11. Face Time
Something in Bruce had changed.
Natasha heard it in his voice when he called before the mission; now she saw it as she disembarked the quinjet at the Tower and found him waiting for her on the landing pad, hunched into the upturned collar of his coat, hands stuffed deep in the pockets, hair ruffled by the wind. Their eyes met and he straightened up, drew out his hands, reached for her as the distance between them closed. She came into his embrace, tucking her head beneath the scarf knotted at his chin, slipping her arms inside his coat.
Neither spoke. Bruce had told her he was ready to talk, but he didn't say anything right away, and neither did Natasha. Mostly because Jessica Jones did first.
"Where's my kid?" Clunky boots scuffed on the cement as Natasha turned, Bruce relaxing his embrace with a sigh she thought sounded as reluctant as she was to withdraw her arm from around his waist.
"Having a piano lesson with my Aunt Susan," he replied, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, the lenses fogging in the cold.
Susan was here? When she called the day before to ask where Bruce was that he was ignoring her emails and calls, Natasha hadn't imagined the seventy-year-old would actually leave Dayton to speak to him in person.
Jess looked blasé. "I know we said we're fans of early education, but we actually prefer early bedtime."
Her husband was slightly more understanding, a knowing half-smile on Luke's face as he stood behind Jess with a hand on her hip. "Baby girl put up a bedtime fight?"
"I thought for sure when she skipped her nap she'd go right down…"
Jess snorted. "Rookie mistake, Banner."
She moved Luke's hand, pulling him by it toward the landing floor entrance. He twisted back to say over his shoulder, "And late bedtime doesn't mean late wakeup. Just a protip."
If Bruce was surprised, or upset, by the bit of parenting advice and the implication that Luke and Jess knew of the adoption plans, he hid it well, mumbling appreciation and an apology for throwing off their routine. Natasha scrutinized him, trying to pinpoint what it is that was different about him since they parted after the disastrous Houston mission a week ago. She was so intent that she barely registered the swish of the automatic doors behind their teammates until Bruce's eyes snapped back to meet hers, clearly aware she'd been staring at him. Almost as if they were back at the start of things, secretly crushing on each other. Except that now they had the additional angst of a few heartbreaks between them.
"You shaved," she blurted out, though of course that was the obvious change, and not the deeper one she was trying to parse out.
He reached up, rubbed the pads of his fingers over his smooth chin and cheek as if this was a revelation to him. "Oh, um, yeah. After Tony and Thor took bets on the Hulk's facial hair…"
"Today they took bets on whether you'd gotten self-conscious."
"Of course they did." Behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes closed. His hand fell to his side. "Actually it was because of the baby. Kept grabbing it. But nothing's going to convince Tony it wasn't because of him, is it?"
Natasha tried to reply no, but the syllable caught in her throat with her rush of emotion. Ditching the beard he was so fond of because of a baby that was only in his care for a few hours seemed extreme. Was he thinking of their future again?
His fingers curled around hers, squeezing. "What happened in Detroit? All the news outlets are reporting about the GM building being destroyed? And some of the International Riverfront?"
"Not destroyed. Just…gone. They must have used the Zodiac Key to teleport it."
Of all reactions, Bruce smirked, and Natasha raised her eyebrows. His hand went up again, as if to physically wipe away the inappropriate expression.
"It's not funny," he said, "but I couldn't help but imagine Tony's commentary on economic domination through a bankrupt automobile company. Zodiac must be desperate."
"Oh, he totally made his relief known that Tesla wasn't transported across dimensions," Natasha replied, then went on, more seriously, "Actually, you're not far off with desperation. We think they're moving ahead with their plans faster than they intended because we've interfered with the long game."
"What are their plans?" His gaze flickered over her head, to the quinjet.
"We don't know. Coulson's team's on it. And Jess."
"What can she do that SHIELD can't?"
"Shady back channel sources in Hell's Kitchen? She's going to try and locate Cornelius van Lunt. He's the key to all of this. Something big's going down, and soon. Detroit was just the test run."
Suddenly Bruce's arms went around her again, pulling her firmly against him. "Thank God you got out of there," he said into her hair.
Natasha relaxed into him, sharing his gratitude to be here, with him, and not making her own cosmic road trip with the civilians they hadn't managed to evacuate. She should probably feel guiltier about that…
"I'm sorry I wasn't there to help," Bruce said.
"Well…Our plan was retirement."
She felt him shake his head. "The plan was to be together. And I haven't been with you."
Natasha leaned back in the circle of his arms, just enough to look up into his face as he continued.
"I'm sorry. I will be, from now on."
"You better be." She didn't want to let him off the hook too easily, even as she grasped the front of his coat and tilted her head up toward him to feel the brush of his mouth between his murmurs.
"I will. I am."
She accepted his promises along with his kisses, but much as she'd missed the softness of his lips and his fingertips, it didn't feel right to take without giving. All their problems hadn't been caused by him.
"I'm sorry, too," she said, tracing a curl back from his forehead, the line of his forehead as his brows pulled together. "For going behind your back."
Bruce tensed against her, but didn't withdraw. His exhalation of breath steamed in the air. "I know why you did. I should've been open with you."
That was the difference. He wasn't closed off anymore. True, he hadn't opened the door wide yet, but he'd cracked it enough that a sliver of light shone into those rooms he'd kept darkened and locked for a lifetime.
He wanted her to come in.
The door opened wider in the dark of their room.
There was still so much they needed to talk out, but Natasha didn't press him; Bruce had already said far more tonight than he had in weeks, and the rest would keep till morning.
They made love and that, too, felt different. Bruce had always been able to pleasure her, but his own had been restrained. Afraid of losing control, she'd assumed, based on one amazingly awkward conversation about his last failed encounter with Betty Ross back when maintaining a low heart rate had been essential. Natasha accepted this fear as a part of their relationship which would hopefully lessen over time and with trust. She'd just been glad that physical intimacy was no longer off-limits to him. Now as he moved within her, cupped her breasts and kissed her deeply, whispered loving words in her ears that tickled and prickled up goosebumps along her neck, she understood what it was he'd held back: want. It reached to the core of her, matching her own, and she did her best to fill it up for him as he did for her.
Afterward, as she lay in his arms waiting for sleep, his voice rasped into the silence.
"I never even asked about what happened when you met hi-" He caught himself. She heard him swallow, then he amended, "My father."
Natasha didn't answer right away, picking at the edge of the sheet as she considered how to describe the prison visit, how much detail to give.
"He was hateful," she said, finally. "And I've known a lot of hateful people."
She held her breath, listened to Bruce's, the heavy puffs of his exhales, the long sharp intakes. Regulating himself, though she didn't detect his heartbeat speeding up at her back. His arm tensed around her middle, but when she scuffed her fingers over the bulging tendons in the back of his hand he relaxed, only to withdraw and roll away from her.
"Let me guess," he said, flopping onto his back. "He said I was a freak who was never supposed to be born?"
Natasha pushed up onto her elbow and flicked on the bedside lamp. She waited till her eyes adjusted, then turned to him. His gaze left the ceiling to meet hers.
"He did call you that," she said.
"He never intended to have kids," Bruce replied, raking his hands through his hair. "He thought he'd pass on the family taint. The monster gene. I was an accident."
Susan had mentioned the family history of abuse, starting with Bruce's grandfather.
"And then there was an actual accident at his lab." Bruce's voice had dropped, low, almost a growling quality to it. "He was drunk on the job, overloaded some machinery, caused an explosion."
"Was he injured?"
The pillow rustled as Bruce shook his head. "Not physically. But he decided the minimal radiation he'd been exposed to affected him on the genetic level. And, you know. The person he passed his genes to."
He lapsed into silence. Natasha waited, stroking the back of his hand where it rested on his stomach, but soon it became apparent he wasn't going to offer any more details.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I think it's completely normal you don't want to think about him, let alone read what he has to say. Or hear it." Hell, she didn't want to, wished she could forget that monstrous face, that raging voice. "I wasn't exaggerating when I told you I wanted to kill him."
Now who was the monster? She looked away, but Bruce brought his free hand to cup her cheek, gently turning her back to face him.
"That's…oddly touching?"
The lines of his forehead arched upward with his wry grin, and she laughed softly, leaning into his palm, then pressing her lips to it. Only Bruce…
"Do you think I should?" he asked. "Go see my father? I don't forgive him. I can't."
Is that what he thought she, Aunt Susan, Bonita Juarez, expected him to do?
"You don't need to," Natasha said. "I couldn't forgive Madame B or the others in the Red Room for stealing my childhood and making me into a killer. But if I had the chance to face them, I think I would."
"I know you would," Bruce said, his thumb stroking her cheek, fingers working back into the tangled hair at her nape. "Without flinching. Just like you face everything."
He sat up, and Natasha thought for a moment he meant to kiss her again. Instead he looked her in the eye and asked, "What would you tell them?"
Without hesitation she answered, "That their teaching failed. That they couldn't program me because I'm not a machine. Or a monster."
At least, when she saw the way Bruce was looking at her, she believed it.
"But they're all gone," she said. "I can never really have any resolution. All I can do is move from my past and try to make the future the best I can."
"Is that…unsatisfying?"
"Yeah," she replied, hoarsely, and blinked back a sting in her eyes. "But it is what it is. And," she added, taking his hand, lacing their fingers together, "what would be right for me isn't what's necessarily right for you."
"This obviously hasn't been right for me. Or us. Or our family."
They would have a family. They were a family. Natasha shifted to lie down with him again, tucking herself into his side, head resting in the crook of his shoulder.
"I wish I had your courage," he said.
"You have more courage than you give yourself credit for." Natasha spread her hand across his chest, felt the wiry hair, the warmth of his skin, and the beat of his heart beneath. "And you have me."
Institutional green paint peeled away to reveal heavy steel. The interview cell door, along with the armed guard posted in front of it, made Hulk's hackles rise. Bruce's, too-that old fear of being caged, even though he knew this time, the cell wasn't meant for him, was in fact already occupied.
Either his discomfort was obvious, or Natasha anticipated it. She stroked his pulse point, leaned up to speak huskily in his ear. "I feel the same way, big guy."
He glanced at her, remembered she had as much reason to fear lock-up as him, and returned the reassuring pressure of her fingers. Brought her hand up to brush his lips across her knuckles.
Neither of them were monsters. They fought monsters. More importantly, some people deemed them fit for the role of banishing them from children's closets.
But first, his own.
Bruce let out a long breath, then nodded to the guard.
Brian had lost visiting privileges after his violent outburst toward Natasha. When Bruce learned this, he nearly took the easy out, fell back to his habit of avoidance, and gave up on the idea of confrontation. Natasha wouldn't let him, of course; she and Aunt Susan, in possession of her own, equally formidable set of persuasive powers, convinced the warden to make an exception for Brian's son, who'd never once darkened the door of the Lima State Hospital the entire time he'd been an inmate. The warden agreed, under the condition that extra precautions would be taken to ensure it didn't happen again in this potentially more volatile encounter.
One of those precautions was that the confrontation would not take place at a visitation booth. Instead, they would meet in a private interview room, the open door to which Bruce, following a final murmur of encouragement from Aunt Susan and a kiss from Natasha, released her hand to step through.
Brian already sat inside, his orange-clad back to the door, hunched over the table. Bruce hesitated, Natasha and Susan stopping behind him. His throat tightened; Hulk growled.
As a child, Brian's towering height had intimidated even when not coupled with the brute strength it was capable of leveling against Bruce. He'd thought that since he was grown, he wouldn't feel so small in his father's presence. But even seated, Brian loomed.
A sick taste filled Bruce's mouth as he pictured the scene Natasha had described of Brian lunging at her, wielding a telephone receiver like a medieval chain mace against the glass. He swallowed down the bile. There would be none of that today, with the shackles fixed to a ring in the floor, cuffed hands to a bar at the edge of the table-the other precautions. Hulk huffed, less than impressed by the feeble restraints, but Bruce proceeded into the room, making his way around the table to face his father.
Only when he was separated from him by a scant three feet of Formica did it occur to him that he had absolutely no idea what he was going to say.
"You look bigger on TV," Brian said.
Why had Bruce ever thought he'd be given the chance to speak first?
"And greener. Same hair, though. Like your mother."
His voice was slightly raspier with age, but otherwise exactly as Bruce remembered it. Had it ever uttered a kind word? None that he could recall.
"This is the first time I've seen my son as a grown man," Brian went on, almost conversationally to Natasha as she seated herself in the chair to the right of the one Bruce continued to stand behind. "Can you believe it?"
Bruce's jaw throbbed, as though he and the Other Guy both clenched it in dislike of Brian talking to her, stoically as she took it. When she didn't respond, his eyes flicked back to Bruce, narrowing to black slits as they scrutinized him.
"That is…if you're a man, Bruce. Are you? Or is that why you've stayed away all this time? Because you're still just a scared little boy crying into his mother's skirt? Or his dear auntie's," he snarled. "You kept him away from me all these years, didn't you, Susie? Poisoned my son against me because you were jealous your husband walked out on you without giving you any of your own."
"Oh, Brian," Susan said with a shake of her head, "you're confusing the way your twisted mind works with the way everybody else's does."
Like Natasha, her ability to remain unshaken by him-or to appear so-helped Bruce to find his center and speak at last.
"I didn't stay away because I was afraid of you."
Brian leaned back in his chair, as far as his restrained wrists would allow, regarding Bruce from beneath eyebrows arched in what seemed, for a moment, to be genuine curiosity. "Why did you, then? Because you were angry?"
He couldn't keep the cutting edge out of his voice, and his sharp gaze dropped. Against his will Bruce followed it to his own hands, tendons flexing across his knuckles as he clutched the back of the chair.
"What happens when you're angry, son? Do you lose control like your old man? Do you become something even worse?" The deep lines of his face cracked open in a grin, the crookedness of it jarring as it revealed a row of straight white teeth. "I always said, I passed you the monster gene. Don't get angry right now. Not with the woman you love right here. So small and fragile."
The legs of the chair screeched over Hulk's rising roar as Bruce dragged it out and sat down next to Natasha. She caught his hand beneath the table, and he stole a glance at her, looked into her unblinking green eyes until he could meet his father's again. You have more courage than you give yourself credit for. And you have me. He wouldn't trade her for all the courage in the world.
"Does it make you feel better about yourself to believe I'm worse than you?" he asked. "I'm not the one chained to my chair."
Brian's leer dropped into a glower. "Because you have your rich and powerful friends to protect you. Not to mention your alter ego. Only reason they haven't locked you up and thrown away the key's because they can't control him."
"But I can," Bruce countered. "That's what separates me from you. I take responsibility for my actions. I've spent my whole life trying not to be you instead of resigning myself to some genetic code for evil."
He hadn't always succeeded. Over the past few days, he'd come to the realization that he'd taken after his father in more ways than he ever knew. Running away, for example, seemed to be a hereditary disposition; Brian had cut off all ties with Susan and their sister Elaine to avoid the memories of his own painful childhood.
"You didn't have to be this way," Bruce went on. "You didn't have to be here."
The links between the handcuffs clanked against the bar. Rather than explode with the insane rage he braced for, an animal struggling to break free of its bonds, Brian hunched lower so he could rub his chin, the stubble rasping against his hand.
"I thought like you once. Thought the love of a good woman would change me. Save me." His hands fell, shoulders broadened as he sat up straight, shedding the cloak of sanity he'd worn so briefly. "But then your bitch of a mother abandoned me."
"Abandoned you? You beat her black and blue and she stayed. She only tried to leave when you started in on me."
"Rebecca loved you more than me! From the moment you were born, you ruined everything!"
"And you smashed her head into the driveway. Right in front of me."
Blood and bits of brain tissue stained the concrete, even the weeds that grew up through the cracks. Covered up the chalk drawings Bruce had labored over for hours to keep out of his father's way. Coated his face.
Untangling his fingers from Natasha's, he pulled off his glasses and wiped at the sticky, wet warmth he felt there now. Sweat and tears.
Out the corner of his eye, she watched him steadily. On his other side, Susan sniffled.
"I was seven years old. And I've seen it again every day for the last forty."
"You think I haven't?" Brian retorted. "What else do I have to think about in here and wish it hadn't come to that?"
He was so passive about his own role, unrepentant. Imprisoned by his past long before he was hauled away from the murder scene in cuffs.
Bruce got to his feet, acutely aware of his unfettered movement. His head buzzed with freedom. No, that was an actual buzz, from overhead, the flickering fluorescent lightbulb. His mind was as quiet as it had been since the accident.
Longer.
He drew a square of paper from his pants pocket. Unfolded it. Cleared his throat and read aloud.
"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?"
"What's this?" Brian interrupted.
"Describe the discipline and child rearing practices your parents used."
"Some therapy worksheet bullshit?"
Bruce looked up from the typed list of questions. "It's a guide for writing my biography."
"Hulk write memoir, Hulk air dirty laundry, Hulk get rich?"
"It's part of a home study. So Natasha and I can adopt."
He hadn't intended to divulge anything of their future plans to his father, and his head snapped to her in alarm. Thankfully, her lips twitched in the faintest smile that she approved. Nothing held back now.
Brian's chains rattled as he threw back his head back and cackled. "I thought you were supposed to be a genius. You can't honestly believe any social worker in their right mind would give you a kid when you put My daddy drank too much and smacked me around and killed my mother in front of me?"
Bruce hesitated, listening for the Other Guy.
Hulk remained silent.
"Aren't you supposed to be a genius, too? I will write that that I was born into a broken and abusive home, and that I witnessed my mother's murder at the hands of my alcoholic father. But the home where I was raised?"
He lay his free hand on Susan's shoulder, felt the shudder of her silent tears.
"Aunt Susan provided me with a loving, stable environment where I learned how to see beauty in the world and value in myself. Most importantly," he said over Brian's scoff, "she taught me to do the good I could in the world, and that it was possible to break the cycle."
She looked up at him, eyes warm and rich, and he thought she'd never looked as proud of him as she did now. Not when he graduated Valedictorian of Science High, or even when he earned his PhD from Harvard.
Couldn't remember his mother gazing with him with more love.
Susan reached for his hand, and he helped her up. Natasha stood, too, pressed her hand into the small of his back as he stepped around the table.
"You were incredible, Bruce." He felt her words as a breath at the back of his neck.
"Adoption!" Brian called out as Bruce rapped on the locked door to alert the guard that the visit had come to an end. "That's good, son. No genetics involved. Means you won't pass on the Banner taint. It'll die with you."
Bruce halted in the open doorway, one hand braced on the frame. The bastard always had to have the last word, as well as the first, and had succeeded in being even crueler than he intended to be. He had no idea genetics couldn't be involved.
"No, Dad," Bruce said, without so much as a backward glance. "It'll die with you."
A/N: One more chapter (I think) and an epilogue to go, folks…And I'm determined to get them out before Captain America: Civil War's US release. Until then, I'd love to know what you thought of this one!