Chapter 3
"And..returning in five.. four.. three.. two.." Bruce pushed a few buttons on the controls and two figures appeared on the platform. But one of them seemed to be lying limp in the others' arms.
Bruce, Sam and Bucky hurriedly came forward as Carol retracted her suit-helmet and set the other person down on the ground.
"Carol, what- Is..is that N-Nat?" Bruce stammered after Carol retracted Natasha's helmet as well. She nodded furiously with a huge grin plastered on her face.
"Is- is she-" Sam couldn’t complete his question.
"She's unconscious. She has a steady pulse and everything. I checked for physical injuries but nothing. I think she's fine. But we really need to take her for a full checkup. Where's Rogers?" Carol asked while looking around. "Shouldn’t he be back the same time as me?"
Suddenly, fear flashed Bruce's face and he ran towards the controls again. They were so ecstatic to see Natasha back again that they completely forgot about the other time-traveller.
"Shit. Shit. Shit," Bruce cursed while urgently pressing some buttons. Sam followed yelling at him to bring Steve back.
"Sam, I need you to help Carol take Nat to the med bay. I'll take care of everything here."
Sam nodded unsurely before ushering Carol and unconscious Natasha to the temporary med bay.
Bruce grunted, "Why isn't it working dammit! What if Steve's in trouble. We don’t even have any Pym Particles left to send someone after him. Fuck!"
Bucky, who witnessed all the commotion that just happened, hadn’t spoken a word yet. Bruce looked over his shoulder to see the metal armed man staring at the ground. Broad shoulders sagged, as if in defeat.
"Don't worry, Barnes. We'll get him back," Bruce didn’t know if he was trying to convince Bucky or himself. To his surprise, the former assassin laughed. A bitter laugh actually.
"That's the thing. I don’t think punk wants to be back. He's not in trouble. He's where he always wanted to be," Bucky lifted his face and looked up to Bruce. "I kind of saw this coming when he gave the shield to Sam. He knew he wouldn’t be coming back so he gave it up."
"Hey, we don't know that for sure. We'll send backup. Now that Dr. Pym is back, the man who made the time travel particles," Bruce explained, "I'm sure they'll be able to formulate some as soon as possible."
Bucky sighed a small okay and started walking towards the med bay to check on Natasha.
"Where is she?" Clint came running down the hallway. Sam, Pepper, Rhodey were already there. "Is it true? She-" Clint cut himself off as soon as his eyes fell on Natasha's unconscious body lying on the hospital bed. He put his hands on the glass window and started sobbing uncontrollably.
Laura and the kids, Scott, Bucky, Wanda arrived shortly after and Laura wrapped her arms around her husband.
"Laur.. She..she's back. Natasha's back. God, I can't believe-" his words were muffled in Laura's shoulder.
When Carol arrived after changing her uniform, Clint stood up and hugged her. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. For bringing her back. I'm forever in your debt."
"It’s okay, Barton. Really. She's here with us now. That’s all that matters," Carol patted his back.
"How did you bring her back?" Wanda asked, her voice wavering.
"Honestly, the whole memory of the time that I spent on Vormir is..how do I put it.. hazy, for some reason. I dropped the stone from the cliff like the guardian asked me to. Next clear thing I knew, I was lying on the exact same spot from where I dropped the stone from, waking up with a hell of a headache. And I don’t even remember passing out in the first place. And then when I looked around I saw Nat lying beside me," Carol smiled, her eyes glassy like everyone else present.
"But I remember orange sky.. Standing on shallow water and having a..a conversation with someone.. with some entity. I don’t know.. I didn’t see them but I could feel them. I think the soul stone is sentient."
"Did you ask that entity for Ms. Black Widow's soul back?" Scott asked.
"No, I didn’t have to. Somehow they already knew. They said it was the first time someone was going back to the land of the living after being sacrificed for the stone. Also that Natasha was a very special soul."
"She trusted your half-assed plan to retrieve the stones and sacrificed herself without any guarantee that the others will succeed getting the rest of the stones. So hell yeah she's a special soul," Sam spoke up.
"No kidding. That's the thing actually. She was the only soul ever to willingly sacrifice themselves. Speaking of which, I don’t really remember how our conversation went down but the entity uh.. it talked like they were talking about two people, not just Natasha. Something like two souls weren’t necessary for the soul stone to acquire and stuff. I mean.. I don’t know if it makes sense, there's a chance I might be misremembering things. I am stilll feeling kinda hungover so..," they didn’t talk further about it.
After a while Dr. Helen Cho came out of Natasha's room and everyone bombarded her with questions.
"Okay. Everybody relax. She has no external or internal injuries. Both Natasha and the baby is fine," the doctor smiled but every other person in the room was stunned.
"What baby?" Carol asked.
"Natasha. Her baby," Cho smiled but it soon faded. "She's pregnant. You didn’t know?"
"Doc, that's not possible. She can't have kids," Clint interrupted when the initial shock passed.
Cho skimmed through some pages of her StarkPad, "Well, I have reports here saying that she is indeed pregnant. Almost 14 weeks."
"Then why didn’t she show any symptoms?" Pepper asked. "I was in touch with her regularly. Even in the last few months. She seemed fine to me. Not even nauseous."
"She has super-soldier serum in her blood," Clint answered absentmindedly. When he noticed all eyes were on him, he elaborated, "It's actually classified SHIELD info. Not many people know but she was given the serum in the red room. A weak version, best they could formulate. Not as strong as Steve's or Barnes' but enough to make her faster, more agile, accelerate healing, slowing down aging.. See how she's 39 but looks like she's in her late 20s?" Clint smiled.
"You know Nat's gonna hit you when she hears you said that right?" Rhodey joked, trying to lighten up the situation.
"But why won't she wake up?" Wanda asked.
"Don't worry. She just needs a little rest. She'll wake up when her body is ready, which shouldn’t be longer than a few more hours," Cho smiled and excused herself.
It was a lot to process for everyone. By some miracle they just got their friend back and what's more miraculous is that she was carrying a child!
"So none of knew? Really?" Clint pointed the question mostly at Pepper, Rhodes and Carol.
"Clint, Nat didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t even know she was seeing anybody! And she hardly left the compound," Pepper answered.
"So who's the father?"
Pepper, Carol and Rhodey just shrugged. Followed by another awkward silence.
"Wait, why are you guys wondering who the father is? Isn’t it Captain America?" Scott spoke up suddenly. All eyes on him now. "What? Aren’t they together?" He looked around, confusion etched on his face. But after a few moments he realized that he had said something wrong.
"Ohh God," Scott groaned. "I swear, I- I didn’t know. I've believed they're together since all the way back in Germany! And..and when I saw them together in the compound a few weeks ago I..I thought they were m-married or something. I'm sorry if I totally misread things."
Nobody said anything after that. Cause they too were thinking about that possibility. Even though the blonde soldier and the redhead spy never confirmed anything they couldn’t help but suspect that maybe, just maybe there was something more than just friendship and camaraderie.
They way they always had each others' back, the way they looked at each other.. they couldn’t help but think. Steve moved out of from the compound after the decimation but he did come to visit once or twice a month. So what if..?
"Where is Cap by the way? Rhodey asked, breaking everyone out of their reverie.