Recovery
Cotton wool.
It was a weird thing to think of when emerging from the dark, but it was the first that came to her mind. Her head was filled with it, her limbs wrapped into it, even her mouth felt dry and scratchy like it. She was lying on her back, that much she could tell and it scared her because she never ever lay down flat on her back, no matter how injured she was, she always pulled up her legs, back to the wall. What had happened? Where was she?
Slowly regaining consciousness, she noticed more things, like the smell… clean in a somewhat artificial way. Disinfectant?
Everything was kind of off. Her body felt so heavy… Had she been drugged and captured? But why didn’t she remember anything about that?
She almost wished her mind would have stayed obscure longer when pictures began floating in. Madame B, the gun, the dead body on the floor. The medical team. He.
She had told herself he wouldn’t come, had screamed it silently lying in the darkness because she knew the hope would drain her, suck out her soul and her will to persist. Even in the worst moments, she had been careful not to cry out, knowing that they weren’t allowed to know she had met him at all. And then he had come.
She might have thought it had been a cruel, masochistic dream if she hadn’t seen the light through her closed lids, the unfamiliar smell, the weight of a blanket. No matter how sick she was, there were no blankets at the Red Room. She had to be somewhere else.
Cautiously, she opened her eyes but was blinded by the light being thrown back from the white walls. She blinked a few times, trying to adapt. Slowly, shapes built up from the white. A bed frame, white and plastic-looking, a chair, turquoise curtains in front of a window which she was somehow sure lead out to a corridor and not outside.
Groaning, she moved a bit, feeling her body like a stranger’s, stiff and rusty. At least it moved, she was probably not dead. Not that she had believed it, that would have been too easy.
The bed was constructed strangely, it had panels next to her head so she couldn’t properly look around. Uneasily, Natalia looked down at herself, seeing her torso in a big turquoise shirt disappearing under the blanket. Her arms, looking strangely fragile, lay on top of it, and only when she moved her fingers she could be sure that they were even hers. This was not good. She was too weak, she would never be able to defend herself… and what the hell was that tube coming out underneath a band-Aid on her hand?
She lifted herself up, ignoring the dizziness and how much strength it cost, and followed the tube with her eyes to a bag, filled with a clear liquid and attached to a stand. She had seen this kind of thing before, in movies, but she couldn’t know what kind of drug they gave her. Probably it wouldn’t kill her, she was pretty sure she had been weak enough to die on her own if nobody tended to her, so why even bother? Which didn’t mean that there wasn’t any danger, she had wished for death countless times in the weeks in the cell, as mercy, as an end to the torture.
Was she with S.H.I.E.L.D now?
Unsure what to do, she pulled up her legs and wrapped her arms around her shins, feeling how thin she was from the long period of starvation. Two weeks, he had said, right? She hadn’t thought you could survive that long without food.
Her heart was beating loudly and her breaths came fast, she knew it was stupid to be afraid now, she couldn’t do anything anyway and the chances of this being a hospital where people were trying to help were rather high… She was trembling all over.
When the door was opened, she flinched so violently that she felt a sting in her chest as her lungs cramped up.
He entered the room, casually dressed. He stopped when he saw her upright.
“I’m telling you, I’m gone for literally two minutes and you wake!” he exclaimed, smiling broadly.
Natalia stared at him, heart thundering but unspeakably relieved to see someone she knew.
Their last encounter was kind of blurred in her mind but she did remember he had told her his real name. Clint. Clint Barton. So, Clint’s face fell as he looked at her more closely.
“Hey, kid, don’t freak out. You’re safe, everything’s fine.”
Natalia just stared at him. No matter how much the logical and even the intuitive part of her mind told her that she wasn’t in danger, another, more archaic instinct had boxed itself to the surface and just screamed ‘RUN!’ all the time.
Clint lifted up his hands calmingly.
“Hey, sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. I meant to, you know, I hardly left, but I had to go to the toilet real quick… Kid. Kid, you’re okay. You’re not in danger.”
RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN
Natalia panted, her arms trying to pull her legs even closer to her body, protecting as much of it as somehow possible. Anyone could just hurt her now.
Clint took a step, reconsidering.
“Sorry, I’m sorry. You remember me? You know who I am?”
She nodded, tears blurring up in her eyes. She couldn’t pull herself together if he apologized all the time. Couldn’t he just force her to be strong?
“Good, that’s good.” He breathed through. “This is Washington DC, a S.H.I.E.L.D facility. 21st of July, half-past three. I’m Clint Barton, you’re Natalia… Romanov, right? We have that from your file. We good?”
She nodded again, shouting at herself silently because he wouldn’t. Slowly, way too slowly, she got her breathing under control.
Clint breathed out as well, apparently relieved, and pulled over the chair.
“There, that’s much better. They didn’t know exactly when you would wake. How are you feeling?”
Natalia opened her mouth to speak, but an invisible hand closed around her neck, violently keeping the words stuck inside. Her hands flew to her throat and she struggled against the blockade but apart from the choked breaths, nothing left her mouth.
“Kid, breathe!” Clint exclaimed, getting closer and lifting up a hand. Natalia flinched, mistaking it for the preparation of a hit. He took it down hastily.
“No, kid, I’m not gonna hurt you, I’m sorry I scared you. Just breathe, okay, breathe.”
She gestured at her throat in panic, trying to let him know non-verbally. Her breathing was clipped.
He nodded. “I see, I see, kid. It’ll be fine, we'll figure that out, but for now, you just try to calm down, okay? Focus on me, mimic my breaths. In.. and out, like that. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”
Panicked, Natalia attempted to mimic his calm breaths, but it took agonizingly long and her mind didn’t help, constantly screaming that she couldn’t speak, that something was horribly wrong with her, that she was broken, terribly, irreversibly broken, and she fell back into panting several times before she finally calmed down a bit, more out of exhaustion.
Weakly, she gestured at her throat again.
“You can’t speak?” Clint half-stated, rather matter-of-factly. She nodded, a breathy, tearless sob leaving her throat. He shook his head.
“No, kid, don’t freak out. I noticed you had difficulties with it last time we met, remember? You’ve had quite a shock, I’m sure your voice’ll come back when you get better. Until then, we have other ways to communicate. You can make gestures or fingerspell and I can teach you ASL if you want. It’ll be fine, promise.”
She whimpered, overwhelmed with the sudden task, communicating without her voice and it might never come back… What was even a shock, she had been shocked before, it had never been like that.
Broken.
“Hey,” Clint said gently, his voice was so calming all the time, how did he do that? “This is a lot at once, I know. Why don’t you take a few minutes and I’ll just sit here quietly, is that good?”
Before Natalia knew, she had shaken her head rather firmly. She wanted him to keep talking, everything but leave her alone with her thoughts…
“No? Okay, do you want to try answering my question then? Or ask me something? You can just fingerspell, we have plenty of time.”
Natalia tried remembering his question but failed to. She figured fingerspelling was just making letters with your fingers, so she started doing that carefully.
“Wait,” Clint said after the third letter. “Sorry, I have to rethink, can you start over? I’m so used to doing it with the proper fingerspelling alphabet, you know, I forgot you have to make up signs as you go. Just start again, okay?”
Natalia nodded slightly, starting over.
“W,” Clint said, and she confirmed every right letter with a small nod. “H-A-T. What?”
Natalia nodded and continued.
“H-A-P, another P, E-N-E-D. What is that, a question mark? Okay, what happened? Is that it?”
She nodded again, letting her hands sink into her lap. Clint smiled.
“See, that works well. I don’t know exactly how much you remember… Do you remember the woman coming in?”
She shuddered, silently affirming it. She was pretty sure she would never forget those few minutes.
“You remember what you did?”
She shivered again but nodded. She didn’t want him to talk about the bits that her mind kept mercifully obscure.
“Good. We waited for medical, you and I, but you were quite scared of them and then you passed out. They took you to the plane and then we brought you here to recover. They kept you unconscious for a while, they said it would be easier and safer because you might’ve been stressed out and you were very weak… They’ve let the drugs wear off slowly since yesterday, but they weren’t quite sure when you would wake exactly, and as I said, I literally left for five minutes. You aren’t in danger anymore, they say, but it’ll take a bit of time to recover, I reckon.”
Natalia had listened attentively, now she lifted up her hands again.
‘How long?’ she spelled.
“How long?” Clint shook his head. “Uh, sorry, I don’t know about that, I’m not a doctor. It depends, I guess, on setbacks and such."
Natalia shook her head, he had misunderstood her question.
‘Passed out’ she spelled. ‘How long?’
“Ah,” Clint exclaimed, understanding. “Sorry, got you wrong. You were out for five days, roughly. You were very close to waking earlier today, but I don’t think you remember.”
Natalia looked away for a bit before she started spelling again.
‘How bad?’
Clint sat down on the chair, leaning forward a bit. He sighed.
“As I said, I’m anything but a medical expert, but it was quite severe in the beginning, I think. I mean, our people took care of you very carefully, but I doubt you would have survived if you had stayed back there. Even if they had understood what a close call it already was, I somehow don’t believe they would have let you recover properly.” He grimaced. “Sorry, I didn’t even want to mention them to you. It just makes me angry. But anyway, you won’t be able to eat normally for a while, because of a syndrome which’s name I forgot and that people get when they try to gain weight too quickly after not eating for a while. Re-feeding Syndrome, that’s it. But we’ll handle that, you don’t have to take care of it yourself, so try not to worry too much. You should rest as much as you can.”
Natalia shivered again. A crease appeared on Clint’s face.
“Cold?” he asked.
She nodded, strangely ashamed. He was only wearing a t-shirt and he seemed to be perfectly fine, so it was something wrong with her, a sign of weakness.
“Here.” He got up and picked up the blanket that she had shoved to the bottom of the bed. He moved very carefully as he put it around her shoulder without touching her directly. “You look tired. This was a lot to take in, wasn’t it?”
She shrugged and he grimaced again.
“I’ll still have to tell the doctor you’re awake,” he said. “and I can’t promise he won’t want to look at you.”
Natalia’s fingers tensed around the blanket, fear flashed over her face before she could even consider disguising it. Not a doctor, not someone else. She had a sort of sense of security around Clint because she had met him before and she was pretty sure he wouldn’t hurt her. But anyone else…
“Hey.” Clint tilted his head, noticing her fear. “We didn’t box you out of that place to hurt you now, did we? I can stay and stand watch if that makes you feel safer.”
She trembled, eyes fixed on him. She didn’t want them to look at her. She knew it was stupid, but somehow it felt like an examination would make it too real so she would have to face her state.
As if it wasn’t enough that she could feel all her bones under her fingers.
Clint sat down on the bed opposite her. His expression was so gentle, so compassionate. She couldn’t understand why he even bothered. As if she could refuse the treatment anyway.
“Hey look, I will stay here for it," he promised. "I'll help to communicate and keep an eye on everything. I'll show you a sign that you can use. See-“ He moved both hands in front of his body, one flat on top of the other, then moved one upward in a little half-circle while shaking his head. “That’s ASL for ‘too much’.” He did the sign again. “If you do that, I will tell the doctor to step away immediately so you can relax. Is that okay?”
She bit her lip before gesturing for him to do the sign again. Carefully, she replicated it.
Clint nodded. “Recognizable. It’ll do, we can practice later. You’re being very brave, kid, I know you’re scared of medical, but I promise you won’t be harmed in any way.”
Natalia frowned, surprised at being called brave. She was literally curled up into a shivering, bony, weakened mess and he said she was brave. He couldn’t be serious.
“I’ll go outside and talk to them real quick, okay?” Clint got up again.
She nodded, then lowered her head. Her hair brushed over her arms and finally, that was a familiar feel, finally something that didn’t feel weird.
Clint left the room with a last smile for her and softly closed the door behind him. She couldn’t hear him talking, the walls were well insulated. She ran her fingers through her soft red curls which was way more calming than it should be.
She thought back to her last mission, the last one she had properly finished, a banker in Chicago that had been. It seemed like years ago and it was only a month… How was it possible that she hardly felt like the same person?
Clint opened the door again, bringing a doctor with him, middle-aged, hair dyed a light-brown color. The girl who killed the banker could have easily taken him down.
“This is Dr. Cao,” Clint explained.
Natalia couldn’t have cared less about his name. She wrapped her arms around herself, eyes not leaving him.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Cao said. She didn’t even nod, she just watched as he got closer, taking out a stethoscope. She heard him speaking but didn’t understand a word. When the cold metal touched her skin, she tensed up.
“Breathe deeply, please,” Cao asked calmly.
Natalia did her best to comply, turning it into a command in her head so she could force herself to obey more easily, and endured the silent terror running through her body until her sight became blurred.
He talked about something and she hoped Clint was listening. He was nice, that Doctor, he wasn’t as rough as the nurses at the Red Room who had always been grumpy about treating her, weakness, it was an imposition that they had to treat something as worthless as her at all. But no, he wasn’t touching her harshly, and he didn’t seem bothered at all…
With a little, subdued ‘crack’, Natalia’s composure broke.
Hastily, shakingly, her hands formed a sign.
“Stop!” Clint commanded immediately. “Stop, it’s too much.”
Without a second of hesitation, Cao took two steps back. Natalia breathed out shakily, curling up on the bed. Weakly, she lifted up her hands.
“No… more… please,” Clint translated her erratic letters in a murmur. He turned to Cao. “I think it’s enough for today.” There was a silent question in his remark. Cao nodded.
“I agree. I’ve looked at the essentials and we did a thorough examination this morning, it should be alright.” He added, under his breath. “Shall I appoint her with a therapist maybe?”
Clint shook his head without even turning to Natalia. “Not now. She’s tired, it’s only natural.”
Cao nodded, nodding at Natalia before he left. Clint sat down next to her.
“That was alright,” he said encouragingly. “You managed a lot longer than I thought you would. You did a really good job.”
She shook her head.
‘Weak,” she spelled, defiantly, not wanting to take praise for failing. Failure was failure, no matter how long you had endured it before.
Clint frowned.
“No, Natalia, that’s bullshit. You’re not weak.”
She didn’t spell back, she just gestured at herself as if saying ‘Look at this! Look at this mess!’
“You’re not weak,” he repeated firmly. “Don’t think that. I don’t even know all that was done to you and what I know would already be enough to break the strongest person. You’re not weak because you’re sick, and you’re not weak because you’re scared either. Most people would be much worse than you are.”
He tilted his head again, seeing that she didn’t believe him.
“Did you listen to what the doc said?” he asked.
She shook her head, looking away in shame. He nodded.
“I thought so. We’ll discuss that in the morning after you’ve slept properly and maybe feel a bit stronger, how’s that?”
She nodded a little, rubbing her cheek against the pillow. As long as it wasn’t now…
“Uh, and about me,” Clint continued. “I’ve stayed here last night because I didn’t want you to wake up on your own, so… I can sleep over there-“ he gestured behind a curtain separating the room. “-if that makes you feel safer, but I can also sleep in a different room if you prefer that. You just let me know, should I stay or should I go?” The last part he said in a sing-song voice, winking at her. She knew the song, by name at least.
Again, her fingers began spelling before her head was even finished comprehending.
‘Stay’
Clint nodded, smiling softly. “Don’t worry, kid, I’ll be there all night. You might even hear me snore,” he added with another wink and Natalia almost smiled.
At least she wasn’t fully on her own.
The first week was hell. Even much later when the memory had softened from the time passing, she never forgot how hard that first week at S.H.I.E.L.D had been. She hardly had the strength to even sit up and nothing happened apart from meals; if you could call it that because she could hardly eat anything and they wouldn’t even let her because of the aforementioned Re-feeding Syndrome.
She didn’t feel like she was getting better at all and the only thing she achieved was learning the ‘too much’ sign to perfection during countless examinations.
Clint proved to be incredibly loyal, staying around at all times, trying to cheer her up, helping with the doctors, and teaching her more ASL whenever he thought of a sign she might need. For the first days, she tried if her voice came back every morning but it didn't and she stopped trying because it upset her so much to be helpless like that, knowing that the blockade was her mind and not her body. That she just wasn’t strong enough, that was her main problem overall. Wasn’t she the Black Widow? Hadn’t she been trained to be made of marble, stronger than everyone else? Hadn't she been strong in the past? How could she not be now?
She got kind of used to lying still, curled up into herself as tightly as possible, and just reacting to Clint because that was easier. In the back of her mind, she was aware that she was not doing this right, that she ought to try harder to engage in the examination, that she should manage at least a hello to the brown-haired woman who entered the room sometime during week two and talked to Clint for a few minutes. They seemed to know each other well even though she called him ‘Barton’ and he called her ‘Hill’. They spoke about a mission, that much she gathered, and at the end, Hill asked about her briefly and Clint said “She’s doing okay” and Natalia had no idea whom he was lying for.
There was another visitor at the end of that same week, an older man with a slightly receding hairline, in suit and tie. She figured it must be a higher-ranked operative, but she also didn’t think he was Clint’s boss. To be honest, she couldn’t imagine Clint having a boss at all, at least none like she was familiar with. She had never fully believed that he wasn’t being hit for failure, too, that was just how things worked, but now she kind of couldn’t imagine that he would let anyone. He always seemed so sure, like he was feeling completely safe around here.
The man lifted up his hand in a small wave.
“Hello there, Natalia, nice to meet you.”
Confused, she lowered her head as a greeting.
“I’m Agent Coulson,” he continued. “I think we will get to know each other properly in time. For now, I’m looking for Agent Barton.”
She lifted herself up and pointed at the room behind the curtain.
“Thank you,” Coulson said with a smile and went over. She was a little confused as to why she would eventually have anything to do with him, but that was a complicated question she didn’t want to fingerspell. She was still learning the alphabet and sometimes she got mixed up and it seemed like a miracle how patient Clint was with her.
She leaned back, arching her back and immediately regretting it because she could feel her ribcage way too much that way, then she curled up again, wrapping herself into the blanket and when Agent Coulson left again she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.
“You know,” Clint ventured one day, rather cautiously. “We’ve been here for a while and I’ve got to admit I’m feeling a little stir-crazy today… so… Do you think you could manage on your own for two or three hours? Be honest, if you need me to stay, I will.”
Natalia thought for a moment.
‘Examination?’ she spelled then before remembering he had taught her the sign for that already.
Clint shook his head. “I’ll tell Cao to wait till I get back.”
Natalia looked down at her slightly trembling fingers. She didn’t want him to go, but apart from that she had no argument to make him stay and she didn’t want to make him unhappy or anything…
‘Where?’ she asked.
“I’d be in the city center,” he replied, adding, “but I’ll take a car so I can be back very quickly if I have to. Wait a second-“ He took out a cellphone and quickly typed something in before putting it on her nightstand. “That’s my number. Since calling doesn’t make much sense you can just message me, okay?”
She nodded slightly. Clint smiled.
“There’s already something I can buy, a phone for you. Would you also like some clothes, something that maybe fits you slightly better than those baggy things?”
Natalia tugged at her grey t-shirt that was certainly not meant for someone her size, even her normal one, and shrugged.
Clint smiled again. “Size 0 or 2, I presume? I don’t think you need bigger than that, do you?”
She shook her head. Actually, the number of clothes she had picked out for herself amounted to exactly zero and so she kind of trusted him he’d guess correctly.
Clint’s eyes suddenly widened. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t even wait for your answer. Are you okay with me going?”
Natalia nodded meekly, deciding that she simply had to be okay with it.
“Brave kid,” Clint said and smiled again.
Natalia had never thought she would end up not minding someone calling her ‘kid’, in movies, it was often kind of condescending and if the people at the Red Room would have used it, it would have been sure to be, but Clint managed to make it sound nice, like a nickname, and he actually hardly used her name even now that he knew it. Since he was taking care of her all the time, she would have let him call her anything, but still…
When he left, she waited two minutes before she got up and sat down on the chair where he usually sat. She was allowed to get up if she didn’t put too much strain on herself and for some reason, she wanted to sit here now. She trembled, panic running through her in waves at the thought of what might happen now; she might get worse and they would have to examine her, they could use the moment of her being unprotected to show their true colors, she might wake up to find this all a dream.
She had the phone in her hand already, ready to ask him back, not today, she wasn’t ready for this yet…
She growled a little like an angry animal as she forced herself to put it back. She wouldn’t call him. She had agreed, she had said she’d be strong enough and she would be. He was sacrificing so much time and energy for her, she needed to let him have this day off, no matter how scared she was. She just had to learn to become functional again...
Meanwhile, Clint and Maria Hill were wandering through a mall in Washington. Clint breathed through happily.
“Oh, damn, I missed being outside,” he exclaimed.
“You’re overdoing it,” Hill said. “Natalia can deal without 24-hour supervision and your mental health matters, too.”
“If this goes well,” Clint said. “I think I want to start running again in the morning. I just… You realize what kind of state she’s in, I felt like she couldn’t be left alone. And I’m the only person she tolerates around her.”
Hill grimaced. “I know. You might want to work on that, though, it’s not healthy, for either of you.”
Clint sighed but nodded.
“I know. I was thinking of-“ He broke off and changed the subject.
Natalia started when he entered the room again later. She sat on the chair, legs pulled up and now turned to look at him.
“Hello there,” he exclaimed cheerfully, positively revitalized from the time outside. “I’m back.”
She smiled a little bit, then got up and stretched. He wondered how long she’d been sitting still like that.
“I’m so glad to see you on your feet, kid,” he said, putting down the shopping bag on the chair. “I have a couple things for you, let me show you.”
She took a step closer as he rummaged through the bag and produced a box.
“Cellphone,” he explained. “We’ll need to set it up first, but you can take a look already. It has an interesting keypad, I thought it was cool.”
Obediently, Natalia took a look. It was a newer phone than she had had from the Red Room, with a keypad sliding out at one side. Especially nice for messaging.
‘Thank you,’ she signed, adding, after a moment of thinking ‘very much’
Clint laughed. “You are a fast learner, gotta say. You’re welcome. I forgot to ask, though, how have you been doing? Alone, I mean, did it work out?”
She nodded, face not giving away anything. If he hadn’t enjoyed being outside so much he might have persisted.
“Neat. And here, a few clothes, not much, but I hope it fits.”
She looked at the clothes, thanked him again and he disappeared behind the curtain to let her change. They fit her much better and she immediately looked more put-together, but also more teen-like because Hill had insisted on getting a graphic t-shirt with dark-red accents which Natalia had put over a long-sleeve, and that was a look that he saw on the streets all the time.
“Looking good,” he said with a smile. She shrugged, tucking at the shirt. She was tired and couldn’t appreciate the present properly right now, but she did feel good that she had managed to stay calm enough to give him a little bit of freedom.
Natalia had kind of lost her sense of time, so she couldn’t really say how long she had been in the hospital room when Clint brought someone with him, a tall, broad-shouldered man with an eyepatch over his left eye. Since he was with Clint she probably shouldn’t have been intimidated, but she was, 100%.
“Natalia, this is Director Fury, the boss around here,” Clint introduced the man.
The boss. Natalia’s fists clenched briefly under the blanket. She lowered her head, more deeply than usual. She wondered if she should get up or at least sit down properly but she stayed perfectly still, fingers interlocked nervously.
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Romanov. I'm glad to see you recover." His voice was calm and matter-of-fact, not soft, but sincere. Like he was always in perfect control.
She looked at Clint briefly as she signed ‘Thank you’. Did he understand ASL? Did he expect her to speak?
“Thank you, Sir,” Clint translated easily. Director Fury nodded.
“I don’t need any information from you, so I’ll mainly just offer you something. When you and Agent Barton met in New York, he offered you recruitment. According to his statement, you were open to the idea?”
Natalia nodded, realizing it was meant to say ‘Do you want to work for us?’. Which she didn’t know. She didn’t feel like she could really do anything at present.
“We realize that you won’t be able to work for a while, but in case you are worried about your future, you ought to know that S.H.I.E.L.D is willing to make you an agent. Only as soon as you’re well enough, of course,” he added. She couldn’t believe- well, actually she did believe that he was the boss of this place, but she could hardly get her head around the amount of choice he gave her in that matter. Like, S.H.I.E.L.D took care of her recovery, why did he give her the choice to walk away and let it all go to waste?
‘Thank you’, she signed again, unsure if that was an agreement or not. Well, who cared if it was? It was the only thing she was good at anyway.
“Well-“ Fury got up –“that would be all on my part for now. Get well soon, Miss Romanov.”
She signed a third and final ‘Thank you’ but she didn’t think he had seen it because he was already at the door.
Clint returned to her. “You don’t stress about it,” he said. “I don’t know what the point of this was really, but you don’t have to think about work now, not until you are fully recovered.”
She nodded obediently and he left her alone, knowing that she needed a few minutes to herself after the interaction.
Clint had not lost his idea of time, he knew exactly how much time Natalia had spent recovering, and although he would have never mentioned it anywhere near her, he had thought it would happen more quickly. True, she had been able to get up for the past two weeks, and she wasn’t as thin as she had been in the beginning, but she was still far from healthy-looking, even from looking like when he had first met her. She also still didn’t speak and he didn’t know why the shock that had caused it didn’t wear off at all.
He had all of that in mind when Dr. Cao asked to speak to him.
“I know you’re not her legal guardian or anything,” the doctor began with a shrug. “But everyone’s acting like you’re in charge anyway, so that’s why I come to you. In short, I’m doing all I can for the girl but that’s not enough. We can’t do more than offer her food and treatment, she has to take it, too.”
“But she does,” Clint protested. “She lets you treat her, no matter how much she hates it. And she’s eating, too, it’s just hard…”
Cao nodded calmingly.
“I’m not blaming her, Agent Barton. I can tell she’s trying her best, maybe just for your sake, but she does. However, for the last ten days, she’s not been gaining a significant amount of weight anymore even though she definitely should. She’s not in ‘malnourished’ territory anymore, but she is still quite a few pounds underweight. The root of the problem might be the environment, I daresay.”
“Do you want to release her?” Clint asked, surprised. Cao sighed.
“Don’t get me wrong, ideally I would like to monitor her a bit longer, but I fear it will hinder her recovery more than assist it. I can’t of course let her out without supervision and assurance that her state is being watched carefully.”
Clint frowned.
“So if I say I can take her home and take care she eats enough and all that, you’d encourage that?”
Cao nodded. “Of course it might be necessary to take her back here or put her in a different form of therapy if it doesn’t work and she gets worse, but I think it might be worth a shot. She seems to be rather comfortable around you.”
Clint nodded thoughtfully.
“Thanks, doc. I have to ask her first, but I think in that case I’ll take her home with me. Maybe you could make me a list or something what I have to take care of, in cooking and stuff like that, and warning signs? I’ve never dealt with something like this before and I want to make sure that I don’t mess up accidentally.”
Cao nodded. “Sure thing, Agent Barton. I hope this works out like we hope it to.”
Later, Clint entered the hospital room to see Natalia sitting on her bed with her arms around her shins, cheek resting on her knees. She looked so lost all the time…
“Hey,” he said softly, sitting down opposite her. She moved her head just a tiny bit to meet his eyes. “There’s something I’d like to ask you.”
Her eyes widened slightly, he hadn’t sounded too serious but she was always easily scared.
“Nothing bad,” he clarified immediately. “You see, the doc suggested you might spend the rest of your recovery out of this place. I mean, this room hasn’t really grown on you, has it?”
She scoffed a little bit, a faint resemblance of the snark he hoped she would have again someday.
“Exactly. He said if I take proper care of you, I may take you home with me, and I’d be down for that, but of course, it's your opinion that matters most on that topic. Would you like to go home with me?”
Natalia had lifted up her head, searching his face for his ‘true motives’ probably. Sometimes she seemed to find it hard to believe that he was genuinely fond of her.
“You don’t have to decide right-“ Clint began, but she broke him off with a tiny gesture.
Then she nodded, very slightly, but deliberately, and he thought he made out a small flicker in her eyes.