Phoenix (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
birdburning) wrote2012-08-28 06:07 pm
birdburning) wrote2012-08-28 06:07 pm
your baby blues, so full of wonder
Title: your baby blues, so full of wonder
Fandom: Next Avengers
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Natasha Romanov never wanted children.
Notes: ...all the Avengers die, it's hideous.
Natasha never wanted children.
It wasn't that she had anything against them. It simply wasn't possible, not with her life. She honestly didn't know if she could get pregnant--adoption was possible, but why would Natasha want to doom any child to having her as his or her mother? What did she have to offer a child? The quickest way to end a life with a blade, the smoothest method of seduction? No. There was no reason for her to want children, so she didn't.
When she and Steve were real, she thought that would be a problem.
(Steve. Years of dancing around each other, years of his soft, kind eyes and her brittle defensiveness, years of other people and other stories and other lives, and somehow he gave her a sketch and changed everything with his sweet, gentle smile. He is all the bravery and goodness in the world, and Natasha loved him a very long time before she admitted it to him. At night when he sleeps he's like an innocent, peaceful where he rests in her arms, and Natasha strokes hair like summer wheat and loves him so that she thinks she might die of it.)
But...it wasn't.
Natasha was surprised by how surprised she was by that, like a recursive portrait, images of shock written onto each other. She had assumed Steve would ask for what she couldn't give him, prepared a thousand excuses--for him not to ask was what she wasn't prepared for. She waited with bated breath for years, silent and watchful, but he only ever smiled and kissed her with their fingers entwined.
Two months, she didn't bleed. And she wandered out of their shared bathroom and said: "We should have this child."
"Tasha," Steve said, with such joy and ready acceptance, and all her fear that he might not want it because she was broken--no. He was waiting for her, for her to be ready, and they kissed and coupled like bright binary stars. And was it an accident? No. She'd known what she was doing. A test--a test, but even if Steve didn't want their son, she would have kept him.
His name is James and he is the most perfect, beautiful child in the world.
She takes the longest maternal leave any superheroine of note has taken, but she was never really one of them anyway. She is the Black Widow and she answers to no one anymore, so if she wants to cradle her red-headed son and sing to him soft lullabies she had to relearn--it belongs to her family, no one else.
James says maht first of all words, and Natasha is helpless against his blue eyes and his endless child's trust. No one has ever believed in her like this, needed her this way, and she swears as she nurses him that he will never know her life. No one will hurt her son the way she is hurt. No one will break his soul into the dust of revolution. He will be safe, sweet and brave, like his father. She swears he'll inherit a better world than she did, a brighter and kinder one. He murmurs in her arms and she never wants to let him go.
He learns to walk, with Steve's eyes brightening and joyous. They spend every moment together they can, and she learns what a family is all over again. It's silly pictures at Coney Island. It's Steve's hand in hers as they watch James sleep. It's waking to a fuss in the night and Steve bringing James to bed to nestle between them, safe and sound. It's all of this and more, every small, quiet, infinitely precious domestic moment. Their exploits are in every paper. What really matters is laughing, helplessly, at three in the morning when they realize they have no clean sheets for James' crib. It's snapping at each other and reconciling. It's the perfect milky smell of James' hair when he sleeps gumming his fist. It's how they fit so perfectly Natasha cannot really remember what it was like to be apart.
"Mom!"
James clutches her hand, excited and four, and points at Captain America pajamas.
"Can I--"
"May I," she corrects, gently, picking him off the floor. He beams at her, her innocent son, and nods.
"May I ask you to get them for me? Please?"
"Of course, solnyshko." She kisses his forehead, quick and loving. Natasha never wanted children. And she ended up with the most perfect child she can imagine. He'll love his new brother or sister, she knows, the quickening in her that waits for a name. They're a family like she never imagined having, not her, and she loves them all with every ounce of her fierce devotion.
(She dies in a week.)
*
Her neck is broken.
She knows this. She cannot feel her hands, cannot raise an arm to strike, and her body dangles uselessly beneath her neck as Ultron jerks her up from where it threw her. She would do almost anything to only be able to strike it.
"This is how the Avengers fall," the monster intones, and Natasha--
It's Steve's shield. Cracked. Her Steve. Her light, her sun, the golden laughter of freedom--
But she cannot give up, because--
"James," she says, as steadily as she can (is she the last? she doesn't know), "Solnyshko. I love you. I know you will be brave. I want you to know--"
Ultron slams her against a wall, but she feels little. It's only the mechanical sharpness of his voice that disturbs her.
"There is no use, human," Ultron says, "Your offspring will--"
Natasha spits into its eye.
"My son," she snarls, defiant to the end, "Will live."
Because Steve's shield is cracked, but Steve never did, and she believes with all of her heart in her son--
Ultron splatters her brains against concrete, and there is nothing.
Fandom: Next Avengers
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Natasha Romanov never wanted children.
Notes: ...all the Avengers die, it's hideous.
Natasha never wanted children.
It wasn't that she had anything against them. It simply wasn't possible, not with her life. She honestly didn't know if she could get pregnant--adoption was possible, but why would Natasha want to doom any child to having her as his or her mother? What did she have to offer a child? The quickest way to end a life with a blade, the smoothest method of seduction? No. There was no reason for her to want children, so she didn't.
When she and Steve were real, she thought that would be a problem.
(Steve. Years of dancing around each other, years of his soft, kind eyes and her brittle defensiveness, years of other people and other stories and other lives, and somehow he gave her a sketch and changed everything with his sweet, gentle smile. He is all the bravery and goodness in the world, and Natasha loved him a very long time before she admitted it to him. At night when he sleeps he's like an innocent, peaceful where he rests in her arms, and Natasha strokes hair like summer wheat and loves him so that she thinks she might die of it.)
But...it wasn't.
Natasha was surprised by how surprised she was by that, like a recursive portrait, images of shock written onto each other. She had assumed Steve would ask for what she couldn't give him, prepared a thousand excuses--for him not to ask was what she wasn't prepared for. She waited with bated breath for years, silent and watchful, but he only ever smiled and kissed her with their fingers entwined.
Two months, she didn't bleed. And she wandered out of their shared bathroom and said: "We should have this child."
"Tasha," Steve said, with such joy and ready acceptance, and all her fear that he might not want it because she was broken--no. He was waiting for her, for her to be ready, and they kissed and coupled like bright binary stars. And was it an accident? No. She'd known what she was doing. A test--a test, but even if Steve didn't want their son, she would have kept him.
His name is James and he is the most perfect, beautiful child in the world.
She takes the longest maternal leave any superheroine of note has taken, but she was never really one of them anyway. She is the Black Widow and she answers to no one anymore, so if she wants to cradle her red-headed son and sing to him soft lullabies she had to relearn--it belongs to her family, no one else.
James says maht first of all words, and Natasha is helpless against his blue eyes and his endless child's trust. No one has ever believed in her like this, needed her this way, and she swears as she nurses him that he will never know her life. No one will hurt her son the way she is hurt. No one will break his soul into the dust of revolution. He will be safe, sweet and brave, like his father. She swears he'll inherit a better world than she did, a brighter and kinder one. He murmurs in her arms and she never wants to let him go.
He learns to walk, with Steve's eyes brightening and joyous. They spend every moment together they can, and she learns what a family is all over again. It's silly pictures at Coney Island. It's Steve's hand in hers as they watch James sleep. It's waking to a fuss in the night and Steve bringing James to bed to nestle between them, safe and sound. It's all of this and more, every small, quiet, infinitely precious domestic moment. Their exploits are in every paper. What really matters is laughing, helplessly, at three in the morning when they realize they have no clean sheets for James' crib. It's snapping at each other and reconciling. It's the perfect milky smell of James' hair when he sleeps gumming his fist. It's how they fit so perfectly Natasha cannot really remember what it was like to be apart.
"Mom!"
James clutches her hand, excited and four, and points at Captain America pajamas.
"Can I--"
"May I," she corrects, gently, picking him off the floor. He beams at her, her innocent son, and nods.
"May I ask you to get them for me? Please?"
"Of course, solnyshko." She kisses his forehead, quick and loving. Natasha never wanted children. And she ended up with the most perfect child she can imagine. He'll love his new brother or sister, she knows, the quickening in her that waits for a name. They're a family like she never imagined having, not her, and she loves them all with every ounce of her fierce devotion.
(She dies in a week.)
*
Her neck is broken.
She knows this. She cannot feel her hands, cannot raise an arm to strike, and her body dangles uselessly beneath her neck as Ultron jerks her up from where it threw her. She would do almost anything to only be able to strike it.
"This is how the Avengers fall," the monster intones, and Natasha--
It's Steve's shield. Cracked. Her Steve. Her light, her sun, the golden laughter of freedom--
But she cannot give up, because--
"James," she says, as steadily as she can (is she the last? she doesn't know), "Solnyshko. I love you. I know you will be brave. I want you to know--"
Ultron slams her against a wall, but she feels little. It's only the mechanical sharpness of his voice that disturbs her.
"There is no use, human," Ultron says, "Your offspring will--"
Natasha spits into its eye.
"My son," she snarls, defiant to the end, "Will live."
Because Steve's shield is cracked, but Steve never did, and she believes with all of her heart in her son--
Ultron splatters her brains against concrete, and there is nothing.