Natasha breathed in for four counts, held it for seven, and exhaled for eight. She did it again. Then again. The sounds of the jungle were starting to come back to her ears, the dull roar ebbing from her mind. She could feel every granule of sand beneath her. She could feel goosebumps on her neck, her arms, down her back. The fire was nothing but glowing embers. Bruce was gone.

She breathed in to four, held for seven, out to eight. She didn't know what had happened. That was a lie. She did. She just couldn't bring herself to admit it. She thought she might vomit and leaned over for a moment, sweat beading at her temples. It passed.

In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. She looked out at the water. The bioluminescence was out—each wave sparkled as it lapped against the shore. Natasha's lips felt puffy, tender. She grazed her finger across them, remembering the feel of Bruce—

In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. She repeated it to herself, a mantra. After a few minutes, she could see why Bruce preferred it. It worked. She felt her heartrate slow, the nausea ease, the panic diminish.

So he had touched her scars. Her stomach churned at the thought of it. He had no idea—he couldn't know. She could lie. She didn't know why that didn't occur to her in the moment—just tell him it was New York, or some one-off SHIELD mission. He'd have believed her.

But she couldn't. She just couldn't, not about that. She breathed in and out slowly, trying to regulate. He knew some. She had told him: families. He knew a little bit. She kept repeating it to herself. She wanted to go to him so badly, to tell him the truth, but all she could picture was his face when she did, the horror in his expression as she recounted what she had done. A sob burst from her chest. She couldn't, she just couldn't. She swiped the tears from her face angrily.

The look of hurt and confusion on his face when she got up, when she told him she didn't want to be touched—it felt like a knife twisting in her gut. The impossibility of the moment struck her, weighed on her like a thousand tons. She wanted nothing more than to be in his arms, but he would never want to touch her again if he knew. The thought of the repulsion on his face spun in her mind. She gasped for air, another sob choking her.

It wasn't fair. He didn't deserve this. She bit back tears as she realized what she had to do. She'd just have to tell him that she didn't feel for him like that anymore. That their time had passed. It was a dusty guest room in a rural house, a moment in a fortress, a shove, and then poof. Gone.

She had been selfish to come, selfish to try, awful for even thinking she could make this work. That she could pose as being worthy next to him, next to someone so honest and kind and naïve. She clutched her arm around her stomach as she stood, wobbly on her feet. She felt like she had a gaping hole inside her chest. Something had been ripped from her. As tightly as she held herself, she couldn't make it feel whole again. She looked north, up the beach, searching for him in the darkness. She didn't know how far he'd gone, how far she'd have to walk. She would deserve every slicing, miserable step. She could leave him to his dream now though—alone, undisturbed on the island, no longer a threat to anyone. It would be better.

She began to put her face back together as she walked. She rubbed the tears away, the salt burning on her skin. She felt where the pain pinched a muscle, where the grief pulled her expression into something she didn't want to show him. She worked steadily, distracting herself from the horrid emptiness inside her with the minor task of her face. Her face was what he would see.

She saw him about a hundred yards off. He was tossing rocks into the water, watching the ripples sparkle with the bioluminescence. Each one made a trail of warm blue light as it sank to the bottom.

Natasha stopped fifteen feet away. She couldn't force herself to get closer. He heard her approach, but he didn't say anything, didn't acknowledge her at all.

"I'm sorry," she began hesitantly. She hoped he couldn't hear the tears in her throat, the telltale scratch in her voice.

"Save it, Natasha." His voice was resigned, almost as empty as hers.

"Bruce—"

"No."

Natasha bit her lip, fighting the tears back. She couldn't speak now, or she'd cry, and then he'd know. She masked the wobble in her chin, looked up to the stars to clear her eyes, then forced herself to look at him.

"Do you see how impossible this is?" he asked. "You see every ugly part of me. You see me naked and weak and distraught, every time I come back, just shaken and guilty and messy. I know I'm an open book, Natasha, I know. I never learned like you, I never learned to mask what I feel or to pretend I'm something that I'm not. I'm just me, and I'm this monster, and somehow, you and I, we've developed this toxic dynamic where I go through the highest of highs and lowest of lows in front of you, with you just, just watching me.

"And I believe you feel tenderness for me, I do, I think you have something there, but I have to bare myself to you every fucking time, and I get nothing back. Nothing. I just have to accept that you will see every part of me, everything, every truth, every poor attempt at a lie, every insecurity, every moment of weakness, of callowness, of disregard or impatience or selfishness, you get all of it. And I will never, ever see you. I will always see a picture of Natasha Romanoff, a highlight reel, a still image, exactly what Natasha Romanoff wants me to see.

"You say we're obligated to save the world, to do better, but how cruel is it, how unfair of you to put that expectation on me, and have it depend so utterly on this awful, toxic thing we've created? To say I have to save the world, and the only way I can do that is to rely on a woman who has grabbed my heart in my chest and twisted it around so many times it feels like it might explode at any second? I just don't know what to do with that Nat. I don't. I feel like I could say this ten times over and nothing will change in between, there's no aching part of my humanity you haven't seen, nothing that's swayed you yet, so why would I expect any different now?"

The defeat in his voice swept over Natasha. She looked at the ground, hugging her arms to her chest, wishing she could sink into the void she felt inside.

"You're right," she mumbled. He wasn't finished yet though, she could tell. He was breathing slowly, trying to stay calm. She didn't fear the Hulk right now—handling him would be preferable to what she was about to do. Finally, Bruce was ready to continue.

"So you come to this island. To what, to save me? To bring me back and make me do it all again? Every time we're together I have this pit in my stomach, this knowledge that I am so deeply invested in something you're not, that I am this pathetic mess of a man who has put you on some pedestal since you won't show me anything real, and I have no idea what that does to me, to him, to either of us, I don't feel safe with it, I don't trust it, and I can't trust you, as often as you do seem to calm him.

"I can't trust you. But I do, so implicitly it frightens me. The way I feel for you—the way it pulls me inside might break me Nat, it really might. And I can't—I won't—go back and willingly bring out this monster, this liability, if this is going to continue. I can't risk that, I can't risk our team, I can't risk more lives. I don't know you Nat, I can't know that he'll trust you, not if I don't, if I can't. I'm sorry. I just can't."

Nat breathed in slowly, feeling her heart speeding up in her chest. The way he felt about her. . . she shuddered. Did he feel like that about her, or the image of her?

Bruce just looked at her plaintively, waiting for her to say something, anything. She took a deep breath and set her jaw, trying to will herself forward. She took one faltering step, then another. Her legs were leaden. When she was in arms reach, she stopped again, refusing to meet his eyes.

She pulled her shirt over her head. Bruce opened his mouth, confused, but didn't say anything. The breeze skated along her skin, cold. Natasha brushed her fingers along her collarbone, grazing her hand over where the starburst of tiny scars was.

"We were going after some arms dealers who had sold faulty weapons to the KGB," she began slowly. Her mind was rushing, tripping over details and memories she had locked away for nearly a decade.

"It was one of my first missions—right after graduation. The dealers were on the run by that point—they knew what they had done. They weren't our assignment though.

"We went as students on the train. Wearing jeans back then was—well, it was new. We looked young and hip and we sat in third class and chewed gum and waited." She realized she was distracting herself, fixating on the small details trying to stop herself from what came next. She looked at her feet. She couldn't bear to face him.

"We got off at a water stop. We snuck into the yard and we slid open the door of the freight car they were in—they were hiding, they knew they were in trouble, they knew they had to stay quiet. I don't know how many there were. The car was full. All the wives, the kids. I think there was even a dog or two. We quieted them, made them think we were allies, come to get them to change trains. They believed us—we were young, feminine. We could be anybody. Anything.

"We told them to stay on the train. We poured gunpowder everywhere. They just watched us, wide-eyed. They were so removed from what their husbands, their fathers did, I don't think they even knew what gunpowder looked like. We lit it. I mean, I did. I lit the match.

"I stood a bit too close. So I got burned. We were trained for that—you bit your tongue off if you needed to, but you didn't make a sound." Natasha dragged her fingers over the burst of tiny scars again, remembering.

"I watched them burn. This woman. . .she stared at me. She screamed. I heard her scream—all of them. There was this little girl, right on the edge, she tried to jump out and I just—" she broke off, a sob choking her.

The tears wouldn't wait anymore. Her fingernails gouged into her skin where the burst of scars bunched, threatening to draw blood. Her other arm clutched at her midsection, trying desperately to hold herself together.

Suddenly, Bruce was there, his hand gently prizing her nails from her skin, laying her arm alongside her body, gathering her into his arms.

"Shhhh," he murmured, holding her. "Shhh, it's ok. It's ok."

Natasha cried hot tears, unable to hold them back anymore. She wanted to scream, to rip her hair out at the roots and throw it, to open her skin and remove everything inside herself. But she couldn't—Bruce held her, tightly, rocking gently back and forth.

She felt her lungs contract, unable to get air through the choking sobs. She felt her knees give out, incapable of holding her up anymore. Bruce sank with her gently to the ground, still holding her to his chest tightly.

"You're ok. It's ok. I've got you," he whispered into her hair. Natasha wanted to shout, to tell him to get away, to hide from her before whatever evil she felt inside herself infected him too, but she couldn't get a word out, the sobs wracking her body preventing her from speaking.

They stayed like that for a while. Eventually the tears slowed. She wept. Bruce never let go. Natasha slumped into him. She couldn't speak, didn't have the words to finish what she had started.

She could hear the screams in her mind, echoing. She flinched as she remembered a face, then another. The dull burn of the gunpowder sizzling in her shoulder and arm. She shivered. Bruce was so warm, she shrank into him.

"Shhh," he murmured. He tucked her hair behind her ear, pulled a tendril from where it was stuck to her face. He held her, not speaking.

Some time later, Bruce released his grip, gingerly, just long enough to get an arm beneath her knees and lift her. She didn't protest.

He carried her the entire way back to the cabana. Nat didn't say a word, bleary, drifting in and out from some awful fugue state, somewhere between the night sky and Bruce's scruffy beard and a frigid trainyard in Russia. She clung to him, her arms looped around his neck, hiding her face in his shoulder.

Bruce carried her up the ramp into the cabana and laid her down on the bed of reeds. He left her only long enough to pull off his tear stained shirt and lie down beside her, gathering her in his arms once more. He held her against his body, seeming to encase her, to protect her from the very space around them.

She drifted in and out of sleep, brief bits of consciousness yanking her from nightmares. She'd wake with a whimper, a twitch, pictures entering her mind she hadn't thought about in years. But every time she did, he held her, whispering softly in her ear, "you're ok, it's ok, I've got you."