Friends With the Monster

Pondering

Natasha's thumbs are busy; one with the room's television remote and the other with a mini bag of chips from the hotel floor's vending machine.

Dinner isn't 'healthy' but neither is the relationship in her choice of film; 'My Fair Lady'. It's not her normal selection of typical spy cinema or murder mystery but she does secretly enjoy a decent musical. And this is a vacation- or at least it was supposed to be.

She enjoys her alone time with a chip in her mouth and hums along to a song describing someone's head resting on the protagonists' knee. 'Warm and tender as he can be'.

"Who takes good care of me, aw, wouldn't it be loverly..." she stands and crumples her empty bag of chips. It's quite the fantasy she can barely relate to after being abandoned by her mother and mistreated by her pretend father. Alexei would've done anything to stay on Ivan's good graces.

Humans can't be trusted- Men in particular. She can count those in her circle with one hand and Natasha has no intention of expanding that trust to a second.

The spy stands with a scoff not twenty minutes into her film and heads for the bathroom to check her search results for criminals in Ohio, unable to match any with her mysterious cab driver.

She reaches for the toothbrush and scrubs aggressively with a sigh, dressed in her baggy tee and loose gym shorts. The sink is running with a small hitch before the water starts to flow in full force. She spits with a tad of irritation over the buzzing on her phone, snapping her from a daydream.

Natasha reaches for the nearby towel to wipe her mouth, lifting her device to read the incoming message from her boss. She squints, believing she's read the message wrong;

"That's Dr. Bruce Banner. Leave it alone."

Fury wouldn't have given a full name if she weren't supposed to search for him in the database. She swipes up and heads back to the database.

"Doctor," she scoffs harshly.

After triple checking the geeky image from his yearbook she then makes an attempt to access Fury's restricted portfolio labeled "Initiative."

It denies her. She groans and tests another passcode. After being denied a second time she closes the browser and stares at herself in the mirror with a frown. It's unlike Fury to deny her access to anything in the database and she hates it.

Natasha tugs at her long hair and twirls a section over her finger with a quick text to Clint;

"What's the initiative?"

Barton texts back with a laughing emoji, "The hell are you talking about?"

So he's clueless.

Natasha drops her phone back onto the sink, lifting it one more time;

"Who is Dr. Bruce Banner?"

"No idea. It's bath time for the minis."

She smirks over his reference to the children Natasha adores so much;

"Night," she texts back with a deeper inhale and subsequent stronger exhale. Clint is in dad mode and she isn't about to encroach on his family time.

Natasha's elbow is on the sink, trying to search a general portfolio for one Bruce Banner in a standard search engine. For some old school virtual white pages. She finds the whole endeavor to be borderline humiliating as she scans the small screen of her phone.

Fury conveniently left out 'Robert'; It's 'Robert' Bruce Banner. Within minutes she's down a rabbit hole and leaning back against her pillow with more questions and new searches;

'Nuclear Physics'

'Desert State University'

'Pennsylvania State University'

'Harvard'

"So he's a nerd," she mutters under her breath with a bit of pride. No wonder she recognizes him, labeled as one of Harvard's best when she did her own time at the school.

And yet, none of that would explain Fury's odd and almost protective nature for the man. Or was it for Natasha's sake?

His verbiage, 'Leave it alone...' doesn't sit well with Romanoff. Nicholas Fury, of all people, knows she won't leave anything alone. And the fact Fury doesn't keep that many secrets from her does nothing to stop Natasha from spiraling.

A search for 'Culver' sends the spy down a completely separate rabbit hole. And just like that Elizabeth Ross is in her search engine.

Natasha absentmindedly reaches for a chip, forgetting the minty texture still on the surfaces of her teeth.

"...scorned ex," she mumbles in the dark, quoting her mysterious cab driver and taps her screen to zoom in on Dr. Ross' image.

Her brows lower, now curious over the article posted by General Thaddeus Ross calling Banner a 'threat.'

She taps her fourth tab, sipping a nearby glass of water and reaching for another chip.

'Brian Banner'

'Hulk'

'Hulk rampage'

The sight of a hulk roaring mid footage leaves her thumb now tapping repeatedly at a red 'x'. Her heart is pounding as she sits up, reopening and pausing the video in question from a local news outlet.

She shuts her screen as calmly as she can. For as strong as her stomach might be, there's something about his roar and the way he shreds anything in his wake that causes her insides to summersault with nausea.

Natasha rolls her eyes and reaches to switch off her light, deciding she's exhausted and officially wasted the first day of vacation fretting over someone she might never see again.