Disclaimer: All characters and such belong to Marvel.

Summary: The Red Room left its mark on Natasha in more ways than one. She freed herself as best she could, emotionally and physically, but sometimes in the darkness everything seems like too much and you find yourself missing old torments for the sheer quality of familiarity. || Oneshot, implied Clintasha, slight tiny spoilers for Agent Carter ||

Chronology: post-Avengers

Pairings: Clint/Natasha implied

Rating: T for mentions of abuse and trauma

Author's Note: Welp. I'm in deep. Out of nowhere I suddenly became obsessed with Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow. Poster on my wall, cosplays, a million fic ideas, you name it. This fic is the first I've managed to get all organized and written up, and was inspired by a brilliant piece of fan art that I now can't find! Feedback is much appreciated.

Locked In

Old habits die hard. Natasha Romanoff knew this perhaps better than anyone. But Natasha Romanoff was also better at killing than most. And so she went about the murder of one particular habit with all the planning and detail and force that she used for any hit.

It hadn't been an issue when she had been working for herself, jumping from job to job without regard for who hired her and why. No one was checking up on her, so she had all the privacy she needed and no reason to have to make up some kind of a story to explain why she couldn't fall asleep unless one wrist was encircled with a handcuff, the other end locked around whatever post was located conveniently near her sleeping space. She recognized the inconvenience, the potential vulnerability it created, but she dealt with it because it had been burned into her psyche and it was easier to simply carry on as always.

Besides, despite telling herself over and over again that she was her own master, the nature of the work meant that in many ways she was no more free than when the Red Room had controlled her every breath. So why should she be physically free when she ideologically wasn't?

Things were different then when Clint Barton found her, let her live, and she shortly thereafter found herself working for SHIELD. She had her own room, personal space that no one else would enter, but suddenly surrounded by all those people going normally about their lives without being symbolically and physically chained to their past in order to get a few hours of sleep punctuated with nightmares, it became painfully obvious how deep the damage ran. And she refused to be damaged goods.

So, through copious amounts of Mederma applied to the scars on her wrist and many sleepless nights where she lectured herself under her breath about how unnecessary the restraint was, nights that stretched into days until finally she was so exhausted that her body had no choice but to succumb to sleep, she killed the habit until only its ugly shadow remained - and then only in her mind. The handcuffs she tossed into the river.

It was her secret for a long time, even as she began to slowly open up to Clint. Because there were some things you just didn't talk about.

Until you did.

She couldn't be quite sure when the change happened, or what in particular brought it about, but at some point Clint became privy to the darkest secrets of her past and when he didn't judge her for them, the floodgates opened and it was like bleeding poison from a wound, talking about these things for the first time and finding not fear or judgment but understanding and empathy. The story about the handcuffs was just a small part of the whole mess, one of the few parts that didn't bother her anymore.

Until it did.

Clint is sleeping over. They're curled up in her bed, sheets tangled around them in the peaceful darkness. Natasha always sleeps easier, breathes easier with him there. He's one of the few good things she hasn't managed to ruin. His presence is soothing and warm and filled with a silent understanding. She craves it like air sometimes, even though through the years she has managed to compartmentalize her past enough that she can usually sleep.

Tonight, that's not the case. Tonight, somewhere in the earliest hours of the morning, one of her walls collapses under its own weight and suddenly she's reliving the worst of the Red Room - the grueling training, the punishments, the violent things she was forced to do to the girls being trained alongside her, the violence they in turn inflicted on her, the earliest missions, the very first time she killed, and the first time she killed where she felt nothing at all. It all runs hot through her brain, like glowing coils, and she sits straight up out of a dead sleep, tense and her whole body in a defensive position, just waiting for the threat to strike so she can protect herself.

Clint wakes up just a second after, his body attuned to hers after all the time they've spent together. He slowly sits up, making no sudden moves, being sure to keep his hands where she can see them at all times.

"Nat? You okay?" he asks, his voice low and calm.

But she doesn't answer him. She can't answer him, because the floodgates have been blown open and all of it is crashing back over her and in this moment it's all too much and she reverts back to that earliest learned instinct when faced with pain and questions - you shut up and you shut down, you become only the most basic functions of breathing lungs and beating heart and everything else doesn't exist, you are an entity of white noise and you fold in on yourself and you stay there, hoping that whatever it is goes away -

"Tasha," Clint says, again with a low, gentle tone, but this time adding warmth to his voice, trying to reach the part of her that's still there, hidden behind all those walls of panic, and self defense. "Tasha," he repeats. "Tasha, it's Clint. You're safe here. It's just us and you're safe, I promise you Tasha..."

It takes a minute or two, but slowly he gets through to her and her eyes start to focus again, landing on his face and sparking slowly with recognition. "Clint?" she asks, her throat tight and her voice breaking.

"Yeah," he says softly, very slowly placing a hand near her on the bed. An offer, if she feels secure enough to accept it. "Yeah, it's me. You okay?"

Her gaze flicks down to take in his offered hand, and she accepts, slipping her fingers between his. They both pretend not to notice her shivering. She licks her lips, looks around, then looks back at him. "I can't sleep," she admits hoarsely. "Not without - I think I need -" She gestures clumsily from herself to the bed post and he knows precisely what she means. She looks embarrassed. That a part of her past - the past that torments her - should serve to help her get through memories of that past.

He squeezes her hand. "Okay," he says, nodding, reassuring her. "Okay." He's seen her tie one wrist to the bed a few times before, using whatever she had on hand, and while he knew why she needed it and how it helped, it still killed him a little inside. So now he reluctantly lets go of her hand, climbs off the bed, and walks around to her side. She looks confused, and a little hurt at first, but he kneels down on the floor beside the bed and reaches up to stroke his fingers through her hair and then gently cups her cheek. "Lie down," he tells her softly.

Uncertainly, she does, eyes on him the whole time.

When she's reclined, on her side, facing him, Clint slides over so he's sitting on the floor, gets comfortable. And then he reaches up very slowly and places a hand over her wrist, gradually closing his fingers around her wrist until it's completely enclosed with his hand - much warmer and much softer than any handcuffs.

Natasha manages to give him a tiny, shaky smile. "You can't sleep like that," she whispers. "You can't stay like that all night."

Clint pulls her hand to him briefly, presses his lips to her knuckles in the softest of kisses, and then rests her hand back on the bed beside her, fingers still snugly around her wrist. "Watch me," he says, his voice gentle and teasing but also underlined with gravity to prove to her just how serious he is, how much he means that.

He sits there and she lays there and they watch each other for long minutes that stretch on into infinity in the impossible darkness of the night, until finally her eyelids start to droop, no matter how she fights them.

"It's okay Tasha," he whispers. "I've got you."

Slowly, she believes him and she lets go, her eyes falling closed and her body going limp from the release of all the tension, all the fear.

And Clint sits there through the night, holding just tight enough to remind her of what had been, what signaled to her that she was allowed to sleep, but loose enough and gentle enough to remind her that it was different now, that he wasn't holding her down.

He was helping her hold on.