Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: There is a saying that a writer is a "slave to the muse," and then there are the times when the writer actually is a slave to the muse. Felt a lot in the latter category writing this story, 'cause I wasn't expecting it to take me all of 3-4 days lol.
Cooper and Lila are Clintasha's kids in this story, but due to this they don't look like they do in the MCU in my head. Not quite sure who would look like how I imagine them, but just saying in case anybody was wondering. For those of you who don't know, a theta in my weird ABO shit is an afab (usually) person who has both alpha and omega parts. Additionally, the title is the Russian phrase for "homecoming" written in the Latin alphabet, or so Google/the trigger words for Bucky tell me as I do not speak Russian.
Also, I think after this I'm gonna take a break from this series (the black and gold 'verse, although I will note that 1) this might be part of another unrelated series in the future and 2) this can 100% be read as a standalone, hence why the series isn't mentioned in the summary) for a little bit so I can work on my WIPs and not get burnt out. 'Cause uh, idk if you guys have realized this, but I've posted 44k including this for the 'verse in the past month alone. Like, that is a holy shitnumber, even for me.
Anyways, I really hope y'all enjoy,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~the black and gold 'verse~
~vozvrashcheniye na rodinu~
Clint was used to his missions not going according to plan.
For most people in his line of work, the saying went "there was always that one mission that didn't go as planned." For him...he wouldn't say that it was most, but it was certainly more than others. But that was why Fury had hired him: even when his missions didn't go as they were supposed to, he got the job done. He was a sharpshooter, even without the bow.
That being said, this mission had seemed doomed pretty much from the fucking start.
He was in Russia, tracking down the Red Guardian. Ever since he had destroyed the North Institute in Ohio, he had been on SHIELD's radar. Many agents had tried to bring him in over the past five years, many had failed. Hence why Fury had assigned him the case, thinking he would be able to do what nobody else could. It was kind of his specialty.
But not with this case, apparently.
His first problem had been where he'd come into the country. He'd arrived in St. Petersburg, thinking the man would either be there or in Moscow, which wasn't too far away. However, SHIELD's intel had soon revealed to him the man was currently in Khabarovsk. Khabarovsk, of all places. It was quite literally on the other side of the country.
His second problem had been transportation. Going by airplane would have been the fastest way, but it was also something that could be easily checked if you knew what you were doing – and the Russians did. In comparison, going by train would have been much easier, and this is what he'd done. It had taken three days, but he'd finally gotten to Khabarovsk, and had checked into a dingy hotel. The locals had been a little weary of him, but he spoke fluent Russian and with the right fake documents, he was passable as a citizen of their country easily enough.
His third and most glaring problem, however, was his heat.
Ever since he'd presented at the age of fourteen, Clint's heats had been like clockwork; it was the only good thing about them. They came on the first of the month every three months – so March, June, September, and December. Never before had they come early, and never had he expected them to.
But when he woke up that morning to slick pooling between his legs and his back and thighs cramping, he knew without a doubt that somehow, someway, his heat was coming two weeks earlier than usual. Which might not have been a bad thing on its own, but.
He was an omega all by himself, in a city where nobody even knew his actual goddamn name.
He was in heat, which meant the brain fog was going to be creeping in any second now.
And he didn't even have any ibuprofen on him to stifle his cramps.
"Fuck," Clint cursed, the only thing he could think of to say. "Goddamn it, fuck! As if this couldn't get any fucking worse – "
Later, he would realize, he shouldn't have said that.
Continuing his expletives, he grabbed his laptop from his bag. He turned it on and opened it up so he could email his handler, because really, there was no other option. Tracking down anyone while he was in heat would be impossible, but the Red Guardian?
That would practically be a suicide mission.
It was as he was just about to hit the send button that there was a knock at his door. "Обслуживание номеров," he heard a feminine voice say.
Later, he would also blame his heat for why he spent a second staring at the door in surprise, which was one second too many. As he dove for his bag, meaning to grab his gun (he wasn't as good with guns as he was with a bow and arrow, but fuck he didn't have the range or time for them), the door was kicked open by a woman with short, curly red hair.
In an instant, she was on him. With a strength far superior than natural, she grabbed him off of the floor where he'd fallen, pulling him to his feet. She pinned him against the wall with enough force to make his head crack! painfully, her green eyes swirling like the sea. She held a knife to his throat.
"Не заставляй меня убивать тебя," she said.
If it had been any other time, he would have laughed at her words. She was undoubtedly a spy, an assassin, and the first thing she said to him was that? "Don't make me kill you?"
What was she, some sort of baby Black Widow?
But he did not laugh at her, because this was not any other time, and he quickly realized two things: 1) with a surreptitious glance down to her belt, he realized she was indeed a baby Widow, and 2) she hadn't had her "graduation ceremony" yet. The smell of a theta untouched by the knife washed over him.
More slick pooled in between his legs.
Fuck, he thought.
This was bad.
This was very, very bad.
He watched as her nostrils flared, undoubtedly taking in the scent of his heat. Her eyes enlarged. At once, she stepped back, causing him to slide to the floor with a groan. "Вы в течке?"
"Да," he said through clenched teeth. Then, in English: "Get out of here."
She ignored him. "Why would you Americans send an omega in heat?" she asked instead. She twirled the knife in her hands. Stepping closer, she leaned down and pressed it back to his throat.
"'Wasn't originally in heat," he retorted, glaring at her.
"Let me try again," she amended herself. "Why did they send you?"
She was practiced, experienced, he thought, but her skills at this side of the job could use improvement. Although the gauze was wrapping over his mind, he hoped he could use this to his advantage and escape.
...Not that he wanted to escape.
A foreign omega in estrus on the streets was basically a death sentence in any country.
"Kill me," he grunted. "Or get out of here. I won't tell you anything."
Something strange flickered in her eyes.
. . .
. . .
In the end, she didn't do either of those things.
The next time his heat waned enough for him to be coherent, he was laying on the bed of his hotel room. His right wrist was handcuffed to the bars of the headboard, a heat pad beneath his ass. On the nightstand, there was a cup of water. On the end table in the other corner of the room, there was a plastic bag.
The baby Widow was sitting on the chair next to this end table, her legs resting crisscross style. He growled at her. "What the fuck are you still doing here?"
"I sent your email," she said, standing up. She sauntered towards him like a predator would its prey. "Your handler wanted to make sure you were safe. I said you were."
He didn't say anything to this, even though he very much wanted to ask, "Why?"
As if sensing this, she murmured, "It is preferable that we do not kill anyone in heat. How long do your heats last? Three days? Four? Five? Six?" He did not think that he gave anything away, but then she nodded. Grabbing the cup, she raised it to his lips. "Then you have six days to live, Mr. Barton. Now, пей."
He tried to resist, but it was of no use. The water felt like a snake going down his throat, causing him to splutter.
She drew away the cup. "Are you hungry? I bought food."
"Is it...preferable that you do that, too?"
"No, it is not." She didn't even blink. "Get your rest, Mr. Barton. You will answer my questions. You will answer them carefully and precisely."
Now, he wanted to ask her who quoted Doctor Who in an interrogation.
But he didn't, because as the fog settled over his mind again, he was out like a light.
It went like that the next few times he resurfaced. She "took care" of him, giving him water and food, changing his clothes, helping him use the restroom. Her touch, he half-mused at one point after she'd taken off the handcuff seemingly for good, was oddly...tender for a Widow, but he wasn't able to entertain it for long. Not that it mattered.
He knew what the end goal was regardless.
The fourth or fifth time he came up, she was standing near the window, her arms crossed and a smoldering expression on her visage. When she heard him, her fingers stopped tapping against her arm, but she did not move away or look at him.
"You smell," she said simply.
For a second, Clint didn't think he'd heard her correctly. "What?"
"You smell," she repeated.
"Uh...yeah," he said, trying to do the math in his head. From how he was feeling, he guessed he was in his third or fourth day of heat. "I haven't showered in days. What do you exp – ?"
She shook her head. "Not that. Your pheromones, they're very strong," she explained. "Some alphas...they wanted to come investigate."
Dread shivered down his spine.
"You also talk in your sleep," she continued. The rapid change of subject almost gave him whiplash. She turned to face him, and he could see a bruise blooming on her cheek. It looked to be a few days old, but with the Widows that did not mean much. "A lot."
He frowned. "What's that got to do with anything?"
She stepped forwards. Perching herself on his bed, she gazed up at him through her eyelashes.
He swallowed.
Oh, no, no, no...
"I will not do anything if you do not wish me to," she spoke. "But if you are to live, Clint Barton, your pheromones need to be dealt with. Even I would have trouble fending off five or six alphas, especially the ones I saw. They are...enhanced."
"I thought you were going to kill me," he argued.
She shrugged. "I changed my mind."
"Do you do that a lot?"
Her eyes flickered again. "Иногда, да."
This was wrong.
This was so incredibly wrong.
Not because of what she was offering. Lord knew, had she been older and not brainwashed, he probably would've accepted it. He wasn't the kind of omega that waited for an alpha or theta to come sweep him off his feet; he was assured in his sexuality, and he wasn't going to let any prude tell him what a horrible omega he was or how he was going to hell.
But she was seventeen, at best. The intelligence SHIELD had gathered of the Red Room suggested Dreykov had figured out some sort of heat and rut suppressants, which meant she'd probably never been in this kind of situation before. She'd probably never had a heat herself, as much as the thought pained him to think about.
And he was a twenty-four-year-old omega. He'd been having heats for twelve years now. No matter how clockwork they usually were, he should've known better than to take this mission so soon to his time of the season. This was his fault, all his.
Not taking his silence as a sharp refusal, she inched closer to him. "I can take care of you," she purred, her chest rumbling.
Now it was his turn to shake his head. "You don't want to do that, Widow. Believe me."
"Natalia," she responded. "My name is Natalia."
And then her lips were on his. She kissed him softly, slowly, and he couldn't help but moan into the kiss as her scent washed over him. They weren't a scent-match, at least if they had been he would've had an excuse, but.
In a very strange way, she smelled like home. Idly, he wondered if that was where the Red Room was: out on a farm, in the middle of Siberian nowhere.
It would be a very convenient location for disposing of bodies, if that were true.
As she deepened their kiss, her fingers hooked underneath the waistline of his sweatpants and underwear. She pulled them off gently, her touch soothing, as if she'd had plenty of experience with this before.
When they had to come up for air, he grabbed one of her wrists. "Natalia," he spoke softly.
To his surprise, there were tears burning in her eyes. "Пожалуйста," she whispered. "Let me take care of you."
Clint didn't try stopping her again after that.
She made quick work of his shirt, and then her own clothes, leaving only her bra and boxer briefs. In the morning light, with the sun's rays surrounding her, she was as beautiful as an angel as she straddled his waist.
She took her time preparing him. Her fingers were nimble, small, but she knew her way with them. He grunted at first, then allowed the strangled noises to escape from his mouth as she worked him thoroughly.
When it was time, she took off her boxer briefs, revealing her peniform. Experimentally, she lined it up to his entrance, the spongy end meeting his slicked up flesh.
"Do it," he hissed.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
In one smooth motion, Natalia entered him. He felt his head fall back, hitting the headboard of the bed. Here, though, her inexperience showed: she moved slow, as if she didn't want to hurt him.
But Clint had always liked his sex rough.
"Faster," he said.
She sped up. Her hands reached out, roaming his body. They raked over his chest, taking in the slight rise that was common in male omegas before they'd had children, the barely noticeable curves of his hips. One of them touched his dick, jerking it off tentatively. He groaned, stars appearing in his vision, before he returned her favor. Her breasts felt amazing in his hands, no matter how obscured they were by her bra. Her ass even more so; he squeezed it with both hands, causing her to moan, a flush appearing on her cheeks and trailing down to her chest.
"Faster," he ordered again. "Harder."
He felt the swelling before she did, he thought. Her pacing became erratic, frantic. Brushing a curl from her face, his arms wrapped around her neck. He pulled her down for a kiss, and bit down on her lip. She came, her peniform locking them together.
Not long after, he came as well.
In the aftermath, he held her in his arms instead of the reversal. "Do I smell better now?" he asked, his voice rough from the sex.
Natalia snuggled against him, nodding. "Much."
They had sex four or five more times after that. Natalia was a quick learner. When he told her how he liked things, showed her too, she made sure to do them on her own the next time. It made for several pleasurable experiences.
Once, in the aftermath, as he played with her hair, he said softly, "You know, you could always come back with me."
Not to his shock, she tensed. "Я не могу."
"You don't have to be what they want you to be, Natalia," he replied. "SHIELD would accept you. You could work with me, be my partner." You could be more than that, too, if you wanted.
He felt her shoulders shake. "Нет. I...I have no place in the world."
Perhaps it shouldn't have surprised him that on the seventh day after his heat had started, the day he'd come off of it, she was gone. The side of the bed she'd been sleeping on was cold. She hadn't been there for a while.
Clint tried to swallow down his disappointment as he packed up his things. Since the Red Guardian was undoubtedly long-gone by now, he went back to the States. Fury wasn't exactly happy with him for not finding the super soldier, but he couldn't blame him.
In his report, he explicitly left out any mention of Natalia.
It wasn't like explaining what had happened would do either of them any good.
Seven weeks later, he was throwing up at least two times every day.
At first, he tried to tell himself it was just the flu, or the stomach flu, or a cold, or – or something. But when he tried to button up his pants on the day that marked eight weeks since his heat and found a thickening of his flesh – not quite a bump, maybe a pouch – prevented him from doing so easily, he let out a sigh and wearily rubbed his face with a hand.
The three tests he bought from the corner store down the street from his apartment in DC only confirmed it.
He was pregnant.
Fuck.
Clint had never wanted to be an omither. In his opinion, he wasn't made of the material for it. He cursed like a fucking sailor, didn't get all happy and joyful when kids were around like other omegas did, couldn't ever picture himself reading a child a bedtime story every night. His own parental issues were a mile long, because Edith Barton had been many things before she'd died of a drug overdose after getting released from prison when he'd been nineteen, but a good mother was not one of them.
So, he knew the right thing for him to do would be to end this pregnancy, for everyone involved. He needed an abortion.
But it was as he was walking up to the Planned Parenthood clinic for an appointment to get the pills that he realized he couldn't do it. In his mind, he saw Natalia, her green eyes looking up at him, looking down at him. He'd thought about her a lot in the past few months, but now she appeared to him so vividly and perfectly.
If he was right about her age, she would've had her "graduation ceremony" already. They would've taken almost everything from her: her uterus, her ovotestes. She would basically be a delta, and would smell like it without any scent replacers.
His pregnancy would be the only chance she would ever have to have kids – and he didn't doubt this was hers. He hadn't had sex in over a month before his heat, and not ever since. Doing it afterwards just hadn't seemed...right.
"What the fuck are you doing to yourself, Barton?" he asked himself as he sat in the waiting room of the clinic, filling out a form for an ultrasound instead of an exam for the pills. "What are you getting into?"
The technician asked if he wanted to have some pictures. He said yes.
It was one of those pictures he showed to Fury the next day. The presence of two sacs instead of one was unmistakable, because of course, of course, Natalia had had to go ahead and knock him up twice. Twins didn't even run his family, for Christ's sake.
"You know I'm going to have to put you on desk duty, effective immediately," his boss said, scowling.
"I know," he replied. Then, after a beat, "But actually, I was wondering if I could request parental leave off for the entire pregnancy."
As an omega in his line of business, he was well within his rights to ask that, legally speaking.
Fury grunted. "You're going back to Iowa?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Figures," the alpha grumbled. "I'll sign off on your paperwork, make sure it'll go through."
Clint moved to leave the room, thinking this was a dismissal.
"But one more thing," Fury said suddenly, stopping him in his tracks. He turned around. "This pregnancy, was it conceived during your heat?"
He stiffened. "I fail to see how that's any of your business, sir."
"It's not," the man allowed. "I was just wondering."
Damn old bastard, he thought, leaving the room. He just has to know everything.
At his apartment, he packed up everything he wanted to take with him. He explained to his landlady he would be going away for about a year, gave her the entire year's rent in advance. As a beta herself, she was sympathetic to his plight, and told him she would keep an eye on his apartment. Nothing would be broken or stolen when he got back.
After thanking her, he got into his car and turned it on. He headed towards the I-80 W, and once on it, didn't look back. Not once.
The last time Clint had been in Iowa was not long after he'd joined SHIELD, when he'd been eighteen.
It wasn't that he had anything against the state, not personally. It was just...he didn't have many good memories there. The ones he did, he could count on both hands.
Iowa was where his mom had had her three children: Laura was the oldest, then Barney, then himself. It was the place where she'd lost custody of all three of them after trying to rob a gas station. It was the place where Laura had been diagnosed with cancer, and had required treatment so severe it had rendered her a delta. And it was the place where he had killed Barney.
Not that he liked talking about his brother.
But, his sister had refused to move from the state, saying it was their home. So, when he had joined SHIELD and struck his deal with Fury, it was Iowa where he'd purchased a farmhouse, to keep Laura safe. Deltas weren't exactly treated well by society, and he had wanted to make sure she had a place where no harm would come to her.
As he drove up the driveway of the farmhouse, he saw that it hadn't changed much. The fields he knew his sister rented out to the neighbors were plowed, but all of the trees were still there. Laura's pickup truck was parked in front of the house, and the tractor was sitting outside of the barn.
For a moment, he tried to imagine what it would be like, his future kids living here. Him, raising them here.
He took a deep breath to steady himself.
It felt weird knocking at the front door of the house he owned, but as he'd said, he hadn't been there in six years. Besides, quickly enough, his sister opened the door. Her eyes widened when she saw him, and then her arms were wrapping around him as she pulled him into the house. "Oh, Clint!" she breathed. "Oh my God, I can't believe it! You're home! It's been, what, six years since I last saw you?"
"Something like that," he agreed, smiling.
Pulling away from him, she led him into the kitchen, where the dining table was. She sat him down at it, then bustled around the room, turning on the stove, grabbing a kettle and filling it up with water. When the kettle was sitting on one of the burners, she finally came back, sitting down across from him. Her smile was so large it was practically as bright as the sun.
Immediately, he felt bad.
He should've come to visit her a long time before now, not just kept their interactions to conversations on the phone.
"So, how's your work?" she asked, curious. Then laughed. "Sorry, sorry. I know you can't really tell me anything about that, can you?"
"Not really, but yeah. It's going good," he replied cryptically. "What about you?"
Her smile grew even further. "Busy, as always. You know how kids are."
No, he didn't.
But soon, he would.
"So, what brings you back to these parts?" she questioned. "You haven't been around for a long time."
He grimaced. "I know, I'm sorry."
"Don't be, I understand. Iowa can be a hard place to return to." Her smile became a bit sadder at that. She waved her hand. "But, are you at least going to be staying for a while?"
"...Yeah. Actually, I'll be – "
The sound of the kettle whistling cut him off. Standing up, she transferred the hot water into a teapot, then grabbed two teacups. "Do you want earl grey or jasmine?"
They were his two favorite teas, but with how his stomach currently was from the hormones...
He winced. "Ginger, actually."
Her eyebrows furrowed at his answer, but she nevertheless complied.
When their tea finished steeping, he took out the bag, then added three sugars. It was most certainly a lot for him, since he usually had none, but the pregnancy had been making him crave things a lot sweeter than what he would usually like.
Laura, who had been moving to take a sip from her cup, paused. He could practically see the suspicion swirling around in her head. "How long did you say you were staying again?"
"...About nine months," he answered. "Maybe more."
"You're pregnant," she said.
It wasn't a question.
Not for the first time, he felt bad about the entire situation. Ever since he could remember, Laura had wanted kids. She'd talked about it when they'd been children themselves, dreaming of the day she would marry an alpha – it had been obvious even before they'd done the genetic testing just for the sake of it she would've been an omega – and have her own kids. She'd always said she wanted three: a boy, a girl, and whatever else God would give her.
But here she was, unable to have children. And here he was, having two of his own when he hadn't even wanted to be an omither.
Thankfully, his sister was made of stronger stuff than most. As he nodded, unable to verbalize his answer, she stood up from her chair again and stepped over to him. "You're keeping it?" she guessed. Another nod, this one accompanied by a sniffle as he wiped away his tears. Damn hormones. "Oh, Clint, I'm so happy for you. Do you have any pictures?"
Pulling his wallet from out of his jacket, he opened it up and handed one to her. She took the picture with dignified grace, her already teary eyes softening as she looked at its contents.
"It's not just one," he told her quietly. "There's two sacs. Fraternal twins."
Her smile became even sadder. "They're beautiful."
He felt like a dick.
God, did he feel like a dick.
"Laure, I'm – "
"Don't you dare say you're sorry," she retorted, swatting him on the arm. "I know I can't have kids, and that it's unlikely I'm ever going to get married because of my designation. It's...not okay, but I've made my peace with it. But you're having your own kids, Clint, and that's a damn miracle. Be happy about it." She hummed. "Can I keep this?"
When he told her she could, she took the picture over to the fridge, pinning it up with a magnet. After she came back, she took a sip of her tea, now undoubtedly lukewarm, and grasped his hand in hers. "Is the alpha in the picture?"
"Theta," he corrected her. "And...no, she's not."
His sister's expression hardened.
"It's not what you're thinking," Clint hurried to explain. He didn't want her thinking bad of Natalia, he didn't want anyone thinking bad of Natalia. For better or worse, he had a feeling, she was always going to be it for him.
Somehow, someway, the baby Widow had wormed herself irrevocably into his heart after only a week of him knowing her.
He explained to her as much of everything as he could. He couldn't exactly tell her why he had been in Siberia, or what the Black Widows precisely were, but she got the gist of it.
By the end of his retelling, he wasn't the only one wiping away his tears. "That poor girl," Laura murmured. "Will you ever see her again?"
He told her what he knew:
"I don't know. Probably not."
It was hard for him to adjust to living in small town, Iowa.
All of his life, he had never stayed in one place for long. With his mother, they had always been moving from place to place, because she'd always run out of money for rent or feared the cops would be onto her when her kleptomaniac tendencies got the better of her. With foster care and the circus when he'd run away at the age of sixteen, that was enough said. And the same went for the missions he'd constantly been assigned or signed himself up for after joining SHIELD.
But, he had to stay here now, for the two slowly growing lives inside of him. For Natalia. Even if he felt like he was going to go insane from the lack of movement.
It didn't help that the people around here didn't seem to...like him. Most of them had traditional views of omegas, and he knew he was about as far from traditional as one could get. He wasn't lithe or graceful, and was quite proud of the six-pack he had, even if the pregnancy was slowly doing away with it. He was unmarried, having had sex with practically anything that moved up until...up until his last heat. He worked for a government agency where the work was dangerous and his life was often on the line, not that anybody here knew about that besides his sister.
He was pregnant, and the sire wasn't in the picture.
Honestly, he could've given less of a shit about what other people thought of him, having long-grown used to snide comments from being a circus rat and his sexist co-workers at SHIELD.
But, just because he didn't care didn't mean he had to like hearing them.
Case in point.
"Don't look at him, Michael," he heard the beta woman down the aisle say to her son.
"But, Mommy," the kid said.
Clint resisted the urge to sigh. He was just here trying to shop for some pads to deal with the excess slick he'd been producing, not to be a spectacle for Betty Bible and her WASPy child.
"No. He's not a good man, Michael. You don't need to look at him."
"But why?"
"Because I fucked a person out of wedlock and got knocked up," he snapped, unwilling to deal with their conversation any longer. "That good enough for you?"
The beta woman gave him an indignant look, before she grabbed her child by the arm and fled the aisle.
He went back to looking at the pad products after that. Out here in the middle of BFE, they didn't have his preferred brand, so he was trying to make do. It felt almost impossible, however.
Why couldn't he have the simple things in life that he wanted?
Suddenly, a voice said to his right, "I like your shirt."
Blinking, he looked down at his old and stretched shirt, one of the only non-maternity ones he had which still (barely) fit. It had the album cover of Green Day's Nimrod depicted on it – he'd had Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) stuck in his head when he'd woken up this morning. "Thanks," he said.
Then he looked up.
For a moment, as he looked at the red hair of the girl standing next to him, he felt like he was going to have a heart attack. The shade was the exact same shade of Natalia's, though the texture wasn't. She also had bluer eyes than his – than her, and freckles.
Not to mention, she only looked to be around fourteen and was an omega by the scent of her.
He diverted his gaze away from her, his face flushing from the brief second he'd thought her to be someone else. Clearing his throat, he questioned, "This your second heat?"
"Yeah." He heard her shuffle in surprise. "How did you know?"
"Lucky guess." There was no point in mentioning how babyfaced she was; he didn't think she would appreciate it. Grabbing a pack of pads off of the shelf, he handed them to her. "These are usually pretty decent. They last longer than some of the other brands."
"Cool." She didn't put the pads back on the shelf, he noticed, instead put them underneath her arm. "Anything else you suggest?"
His head turned up and down the aisle. Finding what he was looking for, he nodded and went down to get it. "Water-based lube." When he came back towards her, he saw the tomato red color to her cheeks, but he didn't mention it. "You should be producing enough slick to not need it, and if you aren't you should see a doctor, but it never hurts to have something extra on hand, just in case. Just make sure it's this stuff, because other things will hurt or make you develop an infection."
The bottle, she also accepted. Her eyes drifted downwards. "How far along are you?"
"Seventeen weeks. I know, I look like a fu – freaking whale," he laughed at her look of surprise. "I'm having twins."
Her lips twitched. "You don't look that bad."
"Don't lie to me, kid. I can see myself in the mirror everyday." She laughed at that. Adjusting his grip on his basket, he nodded. "I wish you luck with your heat. Don't worry about how bad they are: you'll get used to them."
As he was walking away it occurred to him that, in thirteen to seventeen years' time, that would be his own kids. Regardless of their primary genders, they would be omegas or thetas. Theta genes were the most recessive genes there were, after all.
Idly, he also thought, that if at least one of his kids was a girl, he would like a theta. Of course, he would be happy either way – call it maternal instincts, but he was going to be an omither now for better or worse, and it was causing some mushy feelings to rise up within him – but a theta with Natalia's eyes would be...nice.
(Having Natalia herself back would be even better, but he'd resigned himself to their fate.
Some people just didn't get happy endings.)
At eighteen weeks, Clint found out the genders of the twins.
"You see this?" the technician asked him during the ultrasound, pointing at something that he could not, in fact, see. "That shows this one is boy. And this one," here, she pointed to his other baby, "does not have that. That means she's a girl."
"You mean one of them has a penis, right?" he asked.
Her lips pursing, the technician ignored him.
At the end of the appointment, he got some more pictures. He took these ones home, back to the farmhouse, to show to Laura. His sister let out "oohs" and "ahs" at the sight, nodding in understanding when he tried to tell her what the technician had told him, which made him feel a bit shitty.
She'd always been better at these things than him.
"What are you going to name them?" she inquired once she'd put the ultrasound on the fridge alongside the many other pictures of the same kind resting there.
He frowned, pushing the Christmas cookies – could it really have been three days after the holiday already? – on his plate around with a hand. "I don't know."
Truthfully, a part of him didn't feel right debating such things. He didn't want to name Natalia's children when she herself was God knows where, doing God knows what. She had as much of a right to be in their children's lives as he did, but she wasn't.
Probably, she never would be.
"You must have some idea," Laura nudged gently.
He sighed. "For the girl...Lila. For the boy...would it be bad to name him Nathaniel?"
His sister flicked his hand. "No, but it wouldn't exactly be a good one, either. What's your actual idea?"
"Cooper," he answered after a hesitation. "Cooper Nataliovich and Lila Nataliovna Barton. The middle names are matronymics. It's a thing in Russia," the last two sentences, he explained as he saw Laura's expression soften.
She smiled. "Of course."
Neither of them commented on how, though his kids' surnames should've been Natalia's and their middle names derived from his first, that was obviously out of the question. Clint didn't know Natalia's surname.
...To be honest, outside of the one week they'd shared, he didn't really know anything about her at all.
When his twenty-six week mark came and went, he and Laura decorated the nursery.
They made a day out of it. Although his sister had to do the heavy-lifting ("No, you're not doing it, it wouldn't be good on your back," she snapped at him when he tried. The only thing that made him stop was when she added, "It wouldn't be good for the babies."), they had fun putting together the cribs and splattering paint at each other.
Not to mention, Laura had a wicked sense of design. Without her, he doubted he would have been able to make as half of a good forest-themed nursery.
After they were finished, she went to go make a bag of popcorn, and the two of them ate it together on the floor of the nursery. It was both a celebration for their work and the fact he could now bear to smell the buttery goodness.
It was as they ate, though, that he finally decided to omega up and ask the question which had been on his mind lately. "Do you ever think about Mom?"
His sister didn't tense, but he hadn't been expecting her to. She was a lot of things, but shying away from hard questions was not one of them. "Sometimes," she said.
"Yeah. Me, too," he echoed.
"She wasn't a good mother." At Clint's look of "oh, really?" she snorted and bumped him with her shoulder. "I know I don't need to tell you that, but my point is, I think she wanted to be. I just don't think she knew how. She had me at eighteen, Barney at nineteen, and you at twenty-one. The older I get, the more I realize how young that was. The more I realize how the world set her up to fail, too."
He picked apart a kernel with his fingers. "What do you mean?"
"...Mom was never what people wanted her to be. According to her, our grandparents wanted her to be an obedient and meek omega. She wasn't, so they disowned her, and us. Our dad wanted her to be his wife. But Mom never wanted to be anything but a free spirit." She paused. "Nobody ever supported her, you know? She had to raise three kids all by herself as a scorned omega, she had to be there for us, but nobody was there for her. I'm not saying it excuses her actions, but it does help explain them."
Unable to say anything, he simply nodded.
His sister noticed this. "But why are you bringing up Mom?" She clasped his hand in hers. "Are you worried about becoming her?"
"No, it's not that."
"Bullshit." He let out a scoff of disbelief at that; Laura never cussed. "You're going to be a good omither, Clint."
"I cuss a lot."
"I said good, not perfect." As he laughed, she grinned. "I mean, so what if you curse? Your kids' teachers will probably hate you for it, but there's worse things for them to hate you for."
"I'm not maternal or shit."
"Maternalism isn't innate for most people, it's learned. You're not so different in that aspect."
"I – " he began, only to stop, unable to finish the train of his thoughts out loud.
Somehow, Laura mistook the intent behind this. "Listen," she said. "Being a parent...I won't lie to you, it'll be hard. If your kids are even half as bad as some of my students are, you'll want to tear your hair out at times. But it'll be worth it, Clint, I promise you."
"...Yeah," he replied.
Of that, he had no doubt.
At thirty weeks, he was done with being pregnant.
His lower back was hurting like a bitch all the time, his ankles and hands were swollen. He kept on producing excess slick, and he was always exhausted. Always.
But, he knew he still had a long way's to go.
He tried bringing up these issues with his obstetrician. Like with most places in his area, the doctor was a male alpha, and an old one at that. He was at least in his sixties, probably older. Whenever he performed his exams, Clint found himself squirming underneath his touch, though he couldn't explain why. The doctor wasn't the judging kind, not like some – okay, a lot – of the other people were here.
But then, after he'd spoken, the doctor looked him dead in the eyes and said, "Sex would help clear up all of that," as if he was expecting Clint to open his legs for just anyone.
He started looking for a new doctor after that.
He didn't wind up finding another obstetrician, however. Instead, he wound up scheduling an appointment with a beta midwife. She listened to him intently, and then when she was done she gave her expertise. "Well, most of these are just typical symptoms of pregnancy. But while it is true that sex could help with them, so could regular exercise."
"I've already been doing that," he grumbled. He was still practicing his archery at least once every other day, even though he knew he probably shouldn't be.
"I don't see why you need to practice," Laura had told him on more than one occasion. "You never miss."
"Have you tried yoga?"
He felt his eyes nictate. "Uh, no."
She gave him an appraising look. "Try it."
Later that day, after he'd went to the local Walmart to buy a yoga mat and the local bookstore where the midwife insisted a beginner's yoga book would be found (the blasphemy, they'd both laughed, because some of the people who lived in Bumfuck, Iowa really did believe that), he sat on the mat with the book propped up against the pushed-aside coffee table. His center of gravity had recently shifted exponentially, which meant it had been fun sitting down on the floor, and no doubt would be doubly so when got back up.
He did a few poses, cautiously testing them out. If nothing else, they did relax him; he felt the tension leave his shoulders, the worst of the pain leave his lower back as his muscles relaxed.
It was as he was doing the Parsva Savasana that Laura came home from her job as a teacher at the nearby elementary school. "Clint, I'm – " she began to say, then abruptly stopped. His back was turned to her, so he couldn't see the expression on her face, but he could guess how rapidly it changed. "Clint? Clint!"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said as she rushed over to him, just before she could place her hands on his shoulders and rip him out of the pose. "I'm just doing some yoga."
"'Yoga?'" she quipped, sitting down on the floor in front of him.
"Yeah, the new midwife said it might help me not feel so shitty."
"You, doing yoga?"
"...Yeah." He didn't like the look on her face. She looked incredibly amused by the whole situation. "What, is this funny to you?"
"A little," she admitted. "You're going to need help getting up, aren't you?"
"Yes, go ahead and make fun of the pregnant person, why don't you," he bit back. He moved to sit up, then felt his eyes widen. "...Okay, so maybe I really do need your help."
Laughing, his sister held out her hands. Pushing himself into a sitting position, he grabbed both. Between the two of them, they were able to get him to his feet. "I can't wait for this to be over."
"You say that now, but someday years from now, you'll miss it," Laura remarked sagely.
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right."
One night about four weeks later, he had a strange dream.
Clint dreamed he woke up sometime around two in the morning, the twins wreaking havoc on his insides, as always, and making him shift during the night. Blearily, he opened his eyes to look at the time, and then when he felt a cold breeze which certainly didn't belong in his bedroom, he looked towards one of the windows and –
– And there she was. Natalia. She was standing in front of the open window, dressed in her Black Widow outfit. Her frame was backlit by the moonlight, her curls spilling over her shoulders. They were longer now, which didn't make sense, but. He wasn't going to question it.
Because this was very much a dream.
And dammit, he was going to savor it.
"Natalia?" he breathed into the darkness, his vision fraught with tears for some unfathomable reason.
"Омега," she said uncertainly, the Russian pronunciation slipping past her tongue. She started to step closer, then stopped, as if she was afraid of what would happen.
He didn't like that. "Иди сюда."
She did. She came as close to the end of his bed and sat down on it, her eyes never leaving his form– or, more accurately, his stomach. "Ты беременна?"
"Да."
"Это мое?"
"Они есть."
At the word for "they," her face paled. "Twins?"
He nearly laughed. "Yeah, twins. A boy and a girl." He tried to sit up, but like with the yoga gravity liked to screw with him these days, so he didn't get very far. "Why won't you come closer?"
She hesitated.
Before she could speak, the breeze came again. This time, it carried her scent.
At once, he realized it wasn't the same one he remembered. It didn't smell the same at all. Instead of the scent of a theta, he inhaled the scent of a delta. It was still hers, to be sure, it still smelled like home, but it was wrong. So incredibly wrong.
The tears spilled from his eyes. "Oh, Natalia."
"I wanted to come see you," she told him. Her eyes were shining; if the act of crying hadn't been so thoroughly trained out of her, he was sure she undoubtedly would've been, too. "To remind myself that you were real, that what we did was real."
"Natalia – "
"I think they realized what we did," she continued over him, her voice hushed. "I...they took everything from me. My uterus, my ovotestes, my peniform. Everything."
Pain seized his stomach. He felt like he was going to vomit. "Theta – "
"Don't call me that!" she hissed. She closed her eyes. "Я нет! Not anymore!"
Clint didn't know of what else to say. He didn't know how to comfort someone who had been so violated like that, who had lost everything.
Well.
Not everything.
"Stay," he said softly.
Her eyes snapped open. "Какая?"
"Stay," he repeated. "They didn't take everything from you. They didn't take me, or our children."
He didn't know why he was saying this. He knew this was only but a dream. It couldn't be real.
Besides, he knew what she was going to say, before she said it.
"They would," she argued.
"They can't. I'm a SHIELD agent. Killing me would be espionage suicide." He sucked in a deep breath, which wasn't exactly easy for him to do with the way his organs' positions had changed. "Goddammit, Natalia! Please, stay. You belong here."
At the word "belong," she stood up. "Нет. I have no place in the world."
She moved to go to the window.
His blood ran cold. In earnest now, he tried to pull himself up. "Natalia, wait!" he gasped. "Natalia, don't go!"
But by the time he got to his feet, she was already gone.
. . .
. . .
In the morning, he woke up to his cheeks sticky with salt and a knock at his door. Laura opened it a second later with smile that quickly turned into a concerned frown, her eyes crinkling ever so slightly at the edges. "Clint, what's wrong? Bad dream?"
"...Yeah," he agreed hoarsely, after a moment. "Something like that."
Three days into his thirty-eighth week, Clint went into labor.
He gave birth at home. It wasn't exactly planned, because he'd been undecided on whether a hospital or home birth was right for him. But he figured most, if not all, male omegas probably had issues with doctors that were a mile-long each, and the thought of another alpha doctor touching him like that was enough to make him shudder. So, a home birth it was.
At 1:08 PM on May 18th, 2002, his son Cooper was born. He came out with dark hair which was only a few shades lighter than his aunt's, and a loud and hearty cry. After his umbilical cord was cut, Laura was the third person to hold him besides his omither and the midwife. She did so with a wet laugh, the tears streaming down her face.
Sixteen minutes later came Lila. Her auburn hair was a touch browner than her themither's – mother's, whatever Natalia would want to call herself – but her aristocratic cheekbones, nose, and curve of lips were all hers. So too were the former for Cooper, although his mouth favored Clint's.
He wasn't ashamed to admit he might've shed a few tears himself. His children were beautiful, a perfect combination of him and Natalia. He couldn't help but weep for them.
...But he also cried for Natalia. It didn't feel right to him that she wasn't by his side for this special event, wasn't there to hold their babies. He wanted her to know that she had a place in the world, somewhere she belonged.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled into his children's hair, still soft and damp from vernix. "I'll make this right, I promise."
He wasn't quite sure who he was speaking to.
When the twins were ten weeks old, Clint started packing his bags.
He tried to be subtle about it at first, only packing things from here and there. But, by the time Cooper and Lila were twelve weeks, it was impossible to ignore the writing on the wall. Most of all if you were his sister.
"You're going back to work already?" she asked, her hands on her hips and steely determination in her gaze. "Clint, you still have another eight weeks of maternity leave. You don't have to go back yet."
"Yes, I do," he replied, zipping up one of his bags. "Fury called me up a few days ago. He said there's a mission in – well, I can't tell you that, but it's important and – "
"You don't have to go back at all."
He froze.
Laura sighed. "Clint, you're an omither now! Cooper and Lila need you! I know you think your job is important – "
"It is important!" he snapped.
" – but what about your kids?" she pressed on as if he hadn't spoken. "What about their milestones? Their first words, their first crawls, their first steps? Don't you want to be around for that?"
"You know I do."
"Then why are you leaving?"
Letting out a puff of air himself, he stepped away from his bag and went over to her. They hugged, his sister burrowing her head into his shoulder and him his own into her hair. "I have to go, Laure."
"No, you don't. You could stay here. Mark said he's sure he could convince the school district to hire you. You could become the PE teacher at the high school, or – "
"I have to find Natalia."
It was a truth he'd realized a long time ago, he wasn't quite sure when. Sometime after meeting that girl at the grocery store, but sometime before his dream, because it had only cemented the idea. He had to find Natalia and bring her back with him. It was the only right thing for him to do.
She deserved to have her freedom.
"But what about Cooper and Lila? Are you taking them with you?"
"Actually," here, he pulled away from her so he could look her in the eyes, "I was thinking they could stay here, with you."
She gaped at him. "What?"
"If anyone finds out that they're Natalia's kids, they'll be in danger," he spoke, thinking about his dream. Even if it hadn't been real, the Natalia of it had a point. "And if I take them with me, that's what'll happen. Maybe not immediately, maybe not until after I've found Natalia, but still, I can't risk it. Besides, if they come with me, they'll have to be looked after by nannies when I'm not around. I want them to grow up with family, my sister who deserves a lot more than the designation she got."
Laura's eyes filled with tears. "Are you sure?"
"Extremely."
When the day finally came, his sister helped him get all of his things to his car. He went back inside, wiping at his cheeks as he held both of his children, kissed them on their foreheads. Cooper and Lila were still so small, but they weren't going to be that way for long, and it hurt like hell knowing that the next time he saw them they would've grown quite a bit.
As he drove down the driveway of the farmhouse, he popped his Nimrod CD into the player. Skipping through almost all of the tracks, he found the one he wanted: Good Riddance (Time of Your Life). He turned up the volume as high as his ears could stand and listened to it, sang to it, bawled like one of his children to it.
But if there was one thing he knew, it was this:
His decision to go find Natalia?
It would be worth it, in the end.
It would always be worth it.
(Years later, Fury would call Clint into his office one day.
"I received a lead on one of the most prolific Black Widows we know of," he told him, a file in his hands. "My superiors advised me to have her eliminated. But, before I decided either way, I thought I would have your expertise on the matter first."
Clint took the file, and the first thing he saw as he opened it up with shaking fingers was her. Natalia, the themither/mother of his children. His heart skipped a beat inside his chest, then began to pick up at an alarming rate. "You can't eliminate her," he said, his throat tightening at the thought. "She's – I can get her to defect. I know I can, sir."
Fury's eye glinted at him mischievously. "Then do it."
He spent seven days in Europe, looking for her. When he finally found her in Budapest of all places, he felt nearly ragged.
But it didn't matter.
As he pinned her down to the ground the way she had him to the wall of his hotel room, her struggling in his grasp all the while, he looked her dead in the eyes. "Don't make me kill you," he breathed, his lips quirking. "Or have to drag your sorry ass back home."
She stopped struggling.
They spent days in the capital of Hungary, tracking down Dreykov to assassinate him, as was her task in defecting to SHIELD. After they were successful – because indeed, they were, the proof being Dreykov's daughter weeping over his ruined and lifeless body – they spent ten more days in the ceiling of a subway station there, unable to leave the city.
"What do I do now?" she wondered out loud on one of those days, her form pressed against his side.
He looked at her like she was crazy. "It's like I told you, you'll come back home with me. We'll be partners at SHIELD and – " He broke off then, because he hadn't told her about Cooper and Lila yet, there never having been the right time or place.
But she looked at him through her eyelashes, just as she had during his heat. "And go back to Iowa?" she supplied.
And that was how he found out that dream of his...hadn't been a dream, after all.
She also told him how the Red Room had never made any stipulation whatsoever about not killing an omega during their heat. Funny how that worked.
They did go back to Iowa. Natalia – no, not Natalia, Natasha, after she had requested him when they were leaving Budapest to call her such, wanting to leave her old name behind – wore a comical expression on her face as they entered the farmhouse and saw their children. Cooper and Lila were four years old now, and they were bright, mischievous things. A miracle of hers come to life.
She was much more nervous around Laura, but this soon gave way as the older woman wrapped an arm around her and led her to the kitchen. "Clint's told me so much about you," his sister said, sitting Natasha down at the table to help her to tea and cookies.
"What little there was to tell, anyways," he interjected.
Laura ignored him. "Thank you for helping him during his heat; without you, there wouldn't have been those two," at this, she pointed towards where the kids were playing with their LEGOs in the living room. "And thank you for coming home to us. It means a lot."
"...You're welcome?" Natasha replied. She looked completely flabbergasted at what else to say.
Later, after the kids were put to bed, she followed him back to his bedroom. "You can have your own, if you want," Clint told her. "Natal – Natasha, you can damn have anything you want, I'll find some way to make it yours."
Her cheeks colored the hint of a flush. "I want you."
When they found themselves in bed, she tensed underneath him. He waited, asked her if she was okay, and when she said she was he kissed her on the lips. Then, his kisses trailed downwards, until he got to the hem of her pants. "If you...if you don't want me to see yet, or ever, I'll understand."
"No." She shook her head. "You can take them off."
The sight of the scars made him want to cry, but he didn't. With her permission, he kissed each and every single one of them, before delving his tongue in between her folds. Initially, this made her flinch, and he stopped. Pulled back to ask her again if she was okay.
But then her hands were in his hair, pushing him back down. He pulled out all of the stops, every trick he'd learned before he had met her. He wanted to make her feel like the woman, the theta she was, no matter if she didn't smell that way anymore. He wanted to make her feel loved, cherished.
Because she was.
Natasha moaned, her head falling back onto the pillows. When she came, there wasn't nearly as much slick as there should've been, but that was alright. Reaching over to the nightstand, he grabbed a bottle of water-based lube and popped it open. "Is it okay if I – ?"
"Yes. Yes!"
He inserted one finger, followed by a second. The pleasure which slackened her face, made the harsh edges smoother, was a nirvana in of itself. He purred as he captured her mouth in another kiss, placing his dick at her entrance. It wasn't as big as even a beta's, was more like what those trashy romance novels Laura loved to read would call the "omega cocklet"really, but it would get the job done.
Besides, in the future there were always sex toys.
She pushed herself down onto him, and the feeling of entering her was akin to a homecoming. He made sure to pace himself, not wanting this to be too much for her. Unlike him five years ago, she didn't demand him to go faster. She merely whispered sweet nothings in Russian which were downright dirty, her hands coming down to his ass and playing with his well-slicked median.
While he came first this time, she was not far behind him. In the aftermath, they cuddled together. "Я тебя люблю," Clint said. "Welcome home."
Smiling, Natasha nuzzled his mating gland. There wasn't a bite there, but he had a feeling – no, he knew, there would be one in the future. "Я знаю. I love you too, Омега.")
Word Count: 10,096