Work Text
There’s a sort of constraint impressed upon you when you’re subjected to someone who’s out of control repeatedly, relentlessly, and at a young age. A sort of voluntary bondage. He wraps the rope around himself, winding it between otherwise loose and quivering limbs, binding them tightly so as not to lash out, and fastens the knot behind his head. He can’t look back now, or he’ll choke himself. No dwelling on the past, no stopping to process, there is only forward. If he could control himself, control his life, control those around him, he would be safe. But people are difficult to control in general, and impossible for him. There are things in his life that he can’t change, no matter how hard he tries. (People, yes, but also random events, happenstances that threaten to spin him out since he’d thought everything was solidly under his tight grip). When he finally accepts his efforts are wasted on these fronts, he decides to focused only on himself. Never be angry (he’s always so angry), and always think your actions through (volunteering, a needle, a flash of green light…) Well, Bruce had let everyone else down in his life. He might as well let himself down, too. Whispered words, sometimes floating, other times deafening and all-consuming. Daddy had thought he was damned. Ironic, how someone so lacking in control would devour a religion centered around it. Still, that was the weapon his father had chosen, and so the scriptures had been repeated, then twisted into a small strip of rope. Other things would be added, of course, lengthening the rope until Bruce could tie himself with it. There was something dark in him. Something beyond salvation. Violently green, bound to his soul (or was the green his soul?), stuck deep, deep down inside. Bruce wonders if he’d simply pulled the rope too tight. Shattered, like bleeding glass, green surging forward once the pale flesh was stripped away. The bonds never stood a chance against his rage. In retrospect, it was pitiful that he’d assumed he could bind the demon inside him. Binding was never the issue. Binding was the entire issue. Ropes could fray and snap, control could be broken. The thing inside him was inseparable, a part of him as sure as his liver or his heart or his brain.He’s a child no longer. A man, middle aged at that, who wakes up with screams stuck in his throat, drenched in sweat, no idea where he is (knowing it doesn’t matter where he is). The inability to cry is perhaps what sets him apart from those for whom salvation is achievable. From those with souls. In daily life, he’s cast off the notions of religion. The rope had shattered, it seemed that strip hadn’t survived, and the ones that had he’d been tying back together, using knots born of pain and anguish and guilt to remake a new rope, only for it to be broken every time the beast in his mind awakened. But at night, now that he no longer has the rope to keep his head from turning, from looking back, those old thoughts (fears) resurface. If he’d had more control, could he have defeated the green thing? Could he have hung onto his soul? Could he have kept himself from becoming him? “Daddy, no!” Shaking her. “Daddy, stop!” Her head on the pavement, blood splattered, her skull shattered, a haze, the courtroom, pain again, then alone. Safe. Rage. “I’ll never be angry like Daddy.” A broken promise. And now, whispered thoughts, pleas, almost sobs but never truly, “I’m not him, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m,” repeated endlessly, until eventually the broken, “I am.” Bruce thought of his mother and didn’t cry.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They’d been fighting some mutant with empathic powers. He knew that much. It was hard to focus on anything other than the grief rippling through him. Around him, the others were on their knees, all sobbing except for Natasha, who was stony faced and motionless. He couldn’t blame any of them, if they were experiencing what he was. It seemed the supervillain of the week could make people reexperience the emotions prompted by specific events. Of course, the others would be reliving terrible emotions, immobilized by their most painful phantom feelings. But Bruce? He remembered the feeling of his mother’s fingers carding through his hair, the smell of her perfume, how it felt to be held safe in her arms. The mutant was trying to keep the Hulk at bay. She didn’t count on Bruce’s happiest memories being the most painful. Laughter burbled from his throat. Young, childlike, like when his mother used to chase him around the room before scooping him up and tickling his stomach. Another yellow memory splattered with red.He was keeping Hulk back for the moment, trying to fight through the grief that eclipsed this forcibly induced joy. This pseudo-happiness. He stepped towards the villain, not hearing whatever pre-planned speech was tumbling from her lips. Hesitation, uncertainty on her face. Good. Bruce raised his head, staring her down through frantic laughter as tears streamed down his face. He must have looked unhinged. He felt unhinged. “Nice try,” he gasped out breathlessly, “but I’m always angry.” Hulk tore through his skin and he sunk down into his own mind, consciousness slipping from his fingers. He’d lied, he wasn’t always angry. Darkness consumed him as he thought about how this was the only time he was blessed with a reprieve. It was impossible to be angry when he couldn’t feel anything at all.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
There hadn’t been time for Bruce to care about his appearance while on the run, let alone take the time to keep it up. A lack of mirrors made it a sort of non-issue in his mind, anyway. Of course, when he did manage to scrape together enough money for a night in a cheap motel, one with a cracked and blackened mirror hanging above an equally decrepit faucet, he was always devastated by what he saw.Hulk kept him in decent physical condition, but he didn’t stop him from losing so much weight he could count his ribs, his sunken eyes staring out over sharp cheekbones made to look peaked by malnutrition and the smudges of dirt that clothed him. He could have ignored those things, of course. What really shook him to his core was the lifeless desperation in his eyes, the scraggly beard that threatened to take over his whole face, the blood that covered his hands and turned his visage into a monochrome, Jackson Pollock painting. Bruce hated how when he looked in the mirror, Brian stared back at him. He’d stopped running three months ago, deciding to stay at Stark Tower following the Battle of New York. Out of habit, he still tried to avoid looking at mirrors for anything other than shaving (and even then, he never looked at the entirety of his face, simply focused his eyes on the razor, careful not to nick himself) and he’d become quite successful at it. Maybe that was why, when he accidentally caught sight of himself, the reflection staring back at him was so remarkable.Gone was his hateful, haunted appearance, replaced by a version of him so content he thought he might be glowing. He’d gained much needed weight, making him appear less sallow and skeletal, and was able to shower and shave every day. The most significant change, though, was in his eyes. They held life, hope, even as they sparkled with the happy tears that were welling up within them. Familiar, welcome eyes. His mother's.It was amazing to think that he’d come so far in such a short amount of time, both physically and emotionally. He had a purpose, a home, friends, and a rapidly improving relationship with Hulk. He thought about his past reflections, and couldn’t help but feel even more choked up. The difference was night and day.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Bruce had lost count of how many times he’d been in this situation. It was routine, at this point. Ross and his goons caught up to him, captured him, bled him dry and cut him to ribbons, until finally Hulk was able to break through the haze of beta blockers and gamma dampeners to decimate whatever base they’d been kept in. Honestly, this was beginning to feel like a game. They were talking above him in disinterested, clinical tones. Apparently, they were going to tear out his organs, this time. He couldn’t figure out what they hoped to learn, and that served as more evidence that this was a game. Bruce couldn’t figure out why Ross insisted on playing it, when he knew he was doomed to lose. Hulk always broke out, eventually. It was possible that in Bruce’s dehydrated, drugged out state and with a mind made foggy and numb by adrenaline, he wasn’t making a connection that would explain how this torture was actually a scientific endeavor. A snapping noise. They were donning specialized gloves, something thicker than latex. Bruce distantly remembered when they’d captured him the first time, his blood finding the lone, small tear in his tormentor’s gloves. He didn’t remember much after that. The screams had somehow resulted in the remaining scientists hacking him to pieces, and Hulk ripping through his skin and the compound in response. No, don’t think about that. Why focus on old torments? It would only compound his current pain. He turned his thoughts back to Ross's motivations. It was possible, though improbable, that Ross’s scientists would learn something new from their umpteenth blood sample. It was also possible they knew they wouldn’t, and hoped dissecting his organs would yield answers. But really, Bruce thought as the first scalpel descended upon his flesh, the most logical explanation was that this had become an obsession for Ross. Some sort of sick game. The scalpel dug deeper, cutting free his kidneys. Real life Operation. Delirium broke Bruce’s moaning scream into a laugh. Hulk had to come out, soon. He had to. He always came out when they went too far, threatening Banner’s very life and Hulk’s by proxy. Didn’t they understand they had to stop, or they were going to die? A gag was placed between his lips, and only then did Bruce realize he’d screamed the warning aloud. Pain. Fire. Red, wet violence. It all devolved into a haze that left Bruce yearning for Hulk’s release, if only to make the pain stop. And then suddenly the pain was replaced by an itch, a sensation almost worse than the pain. Not just uncomfortable, but wrong. His head lolled on muscles that had long since given up trying to support him. Prying apart eyelids that had been glued shut by sweat tasting of sadism and desperation, he looked down at the cavern that had become his torso. They were growing back. His fucking organs were growing back.Bruce tried to huff another sobbing laugh, when gloved hands cut out his lungs in precise movements. Uselessly gasping for oxygen he physically couldn’t obtain, Bruce wondered if Hulk wasn’t going to save him, this time. This would be his eternal torment. Cut and prodded and maimed for Ross’s amusement for eternity. Maybe this was hell. Maybe it was what he deserved.Blackness overtook Bruce’s vision, oxygen deprivation catching up with him. He decided to accept his fate. It wasn’t penance, but it approached what he deserved. Of course, that was when Hulk decided not being able to breathe was sufficiently dangerous enough, and he managed to escape his mental cage. Green overtook Bruce’s vision in place of the black, and he wondered no more.