Chapter Text
The change came in the morning, while Hulk was idly swimming laps at the bottom of the rooftop pool, and then he doubled over, the muscles and bones of his body contorting. His lungs constricted and shrunk. He thrashed with the sensation of drowning, and then there was someone pulling him to the surface of the water.
At the side of the pool, clinging to the tiled rim, Hulk turned to look at Tony, who was treading water alongside. Tony's eyes were narrowed.
Tony said, “You’re not Bruce, or Hulk.”
“I am Hulk,” Hulk rasped angrily, and his body was too small, and his lungs were too weak, and he looked at the pale peach color of his tiny hands, and then away, clamping down on a sudden terror. Bruce was there in his head as well, telling him it’s okay, it’ll be okay, but sometimes Hulk was sure Banner didn’t know a damn thing, and he felt limp and angry and scared as Tony helped him out of the pool.
--
“I can only presume that this is Asgardian magic,” Thor said at last, where the Avengers were gathered in the kitchen, Hulk sitting on a stool with Clint hovering just behind in a protective way, and Tony running through databases on his Starkpad while muttering things like “I hate magic,” and Jan pressed a glass of orange juice into Hulk’s hands.
Hulk stared at the glass, and then put it onto the granite countertop without drinking from it. His hands felt wrong. His entire body felt wrong. The perspective of the entire room felt wrong, and he had the sudden wild urge to hide away inside his body, letting Bruce out, but Bruce had insisted that Hulk sit outside so that the others could run diagnostics on his condition. They’d already tried switching, just to see if that had been effected. Bruce could come out fine as himself, but when Hulk reemerged, it was the same old tune.
Hulk was human now. He didn’t look anything like Bruce, with his broad shoulders, and black hair, and deep-set green eyes. He was human, and puny, and he hated it. He glowered at the kitchen countertop, looking at the stone rather than at his hands, or at his teammates.
Steve said, from across the table, “Hulk, don’t worry. The last time, when Thor, Tony, and I were depowered by magic, it wasn’t permanent.”
“Spells such as this often possess keys that will break them,” Thor agreed. “There are few accounts of magic that are irreversible.”
Jan swung her legs back and forth from where she was sitting, biting her lip a little. “I just worry because this seems too much like someone taking out one of our strongest fighters, you know? I worry that someone’s going to try something on us now.”
Clint made an incredulous noise. “And, what, the rest of us are completely helpless? Yeah, last time we came out fine, there’s no reason it should be any different this time around—“
And then Hulk was shaking Clint’s hand off his shoulder and stalking off. He heard Jan say his name, and then Clint repeating it, but he jogged off to the foyer of the mansion, and then out the front door. Clint caught his hand before he could get too far down the front path, and Hulk swung round to snarl at Clint, “Leave me alone!”
Clint just look at Hulk, brow cocked slightly. “You’re kidding, right? In this state, you could be a walking target—“
“I’m not really an Avenger anymore, right?” Hulk demanded.
Clint made a noise of surprise and confusion. “What?”
“Ages ago, you said that to Bruce because he was too weak to fight. Now I’m too weak to fight, I’m not really—“
“What—what, no, stop that, you know I was just being an ass,” Clint hadn’t let go of Hulk’s hand, and now his voice took on a kind of urgency, “No, big guy, no. This doesn’t change anything. Besides, we’ll fix this, you heard all that talk about Asgardian magic—“
Hulk looked back at Clint with narrowed eyes. “What makes you so sure I haven’t already been fixed?”
Clint was looking at him like he was crazy, and Hulk said, like talking to an idiot, “I’m human now. I’ve been fixed, and it didn’t kill me, and everyone around here always says these things about Gamma monsters, so now I’m not a monster anymore.” He tried to talk calm, but there was a ragged edge to his voice. There was a ragged ache in his chest.
Clint’s grip had tightened a little on Hulk’s wrist, like he was afraid of Hulk’s running away. “Babe. Jade Jaws. Come on, look at me?” Clint was talking soft now, pleading a little.
Hulk didn’t, and Clint let go of Hulk’s wrist to try to cup Hulk’s face in his hands and pull him into a kiss, but Hulk moved away. He was only an inch taller than Clint, now, and Hulk also had a feeling that even Clint was a stronger fighter than him in this state.
“Hulk,” Clint said quietly. “It’s okay. Is this—this body, is this what you want?”
“No,” Hulk said. It was the honest answer, from his gut. He didn’t want this. This wasn’t him. But it was what everyone else wanted for him, he knew. Maybe it was even what Clint wanted.
Don’t talk like that, he heard Bruce say. You know that isn’t true.
Hulk made a mental noise like a low growl. What did Bruce know anyway, he’d always been the normal one, the one who could pass in the crowd, the one who no one ever looked at funny, like at a monster. And while there was a degree to which he knew this attack on Bruce’s character and perspective was unfair, Hulk couldn’t bring himself to care, then.
“I’ll love you no matter what you look like,” Clint was saying, soft but urgent. As though trying to make Hulk believe it, but Hulk wasn’t sure he believed. Of course Clint had always loved him, but now that he'd been given some kind of a choice...
Hulk wasn't sure he could let himself believe. But he let Clint pull him back inside, where the others were waiting, and Tony said he’d get T’Challa, and maybe Bruce could come out, and they’d talk about what they could do, if there was anything to be done, but honestly these things always seemed to be about waiting games, anyway, and Hulk hunkered down and let Bruce out because he couldn’t stand being in this puny body that wasn’t his.