The Council was mad it hadn't gotten to nuke Manhattan. That was all Bruce could figure. They'd ruled that if the Avengers were going to exist under SHIELD auspices-and they had to, if they didn't want Clint and Natasha to have to request a day off every time there was an alien invasion-then the Avengers would have to be insured.

Which was fine. Tony had offered to pay the unruly premiums. They just had to get health check-ups, for the paperwork. Tony didn't mind; he'd just cloned himself a new liver, and Thor was immortal; his biggest problem was remembering that a spongebath wasn't part of a routine physical no matter what the nurses said.

The problem was Bruce. He'd been on the run for five years. It wasn't like he'd picked up a bug or anything-gamma radiation was better than Vitamin C when it came to that. No. It was his teeth. He hadn't been to see a dentist in all that time.

"I don't see what all the big deal is," he protested. "I brush my teeth twice a day. I floss. I even chew mints after every meal."

"Disgusting," Tony sing-songed, gleeful to have something he could hold over Bruce.

"My teeth are fine," Bruce insisted. "Really, you think having some... medical school drop-out drilling at my incisors would sit any well with the other guy?"

"It's SHIELD policy," Steve said simply. "We need to put up with it for the Quinjets alone."

"Yeah," Clint agreed with Steve, for once. "You can't always charge into battle on a moped."

"It was a proper motorcycle," Bruce corrected.

"Was it a Harley-Davidson? Then no. It wasn't."

Clint's hobbies could be eclectic. As you'd expect from the one SHIELD agent who used an archery set instead of a gun.

They came to a compromise. Fury's idea. Bruce would get his teeth cleaned, but there'd be a friendly face doing it. Bruce half-expected to go into the Helicarrier's med-bay and find Tony in a blood-stained apron, having gotten a DDS while other people were asleep or otherwise not replacing their circulatory system with caffeeine. But no. It was Natasha. Wearing a smock, even.

"I have zoo tranquilizers in case you start looking green," she warned him. "And Thor's here to toss you out that window into the Atlantic. You can swim home."

"Nice bedside manner," he commented, rubbing his hands over each other. Natasha made him nervous. Her being nervous made him nervous.

"A little honesty goes a long way. You learn that being a spy. Or a woman. Sit. Take a neck pillow."

Bruce sat in the chair. At least it was comfortable. All SHIELD's chairs were comfortable. He guessed it was money better spent than on secret prisons or cameras on street corners. "So, let me guess: your parents were dentists, and you were following in their footsteps when you couldn't take it anymore and ran off to join the CIA."

"If you must know, SHIELD isn't allowed to torture prisoners. We are allowed to take steps to maintain their dental hygiene."

"Oh. Jesus."

Natasha shrugged. She was used to that reaction from her teammates. It was good. Reminded them where she stood, even if she went out after debriefings to get microbrews and watch bad movies Tony had funded. "Plus, I have something to fall back on if the leather catsuit stops fitting."

Bruce laughed, then looked guilty. Natasha knew the feeling. Everyone expected the angst when they became a killer. They didn't expect the point where you started seeing the humor in it. When you knew you were fucked.

"Open," Natasha said, shoving a rubber bit in Bruce's mouth. He was sure her credentials were impeccable, but she definitely didn't have the good graces of Bruce's childhood dentist. He'd given baby Bruce a lollypod after each session, as counterintuitive as it seemed.

Natasha circled Bruce, taking X-rays of him with a camera the size of a Nokia. That's great, Bruce thought. More radiation. He was also concerned with SHIELD having a handheld x-ray machine, but then he rationalized that they definitely had much better ways to hurt people at their disposal.

"No cavities," Natasha said, checking the pictures on her smart phone. Bruce refused to believe there was an app for that. "Good work."

"I told you, I floss."

"Need to measure your teeth now. It'll sting; your gums are swollen."

"They are?"

"Thor, hand?"

Thor came in from where he'd sequestered himself away from the quasi-torture. Out of Bruce's eyeline, he raised Mjolnir in a silent question. Natasha shook her head.

"There's a chart over there. Just write down the numbers I call out in the order I call them."

"How cumbersome. On Asgard, eating the lotus of the chthonic blossom keeps our teeth sharp for the gamest meat."

"Not sure my HMO covers that, tall man," Bruce replied.

With the excessive care of a man roped into playing with dolls, Thor picked up a pencil and a piece of paper. Natasha checked Bruce's teeth, pricking his gums as promise. She called the numbers. Some ones, some twos, many threes-which were good-but a few fours and one five.

"Getting into any mood I wouldn't like you in?" Natasha asked when they were done and Thor dismissed.

"No. You're actually pretty good at not using dentristy to torture people."

"I didn't become the Black Widow because it was the only work I could do." Her eyes darted around, especially at the door where Thor might be lingering. "Ballerina."

"Huh?"

"My mother was a soloist, my father was the director of the company."

"Bit of an imbalance there, wouldn't you say?"

She had a smile for when things really weren't funny. "Good thing I got used to it early, huh?" She grabbed for the next tool. "He loved her, she loved him, it just... wasn't much of a choice. You Americans. You want everything to be Chris Brown or Ginnifer Goodwin. Nothing inbetween. No shades of gray. Love isn't like that."

"Yes it is. Love is pure white. It's the people in love that are complicated."

She looked at him, surprised. "You went to college for a while, didn't you?"

"You have to, before they let you play with the really cool radiation."

She held up the latest torture implement. "I forget what they call this in English, but it shoots a tiny jet of water into your teeth. It's totally blunt, though, so even though there'll be pain, it's not hurting you."

"I'm the Hulk, remember? I'm used to that."

It made a fucked-up noise and felt like she was giving his gums a tattoo. After a few passes, she had the front of his bottom teeth cleaned. Bruce spat into the suction tube she fed him and watched bloody saliva go through the plastic.

"How're we feeling?" Natasha asked, backing up to give him time to cool. Or to get closer to the tranqs.

"Ever fallen out of a Helicarrier? I've had worse."

Again, that note of surprise. It made Bruce wonder how many assumptions she had about him. How well she thought she knew him. "I didn't know you... remembered things."

"I don't. But waking up naked on a pile of rubble isn't particularly comfortable."

"Tell me about it. Open."

The back of his bottom teeth. Felt like she was sewing shut a wound that didn't exist. Bruce felt the other guy, down in the basement, pounding at the ceiling. Telling him to keep it quiet. The neighbors were trying to sleep.

That was the thing about trying to quantify sharing a body with a nightmare. Metaphors tended to mix.

"What about you?" Natasha asked, giving him time to breathe again, do his exercises.

"What about me? You've read my file, you know about my parents. Very... Chris Brown. To put it Americanly."

"I'm not interested in your past. That'd be bad for the team. Just wondering where you'll go from here."

"To get some ice cream, most likely."

She had this way of un-smiling-"You're sitting in a clubhouse with Captain America, filling out insurance forms. That must be pretty close to a normal life, for you."

"Your point?"

"I've read your file," she said. "All of your file."

Oh.

"She's very pretty, doc."

"Get on with it."

This time, he didn't really notice the pain. "The uppers don't take so long, but the noise is really bad on the left side."

"It's not the noise, it's the pain."

"You'd be surprised how often that isn't the case. Little things. I had a guy who told me everything because he needed to scratch his nose. Not that much else was left of his face..."

"Fucking fine, we can talk about her if you're that curious."

To her credit, Natasha didn't take a step back. It'd taken weeks, but she'd made her body trust that he wouldn't change just because his voice was raised. "I'm not curious. I'm concerned."

"Do you want to hear me say her name? Betty Ross. Happy?"

"You haven't tried to contact her?"

Bruce laughed. "Has she tried to contact me?"

"Yes."

Now he was surprised. Too surprised to be bitter, even. He just looked up at her.

"Almost done," she said, putting a stopper on the conversation, and went to work on the front of his top row. It hurt, but he couldn't hear the other guy anymore. There were a few things they could agree on.

"Done?" Bruce asked, after he'd sent more of his blood and spit down the tube.

"Not quite. Need to get a little old-fashioned." She picked up the hook that Bruce still remembered from his last check-up, from every check-up. He'd thought they'd have a laser or something by now. "You're the one with the five."

"I don't know what that means."

She scraped at 'the five' some. It hurt, but it wasn't as bad as that jackhammer had been.

"The phone was ringing off the hook," Natasha said, "just as soon as word got out that we'd had an Angry Man sighting in the middle of our own Helicarrier. Then the Chitauri happened. Fury took the call himself. He told her that you were in transition, that it would be best if you didn't shoulder any more burdens until things were settled."

"And you call this settled?"

"You have your dentist appointment out of the way. I'm going to need to polish."

Natasha brought out that buffer that always made Bruce feel like he was eating a car wash. They both stayed quiet, even though he would've appreciated her talking over the annoying noise, then she gave him something the color of a maxipad commercial to swish.

"We're done?"

Natasha put together the customary bag of treats. "Brush, floss, yada yada. Sugarless gum?"

"I'm good."

She tossed it in his lap. "Pretty soon we're gonna start putting her calls through to you. Are you going to answer?"

Bruce tilted his head this way and that, like he was trying to shake it but his neck wouldn't permit. "I already tried going back to her. It was... hard."

"This time you don't have to worry about Ross. You have 'Earth's mightiest support group' around."

Pepper's name for the team. Bruce knew Natasha had some friends outside of work. "That's not what I mean. The last time, I was worried that I'd hurt her, physically hurt her. And I am a lot better at... managing myself now," he told Natasha, assuringly. "But that last time, she had this whole new life, this new guy. She'd buried me. And I just dropped on her world like a bomb."

"People who've buried the past don't call an intelligence agency on the President's hotline every five minutes on the dot. Whatever you did or think you've done, she's forgiven you. Maybe you could ask her to show you how." She reached into a pocket and brought out what looked like a razor with a wire instead of a blade. "Here. Access flosser. No excuses; get between your teeth."

"What about you?"

"Yeah, I use one. In fact, that's from my private stash. I have to pick them up in Turkey, but they work wonders."

Bruce stood, pulling the bib off. And he looked at her like she could give permission, like their situations were somehow comparable and her advice was relevant, like they were friends. "Have you forgiven me?"

"I haven't forgiven the Hulk. But I was never upset with you."