Author's Note: Warning, characters in this story are undergoing Kaydification. This is a dangerous experiment where I weave the lives of these characters into a web of my choosing. Side effects may include growing pains, snarling, turning green, breath taking anger management problems and possible ripping of your pants.

This one goes out to levi97100.

Chapter 3:

It took some convincing the next morning to inform Tony that he was, in fact, still alive and Bahir was still in tact, his own home not included. The other man was relieved up until he explained the assassins departure and her plans. After sixteen hours, his friend was already arriving to see Bruce was cleaning up the mess that the assailants had made the night before and that most of the town was helping to fix anything that they could. For the most part, everything was nearly back to normal. Bullet holes in the walls were patched and the door was reattached, barely hanging from the hinges exactly as it used to. He made sure to thank all of the people who had pitched in to help before sending them away and he watched Tony stand there with his sunglasses on the brim of his nose. "You didn't actually need to come here."

"Sure I did," Tony responded with a shrug, following him into the house. "Has our favorite assassin returned?"

Bruce could only shake his head in response to the question. Truth was, he was getting more and more worried with each passing hour. "I'm not sure if I'm more worried or pissed," he admitted, rubbing the tired from his eyes. "She's one of the most frustrating people I've ever met."

And his friend actually laughed at that. "Romanoff certainly has a unique quality about her," he agreed. "You sure you're okay?" the worry was back in his voice.

"I'm fine..." he assured him, taking a seat on the couch and sagging back onto it. "You know what bothers me most?" and Tony waited patiently. "My reaction to her," he admitted, laying his head back and keeping his eyes closed. "I wasn't particularly nice about her protecting me. And I was even less so when she ran off to make sure I stayed, you know, me..." He groaned, "It's not even really her fault. It bothers me most because the, other guy... agreed with her."

To give Tony credit, the man only cringed a little at that. "Well, I did warn you before I brought her here that Natasha wasn't like all the other little girls on the playground," and there was no doubt about that. "This is the woman who infiltrated my company, mine, and spied on me so that she could help save my life. Because honestly, just flat out offering to help wouldn't have made sense to Nick Fury or to her."

"Like you would have accepted the offer?"

"Of course not," Tony answered with a wave of his hand. "Not the point though," and he watched other other man look around the crumbling shack. "Got anything to drink that packs a little punch?"

Bruce thought of Natasha's vodka but quickly thought better of it. "Afraid not," he stated with a shrug. "Are we supposed to go after her? Help her? Stop her?"

"Stop her?" came Tony's disbelieving tone. "I'm not exactly her biggest fan, Bruce, I'll admit that. Truth is, some people have right hands to help them out and keep them in line. People like Fury? They had right and left hands. Natasha was his left hand."

"What the hell does that mean?" he dared to ask. He was honestly afraid of the answer.

"It wasn't obvious enough?" his friend questioned and Bruce almost rolled his eyes at that. "The right hand works on the right side of the law. You know, dealing with the news, taking care of the legal matters. They walk the line of right and wrong but they don't cross it." Now it made a lot more sense. "Natasha does the opposite. She takes care of the problems nobody else will. Got an organization with a less than stellar reputation that needs to be taken out quietly? She's your girl. Need information but can't get it through legal or moral means? She's got it covered. Need someone to take out the local drug lord to keep a Code: Green at bay? Apparently, she deals with that, too." Tony shrugged now, "You don't have to like it. I don't even think she likes it. I don't like it either but the thing is, we don't have to like it to appreciate the value of her particular skill set."

Bruce leaned forward now, leaning his elbows on his knees and resting his face in the palms of his hands. "I can't have that around me—I don't think it's a particularly good way to deal with my other half."

He could see Tony's mouth open to reply but instead a voice behind them spoke in a neutral tone, "Guess I'm voted off the island." He turned quickly at Natasha's words to see that she was leaning against the wall by the front door with her arms crossed over her chest. He couldn't quite help the nervous flutter in his stomach because he hadn't meant it in the way she seemed to have taken it. "It's alright. I'm used to that." If anything it only proved to make him feel worse. Then she shifted almost imperceptibly and he could see she was favoring one leg over the other, even if she was making a good show not to. "Can I hitch a ride out of here when you leave, Stark?"

Tony gave a stiff nod.

"Great," she declared, swiftly heading towards her room. She quirked an eyebrow up for a moment and he saw her taking note that her sheet for a door no longer existed, having gotten shredded sometime during their attack. A quiet sigh huffed from her lips and she entered anyways, tossing aside her clothes without a spare thought.

The billionaire quickly cleared his throat, "Peachy. I see she has modesty to go along with that sharp tongue."

Bruce wasn't worried about her modesty, not if she wasn't; Instead he stood up, shuffling over to the room she had been residing in, "You're injured."

She looked at him wildly and it was apparent he had done a lot more than startle her. She looked less then thrilled with his second intrusion into her room. Still, he gave her credit when she didn't tell him to leave within the first five seconds and instead she followed his eyes with her own, "I'm fine"

Bruce sighed, running his fingers through his muss of hair and his shoulders sagged down further than usual. The spy had two deep slices, both at least two to three inches long, running across her waist and the other on her thigh. The shoddy stitch work that had been done on them was terrible and he could only assume she had done it to herself. Nobody could stitch it themselves even remotely well with the angle they would have to work at. "Keep your clothes off." Shit...

He didn't have to look to see the smirk that came across her face, he knew it was there the moment the words finished leaving his lips. "You could at least buy me dinner first, Banner." If face-palms were actually a thing people did, he certainly would have done it then and there. It was just a miracle Tony hadn't made a noise or a comment.

Instead he forced himself to ignore the fact this his face had almost certainly turned a shade closer to her hair color. "I made breakfast," he pointed out, surprised by his own retort.

The comment actually seemed to surprise her too, at least for the briefest of moments before she recovered her mask again, "You attempted to make breakfast, but I'm not sure that counts."

He couldn't keep doing this when she was only in her undergarments. By the looks of it, he wasn't sure she was going to leave those on for much longer either. "They're already getting infected."

"And?"

That almost made his face red for another reason completely. "And? That's your response?" he questioned. The anger was only fueled when Natasha seemed to have no idea why it bothered him so much. "Besides the fact that those stitches need to come out and then be redone, you haven't even cleaned these." She didn't seem to care.

"Vodka is good for more than drinking, Doc. I'm not so much of a lush that I can't use it for more wasteful purposes like cleaning wounds." She picked up the bottle from the mattress and took a swig, giving him a wink.

It was even more infuriating to realize that she seemed to have no care that those tiny lacerations already had a slightly unsatisfying smell to them. "Just—you know what, no. I'm not even going to begin to tell you how wrong that is. Get in the other room," he told her immediately.

And pissed off didn't even begin to describe her face at his sudden barking of orders. "You don't get to dictate—"

"Now," he growled out the order. Her eyes became a whirlwind of different emotions. Switching from anger, to surprise and then annoyance. "Please?" he offered up next, which caused a reaction in her teal eyes that he wasn't quite sure what to make of. It wasn't quite defeat, more like acceptance. After one more moment of hesitation she finally tossed the shirt onto her mattress and stalked into the other room, vodka bottle still in hand.

"Right. Well..." came Tony's voice from the main room. "I'll make myself scarce. Bruce, I'll leave the equipment for the new video comms outside the door. Give you a call in a few days," he called out. Then he heard the next comment, "You coming after you've been patched up, Red?"

Bruce could feel Natasha's eyes on him as he dug through his cupboards, pulling out everything he needed. It was almost unbearable but he managed not to react when she gave her answer, "Yes."

"Okay. Well," Tony huffed out an uncomfortable breath, probably due to the assassin still parading around in her underwear. "There are so many things I could say right now..."

He visibly grimaced at his friend's words and turned his head to shoot him a look of warning. It didn't seem necessary because Natasha was wearing a look that could maim, if not kill. "I dare you," came her curt reply. Bruce sucked in a breath of air, puffing his cheeks and quickly turning to get the rest of what he needed from the cabinet.

He guessed that Tony didn't take the dare. When he turned and made his way over, Tony was nowhere to be seen and Natasha was already sitting backwards on one of the wooden chairs, just in front of the beaten up sofa. She also had the chair facing sideways rather than front or back to give him better access to the two wounds. Apparently she was an expert at this. He took a seat on the couch in silence, getting to work on removing the old stitches.

She never reacted. She never flinched. Natasha simply sat in the chair, arms folded over the back of it with her cheek resting on her hands as she stared at the wall. Maybe before Bruce hadn't been able to figure out exactly what it was about her that actually bothered him. But looking at her now? He could see it plain as day. Natasha Romanoff bothered him because she was an expert at things like this. She bothered him because her attitude about her own well-being was so very nonexistent. She bothered him because of the reasons Tony stated. Natasha was a lot like him, she just hid it better. "How exactly did you get these?" he finally dared to ask.

She still didn't look at him and he really wished he understood how she could stare at walls for so long without needing a strait jacket. "Minor altercation. Involved a knife." He frowned and she must have sensed his unhappiness with the answer. "These things happen. In case you hadn't noticed, there aren't a whole lot of people who don't want me either dead or locked in a jail cell or maybe just tossed in a pit somewhere to be tortured. Compared to all those choices, this is nothing." It was true enough, so he knew better than to reply. But her next words had a certain defeated edge mixed into them that bothered him more than anything else about her. "Everybody thinks that I'm off hailing HYDRA or whatever. Besides Steve and Clint." Truth was, he didn't know what to say to that. "I suppose it's only fair. I did all their dirty work. I lied and killed in the service of liars and killers," she quoted Loki and it left him feeling uneasy with how disturbingly calm she said it.

He snipped off the last of the stitches and threaded them out, staring warily at the ugly slices in her skin. They weren't the only things marring her. Thin lines from other scars that he assumed were likely to also be from knives. Most weren't even really noticeable if you weren't actually looking for them, just minor differences in skin tone. An old gunshot wound at her waist that had never healed properly. The more recent and still healing gunshot wound on her shoulder that he had actually seen happen on television a few months back. Thanks to idiotic civilians and their cell phones, all the world had watched as The Winter Soldier came within five feet of putting a bullet through her head before Steve Rogers saved her life. She had a look of fear and surprise in that moment that almost matched the emotion she wore when the Other Guy had nearly killed her. They hailed her as a hero for less than three days before accusing her of hailing HYDRA. He remembered chuckling when she had told the US government and the world to practically shove the thought up their collective asses. Though, she had said it much more politely.

Natasha barely reacted even as he thoroughly cleaned the wound the way it was meant to be, a few uncomfortable shifts and a hiss of discomfort once or twice. That was a feat in itself but he imagined it was because she was too lost inside herself to be anything other than numb. "Not everyone thinks that," he informed her without much thought, setting aside the antibiotics and pulling out the suturing kit. "None of the team thinks that. I never did."

"I'm sure it crossed all of your minds at least once. Besides, I was," she told him, causing him to freeze just before starting the stitches. "For all intents and purposes, I was HYDRA. All of SHIELD was." There was no emotion. Her voice was hollow and empty, causing the pit in his stomach to drop exponentially. "Sure, I made it onto their to-do list along with billions of other people but that doesn't change anything. And you know... the irony is that Steve decided to put his trust in me. Of all the people he could have chosen." He finally started the stitches, trying to ignore the soft and wry huff of laughter that escaped her lips. "But he knew better than to do that right off the bat. Even Captain America can see when someone is the embodiment of everything that has gone wrong with the world in the last seventy years." He paused again at those words and stared at her. But Natasha never looked over at him, probably thinking that if she did, she would have to shut up. "I'm the gray area he didn't know existed. And maybe I was made this way; raised this way. But I'm the one who chose to embrace it."

It was all Bruce could do to finish stitching the first slice in her flesh and move onto the next one on her thigh. "You don't really seem like you're embracing it anymore," he noted.

"Why bother?" and the exhaustion in her voice suddenly showed. She had hid it well, talking like none of this actually mattered up until this point, "Hasn't done me any favors lately." He hesitated with the stitches for a moment when her face actually turned to look towards him. "How come you didn't think I was HYDRA? You don't like me. You don't really even know me."

Natasha's face only looked curious and nothing else. "I don't have to like or know you to know that you weren't—them," he stated, returning to the stitches to avoid her gaze. He realized he was a lot more comfortable when she was staring at the wall rather than at him. "And it's not that I don't like you," he told her next. "I don't have a problem with who you are, Natasha. I have a problem with what you do and with how you act."

"Really?" came the breathy amusement. "All your anger management problems and my attitude is what bothers you?"

"Don't start," he warned her, finishing the stitches. "Just—put clean bandages on those." It was frustrating when he realized she had no intentions of moving yet, clad only in her underwear she just sat there and stared at him, hardly even blinking. "What?"

Her lips pursed slightly and she released a small sigh. "Nothing, never mind," she decided. He watched as she stood, the pain on her one side a lot more visible now that she had been freshly stitched once more. "I didn't cause a bloodbath, by the way, just in case you were wondering," her voice called out from the room as she got dressed. He wondered for a moment if she thought he would actually be relieved by that. He glanced over for a moment and then quickly averted his eyes again, putting his hand to his forehead. She only had pants on and nothing on her upper body.

"If you're leaving, you might as well ask whatever question you wanted to ask," he informed her, doing his best not to look again. It was tempting but he knew a bad idea when it was staring him in the face, or in this case, half naked in his spare bedroom.

There was silence from her as she shifted around through the room for a few more moments. When she finally reappeared near him on the couch, she was fully dressed in a pair of black cargo pants and a jade colored tank top that left little to the imagination that he hadn't already seen. The shirt only seemed to make her eyes seem more green than blue and for a second he just stared at her while she pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail, leaving stray strands of crimson colored hair hanging on the sides of her face. If she noticed him staring, she never mentioned it, instead she dropped her black bag on the floor by the door. "Probably best I don't," she told him softly, shrugging. "Besides, I was under the impression you wanted me gone."

He floundered at that before he grimaced slightly. It was barely there but she actually seemed somewhat bothered when she said it, only causing that sinking feeling in his stomach to grow larger. "I didn't mean it like that."

"I know," and that made him look up at her in surprise. "Then why are you—"

"Because of what you said just a few minutes ago," Natasha answered honestly. "You said you didn't have a problem with who I am, that your problem was with how I act and what I do," he nodded his affirmation, only realizing it was a mistake when her face hardened. "You don't seem to understand that how I act and what I do is exactly who I am," she informed him in an icy voice.

Bruce gave a disgruntled noise, rubbing at his temples again. "Alright... then let me ask you something." He could see her eyes narrow slightly as she debated whether or not to bother placating him before she inclined her head to the side. He took that as a sign of agreement, "What you said before you left. About being less comfortable with what I would do if you didn't uh—take care of the problem?" Her expression never changed, she just shifted uncomfortably before she finally perched herself on the arm of the couch. He had a feeling that her leg and waist were bothering her a lot more than she was letting on, "What did you mean?"

It was something new altogether to see her hesitate and he had a feeling he was broaching a subject that she wasn't entirely comfortable with. Apparently, he had just managed to find the one thing that actually made the usually stoic woman think twice before answering when normally she was blunt and to the point, not bothering to candy-coat things for anyone.

"Natasha."

She pursed her lips, chewing on the inside of her lower lip with complete discomfort. Just when he thought she would never say anything, she proved otherwise, "Alright..." but her voice didn't have much confidence and it made him a little weary. "You mentioned back on the Helicarrier that..." she paused, clearly unsure of how to word whatever it was she wanted to say. "You said—you..."

"Would you please just say it?" Nothing about her ever bothered him nearly as much as her hesitation to tell him whatever it was that she had meant the previous night.

Natasha let out a shaky breath before she let out her next words, "After Harlem, you said that you uh—you know..."

He frowned now, staring at her. "I said what?"

"That you tried to eat a bullet." There it was, without all the tact and hesitation she had been trying to display previously. "And the other guy spit it out..."

Bruce couldn't help but stare at her now because even he didn't quite know how to respond to it. He had forgotten about the outburst in front of the group but now he remembered all of their reactions even if none of them had brought it up since. She was the first to actually try and she wasn't even doing it willingly, he had practically been forced to drag it out of her. "What about it?"

Her eyes actually took on a somber look as she knitted her brows, pursing her lips again at his comment. This was something completely different from her and he really didn't know what to do with it. "Have you ever talked about it? Other than that outburst I mean, really talked about it?" she asked.

"In case you didn't notice, most people aren't very fond of me either," he reminded her, watching her eyes soften at the words.

"I am."

The look of shock that came across his face was something he couldn't stop. Even so, he couldn't manage any words to respond with.

Natasha just gave him a small smile though and she reached forward, giving him a teasing tap on his cheek. "Not too many people actually tell me what they really think of me," she admitted with a shrug. "You'd be surprised how much of a relief it is to really be told the truth, even if I don't particularly like it." She retracted her hand after it lingered for too long, placing it back on her lap, "You don't actually need to talk to me—I just think you should talk to someone. Maybe Tony—"

"Like I said then. I was at a low point..."

"We all hit low points," Natasha told him. "I've been sitting on rock bottom my entire life."

He frowned at that. "And you don't ever wonder if it would just be easier to just...end it?"

She looked a little disturbed by the question but her answer surprised him most. "Every day," she admitted, shifting uncomfortably once again. "Thing is...I don't really deserve to take the easy way out," she told him, shrugging as though it didn't actually matter. "You do, don't get me wrong. It's a little unfair that it's impossible because you're a good man," she explained, finally moving onto the cushion beside him and folding her legs under her. "A little dorky maybe, but a good man."

He chuckled a little at that, which was strange given the topic of their conversation.

"Thing is...the Other Guy? You're not trying to understand him," she pointed out, leaning back against the couch. "You're keeping him in just like you keep everything else bottled up. All that anger? It doesn't come from nothing, it had to come from somewhere." He narrowed his eyes slightly at that. "Truthfully, I don't know too much about your life before the incident. But in my experience, things must have been pretty horrible for you to have so much anger inside that he was created from the gamma radiation."

For the first time he was truly stunned.

"I won't pry," she told him softly. "Or go looking into it," she added. "I just thought I would put it on the table that if you really wanted to get a handle on things, maybe that's the way to do it." Natasha tilted her head to the side slightly, "Not that I'm one to talk. I'm the queen of keeping the past exactly where it's supposed to be. But I also don't have an alter ego busting out on temper tantrums when people rub me the wrong way," the way she said it was almost charmingly amusing and he actually smiled a little. Then she stood up and pressed her lips chastely on his cheek, "I just do my little exorcist act and vomit telekinetic daggers." He felt the heat rise on his cheeks when she winked. "So if you ever want to talk about it, Stark will probably know where to find me."

He frowned now, standing up with her. "You don't have to leave, Natasha."

The small smile on her face fractured a little at that. "Yes I do," she disagreed. "You were right before, I'm really not good for you. I'm not even good for myself but unfortunately, I'm sort shit out of luck on that one." Her teal eyes cast downward towards her feet for a moment before they came back to greet his brown ones. "I know I didn't really act it, or even say it, but I really do appreciate you letting me stay here."

"Now you're just making me feel worse..." and he honestly hadn't meant to say that out loud.

Natasha's head angled to the side slightly and it was almost funny now that he realized why she did that. It was her tell. One of the few things that actually showed she didn't quite understand something that was just said. She would either tilt her head to the side or blink her eyes a few times more than necessary. "Why would you feel bad?" she finally asked, clearly unable to come up with the answer on her own. Before he answered her lips parted and formed a small 'o' shape, as though the reason had suddenly hit her. Suddenly she was sitting beside him again, closer than before, and now she was smiling at him again. "Bruce, I'm not by any means a fragile person. Saying something that I don't like isn't going to break me, push me over the edge or send me out on some crazed massacre," she told him. "There's no reason for you to feel bad. You aren't the first person to not like something about me, you certainly won't be the last."

"See? That—that right there," he interrupted her. "That's why you bother me!" Now she looked almost stunned, clearly taken aback by his words. "You act like nothing can hurt you; Like you're impervious to everything, meanwhile you just walked around this house for a week like a ghost," and now she was blinking more than usual again. "You spent most of the week here looking at the wall and trying not to sleep. That's not exactly a healthy coping mechanism."

She was staring at him with an expression he couldn't quite decipher for a few seconds before she finally spoke again. "It's the best I can do," she finally responded with a small shrug.

"Why?"

For a moment Natasha seemed to be thinking about her answer, as though it were some sort of secret that she didn't think she should be telling him. "The walls are safe," she finally told him. "When I was a kid, the walls were the only thing that couldn't hurt me. They were the only thing that stood between me and everything bad that would happen outside of them," and her face was neutral again. It made him realize that most of what she did and how she acted was all a coping mechanism. "Sometimes the walls screamed—or rather, what happened on the other side of them screamed. Other girls in the facility I was raised in. It may sound a little twisted but I was always glad when the walls screamed." He swallowed thickly at that because she was right; it did sound twisted. "If the walls screamed it meant I was okay for a little while." She shrugged now as though it didn't really matter, "That's why I don't sleep. When I sleep, the wall gets torn down. I lose my safety net."

"Natasha..."

"Anyways," she stood abruptly, ruining any chances he had to get her to open up further. He supposed it was a miracle she had even said that small bit about her past. Like she said, she was a master at leaving the past where it belonged. "I won't apologize for what I did last night... but for what it's worth? Thanks for letting me stay here."

Bruce wanted to tell her that it meant more than she seemed to think it did, but she was already lifting her bag off the floor by the front door and walking out of it. He pushed himself off the couch and went to the door, watching as she made her way towards Tony who was waiting by a jeep. After Natasha tossed her bag in the back of the car, he leaned against the frame of the doorway, watching her get in the passenger's seat before she glanced over and gave him some ridiculous little finger wave. He couldn't help but chuckle and shake his head before waving back. It took a moment for what she had actually done inside the house to really hit him and by then, her and Tony were already gone.

He blew out a breathy laugh of disbelief, "She really is good at what she does." Natasha Romanoff had just manipulated him into wanting to talk.


If you have some idea for something you want to see between any of the characters, feel free to mention it and I can do my best to fit it into the story.