This has been open in a document for about a week. I've re-wrote it a thousand times over, changed the ending again and again but I cannot just get this right. So I just decided what the hell I'm just gonna post it.

Enjoy.

"I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me." -Haruki Murakami

She hears their voices in her mind, echoing, screaming, clawing to get out. The pitch all blends together as she briefly closes her eyes, drawing her lower lip in-between her teeth. It hurts for a moment as her bruised lip catches up with the affects of her actions, but she brushes it off. It's nothing compared to what she's felt before.

Some beg for their lives. Others spit in her face, swearing until their very last breath. But they all fall.

Oh, how they fall.

Natalia — Natasha, she reminds herself sharply — closes her eyes again, just for the briefest of moments, trying to block the words that are flittering through her mind. Her head is pounding with the force of a thousand blows, ears going nearly deaf with the blood rushing against them. She can feel it; she can hear it. Her fingers twitch where they lay in her lap as she leans her head back against the cool metal against her back.

She swallows thickly. Natasha doesn't want to think; she doesn't want to feel. Not this. Not anything, anymore.

She allows the soft lull of the engines from outside drift her into a daze of sorts, where her senses are just closed off enough that she can sleep — but not too much as so she wouldn't be able to sense whether someone entered her cell.

It's maybe an hour or two before her eyes start open, her body jerking up. Natasha's eyes adjust to the light, pinning on a dark figure leaning against the doorway. His posture is tensed and realized all at once; she blinks at him, limbs still heavy with sleep.

The archer, she clenches her fingers. The one that had taken her here, knocking her out after given her a choice. Join him, and live — or die.

But she had been so tired. Too tired. Sick of running, hiding, and killing.

("Убей меня," she had spat at him. [Kill me.]

He had stared at her, eyes dark. Searching for something — what, she didn't know.

"Тебе больно," he had responded, voice raspy. Tired. [You're hurt.]

"Сделайте это," she had snarled back. "Сделайте это!" [Do it. Do it!]

He hadn't.)

"What," she says, voice quiet. Empty. "Come to taunt?"

He slips in, closing the door behind him. It clicks shut, the sharp sound echoing around the room. Natasha clenches her teeth.

"Mistake," she calls to him. "Don't come any closer."

Yet, he does. Silent but sure of himself, he steps forward carefully. Natasha doesn't move though, keeping her limbs relaxed. But she knew — they both knew — that she could kill him in a moment even with her hands tied behind her back.

He's not two feet away, hands linked behind his back, when his voice finally decides to make an appearance. "You're not eating."

It's the last thing she expects to hear from him, and it catches her off guard. She stares at him, expression blank.

"So?"

"Why?" he responds carefully.

She curls her lips into a snarl. It unnerves him, she knows. But he's right; she's been refusing all food they give her. It's been four days since she'd last eaten. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction — couldn't.

He sighs, running a hand over his face. "Natasha—"

"Don't," she hisses. "Don't call me that." Her fingers have begun playing with the hem of her black shirt. No zippers, no string. Nothing she could kill anyone with.

His eyes flash. "You're only hurting yourself," he warns.

Natasha holds her head high. "So be it, archer," she responds, switching expressions into one of blank indifference.

He shakes his head, turning away. But he pauses, just before his fingers touch the handle.

"Clint," he offers. "My name is Clint."

Fool, she thinks, but says nothing.

The door clicks shut.

She's so tired.

Natasha eventually ends up eating though, if only to sustain energy; she'd begun to feel weak.

She hated feeling weak.

But that's all this is, right? Stay here, in their prison with their white walls and white sheets and white words until they tire of her. Until they decide that she's worth nothing of use to them and dispose of her.

She's used to it. Now, she almost wishes they would.

(Almost.)

He visits her again though. Many times actually, never coming more than two feet closer to her. She never leaves her bed, choosing instead to sit and stare emotionless at the opposite wall.

After the first visit, she doesn't talk.

He does, though. This man is trying to coax her out of her shell, and she knows it. She doesn't comply. She sits there, unmoving.

But after yet another visit with no words from her, he's growing impatient. His movements are more tense now, his words more clipped than before. He's trying, harder than ever.

He snaps though, at the end of his most recent visit. "The council is trying to get another kill order on you," he spits. "They've convinced nearly everyone that you can't be reformed. Doesn't that bother you?"

Natasha takes notice of the word "another" but brushes it away. She turns her head towards him, and for the first time in weeks, speaks. "No."

He growls. "Natasha," he hisses.

She jerks upward, swearing at him. "Stop it," she bites. "You don't get to call me that."

He's on her in a second though as she lunges at him, grasping her thigh with one hand and pinning her tied-up wrists — not very hard, she notices, but then again she's not really struggling — against the wall with the other. She swears again, low and bloody, but otherwise remands silent.

"Natasha," he growls. "Please, just try. Please."

She doesn't know what to do; on one hand, she's terrified. She's never been more scared in her life. People don't just do things for nothing. They all want something.

Her heart is pounding as she blinks up at him, chest heaving. Natasha searches his gaze for something — a reason almost, because her pulse is flickering and she's swallowing and everything's going all wrong. She doesn't know what she wants; she doesn't know what he wants. Why he wants her to change.

He should be like all the rest.

But he's not.

His hands are trembling as he releases her. She lands harshly on her ankle, hissing at the sudden pain that shoots up her leg.

He's staring at her, eyes wide. "Sorry," he barely whispers, the words washing over her skin. "But you can't let them do this. Please — you have to try."

He sounds empty, almost.

She doesn't know what to do.

Hope you liked. Sorry about the crappy ending.