Chapter Text
It started early one morning with a strange taste coating her tongue, like milk gone off and mixed with vinegar. Natasha retched into the toilet bowl before breakfast, and again afterwards, the eggs and coffee and juice sour and harsh on the way back up.
She deeply regretted allowing Clint to drag her out to a Chinese buffet the night before, all bright fluorescent lighting and greasy plates. It had been almost designed to induce migraines and food poisoning.
Clint, when she ran into him at lunch, was well and irritatingly cheerful as he dug into something resembling a chicken pie.
“I hate you.”
“What have I done?”
She just looked at him witheringly, tentatively dipping bread into soup and trying not to vomit.
…
It happened again the next day, and again the day after that, until eventually Natasha stopped attempting breakfast at all. On day five, there was a niggle at the back of her mind, a nagging worry about stomach ulcers and cancer and poison.
It had taken her a long time to trust SHIELD’s canteen, to trust food provided by someone else, when she didn’t know where it came from, who had prepared it, what could have gotten inside.
She bought groceries. Every day a different corner shop or supermarket or indoor market stall. She chopped vegetables in the tiny kitchenette in her apartment, packing salads into plastic tubs and pretending it was just a health kick. In the back of her mind, she tried to work out how they'd found her.
When she couldn’t avoid the canteen, she traded food with Clint, like she used to, long ago. He noticed, his eyebrows rising, but he didn’t comment.
…
The vomiting continued. Two weeks, then three.
…
“Nat?”
“What?” It came out angrier than she meant it, but she was so goddamn tired and the taste of bile was becoming more familiar than the taste of bread.
She was starting to feel afraid.
“You alright in there?”
Clint was hovering outside her bathroom door.
“Fine. What are you doing in my apartment?” She wiped her mouth and stood up. There was a tremor in her hands and she closed her eyes, breathing slowly to still it.
“Checking up on you.”
She opened the door, “I’m fine.”
“You’re sick.”
“I’m fine.”
He sat on the swivel chair at her desk, feet up on top of a pile of files and paperwork. He swung around and a small wad of paper floated slowly to the floor.
“You’re making a mess.”
“You are a mess.”
“Thanks.”
She sat on the sofa and laced her shoes.
“I’m due on base.”
“No you’re not.”
He swivelled back to face her.
“You think someone’s poisoning you.” He said it calmly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, “I think you’re being paranoid.”
She laughed, bitter, “I’m alive, aren’t I?”
“Go and see a doctor.” His eyes were soft with concern and something else indecipherable. She hoped, for his sake, that it wasn’t pity.
“I'm fine.”
“Not a SHIELD doctor. We can find someone else.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Nat, for god’s sake.”
“I have somewhere to be. And stop breaking in.”
She left, slamming the door behind her.
...
Natasha flew to Rome, spent three weeks manipulating ambassadors and hacking into servers until she finally weeded out the security leak that had lost SHIELD six missions and two agents.
For three weeks she swallowed down bile and vomited in alleyways, her head span and everything she ate threw a party inside her stomach. She smiled and threatened and flirted and fought, holding on to herself so tightly that she wore four little half-moon scars into the palm of each hand.
Her head rested against the cool porcelain tile of the hotel bathroom wall, one fist pressed against her mouth. Coulson was waiting for her go-ahead to send in the tac team, and she dragged herself across to her purse, abandoned by the door. A text message pinged across the world and she slumped against the hard wooden surface, letting her eyes drift shut.
The rollercoaster of that last fight was being repeated in her stomach. She pressed a hand to her thigh. The bleeding had stopped. It was barely a graze. She'd been off-balance, her finely-tuned inner ear a touch out of kilter, her body landing one extra inch to the left.
Another inch, and she'd have been bleeding out on a sparkling marble floor.
She swallowed hard and forced herself upright.
Either way, this was going to get her killed.
...
"Clint."
"Yuhuh."
He was fletching arrows at his kitchen table, his tongue sticking out between his teeth as he worked with the tip of his penknife. There was a photograph perched on top of a pile of papers: Laura and Cooper, laughing, half-hidden in the long grass of the field behind their home. He shifted it to one side out of the way, turned the arrow to get a better angle. Natasha didn’t move from the sofa, a novel open on her lap. Her body stiffened in anticipation, held perfectly still.
"I-"
Clint looked up.
"I need help."
"You need a doctor."
"Yes."
"I know someone."
"I don't want--"
"Outside of SHIELD."
"Good."
"I'll come with you."
"Ok."
He didn’t say I told you so, didn’t say thank God, I was so afraid you wouldn't come back this time. She could feel it though, see it in his eyes.
He just nodded, and waited.
...
Natasha took the phone number Clint passed her in the corridor the next day, called the number and texted him later with a time and a place, a week from then.
...
The air was cool, goose-bumps prickling her skin.
"Tasha?"
She barrelled through the waiting room, past out-of-date magazines and discarded children’s books. Past the old lady complaining loudly about the wait and the cried-out toddler sniffling pathetically in its mother’s arms.
"Tasha!"
Plastic creaked as Clint jumped to his feet behind her. She was bathed in warm air as she pushed her way out of the air-conditioned reception, half-running towards the setting sun.
He caught up with her a few yards down the sidewalk, matching her pace. Silence stretched out between them, a void in the hustle and bustle of people enjoying the summer evening. Two miles, then three, until her heart-rate calmed and her blood ceased to boil and she could face the question in his eyes. She turned, veering off into a park, sitting down suddenly with her back pressed against the rough bark of a tree. She looked up at him, squinting into the light.
He dropped down next to her, "Natasha," He paused, drew her full name out slowly along its whole length, "What the hell?"
She didn’t answer directly, but tugged at a blade of grass and shredded it between her fingers. Scorn dripped down her throat. "Where did that guy qualify?"
"Chicago Med School." Clint responded, his voice mild as he watched grass seed flutter away on the breeze.
She looked at him sharply, narrowing her eyes and swallowing hard.
"Nat?"
"What?"
Clint sighed, kicking his feet out and leaning backwards, cushioning his head on the soft earth, "Never mind."
They waited, watching the sky turn pink, orange and, finally, grey. She spotted a cloud shaped like Cooper's favourite toy bunny, and idly wished for a camera. The ground was cooling, damp soaking into the back of her t-shirt when she could finally bring herself to speak.
"You're wrong."
"About what?"
"What you think is wrong with me. I can't--" She stopped and shoved both hands in her hair, raking her fingers through it and grimacing as they snagged on the ends. Her throat was tight with anger. Then she smiled at him as though he was a slightly slow child, "Don't you think they took care of that? I’m not pregnant."
Clint swallowed.
"What did he say?"
She scoffed, fingertips whitening as her hand balled into a fist, "Same as you. Won't do anything until I've peed on a goddamn stick. As if I don't know my own fucking..." She stopped and closed her eyes for a second. There was a couple walking past a handful of yards away, sharing food out of polystyrene cartons. The greasy aroma of kebab wafted over on the breeze.
Her mouth filled with saliva and she pressed her lips together tightly, glaring at them. The couple disappeared around the corner, blissfully unaware of how close they'd come to being the victims of a violent double-homicide. She swallowed, breathing slow and steady, and pulled out the empty plastic vial shoved hard in her pocket, "He told me to come back in the morning."
“I can find you someone else.” He gave her the ghost of a smile, his eyebrows still creased in concern, “I have a list.”
She paused, the bitter taste of bile on her tongue, and shook her head, "Fuck it. It doesn’t matter. I need to know. He can have my piss if he wants it that much.”
"SHIELD medical--"
"I need to know before they do."
"Ok."
The sky was darkening, the air getting cool. Clint bounced to his feet and held a hand out, "Can we go inside now? Preferably somewhere with food?"
She rolled her eyes at him and took the proffered hand. Her fingers trembled and she tightened her grip, rolling fluidly to her feet.
Her stomach still roiled, "No kebabs, and nothing with a buffet."
"Deal."
...
They found an Italian cafe still serving and pigged-out on garlic bread and spaghetti. Natasha picked up the tab and they walked the long way home, Clint relaying his newest theory about Coulson's love-life whilst she counted the stars and mapped the ones that told her this was now and not then.
...
Her front door lock clicked and Natasha started. She blinked, struggling to remember how long she'd been sat here, staring at a little row of white sticks on the edge of the bathtub.
There was a knock at the bathroom door, a voice calling her name, but she was stuck under the surface and she couldn’t seem to answer. She spread a palm out on the floor, and it should have been cool and hard but she couldn’t feel it. And her head against the towels hanging on the rail. It should have been soft, but it wasn’t, it was nothing, like she was floating in a cloud of nothing.
The door opened.
"Nat.... oh." He paused. In her cloud of nothing, there was Clint and he'd stopped, and she wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she did.
A second passed, maybe two, it was hard to count without being able to feel the thrum of her own pulse. And then Clint was touching her shoulder, and she didn’t react because she knew he was there, but she couldn’t feel it.
"Come on, let's get out of here." He grabbed her by both arms and she tried to help because, really, she didn’t want to be in there any longer either. They both stumbled out into her living room. It was all orange and grey, lit in long shafts by the streetlamps outside. It hadn’t been dark, before.
Clint steered her towards the sofa. She shook her head and directed them towards the kitchen table, to worn wooden chairs and straight backs, hard and solid and real. Her brain was switching itself on in sharp fits and spurts and she put her hands on the table and watched them as Clint boiled her kettle and set a mug of too-sweet tea in front of her.
He sat across from her. He didn’t say anything, just sat and waited and she hoped his brain was a little faster at processing information than hers was. He'd been called into a meeting with Coulson first thing, been occupied all day and, in a way, she was glad. Some things were better to be on your own for.
"I'm pregnant."
She said it out loud so that they would realise how ludicrous it was. So that Clint would laugh and explain to her why she was wrong. But her voice was hoarse and too loud and it crackled out into the silence, reality forming around the words. Clint watched her like he was afraid she was going to break open in front of his eyes and said nothing at all.
"This was never supposed to... I don't know how it happened."
His eyes widened slightly and that was not what she'd meant but oh, his face was a picture. She couldn’t help it; she let out a noise that must have been meant to be a giggle, but her body gave way to hysterics that terrified her even as her shoulders shook with mirth. Because the thought of it, of immaculate conception and Mary mother of God, and then of who she was, and what she had done. She clenched her hands on the table.
He watched her for a moment and shook his head, mildly embarrassed, "Ok, I get it."
Natasha sobered slowly. The smell of tea made her want to vomit. She shrugged, "After Krakow. I just needed to feel."
He waved a hand dismissively. "It doesn’t matter.” And then, “You've got to tell SHIELD."
She closed her eyes briefly and clenched her fists before shaking her head. She didn’t need that, didn’t need to tell them she’d screwed up. "I'll take care of it."
"Nat. You can't"
She turned her gaze to him, voice low, "Say that again."
Clint was lucky she was still in shock, and that was why she was still just staring at him, rather than throwing him out the door. He paused, his voice eerily calm. “You don’t know what they did to you.”
It wasn’t a question, but his voice lifted a fraction at the end of the sentence. He was so close to the line, so close to messing with things he just did not understand, but Natasha shook her head once. Just one more chance. She owed him that. There was an angry tremor in his words.
"You need to get checked out by someone who knows everything you can tell them. They’ve fucked something up and that...embryo could be in your fallopian tubes, or outside your womb entirely, or...” He paused, “It could kill you. You’ve got to take this to SHIELD."
Natasha didn’t say anything for several minutes. Something had taken a hold of her insides and replaced them with something squid-like; squirming and shifting and no longer belonging to her at all. She reached a hand towards her stomach, pressing down as though she could feel what was underneath, if only she tried hard enough, know every cell. It was all just flesh and muscle. Hard and soft and slightly unfamiliar beneath her hand.
Finally she nodded, "Ok."
Clint sagged, and Natasha smiled weakly at him, watching her hands as she spread her fingers on the table.
They sat there the rest of the night, the tea going cold and the cells continuing to multiply.
...
As the sky paled and the light turned more grey than orange, Natasha blinked and stood up. Her chair screeched harshly against the kitchen tile and Clint jerked from his slumber. He lifted his head off the table and looked at her questioningly.
"I'm going for a run."
It was just shy of 5.30. Clint scrubbed a hand over his face. She didn’t wait for him to ask where she was going after. She was already in her bedroom, discarding yesterday’s jeans and pulling on new clothes, suddenly desperate to be outside, to be able to see the sky.
She was out of the apartment two minutes later, the door slamming hard behind her. Cool morning air rushed over her face and she breathed it in hard, the world stretching out, open, above her.
...
Natasha's heart-rate rose and fell as she ran, the same as always, her breath quickening and sweat cooling on her skin. Outside Fury’s office, the thin carpet-tiled floor felt the same beneath her feet, and there was a familiar flicker from the third light fitting along the corridor, whispering against the backs of her irises. It was hard to believe that anything had changed at all.
"Romanoff."
"Director."
If he was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. The iris scanner granted him entry, and he gestured at her to follow, "Unless you just happen to like this bit of hallway?"
She followed him through the door, stopping behind a chair with her fingers resting on the back. The grain was rough against her skin.
He sat and looked at her pointedly, "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I—“ She stopped and smiled slightly, “I'm pregnant."
It was the second time she'd said it aloud, but the crackle of reality forming around the words was no less audible.
"Ah."
Fury’s expression was impassive, the implications and consequences sliding together in his brain: click, click, click. Coulson’s face would have softened, he would have cared too much. But Fury strategized, processing calmly and clearly behind an expression of steel.
Finally, he spoke, "What do you want to do about it?"
The answer that came out was not quite what she’d intended. "Not die, ideally."
He nodded once, "Good choice," and turned to his computer to type a few messages, the clicking of the keys louder even than the roaring in her ears. Natasha waited.
"Report to Dr. Canton in medical at eleven."
“Sir."
Natasha turned and left. There was a prickle at the back of her neck as his one eye watched her all the way down the corridor.
….
The gym was cold, the air-con on too strong and Natasha opened the windows to warm it up, a wasteful contradiction that made her unreasonably angry, frustration racing around her brain. It filled her mind so she didn’t have to think about anything else.
She trained on her own, spinning and twisting and leaping, one death-defying stunt after the next. She gained a small audience, new agents fresh from Shield Academy, waiting for a group session. They startled as one as she leapt down in the midst of them, snarling at them to stop staring. Someone strode over from the other side of the room, drawn by the commotion.
“Hey, Romanoff, why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
Agent Morse was at least a head taller than her and Natasha could see the funny side, even as she pivoted around to face her. The balloon filling her head with hot air was deflating, other thoughts leaking in and she closed her eyes for a second, grasping onto the fading rage. Bobbi gestured her head towards the sparring mats in the middle of the room, “Want to give them a real show?”
Natasha shrugged, “Your loss.”
The fight wasn’t long, but her focus kept scattering, a few lucky hits when she’d normally take none at all. Bobbi finally tapped out, looking up with a crease between her eyebrows. She didn’t say anything, although it would have been lost to the echo and noise as the gym filled.
The clock said 10.45.
“One more round?”
She shook her head, “I’ve got somewhere to be.”
The crease was still there. Natasha left another room with a pair of eyes watching her go.
…
The water ran, steam filling the shower cubicle. Natasha hesitated, half-dressed. She’d pulled clothes on in a daze that morning, barely registering what went where. She feared her own body, feared that knowledge would have changed it beyond recognition.
The door slammed. Someone moved outside. She stripped, scalding hot, in and out, barely touching her own skin at all.
…
“Tell me what you remember.” Dr. Canton’s voice was business-like, softened at the edges. Her glasses were too small for her face. It was distracting.
“It was a long time ago,” she said.
The doctor’s eyebrows knitted together and Natasha focused on the rims of her glasses, on how the hairs deformed as they passed in and out of the lens, “What about before? Or after?”
Her hand fluttered towards her abdomen, stopping just short of touching it. She didn’t know what she was expected to say. The doctor was still watching her, waiting, and her throat tightened. “I think I shot a man in the head that morning. Is that what you want to know?”
Her lips compressed and her eyes slid away. Natasha stood and strode towards the door, daring the woman to stop her. She hadn’t come here to be judged.
“Agent Romanoff, wait, please.” A microscopic pause, “I’m sorry. Please sit down.”
Natasha halted. The apology was unexpected and she sank, unsure how to react.
“When was your last period?” Dr. Canton’s eyes met hers, hands folding in her lap.
She lowered herself back into the chair, “Ten weeks. But it’s never been regular.”
Dr. Canton pushed her glasses up her nose, “I’d like to do an ultra-sound. We’ll get a clearer picture, at this stage, if we can do it internally. Would that be ok?”
Natasha’s breath came a little faster, and she swallowed, “That might be an excellent way to jog my memory.”
She grimaced, “Ok. Not yet then. We’ll see what we can establish externally, and discuss where to go from there.”
She nodded, heart steadying, not sure how to feel about being incorporated into a ‘we’ with this woman, as if the problem was somehow theirs to share.
“Follow me.”
“Now?” She looked up in surprise, “Don’t you have other appointments?”
“No, just you.” Natasha frowned, “I don’t work here often.” She smiled, “But I owed Nick a favour. He’s a hard man to refuse.”
Dr. Canton left the room and Natasha followed blindly down the corridor, her brain checking-out even as it orchestrated her feet to step one in front of the other. There was a bed and a screen, gel cold on her stomach and she responded to the doctor’s questions in monosyllables. A crack ran across the ceiling, from one corner to the ceiling rose before branching off in two directions.
“Agent Romanoff?”
“Mm.” She watched the crack.
“Your pregnancy is not ectopic. As far as I can be sure at this stage, the foetus will be viable. You’re not in any immediate danger.”
“Right.”
That’s good, she thought, isn’t it?
…
Forty eight hours. Nothing more. An appointment in a private clinic, the day after tomorrow. The parasite, the little bundle of cells growing in her womb would be gone.
Natasha sat on the roof of her apartment building as the sun went down, DC spread out before her. The temperature dropped rapidly, summer giving way to the crisp, cool air of autumn. She was set outside herself, waiting for her body to be vacated before she could fully occupy it again.
“Hey.”
Clint pulled himself up the fire escape and vaulted the parapet to land silently beside her. He was a cross between a shadow and a lost puppy. She couldn’t seem to shake him. She probably didn’t want to.
“Hey.”
“So?” He prompted, perching on the arm of the bench they’d dragged up one dark winter afternoon.
So what?
“I have very persistent fallopian tubes.”
“Good to know.”
“They were blocked. But they grew around.” She paused, “It’s funny, I always assumed they’d done something less… subtle.” Her fist spasmed. She stilled it, knuckles turning white.
“And the embryo?”
“In the right place, apparently. I have an appointment on Thursday, to get rid of it.”
“Good.” Clint said, but he looked pensive, “Tasha—”
“Hm?”
“You know you don’t have to—”
She stiffened, “Don’t, Clint. Just because you have a kid doesn’t mean we all want one.”
“But if you did, you could. That’s all I’m saying.”
Natasha shook her head stiffly. She couldn’t. She didn’t want to. She watched the clouds drifting across the sky. The wind was picking up. It was going to rain.
“Do I have to torture it out of you?”
“Huh?” Clint frowned at her.
“I know you followed Coulson on Monday night.” She shifted to tuck one leg underneath her, “And I bet he does too.”
Clint chuckled. It was not entirely forced. “Nah. Nothing good. Concert at the Kennedy Centre. Alone.” His exaggeratedly hang-dog expression was late in coming.
“Shame.”
“There’s something going on. I’ll get it out of him eventually.”
Natasha smirked at the fiery sky, “Sure you will.”
…
The screen was white, bright white, a supernova against her retinas. She squinted in the dark, eyes itching with tiredness. The report was mind numbingly dull. And badly spelled.
If you did, you could.
She shut her eyes, concentrating. The threads were slipping. The web of names and circumstances and connections was loosening as she read. She needed coffee. She stood to refill the machine, clattering in the grounds and water and setting it to heat.
Her stomach lurched.
She forced it away. She craved caffeine and her goddamn traitorous stomach wasn’t going to take that away from her. She waited, swallowing bile and watching the drip drip drip of dark liquid into the jug.
You know you don’t have to—
She clenched her fingers on the counter-top. Barton’s goddamn American dream. Come with me to the west and you’ll be free forever. The trumpets fanfared and she laughed humorlessly.
Wherever she went, however long she lived, she would never not be what she was.
The jug filled and she poured herself a mug, wrapping both hands around it and letting the warmth seep into her. The report continued: dense and confusing and badly put-together. She glanced at the author’s name. Some new recruit. Agent Ward would be getting an earful in the morning. She blinked a few times and waded on through it.
The night was eerily quiet, the hum of traffic and shouts of passersby strangely muted through the open window. Natasha read and typed notes and sipped coffee, swallowing hard after each mouthful and waiting for the chemicals to spark life in her brain.
Her mind drifted downwards. She clenched a hand on her thigh, nails digging in, little pinpricks of pain. She’d been so goddamn stupid. Not that she’d been completely unprotected, she didn’t have a death-wish, but pregnancy hadn’t been on her radar, hadn’t been a risk she’d thought she was taking. Clint called her paranoid but she wasn’t nearly careful enough.
“Fuck.”
She snapped the lid of her laptop closed. The chair tipped back and bounced against the floor as she stood. Choice is an illusion, Barton, get out of my head.
Her heart was pounding and adrenaline rising, an endless, awful roar in her ears. That walls were too close and the ceiling too low, the carpet beneath her feet so soft it might swallow her up.
She saw his hand held out to her, felt the pain of his arrow searing through her shoulder. Your choice.
The window opened smoothly and silently at her touch, the impact of the pavement absorbed by her knees and her shoulders as she landed hard and rolled across the ground. The glint of a yellow-eyed cat appeared, held still and startled before it turned tail and fled into the bushes.
Natasha took stock for a moment, counting parked cars and wheelie bins stacked like soldiers; cataloguing the scrubby patches of grass and the blackberries, sticky and overripe, weighing heavy on her neighbour’s fence. She tasted one. It was sour and bitty. She spat it out and walked fast down the street: red Volkswagen, silver Ford, beige BMW with a new dent in the passenger-side door.
Around the corner, she broke into a run, feet pounding the pavement, license plates flashing by. A honk cracked the air as she flew across the road a hair’s-breadth from a front bumper.
A mile passed before she was panting and tight-chested, head spinning. She ducked sideways into an alleyway. Her vomit tasted of SHIELD cafeteria curry, chilli and spices burning her throat as she gagged on lumps of soggy naan. The rough wall was cool against her right hand, the fingers of her left tangling in her hair as she leant over and tried not to douse her socks.
Eventually it was over; a final heave and radioactive, sour-tasting bile hit the concrete. She took a few steps backwards, spitting and wiping her mouth, leaning heavily against the opposite wall. The bricks were cool and she rested her back against them, calming her heaving breaths. She counted, in and out.
The acrid smell turned her stomach and she gathered herself to walk onwards, to sink eventually into a worn wooden bench at the edge of a park three streets away. The grass was damp. She should have worn shoes. Her eyes drifted shut and her teeth clenched.
Get a grip, Romanoff. Get a hold of yourself.
…
“Barton!” She pounded on the door, hinges threatening to crack, “Barton, let me in!”
There was a scuffle, a muffled crash and a cascade of swearing. The lock ground and clicked and Natasha pushed past him into the living room.
“What the hell?” Clint was standing in his boxers and an old t-shirt with sleep-ruffled hair but eyes sharp and alert. “What’s going on?”
“Fuck you.”
“Charming.” He smirked at her and his voice was light, but he was searching her eyes warily.
Natasha took a step forward, backing him towards the door and he raised his hands in surrender, “Woah, ok.” His voice softened and his eye narrowed, “Talk to me.”
It was nearly dawn, the light turning grey and his face was in shadow. Natasha backed off, putting the kitchen table between them and gripping a wobbly chair with both hands.
“I don’t have a choice.”
Clint’s eyes widened, his expression settling.
“I am a murderer, Clint. I am a tool and a weapon. You don’t get to tell me I can be a mother just because I have a functioning womb.”
“Tasha…”
“No.” Her voice rose, nearly shouting, “That’s what I am. Don’t pretend that I’m not.”
“I’m a father.” His voice was unbearably soft and it made her want to hit out, to scream and rage at the comparison.
“You’ve killed. You’re not a killer. It’s not the same.”
Clint opened his mouth to argue, and Natasha stared him down, daring him to tell her that she was wrong, that her assessment of her own life was not what she knew it to be. His mouth closed, jaw stiff and set.
She breathed out through gritted teeth, “Can you imagine who would give their right arm to get hold of a child of mine? Can you imagine what they’d do? Don’t tell me I have a choice.”
Air whistled between his teeth, “Ok.”
“Ok?”
“Ok. I won’t tell you you have a choice.”
He was watching her like there was more to say. She turned away from him, took four slices of bread from his cupboard and dropped them in the toaster, depressing the lever with a forceful snap. A scour of his fridge revealed three home-made jams which she placed, clack clack clack, in a neat row on the scuffed table.
“You want some?”
He shook his head.
“Then what do you want from me?”
“You woke me up.”
She shrugged, “It’s morning.”
He groaned and disappeared into his bedroom. The toast popped and Natasha slipped into a chair, spreading Laura’s jam in a thick layer over the first slice. She chewed slowly. Her stomach growled. She continued to eat.
Clint appeared in the doorway in worn jeans and a new t-shirt. The smell of toothpaste wafted over as he crossed the room, running a hand through his hair. Natasha gave him a half-smile around a mouthful of food, and a slight shrug of one shoulder.
“Coffee.”
The machine whirred, grounds rattled into the filter and two mugs clinked as he removed them from the cupboard. She looked up. He was staring at her.
“Can I ask you something?”
She nodded warily.
“What are you thinking?”
“I—“ she shook her head, “Laura makes good jam.”
He took a seat across from her and they waited for the coffee to brew. Her stomach greeted the fourth slice of toast with enthusiasm.
Clint had his chin in his hands, staring at the jars lined up in front of him. He barely stifled a yawn. “Coop tried to help last weekend. With the blackberry picking. I don’t think he understood they were supposed to go in the bucket and not all over his face.”
Natasha’s lip twitched.
“You should come over more often. Laura misses you.”
She shrugged, “They’re your family.”
“They could be yours too. If you’d let them.”
The toast was gone and her stomach was steady. She poured the coffee, clinging gratefully to her mug. Clint added copious quantities of milk and sugar to his and sipped slowly. She stared into it, catching a glimpse of her own dark reflection: pale and exhausted, with deep shadows under her eyes.
Her brain sparked. A mad, impossible idea that somehow spilled out before she could hold it back. Scrubbing a hand over her face, she muttered into the steam.
“You could take it.”
He stiffened, “What?”
“You and Laura. You said you were thinking of trying again.”
“That’s not—“
“Not what you meant? I know. But I’m growing a child I don’t want, and you do. It’s just wasteful to make another one.”
Looking up, she willed him to understand what she couldn’t express aloud. Let me make this choice. It’s the only one I have.
A few minutes passed. Natasha wondered if he was going to respond at all.
“Go home, Nat. Go to bed—“
Her whole body tensed, “Don’t treat me like a child.”
He was eerily calm. “Go to bed. Get some sleep. Tell me you feel the same way tomorrow.”
She discarded the coffee and scraped her chair back, swallowing hard.
“Nat…” His voice softened, “You burst into my apartment in the middle of the night, swore at me, and then asked me to adopt your child. I’m gonna need some time.”
“It’s nothing, forget I said anything.” She turned away from him and prepared to leave, shame burning up her throat.
“It’s not nothing.” Clint exhaled, taking his third laborious sip of coffee.
Natasha left silently, her socks leaving damp footprints on the carpet.
…
“Want a coffee?”
“Hm..?” Natasha looked up in the middle of a financial report, her mind a rolling ticker-tape of numbers.
“Coffee…? You know, the brown caffeinated stuff?” Bobbi Morse was standing next to her, gesturing at the empty mug under her computer screen.
“Yeah, sure.” She shoved the mug at her, and turned back to the screen. The numbers had stopped rolling; it was a mess of scattered figures with no pattern. She scrolled back to the top of the document and started again.
“Black, no sugar, right?” Her mug reappeared on her desk and the numbers scattered. Natasha swore under her breath.
“прости.”
“Of course you speak Russian.”
Bobbi shrugged, “I’m learning.”
“Swear words first?”
“Is there any other way?” She grinned and dropped back into her chair, spinning it around, dirty blonde hair spilling out behind her. Natasha gritted her teeth, closed the report and started on the bitter coffee. It wasn’t important. It could wait. Clint’s dismissal in the early hours echoed around her skull and she gripped the mug tightly, casting around for something, anything else to focus on.
“I really am sorry. I didn’t meant to distract you.”
Natasha shrank from her earnestness, “It doesn’t matter.”
Her eyes narrowed, “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
Bobbi watched her for a second and turned back to her computer screen, “If you want to talk about it…” she trailed off, “Barton doesn’t always get it.”
Natasha pretended not to hear, shutting her computer down and gathering papers scattered haphazardly over her desk. The lock of her drawer clicked as she shut it all away.
“Thanks for the coffee.”
She headed for the stairs, spiralling down, round and round, through security and out into the glass-filled atrium. The clacking of shoes and chatter of agents echoed around her. She paused in the doorway, the Potomac shimmering to her right, the busy street ahead lined with cars and pedestrians and cyclists.
The pavement was solid beneath her feet, and she followed it away from the Triskelion, across the Mall, past the bus station, wending her way through the streets as though she’d find an answer, if she just walked on. As if she’d turn a corner and there on a billboard or a bus shelter, that’s it, that’s the way.
She had been on a track, bound to one obvious course of action and now… there wasn’t a fork, it wasn’t right or left, but a cliff had appeared that she could throw herself off, if she really wanted to.
And there was a little part of her that was wondering just what might happen if she dashed herself on the rocks at the bottom.
A cemetery loomed ahead, gravestone after gravestone disappearing over the crest of the hill. It wasn’t a day for wandering amongst the dead. She took a right, vaulting over the chain-link fence into the Arboretum, disappearing into a world of intense green. But the greenery was a lure, a mirage. It wasn’t Mother Nature here but man’s attempt to tame her.
Natasha pushed towards the undergrowth, away from the tarmac paths and neatly mown lawns, away from the adolescent saplings and their lonely oases of freshly raked soil. She found a clump of feathered ferns, trees tall enough to block out the light, and she settled in amongst them, watching the shadows and the sunlight dappling across her hands.
She been here before. Or somewhere like it. The grass scrubbier, the tarmac crumbling beneath her feet, but the same feeling of man-made wilderness, of urban order imposed upon the chaos of life. There had been a flash of red brick on her left, a laughing glance over her shoulder as she’d darted off through the trees. She’d ran and not been afraid.
She watched a ladybug journey across the leaves between her hands, focused intently on the movement of its legs and folded the impressions away at the back of her mind. That girl was gone. If she’d ever existed in the first place.
There was a frantic buzzing, sudden against her hip. She started, and the ladybug took frightened flight. She wriggled awkwardly sideways to liberate her phone from the pocket of her jeans, half crushing the ferns with her knees. Clint’s name flashed insistently.
She let it ring out and waited for the buzzing to begin again. The ferns sprang back to life as she settled back into position and she plumped at a few bent leaves, coaxing them into shape.
Clint Barton
It flashed up again. She should have switched it off, lost the damned thing in the undergrowth and lost herself in half-forgotten flashes of nothing. It would have been easy, for a little while, to sink into the trees and disappear.
The phone stilled.
Natasha thumbed slowly through her missed calls.
It buzzed again. She answered.
“Hey.”
“We should talk.”
“Should we?” Her retort was sharp. His voice was achingly calm and she wanted to lash out, to feel blood and sweat beneath her fists.
“Nat…” He sounded strained, “Did you mean what you said last night?”
“Which part?”
“You know which part.”
Clint’s creased leather couch creaked as he shifted, the nervous tap tap tap of his fingers against the worn arm, “I don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
Natasha looked up, squinting through the leaves above her. Within him sat in front of her it was easier to pretend that she was talking to herself.
“I can’t be a mother.” That, she knew in the marrow of her bones, like she knew she was left-handed or that the cloudless sky was a clear cerulean blue, “I’m barely functional as a human being and I can’t- I can’t drag someone else into that.”
Clint’s breath at the other end of the line was even, the tapping of his fingers had ceased. He was waiting.
“But maybe… maybe I could be something else. I don’t know,—“ She stopped, screwing her eyes shut, the hard plastic of the phone digging into her ear. Her voice was thin and horribly hesitant and she wanted to stop, to rewind, to be anywhere but here. “I haven’t had many choices. Even joining SHIELD— I was going to die, one way or another. And I want to make a choice.” Her voice had lowered to barely a murmur, vulnerability bleeding into shame.
The silence was heavy.
“Ok.”
Natasha swallowed, forced herself onwards, “If this won’t work for you, that’s ok. I’ll choose something else.”
She didn’t say: they took everything from me, they carved out my body and my mind, tore me apart and reformed me. They took away my chance to have a family long before they touched my womb. But maybe now my body’s fighting back. If I choose to do this, maybe I’m fighting back.
“I said ok.”
“What?”
“I’m flying home tomorrow. I’ll talk to Laura. You’re right. It could work.”
“Clint, you don’t—“ All of a sudden, she wanted to take everything back. She was standing on the edge of a yawning abyss, teetering over nothingness. What was I thinking? This was worse than an arrow in the shoulder, far worse than owing her life and her will. This was entangling herself so inextricably… it was a debt that she would never, ever be able to repay.
“I don’t—“ Her breath was coming too quickly, her throat tight, sharp little gasps that weren’t serving oxygen to her brain.
Clint stilled at the other end of the line, “Nat, where are you?”
“The Arboretum.” It came out choked, lost in the roar of pounding blood.
“What are you doing out there?” The amused sharpness of his surprise was the thread that pulled her through.
“I walked.”
“What can you see?”
She looked around, chest tight, catching a glimpse of red in her clouding vision, “A ladybird.”
“What’s it doing?”
“It flew away. I think I scared it. But then it came back.”
“What else can you see?”
Natasha focused on the soil beneath her foot, grinding her heel into the dirt.
“There’s a couple of woodlice. A snail.” The syllables were short and clipped, but her throat was opening, her heartrate slowing, “A spider.” She watched it, admired its perfect stillness and wondered if it might, in fact, be dead.
“What sort of spider?”
“Eight legs. Pretty huge.” She breathed out through her teeth, prodding it delicately with the toe of her boot. It sprang to life, scuttling a few steps, eying her warily. She felt strangely relieved. “Eight eyes. As big as my head.”
“Ok, very funny.”
Natasha took a deep, steadying breath. The chasm was still there. She’d backed away from the edge. It seemed smaller, at a distance.
“Alright?”
“Uhuh.” She dragged her thoughts away from the shame that threatened to overwhelm her. It’s ok to trust. It’s ok to ask for help. It’s not it’s not it’s not.
Clint’s couch creaked as he stretched out, “Can we meet? Do you want pizza?”
She thought for a moment. The idea of grilled cheese, grease pooling in its folds, made her stomach turn over. “Pastry.”
“…and pizza?”
Natasha choked out a laugh, “Don’t push your luck, Barton.”
“Nino’s, then?”
“Give me half an hour. I’ll find a cab.”
She unfolded herself from the undergrowth and wound her way back to the tarmac path. A bouncing terrier yapped furiously at her as she emerged between the trees. She vaulted over the fence one-handed, the other still holding her phone to her ear, the soundtrack of Clint’s scramble for a matching pair of shoes and his keys lending rhythm to her thoughts.
“What do you want?”
“Enough sugar to make my teeth rot.” I’m eating for two, she nearly said, but it was too much, too fragile an idea and she swallowed it down before it could drag her back to the edge.
“Coming right up. See you there?” There was a lift at the end of the sentence, an unspoken second half to the question: or do you want to stay on the line?
“See you there.” She answered, ending the call and hailing a cab, her shoes muddying its pristine interior as she slipped into the back seat.
“13th and L” She threw at the driver who nodded, disinterested, and pulled out into the fast-flowing flood of mid-afternoon traffic. She caught a glimpse of his face in the rear-view mirror: tired, bored, a twitch of irritation at the corner of his right eye. A lighter band of skin circled the ring finger of his left hand and his t-shirt was rumpled. It was boring and clichéd and predictable. Other people’s lives so often were.
Out on the street, she watched through the glass: sharp-suited businessmen with briefcases; lethargic students with backpacks and messengers bags and armfuls of books; chaotic young parents with babies in strollers, corralling toddlers and lugging diaper bags. People shouting and talking and crying and laughing. Card-carrying members of society. Boring, clichéd. Predictable.
Her stomach growled. She hadn’t had lunch. Did I eat breakfast? She stepped through the night: the stumble home from Clint’s apartment, the restless sleep and uneasy dreams, the painful racket of her alarm clock. A banana. That was it. After she showered, but before she dressed, wrapped in a towel on the sofa because she’d suddenly had to eat that moment. She breathed a little easier. It was all there. The days ran together, but there were no gaps, no disjointed moments that didn’t make sense.
The cab pulled up, bouncing half onto the pavement. She handed the driver a twenty and didn’t wait for the change. Clint was a distorted figure through the window, sat at a table in the back corner, half hidden behind an enormous plate of pastries.
She didn’t want to go in. The phone had been different. The phone hadn’t been real. It had just been her, in her head, playing at what ifs. This was stupid. Her life was dangerous enough as it was. She loitered for a moment, looking away down the street. Fighting back. Was that really what this meant? Was she gaining control or losing it?
The bell tinkled as the door opened.