Chapter 28
They take the car back to his apartment.
He contemplates whether it should be her apartment or the tower but in the end he decides that he’d like some home comforts too.
Clint likes his apartment, his couch and bed. He likes the way it opens up to the balcony that he can reach the roof with and all the little intricacies of home.
It’s his own space.
The tower is great and it’s served so many purposes to keep all of them safe but now; he thinks they just need quiet.
Home is quiet.
She’s silent, apart from the audible breathing through her mouth. Her nose likely blocked from the tears shed.
He reaches across and grabs her hand, driving like they always do with one hand in each other’s.
“Will you talk to someone?” he ventures as he rounds the corner into the car park.
“I suppose.”
Natasha’s voice is quiet, far away.
He offers his phone and the text from their psychiatrist with a link to a secure video call.
“Now?” he asks, knowing he’s put her on the spot.
He could kiss Tony for his skills at making people do what he wants with money. Sometimes money doesn’t solve things but it does make access to resources a hell of a lot easier.
“How’d you manage that?” she asks, handing back the phone.
“Tony.”
“Of course.”
Natasha grasps her hands together, thumb touching her nails, that she rubs over and over unconsciously.
They walk up the stairs in unison, as they have so many times before. He opens the door and lets himself in, closing it behind her.
He offers her water that she takes with a nod.
“She’s ready whenever you are to call.”
Natasha takes the phone and stares at it. Puts it down and then picks it up.
She sighs.
“I can’t.”
Clint can’t stop thinking.
“I saw you standing by the water, I thought you were going to jump.”
He needs her to make the call.
“I was,” she admits.
“I felt like I was drowning without the water.”
Clint offers her the phone again.
“And now?”
She takes it.
“The feeling comes and goes.”
“Do you think you can?” if not, Clint thinks he’s going to make the call, not for her but for him, to help him process what he’s seen; what he’s done.
“Ten minutes?”
It’s a reprieve whilst she gets a hold of herself; it’s something he can give her. Setting a timer on the phone, shows her.
Sad eyes look at him for some sort of direction.
“Can we patch your thigh whilst we wait?”
Leaving the room, he keeps an eye on her grabbing a pair of clean pants and then rummages in the kitchen for his first aid kit.
“It’s not that bad,” Natasha tells him, taking off her pants, the blood dried.
“Your stomach?” he asks.
She looks to him in confusion.
“The burns?” He clarifies.
Natasha lifts her top, the healing blisters just now white with a thin red line around them. She gives half a smile.
Reaching up gently, she touches the cut on his nose, and the bruises that litter his face and chin.
“How’s your face?” she asks, grimacing.
“Better than yours,” he grins. Her bruises are healing already but still the dark marks stay.
“I’m sorry,” she says pulling her hand away.
“Don’t be,” he placates.
Gently, he wipes the dried blood away, the skin peeled back, almost flayed as he wonders what she was thinking when she did it. The scar tissue still seems thick underneath.
“God you did a good job,” he mutters.
Natasha watches him carefully, not pulling away and holding her leg down as he dresses the wound.
“I don’t remember doing it,” she admits.
He finishes with a bandage and sits back on his heels helping her pull her pants on over her feet.
“How worried should I be?” he asks, glancing at the timer.
Five minutes.
“How bad do you think it is?” he asks.
Met with silence, she doesn’t answer straight away.
“I don’t know. Some minutes are better than others, and then, I’m drowning again. It feels like I can’t breathe or like I’m so dizzy I can’t stay upright.”
She sighs as the timer goes off.
Holding his phone, she clicks on the link.
.
The therapists face appears almost straight away. Natasha’s hand reaches for Clint’s and squeezes hard.
“Hello Natasha. Hello Clint,” she says, her hair in a high bun, artificial light alighting her face.
“I’m sorry,” Clint begins, feeling bad that it’s likely some ungodly hour where she is.
“Don’t be sorry,” she dismisses, waving her hand.
She’s just as Clint remembers, kind but serious and no nonsense.
“It’s urgent,” he tries to justify, still feeling bad that he’s put her out and made this happen.
“So I heard. I’m sorry, I only have half an hour before I need to go, but we can talk more tomorrow. I think it’s good that we start, okay?”
Natasha body is fixed but even she nods with Clint, leaning slightly forward.
“There’s ugh… there’s a lot that’s happened.”
Clint starts, looking to Natasha.
The therapist looks to Natasha to continue,
“To you?” she invites,
Natasha nods minutely.
“She was telling me that she’s living minute to minute,” Clint breathes, unsure how much of the conversation to divulge.
Biting her lips, Natasha gives a half shrug.
“Sometimes it feels like that.”
The therapist takes it as an opening, and seems to know just what question to ask.
“What happens when you’re not feeling right?”
“She was standing by the water, ready to jump,” Clint can’t stop the words tumbling out of his mouth, much to the surprise of the two women.
“No I wasn’t,” Natasha rebukes.
“Yes you were,” he argues.
There’s an uncomfortable silence.
“There’s been some intrusive thoughts,” Natasha clarifies, but keeps it to herself the extent of the damage they’ve been causing.
“Are they sticking with you?”
Clint’s leg starts to bounce, his anxiety spiking.
“Now? No. They’ve stopped for now.”
He hopes it’s the truth. He hope she remembers the rules of therapy.
“Can you pin point what made them come?”
Natasha opens her mouth but Clint can’t help the words that cut her off, they tumble out of his mouth like vomit.
“She cut her leg,” he tells the therapist.
“What is this telling on me?”
He almost laughs at Natasha’s indignation, it’s the first time in a while she’s been angry or derisive at him.
“Sorry,” he whispers.
Natasha takes a deep breath, knowing this is the start of something hard.
“How much do you know of what’s happened in the last eight weeks?” she asks.
The therapist nods at them both.
“Some, but I’ll need to hear it from you. You know how this works.”
They do.
Natasha almost snarls at the thought.
The therapist seems to sense it.
“What’s been the worst bit for you? What part of the day is the hardest?”
She knows what she’s doing; breaking it down. It’s an old trick they used to do when healing felt to big, the enormity of it too much.
“Everything,” she says, honestly.
Then.
“No that’s a lie,” and it is. Natasha knows that she can separate it. She thinks of the times when she’s been okay, and the times that seem harder.
“I think at night, when I’m alone with my thoughts,” she clarifies.
The therapist shakes her head.
“You’re always alone in your thoughts,” she rebukes.
“What makes the night time different? What is it that makes the night harder?”
Silence.
She doesn’t know. Or can’t answer.
“Does it make it harder to sort through them?” she prompts, “or is it that they seem more harsh when you’re trying to rest?”
Natasha can’t think. Can’t formulate a sentence to save herself.
“When they’re trying to do battle,” she tries, looking to Clint to help her.
“Can you talk back to them?” he asks quietly.
It’s not a new thought.
“I did, I think.”
She turns to the therapist.
“What do you tell them?” The woman asks.
“I thanked them for keeping me safe,” Natasha says honestly.
“They wanted.. There was something they wanted to do, and I didn’t want to…” she tapers off. She doesn’t want to tell Clint that she wanted to kill him and run. All she ever wanted was to make sure he was safe.
Fear and embarrassment make her face burn.
She must see it.
“Our thoughts aren’t all of us,” the therapist clarifies kindly. This is not the first time they’ve had this conversation.
“Do you think you can keep pushing it away?”
“Sometimes.”
“If you can’t, what can you do?”
Natasha freezes.
Oh god, what if she can’t? What if she had killed Clint? What if in her impulsivity, she had done something that was irreversible?
Her breathing quickens as all the possibilities of what could have happened start running through her head.
“I don’t…” she starts, “I don’t..”
Clint squeezes her hand hard.
“Tell Clint?” She offers.
“And?”
She bites on her lip.
“Write it down?”
They’re the right answers, she’s sure.
“Do you still have the cat?”
Liho. Liho’s with Tony, she thinks.
“Yeah.. Yes,” she says, a vague memory of this conversation.
“Tell the cat?” The therapist prompts.
“Liho?”
She feels aghast.
“I couldn’t tell her those things.”
She could never tell the Cat.
“So why do you think it’s okay for them to sit with you?”
Natasha knows why.
“I don’t…” she starts.
“Because it’s me.”
“It’s hard.”
Everything feels hard.
“I know,” the therapist tells her.
“Do you feel suicidal?”
The question shocks Natasha.
She’s fought so so hard to be here.
She doesn’t want to die. She feels it’s not the same as not wanting to live though.
Not wanting to struggle through each day.
“No. No.”
It’s true, she doesn’t. Even if the voices prompt it.
“You don’t have a plan?”
The therapist looks at her intently through the screen.
“No,” the words are confident. She doesn’t.
“You would tell me?”
Would she?
“Yes,” she supposed, the words not confident.
The therapist looks at her until she looks down.
“I don’t, I would.”
The words more confident this time.
She nods.
“Clint, how are you?”
His eyes widen, the question unexpected.
He can feel the shaking of his hands start and overwhelm threaten.
“I’m fine,” he squeezes out.
“You’re worried?”
She can read his mind, he’s sure.
“Yes.”
He can’t look at Natasha.
“That she’ll get lost… that she won’t come back.”
The therapist is silent, waiting. Clint hates it. He knows she does it on purpose.
“That she’ll leave, and I won’t be able to find her.”
The therapist nods.
Clint sniffs, biting down hard on his lip, holding back the onslaught of emotions that threaten.
Natasha reaches under the table and grabs his hand, holds it as tight as she can.
He hangs his head unsure what to say, his greatest fear unveiled.
The silence in the room feels big.
“Natasha?”
The therapist says her name and she takes her eyes off Clint to look at the screen.
“I need to go soon, but I need you to know some things.”
She likes the therapist, likes how clear she is with her communication.
“You’re still figuring out how to live given all the heaviness you’ve faced recently. So many things have changed. There is more to life than pain, than the hurt you’ve been through, but I fear it’s not over yet. Is there anything you want to talk about right now?”
Natasha is so tired. So over talking. Her answer is slow, but one she can sit with.
“I’m not ready to talk about it yet. “
It seems to be the right answer for everyone.
The therapist smiles.
“That’s okay. We have time.”
She glances at the time.
“I’m going to call through tomorrow at ten.”
She nods.
“Homework,” the therapist laughs, “there’s always something right?”
Both Clint and Natasha grimace. Although used to the way this woman works, they haven’t had to do this in a while. They haven’t stopped holding hands.
“Stay in your comfort zones, for now, it’s important. Recalibrating yourselves and your needs, is where we need to start. Your comfort zone is where you’re going to find something that makes you smile, genuinely, conversations with each other, with friends, and those close to you, getting absorbed into something so you forget your struggles, and the heaviness and pain of what you’ve been through.”
“Those thoughts? Let them pass through. You too, Clint. You’re so worried about Natasha that you’re on tender hooks, and eggshells. Say them out loud, tell each other, make it ridiculous, tell the cat, write it down.”
She takes an audible breath.
“I’m sending through a prescription for sleeping tablets, the same ones you’ve used before. Take a quarter tonight, half tomorrow and then a full tablet the day after. You can taper back down but we’ll talk more about that over the next couple of days.”
He can feel Natasha flinch at the mention of medication.
“If you don’t want to or can’t take it, then you need to set aside time for the meditation exercises we’ve discussed before, but Natasha? You need sleep, and this will be easier than the control that takes for the mediation to work. It’s important, you hear me? You too Clint.”
She glances at her watch.
“I’m sorry I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow. Think about what I’ve said, okay? One day we’ll talk on not so serious circumstances.”
She smiles, “talk later,” she says, and hangs up.
Clint collapses against the couch, thankful he’s in his own apartment and the comfort of it.
He’s exhausted.
It’s clear Natasha is too.
“You okay?” he asks, knowing the answer.
“No,” she says to his surprise.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry my darkness keeps leaking into your life, I’m sorry I got so lost and you had to find me and save me, again and again. They hurt you and it’s my fault. I didn’t mean to get so lost, I don’t feel like me.”
She starts sobbing into his arms, her body cold as he pulls her towards him.
“He’s dead,” Clint starts, his emotions overflowing too, “he’s dead and I couldn’t save you. I would take it all for you.”
Natasha looks sharply at him.
“No,” she says, voice clear and steady. “Better me than you. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, I would never want you to endure…”
Finally, she feels more in control and clear, the sessions, the burst of tears, his words, all helping her with clarity.
“No.”
She takes a shaking breath.
“They did terrible things to me, then; now. But it’s real and it did happen. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get so lost. I am here, I’m not leaving, I’m fighting I swear.”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
Clint nods, exhaustion peaking.
“Can we stay here tonight?” he asks, looking to the promise of his own unmade bed.
Natasha stands and leads him there, pulling out some clothes for her and throwing his pyjama shorts at him.
“It’s like 7pm,” he says aghast. “We haven’t even eaten dinner.”
Natasha looks to the kitchen.
“Do you feel like cooking?”
Clint finishes changing and nods, “I feel like eating. Come on.”
He sticks the Mac and cheese packet into the pan and on the stove top, adding the butter and milk, and stirring it.
“Better than a peanut butter sandwich,” he goads, his voice more steady now, his actions sure.
.