Note: Posting on this one a little slower than the faster Tony/OC stories that I'm usually writing on. Not loving this any less, mind you! I think we'll be swapping over to Cicely's PoV soon, since we know hardly anything about her! Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

Chapter Six: A Sixth Sense

Bruce's conscience bothered him more than he'd expected when he woke the next morning. Everything inside him told him that he had no right to get ahold of the surveillance footage of Cicely's meeting with Natasha that morning, even if he was doing it for what he firmly believed was her benefit. He told JARVIS he didn't want to watch, left Tony's messages on read, and almost pretended he wasn't home when Natasha Romanoff dropped by after lunch. That would be rude, though, so he split the difference and answered the door without moving aside to let her in.

"I don't want to know," he said, before she got a chance to say anything.

"Is that any way to greet a teammate?" she teased, leaning her body against the doorway. Her open, easy body language was a direct contrast to his (arms crossed, eyebrows furrowed, shoulders tense, legs close together). "You gonna ask me to come in, or are you planning to have this standoff in the hallway?"

"There's… there's no standoff. Thank you for doing what I think you did, maybe, this morning," Bruce stammered. Being at odds with a woman as beautiful and deadly as Natasha did not make it easy to remain coherent. He wasn't afraid of her, he just knew she had skills in manipulation he could only dream of. Unfortunately, she was also ridiculously perceptive.

"Wow, okay," she said, grinning. "I see my choice to change out of the leather didn't help much."

"Could you cut me a break?" Bruce begged. "I'm trying to do the right thing. I can't have anything to do with her-"

"-which is why you're arguing about it in a residential hallway."

Bruce couldn't help smiling sheepishly at that. "Give me, I don't know, a day?" he suggested, feeling like all his intelligence was null and void if he couldn't apply it to deflect her mind games.

"Can I at least tell you what color her hair probably is by now?" Natasha asks with a glimmer of amusement in her eyes.

"I'll talk to you tomorrow," he said, hoping his tone carried the right kind of polite finality. It wasn't possible to tell from her reaction, because as Bruce shut the door, she actually waved her fingers at him in the gap.

He walked over to the wall beside the refrigerator and rested a hand on it, dipping his head down to settle his mind. Two sets of instincts warred in him- one to learn everything possible about Cicely's situation to better protect her, the other to disengage entirely from Cicely… to better protect her. The hidden third option was to disengage from the dilemma for a little while, and Bruce reached for that one.

He pushed off from the wall, then turned to smile at it. Bruce had lived so much of his life frugally, if not in dire financial straits, and it was nice to live in a space where every single possible square inch of the walls didn't need to be in use.

If only Tony Stark's generosity extended towards giving Bruce a break from all of the soulmate pressure.

"JARVIS?" Bruce said, pinching the bridge of his nose under his glasses.

"I am here at your service, Doctor Banner."

"Is it possible for you to do some more intensive monitoring of Miss Besnard and only inform me if there's something of concern? I'm trying to strike a balance here, and having access to all of the information is clearly not working," Bruce confessed.

It was a good thing that Stark's AI couldn't access his dreams. Ironically, Bruce's fixation on Cicely translated to guilt even in his own dreams, which often meant he woke up in the middle of them- thus guaranteeing he'd remember their content. It was a frustrating, entrancing Catch-22.

"Yes, that is possible. Would you prefer to choose the parameters, or would you like me to calculate those myself and offer you several options to choose from?"

"Tony has you running the tower, his home back in Malibu, and his Iron Man suit, doesn't he?" Bruce asked, chuckling a little. "I'm okay with trusting you. Just let me know if she's in danger. From someone other than me, I mean."

"To be clear, Doctor: are you asking me to avoid telling you when I believe that Miss Besnard is in danger from your own behavior?"

"Maybe that depends on whether your model for danger is Tony or not," Bruce said, more to himself than the AI. "No," he decided. "You'd better tell me then, too."

"Very good, sir."

That sounded a lot like a pat on the back for good behavior. Bruce wondered how long he'd have to stay here before the benefits of the extra space and amenities outweighed the drawbacks.

Now that he had set aside the sense of responsibility to watch over her personally, Bruce could focus on the threat itself.

"JARVIS?" he said, heading for the computer. "Can you access any employment and enrollment records for jobs I've held and conferences I've attended or spoken at since the accident? I'm hoping we can cross-reference that with New York City residency as a starting point, and go from there. I want to find out who's using Cicely as a pawn in their beef with me."

"I will place the names in a new file on your desktop. The search will take a while, perhaps you should take a walk? I would suggest a visit to Mr. Stark's lab, but as it happens, he's just completed a conversation about soulmates with Ms. Potts. I expect you'd like to avoid being notified about the conditions you've just asked me to monitor so early in your day."

It sounded an awful lot like JARVIS was deploying calming suggestions on the off chance he might be getting upset. Bruce didn't know how to feel about that. "You are a mixed blessing, that's for sure, JARVIS."

"Thank you, Doctor Banner."

8888888888

It was almost ten at night when Tony walked into the lab wearing a fancy suit. Bruce was just finishing up a scan of an alien weapon. Technically, this was Tony's space, but that was because Bruce had moved over after Tony got lazy about walking back and forth to discuss things with him. Tony had put aside the component he was working on to design an apparatus he said would serve as a high-res holographic video phone. When the eccentric billionaire started measuring him for something he called 'the carapace,' Bruce had just packed up and moved.

Now, it looked like Tony was shedding his own carapace. Every ten seconds, he took something else off, draping each piece (silk tie, belt, suit jacket, and so forth) on whatever surface was nearby. Bruce half expected that he'd see Pepper come by looking for him and start following the trail of discarded garments. Finally, down to a white wife beater and black, unbelted dress pants, Tony threw himself onto a chair and glared at his socks.

"Successful fundraiser, then?" Bruce asked, laying on the sarcasm.

"I should have paid Clint to wear the suit and pretend to have Laryngitis," Tony groaned. "You don't know how lucky you are. I am the last person you'd call tactful, and Pepper won't let me drink at those things. Worst part? I don't even think it's working."

'Lucky' was a stretch, but Bruce knew he had a certain anonymity in his current form. "You can't wrangle a suit for Rogers and bring him next time?" The city was only willing to fund so much clean-up. Tony and Pepper had been holding dinner party meet and greets to ask some of the more prominent residents to help, above and beyond what he and the company had donated already.

Tony looked up, aghast.

"No, not an Iron Man suit, I meant a cloth one. You know, for schmoozing."

"Are you kidding? He works ten hours a day out there. I'd have to pour him into it, and then he'd just make me look bad with the aw shucksing." Tony threw his head back, letting his arms go limp beside him, hands dangling against the arms of the chair. "I can't believe I used to be jazzed up after this kind of shit."

Bruce thought his real luck was that almost everything he'd been involved with outside the tower, even regarding Cicely, had occurred in parts of the city that weren't as damaged. It wasn't like he could show up at a party as the Hulk and make nice, though, and they weren't learning as much as he'd hoped from the Chitauri remnants left behind in the devastation.

He ran a hand through his hair, pausing halfway through at a stinging thought: his life had been materially made better by the attack.

He had actual friends and a support system, now. A place to live. A place to retreat to if he hulked out. Numerous labs. Work that felt worthwhile (despite their lack of breakthroughs in understanding the alien technology), and a state-of-the-art place to do it in. He'd also found his soulmate, so that lingering uncertainty had also been removed, despite being replaced by a few others. Bruce was grateful- but he also felt guilty.

Surely there was something he could do? Something that didn't require him to solidify the public's understanding that he was both scientist and monster? Sure, a simple Google search would reveal his 'secret identity,' he'd even watched Cicely perform one. But that was a far cry from stepping in front of a cadre of reporters and admitting it, like Tony had.

"You're thinking so hard it's making my head hurt," Tony complained.

"I'm just trying to come up with something I can do to help besides hole up here and enjoy myself. Feels like cheating," Bruce admitted.

"People give Cap shit for his excruciating morality, but you're the dark horse, I think. What, were you raised Catholic? Pretty sure we're supposed to enjoy life."

Bruce laughed. "No way are you qualified to judge." He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. There was a ghost of an idea he was mentally circling, but it was risky.

The sound of snapping fingers brought his eyes back to Tony. "Out with it. I can recognize a percolating idea when I see one, Brawn Valdez."

"What?" Bruce couldn't place the name.

"I forgot you're a tea man. Juan Valdez. Colombian Coffee mascot. Stop trying to distract me from the idea you don't want to tell me about. I'm dying on the vine, here."

"Fine, fine," Bruce said, grabbing his glasses from the desk to put them on. He always thought better while wearing them, a kind of Pavlovian reaction. "It's not fully fledged, and it depends on what's left to do, debris-wise." He paused, trying to gather his thoughts. There was a glimmer of something useful that was dangling just out of his mental reach, caught on a previous train of thought as it chugged away. He'd been remembering how Cicely had looked him up- there. "So, there's a ton of footage of us fighting that day. Heroic fighting, maybe, but we destroyed a lot in the process."

"Destruction I am now tasked with paying to fix, yes."

"What if there was a way to do some Search Engine Optimization and grass-roots fundraising at the same time? Some of the large pieces of debris are still in place because it's too dangerous to move them. They've got to get all of the smaller stuff first, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, we're probably going to have to rent a crane. Maybe two. Maybe two dozen." Tony sighed.

"What if instead, we make a flashy webpage promising that for every funding goal reached, Iron Man and Hulk will show up at a clean-up site and do some of that work? It'll save the cost of the machines, and who cares if it's a little dangerous? What could happen to me? Nothing permanent." Bruce said, actually getting excited.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Tony asked, his head practically sideways. There was an overlay of happiness on his face that hadn't been there before, though. "I mean, can Hulk do PR junkets?"

"I don't think you'd want him to. That's why it should be both of us. You're the bait for the techies, I'm bait for the Mythbusters crowd. You're the voice, I'm the smash," Bruce said. The more he thought about the idea, the more he thought it just might work. It was a shame it was already dark outside; he was full of energy, all of a sudden. He wanted to go look at some of the sites, pick out what chunks he could move with his alter ego. There was almost no chance he could get Hulk to drop chunks of building neatly enough into a heavy-duty vehicle, but there were a few options that might work.

For once, Tony was quiet. Bruce looked over, pulling his mind from the idea of running simulations that tested how much force some of the more sturdy transport trucks could withstand. "What?"

"I thought you hated being Hulk."

"I do. But what I hate more is feeling responsible for some of that stuff without a way to make it right," Bruce said quietly. "You and Fury, you've given me a new framing device. Hulk as a tool."

Tony burst out laughing.

He really was a child, sometimes. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah." Tony stretched and launched himself out of the chair as if that was the only way to get himself moving. "The SEO thing, that's smart," he said. "I'm all for filling the web with footage of us fixing shit instead of breaking it." His gaze turned coy as he looked over at Bruce. "Think your girl might get curious and show up?"

Bruce pushed down the little surge of possessiveness that reared up on hearing his phrasing. "She's not mine, Tony. I don't even know what her words are."

"Legally, there's a claim there, Cold Feet. Generally doesn't mean anything until it's acknowledged, but take it from someone who knows: when my words turned silver, that went into my medical file. Pepper's too. And once we knew whose they were, that became a fact of record."

Bruce stared at him. "I… I didn't know that," he whispered, stunned.

"Yeah, be glad the ballot measure to make it illegal to lie about whose they are didn't pass about ten years back," Tony told him, draping various articles of clothing over an arm and toeing into his shoes. "It's been national law for about twelve years that your soulmate has certain automatic rights, unless legally severed, including hospital and jail visitation." He narrowed his eyes in confusion at Bruce, and Bruce felt his ears start to heat up in embarrassment. "You're really surprised by this! You, the man who seems to have some inexplicable, arcane ruleset about even coming into contact with your soulmate? You never even looked into this? What, did you just stick your fingers in your ears and hum?"

"Basically," Bruce admitted. He reached out for his rolling desk chair and sat down, hard. The chair rolled back a bit from the force of it.

"You really need to-"

"Yeah, getting that now," he interrupted Tony. "Soulmates don't get medical power of attorney, do they?" he asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"No, but it's fast-tracked for them."

"Well, you've done it," Bruce said. His heart was beating so quickly that he wondered if he should make his way down to the bunker, and his mind was similarly racing. The guilt he'd felt in regards to Cicely Besnard had doubled, something he hadn't even expected to be possible.

She was absolutely in danger because of him. Because of his willful ignorance.

And you call yourself a scholar?

"What did I do? Perform the first verbal lobotomy? You look like you're about to sneeze your brains all over my lab floor, Banner."

"Changed my mind. We can't let her stay at her apartment. If she's being watched because someone wants to use her to force through some kind of medical power of attorney-" He broke off at the sound of Tony's gasp.

"Shit. You're right. JARVIS, is Clint Barton in position to watch Ms. Besnard?"

"He is indeed, sir."

Tony's hand was on the door to leave the lab. "She's safe for now. I'll set up a few options for housing, here and at a hotel I have pull at. Tomorrow we'll figure out how to persuade her to accept a temporary move, and I'll get on the fundraising idea you had. Try to get some sleep?"

For a second, Bruce didn't even know what fundraising thing Tony was talking about. He was too worried about the amount of research into soulmates he needed to do ASAP. There was a little spark of excitement deep down inside him that threatened to spread. Tony's meaning finally sank in as Bruce watched Tony trying to get his foot to slide properly into his shoe while balancing on one foot, half of his outfit precariously draped on his free arm.

"Tony, there's no way I could possibly-"

"Are you still missing the cues, here?" Tony interrupted, his voice abrupt and combative but somehow still affectionate. He held out both hands like a scale, his still-draped silk tie swaying with the movement. "You dislike your alter ego, but Hulk helping out is one of the best ways to make up for the damage we caused. You stayed away from people for years to keep them safe, but you're the happiest and most secure you've been for a long time in the middle of New York City. You run from your soulmate, but she's safer here, where we can all protect her from whoever means her harm." Tony let his hands drop, and the tie fluttered to the ground. "Did you ever consider that maybe your instincts are actually terrible?"

Bruce laughed helplessly. "That is one of the least encouraging things anyone's ever told me, but somehow you come out looking like a great friend for saying it."

"Sweet talker," Tony said, blowing him an air kiss and heading out the door.

When he was alone, Bruce leaned over and rested his arms on his legs, letting out a long breath. His instincts were telling him that they shouldn't wait, that someone should go right now and persuade Cicely to pack up a few days' worth of clothes and get out of there.

Then again, Tony's words were pretty illustrative. He spun the chair around to the computer and logged out. On his way out the door, he picked up Tony's red tie and wrapped it around his hand absently as he waited in the elevator. She'd be fine, he told himself.