It's been almost a year and for that I apologize profusely, but it's back, babies!

LOVE YOU ALL!

"So…your plan now is to sit in silence?"

Thor's words pierced Natasha like a sharp blade, her hands clenched around the steering wheel as she merged onto the highway. She had refused to speak to him all morning, since they had woken up tangled in sheets and each other. She had just needed to think, to separate herself from the situation and be clinical for a second and just think.

Think, think, lie. She needed to get out of this, blame it on hormones. On boredom. Anything but the sense of empathy she possessed, that sense of selfishness over his being-anything but her humanity. She couldn't be human, then she would have failed. She'd been built for a specific purpose, for a job. Being human only got in the way, made her weak. It made her useless; she was only supposed to look human, lie about her feelings and stories. Make people believe she was just like them.

But she wasn't. She was a robot, analyzing and studying. The mission was most important, personal investment in anyone was a bad move. A one that guaranteed her termination, extermination. She would have no purpose any longer.

Natasha wasn't permitted human tendencies. That would have meant she was flawed, that she was a hindrance. She couldn't afford that, so she would lie. Put on her mask, look Thor dead in the eyes and coldly spew facts at him about the biological reasons for their…fucking.

That's all it was. That's all she could afford it to be.

But even then, she chose instead to just not speak to him, to just give him silence to interpret as he would. It would be easier, or so she told herself it would be. They needed to work, that was what was needed. They needed to immerse themselves in work and focus and soon this would just blow over. It would be forgotten and chalked up to confusion on his part and hormones on hers. And then they would be fine, everything would be fine. She wouldn't be broken.

So she had been silent all morning, throughout breakfast and their drive to SHIELD, she had refrained from speaking even two words to him. And he had respected the silence initially, but apparently the awkward silence of the drive had gotten to him enough to speak about the incident last night.

Incidents.

"That was the plan," she said flatly, her lips barely parting has she stiffened in her seat, eyes travelling over the passengers in the cars around her. Distracting herself, letting her focus on something else. There was a man drinking a coffee in the car nearest to her, he was wearing a suit.

She heard Thor sigh, her eyes settling on another man in a pick up truck. He wore a flannel with red in it. Blue.

"Natasha, I believe time has proven that is not a wise solution to things."

There was a woman driving a black Volvo, consoling her toddler daughter in the backseat.

"You need to pay attention."

She couldn't-that was the issue. She heard his words and mentally built up a reply to each but then shut them down. Talking wouldn't help, he kept pushing an open dialogue and that was the issue. That was what had led her to think more about this, to want. She couldn't want. She was programmed. She had tasks and a job and had something. She would not let him rid her of her purpose when it was all she had.

"I know what you people often think," Thor chimed in after a long moment, his eyes still settled on Natasha's tense figure, hands clenched white around the steering wheel. "You think that because I am not of this world, I fail to understand humanity. But-"

"I don't," Natasha cut him off, finally peeling her eyes from the road and meeting his gaze. Natasha didn't feel that way about him, or not anymore anyway. Though she shouldn't have admitted to that, not after last night, after what had happened between them. Again. And Natasha knew she should have pulled away, should have rejected him on the spot and told him that yes, yes she didn't understand him and their nights together had been impulse, not instinct. There was a distinction between the words that she should have emphasized. She should have explained that she wasn't thinking, she just acted selfishly and stupidly.

She was supposed to be a good liar. She was trained to lie, to smile coyly at a man while internally indentifying all his points of weakness. But she had changed, what used to click wasn't clicking anymore and the longer she looked at Thor, the more she wanted to tell him the truth.

She trusted him, like the sad little girl she never had been. He ripped all her humanity from her and shoved it in her face, made her damn near useless. Why? Could it be the sense of empathy was that strong, like it was with Clint? Their connection was more than physical, she knew that. She knew he knew that as well. He wasn't stupid. He was more than the demigod. She was more than-no, no. She never had been.

Natasha couldn't afford to think like that, to expose herself to someone else. Clint was enough, her friendship with Clint was enough-should have been. Yet she couldn't lie to Thor. She couldn't lie to him, push him away back into the arms of someone else he could be happy with. She wasn't structured to be happy, to bring happiness to others.

But she refused to let him go. Her humanity was exposed, her selfishness possessing her all over again. She wasn't a soldier, she could make believe for a moment of crisis. And she thought, with a flicker of curious relief, that perhaps Thor wasn't either. He was brave, he was good-but perhaps not a soldier. His brother still held that string.

"Don't say that again."

He waited a long moment before finally nodding and sitting back into the seat of the car. There was nothing to argue, she was telling the truth and there was nothing to argue over. He only wanted to ensure her that it was all right, everything they'd done was all right in his eyes, even if they could not so easily define what exactly it was that had formed between them. But it was not a mistake, nothing like that. And he only wanted to ensure her that he would never do something to hurt her or her emotions, but knew that phrase would only upset her further. Thor only wished to take care of her, protect her and their child, like he had when Stark had spoken out of turn that one instance, questioning the morals of her character.

Embarrassing her. He had no right; Natasha was strong, brave. She almost seemed unearthly in her character traits, and part of him mused the idea of her being of Asgard herself. Or perhaps another world, trying to assimilate to her new surroundings. Be what they needed, the people of Earth. But really, she seemed as lost as he felt so much of the time. It had been this quality he noted in her first, and it had been this one that had initially been their bonding force. A sense of kinship he so desperately wanted to describe to her, so desperately wanted her to understand so that their relationship could evolve from whatever it was.

Thor yearned to belong to someone, anyone-Loki wanted nothing to do with him, and it was that reaction that spurred him on to this desperation for affection, to prove he was good enough.

Neither had to be lost. They both knew this yet neither seemed willing to compromise and admit to the fact that they had each other. She refrained for her reasons, and he refrained for her sake. He would protect her, like he had failed to do with Loki. He would keep her safe, and then perhaps she would acknowledge her feelings herself.

He couldn't do it for her. He couldn't-no. Then she would grow to loathe him like Loki had. He could not bear that again, that feeling of rejection.

So he was silent. As was she.

Natasha liked to stay as far away from her desk as possible once she was at work; her sorry excuse for a job was hardly an ease on her mind. Just something to occupy her time with until the truth came out, that she was useless and broken and they had no need for her anymore, that she would be disposed of. What else could they do for her? She was not built to be a part of anything but work. She was a bolt in the machine. She acted for the greater good, but alone was nothing. She was a nonfunctioning part, nothing worth saving or sparing. Just tossed away with the rest of the useless agents. Like what had happened to her other Black Widows.

Without point, there was nothing there worth saving.

Sitting at that desk, looking through the work of other agents and figuring out where they would go, it hurt her. It pained her to know soon they wouldn't even do her the service of lying to her anymore, promising her that once the baby was born she would rejoin her colleagues and be of value to SHIELD again. Thor could take the baby, he could take it back to Asgard and it could be raised as a prince or whatever it would have been. It would be happy there, it could thrive there and never know about its origins as a drunken night gone wrong.

It was at that moment where Natasha started to not think of herself, but think of the baby inside her. She began wondering about it-was it a boy or a girl? Would it have her hair or his? She had never given human qualities to what was growing inside of her out of the fear that she would then grow attached. Like when a child gave a name to a stray dog that their parents said they couldn't keep. Her child wouldn't ever find comfort in her embrace, nurturing care in her actions. She wondered if she could even feign being maternal for a short period of time. She imagined Thor would be a good parent, that he would be able to show…emotions to the child, genuine and real emotions. Not like Natasha's. She understood humanity, but she didn't feel things on the level they did.

Or she wasn't supposed to. But even now, she was imagining herself as a mother. Trying to be one, like the one she had never had herself. She imagined herself trying to fill a bottle, waking up in the middle of the night and take care of a crying baby.

Changing a diaper. It was an odd sight, but one that wasn't so ridiculous it was laughable. Not like the idea of Tony changing a diaper.

And for the first time in days, Natasha smiled to herself, internally giggling at her own private joke. Perhaps she wasn't the worst potential parent among the lot of them; the idea gave her slight peace of mind. Encouragement, even. Maybe they had not eradicated all her humanity after all. For so long, she had been what everyone told her to be, had made her into a machine after stripping her of all of her humanity and instinct.

This baby, this baby gave her something else. This baby meant she could even, have another purpose, even a short lived one. There was more to her than what those monsters had built into her decades ago. She was human.

Human. And she was actually willing to embrace this, for once in her life she was willing to embrace every human aspect of her life, if only for these nine months. Then she could become Black Widow again. She could shed this skin like she had before. But for now, now she could find purpose in being a mother.

She could be more than what she had thought, she could…matter, both as an agent and as a mother. She would do both jobs well, and she would succeed.

She would need help, is all. Keeping her on track.

She would need someone to be there, who understood her in a different way than Thor. Someone she had harbored a true connection with for so many years. For she didn't need a lover, she needed a friend. A comrade.

Natasha needed to find Clint.