Chapter 4
6/
London is colder than Natasha remembers.
She wakes up violently, her body reacting with panic and anger.
Breathing heavily, she has no context for how long they’ve kept her asleep for this time.
Blood pools in her mouth as she bites her cheek hard.
She tries to get her breathing under control.
The chill in the room, makes her shiver and she wonders if it’s a side effect of the drugs.
She feels angry with herself.
Drugs is something she’s never relied on, but now it seems it’s all she’s got.
Since killing Sofya, they’ve sedated her two more times with her permission, and she’s starting to think that it’s the only way she’ll ever get rest.
Sometimes, she thinks, they should just keep her sedated.
Tony walks in, and she frowns.
He’s shaved his head.
Clint follows and his is shaved too.
“How long was I gone for?”
She stares at them confused and her hand comes up to her own shaved head.
It’s grown over the last two weeks.
Still stubbly, it itches like crazy.
“What have you done?”
Clint is first to saunter over, and lays next to her on the bed.
Tentatively, she reaches over and he takes her hand to rub his head.
So self conscious of her own hair, she can’t believe that they would both do the same.
Tony holds out his phone and sits on the lounge chair nearby.
“Bruce and Steve too.”
The picture of the two boys together with shaved heads makes her emotional. Their smiles and the way their hugging each other makes her swallow down emotion.
She knows she could blame the drugs, but if she’s honest with herself, the fact that they’ve done this for her, makes her feel.
Natasha doesn’t know what to do with the feelings. It feels like they stir around inside and threaten to break free.
Clint puts his hand over hers and encourages her to keep going with touching his head.
She lets the tears fall silently but it’s good tears.
Anger follows in how weak she is being.
This is not a big deal.
She’s survived so much worse.
“How long have I been asleep for?” she asks shakily.
Clint purses his lips.
“Just over 18 hours.”
She nods, her body tired and stiff.
She feels as though there’s mud in her brain and she’s wading through it to for cognitive thought.
“How are you feeling?” Tony ask awkwardly.
“Are Bruce and Steve coming here?”
Tony nods, understanding not to push the feeling question.
“I’ve sent them the jet. They’d like to see you.”
Natasha feels herself prickle.
“Breakfast?” Clint offers.
Getting up slowly, she completes her morning routine, showering, going to the gym, eating with Clint and Tony.
She can’t stop staring at their hair, or lack there of.
Clint notices and smiles, sipping his coffee the. Offering her the same.
“They’ll be here this afternoon,” Tony announces, looking at his phone.
“Steve has some things he wanted to discuss with you, Nat. Something about a gun runner?”
It’s felt so long since she worked.
So long since she did something that mattered.
Steve coming felt like she had a purpose, that this; whatever this was, could just be a short chapter of self pity and wallowing, and that it could be easily forgotten.
It brings strings of hope and she nods to Tony.
“Send me whatever information you have,” she offers, “I think I’d like to do some work.”
Clint nods and smiles approvingly. It’s better, she supposes, than the nothingness that’s filled their days and the worry that has permeated like oppressive gas.
.
She finds Clint in the library.
He shuts his laptop as she enters and he looks up to her and smiles.
“What were you looking at?” she asks curiously.
“Nothing really.”
She plonks herself down on the large couch and yawns.
For most of the day she can push through the day, but it’s the night that scares her.
She used to love the open hours over the evening, where the world seemed quieter and everyone had gone to sleep. It was like the world was her own.
Now, it felt tainted by something she knew she had to do but couldn’t attain.
“I wanted to ask you something,” she asks.
He looks at her curiously, allowing her to continue.
In that moment, Steve and Bruce come through the door.
Her smile is genuine.
She hugs both of them and invites them to sit down.
Clint looks at the two men, and sends a message to Tony to let him know they’ve arrived.
It’s like old times.
Even though Thor isn’t there, Clint feels like it’s the ending to a big mission.
Pizza and drinks and snacks line the tables in the library. They tell jokes and laugh and no one touches on the elephant in the room.
Clint wonders what Natasha wanted to ask.
At 2am, Steve yawns and Bruce follows suit, and they tell of their long day.
Natasha looks sad as they leave but Clint doesn’t think it’s because they’re going.
She knows what should happen next, but he doubts she’s there yet.
Tony leaves next, a smile and small wave as he saunters off.
Left alone, Clint looks over and pulls Natasha into a hug.
“What do you want to do?”
He feels her shrug against him.
“Do you want to try and fall asleep without anything?”
Natasha shrugs again.
It feels like such a sensitive subject. He doesn’t want to have to always ask and he’s sure she doesn’t want to have to explicitly say.
“I don’t think it will work.”
Clint nods.
“Go shower, I’ll get the room set up.”
Natasha sighs heavily, offers him her hand and helps him up too.
He looks so tired.
It’s her fault.
She should be over this, done and recovered.
Her body is fine, but mentally, she can’t sleep.
It takes all of her energy to get through the day and then, even when she is tired there was no reprieve.
The shower helps to calm her body and when they arrive in the room she finds it warm and new bed sheets covering it.
“We just have to try,” he comments, as she closes the door.
“If it works for a short time, we can build on that.”
“And if it doesn’t work at all?”
He shrugs, “well I guess that tells us something too.”
Natasha climbs into bed, trying not to feel the apprehension and fear that invades her mind.
Even with the threat gone, she feels it was too easy, that they’ll take him, kill him, just like she did to Sofya’s husband.
“Don’t leave,” she murmurs.
“I won’t,” he replies.
“How can I help?”
Natasha doesn’t know.
Her idea, was not this.
Her idea maybe would have put him offside, so maybe he was right. To try this and see if it had any merit.
“Read to me.”
Clint smiles and climbs in next to her.
“I’ve been reading Percy Jackson, will that do?”
Natasha settles in, peeking at the clock. It’s just after 4am.
“Sounds good,” she whispers, listening to his heart beat.
.
The scream erupts from her lips.
Clint holds her thrashing body down.
She hadn’t even fallen asleep for even a minute.
God.
This was the worse he’d seen her in so long.
Perhaps even worse than after coming back from Russia.
Whatever Sofya did was… he didn’t even know if he had the words for it.
Attacking sleep and creating negativity around it had the benefits of continued torture.
He’s sure now that threatening him was not all they did, but built up and reminded Natasha of all the things she did whilst under control of the Red Room and the KGB.
He knows it because of the things she cries out, the names, the way she claws at her arms and her face and the way she wakes with grief and regret.
“Nat, it’s okay you’re okay, open your eyes now, I’m sorry I said it would be okay.”
She grabs at his arms holding her.
“No,” she groans, “I’m not asleep, I didn’t fall asleep. Don’t make me.”
“You’re safe, you’re safe,” he repeats, frantically.
“Wake up now, I’m sorry, I thought maybe if you tried, it’s been been… you need rest.”
Eyes finally focus on him, dark circles almost surround them.
“Don’t let me sleep,” she pleads.
“They’ll…”
He loosens his grip.
“Tash, you’re not there, they can’t do anything, okay?”
She stares off to the side, avoiding his eyes.
“They’ll know,” she says quietly.
“They always knew.”
Clint feels the panic drawing through him.
He doesn’t know what to do. He feels so helpless.
“Can I sedate you?”
He says it as a choice but the option of her going another day without sleep, with sheer willpower and fight to keep herself awake, it’s not a choice.
Doe eyes stare at him.
“If it’s not a choice, don’t ask it like one.”
Her voice low and dangerous.
Even now, at her lowest, she can read him like a book.
She knows the lengths he’ll go to keep her safe.
“I can’t sleep,” she moans.
“I can never sleep. Even when it’s pulling at me, even when I’m excruciatingly exhausted and I want to trade anything for one ounce of sleep; I can’t. Okay? I can’t. So yes, Clint, sedate me, knock me out, recalibrate my brain in any way you can, but I bet that I’ll push through it, because that’s what they did.”
Fingernails dig into her palms so hard that small beads of blood drip smear into her hands.
Clint touches her, awaiting the flinch.
It comes with a moan.
“Don’t.”
He doesn’t know what to do.
He moves off the bed and leaves her staring into nothing.
Clint wonders.
He finds his jacket, and Natasha’s, the one that goes down to her feet.
The idea is probably a crap one, but he doesn’t care.
It’s likely that it’s the only one he has that might not leave them both more traumatized than what they are.
“Nat?”
He says the words gently.
Her eyes watch him.
“You’re leaving?”
She says it like she’s expecting it. Always expecting people to leave her.
Like she’s too hard.
She closes her eyes against him and he pretends not to see the tear that slips out,
“We are,” he tells her.
“Can you put your jacket on? I can help you?”
It’s a testament to how sick she feels, that even though not physically unwell, her mind literally working off fumes. He can tell she has a migraine, the way she turns away from light, the frown in her brow.
He turns the light down.
The movements are slow, measured, as she puts her jacket on, like she’s conserving energy.
It’s reaching sunrise, the clock reading 4.21.
“What…”
She starts and stands as he holds a hand out.
“Go to the car,” he says quietly, handing her his phone with the flashlight on so that they don’t have to turn on the lights.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he tells her.
Natasha starts then stops.
“No.”
Panic passes over her face, looking almost haunting as the flashlight is held up.
Thinking quickly, he grabs the little black bag, two blankets and the water bottle.
He wonders what else he’ll need but he hopes that it’s nothing more.
Looking around he walks after her, finding her shivering in the front seat.
“I got you,” he mumbles, turning the car on and the heater alongside it.
Natasha folds into herself.
“Msorry, I can’t, I want to but I can’t, I want to, but every time I do, I just…”
He grasps her hand with his.
“Breathe, slowly, to the music.”
He puts the strings quartet music on, the eerie, haunting music play slowly. The music makes her stop her tirade of self deprecation, the slow beat focusing her thoughts.
Clint subtly puts it on repeat, as he drives.
The drive is not the point, the destination is.
They arrive at the beach, even though they have been driving for a while, she looks no closer to sleep than when they left.
“Look at the waves, Nat,” he smiles.
She’s looking, the sun is peaking through.
He turns the music off.
Lights reflect on the car, and sound of the beach penetrates the world.
All he can do is stare at is her.
He finds a safe space to park, and pulls her closer. Sitting in the car, they watch the waves and the sun rise.
“It’s pretty,” she says softly.
“I know,” he sighs, sliding the needle into her skin.
The glow warm on the car.
The threat wasn’t idle, his concern of her not sleeping was almost at the point of sending her back to the hospital wing of Tony’s, but the drugs Bruce had given him he hoped would be enough.
For a time at least.
May it help.
Even for a moment.
Clint hates Sofya.
Swears that if Natasha hadn’t killed her already, he’d kill her again.
He pulls away, glancing down at her inert form and wipes his face to be free of tears.
.
Natasha wakes in panic.
Dreams of torture, watching herself take her own finger nails, then injecting poisons into her own body make her feel nauseous.
Her head is pounding and the feeling of dragging herself up and through mud is becoming begrudgingly familiar.
Her eyes close and she sees imagines of girls on gurney. Her eyes snap open again.
Not again.
Clint is asleep beside her and the time reads 9am.
The sedation wasn’t working as long.
Or Clint didn’t give her as much.
She remembers the sunrise, his look of despair.
She tried.
It’s her turn to choose something now.
He’s going to hate it.
She knows how to work off anesthetic.
Knows she needs to raise her body up to decrease the nauseousness.
Taking her breath inwards, she focuses on making her chest rise and fall, then starts with her toes.
Wiggling them just a little to wake up her legs, then tensing her calves and moving up her body in progressive tensing and releasing. Mot takes a moment but does enough to bring her mind back to her and enough distance from the nightmares to make sure she’s not there.
She moves from the bed, and heads to the bathroom.
Looking at herself in the mirror, she touches her head and the tiny spouts of hair and feels sorry for herself.
Natasha laughs in derision and rolls her eyes at the sentimentality of hair.
She was something when she was younger.
Having done to Sofya what hurt her the most when the Red Room tortured her, she knows now, why they did it.
They were right, in a way.
If they could push past the nights of no sleep, or the way their bodies were used, they were truly not their own.
They were puppets being held by longs strings.
She wonders if her past will always haunt her, the darkness that surrounds her always bleeding into any good that she could do, wanted to do.
Sighing heavily, she washes her face, quickly she checks on Clint and then heads to the gym.
Natasha likes the feeling of her body working.
The way her muscles move and after the week of inactivity she’s starting to finally feel more like herself and not the crazed black widow that killed Sofya.
Still plagued with random heart rate spikes from the adrenaline, and focused nerve pain that came on, she found it was easier to concentrate.
She didn’t want to confront the torture from Sofya, and found that the night gave that.
It replayed it over and over in her mind, with no reprieve.
She had an idea though.
Clint was going to hate it.
.
Steve shows the information from Fury and the gun runner base of operation.
Natasha stares at it for a while and then deduces what he expects.
“You’re using this as a training mission for the others?”
Steve nods.
“Gotta start somewhere.”
She looks over it again, and points out some weak points and other things to consider for training opportunities.
It feels close to normal.
He looks her over and feels worry for his friend.
He wants to hug her and tell her he’s sorry for not being there.
Instead, he offers to make her lunch and begins to cook despite her non-committal answer.
He makes scrambled eggs and bacon, and then adds in other options, croissants he finds in the fridge, a chocolate milkshake in case she doesn’t feel like eating and a peanut butter sandwich, for simplicity.
Predictably, she’s goes for the milkshake and sandwich and he eats the rest as they talk about nothing.
He gathers his courage.
“How are you? Really?”
Natasha gives him a soft smile.
“Better,” she offers.
“Nat. That’s not an answer. Is there anything I can do?”
She seems to get lost for a moment, before shaking her head.
“I don’t think so, Steve.”
He reaches across for her hand.
“If there is, you’ll tell me?”
She nods, and looks over the paperwork again.
“This has helped more than you know. Can we do more of this?”
Steve nods, glad to have helped in some way. The guilt of not being round to help and assist one of his closest friends, weighed heavily.
She looked different and it wasn’t just because of her hair and he wondered just how deep her pain ran.
“Nat?”
She looks up from her sandwich.
“I’m sorry this happened.”
In it’s essence the apology is quiet and sincere and Natasha takes it for it is.
“Thanks Steve.”
.
Natasha focuses on the crunchiness of the sand under her shoes and her hand in Clint’s.
She doesn’t love the openness of the beach but the cold seems to deter people.
There’s no one else around.
Clint picks up and throws rocks into the lapping ocean.
“I have an idea,” she starts.
She knows she’s probably traumatised him from the night before, only remembering snippets and harsh words before he stuck a needle in her again.
It’s not the worse he’s seen her but close and visceral and impacts on him.
Other traumas she can keep to herself.
Natasha prefers that.
The dark.
The pain.
They are hers to carry.
This though, is not fair.
He is tired, and in a way that drinking copious amounts of caffeine doesn’t touch.
Clint throws another rock.
“Why do I feel I won’t like this idea?”
“I want to try the handcuffs.”
He stops walking, and lets go of her hand.
“What?”
“No.”
“Hear me out,” she starts.
“I think it might help, even with getting to sleep. It’s how I used to get to sleep as a kid and maybe my brain will remember that and forget this.”
The look he gives her is imploring.
He doesn’t want her to do this.
Maybe because of the connotations of it.
Chain someone to a bed and they can’t move.
Natasha looks as forlorn as he feels as she continues to justify her reasoning.
“I can’t sleep Clint. I need sleep. And you can’t keep drugging me. I feel like it’s not working and it will just become more and more until we can’t do it any more. And then what? We need other ways.”
He nods in agreement.
“I don’t want to keep drugging you, but this? Nat. Last time. Last time it was so hard, and I don’t think this is the solution.”
She kicks rocks on the beach.
“So what?”
He’s silent for a long time.
“We can try it,” he says finally.
Natasha nods, she was going to anyway, but to have his approval felt like it meant something.
“But,” he continues, “if I find another way, we have to try it.”
Natasha scoffs.
“What do you mean?”
“Tony and I have been doing some research, into sleep.”
She almost laughs out-loud.
“The self made insomniac and the man who od’s on coffee every morning are researching sleep?”
He waves her off with an easy grin, the mood just slightly lighter.
“And?”
He throws a handful of rocks into the ocean.
“We’ve found some leads, but Tony is looking into them a little more. The ones that aren’t drug related have more promise but require time and sometimes more scaffolding around them. They… I don’t know. It’s harder to do,” he finishes.
She nods.
“I’m not afraid of hard,” she tells him, taking his hand again.
“I know. Is more that, I want you to be okay.”
Natasha focuses on the way the waves moves in and out.
Imagines it to be the darkness that surrounds her. Maybe with people by her side, it’s not a permanent thing, coming and going like a wave.
“Okay,” she decides.
“Handcuffs and you keep doing research.”
Clint throws another handful of rocks, harder this time.
“Okay,” he agrees.
.
Natasha opens the box that was buried deep in her closet. Like the beating heart in a box, she almost doesn’t want to open it.
She’d sent Clint out, not revealing what she was going to do.
She likes it better this way, to feel the feelings without them being scrutinised.
The box is an old shoe box, no meaning behind it and no sentimentality in where the handcuffs lay.
Taking a deep breath, she takes them out of the box.
Natasha holds them, and thinks of the times they were made to wear them. The memories of being handcuffed to a bed, the fear of not being able to go anywhere.
Being handcuffed to each other.
She takes a deep breath.
She doesn’t know why they help her get to sleep, only that they will. Like a drug, it’s potency marred by its potential for dependence and how that may then bleed into her life.
They hold weight in their steel.
She puts them on one wrist.
Natasha feels ten years old. She tightens it, and then tries to twist her wrist to get out.
It takes her a moment longer than she likes, but she manages to bend her wrist in a way that she can get the pin in and unlock it.
She breathes.
It’s doable.
.
He stares at the offending handcuffs and remains unconvinced at their ability.
“You’re sure?”
She nods.
Clint climbs into bed.
She climbs in after him.
“How.. How do you want to do this?”
Natasha picks up her book, and waggles it.
“I’m going to read for a bit and then I’ll try. I don’t know, hopefully it puts me under enough that I get some sleep by myself.”
He takes her books off her and kisses her head.
“Are you sure?”
Natasha isn’t, but she feels that her angst shouldn’t bleed into him as well.
“It can’t be worse?”
The wry grin is not want Clint wants to see but he nods gently and looks at the time.
It’s just past midnight.
He’s tired.
He wants to stay awake to be with her but also knows that he’ll wake if she’s in any distress.
She said to him before that it’s something she doesn’t like him seeing, a weakness with her.
His are all on show, bared and raw, but she hides her hurts.
He doesn’t like it, but he thinks when he leans into it, she’s more likely to come to him if she needs it. If he pushes, then she’ll push back and hide everything.
One last hug, a whisper of luck and he rolls over and closes his eyes.
Something that is so easy for him, he’s asleep quickly and Natasha can’t help but feel jealousy.
She hears his breathing even out, the quiet breathes and sighs; his still body so unlike her tumultuous one.
Eye her book she tries and read her book, but the handcuffs feel heavy next to her.
Like someone reading over her shoulder, a ghost in the room.
Natasha puts down the book, takes a deep breath and puts her wrist in the metal.
She closes it over and feels her heart beat a little faster, there’s a swell of emotion before she dampens it down.
“No.”
She doesn’t let the emotion take hold.
Closing her eyes, she starts to count by doubles, just like she did when she was a child.
.
Natasha wakes and jerks forward, still tethered, panic builds upwards.
She tries to pull her wrist out, stupidly, but the pain of it scraping up against her skin, seems to clarify where she is.
Biting back a squeak, she feels Clint move against her.
Within seconds she’s uncuffed herself and rubbing her wrist.
It worked.
She fell asleep.
Natasha glances at the time.
2pm.
Just over an hour and a half.
It’s something.
It’s something.
She checks to see if she woke Clint, and to her surprise he’s still asleep.
Still breathing and alive.
She was slightly scared about what she might do.
Natasha wonders what to do.
Deciding to try again, she ignores the fact that her childhood trauma is deeper than whatever this is.
She stands and stretches, touches her toes, then goes to the toilet and grabs a drink of water.
Dragging her feet back to bed, she eyes the handcuffs.
“I hate you,” she whispers.
And it seems to help.
Cold metal meets her skin, and she starts counting again.
.
7/
Clint’s eyes hurt from staring at the computer. He thinks he has a plan.
Natasha told him about the night. The constant waking.
She wanted to try it again.
And he hated himself a little but he did too.
He slept through the night for the first time in almost three weeks.
And he think he needed it.
He feels almost human.
He’d left her with Tony, working on something together.
Clint was only half listening.
He had called Dr Cho, and she’d sent him some articles on sleep, and working his way through them seemed more work than fighting off 100 Hydra goons.
He thinks he has something though.
With the amount of therapy they’ve both had, he’s no stranger to CBT but he hadn’t thought it would have any efficacy with this trauma and sleep.
He reads on.
It’s not hard.
But convincing her might be.
.
Bruce watches Tony and Natasha and from the outside, you would think that there’s nothing wrong - despite Natasha’s shaved head, and even that could be a choice and not forced.
She smiles and asks questions, listens to Tony’s monologue, that even he zoned out of, and she asks questions with interest.
To think three weeks, almost a month ago, they were anxiously tending to her, wondering if this was the time that they couldn’t help or fix what was wrong.
Bruce thinks of it often.
They were lucky this time, maybe not next time.
Always living on borrowed time.
He knew he was.
It was only time before the Hulk took over or become something more than he could handle, and he thought that all the avengers had something like that in them.
Maybe not as big and green as his was, but something that would probably kill them in the end.
Natasha and her trauma.
Tony and his guilt.
Steve and his hero complex.
Clint… he wasn’t so sure of, maybe that he was the protector, always keeping an eye on everyone else.
He watches Tony work with Natasha, as they solider something that looks suspiciously like handcuffs.
Bruce doesn’t want to know.
What he does want is to turn his attention back to his research, the science of blood was fascinating, and his particularly so.
.
Natasha yawns.
Tony stares at her then promptly yawns too.
“Why exactly…” he starts, looking down at the handcuffs, “who are these for? And why.. Like what the point of making them easily activated to release?”
Natasha swallows and then looks visibly uncomfortable.
Tony looks at her with even more interest.
“Who’s it for?”
Natasha inspects their work, putting them on her wrist and then flexing it forward to make it open. It was a strange mechanism but it worked.
“Me.”
Tony takes it off her and puts it on his own wrist, he tightens it and then flexes his wrist forward like Natasha had, and they unclick for him as well.
“I don’t get it,” he tells her, “do they inject you with something?”
She smirks at him.
“No,” she replies, taking them back.
She doesn’t elaborate but he doesn’t stop.
“How do they help you?” he starts, “why handcuffs? Is it a sex thing with you and bird boy? Why is that the thing that worked for you? Like why that, over say just the sleeping tablets? Did you want some sleeping tablets? I have some, they tried to make me take them but then I sleep walked with them and they told me not to take them…”
He pauses for a breath.
“Should I try handcuffs with Pepper? Would it work for me too?”
Tony should know better, and thinks later that he should have shut up three sentences before as Natasha stares at him and shuts him down.
“Unless you were handcuffed to bed as a child, I don’t think it would work for you, Tony.”
The use of his name makes him cringe and want to apologise.
Maybe because she still stays, he wonders what to say next. Maybe something consoling, but it doesn’t feel right.
Scenarios run through his head of what to say or do but he’s caught in inaction and only saved by Bruce and Clint walking through the door.
He offers her a rueful smile, and she offers a tiny one back.
“Clint’s decided to show us all how to shoot arrows,” Bruce announces.
Clint nods and Natasha looks over in interest.
“We thought we’d invite you both,” he laughs, looking at Tony looking forlornly between learning something new or playing with new toys.
“Steve’s at the armory, getting my spare bows and the less dangerous arrows.”
Natasha hops off her chair, the handcuffs disappearing into her pocket.
“I’m in,” she announces.
Bruce looks expectantly at Tony before he caves too and they all file out of the workshop, following Clint to the range.
.
It feels like the world has found an equilibrium.
Natasha has moments where she feels outside of herself, that she shouldn’t be here, and that she’s an imposter just watching everyone else live.
Like she could disappear and leave her body still functioning.
It feels like she’s both there and not there but it’s not an unusual or bad feeling.
Clint would tell her they need to go to therapy. Talk to someone, and she’s sure the conversation is coming.
She’s not ready for it.
Three weeks ago she was strapped to a bed reliving her worse memories as they were pounded into her brain.
And whilst some of the images are gone, the repercussions of it and the flashbacks are still intrusive.
She can make it through the day, she can be present but it takes so much energy.
This isn’t the first time.
It probably won’t be the last.
Natasha watches Tony try and fail to notch an arrow, as Clint groans in frustration.
She smiles at Bruce and Steve trying to do it alone.
She picks up her own bow and enjoys the thwack of it hitting the target, Clint nodding at her in approval and making it a point to Tony that he should at least be able to notch the arrow on the bow.
Natasha focuses on her breathing, something she thinks about often it seems, it’s one thing that Clint has taught her, and bettered her since she started to utilize it.
Breathing and focuses breath, he’d taught her all those years ago, was one way to make sure he always hit his target.
Slowly, slowly, slowly in through her nose, letting the air fill her lungs. She imagines them filling like a balloon, and lets it out slowly.
The second breath she does the same, this time letting it out through her mouth, letting the breath pass her lips.
She notches the arrow.
Breathes again.
In, slowly.
Aim.
Out.
Fire.
Clint’s cheer breaks her reverie.
She can’t help but smile as he comes over and gives her a high five and a hug.
Natasha finds herself smiling, too, and the equilibrium of the world shifts again.
.
“Tell me again,” Natasha asks, yawning.
He shows her the computer and the sheets of information he found.
“There’s a therapist who deals with sleep, there’s a doctor too, but I don’t know what he’d tell us that we don’t already know.”
She nods.
“It’s a couple of things we can do. The first one they call stimulus control and it’s like, well you only go to bed when you’re tired and if you can’t sleep for around ten to twenty minutes, you get up and then go back when you’re tired.”
Clint hands her the research paper.
“Bruce put me in touch with a doctor who has had good success with sleep restriction, which basically, the time you’re sleeping now, we just add on half an hour and that all the sleep you get for the night, then we slowly bring it up. I think this one might be the one we start with?”
She takes the paper off him, and then looks at his tired face.
“How long have you been researching this?”
He shrugs.
“Tony helped, and Bruce too, they helped explain it to me and think of ways we could do it.”
Natasha hates that her problem is everyone else’s.
Clint sees it on her face and reads her mind.
“No, don’t do that, they wanted to help, asked to help, so don’t pity yourself into thinking that your problems are not theirs.”
He pauses.
“You’d do the same for them, and more, so don’t think that we wouldn’t do that for you.”
She ducks her head with the flood of emotion.
“Why this one?”
Clint shows her two more pages.
“The other two, they’re things we already do, well.. Mostly anyway. Like going to bed at the same time, or restricting caffeine.”
Natasha laughs genuinely at that one.
“I said some of the things we do, okay?”
“We just might need to get a bit better at it.”
“Or maybe I do,” she mumbles.
He squishes closer to her.
“We do,” he assures.
“Then what?”
Clint finds another piece of paper with a name and a number on it.
“Bruce said this person does well with therapy and sleep, and so maybe we call them?”
Natasha shifts uncomfortably.
“Maybe we try the other things first,” she offers.
Clint smiles predicting she’d have that reaction but at least all the information was literally on the table.
“There’s medication too,” he tells her, “but I think mostly they do what the handcuffs already are, and I thought….”
“I don’t like it.”
“Yeah.”
“Tony said he takes it sometimes,” he offers.
She sighs.
“So what we are doing now is wrong?”
“What laying in bed?”
Natasha looks at the time, and pulls out the handcuffs to show Clint.
“They’re quick release. Nothing special. I think Tony had other thoughts but I want to keep them the same for now.”
He takes them gently from her and tests the release by putting his wrist inside.
He plays with them for a bit and then hands them back.
“They’re only for getting to sleep right?”
Natasha takes them gently off him, glancing at the time again.
“You ever think to yourself, if I go to sleep now, I’ll get four hours of sleep, or if I go in twenty minutes I’ll get three hours and forty minutes?”
Clint looks at her.
“No?”
She frowns, “you just what, go to sleep and put on an alarm?”
He nods against her.
Natasha chooses not to think about that statement, and takes note to ask Tony what he thinks about before sleep.
“How long?”
“Yesterday was 4 hours,” she admits.
“So four and a half hours is the aim?”
Clint nods.
“That’s the aim, and then you gotta get up.”
“Okay,” she says with a look of determination.
He gives her a hug and kiss and then another.
“Four and a half hours and then pancakes,” he tells her.
Natasha kisses him, and breathes in an out audibly.
“Then pancakes.”
The handcuffs snap and sound loud in the dark, as she settles in and closes her eyes.
Counting breaths, Natasha falls asleep.
.