Natasha found out what was in Sulawesi a few hours later, when she and Fury took a quinjet to a beach just north of the seaside town of Bukaan. A couple of local fishermen looked up in surprise as they went over, but Fury ignored them, and touched down softly on a beach a couple of miles up the coast.

There were two figures waiting for them there. One was a solicitous orang-utan which had approached the other to offer a papaya. The other, lying exhausted on the sand in the shreds of his clothing, was Bruce Banner. For a moment, even though she knew better, Nat was afraid he was dead. As the quinjet's hatch opened, letting the hot, damp tropical air flood into the cabin, the terrified ape knuckled away up the beach towards the trees – but Banner did not move.

Nat hurried down the ramp towards him, barely noticing the thick green smell of the nearby jungle. "Dr. Banner?" she asked, kneeling next to him on the sand.

That was when she realized his eyes were open. He was awake and conscious, he had simply chosen not to get up. He turned to look at her, and asked, "how many were killed?"

She hesitated a moment before replying. There had been civilians at the airport – firefighters, reporters, and in the early stages of the affair probably innocent travelers as well. Nat had done her best to keep the Hulk away from them while he'd been with her, but before that had happened there'd been the battle around the wreck of the cargo plane. People had definitely been hurt in that, but they would have been mostly the mooks Madame had brought with her. She decided to reply, "only the bad guys."

Banner sat up stiffly and heaved a sigh as he leaned forward, arms resting on his knees. "Bad guys," he repeated distantly.

Nat understood at once. Not all 'bad guys' were necessarily bad people. Living under every evil empire were the ordinary human beings just trying to get by. Individuals who might take a job because they needed the money, and didn't really know who they were working for or what they were getting into, who had lives and families and whose plans for the day had not included fighting a couple of superheroes.

Those were the people Natasha often forgot about. She'd certainly forgotten about them last night – she'd been so determined to bring Madame in alive, one way or another, that everything else had fallen by the wayside. The black widows were brought up to believe that those people didn't matter, that they were merely obstacles, but that wasn't true. Of course it wasn't.

That was the moment when Nat realized she wasn't scared anymore. The Hulk hadn't hurt her when she'd stood up to him, and Banner... Banner was just a tired, anxious man who saw his life as a string of failures to be quite good enough. Like anybody else, Natasha was afraid of what she didn't understand. But she understood that just fine.

"So are you going to vanish into the jungle again?" she asked, sitting down next to him.

"I'm thinking about it," he admitted.

"The neighbours seem nice." She glanced at the place where the orang-utan had disappeared.

"Not great conversationalists, though," said Bruce.

"Or cooks," Nat agreed, glancing at the discarded papaya. "The diet would get really monotonous."

"I don't know, there's quite a variety of fruit in Indonesia," Bruce said. He began to smile a bit as he asked, "have you ever had durian?"

"Yes, I have, actually," Nat replied with a proud smile. "Smells like turpentine, tastes like custard. Taste is supposed to be mostly smell, so I've never figured out how that works."

"It's a scientific mystery," Bruce said with a knowing nod, and then his face became serious again. "I'm so tired of running and hiding all the time," he said. "I know that if I'm around people I'm going to end up hurting someone..."

"But running is exhausting," Nat finished for him. "It's good to have a place to sit down and know that it's yours, and nobody can bother you there." A place to be anchored, a bed she could chain herself to metaphorically if not with physical cuffs. "You don't realize how badly you need it until you get it back after a long time doing without."

"Yeah," he said.

Fury looked out of the back of the quinjet. "Are you coming, lovebirds?" he asked. "Because I'm not taking you all the way back to New York. If you want to be there to see Thor off, you've got a plane to catch!"

"I hate flying," Bruce muttered, then corrected himself. "Actually... I don't hate the actual flight part. It's airports I hate."

"Airports make everybody angry enough to become the Hulk." Nat stood up and offered a hand. "Are you coming?"

After a moment's more indecision, Bruce let her help him to his feet. "Stark did offer to show me around the Tower," he said.

"An offer he normally only makes to women," Natasha said with a smirk, and then she got an idea. "If you don't mind my asking a strange question, Dr. Banner... have you ever been hypnotized?"

He blinked at her a few times in obvious confusion. "Uh, no. I don't think I have. What's that got to do with anything?"

She helped him sit down in one of the quinjet's seats, and offered him a SHIELD flight suit to put on over the tattered remains of his trousers. "The Hulk is sort of a psychological phenomenon, isn't he?" she asked. "He comes and goes according to triggers in your thoughts and emotions."

"That's right," said Bruce. "I have some idea what brings him out... less so what puts him away again."

Nat sat down across from him. "I just thought, maybe a post-hypnotic suggestion could give you greater control over him," she offered. "I could implant a trigger phrase or action that would knock him out, and you'd change back automatically. Then we wouldn't have to come collect you from distant islands after each incident."

He shuddered, which was obvious to Nat even as he tried to suppress it. She expected this would lead to an immediate no, but instead he licked his lips and said, "maybe. I don't know if I trust anyone enough to let them hypnotize me, but... it would have to be something that couldn't be set off by accident."

"Of course." Nat nodded. "I'm sure we can figure something out."

The quinjet lifted off, and they soared away into the blue tropical skies.

The morning after, Natasha was back in Laoag, boarding a plane. The entire Barton family was heading back to the States together and Nat was going with them, wearing her arrow necklace. She could have gone back on the SHIELD jet with Banner and Fury, but she'd preferred to go with the Bartons – Laura was visibly nervous about getting on another jumbo jet, so Nat hoped her presence would help her friend stay calm.

"Gina better have kept up with watering my tomatoes," said Laura, pushing things into the overhead compartment. "My weather app says it's been dry the entire time we were gone. If I get back and find my vegetables dying of thirst, I'm going to be very unhappy."

"Tomatoes are a fruit, remember?" Clint asked. He was making sure the kids had their belts on, before he settled down in his own seat next to Lila. Laura and Cooper would be sitting in the row ahead, with Natasha across the aisle from them – they were flying business class this time, on SHIELD's dime. "I've always wondered... if tomatoes are a fruit, isn't ketchup by definition a smoothie?"

The kids giggled. Laura just smiled and shook her head. "I thought we talked about this already, the time I caught you drinking it with a straw." She took her own seat. "Natasha, have you got the tablet?"

"Right here." Nat unzipped her bag and handed it over.

"Thanks." Laura started a cartoon playing and then handed it back between the seats. "Here, this will keep her busy."

Clint gave the device to his daughter, as the Scooby-Doo theme began playing on it. "You know," he said with a chuckle, "Velma from Scooby-Doo was my childhood crush. I like 'em short, curvy and smart as a whip."

"You hear that?" asked Laura. "He's kissing up."

"That he is," Natasha agreed. "He does that." She sat back and smiled, at peace with the world and ready to sleep through most of a fourteen-hour flight. "I told you I'd get him back for you, didn't I?" she asked Laura.

"Yes, you did." Laura smiled. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Nat said.

There was still red in her ledger and there always would be. But today, perhaps, there was a tiny bit less.

BUT WAIT, you say. What happened to the Hu Xian? Did Yelena survive? How long will SHIELD be able to keep Madame in custody? What powers might Natasha have that she doesn't yet know about? Watch this space, because this story is TO BE CONTINUED.