Disclaimer: I do not own Avengers or any other associated works.

"Italics," spoken in Bangla

"The house does not rest on the ground but upon a woman." – Mexican Proverb

How We Start

Bruce Banner has only been in Kolkata*, India a few months before it blows up in his face.

The raven-haired little girl at his doorstep – so tiny and thin in her well-worn dress– is not an altogether unfamiliar experience at this point. Bruce had quickly become the slums go-to-doctor since showing up, and even without that it didn't take a good eye to see that he stuck out in a crowd (though, thankfully, not enough for tanks to come rolling up to his doorstep). The girl gave off the typical elements Bruce is used to dealing with as a doctor, (the desperation, fear, the helplessness) but he also sees something else, something stronger, almost familiar, in her furrowed brows and pouting lips. It's vague but very much there, and its presence is unsettling enough that Bruce does not think on it further than that.

"Come with me!" The little girl demands.

Her voice is strong and determined, and if Bruce was a less perceptive man, he probably wouldn't have thought she was scared of anything. He thinks she can't be more than eight years old at most, and yet she stands her ground in front of him like they're in the middle of some kind of steel cage death-match, and the poor doctor doesn't really know what to do with that.

"You are the doctor, right? Hurry up and come with me!" she grounds out with a stomp of her foot when he doesn't move from his doorway.

It takes him a minute to get his bearings, because Bruce can't seem to remember the last time anyone – at least, not since the Other Guy – ordered him around like that, much less a kid.

And really, who asked for a doctor like that?

"Uh…hello?" He says anxiously and glances around for any sign of an adult. "Is something wrong? Is someone ill?"

His awkward Bangla isn't all that impressive and seems embarrassingly worse in the face of this unreasonably aggressive little girl. At his hesitant words, the girl grits her teeth and tilts her head to the sky like she's asking god for patience, and Bruce can't decide whether he should be awed or insulted by the sheer nerve.

"You are the doctor, or aren't you?! If you want to get paid, then stop asking stupid questions and come with me!"

She takes off without another word, and he stands stock-still for second in disbelief before snapping out of his stupor, and hurriedly collects his medical supplies to follow her. It is his job to help people, after all – even if he is already a little annoyed with his new client. The girl gives him stealthy glances over her shoulder as they go to make sure he's keeping up, expertly weaving through the throng of people all the while. Bruce does keep up, though not nearly as gracefully, and not too much later they reach a small block of shacks just outside the city's red-light district. The girl stops at the front door of one, and suddenly she's every bit the frightened child she'd tried to hide at his doorstep.

"…She is in there." Her voice breaks with emotion, but when she looks up at him, the hard lines of her features don't betray her in the same way. "Save her…I can't do it, so… so save mama…please."

Bruce wastes no time and he quickly enters, finding the house's only bedroom on his right. He finds a woman – shivering in a cold sweat, teeth chattering, and wrapped in several threadbare blankets with a bucket of water and a wet rag by her bedside. She's in bad shape, likely has been for some time, and Bruce can tell he's got his work cut-out for him. As the doctor comes closer to her side, he sees the dried blood on her cracked and quivering lips and can smell the awful stench of infection from her weak body. The woman has a high fever, judging from the sweat drenching the bed sheets, and it comes as no surprise to Dr. Banner that she seems to be babbling incoherently under her breath.

"Ma'am?" He whispers to her carefully. "I am a doctor. I am here to help. Can you hear me? Can you tell me your name? "

The woman's eyes flutter open, blurry and unfocused. She reaches out a far-too-skinny arm, as if to call out to him, and whispers something that Bruce strains to hear.

"Mitra? Where is Mitra? Where is she? Where did she go? My girl… My Mitra…"

It takes the young mother, Shanta, three days to die. Bruce realizes the inevitable by first day's end but tries to keep her as comfortable as possible with what little he had. The little girl, Mitra, is a mess of tears and angry fists. She runs at him from her mother's deathbed in a rage, screeching hateful words at him for letting her mother die. Bruce lets her punch and kicks at him with what little strength her body has before little Mitra collapses in exhaustion and anguish at his feet.

Bruce does his best to comfort, but just like with her mother, there is little he can do for the girl. She has no siblings and now no parents – only a run-down home stained with loss and grief to keep her company – and it's a burden no child should have to carry. Dr. Banner feels the all too familiar guilt of another person he couldn't save – another victim. Even though it was irrational, even though he knows Shanta had been too far gone for him to do anything, Bruce still feels the grief of failure– of self-loathing– that by now is just as much a part of him as the monster that haunts his every heartbeat.

The funeral is a quiet affair. A few women come to pay their respects, but do not stay for long, nor did they spare any words of comfort for the newly orphaned child left behind. Some neighbors come to stand silently as prayers are read, but again none seem there to do more than to bare witness to the woman's passing. There are no family members present aside from Mitra, and with no father or other relatives coming forward, Bruce begins to worry.

"I don't remember him much. I think I was three when baba came last." Mitra later tells Bruce despondently after the funeral. "I guess… he didn't like me much."

"…Oh." was Bruce's intelligent reply.

Bruce takes her home with him. Whether from guilt or duty, (or maybe both, or maybe because he feels like he has no other choice – possibly because he has no idea what else to do) he really doesn't know. The only thing that he knows is that he can't leave her there. He decides that he can risk keeping Mitra close, if only for a few days. Within that time, he thinks, he'll be able to find her a new home, and they'd both get on with their lives. A part of him knows he's hoping for a miracle – knows that this is probably the worst idea he's had in a long, long while – but Bruce just crams that part away to the back of his consciousness alongside all that rage and common sense screaming at him for being such a sentimental idiot.

Note: *The West Bengal Government officially renamed the city of Calcutta to Kolkata on the 1st of January, 2001. As this story takes place well after that, Kolkata is correct.