Natasha woke up with a cough. The morning light was filtering through a thick layer of dust in the air. She looked around. First priority was survivors.
"Yelena!" she called out. Where was she? She lost track of her right before Ross' meltdown. But she caught a flash of yellow above her after a few minutes of searching. Yelena was pinned nearly 20 feet up in a mound of rubble. Natasha thumped her grapple a few times to get it operational again, then ascended to check on the young Widow.
She was caked in dust from head to toe, her limbs limp and her breathing haggard. Plenty of cuts and bruises, but she was alive. Again.
Lucky girl, Natasha thought to herself. She heard Hulk dig himself from out of the rubble. The green giant was breathing heavily and nursing his arm. Doctor Sterns was slung over his shoulder.
"Rough morning, Big Guy?"
"Hng. Red Hulk strong. Not stronger than Hulk - no one stronger than Hulk. But maybe just a little bit as strong as Hulk?"
Natasha found Ross lying prone in a deep crater. She realized now that they were actually several feet below ground level, the force of Ross' outburst having pushed the building up and out of the ground like a huge nest.
How the hell are we all still alive? Natasha thought.
"Big hole," Hulk summed up bluntly as he looked around. "Give Hulk good fight though. Not fight someone like him since Purple Guy."
"That's… a very high bar. How were you able to beat him?"
"Hulk been Hulk since forever. Mustache Man only Hulk for little while. Couldn't handle it. Ha. Silly Mustache Man. Puny."
The two looked up as the Quinjet emerged from cloaking. Jen emerged from the cockpit and checked to make sure everyone was okay. The remaining members of El Raios had scattered after the blast and the area was clear. Now the lawyer stood at the rim of the crater.
"So it's over then? Is he?"
"Dead? No. He's just out cold. I'm not out for assassinating heads of state these days."
"What happened to him?" Bruce had now rejoined the group at his normal size his arm was covered in bruises. "It was like a… a bomb. Maybe it was all that pent up gamma energy from the serum? But we'd be dead if it were radioactive."
"If he released it all, hopefully that's the last we see of the Red Hulk," Natasha mused.
"We should be so lucky," Bruce frowned.
Jen took the unconscious man's arm and began to write something on it in pen.
"What are you doing?" Bruce asked.
"Leaving my number," she said. "Something tells he's gonna need a lawyer when he wakes up."
Shocking news out of Washington DC tonight, the Pentagon has released a report detailing the arrest of Doctor Samuel Sterns in Brazil for kidnapping and human experimentation. A former associate of Bruce Banner, aka the Incredible Hulk, Sterns was previously in US custody, before negotiating his release. Sterns is believed to be responsible for the Hulk attack in Germany several weeks ago. The arrest involved further attempts to manipulate the Hulk's blood for weaponization, and it has been reported that Banner's cousin, New York lawyer Jennifer Walters, was also a victim of the incident.
"We were lead to believe that he could use his genius to pay off his debt to society, but clearly society is no place for him."
Secretary Ross, shown here in his press conference earlier today, has vowed to return Sterns to maximum security internment in a former SHIELD facility for superhuman criminals.
"On behalf of the US Government, I would like to extend my deepest apologies to Ms. Walters and her entire... family."
"At least our jade giantess will keep quiet now. That cash settlement will set her up nicely for the rest of her life."
Yelena and Ross were wathcing the news in his office. Ross had one arm in a sling, a glass of whiskey in the other. He was standing stock upright, looking lie he had just done one too many tours in Fallujah. Or wherever he served. Yelena never paid attention to his tales of the glory days.
"She can't pin the Thunderbolts for her abduction," Ross said. Ice cubes rattled in his drink. "But I think this is going to blow up in our faces one way or the other. People like her don't leave well enough alone."
"And what sort of people is that, boss?"
"People who think they're heroes."
Six Weeks Later
It was a packed courtroom, though few people were there to watch the proceedings.
The plaintiff rocked nervously in his seat as he stared at Jen.
"I don't get paid enough for this," the old man representing him muttered as he ran a hand through his mustache.
"All rise. The Supreme Court of the State of New York is now in session, the Honorable Judge Robert Chalmers presiding."
At the bailiff's request everyone in the room stood up, including all seven green feet of Jennifer Walters.
After he entered and the bailiff sat everyone down, Judge Chalmers greeted the court.
"Good morning. Before we get started, will the defense approach?"
Jen nodded and strode over to the bench. The judge found himself meeting the eye level of the green attorney.
"Welcome back, Ms. Walters," he said quietly. "It is my understanding that your… situation has the same lack of permanence as your cousin's?"
"Yes Your Honor, though - as I do not believe my physical state will impact my ability to defend my client - I have elected to conduct trial this way at this time."
Judge Chalmers looked at Jen for a moment. She was wearing a brown suit tailored to her much larger dimensions. An oversized pair of reading glasses sat on the bridge of her nose, and her dark green hair was tied in a tight bun. If she weren't green she would look like any other attorney to stand in his court. And really, did anything else matter?
"I trust you will not cause a scene?"
"All due respect Your Honor, if you let me do my job I'll let you do yours."
"Indeed. Very well. Let's begin the proceedings. You may return to your seat."
Attagirl, Natasha grinned as she watched Jen return from the bench.
"Excuse me."
Nat looked down to see a little girl next to her in the gallery.
"Can you do a picture? You're my favorite Avenger."
Nat leaned down and feigned confusion. "Me? Not the Hulk? He's pretty cool."
Bruce coughed and pulled his baseball cap a little further over his eyes.
"No, you! I want to be Black Widow for Halloween this year, but my mommy won't let me."
"To be fair to your mommy, they make some pretty silly costumes of me," Natasha tried not to laugh. "But maybe if you make one together she'll like it more."
"Okay!"
After the little girl left with her picture saved, Bruce turned to the Black Widow.
"Not very covert, Nat."
"Trust me, they know we're here," Nat jabbed him lightly. "But they aren't here. Their play didn't work, so they'll need some time to lick their wounds and come up with a new one. We'll be long gone by then."
"Where are we headed?"
"For now? How about the front steps?"
Nat sat against a pillar. "Do you think I did the right thing, letting Yelena walk away?"
Bruce picked a step in front of her and sat down as well. "I imagine it was hard for you."
"I've made an enemy of her. And I probably deserve it. She'll keep coming for me until she gets what she wants. But she's as much a victim as I was. I didn't do any of the things I did that night to kill people. I had to kill a system made of people. Now there's no system, and Yelena's just a person."
"And people can change."
Natasha smiled coldly. "But I don't think she wants to. She certainly doesn't want my help changing if she does."
"It's a mission for another time, that's for sure. We could use some down time, heal my arm, your abdomen."
"Maybe we can head somewhere warm next," Natasha closed her eyes and thought of a beach. The two sat in silence for a time, listening to New York's symphony of angry traffic. At length Bruce cleared his throat.
"I still don't think I've thanked you enough. For saving Jen's life."
"The way I remember it, you saved it first. Though you took some convincing."
"Well, I worry-"
"You? Cool-as-a-cucumber Bruce Banner?"
"I worry about hurting people close to me. Jen and I weren't so close before all this, but she's still family."
"I know she is. And you're my family."
Bruce smiled sheepishly. "I don't know how Ross can call you a traitor. You're one of the most loyal people I know."
"He's not technically wrong. I've burned bridges, and they've come back to haunt me. But only because I realized those bridges weren't taking me anywhere I wanted to go. Ross didn't want to understand that the Avengers had me when I had nothing else. They're all my family, even if we're a little smaller and a lot far apart these days."
Her voice caught in her throat a little as she said this, but she soon recovered.
"And I'd do anything to protect them. Anything."
A small beep punctuated their heart to heart as Natasha got a call on her communicator.
"Hi Sam," Natasha spoke into the phone. "You're just in time, I was starting to get sentimental."
"Uh, Okay. Well, I've got some new leads on the whole Latverian Revolution situation. I can send you the details. Let me know if it's anything you want in on."
Natasha looked at Bruce. He shrugged. "Beach first or Beach later?"
The Black Widow smiled. "Can you and Bucky hold the fort for a long weekend while I go over the files? I think something just came up."
|Black Widow: Code Red|
"Ms. Walters!"
Jen turned down the music in her earbuds and looked down to see a reporter team gathered on her stoop.
"Can I help you?"
"We're from Channel Six. Ms. Walters, you're the world's first superhuman lawyer. Can you tell us why you've been doing trials as a Hulk?"
Jen thought about it for a moment. She could easily transform and run away faster than any paparazzo could chase her. But this was a question she was hoping someone would ask.
"I want people to see that enhanced individuals, of which there are surely more of in the world than we know," are not all superheroes and supervillains. Some of us justead normal lives. But rather get now our rights to normal lives aren't protected. There are glaring flaws in legislation like the Sokovia Accords that don't do anything to distinguish between vigilantes and simple working citizens."
"Are you going to take this argument to court?"
"Someday soon," she nodded. If the Accords were meant to protect us, it should protect all of us. Now if you excuse me, I'm going for a run."
She turned up her tunes again and set off down the street.
Yelena flicked on a light, and opened up the black folder on the table before her.
"Thank you for coming out to meet me, I know your time is valuable."
"You can thank the Secretary's check clearing for that. I find his money to be just as valuable as my time."
"There's probably a joke about ethical consumption under there, but I'm certainly not one to talk. The USSR was about as Marxist as a pair of glasses with a fake nose."
"But you digress, surely," the person on the other side of the table said shortly. "I didn't fly out here to discuss wordplays with an assassin."
"Certainly not," Yelena flicked the figure a sheet of paper from the folder.
"I'm here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative."
[A/N]: When I first started writing this story, it was a short side project to seed some ideas for the bigger stories coming up. But as of late I've grown really attached to this story, and I hope you all liked it too. I enjoyed writing Natasha a lot, so as long as I have anything to say in the matter…
Black Widow Will Return