When the door slammed shut she gripped the edge of the bathroom counter with white knuckle ferocity and tried to catch her breath. She hadn’t meant to lose it, the whole point of this trip was to get Clint to open up and try to help him heal, but here he was trying to be honest with her and she had bit his head off.
She just didn’t know how to deal with it. It hurt; hearing him say those words hurt. She knew he hadn’t been referring to her, hadn’t been thinking of her at all at the time, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. He had changed her life, saved her life, and ever since she had been on a road of retribution. She put her blood, sweat and tears into atoning for her past, for all the awful things she had done, and he made that journey sound foolish, that maybe she would have been better off dead than trying to make up for what she had done. If he thought his life worth so little, what did that say about her? If not for him she wouldn’t even be here; she would have grown tired, she would have slipped up, and someone would have finished her.
Looking up at the mirror, only a blurry image stared back at her, and it was then that she realised she was crying. Pushing away from counter she stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower, mixing the water so it was near scalding, her skin turning red almost instantly.
She felt ill, the heavy meal from earlier sitting like a hard lump in her stomach; she felt exhausted despite the nap earlier; she felt emotionally drained, yet the tears kept coming. He would have killed himself; given the opportunity to do it all over again he would have taken his life stupidly thinking that that would have somehow done something to save a lot of people. If it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else and people still would have died, maybe more people because Clint wouldn’t have been there to help them in the end. He would have killed himself, and she never would have had the chance to get him back, to fight for him. Just like that he would have been gone. “You selfish bastard,” she sobbed into the hot, heavy spray of the shower.
She wanted to help him come to terms with everything, to try to atone for it all, but he would rather just turn back the clock and have someone else take his place. How could she help that? Why should she bother? Yes, he had done some awful things under Loki’s control, but in the end that was the real truth of it, wasn’t it? He hadn’t made the choices, he had been powerless to stop his actions, he had been completely under the control of someone else. In Natasha’s case it hadn’t been like that. She’d had her brain tampered with, she had been manipulated, but in the end every life she had taken she had done so of her own accord. She could have ran; hell, she could have told them she would rather die, but she hadn’t, she had done as she was told, and after she had stopped taking orders, when she had been running her own show it had been worse. She killed for money, killed without question, and all entirely by her own choice.
She knew it wasn’t the same thing, and that she should be more understanding of Clint. He wasn’t like her, he didn’t know what it was like to cause the deaths of so many innocent people before that, and the wounds were still fresh, but it still hurt more than she could possibly say.
If he thought so poorly of himself, what would he really think of her if he wasn’t so blinded by love? Did he think others should hate her, mistrust her, and condemn her for her actions like he seemed to believe was only right for him?
Closing her eyes against the stinging tears and the scalding water, Natasha doubled over, one hand grabbing blindly for the shower wall and the other clutching her stomach as its contents finally refused to stay down.
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Date: 2014-03-26 04:41 pm (UTC)From:She just didn’t know how to deal with it. It hurt; hearing him say those words hurt. She knew he hadn’t been referring to her, hadn’t been thinking of her at all at the time, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. He had changed her life, saved her life, and ever since she had been on a road of retribution. She put her blood, sweat and tears into atoning for her past, for all the awful things she had done, and he made that journey sound foolish, that maybe she would have been better off dead than trying to make up for what she had done. If he thought his life worth so little, what did that say about her? If not for him she wouldn’t even be here; she would have grown tired, she would have slipped up, and someone would have finished her.
Looking up at the mirror, only a blurry image stared back at her, and it was then that she realised she was crying. Pushing away from counter she stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower, mixing the water so it was near scalding, her skin turning red almost instantly.
She felt ill, the heavy meal from earlier sitting like a hard lump in her stomach; she felt exhausted despite the nap earlier; she felt emotionally drained, yet the tears kept coming. He would have killed himself; given the opportunity to do it all over again he would have taken his life stupidly thinking that that would have somehow done something to save a lot of people. If it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else and people still would have died, maybe more people because Clint wouldn’t have been there to help them in the end. He would have killed himself, and she never would have had the chance to get him back, to fight for him. Just like that he would have been gone. “You selfish bastard,” she sobbed into the hot, heavy spray of the shower.
She wanted to help him come to terms with everything, to try to atone for it all, but he would rather just turn back the clock and have someone else take his place. How could she help that? Why should she bother? Yes, he had done some awful things under Loki’s control, but in the end that was the real truth of it, wasn’t it? He hadn’t made the choices, he had been powerless to stop his actions, he had been completely under the control of someone else. In Natasha’s case it hadn’t been like that. She’d had her brain tampered with, she had been manipulated, but in the end every life she had taken she had done so of her own accord. She could have ran; hell, she could have told them she would rather die, but she hadn’t, she had done as she was told, and after she had stopped taking orders, when she had been running her own show it had been worse. She killed for money, killed without question, and all entirely by her own choice.
She knew it wasn’t the same thing, and that she should be more understanding of Clint. He wasn’t like her, he didn’t know what it was like to cause the deaths of so many innocent people before that, and the wounds were still fresh, but it still hurt more than she could possibly say.
If he thought so poorly of himself, what would he really think of her if he wasn’t so blinded by love? Did he think others should hate her, mistrust her, and condemn her for her actions like he seemed to believe was only right for him?
Closing her eyes against the stinging tears and the scalding water, Natasha doubled over, one hand grabbing blindly for the shower wall and the other clutching her stomach as its contents finally refused to stay down.