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I swear, on my life, I will get you out of this. You will walk away.
The first time, in the bowels of a crumbling helicarrier, with the world as she knows it crashing down around her ears, Natasha makes a promise she should never have made and cannot keep. She tries to convince the universe to bend to her will. She tries to convince Bruce that words, wishes, prayer, can control a force of nature.
It doesn’t work.
The rage builds. It’s out of control. Hers, and his. She finds herself back at her beginning, a predator become prey again, a little girl hiding in the dark. It ends the same way: a chase down a corridor, the monster at her heels, gaining steadily as her heart pounds and her lungs spasm in search of oxygen.
The worst part is, that in the end she is insignificant, swept out of the way like a leaf on the wind. She hits the ground hard. Her ribs are bruised and her ankle aches, but it’s nothing really. Or it should be nothing.
She thinks of the unassuming man in the rumpled, too-large shirt, wringing his hands and trying to disappear. They are opposites, and yet the same. Predator disguised as prey, or prey disguised as predator. They are both trying (failing) to control the monster inside.
She shakes, loses herself in the dark, locked in the past, in the things she cannot change. She lets dreams, nightmares and memories become one. The world is ending anyhow.
But then there’s a call to arms. A job which needs doing. A job which is hers and hers alone. A monster she is more than a match for. It’s enough, just, to pull her back to herself, to gather in her soul.
This is Agent Romanoff. I copy.
She runs towards the fight.
--
We could use a little worse
The second time is different. It’s not as enclosed, not as close. She has freedom to move and run and broad, glorious daylight. Well, broad glorious daylight with deadly alien spaceships raining down around, but beggars can’t be choosers.
She has a chance to admire him then, for choosing to let the monster take control. There’s a job needs doing and they’re all willing to die for it, but Bruce is willing to change, willing to lose the very essence of himself.
There’s bravery in that.
--
It’s been months since she’s seen him. Months since she’s seen any of them actually. SHIELD fell, and Agent Romanoff went with it. She ran away to build a new cover, to decide who to be in this new SHIELD-less world. She’s tired of putting her faith in something larger than herself. She’s had the rug pulled out from under her, too many times. It’s humiliating. She’s ready to trust in Natalia Alianovna Romanova for a change.
It’s therefore entirely typical that she should arrive back at Avenger’s tower to find the place deserted, and Jarvis ready to inform her that her team, the team she has chosen to join, but not obey, are conducting a mission up-state. A drug-lord’s den, or a political kidnapping, or something equally mundane. The details are not important.
What is important, is that she decides to join them. What the hell, she’s her own woman now. If she wants to get in on this one, if her fingers are itching for the trigger of a gun, if her brain is starved of adrenaline (of company, maybe, of people who have her back no matter what) then she’ll do it. Who’s going to stop her?
And that’s how she finds herself a couple of hours later, bent-double and panting with the rush of fast-moving water at her back and squinting into the setting sun as a solid lump of green rage crashes towards her.
It’s not dark this time, not enclosed, but she’s still just as trapped. The valley side is practically a cliff edge and the Hulk is closing fast and far too close for her to slip up the path in either direction. She curses herself, her stupidity, her inattention. She should know better than this.
She finds her hands gripping a gun. She knows it won’t do any good, but she wasn’t built not to go down fighting. The Hulk is awe-inspiring, a solid mass of muscle and rage.
He’s slowing down.
“Bruce.” She calls. It’s a mistake.
The Hulk scrunches his face up in anger, swipes at her with a massive fist which she somehow manages to vault over. He’s like a huge, terrifying child having a tantrum. The single-mindedness, the focus on nothing but his own rage. A wounded animal, maybe. She rolls under another huge fist, sliding to her feet and turning back to face him. He uproots a tree, stamps a massive foot, sends debris skipping and clattering off the edge.
A child.
Well, if she’s going to die anyway.
She holsters the gun, holds out a hand.
Hey, big guy.
Sun’s gettin’ real low.
--
The next time, it’s planned. A controlled experiment in the middle of nowhere with Veronica primed for back-up. Bruce is agitated, hand-wringing in full force.
"Nat, I’m really not sure about this."
"Trust me. Please."
She squeezes his shoulder, holds his gaze. This is a chance for both of them. For her to control the uncontrollable, and for him to know the monster can be tamed.
He grimaces, turns away. Before that, before they can reach that point, he has to face his greatest fear (just as he has done before, over and over and over again). He hates this. He clenches his fists, feels the rage building in his chest.
He walks away and The Other Guy roars.
Natasha watches from the shadows, follows the squawking of birds and waving of uprooted trees.
Then:
Hey big guy. Sun’s gettin’ real low.
--
There’s snow on the ground. It should mean fresh starts and mince pies and snow angels. Sweet, innocent, childish things. But it’s not the same once you’ve seen it churned up with mud and blood and guts and somehow that pink stain on fresh white is so much more sickening than on tarmac or tiles or the ratty carpet of a hotel room floor.
Bruce sees it differently. She’d caught him holding out his tongue for the first snowflake, grinning with infectious delight, with anticipation. It was a gesture full of such aching vulnerability. It had transfixed her.
The blanket of white, the sharp piercing cold, seem to have no effect on the monster. He tosses bits of truck around in a blind rage as she approaches.
Hey big guy.
She searches for something, some trace of the man she knows is in there, some trace of the wonder.
Sun’s gettin’ real low.
--
You’ll break them.
Only the breakable ones. You were made of marble.
It’s so tentative, still, this thing between them. And when their foundations start to crack, when they both lose their footing, their hold on the world, they start to freefall in different directions.
Natasha’s monster is in her past, that’s where she keeps it, locks it away. She lets the guilt belong to someone else, a different person, the person she used to be. It’s the only way she can keep going. But Bruce needs to remember. His monster hasn’t gone, will never die. He needs to feel the guilt, to feel the pain, to remember the dead because otherwise, how can he count himself a good man?
What about the dead?
They’re dead.
No…. not ever. Not to me.
She must forget and he can’t ever. He means to condemn himself, but he condemns her too. And she won’t be dragged back into the dark. Not for him. Not for anyone.
There’s nowhere to run, not for either of them.
(I adore you. But I need the other guy.)
She does what has to be done. Always. Whatever the cost.
She runs towards the fight.
--
The sky above Sokovia is the palest blue and the air is thinning. Natasha can feel it in her lungs, feel the heaviness sitting on her chest.
Finally, a moment of peace. A chance to salvage…something. Maybe.
Hey big guy. Sun’s gettin’ real—
A hail of gunfire and the world explodes.
--
Hey big guy. You did it. The job’s finished.
Now I need you to turn this bird around, ok? We can’t track you in stealth mode, so help me out. I need y—
He’s gone.
Natasha swallows, accepts it. She knows what she’s done. She betrayed him in the worst possible way. She took away his control, let the monster win and she, of all people, knows what that means. She understands how that will sit in his gut and in his heart.
But she looks out of the window of the helicarrier, sees the world still turning, still intact, still thriving with life and she doesn’t (can’t) regret it. This is the job she has chosen: to do what is necessary, what no-one else will. Whatever the cost.
She pictures him, crawling out of the sea in Fiji, the searing sun, white sand and blue sea. Transforming. Bruce, on the beach with cocktails. It’s a ludicrous thought. She imagines him instead, in a cabin in the woods. Another unregistered medical practice. Giving to those in need. That’s more like it. It sits more comfortably in her soul.
She creates a life for him, in her head. In the spare moments between training plans and missions and Hydra, in the quiet of the early morning, when she drinks coffee by herself before anyone else is up. In those moments, she builds him a peaceful life. She gives him purpose, intellectual challenge, she makes him laugh. She takes away his fear. She tries to see Bruce, just as himself.
She knows it’s a lie.
(The wormhole stretches, and squeezes, adds rage and confusion and anger to the betrayal. Betrayal and fear. Who can he trust? He can’t. He rages. He fights. He wins.
Bruce is left drowning in the ocean.)
--
Hey big guy. Sun’s gettin’ real low.
“No. Sun high.” He brushes her aside.
She feels like a rag doll thrown aside by a child who’s out-grown his favourite toys. Who finally sees through the make-believe.
It’s like the first time, on the helicarrier. The insignificance of her. She flies through the air, hits a tree. Hard. Her head meets rough bark with a crack that shatter stars through her skull.
Her vision wavers, and the world starts to disappear. She tries to stay conscious but honestly, she’s just goddamn tired. She’s been too long on her own, too long on the run, looking over her shoulder, trusting no-one.
It had been like a message from above when the Asgardian ship landed in the Andes, a ten mile hike from her white-washed room in Arequipa. Not that she believes in such things. She’d wanted (desperately needed) to be trusted again.
The air is thin and there’s a weight on her chest. Living in a city at eight thousand feet, she’s gotten used to it.
Thor finds her, later.
“Natasha, are you hurt?”
She groans, shakes her head, half laughs.
“No, I’m fine. Looks like the Hulk’s out-grown the lullaby. I guess we’re back to waiting him out.”
“Yes, we are.”
He doesn’t quite meet her eyes.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“He’s been like this for six months. “
Her eyes widen.
“The time before that, the Hulk stayed for two years.”
Two years.
(I adore you. But I need The Other Guy)
A cavern opens up beneath her. She feels his lips on hers again, the softness of his hoodie clenched in her fists. She feels him stiffen, sees the shock enter his face.
She sees him falling.
He fell too far.
Natasha swims in a sea of red.
--
Hey big guy.
A moment of peace, again. The war still rages, but the battle’s over. For now. The cold is piercing, chilling to the bone.
The Hulk turns. His expression is unfathomable. They have both been aged, changed by loss.
The first snowflake falls. She opens her mouth for it, lets a morsel of a new world melt on her tongue.
She searches his eyes. There’s something. Maybe.
Natasha sits on the hard ground. Cross-legged, like a child. She holds out a hand.
Sun’s gettin’ real low.