Chapter Text
Mexico felt different, this time.
Familiar, but different. It smelled the same, for the most part, the same smells of food, people and animals, a little more smoke.
The protests were new.
The whole country was... angrier. More on edge. Tired of being jerked around and being lied to. But at the same time, there was a new sense of energy, of... solidarity. Of pulling together for a common goal.
Bruce could relate.
Since the Hulk had dropped him on the warm shores of who-knows-where, he'd traveled wherever and however he could manage, helping the people he came across and getting by with what they gave him in return. The habits came back easily enough, sleeping rough, eating little. Blending in. Watching his back. He'd been afraid it wouldn't come back, that he'd stayed in the lap of luxury too long. But that all seemed like some kind of bizarre dream now - it felt like he'd always been on the run, that he'd only dreamed that there was somewhere he could settle in. Somewhere he could belong.
And maybe it all had been just a daydream.
The witch, Wanda, had put all the Avengers to sleep, had made them dream. Had showed them nightmares, their worst fears. But not him. She hadn't shown him dreams.
She hadn't needed to.
All she'd had to do was wake him up.
It had all been real, the things she showed him. All the destruction. The pain. A rude awakening.
And then?
"I had a dream," Natasha told him. "That I was an Avenger."
She'd told him that she felt like a monster, a killing machine, tried to tell him that she understood what it felt like to be so horrified by your own potential that you weren't sure whether it was worthwhile to try to use them. She'd cracked open his heart with stories of how that potential had been used, twisted. She'd told him that she would run with him, if he ran.
Exactly what he wanted to hear, and didn't she have a talent for that? He'd thought she meant it.
And then she tricked him, pushed him, used him to complete the mission.
That still sat in his stomach like a brick. No matter how far away he got from New York, from her, it weighed him down.
It didn't help that there was now a city on every populated continent where the Hulk had made his presence felt. Rio de Janeiro. New York. Johannesburg. Sokovia. It felt like there was nowhere that was far enough away that he could forget what he was capable of.
So he had nowhere, really, to go.
His travels had been aimless, or at least consciously so, but he was beginning to get a feeling that something inside him was aiming for something. The Hulk was steering him somewhere.
Not New York. His feelings about the city were a tangled mess (more even than average for him), but it was a cringing feeling, a sadness, an aversion more than a pull. But he was making his way up through Sonora, back up to the border on roughly the same path that he'd taken down, the first time, before Rio.
He stopped to get food at a place he remembered, the food all spice and richness, and he thought back to last time, what had changed and what hadn't.
Before, he'd run to protect Betty from himself. This time... he'd run to protect himself from Natasha. He wasn't sure which hurt worse.
Now, when he thought of what he was avoiding, the places he wasn't - when he thought about being home - he didn't think of Betty.
But he didn't think of Natasha, either.
And out of the others....
Well, Bruce was starting to have a pretty good idea of where Hulk was steering him.
Malibu, CA
It felt odd, walking up to this house he'd never laid eyes on, this mansion on the coast, clothes kind of bedraggled and unsure of his reception. He fervently hoped he'd gotten the right place.
The gate opened under his hand, and he walked up to the sprawling structure, searching out something that resembled a front door.
The panel beside the door lit up as he approached. "Good morning, Doctor Banner," said a soft female voice, accent not quite American, but far from Jarvis's English drawl. Irish, maybe?
"Hey," he said hesitantly. "Uh. Is Tony in?"
The door swung open as the voice from the panel answered. "Mr. Stark isn't here at the moment, but he's left instructions that you are to be given full access to the house and workshops. Please, come in."
"Thanks. You're, uh, AI?" he asked as he walked in and found empty, echoing space.
"Yes, Doctor," she answered pleasantly. "My name is FRIDAY. If there's anything you need, please ask."
She directed him to a shower and a meal, everything smooth and easy and pleasant. He was back in the lap of luxury, and like being thrown head first into a swimming pool, it was a shock to the system, enveloping and overwhelming. He was just tidying up the kitchen when Tony returned.
The door closed with a soft thunk. "Hey, Fry, where's this company you promised me?" came the familiar voice from around the corner.
"In the kitchen, Boss," FRIDAY replied. Bruce's eyes strayed towards the corner that separated them, more eager than he'd expected to be to see the eccentric billionaire again.
Tony rounded the corner, and when his eyes flicked to Bruce, they widened, and he darted back behind the wall. There was a moment of stillness.
"I know you're not afraid of me, Tony," Bruce called with a breathless laugh, a hint of nervousness tied up in it at the prospect that he might be wrong.
"Well, no, not in the classical sense," came the reply before Tony poked his head back around the corner, bright eyes steadily on the scientist now. "Kinda afraid I'll do something to chase you off again, though."
Bruce sighed, turning away to rinse his dishes. "It wasn't you," he reassured. "As much as you're... well... you, you weren't the reason I ran."
Tony made a noise, a little sympathetic, a little disbelieving. "Right," he said. "I've been told that anyone who can tolerate me for as long as you did can tolerate just about anything."
Bruce shook his head, looking back to Tony. "I can tolerate a lot of things," he said, "some of which I'd never wish on anyone. I've got a pretty long list of those now, actually. But if you were on that list, I wouldn't be here."
He tried to make it sound like the light banter they usually used to gloss over everything terrible in their lives if it came up while they were working. But it came out heavy, almost pleading.
Tony came the rest of the way into the kitchen now, looking with concern at his friend. "Huh," he said. "My turn to play therapist?"
Bruce laughed a little bitterly. "You think you're up to that job?"
"Well, I've got the time. I'm retired." He strode back into the main room, beckoning like Bruce following him was a foregone conclusion.
Thinking about how much he'd done at Tony's suggestion the last time they'd been in the same building, Bruce thought that was probably justified.
"So what's on your mind, Big Guy?" said Tony as Bruce took a seat near his.
Bruce looked at him for a minute before formulating an approach to the subjects swirling in his head. He settled on, "How long have you known Natasha?"
Tony snorted. "Well, that depends. You wanna include the time a Miss Natalie Rushman infiltrated my company to flirt, get close to me and learn all my secrets, then stab me in the neck with a hypodermic? Because if you do, then... never. I don't know this woman, Your Honor, never seen her before in my life."
The noise Bruce made was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "So she's just... like that, huh? Draw you in, and then stab you in the back to complete her mission?" He winced. "Should've seen it. I think I can probably count on one hand the people who really want to be near me for reasons other than to use the Hulk."
Tony drew in breath through his teeth in a hiss. "Wow. Yeah. Knew something was going on with you two, but...." He rubbed at his eyes tiredly with his fingers and thumb. "Steve... he trusts her, they have this whole 'war buddies' thing going on, and I trust his judgement." He talked over Bruce's scoffing noise. "With things that aren't science, I trust his judgement. But she really just wanted to put the whammy on you mission-wise? Not...."
Bruce interrupted before that sentence could get worse. "I don't think it was just that. I'm not even sure if she knows she's doing it. I know what it is to have different, conflicting impulses in your mind, okay, I get that. But she looked me in the eye and she promised me we'd run away together, whenever and wherever I needed to, and when I decided to take her up on it, she pushed me off Ultron's floating city."
Tony's face crinkled in a sympathetic grimace, then a considering frown. "Hate to say it but I'm kinda grateful, Bruce." He reached over and squeezed the other man's shoulder. "Couldn't have done it without your greener half."
"You would have found a way." Bruce let his breath out in a huff. "You always do."
"Mostly that's because I've got the best people around me." Tony's words were quiet and sincere, and they hung for a moment in the air before the engineer's patience for emotions was apparently exhausted, and he stood, the science-gleam sparking in his eyes. "Come on, come take a look at how FRIDAY's matrix is developing, tell me what you think. I patched in a few of the protocol chains from JARVIS, but I'm thinking from here I want to let her develop on her own. She's pretty quick on the uptake, aren't you, Fry?"
His chatter and FRIDAY's continued, slowly beginning to fill the space that sat so heavy and hollow in Bruce's core.