(A/N) Thank you for your thoughts Lmere969, you read my mind, I hope this helps :)

It felt like another age before the last members of the team were released from questioning but after only a few minutes real time, Tony and Steve emerged together. Tony looked stressed, uncomfortable and possibly a bit bemused and given that only Bruce and Clint had known about the problem before this interrogation - she suspected the others new but now it was confirmed - she was not surprised at the reaction from Tony. Steve, however, was someone she worried about more. She was almost close to Steve, as close as she had ever been to anyone besides Clint and she had a feeling this would break him. Yes, her and the Captain had some very similar experiences of times changing but at least she had lived through those years, those decades, whereas Steve had only had an internet-sourced recap.

Natasha wasn't sure how the captain would take her feelings if he would find it inhumane how little she cared about the blobby human inside her. Would he be at odds with what the game plan should be? Would it hurt him as much as she knew it was hurting Bruce?

She knew some things had to be done for herself, not the team and despite the team but on this occasion, she didn't have time to think much more about Steve's thoughts before he made them known.

Natasha had been watching Steve too closely, been too aware of his smallest emotional ques that she had missed Tony.

"Tony?" Steve asked simply and every pair of eyes in the room swept to the Billionaire who seemed to have been fiddling with his watch. He looked up, nodded to Steve.

"We're set Cap."

Steve nodded and spoke clearly, addressing the room.

"We've shut out the team of puppets in there, they won't know their signal is down for a while. We need to talk, as a team. We need to sort this out, and we don't have long to do it."

At the words of the ex-soldier, everyone gathered around the small coffee table, some sitting on couches, other's leaning on the arms of chairs. Clint crouched on the floor, the position he seemed happiest although his expression was still one of internal turmoil. Bruce offered a space on the sofa to her but she shook her head. She wasn't about to sit down on principle, even if the weird feeling in her stomach was becoming annoying. It almost felt like her insides were flipping about and it was very strange.

Cap sat in a chair at the far end, everyone facing him. Everyone, Natasha knew, waiting for him to speak, to tell them what to do and how to do it. Instead, he looked down into the palms of his hands. The silence was thick and sticky, impossible to shift for a while.

"So when were you going to tell us, huh? When you got too big to get in your suit? Or were you just waiting till you went into labour on a mission? Carrying a newborn in a duffle bag?"

Tony was the first to speak. He was doing the 'I'm pretending to be in charge even though I don't have a clue what to do' voice. The voice Natasha associated with stress, with frustration and with the clever guys not knowing the way out. The problem was they were too moral. She had a code, a strict code, and she stuck to that no matter who or what was involved.

"That's not fair Tony," Clint spoke but his voice had grown quiet. He stood, paced to the far end of the living space and stared down into the tower below.

Tony glanced about, looking for someone else to speak, someone either to back him up or shoot him down. He believed in his words, but the anger behind them wasn't true anger; it was fear.

"Natasha," Steve spoke, looking up from his palms at long last,

"When did you know?"

Steve looked at her with the look of a friend, an authoritative friend but someone who undoubtedly cared for her.

"A few weeks ago, a month or so. I found out after the GSW. I didn't know from the beginning - I had no reason to suspect."

Bruce lifted his palm like an elementary school kid asking for permission to speak.

"She's right. Tony, you know that radiation poisoning destroys fertility, it annihilates every last sperm cell. That amount of poisoning, a pregnancy should never have been viable."

Tony smirked,

"Come on Doctor Banner, you have enough PHD's, seven? Is it Seven? Then you know that mutations happen, miracles happen, look at Hiroshima, look at the mutant wolves surviving there, Natasha is enhanced and you-you are impossible."

Steve cut him off.

"Right now I don't care how it happened, I don't care what miracle came from where. Romanoff is pregnant, the government want this impossible child to become a lab rat." He paused once more, glancing over at Clint.

"Natasha, what do you want us to do?"

She was surprised, to say the least, never having expected the complete following of the man out of time and yet here he was, defending her rights to her own body. The rights any other citizen of the world should have in this day and age.

Natasha took a moment to answer. She hadn't been ready for support and before she could think of what she really wanted from the team she was interupted from her thoughts once more by Steve.

"Your the closest thing most of us have to family, you should get the same choice every other woman in th US has. You have the right to do what you want to your body. As much as I believe Dr Banner should have some imput on this matter I know it's down to you Nat. And we're with you."

Tony bit his lip, thinking.

"Why don't we try and appease them?"

Bruce furrowed his eyebrows but the look on the face of both the scientists showed promise.

"appease them how?" Bruce asked instantly as Tony began to nod his head, agreeing with the thoughts as they came to him.

"We need Data. We need tests. If we can create a model genome of that kid in there then we can prove either way. One way we show this kid would be turning green during a two-year-old tantrum and would be a threat, or we prove it's totally normal and it doesn't matter what Natasha does. If we can get an amniocentesis then we're on track to ending this."

Bruce was now also nodding slowly, agreeing with Tony's thoughts. Natasha could see the sparkle in his eyes as he ticked the boxes in his mind.

"Natasha?" Steve asked, awaiting the final verdict to the only plan they had.

"I'm in."