Frankenweenie, Eat Your Heart Out
An AU where Bruce turns himself into the Hulk a little earlier than in canon. Like, 25 years earlier. Written for this kinkmeme prompt. Trigger warnings include: off-screen child abuse, minor character death, canon-typical violence.
~*~
It reminded him a little of Frankenweenie, to be honest, which was just embarrassing. He wasn’t some idiot kid who couldn’t handle his beloved dog dying-this was real scientific research, and it wasn’t his fault no one listened to a kid, wasn’t his fault no one would give him grants even though he was brilliant and on the verge of making another Captain America.
He did admit to himself, just a little, that it was nice not to have to share the glory, nice to know that he could be the next Captain America. He didn’t need another test subject. He didn’t want one. He could admit, to himself, in the privacy of his own head, that the idea of never getting whaled on again because he was so big and strong was very appealing.
Still, requiring a lightning strike to power his experiment stank of the old Tim Burton short, and it irked him even though the results would be that much more glorious, for having come out of his parents’ garage.
Bruce Banner lay on the re-appropriated tool bench and waited for his life to change.
-
His first inkling that everything was going to fall apart (again) was the new regular at the café.
He was just a busboy, but some of the waiters were generous with splitting their tips and he tried hard to make everyone like him, or at least tolerate him. People you liked were less memorable than people you disliked, and he’d been lucky enough to find a job far enough into the next town that hardly anyone knew him, and he’d rather not change that by being his usual sarcastic self. This, sadly, meant that he spent most of his time with his mouth shut.
The new guy was the most unassuming man Bruce had ever seen, and that alone made him suspicious. He ordered the same thing, every day, showing up at exactly the same time, reading that day’s newspaper in exactly the same order, folding it exactly the same way to do the Sudoku puzzle when Charlene brought him his coffee. He even gave her the same smile and thanked her the same way every time. It was slightly unreal.
“Hey, Bruce, isn’t it time for, uh…”
The fry cook gestured at Bruce’s arm a little awkwardly, and Bruce snapped out of his reverie and focused on the present.
“Huh? Oh, right. Thanks, Homer.”
He set down the tub of dishes he was carrying and went into the tiny bathroom, grabbing his backpack on the way. He’d told his boss he had diabetes and needed to take blood every few hours; the entire staff had stepped up and made sure to remind Bruce to take his blood, to eat or not eat, babied him and coddled him to the point of insanity, but, and this was key, they all believed him.
He took the large syringe out of its case and rolled up his sleeve, taking deep calming breaths before plunging it into his arm.
The radiation blocker hurt like a bitch going in, a thick, almost peanut-buttery substance that Bruce thought glowed in the dark but was too nervous to confirm. He already felt sick and it hadn’t even gone all the way in yet. He was more used to it now and hardly ever actually threw up anymore, but feeling slightly nauseous all the time was better than the alternative.
Every time he saw an advertisement for Grecian Falls’ very own Giant Green Swamp Monster it made the nausea that much worse.
He took a minute for himself, breathing through his mouth and gulping down some water, and then he went back to work, bussing Normal Guy’s table like he always did. This time, though, he’d left his newspaper, and this, coupled with the fact that Bruce could see letters penciled in his Sudoku puzzle, made him quickly stuff the paper in his back pocket. He’d look at it later, maybe after dinner tonight, if things were okay at home.
They weren’t.
Bruce limped to bed that night, and the newspaper crinkled as he sat down gingerly. Just the reminder of it was enough to make him take it out and rip it to shreds without looking at it. He stared at the mess on his carpet, and when he felt angry tears start to prickle behind his eyes and give him a headache, that was how he knew he’d been hoping. For what, he didn’t know (he did know, and it was the same thing he’d been hoping for since he was four years old and he’d first begun to realize that sometimes daddy wasn’t very nice) but it was pointless now.
He gathered up the pieces and dumped them in the trash, and went to bed.
-
Normal Guy didn’t show up the next day, or the next, and that was almost enough to make Bruce want to try and piece together the torn up shreds of a Sudoku puzzle still sitting in the trash, but he ignored the impulse and did his homework, slipping out quietly when dad came home. It meant leaving his mother there alone, and the thought of what he might come home to made him sick to his stomach, but the promise of a few hours totally to himself was too sweet to pass up. He went down to the lake, skipped stones, worked out a few things in his science notebook, took a nap. The steady shushing of the water soothed him, and when he woke up it was after dark. He swore, gathered up his things, and ran home.
Things were quiet when he got back, or they were until the door closed behind him. His father’s voice called out from the kitchen, thin and frightened, and Bruce, already on edge from being late, had the sudden premonition that whatever was in the kitchen he didn’t want to see it.
Still, he set down his backpack by the door and stepped forward slowly.
“Dad?” he called, unable to make himself either move faster or stop moving altogether, “Mom?”
It was forever before he got to the kitchen door, and he pushed it open slowly, the creak of it loud in his ears.
Blood. Blood all over the floor and some of it on the counters and most of it under his mother’s limp form-
Bruce heard a high, strangled whimper, and realized the noise had come from his own throat. His father was standing on the other side of the kitchen, looking lost, looking at Bruce, looking sorry, he was always sorry after, never before, never when it counted-
“What did you…” Bruce could not make himself finish that sentence, couldn’t even begin the one that went Is she dead or just knocked out? He swallowed, gulped down air, tried to stay calm, stay present, but his eyes flicked automatically over to his father when the man started forward.
“Why weren’t you here, Bruce?” he plead, as Bruce backed up. “Where were you?”
“I-I was down by the… by the lake, dad,” and it was just like a thousand other times they’d done this dance, sung this song, except now it was just a duet, empty and too quiet without his mother’s desperate, pretty cajoling in the background. He backed out of the kitchen, his father stumbling forward, the bottle still in his hand, still smeared with blood-
“You should have been here, Bruce. If you had been here, she might not have-” Brian Banner choked back a sob, hand going to his face in grief, but Bruce was getting angry, and his hands clenched on their own.
“You can’t blame me for this.” He did, he always did, and it was so unfair, and Bruce had only just realized that it really wasn’t his fault, as he had always believed as a child, had very recently sat himself down and looked at the man who called himself his father and come to the conclusion that “It’s not my fault!” he roared, and watched in slow motion as Brian’s face contorted with rage, bringing the bottle in his hand up, and right at the zenith of the swing Bruce remembered that he hadn’t taken his last radiation blocker of the day.
-
It was like going underwater, a little, rushing sounds in his ears and lights reflecting oddly; and it was a little like being on really hard drugs, something you thought was safe but that was actually cut with rat poison or something awful; but mostly it was like being so angry you lost track of who you were and who was around you, the whole world shrinking down to a single point where you focused all your rage until it was utterly spent, only when he was like this the rage took a long, long time to bleed out, so long that sometimes Bruce thought he might die before it was all gone.
He never remembered much, but they told him about it later, though it sounded like something from a badly made horror film and not something had had happened in his own house, his own life.
The large, green monster that as best Bruce could figure was his own rage made manifest backhanded Brian Banner into the wall so hard it dented, and he made for the kitchen except that there were men in black suits pouring out of it and through the front door and the bedroom, and the thing that was Bruce roared in fear and rage and tried to fling them out of the way, but then they were shooting at him, and that hurt, and the monster roared and charged forward, flinging men in suits willy nilly as he tried to get into the kitchen.
“Mom!” he roared, and then another voice, sharp, commanding, calm, called out and all the people in the house froze, lowering their guns slightly. He knocked past them to the woman on the floor and knelt down beside her, aware only that she wasn’t moving, and that tears were running down his cheeks. “Mom?” he called again, softer, his voice impossibly deep, but she still wasn’t moving and the tears were flowing faster now, and he tilted back his head and roared, long and howling, more like a sob that went on for a long, long time.
When it was over he was Bruce again, and so tired he slumped down and passed out, wondering why he was imagining Normal Guy’s voice, of all things.
-
He woke up in clothes he didn’t remember putting on, in a strange room that seemed very like a prison cell, the guard at the door doing nothing to dispel this impression. At first he was only confused, deeply frightened and alarmed at not knowing where he was, but his last memories, for a blessed moment, were of the lake, and he wondered if he’d been kidnapped.
Then he remembered blood, and dark hair pooled on the ground, and he doubled over in sudden grief, not caring that the guard was right there and stolidly watching him. He worked for a long collection of minutes, choking down his tears, and then wrapped the coldness around himself and stood up.
“Where am I?” he demanded of the guard, whose only answer was to turn away and speak into a headset of some kind. He was wearing a dark blue jumpsuit and a gun in a holster at his hip, and the way he looked through Bruce instead of at him was extremely disconcerting.
He backed away and sat back down on the bed, brought his knees up to his chest, and waited.
He stood up, though, when Normal Guy came through the door, his bland face in a soft, careful smile, carrying a bag of something that smelled delicious and a bottle of water.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, hefting the bag. “This is for you.”
Bruce watched him intently at he set the bag and bottle down on a small table on the other side of the room, which he cautiously approached when Normal Guy turned away and waved the guard out of the room. Poking into the bag Bruce found a perfectly normal-looking fast food hamburger with fries and an apple fritter. He glanced up at Normal Guy again, who nodded encouragingly, and then he dug in, his body telling him that whatever else happened, it had needs that had to be met. When he had polished off the food and taken a long swig of the water, Normal Guy had gestured at another door, inviting him to use the facilities if he needed to. Bruce did so, almost disappointed at how normal the toilet and sink looked, though he’d never seen a bathroom with quite so much stainless steel in it before. He only glanced at the mirror for as long as it took to run a hand through his hair a few times, taming it from mad scientist disarray to merely sleepily unruly.
He settled down across the table from Normal Guy feeling better, even if there was a place in his mind that he refused to look at now.
“My name is Agent Phil Coulson,” Normal Guy said when Bruce had situated himself. “I’m pleased to meet you, Bruce.”
“Are you from Social Services?” Bruce shot back, even though that was patently ridiculous. He’d been interviewed by them before. None of the harried people he’d talked to had ever looked this put together.
Agent Coulson smiled, a small, practiced thing that somehow managed to be warm and entirely fake at the same time.
“No, I’m not,” he said. “I’m with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”
Bruce couldn’t help raising an eyebrow, and the chuckle Coulson gave him was self-deprecating.
“It’s a little long,” he admitted. “Bruce, I’d like to know why you think you’re here.”
Bruce scowled at that. He hated it when adults asked questions they already knew the answer to, trying to trick you into agreeing with them before they even told you what they wanted.
“I dunno,” he mumbled, scratching at a stain on the table. “You’re the one who kidnapped me.”
“No one kidnapped anyone, Bruce,” the man said firmly, but Bruce just rolled his eyes.
“That’s funny, I could have sworn I didn’t give my consent before you whisked me off here.”
“Bruce, do you have any idea what’s waiting for you out there?” Agent Coulson said, voice still soft but strangely intense in a way that made Bruce snap his mouth shut. “At the moment, your father is claiming you are the one responsible for your mother’s death. We are prepared to disclose evidence to the contrary, but we need to be certain of your cooperation first.”
Bruce found that he was breathing hard, eyes pricking, skin too tight. His voice, when he spoke, was small and cracked. “I didn’t. I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill her.”
“I know, Bruce,” Coulson was saying, but adults always lied.
“I didn’t kill her,” he repeated more insistently, wishing he would wake up or die or just disappear. He thought of his mother, holding him, whispering to him, smiling at him, and he was frightened to realize he was already having trouble remembering what her face looked like.
“We know you didn’t kill her, Bruce,” Coulson repeated. “We’re going to make sure the police know that too, but we need you to cooperate.”
“To do what?!” Bruce shouted, slamming his hands on the table. They were going to sting later, but right now the pain only made him feel stronger. “What do you want from me?”
“First, I need you to calm down, Bruce,” Coulson said, infuriatingly calm himself, and Bruce decided he’d had it.
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” he yelled, standing up and knocking his chair over. Coulson stood up also, reaching in his jacket for what had to be a gun, and suddenly Bruce had a moment of clarity.
“You don’t want me at all, do you?” he whispered. “You want that… thing I become. You want to use it to hurt people.”
“No, Bruce,” Coulson said, but Bruce knew better.
“I won’t. I won’t be some science experiment or a weapon! I’d rather die!”
“No one is using anyone as a weapon,” came a new voice from the doorway, and both men startled. Bruce told himself sharply that he was not looking at Shaft, but it was hard since the man in the doorway was a large, imposing black man with an eye patch and a leather coat. Shaft doesn’t have an eye patch, he thought absurdly, but then the newcomer was swaggering over to them, looking pissed. “Coulson, who decided you should talk to the kid?”
“My case, sir,” the agent said, looking wry. Bruce stood as tall as he could, which brought him up to about the man’s armpit. Still, he felt small and powerless, just being near this man who oozed danger like an open wound, and his instinct was to make himself look, at least, less small and powerless than he felt.
“Dumbass. You scare small children. Go look unassuming at some junior agents, tell me which ones are worth keeping.”
Despite the words, Bruce was shocked to find some affection there, and the agent hid a smile as he nodded and left the room, glancing sympathetically at Bruce before he did so. Shaft-well, he hadn’t told him his name, yet, so Shaft would have to do-arranged his long limbs in the chair Agent Coulson had vacated, and gestured at Bruce’s upturned one, inviting him to have a seat. Bruce did so, feeling a lot younger than he had a minute ago. Shaft fixed him with a long, searching stare before sighing deeply and leaning forward.
“You have made my life very difficult, young man, and I don’t mind telling you I am not in a good mood right now. Containment in a small, tightly knit community such as you hail from is tricky, and while Brian Banner may be known as a drunkard who beats his wife and kid it is going to be very difficult to keep the reports of a giant green man out of the news. I have Social Services to contend with, not to mention a collection of generals over in Washington who are just waiting for me to give them a threat assessment on what they are hoping is either a career-advancing dragon to slay or the next step in the super soldier program. Now, I am prepared to face all of these people and feed them whatever bullshit I need to to get them off my back, but first I would like to know what you are offering me.”
“What I-” It was hard to get angry when you had the distinct impression that the man across from you could stare you to death, let alone kill you five different ways with his pinky finger. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What I mean, Bruce Banner, is that I am offering you a free pass out of the mess you have made of your life if you are, in return, willing to offer me certain things.”
“Like… what?” Bruce was suspicious. Why wouldn’t anyone here say what they wanted from him?
“First of all, the promise that you will be a little bit more diligent about taking your suppressants.”
Bruce felt his mouth drop open.
“How do you know about-”
“Second of all, I would like you to show my scientists and my scientists only how you did what you did, and swear to me up and down that you will never tell another living soul about it. There are those out there who wouldn’t even blink about unleashing the kind of destruction you are capable of on their enemies, consequences be damned. I can assure you I am not one of those people, but I need to know how the hell a kid in high school came this close to recreating Project Rebirth in his backyard with stolen equipment.”
“I didn’t steal-”
“Third of all, Bruce, I need you to tell me one thing right now, and this is not an easy question, so don’t you dare answer me right away.” The man leaned forward and bore down on Bruce with his one eye. “I need you to tell me if you are okay with leaving your former life totally behind. New name, new school, new town, everything. If you say the word, Bruce Banner will cease to exist.”
Bruce sat there, feeling numb, limbs drained of their strength. After a moment, Shaft went on.
“This means you will no longer be allowed to have any contact with your father, or any of your former friends. You will, for all intents and purposes, be dead. You will have to give up all your worldly possessions, because a dead man takes nothing with him. You will not…” he said, voice going low and almost kind, “be able to attend your mother’s funeral.”
Bruce felt his chest constrict. He transferred his gaze quickly to the table in front of him, trying to breathe and failing miserably.
“How do you know… are you sure? Are you sure she’s… dead?” he whispered. Shaft leaned back, gaze going less hard.
“We’re certain.”
He would not cry. Banners didn’t cry. Banners were stronger than that. He did clench his fists, though, and he swallowed a few times.
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
“Don’t take too long,” Shaft warned. “I’ll give you another four hours to decide, but after that it’s my way or the highway, and let me tell you, you won’t like the highway.”
He got up and left, leaving Bruce to try desperately to control his breathing, until he couldn’t take it anymore and he leaned over and at least tried not to make too much noise.
-
“I’ll do it,” he said, when Normal Guy came back, and hoped he didn’t feel too guilty later for being glad at the chance to leave his father behind.
~*~
They assigned him a ‘handler,’ like he was a pet lion in the circus or something, but the red-haired woman who told him to call her Natasha said it was more like they had decided to treat him like an agent going undercover and that’s what they called the other agent who took care of you while you were undercover and couldn’t do certain things. She said she hoped they’d be able to work well together, and that if he needed anything he only had to ask and she’d get it for him. She smiled a lot, warmly, as she talked, and didn’t ask about his mother or his father or what he liked to do after school. She did ask him if he was okay over there on the other side of the car.
Bruce didn’t answer her, because if he spoke he’d be speaking to her breasts.
And because he was scared to death and strung out on grief and fear, trapped in a car on his way across the country with a woman he’d known for the five hours they’d been driving plus the two minutes she’d taken to make conversation with Coulson before he turned Bruce over to her custody, but he pretended it was the breasts.
She got him settled in the small apartment he’d be living in under the name Bryce Bantam (Bruce rolled his eyes at that, but Natasha explained they wanted to be sure he could remember it and besides no one was going to be actively looking for him. The thought was not as comforting as she seemed to have meant it) and handed him a cell phone, with her number already programmed into it.
“They set me up so I’ll be right down the hall,” she said, smiling, and he grunted and turned away. He fumbled in the kitchen for a while, pretending to be busy, but really he was just waiting for her to leave. After ten minutes he turned back and made for the bathroom, just for the excuse to walk past her and try to see what she was doing. She glanced up from her phone as he passed, smiling as she said,
“Do you want me to fix dinner, Bruce?”
He grunted again, slamming the bathroom door behind him, and wondered if he stayed in there long enough she would finally leave.
She made an excellent spaghetti, though by the time he sat down it had gotten cold.
-
He settled into a routine: go to SHIELD headquarters, try to recreate his notes and his process from memory, try to dodge Fury as much as possible, try to figure out Normal Guy’s shtick (was he hiding something? Was he really that boring? What did he do all day?), go home, try to ignore the beautiful woman who seemed to pretty much live with him and never stopped being nice to him no matter how rude he was to her, go to bed and either stare at the ceiling or hide his head under his pillow and try not to cry.
Lather, rinse. Repeat.
He did not think about his father. He tried not to think about his mother. He had to stop himself from wondering about Homer and Charlene and Benny once or twice. Mostly he kept his head down and did what was expected of him, and told himself that all in all, things were better now. He even thought someday he’d believe it.
After a few weeks Fury handed him a class schedule and informed him that he was going to college.
Natasha made him a lunch and drove him to campus his first day, and he tried to keep the scowl on his face as she told him to have a good day. But it slipped, and he mumbled a thank you, and he swore her smile got just a little bigger before she drove away.
Classes became part of the routine. His research at SHIELD moved into other areas, strange areas, and he got his first paycheck, which he stared at for a long time.
“Did SHIELD set this account up for me?” he asked Natasha, who wasn’t even pretending not to be looking over his shoulder at his computer.
“Yes,” she said, smiling. He went back to staring at the numbers, more money than he’d ever had in his life. It felt anti-climactic to realize he had nothing to spend it on.
One Tuesday evening as Bruce was about to go home the building he was in exploded and then collapsed.
By the next morning he found himself on the helicarrier with Fury looking as pissed as he had ever seen him, Natasha nowhere to be found.
“We need you to find that cube, Bruce,” Fury growled, and Bruce was tempted to remind him that despite what it said on his fancy new paperwork, he was, in fact, only seventeen. A minor. He was frightened and overwhelmed and he wanted his mother, but he knew better than to let any of that show on his face or in his voice.
“I’m working on it,” he promised, and put his head down and waited for Fury to leave.
That morning Bruce forgot to take his first dose of the suppressant. He’d forgotten to take his last one the night before. None of this registered as he worked feverishly to figure out how to track something he only barely knew the properties of.
That afternoon Fury told him to take a break, he had someone he wanted him to meet.
“Captain Rogers, this is Bruce Banner. With Dr. Selvig… out of commission, he’s our resident expert on the cube. Bruce, this is Captain Rogers.”
Bruce felt a sharp thudding pain in the back of his head followed by a slight green tinge bleeding out over his vision. The ache spread over the top of his head and down his forehead until it reached the back of his eyeballs, making his whole head hurt. He knew that should worry him, but all he could think was that he was so fucking angry at Fury for springing this on him. He took Rogers’ hand woodenly, let it be shaken, grunted sullenly when the man said something, something that was probably even nice and kind because he was Captain fucking America, but Bruce had thrown away all his posters and action figures once he realized what had happened to him, and all he could think was, I just wanted to be like you. Why did I end up like me instead?
When it became clear Bruce was not going to stand there and make conversation, Captain Rogers smiled uncomfortably and turned back to Fury, who was looking at Bruce like he was a piece of gum stuck to his boot. It was basically how he looked at him all the time, but Bruce felt that much more humiliated considering he was doing it in front of Captain America. He put his hands in his pockets and stared at the floor.
“…and if you ever need a ride to Portland, you just give the word,” a voice was saying, coming in through the door. Bruce glanced up through his eyelashes at the newcomer, who was followed by an Agent Coulson who was actually displaying emotion, though, granted, the emotion was mostly vague discomfort. Still. That was. That was. That was Tony Stark. Holy shit. That was Tony Stark in front of Agent Coulson, looking around the room like he owned it. His eyes slid right past Fury, lighted on Captain America, and stuck there a moment while his mouth puckered slightly like he’d just sucked on a lemon.
Bruce liked him already.
-
“You’re… assigned to this kid?” Stark said incredulously. Natasha shrugged. Bruce stared resolutely at the screens in front of him. “What, like his keeper?”
“His handler,” she corrected dryly, lounging against a table doing nothing but being there. Stark raised an eyebrow, gaped slightly at her.
“Isn’t that like… killing a fly with a sledgehammer?”
Bruce jabbed one of the holographic screens too hard and it bounced.
“I’m not a fly,” he protested, even though he didn’t really know what Stark meant by that. Stark shook his head, walked around so he was facing Bruce.
“I guess not,” he said, sounding almost… impressed. Bruce wondered what he thought Natasha and him did as handler and… handlee? It was pretty boring and domestic actually, though he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t mentally spiced things up in the shower once or twice. Doing that felt wrong somehow, though, like he was jacking off to his aunt or something. Not that any of Bruce’s aunts had the sex appeal Natasha had in her little finger. Tony shook himself and mock-glared at Natasha.
“Hey, well, sledgehammer, get lost, will you? We’re trying to do science in here.”
And she left. Just like that. Stark was so cool.
“So tell me,” Stark said, lounging against the desk on the opposite side of the display from Bruce, “how does a kid like you end up in a scary shadow organization like this?”
He sounded genuinely curious, not like he was outraged on Bruce’s behalf or like he was buttering Bruce up for something. Just that he’d found something that confused him and wanted an explanation. It made Bruce freer with his tongue than he might have been, and it felt good.
“I tried to recreate Project Rebirth; you know, the experiment that made Captain America? It, uh… sort of didn’t work.”
“What happened?”
Bruce lowered his chin a little, but he spoke defiantly.
“It turned me into a monster.”
Stark raised an eyebrow at that, but it was as much an invitation to continue as a remark on the oddity of that statement. Bruce lowered his voice, but kept his gaze on Stark’s eyes.
“When I get angry,” he said, feeling like he was telling a great secret, “I turn into a huge green monster and tear everything apart. The last time it happened my mom died. I didn’t kill her, though. But they said I couldn’t go to her funeral.”
He swallowed, suddenly unsure why he was telling Stark any of this. He’d meant to talk about the scientific properties of his green self, his theories about what made the transformation possible. Now he was closer to crying than he’d been in a long time. Stark shoved the display out from between them and reached forward, cradling Bruce’s neck in his warm hand.
“They’re the monsters,” he said, though Bruce wasn’t sure who he was referring to. It was still comforting to hear him say it. “A kid should go to his own mother’s funeral.”
Tony Stark’s parents are dead, Bruce thought. They died in a car crash before I was born.
“After all this is over, why don’t you come along with me? You’re brilliant, I could hire you on in R&D, you could get out in the sunlight and meet some pretty girls. How’s that sound?”
This time it was his heart that constricted painfully. How many times had he wished that Captain America would come and defend him from his father, putting his shield between Bruce and the angry words, the hard fists? Take him away somewhere, anywhere but there. Only now it was Iron Man, not Captain America, standing in front of him with his hand extended, inviting him to a better place. It felt fitting, somehow, that in this as well, he was to be betrayed by his childhood hero. And Stark seemed nice. It was too good to be true, of course, but he smiled and nodded anyway, and Stark smiled back, a warm, genuine thing that Bruce couldn’t stop staring at. It wasn’t until the door opened and someone came in and Tony took his hand away that Bruce realized he’d never had an adult male smile at him like that. Heck, the only adult female who had ever smiled at him like that had been his mother. Like they enjoyed looking at him for him, not for what they could do to him or what he could do for them, but for his own sake. Like they liked him.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and pulled the display back around to hide his face in.
-
“Big man in a suit of armor; take that away and what are you?”
“Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist,” Stark shot back without even pausing.
“Yeah, well, I know guys with none of that worth ten of you,” Steve said in a low voice, and that was too much.
“What about you?” Bruce spat, and both men jerked out of their staring contest to look at him. “I grew up learning about how special you were and-and-and how you were this great man, but in the end everything special about you came from a bottle.”
Steve looked taken aback, but Fury stepped up then looking even more pissed than usual.
“Bruce, when was the last time you took your suppressants?”
He had a flash of fear as he realized he didn’t know, but it was quickly swallowed by more anger.
“Why? Scared your little pet monster boy is going to come out and play? Should have thought of that before you brought me up here. Should have thought of that before you took me away from my family.”
“You don’t have a family, Bruce,” Fury said calmly, and Bruce saw green.
“Yes I do! He-he-he might have been a piece of shit but he was still my father. And you didn’t even let me say goodbye. You didn’t even-” let me go to my own mother’s funeral, but before he could say the words the headache, which had mostly subsided, suddenly shot all the way down his spine. It flared brighter and dug needle-like claws of prickling pain across his back and down his arms. He gave a whole-body convulsion and choked out a scream, but it wasn’t until he looked up and saw the matching looks of horror on everyone’s faces that he realized it really had been too long since he’d taken his last dose.
His last thought before he lost consciousness was that he was glad his mother had never seen him like this.
-
Tony told him what happened later, and he could piece together some of it from his dreams and snatches of memory.
After the transformation was complete Bruce was standing there in the middle of the lab breathing hard, the shredded remains of his jacket still clinging to his broad shoulders, baggy pants now uncomfortably tight. He was stink-eying Fury, and in the moment right before Fury drew his gun and brought the monster down upon him, Tony stepped forward, hands held out palm up.
“Hey, there, big guy,” he said, sounding easy-breezy, not at all concerned, just soothing. “That’s quite the party trick you got there. You never told me how that works, where all that extra mass comes from. Is it some kind of metabolic process, does everything just speed up? I bet you get really hungry afterwards, huh? How about when this is over we go get some gyros. Guy-ros? Gee-ros? I don’t know how you pronounce it, but it’s good. We can order as many as you want. Maybe get some milkshakes too, how does that sound?”
And he had edged forward far enough during all that talking to lay a hand on Bruce’s big one, squeezing gently and smiling.
“Which do you like?” he asked. “Chocolate or strawberry? Now, me, you’d never believe it of me, but I prefer vanilla. I know, hilarious.” He waved a hand as though dismissing laughter that wasn’t there, but the extraordinary thing, Natasha told him, even later still, was the way green-Bruce was drinking in every word Stark was saying, completely focused on him and the sound of his voice. (“That might be why he likes you so much,” she said wryly, “he’s finally found someone who likes hearing him talk as much as he does.”)
“Straw-berry,” green-Bruce said when it became clear Stark was actually waiting for an answer, and when Stark grinned, wide and open, his own face lost its suspicious confusion and softened into something almost approaching a smile.
Then Steve moved forward, and the monster’s head snapped up, and Bruce remembered this part vividly because he was still seeing that wary, disapproving face over a chest of red, white and blue in his nightmares, still feeling the impossibly large sense of betrayal and sadness that quickly coalesced into rage, and the monster thrust its head forward into Rogers’ space and roared.
After that, Tony said, everything kind of went to hell.
~*~
“Do you know where you’re going, son?” the old man asked, and Bruce plucked at the too big clothes before answering.
“Yes,” he muttered into his shirt. “No,” he said immediately after, louder. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“I’d expect some confusion of the mind when your body’s all mixed up,” the old guy said without a trace of irony, “but, son, it’s got to be one or the other.”
“I know where I should go. And I want to go. But…”
“If that’s the case, then what’s stopping you?” Bruce thought about it. Then he said, with more honesty than he’d ever mustered in his entire life,
“I’m scared about what will happen after.”
The man gestured for him to follow and he did, into the sunlight. They reached an aging motor bike, and the old man put a hand on Bruce’s shoulder, looking at him like an equal.
“Life is large, son,” he said, “and anything can happen. But,” he said, handing Bruce a set of keys, “that doesn’t mean everything will.”
It felt profound, even though, as Bruce parsed that in his head, it sounded like nonsense.
He puzzled at it the whole ride back to New York, and when he stood before the five of them, looking so strong and capable and larger than life, he was no closer to an answer. But when he transformed, when he called out the monster on purpose and everything was so much clearer and he remembered so much more, when Captain America turned to him and, smiling, told him to do exactly the one thing he wanted to do right then, he started to hope that what it meant was that maybe, for once, when he woke up the next morning things would be less awful than they were the day before.
-
“Bruce? Can I have a word?”
Bruce, who was wearing brand new clothes given to him by Tony Stark along with a promise that he was not letting Fury take him back to New Mexico no matter what, hunched into himself at the sound of Steve’s voice. Tony nudged him and tilted his head in Steve’s direction, encouraging him to go.
“Let him say his piece,” he said. “He’s not so bad when you get past the… you know… everything.”
Bruce heaved a long suffering sigh that masked his sudden desire to run away, and, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets, trudged over to Steve, who gestured at a nearby park bench. Clint and Natasha had already left, and all traces that two Norse gods had been standing in the center of the street only minutes ago were gone.
They sat down, Bruce hunched over in his baggy jacket and cargo pants, Captain America looking calm and put together and somewhat god-like himself in plaid and khaki.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” he said, giving Bruce a lop-sided smile that Bruce knew well from the vintage propaganda poster he’d hung up in the garage to give himself inspiration. It also made it hard to remember he was talking to a real human being and not a figment of his imagination. He shrugged.
“I guess.”
They sat in awkward silence for a minute, and then the Captain said,
“They told me you were trying to recreate the super soldier serum,” and Bruce went stiff, hands clenching into fists so tight they ached. He waited for the lecture he knew was coming about how irresponsible he was, how disappointed the Captain was in him, but all he said was, “They told me it turned out a little like Jekyll and Hyde, but I wanted to know what you thought.”
Bruce struggled to keep his voice level.
“Yeah, basically, I guess.”
Rogers hmm’d a bit, and then said casually, “I don’t think that’s it, actually.”
Bruce frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“Dr. Jekyll’s formula was supposed to separate the evil half of his soul from the good half, right? But I don’t think your green self is evil, and I don’t think people’s souls are as simple as that.”
“He’s a monster,” Bruce burst out before he could stop himself. “He hurts people, that’s all he does. I’m-”
“You’re not a monster, Bruce,” Steve said firmly, and Bruce scowled.
“Yes, I am,” he said, as much to be contrary as because it was true. “I tried to make another you and I ended up as a monster instead.”
He expected the Captain to protest again, but instead he was silent a moment as he studied the trees in front of them and then said,
“Bruce, how much do you know about the other experiments?”
“The… the others?”
“I guess they wouldn’t have told you. They didn’t want to tell me but I… can be insistent.” He smiled at Bruce, a close, humorless smile, and then turned back to the trees. “Since World War Two and up to the present day there have been sixteen major attempts by various organizations around the world to recreate the super soldier formula,” and Bruce’s mouth dropped open because he’d had no idea. They always told you in the documentaries and the history books that all attempts to recreate the experiment had failed, but it had always been implied that such attempts had been made by the original team and that they had done so only in the few years left of the war and then gave up. Steve went on.
“Of the 158 human subjects, 152 of them died directly from the effects of the radiation without manifesting any super powers before they died. Four of the remaining six did display increased muscle mass and superior hearing, but they all died from the radiation same as the others. Of the two that didn’t die from the radiation, one went so crazy the scientists had to sedate him and he was later… terminated.” Steve swallowed. Bruce was staring at him with his mouth open. “The last one seemed physically enhanced, but as soon as he opened his eyes he reportedly said, ‘You don’t know what you’ve done,’ and walked out of the facility despite all attempts to stop him. His body was later found at the bottom of a ravine.”
Bruce shivered. He remembered the moment the lightning had struck, the pain he’d felt, the agony he had been sure would kill him. He had known, between breaths, that he would welcome death, if it came. He wondered what Steve Rogers had gone through in that chamber, seventy years ago. The man leaned forward, clasping his hands together in front of him as he rested his arms on his knees.
“The night before the experiment Dr. Erskine told me something I don’t think he ever told anyone else. He said the most important thing about the serum is what it does to a man on the inside. He said it makes everything… more, a good man better and an evil man worse.”
“So it made me worse,” Bruce mumbled, wondering why Captain America had thought it necessary to tell him this. But Steve shook his head.
“I don’t think so. You see, there was one other human subject that I think people have forgotten about, or maybe the general public was never told, I don’t know. Did they teach you about the Red Skull in school?”
“Yeah, he was the head of Hydra, everybody knows that.”
“Did they tell you he was Dr. Erskine’s first test subject?”
Bruce’s mouth opened but he couldn’t find words. Johann Schmidt had been the insane leader of a scientific branch of the Nazi regime that had gone rogue and attempted to bomb the whole world. Steve Rogers, Captain America, had died to prevent that attack from taking place. You learned that in first grade history class along with the pilgrims and the Civil War. But no one, in anything Bruce had ever read, had ever spoke of the Red Skull as anything more than simply another madman in a war waged by madmen.
“The Red Skull was not just a nickname; it was a description. During the process his skin burned mostly away, leaving his head looking like a big, red skull. It was,” Rogers said with a disgusted twist to his mouth, “not a pretty sight.”
“Are you saying I’m like him?” Bruce whispered, horrified. Steve looked almost annoyed.
“I’m not, Bruce. I’m saying-” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration, leaving his perfectly styled blond locks in disarray. He didn’t seem to notice. “What I’ve been trying to say, Bruce, is that I think you and I are the only successful test subjects out of 161 people, and I think that’s kind of extraordinary.”
Successful. In the eight months since the experiment neither Bruce nor the SHIELD scientists had ever referred to what had happened to him as successful.
“What do you mean?” he said dully, suspiciously, not sure where this was going and ready to be disappointed if it went somewhere bad.
“I think Dr. Erskine was wrong. Not about the serum reacting to what was inside, I think he was right about that. But I think he saw the world a little too black and white. It was easy to do, back then, there was a war on, it was us and them, enemies and allies, good and evil. But people aren’t that simple, and I think maybe Dr. Erskine forgot that. When he said it made everything… more, I don’t think he realized what exactly that meant. When I came out of that chamber it was like everything was brighter. I could see better, hear better, smell better, like the entire world was just… more. It was… overwhelming.” Bruce felt his stomach coil a little as he realized the Captain was describing exactly what happened every time he went green. The world exploded into light and sound poured into his ears, his clothes felt maddening against his skin and he could smell everything. It was, yes, overwhelming.
Steve sat back and looked up at the sky, eyes going distant.
“What I didn’t expect, what I don’t think Dr. Erskine knew to expect, was that I felt everything more, too. When I got angry, I got so angry; when I was happy, it wasn’t just happiness, it was euphoria. When Bucky died…” He trailed off, but then continued in a softer voice, still full of emotion. “When he died I thought I was going to die it hurt so bad.”
Bruce quickly calculated the timeline in his head and realized that for the man sitting next to him, that death had occurred scant months before, maybe even mere weeks. It made him feel young, somehow, and he looked at the ground to give Steve a chance to compose himself.
“I wanted to tell you that I think you didn’t just recreate a formula for making a super soldier. I think you went one step better and made something that let you experience all of that, have the strength and the speed and the senses, and then be able to go back to your normal life afterward.”
Bruce’s mind reeled. He flailed, trying to find something that made sense, and he protested,
“No, it’s… I only change when I get angry. That’s not…”
“Why do you get angry?”
He frowned. No one had ever asked him that question quite like that before, like it was a scientific inquiry with a specific answer that might prove or disprove a hypothesis. Not like most people, who meant it as a code for stop acting like a child, Bruce.
“I dunno, lots of things, I guess. You know. Bad stuff.”
Steve leaned forward again, looking back at Bruce over his shoulder.
“I read your file,” he admitted. “They said the two times you transformed while SHIELD was observing you were after your father got… violent.”
Bruce shoved the toe of his shoe into the soft dirt under the bench and shrugged his already hunched shoulders.
“Bruce, I think you get angry when you can’t protect the people you care about. I think what the formula did for you was make you able to protect what’s important to you.”
Bruce shook his head, but mainly because his vision was swimming with unshed tears.
“And then when you’re done and the things you care about are saved, you can go back to being Bruce, just Bruce, and live a normal life until the next time. That’s more than I can say for me.”
His hands were fists again, his breathing ragged.
“But I hurt people,” he sobbed. “I… I break things and I-”
“You don’t have a lot of control, it’s true. But that’s what practice is for.”
The sound that tore out of him started its journey as a laugh, but when it arrived it was pretty much a sob.
“I hated you,” he said, voice still unsteady. “I just wanted to be like you and then I turned out like this and I hated you so much. And then I met you, and, and, and then you were just as good and amazing as all the history books say and I knew if you knew you’d be so disappointed in me and-”
“But I’m not.” Steve Rogers’ voice was low, but carrying, and so full of authority and truth that you couldn’t help but believe it. And Bruce felt something inside himself come completely undone and he hunched up on the park bench and buried his head in his knees and tried not to think about the fact that he was crying like a little baby in front of Captain America. After a moment he felt Steve Rogers’ hand on his shoulder, and he tried so hard to swallow his sobs and pull them back into himself but they were too big and they kept escaping, little choked off whimpers that sounded almost worse than actual sobs, and after a minute he felt a hand on his other shoulder and he knew it was Tony, and then he stopped trying to reel the sobs back in and just shook.
-
“Where are you going now?” Bruce asked, voice a little thicker than he liked, but steady. They were getting ready to leave, him and Tony back to Stark Tower, Steve about to climb aboard his motorcycle. Steve gave him a wistful smile.
“They call me Captain America,” he said, “but I spent most of the war over in Europe. When I was on the USO tour I didn’t have a lot of time for sight-seeing. I think now that I have the chance I’d like to get to know my country a little better.”
From anyone else it would have sounded cheesy , but when Steve said it it sounded like the Declaration of Independence or something.
“You’re going on a road trip across America on your motorcycle?” Tony chuckled from behind Bruce. “If you weren’t already Captain fucking America I’d say all you’d need is a slice of apple pie and a baseball bat and they could bottle you up and call it Eau de United States.”
“You know,” Steve chuckled back, “don’t tell anyone, but I actually hate apple pie.”
The three of them laughed, and Steve climbed on his motorcycle and Tony got in the car, but Bruce lingered a moment.
“The only vacation we ever went on,” he said, hands in his jacket pockets, “we went to this giant ball of twine in Missouri. I wanted to send somebody a postcard but they wouldn’t let me buy me one. It was pretty boring, but…”
He twisted his toe into the ground, unsure what he was trying to say. Steve smiled like he knew and nodded.
“I’ll send you one,” he said. “You’re staying with Tony?” Bruce nodded. “I’ll send you a postcard from every town I stop in, okay?”
Bruce nodded, not trusting his voice, and the Captain gave him another nod that felt like a salute and started up the engine. Bruce watched him drive away, and then climbed in the convertible with Tony and they drove off too.
Tony made a giant corkboard with a map on it to stick all the postcards on and put it in the kitchen. The one from Branson, Missouri read,
Bruce,
You were right, it was pretty boring, but the food was alright. I think I’ll go to Memphis, Tennessee next. Hope everything is well with you and Tony.
-Steve
P.S. Keep practicing.
In the corner, under the address for the tower, was a little doodle of the Hulk, shaking hands with Captain America and smiling.
Bruce kept that one in his room, propped up above his computer where he could see it.