Hey ya'll, here's chapter 43, I hope you like it!

I don't own the Avengers. Le Sigh...


I had been in the hospital for four days when there was a light knock on my door. The door opened and I looked up to see the last person I expected to see. "Hey." Betty said as she walked in, holding the hand of a well dressed young boy.

"Hi." I smiled at her, the young boy was holding a bouquet of sunflowers. "Who's this?"

"This is Joshuah." she said as she put her hand on Joshuah's shoulder.

"Hey there Joshuah." I smiled at him and he ducked behind his mom's skirt.

"Josh, say hi." Betty smiled at the shy young boy before looking at me. "How are you doing?"

"Oh you know," I smiled gently. "I can't walk to the bathroom without someone's help, but I get the awesome hospital drugs." I shrugged and winced slightly at the movement.

"Josh, go give Minnie the flowers." Betty said and Josh walked over to me shyly, before holding out the flowers.

"Thank you Joshuah." I smiled at him. He smiled at me before running back to his mom and throwing his arms around her legs.

"He's really shy." Betty said with a small laugh.

"We should introduce him to my Kayla, she'd talk the shyness right out of him." I said and Betty chuckled. "What are you doing here Betty?" I asked and she sighed before gesturing to a chair. I nodded and she sat down, before looking at me.

"Tony called me." she said and I nodded. "He told me about what happened to you."

"He thinks you can help find the cure." I said and she shrugged.

"He wants to bring me in on the project." she said and I nodded.

"Do you think you can do it?"

"I think I can try." she said and I nodded.

"I guess that's all anyone can do." I said and she nodded.

"Can I-" she stopped and smiled as she looked down. "Sorry."

"No, no, it's fine." I said as I pulled my gloves I had Dallas bring me off. She stood up and walked over, I let her take my hand and a moment later she pulled away, before going to sit in the chair next to my bed. "I have a few friends who have healing powers. Sometimes they help me out a little. I had a pretty badly broken nose." I touched my nose and then smiled looking at her. "Pretty bad cut on my head as well. I've never seen Bruce so upset... Well. You know what I mean."

"I'm a little surprised he's not here." she smiled and I chuckled.

"He's hardly left. I finally sent him back to the mansion for a shower and a shave." she smiled and sat down on the side of my bed.

"Minnie, what's it like?"

"What?" I asked.

"This," she gestured to my hands, and then sighed. "Everything."

"Loaded question." I sighed. "Uh, well... Huh." I laughed lightly. "When I touch someone, and they're normal, like you, I feel this warm, almost like, pins and needles feeling going through my hands, and up my arms. When they're different, like when I touch Logan, he's got the healing power, if I touch him and I'm hurt, I feel that same feeling right around wherever is injured."

"So you don't just take energy, but their powers as well?"

"Yeah."

"Even Bruce-"

"No no, nothing like that." I chuckled. "No, the way my daughter Amanda described it, Bruce is a mutate, not a mutant." I explained. "His condition was created, he wasn't born with the..." I trailed off looking as Josh. "The Other Guy." I explained.

"He knows." she said softly. "He's seen him on the news."

"Of course." I said softly.

"So, you have another-"

"Oh, no, no, we took her in. She's a mutant; she was kicked out of her home because of it." I explained as I waved my hand.

"Hey," Betty and I both looked up at Bruce walked in. He paused seeing Betty and smiled gently at her. "How are you?" he asked as she stood up. She gave him a light hug, before he moved over to me and kissed me quickly. "How are you feeling?" he asked me and I smiled.

"I'm feeling like if I don't get out of this hospital room and away from SHIELD captivity, I'm going to snap and drain the next nurse to come in here wanting to check my heart rate." I said and he laughed lightly.

"Well, it's good to see you're back to normal." he said and I nodded as he wrapped his arm around me. "Feeling any pain?"

"Not so much." I said and he shot me a look. "In my knee mostly." I sighed.

"They say you're going to need some physical therapy." he said and I sighed darkly. "But, if you get through today, they also say you can go home tomorrow."

"Home?" I asked and he nodded. "Home as in our fabulous apartment right underneath Dallas and Felipe's fabulous apartment?"

"As much as Tony is trying to get us to move into the tower, yes, that home." he nodded and I sighed gently. "What?"

"It'll be good to be home." I said looking up at him and he smiled.

"The girls will love having you home." he said and I grinned. Tony and Bruce had gone to pick the girls up from Xaviers two days into my hospital stay.

"What's been going on with SHIELD and everything?" I asked as he rested his hand on my knee, over the hospital blankets of course, and then looked at Betty who was trying to get Joshuah into a coat.

"You leaving Betty?" he asked and she nodded.

"I have to go drop Josh off with his dad and then check in at Stark Tower." she said and he nodded. "It was good to see you Bruce." she said as she put her hand on his arm, and then looked at me. "I'll see you later Minnie."

"Bye." I said waving to her slightly. When she left I looked up at him and he raised his eyebrows. "You couldn't find another cellular biologist?" I asked and he sighed.

"You know she's one of the best in her field."

"Yes, and she's also your ex-girlfriend."

"She helped with that... Other thing." he said and I rolled my eyes.

"Yeah, well that could have benefited her as well." I said and he rolled his eyes. "Don't think Jarvis didn't tell me." I said pointedly and he sighed as he sat down on the side of my bed.

"Yeah well I hope he told you the whole story." he said and I nodded.

"He did."

"Good." he replied as he took my gloved hand in his. He pulled my glove off and I sat up, trying to pull my hand away as he ran his hand over it. "With her help," he said. "Maybe soon, we'll be able to hold hands without worrying." he said before slowly letting go of my hand. I smiled and he leaned forward, gently kissing me. "Besides, what about me screams cheater to you?" he asked and I laughed gently before his phone rang. He sighed and looked down at it. I recognized the Iron Man ringtone, Tony had given everyone new phones to make up for the ones they had to destroy while they were on the run.

"Answer it." I sighed and Bruce nodded as he stood up and answered the phone. He moved out to the hall and I turned on the TV in the room, trying to concentrate on the news, before I flipped through the channels, before settling on an episode of Cupcake Wars. What I really needed was something mindless. "Hey, honey, I'm really sorry, but I've got to go." Bruce said when he walked back into the room. "Tony needs me at the tower, and, well, you know how he can be." he sighed and I smiled.

"Don't worry about it, go. I'll be fine. Just promise you'll get me the hell out of here tomorrow." I said and he nodded as he grinned.

"Anything you want me to bring you to wear tomorrow?" he asked and I shot him a look. "I'll ask Dallas." he nodded and I laughed as he left.


Later that night I decided not to ring the nurse to help me get to the bathroom, and rather try doing it myself. It was so embarrassing to have to have one of them come in every night to help, I hated it. So as I slipped out of bed, my bare feet hit the cold hospital floor, I recoiled slightly, before putting them back on the floor. I held onto my IV pole with one hand and the bed with the other as I tried not to put too much pressure on my knee.

I held to the bed as far as I could to the bathroom, and tried to put a little pressure on my knee, yelping slightly as I did. I tried to put all my pressure on my other leg and the IV pole, but by the time I got to the bathroom I was exhausted, and my knee was killing me. When I got out of the bathroom I was obviously facing a challenge. Even if I decided to call a nurse, the button was all the way back at the bed, and if I made it back to the bed, that would render my dilemma of needing a nurse moot.

I sighed as I started to move towards the bed when the door opened. I looked at the door slightly startled as Natasha walked in, looked at the bed, and then looked around the room, before she spotted me. She sighed before walking over to me and wrapped her arm around my waist.

"Put your weight on me." she ordered and I did as she helped me back to the bed. "You shouldn't try to rush it." she said and I sighed as I laid back on the pillows.

"I just feel so useless Natasha." I said. "I can't even make it to the bathroom without a nurse helping me. I just thought, Bruce said I might be able to go home tomorrow, and I thought..."

"I know." Natasha said softly and I looked at her curiously as she looked around the room. "I've been stuck in hospital rooms before."

"Rough missions?" I asked and she shook her head.

"No. Well, yes, but before then. When I was Russian." she said and I looked at her curiously. She talked about her past so rarely I couldn't help but wonder what was bringing this on. I stayed silent, letting her decide to talk, she told me about how she had been experimented on as a child and into her teenage years.

How they had wiped her mind and imprinted entirely new backgrounds so she could get close to her targets, before a phrase or a word would be uttered and she'd be forced to kill them. She told me a lot of things, things I never could have imagined, how she was trained, how the experimenting had left her sterile. As she told me all this I watched her.

The way she stared at a place in the wall behind me, before turning her eyes to mine. "I wasn't allowed to make friends growing up." she said to me and I smiled lightly. "I know that you're my boss and-"

"Natasha I'm not your boss." I said shaking my head and she nodded.

"Well, until Nick Fury officially takes the place as the head of SHIELD again, you are still the director." she explained.

"Not that I don't appreciate you telling me all of this." I said to her and she nodded. "But why did you decide to tell me now?" I asked and she looked down before giving me a small almost smile.

"I didn't want you to read it in my file, or hear it from anyone else." she said and I looked at her curiously. "I trust you." she said and I smiled.

"I've always trusted you Natasha. Ever since I was that hyperactive intern eating skittles and drinking three red bulls a day. Even after I found out you worked for SHIELD." She smiled at that and I laughed. "They say you were the first one to find me." I said and she nodded.

"Stark gave me the go to unseal the room when I said there was no light coming from under the door." she explained.

"Thanks." I said.

"I have to say I'm impressed." she said. "To take out Leona Hiss like that, it's impressive."

"Yeah well, you trained me." I pointed out. "I was just... I know everyone thinks I'm reckless." I said and she shook her head. "No, they do. They all tried to convince me not to do it, and if the Hulk had known what I was doing, he never would have let me out of his sight, but, I did it anyway. All I could think about was how I had to be the one to do it." I sighed. "I just remembered her tackling me and shooting me up with whatever it was that she used to change me, and I remembered seeing her in Nadine when she took the Hulk's blood, and I just... I couldn't let her get away with it." I sighed. "I know it's stupid, and unprofessional, and kind of crazy, but-"

"She's the one who ordered them to cut out your unborn child so they would be able to work on stabilizing the Hulk's DNA so they could sell samples to the army or any other country who wanted an army of hulks." she said simply. "You were eliminating a threat. You did your job." she said and I looked down. "It's always hardest the first time."

"You felt like this too?" I asked and she nodded.

"Hard to believe isn't it?" she asked and I shook my head.

"I don't care what you say Nat," I said as I looked at her. "You're human, just like the rest of us. Except maybe Tony, I haven't cleared that yet." I said and she laughed lightly. "I know you feel the same things, even if you show it differently, I know you feel it." I sighed as I looked out the window. "God I can't wait to go home tomorrow." I paused and then looked back at Natasha. "What's been going on with Fleischer?"

"He's still not giving us any information, our inside source was able to get her hands on a lot of files, but there's evidence that he transferred a lot of it to a flash drive and we don't know where it is."

"And he's not giving it up?"

"As of," she looked at her phone. "Nine forty five, no. Clint is with him now."

"It's almost eleven o'clock." I said looking at the clock. She just shrugged as if to say 'What can ya do?'. "How long has he been awake now?"

"He sleeps for about twenty minutes, we wake him up." she said and I shook my head.

"Falls under 'Things I don't want to know'." I informed her and she smiled lightly. "No, but, seriously, do you think that's going to help? Why not bring Steve in, he knows Hydra." I said and she nodded after a moment of thought.

"At this point it can't hurt."

"Or, you know, at this point, give the guy a cup of coffee, he might tell you everything." I said and she seemed to think about that. "Nat, you said you had a person inside his lab, right?" I asked and she nodded. "Were any of Bruce's DNA samples recovered?"

"I'm sorry, they weren't." she said. "But we're still looking for them." she said. "We're sending contacts around the world, getting into the black market, doing whatever they can. This is our highest priority." she said and I smiled gently as she reached forward and gently took my hand. "I promise."


On my way to Disneyland, and I had to post this chapter! I hope you enjoyed it.

Please don't forget to review!