A/N Any Brutasha fans get your tissues.

Chapter 8

A man stood there with messy, black starting to turn grey hair, a purple ripped and dirty shirt on. Natasha blinked, not believing her eyes. Tears started to form but she held them back, Black Widow never cried.

"Natasha?" The man asked in his normal rusky voice taking a step into the light, allowing the rest of the team to see who it was.

"Bruce?" Natasha said not thinking of anything else to say.

"Well, what an unexpected surprise" Thor cheerfully joked. Tony walked over to him, hugged and patted him on his back. Steve went up and shook his hand, always formal but that was just Cap. Natasha staied there staring. Bruce broke the silence that had fallen by asking,

"how did you guys find me?"

"We didn't intentionally" Natasha said and then started walking back down the stairs, Steve chasing after her.

"What did Natasha mean?" Bruce asked Tony.

"We are actually looking for Clint and Laura, all the clues led here, but we don't know who took them. Well Natasha does but she won't say" Tony explained.

"Let me see if I can help with this" Bruce said urging Tony and Thor to follow them. "There some sort of carving, at first I thought the people who originally documented this place had missed them but with closer analysis, it shows that they are quite recent. Definitely made within a week. When did they go missing?"

"A few days ago. Natasha has been working clockwork, either to find them or looking after Cooper, Lila and Nathaniel." Bruce nodded with recognition.

"See what you make of them, I'm going to talk to Natasha."

Back outside Steve caught up with Natasha who'd reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Natasha! Wait up!" He called out, "are you alright?" Steve put his hand on her shoulder stopping her movement. She let out a sigh.

"I'm fine Steve." She snapped, "I just want be alone." Natasha tried to walk away.

"Hey, come here" Steve said pulling in Natasha for a friendly hug. "I know it mustn't be easy for you to see Bruce again after what happened last time, but give him a chance, at least to explain himself. Ok?" Steve reassured. Natasha found herself nodding in agreement.

"Thank you." Steve smiled, they both looked up at the sound of footsteps coming towards them.

"Hello" Steve said to Bruce and then walked off back to the others giving Natasha and Bruce the space they needed to sort things out between them.

"Hello." Bruce said shyly, "look-"

"No wait before you say anything, I'm going to be totally honest with you. I know I shouldn't have pushed you, especially when you didn't want to go there so soon after, you know, but we needed the other guy. All I can say is that I'm sorry." Natasha said struggling to keep the tears back.

"Hey it's alright" Bruce said placing his hand under her chin and raising it upwards gently to look him in the eyes. "I'm not going to pretend that it didn't hurt because it did, but it wasn't the fact that you forced me to turn into the other guy that hurt. It was the fact that you could have been hurt after I'd told you my worries about this, I just didn't know how to, how to" Bruce trailed off.

"It's ok take your time" Natasha reassured.

"I didn't know how to trust myself around you, I couldn't bare to loose you Natasha" Bruce declared placing his hands on both of Natasha's shoulders.

"So running away doesn't count as losing me?" Natasha quized.

"No, yes but not like that, at least I knew you were safe."

"And what about me? How was I supposed to know if you were alive or not?" Natasha argued.

"See this was never going to work, five minutes and we're already arguing." This caused both of them to burst out laughing. Bruce's hands fell down to Natasha's waist.

"I love you Natasha, and whatever you chose to do with that is fine, but just let me tell you that I care about you and I will never stop caring."

"Bruce I..." Natasha was about to reply but the rest of the team had come over causing Bruce to pull away. They weren't ready for them to know what was going yet.

"So Tony told me you are looking for Clint and Laura, your search led you here" Bruce quickly changed the subject.

They piled back into the quinjet Natasha retaking her position as pilot, she liked the solitude the cockpit could offer a person. Allowed her to wonder with her thoughts. Tony had said that Bruce had found some carvings in the temple, but she wasn't interested. Her head was all over the place at the moment, and in a way she wanted it to stay like that. To have everyone else take control. It was unusual for this to happen to Natasha, but she liked it.

Several hours later they arrived back at Stark tower. They were greeted by a very excitable Pepper, but her mood soon changed as she saw Bruce not Clint and Laura.

"What happened?" She whispered to Tony. Tony waved Pepper off and went off into a side room to talk to her. Vision looked up from the table he had been sitting at playing cluedo with Cooper and Lila. The kids got up and ran over to Natasha when they saw her with hopeful eyes. However they already knew the answer to their question when they noticed their parents weren't there. Their faces dropped as Natasha embraced them in a hug. Bruce standing at her side, but not too close.

"Everything will be alright" Natasha whispered into Cooper and Lila's ears.

A/N Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me on this story and thank you for the lovely comment Black_Widow1984 left! We're about halfway through the story now.