Chapter 28:
"You can close your eyes
to the things you don't want to see.
But you can't close your heart
to the things you don't want to feel."
Natasha was back in her bed early the night following the team meeting, which was also the night prior for their next target. Not that it helped, she still found herself laying there without actually falling to sleep. She ignored the knock at the door with the assumption that it was likely Clint and that he would just let himself in whether she extended the invitation or not. The person did let themselves in, but much to her surprise, the footsteps certainly didn't belong to Clint.
She stayed turned on her side nonetheless and listened to the clearly uncertain and hesitant footsteps in the hall that she recognized as Bruce's. It was almost impossible not to smile when she realized that her uninvited intrusions into his room had seemingly rubbed off onto the awkward scientist as well. It was even harder not to just smile, but also not to laugh when he clearly paused outside of her bedroom as he debated how wise or unwise his decision might be. She didn't make it any easier when she refused to acknowledge his presence and she continued to feign sleep for the three minutes it took him to suck it up and step inside.
Even as he failed stupendously to be quiet while he moved towards the bed, and failed even more spectacularly as he tried to climb into the other side as nimbly as possible, she played possum. It wasn't until his leg sunk into the mattress in the wrong way and he landed half on top of her that the cork popped on the laugh that she had been holding inside. It came out a little more loudly than she meant it to and she let her right eye open as she looked at Bruce who was chuckling. "Smooth," she offered up with another breathy little laugh.
Bruce shook his head with that shy little smile as he shifted himself back onto the other side of the bed and onto his back. "You were never actually asleep, were you?"
"No."
It succeeded in making him laugh right up until she shifted, swung one of her legs over his waist and sat on top of him. The laugh turned into a cough as his face turned beet red and she smirked a little "You snuck into my room, remember?" she questioned playfully.
"Y-yeah..." he mumbled out.
It was probably mean or cruel by some standards, but with him continuously getting uncomfortable after his dream, it seemed necessary to push him. However Natasha was clad only in underwear and a tank top, something he didn't seem to realize until his eyes actually looked from her face and scaled downward. "I might have left more clothes on if I'd realized you were going to join me," she tacked on for good measure. He cleared his throat with obvious discomfort and she only leaned down towards him a little when she spoke again, "I could just go to sleep if it would make you feel better, I just thought we could practice."
Bruce looked like he was about to tell her to do just that when he leaned forward and caught her lips with his instead. It was the last thing she expected and it actually took a moment before her brain caught up with his actions. Each time Bruce kissed her, the kiss tended to be more heated, much like their first kiss had been.
This time he didn't hold back and he only impressed her further. Bruce tangled one hand up in her tank top and the other in her hair as he pulled her down further until the liplock took on a new level, even for Natasha herself. It was also the first time the tiniest little flutter overtook her chest and she forced herself to pull away in surprise as she stared down at him.
"Natasha?" came his instantly worried tone.
And she really was letting Bruce get far too close for her liking. She let him through way too many of her walls than she felt comfortable with. But the flutter...the flutter left her curious enough to want to let him keep getting closer and the fact that he continuously worried that he was the one doing something wrong gave her a reason not to rebuild the walls. She leaned forward and pressed her lips back to his once more, pressed both hands against his chest to push him flat down against the mattress while she tested the limits of both their comfort zones. The most surprising thing was that he let her and she continued to feel the growing thumpthumpthump in his chest when their lips parted and their tongues mingled.
Her hands only roamed slightly before Bruce groaned into her mouth and gave her a gentle push upward and Natasha shifted her leg back to her side of the bed and laid down with her head resting on his shoulder. It was quiet for a good half a minute besides Bruce's slightly labored breathing before his voice came out quiet and breathy, "I'm sorry..."
"For what?" she asked as she closed her eyes and listened to the way the beat of his heart began to slow back to normal.
"It's not exactly easy to...stay in control," he admitted, "not around you."
"So you've said before," Natasha reminded him as she cracked open her eyes again and shifted them to meet Bruce's while she gave him an honest smile, "but you're doing fine."
He left that alone, though he clearly disagreed as he changed the topic, "How did we even get to this point?"
"What? Kissing?" she questioned and at his nod she chuckled a little, "well, I'm fairly certain it started with this exact position." It worked because Bruce let out the tiniest laugh in response and she smirked as she gave the tiniest shrug against his chest.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
She left her one hand resting on his chest as she waited and listened to the question that he released, "Why keep bringing me on these missions? Admit it or not, but you understand more of this stuff than you've been letting on...so why bring me?"
That actually surprised her and she shifted off him and leaned her elbow on the bed as she rested her head on her palm and quirked both her eyebrows up at him. "You might be giving me too much credit, Bruce," she offered up. "Hacking I'm good at, maybe even great. Infiltrating facilities with dozens of armed guards? Definitely an expert at that. Killing, well, according to Stark I'm a master at that."
Bruce was chuckling, "Anything else?"
She knew it was a joke but she named off other things just for show, "Marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, interrogation—"
"Okay, okay," Bruce interrupted with a laugh, "I get it..."
"Unfortunately, science and these 'enhanced' humans that HYDRA has created? That's not in my expertise," she tacked on. "You're there in case there's no time to download whatever we might find on those files because you understand what you're seeing."
Bruce seemed determined to continue on, "So far we've only read about the enhanced, plus, whatever Maria has gotten ahold of from the...uh..."
"New SHIELD?" Natasha questioned with a chuckle.
"Yeah...that. So what happens when we actually come across one? So far we've avoided it, but what happens when a guy throws an entire vehicle at you? How do you fight that?"
That actually made her snicker as she shifted a leg over him and sat on his waist once more. "Then I'll duck," she informed him casually before she pressed her lips to his once more.
"I'm serious..." he grumbled out against her mouth.
She smiled against the kiss, playfully bit down on his lower lip, then quirked another eyebrow up at him, "You worried about me, Doctor Banner?"
"Natasha...there's guys throwing fireballs and freezing things into blocks of ice..."
"I'm almost positive that they're both dead," she tacked on for good measure as she gave him a rather amused look.
He let out the tiniest sigh that showed he didn't find the way she passed off his worry with playful jokes to be amusing. "That...really isn't the point," he reminded her with the tiniest smile before he gave her the smallest and gentlest kiss that she had ever experienced.
Natasha gave him a real smile now as she leaned forward, crossed her arms on his chest and rested her chin on her hands while she looked at him. "I'll be fine, Bruce," she assured him.
It seemed the topic of conversation was keeping him distracted enough from their close proximity because his heart had yet to begin racing. At least that was a bonus. "How do you know?" came the next question, "how do you know that the next one won't get the better of you?"
"I don't," she answered honestly, "but that comes with the job. When you do the things that I do, there's always a chance that you won't come back, but it's almost a guarantee that you won't if you stop believing that you will. But, enhanced or no enhanced, one day I'm going to wind up on the wrong end of things."
"But you just said—"
"There's a difference, Bruce. There's a difference between accepting that it'll be over one day and accepting that it'll be a certain day," she explained. It didn't give him a whole lot of relief if the pained look on his face was any indication and she was slightly surprised when he sat up, taking her with him.
"That's no way to live..." Bruce mumbled out with a frown.
Natasha let her eyes soften slightly when he placed both hands on either side of her face. She remembered when Steve told her the exact same thing about something else she had said, about the truth being a matter of circumstances. She searched Bruce's eyes for a few more moments before she replied with a slightly varied version of the same response, "It's how I've always lived and it's kept me alive so far."
"Maybe you should think about a change of professions," Bruce offered up with a dry smile, "like the detonator on a bomb squad."
And he surprised her further when his lips found her neck before she could respond to the joke. That flutter turned to the tiniest tingling and she closed her eyes against the feeling of the unshaven beginning of scruff on his face as it left a slightly rougher sensation to go along with the gentleness.
It was one of the first moments that she actually felt like she was capable of feeling more for someone, or maybe it was just the first time that she wanted to, but Natasha couldn't exactly be certain when she had never known the difference in the first place. He stopped as suddenly as he had started it, leaving warm puffs of his breath on her neck and a feeling of slight confusion within her until he spoke, "Is this...alright?"
That was the last thing she expected, though from Bruce, perhaps she should have seen the question coming given their positions. He couldn't go too far and she had no interest in going too far. She supposed it made sense that while they tested where that line actually lay, that he might actually ask if they had crossed it on her end. Unlike him, she didn't exactly have any physical or emotional tells for where the line stood, not when she didn't allow it to show. "It's fine...you're fine," she assured him. It was then that she blinked a few times and let her confused words out before she could stop them, "You're...fine?"
He released a nervous little chuckle, "For now...just don't move the wrong way or this might become a situation."
Natasha laughed in an instant before his lips closed on her neck again, then her laugh turned to a breathy little sigh that sort of surprised both of them, and also brought on a bit more speed to his heartbeat. Thankfully it wasn't too fast, and while Bruce continued what he was doing she closed her eyes to let herself try to feel more, or at least feel more without her mind defensively shutting down her ability to.
Then she remembered why she had still been awake when Bruce came into her room, and she remembered seconds too late, because her laptop on the end table beeped and lit up.
Natasha's eyes shot open as she glanced to her side of the bed and stared in bewilderment as Laura Barton's face popped up over the pre-planned video call. She didn't hesitate to snatch up her pillow, shove it over Bruce's face, then push him down on the bed as Laura raised both eyebrows up over the video screen. She cleared her throat as her partner's wife gave her a rather mischievous little grin, "Did I just see you shove a man down on your bed and hide him with a pillow?"
"Uh..." and she was almost positive that Bruce had just snorted out a laugh under the pillow. The continuous shaking of his shoulders proved that he was laughing, probably more at what she had just done to him and her sudden speechlessness than anything else. "I uh...I may have forgotten that we were supposed to talk."
Laura didn't seem remotely bothered. "No judgement here, besides, you really looked like you were enjoying yourself."
Natasha felt Bruce shake with further laughter and she was almost positive that for the first time in history, she felt real heat rise in her cheeks rather than color manufactured for show. All she could think was that Bruce probably wouldn't be laughing if he knew whose wife she was actually speaking to.
"Nat, are you blushing?" came Laura's teasing comment.
She probably was, if only because Laura was the last person she wanted to have see her in a position quite like this. And the comment of her blush only made this worse, so much so that Bruce's laughter actually came through the pillow and Natasha quickly coughed, "I uh—I'll call you back. And Laura? This never happened..."
"Uh-huh..." was Laura's entertained parting comment as Natasha reached over and closed the laptop as fast as she could.
She rolled onto her back on her side of the pillow and watched as Bruce pulled the pillow up slightly and peeked his head out from underneath it, "Is it safe to exit the pillow?"
Natasha snorted out a laugh in an instant, "Trust me, you didn't want her to know who you were." And at least she was almost positive Laura hadn't actually been able to see Bruce's face given that it had been buried on the other side of her neck when the video call had sprung to life.
"Friend of yours?" Bruce questioned as he handed the pillow back to her.
"Yeah, sort of..." she scrunched her nose up a little, "it's a bit of a long story. It's also not really my story to tell."
Bruce gave a small nod, "Fair enough." And then he got a rather sly twinkle in his eyes that she had never seen with him before, "Did you really blush?"
Natasha smacked him with the pillow in an instant, "Shut up, Bruce."
Nova Scotia, Canada.
The feeling that they were being watched and followed was beginning to fray on Natasha's nerves, though neither Bruce nor Clint seemed to notice the way she was becoming antsy. The building wasn't exactly large and they had entered from the roof onto the second floor. It only took them several minutes without ever running into someone before they came into a second floor office that looked down into a large lab.
"It's quiet," Clint commented, and she didn't disagree, in fact... "too quiet."
That was exactly what she had been thinking and she let out a sigh, "They knew we were coming."
"Think there's anything to find?" came Bruce's question.
"There's always something," Clint answered without a second thought, "nobody ever manages to clean up everything. No matter how hard you try, something always gets left behind."
Bruce seemed like he thought the statement was plausible, though Natasha wasn't entirely certain that she agreed, right now it felt like something was hiding in plain sight that none of them could find.
"Nat, you okay?"
She only realized she had been staring behind them when Clint's question broke through her concentration and she turned to look back at both him and Bruce. "Yeah," she mumbled out as she shifted her gaze down to the lab.
"I haven't just been paranoid this whole time, have I?" Clint questioned next, "you feel it too?"
"Yeah," she agreed again. "It doesn't look like anybody is here, but—"
"But someone is..." Clint finished.
Natasha should have known he had noticed it too but Bruce's comment was the most surprising, "And here I thought it was just me being paranoid."
Clint gave a meager little shrug in response, "Not paranoia if they're really after you, Doc."
Natasha figured it was the right thing to say because Bruce at least gave a halfhearted smile in response to the comment. She felt the air shift just slightly behind them and she narrowed her eyes, letting her ears listen rather than trying to force her eyes to see.
Then she heard it. She reached out at the same time that Clint turned around abruptly and she caught the knife midair a mere fraction of an inch from her partner's chest. Looking around there was nobody in the room with them to throw it and Clint and Bruce were doing much the same. All three of them stood defensively in silence and Natasha was grateful for that because it helped her to listen. She used her ears rather than her eyes, but it was instead what she felt, that changed.
Natasha felt the movement beside her and turned in an instant with her hands up defensively—towards absolutely nothing and no one. That caused a reaction that she was used to from Bruce rather than herself and she felt her heart rate kick up drastically. Something had just been there. She was sure of it.
And then two hands became visible in the air as they reached out and grasped her uniform before she could actually comprehend it. The gasp of surprise left her lips just as her feet left the ground and she hit the desk several feet away and dropped to her side on the ground.
"Nat!"—"Natasha!"
It took half a second to suck the air back into her lungs from getting the wind knocked out of her when her back hit the desk and she shook her head as she got back to her feet. That was when she saw the man, and it was a man. It wasn't in time to say anything or to stop him as those same hands reached out, grasped Clint's uniform much like he had hers, then hauled her partner straight through the glass and into the lab one floor down. The man was once again gone from her vision, something that should not be possible, but she never heard anything to show he moved and she rushed the spot he had been in.
The idea turned out to be a good one because she made contact with something as both she and whoever she couldn't see went down to the ground.
"Bruce! Go check on Clint!" she ordered quickly. The harried look on the scientist's face told her he was having one hell of a time keeping the Other Guy in check and getting him out of the room seemed like the best option, "now!"
Bruce didn't look thrilled with being given the order but she saw him open the door and rush down the stairs towards the lab as she held down whoever or whatever was beneath her.
"You're good," his voice came out smooth as silk when tanned skin, brown eyes, and dark brown and spiky hair came into view below her. He was young, barely more than a kid. "You knew where I was any time I moved, nobody's ever seen me before when they couldn't see me. Color me impressed. You must be the Black Widow."
"Must be," she answered with the barest shrug, "and you must be enhanced."
He snickered as he retorted in kind, "Must be, but then again so are you, otherwise your partner would be dead."
Natasha narrowed her eyes slightly at the comment but she didn't give any sort of reply to the statement to deny it. Instead she responded differently, "They made you to fight me?"
"You're giving yourself far too much credit. However, HYDRA did deem me the best chance of taking care of you since you caused quite a few problems for them," he commented with a rather sassy smirk as he validated her statement partly with that one word. "You really pissed them off when you leaked everything to the world, Widow."
"Where's Strucker and the scepter?" she questioned next and watched as the smirk never left his lips.
"If I tell you that, I'm already dead," was his only reply.
She only reacted enough to give him a devilish little smile, "And if you don't, I'll make you wish that you were."
"I wish you the best of luck with that, Widow, I truly do," he answered without a care, "but I prefer to live." She never saw his fist because it wasn't visible, not until it picked up speed and slammed into her jaw. "I also prefer to keep all my fingers on my hand, as you can see, or rather um...feel."
Natasha fell to the side instantly from the blow and by the time she reached out to where she had been holding him down, he was gone. All her senses went on high alert in an instant and she listened intently. Bruce's worries from the night before were hitting her like a sack of bricks right now and she cursed herself for saying 'I'll be fine'. Nothing quite like this had been in the new SHIELD's 'Index' and she stood patiently as her eyes skirted the room in failure. He always became visible at the last second, but waiting for the last second would get her killed and she needed another way to find him before that happened.
Once again there was nothing she could do when she saw the movement too late and a rather high and well-placed boot hit her square in the chest and back into the same desk from before, except this time it broke into pieces beneath her and she hissed immediately as a splintered piece of wood dug into her waist. This time she heard his steps and she gripped a piece of wood from the desk in her hand, swung it around, and felt and heard the success when she made contact. She slammed it forward again, and again, and again, hearing the crack of a rib before something, which she assumed was his hand, gripped her wrist and stopped her next swing. Then it happened again. She couldn't see what was about to happen until she saw his boot as it stepped on the splintered wood in her side and drove it deeper.
The worst part about not knowing something painful was about to happen was that it made it a hell of a lot more difficult to try to hold in a reaction. This was one of the times where it wasn't quite possible and some strangled gasp of agony, as that foot continued to dig it in deeper, escaped her lips against her will.
Natasha gripped his foot in an instant, twisted it, and dragged him to the floor with her before she climbed on top of him once again and struggled to find his arms to pin him down. She could have just shot him and ended it, but that really didn't get her any answers and she forced herself to attempt to overpower him and keep him down. Hell, she could shoot blindly and wind up killing him even if she were only attempting to wound him. It was a failure once more to keep him down and another piece of the desk met her temple with enough force to blacken the edges of her vision as she fell back onto her back.
"This is...such a disappointment," came his mocking tone from a few feet away. She was done with the game and she pulled her gun and shot in the direction his voice came from. The bullet never met a target and she realized it was just bait when his foot kicked her hand and sent the gun sailing away. "Don't get me wrong," and she dove towards the voice in yet another useless endeavor as she met air. Her frustration with all of it was making her ability to find him get worse and worse, and she barely stayed on her feet when she missed taking him down. "You're doing a halfway decent job," came his voice from behind her. She swung again as she turned and again she met air. "But you're not as good as the stories say you are," he was taunting her and she had let it work as she went for the voice more quickly that time. Unfortunately all it got her, she assumed, was his knee to her gut before her head was reamed into the wall and she went to the floor in a heap again. "You're actually rather pathetic compared to what I was expecting," came his next taunt when she laid there and played possum. "I expected so much more from the legendary Black Widow. Now I'll get to say that I killed the Black Widow, and all I got was one cracked rib."
Given that his voice continuously got closer as he slowly drawled out the last words, playing possum was an effective plan, and then she heard as his foot meet the floor by her face. He seemed to be debating whether or not she was really down for the count and she could hear the uncertainty once she listened more carefully and heard his breathing.
Then he tested it by continuing to taunt her, to attempt to derail her using a new method, it was just too bad for him he wasn't the first to try it and she was going to make damn sure she lived through it to make sure he wasn't the last, "Once I kill you, I'll go down there, I'll kill your two friends." It seemed nobody told the idiot what The Hulk looked like when he wasn't big and green, otherwise he certainly wouldn't be suggesting he could kill the scientist below. Even so, the words did leave the same pit they always did when someone threatened her partner's life, and now Bruce's as well, but she stayed still and let him believe she was unconscious. "I'll kill the one with the glasses quick, he seemed pretty pathetic, not a whole lot of fun...but the guy with the bow? He looked like he might show me at least a fraction of the good time you have." It was sort of like twisting a knife in her chest and she had to force herself not to react.
It worked like a charm because she felt his breath on her face. Natasha snapped her eyes open, reached up, and gripped her hand around his neck like a vice because he was idiotic enough to think he didn't need to be invisible. She drove the knife that she pulled from her boot into his chest, just opposite his heart, while ignoring the two kicks to her ribs. "You want to see what happens when I stop holding back?" she growled out, "you got it." She gripped the knife tighter, drove him backwards with more strength than truly necessary until she was at a full-force run with him stuck for the ride, and then both of them flew through the window beside the one that Clint had been thrown through before.
He landed on his back on the cement floor of the lab and she was sent rolling a few feet away from him. There was a ringing in her ears and she supposed that was probably from the rough landing even with her human meat shield and she sucked in a few shaky breaths from the throbbing throughout her body, but if she felt this terrible at least that meant he had to feel worse.
"Natasha!"
She barely heard her name and she had to blink a few times before she realized it was being said in warning tone of voice, Bruce's voice. She rolled to the side in an instant and not a second too late as the blade of a bloodied knife, her knife, hit the cement by her head and actually sparked. She swung out and he was gone from her sight again, rebuilding the earlier frustration. The son of a bitch seemed to have the ability to bring objects into his invisibility with him. She twisted to the side again as the knife again hit the cement of the floor a centimeter from her nose.
Then it was like he gave up the endeavor. No further attempts to embed a blade into her head came and she sat up, locking eyes with Bruce's confused gaze before both of them began to search the lab.
And then her eyes finally caught sight of the actual differences between where he stood and everything else in the lab. It was barely there. Just the occasional tiny flicker, almost like a ripple in the air, but it was enough to give her the edge she needed. She also saw him move just above where Clint was leaning against a desk with Bruce just beside him. "Clint!"
Bruce reacted to her call before her partner needed to. It was the last thing either she nor Clint expected as Bruce gripped the attacker's hand when the knife swung towards Clint, yanked it quickly behind his back, then got his foot around the other man's unseen leg as he dragged him to the floor.
"Right now I'm really glad she showed you that move..." Clint mumbled out.
Natasha was too if she was being honest.
"Don't get too excited...he's gone again," Bruce told them.
She already knew that and she watched the flicker of difference show itself before she ran towards Bruce and Clint at full-speed, faster than Bruce thought she could move it would seem, because he looked shellshocked. She made impact with her invisible target just next to Bruce, with enough force that she had to have knocked the wind out of him because she had knocked it out of herself as they crashed through yet another desk. The computer screen that had been on the desk crashed over her head in an instant and she was forced off of him again.
He may have been enhanced to be invisible at most times, but he was also one resilient son of a bitch because she had knocked men out with a lot less effort. She grabbed his wrist as the knife came towards her and slammed her boot into his ribs once, twice, and then three times. Natasha narrowed her eyes in an instant as she clenched the fist of her free hand, swung upward, and met his jaw with enough force to send him off of her and a few feet back.
It was proven that he wasn't just enhanced with the invisibility when he got right back up from a blow that she hadn't held back on. She hadn't expected the speedy recovery and she missed the flicker as he pounced. The back of her shoulders hit the concrete, the back of her head smacked down as well, and she couldn't avoid the knife that soared towards her.
But she also didn't have to when he went rigid in posture, knife frozen just a breath away from her eye.
The familiar sound of one very angry Hulk reached her ears at the exact same moment and she watched her attacker's face come into view as he whipped his head around with enough speed, and then she understood how she could never see him until it was almost too late. She snatched the knife from his hand just as she forced her foot into his midsection and purposely sent him a few steps backwards, right into the volatile swing of a rather large and green fist. He flew across the lab from the impact in an instant and she grimaced a little as she watched the way he sailed through and destroyed several desks and computers before she heard the sound of a body careening into a wall.
Natasha could see Clint's stunned expression from where he was leaning against a desk with his arm wrapped around his ribs. Clearly she wasn't the only one not expecting to see the Big Guy, but given that he had probably just saved her life, she certainly wasn't about to complain. Unfortunately, he was also still as pissed off as possible and before she could even attempt to stop him, he trampled his way through a wall and went on his merry destructive way.
"Steve and Thor are inside now and almost to you two, but Romanoff, I've got one very pissed off Hulk out here who really needs a lullaby," came Tony's voice over her comms just seconds later.
She watched as Clint moved next to her, his fingertips pressed against the throbbing flesh around the splintered wood embedded in her waist and she sucked in another shaky breath before she responded to the billionaire, "I'll take care of him, just stay out of his path."
"Nat—"
Clint silenced his objection the moment she shot him a warning look and got back on her feet. She made her way without faltering through the Hulk-sized hole in the wall, passing Steve and Thor without a word as she followed the sounds of enraged growling. She could see him the instant she was outside and she paused when Tony flew up beside her in his suit. Both of them watched as he uprooted one tree and proceeded to swing it into a few others in the area.
"He's more pissed off than usual," came Tony's offhanded but knowing comment. She knew his gaze had traveled to the slow trickle of blood seeping out from around the wound in her side, "and...I guess I can see why."
And this thing between them might have become a problem for entirely different reasons inside that lab, reasons that she had never once thought to actually calculate before. She watched Tony turn his comm off and she reciprocated by doing the same.
"This could be a huge problem..." Tony stated the very same fact that had just gone through her own mind.
Natasha gave the smallest inclination of her head without sparing a thought to disagree. Instead, she said the only thing she could, she told him the truth, "This was never supposed to happen. I knew Bruce's feelings might cause setbacks, but—" She could feel the way Tony studied her as his mask rose to show his face and she watched the tantrum that The Hulk continued to throw through flurries of snow. "But I never once factored in the possibility that the Big Guy would..."
"Feel the same as Bruce?" Tony attempted to finish.
She shook her head at that. "It's not the same, not exactly..." she explained, "what he feels, I think it's—it's different."
"Different how, exactly?" came Tony's curiosity in an instant.
And that was an answer that she didn't have. "I don't know," she admitted, "not yet."
"But you're sure it's different?"
"Well he hasn't tried to kiss me yet, so yeah, I'm pretty sure," she quipped with the tiniest smirk.
It seemed effective because Tony at least looked half-amused and half-disturbed as he shook his head, "That's a whole new Fifty Shades of Green that even I don't want to think about, Natasha."
Natasha snorted out a half-laugh as she rolled her eyes.
"Giving him a chance to let out some of that anger?" was Tony's next question.
"There's nothing else around for at least ten miles in any direction, and since he doesn't seem to be taking a further stroll, might as well let him let off steam," she explained, "besides...this isn't the first time where I'm alive because of him when I should be dead."
Tony's nod was brief and then she heard the mask raise and turned to watch his eyes travel to the wound once again. He was wise enough not to comment that she might not actually be up for a lullaby and instead he said something slightly more surprising, "And do you think only Bruce's feelings are going to cause setbacks?"
She kept her expression neutral now as she continued to watch The Hulk swing the tree around and repeatedly slam it into the ground. "We better hope so," she murmured.
"That's not an answer. Not a good one anyways," Tony told her, "so do you want to explain it to me?"
"The day that happens is probably the day I get myself on the wrong end of things," Natasha admitted.
"You really believe that? You really believe that if your feelings get in the way that you'll get killed?" and he actually sounded surprised to hear it.
Once more she inclined her head to the side slightly, "I know it, besides, we've had this conversation before."
"About the one you didn't love back, the one who died?" Tony asked.
"His feelings got in the way."
The expression on his face actually softened and neither of them said a word again as she kept her arms crossed for a few more seconds. "How bad does it suck?" came the next surprising question from him.
"What, exactly?"
"Trying to keep everything bottled up the way you do, how bad does it suck?"
Natasha was fairly certain he meant that in a serious way and she hadn't actually thought of it until now. The question actually had her thinking about it and she tilted her head sideways just slightly before she unfolded her arms and began walking towards The Hulk. "It never used to be a problem before," she answered just before she was out of hearing range.
She wondered how much that answer surprised Tony as she crouched down and slowly inched her way up a snow pile a few feet away from The Hulk. The movement and her posture left her more than a little uncomfortable with the wood still embedded in her and she ignored it vehemently as she crouched atop the snow pile and gave her usual greeting while pulling her glove off, "Hey, Big Guy." He turned in an instant towards her, tree mid-swing and frozen in the air. A rather hostile pair of brown eyes landed on her form and she barely manage not to flinch when he rumbled out a growl in her direction. It tugged on her already frayed nerves, though she was certain she managed to hide that from her expression. "Sun's getting real low," she offered up as she raised her hand up slowly.
He didn't budge from where he stood, staring back at her as he huffed out a few more enraged breaths. Perhaps she didn't need to have her nerves showing on her face for him to know they were there. The Big Guy was a lot more perceptive than people gave him credit for and she understood now why he normally hesitated to accept her gesture when she tried the lullaby. He knew she was nervous and he would give her the time she needed to try and relax.
The realization succeeded in calming her nerves and she gave him a small smile. as he rumbled the ground a bit and stepped towards her. She turned her palm up towards him and watched as he glanced at it before she spoke, "You take your time for me, not for you, don't you Big Guy?" she questioned with a tilt of her head. He answered with nothing but his own self-satisfied and angry little smirk before he hovered the top of his hand down over her palm. "Thank you," she tacked on as she slowly moved her hand over to his arm and let her fingertips slowly trace there way down to his hand. "Maybe one day I'll get used to the fact the people seem to care about me," she mentioned and she locked eyes with him as he huffed out another breath. His eyes remained locked onto her face and she gave the barest semblance of a shrug, "It's hard though...and I think you get that."
There was a small nod, barely existent from him as her fingertips finally reached his own giant ones. "I care," she told him. He didn't exactly look like he believed her and she supposed she understood that as well. "It might be in my own way but I do care, Big Guy, so it might take some time for me to figure out how to show it."
His eyes narrowed just slightly with what she thought was further disbelief before he snorted, growled, and stumbled a few feet back with his hands on his head. She supposed she understood his hesitation to believe her and she took that with a grain of salt as she waited and pulled her glove back on. It was hard to have faith that someone cared when all you ever saw was the opposite. Once he was no longer green and he was once more Bruce Banner, pale, shaking and shivering in the snow, she made her way over towards him. She listened to Tony flying their way as he handed over a shirt and a blanket and she pulled Bruce up to her in a sitting position, pulling his arms into the shirt before sliding it over his head. "You keeping shirts and blankets in your suit now, Stark?" she questioned as she took the blanket next and tugged it around Bruce, leaving her fingers curled around the edges of it at his chest.
"Hilarious," Tony retorted, "but I flew back to the jet and got them. I should make a 'Bruce's spare clothes' compartment though, now that you mention it."
"You okay, Bruce?" she asked next, ignoring Tony completely.
"Will be..." he mumbled out.
She listened to the same thing Tony did over the comms from Steve, "Barton's fine. Thor's got our invisible man tied up and Maria says SHIELD will pick him up. According to Barton, there's nothing else here aside from the surprise guest."
"Peachy, so we walked into an ambush," Tony commented to her dryly and she watched him roll his eyes.
Natasha mulled it over in her head just a little. She had initially assumed they made him the way he was. "Not an ambush..." she offered up with surprise, "a test."
"Test?" Tony questioned.
"What he said to me, that HYDRA thought he was the best possible way of taking me out. They were testing him out and I was the test."
Then Bruce's words met her ears and gave her pause, "He said you were enhanced..." Her eyes shifted down to his baffled and pained brown eyes and she watched from the corner of her eye as Tony not-so-casually looked in a different direction. Bruce noticed it too.
"You heard that," she stated with a frown. Her comm hadn't been on and she had hoped it hadn't been said loud enough, but that hope died now.
"You didn't deny it."
"No, I didn't."
And Bruce's next statement was pointed towards his best friend, "And you knew."
"Yeah, I knew," Tony admitted.
"Why didn't I know?" Bruce wondered aloud.
She released the tiniest sigh before she answered, "Because I don't talk about it and 'Hey, when I was a teenager, the Russian's injected me with a serum to enhance my natural abilities' doesn't exactly come up in casual conversation."
For a second she thought he was angry that she had withheld it and then she realized that his ruffled brow was because his eyes were locked onto the wound at her waist. She had forgotten about it and she let her own eyes travel down to it as well. Then she remembered that it hurt like a bitch. "It's fine," she assured him.
"That's not fine...Natasha, that's really bad," Bruce grumbled out as he pressed shaky fingers to the skin around the wood. "It needs to come out."
"Might want to wait til we're somewhere else for that, I left it in so I wouldn't bleed to death," she informed him.
Bruce looked even more uncomfortable with it now that she said the comment out loud, though he had to know she was right because he gave a slow nod. "Alright...then we better get to the jet because that's...that's an infection just waiting to happen."
She gave him a small smile at that and was a little grateful that he at least smiled back.
Tony, of course, had to ruin the moment, "It's actually nauseating how you two do that weird little stare and smile thing. At least have the courtesy to do it when I'm not around so I don't barf."
Sleep came on and off for Natasha that night. The bright side was that between the stitches in her side, the concussion and the bruised ribs, when she did sleep it was typically dreamless. Occasionally, the pure darkness of nothing was worse than the nightmares themselves, because she could never be sure what lurked behind the shadows. In her opinion, something had always been better than absolutely nothing and she found this to be one of those times as she opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. She listened as the door to her quarters opened, then closed, and was followed by Bruce's footsteps.
He hadn't even given the pretense of bothering to knock tonight and she didn't entirely mind it. She listened as he padded down the hall and stepped inside her bedroom and she didn't bother with the pretense of being asleep as she turned her gaze to him. He had that look on his face like there was something he had been wanting to say, something that he had been holding back from her, and she slowly sat up as she watched him inch himself onto the edge of her bed right beside her.
"Maria said SHIELD checked in. Guys name was Yuri...Yuka—something that I can't pronounce," and it made her smile a little. "Guy was sort of an Enhanced 'lab accident gone wrong'. HYDRA was messing with the SHIELD cloaking technology in the same lab as the Enhanced technology...and...Yuri just sort of happened by accident."
"One bitch of an accident," she commented with a sigh.
"How's your side?" he questioned softly and she kept her eyes locked with his.
"It's fine, but that's not what you came here to ask me," Natasha insisted, "you want to ask why I told Tony I was Enhanced but not you."
Bruce's face told her she was right even when his words said otherwise, "You're allowed to have things you don't want to talk about."
"I know," she agreed with a small shrug. "Do you remember that first night where we slept together?" and the way he blushed made her smile appear in an instant, "and I'm talking about the one where you texted me in the middle of the night and I decided to sleep in your bed, not the one where you had that nightmare in India or I had the flu."
"I uh...yeah, I remember. What about it?"
"There was a reason why I avoided you up until Tony's party, the one where Constantin tried to splatter me on the pavement." Bruce's eyebrows were ruffled so much that they were almost pushed together and she released a sigh before she continued, "I woke up because you put your arm around me and got...quite close."
The poor guy looked thoroughly embarrassed to learn he had done that before anything between them actually started. "I—you—you never said anything," he stumbled out.
"I didn't avoid you for cuddling me in your sleep, Bruce," she assured him with an amused shake of her head, "I avoided you because—because it felt...nice. I avoided you because I liked it." Bruce looked more than stunned, he looked absolutely shellshocked at the newfound knowledge and she chuckled a little, "Don't look so surprised. After all, the next time you woke up with me wrapped around you, and you kissed me senseless, so I'm sure that gave me away since I kissed you back."
That actually seemed to make him laugh a little and she smiled as he carefully eased himself over her to sit beside her, his shoulder pressed to hers as they leaned against the headboard. "Alright...so..."
"So, right after the kiss and run thing you did, that's when Tony came to talk to me," Natasha informed him. "I didn't intend to tell him, but it was the only way to convince him I was fine after—after going through the window with the Big Guy. I only told him so that he wouldn't worry you over being worried about me."
Bruce had that look of shame on his face all over again but she didn't need to question it because he voiced the reason for it, "I was worried about the Other Guy hurting you, but I hurt you more than he did...didn't I?"
He wasn't wrong and Natasha glanced away. Before now she never would have admitted that somebody had hurt her in an emotional sense, but the honest answer left her lips of its own volition, "Yes." He looked even more ashamed when she turned to look back at him and she reached up and gripped his chin gently in her fingertips, "But you've also said things to me that made me believe you really never meant to hurt me."
"What do you mean?" came his uncertain question.
"No offense, but...men don't just say things like you do," she told him, "no one ever told me that I made their heart beat faster. They certainly never told me I was breathtaking...or that I enchanted them."
"Well, you do make my heart beat faster, you are breathtaking, and you do enchant me..."
It made her smile again and she carefully shifted her leg over him much like the night before. She grasped his face between both palms of her hands and she waited out his racing heart. Once it slowed down, Bruce's hands encircled her waist and she slowly moved to capture his lips with her own. It was when she leaned in closer that her shirt rode up above where his hands rested and his fingertips came to rest on the bare skin of her waistline. Then he gently tugged her even closer. Once again they were testing the limits of where the line was drawn and his mouth moved from her lips, to her chin, then to her neck.
It left that same fluttering feeling from the night before that left her curious and fascinated, then his mouth met her collarbone with just the barest graze of teeth, and a shaky breath left her lips that sent her mind into a world of absolute vacancy. "Bruce—" but she didn't even have to bother to finish saying his name because he seemed to have noticed. In an instant his mouth left her skin, his hands left her waist and he had a concerned look as she sat there with her eyes on the wall.
"Natasha...?" The empty feeling didn't leave right away and she shifted her eyes to meet Bruce's alarmed expression as she removed herself off of him and then the bed without a word. He got to his feet and she noted the fact that he was keeping his distance, though she could see the way he was just barely restraining himself from reaching out to her. "You—Natasha, you're shaking..." and his voice sounded uneasy and fearful, "I'm so sorry...I crossed the line..." He had crossed the line to her comfort zone, sure, but it hadn't been his fault at all. She watched as his hand reached towards her, then he thought twice about it and quickly yanked it back to his side while he fidgeted with his fingers, "You lied...didn't you? You said it wasn't about something bad that happened to you, but—"
"It's not, Bruce..."
"Natasha you're visibly shaking—"
"There was a moment, just for a second..." she told him quietly as she cut him off and took another step back, "that I wanted to kill you..." It was effective in the sense that he was absolutely speechless as he stared at her, frozen in place while she rubbed furiously at her face. "This isn't your fault, Bruce, it's mine." It was her fault because she had never imagined that they would find where her mind drew the line before they found where his did.
Bruce opened and then pursed his lips closed several times before he seemed to find the question he wanted to ask. Still, even before he asked it, his eyes never once bore a look that said he despised her for what she had just told him. But the question...the question rattled her, "Did they do this to you?"
"I don't know. I don't know if it was part of Red Room's conditioning if that's what you're asking," she told him with complete honesty as she rubbed at her eyes, "it's possible. It's also possible that maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just that far gone, Bruce."
"I don't believe that, I don't believe that it's you. But after the few things you've told me, and the few I've seen, it sounds like this is something they would do to you..." and she supposed it was accurate enough, but there was no way to know, not unless it was hidden somewhere in her massive file.
She nodded her head a little and he stepped closer, albeit a bit warily as he studied her for any sense that he should stop. She let him and she didn't stop him when his hand rested carefully and gently on her cheek, thumb softly grazing her chin just below her lip. "It's never happened before. But I've never actually tried to be with someone just for the sake of being with them. Until now."
"So...when you said that you couldn't feel more, that more meant nothing to you...you actually meant that you—that they..."
"That it's possible they programmed me to be incapable of more," Natasha finished for him, "I just never cared before to wonder." She pulled his hand off her face and pushed it back to his side as she backstepped again, "I should have never started this with you."
"Natasha..."
"No, no. This—this isn't fair to you," she insisted quickly, "the longer this goes on the more you'll start to feel for me, but Bruce, I can never feel the same. Maybe right now, in the beginning, what little I can manage seems okay, but eventually—eventually it's not going to be enough."
"It's enough," Bruce's attempt to reassure her did nothing to help.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, "It's not, you just can't see it yet."
"Natasha, it's enough," he told her again with more certainty. "I know it's enough because I—because..." She snapped her eyes open and stared at him but the relief that flooded through her was almost pathetic when he finally finished the statement, "I care about you. You've never pushed me more than I could handle," he reminded her, "you know where my line is and now—now I know where yours is."
"What happens the day that I push too far?" she dared to ask, "will you still believe that what little I have to offer is enough?"
"Yes."
Natasha released a sigh before she moved back to the bed and sat down. "I really hope you're right," she added softly, "because if you're wrong I'm going to be really pissed."
"I'm right," came his reassurance as he moved to sit back beside her. He draped his arm around her shoulders and she rested her head on his chest as she closed her eyes. "And you already broke part of their conditioning, Natasha. You can break this, too."
If it was actually their conditioning. "How?"
"Practice?"
That actually made her smile just a little, "You're a lot more optimistic than I am right now..."
"Sort of depressing when you call a perpetual pessimist more optimistic than you," he quipped with a wry little smile.
It was another effective comment because it made her smile just a little more, "It really is, isn't it?"
Bruce rested his head on top of her hair and she actually felt herself relax again for the first time in the past several minutes. "You keep believing that I'm more than what I think I am. You said you trust me, so do you trust me when I say we can figure this all out?"
Truth be told, she wasn't sure if she was willing to take that plunge. "I don't know..." she admitted.
"You'll have to let me know when you do then..." Bruce told her, "because it's the only way I can help you."
It felt like he was asking for a hell of a lot more than for her to have just a little faith, but at least admitting she wasn't sure hadn't caused him to leave, so she nodded her head, "I'll let you know."
And at least he never said 'I told you so' about her fighting the enhanced. At least he hadn't called her out for saying she would be fine when she very nearly got a knife through her eye and into her brain. At least he didn't hate her inability to feel more. But now he seemed to have that same false idea that she had once had about him.
Bruce believed he could fix her and she almost found herself believing he could.
Almost.
Alrighty guys. The next chapter is the final one. Remember that's where we'll be going into AoU, but remember, it's not the end.
There will be an Epilogue after the final chapter, which will actually be a sneak peak into the sequel which has been titled 'In Ruins'.
