The two days following their trip into town passed quietly with days spent walking in the forest and evenings spent in easy company on the porch. With every day that passed them by, he could see the difference in her, she was gradually regaining her sense of self, healing both inside and out. Although her appetite still came and went, she was eating enough to regain some of the weight that she had dropped so suddenly, which meant that her clothes fit better and her hip bones no longer stood out quite as sharply as they had a few days ago.
He had devised a routine of exercises that would help her to rebuild her strength and stamina without impeding her healing, taught her the basics of hunting and generally made sure that the environment was as calm as it could be. It had been three nights since her last nightmare and she seemed calmer, no longer hyper-aware of their surroundings at all times of day and night. Time and distance had worked wonders on her, but they both knew that they couldn't stay at the cabin forever, in three days she had to report to medical so that they could assess her recovery.
Standing on the porch, coffee cup in hand, he watched her out in the meadow as she twisted and tumbled in the long grass, throwing kicks and punches into the air at imaginary opponents, a hurricane of movement that threatened to bring his carefully constructed house of cards crashing to the ground. He couldn't breathe when he watched her, he'd never learned how. Usually he would be there, at the centre of that whirlwind, the person at the other end of those kicks, the man who helped her to hone that lethal grace and precision, but that morning he was just a spectator and she took his breath away. Even knowing that she was not at one hundred percent, it was difficult to imagine anything that stood in her path stopping her.
She turned her head towards him, as if she could sense his presence and he forgot how to breathe. She was too beautiful amid the lush green of the meadow, among the wild flowers, her hair a brilliant, vibrant red and her skin showing the first hints of a developing summer tan after days out in the open. He had never seen a more enchanting sight than the one that faced him now. In another life Natasha could have belonged to the country, she had the charm and the beauty for it, but life had had other plans for her, for both of them.
"Feel like helping me out with something?" she called, shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun as she continued to watch him. Knowing that whatever she wanted help with would most likely end up with him out in the sun and working up a sweat, he retreated into the cabin to change into more appropriate clothing for a workout. Experience had taught him that even the most relaxed workouts with Natasha could be a gruelling affair, it had something to do with what had happened to her back in Russia, and made her a tricky sparring partner. They were always trying to get the upper hand over one another, evenly matched in almost all respects but for her enhanced endurance and ability to twist out of almost any hold he managed to get her into.
They spent over an hour wrestling in the grass, bodies working with and against one another as she perfected techniques for reversing various holds. He didn't comment on the fact that almost all the holds she insisted he put her into involved positions that gave an attacker a physical advantage, preferring to see her work out her issues that way and not through a relentless punishment of her own body. Surging to her feet she upped the pace, throwing blows at him, forcing him to think fast as they sparred. He pushed her as far as he dared in her current condition and she met him stroke for stroke, strike for block, matching him as she always had. It didn't take long for laughter to bubble out of her, the exhilaration of the fight bringing them both to what they did best and where they were most comfortable.
Eventually, when she was done sparring with him, she resumed the grappling that had started their session. Positioning his hands where she wanted them and talking him through her thoughts on how to break free. Her instinct for combat was amazing, a response to years of training and too many near death encounters to count. She was, however, slowly driving him insane. Holding her body so close to his own, feeling the brush of her skin as she moved against him, the way she pulled him so intimately against her as she wrapped her legs around his waist and countered his hold on her, made him inescapably aware of how her body fit against his own. As she locked her legs around him and yanked him off-balance, pulling him down on top of her, he couldn't miss the way her eyes dilated, the slight hitch in her breathing and the clenching of her pelvic muscles as she gripped him tightly.
They lay out in the sun, side by side, for most of the afternoon. Relaxing in the wake of their exertions, talking and reminiscing about old times and past missions that they had shared, her body close enough to his that their skin brushed each time one of them moved. He saw the moment that her eyes clouded over though, the slight change in her posture as her thoughts turned to the future.
"I don't know if you did the right thing bringing me here Clint," she admitted, turning those stunning eyes his way.
"Why is that?" he asked, despite believing that he already knew the answer. She had been calmer there with him than she could have been almost anywhere else, he was sure of it, which meant that her sudden change of mood could only be related to one thing.
She sighed, rolling onto her front and propping herself up on one elbow so that she could pick at the grass. "Because I have to go back there in a couple of days and this is all going to fade into nothing but a distant dream," she admitted. "Here I can forget about what happened to me, I can focus on just breathing, feel the weight of my bones and just be me. When I go back to SHIELD and they start prodding me for answers, asking questions that I don't want to answer, it's going to be like these days never existed."
He measured the weight of her words and rolled to his side so that he faced her. "You do know that you won't be going back alone right?"
"Doesn't matter, you can't protect me from the way they'll all look at me. There were too many agents on the scene so the rumours would have started almost as soon as we got back to headquarters. We've been gone for over a week, I'd be surprised if there's a single agent that hasn't heard something about what happened to me out there." She huffed out a breath and glanced at him. "This kind of thing makes people pity you, it makes them look at you as a victim."
Acting on impulse, he reached out and took her chin between his fingers, turning her face back towards him, making sure that her eyes met his before he spoke. "Natasha, anyone who looks at you like a victim is an idiot," he told her, "you aren't a victim, you're a warrior and above all else you are a survivor."
Leaning in,she planted a soft kiss on his forehead, a thank you, an understanding. He saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes before she locked her emotions away, but he could hear it in her voice when she spoke again. "How is it you always know exactly the right thing to say?" she asked gently, settling against him in the long grass, head resting on his shoulder. He held her, saying nothing, just staring up at the sky and quietly turning over a plan that had begun to form in the back of his mind, a plan that would possibly help her to get some closure on this episode and would prove beyond all doubt to anyone watching her that the Black Widow was still as ruthless and deadly as she had always been.