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They say that your life and its path is dependent on the friends you make. So by extension, your life, your personality, is all reliant on your friends, your acquaintances.Bruce doesn’t have those, and he doesn’t know what he lost first; his life or his friends. Maybe they were synonymous with each other, or maybe not. It’s not like it matters.After his friends - and his life, he supposed; he’s dead now, technically, not even a person but a thing , a possession - he lost his assets. The money he had been saving for years for the white picket fence and the swing set in the backyard is gone, his apartment is gone, his clothes and furniture and everything is gone. They renovated his lab into a storage room, they deleted and purged all his files and research. If your life depends on what things you own, well...you know how it goes.Then it was his name. With every disguise came a new name, a new person, a new life. A life that was discarded when he was found, peeled off and thrown away like trash. Countless names and lives and people were killed by the monster, the Hulk, whatever you call it, but countless names and lives and people were killed by Banner, as well. Names distinguish the person, a name decides your life and your identity. Bruce Banner had no name because he couldn’t afford to have one, and so he had no life because he couldn’t afford to have one.The next thing to go was his autonomy. Simple, easy. He has no choice in where he goes, he just floats in the wake of the Hulk as he paddles furiously away from the military. Philosophers argue if humanity has free will, but Bruce doesn’t need to argue. Because he knows . The answer is a resounding no .The last straw, the final nail in the coffin of his horrible, fucked up life, is the removal of his face. After a month of running and hiding and dying, the gamma twists his insides and swaps some nucleotides around so some As become Gs and Ts become Cs and he wakes up in his grubby motel as a stranger to himself. His hair is lighter, almost ginger, his eyes are rounder, his chin squarer. The reflection in the mirror moves with him but it isn’t him . It’s the worst feeling, he thinks - that disconnect. He knows he should look different, look like how he did on that fateful Day ( a deafening roar and a wave of heat and power and green, green, green...the screaming and the Geiger counter ticking ticking ticking… ), but he...doesn’t.An adaptation. A mutation. An evolution. Call it whatever you want. Bruce calls it death. Bruce is dead. It’s too bad he can’t die.
1.
It’s in some backwater town in Texas where he breaks; some meaningless, inconsequential town with a population of 107 where the nearest Walmart is 45 minutes away. He’s staying in a cheap bed and breakfast owned by a nice old woman who can barely move from arthritis.The room is adorned in frills and has that distinct old-person-smell, but it’s nicer than most of the places he’s stayed in in the past few months, with a mattress that isn’t rotten and electricity that doesn’t flicker.It also has a mirror. He tried to avoid them after seeing how his appearance shifts every week, but running into one is more or less inevitable, isn’t it? Sometimes he catches his reflection in shop windows and cringes, or there's a flash of the wrong face in a body of water and he flinches. But he hasn’t looked close. He doesn’t think he’d be able to keep it together if he does.And he was right.It’s a Tuesday, when he breaks. He wakes up, showers, leaves the shower, towels off, walks past the mirror on the dresser, stops. Stares.It isn’t him. Or it is him, but his cheekbones are lower on his face and his eyes are almond-shaped and hazel and he doesn’t even recognize himself . It’s like there’s a mime behind that pane of glass doing what he does as if the mirror isn’t a mirror.He raises a hand to touch his chin, and the man in the mirror copies him exactly. A choked noise rises in his throat, some horrible hybrid of a scream and a sob, born of surprise. The man’s face that is-isn’t- is his reflection crumples, and Bruce feels his do the same.It’s like his brain is split in two. Logic says that he’s in the mirror, that that’s him because that’s what mirrors do , they reflect, but then there’s his instinct. This isn’t him. This can’t be him. He doesn’t look like that. His hair is light brown and his chin is pointed slightly and his eyes are dark and almost black.He collapses to his knees, as if something hit the back of his legs and they buckle like a marionette with its strings cut. The man in the mirror follows him down, down, down. Bruce feels like crying, but the tears don’t come. They never do. He isn’t allowed to have these emotions, this sort of distress. He isn’t allowed to cry, because the Hulk doesn't let him. Crying leads to anger leads to destruction leads to death. So he doesn’t cry, but he wants to.He doesn’t always get what he wants. Bruce feels himself float away from his body, his face. He tries to hold on tight, because he can’t lose control, he can’t , but he never really feels himself come back down, and he never feels himself stop floating.
2.
Jen’s apartment is there. It’s there, and she’s in it. Bruce knows she’s in it, because he had watched her walk in, his face concealed by a bowed head and the grimy baseball cap he had pulled out of a Salvation Army bin. Today his hair was ginger, the color of orange sand, and his eyes were round and owlish. He only got a glimpse of himself in the grubby mirror as he left his motel room.But it didn’t matter what he looked like, because Jen was there. She was right there . His cousin, his friend, his familial soulmate . Less than 100 feet away. Bruce couldn’t go speak to her, though. He was frozen, stuck, as if his spine had grown roots and anchored him to this metal bench with chipping green paint. His hands wove together in a flurry of movement fueled by his anxiety, and his legs shook his seat with how hard he was bouncing them.
Go talk to her, moron.
Wasn’t it supposed to be easy to talk to a friend, as instinctual and inherent as breathing? Bruce hasn’t had a friend in so long, perhaps he forgot what it was like to have one. Or, well, he hopes she’s still his friend, he would understand if she wasn’t. Maybe that’s why he can’t walk up to her apartment and ring the damn bell. Maybe he was afraid she wouldn’t like him anymore.He’s always been such a damn coward . A milksop, just like Ross had said on that fateful day.He shouldn’t have come here. He should just walk away, and forget he was here, and just leave . Jen didn’t need to be involved in this, and fuck, Jen probably hated him anyway, despised him -He didn’t realize he was walking until he found himself standing in front of her apartment door with no recollection as to how he got there, fist poised to knock, a few inches from the wood. Fuck. He couldn’t do this. Bruce looked down at himself. A blue jacket with a mystery stain on it he had found on the sidewalk covered his emaciated torso, a pair of frayed jeans a size too big hung off his hips. What a mess this was. What a mess he was. God .The door opened, and Bruce stumbled back. Why did he come here he shouldn’t have come here but it was too late now because she was right there.“Uh…” Jen stood in her doorway, awash in the natural light emanating from her apartment; it made her look ethereal, like she was a spirit or ghost or something. Bruce had to restrain himself to reach out and touch her, to see if she was actually solid or just a hallucination, a mirage. He wouldn’t put it past his brain to do something like that. “Can I help you…?” Bruce looked up in shock, saw the wariness and trepidation present in her eyes. There was no spark of recognition in her features. None. Her eyes were void of familiarity, as if he was a stranger. He blinked, unsure of what to do. He was expecting surprise, happiness, anger, sadness - anything . Not this. Not this…this nothingness .She didn’t recognize him. He doesn’t know what to do. What does he do ?“Jen,” he coughed, voice hoarse from disuse, “ Jen …” his desperation was palpable.“Um...yes?” She had taken a step back, her hand on the door, ready to close it.“Jen - Jen , Jen,” he repeated her name like a mantra, a chant. It almost didn’t sound like a real name anymore. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she wasn’t real, maybe this was just some bad dream. “Jen, it’s...it’s me .” It’s Bruce . He couldn’t say that, though. Because he wasn’t Bruce , hadn’t been in years.Jen was looking more and more freaked out the more he spoke. She didn’t recognize him. She didn’t recognize him . “I’m going to...I’ll be right back,” she moved to close the door, but his foot darted out to prevent it from shutting.“No!” He called. “No, no Jen, Jen please …”“Sir,” her formal tone caused thorns to grow around his heart, squeezing and piercing and hurting. “I don’t know what you want from me, but -”God, he couldn’t take this, this, this torture. “Jennifer! It’s me, it’s -” Robbie Bruce David Robert “Bruce. It’s Bruce.”Jen’s stance immediately stiffened. “You - you aren’t Bruce. You can’t be. Bruce is dead .”Bruce was dead, she was right. He was dead, and now there was only Bruce.“And besides…” Jen continued, “you don’t look like him.” Bruce didn’t know what to say in response to that, because she was right . He didn’t look like Bruce. So he just mutters something about having the wrong person and leaves, because he’s a coward.Later, after Jen got shot and there was blood blood blood, pooling on the tarmac in a puddle of scarlet so thick it was almost black, reaching out to him in red tendrils like it did when Mom died, Bruce moved into action from the alleyway he’d been watching from. He couldn’t have done anything before the gunshot, because then the Hulk would have come out and hurt Jen and he just couldn’t hurt her, not again, so he didn’t move and just stood there and watched. And then Jen was bleeding out and he stood and watched. Just like he did on that night with Mom. He stood and watched until something clicked and he was spurred into motion.The blood transfusion happened during one of those times where everything goes fast and slow at the same time. Bruce stares as poison enters her veins and hopes that it’ll work, that she’ll be alive after this.He drops her off at a hospital when she’s stable.Later he finds out that a large hulking woman, big and green and muscular, was seen in L.A.. As Bruce is eaten by the guilt, he hopes that Jen doesn’t become Jen.He hopes she can keep her life.
3.
He’s in Bangalore when he’s found. The slums are warm and hot and damp, steam rising off the muddy ground like a sauna. Most nights he arrives at his abode - a liberal use of the word - with inches of mud caked on his shoes and weighing his steps down.When they find him, he’s asleep. But he wakes up, because he’s always been a light sleeper - it’s a habit that has roots in alcoholic fathers and crying mothers, that stems from running running running. He’s sure he hears them before they see him, because an entire military squad is very hard to keep silent. He doesn’t bother running, which is a first for him.He’s just sick of existing and not existing in this wretched sort of purgatory, with his different name, different face, different blood. He doesn’t know what parts of him are really him anymore . He’s just a harbinger for the Hulk, a carrier of the plague, a bad omen that predicts nothing but destruction.So he walks out of his lean-to and faces his executioner, arms up in surrender. Bruce doesn’t move and doesn’t care as they shackle the mutant inhibitor around his neck and roughly restrain his hands behind his back.This is wrong. So, so wrong.He shouldn't let them do this.But he is just so, so tired.So he does.His hair is brown - almost black - and it falls in his eyes limply, burdened from days of dirt and grime and oil. Bruce ’s eyes - they're more wide set, now, a light brown - are sunken like a corpse’s, and his movements are jerky like the undead. It’s appropriate. He looks as dead as he feels.They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer. He has no friends, but he does have enemies. It’s the one thing he does have.But they are mostly the Hulk’s enemies, so maybe he doesn’t have anything, after all.Ross towers over him, square muscles square torso square jaw pulled tight, something awful glimmering in his eyes.“Finally found you, you bastard,” Ross gloats, chewing a gross black cigar. Bruce doesn’t blink as Ross exhales smoke like pepper spray into his eyes. He does tear up, though. It’s the first time he’s cried in years.Dead eyes glance up at their captor, blank and dull. Furious eyes stare down at their prisoner, filled with fury, then...something else. Confusion.“This isn’t him!” Ross shouts at the army men surrounding him. Bruce’s face is slack with shock as his restraints are removed, and he’s shoved unceremoniously back into his house. He stands there until the soldiers leave, their feet light and solid despite the mud beneath their boots. He stands there and doesn’t move. And then he starts laughing. He laughs and laughs and laughs until he realizes he’s crying and the tears finally come and don’t stop.He clutches at his cheeks with a tenacity that makes them bleed. He doesn’t feel the sting from his nails piercing his skin or the burn from the salt in his wounds. He just feels relief and disappointment and everything . He hasn’t felt anything in the past year, hasn’t allowed himself to. But the dam broke and now there’s everything.The blood drips down his chin and mingles with the tears, and together they fall to the floor in a cavalcade of scarlet.
1.
They say that your life and its path is dependent on the friends you make. So by extension, your life, your personality, is all reliant on your friends, your acquaintances.He has friends now, and they’ve been with him for about a month. He had sought after Betty one day and explained everything, and Jen had seen Hulk save the world and had sought after him, and Rick...well, Rick was always there when he needed him. So he had friends, which was nice. He wasn’t used to nice. But he could get used to it.He has possessions now as well. Jen let him live in her guest bedroom. He had a weighted blanket, a stack of books and scientific journals, and a phone and a laptop. He felt almost like a normal person, almost like he didn’t have a maelstrom inside of him, always ready to be unleashed.He was in Jen’s guest bedroom when he saw it.The room is cluttered; not disorganized, just cluttered. Busy. He can’t find it within himself to throw anything away - he hasn’t had anything in so long, that he keeps everything. Ticket stubs, notebooks, dried out pens, everything his hands have come in contact with litter every surface. There’s a bathroom attached to his room, and this bathroom has a mirror, as bathrooms do. He avoids it. It’s a Tuesday, when he sees it. He wakes up, showers, leaves the shower, towels off, walks past the mirror in the bathroom, stops. Stares.It’s...it’s him. It’s him . His reflection stares back at him and he has a pointed chin and high cheekbones and dark brown eyes and light brown hair and it’s him - God, it’s him . He doesn’t react at first, just looks and doesn’t blink or move. It takes a while for the realization to break through that wall of shock. An arm slowly raises to feel his chin. He blinks.And then he’s laughing. He’s laughing like that night in Bangalore. Loud and manic and relieved .Jen must have heard him, because she barges in, almost knocks the door off its hinges.“Are you okay - oh my God.”He looks up at her, eyes glistening with tears. “ Jen , Jen , I’m me .”“Oh Bruce ,” she says, and Bruce doesn’t need to correct her, because she’s right .A name decides your life and your identity. Bruce finally has a name again, because he finally has an identity again. He looks like how he did on that fateful Day ( a deafening roar and a wave of heat and power and green, green, green...the screaming and the Geiger counter ticking ticking ticking… ).For the first time in years , Bruce is alive.