"Romanoff, you've got a tail at five o'clock."
"Roger that Rogers,"
Natasha was calm, collected, enjoying the chance to switch off half her brain, to think with logic and strategy. She had been free from the hospital a few days, she was on light duties due to her injuries but being an Avenger didn't lend itself to light duties.
This, luckily, was a practise mission. It was set up by Friday, the new iron man interface, the team had to complete it using real tools, real strategies but there was no real danger.
Unless, Natasha thought, pulling the jet into a dive, you kill yourself by getting too into it.
Their objective was securing Stark Industries files, Natasha was acting the distraction as well as the eyes in the air, while Clint - who was usually in Nat's place - patrolled the ground. Rogers and Stark were securing the files, while Bruce worked on the cover.
Clint came in on the comms.
"I dunno how you do it Nat, this running is exhausting."
"Swap you anytime Barton, I'm not 100% on my Barrel rolls."
She heard him laugh before Bruce was heard.
"Well unlucky Clint, Natasha is no running for a while, doctors orders- and I'm not the one that gave them."
Nat felt her eyes roll, she'd had worse, this bullet hadn't pierced the other side like the one in Odessa several years previous.
"No running?" Tony's voice was next to penetrate her ears. She winced, he always spoke so loud on the Comms.
"Well I vote for a speed limit, she can walk at 20 miles an hour as it is, running won't stop her spilling a lung."
For a moment Natasha had frozen, they all sounded like they knew, but it was only the bullet they knew of, not the other foreign object still inside her. They had discharged her but the small issue of an embryo was still there.
She was booked in for a termination in three days time, and would prefer it to stay hush hush if she could. It was, in reality, the only option. She may have risked a baby back when she KGB - or FSB, as they were now - but now she had a planet to protect, she had switched to a Utilitarian view on life, 'the needs of the many over the needs of the few.' In lay terms, one baby had less right to life than hundreds - even thousands - of people. She couldn't book in maternity leave any more than she could book a holiday, 'sorry, the widow is putting her feet up, press one if you are considering world domination.'
No, it couldn't happen- it wasn't supposed to happen. They'd tied her tubes when she was still a teenager. She wasn't sure exactly how old she had been, those years of her life all seemed to mash into borsch in her head. She remembered coming to America in the sixties, remembered infiltrating Stark Industries as a big mission, still with Yelena at her side.
Those memories were why, exactly why, she would never risk that sort of relationship, no one could depend on her just as she could depend on no one. A small human, a bright eyed little Ptennets like she had once been, it would simply create another Dyvoshki Ivana, a second generation Red Room graduate. Was psychopathy genetic? She didn't know, but she wasn't willing to find out. America didn't need any more psychopaths.

"Nat! Missile strike two o'clock, 10 seconds, move your ass!"
Clint came over comms, Natasha glanced to her left, the artificial missile - a flame retardant firework of sorts- was gaining ground with real timing. Natasha took a breathe, damn she hated barrel roles, and pulled the jet sharply to the right.

She had been researching the history of tubal ligations trying to work out what had gone wrong with hers. The surgery had seemed to go as planned, she had recovered fast, no infection and got very drunk only a few days after the operation.
Of course when she had her surgery it had been a different time, the type of surgery was in itself pioneering. There may have been mistakes, or, more likely, corners cut. And besides that even in a modern tubal ligation there was a small chance of tissues re-forming and eggs getting through. She had never realised this, and why would she, it had been years since she had any signs of fertility at all.
In true style she had encrypted all her print-outs, sticking them up on her Pyrex investigations panel across the back wall of her room. She always made sure if anyone dared enter her room without knocking they wouldn't understand a word of her behind-the-scenes work.
This, of course, was highly personal research, written in a mix of the enigma code and the Cyrillic alphabet. Pieces of coloured string were stuck between the sheets of paper, linking her research both on the modern op and the old-style one, and with a little bit of KGB corruption thrown in for good measure.
The truth was the KGB didn't want you knowing everything- even if you were on the inside - it made clean up easier and less messy than it may have been otherwise. That meant Natasha could have been told anything they wanted to tell her, it could have been a test for some drug, some new enhancement. She did know Ivan had cared too much to risk her health. She had been his main asset, she worked hard, she spilled blood for him, so he would keep her alive.
"Hey, Nat," a knock sounded on the bedroom door. If the voice hadn't given it away then the knock would have, Clint was never very good at judging his own strength.
Natasha sighed, standing up from her bed where she had been leaning over the screen of her laptop, and going to open the door for her friend. Before Natasha could open it however Clint pushed it open. His jaw was set, but she couldn't tell if he was only angry, or wether there was a mixture of concern in there too. This made her uneasy, it wasn't like Clint, he usually let things be, let Natasha screw up her own life in her own way.
"So I took a phone call there just now, from St. John's" he paused, swallowing and pretending to look nonplused.
Der' mo.
"Thing is Natasha, to have a termination you need to be pregnant."