Chapter Text
Part 4
Of Grasping Trust
The ranch didn’t ask much of him.
That was part of the appeal. A few acres of dry soil, a cracked gravel road that wound out to the highway, and a fence that needed repainting—all of it uncomplicated. Honest work and silence.
Well plus the occasional singing goats at their makeshift barn that Leslie adamantly kept as her pets.
Bruce Banner found he didn’t mind the solitude as much as he used to. It wasn’t penance. It was choice.
Leslie had called it “the safest exile she’d ever seen.”
She hadn’t said it unkindly.
The porch chair creaked as Bruce leaned back, watching the light settle over the hills. His laptop rested open on the side table, a quiet hum beneath the chirp of distant birds. No alarms. No green.
Still, he kept tabs.
News feeds rolled across the screen—not the kind most people followed. Buried articles about defense contracts, international briefings, blurred photos of SHIELD carriers hovering too low to be routine. He clicked through them absently, letting patterns form in the background.
Leslie had told him about Project Insight. Not everything—she couldn’t—but enough. A network of helicarriers, global surveillance, threat assessment. Defense without war, they called it. Safety through precision.
She said she was going back to ask questions.
Bruce had nodded, told her he understood.
And he did.
But even now, days later, her words stayed with him—not the technical breakdown, but the shift in her voice when she described what it was supposed to be, and what it might’ve become.
If anyone could dig through the noise and find the truth, it was Leslie. But she was smart enough to know truth came with a cost. The more she uncovered, the deeper she’d get. The deeper she got, the fewer people she could trust.
And that scared him.
Because Bruce knew better than anyone: systems like that didn’t welcome questions.
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of his coffee mug, the ceramic chipped where he’d dropped it months ago. A flock of birds cut across the horizon, heading west. The sun followed them, inch by inch.
Then the phone pinged—not an alert. Just the screen shifting as a call came in.
Leslie.
Her name lit up, small and unassuming.
Bruce stared at it for half a beat too long before clicking to answer. The screen went dark for a second, then brightened—her face grainy, but unmistakable.
“Hi Bruce.” Her voice was low, almost too low.
He immediately frowned. Something was wrong
“Hey,” he said, voice quiet but steady. “You okay?”
She didn’t answer right away. Then: “Fury’s dead.”
Jasper Sitwell was looking for her. But the white walls were slowly getting her.
She didn’t like being cornered by grief indoors. The ceilings felt too low. The air too still. Here, at least, there was wind. Sky. Space to think.
So she bolted out of the building.
The cold air hit her lungs like clarity.
The café was quiet, save for the steady hum of the city pressing in beyond its glass walls. The chairs didn’t match, and the ceiling fan wobbled like it was only just hanging on—but Leslie preferred it that way. She needed somewhere off the grid, somewhere no one would think to look for a grieving pilot digging through classified rot.
She sat outside with a cooling cup of coffee between her hands, her elbows pressed against the edge of the small metal table. Her hair was tied back in a low, half-hearted knot, her coat folded neatly over the back of her chair. Her phone sat beside her, screen blank, unanswered messages buried beneath.
Her breath curled in the evening air. Slow. Controlled.
Fury was dead.
The thought circled in her mind, not with panic—she’d been trained too long for that—but with a weight she couldn’t shift. She rubbed her thumb along the inside of her palm, an old reflex. Grounding.
She had only spoken to him that morning before his murder. A small update which—even now—didn’t lead to anything in particular.
And now he was gone.
Her eyes wandered to the sky, where a cloud bank hovered low over the city skyline. Somewhere behind it was where it all began—the first helicarrier prototype, back when it was still just math and ambition.
Fury had come to her after her incident.
The Joint-Op: Red Wings was perilous from the start, but nothing could have prepared her for the moment when two MH-47 Chinooks were brought down under a relentless barrage of Taliban fire. It was by far the deadliest day in SEAL history.
And the two survivors?
Second Class Corpsman Marcus Luttrell had recovered. He returned home, battered but alive, carrying the weight of three brothers lost on a mountainside. In time, he found his voice. He wrote a book—now bestseller, a raw and unflinching account of what happened that day. A movie followed. Speeches, foundations, interviews—he became the public face of SEAL sacrifice. A patriot. A storyteller. A symbol of resilience.
And Petty Officer Leslie Jenkins… she had disappeared.
Amid the scramble to extract the bodies, She’d been grounded—literally. Spine fracture, punctured lung, twelve inches of shrapnel in her side, third degree burn, nineteen months off flight status. Some said she wouldn’t walk right again. She’d almost believed them.
Then came the visit.
She still remembered it: the stiff hospital sheets, the too-clean air, and Nick Fury standing at the foot of her bed like a shadow no one else had noticed.
“You’re wasting time trying to be what you were,” he said. No introduction. No small talk. Just that gravel-worn voice.
Leslie had narrowed her eyes. “And you’re wasting mine.”
He smiled. That tilted, snake-charming smirk.
“I’m building something,” he had told her. “Big. Quiet. Meant to make sure people like you don’t have to go back out there unless it’s a damn good reason.”
She stared at him. “A drone?”
He shook his head. “A deterrent.”
Later, she learned the term they used was Project Helicarrier. Back then, it was just a dream made of blueprints and hubris. But he let her shape it. Let her write parts of its operational DNA. Even when she couldn’t run drills herself, he gave her clearance. Authority. Trust.
That was Fury’s way.
He didn’t look for people who followed orders. He looked for people who understood the cost of power.
And now, whatever had happened… whatever he saw coming… it cost him his life.
“Goddamn you, Nick,” she whispered to the glass. “You really knew something, didn’t you?”
The grief was rawer than she’d let herself believe. Fury was gone. And with him, a piece of whatever still tethered her to the version of SHIELD that had purpose. That had honor.
She didn’t hear the door open. Didn’t hear the quiet steps cross the tile.
“Leslie,” but she heard his voice. “Didn’t want to interrupt.”
Her breath caught. Her eyes blinked once, twice—and then turned.
Bruce stood there, just inside the low glow of the café’s entryway. He looked out of place in the polished city but still whole—wearing the same jacket he always did when the nights got colder, the sleeves pushed up a little, his stubble grew a volume, his hair longer than she last touched it. But it was him.
And suddenly, the air in her lungs didn’t feel so heavy.
“Bruce?” she breathed, rising halfway from her seat. Disbelief warred with something dangerously close to hope. “What are you—?”
“I figured someone should check if you were eating actual food,” he said with a tired smile, “and not just running on caffeine and espionage.”
She stepped around the table. There was a beat, half a breath, where she didn’t know what to do—then she moved. Into his arms.
Bruce caught her with the ease of someone who’d imagined this moment a hundred times in silence. Her arms slipped tight around his back, and his found the space between her shoulder blades. She buried her face against his chest.
“It’s been two weeks,” she said, muffled against him. “That’s longer than I promised you.”
“I know.” His voice was soft in her hair. “And I hate every day of it. Then Fury—”
She tensed slightly. He felt it.
He pulled back just enough to look at her. Her eyes were tired. Red-rimmed. Not from tears—but from holding them back too long.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said. “I know what he meant to you.”
Leslie gave a small nod. Her voice dropped. “He gave me something after I came back broken. Pulled me off the ground and threw me into the sky again. Told me I could fly.”
Bruce brushed his hand along her jaw. His thumb caught a tear she hadn’t noticed slip free.
“Then maybe it’s time someone caught you for a while.”
She blinked up at him. His gaze was steady, but his own pain hovered just beneath the surface. He hadn’t been sleeping much. That much was clear.
She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his—soft, slow, but firm. A kiss that said you’re here and I missed you and thank god all at once. He kissed her back with the patience of someone who didn’t know when the world would come undone again.
When they pulled apart, she stayed close, foreheads touching.
“You came all this way just for me?”
“Of course I did.” He gave a small breath of a laugh. “You didn’t text me. That’s practically a distress signal.”
She chuckled, then shook her head. “I didn’t want you to worry.”
“You’re in D.C., tangled in SHIELD again, right in the middle of a classified defense program—and you thought I wouldn’t worry?”
Leslie’s expression faltered. The humor faded. “Insight feels… off, Bruce. I can’t explain it. But Fury didn’t die just like that. He was murdered, coincidentally. Something’s wrong. Something deep.”
Bruce didn’t answer right away. Just reached out and gently took her hand.
“Then tell me what you need,” he said. “I don’t have to suit up. I’m not trying to fix anything. I just want to be where you are.”
She squeezed his fingers. “Just… be here. That’s enough right now.”
The waitress passed nearby. Bruce gestured silently for coffee. Leslie reached for her now-cold cup and drank it anyway. They sat like that for a long while—shoulders close, hearts beating slow in the middle of a storm neither of them could see fully yet.
But they were together.
And for a moment, that made the chaos survivable.
Bruce stirred his coffee absently, watching her over the rim of the cup. His hand never left hers. His eyes hadn’t left her for more than a few seconds since he arrived.
“How’s everything inside SHIELD?” he asked finally, voice low.
Leslie didn’t answer right away. She stared into her own cup like it might provide a better answer than her memory could.
“Worse than chaos,” she said quietly. “They’ve labeled Steve and Natasha as fugitives.”
Bruce’s brows lifted slightly. “Already?”
She nodded once. “Level Six threat. Full mobilization. And people are spooked, Bruce. Paranoid. It’s like someone turned on a switch, and now everyone’s watching everyone else.”
Her voice dropped further. Her eyes lifted to meet his. “You can’t be seen here. It’s too dangerous.”
Bruce frowned, setting the cup down slowly. “You think they’re watching you?”
“They’re watching everyone. Digging into files. Pulling favors. SHIELD is restless—angling for control because they’ve lost whatever they thought they had.” She hesitated, then added: “They tried to get a trace on Stark, but whatever mess he left behind with The Mandarin in Miami bought him enough cover. Lucky bastard.”
Bruce gave a small huff that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“Tony’s messes usually burn big enough to scare off the follow-up.”
Leslie shook her head. “I don’t have that luxury. I’m walking a line, Bruce. Between what I know, what they want, and what Fury never got to tell me.”
She rubbed her forehead, suddenly tired. “Every time I plug into the system, I wonder how close I am to triggering a flag. To getting yanked in for questions I can’t answer.”
Bruce’s gaze softened with concern. “Then pull out, Leslie. Come back with me. You’ve already done more than anyone asked.”
“It’s not about that.” She looked at him. “I think Fury left me breadcrumbs for a reason. If I don’t follow them, whatever he was afraid of wins. I just… I wish he’d told me more.”
Bruce reached across the table again, gently curling his fingers around hers.
“Just don’t disappear on me,” he said quietly. “Not you too.”
A silence fell between them, stretched by grief and the noise of everything they couldn’t say aloud.
Leslie looked back toward the street outside. Then at him.
“I promise,” she said. “I’ll find out what’s happening. But you have to stay out of it, Bruce. For now. If they even think you’re within ten miles of this city, they’ll come after you too.”
“Let them.”
She flinched at the edge in his voice. “You don’t—is this the Hulk talking, or you?”
“I’m serious, Bruce.”
“So am I.”
She let out a slow sigh, the kind that carried worry, love, and the weight of everything unsaid.
But she didn’t let go. Neither did he. Their hands remained locked—two lives, tangled in fear and defiance, refusing to let the other slip away.
For a few minutes longer, they sat as if time outside had stopped. Because for all its secrets, SHIELD had taken enough. It wasn’t going to take this too—not without a fight.