Chapter Text
Being back in New York after two years on the run was supposed to be comforting.
Two whole years running from 117 countries and the UN was hell. Constantly looking over their shoulders, being hunted from country to country, never being able to settle down, to relax, moving from shitty safehouses to even shittier safehouses. Taking underground jobs so they could live, so they could have a roof over their heads and somewhat necessities. Absolutely no comfort, in any shape or form.
Going home meant all of the things they left behind. The Compound and all of its luxury amenities. The apartment with their own clothes, the comfort of their own beds and bedrooms, full fridges of everything they could crave for, a warm strong shower, a place that doesn't smell like cigarettes and 50 years of regret. Space from each other, privacy, real quiet, air conditioning.
Everything they had ever missed in those years and even the ones they didn't realize they had missed.
The first time they went home was less than 24 hours ago after a call from Bruce. There was an air of uneasiness, they didn't know what to expect but things didn't sound promising. They were barely able to spend time there before rushing to Wakanda, but at least they weren't arrested despite Ross's orders.
It was still a lot better than the second time.
This time, getting arrested was their last worry. Only half of them returned, only half of them were even alive.
Not half of the team but half of the universe. Even those who had nothing to do with this, not unfortunate civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the innocent ones that were thousands of miles away too. Billions of people on earth, and even more on other planets.
The Avengers failed and everyone paid the price.
Thanos' actions brought consequences that they wouldn't be able to understand for now and probably not for a long time. There was no training any of them had that could even remotely help, there was no one who had any idea of what to do to fix this or help the remaining population to deal with the fact that half of them vanished.
It was still the Avengers that were called for help, for answers and a solution. It didn't matter that they had none, that the only answer they had was that Thanos was the one responsible for everything and that they weren't able to stop him.
So being back in the Compound didn't help. Being able to shower in her own shower and put on her own clothes didn't help. Seeing her own bedroom exactly as she had left didn't help. Not even having Bruce and Thor back helped. There was no place that could bring any ounce of comfort after everything.
They didn't have time to grieve, didn't have time to really wrap their heads around what happened or feel the regret of losing the most important fight they have ever fought. All they could do was push everything aside, grab the ever growing list of things they had to do and put on a brave face to try and do what they could.
Steve and Thor had been called somewhere. Bruce was doing something. The Raccoon was doing something else. Rhodey was on the phone with someone. Even Pepper Potts had come over and was on the phone with someone else.
Natasha should be on the phone with someone or doing something to help with something that could maybe help with this. There was a list of things for her to do, of shoulds and coulds but for once her training failed her.
Usually she had a backup plan to her plan z, she could keep her composure and improvise under the worst situations. This time? She couldn't even keep her breathing steady, her mind kept swimming and she honestly had no idea of what was happening around her.
This was not like her. She was Black Widow, she wasn't supposed to crumble under pressure, to not know what to do or not have control over her emotions. Yet, she still sat there clueless, completely lost over her surroundings.
She had to get out of here. She had to call Clint or Laura. She had to call Yelena and Melina. She had to get a hold of herself. She had to be able to breathe. She had to focus.
She got out of there.
Natasha doesn't remember getting up from her chair, she doesn't know if she said anything to anyone. She doesn't remember going to the garage, doesn't remember getting into her Corvette or leaving the Compound.
She does remember seeing a lot of cars abandoned in the middle of the road, she remembers looking inside to see if there was anyone inside. She remembers seeing all of them empty.
She remembers calling Yelena and Melina so many times without being picked up, none of the safelines, none of the burner phones. Her calls to Laura going straight to voicemail. She remembers the small glimpse of hope when one of her calls to Clint got declined, not to voicemail and not not answered, but rejected.
She remembers almost hitting her car when he finally picked up. She doesn't remember getting out of her car. She remembers hearing Clint's desperate voice telling her that Laura and all three of the kids simply vanished. She doesn't remember throwing up. She remembers the fury in his voice when she told him what happened. She doesn't remember when the tears started running down her face or when she started hyperventilating.
Natasha does remember the piercing crying that broke through the fog.
She has no idea of exactly where she is or how she got here, but she's in front of a dark house surrounded by two other dark houses on both sides. Not “middle of the night” dark but a “no one inside” dark.
The crying continues, growing weaker but impossible to be mistaken. A baby's cry. Coming from one of the empty houses. Screw that, it's clearly from the one she parked in front of after almost hitting their car.
Natasha takes a deep breath and dries her tears, her mind clearing for the first time in 12 hours.
She still rings the doorbell, hoping that maybe there's someone inside with the baby, that it's just a baby waking up to eat like babies do and its parents are worried about the electric bill in this uncertain times. The only noise she can hear inside is the baby's faint cry. She tries to look through the widow, and all she can see is an empty house.
As much as it looks like the baby is alone, she's still careful to not make a lot of noise as she picks the lock in case there's an older sibling inside who may get more freaked out with the front door being broken. Not that a stranger inside their home won't scare them either way, anyways.
The house looks like a normal house. There's shoes and jackets by the door, a stroller with a carseat on top. A blanket thrown over the back of the couch, baby things that she can't name, glasses on the coffee table. Dishes in the sink from lunch. Photos of a couple on the walls, a smiling redheaded woman pregnant, photos of a tiny baby, photos of the couple holding the newborn baby.
A pile of dust in the hallway.
Another one in the middle of the nursery.
A baby alone in the crib.
The baby has stopped crying now, the eyelids dropping closed. Her little face was blotchy, her eyes puffy from crying and there were dried tear tracks running down on her red cheeks. She was laying on her back, squirming uncomfortably in her soiled one piece pajamas and her breath hitching.
Natasha seems unsure of how to approach. Obviously she is going to pick up the baby, but she doesn’t want to spook her. So she turns on the lights, alerting the baby awake who immediately started kicking and moving her hands.
“Hi, baby”
The baby locked eyes with her, starting to cry again in response. Natasha could hear that she was hoarse, clearly she had tried to call someone to pick her up many times before. She cried even harder when Natasha picked her up.
“You were alone here all this time?” It has been 12 hours since Thanos, since half of everyone disappeared and this small baby was completely alone.
How many other kids and babies were in the same position?
Natasha looked down at the baby in her arms, at the scrunched up red face and the tiny fists grabbing her shirt. What was she supposed to do now? All of the three babies she has held came accompanied by Laura who knew exactly what to do and why they were crying. She had never met this baby before and there was no Laura or any mom to tell her what to do.
The baby answered it for her by pressing her little face into Natasha’s chest, mouth open in search of something. She was very insistent about it, very uncoordinated and growing more and more frustrated when she couldn’t find what she was looking for.
“I’m sorry, you won’t find anything there” Natasha swallowed thickly, feeling guilty as if she was wrong for not having any breast milk “You must be starving”
The baby lets out another unhappy cry before head butting Natasha in the chest, as if pressing hard enough she will finally find the milk. Natasha adjusts the baby so she’s not face to face with her breast, so she’s not taunting her or something. It doesn’t help, she keeps searching around her shoulders and collarbone.
“Let's find you something to eat” Natasha's pulse is humming. The baby keeps crying more and more the longer her search isn't successful, she's so small and she has been so long without food that it's a miracle she's still strong enough to cry like that. If Natasha hadn't stopped in front of this exact house…
Her panic spikes when she gets to the kitchen and she can't find any baby milk. There's a lone empty bottle in one of the cabinets, but the only type of milk she can find is a half a gallon of milk in the fridge, no cans of powdered milk or anything like that.
“No, no” She tries to take a deep breath “There has to be something, right? Babies can't have gallon milk before they're walking yet and you can't even sit so they were feeding you something, right?”
This is a chubby baby and the whole house but especially the pink nursery showed no signs of her parents being even remotely neglectful. They were absolutely feeding her regularly. So there had to have something in there she could give her for now.
Despite her panic, Natasha knew the answer to that. She had been around since Cooper was born, she knew exactly that this baby was exclusively breastfed. She should have expected to not find anything when the first thing the baby did was to try and nurse when picked up but babies's whole brand was diapers, pacifiers and bottles. She did find the bottle so technically that wasn't wrong.
“What are we going to do?”
How far was she from a store? Where was she even? She couldn't drive with a baby in her arms and she couldn't simply lay her on the passenger seat either. She wouldn't be able to focus with the baby screaming either way, not when she was worried about how long she could even survive without eating.
The human body could survive three days without water, sometimes a week depending on conditions. Months without food. But this is a tiny baby, they need food regularly and their “food” is basically the same as their “water” so that can't be good. Especially with all of the crying to help dehydrate her.
Natasha is panicked enough that she's tempted to just wipe out her boobs to see if it magically has filled with milk. She knows that's not possible but her only rational thought is finding food for this baby. Laura's voice is screaming inside her head that babies can't have cow milk, that they will fall ill because their little bellies aren't grown enough to digest it so some magic milk appearing seems more coherent. She doesn't want to save this baby just to put her in the hospital.
She searches the cupboards again. She looks in the pantry. She goes back to the nursery to see if she finds anything. She searches the parent's bedroom. She even looks in the bathrooms for something. All she finds is more signs of how loved this baby girl was and that her name is Rose.
With shaky fingers she calls the first number in her speed dial, throwing herself on the floor with the now drowsy baby against her chest.
“Nat?” Steve's voice came out confused.
“Steve” Natasha chokes out “I can't find anything”
“What's going on?” He can hear the panic in her voice, Natasha Romanoff never sounds panicked “What happened?”
“I've searched everywhere and there's no milk” Her breath is speeding up again “She needs to eat but I can't find anything”
“Natasha, take a deep breath” He exaggerates a deep breath through the phone as if his own heart wasn't in his throat “Tell me what's going on”
He doesn't know what's going on, what has her so freaked out but he's already gesturing to Thor to let him know he has to go. He doesn't know where, or even why but he does know that he can't just stay there talking with the remaining UN council trying to come out of ways to help with this Thanos aftermath when Natasha is panicking about something.
He can hear a baby's whimpering over Natasha's shaky breaths and his blood runs cold. She needs to eat and I can't find anything.
“Where are you?” Steve asks, trying to find a way to get to her
“I don't know” Natasha tries to force herself to be calm “I was just driving and then I stopped in front of this house and I found her”
“Do you have your tracker? Turn it on and I'll find you” He says, thinking about the bracelet Natasha always has on her that he's the only person that knows it's not just a silver bracelet.
The baby kept on crying weakly, Natasha started humming and rocking it despite knowing that the only thing that would really help was her mom coming back and being able to feed her. She was hungry, not fussy.
“I'm 30 minutes away” Steve says when Natasha's location appeared for him “I'm leaving now”
“It's been over 12 hours, Steve” She says “She's tiny”
“Is she okay?”
“She's starving” Her voice comes out thickly with tears “They're supposed to eat every 3 hours, she has missed like 4 feeds”
“There's no milk in the house? That's her house, isn't it?” He grabs the first motorcycle he could find thrown around in the streets
“There's no milk, I've searched everywhere” The cries stopped again “Her mom breastfed so all the milk has turned into dust too”
“I'll stop by the store” His mind was swimming too, Natasha's panic hitting straight though his chest “What do I even buy? Do I ask for baby milk?”
“I don't know, Steve” Natasha's voice came out hash, scaring the baby into crying again “The only time I've dealt with babies and milk was when I babysat Lila and Laura had left a milky bag for me to heat up”
“I'll look for milky bags then” Where would he find that? Did it look like the Canadian bags of milk?
“It was Laura's milk” She sounds tired now, not at his clueless question, just exhausted “Like, from her boob”
“Maybe the mom left some? I know you said you looked everywhere but maybe because you were searching for something else?”
Natasha didn't answer but she got up from the floor and went back to the kitchen. Throwing her phone on the counter, putting it on speaker so she could open the fridge again to look for milky bags. There were none as she expected, the milk gallon still being the only milk-looking container inside. She swallowed a sob as she opened the freezer, mostly to say she had looked when she was met with a single little bag. It matched the one that Laura had handed it to her so many years ago, the same design and little measurements, but inside it was a yellowish liquid instead of a white milk.
Could that be it? Was it safe?
“Steve, can you look something up for me?” She says, still holding the baby and the bag in the other hand while moving closer to her phone.
The wind on his end told her that he was driving, that he was on his way but he still slowed down so he could try to help her.
“I found a bag with a yellow milk, not like pee yellow but yellowish” Natasha clarified, turning the bag to look it over “Can you see if it's safe? Like if it's milk? It's not milk white but it does look like milk”
Steve was quiet for a moment while he looked it up. He had pulled up so he wouldn't risk hitting a car, mostly because he felt like searching “is yellow milk safe for babies” wouldn't be a straight answer.
“Is it pumped milk?” He wasn't sure exactly what it meant but that was what was written “If it is, it just means it's colostrum. It's a very good milk for babies, actually. It's rich in nutrients and fat”
“So I can give it to her?” She can't hide the relief in her voice
“Yeah, you can give it to her” Steve turned the bike back on “Anything else?”
“Search how to quickly warm it up”
“You can run it under warm water until it thaws and warms up, or you can pour boiling water over the sealed bag so it thaws super fast” He told her after a little while “Well, a few minutes but it's apparently the fastest way. Don't put it in the microwave”
“Okay, thank you” Her voice was calmer now, not controlled like normally but not freaking out anymore “I'm going to do that”
Natasha fills the kettle with water and turns it on, finding a container she can put the frozen bag in so she can put the boiling water over it. The baby has quieted down again, this time because she's chewing on her own tiny fists, but every time Natasha moves to a new position she tries to see if this will finally be the time she will find the boob she's searching for.
“Should I go straight there or should I stop at the store first?” Steve breaks the silence
“This won't be enough, she's little but not this little” Natasha tells him, unsure
“So I'll stop by the store and hope someone can help me”
“No, come here, please” She doesn't hide how scared she is, even now that she knows she can feed the baby at least until they can find her more food
“Okay, I'll be there in 20 minutes” He tells her
The kettle signals it's ready so Natasha focuses on safely pouring the water on top of the little bag without spilling anything on the baby. She prays that this is right, that this is safe for the baby and that she won't melt the bag and waste the only food she has until they can find more.
It's the longest 3 minutes of her life.
Steve stays on the phone but he's not saying anything, just the sound of the wind as he rushes towards her. The baby keeps chewing on her fists, making tiny sounds every once in a while.
After what feels like hours, the milk has thawed. So Natasha pours it into the bottle, making sure to not spill a single drop. It's still a little cold, more lukewarm than warm but she doesn't want to risk burning the baby or ruining the only milk they have.
“It's ready” She tells both Steve and the baby.
Natasha moves to sit on the couch, feeling a little sick when she spots the pile of dust by the hallway. She adjusts the baby on her lap so she's in the proper position. It makes her once again root against her chest, but this time Natasha can give her something, give her a little of what she's searching for.
It doesn't work.
The moment the bottle touched her mouth, the baby started crying. She's mad, her tiny face is scrunched and looking up at Natasha as if saying “how dare you?”. The more Natasha tries to offer her the bottle, the more she cries
“Baby, this is your food” Natasha tells her “If you try it, you will see that it tastes just the same. I think”
The baby keeps crying and pushing the bottle away, her whole body squirming uncomfortably. She has grown hoarse with all of the crying she has been doing but it doesn't stop her from crying.
“Drink just a little” Natasha tries to be encouraging, despite the panic coming back in full force “You need to eat, who knows the last time you ate”
“She's refusing it?” Steve's voice came from the phone, startling both Natasha and the baby
“She's refusing the bottle” She tells him, trying to adjust the baby “She's looking at me like I'm the worst person ever for trying to put this awful plastic thing in her mouth”
“It says here to get them comfortable before eating” He says gently, unsure of how to help “If she was too hungry and overtired, that can happen”
“No, Steve” Natasha sighed frustrated “She's not comfortable. She doesn't know me, she was left alone for over 12 hours, laying alone in her crib, crying and with her diaper full without anyone coming. Someone finally came but it's not who she wants, it's not the boob she wants so much. Strange arms, strange smell, strange bottle”
“Did you change her diaper?”
“What?”
“You said her diaper was full, is it clean now?” Steve clarifies, already bracing for the response
“No, I was too focused on finding food for a starving baby” Natasha answers harsh, not mad at him but it was the easiest target now “She's been crying, and her mouth looks a little too pale for my comfort and I couldn't find fucking milk to make sure she wouldn't literally starve so the diaper didn't cross my mind”
“Hey, I'm not judging” He says calmly “The diaper is not the priority over food, but maybe this could help get her more comfortable so she will eat?”
Natasha took a deep breath, she has lost count of how many deep breaths to calm down she has done recently. Steve did have a point and he was trying to help. Trying to get the baby to accept the bottle wasn't working and the diaper has leaked so it's probably uncomfortable, even her clothes were wet.
“I'm going to change her” She told Steve “The door is open, my car is parked in front so you won't miss it”
“Call me if you need anything else”
She goes back to the kitchen so she could put the bottle in the same container she had used to pour the boiling water to thaw the milk, to keep it from getting even colder.
She has changed diapers before, she's not an expert but after two nephews and one niece she can do an okay job. It's the least frightening thing since Thanos, just: take off the soiled onepiece, open the tab, throw away the dirty diaper, grab a new one without dropping the baby and hearing Laura's voice telling her she was supposed to grab the supplies before taking the diaper off, use a wipe to make sure she's clean, put the rash cream, lift baby's legs to slide the clean diaper and then close the tab before finding clean clothing. It's not a calm experience because the baby is more offended at being laid down on the changing table than when Natasha was trying to feed her, but again it's not an alien army or half of everyone disappearing or no way to feed a tiny baby stressful.
She tries again with the bottle, this time in the rocking chair in the corner of the nursery. The baby has a dry diaper and clothes, this is her own bedroom and she's not crying so supposedly she's comfortable. Her attack plan is to position her in the way it seems that a mother would to breastfeed, closer and angled towards her body instead of the more natural position for a bottle.
It works.
The baby isn't happy with the bottle, but the moment the milk touches her mouth she starts hungrily sucking. Maybe Natasha had been holding her wrong in the first try, maybe it was the diaper or maybe it's the position and her own bedroom.
It doesn't matter. What matters is that she's eating and Natasha feels like she can breathe. She doesn't know what will happen from now on, but she knows that now they have enough time to figure it out.
“That's it, baby” Natasha tells her quietly, looking away when the baby keeps studying her face in a way that it's too intense for someone so small “Your name is Rose, I should stop referring to you as the baby, huh?”
There's a blanket hanging on the crib with Rose embroidered and Natasha had seen other things with that name when she was searching for milk but she had been freaking out too much to really register it. The theme of the nursery was roses, now that she looked at it properly.
The pile of dust in the middle of it was nauseating the more she looked, but she still made a mental promise to it that she would make sure to take care of their baby and all of the kids in a similar position. She wasn't sure exactly how this would be fixed, but one of the Avengers could at least make a transmission to the public to remind them to look for any neighbour's kids that could have been left alone with their parents disappearing.
Natasha didn't believe in God, not even being in the same team as one god could change that. She was too cynical and she had both done too many bad things to people by someone's orders and suffered too many things to think that there was a guy up there deciding things would happen the way everything would happen. Maybe that's not even the way people see God, maybe it's just her interpretation about their interpretation, or maybe she was just raised in fucked up people that ruined her ability to even hope. Either way, she found herself praying to God and to whoever is out there that those kids stay protected and safe, that none of the bad people will find them.
As she looks at the baby girl falling asleep in her arms, she prays even harder that she and Yelena managed to end the Red Room for good, that there's not one single agent or sympathizer left. They have always thrived on vulnerability, on the forgotten and overlooked, and unfortunately Thanos has created an exacerbated vulnerability to a lot of innocent kids.
If child trafficking was already easy before, now it's even easier because there's too many kids without parents and it's easy to just claim the kid was a victim of Thanos if someone does miss it.
Natasha will work so hard on making sure this doesn't happen to any kid, or any other baby and little kid will be in the same position as Rose was. She's not sure how she will be able to do it, if it's even possible, but she will for sure try.
Steve had expected to find the worst when he walked into the house. He wasn't even sure exactly what he had expected but if Natasha was so frightened that she was panicking and couldn't even hide it then things must be catastrophically bad.
Instead, he walks in to find Natasha sitting down on a rocking chair holding a sleeping baby in her arms.
She's perfectly composed now, he doubts she's calm but her eyes are focused and her jaw is set in a way that tells him she has a plan formed in her head.
It's not enough to calm his frantic heart. In fact, for a moment he fears the baby isn't actually sleeping but worse. Then she presses her tiny head closer to Natasha's body and he can at least breathe.
“Is she okay?” He asks “Did she eat?”
Natasha nods, lifting the small bottle in her hand to show him it's empty.
“Are you okay?” Another nod from her in response “You told me she was small but I didn't expect her to be this small”
“Her eyes are incredibly blue”
Steve pauses. After everything, this is the last thing he expected to come out of her mouth.
“What?”
“I've been holding her for almost an hour, but I only saw it as she was falling asleep” Natasha says quietly “It's a very light blue, there's no lighting that could leave any doubts about the color. Yet I had already confirmed she was indeed a baby girl before even noticing her eyes were blue”
“I think given the circumstances, that's understandable” He moved closer to her, mindful of the pile of dust
“I'm Black Widow, that's a huge detail to miss” She says as she looks down at the sleeping baby gripping her shirt tight. Afraid of being left again.
Steve lowered down so he could press a kiss to Natasha's head, inhaling her scent deeply to ground himself. She's here, she's okay. The baby is here, the baby is okay, the baby is blue eyed apparently.
From this angle he can see half of her little face, the chubby cheeks and the frow in her eyebrows… or where her eyebrows should be. Her blue eyes are closed and puffy, her little nose and cheeks also red, showing how much she has cried today.
“She doesn't have eyebrows” He says quietly, unsure of why he's saying it but maybe because of the same reason that Natasha blurted about her eyes
“She does, it's just extremely light” Natasha looks up at him “I think she's a redhead. Her mom was one and the little fuzz in her head is reddish”
“What's her name?” He asks
“Rose”
“Pretty name”
“A very fitting name” She says, before reciting “The Rose that grew from concrete”
“What?”
“It's Tupac, a rapper,” Natasha explains “It means a rose grew in a place where it shouldn't grow, and despite the adversities it survives. Resilience, Steve”
“That's very fitting” Again, not what he expected from her, but nothing about this last 24 hours has been expected so Natasha analyzing a baby's name shouldn't surprise him. “Something tells me that this brain wasn't just analyzing a rap song”
“It's poetry, actually” She looks up at him “But, yeah I was making some plans”
This was their language, how they dealt with things
“About Rose?”
“No, my only plan regarding her is that we need to buy the milk can because she will wake up hungry soon” She shook her head “There's more babies and kids like her out there, all over the world. No parents, no help”
“What are you thinking?” He stepped back so he can look at her properly, Captain America face on
“We can't find them all” Her eyes are determined “We don't know how to fix what Thanos did or even how to help the remaining population, but we can help the kids.”
“How exactly?”
“We will have to come out with a better plan, to make sure the kids are accounted for, safe and provided for” It's her plan but something about it it's making her uncomfortable “But before that we have to make sure they stay alive for it so we have to ask the community to be a community. To check on those around them who has kids and babies, neighbours and friends”
“You're worried about a Red Room-esque situation”
“Yes” Natasha nods “But we don't have time to entrust only first responders, teachers or be able to make a proper count. Babies don't have time for that, kids with special needs, and even adults with special needs to be honest. Little kids can go longer without eating and even be able to reach for something to eat at home but they can also reach for something dangerous”
“Alright, we'll go from there” He can see the plan's fault but he also knows that the potential benefits outweighs the risks “We'll make a public announcement”