After two days of watching her pushing her body beyond the limits of its endurance, as if punishing it for some sort of betrayal, he had known that he needed to do something before she did herself serious harm. Clint was not a fool, he understood her nature just as well as she did, Natasha was a strong woman and having been made into a victim did not sit well with her. He also knew that there was no use in trying to outrun what had happened, it would catch up with her eventually.
"You want to take me where?" she asked, staring at him in a way that made him question the sanity of the idea that he had laid before her when he had found her prowling the roof terrace. She had been up since first light and had already worked her muscles to the point of exhaustion.
Clint handed her the mug of coffee he had made her, noting that she immediately set it aside to resume hitting the punch-bag that hung in front of her. She had barely eaten, only seeming to remember that food was necessary when he made a point of making something for her, and even then only managing to force down a few mouthfuls before she pushed her plate away. "Out of the city," he repeated, "we'll spend a few days out on the land, hiking, hunting, that sort of thing."
Grasping the punch-bag, she looked at him again. Barton didn't miss the way she swayed on her feet, or the fact that the bag was pretty much the only thing holding her up. "You really think it'll help?" she asked.
"It helped me," he replied seriously. "If you don't want to go we can stay here Tasha, I just know that being out of the city for a few days, away from people and the noise, really helped me to feel more like me when I could barely get through the day without seeing the ghosts I was trying to get away from, but it's your decision."
"I'll think about it," she replied, bracing herself to resume her workout. Barton said nothing about the pounds that had already dropped from her slender frame, pounds that she could not really afford to lose, making her face gaunt and her collar bones stand out in sharp relief. He nodded once and retreated to the apartment.
When she woke sweating and shaking at three in the morning, her breathing ragged in the darkness of the bedroom, he was already awake. He watched her curl up, hugging her knees tightly to her chest as she rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and waited to see whether she wanted to talk. He had heard her distress as she talked in her sleep, pieced together the words as she poured out her pain into the dark, subconscious overflowing with all that she refused to talk about. He had heard the hurt, the pain, the loneliness and the anger that were warring for dominance within her and he had bled with and for her as she relived something that would have broken most women.
After a long moment, she reached out and shook him gently by the arm, obviously unaware that he was awake at her side. She'd been oddly insistent that he sleep at her side since the first night and he had complied, assuming that she felt safer with him there. "Let's do it," she exclaimed determinedly, "I can't live like this. Tomorrow morning we'll pack up and go."
"Don't you want to know where we're going?" he enquired quietly. Natasha shook her head, red curls bouncing around her face. Her fingers found his own, squeezing briefly before letting go.
"It doesn't matter where we go," she replied quietly, "as long as it's just you and me."