"Magicians have something wrong with their heads," Agent Natasha Romanoff declared with absolute certainty.
"What happened?" Clint Barton had a bad feeling.
As the listener, he glanced around nervously.
He'd heard some of the bad rumors about Solomon—"arcane brute" being one of the kinder terms. He half-expected the magician Natasha spoke of to leap out from the shadows wielding a giant club, swinging it at both of them. The absurd image made him chuckle to himself, but Clint quickly pushed the thought away and focused on Natasha's words.
This had to be something private. Otherwise, Natasha wouldn't have come to confide in him alone.
He was the only one in the Avengers who knew the secrets of Natasha's past. Those dark, bloody, and brutal memories hadn't simply vanished when she joined the Avengers. No amount of glory could erase what she had done. Natasha once told him that in the dead of night, she often heard those memories approaching with shuffling steps and the stench of decay, creaking across the polished wood floors of the Red Room, waking her drenched in cold sweat.
"He said he wants to give me a child!" Her voice suddenly rose in volume.
Clint raised an eyebrow, clearly intrigued.
He knew what kind of sterilization procedures Natasha had undergone. They were enough to destroy the psychological defenses of most women—he had seen similar horrors at the concentration camps along the U.S.–Mexico border. If Solomon really had a magical way to reverse that damage, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing. He'd be happy to see his friend realize a dream.
Natasha wiped at the corner of her eye, slipping back into the mask of the secretive agent.
Years of training allowed her to regulate her emotions instantly. But as Solomon had once said, she was a poor soul with a shattered mind. She didn't even know which of her emotions were truly hers anymore. The reason she could beat a polygraph was because she had learned to deceive her own consciousness first.
"He came to me all excited," Natasha said flatly. "Then after taking a blood sample, he left. I thought…"
After so many years of friendship, Clint could sense a deeper meaning. He felt the need to say something ridiculous to calm her down. "He's only nineteen. If you were expecting that sort of thing, maybe it's a bit too soon."
"My uterus and ovaries have been gone for years. I thought he would use magic to regenerate them," Natasha said, now fully composed. She half-joked, "Even if it hurt, I wouldn't have minded. He's a handsome young man—I've seen that body of his—and I'm single. I wouldn't mind if something happened."
"That's a bit of a stretch, Nat," Clint said, spreading his hands and shrugging. He laughed too. He knew she was joking—mostly. But it showed she was no longer drowning in her emotions. She was back to herself.
"In both senses," Clint added.
"Clint~" Natasha chuckled and accepted the cold beer he handed her. This time the laughter seemed genuine, not forced. But even Clint couldn't be sure if it was truly heartfelt. "That's not what I really wanted," she said with a smile. "It was a promise made a long time ago. I can't tell you the details, Clint—it involves magical secrecy… He never explicitly said he could regenerate my organs, but the implication was there."
"You can't clone an organ with just a vial of blood. Why would he do that?"
"I don't know. When I tried to track him down, I found out he hasn't shown up anywhere except Oxford," Natasha said slowly, shaking her head. "Even when he came to take the blood sample, he was in class at the same time."
Clint felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "Nat, is this a ghost story?"
"It's a magic story. Don't act like a little boy afraid of monsters under the bed, Clint," Natasha rolled her eyes. But Clint could tell—she was angrier than before. "The one who came to draw blood was an ice-sculpted replica he made of himself. Just something he uses when he's too busy to be present. He assured me it was necessary for testing, then hung up."
"Okay… So he's a bad boy, huh?" Even though he was married now, Clint still couldn't figure out how women thought. All he could do was follow Natasha's lead and pretend to be outraged. He even slapped his chest and promised to go teach that bad boy a lesson. That childish gesture finally brought a real smile to Natasha Romanoff's face.
"Thanks for listening, Clint."
"No problem. We're friends. Are you really okay, Nat?"
"I'll handle it myself," Natasha Romanoff said with a smile. "That teenage brat is about to learn why women are not to be trifled with."
And women were not to be trifled with—that was something Solomon had learned firsthand.
When Natasha Romanoff bypassed security and stormed into the library to drag him out of his ocean of knowledge, he knew this was serious. She was wearing a trench coat and sunglasses that practically screamed "bad news." No one knew what kind of weapons were hidden under that outfit—but he was certain she had at least one gun, because the muzzle was currently pressed against his waist. And the woman holding it was standing very close, blocking the view of anyone nearby.
"Tell me, kid," she whispered, her voice low enough not to disturb the other readers. "Why did you hang up on me?"
Solomon stared at her, utterly incredulous.
"Are you crazy? Just because of that?" he hissed, eyes wide as he tried to keep his voice down. The library was dead silent. He hadn't brought any spell components, so there was no way he could cast something to block sound. "Didn't I explain it clearly over the phone? It was a required diagnostic!"
"I want to see results." Romanoff's volume didn't change, but her tone suddenly turned cheerful and flirtatious. An elderly professor nearby glanced over and shook his head in disgust. Clearly, the spy's professional instincts had kicked in, prompting her to provide a believable cover for her presence. "Let's assume that promise you made in the bathtub actually counts. It's been years, Solomon." She smiled. "I'm getting older. Less fit for pregnancy. I'm running out of time, Solomon."
"I told you—regenerating internal organs is an extremely difficult procedure. It involves a lot of black magic…"
"If you can do it, I'm not against carrying your child."
Cough cough!
"Shhh!" The professor in front of them spun around and angrily told Solomon to keep his voice down. Solomon quickly stood up and bowed in apology, his face burning with embarrassment. He had taken the Bodleian Oath—the sacred code of the Bodleian Library—an oath as binding to Oxford students as the Hippocratic Oath to doctors. Breaking it wasn't just grounds for expulsion; it would bring such disgrace that no professor would want to teach him again. When he finally sat back down, he found Natasha Romanoff smiling sweetly, as if nothing had happened.
He shot her a furious glare, but it did nothing to erase the smug, relaxed look on her face.
"So?" she whispered in a husky voice by the arcane master's ear. "Made up your mind yet? Getting a beautiful woman pregnant is a temptation no male DNA can resist—and you're no different. Bad boy, you've only got one chance."
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Fairy Tail: Igneel's Eldest Son (Chapter 256)
I Am Thalos, Odin's Older Brother (Chapter 336)
Reborn in America's Anti-Terror Unit (Chapter 542)
Solomon in Marvel (Chapter 924)
Becoming the Wealthiest Tycoon on the Planet (Chapter 1284)
Surgical Fruit in the American Comics Universe (Chapter 1289)
American Detective: From TV Rookie to Seasoned Cop (Chapter 1316)
American TV Writer (Chapter 1402)
I Am Hades, The Supreme GOD of the Underworld! (Chapter 570)
Reborn as Humanity's Emperor Across the Multiverse (Chapter 660)
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