stabilized her and took blood to do some tests, and then he sat with her for a while. He left briefly to grab a shower, change his clothes, and get some coffee. When he returned he found a couple of probies standing in her room gawking. They look both frightened and guilty when he barked at them to get out.

He dragged them out of the room by their collars, threatened them till they looked ready to piss their pants, and then slammed the door in their faces.

Jesus

It probably wouldn't have pissed him off so much if it were just the probies trying to catch a glimpse. Probies were probies. But all day people who had no business being there, were strolling through medical. Instructors, handlers, field agents. He could understand people's reservation about trusting an enemy spy, but shit, she was a human being not a circus freak show! What the hell was the matter with these people?

So he parked himself in a chair at her bedside and glowered at the door whenever it opened, intent on making sure only those who were supposed to be there were admitted. That was how Coulson found him.

"You're scaring the nurses." Coulson stated, casually paging through a file, a hesitant doctor followed behind him.

Clint didn't reply, choosing instead to look over Natasha once more. Her breathing was slow and steady, the heart monitor beat out a steady rhythm, and her face was completely relaxed. She looked completely at peace, but it was only a drug induced illusion. No drug could protect her from her own mind, her dreams. They could hardly manage to make a dent in her fever. Her body seemed intent on killing her.

"Good news. They think they've discovered what's causing all this." Clint perked up at that, giving Coulson his full attention.

"yeah? And what's that?"

Coulson pulled a picture from the file and handed it to Clint, "two years ago the CIA got a walk in. He gave his name as Jan Yenotin and claimed to be an agent of the Red Room, a Russian covert agency that went rogue after the fall of the Soviet Union. The same one that once pulled Black Widow's puppet strings before you brought her in. Before he could provide any intel, he started to exhibit the same symptoms; chills, fever, hallucinations, paranoia... textbook drug withdrawal. Dr. Bergt," he gesture to the doctor, "compared her blood work with his and found traces of the same unknown substance in both patients, it was initially overlooked in both cases."

"It's difficult to detect of you're not looking for it," the doctor cut in. "it was only a fluke that the lab techs found it in Yenotin. Unfortunately, no one here knew about him at the time we did Ms. Romanoff's examination. I stumble on the file when I went looking in the database for anything to do with the Red Room that might explain her condition. If I had to venture a guess I'd say it's some kind of performance enhancing drug."

Clint stared down at the photograph, "you said good news. What's the bad news?"

Never one to pull any punches, Coulson came right out and said it. "He died within 48 hours."

Fuck.

"It's a leash. Cut and run, and you are as good as dead." Clint said distastefully.

"We don't know that. It could just be severe withdrawal. Severe, but survivable. Yenotin was in much in a much worse condition when he came in. Natasha was perfectly healthy, and has received excellent health care and a healthy diet. She has an impressive physique. She's built strong, I'm confident she'll pull through."

It was just wishful thinking. Fucking doctor didn't know anything. He hadn't seen Natasha in Sao Paulo, surrendering herself to what she thought was going to be a death blow, or sitting there in the burning hospital inviting the flames to consume her. If she had no will to live, what did it matter if she had excellent medical care or a strong body?

He turned to look down at her prone form. She was a shell of a person. An abused child who'd already written herself off as worthless; she thought she was better off dead.

Why do you care? She'd asked him.

There are some people in life that you meet and you know instantly that there is something different about them, something special. A spark that draws you in like a moth to a flame. Someone had tried to stamp out that spark in her, but it's also the reason they wanted her in the first place. She had talent and charm. Now it was barely there. A faint glimmer in a sea of hurt and betrayal, but it was still there despite everything; and it had caught Clint's attention.

He sat down on the bed next to her and threaded his fingers through hers, gazing down at her tenderly. Behind him the doctor cleared his throat uncomfortably and excused himself from the room. Coulson stayed.

Clint didn't have to turn to see the man clench his jaw. He could practically hear his handler's thoughts. He was thinking that Clint had gotten himself in to deep. He allowed himself to be charmed by a pretty girl, and when she was gone, Coulson was going to have to pick up the pieces.

Clint didn't care. She wasn't going to die. He wasn't going to let her. He didn't drag her out of that fucking burning building to let her die now. Truth be told, just like when he saw that black smoke rising from the hospital, he couldn't help himself, he acted without thinking.

He laid his other hand across her forehead and skimmed his fingers down her cheek. "I'm not going to make this easy for you." He said softly, "You don't get to just give up."

Right so before anyone asks, I'm not going to translate the Russian in this chapter. It really not that important to know, plus the context gives you a pretty good idea I think.

On another note, I'm worried that I might be leaving things out or underexploring. I fear that what's happening in my head may not make it all into words, so if anything is confusing, please let me know! And I'll find a way to fix it.

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to review if you like it!...or even if you don't. I LOVE hearing from everyone, it makes my day.