A.N: Still stowed off with work but I was running a fever last night and couldn't sleep so this helped me pass the time. If it's a little disjointed I'm blaming the sleep deprivation! As always I'd love to know what you think...
Time once again moved strangely around her, the passing hours slowing down to a torturous crawl as she waited for her therapists appointment. She hadn't slept well, finding herself up and pacing the confines of her room in the small hours, exhausted and yet unable to sleep for the constant turning of her thoughts. She was also trying to convince herself that the inability to sleep had nothing to do with the fact Clint wasn't in the bed beside her.
She had passed most of the day alone, aware that Clint would be busy with the assignment that Fury had given him the day before. He had told her that he was available if she needed him but she was loath to disturb him without good reason. Feeling a little restless and edgy about the upcoming appointment and the possible test results from her physical the day before, were not good enough reasons, even if she had spent most of the night torturing herself over the outcome.
The thought that the days spent in that airless basement could still have the power to change her life was just too cruel to contemplate and yet her mind refused to focus on anything else. She wasn't too concerned about being pregnant, reasoning that her body had been through too much to sustain it, but there was still the possibility of infection or the reality of lasting damage caused by internal injuries. The doctor has reassured her as best she could, finding nothing obvious during her examination but the results of the tests wouldn't be in for another day at least, since Carter had insisted that she would process them herself in order to keep the results strictly confidential.
Two o' clock eventually arrived and Natasha found herself sitting in the small private waiting room outside the therapists office with Maria Hill on one side of her. At first she had been convinced that Fury's second in command had only arrived at the door of her quarters to make sure that she attended the appointment, but the longer she sat there, trying awkwardly to make conversation, the more Natasha began to suspect that this was her version of a genuine show of support. Strangely she found herself glad of it when it became clear that the doctor was running late. It was nice not to have to wait alone.
Dr Mary Heworth was a quietly spoken, middle-aged woman, who welcomed Natasha to her office in a way that immediately set her teeth on edge. Calm, compassionate, she seemed like exactly the sort of person that someone could confide in, so naturally Natasha, who had no wish to talk about her experiences, hated everything she stood for on sight. From the first words out of her mouth, Natasha wanted to be anywhere but under the astute gaze of the woman who took the chair opposite her.
She'd had an aversion to people trying to get into her head since the Red Room so she didn't imagine that it would matter how nice the doctor was, she still wouldn't want to be there. Nothing raised her hackles more than someone, who probably had a whole lot of book learning but no real experience of what they were talking about, attempting to reassure her that they understood where she was coming from, especially when Natasha severely doubted that the good doctor had ever been part of a covert Soviet science project.
"You're resistant to talking about your time in captivity, why is that?" Heworth asked, looking over the top of her glasses, pen poised over the notepad that she had scribbled in for best part of an hour. They were going round in circles and getting nowhere fast.
"There's nothing to talk about," Natasha replied, keeping her voice as level and calm as she could. "It's over, bringing out the past serves no purpose but to give it power over the future."
Scribbling something down on the paper in front of her, the doctor raised an eyebrow. "You don't think that you need to deal with what happened in that basement Agent Romanoff?"
Turning the options over in her mind, Natasha considered the best way to play out the conversation. Since she excelled at turning interrogations to her advantage, she knew that there had to be a way to do the same in this room. As far as she was concerned, she'd been doing a damned fine job of processing the incident without the help of any professionals. With all the traumas in her past the last thing that she needed to do was start talking to a shrink, if the box in which she buried her past horrors was compromised, and the darkness that existed within her brought to the surface, she'd be in therapy for the rest of her life and so most likely would the doctor.
"No offence Doctor but I'm not a fan of people trying to get into my head, my former employers were rather skilled at manipulating my memory and my emotions so forgive me if I'd rather deal with things my own way."
"Talk therapy will help you to process what happened..."
"And just what do you think happened to me?" Natasha asked, turning her gaze toward the woman opposite her. The doctor stiffened slightly, obviously not liking the change in her posture or the tone of her voice.
"You were injured in the line of duty, held hostage and tortured for information..."
"Is that what they're calling it these days?" Natasha muttered, interrupting the doctor and drawing the first real response she had seen from the woman since she had walked in the door. She wasn't sure what had changed but there was something in her eyes that made Natasha wonder whether she had been too hasty in her judgement of the woman before her, the woman who held the keys to her getting back out into the field.
"You've been through a trauma Natasha, it doesn't make you weak if you need to take some time out to deal with that." The doctor leaned forward in her seat, setting the notebook aside momentarily. "If I'm reading you right, you're quite skilled at locking away the things that you don't want to think about, an agent with your skill set has to be adept at locking away the elements of the job that are unpalatable to them."
"I have my own way of dealing with this stuff," Natasha agreed calmly, "a way that works for me."
The therapist nodded, then looked her directly in the eye. "How bad did things get in that basement Agent?"
Images lit up the inside of Natasha's skull, flashes of memory, faces, emotions. She saw every indignity that had been inflicted upon her body as if she were a witness to it, once again feeling the harsh grip of cruel hands and seeing the bruises that had been left behind. She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, and expected to find them shaking under the onslaught of memory. Steady, calm, just like the beating of her heart and the breath in her lungs. Well if that wasn't progress...
"I've survived worse," she replied calmly, meaning every word. She had promised herself when she escaped the Red Room that she would never again be anyone's victim. She had hardened herself, turning her mind and her emotions to steel and locking them away where nobody would ever be able to exploit them. Clint was the only person who had breached that wall and it had taken him a long time to win her trust. He knew her the way he did only because she had found it impossible to keep him at arm's length.
"I should probably tell you that I've seen the photographs of the injuries you sustained."
Natasha took a deep breath, exhaled and laid her cards on the table. "I don't believe in fooling myself, lies serve no purpose. I knew that there was a chance that I could die there, I would have died there if Agent Barton hadn't got me out when he did..."
"It sounds like you were okay with that," Dr Heworth stated quietly.
Natasha met her gaze straight on, never flinching. "I'm not suicidal Doctor," she announced, "nor am I broken. I don't need someone prying around inside my head to help me process this. I don't need someone to hold my hand and tell me everything is going to be okay, what I need is to get back out there with my partner and live my life."
The expression that she saw in the doctor's eyes surprised her, there was something that looked a lot like respect there, along with something speculative. "I think that we can compromise a little here Agent Romanoff," she said after a long moment of silence, "regulations state that we have to meet a minimum of three times before I can discharge you from my care but I will reinstate your training schedule and stipulate that you may come and go as you please. You will still have to meet with me at least twice for a minimum of an hour Agent, but after that, if I feel we've made progress, I will recommend a return to active duty."
"What's the catch?" Natasha asked warily.
"Only that when the time comes that you can no longer lock away the horrors you live with, that you will seek me out and let me help you to deal with them." Extending her hand, the doctor waited expectantly. "I believe that I can help you Agent Romanoff, but not until you are ready to let me."
Natasha got the distinct impression that she surprised them both when she shook hands with the woman. "Deal," she replied, thinking that she would do almost anything to get to her ultimate goal of being fully reinstated and getting back to work. If that meant jumping through a few more hoops to convince everyone that she was stable enough to be in the field then that was what she would do.