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"Are you still mad about that?" Bruce asked the man across from him laughing.
"Yes I'm still mad, even with my healing I ache."
"Well you did kinda throw me through a wall, for no reason I might add." Bruce said lightheartedly. Tony might laugh if he saw him sitting across from the famed Wolverine, having a cup of tea and reminiscing.
"Still no reason the other guy should have smashed me into the side of that building bub." Logan said laughing.
"True, we scared the hell out of those sight seers."
"You remember that?"
"Yeah, it's really weird right, but I think I'm starting to understand the other guy, I think I'm starting to understand what Tony meant."
"Tony Stark, weren't you staying with him?"
"Yeah."
"I have to ask something; try not to Hulk out if you don't like what I say."
Bruce looked at him suspiciously. "Alright, I'll try, no promises." Logan nods.
"Why aren't you still there?"
"I don't really know, I guess I just needed a break from the big city."
"I understand, same reason I'm here, but the real question is; are you going back?"
Bruce sat the tea in his hand, growing cold as the light faded from the sky, down on the small table between them. He had thought about this a lot since leaving, he had told them that he would come back, but was that what he wanted?
"I think… I might, I really feel like its home, Tony's the first person to see me as human since the accident, and the others finally stopped giving me a ridiculous amount of personal space."
"Hey I saw you as human."
"Then why'd you throw me through a wall?"
"I was angry and you just happened to be in my way."
"I tried to stop you from hurting that doctor."
"Hey he deserved it, and don't act like you didn't want to punch that man in the face too."
"I did, that man was an idiot." Bruce laughed. Logan's laugh died in his throat and he suddenly tensed up.
"What's wrong?" Bruce asked immediately noticing the change in his friend's demeanor.
"Bruce I think you should run." Logan growled.
"Logan what's going on?!" Bruce hissed making sure to keep his voice low.
"We're surrounded."
Now that Bruce thought about it, he could feel the other guy growling in the back of him mind. Standing quickly he moved toward the door only to realize that Logan wasn't following.
"Aren't you coming?" he asked looking back to where Logan still sat in his chair.
"No I thought I'd stay behind and hold them off for you; I know you don't want to let him out."
Bruce nodded but was torn between leaving his friend or staying and fighting. His decision was made for him when twelve men in black burst through the windows.
"SHIT!" Logan yelled rolling out of the chair just as they fired upon it.
"FUCK!" Bruce yelled ready to release his hold on hulk, as he dived behind the couch, but not before being hit in the chest with a dart. Almost immediately he could feel the Hulk start to sleep in the back of his mind.
"Bruce you okay?" He heard Logan call from wherever he was hidden.
"N-no they hit me with a dart, I can't Hulk out." He could hear the sound of Wolverine's claws extending and the sound of men dying.
"Bruce you still with me?!" Logan called before more men burst through the door.
"Y-yeah, but not for long, Logan… if… I'm taken, contact Tony and tell him what's happened, I… I don't want him to think… I ran away!" He called back weakly; he could feel whatever drug they used running through his system making him drowsy.
The last thing he saw before falling to numbing darkness was a barrel of a gun aimed at Logan's head, and a loud bang.
He knew it would be a while before Tony got his message.
XoXoX
This was after nearly two months of nonstop pranks and an endless amount of annoying things that had come tumbling out of his mouth, the rest had had enough an locked him in his lab.
Without Bruce there he had no one to bounce ideas off of or talk to about science, or make lame science puns, and flirt with Science to.
He wanted Bruce back.
Tony Stark was pacing, had been for two days.
"He's late, two weeks late to exact." He growled.
Much to the irritation of Pepper Potts.
"Tony, if you're worried then why don't you put your genius and billions of dollars to good use, and just track him down?" She asked sitting down on the lab couch.
"No, I can't, he asked me not to, and I don't want to break any trust." Tony said pausing in his pacing to give her a frustrated look before he started to pace again.
"He said he would be back in a month, he's late."
Tony slowed to a stop and looked at her with a heart breaking expression of sadness.
"What if he's not coming back?"
Pepper stood up and grabbed him by the shoulders shaking him a bit.
"Tony what was the last thing he said to you?"
"'See you when I get back', then he told me he'd be back in a month."
"Would he say that if he wasn't coming back?"
"No, but-"
"Sir, you have a message from 'unknown', it seems rather important."
"Yeah display it."
A screen appeared in front of them displaying a jumbled mess of letters.
"What is that?" Pepper asked.
"JARVIS… decode it."
'Come to the warehouse at midnight, I have info on Banner.'
Before Pepper could say anything Tony was out the door. Running after him she pulled out her phone and hoped she could warn the others in time.
"It's Tony again isn't it?" Natasha's voice said over the line before Pepper could say anything.
"Nat, listen Tony just got a weird message I need you guys not to do anything to set him off."
"Is it about Bruce?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"He got a weird message from someone, meet me in the hanger." She said, she was worried about Banner as much as Tony, enough to understand that he didn't want anything to hinder any progress in finding Bruce if he was truly missing.
Hanging up she called after Tony's disappearing figure. "Tony wait, how do you even know where to go?!"
They were in the hanger before he answered her, still on the move not once pausing, his voice low but determined. "He told me about when he woke up after the fall, he woke up in a warehouse, met that old guy I hired for security."
"What if it's a trap?"
"Then have the others come get me."
With that he suits up and leaves.
XoXoX
Bruce could barely breathe, his entire body felt like it was on fire. There was an odd blank spot in his body like something was missing.
He felt the liquid they had started to pump through him pour through his veins like flame.
It took him a week to realize they were killing him without knowing it.
He could feel his grip on reality slipping away with each passing day.
He tried to Hulk out but he was far too gone to come to his aid, he realized when his anger only tugged at the empty spot in his mind.
He realized with shocking clarity that the Hulk was locked up, for the second time since the accident.
Instead of relief he felt emptiness and split in half more than he ever had before. So in one last desperate attempt at calling out the Hulk he closed his eyes and sank deep into his own mind.
Breathe in.
Sink below the surface.
Breathe out.
Dive a little deeper.
Breathe in.
Fight his body's natural reaction to the darkness his body was sinking into.
Breathe out.
Fight himself when his body screams that it doesn't want to go near the place that he trained himself to ignore.
Breathe in.
Panicked a little bit when he realized that he couldn't breathe.
Opened his eyes.
He didn't realize that he had even closed them. In front of him stood a door; an off colored white door that gave him brutal flashbacks of his childhood. Reaching out he grabbed hold of the handle. It burned his palm and sent waves of jolting pain up his arm.
He fought through it and pulled the door opened.
He was standing in the middle of a field, a river ran off to one side and there was a large shack in the middle. He started to walk forward towards the brown crumbling wooden shack when the giant door burst open and the Hulk stepped out; a look of confusion and pain.
Bruce startled but didn't stop as he drew closer.
"Why it hurts?" Hulk asks pointing to his head.
"Their killing us." Bruce says sitting on a small stump next to a fire pit. He wondered briefly how this place came to be, and which one of them thought it up.
"Can't see, can't feel, can't smash." Hulk huffs flopping down on a much larger stump across from Bruce.
"That's what I was afraid of… it's like you're in a cage."
"Don't like cage!" Hulk growls.
"I know, I don't like them either." He stares at Hulk, his thought's drifting off until he hears the other shift. Hulk is looking at him, the look of pained sadness shocks him.
"Hulk can't help, can't stop pain for Banner, Hulk always helps Banner."
Bruce is taken off guard so completely he's speechless. He is wide eyed and he has a cold feeling in his chest.
"Is that what you've been doing this whole time, helping me?" He manages to ask, it's almost a whisper. Hulk nods, he looks sorta like a puppy Bruce thinks.
"Hulk always helps, runs from men with guns, fights big gray even after Banner locked Hulk up in cage."
"I-…" Bruce isn't sure what he should say, he can't say he was sorry, because he hadn't regretted it. "I didn't know, I don't understand." He says instead. He thinks on the blankness he felt when the Hulk was cut off from him and he never wants to feel like that again.
"Hulk knows, Hulk doesn't understand lots of things, but Hulk doesn't care about other things as long as Banner is safe." He says with a nod of finality. Bruce rethinks his earlier description; Hulk looks more like a child whose parent finally realized they were only trying to help. In a way, he realizes in a moment of clarity that washes over him like a cold wave, that that's exactly what it is.
"Why'd you save Tony?" Bruce suddenly has the urge to ask.
"Metal man likes Banner and Hulk, Banner and Hulk like metal man too." He says with a slightly terrifying smile, and Bruce can't think of it as scary. Instead all he can see is the child-like happiness in it, because unlike Betty who still looked at Bruce with hidden fright and caution, Tony looked at him with unnerving admiration and glee. Tony stark was the Hulks first real friend and that made the Hulk, for once, happy about something other than smashing.
"I do like him… I like him a lot actually… in fact for the first time I feel like we can call someplace home." He hears himself saying and has no idea why he has done so.
"It is home." Is all he says before Bruce feels himself being pulled out of his inner world.
"If you can't come out we're going to die." He says as he starts to float backwards out the door.
"Metal man save us, metal man doesn't like it when Banner and Hulk hurt."
The door shuts and he's being pulled up into the waking world.
"Mr. Banner can you hear me?" A male voice asks. Bruce opens his eyes and blearily looks around him. A man in a white coat stands next to the hospital bed they have him strapped to.
"Good your awake, we thought you had slipped into a coma." His accent is German and his eyes are sharp and piercing brown. " My boss will be very angry if we don't figure out how to control the Hulk if you die you know, you're the only specimen we've found that had been able to live through a replicate serum."
The words his Bruce like ice. "T-there have been others?"
"Only a few that had been smart enough to get almost as far as you, their dead now in case you're wondering."
Bruce nods, he remembers the fact that he himself is dying and wonders why he doesn't speak up. Better than living in case they really do figure out how to gain control over the Hulk, he thinks.
"We're going to run some tests now." The man informs him.
'I hope your right.' He thinks to the other guy before an electric current is sent through his body jerking it up off the table.
'I hope… Tony gets here soon… I don't think… I can take… much more of this...'
XoXoX
"You sure this is the place?" Natasha asked over the com.
"I didn't spend three days looking for it if I didn't think it was the place." Tony snapped. He watched the building in the middle of the desert sand. Men crawled over the two story building guns in hand and scowls on their faces.
"You're not the only one that's worried Tony." Clint's voice crackled to life from where he's tucked away watching the exits and roads.
"I know that."
"Then try and keep your head, going in there and blasting everything in sight might get Bruce killed." Steve said.
"I know that too Cap thanks for your words of wisdom."
"Enough of this, I see why something always blows up with you guys fighting together." Logan growled.
"Are we ready then?" Thor asked.
"Yeah, Stark Widow and Wolverine you guys take the back, Thor you're with me, contact the other team when you find Bruce." Captain America orders before he starts moving towards the front entrance, Thor following close behind. Tony rockets off towards the back of the building, Logan and Black widow behind him, leaving Clint to watch their backs.
"Be ready to maintain radio silence, only contact if you've found Banner." Steve's voice cuts in one last time.
"Bring him home Tony." Clint said before cutting contact.
Tony took a deep breath before bursting through the doors. Men scattered, doctors, nurses and scientists dove for cover, screams rang out and glass shattered from startled hands.
He marched down the hall, Black widow and Wolverine following in his wake, taking out guards and angry scientists as they went.
He heard men yelling back on forth.
"They're here for the experiment, I repeat they are here and making their way towards you, you need to move."
"Negative, His heart rate is dangerously low, over dose of serum suspected cause, if we move him he's going to go under."
Natasha and Logan hear this and turn towards Tony but it's too late. Tony's stalking down the hall towards the man talking and even though they can't see his face they know it must hold an expression of horrible rage.
By the time the man notice's him it's much too late and Tony grabs him and punches him in the face.
"Tell me where he is or I will destroy you." He hisses. The man flinches nodding with too much force.
"Ja, Ja, P-please, I'll show you!" The man pleads raising both hands in surrender, his face is bleeding and his nose is broken.
"You had better because if you don't it's not going to end well for you." His voice is so cold Natasha suppresses a shiver of fear. As soon as he drops him, the man is running towards an elevator and they're following after him.
They reach the basement level and Natasha knows they aren't going to like what they find on the other side of the giant metal set of doors.
XoXoX
Bruce struggles to breathe; he can feel himself fading back into his mind, back into the Hulks inner world.
The pain crashed over his mind like tidal waves, over and over again. He doesn't understand what they are trying to do, are they experimenting or are they just torturing him, he can't tell.
He floats back into the darkness of before, and it hurts less when he opens the door and steps through.
"Hello!" he calls to the Hulk, who sits on his stump.
"Banner came back?"
"Yeah… I figured I should try at least to visit you in here, that way it doesn't feel so
much like a cage."
Hulk nods before pointing at the fire pit. The flame is high and he holds out a stick with a marshmallow attached.
"S'mores."
"Hulk's favorite."
"Yeah it's mine too." He says and Hulk suddenly hands him a stick and a bag of marshmallows. He doesn't forgive the Hulk, he can't, after everything though he thinks… he can at least try and understand him.
"Why… do you protect me?" he asks in a low voice as he sticks the marshmallow over the
fire.
"When Banner hurt, Hulk hurt… Hulk and Banner no get along but Hulk still needs to protect."
"You can call me Bruce."
"Bruce?"
"Yeah…"
"Call Hulk." He says pointing to himself. Bruce feels like they are having a sort of formal introduction and can't help the amused snot that escapes him.
"Yeah… I can do that…"
"Good." Hulk huffs pulling his huge marshmallow out of the fire and blowing gently on it before taking a bite. Bruce did the same; he sat staring off into the never ending distance of rolling fields. He wonders if Tony knows what's happened. The thought of Tony thinking that Bruce abandoned him makes him feel guilty and hollow.
"Bruce like metal man." Hulk says suddenly. Looking up he sees the Hulk studying him intently.
"Yes I like him."
Hulk huffs in annoyance, "No Bruce like Tony." He stresses and Bruce understands. His cheeks ting pink though he doesn't know why.
"Yeah, but I don't think he likes me like that."
"Stupid humans." Hulk says shaking his head sadly. Now Bruce is confused, was he just… called stupid… by a giant green rage monster?
"What do you mean?" he asks shocked.
"Metal man look at Bruce like Bruce something nice to smash."
It takes a moment to realize what Hulks trying to say, and when he does he realizes that he's right. Thinking back he had noticed the looks Tony had been sending him and the lingering touches. He had ignored them, or played them off as Tony just being Tony, he never imagined…
Bruce sighed thinking back to the kiss he gave Tony before leaving, he had noticed the smile that had settled on the man's face before he left.
He wonders when asking the Hulk for relationship advice became an okay thing to do, and not weird at all. Sitting there his breathing is starting to get harder and harder, his vision suddenly blurs and he's swaying.
"Banner okay?"
"Y-yeah buddy I'm okay." He says because for some strange reason he doesn't want to scare the other guy.
"Banner not okay!" Hulk growls but he too is having trouble breathing.
XoXoX
Tony doesn't waste his time with the giant locks on the doors instead he cuts right through the door itself. He kicks the metal out and walks through the hole and sees red.
Men scatter around the room away from the prone body lying on the metal table in the middle of the room.
The heart monitor is slowly beeping away showing Bruce's heart rate slowing down dangerously. He has an oxygen mask strapped to his face and an IV in the back of his hand.
The men completely ignore him in favor of scurrying away to safety. Tony marched up to the machine and started to shut them down.
"Are you sure you should be unplugging him from that stuff?" Logan asks. Tony pauses in the middle of unhooking the IV, he looks uncertain.
'Should i? he could die without it, but I need to get him out of here so I can get rid of whatever they drugged him with… oh…OH, alright that could work… but I need… It's not in here though… where…'
"He should have a bag somewhere right, they would bring his shit with him, I need you to find it." He tells Natasha who nods and runs off.
"What's in his bag?" Logan asks watching the door for Natasha's return.
"Well I figured he would want to run off at some point so I created a portable med pack for him so he could go on doctoring and shit, I also gave him nanites."
"What do you need with those?"
"They're designed to go in and fix a person, that's why I made them, you put a small drop in a water source it purifies the water, then when someone drinks it they get better then the nanites die after that leaving the body healthy and no chance of the nanites taking over, always have to watch out for that." He rambled off while checking Bruce's pulse and unstrapping him. Natasha ran back in holding Bruce's bag in one hand and ruined Stark phone in the other.
"I found this; I figured you might need it." She said tossing the items his way. He caught them and set them on the metal tray next to the bed. Pulling off his gauntlets he set them down next to the bag before pulling the bag open and pulling out a small glass vial.
He slipped the oxygen mask off Bruce's face and opened the vial and used the dropper, three drops was all it was going to take. He hoped it worked.
"I need you guys to back up just a little bit…" Bruce's body started to shudder, and his shallow breathing started coming in gasps. "Okay make that, I need you guys to clear the room."
"What about you?" Logan asked.
"He'll be fine." Natasha said heading out the hole in the doors. Logan gave tony one last calculating look before he turned and left.
He watched Bruce fight the hulk refusing to let him out until Tony couldn't take it anymore, watching the man he cared so much about jerk around on the bed willingly going through so much pain made his heart ache.
"Alright big guy, let's see what we can do." Tony mumbled picking up the Stark phone and started rewiring it. He nearly dropped it when Bruce started to scream. Looking over wide
eyed he saw Bruce face contorted into a mask of pain.
"Please let this work." He pleaded with whoever was listening.
XoXoX
Bruce's body tingled, he shuddered and gasped, if he didn't keep hold of himself he knew he would start to convulse. He watched Hulk do the same with less restraint as he got angrier and angrier.
"Hulk no get out, Hulk stuck!"
Bruce nodded and made his way over to the door that stood in the field. Gripping the doorknob he held it tight and twisted, rushing forward he screamed as the pain that his mind had hidden away from came crashing down on him at once.
Through the haze of pain and confusion he faintly heard a familiar voice.
"Please let this work."
Then more pain crashed through him, he couldn't take it anymore. He reached out to the Hulk and grabbed his fingers.
"Y-you need to take over, p-please." Bruce said, shocked by his own words. Hulk looked at him confused before nodding his head.
"HULK PROTECT BANNER!" Hulk roared curling himself around Bruce protectively. Bruce's world went black and he was aware of nothing after that but green, gold and red.
Hulk came out with a roar, panting he glared around before spotting a flash of gold and red.
"Metal man hurt Banner?!" Hulk asked his voice came out confused and hurt. Tony walked up with his arms raised as a sign of peace and dropping the phone he had used to send a volt of electricity through Bruce.
"I had to do it; if he hadn't let you come out you guys would have died, I'm sorry." Hulk heard the pain and sadness behind the words.
Hulk glared down at Tony hard before huffing. "Banner hurt."
"I know, I'm sorry I hurt you, but Bruce would have died if I hadn't."
"We go home?" Hulk asked him with a sigh. Tony's face lit up and he wore a smug grin having heard that Hulk and Bruce considered the mansion and the tower home.
"Do you not want to go home?" Tony asked slowly. Hulk shook his head.
"Banner want to go home, Hulk want to smash."
"Alright… smash." Tony said waving around the room. Hulk looked at him skeptically but Tony just waved again.
"Metal man smash with Hulk?" he asked carefully.
"Yeah metal man smash with Hulk, just let me warn the others." Hulk nodded and Tony walked over to the hole in the door and turned on his com.
"Alright I have the Hulk here, things are about to start blowing up."
"Roger that, everybody clear out." Steve said, knowing better than to ask why when Tony and Hulk were involved.
Together they destroyed the compound, leaving nothing standing. Thor joined in at one point along with Clint and Natasha. Steve just sighed and made sure the team wasn't doing anything too dangerous.
XoXoXoX
Back at the tower, Bruce sat in the chair overlooking one of the large windows.
"I knew you'd come back." Tony said standing next to him.
"Oh and how did you figure that?"
"I'm just too sexy."
"Oh yes just so terribly sexy that I couldn't stand the thought of not seeing your hot buns again." Bruce laughed resting his head back against Tony's abdomen.
"I'm sorry you were stuck in that place." He whispered running his fingers through Bruce's hair.
"It's not your fault; it just took Logan a while to get back here."
"… I was scared thinking maybe you had just left me." Tony said after a moment's silence.
Bruce gazed up at Tony's face.
"I came back, I promised I would… and besides why wouldn't I come back home?"
"Well I can be pushy, and demanding, I have no respect for peoples free will and I tend to blow people up if they are in a lab with me, I'm also targeted by villains a lot and I have self-destructive tendencies and alcohol -"
"Tony, if I couldn't handle that then I wouldn't be here, I think that if I can handle a constant rage monster then I can handle the pushy and demanding you just fine, though the lab part might bring out the Hulk, and I'm technically the most wanted criminal in the world."
Tony stared at him for a moment, contemplating and questioning.
"I think I love you." He blurted out, his face a faint pink and a hint of worry in his eyes. Bruce stared wide eyed, brain halted for a moment before jump starting.
"I think I love you too."