The world has gone to hell
No one knew what Natasha Romanov did when she got off of work, well no one but Clint Barton anyway but Clint knew more than most people did about her; she trusted him because he was still her best friend no matter what happened and she knew she could count on him no matter what happened and that probably explained why he was the only person truly privy to her secrets and by proxy, so were Kate and Clint's ex-wife Bobbi.
Well some of them anyway, they were aware of the basics but anything deeper remained securely locked inside of the vault that was her best friends brain and she knew that he wouldn't sell her out or tell people more than she wanted them to know because he knew the cost if he did something that stupid. Natasha was a guarded person for a lot of very, very good reasons; she'd been through more than most could comprehend and more than anyone ever should.
Every time he looked at her he wished that she was dealt a better hand than she was; Natasha had maintained that a lot of what she'd been through was because she'd made the wrong choices but what could you expect if you took a child and lied to them so badly that they believed you were their only hope? No one could blame her for what she'd been through or what she'd done. She was a goddamn child. She had no other options and she didn't know any better.
It wasn't her fault and his eyes, it never would be. They'd been through a lot and met many, many hurdles over the years but ultimately they were both still there when they needed someone to turn to and he knew that was always something he could count on, and eventually, so did she. It had taken something really, really freaking horrible for her to realize it but Natasha Romanov had shown up at his place one night quite literally covered in blood - not hers, he'd learned that pretty quickly when he'd lost his shit - and trying so hard to hold it together that it had literally taken just the tiniest tap for her bravado to break.
Natasha didn't break. Not ever.
She was too strong for that and she was too stubborn for it, she buried everything so deeply inside of her that most people would watch her face trial after trial and be left with the impression that she was wholly and completely unshaken by everything but he knew better. She was still a person beneath it all and most people didn't seem to realize that and those that did forgot it easily when she seemed strong again.
He didn't though, he never had.
Vulnerabilities and strengths, ups and downs, highs and lows? He'd seen it all with her and he was more than aware that though she carried herself well and she seemed so brilliantly composed inside of her there waged a war that threatened to consume everything she was and she fought that war all alone for the most part except for those brief, fleeting rare moments like then where she'd show up and have faced something so goddamn horribly overwhelming that she had no choice but to admit that she needed help.
That night had been one of them. Natasha had been literally shaking when she'd showed up at his apartment, covered in blood and pale as a goddamn corpse, and by the time he'd gotten her to come inside and talk to him, she'd seemed almost numb but there was anger simmering just below the surface, he could see it in her eyes and he had to find a way to abate that for long enough to get her to tell him what the hell had happened.
He couldn't help her if he didn't know and she'd obviously wanted his help or she wouldn't be there. She had plenty of places she could run to if she just wanted someplace to be alone with her thoughts but instead, she'd showed up at her best friend's place and so it was natural to assume that she needed someone.
For the longest time, she'd just stared dead ahead, running her hand idly over Lucky's fur while she just disappeared off into a place that no one could follow but eventually, she'd turned to him and at first she'd simply said two words: He's dead.
She was broken, so very utterly devastated in a way that he couldn't even begin to help her with but that would never, ever deter him from trying. She'd been there for him through some pretty shitty things, some things that had broken something inside of him that he wasn't sure he'd ever recover from and she'd helped him to get better so, he was damn well going to do the same for her without even a second thought.
He's dead.
James, he knew she meant Bucky - she was probably the only person he knew that called him James - without even asking her and so he didn't, he wouldn't put her through the pain of having her say his name and 'Dead' in the same sentence, he wasn't cruel. He knew what they'd been through together and he knew what she'd lost and what she'd endure over the years especially when it came to them. He knew how much she loved him and he knew how much it must be tearing her apart to have lost him like that.
Death was pretty permanent. Sometimes. In this world it was a little bit complicated, death could either stick and dead was dead or they'd be brought back and life would throw them into some new, fresh hell weeks later. Life was weird.
He let her just sit there for as long as she needed while he talked to her about absolutely nothing. If that was all he could do for her at that moment then he'd gladly do it; he'd sit there and he'd hold her and he'd let her quietly sob and not mention anything about it while he talked about absolutely nothing at all so that she didn't feel like he was drawing attention to it. She hated it when she was weak and she hated it even more when people pointed out that she was or drew attention to it.
He'd learned not to quickly.
Eventually, she'd fallen asleep on his couch after he'd insisted that she shower; she wouldn't eat anything because she felt too sick after spending hours just lost in grief. He could relate; he'd felt the same with Bobbi but he didn't say a word to her about that. She knew he could relate already she didn't need him saying it, she needed him to just be a shoulder that she could lean on when her own strength faltered the same way that he always had.
She knew that he always would be, Clint Barton loved Natasha Romanov in a very complicated kind of way but ultimately he was her best friend and he'd always made sure that she knew that above all else.
Come morning, it had been almost like the world had ended for her and that didn't change for weeks. He could see the emptiness in her even when she decided that someone out there had to pay the price for what had happened, he should be avenged in some manner or another and she'd track down every last person that played even a tiny part in what had happened to him; she'd watched him die on that table at SHIELD and there had been nothing that she could do about it.
She'd watched her world end and now all she had left was the anger. It was one of the stages of grief and he hoped eventually when she worked through it all that she'd start to find a way to heal but that wouldn't happen for a very, very long time. There was still so much pain inside of her that healing now would be impossible for her until she'd worked through it all. He might not agree with the way that she was doing that and he'd been very vocal about that fact but he understood that she was doing what she felt she had to.
He'd gone dark too in his pain so he was hardly in any position to lecture her on it, she'd reminded him of that too and he'd been pissed as hell about it at first but she was right. She deserved to work through this any goddamn way she had to work through it. James Barnes was the love of her life and while he may have hated that fact once upon a time? Nothing would change it and now she felt lost and hollowed out by the loss of the person she loved.
No one had the right to tell her how she dealt with that.
That went on for the better part of two months though, until one day, she'd passed out in the field and it was in that moment that people started to realize that there was something wrong with Natasha that might very well be not just emotional; a few people theorized that she'd just burned herself out with her revenge kick and maybe they were right but he didn't think so, Natasha had been through so much and never once had she faltered like that.
He'd seen her go through absolute hell and she'd always managed to pull herself out of it with a strength that was admirable. He knew that the fight in her was simply too strong.
She'd clean, straight up passed out and she could've goddamn died. She'd brushed it off like it was nothing though, she'd said that she'd just forgotten to eat but no one that knew her believed that was all it was; Natasha had always, always hated the infirmary and she hated undergoing absolutely any tests at all but after literally being bugged into it by him, Steve (who reminded her that Bucky wouldn't want her to risk her health for anything) and Maria, she'd eventually given in and she'd stayed the night for observations.
Observations, that was all that she'd agreed to and she'd told every goddamn person that had come near her and mentioned a test that she'd snap their neck before they even got close enough to her to do anything and no one had a reason to doubt that she would; Natasha Romanov was hurting and angry and looking for something to take away even a part of the pain that she'd felt; her crusade hadn't alleviated even a little bit of it. It still hurt as much as it had when she'd started.
She missed him so goddamn badly.
It just wouldn't stop. She didn't want to be back at SHIELD, it was the last place in the world that she wanted to be but there was nowhere else for people like her, she was different and a regular hospital wasn't - and would never be - an option. She needed to be here even if it was just so they'd shut the hell up and accept that there was nothing wrong with her and let her get on with whatever she needed to do in order to just feel something besides the pain and the loss.
Every time she was in here she could hear the machines screaming in her head all over again, it was so loud it was deafening and she couldn't block it out; she didn't sleep, not even a little bit. Clint had stopped by the next morning and asked her - repeatedly - to let them do some blood work at the very least just to check that it hadn't been any kind of poison that had knocked her on her ass and she'd outright refused. Again.
There was no way in hell anyone was coming anywhere near her with any kind of needle, never again. He wouldn't win.
Somewhere around lunchtime when Natasha had vowed if they didn't willfully discharge her soon, Logan had decided to stop by or more he'd been passing through to drop something off and Maria had told him she was going insane in the Infirmary and demanding to be let out when no one had a goddamn clue what had made her pass out in the field. Needless to say, he'd given her a rather stern look and shook his head at her as he lingered in the doorway of her room; he rose a brow as he studied her.
Logan's head tilted softly to the side as he made his way inside of the room and stood little more than a hands distance away from her and he studied her with a look in his eyes that she'd never seen before. She frowned at him and blew out a sigh.
"What? If you're gonna tell me I look like shit don't-" he cut her off.
"Natasha, you're pregnant." Logan's enhanced senses meant he could quite literally hear the thudding of a second heartbeat.
He'd been able to hear it the second he'd stood in the doorway but he'd been unsure on whether he was actually hearing something or whether it was someone in the next room but being this close? He was absolutely certain that there was indeed a second heartbeat. A second person. Natasha Romanov was pregnant.
"What? Did you hit your damn head?" She rolled her eyes at him.
No. That was impossible.
"You're pregnant, Natasha. I can hear it. I can hear the beating heart." He knew she had no reason to distrust him but she sure as hell looked at him like she did.
That hurt.
"I can't be," she muttered defiantly shaking her head vehemently.
"You are." He was absolutely certain she was. "Get an Ultrasound, you'll see it for yourself kid." He was adamant.
"Fine. Just to prove you wrong." He was wrong. He had to be wrong. There was no fucking way in hell.
It was impossible and if she was then the baby was... She started then to hyperventilate. She couldn't even bring herself to consider the idea and it was the most human that she'd felt in a hell of a long time. Anyone that really truly knew Natasha knew that she'd been through something horrible once upon a time and she couldn't bring herself to go through that again. She couldn't do it. No. He was wrong. He had to be wrong.
But he wasn't. She'd conceded - reluctantly - to the scan and as she stared there at the tiny being growing inside of her, her green eyes shot toward her Little Uncle and she narrowed them at him. It wasn't his fault, she knew that. He wasn't to blame for any of the situations that she was in but she was frustrated and now, now she was going to be responsible for another life. Another life that could face hell the way that she did and that hardly seemed fair but the alternative was far too painful for her to consider.
"You can't tell anyone, Logan. I mean it. Not a word," she sounded deadly serious and the look in her eyes told him she was too.
"Your friends, Nat you can't go through this alone." He was trying to reason with her but it was doing no good.
She shook her head. She was absolutely certain that this would be something that indeed she would do and she'd do so in her own way. They wouldn't - and couldn't - know a damn thing about what she was going through because she couldn't stand the thought of this poor, innocent child being wrapped up in a world fraught with danger.
Her grief would be bad enough but even then, Natasha knew that one person in the world bar Logan would indeed know: Clint Barton. If she was going to disappear she needed to be sure that her best friend wouldn't be stupid enough to come looking for her. She needed to be sure that he'd let her become a shadow. She needed to know that he'd help her if she ever needed it but he'd never, ever look for her unless she reached out first.
He'd hated it, of course, he had. He'd asked her to stay a million times but he could see it in her face that she didn't want to and that she couldn't do that. She'd already made up her mind and she needed to go and it was about her, it was about what she needed because God knew she'd given enough to everyone else already.
She'd made him promise that he'd say goodbye for her but that he'd never tell them why.
Clint Barton was a vault of Natasha Romanov's secrets and that would never, ever change.
That vault would remain locked forever if that was what she wanted. He hated goodbyes.