Bucky stopped when she did, watching her. Bucky wasn't Natasha, he didn't measure every angle or read every nuance. But he'd been in the game long enough that he wasn't a simple mark who never thought to look for what was beneath the surface.
He didn't know Natasha, not well enough to know the minutiae or read everything. But it was ... obvious. If she'd slipped, Bucky would have thought she'd smooth it over, slide by, run past it and divert.
The hands pressed to her eyes, the emotional swallow and the hissed curse. Even the red eyes - it looked like a show, a little bit. A good one, but if it was true, if it was a slip, Bucky didn't think it would look like that. He thought she would turn away, draw in. It just ... read wrong to him, even if he couldn't quite name why.
He blinked at her, taking that in. Pregnant.
She could sell pregnant, Bucky thought. It didn't occur to him it might not be true. But his first thought was that it was a story. The way Peg had wanted Steve and him to be a story, but given it up. And Natasha would know that too. She was letting him know because she wanted him to know.
It might be the least painful way for a Victor to have a kid, if they died before the kid had to be born. Then it never had to face the axe of the Arena.
Bucky grimaced at the path of his own thoughts, searching her face. "It's not obvious," he said finally. "Whose?" He stopped, gathering his thoughts and looking at her again, her face, the red eyes. She looked miserable, but he didn't ... know. How much was what she wanted him to know about her misery. Do you know? Was it someone you wanted? Bucky wanted to ask, but didn't. All that came out was, "you can use that." Because he knew how it worked.