She stared at the chalkboard, it was wrong. Twenty seven days of craving and she didn't possess the heart to change the number. Because the higher the number the longer Bruce had been missing. Plus, Bruce always crossed his sevens, Parker didn't want the choice to.

She had tried her hardest to continue, business as usual but the tell-tale signs of paranoia were becoming more evident as the days passed.

Her nails were ragged and chipped; definitely not fit to be in the medical profession. She had also taken to nervously twirling a cigarette between her fingers at every moment she could spare. The end was soiled with rosy Vaseline from her lips but it still remained unlit.

It was tough but her long patience had finally given way. She swapped the cigarette in her hand for her phone that lived in her pocket. Fully charged, the only way she would allow it to function. If it dipped below 90% then it meant a recharge was on its way followed by a potential heart attack.

She called Bruce again, and again she was greeted with the same voicemail message. You would assume she was sick of it now but just hearing Bruce's voice was enough.

However when she spoke the same tired plea for help she heard the desperation in her voice. Her voice had also had a gravelly edge to it, which she hated. It was at the end of the message that she decided to do something.

She was going to Bruce Banner's house, whether he likes it or not.

"Right." She said after the phone call.

Parker gathered herself together which meant putting the unlit cigarette back in the corner of her mouth. It's presence soothed her in a way that she couldn't begin to describe, the comfort and friendship her partner once offered her was replaced with a cigarette. Bruce had been away too long.

She walked out of the surgery and was hit with the full force of Indian heat. Parker was able to deal with it better than Bruce, the doctor would constantly have a layer of sweat on his brow. That no matter how many times he wiped it away would remain.

It was the little things Parker missed the most. She walked past a group of young kids playing football, she smiled as the ball rolled to her feet and the children followed behind. She didn't simply kick it back, instead deciding to get involved in the game. She dribbled with the ball as tiny legs tried to intercept, and playfully tried to grab hold of her body to slow her down.

She laughed, the first time in too long. Looking she saw a young girl standing by the goal. And she passed to her, sending the hoard of children with the ball. Parker watched as the girl hit the ball towards the t-shirt marking the goal. The ball rolled between them and the girl team were in an uproar.

Parker clapped her hands with a wide smile on her face. The girl was the one who had seen her just days before and before Parker could recognise what was happening she had run to the nurse and hugged her.

The girls head rested on Parker's stomach, and she whispered,

"You're the pretty lady."

Parker was slow to react but she slowly rested her hand on the girls short hair. This was the part of children that she disliked, along with Bruce; what to say.

They liked being with children, countless times they had played against each other in street football matches like these. Those were the times Parker was most happy, it reminded her of times before it went bad and she used to entertain herself playing with her brother.

The game continued on and the little girl left, Parker swallowed and painfully went on. All of it was memories. Memories of the way Bruce's face would light up with a certain spark when he played, the memory of afterwards and them seriously fanning each other with medical papers to cool down.

And him. Just thinking of how he wasn't there and where he could possibly be was threatening to turn the memories sour. But Parker Miller would not let that happen, she had spent the last year and a half with just the scientist, with just him. And now she realised how much she just wanted that to last.

She walked on with determination in her steps. She was finding Bruce; there was no other option.

The extent of her love for Bruce Banner was infinite. She was just one of the poor victims of Cupid that had no idea that this level of love was abnormal, the kind of love that only comes around once or twice in your life.

Parker Miller was in love with Bruce Banner and the proof was the unlit cigarette she placed in her mouth.

----

The road in which Dr Banner had lived on was the definition of dodgy. Parker felt a chill run up and down her spine as she peered into windows; some glass, many broken glass and the odd couple just holes in the world.

She felt as if she was trespassing, intruding on his personal life that he had hidden so much away. It felt wrong. But not having Bruce in her life felt even more wrong.

His door seemed normal for the area, although if any other American were to see it, it would be a miracle if the police were not called. The hinges were questionable and the brass doorknob was something Parker would normally only really want to touch with surgical gloves. Unfortunately for her they were now rationed as Parker had forgotten to place an order.

It opened with a turn and Parker's watched with caution as the door swung back and hit against the wall. She jumped in her skin a little. She didn't think it was possible, but one small noise followed by an eerie silence was enough to send her anxiety sky high.

The women looked over her shoulder both ways, half wanting Bruce to appear and half expecting a green mister to come and kill her. Nothing happened. She wasn't happy but she wasn't relieved.

The mandatory second doubts entered her mind and she contemplated going back.  Bruce was obviously hiding something like every human being on this world. Yet something told her maybe his was a bit more than an particular love of ABBA.

Instinctively she took the cigarette out of her mouth and was ready to put it back in the packet. When she felt in her pocket however there wasn't one so she let it in loose. She was ready.

Entering his residents was a military task itself which surprised her. It was only with him gone that the surgery had gone to rack and ruin which Parker hated. It was Bruce that knew she liked to be tidy so it was him that helped her with the actual reality of tidying, which she hated.

The entrance to his small apartment building he shared was an assortment of pizza boxes, socks, books and unrecognisable objects littering the stairway. Parker's first thought was this was exactly like the crime scenes she had seen before.

This thought stopped her dead on the second step, she had seen bodies before but the thought of seeing Bruce's? That made her have to swallow a bit of rising sick. She carried on because she had no other choice. Hoping that it was the communal mess of the other five immigrants that she knew lived here.

The door to his apartment was ajar and Parker Miller was contemplating fleeing the country that very second.

It is said that curiosity killed the cat, but Parker forced herself to focus on the fact that satisfaction brought it back. She couldn't leave without knowing what happened to Bruce. In fact she would never leave unless she found Bruce Banner.

Thankfully as she scanned the beds it there was no corpses in sight although some of the dishes in the sink were questionable. Parker didn't know if it was her imagination but the room even smelled of Bruce's aftershave, she took it as a good sign. However then she saw a small moist patch where his aftershave had spilled which was not a good sign.

Parker had to be smart, she was becoming a detective to fit the puzzle pieces of Bruce together. And they always thought aloud, so that is what she did.

"If I was Bruce Banner, where would I store my secrets?" Parker mused.

She checked the sock drawer first and was pleasantly surprised to see not one matching pair together and also a random glove in the mix. She would have been happier to see something along the lines of a diary but beggars can't be choosers.

"Okay, not a fan of matching socks. Remember that for Christmas - if he's here for Christmas." The little bit of joy the girl had vanished but she had to stay on task. She closed the draw and turned to the coffee table.

"Now what do we have here..." The table was covered with paper - newspaper, printer paper, folded paper, crumpled paper - so much that Parker couldn't see the wood grain underneath. Which could be explained as Bruce loathed woodgrain with a passion.

Parker at first had tried to kneel down next to the low table, but the sight of a rather large dead spider on the floor ignited her inner arachnophobia and she resolved to keep on standing. Had she overcome her fear maybe the following events might not have happened.

Her standing meant the agent on the opposite side of the street had a clear view of the blonde in his viewfinder. Clint was able to see every twitch of Parker Miller's body. The archer was also talented at lip reading so amused himself by decoding the thoughts of the American as he waited for his executive orders.

At first glance the papers were harmless. Parker smiled slightly at reports regarding gamma radiation and other miscellaneous scientific paperwork she couldn't begin to understand. Some she examined further, one being a note in her own handwriting from a couple months back. Seeing it made Parker feel warm inside but then the fact that Bruce wasn't here anymore made her crumple it in her hands.

Focus. Parker really wanted a cigarette right now but she couldn't do that to Bruce. Not in his own house at least, or what was left of it. Parker noticed how it looked like nothing was missing
and that meant two good things; he wasn't robbed and he probably didn't plan to leave her.

Unfortunately that means Parker has to classify his disappearance as suspicious.

She flicked through papers for a couple more minutes and almost gave up again. Bruce just seemed to enjoy reading medical and scientific journals in his spare time. Now Parker knew to never tell him how she enjoyed reading love stories you often find with shirtless men on the cover.

However nothing could have shocked her more than what she saw underneath the last scientific journal.

She saw a giant green monster.

The women slowly and with shaking hands picked up the newspaper article. Parker had to cover her mouth in shock as she saw the Hulk in all his black and white glory.

"Fuck." Was the only word she could muster.

Suddenly Banner's reading patterns took a turn towards the 'crazed conspiracy theorist' route. Underneath the boring journals were articles about a billionaire superhero and Norse Gods along with thawed out super soldiers. And the worst part was they never seemed to stop.

There were more than seventy articles on the table spanning from early 2000s to the present day.

"What are you involved with Bruce Banner?" She asked his empty room with creased eyebrows. Nothing made sense, how was Bruce involved with all this?

Parker ran her hands through her hair and sighed. It took her over fifteen minutes to go through the papers and her reward was the rather ugly sight of woodgrain. It annoyed her and she drummed her fingers against her lips. Her instincts were right, something big was going on.

She then turned to drumming the coffee table with her fingers but her nails were too short to make any kind satisfying sound. Somehow that seemed to encompass all of Parker's annoyance, she needed that sound. She craved it and like a cigarette she wouldn't let herself have. All because of Banner and he wasn't even here to help her.

In pure frustration she swiped her hands over the table sending all the papers to the floor clearing the table until all of the wood grain was visible. Parker sank to her knees, forgetting about everything else and put her head on the table and hit her fist softly against the side.

"Fuck you Bruce, fuck you." She whispered, her anger slowly dissolving in her veins and turning to a pathetic feeling of hopelessness. She didn't cry, her emotions were too overactive for tears. Bruce wasn't here to help her.

That was the one thing that Parker had got wrong. Engrained on the table - that hasn't seen light of day since it was bought - was a phone number.

Parker saw it out of the corner of her eye and her fragile heart pounded a little louder as she read the two words that were with it.

Emergency number.

Without hesitating Parker had her phone out and began to dial and pressed the mobile hard to the side of her ear. She prayed for an answer as she chewed her fingernails even more.

"Pick up pick up pick up Bruce. Please please." She muttered as the phone rang.

Meanwhile Clint got his orders, "After the call Barton. Wait til after the call."