adventures in parenthood

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I wake up at about four-thirty in the morning. Bucky's not in bed, but the baby's still asleep. I watch her sleep for a few minutes before getting up. I figure I won't be able to get back to sleep anyway. As I'm getting dressed, Bucky walks in reading a file.

"She's ten months old. She doesn't have any pressing health conditions, which is good. Her parents never bothered to give her a first name..."

"No 'good morning'?" I ask jokingly.

He looks up from the file. "Didn't know you were awake. Morning, doll."

"Morning, baby."

He closes the file and sets it on top of our dresser. He turns me toward him and kisses me deeply. I return the kiss, wrapping my arms around his neck.

Tony knocks on the door, waking the baby. I pick her up and start rocking her gently as she cries. Tony comes in before we get a chance to say anything.

"Okay, get a shirt on, metal man. We've got company."

"Who's here at this hour?" Bucky asks.

"Police officer, I think. Something about the kid."

He leaves and Bucky gets dressed. The baby won't stop crying, so I prepare formula for her. She calms down when she sees the bottle. "Mm, someone's hungry..." I say in a sing-song voice. I hold her so that she's on her back and feed her as we walk down the corridors.

When we reach the living room, the officer watches me suspiciously. "You've been taking care of the child, I see."

I'm about to say something when Tony chimes in. "Are you insinuating that we wouldn't?"

She ignores the question. "We've contacted all known family members. Which is two. The mother's the one who brought her here, and the father is incarcerated. She'll need to stay here until something more permanent can be arranged."

Again, I start to say something when I'm interrupted. Bucky asks, "What do you mean?"

"I mean, she stays until she's put in the system. I don't want to burden you all for too long."

"She's not a burden," I assert. "We can keep her, if that's a possibility."

The officer thinks on my proposition for a moment. "I can talk to my supervisor about it, but I can't promise anything."

I nod and the officer walks off with Tony.

Bucky turns to me. "Doll, respectfully... What the fuck?"

"If we play our cards right, this is our chance at parenthood. I know you're apprehensive-"

"And rightfully so! We're Avengers, doll. We can't be killing bad guys with a baby at home!"

The baby gets fussy again, so I take the bottle out of her mouth for a few moments to rock her. "That's a quitter mentality, honey. We can avoid going on missions together whenever possible, and there's at least nine people we can trust to take care of her if we have to leave."

Thor knocks over a cup in the kitchen and it shatters to pieces.

"...make that eight. Look, I know you're worried, but I also know that we can make this work."

Bucky sighs and gives me the look he gives me when he knows I'm right but he's upset about it. "Fine. You're right. We can... We can do this. Together."

"Exactly. See, I knew you'd come around."

We walk back to our room. Bucky rearranges the bed and the nightstands to make better room for the crib. I use one of my woven organizers (which I have an excessive amount of) to put the formula, bottles and pacifiers in, and another one for the diaper changing items. I burp the baby and play with her for a bit while Bucky reads through a baby names book that came from nowhere and bounces ideas off me. Rose, Delilah, Daisy, Esther, Melissa, Amelia, Geniveve, Charlotte-