She realized she couldn't pretend anymore the moment she woke him up with another one of her nightmares. But this time it wasn't about the Red Room or one of her missions. But it was still about blood and death. She had woken him up with her thrashing and screaming. That wasn't so different from her usual nightmares. And, as always, he had held her to prevent her from hurting herself or him. He had whispered soothing words in her ear and applied butterfly kisses to her sweaty temples and that just did the trick. She stopped thrashing and opened her eyes, breathing in violently and suddenly as if she had been underwater for too long. She trembled in his arms for long minutes but when he angled their bodies to lie back down she raised her hands in protest.
"It was in 1945," she said, her voice a little bit shaky. Instead of lying down, Steve sat against the head board and she pressed her back to his chest, resting her head on his shoulder as he stroked her red hair. "All the girls from the Black Widow program had been sent on the battlefield to help the soldiers of the Red Army. I was in Slovakia. It was one hell of a winter although it had nothing to do with the harshness of our Russian storms."
She paused, clearing her head and ordering her thoughts before she resumed her story. Steve didn't interrupt her even once. "I was barely seventeen and his name was Nikolaï. We eloped on the battlefield when every hope seemed dead. We fought for months through the never-ending winter. In the end, I was the only one to survive. My fellow Red Room students that were in Slovakia were gone. The other soldiers that I had come to consider my brothers were gone. Even the child I was caring was gone too."
Natasha let out a strangled cry but it had been barely audible and so soft Steve didn't understand what it was until he heard all the pain in her tone. He pulled her close and told her everything was fine, that it was all in the past now and she cried in his arms. She cried like she hadn't cried in a long time. After most of her tears had dried and only a handful was left on her rosy cheeks, she picked up her story again.
"I was six months along in the pregnancy when I miscarried. It was due to the Kudrin's serum they used in the Red Room to enhance my metabolism. I am unable to carry a pregnancy to term but I shouldn't even be able to get pregnant in the first place." She locked eyes with Steve. "Her name was Rose. I buried her in the woods around the house of the lady that helped me deliver."
Steve simply whispered "I'm so sorry Nat." She nodded but didn't say anything else. There wasn't much to say and she had accepted her infertility as part of herself. What happened in 45 still hurt though but now she wasn't all alone on that cold December night when she burned a rose on her balcony.