The Irony of it All

19

Natasha was freaking out. She’d managed to make it to one of her safe houses in Zvenigorod, a small town about an hour and a half west of Moscow. She loved Zvenigorod during this Autumn time of year when the leaves were golden, pastel yellows, burnt oranges, and crimson reds. But she couldn’t bring herself to enjoy it. 

    She’d been there a few days already. The first couple of days, she’d done nothing but pace around the room, worrying if someone had followed her, done some recon on the town streets, and find some of her hidden caches of guns, money, and new identities since the one she’d come in with had been totally blown open, and she’d lost her other belongings to Yelena. Once she’d finally convinced herself that there were no monsters creeping around in the shadows, she’d finally relaxed on the small sofa of her apartment, and taken a deep breath to calm herself. And then she felt the baby move.

 It wasn’t a kick, but it wasn’t just a flutter either. She realized that she hadn’t felt the flutters since her trip to Dr. Fine. The baby hadn’t moved, and a part of her felt guilty for not even noticing. Not caring. But now that she felt the baby actually move, she wondered if the fetus had been in tune with how stressed she was. Maybe the lack of movement was in response to how hard her adrenaline was pumping through her veins. And while she was thinking how adorable and sweet and touching it was that the baby responded to her feelings, she was simultaneously thinking that she’d be a horrible mother for not noticing before, and she missed Steve, and she didn’t know the date or the time, and it was just too bright in this room!

 Yeah. She knew she was spiraling. She knew she was having a panic attack. And she knew she had to get a grip of herself. But for the moment, she’d just lay there on the ground inside the closet, wrapped up in dusty blankets, crying, and watching the tiny slits of sunlight from the closet doors peak through. But could you blame her? HYDRA knew she was pregnant, and she wasn’t just carrying a normal baby. Her husband was a fugitive somewhere in either Africa or Europe probably. Her best friend was probably dead, and Laura was widowed, and the kids were fatherless because Auntie Nat left him there to die. And on top of that, her ex-husband was back from the dead, and was a giant pasty gray monster that seemed to feed off of human life energy. 

Wait. If Alexei had never actually been dead, and her marriage to him was still legal, and her marriage to Steve was legal, did that mean she was actually married to two different men?! Her sobs came back and she found herself spiraling once again. She'd just blame it on hormones.