Author's note: Life is a bitch. My job and summer exams will be ending soon, but then it is right back to actual classes. I will not be abandoning this story by any means, but I apologize if there are occasionally long periods of time between updates. Also, all mistakes are mine. I apologize in advance. If you find something absolutely terrible, please let me know so I can fix it.

Chapter 5

Robert Bruce Banner had a thousand regrets in his life. Who didn't, though? Everyone did things they regretted. A lot of his just so happened to have been more impactful on the rest of society. There were a billion things he wished to go back and change before he had even graduate college that he thought would have somehow kept those major things – the one major regret he had had for the longest time – from happening. When he was younger, he had gone through the, "maybe if I was never born", phase like all who brooded. He could not have done anything to really stop that, however, so as he aged he wished other things could have gone differently.

He wished that his mom had been able to get them both away from his father. She had tried once, around the time he was eight years old. He had come home from school to find two small suitcases packed, and a duffel bag full of his favorite books and toys. "We're going to go on an adventure, Bruce, okay?" His mom had said, but there was a choked way to how she spoke. Like she was struggling on the lie and the tears that would come later in the day, when they would get pulled over by the cops his father had called saying his mom had 'stolen' the car. They escorted them back home, and left Bruce and his mom at his father's drunken mercy.

He broke Bruce's arm and four of his ribs. Then he snapped his mother's neck. Bruce wished the man had possessed the state of mind at the time to kill Bruce as well. Would have stopped a lot of things from occurring, and made his life… Well, not easier, but certainly not as drawn out and difficult. The world would be safer if he had died all those years ago.

Bruce wished that he had never taken the job with the United States Defense Department, because that was what really caused all of the trouble he had found himself in. He was a nuclear physicists; he did not belong on a military base. If he had never taken that job, the Hulk would have never been born. He would just be a regular old, anxious physicists instead of public enemy number one. He would be normal.

And he never would have met Betty. Or Tony. Or Clint, Steve, Pepper, Thor, Jane, Doctor Selvig, Sam, Maria, Fury, Coulson…

Natasha.

He would have never met Natasha Romanoff, and he hated to say that that was a fact he would be willing to live with. If it meant safety for humanity – from himself – then he would give up any chance he ever had with the gorgeous redhead. Because that was just how Bruce was. He was the self-sacrificing type. He could give and give all day long, and would never take for fear that he would be taking something from someone else who needed it more. That was why he had left her, had not fought the Hulk when he had hung up. The idea of running away with her had been an alluring one, but it would not have worked for him. He was danger. And he could not in good conscience run away with her, no matter how desperately he wanted to.

Perhaps that was his greatest regret; she had been so open and trusting with him in a way he knew she had been with so few in practically her whole life time, and he had blown it. He had taken that trust, held it close for a time, then thrown it right back in her face, crumpled up and torn. She had offered him her heart, honestly. And he destroyed it, just like everything else he touched.

The Hulk was not the monster. He was. And it appeared that he had visitors to tend to.

. . .

"Oh, Laura is gonna be pissed she missed this. Gosh, can we stay a bit?" Clint asked as he hoped off the quinjet and on to the landing pad. He hurried off of it and into the sand, wishing now that his boots were off so he could actually feel it beneath his feet. "Good God, Stark, why'd you keep this hidden? All that damn 'team-bonding' in the woods you let Cap put us through when you had this?" Steve actually blushed just a tad at that, opening his mouth to protest but Clint was not paying him any attention. The archer stood before the beach, arms spread wide at his sides as the sun beat down on him. "I have died and gone to Heaven. Stark-owned Heaven."

Tony rolled his eyes as he clambered off the quinjet to stand beside Cap, sweat already beading on his forehead. He glared half-heartedly at the archer, arms crossed. "This right here is why only Bruce knew about the place. Because I knew as soon as the rest of you knew, you'd be like, 'oh, Tony, let's do team-bonding on the island,' or 'oh, I bet there are all sorts of perfect trees for me to make a new nest in for my secret flock, Tony.'" Clint groaned loudly at the last remark, as did Steve. Tony was still extremely bitter about the hidden family incident. Which he felt was entirely justified, seeing as he had been housing that damn ingrate canary and he was supposed to be his friend and friends don't keep their family a secret. He had trusted Clint, let him crawl through the vents to his odd little heart's content, and the ex-carny had repaid him by having a secret family.

It went further than that, though. Tony and Clint may have bickered incessantly around the others, but they really were good friends. Or Tony had thought they were. Clint had found him curled up in the corner of his lab more times than he could count in the midst of a panic attack and just helped him calm down, not cracked any dumb jokes like the others would have expected. And on late nights when the archer just could not rest due to his own PTSD or nightmares, he would come down and Tony would distract him with 'nerd talk' or swapping stories they deemed 'bro-worthy.' The two of them had even started movie nights among the Avengers, where they often tried to out quote the other. Hell, he would have trusted Clint to hand him things before, but after the farmhouse? No. That was all shot (and Tony found it ironic how it was shot by an archer, but that was beside the point).

"Tony, c'mon, they're my family. You think I'd risk them getting hurt by someone tappin' in to JARVIS and overhearing me sharing that little bit of information?" Clint asked, turning back around to face the other two now. "I've got three kids, Tony. I'd do anything to keep them from getting hurt, especially because of what I do."

"Natasha knew." The genius countered, and he saw the quick flash of hurt across Clint's face at his tone. Good.

Clint threw his arms up in exasperation, rounding on the engineer. "Can you keep a secret from her? She's one of the best damn spies in the world, Tony. It was either tell her or risk her finding out only part of the truth and hurting my family. I did what I had to do. I'm sorry you don't understand that."

Tony looked like he had been smacked at that and immediately went to give a snappy reply back before Steve was putting himself between the two. "Enough." His voice had that stern, no-nonsense tone to it he always got when on a mission. "Are you two gonna sit here and argue, or are we actually going to find Bruce and bring him home? Because there is a life at stake here, and arguing is not going to save Pepper." That seemed to get the engineer to snap out of his snappish mood, seemingly sinking back into himself. It was rude, Steve felt, to remind Tony of Pepper's condition, but they needed to get a move on. Her life was in their hands at the moment. They had to do this quickly.

"C'mon. Let's see if Hulk made a nest." Steve mumbled, shaking his head and moving to head towards the treeline. He was stopped in his tracks by Tony grabbing his arm a bit roughly, jerking him back. Steve turned to ask what was up, but saw for himself in the distance.

There, approaching them slowly in a stereotypical Hawaiian print pair of swim trunks and with unruly curls that Steve had grown plenty familiar with, was Bruce Banner. "You know, you guys could have just called!" He yelled to them, hands cupping around the scruffy beard he had grown. Banner actually looked… Happy. It was odd.

"We didn't even know for sure that we would find you here." Clint called, jogging quickly through the sand towards their friend. "God, I wish Nat were here, just so I could see her kill you, Banner!" The archer called, Tony and Steve now hot on his heels. Bruce at least had the decency to flinch a bit at the mention of Natasha. He was tackled to the ground moments later, Clint tripping in the sand and sending them both crashing into the beach.

Tony laughed beside Steve, a warm sound that almost made it easy to forget why they were really there in the first place. Almost.

. . .

They did not return for a few days. It would have gone unnoticed by Wanda, were it not for the sudden somber mood that Vision and Sam took on. It was not hard to find out why; Stark's woman was in some sort of coma. Wanda felt bad for her, of course, and for Stark. But she had more important things to worry about. She needed to figure out that thing with her dear Pietro. He had been there, with her. She had felt him. But… He was dead. She had felt it, had felt him snap away from her suddenly. She could not forget the feeling of her other half just suddenly… disappearing.

For that stark emptiness to suddenly, briefly be gone… She would drive herself mad trying to fill it again. She had to get him back. She did it once. She could do it again. She had to.

She pulled away from the other two, not that they noticed. They were too caught up in their grief. A grief she felt, because it came off of them in waves that crashed into her if they were even a few rooms away. So, if she needed to, she could always use that as an excuse. They did not need to know what she was doing. Resurrecting the dead was generally frowned upon, after all.

This was beyond her. Wanda had been capable of making illusions for short periods of time, mind control, telekinesis, mind reading… but never something of this caliber. Not on purpose, at least. Killing she was more than capable of, though, so she started there. She made use of the huge expanse of woods that surrounded the Avengers base, going out and finding some poor creature, and killing it. Always swiftly, in hopes of keeping the animal's pain to a minimum. It started with a tiny brown field mouse, then a squirrel, a rabbit, a baby deer… She would kill them and sit there over the body for an hour trying to pull their spirit back. Trying to bring them back to this world from wherever their spirits went.

The task soon proved impossible. No matter how hard she focused or tried, the corpses stayed as just that: corpses. She tried grasping the energy that escaped them as soon as they died and putting it back, but that proved fruitless. She could cradle the creature's life energy in her hands, could pull it close so it did not truly pass. But she could not put it back. There was an actual physical resistance. As soon as she got the energy close to the body, it would dissipate. No matter what she did, their life would just slip from between her fingers. Just like her brother.

That was it, though. When her brother did come back, albeit briefly, he had no body. His body was six feet under back in Sekovia. Perhaps she was going about it all the wrong way. She did not near their old bodies. She simply had to make them a new one, which created a whole other slew of problems for her.

Just like the snapping of a twig a few feet away. Her head snapped up from the animal, eyes locking on the intruder. She was up in an instant, holding him tightly in place. "What are you doing here?" She snarled, surging towards her new prey. "This is private property. I could kill you." Her tone was low, and she prayed her accent made her sound threatening. (Clint often joked that it did.)

The voice that greeted her was gruff and broken like its owners mind. "I need to see Steve."