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[starkingenuity]

[Tony volunteers for the worst sort of body take over ever: here.]

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[starkingenuity]

Tony can’t imagine what it would be like to be stuck for year years like that. Banner never remembers what happens after a Code Green. He’s got some vague sense of movement, he’s got a headache, and his entire soul is half shattered, but his memory isn’t in tact at all. Going to sleep for two years I had got to be the worst. For a guy like Tony with his fear of missing out on everything, it would have been unbearable.

He chooses to focus on that instead of the Natasha issue, instead of asking about Thor and his oh so delightful brother (and all of Asgard) are in the process of negotiating for land with Norway.

These are strange times they live in.

“Did Scarlet Witch show you something bad?” Because he’s gonna refuse that you chose to run away over a girl.

[hulkbusted]

What’s worse is when he does remember, because what he remembers is never good; it’s flashbacks of fear and pain and fury without context. Everyone thinks he’s afraid of Code Greens because he loses himself, and that’s certainly the largest portion of his fear, but not the whole picture. Now he has two years of Hulk that could come crashing in on him triggered by who knows what? Being hit by shower water has been enough to trigger flashbacks of rains of bullets, and that was a relatively isolated event.

There’s nothing innocuous in Bruce’s life, and Hulk spent two years killing people for sport.

Unbearable’s one word for it. What the witch showed him pales in comparison.

His hands are restless in his lap, rubbing together as though he can wash away some psychic stain, but he's just tired. “She didn't show me anything that wasn't already in my head. If you're asking why I left..."

He shakes his head and looks away again, out and down. "I think it was because Hulk and I could both agree that we're a danger to everyone around us."

[starkingenuity]

“And what? You’ve changed your mind?” Tony knows the moment he’s said it that it’s come out wrong. His charming sarcasm doesn’t work here, nor should it. What he’s saying is awful. What he’s implying is that maybe Bruce shouldn’t have come back.

The engineer is the least touchiest person on the planet, bar for maybe Banner, but he reaches out to out a hand on what used to be his own t-shirt and squeezes Bruce’s shoulder lightly. The touch lasts a moment but the warmth, as always, lingers.

“I’m not telling you to go. You’re not allowed to go. You can be trusted when you’re alone so you have to stay with me.”

And that sounds bad too but Tony’s possessiveness is legendary.

[hulkbusted]

Bruce knows Tony well enough to know what he's trying to say. He doesn't know what's happened to Tony in the past two years, but he hasn't changed that much. He's still a mess.

He answers the question of why he's back with two words meant to derail Tony from pursuing the answer. "Asgard's gone."

[starkingenuity]

Bruce is better at changing the subject than Tony is but don’t think that Tony isn’t well aware of what just happened. He glances at Bruce with both eyebrows up and then nods. “Why else would a ship full of Asgardians fly over to Norway? I bet the why is pretty bizarre but I’m going to strike a guess that some big bad showed up and Loki had a hand in both saving people and blowing the planet up?”

Just knowing that guy’s around makes him feel pretty sick to his stomach honestly.

“Listen. I don’t really care. Before you give me disapproving mom eyes, I’ve just had too much to worry about here and with the World Council to deal with Thor and Loki right now. That’s Norway’s problem. Not mine.”

And the World Council should be Steve’s problem but. You know. Criminal.

[hulkbusted]

Norway's part of the world, Tony.

"Tell me about this World Council. That's new." He doesn't have to tell Tony how right he was about the end of Asgard scenario. Is it better or worse that Tony can't pull the whole Champion Hulk thing out of his ass, too?

Better, probably. Psychic Stark sounds like a nightmare.

[starkingenuity]

Psychic Stark is everyone’s ultimate nightmare. Thankfully, he’s not psychic. He’s just a genius and putting together the arrival of the Asgardians with Loki on board and a bunch of weird aliens with them is easier to deduce than Hulk becoming a gladiator and killing at least one person per day for two years or so in order to appease the crowd and his master. That’s a little far fetched and Tony’s imagination can only go so far without prompts.

“Ah, okay so you’re... wow. Two years out of the loop. It’s like the UN. But with an oversight component for the Avengers and anyone with super abilities. To keep people safe. I helped them write legislation after the Sokovia incident. I’ll get you a copy. I was pretty proud of it.”

Was is the operative word here Banner.

[hulkbusted]

"How does that oversight work?" Bruce is already dubious. Was there a database and licenses to live? Or was it looser?

Unfortunately, he's also seen Tony's zealot's approach to saving the world, and it's worrying. He's really not good at nuance.

"And why are you speaking past tense?"

[starkingenuity]

“Because I made a mistake.” He’s gotten very good at saying those words. “And I hurt someone I didn’t hate. A few someones. Listen. It’s complicated and my head already hurts from having an alien in my body trying to score with you. Reader’s Digest version is that the law is supposed to keep the little people safe by putting leashes on the rest of us. It doesn’t work right. There are some pretty bad loopholes. Cap, Barton, various others I don’t care too much about are all wanted criminals. I was left with a shattered breast bone and a dinosaur of a burner phone to show for it and now let’s all just focus on present day.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. A lot of fat to chew. Being the current defacto leader of the Avengers in hard work already and he really doesn’t need your disapproval, Banner. So please. Please don’t give it.

“How close are we getting?”

“About twenty miles Northeast, Boss. And twelve thousand feet,” FRIDAY cheerfully answers.

[hulkbusted]

Bruce is visibly surprised by how readily Tony admits the mistake. It takes him a few seconds to sift through the infodump and pull out the parts that he thinks are most immediately salient. Tony's shattered breastbone is clearly healed or healed enough. The burner phone is a detail to pick at later

He's pretty sure that if Steve and Barton are wanted criminals, things aren't going to be looking all that good for old Dr. Banner, either. Funny, he's the one with the most practice with that.

"That's a lot." He's holding his disapproval for now, but he does look a lot like he just got punched in the gut. Tony may still get it, but something else he's getting from the infodump is that his friends - not just Tony, but clearly Tony - are hurting. A lot.

"Is that why the tower's mostly a ghost town?"

[starkingenuity]

“Oh. That.” No. There’s even more things to say about that. Tony huffs. Why does Bruce always have to ask the really hard questions? Why can’t he just sit back with his feet on the dash and enjoy the ride?

Tony still holds the throttle though it’s FRIDAY doing the navigating. It gives his hands something to do. He’s always needed that, not because he fidgets but because his mind wanders. And when his mind wanders, people get hurt.

“Dad had this facility in Upstate New York. Rogers opened it up as sort of a compound for everyone. Living quarters, training rooms, and recently, some of SHIELD and the Accords staff. And me and Pep for awhile.”

But stuff never seems to work out with Pepper for long anymore. She’s hot and she’s cold. Literally.

“Technically, still Ms. Potts. Me less so. We should swing by after this. You’ve got a lab there. Did my best tracking all of your stuff down. You know. For when we found you.”

[hulkbusted]

Why does Tony always have to go charging headlong at things? Why have neither of them figured out that just because they have ideas doesn't mean they're always good ideas?

"A compound?" The images that come to mind aren't homey, particularly not with the world turning upside down to make Steve freakin' Rogers out as a criminal. Barton? He can buy Barton as a criminal, but not Steve.

"Where Pepper lives and you don't," he says slowly as bricks finish falling into line to make a nice big wall between Tony and Pepper. Ouch. "I'm sorry."

He's just going to get that out of the way so they can both get back to the Emotional Repression Olympics.

[starkingenuity]

“What did you do?” Other than leave? Tony smirks but doesn’t say it out loud. “She’s having a lot of trouble controlling Extremis. And evidently my mind is always on something else.” Like finding Banner or trying to mentor a kid he can’t decide if he wants to mentor or not. “She’s where she needs to be. And I’m where she needs me to be.”

Far away.

“She told me I’m too fixated on nearly getting hurt and she doesn’t want to be part of the reason why.” There’s always something. Women have always been like that and maybe that’s why Tony’s never been so devoted.

And probably why he doesn’t think he’s going to bother to be anymore.

“Boss? The wormhole is straight above us,” FRIDAY claims and Tony swivels out of his chair to get the drone ready. Conversation over.

[hulkbusted]

Bruce has left two women he cared about because he's just too dangerous for them. Okay, if he's honest with himself, he left Betty because he loved her too much to drag her into his fucked up life. Natasha... It's complicated. It's a mish-mash of fear of himself, fear for her, anger at himself, anger at her, anger at the world that made her who and what she is, anger at Hulk... yeah, there's a whole lot of anger in there, and whether any of it's fair or not doesn't matter when It's. Still. There.

So he doesn't answer the question because Tony isn't waiting for one anyway. He peers up through the window at the wormhole that's somehow hidden from the world all this time, then gets up to follow Tony off the flight deck.

"Are you sending Kiara through now or doing a first pass for data?" Let's hear it for science, where both of them can escape and just be friends for a while. Man, they would have destroyed school science fairs together.

[starkingenuity]

They would have destroyed schools together, honestly. Maybe the city that the school was in too. Actually, a teenage Bruce and Tony might really be too terrifying for words so it’s best to stop even thinking about it.

“I was thinking the drone first. Just to see what we’ve got. This is probably just one way right? I don’t want to chuck her into the middle of no where if that’s the case.”

He’s killed enough people lately. He’s pretty sure Banner feels the same.

With the quinjet hovering over the ocean, back ramp open, two middle aged men launch a drone. One is holding a tablet with a video feed, the other is holding a remote control.

Both might be grinning.

It’s hard not to have fun with Tony.

[hulkbusted]

At least a teenage Bruce couldn't Hulk out. They'd have had to destroy their town the old fashioned way: mad science.

"There's only one way to find out." The video feed might get cut off, but Bruce had a couple of ideas that he was already tapping into the tablet, setting the feed to a wavelength that might be able to keep hold of for longer. "Sakaar is a wormhole nexus. The sky's full of them and most of them keep dumping trash from all over the universe onto the planet's surface."

He switches from the tweaking he's been doing to quickly drawing up a model of what he remembers from his brief period of not being Hulk on Sakaar, illustrating the almost inconceivable number of wormholes feeding into the atmosphere.

"Some of the wormholes have to be two-way. We didn't test the one back to Earth to see if it was one of them."

[starkingenuity]

“There was just one back to Asgard? Thor’s always been selfish,” Tony grumbles, making the drone weave between the two of them even if he wasn’t paying attention to it. His perception had always been good but Iron Man forced it to be better than food and he could adaptively predict where to tap the joystick to keep it from hitting either of them, even the generally shifting Banner as he programmed and sketched. Tony nods with appreciation at what was shown to him, however.

As a scientist and a designer, he knows that there’s a particular artistic side that has to come with it. Some of his combustion engines and arc reactor specs have won awards for technical skill in the preliminary sketches he’d made on cocktail napkins at boring functions.

As the drone hovered over, Tony lightly patted it. This, like DUM-E and JARVIS and U is one of his children or pets and though sometimes things have to blow up, it’s always sad to see it happen.

Even to the things he hadn’t given AI or a high-tech feel. I mean honestly. The guy is using a remote control box out of the eighties. It might have a lot more bells and whistles but it’s still analog to his usual digital preference!

“Okay. Time to go.” Tony touches his ear and a clear plastic plate unfolds from behind it, wrapping around his eyes, so that he can mirror what’s on the table directly in front of him, like the Iron Man HUD.

[hulkbusted]

"Give him a break, his sister was tearing the place up," Bruce mutters, not even looking up from the tablet as he races through some last second recalculating to give them the best chance of getting the drone back, or at least some visuals. He's throwing out that detail to add another data point to Tony's already clear assessment of what had happened to Asgard.

The drone's like a puppy between them, restless and wanting attention, which, considering that Tony's controlling it, says a lot about its creator, too.

It's got to be possible to get the something from the drone, right? Heimdall can see anywhere in the universe, and if it's possible one way, between Bruce and Tony, it's got to be possible another. Okay, maybe a little optimistic, but science is where he uses up all of his optimism.

And then the drone is out and up. Zipping out of the hold like a dragonfly over a pond before rising closer and closer to the wormhole while Bruce watches the tablet screen. He doesn't remember taking this trip, but then again, he hadn't, Hulk had.

And then the drone's video feed flickers and stabilizes.

[starkingenuity]

Tony’s eyebrow raises ever so slightly over the terrain broadcast on the glass in front of him, but his eyes refocus from Banner to the image. He’ll have lots of time with Bruce (he’s not losing him again), but this is one of those very few moments of pure, unadulterated joy he was ever able to feel these days. Pure discovery tickles all of his bits, especially his mind, and that’s where he enjoys them the most.

As the image on the feed stabilizes, Tony is left looking at what looks exactly like a garbage dump. He hadn’t expected that to be so literal and so he tilted his head to the side in amusement and guides the little drone over heaps of stuff. And heaps of people picking through the stuff. And more heaps. And more heaps—

It’s not until the drone zips right by a wall that’s obviously intelligently made (and not a heap) that Tony finds his excitement building again. And when he sees that tower—

“Oh my god. You were Russell Crowe.”

[hulkbusted]

Yes, it's a garbage dump. Why use hyperbole when reality has already turned the crazy up to 11?

He's going to give himself a little pat on the back for getting the transmission through, and there's a moment when he's distracted from the garbage dump of a world thinking about he potential implications for wormhole-facilitated interstellar communication.

That moment passes all too quickly when the first sign of construction hits the screen because he knows what's coming. "Why don't you bring the drone back now to see if the wormhole's two-way."

That suggestion, unfortunately, comes too late, and even if it hadn't, why would Tony turn around when things are getting interesting?

So all he's got left is a slow blink. "What does Russell Crowe have to do with this?"

What? His lifestyle since Hulk hasn't left him a lot of room for movie watching.

[starkingenuity]

There’s no way in hell that the drone is coming back now. Tony’s got it zipping through the window of the tall building, eyes focused forward and not below (or he might have caught some of the craziness going on in the streets). He finds the entire thing incredulous. He’s built tall before, the Tower is easily ninety stories in the air, but this structure just doesn’t look feasible. And that’s exciting to say the least. “Never mind,” he chirps, counting floors as he goes with the quick wit of a man who can compartmentalize calculations and speak all at the same time.

How a building like this can survive is just incredible. The drone scans material composition and feeds it back into FRIDAY. He’s too busy scanning everything to really pay attention to Banner—

At least until he finds the giant core of the building.

The arena.

And not only that, but there are datachips with video recordings—

“Oh this is Christmas!” he says, having the drone play the last match. Thor and the Hulk? It’s incredible. “I need popcorn.”

[hulkbusted]

Tony's busy playing tourist and snooping through alien data, Bruce is revisiting the familiar territories of why do I do this to myself?

He's still watching, scanning some of the rapid streams of incoming data, fighting through the cognitive dissonance of knowing that he was there for two years and that he doesn't remember it, and then Tony finds the arena...

Two years of fighting and killing come crashing down on him in a static overload of teeth, claws, fists, swords, blood, screaming spectators, and fury. The flashback lasts seconds, and in those seconds, the tablet slips from his fingers before he's stumbling back, arm raised in front of his face to fend off the memory of attackers that are long dead.

[starkingenuity]

“How high does this go— Woah! I knew he could jump but— Banner?” Tony rips the glass off of his head, hissing a little as the earpiece tugs at his hair and the lobe of his ear. He’s a little more gentle with the remote. He doesn’t want to break his little buddy exploring through the wormhole after all! “FRIDAY, close the quinjet up!”

His hands are immediately on Bruce’s shoulders to try and kept him from falling over. He’s been stupid. He’s been so stupid!

The AI sealed them in and Tony’s thoughts are less on what panic could do to him and more on what poor Bruce is going through. He grabs him tightly at the sides of his face and jaw and neck, forcing the other man to look at him.

“Breathe. Look at me and breathe. You’re okay. I’m so sorry.”

And isn’t that strange? Tony never apologizes.

[hulkbusted]

There's a mercy to not remembering what happens when Hulk's in the driver's seat, and that mercy has been rescinded. It's a little slice of hell, even for seconds. There's nothing else in the world other than the overwhelming reality of what Hulk has done, every memory immediate and virtually incomprehensible without context.

He's coming undone, and desperate for something solid and real and familiar. He grabs Tony's forearms and clings to them while he fights through the wreckage of two years and back to the present.

He's unaware of how hard he's gripping Tony or the tears rolling down his face or how close he's coming to hyperventilating, but he's pulling himself back an inch at a time, using Tony as a solid center to a disaster of a universe.

Say what you will about Tony, but if you accept that he's never not going to be Tony Stark, he's actually pretty reliable.

[starkingenuity]

It hurts him to see Bruce this way. He doesn’t know if he’s close to a Code Green, if he’s struggling to keep himself himself</> or if this is s panic attack. He’s very well versed in the latter. Though the other man is bruising him, Tony doesn’t complain. He doesn’t so much as wince. He just is whatever Bruce needs him to be. It’s payment for all of the times that Bruce has been there for him too. Even when he hadn’t physically been there for him.

Tony watches as Bruce breathes again, just as he had been recommending. He watches as he stitches himself back up together and that embrace of two men clinging together at arm’s length lessens into two friends holding one another close.

It doesn’t bother Tony. Bruce is family. His soulmate. The only guy that has the capacity to understand him and his quirks. So if a hug will help, though he’s an on again, off again germaphobe, a hug Bruce Banner gets.