Happy Wednesday! LOL, guys, I am on a roll with these!
Guest : rest easy:)
Batghost: YAY! my mission is complete
tanchik: Well, we will see something about Kate in this chapter (if I remember right) and as for Clint, I feel like he'd know Natasha enough to understand. BUT, we shall see where this leads:) And I am totally updating faster than I thought i would!
khaitosfren: oh yes, really. Get ready, folks, Avenger babies dreams are coming true. Remember: this is the end of this series!
amy. .9: poor Clint. all this excitement and he will never know:(
5mairer: hehehehehehe.
discordchick: Natasha is planning to be a little plethora of surprises.
Fury-Natalia: hahahahaha! I have therefore accomplished my goals
Chapter 40
It took over a week for the Avengers to return from the middle of space and in that time Natasha exited her room precisely once. She spoke to no one, accepted the meals Steve made, prepared, and delivered with the tray, leaving it outside her door, and trapped herself in the last remaining dregs of Clint's finals days. When the Gateway came to its final resting place in Cape Canaveral, Natasha joined the other Avengers at the welcome ceremony. None stayed long. Other heroes could take the reins of public appearances. The team itself wanted to shrink back to Avengers Tower and disappear into obscurity.
Thor, Sif, and his father's captain-of-the-guards, Veurr, met them at the Aven-Jet. He stood at the door with a mixture of excitement and trepidation while leaning heavily on a cane someone provided him. When Tony didn't outright attack him, and even offered a kind acknowledgement of his existence, Thor knew he was safely accepted back into the team. The rest of the world could consider itself officially out.
Steve and the others offered kind, brief greetings to the Asgardians that came along with Thor. They might have come, intending that the son of Odin would return to Asgard with them at once, however Thor himself entertained separate plans. He mounted the ramp of the jet and settled down in his normal spot.
Steve looked over at Sif. "He might need some time."
Sif nodded slightly. "He has not spoken to Jane. She remains on Asgard in our company, as he requested."
"Let us handle him for a while. I think everyone deserves some time off. I'll look after him. You can trust me in that." Steve took his leave of them and joined the Avengers. This was his job, his roll. Keep the team together. Keep them sane, supported, and working. Be their representative when times got tough. He could grieve, on his own, later.
The Avengers consolidated themselves. No longer did the team outstretch to the half dozen other lesser hero organizations. They didn't want the world's abject, morbid curiosity fixing their eyes on Avengers Mansion in New York, waiting to see how Captain America, or Tony Stark reacted to a crisis before they handled it themselves. In the seven years the war had stretched for, Kate Bishop, Gambit, Wolverine, Rogue, Iron Fist, Spider-man, and more had taken up the slack left on Earth and the Nova Luna colony. Even with the return of the big guns, they could still control Earth's problems. The Avengers weren't out of the game entirely, they simply needed their time to reconnect with the important things in their life, especially after the loss of so many.
T'Challa returned to his people. Parker to the mansion. Thor, Natasha, Tony, Bruce, Steve, and Pepper alone took up their old residences in the New York tower. Apartments in the mansion, New York proper, D.C. and a few personal items from Clint's home in New Jersey were moved. Clint's Place, the archery range that became a monument to Barton's life, was turned over to his faithful employee and dear friend Bill, his wife, and their new three kids. Bill's cousin, Denali Rizzo, came back into the area with his family and took on an assistant roll. It would forever remain in Clint's name. No one felt right calling themselves the new owners, and that was how it would always be.
Kate Bishop loved Clint like a second father. The girl, his protégé, had grown up immensely in the time everyone spent away. She was good, almost as good with a bow as her mentor. To prevent the old Barton home in New Jersey from falling into disrepair, she began to take up residence in the spare suite he erected in the backyard for visitors passing through. It was a God-send during the Mutant Registration round up days, and anyone passing through Clint's neck of the woods knew they had that small bit of paradise to look forward too at his home. As for the main house, touching it, or his things within, seemed too much to bear. Again, it would always be his, but just having that space brought her closer to the man she never had a chance to say a proper goodbye to.
Moving into the Tower again after so long away had a strange nostalgia to it. Stepping out of the elevator and into the living floor, one faced the long, living quarter hallway. After a dividing wall, one first encountered the living room/open kitchen combo where so many Christmases had been spent in the past. The pine needles seemed to last forever, stuffed in couch cushions, in the carpet fibers, or under the lip of the kitchen island. They spent most gathered meals standing around that island, Clint cooking something for breakfast that woke everyone up and ushered them into the new day. Tony coming up behind him and setting the Keurig to brew. Individual coffee cups, color coordinated. Bruce's was green.
Down the hallway was a short, thigh-high table with the same fake plant sitting there for almost twenty years. Pepper kept putting it off but she wanted to throw it away. When Steve moved in he mentioned how the color brightened up the place. She decided to leave it be. Bruce had rolled over the table, twice, when he brought a girl home one night.
The first living quarter belonged to Clint. It was on the left side of the Tower, the door was open, and someone had already cleared the debris and rubble left by the Kree warship. It looked almost like it always did; bed spreads on the floor, rumpled up pillow, mattress reminiscent of a boulder. An outline of a bow, with two hooks for it, hung on the wall. Beneath the outline was a yellow post-it note Clint never took off the wall. No one knew how it survived the rampant destruction.
Promised I'd give your bow back, didn't say anything about arrows. Feel better soon, and maybe you'll earn them.
-Steve
Steve's room was next on the left with Bruce Banner's directly across from him. Natasha followed on the right and Thor the left. The hall itself ended at a single doorway. It belonged to the Stark suite. A full living room, bedroom, master bathroom, and private elevator leading to the platform over their heads. The bar, pool, landing platform, and other amenities existed up and behind that hidden portal. Or, one might take it downward to the private floor between floors. The hidden Stark lab where the Iron Man suits resided, Bruce's happy place existed, and all the tinker toys they worked on daily came to life.
Bruce stood in the lab now, reasoning with Tony as to why, exactly, he was not the man to fill the very important void in their new lives together.
"Tony, I'm a doctor, I'm a neurosurgeon, a physicist, and expert in nuclear modeling and gamma radiation, cancer therapies! I am not, nor have I ever been an obstetrician."
"But you could be…"
Bruce Banner gave his friend a flat, dead eyed stare. "No."
When confronted with a wall on a path Tony thought was the easiest, Stark did what any rational man would do. He continued to press the matter. "Natasha's having Clint's baby. You know her anatomy better than anyone except Clint himself. You know she's not going to trust anyone else, Bruce!"
The scientist squirmed around the lab bench, placing it between Tony and himself. He'd listened to this self-same argument non-stop for nine days. While it didn't surprise him that Natasha told the billionaire about her pregnancy, it did shock him that she was willing to give the baby up so swiftly. Tony wasn't a bad guy and Bruce thought he'd make a rather amazing father, but that did not mean he was willing to become a private Avengers baby doctor.
"Tony, when you have a toothache, you see the dentist, not the proctologist." Bruce motioned to himself. "Look at me. I'm the proctologist. I don't know the first thing about a birth crisis."
"You had a rotation in it during med school, you told me all about delivering that baby in the back of a van!"
Bruce lowered his glasses. "That was the back of an ambulance, under supervision of a licensed OBGYN, and one of the best, I might say. I'm sorry, I can't just become a specialist in the next," he checked the date on his watch, "six months." Bruce knew it was a lie the moment the words exited his mouth. Technically, he'd been working on exactly that since the moment he learned of Natasha's, then Pepper's condition. He could do fifteen diagnostic tests already, interpret them confidently, and deliver a breech baby. Tony, apparently, knew that too.
"I would do it myself, Bruce, because I've been reading every single medical journal you had, but doctor's won't hand me a scalpel and trust me to know what to do with it. You have performed brain surgery. On me."
"That might be true—"
"It is true."
"But, those two are going to pop within a week of each other. If they go the same day, I can't possibly be in two places at once." Bruce shrugged, mic dropped, case closed. "We need to bring someone else in."
Tony folded his arms across his chest, sank into one of the high backed lab chairs, and stewed on that notion. "Ok, fine. If I let you off the hook on this, then who would you suggest we trust? It can't be just anyone, Bruce. The world's catching on pretty quick to everything Clint did for us out there. If news hits that he has a son," Tony shook his head, "No one wants that."
Bruce smiled a little. "A son? It's too early to tell. Maybe it's a girl."
"Natasha's convinced."
Bruce nodded. He had noticed that every time, and times were brief, that she spoke about Clint's baby, she called it a "he". Feeling Tony might be finished chasing him around the table, Bruce sank into one of the lab bench stools. A memory welled up in him, unbidden. He noticed them coming more and more lately with Clint's absence in the Tower striking him harder and harder.
Ton noticed the shift in the expression on Bruce's face. "What is it?" he asked.
He wondered whether or not he should say it, given the affect it might have on Tony. In the end, Bruce decided he had to talk about it if only to prevent cracking up himself. "I remember bringing Clint down here early one morning. Must have been, I don't know, years ago. About a year or two after we made the team. He'd gone deaf on that mission in Egypt. The one with you and Steve,"
Tony indicated he remembered.
"He sat in this stool," Bruce tapped the seat a little. "And I fitted his first pair of hearing aids. You know, it's the first time I ever saw him lose it. I played some classical music or something. And he just couldn't help it."
Tony's jaw clenched and unclenched. He remembered the aftermath of that time. Working late nights with Bruce on a brain implant to take over what Clint lost. Weeks convincing Clint to go under the knife. The elation of its success. The thought of his surgery finally brought him back t the topic at hand. "Doctor," he said with a measure less enthusiasm.
"Castillo." Bruce said, snapping out of his revere. "She's the best. Familiar with super soldiers and she did her residency in maternal care before taking on specialty practice for powered patients. She's the best in both fields, something Natasha will need."
"You mentioned a second?"
"Grant Lindsey. I did my rotation under him in med school. The man has an attitude like Gregory House and a mouth most sailors would be proud of. I once saw that man deliver quintuplets in four minutes. He's leveled-headed under pressure and one of the best surgeons I've ever worked with. He regularly assists in fetal, in womb, operations pre delivery for children with developmental defects."
"Primary care, Castillo. Emergency, Lindsey." Tony summarized.
Bruce nodded. "I wouldn't go with anyone else. Not with Natasha at least."
"Whoever Natasha sees, Pepper will want to see, it's how girls are." Tony leaned back, folded his hand into a fist and leaned his head against it with his elbow propped on the work desk. "You better start reading up. If something goes wrong, our girls are going to demand you be there."
"I know."
"In fact, I will too."
Bruce grinned. "I know that too."
"You know what I just realized?"
"What?"
"I'm actually going to be a dad."
The expression on his face shifted. Something, much like happiness, crossed his eyes and for a time he could say nothing at all as he thought about it. Bruce sat on the other side of the work bench and watched the emotions roll through him. They were tumultuous waves tossed up like an eastern wind, part enjoyed, part dragging an unending trauma. Tony didn't want to be happy, not with Clint dead.
"How am I supposed to feel?" he asked after a time.
Bruce shook his head a little. "I don't think anyone knows how to answer that."
"How do you feel?"
Sensing a change in his meaning, Bruce took a few moments to contemplate his answer. The thought came to him in a wave. "Ah, that. Betty. So you heard?"
"Me and Clint were nailing down our chicks and she goes off to marry some Japanese guy while you're away at war? It's screwed up."
"It wasn't like that, and I told her too, and, if you must know, I was invited to the wedding. As much as I would like to hate her husband, he is a stand-up guy."
"Did you actually go to the wedding?"
"I might have been the Hulk at the time. But I will not confirm, or deny, that."
Tony smiled. "That's ok. I'll hate him for you."
Next time: How has Thor been handling what he has seen? Natasha aims to find out!
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