Author's Note: Man, you people sure know how to make me swoon! That last chapter seems to have lit a fire under a few bums, so I'm glad I finally gave you something in the way of Brutasha, haha.

I have an over-abundance of guest reviewers, and I twitch a lot since there's no reply button. So I suppose I just have to thank all of you here! And an extra head nod to Commander Zucchini, because your name still slays me, lol. Glad you're enjoying, so thank you, sir-ma'am-sir! Everybody say thank you to the Commander for being the one to bring up the possibility for Option B!

Chapter 12:

In truth, Natasha should have made an escape from this situation hours ago, but Bruce was still entangled around her and it seemed wrong to just leave him. She wasn't at all comfortable with the position she was in, but she had promised not to leave and uncomfortable or not, she intended to keep it. There was the barest glint of sunlight beginning to shine into the room and she finally dared to take a good look at the scientist that held onto her. He still looked pale and damaged even as he slumbered somewhat peacefully, it was something that she understood, the ability to sleep dreamless and still be disturbed.

Sometimes the emptiness and darkness of a non-dreams were even less inviting than the nightmares. Terrible things lurked in the black shadows, monsters and evil, grotesque miscreations that the mind hasn't yet fathomed the existence of. If Bruce was anything like her, he would hate himself when he woke up, probably curl into himself and suffer his self-loathing in silence. Worse than that, she would let him because as much as she didn't want to, people like themselves needed that melancholic solitude. If they didn't hate themselves, they wouldn't know what to do any longer, they would be someone someone other than who they were meant to be.

He would probably also hate her again and remember that the fact that she bothered him wasn't such a good thing. It had been such an odd thing to hear from him the the afternoon before, especially after her teasing and manipulative flirtation, and it still sat with her now. Natasha couldn't even decide what had drawn her to make the intrusion into his room last night, there had been some mixture of noises between shuddering breaths and feral groans, and she had looked in just to see that he was alright. The hints of pale green that had covered his skin were her first indication that he wasn't, in fact, anywhere near being alright.

She had stepped in cautiously when failed attempts to rouse him by calling his name at the doorway failed. Bruce had been trapped in some horrible and vivid nightmare and really, every instinct told her that she should run away, but some little fiber left in whatever dark pit of a soul she still had, told her to stay. The fiber had won out and she had inched her way over to the bed. When shaking him had become another useless endeavor, she instead sat down on the edge of the bed and attempted not to cringe when he had rolled over and latched onto her.

It was ridiculous and childish and something no one had ever done before, at least, not to her. People didn't cling to Natasha, and she most certainly wouldn't allow them to do it if they tried. Hell, she didn't even cuddle or whatever else normal people did after sex, so this was as foreign as something could possibly be to her. Bruce's face was pressed into her shoulder, one hand clutching her arm tight enough that she actually felt some semblance of discomfort. It took her several seconds to decide that she couldn't do nothing, that she should try and do something that was supposed to be a comfort.

His old movie binges had been good for something, so she had taken her free arm and trailed it along his back, and said his name one more time. That had roused him awake in an instant and he looked horrified and in agony when he looked at her, that radiated green had overtaken his eyes, and stared up into her own. His warning to go and run, though she had refused, had thrown off warning bells in her survival instinct of fight or flight. Although flight had been alarmingly high on her priority list in the moment, she had shoved it down with tenacious defiance, much to Bruce's rather transparent irritation. She supposed some people would think it was bravery, and many others would think it was reckless, but she considered it proof that she wanted to help. After all, if Clint had been able to see something more in her, she had to be able to do that for someone else. He had seen a chance for good in a drug-induced twenty-year-old assassin for the KGB, so Natasha was determined to try and find that good in someone else.

She had found that, in some sense, she just hadn't expected to find it within Bruce Banner and his monster. It seemed somewhat illogical to find good in an actual monster, or it had, until she realized The Hulk wasn't really so monstrous. Really, her attempts to be helpful had all backfired rather spectacularly. Bruce didn't want help, he didn't want someone to see good in him, and he certainly didn't want her to be the one to sit here and try. He had told Tony that someone like her wasn't good for him to be around, and she was starting to see his point. Bad omens and horrible situations seemed rather keen to follow her around these days and now she found herself double-checking his forehead for a bullet wound. There was nothing, no indication there ever had been, but she could still see it because the image was practically ingrained into her mind.

Natasha couldn't help him, and it was pathetic and idiotic to think that she could. The thing about being broken, is that in order to be fixed, the person doing the fixing can't be missing the same pieces. Her and Bruce were missing the same pieces, and a few very different ones as well. She leaned her head back against the headboard again with a little extra force, grimacing when she realized the noise might have woken up him up. He didn't wake up, but he did shift a little.

What she really wanted to do was to go to sleep and forget all this stupidity, to forget her nonsensical idea that she could save someone as fractured and shattered as herself. He was right not to trust her, right not to want to be her friend, and it left a sort of empty feeling inside her. Clint and Steve had placed themselves into an unbidden friendship with her before she could bat an eye and refuse, and yet, the one time she tried to place herself into that slot with someone else, she couldn't comprehend how she was supposed to do it.

She really was remarkably inadequate at not just being someone that other people could put their blind faith in, but at being a friend. Clint and Steve, that was it. Clint for reasons she would never understand, and Steve because he had some unwavering and foolish notion that good could be found in just about anyone.

Natasha knew better. Good had long ago been snuffed out of her, and in return, she had extinguished it out of many others.

She didn't have any spare parts left to give, not even the semblance of family that Clint had given to her, would she ever be able to give to someone else.

He hoped it was another dream, and that when he opened his eyes, it wouldn't have really happened. However, Bruce knew before he opened his eyes, that wasn't the case. There was warm bare skin where his head rested and an odd weight on his back and side, so when he opened his eyes, he wasn't sure exactly what to do. His head was precisely where he remembered it being, left to rest atop the bare thighs of Natasha who was clad in rather tight black shorts. He didn't even know how to move, because he realized now that the weight on his back was the aforementioned redhead who had an arm draped over his side and her cheek pressed against where her elbow bent.

His first coherent thought was that she could not be comfortable. She was at such an awkward angle that he couldn't even find it plausible that someone could fall asleep in that position. It didn't last more than a few seconds because her eyes shot open, instantly alert, and he guessed that she sensed the sudden shift in the air. Natasha was a little too good at that, even in sleep. Although her eyes were half-glazed from what he guessed was too little rest, she seemed no less functional than her usual self. In just another second she sat up and let him untangle himself, which he didn't hesitate to do.

By the time he was off of her, she was on her feet and practically a fleeting memory in his mind. If it weren't for the fact that whatever that strangely alluring scent was that she used, still lingered in the air, he might not have believed she had ever even been there to begin with. Honestly, he was a little grateful for her swift retreat, but a little worried by it at the same time. He had expected her to sit there and ask questions, try to dig for information and get him to talk, it was her favorite pastime.

Yet she had simply walked away.

It left him with mixed feelings as he got himself dressed and a bit more composed. Bruce wanted to be angry that she had done what she had the night prior, he wanted to be angry that she had stayed when he told her to leave, but at the same time he sort of wanted to thank her for both of those very same things. She never left... Natasha had promised to stay and she had. His hand reached for his back where he still felt that odd sensation of having walked through a spider's web, where her fingers still left traces of their comfort behind.

He shook that off after a moment and finally dared to leave the safety of his room. It took him a moment to look around and find her, but when he did, he couldn't help but soften his eyes a little. She was curled into the corner of the couch, elbow pressed down onto the arm of it, and her cheek rested on her palm with her eyes shut. One of those eyes opened and squinted at him before it closed again, and apparently, that was all he would get in reaction to his presence.

Or so he thought, until her voice rang out, still tinged with the barest hint of tiredness in it, "You good?"

"Uh..." Bruce figured he was about as good as he could be, "Yeah."

She never said another word, just stayed in that exact position and he forced his eyes to the arm she leaned on, to the small blemishes in her skin where his hand had been. He had hurt her, again.

"Don't do that." He frowned at that as he jerked his attention back to her face and she once more had both eyes open. Natasha edged herself upright and stretched a little before that flat and even tone vacated her lips again, "We all have bad nights."

"Other peoples' bad nights don't end with a Hulk."

One corner of her lips turned upwards into a small but slanted smile at that, "Neither did yours."

He sighed a little at her response. She had a tendency to downplay his issues and he wasn't sure why, "About that..."

Natasha merely waved the thought away with her hand, "This never happened."

Once again, she surprised him. "Aren't you the one always trying to make me talk?" he dared to ask. It was curiosity getting the better of him he supposed.

Her meager shrug was a little disconcerting, and so were her next words, "When do you want to leave?"

"I thought you wanted to stay..."

"Changed my mind."

No kidding... This was a rapid change from the woman who had infiltrated his home yesterday and had convincingly charmed and flirted him into returning to the tower. It certainly wasn't the same Natasha who had comforted him in the remembrance of his mother's murder. That thought made his heart jump a little and he noticed the way her demeanor shifted, as though she seemed to know where his thoughts went.

"You can talk if you need to," came her sudden offer, though it lacked her usual warmth from the previous times she had told him the same thing.

Bruce shook his head at that. Maybe if she had been acting like her former self he might have thought about it, but something simply didn't sit right with him now, and as weird as it was, he actually sort of missed the Natasha who had attempted to weasel her way into his life before. "I guess whenever you want to go is fine," he finally told her.

She gave a small nod at that as she rather gracefully got to her feet before she quietly made for the spare room.

Apparently that meant she wanted to leave now and for a brief moment his curiosity got the better of him, so he moved over towards the doorway that still had nothing to cover it. He didn't dare to look in, especially since he knew for a fact that she had a fairly notorious habit of being naked when he did so. "Are you... alright?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

He supposed that was a valid question and decided that asking had been a pretty frivolous idea, "Nevermind." Natasha never bothered to dignify that with a response and he stepped away from the doorway before he asked the next question, "So... you want to leave now?" There was silence before she emerged from the room wearing black skinny jeans, a red tank top, and her seemingly favorite pair of black combat boots and he couldn't resist his next question, "Do you own anything besides those boots?"

There it was, that sly little smile that he actually enjoyed the sight of. "Of course I do," she informed him. "And yes, I'd like to go whenever you're ready," she plopped that familiar black bag down on the floor by the door, much like she had the first time she had been here.

His brow ruffled a little as he looked between her and the bag, "Do you ever bring more than an overnight bag anywhere?"

The smallest twinkle of amusement lit her eyes once more before it disappeared, "Not unless I have to."

This new side of her was quite possibly more annoying and frustrating than any other side he had seen of her. "I have plenty of stuff still at the tower," he stated and he could actually hear the irritation in his own voice, "Just need my bag."

"The runaway bag?"

"Yeah, that one..." he grumbled out as he went to his room to get it.

They didn't talk again, not even when they were on the jet. Bruce had watched her set the autopilot after five hours into the flight before she slid onto the couch across from him, laid down, and turned her back to him without a word. This had easily become one of the most uncomfortable trips of his entire life, and before she eased into a rather restless slumber, he swore that the tension inside the small jet could have been sliced into with the knife she kept in her boot.

He had closed his own eyes for what he thought was a few minutes. It wasn't until he opened his eyes that he realized another four hours had gone by, and he wasn't sure what exactly had his heart racing this time. He didn't recall any foul dream that might have caused it. The smallest sound of a shaky breath reached his ears and he dragged his eyes over to Natasha. She was turned towards him now and unlike before, and he could see the movement of her eyes behind the lids that hid them, the way her whole body seemed to tense up every few seconds.

Bruce knew better than to go wake her up, even though every part of him hated to see it. Whatever plagued her sleep, her face was completely covered with perspiration, her hands clenched and unclenched the edge of the couch cushion. He tore his eyes away and figured she would probably just get even more strange with him than she already was if she knew he saw this, and he was about to drag himself to the cockpit when the mind-numbing scream pierced his ears and brought him to his feet in an instant. She was sitting up, breaths coming out in actual pants before she clumsily fumbled her way off the couch and onto her feet, then tore through the back of the jet to the bathroom in the back.

He had to take a deep breath himself now, he counted, his heart rate had hit a rather high one-seventy-eight when that scream had rung out. It had been almost agonizing, and he dared himself to look back at where she was now seated on that ridiculously small bathroom floor. Natasha's eyes were squeezed shut, her arms clutched around her legs and her forehead leaned down to rest over her kneecaps.

It was a stupid idea, he knew it the moment his brain told him to do it, but he went with it anyways. His feet dragged him back towards her, and though he imagined she knew he was there, she never budged nor said a word. He did the only thing he could assume she might actually want him to do, and he closed the door.

Bruce stayed outside it for a moment and waited to see if she might tell him to do otherwise, he hoped she might tell him to come in.

She did neither.

Natasha stayed in there until the jet landed itself at Stark tower and it wasn't until she came out and picked up her bag that he knew whether or not leaving her be had been the right thing to do.

She gripped the black bag in one hand, walked towards were he stood at the exit and then paused and looked over at him. "Thanks..." and she sounded about as appreciative as he supposed Natasha actually could, but she also included one of those small and very real smiles that she rarely used.

It had been the right choice to shut the door, just like her choice not to leave him the night before had been the right one, much as he didn't want to admit that. Bruce watched her as she strode off the jet as though nothing had ever happened. She waltzed past Tony without a word and he supposed his friend was already aware that Bruce himself was back, even before he stepped off the jet and made his way over to him.

"Bruce, thank God..." Tony huffed out, "I need less estrogen in the tower, definitely less in my lab."

He couldn't resist giving the other man an odd look in reaction, "I thought Thor was here."

"Yeah, right," Tony rolled his eyes at that, "I don't consider an Asgardian in skinny jeans to be the epitome of testosterone."

Bruce smirked a little at that.

"How'd she convince you? You gotta tell me," Tony probed for the information as he stole Bruce's 'runaway bag' straight from his hands. "Sexual favors? Tell me she offered a sexual favor. I wouldn't have come back for less than two."

Bruce groaned as he followed his friend back inside. He should have expected that, "Yeah—that never happened." Though, now that he thought about it, he barely managed to hide his remembrance at his first meeting with Natasha.

"What if I say no?"

"I'll persuade you..."

"Not one?" Tony huffed out a sigh, "You need to work on priorities, Bruceyboy."

Bruce gave him a look of disbelief, "Sexual favors are a priority?"

He watched Tony give him the most incredulous expression in response to that question, "Have you looked at Red? Yeesh, I mean—I'm not including myself, because I'm in a perfectly happy relationship, but any man that isn't on the other side of the fence, would kill to have her fly sixteen hours to say, I want you back," and those last four words came out in a rather feminine voice that made Bruce chuckle.

He figured it was probably better to just ignore that rather than let Tony drag it on. "Actually, she told me that you needed me," he stated, "according to Natasha, you're a weeping hot mess without me."

He watched the sunglasses on Tony's face drop to the brim of his nose, "Wait—did she flirt you into this sudden return?"

And now his face was red, Bruce was well aware of it.

"She did!" Tony grinned at that. Then a slightly more exasperated look crossed the billionaire's face, "Wait... are you telling me that my weeping hot mess of a self wasn't enough?" Bruce chuckled a little at that and then Tony spoke again, "Seriously, Bruce. You performed a serious infraction of the Bro Code here."

Bruce gave him the strangest look at that, "Which one?"

"One-thirty-five."

Bruce snorted out a laugh at that, "A bro never makes eye contact with another bro while eating a banana?"

Tony paused in the elevator, "Wrong code..."

"I should hope so... but before you try and figure out the right one, can I remind you of code one-twenty?"

He watched Tony stand there and think about that even a few seconds after the elevator had opened, then his friend stepped through the doors, "Ah—the whole, not showing nor telling a crazy chick where your fellow bro lives... and how do you remember all these?"

"We even?"

Tony shifted his eyes around in thought before he finally spoke again, "Square deal. We should test the Gamma Pants."

"Those are done?"

"Please," Tony snickered, "Red's been in your pants more than you have recently."

And now he was red in the face again.

When Bruce didn't see Natasha again for two days, he finally decided to take it upon himself to search her out. With a little help and direction from Jarvis, he found her on the balcony that went out from the lounge and looked out over the city. He figured it was safe to approach, given that she probably already knew he was there anyway, and that she hadn't told him not to. So he moved next to her and mimicked the way she leaned on the ledge of the balcony, examining her view over the lights of the city below.

She didn't say a word, she just nursed the small glass in her hand that was filled with clear liquid, liquid he assumed was her favored vodka. For half a second he actually thought about asking her what the nightmare had been on the jet, what could make her scream like that. This was a woman who had been electrocuted in front of him and did little else but shutter and breathe through it, a woman who sat and had chats with The Hulk as though it were normal.

But she had looked terrified in those few seconds he actually got to see her face, and it was a terror that he knew well. He had seen it on his own face enough times to know the horror of a nightmare where you were the monster. It hadn't been something that happened to her in the nightmare, but something that she herself had done.

Bruce figured he was going to have to be the first one to talk, "So...the pants work."

A clear success, because that monotonously void expression changed, the thin and even line of her lips slowly curled upwards and her eyes shifted in his direction. "That so?" she questioned. At his nod she glanced back out towards the city, "Too bad."

"Too bad?" he wasn't exactly sure how he was supposed to take that.

One of her impish little smiles came about next as she twirled the glass, "Well, I bet Stark that your ass couldn't be as bad as he was saying." Natasha inclined her head a little towards him in a sideways nod before she tipped her glass and took the smallest of sips, "Guess now we'll never know."

Oh boy... Still, the random flirtation aside, she still didn't seem quite like herself. "You know, I won't tell anyone that you have a soft side." Bruce watched as her nose scrunched a little at that and she blinked a few times before she actually turned her head to look at him. "You've been different," he added in explanation and when she didn't reply he tried a different tactic, "I thought we were friends."

There was the tiniest flicker of animosity in her eyes that faded almost instantly before she looked back at the view of the city she seemed to be favoring, then she scoffed a little, "That's funny... I wasn't really under that impression."

"Natasha..."

She took another small sip from the glass, "Is there a reason you came looking for me?"

Bruce figured it out then. She really didn't think that they were friends, maybe she even thought he disliked her because he shut the door on her rather than make attempt to help or comfort her, but she had been different before that. It only became more clear after that and he stared at her for a moment, trying to wrap his head around it. It was before her nightmare in the jet, and after his nightmare in India. "Did I do something—I mean—when I was sleeping?" it was such an awkward question to have to ask.

Natasha gave him the most absurd look in response to that. "Please, nothing you could have done would have even remotely bothered me," she assured him. "Plenty of people have done worse in their beds than sleep with their head on my lap." That was an alarmingly frightening answer and his discomfort must have been apparent because her expression softened just a fraction, "You didn't do anything," came her next reassurance.

"How do you talk about things like that like it doesn't bother you?"

It was probably a horrible question, and her perplexed faced told Bruce that he was right. "Because it doesn't bother me," came the rather simple answer, and it was one he doubted the validity of.

"Something is..." he mentioned.

"Like I told you, I'm not an expert on the whole friendship thing," Natasha reminded him. He supposed that rang true for both of them. "I gave it a shot," and she took her third sip out of that tiny glass she nursed in her hands. "Turns out it doesn't work so good when I'm the one trying to make friends with someone."

"You have friends," he told her. She did, right?

She smirked a little at that, "Barton and Rogers?" she chuckled as she swirled the vodka in her glass and stared at it. "I didn't really try to be their friends, they sort of weaseled their way in."

That actually made him laugh.

"Yeah, I laughed too when Steve actually suggested such a thing," she added with a smile. "He told me I was a hard person to trust because he didn't know who I really was," she explained as she released the tiniest breath that was just shy of a laugh. "I asked him who he wanted me to be, and... he said a friend." He watched Natasha chew on her lower lip for a moment, "I sort of laughed at him, told him he was in the wrong business."

"How'd he take that?"

Her face was a little more solemn after that, "He saved my life." She shook her head a little at that, then she did chuckle, "The only friends I have forced themselves into the position."

"Yeah," he agreed, "Mine too."

She smirked at that, "Like Stark?"

"And you."

That seemed to have floored her, because if the look she had given him before had been absurd, this one was downright ludicrous. Apparently, Natasha was also at a near loss for words, because only one left her lips, "Me?"

Bruce chuckled a little at that, "I know I haven't really been that great at being one back, but—you were trying, and I get that." He watched as her face changed from being a little less ludicrous and a bit more uncertain as she stared at her drink. "I'm not good at the friend thing either," he admitted. "But—I was sort of hoping to try and work on it," and he waited, but she she didn't say anything in response to that. "And I figured, if you still wanted to try to work with the...Other Guy... then—"

"You were right," she stated with a shrug, "It was a stupid idea."

That stung a little more than he wanted to admit.

"The truth is, when I'm around you, whether it's bad or good, these little warning bells tend to go off in my head," she told him. It was a weird statement that he didn't know what to do with. "You were right, when you told Stark that I was no good to be around," she added. She shrugged with a bit of indifference as she finished off her drink, "And I finally realized that."

Bruce was even more surprised when he placed his hand over hers and she didn't removed it, or react in any way at all. "Natasha...I meant that I wanted you to help."

"I have to go somewhere for a few days," she finally mentioned, "Barton needs me for something."

"Oh," and he figured it was probably best not to ask.

Her hand disappeared from under his and he watched her back as she retreated off the balcony. He had just looked away when he heard her footsteps pause at the double doors that led inside, so Bruce dared to glance back at her. She didn't turn around but she did speak again, "I'll think about it."

He figured that was better than nothing, but he didn't feel right letting her leave just like that, "Natasha?"

Now she did turn and look at him.

"Thanks... for what you did in Bahir."

That amused little smile graced Natasha's lips once more, "Thanks for shutting the door in my face."

He laughed at that, "You're probably the only person who could say that and actually mean it."

She didn't disagree, she just winked and disappeared from the lounge. Strangely, he found he was going to miss her for the next few days. He just hoped when she came back, she was back on the train where she wanted to be his friend.

That's all for now, but it probably won't take long for another chapter. Cheers!