Chapter 149
I was sitting perched on the closed lid of the toilet, leaning forward with my elbows resting heavily on my knees, my hands nervously picking at each other as I tried not to break down into a full-blown panic attack.
My breath was coming in short, shallow gasps. I squeezed my eyes shut as I struggled to try to get it back under control. Stop. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. I managed two before I involuntarily switched to raw, open-mouthed panting. The acute nausea that had had a stranglehold on my stomach since I’d woken up this morning was having a spirited competition with the gut-churning anxiety to see which of the two might make me throw up first. The saliva glands in my mouth were working overtime in preparation.
“Shhh,” Eliza murmured. One of her hands was stroking my hair. The other was around my shoulders, holding me gently but firmly.
My vision was blurring, tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. “What do I do?” I asked, my voice a hoarse whisper.
“Everything’s fine. It’s not the end of the world.”
“But—”
“Shhh,” she cut me off with another shush. “Concentrate on not freaking out, first. Then you can work through it.”
I nodded numbly, renewing my focus on getting my breathing under control. Several minutes crawled by, stretching out agonisingly slowly. By the time I was feeling a little steadier, Eliza was gone again.
About two days ago—the day after Arishem had paid a rather startling visit to Earth—I’d noticed the beginnings of a weird fluttering sensation, somewhere deep inside myself. It was faint, almost imperceptible, to the point where I initially thought I might’ve just been imagining it. Or that it was just some lingering aftereffect of the shock of the Prime Celestial’s visit, or of my attempt at speaking his language. I’d ignored it, quickly filtering it out of my enhanced perceptions much like I did any of the other various, assorted noises of my internal bodily functions, and hadn’t really thought about it since then.
This morning, while fighting off the latest instance of what I now recognised as a pattern of repeated bouts of nausea, I’d practically leapt out of bed, immediately gotten dressed, and portalled away—abandoning a half-asleep Natasha while offering nothing in the way of explanations.
Realistically, I hadn’t needed to do it.
Realistically, the two tests I’d immediately rushed to purchase and take, both now sitting on the edge of the sink next to me with clear positive results, were just a formality. I’d known the moment I’d woken up and felt that—instead of remaining an ignorable, intermittent, vague sensation—the flutter had settled into a consistent, rapid rhythm. When I focused, straining my enhanced senses, I could actually separate it out, too, because there wasn’t just one. There were two fluttering, distinct, independent sounds inside me, almost on top of each other.
Two tiny heartbeats.
Because I was pregnant.
I was pregnant.
Thinking back, there had definitely been signs—the nausea and sensitivity to smells, soreness in my breasts, even just me needing to pee every fifteen fucking minutes. I just hadn’t put the pieces together until the answer was already staring me in the face. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out exactly when it had happened, either. A quick Google search had told me that, typically, an embryo would start to get a faint, steady heartbeat about 22 days after conception, though I hadn’t needed that bit of information to put it together. I knew when my last period had been, even if I’d been a little lax in noticing that I was late. In my defence, this last month had been an absolute whirlwind of distractions.
The looming threat of the Eternals had been hanging over us. I’d been put through the wringer by Thena for days. Sterns had appeared out of fucking nowhere. I’d been incredibly stressed and worried and then Bucky and I had had that talk and I’d just been so fucking pent up. I hadn’t been thinking clearly. I’d just wanted to feel good, to have a distraction, to just be able to exist and enjoy myself with him for a while before I had to come back to reality.
It wasn’t Bucky’s fault at all. Thinking back to the blur of sex in my memories, though we hadn’t directly had a conversation about protection, he’d made sure to verbally flag with me each time he was nearing the finish line. The idea of having him pull out hadn’t even crossed my mind. I’d done the opposite of that, even, knowing he was close making me desperately chase the pleasure—the release—all the harder.
For all he knew, I could have been on the pill. I should have been on the pill, but I just hadn’t needed it before now because all the sex I’d been having up until very recently had been with Natasha. Hell, for all Bucky knew, HYDRA had sterilised me the same way Nat had been by the Red Room. He’d been tactful and polite, avoiding prying into something I might not have been comfortable talking about. The only thing he’d done wrong was assume I was an adult capable of being responsible for my own actions.
And then everything had happened with the Eternals, there’d been the big fight at Kamar-taj, Bruce had died and come back to life, I’d had that gamma radiation scare… During all of that it just hadn’t even occurred to me that, hey, maybe it’d be a good idea to pick up some Plan B. After that, I’d joined the Avengers, there’d been press conferences, interviews, stuff with Matt and Bruce… It just felt like everything hadn’t really stopped since then. Oh, and then God had paid a brief visit a few days ago. It had just been one thing after another.
One time. I’d had unsafe sex one fucking time! Well, three times, I guess, if we’re getting technical, but they were all… it was one occasion! It still only counted as one!
What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want to baby trap Bucky. When it came down to it, we’d been official for less than a month, and it hadn’t even been all that long before that that he’d finally been freed from his HYDRA programming. He was still working through everything, sorting out his issues and residual guilt… deciding what he even wanted to do, now that he was actually in control of his life again. It seemed utterly unfair to throw this in his lap right now.
But the alternative… That wasn’t something I wanted, either.
I closed my eyes again, listening, feeling. There were definitely two heartbeats. It was twins. Again. I knew that having fraternal twins was something that ran in the family. There was a genetic element. Pietro and I were twins, and that meant I was two and a half times more likely to have twins myself. I knew it wouldn’t be them. Billy and Tommy had been butterflied away. These would be different.
Even so. Even so.
This just hadn’t been on my radar as a possibility at all. I mean, sure, Bucky and I had used protection after that initial night. And I’d used protection with Matt. But that was just… perfunctory. ‘Oh, yeah, use a condom’. Not something that felt important.
In the Hex, with Vision, everything had happened so fast. There was no build up, I just suddenly was pregnant, and then I’d barely had time to even come to terms with that fact before Billy and Tommy had popped out in a chaste, family-TV-show-friendly way. Until it had already happened, I’d never even considered that Vision could get me pregnant—even discounting the fact that my magic had conjured him into being, which I hadn’t known at the time, he wasn’t remotely human. And the memories I’d had from my other life weren’t exactly helpful: That version of me never had to worry about getting pregnant because they physically couldn’t. And, once again, up until very recently all the sex I’d been having had been the gay, non-baby-making kind.
God, I was so stupid. Stupid and pregnant.
There was a knock at the door and my heart leapt into my throat.
“Wanda?” Nat’s slightly muffled voice came from the other side. “Everything okay? You’ve been in there a while.”
“Uh, yes! I’m fine. I’m just… Um…” The handle started to move and I reacted instantly, throwing myself across the short gap between myself and the bathroom door, desperately grabbing at it to hold it shut. “Don’t come in!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! I’m just… masturbating?” I winced before the word even finished leaving my lips. My panic-addled brain had helpfully supplied what might’ve been the single least believable lie I’d ever told in my entire life. I wanted to bang my head against the doorframe.
“Uh huh,” Nat, of course, sounded utterly unconvinced. “So… why don’t you want me to come in?”
“I, uh, it’s just… I’ve…” That was, of course, the obvious flaw in the lie, beyond any other aspect of its believability: why on Earth wouldn’t I want my girlfriend to come in, either to participate or watch? “I’ve made a mess. It’s, uh, just… everywhere. I—G-give me a minute to clean this up, okay?”
“Wanda…”
“Natasha. Stop. Just… just go away. Please.”
There was a moment of silence before she responded. “Okay.”
I stayed at the door for another thirty seconds or so, until I was sure she’d moved away and I could stop holding it shut, then let out a massive breath, sagging down against the painted wood for a moment. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Picking up the paper bag from the chemist, I gathered up the tests and their discarded packaging and bundled it all together. My sling ring went back onto my fingers and I spun up a quick portal to just outside of the hotel that Pietro and I had stayed at in Albany, in Western Australia. Just down the street from where I’d opened the gateway, a bin sat on the sidewalk. A flicker of red energy sent the offending package sailing through the air to its destination and I dismissed the magic.
I turned on the tap, splashed some water on my face, then dried off and steeled myself before I opened the bathroom door. Nat was directly across the hall, of course, sitting on the bed, waiting for me. I forced a grin onto my face as I stepped out to join her. “Hey.”
Nat eyed me searchingly. “Hey. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing’s going on with me. I’m totally fine. Everything is fine.”
I should just tell her. Sorry for being weird, Nat, but I’ve just found out I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. Just fucking say it. Tell her. Tell her.
“I’m sorry,” I said instead, huffing out a long sigh. “I know I’m acting weird. I just… I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now. Not today. It’s Halloween. Can we just pretend that that didn’t happen, for now? There’s baking I need to do, we’ll go have a nice lunch, get ready, have a good time at the party tonight and…”
“And?”
“And nothing. And we can worry about everything else later. Another time.” My eyes dropped guiltily to the ground, avoiding her gaze. I’d tell her later. Of course I would. I had to. Soon. Just… not now. Not yet.
I knew that, when did tell her, she wouldn’t hesitate. She’d be supportive and amazing and help me however she could. We’d work out what to do next together. But I needed to come to terms with it on my own first, because I was worried about how me being pregnant might make her feel. And I needed to be able to be there for her, too.
Natasha hated that she could never have kids. It made her feel less. Like there was a piece of her that the Red Room had taken away that she would never get back. We’d never talked about it, not directly. But I knew how she felt about it, and she knew that I knew.
It had come up, obliquely, when we’d had our first real talk, after Eliza. When we’d discussed our relationship and what each of us had wanted out of it. She’d felt self-conscious about the fact that she couldn’t offer me a family. Even outside of the issues with her own body, Natasha didn’t really see herself as someone who could ever be a mom.
She hadn’t said anything, either, after Ajak had healed her. But she didn’t have to. If the Eternal hadn’t fixed Bucky’s arm, then almost certainly she wouldn’t have fixed that either. But Nat had probably hoped.
And I hadn’t tried to talk to her about it. I’d told myself that if she wanted to talk about it, she would, and I wouldn’t be doing her any favours in bringing it up if she wasn’t ready. But that was a lie. The real reason I hadn’t brought it up was because I didn’t want to think about it. Because I was a shit girlfriend. What could I even say to her? What could I possibly say that would help?
“Okay,” Nat said gently. She reached out with both hands, taking mine in hers. “Just… you can talk to me, remember?”
“…Yeah. I know.”
--
I spent the rest of the day trying and failing to ignore the heavy weight in my chest and the flutter in my uterus, throwing myself into baking, into lunch with Natasha, into everything in an effort to distract myself. But even though I was used to being able to filter out the base level of noise made by the churning chemical factory of my bodily functions, the two faint, rapid heartbeats that had joined the chorus felt almost impossible to ignore. They were always just there, hovering in the background, on the edge of my perception. A constant reminder of what I was putting off talking about.
Miraculously, I managed not to mess anything up, fumbling through our pre-party preparations—though we were well-prepared enough that there wasn’t that much else to do outside of prepping the baked treats I’d been planning on contributing and getting our costuming sorted. I’d already dropped off some of the booze from Gil’s place at the compound a couple of days prior, though, of course, that was out the window now, given that I couldn’t drink any of it.
God. Though she’d been trying to be subtle about it, I could tell that Natasha had been watching me like a hawk since the incident this morning. She might actually just puzzle it out on her own. She’d definitely notice if I avoided drinking at the party. Up until this moment, I’d been planning on getting pretty messy, so doing a complete one-eighty on that would be incredibly suspicious. It wouldn’t be just Nat—everyone would notice. I wasn’t exactly a subtle, reserved drinker when we’d had things like this in the past. So… I was going to have to pretend to drink, wasn’t I? God, never in my life had I wanted a drink so badly and not been able to have one. The cruel irony of a surprise pregnancy.
My costume looked good, at least.
I’d gone for Harley Quinn’s classic look: A skintight bodysuit in red and black quarters with diamond patterns on the legs and arms, connected to a matching jester cap with twin bells dangling in my peripheral vision. There was a flat, white fabric ruff with small pom poms around my neck that matched the tightly-pleated ruffs around my wrists, and a small black domino mask over my eyes. A full face of white powder, black lipstick, and some black around my eyes to blend them with the mask completed the look. I also had an oversized prop hammer, though I would probably only retrieve it for a few photos—if I used my sling ring just right, I could make it look like I was pulling it from nowhere in true toon Hammerspace fashion!
Nat was still only halfway through her own makeup by the time I was dressed and ready. I didn’t want to hover around her while she finished, so I headed out to the lounge room. Yelena was there, sitting on the couch, scrolling through her phone. She wasn’t even dressed yet.
I moved around the front of the apartment restlessly while I waited, pacing, fiddling with random things, trying to do anything but think about the conversations I was going to have to have with Natasha and Bucky in the next couple of days. After a while, I stepped over to the couch and nudged Yelena with my foot to get her attention. “You gonna go get dressed? We’re supposed to leave soon.”
Yelena shrugged. “I’m already ready.”
“But you’re not in costume?”
“Yeah, I am.”
I paused, reviewing her outfit—a pair of black pants and a long-sleeved top. Black boots. Normal clothes. As I eyed her off, she picked up a headband with a pair of black, fuzzy cat ears that had been lying next to her on the couch.
I sighed. “That’s your Catwoman outfit?”
“Yes.” She went back to scrolling on her phone.
Ugh. The big idea I’d had for a DC superhero group costume had gotten significantly less buy-in than I’d hoped, primarily because I’d left it too late to make the pitch and most people had already made plans of their own. Yelena had, of course, been planning on half-assing whatever she ended up doing, and I really shouldn’t have expected anything different even after she’d agreed to do Catwoman. Still, at least Pietro had let me talk him into dressing as the Flash. I was Harley Quinn, and Natasha…
When Nat eventually emerged from the bedroom, I leaned back against the wall. She’d taken twice as long to get ready as I had, and it was easy to see why. Her costume was almost on the level of a professional cosplayer—she’d seemingly put the exact opposite amount of effort into her costume than Yelena had put into hers.
A ‘bodysuit’ of fake leaves clung to and emphasised her curves, leaving her shoulders and a generous amount of cleavage bare. Her legs were covered, green tights into darker, knee-high boots. Her makeup was immaculate. It wasn’t just beautifully layered and blended greens, either: she’d drawn thin ‘vines’ creeping out from around her eyes that almost looked real. A bright dye had been put through her hair to make it a much more vivid shade of red, and she had some extensions in there as well. She was holding a shawl, the colour matching her tights, embroidered with a pattern of leaves.
Natasha absolutely rocked the Poison Ivy look.
I put a hand on the middle of my chest and took several deep, open-mouthed breaths, my eyes locked on her.
“You okay?” she asked, a small, bemused smirk curving the corner of her mouth.
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
I started fanning myself with both hands. “It’s like, I can’t breathe, but also I’m breathing too much at the same time.”
“You want me to turn around?” As she asked, she gave a coy half-turn.
I leaned forward to rest my hands on my knees, breathing harder, like I was trying not to hyperventilate. “I feel like that may not help.”
Natasha laughed, the corners of her eyes crinkling merrily, and shook her head. “You’re ridiculous.”
“The costume stayson after the party tonight,” I told her, straightening up.
“Mm, maybe,” she said teasingly as she walked over to me, carefully draping the shawl over herself to cover her shoulders. Her voice dropped into a slightly lower register. “I have to admit, I am looking forward to revving up my Harley…”
I made a strangled noise in the back of my throat.
“Can we just go, already?” Yelena interrupted testily, shooting the two of us an unimpressed look.
My smile faded a little bit, the very brief distraction of Natasha’s costume shouldered aside by the fluttering background noise that I still couldn’t quite push from my awareness. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
We did one last quick check to make sure we had everything, Nat retrieving the containers of baked goods I’d prepped this morning while I slipped on my sling ring. Then I spun up a portal to the compound. On the other side, just in front of my usual designated landing spot, Pietro was already standing on the lawn waiting for us. Yelena moved past me, stepping through the gateway first, as I stared hollowly at my brother.
He was supposed to be dressed as the Flash. Team speedster dressed as the team speedster. Instead, he was wearing a sleeveless red and black top with a sparkling red and gold starburst emblem in the middle, tight black pants with matching leather boots, and a wide black belt with a massive gold buckle adorned with a miniature version of the starburst on his chest.
Yes. He was dressed as Flash. Flash fucking Gordon.
Yelena gave him a kiss, hanging off his arm for a moment as she turned to look back at me. The two of them had the biggest, most shit-eating-est grins I’d ever seen on their faces. Next to me, Nat let out a small chuckle.
I sighed. “My day is ruined and my disappointment is immeasurable.”