If you go out in the woods today, you'd better not go alone. [closed]

[playonforever]

The Wood is bright and friendly and full of birdsong in the half-mile or so around the barracks. Sunlight glances through the trees, turning everything to green and gold. Here and there, between the shadows, individuals appear and disappear. Some of them peek around trees toward the buildings, some of them run laughing through the woods and vanish

Comments

[gammapulsed]

Bruce, for the most part, has kept well away from the majority of people he's seem to have found himself with. He doesn't want to have to deal with the obvious questions people will ask. Like where he's from, why he doesn't have any clothes on, what's wrong with him...

He's just too tired to even begin to try answering any of that. Not to mention he's probably not supposed to, what with security clearances and top secret stamps and whatever other classified crap is piled on top of the Initiative. So it's in everyone's best interest that he just stay away until S.H.I.E.L.D. comes and picks him up. It's just safer this way.

So Bruce is simply walking along under the trees, trying to be careful of where he puts his bare feet, when his head jerks up at the sound of whomever the heck's out there. He knows better, really he does, but he can't stop himself.

"...H-hello? Is somebody out there?"

[gammapulsed]

"Yeah, well, I think we have really different dictionaries, if you'd call any of this 'nicely'." He grimaces at the continued use of it, but he keeps his head down as he focuses on just... Breathing. After a few quiet moments, he looks up at the cup in front of him and he's obviously not enthused about his prospects right now.

If this is the way out, he'll play the game... But he'll be sure to read the manual beforehand, thank you very much. Bruce has jumped in without looking before and paid the price for it - is still paying for it - and he'd rather not add more to the bill.

"How much of this do I have to drink to get out of here." He keeps his voice and his head down, otherwise... Well, he's not sure what would happen if he looks back at those mirrors and he doesn't want to find out.

[playonforever]

"The more it drinks, the more they fade. She said nothing about leaving."

Another shrug. The white-eyed woman props her chin in her hand. "Why do they bother it so?"

[gammapulsed]

A quiet, bitter chuckle. "You wouldn't get it. You j- It doesn't matter." He shakes his head. "You don't really care, otherwise you w- ...Whatever. It doesn't matter. So just. You don't even have to bother asking."

Bruce exhales quietly, focuses on breathing... And continues to ignore the drink in front of him. "So if this isn't. Then how do I get out of here? Since that's. My big priority right now."

[playonforever]

There's a fractional flicker of irritation, but it's gone in a heartbeat. The mirror fades away. "Does it know her so well? Does it think so highly of itself that it assumes it knows what she would and would not understand."

She waves a hand and the cafe vanishes--all but their table and chairs. She half-turns away from him, flicking a hand in dismissal. "It wants to leave, it may leave."

[gammapulsed]

"Not so much that as, well. The fact you even had to ask why was a pretty big pointer in that direction." He doesn't even touch on the accusation of acting lofty because... It's simply absurd. Anyone looking at him could tell that much with a passing glance - he doesn't have to correct what's so very obvious

[playonforever]

She doesn't answer for a moment, her eyes on her own cup. "None. It is already a puppet, no?"

After a moment she pushes the mug aside. "It does not think itself proud, for how can one have pride that has no freedom? Then is the one who holds it captive superior to it in truth or just in seeming? Does it truly think itself below the one that keeps it caged, that lies and cheats and mocks it? Or is there some small self-congratulation in staying when the lock is off the door. Some private knowledge that it is better than they could ever be, for they do willingly what it is forced to."

[gammapulsed]

What starts as a quiet grimace ends up as an undeniable bristling because of all the things Bruce is or isn't, the one thing he's most definitely not is less than Tony fucking Stark. He'll sourly admit to being a puppet, a tool in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s belt, a weapon, but he refuses to let anyone imply that alkie jackass is any better than he is.

But then he catches himself and immediately swallows the vitriol and bile, suppressing it and locking it away in the box where he keeps everything else. Calm. Control. These are the important things right now. Not letting this woman, whoever she is, get under his skin with petty jabs. Except now he's definitely strung a little tighter as much as he tries to play it down.

The constant use of 'it' certainly isn't helping, either.

"That's not the p- I don't care what they want to do w-with whatever kinds of, of powers they have. That's not my- If they want to be all crazy and spandex-y then fine. I don't care. So that's. ...Just no. You're wrong

[playonforever]

"Is she? She understands. It thinks she does not, but she does." She reaches out to turn his cup in tiny increments as she speaks. With each tiny turn, it gets closer to the edge of the table.

"They do not help it. All their power, all their clout, and they do not help. If they wished, they could free it. If they wished, they could stop its captor from executing those threats. And quietly, secretly, it knows this, does it not?"

One more tiny turn. The cup is about ready to capsize into Bruce's lap. "It would help them. But they think of its use first, its personage second. It knows."

The mug wobbles and starts to go over the edge.

[gammapulsed]

No... No. That's n--

For someone whose mind is as geared to justifiable paranoia as Bruce's is, it's a shock that he hasn't actually thought of this. The cogs are spinning fast enough for friction burns as the rest of him goes preternaturally still. Of between the four of them, they could easily make a hole big enough and keep it open long enough for him to run. It wouldn't be that hard, not with a legitimate, dead-to-rights god. If they cared about him at all, if they had any kind of problem with his indentured servitude... It all clicks together now, like a leaden door snapping shut on a tomb. The closest things to whatever he could call "friends" and

[playonforever]

"Traitors and liars. She understands all too well."

And now she's fiddling with her own cup. "Trust is for those with nothing to offer and nothing to lose, she has found. Know first that none can be trusted, and the world becomes far easier to understand. Captivity and its roles..."

She looks up at him, her expression briefly plaintive. "Easier to accept."

[gammapulsed]

Bruce numbly sets the cup back on the table, still trying to get past the staggering loneliness of the last moment's epiphany. What she's saying, how's she's saying it, and who she looks like all combine to make him watch her with sad eyes...

But he's not a goldfish and he hasn't hit his head on anything recently, and he sure as heck hasn't forgotten what else she's done in the last few minutes. He shuts his eyes, centers himself, and when he looks her way again, the sadness hasn't gone anywhere, but it's locked away under a good heaping of distrust.

"I'm not accepting anything." He says it quietly, but firmly, and there's any amount of layers to be found in those four little words.

[playonforever]

White Eyes looks away. "It is a better beast than she." Then, quieter-- "Or perhaps a better man."

She passes her hand over the glass and it becomes a small white box done up with red ribbon. When she speaks, it's very quietly, almost urgently. "Whatever it might think of her, let it also remember itself. Even beneath the skin of heroes there be monsters."

She glances at the woods and stands, sweeping into a bow--and vanishing in the same moment.