This oneshot appeared in my mind and demanded to be written. It was lots of fun, and I just loved writing from Bruce's perspective! Let me know if you enjoy it.

(And for those of you who are reading A Place on Earth, the next chapter is coming soon! Don't worry, the oneshot didn't distract me too much.)

A Thousand Words

"I drew you a picture!"

The little girl with the braids - Barton's daughter, aged maybe six or seven - called out to Natasha as she stepped into the living room, and Bruce felt the return to reality as sharply as a sudden plunge into ice cold water.

He had finally been compelled to leave the safe haven of the bedroom upstairs when Natasha had insisted that it was dinner time. ("Clint and Laura always eat at seven.") He had floated the suggestion that he might skip dinner, but Natasha had given him a very scary look and in the end he relented. Besides, he felt safer when she was close, and here in the middle of a very breakable wooden house (a house of toothpicks and second-rate glue to the Other Guy) with Barton's equally breakable wife and kids, safety was a feeling he wasn't willing to sacrifice.

He was also kind of hungry, now that he thought about it.

Barton and his wife were hard at work on something that smelled delicious in the kitchen, and he heard the clink of plates and glasses as they set the table. Clint made a low remark that didn't carry past the kitchen and Laura smiled and laughed. They seemed very happy, and he felt distantly astonished yet again that Barton had managed to maintain a career in spying and subterfuge and have the ultimate white picket fence life.

The pang that crawled through his chest like bitter and slow-spreading poison was definitely not jealousy. He didn't even have the energy to be jealous right now.

He glanced down at Natasha, who had dropped to her knees on the floor beside the girl and was admiring her drawing of what looked like a face. Well, a slightly warped approximation of a human face whose aspect would have been ideal for a horror movie if it stepped off the page and assumed three-dimensional form… but the girl was very young, so he was sure it was a normal effort for her developmental stage and not cause for calling in a pediatric psychologist. But then, how much did he really know about children?

"Draw a picture," the little girl insisted, her braids whirling around her face as she grabbed for some spare crayons and passed them to Natasha. "I would love to," Natasha replied in a voice brimming with enthusiasm. He had never heard that tone before today, and it was still weirding him out. The Nat-talks-to-kids voice was full of sunlight and optimism and held none of the usual shadows or snark. He had never even imagined her interacting with kids, let alone being good at it and it was throwing him off.

Especially since he liked it. The bitter pang returned with a vengeance.

"Can Dr. Banner draw with us, too?" Natasha asked.

Oh no.

The girl's bright eyes locked onto him and Natasha swiveled to face him as well. He wasn't sure which one of them was wearing the more innocent smile. He caught Natasha's eyes and shook his head minutely - he was in no condition to be around children. If Natasha understood his silent plea, she did an excellent job of hiding it. She held his gaze and actually winked. The little girl definitely won the innocence contest, then. He wanted to be irritated, but found himself smiling instead.

The girl finally nodded. "Sure," she declared and grabbed another handful of crayons. She dumped them in a pile between herself and Natasha and held out a blank sheet of white paper for him. There was nothing for it now; he accepted the paper and settled himself between the two of them.

Natasha was already hard at work on selecting her color palette. She casually rooted through his crayon pile and plucked a fair number of crayons out for her own use. It took him a moment to realize that she was grabbing every shade of green.

"What?" she answered his incredulous look. "I'm going green." He wavered between astonishment and laughter, an all too common emotional state where Natasha was involved. His smile seemed decidedly disconnected from his brain today; only a few hours earlier he had felt that he would never smile again, but now it was making yet another appearance without his consent.

"Bruce, this is Lila," Natasha said as she finished her crayon raid. "Lila, this is Dr. Banner."

"Hi," said Lila, not looking up from her new drawing. "Auntie Nat, I need some green."

"Sure, sweetheart. Take whatever you need." Lila inspected Natasha's stockpile, selected a light green from the yellower end of the spectrum, and set to work silently. Bruce studied his paper uncertainly.

"Is that modern art, Bruce?" came Natasha's voice after a moment. "It really speaks to me. 'I hate drawing because I'm a loser' - that's the message I'm getting."

"I prefer the invisible side of the color spectrum," he replied loftily.

"Deep," she remarked. She was smirking at him and he couldn't help but smile back. Again.

"Are you the Hulk?" Lila's voice smashed into the comfortable silence like breaking glass and he felt every muscle in his neck and arms seize up. He turned to face the girl's curious gaze and he felt Natasha's eyes follow him. She was probably gauging whether or not she needed to rescue him from this conversational situation. He wasn't sure himself, for a long moment… but Lila's stare was so innocently open and curious that he felt the tension drain away again. If he could handle the United States Military, aliens, Hydra, and even gods, he could handle the questions of a little girl. He was unkillable, right?

"Sometimes," he replied honestly.

Lila absorbed his answer with a frown and dragged her crayon across her page in a few purposeful strokes before she addressed him again. "You don't look like the Hulk," she continued without looking up.

"The Hulk-" he couldn't quite control his grimace as he said the name the media had given him (as though he was a circus attraction or a popular display at a zoo), "The Hulk only comes out sometimes."

"Why?" she asked immediately.

"Because that's the way it works," he answered, holding back the weariness that threatened to creep into his voice. Lila looked far from satisfied when she glanced at him.

"Is he going to come out at our house?" she asked. Bruce felt cold and nauseous, and his heart clenched painfully, but he saw no hint of fear on her face when he searched for it.

"No," Natasha interjected calmly, and the knot of tension in his chest loosened minutely. "The Big Guy only comes out when we have bad guys to fight." Bruce was severely tempted to argue that point, but he glanced at Lila and refrained.

Lila looked disappointed. "I wanted to see him," she complained, coloring with a burst of feverish speed. Her green crayon was almost flattened when she threw it down. "Look!" she said a little too loudly, sliding her paper over the top of Bruce's blank one. "It's you!"

A large green blob with ape-like arms, no clothes, and two black dots for eyes smiled crookedly up at him. Beside him, Natasha muffled a snort of laughter. Bruce stared.

"Do you like it?" Lila asked hopefully, propped up on her hands and knees and looking expectantly between his face and her artistic depiction of it.

"Um…" he started, hoping fervently that an answer would present itself to him before he hurt the little girl's feelings. "That's pretty good," he managed at last. "You should make him look angrier, though." Lila's brow creased thoughtfully and she snatched up a black crayon and pulled the paper back towards herself, laying it over a book for support. She began adding enormous black eyebrows slanted at a sharp angle.

"There," she announced, leaning back to regard the new addition. "Is that better?" He glanced at the angry eyebrows hovering over the black dots and the uneven smile and suppressed a sigh. "Yeah," he said. "That's perfect." Lila nodded happily and examined her drawing. A thoughtful frown clouded her face.

"Why is he so angry?" she asked after a moment.

That was a long and definitely not G-rated story. "I'm not sure," Bruce answered instead.

"Because he thinks everybody wants to hurt him," Natasha interjected again. "Sometimes when people get hurt, they get angry." Bruce stared at his blank page and felt the familiar pang blossoming in his chest. It was a thorny growth - sharp, bitter… and evergreen. You're hilarious, Banner, he chided himself and shook off his distraction.

Lila was still absorbing Natasha's too-kind appraisal of the Other Guy and her frown deepened. "Sometimes Mommy cries when bad guys hurt Daddy," she said quietly, glancing towards her parents in the kitchen. They were laughing and smiling and the warmth returned to her expression, the sudden clouds clearing as quickly as they had come.

"Sometimes people get angry because they don't want to cry," Natasha observed, and Bruce realized that she was still hard at work with her crayon. He leaned in for a closer look, but she curled an arm around her paper and raised an eyebrow at him. He stared in surprise and she gave him what he could only describe as a saucy smile.

Really?

His traitorous lips were twitching again.

"I would be angry if somebody hurt me," Lila continued, and Bruce glanced toward Natasha's secret picture and wondered what would happen if children realized that adults were no more mature than they were. "And I would cry," Lila added thoughtfully.

"Nobody's going to hurt you," Bruce re-entered the conversation at last, eager to pull it back into the shallows after so much uncomfortable depth. "Because you've got Black Widow and the Hulk," - that awful name again - "as bodyguards." Natasha was nodding.

"And your dad," Natasha added.

"He's pretty cool, too," Bruce agreed. "Your dad's a hero. Not everybody can say that." And now he was the one pulling them back into painful territory. He hadn't realized that conversations with six-year-olds could be so emotionally taxing. He caught Natasha's concerned gaze in his peripheral vision.

Mercifully oblivious to the emotional trauma all around her, Lila grinned.

"Are you going to add me to the picture?" Natasha asked Lila suddenly. Lila's eyes lit up with delight. "Yes!" she cried instantly, seizing orange and black crayons and bending over her page with a look of intense concentration. Natasha smiled and went back to her own picture. Bruce tried once more to sneak a peek at what she was drawing with every imaginable shade of green, but Natasha scooted further away and pulled her clipboard and her paper into her lap and out of sight. She smirked silently and, thwarted, Bruce sighed.

"Done," Lila proclaimed proudly, thrusting her page at Natasha. The enormous green blob was now joined by a black stick figure with an orange halo of hair and a smiling face just like the Hulk's (minus the eyebrows and with the addition of a few oversized eyelashes).

"I love it," said Natasha instantly. "I think it's a pretty good likeness, don't you Bruce?" She held it towards him and he glanced over the angry green ape and the tiny black stick figure. "Yeah," he replied. "I guess it is."

"Good job, sweetheart," said Natasha in her warmest tone, and passed the page back to Lila.

"Daddy says you help him change back," Lila said abruptly. "Into him." She pointed at Bruce. Well at least she was up front about the pointing. There was something remarkably refreshing about her straightforward way of talking about things. People had always either tiptoed around his problem… or just attacked him first and asked questions later. Lila faced the issue and had no ill intent. It was a relief, he realized.

"Yeah," Natasha answered, and he could see that she was weighing her words carefully. "I do."

Lila stared at Bruce openly and turned back to Natasha in confusion. "How do you change him back? Is it like Beauty and the Beast?"

Natasha kept a straight face, but he could see the laugh that was shivering just behind her smooth facade. "With the magic and the sparkles? No, not really." She glanced at Bruce with a look of barely restrained amusement. "Although that would be great."

"Sparkles?" Bruce asked in confusion, trying to remember how the movie ended. He knew he had seen it, but it had been years… a lot of years.

"Actually…" Natasha had turned back to Lila and her face went still and serious. "I hold his hand and help him remember that I like him and that it's okay for him to come back." Lila nodded as though this answer was somehow satisfactory. Maybe it was, when you weren't distracted by the science and the fact that it should be completely impossible, logically speaking. Of course, where Natasha was involved, he had pretty much given up on his own logic.

"Are you getting married?" Lila asked suddenly, eyeing her drawing. Bruce saw an idea catch fire behind her eyes as she seized the black crayon again, but he was much too distracted with the effort of controlling his expression to wonder what new addition she was planning. He discreetly watched Natasha's reaction to this latest question (and was privately relieved that it had not been directed at him).

"No," Natasha answered simply. "But never say never." She bent over her drawing again, and both girls were too absorbed in their artistic efforts to notice Bruce's blank look of astonishment.

He was once again saved from having to invent something to say by an outburst from Lila. "Look, I made you a wedding dress!" The black stick figure had been fitted with a black triangle that approximated a skirt. "The white crayon doesn't work on white paper," she explained knowledgeably.

"Right," said Bruce, realizing distantly that he was never going to be on solid ground in this conversation.

"White's not my color anyway," Natasha shrugged and Bruce thought he detected an undercurrent of something dark in her voice. White was the color of purity, and after all her talk of tainted pasts (Still think you're the only monster on the team?) he thought he could trace the source of this particular shadow.

"You would look great in white," he offered quietly. She didn't look at him, but her lips lifted a little. It wasn't enough; he tried again. "In fact, that's what I've been working on. Here," he slid his perfectly white page toward her. "It's your beautiful white dress."

She stared at his blank page and her lips finally twitched into a smile. "What do you think, Lila?" she asked.

"It's not a very good dress," Lila observed grimly. Natasha laughed.

"True," she said. "But it's the thought that counts. Or so I'm told." And she smiled at him. This time he consented to the answering smile that crossed his face.

"I bet you could draw an amazing dress, Lila," Bruce suggested after a moment of comfortable silence.

"Yes!" Lila agreed. "For a princess! Will you help me?"

It occurred to him that he had absolutely no experience drawing princesses. That was the sort of thing that never came up in doctoral courses and questionably ethical biological experiments. On the whole, he considered, he might have come out better if he had spent more time on princesses and less on super soldier experiments. Of course, then he never would have met Natasha.

He glanced at Natasha and she was waiting for his answer in amusement. "Well, Bruce?" she prompted.

"I can help," he said at last.

Lila grinned and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper. "I'll make the dress," she instructed imperiously. "You do the face and the crown."

"Okay," Bruce agreed. She waited for him to finish the head and the crown. Bruce's hand gravitated towards a red crayon when it came time to add the hair. He made it short and curly.

"Her face looks weird," Lila commented, but she immediately set to work on an elaborate dress.

"I hate to break up the princess club," came Clint's voice from the door, startling Bruce and Lila. Natasha, in her typical uncanny fashion, didn't even flinch. "It's time for dinner," Clint explained, and he retreated into the kitchen with a smirk. Before Bruce could determine whether or not Barton was judging him, he heard Tony and Steve's voices on the porch. The front door swung open and they headed for the kitchen with everyone else.

Tony paused to inspect the princess drawing beside Bruce. "I'd recognize your handiwork anywhere. Nice princess, Banner," he commented blandly, and walked into the kitchen. Natasha was laughing silently beside him. Bruce just sighed.

"Come on, Lila!" Laura's voice drifted in from the kitchen.

"Coming!" Lila answered, feverishly putting one final bow on the dress. "Done," she said, and dropped the crayon.

"Nice work," Natasha praised.

"Thank you," Lila answered instantly. "I'm going to draw you a picture after dinner," she declared.

"That would be great," Natasha answered with a smile. "Is the princess picture for Bruce?" she added, smirking in his direction.

Lila considered. "Yes," she decided finally, and presented the picture to Bruce with an air of importance. "Here you go. Oh! You can have this one too." She handed him the picture of the green blob and the stick figure in the black triangle skirt.

"Thank you," he answered solemnly. Lila nodded and ran into the kitchen.

"Sorry if that was uncomfortable for you," Natasha whispered. "I didn't know she was going to ask you so many questions. She's usually quiet around people she doesn't know. I guess you're just too approachable."

"No, it's okay." He waved away her concerns and stared at the crayon drawings. "It was… nice."

"Nice?" Her look of surprise quickly shifted into a smirk. "That's not the word I would use. Did you see your princess? We need to work on your drawing skills. That princess was weak."

"Ouch," he replied with a laugh. "Well, Rembrandt, what were you working on so secretly over there?"

"Yoda," she replied flatly. "Obviously."

He stared at her. "It didn't turn out like I wanted, so I scrapped it when you weren't looking. It wasn't a great try. And Yoda says there is no try, so…" she shrugged.

"You're a Star Wars fan?" Bruce asked at last.

"Maybe," she demurred. "Or maybe I just like the color green."

Bruce folded Lila's drawings carefully, tucked them into his pocket, and felt his smile make yet another unscheduled appearance.

Notes: I work with kids for a living, so I had lots of fun writing Lila. She's partially based on a little girl who is about the same age and also likes wearing her hair in braids.

Bruce's statement about not all dads being heroes is a reference to the comics backstory in which Bruce's father is abusive and horrible. Ugh.

On a brighter note, the idea for this oneshot came to me when I thought about the Age of Ultron scene where Lila runs into the kitchen to give Natasha the butterfly picture... and I thought about all the time that's not accounted for during the farm scenes... and I thought Bruce + crayons + awkwardly frank conversations with kids = very yes. I was also unreasonably delighted by the idea of Natasha being adept at talking to the kids and breaking things down to their level after years of visiting the Bartons. Thus, a oneshot was born.

Let me know what you think!

Me: The fandom is huge, we're fighting an army of anti-BruceNat shippers, and I have a fan fiction. None of this makes any sense. If you want to hide in the dark and not review, that's fine. I'll just look at my stats to see if people are reading. But if you enjoy this fic... then you're a reviewer.

You: *reviews*

Me and Hawkeye: *survives in defiance of all the foreshadowing*

Please review!