About a month after AoU premiered, I started to wonder how Bruce took the SHIELD data dump, and what would have happened if Natasha decided to prioritize genuine accountability over court appearances. And then, that became, what would Bruce & Natasha do, when they are struggling with the fallout of SHIELD's fall together. I started writing the post-TWS AU where Natasha and Bruce go on a fugitive roadtrip almost immediately after this string of thoughts, and a year later, I'm now beginning to post it.
All the thanks in the world to Sian (widowshulk on tumblr), who read an early draft & told me this was worth continuing, many months ago, and to Helen (natashavevo on tumblr) who has read & given feedback on multiple drafts, offered endless encouragement, made a gifset inspired by this fic, and basically motivated me to get this finished and posted. This fic couldn't have happened alone, and, for that, I'm grateful.
New York
She goes to New York, first. It's a stupid, unnecessary risk, but it's the kind of unnecessary risk that's not that unnecessary after all. Hazards of not living in a vacuum, she supposes. The more people you count as unexpendable, the more unnecessary risks become necessary.
She's not sure when Bruce Banner stopped being expendable to her. But in the information she just released to the world, there's a file on Bruce that's pushing the length of her own, and she regrets freeing that file as much as she regrets any of the things she's done since joining SHIELD. Bruce didn't ask her to make his identity public knowledge, any more than he asked her to pull him out of Kolkata and into SHIELD custody. She owes him an out.
And Bruce might be good at disappearing, but Natasha is better.
She makes a big affair of arriving back at the tower. Takes the front entrance, smiles at the gawkers. Make sure everyone knows exactly where she is, so they won't think to look for her when she's gone.
Bruce is in his lab when she gets there, brewing a pot of coffee while his computer monitor rolls out a simulation. The lab speakers are playing R.E.M. and Bruce is humming along, lingering in front of his ancient coffee machine in an oversized sweater. He looks warm and settled, here in this place he has made his own. She hates that she's forcing him out, now that he's finally stopped running.
"You haven't seen the news," Natasha says as she walks into the lab. It's not a question; there's no way he knows what happened and is still in the state.
"Jesus, Natasha," Bruce jumps, turning to stare at her. "I thought you were in DC."
"I was. How do you feel about road trips?"
"What?" he stares at her, blinking at the non-sequitur. Behind him, the coffee pot beeps, and Bruce starts rummaging for a mug. He absently grabs a Dodgers mug that she knows for a fact belongs to Steve. Natasha wonders at that, if Bruce and Steve were close, she had somehow managed to miss that entirely; just another reminder that somehow this team had finished forming without her, while she'd been here the whole time.
"SHEILD's been compromised. And so have all of its assets."
"What does that mean?"
"SHIELD was Hydra, so Steve and I broke it. Dumped its database on the internet."
"I'm sorry, you broke SHIELD?" Natasha nods at him, and waits for him to catch up. It hardly takes a second. "And when you say database you mean?"
"I'd give it less than a day before somebody stumbles across your file. If they haven't already."
"Jesus Christ," Bruce says. He is still holding onto his coffee mug for dear life, like it's the last solid handhold for miles. "Eat your heart out, Julian Assange."
"So," Natasha repeats. "How do you feel about roadtrips?"
Bruce grimaces. "Suddenly, I'm feeling an awful lot like taking one."
"How does out west sound?"
He blinks. "With you?"
"We're both running from the same thing, aren't we?"
"What's the point of being on a team in the first place," Bruce says, giving her an anemic smile, "if you don't have someone to turn fugitive with."
New Jersey
Natasha has a cache of fake names and matching credit cards tucked in her backpack. Not covers, exactly, just empty names and offshore accounts, a safety net she'd built herself outside the gaze of SHIELD. Now, what other agents would have once called paranoia, feels an awful lot like foresight.
Tess Michaelson pays for a room with two double beds in a motel off the interstate, and Natasha leads Bruce into their room for the night. It's early afternoon still, but they've got a day's work ahead of them if they're going to ground. She'll dye her hair straw blonde, have Bruce ditch the glasses and grow out his scruff, and by the end of the week they'll look as unremarkable as the framed print of a sailboat hanging above her lumpy double bed.
Bruce is standing at the foot of the second bed, staring at that awful sailboat watercolor like he's seeing something else entirely. She knows that expression on him, isn't a fan. Bruce has this terrible habit of internalizing everything, like he thought it would be safer to keep all of his rage inside. They both ought to know by now how untrue that is.
"Out with it," Natasha says brusquely, and waits for an answer. When it really comes down to it, they're blunt people, she and Bruce. They like things at face value, like the truth, like calling things exactly what they are. Natasha's always been far too good at lying to actually enjoy it.
Bruce sighs, the noise oddly stuttering. He doesn't turn to her, but he says, "I didn't come with you because I needed you to protect me, Natasha."
"I'm not protecting you. I'm not under any delusions about how little help you need with that."
"Oh," Bruce says, and releases a long breath. "Okay." He folds, sitting on the edge of one of the motel room beds and runs both hands through his hair. He turns to watch her, nearly expressionless. He's gotten easier to read in the two years she's known him, as they've built a friendship from half-forgotten fears, but he's not a quick study.
"I asked you to come with me," Natasha explains, sitting beside him. There are a scant few inches between their shoulders, their hips, their knees. Natasha thinks she wants to close the distance, feel Bruce warm against her side; she chokes out the impulse and preserves the space between them. She's weathered worse storms than this on her own, and she didn't get this far by needing comfort every time something went wrong. "Because I made a mess and you didn't deserve to get caught in the fallout."
"To be honest, Natasha," Bruce says, "that sounds an awful lot like trying to protect me."
"That's not what this is about." Natasha doesn't move any closer, but she does give in to the temptation to brush her fingers along Bruce's elbow. He tenses, and Natasha does too, burying her hands in her lap and stifling the urge to touch. She's not tactile, but here she is, wanting to press against him like some touch starved alley cat. She chalks it up to the lullaby, still in its infancy but the closest bet to control Bruce has, to the knowledge that touch soothes him in either body, but she knows it's a lie. She disregards it, she clasps her hands tighter between her knees, she is relentless in her denial. Locked down like a deadbolt, no movement after deployment.
"Then what is this about?" His voice is getting rough, more like the rasp of wood against wood than anything human, so Natasha cuts to the chase. Handy ace in his pocket, she thinks, always carrying around a third party to cut talk short.
"It's about not leaving debts unpaid. I did wrong by you, now I'm doing right."
Bruce shifts at her side. He's harder to read than most, but still easier to read than he thinks. In just the line of his neck and the tension in his arms, Natasha can read a spun out mess of anxiety, can tell that the whole situation is throwing him off. He just wants a straight answer, and she can give him that much.
"We're running from the same thing, here. I don't trust the government to put either of our best interests' first." Natasha pauses before dropping her last bomb. When Bruce meets her eyes, he looks nothing short of hunted. "They put you in a cage before; do you really think they won't do it again?"
He laughs, with that same inhuman, papery rasp. "Of course they will. Why do you think I ran?"
"The same reason I did."
Bruce doesn't say anything to that, but his arms sag into his lap. It's a concession, relaxing. Maybe she hadn't done right, but she hadn't done anything wrong either, like he'd led her to a minefield and she'd made it out without a misstep. Bruce is still wary, but he's trying to let trust win out. And, somehow, that means more than simple trust would to her.
Pennsylvania
They've only been on the road for three days, taking backroads that lead them out of their way through farm country for hours, and already Bruce looks like a stranger from the man who'd left New York with her. There's a familiarity about his bearing: this is the man she'd met in Kolkata, wary and hunted and clever. Unbelievably tired and quick to feel threatened, but no less kind because of it. He is still just as much Bruce as he had been living in the tower, but now he's a little more. Sharper edged and harder, he's shed all the softness two years of stability had lent him within minutes of fleeing the tower. He has a week's growth of beard and wears jeans and flannel, nearly invisible as he fades into the crowd in Harrisburg. Natasha's not sure if he'd even owned jeans before she forced him to buy new clothes on the way out of the city, but it's a good look on him.
Natasha can tell that she'd changed too, had started shifting the minute they started running. Natalia was a killer, more weapon than woman; the Black Widow was a good agent and a better spy, a gun pointed in the right direction; and Nat, Aunt Nat, was the woman the people who loved her best believed she could be. But now, all her aliases and secrets shed easy as a winter coat, she isn't any of those people. She's something less, something more. She'd told Steve that now that she'd blown her covers it was time for her to find some new ones, but maybe she could just start with finding out who Natasha was.
It's painfully cliché, finding herself out on the open road, like a Kerouac novel, if only his heroes had gone to ground with the government nipping their heels. Redefining herself on the road was predictable, trite, self-indulgent; the kind of gesture she'd been taught to hate. But Natasha is learning that there's something richly satisfying in doing things because she chose to, taking and doing everything she wanted.
She'd been good at running for a long time now, but there were other things beside running worth doing. Besides, she'd always meant to see the Grand Canyon.
They stop for gas in a small town in coal country. It's some off brand joint, the family legacy kind of place, with a general store and an attendant and everything. Bruce waves off the attendant, insists he can handle self-service, and hunches down with his back to the station before anyone really gets a good look at him. Natasha goes into the store, leaving Bruce to watch the pump.
Inside, the woman at the counter watches with unmasked curiosity. This is not the part of Pennsylvania that people tend to travel to, not really enroute to Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or even west to Cleveland. Visitors are something worth remarking on. This is the drawback of avoiding population density; fewer people to see them, but the ones who do are paying attention.
"New in town?" the woman asks. She's maybe in her twenties, cherry red lipstick and a high ponytail. Her eyes are sharp on Natasha and she's absently thumbing through a book that looks like it's been read more often than put back on the shelf. Natasha wonders what the draw of working here was, where she'd rather be.
"Just passing through," Nat answers. She keeps her eyes on the trail mix she's looking through. Bruce likes cashews and won't admit to a sweet tooth, and making eye contact with someone who's frankly curious doesn't seem the prudent thing to do.
"Yeah?"
"My boyfriend and I," Nat gestures out the window, where Bruce slouches against the sedan, "we're driving down to Florida to visit his folks. Thought we'd take the long way."
Natasha glances up at the woman, who nods, looking like that was exactly what she'd expected to hear. "Well," she smiles, "we're no Sheetz, but we get the job done."
Natasha has no clue what the hell a Sheetz is but she nods anyways. Good Pennsylvania girls who drive south to see their boyfriend's mom know that sort of thing. She grabs a few bottles of water and heads to the front to check out.
"You look mighty familiar," the woman says as she rings up the trail mix and water. "Sure you haven't been through town before?"
Nat forces a laugh, but it sounds stiff. The cashier peeks up, as if she could hear the falseness, too. "I hear that a lot. Must have one of those faces, you know?"
"Sure, sure."
On display on the counter are a passel of newspapers, a pile of the local paper, a few of today's Harrisburg-Patriot News, and last Sunday's copy of the Times. She picks up the Harrisburg paper, Russia, China, and Others Wary After Intelligence Leak, and glances through the first few pages. She's not sure what she's looking for, but when she sees Lawmakers Push to Regulate "Super-Humans" on page three, she knows that was it.
"Wild times, huh?" the woman says, as Natasha hands her the cash she owes. "You want that paper, too?"
Natasha puts it back on the shelf. "No. Just curious."
Bruce is sitting inside the car when she steps outside. She slips into the passenger seat and opens a water bottle for Bruce as he starts the car. "New rule," Natasha says. "Let's avoid the news."
"Why?"
"I just think it's going to be a long time before we see anything good," Natasha says, and Bruce turns back onto the road.
West Virginia
The television in their latest motel room is broken. It gets a signal, but the picture's bad and the audio's worse. Playing it feels like just watching her frustration beat against the screen, shrieking low fidelity, arrested momentum.
Bruce looks up from his book when she switches it off, and makes a sour face, like he's chewing over something he needs to say but can't quite figure out how. She can't begin to hazard a guess at what he's stewing over, and Natasha realizes, not for the first time, for all that she does know Bruce, she sometimes doesn't know him at all.
"Honesty?" he asks.
Early on, they'd set up the road trip equivalent of house rules, guidelines for rehabilitated killers sharing Tony Stark's casually beat up getaway car and a series of motel rooms. The first was no news. Any breaking stories that truly concerned them wouldn't be broadcast, and there was no need to see the media feeding frenzy that would follow both of their files. The second was no lying. Bruce had said that if they're were going to trust each other to watch their backs, they needed to make good on that trust. Natasha had said, "don't bullshit a bullshitter." The third was don't get found.
Natasha nods, leaving her palms open on her thighs, and waits for the real question.
"Why'd you do it? There had to be easier solutions. Safer solutions."
They've been hedging around this since New York, talking about it without naming it, the question hovering like a silent third party in the backseat. Natasha wonders what's raised the stakes enough for Bruce to finally ask.
"The position I was in," Natasha says, "didn't really leave me the time to find a better solution." She could leave it at that without lying, but there's a difference between not lying and being honest, and she didn't want to be the kind of person who counted that difference as negligible anymore.
"I didn't measure out ramifications," she continues. "Or scope, really, beyond the idea that if secrets stop being secrets, they stop being weapons."
"I can't tell if you're being philosophical or just pithy," Bruce says, managing to ignore the lion's share of her answer.
"Don't tend to think of myself as either."
Bruce hums, but leaves the thought untouched. He moves on, "scope and wide scale disaster and contingencies aside, why'd you do it when you knew your own file would go wide?"
"I have done," Natasha says, "a great deal of bad things."
Sometimes, bad things just happened. Sometimes, she had been the bad thing that happened to other people. Distinctions like that were important, and she no longer had the luxury of looking beyond it, like she had in the past. There was a difference in holding yourself accountable for the bad things that had happened to you, and those you had made happen, and she'd spent too long living on the extremes of it, trying to atone for nothing, for everything.
She pauses, and finishes. "I should be accountable for my crimes. But the people who made me? They should be too."
Bruce takes a minute to think this over. "I could make a Crime and Punishment joke," he says, but he doesn't make it. Instead, "responsibility is important. I just don't know if I would ever have been ready for everyone to know what I've done."
Natasha wants to tell him that you are only at fault for what you choose to do, that sometimes the bad things just happen, and there's no accountability to be had. That's one you have to learn for yourself though, and just like she hadn't heard it when Clint tried to explain it to her, years ago, she knows Bruce won't hear it at all. He's much newer than she is to bloody hands.
"I don't know if I was ready, either," she says instead. Natasha might lie to herself, but she promised not to lie to Bruce, so she knows it must be true. Why else would she have run?
"Well," Bruce says, "we can either get ready, or we can keep driving. Maybe both."
Natasha hums in agreement. After all that, she doesn't have much to say. She drops the remote on the bedside table and falls back into her pillow. She leaves the light on. She can sleep through most things, might as well let Bruce read.
"Keep going south tomorrow?" she asks.
Bruce agrees, and Natasha is asleep before he can follow up the thought. She wakes up three hours later, Bruce asleep and the lamp still on, and wonders which of the two of them he'd left it on for. It matters, whether she's travelling with someone who leaves the light on to sleep or who didn't want to leave her in the dark, but she thinks it will take some time before she knows which one of them needs the light more.
a/n: The lion's share of this story has already been written, and now I'm slogging through the work of editing what I've written, and coming to terms with what parts need to be rewritten. I'm finishing this up while also writing a year long senior thesis and graduating from college, so I can't promise any regularity in updates, aside from that they will come.
Any feedback is welcome & encouraged!