Hawkeye made a different call when Laura was five months pregnant for the first time.

Laura might have yelled at Clint for bringing home an enemy agent if Natasha hadn't been nursing two broken ankles, one broken leg, a sprained wrist, a lip split in three places, a gunshot wound to the side, several burns, and the aftermath of a concussion at the time.

"Tell me she at least got a few x-rays."

"She got a few x-rays, Laura."

"Are you lying to me?"

"Right hand up to Jesus, I am not lying to you."

"Because I know the brilliant way you guys handle injuries."

"I got a few x-rays," Natasha said suddenly, woodenly, from the couch; her eyes stared straight ahead. It was the first thing Natasha said since Clint helped her in the house-the first thing Natasha had said all day.

"She won't be talking much," Clint explained, once they had defected to the kitchen. "It's more than just...what you can see."

"Did she get a head injury?"

"She did have a pretty bad blow to the head this time around and the painkillers she's on are something else. So I wouldn't trust...no, I wouldn't rely on anything she says, okay? She may or may not be actively trying to lie to you, but it's a habit for her, she's a spy."

Clint has a tell for when he doesn't want to let Laura in on something: his eyes grow a little wider, creating the same crease in his brow every time. It showed up a lot during Laura's pregnancies. Laura has her own tell for when she knows this and is insisting that he do it anyway: she crosses her arms, cocks her head, and purses her lower lip to the side.

He sighed, took her by the arms, and guided her into a chair. "There's this organization called the Red Room," he said, sitting opposite her. "This woman-Natasha-is a..."graduate" of it. It's sort of a training school for assassin-spy-femme fatales."

"So there are more like her? Are they going to come looking for her?"

Clint shook his head. "There's only one graduate at a time. They make sure of that."

Laura's seen and heard a lot of things since a SHIELD Wife, but that made her drop the spoon she'd left on the table from breakfast and had been toying with since he started talking.

"So...she killed her...killed her peers?"

"She might have. Or they might have. Probably a mix of both. We're not sure."

"Jesus." Laura's hand flew to her mouth, and then pushed back her hair. "How do you do that to a kid and have them turn out functioning?"

Not for the first time Clint felt a tug at the corners of his mouth; the appreciative smile born of having a wife ruled by compassion more than fear. "You don't. Not to a kid with a normal brain. So there's been a lot of things...hypnosis, drugs...probably some other stuff."

"They wanted to implant false memories."

Clint nodded. "Plus she's had so many cover stories over the years. With the head injury she got this time, and the drugs we've got her on...it's probably all starting to bleed together. So she's gonna be a bit less than lucid for awhile. That's why we're hiding her here. She's not a danger to you in her current state."

Laura inhaled deeply; sighed heavily. "Are you sticking around too?"

"Of course." He slid a hand across the table, to grasp and then run his fingers over her wrist. "I was gonna request off soon, anyway." Counter-intuitively enough SHIELD had a generous parental leave policy. Kids distracted agents, and distracted agents were useless, and often killed in short order besides.

"Water!"

The cracked-dry-sand cry from the living room jerked Clint's hand back and nearly made Laura jump to her feet.

"She's probably telling the whole truth about that..." Clint muttered, pushing back his chair and going to the fridge. "Spoke too soon," he reported to Laura, when he went to give Natasha the glass he had filled, and she had lain down, dragged their couch blanket over her, and fallen asleep.

First mishap notwithstanding, Laura and Clint soon learned that any requests for physical or material needs to be met tended to be true. At first it was mainly barked order-pleas; as she needed the painkillers less and less, they were replaced by complete sentences. By the time Laura was six-months-showing Natasha had graduated from "complete" to "complex", although regardless of the capability, she still wasn't saying much.

"Hold this for me?" Laura asked once, plopping a skein of yarn in Natasha's lap as she herself plopped down onto the sofa. She was met with silence, which she expected. "I think if I start now and work nonstop, I could have another blanket done before the baby shows up." This time she received a slight nod, but with a certain blankness behind it; an acknowledgement of fact more than a genuine reaction. "Do you like babies, Nat?"

This at last seemed to catch her off-guard, if the way she leaned back into the couch was any indication.

"Babies are fine."

"You sure?" Laura was smiling as she tied the end piece of her yarn around her crochet needle. "That didn't sound too convincing."

"I don't spend much time with them."

"I would be very careful, Mr. Drakoff. Your little girl is awfully cute. It would be a shame if something happened to her."

"Oh my goodness, she's so precious! I didn't know you had a little one, Natalie! What's her name? How old is she?"

Natasha put a few fingers to her temple.

"I guess not," Laura said, with a nod. "I was just curious."

"I like babies. I have one."

Laura paused mid-stitch and tried not to move suddenly or quickly. From the corner of her eye, she saw Natasha's expression, a mix of blank and confused and maternally proud.

"Her name is Sonia. She's two months old."

Laura made an ambiguous noise and returned to her crochet. She felt a few beats of her heart and thought about the hydroxyzine she had in her purse upstairs. Blessedly, Natasha furrowed her brow, and didn't say anything more.

"Does she have a child, Clint?" Laura asked later that night, when they were busy making dinner.

"No." Clint put down the plates he had been attempting to set the table with. His tell came back, and when she went to him he stopped her in her tracks to put his hands on her belly, and his forehead to hers. This time Laura didn't push.