Chapter Text
“He wouldn’t let you come back.”
His head was killing him as the words touched his ears. Automatically, Bruce fell back on well-honed reflexes developed from years of waking up in strange places, ravaged by the change. First step was gauging what the transformation had done to him physically before assessing where he was and how much trouble he was in, because he could do nothing about the latter two if he was unable to physically function.
Thus far, the problems at hand were dehydration, potassium buildup in his extremities, and concussive cellular damage...that translated to the massive headache he was sporting, being sore from head to toe, and suffering from the kind of ache deep in his bones that told him the Hulk did more than get a good workout: he’d been around for far too long.
“Yeah? He say why?” Bruce deadpanned, wincing as he shook his head a little and started to try and sit up. He was facedown on the floor...there was a blanket over him, thank God for small favors...the floor was cool, slick, not unpleasant. These days, he normally woke up in his own bed thanks to Tony, JARVIS’s soothing synth voice telling him the date, time, and how long he’d slept before he wandered out to fix himself some food...if Tony wasn’t already either in his apartment or roaming the house in Malibu, munching and offering him whatever was in his hands and cajoling him to hit the lab before coffee.
This...there was something wrong with this.
“Actually, he did.”
Bruce blinked, finally managing to push himself to a sitting position and reflexively catching the blanket that slid down around his waist as he winced against the light, struggling against the pounding in his head. He felt slow, clumsy, weak as a kitten...and something was still wrong. The blanket was cheap, military issue, not Tony’s usual million thread count stuff. The smell was wrong, too, the kitchen usually smelled like fresh coffee, and even the lab floor smelled like chemicals, ozone, and burning, not this...neutral, clinical smell of nothing.
“That’s...new. Can I get some water? My head...”
“Something for the pain?”
“Won’t help...’cause of my metabolism. It’s dehydration, I just...water? Please?”
He wasn’t precisely sure how long it was before a bottle was pressed into his hand, but he surmised about a minute passed before the blessedly cool touch of condensation on a cold plastic bottle met his fingers. Still wincing, he focused on drinking slowly, small sips, pausing between swallows as he sat with his head down. Mostly because the stomach cramps wouldn’t be worth the satisfaction, and he had no idea where he was, not precisely, not just yet, so puking all over the place might be a bad thing.
“What’d he say?”
“He said ‘heart.’ Just that, and kept beating his chest. Does that mean anything to you at all?”
Bruce took another swallow of water and tried to focus as he shut his eyes. As much as his head hurt, he knew from experience that he was still in the early stages of changing back, before his cells were fully normalized. He could almost feel them buzzing, sizzling with radiation if he really tried, and if he shut his eyes, the shards of the dream that was the Other Guy, they were still bright and not too far scattered, if still broken in his head.
//Red and gold and green...red and gold, flashes of heat and energy, tearing and smashing and simple, primal joy in the destruction...grey and red and gold and green, red and gold, red and gold, that was all that mattered and something else, metal twisting and shouting and red and gold, red and gold and red and gold and red and gold...//
Shaking his head, he took another swallow. “Not...not really. You said...he wouldn’t let me come back.”
“No. When we found you, none of us could get anywhere near you. We managed to convince you...him that we were trying to help. He wouldn’t let go until I promised I’d tell you what he said.”
“What...where was...”
//Red and gold and green...flashes of heat and energy, sounds of gunfire, the world exploding around them...tearing at knotted gray limbs, flesh tearing like gravel in his hands, beating something half to death with his prize...grey and red and gold and green, red and gold, that was all that mattered...metal twisting under stone, an explosion of sparks and a familiar voice shouting and red and gold, red and gold and red and gold...//
“Bruce.”
The bottle was almost empty now. His head hurt far less, letting him blink and squint up at the warm, unobtrusive voice that he was only just realizing was too high, too soft...unfamiliar and alien, it wasn’t the voice he was used to hearing during this harsh, painful transitional period. There were no familiar touches, strong hands working to ease the aches and idle quips to distract him from being completely miserable until his cells were back where they belonged...
“...Natasha?”
He had a feeling she might have been smiling sadly, apologizing without words, if the light in her eyes wasn’t so grim. Bruce liked her for that: pragmatic yet not without feeling, and he decided she wasn’t a bad person to wake up near. She would have been...good...if the question wasn’t there to be asked.
“Where’s Tony?”
“He’s locked himself in the lab.” She explained simply, still grim and drawn. “He helped us get you back here, then took off. About an hour in, he engaged the privacy locks, none of us are sure how to break them, so we waited for you.” She paused, her neutral expression darkening with a frown. “You...he was standing in front of Tony when we reached you guys. If Thor hadn’t been there, someone could have been seriously hurt...he was going to kill anyone that got near Tony. I haven’t seen him like that since...the first time I met him.”
Bruce drew the blanket around his waist and struggled to get to his feet. Natasha was at his side instantly, trying to help him up. He realized then, suddenly sick with the revelation, that he was in the cell...the same one they’d replaced after the first was destroyed, a cell that hadn’t been used or mentioned since. Not where he was concerned, anyway...others had gone in there, the worst of the worst, but not him...never him.
He knew the difference now, Tony had seen to that. He knew friend from foe, and he listened to Tony. Really listened to him, he even took orders when he knew he had to...
//Red and gold and green...red and gold, that was all that mattered, high-powered energy weapons firing, bodies and limbs like stone...tearing them apart, ripping attack pods from the air...grey and red and gold and green...metal twisting, crushing under bands of stone, red and gold shouting, red and gold and red and gold...and something else, something else something else red and gold and something else and red and help and red and gold and red...//
“He said ‘heart?’ That was it?” Bruce asked, trying to blink the shards into some semblance of order that he could better understand, to reach that thread he knew connected the feelings and flashes deep in his brainstem, fresh information that would slip away if he didn’t force it to make sense.
Natasha watched him with clear, steady eyes and nodded. “Just said ‘heart,’ over and over, and beat his chest. I promised I would tell you, and he seemed...surprised. Then he finally sat down...”
“And let me back in.” Bruce murmured.
//Red and gold and green...red and gold and help and green, red and gold, that was all that mattered...red and gold was all that mattered...//
“Dr. Banner?...Bruce?”
“Get me some clothes.” He rasped. When he turned to look into Natasha’s eyes, he swore he could see pinpricks of emerald green reflected back in her wide, startled eyes.
“Bruce...”
It was hard, but he drew a shaky breath and shook his head.
“It’s me...it’s me, I swear. Just...I need clothes. Then I need you to help me bust the lab door down. I think I know what the Other Guy was trying to do.”
“And?...”
“And if Tony’s still alive, I think I’m gonna kill him.”