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Prologue
Natasha Stark doesn’t know she’s pregnant until the pregnancy is more than half way over. There are quite a few very sensible reasons for this. The most significant reason is that she had her tubes tied and an endometrial ablation around 16 years ago. The second reason is that she never has “unsafe” sex. She might be missing a few years’ worth of memories but according to the information she’s been able to get her hands on, her sexual partners have been few and far between, and female with the exception of Steve. Apparently Iron Woman and Captain America started dating, had tied the knot then not two years later divorced. The divorce had been finalized a good ten months ago and if the sample contact she’s accumulated over the last three months is any indicator she doubts that they have been doing the horizontal tango. Also she’d essentially been killed by having her brain deleted so it doesn’t make any sense for a fetus to have survived.
All the previously mentioned reasons are why Tasha doesn’t believe she’s pregnant until she’s 21 weeks along. The light headedness and momentary black outs she blamed entirely on having been practically dead for a while. The slight nausea and occasional vomiting she had passed off as ether stress or side effects of her readjusting body; although she didn’t really think the RT should have caused that type of problem. It didn’t matter really because all those indicators had mostly vanished within a month of her waking up.
The changes that hadn’t disappeared or had gotten worse since waking from her coma she made excuses for. The breast tenderness was like due to the unnatural addition of the RT to her body. Changes in her cup size she blamed on weight gain. Weight gain she blamed entirely on her hospital stay and her sudden addiction to cheddar cheese and avocados. Her unending craving for cheddar and avocados she attributed to trying to drown her pain with food rather than booze. She was also suffering from one of the worst bouts of depression she had ever dealt with.
Depression, well not that abnormal for someone who was three years behind on everything from gossip to her own scientific advances. Not to mention she had been married to and undoubtedly slept with her long time crush and had no memory of it. Natasha couldn’t even remember how she had screwed up badly enough that they had to divorce. She couldn’t apologize or even try to fix there now seemingly permanently damaged friendship without data. She felt stupid and slow, particularly after an incident in the field that nearly got her killed that Bucky had figured out before her. She felt fat, slow, worthless, and more like a liability then an actual hero. The only person she wanted to talk to was Steve, which naturally meant that he was the only person she couldn’t speak too.
She often found herself wondering how she could have started dating Steve in the first place. Natasha had wanted into his bed the first moment she saw him but wasn’t stupid enough to try it. When she realized she wanted a place in his heart more than his bed she promised herself that she would be contented with a friendship. For the most part she had been and the moments when that got hard she reminded herself that she was not good at relationships and she couldn’t give Steve what he wanted, a family. Steve deserved a happy family with a white picket fence and a golden retriever. So how the hell had she thrown all her convictions out the window and ended up married? How could she have let him fall through her fingers after she had had him? Unless Steve told her she would never know.
Oh, she knew that she was the one to have the papers drawn up; but she saw from the footage that she wasn’t actually supposed to look at, that Steve had signed them with an angry flourish before leaving with a chilling glare. Pepper didn’t have a clue what had happened and neither did Jarvis but the way the butler treated Steve now could only be considered coldly polite. He also flatly refused to oversee the mansion, which apparently she had given Steve in the divorce.
Natasha’s first real inclination that something weird was happening was about three weeks before she found out she was pregnant. She’d been down in the R and D levels munching on slices of cheese while going over code when she felt something strange in her lower abdomen. It was sharp and sudden like a firecracker and a few moments later it happened again. Alarmed she had stared at her stomach, which had already been betraying her by being less fit then she was in the habit of keeping it. After waiting a bit the feeling didn’t come again so she decided that she just needed to sleep, her balance had been off a bit lately too, and clearly this was just sign of sleep deprivation.
The feeling came back and it brought friends, a swish and a flutter. Some of them she excused as gas or hunger but others were just too strange. Every time she was about to investigate it something happened. Pepper getting flustered because the company was in trouble, Nick bitching because someone had damaged the Helicarrier, and the Avengers panicking because Ultron was wreaking havoc. Also Tasha herself having fits because Steve had vanished off the face of the earth. All of them really major things that were more important than her firecracker problem.
Every moment she has had to spare for weeks has been spent repairing and making adjustments to her armors. During her little comma she’d lost both muscle and body mass and she’s spent as many hours as she could both stomach and manage trying to get her muscles back. Now, for the most part, her muscles are back but her breast for some reason have gotten too big to comfortably fit in the armor. Her stomach also required her to make adjustments to the armor. The latest one she had gone out in was almost as masculine in design as Rhodey’s suit. She’s gotten a few snide comments about her compensating or possibly having some midlife crisis from both “friends” and the media. Needless to say it wasn’t helping with her current self-esteem issues.
Natasha’s actually expecting her life to get worse because that’s what seems to be the pattern. She wondering if the next his will be what sends she straight back into the bottle. Then she finely finds out she’s pregnant.