Chapter Twelve: Meet Me in the Hallway

"We've both got a million bad habits to kick / Not sleeping is one." -Lorde

November 7, 2012 - Stark Tower Residential Units - Manhattan, NY

Audrey had a dream about her childhood that felt much more like a memory, but that could not possibly have been true. It went like this:

In the Russian winter, Audrey made snow angels while the Madame watched from the doorway. Audrey was no good at ballet, so when the other girls went to their lessons, she had her conditioning and a few brief moments to go outside.

"This will be your home," the Madame had told her. Audrey thought that was okay, but Audrey also thought that was sad. What about her family? "Dead," the Madame replied. "You would be an orphan if not for us giving you such a beautiful home."

And so Audrey spent her afternoons making snow angels while the other little girls looked on with envy from the dance studio. And sometimes, the Soldier came to visit and brought her small gifts.

"Hello, солнышко. How are you, little sunshine?"

"I'm cold."

"Spring is coming soon. I brought you these to help you while you wait."

The Soldier handed her a small bouquet of white daisies. "Thank you."

"Be good."

And then they'd called him inside.

"Daisy-girl," said the Madame. "It's time for your conditioning."

Training for Audrey was not like training for the other little girls. Training for Audrey was hours in a chair studying different letters.

"Mама," said the Madame.

"Mother," said Audrey.

"Who is your mother?"

"Peggy Carter."

"Колыбельная," said the Madame.

"Lullaby," said Audrey.

"What's your favorite lullaby?"

"Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

"Good girl. Aвария."

"Crash. My father died in a plane crash. My father needed to die in the plane crash so that the world could grow towards its future."

"Excellent." The Madame smiled at her, pleased. "You are going to become our most successful project, Daisy-girl. It's going to be a very beautiful spring."

When Audrey awoke from the dream, she jolted in bed. Like last night, and the night before, she threw herself out of the bed, confusing her sheets with the arms of someone unwelcome. Like last night, and the night before, Audrey groped in the dark blindly for the switch on her floor lamp, and waited until it was on to catch her breath.

This—the nightmares—had been happening every night for the last few days, and it was nearly impossible to sleep. Her clock read 1:29, meaning she'd made it slightly longer than the night before, but not by long.

It was getting ridiculous, at this point. Audrey was sick of going to sleep and being ripped back to her memories of Moscow, and the people who had hurt her while she was there. The scars they'd left her with were bad, but the dreams were worse. They felt inescapable, as though they swelled through anything she tried to cover them up with.

After a moment on the floor, Audrey pulled herself to her feet and flicked on the overhead lights of her apartment. She checked the door. She checked the closets. She checked under the tables. Nobody was there, poised to kill, ready to take her back—she was alone.

She threw her hair up in a ponytail and went to brush her teeth. Sleep wasn't in the cards for her tonight, but the exhaustion was preferable to the risk of being trapped again.

Maybe Jane was in the labs. She and Audrey weren't exactly best friends, but it wasn't entirely odd for Audrey to stop by. The time of night, and her pajamas, added another factor to complicate that, but if Jane was up and working, how much judgment could she really pass onto Audrey?

Audrey grabbed from the pile of files she'd been working through. Isabel had made her promise not to choose reading them over sleep, but sleep wasn't really an option at this point, so Audrey felt like it was okay. She'd made it to 1985 in everything S.H.I.E.L.D. had on Red Room, and now was as good a time as ever to break into 1986.

At night, when everyone was asleep, Audrey always got the feeling she wasn't supposed to be there. Like she was a kid again, wandering downstairs into the dining room where the adults were talking. JARVIS was programmed to shut off the lights after a certain period of inactivity, so the furniture on the common floors morphed into shadows as Audrey took the elevator down to the labs.

To her relief, the lights were on. But as Audrey stepped out of the elevator, she realized that it wasn't Jane working late—it was Bruce. Not in his pajamas, but in jeans and a tee shirt instead of his usual button down and slacks.

"Oh," she said.

Bruce looked up from a notepad. "Hey." He looked puzzled, and rubbed his eyes, as if to make sure she was real.

"I—I thought Jane might be here."

Bruce rarely worked nights; his sleep schedule was kept pristine, Audrey knew, in order to keep things ordered. He and Tony had collaborated on projects after dinner on occasion, but it was strange to see him alone, his lab the only of the four lit up.

"Thor took her out for dinner and she hasn't been back since." Bruce glanced off out the window, as if unable to hold her gaze for too long, and then back to Audrey. "Do you want me to...take a message?"

"No, no, it's okay." Audrey considered going back up to her room, since she hadn't seen Bruce since Halloween, and she'd made kind of a fool of herself that night, but the embarrassment was manageable, and being alone again was not. "Do you—well, feel free to say no if it's going to disrupt you or disturb your work or anything, but do you mind if I stay?"

He shook his head. "Not at all. I'm just transferring data. It's boring work. Doesn't take much focus." He cleared his throat and gestured vaguely to the files Audrey had folded under her arm. "What are you doing?"

"Case files," she said. "Just...organizing intel."

She was less concerned about Bruce's clearance and more concerned about what he would think of her if she told him the truth—that she was obsessively reading through decades of history trying to understand what had happened to her. Audrey was one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s highest-cleared agents, sure, but there were always secrets to be kept—including kept from her.

Audrey had considered calling Peggy, and trying to understand why the story she'd been told by her mother was so different from the story she'd been told by the Madame and the Red Room files, but it didn't feel great to take the word of her kidnappers over the word of her mother without conducting her own investigation. So she'd resolved to try to figure it out herself first, and then ask Peggy after she'd done as much research as she could.

"You get bored of your room?" Bruce asked, as Audrey pulled out a chair across from him at the lab table and set the stack of papers down.

"Sort of," Audrey answered. "Lonely, I guess."

His gaze flitted up to her, unreadable in a way that Audrey knew wasn't just a mystery to her. "That why you're always in the labs during the day?"

Audrey shrugged. "Um, I guess so. I didn't really have friends before...well, before all of this happened. And now that I'm with people all the time, it's hard to let them go." She winced. "That sounds so pathetic. I had work friends and stuff, but—"

"It's not the same," Bruce finished.

"Exactly."

"I was the same," he admitted. "Before the Hulk thing happened. I used to just work all the time." He gave a humorless laugh. "I don't know if I'm much better about it now."

"You seem to have it pretty together."

"Really?"

"I mean...yeah. You're the only one in these labs who doesn't need to be physically put to bed. I mean, I guess Helen's good at that, too, but. She's new. I give it a month before Tony and Jane start rubbing off on her." She cleared her throat. "Don't you do yoga with Nat?"

He hesitated, sheepish. "From time to time."

"See?" Audrey uncapped her pen. "I don't know if I ever stopped being married to work. It just all became a lot more personal, all of a sudden."

No kidding. In the last seven months, she'd been assigned to assist her dad, moved in with all of her coworkers, and been sent on what should've been a routine mission but that morphed into a giant revelation about her past. There was nothing in her life that she could file as objective anymore.

Bruce glanced over at the files. "Red Room? Do those have to do with Natasha?"

"Uhh," Audrey began gracelessly, "Yes…?"

He raised an eyebrow.

"They do, tangentially," she amended. "They have more to do with...me."

"With you?"

"It's just—well, in Moscow, I found out they kidnapped me as a child, and I don't remember the entire month they had me, but they said a lot of crazy stuff about it, and I'm trying to figure it all out." She forced a laugh. "But it's, like, not a big deal."

Bruce gave her a look like she was crazy. She couldn't blame him. "It kind of seems like a big deal."

"It's just...one of those things."

"Being kidnapped by an enemy organization known for brainwashing when you were a kid is just one of those things?"

"Well, when you put it like that."

"Jesus."

"I'm fine, though."

"Is that why you're up this late looking for company?" He flushed. "Not company. Just—friends."

Audrey opened her mouth, ready to deny it, but what was the point? She hated lying, and she was bad at it, and she especially hated lying when she had no good reason. And with Bruce, there was no point to dishonesty. "I haven't been sleeping well," she admitted, finally.

"Oh," he said, and didn't push it further.

After a few tense moments, Audrey pointed over at his own notes. Bruce's handwriting was messy, yes, but also tight and controlled and legible, which was more than could be said of Jane or Tony. "What are you transferring data for?"

"I'm wrapping up a study on bone marrow cells," he said. "I'm trying to see if there's any way to replicate their structural capabilities in an artificial setting to compound their natural processes and increase healing speeds for certain diseases."

"Nice. So you're a hero in two ways."

He gave her a don't bullshit me look that she pretended not to pick up on. "You'd call the Hulk a hero?"

Audrey's brow furrowed. "Yeah, of course I would. Why not?"

"Because the guy's a maniac. All he does is break things."

"For a good cause."

"I don't think he knows that."

"I don't think you're giving him enough credit."

A beat passed, where Bruce just stared at her. Something about his dark eyes on her gave her the impression that he was just as perplexed by her as she was by him, and it set off a thrill deep in Audrey's chest. The reciprocity; the desire to know and be known. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"How are you comfortable being alone with me?"

The question took Audrey a minute to process. What did he mean, how was she comfortable being alone with him? He was...he was Bruce. They did crosswords together. He wandered around blindly for three days after saving New York because he'd lost his glasses. On her birthday, he'd called her out for getting drunk and talking in a British accent. What was there not to be comfortable with?

And then she remembered that Bruce probably meant the Hulk. Obviously. As much as Audrey wanted to blame it on her exhaustion, she was reluctant to cut herself that much slack. She didn't know where to begin, because, yes, she'd thought about this before, but she didn't want to let on that she'd spent a significant amount of time psychoanalyzing Bruce's alter-ego, for fear of looking crazy and weird. "Well," she began, choosing her words carefully. "The Hulk comes out when you're afraid, right?"

"Yeah."

"I just assumed I don't...scare you. I'm not a very intimidating person, despite my occasional efforts."

"And you're just willing to take that risk?"

The question made Audrey worry. Had she been presumptuous in assuming that Bruce was comfortable with her? Had she been putting him at risk? "I'm sorry," she said, once she realized.

"What?"

"I—should I not have?"

"No, Audrey, I didn't mean it like that."

Hearing him say her name froze Audrey for a moment, which she hoped he had not noticed. "What did you mean?" she finally mustered.

"Just...you aren't scared?"

"No," she said, and it was the truth. "You're...you. You're Bruce."

He shook his head, incredulous, and took off his glasses. "You're a strange one."

"Yeah." The corner of Audrey's lip quirked up into a smile. "Just one of those things. You're pretty weird yourself."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. I mean, how do you stand working with Tony all day without hulking out? I was raised with him. I know what he's like."

That managed to pull a laugh out of Bruce, and Audrey was relieved that she hadn't hit a nerve by bringing up the hulk. "He's not so bad anymore. Once I stopped being new and shiny and exciting to him he started to leave me alone. Now he's working on other projects."

Audrey was too tired to think through her words, which was how she found herself saying, "Maybe Tony's the weird one, then. How could anybody get bored of you?"

It was forward, but Bruce didn't give her time to regret it before he replied, "I can think of about a million ways someone could find me boring."

"I can't," said Audrey, honestly. There were plenty of things in the world that Audrey knew nothing about, and plenty among those where she was content to know nothing; Bruce was not one of them. Everyone else seemed so quick to reduce him either to the scientist or the Hulk, but every time they talked, Audrey found something else about him to like. He drank chamomile tea daily and without fail. He didn't like the crust on his pizza, but felt bad about wasting food, so he ate it anyway until Clint got a service dog he could feed the scraps to. He hated Tony's music, but liked Audrey's, and the stuff Darcy would play. He was impossibly quiet as he worked. He liked to read those tiny, thick fantasy novels from the book aisle in a grocery store. It felt like she was collecting souvenirs; little tokens she could remember their conversations by.

Bruce stared at her, bewildered, before flipping to the next page of the notebook he was working on. The motion sent a push of cold air toward Audrey, who shivered. "Are you cold?" Bruce asked.

Audrey knew that the reason he kept his lab so obscenely frigid was to help keep him calm so that he wouldn't turn, so she shook her head no. "I'm fine," she assured him.

"No, seriously." Bruce reached over into his bag and grabbed something soft and grey, before offering it to her. A hoodie. "What kind of host would I be?"

"The kind dealing with an unwanted guest."

"You weren't unwanted," Bruce said softly, and then, looking as surprised by his words as she felt, turned sharply back to his work.

Audrey slipped on the Culver hoodie and re-opened the file she'd been meaning to look at, which covered February of '86 in Red Room history. There wasn't much that was interesting. A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent had been sent to go undercover but had defected, which was fairly odd but not unheard of. The Bolshoi Theater had performed Swan Lake, again. One of their agents attempted an assassination on an enemy of the Soviet state, but failed. Overall, a slow month.

So slow, in fact, that Audrey found herself drifting off. She folded her arm flat on the table and laid her head down on it, trying to read the file from an angle, but largely failing, and eventually dozing off into a dreamless sleep.

Across from her, Bruce continued working. He wasn't entirely sure when she'd passed out, but he'd set the night aside for data entry anyway, and pulling an all-nighter had always been a possibility. He thought back to what she'd said earlier—that she was having trouble sleeping because she was alone—and resolved himself to keep working, just until she woke up. Just so she wouldn't be alone.

November 10, 2012 - Stark Tower Labs - Manhattan, NY

When Audrey had the same dream a few nights later, it was like she went on autopilot. It was 1:30 in the morning again, and she knew she wouldn't be able to fall back asleep if she stayed in bed. So she threw off her covers, put on the Culver hoodie she'd been meaning to return to Bruce, and grabbed the throw blanket on her couch before getting into the elevator down to the labs.

When she fell asleep a few nights ago, she'd woken up at 5 to find Bruce packing up.

"You can go back to sleep," he'd said. "I don't mind staying." Audrey had shaken her head, mumbled something about training, and left before he could ask any questions. That morning, she'd run her fastest mile in a week and realized that sleeping three hours a night was creating a lot more additional problems for her that she couldn't afford.

Though Audrey was technically on leave from active missions, Natasha had insisted on continuing training and Audrey hadn't disagreed. Sparring and conditioning made her feel better. As her fighting improved, she felt less and less afraid of what might happen to her in the worst case scenario where she was trapped again. Like she wasn't so helpless after all.

"Hey," Bruce greeted, when Audrey stepped out of the elevator. He was dressed in a button down, not last time's tee shirt, and Audrey wondered faintly if he'd worked through the day without breaking for dinner.

"Hi," she said. "You look nice. Fancy. Very...professional."

He cleared his throat. "Thank you." Beat. "No files this time?"

"Not tonight." Audrey looked over at the small, out-of-place armchair in the corner, where Bruce paused his research to read during lunch breaks. "Do you mind? I'm really sorry."

"Don't be sorry," he said. "I like your company."

That made Audrey feel good. With a renewed sense of confidence, she felt that now was a good enough time to finish what she'd been meaning to say to him a week and a half earlier. "Um, I meant to say. The elevator—on Halloween."

Bruce's arm jerked up, knocking over a metal water bottle on the table. The sound reverberated through the empty lab, and he scrambled to right it before he met her gaze. "Uh...what about it?"

"I meant to say yes."

"Yes?"

"As in...yes, I wanted us to spend time together." She watched him carefully, trying to discern his reaction, but his expression was more confused than anything—about the same as it had been a few nights before when she'd told him that she wasn't afraid.

Audrey was a person afraid of everything—she'd spent most of her life isolated from the world, and then everything after dealing with the worst parts of it. Very rarely did something bring her comfort, but Bruce did. The cautious, measured rhythm of his breathing, or the drumming of his fingertips against the lab table, or the low timbre of his voice all made her feel calm in a way that nothing else did.

He still seemed caught off-guard by the fact, so she said, "You're my friend."

"Oh."

"Or I want you to be. And on Halloween I was just...jealous. Of Doctor Cho."

"What? Why?"

Audrey shrugged. "The conversation you guys were having was way out of my league. Made me feel...dumb."

"Way out of—Audrey." She stilled at her name from his mouth, same as a few nights before. There was something pleasantly hoarse about the way he said it, scratchy and honest, and the bright look in his eyes as he watched her only magnified whatever feeling he gave her. "There was no reason to be jealous."

"I know, I know. Now I know. I feel...dumb about it, mostly. And I was spending time with Trip too, which was good."

Bruce's expression faded, and he gave a stiff nod. "Yeah, uh...how is he?"

"Not sure. He's in Thailand now."

"How long?"

"No clue."

Whatever carefully masked emotion he'd been focusing on hiding was replaced immediately by confusion. Bruce fiddled with his watch as he formulated his question. "That doesn't….bother you?"

"Well, I mean, ideally I'd get to see him more often, but we just catch up every few years."

"I'm sorry," said Bruce. "I don't know if this sounds crazy but, you two aren't a couple?"

A laugh bubbled out of Audrey's mouth again. "I don't know why everyone thinks that. No. Trip and I are just family friends. I used to, like, babysit him."

"Jesus. Really?"

"Yeah. He grew up in San Francisco and I went to Berkeley for a bit in the 80s. I would go across the Bay to babysit him whenever his parents needed a hand."

"I didn't know you went to Berkeley. What for?"

"History and engineering. Just Bachelors' degrees, nothing that impressive."

Bruce whistled. "I had no idea. Two degrees is impressive." Audrey considered correcting him, but hesitated. He must've noticed, because he asked, "What?"

"Technically," she began, "I have six degrees. But! It's not really...impressive. I wasn't allowed to get a job, and I'd gotten bored of sitting inside all day, so I just started going to school." She wrinkled her nose. "I sound like every old-money nightmare I like to make fun of."

"A little bit. But your circumstances didn't give you that many options." He took off his glasses and leaned against the table. "Weird childhood, huh?"

Audrey nodded vigorously. "Yeah. Definitely not standard. I mean, I don't really know what a normal upbringing looks like, to be honest, because my best and...only….friend was Tony…" Way to not sound pathetic, Aud. "...and he went to European boarding schools for most of his life before M.I.T."

"Yeah, Tony's not so typical either."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"What was your childhood like? You're weird, like me. Do you have the backstory to match?"

"Eh. Grew up in Ohio. My mom was a homemaker. My dad was around for about five years before my mom left him because he was. A bastard." He shrugged. "I liked reading. I liked science, um. Not unexpected."

"So you've always been a nerd?"

"I used to be kind of an asshole, too, so there's that."

Audrey tried to imagine it, but came up empty. "I find that hard to believe."

"Well, not like...not like an asshole. I just didn't really care about things that weren't work. And I was okay with communicating that to people."

"And now?"

"Now I just want to be more good than bad."

She nodded. Audrey didn't know what it felt like for Bruce to be the Hulk; she didn't know how connected the two were, she just knew they weren't friends. But Bruce didn't need to repent for the Hulk's sins, though Audrey knew that telling him so wouldn't make a difference. "I think you are."

"You're something else."

"So I've been told. By you."

"Yeah, well. I mean it."

Audrey settled into the armchair, black leather in contrast with the rest of the pristine, white lab. "Thank you, Bruce," she said.

Bruce looked over at her with some degree of fondness, and she felt both ridiculous and happy to be studied by him so closely. A year ago, she wouldn't have put on money on Bruce Banner being the secret cure to her insomnia, and even if she had, she wouldn't have included the borrowed-sweatshirt and lab-armchair in the scenario.

Audrey pulled her knees to her chest and draped the blanket over her legs. It wasn't comfortable, really, but it was safe. Bruce had once said he was open and exposed, like a nerve. Audrey figured she was the same, but without the excuse of the Hulk, and that was why she could sleep well when he was around.

In her dream, she was running laps around a track while Natasha yelled at her to go faster. Round and round.

November 14, 2012 - Stark Tower Labs - New York, NY

The nightmare that brought Audrey back to the lab a few nights later involved an apple on her head and the barrel of a gun. She'd woken up and run to her bathroom to retch, trying desperately to scrape the memories from her mind.

Each night, the nightmares got more vivid. Sometimes, they repeated past dreams. Other times, they were new. But without fail, each of them had something to do with the words scarred on her body.

She didn't want to be asleep, not yet, but she didn't want to be alone either. So Audrey took her laptop from her desk and a pair of headphones, and then pulled the Culver hoodie she'd (once again) forgotten to return over her head.

Down in the lab, Bruce looked as though he'd been expecting her. Despite this, he greeted her with the usual amount of awkwardness, spinning around in his chair to face her. "Hi." He checked the time on his watch. "You made it longer, huh?"

She had, indeed, managed to sleep until 2, but the nightmare had been much worse, so splitting the difference didn't add up to much. Audrey nodded, surprised. "I can't believe you remembered."

Bruce looked sheepish, for a moment, before rubbing at the side of his jaw with his thumb. "Yeah. I just thought you might not come."

"Were you expecting me?" It hadn't occurred to her that Bruce might have been waiting for her on the nights she didn't show up.

"I always wonder," he answered, and left it like that.

Something akin to pride twisted up in her stomach and wrapped around her heart. He waited for her. He'd been waiting for her, in the nights she managed to force her body back down into bed and sleep. She smiled at him, as if to tell him she understood without the mortification of speaking it aloud.

"How's the research?" she asked, waving at his computer with her free hand.

"Wrapping up." He looked amused by her, her small attempts to understand what he was doing all day in the labs. "I'm checking the report for typos, at this exact moment, and I'll be submitting it for review in a few days if nothing goes horribly wrong."

"Fingers crossed."

"Yeah. Thanks." He pointed to her laptop and leaned back in his chair. "You working too?"

"No," Audrey replied. "I realized that aggressively rereading those files before bed may not have been helping with the nightmares."

"You might be onto something there."

"I have good ideas, from time to time."

Bruce leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers behind his head, the left corner of his mouth twitching up into a smirk. He looked so oddly at ease, Audrey couldn't help but stare. She was so used to Bruce being wholly deliberate, in his words and his actions and his mannerisms, that it felt bizarre to see him relaxed. "I think it's a little more often than that."

She snorted. "Definitely not."

"Agree to disagree."

"If you insist."

He leaned forward and propped his forearms on his knees. "So if you're not working, what are you planning on doing?"

She hadn't really thought it through much beyond that. "Maybe watching a movie?" she said, more question than answer. "I'm not ready to sleep yet. And...there's a new documentary on Netflix about sharks."

"Sharks?" He looked genuinely amused.

"One of my degrees is in biology. I like to keep up with...nature." She winced at her response. If her plan was to get Bruce not to think she was stupid, she had failed miserably. Instead of questioning her response, though, Bruce just nodded, the same look of fondness from a few nights earlier taking over his features.

So Audrey watched the shark documentary while Bruce worked. Or, more accurately, Audrey had the shark documentary playing on her computer while she watched Bruce. There was something intensely comforting about how purposeful he was in his movements. He scrolled through his computer, a hand supporting his jaw as he read through the paper, deep in thought.

Audrey didn't make it halfway through the movie before she began to drift off, this time slipping into a dream where she felt lighter, like flying.

"Audrey...Aud." She winked one eye open to find Bruce hovering close to her, his face only inches from hers. "I've got a meeting in the morning, I have to head upstairs, but—"

Before he could finish, she was scrambling out of the chair, knocking her laptop off her lap. It hit the floor with a plastic slap. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't realize. I'll—I'll go now, thank you."

Bruce bent down to pick her laptop up and hand it to her, before shaking his head. Audrey closed her mouth. "You can come to my apartment, if you want. Just—I mean—if you would feel better about not being alone."

Any other time of day, Audrey would've at least attempted to talk herself out of it. But Bruce had caught her at 4 in the morning, approximately 30 seconds after waking up, and so common sense was not really her forte at that exact moment. So Audrey said, "Are you sure?" even though she knew he would say yes, and when he did, she nodded and said, "Okay."

They were quiet as the elevator carried them up to the residential units. Audrey couldn't tell if her brain was working slower or if Bruce was moving slower, or maybe both as he placed his thumb over the lock on his door, only for JARVIS to greet them with a cool, "Good morning, Doctor Banner. Agent Carter."

Audrey had never been to Bruce's apartment before. She hadn't been to anybody's apartment, really, except for her dad and Tony, and even then, it was rare. They all tended to spend time with each other on the common floors whenever they were hanging out as a group. Inside, it was all creams and whites. Bland. Empty. Audrey was a minimalist, to some degree, but Bruce had nothing. Had there not been books neatly arranged on a pair of shelves, she would have doubted that anyone had moved in at all. She bit back a feeling of disappointment at how impersonal it all felt.

She hovered by the door as he toed off his shoes and hung up his bag on a hook by the door. Audrey pushed her own shoes off, which had happened to be the first pair of sneakers she could find earlier.

"Can I get you anything?" he offered.

Audrey shook her head. "No, I'm okay, thank you."

Bruce flicked on the light in the living room, and then turned to face her. "So. I don't really have guests usually, or, uh, ever—"

"That's fine."

"—so I don't have a guest bedroom."

"Oh."

With the light on, Audrey could see that Bruce's apartment was a studio. It was huge, still, but totally open, so they'd be sleeping in the same room.

Well, it wasn't like she was going to sleep in his bed or anything. Audrey doubted that would fall under the category of favors he was willing to do for her. And he'd already done so much, so many times, so Audrey blinked through her exhausted haze and considered her options. She could go back to her place. Or she could stay here. And if she stayed here, her options were his bed, the floor, or his couch.

"I'll just—I can take the couch," she assured him.

He nodded. "I'll get you a blanket."

"I'm okay."

"No, please."

Audrey felt stupid lingering in the entryway wearing her polka dot pajamas, Bruce's hoodie, and a pair of American flag socks that Caroline had given to her the summer before, but it felt worse to venture into the space without him to...guide her. Or give her permission. It all felt like a museum, specifically curated to keep Bruce's life manageable, and she worried that she would break it by setting foot into his world.

A moment later, he returned from a closet with a duvet folded in his arms. He took one of the pillows from his bed and offered them both to Audrey.

"I'll change in the bathroom, and everything," he assured her. "You don't have to worry."

She yawned before she could stop herself, bunching up the linens under one arm so she could use her other hand to cover her mouth. "Don't—I'll be asleep in a second. You don't need to worry about me, Bruce." He looked so awkward, hands in his pockets, as if he was the guest. Before thinking about it too hard, Audrey put her hand on his forearm, scaling her thumb back and forth for a moment and then letting go. He inhaled the slightest bit at the contact, holding his breath until she dropped her arm. "Thank you, Bruce. I owe you."

"You don't owe me anything," he insisted. "I just—I'm just looking out for you. You're my friend."

November 15, 2012 - Stark Tower Residential Units - Manhattan, NY

When Audrey woke up, the apartment was empty and sunlight was streaming in through the windows. She'd been too asleep to notice that Bruce had left in the morning, taking his bag with him. Audrey had slept so well, in fact, that when she shuffled off the couch and checked the time, she saw that she'd missed the first half hour of training in the range with Clint.

At that point, making it on time was a lost cause, so Audrey took her time folding the duvet neatly and placing the pillow atop it, before heading to the kitchen. Bruce still had a landline, which made her smile—another fact she filed away in her collection. Next to the phone was a pad with the Stark Industries watermark at the top, and Audrey wrote out a thank you to Bruce before she left. Thank you for everything. It was nice to spend time with you. I will make it up to you, I promise. -Audrey

And when she arrived hopelessly late to the range, still wearing polka-dot pajama pants and a Culver sweatshirt, she ignored the alarmed look Clint gave her in favor of loading the magazine he handed her into her pistol, taking aim at the target, and firing. The lab with Bruce, at night—that belonged to her. She didn't want to share.

A/N: thank you so much for reading and to everyone who reviewed! let me know what you thought of this chapter :)

Chapter Thirteen: Family Matters

"You hid that from me. For almost fifty years, you kept that a secret from me." Audrey's voice shook from the anger. "How could you? You're my mother. How could you do that to me?"