One day you have to stop running from the world

A/N: It has been a long time guys…but I haven't given up on this fic! It's the holidays and I finally had the time to take a fresh crack at it. Hopefully you're still interested!

RECAP of the entire story so far: This is going to be a long one. Natasha and Bruce are starting to slowly figure out what exactly they are to each other at the moment. Are they teammates? Are they friends? Are they something more? They are both in denial about the last one but slowly but surely their relationship is moving towards something more. Bruce hasn't had a real friend in a long time. The Avengers have been the closest thing to family he had at the moment. And even then he was wary of them. But after a disastrous mission gone wrong, saving Natasha's life, running away from SHIELD medical, a crazy jet trip with Natasha Romanoff, wandering the Russian coast, meeting 50 extraordinary little girls who need to be protected from the world and facing the millions of questions from their team – Natasha and Bruce are finally back home at Avengers Tower ready to take on the world. If only they had the courage and the strength to face their past. Natasha has started the process of coming to terms with hers – now it was Bruce's turn. But before they fix their past – they had some new problems to deal with in their present.

Enjoy!

Chapter 7

It's been several days since Natasha and Bruce have returned from their little trip to Russia. It was a tight secret that was just supposed to stay between them and their team. However the first thing Natasha realized when she walked into SHIELD was that the news of their excursion had somehow spread like a forest fire throughout the organization. Pictures of them were posted all over the building. The rumor mill was going haywire with all the truths mixed with obvious lies. The hulk and the black widow? It was deemed insanity. Their privacy was completely breached and their reputations ruined. It wasn't anyone's god damn business – but Natasha couldn't kill all of the junior agents. She would just seriously maim the initiator. Within an inch of his life.

"Where is Tony Stark?" Natasha asked dangerously as she cornered a group of trembling junior agents on the third floor of the SHIELD main base in New York. She had just caught them gossiping about her relationship with the quiet doctor and how they were fraternizing and potentially compromising the most important team in SHIELD.

AS if she would ever let her personal relationships compromise her work.

As if there was any way in hell there was any fraternizing between her and her teammate.

But did she want that to stay true?

Natasha growled and angrily shook those thoughts out of her head. Now was not the time to undermine her own authority. She was not going to second guess herself while she was interrogating her suspects.

"Talk!" she demanded as the agents tried to find their voice in the mist of their palpable fear.

"W-w-we don't know! We swear!" the bravest boy in the middle stuttered as he tried to stand his ground while being faced with the glare of death. You needed to be a long term professional agent to withstand one of Natasha's death glares – they pierced right through your soul.

"Was he the one who started spreading these rumors?" she asked clenching her fists at her sides. They all frantically shook their heads.

"N-n-no! It wasn't him! It was-"

"AGENT GUNNER YOU ARE FIRED! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? FIRED! GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!" they all heard the angry voice of Maria Hill shout from down the hall. Natasha tensed as she looked away from the cowering agents and narrowed her eyes at the commotion happening down the hall.

She had found her target.

She forgot about the junior agents who were about to faint and stalked down the hall towards all the noise.

"But Agent Hill-" Gunner started to say.

SMACK!

The entire hall gasped.

Agent Hill had slapped the frozen agent right across the face with the back of her hand.

"How dare you hack security files of other agents in your own fucking organization?" Maria shouted angrily.

"As if you weren't curious about what those two were doing in Russia either Hill!" Gunner said holding his cheek with a heated look in his eyes.

Click. He froze as he felt a cold metal object make contact with the back of his head.

"If I shoot him will I get reprimand?" Natasha asked darkly from behind him. Maria took a deep breath and locked eyes with one of her best agents.

"I want to say no so badly…" she said through gritted teeth. What the bastard did was unforgivable. In 2 days he had undermined everything SHEILD stood for. But she could never authorize such an act. Natasha gripped the gun in her hand tighter. The tension in the hall had skyrocketed in the last 3 seconds. Nobody said a word.

"Natasha?" someone said anxiously from behind her. Natasha froze as she recognized the voice.

"What are you doing…?" Bruce asked as he slowly walked into her line of sight. She clenched her jaw. She could kill Gunner and deal with the consequences. Or she could let the bastard live and let SHIELD deal with him.

She locked eyes with the only man in the entire world she couldn't understand. Clint never confused her this much. Clint was exactly like her. Too much like her. Bruce's eyes were cautious but not judging. Why the hell was he not judging her?

"Natasha?" Bruce asked again as they continued their intense staring match. His shoulders loosened when she finally looked away.

She dropped her hand with the gun in it and stalked away from the tense scene.

Gunner slowly fell to his knees as he stared at his hands trembling in front of him.

If Bruce Banner hadn't shown up – he would've been dead right now.

Bruce slowly backed away from the staring crowd and turned to follow the fuming Russian agent stalking down the hall behind him. He didn't know what was wrong. He didn't even know why things defused so fast when he got there. But even he knew no one should be alone after a confrontation like that.

"Natasha? Natasha where did you go?" he called out as he lost sight of her as she promptly disappeared around the corner. Russian spies were not easy to find when they didn't want to be found.

Natasha stomped into an empty training room and slammed the door shut behind her. She needed to calm down. She needed to get some freaking control back. She stared at the gun in her shaking hand and swore in Russian.

Natasha angrily threw the gun into the wall in front of her and watched it shatter into a million pieces. She back up and hit the wall on the other side of the room and slowly slide down the wall in the corner of the silent room. How did she nearly lose her control like that? Why was she slipping again?

"Natasha!" she heard a familiar voice shout down the hall.

Natasha covered her ears and tightly shut her eyes. She didn't want to talk to him right now. She didn't want to look at his eyes right now. She didn't want him to see her like this right now.

"Just go away Bruce. Just go away," she whispered with her eyes still closed.

"Natasha seriously where are y-" Bruce froze as he ran into the room and stared at the scene in front of him. He slowly shut the door behind him and cautiously approached the slightly shaking Russian agent.

"Natasha…are you okay?" he asked slowly. Natasha tensed without looking up from her crouched position.

"Stop saying my name like that!" she growled. He froze.

"Like what?" he asked in confusion. She lifted her head and glared at him fiercely.

"Like you're actually worried about me!" she spat. Bruce flinched at the venom in her voice.

"I am worried Natasha…" he said carefully as he watched her hands clench into tight fists – they were still shaking.

"Why? You don't even know me," she muttered angrily looking away. Bruce gave her a soft look.

"I was starting to get to know you," he said quietly. She tensed and shut her eyes again.

"Go away Bruce – I-I can't – you don't know how I'm feeling right now," she said tiredly as the anger finally started draining out of her system and was replaced with a wave of exhaustion. He felt all of it.

He laughed humorlessly and shook his head.

"That's not quite true Natasha. I know exactly how you are feeling," he said carefully. She froze – oh shit.

"I felt your simmering anger 10 minutes ago when you were talking to someone. I didn't think it was much to worry about because it was very controlled and a very organized type of anger. You were using it to channel something. But then…then you just exploded Natasha. It nearly knocked me out completely. It was like this blinding type of rage that burned right through my brain. And then it was overwhelmed by this intense darkness that came out of nowhere. I don't even know how to describe it. It was…it was unbelievable," he said slowly coming to realize just how shocking her explosion of emotions really was.

"I'm sorry you had to feel that," she said expressionlessly staring at her hands. She should have had a better latch on her emotions. Now her loss of control was hurting people who weren't even in the same room as her? Bruce gave the distant agent a cautious look. It wasn't just about feeling her intense emotions.

"Natasha…if I ever got that angry? I would've Hulked out a long time ago. I nearly did today," he whispered guardedly. She quickly glanced up at him and noticed the restrained stress at the corner of his eyes and the fear swirling around his steady gaze.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. He gave her a weak smile.

"It's okay," he whispered back.

"Did he really want to come out?" she asked staring at him with curiosity mixed with fear swirling in her eyes. He gave her a reassuring smile and shook his head.

"No – he was just really annoyed that someone could cause that much havoc in his environment without him there," he whispered with a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. She snorted.

"You and your other guy are weird Banner," she said shaking her head in disbelief. Now it was his turn to snort.

"We're weird? How about the girl who has emotions buried so deep inside of her that they had time to build up enough to explode and allow me to feel it from the other side of the building?" he asked incredulously. She froze.

"Where were you?" she asked in shock. She didn't even know he was in SHIELD today.

"I was on the first floor Natasha. You have the most intense emotions I have ever felt in my life," he said shaking his head still slightly amazed. She froze.

"No one has ever said I have intense emotions. Most people say I don't have any at all," she whispered.

"Most people don't have a direct link to the general empathic atmosphere around them Natasha," he said quietly. "Most people are also idiots. Even without feeling your emotions I knew you felt things deeply Natasha," he said giving her a knowing look. She looked away from his truthful eyes. It was too much to take in at the moment – so she changed the subject before they started treading a topic she wasn't ready for.

"How did Gunner even get a whiff of where we were Bruce? Who told him?" she asked guardedly. Bruce heard her unspoken accusations loud and clear.

He tensed.

"It wasn't Tony. Tony would never start this. No matter how much he likes to piss us off Natasha – he would never do something like this," Bruce said firmly. He never defended the idiot after one of his stupid pranks backfired on him – but for this Bruce would defend Tony to the end. He still had faith in Tony's ability to be a good friend above all else. Natasha stared at him dead in the eye.

"Are you sure?" she said steadily. He nodded.

"Dead sure," he said seriously. She sighed and looked away from his intense eyes.

"Now what are we going to do Bruce?" she asked tiredly. She's never had to face these types of rumors before. She's never been accused of being severely compromised before. Even while she was with Clint – no one even noticed. No one cared.

Why did they all suddenly freak out when it was the doctor who might suddenly be the object of her affections? Especially because it was all lies. Bruce and Natasha were barely starting their rocky friendship and then this hits them in the face?

The world was full of hypocrites.

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A/N: I hope that makes up for the long, long, loooong wait! Let me know if anyone is still interested in the story and I'll continue it. Thank you for reading!