WHO: Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner WHEN: Today. WHERE: Bruce's room on the Avengers compound. WHAT: Let the angsting begin. STATUS: There's some rage going around. No Code Green though.
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Natasha found herself outside of Bruce's door the next day. The Avengers kept her busy, but too many people here seemed to want to keep her sidelined. She couldn't blame them. It was human nature to give people time when distressed, especially after six months of trying to find someone who didn't want to be found. Annoyance, though, that she could do with ease. Someone said his name, and most of the people in a room would look at her. If it was a room of Avengers, there was training to be had, and she wasn't going easy on anyone.
She rapped on the door with her knuckles before sliding into the room. She poked her head in with a feigned smile. "Up for visitors?"
Since the time when Bruce arrived to the Avengers’ new base in Upstate New York, his belongings from the Tower had been sent, including clothes. There was now a marked difference in how he wore them - Bruce had lost a significant amount of weight during his self-imposed exile, so his trousers were baggy and couldn’t be held up without a belt, and his shirt hung loose on his frame. Physically, Bruce had completely recovered from his drug induced coma, thanks to the Other Guy. However, psychologically, he was struggling.
Upon hearing Natasha’s voice, Bruce looked away from the document he’d been reading on his laptop. A feeling of apprehension washed over him, and his first instinct was to shut her out. For the past six months, he’d been avoiding all contact with his teammates, and Bruce knew he couldn’t avoid them any longer. And considering his unique relationship with Natasha, Bruce owed it to her to invite her into his room and face the inevitable, emotionally charged conversation that was sure to follow.
“Yeah, come on in,” Bruce said, swiveling around in his chair to face her. He scratched his cheek where his beard still grew - he hadn’t shaven yet. He’d grown it out to help disguise his face from those who were searching for him. Unconsciously, Bruce saw his beard as a vestige of his life on the run, escaping his responsibilities and contact with other people. Keeping the beard was Bruce’s unintentional way of saying he wasn’t sure whether or not he was going to leave again.
“I was just, uhhhh… catching up,” he said, motioning to the laptop screen. “How’s it going?” It was a casual, yet cautious way of testing the waters, to see how Natasha was feeling toward him.
"I think that's supposed to be my line," she responded as she opened the door and leaned her shoulder against the door frame. One eyebrow rose and fell as her lips dropped into a half smile. She gave a quick look down to the laptop. "I'm good for catching up summaries. What interests you?"
Natasha knew how to play the game: you started with the niceties. You settled into a conversation, and then you had a talk. The long separation meant more niceties. Natasha really hated those sometimes. There were only so many platitudes she could really stomach before she wanted to punch someone in the face. That would be counterproductive to what she wanted out of this conversation. For now.
Bruce felt his heart rate quickening. Not enough to trigger a transformation - he had enough control over that, but it was something he always was aware of, to make sure it wouldn’t go too far. His heart was telling him that he was nervous with Natasha standing there, but he mentally calmed himself down. There was no use in evading her any more - six months was long enough. He needed to have this conversation sooner or later, and Bruce figured that it might as well start now.
“Come in,” Bruce said, inviting her with a nod of his head. “Take a seat.” Maybe if she sat down instead of standing in the door frame, she’d be less intimidating. Bruce looked briefly at the computer screen again. “I, uhhhh… was going over the damage the Other Guy made in Johannesburg,” he confessed with an awkward, nervous smile to take away the edge. He swallowed hard, then continued, “It’s pretty bad, but not as bad as I thought.” His forehead creased with worry and guilt. “There was some outcry, huh?”
"It wasn't just Johannesburg. It was New York. It was Puente Antiguo. It was London. It was Sokovia." If Natasha looked unhappy, that was because she had a part in every single one of those events, with the exception of London. "And then of course, the main attraction: bringing down SHIELD right on top of Washington DC."
There'd been a lot of chatter all over the airwaves about them. New York may have started the talk, but it dated back a while. The Other Guy was the least of their worries.
Natasha left the door open as she took a seat in an open chair just far enough that she wouldn't be tempted to reach out and touch him. There'd been enough of that when he was unconscious and fighting to the surface, despite her better judgment. "We came out here to keep these fights away from civilians, since they seem to land right on our doorstep."
“Those other places are different,” Bruce insisted. “They were under attack and in one way or another, we were trying to stop it from happening, either individually or as a team. Yeah, there was a lot of damage in those places, and lives lost, but it would’ve been a lot worse if the Avengers hadn’t stepped in to handle it. Johannesburg…” Bruce suddenly looked away, unable to maintain eye contact with Natasha. “I was the aggressor that needed to be stopped.”
He paused to rub his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I’d been turned into a weapon. I almost ripped Tony to shreds.” He stared off into space. “ That’s always been my worst fear. Hurting those closest to me,” he muttered. It was unspoken , but Bruce also considered Natasha, and the ways he could hurt her, not just physically, but emotionally.
"Fox News is having a field day, of course." Accountability. That's what SHIELD and the World Council had been about, hadn't it? And that turned out to be a joke. "They blame us for the fights coming here in the first place, Bruce. They blame Thor for London. Steve and me for DC. You for Harlem, Johannesburg. They blame Tony for -- You don't even want to know the list of things they like to pin to his shirt."
This was good, keeping the topic to battles, to the Avengers. She could handle the right and left sides of the superhero debate. There wasn't much else she felt capable of. Relationships just weren't her forte, even if she was good at pretending. She folded her hands in her lap, though she leaned against the arm of the chair. "The point is that it doesn't matter if those were fights that came to us or we caused. We still caused the damage. How much of New York did we destroy fighting the Chitauri? How many buildings were leveled when Tony killed one of those giant turtle things from the inside? Yeah, we saved the world, but they're all left with the aftermath."
“Pft, Fox News.” Bruce shook his head out of irritation. “Did they like it better when HYDRA was still secretly infiltrating SHIELD? Have they said anything about Tony pumping money into these places, to help rebuild?” He leaned his elbow upon his desk and rested his head against his hand, frowning deeply. “What kind of accountability? And to whom?"
"That is the question, isn't it?" Natasha didn't know. She assumed it would be to the United Nations or some new worldwide agency meant just to keep an eye on them. Assuming that's the way things were going to go. She'd seen it happen before, on a much smaller scale. Hell, she enforced it in some cases. "Some news sources are spinning it that Stark's trying to keep everyone placated with the money."
“And they’d probably vilify him if he choose not to do anything,” Bruce darkly muttered, letting his ire show. “They don’t understand, that’s how Tony apologizes. It’s not that he’s simply throwing his money around, it’s that he has a hard time communicating, normally.” Bruce only knew how Tony thought and felt after working closely with him for so long. “I ought to ask Tony, the next time I see him.”
He looked over at Natasha. “I also saw that the Avengers have some new members. Rhodey, Sam, Vision… and Wanda.” The way he said the name, indicated his dislike. “I haven’t forgiven her for what she did. How can you trust her?”
That touched a nerve. For anyone to gain redemption, someone had to take a chance on them. Tony. Used to be a weapons manufacturer. Second chance. Thor. Spoilt brat who started wars. Second chance. Bruce. Couldn't control the Hulk. Second chance. Natasha… Well, do you have all day for hers?
"You know, I think Fury asked that exact question to Clint once upon a time." She allowed her annoyance to creep into her voice.
“I think it’s a fair question, given that she manipulated each of us. She blamed Tony for the Stark bombs that fell on her house, I’m surprised she didn’t blame the Avengers for the death of her brother, the same way practically everybody else is blaming us.”
Bruce was familiar with Natasha’s background after the information dump she’d caused, where most of SHIELD’s records were made public. He met Natasha’s gaze and flatly asked, “What was Clint’s answer?”
She straightened in her seat, drawing in a deep breath. Wanda was a lot of things -- broken, grief-stricken -- but Steve believed in the goodness of people. He trusted her, so Natasha trusted her. There wasn't a lot that Natasha could say except that their trust hadn't been unfounded. So far. "You can't earn trust unless a little trust is ventured, but I don't know what Clint said. I wasn't a fly on the wall for that conversation. I was in a holding cell while Fury made up his mind about me."
After a moment, Bruce let his gaze fall to the floor. “You decided to stay on the team,” he muttered, unable to hide the bitterness he felt. “Why didn’t you run away, like you wanted to?”
The question surprised her. She thought the answer had been simple: out of her own fear, her own doubts, she'd discovered some strength she didn't have until that moment when he'd suggested that they leave the team behind to fight Ultron. It had given her the fortitude to play Bruce, if only for a few instants, while she got him to a point where she could trigger the Other Guy. She knew that deep down, Bruce would have regretted leaving them to fend for themselves too, even if he was too clouded in anger to see it now.
There were a hundred different clever retorts that would cut him, make him feel worse. Natasha could feel the sting of her own emotions in her mouth, behind her eyes, so she said the only thing she could think of. Her voice cracked painfully. "I wanted to run away with you."
Now it was Bruce’s turn to be surprised, staring at her silently while weighing her words with how she spoke them. Natasha was a covert operator, one of the best there were, and Bruce was aware of how easily she could manipulate people by telling them what they wanted to hear. Bruce’s cynicism wanted to believe that she was faking it, because that way it would easier to distance himself away from her, emotionally. But then, he thought, what would be her motive? Why would she be manipulating him? To keep him in the team? To maintain control over the Hulk?
Then, he recalled how Natasha was in his room, the moment he came out of his drug induced coma. His mind wasn’t very clear at the time, and his memory of it was a little hazy, but would it make sense for her to be waiting there for God knows how long, not knowing when he’d wake up. He also remembered the expression of concern and care upon her face, the tender touch of her hand upon his shoulder - was it possible for that to be an act, too?
It was an internal struggle between pessimism and what his heart craved, and though he hated himself for it, he found himself falling for her again. No. Not again. He’d never stopped caring for Natasha in the first place. Grimacing and shifting his weight uncomfortably in his seat, he opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again, censoring himself. Finally, “Well....” he cleared his throat, and continued softly, “Take it from me, running away isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. The past always has a way of catching up with you.”
Natasha forced a bitter laugh through her teeth, the smile on her face too weak for the sound. She gave a one shoulder shrug. "Reason number two for not running away. For better or for worse, my past is out there. I don't need to run away to hide from it. I've been doing that for years."
She knew what she'd said, that being an Avenger was a dream and now she was waking up. That wasn't the dream, not really. It was that she was anything other than a spy. Everyone had their place in the team, and that was hers. When Wanda's visions were said and done, the worst to happen to Natasha had already happened. Running away meant never being able to wipe any of that red from her ledger.
There was a pause. Why the hell couldn't she keep herself from reacting? She'd spent months staring at walls, waiting for this moment. Instead of anger, all she could summon up was the sting of abandonment. "You didn't just leave the Avengers. You left me. Didn't even say anything."
“The Other Guy was calling the shots when I left. He’s not that great of a conversationalist.” It was easy to blame the Hulk.
Her laughter grew in its bitterness. Natasha nodded her head as she pushed herself from the chair. Some part of her knew that she deserved that. She'd lied to get him to the edge of that crater. She pushed him over the edge. For the moment, though, she stood there, flabberghasted that he would try to use the Other Guy this way.
"That's the story you're going with. The Other Guy made you do it." Her jaw clenched, as her voice took on an icy resonance. Finally, there was her anger. There were so many things bubbling to the surface, but the main one was coward. Say what you wanted about the Black Widow, but a coward was not one of them. "I knew I'd lose you when I made him come out, but I never thought you'd stoop this low."
The anger with which Bruce responded wasn’t directed at Natasha, but sprang from a hatred of himself. “Don’t tell me you’re shocked. You know my track record. Six months is nothing for me. Running away is my fucking modus operandi.”
Some other time, Natasha might have backed down, taken a step back, to keep the Other Guy from making an appearance. Now, she was just glad to see some goddamn emotion from him, even if it was anger. Something other than humility and embarrassment at being found by them. She jerked forward. Her fist flexed as she struggled with the words.
"I didn't know that meant running away from me too! I laid my soul out to you, told you things that no one else knows, and you just left me like I was garbage. I thought -- " She caught herself before too much tumbled out of her mouth. (Too late.) She thought what? She thought she mattered to someone. She thought she mattered to him. "Don't worry. No one's keeping you locked up here. You can leave any time you want. You know where the door is."
Anger gave way to frustration. What? Did he think this conversation with Natasha was going to be easy? It involved a lot of soul searching and revelation, most of it painful, and it was from this that Bruce was trying to escape. “I’m not running away again,” Bruce said, plainly. “I can’t. I told you about the past catching up. Now HYDRA has something that can knock out the Other Guy. I used to take it for granted that he couldn’t be stopped, I don’t have the luxury anymore. I’m still worried they’ve taken samples of my DNA so they can do God knows what sort of experiments.”
That wasn’t all. Natasha bore her soul, Bruce owed it to her to do the same. He rose to his feet, and hesitated before turned away to wander to the window, where he stared outside, yet kept Natasha’s reflection in the glass pane in view. “When I left, I’d gone to a Bad Place. Mentally. I shut everybody out of my life before, I thought I could do it again.” He then looked over his shoulder at her. “I couldn’t have been more wrong.” He lowered his voice, but his conviction was strong. “I missed you.”
Those were definitely not tears in her eyes. She was definitely not swallowing hard. Natasha couldn't even hold his gaze. The damage was done. Loss of trust, betrayal -- those things were hard to recover from, and they took time to heal. Never mind regaining them. She couldn't handle that last, so she didn't acknowledge it with anymore more than an imperceptible nod.
She could leave it at that. He had to know from her own outburst, from everything she'd said how she felt. He couldn't just drop a bomb like that -- like I missed you -- and expect her to melt all over again. She had a hard enough trusting Steve Rogers, and he'd never abandoned her.
"We confiscated the HYDRA ship they were keeping you on. We might be able to find some samples or data onboard." And if not, they could monitor communications, figure out a way to infiltrate. There were possibilities. "You're a better choice to scan the ship than me. You'd know what to look for."
It was stupid of Bruce to think that Natasha would automatically respond to his confession in any other way than how she did. And that thought made him angry with himself. This was the second time he’d blown it, romantically, the first being Betty. He had something that might’ve been potentially good, and he squandered it, but he was also conflicted. Did he really want a commitment, a relationship? Or just the knowledge there was somebody he could always go to when he needed her, irregardless of her needs?
Bruce scowled and looked out the window, nodding his head in agreement to Natasha’s statement. “I’ll speak with Helen and Vision, as well. See what they came up with. They also have plenty of samples of what they drugged me with. I’m interested to know what it was.” His voice was flat, devoid of any emotion, as if their previous discussion never happened.
Regret was a thing that Natasha was used to. These days, it seemed to be all that she thrived on, and there was no part of this conversation that she didn't regret. She knew she'd agonize over it for the next few days, to herself, and then finally something new would happen or develop, and she'd agonize over that.
But you had to regret to move on, and that's what she'd been doing since Bruce left.
"I'll have them send a data packet for you to work on. Don't want to send that kind of information over a network." Not after Ultron. Some things, like anything to do with Rogers and Banner's blood work, was taken offline for storage. Stupid, stupid, stupid. For someone so skilled at reading people, she sure had a hell of a lot of work with this one. "Anything else you need?"
Again, Bruce nodded, but internally? If there was any time he wanted to unleash the rage of the Hulk and punch something hard, it was now. He wouldn’t let his emotions get the better of him, though. Acknowledge the anger, but stay carefully in control. It was second nature to him, now. “Maybe some better fitting clothes?”
Her smile may have seemed as casual as the ever, but it was a well-practiced one. It struck her that she'd never used it on Bruce, not even way back in Bangladesh. Well, if that wasn't a sad first, she didn't know what is. Natasha reached behind her for the door as she backed away with an incline of her head. "I'll handle it myself, and in the meantime, I'll have some food sent up."
Bruce stubbornly refused to turn to watch her go, and instead continued to stare blankly out the window. “Yeah?” he muttered, relieved that she was leaving, but heartbroken at the same time. “Thanks.”
He didn't turn. Natasha's heart sank. She gave one final nod, then pulled the door open. Just as she was about to step outside of the room, she paused staring out into the hallway. With a brief look over her shoulder (still not looking at her), she finally said, "...I missed you too."
Then she left without waiting for any acknowledgment and hurried down the corridor.