Okay, so apparently I lost my mind after seeing Age of Ultron. I got home, starting looking for Brutasha fanfic, and found that there wasn't nearly enough. There also wasn't anything exploring the origin of the relationship we see in AoU, so I decided to write what I wanted to read and subsequently spent two weeks feverishly working on a short story exploring the developing relationship between Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff.

Like I said, I lost my mind.

If you have a similar brand of insanity, please let me know what you think and if you enjoyed my take on their relationship! I've almost finished this fic; it will be about seven chapters long and I will be posting very quick updates. Also, just a couple of quick notes, this isn't so much a novelization of the movies as it is a fill-in-the-massive-blanks sort of thing, especially the dead zone between The Winter Soldier and Age of Ultron. Wherever I do include movie scenes, I tend to skim past them and focus on the stuff we didn't get to see. Additionally, there's a lot of Clint and Natasha and Steve and Natasha in this chapter because I thought their respective relationships bore some unpacking, particularly as we bridge the gap between the Avengers films. However, the Brutasha Force is going to be very strong with this fic, so don't despair!

I can't wait to finish writing this, actually... Not only has it been a labor of love (with emphasis on the labor, ha), I 've been avoiding reading any Avengers fanfic for fear of being influenced too much by other people and I'm starting to feel the deprivation keenly. I can't wait to emerge and see what excellent Brutasha fics have sprung up in the last two weeks. :D

Enjoy! And please review!


It started in New York, in a dingy schwarma joint that was half-destroyed in the Chitauri invasion. Natasha and the rest of the Avengers stumbled inside and collapsed into a circle of chairs as Tony ordered for them. Her body felt impossibly heavy, the food was tasteless when it finally arrived - as though even her tastebuds had decided to call it quits after the day she'd had - and eating with Iron Man, an unfrozen super soldier from World War II, a Norse God who was actually an alien, and the scientist with a werewolf-style problem who had tried to kill her the day before was a little weird. But food was food when you were about to collapse from exhaustion. The werewolf scientist in question smiled faintly at her after they had choked down as much as they could.

"I'm really sorry," he said, sliding into Clint's seat when the Avengers began to stand and drift away from the table. "About what happened… with the Other Guy."

"You apologized once already-" she began, but he was shaking his head.

"Well it's not enough," he interrupted gently. "It will never be enough, but I hope that if you know how sorry I am, how much I wish that I could change what happened…" he shrugged and suddenly looked more exhausted than she felt. It hurt to look at him when he sagged in his seat, deep shadows under the eyes that always carried an echo of fear. "I thought it might help."

She stared at him for a long moment and couldn't quite size him up. He was genuine - and that was always the hardest thing to counter. She made a call she rarely made and decided to reciprocate. "Your help out there was critical today. So I think you're being a little hard on yourself." His eyes snapped to hers and she read surprise behind the ever-present fear. But she saw the objection welling behind it, and she continued before he could insist that he was horrible. "But," she began forcefully, "if it will make you feel better… apology accepted."

He smiled at her and it was the first real smile she had seen on his face. The tense and drained look slid away and for just a moment she thought that smiling suited him. "Thank you," he said quietly, and slumped against the back of his chair. The exhaustion settled around him again like a heavy shroud and he looked almost gray. They sat alone in the ruined schwarma joint until Cap's voice called to them through the gaping hole where the door had once been.

"Back to the land of the living," Bruce deadpanned. She managed a weak laugh. As they shuffled through the ankle-deep dust and glass to emerge into the fading light outside, Natasha thought that it might be more appropriately termed the land of the half-dead.


They helped with search and rescue for a while, and Natasha quickly lost sight of Bruce in the piles of debris and the flash of emergency vehicles. She wasn't surprised when she heard that Tony had gotten him out of the area; she had seen Bruce's darting glance and the uneasy set of his shoulders around the milling crowds. He was always worried about being triggered around civilians. She felt a swift stab of pity and worked on, ignoring the two images that swam before her eyes more clearly than the broken asphalt and the swirling dust: Bruce's warm smile and the Hulk's murderous gaze.


The days passed, and she slept off the bruises and lacerations and general hit-by-a-bus feeling that always followed a huge fight. Her body healed, but her mind was another story. The nightmares were becoming a problem.

Nightmares had been something of a lifelong job hazard for her, so it was well-trod territory and she wasn't even surprised at first. It started as she expected it would, with Loki's sneer behind the glass of his cage, his words slicing her like daggers. "Your ledger is gushing red," she heard and she was crushed by the truth of it. She looked down at herself in the dream, covered in blood oozing from somewhere - everywhere - and Loki laughed and laughed. But the worst part always came last. The Hulk always came bursting through the walls with his face contorted with rage and his eyes fixed squarely on her. He lunged at her as she finally screamed…

And there she always woke, just as her terror spiked and she realized that she was going to die - that Bruce Banner was going to kill her. She spent a few sleepless hours in the middle of every night breathing deeply and dispelling the horror with every calming technique she could think of.

When the nightmares continued and grew more frightening instead of less, Natasha knew she had to act quickly. She had learned long ago that facing fears down was essential if you wanted to avoid being ruled by them. She resolved to spend some time with Bruce Banner.


She got her chance sooner than expected. Stark summoned everyone to what he called "the farewell ceremony" and Clint announced that they were picking up Dr. Banner on the way when she climbed into the car. Bruce took the back seat with a murmured greeting and they spent most of the ride listening to Clint's questionable choice in radio stations. She summoned the energy to rib him about the fact that there was a country station programmed into his favorites, and aggressively ignored the annoying way her traitorous mind kicked up memories of the Hulk's enraged roar and his impossibly fast and heavy footsteps pounding just behind her.

They finally found the meeting place in Central Park. ("Why did the gods cross the street?" muttered Clint as they found Thor and Loki standing beside the road looking like celestial tourists.) Natasha was torn between feeling intensely twisted happiness at the sight of a bound, gagged, and defeated Loki and feeling of growing dread in her stomach over the fact that she would have to admit her difficulties to Dr. Banner. She dealt with the first feeling by smiling daggers at Loki whenever she caught his eyes (which felt fantastic) and the second by resolving to speak to Bruce as soon as whatever-this-was happened. Thor and Loki took hold of the cube's cylindrical carrier and disappeared in a swirl of blue fire, presumably teleporting somehow to Asgard. She barely blinked. She wasn't even surprised anymore, at least not by gods and magic. Monsters, however, were posing a little bit of a problem. She turned to look for Bruce, but he was already walking back to the car. He paused to check for traffic before crossing the street and she smiled despite herself.

He tugged on the door handle and looked comically lost when it was locked. "Clint," she called. "Keys?" He tossed them with his characteristic perfect aim without stopping his chat with Cap.

"Where are you going in such a hurry?" she asked Bruce as she clicked the unlock button.

He looked sheepish, and Natasha thought that if his weariness wasn't always winning out that it might be his default expression. "Sorry," he began - another of his defaults - and gestured towards Stark, who was shaking hands with Cap. "Just need my bag. Tony has some scheme that involves me moving into one of his houses. It involves my own private lab, so…" he shrugged. "I guess I'm in."

Natasha didn't have time to pick apart the strange swell of relief and disappointment that rose up in her chest. Whatever it was, it made it peculiarly difficult to smile. "Oh," she managed, reaching into the backseat for his single bag. "Sounds like fun."

She handed him the very light bag and he smiled at her. It was the genuine one. "Thanks for everything, Agent Romanoff."

"Natasha," she corrected and managed a smile herself. "Take care of yourself, Dr. Banner."

He turned away and climbed into Tony's ostentatious car. Natasha stared after them for a moment, and thought distantly that the two of them looked like little boys on their way to a sleepover.

"They're excited," Clint remarked when Tony and Bruce finally sped away and Natasha took her seat.

"Endless time in a lab with only Tony Stark for company - who wouldn't be excited?" Natasha asked flatly. Clint smirked and pressed the gas.

The park disappeared behind them and Natasha divided her time between rolling her eyes as Clint sang along with the radio and coming up with another way for handling her nightmares.


They had only spent a few hours at the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D. installation when Nick Fury appeared at their door, wearing his usual black leather coat and an expression of disgust. Thankfully it wasn't directed at them. "Why am I not surprised that you two are still here?" he began, crossing the room to stand by the windows. "Any normal person would ask for time off after a fight like this and here you two are…" he glanced at the two of them, leaning towards a computer monitor. "You're keeping tabs, aren't you? Assessing where you need to go next?" Natasha nodded and Nick gave the sigh of a man who is always right. "No, you're not. You're taking some personal time, right now." He caught her mutinous look and Clint's rising objection and silenced them both with his one-eyed glare. "Now, agents. Not only do you deserve it, but the media will be all over you like a pack of wolves if you stay here. And who does that help? Besides, Barton," he added pointedly, "I know you need the time to explain the whole 'Battle of New York' thing to your wife."

The hint of rebellion that had frosted Clint's face finally cleared. "Whatever you say, boss," he replied and powered down the monitor. "What about you, Nat? You coming with me?"

"Yes," Fury answered for her, "She is."


She was still irritated with Nick when they arrived at Clint's farm. But she had to admit that if she had to be exiled, at least this was a pretty good spot to serve the time. "Nowheresville, USA," Clint announced with one of his stupid grins as he killed the engine of his truck. "Ready for some R&R, Nat?"

"You know it," she muttered mutinously, but he knew how she really felt - he always did. He smiled at her, but his eyes turned serious. "You should really try and get some rest while we're out here. You looked like you've been stretched pretty thin over these past few days." He leaned back and stared at a point far off in the distance and his smile faded altogether. "You definitely saved my sorry mind-controlled ass," he commented lightly, but she saw the shadow of what Loki had done in his eyes. For just a moment her hatred flared hot and savage toward the so-called god. "Forget about him, Clint," she interjected suddenly, hoping to dislodge the haunted look that had settled into his eyes. "You were a hero in New York. You've always been a hero, no matter what alien psychos may throw at us." He finally laughed a little. The door to the house opened and Laura Barton stepped out, looking concerned and happy all at once just like she usually did. The change that came over Clint was as instantaneous as always. His eyes lit up and his entire body relaxed. "Home," he whispered. "Let's go home, Natasha."

So they climbed out of the car and they did.


Clint and his family were always a wonder to Natasha. She had first laid eyes on Clint over the shaft of the arrow he had nocked and pointed at her throat. His appraising eyes had taken her in - and seen something. She still didn't know what it was and Clint still couldn't explain it after all these years. "There was more to you, Nat," he always shrugged when she repeated the question. Clint was warmth and safety. His family was warmth and safety, too.

She had met his family long ago, and they occupied a sacred space in her mind. It was like a perfect, crystalline snow globe complete with rolling fields, a snug house, and the laughter of children, "The Bartons" etched into a golden plaque on the globe's sturdy base. His life belonged on a greeting card. He had laughed when she told him that the first time she came to stay there. "A secret spy greeting card, maybe," he had corrected with a grin.

She was drawn like a moth to the warmth and soft light of the Barton's home. The first time the kids sat beside her during a movie and gradually used her as a pillow had filled her with an ache too deep to express - or to understand. She loved Clint. She loved Laura. She loved his kids.

She treasured her time there: eating dinner in a kitchen, helping out on the farm, playing with the kids… for most of her life she had never known that living could be so simple and so good. Sometimes she still forgot, but visiting the Bartons always brought it back. She was glad to be with them as she tried to work her way through the nightmares.

Clint caught on quickly to what she was going through. "Nightmares?" he asked when he found her in the living room long after midnight, sitting in a circle of lamplight as she waited for the sun to come up. "Yeah," she answered, hoping she didn't look as pathetic as she felt. Clint sat down on the sofa beside her. "The old ones?" he probed gently. She flinched inwardly as she remembered her old dreams about the Red Room, but that was old pain and she slid away from it easily now. "New," she answered without elaborating. "Okay," said Clint. "You wanna tell me about the dream?"

"Not this time," she answered apologetically. "Okay," he agreed, and they didn't speak anymore. He did, however, settle back into the cushions and sat with her until she fell asleep on the couch. She woke up with the sun streaming through the windows, the smell of bacon, eggs, and biscuits cooking in the kitchen, and the kids playing on the floor. "Auntie Nat!" they cried in unison when she sat up, and quickly flung their latest lego creations into her lap. Despite her stiff back and burning eyes, she couldn't help but smile.

She loved the Bartons. Their home was a beautiful place, whole and wholesome in a way she had never imagined until she encountered it. But sometimes, Clint's wholeness scared her in the way she imagined an escaped circus lion would be scared of a wild pride. Wholeness, happiness... it was so foreign, that she almost couldn't understand it. Those instincts and desires had been beaten out of her during her time in the Red Room. She felt like an amputee trying to use a limb that no longer existed. She didn't feel like a human anymore, let alone like sister, daughter, or mother material. His home was wonderful… but it filled her with a terrible ache. She buried the empty ache deep, and dragged out smiles and kind words instead and tried not to feel like the shadow cast by so much surrounding light.


She and Clint went back to work after a few weeks, and months passed without incident. After the insanity of recruiting for the Avengers and holding off an alien invasion, Natasha didn't mind the lull.

She heard occasionally about Tony's project to rebuild Stark Tower into Avengers Tower in New York, but she wasn't holding her breath. After Thor's return to Asgard, Bruce's complete disappearance from any official radar (although S.H.I.E.L.D. was always keeping tabs), and Tony's recent sparring match with the Mandarin and subsequent destruction of many of his suits, Natasha half expected that the Avengers would never assemble again. Even her nightmares faded with the passage of time.

The closest she got to avenging were the joint missions with Captain America. To her surprise, she found that she and Steve actually worked quite well together. His no-nonsense attitude, smart command decisions, and ridiculous combat abilities were the best combination of skill sets she had seen in a long time. So they took down lots of threats together and Natasha thought that the mini-Avengers was turning out to be a pretty effective team.

At least it was until Hydra struck. It was one of the more terrible moments in her life when she and Steve stood together and listened to an evil supercomputer tell them that S.H.I.E.L.D. was nothing more than a host body for the Hydra infection. They went on the run and everything she thought she knew was ripped apart. She distracted herself from the lethal sensation of futility by finally getting to know Steve Rogers.

Captain America - she had always thought it was a silly notion. But when they fought their way out of bomb blasts together and stole classified information together (and kissed to distract their pursuers from their identities, flustering Steve to her endless amusement) and rallied to destroy S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra within it, she realized a few things. Steve Rogers was genuinely trustworthy. He was a guy that, no matter where you knocked, was solid all the way through.

But for all his innocence, he wasn't without pain. She knew more than she wanted to about him after her time in S.H.I.E.L.D.; she knew about his weekly visits to the nursing home that housed Margaret Carter and she knew about the tears he had shed there. When she kissed Steve as part of the classic PDA-as-distraction tactic, she idly let her mind wander over the idea of suggesting herself instead of yet another girl from the office as a date. She rejected the idea almost before thinking it.

Steve wasn't a free man. He carried Margaret Carter - Peggy - around with him, a phantom that filled up the empty place inside him but never soothed it. She knew the power of memories - and she knew that she could never fill that void for him. All her idle thoughts, and even her sadness for Steve's situation with Peggy helped to distract her from what could have been crippling grief when S.H.I.E.L.D. became yet another mistake in her long litany of failings. For a while the dreams where Loki laughed at her as she stood drenched in the bloody red of her gushing ledger recurred; she fought to keep going no matter how tired she felt after her sleepless nights. She refocused on positive things, a technique Clint often mentioned. When Steve was around, she focused on his positives.

She discovered that she loved most about Steve was the way he looked at her. There was no lust, no underestimation, and no judgement. In his eyes, she was his equal. She was also his friend. And she knew how he treated his friends. (She thought sometimes, after it was all over and S.H.I.E.L.D. was only a memory, about finding Steve on the shore of the lake after the helicarriers fell. He had been bleeding and nearly dead, but all he asked was "Bucky?" She remembered the look of determination on his face when she handed him Barnes' file. Most of all, she wondered how it was possible that she ended up with a friend like him, who looked at her without reservations even though he knew everything about who she was and who she had been.) Steve himself was one big positive in her life. But for every positive there must be a negative.

His honesty, his commitment, his absolute trustworthiness - they were too much. They burned her. Like a vampire, she mused with bitter humor when S.H.I.E.L.D. was gone, Fury was in the wind, and Steve was spending his days hunting for the Winter Soldier with their former friendship in mind. His goodness (and she thought that he was the only person she could ever truly apply the word to) was sunlight and she couldn't walk in the daylight, not without burning.

Steve left to track down whatever was left of Bucky Barnes and she was relieved, disappointed, and alone.


The call from Tony came not long after.

"Romanoff, the Avengers are assembling. Are you in?" he fired off as soon as she picked up her phone. She had to sit through some rambling and occasionally the music in the background almost drowned him out (AC/DC. Again.), but she could also hear that there was some friendly conversation humming behind him. She picked out the voices of Pepper Potts and Bruce Banner before Tony finally pressed her for an answer.

"Alright, Stark. I'll be there tomorrow," she answered, feeling a little nostalgic for the days when S.H.I.E.L.D. had existed and their battles had been a little more clear cut. Besides, he had mentioned something about free room and board and she wasn't exactly living the high life between losing her employment and dodging the media after the less-than-pleasant facts of her life had been dumped onto the internet. A free penthouse in New York sounded like just the thing. And if there was a little avenging to be done on the side… so much the better.

For the first time in a while, Natasha smiled.


She arrived at Avengers Tower the next morning, carrying a bag even lighter than the one she had handed Bruce months ago in Central Park. Tony's all-purpose A.I. Jarvis identified her and unlocked the front door. "Hello, Agent Romanoff," it greeted with its disconcerting mix of politeness and omniscience. The electronic voice came from all around, and she looked up as she listened although there were no eyes to meet. "Welcome to Avengers Tower. There is a room waiting for you. Shall I direct you there now?"

"How about a drink first," came Bruce's voice from ahead. He had paused in mid-step in front of the elevator doors, holding a stack of papers and looking as surprised to see her as she was to see him. He was dressed in clothes that fit, and looking as though sleep and regular meals were part of his routine these days. It was a much better look than scrappy-and-on-the-run. "From what I've heard about S.H.I.E.L.D. and… well… everything, you could probably use one."

"Dr. Banner," she greeted. Her smile came naturally.

"Bruce," he corrected instantly.

"Bruce," she agreed. "You read my mind."


Hanging out with the Avengers could be fun when gods on world-conquering ego trips weren't involved, Natasha discovered. Tony and Pepper had been called away for a few days, but Bruce was already settled in a room near the suite of labs when she arrived, and Steve arrived soon afterward.

"Natasha," he greeted with a smile showing signs of wear around the edges. She knew before she asked that he hadn't been able to make any headway in the search for Bucky Barnes. She listened to his summary of the search anyway.

Bruce drifted in halfway through. Steve paused and nodded at him.

"Dr. Banner."

"Captain America," Bruce replied. "This all sounds horrible," he commented quietly.

"I guess it is," said Steve in a tired voice.

"Should I go?" Bruce was already drifting back towards the hallway he had appeared from, looking as uncertain as a child who had wandered into the wrong classroom. Of course, he always looked like that.

"I plan on updating the whole team on this situation. And you're part of the team, Doctor." In Natasha's professional opinion, putting people at ease was one of Steve's lesser known powers. Bruce immediately moved to sit down; it didn't escape Natasha's notice that he walked past a large number of seats before finally settling in the chair furthest from hers. Steve launched back into his tale of cold leads and trails that went nowhere. Natasha listened carefully and felt a twinge of sympathy for the frayed quality in his voice. Steve was so tired.

At the back of her mind, she filed away the fact that Bruce didn't look at her even once. Steve wrapped up and Bruce offered to take him to his room; it seemed that Natasha wasn't the only one to notice how worn Cap looked. The sitting room was enormous, but the wide berth he gave her as he led Steve back into the hallway was still obvious.

She deliberately didn't look in his direction as she analyzed why he was avoiding her.


In the following days, Clint came to stay and Thor wasn't far behind. "Tony said there was a meeting," Clint explained, even though Tony himself had yet to show his face. Thor flew in - quite literally - from England, where he was apparently staying with his Earth-bound girlfriend, Jane Foster.

There were lot of lively discussions of battles when Thor and Clint were around at the same time, and the talk turned towards science when Bruce engaged in the conversation. He was full of questions about Asgard's rainbow bridge, Thor's hammer, and even the work of Jane Foster.

Clint had taken to groaning whenever Bruce brought up a project Jane was working on; Thor had a tendency to go starry-eyed when he discussed Jane. It was a rather disgusting display and she and Clint had pulled quite a few faces behind Thor's muscled back as Bruce tried very hard not to laugh. He had a terrible poker face.

Despite all the late dinners and catching up sessions the team fell into as they waited for Tony to show up and tell them what was going on, Bruce Banner's strange behavior continued. Natasha was surprised at first that he should avoid her, but the nascent feeling began to progress towards irritation. She wasn't the one who had transformed into a giant green muscle man and tried to crush him. She catalogued every time she took a seat near his and he stiffened or leaned away, every time she had an empty seat near her and he went out of his way to select another, and every time he suddenly remembered an important task when he saw her coming.

With her first-hand surveillance exhausted, she finally resolved to face the problem head on.

Bruce wandered into the vast, tiered sitting room one morning, the empty coffee cup in his hand proclaiming his reason for finally leaving his lab. He had his head dropped almost onto his chest as he concentrated on the newspaper in his hand, so he nearly ran into Natasha before he saw her.

"Natasha," he said, looking flustered. "I"m sorry, should have been looking where I was going-"

"You're avoiding me," she began without preamble. No need to dress up an ugly conversation. "I want to know why."

He stared at her for a long moment and finally sighed heavily, setting down his mug and his paper. He pulled his glasses off next and started rubbing at them with the lapels of his lab coat. "That obvious, huh?"

"Yes. That obvious."

He folded up the legs of his glasses and held them in one hand as he finally met her gaze. "I thought you might feel more comfortable if I kept my distance. I'm sorry if I offended you."

She wondered how many times one man could say he was sorry. Then she wondered how many times one man could surprise her.

"You don't need to worry about me, Bruce," she said once the silence had become a little long. "You don't scare me."

"I seem to recall a gun pointed in my face when I raised my voice at you…" he lifted an eyebrow at her, but his eyes didn't hold any malice. Her lips twitched.

"You don't scare me anymore," she amended. "How about that?"

"Good," said Bruce with a smile - the tired one this time. "I don't want to."

He refilled his coffee and disappeared back into his lab. Alone in the sunlit sitting room, Natasha ran through her mental files of every time Bruce had pulled away from her. When she filtered it all through Bruce's confession, the picture it presented was different. His careful consideration, while misguided, was… bizarrely moving. She wasn't used to the concern of others, particularly not spectacled scientists with kind streaks.

Inside the void that always ached when she visited Clint's family, she almost felt something shift.


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