Tags: natasha goddamn romanoff deserves better than this shit look my opinions on bruce/nat are pretty simple ultimately we didn't get to see any development of the relationship so when they handed it to us it felt fake because the last time i saw natasha and bruce in the same movie she genuinely feared him and he deeply mistrusted her i also have criticisms of the way natasha was used in the relationship as solely there to tell bruce that he wasn't a monster the relationship did not strike me as a balanced two-sided supportive one nor did it strike me as one in which all parties were comfortable with their positions in it personally if i'd been doing aou i would have had it occur throughout the movie that various members of the avengers did the 'lullaby' thing with bruce and build up the relationship between nat and bruce from 'teammates who don't really trust each other' to 'friends' over the movie and then at the end during the final battle with ultron on sokovia i would have had bruce fighting with the others and then have the ship come the evacuation starts and natasha gets a message over comms that says 'bruce isn't back we need a lullaby does anyone copy' and then i would mirror the scene in the first movie and natasha would take a deep breath and touch her comm and say 'i copy i have eyes on the hulk i'll bring him back' and then she would talk the hulk back down to bruce and help him back to the car where clint is waiting they toss him into the backseat and gun it for the helicarrier and bruce reached forward and taps natasha on the shoulder she doesn't jump or startle and he says 'thanks' and she smiles at him and says 'no man left behind' AND PIETRO LIVES GODDAMNIT WHAT THE FUCK HIS MUTATION IS LITERALLY HEIGHTENED METABOLISM (AMONG OTHERS) HE HAS A HEALING FACTOR AND FURTHERMORE HE'S SIGNIFICANTLY FASTER THAN A BULLET I AM ASHAMED OF THE COMMUNITY and see the lovely thing here is that this smoothly transitions them to friends bruce and natasha have space to learn to rely on each other now (i personally think that they'd be kind of a disaster of a relationship regardless and furthermore i don't ship it but still) also bruce doesn't leave like a motherfucker and natasha isn't pining because obviously