Hello Darkness My Old Friend

[notsoangry]

WHO: Bruce Banner
WHERE: South Village Fountain
WHEN: 9/17
OPEN TO: Open to all!
WARNINGS: None yet

BUNKER/SOUTH VILLAGE FOUNTAIN

In the tube, Banner was unconscious. Nothing so restful as a simple dream, that would be too kind, instead his mind was restless. It was a waking nightmare, seeing people turn to dust before his eyes, seeing the looks of pain and loss on the few people in the world he still cared about, and the friend he knew best was missing, gone, who knows where. Everything was wrong. And now he was here. His hair was newly short and gray, his figure average and unassuming, and he woke up suddenly to propulsion that he couldn't possibly be ready for.

This wasn't really the first time he woke up somewhere he shouldn't be, in a place he couldn't remember; this was a common situation. It wasn't even the first time he was in the water, struggling to breathe, his limbs wildly flailing. But it was a rare occurrence that this moment of concern didn't follow with the feeling to the tip of his toes of the other presence waiting. Then again, he and the Hulk had issues. Issues not even close to being addressed. It meant he was vulnerable. It meant many things. Banner finally got himself together and swam up, figuring out which way was up, and broke the surface gasping. To where? To here. Where was here?

Exhausted and with a heavy heart, he sat on the edge of the fountain and breathed deeply, running hands through his wet hair. Nothing seemed familiar around there, but hey, it wasn't a planet geared toward trying to kill him or freak him out. So far. Don't jinx it, Banner. He sat there for a long time, he had no idea how long. He was in no hurry to move. The world was too much right then, and whatever this was, it was a few steps above.

The strangest part of everything was the clothing. The extras. Normally he woke up naked. So there was that one small good thing. It took him awhile before he was up and walking, but eventually it happened.

INN

At first he simply walked around. Nothing was familiar. In fact, he was fairly certain it seemed dissimilar from anything he'd known before. Some things were the same, yes, but Banner couldn't see how the Hulk brought him this far. And he was wearing clothes. What the hell was happening now? Was this another trick from Thanos? That made sense. He clearly liked to torture people. When he saw the inn, he paused. He tried to avoid people most of the time. It was too dangerous, he was too dangerous, except now he wasn't at all and that meant people he walked into could in fact be dangerous to him. He tried to reach out to see if the Hulk was still ignoring him.

There was nothing. No touch. No moment of anger or denial. No feeling whatsoever. Nothing. He was the only on home. At first he couldn't figure out what that meant. All these years later, how could it be? All the years trying to get here, and it just happened when he woke up. Stunned and overwhelmed, he could only stumble over to the outside wall of the Inn and lean against it. Not going in, just hovering there, and then he started to crumble down until he was sitting on the ground, staring off into space.

What was he feeling? Relief? Loss? Fear? Confusion? All of it.

Comments

[houmaprotector]

Alec? Alec prowls. The green is a quiet thought in his mind, a longing. It's hard not to feel ungainly, to feel uncomfortable. He can't move as quickly as he used to and when one lumbers it doesn't make for good company.

Still. The people here seem...understanding. The notion of being set on fire is still on his mind and there's John, a puzzle in and of itself. The strange machine, the people here, how people reacted to his presence.

He sticks to the fountain, willing his powers back into focus so he can speak to the green and ask it where the hell they are - but there's nothing.

And so he walks, past the inn where the others (the humans) stayed. He stared at it with longing before turning, seeing a man sitting there lost in thought. Do I need to preference every meeting with "please don't scream?"

"Are you...lost?" Remember the names and faces Alec. You can do it. His mind had warped to think of plants more then people but still. Any one of them might be the ticket back home.

[notsoangry]

It seemed very strange and timely that when Banner was getting past the reactive emotions of a big life change, he looked up to see something bright and green. Hulk, he thought first, like an idiot. As it was, he didn't seem to react at all to the green creature in front of him, outside of lifting his eyebrows and tilting his head slightly to the side, curious. Well you don't see that every day. Except he did. All the time, in fact, this was on the list of strange things he'd seen, but not at the top.

"Hm?" He said, distracted, as if for a moment his brain went white and he couldn't function properly while all alone in his once loud mind. The words came a few seconds after they should have made it, and he was mostly dry now, so when he ran his fingers through his hair, it stuck up a little. "Sorry, yes, very lost. I have no idea where I am, actually." But this was definitely an alien planet, he knew that now for certain. It's okay. He'd been on one before. No one was wearing Hulk masks yet. It was fine. Everything was fine.

[houmaprotector]

Something about the man felt off. Not in his presence or bearing but in how he reacted to him and was reacting to the world around him. Like he was disconnected from everything. Just like I was.

When was the last time you saw a human being Alec? How the hell do you know what they're thinking and feeling?

He shakes his head, "This place has a "The Prisoner" vibe doesn't it? There are other people here though, and me. Of course." He gestures, "Can I get you something? You look like you've seen a ghost."

[notsoangry]

Bruce had a tendency to wring his hands together when thinking, like now, and that's how he became aware of the wrist device. He might have noticed it sooner if he wasn't overwhelmed by everything happening now and before. His natural urge was to play wth it, since it was the biggest show of technology so far, and that was comforting at least. But it was rude to let his mind get distracted that easily when someone was standing there, so he let his hand drop and focused on the alien.

Well, he thought it was an alien, but it said something about the Prisoner which was very human, so he was leaning now more toward human experiment gone wrong, which he knew very well. "That's exactly the vibe it has." It was a pop culture reference he actually knew. "Other people?" Bruce paused, thinking he was just about to get his hopes up for nothing, but oh well. "Would you ... have you seen anyone ... his name is Tony. He has dark hair and a beard, usually he has an advanced tech suit on or ironic t-shirts but maybe not now." Since he was in different clothing. "Or Steve? Blonde, tall, strong jaw, very noble." Nat came next to mind but that was an entire emotional breakdown he was leaving aside for now.

[houmaprotector]

"...Stark?" He stands, "You know Stark?"

Interesting. The man at the forge knows a number of people apparently. It's a good thing he seemed relatively supportive.

"I can take you to his forge. Can you stand or do you need me to carry you?"

Point of fact that he can, "Again, you look like you've been through the ringer."

Inn

[thegreatexperiment]

Sam's vodka still looked like something out of a Rube Goldberg drawing. There were pipes and tubes and glass jars and jugs. Everything was rigged up by string over burners and counter tops. The whole thing had to be disassembled and reassembled every time she used it, or no one would be able to use half of the kitchen. As a whole, Sam tried not to be that person. A dick. Admittedly, it was a habit that came to her naturally in most arenas of her life. But she had surprisingly excellent kitchen etiquette.

Especially for someone who couldn't eat.

She missed eating, as of late. Comfort food, really. A bag of Cheetos or a nice, hot bowl of her mother's Matzo-ball soup. Anything to clear her mind. She was working on her second batch of the day, her eyes following the glittery, shining bubbles as they traveled along her patchwork distillery. There was an art and a beauty to it, but Sam couldn't fully appreciate it today. Every time she blinked, she saw it again. The half-redacted, just-revealed-enough names.

Avery Anderson.

Damn it. Why did he have to be brought into the muddle of her thoughts? It wasn't fucking fair. Her feelings about her big brother were complicated, to say the least. But he belonged to her. She hated the thought of their 'Overlords' taking ownership even more than she hated him for what he'd done to her in their final moments together in LA.

Angrily, she grabbed the nearest glass and threw it against the wall.

[notsoangry]

Bruce was still outside, trying to get a grip. It wasn't working. He felt like his mind entirely went blank for awhile, because it was too much information all at once. Wherever he was. He wasn't a they anymore. What am I? A singular person. The last thing he wanted to do was have an emotional breakdown in a public place, so instead he dragged himself up and stepped into the inn. Precisely at the moment a glass hit the wall, and he startled, almost stumbling as he jumped to the side. Not that the glass was anywhere near him, it wasn't, but it was the nervous reflex.

He never knew what to do with strangers. He was a stranger in a strange land and here was a girl he'd never seen before, obviously in some kind of state that led to broken things. His instinct was to turn right around and leave. Instead he paused, watching her. "Hi." He was actually better with other people's problems than his own, and he was desperate for a distraction. "Uh, everything okay?"

[thegreatexperiment]

There was a moment of surprise, before the self-loathing kicked in. Damn it. Sam couldn't even vent when she was alone without fucking it up. It was pretty much her signature move. Botching. And as she looked at the guy, she realized that he was, without a doubt, a n00b. She knew all the faces, if not the names. She'd never seen his before.

She'd remember. He was, maybe, the first person she'd met here who didn't look like a ridiculous underwear model.

Great way to make a first impression.

Sam grimaced. "Shit," she said. Midwestern accent. Which was to say no accent, in her opinion. Although she'd lived in LA the last few years, Sam would always be a Chicago girl at heart. "Sorry. That was so, so, so not intended for you. Uh..." She walked over, holding up her hands in a gesture of surrender. "Don't move. Lemme just get that glass." She dropped down to her knees and started sweeping the broken shards into her hand.

[notsoangry]

Bruce was as average as average could get, the type of man that had very little difficulty slipping into a crowd or being forgotten. And he was fine with that. But he simply got used to being surrounded by beautiful people who could also kill people with their pinky. He rolled along with it. He winced at her response, but not because the language bothered him, because he could see that he walked in at the wrong time and put her in an uncomfortable position. He'd been there before, too many times. If he'd been able to slink out without bothering her, he would have.

"No, no, I'm the one who barged in." He moved over to her and gingerly knelt down himself. "Be careful with those, glass shards have a way of sticking into your skin even without much of a prick." Bruce was trying not to do the same, between the two of them they could probably get it done quickly. "I mean, there's a lot about this place and this situation that's worth breaking some things, right?"

[thegreatexperiment]

He managed to surprise her a second time. This time with decency, something that tended to be in short supply, in Sam's experience. She looked up in complete bewilderment. he was actually coming over to help her? He was apologizing to her?

What the actual...?

Sam shook her head.

The clown rodeo would never stop throwing curve balls at her.

"If I could, sometimes I think I'd smash everything in sight," she admitted. Sam had never thought of herself as an angry person. But once upon a time, she'd thought of herself as an active agent. How things changed. "But that was just fucking wasteful. It's not like I can just go around the corner and buy a dozen beakers every time I need more."

Inn

[unraisehell]

Wynonna's been spending a lot of her time here. She has the same sort of lost, stunned look as Bruce, albeit at a lower setting, and it's that look that has her sitting down across from him.

"I'd like to say it gets easier, but I've only been here two days," she tells him. "And to think I thought my hometown was remote and outdated."

[notsoangry]

Bruce is no stranger to staring off into space and then finding out someone was sitting across from him, so he only blinks a few times to clear his mind when she sits down. It takes him a second or two to play back what she said, still a little stupefied from the whole thing. Focus, Banner.

"I look that clueless, huh?" He knows he must, barely registering the things around them, or the details of how he got there, which is a real bad sign. Dark eyes fix now on the area around them, and he rubs a hand to the back of his neck. "Probably not, unless it's in the early 1900s. That's the feel this place has." Old but not centuries, plural. "I just came from ...." Wakanda. A battle. "A city. In 2018."

[unraisehell]

"Small-town Canada in late 2017." Shortly after burying a beloved friend. Or someone more than that. She'd never know now, what she and Dolls might have been.

"The architecture's not that different, have to say. And I grew up on a homestead- I'm at least not worried I'm gonna die out here." Though the somber expression that slips through for a few moments says there's evidently something that worries her more than that. This is definitely worse than Mom's camping trips.

[notsoangry]

"Different times and locations. I would suspect maybe a wormhole? But how did we get through one." There were forces at work here, probably someone like Thanos, but not actually Thanos, because they would just be dead. As crazy as the alien was, he was very single minded about his plan. "It can't be random happenstance, the variables are too clear."

He was still wrapping his very tight brain about it when he picked up on her saying die and glanced her way. "Sorry, I'm rambling. You'd think I would be used to this." Bruce ran his hand through his now dry hair. "I'm Bruce. I don't think we're going to die here either. It would defeat the purpose of us being here, whatever that purpose is." Probably. Maybe. He needed a chalkboard and some numbers.

[unraisehell]

"I shoot demons with a magic gun," Wynonna says, so flatly and casually despite the strangeness of the words themselves that she can only be telling the truth. "The 'how' parts of these equations are really not my department. But it's good to know there's someone here who at least sounds smart enough to figure out how to fix this." No pressure or anything Bruce.

Inn

[womanofvalue]

Between Tony working all hours at the forge, guarding the bunker, and trying to educate herself on a world of new things, Peggy's aware that she's probably running herself ragged. Then again, actually changing that isn't something she plans to do, so instead, she's come to the inn to collect on another bit of her tea that she keeps here, needing the caffeine quite desperately.

When she does arrive, there's yet another new face, gaping as if he's seen a ghost. Peggy warily looks at him and decides that tired as she might be, she's also not rude enough to ignore him. "I'm just about to make a cuppa," she informs him. "Will you be joining me?"

[notsoangry]

Bruce felt less like he'd seen a ghost and more like he could be a ghost. There were a lot of theories about the afterlife, but none that speculated about this particular situation. So he was putting it under very unlikely. He'd been toyed with gods and aliens enough at this point to think they were more likely to be the culprits. This was all very well and good, but he was still sitting there frozen like his brain stopped entirely, when in fact it was running a mile a minute.

He snapped out of it at the voice and looked at her, and paused. There was something very familiar about her, but he couldn't put his finger on why. And it was not because she had one of those faces. She had a singular face. One he was not going to stare at, stop staring at people Banner. "Sorry," he said automatically, standing up a little straighter. "I---" Where did he have to go? He was too tired to go back and forth in his head about what the better choice was. "If you don't mind, ma'am, I'd appreciate that." She was maybe twenty years younger than him, and still he felt like ma'am was the right way to address her.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy gives him a rueful, yet pleased smile at the 'ma'am'. She's not entirely sure what it is that earns her such respect, but she's not about to decline it at any point in time. After all, it's far better than the opposite. "I've plenty, the flowers have been blooming well."

Apparently, while she might be overworked and overstressed, her plants are flourishing. While it's steeping, she returns to the doorway so as not to ignore him. "Will I get a name of the man I'm sharing my tea with?"

[notsoangry]

His instinct was the correct one, which was a relief, because Bruce didn't really have the state of mind at the moment to deal with social flustering too. He shuffled after her quietly, wringing his hands together. "Flowers from here? Are they familiar or new?" There was nothing to stop him from being curious about the world around him, even during an existential crisis. It was going to nag at him, why she seemed so familiar, but maybe it would come to him.

"Bruce Banner." He almost put doctor at the top of it, but generally he felt like he was showing off when he did that in casual conversation. He offered her a hand politely. "I just got here. Wherever here is. I'm from earth, unless this too is a version of earth." It could be. This could be a Planet of the Apes scenario."

[womanofvalue]

"Peggy," she says in turn, settling the saucers down with the milk and sugar, still wanting a stronger of a steep, given that she doesn't like anything weak, in her opinion. "I got the plant a few years back and I've been growing it ever since. It's done quite well, thankfully, because I'd be lost without the tea," she says bluntly.

"I'm not sure what a Planet of the Apes is, but I haven't seen a primate around here," she says, hoping that's helpful. "And I do think it's earth, though perhaps not the one we're used to."

INN - After Text Conversation - Around Sept 18th

[minus1twin]

Wanda had a very strange relationship with many of the Avengers. Bruce was someone who she had never had the chance to get to know as a friend because he had disappeared after Ultron's defeat. She remembered Natasha trying to find him, demanding Tony for information about the craft so she could locate Bruce but it all came to nothing. There were stories about him and she's seen the depth to his anger but that wasn't the same as knowing him.

It surprised her that he was so readily to accept her again. She understood with Natasha and Clint. They all had done horrible things in their past and were trying to atone. Steve was hopelessly optimistic, Vision was young and everyone else was following orders. Wanda and Tony tolerated each other and helped each other but it was a business arrangement, it wasn't about being friends or teammates.

Wanda didn't really know how things with Bruce were going to go.

Dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, Wanda sat at one of the tables in the inn. It was in the far back corner but within view of the door. He already knew what she looked like so she trusted Bruce to find her when he was ready to talk. She had some stew in front of her but she wasn't eating it. It's been years since Ultron and her brother's death as well as another year or so of her being trapped in this place. She didn't look like the child Bruce had first seen; now she looked like a solider, weathered by her past but tempered by newer experiences.

[notsoangry]

For Bruce, the Avengers were a symbol of hope and pain. He believed in them, that was where it went wrong, or rather he believed in himself with them. They accepted his darker side and helped him find a way to transform back. They gave him soothing music and took time to reassure him that he was wanted. Those acts of kindness, he couldn't express to them what it did. Yes, he was closer to some than others. He and Tony were fused at the hip during that time, he and Nat were complicated. But Steve, Clint, Thor, they were there for him too.

Redemption was a consistent part of the team. They were all looking for it, in one way or another. He thought that Steve might be the only one above it, when it came down to it. He struggled in his own sense, yes, but he was still the cleanest of them all, a good man saving the world. But the rest of them? Lived with their bad decisions as best as they could. With his death toll on his back, Bruce was the last person to be cruel to another. It wasn't in his DNA, before the Hulk and after.

So yes, it was easy to forgive Wanda, who he barely knew. She was so damn young. She looked older now, and when he saw her during Thanos, but she was still young. She made a decision, and she did pay for it, in her brother's life, taken too soon. She put the hallucinations in his head and the Hulk destroyed and killed like he was meant to do, but all bad acts came from somewhere. Her pain in this case.

Bruce spotted her immediately and walked over, noting the differences and the similarities in her. He remembered what she did, in the end, something so difficult and it was devastating to watch. He might have walked away from the people he loved most in the world, but he also was never asked to destroy them. Wanda had that in her, that strength. He sat down across from her and smiled, as true a smile as he was capable of. "Thanks for meeting me."

[minus1twin]

Wanda wasn't sure how this meeting would go. Yes, he had agreed to meet her but she imagined a similar situation to her awkward conversation with Tony a few days before. The best she could do was try and help Bruce now. There was no changing the past. She would always be trying to make up for her past mistakes but what's done was done.

"I should be saying that to you." Her accent was still thick and warm as she met Bruce's tight smile with her own. "It's easier to explain things like this." Though Wanda didn't have all the answers, she's been living in this village for awhile.

"We should probably start with any specific questions you have." Wanda had no doubt that he'd have a lot of them and some of his questions might be about her and her affiliation with the Avengers. "About this place or anything else."

[notsoangry]

Bruce was gone by the time Wanda joined the team, so he never got the chance to accept her apologies and attempt to start again. He understood people who sought redemption. The blood on his own hands would never go away, and he was not capable of blaming others for their past deeds. Not if they were trying to change. Someone like Thaddeus Ross, he would always hate and never trust, but that was because the man only got worse with time. Wanda was young. She was misled.

"It's okay. I don't hold grudges." He wanted her to understand that up front, and hoped the genuine understated warmth would prove it. She'd been a true Avenger when he saw her last. She fought hard for them. She'd put the time in, he knew that much. "Text is easier, but context is lost on it." It was typically more comfortable for him, to have that space in between, but he would live with it.

"No, I, uh, got some answers about our situation back home. I came back to earth after a few years." So as far as he was concerned, that was wrapped up. Unless Wanda wanted to talk about anything. He was definitely not going to offer her the misery of knowing what came next. "I suppose if you want to explain what's happened here since you arrived and what you think the key parts to know about are in this place. Cliff notes, if it's easier than going into detail."

[minus1twin]

Wanda nodded her head and exhaled a soft breath of relief. She had already known that Bruce was willing to speak with her, that was why they had met, but hearing him both acknowledge their shared past and move on was a comfort. It felt like they had a chance to actually move on from it.

"Cliff notes." She had to figure out what those would be. "To start, everyone arrives here with different memories. The last I remember was helping Steve but you hadn't returned yet. This place..." Her lips pressed into a thin line. "It's somehow outside of our universe. Thor was trapped here for a while as well but he left months before I did." She left and returned. That was another long story where she only new the beginning and end.

"This place and our captors are testing us though I don't know why."

There was so much she wanted to try and explain but she was trying to keep things brief. It was hard to believe that so much had happened.