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There's a perfect altitude where the city lights stop looking like part of a city and start looking like jewels scattered across dark velvet, where the noise of life below is whited out by the noise of the air that parts around him like a welcome. Tony should probably be doing something heroic -- looking for crime or scanning for random citizens in danger -- but what he's really doing is cruising along on a cushion of his own ego, experiencing a proprietary thrill of ownership he's smart enough not to mention to anybody.

"I am the master of all I survey, Jarvis." Well, anybody human. "How's my city doing tonight?"

"Bright, loud, corrupt, dirty, and rather beautiful from this perspective, sir," Jarvis replies. "Will we be rescuing anyone this evening, or merely observing the spectacle?"

"Is there someone down there who needs rescuing?"

"Quite likely. Shall I tap into the 911 network?"

"Scan for anything you think the paid crime fighters can't handle. I'm not touching down for any more cats trapped on fire escapes."

"That's unfortunate," Jarvis says. "The Ironkitten hashtag trended on twitter for more than a week. Incoming call on your private line, sir." Jarvis's voice gets extra-clipped and extra British, and accordingly, Tony pays extra attention.

Pepper's picture appears on the HUD and her voice breaks in, smooth and unflustered but with an air of red alert in her tone. "Tony, you need to come home."

He's already banking smoothly in a curve that will take him back to the tower at top speed. "Is this a booty call? This feels like a relationship milestone. Are you naked? Should I be naked?"

"Bruce Banner just showed up on our doorstep," she cuts in, "and I do mean literally on our doorstep. He's mostly naked, if that makes you feel any better. And also unconscious."

Tony's focus narrows instantly. "Is he--"

"Pink as a newborn baby," Pepper says, "and starting to draw a crowd. Tony, he’s hurt."

"Set up a perimeter, give it five hundred -- no, give it a block, I want everybody he wouldn't know on sight, out of sight. No spotlights, nothing shining in his eyes, but not too dark, either."

"I already did all that. Should I cover him up? I don't want to move him, but I don't know what might happen if he wakes up surrounded by strangers."

"Can you do it from the penthouse? Because that’s where you should be right now. Is that where you are right now, Pepper?"

“I’m in the lobby. I sent Security away.”

“Why would you be -- that’s not --”

Pepper cuts him off. “I didn’t want him to wake up alone, either.”

Tony loves her at least partly for her innate compassion, a trait he can’t always find within himself, even on his best days. He just wishes she applied it with slightly better timing. “Okay. Right now, I want you to move very quietly and very slowly out of sight. Get behind a -- a chair, or a planter or something. Right now, okay?”

“Tony. What happens if he wakes up surrounded by strangers?”

"Nothing good," Tony says darkly, and pours on the speed.

By the time he arrives, the street, the surrounding area, the Tower -- it’s all deserted, like a stage set for a play that hasn’t started yet. The speed of the evacuation is impressive, considering Tony broke the sound barrier on his way in. Jarvis starts scanning Bruce without being asked, before he even lands. Tony takes a second to absorb the readout, then ditches the suit and lets it find its own way upstairs.

Bruce looks bad -- face bruised and bloodied, body curled in on itself like he's protecting all his soft parts from a blow. His breath hitches when he breathes in deep. Damaged ribs, Jarvis said. Dislocated shoulder. Cuts, contusions, possible concussion. The bottoms of his feet are red, the skin shredded into ribbons. He's dangerously dehydrated, and he looks it.

Tony squats next to Bruce and puts a careful hand on his uninjured shoulder. The skin under his fingers is flushed and warm, as expected -- temperature high, blood pressure high, heart rate high. Amazing that a guy can be so revved up and so very, very still.

There's a royal blue satin sheet draped over Bruce’s middle. Tony instantly recognizes it -- last seen on his bed, with Pepper tangled up in it. He wonders if she'd had time to put something on before taking this off and donating it to the noble cause of preserving Bruce Banner's modesty, or if his naked sometime-girlfriend is hiding behind a ficus in his lobby. He makes a note to track down the security tapes before they get sold on Craigslist -- just in case.

He arranges the sheet to cover Bruce up a little better, thinking hard and fast about the city's emergency response time. How long before the mayor remembers he’s up for re-election, and rolls out the tanks and helicopters? These are machines with which Bruce Banner has a complicated history.

He closes his hand around Bruce's shoulder again and squeezes. "Hey, buddy," he says gently, "nap-time's over. Time for some Kool-aid and cookies."

Bruce's eyelids flutter, but don't open. He's cooling off fast -- his skin is pale now, almost translucent. Lines of strain fan out from the corners of his eyes, his mouth, and Tony has to work to keep his hand from clamping down, trying to curl into a fist. Reassurance first, he tells himself. Vengeance after.

"Honestly, Banner," Tony says, "this is not how I thought my night was going to go. Not that you're hard on the eyes or anything, but I was expecting the nudity portion of the evening to involve more curves than angles. And to take place indoors. Not that I can't be flexible." The wind catches at Bruce's hair and hides his eyes; Tony pushes it back. "You in there, Bruce? I'm giving you some of my best material, here."

He checks his watch, checks the road. All clear, but time isn't standing still. Soon he'll just have to grab Bruce and hope for the best, Hulk or no Hulk. In the state Bruce is in, Hulking out might even be good for him. But before he has to make that call, Bruce groans and presses his palm flat against the pavement, trying to push himself up; his breath stutters and his face goes white from pain.

"Tony?" he says, his voice thick and confused.

"Awesome. Moving is a good sign. Though maybe don't start with that arm, okay? And don't freak out. I'm about to sweep you off your feet -- well, off your ass, anyway -- and carry you across my threshold." Tony pulls Bruce’s good arm around his neck and heaves them both up. "Upsy daisy, there we go. Just like a biped." He loops his other arm around Bruce's waist, carefully keeping the blanket tucked around him in case the cavalry arrives while the family jewels are on display. They're halfway to the door, Bruce's feet only helping every third step or so, before Bruce gets interested in his surroundings.

His eyes roll wildly, trying to focus on Tony's face; Tony doesn't think they manage it. "What am I doing here?"

Tony tries to think of a rational, comforting answer, but there's no good scenario he can come up with that would end with Bruce naked, battered and unconscious on the steps of the Tower. Anger rises in him again, a hot, helpless clenching in his chest that makes the arc reactor feel cool in comparison.

This doesn’t happen; Bruce doesn’t change like this. He comes back whole. Someone did this to him. To Tony’s friend, in Tony's city, somebody did this.

He takes Bruce upstairs. He doesn’t know what else to do; every possible action seems equally dangerous, equally likely to hurt Bruce or trigger a transformation or both. Bruce is familiar enough with Tony’s place from the few weeks he’d been willing to stay after Loki’s invasion, and familiar has to be good, right? He should feel safe there. Safer than in the street, anyway.

Bruce drops in and out of consciousness on the way up to the penthouse, little microbursts of oblivion that scour his mind clean. Every time he wakes up, it's the same questions: What am I doing here, how did I get here, what happened? By the time the elevator stops, Tony's certainty that sleep and time and residual gamma radiation would put Humpty Dumpty back together again has been replaced by something rapidly scaling up toward panic. Bruce needs a doctor, and not just for the external injuries, which are as extensive as they are inexplicable. The baffled, frightened look in his eyes is unnerving. Tony's been through some terrifying shit in his life, but nothing that remotely compares to seeing Bruce fucking Banner look scared.

Pepper's got the door open for them; Tony eases Bruce down onto a sofa that’s definitely going to need replacing, and plants himself on the floor beside it. He sits with one knee drawn up toward his chest and one hand wrapped loosely around Bruce’s wrist, nearly vibrating with the need to take action. Any action, however stupid or poorly thought out -- as long as it’s messy and final and right the fuck now. But under his fingertips, Bruce’s pulse is a quick, thready reminder that Tony is exactly where he needs to be. That single circle of contact is all that’s keeping him together.

"I don't even know what I'm thinking," Tony says, looking up at Pepper. "What are we thinking? Are we calling in SHIELD? Seriously? Because for all we know, it was SHIELD who broke him and dropped off the pieces out front."

"I don't know either,” Pepper says. Her hand rests gently on Bruce’s head, but her eyes are fixed on Tony’s, her expression warm and solemn. “But we have to do something. He needs help we’re not currently staffed or equipped to provide."

She’s not wrong. Bruce needs SHIELD’s medical resources. Obviously. If Phil Coulson hadn't had to be a hero, maybe Tony would know somebody at SHIELD he could trust. But there's just Widow and Hawk now, and God only knows where they are, who they are, at any given time.

And then there's Fury.

"Maybe Bruce just needs some more sleep. And a sandwich. You know, I would love to take a gander at his metabolism sometime, see what's going on in there. It's fairly normal when he hasn't been green for a while, but you catch him right after, you don't just buy him dinner. You buy him a restaurant. Possibly a farm."

"We could do that, if we could keep him awake long enough to eat."

"He doesn't trust the military.” Tony’s free hand curls into a fist; he knows Bruce’s reasons, and they’re not wrong. “He didn't want Fury to know where to find him. How am I supposed to just hand him over to the very people he was running from?"

"Clearly running wasn't the answer. Not this time." Pepper kneels beside Tony, leans on his shoulder. "You care about this guy a lot, right?"

"Well, he did stop me from becoming the world's most expensive tinned beef not too long ago. It makes an impression."

"Yes, but aside from that. You actually like him."

Tony leans back to look at her. "Are you asking me if I like him, like him? Because if that's what you're asking, I prefer that you do it by way of a folded up note written in pink glitterpen. You can pass it to me in science class, and I'll check a box for yes or no."

"I think he came here on purpose -- to you, Tony. Maybe he doesn't trust SHIELD, but he wouldn't have come here if he didn't trust you. He's trusting your judgment."

"He's out of his mind," Tony says. But he lets Pepper pull him to his feet. "I'll reach out to Fury."

"I don't think a phone call will do it." Pepper kisses Tony's cheek, then steps back. "And you need to be here when Bruce wakes up. I'll go to Fury. If he had any knowledge of this, any part in it at all, I'll know. Smarter men have tried to hide their little plans from me, and you know better than anyone how that usually works out for them."

Tony nods solemnly. "Yes, yes I do. What will you do if it turns out he was involved?"

"Come home. Think of something else.” Her smile widens, warms up a bit. “Are you worried about me, Tony?"

"I'm a little worried about SHIELD," he says frankly. "So, assuming he passes the Pepper Potts inspection process..."

"I'll say the charmingly eccentric billionaire and part-time Avenger Tony Stark requests the honor of his company, at his earliest convenience." She kisses Tony’s cheek lightly. "Don't worry. He'll come. I used to do this for a living, you know."

Bruce wakes up slowly; sound first, the quiet click of a door closing somewhere nearby. There's something soft under him, which isn't right. Before, there was… before…

Before he can start asking questions, a voice says, "Don't worry about it, you're fine."

That… is patently untrue, a fact which becomes clear when he tries to sit up. His right arm is a hot scramble of pain hanging awkwardly out of place at his side. He groans, unused to hurt. He has the usual stuff, the knees, the up-too-late headache, the twinge of RSI in his right wrist that's been with him since undergrad. But hurt, real hurt belongs to a piece of him he can't access anymore.

"Okay, that was a lie, sorry," the voice says, "You're going to be fine," and even through the ringing in his head, it's convincing enough that Bruce nods and sits up, flinching away from every part of his body, and swings his legs over the side of the sofa.

"Hey, hey, hey, what are you doing?" Tony makes a grab for him and gets the wrong shoulder, and Bruce hisses and jerks away, which just makes it worse. "Sorry, sorry! I didn't mean to do that. Please relax, big guy, I just rebuilt this place." He pulls back, keeps his hands to himself, and hovers. "Do you need anything? Water, Advil, traction? I can get you any of those things, just say the word."

Bruce stretches his good hand out in front of him, his brow creased, his upper lip curled. He watches his fingers flex and relax. Why is he still here? Why is there so much pain? He looks up at Tony, at Tony's wide eyes and jittery hands, and something like fear pierces his confusion.

"Why --?" Bruce looks at his hand again, skin pale beneath the rough tan, feeling -- what? Afraid, angry -- offended, in some deep and unforgivable way. He shouldn't look like this, he shouldn't hurt like this. His voice -- his voice is odd, a deep growl, but not deep enough, somehow. He's not himself. Not Bruce, not Hulk. Something stuck, somewhere in the middle.

"Bruce, listen, you're okay. I promise, you're okay." Tony sits down next to him; he grabs the hand Bruce is staring at in so much confusion and wraps his fingers around it. "You're just hurt, that's all. Not even all that bad. You need some rest and some iodine and some ace bandages," Tony tells him, "and maybe some morphine and a licensed professional to fix your arm. A year of comfort TV and ice cream. You’re a mess, but you’re safe, okay? You’re with me."

Bruce freezes, and for a second his brain fuzzes out; terror overtakes him, Tony is here and there's all this pain and in a moment, any second now, Hulk will find his way out of whatever gamma back alley he's lost in and it's not safe. But Hulk doesn't come.

Hulk doesn't come, and when seconds pass and he still hasn't come, the fear starts to fade and instead something small and doubtful is born inside him, fragile and desperate, and it might -- it's been a while since he felt it, or anything like it, but it might be something crazy like hope.

The corner of his mouth curls up, completely out of his control, and he laughs -- unsure, nervous, but starting to feel clear-headed. For the most part.

"See?" Tony says, drawing back to rake his eyes over the wreck of Bruce's… everything. "You're already finding me unbearably charming. You'll be right as rain in no time."

"Not… entirely unbearable." Bruce's voice is almost his own again. He looks at Tony for a long time. Relief washes over him in a wave, and just as he starts to feel like he can breathe again, his eyes lose their focus and drift shut. His hand in Tony's goes slack, and he tips over slowly against Tony’s side. Tony is warm and solid and there, and Hulk is gone, at least a little -- maybe? At least for now? And that's enough to finally let Bruce sleep.

Hours pass. Pepper doesn't call, and Tony doesn't call her; whatever she's doing, she'll do it best without him hovering. Tony devotes a little of Bruce's nap time to some personal hygiene improvements. Not for Tony, of course - Tony developed an allergy to grime in Afghanistan that he's never quite managed to scrub off. He's so clean you could eat eggs off his chest. Bruce, on the other hand, looks like he's been run over repeatedly by a dump truck, and the aroma of exotically unpleasant locales lingers on his skin.

The first swipe with a wet cloth leaves a trail of clean behind it that stands out like a stripe on Bruce's skin. Tony flinches back from that a little -- he's glad not all of the washed-out grey is health-related, but he doesn't like the ideas that come with it. Wherever Bruce was -- whoever had him -- how long was he there? How bad was it, wherever it was? He tries to remember the last email he got, the last postcard from nowhere, and it comes out to about two months with no contact. Bruce likes his space, and Tony respects Bruce enough to give it to him. But how much of that radio silence was compulsive Banneresque do-gooder road tripping, and how much was … this?

He finishes the job he started, efficient and methodical, wiping away dirt and grunge and blood with cloth after cloth, until Bruce is something approaching his normal color. He's careful with Bruce's face, the lightest touch he can manage. There's a cut on his lip, a gash up near his temple. The embedded smudges under Bruce's eyes take a little longer, and a few less careful swipes, before Tony realizes they're not smudges at all; they're circles of exhaustion, bruises only rest and safety will be able to wash off.

"I told you something like this was going to happen," Tony says. "I told you, if you go off on your own with nobody to watch your back, something terrible is going to happen. You don't ditch your team, Banner, that is what life has taught me, and that is what I was trying to teach you, but did you listen to me? No, you did not. And now you're lying there stupid and unconscious and bleeding all over my very expensive stuff, and it is not--"

Tony stops. He's worked himself up into something just shy of yelling, and while he's no doctor, he's pretty sure you're not supposed to yell at people as fucked up as Bruce is right now. Later, he promises himself. Later, when Bruce has had a chance to regain consciousness and ... and coagulate, or something. Later, there will be time for so much yelling, the hissy-fit of his dreams.

"It's not acceptable," Tony finishes quietly, wiping gently at Bruce's chin. "We'll be talking about that later, believe me."

Pepper returns with a flourish of violent efficiency. She comes off the elevator talking, not to him but into the phone mic hooked around her ear, and she's flanked by a platoon of white-coats, several of whom are manning a gurney. They swarm over to Bruce and carefully lift him onto it, then carefully wheel him to the elevator. Tony scrambles in after them; Pepper follows at a slightly more dignified pace, and hits a button that sends them a long way down.

"What is happening?" Tony asks her, trying to keep hold of his temper. "Where are we going? Who do these clowns work for? Hello?"

Pepper hits an invisible button on her ear piece and says, "We’re taking Bruce down to the medical level. These gentlemen work for Nick Fury, and their job is to find out what's wrong with him."

"He's an egomaniacal fascist running a quasi-military black ops battalion staffed entirely by thugs, thieves and assassins," Tony tells her, "That's what's wrong with him. Plus his face looks like somebody carved a road map to Hell on it, which is surprising only because I'm pretty sure he's got that route memorized."

"To find out what's wrong with Bruce," Pepper says, not missing a beat.

"Wait… did you say the Medical Level? Do I have a Medical Level?"

"Yes, Tony. Now we do."

"I'm sorry," he says, "of course, I meant we, because clearly what's mine is yours. Even my unconscious teammate who you just dropped into the clutches of Fury's Biohack Division."

"Of which you are now in complete control." Pepper smiles a stressed, fake smile with fake-bright eyes and says, "Sorry, the negotiations were difficult. You have to be in charge of something. Believe me, I tried to find any other solution."

Tony's eyes narrow. "What--"

"I'm sorry, Mr. President," Pepper says, staring a hole through Tony's interruption. "Of course I didn't mean to leave you on hold, but the head of the medical division currently responsible for Doctor Banner's care required my attention for a moment. Where were we….?"

"Gotcha," Tony says, backing off. "Leader of the Free World and all. Totally takes precedence. Don't mind me. I'm just the majority stockholder of the Free World,” he tells Bruce, sleeping pale and still on the gurney beside him. "Technically, that guy works for me."

Downstairs, things are happening fast. A room approximately the size of Tony's penthouse has been jammed full of high-tech medical monitoring devices, everything lit up like Christmas and trailing thick, tangled cables. Bruce has been transferred to a hospital bed at the center of a twenty-foot radius kept completely clear of equipment and personnel. Tony crosses the invisible perimeter into the electronic DMZ the medical team has created and examines Bruce for any change, any further damage.

"We were told not to lay a finger on him, and we didn't. Right now we're just monitoring, and reading what we can from a distance."

There’s a kid of maybe twenty, twenty-five tops, standing a respectful distance from the bed. He's wearing jeans and a bright pink T-shirt under his lab coat. There's a stethoscope looped around his neck. "Doogie Howser, I presume?" Tony asks.

"Jake Bennett." He offers his hand, which Tony ignores and which Bennett seems to take in stride, letting it fall with no comment. "I'm way smarter than Howser, plus old enough to shave. You're Stark, right? How long has your friend been like this?"

"Are you even a doctor? Did you finish medical school? How old are you?" Tony looks him over. "Show me some ID."

Lips tightening, Bennett says, "I'm twenty-five, and I could teach at any medical school on the planet, except for how a good ninety percent of what I know is classified."

"Child prodigy, huh? We'll have to compare emotional scars someday." Tony looks at him for a long, tense moment, and then his eyes are drawn back to Bruce. "I don't believe you've had to shave in the past month, but -- what can you do for him?"

Bennett lets out a breath. "I've got SHIELD's files on him, read them on the plane on my way over. I'm up to speed on Dr. Banner's unique physiology -- as much as anybody can be. But I'm going to need to examine him. We stuck to your rules getting him down here and setting things up, but I'm a doctor, Mr. Stark. At some point, I have to actually put my hands on my patient."

"What's all the equipment for?"

"Half of it's monitoring -- remote monitoring, whenever we could manage it. The other half is one part pharmacy, one part chem lab. Do you know if Dr. Banner has done any work on himself? Any tests, any results, any notes that might shed some light--"

"There's a notebook. Somewhere. He didn't have it on him when he showed up, and I have no idea where he came from. There's a lab he used sometimes, up on twenty, but I don't think he was working on himself -- I never let JARVIS keep an eye on him. He's a very private guy, and as far as possible we tried to respect that. Of course, now that I see where respecting his boundaries gets us, I'm rethinking the hell out of that strategy.”

"It's okay," Bennett said, his calm, quiet voice drawing Tony up short. "It would be a bonus, but we'll do fine without it. The physical injuries aren't insurmountable."

"It's the inability to hang onto all his marbles for more than five minutes that I'm most worried about. Can you fix that?"

Against all rational sense of self-preservation, Bennett reaches out and pats Tony's shoulder. "I can fix anything, Mr. Stark. That's what Nick Fury pays me for."

Tony stares at the back of Bennett's hand, incredulous. "Is that a club stamp?"

Bruce drifts, somewhere between sleep and consciousness. It's nice -- pleasant, like the first touch of a warm breeze in early spring, like a vanilla ice cream cone on a baking hot summer day. It feels good to lose track of himself, to let go of himself, just for once. His muscles are lax, lazy. He feels his body moving, knows it's not under his own power, but can't quite make himself care. Has he ever felt like this before? He can't remember. Surely there was a time before the accident when he could sleep fully, deeply; when dreams weren't a risk and rest wasn't out of reach. He just can't remember.

It doesn't matter, he doesn't need to remember. He's out of the cage now, out in the light, out in the wild air, and he lets his head fall back, feels the sun against the wide column of his throat and he roars with the release and the freedom of it, roars away the last of the lingering darkness, and he is awake, awake, alive and in the world, the panicked cries of the captor melting away as he runs and leaps and leaves the cage behind him forever and ever and--

~

At some point when Tony's brain wasn't even finished growing yet, he zigged toward engineering when he should have zagged off to med school. His entire life path from that moment on has rendered him utterly useless for this crisis. Bruce is so clearly broken that Tony itches to put him back together again, but there's nothing he can rebuild here, nothing to recalibrate or rewire. There's just a discolored mass of meat and bone strung out obscenely across a table. Hardware dismantled, software hopelessly scrambled.

Tony lets Bennett in because he has to. And Bennett, to his credit, is as careful with Bruce as Tony would have been. He doesn't waste time, and he doesn't touch Bruce more than he absolutely has to. Tony's teeth clench when Bennett slides a needle into the crook of Bruce's arm to draw blood. When Bennett fits a glowing steel cage over Bruce's skull, Tony's fists clench, too. But Bruce doesn't move, doesn't flinch from the needle or blink from the lights. The monitors mark his lack of response with slow, bored beeps at steady intervals.

Finally, Bennett takes away the awful horror-movie skull cap from Bruce's helpless body and steps back, vials of Bruce's blood clinking in his pocket. "This is a start," he says, adjusting the angle of a monitor displaying a 3D image of Bruce's skull. "Data from the headset looks … I don't want to say normal, but about what I'd expect, given the givens."

"Are you planning to fix his arm any time today?" Tony demands. "I just ask because you told me you were a doctor, but so far all I'm seeing is vaguely scientific curiosity. If I just wanted him strapped down on a slab, I've got my own guys for that."

Bennett's face reddens, but he doesn't take his eyes off the monitor. "If you want to know what's wrong with Doctor Banner, I need him to stay Doctor Banner. We'll lose time and data if he transitions before we get a baseline. And frankly, if his brain has been damaged, we have no way of knowing how that damage will translate into his… alternate form. If I don't study him, I can't help him."

"Oh, sorry, I forgot,” Tony snaps. “You're from SHIELD; you're here to help."

Bennett rounds on him. "Mr. Stark, I've lived in this city all my life. My mom lives in this city. The goddamn Yankees live in this city. And the guy on that table, plus his asshole friend, saved this city. So whatever you may think of the people who sign my paychecks, I am fucking well here to help. If you don't believe that, you can--"

A crash from behind them stops Bennett cold, and Tony jerks his head toward the bed.

"You're welcome," Bruce says to Bennett quietly, sincerely. There's a tray of shiny sterile things that aren't so sterile anymore scattered all over the floor by his bed. "Sorry," Bruce says, giving the instruments a disinterested glance.

Tony's face goes red. "Bruce," he says. "I was just--"

"I heard," Bruce says. "Deaf grandmothers in Jersey probably heard."

"I was just trying to make sure that eventually there would be some actual care forthcoming," Tony says defensively.

"And?"

"And -- now I'm reassured on that point. Doctor Bennett made an excellent case for himself. No harm, no foul." He smiles at Bennett. "Right, Doctor?"

Bennett ignores him. He approaches Bruce's bed, hands where Bruce can see them, moving neither fast enough to be threatening nor slow enough to be insulting. "Doctor Banner," he says, "how are you feeling?"

"That depends on where I am and why I'm here," Bruce says, still looking at Tony. His face is tense, guarded in a way Tony's not used to seeing from him these days.

"My house. Medical level. I’m afraid I can’t help you with the why yet."

"Since when do you have a Medical level?"

Tony shrugs. "Since you showed up at my door in need of one," he says.

"This all feels a little excessive." Embarrassing, is what Bruce should probably say, if he's being completely honest. But close enough. The pain was right there waiting for him when consciousness returned, and it's intense, laser-focused, determined pain, like it's trying to get across a point that Bruce keeps missing.

“It isn’t,” Tony says bluntly. “You haven’t seen you yet. For once, Banner, you’re going to do what I tell you to do, because right now you’re in no condition to argue. Just lie back and think of England; the good doctor here will take care of the rest.”

Bruce rolls his eyes at Tony, but he does relax back into his pillow. He asks the question he has to ask, though he already knows the answer. He dreamed the answer, he thinks, though it's just as likely the answer is dreaming him. “Did I transform?”

"You showed up like, eighty-five, maybe ninety percent naked? So yeah, I would imagine at some point you did. Not the first time I've seen you in the altogether, so you can save the blush. First time it's happened without your alter ego showing up on Twitter, though, which makes how you got to me kind of a mystery. Any thoughts you’d care to share on that topic?"

"The last thing I remember is getting into a cab," Bruce hedges. He remembers a lot more than that; he remembers everything that led up to that, in excruciating detail. He's just a little hazy on the stuff that happened after.

Tony blinks. "Naked?"

"Totally decent," Bruce says, but he blushes anyway; the simple act of getting into a cab like a regular guy qualifies as reckless endangerment, when the perpetrator is Bruce Banner. "In Midtown, I think."

"I mean, I've heard stories of some wild cab rides, but…. yeah, I think there are some steps you're missing in the middle." But then Tony takes a deep breath and grows serious. "And at this end, too. This isn't the first time you've regained consciousness since you got here."

It's Bruce's turn to give a slow, confused blink. "Really?"

"I don't want to freak you out," Tony says.

"Then you should have stopped talking about ten seconds ago."

"You're just not clamped very firmly to a mental throughline at the moment."

For the first time, Bruce looks at the doctor instead of Tony. "How long have I been here?"

"A couple of hours on this floor," Bennett says. "Before that, you were upstairs in Mr. Stark's suite for a while."

"What's the extent of my injuries?"

"Structurally, the worst is an anterior dislocation of your right shoulder, but I don't see any damage to the rotator cuff or any bone fragments on our scanners. I take it this isn't the first time?"

Bruce laughs softly. "Hardly."

"It probably hurts like hell, but shouldn't be hard to fix."

"What else?"

Bennett's answers are honest and extensive, no candy coating, no bullshit. It's not as bad as Tony's face makes it out to be. Superficial bruising, some cuts, some cracked ribs, the shoulder. No internal injuries. Most of that happened before the cab; the shoulder, definitely after.

When Bennett finally leaves, Bruce sinks deeper into his pillow, shifting to find a comfortable position. Tony, miraculously, stays still and quiet while Bruce processes. On the one hand, everything hurts. On the other, everything hurts and he's still Bruce. It's impossible and wonderful and terrifying in equal measure; he's having a hard time keeping his heart rate regulated so the machines he's hooked up to don't lose their minds.

Eventually, Bruce turns his head to look at Tony, smiling faintly. He says, "Thank you," which is one of the world's great unsung understatements.

Tony just nods, and stands up straight, throwing off the pretense of relaxation. "If I'd known you were coming by, I'd have prepared better accommodations."

"Well, you did say I could drop in any time."

Tony grins. "I did, didn't I. What was I thinking?"

"Could've been worse," Bruce says. "I'm a lot easier to carry than the other guy."

"There's a lot less of you to wash, too," Tony says, and grins while Bruce's face heats up. "Listen, how are you feeling? Not the technical stuff you told Bennett. Tell me like I'm a friend who's desperately invested in your continued well-being."

"I'm…tired," Bruce admits. "I hurt pretty much everywhere. I can't remember a lot of stuff that I'd really, really like to remember. And I wouldn't mind getting my shoulder fixed like, yesterday. I forgot how much pain…uh…hurts."

"Bennett says we aren't supposed to," Tony says, frowning. "He doesn't want you Hulking out before they get a good look at what's going on under your skin right now."

Bruce doesn't want that either, but he thinks -- tentatively, hopefully -- it won't come to that. "Maybe they've looked long enough?"

Tony steps closer to the bed. "Tell me what to do."

"Your suit--"

"--can be wrapped around me like a mother's love within ten seconds of a green spike. But you can handle it," he says, with so much confidence Bruce almost believes him. "Hurry up, will you? Before somebody looks over here and decides I’m molesting you.”

"That would be way more fun than this is going to be," Bruce mutters darkly, then shifts slightly in the bed, bending his arm up to his chest and making a fist. "Just grab my wrist, gently, and do exactly what I say. Don't let me stop you once we get started."

"No safewords, got it," Tony says, taking hold of Bruce's wrist gently. "My kind of party."

Bruce rolls his eyes and says, "Pull," gritting his teeth. "Slowly. Straight toward you."

Sweat pops out on Tony's brow, but he does what Bruce tells him. He steadies Bruce with one hand on his chest, and pulls, slow and steady. Bruce hisses through his teeth, and says, "Okay, okay, that's good, that's enough."

"You sure?"

"Positive."

"You said not to let you stop--"

"I know. We're here. This is the good part. Just… hold my arm right there, don't let me pull it in, okay?"

Tony nods, looking deeply alarmed by that request but clearly trying to hide it. Bruce takes hold of his own elbow and then takes a swift, deep breath.

"Here we go."

It's grueling. They waited too long; clearly, they’ve waited too long, the swelling is too bad. It hurts like hell. Tony starts to flinch and Bruce knows it's now or never; he shifts, shoves, shifts again; he asks Tony to push his arm a little closer to his chest, and it's so bad Bruce groans out loud, a frustrated and angry noise that comes out a little more Hulkish than he'd like.

"Sorry," Tony whispers, close to Bruce's ear, and Bruce almost calls for Bennett or one of his drones to finish off this epically bad idea. But there's no telling when they might decide the reward outweighs the risk. Everybody's too careful around Bruce, even Bruce himself, and most of the time he doesn't mind. But Tony wants to help, and this once, Bruce wants to let him; and anyway, even if Bruce can change, he hasn't so far. He's got it handled.

Tony changes his angle a little, shoves… and the shoulder slides back where it belongs with a sickening, final click. The risk pays out; Bruce keeps himself together.

"Sorry," Tony murmurs, "sorry, I know that sucked, but you did great. Just the barest hint of seafoam around the edges."

Bruce cuts him a quick glance and grins tightly. "That was the color of impending vomit, not impending havoc." After a long, tense moment, he lets himself relax. When he's finally still, he stares up at the ceiling, blinking slowly into the overhead lights.

Tony's job is done, he's free to back away if he wants to, but he doesn't. It's one of Bruce's favorite things about Tony: he never, ever backs away. Instead, he pushes Bruce's hair back from his forehead, damp with sweat, and after that gesture, which could be explained away as utilitarian if it had to be, he just keeps doing it, stroking Bruce's hair back while Bruce takes in long breaths, each easier than the one before it. It feels good to be touched by someone who cares about him, to be comforted and maybe coddled a little. Maybe Bruce doesn't need it, he's always been a little too self-sufficient, a little too distant from everyone he cares about, but this time he just lets it happen. Tony's got a great bedside manner, it turns out; who knew?

"Let's never do this again," Bruce says finally, his voice rasping in his throat.

"Told you we could handle it," Tony says, grinning smugly. "What else can I do?"

Bruce smiles back and sinks into his pillow again. "I don't suppose you've got any spare pants lying around?"

With Bruce alert, partially treated and mostly stable, Tony gives himself a break; he walks out with supreme grace and dignity, then crashes into a wall and nearly goes down, once he's out of sight. The corridor telescopes away from the elevator alarmingly, so he stays put for a few seconds, gathering up some steam and… thinking some thoughts.

There's something wrong. Not just the obvious, not just Bruce trapped in a room full of lab equipment like a scene out of Tony's worst nightmares. Something's off with Bruce himself. Maybe he hit his head at some point? Maybe he's just not quite as fully rebooted as he's trying to come off? Tony doesn't know. Even his questions have questions, and the need to be doing something, fixing something, is a constant distracting buzz at the back of his mind.

He taps the fingers of his right hand against the bracelet around his left wrist, then stops himself. Taps his foot, as silently as he can manage, and then stops himself. He folds his arms across his chest and slumps more purposefully against the wall, faking nonchalance for all he's worth as his newly minted whitecoat minions scamper past on errands he probably wouldn't understand.

"Sir," Jarvis murmurs in his ear, "the Avengers have gathered. They are waiting in the common room for word on Doctor Banner's condition."

"No rest for the wicked," Tony says.

"You would know better than I, sir," Jarvis responds archly, and so Tony's grinning when he shambles into the elevator.

Steve meets him at the door to the common room and shoves a cup of coffee into one hand, boiling hot and bitter as tar. Clint shoves a turkey sandwich into the other, and Thor shoves Tony gently into a plush chair. Natasha perches across from him on the back of the sofa, elbows on her knees, and hurls telepathic commands at his brain through her laser beam eyes until he takes a bite of the sandwich.

And then another bite, and then another, until he's wolfed the whole thing down without even tasting it. He washes it down with the entire cup of coffee, which burns off a layer of taste buds on its way down and hits his starved bloodstream like a bolus of pure adrenaline. How long has it been since he ate last? How did they know?

"Pepper," Natasha tells him coolly, clearly still telepathic. She flicks a long red curl out of her eyes.

"Iron Man’s girlfriend is authorized to assemble the Avengers? Cool.”

“Tony Stark’s girlfriend is authorized to call his friends when he’s in trouble," Steve says.

"So are you, by the way." Clint clamps a hand on his shoulder, a little too tightly to be strictly supportive. "And given the kind of trouble you tend to get into, sooner's better than later."

"That's," Tony says, and then swallows back the snide, useless thing he was going to say. "Yes. Thank you. Though I have to point out, I'm not the one in trouble. It's Banner who--"

"Doctor Banner was unconscious," Thor says bluntly. "Therefore--"

"Right, right. My responsibility. Got it." Tony runs a hand through his hair. "Sorry. I was a little busy."

Unexpectedly, Natasha breaks into a gleeful grin. "So we heard."

"At length," Clint says. "Fury's mad as a wet cat. Pepper’s had him stalled for hours. When we get back to the Helicarrier, we're gonna have to peel him off his ceiling."

"She worked for me for ten years," Tony says proudly. "That's like a master class in pissing people off."

"Tony, please tell us what happened to our companion." Thor drops into a seat beside Tony; he dwarfs both Tony and the chair. The tightly-leashed anger of an only semi-benevolent god crackles in the air around him, and Tony wants more than anything to give him the name and address of somebody he can take a holy space-hammer to.

"I don't know," he admits. "He says he doesn't remember anything that happened after he got into some cab in Midtown. I have no idea when that was. Could be months ago; he’s not one of the world's great correspondents."

"Is he well?"

"No. He's -- he can't remember anything. For a while he kept passing out, and every time he'd forget where he was, where I found him. The good news is, he's more coherent now, and apparently his injuries aren't quite as bad as they look."

Steve leans forward, elbows on his knees. "What's the bad news?"

"As soon as I find out who did this to him, I plan to burn their world to slag."

There's a moment of quiet, during which Tony tries to stare Steve down and Steve refuses to blink. Then Steve leans back, tapping his fingers against the arm of his chair. "Okay," he says finally. "Though… 'rain of fire' is technically more of a tactic than a plan."

"I'll help," Clint puts in. "I mean, not so much with a rain of fire, but I can rain a fuckload of arrows. Oh, hey, fire arrows! That I can do. Fully on board."

Natasha mutters "идиот" under her breath at Clint, but gives Tony a nod of solidarity. "I'm in."

"If it's rain you want," Thor says, patting his hammer affectionately, "Storms are kind of my specialty."

Tony starts to grin. "Really more of a lightning and thunder situation, big guy."

"Even better!" Thor declares, beaming.

"We still need to do some finding first, though," Steve says. "Bruce really didn't know anything?"

"I know everything," Bruce says from the doorway, shocking everyone to silence. "But you're not going to like it."

Tony jerks out of his chair and takes a stumbling step toward Bruce. His heart is hammering and his right hand fumbles for the bracelet on his left wrist. Bruce is…big, bigger than he should be, slabs of muscle straining at the cuffs and legs of the white scrubs Tony scrounged up for him. His skin is unbruised and unbroken, and his eyes are a bright, poisonous green, but otherwise -- otherwise…

"What the actual fuck," Clint mutters behind him, a sentiment Tony finds wildly appropriate.

"Bruce?" Tony takes another step closer, tilting his head to take it all in. "You're still…Bruce."

"Yeah. Yeah, mostly. I had to do some…soul searching, to remember exactly what happened. The healing was just a side effect."

"A damn good one," Steve says. His shield is in his hand, not exactly locked and loaded, but not exactly not, either.

Nat, though, is beaming, her eyes dancing. "Looks like sometimes you do get what you want, Banner."

Bruce holds her eyes, his mouth curved up in a half smile. "We're cautiously optimistic."

Tony is still stuck on all the muscles, actually; he closes in on Bruce and grabs him by his new, improved shoulders, taking it all in. "Are the guns permanent, or--"

Bruce raises his eyebrows; beneath them, the green in his eyes fades back to warm brown. Beneath Tony's hands, he shrinks back to a soft, bookish 5'10" or so. He fumbles around in his shirt pocket, comes out with his battered glasses, and shoves them onto his face. "How do you like my new party trick?"

"I'm--a little torn, actually." Tony scratches at his cheek, feeling rough stubble destroying the carefully-cultivated line of his goatee. "is…is he still in there, somewhere?"

Bruce's eyes soften along with his smile. "Yeah, Tony. He's okay."

A surprising crush of relief spills through him, and Tony slumps a little, his grip on Bruce's shoulders falling away. He attributes the surprise to sheer exhaustion; his adrenal glands have been through a lot today, and he's not sure how much they have left to give. The relief though… fuck it, Hulk may be a living, breathing, smashing apocalypse, but Tony just likes the guy, utterly and without reservation; the same way he likes Bruce who -- to be fair -- is his own brand of walking disaster. The line between the two of them has never been as bright and clear as Bruce would have liked it, but Tony has never minded. He can see Hulk's rage and joy in Bruce sometimes, and Bruce's humor and cleverness in Hulk, and he loves them both, he's not ashamed to admit it.

"I'm sorry," Tony says to Bruce, and he means it, he does; he knows what Hulk costs Bruce, sees the toll it takes to keep Hulk in check, always, but also always ready just in case. He means it, but also, "I'm sorry, but I'm also not sorry. You know."

"Me, too." Bruce gently pushes Tony back into his chair. "I'm sorry I put you through this, but I'm not sorry about how it turned out."

"You have control now?" Tony asks, "real control? That's kind of amazing."

"No." Bruce shakes his head firmly, a little ruefully. "I have… kind of a timeshare agreement. Kind of a peace treaty. Not exactly what I was aiming for, but it's…fair, I think. Fair enough."

Steve leans forward, frowning. "What were you aiming for?"

"Sole occupancy. I wanted… I thought there might be a way I could myself back, get free, but things didn't go exactly as planned. It seems Hulk hasn't enjoyed being repressed any more than I've enjoyed repressing him. We both had about a decade of grievances to air out. Negotiations were… intense, to say the least."

He's answering Steve, but his gaze never leaves Tony's, and everything Bruce is saying merges with everything he's not: the hesitation before every answer, the apology his eyes are trying to offer, the lines of regret around his eyes. Tony understands it all, all at once, and it actually knocks him back a step, steals his breath.

"Sorry," Bruce says again, quiet -- just for Tony, because Tony's the only one who knows.

"There's no bad guy," he whispers as much to himself as to Bruce, equal parts amazed and appalled. "You don't need avenging; you did this. To yourself. How --" His legs fail him and he falls into his chair, white-knuckling the armrest while his eyes track into the distance.

"You did this?" Tony says again, not really needing the confirmation but wanting it, wanting it; wanting to hear Bruce say the words.

"I did. It wasn't -- I didn't know it would be so bad, I didn't think it would work, really, but I had to try."

"You could have died." Tony checks Bruce's face, his eyes, to see if he understands. "You could have died and we never would have known how, you could have died right in front of me--"

"Tony--"

"Did you even think." Tony stops, swallows around the white-hot pulse of rage roiling in his chest. Put a bullet in my mouth, Bruce had said, way back at the beginning, and Tony had thought about how terrible that was, what a waste that would have been, what a terrible loss, how glad he was Bruce was over that kind of bullshit now. How relieved.

He pushes himself to his feet, aims himself at the door. "Nevermind. Not important. Obviously. I have to go. I need -- some air, or something. Glad you're alright, though. I'll stop in and alert the utterly superfluous team of Banner specialists I hired to keep all your limbs attached. Maybe try to renegotiate their contracts, now that I know that's not such a high priority for you."

"Tony, I'm--"

"Don't say you're sorry, Bruce," Tony says quietly. He breaks out the best smile he can find, which is barely even there before it fades. "We both know better."

Tony is -- Tony is gone, before Bruce can find his voice. He turns to go after him, stop him, explain somehow, but a firm hand the size of a dinner plate wraps around his arm and holds him still.

"Let him go," Thor says in a low, gentle voice.

"I need to--"

"Just for a moment. Allow him to gather himself again. He cares for you deeply, and would not have you harmed, not by your own hand or any other." Thor waves a hand at the others, all watching him with solemn eyes. "Nor would we."

Something unfamiliar is pressing itself down on Bruce's thoughts, a great swell of dark emotion he can't seem to process or identify. The urge to follow Tony, make him listen, make him understand, is almost overwhelming -- but Thor is right. Bruce knows Tony, there's nothing to be gained by chasing after him before his heart catches up to his mind and his mouth. It's just that there's this feeling like he can't catch his breath, like he wants to run and fight and hide, all at the same time, right now, and he can't -- he doesn't know what to do, how to get out from under this feeling.

Except… he kind of does know what to do, when he feels like this. It's just that he's not doing that anymore.

"Take a breath, doc," Clint advises, "before you pass out. We get it, okay? There's nobody here who hasn't done something dumb for a chance at something better. Tony included."

"Speak for yourself, Barton," Natasha says sweetly. "I only make perfect choices."

"I wasn't trying to die. I didn't mean to -- to go off into the dark on my own. I just forget sometimes," Bruce says softly. "That part of me is part of a team."

"Part of you," Steve says evenly. "I'm just guessing, but I don't think you're talking about the part we're talking to right now."

"I know we do good work together." Bruce bites his lip, looks away. "I tend to sleep through most of the excitement, though."

"I hadn't thought about it that way," Steve says, cocking his head.

"It's okay. I'm kind of glad I missed out on most of the evil alien demigod invasion. Think of all the therapy I won't have to pay for. You would not believe what therapy costs in the twenty-first century."

"We didn't really have therapy in my time," Steve tells him with the ghost of a grin. "If we felt bad about something, we just ran laps and ate more fiber."

"And that," Clint says, raising his fist to tap it against Steve's, "is why the Allies won the war."

Later, when Thor's divine judgment allows that Tony's probably cooled off enough to be reasoned with, Bruce goes looking for him. First on the Medical level, where the excitement of having a super-patient has faded to a dull roar, then in the workshop where Tony's suits stare down at him from their lighted pedestals with uniform frowns of silent disapproval. The next logical place to look is the penthouse, and with every floor, Bruce's anxiety spikes a little higher. His pulse and respiration are elevated and it just feels -- weird. Very, very weird.

Before, when he'd fantasize about getting his life back, he thought mostly about all the places he could go if he wasn't five seconds from detonation at any given moment, all the things he'd be able to do and see if he could control himself. He never really considered all the things he'd have to feel if he couldn't just outsource it to Hulk. All this time, he's thought of Hulk as a problem to solve, a disaster to avert -- but he's kind of a crutch, too, it turns out. Hulk is the part of him that knows, absolutely, what to do with all Bruce's excess anger and fear.

Bruce, on the other hand, hasn't got a clue.

When the elevator pings, the door doesn't open. Bruce hits the button, which does nothing, so he hits it again. Nothing. His apprehension kicks up another notch.

"Um. Jarvis?"

"Doctor Banner," Jarvis says immediately. "How may I help you?"

"...by opening the door?"

"One moment, please."

A moment passes. The door still doesn't open. "I can't help but think there's a point you're trying to get across here, Jarvis."

"I've announced your arrival to Mr. Stark, Doctor. I'm sure he will approve your access request at his earliest convenience."

Bruce's eyes widen. There's a hint of reserve in the electronic voice he's never heard before. "I need approval to visit, now?"

"Previously, my approval was sufficient to bypass Mr. Stark's security restrictions and allow entry."

"Oh." Bruce closes his eyes and fights off a fresh wave of panic, this time mixed with hurt. Feeling his own feelings isn't really all it's cracked up to be. "But… not anymore."

"My approval is sufficient," Jarvis clarifies. "I have withdrawn it."

The door opens. Tony's on the other side, glaring at nothing. "Cut him some slack, J. He's had a rough day."

"As you say, sir," Jarvis says frostily, and the overwhelming sense of malice in the air starts to fade. Just a little.

Tony turns toward the bar, waving Bruce in as he goes. "He thinks you hurt my feelings," he explains over his shoulder before reaching for a bottle of Scotch and a couple of shot glasses.

"Ah." Bruce looks down at his feet, trying to make sense of that. "It seems like he might be right?"

"For a hot second," Tony allows. He fills both glasses and shoves one toward Bruce. "But as it happens, I convert most emotions to annoyance pretty efficiently. Now I'm just pissed off."

"I--"

"Say you're sorry one more time, and I swear to Thor I'll punch you in your sad little face. I know I can get away with that kind of thing now."

Bruce closes his mouth abruptly and swallows the apology back down. He picks up his glass and drains it, barely tasting it. He sets the glass back on the bar and looks at Tony expectantly.

Tony raises his eyebrows. "Liquid courage? That's how you want to do this?"

"Why not? I can get away with that kind of thing now."

"Fair enough." Tony shrugs and pours him another, takes another for himself. "Why don't we start with what happened. I don't get it. How do you crack your own ribs, dislocate your own shoulder, and fuck up your own short term memory in New York City without any outside assistance?"

"I fell from a very great height."

Tony's eyebrows shoot up.

"Hulk jumped," Bruce explains, more than a little embarrassed. "I landed."

"I see," Tony says, frowning. "Usually you guys do that the other way around. I take it the peace talks are a work in progress?"

"I think he was trying to make a point. Something about being used as a safety net, instead of being treated as an equal. Look, I would have told you the plan, Tony, but I knew that it wasn't--it probably wasn't going to work out so good for me. Most things don't. I had to talk to the Hulk, but that's—complicated. I had to get him out far enough to hear me, but not so far I couldn't talk back."

"So you did something dumb," Tony says drily. "Quelle surprise."

Bruce nods. Now, at the point of coming clean, the words are getting harder to find. "For a chance at something better."

Not looking at Bruce, voice low and even, Tony says, "Another bullet?"

"No, I--it had to be slower. Not reflexive. He had to decide to come out, not just--"

"Pop out like a Hulk-in-the-Box?"

Bruce huffs out a laugh. "Yeah."

"I'm going to need you to spell it out for me, Banner, so I know exactly how long to make you pay for it."

"You know those big metal crates they make, for really big dogs?"

Tony's fingers go white around his glass, and he makes a small, anguished sound, deep in his throat. Bruce looks away and nods rapidly. It seems he can't say it after all, not…not with Tony looking like that.

If you can't say it, you shouldn't do it. The words float up in his mind like a memory, but he's not sure where he heard them, or when. He wasn't thinking about this moment, though, when he decided how he'd do it, when he bought the second-hand crate from a veterinary clinic on its way out-of-business. When he'd driven the truck deep into the Palisades, where a little aimless smashing probably wouldn't do any harm. He wasn't thinking about anyone but himself, he can admit that. When he lugged it through the trees, far out of sight, and climbed in. Clicked the padlock shut and tugged at it, twice, to be sure. Tossed the keys through the bars, as far away as he could, and waited to dessicate enough for Hulk to care.

He was thinking about all the times he woke up shivering among the dead with blood on his hands, his face, soaking what was left of his clothes. How it could never be wiped away. Not without some kind of reckoning, and maybe not even then.

Bruce goes to the window and looks out at the city's jagged skyline. It's been a year, and in some neighborhoods, they're still clearing away the rubble. "It took a little longer than I hoped," he says quietly.

"And you absolutely had to do it alone." Tony's voice is rough, bitter. "Because that's how Bruce Banner rolls."

"Because I wasn't about to risk anyone else, Tony."

"See, that's kind of what we do, though." Tony steps closer, gets nearer and nearer until Bruce has no choice but to face him. "This whole team thing? It kind of implies doing the dangerous stuff as a group activity. It's not just for alien invasions and Thor's night to cook. Confronting your giant green rage-fueled inner child is no worse than any of the rest of the crazy shit we've dealt with together--"

Bruce is shaking his head before Tony's done speaking. "Hulk isn't safe. You've only seen him on his good days, I get that. But I've seen the aftermath of his bad days, and it's--it's horrific. I wouldn't wish him on the worst this world has to offer; I'm not about to inflict him on the best."

"You're underestimating our joint badassery by miles here. What is up with that? You, of all people, should know what we're capable of -- you saved the world with us!"

"No, I didn't. You did. All of you. You and Steve and Thor and Nat and Clint, you did, but I wasn't there. Hulk was."

Tony's face flushes and his eyes turn hard. "No. That is absolutely untrue. You were there. I saw it. You rolled up to an alien invasion on a shitty motorbike in your khakis and loafers and plaid, and took on a pile of metal and flesh and death the size of a blue whale. It was on fucking CNN, Banner. It was on the cover of Time Magazine. The Daily Show did a whole bit about it. Don't tell me you weren't there."

“But I didn’t save anyone that day. I didn’t even save you. Hulk did. He was always the most -- the most horrible part of me, the darkest part, and I can't --" Bruce chokes on the words, but forces them out anyway. "If I have to be this, this monstrous thing I made myself into, okay, I can do that, I've learned to do that. But I can't have him be the best part of me, too, Tony, I just can't."

"Hey." Tony's voice is low, sincere, warm in ways Bruce doesn't feel like he's earned. "Is that what you think? He's the hero, you're on the bench? Banner. Come on."

"That's why I had to do something, Tony! I want this, okay? I want this team, I want this thing we're all building here. I couldn't just -- just let him take this, too. I don't want to be the guy who just wakes up when the smoke clears and the cheering starts. I want to do the work. I want to be a part of this." Bruce hitches in a breath, and meets Tony's eyes squarely. "I want it for myself."

"You already have it." Tony smiles at him, a real smile, for the first time since Bruce came in. "You listen up, okay? You feel like you're not a part of this, but you are a part of this. You're the best part. With or without Hulk, we're your team. We're your family. You don't have to do anything to earn it. You just have to show up. How is it you're still not getting this?"

The words come through from a distance. Bruce clutches at the table behind him, letting the cold chill of the sharp metal edges bite into his skin. He wants to grab the line Tony's thrown him, but he's been in this alone for so long, standing between Hulk and the world as best he can for so long -- the thought of sharing that burden is almost unimaginable.

A cold flood of panic washes through him and he fights to hold it back, shunt it aside. There's no danger, nothing here to be afraid of, and he knows it. Tony, the team, this place, they're the first unalloyed good in his life that he's ever thought he could keep. Everything bad here is coming from inside of him.


"You're the strongest person I know," Tony says, pronouncing every word deliberately, like he can carve them into Bruce's skull with the force of his personality alone. "And I'm not talking about your alter ego. I'm talking about Bruce Banner, superhero. The guy who holds back the flood. You think we can't see what it's cost you to try to integrate him, to do the kind of good you can do together? We see it, I promise you. There's not a person on this team who doesn't have epic, epic respect for what you contribute." Tony reaches up and delivers a solid thump to the center of Bruce's forehead. "Except for you, apparently. Seven Ph.D.s and still a dumbass."

Bruce shoves Tony's hand away from him with a glare. He forces his breathing, his racing thoughts, to slow. Fumbles for that inner door that will let the quiet back in. It's getting harder and harder to find it, and he knows that's down to a lack of practice. It's always been too easy to let Hulk handle the hard parts, and this is hard, too, in its own way -- figuring out a way to trust, to accept and be accepted. To be forgiven.

"Hey. Whatever bad mojo you're feeling right now," Tony says, "it's not coming from us. You know that, right?"

Bruce nods, and breathes, and nods again. He is intensely fucked up inside; this isn't news. "Yeah."

"It's especially not coming from me. You're brilliant and weird and annoyingly altruistic, and honestly a gigantic pain in my ass, Banner, and this whole hero thing would be orders of magnitude less fun without you. Don't make me deal with the rest of these assholes alone."

That surprises a laugh out of him, sudden and ragged, like something shaking loose. "Jesus, Tony."

"You think I'm kidding, but I've got three requests for fire arrows for Hawkeye in my inbox right now, and only one of them is from Clint." Tony leans back a little to look Bruce over, then nods, like he likes what he sees. "No more solo projects, okay? Let's keep this band together."

"Not really used to being on stage…I've always been more of a waiting-in-the-wings kind of guy," Bruce says, just to hear Tony laugh. "But I think I could learn to play along."

Tony claps a hand around the back of Bruce's neck and gives him a friendly shake. "Stick with us, Banner," he says. "The Avengers are going places."