A/N: Hello. *Ducks everything thrown at me.* I'm sorry, I'm sorry. :( I really thought I could have updated this sooner but life happened. You know those funny experiences where your writing foreshadows what's about to happen to you in real life? Yeah that kinda happened to me. Hence, my long absence from this fic. But I'm here now, and my life is kinda ordered, more or less.
Anyways, enjoy! Leave a review and I'll finish this, don't worry.
Tony, Bruce, and Helen walked in a room.
That would've been a start of a good joke, Tony thought had he not been holding this blasted piece of paper in his hands.
In all the history of the world that he knows and that he knows is possible, this shouldn't have happened. Tony wasn't a believer in miracles, but this is nothing short of one. He snorted inwardly, thinking that miracles ought to be benevolent in form and idea but this is the farthest miracle-miracle there is.
There was no child.
There was no child inside Natasha's womb.
Not alive, not dead either.
There simply is nothing.
"How can this be, Helen? She's pregnant, wasn't she? Or isn't she? Fuck, this is a doozy. Tell me someone else is also as crazed by this as I am," Tony sank to the nearest tabletop in the office.
"I am not sure yet, but best case scenario? Whatever fluid inside Ms. Romanoff right now appears to be stabilizing her, or her pregnancy at least. I am terribly out of my depth here as you are, Mr. Stark." Helen told them. "She appears to believe the pregnancy is still ongoing and that the baby inside her, or isn't inside her, is still inside."
Bruce took the StarkPad from the table and scrolled through the raw data gleaned from the first batch of results JARVIS ran. "Blood pressure …. Hormones …. Everything else looks normal here, Tony. It really looks like as if Natasha is experiencing a normal pregnancy."
"But the fetus isn't there?" Tony redundantly said.
"…it's not. It simply isn't there." Bruce said in a soft and bewildered voice.
"We need to run more thorough scans on Ms. Romanoff, Mr. Stark. I'm sure between Mr. Banner, you, and myself that we can sort this out." Helen smiled weakly, trying to inject a bit of steel in her voice. A woman, a mother, should never experience this. As long as Helen could help, she was going to see the Black Widow and her child well.
"JARVIS can you please do a full set of tests for Natasha?" Tony asked the disembodied voice above.
"Of course, Mr. Stark," the AI echoed, "However, Mr. Stark, Dr. Cho, and Mr. Bruce, I would like to call to attention a small injury that I'm afraid I have omitted due to its comparatively healed state on Ms. Romanoff."
Everyone stilled.
"What injury?" Bruce asked hesitatingly. His troubled countenance was also echoed by Tony and Helen as well.
"When I was accounting for Ms. Romanoff's injury, I naturally ordered them from the worst to the bad. However, due to the nature of the emergency, I have failed to also account for the comparatively healed wounds and injuries on Ms. Romanoff when we were trying to save her."
"Get to the point, JARVIS." Tony rang out. He had a very bad feeling about this.
"Ms. Romanoff has a five-inch scar just below her stomach. It appears as if the scar is months old, but incorporating Ms. Romanoff's healing rate and the scar being sealed by laser, it appears as if nothing but a thin white line, barely perceptible in the first glance," the AI explained in a somber tone. Contrary to what everyone believes, Tony had JARVIS calibrate his emotions and even his sarcasm level to attune to the situation. Tony could've kissed the brilliance of his younger self because he honestly thought that had JARVIS delivered this piece of news with a clinical voice and detachment, he and the others might've lost it.
"Are you saying that there is no child because… because the child is already out of Natasha's womb?" Helen asked in an incredulous voice.
Tony couldn't believe it. Natasha had looked every bit as pregnant as she was in the video. But then again, she looked pregnant now and apparently, she's not.
"Oh dear God, this is fucked up." Bruce said out of the blue.
Tony couldn't even respond to that unusual quip by Bruce. He was busy digesting the fact that Natasha was pregnant, had her child cut out of her, and still managed to think she was pregnant.
Just what did those fuckers do to her in that hellhole?
"It appears so, Dr. Cho. The liquid inside Ms. Romanoff seems to be amniotic fluid as well yet there are trace amounts of another serum that is alien to both the Red Room's and Dr. Erskine's formula. It also appears that it isn't strengthening anything within Ms. Romanoff but rather … communicating, for lack of a better word."
Steve couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from Natasha's prone form. She was inside the ICU unit after Helen's machine stabilized her and knitted together her wounds. She was still bound for surgery later but as of the moment, she's safe.
His eyes drifted towards the bulge in the soft blanket that covered Natasha.
How could I have turned my back on them?
He knew berating and kicking himself wouldn't do anything good to Natasha yet he couldn't stop blaming himself. He couldn't bear to think about when Natasha would open her eyes, and they will open, and all he could see would be contempt and hate for him.
Now, won't that be grand? He did the exact same to her back when he unfairly threw her out of his life. Natasha doing it to him would be exactly what he deserved.
The quiet hum of all the machines surrounding her, the regular beats of heart, and the peaceful yet tired look on her face all tugged at his heart. She shouldn't be here.
Steve couldn't bear to go near Natasha and enter the ICU unit, so the scrubs that Tony had given him earlier still lay clutched on his hands. The pull to touch Natasha again was strong, but he wanted to go find Tony or Bruce or Helen and ask what's wrong with their child.
Their child.
God, their child.
He rose up, took one last look at Natasha, and headed down the hallway towards the office that the three were currently holed up in.
He knocked on the door, and a beat or two passed before the knob was turned and Helen let him inside.
"Mr. Rogers, I was just about to call you," Helen looked up to the face of Captain America. Though at this moment, he was as far removed as he can be with the visage of the strong, stalwart hero. Helen didn't blame him.
Steve walked into the room and took a seat against the wall. Once he had settled himself in, he looked at the three grim faces staring back at him and uttered the only thing he can say.
"Talk."
Now that's just not right. Bruce thought. Steve normally has the voice of confidence, both literally and figuratively. But just that single word was enough to convey how much Steve can take right now.
"Steve, we… I mean, JARVIS… Natasha was pregnant." Bruce was the first one to break the silence.
Steve looked at the face of his friend, and with a hollow yet controlled voice asked, "'Was?'"
Helen jumped in, "Yes, was. As far as we know, Mr. Rogers, Natasha was indeed pregnant. Yet she isn't now." At Steve's bewildered expression, she continued. "It appears that at some point in the not-so-distant past, she had undergone a Cesarean section and the fet-child , was taken. It only appears that she is pregnant now because apparently her amniotic sac was re-engineered."
"But I felt the child kick! When we were in the Quinjet, I …" Steve trailed off.
"As the sac was re-engineered, we have cause to believe that the fluid inside was also. It holds a third, distinct serum that is quite different from yours or Ms. Romanoff's serum. This particular serum holds … communicative properties that we believe are the reason why you felt a kick when you were rushing her in." Helen responded.
Steve didn't say anything. Didn't say anything for a long while. The tension in the room thickened so much to the point that Tony was about to address Steve when Steve himself cut him off.
"So, in short, our child is probably in the hands of the people responsible for her abduction?" He said in a calm, short tone.
"Yes, and because of the serum, he probably is still alive, Cap." Tony said softly. "But, again, the odds are—" he wasn't able to finish his sentence because Steve suddenly stood up.
"Then suit up. We are going after my child and I will get him back to his or her mother. Natasha will see our child even if it is the last thing I'll do." Steve said with all the authority he could muster, and at that moment, Captain America shone through his eyes and his tone.
But Tony had a bad feeling about this.
"Cap, Cap! Hey Steve, wait up!" Tony said as he rushed beside Steve. Yet Steve didn't stop or slow down. His stark face was there for all to see, yet underneath all that, the resolve Captain America is known for showed.
"You can't just go about punching things and people, Cap," Tony reminded him as they turned a corridor into the Tower's armory. The doors opened with a whiz and they stepped inside. Steve immediately went to his own personal armory, a veritable shrine of blue, red, and white. Tony thought it was funny when he was designing it. There was a replica of the shield made by his father on the wall that signaled the small alcove as his own. There were other alcoves along the walls that served as a stockroom of sorts for every Avengers in the Tower. Tony went crazy decorating them, too, and he was damn proud of it. He could've been a kickass interior designer if it wasn't for his genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist image.
"We need to think about this thoroughly, and not just my usual 'I have a plan. Attack.' plan of attack," Tony said. "We need to be smart about this."
Steve stepped into a platform and JARVIS silently outfitted him with his Captain America suit. It was a nifty trick of Stark to integrate how he suits up with the rest of the Avengers' suits. It saves time especially when they were on time-sensitive missions.
The doors whizzed again and inside stepped Clint, Fury, and Hill. Clint was already suited up, and so was Fury, not that Steve ever saw Fury in anything else but that long coat of his.
"For once, Tony, you are right. Our plan is to attack. Find my child, give him/her to Natasha, and then make those bastards pay," Steve grabbed a few other gadgets and then turned to them. "I will make it right for Natasha."
Clint's face looked like it was carved from granite, but he nodded. Clint and Fury were both briefed by Hill about Natasha's unusual situation.
"Damn it, Steve! You can't just attack the base!" Tony said. "You attack the base, save your child, then return to Natasha. What then? Do you think Natasha will be okay? No! We need to learn more about her condition and I do not think that you destroying that base is actually beneficial to us!"
"What do you want us to do, Tony?" Clint asked him, turning his tense body towards the man.
"I'm only saying that we need to be smart about this." Tony said.
"Stark's right. I have a hunch that everything is not as it seems with Romanoff," Fury interjected "You can't afford to destroy the base any more than you destroyed it leaving. If Natasha was held there for a time, it would make sense that there are information there about the things they were doing to her."
Everyone looked at Steve.
Steve's face faltered for a bit, but then he regrouped. "Fine, we'll do a reconnaissance mission. Stealth in and out, find any lab and computer and download information pertinent to Natasha and my child."
Tony nodded. "J? We'll need you to do some serious hacking. Not that it's hard for you."
"Of course, Mr. Stark. Anything to help the Avengers."