Hi everyone! I hope you're enjoying this story so far!
In this chapter: Natasha wakes up, and the Avengers try to tell Nick Fury what happened.
Without further ado...
"So you're telling me that that was Romanoff I just operated on?" Banner asked incredulously.
Pepper had told him the story in a sane, reasonable way, while Stark dry-heaved in the corner.
He was so happy that he didn't kill Natasha that he almost puked.
Bruce shook his head like he was asking himself why the hell he was part of this insane group of people and sighed.
"Stark, tell me you know how to turn her back. We don't know anything about taking care of a child," the ever so reasonable Banner said, eying Tony in disdain.
Stark huffed. "It can't be that hard."
From the glares he received, he knew that it was. "Plus, I have no idea how to turn her back."
Silence.
More silence.
Then, "I'm going to kill him," Hawkeye whispered, while Thor held him back.
It was a promising start to their co-parenting journey.
Pepper was sitting in a chair next to Natasha's bed, while the young girl slept. Banner told them that she needed at least 24 hours for her body to recover. It wasn't an easy surgery, to say the least. He had to stop so much internal bleeding, that she needed 3 bags of transfused blood to get through it.
She looked as pale as usual, not the deathly color Stark saw during his ride down the elevator. Her chest shook with every breath she took, and her cute little face was scrunched up in a pained expression.
Pepper brushed her hair out of her forehead in a gentle way and smiled sadly. "Bruce? Is there any way we can give her more morphine?" She asked the doctor, who was writing on his notepad, standing at the foot of the bed.
"I'm afraid not. She's allergic. Well, Adult Natasha was, so I presume baby Natasha is, too."
Pepper winced inwardly. She's allergic to morphine. How did she manage to recover after every mission?
Pepper remembered once the boys coming back to the tower in a panic because Natasha was shot twice in the chest trying to protect Clint.
She was fine, of course, but it took her a month to be able to walk normally again. Pepper couldn't imagine how she did it without the help of painkillers.
She sighed, then felt Natasha move.
"Bruce?" Her voice rose as she saw her hand twitch. "I think she's waking up!"
"That's impossible," Bruce whispered, browsing through the papers in his hands. "Her healing is almost as fast as Adult Natasha's. Incredible."
"Should we restrain her?" Steve asked from the doorway in a small voice. This Natasha didn't know them. She was still a trainee at Assassin School or whatever. What if she tried to kill them again?
"Are you kidding me? NO! She's not some prisoner, Jesus, Steve," Pepper whispered harshly. She wanted to continue making him feel bad about it when Natasha's eyes fluttered open.
She blinked warily and looked around her. Her eyes landed on Pepper, who smiled at her reassuringly.
"Jarvis, activate the earbuds," Bruce said to the A.I.
While Natasha was unconscious, Tony had created translating earbuds that would allow them to talk with Natasha and understand her in real time, seeing as no one spoke Russian- except Barton, of course.
They each had one, as did the child.
"Hey there," Pepper whispered, stroking her hair gently.
Natasha looked at her in confusion. "What are you doing?" She asked in a small, hoarse voice.
Pepper looked at Bruce, who shrugged his shoulders in an 'I don't know' manner.
"Call Clint," she said to Steve, who practically bolted from the room.
She turned back to the small child, who was watching her with suspicion.
"Natasha, you're safe. This is not a test, you're not training anymore. You're free," she whispered gently, smiling as maternally as she could.
The child blinked, and her eyes hardened. She was still absolutely expressionless. She was starting to really freak Pepper out.
"My name is Natalia." She tried to get up, an expression of pure rage on her face then fell back in a scream of pain.
"Did you tear your stitches?" Pepper asked in a hurry, her hand shooting to the child's chest, but she stopped herself at the last second. "Can I check, Natalia?" She tried using the name the child gave her, to no avail.
"Don't touch me," she hissed, and Pepper almost thought she was speaking with Romanoff herself.
Pepper raised her hands in the air in surrender and backed away from the bed.
That was when Clint decided to make his entrance. He approached Natasha with his easy, Clint smile, and sat on Pepper's chair.
"Hey Nat," he took out her earbud, speaking to her in her mother tongue.
She seemed genuinely relieved to see someone speaking Russian. "Why are they not speaking Russian? Where am I?" She asked, letting the emotions creep onto her face. She looked so confused and panicked, Pepper's heart almost broke for her.
"You're in America, Natalia." He held her hand and continued smiling at her, trying his best not to show an ounce of sympathy or pity. He knew that she hated that.
"No," she whispered, terror overtaking her. "They're gonna kill me!" She cried and clutched Clint's arm in despair. "Take me back! They're gonna kill me if I don't come back! Please, please!"
Clint's smile broke, replaced by a sad look. He sat next to her on the bed and took her hand. She was crying, her chest heaving with the sobs. He knew that straining her lungs that much after having them almost burned to a crisp was not a good idea.
"Talia… You're free. You escaped from the Red Room."
At the name, her head snapped up to look at his face.
"… What?" She calmed down a little, wiping her eyes with her bandaged arm.
His teeth gritted. He was so gonna kill Stark.
"You did. You came to America to escape, and we took you in." Clint lied the best he could. He didn't know what she remembered exactly, but he hoped that she would believe him.
"I… I don't remember…" She whispered and looked at Clint with wide green eyes.
Meanwhile, Pepper was still watching the scene, along with Bruce and Steve. They collectively and silently decided to leave the master assassins alone. It was high time they ask Nick Fury who the fuck Natasha Romanoff was exactly.
They got out of the room to come face to face with the rest of the Avengers, who were sitting in the waiting room, worry etched on all their faces.
Pepper felt her heart constrict when she saw young Peter press his palms against his eyes in an effort to stop himself from crying. He just lost the closest person to a mother he ever had.
As much as Natasha would have loathed to admit it, she loved Peter with all her heart. She taught him how to defend himself efficiently, how to cook on the run when you don't have much to work with, how to stay strong despite heartbreak after his first girlfriend left him for the school jock. They even spoke Russian together, though very slowly, and using basic words, for Peter was still learning.
All those little things brought them closer together. To the point where one time, Peter called her мама спайдера in front of everyone, while they were having dinner one night. Romanoff had just smiled softly at him, surprising everyone in the room. They didn't know she could smile.
They had asked Jarvis what it meant afterward when both spiders were well out of earshot. The A.I told them that it simply meant 'spider mom', and that melted everyone's hearts. They never teased Peter about it.
She couldn't imagine what he must be going through right now.
Bruce cleared his throat before she could let herself be carried away by her thoughts. All the heads in the room turned towards them, curious.
"How is she?" Tony asked in a strangled voice, his eyes red-rimmed. Pepper sighed and took him in her arms, caressing his hair softly.
Tony had apologized profusely to Peter and Clint, and everyone else, though the formers were not keen on accepting his apology. Pepper knew this whole deal was taking its toll on him, that he didn't mean to do what he did, that he respected Natasha and wanted her alive as much as everyone else. She had saved their asses during missions countless times, usually by pushing them out of the way, and offering herself up instead, succeeding in missions deemed unsalvageable.
Her skills were beyond perfect, they all knew that, but they also missed her as a person, not just as a leader. Like that one time, she went out at three in the morning to buy Pop Tarts for Thor when he was sick with some Asgardian illness and desperately needed some. Or when she took Steve out for a few hours to introduce him to the new New York City, because she knew he was beyond lost. Or when she soothed Bruce after a particularly violent Hulk-out, where he almost killed her and Tony.
Most importantly, when she stayed up with Tony after a nightmare, even though he - and Pepper, when Tony told her- knew she would rather be alone.
She wasn't an all-out comforting and kind person, but those tiny gestures made her team realize quickly that she cared for them more than she would ever admit. That she had a heart, even though she's trying so hard to hide it. Pepper didn't know if that was due to her training, or the countless years of pain she endured -or was rumored to have endured, at least- before joining S.H.I.E.L.D. Maybe it was both.
"We have to tell Fury," Bruce calmly announced, making everyone's jaws drop.
"Are you insane, Son Of Banner?" Thor got out of his seat and rose to his full height, towering over everyone in the room. "He will surely have our heads."
"I agree with the big guy. You're batshit crazy, Banner," Stark deadpanned, passing a hand through his hair, a tell-tale sign of his stress.
Pepper glared at him from her position in his arms.
"Would you prefer having to deal with her without knowing anything about what she had to go through?" She hissed, glaring at him with all her might.
He gulped, a guilty look overtaking his features in a wince. "You're right," he sighed dejectedly and got up. "Let's go call the pirate."
They all made their way to the Avengers Conference Room, that Tony set up not long ago. They all agreed on one thing when they first moved into the tower together, three months ago: they hated being called to S.H.I.E.L.D all the time. It was an hour's drive away, and they didn't feel frequent road trips would do much to cement their relationship. It would cause more fights if anything.
So they had Stark prepare this room, a spacious, but cozy conference room, with plush sofas of all colors, pushed against the walls, a mini fridge filled to the brim with all kinds of snacks, a coffee machine, a huge flat screen tv, and a glass table surrounded by chairs.
Each Avenger had their own chair. Thor had one that resembled a throne, Tony's was a blue armchair, Peter's could recline, and so on. They corresponded to their personalities perfectly. Even Pepper had one.
At some point of their stay at Stark Tower, the Heroes agreed that Pepper Potts was to be their handler until she got tired of their shit and left them to deal with it by themselves. It was a unanimous decision that they all seemed to take at about the same time, though no one spoke about it out loud.
They all settled around the glass table, Tony with a coffee in his hand, and took their respective Stark Tablets from the stack they were piled in.
No one mentioned how empty Natasha's chair was, at the head of the table, and how hollow it made the room seem.
"Are we ready?" Pepper asked, though she obviously knew the answer.
Even though no one was, they nodded, and she pushed some buttons on her tablet. Soon enough, a ringing sound reverberated through the room.
The Avengers joined the conference call with a few presses on their Tablets, and soon, Nick Fury's face appeared on the screen of the tv. He looked beyond annoyed to seem them.
"What now, Romanoff-" He stopped himself when his eyes fell on her empty chair.
The group felt the tension in the room suddenly skyrocket. Natasha had always been Nick Fury's favorite. No wonder he gave her the lead on all the missions, and made her an Alpha member of S.H.I.E.L.D, along with him and the freaking Secretary of Defense. He even gave her the Avengers. If that wasn't a dad spoiling his favorite murder child, Pepper didn't know what was.
He would kill them if something happened to her. And something did.
They all looked at each other with uncertainty, before Steve, Natasha's right hand, spoke up.
"Sir, Agent Romanoff isn't… Available at the moment," he admitted quietly, but Fury heard him perfectly.
"And why is that, Captain?" The Director seemed seconds away from ordering the Stark Tower to be bombed.
"I kinda transformed her into a kid," Stark answered with his usual nonexistent tact.
Silence.
More silence.
"I'm going to murder you, Stark."
That was, like, the fifth time someone said that to him today. He was starting to get used to it.
That was it! I hope I'm living up to your expectations! :3
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