AN: This started as a way of procrastinating and ended up way longer than I expected. I used to ship Natasha and Clint, but after seeing his family in Age of Ultron I've jumped to the Bruce/Natasha ship, so this takes place at some point not long after Bruce and Natasha's little moment in the bedroom in Age of Ultron.
Sitting in an armchair in a small room in the Barton family home, Bruce was drawn out of his book by the sound of light, tapping footsteps drawing closer and then stopping abruptly. Looking up, he saw Barton's daughter, dressed in her school uniform and standing in the doorway, chewing her left thumb nail, and clutching two crumpled pieces of paper in her free hand. Bruce lifted his hand from his book and waved slightly at her, but when she continued to stare at him he gave up his attempts at being social and went back to his book. After a moment he heard her footsteps walk to the sofa opposite him, but he didn't look up again until he heard a quiet sob coming from the girl. Panicked, Bruce quickly closed his book and made to leave.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you, I'll go somewhere else." He muttered, as he stood up.
"You don't – sniff- have to go away." The little girl replied, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
"I, uh, I thought you wanted me to go." Bruce clasped his hands together, fidgeting in the middle of the room. His eyes darted towards the door again.
"Why?" She looked up at him in confusion.
Bruce opened and closed his mouth several times, but each time abandoned what he had been about to say. Eventually he decided to sit down in the arm chair again, and he leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees.
"So, um, is something the matter?"
The small girl lifted the pieces of paper from where they had been momentarily forgotten, and looked at them again, her eyes filling with tears. To Bruce's infinite relief, he heard the sound of high heels clipping in the hallway, and a feminine voice muttering quietly in Russian.
"Natasha?" he called.
She appeared in the doorway, looking to Bruce like an angel sent to rescue him. He caught her eye, and inclined his head towards the girl, who was now wiping her tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.
"Lila! Lila, sweetie, what happened?" Natasha hurried to sit on the sofa, and bundled the weeping child up in her arms.
Bruce breathed a sigh of relief at seeing someone else take charge of this situation, but at the same time, he couldn't help but feel for Natasha, now that he knew she would never have the opportunity to do this for a child of her own. Distracting himself for that line of thought, he still didn't relax his posture, and he subtly checked Lila for any obvious signs of injury.
"What's the matter, little bug?" Natasha asked again, as Lila pulled away to sit up on her own. She thought for a moment, before silently handing Natasha the first piece of now very crumpled paper. Bruce saw Natasha's eyebrows narrow, before a look of comprehension crept across her face, and she handed the paper to him. Turning it over, he saw that at the top of the page, in rounded Comic Sans font, was the printed title "My Dad's Job". Where Lila had been tasked to fill in her father's job title she had written neatly in pencil "A superhero spy", and in the blank lines below which asked for a description of this job she had written, "Daddy goes to loads of different places and stops baddies by shooting a bow and arrow at them. Sometimes he gets to fly big airplanes and he talks on a radio to the people that give him his super secret spy missions.". Below this again, in a large rectangular box which challenged her to draw the job, Bruce smiled at the crayon drawing of a man with a black suit and blonde hair, shooting an arrow at green and black blob with a stick. His heart jumped when he realised that above 'Hawkeye' on the page stood a friendly looking green and purple dinosaur that he suspected was meant to be the Hulk, beside another black figure, this one helpfully labelled "Auntie Nat". As he looked at it longer he began to recognise the other Avengers, to the dinosaur's right was a blue person with a red circle beside him, and next to him was a red and yellow man who was frowning heavily. On the other side of "Auntie Nat" she had drawn a knight with long yellow hair and a cape. Bruce found he was smiling at the paper, and so as he handed the paper back to Natasha, he tried desperately to ask her with his eyes what the problem was with it.
"Did you hand this in to the teacher, Lila?" Natasha asked gently, rubbing soothing circles on the girl's back.
She nodded, and wiped her eyes again, mumbling something at the same time, but the words were lost against her hand. Natasha wrapped her hand around Lila's and carefully moved it away from her face.
"What'd you say there, Lila?" Bruce asked.
She took a raspy breath and sniffed again before answering, "She said that it's bad to tell lies, and that I should have done my work properly, and I tried to tell her that I was telling the truth, but she said that I was being really naughty and that I had to do it again at home with the real answers and bring the first one home and give it to Mummy and Daddy so that they would know that I'd been telling lies."
Having said this she started crying again, and Natasha hugged her once more. Over Lila's head she met Bruce's eyes, looking for the first time out of her depth. Seeing Natasha uncertain made Bruce suddenly determined to make this right for her, and for Lila, and possibly to prove something to her but he swiftly avoided examining what that might be.
"Lila, Lila, come over here a second." He called.
The girl wiggled out of her Aunt's arms and walked slowly towards him, holding her work in front of her like it might explode at any time. Bruce took it from her hands, setting the blank version that she still had to fill in aside and turning the first one around to examine it again. He was still thinking about how to make this better when she suddenly sat down on his knee and tucked herself into his chest. Panicked, Bruce's head shot up to look to Natasha, but she nodded encouragingly. Shocked that this tiny girl knew he could turn into a monster at any time and still trusted him enough to sit on him and cry, he looked at her in wonder.
After a moment he held the drawing up so they could both see it.
"Lila, hey, let's take a look at this together."
She sat up straight and nodded.
"So, your Daddy stops bad guys, right? So, how about instead of saying he's a superhero spy, we pretend he has a different job that helps stop bad guys. Me and you and Auntie Nat will still know what he really does, but everybody else wouldn't know, cause he can't be a very good secret spy if everyone knows he's a spy, can he?"
She laughed a little and shook her head. Bruce began checking his pockets, and soon found the pencil he always carried with him when Tony was around. Tony's genius could happen at any time and it was best to be prepared. Lifting the blank page, he handed it to Lila along with the pencil.
"What job do you think is the best at stopping bad guys?" he prompted.
"A superhero?"
Bruce couldn't help but laugh.
"No, Lila, well yes probably, but let's go for a job your teacher might like, huh?"
She scrunched her face up in concentration.
"Maybe… a policeman?"
"That sounds good to me, what about you, Auntie Nat?" Bruce asked.
Natasha smiled at him, the sort of happy smile that would be a rarity anywhere else, but here with Barton's family seemed completely natural. "I think that sounds great."
Lila put the paper against the plump arm of the armchair and carefully wrote "Policeman" on the line for Clint's job.
"We can probably make some of this work for a policeman," Bruce offered, holding up her original page, "Daddy still goes to lots of different places and stops bad guys, and what if, instead of flying a plane, he drives a police car?"
"One with sirens and flashy lights on the top!" Lila laughed.
"Exactly!" Bruce encouraged, watching her write this down and forcing himself not to correct her jumbled spelling. This had to look like it was her work.
"The police use radios too, Lila." Natasha said when she had finished writing, "You could keep that bit as well."
"And the radio tells him where to go to stop the bad guys!"
"Perfect." Bruce said firmly, as she finished writing the new description. "All it needs now is a picture of your Daddy driving a police car and it'll be all fixed."
"Clint would have a ball driving a police car." Natasha laughed.
"I've got crayons in the kitchen!" Lila declared, hopping off Bruce's knee, and turning to run off.
"I think someone deserves a thank you, Lila." Natasha reminded her, as Bruce began to protest that that wasn't necessary.
"Thank you, Uncle Bruce." She said, throwing her small arms around his neck in what was a somehow still an affectionate hug, before scampering away to find her crayons. Bruce felt his face heat up, and looked at Natasha from the corner of his eye. She refused to meet his gaze, the implication of Lila's opinion on their relationship being perfectly clear. The tension in the room was becoming stifling, and so Bruce stood up, lifting his book, and Natasha did the same. He made to leave when Natasha stepped closer and caught his wrist with her hand.
"You did really good there…"
"So did you." He replied. He wanted to tell her that he thought she would have been a wonderful mother, and that she didn't deserve what they did to her back in Russia, but this wasn't the moment, it was still too fresh.
"I've never been thought of as a dinosaur before." He joked instead, and the awkwardness faded as she laughed.
"I think Loki might have come out worst though," she chuckled, lifting the original page from the arm of the chair. "I'll make sure this gets to Clint, he'll want to see it."
Bruce nodded in agreement.
Natasha turned to leave, he assumed to find Barton, but she paused a few steps from the doorway. Still facing away from him, she said quietly.
"A dinosaur isn't a monster, Bruce. She knows you aren't one either."
Bruce stood motionless, staring at her as she walked away.