Fractured Halves
Nat
“How long do we have?” Tony asked. I could tell by the slightly distracted look in his eyes that he was already running through potential scenarios in his mind.
“Two weeks, maybe less.” Gamora gestured to three of the bright points on the three-dimensional chart that currently filled the space above the council table. “As far as we can tell, he returned to his home world to retrieve whatever it is he is using to control the stones, and to gather his children for the fight.”
“And how do we know that, exactly?” Loki interjected. “How can we trust your information? We’ve known you for less than a day. That hardly makes any of you a credible source.”
Gamora’s expression stiffened. Quill started to stand up, obviously riled by the question, but she stopped him.
“Because I’m one of his children.”
“Really inspires confidence,” Tony muttered.
Thor rose to his feet. I fiddled with my tasers, wondering if I would need to intervene to keep the council from getting out of hand and even more if any intervention on my part would make things worse or better, but he merely extended a hand to the green-skinned guardian.
“Families can be difficult.”
Gamora nodded, accepting the offered hand.
As Thor returned to his seat, Loki leaned over and whispered, almost imperceptibly, “No need to talk about me as if I’m not in the room.”
Thor guffawed and punched his shoulder. “I was talking about Hela. Not everything is about you, brother.”
Loki tried to look wounded, but the slightest hint of a smile hovered around his lips regardless. Seeing the two of them at such a comfortable peace with one another was strangely heartwarming.
“How about Heimdall?” Tony pressed. “Isn’t seeing across the universe kind of his whole deal? Why didn’t he warn us about Thanos?”
“Heimdall sequestered himself away in the forest weeks ago, telling us he wished to be alone to meditate on the events of Ragnarok,” Thor admitted. “His sight makes him difficult to track down unless he wants to be found. I sent Miek in search of him upon your arrival, but they have not yet returned.”
“Miek?” Tony prompted.
“Excellent sense of smell.”
The Valkyrie sighed at Thor’s confusing description. “Bug with knives for hands. You’ll meet him eventually.”
“Good friend of mine,” Korg added cheerfully.
A loud ding interrupted the conversation. Loki pulled the cellphone out of Thor’s pocket and handed it to his brother.
“It appears to be for you.”
Thor’s face lit up as he read the message. “Captain Rogers shall be joining us within the hour.” He grinned at the device, turning it over and over in his hands. “Aren’t phones remarkably convenient?”
I looked over at Tony, but his face had become a mask. “You gave him Thor’s number?”
“Yeah, well, seemed like Thor would be a better contact point,” Tony mumbled.
Making a decision, I rose from my chair. “If I may, I have some business to attend to.”
Bruce
The first person I saw, hours later, was a nurse. Was it morning, or evening? I was too numb to ask; she too skittish to volunteer the information. I could tell by the way she shot me wary, frightened glances that tending to the Hulk’s host had not been something she’d signed up for. Taking vitals, checking the wounds… I could have told them it was all normal. As normal as I could be. Recovering, yet again. Another set of scars to hide, another incident to try to forget, another hope dashed to pieces.
Emotionally drained beyond tears and words, I sat there silently as she fastened a silvery ring around my wrist and clipped it to the bed frame.
“Monitors heart rate and warns us if you attempt to leave or remove it.”
I nodded mutely. Under any other circumstances, I would have protested the restraint, felt my body leap into panic as the circle closed around my skin; but there was nothing left in me with enough strength to panic. Instead, I stayed as I was, collapsed silently against the wall on a barren cot, praying for the peaceful oblivion of a sleep that would not come. I could never escape my mind; what did it matter anymore if I could not escape in body as well. The monster deserved to be locked away.
The nurse’s footsteps faded away in the distance.
Natasha
A nurse unlocked the door wordlessly and disappeared down the hallway. I pushed it open and stepped inside. The room was bare, save for the cot on one side. Anything else that have previously taken up residence in the space seemed to have been removed hastily to prepare the room for the new occupant.
My heart pinched. Hastily, I wiped my palms against the sweatpants I was still wearing, noting to myself that I really needed to get to the bottom of this compulsion and nip it in the bud. I was an assassin; getting blood on my hands was nothing.
“Bruce?”
His eyes flickered upwards; then just as quickly away. “Natasha.”
I let out the deep breath I’d been holding. Hearing his voice sent a surge of relief over me, but it wasn’t enough. I fought the urge to grab him and make sure he was there and whole. Everything in his body language was closed off; afraid, perhaps, or even ashamed. Leaning in the far corner of the metal bed frame, knees to chest, hugging arms against his body… all signaling isolation and distance.
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t here when you woke up. Do you need anything?”
He shook his head.
“May I sit?” I gestured to the open space on the far side of the cot.
“Okay.”
He straightened out of the corner he had wedged himself into and smoothed out the fabric of the mattress with his left hand. My eyes flickered to his right hand, still pressed up against the metal bar that served as a headboard.
A sudden fury rose up within me.
“Are you handcuffed to the bed?”
“It’s fine,” Bruce stumbled out, bewildered. “Tracks my vitals, warns them if I try to leave…”
Bruce
As suddenly as Natasha had arrived, she was gone in a whirlwind of unusually unfettered emotion. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to think, focusing on my breathing and hoping that I could drown out everything else in the meditative ins and outs, if I just focused hard enough. I needed the thoughts to stop.
Even as I thought it, the breaths shallowed and quickened. I let my eyes drop back open. It was no use. I wished Natasha could have stayed, but even as I wished it I berated myself for the thought. The team had far more important things to be doing.
Natasha
I stormed back into the cell—room, it was a room, not a cell—with key in hand. As the metal ring popped open, my fingers fumbled with the release, almost dropping the sensor that I’d commandeered from the medical staff in order to undo the cuff.
I couldn’t breathe. The room was dark around me; the metal cold around my wrist. I looked down and there was blood on my hands, so much blood…
Gentle hands were taking my own, guiding me to sit as they stroked my knuckles soothingly and steadily.
“You are safe here, Tasha. No one is going to hurt you. Can you breathe for me? Nice and slow.”
“Слишком много крови,”* I mumbled with difficulty. I knew that that didn’t work in this context, but I couldn’t figure out how to make myself fix it. I was trembling and close to tears. “Кровь везде.”**
“ты в безопасности.*** I’m so sorry, Nat, I don’t really speak Russian, but I promise you, you are safe here. I don’t know where you went just now, but no one is going to hurt you here and now. You are safe.”
I took a shuddering breath. My hands still trembled, but Bruce’s were there, holding them steadily, giving me the stability I needed to wrench my mind out of the past. “They used to handcuff us to the beds at night.”
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the slow in and out of his breath. “Breathe with me.”
Bruce hesitantly put an arm around me, maneuvering himself behind me in such a way that my back rested against his chest. He moved me with a gentleness that most would not expect out of a man who shared his life with the Hulk. My lungs matched pace with his, eagerly returning to a healthier rate. I could feel each steady respiration, the rise and fall of his diaphragm and ribcage, the beat of his heart… a heart we had almost lost forever.
My breath hitched.
“Natasha? You back with me?” Bruce started to pull away, but I clung to his hands before he could move his arms from around me.
I couldn’t speak, so I nodded instead.
“What do you need?” he asked softly. “Anything I can do?”
I finally found my voice. “I need you. I need to feel your heart beating, to know that you’re okay.”
Wordlessly, Bruce rested his head against my shoulder. The change in rhythm of his chest told me he was fighting back tears of his own.
We stayed there for several minutes.
“Look at us, Earth’s mightiest heroes.” I tried to laugh through the tears. “I just had a panic attack over a piece of medical equipment, Tony and Steve are gearing up for Siberia: Part 2, and the universe as we know it has two weeks left.”
Bruce’s hands were still tracing mine soothingly. I leaned into his touch.
“Steve’s coming back?”
I nodded.
“How bad was it? The fight between them, I mean.”
“It was bad.” I shook my head at the memories from the airport. “The Winter Soldier showed back up, and suddenly everything escalated out of control. Friends turned on each other, we all fought. Tony followed Steve to Siberia. When they returned… neither of them are willing to talk about what happened there. Steve wept for weeks when he thought none of us could hear him. Tony nearly drank himself to death.”
“I should never have left,” Bruce murmured against my shoulder.
I shrugged. “You did what you thought was best. That’s all anyone can do.”
“Still… can’t fight each other if you’re stuck in your own hero-shaped dent in the floor.”
I laughed. “I know you’re joking, but being Hulk-smashed doesn’t sound like such a terrible option after what actually went down. Besides… you bring out the best in all of us.”
He made a surprised noise.
“You do,” I insisted. “Tony listens to you, and he hardly listens to anyone. Steve respects you and prizes your counsel. Your way of looking for the peaceful alternatives in every situation balances his combat training and he values that.”
Bruce was quiet for a moment. “Sometimes I forget who I am beyond the other guy, Nat. I worry that someday, that’s all there will be to me. Recently, it feels like he is seeping over into Banner, and that terrifies me.”
I squeezed his hands. “I can’t speak for recently, but as long as I’ve known you, Banner has been seeping into the Hulk, Bruce. The more we worked together, the more he seemed to know me, to make decisions that spared lives as much as he could, to care about his team. I guess what I’m trying to say is that no matter what happens between you, there will always be Bruce in there somewhere at the heart of both of you. And I will do my utmost to make sure that spark of you never dies out.”
“After the battle of New York, I really didn’t think you’d ever want to be near me again,” Bruce admitted after a few minutes. “I fully expected the team to ship me back to Kolkata, or even off to a military lab. Not invite me home and try to help me.”
“You know when I first trusted you?”
I felt rather than saw him shake his head. “When we went to that cabin in Vermont to work out the lullaby?”
I smiled. “No. When I bribed a beggar to lure you to a building on the edge of town to help a person I made up, and you followed her without question.”
“Huh.”
“Took me until the cabin to trust the other guy.”
Bruce chuckled. “That’s fair.”
For a while, we sat in silence, comfortable in security of knowing the other was there. Remembering why I had come, I turned to face Bruce.
“I’m springing you out of here.”
“What?”
“I’m springing you out of here,” I repeated. “I know you’re on orders not to leave, but the team needs you. Steve’s going to be here any minute now, and if nobody stops them, he and Tony are likely to wreck this place all over again.”
“I’m not sure bringing me into it is the best idea.”
“You and Thor are the only ones who weren’t part of the fight in Germany,” I explained. “And Thor… well… Thor could stop a fight if it comes down to that, but he’s going to stop it with his hammer, not words.”
“Mjolnir’s gone,” Bruce pointed out. “His sister destroyed it. But you’re right. He tends to be very physical, and it would be better if it didn’t come to that.”
“I don’t want it to come to that, not again. And because I was there—I was part of it—I don’t think I can talk them down by myself.”
Bruce sighed. “Okay. But we have to clear it by Dr. Cho first. We don’t need her showing up in the middle of it to lecture me about my disregard for my health.”
"Deal."