sixthiterationlogs | Hello Darkness My Old Friend

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Hello Darkness My Old Friend

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I know, I was surprised I won too. I got really lucky." Bruce didn't think it was due to any real skill on his part. Tenaciousness, maybe, but once he realized the Hulk wasn't going to save him, he had to stir up the energy to do it instead. Which was a far way from where he was before. There was a time he would've liked the excuse to give up. Dying used to be an impossible goal, not a reality, but it turned out he wanted to live enough to fight back. He wasn't sure until this moment how true that was. Wow. A day of mindbreaking changes. He really hated change.

Bruce had mental trauma in spades, but nothing physical. Even now, with aches and mild pain, he was weary of many things, but not injured. He was indestructible once, but he'd wanted to be anything but that. After killing so many people as the Hulk, he constantly felt like he deserved to feel it, and yet nothing could be done on that front. He couldn't mimic injuries, so they were internal. The truth was, Bruce didn't think the Hulk was a monster, because he was a creature of Bruce's own making. Bruce was the monster. Nothing could change that.

Dark eyes watched Tony work, having no intention of looking away from his friend, because eyes locked there meant he was not going to disappear. Alive, alive, alive. There had been no time to really talk about what happened. No time to understand the shadows in his friend's eyes, the emotional pain behind his words when he talked about the Avengers breaking up, and no real reckoning for the elephant in the room. Bruce knew that Tony went to great lengths to give him a life. Maybe he didn't know all of the lengths, but he did go above and beyond what most people would do for a human disaster. For the first time since the Hulk happened, Bruce had a place he belonged, and he was seduced by that promise of happiness. Flight was his response to many things, including happiness.

He owed apologies. He owed explanations. Maybe when he had the answers, he'd try that.

Instead he focused and shook his head when Tony dropped close. "No, he's ... we've fractured more since I've been gone." The hands were grounding. Bruce took in a deep breath and let it out, one hand lifting to grip one of Tony's, holding it tight. "He was in control since I left after Ultron, Tony. Years he had his own life, developed his own wants and needs, made ... friends." That beautiful, wild, engaging woman Bruce spent some time with but felt like he'd known for years. So yes, he and the Hulk were still bound at their core, but the Hulk became the dominant force. "That's why he could refuse to come out. He makes his own decisions now." Which was a terrifying concept in so many ways. The Hulk shouldn't and couldn't be trusted with that in a civilized society. Bruce looked at Tony and placed his free hand on his shoulder. An anchor. "He's gone."

"...He was driving for years?" Where would he have possibly landed where he felt that was the safest option for them? Hulk was angry, sure, he was destructive in that anger but at his core it always seemed like Hulk's number one priority was the protection of himself and the human he was stuck with. Keeping Banner alive, keeping himself far from anything resembling the military- Tony squeezed Bruce's shoulders, mind rattling through option after option. Something about what happened with Wanda? Something about the situation with Ultron.

Something about where they landed. Wherever it was, Hulk didn't feel safe to let go of control and simply...hadn't.

That long without Bruce as a counterweight would probably cause the tenuous distinction between them to shatter- and this place played with anything wild and fantastic except for the shit it saw fit to hand out like candy (his current status included) so tearing them apart to prevent a Hulk out made sense but- Tony swallowed back a pang of grief. Sure the big guy was a little unpredictable. Sure Johannesburg had been a low point for them. But Hulk had been as much his friend as Bruce and knowing he was gone? Complicated emotions. On the one hand- Bruce was finally free.

On the other?

Bruce was now vulnerable in ways Tony couldn't protect him. He wasn't certain how to cope with that considering how much insanity lived in the woods beyond the village. "Well."

Shit.

"That's probably for the best, because this place? Stressful as hell, Gummibear." When in doubt? Humor. Every shred he could scrape together. "Have you chosen a place to stay yet? I've got an extra room in my house. It's not quite candyland but-"

It was his. It was safe.

"We didn't really have time to talk about it. About anything." End of the world. They didn't even get through the explanation of what was going wrong before earth was attacked. "We were enslaved on a planet and forced to fight in a gladiator ring to survive." For years. Bruce knew that Hulk was the only reason he was alive, that Hulk used those years to protect them both, and maybe that was part of why this loss felt like a loss as well as a relief. He used to hate the entity that ruined his life, even if that entity was himself, but for once they were starting to sync. Even when Bruce was desperate to keep his mind together, to not change into the Hulk again, it was fear of loss of self. Not fear of the Hulk. "Thor found us there, we went to Asgard, it was destroyed, the refuges from Asgard were then attacked by Thanos." And there. That was the summary. Murder, disaster, loss, and misery.

"It is for the best. Maybe. I don't know. If it's stressful here, it means I can't help. We don't have Veronica here." Bruce was useless when it came to stressful situations, that's why the Hulk balanced him out. If he wasn't able to be part of the team, what exactly did he bring to the table? He shook his head before he dropped too low into that spiral, wanting to focus on the here and now. Tony. Alive.

The look on his face at the offer was a mix of too many emotions to name. He could close his eyes and remember exactly what it was like, to live in the tower, to have that sense of community. It wasn't the same here, but the offer was the same, the intention was the same. "Yes, please, I don't ... you're all I've got." Well that was too honest and not intentional, blurted the way it was, but it was true so he couldn't take it back. After everything between them, and this was still Tony's response to him. He didn't do anything to deserve a person like that.

"I'm sorry." What useless words. Bruce took Tony's hand and held it, not tight, just held it. "Call that a blanket sorry for everything, but also because I'm just stupidly rambling about gladiators and I should have asked what happened to you."

Well that sounded like Bruce's worst fears realized. Out of control, people hurt or killed and he'd never had a chance to stop it, lost and far from anything either of them knew- On the one hand he remained fiercely glad that the quinjet hadn't failed- that they survived whatever happened. On the other he hated that it worked too well. Took Bruce and Hulk somewhere they probably never should've been in the first place.

A world ended before the universe ended and fuck, could Asgard ever catch a break? Could earth? Could anyone?

It dipped too deep back into everything he was trying desperately not to think about. What he could've done different, how he could've gone back to the beginning and kept them together- too many options, too many paths and not a single one of them with any kind of guide as to which was the best option-

Tony's heartbeat filled his ears for a moment, eyes falling shut as he tried to breathe. It was fine. They were fine. Bruce was here, they were safe, whatever happened back home was beyond his control. He couldn't change it. He couldn't fix it. Without any kind of platitude or promise to offer he settled for leaning up and tugging Bruce in, wrapping his arms around Bruce's shoulders again. This was easy. This was grounding. "Well, good news is someone grows a fuck ton of weed- so we should be able to manage that."

Like that was any kind of solution.

"...you're all I've got too, you know."

Pepper's line. Something she'd said at the beginning and he wasn't crying, he wasn't, his eyes were hot from all the soot, they itched, that was all. He kept his breath steady as best he could but it wasn't enough to smooth over the hitch, the way his hands tightened in Bruce's scrubs. "Not your fault. None of that was your fault."

Bruce thought it was unlikely that level of trauma was something he could ever get past, but hey, he had mountains of trauma he hadn't come close to getting passed. So he would just keep surviving and trying to keep sane. Without the constant fear of hurting people here, that would help. He couldn't help, he had no strength, but he also couldn't turn on them. He told Nat that he was a threat to everyone, to her included, but now he was a threat to no one. The body count would stay at its current high horrific number.

He just huff-laughed at the weed comment and shook his head. "I might be able to smoke it for the first time, that's what I'll become, our resident pothead." Bruce was such a clean kid, who never made trouble, who never smoked or drank, he studied and he avoided. He did try a huge mix of medications and herbs and biological serums when fighting off the Hulk, and all of it much heavier than something as simple as marijuana. But that seemed ridiculous.

You're all I've got too, you know. It wasn't something to make him feel better, it shouldn't, it should make him sad, that he was all Tony Stark had now. He was a very poor substitute for the people Tony had before, for Pepper, for Rhodey. He would have to do his best to help fill those holes, to take the responsibility of being All Tony Had seriously. They were functional and intelligent. Bruce knew it was selfish, to be so grateful to mean that much to someone else, but he was not a healthy individual, and he wanted to matter.

Bruce held onto him and laughed again, but it was more just a gasp in and out of breath, sniffing. "No, no, it is. I messed up. I thought ---" He just shook his head. "I thought I was helping, it's so ridiculous now, looking back at it." Looking back on it as if it was years ago, when it was so close a time to his real memory. "After Johannesburg and Ultron, I knew I was bad for you, for the team." Not thought, knew. He had equal responsibility for the murder bot, he made the Avengers look terrible, dangerous. Cap and Tony, they could be forgiven by the public, they could salvage it, but making excuses for him, for the Hulk? "I didn't want to drag you down with me. I thought if I was just gone, it would be easier for the team to move on." The world could see him as the bad element.

There were tears now, and he just gave up on trying not to accept them. "I should have stayed. For you, if no other reason. And if I had, maybe things would've been different, maybe whatever happened to the Avengers wouldn't have." And he wouldn't be on a slave planet and the Hulk wouldn't have had his life for two years. If Banner for once made a good choice instead of running.

"Bruce- a lot of things weren't good for me with 'the team'. You weren't ever one of them." Time and distance and a lot of scotch, dealing and coping and trying to live better, to be better. It'd hurt, losing everyone. Watching them walk away in the middle of a mess they all had a hand in leaving it for Tony to try and mend. He won't pretend it didn't. Bridges for the most part might be stretched or strained or nonexistent but only one had a torch put to it-

Only one was something he had no intention of mending.

"I retired. You left, I tapped out. Ultron was...Sokovia was a sign." A warning, a message. Something none of them had the chance to pay attention to. A reminder that no matter what he did, no matter what he built or how many lives he saved people would look at him and see The Merchant of Death. That was flag one.

Rogers bringing Wanda in without missing a beat, Thor throttling him, how easy it was for all of them to look and judge and blame- he'd fucked up. He would own that.

But not a one of them tried to understand the why. None of them had ever tried to connect with him other than Bruce, and he'd been useful. A heavy hitter, a constant supply of funding, legal navigation, PR assistance, tech. He gave. He gave and he gave, he tried and he tried and he didn't want anything in return but the opportunity to do something right. To help people. To trust a group he'd come to be fond of and-

That trust wasn't returned. Shocker.

He knew better, no reason why it should be so upsetting. "I tapped out. There wasn't much of anything for me left there and I stupidly thought Rogers had a handle on everything."

But that had been the first crack- or at least the first visible one. They'd never really seen eye to eye for all he thought they understood one another. Didn't matter. Tony let his head fall forward, leaning in and curled into Bruce, holding him as much as he was being held up. "It's a long story, if you want to catch up. I'll give you the cliffnotes. Don't want you passing out on me again."

The worst part about Ultron was that they both should have known better. They were two of the most brilliant minds in the world, and all they could do was look at this puzzle they wanted to solve and not on the down sides it could lead to. No, they couldn't know for certain how badly it would all go, but Bruce in particular knew better. It was exactly what he did in the first place to ruin his life, and at least when he did that, the number of people destroyed by it was lower. The second time? Everyone paid. Tony wanted to do the right thing, he had vision and purpose, but it should have been Bruce's responsibility to pause.

The team wasn't really a team to him. The Hulk was on the Avengers, Banner helped in the lab and lived there. They were some outline sketches of a family to him, not that he really put the words into forming that mindset. Yes, Tony was who he was closest to, but he got along well with everyone enough to feel less like looking over his shoulder. He knew what it meant to Tony though. It was everything to him. He poured his heart and soul into the Avengers, he made them his mission, his blood and his sweat.

So something very, very wrong had to happen to change that. It was in every line of Tony's body language right then, telling the story of how they were destroyed. It was a very subtle movement, when Bruce went from leaning on Tony's support, to pulling Tony in a little more, being the support instead. "Tell me. I won't pass out. What happened, Tony?" The Avengers were tarnished by Ultron, but they still stopped him. Bruce couldn't imagine how it went from that to Tony refusing to speak to Steve, and the others being hunted as criminals.

"...Politics." That's the long and short of it. "Politics, emotional compromise, and a lie that lasted for three years longer than it should've. No one walked away clean."

But almost everyone walked away. It was easier to talk about it like this, tucked up close, not having to watch Bruce's face as he outlined every way he'd fucked up. "...After New York- there was a lot of collateral damage. There always is whenever we tangle with something big that wants to murder humanity. Then the nuke happened and- people got antsy. After the Helicarriers, Roxxon, after Sokovia? It got worse. People were afraid of us. Of our disregarding sovereign borders and flying in to make a mess, sweeping back out when we deemed the day saved."

Maybe he was a little bitter. A lot bitter.

"The Sokovia Accords were a document that would mandate accountability that came around at the worst fucking time. I'd tapped out, Rogers was trying to train up the new team and lock down the remaining Hydra or former Hydra cells still running around stirring up shit, Peggy was on the decline and he still hadn't found Barnes. Pepper and I were taking a break. Ultron, Sokovia, being with the Avengers again after I promised I'd quit? She couldn't take it. None of us were in a good place when this slammed down the pipeline. I was the one that handled politics so...the Secretary of Defense came to me with an ultimatum after an incident in Lagos where Maximoff attempted to contain an explosion and wasn't able to manage it as well as people thought she should've. Civilians died. Wakandan Citizens died. It was a mes. Because of that we had to sign or forcibly be retired and I got slammed in the face with a huge mallet of 'my baby died because you fucked up' about A woman's son that had a bright future and died in the fallout of Sokovia where he was assisting relief efforts and building affordable housing. So. I was off my game. Rogers was shook, Maximoff was shook, the rest of the team was trying to handle shit and Rhodey was trying to keep the brass off the initiative's back demanding some kind of trial for Maximoff's assumed carelessness. While we're arguing should we sign, shouldn't we sign, Aunt Peg-"

Tony's voice went thick, scraped raw over remembered grief. He took a deep breath, peeling back enough to massage his face with a hand. "Peggy Carter passed away. Rogers leaves for the funeral, I try to scramble to get us more time or to get everyone on board so we're at least steering the thing, get it amended, workable, it's not something we can do if we're not in the damn car- and there's an explosion where they're being signed, killing the King of Wakanda who spearheaded the Accords. James Barnes is assumed the culprit and that sets Rogers off trying to find him. It's a clusterfuck from the start and it only gets worse."

Bruce kept completely quiet while Tony spoke, simply listening to him, and not at all falling asleep, thank you very much. It wasn't really that Tony's other story was exhausting, or that Bruce hated listening to people's problems, but he hadn't slept for a few days at the time, and Tony started decades before. He drifted! He remembered at least 40%. Anyway, he was there, he was focused. He ran his hand soothingly along Tony's back as he went, glad too that they were close because Bruce was not good at hiding his expressions. And if Tony said something that threw him off guard, it would show, and his immediate reactions to things were not always the most rational. He wanted to be supportive. The Most Supportive Non-Pepper Entity.

He couldn't say that any of it sounded like a surprise. People were afraid of them, and the shine was off their initial save of New York. They did cross over boundaries and did what they wanted without asking first. But that was also the only way they could do the work they felt they needed the way it was needed. There were some holes that Bruce did have filled, he remembered about Barnes, and it sounded like they were all torn in different directions and distractions. It was a recipe for a political disaster.

Aunt Peg, well, that didn't sound good. Bruce frowned. "Barnes is the assumed culprit, but you wouldn't say assumed if he was. Was someone trying to pin it on Hydra?" It would've been one of his first thoughts, if the man showed up again apparently assassinating people. "But at this point, no one has any reason to think it's anyone outside of Barnes, I'm guessing." Yep this was definitely headed toward a clusterfuck.

"Everyone thought it was him, there was photographic proof and none of us had the time or sense of mind to wonder why, after being a ghost for years, he'd fuck up or act out now. I didn't have time. The Secretary of Defense wanted him brought in, set up a german task force and Rogers fucked off to find him on his own. I had to argue with Thaddeus fucking Ross to cool it with the itchy trigger finger to let me bring them in. Mostly to keep him from vanishing Barnes, because he'd want to, you know he'd want to. I had to bargain for the right to arrest a friend." Someone he trusted. Someone he went to bat for. Someone he'd tried so hard to protect in any way he could even if he'd stepped away. "...And I got twenty four hours to find him and bring him in. So we tried- the German task force located them in Romania and there was...Rogers had gotten there first. There was a fight. There's always a fight. Officers get critically injured because it's a swat team versus two super soldiers and a mystery third party that's as enhanced as either of them. The Black Panther? T'Challa. Prince, now King, of Wakanda."

God, what a clusterfuck.

"Ross is breathing down my neck, Rogers and Barnes get brought in, T'Challa's in custody, and I'm trying to get Rogers to sign to make what he'd done aboveboard. Legal. Arguing with him that we need to be on the same page with this and I thought maybe he'd trust me to handle it, because it's all I fucking do. But- I don't know. Nothing I did was the right option, no argument I could make got through to him. His mind was on where Barnes was being kept and mine was on trying to keep everything from cracking open."

There were a lot of words and Bruce heard every one of them, he moved the pieces around in his head, because he was a genius and he could do that while also having a mild freak out. Barnes was being blamed for the murder of the king who forced the accords, Rogers just lost someone and was clearly not going to lose another, Tony was just trying to keep everything from exploding while the others reacted emotionally, it made a patchwork amount of sense. With a few questions still, about who was really moving the chess board.

But Bruce was full of trauma, mountains of it, and there were only a few words that could trigger him absolutely. The Thaddeus fucking Ross? Pounded through his head like Tony was screaming it. He froze and his face went completely white. "How did ... why was he there?" They were quiet words at first, he was trying to add the pieces in. "The army, they'd have a reason. He had a lot to gain from all of this, he was probably behind it." That was Bruce really mostly talking to himself, as if talking to himself would remind him that Thaddeus fucking Ross was not anywhere nearby. Maybe he had showed up, hoping to find Bruce. He thought he could use Tony against him.

"Sorry, sorry," he shook his head, fingers tight on Tony's arm and then relaxed. He was not going to let Ross wreck his chances at being a good friend. He could ask those questions after. He wasn't questioning why Tony was dealing with Ross. Yet. "Sorry, this is your story, keep going."

Edited 2018-09-20 02:52 (UTC)

"...Ross was, is, the secretary of defense." Politics were a bitch sometimes. Tony took a moment to breathe, reaching up to squeeze Bruce's shoulder. "The UN had him come in to deliver the accords and ultimatum since the Compound is on American Soil. And he'd always wanted to get a look inside the clubhouse because I spent a lot of money making that impossible while you were still with us."

Ross could have Bruce over Tony's cold, dead body. It wasn't happening. It didn't breed a lot of love and made the entire situation even more heated, even more complicated. Ross was a man Tony couldn't and moreover wouldn't charm.

"But you're not wrong in thinking someone's behind it. Apparently Hydra...plugged trigger words into Barnes' brain. Rattle them off and you've got The Winter Soldier as your puppet. The guy behind this particular part of the mess? Barnes' being caught, being brought in? Infiltrated the cell where Barnes was being held under the guise of being a psychologist. I was still arguing, trying to get the right to bring him back to the states, get him released to the Avengers, let us deal with him. Leave him Rogers' problem. The guy? Triggered Barnes. Ordered him to attempt to escape which- well he managed. Rogers went with him, Wilson followed. I'm stuck trying to clean up the mess and figure out what the fuck happened because I-" He kicked himself for this, every hour of every day. "I was retired. I didn't have a suit. Had a handheld repulsor that collapsed into my watch but- no armor. Not there when Barnes tried to escape. We had injured, I had a deadline."

Bruce wasn't ready to process his varied emotions over Tony working with Thaddeus Ross because that's exactly what it meant and it was Ross who had the accords and Ross who was hoping they'd all fail and the Avengers almost were in the hands of a sociopath. "That's who Rhodey was talking to, he had me leave the room." Bruce was putting that together. It made sense at the time for no one to know he was there, outside of the other Avengers, but if Ross knew he was back, it wouldn't have changed anything right then, but later? Hard to say, when there was no way of knowing what the later was. Rhodey was protecting him, on behalf of Tony, he saw that now.

He was going to circle back to all of that.

"You were in a secure location, surrounded by Avengers, with the one dangerous person in custody, and you were retired. You can't always be the suit." Tony used to always be the suit, but it wasn't healthy for him. This situation was not the kind of one where people brought in a weapon thinking they'd have to use it, so far he got that much. "The man thought all of this through. That's a lot of moving pieces. A lot of if they do this I do that." Not outside the realm of possibility though. He and Tony were geniuses. If they wanted to manipulate situations to this extent and put their minds behind it, it would be done.

Ross must have loved it. Every second. Seeing Tony fail, having good reason to arrest or make an enemy out of the others. "So Steve, Sam, and Barnes are out in the wind, someone's framing Barnes, but I have a feeling things are about to get worse." All of this explained an argument between him and Cap, but a very, very bad break up? Not so much.

"You don't always get to pick who you work with when it comes to business and politics. The best thing I can say about Ross is he isn't Hydra. Sweeping all those connected officials out left a power vacuum." Could anyone honestly be surprised he stepped up to what he thought he deserved?

"It wasn't about being the suit it was about for once thinking I wouldn't need it to get through a situation. The one time I think we have shit handled, that I figure Rogers has his head on straight and we can talk through it, get through it-" Face to face with an armed supersoldier with hallow eyes that fired without flinching. Jesus. "It gets worse. So much worse. I'm...either we round up who we have left and collect them quietly- or another task force is assembled to do it. Military. This wasn't above board entirely but a lot of shit was getting flung around and again, people were terrified. Suddenly the Winter Soldier who's already killed once is on the loose, Captain America is missing, and the Avengers are a hot fucking mess. Rogers calls in Barton from retirement and Scott Lang. Romanoff, for reasons I don't fucking agree with, called in T'challa. Who was out for blood because he thought Barnes killed his father. I call in a pitch hitter as a show of force and a reminder that there are more people these Accords would affect other than us. Because it wasn't supposed to become a fight."

But it...when it was Rogers feeling like his back was against the wall? It would always, always become a fight.

"...We catch up with them at an airport in Germany. We get the place evacuated and I try, again, to talk Rogers down. To de-escalate. It doesn't work."

The only obvious reaction he had so far was giving Tony a very reproachful look about Ross. Ross was a different sort of evil, but an equal evil in Bruce's eyes. A very dangerous one, when he was controlling the government and now apparently the Avengers. There are a lot of things Bruce wanted to say, and not all of them were going to be what Tony wanted to hear, which was exactly why he was staying quiet. Because if he interrupted to ~~argue~~ discuss, they probably wouldn't make it to the end, and he couldn't know how it all fell apart without the full story. He owed it to Tony to hear him out from beginning to end and without jumping to a judgment.

There was a slight flicker of sadness in his eyes when Nat's name was mentioned, but that was a whole backlog of problems too. He sighed and patted Tony's shoulder, clearly letting him know that despite the look, he was still there as an anchor. "It was going to be a fight no matter what. Steve wasn't going to let anyone have Barnes. That's just always where it was headed." There was a lot of weariness in that, and Bruce was thankful now on about ten different levels that he wasn't there. With the Hulk in the mix and with Ross, it would have escalated but a hundred.

"It's a fight, a bad fight, but you sound like you hate the man now, Tony." Tony was forgiving in a lot of instances, of everyone but himself. "So I'm assuming it's still coming."

The look is obvious and- Bruce hadn't been there. Bruce had fucked off to space and he didn't resent him for it as much as he actually might. His expression didn't close off so much as he leaned back, out of Bruce's space. A reminder to himself not to depend too much on any one person. To expect anything other than derision. Relief made a man forget that shit, apparently.

"...Hate takes effort." And that's energy Tony decided a long time ago he wasn't going to waste on Rogers. "I don't care anymore. There's a difference."

Getting to that meant getting past Germany, so. "We fight. I didn't want it to be a fight- but we fight. Rogers drops a damn freight car on Peter, Romanoff decides to let them walk away to minimize damage when they finally get to a parked quinjet- Maximoff drops half a parking garage on me, Lang risks tearing himself in half to become a fifty foot giant that we have to knock down which distracts us long enough for Barnes and Rogers to bail. Rhodey and I give chase and- Sam tries to dogfight us. In the suits. The wings can't catch up, I'm not worried, Rhodey shouldn't have been worried but he put a call down to Vision to make Sam a glider. Bring him down gently. Wilson evades because it's reflex and instinct- and the mind stone shorts out Rhodey's arc reactor."

His voice went cold and clipped, flattening out. Hiding his upset that the thing he built to protect one of the most important people in his life? Failed.

"...We both dive to try to catch him. Neither of us make it."

Bruce felt the withdrawal and wanted to sigh more, because what was he supposed to do, approve completely of everything that was being said? Tony had to know that a lot of what was happening here were hitting all of Bruce's buttons, but he was there and he was trying. If it was anyone else, he would have already left the room, right around the time Thaddeus fucking Ross was mentioned. "Don't," he said firmly, not saying what the don't was, because it was obvious when he leaned right back into Tony's space. Don't.

Any of the swirling feelings in him dissipated, and his eyes widened. "Rhodey was injured? He seemed ... he seemed fine when I saw him." There was a lot going on at the time, it wasn't as if Bruce had a moment or two to step aside and ask how he was feeling. He was taking on a pretty serious government pressure moment, and helping the team figure out next steps with Vision. And this fact came closely on the heels of him realizing that Rhodey went out of his way to protect Bruce from Ross, which meant a lot.

"There's no point to saying it wasn't your fault, is there?" Not only his fault, at least. There was fault on every single set of shoulders involved in the situation. There was fault on his shoulders too, for Sokovia and the Hulk's actions before, for Ross' vendetta. Blame to go around. Bruce took Tony's hand loosely in his, eyes dropping down to it, so very tired. They really never got a damn break. "He's still ... you probably don't know. He's still alive."

"What?" He was allowed distance if he needed it. Best buffer in the world, a few inches. A few miles. A couple of lightyears. But Bruce leaned right back in and apparetly he wasn't supposed to peel back if he needed it and-

Fuck it, fine. He'll deal.

"You didn't notice the braces? Good. Means I finally have them discreet enough. There was massive spinal trauma. He was paralyzed, never supposed to walk again." And Tony couldn't abide a world where Rhodey couldn't fly, let alone couldn't walk. He'd spent days alternating between helping Rhodey with physical therapy and throwing himself into working on the braces, reintegrating them with the War Machine armor. Giving Rhodey back his life that he shouldn't have had to struggle to keep. "I know. Barnes told me."

But a second opinion, a confirmation? Kind of important. The tension in Tony's shoulders loosened somewhat, fingers loose in Bruce's hand. "Which is fucking hilarious when we get to the end of this little story. Rogers and Barnes high tail it to Sibera. Everyone else: Barton, Maximoff, Wilson, Lang, they get rounded up and sent to The Raft which is what happens when you break the law. You go to jail. Pretty sure the only reason they ended up there was Maximoff, not that it makes it better. They hadn't signed the Accords so there was no due process and I didn't get any time to try and get them a trial or held somewhere not fucking awful- also I was in the hospital with Rhodey trying to figure out what happened with Vision and what should've been a clean shot that never needed to be made- mistakes to go around. So. I'm injured, compromised, the rest are in lockup, Vision's contemplative, Ross is demanding answers and I've got nothing to give. But I know they're not just hiding out, Rogers had said something about a threat- more winter soldiers."

Which- fuck. One was bad enough. "I kill surveillance long enough for Wilson to tell me where they were going because two on five, even if two are supersoldiers, those aren't good odds. I fly out to Sibera which is when we start unpicking the tangle of planning Zemo had left behind. Killing the power grid to get at Barnes, killing his actual assigned psychiatrist to trigger him, setting off the bomb at the UN summit. I thought- we all thought he wanted the soldiers. A man that meticulous and detail oriented with five supersoldiers programmed to obey? It'd be a nightmare."

"Barnes told you? But Barnes is ---" Dead seemed like such a terrible word. Dust was what it looked like, dead was what it was. "He was one of the first people who died after the snap." Which meant that someone else must have told him. What a conversation that would have been, you died but here's the people who didn't. There were so few of them at the end. Bruce only saw the numbers they had in their corner, but out in the rest of the world? No one had the numbers. He had no idea about Pepper or Betty or Ross either.

It was actively difficult not to react to things as he heard them. He was doing better at the moment hiding his thoughts than he typically did. it was taking a concentrated effort. Tony was much better at seeming stony faced, although there were still curls at the edges of real emotion. Steve and Nat were steel traps. Bruce was really just aiming for not reacting to the Raft or what Wanda being there would mean or what Ross was really after. This was all a disaster, but he was very aware now about how much worse it would have been if he was there. Trapped in the Hulk on another planet was horrible, but on earth with the government trying to control superheroes and Ross having all the power and them fighting each other? The Hulk being there would have made it worse for everyone.

"All of you had trouble handling one supersoldier, the damage of five would be serious. But he didn't want them. He wanted to hurt the Avengers. Otherwise this wouldn't be about Barnes and it wouldn't be about you and it wouldn't be about Steve." Unless he was targeting one of them specifically, which was possible, it all worked to the same goal. The Avengers broke up because of this. So whoever this guy was, he won.

"I know." Barnes had told him that too. And then the word's in the air, the Snap, and all Tony could see or hear was Peter apologizing as he crumbled away. Nevermind that the kid was here and solid- having that ash and dust on his hands, his face, under his nails-

There was a reason he was always a little sooty, lately. Like if he tried he could reprogram his brain to associate it with something else. It hasn't taken just yet.

"We get there and- there's a bunker. Door's open, Rogers and Barnes are inside- Ross doesn't know I'm there but I can't let them face it on their own. But we get in and I'm only picking up one heat signature. There are five cryo tubes with corpses in them. Zemo shot them all in the head. Which, weird, but okay. He wanted all three of us in that Bunker to...see an empire fall. Zemo is Sokovian. He lost someone in the fight with Ultron. Everyone. And he promised Rogers would too which- that's a laugh." Seeing as he was the one that walked away with most of the team but, whatever. Zemo couldn't see the future. "An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one which crumples from within? That's dead… forever. That's what he said. And...then he pulled up footage of an old dirt road dated December Sixteenth, Nineteen ninety one."

A road Tony had studied and obsessed over in the aftermath, trying to find the fault in the road, in the car, anything that might prove his father hadn't gotten drunk with his mother in the car and lost control. It wasn't an accident so it had to have been Howard balls deep in bourbon, being frustrated and reckless and that- that didn't fit. He'd been more careful with Maria in the car, always, but that had to have been it and-

Tony shook himself out of the fugue, scrubbing at his jawline. "...Apparently there was a camera close to where my parents crashed and had their 'accident'."

Now Tony was working with Steve and Barnes so it was baffling to think what could then turn it around and change things so drastically. What Zemo was saying and Tony was repeating, it did sound like he planned exactly what ended up happening. Bruce's mind was jumping around, until he heard the date. The date was familiar, why was the date familiar? As soon as Tony put it into context, Bruce's head picked up, brown eyes wide. The death of Howard and Maria Stark was highly publicized, and everyone in the science and technology field was horrified at the loss of such a great mind. He was all over the Project Rebirth files too.

"He made you watch?" That was cruel beyond imagining. Tony actually loved his parents. It wasn't like Tony would turn away, if Zemo was doing it to torture him. Whoever this Zemo was, he was scum, and Bruce really hoped he got some kind of retribution for all that had happened. But as awful as that was, why would it make Tony mad at Steve? Steve cared about Howard too, he would be sympathetic. His mind was curling over the facts, flipping them around, trying to find the through line.

It clicked all at once. Zemo pinned the death of the king on Barnes, so Steve would protect him, so they'd have to arrest him, so the rest would happen. If it was going to plan, it was necessary for those three people to be in the room. And if those three people were in the room, and he was showing Tony's parents dying, it had to be connected. It shifted again and reframed, and he just felt a wave of sadness that could knock him off his feet. For Tony and for Steve and for this entire screwed up situation and screwed up world. "It was a hit, not an accident, right?" Everything was rotten to its core. "Tony, I'm so sorry."

"I thought- I'd assumed, for years that Howard just did what he always did, had too much bourbon and drove. Lost control of the car. I knew there was a coverup with the story, I just- I was wrong in what they were covering up. He never would risk my Mom. Never. We might've argued and he might've been distant but he wouldn't risk her." The one thing both Stark men had in common: an absolute adoration and bone deep love of Maria. "But- we'd argued before they drove out, I've always been good at pissing him off, stressing him out, it's a talent. I blamed him. I blamed him and I blamed myself for years."

Decades. Baggage and issues and pain and all of it unresolved because of this loss cutting the legs out from under him when he and Howard were finally starting to talk and kind of understand each other. All that potential- gone. Irrecoverable. Tony's gaze swept to the middle distance, jaw working. Two years to process everything and he still- "Barnes looked like he was about to cry and I didn't get it until I saw Hydra's favorite Murder Doll roll up to the scene. He- ah. Howard recognized him. Last thing out of his mouth was 'Sargent Barnes.' It's kind of amazing how well a metal fist can mimic impact trauma from a steering wheel."

Horrifying, more like. "Strangled mom. Shot out the camera. But that-"

It cracked him open a little, still, every time he thought about it. Dug in and wrenched around until he couldn't breathe, even then with a full set of lungs and a sternum that isn't half so fragile as it ought to be. Sharp, pained, hysterical laughter trickled out of him from behind his palm, his eyes half closed. "That wasn't the worst part, Bruce."

This was a mess. A horrible unfixable mess. All thoughts about Thaddeus Ross was swept to the side, because for all of Bruce's own feelings of anger and betrayal and opinions, it really didn't matter much in comparison. That could wait, and it probably should, because he was already going to be irrational walking into it. Tony blamed himself for his parents, and then he found out the truth, but it wasn't like retribution or relief, knowing it wasn't his fault. A car accident was bad, but being murdered by a supersoldier, that was worse. And he strangled Maria Stark. Fucking hell. If someone had a video of his mother dying, rather than just the actual knowledge of how she died, it would be terrible, and that was long ago.

Bruce stopped himself from saying what could be worse? and instead just gently ran his fingers through his hair, rubbed his arm, he didn't know what really would help, if anything could help. That's what Betty did for him, when things were bad, and it didn't fix things but he remembered then he wasn't alone. His heart felt like it could bleed for the man in front of him, who gave so much to him and others, and got this back. "Just remember to breathe," he murmured, having had experience with emotional breakdowns before. "You don't have to continue if you're not okay."

"The worst part-" He had to hold it together because he's over this. He'd made his choice to step off the bridge while it was still burning before it took him down along with it. He was done. He didn't have to care anymore and that? That was a fucking relief. "The worst part, Bruce? Was that he knew."

Tony swallowed down whatever tangle of emotion that kept making his voice thick. The reveal had been devastating. What came after?

Something he should've seen coming from day one.

"Rogers knew. Since the Hydra dump. That my parents had been killed, and that Barnes did it." As much as he'd like to believe that brief moment of 'I didn't know it was him-' how could he trust it? After everything he'd been through in the days before, every line he'd tried to give, every pound of flesh he'd offered up to Rogers and the Avengers- he'd finally hit bone. "He lived with me, worked with me, laughed and had me help fund his 'find Bucky Barnes' missions for three years. And never said a word. I had to find out like that. With Barnes three feet to my left. Suffice to say I didn't handle it well."

That was devastating. Bruce could think of a few reasons why it happened. None of them excuses, just rational analysis. It came down to trust. Steve didn't trust that Tony wouldn't react badly, wouldn't try to hurt his friend. He didn't trust their friendship in comparison. Whatever trust had started to build, it wasn't enough. For Tony, that was devastating. He wanted to be trusted. Bruce didn't want to be trusted, personally. He didn't trust himself, he couldn't imagine asking others to. But it mattered to Tony, what the team thought, what the world thought, making a tangible difference, making up for his mistakes.

"Yeah, I don't know anyone who would handle it well. You were triggered by the situation and then by the video. Whoever his Zemo guy was, he was very astute. I wonder how he understood everyone's minds so well." A question that wouldn't be answered, but sometimes an outside view was capable of seeing what people close to it was not. You hit this pressure point and this one, and it explodes. Bruce was the last person to judge anyone for reacting badly in a situation. He literally tore through cities because of his poor anger management.

Bruce sighed and rubbed Tony's arms, trying to keep him in the moment, not lost to the memories. "So you fought them, the team split up, Cap and the others went on the run, and that's how things were until Thanos." He met up with them then. He told them they looked great, but they did look awful, just great in terms of him being glad to see their faces. "I get why it was hard to call him now." Bruce did instead. There wasn't time to ask questions, but it also was the end of the world. Bruce would have said as much even if he had context. Some things trumped personal issues. "That is all ... really fucking bad, and I'm kind of an expert on really fucking bad." He rarely swore, so when he did, there were good reasons.

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ENTER TL; DR

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