It would be the truth to say that Natasha is panicking, but she isn’t going to be dramatic about it. She is a consummate professional, poise personified; if she’s taken by surprise enough to be wounded, everyone else around her has been dead for weeks. She knows how to play the game, the I’m Okay Game, where the rules are to not make things worse for everyone else and the points don’t matter. Around the Avengers, it’s just another day. She’s always quiet, so her silence shouldn’t be remarkable, and she’s always pale, so her drawn features shouldn’t cause concern. Besides, she wears makeup, so if anyone notices she’s pale they’re looking too close and she can make them wish they hadn’t.
When she’s alone, it’s a different story. There’s a lot of pensive staring into her bathroom mirror between bouts of throwing up (both nervous and hormone-induced), laying on her couch like a wet towel, and thinking hard as evidenced by gripping her chin in her hand and glaring at the ceiling. It’s real thrilling stuff.
Honestly, she’s even annoying herself after three weeks of agonizing to no result. The obvious choice should have been immediate and definitive, but she can’t quite decide to treat this thing like a cancer to be purged or a miracle to be protected. She lays in bed at night with both hands clenched over her stomach, arguing with herself. Counting the cells within as they divide.
There’s nothing else for it. She has to tell her husband she’s pregnant.
“We need to talk,” she says conversationally the next time she sees Clint, a few days after he gets home from a three-day trip to...somewhere that smells strongly of asafetida, judging by the scent of his jacket when she kisses him hello. Her tone is light, conversational, but her stomach is griping and twisting with the old fear drilled into her by Comrade Mother Ibragimova, remembers the threats and ill omens wished upon any Red Room trainee who dared open her legs for a man, especially the enemy. Comrade Mother Ibragimova is talking to her a lot, these days, while she tries to think with rationality. She pushes the old woman’s voice to the back of her mind and focuses on the moment. “Somewhere public, preferably, but privacy with surveillance also works.” So, she can’t quite let the old fear go, apparently. “We...messed up.”