16
Summary: It's Natasha's turn to dream as she tries to work through her emotions and adjust to her new situation. Reconciling her past with her present and figuring out why she was targeted leads Nat to confronting feelings of loss and considering alternate explanations.
Notes: Better late than never! Thanks for sticking with me. I'll try and keep the momentum going through till the end.
In the story, it's still late Monday night of October 30, 2023, as Natasha dreams.
Body and Soul: The Endgame Fix
Part 17: Hearts and Minds
Although she hardly moved after she fell asleep on Bruce's chest, Natasha's dreams weren't peaceful. She was working a mission with teammates from different decades mashed together at first, several of whom had never met in reality. She was the only common factor connecting some of them. They were assaulting a tower made of dark natural rock that sloped upward steeper and steeper until it disappeared into a ceiling of low-hanging clouds above them. The light was a strange orange-pink like dawn or twilight, she wasn't sure, and the thick cloud cover made it difficult to locate the sun? This certainly wasn't Belarus or Kansas, Toto. When she looked down the slope, the situation was much the same with a layer of fog blanketing most of the lower elevations and what look like flooded fens below. If the visibility were better, she was sure there'd be a flaming eye at the top of the climb and a plaque that said, "Welcome to Mordor."
Clint was beside her as they advanced cautiously up the incline, but he was dressed in a strange black and gold hooded uniform, which she didn't recognize. His bow and quiver were missing. One of her sisters, an older Widows trained in the Red Room program, was on her left side, firing at something in the fog below with both her handguns. Natasha's heart came into her throat when she realized the woman was supposed to be long dead a decade or more ago. Natasha knew for certain she had to be dreaming to have plucked a person out of her past.
Shouts and screams and the sound of high-tech weapons' fire roiled up the foggy slope beneath their position. The ground shuddered, and suddenly Clint grabbed Natasha's right shoulder and pushed her down flat against the gravely path. A blob of orange energy struck an outcrop just ten yards beyond them, shaking the ground and sending rock chips flying.
"Fuck!" Clint spat and wiped blood out of his eyes that dripped from a small gash on his forehead where a piece of stone had nicked him. As Natasha gave the wound a quick inspection, he touched his comms, "Hey, whatever let loose that fireball way outclasses us. Isn't it about time for a Code Green?"
There was a roar from far below them followed by the creaking rip and crunch of metal and panicked screams mixed with smaller arms' fire. "Fast enough for you, Barton?" a deep male voice she didn't recognize snapped back over the comms. "He was already worried about Romanoff, so get ready."
Something hit the same rockface just above them, but this time it made a wet thud and the mangled body of an Outrider slid down and landed in a lifeless heap of broken limbs. A S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent on Clint's right retched and threw up. Nat wondered whom they were fighting and what the objective could be. It had to be Thanos' army, but why were they ascending the slope to this tower?
Something large bellowed on the path below. It was closer to them than the sound of weapons' blasts. A dark shape sprang clear from the tendrils of fog and sped toward them on all fours . . . no, sixes? Natasha instantly had her Glocks in hand and sighted them in time to get off a few rounds as the creature closed the gap. Just as she prepared to roll, a blur of purple, gray, and green cut the massive beast off and rocked it backwards on thrashing limbs. She barely had time to recognize Hulk and stop firing before he was on the thing again. He'd landed a double-fisted blow to its lower back and then jerked its head to the side to break the thing's neck in seconds. Another creature came out of the fog and Hulk slammed the dead body of its fellow creature into the second before leaping high in the air through the fog and smashing back down atop the shoulders of a third right behind the second beast. Hulk bashed both their heads with a boulder while they jerked brokenly on the ground.
As Hulk dropped the ichor-covered rock in disgust, Nat realized this was indeed Hulk and not Bruce, but something was different from when they'd last worked together in Sokovia. He focused on her and smiled, straightening up a bit from his normal crouch and squaring his shoulders as he approached. He was wearing a full suit of purple, black, and gray material that covered his torso, legs, and shoulders down to his biceps and ankles.
"Took you long enough," Clint complained.
"Had company," Hulk returned, but his gaze had never left Nat. "We need to get 'Tasha to the top while the rest fight Thanos' dogs," he explained. "Lift?" he asked her, sounding less gruff.
They had often teamed up in the past, so Natasha didn't hesitate. "Sure, Big Guy."
He bent down on his right knee and offered her a boost up with his right hand. Natasha stepped lightly onto his palm and left knee before swinging onto his shoulder and neck. She noted there were straps for hand or footholds on the back and shoulders of his uniform which practically had her name on them. She would have killed for these before Sokovia. She wondered whose idea they were.
"Not fair," Clint protested. "Since you and Banner got engaged, I've totally lost my ride."
"Complain to Banner," Hulk said with a brief chuckle before he turned and sprang up the slope at a smooth lope, covering the rocky ground quickly and leaving the rest of the team behind to fight. "Hang on," he instructed as the pitch of the incline soon had him climbing and leaping between rocky outcrops. The sounds of the skirmishing began to fade as they made their way up the crude path. "We're supposed to retrieve it."
Natasha leaned close to his ear. "What's at the top?"
"A rock," Hulk said.
"An Infinity Stone?"
"Soul Stone," he answered tersely, keeping his attention on the terrain.
Natasha reminded herself this was a dream, but she now felt a looming sense of dread. She remembered hearing from someone Thanos and Nebula's sister Gamora had traveled to Vormir for the Soul Stone, but only Thanos had returned. Was Gamora's body or something worse waiting at the top? Natasha shivered. They were getting high enough up for the temperature to start dropping, and before long, sleet and then snow started to flurry around them. They were well above the fog and the tree line when Hulk stopped and stood still, pausing to listen.
"We have company, but I'm not stopping to say, 'Hello,'" he said with a growl in his voice. "Hang on tight." He leapt almost vertically up the face of the rock, barely pausing for toe or hand holds as he propelled them upward through the swirling gusts of snow. She closed her eyes and hung on. After a few minutes, they reached a plateau.
"This has got to be near the top," Natasha said, and Hulk knelt down, so she could slide off. Although she wasn't prone to motion sickness, the ride still left her a bit off balance and the air was getting thinner.
Hulk was listening again. "Need to keep moving and stay on the trail," he explained. They followed a narrow path between dark stones, leaving footprints in the snow that didn't always blow away. She would have preferred to cover their trail, but there didn't appear to be another route, so her efforts would have just wasted time. They soon came to a cave-like arch and a man-sized tunnel in the dark rock face. They paused, looking for another route, but not finding one. If Thanos had come this way, surely Hulk could?
"Can you fit, Big Guy?" Natasha asked as she sized him up with the opening. She looked inside and shown a light as she scouted it out. The ceiling quickly lowered to about six feet and the shoulder-width walls stayed the same consistent measurement as far as she could see. Even if Thanos has come this way, Hulk at his current size wasn't going to fit. They were in a hurry, so somehow, they'd have to get through the narrow passage. "Sorry, it's even smaller inside, Big Guy."
"Could make it fit Hulk," he suggested, scratching the back of his head. She gave him a knowing look and shook her head. "Okay, puny Banner has his uses. Don't mess around. Thanos' hounds are coming, and I need to protect you." She gave him a withering look. "Okay, Hulk needs to protect Banner. 'Tasha can look after herself." To Hulk's credit, he didn't roll his eyes.
"Thank you," she said a little tartly but couldn't keep from smiling as she took her right glove off, and Hulk obediently offered her his hand and forearm without her having to say a word. "Hey, sun's gettin' low." This time he rolled his eyes like a rebellious teenager before collapsing onto his knees. Natasha knew she was dreaming, but the transformation process still looked just as painful as it always had with his bones and spine audibly cracking as he contracted and jerked, collapsing inward. The heat poured off him and the falling snow hissed as it struck his skin and sublimed into a cloud of steam. As the green receded into his pink skin tones, Bruce had rocked forward onto his hands and knees on the stony ground at the cave's entrance. It was an unforced transformation, but it still had to have hurt like hell. Bruce would cool down quickly in the cold temperature, so Natasha was relieved to see his new uniform shifted to a multilayered garment that covered his arms and feet. There had to be some nanotech involved, so Tony must have had a hand in it.
Natasha helped him to his feet, and Bruce surprised her with a kiss she wanted to lose herself in with him. After a few passionate moments, he pulled back reluctantly, and they both smiled, a little embarrassed. "Sorry, I know. We need to keep moving," Bruce said, and she laughed and took point. They'd gone perhaps a mile heading steadily upward in a switchback pattern when natural light shown around the next rocky corner.
Natasha pulled up and placed a hand on Bruce's chest to stop him. They listened, but the wind was the only sound to be heard. She cautiously crept closer to the last corner of stone, so she could get a view of the opening.
"Come forward, Natasha, daughter of Ivan, and Bruce . . . and Hulk, sons of Rebecca. Fear not, I am the Guardian of the Soul Stone, which you seek," said a male voice with an urbane German accent. Nat looked back at Bruce who seemed rather stunned, but he nodded and they stepped cautiously around the rock into a larger chamber that opened to the outside.
The voice's owner appeared beside the exit, a red skeletal face in a pitch-black spectral cloak that seemed to float in slow motion independent of the air moving through the chamber. Bruce stopped and grabbed Natasha's arm. "I know him. This isn't an alien. He's from Earth's history."
The Guardian smiled, "It has been a long time, but yes, I am from Earth."
"Who are you?" Natasha asked.
"He's the Red Skull. Johann Schmidt," Bruce said through gritted teeth.
"That was once my name lifetimes ago. How do you know me?"
"I'm well acquainted with the history of Abraham Erskine's formula, especially its misuses." Bruce's fists were clenched and his gaze never left the specter.
"Ah, another American Super Soldier." Bruce winced. "No? Wait, a fellow scientist as well, but that doesn't begin to account for the dual nature I detect in you, Dr. Banner. How curious."
"How did you get here? The reports said the Tesseract disintegrated you," Natasha demanded.
"The power within the Tesseract was the Space Stone. I was found unworthy when I sought to wield it, so I was made to serve the Soul Stone here on Vormir. I will be your guide, but I must warn you that there will be a sacrifice to possess the Stone if that is what you seek."
"We've spilt enough blood on the slopes today to serve as any sacrifice," Natasha informed him.
"If only it were that simple, Liebschen. Come," the specter said as he led them out of the cave.
Natasha looked at Bruce as he touched her arm. "Nat, I don't trust him," he whispered.
"I don't either, but we don't have much of a choice. Let's hear what he has to say." They followed the ghostly figure out into an open space at the top of the tower. It looked like a temple in the process of becoming a ruin.
"I'm beginning to wish there was an eye of Sauron up here," Bruce said. Natasha rolled her eyes. They arrived at an open area with carvings in the stone beneath their feet, but their gaze was instantly drawn to the cliff and the view before them. They were above the clouds that stretched out over the landscape to the horizon. The sky was a luminous pink with purple shades near the edges.
"What do we have to do?" Bruce asked.
"If you seek to possess the Soul Stone, you need to understand its power and its unique place among the Stones. It alone demands a sacrifice."
"What kind of sacrifice?" he asked.
"In order to acquire the Soul Stone, you must lose that which you love."
"Whom you love? Okay, I'm definitely ready to trade this for Barad-dûr," Bruce said under his breath.
"I'm not familiar with Barad-dûr," the Guardian commented.
"It's a fictional tower of doom," Bruce explained.
"I'd prefer a sphynx with riddles to this," Natasha groused.
Bruce snorted, "Only if we didn't get eaten."
"Have you heard the saying, 'Beggars can't be choosers'?" the wraith intoned.
"What would someone do if she came here alone? Throw a bucket of chicken over the cliff?" Natasha asked, edging into irritated sarcasm.
That didn't seem to ruffle Schmitt, "No, she'd need to go back and bring the person to sacrifice."
"You did say, 'that which,' not whom," Bruce pointed out.
"No, it's a soul for a soul, an everlasting exchange," the Skull insisted.
Natasha looked at Bruce, "I think we need to get the Reality Stone first."
"That might work," Bruce agreed. "It's worth a try."
"I'll save you the trouble," the Guardian offered. "The Soul Stone is the Queen among equals. The others cannot overrule it."
"Who makes these rules?" Nat complained.
"Not I," the dark specter said sternly.
Bruce motioned her over to the side. "I have an idea. Throw me off. That will count as your sacrifice. Hulk will come out before I hit the bottom . . . or at least before I die. That ought to work. I'm kind of getting used to it."
Nat gave him a stern look for joking around. "He just said, 'a soul for a soul.' That doesn't sound like you'd live."
"Hmmm. You might or you might not," the wraith said, butting in. "Your situation is very unique. Do you have a soul to spare? What would Hulk be without your essence?"
"That's a good point," she noted.
"Well, it's not going to be you who goes over. That would be suicide," Bruce countered.
"Would that work?" she asked the specter.
"It's splitting hairs, but a suicide is a self-sacrifice, not a sacrifice, so it might not work."
"It shouldn't," Bruce said stubbornly.
Natasha paced away from the men to think. What sort of being sacrificed a loved one to gain something like the Soul Stone? A megalomaniac like Thanos or someone truly desperate, she postulated. No wonder they called him the Mad Titan. She told herself there had to be a way around this, but she couldn't help remembering that her abductor hadn't found one.
Bruce was standing closer to the cave's opening, clasping his hands and pacing, when he suddenly stood still and listened much like Hulk had earlier. After a few long moments, he walked over to her. She thought she could hear something that didn't give a damn about stealth approaching through the tunnels. Bruce grasped her by the shoulders. "Nat, we're running out of time. We can't let them find us here. I doubt Thanos' hounds can earn the Soul Stone, but his 'Children' might if they're here. At the very least, they'll take back the information for attaining it and cut access to it off from us if we don't beat them to it."
Natasha looked at him. She'd wanted more time. She wrung her hands. Suddenly, Natasha realized the glove on her left hand was tight because she was wearing his engagement ring. Bruce had survived without her before. Half the universe. She didn't know if she wanted to go on without him. He was going to have to bring everyone back with his own Snap. Nat turned and broke his grip on her arms. She wanted to look at him one last time, but she didn't dare. "I love you," she choked out and sprinted for the cliff's edge.
Bruce had been expecting her move. She hadn't closed half the distance when larger hands closed around her torso and swung her momentum in the opposite direction. She went airborne, grabbing for a handhold along his shoulder, hoping to activate the nanotech on his uniform, only to find he'd thought one step ahead of her and not activated the top half of his outfit. Natasha hit the smooth stone belly-first and the impact knocked the breath out of her. She saw Hulk turn his head to make certain she was safe before he made his leap beyond the cliff's edge. She tried to scream with grief and rage, but only a painful moan would come out of her. Natasha was certain he'd said, "I love you more," as gravity had pulled him out of sight.
She gasped for breath and then sobbed before she forced herself to stand and struggle to the edge. It was Hulk's body she saw sprawled on the stones below when the fall shouldn't have been enough to seriously injure him. Natasha half expected him to get up or transform back into Bruce.
"Interesting," the Red Skull said, standing beside her and studying the prone green body below. "I didn't quite see that coming. He becomes a grüner Waldgeist . . . a Scheusal?"
Natasha fired a round from her Glock into his now solid and once again vulnerable temple, and the former Guardian crumpled to the stone. "I did. I still couldn't stop it," she said to no one in particular. She looked down at the dying Johann Schmidt at her feet. "He's not a monster. That was you. Hulk has always been a hero . . . and so has Bruce Banner."
There was a sudden rush of wind and the clouds opened up as a column of light ascended from the tower below into the darkening sky. A soul for a soul, an everlasting exchange.
When Natasha opened her eyes, she was comfortably warm and holding someone's hand with her left. She felt peaceful and her physical pain was substantially reduced. Suddenly, she realized they were in a shallow pool of water on the plane far below the tower. She quickly sat up and saw Bruce was lying unconscious beside her, a peaceful look on his almost angelic face. "Bruce!" She let go of his hand and shook him by his shoulders when he didn't respond.
His eyes flew open. "Nat!?" He struggled to sit up and realized there was something in his right hand. He unclenched his fist, revealing an orange glowing crystal. "Hulk! No!" He looked at her with horror and misery contorting his features. "He's gone, Nat. I can't feel him. He's just gone!"
Natasha's dream faded and shifted, and she was alone in the field of wildflowers again. The last time she'd been gathering armfuls of spiderwort, dark-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne's lace, but now she was just walking toward the top of a rise, sensing there was something or someone there waiting. Yet, she didn't see anyone else around until she arrived at the crown of the small hill and found a quilt spread out to flatten down a square spot like a private little room in the tall grass. Bruce was there lying on his back with his arms cushioning his head, chewing on a stem of grass. He wasn't the new version of Bruce Banner she knew was breathing beneath her in their bed nor the one she'd just been with on Vormir.
"There you are," he said and broke into a pleased smile that spread across his handsome face as he sat up. He looked like he had over five years ago: warm brown eyes, dark curly hair with graying temples, and a slim body of perfectly normal size and medium Caucasian skin tone. No green. This was the past Bruce, not the present. He was wearing the same blue checkered shirt she'd claimed and worn earlier herself. Natasha suddenly remembered she'd packed it for him along with his other abandon belongings before the Tower's living quarters were cleared out. He'd been missing for three months at that point. Tony had packed up and moved Bruce's lab himself, but he'd asked her to box up Bruce's personal things in his apartment. Natasha remembered holding the shirt to her nose and inhaling, hoping to smell him for a moment before folding the garment and placing it in a moving box full of his clothing headed to the new Avengers Compound. It all waited in storage until Bruce returned from Sakaar and reclaimed his things about two years later.
"Hi," Natasha said, not sure why she was imagining him here beneath the open sky looking like he had before Hulk went to Sakaar. Was this really Bruce or just a ghost she couldn't quite let go?
He patted the spot next to him on the quilt to his left. "Please sit and spend a few minutes here with me. I'm not sure how long we'll have."
Usually, she was more cautious than this, even in her dreams, but she was acutely aware the whole thing was in her imagination—it wasn't real. The adventure on Vormir hadn't been real either. "What's up?" she asked as she sat down, figuring it wouldn't hurt to play along if her mind and her heart were trying to work things out.
He'd brought his right knee up and turned his body a bit to face her better. His feet were bare and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. She noted that his right arm appeared normal, but the hand resting on his thigh had the same white scars where the stones had been that she'd traced on a much larger green arm in reality. Even his ghost was scarred. He noticed her staring and simply smiled as if he was okay with the marks, that he'd taken her advice to the "new guy" and accepted the wounds as his own. "I'm glad you're here, Nat."
"Where is here?" she asked. It certainly wasn't Vormir. The fate of half the universe wasn't on their shoulders at the moment either, and they seemed to be alone with just the birds and the drone of a few insects.
Bruce looked around them at the field of grass and flowers, considering his answer. "Some place familiar to you, pleasant, but still neutral?" he guessed. "I'm not sure."
"Neutral? Like no-man's land?" she prodded.
"No, I'm pretty sure it's all yours, Nat. I don't recognize it. Honestly, I just wanted to see you and be with you if I could. I'm surprised that thinking about this happening has worked. At least, I think it's worked. It's hard to tell when you're in the middle of a dream."
"Okay," she said, not quite sure if this was really her Bruce. "How are you in my dream, Doc?"
"I'm not 100% certain. I think maybe I dream walked or projected. It's kind of like guided dreaming, but it spills over into a mutual experience. Sharing head space was the only way I could communicate with Hulk for a long time, and the barriers only seemed to come down for us during R.E.M. Of course, that was confined to my own head." He gave her a rather goofy, apologetic expression and shrugged, "Sorry, that's my best guess for how I'm sharing this with you."
They both laughed a little nervously at that, but she thought, Why not? She'd dreamed of stranger things over the past five years, and she'd already been adventuring off world tonight with another version of him and Hulk. How much more traumatic could this get? "Maybe we're both imagining this, wanting to find a way to reconnect?" She knew it sounded drippy and sentimental even before she suggested it.
Still, Bruce looked at her in that sincere, nonjudgmental way he had. "I think I just wanted to see you again by myself, and there may not be another way left to do it. I . . . I'm sorry, Nat."
Nat realized she wanted to believe this was really her Bruce. She wanted their bond to be that strong, that they'd be drawn together like this. She scrutinized him closely again. "Doc? . . . Bruce?"
"I'm here, Nat. I honestly am here."
She told herself this was just a coping mechanism. Her version of Bruce was probably gone, and the parts of him left were melded together now in a new permanent form, but then she decided to go ahead and roll with it. Maybe she was unconsciously attempting to find closure? "I'm sorry we didn't have longer before everything with you changed." They'd never really gotten their chance. Her heart still felt raw and bleeding.
"Me, too," Bruce said, his voice sounding a little tight in his throat. "I wanted so much for us, Nat. I really did. I'm sorry."
"I know. I'm sorry too. We should have had more time." Natasha reached over and took his left hand in hers, relieved that it felt real and familiar as she remembered. She needed an anchor right now. "But, what we had never went away, did it? We still have that connection going for us. I feel it, and we'll build on it. I like the new guy. I . . . I just don't want to forget you like this. It's how I fell in love with you."
Bruce squeezed her hand, obviously moved, as he placed his other hand on top of hers. He looked away, gathering his thoughts for several heartbeats. "Thanks for understanding, Nat," he finally said as he looked at her. "I almost gave up on me, but I swear, I never for a minute gave up on you. I've always loved you from the very beginning."
"I know you do. Even when things got bad, you never let your faith in me die. It's one of the things I love about you, Bruce." He believed in her and had trusted her long before he trusted the other parts of himself. He'd been her target, her mark, yet he'd seen through all the half-truths and the games to the real her, and still, he managed to trust her, let her inside, and love her more than anyone else ever had. He accepted all of her.
Bruce gave her a soft, appreciative smile. "I guess, in the end, it paid off," he agreed and squeezed her hands again.
One good thing about dreaming, she decided, was you didn't need tissues. "Hey, you know what? Sometimes, when I was dreaming in the stasis chamber, I'd swear you were near me. At other times, I was searching for you, and that goal kept me going, helped me focus," she explained. "When the drugs the Skrull was using on me lost some of their hold, I got so angry that I was finally able to fight back. It was pretty pathetic, but remembering you kept me from giving up."
He bit the inside of his lips to try and control his reaction to her words; then, he looked up at the blue sky for a few moments, getting his breathing under control, before turning back to her. "I dreamed about you, too. I couldn't give up. I had some dreams that were a lot like this one. Sometimes, we were able to sit down and talk. Most of the time, as soon as I found you, it seemed that you were pulled beyond my reach—just a moment of recognition to keep me going, just a little taste when I needed more."
She couldn't keep from smiling at him. "There were a number of times that I woke up when the Skrull had brought me out of stasis to ask me questions or even just to talk. It was like, for him to accomplish his mission, that meant we couldn't be together. That's why he was so horrible to you. Something depended upon us being apart as much as it did him actually accomplishing something."
"Right." He leaned closer to her, looking into her eyes. "Like we needed to be separated for the bigger plan to work out," he noted. "That had occurred to me after Tony told me about Strange using the Time Stone to find the one set of variables for everyone to survive. According to him, it took 14,000,605 tries for everything to work out and everyone to be brought back."
The exactness of the number almost made it seem plausible to her. Natasha took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. "You know, this whole situation, everything that's happened is so frustrating. Since I woke up this morning, I've been wracking my brain for what the fake accomplished that I couldn't. I can't quit asking myself, would I be able to make that sacrifice on Vormir?" In a sense, she'd just tried it and been thwarted, but at least she'd been able to make the decision to try, even if Bruce and Hulk had outflanked her. However, the result was still going to haunt her.
Bruce frowned. "I'd like to think you wouldn't have put yourself in that position, Natasha. There had to have been another way." This was clearly a sore spot for him.
She shook her head. "Now, don't just dismiss this. It's a hypothetical. Let's play the scenario out. If we'd been together, how would that have changed what happened on Vormir?"
Bruce let go of her hand and leaned back, running his fingers through his dark unruly curls as he thought. "For one, I might have bumped Clint, taken his place during the Time Heist, and gone with you to Vormir instead."
"How do you think that would have changed the outcome?" she pushed, knowing she'd just imagined how it might have gone. She wanted to know what he thought would have happened.
He puffed out his cheeks and let out a long breath as he thought. "If we couldn't have figured out a better way between us, I would not have let you die. I. Would. NOT," Bruce insisted, his voice lowering almost to an intense, Hulkish growl.
Without thinking, she nearly snapped back at Bruce, that he shouldn't have stopped her, but the expression on his face was every bit as fierce of a look as she'd seen on Hulk's. In her earlier scenario, Bruce had outmaneuvered her, but he'd been outdone by Hulk. "I'm glad we'll never know for certain," she decided. Natasha was sure she'd imagined a failed scenario, whether or not it was one Strange had foreseen or maybe even brought about.
Still feeling agitated, Bruce shook his head. "Look, I get what you're saying. Over the past week, I've run this through my mind many times, too, Nat." He looked her in the eyes again, "I admit, in the past, I've been a little envious of what Clint and you share sometimes. I know it's petty on my part, but when he came back without you during the Time Heist, all I could think about when I wasn't focused on putting the Gauntlet together, was how I'd have happily died for you. Inside, I was furious with Clint because he lost you." Bruce drew his knees up close to his chest and hugged them with both arms. His body language had always been easy for her to read, and now he was obviously feeling upset and torn. "I'm sorry, but that's how I felt. It's a good thing the new guy could handle the anger and still stay focused. I'm not sure I would have measured up compared to him on my own. By myself, I think I might have completely broken down."
Natasha thought it spoke volumes about Bruce that he could admit this now. She also realized 'the new guy's' control was a significant achievement since he'd clearly stayed focused to help build the Tech Gauntlet and taken responsibility for the Snap. She had to admit Bruce had a point, he or Hulk by himself might not have succeeded. "Bruce, it's really just as well you didn't get the chance to try and stop me. Who would have worn the Gauntlet if you and Hulk had died on Vormir?"
His own words echoed back at him, "It's like I was made for this." Well, he and Hulk had in a sense made Bruce 2.0 as an improvement on themselves to be the best version of themselves in every way they could anticipate. "I'll admit your 'loss' made wearing the Gauntlet easier for me because I had nothing left to lose. I thought you were gone and my desire to survive was linked to making your sacrifice count. That, and I wanted to try and get you back. Any victory short of returning you was going to be a Pyrrhic one for me . . . for us."
As she listened to him, it hit Natasha that what she was asking Bruce to do was disentangle himself from what had become his new identity. She'd wanted him to be honest, but it hurt to hear him describe what he'd been through alone and then as part of the amalgam. Her doppelganger had set a self-destructive example. Bruce had tried that suicidal path before she knew him. Natasha didn't want to imagine him taking it again. Maybe she'd pushed him far enough? Yet, she still had questions. "Have you thought about what might have happened if you and Hulk hadn't united? Could either of you have brought everyone back with the Gauntlet?"
He stared at his right hand with its scars, flexing it as he responded. "Hulk would have survived the Snap, but he might not have had the single-mindedness necessary to stay focused. It might have sent him on an irradiated rampage that would have made Johannesburg look like a social call. A Snap might have killed me or changed me for the worse as well with all that radiation to fuel an even less stable transformation into who knows what beyond the Hulk we know."
"I'm trying to imagine Hulk bigger, angrier, and greener," Nat said. "I don't think you can get much smarter."
He responded with a dry laugh. "I don't know about that." Thinking back to his experience with the Mind Stone in Loki's staff, Bruce could imagine it. That deadly whisper had lulled his ego into grabbing hold of the staff in the lab. He could have harnessed that power to . . . "No, Nat, I might have become far more dangerous and unstable than Thanos. United, we kept the command to the Stones focused and simple: Bring every being destroyed by Thanos' actions back safely to the present. I'll admit I was thinking of the Asgardians as part of it, too, along with other beings he decimated to get the Stones. That was easy enough to hold in my mind. What I added past that was, 'Bring Natasha back to me safe and whole.'"
"And that's what burned you almost down to the bone?" She touched the back of his scarred hand.
He cocked an eyebrow and gave her a guilty shrug. "You know I'm stubborn. I tried everything I could envision to get around the prohibitions the Soul Stone threw up to block me. All I got was laughter. Mockery. I guess now we know why." He sounded quite chagrined.
She had noted how Bruce was speaking in first person about trying to bring her back when it had been his combined self who had done the Snap. Maybe she'd been wrong. She wondered how fluid his or their identities were. She thought about the Bruce she'd just met today trying to describe the joy of finally being whole.
Impulsively, Natasha leaned over and kissed his left cheek. It felt as warm and real as his hand, so she didn't hesitate to reach around him, drawing them together. Bruce turned his head and kissed her back, slipping his left arm around her waist, but then he hesitated, drawing back a bit as if an idea had suddenly slammed into him. She felt his body grow tense in a heartbeat. "Are you okay, Love?"
"What did I do, Nat? What did I do?" There was a hint of panic and then sorrow in his voice as he looked at her. "You may change your mind about wanting to be near me."
"Why would I do that?"
"The Bruce that you're with right now in reality, the new guy to you, is a good person. He's every bit as intelligent as I ever was, but he can hide things from himself, too. It's a bit like I did when I disassociated, just not as severely." He wrinkled his brow in thought, "Well, to be fair to him, Hulk and I spared Bruce from some things. He doesn't have the baggage Hulk and I have always carried. It's not that he's exactly naïve, but he's a cleaner slate and selfless in a way that, honestly, I'm not."
"Doc, you're one of the most selfless people I've ever known." She stroked his face, and he took her right hand in his.
"Except when it comes to my ego and not sufficiently weighing the consequences. I put Hulk through hell because I was too wrapped up in my own pain. We tried to protect Bruce from some of those darker possibilities."
Natasha shook her head. "That's understandable, but you're no narcissist." She felt Tony had earned that title before evolving past it. "I don't see what's alarming about that."
"What I'm trying to say is my desires, what I wanted for us, Nat, may have consequences I didn't imagine till just now. If that's the case, I need to shoulder the blame, not the new guy. This won't be his fault."
"You're being really cryptic. Walk me through it. What consequences?" He was starting to worry her.
Bruce averted his gaze from her. "When the blood test results come in, make sure to check the hormonal levels," he murmured aloud as if he was making a mental note to remind himself.
When he didn't say anything further, she grew a little impatient. "Spell it out, please. If you're going to hint at something ominous, don't leave me just hanging here, Doc."
"Safe and whole," Bruce blurted as he turned his focus back to her. "That's how I wished it." She shook her head. When that didn't draw a response of recognition from her, he went on. "Think back to when you told me about the Red Room while we were at the Bartons' farm, Natasha. What's the one thing you said might have mattered more than a mission? What might have kept you from sacrificing yourself on Vormir?"
Natasha cocked her head and gave him an incredulous stare. "Bruce, we both know that's not possible. Neither of us could have that happen without medical help or divine intervention." Neither of them was capable of producing life, even if they both wanted to nurture it. That gift had been taken from them. It didn't make either of them any less of a person, but it was a cruel reminder of their mistakes or misfortunes.
Bruce didn't laugh. He took her hands in his. "When I told you I was looking for a place with a big house, and I said I wanted to have a place for a family, we did talk about adoption as a possibility, something to think about in the future. If we'd had five years together, you can't tell me we wouldn't have figured something out and acted on it. We both wanted a family. We'd talked about it being a possibility down the road. What if that's what we did?"
"What are you saying?"
"Even if we didn't completely step away from 'Avenging' like Pepper and Tony did, what if we adopted or even got lucky somehow? To some degree, we've both contemplated having a family together. I've seen how you look at the Barton kids. You . . . we both wanted something like what Clint and Laura have, what Pepper and Tony chose to do."
"Yes, but . . ." Why was this so hard for her to think about? Natasha heard Madame's voice, "You are made of marble. We'll celebrate after the graduation ceremony."
"I'm just suggesting, cliché or not, maybe we went for our piece of happiness, and that wasn't the option that led to a successful Time Heist or a positive return Snap."
"Are you saying it was one of the millions of options that Strange reported had failed?"
Bruce looked at her guiltily. "I think it might have been. The odds would favor it happening in a few of those rejected futures."
This time she was the one rubbing her forehead and feeling frustrated. Was there some version of reality when a family had been in their cards? Had that disqualified her or prevented her from seeing the Time Heist through? Is that why she was the Skrull's target? "This is making my head swim," Natasha admitted. Was having a family still a possibility or had they missed their window for the last time? Was this the real sacrifice?
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel bad. It's really hard to get all of my brain to shut down, and sometimes my mouth is just as bad," he admitted. Sometimes he hated that about himself.
She gave a snort. "It's okay." He had that melancholy look about him again, always ready to shoulder the misery fate seemed to heap on them. "Be honest, am I imagining you, Bruce?" she asked. "Is this really you or am I just putting myself through more heartache?"
His laugh had a slightly bitter edge, "If you are, it's mutual masochism. Maybe we're both imagining each other, Nat? I think we're here because it's a shared desire, and there are unsettled things between us. I don't think either of us want to let go, but I don't know exactly how to hold on now except to keep moving forward. I'm sorry, I know that made very little sense."
"It's always been complicated between us," she admitted. She touched his knee through his jeans. He felt so real and her gut said he was. "Is seeing you alone like this going to be okay or will it cause problems with the rest of your entourage? I don't want to put you at odds with either of them when you all seem to be getting along."
"They're already here. You and I have a little bit of privacy now as a courtesy, but Hulk and the new guy are still just beneath the surface. We don't withhold information from each other unless it's necessary. I'm sure talking things out with you isn't going to be a problem."
Natasha still felt like they were doing something that she would like to stay between just the two of them, but she knew she needed to get past that. "Will I see you again once this dream is over or will you be gone?"
"When you wake up. You'll see me in him. I'll be there. That's who I am now. I'm not going to be gone." He reached up and stroked her temple. "I'll be there when you need me. I promise I didn't die on you."
Natasha knew that wasn't a jab, but it still hurt. She thought about the earlier dream and the sacrifice they'd all three tried to make. "But, aren't you hiding inside him, using him like a mask?" She immediately regretted saying it, but now she'd finally articulated her worst fear for him, that he'd retreated as far into himself as he possibly could as a mode of self preservation that was more like an exile or suicide.
Bruce looked down at his hands. He wasn't clenching them; he wasn't wringing them. He was calm. "No, I don't think so. Even if the accident had never happened, Hulk has always been a part of me. He saved me from a psychotic breakdown when our mother died." Bruce looked back up at her. "Nat, I didn't just choose to move into a bigger body with roommates. I had to accept the trauma from which Hulk protected me. I had to put it into perspective and not blame him for it. That meant putting everything on the table to understand our broken relationship and figure out how to mend it. We couldn't stay the same and find any kind of fairness or equality. We'd hit our low. We couldn't function sectioned off from each other anymore. He was in too much mental and physical pain. I couldn't avoid physically changing in some way with us each tied to our corporeal forms while his was so unstable. It's amazing he was still sane."
"I'm sorry to be so blunt when I obviously don't know all the details about how you came together." He'd said they were equal partners, but it was hard for her to understand what kind of arrangement they'd reached that could be equitable to them both, yet create an amalgam identity who almost seemed like a third individual to her. It occurred to Natasha that she had yet to hear directly from Hulk. His absence, she realized, had left her feeling uneasy. "What does Hulk think about this? Is he okay with it?"
Bruce chuckled. "Do you remember when you told him to 'Go be a hero'?"
"Of course. We were in Sokovia, after he jumped us onto the flying city."
"He took that idea to heart, Natasha. He had to do a lot of growing up on Sakaar, but Hulk is still here, and he has what he most wanted."
"How do you know? How are you sure?"
"'Tasha, it's okay," a deep voice assured her from behind. She whirled around, finding herself in his shadow as he stood in the grass and flowers beside them. "Sorry to butt in, but maybe I can answer your questions."
Natasha was already on her feet. "Hulk!" Just seeing him there flooded her with relief. She stood back a few steps and looked at him. She hadn't seen Hulk since he'd laid her gently on the Helicarrier's deck then flown the Avengers' Quinjet off into the unknown after the Battle of Sokovia. Somehow, he looked different. His hair was cropped short like Bruce's had been when he returned to Earth; yet, he spoke like the Hulk in her earlier dream. What also surprised her was how much his features resembled Bruce's now that he was calm and not scowling. Thankfully, his grin was the same lopsided one she knew.
"Miss me?" he asked.
"Yes," she admitted. Not so many years ago, she couldn't have honestly said that. "I was afraid you were really gone." She stepped closer and he kept smiling, offering her his right hand. She touched his outstretched fingers with her own and stepped further into his space. He had the same scarring from the Stones on his hand, but pale jagged lines snaked up his arm to the shoulder. He was wearing a linen kilt and breaches with an embellished silk belt tied at the waist that reminded her of a monk's garb from some Madripooran temple.
"Too mean and stubborn to die," he said with the same shrug Bruce used.
"I'll agree with stubborn, but you're not mean." His eyes were a shade or two on the greener side of hazel-brown than Banner's dark eyes. In the daylight, she could see that difference now.
Bruce had gotten to his feet and positioned himself at a neutral distance between the other two and then touched Hulk's forearm. "You were in a lot of pain, right?" Bruce asked and his alter ego gave an affirmative snort at the understatement. "His body wasn't stable, Nat. Past a certain point, the mass was borrowed from dark matter. It was a constant struggle on an atomic level to hold together."
Hulk snorted, "Well, the mean part came from somewhere."
Natasha looked disturbed by that information. "You're not in pain now?"
"Not now, but we're in your head, not the real world." He was clearly amused by this.
Duh, true enough. She looked at Bruce and back to Hulk, "I knew it hurt you both to transform, but how could you two function on Sakaar for so long."
Hulk shook his head and gestured to Banner. "You're the smart one. I just know it hurt all the time, but I sort of got used to it better on Sakaar."
"Well, the proximity of so many stable Einstein-Rosen Bridges might have had a slight effect on the accessibility or the amount of dark matter available, but I think your ability to stay in control had more to do with mental tolerances, motivation, and plain old stubbornness."
Hulk laughed. "If it was just mind over matter, I could have come up with that."
"It's not like I had a lot of time to gather data, man," Bruce complained. "There might have been less of a negative charge or more of a positive pull at the atomic level to bind the added mass more securely. I'm sorry, all I can do from here is make a guess, hypothesize a bit. We were in kind of a hurry to leave."
"I'd take your guess any day, Doc," she assured him.
"If you're satisfied that I'm okay, 'Tasha, I think I'll be heading back."
"So soon?"
"Banner is right. We'll see you in the morning."
Natasha looked at Bruce and he nodded his agreement. "Are you okay? Are you happy?" she asked Hulk.
"I'm happier than I've been since before the accident."
"You wouldn't rather be out in the world on your own?" she asked.
Hulk looked quizzically from her to Bruce and then back. "'Tasha, have you been listening to us? We chose this together: the body and the soul . . ." Hulk laid his left hand on his chest and then touched his temple with his right, ". . . the heart and the mind. We are out in the world together just like we are inside." Hulk's oversized verdant index finger delicately traced the side of her face. "Yes, I am happy." She knew from the slight smile and the softened look in his eyes that it was true. "Glad you're finally home, 'Tasha," Hulk concluded.
She blinked and he was gone. Natasha stood there stunned, trying to get her head around what he'd told her and how he'd looked at her. She touched her cheek where he'd softly brushed her face with his finger. Bruce stepped closer and took her hand. He wove his fingers with hers so their palms were pressed together. "Would it make things better if I let you go?" she asked.
He closed his eyes and held his breath a moment before looking back at her again. "It's up to you, Nat. I want you to be happy and, like you said, build on what we have. Seeing you when we're sort of alone together is nice, but I'm happy with what we'll have in reality. I wish I could explain the synergy of it well enough for you to appreciate how we're interconnected." He shook his head and grimaced. "But, if you need to start over to move forward, I understand. I won't bother you again."
Natasha squeezed his hand and shook her head. "You're not the kind of guy a girl ever gets over, Doc. This may be selfish on my part, but I think I'm going to hang onto all of you as tight as I can."
Sighing with relief, Bruce beamed at her again. "Please don't blame the new guy. He didn't have a choice about his making. Hulk and I would have needed to find peace and come to some arrangement on a form, no matter what it looked like."
"To be honest," she said with a raised eyebrow, "you look pretty damn fine together."
"Good," he said with a chuckle. "Hulk insisted on it, but aesthetics are always subjective."
"Can I ask you one more thing that I wondered about?"
"Of course."
"What is it with still using the glasses? Yours were just a little stronger than reading glasses because you're farsighted, so why does the new guy need them? Didn't you guys fix that, too?"
Bruce shrugged. "I did correct that. He has 20/20 vision, but glasses can be for more than just improving someone's eyesight. There's a lot of tech in those frames, and it does give a person something to do with his hands."
"Is that all?"
He shrugged. "Well, you do know how to change your appearance to suit your target and purpose, so I suppose it's 'a look' and a connection to me as opposed to Hulk. The big green body says one thing, yet the clothing and the glasses kind of balance it out."
"The reverse of 'You wouldn't hit someone with glasses,'" Natasha suggested.
"Right, a guy with glasses won't smash you." He paused for a moment to choose his words. "It's okay to ask him about this sort of stuff. Bruce 2.0 won't mind."
"I feel like that's all I've done is ask questions and try to take in information that I'm struggling to process," Natasha admitted. She wasn't sure when they'd let go, but Natasha took his hand again, and they held them up together and touched palms, mirroring and stretching out their fingers together before weaving their digits together again. She was going to miss this small intimacy and others. "He has to feel a little lost, too."
"He does. We all do, but there is a certain pleasure in getting to know each other again. No one really likes unexpected changes, especially big changes, but this is going to work, Nat. A pleasant surprise here and there doesn't hurt. There's more that's familiar than not."
Natasha realized she felt very tired. "I miss you so much. Please just hold me." Bruce stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her. "Some tough professional I've turned out to be," Natasha grumbled as she rested her head in the crook of his shoulder.
Bruce stroked her back as he held her. "Nat, you're more than that. You're not just some two-dimensional badass caricature. You don't have to be the stone-cold assassin twenty-four/seven. It's safe to be more now. It's okay to want more for yourself."
"I wanted it with you." That sounded so petulant and pathetic to her, but it was true. Why the hell did things have to happen this way? It was like some malevolent force was manipulating them and doubling down on the misfortune. This wasn't even the Stones, it was something beyond that.
He kissed a tear she hadn't realized had leaked out. "We'll have it. Trust me on this. We're going to have what we wished for and more."
"You can't guarantee that, Doc."
Bruce leaned back far enough to look her in the eye. She thought he knew something, but held back and didn't say it aloud, as if he might jinx it. "No, but I'm betting everything on us. You with me, Nat?"
"All in?"
"All in."
"I'm such a sucker for a guy with glasses."
"Ah, there's another reason to keep wearing them."
"Shut up and hold me, Banner." He was only too happy to comply.
End Notes: My gratitude to Autumn_Froste for the beta read. Thank you all for patiently sticking with me and the story. My, how much the world has changed in six months. I hope everyone has stayed safe and healthy.
The academic book chapter on Harry Potter fandom is written, and I'll be done with the editing this week (I hope). Wish me luck and cross your fingers Jo Rowling keeps off the rants so I don't need to cover them!
Natasha's first dream is one of the "fix-it" ideas I had early on last year after Endlame, but I wasn't sure if I had enough to make it a story on its own. Inserting it here felt better than spinning it off, so Halloween has had to wait till next time.
I have about two more chapters roughed out and I think it may take a few more parts than the planned 20 to finish up. We shall see! I will be back to writing Special Needs after that. I am not going to jinx anything by promising a date because it always slips past.
Comments, questions, and commiseration are always welcome! Please give a like, a follow, a kudo, a review, a share, a tweet, and tell your friends to give it a read!
If you'd like to see the cover edits for each part, check out my Pinterest board or the Brutasha Nation or Hulk & Associates page on Facebook. This collage includes flowers, a Hulk edit, and everyone's favorite Cap villain.
Next up: Part 18, It's finally Halloween, and Nat meets more of the people with whom Bruce has surrounded himself and explore the place before the trick-o'-treating hordes descend. What has she gotten herself into? You never know who might show up.