Silver and Red

Broken Mask

At long last, she drifted into awareness, buoyed along by the voice that murmured beside her. She opened her eyes and squinted blearily at the bright lights in the white ceiling above her. Moaning, she tried to turn her head away from the stabbing brightness, and the person beside her bed suddenly stopped speaking.

"Nat? Nat, can you hear me? Are you awake?"

Her only response was another moan, but the person beside her jumped up and pressed something beside her head, talking excitedly all the while. Soon several people rushed in and shooed the man out of the room, then began checking equipment and asking her questions in calm, quiet voices. She tried to follow their directions, but could only manage to squeeze the hand that was placed in hers. After a while, they left and the man returned, but she could tell from the sound of his voice that he was much happier than he had been before.

Over the course of several days, she gradually healed enough to move her arms, then to sit up. Agony still pierced her side when she moved too much, and her head swam if she sat up too quickly. Bandages covered great swaths of her skin, hiding the evidence of the wounds she had sustained from both the explosion and the torture afterward.

She could tell that the team had been worried about her. Clint, Bruce, and even Stark, surprisingly, were visibly careful around her, going to great lengths to ensure her comfort. They all came and sat with her at different times, talking about all sorts of things. Bruce talked about various science projects in that quiet way yet excited way he had, while Stark asked for her opinion on some upgrades he had been thinking about for her Black Widow suit. Clint spent long hours talking about the farm, telling her about the latest missions, talking about Lila and Cooper's latest escapades. Anything and everything was discussed in that little room in the medbay.

It was during one of these times that she interrupted Clint. He had been in the middle of telling her how Lila had sneaked his spare bow and arrows out to the yard, and had been on the verge of blowing a very large crater in the ground by the barn before he caught her.

"Poor girl, I don't think she knew how dangerous—"

"Clint."

"Yeah, Nat?"

"How did you know where I was? How.. how did you find me?" she rasped.

"We got a signal from your tracker," he said softly.

"But they took all my gear away, even my Bites. They... they had some sort of tranq dart, and I... I couldn't stop them," she whispered in shame.

"I tried, but I just... I couldn't... There were too many..."

"Nat, I don't blame you for getting captured. It wasn't your fault. You were injured, and even the best of us can be overcome."

"I know, but.. but how did you find me? I thought I would die there."

"I got one of Coulson's team to put a tracker in your necklace when I got it fixed. I thought that it would be important for you to have one that even you didn't know about, so that way no one else would be able to find out it was there."

"Clint," was all she could say as a lump filled her throat.

"That Fitz kid did a stunning job. It would only activate if your blood touched it, and your blood only. That way, if you were ever unable to call for help, it would do the calling for you."

"I... I didn't know," she said, eyes filling with tears. "Thank you... thank you so much. I thought I would die there, alone on that roof. I thought that you would never know what had happened to me."

Her voice dropped to a whisper, the words barely audible. "Never know that I had failed, that I was too weak to save myself."

"Well," he said softly, "you're here now. Safe. And Nat, it takes a certain type of strength to do what you did. Man, it takes a certain type of strength to be you, to have lived what you lived."

Taking her hand, he squeezed it in reassurance. "Never let yourself think that you are weak. You are the strongest person I know."

"Stronger than Steve?" She smiled through her tears.

"Stronger than Bruce when he's angry," he chuckled. "But don't tell him I said that."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

My idea of Nat's necklace being a blood/DNA activated GPS beacon was inspired by the blood activated gadgets used by livvylane in her story "A Different Kind of Rescue", on FanFiction.Net