Clintasha: The Baby

Part 38

Third person point of view: 

"Buck I'm going to go grab some more coffee, do you want anything?" Bruce said looking at the clock, it was just after Fury had left. 

"No I'm fine." Bucky said dismissively.  Bruce nodded and left, as he left Steve came through the door carrying a plate of food and a duffel bag. 

"Hey Buck. I brought you some food. I know you haven't ate in a while." Steve said testing Bucky's mood. when he didn't get a response he continued. "I also brought you some clothes to change into and a couple of your guns. I figured you could use a distraction." 

"Thanks." Bucky grumbled under his breath, and grabbed a t-shirt out of the bag and put it on.

"Bucky, Natasha is going to pull through, I know you're upset, we all are, but there is only so much we can do."

"Steve, I know what you are trying to do, but it isn't going to work. This is my fault, this is my mess and I need to take care of it." 

"Bucky I know you keep saying that, but unless you slept with Natasha and got her pregnant. This isn't your fault, so stop blaming yourself."

"Steve you aren't goddamn listening! I need to take care of this because this is my fault."

"What do you mean that this is your fault?" Steve asked finally getting frustrated with the now standing Bucky. 

"I'm the one who picked her for the graduation ceremony! I'm the one who volunteered her to be sterilized!" Bucky screamed.

"What?"

"When we were in that hell hole that they call the Red Room, I trained her, you know this. She was the top of her class in everything, the smartest, strongest, most ruthless, but she was different. She hated it, she wanted out, she didn't want to graduate! She wanted to fail! She was the first person who broke through my programming, I told her about you and about life back home. I told her that one day Captain America was going to come and save her when she was little." Bucky said without getting a response from Steve. 

"She believed me and she trusted me. One time she disobeyed a direct order, they were going to kill her. I convinced them not to by having them do the same thing to her brain that they did to mine. After that she was the perfect soldier, some of the things she did, some of the things we did to survive..." Bucky trailed off.

"Bucky what are you saying?"

"She begged me to fail her after something went wrong and she remembered a fraction of some of the things that she did. She wanted to die, she wanted them to kill her. I couldn't let them kill her she had become my little sister, she was my last connection to home, she was the thing that kept me human when they were turning me into a robot! I demanded that they wipe her and graduate her immediately. A part of the graduation ceremony is a super-soldier serum and a sterilization." Bucky said with tears threatening to start spilling over. 

"Bucky, you did what you had to do. You're the reason she's alive right now. We all make choices, some of them we aren't proud of, but we do them to protect the ones we love."

"I'm also the reason she might die. I'm the reason she lost the baby." Bucky whispered and drew a shaky breath as the tears started to fall. "If she wakes up I don't even know if she'll be Natasha anymore."

"What do you mean she might not be Natasha? I know she won't be the same person after she finds out she lost Elizabeth, but she'll still be Natasha."

"Elizabeth. That was her name?"

"Bucky that isn't the point. What do you mean she might not be Natasha?"

"She might be Natalia. The girl I practically raised in the Red Room, the one who is a cold-blooded killer, who doesn't care. The female version of the Winter Soldier. I need to be here when she wakes up, because I don't know if it's going to be Natalia who comes out of that coma or if it's going to be Natasha."