Secrets
Clint did what he did best: he watched.
Watched as Sam carefully began to stem the bleeding from every active cut on her torso. Watched as he wrapped her ribs. Watched as she shifted restlessly in unconsciousness, shivering, wheezing, and occasionally coughing. Watched the team as they tried to figure out how they could help, or otherwise just stayed out of the way and looked miserable. Clint tried to force the memories of her reacting to sound and touch and light and even Tony away, but he found it very difficult to do.
He longed to tie Ross up and turn his body into a living pin cushion, from head to toe with arrows – toes first, of course.
But first, he needed to watch over his friend, whose body was skin and bones, cuts and bruises, broken and bleeding. She shivered constantly, although there was sweat on her forehead. Her pain was apparent with every reflexive response she gave to being touched, and they hadn’t even scratched the surface on what was ailing her. As soon as they arrived at the Compound, which Tony had put on lockdown upon arrival with strict orders to keep an eye out for official activity, Clint jumped up. The first step was to get her to the treatment area, but he also knew he had to tell them some of the things that were not on her files, for her sake. She would not appreciate him sharing certain things, but it was to potentially save her life, or avoid some confusion later on.
Clint had been forced to leave her side when the doctors went in to get to work, and now he found himself pacing again, angry, scared, horrified and vengeful. Ross will die for this, he thought to himself, over and over.
“Clint.”
He continued to pace, desperately wanting to go and hunt down some assholes from the Raft but also not wanting to leave in case she woke up in a panic and hurt someone – or herself.
“Clint!”
He jolted as a hand grabbed his arm. He spun, launching a punch immediately that was barely dodged by a startled Tony. The archer froze, realizing the entire team was gathered and he had not been paying any attention to them. He had nearly punched Tony – and while he might have been happy about punching him a couple months ago, his perspective had shifted significantly since then.
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. “I’m sorry.”
“Save that for the assholes who did this,” Wilson said, glaring at the wall angrily.
“Don’t worry… I have plenty left for them,” Clint said darkly, fingers twitching reflexively as if he was holding a bow, ready to shoot some arrows.
“Clint,” Tony spoke less loudly but more sternly. “The doctors need to know anything important about her immune system. They also need permission to run… uh.” It was strange to see the man stammering when he spoke, and Clint could already guess the remainder of that sentence. “Tests for STD’s or sexual assault,” Stark finished.
Wanda made a muffled sound.
Clint just stared straight ahead for another moment, before he walked backwards and dropped into a chair in frustration.
“Nothing I say leaves this room. You don’t tell anyone. Even if they’re one of us, unless I tell them or Nat tells them. There’s a reason this isn’t on her files,” his no-nonsense tone apparently was scary, because everyone suddenly straightened up, looking alert and possibly even more uncomfortable than they had several minutes prior.
He looked at each of them, making sure everyone understood. “FRIDAY, delete everything following this message until our conversation is over,” Tony said.
The AI confirmed.
Clint dragged his fingers through his hair, frustrated and hoping Nat didn’t wake up and come kick his ass when she learned he had told the team some of the things she didn’t like people to know. She always thought it made her look weak, or less than, or confirmed that she was just a monster among the team. As if it was her fault these things had been done to her without her consent, as opposed to horrific experimentation.
“The Red Room was very thorough with their training program. Having their trainees be down for days or weeks at a time because of illness would be a nuisance. So they experimented a little.” A little being the understatement of the year. “Some DNA experiments. Drug experiments. Messing with DNA. Killed dozens of girls before they found a good result. But there were always more out there. Steal them from orphanages, off the streets, or murder an entire family to kidnap their child…” He trailed off, ignoring some horrified looks. “They were pumped full of special drugs that killed 70% of them. The survivors were then exposed to some pretty awful bugs, but never got sick. Was almost like they became immune to most of the things that infect and kill the rest of our species,” he said.
“70%?” Rhodey asked, disbelieving.
Clint nodded. “The 30% that survived wished they hadn’t. There’s a reason it never grew to be some miracle drug. Organ damage, skin lesions, blood clots, hemorrhaging. The ones who died often died choking to death on their own blood. It took four months for the survivors to actually recover from it,” he said.
Hate. He hated the red room, not just for what it had done to Nat, but to so many other girls and women who had done nothing to deserve it. They had not wanted to be there. They had been forced to join and do horrible things to survive.
“The problem with the drug is while they were immune to about everything, they stopped developing normal antibodies to deal with these things. Their bodies no longer knew how to fight infections or diseases, because they never got sick. Yeah, they’re okay most of the time, and never catch anything.. but when something finally gets through, a simple cold could be deadly.”
Vision blinked slowly. “So pneumonia would be very serious even with treatment.”
Clint nodded. Felt that overwhelming urge to punch someone again.
“We need to hope like hell it’s bacterial and put her on the strongest antibiotics we have,” Clint said, massaging his temples.
“We can do that,” Tony said confidently.
Clint had definitely missed that kind of confidence. Not the hopeful, almost naive confidence that Cap had, believing everything would be okay just because he waned it to be… but knowing they could do it because they had the resources, the money, and the scientific genius to accomplish these things without a second thought.
Clint sighed. “For the other thing… they can test for STDs and check for any internal damage. I don’t know how those work with her immune system. The Red Room was very sterile about those kinds of things, if you didn’t look at all the bloodstains.”
He might have spoken too freely. Tony connected the dots almost immediately. Face set in stone, muscles tensing. Rhodey and Wilson picked up on it soon after. Vision was naive, not understanding. Wanda might have understood but she might be trying to suppress it. Scott had very much checked out of the conversation after talking about the effects of the drug, probably thinking about his own little girl, and the idea of his child being forced to be a test subject for various chemials.
“Should we run a pregnancy test?” Tony asked softly.
Clint grimaced. He had wished he could have kept that one detail a secret.
“No need. The last step to becoming a black widow was surgery to remove all reproductive organs. They don't want their prized assassins getting distracted with pregnancy,” Clint stared off into nothing as he spoke, remembering the hollow look in Nat’s eyes when she had told him that, how she was damaged and could never have a place in the world because of what they had made her.
“That’s fucked up,” Rhodey growled.
Clint didn’t even look at him, still gazing blankly at a wall, trying to channel in all his anger and sadness. “It gets so much worse.”
No one asked for clarification.
Consciousness was fluttering in and out. Every time she reached out for it, trying to pull herself out of the darkness into awareness, it slipped just out of reach. At times she thought she heard voices. Other times, she felt pain. She was used to both. More so the pain than the voices, but at least she could feel something, which meant she was still alive.
She drifted for a long time, just out of reach of consciousness. Then one time, she managed to force her eyes open, blinking painfully into the light. She swore the light burned into her retinas, but it was still better for her eyes to burn than to see nothing.
She took a deep breath. Regretted it when she broke into a deep, painful coughing fit that had her doubling over. The movement woke blazing pain across her entire body, and the previous beatings swarmed into her memory. Her heart began to race as her mind fully woke up, and she started to struggle, trying to get up and move. It could have all been a dream. A dream of rescue. Her painful, gasping breaths made it hard to focus on anything beyond the panic, and she knew she was sick. She had not been sick in almost 10 years, and she struggled to clear the thickness in her chest.
“Nat! Nat, hey. You’re okay,” a voice said. She moved her eyes towards it, recognizing a blurry Clint as he entered the room. She stared at him, frantic and struggling to piece together the fact he was here, while the nervous, paranoid side of her was panicking that he wasn’t really here, or that she was still on the Raft and they were trying out a new tactic on her mind.
Her breath hitched again, and she coughed, raising a bandaged wrist to her painful neck, not taking her eyes off him for a moment. Her body was tense, posed to flee, even if she knew attempting to stand would just send her crashing to the floor.
Her rasping, hoarse croak of a voice when she tried to speak prevented her from saying anything at all. Her throat was too dry, too injured from repeated bouts of strangulation. She grimaced, raising shaking hands and struggling to sign with her throbbing wrists interfering with every movement, as well as the broken forearm making it difficult to move certain fingers. Where am I?
Clint sat in a chair next to her, looking tired as her vision cleared when he came closer. “You’re at the compound. You’re safe. They can’t hurt you,” he said.
She continued to stare at him uncertainly. He reached out to her slowly, as if to touch her. She flinched back automatically, heart jolting painfully in her chest. Touch meant pain. Even if the hand it belonged to was someone she loved.
He immediately withdrew, looking crestfallen.
“I promise this is real,” he said softly.
She signed back I want to believe that.
Again, she was struck by a heavy, painful fit of coughing that made her chest spasm with pain. She shuddered from the effort it took to control it and breath normally, struggling to hold back groans of pain from her aching chest.
When she next was able to see Clint, he looked like he wanted to cry. “Can I touch you?” He asked in a voice that sounded seconds away from cracking.
She was shaking again. Heart racing. Every touch she had felt had been for the purpose of causing pain. But this was Clint. Clint wouldn’t hurt her. She knew that, logically, so why was she still so scared? She forced herself to nod, still struggling against a growing wave of panic.
She clenched her jaw, forcing herself not to flinch as he slowly, gently reached out. As his fingers brushed her face gently, she held her breath. No pain followed. Slowly she allowed herself to relax, gazing up at him. She fought the urge to cry as she reached up, grabbing his arm in her hand, squeezing it as much as she could just to assure herself that this was real and he was here. His arm was solid. The tears ignored her wishes and came down anyway.