Author's Note: This chapter is for Kelly of the midnight dawn. This site brings us back together again after almost... uh, scary to say, a decade of not talking or reading each others' stories.

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Chapter 2:

Bruce was doing his best to give the redheaded former assassin her space, something she had made abundantly clear that she not only wanted it, but also that she needed it. It was now six days since the incident between them and even though he hadn't been upset with her reaction to him that night, she seemed to have an entirely different opinion, because any time he actually did see her, she would slowly start to look more and more disheveled. The more the nights went by, the less she would sleep, and the less she would sleep, the more it would show in her eyes. There were even a few times where he caught small glimpses behind the sheet and she would just sit on the mattress and stare at the wall.

Still, Natasha hadn't been wrong when she said that she bothered him. He hadn't admitted it, but something about her had always thrown him a little off kilter. The vague recollection of the Other Guy very nearly killing her had continuously left a bad taste in his mouth. It wasn't her fault that her presence bothered him, however the change in her since then and now was almost unbelievable, and it only fueled the feeling further. Apparently it was the Black Widow who only took five minutes huddled in a corner after being faced with death by The Hulk; she was the one who shook it off, put on her big-girl pants and went back to business.

The woman Tony Stark had left at an airfield several hours away wasn't the same one Bruce had last seen. Natasha didn't shake things off so easily without the mask to hide behind. She had let go of the spider when she had released it into the world and he was forced to see the wreckage of the woman left behind. Sure, her poker face was still as top notch as ever when she actually cared enough to put it on, but for whatever reason she didn't seem to bother with it while she was here. Admittedly, he had actively avoided looking at any of the SHIELD files that the redhead had placed onto the internet for the world to see, especially her files. People didn't become like her without reason, not unless they were a sociopath. She had never struck him as a sociopath though, a few sociopathic tendencies perhaps, but she wasn't completely unfeeling, something that was painfully obvious nowadays.

So he attempted to do what seemed impossible and get the redhead to relax a little; to calm down and breathe through whatever demons she was currently battling. "Um... Doctor Banner?" her troubled voice broke his thoughts and suddenly he realized why she had actually spoken to him. The smoke that now poured throughout the tiny kitchen area was a painful reminder to Bruce that he probably shouldn't cook if he could help it and he grimaced slightly. He quickly took the pan off the burner and wafted the smoke through the air uselessly. Natasha wandered towards him in curiosity and he sighed as she stopped just next to him, then she peered over at the pan he had settled aside on the oven. Her trademark eyebrow raised upward and he watched with fascination as she peeled a blackened piece of bacon from the pan and held it up to her face for closer inspection. It was absurdly hilarious to see her study it with the barest hint of amusement, and then she unexpectedly took a bite of it. "Huh, well..." she took a second bite and shrugged, "I've eaten worse."

He couldn't help but laugh because of all the ridiculous ways he had come up with to convince her to stop staring at the walls, burning breakfast had never even been on the list. "Me too," he admitted, "Though it's almost always my fault that I eat worse. I'm not very good with this."

There was a slanted smile on her face as she gestured him to move. Begrudgingly, he decided it was probably for the best, so he stepped aside and watched as she dumped his burned bacon onto a plate and started anew. "You know, bacon is surprisingly easy to screw up," she mentioned and he chuckled because he could bare witness to that fact. "One minute too long, or not long enough, and you either wind up with a piece of charcoal or a piece of rubber," as if it wasn't ridiculous enough that she took over his attempt to cook breakfast, now she added in a lecture on the many ways to cook bacon. He kept silent as she flipped the pieces over, surprised to see that cooking seemed to put her a little more at ease, even if the darkness under her eyes still remained. Then she flipped it onto a new plate and handed it to him, "Here you go."

"Oh—uh..." He took the plate she dropped in his hands and frowned, though he accepted one of the pieces of bacon just to be polite and took a bite. He had to admit, she did know her way around the frying pan, "I was actually—well, I was making it for you."

There it was again. She stood there and stared at him as she blinked a few times, as though she didn't quite comprehend what he just said to her. "Me?" came Natasha's baffled tone, "Why?"

Bruce sighed, because for someone trained to see everything, she really was rather oblivious. "I haven't seen you eat anything in a week," he told her and he watched her eyes harden for a moment, as though she was going to retort with something unkind. A moment later she seemed to rethink whatever crossed her mind and the hardened gaze faded to something a little softer. It seemed that being taken care of was practically a foreign subject to her, something she didn't know what to do with, and he understood where feelings like that got established. It was something that got drilled into you when you were young, that nobody was going to take care of you except for yourself. Finally he just gave a disheartened sigh and placed the plate back in her hands, "Just eat." She looked mildly annoyed at being ordered around, "You don't know how to kill someone with bacon, do you?"

Flabbergasted, that was the only word he could think of to explain the look that graced her face now. Slowly her lips moved into a smirk and she gave him an amused glare, "Other than initiating a future heart attack or hoping it gets choked on, no." That was a relief. "But I'll see what I can come up with," he released a nervous chuckle at that, but he was relieved to see her take the plate and sit down. "So, I just made myself breakfast?"

"Looks like it," he agreed with a shrug.

Her bites into the slices of bacon were slow, but after the first piece she finally decided to speak again, "Guess it's the thought that counts." She really was the strangest person he had ever met.

Bruce could only smile a little at that. "Well, if you ever wanted to—uh..." he paused, not sure how to actually make the next offer, "Talk..."

"I'd much rather drink my feelings, Doctor Banner, not talk through them." So much for that. Not that he doubted her since there tended to be a vodka bottle in the kitchen or her bedroom each day, and it wasn't always the same one. Yet, she never seemed drunk, so either she had the highest tolerance for alcohol in a human being besides Steve Rogers, or she hid her intoxication as well as she hid everything else.

He gave a haggard sigh and realized it was back to square one as she pushed the plate aside and walked back behind the sheet. There was something that kept him from being overly frustrated with her though and he just couldn't decide if it was the fact that she was so plagued by whatever she saw at night, or the fact that she was avoiding sleep to hide from it. It also begged the question of whether or not she wasn't sleeping for her sake or for his, but the simple fact was, she would watch him when she thought he didn't notice and she would try to gauge what he was thinking. He figured she was trying to find out if her presence was detrimental in anyway, and if he was honest, he didn't really know what her presence was, something of which he informed Tony of that late that night, when Natasha had disappeared from the house.

The billionaire was the only person he actually considered a friend in many years, and he supposed that was because the other man had absolutely no care in the world. There was never a remote hint that Tony feared him or his monster, in fact, he continually made jokes about 'letting the big guy fly' and 'letting off a little steam'. Simply put, Bruce had grown pretty fond of Tony from the moment the other man zapped him on the Helicarrier to see what would happen. "How's Romanoff settling in?" came his friend's voice. The video screen popped up only a moment later to show him wearing a pair of safety goggles, "She stab anybody yet?"

"No stabbing," he answered with a shrug, though he supposed Tony could see the sag in his shoulders.

"I take it she's not settling then."

That was an understatement. "Not particularly," he admitted, "Most of the time it's like she's not even here. And when she is, I think I just piss her off."

Sparks flew across the screen and Bruce was at least a little amused, because only Tony Stark would be using a blow-torch while on a video call. "Well, I don't know if you've noticed, Bruce, but you're a lot alike," and he must have looked completely befuddled by the comment. "She's always angry, too," with that the sparks disappeared and he watched as Tony pulled the goggles onto the top of his head. There were soot marks all around where the goggles had been and it left clean skin in the shape of them. "Honestly. I think she's got even more bottled up than you do. The apocalypse would happen if somebody exposed her to gamma radiation. She would become some cross between the exorcist and a She-Hulk. She would turn green, her head would spin in a three-sixty and she would vomit little daggers that gouged out eyeballs through telekinetic powers of the mind."

"That's not that funny..." Bruce grumbled, but the amused shake of his head and crinkles around his eyes clearly gave him away and proved he thought otherwise.

The billionaire distorted his voice and held his hand up to his mouth like he was talking over a loud-speaker. "Tchhh-chhh—Code: Green. Code: Green. Tccchh-chhh—apocalypse looming. Tccchh-chhh—Black Widow on rampage. Spiders now go rooar, Code: Green, Code—" he paused and both of his eyebrows raised as he looked at something behind Bruce. "Afternoon, Romanoff. You're looking rather—uh..." he guessed Tony had just gotten an actual decent look at the redhead, because he looked a little unsettled for half a second before he hid it. He dared to look behind him to see that Natasha, per usual, looked impassive. It was actually somewhat surprising given she must have walked in sometime during Tony's antics. "Charming as ever," he finished after a beat. She never reacted, in fact, she just went back behind her sheet without a word. It had slowly become her usual reaction when she was met with something she didn't want to deal with. "I believe she's already plotted at least a dozen variations of my death in the last week."

"You haven't been eating bacon, have you?" Bruce questioned. The joke was lost on Tony but he thought he heard a snort come from behind the sheet.

The billionaire gave an over-exaggerated breath of exasperation and clearly he had heard Natasha's snort of amusement as well, "You two have an inside joke, that's adorable." It was all he could do not to roll his eyes until the sound of the front door crashing open caused him to swivel around, wondering briefly if the his housemate was about to take off in some fit of rage. "Romanoff!" Tony's alarmed tone indicated that wasn't the case. By the time he fully turned to see the man with the gun, Natasha was already running through the sheet, and she caught the intruder off-guard as she wrapped her arm around his neck and bulldogged him to the ground. He was almost to dumbfounded to know how to react to what just happened, because at a walloping five feet and three inches, he couldn't fathom the upper body strength she must have to even pull off a maneuver like that. "Yeesh... Romanoff, you are twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag." Leave it to Tony...

Natasha got back on her feet swiftly enough and she eyed the unconscious man with caution before she looked over at him, "You good, Banner?"

"What she means is, are you about to Code Green and break Bahir?" Tony translated.

Bruce could only sigh at that, "Yes—wait. I mean no." He groaned, "Yes to the first and no to the second," he corrected.

Before he could even warn her about the movements of the man at her feet, she leaned down with such speed and, quiet literally, gave him a right jab to the jugular. Then she gave an almost bewildered look out the broken front door. "Shit," he didn't imagine that meant anything good and she proved the thought correct when she ran towards him, "Get down!" There wasn't exactly time to react as she took him to the ground even more easily than she had the intruder and he was left to lay underneath her when the bullets pelted through the fragile walls in a barrage. The video link to Tony was taken out almost instantly and she stared down at him intensely, "I swear if you turn green—"

"I won't..." he promised quietly and he did his best to keep the Other Guy at bay, though he wasn't exactly easy to ignore. The look on her face said she didn't entirely believe him, and frankly, he couldn't really blame her for that. It was an uncomfortable sixty seconds with a sea of gunfire cascading through the house before it went eerily silent and he watched her teal eyes. They were locked onto the front door when she slowly pulled herself into a crouch and she pulled him with her, then dragged him behind the couch. He could only blink a few times as she motioned for him to stay there before she pressed her index finger to her lips. And then she was gone, graceful as a feline, Natasha slipped from their hiding spot and disappeared into the darkness of the room. Whoever attacked clearly had no idea the mistake they just made when they shot any and all of the lights out.

Footsteps creaked in through the front door and he knew it wasn't her. Natasha didn't make noise and he could count at least five sets of footsteps that weren't hers before the silent assassin finally struck. Suddenly there were enough different noises that he wasn't sure what to make of it all. The flare came into the room just in time for him to see her take out a garrote. She was up on the first assailant's shoulders, pulling it around his neck and then just as the man beside them raised the gun, she bent backwards to use the man she had a hold of as a shield. The bullet intended for Natasha took residence in the first man's body and she released one hand on the wire so that it retracted from his neck and into her other hand. Within another second, she easily flipped onto her hands and used her legs to launch her meat shield into the shooter, which brought both men to the ground.

She used that momentum, still on her hands, to vault herself backwards and get the third man's head between her feet. She locked her ankles around his neck and used all of her weight to twist and drag him to the ground as well. When the fourth swung around to where she was on the ground, it was too little too late. Natasha was faster then anyone Bruce had ever seen and she pulled a knife from her boot before she jammed it into the side of the fourth man's knee. The scream made him grimace and he watched the guy writhe on the ground in agony before she slammed his head into the floor to silence him. She nearly made it five for five, but the fifth assailant seemed to have better reactions then the rest of the men.

The large hand gripped her neck, wrenched her forward, and took off her feet. Bruce heard the resounding noise that came when the back of her head slammed into the wall not once, not twice, but three times. He was already on his feet and he quickly grabbed the flare off the ground. Before Natasha could retaliate against her assaulter, he shoved the lit end of the flare into the man's neck. The noise that came from him was mind-numbing and he picked up one of the guns and slammed it over his head. It took him to the ground easily enough. By the time his eyes moved back to Natasha, she was half-leaning against the wall and bent over with hands around her throat, and she stared up at him with the widest eyes he had ever seen. He never got to say a word, because a second later she snatched the gun from his hand and pushed him behind her. He barely saw why she did it until she raised the gun and fired a bullet straight through the forehead of the second guy, who had very nearly put a bullet in Bruce's own back. Her words were quiet, grateful, yet also condescending, "Much as I appreciate the whole white knight thing, I told you to stay back for a reason."

"Whoa!" he huffed in surprise. He reached for her hand as she aimed the gun at the head of one of the four still alive. "Wait—wait!" and she did, although she whipped her head around and looked at him in bewilderment; like he had just done something completely sacrilegious. He supposed that to someone like Natasha, he sort of had, and he rested his hand on hers gently as he pushed the gun down to her side. "You don't just—just shoot unconscious people..." he told her quickly. "They aren't a threat now. I mean, I get it, they tried to kill you but—"

The look in her eyes said she thought he was the insane one right now. "Kill me?" and her tone was nothing if not sardonic as she found the one working light in the house and proceeded to turn it on. It flooded the room just enough so he could see the carnage. "Take a closer look, Doc," she motioned towards the men on the floor. "These guys are local. Far as I know, this might actually be the one place in the world that I haven't managed to piss anyone off." She looked like she was thinking about it for a moment, "Well, India and maybe Switzerland."

"Switzerland?"

"It's very neutral territory there," she deadpanned. Then she nudged each unconscious man with the toe of her boot before she looked back at him, "My enemies aren't going to send the local crime syndicate of India to kill me. And if they did, I would be more offended then anything else."

Bruce frowned now, "You're saying they came here to kill me?"

"Yep..." she muttered and rubbed the back of her neck, "You've pissed somebody off."

"What could I have possibly done?"

The look on her face was near incredulous. "Seriously, Banner?" she questioned. "You're out here, helping the needy, tending to the sick, and you're not asking them for anything. You don't take anything that isn't offered, hell, sometimes you don't even take what they do offer," she pointed out and he couldn't deny the validity of the statement, though he still didn't see the issue. "You're digging into their profits. You've probably cost them boatloads of cash by helping these people like you do. We're in No-mans-land, India where they need to travel for nearly a day without stopping to ever find a doctor to treat them and that's if they can even afford it." It was actually starting to make a little sense. "So, local crime lords send their lackeys with medicine and useless promises of protection. Of course, it all costs something, because nothing is free. A drug mule here, a little murder for hire there. Welcome to the gray area of the world, Doc. It's not all sunshine and roses."

Bruce fumbled for what to even say to that. Of course he knew the damned world wasn't sunshine and roses and he grunted in annoyance at her comment, "Okay... so it's my fault."

He watched as Natasha's eyes softened a little at that. "That isn't what I meant, Bruce..." she assured him, and it was weird that she had suddenly decided to be somewhat gentle with him. She never used his first name, not since she failed in her attempt with it to stop him from Hulking out on the Helicarrier. "It's just—I learned lately that sometimes doing the right thing isn't always the right thing," she added with an almost numb shrug, then he watched as she struggled to think of how that actually fit the current situation. "Bad example..." she decided. "I just mean that, yes, you're doing something great for these people. But doing something generous usually includes stepping on the toes of the greedy."

"So you want to just kill them?" he questioned and he studied her intently. "I mean, those two I understood, self-defense. But... the others? That's murder."

"Are you forgetting who you're talking to here?" came her flippant reply as she rolled her eyes. "Murder is sort of my area of expertise, Banner." So much for Bruce.

She raised the gun at one man again and he quickly grabbed her wrist, "Natasha, stop."

Now she was giving him an absurd look. "Listen to me, Bruce. If half a dozen armed men come into your home, you don't just kill half of them and say ta-ta for now. If my shooting them bothers you, turn around, or if you really prefer, then we can wait til they wake up and start this whole tit-for-tat thing over again. At least that way their deaths can be satisfactory to your over-inflated moral compass."

Bruce swore that she was going to be the death of him, especially since he heard the Other Guy grunt with appreciation at her suggestion of murder. "You know, maybe you should think about what it means when my other half thinks that's a good idea," and to his satisfaction, she actually looked somewhat disturbed at the thought.

Natasha's face quickly returned back to a blank slate though and the only good thing was that she lowered the gun to her side, albeit a tad reluctantly. "Alright, I won't kill them," she told him. He let out a breath of relief even as The Hulk grumbled in the back of his mind. "Got any rope?" he narrowed his eyes at that and she just quirked an eyebrow up, "If you won't let me kill them, you're at least going to get me rope to tie them up, then you'll help me drag them out to the truck."

"Why are we doing that last part?" and honestly, he loathed whatever answer might await him.

Surprisingly, she didn't seem annoyed with his question. "People like them don't stop just because you say please. And they don't stop just because you showed some mercy," she informed him politely. He was a little uneasy about whatever she might be plotting, but he went and got the rope for her anyways. When he got back she was still on high alert in case the men started to wake up, and truthfully, he was afraid one of them might twitch and cause her to shoot preemptively. "We're going to tie them up, we're going to put them in the trunk, and then I'm going to go drop them off to their boss and have a little chat."

"Are you out of your mind?" he groaned out and he heard the Other Guy actually snort with amusement. It was official, Tony had put a mentally unstable assassin in his home that The Hulk seemed to approve of immensely, "How is that any better than what we just decided you wouldn't do?!"

The slanted smile she gave him made him uneasy and her next words didn't help, "There are other ways of convincing people to see your side of things than putting a bullet in them, Doctor Banner."

He rubbed his temples, trying to push back the headache that was lurking closer. "That's not as comforting as you think it is, Natasha..." he handed her the rope and watched as she went about with expert precision as she tied the hands and feet of the men who were still alive. When she finished she stuck the gun in the waistline of her pants and looked over at him expectantly, "You're really doing this?"

She simply angled her head to the side slightly. "You thought I was kidding?" she questioned. The simple truth was, he didn't know what to think of her. It was disturbing to realize that most of the horror he had seen on her face over the last week had disappeared since the first guy kicked in the front door. The Black Widow had returned for the moment, and she left no trace of the hollow and empty Natasha Romanoff, who had walked around in limbo. She placed her hand on his shoulder and gave a light squeeze, something she probably thought was reassuring, though the reality was, it was anything but. "I'm not going to kill them," and he actually thought she sounded sincere, although lying was another one of her specialties. "Not unless I have to." There's always a catch...

"This isn't right..." Bruce reminded her, "You know that." Still, he helped her with her endeavor to bring the bodies to the car, and they both ignored the prying eyes of all the residents in the desolate town.

"Yeah," she admitted. "But I also know there are really only two choices here, so I want you to tell me which one suits your needs better," she informed him as they went back for bodies two and three. "Choice number one, I go in—I do what's necessary to get them off your back, if they don't agree, cut off the head of the leader. Then you keep going down the list until you get one who does agree to your terms." She was disturbingly nonchalant about telling him her plans to murder her way through the command ladder of a crime syndicate. Now they were onto bodies four and five, "Choice number two, I can just flop them onto the front porch to their boss, who by the way, will also kill them, just in case you didn't know that. I'll say, 'Excuse me sir, didn't mean to bother you, but I found these in my house,' and then I'll come back here. After that, he'll proceed to send more men with guns and maybe next time you won't be able to contain your very angry other half, and as Stark so blatantly put it earlier, you can proceed to break Bihar."

"Natasha..."

She ignored the soft and worried tone of his voice. "I don't really see a third option here. But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong." He didn't and as much as he was loathed to admit it, she was right. Those were their only two options unless he left India all together and didn't come back, though the thought was tempting now. The last guy was now in the bed of the truck and Bruce ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated and pissed and worried all at once. A second later, she pried the keys from his hand and opened the driver's side door before she started the truck. She looked back at him again and the saddest smile graced her face with it's presence. "Truth is, Bruce? I'm a lot more comfortable adding more red to my ledger and taking care of this myself, than I am with seeing what you might do to yourself in the aftermath if I don't."

Bruce couldn't help the horrified expression that crossed his face and he wanted to tell her they could just leave India. The problem was, she was gone before he could do or say anything else about it. Natasha had never actually put the options on the table up for debate, she had simply given him the facts and the fact was, she saw murder as the lesser of two evils.

Yep. I'm a tidbit twisted. I was in one of those moods. I get all dark and twisty. Hope you can dig it.

Remember, criticism is always accepted and appreciated. Any angry rants about how horrible I am or how horrible Bruce and Natasha are will be responded to with vomit-inducing kindness. I'm just that dark and twisty. I'm actually quite proud of it.

Ta-ta for now!