[MINGLE] Worried/Sick 2: Snake Expedition & Recovery!

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Anywhere; multiple locations
WHEN: Apx. 19-27 November
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Serious illness and reactions to such, snakes, hallucinations

IMPORTANT NOTES: This is the second of two mingles. Please see the timing and general event details here.

Not putting any mod top-levels in this one — Just make sure you label your own top-level clearly as to whether it's Expedition or Recovery, and as always, whether it is OTA or not!

Please keep in mind the established plot details, but creative license is welcome and encouraged as long as it doesn't step on toes.

Comments

[tothefly]

Natasha understands the urge to put things in boxes for better categorization and study. She isn't a scientist, but there's always been a need for compartmentalization in her life, and she is very, very good at putting things in boxes and keeping them there. It's what she'd originally done with her feelings for him, before she'd ever confessed them in the first place: kept them in a box, weighed her options, measured risk vs. reward, need vs. want. It wasn't always so cold as that; it was rarely cold, but... she'd always been good at choosing what was necessary, and not necessarily what was selfish. And then things had fallen out the way they had, and she'd put those feelings back in that box and not taken them back out. Until now. Until this second chance she hadn't known she'd ever get, because second chances weren't the kind of thing people like her got. Can she really be blamed for not wanting to give up that chance?

"I wouldn't say no if you asked me out," she says, and there's a faint smile in the words. "Movie might be a little hard, but dinner isn't impossible." The words fade, though, and she sobers again as she listens to him talk about Ross. Ross, whom she already had no love for, Ross, a dangerous man with a dangerous set of ideas in a position no man of his ilk should be in. She has her own ideas about Ross and how to handle a problem like him. Those she doesn't share with anyone. And they aren't the problem at hand. She can hear the problem in his voice, hear the guilt.

"That doesn't reflect on you," she tells him quietly. "Who they are, what they did. You aren't any less just for wanting a father." And you aren't them, she doesn't say, not yet, but the words are there, too. She can see the parallels that he might think were there, but the Hulk is nothing, nothing at all like those men. Nothing at all. And neither is he.

[notsoangry]

"Sometimes I think it does. My father was a mad scientist who got people killed when an experiment of his went wrong." Including his own mother. "I didn't want to be anything like him, but then I did the same thing." Bruce sighs and closes his eyes, leaning his head back on the wall behind them. "It wasn't the radiation that created the Hulk entirely, the radiation could have just killed me. But it was my brain that made it happen, my flaws, my DNA." His demons became reality. He spent most of his life suppressing himself, living in anxiety and fear and shyness, and it was all pieced together into the disaster.

"Abraham Erskine, the man who created the Super Soldier project, posited that the experiment could go wrong based in part on who the person in it was. So a good man, like Steve, became a better man." The experiment wasn't exactly the same, Bruce used more radiation than he should, he was skirting around some of Erskine's better suggestions to poke and prod and try to make it better. He was showing off, honestly, which was so foolish. "The Hulk isn't to blame, Nat, Bruce Banner is to blame. The experiment going wrong, me, the death and devastation from the Hulk, me, Ultron, me. I'm the mistake." She's seen him in this state before, after Johannesburg, and also in that bedroom when they revealed too much of themselves to each other. Seeing his father again was bringing it all back.

There may be more than a few tears shimmering in his eyes, but really, he can't really force them away and doesn't try. "I want to go on a date with you. I'm crazy about you. But I don't know that I deserve it, that I deserve you."

[tothefly]

She can see the connection he's making there, the fallacy inherent in the statement. That because Steve was a good man already, he became Captain America, the super soldier, and because Bruce was a bad man, he became a monster. It isn't true. For a variety of reasons, chief of which is that it really just doesn't work that way, and as good as Erskine was, half of Steve's development was just random chance. She can't tell Bruce that. Just like she can't tell him that she doesn't deserve to be on the pedestal he's placing her on. She knows just how well it works when she tries to put them on even ground, when she shares a part of her bloody history in an attempt to make him understand that she measures things differently. She'd never figured out, exactly, how to do this the right way, but she at least knows the wrong ones. So she doesn't tell him that his father was awful, and she doesn't tell him that he didn't make mistakes, and she doesn't tell him about the things she has done and the choices she has made and the ghosts that still follow her.

Instead, she listens. She listens, and she lets him get all of it out, and she's quiet for a moment, looking at their hands, at her fingers tight around his. "You've made mistakes," she says quietly, "and you've gotten people hurt. You've made choices, and those choices have had consequences. But that doesn't change the fact that you are one of the best men I have ever known." She shakes her head slightly after the words, not a dismissal, but perhaps heading off any protest that he might want to make. "I know. I've spent my life in a lot of questionable places with a lot of questionable people. But I've known good men. Everything you did with us. With the Avengers. Every day you went out there, and you became the thing that you thought was the worst of you, you let that happen, and you did it because people needed help, and you trusted us to bring you back. You did it to help, and you did it to try and make up for mistakes you'd made, and every single time you know what you asked me? Every time you came back, you'd ask me if you'd hurt anyone." Her fingers squeeze a little tighter, grip firm around his hand as she looks at him, tears and all. "I've known a lot of bad men, too, Bruce. You are not one of them."

[notsoangry]

Bruce really doesn't want to hear good things about himself, because when he curls into himself like this, usually it leads to a lot of self-recrimination and grief. Eventually he shakes it off and goes back to his life, but it's not gone. It's repressed and set aside. But he lets her talk. He listens and tries to believe her, and maybe it gets easier as she talks. Natasha has her own dark side and her own demons, he knows that. Neither of them are great at seeing the good in others, full of skepticism and bad experience. Except that was partly what the Avengers gave them. A cause. People to believe in. A future.

Of course he asks every time if he hurt anyone. Bruce Banner himself wouldn't hurt a fly. He caught spiders and brought them safely outside. He brought centipedes to leafs and found safe ways to set butterflies loose. He braked for animals and took in stray dogs while on the run, sometimes giving half his meager food to them. He wants to be a good man. She thinks he is, and who is he to question her? "I have a temper, but deep down I'm all fluff," he echoes with an exhausted half-smile. "I still think you've got lousy taste in men, kid." But he's glad for it anyway. He lifts her hand to kiss her knuckles like that first walk, a sweet gesture they both seem okay with.

"Nat, will you go on a date with me?" It seems like he might as well. She's continuously seen him at his worse and can still look at him like this. He'd be an idiot not to ask.

[tothefly]

"Exactly. And hey, I could do worse." Of course he doesn't want to hear it, but maybe he should. A reminder that he isn't a terrible person, no matter how much he might feel like one, from someone who has never lied to him, even when it might save one or both of them heartache. It's better than a reminder that no matter how bad he might think he is, she's done worse. Bruce Banner might not hurt a fly, but Natasha Romanoff has hurt many, many things far worse, and not always for a good cause. Maybe that's why she can see the allure of this place, see the trap. It's a chance to start over. Make different choices.

She can't quite bring herself to regret this one, no matter how it might end up.

"A date? Hm, I mean, my schedule's pretty full, but I think I could pencil you in," she says, and her tone is faintly teasing, an attempt at returning to normalcy, comforting routine. He can't repress forever, and maybe she'll push a little at those edges another time, when he's not still weak and recovering, but for now, she's here, and so is he, and a date sounds nice. "What about next week sometime, after everyone's recovered and things are calmer?" Hopefully calmer, anyway.

[notsoangry]

It's such a simple thing, to ask for a date in the most complicated of situations, but this seems huge to him. She was his first kiss since Betty, and now she would be his first date too. Strangely enough, if it wasn't for the nightmare he just went through, Bruce might not have asked. They're in such a tenuous place, but he's tired and beaten down and he really wants to be with her. In this room, as friends, out on a date, as more than, whatever it is, that's what he wants. He's not going to second guess it. He might think she has lousy taste, but she's a grown woman. If he's what she wants, he's what she'll get.

"I'd appreciate that," he replies dryly. "Pencil and not a pen? Harsh." Bruce nods, knowing he's not close to recovered himself. He's weak and the fever's only barely gone. He has to go back to the hospital and be a doctor, and he doesn't want to, he wants to stay here and be a man flirting with a pretty girl. "We'll get better, who knows if we'll get calmer." He smiles. "Wow, now I really want to smack myself for thinking being in a Little Red Riding costume was a big deal." It did lead to some laughter for them, and by the end of the night he had drinks with friends and relaxed. It was strange, but even now, only barely alive, he still really liked this place and what it was offering them.

Blame it on his mind. After a beat, he blinks a few times. "You know. I think we completely missed Thanksgiving."

[tothefly]

If it weren't for the nightmare they've just lived, she might not have said yes. She'd told Tony at the very beginning that she wasn't about to rush into anything, to let Bruce rush into anything, but he'd almost died. She hadn't realized how much she'd grown to count on the Hulk's inability to die, on Bruce's safety no matter what. She'd lost so many people, and here was one she would never lose that way. And then the loss of the Hulk, and then the illness, and now...it's not a proposal. It's not a declaration of undying love. But a date--a date sounds just about the right speed. "You telling me we have that kind of technology? In the year of our lord 1890, or whatever this place is?" Her answer is easy, amused. It's not relevant. "You know you're the only one on my dance card, anyway. With or without lacy petticoats." It takes her a very, very long time to let anyone in. A longer time to want to. He's an exception to a very large rule. A silly thing like a costume wouldn't change that. Just look at what they've been through together.

It's easy to just lean over again, nudging his shoulder, and let herself stay there. Eventually he's going to have to get up, to go rest, to go be a doctor again, but until he's ready she'll sit here as long as he likes. "Maybe. Probably. It's not a holiday I ever paid much attention to, honestly. Does it bother you? Missing it?"