I just want to take a moment to apologize to my readers who had favorited/subscribed to this story under my old name SadDaysLove. I made that account when I couldn't get into this account. I'm not sure why I was locked out of this account, but I was...probably because FF is so awesome. Anyway I'm deleting the email that SadDaysLove is linked to, and it's just flat-out getting annoying having two accounts, so I decided to combine the two.

So no, I'm not stealing anyone's work in re-posting this story...SadDaysLove and AMiserableLove (hmmm I sound fun don't I?) are the same person. AND, I'm sorry I don't have a third chapter for you. I've been working on my New Girl fictions AND I'm still kinda battling with myself over whether or not a third chapter with a love scene is necessary.

Long story short...sorry for the re-post!

Warnings: Attempted rape, mentions of rape, violence, language, out of character fluff etc etc...

Disclaimer: I don't own Avengers

I Can Save What's Left of You

Her head hurts.

Really fucking hurts.

Opening an eye Natasha takes a moment to assess the situation.

Her brain is foggy. Her limbs are heavy.

She's been drugged.

She winces while trying to clear the thick haze that is hindering her thought process.

Glancing around her, she attempts to focus heavy lidded eyes. She's in the helicarrier. The room is easily recognizable; she's been in many similar to it. It's a basic room used for sleeping before or after missions. It's very small and very dark. She glances up to where she knows a camera should be and frowns when she sees it's been disconnected. That should have set off any number of alarms bringing a handful of armed guards to her. But as a low rumble shakes the walls around her and sirens sound in the distance, Natasha figures that whatever is happening outside the confines of her small prison is much more important than one disconnected camera.

Her eyes wander up to the ceiling. She's laying face up on a bed. Her legs are bound together; her hands are tied on either side of her head to a thin metal frame. There's nothing special about what she's been bound with. It's a thick rope…she pulls at it a little, her arms protest with the movement. She scowls; it's a very thick rope. The frame is solid, but if the drug's effects continue to wear off and given some time (something she may or may not have) and momentum she may be able to work on it.

This offers her a sliver of comfort.

Her mouth is free. She has not been gagged, which is not reassuring in the slightest. This just means that whoever took her believes that there's no need for it. Natasha ponders this. How is this happening? How is she a prisoner on a SHIELD helicarrier? Why isn't anyone looking for her? Someone has to be looking for her. Why has no one found her? The questions swirl in her foggy brain and as the walls rumble again, her scowl deepens.

What the hell is going on?

She tries to force away the gray clouds that are still heavy on the edge of her usually sharp and focused mind. The memory, the answer to what happened to her is there, she can almost grasp it. Struggling against the drugs, she demands her body and brain fight to overcome the barrier.

She's stronger than this.

Taking in a deep breath, she winces when pain roars up her body. Annoyed, she gives herself a moment to note her injuries. She's got a pretty nasty head wound, there's a dull throbbing and dried blood on the left side of her face, and her entire body feels like one big bruise. Other than that and the lingering side effects of whatever drug is coursing through her system, she's not severely injured.

Someone just did a decent job of thoroughly kicking the crap out of her, that's all.

And that's when it all comes flooding back to her.

Loki. Clint.

There had been a fight.

An intense one.

Despite the situation, she allows herself a small smirk. She hadn't gone down easily. She had fought the shell that used to be…still is Clint…she had fought him like hell. Only the bastard had cheated and had stuck her with a needle in a moment of weakness.

She stumbles as he lands a solid right hook, but it only sets her back for a moment before she's swiping his feet out from under him. Pouncing on top of him she pays him back for her ringing jaw and gives him what she hopes will be a decent black eye; feeling real satisfaction when her fist makes contact with his face. He grunts and rolls her, pinning her down with the sheer force of his weight, and when his hands come up to her throat, she feels fear for a split second before bringing her legs up and launching him off of her. He's on her in seconds and she's just barely able to block his swinging fists and attempts at landing a decent kick. She takes a second to remind herself that she's better at this than he is. This is not his specialty. This is not what he's most comfortable with. With newfound vigor she spins catching him with her elbow and gains the upper hand, landing blow after blow on his body.

And when he fights dirty and pulls her hair she fights dirty right back and bites him. They go at it for a while. Landing hit after hit on each other. Not a word is said between them. Their heavy breathing, grunts, and pants are the only sounds they exchange.

Anytime her brain tries to reject what is happening she forces herself to focus. Clint is not her partner right now; he's not her friend. He's been compromised and she has to bring him down.

In anyway she can.

And she has every intention of doing so, but she lands a pretty hard hit and he stumbles back. His deceptively blue eyes go back to that familiar gray, and he stares at her…no he looks at her, really looks at her. He sees her. And the sorrow, the anguish, the apology she sees in his eyes, hits her harder than any blow he had previously landed. It almost knocks the wind out of her.

Clint.

"Tasha?" His voice is pleading, like he wants to tell her something.

She pauses, and it's during that brief pause that his eyes freeze back to that wrong icy blue, and suddenly he's slamming her head into the metal railing next to her and she goes down. She can feel blood trickling down her face and as he leans over her, he smiles a little a smile that is in no way his, and then she feels something pierce the tender flesh of her skin and everything goes black.

"Well." Natasha whispers as the memory fades.

"Everything come back to you?"

She hates that she jumps at his voice. She hates even more that she hadn't realized right away he had been standing in the farthest, darkest corner of the room. He's good at hiding in the shadows but there's no excuse for him going unnoticed. She shakes her head, disgusted by the remnants of whatever drug he had injected into her.

"You fought dirty." She states, watching as he walks closer to the bed.

"I didn't have time for foreplay."

She snorts at that. But her body tenses.

Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear

Loki's promise to her.

She swallows as she watches her brainwashed partner watching her. She has a pretty good idea what is going to happen...what Clint's hijacked body is going to do to her. And in her current condition, she's not sure she has much of a chance.

He's going to kill her.

And as his gaze roams over her body, as his mouth twists into a cruel sneer, as his hands flex and then clench into tight fists, she bites back a frown.

Because she's pretty sure he's going to rape her before or while doing it.

Natasha sighs, feeling just the tiniest bit of her resolve begin to crumble before she coldly pushes it back into place. She can deal with this. She knew she wouldn't live long in this line of work. She knew that her end wouldn't be a pleasant one.

But still…this is a pretty fucked up way to go.

She's never willingly had sex with a man before.

Natasha Romanoff infamous seductress, has never willingly taken a lover.

Before coming to SHIELD she had been forced to use her body for the job, in every way possible. The Red Room had made sure that she was good…talented at using her body…in every way possible. It was part of her training, she had been told. It made her a better tool, a better weapon. And after she had left them, leaving a trail of blood behind her, her next employers had seen to it that she follow through with her whispered promises and soft touches. Since coming to SHIELD, she still uses her body for the job when necessary but she isn't required to do so in the same way she had before. At SHIELD she only has to pretend to be the seductive temptress.

She doesn't have to follow through.

Her hazy drug induced brain brings back memories she'd rather not think of at a time like this.

"Hey Romanoff."

She turns and levels him with an icy stare. Fury has assigned them as partners. It's their first mission together. It's her first mission for SHIELD ever. She's not quite sure what to make of it...she doesn't hate it, but she doesn't like it.

She decides just to accept it.

"You don't have to fuck him." His gray eyes lock onto hers. There's no emotion in them, he's simply stating a fact.

She tenses. "Don't tell me how to do my job." The glare she shoots him is enough to make most men who know her reputation cower in fear. She can kill a person fifty different ways without a weapon, and that's without really having to think about it too much.

This is a known fact at SHIELD.

She doesn't have many friends at her new job.

As she glowers at him, he's not even decent enough to look the slightest bit disturbed.

Instead he nods, a ghost of a smirk playing across his lips. "Okay."

She doesn't sleep with the ambassador to get him to spill his secrets on that mission. Oh sure, she plays like she's going to. She brings him to the edge of temptation and back. She lets her gaze, her fingers, her words linger. She says all of the right things, she dresses all of the right ways.

But she doesn't sleep with him.

What her old employers had never realized, had never given her the chance to show, is that she's perfectly capable of bringing a man to his knees without ever becoming intimate with him. So no she doesn't sleep with the ambassador during that mission, and still he spills all of his secrets to her. She gets the information she needs and the mission is successfully completed. But just for fun, because she's still new to this whole turning over a new leaf thing and the red on her ledger is still wet and fresh and dripping, she slits his throat right as he's about to push her up against the wall and take her.

And she smiles a little as his lifeblood runs from his body.

She gets in a bit of trouble on that mission. Fury's not sure if the poor ambassador really deserved the death she had given him, and the cover-up costs SHIELD a pretty penny. But he was a cruel man responsible for the deaths of many innocent people, and her punishment is merely a slap on the wrist.

She's back in the field within a month.

Clint is assigned as her permanent partner.

He's forced to watch over her. He made the decision to save her, according to Fury she's become his responsibility.

She fucks up again, they both pay.

So from now on she doesn't kill any men or women who aren't actively trying to kill her, or whose death she hasn't been ordered to deliver. Early on, when she does slip, and it only happens a few different times, she makes up some damn good excuses, and Clint seeing past her, looks the other way.

They are partners after all.

After she realizes that indeed SHIELD does not expect her to follow through on the promises she whispers in her target's ear, she swears she will never use her body in that way again. She will never degrade herself that way again. Sex isn't necessary.

When the Red Room first made her use her body as an intimate weapon, she had thought that sex was painful, dirty, and disgusting. But she did it well, because it was a part of her job, and it was required of her. After awhile it was just messy and uncomfortable, until suddenly it was just boring.

A means to an end.

Sex is something used as a form of persuasion not pleasure.

She clings to these thoughts the first year or so after leaving her old life behind and following Clint to SHIELD.

But as she gets more comfortable with her new position, she finds herself getting more comfortable with her new partner. And no matter how uneasy her new feelings make her, she can't push them aside. She's not blind to their chemistry; she's not blind at all. She notices him. And she notices him noticing her. After a while she begins to like it. After awhile, she begins to let her guard down about sex. Slowly she allows herself to explore her own body, always in the confines of her own room, and always completely alone. She never takes a lover, but she allows herself to indulge in fantasies.

She's only human…no matter how much it pisses her off…. she is only human. And she finds herself wondering what it would be like...with him. To have sex, to be intimate, with someone she wants to be with.

With someone she isn't forced to be with.

With someone she chooses.

Snapping her sluggish brain back to her current situation, Natasha looks on as Clint slowly takes his bow off and places it on the ground at the foot of the bed. She notices he still has a knife at his side. Barely suppressing a shudder, she tries not to let him see her visibly stiffen as he places a knee on the mattress.

She's about to be raped by the only man she has ever considered willingly sleeping with.

She's about to be killed by the only man she has ever trusted with her life.

She's about to be raped by him, while his mind is being raped by a demi-god. And once it's over, she knows Loki will do everything in his power to kill Clint. Or seeing what he has done to her, she's aware that there's a very real possibility that Clint will kill himself.

Talk about a complete mind-fuck.

"Natasha." He says in a voice that sounds like his, but isn't. She watches as strong nimble fingers move to his knife. He pulls it out as he straddles her bound body. She can feel the strength of his thighs caging her in and she contemplates struggling, bringing her legs up, attempting to rear him off of her, but her limbs are still heavy, and she knows it's useless.

"I want you to fight." He says, as if reading her mind.

"Give me a solid twenty minutes for these damn drugs to wear off, undo these ties and I'd be glad to oblige you."

He grins. "Ahh sweetheart where's the fun in that?"

She doesn't appreciate the endearment. "Me kicking your ass? Sounds like a good time to me."

"I think I like you like this…tied up…at my mercy. But feel free to still struggle."

She raises a brow. "I won't…coward."

"Too bad." He murmurs, honestly sounding disappointed.

He draws his knife up; plays with it at the base of her throat a little. His eyes never leave hers, and she doesn't look away. That, she can't give him. Although part of her thinks she should. Because she knows that Clint…the real Clint...is still locked in there somewhere. She knows that this has to be torture for him. But she already can't fight, and she can't give Loki everything, so she keeps her eyes firmly on his.

"I plan to make this hurt." He whispers.

"I know."

He arches a brow, and she wants to spit in his face, because that arched brow, that slightly amused, slightly exasperated expression, is supposed to be entirely Clint's and how dare Loki's imposter use it against her.

"Will you scream?" He asks, sliding the knife across her skin, pricking her a bit, and slicing her flesh just faintly.

She doesn't flinch. "I'll try not to." She tells him honestly.

"He's in love with you." The thing that has stolen Clint's face smirks at her.

"I know." She says, and she wants so badly to scream.

Because she does know.

He told her.

Just once.

In Budapest.

She sees him go down. Even when taking heavy fire, she always keeps tabs on him and he on her. So she sees when he goes down. Swearing vehemently in Russian she rushes to him, rage building inside of her. The shit had hit the fan on this mission. What was supposed to be an easy get 'em and go case had turned into a shit show. Running, she barely bats an eye as a car explodes to her right. She's too furious at that moment. Furious that Lakatos, the weapons dealer they were supposed to take down, had been made aware of their presence. Furious that this set back would undoubtedly cut into her holiday time because now this mission was not going to be the open and closed one that had been promised to them. They would be backtracking for days, weeks even. But mostly she was furious that Clint had gotten hit, because being the jackass that he is, he had left his perch to provide cover for her as she had sped from Lakatos mansion with heavy guns hot on her tracks.

"Son of a bitch!" She yells as a spray of bullets delays her.

She needs to get to him.

He's taken hits before. She's seen him get hurt before. But this is bad; the fear in her gut all but screams it. Running towards him, she fires her gun while dodging enemy bullets. One grazes her shoulder and she takes a second to pull out a grenade, biting the pin, she throws it as far as she can, waiting for the explosion before sliding up next to him and rolling him towards the abandoned building he had been using for cover. Cursing him, she can't pinpoint who she's angrier with; their targets for almost killing him, or Clint for allowing himself to get a near fatal injury. As she applies pressure to his gushing wound with one hand and continues shooting with the other, he smiles up at her. Murmuring softly that she looks like an avenging angel.

She arches a brow at him, not at all amused by his romantic sentiments.

"Don't talk." She tells him; glancing down at the blood pouring over her fingers. She's had his blood on her hands before. This is not something new. So she pushes down the fear and the panic that is just threatening the edges of her mind. There's no time for emotions in the field.

She speaks into her earpiece, or maybe she shouts, demanding back up and a medic and demanding them now.

Another round of bullets attempt to take them out and she covers his body with hers. Even more pissed off now, she takes his hand and hisses for him to keep it on his wound, grabbing his fallen weapon she pounces to her feet and methodically begins to take out target after target, until there's no more returning fire, and things go eerily silent for a bit. Returning her attention back to him, she looks down to find his steely gray eyes looking back up at her; dull and hazy with pain and loss of blood.

"I love you." It's a gurgled whisper. Barely understandable. Barely decipherable.

But she hears him.

He falls into unconsciousness immediately after.

Fury sends in back-up and she and Clint are rescued. He's rushed to surgery and ultimately survives but his injury heals slower than she knows he'd like. On her down time, she helps him to recover. They never speak of his confession. She likes to think that he doesn't remember it. She likes to pretend sometimes it was the loss of blood that had caused the murmured words to spill from his mouth.

Sometimes, she pretends that she had misheard him entirely.

But then she feels his eyes on her. She sees something flash in their gray depths as they spar and train, and eventually go back on missions together, and she knows that what had been said in Budapest, was absolutely the truth.

He loves her.

"How many men have you been with?"

His knife is ripping through her clothes, he's cutting her in the process, she can feel the slice of the blade, and the warmth of her blood. The way he's cutting her, it's not enough to deeply wound her, just a bunch of surface scratches...but he's doing it on purpose. She knows that with his eyes closed, he can shred every bit of clothing off of her with that blade, and not once knick her. He pokes her with the knife a bit deeper and she knows he's waiting for her to answer.

"Too many to count."

"How many have you wanted to be with?"

She doesn't answer.

He sneers. "The Black Widow doesn't let too many people in. She doesn't let too many people get close. But you gave your body over again and again…for your job. You were nothing more than a slut with a gun before you met him. Before he gave you a second chance."

She stays silent. She knows it has Clint's memories. Loki may have put a spell on him, but Clint's memories are still in tact. That's how Loki knew so much about her, SHIELD…everything.

She stares at Clint's face twisted into a cruel smile and tries to convince herself that the pang in her chest is not her heart breaking...because she's too much of a miserable bitch to claim to have a heart.

But Clint's imposter word's ring in her ears.

Because he's the only person she's ever let get close to her.

They are in Rome. She's resting in her hotel room after a mission that almost went horribly wrong. When the door to her hotel room flings open she's not surprised.

"Jesus Christ Nat! You could have gotten yourself killed." He yells it at her; his voice nearly quivering with fury.

She watches as he slams the door shut behind him and when he levels her with a glare, she merely shrugs.

Silence hangs thick and heavy in the air.

Finally he breaks it.

"This." He holds up her earpiece before flinging it at her with a quick flick of his wrist. "Stays in at all times…don't do something that stupid ever again." His voice is low and controlled.

It sounds deadly.

"If you hadn't kept chirping in my ear I wouldn't have taken the damn thing out." Her tone is just as cool as his.

"The mission was a bust...they were on you the minute you walked in there."

"I got the information!" Her voice raises a notch, and this irritates her. He's the only person in the world that can rile her up.

"You nearly blew the whole thing and almost got yourself killed!"

"That's not how I see it." She lies. Because she's perfectly aware that she had been careless. She doesn't like to admit it, but she was off today. She had made a mistake and when she had realized it, it had almost been too late. She remembers hearing his voice in her ear frantically telling her to get the hell out, warning that her cover had been blown. She remembers thinking about Budapest about how she wasn't going to let this mission end the same way. And then she had snapped, and had almost compromised the entire thing. It had been dumb, but the end state is she had gotten the information and any and all risk factors had been taken out.

Case closed.

She's not sure what will satisfy him. What she needs to say to him to get him off her back, but she sure as hell isn't going to admit right now that she had been wrong. Finished with the conversation she makes a move towards the bathroom but he blocks her path.

She cocks an eyebrow. "Really? We're going to do this?" She clenches and unclenches her first, ready to pounce.

He stares at her a moment, his eyes flashing with barely controlled anger and something else she can't quite place. And then suddenly it fades and he sighs. "Don't shut me out Natasha."

She wants to throw a retort back in his face. She wants to smirk at his suddenly defeated expression, she wants to tell him he's weak, but instead she finds herself closing her eyes.

"I won't." She says and she means it.

She doesn't pull away when he pulls her to him. She doesn't immediately try to drop him to the ground when his arms come up around her. And as she leans into his embrace, she feels the walls she has put up around her heart begin to crack. He holds her for a moment, before whispering into her hair, softly in the language she grew up with. She can just barely make out his words.

"Мое сердце"

My heart.

"Natasha your daydreaming again." His voice is taunting. "On your long list of lovers, how many men did you actually want to be with?"

"None of them." She's silent after that, refusing to say more. She won't think about the one lover she never took.

Her answer and the silence that follows seem to satisfy him. "Have you thought of me in this way before Natasha? On top of you like this?"

Natasha doesn't answer as the blade continues to rip her clothing open until she's lying before him exposed and bleeding.

"So beautiful." His voice, Clint's voice, it almost sounds reverent, awed. His eyes are cold as he drinks in the sight of her naked body; decorated with tiny slashes from his blade.

And she hates the way he's looking at her, because she has pictured him looking at her that way before. Only it's not Clint, and she tells herself that as he brings a hand to her breast and teases the nipple lightly.

She bites her lip, as bile rises up in her throat.

"I'm going to fuck you Natasha. And I'm going to slide my knife into as I'm doing it."

She nods.

He smirks at that. "Don't you have anything to say?" He sounds almost surprised.

She considers remaining silent, not giving him the pleasure of any last words. But as she stares at his face...Clint's face... she hesitates. He's in there, watching what his body is doing to her. She knows this. He had been able to break free for just a moment, before Loki's magic had regained control of him and he had knocked her out. So he's in there, and he deserves to know that she doesn't blame him. That she knows he's unable to stop it.

The walls shake again, as whatever battle is going on outside of the room continues, and she hopes for a moment that the rest of the team is able to take Loki down, even if it's too late to save her. Bringing her attention back to Clint she smiles softly, the act obviously surprising him as his eyes narrow at it.

"I forgive you Clint." She whispers, her throat feels thick with emotion.

"What?"

"I forgive you."

He doesn't like this, and frowns. "I'm going to kill you Natasha, but first I'm going to rape you."

"Your not him. Not really." She smirks and she knows it infuriates him.

"I'm going to make you scream and beg for your life."

"I forgive you Clint." She says again ignoring the imposter, her voice is more determined.

Frustration crosses his cold features, and he brings his knife to rest near her stomach while his other hand makes quick work of opening his pants.

"You're going to feel my cock inside of you, before you feel my knife."

As he positions himself at her entrance, she can't help from tensing. She can feel tears pricking her eyes and she hates herself at that moment. But she's about to die, and she reasons that maybe it's okay to cry, because surely when facing certain death at the hands of the only person she has ever trusted, even she can allow herself to crumble. But then Clint crosses her mind, and she knows that she can't do that to him. So she works up a tremulous smile, throwing off his imposter.

And as the tip of him presses into her, she catches the frigidly blue eyes that are boring down on her and pretends that they're gray.

She remembers his words to her in Budapest, in Rome.

"Я тоже тебя люблю." I love you too. She whispers it to him in her native tongue; they're laced with an apology. She's sorry she never said them sooner.

He stills above her, and she watches as his body shudders, a low guttural groan is ripped from him and he sounds like a wild animal howling in pain. His eyes grow wide before they shimmer from pale icy blue to a stormy strong gray. He's motionless above her, staring down at her, and she doesn't dare move beneath him.

And then he gasps and catches his breath. "Tasha." His voice is pained and desperate.

She's frozen. She can't move. It's a cruel cruel trick.

One last 'fuck you' to the master assassin before she dies.

"Oh Christ. Tasha, Tasha, Tasha…" He says her name over and over, like a chant, a prayer, and still she can't budge.

When he moves the hand that is still clutching his knife, she flinches, and worry, distress, and anger all clash in his gray eyes for a moment before he slashes through the ropes binding her down. Freed, she still doesn't move, doesn't allow herself to hope that it's really him.

It's not until he has gathered her in his arms and is apologizing over and over again, his voice a low rumble in her ear, that she lets the tears she's been trying to hold back fall.

Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, one of the world's greatest spies and assassins, cries into his embrace whimpering like a lost child. She cries for the first time in what feels like decades. Her only vivid memory of giving into the action, being after her very first kill. She had been beaten afterwards for showing such weakness. After that her body and mind refused to betray her in that way again.

Until now.

As hot wet tears streak her cheeks, she wonders if they are stained red.

She's almost certain they are.

The muffled sound of her sobs fill the dark room, and the thuds of explosions in the not so far off distance rattle them both, but he continues to hold her speaking soft apologies to her, alternating between English and the Russian he's fluent in. He tells her he's going to bring Loki down himself, and he promises that she can be the one to kill him, to deliver the final blow.

She is pretty sure they are empty promises, that there is no way he can guarantee that to her, but it comforts her and her tears slowly begin to subside. Later, the embarrassment will come. But now, all she does is allow him to hold her, knowing that in a few moments she'll have to get up and find new clothes. There is much more that needs to be done.

Clint doesn't tell her he loves her, and she doesn't repeat her earlier declaration. Love is for children she had told Loki. Part of her still believes this. Because really, what they have, what they mean to each other, is so much deeper, so much more than mere love.

They know this.

They have always known this.

There is no need to say more.

In the few last moments that she allows him to keep his arms around her, before they get up to join the rest of their team, he whispers something about how she saved him. She doesn't think that's entirely true, the way she views it, he broke through Loki's mind control to get to her, to save what was left of her.

She owes him another debt.

But knowing that he'll only argue with her, she remains silent, and lets him hold her for a moment longer.

Later after they have cleaned themselves up and have redressed, after Cap has retrieved them and they fly straight into the heart of Manhattan to take on Loki and his alien army, Natasha slowly steps into her comfort zone. Adrenaline pumps through her veins at a fast rate as people run for cover; screaming all around her. There are explosions and heavy enemy fire. These are familiar sounds, familiar feelings…ones she knows all too well. Never taking her eyes off of her targets she shoots her guns and shouts over to him, needing the easy banter. After everything that has happened, everything that has been revealed she needs, craves, demands that on this mission they act like they always do. Cool, calm, and disconnected from the reality of what they are doing…of what's really happening.

"Just like Budapest all over again!"

She can hear the smirk in his voice when he answers. "You and I remember Budapest very differently."

I don't expect any readers who have already reviewed to leave another review...but I'd appreciate feedback from any new ones! :)