Fast, fast, fast, updates!
Batghost: this may brighten your day some:)
Fury-Natalia: nope, nope, nope, nope...
Ms. Hawkeye: hahaha, yes i can do this to your questions will be answered very soon.
discordchick: oh, rest easy. steve gets his soon:)
amy. .9: hahahahahahahahahahahah...
IceDragoness1: daw! Yes, in some ways reading this isnt safe around the general population simply for the pure emotions you will surely experience.
Chapter 42
Natasha Romanov watched Steve sleep. His steady breathing rhythmic and somehow peculiar for a man who spent less than a few hours every night accomplishing such a task. She could understand the sentiment now. The meeting in Washington had taken all the energy out of him. Rhodes and Sam carried him out of the court room floor and together advocated in his stead for the remainder of the proceedings. All the headline news outlets ran the sole photo of the prostrate Captain America, cradled in the arms of his friends, as Sam shoved the masses away.
Steve twitched under the rays of the sun dropping through his curtains. He tended to wake with the new day, all the more reason Natasha wanted to get up before him.
He shifted in the bed, blinking through the dawn at her. It wasn't easy to see past the tray of orange juice, stack of pancakes, and quarter pound of bacon. How he missed smelling that, he had no idea. Pushing up on one elbow, he gazed over the food at her.
"Tash? What are you doing? What time is it?"
"I was repaying you for breakfast over the last month. And, it's early. I'm going to the doctor's with Bruce today."
Steve looked down at the tray of food. "You didn't have to do this. I mean—"
"Yeah I did." Natasha folded her arms in front of her chest and stacked one knee over the other. There was a few things left unsaid between the two of them. She'd let those words hang in the air, obscure and hidden beneath the pain they suffered through in silence.
"It's not that I love you," Steve said suddenly, lifting himself up. He grabbed the orange juice and took down a swig. Natasha watched him, wondering just what was scrolling around in that mind of his.
"I'll admit that I loved you, very much, once. I'll even admit that the minute Clint told me he married you, I kinda wanted to kill him." Steve set the glass down, picked up a piece of bacon, and smiled. "I was obviously jealous. Then he took me aside, and he told me something that I don't think I'll ever forget. He said, I wasn't a father to him, a brother, or even family. I was his conscience. He knew if I gave him my word on something, then I kept it. It took me a long time to come to grips with that."
Natasha smiled a little. "So is this you saying flat out you aren't planning on convincing me to keep the baby, marry you, and live a happy, weird, life together?"
He laughed, ate piece of bacon, and offered her one. "No, I'm not. You weren't ever mine, Natasha. Clint said it right. You don't belong to anyone. Not him and not to me. Whatever you decide to do, I'll support you. And I'm going to keep looking out for you, whether you like it or not. Because I gave him my word that I would."
She accepted the slice, forgoing the fact that she'd already eaten her fair share while cooking his. "Is this a salty olive branch you offer?"
"Depends on if you say yes."
"What about that new girl of yours? How's she feel about you playing nurse maid?"
"I think she understands."
Natasha watched him for a while, trying to fix something in her mind. Finally she asked, "All right, who is she? Do I know her?"
Steve laughed. "Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure you know her and she isn't mind. Like I said before, I don't think she's one to accept the whole love idea."
Her eyes narrowed. "She's not from this planet is she? Wow, soldier boy, you are just full of surprises."
"Be nice, now. I guess none of you were around when Jane kinda forced Thor's hand. After the Earth evacuation, she wasn't about to be left out of things one more time. He decided to send her to Asgard, to keep her safe and to work on things from there. Thor went to check on her, and suddenly he walked into a wedding. One more male war bride in the sea of others. Odin presided. Apparently she twisted his arm into it to."
Natasha was surprised Thor had tied the knot and not bothered to mention it. Then again, given their conversation the day before she couldn't blame him. "Sif didn't kill her?" She almost laughed. It wasn't uncommon knowledge that Thor's long-time war companion loved the prince, now king, dearly. The only one who seemed oblivious to it was Thor himself.
"She found a way to get back at him. Apparently I have a big sign on my forehead that reads "rebound". I tried not to get tied up again, and she did to, but then it sort of didn't work out the way either of us planned. She liked a guy from Brooklyn who could hold his own. Remember she fought that battle with us on Asgard. And the one on Alfheimr when she came to Clint's rescue years back."
Natasha sat back, shaking her head in disbelief. "Sounds like we missed out on a lot in that time we were on different time zones. You and Sif. Wow, Cap. I didn't see that one coming."
:(:):(:):
Natasha stared down at the women in the room as if she was planning exactly which of them might have a bomb, and not a baby, expanding in their abdomens. Unrealistic fear? Indubitably. Did she continue to dwell on those thoughts rather than face that fact that she currently sat in the wing of New York General's Mercy Hope Maternity Center? Absolutely.
Approaching the door, reading those glazed on letters, Natasha nearly spun around and marched straight back to her car, with or without Bruce Banner and Pepper Potts. Tony grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her through the front door. Natasha may want to live her entire pregnancy in denial, but for the health of her baby she at least needed a basic exam.
Bruce arrived at her door one day and dropped off an entire basket of pre-natal vitamins. At first Natasha threw them down the hall, but he soon convinced her what might be inconvenient for a time, would serve the baby's health in the end. She saw the light and adjusted. Sitting in the waiting room, sixteen weeks into her pregnancy and all Natasha wanted to do was crawl the walls, set off a smoke bomb, and sneak away in the chaos. Tony, perhaps sensing that exact notion, slid into a seat beside her and removed the knife sticking out of her boot.
It was Natasha's strict request that no one outside of Stark Tower found out about her and Clint's child. Since Steve's speech at the UN meeting, a lot of fuss was being made around Hawkeye and everything he ever did, places he visited, and lives he touched. Heroes the world around heard about his death in the Galactus War and came to Avengers Mansion to pay their respects. Hundreds visited Clint's shooting range in New Jersey and spent their time reminiscing over cold beers with Bill and Denali Rizzo. Some went a few rounds in the Danger Room gym for old time's sake. There was talk of restarting Fight Night, though none had spear headed the movement. Somehow it seemed too empty without the life of the party along.
"Hello Mrs. Stark! You've got a whole troop with you today," Nurse Jack Biehl declared behind the counter. He passed over the sign in paper and a pen, then nodded a hello to Bruce, Tony, and Natasha.
"Everyone's getting excited now that we can actually see something." Pepper replied, signing her name.
Another stipulation in Natasha's maternity care. She would be "Pepper's office buddy" and nothing more. No name on the books. No obvious reason why she'd come. No indication of her pregnancy to anyone in the waiting room. Castillo, an old time friend and physician, knew very well the intricacies of treating powered patients. Discretion was her middle name.
Biehl grabbed Pepper's file, searched under the table for Natasha's and stacked one within the other. He went around the far wall, came out through the exam door and within a few minutes the pair were ushered back into separate exam rooms. Tony stood in the hallway for a moment, torn as to which direction he intended to go. Bruce went with Natasha, so he followed Pepper instead.
Bruce grinned at the Black Widow. "How Tony plans to handle this, I'm not about to guess."
Natasha smiled, removing her jacket. March was balmy this year with a winter wind not wanting to give way. She had another five months to go yet, the rest of which including her "showing" period. That meant summer, summer meant heat, and two pregnant ladies in the heat did not sound like the kind of fun she liked to have.
"Nervous?" Bruce asked.
Natasha shrugged, eyeing the exam table. She decided to sit on one of the chairs instead. "No."
"Pepper's going to ask the sex of the baby today," he pointed out nonchalantly. One couldn't ask her a direct question, she tended to shut down for things like that.
"She said that forty-three times in the last four days."
"She's excited. Wants a little girl."
"I know that too."
"You want a boy."
"I don't want a boy."
Bruce's eyebrow arched. He shifted, just slightly in his chair to examine her profile. "Oh? All this time—"
"I don't care what it is. I know it's a boy. It doesn't matter to think it's anything else."
Natasha tended to have this assurance. She'd already taken up the habit of referring to the baby as a "he" or "him". A more troubling matter was her avoidance of calling the baby hers. In her eyes it belonged to Clint, as if he had the power to create a clone of himself and implant it in her. It had to be a boy, it had to be his, and Tony would raise him. That was her only opinion on the matter.
"Remember when Pepper found Clint's grandmother?" Natasha randomly asked. She was looking at her nails, analyzing them for stray debris from the waiting room.
Bruce smiled. "Do I ever. She didn't realize it was his paternal side. Clint crawled out a window and hid out on the roof from the eighty-something-year old. As if she'd climb up there after him. Tony had to go up and coax him down."
"She turned out nice."
"Very. Clint was afraid she'd be like his father. Try to convince him the man was a good kid, though she ended up saying the opposite."
"She said Clint looked like her husband. His grandfather, Henry."
His smile widened. Years ago, after uncovering some information about Clint's father's service record in Vietnam, Pepper had decided to do a little Ancestry research for other living relatives. It bothered Thor, and therefore her, a great deal to think Clint was the last of his lineage. Together they tracked down a woman named Kitty Jenkins-Barton. After a few background checks, they realized the woman was in fact Clint's biological grandmother and off to the Tower they went. Clint had the shock of his life meeting her, and almost flat out refused to even speak with the woman. The others convinced him otherwise, and for good measure.
They spoke for hours. Clint took the little old woman out for lunch and they spent the day strolling Central Park. While he listened to the small bit of his father's upbringing, he was most interested in his grandfather's life. The old man had died not long before in a parachuting accident at almost ninety years of age. He'd been a paratrooper in World War II, and famously landed on Omaha beach in Normandy.
Clint grew to love his paternal grandparents, though Henry Barton and he never had a chance to meet. In a fascinating twist of events, Steve Rogers actually remembered the man. He'd beaten Dooly one night in East Germany at a game of pinochle that almost ended in fists flying. Howard Stark and Peggy jumped in to separate the men, a chair was thrown, and following the thrashing of the bar, Dugan and Barton both invited Captain Rogers to a hand of crazy eights by candle light, using Stark's unconscious body as a table.
Natasha sat back, letting her legs swing in a childish way. "Clint never wanted to name a boy after himself. Something about the funny names he got called by the orphanage kids. I think I'll name him Henry."
Bruce tried to hide his all-out approval of the name, worried too much support might come across as false to her. "Henry Frances?" he supplied.
She glanced over, clasping onto it. "Henry Frances. His grandfather's name and his middle name. I think he would have picked that."
"I think he might have. It's a very good name."
Natasha returned her eyes to her knees. "Henry Frances," she whispered downward. She liked having something to call that shifting form inside of her.
Bruce relaxed back and watched her whisper. It was the first time she'd seen her talk to the baby, something Pepper did very often now. In fact, sometimes she spoke for the baby too. Natasha took things slower but at least she wasn't rebelling openly against them.
Dr. Castillo came through the door. She'd known Natasha, mainly through Clint's frequent flyer miles. Her trust was absolute. Natasha knew what needed to happen. Undress, climb onto the table, answer questions, look at the monitor. She could accomplish all of that without feeling the slightest emotion, if she tried hard enough to undo the work her raging hormones sought everyday to uproot in her.
Beside her, Bruce saw the wall coming up and clamping over her heart. He had hoped she might wait a little longer into the appointment before she shut completely down. Unfortunately, he was talking about Natasha.
Castillo went straight into the small talk. The consolation over Clint's death, get on the table, must have exciting stories, this gel will be cold, have you picked out a name, just set this here, and so on and on. Bruce took in the knowledge for them both, knowing they might need to review it over again in the car.
Little Henry Francis Barton appeared on the screen, and suddenly all of Natasha's hard won Black Widow training collapsed into a puddle of progesterone. She sat up a little, grabbed the side of the rolling monitor, and dragged it closer. Her eyes welled in big, round tears and very suddenly she burst into a sob.
"He has toes!" She exclaimed excitedly, her hand gripped the front of Bruce's shirt and yanked him closer, pointing out the screen. "Look! Bruce, look! He has fingers!"
Bruce struggled against her iron-clad grasp on his collar which effectively cut off his air supply. She was so excited, she most likely hadn't noticed.
"Loohhk ahht thahhht," he rasped, appreciatively.
She let him go and rolled forward to watch. The baby bounced all over beneath the ultrasound probe. "Look at him! I don't even feel that! Should I feel that?"
Castillo grinned, encouraged by her excitement and the thumbs up Bruce hid beside his arm. "Actually you might not feel anything until eighteen, or even twenty weeks. So I wouldn't be too concerned about that just yet."
Natasha grabbed Bruce again. "Tony! Go get Tony! And Pepper! I want them to see Henry!"
Not about to argue with a woman high on hormones and enthralled for the first time at being a new mother, Bruce swiftly departed. He found Tony and Pepper just heading into the hall and quickly ushered them inside before Natasha had a chance to change her mind. Together, the four of them clustered around the monitor, watching tiny Henry Barton bounce his way into their lives.
Pepper leaned her head on Natasha's arm, sighing in relief. "What are we going to do, Tony? Two boys."
Bruce laughed. "You too?"
Tony nodded, patting his jacket pocket where a new case of cigars were waiting to pass out to every father in the waiting room.
"Just think about it. A little Clint and a little Tony. Pint sized brothers raised by Avengers." Pepper sighed again, whimsically allowing her future to play out before her eyes. They were going to be little hell-raisers, and that was an absolute fact.
DAW! Mini Tony/Clint! The most adorable boys soon to come onto this planet!
(if they survive, cause, you know, I've killed Clint and his family before already;)
-Now with that little mental image: Please review!