Prompt--any combo of the following for Bruce and Natasha: sterilization techniques; the scents of rust or clove; 'if you keep picking it'll never heal'.
i’m cheating a little here -- this one is also for @thassalia, who wanted natasha, out there alone. i didn’t intend to combine them, but here we are.
"You know, if you keep picking at that, it'll never heal."
Bruce is extra careful to make noise when he comes out, heavy boots crunching through the hard-packed snow, but Natasha doesn't bother looking up. "Because leaving the shrapnel in worked out so well for Stark?"
Bruce rolls his eyes. "It's not really comparable."
Natasha ignores him, and Bruce tries not to wince as she drops another small piece of metal on the ground and goes back to digging around in her broken skin with a pair of tweezers. Jesus. "I wish you'd let me do that," he says, crossing his arms. They're not even good tweezers. They're the ones she uses on her eyebrows. He hopes she cleaned them first, but she probably just stuck them in her mouth and called it good. Saliva promotes blood clotting and fights infection is a sentence that he has heard, with his own two ears, come out of her mouth. "Natasha--"
Bruce sighs. His breath hangs cloudy in the air between them. "I don't know who you're trying to impress. I already know you're tough, and we're the only ones here."
That, of course, is because Natasha killed everyone else. There's blood everywhere, still steaming as it seeps into the frozen ground, the scent of iron so thick in the air Bruce feels like his own organs are rusting, oxidation slowly eating away his stomach lining.
Natasha looks up, eyes so hard Bruce thinks she's going to try sinking the tweezers into his throat. That'll go well for everyone. He waits.
"You think I'm trying to impress you?" she asks, voice quite a few degrees colder than the air. No mean feat.
"Honestly, I don't know what the hell you're doing."
"Feel free to go inside and leave me to it, then."
They stare at each other, the moment heavy with things unsaid, and finally Bruce takes a few deliberate steps in her direction. She tries to go back to digging around for shrapnel in her hip but her shoulders are hitching up as he moves closer, and he can see she's not as steady on her feet as she wants to be. Which is no wonder, considering how much of the blood on the ground used to be in her body.
"I stayed inside and left you to this." He gestures at the pile of corpses. "Now it's my turn." He holds out his open hand. "Please."
Natasha looks for a long time at the tweezers, and her hand is shaking as she lays them carefully across his palm.
