All that is now, all that is gone (Avengers, Tony&Bruce, R), Part 3

[lindmere]

<< Part 2

Tony gets his leather-upholstered ride home, his glass of Balloch 1946, Pepper curled up next to him in front of a blazing fire (it’s a mild April evening, but he cranks up the AC).

The scotch tastes like ashes in his mouth. Well, not really--it tastes like butterscotch and warm spices with the pronounced peatiness characteristic of the war years. But Tony is deflated and unsettled and oddly hurt. None of which he mentions to Pepper, because she went to so much trouble not going to any trouble, to make this a normal night, which is what Tony has been craving since the evac helicopter touched down in Buenos Aires a month ago.

They eat Thai takeout and ice cream right out of cartons and flip through 2000 TV channels on three different screens, Pepper mostly indulging him TV-wise except when he lingers too long on motor sports or sadistic game shows. His weary bones are sunk deep into the sofa, Pepper’s legs are draped across his lap, and there’s nothing wrong with the world except for the feeling of disappointment that sits in him like a rock, untouched by the warmth of alcohol.

After a while, Pepper leans forward and runs a hand through his hair. “You’re wiped out. Let’s go to bed.”

“Sure,” Tony says letting her pull him to his feet. “But no sex, okay? I really am tired and ever since they took the catheter out--” He can only get that far before cracking up at the look of disappointment, sweetly masked by sympathy, on Pepper’s face. “I’m lying. I’m tired, not dead. Let’s do it.”

Her smile reappears and she slides an arm around his waist, but she guides him to the storage room instead of the bedroom.

“I got you a welcome-home present,” she says, pointing to a plastic-sheathed cylinder with an international courier slip on the lid. Tony’s heart skips a beat.

“Is it a puppy?”

Pepper gives him a not-very-gentle shove toward the package and waits, smiling, while he pops the lid. Inside is a powder the color of pencil lead, not exactly exciting, but Tony knows better. He plunges a hand into it and it shrinks away to a precise distance from his skin, leaving not so much as a speck on him. The little machines are apparently on their factory setting of repel. He imagines programming them, teaching them, making them part of his skin--

“How did you do this?” he whispers. “I thought it was going to take at least another week.”

“What can I say? I have friends in New Songdo Research District.”

It may be the hottest thing he’s ever heard come out of her mouth. He follows her into the bedroom, pushing her along with a little hurry up gesture that happens to involve his hands on her rear end. In the elation of having her, in his bed and his arms and as close to his body as any body could be, in the anticipation of starting work with the sunrise, he forgets, for a while, that anything else is wrong.

+++++

When he wakes up he can tell from the way he feels that it’s well before morning. He doesn’t torture himself or Pepper by rolling and sighing and trying to force himself back to sleep. Instead, he slips out of bed and into the living room, still dim in the grey pre-dawn, too early know whether it’s going to be a sunny day or not.

He could go to the lab, but he doesn’t. He’s not superstitious, but he doesn’t want to start the Mark VIII in his current mood. The fog of disappointment has rolled in again, and the dark shape he can discern in it isn’t the Hulk; it’s Bruce.

He realizes now that he’d gone to Bruce looking for explanations that Bruce, swaddled in layers of guilt, philosophy and dubious science, hadn’t been able to provide. But Bruce’s unwillingness to peek out long enough to see that Tony had problems of his own, that his need for information was more than just some pigheaded reductionist bullshit--that had hurt, because it didn’t take a philosopher or a mystic to give Tony what he needed, it just took a friend. And that’s what Tony had thought Bruce was--a depressed and confused friend, maybe--until Dr. Medina and her wavy lines had made Tony think that maybe the feeling wasn’t mutual.

Bruce had sat on this very sofa so many times, talking or eating or watching a game. It was fun having him in the same building; sometimes they even took him along to Malibu, although Bruce was at the point where he could afford his own weekend place (he refused to be put on the payroll at Stark Industries, so Tony paid him what he considered a fair contracting rate for his services, which by normal standards was a pretty fucking huge amount of money). Pepper adored Bruce; there’d been a brief period where Tony thought she maybe even liked him too much, susceptibility to the Banner charm being pretty much universal.

He’d seen slivers of the darkness Bruce always insisted was inside him. Bruce tried so hard to be normal, but when it was just the two of them talking and Bruce let his guard down, things slipped through--hints of childhood abuse, night trains, small town jails, waking up naked and alone after a Hulk episode and having to start over again quite literally from nothing. It was enough to make a devil out of a saint, and Bruce had never claimed to be one of those. Tony had everything in the world--fame, wealth, brains, a woman who loved to make him happy, and most of all, the ability to step in and out of his other identity like the suit of clothes that it was. If Bruce resented him for all that, Tony could hardly blame him. Knowing Bruce, he’d feel guilty for having a normal, ungenerous human emotion, so it would go onto the coal heap with everything else, all the resentment and anger that fueled the Hulk the way vibranium fueled Iron Man.

Tony could talk himself into forgiving Bruce, but not into believing it didn’t matter. More than just a collegial friendship had broken. There was trust, more fragile even than his life.

+++++

“Adaptable, multi-purpose nanites--incredible,” Rhodey says, zooming in on the 3D rendering. “Forget Iron Man--I mean, not forget him, but the military applications are staggering. Just think--”

“Whoa there, cowboy,” Tony says. “This is unfuckingbelievably proprietary technology developed under contract for Stark Industries. You’re here as a private citizen. That’s why I told you to leave the bus driver uniform at home.”

Rhodey is, in fact, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans, an outfit in which he can drink a beer without fear of bringing disgrace to the Air Force. Tony’s invited him to New York to get his input on the Mark VIII, but it’s also nice just to hang out. It’s been too long.

“Let’s get to the point, Stark,” Rhodey says, pointing the neck of the beer at him. “Am I going to get to test pilot this thing?”

Tony lets him sweat it for a minute, Rhodey’s poker face betrayed by the gleam in his eyes. It’s validation; if he can impress Rhodey, he knows he’s on the right track.

“Ah, what the hell. Get us some court time at the Mojave range, bring a twelve pack, and you’re on.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Rhodey says, giving Tony a thump on the shoulder. “Of course, if you’d rather make it Malibu, we could test the hydro pack.”

“Don’t push your luck. Anyhow, next time you come to Malibu, I’m bringing Pepper and you’re bringing Glenda and we’re doing things like civilized people.”

“Listen to you--it’s like you’ve decided to join the human race.” Rhodey pops the cap off another Bud. “In all seriousness, this new suit can’t be ready too soon.”

“Are the bad guys misbehaving again?”

“You better believe it. We’ve got unconfirmed reports that the Abominable Snowman you fought down south may not be the only mutant creature out there. Suddenly every bad guy seems to have one or be in the market for one. Some of our analysts say that it’s Chinese genetic engineering, others that it’s alien tech. Of course that’s what everybody says these days when they see something they can’t explain. The world was a lot easier when it was just guns and bombs.”

“I like variety. Variety’s good for business.”

“So you say,” Rhodey says with a chuckle. “You just like an excuse to suit up and get out there.”

“I know you are, but what am I?” Tony says, but something in his voice makes Rhodey put the bottle down and look at him with something more than speed-freak comradeship.

“You really okay with getting back on the horse?” Rhodey asks. “You took some serious damage from that snowman, and from the Hulk.”

“Yeah, I got spread around a little,” Tony says lightly, tapping the shoulder plate of the suit so that it makes a metallic ping. “Hence the anti-ablation features.”

“Uh huh. I heard that Banner is in custody, that they’ve got him locked up in some super cell deep in the bowels of HQ. That okay with you, too?”

“No, not really.” The feeling in the pit of his stomach, absent since Rhodey arrived, makes a surprise reappearance. “But it’s complicated.”

“I see.” Rhodey leans back, props his feet up on Tony’s drafting table. “Complicated like Dr. Davis’s nanomaterials class, or complicated like Tony Stark doesn’t tell anyone he’s dying and plans to go out in a blaze of booze and girls?”

Tony, smiles, just a little. “Somewhere in between.”

“You talked to anyone about it?”

“No, I’d rather Pepper--wait, do you mean like a therapist?” Tony’s insides shrink at the thought. “God, no. I’d rather shave my head.”

“Okay, okay. I’d like to see that, but never mind. But if you want another perspective--don’t take this personally, but you don’t have a lot of experience with the fog of war, unless it’s on the visor of your suit.”

“Hey,” Tony says, genuinely affronted. “The Avengers aren’t about spandex and cool explosions and magazine covers. I mean, not only. I know you know that.”

“I’m not suggesting that they are,” Rhodey says. “I just think you’re in a tough position. Most guys only come home once a year. You put on the spandex--excuse me, the armor--and go into the field and you’re back in boardroom by Monday morning. Not much processing time.”

“If you’re suggesting I’ve got some kind of superhero schizophrenia--” Tony begins, voice rising, because Rhodey’s got a lot of nerve lecturing him about job stress.

“I’m just suggesting you need time,” Rhodey says, holding up a placating hand. “Not just the 20 hours a day you spend working on these gizmos. The shit that happens in the heat of battle--most of it you don’t even begin to process until you get home. It’s nature’s way of keeping your sorry ass alive, I guess, but it means you’ve got hard work to do, just when you’d rather be kissing your wife and mowing your lawn. Figuratively speaking, in your case.”

“So you’re saying I’m avoiding it?” Tony looks at the clasped hands in his lap instead of at Rhodey, feeling sullen.

Rhodey shrugs. “It’s your brain, not mine. I’m just asking whether there’s ever a moment when you’re working and you look at the tool in your hand and suddenly it’s like you’re--I don’t know, looking down the throat of a hungry monster.”

It’s so exactly like what’s been happening to Tony for the past three weeks that he catches his breath, then catches himself catching it--too late for Rhodey’s keen eyes.

“Thought so,” Rhodey says quietly. “And you may think you can put it off forever, but you can’t. You tell me, who’s paying the price for that?”

“Shit,” Tony says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“So?” Rhodey says, gesturing come on, give with his hand. “This is not an invitation to cry on my shoulder. If I think you fucked up operationally, I’m going to tell you.” The unspoken if not is that Tony might be able to purge himself of the queasy guilt that hits every time the elevator dings past Bruce’s floor.

“Okay,” Tony says. “God, no wonder you’re such a pigheaded asshole in contract negotiations. You want it, here’s the short version.” Tony takes a deep breath. “Nobody’s ever been able to figure out how much of Bruce’s memories or personality the Hulk retains. It seems like he keeps more when he transforms on purpose instead of when he’s really angry, but it’s not predictable. So the rest of us stay out of his way until we have a feel for how he’s going to be that day. He does well with direct, simple orders if they’re coming from someone he trusts, but you never know who he’s going to decide to trust.”

“And that day it wasn’t you?”

“No, it was not. The Hulk engaged with the creature, but it turned out it was booby-trapped. So I tried to call him off, but it’s like trying to stop an earthquake. He picked me up and--” Tony stops, overcome not by the memory of pain, but how strange it felt to be picked up so easily by another being, how helpless. “He used me on the creature like a baseball bat. Sounds kind of funny, right?”

“Not a bit.” Rhodey’s not smiling or frowning, just listening. Tony knows his own story probably isn’t the worst Rhodey’s heard, even this month.

“For the Hulk it was pretty smart, killing two birds with one stone like that.” A lot of what happened down there is blurry, like the snow-flecked air, but Tony remembers feeling impressed, maybe even a little proud of the Hulk, feeling no pain, not even any pressure, thanks to the anti-inertial field.

“Do you think he realized what he was doing? That you could get hurt?”

“I have no idea.” Tony’s voice is sounding a little scratchier than he intends; he hasn’t consciously thought about it in weeks, the work neatly displacing the reason for it. “Bruce doesn’t think the Hulk can store memories of his own, so everything in the Hulk’s brain is in Bruce’s. Whether he can access it is another question.”

“But it’s possible,” Rhodey continues, relentless. “He wasn’t necessarily trying to hurt you, or even disregarding your safety. He could have thought he was being smart, like you said. Or he might not have been thinking at all. Those kind of questions--if Banner doesn’t know the answers, I sure don’t. And I don’t think they matter. Just tell me this one thing.” Rhodey waits until Tony stops fidgeting with a pair of calipers and meets his eyes. “Were you afraid for your life?”

“Yeah,” Tony says with a cough. “Yeah, I was.” He can feel his eyes tear and he’s mad, because he hates pulling that kind of shit in front of Rhodey, but Rhodey just leans over and pats his knee, which feels warm and good through the denim. He’s living in that moment, he’s afraid, but he’s not too afraid to avoid thinking about it any more: the moment he thought he was going to die, in a confusion of blood and bellowing, at the hands of his friend.

“But you didn’t,” Rhodey says, and adds, a little more softly, “Do you ever wish you had?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” If anything, Tony has been at a near-manic level of happiness, dating from the moment he decided, consciously or not, to shut the door on Bruce and his complexities. “I just--I don’t know about going back out there. With him. The Hulk, I mean.”

“That’s not too likely, is it? Not with Banner locked up.”

“Bruce said SHIELD was trying to figure out a way to use him on a limited basis,” imagining as he says it what that euphemism probably involves.

Rhodey’s eyes narrow. “And you trust them to do what’s best for him?

“Fuck, no.”

“Well, then. We have a saying in the Air Force: we never leave a man behind.”

One of the things Tony loves about Rhodey is that he can say things that John Wayne would find corny and sound completely sincere. “Don’t the Marines say that?”

Rhodey shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter; we all live it. And right now you’ve got a man down in the field. What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Tony says, his least favorite words ever to say.

Rhodey rises and gives Tony a little pat on the shoulder. As he turns to toss his empty in the trash can, Tony can see that the son of a bitch is smiling.

+++++

Tony has no idea where in the world Natasha is, but he hopes it’s somewhere where she can answer her phone. After a few foreign-sounding rings, she picks up.

”Tony? What’s up?” Tony can hear cars honking and the rush of traffic in the background.

“Hi. Can you talk for a minute? Is this connection secure? I mean from the people who sign our checks.”

He can practically hear her eyeroll. “Yes. And the KGB, AIM, Mossad--”

“Okay, okay. Anyway. I need your helping breaking into the enclosure where they’re keeping Bruce.”

“Finally! I was ready to do it weeks ago, but Steve said we should wait for the go from you, since you know Bruce the best. You’ve talked to him, right? He’s on board with this?”

“Yeah, well--” Tony’s too embarrassed to admit that he hasn’t talked to Bruce in more than a week. “We’re not breaking him out,” Tony says, trying to sound reasonable. “I need to break in. I need to talk to him.”

Natasha gives a huff of disbelief. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just to walk in the front door during visiting hours?”

“This is important, trust me. I need to talk to him alone. That place is monitored up, down and sideways. And it can’t look like we did it.”

”You’re a demanding customer. Anything else?”

“Don’t hurt anyone. He’ll be mad if we hurt anyone.”

“Well, I certainly don’t want to make him mad.” Tony can hear what sounds like bursts of automatic weapons fire. ”Hey, listen, I’ve got to go,” she says with no particular urgency. ”Meet me tomorrow night at midnight at the loading dock across from the officers’ parking lot. No Iron Man stuff, okay? Wear dark clothes and running shoes. Don’t drive your own car and don’t badge in. You copy that?”

“Yeah, got it. Good luck with--whatever that is,” Tony says, but she’s already clicked off.

+++++

At midnight, he gets one of his employees with a base pass to sneak him in using the high-tech expedient of hiding in the back seat.

Natasha melts out of the shadows of the loading dock, noiseless and nearly invisible except for her red hair, which Tony has always figured was a fuck you of the if you can see this, it’s too late variety.

“Seriously?” she says instead of “hello,” pointing at his vintage Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt.

“You said black, it’s black. Plus if we get caught I want to look cool in the booking photo.”

Her lips are uncompressible into a thin line, but she tries. “If they catch us, we’re not going to Rikers. Follow me.”

“Gladly.”

This late, all the bureaucrats and researchers have gone home, and the halls are empty except for guards and the occasional analyst stepping away from the a situation long enough for a smoke or a microwave burrito. Natasha makes sure nobody sees them by staying out of everyone’s way, which is a lot harder to do than you would think, especially when Tony forgets to look where he’s walking and kicks a janitor’s bucket halfway down the hall.

They make it to the double doors of the Department of Hulk and Tony is about to ask what the strategy is when Natasha makes his stomach drop into his shorts by ringing the fucking doorbell. A few seconds later the door budges open and Natasha waves Tony frantically to the side. A sleepy-looking technician pops his head out.

“Hey, I already told the cleaning crew--” he begins, at which point Natasha’s manicured hand reaches around the door frame and hits him with a puff of something from a little bottle that drops the guy to the floor.

“Ring the doorbell and hide?” Tony hisses. “That’s a grade school move.”

“Works,” Natasha says, pulling the guy inside and shutting the door. In moments she’s skinned him, taking his badge and jacket and rolling him under a conference table.

Tony likes guns and rockets and blasting his stereo on the open road, not this pin-dropping stealth that seems to be as well tailored to Natasha as her jumpsuit. As they make their way through the dim laboratory, Tony can feel his nerves waking up one by one, the marching ants making their way up his spine.

Natasha slowly opens the door onto the observation deck, looking enough like the ingenue in a horror movie that Tony braces for something to jump out at them.

Instead, a couple of dark shapes fly by his ear with a vibrating whizz toward the dark recesses of the ceiling. Tony begins to yelp but is stopped by Natasha pinching his arm, hard.

“Ow,” Tony hisses. There’s a tinkle of something breakable hitting the floor. “Jesus Christ. You didn’t tell me you were bringing Clint. How is that covering our tracks?”

“He’s using arrows we confiscated from HYDRA, and he just took out the cameras. He’s also deactivated the monitoring systems from the control room.”

“Oh. Okay. Uh, thanks, I guess.”

They make their way down the metal stairs in twilit gloom to the base of the domed enclosure. Tony can just make out the living section, a lumpy shape that might be Bruce asleep.

Natasha waves the access card against the door reader and gets a red light for her trouble.

“Shit,” she says, perfect brows knitting together. “I can fix this, but it’s going to take a few minutes. Stay here.”

Tony does, and Natasha disappears, soundless, into the gloom. He bounces on the balls of his feet in nervous expectation of a siren going off or a gun barrel pointed at his temple. As the minutes stretch on he just has to move, so he edges a little closer to Bruce.

He remembers the layout from his daytime visit: furniture grouped as if in a small apartment, but artificial and completely exposed, like the diorama in a natural history museum. The lump in the bed does indeed turn out to be Bruce, asleep under a paisley quilt that’s probably supposed to look homey but is like nothing that Bruce (who shares Tony’s love of clean modernism) would ever buy.

Bruce is lying on his back, an arm flung above his head, face impossible to make out in the darkness. Tony can’t imagine having a restful sleep in those circumstances, but Bruce has plenty of practice adapting to his surroundings, sleeping in ditches and waking up naked and disoriented, not sure if he’d killed someone or left a smoking crater behind.

On a team that includes gods and monsters, a guy who wakes up with no memory and no pants is easy to take in stride. Picking up Bruce had become part of the mission plan, aided by a tiny, implantable transponder of Tony’s design. If they were near civilization, Fury sent someone after Bruce, but if not, either Tony or Thor picked up him up, often literally. Bruce wasn’t crazy about transport by superhero, but he was always a good sport about it, including the time that Thor had covered Bruce with his cloak and carried him in his arms like the stud on the cover of a romance novel. Tony hadn’t ribbed him about it because--although on one level the image was funny as hell--on another it was just another one of the little humiliations that came with being not in any kind of fucking control of yourself.

Whatever Vanity Fair had said, Tony doesn’t drop-kick puppies and he doesn’t like hurting Bruce or seeing him get hurt, which makes Tony wonder afresh how he could have left him for almost a month in this hellhole that smells like fear and disinfectant.

“Here we go,” Natasha says in his ear, and Tony almost has a nuclear-assisted coronary. “I had to get it from that doctor.”

“Was it the unconscious kind of ‘get’?” Tony asks, but Natasha’s already swiping the new card. The light turns green and there’s a satisfying click and Natasha flashes a thumbs-up to someone unseen in the darkness.

They enter on the playpen side and have to pick their way around metal debris. It’s got the quiet-too-quiet feeling of entering a lion’s enclosure while the big cat dozes and dreams of lapping up your blood.

Natasha pulls aside the sad excuse for a privacy curtain to reveal Bruce’s sad excuse for a bedroom. In this moment all the metaphysical bullshit about the nature of self is reduced to two voices in Tony’s head: It’s just Bruce and No, it’s not. He freezes, scared to make a sound, conscious that a month ago he would have thrown a pillow at Bruce’s head without a second thought.

“I’ll wake him up,” Natasha says. “It’ll be better that way, trust me.” Tony nods, aware that there’s no such thing as a safe distance anyway.

Natasha is soundless, floating above Bruce like a black moth. She leans down and presses her lips--the lips Tony stares at so often while she speaks, without even meaning to--against Bruce’s. It’s so beautiful that Tony forgets to worry that Bruce will be startled awake and transform into something that isn’t a frog or a prince. Tony can see Bruce’s body tense as he wakes, then relax again, not reaching up to touch the lovely phantom’s hair because you don’t bother to do that to a vision.

Natasha pulls away and Bruce falls back against the pillow, lips still parted, eyes unfocused.

“Hi, Bruce,” Natasha says, a hand still resting on his shoulder. “Sorry about that. It works better than an arm across the windpipe. Especially in your case.”

“It’s-it’s fine,” Bruce says hoarsely, reaching out a hand to fumble at his night stand. Natasha hands him first his glasses, then a plastic cup of water. “What’s up? I hope this isn’t a rescue mission.”

“Nope. Someone wants to talk to you,” she says, and waves Tony through the curtain.

Bruce blinks at him for a moment. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to come during visiting hours?”

Before Tony can answer, there’s something he has to check. He grabs the edge of Bruce’s blanket and throws it off, so that he can see Bruce is wearing institutional pajamas but nothing with wires or tubes.

“Hey,” Bruce says, grabbing the covers back. It’s ordinary annoyance, not the arcing stress that points in the Hulk’s direction, but it still tweaks Tony’s nerves, which are already on high alert. The air feels thick, as if it’s full of gas that’s about to ignite.

“Do you mind if I wait outside?” Natasha says, apparently aware of the vibe.

“Good idea,” Tony says. “I hope you brought a book.” She wastes no time slipping away.

“You do realize coming here was a stupid idea,” Bruce says, throwing back the covers again and swinging his legs around so he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. “And incredibly dangerous.”

With his glasses on and the ghost of a wry smile on his lips, Bruce looks more like himself. Tony wonders how long that’s going to last.

“I agree that it’s stupid for one of us to be in here,” Tony says.

“Are you going to start that again?” Bruce runs a hand over his face. “I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but--”

“Sentiment? You think I’m here because I feel sorry for you? Fuck, no. I’m disappointed. I’m mad.” He edges closer, a little more in Bruce’s space. “Your life wasn’t easy enough before, living in a multi-million dollar condo, working in your private lab by day and saving the world by--other days? That was such a huge burden that you had to find somewhere where they tell you when to wake up and when to shave and when you can eat a bowl of fucking cereal?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I didn’t have a choice.” Even in the dim light, Tony can see Bruce’s jaw clenching. “I’m sorry about the apartment, if that’s what you’re mad about. You can rent it out now, I won’t be needing--”

“You’re so right. That’s what I’m mad about.” Tony crosses his arms and raises his voice, hoping that Natasha and Clint have all the nosy little techs and microphones locked up tight. “I’m number 5 on the Forbes 400, and I’m worried that one of my tenants isn’t making rent payments. Or it could possibly be that I’m worried that one of my top researchers is pissing his life away as the five-star attraction on SHIELD’s Safari Adventure.”

“I already explained to you,” Bruce says, the stress creeping further into his voice even as Tony watches him do the deep-breathing Zen thing. “I did what I could, but there’s a time to stop fighting, and that’s when other people get hurt.”

“Of course. It’s always about other people.” Tony’s warming to his subject now, adrenaline up and heart beating double time. “You’re San Roberto de Alamogordo, making sure everybody knows about that big, green cross you bear. Then things get a little bit difficult and you can’t run far enough or fast enough. You leave a trail of destruction, buddy, but it’s not all metal and glass.”

“Don’t talk to me about what’s difficult.” Bruce is inching closer, barefoot and gray-stubbled, the most dangerous man in pajamas that Tony will ever see. “Everyone thinks they know what they’d do in my position. For some people it’s about revenge, getting back at all the people who’ve hurt them.” Bruce’s hands are shaking now, his pale cheeks beginning to flush. “For others the Hulk is a weapon, a tool. What is he to you, Tony? Something shiny for your collection, something that nobody else has? Is that the real reason you’re mad that I’m in here--because somebody else took your toys?” He jabs a finger toward Tony’s chest, just brushing against his T-shirt, but it feels like a 10KV current direct to his heart. “What am I, Tony? What do you think I am?”

The answer forms in Tony’s mind so clearly that it’s almost on his lips before he can stop it. But he does, and the effort of holding it back joins with the tension of being close enough to Bruce to see how dilated his pupils are. It’s like holding an atomic bomb in your hands, knowing that you’ll be no safer across the room or across the city, but with that extra edge of pure insanity. There’s a moment where Bruce is just waiting, breathing a little hard, Tony wondering what kind of chemical transformations are already going on in his blood. There’s no more chance to run away, so he might as well charge forward.

“You’re the stupidest smart motherfucker I’ve ever met. And you’re my friend.”

A green shadow passes behind Bruce’s eyes, and there’s a moment where Tony thinks Bruce might slug him, which under the circumstances would be deserved. Then Bruce takes a step back and collapses on the bed, shoulders slumped, arms limp between his knees. He looks utterly defeated, but Tony knows he isn’t.

He’s won. They’ve both won.

“Wow,” Tony says, starting to shake a little as the adrenaline tide rolls out. “Guess what didn’t happen.”

Bruce doesn’t look like he’s going to be moving anytime soon, so Tony decides to give his wobbly knees a break and sits on the bed, not too close to Bruce but not too far away, since there’s nothing to worry about.

“I don’t suppose you have a barf bag and a bottle of GlenDronach?” Tony gets no answer, so pours himself a cup of water from the plastic pitcher. “You know this place is 10 times worse from the inside. I feel like I should donate more money to the Bronx Zoo. Or maybe campaign to shut it down.” He sips his water in silence.

“I’ve given up trying to understand you,” Bruce says after a while. He sounds exhausted, but he also sounds like Bruce. The brittle tension is gone.

“Most of what I do makes sense in the context of me being a rich asshole. But in this case, you don’t have all the information.”

“Feel free to share,” Bruce says. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep any time soon.”

“Okay.” Tony tries to collect his scattershot thoughts into some kind of logical sequence. “First of all, if you don’t mind my asking--have you been transforming since they threw you in here? I couldn’t help but notice the debris field.”

“Yes,” Bruce says tightly. “And it’s been getting more frequent. Since you mention it.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Tony says lightly, as if Bruce is complaining about a persistent cough. “There’s something else. You said you kept thinking about--the incident. Blood on the snow, stuff like that.” Bruce shifts uncomfortably, making the bed springs creak. “You don’t usually remember anything that happens, so how did you know about that?”

“I saw enough. When I woke up, they were loading you onto the helicopter. I saw the pieces of your suit, and at first I thought the snow creature did it. Then Fury told me what happened.”

“With his usual compassion and sensitivity, I’m sure.”

Bruce shrugs. “He didn’t blame me, but he didn’t soft pedal it, either. He said you were in critical condition and they were taking you a hospital in Argentina. And that they were going to treat me as a Class A Extraspecies threat until they could complete an investigation.”

“Same classification as Loki. Won’t he be mad.”

“They kept me at an abandoned military base until they could get a secure transport. The logistics must have been complicated.”

Tony imagines Bruce huddled in some rusty Quonset hut with nothing but penguins and self-reproach for company, and understands his rapid unravelling.

“I’m surprised they didn’t bill you for it, knowing the government,” Tony says. “But what you saw, what you heard--that didn’t come from what Fury told you, unless you have a really vivid imagination.”

“They film everything. There was a surveillance drone, but most of the video they got from your suit.” As well as the more complex integrated video, the suit has a sort of black box recorder. Under the circumstances (the suit and Tony both being in pieces) he understands why SHIELD would have accessed it, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling pissed. It’s his suit, and his experiences.

“And they showed it to you--the first-person-shooter view of me getting torn up.”

Bruce nods glumly, and Tony fantasizes briefly about paying a return visit to HQ in his suit.

“And you’ve been transforming, and they’ve been conducting behavior studies here--” Tony waves his hand toward the control room. “Did they find the needle in the haystack? Did they figure out a trigger, a way to make you transform?”

“Yes,” Bruce says, so softly Tony almost can’t hear him.

“And--” The words stick in Tony’s throat even though he’s pretty sure he knows the answer, because there’s a horrible and inexorable logic to it. “Bruce, is the way they trigger you to show you the video of me getting hurt?”

Bruce doesn’t answer, but slumps forward and puts his face in his hands. Tony feels unbelievably pissed off and helpless, because he can’t go back in time and stop this. Because they’ve been torturing Bruce for weeks, cycling him through agony and rage, to the point where it’s no wonder the poor man can’t think straight.

Tony lays a hand between Bruce’s shoulder blades, a bit cautiously because if Bruce had ever been a touchy kind of guy, he’s learned to keep physical distance. But Tony can feel his muscles relaxing under the cheap flannel, and hears a slow exhale, as if of relief.

“They’re industrial grade sons of bitches, Bruce,” he says. “I’ve been in the files. They call this Project Catalyst, and they’ve been planning it for years. You know how Fury is always saying the Avengers are still controversial, even within SHIELD? A lot of people don’t like the fact that we can’t be controlled. I’m a rich, independent SOB, Thor isn’t on the planet half the time, and you--the best card in the deck, the one that beats all the other cards--you’re the most unpredictable because you’ve got the best moral bullshit detector. Usually, that is.”

“That’s not true,” Bruce says, frowning. “You do this because you know it’s the right thing, and Steve--”

“Steve hasn’t been doing this long enough to realize how easily his government will lie to him. Unlike you, you knucklehead,” Tony says, giving Bruce a nudge with his shoulder. “They’d like to parade you through streets like they used to parade the missiles in Red Square. But they can’t, so they just write long analyses about Will he or won’t he? And now you’re in New York, and you’re working with SHIELD--it’s like having the candy just out of reach. You fucked things up when you learned to control your transformation, so they had to figure out a way to break it back down. We gave them that, and the perfect trigger, at the same time. And you helped quite a bit by holding still for the butterfly net.”

“So that part of it wasn’t just you trying to get me angry,” Bruce says, turning to look at Tony for the first time. “You believe that I stopped fighting because I was consumed by self-pity, and that when I did that, I made the bad guys’ job easier.” He doesn’t sound angry or morose any more; he sounds like he’s trying to figure things out, rationally and without self-regard, which is what Bruce is capable of at his best.

“I don’t think it was self-pity. I think you were so mad at yourself for what the Hulk did to me that you lost any kind of perspective. Believe me, I get it. You should have seen me for the last month; I had triple-caffeinated energy for anything but thinking about this. I did get a ton of work done on the Mark VIII, though. You’re going to love it. All the bells and whistles, plus it’s Hulk proof.”

“Please don’t say that,” Bruce says with a grimace.

“Oh, I’m going to prove it. Me and Rhodey are going to have a party in the desert, and youre invited, as long as you bring your friend.”

“Sounds like fun,” Bruce says. “Except that you still don’t have your guarantee that the other guy won’t hurt you.”

“Oh, that.” Tony runs his hand over the short hairs at his neck, which are damp and cooling. “It’s fine. It’s not a problem.”

“Because you have a new suit? I got the impression that it’s not about the suit.” Bruce looks away from Tony and down to his clasped hands. “In the video, there’s this moment where you run forward to try to stop him from attacking the creature. The other guy looks at you, and he--” Bruce halts, then proceeds with effort. “He grins, like he’s anticipating how much fun it’s going to be.”

“And you assumed that his evil grin had to do with taking me apart. This is weird to say, because I know he’s your monster, but I think you’re in danger of stereotyping him. You think he was being hostile to me because you fear the worst, and because they’ve been trying to convince you that he’s too out of control to be left safely in your hands. But look at it this way--we didn’t know that the creature’s fur would damage the suit, so why would he? And he’d seen me do all kinds of crazy things in that suit without getting hurt before.”

“I have, you mean.” They’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, so Tony can feel Bruce tensing up, but he’s come to far now not to push ahead.

“You’ve said it yourself--you don’t know whether he remembers between visits. So why not give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that at best, the Big Guy was making a mistaken assumption, and that at worst, he just fucked up. We all do it sometimes. Shit, Clint almost took my ear off with one of his arrows.”

“During the mission?”

“No, about an hour ago.”

Bruce gives a little chuckle that turns into a cough, and Tony hands him his cup of water.

“Thanks.” He takes a gulp and hands it back. “So you’re suggesting that it was just an ordinary mistake, something I could have done just as easily as myself as the other guy.”

“I’m doing a little more than suggesting. I’m saying that unless you, Dr. Genius Physicist from C.I.T., can think of an alternate explanation, you’re going to have to accept mine.”

Bruce steeples his hands the way he does in the lab when he’s thinking. “It’s not going to be easy. Even if I accept it intellectually, they’ve been conditioning me to see it the other way for weeks.”

“I don’t recall you caring much about whether things were easy.”

The corners of Bruce’s mouth twitch. “You’re giving me too much credit. I dug myself quite a hole. When I handed myself over to them willingly--what’s that old folktale about walking over thresholds?”

“You’re thinking of vampires. This doesn’t involve vampires. See? It’s not as bad as it could be.”

That gets a genuine laugh out of Bruce. It’s no coincidence that Pepper and Bruce, two of Tony’s favorite people, share a propensity to laugh at his jokes.

“It’s bad enough,” Bruce says. “What are my options? I’ve been classified as an enemy of the Earth. If I run again, there’s going to be a planet-wide APB. out on me.”

“Yeah, but you’re not limited to the planet this time.” Tony hesitates, not eager to put this particular option on the table. “Thor knows this place that’s almost all water, where the land is practically all beach--kind of like Baja, without the all-inclusives.”

“It sounds beautiful,” Bruce says. “Did he really offer that? To take me there?”

“He did. Or anywhere else you want to go.”

“The trouble is that where I want to go, he can’t take me,” Bruce says, a little wistful. “I’ve gotten spoiled. The sages are right--giving up desire is the hardest thing.”

“Hey, I’ve told you I’m the wrong guy to be discussing the Eightfold Path with. I personally own 47 TVs, two soccer teams, and an obscene number of cars. But if you tell me what you want, at least you know I won’t judge you.”

Bruce gives a twisted smile and glances around the room, at the metal side table with the pitcher of lukewarm water, the plywood desk, the plastic chair: everything cheap and impermanent, easy to replace. Nothing that belongs to him. It begins to dawn on Tony what it means to leave everything behind, each transformation a death.

“Go on, tiger,” he says, while he can still speak. “What is it? Your own Caribbean island? Breaking the bank at the Bellagio? Norse goddesses in metal bikinis?”

Bruce smiles so wide that Tony can see his teeth, and a gleam lights his eyes, as if he’s thinking something monstrous.

“Oh, come on,” Tony says. “What?”

“I want my old life back,” he says.

“You mean India?” Tony’s not the type to balk at stealing a guy away from charity work, but he tries to hide his disappointment for Bruce’s sake.

“No,” Bruce says. “Living and working in Stark Tower. Saving the world on the weekends.”

Now it’s Tony’s turn to grin. “You’re right,” he says. “It won’t be easy.”

“Is it even possible?”

“I think so,” Tony says. “A lot of things are going to have to come together for it work and for you--” He gives Bruce’s shoulder a little pat, and is glad when he doesn’t flinch. “That’s going to be the not-easy part. It’s going to mean--” He stops.

“What? Bruce prompts, impatient now, excited. “How crazy is this crazy idea?”

Tony tells him, and Bruce sobers up considerably.

“Wow,” he says. “You don’t screw around.”

“When I thought of it, I didn’t know for certain about you you and the video. I mean, I made an educated guess, but this--” Tony’s breath catches on the enormity of what he’s asking Bruce to do.

“It’s okay,” Bruce says, watching Tony closely. “I said I wanted all the marbles. You told what I had to do to get them. That’s not on you; it’s on me. Can’t promise anything except that I’ll do my best.”

The curtain sways and Tony is halfway to panic when Natasha appears. “Sorry to interrupt, but the guards change shifts in another half an hour. We should be out of here by then.”

“No problem,” Tony says, adrenal glands pretty much tapped out. “I’ll be right out.” The curtain falls lightly back into place.

Tony puts his hands on his knees, intending to stand up, but doesn’t. On the way in, he’d been too worried about the mission, too nervous about what he was going to say to Bruce, to process the fact that he was going to have to leave without him. He’s not used to not getting what he wants, to I’m Tony Fucking Stark not being able to blast open every door. He’s been able to crack it open a bit, but Bruce is the one who’s going to have to walk out.

He tries to stand again, putting a little more conviction into it, but a hand on his own freezes him.

“I want you to know,” Bruce says quietly, “that everything you’ve done, all this effort--”

“Don’t,” Tony says, sharper than he means to, but he can’t bear to hear humble gratitude when Bruce has already been humiliated in every way possible. He tries to stand and walk away and also to not let go of Bruce. Tony’s palm is dry and a little rough, the hand of a maker, but Bruce’s is smooth, his grip light.

“You don’t understand,” Bruce says. “It’s never been like this before. I’ve always been alone.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, giving Bruce’s hand a quick squeeze and letting it drop. “One of many habits I guess you need to unlearn.”

Tony moves toward the door, not sure how much more of this he can take without the embarrassment of having to ask Natasha for a tissue. Halfway there, he stops.

“If you’re ever pissed off at me in the normal, non-Hulk way, I hope you’ll tell me. I don’t want you to feel like you have to hold back because I gave you a job or a place to stay. You deserve those things. So promise you’ll let me know, okay? If I’m ever being more of a jackass than usual.”

Bruce looks back at him with eyebrows raised and a baffled smile on his face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. “But you have my word.”

Tony heads for the exit just as Natasha appears again.

“‘Bye, Bruce,” she says. “See you soon.”

“I hope so.” He’s standing there with his arms folded, as if he’s seeing them off after a friendly visit. “Thanks for everything. Careful on the way out; they keep dogs around here. Big ones. Dobermans, I think.”

At the foot of the stairs, Clint emerges from the shadows, security lights glinting off the shiny black of his bow.

“Hey there, Clint,” Tony says, as Clint moves in to cover their retreat.

“Hey, Tony,” Clint says. “Everything okay with Bruce?”

“Yeah, I think it’s going to be fine.”

“Good, good,” he says, eyes searching the darkness. “Hey, did you catch the Knicks game last night?”
Part 4 >>