some promises outlast vows
It took six months, three days and several hours to stabilise Tony and the baby, to a point where they could be transported between hospitals. Once Stark had been stabilised in Siberia, after several emergency surgeries just to keep him alive, and the doctors were sure flying wouldn’t further deter his health, he had been flown to Helen Cho’s new facility in South Korea, supposedly for further treatment, according to her source. The baby had gone with, and so had Rhodes, who hadn’t left Tony’s bedside since arriving in Siberia months ago.
Tony had sustained more than internal trauma and superficial scars and scratches, his already weak heart and damaged sternum had taken the brunt of the damage Steve had done with the shield, with other organs and faculties failing and becoming more damaged in the time he was out in the cold. Not to mention the post-op trauma after having an emergency C-section done in the waiting room of a rural Siberian town’s local clinic.
The number of times the word ‘trauma’ had been used to describe some part of Tony’s injuries nauseated her, and the visuals his file provided were some of the worst things Natasha had seen in her long life. One had been trapped in her mind for days now though, keeping her out of sleep and making eating anything more than a few spoonfuls of soup and rice impossible: a torso-length picture had been taken by one doctor or the other, Tony’s body exposed, bruised a horrible shade of blue with large cuts and stitches littering him from collarbone to the underside of his belly.
The largest gashes lay horizontal across his sternum, the scars from the arc reactor all but unrecognizable thanks to the inflamed skin stretched across Tony’s chest, and she couldn’t explain it, but it was obvious there was no bone left in his concaved chest cavity, an exoskeleton somehow miraculously holding everything together. His nipples had been patched, although no breast tissue remained and a fresh horizontal pink scar twinkled morbidly below his navel.
Tony had been her friend, a man who loved her and took her in despite what she had done to him in the past, and all she had wanted to do was control him - first for S.H.I.E.L.D., then for Steve, and supposedly always for everyone’s own good. Tony was volatile, a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, he’d mess up somehow, it didn’t matter how or when, but it was inevitable, was what she had told herself and pandered to the rest of the team. He can’t be trusted to make decisions by himself, it’s best for everyone, including himself, to keep him on a tight leash. After all, who knew what years of untreated trauma could do to someone.
She had used his desperation for acceptance to keep him in check, like a beaten dog, she had kept him obedient and on his toes by looming the threat of the team shutting him out above his head and keeping him at arm’s length as he jumped through hoops to get their attention. She would strategically plan team dinners and movie nights around Tony’s schedule, making sure not to tell him or invite him, but have him walk in on them anyway, as a reminder that he didn’t really fit their puzzle, that he would have to keep shaving parts of himself off to fit in, that he had to constantly change himself to be a part of their team.
She had used his kids and his partner, his abusive childhood at the hands of his father, anything to keep him in line. She had sat by as Tony was ridiculed and torn into the by the team, had even joined in, in the wake of Ultron and had turned a blind eye when Maximoff had been assaulting his dreams for months, despite knowing Tony had nightmares all on his own, had had some bad shit haunting him even before Afghanistan – likely things his father had done to him, or maybe it had something to do with the whispers of what really happened between a thirteen-year-old Tony and fifteen-year-old Tiberius Stone, then hailed a ‘match made in heaven’, at that boarding school.
She didn’t think about his feelings, or the effect that had on his mental health, or how he and his children had become too terrified to even stay in the tower.
She hadn’t thought much about Steve talking down on him either, or how sometimes he handled him with a rougher hand than necessary or harsh words, because it was Stark.
A collapsed and bruised lung, heart failure after suffering a series of heart attacks, severe nerve damage in several areas of the chest cavity, minor trauma to the oesophagus, significant damage to breast tissue, the list seemed to be unending.
(“There wasn’t much to save,” the cardiologist who had been on standby in Tony’s O.R. had said to her after a few drinks, unaware of who he was talking to. “They had to take both tits, but hey, that’s what ‘he’ had wanted wasn’t it? That’s why I always say ‘Be careful what you wish for!’” the burly man had laughed, had made all of this sound like Tony’s just punishment for whatever slight he supposedly committed just by being. “Humans weren’t meant to mess around with what God made, you try to play God and he punishes you tenfold for it. You’ll get what you want, sure, but not how you wanted it – Old Testament for you! I saw pictures of him before he did all that stuff to himself you now, beautiful woman - I could see why the Captain would want her - and then ‘he’ had to go and mess that up. Now who would want him? And having all those kids? It’s no wonder the good Captain ran off with that other guy.”)
The surgeon had kept on laughing, had thought Tony’s pain and trauma was so damn funny, some cautionary tale for the ages – don’t be yourself lest thou wants the wrath of God upon them. Doctors having to cut away parts of him to keep him alive while he laid in a comatose state was somehow just, a price paid to someone’s selfish God to pay for some imagined debt he owed. Natasha briefly wonders who vetoed him joining the medical team, because there was sure to be more people who thought like him caring for Tony, happily taking his money while sneering in disgust behind closed doors (and wow, the irony there, she and the team didn’t even bother to badmouth him behind his back).
Natasha still took his eye for that, had left him bleeding out in the unforgiving cold – she knew there were all sorts of wild animals around this time of year. You hit the right spots, and no visible signs of force would even show up in an autopsy, or simply look accidental - there were many ways to make deaths look like accidents (like The Winter Soldier had made the Stark deaths look accidental, she thinks grimly).
She had been doing recon for the media-coined “Rogue Avengers” following the so-called Civil War; Steve wanted to get back home as soon as possible and had somehow convinced himself that Tony would welcome them back (preferably on his knees begging for their forgiveness and spouting out how wrong he was), that what they had done would just be forgiven and forgotten. But she had read people all her life, had scoped out the terrain and knew they wouldn’t be going home anytime soon - not without being shackled and thrown in some high-level security prison or the other – and it wouldn’t be like they didn’t deserve it.
But then Tony had disappeared, no known sighting of him in weeks and the Avengers who remained had all mostly fallen off the map – Rhodes had been spotted in Malibu with the kids, which wouldn’t have been considered weird except that the man himself had just sustained life-changing injuries, and that it was the middle of the school year – Stark may choose to disappear to lick his wounds but he wouldn’t ever do anything drastic that would affect his children’s lives unless it was absolutely necessary. Vision had gone off the map too and the Spiderman (still somehow so familiar) that had fought with them on Tony’s team had not been heard from or seen since.
Potts had eventually made a media announcement – Tony was being treated in some St. Petersburg hospital after sustaining “life-threatening” injuries in Siberia and being transferred for treatment. She had condemned the actions of the ‘Rogue Avengers’ on behalf of SI and had made it clear neither Tony or any of his affiliations were supporting them in any way and that more information would be made available as it came.
Ross had been arrested in the following weeks, a case orchestrated by Rhodes and the lawyers Tony had been working with behind the scenes since the Accords crossed his desk – Walters, she believed? Or maybe it was the guys down in Hell’s Kitchen, Tony had been making a few trips down there in the time since Ultron. Steve had enjoyed Ross’s downfall, had went on and on about how what they did was right, how the accords were inherently evil and would have fucked them over because Ross was tied to it, and that Tony had fallen into Ross’ trap and how even those on Tony’s side of the “war” had realised it, but the Black Widow couldn’t help but feel like it was a spit in the face, whether it was in Tony’s or all the other people that had gotten hurt because of them. Steve refused to acknowledge what had happened in Siberia, had maintained he did what “he had to do” and that he hadn’t hurt Tony like that. “Tony was crazy, unhinged, he had tried to kill Bucky,” was what he had told them, all righteous indignation. Barnes had just silently sat by, eyes averted, which told Natasha all she needed to know, but before she could corner the brunet and get the truth though out of him, Barnes had chosen to go back into cryo.
Natasha had realised two things then, 1) Steve was completely off the rails and whatever had happened in Siberia had burned all their bridges down and Steve hadn’t just been the one to torch them, he had taken a sledge hammer to its very foundation and 2) the one she should have been reeling in all this time was Steve.
Even now, months later, the super soldier was still buying into his own delusions, along with the rest of the team; she couldn’t even recognise who Clint had become these days, bitterness and hatred consuming his mind. Steve rarely mentioned his children, the children he had left without a word and betrayed within the blink of an eye, or expressed fear for Tony surviving, convinced it was just some media ploy to garner sympathy and to get them arrested – he hadn’t even reacted to the little girl Potts had announced was born to Tony, months too early and with minimal chance of survival, other than the initial surprise and grief that had filled his eyes when they first saw the announcement.
Steve had just stared at the television unblinking, and in a second he was gone. No one knew where he went or what he did, but Steve didn’t come back until hours later, jaw set and looking more hopeful and determined.
Maximoff, as expected, was delighting in Tony’s bad fortune and misery, claiming it was finally his time to answer for his crimes - she had become increasingly unhinged the more the world condemned what they did, and was staunchly buying into Steve’s assurances that in time they would be welcomed back, that the world would realise it’s mistake. Natasha wants to go back in time and kick herself for letting this delusional child onto the team without any control. They had let her run loose, had never made her face the consequences of her actions, and now, Natasha wonders when she’ll really snap and they become her target. She had vouched for Wanda because it was another convenient thing to keep Tony in line, having a reminder of what his weapons did, what they created; he would have been obedient for a very long time, but she hadn’t anticipated that he would leave the compound altogether.
It hadn’t taken the Black Widow long to realise that she couldn’t stand to be around them for too long, their long list of fantasies and delusions, and self-righteous attitudes infuriated her more than she thought it would, and once T’Challa had retracted his welcome, fed up with Maximoff and Clint’s damage to the lodge they were staying in in Wakanda, she had breathed a sigh of relief. Out in the world they had to survive, her mind could focus on the one thing so deeply ingrained into her. Tony had questioned whether she never stopped being a spy, but in truth, Natasha had never stopped trying to survive – in the end, she was a survivor above all else. She had taken Clint and sniffed out old S.H.I.E.L.D. safe houses, hoping time away from the group would settle him a bit. They made sure to stay under the radar and kept the more incensed members of their team inside and away from public places, gathering materials to help hide their identities. She had been quick to offer to do recon, claiming to want to read the terrain but in all honesty, she had needed to know if Tony was okay, if he and his little girl would survive.
It was easy to get men talking, and figuring out who was in the medical team assigned to Stark was made easier by S.I. had releasing their names. From there on, it was child’s play to track down a technician willing to talk. Besides Tony’s chart and disclosing his surgeries, the surgeon had spilled on how the Siberian doctors first tasked with stabilising Stark, who the Vision had brought in after finding him bleeding out in the bunker, had picked up on unusual readings in Stark’s vitals midway through suturing his wounds and getting the blood to stop. Blood work was done and the pregnancy had been found out, but how could they have missed it anyway? How could Vision have missed it? By the time they had realised Tony was pregnant, he had already begun to miscarry, whatever little fight his body had left had turned to focus on keeping him alive and saw the foetus as a danger, a malevolent entity eating away at his life. An emergency C-section had been performed at just 26 weeks, and both the baby and Stark were being monitored and operated on for the past six months. The doctors had written that she wouldn’t catch up to being a healthy baby until she was at least three years old. According to the surgeon, she had been born with her heart outside her body, already weak and with undeveloped lungs – it would take a miracle for her to survive and survive she did. She was Tony’s after all.
Natasha had turned to prayer, to wishing that that little baby survived, that another innocent victim caught in the crossfire of their bad decisions didn’t have to suffer at their hands. She had reached out to T’Challa, to have him extend his help to Rhodes, who she knew was Tony’s power of attorney. Though he gave her no answer, she had been relieved to see reports of Wakandan doctors joining Tony and the baby’s medical teams.
She didn’t deserve the relief, this she knew; she had abandoned Tony when he needed her most, had attacked him when he was weak, when his back was left unguarded. She had been part of the team that almost orphaned his boys and almost got his baby girl killed before she could even live, while their father remained aloof and maintained that Tony deserved it, and that everything he did was out of necessity – that in the end, they would understand why he had to take such drastic actions.
In all Natasha’s years, she’s seen many downfalls, and she can positively say it stops being special the third time around. All her life she had been surrounded by great and terrible people alike and had learned that the bigger ones always fell the hardest.
Steve was no different - he was falling hard, and fast at that, and Tony wasn’t going to be there to bring him back. She’ll admit that she had bought into the whole ‘Captain America’ thing too, she had followed Steve because some part of her believed everything he did had to be right, and in trying to correct her wrongs, her ledger had grown even more red. Playing favourites had never really worked out for her anyway, getting biases and feelings involved always steered her off the road, off her path.
Steve had led them down a path and didn’t know how to bring them back, had hurt her friends in trying to prove he was right, and she had done the same. Now it was up to her to make things right, it was time for Natasha to leave the masks behind, to atone for what she had done. She had made promises, to herself, and to others, and it was time for her to keep them, let people say Natasha Romanoff was loyal and had loved. That she was human, before spy, before double crosser and every other nasty word she had earned throughout the years.
The Red Room had always known she was weak to love, and now she had no reason to hide it; the time for playing cards close to her chest was over.