A/N: This fic was written for blueincandescence as part of the HulkWidowNet fanwork exchange on Tumblr. She requested something set pre-Kolkata, in which Bruce and Natasha don't meet, but they interact with each other based on reputation/spycraft. I've referenced The Incredible Hulk, as well as the Fury's Big Week comic, but you don't need to have watched/read either of those to understand this fic. Many thanks to Katla for beta-reading and generally being a fabulous cheerleader.

For those of you looking for an update of Sun's Getting Low, I should be posting chapter 15 this coming Sunday. :) In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one-shot!

Never Lost You

"Bruce Banner's in British Columbia," Nick Fury said without preamble as soon as Natasha stepped inside his office and shut the door behind her.

For a moment she stood there blinking, as though to let her eyes adjust to the dark of the room, lit only by the glow of half a dozen computer monitors behind his desk, but really it was the subject she needed to adapt to. And had hoped she wouldn't have to again.

She crossed her arms over her chest, drew a steadying breath. "You want me to bring him in for containment?"

That had been her assignment in Harlem after all. If General Ross hadn't beaten her to the punch.

Fury grunted, a sound which might have been a laugh, or it might not. "If I wanted to contain Banner, I'd have done it after Harlem. Then I wouldn't have the World Security Council breathing down my neck."

"Can you blame them when we lost him?"

"We never lost Banner." Annoyance edged his tone. Well-Fury was perpetually annoyed. More annoyed than usual. Or maybe he was affronted. "We let him go, because I deemed him a secondary threat. Blonsky being the primary."

"Primary, secondary…seems like a negligible difference in a threat of this scale."

"I want him for the Avengers Initiative."

The statement was a pinprick in a balloon.

"So you want me to bring him in for recruitment?" Natasha asked, less steadily than she would have preferred.

"Not yet. Banner's a…delicate case."

Natasha snorted. Fury's eyebrow went up above the patch.

"Nothing," she said. "Just…interesting word choice."

Fury didn't see the humor in it. He seldom did.

"He's isolated himself up there for months," he said. "I need to know how he deals with people."

His chair squeaked faintly as he turned away from her, effectively ending the meeting.

Natasha didn't leave. Instead, she approached his desk.

"With all due respect, sir, I don't think this is a good idea."

"You think Blonsky's a better one?" Fury swiveled halfway back, the side of his face turned toward her swallowed up in shadow, except for the white flash of his good eye. "That's what the Council wants. Thinking with their collective asses, as usual."

When she didn't respond to his sarcasm, he faced her fully, studied her.

"Or is it the part where I'm sending you to Banner that's a bad idea? I know you found him overwhelming. That's why I pulled you off the case. That, and Sitwell was freed up again."

Natasha clenched her jaw, annoyed and a little ashamed that he thought she was afraid. Or that Sitwell, of all people, was better suited for the assignment.

Through her teeth she said, "Banner didn't overwhelm me."

"Good. Then there won't be any problem, seeing as you'll be dealing exclusively with Banner and not the Big Guy. He's been practicing controlled transformations, so Sitwell reports. He'll meet you in Bella Coola-and be glad to have company."

"Yes sir." Natasha turned to go.

"Agent Romanoff," Fury called her back as her fingers grasped the doorknob. "I wouldn't put you on this if you weren't the right agent for the job."

"What makes you think I am?"

"I'll let you figure that out."

A remote location had been imperative when Bruce fled New York after breaking Harlem. Bella Coola, British Columbia, seemed like an ideal place to hide out: located on the opposite side of the continent from General Ross, with only around six hundred people in the town proper, a third of the total population of the Bella Coola Valley area. Few enough people that everyone knew each other-except of course for Bruce, who knew no one, and no one knew him.

Not for lack of trying. Canadians were friendly to a fault, especially in comparison to New Yorkers, and the residents of Bella Coola were no exception. They made overtures, tried to draw him into the community whenever he ventured into town on supply runs, though he kept those few and far between, like his words. He quickly discovered the drawback of remote. Disappearing acts presented something of a challenge when there wasn't a crowd to disappear into.

So Bruce holed up for the winter; the snow made it too difficult to get through the valley on foot, anyway. Warmer weather in late spring brought an influx of tourists to the Valley, making it easier for him to go to town for necessary errands without drawing undue attention.

When he left his cabin one bright morning in July, he felt something like a bear crawling out of hibernation. Looked it, too, with his full beard and shaggy hair. He considered a shave and a haircut, thinking wistfully of what Betty would say about the scruffy look, such a far cry from the bespectacled, lab coat-clad scientist he'd once been, but decided against it. The less he looked like Dr. Banner, the better. The less he thought about Betty, too.

He blended in well enough with the fishermen and loggers that populated the area, as well as with the tourists: the outdoorsy variety who came to camp and hike, the hipsters who came for the indigenous art and culture. The latter variety would be out in force, he realized as he made his way through town and saw that a stage had been erected in the park for the annual Bella Coola Music Festival.

The shops were more crowded than usual, with enough customers willing to make conversation with the store owners that no one cared whether Bruce did or not. If they even noticed him at all. He, on the other hand, paid close attention to his fellow shoppers.

Two people in particular, intrigued him as he browsed the clothing racks at Kopas Store: a petite woman whose age was difficult to gauge, a pair of glasses with large plastic frames covering much of her face and a slouchy knitted hat concealing most of her hair except for side-swept auburn bangs, and a man who looked slightly less fashionable in cargo shorts and a fishing hat. She perused books about the town and its history and environs, and went from amused to annoyed when he interrupted repeatedly to show her native jewelry and other handcrafted souvenirs. At one point, the look of irritation was directed at Bruce when she glanced his way and saw he'd been watching her. Hastily, he averted his eyes; the next time he looked up, the couple had left the shop.

On his way to the co-op he encountered them again, making a slow path down the main street, pausing to take pictures of each other. They posed in front of a mural painted on the side of a building, by the Nuxalk longhouse which stood beside a whitewashed church, with totem poles. When Bruce finished his grocery shopping and passed by the festival grounds, he spied them again, standing on the stage, attempting to take a selfie. Remembering the dirty look the girl had given him in Kopas Store, he quickened his pace, not turning his head toward the stage as he passed. Nevertheless, he heard them squabbling.

"You're not getting any of the background in," the girl complained. "My followers want pics of our faces in Canada."

"I want pics of our faces," argued the boyfriend. "Not every pic needs to be Tweeted, you know."

Even as he said this he left her side, moving to stand at the edge of the stage to take a picture of her with the backdrop behind her. This didn't satisfy her, either. "We won't both be in it."

On a whim, Bruce pivoted back, bracing himself for a glare when the girl recognized him as the creepy hairy guy from the shop.

"Hi…I couldn't help overhearing…Would you guys like me to take a picture of you? Of both of you? Together?

As the boyfriend turned around to say, "Oh would you? That would be amaz-" he stepped right off the stage, falling to the ground a good four feet below and cracking his hand on the wooden steps.

"Oh. Oh God." Bruce rubbed his hand over his beard. "I am so sorry."

"It's not your fault," said the girlfriend, not exactly rushing to her boyfriend's aid. "He a total klutz. And a wimp. Man up, Jay."

"He did hit that step pretty hard." Bruce glanced away from the girl, embarrassed, and looked at the step. He saw Jay's cell phone and stooped to pick it up.

"I think I might have broken it," Jay grunted out through his teeth.

"Phone's okay," said his girlfriend, taking the phone from Bruce.

"Not the phone, Ramona, my arm!"

She pursed her lips, contemplated him. "Move your fingers."

Gingerly, Jay curled his fingers. "Ow! I should probably have x-rays. Is there a hospital in this town?"

Bruce started to answer that there was, but the girl-Ramona-spoke first. "The only thing they'll diagnose is hypochondria."

Cradling his arm to his chest, Jay glowered. "Maybe they should look at you as well, and find out how you're still alive when you clearly don't have a heart."

"I could take a look at it," Bruce said, not sure why he'd intervened instead of running like hell back to his cabin. "I can tell you whether you should go to the hospital."

"You're a doctor?" Ramona said, an eyebrow hitched in skepticism.

"Kind of."

"Kind of a doctor? What does that mean?"

"Of biology."

"Thanks, but I'm sure he just needs ice."

"You're sure?" Jay fired back at her. "You're not even kind of a doctor."

"Won't hurt to look," Bruce said.

"Actually it probably will, I'm in so much pain."

With a shrug, Ramona stepped aside, leaning against the stage as Bruce put down his shopping bags and helped Jay to his feet, then eased him to sit on the steps. Jay winced and hissed through his teeth as Bruce ran his fingers over the wrist, which was already darkening with a bruise.

"Nothing feels broken. I'd suggest ice," he said with a sideways glance at Ramona, who looked smug. "If you have prolonged pain, then maybe you should have it looked at for a hairline fracture. Not that there's much they can do for that."

"Thanks, doc…What's your name?"

Bruce hesitated. This was the longest he'd interacted with anyone since he came to Bella Coola, and although he'd given his alias before, this felt somehow like he was letting his guard down. He couldn't very well not give it without making himself suspicious, so he took a breath and said, "Morrison. Walter Morrison."

"Jay Standish. And this is my girlfriend, Ramona. That is, if she hasn't broken up with me now that I'm maimed," he added, sulkily.

Ramona rolled her eyes.

"Buy you a beer, Walt?" Jay asked. "Can I call you Walt?"

"Why not?" Bruce replied. "Call me Walt, I mean. I have a few more errands, so I'll have to pass on the beer-"

"Come on, let us thank you," Ramona said, much to his surprise. "Beer's a hell of a lot cheaper than x-rays."

Bruce wasn't sure why he agreed. Maybe it was because he was lonely, or maybe he felt sorry for the guy, on vacation with a woman like this, or maybe it was that he felt bullied into it by Jay's girlfriend, or maybe a combination of the three. Whatever the reason, he regretted the decision the moment he found himself seated at the bar in the Bella Coola Valley Inn and realized he had no choice but to hold up his end of a conversation.

"So what's a biologist do in Bella Coola?" asked Jay, a zip-top sandwich baggie of ice on his hand.

"A lot of things, I imagine," Ramona deadpanned.

"Research," Bruce replied.

"The wildlife?" Jay asked.

"You could say that."

"Lots of bears around here, right? We want to do that hike out to see the Nuxalk petroglyphs but…I'm a little concerned about the bears."

"I wouldn't worry about the bears," Bruce said.

If only people knew what there was to fear in these woods.

"Exactly, that's what I've been telling him," Ramona said. "These are guided tours."

She slid off her bar stool, told Jay they'd better get going.

"Thanks again for patching me up," said Jay, taking his icepack with him. "See you at the music festival, maybe?"

"I don't really do crowds."

"How many people do you think are going to show up to this thing? It's not a U2 concert. What are you, agoraphobic?"

"Something like that," Bruce replied.

Early the next morning, Director Fury's phone buzzed with a text message from Agent Romanoff: elvis has left the building

Grinding his teeth, Fury texted back: Code Green?

Natasha Romanoff: banner's cabin is literally empty

Natasha Romanoff: except for a can of beanie weenies

Natasha Romanoff: almost feel sorry for the guy

Nick Fury: Good. That's the goal.

Natasha Romanoff: he could still smash me

Nick Fury: What did you do to scare him off?

Natasha Romanoff: sitwell asked him out

Jasper Sitwell: I mentioned him attending the local music festival.

Natasha Romanoff: pursue and apprehend?

Nick Fury: Pursue only. Keep informed.

Nick Fury: Maybe you could try writing an official report for a change.

Natasha Romanoff: :P

Shaking his head at the emoticon-or whatever the hell it was called-he saved the text conversation to his Romanoff Reports folder, then placed his phone on the desk and swiveled toward the computer screen with his open Banner files, trying to predict where he'd go. He didn't have to wonder for long before he had another text from Romanoff: prince rupert island ferry

As Fury typed Prince Rupert Island into the search engine, she texted again: if we fly we can beat him there. it's a shipping port.

Nick Fury: Wondered if you knew how to use punctuation for anything besides those stupid faces.

Natasha Romanoff: :'(

"I asked for that," Fury muttered, looking away from his phone in disgust to the Prince Rupert Port Authority website that had loaded on his monitor. The fastest trade route on the transpacific declared bold black letters against the white of the page.

Natasha Romanoff: are we flying to prince rupert?

Nick Fury: I need you in Russia. I'll alert my team in Shanghai to keep an eye out for Banner.

Natasha: shanghai?

Busan and Tokyo were possibilities, of course, but not exactly Banner's MO. He liked to have room to run, and a densely populated island and peninsula didn't exactly allow for that. Could the Big Guy swim?

Nick Fury: I'd bet my good eye the Doctor's taking the slow boat to China.

On the flight to India, Natasha skimmed the files Coulson transferred after he pulled her off the Luchkov assignment to recruit Banner, bringing herself up to speed on his activities since their encounter in British Columbia eighteen months earlier. She came across her texts to Fury, smirking slightly, wondering why other agents stuck to protocol and wrote such dry reports when pithier messages would do.

From Prince Rupert Island, Bruce had gone to Shanghai, just as Fury suspected he would. SHIELD weren't the only ones tracking him, though, and the agents assigned to him-the ones who'd written this yawn fest-narrowly helped him escape capture by a military task force. And who had sent them? Drumroll…None other than General Thaddeus Ross, who apparently wasn't concerned about what unleashing the Hulk in a city of over fourteen million might do to US-Chinese relations.

The agents posed as itinerant doctors and convinced Banner to go with them to Pakistan, where rural mountain villages lacked medical care. He lived quietly for a few months until bandits attacked the village, resulting in his first incident since the controlled transformations Sitwell observed in Canada. News of the Big Guy spread through the villages to larger cities, putting Banner back on Ross' radar-as well as that of some fringe scientists who were working on their own versions of the Super Soldier Serum, because no one was ever going to learn.

Would Fury? At times she wondered.

As she waited for Banner in the shack on the outskirts of Kolkata, where he'd gone over a year without incident and so surely must be overdue, she sent a text: as princess leia said, i've got a bad feeling about this

Fury replied, I trust him. And I trust you.

He hadn't always. Natasha scuffed her finger across the text bubble on the screen. At the sound of uncertain shuffling footsteps outside, she fired off one final message-the doctor is in-and quickly pulled up the pic of the tesseract as she adjusted her shawl around herself.

Let's hope your trust isn't misplaced this time, Nick, she thought, then stepped out from behind the curtain.

"I'm here on behalf of SHIELD."

"SHIELD. How did they find me?"

Natasha smiled. "We never lost you, doctor."

The last time Bruce saw Natasha-in person, not on CNN testifying before the US Senate-she'd handed him a SHIELD-issue duffel bag and told him to try not to get in any trouble with Stark in the Tower. Two years later, she arrived at the Tower along with a mob of reporters clamoring about the trouble she'd gotten into. She grimaced as he stepped out to meet her, at the general discomfort of the situation, he thought at first, then the expression flickered again as she shouldered her own duffel bag bearing the insignia of the now defunct intelligence agency.

"You're in pain," he said when the Tower doors closed behind her, silencing the reporters' shouts for a statement-from her or him; he'd heard someone shout a question to him about how the Avengers felt about two of their members having been potentially corrupted by Hydra, and hoped she hadn't.

"Got shot," Natasha replied, through her teeth.

"Oh. Do you…I could take a look at it, if you need me to."

"That's right. You're kind of a doctor, aren't you?"

Sinking down onto a leather chair situated near a potted plant in the lobby, her bag thumping on the tile, she smiled up at him as though this were an inside joke. Bruce, feeling decidedly on the outside, shook his head vaguely and replied in kind.

"More of the medical kind than the psychological."

"No, I mean…Do you remember meeting a couple in British Columbia?"

Bruce blinked at her behind the lenses of his glasses. He took them off, folding and unfolding the earpieces as he stared at her, comparing the pale face framed by straight red curtains of hair with an all-but-forgotten image of a woman he'd encountered long ago. Shaking his head again, he put them back on and sat in the chair across from her.

"That was you," he said. "I…can't believe I didn't recognize you in Kolkata."

"I am a super spy." The wry little grin made a brief appearance, only to hide again as she looked down at the arm of her chair. "My partner was Jasper Sitwell. He kept tabs on you when you returned to the US after the incident in Rio."

"You did say you never lost me." He smiled, slightly, but Natasha didn't see it as she kept her head down.

"Turns out he was working for Hydra the whole time."

Bruce rubbed his chin, the stubble rasping against his palm, and let his gaze drift out the windows where the press, who couldn't see in, reported drivel to their 24-hour news networks about how the Black Widow had taken refuge inside the Avengers Tower. Her revelation came as no surprise to Bruce. Not much of one, anyway. He'd known it was a possibility, from the moment news broke that SHIELD had been compromised, that Project INSIGHT targeted those it deemed threats to Hydra, including him, that the agents Fury assigned to watch him all that time before he was recruited for the Avengers Initiative, might have been Hydra agents.

At least there had been some cold comfort in knowing Hydra wanted to destroy him, not to use him. In some way, that almost made their motivations less dubious than SHIELD's.

"I never was," Natasha said, seeking his eyes with hers now. "Not intentionally. I realize you may not believe me-"

"I do." Bruce surprised himself with the interjection, with his own certainty of the claim, and Natasha appeared to be, too. Or relieved, he wasn't sure which.

Relaxing in her chair, the tension eased from her face, and when she spoke again the words sounded like they came more easily than before. "You don't have to worry about Sitwell. He's…been dealt with."

"You know, at the time I felt sorry for him. You seemed like a really mean girlfriend. Especially for a hipster."

Natasha snorted. "That was the intention. Appeal to your sense of empathy, get you to interact."

Bruce didn't know whether to feel like an idiot for falling for a spy plot hook, line, and sinker, or to be pleased that after Harlem they thought him still capable of relating on a human level.

"Well I have a vindictive side. I'm glad you were mean."

"I kicked him off a roof."

Maybe he wasn't so vindictive that he accepted that readily; the Other Guy gave a rumble of approval in the back of his mind, but Bruce shifted a little in his chair.

"Why'd you leave Bella Coola?" Natasha asked. "Did you suspect we were more than just an unhappy couple on vacation?"

"You know you're a better spy than that," Bruce replied, and she pursed her lips in an expression that was just a tad smug.

For a moment Bruce contemplated his answer. He wasn't used to putting all his cards on the table, but then again neither was Natasha, and she had nothing left up her sleeve. This conversation was proof of that.

"You were the first people I'd really interacted with, and it made me realize how much I missed…" Betty. "…being with people. But I couldn't be. I couldn't be that close. So I went farther away." To where there were more people than in Canada, but language and culture were much bigger barriers than remote locations. "Oddly, giving Sitwell a little medical attention made me realize that maybe I could still do some good in the world. Help people, instead of hurt them."

Reaching up to scratch the back of his head, his eyes fell on Natasha's bag.

"Can I carry that up for you?"

The question fell instinctively from his lips; after it did, he was sure she'd tell him she could handle it. Instead, she gave him a soft smile, and an even softer answer.

"Thanks. I'd really appreciate that."

"A long time ago I asked you a question," Natasha said as she and Fury stood together on the farmhouse porch before he flew Bruce back to New York. "You never gave me an answer."

Fury still didn't answer her right away, let her have her moment as Bruce turned back at the loading bay to give her one last long look before he dutifully mounted the ramp to board the quinjet.

"You probably asked a lot of questions I never answered," Fury replied. "Which particular one are you referring to?"

"Why I was the right agent for the job." She nodded toward Bruce's retreating back, then when he'd finally ducked out of sight, she looked up at Fury. "I figured it out."

His good eye rolled downward to meet her gaze as he silently waited for her to go on.

"Someone saw more than a monster inside me, too."

She almost thought she saw the flicker of emotion across his face, a softening of the permanently drawn lines. Or maybe it was an illusion, her eyes unaccustomed to seeing him dressed like this, signature leather traded for a pullover and sport coat.

There was no missing the tenderness in his voice.

"We won't lose him, Natasha." Fury stepped off the porch and strode toward the jet. "We never have."

A remote location had been imperative when the Other Guy took control of the quinjet and shut off communication with the helicarrier in Sokovia. Fiji, made up of three hundred islands only a third of which were permanently populated, seemed like an ideal place to hide out. Where in the world can I go that I'm not a threat? If there was anywhere, it was a more or less deserted island. Too bad he couldn't tell Tony he'd been right about one thing: that Bruce was lying on the beach, turning brown instead of green.

The downside to Fiji-aside from being utterly alone-was that he saw Natasha everywhere. The clear blue green of her eyes in the sea that stretched out all around him for unbroken miles, the fiery hues of her hair in the sunset over distant mountains. Hey, big guy. Sun's getting' real low...To be honest, he would have seen her in the glacial river in Bella Coola, in the changing autumn leaves.

As in Canada, he did have to venture out of hiding every now and then; uninhabited islands were that way for a reason. Whenever he did, he scanned every face he saw, simultaneously dreaming and dreading that one of them would be her, posing as a honeymooner. We never lost you, doctor, he could have sworn he heard a husky woman's voice whisper, but of course he hadn't.

Strange how those words, almost the first ones she'd spoken to him, which angered him so much at the time came to mean something else entirely. I once was lost, but now I'm found. He never saw her, and as the tourist season melted into the rainy season, the words he heard her whisper most were her last ones. We can't track you in stealth mode, so help me out-

He had.

They'd finally lost him.

Or maybe, he thought, looking out across the sea, it was the other way around.