Third person point of view: 

Natasha stepped off the nearly empty plane into the cold Russian winter much earlier than she expected. She caught one of the only cabs that was available this early in the morning and had him take her to just outside the city of Stalingrad, it was the city Natasha knew before she was captured, but she could hardly remember that. The cab let her off a few blocks away from a shady apartment building, that had the paint chipping and you could tell it had very few residents. As the cab driver drove away Natasha saw him get out a phone and make a call, she assumed that he was tipping off the Red Room. After all she was one of the most wanted people in Russia, she knew it was going to be hard to stay off their radar once she was in the country. Natasha climbed the ice covered stairs and unlocked the door to her apartment, from the outside it looked like all of the others. The paint was chipped and cracked, the plaster was crumbling away from the wall, and the number was missing off of the door. Natasha broke into the first door easily and shut it behind her so no one could see what lay inside. 

When the door closed behind her it was completely dark inside until one light appeared. It was a finger print scanner, when Natasha pressed her index finger to it a few lights more lights appeared along with a retinal scanner, hand print scanner and a keypad. Natasha went to the retinal scanner first, after it was satisfied it disappeared, she put her hand on the scanner next and a voice verification system engaged. 

"Natasha Romanoff." She said plainly and evenly. 

She then moved onto the keypad and typed in the code. After everything was verified and matched by the computer system, the inner, soundproof door opened. It revealed a state of the art safehouse. It was one of Natasha's many around the world, she had mostly stayed away from them unless she absolutely needed them while she was on her little hiatus, because Fury, Coulson, and Clint all had access to them and could see when and where they were accessed, but now she didn't care. She was going home after this mission, she was going back to the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D, she was going to try and fix things with Clint. She was going to put her life back together, she was tired of running from everything. 

Natasha put her bags down and took out the note from Tony along with two pictures, one, an Avengers family photo, it was the one they had used last year to put on their Christmas card. The other was a picture of her and Clint dancing from the night that she had told him about Elizabeth. She quickly changed into her heavy duty mission suit that had an extra layer of protection on the inside, loaded her weapons into their hidden compartments, and put the pictures along with the note in a pocket just over her heart. She wanted them close to her in case anything went wrong, she wanted them to know that she always loved them no matter what. She grabbed extra guns and magazines off the wall, stored them in a separate bag and left a note on the table in case anything happened, because she wasn't going to let herself get captured again. Before she left she looked in the mirror and noticed something was missing, she had her red hair pulled into a tight braid, out of her way and out of her mind. She immediately pulled the hairtie out and let the curls flow down, she pinned the front away from her face so she could see what she was doing. She wanted them to know that the Red Death was coming and the fury in her eyes would tell them that she was taking no prisoners. 

Bucky had just been woken up by the sound of his phone buzzing and quickly tried to orient himself. He was still flying, somewhere over Europe and had two hours left until the plane landed. He quickly found his phone and answered it while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

"Go for Barnes."

"Bucky. Thank god! I've been calling you for the past twenty minutes. Where the hell are these coordinates taking me? I took off from Paris about an hour ago, and I'm still trying to find Natasha, what the hell did you mean in your text? Did you find Nat, is she with you? Let me talk to her I need to tell her something."

"Barton. Barton! Calm down!" Bucky yelled to get Clint to stop talking.

"I don't know much, other than Natasha texted me, probably about sixteen hours ago. She said she was taking the Red Room down once and for all, she wanted my help. After I got packed I sent you that message, I was hoping you'd get it earlier. I'm two hours out from where Natasha asked me to meet her, I'm pretty sure it's the old facility."

"What the hell? I've been chasing Natasha for a month now and have always been one step behind her. Dammit! This isn't good, I'm almost three hours out. I am not letting her take them down alone, it's a suicide mission!" Clint screamed nervously. 

"I know, that's why I'm here and I called you for backup. I'm about two hours out from meeting her, I'll try to stall her until you can get here, but judging by everything she has told me it's not going to happen."

"Shit! Why the fuck is she going after them now?"

"I have no clue, but something set her off. I'm fairly sure that she's planning on coming home after this, but I don't know why and I don't know what happened. She isn't telling us something, but I don't know what. I'll get all of the information that I can out of her before you get here." Bucky said and then paused while Clint let the silence stretch on. 

"Barnes, I know that you and I have never had the best relationship, with me getting Natasha pregnant and subsequently marrying her, along with other things, all without your permission, but I need you to keep her safe until I get there. I spent two months in the darkest hole I have ever been in because I thought I had lost her, but I realized that I was the one pushing her away and for the last month I have been trying to get her back. Barnes, I can't lose her. She is the love of my life and I cannot live without her. She is my everything, my whole world. I know you're still pissed at me for what I did, for leaving Natasha, for not going after her right away, for every single idiotic and asinine thing I have done since we lost Elizabeth, and trust me I hate myself for it too. But please, just keep her safe for me. I need to tell her that I love her, I need to explain to her what happened. I need her to know that I don't blame her for any of this, other than for making me the happiest man on the planet for the past ten, well almost eleven years that we have been together. I love her and I need her so please, just don't let me lose her. Protect her until I get there, please?"

"Barton, nothing would make me happier than to punch you in your perfect, idiotic, unthinking, teeth, but I will never let anything happen to Natasha. I know what you did after everything, I know why you did it, because I did the exact same thing I don't know how many times. I made you a promise two days before Elizabeth was born, that I would protect her and Natasha in case anything ever happened to you, that I would be there for them whenever they needed me, and I know Elizabeth is gone, but that promise still stands for Natasha. I know you're alive and well, but for right now I am going to take your spot until you get here. I don't know how to say this, but you have been the best thing that has ever happened to Natasha, you did something I never could and got her out of the Red Room, gave her happiness, true happiness for the first time. You love her, you gave her everything she has ever wanted out of life, you gave her a home, stability, love, a family, a child, and so many other things that I can't remember right now. I was wrong to have ever been mad at you because I was being hypocritical. There is no one else I would rather have married to Natasha and I am sorry for ever making you think other wise, for telling you that you don't deserve her, for telling you you didn't deserve to be a father. I was wrong, you were the best father that Elizabeth could have ever had and you are the best husband to Natasha." Bucky said with conviction, passion, and sorrow in his voice. 

"No Bucky... Just... Just keep her safe, I'll be right behind you guys."

"Hey man, don't worry. If any one is going to keep Natasha safe it's going to be her. She can take care of herself." Bucky said with a chuckle to lighten the mood, then continued. "Don't worry. We've got this. I'll talk to you when you get here." He finished and hung up the phone. 

Bucky put down the phone and looked at how much time was left until he landed and noticed that he still had an hour and a half left. He rubbed his eyes and stretched a bit and went to check to see how many weapons that he had brought and to see if he needed to stop at one of his hideouts to grab more. He had packed his entire duffel bag full of weapons but he knew that he would need more so he re-calibrated the GPS to his nearest hideaway that was only a half an hour away from the location Natasha had sent him. He stopped by the plain storage locker and grabbed everything out of it and loaded it on to his jet, he locked it back and made a mental note to restock it the next time he was nearby. He started the jet again and made his way to where Natasha was.

"Maria!" Fury screamed from his office knowing that she was standing outside.

"Yes sir." Maria said as she entered.

"Close the door." Maria did as she was told.

"Where is your sister?" Fury asked threateningly. 

"I don't know sir. I haven't heard from her since she left."

"Bullshit. I know you talked to her. Where was she?"

"Sir, she asked me not to tell you."

"Drop the sir shit Maria! I don't give a fuck what Natasha wants, she's in danger, where is she?"

"Dad I don't know. I only know where she was a month ago, that was when she called me. I notified Coulson and he said he would take care of it. I tried to go after her, but I didn't get to her in time."

"What do you mean you didn't reach her in time?"

"The last known location that I had on her. When I got there she was already gone. I have been looking for any sign of her since."

"Do you know if Barton would have accessed Natasha's hide out in Russia?" 

"I know he has access along with you and Coulson. Natasha was working on getting me clearance to the Russian location before everything happened, before she got pregnant."

"So you have no clue where your sister is? Or what she may be doing in Russia, or what she has been doing while she's been gone?"

"I have no idea where she is or where she might be, I wish I did. I don't know why Natasha is in Russia, but I will be the first one to volunteer to go lead a search for her."

"You answered all of my questions except for the last one. What has Natasha been doing while she has been missing?" Fury said standing up threateningly. 

"The last time I knew she was hacking into S.H.I.E.L.D to get missions. She was the unknown hacker who we have been unable to identify for the last three months."

"And you didn't think it would be important to notify me of that information? Maria what were you thinking? What has gotten into you?"

"Sir I was trying to protect my sister because I knew that you would react this way. Natasha cannot handle you at the moment. I have been doing all of this for Natasha no matter what you chose to believe." Maria snapped because she was tired of being chastised like a four year old. 

"What does that mean? I am doing this for Natasha's safety. All I want is for Natasha to be safe. Your sister has done the same thing for you I don't even know how many times."

"Dad no matter how many times you think Natasha has informed on me, she has covered for me at least double that. I was not going to let you force her back before she was ready because she would never come back! I was doing this for us! I was doing this to keep our family together." 

"You think I haven't been doing this to keep our family together? There is so much that I have done for this family that you don't even know about. I have been trying to keep the council from putting a price on your sister's head and calling for her execution!" 

"You think I don't know that! I'm not sixteen anymore, I am your second in command at S.H.I.E.L.D I know almost everything you do here! I didn't tell you because if you knew then you would have to tell the council who would go hunt down Natasha, or you could lie to them and then they would hunt you down! I wasn't going to stand for that so I was trying my best to keep everyone I care about safe, because I wasn't able to keep Elizabeth safe!" Maria screamed, acknowledging her real reason for hiding the truth from Fury for the first time.

"Maria!" Screamed with surprise. "You don't have to keep me safe. It's my job to keep secrets, it's my job to decide what happens with each and every one of my agents. It's my job to decide who gets to know what." Fury said much softer and sitting back down.

"Respectfully sir, it's my job too. I am second in command, I deserve to know these things, I am here to help you. I made the choice to not tell you about Natasha, that was my choice, I made the decision and I would make it over and over again because it's the call you would have made, it's the call Natasha would have made. It's the call that was made, now if you don't mind telling me where Natasha is I am going to go try and find her." 

"I don't know for sure where she is, but I have a guess that she is on her way to take down the Red Room, I don't know if she is alone, I don't know anything, you're going in blind." Fury said somberly. 

"Sir Natasha goes in on less on every single one of her missions. I'll be fine." Maria said coldly with her hand on the door handle. 

"Maria. Please be careful. Bring her back home please. I can't lose one of you, let alone both of you. Please make sure you both get back here safely." Fury said as he came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. 

Maria turned around and wrapped her arms around him. "Don't worry, I'll bring her back. I'm sorry that I upset you, but I'm not sorry for what I did, because I'm going to do it again."

"I figured. All right enough talking. Go out there and help your sister because she's probably waiting for back up right now." Fury said with a smile, shooing Maria out of his office.

"Bruce! Hey Bruce! Wake up!" Tony yelled shaking the sleeping Bruce who had fallen asleep in the lab. 

"Tony? What time is it?" Bruce asked sitting up and rubbing his eyes. 

"It's a little before seven. Jarvis told me you had something to show me." 

"Oh my god! I feel asleep! I didn't mean to do that. Is Natasha back yet?" Bruce asked shaking his head to get the cobwebs out. 

"Natasha? We haven't heard anything from her in months, did we finally get a match?" Tony asked excitedly while running over to the computers to check. 

"No. No. Natasha called. She called me after I told her I found out what happened to the baby."

"What? How? You haven't been close to anything real in months. What happened?" Tony said running back over to where Bruce was and trying to look at his research. 

"It wasn't Natasha's fault. It was the Red Room. I know it was, I can prove it." Bruce said with a smile. 

"No way. We have made sure that they have gone no where near her in months!"

"No, but this has." Bruce said holding up the device that they removed from Natasha. 

"The device we removed from her? That was only implanted in her months ago, how could that do anything, we removed it."

"But it wasn't I went back and carbon dated it after Bcuky came down and told me some stuff. It was in her for over twenty years, she had that implanted in her since before she left the Red Room, before she got pregnant."

"What? How is that possible?"

"Well they implanted it in her, it's not that complicated. That device is the cause of all of Natasha's problems, well almost all of them. That device neutralized part of her serum so that it would stop attacking her womb, so she could get pregnant. Remember the day that Natasha and Pepper went out and she passed out?" Bruce said showing Tony the neutralizing agent's chemical make up on the computer. 

"Yeah, it was the day we told Natasha about the Shadow Protocol, right? You said she passed out because of all of the stress, it was the baby's way of telling Natasha to calm down." 

"No it wasn't, I figured out why she passed out that day. Someone at the Red Room had forgot to give Natasha her daily dose of the neutralizing agent for probably a week. They were worried that the serum would start attacking, so they gave her two weeks of the stuff at the same time. Her skin by the implant got irritated at first which was why we noticed it in the first place. Then the rest of the stuff got into her system, so she passed out. It turned her serum off for the rest of the pregnancy or at least almost all of it. Had we not noticed they would have kept sending the stuff and it would have turned off Nat's serum entirely, which would have done who knows what to her and the baby."

"So the Red Room was never trying to kill the baby. Why? And what do you mean almost all of the pregnancy?" Tony asked while reanalyzing the results from all of the tests that Bruce had run. 

"I would assume they realized that Natasha was sleeping with one of us, if she had a kid with one of us they would be extremely valuable to them. They were probably plotting to take the kid. It's probably why the Russian government wanted her so badly."

"Holy shit! You're right! So no matter what would have happened, Natasha probably wouldn't have got her happy ending that she wanted." 

"Probably not. Maybe it was for the best that things worked out the way they did. It was the Red Room's fault that the baby died anyway."

"How?"

"The serum. It was specifically formulated to attack Natasha's womb to keep her sterilized and kill any fertilized eggs that somehow attached. Without the neutralizers the serum wasn't kept at bay when Natasha's body was under stress. When Natasha when into labor that obviously caused her body stress, so the serum speed up her labor to try and end the stress but when that didn't work it started fully attacking. That's why her scar tissue ripped, that's why Elizabeth died, that's why Natasha almost died."

"Holy shit! I can't believe it! You did it, you figured it out! I mean it's absolutely terrible, but you finally did it!" Tony exclaimed giving Bruce a hug. 

"Yeah I did. Now we just have to wait and see what happens, I already told Natasha." Bruce said with a genuine smile for the first time in a long time.