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Natasha did not have sweet dreams that night.

At somewhere close to 2am, Natasha woke up in a sweat, her breathing labored as though she'd been fighting for her life in the throes of her sleep, her tangled legs in the blanket feeling like a vise. She tried to escape, kicking the sheets off as her back hit the headboard, grasping blindly at her nightstand only to knock something over with a sharp crack, pain lighting up her arm.

"Fuck," she cursed, the word broken, her voice shaken, the trembles racking through her body, aftershocks from the nightmare, taking away her dexterity. She waited in the dark for several minutes, until she felt like she could breathe again and stand without falling over.

Exhausted and vulnerable, Natasha eventually got up from her bed, leaving a mess of blood mixed in with a layer of sweat.



Yeah. All of that was definitely going into the wash.

Stumbling into her bathroom, she flicked on the light switch, wincing at the brightness. Her eyes only met the mirror once as she continued to her cabinet, but it was enough to see a broken shell of herself staring back at her, her eyes red, face flushed, framed by a frizz of red. After attempting to at least tame her curls so she didn't look like a crazed ghost, using a wet cloth to cool her heated skin, she searched through her things for some kind of medical supplies only to come up empty.

When had she—?

Then she remembered the week prior when Clint had come home from his mission, too stubborn to treat his wounds properly, and Natasha had forced him to sit in her bathroom while she cleaned him up.

She sighed audibly.

That would do it.

Forgoing a robe, because it would be quite difficult to force her glass-riddled arm into a sleeve, she stepped out into the chill corridor of the Triskelion in a tank and sweats, traveling the few steps it took to make it to Clint's door down the hall.

After letting herself in and sifting through his things, first checking the bathroom, then the kitchen, and the laundry, she found, to her surprise, that he also did not have any medical supplies.

It was possible he took them with him on his mission, though those kinds of things were usually already provided on the quinjet. She thought back to the last time she remembered seeing it, and—

Right. Natasha had also had a nightmare a few weeks ago. Clint had been there to patch her up, though it had gone through his supplies. She definitely intended on ripping a new one into him for not restocking, especially after so much time had passed.

She didn't have many options after that. Hoping that no one else was out, she ventured out into the darkened hall once more, using a paper towel she'd stolen from Clint's to make sure she wasn't leaving a trail of blood on the floor.