Author's Note: I was away for the weekend for my sister's birthday, but I've returned now after many drunken adventures at the casino(They had an Avengers slot machine, drunk me found it entertaining for TWO hours straight, and the Iron Man bonus liked me, I won $180 on it.) Cheers!

Prepare yourself, I'm gettin' real in this one, haha.

Chapter 16:

It only took a measly three days after the night where Bruce stayed with Natasha in her bed, and then it was as though she had never been sick to begin with. Her color had returned, or rather, her usual paleness was back in place. Oddly enough, she had only been a bad patient in the most mediocre of ways after the first twenty-four hours of her flu. She never attempted another shower debacle at least, she ate his 'shitty' tasting soup without complaint but most importantly of all, neither of them said a word about the fact that he spent nine and a half hours in her bed.

Admittedly, he spent about three fourths of most of that time trying to think of any number of other things besides the woman who had been cuddled up to him.

And really, who would have thought that Natasha Romanoff was the 'cuddling' type?

Still, he chalked that up to the fact that she had been under the influence of a rather high-grade fever, nearly to the point of being dangerously so if it had ever gone any higher than it was at that point. His first instinct when she had asked him to stay had been to run about as fast as humanly possible. That oddly 'un-Natasha-like' trust had been his only reason not to run for the hills. She hadn't wanted to ask it, he could tell the moment the request had left her lips and she had tried to take it back within seconds of asking it. Secretly, he wondered if her supposed agreement to his suggestion of honesty went out the window with her fever.

People weren't always in the right mind-frame when they had fevers of her caliber and he had seen many effected people do worse than her shower stunts and ask for stranger things than Bruce in their bed. Even so, she had been quite the adorable sick person, and adorable wasn't a word he ever thought he could associate with Natasha. Puffy eyed, red nosed and she had looked at him with such an uncertain face, taken his hand, and asked him to stay. It felt more than a little wrong, because she was asking him to be her friend when he was having more than friendly thoughts at times. She was either the most oblivious person in the history of the world, which he knew she wasn't, so that meant that she was blatantly ignoring it. For that, he was eternally grateful, at least it meant she still wanted his friendship.

She was willing to overlook Bruce's new found and ever growing fondness, which meant that he was going to have to figure out how to do exactly the same thing. He needed to get past it, and the nightmare last night sort of shook some of it loose. It had been a while since he had one like that, but he supposed having been so close to her a few nights ago, it erupted again for that very reason.

The feelings rehashed themselves and became that became much harder to ignore the moment he walked into the lab.

He saw her the second he was in the door.

"Shouldn't you be doing this?"

"I'm checking the readings, just fire when ready, Romanoff."

Bruce stared with his mouth slightly agape.

Tony stood at the computer with safety goggles in place over his eyes.

Natasha stood at Tony's make-shift firing range(and when the hell did he even have time to set that up in the last day?) with an uncharacteristically large Iron Man gauntlet attached to her hand. She looked hilariously out of place, wearing a pair of safety goggles to boot, and any number of men who practically lived in labs would have found her the definition of attractively geekish in this moment. He couldn't really push himself out of that category, which was even more embarrassing than his already unwarranted attraction to her.

"Would you shoot something already?" came more of Tony's pestering.

"Keep that up and I'll shoot off your manhood, Stark."

"My dear Pepper would never forgive that."

"I think she'll thank me in the long run."

Bruce glanced over as Pepper came and stood next to him with her hands on her hips, "They've been bickering like this for hours," she explained with a shrug. "Honestly, it's sort of refreshing watching her put him in his place in his own lab," she offered up with a rather innocent smile, "I like her."

He chuckled a little at that. "Me too, she sort of has that way about her..." and then he thought more about what she said, "Hours?"

"Mmhmm," Pepper acknowledged with a sigh. "Tony's been trying to find the kinks that she keeps using to override Jarvis, she's been showing him how she does it."

"Really?" That seemed a little odd, though the two seemed to be bickering in more of a friendly sense than anything else, it had been more or less that way since he had come back. It wasn't that they were unfriendly before then, but now they just seemed more on the same page, and it had him more than a little curious.

BOOM.

He winced and watched as Pepper jumped a little when Natasha blew a hole clear through the wall, the wall behind it, and just enough to singe the wall behind that one. He almost laughed when the two of them, at the exact same time, pulled their safety goggles to the brims of their noses and studied the hole with equally awed expressions. Truth was, he was far too used to Tony blowing stuff up in the lab to be effected by it any longer.

"Maybe a little too much oomph," Tony mentioned.

"I thought it was supposed to have 'oomph'," she was yanking the giant gauntlet off her arm and glancing around as she pushed her safety goggles on top of her head. Bruce noted that she was at least a good two and a half feet back from the position she had originally been standing in. The impressive part was, she had kept on her feet and he hadn't even noticed that the force had driven her back until he saw her staring at her own feet with an eyebrow quirked up.

Tony rolled his eyes, "Oomph, yes, but that was oomph!"

She walked up to the table next to Tony and rolled the shoulder of the hand the gauntlet had been on, "I'm failing to see the difference, I'd think it was preferable to pack more oomph."

Bruce smiled a little at the comment, caught Pepper staring, and quickly wiped it off his face. Thankfully, Pepper seemed willing not to mention it, "She's different than when she first showed up, you know? I think that incident with you and her in the city rattled her a little more than she let on."

"Why do you say that?" he dared to ask. She didn't seem all that bothered, but then again, it was Natasha and he hadn't exactly been around for a while after the incident. It certainly still rattled him. Other than leaving and running back off to Bahir, and then coming back here, he had never gone anywhere else in the two months.

Pepper frowned a little, "It was her reasoning for helping Tony with Jarvis' vulnerabilities. She said if she can bypass Jarvis, it means that guy who attacked the two of you can as well," she paused for a moment as she glanced back over at the two of them as they inspected the crater in the walls, "She said they had the same training, anything she was capable of doing, he was too, and that's disregarding the ten years that she hadn't thought he was even alive." That was unsettling, and clearly Pepper thought so too, "If Natasha's worried about it, we all should be, in my opinion..."

She was right. Pepper was a little too intuitive for her own good sometimes. "Given that him and Ross seem to have disappeared off the face of the planet, I'm equally as worried," he admitted. "She thinks he'll try something again?"

"She hasn't said," Pepper admitted, "But I imagine she must if she's helping Tony with security upgrades. They've been slowly doing more and more upgrades since you left."

"Since I left? That long?"

Pepper gave him a weak smile at that.

"And Tony is still alive?"

That seemed to have veered the topic for the better, because Pepper gave him a real smile now, "Yeah, I'm impressed too."

"Well, fun as that was, did you upgrade the laser grid?" came Natasha's next comment.

"Mmm, though really, who besides you can actually fit into the duct-work?" came Tony's question. Of course, he followed it up with something that had Pepper shaking her head, though more in a sense of wonder than disbelief, "And how do you do it with that much junk in your trunk? Really, it astounds me that you're as acrobatic with your martial arts as you are."

Oh no... Bruce expected the worst after that comment and he cringed a little as he waited. Instead, Natasha used the the gauntlet still in her hands and smacked Tony on the back of the head, "Next time, I fire it."

To Tony's credit, the man didn't seem to doubt the threat, but it also didn't stop another comment, "Your junk is off limits, understood."

Even more surprising, Natasha reacted no further except to put the gauntlet down on the table.

Pepper just gave him a small smile, a shake of her head and a tiny wave before she left the lab, with her parting words, "With her in the lab too, I think I may need to increase the expenses budget aside for his knack for blowing it up," he grinned at that as he finally fully entered the lab. He had a feeling Natasha had known he was there and Tony was never one to be surprised when Bruce showed up at the lab. While Natasha just gave him the smallest of smiles, Tony did, however, look a little uncertain about whatever he had just walked in on.

"No offense, Tony... but that gauntlet is a little bulky," Bruce informed his as he took a seat at his own desk. He could see Natasha giving his friend an 'I told you so' smile and Bruce felt his own smile quirk up at the sight of it.

"It's supposed to be bulky, you two are ridiculously shallow when it comes to my battlewear," Tony huffed out in dismay.

"He calls it the Hulkbuster," Natasha informed him as she dragged a chair over to him. Within a few moments she ceremoniously took a seat and her feet lifted up onto his desk, one crossed over the other.

Bruce stared a little uncertainly at her, "The Hulkbuster?"

Tony rolled his eyes, "Please, she calls it The Hulkbuster. I call it Veronica."

"That's because you're a prick," came Natasha's immediate retort.

Bruce really thought he should be upset or maybe even surprised, but when it came to Tony, he honestly couldn't find it in him most days. He expected shameless things like that from his friend, it was actually what he liked about him, Tony wasn't afraid to do things like that around him. "It's alright," he insisted, watching as Natasha's rather defensive glance shifted over to himself with a bit of disbelief. "It's his way of being sentimental," he insisted.

Natasha gave him a rather wry smile at that, "His sentimentality is twisted."

"Uh, hello, I'm right here," Tony called out with an exasperated breath.

Bruce chuckled a little at that, "So—dare I ask what brought about this latest invention?" To Natasha's credit, she actually looked a little uncomfortable and he figured he knew why, this armor was obviously in case of another chance of a 'Harlem'. "I'm not upset," he insisted, "I'm actually a little relieved... but also curious."

"Well, as much as I totally love the idea that Red here wants to sing the Jolly Green Giant a lullaby and bring back my favorite genetic experiment in scientific history, I felt like there should be a back-up plan," Tony stated with a casual shrug. "You know—just in case she sneezes again," he quipped.

Bruce couldn't resist an actual laugh at the end of that explanation, especially not when Natasha was rolling her eyes, something that Tony seemed to bring out of her more than anyone else ever could. He remembered overhearing the pilot that had been aboard the quinjet when Iron Man had joined Steve's brawl with Loki in Germany, that Tony's arrival had been the first time he had ever seen Natasha so much as bat an eye at something, let alone 'roll her eyes'. Given that he also heard that Tony overrode the loudspeaker on the quinjet to play 'Shoot to Thrill' and asked if she missed him, he didn't doubt the validity of that for one moment, "Can't you just pack the same amount of punch into one of your normal suits?"

"I could," Tony agreed, "But I don't think I want to test how well my armor would hold up with a very angry green beast beating the holy hell out of it, not when I'm inside it."

"Fair enough," and he watched as Tony tapped a few buttons on his screen and then his eyes shifted over to watch as part of the wall shifted over. The suit of armor that sat behind it(minus one gauntlet) was Hulk-sized and really that seemed a little further on the 'better safe than sorry' side of the fence than Tony usually exhibited. His friend was typically on the wrong side of that fence, "Wow... that's really going to cut into your figure."

He watched Natasha's lips as one side instantly slanted upwards into a tilted smile. It was one of those ones he was enjoying the sight of more and more, and of course, that brought his nightmare back into his mind's eye in an instant. It must have been obvious, at least to her, because he watched as that amused expression faded to nothing as she studied him. She gave nothing of her suspicions away to Tony, and for once her face being the epitome of neutrality was something he was grateful for.

Bruce chose to continue the subject of Veronica. "So, you want me to go on team missions, and if Natasha can't talk the Other Guy down, you want to beat him down?" he figured he might as well be certain that was where this was heading.

"That's the gist of it," Tony replied.

"And you're just going to cart around that behemoth of a suit of armor in your back pocket?" he questioned sarcastically. Natasha's little smile made yet another appearance.

Tony huffed a little and leaned back in his seat, "Of course not, I'm going to shoot it up in a satellite so that there's instant access to it no matter where we currently are."

"Naturally," Natasha commented with the smile once again removed.

"You need to spend more time with me and less with her," Tony ordered him with a frown, "She's rubbing of on you. Your sarcasm is taking on a rather dark Natasha-esque vibe, I'm not feeling it."

"How are you even going to do that?" Bruce grumbled out in disbelief. "Who would actually let you shoot a satellite out into space with a giant suit of armor inside it?"

Tony actually looked a little offended by the question, "There are no problems my money can't solve."

"Can it buy you a smaller ego?"

Bruce barely held back his smile at Natasha's last comment, "You probably wouldn't have to pay them off if you told them it was there to beat me senseless."

"And there's the return of my favorite self-deprecating humor, thank God, I was afraid Natasha had completely rewired your ability to be funny," Tony clapped with a grin.

Still, the stupid nightmare wouldn't stop niggling at the back of his mind, and he could feel Natasha's gaze on him again; and really, how did she seem to know each time it eased it's way back forward? She seemed to be willing to let it slide for a second time, and he supposed that if she hadn't been sick for a few days, she might have noticed them weighing on him since the night after she used him as a human heater.

Knowing Natasha, she may have very well noticed and chosen not to ask about it, maybe she was testing his end on the honesty-policy he had suggested. That in itself was even more disconcerting, because if this was a test, he knew he was failing it. He wasn't sure how to bring up the fact that she was plaguing his nightmares in casual conversation, and he wondered just briefly, if she had equally horrifying nights over what the Other Guy had nearly done to her.

Apparently, he stayed quiet too long, because now Tony also seemed to notice that something wasn't quite right, "You alright, buddy?"

Bruce couldn't stop the way his eyes shifted to Natasha momentarily before he cast his gaze downwards at the desk and he felt a little more uneasy than before.

"Think that's my cue that I've overstayed my lab welcome," Natasha said to nobody in particular. He saw her feet drop off his desk and he grimaced a little as she swiveled around on the chair and walked out of the lab. There hadn't been anything in her voice to give away the fact she thought she did something wrong, but he had learned lately that when it seemed like Natasha felt nothing at all, in actuality she was feeling much more than when she actually let people see her.

He could feel Tony staring at him now and his friend seemed over the teasing and more into the worried department, "Bad night?"

"Yeah..." he answered with a sigh as he rubbed at his eyes.

"About Natasha?"

"Yeah..."

Tony was quiet for half a minute as he seemed to debate his next words carefully, "You ever think it might help to just tell her about them?"

"And you think 'Hey, I dream that I kill you sometimes' is a good way to work on this friendship thing she seems so keen on?" Bruce questioned dryly.

It was exactly fifty-eight seconds before Tony dared to comment on that, "She likes you, I think she'd be grateful you told her rather than hid it from her." There was the barest of shrugs as his friend swiveled around and looked back at his computer screen, "All I'm saying is that for someone who has an insurmountable amount of walls to keep people out, she seems to let you through quite a lot of them." Bruce kept quiet at that, which Tony seemed fine with, since he apparently hadn't finished yet, "You know, I know she messed up a lot with her attempts to befriend you for a while, but you get her loyalty, and I think Barton will vouch that you'll have it for life. You don't want to be the one to screw it up now, especially when you didn't help it along much to begin with."

It was a fair lecture, and an oddly defensive one of Natasha at that, especially for Tony, "When exactly did you two become so close?" It was unusual for him to get so snippy with Tony, but between the recent string of worse than usual nights, he wasn't up for this.

"When I politely informed her that she needed to choose whether or not to be your friend and stick to her guns," Tony answered curtly. "Now I'm telling you to at least do her the same courtesy so I don't look like a jackass." Well, crap... "You don't pry into peoples lives, but it's a specialty of mine, so I'm going to tell you this..."

"No," Bruce stopped him immediately, "That's not for you to go around telling people."

"Maybe not, but like I said, you don't get to turn around and do the things back to her that she told me she wouldn't do," Tony warned him. "So I'm telling you whether you like it or not..."

"I said no," Bruce emphasized quickly, cutting him off once more. What about this was Tony not understanding? "If there's something to know, she'll tell me."

The silence after that was a little uncomfortable before his friend broke it again, "You seem pretty sure about that."

"I told Natasha if this friend thing was going to work better that..." and the realization hit him like a sack of bricks, Tony was manipulating him, he probably never actually intended to divulge any of the skeletons in the former-assassin's closet.

"As pretty much the only friend you've had until she came along, let me tell you a thing or two from my limited expertise," Tony finally added in, "You can't expect someone to tell you things when you aren't willing to do the same. You're the one who told me she wasn't a robot, she has feelings, and she's intuitive, Bruce. Natasha knows that whatever your issue is, it has to do with her," he extended on his lecture further. "I expected to have to warn her, she's not a very warm and fuzzy person, but I didn't think I'd have to warn you too."

Admittedly, Bruce didn't think he would have to be warned either, but apparently his social ineptitude was a booming success as per usual.

"And I have a date with Pepper, so I'll rest my case," came Tony's effort to put his case to rest. Bruce watched as he stood up from his desk and moved towards the door, but the next warning was Tony's clear attempt to lighten the mood, "And I better not come back to you touching Veronica, she's a one-man suit."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Bruce assured him with a weak smile. Tony was gone a moment later and really, he was a little off-center now that he had been thoroughly reprimanded by the one person who would normally never do so.

He actually heard Natasha's footsteps entering a moment later before he saw her, and he figured she used heavier steps on purpose so she wouldn't take him by surprise. "He's wrong, you know," she informed him as she came over to his desk and picked up the tablet she had left behind when she left before. "I don't expect you to tell me things you don't want to," she added next. "Honesty is one thing, but you respected my privacy and I respect yours too."

Bruce had absolutely no idea how to respond to that and he ran his hands through his hair as he heaved out a sigh. The words just wouldn't seem to come out, even though he knew he should just admit to the issue, a different question entirely escaped his mouth, "Why did you decide you wanted to be my friend?"

He could see she had been about to walk away, but she paused a little rigidly for a moment. Whatever the reason was, he could tell she was calculating whether honesty was really the best response, even when her face was devoid of anything of the sort. Finally Natasha blew out a small breath and reclaimed her vacated seat from earlier as she put the tablet back down on his desk, "The truth?"

"Please..."

The empty expression faded, and he supposed that was one of those many walls Tony mentioned she dropped around him. His friend was right, she did allow him quite a few more privileges than she did a lot of the others. She looked a little more wary as she finally answered the question, "I had this rather juvenile notion that I could help you somehow, maybe help you find the good in you, fix you." She leaned back in the chair and folded her arms, "But I realized after that nightmare in India that even though I could see it, you wouldn't, just like I can't find the good that Clint saw in me ten years ago." That actually left him with a pang of regret and guilt, especially after her next comment, "I realized that broken can't fix broken. You can't slap duct tape on people like us to fix the things that happened to you, or fix the things that I've done, the world just doesn't work like that."

It was the first time he really understood why she had backed off so suddenly after that night. It was one of the first times that the woman sitting next to him made complete sense and he felt terrible for not understanding before now. "Oh..." and it was a little funny in a rather depressing manner that she could say all this as though at didn't even matter, her voice had remained even and casual throughout the explanation, "So... why decide to be my friend anyways?"

Now she had tiny little smile gracing her lips and it made him feel just a little better, "You said I was your friend," she reminded him, "On the balcony?" He had nearly forgotten about that. "And I decided that I wanted to be, I don't need to fix you to be your friend, I just need to figure out how to be a friend when the person is nearly as screwed up as I am."

"Nearly?"

Her smile grew a little larger at that, "Trust me, people don't really get much more screwed up than me."

"We'll have a contest sometime to decide that," he offered with a meek smile.

Natasha's eyes and smile were a little softer now, "Deal." She took the tablet back in her hands and started to stand up. He grabbed her wrist, much like she had done to him when she asked him to stay the other night, and he watched her eyebrow quirk up a little before she once more placed the tablet down and re-seated herself.

"You want to talk about it?" she asked gently.

Gentle was such a foreign thing from her, but he saw it often enough at this point not to be so surprised by it. "We both have nightmares," he said quickly, but she didn't respond to that. Natasha just remained quiet and she didn't tell him to remove his hand from her wrist, "But mine—they're about you lately."

Bruce supposed he didn't really need to explain it, she looked like she already understood the meaning behind his words, and yet she asked anyways, "What happened in it?"

"I—the...Other Guy..." he quickly corrected, "But... me at the same time," he added in as he pulled his hand away from hers. "It's not even the Helicarrier anymore... it can be anywhere. That stupid Hulk-cell, the streets, the lounge. He just comes out, but I'm sort of there too," and he couldn't believe he was actually going to admit this to her. "You try to calm him down but—but he doesn't, he just—he grabs you, both hands... and he crushes you slowly. You look even more terrified than the Helicarrier...and you just...break. I can hear your bones break."

He expected her to look horrified, to want to run as far away from him as humanly possible, but she does neither of those. Natasha just gave him a rather sympathetic look as her hand covered his on the desk. "I get that..." she admitted softly, "Nights like that are the worst."

"You—have ones where he does that?"

She paused for a moment and she looked a little perplexed before she seemed to catch the meaning behind his question. "That wasn't what I meant but...not so much anymore. I used to, all the time," came her honest reply he hadn't truly expected. "Sometimes you need to face those fears head on if you want to get over them," she added with a smile, "I think I'm doing that pretty well."

"You're a little scary..." he admitted with a sad little laugh.

Her smile changed into a smirk, "I know."

"I can't get over this one..." he finally told her, "I've tried, I really have but... it came back the other night."

Natasha's amusement faded, "Is that why you haven't come near me much?"

He should have known she had noticed, sick or not, Natasha always knew. "Yeah..." he blew out a breath of frustration, "A little hard to look at someone when you keep dreaming of murdering them."

"I know," came her unexpected agreement.

"You—you what?"

She hesitated now and he felt a small twinge of uncertainty about whether or not she was willing to take this honesty thing this far. Natasha seemed to accept that she was willing to do so and finally her voice left her lips, but a hollowness was there he hadn't heard before. She was distancing herself from what she was about to tell him, and he wished he knew how to do that, "It's a lot easier to handle when your friends kill you in your dreams, those are ones I consider dreams," she told him. "I have ones where Clint kills me, exactly the way Loki told me he would," she admitted.

Bruce saw her eyes on the wall and he turned his hand over so his palm met hers. It was enough, because her eyes shifted from the wall to him and he saw them flicker with everything she was trying to lock up, "I can be the wall... for a little while."

Her wall just seemed to shatter when he said that, Natasha's face was such a mix of surprise and uncertainty, and apparently no one ever made an offer quite like that before. She gave him the saddest little smile, "You don't want that job, believe me," she half-joked. "There are those nights... but then, there's nights like what you saw on the jet."

"And that's... not the Barton kills you dream? Or the Hulk kills you dream?"

She shook her head at that, "No... not even close." She bit her lower lip and glanced down at his hand under hers before she seemed to decide she was willing to tell someone, "In the one on the jet, I kill him," she finally told him. "It starts the same as the other one, but—instead I decide not to save him. I decide to take my knife, and drag it across his neck, and bleed him dry," and now she looked a little lost, but what she said next is when he understood why she hated it more than anything else, "And I smile the whole time... because I feel free. I feel like I don't owe him my life anymore now that I've ended his."

The silence between them was deafening and he knew that he needed to be the one to break it, so he tried to make it better, "You would never do that."

"I would, that's the problem," Natasha admitted as she ran her fingertips through her hair. "Ten years ago, without the mix of drugs he found me dosed with, I would have done it without a second thought," she explained. "If Nikolao and Strucker—if you and Tony hadn't shown up, I'd probably be trying to kill all of you right now, with that same sick smile. And I would enjoy every moment of it, because that's who I was."

"That's not you," Bruce tried to assure her, "I've seen you..."

"Pieces of me," Natasha agreed only a little, "But you haven't even cracked the surface. Tony was wrong about you before, but he was right that there were things you didn't know, but should."

He shook his head at that, "Who you were doesn't matter. That's not who you are now."

"When I was ten, I killed someone for the first time," and that shocked him into silence. "Another girl, she was twelve. Weak. I let her think we were friends, I shared food with her, and then I snapped her neck. And I was glad, I was proud," her eyes locked onto his, and he truly couldn't read her now, "I was the best." Then she gave him a rather unsettling smile, "See? That should make those bad nights a little easier for you."

Holy shit... "You can't possibly think that..." he said in disbelief. "You were a kid—and they stuck you in that chair, electrocuted you, warped your memories," Bruce reminded her, but she still didn't react, "That was never your fault... and even if none of those things led to what happened, it would still never make my 'bad nights' easier."

Natasha just sort of watched him, and he had a feeling she was just trying to remain shut off from all the things she had admitted to him. Honesty wasn't something she did very well, not that he did either, but it was her nature to lie, and she was going against her nature to be his friend.

"You matter to people, whether you like it or not, believe it or not," he told her. "And you matter to me, so—when I have those bad nights, they'll never be better or easier, they'll just get worse," Bruce sighed as he stood up. He reached out and gave her hand a light squeeze, "You already know that from experience."

He could feel her eyes watch him as he moved to leave the lab, but her voice didn't speak up until he was almost out the door, "Bruce?"

He dared to turn around and look at her.

"Thanks," at least this smile was more real than the last few.

"I'm around anytime you need a reminder."

And now her smile was real, "Dork."

Strangely enough, he found it a little endearing when she called him that, and he actually felt a little better too.

Mad feels in this chapter, no? :P