NOTES: I wrote this story almost a year-and-a-half ago. Pretty sure I didn't know what exactly the Nadiaverse would entail then, and I certainly didn't have a clue about how many people would care about it.
Thanks to the_wordbutler for the beta, and to all of you for the support.
Two weeks from today, "Give Me Your Firstborn" will be posted. Two weeks after that, we'll start the next multi-chapter story in the series, "First Duty".
The front door of the McCoy home opened, causing Kate to find the Black Widow on her doorstep. Not Natasha Romanoff, her unlikely friend and mother of her daughter's best bud, but the full-on Black Widow complete with catsuit and black leather trench coat to somewhat hide the guns strapped to her thighs. Involuntarily, the lawyer took a small step backwards with a faint gasp at the intensity of the sight. There was a tiny bit of guilt creeping into Natasha's stomach for catching the woman off guard, but there were more urgent matters at hand.
"There's an unmarked sedan parked outside your brownstone, and everyone knows who I am, especially when I'm dressed like this. You'll want to let me in sooner rather than later," Natasha instructed.
Kate slowly processed the words and then shook her head out of the haze. "Of course." She pulled the door completely open and stepped out of the way so the other woman could enter her home, and quickly shut the door behind her. "The girls are upstairs, I'll—"
"Mama!" a shout from the top of the stairs sounded before two sets of feet came thundering down the steps.
"No running," Hank chastised as he joined the party in the entryway. "You'll wake—" His words fell silent as his eyes caught sight of the weapons attached to Natasha's sides. Even though the scientist volunteered to partake in action every now and again with his fellow mutants and was happy to help design things to help defend his friends, Natasha knew he was adamant about not bringing that particular aspect of his work home with him. She mouthed an apology as she knelt to catch Nadia, who flung herself into her arms.
Natasha breathed for what felt like the first time in almost two days at the contact. She nuzzled her nose in her daughter's hair and didn't even mind the scent of a different shampoo there. Half-listening to Nadia babble about how much she missed her, Natasha felt her control waver and she held on to her daughter as tight as she dared before Nadia jerked away and pulled a face. "You smell gross."
Natasha grimaced at having failed one of the rules she and Steve held to dearly: always shower before letting their daughter near them after a fight or mission. It was over two days since Natasha cleaned herself up, but she didn't want to waste any more time. She'd stalled enough in the last twelve hours.
"Hi, Miss Natasha," Zelda greeted with a small wave from the foot of the stairs.
"Dear heart," Hank said from his spot just inside the kitchen, "why don't you go upstairs and start packing up Nadia's belongings?"
"C'mon," Kate instructed as she took her daughter by the hand and led her back up the stairs, "I'll help you."
"Mama, come see what we built in Zelda's room," Nadia said excitedly.
Natasha felt her pulse quicken. She'd practiced what she was going to say in her head a hundred times during the drive to Brooklyn, but the words were trying to stick in her throat. "Nadia, there's—"
"We built a fort with blankets."
"Nadia, I—"
"And Doctor Hank and Miss Kate let us stay up past our bedtime and play with puzzles in there. Not too late, but just a little. And we—"
"Nadezhda," Natasha interrupted a little too loudly in a serious tone.
The use of her full given name caused the girl to flinch, her shoulders to draw up, and a look of fear to cross her face. "Am I in trouble?"
Natasha ran her hands down her daughter's arms. She was so small, young, and innocent; that was why Natasha had procrastinated in coming to pick her up. Why she, without giving too much detail, had thanked the McCoys for taking Nadia home with them from daycare when the fight had started and asked if they'd be willing to watch her and keep her away from the television for another day or two while the dust settled.
Dust from a fallen building.
Natasha squeezed her daughter's hands and took a steadying breath. "Nadia, Daddy was hurt."
The girl shrugged. "He'll get better. He always says he'll be fine by morning. And he's right." She ended her answer with a little nod, so sure of her answer and what she held as truth.
Natasha took a deep breath and tried to push down the thought of how she was about to take a hammer to a stained glass window. "Baby, I don't know if he's going to get better this time." She paused a second to let the words sink in. "He was hurt very badly. Bad enough that he hasn't woken up yet, and it's been two mornings."
"But Uncle Bruce can make him better," she argued in a small voice that had the faintest hints of fear laced in it.
Natasha shook her head. "Bruce has been trying, and so have the other doctors, but nothing's worked yet." Nadia's bottom lip wobbled a moment before tears began to stream down her cheeks. Natasha gathered her up in her arms and held her little body against hers. She whispered soothing nonsense in Russian and swayed a little side to side like she had when Nadia was an inconsolable baby.
She flinched when she caught movement to her left and belatedly realized that Hank was still in the doorway between the kitchen and the entryway. He looked guilty for having eavesdropped. "If there's anything I can do…"
Natasha nodded. She didn't know what assistance she could ask of him right now. Well, she knew what she needed; she just didn't know how to make it happen. Years of planning ops, thinking on the run, and executing tasks, and now she was at a loss. It made her sick to her stomach when things were out of her control.
"What's his condition?" Hank asked softly.
"Coma. The bleed on his brain has healed itself. Punctured lung from broken ribs, but that's mostly healed. Not the broken bones, and he broke more than just ribs—those'll take a week or so. Maybe."
"Could this be something from the serum? Some defense mechanism built in to protect him?" Hank hypothesized.
Natasha shrugged. "They still don't know enough about it to say." And it's me who was supposed to protect him, she added silently. She wondered how long the sound of the building crashing down atop her husband would haunt her.
Clint had warned him. Thor and Tony had both flown in from opposite directions to try and sweep him out of danger. She'd been fighting alongside Steve, known the structure next to them was weak, and had followed his orders to run, but she'd neglected to drag his ass out with her. She should've known better.
It was thirty minutes before the fight against the army of their latest foe was contained enough for The Other Guy and Thor to start pulling rubble from the spot where Steve was last seen. Because that location was close to the outer wall of the half-standing building, the process to unearth him was slow and tedious to make sure they didn't risk more debris collapsing on top of him. It took six hours to get him out. SHIELD cleared the area as best as possible and to set a wide radius around the scene to give the team as much privacy as possible, but that just drove everyone's curiosity sky high.
Once Steve was pulled from the chunks of stone and cement, Natasha rode with him in the medevac chopper to headquarters. That was thirty-eight hours ago. In that time, Steve never showed any signs of waking up. His body was healing, but at a slower rate than normal. The team hadn't left his side, and neither had she. Each of the men offered to go collect Nadia for her so she could remain with Steve, but she refused. She knew Nadia was going to be scared, and rightfully so, and the girl deserved to have at least one of her parents with her when she found out what had happened.
"I want Daddy," Nadia sobbed into her shoulder. Natasha pressed a kiss into her curls and bit her tongue before the words So do I fell out of her mouth.
"In just a minute," Natasha promised. "Agent Jasper is waiting outside to drive us to him."
"If you need anything," Hank offered, "please do not hesitate to call us."
Natasha nodded. "Her things are upstairs?"
Hank waved her off with a large, blue hand. "Don't worry about it. Kate can bring it to work with her tomorrow and give it to you then. Or it can stay here for a bit. And so can she. Just call one of us, and we can pick her up if something… If need be."
"Thank you." Natasha rubbed a hand up and down her daughter's back. "We're going to go," she said softly in her daughter's ear. "Hide your face."
Nadia had heard those three words too many times in her short life. It was a common instruction whenever she was out in public and there were cameras around. But she always obeyed—perhaps now it was a learned behavior—and buried her face in the crook of the neck of whoever was holding her.
"Thanks again for watching her," Natasha said.
"Of course," he answered. "Do you want me to walk you to the car?"
"That's not necessary."
"If there are photographers once again encroaching on the privacy of my family and friends, it is."
Natasha nodded, and Hank moved in front of her and led them out of the house. She used his broad torso as a shield and was grateful he'd insisted on doing this. Quickly, they made it to the idling car out front. Natasha got Nadia strapped into the booster seat Sitwell ensured was placed in the back before she nodded at Jasper to take off and drive them back to headquarters.
The bald senior agent was the only person Natasha trusted to drive them at the time. Maybe Maria. But she wanted the team to stay with Steve, and Jasper was a parent. He knew what it was like to have a scared kid, and Natasha knew he'd respect their privacy.
Nadia'd stopped crying by the time they'd crossed the bridge into Manhattan. She didn't say anything, just occasionally sniffled while looking out the window to stare up at the buildings around her. When they arrived at headquarters, Natasha gave a nod of thanks to Jasper for driving them before walking around to the other side of the car to release Nadia from her restraints. "Do you want to walk or do you want me to carry you?"
Nadia wrung her hands for a second as she considered her answer. "Do I have to be brave right now?" she asked quietly.
The question gutted Natasha and she slowly sank to kneel next to the open car door. It was one of the few times she clearly saw before her a fork in the road, with one option leading towards an upbringing similar to her own. She avoided that path at all costs. Nadia might have been her clone physically, but Natasha was bound and determined not to make it emotionally, too. "Only if you want to be. You don't have to."
"Then will you carry me?"
"Always," Natasha swore. She gathered Nadia up into her arms and carried her to the elevator. When they stepped off onto the main medical floor, Clint and Bruce were waiting for her. Thankfully, Nadia's face was once again buried in the crook of her shoulder, and she couldn't see them yet. Natasha shot a look at Clint while her breath caught at the sight of the men. She silently asked if things had gotten worse, and Clint shook his head. That meant Steve's condition hadn't improved either.
"Hey, Bug," Clint greeted. Both the men gave the girl their best attempts at a reassuring smile as she peeled her face away from Natasha's neck.
"Hi," she greeted softly. Natasha fought the urge to hold her tighter, as if it would somehow protect her from all of this. Nadia turned to look at Bruce. "Why can't you fix Daddy?"
"We have to figure out what's wrong first," he answered gently. "And we're trying to do that, I promise."
"Can I see him?" Nadia asked Natasha.
She hesitated in her answer, and Clint beat her to speaking. "Nadia, you know how I look sometimes when I get really hurt? With the casts and bandages everywhere?" Nadia gave a small nod for an answer. "Well, that's what your daddy looks like right now."
Her eyes bugged a little at the thought. She'd never seen her father be injured that severely before; none of them had, really. Natasha absolutely understood why that thought would be terrifying. "We don't have to see him if it's too scary," she reassured her daughter. "We can go home."
The little girl mulled over her choices before answering, "I want to see Daddy."
Natasha nodded. Part of her hesitated with fear of exposing her daughter to too much of a bad thing, but Nadia was also a daddy's girl and things could go even worse if she was denied the right to see Steve. "Okay, let's go."
Clint and Bruce fell in step behind her as they walked down the corridor to Steve's room. When they entered, Phil shot her a questioning look. She ignored it. The handler was sitting in a chair by the bed and Thor stood behind him; Tony was slouched over asleep in another chair further away, his head leaning against the wall.
Nadia burrowed deeper into Natasha when she saw her father. "I know, this is scary," she reassured her quietly. "I'll be brave for you," she promised in Russian. "Do you want to talk to him?"
"He's sleeping," Nadia told her with a confused look on her face.
"He can probably still hear you," Bruce told her. "And I'm sure he'd want to hear your voice. I bet he misses you."
Natasha settled into a chair on the other side of Steve from Phil and situated Nadia onto her lap. "What do I say?" Nadia whispered to her.
"Whatever you want," she answered.
"Hi, Daddy," Nadia said in a voice barely loud enough to carry over the beeps from the monitors hanging about Steve. She watched his face for a minute to see if her greeting spawned a response. When it didn't, she turned back to Natasha and shrugged.
"What did you do at Zelda's?" Natasha prompted.
Nadia slowly began to open up, telling tales of reading books, coloring, and playing with Zelda's recently-acquired brother. It was obvious that it was easier for her to face Natasha instead of Steve when discussing the events of the last two days, but Natasha didn't mind. As long as she was talking, things were okay.
The men stayed long enough to make sure both Natasha and Nadia ate. Clint offered to stay a little longer so Natasha could finally take a shower. She thought about it, but caught Nadia's nervousness at being left alone, so she told him no.
A cot was brought in; on it was a bag containing a change of clothes for both Nadia and herself. She'd have to thank Phil for that. Natasha helped Nadia change into her favorite pair of pajamas, and she too finally changed out of her suit. She helped Nadia use the bathroom and brush her teeth before taking the opportunity to at least run a washcloth over her skin to clean up a little.
Before they got settled onto their cot, Natasha held Nadia over Steve so she could place a kiss on the tip of his nose—one of the few parts of him that was relatively unscathed. She whispered stories of Russian fairytales in Nadia's ear until she was sure the girl was asleep. Natasha tried to fight off sleep, but was overcome with exhaustion around one in the morning.
She awoke three hours later to the sound of Steve trying to stir in bed. "Hey," she whispered. "It's okay."
His head turned toward her and he visibly relaxed when he caught sight of the two of them. "How long?" he asked, his voice dry.
"A few days."
His eyes closed again at her answer before opening a moment later. "Sorry," he apologized. "She okay?"
"She's terrified. So was I." She wanted to get up and hug him or punch him, but Nadia was sprawled half on her, and Natasha wasn't about to wake her up. "Once you get better, I'm going to have to beat the crap out of you for making me think I might have to raise her on my own. Don't you dare ever do that again."
He grimaced. "Sorry," he repeated. "Did I really scare her that badly?"
"You scared all of us." Natasha shook her head. "What are we doing? She should be mortified all the time to have parents like us. And now we're thinking about taking the chance to have another one?"
"Let's not make that decision right now."
"Maybe we should."
"Natasha, please."
She sighed but didn't say anything else. Reaching out for his fingers, and moving slowly so as not to disturb Nadia, she grabbed hold of the exposed fingertips of his right hand sticking out from one of his casts. She tightly squeezed them for a second before loosening her grip in a silent message to let him know they'd be talking about this again, that she was still terrified, and that under all the fear, she was glad to have him back.