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She not a fucking child.
The words race in circles around her pounding head, even as she curls up tighter against the comforting presence that is a mother she didn’t have.
Clint brought her here. Reassurances that it would be okay, that Laura would know what to do. That everything would be fine.
After all, she’s done it once before, when Nat was a barely tamed creature, fresh from a couple lifetimes of assassin work for agencies best not spoken of in light of day.
Now, though. Now she thinks even Laura might not be able to fix what’s gone wrong.
Withdrawal doesn’t kill. She knows that. She does. Well, it might. If you don’t have someone to babysit you, to gentle you through the expulsion of every bodily fluid you ever thought about possessing. She doesn’t even really know what’s she’s coming off of this time.
She hiccups, bile crawling up her throat for the thousandth time. There’s a Tupperware bowl beneath her chin. The domesticity of the whole situation makes is so much worse.
Simple mission. That’s what Fury called it. When Nat can move without hurling, he’s going to get a dictionary thrown at his head. Let herself be detained. Spend some time in a black site. Leave, bringing with her a target Fury has an interest in.
The target is dead. The mission a complete failure. And Nat’s detoxing off something that’s making her about as human as a three days gone corpse.
Clint came for her. No doubt against orders. He’s not one for following them if he thinks they’re stupid. And so many of the orders are stupid these days.
“Nat, breathe,” Laura tells her, and it’s only when the air practically burns on the way in that she realizes how long she’s been resisting the urge to draw in a proper breath rather than queasy little gasps.
“Four,” she reports, giving the pain a score without thinking through what she’s doing. Clint taught her that. It’s easier than admitting what hurts, where, and how. Clint knows that hiding weakness is more than just saving face. The tremors running through every muscle hurt. The raw burn of her throat hurts. The ever-worsening cramping in her gut hurts. She’s hard wired to lowball the number, but Laura doesn’t need to be told to add a few to the tally she reports.
She drifts, and when she’s next aware of anything it’s of neon contrails behind her eyelids. She tries to offer up warning. It’s been a long time, but she knows what coming. The muscles of her limbs tighten with angry cramps, and the neon goes searing white. Her back arches, and she’s gone.
“Eight,” she whimpers some indeterminate time later. The back of her skull throbs. She’s bashed her wrist into something and there’s a bruise sure to come along soon. Not fractured. She knows that feeling well enough to be sure of that. But fuck does she hurt. Her back is burning and she wonders how long the tonic phase lasted before the clonic jerks arrived. It feels like it might have been a century, though she knows it probably barely made the minute mark.
“Damn,” the voice that answers is soft and calm. She wonders if Laura is human, to be so calm when everything is so utterly no okay.
“Was bad?” she asks back. The pronoun in the middle is missing, but she trusts the question is functional without it.
“You flipped yourself off the sofa,” Laura’s voice clarifies. “I wasn’t expecting seizures.”
She wants to apologize. Wants to tell her keeper that she couldn’t have been prepared for it, that without a clue of what she was dosed with, they have no way of knowing what’s coming. Instead she turns her head to the side and retches. She can’t get her tongue far enough out of her mouth, can’t squeeze the muscles of her stomach tight enough to make the nothing come up. So it goes on for far too long, hacking and choking and pinpoints of white in her vision because why the fuck not.
When it’s over, she squeezes her eyes shut and tries not to be ashamed of the way she presses into the warmth of Laura kneeling beside her. She’s not a fucking child. Not when she’s eased back to her feet. Not when she’s shepherded into that bathroom. Not when warm water is poured over aching muscles and through bile crusted hair. Not even when tears fall silently down her face as a blanket is tucked around her and a towel slipped beneath her chin on the pillow.
“Just in case,” the words should bring shame. They bring peace. Everything is there, ready, just in case. And so she sleeps, as the last of too many chemicals make their way out of the nooks and crannies of every synapse she has.