"Remember India?"
Sitting by the window, they talk about the good old days. India was particularly special. (Black Widow/Natasha Romanov x Hulk/Bruce Banner) (AU, oneshot)
The characters are based loosely on the information in MARVEL official website.
He had been sitting by the window even before the sun came up.
In silence, he watched as the color of the sky changes –from dark blue to purple to a bright shade of orange as the city welcomed a new day. He liked how the morning lights fell into the thick sea of trees in a nearby park. There was this lingering suspicion that if he actually put a camera in fast-forward mode, he could actually watch the lights dance.
He was just going to give the most heart-warming smile, when he suddenly let out a sneeze.
My, it was quite cold for a spring morning. Perhaps he still had not got himself used to the weather in New York; Haiti was definitely a different take when it comes to weather. So he pulled the checkered blanket that had been covering his body closer, trying to keep himself warm.
This is a habit that he could never let go of.
He would carry a blanket to his study, and use it to wrap himself in a cape-like way. Late at nights, when sleep was far and few between, and his mind was up for a silent conservation, he would sit by the window, right on the spot where he is currently sitting on, to watch the city lights and drew pictures on the cold, dewy glass.
The blanket served as a barrier. From the danger that is the outside world, and the comfort that is his private zone.
It was the policewoman who first wrapped him in it the day he was taken from his house. An officer found him trembling on the cold kitchen floor, deeply traumatized by the horrifying sight he just saw. The policewoman soon appeared in the picture, with a big, warm woolen blanket at hand. She wrapped him in it and took him out to the ambulance, giving him the chance to receive medical treatment, before Mrs. Drake came to pick him up. Because watching your father beat the life out of your beloved mother is a sight no child could ever bear.
He was just thinking about going back to his couch –his temporary bed- when a cup of steaming hot chocolate suddenly appeared in front of him.
He did not realize that she was awake.
Her ginger hair was all messed up; apparently she was not bothered to fix them when she first woke up. He always had this suspicion that it was not natural, but then she had had this color since forever. She had this oversized dark blue pajama on; almost succeed in covering her dangerously curvaceous body. He had to struggle to keep his attention to the cups of hot chocolate and coffee that she was carrying, and not on other body parts.
"Good morning!" she greeted. Her smile was like a pocket of sunlight that you can carry anywhere.
"Morning… Geez, thank you, sorry I…," Bruce struggled to apologize as he took the cup of chocolate from Natasha's hand. "I've no idea you're awake…"
"Nah, it's okay!" she replied, sitting cross-legged on the other side of the windowsill. "You've been so kind for taking me in on such short notice, I feel like repaying you…"
Bruce smiled. "One can never leave a lady out in the cold".
"But the lady had kicked you out from your own bed. So yeah, she had to feel bad, somehow…," she proceeded. "Anyway, I still remember it correctly, right? You don't drink coffee…"
Bruce let out a small laughter. "You've a sharp memory…"
"Because caffeine makes you restless!"
They laughed, and the morning had officially entered Bruce's little apartment.
"Anyway, how's your jetlag?" asked Bruce, stirring the cup of chocolate. "Hope you feel better already."
"I'm fine… Getting used to that," Natasha answered, playing with a strand of her ginger hair. "My life is all about airplanes and train rides."
"Where was it? Tasmania?"
The lady journalist nodded. She had recently came back after a spending a year long in a vineyard in Tasmania, writing her latest book.
That is just how Natasha lives her life. In and out of one country to another, endlessly seeking for a new experience, something to put into print and fund her next adventures. Only to come back to New York to find out that the landlord of her place had sold her apartment to someone else, with all her things in one box placed neatly near the door. This is the very circumstance that led to her old friend Bruce's place.
"Thanks for letting me stay, Bruce," Natasha said. She put down her cup and put her hands together. "Promise, I have no intention to make it permanent!"
"It's okay, really… Haven't had company for a while," he muttered, leaning on the wall behind him.
A passing silence filled the air.
"So! How about you?" asked Natasha, taking her cup. She looked at Bruce with an excited glint in her eyes. "Brazil, India, Haiti… What's next? It's a rare thing to find you so comfy at home…"
Bruce fixed his sitting position. "Well… You know what… Nowhere."
Natasha's eyes widened. Bruce nodded. "Yes. Seriously. I feel like staying put in a place for a while."
"No more going around, saving the world?"
Bruce laughed at the term she used, though it somewhat rang true. Bruce is a physician, a specialist in epidemiology and community health. He had traveled extensively to some of the least unfortunate corners of the world, to save people from deadly diseases, often at the risk of his own life. He practically lived on his backpack, spending more time in exotic countries than in the comfort of his own home.
"Still saving the world… In different ways, though. I focus more on consulting now, for the NGO," he explained. "I mean, those countries are great. India, especially, seven years of service… But I'm not getting any younger, so…"
He sighed, smiling gleefully while pointing at some slightly greyish strand of hair.
"I remember India the most," Bruce muttered.
"Of course, you actually lived there for seven years!"
"No, not because of that."
"Eh?"
Bruce lifted up his head to stare at Natasha's eyes. "Because one day a girl popped up right in front of my hut, asking… demanding! For a job and a place to stay."
Natasha's laughter filled the room. It looked as if she was going to fall to the floor at any given time.
"Oh my God, oh my God! I didn't expect that!"
"Me neither!" Bruce replied, moving his cup around. "This ginger-haired girl, she claimed herself to be a writer or something, asking me to let her help around in my clinic…."
"And you were HARSH on her!"
"I yelled at her! I thought she must be some kind of a hippie chick, straight out of college looking for enlightenment!"
"But you end up taking me in!" Natasha yelled, pointed at Bruce. "You even let me slept on your bed!"
"Of course, I'm not getting myself sued for leaving a college student out in the middle of nowhere!"
"I wasn't a college student!"
Both of them laughed so hard, a neighbor from upstairs started to stomp really hard on the floor. Bruce made a gesture to keep Natasha quiet.
"But it was good that you took me in, right," Natasha whispered. "There were no ladies in the team that time, and it's hard to deal with kids…."
"Yes, yes, I know," Bruce replied. "I'll let you take credits for that."
The two old friends giggled as if they were high school kids.
"You know what's really great? When I got food poisoning from eating at a local eatery…."
"Told you! I told you you shouldn't put anything from the market into your mouth, you wouldn't listen…."
"I can't say no! But then after I got healed you took me to that waterfall in a forest…."
Then Natasha's story was cut short.
She put her hands over her mouth, looking terribly shocked. She then moved her hands wildly, her face looked as red as her face. "Um… well… Never mind…."
Bruce went slightly red around his cheek. "Yeah, yeah. Let's not go there."
Both of them kept their heads low for the next few minutes. Bruce took a deep gulp from his cup of chocolate, and Natasha suddenly grew very interested with whatever remains from her coffee.
That day in under the waterfall, Bruce mistook the sight of Natasha walking out of the water with a ginger-haired Botticelli's Aphrodite. He actually moved to kiss the goddess; and the goddess did not try to stop him. Him, the mortal, worn away by the world, seeking for that certain something. He began to believe that whatever it is, the thing he was searching for –was living in the goddess' eyes.
That night, heaven and earth collided as they roll around in Bruce's creaky old bed in the small hut.
With his cup now empty, Bruce had to shake his head real hard to get rid of the image of the goddess moaning and sighing under him. But luckily, she had begun to say something to completely distract him.
"Then the next day, my fiancée appeared to pick me up," Natasha said, as if she was actually able to read Bruce's mind and was just trying to finish the story.
"Yeah, I remember that…" Bruce muttered. Of course he remembered. It was as if Zeus himself had came down to earth to remind him that a mere human being –with baggage, a cargo airplane worthy of them- was not supposed to touch a goddess. All right. Point taken.
"Do you remember how he looked like? With safari suit and socks to go up to his knees!" Natasha just would not contain her laughter. "He's so out of place!"
Bruce tried to force a smile. "Yeah, that guy… What's his name? Cliff?"
"It was Clint," she answered. "But we did not make it. Broke up three years ago. I'm a single chick now."
"Oh, so sorry to hear that…" Bruce muttered.
"Actually…" said Natasha, picking up the cups to bring it back to the kitchen. "I dated Tony for a month, while he was touring Australia last year…."
"No way!" Bruce yelled, taking all the cups from the lady's hands. "My God! No way!"
"It's true!" she replied, following him to the kitchen, his blanket hanging on one of his shoulders like a Roman senator. "I know you wouldn't believe that!"
"But why! Tony! Of all beings!" Bruce yelled, putting all the cups into the sink and starting to clean them. "I mean, well… He's like a brother to me, and he gave a lot to the NGO, and he didn't say anything…"
"Because I asked him to!" Natasha replied, putting her hands on her waist. "It wasn't a serious thing. And I'm not proud of that…"
Her voice slowly faltered. Soon she was doing nothing but tugging the blanket that was hanging on his shoulders, pouting in a child-like way. Then she laid her head on his shoulder.
He closed the running tap water, and softly pat the ginger-haired head on his shoulder. "Hey, it's okay. Everyone made silly mistakes."
She nodded. "Thanks. Oh, Bruce?"
"Yes?"
"Why India?"
For the first time, he turned his head into her direction. "Why?"
"Why did you remember it for the day we first met?"
"I guess it's obvious, no? It's simply because I fell into you."
Then she stared at him with a knowing look.
"So… That moment…"
"In case you wonder, yes, I took it seriously. Until that Clint guy showed up and took you back to States. And I just thought… well… It's not happening."
"I've been a very bad girl, aren't I?"
Bruce put the two cups into the kitchen cupboard. "You were just confuse…" he muttered. "Besides, it'd be unwise if you chose me instead…"
Another awkward silence passed.
Bruce turned himself around, forcing Natasha to face him. "But it was the past. Today is a whole different matter..."
"Bruce?"
"Which is why I am wondering if I may have a second chance."
That day, Bruce never had the spoken answer he had always wanted to hear, for as soon as he popped the question, he was greeted by a warm, longing hug by the girl. And they kissed, so passionately that his blanket dropped to the kitchen floor. And he did not care.
In the upcoming years, after the wolf-whistles they had to receive from their friends for showing up together in a party (Tony discreetly pat his shoulder with an understanding smile), after all the lonely hours they spent together (she was writing and he was on the yoga mat), and all the long journeys they had together (The Pacific Islands!), they would always remember India. For it was where everything started.