Rio Verde Favela, Brazil
Natasha Romanoff moved like shadow through moonlit alleys, her figure cloaked in a black, form-fitting evening dress with a slit that hinted at agility more than glamour. A thin, synthetic shawl wrapped around her shoulders—a local imitation of luxury rather than mink. She didn't need real fur in the tropics, and S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't pay her to stand out.
She murmured, almost to herself, as she passed between crumbling shanties and flickering street lamps.
"Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Cape Town… now back to Brazil?"
Her voice was low, but her comm picked it up instantly. A voice responded in her ear—most likely Agent Coulson or Hill.
"Natasha, Banner's getting harder to track. After Sri Lanka, he went completely off-grid. He swam across the Atlantic. We only picked him up again through intercepted medical shipments—gamma-sterilized equipment bound for Monte Verdeu."
Natasha gave a dry, mirthless chuckle. "Banner always did have a flair for the dramatic."
She approached a small, isolated house tucked beneath a staircase of corrugated tin and concrete. A quick flash of local currency, and a glance toward the pistol holstered discreetly on her thigh, was enough to rent the place for a few days without questions.
The homeowner—ragged, desperate, his eyes flickering between Natasha's weapon and his daughter—hesitated.
The girl couldn't have been older than ten. Malnourished. Quiet. A fading bruise on her cheek. Natasha could almost hear her own childhood echo in that silence.
She raised her hand. "Wait."
The man paused.
"Let the girl stay here. She'll help me clean, cook, whatever I need. I'll pay you triple. The only condition is that you disappear. Don't show your face again."
The man's expression twisted. "She's my daughter."
"No," Natasha said coldly. "She's your property, and I'm buying her out of it."
She let her gown part slightly, revealing the compact Widow's Bite bracelet and the outline of a collapsed baton strapped to her thigh. No submachine guns. Natasha didn't need them.
The man grunted and held out five fingers.
"Deal," she said without hesitation.
---
Three days later, Natasha sat on the rooftop of her temporary safehouse. Rio Verde was noisy, polluted, and densely packed. The kind of place someone like Bruce could disappear into easily.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had confirmed his latest location: Monte Verdeu, a remote hillside town eighty kilometers inland. Posing as a community doctor, Banner had been treating impoverished patients in exchange for shelter and supplies. It fit his M.O.—always trying to do good, always trying to repent.
Soon, he'd move again. Natasha was waiting here because Rio Verde was next.
During the wait, she bonded with the girl—Ana.
Ana was clever. Quiet. Observant. And heartbreakingly blunt.
"Why did you want me? I'm not a virgin. My dad sold that to a neighbor years ago."
"I'm not good at anything. I mostly cry. That's what I do best."
"You said I'm an agent-in-training. Does that mean I get to live? Like this? This is already more than I thought I'd ever have."
Each time, Natasha answered with silence, or a hand on her shoulder.
"You don't need to know anything yet," Natasha told her one night. "Your sadness? It's real. Even monsters notice that. You just need to survive. And if you survive, you win."
Tonight would be Ana's first field assist. Nothing dangerous. Just observation. A start.
---
Monte Verdeu Clinic
Bruce Banner looked every bit the ghost he was.
Disheveled, unshaven, his threadbare coat hanging off his shoulders. A portable medical kit in hand, its hinges rusted and leather cracking. He stepped carefully through mud-soaked alleys between squat brick homes.
He knew what he was. A man marked by gamma. His own worst mistake.
His work here was real. And it helped—if only a little.
The woman on the straw mat had lesions—red, inflamed.
"Lupus," he muttered. "Autoimmune. Not contagious. Needs hydroxychloroquine."
He rummaged in his kit and sighed. No supplies left.
Even with all his intellect, all his strength, he couldn't cure the world.
The woman lying in front of him was suffering from lupus. She lived in an impoverished neighborhood where healthcare was nearly nonexistent. The lack of proper treatment or nutrition meant she was left to waste away in silence.
Bruce Banner sat silently in a rusted folding chair, his eyes staring weakly at the ceiling of the clinic. His beard had grown out, scruffy and unkempt, framing his hollow cheeks like weeds overgrown in an abandoned garden.
What else could he do?
Keep moving. See the next patient. Keep hiding. Always hiding.
A timid voice interrupted his thoughts.
"Hello... my mom... she's really sick. She's been throwing up, and she hasn't eaten anything all day..."
It was a girl's voice—fragile, quivering, barely a whisper through her sobs. Banner turned slowly.
She was just a child. Malnourished. Her belly bloated from indigestion, her skin yellow from a failing liver. Her eyes were dull, and her brittle hair showed signs of long-term starvation. And yet, she stood there, holding out a few crumpled dollar bills with both hands.
"Please... it's all I have."
The sight twisted something inside Bruce.
She shouldn't be here. She should be laughing at a playground, waving pom-poms at a school game, not handing over her last scraps of money in a place that reeked of disinfectant and despair.
He knelt beside her.
"It's not about the money," he said gently.
---
Of course it wasn't. Who could take a child's last few dollars?
Bruce followed the girl through the alleys and debris of a forgotten neighborhood. The deeper they walked, the more unease settled in his gut. Slums usually clung together, but this area was unusually isolated. Odd for someone sick and desperate to live this far out.
When they reached the door, she ushered him inside and darted ahead into the darkness.
By the time he stepped through the bedroom doorway, the girl had already jumped through the window and vanished into the shadows like a cat on the run.
Banner sighed.
He turned around slowly.
A red-haired woman in a black dress and fur shawl stood in the room, smiling softly.
"Not bad," Banner said dryly. "Let me guess. You're not her mother. Or... if you are, she's definitely not sick."
Natasha Romanoff smiled faintly and nodded.
"No one's sick, Bruce."
He chuckled hollowly. "Well, that's the first good news today."
There was guilt in her eyes, but the mission came first.
"You have every right to be angry," she said. "But if we meant you harm, it wouldn't be me standing here."
"So what do you want, Natasha?"
"Just a conversation. Between you and me."
Banner leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Fine. But no sudden moves. I don't want to redecorate this whole block because he gets annoyed."
"Deal."
Natasha stepped forward, her voice calm. "We're not here to capture you. This isn't a military op. I'm with S.H.I.E.L.D. We handle threats the world doesn't understand. And right now... we're outmatched."
"You don't need me," Banner muttered. "You need him."
She didn't deny it. "We need both. The monster and the mind."
He looked away, jaw tight. "You know, I was once the top gamma radiation expert in the world. A scientist, a teacher. Now? I'm just a cautionary tale."
His skin twitched. Green flickered at the corners of his eyes.
In the MCU, Natasha had recruited him not just for brute strength, but to track Loki's Tesseract trail—a mission requiring Banner's expertise in radiation. It was the first time in years someone had asked for Bruce, not the Hulk.
"You're not a monster," she said softly. "Not unless you believe that."
The veins in his neck flared green. His fists clenched.
"Calm down, Bruce. Please. You've been stable for over seven months, right? You said so yourself. You haven't lost control. Don't start now."
Natasha handed him a phone.
Footage rolled across the screen—blurs of red and blue, a man soaring above buildings, discharging heat vision, freezing trucks with his breath, and punching through steel with a single blow. At one point, he casually swatted Wilson Fisk like an insect.
"His name is Heisenberg," Natasha said. "He's not from here. Not from Earth. Kryptonian, we think. Super strength, supersonic flight, energy beams. And he's not exactly a team player."
Banner watched carefully.
"This isn't about just fighting fire with fire. You're more than a weapon, Bruce. Your mind is what we need."
He didn't answer at first.
Then he gave a long sigh.
"All right. Let's talk."
---
Meanwhile, Phil Coulson found himself kicked out of Stark Tower. Again.
Pepper Potts, newly acting CEO of Stark Industries, had refused him entry.
Tony's palladium poisoning was worsening. He needed help. But his ego refused to admit it—especially to S.H.I.E.L.D.
Coulson muttered to himself as he walked down the steps.
"I swear, one day someone's going to get through that armor—literally and emotionally."
Back inside the lab, Pepper stormed in.
"Tony!"
Tony barely glanced up from his holographic projections. "Something on fire?"
"You're letting me take the heat for your decisions again. Twelve board members want me out, and you won't even defend me!"
He grinned. "I'm sure you can handle a few billionaires, Pep."
"You're not just Iron Man! You're the head of a global company! The world is bigger than your suits."
Tony blinked.
Pepper threw a sealed envelope on his desk. "You got an invitation."
"Oxford again?"
"No. Local. The New York Science Council. The Mayor endorsed it."
He opened it—and laughed.
"The top floor of the Brooklyn Gold Building? That place used to be a jazz club-slash-nightclub-slash-tax shelter."
"And yet, they want you. Maybe it's serious."
Tony was already packing.
"Guess I'll go see which wannabe genius thought it was a good idea to throw a science symposium in a nightclub."
Pepper narrowed her eyes.
"You've been there before, haven't you?"
Tony froze.
A chill ran down his spine.