Body and Soul: The Endgame Fix

Bruce x Natasha

Notes:

We start on Monday, October 22, 2023: Eleven days after achieving time travel, six days since losing Natasha, five days after the Hulk Snap, two days since Tony's funeral, and one since Steve went into the Quantum Realm and Old Man Steve appeared.

First, we have to fix that arm!

Part One: The Price

"Five days! It's been FIVE WHOLE DAYS that you've been walking around like this? Just what the hell were you thinking, Bruce?" Dr. Helen Cho swore intensely as she escorted an ailing Dr. Bruce Banner down the Avengers Quinjet ramp to the rooftop at the U-GEN building in Soule, South Korea. The more she saw of the obvious physical damage inflicted by the Infinity Stones, the more the geneticist was getting wound up. This was a complete reversal of their normal temperaments as the healer began to rant at her friend and professional collaborator, and the physicist calmly accepted her chastisement with a sheepish smile and a shrug of his broad shoulders underneath his tailored charcoal gray suit.

His right arm was now out of the sling he'd used during Tony's funeral a few days before, but it was an obvious mismatch with his healthy left arm. "안녕하세요to you, too, Helen," Bruce replied with a good-humored laugh. "By the way, this is Princess Shuri of Wakanda," he said, gesturing behind them with his good hand to the slim, bright-eyed teen who was enjoying a laugh at his expense as she tucked a meter-long cylindrical container under her arm to bring off the Quinjet with her. "I believe you've already been consulting over the Internet," the physicist added.

Helen suddenly flushed with embarrassment and turned to her other visitor. "Oh, my apologies, Princess Shuri. I'm sorry for being so rude. It's good to finally meet you in person, your highness."

"No problem, Dr. Cho. Please, just 'Shuri' is a lot easier." She reached up and gave Bruce's good arm a pat. "This is more important, and you are right to give him Hell for not getting here sooner," the young woman chided Bruce.

"Just 'Helen,' please," the older scientist said, feeling very chagrined.

"Hey, I tried to get here faster, and you know that, Princess," Bruce needled the young Wakandan prodigy in return since they'd had to detour for her to pick up her package in Oakland, CA, on the way from Upstate New York to South Korea. Bruce turned to his colleague, "Please, Helen, you'd just gotten back to your family, and there were too many other things going on after the battle at the Avengers Compound to have more than triage done anyway. Thanks to Shuri and her medics, it's been stable or improving over the last four days, and if you look closely," he pulled back his blue dress shirt's collar and bent down for a better view of his neck, "it's starting to regenerate around the edges of the burn."

"I could tell that from some of the scans you sent, but let's get inside the lab, and I'll judge for myself." Bruce was just able to fit his oversized frame inside the freight elevator with the two scientists by ducking and crouching a bit. Squeezing through the doors on the staircase would have been worse. When they arrived at the correct floor, Dr. Cho led them into one of her lab spaces where the third generation of "the Cradle" and its related research projects now resided. "I'm sorry for the mess and disorganization. The program and our research agenda continued in my absence, but I'm almost back up to speed." Bruce noted everything looked as neat and well-organized as it always had in the past.

Helen kept grumbling to herself in both English and Korean as she helped him take off his clothing from the waist up before tackling the protective sheathing and nutrient treatment wrap shielding his right arm. The irony of their character reversal—her anger and his calm—wasn't lost on him, and he bit his lower lip to avoid smiling too much and antagonizing her. She still shot him a deadly glance. "Don't you dare smile unless that's from the pain meds, Banner," Helen threatened. He doubted there were currently any pain meds involved since they'd never been effective for long after his original "accident" altered his metabolism. He was used to being stoic about it as Banner and irritable when he'd been just Hulk about three years ago. Now that he'd co-integrated, he was enduring it as good-naturedly as he could.

When Bruce had Skyped Helen very early that morning (tomorrow afternoon for her with the 13-hour time difference), her husband Philip had to reassure her she wasn't being pranked. A much larger and greener Bruce explained to her that while she was gone for five years, he had made peace with his anger-prone alter ego and "merged" with the Hulk. If it weren't for his voice and facial expressions, she wouldn't have recognized her old colleague in the new Bruce. Even face-to-face, she was still feeling a bit unnerved by his floor-to-ceiling size, but he was surprisingly nimble and coordinated as he maneuvered around the delicate equipment. She had to admit, especially with the geeky glasses and easy-going confidence, the new Bruce was pretty charming.

The U-GEN staff had brought in a reinforced examination table for Helen to use, so she could examine him since he was now roughly seven and a half feet tall and about 900 lbs. Not as big as his former temperamental Hulk form had been, but this Bruce was now closer to Hulk physically than Banner's spare 5' 9" frame. Thankfully, his intellect and puckish sense of humor were as prominent as ever; still, this was a lot to wrap her head around on top of everything else she'd missed in five years. To be honest, having a project like rehabbing Bruce's arm helped her focus since she was having difficulty fitting back into her own projects that had moved on without her. In cutting-edge science, five years felt like a lifetime. She wondered what Nat thought about this metamorphosis since he hadn't mentioned her yet, and they'd seemed to be getting so close. They were all definitely going to have to catch up and talk about this later. Right now, the geneticist needed to see what they had left to work with function-wise and determine a course of treatment or make some tough decisions about whether or not to remove the limb. She guessed this was just one of several likely reasons for the Wakandan wunderkind to be involved since she'd reportedly redesigned Sergeant Barnes' prosthetic.

Now that Bruce's upper body was exposed, Helen studied the extensive wrapping protecting his arm and shoulder. "Here, may I please assist you, Helen?" Shuri offered as she caught back up to them in the right section of the interconnected areas. She'd gotten a little lost in thought as she'd curiously looked around the cluster of labs on that floor. (She could hardly wait for the tour!) She'd been taking a lot of mental notes since the final showdown at the Avenger's Compound as she'd met many interesting people.

As soon as Tony's body had been taken away from the battlefield crater, she'd approached the exhausted Hulk as he collapsed onto his knees in the rubble. It didn't take a genius to see he was obviously injured and overwrought, but she was surprised to learn he was not the angry alter ego she was expecting, but the good-humored physicist she'd teased about Vision's neural configuration who was now broken down before her. Bast forgive her, how she'd mercilessly critiqued Banner and Stark's work on the synthezoid just before the Snap! Now, it felt like a lifetime ago, and so much had changed while she was "blipped."

On the day of the second battle, Shuri had quickly sent an assistant to look for Natasha Romanoff, knowing that's who should have been there to share their loss together only to be told by one of the Dora Milaje that the warrior and spy had sacrificed herself before the battle had even started. Shuri had quickly stepped forward and taken charge of Banner's care on the battlefield. It was devastatingly obvious to her he'd lost the two most important people in the world to him, but she'd be damned if he was going to lose his life or his arm next.

Tents were set up in a field away from the blast crater where the Compound had been. Only a few of the storage buildings and a maintenance facility toward the very back of the property had been spared due to the angle of attack, so the survivors took Bruce and the other wounded there where they still had electricity and running water. Her initial scans showed he had unusual radiation burns, similar to what Stark had suffered. "So, are you the fool or the hero responsible for bringing us all back, Dr. Banner?" she surmised.

"It was a team effort," Bruce acknowledged, yet he demurred taking credit even after paying such an awful price. She estimated he had paid about 160 pounds of flesh to return half of all life in the universe—including hers and T'Challa's—so maybe it wasn't such a bad deal? Of course, that put a lot of people in his debt. She, however, was one of the few in the unique position of being able to pay him something back now when he needed it.

"Joint effort or not, you alone wore the Gauntlet and made it happen. Thank you, Dr. Bruce Banner. You don't even have to say, 'You're welcome,'" she added pertly.

Despite the pain, he'd smiled and nodded. "You are welcome, Shuri. I just wish Tony had let me do it the second time."

She shook her head. "Even I, who never met Mr. Stark, know he wouldn't have let you, and it was not your fate." The older physicist simply sighed and shook his head as the tears started to fill his eyes again. "Whether you like it or not, Bruce Banner, you are the one who is going to survive, especially if I have anything to say about it." He looked at her and almost laughed through his tears. That's when she was sure he had some fight left in him. "Besides, who am I going to teach how to make synthetic synapses work properly if you don't stick around, hmm?"

That had gotten a small chuckle out of him, so she and an assistant had set to work removing the burned purple, grey, and black tech suit from him. The tricky part had been separating it from where the material had melted onto his tough skin, especially the spots on his back and hand where the healthy tissue was starting to regenerate around the fibers. That wouldn't have been an issue if the uniform had been made out of Vibranium, which she could easily have made to separate or meld with organic tissue by merely adjusting it with one of her Kimoyo Beads. This was a different carbon-based weave that incorporated organic materials with the high-tech microstructures. At Bruce's suggestion, the healers used their Beads to apply cold and the fibers shrunk enough to be removed with a dental water jet. They were nothing if not resourceful that afternoon. Next, they applied a Wakandan cooling nutrient wrap to disperse the heat and protect the burned tissue from infection. It was no secret that aloe was a major ingredient, and it also had a pretty powerful anesthetic. However, her patient didn't need to know that. Eventually, he'd slept stretched across four cots.

Everything had gotten crazier after that as T'Challa, M'Baku, and she had returned to Wakanda briefly before Stark's funeral to see that the mantel of leadership was returned to her brother—Bast be blessed, without a fight or torture-by-corset this time. The funeral had only been two days ago, and Steve had left to return the Infinity Stones the next day, as soon as Bruce had tested his new portal. Demolition and construction work had already started at the damaged Compound property, so they set the equipment up in the open. She had a bad feeling something hadn't gone according to plan, but Bruce had been tight-lipped about it on the flight to Seoul, though he did confirm it was Steve who'd taken on the mission. She could afford to be patient since her brother would eventually crack, and she expected to be consulted at some point if there was a serious problem. Shuri didn't question the outcome, but she suspected their methods may have incurred some serious consequences. Time would tell.

In the meantime, Shuri was surprised, yet not really surprised that no one had attempted to revive Vision since the "Snappening." Now that Wanda Maximoff was back, the young scientist was certain it was a project she and (she hoped) Dr. Banner would want to take on, which was another good reason to be here and talk with Helen Cho since she'd helped design and "birth" the synthezoid's body. Like Helen, she had a five-year backlog to catch up on, but Shuri and her brother had agreed overseeing Banner's treatment was an important responsibility because she might be one of the few people able to manage it, especially since she thought he could use a friend and a purpose to keep him from sliding into depression. Why not snare two birds with one wire then? Their mother would have insisted it was wise politics as well, but that really didn't factor into her daughter's thinking. He was broken; she would fix him. It was that simple.

Shuri used one of her tech Beads to help release the wrap, and the Wakandan-made sheathing came off Bruce's arm slowly yet cleanly. Helen grew silent as she took in the shocking extent of the radiation burns and tissue damage. "I'd say this involves 20% of your body, Bruce. Can you extend your arm?" He had to take his time, but he was able to move his shoulder and extend his elbow, through up to 85% of his normal range of motion comfortably. His forearm and wrist were less damaged with mostly second-degree burns, and his fingers were in the best shape, having been somewhat shielded from the radiation by the glove. The spots where the Stones had been were the only places completely healed over with slivery-white scar tissue. Helen was pretty certain that would be permanent unless they replaced the tissue.

The withering of the limb was what both puzzled and concerned Helen. The bones were intact, functioning, and proportional, but the muscles looked like they'd atrophied and lost 40-50% of their mass. According to Bruce, that was an improvement of about 10% over the past four days. Yet, it was almost like part of whatever he'd done to himself in the Gamma Lab to make his larger form stable had been undone by the radiation. On the bright side, even if his arm did look like a charred log, at least the tissue smelled clean and healthy with just a bit of Gamma-tinged bitterness beneath the mineral-rich smell of the healing compounds in the wound dressing. She'd already looked at the scans they'd sent her ahead of their arrival, so the examination both confirmed her fears and gave her some hope.

The regeneration specialist closed her eyes and counted to ten. "Thank you again, by the way, Bruce, for having the fortitude to go through this for all of us." He simply acknowledged her gratitude with a warm smile. He wasn't ready to admit how much of the damage he'd taken trying to undo Natasha's choice and bring her back with everyone else. Otherwise, he could have efficiently concentrated on just who and how to bring everyone back safely. He was almost as disappointed as Wanda about not finding Vision returned. Apparently, Natasha's had been a lost cause, but he'd risked everything and tried his hardest. He would have time to properly grieve and plan her memorial later, but just six days in, Bruce was having trouble letting go of his last small shreds of denial about her fate. Helen continued, "It's good to be back, but delaying has made our job here more complicated. Tony's initial nanite seal seems to have prevented contamination of the wounds and kept you from losing blood and plasma. However, it's a miracle with all this burned tissue that it hasn't gone necrotic . . . yet."

"You can thank Shuri's wound dressing techniques for that," Bruce acknowledged. They'd tried a progression of them as the situation improved.

"No kidding," the physician noted as she probed the skin around Bruce's right shoulder to find the patchwork of green, grey, and pink tissue knitting together at the edge of the charred black flesh that covered his right arm up to his shoulder and snaked up his neck and across parts of his massive chest and shoulder. "Damn, it certainly looks painful."

"It is and that's what gives me some hope that the nerves are still intact," Bruce explained.

Helen used a handheld scope to get a closer look at the regenerating tissue along the wound's edge on his shoulder, and the view popped up on a new 3D Holographic display to her right that quickly translated to a digital 3D model over a control panel. "Would it be out of line to suggest you've been gene splicing, Dr. Banner?" Helen asked as she identified patterns from three different individual genomes in the repairing tissues.

"You would not be wrong," Bruce admitted. "I am the poster boy for genetic chimerism."

"Thought so," Helen snorted and chewed at her tongue as she thought. She adjusted the display to highlight the differences. "It's visible up close in all of the new tissue, but I imagine it will eventually fade like a scar."

Cosmetically, it didn't bother Bruce either way. He glanced over to the corner of the room at Shuri's petite figure standing at a station and intently working on a small piece of Stark tech he'd brought at her request. She was using one of her Kimoyo Beads to make adjustments to Tony's device. "What do you think, Shuri?"

"First things first, Hulk Boy. Since we're fresh out of maggots like the British once used, I'm programming some of Stark's nanites to remove the dead and dying flesh," the young scientist explained. "Helen, if we're still in agreement on this next step, tell me when you're ready to start."

The older scientist checked his shoulder one last time then swabbed his massive chest with a prepping solution for the Stark tech to perform better before she stepped back. "He's all yours, lady. I certainly agree, cleanup is the next thing that needs to happen, and I definitely don't want to deal with gamma-powered larvae."

Bruce just groaned at that mental image. "Yuck!"

Shuri giggled before she stuck the nanite housing to his right pectoral muscle. "This is going to itch like crazy ants, but let's see if we can't get you back to looking like something besides a big, crunchy briquette." She tapped the housing unit on his bare chest and a swarm of miniature robots spread across the edges of the damaged tissue like a tiny darkwave. At first nothing further seemed to happen, but after a few heartbeats, the cracked, blackened skin began to flake off, starting at the edges of the wound and falling like black ash and sand to the floor as they worked toward his shoulder and slowly converged down his withered arm to his fingertips where Shuri collected them back into their housing.

Helen had to avert her eyes. It reminded her too much of the so-called "Snappening" or "blip" or whatever term they were calling it now. She'd seen some of her colleagues struggle and dust away before she did herself. She'd had just enough time to wish she could tell her family she loved them. When she looked back at Bruce and the healthier tissue that was emerging, she felt a great deal more optimistic about his chances for recovery.

Helen squinted at Bruce and shook her head. "You are so lucky not to be septic and gangrenous to the bone, Banner. This isn't going to be easy, but I think we can use the Cradle to speed up your healing significantly and restore the muscle mass." Helen looked questioningly at the younger scientist. "If Shuri is willing to collaborate, we may be able to apply even better techniques to upgrade the repairs to match your normal strength and durability as well."

"Ha!" Shuri laughed and slapped Bruce on his left shoulder. "I told him as much, Helen. Cheer up, Bruce," she noted with a grin. "I've always wanted to play Dr. Frankenstein." Shuri offered Helen a fist bump, which the specialist smoothly returned.

Although they'd just met, Helen already liked the younger woman. Her own young son Amadeus was now suddenly a ten-year-old and her daughter was almost the same age as the princess. Helen felt completely robbed of so much, but she shoved her own pain and anger to the back of her mind for now and kept moving forward and thinking positive. This collaboration might actually be a lot of fun.

Bruce offered them both his large set of healthy knuckles to bump as well. "Just to set the record straight, I have faith in you both, but I know this is not going to be a quick or easy process. I already owe you a bunch."

"Oh, don't worry. The world owes you a sizable tab. Besides, if we can get this moving, maybe Col. Rhodes will let me have a crack at his spine next."

Bruce groaned, "That is your worst pun yet today, Princess."

"No, it's not, and I'm serious. If we can combine the Wakandan Design Group's concepts with Helen's techniques, I don't think nerve regeneration is at all out of the question, even after years have passed. What do you think, Helen? You've worked with Vibranium before."

The geneticist first took a deep breath and blew it out. "If we get this to work for Bruce, I don't see why not. However, Bruce, you're going to have to explain what you did to yourself since your tissues and genetic makeup were unique to start with, and we all know your procedure is beyond cosmetic." Both female scientists looked at him expectantly.

It was Bruce's turn to take a deep breath and think. For once he had an audience who would have very little trouble understanding the technical and scientific elements of his metamorphosis, but that was a fairly straightforward process compared to what he'd gone through inside. That was much harder to explain, even to empathetic friends. "Okay, we can go into the weeds and details later, I have all kinds of notes and data, but in a nutshell, I had to make a stable genetic form for both Hulk and Banner to inhabit with some equality for integration to happen. We needed a body that didn't depend upon the adrenalin spikes and gamma surges that the original genetic coding for Banner always fought against and caused Hulk debilitating pain. Therefore, I rewrote my predominant DNA code to include the elements from both of my genetic sets that we agreed we wanted to keep. Then it was basically splicing active sequences together until we both had what we wanted while the rest has gone dormant. We started out with Banner vs. Hulk." He gestured toward himself, "Now we have the best of both somewhere in the middle: me . . . Bruce. It's an upgrade for both of us and took about a year and a half of work before I applied the gene therapy and activated it with Gamma radiation as the catalyst."

The geneticist nodded, understanding the complexity of what he'd done. They would certainly be discussing this along with some of her concerns. "When you say 'dormant,' that means the coding is still there, it's just not manifesting, right?"

"Right. If you take a look at the images of the healing tissue we just observed, I think you'll find plenty of evidence that all three sets are still present, just not expressed."

"I know there's a CRISPR/crispier pun in there somewhere, but I'm a little too jetlagged to spike it," Shuri joked.

"Bruce, you really went beyond CRISPR, didn't you?" He shrugged in acknowledgement. "How did you negotiate that agreement between your other selves?" Helen asked, looking concerned but intrigued.

"I've been seeing a psychiatrist since a few weeks after the Decimation. You remember Betty's husband Lee Samson?"

"Yes, he's a pretty decent human being and a respected analyst." Helen knew him through Betty. "He got you both to communicate?"

"It was mostly through Banner at first, but eventually Hulk felt like talking. We got to know each other and understand our mutual traumas and why we were separate entities and co-main personalities. That helped us figure out what had happened to us during our childhood and the accident. We decided we were both tired of being victims and victimizing each other in a vicious circle. We had to accept there was a lot more to like about both of us than hate, especially when we worked together." He didn't add that they both knew if they continued to be at war, it was only going to become more toxic and dangerous, especially for those around them. Banner had especially worried that neither of them would have control if they continued to fight each other and not communicate. That weakness, their lack of working together, had led to Thanos defeating them both separately. There was also the depression that followed after their failing and the chronic fear that neither of them were worthy of being loved, but he wasn't about to get into this at the moment. It hurt too much to think about Natasha and what had and then hadn't happened between them.

Helen reached out and touched his good hand. "I have always liked you and admired you as a colleague and friend. I'm looking forward to getting to know both of you better, Bruce. If you're happier, I'm happy for you."

Shuri smiled reassuringly, "Don't take this the wrong way, Bruce, but sometime I would really like to map your mind along with your genomes." That got them all three laughing.

"Maybe," Bruce replied with a cocked eyebrow and a wink.

"All right," Helen said more seriously. "Let's get down to practical matters and come up with a treatment plan." An hour later, they had mapped out a schedule for treatments, and Helen had taken samples from him to work with thanks to the modified Vibranium tools Shuri had brought with her. Helen would culture his cells to make the raw materials to use for the Cradle in combination with the Wakandan Design Group's Vibranium technology. It would take a few days to grow the cells and modify the equipment to fit him, so Bruce planned to return in the middle of the week. He'd taken the precaution of offering U-GEN extra security if they worked with him, which they'd gladly accepted.

As they wrapped up, Shuri pulled out the long cylindrical package she'd picked up at the Wakandan International Outreach Center in Oakland and laid in on the table they'd been sitting around.

"What's in that?" Bruce asked a little warily.

"I'm glad you asked. It's a couple of presents from my family. I'm sorry I didn't have time to wrap them." Shuri opened the end of the container and pulled out one large and two small bags of gold and black cloth, elaborately stitched and embellished with the symbols of her family. She handed one to Bruce and the other to Helen. "Open them now! I can't wait!" Shuri insisted.

Helen opened hers to find a bracelet of the finest gold Vibranium with a Kimoyo Bead. "Oh, my, this is a real honor, Shuri! Thank you," the scientist said appreciatively. Very few people outside Wakanda possessed one of these technological wonders.

"You're very welcome! You'll find that it's more useful than it is beautiful, especially when you're working with Vibranium technology."

Bruce had gingerly tried to open his but set the bag down to admire Helen's gift.

"Oh, no! I gave you yours out of order, Bruce." Shuri started to pass him the larger bag then opened it herself. "Sorry, I really can't wait." What looked like a silky metallic sleeve almost a meter long and a glove slipped out.

"Uh, thank you?" Bruce wasn't quite sure what to do with them.

"Put it on."

"Without putting the wrap back on first?" he asked.

"Yes, put it right on next to your fried Frankenstein skin. Sleeve first. Here! Give me your hand with the fingers extended out like that." Shuri picked up the sleeve and pulled it onto her own wrist, grabbed his injured hand, and smoothly pulled the metallic fabric up over her own wrist and hand and onto his before tugging it up over his elbow and covering his arm up to the shoulder. It was much heavier than it looked. "Men, it doesn't matter what culture, no one teaches you anything useful about how to dress! Do you think you can manage the glove, Doctor?"

"That I can do," he affirmed and gingerly pulled it on, so the sleeve and the glove matched up at the edges.

"Helen, would you do the honors and roll your Kimoyo Bead between your thumb and index finger one-half rotation?" Shuri asked, and the geneticist held the metallic sphere close to Bruce's arm and gave it a try. The glove immediately grafted itself to the sleeve and the sleeve expanded outward, matching the contours of his other arm with overlapping bands of dark metal that blended into one another as they worked their way up his arm.

Bruce turned his wrist and flexed his hand, and the arm responded with a natural-looking ripple of muscles. He looked at her quizzically, "Do I get to be a Winter Scientist?"

"Winter, my ass, this is Wakandan. You can fill out a citizenship application later. Just watch."

The last thing that happened was the color and then the texture shifted to match his verdant skin tones. "Color me impressed," Bruce murmured as he continued to move and flex his injured arm. "Thank you!"

"Now, do not expect it to match your other arm's strength. You can leave it on for as long as 12 hours in a row, but it's better if you don't sleep in it. You're beta testing this, by the way, so don't shower in it either," Shuri recommended. "Now, see if you can open your present."

Bruce carefully picked up the small cloth bag and after a few tries was able to open the drawstring and poured out a larger bracelet and Kimoyo Bead. He grinned and fastened the chain onto his left wrist. "Cool! I may have to get a dressier watch," he quipped, but then he remembered Tony had given it to him. Never mind. "Thank you and your family, Shuri. This is truly an honor."

"You're both very welcome!" the Princess responded with a satisfied smile. "Do the same as Helen did to deactivate it when you want to take the prosthetic off, Bruce."

"Did you have this made because you thought I'd lose the arm?" he asked her seriously.

"Honestly, no, because I already had it on the drawing board before the Snapanations happened, so you get to try it out as more of a temporary aid. This way you can be done with the wraps and wound dressings, too, but I imagine you'll only need this for a short time."

Helen nodded, "I think we can move on to topical treatments and get your fluid levels built up over the next few days before the first grafting treatment."

"It also works as a compression garment, which you're going to need after the tissue grafts," Shuri continued. "It will also administer medications and treatments if needed. Later, it can also apply resistance to muscle groups, so you can use it to help with your physical rehabilitation."

"Impressive is right," Helen noted. "You're going to have to show me how this works."

"Right after you give me a tour of your labs!"

"Deal," Helen agreed. They finished up with their planning, and Helen walked them through the labs where they met her team members and her co-director who'd taken on the position after the Decimation. They were working things out like a lot of people.

Endnotes:

Thank you to my Beta-gals and coconspirators, Autumn_Froste and EmilyGracie13, who've put up with a ton of ranting over the past three months since our version of the MCU came to an inglorious, OOC end.

This is my attempt to make some sense out of all the missing, neglected, nerfed, and misused parts that should have been Banner and Hulk's story arc that we didn't get and the blossoming of Natasha and Bruce's canon romance and relationship with all the happiness they absolutely deserve. I am still fuming mad about what was done so callously and unjustly to both Natasha and Bruce (and Tony and Thor) in Endgame. I may not be able to fix the whole MCU, but we will have Justice for Natasha and Bruce/Hulk here. I'm going to try and post on a weekly basis till it's done . . . probably 20 Parts. Cross your fingers!

If you'd like to see the cover edits for each chapter, check out my Pinterest board: w w w . pinter est borahrs/my-bruce-x-natasha-edits/fanfiction/

Comments, questions, and commiseration are always welcome! Please give a like, a follow, a kudo, a review, a favorite, and tell your friends to give it a read!