The Irony of it All

20

The sky was gray and bleary. There was no wind, no rain, no sound besides the occasional car on the streets below, and her own steady heartbeat. She hated it when there was no sound. Natasha had always lived in the city. This quiet village life put her on edge. It was too quiet.

It was probably around 6:30 in the morning now. The sky was just starting to lighten with the Autumn daylight. She was laying on her back on the old mattress, blankets wrapped around her to keep out the biting Russian cold. She had one hand resting on her swollen stomach, and the other stretched above her head, handcuffed to the bedpost. 

She hadn’t slept very well the last few nights. She’d gotten so used to sleeping next to Steve that she almost forgot how bad the nightmares were. The habit she’d broken years ago when Clint had brought her back to SHIELD had resurfaced. Her sleep was so fitful, and her nightmares so vivid that she’d gone down to the children’s toy store down the road and bought a small police costume just for the toy handcuffs that it came with. At the moment, it was the only thing grounding her. 

As the curdling feeling in her stomach suddenly told her to find the toilet, she hurriedly unlocked the handcuffs and bolted to the bathroom. She tried desperately to hold on to her dinner, fighting the nauseousness with deep breaths. But in the end, she lost, and spilled her dinner from last night into the porcelain bowl. 

Dr. Fine told her that as her first trimester ended, the morning sickness would start to subside. It had lessened, that was for sure, but she didn’t know if it was the stress of the situation or what that continually caused her to be nauseous. She did the math in her head. She must have been 14 weeks along by now. What was that? Like four months? She didn’t know how it all worked, not really, and she didn’t have a phone to look it up on. 

She really needed to find one. She had to contact Steve. She knew that. She was alone, vulnerable, with all kinds of bad guys after her, and they knew she was in Russia. Her only comfort was that only Steve and Clint knew where her safe houses were, and even then she hadn’t given away all her locations. This one, only she knew about. So she was safe for the time being. 

She wondered if she could maybe make it to Africa. If she could get to Wakanda, surely T’challa would let her stay, at least for a bit. Even if Steve wasn’t there, T’challa would have a way to contact him. 

She really wanted to stay put. Leaving meant that she’d be out in the open. But the longer she stayed, the more vulnerable she was. She knew that. She shouldn’t even be considering staying here. She’d have to take the backroads, and make black market deals to get her over the mediterannean, and get safe passage through the deserts. A trip like that with no SHIELD or KGB contacts could take a month or more. But what choice did she have? Right now, she could hide her pregnancy under clothes, but her pregnancy would surely be noticeable in a month. And if she waited longer than that to leave this safe house, the more she’d stand out. 

She gave herself a day to gather her things. And the next morning, the small apartement was once again empty. With everything put in place as if no one had been there at all. As she took the train out of Zvenigorod to Smolensk, Russia (8 hour trip), and then another train from Smolensk to Minsk, Belarus (4 hour trip). It would be faster to go through Kiev, but she wanted to avoid Ukraine. It was just too close to Russia. So she took the train to Warsaw, Poland. She had some great contacts in Bulgaria, ones she trusted, but she’d have to go through Budapest, Hungary, and she had too many enemies to count there. In normal circumstances she might have risked it, but with HYDRA after her and the 117 countries angry about what went down in New York, she’d much rather take the long way around. 

So she took the train to Prague, stopped to switch identities, switched out her bags, and traveled on foot for a while, hopping on buses and taking taxis until she reached Vienna. Austria that is. From there she went to Italy. Milan, Bologna. Stopped in Florence for a week to catch her breath, switch identities and bags once again. Natasha loved Florence. She’d been several times but had never learned to appreciate it until she and Steve had passed through on a Mission back before they took down SHIELD. 

Considered by many scholars to be the birthplace of the Renaissance, Florence was a beautiful city, filled with gorgeous architectural feats from the middle ages, with cobblestone streets, statues, and fountains. It was a city many artists such as Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, and Donatello had called home at different times. Filling the buildings, and churches, and streets with their murals and sculptures. 

Steve had been to Italy before, during the War, but had never been able to appreciate the beauty. So when they’d finished the mission early, she decided to tell Fury that they needed another week to complete it just so she could show him around. She knew he liked to draw. He carried a sketchbook around with him everywhere. She didn’t find out until later that he was actually an art student when he decided to join the army. But she decided to take him to Florence.

Walking around the streets of Florence with him as he looked at all the murals and sculptures, admiring the architecture and spewing out words like “pastiche” and “diagrammatic” that went way over her head, she realizes, looking back, that that’s when she first started falling for him. Anyone could see he was attractive, but it was the look of pure awe and fascination he had on his face that made her see him in a different light. It was the same way she felt about ballet. 

After resting for not nearly as long as she needed, she got up and continued her journey to Rome and then to Naples before boarding a Ferry to Sicily, and then another ferry to Tunisia, the Northern Horn of Africa. 

Now she was in the Sahara. She switched identities again (thank goodness she’d decided to make a cache in Tunisia even though Clint teased her about it), dressed herself as an Algerian woman, covered her face in soot and grime, and made up a sob story about her horrible life and how she was looking for a new life in a new world, and payed some Black market weapons dealers to take her across the desert. 

They asked her a few times why she wasn’t going to Europe to which she made up an excuse. She knew they still didn’t understand why she was going further into Africa, but they didn’t argue any further. She knew traveling with arms dealers was a risk, but they seemed amateur, and they didn’t suspect who she was. They were surprisingly kind to her despite the brash talk and ordering around. She bit her tongue, and took every rude word they didn’t think she could understand. Maybe she’d put them out of business later, but right now they were being relatively helpful. 

    They followed the border of Algeria and Libya for a couple of weeks. She sat on a camel as they led her along. Mostly they were just frustrated with how many bathroom breaks she had to take, and how the movement of the animal made her nauseous so that she’d have to lean over the side and puke out her guts. They would rebuke her about how she was wasting precious water to stay hydrated to keep up with the amount of fluids she’d waste on the red sand. But they made sure she drank it anyway. 

    They’d bicker back and forth in their native tongue as they walked along. She could understand just enough to know that they were talking about her and that they had pretty much put two and two together with her bathroom breaks, and sickness. And it didn’t help that her belly was starting to poke through even her long cotton robes. 

    She could feel the baby weight now. And it was hot. She’d regretted coming to Africa fairly often since starting the long trek across the Sahara. Her skin was sticky, and the air was hot and dry. She kept her face covered for the most part to help keep her own body moisture in, but with her body heat and the baby’s heat, she felt like an oven. No pun intended.