A.N. This fic contains Characters of the Marvel Cinematic Universe...which I sadly, do not own.
This fic is not a happy one. If you are triggered by childbirth, stillbirth of a child, some graphic imagery involving blood and a dead body, for your own safely, probably this isn't the fic for you. Sorry.
Pacing the cell she was being contained in was really the only thing Natasha Romanoff could really do, and by her count she'd paced out this particular cell well over a thousand times. It was a square, relatively large as far as cells went, eight paces wide, and just as many deep. It was even larger than her room on the helicarrier, not that she'd been there in a long time.
It had only been a month or so since she'd been placed in this particular cell, but it was only the latest of a long line of cells and rooms that her captors had kept her in. Like the one she was currently in, most of them had no windows, so she had not real way of keeping track of night and day, but she guessed that it had been about a year since she'd been captured.
It was almost embarrassing, how long it had been, and yet she hadn't escaped. At first they'd kept her drugged up, too sedated to even walk a few shaky steps, let alone try to escape. Then they increased the security to the point that even the Black Widow herself didn't think that she would be capable of escaping.
It was obvious that whoever had captured her had experience in keeping prisoners that were capable at escaping; those who had been trained from childhood to fight their way out of situations like this, because, although Natasha hated to admit it, these guys had always seemed to be one step ahead of her.
Natasha glared at the clear pane of glass that separated her from the world outside her cell. She was almost certain that it was the same substance that the cage built to contain the Hulk had been made from. The other three walls of her cell were made of stone, just as impossible for her to break through.
This wasn't the first of her cells to make use of the Hulk-proof material. Some of them had been constructed almost identically to the Hulk's cage, which was very suspicious, as the details behind the construction of that cage was one of SHIELD's biggest secrets. She couldn't imagine Nick Fury making the plans for a Hulk proof cage public knowledge, especially now that Bruce Banner had been recruited as a member of the Avengers.
Thinking of Bruce made Natasha wonder what the rest of the team were doing. She knew that they'd searched for her, judging from what she'd overheard from those on the other side of the cell walls, the thugs patrolling the corridor outside her cell, and the scientists and doctors that sometimes came into her cell, only ever when she was restrained.
It had been enough to give her hope that SHIELD and the Council hadn't given her up for dead that somebody, at least was still fighting for her. It had given her something to focus on, knowing that her team were trying to find her. She'd stayed strong, determined that she would survive until they found her, refusing to back down and let her captors win.
Natasha looked down and frowned, gently rubbing her hand over her stretched, swollen stomach. As time had passed it had soon become apparent why she'd been taken, and why she'd been kept alive. Natasha had never put much thought into having children. She'd never thought that it was a valid possibility, that the option of having children had been taken away from her by the Red Room when she'd been little more than a girl.
And yet, here she was, obviously heavily pregnant, the baby within her currently still, although he, or she, apparently enjoyed practising their kicking by using her internal organs as targets. She had figured that there probably wasn't much room for kicking these days. She was huge, and although she'd had no way of keeping track of how far into the pregnancy she was, she expected that it wouldn't be long before the baby was born.
What would happen then, Natasha wasn't sure, although as she gently rubbed her hand across her belly, Natasha silently swore that she would protect her baby, that she wouldn't let anything happen to him or her, and that she would make sure that her baby got out of this without being hurt.
"I will protect you," she whispered to her baby, before she continued her pacing, keeping alert for any potential dangers. Being heavily pregnant, and having been confined for a year, or thereabouts, had impacted on Natasha's combat skills more than she would like to admit, although how much exactly remained untested. Nobody had come within sight of Natasha in a couple of days, and nobody had even presented a viable target for her in months. It was the longest Natasha had gone without a fight since before she'd started training, even without knowing how long she'd been captive for, and restless energy had been pooling in her legs for weeks.
It would be foolish to expend too much energy now...Not when it remained uncertain when the next meal would come from. Natasha had to admit that as far as nutrition was concerned, she was being looked after very well all things considered. This was the longest she'd gone without food for almost the whole time she'd been captive, although Natasha was more than a little worried about what that might actually mean.
Especially when she factored into consideration that she had obviously fallen pregnant after she'd been taken.
Natasha knew that it must have happened when she was sedated, but at the same time she was aware enough of how her body felt after sex that she hadn't actually been raped, which made her wonder if those behind it all had used a more artificial method of making sure she ended up pregnant.
Whatever they had done, and whoever's sperm they had used, it had worked. Natasha knew she was pregnant, and they knew she was pregnant. Natasha remembered waking up, securely anchored to a hospital bed, a ultrasound wand pressed against her still flat abdomen by a doctor, while around them, other doctors and even a few of the guards had celebrated the discovery of her pregnancy. Natasha's gaze had drifted over to a mirror, knowing that it was one way glass, and that, perhaps, the ones behind her kidnapping, were on the other side, possibly as well as the sperm donor of her baby. Natasha could still remember the noise coming from the monitor; turned so she couldn't see it...and the moment she'd realised that the noise she was hearing was the beating of her child's heart.
More than anything that memory, combined with how careful and attentive towards her physical needs her capturers had been, told Natasha that they wanted her baby, and that she couldn't let that happen. The problem was that Natasha wasn't sure what was going on. She hadn't seen anyone in quite awhile...perhaps even days, which was definitely a new development. She couldn't escape from her cell, and although she was fairly confident they were still looking for her, Natasha couldn't rely on the other Avengers to find her before she starved to death, not after she'd been missing for so long and they hadn't found her yet. At least dehydration wasn't an issue, as there was a sink in her cell, with a working tap, so she could still drink whenever she wanted to. All the water in the world, however, wouldn't sustain her life, and that of her baby, indefinitely without food.
The situation was becoming increasingly desperate, and Natasha couldn't help but wonder what was going to happen, both to her, and to her unborn baby.
AVENGERS
It was the increasing pain in her back which gave away to Natasha that her baby was on it's way. The deep ache would build over time, before easing for awhile, before it would get worse. The temperature dropped slightly (Natasha guessed that the temperature drop was a result of it being night time in the outside world, although the lights that lit her cell, and the space beyond, were still as bright as ever).
The baby felt low in her hips, having dropped down significantly a few days earlier. It had resulted in Natasha needing much more frequent trips to the bathroom, and she was very grateful for the flushing toilet in the corner of her cell, although it offered nothing in the way of privacy. Most kidnappers would only provide a bucket for that kind of thing, but whoever it was that had her in their possession had put more thought into things. Buckets got full after awhile, and then they would need to be emptied, but properly working flushing toilets didn't require emptying, a bonus when you were holding a dangerous assassin captive and you wanted to limit her chances of escaping.
Uncharacteristically restless, Natasha paced her cell in between the spikes of pain in her back...although she knew that they were probably the beginnings of contractions. She'd been having false contractions for weeks now, but she instinctively knew that this was different...this was the real deal. When the pain came Natasha stopped pacing and rode it out, grateful, for once, that the Red Room had taught her to ignore pain. It had been a long time since she'd been taught, but it was a lesson had lingered, forever engrained in Natasha's mind.
As the supposed night dragged on Natasha tried to rest, to build up some energy for the ordeal that lay ahead, but she couldn't force her body to relax, she couldn't stop the thoughts flying through her head. At the forefront was a memory from the last time she'd been checked over by the medics that monitored her health, or more importantly to them, the health of the child Natasha was carrying.
Whereas during the first ultrasound scan, the one where Natasha's pregnancy had been confirmed, the joy and excitement in the room had been palpable, the generally feeling of the room following the most recent scan had been far quieter and more subdued, and Natasha wondered if something was wrong with her child. She'd still felt her baby moving around and kicking strongly, so it wasn't as though he or she had died, but there was a part of Natasha that was worried that something was going to go wrong, and that, alone, with not medical assistance to speak of, she wouldn't be able to prevent something happening to her unborn child.
Still, there was nothing Natasha could do about it at this point of time, not with the contractions increasing in strength, frequency and duration. Natasha was very grateful for the fact that she'd learnt as a young girl in the Red Room how to ignore pain, because as time progressed she was definitely becoming more uncomfortable during the contractions, and her discomfort would be far more noticeable without the training she had endured.
Despite her discomfort and her active mind, Natasha tried to sleep, knowing that she would need all the energy she could get, especially as it had been days since she'd eaten anything more than a ration bar. Since she'd first been brought to this cell she'd been stockpiling the ration bars given to her with her meals, saving them if there was a time when meals were being withheld. After about two weeks (or thereabouts) of being along, the base she was being held at apparently abandoned, she only had one left now...the one she'd set aside for after she'd given birth, to help restore her energy following the ordeal of brining her baby into the world.
Eventually Natasha fell into an uneasy sleep, her dreams filled with blood and the sound of a crying baby that she couldn't seem to find no matter how hard she looked, wading through an ocean of blood as she searched for the baby before it drowned in the thick red liquid. She wasn't sure how much time had passed before she startled awake again, feeling nauseous and shaky. She staggered to the toilet and threw up, letting out a soft, breathy moan of pain as her womb contracted again.
Childbirth wasn't something that Natasha had done much research on...she'd always believed that her ability to have children had been taken from her by the Red Room, and the field first aid and medical courses she'd done once she had joined SHIELD hadn't really gone into much detail. She didn't know how long this was supposed to take, or if everything was going ok. The one comfort she'd had before the base had seemingly been abandoned was that there were doctors and other medical staff on hand to at least make sure nothing went wrong. That one positive, however, was gone now, the medical personnel gone, just like everyone else.
Leaving Natasha alone.
Natasha leaned against the wall of the cell, her hands pressed against her swollen stomach, gritting her teeth as she felt another contraction. Judging from the temperature of the cell it was morning again, although she wasn't sure. One day tended to just flow into another, leaving her uncertain about the passage of time.
A single tear rolled down Natasha's cheek, and she angrily brushed it away. It had been decades since she'd cried...actually cried, and she couldn't believe that her body had betrayed her like this. She hadn't even cried at Coulson's funeral after all. Apparently, however, her body wasn't done betraying her, a second tear trickling down her cheek following the first.
AVENGERS
Natasha let out a gasp as she finally...finally felt the baby slip completely free from her body and into her hands, collapsing back against the wall and dropping her weight back so she was sitting on the cold, blood spattered cell floor as she raised her baby to her chest, getting her first glimpse of the child she had carried within her.
Although she had never dared to actually vocalise it, Natasha had been privately looking forward to the moment when she first saw her child. She'd wondered if it would be a boy or a girl, would he or she look like her, or whoever the father was...or perhaps someone else from Natasha's family. Natasha had spend hours over the last few months trying to remember the faces of her parents and siblings, but it had been too long since she saw their faces, and the only memories she could bring to mind were of their charred corpses, so she'd had to reason that she wouldn't know if the child really looked like anyone in particular, unless it was herself.
It was supposed to be a happy moment, especially now that the threat of whoever it was that had captured Natasha and orchestrated the whole pregnancy, was apparently gone, the base abandoned, deserted save for Natasha, and now, her baby.
The moment Natasha saw her baby her heart sank. The baby was limp and motionless; it's skin a gaunt grey colour, where it wasn't coated in Natasha's blood. The silence in the air was thick as Natasha gingerly rubbed the baby's chest, trying to coax the baby's heart to start beating, she blew gentle puffs of air into the baby's mouth, trying to get her baby to breath, but the minutes dragged on, and on, and on, until Natasha knew that there wasn't anything she could do.
Her baby was dead, and probably had been since the last scan. It would explain the way the medical staff had reacted, with such solemn dismay. She must have imagined the fleeting kicks and movements she'd felt from within her, her mind not willing to process the fact that the baby wasn't moving anymore.
Natasha didn't bother wiping her tears away as she began to cry, instead wrapping the baby in one of the blankets that had been left in the cell with her. She cradled the baby to her chest, gently rocking back and forward as the after pains of labour continued, focusing on the motionless bundle in her arms, gently fingering the whips of red curls the baby had on her head.
"I'm sorry," Natasha whispered to her daughter, "I'm sorry that I didn't do more to try and escape earlier. If I'd escaped earlier I might not have lost you. You might have survived if I'd gotten back to SHIELD and gotten help there."
Natasha bowed her head and kissed the top of her baby's cooling head, tears trickling down her cheeks and dripping down onto the baby, washing away the drying blood. Natasha didn't move from where she sat, too drained physically and emotionally from the effort of giving birth, and then the realisation that her baby was gone. She drifted, in and out of consciousness, oblivious to everything, except for the bundle of blankets she was cradling in her arms, refusing to let go, despite knowing realistically that it was illogical and went against everything she'd ever been taught. She was a spy...an assassin...the Black Widow...love meant nothing to her.
And yet she couldn't bring herself to let go of her dead daughter.
Natasha was dragged from her grief, however, when she felt the contractions intensify, her mind telling her body that it needed to push. She frowned, looking past her baby girl at her still distended stomach. She'd already delivered the afterbirth, so surely the contractions shouldn't be getting any worse...unless.
Unless there was a second baby.
Natasha inwardly swore, first in Russian, and then in English, French, Arabic and then finishing up with Swahili. It would explain why she'd still felt kicks after her baby girl had passed away, why she'd still been able to hear a heartbeat during the last scan, why they hadn't cut her open or induced labour at the time...because she'd still been pregnant with an alive child, and they'd wanted to wait until that baby was ready, perhaps not wanting to risk the complications associated with delivering the still alive baby prematurely.
Biting her lip Natasha forced herself to gently lay her baby girl on the floor, knowing that, already weakened; she wouldn't be able to give birth again while holding onto the baby. She shifted back so she was kneeling on the concrete, her legs spread as far apart as she could, ignoring the way he knees ached from already being in that position for hours that day, and the blood that ran down her legs. As the next contraction began she bore down, beginning to try and coax the baby within her out into the world.
AVENGERS
Natasha's whole body was shaking from exhaustion by the time she felt the second baby, whose head she'd cupped and supported since it had emerged from her aching and sore body, slip free completely, her hands slippery with blood as she hastily lowered the baby onto a blanket so she wouldn't accidently drop him or her. She shifted her weight, ignoring the pain as her body protested the movement, and looked at the baby, this one a boy, as he scrunched up his face and cried, her heart skipping a beat as she realised that, despite his sister's death, and the lengthy labour and birth, her son had survived. She moved quickly, wrapping her baby boy in the blanket, knowing that it was important to conserve the baby's warmth, before she gathered him into her arms and leaned back against the wall.
"Hello," she greeted her son softly. The baby in her arms quietened at the sound of her voice, blinking up at her with unfocused eyes. Natasha couldn't help but run the back of her finger along his cheek, smiling when one of the baby's arms wriggled free of the blanket and he clasped her finger with a strong grip.
"I don't know what your future holds," Natasha began, "But I hope your life is more peaceful than mine. I hope that you grow up knowing love and freedom, that you experience a childhood far happier than my own. I know we are in a bad situation right now, but...but I promise that I will protect you, and that we will be freed."
The baby let out another happy sounding gurgle, before he snuggled against Natasha's chest and dozed off, his breaths deep and even in sleep. Natasha cradled him in one arm, taking in her sons' face as he slept. He was heavier in her arms than his sister had been, but even then Natasha guessed that he was small, for a newborn, although she wasn't certain.
Shifting sideways a little Natasha used the arm that wasn't cradling her son to scoop up the blanket that contained her daughter. If she closed her eyes and imagined they could both be asleep, although a shudder went down her back when she accidently brushed her exposed skin against the face of her daughter, the cold chill of death seeping from her daughter's skin into her own.
The birth now over, Natasha could feel her adrenalin running out, the inevitable crash coming quick on it's heels. Her energy levels were dropping fast. She knew that she'd lost a lot of blood during the birth, as well as the energy she'd used in order to push both of her children free of her body. Combine the fact that she'd been staving off malnourishment and exhaustion, even before she'd gone into labour, (although thankfully thanks to the fact she had running water in her cell dehydration wasn't a concern), she was in a bad way. She needed to sleep, but her babies...baby, she corrected herself, needed her to watch over them and protect them until she either got them out, or they were rescued.
And owing to the fact that so much time had passed, the latter seemed to be the far less likely option.
Despite the urgency of the situation, however, Natasha's eyes kept sliding shut of the own accord, and she had to keep forcing them back open, fighting to stay awake, knowing that she had to stay conscious. It was perhaps due to her state of exhaustion that Natasha didn't notice the sound of heavy approaching footsteps until they were quite close. Natasha shifted until she was in the back corner of her cell, almost cowering over the twins. A year ago, before she'd been captured, she would have scoffed at how pathetic the act was, but Natasha knew her body, and she knew that in her current state she would be useless in any sort of fight. She doubted that she was even able to stand, let alone walk, or fight.
For the first time in almost two weeks, or thereabouts, Natasha saw people on the other side of the strong, clear wall that separated her from the outside world. There was eight of them, all wearing black combat gear, their faces hidden behind helmets, although Natasha felt her heart clench in her chest as one of them turned their head and she saw the Hydra emblem imprinted on his sleeve.
The men were familiar with the layout of the room on the other side of the glass, immediately going to the panel that controlled the door to Natasha's cell, a part of the reinforced glass wall. The door slid open, and four of the soldiers walked into the cell, steering well clear of the blood pool and smears that Natasha had left, guns levelled at her, and at her twins. The message was clear, move, and we shoot them.
Natasha froze, looking up at the soldiers. A fifth soldier joined the group in the cell, and this one didn't hesitate before he shot Natasha in her outstretched leg. The numbness that spread from the spot impacted immediately told the Black Widow that it was a tranquiliser round, not an actual bullet, and she shook her head, trying to remain alert, despite knowing what was going to happen. They were going to take her babies...they were going to take them away from her, to do who knew what to.
"No," She shook her head, already feeling the effects of the tranquiliser as she slumped sidewards, her arms loose around her babies. Her baby boy, obviously awoken by the change of position, began to cry, and the soldier who had shot Natasha passed his gun over to one of the others and approached Natasha. Natasha tried to move, but her limbs were too heavy, and her vision was starting to blur, grey building in the corners of her range of vision, reaching out like spider webs and making everything blurry.
"Noooo," she slurred as rough hands prized her baby boy from her arms, the cord that had once joined her and her son severed by a quick flick with a knife.
"What about the girl?" One of the other soldiers asked, his voice muffled by his helmet.
"She's dead, and Romanoff will be too in a few more days, if she survives the next few hours. She's lost a lot of blood; it's possible she'll just bleed out. If she doesn't well, starvation will finish her off. Come on, we've got what we came here for. The experiment worked, the boss is going to be very happy when we bring him the result." The leader of the soldiers replied, gesturing with his knife at Natasha's son, who was still crying loudly, protesting his separation from Natasha, and the rough way he was being handled. Natasha sluggishly reached out her hand for her baby, before it dropped heavily to the floor, her body too weak and drained to hold it up for more than a few seconds. The soldiers laughed at the gesture, before they walked away, out of the cell, Natasha's baby still cradled in the arms of their leader. Once the soldiers were clear of the cell one of their teammates that had waited out of the cell hit the button to close the cell door again, leaving Natasha trapped and alone, save for the body of her stillborn daughter, before they walked away, disappearing from sight.
Natasha let loose one single wail, screaming as she realised that she would probably never see her son again, that he had been taken by hydra, a long time ally of the Red Room. It had only been five minutes since she'd promised her son that he would get the chance to have a better life than she did, and she'd failed him already.
Darkness closed in around Natasha and consumed by her overwhelming grief, Natasha succumbed to it.