A/N: When I said I was thinking of switching to bi-weekly posting, I didn't mean to go longer than that between updates! RL had other plans, for me and my beta…So this chapter is overdue, but hopefully well worth the wait. Thanks, as always, to malintzin for taking time out of her busy schedule to beta and brainstorm with me. Bruce's mental state in this fic is not an easy one to get into! If you want a good soundtrack for this chapter, check out Rachmaninov's Vocalise, the piece referred to in scene two. The tone works for the whole chapter. Also, Bonita Juarez is not an OC, but sort of a Marvel Easter egg. Feel free to google her and try to guess what I have planned with her. ;) Enjoy the chapter-and if you do, your feedback is most welcome and appreciated.

6. On Paper

"I was cleaning Bruce's room after you left, and I came across those-"

"Sorry, Susan, just a sec," Natasha interrupted as Bruce's reflection in the office window came into view behind her own. She swiveled in her desk chair to see him standing in the doorway with two steaming mugs.

"Sorry," he murmured, shuffling softly on slippered feet into the room. "Didn't mean to interrupt. Just thought you might like a cup of tea. It's so chilly today."

She reached out to take one of the mugs from him, the heat surging through her fingertips to warm her all over. Or maybe it wasn't the tea as much as his thoughtfulness, his disheveled hair and rumpled slacks and sweater combo. Somehow, just looking at him made her feel cozy. The semester hadn't begun, so technically he was still off work, but he was catching up on some research and writing in his study-slash-lab in the basement. Of course he did proper experimental research in the Cornell labs, which had recently received a generous donation from the Stark Foundation-to the consternation of MIT, who were reluctant to share an alumnus.

He started to go, but Natasha said, "You're not going to go before I thank you, are you?"

Bruce turned around, lips pressed together in one of his quiet chuckles.

"It's not a work call," she said, her face upturned as he bent to brush his lips over hers.

Straightening, Bruce pushed his glasses up his nose. "Are you talking to Aunt Susan? I thought I heard you say..." He shook his head slightly. "Sorry. That's nosy."

Natasha smiled as she brought her mug to her lips. "If I wanted it to be a secret, it would be."

Even as she said the words, she found herself thinking of the envelopes stacked neatly on the desk behind her, Bruce's name and the name of his father's prison lying face down on the light toned wood.

"She called me."

His eyebrows went up above the rims of his glasses; Natasha had been as surprised as he was when Susan, who avoided the phone as much as possible, had not only called, but not for Bruce.

"Have a nice girl talk then." He stooped to press another kiss to her cheek. "Give her my love-and tell her I'll look forward to her next letter," he added, eyes twinkling.

"Hey," Natasha called before he pulled the door all the way shut, and he poked his head back in. "Try to keep your lab from looking like it used to at the Tower, will you? The social worker's gonna want to see it tomorrow."

At first Bruce stared at her, then he saw her smirk.

"All the adoption blogs say not to worry about the house looking too perfect," he said. "Also by like it used to at the Tower, I assume you mean like a place where many fires have started? All credit for that goes to Tony."

"Whatever, I've seen your clutter when you research, Doc."

"In that case, maybe I should stay out of the kitchen tonight. I didn't make too big of a mess when I made the tea, but it might be smart to order in."

"Chinese?"

When he finally ducked out of the office and closed the door all the way behind him, Natasha waited until the creak of the hardwood floor beneath his otherwise padded footsteps receded completely before she swiveled back toward the window and the scene of the snowy back yard and frozen lake beyond.

"Sorry about that, Susan," she said, bringing the phone back to her ear. "Bruce was just bringing me tea."

"He's such a sweet man," his aunt replied.

"He is. It really wasn't fair of me to give him grief about being a clutter-bug."

"He comes by it honestly." Susan sounded a little distant, and not just because her voice was coming over the phone. "As I was saying, I was cleaning the room, and I found those comic books. You remember, dear, the Captain America ones I gave him for Christmas?"

Natasha hmmed in reply, the winter landscape blurring as her own reflection, clenching her jaw and clutching her phone, came into focus.

"As soon as I saw his reaction I knew I'd made a terrible mistake," Susan went on, "but I didn't know what to say. I hope you know I never would've given them to him if I'd known it would be so upsetting. Honestly, I thought it would be a nice bit of nostalgia. He really loved them when he was a little boy..."

The letters loomed in the foreground now. "It's hard to know how Bruce is going to take this stuff. He's on lockdown about anything to do with his father."

Static crackled through the phone speaker as Susan sighed. "That's how he was as a little boy. He never would talk about what happened, not to me or to the therapists… " Her voice trailed away, as though she'd hadn't spoken into the phone, only to come back, louder. "He's never talked to you about Brian?"

Natasha shook her head. Of course Susan couldn't see. She didn't say no out loud, instead asked a question she knew could have no good answer. "Did he talk about him to Betty Ross?"

It came out hoarse. She took a drink of tea, but swallowing hurt.

"I assumed since they were planning to marry and have a family that Bruce had dealt with it. Just like I assumed was the case when he'd decided to be with you."

Natasha pressed her mug against her chest to absorb some of its warmth. All she felt was the cold handle against the backs of her knuckles.

"You know," Susan said, "I always thought it was…well, the Hulk that came between Bruce and Betty. Maybe it was really Brian. The unresolved rage…"

Big fan of the way you change into an enormous green rage monster, Stark's voice flitted through her mind. How did a man like Bruce become that? She'd chocked it up to ramped up aggression from the gamma but there would have to be something in there to ramp up, wouldn't there? The cycle he'd worked so hard to break catching him anyway.

"Have you had any contact with Brian since he went to prison?" Natasha said into the phone.

"I mentioned music therapy, didn't I?"

"You do music therapy with him?"

"I go to Lima Hospital twice a month and do a music class. I visit Brian. We write."

Write. The word was so close in Natasha's ear that if she couldn't see the office reflected in the windowpane, she might have turned to see if Susan was standing over her shoulder, looking at the letters from Brian Banner, Lima State Hospital Inmate #968121.

"I'm not saying we're best friends and all is forgiven and forgotten," Susan said. "Can you imagine your own brother violently killing his wife in front of their little boy?"

Natasha didn't have to imagine herself killing. Couldn't forget. Or forgive.

"I realize that as difficult as it is for me, for Bruce, it's...I suppose since I experienced what Brian did, I understand where he came from. At the same time, I've often wondered how it's possible we turned out so differently. Why he repeated the cycle of abuse. Or maybe it's that I see how easily I could be the one locked up in a prison for the criminally insane."

"But you made a choice," Natasha said.

"That's right, I did. And so did Brian. And he's still living with the consequences."

Unfortunately, Brian Banner wasn't the only one.

Chinese takeout cartons littered the living room coffee table, but at least the kitchen and dining room remained pristine for the impending home study. There was no question that Natasha and Bruce made a picture of a lived-in home environment facing each other from opposite ends of the sofa, feet in slippers and thick socks tangled together in the middle. A fire crackled in the hearth opposite, heating and providing most of the light in the room. Classical music played softly over the recessed speakers, an album she'd given Bruce for Christmas: Audrey Nathan performing Rachmaninoff's works for cello and piano.

If her recent chat with Coulson hadn't already been on her mind, it would be now.

"What'd Aunt Susan call you about?" Bruce asked around a bite of beef with broccoli.

Putting her chopsticks in her carton of orange chicken, Natasha sat up to reach her wine on the coffee table and took a sip. "You."

He chuffed out a laugh.

She turned back to him, looked him directly in the eye. "You left the comic books at her house."

For a moment Bruce stared at her, the meaning of this sinking in, then his shoulders sloped with his exhale.

"Damn."

He rubbed his palm across his beard.

"Should've brought them home," he said, shifting on the sofa to swing his feet down to the floor, "gotten rid of them here…"

"Is that what you'd do with any reminder of your father?"

Bruce had leaned over the table, studying the contents of the various takeout containers. At her question, Natasha saw his back tense beneath his sweater, the quiver in his jaw.

"I found something else from him when we were at the Avengers Facility," she said.

His head snapped toward her, brow furrowed. Without a word, Natasha rose from the sofa, feeling him trail her with his gaze as she strode through the living room, down the hall to her office and back again. She stood on the opposite side of the coffee table, extended her hand across it with the stack of letters, held her breath.

Gingerly, Bruce reached out to take them from her. She blocked the glow of the firelight, and his eyes seemed to darken as he read the sender's name scrawled in cramped penmanship not unlike his own.

Natasha didn't exactly expect a Hulkout, but she took careful stock of him all the same, the taut lines of his face, the tendons stretched over the backs of his hands. In the background, the cello's voice strained with sadness against the steady minor chords of the piano.

Finally, Bruce spoke. "These are post-marked five years ago." He half-swallowed the words. Not since Kolkata, all those years ago now, had he spoken to her with so much suspicion and restraint.

"They started arriving after Sokovia." Natasha felt like she was making a confession. Well-in a way she was. It was an act she'd gotten well acquainted with over the years. Just not with Bruce. "Tony forwarded them to me."

"Surprised he didn't read them."

"He wanted to." The smile she attempted was even more brittle than his joke, crumbling with the faintest twitch of her lips. "Will you read them?"

"He's got nothing to say to me that I need to know," Bruce replied, pushing up from the sofa, the envelopes bending in his firm grip. "You should know that."

"How could I when you haven't told me anything about him?"

Harsh, but she'd had enough of him holding back, rebuffing any attempt by her, his aunt-hell, even Tony-to show him they cared about his past and wanted to help prevent it stealing his future, as well.

"That right there should be a pretty big clue," Bruce muttered, stalking around her to toss the letters into the fire.

Bits of white paper, envelopes and stationery, singed black and curling around the edges, remained with the ashes at the bottom of the fireplace the next day as Bruce bent to add a log to the fire. His stomach tightened, clutched with a feeling like regret, not because he wanted to know what his father had written to him, but because when he'd turned back from throwing them into the flames, Natasha had looked as if she'd been burned.

Her voice drifted to him from the kitchen: "Do you take milk or sugar?"

"A little of both, thanks," replied the social worker, who'd arrived a few minutes earlier. Natasha had taken her to the kitchen to make tea while Bruce built up the fire.

He took out the lighter and held it beneath the logs till the kindling and the remnants of the letters caught the flame. Satisfaction that they would burn completely to ash overrode the regretful feelings.

He understood why Natasha felt she should give him the letters, truly he did. What he simply could not fathom was that she'd thought the night before their first adoption home study would be an appropriate time to confront him with a tangible reminder of his own childhood hell.

"I feel warmer already," said the social worker, approaching down the hallway.

What was her name again? Facing the fire, Bruce raked his hand through his hair as he wracked his brain to recall the introduction that had been made only moments before. Something Juarez. Linda? No, it started with a B…Barbara?

"I'm from Albuquerque originally," she said. "It gets pretty cold there, but I haven't really acclimated to the long New York winters. Although I probably sound wimpy to a Russian."

"I've been in the States now longer than I lived there," Natasha replied.

"And you're from Ohio, Bruce?"

Still not having remembered her first name, Bruce turned to see Ms. Juarez enter the living room with Natasha. They both carried mugs; Natasha had two, one for Bruce, and the brush of their fingers as he took it from her was the first time they'd touched since she gave him the letters.

"Or would you rather I call you Dr. Banner? Only I prefer Bonita."

Oh yes, Bonita.

"That's fine," he said. "To call me Bruce, I mean."

She appeared to be in her late thirties, although the lines around her eyes might be more evident of early forties. Then again, that could be her line of work. He knew eyes like that, had avoided meeting them when people asked in kind voices whether anyone was hurting him at home. Bonita's dark ones regarded him for a moment from beneath thick, straight eyebrows, waiting for him to speak further. He glanced away, the back of his neck prickling, a growl rumbling through his mind.

"Bruce is from Dayton," Natasha answered the question he'd forgotten had been asked.

"How are the winters there?"

"Not too bad," Bruce replied.

Again that expectant look on Bonita's face.

"I know these home studies involve a lot of detailed questions, but I didn't think that would include a climate report."

Bonita took a drink of tea. "Just making small talk. If that's not your thing, don't worry, we'll get into the deep stuff soon enough."

That didn't exactly make Bruce feel better. He flinched at the unexpected brush of Natasha's fingers at the back of his wrist beneath his sweater sleeve.

"We were just in Dayton, actually," she volunteered. "We had a white Christmas."

"You still have family in Dayton?" Bonita asked.

Nodding, Bruce raised his mug to his lips.

"Bruce's Aunt Susan," Natasha said, but Bonita directed her next question to him.

"How does your aunt feel about having Avengers in the house?"

Wasn't the answer self-evident?

"Guess she didn't mind," Bruce said. "And we're former Avengers."

"The neighbors volunteered to shovel and hang the Christmas lights once they recognized Bruce," Natasha said, stroking his wrist.

"Those are some nice perks," Bonita commented. "If I were your aunt, I'd have asked you to move in.

As she moved to stand closer to the fireplace, the flames flared up, sparks crackling, but she seemed unfazed as she gazed up at the art hanging over the mantel.

After a moment, she turned back to Bruce and Natasha, the smile replaced by a serious expression as she looked back and forth between them.

"I won't lie to you, a number of people in Children and Family Services don't think superheroes, currently or formerly active, should be permitted to adopt. Obviously more do than don't, or else you wouldn't have made it even this far in the process."

She paused to sip her tea, and Natasha asked, "Are you one of the ones who does?"

"I'm not opposed to the idea, being…rather closely acquainted with some powered individuals myself."

Bonita took another drink, and Bruce glanced at Natasha. Did she have any idea what Bonita meant by that? Or was he only imagining the undertone of meaning in the social worker's voice?

"Whether you two are as good of candidates as you appear to be on paper, of course, will depend on my getting to know you better."

On paper…Bruce's gaze drifted past Bonita to the fireplace behind her, where the dancing flames transformed his father's written words to ash. The back and forth movement of Natasha's fingertips suddenly felt irritating to his skin. He pulled his hand away from her, shoving it in his pants pocket. In his periphery, he saw her look down, and he almost withdrew his hand again and took hers. But he didn't.

"So!" Bonita went on, in a more upbeat tone. "Do you think we could start with a tour of this beautiful house?"

Natasha almost eagerly left his side. "We've only bought it last summer, so we're still in that new homeowner honeymoon stage where we're thrilled to show people around. Aren't we?" She glanced over her shoulder at Bruce, who hmmed a vague response.

He trailed behind the women, the rumble of his own thoughts louder than their voices as Natasha played tour guide. How could she be so at ease, opening her home, her life, to the scrutiny of a stranger with the authority to deem her unfit to fulfil one of their deepest held dreams? Maybe she was acting-after all, she'd been trained to be and interact with anyone. It was a skill he'd often envied, having always tended toward shyness himself. This went way beyond social awkwardness, though. It was completely against how he'd been accustomed to living, with doors closed and windows shuttered.

What was it Natasha had said to him? Sometimes I feel like your doors aren't just shut, they're locked, and you've thrown away the key.

It had pissed him off then, and it pissed him off again now. It just wasn't fair, when she knew better than anyone what it cost to be exposed, and how much more he'd opened to her than he had to anyone in years.

"This is one of the rooms we've set aside for a kid," he heard her say as she stepped into a guest room and flicked on the light.

"Or two," Bonita remarked. "This is big."

Probably it seemed bigger because there wasn't much in it: a bed and an empty dresser and a bookcase containing some of his favorite childhood books, mainly Hardy Boys mysteries.

"Training them early in the ways of the Force?" Bonita indicating the set of original Star Wars trilogy posters tacked on one wall.

"Oh, um…" Bruce raked his free hand through his hair. "Those were mine when I was a kid."

"How old were you when the first one came out?"

"'77…Around seven or eight, I guess."

In fact there was no guesswork involved. Susan had taken him, and his connection with the orphaned protagonist who lived with his aunt and uncle had been instantaneous, only deepening three years later with the sequel's reveal that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. By the time he was thirteen he hadn't been sure what to make of the redemption arc, but Luke's heroic journey despite his dark family legacy had remained inspirational.

Was this the sort of thing they wanted him to open up about? It sounded so maudlin. Not to mention navel-gazey.

"Those don't have to stay up," he muttered, fiddling with the corner of the dresser.

"We hung them because it seemed best to acknowledge up front what huge dorks we are," Natasha said, and through his sweater he felt her hand come to rest in the small of his back. He hated that he tensed.

"All the kids at St. Agnes, where I do most of my placements, are crazy about Star Wars," said Bonita. "Of course a couple of movies might not be quite so impressive considering to the fact that you two have fought actual star wars."

"We got to go to the premiere of Episode IX," Natasha went on. Tony worked it out for them. "In costume."

She'd been Leia, complete with cinnamon bun wig, while Bruce had opted to be old Jedi Luke because he had the beard for it.

"That was mostly so we wouldn't be recognized," he said.

Bonita didn't look like she bought it.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Bruce," she said as they left the room, "but I'm getting a vibe that maybe you wish you were in disguise right now. Are you always this quiet, or are you just nervous?"

Heat flooded his face, and not a flush of embarrassment. "I-"

"You certainly wouldn't be the first person to be," she went on. "It's an invasive process, from start to finish, and there's just no way around that. Please try to remember that I'm not here to judge you or any of the skeletons in your closet. I am here to advocate for these kids, and to ensure they're placed in the best homes for them. Which I would hope is what you want for them, too, whether that's here or somewhere else?"

"Absolutely," Natasha said, voice creaking.

"Of course," Bruce mumbled.

They'd finished showing her around the house, which Bonita announced meant the end of her visit.

"Thank you for opening your home to me," she said as she put on her coat in the front hall. "If it makes you feel any better…" She caught Bruce's eye. "…I really liked what I saw. Especially that you have plenty of designated places to do your homework."

"Our homework?" Natasha asked. "Or the kids'?"

Bonita opened her bag on the console table and took out two packets which she handed to each of them. "These are questions that will guide you as you write your autobiography. We'll discuss them over the course of our next few visits, but it can be helpful to reflect on them, even to write about them before."

"We will," Natasha said. "We were both exceptional students."

She gave Bruce a gentle nudge with her elbow as he perused the questions, apparently teasing him about his studiousness.

Describe the family you grew up in…Was there any drug or alcohol dependency in your family history? If so, how has this affected you?...Describe the discipline and child rearing practices your parents used.

"I'm sure you were," Bonita said.

Were being the operative word. If there was one thing Bruce was sure of now, it was that he was going to prove far from exceptional.

"The question I want you to think most about is: why do two superheroes want to adopt a child?"