A/N: Thank You so much for your reviews and favorites/follows! You guys have no idea how much it means to me! There is a bit of smut in here since I got a good response from you guys, again it won't be terribly graphic. This story is unbeta'd.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 2: Demons

Bruce POV

"Hey we're home!", yelled Beth as she and Steve walked into the living room one Saturday morning.

Both of them had a glow from their tans and it suited them well.

"Hey guys!", I greeted, "Nice seeing you two again. How was Fiji?"

Beth sighed,

"Ugh it was so hard to leave…I loved it there!"

Steve nodded in agreement but the way he smiled told me (and every other guy) that he had got a lot of action on the island…not that he would ever say that out loud.

"Let's go back to our floor and unpack.", Beth said.

"Oh and tell Tony that his wedding present was thoughtful.", Steve said to Pepper who nodded.

When the couple had left the room, I asked Pepper what Tony gave them.

"Oh,", Pepper sighed, "He got them a fondue pot."

I smirked as I recalled what Tony told me some time ago about Steve thinking that the term 'fondue' was a double entendre for 'sex' back in the 40's and that Howard Stark told him that fondue was just cheese and bread. Steve still referred to sex as 'fondue' and the fondue pot had been more of a gag gift than anything else.

I held Anastasia as she napped and I watched Darcy coach Loki through the gameplay for Grand Theft Auto V on Tony's flat screen. The game had been out for a year, but it was still Darcy's favorite. Once when she was playing it a few days after Loki came to earth, he had scoffed at her skills and said that he could probably play better than she could.

Loki got owned in GTA V that day and quickly realized that Darcy was the queen of the controllers and that he wasn't even close to her level of skill.

"Select your weapon! Quick, cheat code!", she yelled as a cop got too close to Loki's character and Loki quickly punched in a cheat code and made the cop lower his weapon and stroll by the spot where he was hiding.

"Good job! Now shoot him!", she said and I shook my head as Loki 'popped a cap in his ass', as Tony put it so eloquently when he was watching someone else play GTA V.

Natasha had gone down to the gym to work on getting back in shape.

She had been practically living out of the gym since I had returned from the Helicarrier, she had returned from the gym every evening, sweating and exhausted. Her muscles had been ripping and re-growing at rates I didn't think were possible.

She somehow still had enough energy for marathon sex every other night (well that technically is exercise for both parties).

Anastasia had been growing rapidly in the past two weeks and the Hulk had been taking note of this, saying that she was beautiful and incredible. Sometimes the big guy could be so affectionate.

Other times, like right now, he would worry about his own well-being. He was talking about my intention to wipe him out of my mind and body and telling me that it would be a bad idea.

"Baby Anna much different than baby twins, Hulk blame himself for this. Hulk also blame himself for causing Banner to want to remove Hulk from him and Anna. Hulk sorry for all the trouble and hope that he won't be separated from Banner, Tasha, and little Anna. Little Anna need help, Hulk can help if you give him chance…Hulk would be lonely if Banner take away his Anna and his Tasha."

I shook my head as Natasha walked in from the gym and sat down next to me.

Her red locks were damp and sweet smelling, causing me to infer that she had just stepped out of the shower.

"Hey Bruce. How is she?". Natasha asked, straightening the edge of the blanket around Anastasia.

"She's been sleeping like a rock since you fed her this morning."

"Okay… Can I hold her?", she asked, shifting as I placed my napping daughter in her mother's arms.

"She's so cute…", she said, leaning down and kissing her forehead.

"Natasha, I have a serious question to ask you.", I said after a moment of silence.

"Shoot."

"Okay, suppose Tony and I did find a way to get rid of the Hulk from Anastasia and I, would you want us to get the Hulk removed?"

She screwed up her face and I could tell that she was weighing the pros and cons of not having the Hulk around. I had asked a loaded question and she was going to think for quite some time about her answer.

"I would say no.", she replied.

I couldn't believe my ears.

"What?"

"I would say no to having the Hulk removed.", she repeated.

"Why?", I asked, confused.

Didn't she know how much agony it put me through whenever I destroyed something? Didn't she know that I would simply pass on the mutation to any other children we might have and then they would pass it on to any children that they may have? Didn't she know how easy it was to lose control?

"When you Hulk out on the battlefield and I'm not there, the Hulk asks where I am and he gets upset. When you Hulk out in the unit, he puts his hand on the glass and talks to me, he tells me that he loves me just as much as you do and that he feels bad about scaring me. Bruce, I didn't know you before you had your accident, I don't know who you were before the Hulk, I don't know that I'll like who you are without him. I love the Hulk and I love you."

"So you're telling me that without the Hulk, you wouldn't love me?", I asked her, feeling hurt.

"No! I'm saying that Dr. Bruce Banner and the Hulk are two sides to the same coin. You wouldn't like me if my Black Widow side didn't exist, would you?"

"Not as much.", I replied sheepishly, "But the Black Widow isn't a separate being…you don't hear the Black Widow talking inside your head like the Hulk talks in mine."

"But the Black Widow was created and is a part of my very existence. I would lose myself if I wasn't the Black Widow. You can't have Natasha Banner without the Widow, it just can't happen. I'm not saying that I don't love you, or that I love one of your sides more than the other, I'm just saying that both sides love me in the same way. You see what I mean?", she asked.

"I see."

"You aren't upset, are you?", she asked softly, lowering her head to plant another kiss on Anastasia as she stirred in her sleep.

"Not at all.", I murmured back.

It was becoming clear to me that I had changed over the years following my accident. I had become someone else and it took a few questions and answers to figure it all out. I knew I was changing because everyone changes as time goes by, I just didn't realize that I was becoming a better man as a result of having the Hulk inside of me.

Looking back on my former self, I realize that I hadn't been as good as I thought I had been. I had been reserved, but I had been pretty self-centered. Hadn't I been warned before testing the serum? I had been ignorant to my colleagues' warnings and proceeded with the testing because I thought I was right.

After my first transformation, I had changed. My personality was different and I worked to fight the Hulk. I gained more respect for others and listened carefully from then on. I learned the hard way that I wasn't always going to be successful.

"Bruce… look at her…", Natasha murmured as I was snapped out of my thoughts.

Anastasia was awake and was reaching her short arms out to me, babbling on in her infantile form of communication. Her brown eyes were wide and alert as she giggled.

Watching my daughter reach out to me was a completely new experience, one that I was glad to partake in.

I scooped my daughter from her mother's arms and sat her on my lap, watching with wonder as she waved her chubby fists at me, gurgling happily.

"She's getting so big….", I murmured.

"She is.", Natasha replied, "Soon she'll be crawling and talking."

"I can't believe she's almost four months old…."

"Neither can I."

Natasha POV

Two weeks later…

I rinsed off and then felt Bruce wrap his arms around me from behind.

Bruce and I had had a very long day and now we were unwinding together in the shower. Anastasia and Snowy were asleep after a long family outing in Central Park.

It was all quiet in our apartment and I tried to keep from moaning in ecstasy, but my lips betrayed me.

"Mm Bruce…I like that….", I moaned as he worked his hands on my tense shoulder muscles, working the knots out like a professional massage therapist.

He kissed the first few vertebrae in my back and I could feel him smirk as the hot water streamed down over my body and rinsed the last bits of conditioner out of my hair.

I turned around as he pushed his dripping, silver-streaked, hair off his forehead and smiled gently, his liquid brown eyes causing warmth to spread through me and making my toes curl.

"Natasha, you never cease to amaze me."

I kissed him passionately and our tongues wrestled for dominance.

His hands were roaming all over my body and I shivered as my back made contact with the wall tiles.

With Bruce at my front doing indescribable things to my body, making me moan incoherent words with every gentle touch and passionate kiss, the hot water streaming down upon us, and the cool tiles to my back, it was like battling forces of heaven and hell on my flesh.

He bit my clavicle, no doubt leaving a mark, and I threaded my fingers through his drenched hair to tug ever so gently on it.

"Bruce… I want you… Right now.", I gasped as he moved his fingers inside of me.

I could feel my release building, growing, until I was sure he would let me fall over the edge.

My breathing came in pants and it felt like my heart was beating loud enough for everyone in the tower to hear.

"Then let's take this into the other room and we can spend the evening in each other's company.", he murmured as he removed his fingers from me.

I groaned at the loss of contact.

I had been so close.

I switched off the hot water and wrung my hair out before Bruce passed me my towel.

I looked down and saw that my stretch marks and postpartum bump were decreasing in size after almost four months of hard training and I was starting to see my abs coming back. I had been on my feet the day after I gave birth, as most mothers were, and I began training as soon as I was cleared by Dr. Hiddleston.

Looking at my marks, I got a bit self-conscious of them. I wasn't afraid of aging or anything, it was just slightly unnerving to look down and not see the perfect set of abs marked with a few scars that I'd always had until I got pregnant or to look down and not see a rounded bump where my daughter had been thriving. Whenever I looked down now, all I could see were deep wrinkles and loose skin made even more evident by my scars.

I sighed and toweled my hair to a damp state, still focused on my abdomen until I wrapped the towel around my chest.

Bruce kissed my neck softly before resting his head on my shoulder.

"What are you thinking Tasha?", he murmured as we made eye contact in the mirror.

"How much of a difference four months makes."

"How so?", he asked.

"It's been nearly four months since I gave birth and I still have all this postpartum flab on my body...it's kind of ugly."

"It'll take some time to get rid of it, but it will happen.", Bruce replied.

"It makes me feel less than what I should be..."

"Which is perfection?", he asked rhetorically.

"Well…yes, I suppose. Before I became pregnant, I was the one that all the women in SHIELD, and everywhere else for that matter, wanted to look like. I was slim, toned, and I didn't have stretch marks…that's how it always was for me, even when I was in the Red Room program. Then I became pregnant and I just got used to having a round abdomen. I thought my flab and wrinkles would be gone in four months if I worked hard enough… Before, I could easily run ten miles and then begin to get winded on mile eleven. Now I can barely run five miles without getting a cramp in my side."

"Natasha, I want to tell you something about those marks you have, the ones you find ugly. Every line and stretch mark symbolizes every moment you spent wondering what Anastasia was going to look like, imagining who she was going to become, and loving her. Every miniscule wrinkle symbolizes every minute you carried her, from her conception to her birth. These marks may be ugly to you, but I look at them and realize how different we both would be if the little being who made them didn't exist. For nine months you did what I will never be able to do… what no man will ever be able to do. For nine months, I felt pretty useless… When it comes down to the bare bones, it was all up to you. I honor you for it.", Bruce replied.

I smiled and kissed my husband.

"Love you."

"Love you too."

We walked into our bedroom and Bruce went over to his closet to put on sleepwear but I stopped him in his tracks.

"Bruce…"

"Yes dear?", he replied, turning to face me.

"I thought we were going to have the evening to ourselves?", I replied seductively, walking over to him and making my hips sway enough to draw his eyes downward.

"Well we had the conversation back there and I thought that I had kind of killed the mood…", he said as he ran his fingers through his hair awkwardly.

I moved gracefully and slowly across the floor, lowering my eyelids as I went.

"Hardly Dr. Banner…", I whispered seductively as I ran my hand down his chest and slid the dimming switch down to the point where the lights were hardly on at all.

"So I guess I should stop talking…", he said with a smirk.

I pushed him onto the bed gently and moaned as his lips met the sensitive part of my neck.

He pulled my towel away as I removed his and I reached into the bedside table for a condom.

"Natasha…You know you drive me absolutely crazy when you do this to me.", he growled as I rolled the condom down onto him and teased him in the process.

"After what you did to me in the shower, I'd say this is payback.", I said with a devilish little smirk.

He moaned as I teased him further. I got on top of him and impaled myself on him.

We had barely gone a minute when I heard Jarvis send out the alert.

"Avengers Assemble!"

I whined as Bruce gripped my hips and looked like he was going to pull out and leave me high and dry.

"How…-ah-..how close are you?", he panted from below me.

"Ah-…give me a couple more minutes…", I gasped.

He reached up and touched me as I rode him, causing me to cry in pleasure.

"Natasha…I don't know how much more I – ah- can take….", he muttered as his focus sharpened.

"Bruce….I'm close…"

Tony came in over the intercom in our room.

"Bruce! What are you doing?"

Bruce groaned and replied,

"Tony, do you really need me?"

"We need everyone. Are you really that tired?", Tony asked.

Bruce flipped me over and answered Tony as I tried to keep my cries of pleasure to myself.

"No…not tired but-ah- definitely busy.".

I tried to stifle a moan and let it slip out anyway.

"Bruce…."

"Tony, I'm kind of busy here…", Bruce groaned as I shifted and sent him deeper with his next thrust.

I felt the heat of his passion as he dropped his lips down to seek purchase on my neck and lips.

"Bruce….", I moaned as he ran his tongue along the sensitive part of my neck.

"Oh…I see, I'll um…just leave with the rest of the team…you can show up if you want to… I'll leave a post it note with the address of the call on it…we shouldn't take too long, but if we call you again, we're getting overpowered and you should show up.", Tony said awkwardly.

Tony ended the intercom call and Bruce moaned loudly.

"Natasha…God, -ah- you're beautiful…"

I could feel my orgasm building to a peak and I grew louder as he pushed into me once, twice, three times, and then I screamed his name as I fell over the edge.

Bruce thrust into me a few more times before he came.

"NATASHA!", he yelled into the darkness.

I gasped as aftershocks assaulted both of us. Bruce collapsed onto me in the darkness and kissed me slowly.

"Dr. Banner, your assistance is required in the fight…", Jarvis said over the intercom.

Bruce pulled out of me and I laid there, panting as if I had just run for my life.

"Natasha…I have to go, I wish I could stay and sleep but the team needs me…", Bruce muttered apologetically as he rolled out of bed.

"It's alright Bruce…I'll be here when you get home.", I replied, feeling just the slightest bit of annoyance at the ill-timed distress call.

"A man shouldn't have to leave his wife after they just made love…that isn't right…", he muttered as he pulled on a pair of cheap pants and a plain t-shirt.

"I know, but the team needs you, so go to them…"

Before he left, he ran back over to me where I sat up in bed, the sheets wrapped around my chest messily, and my hair mussed up from our previous actions.

"Love you. Be safe."

"Love you too…"

Bruce ran out of the room and I heard the apartment door close behind him.

I rolled out of bed and pulled on a long flimsy nightgown and my long silky dressing gown while I wriggled into my slippers.

I laid out a change of clothes in the bathroom so that Bruce could head right to the shower and then get ready for bed when he came home.

I padded out of the apartment and took the elevator up to the room where I would keep tabs on the battle.

I sat down and put on my headset as the battle cams booted up around me on four monitors. A map appeared on the fifth monitor and had symbols to show where every member of the team was during the battle. The red dots symbolized enemies.

The radiation symbol that was Bruce's started blinking green. He had started his transformation. The blinking green symbol turned into a steady green as Bruce was now the Hulk.

"Tony, on your six.", I called out as a group of drones flew behind him.

"Thanks Nat.", he said as he blasted them to smithereens.

I zoomed the cameras around and focused in on the Hulk.

"WHERE NATASHA?", he bellowed as he batted a dozen drones out of the air in one swipe.

"Phil? Where are you?", Maria called from the cockpit of the Quinjet.

"I'm fighting off a good bit of ground drones with Loki.", he replied.

"How's Loki doing?", Darcy asked.

"He just froze a few dozen drones."

"Nice."

"Natasha? Is Beth at home?", Steve asked.

"Yes she is.", I replied.

"Could you tell her to have some butterfly bandages, isopropyl alcohol, antibacterial ointment, and gauze bandages ready with some Ibuprofen when I get home? My muscles will sorely need them. Thanks."

"No problem."

I sent the message to Beth and looked at my monitors for a few more minutes before Jarvis contacted me.

"Mrs. Banner, Anastasia is crying.", Jarvis informed, and I leapt to my feet and ran as fast as I could back to the apartment.

Anastasia was becoming stronger and I was afraid of her losing control and hurting herself in the process.

I leaned over her crib and picked her up while cooing at her to try and make her green complexion fade away. I took her over to the changing table and disposed of her soiled diaper before noticing that she had a bit of diaper rash.

Poor thing, no wonder she was so miserable.

I cleaned her up and treated her rash before putting her into a clean diaper and pajamas.

She was still crying as I rocked her back and forth but she quieted as I began to sing a lullaby.

"Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,
Go to sleep my little baby.
When you wake you shall have
All the pretty little horses.
Black and bays, dapples, grays,
All the pretty little horses.", I watched as Anastasia's eyelids began to droop again and the green faded back into her eyes.
"Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,
Go to sleep my little baby.
Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,
Go to sleep my little baby.
When you wake you shall have
All the pretty little horses."

I exhaled in relief as the green finally faded from her eyes and I laid her back in her crib with the teddy bear Phil and Maria got her at the hospital in the corner of the crib.

The sooner Bruce returned, the better.

I lacked my better half and without him, even for an hour or two, I would find myself running in theoretical circles.

I could be a mother just fine during the times when he wasn't there, but it was never the same as the times when we would watch our daughter together.

I peered into the crib and I turned around as Bruce staggered in the door to our apartment covered in ash, dust, and other dirt. His shirt was gone and his pants were ripped at the seams. I rushed to him and he smiled weakly at me.

"Hey.", he croaked out.

"Hey, I'll help you out okay.", I said as I helped him into the bathroom where I had already laid out a comfy change of clothes.

"Thanks Nat, I can take it from here… you look beautiful in that gown…", he said as he kissed my lips softly before closing the door and going about his business.

I went back into the nursery and watched my daughter sleep.

Her hair was turning reddish brown, a perfect combination of Bruce and myself. Her eyes were twin pools of warm liquid brown and she shared that with her father, but when she smiled all Bruce said he could see was me reflected in our baby.

I heard Bruce singing in the shower and I stopped and listened.

"When the days are cold, and the cards all fold, and the saints we see are all made of gold, when your dreams all fail, and the ones we hail, are the worst of all, and the blood's run stale, I wanna hide the truth, I wanna shelter you, but with the beast inside, there's nowhere we can hide. No matter what we breed, we still are made of greed, this is my kingdom come, this is my kingdom come. When you feel my heat, look into my eyes, it's where my demons hide, it's where my demons hide. Don't get too close, it's dark inside. It's where my demons hide, it's where my demons hide.", I let Bruce pause for a moment and then took over with the second verse.
"Curtain's call, is the last of all, when the lights fade out, all the sinners crawl. So they dug your grave, and the masquerade, will come calling out, at the mess you've made. Don't wanna let you down, but I am hell bound, though this is all for you, don't wanna hide the truth. No matter what we breed, we still are made of greed. This is my kingdom come, this is my kingdom come. When you feel my heat, look into my eyes, it's where my demons hide, it's where my demons hide. Don't get too close, it's dark inside, it's where my demons hide, it's where my demons hide", I sang before Bruce took over.
"They say it's what you make, I say it's up to fate, it's woven in my soul, I need to let you go"
"Your eyes, they shine so bright, I wanna save that light. I can't escape this now, unless you show me how.", he replied as he turned off the shower and I heard the rustling of cloth.
"When you feel my heat, look into my eyes. It's where my demons hide, it's where my demons hide"
"Don't get too close, it's dark inside, it's where my demons hide"
"It's where my demons hide", we finished together as he came into the bedroom.

Bruce looked me in the eyes and murmured,

"You have such a beautiful singing voice.".

"Thank you.", I said before patting his side of the bed, "Now you look tired Bruce. Come to bed."

My exhausted husband obliged and soon we were both flying over the clouds, lost in our own dreams where our demons would never hide.

A/N: Thank you for reading and leave me a review!