Natasha's secret

Chapter 2

Natasha awaited eagerly in the slowly moving elevator.
This would be the first time she was seeing her old friends for three years and none of them except for Clint knew her secret. With each passing second of being in the elevator the more anxious Nat became, she could feel the sweat releasing out of the pores on her hands as she twirled her daughters' long locks around her finger in anticipation. The toddler was fast asleep against Natasha's chest, it did baffle her how she managed to sleep through the loud pounding in her chest as they approached the top floor.

The metallic doors opened, revealing a rather empty avengers tower. A shower of relief poured of Natasha, one exhale erased all the anxiousness in her body.

"Do you mind if I let her sleep on the sofa while I unpack our things?"

Her best friend nodded in response, reaching his arms out to take the sleeping beauty out of her arms.

The small figure slept peacefully on the sofa next to Barton, tucked away under a thick coated fluffy blanket, her features rested peacefully. Not for long however, as the missing avengers besides from Steve, of course, walked out of the elevator door, their voices discussing the effects of gamma radiation filled the silence in the room, however, the conversation was discontinued when tony had clocked on to the fact that Clint was sitting on the sofa facing away from them.

"Any luck?"

"Yeah, she's back."

Banner exhaled a sigh of relief, he had missed Natasha after all. Thor, however, was the first to notice the sleeping toddler next to Clint and didn't even hesitate to speak.

"I assure you, Asgard has a potion to cure this, Loki used to do this all the time to people when we were kids, I can take young Natasha with me back to Asgard!"

Confused glances were shared among everyone else at Thor's sudden outburst until they all realised where exactly his eyes were making a bumble bee trail to.

"That won't be necessary but thank you Thor." Natasha spoke smoothly, entering the now full room in no time when she heard her old friends returning from god knows where.

Glances even more confused than before were still being shared among the room, Thor being the most confused until he had his much-awaited light bulb moment.

"She is your daughter!" Thor exclaimed with a grin as he finally understood.

"Little red..." Tony was lost for words just as much as banner was, but he proceeded to complete his sentence "... I thought you couldn't?" Silence loomed within the room momentarily until stark continued having a conversation to Natasha but mainly with himself as he wasn't giving her a chance to speak. His mind began working at a 1000 miles per hour rate and showed no signs of slowing down. "Steve... the serum!?" The billionaire, playboy, philanthropist really was great at piecing everything together, but Nat figured he had the upper hand regardless, his father basically loved Steve anyway.

"You and Captain Rogers must be so happy!" Thor congratulated, pulling Natasha into a suffocating hug.

The comforting silence after the questions stopped was short lived as Thor's booming voice awoke the slumbering child from her sleep.
Natasha reached instantly for her child to soothe her from her confusion.

"I apologise young one." Thor approached the scared looking toddler and poked her button nose, which only made matters worse as this sent the 2-year-old into a meltdown mode, red in the face she threw her head back as the small child continued to create such a big sound.

"Make it stop that"

Natasha pulled her daughter closer into her chest gently swinging her back and forth. "she's just confused, she'll come around soon"

In among all of the noise Pepper had made an entrance "Oh my gosh... that's a child!"

Tony rolled his eyes before muttering an almost silent "oh boy" Pepper paused for not even half a second before continuing to walk towards the two other females in the room with the usual bounce in her step.

Pepper couldn't get a great look at the now sobbing child as her head remained buried into the crook of her mothers' neck. "well, you're a pretty little princess aren't you!" Pepper cooed. Resulting in the child slowly looking up at the unfamiliar woman with her big blue eyes, sharing a little smile at her new friend.

"baba!"

"I'm pepper"

"baba!"

"Peh-Pah"

The toddler paused for a moment, watching carefully on how the words formed on peppers lips.

"beba!"

The strawberry blonde smiled sweetly to the toddler, cheering at her. "may I?" Pepper reached her arms out for the small figure once she had Nat's approval.

._.-._.

The sun began to set softly over the avenger's tower. Pepper was stacking blocks with her newfound friend, slowly building up a tower so that the child could take it all in, but this was nothing but a game to the young girl as she pushed the small tower over, bursting out into hysterical laughter.
Pepper remained patient repeating all of the previous steps as Natasha fed a before-bed snack to the now happy child.
Happy never lasted long for the blue eyed child when it was time for bed, especially as she was having such a ball with her friend.

"It's time for bed now sweetie, say goodnight to everyone."

Ignoring her mothers words, she continued to push the building blocks towards Pepper, gesturing for her to build them up again.

"It's time for bed now Lucy-loo, but we can play again in the morning once you've had your beauty sleep, every princess needs their beauty sleep, don't they?"

"No." the child crossed her arms as she went red in the face, on the verge of yet another meltdown.

"Come on Lucy" Natasha reached to pick up the now sad child to take her to bed, pushing her into yet another terrible-twos-tantrum. Natasha and Pepper were trying everything they could to calm down the child before she got into too much of a bad state but in among the screaming and the crying, and the attempts of comforting, the elevator doors opened, revealing a very tired, and a very confused looking Steve Rogers.