FIC: The Hollow Men (1/3) (Avengers)
Title:The Hollow Men
Author: lettered
Characters: Bruce Banner+Steve Rogers, or Bruce/Steve. Also includes off-screen Tony.
Rating: PG-13
Length: 26,000
Warnings: issues include ethics in the superhero genre, politics, patriotism, aid in Africa, HIV, homophobia, terrorism, religion, child abuse, brief allusion to suicide. If you think discussion of these things between the two main characters would bother you, I strongly encourage use of your back button.
Disclaimer: Characters aren’t mine. Title and poem belong to Eliot.
Summary: Steve goes to Uganda, ostensibly to fetch Bruce, who still doesn’t want to join the Avengers. Steve tries to figure out how to do the right thing; they both try to find their place in the world.
A/N: Thank you to honeylocusttree for the beta, promptness, and explanations. And I can’t even say how much of this fic is indebted to my_daroga. Thank you for listening, encouraging, reading, vetting, idea-sharing, concept-checking, and putting up with me. I’d say that you are Steve to my Bruce, but . . . I’m way taller than you, among other things. :o)
This comes after A Fine Spur (AO3 | DW | LJ), which is Natasha and Bruce (or Natasha/Bruce), but it doesn’t have to be read in order to get this one.
I am aware of the problematic nature of addressing these issues through the use of fandom and these characters in particular; it's partly why I wrote the fic. If anyone finds anything inaccurate or offensive herein, I would really like to know about it. For more information about aid and/or Uganda, please read the note at the end.
The Hollow Men
It was five months after New York and three months after Honduras when the motorcycle roared up to the cottage in Uganda.
Bruce went to the door to see what was going on, and was surprised to see a big dusty blond man in a leather jacket getting off his bike. The big dusty blond man hauled a big duffel bag off the back of the bike, then slung it over his shoulder as though it weighed nothing.
When he came up to the door, Bruce said, “Steve,” because he still couldn’t quite believe it.
“Hello, Doctor Banner.”
Mostly what Bruce couldn’t believe was that they would send him-him, out of all S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best and brightest. He was no longer expecting Tony, and they’d already sent Natasha, but, “Steve Rogers.”
“How are you doing?” Steve asked, and put out his hand.
It was large and strong, tanned, still lighter than most of the folks around here. His nails were well-groomed. He really wasn’t as dusty as he should be for someone who had come all this way. Then again, it was unclear how S.H.I.E.L.D. had found out where Bruce was. Steve could have come by private jet, for all Bruce knew. He could have ridden that motorcycle straight out the back and right up to the health center, and they would have told Steve where the muzungu was. Of course they would have; they were nothing but friendly there.
“Steve Rogers,” Bruce said again. “Say . . . what’re you doing here?” His voice was very flat.
Steve lowered his hand, smiling sheepishly. “Ostensibly I’m here to recruit you for S.H.I.E.L.D.”
“Okay,” said Bruce. “Sure. No. They already tried that. What’re you really here for?”
“Well.” Steve glanced out at the dusty road, grass, the scraggly trees. “Maybe just a bit of fresh air.”
“Uh-uh.” Bruce nodded, thumb running over his fingers. “I hear Prague is nice this time of year.”
Squinting, Steve turned back. “Yeah. I hear that too.”
Lingering there in the doorway, Bruce pursed his lips, wondering why it felt so bad to be rude. He turned into a huge monster and fought tanks, it shouldn’t be a big deal, but here he was and it was Steve Rogers, which made Bruce feel like he was leaving Abe Lincoln out in the cold. “Would you . . .” Bruce opened the door wider. “Come on in.”
“Thank you,” said Steve, and came in.
“Um, you can sit,” said Bruce.
Steve sat down on one of the stools, setting his bag down beside him. He started taking off his jacket.
“You want coffee?” Bruce asked, because he needed things to do with his hands.
“In this heat?” Laying his coat over the bag, Steve looked up in puzzlement.
“I’m making coffee,” said Bruce.
The cottage was more of a hut, really, but he called it a cottage. It was made mostly of mud bricks and clay, corrugated metal for a roof. There were two rooms, the second of which would eventually be the lab. Now it held only a safe for chemicals, a gas tank for the Meker burner, a laptop and a centrifuge. The main room had a kitchen-a corner with a propane burning oven, and a counter attached to the wall with some crates under it. It also had a bedroom in the other corner, a pallet with the requisite mosquito netting and another crate for clothes.
Bruce only had so many hide-outs, and he was pretty sure that S.H.I.E.L.D. knew all of them. It was time to build some new ones, start stockpiling gear-obviously not here, because . . . Steve Rogers.
He was sitting politely at the table while Bruce fired up the oven. “You live here?” Steve asked, also sounding polite. Making conversation like his mama taught him, no doubt.
“Why? Are you interested in real estate?” Bruce put a pan on top of the oven and poured water into it from a jug. Then he poured some coffee beans from a jar into a clay bucket, and started pounding them with a club, in and out, in and out.
“Maybe,” was all Steve said.
Bruce glanced at him. He appeared unfazed by the pounding, and curious about his surroundings. Right, because it was Steve Rogers, who probably couldn’t even think things that were unkind. “S.H.I.E.L.D. not treating you well?” Bruce asked, because he could be unkind all he wanted. He went back to pounding beans. “Thread count a little low? High rise a little high? They cook your steak a little rare?”
“Frankly, yes,” said Steve Rogers.
“Okay.” Bruce glanced at him again. “That’s not sarcasm.”
“No.” Steve met his eyes. Bruce was too far away and the light wasn’t very good, but he would lay money on the guess that they were blue. “It’s not.”
Bruce turned back to the beans. They needed to be sifted to get all of the shells out.
“I can’t get a job of my own,” said Steve. “I get a job with the government using my . . . skills, and that’s what I’m already doing. I get a job using those skills elsewhere, and I don’t know what they’re sending me into. I get another kind of job, I either can’t really use what I’m good at to help anyone, or else I can’t be relied upon to be there when they need me. So instead I’m living somewhere where everything is done for me, and . . . I don’t like it.”
Bruce emptied the sifted grounds into a cloth, then arranged the cloth over the bucket. He got up to check the water, and couldn’t help glancing at Steve.
The table was too little anyway, but Steve looked massive at it, thighs bunched under it and much too broad. Sunlight streamed in from the window, as though it shone specifically to frame his face, and Bruce had to look away. He wasn’t just Abraham Lincoln; he was like Daniel Boone. And Buzz Aldrin. A national treasure and all the right stuff.
The water was starting to bubble, so Bruce wrapped a towel around the handle of the pan and pulled it off the oven. He went back to pour the water over the cloth into the bucket. “You don’t see working for S.H.I.E.L.D. as a job?” he asked, making more of an effort to be polite. He poured the water a little bit at a time.
“Sure,” said Steve. “I get paid. I also get a hotel, three meals a day, a private gym-did you know that? I get a private gymnasium.”
“Life is hard,” Bruce agreed. He kept pouring.
“Yeah. Listen to me.” Steve chuckled. It was a self-deprecating chuckle, precisely the way Captain America would chuckle.
“Look.” Bruce glanced back at him, and then had to concentrate on the water. He thought it was not a good idea for him to look too much at Captain America’s perfect, wholesome face. “I didn’t mean to be a jerk. You have a problem. It’s not . . . unimportant. Have you tried . . . just moving out? Take your paycheck. Go somewhere else.”
“Yeah. I did that.”
Bruce poured the water. When the cloth started dipping down too far, he rummaged through one of the wood crates for some cups. “Um, do you want the one with the dead cockroach in it, or the other one?”
Steve just smiled. “Surprise me.”
It was immediate and wry, just as though Captain America had a sense of humor after all, and Bruce didn’t know why he wasn’t expecting it. “Sorry,” he said, opening the door to toss the cockroach out. “So you didn’t like living on your own?”
“It wasn’t quite that.” The corner of Steve’s mouth turned down, and even that looked self-deprecating; Bruce almost couldn’t stand it. “I couldn’t get the internet connected.”
“I’m sure someone could help you with that.” Bruce concentrated on pouring the last of the water into the bucket, then took the cloth off the top and squeezed the grounds. He dipped the first cup into the bucket.
“Yeah.” Steve snorted. “Tony Stark.”
Bruce raised his brows. “He saved the world.” He poured the rest of the bucket into the other cup, then gave one to Steve. “Thought you’d like him better after that.”
“Thank you,” Steve said. “It smells very good.”
“What about S.H.I.E.L.D.? I’m sure they could give you someone to help get you started.” Bruce leaned against the opposite wall, holding his own cup.
“Of course they would,” said Steve. “The internet’s just an example. There are just so many things that I don’t know, that I find it kind of hard to really . . . cut ties.”
“Ah,” said Bruce. “Is this far away enough?”
“Not really.” Smiling, Steve opened his bag. “They gave me this”-he tossed a satphone on table-“this”-a satellite internet terminal-“and this.” He pulled something round and metal out of his jacket pocket, probably a bug. “They didn’t tell me about this one”-he tossed the bug on the table with the other things-“and I don’t even know what that is.” He nodded at the terminal.
“Well.” Bruce’s lips twisted. “It’ll solve your internet problems. If Uganda isn’t far enough, did you want to go to outer space? Because you’re kind of like Buzz Aldrin.”
“Yeah,” said Steve. “Who’s he? I mean, I’ve got all the presidents memorized, so there’s that, and all the wars we’ve fought and the movie stars and I know who Elvis, Howard Stern, and Sarah Palin are, but people keep-they keep doing that.”
“I’m sorry,” said Bruce.
“No,” said Steve. “It’s okay. I’m telling you all my problems; I don’t mean to. I just mean that . . . sometimes it’s easier. Sometimes it’s easier just to do what Fury tells me to, to let them . . .” He waved his hand over the assorted electronics on the table.
“I meant that I was sorry you know who Howard Stern and Sarah Palin are.” Holding his coffee, hips leaning on the wall, Bruce watched Steve chuckle, running a hand through his blond hair. Bruce stopped looking and started working on getting the coffee down. “Buzz Aldrin made the first moon landing,” he said, after a long, burning swallow.
“I thought that was Neil Armstrong.” Steve smiled ruefully. “It’s not like I haven’t done a lot of reading.
“Neil Armstrong was the mission commander. Aldrin was the pilot.”
“Oh, thank you.” Steve was quiet for a moment. “Excuse me, do you have any . . .”
Bruce looked up at Steve’s vague gesturing, even though he didn’t really want to. “What?”
Steve gestured again to his coffee. “Milk, or-it’s okay if you don’t,” he rushed to add.
“Milk.” Mouth twisting again, Bruce squatted on the floor, setting down his coffee. “Let me see. I have . . . um . . .” He sorted through another crate. “Baby formula.”
“I didn’t know you were expecting.”
Bruce smiled. “Yeah, thanks. I’ve got sugar, but it’s . . . stuck.” He produced a box and tossed it at Steve.
Steve caught it with one broad hand and it made Bruce want to look away again. “I bet I can unstick it,” Steve said. “Thank you.” Opening the box, he looked at the brown brick inside, shaking it a little. It had probably gotten wet or something.
Great, so Bruce was giving Daniel Boone- Paul Revere?-wet sugar.
Steve put a corner of the brick between two fingers and just . . . pinched, and it crumbled. He put the pinch in the coffee and carefully cupped the remaining loose sugar back into the box, folding the sides closed. Then he actually checked the floor, as if concerned that he had spilled. “Why do you have baby formula?”
“For babies.” Bruce turned back to the crate. “You want something to eat?” He needed to do something else with his hands. He shouldn’t have had the coffee; it made him jittery.
“Sure,” said Steve. “Thanks.”
“Goats’ or cows’ milk are better, if you have them,” Bruce said, rummaging in the crate. “I mean, for feeding babies. But there was one girl in Kampala . . . I thought I had . . . You want a banana?”
“Thanks.” Steve caught the banana, too. “This coffee is very good. I think I got the one without the cockroach. Not that I’m complaining.”
“I’d offer you a shower. You’ll have to do with a cup and a pump outside.”
“Thank you,” said Steve. “Don’t worry about it. The girl in Kampala?”
“Mm? Oh.”
Sophie had been nine months old when Bruce determined that both of her parents had cholera. Her eight year old brother, Marcus, had watched Bruce with steely eyes whenever Bruce had prepared fluids, administered them to the parents, brought them antibiotics. Bruce had been sure Marcus hated him, perhaps even suspected him of wrong-doing. Then one day Marcus had looked at him in that hard way, and said, “I’m going to be a doctor like you.”
“Oh,” Bruce had said, stupidly, ineffectually.
“But I will stay until everything is better,” Marcus had said.
Bruce scratched the back of his neck, remembering that day in Kampala. It had been raining, and the sound on a tin roof could sound like gun shot. The only other time Marcus had spoken to him of his own volition, he’d asked if he could try on Bruce’s glasses. “Keep them,” Bruce had said, because he could buy another pair.
“Don’t want to talk about it?” said Steve.
Bruce just shook his head. “There just wasn’t enough milk,” he said. “That was all.” He finished sorting the crate and put it back against the wall. He leaned against the wall beside it, waving vaguely at the room. “I was working on getting some equipment.”
“Milk equipment? They’re called cows.”
Bruce smiled. “No. I mean . . . all this.”
Steve’s smile fell away. “Doctor Banner, I hope you don’t feel insufficient on my account.”
“It’s not that. It’s . . .” Standing up, Bruce ran his thumb over his fingers. “I’d like to set up a lab. Somewhere that’s at least sterile, if not conducive to research.” One hand formed a fist and the other moved over it again and again. He better put the sugar away. “It’s difficult to get anything done with the military always two steps behind me.”
“I guess we have similar problems,” Steve said.
Bruce put the sugar back in the crate. “I guess.”
“So,” Steve said politely. “You feed babies. You help people here? I was under the impression your degree wasn’t medical.”
“It isn’t.” Bruce grimaced, then realized he could wash out the bucket, also. It was a waste of water, but then he could go and get water, too. He poured the remaining water in the pan into the bucket, sloshed it around, then tossed the water out the door.
“Then what do you do here?” said Steve.
Bruce put more water from the jug into the bucket, sloshed and tossed again. Then he guessed the bucket was as rinsed out as it was going to get, so instead he just stood there by the door, looking out. The sun was shining brightly, the long grass very still. “Why do you ask?” he said finally, after a long moment.
There was a beat of silence. “Just making conversation, Doctor Banner.”
“That’s nice.” Bruce turned back into the dark room. “What are you doing here, Steve?”
“I told you-”
“You told me. You’re tired of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s chain; I get that. But you said you’re not here to bring me in for Fury, and I don’t know, maybe it’s because you’re you, or maybe that serum makes you physically incapable of lying, but for whatever reason, I believe you. But I mean, what are you going to do? See the sights, or . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not actually really a people person.”
Steve was quiet for a while, and Bruce couldn’t help himself. He looked over at him. Steve just sat there, looking back at him. “I just want to help,” he said finally. “That’s really all I ever wanted.”
“That sounds fun,” said Bruce. “It was nice seeing you.”
Steve turned his head, looking out the window. “I thought I might stay here a while.”
“No.” Bruce’s lips twisted, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “No,” he said again. “That’s really not such a great idea.”
“Why not?” Steve looked back at him. “Because you’re here?”
Bruce could feel his lips twist further. “No. Because what are you going to do here, Steve? Punch poverty in the face?”
“With all due respect, Doctor Banner,” Steve said, standing up, putting the electronics back in his bag. “I thought I might just do some good. Thanks for the coffee.”
Then Steve was brushing past him, walking out into the sunlight, and Bruce was standing there in the doorway and the darkness, watching as he revved up the engine of his big, shiny bike. “I was afraid he’d say that,” Bruce muttered.
Time to run again, Banner.
*
When Bruce was a kid, they still had those little books in the “American Heroes” series that you could buy for a dollar. Bruce had bought the Captain America one because he’d wanted to learn more about the science behind the serum. He’d never thought he was interested in Steve Rogers for the man himself.
And yet, when Bruce had performed the experiment, he’d done it on himself.
He couldn’t think why. All evidence suggested Steve Rogers was the kindest, the fairest, the best, and you couldn’t make that. You couldn’t engineer it in a bottle; Steve wasn’t Captain America because of the serum.
Meanwhile, Bruce wasn’t honest; he wasn’t fair, and he wasn’t kind. He had always been arrogant, and despite everything Dad said-maybe because of everything Dad said-he full-heartedly believed in his own brilliance. He’d never been able to kill his passion to know, and sure, curiosity sounded innocent-until you took it too far without considering the consequences. He’d been so irresponsible and-and careless; he’d been careless.
(Even now, he couldn’t help but ask the questions that should never be answered: if the Tesseract could open portals, what other worlds . . . ? And, if the Tesseract could build that kind of protection around itself, what kind of force field . . . ? And, if Loki’s scepter could control men’s minds, what elements was it comprised of, what wavelengths could interact with the human psyche in such a way, and-could it be replicated. . . ?)
Part of the reason Phase Two of the Tesseract had bothered him was that he’d thought they’d already learned that lesson. He thought that lesson had been him. He remembered talking to Steve about what Fury had been planning before they found out about Phase Two, and he had really wanted him to understand. Say that something isn’t right, he had wanted to tell him, because if someone like Steve could see something was wrong then it must be true.
I would have made him smarter, if I had made him, Bruce had thought. If I had made him, I would have made him me.
*
When Steve pulled up on his bike outside Bruce’s cottage four days later, Bruce realized that if they were letting Steve stay here, it might mean at least that Fury wasn’t going to send someone else out after him who was less . . . forthcoming. If he was going to have to deal with S.H.I.E.L.D., Bruce preferred the straight story-not in the least because of what had happened in Honduras.
So Bruce went out and greeted him, and gave Steve the two-bit tour. It went like this:
“Chickens, water pump. House, and now we have more chickens.” They walked on the red dirt road, half a mile from Bruce’s cottage. Tall grass stood on either side of the road. Far up the lane, men were hacking at it with machetes.
“House.” Steve looked at the little shack made out of corrugated metal.
“Banda,” Bruce said. “Cottage.”
“Why don’t you wear shoes?”
“What?” Bruce looked over at him. Steve had taken off his shirt a while ago, sleeves tied around his waist, wearing just an undershirt. Bruce looked at all that smooth gold skin and thought, you’ll get burned, but he didn’t say anything. If Steve wanted to get burned he could get burned, except he probably wouldn’t because his skin was bio-engineered-except if it was, then he shouldn’t have freckles. Then Bruce realized that Captain America had freckles-he was looking at Captain America’s freckles-George Washington’s very own freckles. Bruce looked away.
“They say you’ll get diseases, if you don’t wear your shoes,” Steve prodded.
“I don’t really get sick,” Bruce said.
Steve smiled. “Me neither.”
“Occasionally I do get a little green about the gills.”
“That’s gotta be difficult.”
Bruce’s thumb ran over his fingers. “Just have to be careful.”
“I’ve gotten to know the area a little. Most of the people around here seem to know you. You work at the clinic?”
“Sometimes. Not really.” Bruce shrugged. “Sometimes I teach. There’s a school over that way.” He nodded to a clear spot in the distance. “More chickens. Look, a cow.”
“Teach?”
Bruce’s thumb was still running over his fingers. “English. Science. Sanitation. I engineer mosquito netting. Diagnose TB. Eat avocados. Research terrestrial gamma ray flashes; they have good thunderstorms here. The day I got here, I helped birth a calf. It’s a mixture, really.”
“Are the avocados good?”
Bruce smiled. “Yeah. They’re good.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever had an avocado.” Steve looked down at him thoughtfully. “When you said you make diagnoses-you do that even though you don’t have a license?”
“You wanna tell the authorities?” Now Bruce’s hands were making fists, so he put them in his pockets. “Because I’m pretty sure no one in the immediate vicinity cares.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Steve stopped in the middle of the dusty road.
Bruce sort of wanted to keep walking, but no that would be rude, and Steve was Captain America. He was practically Paul Newman, or something. Most of those other iconic American actors-John Wayne, Marlon Brando-you could say something bad about, but not Paul Newman. His face was on salad dressing. Reluctantly, Bruce turned back, not quite meeting Steve’s eyes.
“You do good here,” said Steve. “That’s what I meant.”
“Want to give me a medal, Steve?”
“No.”
Frowning, Steve looked down at him, and he was so broad that he made Bruce feel small. The thing was that Bruce was four or five times his size, when he wanted to be. Bruce still didn’t look at him.
“I want to do good things,” said Steve. “I want to help people, serve my country.”
Bruce’s lips twisted. “Maybe you should go back to your country, then.” He started walking.
Steve fell right in stride. “When they gave me that serum . . . I didn’t know what I was. They gave me that costume, too, and do you know what I was then? What I did? I performed. I did commercial spots. Advertisements. I was a symbol, but what was I a symbol of?”
“Shaving cream? Did you ever learn to dance a jig?” Bruce’s hands were still thrust in his pockets. “I’ve always wanted to see a jig. I’m not sure jigs actually exist.”
“You think I’m whining,” said Steve. “Maybe I am.”
“No, I’m listening.” Bruce resisted the urge to sound as insincere as possible.
“You have every right to think ill of me.” Steve put his hands in his pockets, too.
Bruce stopped. Steve stopped too, standing there in his undershirt, his face so open and so honest that Bruce sort of wanted to destroy it. He looked away. “I don’t have the right to think ill of anyone.”
“I’ve talked to people from around here,” Steve pointed out. “They say that you’re a good man.”
Bruce shook his head, fists tightening in his pockets. “I’m not here to help people.”
“You were helping people in Calcutta.”
“I wasn’t really helping.”
Steve frowned. “Then what were you doing?”
There was this slum in Kolkata, about five blocks away from where Bruce had lived. He could have gone to this slum once a day, cleaned up every bit of trash and refuse, and it would still be littered with plastic bags and feces the next morning. He could have visited a patient every hour, and three of them would still have died every week. He could have told women that he knew that some of the things they had been raised to believe were entirely wrong, and they would still have married men who beat them.
He never tried to tell any women what their place in society was. He never tried to tell anyone what they should do with their streets. It wasn’t as if these things worked in America; Bruce hadn’t any illusion that they would work anywhere else, and even if he could have visited patients every hour, he didn’t.
Sometimes he stayed in the room he rented from his landlady, and through the walls, he could hear her sing. She had a little battery-operated machine that played long, buzzing tones in scales, and she would sing in each tone until the note changed. A vocal exercise, she said. The first time Bruce had heard it, it had made his ears itch, the tones discordant to his ears. Eventually, he had begun to think about the many, many ways to divide harmonic frequency, about the cilia in the inner ear that measured vibration of the fluid and sent these measurements to the brain, and he realized it was beautiful.
Before the accident, Bruce used to think that everything could be solved by science. Only once he had realized this wasn’t true did he begin to appreciate that what it lacked in solutions, it made up in loveliness.
“Doctor Banner?” Steve asked. “What were you doing in Calcutta?”
“Getting by,” said Bruce. “Like a lot of people.”
“I can see how that might be nice.”
“What?”
Steve’s gaze was very level, for all that he had to look down. “Being like other people.” He looked off into the sunlight, squinting, hand on his hip. He should have been a cowboy in a field; he should have been on the cover of Grapes of Wrath. His face should be on salad dressing; he should have walked on the moon.
“So, teaching, treating sick people, assisting at the birth of baby cows-that’s not called helping anymore? What do they call it these days? Being a nuisance?” Smiling crookedly, Steve ran a hand through his hair. “Trust me. I’ve been a nuisance before.”
Bruce pressed his lips together. “I’m just saying it’s hard to make a difference.”
“I don’t want it to be easy,” Steve said. “I want it to be right.”
“You’re looking at a poster boy for ‘not right,’ Captain.”
“No.”
Steve’s hand descended on his shoulder and Bruce didn’t do anything, didn’t move or flinch or anything, but inwardly he was thinking that if Steve was really going to stick around, this casual touching thing pretty much had to stop.
“I think for once,” Steve said, “you’re doing better than the rest of us.” He kind of squeezed Bruce’s shoulder-Bruce guessed it was a 1940s thing-then turned, walked down the dusty road. Sunlight shone down on his shoulders, bathing him in brightness.
*
Four days after Steve’s arrival, Bruce walked into the village to find Steve was over in the southwestern corner of it, digging a hole. Some women nearby were watching him as they ground millet, occasionally exchanging smiles. Children-some in clothing, some without-occasionally ran up to him and then away, laughing and smiling. A young man stood close to the hole, leaning on a pole, a group of men further away using more poles to churn the earth with straw and clay.
Bruce stood there for a little while, watching. No one seemed to think it odd that Steve Rogers was digging a hole in the village. Everyone in the immediate vicinity seemed quite pleased with it, actually. After a minute, one of the children saw Bruce, a boy named Julius. Julius raised his hand and waved, but didn’t come running over as he usually did when he saw him. Instead he went back to watching Steve.
Then Steve looked up, saw Bruce, and smiled. He’d done away with the shirt completely this time, red earth streaked down his front and across his jeans. He got out of the hole-thigh deep-and pulled a white t-shirt over his head, just like any gentleman would. When he got closer, Bruce could see gold stubbled on his jaw.
“Very manly,” Bruce commented, without much inflection.
Steve had stopped offering his hand to shake every time they greeted, but he still said, “Hello, Doctor Banner,” in that formal way that seemed so utterly casual to him. “Stream’s a mile, there and back.” He shrugged. “So I decided to dig a well.”
“We all like a morning shave,” Bruce said through five days’ worth of beard.
Laughing, Steve self-consciously scratched the stubble on his chin. “It looks good on you. Distinguished.”
“No one’s ever tried to call me that before.”
“It’s true, Professor.”
“Ah.” Bruce nodded towards the villagers. Some of the people called him that, even though he was about as far from a professor as they. “I see you’ve made friends.”
“Yeah,” said Steve. “Come on.”
They walked over to the well site, where the young man leaning on the pole was talking to a woman of about his age. Steve introduced him to the couple, Esther and Muhindo, saying that he was going to stay with them. Bruce shook hands and smiled, talking to Esther about her brother, Solomon, who she said worked at the clinic. Bruce knew him vaguely, and they talked about how busy the clinic was and how it was low on supplies, and Esther said that Steve had already mentioned he could bring antibiotics from Kampala.
Muhindo talked to Steve in English about how long it might take to build the well, but when Bruce turned from Esther Steve said, “You’re going to have to teach me Luganda.”
“Mm-hm.” Bruce pressed his lips together. “Can I talk to you?”
Steve looked from Esther to Muhindo, then back to Bruce again. “Okay,” he said. “Be right back.”
They walked up the road a bit, until Steve stopped and said, “Alright, I give. What’s eating you, doc?”
Bruce looked back at the hole in the ground, the children laughing and playing. Above was all blue sky; down the road, a boy wheeled a bicycle laden with bananas. Even the shacks with their tin roofs were beautiful things when seen abstractly, without the context of the illness and the privation that so often contained inside. When the world was as pretty as a painting, Bruce sometimes wanted to tear it to shreds, just because he could.
“You can’t do this,” Bruce said, thumb running over his fingers.
Something ticked in Steve’s jaw, but his eyes were steady and warm and kind. “Learn Luganda? Because I’m already picking it up. I know how to say banana, anyway.”
“You can’t just come in here and fix everything.”
“I’m not trying to fix everything,” said Steve. “I’m building a well.”
Bruce grimaced. “And bringing in antibiotics.”
“You have something against antibiotics?” When Bruce glared at him, Steve said, “Kampala’s not all that far on the bike. Just an hour or two. It’s not like I’m going to buy out the pharmaceutical industry. I’ll just spend what I have.”
“And then what?”
“What?”
“You build a well, you buy some drugs, and then what?”
“Maybe I’ll build a church.”
“A church.”
“The old one burned down.” Steve looked down at him for a moment. “You’re upset.”
Bruce’s fists tightened. “I’m not upset.”
Steve just kept looking at him. “Do we need to go elsewhere?”
Do we need to go elsewhere, just as though they could walk somewhere and everything would be alright; no one would get hurt. For the first time, Bruce realized that with Steve there, it might actually be possible. Bruce rather thought the Hulk could break him in half, if he really wanted, but it would probably wear him down enough that he wouldn’t do all sorts of other damage, and who knew, Steve might not even die. The problem was that Steve really would have escorted him to the savannah so that Bruce could have a temper tantrum that just might kill him, all in the name of protecting some innocents he’d only just met.
Bruce breathed, and then he said, “Smoky the Bear.”
The corner of Steve’s mouth turned. “Who?”
“Sorry.” Bruce smiled mirthlessly. “Must have been late forties. Only you can prevent forest fires.”
Steve frowned. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
“Yeah. I’ve been trying to settle on an American icon-Thomas Jefferson, Sam Houston, Norman Rockwell-someone you remind me of. I think it’s Smoky the Bear.”
“I knew all three of those,” said Steve. “I really enjoy Mister Rockwell’s paintings.”
Bruce’s fists loosened. “Aldrin was really the only modern example I had. I mean, besides Clark Kent.”
“I know Clark Kent. I read comics.”
“I mean Christopher Reeve Clark Kent,” said Bruce. “It’s a very specific example.”
“Christopher Reeve?” said Steve politely.
“Gregory Peck,” said Bruce. “Only more.”
“Mister Peck was a Broadway star, wasn’t he?”
Bruce couldn’t help a dry chuckle. “I keep not going back far enough. It’s a pity, because Atticus Finch.”
Steve shook his head, smiling. For a moment, Bruce thought he saw what Steve might have looked like younger, before the serum-boyish. Really sweet. “I’m pretty sure Luganda’s going to be an easier language than modern English,” Steve said. “At least I’ll know I don’t know anything.”
Looking over at the hole Steve had dug in the ground, Bruce swallowed a sigh. “Look. I know all this . . .” He waved a vague hand. “I know you want to help.”
“I do,” said Steve. “But I haven’t been here very long. You’ve been here longer. And you’ve definitely been in the twentieth century for longer, so you may know how to help better than I do.”
Shaking his head, Bruce said, “I’m not-”
“If you say you’re the poster-boy for not helping, I’ll get angry.” Steve smiled his easy, charming smile, the one that looked just like baseball and apple pie. “You won’t like me when I’m angry.”
“Funny,” said Bruce.
Steve’s smile faded. “Doctor Banner, if you think there’s something wrong with what I’m doing, maybe you could just tell me what you think I should do instead.”
Bruce didn’t look at him. Instead he looked back at the village, the children playing in the sunlight. Some of the kids were lying on their stomachs, peering over the edge of the hole. Julius was pretending to push another boy in. He wasn’t always exactly nice.
“Giving people drugs isn’t a bad thing,” Bruce said at last, turning back to Steve. “But things like that are . . . quick fixes.”
“I’m listening, Doctor Banner.”
“Hand-outs are only going to delay the inevitable.”
Frowning, Steve said, “Don’t you think that’s cynical?”
Bruce’s lips twisted. “Steve, you’re stronger than any other human being on his own. You can virtually move mountains. Then you leave, and what happens? Water diverts around the mountain, the village floods, people fight, and now you’ve got this mess where there wasn’t one before. The whole unlucky place would have been better had you never come at all.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from personal experience.”
Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “Why do you think I don’t want to work with S.H.I.E.L.D.? They’re trying to save the world, aren’t they?”
Steve smiled, rather grimly. “High rise too high?”
“Thirty thousand foot drop.”
Steve shook his head. “Director Fury’s not going to keep you in that cage.”
“They already did.” Bruce kept his arms crossed. “So it wasn’t Fury. The point is, I’m the mountain. S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to think it’s in the world’s best interest to move me wherever they see fit, no matter what kind of collateral damage that could cause. You want to know why I don’t want to save the world, Steve? It’s because before the Tesseract, I was Phase Two.”
Steve was quiet for a long time. His narrowed eyes slanted to the side, strong jaw held tight. The solid flow from his shoulder up his neck made something poetic in the line of his bowed head, like a contemplative statue, like a benevolent saint. The light caught in his hair.
Bruce longed to smash him into pieces, said statue crushed utterly to dust, because it was an illusion, all of it. Steve Rogers was a dream of heaven and of angels. Bruce was the reality: men had never been anything other than monsters.
Carefully, Bruce unfolded his arms. “I didn’t mean you couldn’t build your well,” he said gently.
Steve looked up. “I think I understand.”
“Yeah.” Bruce turned to walk back to the village, to Steve’s hole in the ground, but Steve caught his arm.
“Thank you,” he said.
Only someone like Steve would ever thank you for attempting to shatter his comfortable illusions. His voice sounded as deep and full of meaning as that well.
“Webale,” was all Bruce said: thank you in Luganda.
*
Steve built the well in half the time it would have taken five grown men to do the same job. Then he started on the church, and almost everyone in the village fell in love with him. It would have been the same in any village anywhere, whether he was building wells or working at the local grocery. It would have been like that in any American small town; it would have been like that on an island in Japan even during wartime.
Steve was just that sort of man; his beauty may have been a cultural touchstone, but his kindness and his generosity were a universal language. He was charismatic in a way that made it difficult even for people who didn’t want to like him not to like him, which made it extremely hard for Bruce.
Steve always seemed to be around. When he wasn’t at the church site or in the village, he was at the clinic bringing something to Solomon for Ester, he was stopping in the road to help someone carry chickens. One day he came to the school and found Bruce there teaching a class.
He didn’t teach the little kids, but some of the village’s teenagers were interested in going to Kampala to seek jobs and higher education, while a few of the assistants at the clinic were just interested in learning more so that they could better support their community. The Ugandan physicians at the clinic were overworked, and didn’t have time in after-hours to feed their staff’s interest in biology. Bruce had time. He had all the time in the world.
He was writing on the blackboard, wearing his glasses and talking to Solomon and a girl in her late teens, Irene. Wherever he was, Bruce found it hard not to talk over people’s heads, and here, translation was particularly a problem, since his grasp of the language was not the best. Solomon and Irene, however, besides speaking English relatively well, were also exceptionally clever, and Bruce found that he was enjoying himself until he saw Steve sitting in the back.
He was lounging on one of the benches, leaning against the brick wall, a fond, lazy smile on his face. Bruce wasn’t sure who he was looking at-Irene, or maybe Solomon, or maybe he just found the whole scene quaint or idyllic somehow. The thought made Bruce’s jaw clench. Then Steve caught Bruce looking at him, and grinned.
Later they went outside, and Bruce took off his glasses.
“I see why they call you a professor,” said Steve. “I always needed glasses. I never wore them because I always thought they made me look like more of a wimp than I was already.”
“Thanks,” said Bruce.
“That’s not what I meant,” Steve said. “I meant-I don’t think it’s true, what they say about glasses. You look good. Really smart.”
He looked so earnest in that moment that Bruce took pity on him. “As I understand it, four eyes have become rather attractive, since your time.”
Steve chuckled ruefully. “Sorry. I was really weedy. You know-the kid they all made fun of. I was just . . .” He gestured self-consciously. “Used to it.”
Bruce turned away from the school. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.” He was pretty sure he lied less because he had anything to hide, and rather more because it amused him to make jokes that no one but himself got. God, but he was a sardonic bastard.
“Yeah.” Steve just laughed, walking with him. “You were good back there. Those kids really listen to you.”
Bruce’s mouth twisted. “Don’t call them kids.”
“Sorry?” Steve said, surprised.
Steve hadn’t meant to sound patronizing; of course he hadn’t. Bruce just shook his head. He could feel Steve glancing sidelong at him, and remained resolutely facing forward.
“I wanted to start a garden,” Steve said, after a moment.
Bruce thought of Adam and Eve, and said nothing.
“I wanted to get your thoughts on it.” Stopping, Steve turned to him. They were a little down the road from the school house now, the chickens wandering around them.
“You should definitely put your pretty maids all in a row,” Bruce said.
“I thought a lot about what you said,” Steve said, just as if Bruce wasn’t an asshole. “I don’t want to interfere. I don’t want to cause problems for anyone here; I just want to do some good.”
“I shouldn’t have said those things,” Bruce said. “It wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry. I’m not your moral authority.”
“Thanks, but I can make my own decisions, Doctor Banner. I respect you. I want your advice.”
Steve was looking at him with calmness and with confidence, and Bruce just felt utterly blank inside. It was almost as if what Steve had said didn’t register at all.
Tony had respected him. Tony probably would have died rather than have said it in that way, but somehow Tony’s respect was comfortable. Tony respected him on a basis of intelligence and that was okay, because even though Bruce hated his own arrogance, he still knew that he was brilliant. But it wasn’t like Tony walked around respecting Bruce on the grounds of moral decency. That had been the problem with Tony, basically.
And many things had gone wrong with Natasha, but the thing Bruce had really, really liked about her was that she was never going to say that she trusted him.
“You look like I just kicked your puppy,” said Steve. “Is it really that shocking?”
“I never had a puppy,” Bruce said.
Steve grinned. “Maybe that’s your problem.”
Bruce thought about his father and then stopped thinking altogether. “So you want to start a garden,” he said.
“Right.” Running a hand through his hair, Steve looked back up the path at the school. “I was thinking a vegetable garden. So there’s food to eat. Then, if people save money on food, they can expand the garden. Eventually they could sell food from it.”
It wasn’t exactly a bad idea. Many of the men in the village and surrounding area harvested cocoa. Others sold cows, goats, and milk, or worked at the cement factory in town, several kilometers away. The women often didn’t have time to make an additional income, but gardening was something both the women and the male farmers might be able to manage. “First, you’d have to make sure someone actually wants a garden,” Bruce pointed out.
Steve nodded. “I talked to Esther, Keisha, and Lillian. And they introduced me to Faridah-do you know Faridah?” Bruce shook his head, and Steve went on, “She knows everyone. She said there’s interest.”
Gazing off into the sunlight, Steve had his hands on his hips. He should have a boot on a rock and be planting a flag or something; Bruce didn’t know; he was all out of icons because Steve was all of them except also very, very alive, and real. Just looking at him made something rush up in Bruce’s chest, something also real and also alive until his heart clenched with it, and his chest felt tight. He didn’t want Steve to be disappointed, he realized.
“During the war we had these Victory gardens,” said Steve. “Do people still do those? They were community gardens, and everyone worked together to keep them up, but you could still have your own plot of land and your personal yield.”
“You want to start a co-op,” said Bruce.
Sheepishly, Steve smiled, scratching his chest. “Are you going to tell me there’s something wrong with cooperation, too?”
“No,” said Bruce. “No. I’m not going to tell you that.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
Bruce looked away. “I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“So,” Steve prodded. “Is it a good idea?”
“Yes. No.” Sometimes Bruce got these thoughts where he started thinking about, he didn’t know, brains and blood everywhere, and smashing skulls. He was pretty sure he did it just to mess with his own head. He’d always had a sick sense of humor. Bruce touched his knuckles, then made himself stop. “I think it sounds great,” he said.
“Neat,” said Steve, and beamed.
“You should think about where to get the money,” Bruce said.
“What?” said Steve. “Can’t I just . . . oh. But if I just front it,” he began, but stopped when Bruce shook his head.
“Try a local bank,” he said.
“See?” Grinning, Steve slapped him on the back. “I knew you’d come in handy.”
Bruce took a neat step to the side. “I’m not really so great with the touching.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Steve looked concerned enough that Bruce figured he’d better change the topic quick. He started walking. “So, you garden?”
“Nope,” said Steve.
“It’s like you’re expecting this co-op to do all the work,” Bruce said.
“Now you’re catching on.” Smiling again, Steve was keeping pace beside him. “I figure I can do a little research in town. There are more people who garden there. Then I can help dig the plot, then we can go from there.”
“I still think you should put the silver bells next to the cockle shells.”
“See,” said Steve. “This is why I come to you for advice.”
Bruce laughed, startling himself. He hadn’t heard that sound since Tony.
*
After Steve had been in the country about a month, the bike came roaring up to the cottage. Steve walked or jogged almost everywhere these days, except on his trips to Kampala. Surprised to hear the motor, Bruce went to the door; he was even more surprised when Steve vaulted off the bike and rushed up to the cottage. Steve was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Doctor Banner, will you come with me?” he said.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s Asha.”
“Is she worse?”
“She’s running a fever, and she said she can’t move her head. I wanted to take her to the clinic, but she says it hurts to move. And-”
“Of course I’ll come.” Bruce turned back into the cottage to get his bag.
Steve followed him. “Can you take my bike? I can come along after. I just want-”
“I can ride behind you.” Bruce got his bag, and looked at Steve’s concerned face. “I’m not that skittish.”
They went outside. Bruce put his bag in the pocket in the back, and Steve got on, then Bruce got on behind him. Then they were going, and Bruce yelled over the roar, “You should really wear a helmet.”
“What?” Steve tried to look over his shoulder.
Bruce put his lips by Steve’s ear. “You should wear a helmet,” he yelled.
“Well, you should hold on,” Steve yelled back, probably because Bruce’s arm was just sort of loosely wrapped around Steve’s waist, despite how fast they were going.
“I’m not going to die if I fall off,” Bruce yelled.
“Yes, but did you ever think that I might?”
Bruce thought about what was likely to happen if he fell off, and held tighter.
The orphanage was run by a nun named Faridah. It had been started in the late 1990s as a safe haven for child refugees displaced with in their own country, and continued to take in children orphaned by HIV. The orphanage was two buildings, one a dining hall and the other a dormitory. When Bruce and Steve arrived, most of the children were outside playing, but one of the bedrooms held a small girl on the top of a set of bunk beds.
Steve had been telling Bruce about the orphanage for the past two weeks, describing the children there and the work the nuns did. Apparently Faridah was well-connected to the community and sometimes shared land and business plans with neighbors. Faridah was the reason a bus route existed from Kampala to the nearby town. She was in her early sixties, a ripe old age for this country. When Bruce met her, she wore a brightly printed dress and an expression of concern.
Asha was a little girl of about twelve, closer in size to a child of nine. Her breathing was labored, her lips dry, and she barely took note of them when they came in the room. In those early days, simply looking at her would have made Bruce’s jaw clench; it would have been hard to loosen his fists. It was different now. Bruce knew how to make his hands gentle, and his voice kind.
He got out the stethoscope, laid it on her frail chest. Steve went out to the other children, while Faridah stood nearby. “I want you to take a deep breath,” Bruce said, in his clumsy Luganda.
“We teach English here,” said Faridah.
“Pardon,” said Bruce. “Asha, can you take another breath?”
Asha tried again, another rattling breath.
“Has she been throwing up?” said Bruce.
“No,” said Faridah. “She says her neck hurts.”
“Alright. Asha, this may hurt a little. Can you roll over on your tummy?”
She turned a little on the bed. Bruce lifted her hand to help her, but it was limp in his grasp. When he let go, her arm fell back to the bed.
“I’ll help you,” said Faridah.
“Thank you,” said Bruce. “Okay, Asha, I need to look at your back. I’m sorry if this hurts.”
Faridah came around the bed, and they got Asha turned over. Bruce carefully touched her neck, ran his hands along her spine, over her flower-print dress. Sometimes it helped to grind the tips of his teeth together, and think of things like bacteria. They were amazing things, billions upon billions of tiny miracles, and it was only happenstance that they killed people. It was a brutal thing, but Bruce sometimes found it strangely comforting. They never meant to hurt anyone at all; they only meant to live.
“It’s okay,” Bruce said, when the catch in her breathing told him that the touching hurt. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Faridah held Asha’s hand, but Asha didn’t seem to notice.
They turned her back over, Bruce running some other, less painless checks, then asking Faridah a couple more questions. “I’m pretty sure it’s meningitis,” Bruce said, taking off the stethoscope.
“I thought it was malaria,” she said.
“I thought so too,” said Bruce, “but she would be losing far more fluids.”
“What is it, then?”
“A complication of the tuberculosis,” said Bruce. “It’s an infection in the spine.”
“Will the treatments help?”
Swallowing, Bruce put the stethoscope in his bag. “I can order more medicine from Kampala.”
“He will help us.”
Bruce looked at Asha. “Steve’s a great guy,” he said.
Breaking into a smile, Faridah at last turned to him. “I was speaking of God. Perhaps you mistook my reverent tone?”
“I’m sure God’s a great guy, too.”
Faridah laughed. “I’ve heard you’re an odd one.”
“So, people are spreading rumors.”
“People always spread rumors.” Turning back to Asha, Faridah’s smile died. “Steve is splendid, but there comes a time when things do not rest in our hands.”
Bruce looked at Asha. “I’ve heard you’re very wise.”
Faridah laughed. “I can’t help it if some rumors are true.”
“I think Steve might break out into hives before saying anything untrue.” Bruce looked around. “He says you do good work.”
“He says that you do, too.”
“Proves the hives theory wrong, I guess.” Faridah raised her brows, so Bruce just said, “Maybe we have different definitions of good.”
“I’ve heard that as well,” said Faridah. When Bruce raised his own brows, she said, “Did you think yours was the only opinion Steve liked to get before doing the things he does here?”
“I sort of hoped it wasn’t,” said Bruce. “But I guess I thought it was.” His thumb ran over his fingers. “I sort of have this tendency to assume it’s always about me.”
“Maybe he likes you because you’re so humble.”
Her comment surprised a dry chuckle out of Bruce, but Faridah was looking at Asha. Her brown eyes were very large, weighted at the sides by lines of care and time. She looked like a strong woman, but also one who had seen far too much. She wasn’t anywhere near as old as Steve, but suddenly Bruce wondered whether Steve found it a little easier around people closer to his real age. Maybe it was just that much harder.
“It’s not about you,” Faridah said. “It’s not about Steve, and it’s not about me. It’s not even about our future, my family, or my children. Right now, it’s just about her.” She was still looking at Asha. “I don’t care what you say about money or charity. If you can help her, even just her, that’s all that matters.”
“Until the next child,” Bruce said.
“When life is difficult,” Faridah said, “we take one problem at a time.”
*
Go to: part 2
Author: lettered
Characters: Bruce Banner+Steve Rogers, or Bruce/Steve. Also includes off-screen Tony.
Rating: PG-13
Length: 26,000
Warnings: issues include ethics in the superhero genre, politics, patriotism, aid in Africa, HIV, homophobia, terrorism, religion, child abuse, brief allusion to suicide. If you think discussion of these things between the two main characters would bother you, I strongly encourage use of your back button.
Disclaimer: Characters aren’t mine. Title and poem belong to Eliot.
Summary: Steve goes to Uganda, ostensibly to fetch Bruce, who still doesn’t want to join the Avengers. Steve tries to figure out how to do the right thing; they both try to find their place in the world.
A/N: Thank you to honeylocusttree for the beta, promptness, and explanations. And I can’t even say how much of this fic is indebted to my_daroga. Thank you for listening, encouraging, reading, vetting, idea-sharing, concept-checking, and putting up with me. I’d say that you are Steve to my Bruce, but . . . I’m way taller than you, among other things. :o)
This comes after A Fine Spur (AO3 | DW | LJ), which is Natasha and Bruce (or Natasha/Bruce), but it doesn’t have to be read in order to get this one.
I am aware of the problematic nature of addressing these issues through the use of fandom and these characters in particular; it's partly why I wrote the fic. If anyone finds anything inaccurate or offensive herein, I would really like to know about it. For more information about aid and/or Uganda, please read the note at the end.
The Hollow Men
It was five months after New York and three months after Honduras when the motorcycle roared up to the cottage in Uganda.
Bruce went to the door to see what was going on, and was surprised to see a big dusty blond man in a leather jacket getting off his bike. The big dusty blond man hauled a big duffel bag off the back of the bike, then slung it over his shoulder as though it weighed nothing.
When he came up to the door, Bruce said, “Steve,” because he still couldn’t quite believe it.
“Hello, Doctor Banner.”
Mostly what Bruce couldn’t believe was that they would send him-him, out of all S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best and brightest. He was no longer expecting Tony, and they’d already sent Natasha, but, “Steve Rogers.”
“How are you doing?” Steve asked, and put out his hand.
It was large and strong, tanned, still lighter than most of the folks around here. His nails were well-groomed. He really wasn’t as dusty as he should be for someone who had come all this way. Then again, it was unclear how S.H.I.E.L.D. had found out where Bruce was. Steve could have come by private jet, for all Bruce knew. He could have ridden that motorcycle straight out the back and right up to the health center, and they would have told Steve where the muzungu was. Of course they would have; they were nothing but friendly there.
“Steve Rogers,” Bruce said again. “Say . . . what’re you doing here?” His voice was very flat.
Steve lowered his hand, smiling sheepishly. “Ostensibly I’m here to recruit you for S.H.I.E.L.D.”
“Okay,” said Bruce. “Sure. No. They already tried that. What’re you really here for?”
“Well.” Steve glanced out at the dusty road, grass, the scraggly trees. “Maybe just a bit of fresh air.”
“Uh-uh.” Bruce nodded, thumb running over his fingers. “I hear Prague is nice this time of year.”
Squinting, Steve turned back. “Yeah. I hear that too.”
Lingering there in the doorway, Bruce pursed his lips, wondering why it felt so bad to be rude. He turned into a huge monster and fought tanks, it shouldn’t be a big deal, but here he was and it was Steve Rogers, which made Bruce feel like he was leaving Abe Lincoln out in the cold. “Would you . . .” Bruce opened the door wider. “Come on in.”
“Thank you,” said Steve, and came in.
“Um, you can sit,” said Bruce.
Steve sat down on one of the stools, setting his bag down beside him. He started taking off his jacket.
“You want coffee?” Bruce asked, because he needed things to do with his hands.
“In this heat?” Laying his coat over the bag, Steve looked up in puzzlement.
“I’m making coffee,” said Bruce.
The cottage was more of a hut, really, but he called it a cottage. It was made mostly of mud bricks and clay, corrugated metal for a roof. There were two rooms, the second of which would eventually be the lab. Now it held only a safe for chemicals, a gas tank for the Meker burner, a laptop and a centrifuge. The main room had a kitchen-a corner with a propane burning oven, and a counter attached to the wall with some crates under it. It also had a bedroom in the other corner, a pallet with the requisite mosquito netting and another crate for clothes.
Bruce only had so many hide-outs, and he was pretty sure that S.H.I.E.L.D. knew all of them. It was time to build some new ones, start stockpiling gear-obviously not here, because . . . Steve Rogers.
He was sitting politely at the table while Bruce fired up the oven. “You live here?” Steve asked, also sounding polite. Making conversation like his mama taught him, no doubt.
“Why? Are you interested in real estate?” Bruce put a pan on top of the oven and poured water into it from a jug. Then he poured some coffee beans from a jar into a clay bucket, and started pounding them with a club, in and out, in and out.
“Maybe,” was all Steve said.
Bruce glanced at him. He appeared unfazed by the pounding, and curious about his surroundings. Right, because it was Steve Rogers, who probably couldn’t even think things that were unkind. “S.H.I.E.L.D. not treating you well?” Bruce asked, because he could be unkind all he wanted. He went back to pounding beans. “Thread count a little low? High rise a little high? They cook your steak a little rare?”
“Frankly, yes,” said Steve Rogers.
“Okay.” Bruce glanced at him again. “That’s not sarcasm.”
“No.” Steve met his eyes. Bruce was too far away and the light wasn’t very good, but he would lay money on the guess that they were blue. “It’s not.”
Bruce turned back to the beans. They needed to be sifted to get all of the shells out.
“I can’t get a job of my own,” said Steve. “I get a job with the government using my . . . skills, and that’s what I’m already doing. I get a job using those skills elsewhere, and I don’t know what they’re sending me into. I get another kind of job, I either can’t really use what I’m good at to help anyone, or else I can’t be relied upon to be there when they need me. So instead I’m living somewhere where everything is done for me, and . . . I don’t like it.”
Bruce emptied the sifted grounds into a cloth, then arranged the cloth over the bucket. He got up to check the water, and couldn’t help glancing at Steve.
The table was too little anyway, but Steve looked massive at it, thighs bunched under it and much too broad. Sunlight streamed in from the window, as though it shone specifically to frame his face, and Bruce had to look away. He wasn’t just Abraham Lincoln; he was like Daniel Boone. And Buzz Aldrin. A national treasure and all the right stuff.
The water was starting to bubble, so Bruce wrapped a towel around the handle of the pan and pulled it off the oven. He went back to pour the water over the cloth into the bucket. “You don’t see working for S.H.I.E.L.D. as a job?” he asked, making more of an effort to be polite. He poured the water a little bit at a time.
“Sure,” said Steve. “I get paid. I also get a hotel, three meals a day, a private gym-did you know that? I get a private gymnasium.”
“Life is hard,” Bruce agreed. He kept pouring.
“Yeah. Listen to me.” Steve chuckled. It was a self-deprecating chuckle, precisely the way Captain America would chuckle.
“Look.” Bruce glanced back at him, and then had to concentrate on the water. He thought it was not a good idea for him to look too much at Captain America’s perfect, wholesome face. “I didn’t mean to be a jerk. You have a problem. It’s not . . . unimportant. Have you tried . . . just moving out? Take your paycheck. Go somewhere else.”
“Yeah. I did that.”
Bruce poured the water. When the cloth started dipping down too far, he rummaged through one of the wood crates for some cups. “Um, do you want the one with the dead cockroach in it, or the other one?”
Steve just smiled. “Surprise me.”
It was immediate and wry, just as though Captain America had a sense of humor after all, and Bruce didn’t know why he wasn’t expecting it. “Sorry,” he said, opening the door to toss the cockroach out. “So you didn’t like living on your own?”
“It wasn’t quite that.” The corner of Steve’s mouth turned down, and even that looked self-deprecating; Bruce almost couldn’t stand it. “I couldn’t get the internet connected.”
“I’m sure someone could help you with that.” Bruce concentrated on pouring the last of the water into the bucket, then took the cloth off the top and squeezed the grounds. He dipped the first cup into the bucket.
“Yeah.” Steve snorted. “Tony Stark.”
Bruce raised his brows. “He saved the world.” He poured the rest of the bucket into the other cup, then gave one to Steve. “Thought you’d like him better after that.”
“Thank you,” Steve said. “It smells very good.”
“What about S.H.I.E.L.D.? I’m sure they could give you someone to help get you started.” Bruce leaned against the opposite wall, holding his own cup.
“Of course they would,” said Steve. “The internet’s just an example. There are just so many things that I don’t know, that I find it kind of hard to really . . . cut ties.”
“Ah,” said Bruce. “Is this far away enough?”
“Not really.” Smiling, Steve opened his bag. “They gave me this”-he tossed a satphone on table-“this”-a satellite internet terminal-“and this.” He pulled something round and metal out of his jacket pocket, probably a bug. “They didn’t tell me about this one”-he tossed the bug on the table with the other things-“and I don’t even know what that is.” He nodded at the terminal.
“Well.” Bruce’s lips twisted. “It’ll solve your internet problems. If Uganda isn’t far enough, did you want to go to outer space? Because you’re kind of like Buzz Aldrin.”
“Yeah,” said Steve. “Who’s he? I mean, I’ve got all the presidents memorized, so there’s that, and all the wars we’ve fought and the movie stars and I know who Elvis, Howard Stern, and Sarah Palin are, but people keep-they keep doing that.”
“I’m sorry,” said Bruce.
“No,” said Steve. “It’s okay. I’m telling you all my problems; I don’t mean to. I just mean that . . . sometimes it’s easier. Sometimes it’s easier just to do what Fury tells me to, to let them . . .” He waved his hand over the assorted electronics on the table.
“I meant that I was sorry you know who Howard Stern and Sarah Palin are.” Holding his coffee, hips leaning on the wall, Bruce watched Steve chuckle, running a hand through his blond hair. Bruce stopped looking and started working on getting the coffee down. “Buzz Aldrin made the first moon landing,” he said, after a long, burning swallow.
“I thought that was Neil Armstrong.” Steve smiled ruefully. “It’s not like I haven’t done a lot of reading.
“Neil Armstrong was the mission commander. Aldrin was the pilot.”
“Oh, thank you.” Steve was quiet for a moment. “Excuse me, do you have any . . .”
Bruce looked up at Steve’s vague gesturing, even though he didn’t really want to. “What?”
Steve gestured again to his coffee. “Milk, or-it’s okay if you don’t,” he rushed to add.
“Milk.” Mouth twisting again, Bruce squatted on the floor, setting down his coffee. “Let me see. I have . . . um . . .” He sorted through another crate. “Baby formula.”
“I didn’t know you were expecting.”
Bruce smiled. “Yeah, thanks. I’ve got sugar, but it’s . . . stuck.” He produced a box and tossed it at Steve.
Steve caught it with one broad hand and it made Bruce want to look away again. “I bet I can unstick it,” Steve said. “Thank you.” Opening the box, he looked at the brown brick inside, shaking it a little. It had probably gotten wet or something.
Great, so Bruce was giving Daniel Boone- Paul Revere?-wet sugar.
Steve put a corner of the brick between two fingers and just . . . pinched, and it crumbled. He put the pinch in the coffee and carefully cupped the remaining loose sugar back into the box, folding the sides closed. Then he actually checked the floor, as if concerned that he had spilled. “Why do you have baby formula?”
“For babies.” Bruce turned back to the crate. “You want something to eat?” He needed to do something else with his hands. He shouldn’t have had the coffee; it made him jittery.
“Sure,” said Steve. “Thanks.”
“Goats’ or cows’ milk are better, if you have them,” Bruce said, rummaging in the crate. “I mean, for feeding babies. But there was one girl in Kampala . . . I thought I had . . . You want a banana?”
“Thanks.” Steve caught the banana, too. “This coffee is very good. I think I got the one without the cockroach. Not that I’m complaining.”
“I’d offer you a shower. You’ll have to do with a cup and a pump outside.”
“Thank you,” said Steve. “Don’t worry about it. The girl in Kampala?”
“Mm? Oh.”
Sophie had been nine months old when Bruce determined that both of her parents had cholera. Her eight year old brother, Marcus, had watched Bruce with steely eyes whenever Bruce had prepared fluids, administered them to the parents, brought them antibiotics. Bruce had been sure Marcus hated him, perhaps even suspected him of wrong-doing. Then one day Marcus had looked at him in that hard way, and said, “I’m going to be a doctor like you.”
“Oh,” Bruce had said, stupidly, ineffectually.
“But I will stay until everything is better,” Marcus had said.
Bruce scratched the back of his neck, remembering that day in Kampala. It had been raining, and the sound on a tin roof could sound like gun shot. The only other time Marcus had spoken to him of his own volition, he’d asked if he could try on Bruce’s glasses. “Keep them,” Bruce had said, because he could buy another pair.
“Don’t want to talk about it?” said Steve.
Bruce just shook his head. “There just wasn’t enough milk,” he said. “That was all.” He finished sorting the crate and put it back against the wall. He leaned against the wall beside it, waving vaguely at the room. “I was working on getting some equipment.”
“Milk equipment? They’re called cows.”
Bruce smiled. “No. I mean . . . all this.”
Steve’s smile fell away. “Doctor Banner, I hope you don’t feel insufficient on my account.”
“It’s not that. It’s . . .” Standing up, Bruce ran his thumb over his fingers. “I’d like to set up a lab. Somewhere that’s at least sterile, if not conducive to research.” One hand formed a fist and the other moved over it again and again. He better put the sugar away. “It’s difficult to get anything done with the military always two steps behind me.”
“I guess we have similar problems,” Steve said.
Bruce put the sugar back in the crate. “I guess.”
“So,” Steve said politely. “You feed babies. You help people here? I was under the impression your degree wasn’t medical.”
“It isn’t.” Bruce grimaced, then realized he could wash out the bucket, also. It was a waste of water, but then he could go and get water, too. He poured the remaining water in the pan into the bucket, sloshed it around, then tossed the water out the door.
“Then what do you do here?” said Steve.
Bruce put more water from the jug into the bucket, sloshed and tossed again. Then he guessed the bucket was as rinsed out as it was going to get, so instead he just stood there by the door, looking out. The sun was shining brightly, the long grass very still. “Why do you ask?” he said finally, after a long moment.
There was a beat of silence. “Just making conversation, Doctor Banner.”
“That’s nice.” Bruce turned back into the dark room. “What are you doing here, Steve?”
“I told you-”
“You told me. You’re tired of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s chain; I get that. But you said you’re not here to bring me in for Fury, and I don’t know, maybe it’s because you’re you, or maybe that serum makes you physically incapable of lying, but for whatever reason, I believe you. But I mean, what are you going to do? See the sights, or . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not actually really a people person.”
Steve was quiet for a while, and Bruce couldn’t help himself. He looked over at him. Steve just sat there, looking back at him. “I just want to help,” he said finally. “That’s really all I ever wanted.”
“That sounds fun,” said Bruce. “It was nice seeing you.”
Steve turned his head, looking out the window. “I thought I might stay here a while.”
“No.” Bruce’s lips twisted, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “No,” he said again. “That’s really not such a great idea.”
“Why not?” Steve looked back at him. “Because you’re here?”
Bruce could feel his lips twist further. “No. Because what are you going to do here, Steve? Punch poverty in the face?”
“With all due respect, Doctor Banner,” Steve said, standing up, putting the electronics back in his bag. “I thought I might just do some good. Thanks for the coffee.”
Then Steve was brushing past him, walking out into the sunlight, and Bruce was standing there in the doorway and the darkness, watching as he revved up the engine of his big, shiny bike. “I was afraid he’d say that,” Bruce muttered.
Time to run again, Banner.
*
When Bruce was a kid, they still had those little books in the “American Heroes” series that you could buy for a dollar. Bruce had bought the Captain America one because he’d wanted to learn more about the science behind the serum. He’d never thought he was interested in Steve Rogers for the man himself.
And yet, when Bruce had performed the experiment, he’d done it on himself.
He couldn’t think why. All evidence suggested Steve Rogers was the kindest, the fairest, the best, and you couldn’t make that. You couldn’t engineer it in a bottle; Steve wasn’t Captain America because of the serum.
Meanwhile, Bruce wasn’t honest; he wasn’t fair, and he wasn’t kind. He had always been arrogant, and despite everything Dad said-maybe because of everything Dad said-he full-heartedly believed in his own brilliance. He’d never been able to kill his passion to know, and sure, curiosity sounded innocent-until you took it too far without considering the consequences. He’d been so irresponsible and-and careless; he’d been careless.
(Even now, he couldn’t help but ask the questions that should never be answered: if the Tesseract could open portals, what other worlds . . . ? And, if the Tesseract could build that kind of protection around itself, what kind of force field . . . ? And, if Loki’s scepter could control men’s minds, what elements was it comprised of, what wavelengths could interact with the human psyche in such a way, and-could it be replicated. . . ?)
Part of the reason Phase Two of the Tesseract had bothered him was that he’d thought they’d already learned that lesson. He thought that lesson had been him. He remembered talking to Steve about what Fury had been planning before they found out about Phase Two, and he had really wanted him to understand. Say that something isn’t right, he had wanted to tell him, because if someone like Steve could see something was wrong then it must be true.
I would have made him smarter, if I had made him, Bruce had thought. If I had made him, I would have made him me.
*
When Steve pulled up on his bike outside Bruce’s cottage four days later, Bruce realized that if they were letting Steve stay here, it might mean at least that Fury wasn’t going to send someone else out after him who was less . . . forthcoming. If he was going to have to deal with S.H.I.E.L.D., Bruce preferred the straight story-not in the least because of what had happened in Honduras.
So Bruce went out and greeted him, and gave Steve the two-bit tour. It went like this:
“Chickens, water pump. House, and now we have more chickens.” They walked on the red dirt road, half a mile from Bruce’s cottage. Tall grass stood on either side of the road. Far up the lane, men were hacking at it with machetes.
“House.” Steve looked at the little shack made out of corrugated metal.
“Banda,” Bruce said. “Cottage.”
“Why don’t you wear shoes?”
“What?” Bruce looked over at him. Steve had taken off his shirt a while ago, sleeves tied around his waist, wearing just an undershirt. Bruce looked at all that smooth gold skin and thought, you’ll get burned, but he didn’t say anything. If Steve wanted to get burned he could get burned, except he probably wouldn’t because his skin was bio-engineered-except if it was, then he shouldn’t have freckles. Then Bruce realized that Captain America had freckles-he was looking at Captain America’s freckles-George Washington’s very own freckles. Bruce looked away.
“They say you’ll get diseases, if you don’t wear your shoes,” Steve prodded.
“I don’t really get sick,” Bruce said.
Steve smiled. “Me neither.”
“Occasionally I do get a little green about the gills.”
“That’s gotta be difficult.”
Bruce’s thumb ran over his fingers. “Just have to be careful.”
“I’ve gotten to know the area a little. Most of the people around here seem to know you. You work at the clinic?”
“Sometimes. Not really.” Bruce shrugged. “Sometimes I teach. There’s a school over that way.” He nodded to a clear spot in the distance. “More chickens. Look, a cow.”
“Teach?”
Bruce’s thumb was still running over his fingers. “English. Science. Sanitation. I engineer mosquito netting. Diagnose TB. Eat avocados. Research terrestrial gamma ray flashes; they have good thunderstorms here. The day I got here, I helped birth a calf. It’s a mixture, really.”
“Are the avocados good?”
Bruce smiled. “Yeah. They’re good.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever had an avocado.” Steve looked down at him thoughtfully. “When you said you make diagnoses-you do that even though you don’t have a license?”
“You wanna tell the authorities?” Now Bruce’s hands were making fists, so he put them in his pockets. “Because I’m pretty sure no one in the immediate vicinity cares.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Steve stopped in the middle of the dusty road.
Bruce sort of wanted to keep walking, but no that would be rude, and Steve was Captain America. He was practically Paul Newman, or something. Most of those other iconic American actors-John Wayne, Marlon Brando-you could say something bad about, but not Paul Newman. His face was on salad dressing. Reluctantly, Bruce turned back, not quite meeting Steve’s eyes.
“You do good here,” said Steve. “That’s what I meant.”
“Want to give me a medal, Steve?”
“No.”
Frowning, Steve looked down at him, and he was so broad that he made Bruce feel small. The thing was that Bruce was four or five times his size, when he wanted to be. Bruce still didn’t look at him.
“I want to do good things,” said Steve. “I want to help people, serve my country.”
Bruce’s lips twisted. “Maybe you should go back to your country, then.” He started walking.
Steve fell right in stride. “When they gave me that serum . . . I didn’t know what I was. They gave me that costume, too, and do you know what I was then? What I did? I performed. I did commercial spots. Advertisements. I was a symbol, but what was I a symbol of?”
“Shaving cream? Did you ever learn to dance a jig?” Bruce’s hands were still thrust in his pockets. “I’ve always wanted to see a jig. I’m not sure jigs actually exist.”
“You think I’m whining,” said Steve. “Maybe I am.”
“No, I’m listening.” Bruce resisted the urge to sound as insincere as possible.
“You have every right to think ill of me.” Steve put his hands in his pockets, too.
Bruce stopped. Steve stopped too, standing there in his undershirt, his face so open and so honest that Bruce sort of wanted to destroy it. He looked away. “I don’t have the right to think ill of anyone.”
“I’ve talked to people from around here,” Steve pointed out. “They say that you’re a good man.”
Bruce shook his head, fists tightening in his pockets. “I’m not here to help people.”
“You were helping people in Calcutta.”
“I wasn’t really helping.”
Steve frowned. “Then what were you doing?”
There was this slum in Kolkata, about five blocks away from where Bruce had lived. He could have gone to this slum once a day, cleaned up every bit of trash and refuse, and it would still be littered with plastic bags and feces the next morning. He could have visited a patient every hour, and three of them would still have died every week. He could have told women that he knew that some of the things they had been raised to believe were entirely wrong, and they would still have married men who beat them.
He never tried to tell any women what their place in society was. He never tried to tell anyone what they should do with their streets. It wasn’t as if these things worked in America; Bruce hadn’t any illusion that they would work anywhere else, and even if he could have visited patients every hour, he didn’t.
Sometimes he stayed in the room he rented from his landlady, and through the walls, he could hear her sing. She had a little battery-operated machine that played long, buzzing tones in scales, and she would sing in each tone until the note changed. A vocal exercise, she said. The first time Bruce had heard it, it had made his ears itch, the tones discordant to his ears. Eventually, he had begun to think about the many, many ways to divide harmonic frequency, about the cilia in the inner ear that measured vibration of the fluid and sent these measurements to the brain, and he realized it was beautiful.
Before the accident, Bruce used to think that everything could be solved by science. Only once he had realized this wasn’t true did he begin to appreciate that what it lacked in solutions, it made up in loveliness.
“Doctor Banner?” Steve asked. “What were you doing in Calcutta?”
“Getting by,” said Bruce. “Like a lot of people.”
“I can see how that might be nice.”
“What?”
Steve’s gaze was very level, for all that he had to look down. “Being like other people.” He looked off into the sunlight, squinting, hand on his hip. He should have been a cowboy in a field; he should have been on the cover of Grapes of Wrath. His face should be on salad dressing; he should have walked on the moon.
“So, teaching, treating sick people, assisting at the birth of baby cows-that’s not called helping anymore? What do they call it these days? Being a nuisance?” Smiling crookedly, Steve ran a hand through his hair. “Trust me. I’ve been a nuisance before.”
Bruce pressed his lips together. “I’m just saying it’s hard to make a difference.”
“I don’t want it to be easy,” Steve said. “I want it to be right.”
“You’re looking at a poster boy for ‘not right,’ Captain.”
“No.”
Steve’s hand descended on his shoulder and Bruce didn’t do anything, didn’t move or flinch or anything, but inwardly he was thinking that if Steve was really going to stick around, this casual touching thing pretty much had to stop.
“I think for once,” Steve said, “you’re doing better than the rest of us.” He kind of squeezed Bruce’s shoulder-Bruce guessed it was a 1940s thing-then turned, walked down the dusty road. Sunlight shone down on his shoulders, bathing him in brightness.
*
Four days after Steve’s arrival, Bruce walked into the village to find Steve was over in the southwestern corner of it, digging a hole. Some women nearby were watching him as they ground millet, occasionally exchanging smiles. Children-some in clothing, some without-occasionally ran up to him and then away, laughing and smiling. A young man stood close to the hole, leaning on a pole, a group of men further away using more poles to churn the earth with straw and clay.
Bruce stood there for a little while, watching. No one seemed to think it odd that Steve Rogers was digging a hole in the village. Everyone in the immediate vicinity seemed quite pleased with it, actually. After a minute, one of the children saw Bruce, a boy named Julius. Julius raised his hand and waved, but didn’t come running over as he usually did when he saw him. Instead he went back to watching Steve.
Then Steve looked up, saw Bruce, and smiled. He’d done away with the shirt completely this time, red earth streaked down his front and across his jeans. He got out of the hole-thigh deep-and pulled a white t-shirt over his head, just like any gentleman would. When he got closer, Bruce could see gold stubbled on his jaw.
“Very manly,” Bruce commented, without much inflection.
Steve had stopped offering his hand to shake every time they greeted, but he still said, “Hello, Doctor Banner,” in that formal way that seemed so utterly casual to him. “Stream’s a mile, there and back.” He shrugged. “So I decided to dig a well.”
“We all like a morning shave,” Bruce said through five days’ worth of beard.
Laughing, Steve self-consciously scratched the stubble on his chin. “It looks good on you. Distinguished.”
“No one’s ever tried to call me that before.”
“It’s true, Professor.”
“Ah.” Bruce nodded towards the villagers. Some of the people called him that, even though he was about as far from a professor as they. “I see you’ve made friends.”
“Yeah,” said Steve. “Come on.”
They walked over to the well site, where the young man leaning on the pole was talking to a woman of about his age. Steve introduced him to the couple, Esther and Muhindo, saying that he was going to stay with them. Bruce shook hands and smiled, talking to Esther about her brother, Solomon, who she said worked at the clinic. Bruce knew him vaguely, and they talked about how busy the clinic was and how it was low on supplies, and Esther said that Steve had already mentioned he could bring antibiotics from Kampala.
Muhindo talked to Steve in English about how long it might take to build the well, but when Bruce turned from Esther Steve said, “You’re going to have to teach me Luganda.”
“Mm-hm.” Bruce pressed his lips together. “Can I talk to you?”
Steve looked from Esther to Muhindo, then back to Bruce again. “Okay,” he said. “Be right back.”
They walked up the road a bit, until Steve stopped and said, “Alright, I give. What’s eating you, doc?”
Bruce looked back at the hole in the ground, the children laughing and playing. Above was all blue sky; down the road, a boy wheeled a bicycle laden with bananas. Even the shacks with their tin roofs were beautiful things when seen abstractly, without the context of the illness and the privation that so often contained inside. When the world was as pretty as a painting, Bruce sometimes wanted to tear it to shreds, just because he could.
“You can’t do this,” Bruce said, thumb running over his fingers.
Something ticked in Steve’s jaw, but his eyes were steady and warm and kind. “Learn Luganda? Because I’m already picking it up. I know how to say banana, anyway.”
“You can’t just come in here and fix everything.”
“I’m not trying to fix everything,” said Steve. “I’m building a well.”
Bruce grimaced. “And bringing in antibiotics.”
“You have something against antibiotics?” When Bruce glared at him, Steve said, “Kampala’s not all that far on the bike. Just an hour or two. It’s not like I’m going to buy out the pharmaceutical industry. I’ll just spend what I have.”
“And then what?”
“What?”
“You build a well, you buy some drugs, and then what?”
“Maybe I’ll build a church.”
“A church.”
“The old one burned down.” Steve looked down at him for a moment. “You’re upset.”
Bruce’s fists tightened. “I’m not upset.”
Steve just kept looking at him. “Do we need to go elsewhere?”
Do we need to go elsewhere, just as though they could walk somewhere and everything would be alright; no one would get hurt. For the first time, Bruce realized that with Steve there, it might actually be possible. Bruce rather thought the Hulk could break him in half, if he really wanted, but it would probably wear him down enough that he wouldn’t do all sorts of other damage, and who knew, Steve might not even die. The problem was that Steve really would have escorted him to the savannah so that Bruce could have a temper tantrum that just might kill him, all in the name of protecting some innocents he’d only just met.
Bruce breathed, and then he said, “Smoky the Bear.”
The corner of Steve’s mouth turned. “Who?”
“Sorry.” Bruce smiled mirthlessly. “Must have been late forties. Only you can prevent forest fires.”
Steve frowned. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
“Yeah. I’ve been trying to settle on an American icon-Thomas Jefferson, Sam Houston, Norman Rockwell-someone you remind me of. I think it’s Smoky the Bear.”
“I knew all three of those,” said Steve. “I really enjoy Mister Rockwell’s paintings.”
Bruce’s fists loosened. “Aldrin was really the only modern example I had. I mean, besides Clark Kent.”
“I know Clark Kent. I read comics.”
“I mean Christopher Reeve Clark Kent,” said Bruce. “It’s a very specific example.”
“Christopher Reeve?” said Steve politely.
“Gregory Peck,” said Bruce. “Only more.”
“Mister Peck was a Broadway star, wasn’t he?”
Bruce couldn’t help a dry chuckle. “I keep not going back far enough. It’s a pity, because Atticus Finch.”
Steve shook his head, smiling. For a moment, Bruce thought he saw what Steve might have looked like younger, before the serum-boyish. Really sweet. “I’m pretty sure Luganda’s going to be an easier language than modern English,” Steve said. “At least I’ll know I don’t know anything.”
Looking over at the hole Steve had dug in the ground, Bruce swallowed a sigh. “Look. I know all this . . .” He waved a vague hand. “I know you want to help.”
“I do,” said Steve. “But I haven’t been here very long. You’ve been here longer. And you’ve definitely been in the twentieth century for longer, so you may know how to help better than I do.”
Shaking his head, Bruce said, “I’m not-”
“If you say you’re the poster-boy for not helping, I’ll get angry.” Steve smiled his easy, charming smile, the one that looked just like baseball and apple pie. “You won’t like me when I’m angry.”
“Funny,” said Bruce.
Steve’s smile faded. “Doctor Banner, if you think there’s something wrong with what I’m doing, maybe you could just tell me what you think I should do instead.”
Bruce didn’t look at him. Instead he looked back at the village, the children playing in the sunlight. Some of the kids were lying on their stomachs, peering over the edge of the hole. Julius was pretending to push another boy in. He wasn’t always exactly nice.
“Giving people drugs isn’t a bad thing,” Bruce said at last, turning back to Steve. “But things like that are . . . quick fixes.”
“I’m listening, Doctor Banner.”
“Hand-outs are only going to delay the inevitable.”
Frowning, Steve said, “Don’t you think that’s cynical?”
Bruce’s lips twisted. “Steve, you’re stronger than any other human being on his own. You can virtually move mountains. Then you leave, and what happens? Water diverts around the mountain, the village floods, people fight, and now you’ve got this mess where there wasn’t one before. The whole unlucky place would have been better had you never come at all.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from personal experience.”
Bruce’s thumb moved over his fingers. “Why do you think I don’t want to work with S.H.I.E.L.D.? They’re trying to save the world, aren’t they?”
Steve smiled, rather grimly. “High rise too high?”
“Thirty thousand foot drop.”
Steve shook his head. “Director Fury’s not going to keep you in that cage.”
“They already did.” Bruce kept his arms crossed. “So it wasn’t Fury. The point is, I’m the mountain. S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to think it’s in the world’s best interest to move me wherever they see fit, no matter what kind of collateral damage that could cause. You want to know why I don’t want to save the world, Steve? It’s because before the Tesseract, I was Phase Two.”
Steve was quiet for a long time. His narrowed eyes slanted to the side, strong jaw held tight. The solid flow from his shoulder up his neck made something poetic in the line of his bowed head, like a contemplative statue, like a benevolent saint. The light caught in his hair.
Bruce longed to smash him into pieces, said statue crushed utterly to dust, because it was an illusion, all of it. Steve Rogers was a dream of heaven and of angels. Bruce was the reality: men had never been anything other than monsters.
Carefully, Bruce unfolded his arms. “I didn’t mean you couldn’t build your well,” he said gently.
Steve looked up. “I think I understand.”
“Yeah.” Bruce turned to walk back to the village, to Steve’s hole in the ground, but Steve caught his arm.
“Thank you,” he said.
Only someone like Steve would ever thank you for attempting to shatter his comfortable illusions. His voice sounded as deep and full of meaning as that well.
“Webale,” was all Bruce said: thank you in Luganda.
*
Steve built the well in half the time it would have taken five grown men to do the same job. Then he started on the church, and almost everyone in the village fell in love with him. It would have been the same in any village anywhere, whether he was building wells or working at the local grocery. It would have been like that in any American small town; it would have been like that on an island in Japan even during wartime.
Steve was just that sort of man; his beauty may have been a cultural touchstone, but his kindness and his generosity were a universal language. He was charismatic in a way that made it difficult even for people who didn’t want to like him not to like him, which made it extremely hard for Bruce.
Steve always seemed to be around. When he wasn’t at the church site or in the village, he was at the clinic bringing something to Solomon for Ester, he was stopping in the road to help someone carry chickens. One day he came to the school and found Bruce there teaching a class.
He didn’t teach the little kids, but some of the village’s teenagers were interested in going to Kampala to seek jobs and higher education, while a few of the assistants at the clinic were just interested in learning more so that they could better support their community. The Ugandan physicians at the clinic were overworked, and didn’t have time in after-hours to feed their staff’s interest in biology. Bruce had time. He had all the time in the world.
He was writing on the blackboard, wearing his glasses and talking to Solomon and a girl in her late teens, Irene. Wherever he was, Bruce found it hard not to talk over people’s heads, and here, translation was particularly a problem, since his grasp of the language was not the best. Solomon and Irene, however, besides speaking English relatively well, were also exceptionally clever, and Bruce found that he was enjoying himself until he saw Steve sitting in the back.
He was lounging on one of the benches, leaning against the brick wall, a fond, lazy smile on his face. Bruce wasn’t sure who he was looking at-Irene, or maybe Solomon, or maybe he just found the whole scene quaint or idyllic somehow. The thought made Bruce’s jaw clench. Then Steve caught Bruce looking at him, and grinned.
Later they went outside, and Bruce took off his glasses.
“I see why they call you a professor,” said Steve. “I always needed glasses. I never wore them because I always thought they made me look like more of a wimp than I was already.”
“Thanks,” said Bruce.
“That’s not what I meant,” Steve said. “I meant-I don’t think it’s true, what they say about glasses. You look good. Really smart.”
He looked so earnest in that moment that Bruce took pity on him. “As I understand it, four eyes have become rather attractive, since your time.”
Steve chuckled ruefully. “Sorry. I was really weedy. You know-the kid they all made fun of. I was just . . .” He gestured self-consciously. “Used to it.”
Bruce turned away from the school. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.” He was pretty sure he lied less because he had anything to hide, and rather more because it amused him to make jokes that no one but himself got. God, but he was a sardonic bastard.
“Yeah.” Steve just laughed, walking with him. “You were good back there. Those kids really listen to you.”
Bruce’s mouth twisted. “Don’t call them kids.”
“Sorry?” Steve said, surprised.
Steve hadn’t meant to sound patronizing; of course he hadn’t. Bruce just shook his head. He could feel Steve glancing sidelong at him, and remained resolutely facing forward.
“I wanted to start a garden,” Steve said, after a moment.
Bruce thought of Adam and Eve, and said nothing.
“I wanted to get your thoughts on it.” Stopping, Steve turned to him. They were a little down the road from the school house now, the chickens wandering around them.
“You should definitely put your pretty maids all in a row,” Bruce said.
“I thought a lot about what you said,” Steve said, just as if Bruce wasn’t an asshole. “I don’t want to interfere. I don’t want to cause problems for anyone here; I just want to do some good.”
“I shouldn’t have said those things,” Bruce said. “It wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry. I’m not your moral authority.”
“Thanks, but I can make my own decisions, Doctor Banner. I respect you. I want your advice.”
Steve was looking at him with calmness and with confidence, and Bruce just felt utterly blank inside. It was almost as if what Steve had said didn’t register at all.
Tony had respected him. Tony probably would have died rather than have said it in that way, but somehow Tony’s respect was comfortable. Tony respected him on a basis of intelligence and that was okay, because even though Bruce hated his own arrogance, he still knew that he was brilliant. But it wasn’t like Tony walked around respecting Bruce on the grounds of moral decency. That had been the problem with Tony, basically.
And many things had gone wrong with Natasha, but the thing Bruce had really, really liked about her was that she was never going to say that she trusted him.
“You look like I just kicked your puppy,” said Steve. “Is it really that shocking?”
“I never had a puppy,” Bruce said.
Steve grinned. “Maybe that’s your problem.”
Bruce thought about his father and then stopped thinking altogether. “So you want to start a garden,” he said.
“Right.” Running a hand through his hair, Steve looked back up the path at the school. “I was thinking a vegetable garden. So there’s food to eat. Then, if people save money on food, they can expand the garden. Eventually they could sell food from it.”
It wasn’t exactly a bad idea. Many of the men in the village and surrounding area harvested cocoa. Others sold cows, goats, and milk, or worked at the cement factory in town, several kilometers away. The women often didn’t have time to make an additional income, but gardening was something both the women and the male farmers might be able to manage. “First, you’d have to make sure someone actually wants a garden,” Bruce pointed out.
Steve nodded. “I talked to Esther, Keisha, and Lillian. And they introduced me to Faridah-do you know Faridah?” Bruce shook his head, and Steve went on, “She knows everyone. She said there’s interest.”
Gazing off into the sunlight, Steve had his hands on his hips. He should have a boot on a rock and be planting a flag or something; Bruce didn’t know; he was all out of icons because Steve was all of them except also very, very alive, and real. Just looking at him made something rush up in Bruce’s chest, something also real and also alive until his heart clenched with it, and his chest felt tight. He didn’t want Steve to be disappointed, he realized.
“During the war we had these Victory gardens,” said Steve. “Do people still do those? They were community gardens, and everyone worked together to keep them up, but you could still have your own plot of land and your personal yield.”
“You want to start a co-op,” said Bruce.
Sheepishly, Steve smiled, scratching his chest. “Are you going to tell me there’s something wrong with cooperation, too?”
“No,” said Bruce. “No. I’m not going to tell you that.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
Bruce looked away. “I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“So,” Steve prodded. “Is it a good idea?”
“Yes. No.” Sometimes Bruce got these thoughts where he started thinking about, he didn’t know, brains and blood everywhere, and smashing skulls. He was pretty sure he did it just to mess with his own head. He’d always had a sick sense of humor. Bruce touched his knuckles, then made himself stop. “I think it sounds great,” he said.
“Neat,” said Steve, and beamed.
“You should think about where to get the money,” Bruce said.
“What?” said Steve. “Can’t I just . . . oh. But if I just front it,” he began, but stopped when Bruce shook his head.
“Try a local bank,” he said.
“See?” Grinning, Steve slapped him on the back. “I knew you’d come in handy.”
Bruce took a neat step to the side. “I’m not really so great with the touching.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Steve looked concerned enough that Bruce figured he’d better change the topic quick. He started walking. “So, you garden?”
“Nope,” said Steve.
“It’s like you’re expecting this co-op to do all the work,” Bruce said.
“Now you’re catching on.” Smiling again, Steve was keeping pace beside him. “I figure I can do a little research in town. There are more people who garden there. Then I can help dig the plot, then we can go from there.”
“I still think you should put the silver bells next to the cockle shells.”
“See,” said Steve. “This is why I come to you for advice.”
Bruce laughed, startling himself. He hadn’t heard that sound since Tony.
*
After Steve had been in the country about a month, the bike came roaring up to the cottage. Steve walked or jogged almost everywhere these days, except on his trips to Kampala. Surprised to hear the motor, Bruce went to the door; he was even more surprised when Steve vaulted off the bike and rushed up to the cottage. Steve was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Doctor Banner, will you come with me?” he said.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s Asha.”
“Is she worse?”
“She’s running a fever, and she said she can’t move her head. I wanted to take her to the clinic, but she says it hurts to move. And-”
“Of course I’ll come.” Bruce turned back into the cottage to get his bag.
Steve followed him. “Can you take my bike? I can come along after. I just want-”
“I can ride behind you.” Bruce got his bag, and looked at Steve’s concerned face. “I’m not that skittish.”
They went outside. Bruce put his bag in the pocket in the back, and Steve got on, then Bruce got on behind him. Then they were going, and Bruce yelled over the roar, “You should really wear a helmet.”
“What?” Steve tried to look over his shoulder.
Bruce put his lips by Steve’s ear. “You should wear a helmet,” he yelled.
“Well, you should hold on,” Steve yelled back, probably because Bruce’s arm was just sort of loosely wrapped around Steve’s waist, despite how fast they were going.
“I’m not going to die if I fall off,” Bruce yelled.
“Yes, but did you ever think that I might?”
Bruce thought about what was likely to happen if he fell off, and held tighter.
The orphanage was run by a nun named Faridah. It had been started in the late 1990s as a safe haven for child refugees displaced with in their own country, and continued to take in children orphaned by HIV. The orphanage was two buildings, one a dining hall and the other a dormitory. When Bruce and Steve arrived, most of the children were outside playing, but one of the bedrooms held a small girl on the top of a set of bunk beds.
Steve had been telling Bruce about the orphanage for the past two weeks, describing the children there and the work the nuns did. Apparently Faridah was well-connected to the community and sometimes shared land and business plans with neighbors. Faridah was the reason a bus route existed from Kampala to the nearby town. She was in her early sixties, a ripe old age for this country. When Bruce met her, she wore a brightly printed dress and an expression of concern.
Asha was a little girl of about twelve, closer in size to a child of nine. Her breathing was labored, her lips dry, and she barely took note of them when they came in the room. In those early days, simply looking at her would have made Bruce’s jaw clench; it would have been hard to loosen his fists. It was different now. Bruce knew how to make his hands gentle, and his voice kind.
He got out the stethoscope, laid it on her frail chest. Steve went out to the other children, while Faridah stood nearby. “I want you to take a deep breath,” Bruce said, in his clumsy Luganda.
“We teach English here,” said Faridah.
“Pardon,” said Bruce. “Asha, can you take another breath?”
Asha tried again, another rattling breath.
“Has she been throwing up?” said Bruce.
“No,” said Faridah. “She says her neck hurts.”
“Alright. Asha, this may hurt a little. Can you roll over on your tummy?”
She turned a little on the bed. Bruce lifted her hand to help her, but it was limp in his grasp. When he let go, her arm fell back to the bed.
“I’ll help you,” said Faridah.
“Thank you,” said Bruce. “Okay, Asha, I need to look at your back. I’m sorry if this hurts.”
Faridah came around the bed, and they got Asha turned over. Bruce carefully touched her neck, ran his hands along her spine, over her flower-print dress. Sometimes it helped to grind the tips of his teeth together, and think of things like bacteria. They were amazing things, billions upon billions of tiny miracles, and it was only happenstance that they killed people. It was a brutal thing, but Bruce sometimes found it strangely comforting. They never meant to hurt anyone at all; they only meant to live.
“It’s okay,” Bruce said, when the catch in her breathing told him that the touching hurt. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Faridah held Asha’s hand, but Asha didn’t seem to notice.
They turned her back over, Bruce running some other, less painless checks, then asking Faridah a couple more questions. “I’m pretty sure it’s meningitis,” Bruce said, taking off the stethoscope.
“I thought it was malaria,” she said.
“I thought so too,” said Bruce, “but she would be losing far more fluids.”
“What is it, then?”
“A complication of the tuberculosis,” said Bruce. “It’s an infection in the spine.”
“Will the treatments help?”
Swallowing, Bruce put the stethoscope in his bag. “I can order more medicine from Kampala.”
“He will help us.”
Bruce looked at Asha. “Steve’s a great guy,” he said.
Breaking into a smile, Faridah at last turned to him. “I was speaking of God. Perhaps you mistook my reverent tone?”
“I’m sure God’s a great guy, too.”
Faridah laughed. “I’ve heard you’re an odd one.”
“So, people are spreading rumors.”
“People always spread rumors.” Turning back to Asha, Faridah’s smile died. “Steve is splendid, but there comes a time when things do not rest in our hands.”
Bruce looked at Asha. “I’ve heard you’re very wise.”
Faridah laughed. “I can’t help it if some rumors are true.”
“I think Steve might break out into hives before saying anything untrue.” Bruce looked around. “He says you do good work.”
“He says that you do, too.”
“Proves the hives theory wrong, I guess.” Faridah raised her brows, so Bruce just said, “Maybe we have different definitions of good.”
“I’ve heard that as well,” said Faridah. When Bruce raised his own brows, she said, “Did you think yours was the only opinion Steve liked to get before doing the things he does here?”
“I sort of hoped it wasn’t,” said Bruce. “But I guess I thought it was.” His thumb ran over his fingers. “I sort of have this tendency to assume it’s always about me.”
“Maybe he likes you because you’re so humble.”
Her comment surprised a dry chuckle out of Bruce, but Faridah was looking at Asha. Her brown eyes were very large, weighted at the sides by lines of care and time. She looked like a strong woman, but also one who had seen far too much. She wasn’t anywhere near as old as Steve, but suddenly Bruce wondered whether Steve found it a little easier around people closer to his real age. Maybe it was just that much harder.
“It’s not about you,” Faridah said. “It’s not about Steve, and it’s not about me. It’s not even about our future, my family, or my children. Right now, it’s just about her.” She was still looking at Asha. “I don’t care what you say about money or charity. If you can help her, even just her, that’s all that matters.”
“Until the next child,” Bruce said.
“When life is difficult,” Faridah said, “we take one problem at a time.”
*
Go to: part 2