This isn't a very long story, three chapters max. I might just smush the next to together and make it a simple two-shot with super long chapters. Just had to get this out of my brain before I got started on my sequel to In Ruins. Hope you enjoy A Matter of Circumstances.

Chapter 1:

"The truth is a matter of circumstances;
It's not all things to all people all the time,
And neither am I."

Bruce had been gone for over almost two years, not that he wasn't aware of all that had transpired since he left after the battle with Ultron. Tony occasionally found him and called although the billionaire didn't actively seek him out and show up on his doorstep. Even so, each time Tony found him Bruce made it a point to go elsewhere because if Tony found him then someone else probably wouldn't be far behind. The accords made his need to be invisible even more necessary; he couldn't even trust himself with control over the Other Guy let alone trust the United Nations to make active decisions about how and when to use him.

The accords were also the reason why Bruce thought he was imagining things when he saw the familiar face of one Natasha Romanoff in a city marketplace in Ecuador. For a moment he wondered if she would actually actively hunt him down for whoever she worked for now, or he did wonder, up until he remembered Tony telling him she had 'gone double agent on him...again'.

He imagined she had her reasons for what she did, for letting Steve and the man who had shot her twice go free, just like he imagined she had her reasons for forcing him into the fight in Sokovia. It didn't mean he accepted that her reasons were good ones, or that he forgave her, but he accepted that she believed she had a good reason. It was enough that he didn't outright hate her though admittedly she also wasn't his favorite person since what had transpired between them.

Unfortunately before his mind could decide if he had really just seen the redhead, that small glimpse of her was gone almost as soon as he had seen it and he frowned, heading in the same direction he had seen her moving. One thing he knew for certain was that if he had actually just seen Natasha then she certainly didn't know he was here. She was a world class spy, an assassin; if Natasha was looking for him then he wouldn't know she was there until she was standing right in front of him.

It took almost ten minutes and Bruce was about to give up and call it a false alarm when he saw her again. She was at an alleyway, glancing around discreetly as she pretended to adjust the hood of her thin hooded and long-sleeved shirt, then she disappeared into the alleyway like it was the most natural place to be going.

His assumption was that she knew she was being followed, after all, she was a master of subterfuge and being unseen even when she was the most vibrant thing around for miles. It was a skill he could never understand, how someone who looked like her could make herself obsolete and forgettable, how she could either walk through a room and be the most exquisite person someone ever laid eyes on or just another face in the background depending on how she carried herself.

Which is why she had to know she was being followed, though Bruce supposed she didn't imagine on any level that it might be him and he hadn't thought that maybe she was being followed by more than just him. He found that out when he came across the squabble.

It stunned him momentarily and all he could do was stand and watch as she fought with only one hand, her other arm hanging uselessly at her side as she maneuvered. Five men were already motionless on the ground but he wondered why she wouldn't just shoot rather than fight one-handed—he had never known her not to have a gun.

Bruce moved to step forward when his foot hit something and he glanced down. The slick black pistol laid at his feet. That explained why she wasn't shooting and he frowned in an instant when her grunt met his ears. He glanced up to see two of the men still left standing had Natasha pinned against the brick building of the alleyway while a third man stood, growled something out at her in a language he didn't quite catch. His gaze shifted to the gun at his feet again before he looked back at the scene before him.

Natasha held no fear in her eyes, though he knew she was afraid. He could smell the fear radiating off of her because of the grumbling of the Other Guy in the back of his head, however that fear was being expertly veiled behind layers of disciplined indifference. She merely stood there and stared as the man gripped her throat between the fingers of one hand and placed a gun of his own to her forehead. She looked death in the face, terrified to her very core, and acted like it was just another Tuesday afternoon.

What happened next happened before he could comprehend it. The gunshot rang out, louder than he thought it would, and he realized that was because it had come from Natasha's gun in his hand.

Bruce wasn't sure who was more surprised when the man with the gun dropped to the ground sputtering; Bruce himself, Natasha, or the two men holding her against the building.

Her good hand was deft as she slipped the knife from one of the men and then jabbed it into his chest because shock and awe had loosened his grip on her. His full release of her good arm meant she swiftly took care of the other man as well and Bruce glanced down at the gun in his hand as he lowered it. When he looked over she hadn't moved, Natasha was instead leaning against the wall and staring back at him with a slightly wide-eyed look of wonder and bewilderment.

It seemed she really hadn't known that he was here because her surprise looked genuine.

Bruce didn't often believe in coincidences but he had a feeling that Natasha didn't quite believe in them either. It was likely the reason why neither of them quite knew what to do. The distant yelling in that same foreign language warned him that apparently the half a dozen men dead in the alley weren't the only ones after her and he got over his distaste for the gun, for the fact that he had shot a man, though he felt a little better when he moved towards Natasha and realized the man he shot wasn't dead. He certainly didn't look good but he wasn't dead.

He took in her arm fully now, saw that it was twisted at the wrist in an almost unruly way but also that she was now holding it with her good arm at the elbow. It meant the wrist probably wasn't the only problem in that arm and he needed to look at it more thoroughly, though here and now was not the time as yelling, that he now recognized as German, got closer to them.

"Come on," he told her as he shoved the gun into the waistline of his pants and pulling his shirt down over it. He eased his hand to the small of her back before guiding her in the opposite direction of the voices. The one good thing about learning to lay low was also learning every possible turn for where you were currently located. He had never actually needed to use any of the unexpected little nooks and crannies between different buildings before this moment but his preparation in case he needed to make an escape at some point came in surprisingly handy.

Natasha didn't fight him on him ushering her around which told him more than her useless arm ever could. He didn't know how long she had been running, evading and fighting her pursuers but if she was following him, not questioning that he knew what he was doing and where he was going, then he imagined she wasn't just injured but also thoroughly exhausted.

Forty-five minutes later and dozens, probably near a hundred different paths and alleyways were traversed before Bruce ushered her onto a trolley that would bring them to where he had been living the last few months.

They went unnoticed on the trolley, Natasha's subterfuge once again proving faultless even under the circumstances and Bruce—well, he thrived on his ability to be unseen. No one gave them a second glance, hell, hardly anyone gave them a first one. People didn't tend to notice others who were minding their own business, though Bruce could see Natasha's eyes taking in every single person on the trolley even when no one else noticed.

He had only spoken those two words to her while she had yet to speak even one during their rather unexpected escape into the shadows. She seemed to read his movements because she moved when he did and they got off the trolley as inconspicuously as they had gotten on, with no one caring or remembering that they had ever even been there.

No one paid them any mind as Bruce led Natasha into the rundown little building he had considered somewhat of a home for the last few months, he wasn't sure anyone had ever really noticed him at all in the first place. He shut the door behind them before he pulled her gun from where he had tucked it earlier, placing it down on the table and then forcing her to sit down on the beaten up couch.

She wasn't looking at him yet and he raised his hands to pull the hood down off of her head. He was surprised to see that her hair was more chestnut than red in subtle waves just passed her shoulders, though the red still seeped through the brown to give it some of its former vibrancy. The impression of fingers were still on her throat, an ugly little bruise marred the skin just at the corner of one eye, a tiny cut had dried blood just over one eyebrow, but none of those were as horrifying as the final thing he noticed. There were two tiny and somewhat healed indentations on each temple where it seemed like thick needles, or something along those lines, had been in her skin. All that loathing he had held for her before faded the moment he realized something terrible must have happened because when he finally met her eyes; and he saw absolutely nothing within them.

"Let go of your arm so I can take a look at it," Bruce finally told her.

Natasha was studying him silently as she relented and removed her good arm from the bad one. She didn't react as he gently pulled her sleeve up and he grimaced at the color of her wrist alone. Deep blues, purples and reds circled her wrist in one large and nasty bruise to go along with it's displacement. It was when he got the sleeve up past her elbow that he saw the flicker in her eyes, the immediate pain that she couldn't quite hide. He felt with his hands around her elbow until he felt the spot that was out of place, a bone that wasn't just broken but out of place just below where her arm could, or rather should, bend. Then his eyes landed on a perfect three inch long bruise that he recognized as bruising from being restrained far too tightly.

"I don't have anything more than tylenol," he warned her, avoiding the topic of what happened to her for the moment so he could deal with the more pressing issues.

"It's fine," she spoke for the first time and her voice sounded nothing like he remembered.

Her 's' had slurred a little and her voice was quiet and raspy, void of any hint of emotion, so he raised one finger in front of her eyes before he gave the verbal order, "Follow." She did as he said but she couldn't keep up even with his finger's slow movements and he frowned as he asked the question he didn't want to know the answer to, "When and how hard did you hit your head?"

"Yesterday," she answered, "and I'm assuming hard enough that it's an issue."

Bruce sighed as he shifted back to her arm. "A concussion, a pretty bad one. And you broke your arm in two places. I'm going to align the top first, then your wrist," he warned her, "you ready?"

"Does it matter?" she asked without much care.

He supposed it didn't. He grimaced a little as he gripped her arm just above the elbow, then got his other hand into place under it. The subtle release of air left her lips quietly just at him tightening his grasp and the actual resetting of the top break brought out a gasp, her eyes glistened a little, but that was it. He could never decide until this moment if people's screams were worse or if the sounds of bones setting were worse, but this time almost all he heard was the bone and he decided that was worse.

"It's fine, just do the other," she said before he even had to ask.

Bruce inclined his head a little before he shifted his hand to her wrist. Again they went through the exact same thing, the exact same noises and reactions, and when he looked back up at her face he swore she wasn't breathing when she finally released a few shaky breaths. "Stay here," he told her before he stood up and moved into the other room.

It took some digging to find anything even remotely useful. He hadn't done anything medically related in a long time but finally he gathered up things he could use. She was watching him with the most intense gaze as he sat down beside her and dropped the armful of random objects down. Her eyebrow quirked up slightly when he broke the bottom rod off a wooden clothes hanger and measured it up against her arm but she didn't question it as he took her good hand and made her hold the wooden rod in place.

"Sorry," he offered up pathetically, "I wasn't exactly prepared to set bones."

"You're helping me," Natasha reminded him, though still her tone held no semblance of caring one way or the other, "so if you want to make a splint out of a clothes hanger then by all means, do it."

He supposed that was fair enough so he shrugged a little as he pulled out the only actual medical item he had. He put the medical tape around her arm and the hanger in five places before he tossed it aside and pulled the sleeve of her shirt back down over the splint.

Natasha just watched him in silence again while he ripped one of his shirts that he had brought with the pile, then she continued watching as he tied two of the longer pieces together before he put her arm in the fabric, looped one end under her arm, over her shoulder, and then he tied it the other piece by her hand.

It wasn't the world's best sling but it was certainly effective.

"Why are you doing this?"

The question took him by surprise and Bruce met her gaze again with a frown. "Why wouldn't I?" he asked after getting over the slight hurt he felt that she seemed to think he wouldn't have helped her. She seemed more confused than he felt and suddenly the void in her eyes clicked and he realized he had never seen any hint of recognition within them since they came across each other. "You don't know who I am, do you?" he dared to question and his voice came out strained.

Natasha's head tilted ever so slightly to the side as she studied him in silence for well over a minute. Her eyes seemed to be taking in every inch of his face, every detail, then she shook her head, "Am I supposed to?"

Bruce's response of telling her 'yes' died on the tip of his tongue and went to a more medically important one, "Do you know your name?"

Her mouth opened slightly before she stopped and blinked several times. Finally words left her lips again but it was mumbling, almost incoherent, "M-my name?"

He felt his heart drop right into his stomach. "That's okay..." he told her softly.

"My name..." she murmured again. "M-my name..." and it was coming out a little frantic, confused even.

Bruce encased her face gently within his hands before giving her what she was looking for, "Natasha."

She paused, staring at him in wonder before she repeated it, tested it on her own tongue, "Natasha." Finally she gave the barest of nods, seeming to accept it as familiar. "And...I know you?" she brought up again.

He nodded before he remembered she didn't know him even if she did know him. "Bruce," he finally told her.

"Why are you looking at me like that...Bruce?" she asked and his name sounded odd from her lips as she tested that out as well.

He realized his hands lingered on her face for far too long and he pulled them away quickly. "It's just—what happened to you?" he asked as his brow furrowed. Natasha didn't give him an answer, or maybe she didn't know the answer, so he relented and asked the more important question, "Alright...where else are you hurt?"

"That's rather presumptuous."

Bruce shook his head, "Not really. I was able to follow you, not just them. So where else are you hurt?"

She seemed to relent, and although her eyes seemed somewhat confused by what he meant, still she inclined her head ever so slightly before she answered him, "Gunshot to the abdomen, ironically right through a previous one, but I already got the bullet out and stitched it up. Got nicked in the calf and thigh of my left leg with a knife last night, they aren't bleeding anymore though. Think I have a few bruised ribs too."

That was all so—nonchalant. She said it like it made absolutely no difference and he stared at her openly. "Who are they?" he finally asked her, "those people that were about to kill you? The ones still looking for you? Who are they?"

"I...don't know," she admitted.

Of course she didn't, she didn't seem to know anything—except she seemed to remember how to protect herself, how to fight. Bruce rubbed at his face for a moment before he let himself deal with the other injuries. "Let me see that gunshot first," he finally told her with a sigh. She lifted her shirt and he flinched at her shoddy stitch work, even more so at seeing another perfect three inch wide bruise going horizontal all the way across her upper hip line. "Do you feel alright? Dizziness? Nausea?" he asked as he pressed his fingertips around the gunshot wound.

"I'm fine."

Bruce smiled a little sadly at the response, one she probably would have given as her usual self as well, and then he pulled the rubbing alcohol from the pile of gathered goodies along with the cotton balls. He dabbed them in the alcohol before he started cleaning the stitches. "You know I wasn't sure who was more surprised in that alley; me, you or those guys about to kill you," he quipped rather pathetically. He didn't know what else to actually say but the silence was was too consuming, too stale, too uncomfortable between them.

But for the first time he saw her lips curl upward into somewhat of a smile and he had forgotten what it actually looked like after so long. "I didn't get the chance to thank you back there and I haven't done it yet—"

"You don't have to thank me," Bruce told her as he cleaned it more thoroughly. It looked to him like she'd stitched it and then ignored it, or perhaps she never had time to properly take care of it. He was almost afraid to ask about the 'nicks' on her leg.

Natasha looked curious, "Are we friends?"

He avoided the question, pretending he hadn't heard it. "You were scared to die," he stated without daring to look up, "you didn't show it but...you were terrified."

Natasha was eerily silent for too long and he finally looked up at her. She was looking anywhere but at him when the words left her lips, "I wasn't scared to die. Well, maybe a little but that wasn't..." She met his eyes again and the smile from before was long gone now, instead her lips were pursed into a thin line. "How do you even know?" she finally questioned him.

Bruce supposed that telling her that he could turn into a giant green rage monster, that said monster could smell the fear radiating off of her—feel the reverberations of her heart racing with terror, he supposed that wouldn't go over all that well so he didn't tell her that. Instead he painted over the truth with an option that was easier to accept, a term Natasha herself liked to use rather than say 'lie'. "Because I know you," he reminded her again, "so tell me...what was scarier than death?"

"The fact that they weren't going to kill me," Natasha admitted.

He paused in an instant as he jerked his head back over to look at her. "He had a gun to your head," he pointed out.

"And the one on the left had a needle, a sedative," she informed him with a shake of her head. "They were going to take me back, I can't go back—I won't go back there," she told him, her voice sounding almost desperate in a way he hadn't heard before.

"Where, Natasha? Take you back where?" Bruce asked her as he pressed his hands over her ribs slowly while watching her face for any visible reaction. She didn't answer and he couldn't imagine what they had done that hollowed her out so much that she couldn't figure out how to fill herself back in, that she couldn't find the pieces to the puzzle of her own life. He went over each rib meticulously but she didn't flinch and he didn't notice any displacement. He imagined she was right about it just being bruised so he relented and pulled her shirt back down.

"Have you done that before?" Natasha questioned out of the blue, ignoring his question just as he had hers about them being friends.

Bruce frowned for a moment, "Done what?"

"Touched me."

He pulled his hands away from her almost as if he had been burned and he opened and closed his mouth several times, stunned further into silence when she reached forward and gripped one of his hands.

She placed his hand along the side of her own face and Bruce swallowed dryly before she explained herself, "This—this felt familiar." She took him by surprise much like she had done on many occasions well over a year ago and his breath caught at her next words, "You feel familiar but I—I can't place it, place you, place your face."

Bruce realized rather suddenly that she was playing him, playing off of what she was reading from him. She was deflecting his question by using former feelings, feelings he assumed she could sense from him, and then mirroring them to distract him. It almost worked. She almost evoked it all to the surface again and he took a breath before he smiled a little sadly and pushed her hair out of her face. "Nice try," he mumbled out and there was a ghost of a smile on her lips when he called her on it, "but the question still stands."

Her eyes were cold again now and Bruce almost regretted it. "I don't know who they are, or where I was, or where I am now," she told him as her voice mirrored the frigidness in her eyes, "I woke up a few days ago, strapped to a metal table, or that's the first thing I really remember anyways. I couldn't move, not my head, not my arms, not my hands, or my legs. I couldn't move."

He couldn't quite imagine what that would do to a person who didn't know or understand what was going on. He settled his hand back onto her face with worry and concern, his thumb slowly moving across soft skin. "What did they do to you, Natasha?" he asked more gently this time.

Her heart was beating rapidly again, he could feel it and hear it even as her face showed none of the signs. Finally she gave an answer, one that haunted him, "It hurt. I don't...know what they were doing—but it hurt...everything hurt. Trying to remember hurts and I couldn't move, I couldn't move..."

Bruce released a weary breath before he gave in, pulled her closer and put his arms around her while being cautious of her arm. She was stiff as a board, as guarded against physical attempts at comfort as she had always been. He didn't think she would ever relax but after several painstakingly long minutes her shoulders lowered slightly in a form of acceptance. It wasn't much but it also wasn't nothing so he was glad now that he had done it.

Her concussion, her injuries, her exhaustion. He pulled out of the awkward embrace and she was staring at him, her eyes much softer than they had been at any point before now. He supposed that hugging her had been the right move even if it had been the strangest one. "You need to lay down," he told her, "I won't ask anything else today...I promise. But you do need to lay down, get some sleep after I'm done checking you over."

"You don't have to do this," Natasha assured him, "I'm fine, I can go. I can take care of myself."

He narrowed his eyes at her, "That's not going to happen. If I let you leave like this, Natasha, then whoever they are will get you just like they almost did before. I couldn't live with that."

"They said I was a weapon," she told him out of nowhere, "that I was broken, that they would fix me." There it was, the slightest fear behind her eyes making an appearance as she asked him a question, "Are they right? Am I just a weapon?"

"No," Bruce told her quickly, "no, you're not." He wanted to touch her again but he wasn't sure how she might react if he kept on doing it. For someone who didn't remember him she was being remarkably lenient with letting him do as he pleased, more so than he had known her to be in the past when she was fully functioning. "You're every inch a person," he assured her after a beat, "every single part of you."

Natasha's eyes were empty again as she looked back at him and he hated the sight of it. Her words caught him off guard though, giving him a little more of the story but not nearly enough, "There was some metal tray next to the table, knives and scalpels with blood on them, and a window where people watched from the other side as they poked and prodded at me." The imagery ended there and then she was back to her idea of leaving, "I should go. They'll find me here. They'll always find me."

He didn't doubt that, though he imagined that it would take them some time given they had no idea where she went or who she went with. "They'll be checking to see if you go back to wherever you were staying first," he told her, "we've got a day or two before they make it this far across the city looking for you. So rest here and I'll figure out where we can go from here while you get some sleep."

"We?"

"You don't have to do this alone," Bruce told her, "I won't let you."

Natasha didn't respond to that verbally though she did seem to be mulling the idea over in her head.

"But before you go lay down I want to take a look at those knife wounds on your leg," he told her.

She inclined her head just slightly before she stood up and Bruce averted his eyes as she unbuttoned the black cargo pants that she wore and started to shimmy them down. "You can look, I mean I don't really have much to be shy about after being strapped half naked to a table," she informed him nonchalantly.

Bruce couldn't bring himself to do it even with her permission and instead he sighed as he stood up and moved to a pile of folded laundry he had never put away. He dug through it until he found a pair of boxers before he held them out to her without actually looking at her. He only had to wait a moment before her fingertips brushed his and the fabric left his hands within seconds.

"Alright, they're on," she informed him after a beat, "although I seem to have been wrong about the bleeding."

He turned his head in an instant and saw her standing by the couch, clearly uncertain what she should do because she didn't seem to want to sit down again. He shifted his eyes down to her legs and cringed as she stood barefoot now. Another set of bruising from being strapped down went across her thighs, then another set over her calves, and finally a set on her ankles. They had certainly been meticulous with how tightly they kept her tied to that table and yet still she had somehow gotten out from under her keepers' thumbs.

"I don't want to bleed on your couch," she told him.

Her voice brought Bruce back out of his horror at her bruising and he shifted his eyes to the ugly and jagged gash across her thigh. He had a feeling she hadn't been wrong about the bleeding, that it had actually stopped, but only because it had welded itself to the inside of those cargo pants she was wearing. The moment she took them off it seemed she had reopened the wound because it was bleeding in a steady stream now. "The couch isn't what's important here, you are," he told her, "sit."

Natasha seemed hesitant to do so but finally she relented and sat down. He sat down as well and angled her to face him before he pulled her leg over his lap and reached down for that rubbing alcohol again. The second wound on her calf actually was just a 'nick' as she had called it earlier so he ignored that one as he put one hand to the one that was bleeding profusely across the bruise on her thigh.

"This is going to hurt like a bitch," he warned her, though given how well she took him setting two bones then he imagined this would be a cakewalk. He twisted the cap off the rubbing alcohol with one hand, looked her in the eye, then forced himself to pour it over the gash. He faltered when she writhed under the stream of it, when he saw her hands grip the couch so tightly that her knuckles turned white. He didn't stop until he stopped seeing dirt clear off the skin along with the blood and then he picked up a towel out of his pile of laundry and pressed it over top, taking her hands and pushing those down on top of it. "Hold that down," he ordered next.

"Okay."

He leaned over next to get the sewing kit. It wasn't sutures but it was all he had and that gash was too deep and jagged to leave alone. "This is going to be a lot worse than stitches," he explained, "I'm sorry." Natasha's hands were still pressing the towel to her thigh and Bruce grimaced when he saw how pale she was and just how much she was trembling. Apparently he'd been wrong about which wound was worse to take care of and so he put the sewing kit down before he gently eased his hands over top of hers. "Hey...you just need to keep breathing," he told her softly.

Bing.

Bruce grimaced at the way Natasha jumped at the sudden intrusion of noise and she looked ready to fight before he moved one hand to her shoulder to calm her. He shifted his gaze to the computer screen just a few feet away and he knew it would only take a moment before Tony hacked the web-cam on it simply because he could rather than waiting for Bruce to answer. "Someone's about to pop up on a video call," he warned her quickly, "but he's—he's a friend, don't worry about it, alright?"

The look in her eyes was a fear of betrayal but she gave a curt nod nonetheless that didn't make him feel a hell of a lot better.

"I promise, Natasha," he tacked on.

The intensity of those green eyes was mind-blowing but finally her expression softened just slightly.

"Bruce."

And there it was.

Bruce glanced over at the computer screen as it started loading up the video as well and he sighed. "Tony," he answered.

The bright side about a terrible connection was that it was taking a decently long time to go through but that also meant that Tony said something stupid and at such a high rate of speed that Bruce couldn't stop him, "So, I found you. Also figured I'd let you know that I've been hearing some odd stories that your least favorite Russian is in the vicinity. Thought you might appreciate the warning in case you ran into her—" the video screen came to life and Bruce could see the gobsmacked look on the billionaire's face, "or maybe she already found you. What's shakin', Red? How's the fugitive life? Is it anything like the movies?"

Bruce felt Natasha stiffen immediately and he gave her a light squeeze to her shoulder and an apologetic look before he turned back to the computer screen, "Tony...I was actually going to call you."

He wasn't sure if Tony could see the stiffness in Natasha or if maybe Bruce telling him that he had been near to calling him set the warning bells off, but either way Tony caught on to there being a problem, "I take it you two aren't just catching up on how to hide the zucchini?" Bruce kept quiet for a moment, trying to gauge Natasha's mood now, but other than being stiff as a board she gave no indication of anything. He shifted more out of the way and he heard the billionaire suck in a breath before he spoke, "What the hell?"

"Tony, when was the last time you saw or heard from her?" Bruce dared to ask and he sincerely hoped he wasn't about to get the answer he thought he might.

"Not since she walked away from me back in New York," Tony answered with a frown, "what the hell happened to you, Natasha?"

Her eyes shifted to Tony on the computer screen before they looked to Bruce himself. She looked guarded for the first time since he had found her and he really wished Tony hadn't called, or at least hadn't called yet.

Finally Bruce spoke, "Tony, she has no memory. She has no idea who you are, who I am—who she is. Tell me you know somewhere that she's been since then because that was six months ago."

He saw Tony's lips purse shut for a moment before he spoke, "Two months ago she was in Beijing. That's the last location I had on her though, after that she just disappeared completely off the grid. It one hell of a Houdini act...or so I thought."

Bruce released a sigh but he supposed two months was better than six, though not by much. Even so he was afraid if Tony stayed on the line much longer then Natasha might run for it because she was looking like she was about to go into flight mode. "Tony, let me call you back..." he finally called out to the computer.

There was silence for a beat before his friend responded, "Alright."

The computer shut down and Bruce assumed that was Tony's doing so he turned back to Natasha.

"I take it I'm your least favorite Russian?" she questioned with that air of indifference that had always bugged him in the past.

Bruce swallowed dryly for a moment before he picked the sewing kit back up and gently lifted her hand and the towel from her leg. It was stained red but they had staunched the bleeding enough that he could actually start working on it...if she was even going to let him now.

"What did I do to you?"

He glanced back up to meet her gaze again and frowned. "It's not important," he told her, "your leg however is important."

She gripped his wrist tightly when he went to open up the sewing kit and he sighed when she asked her next question, "Do you hate me?"

"No I—no..." Bruce assured her. "Natasha, there was—we..." he couldn't quite find the words to explain it. How could he? He hadn't told her about The Hulk so how could he tell her what she did to him?

"We were together?"

"Ye—no..." an even harder question that had him further frustrated and he gave the only answer he could think, "sort of...and I don't hate you, I swear."

Natasha gave the smallest of nods before she released his hand and she remained silent as he opened the sewing kit once more.

"Any color preference?" Bruce asked her.

He must have kept too straight of a face because she blinked at him several times before making an admittance, "I don't know..."

Bruce hadn't meant for her to take him seriously and he gave her a sad little smile. "I was only kidding..." he told her quickly, "trying to lighten the mood." She only looked more confused and he sighed, "Yeah...you always used to tell me I made pretty terrible jokes." He gave Natasha credit when she raised one corner of her lips into a slanted little smile that he almost recognized. It made him give his first real smile in what felt like forever and the words came out before he could help himself, "That's the smile I remember."

A unique softness came over her entire demeanor; it was in her eyes, her posture and finally her voice, "Are you always such a nice guy or are girls with memory loss just your Achilles heel?"

He chuckled a little before he shrugged, "I'm probably not the best person to ask."

Natasha didn't do more than suck in a breath when he first broke skin with the needle and yet somehow that softness didn't leave her face as she watched him. "So you actually are just a nice guy," she finally decided after a few minutes of him threading her skin together.

She probably wouldn't think so if he told her the truth about things between them; how things ended between them as abruptly as they had started. He knew she had caught on early on that there had been something between them even though he avoided answering her when she asked.

"I guess I dodged a bullet when you came into that alley," Natasha mentioned. A moment later she shifted, grimaced at the pain in her stomach, then snickered, "Well, figuratively speaking anyways."

An actual laugh burst from his own lips and she gave him a rather coy look with a sideways little smirk. Finally he stopped stitching and put everything away before he taped some gauze over top of it. "Alright, that's everything—at least I hope that's everything," he pointed out and she gave a nod. "I wasn't kidding about you going and getting some sleep, Natasha," he tacked on for good measure. His hand was resting on her knee just under another of those 3-inch wide bruises on her thigh and he must have stared at it for far too long because Natasha was eerily silent as he did so. "You didn't deserve this," he mumbled out before he could stop himself.

Natasha ignored that, "Am I sleeping on here?"

Bruce realized she meant the couch and he shook his head, "No...no of course not. You're not sleeping on a bloody couch." He stood and helped her up from the couch before pointing, "First door right there is the bedroom. Go ahead."

She was hesitant to go where she couldn't see the door and he nudged her with his elbow, "I'll keep an eye out, I promise. Just don't go trying to ninja your way out the closest window when you're in there because—well because they're really tiny windows and while you're the tiniest person I've ever seen that can kick someone's ass...you'll still pop stitches trying to do that and that'll just annoy me when I have to fix you again."

Natasha chuckled before she inclined her head slightly in agreement, "Alright." He was starting to clean up when she paused in the doorway to his bedroom and said his name, "Bruce?"

"Yeah?" he questioned, glancing over at her.

"Thank you..."

Bruce realized in an instant that to her, in this very moment, he was the first person to help her rather than hurt her. She was already in the room before he whispered the response, "Always..."

He spent the next little while cleaning everything up before he glanced at the open door of his bedroom. To his relief Natasha was still there, though from what he could tell she wasn't sleeping, something he had learned to notice about her from their time as Avengers together. For her sake he ignored it and just hoped she might find it in her to relax and get a little bit of rest, so instead he took a seat at the computer and called back his favorite intrusive billionaire.

And it didn't take long to get an answer either.

"Bruce," came Tony's instant greeting before the video ever came to life.

Natasha, the name this Bruce character had told her was hers, laid on the bed and listened in silence as Bruce once again restarted his conversation with his friend. Something inside her told her that Bruce was alright, it wasn't to say she trusted the man, but she believed that he truly wanted to help her despite that it was risky to himself. It also wasn't to say that she would let him continue to put himself in further danger.

Bruce saved her life and now she had to return the favor by getting out of his home before she got him killed.

Except his eyes kept flickering in her direction every minute or two when he'd been cleaning up after fixing her up. She had a feeling he knew she was going to bail, it was probably the reason he gave he that warning about the window, and to be honest it was a rather small window. It was definitely possible for her to get out through it but he probably wasn't wrong about her ruining all the stitch work he had done while doing it.

"Red already take off on you?" she heard Tony question.

"Not yet, she's laying down," Bruce replied. "Tony...I know the last time the two of you talked wasn't exactly on the best terms but—"

"But she needs help," Tony finished for him, "I mean Nat and I may not see eye to eye, hell, we probably never will but that doesn't mean she's not still my friend."

A rather large sigh came from Bruce and Natasha frowned at hearing it, then she grimaced a little at his words, "Tony...she's been tortured, shot, stabbed. She doesn't even know what they want or who they are let alone who she is or who I am..."

"Look, I can get you a place to lay low but—well, I've got Ross on my ass watching me like a hawk..."

"Which means we're on our own getting there."

"Exactly," Tony agreed, "me coming to help will only cause her more problems if Ross catches wind of it, he wants her arrested for breaking the accords by letting Cap and Barnes escape."

There was silence for a few seconds before Bruce replied, "And what about you? How are you uh...dealing?"

Natasha sighed lightly to herself before she decided to make her escape. Apparently she'd caused enough trouble for Bruce's friend already, she didn't need to add to that by causing further trouble for Bruce. The man had gone to more than trouble enough trying to help her already.

Fortunately he was thoroughly occupied with his conversation with Tony so she slipped out of the bed and over to the window. She eased the window open with complete silence before she glanced back at the open door and the mumbling on the other side of it. She couldn't remember Bruce but something told her that he would be angry with himself when he realized she was gone and that he hadn't checked to see if she was still there while he talked to his friend.

But it was definitely better this way.

Bruce had been sorting out the details with Tony for a while, probably for too long, when he realized he hadn't looked at Natasha since the conversation started. He glanced back at the room before turning back to Tony and instantly shifted back towards the room for a double take.

Natasha was gone.

"Dammit!" he growled out as he stood up and went to the bedroom doorway.

"What?"

"She's gone," Bruce mumbled out as he rubbed at his face. He moved into the room and glanced at the open window. A couple drops of blood on the window told him she probably did pop at least one stitch to make the escape but nothing too serious. He placed his hand on the bed where she had been laying but it was cold. Natasha had been gone for a while and Bruce moved back to the computer and sat down before he asked a question, "How long have we been talking?"

Tony seemed to be thinking about it for a moment before he answered, "Maybe an hour."

"Tony..."

"I'll find her," the billionaire told him in an instant, "and I'll call you the minute I do."

Bruce groaned as Tony turned off the video call and he put his face in his hands. He couldn't believe that while he'd made sure to keep himself facing the front door in case anyone did find them, he hadn't kept looking to make sure the woman he'd been trying to save was even still there to be saved.

It wasn't that he hadn't expected her to run off, he'd called it before she had even gone into the room. It also wasn't as though paying more attention would have stopped it from happening. He reminded himself again that she was a master in the spy world.

If Natasha wanted out then he never stood a chance at stopping her let alone seeing it happen. Her memory may have been gone but her skills were dead on.

Hope you guys have enjoyed the first half of the story!

-Kay