The Algorithm To Infinity

[13] one in a million

"My what?" Natasha frowned, her eyes snapping open to look at the nurse as if she'd grown two heads. 

Her little one. 

"What the hell does that mean?"

"What?" Steve echoed. She glanced at him and found that he was staring at the nurse with the same dumbfounded expression on his face as she had.

"Well Ms. Romanoff, according to our ultrasound, you are two months pregnant." The nurse said with wide eyes as she realized that Natasha hadn't known.

Her head was spinning, her mind suddenly numb as her stomach dropped. 

Pregnant. 

It wasn't possible.

The Red Room had sterilized all the graduates. She still remembered the painful procedure so vividly. She and Steve had unprotected sex, but the Red Room had told them that they were infertile - that it was impossible. However, the impossible had happened before. She had met Steve Rogers and fallen so deeply in love with her soulmate. Was it possible that she was still fertile? 

"I'm going to be sick!" She gasped.

The nurse reacted quickly and set a bin in her lap as she threw up what was left in her stomach. "It's not possible." She choked out, hot tears streaming down her cheeks as the foul taste of bile burned in the back of her throat.

He had stood quickly to hold her hair back, but she knew he was just as shocked and as dumbfounded as she was.

"The ultrasound confirms that you are pregnant, Ms. Romanoff. I'm going to give you some time to process this, but just hit the call button if you need anything." The nurse said before she left the room as if she hadn't just given heart-stopping, mind-spinning, life-changing news.

She clutched the bin in her lap, fighting nausea that made the room spin around her. "I've been sick since you left, but I thought it was for a different reason." She said slowly, not daring to look at him. She would've never thought that she was pregnant but now that she knew, it all made sense: the sensitivity to specific smells, the morning sickness, and how fatigued she became after what was once an easy workout... "I should've known..." She groaned. "I've been drinking... I was just shot... what if the baby doesn't make it?"

Why should she care anyway?

Did she want this? 

A baby?

A part of her always had - the teenager who had thought she had a lifetime of love and happiness ahead of her - but a part of her had accepted long ago that she wasn't made for the domestic life, that she was a deadly weapon who never diverged from a mission. Could she completely change who she was to provide for another human - an innocent? 

Could she be so selfless to give her body, her heart, and her life to a child of her own?

The conflicting thoughts hit her all at once but beside her, he hadn't spoken a word.

What if he didn't want this?

She knew he had with someone else long ago. With Peggy. He had wanted to settle down and have a family with the woman in his past, not Natasha. His silence said more than his words ever would, and she knew this was all a huge mistake. Not the baby, but Steve. "You can leave, you know. If you don't want this... you're not trapped if that's what you're thinking." She said. Pushing his hands away from her, she set down the bin and leaned back against the pillows with a heavy sigh.