Red Room

RR46 Tabula Rasa

"She was so heartbroken... she was with this other man who I think saved her somehow, she was covered in so much blood but also looked fine at the same time. I watched as she begged this man to kill her after her own attempt failed, all because the little girl you are holding had...passed away during the whole ordeal."

"Anatoli that's horrible!" she said as she rocked the baby girl in her arms.

"I think the Red Room was going to take the child from her, or they did and Romanova got her back...I don't really know. The man then did something to her; he placed his hands over her temples and this light appeared. I thought that maybe he somehow took her memory or something. Eventually he took the baby and buried her and then he disappeared into the sky!"

"Into the sky? Like a bird?" she asked in amazement.

"No, not exactly. He yelled something and then this light came down from the heavens. He stepped into it and then he was just gone. I don't know why I did it Val, but I just had to help the child. I brought her back and when I saw her eyes, just as you did, I was in love. I thought that maybe we could raise her as our own."

Anatoli then started rambling to which Valentina thought was cute.

"Anatoli slow down, we need to talk about this," she said.

"I know, I know. What would you say about keeping her? There is no way we could let HYDRA know where she came from, or hand her over to them just so they could corrupt her like everyone else in that wretched place."

Valentina looked into the now sleeping child's face. Her rosy cheeks and pink little lips were just too irresistible. Eventually she looked back to Anatoli with tears in her eyes.

"HYDRA can't know," she said. "We could pretend she is mine, I was close enough with...our child. No one would suspect a thing; this girl isn't even a day old, is she?"

"She looks young," he agreed.

A tear then fell from Valentina's face as she tried to imagine what her mother had gone through just to end up losing her baby.

"Okay," she said, finally agreeing to adopt the child and raise it as her own.

Anatoli lit up and kissed Valentina on the forehead, happy to finally become a father.

"I need to report back to base, ill only be gone for a few hours." He stood up and pulled his jacked back around his shoulders.

Valentina stood up with him still cradling the baby. "Be careful my love, don't mention at all that the Black Widow had a child. That would raise more questions than answers."

He cupped her cheek in his strong hand and planted a sweet kiss on her lips. "I won't," he promised. "I'll bring some supplies back on my way home as well."

Anatoli then left Valentina for the second time that day but this time she wasn't left alone. The baby slept until he arrived again with arms full of grocery bags. Her mood had brightened for the first time in weeks and her laughter returned. It was music to Anatoli's ears as she laughed at him trying to figure out how to make a bottle.

She laid the baby in a nest of blankets as she joined him and together they figured out how to do it. As the bottle warmed, they unloaded the rest of the bags and looked at the spoils. There were several different sizes of diapers and again Valentina laughed when he confessed that he didn't know what the numbers meant exactly. He did good on the wipes as well as clothing, bath things, and blankets.

Once the baby was fed, they gave her the first bath of her life, which she did not like. Valentina found a cute little freckle on her wrist and pointed it out to Anatoli who called it an angle kiss. Once she was clothed though she calmed down and they then sat on the couch and just stared at her. She was in a deep sleep and looked content. Anatoli was worried when he saw the reddish tinted hair on the top of her head but relaxed when he thought of his own mother who also had red hair. The gene skipped him and his drab brown hair but if anyone decided to dig they would have no doubt that the baby was his.