The room was dark when she awoke; the machinery around her head was glowing in a variety of hues. There was a spattering of lights through the rain covered glass at the other end of the room. The sick room wasn't a room often utilised in Avengers tower, in fact it was barely used at all as most of them were immune to normal sicknesses. This, this wasn't a sickness this was a chudo- a miracle – a miracle in all senses of the work. She had the scar, she remembered waking up from her operation, and she had never had a period in her whole life. They had completely sterilised her as a sixteen year old, how, it wasn't possible but somehow a baby had come out of her, a normal human baby that she must've been carrying. She hadn't even had morning sickness, all that had changed was that she'd occasionally felt a bit woozy after sparring sessions, but . All.

She was laying on one of the trolley beds from the Quinjet,a trolley that was narrow and had a water mattress. It also had bed guards,sides so she couldn't fall out. Underneath her was an absorbent pad, one of those you put under old people who were incontinent. She could feel the dampness on her thighs, the drying blood. She had a handprint of blood on her cheek, where she had tried to get herself to focus through the pain. She knew pain; she had been shot thirteen times in one day and survived within an inch of her life. That hadn't been pain, what she had experienced recently,within the last hour, had been pain. There was an oxygen SATs peg on her finger, a cuff around her arm to take her blood pressure, two prongs up her nose spoon feeding her oxygen and a blood transfusion attached to the pink butterfly of a cannula in her hand. She was sore, sore everywhere, her bones ached, her muscles wept for rest. As for down there, it was burning, a burning numbing pain that felt both like fire and like ice cubes in the same breath.

She dared to move, dared to try and sit up off her propping of pillows behind her head and on either side of her. Her boobs hurt, really hurt, like they were hard and turning to stone quicker with each passing moment. There were damp patches on her top,which she soon realised was the only thing she was wearing.

She had taken herself to bed before it happened, she'd been in the shower when her waters had broken, but she hadn't known that's what was causing the bloody colouring to the water on the wet room floor. Then the pain had started, she had been in sudden, extreme pain. It was her screaming which alerted the others, alerted Clint first of all, who had known the signs straight away with being a father of three he had seen labour. He knew it was labour, and he knew this wasn't the way it was meant to go. Bruce had done the work, brought the little thing into the world with the help of some homemade forceps. He had been opting for a caesareans section but given the scar she already had he hadn't wanted to risk it. She remembered Wanda and Clint at her sides, Clint grasping her by the elbow to hold her up and by the hand to give her somewhere to direct the pain. Her eyes had gone fuzzy around the edges, she couldn't see properly and just as she felt the fiery pain come to an end she lost her vision and blanked out.

What happened now? Did she just lie here until someone came to find her? Did she just wait for them to come and tell her what had happened. She knew the outcome. It had happened before. Natasha felt the lump in her throat beginning to form at the thought of it. She knew it would be like Rose.

The little creature flashed into her mind's eye for a moment but she refused to let it stay. This was the here and now, god, it was nearly seventy years- maybe even more than seventy years- later. She had only been in her twenties then, oh how things had changed. She didn't know how old she was now, ninety? surely not that old... It didn't matter how old she was, the past was called such for a reason, it would stay far away from the now.

Natasha had never been one to follow instructions- Petrovich had hated and loved it in the same breath, and because of her insistent need to break rules she sat herself upright on the bed. The burning between her legs became worse the moment she sat. Her head spun a little as she became upright but she refused to let herself faint. Not again.

Her arms felt like lead as she pushed the bed guard down and out of the way, her legs felt like lead as she attempted to lift them over the edge of the bed. They dangled numb and feelingless for a moment before she allowed herself to drop to her feet. Her legs didn't function, they buckled the second they hit the floor and she crumpled down in a heap.

Her body screamed in pain, she was so weak, so sore.

The door slammed open and she saw a pair of bluey-black trainers rushing towards her.

"Tasha! For the love of god woman!"

It was Clint's voice she heard, Clint's strong arms that scooped her up as if she were his bride and as much as dumped her back on the bed.

"You are ill." He begged with her,

"I am not ill, Barton, I'll be fine, just let me get back to work."

"Are you not gonna tell me anything!" He suddenly exploded, shoving his hands down on the bed guard and making it shudder in protest.

"Natasha you just had a baby, so much for being infertile, you can't have children and the next minute there's a healthy baby girl on the scene screaming her lungs out."

Natasha froze. She didn't know what to think, healthy. It was healthy, it was alive. It couldn't be, it wasn't possible, the experiments meant she could never give birth to a baby, she knew she couldn't. There were tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat but it wasn't happiness, happiness would mean she felt anything but numb.

It was alive.