Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. - Francis Bacon

Running away was a lot easier when you had friends in high places. All Stella had to do was make a call, and she was on the fast track from Washington, D.C. to Germany. From there, she had taken trains, rented cars, hot-air ballooned, sailed, biked, walked, and hitch-hiked to India, all to keep the scent of the Monsters off of her trail.

One more call and she had endless venture capital flowing to her from places she had never even heard of before, as long as she didn't ask too many questions.

Another call? A private jet was waiting to take her from Germany to Spain, courtesy of a certain pharmaceutical fiend.

When she needed a car to take her from Spain to Italy, a shiny black Bugatti and a very sexy Spanish driver were waiting for her in front of her Barcelona hotel.

A hot-air balloon took her from Italy to Bulgaria, though she and the balloonist had to backtrack to the northern border of Greece. From there, they had to make a run for it to get to the Southern coast because they had been shot down by agents of the Monsters.

She made it to the boat that would take her to Egypt. The balloonist did not.

A stolen bike and a lot of water and military rations got her to the far eastern tip of Somalia.

It was by sheer luck she made it to India. The boat that had been waiting for her in Somalia happened to be crawling with Monster operatives. Through a little creative costume makeup, she escaped their notice (cartoon characters were obviously clued in on something when they started using mustaches in their disguises), but not by much. She thought a few of the agents recognized her, but she was always out of their sight before they could register that it was, indeed, she under the mustache, dramatic eyebrows, and improvised fatsuit.

Within three days of her arrival in India, she was in Calcutta – though, it is now officially called Kolkata. Through the unexpected fortune of finding an old friend who owed her a big favor, her transport from the tiny dock where she landed to Calcutta to a safe haven went off without a hitch. The branch of the oil company her friend worked for now supplied her with housing and transportation in the form of a relatively decent, if not blisteringly hot, cabin and a new moped.

Yes, having friends in high places most certainly paid off. However, the price of such friendships included making enemies in equally lofty positions.

Which is why she spent most of her days on the run from the Monsters. The agents who hunted her were cleared to use deadly force to capture her, and they would shoot her on sight without a second thought. So she hid from them like the coward she was and busied herself with creating a reputation as the nice foreign girl who ran the sweet shop. Which she accomplished rather spectacularly, she thought.

Most of the people in her neck of the woods couldn't afford sweets. More often than not, she was left to tend to the shop in lonely disquiet as the food went slowly out of date. Children pressed their faces to the windows in awe of the things they couldn't afford. Stella's heart bled for them, just a little, so she made small goody bags for the ones who spent their precious time pining away with their bodies meeting the glass of the windows.

Sometimes the adults would come in to see if she had anything cheap, or anything to spare. She always did.

Some of the missionaries who lived close by would come see her very frequently so that they could buy a few special treats for the children they tended and a small treat for themselves.

Her days were hot and slow, but not altogether unpleasant. She felt safer now than she had in the past eight years of her life, which was a definite plus. There were no Monster agents looking for her here. There were no S.H.I.E.L.D. agents breathing down her back, begging her to finish her paperwork. No one was aiming a sniper rifle at her heart.

And she was going out of her mind.

She had made it halfway around the world by any means necessary; almost been killed in Greece, Egypt, and Somalia; almost been caught by the Monsters on the boat to India; and that was without what happened before she made her way to India. She had almost been murdered twice in D.C. She had escaped from not one, not two, but five Monster agents in Atlanta. S.H.I.E.L.D. had promptly abandoned her in Detroit while she was on an assignment for them, and there was no hope of getting any help from them right now.

So she had to take her time here in India and wait for the phone call that would give her back her former life, though it didn't seem to be coming anytime soon. She longed for the excitement of a hard day's work at S.H.I.E.L.D., even if she secretly enjoyed the feeling of finally being safe - of finally being able to fully relax.

After a couple of months without the call, she began to give up that it would ever come. There was no sign of a known Monster agent, or anyone else that could be looking for her, friendly or not. She kept in touch with the most important friends she had (they would send her small favors whenever they pleased, which was often; they were rich and she was respected).

Finally, after the mark of about four months, Stella had accepted that she was staying in India for a while. She decided that it was time to begin her life there, and to stop pining away so desperately. There was no telling when the call would come, or if it ever would. S.H.I.E.L.D. always took its time and did not typically hand out pink slips, so there was no way to know if she had been terminated or not. She did her best to lead a less paranoid life, and resorted to the task of cleaning her bungalow as best as she could. It was always hot and sticky, so wood rot was her main concern. She inspected the building with military precision once a week, but she never found wood rot or any other type of devastating nastiness.

The sweets shop began to have more business than she was used to. Many of the missionary children would come to have Stella read to them, as their parents were busy tending to their own business. The orphans found their way into the store to mingle with the missionary kids and to listen to her read to them in English, and sometimes the language of the village (what she knew of it).

Her regulars included a tall, slim Indian man who chomped constantly on half of a cigar. He said he couldn't light it, but he could get the flavor of it. There was a middle-aged missionary couple who brought her books to thank her for keeping an eye on their five children, plus the six other missionary kids who came with them who belonged to two other couples. A short, thick Indian woman who had the most gorgeous hair Stella had ever seen brought candy to sell.

And there was one more. He was relatively new, but he came in at least once every couple of days. His hair was dark, shot through with a little salt-and-pepper, he wore small, thin glasses, and he had a nice, quiet way about him. He didn't smile much, but she had caught him flashing his quiet grin at some of the rowdier kids, perhaps as if they reminded him of his childhood.

They had a routine: he came in, she smiled at him, he smiled back, she handed him whatever package or necessity he needed, he paid her, and then he moved to the back of the store to read. They had spoken no more than fifteen words to each other in the past month, but that was fine. She appreciated some quiet, especially since the twenty-odd kids who inhabited her store always took off towards him when he came in.

He was a doctor. She had to ask one of the children who spoke English, which only four of them did. The other missionary children had been born in India, and could only speak what little they heard their parents speak. He had been in India for two months, which was two months less than she had been there.

However, she couldn't shake the feeling that he looked a little familiar.

She didn't think he was an agent of Monster; they all looked a few colors short of the rainbow. She didn't think he worked for the oil company, though he could just as easily have been one of their top men. Most likely, if he looked familiar, he was affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D. in some way. That wasn't much better than Monster or the oil company, honestly (her already-pitiful opinion of them had been in a steady decline for a while), but at least it put her mind at ease.

Essentially, her day consisted of an extremely short shower in freezing cold water, followed by coffee for breakfast. She headed out to the store at eight every morning and opened it up at nine. A few passers-by would stare into her window, and at ten-thirty, the swarm of kids would arrive. They would all head to the back room, where Stella had set up a small library and playroom of sorts. Every other day at three o'clock, the dark-haired man would come in and pick up whatever he needed (her sweets shop had quickly become a small grocery store). He would head to the library at the back. At four, the children would leave. At five, the dark-haired man would leave. At six, she closed. At seven, she went home.

This routine had been in place for five months before being interrupted. This particular interruption came in the form of an eight-year-old's broken arm. Two of the missionary boys had been playing rather roughly, and the younger boy had gotten his arm twisted in such a way as to break it at the elbow.

Stella heard a yelp of pain and a collective whine of groans and squeals as everyone took in the poor boy's broken arm. It was twisted backward and vaguely resembled a crooked chicken wing. She scooped the skinny kid into her arms and snagged one of the girls who could speak English.

"Mellisa," she said, taking the girl's hand in her own. The boy whimpered in pain. "Do you know the doctor that comes in here sometimes?"

There came a quick nod from the little girl.

"Can you show me how to get to him?"

The little girl nodded and took off. Stella wasn't unduly worried about anyone wrecking her store. There were enough kids in that place to drive off a stampede of bulls.

The girl wound her way through five streets and two alleyways before stopping at a small bungalow that looked as if it had seen better days. Everything in the secluded neighborhood looked as if it had seen better days. It was dusty and falling apart, and there always seemed to be a thin, glistening sheen of damp and sweat on everything, not just the people. This small bungalow was no different than the ones that surrounded it, just like it was no different from the cabin she slept in every night.

Stella stopped Mellisa before they barged into the doctor's residence. "What's his name, Mel?"

Her liquid sugar little girl voice broke through the din of heavy traffic and the smell of soured sweat. "Banner, I think. I don't really 'member."

The sniffling boy whom she had carried this far looked at her with sad brown eyes. "She's right."

"Thank you, darlings," Stella replied, shifting the boy in her arms as best as she could without hurting him. Mellisa took this as her cue that she needed to go back to the store, and she took off without a reply.

Banner. That name thumped repeatedly in the back of her head as she knocked on the wayward door of the bungalow. Banner. She knew she'd heard it before. It was like a song that kept skipping a beat. She was almost positive, almost completely sure, that if she had a first name, something would click. She knew his face, she knew part of his name, but there still seemed to be something left out.

The cracked wooden door squeaked open. It sounded as though it was one final squeak from completely falling off its hinges. The visage of a dark-hair, dark-skinned, and dark-eyed doctor filled her vision. He wasn't a big man, but since she was unfortunately only five-foot-two, he towered over her.

"I believe we're in need of your services, doctor," she said, smiling sweetly at injured boy. The boy sniffed, wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and nodded. He extended his broken arm the best he could.

"Well, let's take a look at this then, shall we?" Banner said as he gently pried the boy away from Stella, much to the child's dismay. The boy was determined to use his good arm to hold her hand while the doctor set his broken arm.

Banner glanced up at her while he searched for a suitable splint. "Does he speak English?"

"He told me your name was Banner, so I assume so," Stella replied. The boy held on to her fingers so tightly that they began to turn purple.

He mumbled, wiping away more tears, "Daddy speaks English, so I do, too."

Banner smiled at the boy as he gently coaxed his arm into a normal position. "What's your name, then?"

"John," the boy said, whimpering from the pain. He squeezed Stella's fingers harder.

Stella raised an eyebrow and directed towards Banner, "He's a missionary kid."

"I see that," Banner replied, never losing his comforting smile. "How did you break your elbow, John?"

"I hit Jason, so he sat on my arm," John replied, pouting. Stella was surprised at how far out this kid could poke his lips; as a rule of genetics, the fact that the dexterity of his mouth rivaled Sylvester Stallone's probably enabled him to do this.

"Why did you hit Jason?" Stella asked. She tended to forget that she was supposed to be the responsible adult, but kids weren't exactly a subject that she had experience with.

John poked his lips out even further. "He was holding Crystal's hand."

Banner shook his head. "Do you like Crystal, John?"

"No, cause she's a girl," John defended. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand again. "But she's my little sister, so I gotta take care of her."

Banner grinned and scruffed the boy's hair. "Good. That's what brothers are supposed to do. You have to take care of your sister."

The boy beamed with pride at the fact that he had done something worthy of praise. The three sat in silence while Banner wrapped the boy's arm up tightly. The cast extended from the boy's bicep all the way down to his wrist, effectively immobilizing his arm.

Stella looked around the bungalow for a clue as who Banner might be. She saw books and magazines piled high, all medical journals or books on some obscure medical disease. There was books on jungle fever, malaria, basic first aid, and they ranged to stranger titles on the subject of planetary physics, quantum foam, and black holes. There were no pictures, though. No accolades, no items of memorabilia, no personal items, nothing to even give a clue as to what sort of person he was.

But good Lord, if Banner smiled one more time, Stella believed some of the Arctic ice in her heart might thaw. No one with a smile like that could be all that bad.

It was just that sort of thinking that got her in trouble with Monster.

But man, Banner's smile could make the meanest old woman smile like the sun.

Banner tied the wrappings on the boy's arm off and pinned it securely. "Okay, we're all done, buddy. Come back in a few days so I can change that."

The boy thanked him and moved to stand at the door, waiting patiently so that Stella could take him to the orphanage where his parents tended kids.

"Thank you, Dr. Banner," Stella said, taking John's hand.

"You can call me Bruce," he said, flashing her that infernally sweet grin.

She smiled back at him. "And I'm Stella Storm. Thanks, Doctor Bruce. I still expect you at the store later."

He waved to them as they left, "Of course."

So his name was Bruce. She like that name, Bruce. Bruce Banner. The more she said it in her head, the more it seemed to click. The beat of it sounded positively exquisite in her head. And then the missing beat in the song finally started to play.

Bruce.

Bruce Banner.

Something chilled in her heart. She recognized that name.

Oh no…

A/N: Guys, feedback is always appreciated. Please tell me if I've screwed up on any grammar, spelling, or factual evidence. I answer every review! :) This story is rated T for now, but I assure you the rating will change when its appropriate, cause I've got everything planned.

Btw, more Bruce in the next chapter. ;D