A Thousand Times, and Again
They went back to Stark Tower after everything was over. Well, over in that there were no more aliens pouring from a gap in the sky and Loki had been effectively shut down. The city was still in ruins and the people were frightened and SHIELD was disappointed in them and of course there was Coulson but they could take care of it tomorrow, tomorrow, so they went home.
SHIELD held Loki and Thor went to see Jane. Clint flopped on the living room couch and turned on the TV. Steve joined him on the opposite end, closer to the window, and drew the broken city he saw below him. Tony went to the kitchen immediately put on the biggest pot of coffee he'd ever made in his life. Natasha took the elevator to the basement, where the training room was. Bruce stood in between the kitchen and the living room and the elevator, watching everybody but mainly looking after her.
Tony poured a mug of coffee for himself and leaned against the door frame, sipping it carefully and shoving his other hand in his pocket where it trembled almost inconspicuously. He watched Bruce.
"You should go check on her."
The doctor turned to him, eyebrows raised an expression that Tony matched. Eventually, he gave up and sighed, lowering his head and removing his glasses to wipe them on his shirt.
"She wouldn't want me to. Not now."
"Yes, now!" Tony said, and Bruce was thankful that Clint had the TV turned up loud enough that neither him or Steve could hear the conversation from the couch. "In fact, there's no time like the present."
"Why don't you go see her, then?" Bruce snapped, jamming his glasses into his breast pocket.
"Because there's nobody who needs to talk to her more than you do, and nobody she would rather talk to than you."
"No, see, if you recall, I attacked her."
"Not you," Tony started, but stopped quickly. "Look, I'm not normally this sincere. But I think it would do you both some good." He stepped back and took another sip of his coffee, made a face. "Un-uh. New batch."
Bruce smiled lightly, then frowned, then sighed again and rubbed his fingers over his eyebrows and pinched the bridge of his nose. He glanced over at Tony in the kitchen, who was whistling the Mission Impossible theme to himself as he put on another pot of coffee and dumped the first batch down the drain. Then Bruce glanced at the elevator where Natasha had disappeared, and ultimately made a decision he considered to be incredibly unwise. But Tony, he had found, was chaotic in his ways but often knew best.
Thirteenth level, twelfth, eleventh, tenth… The numbers ticked by in orange above him, floor by agonizing floor. Finally, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open, revealing a wide, empty hallway with a half-lain carpet on the floor. Tony must have been planning on getting to that later.
The training room was on the right, he remembered, and the only room on that side of the hallway, considering that it was the size of England's finest ballroom. Tony didn't half-ass things (except for the carpet outside). Bruce leaned his head carefully on the door, listening for motion inside while at the same time gathering his courage. Finally, he set his hand on the smooth handle and turned it, sliding the door open an inch at a time.
Natasha had surely noticed him, he would have thought, but he did not hear her stop moving. When he entered the room all the way, he saw her on a structure opposite the door that he remembered was called the fish ladder, where she hung from a bar almost all the way at the top. She took a moment's rest, then threw her weight upwards and pushed the bar to the next set of hooks, then the next, until she was up at the very top hook and her knuckles nearly brushed the ceiling.
"Natasha," he said, quietly.
He wondered why, because his original plan had been to be completely silent and motionless and hope that she did not notice him, or if she did at least be the one to engage first. But no, he had opened his mouth and there was certainly no turning back now.
She stopped, just froze completely, then turned herself around with no effort whatsoever, so that she hung facing him. He had to crane his head tremendously to meet her eyes, and she had to bring her chin down to meet her chest in order to see him at all. He saw her twitch slightly at the sight of him before letting go of the bar and dropping the whole twenty feet to the ground.
She landed less than gracefully, and he would have been more concerned about why if he wasn't worried about her being injured. He rushed towards her, but before he could get more than three steps, she was on her feet. And she stepped back.
She stepped back.
He slowed, but for every one step he took forward she took back. She shook her head with every footfall, and her hands came up in front of her to warn him to stay back. It didn't take him much time to figure it out.
He stared at her for a long while, and she continued to meet his gaze. He was almost far enough away that he couldn't see her eyes, but not quite. Her pupils were blown out to engulf her irises, but the whites of her eyes showed predominantly around the edges. She was scared. Scared not just of anyone, but of him.
He fell to his knees, for he had nowhere else to go except back and at this point that didn't seem like an option. As he crashed, her eyes still held his.
"All the things," he started, coughing when his voice came out rough. "All the things you've been through, and done, and seen. Did you know it would be me? That I would be the one to finally truly terrify you out of your wits? You don't get scared, ever, and now that you finally are it's because of me." He dropped his head into his hands, sitting back on his heels. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. So, so sorry. I'm so sorry…"
He just kept repeating his regret, over and over again. He didn't know how much time passed, but he hadn't heard her move in a while and to be honest, he though she had left. But just as he was about to lift his head to confirm this, he felt her drop herself in front of him. Her knees touched his through his jeans and her uniform pants. Slowly, slowly, he felt her hands come up to wrap around his wrists and pull them away from his face. He still would not look at her, instead keeping his gaze on his lap.
"Please don't apologize," she whispered. "Please. It wasn't you. It was the Hulk, and you had to come after me. It was the only way to avoid completely destroying the Helicarrier."
He shook his head violently and gripped her hands in his - he felt her tense at this, but she forced herself to relax.
"No. No, it wasn't better. Hurting you was not at all better than taking out the plane."
"Do you even hear yourself? Bruce, you know that's untrue. I had minor injuries. I was still able to fight. You were the one that crashed back to Earth from a height of thirty-thousand feet and a steel cage. If anybody should be apologizing -"
He lifted his head, and when he did he saw that she had extracted on of her hands and was on the way to do it for him. He might have smiled at that some time ago, but not in this moment.
"You're not supposed to be apologizing."
"Neither should you be."
"You're not going to convince me of that."
"Well, then we're going to go around in circles for a while, aren't we?"
"Guess so."
Her hand continued on its path and rested on the side of his face, her thumb ghosting over his cheekbone and her pinky resting just below his earlobe. He closed his eyes for just a moment, and when he opened them again, she was smiling. At him. She was smiling at him.
"Bruce Banner, I forgive you."
He clutched her hand tighter in his and leaned into her touch, and she rubbed her fingers carefully over his day-old stubble.
She moved first, and this was not what he had in mind when he'd been praying for her to do so when he originally entered the room.
Her lips pressed to his, ever so softly, and he thought he might be imagining it. But she pulled away, ever so slightly, then came back at just the same time he did. He was far more careful kissing her than she was with him, which was almost equally surprising for both of them. Not that they thought much of it at the time. They moved themselves forward off their heels so that their thighs and stomachs and chests pressed together and being here, with her, kissing her… He was sure this was the best feeling in the world. He would never trade it for anything.
It was only when she moved her lips to his jaw and his throat that he became fully aware, which seemed ironic because his mind had never been quite so fogged, even on the occasion when he transformed to a completely different body.
"Nat… Natasha," he murmured.
She hummed in response, but kept trailing kisses down his neck, onto his collarbone.
"Natasha, what if I - and then what if you -" He stopped, partly because she had, and partly because he didn't want to finish the thought out loud.
She pulled his face close to hers, so that their foreheads pressed together. He could feel thin sweat beading between their brows, but he couldn't bring himself to mind. She pressed her hand that had formerly rested on his cheek to the back of his neck, a hard pressure that forbade him from moving anywhere, and despite what his mind knew he couldn't find time to mind that, either.
"I've said it once, and I will say it a thousand times more until you believe it: I. Forgive. You. And I trust you." She slipped his curly hair at the back of his head between her fingers. "Do you trust me?"
He lifted the corners of his lips in an unpracticed smile and kissed her again, which she returned with small question.
"Always."
fin.
Just something I thought up late at night and thought I might as well finish while it was still short and fresh in my mind. Also, KN, I'm still workin' on that Art School AU fic. I know, I know, I promised, but it will be here soon! Thank you for reading, I hope you liked it. Please review if you did, and even if you didn't!
Thank you once more, and have a wonderful, sweet-dream filled night.