By the time Tony and Pepper had returned, autumn was in full swing—the daily temperature hovered at a brisk 50 degrees, and a mosaic of red, gold, and orange leaves covered nearly every pathway of the city's many parks. Natasha, normally nonplussed by the festive beauty that seemed to enrapture everyone else, this time welcomed the season with open arms, if only for the much-needed reprieve from the summer's stifling heat and the excuse to wear thick, shapeless sweaters that covered the rapidly growing lump in her lower stomach.
As much as it pained her to admit it, without Clint in the tower, things had calmed considerably. It wasn't that she didn't miss him; it was just that the palpable tension that formed the warped little triangle between him, her, and Banner all but vanished. There was a noticeable spring to her step, and it seemed that along with the break in heat had come a subsiding of the horrible morning sickness that had been plaguing her for nearly a month. Most importantly, she felt that she and Bruce could talk freely and intimately without the presence of that twinge of guilt that panged her chest whenever she blushed at his touch or laughed too hard at one of his jokes. When it did rear its head, it represented nothing but a nagging annoyance, and she was able to snuff it back out with expert skill and finesse that she had developed over years of being forced to cloak her emotions behind the spy-veil she had gotten so used to donning.
The only cloud that muddied the pure autumn bliss she was feeling was the inevitable weight gain that came with the rapidly developing changes occurring within her body. Natasha had never been one to fret over her heaviness, mainly because she never had to; due to her rigorous physical training routine, she ate what she wanted as often as she wanted with a general disregard for its effects on her body. She certainly wasn't unhealthy, but she wasn't exactly counting calories, either. She couldn't even say that she cared how heavy other people were; as far as she was concerned, people came in all shapes and sizes, and any weight gain or loss of her friends and acquaintances was noted not out of judgment, but purely out of the habit of keeping a constant tab on her surroundings. Still, the steadily creeping number on the bathroom scale was a bit unsettling. When she had griped about it to Bruce, he had simply rolled his eyes and told her that if he could gain 500 pounds in the span of 30 seconds and still feel secure about his physical appearance, she should be able to, as well. Being in one of her hormonal moods, she had just sighed pointedly at him and glared.
Now, she, Bruce, and Pepper were sitting around the bar enjoying takeout from the nearby Indian restaurant. The latter two were sipping mimosas while Natasha nursed a coffee. She had decided to put off drinking anything remotely alcoholic-sounding until after the pregnancy, if only to avoid enduring the humiliation of ordering a "virgin" cocktail. Like a good Russian, she had had her first sip of alcohol when she was nine years old, and there was no way in hell she would revert back to the habits of a fifteen year-old wannabe who wanted to feel like a grown-up but wasn't actually old enough for real liquor.
Until now, the only sounds that could be heard were the clinking of utensils and the shuffling of chairs as the three adults ate their meals. Clearing her throat, Pepper, without taking her eyes off of her food, spoke suddenly in Natasha's general direction.
"So you have an ultrasound appointment tomorrow."
Natasha's fork froze in midair. She looked suspiciously at the obviously uncomfortable woman. "Yeah? Says who?"
"I do. I took the liberty of making you an appointment, since I happened to be at the office the other day." This was a lie; Pepper knew that the only way to get Natasha out of her hiding place and into the hands of an actual physician was to physically force her out of the tower. The making of an appointment was only step one.
Slowly, Natasha continued to eat. Eventually, she said, "Thanks, but I'll make one later."
Bruce exchanged a look with Pepper as the corner of his mouth pulled into the hint of a smirk. They both knew that to the redhead, picking up the phone and talking with a doctor was the relative equivalent of a teenage boy calling up a girl for a first date. If it were left to Natasha, the woman would probably spend the entire nine months in the dark as to the child's health until she birthed it solo on the bathroom floor. Taking a breath, Pepper laid her knife down and raised her head to look into Natasha's fleeting eyes.
"I'm sure you will, but since I already made one, how about we just take advantage and get it out of the way?" Her voice was pleasant, but it held a firmly authoritative undertone; lightly scolding a person who could choke you with her thighs was never easy, but Pepper considered herself more gutsy than most. That, along with the added comfort of having something like a bodyguard on steroids next to her boosted her confidence enough to stand up to the assassin.
Natasha's eyes glinted with a hint of surprised anger, and she looked up to meet Pepper's gaze. "How about we let me be an adult who's capable of making my own decisions?" She countered, a dangerous edge to her voice.
The woman faltered slightly, but managed to hold her composure. "Well, frankly, Natasha, I would be more inclined to agree with you if you were to start acting like an adult."
Bruce's breath caught in his throat, and he looked back and forth between the two women, who currently seemed to be engaged in a weird staring contest. Natasha's expression was unreadable, but Pepper's eyes glinted with a certain defiant determination. He guessed that dealing with Stark for so many years had left her with a sort of immunity to thickheaded stubbornness.
"Fine. We can be adults," Natasha said coolly. She leaned back and folded her arms across her chest. "But from now on, you let me make my own appointments. Is that good with you?"
"Peachy."
Natasha downed the rest of her coffee in one silent gulp, deposited the mug into the sink with a resounding thump, and walked to the door in several long strides.
"Well, I'm going to bed. Are you intending on driving with me to the hospital, too?"
"No, I'm afraid I've got another appointment. I'm sure Bruce would be happy to accompany you, though, if you're so intent on having a chauffeur," Pepper retorted, jerking her head back to motion to the startled man behind her.
Natasha gave a dangerous smile and shifted to look at Bruce. "Fine. Looking forward to it." With that she stormed out the door and disappeared down the hall.
"What did you do that for?" Bruce hissed when he thought Natasha was safely out of earshot.
"She's nervous. Believe me, I know this 'tough guy' behavior a lot better than you do—she's just trying to hide the fact that she feels like she's in over her head." Pepper shrugged. "Actually, I think it went pretty well."
Throwing one last glance at the sealed metal doorway, Bruce sat down to finish off what was left of his meal. "If you say so. I'd still sleep with a knife under your pillow tonight if I were you."
Despite the maternity ward's attempt to appear welcoming, Bruce could not help but feel as if he and the young woman sulking beside him were awaiting punishment in some sort of strange, pink-walled prison covered with nauseatingly tacky stock photographs of smiling couples holding rosy-cheeked infants and warning signs dictating the proper way to avoid harming the home's latest newborn. The pair currently sat in front of a poster portraying a delightfully confused-looking woman holding up two different colored packs of small pink pills. Above her, large block letters read: "Which birth control is right for you?" He chuckled to himself; if you were here, it was probably a little too late for that.
He felt Natasha shift uneasily next to him, and he gave her an encouraging smile. Her discomfort was almost palpable; he reached out to give her knee a reassuring pat, but, realizing how much the gesture made them look like a couple given their current setting, quickly withdrew his hand. She blushed and jerked away from his touch, but said nothing. He guessed that she was too stressed at the moment to respond well to physical affection.
Not that he was feeling completely at ease, either. Bruce almost always felt self-conscious: wherever he went, he couldn't help but feel that he was too big for his surroundings. His movements, in his opinion, were clumsy and awkward compared to those around him, and his voice always seemed to ring too loudly in his ears. He supposed that was why he hunched and mumbled as he did: if he made himself as physically small as possible, maybe people wouldn't notice how out-of-place he actually was.
He sighed deeply and closed his eyes, resting his head on the wall in back of him. Next to him, Natasha's arms were crossed tightly across her chest, and she tapped her foot loudly on the ground, her boot making rapid clicks that echoed down the hallway. Noting the annoyed glances of the other patients, Bruce, keeping in mind the former awkwardness his touch had caused, poked her timidly in the arm.
"What?" She hissed, turning her head so quickly that tendrils of orange hair brushed his face.
"'Tasha, I know you're nervous, but I think you're disturbing the other people," Bruce whispered into her ear.
"I'm disturbing the others? Well their being here is disturbing me! Why don't you get on their backs about it instead of mine?" She was talking at one of those loud whispers that wasn't really a whisper at all. Other couples glanced disapprovingly in their direction, clearly judging what appeared to be the controlling young gold-digger wife subjecting her older husband to such verbal abuse. Before he could respond, Natasha's name was being barked down the hall.
"Romanoff!"
The Russian gave him a look that said, we're not done here, and rose gracefully from her seat to pad to the doctor's room. Bruce followed her at a distance. About halfway down the hall, a blond man next to a girl who looked much too young to be having a child gave a thumbs-up sign and mouthed "nice," clearly in reference to a scruffy man like him being able to bag a babe like Natasha. Bruce smiled nervously, not bothering to correct him. Might as well let the kid dream.
By the time he entered the pleasantly dark room, Natasha was already lying on the padded doctors' table, picking silently at a hang nail while a surly-looking nurse scribbled down some statistics onto a clipboard. Natasha met his eyes.
"Oh, I didn't know you were coming."
"Did you want me to leave?"
"No. I mean, whatever you want. It's probably gonna be over pretty quick," she answered quickly, trying to look apathetic as she went back to picking her hangnail. Bruce knew that she would probably not talk to him for the rest of the day if he were to actually go back to his waiting place in the hallway, so he stepped fully in and closed the door.
"No, I'll stay. I've never seen one of these from a non-doctor perspective before," he mused. Technically, this was the truth; although he could administer an ultrasound with his eyes sewn shut, he and his long-ago wife Betty had never succeeded in producing any children.
The nurse raised her eyes uninterestedly from the clipboard. "And you are?" She had a deep, drawling voice, one which reminded Bruce of a tape that had been put in slow-motion.
"Bruce. Banner. Bruce Banner." She rolled her eyes.
"No. What's your relation? You the father?"
"No!" Bruce and Natasha sputtered at once, causing the nurse to stop writing and raise her eyebrows. The man and woman exchanged glances, blushed, and looked away.
"No. He's just a friend," Natasha mumbled quickly, crossing her arms tighter across her stomach as if to protect herself from the sticky goo that the nurse had placed on the table next to her. Bruce felt a small pang in his chest, but he nodded in confirmation when the nurse looked at him expectantly.
"Okay. Ever been pregnant before?"
"No?"
"I was talking to the lady."
"Oh." Bruce looked to Natasha, who was staring intently at her legs.
"Yes," she answered finally. The nurse jotted something down.
"How many times?"
Natasha was silent.
"I asked how many—"
"Four," the woman blurted quickly. The nurse's pen paused momentarily on her notepad, but her expression did not change.
"Including this one?"
"…No."
Poor Natasha—she looked like she was ready to be sick. Bruce wanted nothing more than to reach out and hug her, but he had a feeling that she may burst straight through the roof like a character from the Looney-Toons if he dared touch her. He settled for leaning against the exam table and putting his hand close to hers.
"Around how old were you when the first pregnancy occurred?"
Bruce shifted—in all the personal conversations they'd had together, Natasha had never touched upon this topic. He felt her physically stiffen next to him.
"Listen, I can leave if you'd rather…"
"No, it's fine. About fifteen."
"Do you know around when you started being sexually active?"
"January 3rd, 1997."
This caused the nurse to look up, probably because she had never really been given such a specific answer to that question. Bruce did the math in his head: born in 1984, lost her virginity in 1997…that would have put her around thirteen. He tried to contain his shock as he studied her rigid features; he wondered if it had been with that Alexei kid or if it had just been part of another assignment.
"When was the last pregnancy?"
Natasha shrugged. "A couple of years ago, I guess."
"And none of them have been carried through?"
"Listen, is there a point to all of these questions? Because last time I checked, I wasn't here to rehash my sexual history for you." There was a mixture of anger and embarrassment in Natasha's voice, and she looked a tad bit ill. The nurse's face remained stoic.
"Standard procedure, hon. Just doing my job. I'll take that as a yes."
Bruce had to hand it to her—the nurse was very good at keeping a straight face. If she held any judgment, her expression and tone of voice didn't let it show.
"You're at twelve weeks now, correct?"
"Give or take a few days, yeah."
"You should have come in a month ago." The nurse pursed her lips. "Have you ever had an ultrasound before?"
"I'm familiar with the routine."
"Perfect. You know the drill, then: roll up your shirt."
Bruce felt himself redden. "Listen, are you sure you don't want me to step out? I understand if you don't want me to see—"
"What? My stomach? What is this, the 1800's? I'm sure you've seen worse." She flashed him a quick smile to show that she was joking and lifted up her sweater to just below her chest, revealing an expanse of porcelain flesh disturbed only by a few old scars and a small bump in her lower abdomen. The sight made him feel slightly protective, though he couldn't place his finger on why. For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the whirring of the computer as the nurse squirted a good helping of bluish goo onto the black probe that would provide a blurry window into Natasha's body.
The woman squirmed a bit when the cold liquid touched her stomach, but began to relax as a soft wub-wub-wub filled the cramped space.
"That's its heartbeat," the nurse added almost as an afterthought.
"Hmh," Natasha grunted.
The screen suddenly flickered to life, and within a few moments a grainy, black-and-white crescent filled the television. It was almost empty except for a small, bean-like blob in the lower-right corner, which Bruce immediately recognized to be the fetus.
"Well, there you have it," said the nurse. "Heartbeat's normal, no visible abnormalities, everything's where it should be. Any questions?"
It was strange; Bruce had administered countless ultrasounds, examined hundreds of embryos during his travels, but never had the sight of that ugly, fish-like creature instilled in him such emotion. There it was, the start of a human being of his friend's own creation, living and growing inside of her. Unconsciously, he closed the gap between their hands and took Natasha's in his own, intertwining her fingers with his.
"What's wrong with her?"
He looked at Natasha to find that she had squeezed her eyes shut.
"Tasha? What's wrong?"
"I don't want to see it; I don't want to hear it; I don't want to learn about it. I just want to know that everything's hunky-dory so that we can check out and leave."
Bruce released her hand to give her shoulder a shake. "Come on, just one peek. For me. You owe me that much—everyone in the lobby thinks I'm the world's most pathetic husband."
Sighing, she opened her eyes and looked hesitantly at the screen. She stared at it for a while, frowning.
"It's disgusting," she finally said, though Bruce noticed that her expression had softened considerably.
"Oh, come on. It looks just like you."
This caused her to smile. "I guess it does have my eyes."
"The resemblance is uncanny."
She chuckled and leaned into him.
"Can you tell if it's a girl or boy yet?" Bruce asked.
"Nope." The nurse removed the probe from Natasha's belly and reached to turn off the machine, but the redhead stopped her.
"Wait—do you think it would be possible to get a picture or something? For Clint," she added when Bruce turned to her incredulously. "Don't get your hopes up—we're not going to be putting this on the fridge or anything."
"Sure," the nurse shrugged. She replaced the goo and typed something into the computer. "Is he the father?"
"No," Natasha said, annoyed. "He's another…friend."
"Hmh." The nurse placed the printout in a manila folder and handed it to her. "You sure have a lot of friends."
The corners of Natasha's lips tightened, but she said nothing.
