The Tower: Unexpected

Against the Odds

It took quite a while to suspect I was pregnant. It was after Thor had left for Asgard. I know you're probably thinking I'm a huge idiot for that. You've been following the story. You've heard about the kinds of sex I have and with the sheer volume of people I have it with. I've also never mentioned a condom once. The thing is I have Implanon in place. The stats for that are good. Yeah, okay, no birth control is 100% effective. But this one is like 1/1000 women every three years. The odds were in my favor.

I also can hear the mom in the back of my head yelling at me about how 'condoms don't just protect against pregnancy, Elise'. That is true, and okay I'm not the smartest person. I got carried away sometimes, but they are the Avengers. I figured with the amount Natasha had stalked me, to begin with, they had something in place to make sure nothing was passed on to other people or vice versa. I was right in the end too, so back off, mom. Also, don't follow my example, it gets you pregnant.

The thing I didn't mention, was before I even came along Bruce had developed a contraceptive for the men. He didn't want to risk himself getting anyone pregnant and he thought it would save any problems with women outside trying to make claims against them. I'd had a talk very early on with Sam about babies, and if they had wanted them and what would they do if say Wanda ever got accidentally knocked up. He'd told me that the men were all on this shot they took every month, and babies weren't really in the books for them. That maybe later Wanda might decide she wanted to. She was very maternal. Right now though, none of the men in the group wanted nor felt they could handle being parents and if that changed for Wanda or if it was something I thought I wanted it might be the thing that took us out of the arrangement we had.

Ugh... fuck my life, seriously.

So I'd come to terms with that. With my upbringing, I was never really sure if my biological call to have kids was me or the conditioning my parents had beat into me that I needed to be a wife and mother. I knew at the time I had that conversation I wasn't ready to, and maybe that would never change.

Then I started getting sick. It was low-level nausea that dulled as the day progressed but it worsened every day. I felt achy too. Yes, in the breasts. No one questioned it. Double birth control, we were fine. I was coming down with the flu or something. I didn't notice if I'd skipped periods or not. My birth control made that happen anyway.

As soon as the thought passed through my head I panicked. With Wanda here, I couldn't risk her hearing that thought until I knew if it meant anything. If she heard it, she'd get excited and then I wouldn't be able to think about this rationally. So I rushed to the closest CVS and bought some pregnancy tests and took them straight to my apartment and used them.

Every single one of them turned positive.

I didn't know what to do. I had been told in explicit terms they didn't want children. I wasn't even sure if I wanted them. Only looking at the tests I wasn't having an 'I've got get rid of them' feeling. I was worried they'd be angry with me. That conditioning I had that I'd get in trouble for disappointing people was pretty heavily ingrained. I was worried that I would make them feel trapped into doing something they didn't want to do. It was just, I could picture myself holding this baby. I could picture them with a child. Maybe it would have been better if Wanda had heard my thought then she could have told me what to do.

I considered calling up Jax and talking to him. Maybe getting Clarke to just take me to a clinic and getting this over with and the others would never even have to know how close I came to ruining their lives.

Only I couldn't do that. They had a right to know. To have input on this. I imagined every single worst-case scenario that you could imagine. Bruce Hulking out and destroying the place. Getting tossed to the street. Having them accuse me of cheating on them. Demanding DNA tests. Even with all those thoughts, I told FRIDAY to call an emergency family meeting and took the elevator up to the common room with one of the positive tests in a baggie to wait for them all to arrive.