Body and Soul: The Endgame Fix

Part 19: Professional Courtesy

Summary: Natasha and Bruce head back to the house where she gets to meet Vella. After cleaning up, they have breakfast and Gordy joins them. Then, Bruce gets a phone call from the Lab.

Note: In the story, it's Tuesday morning October 31, 2023.

Part 19: Professional Courtesy

By the time they walked back to the house, they both felt a good deal better, and there was a silver Subaru Forester belonging to Vella in the drive pulled up beside the HX. Bruce had shown Natasha his workout and physical therapy routine in the pool, and she had made some recommendations to help get his damaged arm back up to speed. He had a very clever set up that used resistance against the weight and pressure of the water to test his strength and help increase his range of motion. Bruce also told her he had a circuit of scenic trails around the town he liked to run that was 25.22 miles in circumference. If he didn't swim laps for a half hour, he usually ran the trail in about that time. He had to be careful, but it was remote and the locals up that early knew his habits.

As Natasha checked through a log of his workouts and stats, she'd noted Bruce might not be as off-the-scale strength-wise as Hulk once had been, but he was more thoughtful and disciplined when it came to physical training than either of his counterparts. He'd put on over two hundred pounds of lean muscle mass over the past few years before the second Snap as if he'd been planning on a possible rematch. That extra motivation might have saved him from the Stones' ravages. She raised an eyebrow when she saw he'd progressed through his Brazilian Jujitsu training and earned his brown belt. Nat made a mental note to ask whom he'd studied under and how he'd sparred since there wasn't much in the log and she didn't have time to dig further.

Scanning the most recent entries, she noted—thanks to Helen and Shuri as well as his own work in the lab and the pool—he was almost three-quarters back to replacing the flesh he'd lost from using the Gauntlet. He'd be even closer to normal after the next treatment. Knowing how Banner had once avoided working out, his dedication to repair and rehab now surprised her a little. She wondered if Hulk had something to do with that? Somehow, Natasha felt like she had finally timed something right to help him. Nat was surprised how relieved she was to identify a niche for her professional talents. Security was one thing, but working directly with him was more important to her. She smiled with anticipation, looking forward to helping him train back to "fully functional" if not fighting form.

After they'd dried off, Bruce had given her a precursory tour of the lab space upstairs, which had a lot more character than Tony's sleek glass interiors. Bruce had always been more tactile and sentimental than his friend, so the industrial eclectic design didn't surprise her. Oh, there were plenty of glass panels and dark polymers, but exposed metal beams, polished wood, and colorful terrazzo along with the original tilework were present as well. Since both their stomachs were feeling empty, Bruce promised to give her a more thorough tour of the rest later in the week. Before they headed back, he took her into his office where he'd examined and cleaned up her damaged laptop.

"I kept it under a dryer hood for several days, but I've not done any recovery work on it yet. It just seemed a little too intrusive," he explained. "It should still be charged up."

"It doesn't look too bad," she said as she examined the scraped exterior of the sturdy military-grade machine she'd built from standard S.H.I.E.L.D. parts and modified and upgraded with Stark Tech and other components. She decided the damage looked superficial, so Natasha opened it up and tapped the tracking pad, using her index fingerprint to sign in. She could feel the slightest of vibrations as the processor and the fan engaged then turned off. It came up in safe mode, and she tapped her way through a few startup screens before encountering something she didn't recognize. "This may take longer than I was hoping."