Bruce leaned on the counter, slowly turning pages in the stained and water-warped cook book resting on the counter and frowning slightly as he skimmed each recipe. After a while he sighed, closed the book, and began to pace back and forth, lost in thought.

"Jarvis," he finally said after a while.

"Yes, Dr Banner?" the AI asked. "How may I help you?"

"I need... a phone number. Or an email address. For someone I lost contact with a long time ago."

"Certainly. Can you tell me some identifying information about the person in question?"

"Yeah. Her name is Jennifer Walters... or was, she may have married and changed it since we were last in touch. She's my cousin; her mother was Elaine Banner, her father is William Morris Walters, both of Los Angeles. I haven't seen her in over a decade, since shortly after her mother died, when she was still just a teenager. Is that enough information?"

"It should be," Jarvis agreed, followed by a brief pause while he presumably did some searches. "I have narrowed it down to four possibilities. Do any of these women look familiar?" he asked, displaying four photos.

Bruce turned and looked at the display, then blinked, a slight smile lifting his lips. "Yes. Bottom left photo. That's her," he said.

Jarvis silently cleared the other three photos, expanding the indicated one to fill the screen. "Jennifer Walters, a district attorney working in New York. Would you prefer a phone number or email address, and for home or personal use?"

"Um. I don't know..." Bruce said, hesitant now. "I don't think I want to contact her through her work, but knowing her home number or email would be kind of... creepy? Maybe?"

There was another brief pause before Jarvis responded again. Not a pause the AI would have actually needed, but he was very adept at judging the proper pacing of conversations to seem as human as possible, Bruce knew. "She appears to maintain several home email addresses, one of which is publicly available through her Facebook profile and is listed as an after-hours emergency contact method on her business cards. Perhaps if you attempted to contact her via that one?"

"Oh. Yes, that would be perfect. Thanks, Jarvis."

"Adding it to your contacts list," Jarvis said, his voice warm.

Bruce sat down and quickly typed out a brief email, keeping it as detached as possible, merely naming himself, saying he was looking to reconnect with his cousin and was checking to see if that was her, and ending it with contact information for himself, both a private email address and his personal phone number.

He went back to the kitchen to resume looking at recipes, and was startled when his land line phone rang less than ten minutes later, while he was busy calculating how large a turkey – or more likely turkeys, plural – he'd need to roast to be sure of having enough for all the Avengers and their super-sized appetites, not to mention however many friends also were invited to the dinner.

"Bruce speaking," he said, after lifting the receiver of the phone.

"Bruce? Hi. It's Jennifer," a female voice answered.

"Oh my god," he said, and had to stumble the couple of steps to the nearby table and take a seat, overwhelmed by memories at the sound of her voice. "Jennifer. It's really you. How are you?"

"I'm fine. I'm good. God, Bruce, how are you? I haven't heard from you in... what? Ten years?"

"Closer to fifteen I think," he said, throat closing with emotion. "A couple of years after your mother died. You were..."

"...nineteen. I remember, that was the gap year I took off to try and decide what field I was going to go into, and when I got back from backpacking around Europe I stopped and stayed with you and... Betty?"

"Yes, Betty Ross. At Culver University. Until you had to go home..."

"To spend Thanksgiving with my dad," she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice at those words. "And then a few months later... what happened, Bruce? All we heard was that there'd been a terrible lab accident, and that you'd disappeared..."

Bruce gave a short bark of laughter. "A lot happened. Not something I want to talk about over the phone. Though I would really love to see you in person again some time, and catch up on everything. You're a lawyer now?"

"Yeah," she agreed, voice warm. "I'm working as a District Attorney in New York City. And I see this is a local phone number you sent me...?"

Bruce laughed. "Yes, I'm in New York too. I live and work in Manhattan, mostly."

"Only mostly?" She sounded amused.

"Well. Sometimes my work takes me elsewhere. And some of the time I just need to get away and be on my own for a while."

"I hear you on that," Jennifer said, voice warm. "So how are you? What do you do?"

"Um. That's... complicated. Part of what I don't want to talk about over the phone. The part I can talk about... well. I work for Stark Industries, mostly."

"Oh, sweet! Does that mean you've ever met Iron Man then? Or Ms Potts? Or any of the Avengers?"

Bruce found himself smiling at the excitement in her voice. "Yeah, I know Tony. All of the above, actually."

"Oh my god. You work in Stark Tower... Avengers Tower, I mean. Am I right? Yes?"

"Yes. I work in the Tower," he agreed, smile widening. "Actually, I live there too... one of the perks of the job."

"Oh my fucking god. That is so cool. Fuck. You're making me sound like I'm a teenager again, Bruce. I'm supposedly a mature, super-serious lawyer and right now I sound like... like..."

"Like someone having a fan-gasm?" Bruce asked, amused, remembering a term Darcy had used a couple of days ago.

"Yes," Jennifer exclaimed, and laughed. "Holy fuck, Bruce, it is so good to hear from you again. We definitely need to get together as soon as we can. Coffee somewhere maybe?"

"I would love that. Maybe... would you like to visit me here?" he offered shyly. "We could pick up coffee and bring it back to my place? I have to admit I'm not very big on the whole talking about my private life out in public thing."

"Sure, that sounds great. When?"

"Well, my schedule is usually pretty flexible, which I'm guessing yours is not, so how about you let me know when is good for you?"

"That sounds good. I'll check my schedule and email you a list of times and dates that I'm free, how does that sound?"

"Excellent. Listen, there was something else I wanted to ask you," he said, and flushed a little. "I'm embarrassed to admit that it's kind of the ulterior motive behind the phone call."

"Oh? What's that?" she asked, voice cooling just the slightest bit.

"It's nothing bad. It's just... remember before you headed back to California, Betty and I were talking about how I'd never had a real family Thanksgiving, not a good one anyway, so we were planning to have one for ourselves, since it would be just her and I that year..."

"I remember," Jennifer said, voice warming again with fondness.

"Neither of us had ever roasted a turkey before. So you wrote out instructions for us, including a recipe for the stuffing... a family recipe..."

"I remember that," she agreed, sounding surprised but voice going even warmer. "You'd been talking about it... you remembered it from the one semi-decent Thanksgiving you'd ever had, at Grandma Banner's place, and it was the same recipe my mother always made so I recognized your description of it, and wrote out how to make it."

"Yeah. And Betty and I made it with our turkey, and it was the best Thanksgiving I ever had. Well. I'm going to be roasting a turkey for a dinner party with friends and I really want to make that stuffing again. Do you still...?"

"Still remember how to make it? Of course I do," she exclaimed. "Have a pen and paper handy? Or I can email you the instructions..."

"I've got pen and paper," he said, leaning over to snatch up one of the notepads he kept scattered around the place. He could always take notes electronically anywhere in the tower, but he had a fondness for pen and paper, even if – or perhaps especially because – it drove Tony up the wall.

"Right. Okay, a batch of this is enough to stuff a 10 pound turkey, so adjust amounts accordingly depending on the weight of the bird. To start with, you'll need..."

Bruce leaned on the table, receiver tucked between shoulder and ear, and took careful notes, a warm feeling of contented happiness filling him as his pen scratched across the page, listening to his cousin's voice.