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There’s a lot about the Hulk that most people don’t seem to realize.
One thing, of course, is that Bruce has very little control over when the Hulk comes out. He can, for example, keep him at bay during an argument or hold him back when he wakes from a nightmare. He can handle normal people situations. But he is not a normal person, and he frequently finds himself in not normal situations, and those tend to trigger certain angry green transitions that he’s not all that fond of.
Another thing about the Hulk is that he has spent far longer trying to mitigate the damages than he did bringing about the guy in the first place. He started with Veronica; it did the job, but only after the fact, so that wasn’t going to cut it. He tried fusing the two of them together next; that worked for a while, until he decided he missed being himself. Then he created the inhibitor; that was going fine for as long as he had the thing, but he realizes now that it’s something that can be – something that was – weaponized against him. But it stands to reason that if he could create the Hulk, then he can create the solution, too.
Unfortunately, he’s come to realize – though certainly not by choice – that the solution might just be jail. It sucks, obviously. It’s jail. Jail is supposed to suck. But people are pretty nice to him. Part of it is that he’s a celebrity, and people always love a good celebrity. Part of it, he’s sure, is that they’re afraid he could turn into the Hulk at any minute and kill them all. But he feels like he’s sort of made some friends, so that’s nice, at least. It could always be worse.
Another thing that people don’t tend to realize about the Hulk is that he doesn’t remember anything that happens when the Hulk takes control. He wakes up to the aftermath, to the destruction the other guy leaves in his wake, and he has to live with the fact that it’s all his fault. That’s how it’s always been, and there’s a part of him that appreciates it. He doesn’t want to watch his hands – these hands he created, unknowingly, naively – tear the world apart.
But it does cause some really weird situations sometimes, like how one minute, he was hanging out with his prison friends at lunch, and now he’s…
Here?
Not in prison?
Outside, somewhere, he thinks? It feels like fresh air, at least. The air that is entering and exiting his lungs at record speed right now feels fresh, feels like it’s probably coming from outside, so it stands to reason that he’s outside, too.
He doubles over, his hands on his thighs, and there’s a part of him that knows he is so completely fucked (the Hulk just broke him out of prison, for god’s sake!), but all he can think about is that he can’t fucking breathe. And he would be able to, he knows, if he would just breathe like a normal fucking person. If he would just take normal-sized breaths at a normal breathing speed, at that nice, healthy, twelve-to-twenty breaths per minute he used to look for during his brief stint as a somewhat-fake doctor in Kalkutta, he would be able to breathe just fine. But instead, he’s probably breathing, like, forty times a minute, which is not fucking helping–
He needs to stop swearing at himself before it makes things worse, doesn’t he?
Is somebody talking to him? Shit, they are, aren’t they? They sound panicked. They probably should be. Mere seconds before Bruce stood here, the Hulk was standing in his place. He’s not sure he wants to look around and find out what he did this time.
There’s a hand on his back, he realizes, and another on his arm. The voice is right in his ear. It’s a young voice, a young man, and he’s saying Bruce’s name – Bruce’s professional name, actually; it’s “Dr. Banner” that’s coming out of this sweet young man’s mouth – and it’s quite touching that he’s still willing to treat him with such respect, even after what he just did. Whatever it was. Oh, god, he doesn’t want to know what it is that he just did.
“Dr. Banner, it’s okay,” that same voice says, and it’s strange to come back from the other guy to the sound of someone trying to comfort him. He hasn’t had that since… God, probably since Natasha. That’s a sad thought. He doesn’t want to think about that any longer than he has to.
He lifts his head, finally, just a little bit, just enough to see who’s in front of him, what poor sucker got dragged into his mess this time, and it takes his eyes a moment to focus, to figure out what’s going on. It’s that kid, that grad student from ESU that came by the other day. He looks different now, a bit worse for wear, a few cuts and scrapes and scabs on his face that weren’t there before, and he’d almost think it was the Hulks doing if they didn’t look as old as they do. This poor kid must go through a lot. He can’t say he’s surprised.
“Hey,” Bruce says breathlessly, and it’s such a stupid fucking thing to say after the Hulk tore this place apart, but he’s starting to feel kind of lightheaded right now – from the whole hyperventilating thing, probably – and he’s not sure how much more he has in him right now.
“Hey, hey, Dr. Banner,” the kid – Ned? Was his name Ned? His name was something like Ned – say quickly. “Are you okay?”
Bruce scoffs. “Am I okay? Is–” He glances around, ready to take in the damage, to assess how completely and totally he fucked up this time, but then he pauses. It’s just… a street. A very normal-looking New York City street. Nothing’s broken. Nothing’s been smashed. It’s just… normal. It’s so normal that it’s actually abnormal.
“Come on,” Ned says. “Let’s get you inside. They’re going to be looking for you.”
Bruce has absolutely no idea what the hell is going on, but Ned seems like a nice enough guy – and definitely some sort of genius, if their conversation from before was anything to go by; there aren’t many interactions with students that etch their way into his brain like that – so he makes the potentially stupid decision to trust him.
They don’t talk in the elevator, which is nice. He needs a breather. He needs a chance to catch his breath. By the time they make it to Ned’s apartment door, he’d be willing to bet he’s back in that recommended twelve to twenty breaths per minute range, right where he wants to be.
Ned opens the door, and he gestures for Bruce to go in first. He doesn’t think all too much of it until he steps inside and he’s met with some far-too-fancy technology to be sitting in a grad student’s crappy apartment. He hasn’t necessarily been invited to investigate, but he was invited inside, which feels like the same sort of thing. So while Ned locks up behind them, Bruce takes it all in.
There’s no technology here that he’s never seen before. Anything this kid has, Tony Stark had it, too, and his were better in every way, and of course they were; he had all the money in the world to make it. All of this only interests him in the sense that he’s surprised a kid like Ned would have any of it. But the real surprise – or the closest thing he gets to one – is what he finds lying carelessly between machines.
“I was wondering if it was something like that,” Bruce remarks.
“Hmm?”
He picks up the Spider-Man suit and turns around to show him. I know who you are, the movement says. He knows who he is, and he’s not all that surprised, all things considered. Either he was a superhuman or he knew one. That much was easy to figure out. This isn’t a surprise to him, nor is it all that big of a deal, and he wants to make sure he knows that. He’s not going to rat him out to anyone.
Ned falters, but not in the way Bruce had expected him to. He doesn’t seem at all perturbed by the fact that Bruce is holding his suit, or the fact that he’s very obviously pieced together his secret identity. No, really, he just looks… sad. Which feels like a really weird reaction to this.
It takes a few seconds for him to speak, and when he does, all he says is a quiet, “What?”
“All that talk about inhibitors,” Bruce says, with a small smile on his lips. “I figured you had to be either a superhero or a supervillain, and you didn’t strike me as a villain.” There’s nothing evil about him. There’s not a bad bone in his body. He wouldn’t have talked him through making an upgraded inhibitor if he thought there was.
But that does nothing to fix the situation. It does nothing to cheer him up, nothing to assure him that Bruce isn’t bothered by any of this. No, if anything, it does the opposite. It’s like he can see his heart shatter right there in front of him, and it doesn’t make any sense.
“You don’t remember.” It’s barely a whisper from his lips.
Bruce frowns. He’s really glad the Hulk didn’t fuck everything up. He must have known that this was going to be Bruce’s job today instead.
He puts the suit back down on the table, and then he turns back to him, a little more cautiously, a little more cognizant of the fact that he could doubtlessly fuck this up even more and he’d be none the wiser until he did it. “Of course I remember you,” he says. “You found me after my class to talk about my inhibitor. You were looking to – hypothetically, of course - suppress actively mutating DNA – a universal inhibitor, that would let you keep the good and get rid of the bad.”
Ned’s shoulders slump, and Bruce realizes that he has, in fact, fucked this up further.
“I thought for sure…” Ned shakes his head helplessly. “I mean, the Hulk came all the way here because he remembered me. I was so sure that meant that you…”
Bruce finds his gaze flickering to the door, almost on instinct. Ned’s blocking his path, and he has to think that’s on purpose now, that he’s trapping him in here, because what the hell else could this be? Either the Hulk knows him and he’s deemed him enough of an enemy that he broke out of prison to track him down, or, the more likely option, he’s lying, and nothing good ever comes from lying.
But, short of jumping out the window, he’s all but trapped in here. He’ll have to play nice for now.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce says, though he sure as hell doesn’t mean it. “I don’t know what else…”
Ned takes a step toward him, and Bruce takes a step back. Ned’s eyes go wide, and he quickly spits out, “No, it’s okay! We’re friends! I’m a friend!” He grimaces, and he runs his hands down his face. “Oh my god, this is going really bad.”
Bruce huffs. That’s an understatement if he’s ever heard one. “Okay, so, just so we’re both on the same page here, are you Spider-Man?”
Ned takes a deep breath, and he nods once. “Yes,” he says. “I’m Spider-Man.”
“Okay.” Bruce presses his lips in a firm line. This is good. This is a start. He knows that this is Spider-Man. He doesn’t know what Spider-Man thinks he should remember, but…
Oh. Wait. Duh.
“Are you talking about the, uh…” He gestures vaguely as he tries to come up with a way to describe whatever the fuck it was that happened, because he sure as hell didn’t get the rundown on it. “When I lost my inhibitor. You were there, and you…” Well, he doesn’t know what Spider-Man did, because he wasn’t really there for most of it. “Is that what you’re asking if I remember? Because I don’t – I only remember bits and pieces.” He only remembers the parts that he was himself for, and even then, they’re scattered memories, overtaken by the near-paralyzing fear he felt at the time.
“No, not that,” Ned says. “Before that – long before that.” There’s a sort of distant look in his eyes, and he shakes his head solemnly. “But you don’t remember – you wouldn’t. You’re not supposed to.”
Bruce cocks his head to the side. That would almost sound ominous if it didn’t sound so damn sad.
Ned sighs. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does matter, actually, a little bit,” Bruce says. He’s not even sure that it should matter, but it does. There’s something weird going on – something weird that even the Hulk is in on, which makes it even weirder by default – and he wants to know what it is. “What don’t I remember, Ned?”
He pauses at that. “Ned?”
Bruce cocks his head to the side. “That’s… your name.” Isn’t it? He’s pretty sure that’s what the guy told him. Right? Or maybe he’s completely lost his marbles. That wouldn’t surprise him, at this point.
It takes a moment for him to piece that together, but then his eyes go wide, and he shakes his head. “Oh, shit, sorry, my name’s actually Peter – Peter Parker.”
Bruce stares at him. That’s all he can think to do. This whole conversation has been very, very weird, and it’s kind of starting to make him miss prison.
Peter grimaces, and, under his breath, he mutters, “This went so much better with the Hulk.”
Bruce scoffs. “God, I feel like we’re going in circles.” They just keep saying the same shit, the same nothing over and over. “What is going on, Peter? Why did the Hulk bring me here? What do I not remember?” He spreads his arms in a helpless sort of way. “Who are you, Peter?”
Peter’s quiet for a few moments, thinking, weighing his options, and finally, he answers, “I told you. I’m Spider-Man.”
“Right, okay, and who are you to me?”
Peter just looks at him, not an answer to be heard, not an answer to be seen on his face, and Bruce just looks right back at him, waiting, expectant, because he’s not letting this go until he knows what the hell is going on. This kid is keeping something from him, and he wants to know what it is. He’s not going to be able to rest until he does. (He’s not going to be able to rest at all. He’s a criminal, and the Hulk’s blown up his life once again. Around and around and around it goes.)
Finally, Peter sighs. “This is going to sound… really weird.”
“Trust me,” Bruce says, “I’m used to weird.”
Peter nods slowly. “Okay, well…” He takes a deep breath. “Here we go, I guess.” He chuckles, an awkward kind of chuckle, an obviously uncomfortable one, but then he grows more serious. “I knew you once,” he says, “a long time ago. We fought Thanos together. We talked a little bit at Tony Stark’s funeral. We weren’t that close, but we knew each other.”
Bruce squints a little bit, and he wracks his brain for any memory of that, as big or small as it may be. Some part of him might sort of remember that Spider-Man was there when they fought Thanos, but, then, it felt like every superhero ever was on that battlefield, so that doesn’t mean much. He doesn’t remember ever talking to him, though. He sure as hell doesn’t remember seeing him at Tony’s funeral – not as Spider-Man, and not as himself, as this kid in front of him. He’s not sure…?
“But then, a few years ago, my identity got out,” Peter continues. “I was framed for something I didn’t do, and my life fell apart. I talked to Doctor Strange and he cast a spell for me, but it went wrong, and, long story short, to fix things, he had to cast another spell – one that would make the entire world, the entire universe forget about Peter Parker.” He shrugs awkwardly. “And that included you.”
Bruce just stares at him, because, quite honestly, he has no idea what to say to that. This is why he doesn’t get himself involved with magic-wielders when he can help it. He gets in enough trouble with his science. He doesn’t need to throw sorcery into the mix.
Although, if the little bits of non-information he’s gotten throughout this conversation mean anything, then…
“So it includes me,” Bruce says slowly, “but it doesn’t include the Hulk?”
Peter shakes his head. “I guess not,” he says. “I was trying to get through to him – or, I guess, I was trying to get through to you? – and I said my name, and he knew who I was. I don’t know why, if it’s because he’s a part of you, and maybe he wasn’t out when Doctor Strange cast the spell or something, but…” He tucks his hands into his pockets. “He remembered me, and he came looking for me, and now here we are.”
Bruce huffs. That’s… really fucking weird. He can’t say he doesn’t believe it, though. Really fucking weird seems to be right up his alley. It has been for nearly twenty years now.
“Well,” Bruce says, “I guess it’s about time to have Doctor Strange fix that, then.” It seems like the obvious course of action.
But Peter shakes his head. “He can’t,” he says solemnly. “I broke the multiverse, Dr. Banner, and I learned the hard way that there’s a price for playing with things you don’t understand.”
Bruce sighs. “Yeah, I know it.” He’s been paying that price since 2011, and every time he thinks he’s found a way to fix it, to make it easier, he makes it worse for himself – for himself, and for everyone around him.
And, on that note…
“I’m sorry,” he says. “About what happened with Doctor Strange, and about what the Hulk did. I’m glad you’re okay. But I really should be going.”
Peter frowns, but he must understand, because he nods solemnly. “Yeah, no, sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to keep you – and I’m sorry to drop all of this on you.”
Bruce waves that off. “I was the one asking questions,” he reminds him. “That’s not on you, but, uh… Thanks for answering them. I wish I could say I remembered you, but…”
“Yeah, no, that’s fine,” Peter says. “Like I said, we didn’t know each other that well anyway, so it’s fine. It’s whatever.” He plasters on a smile that could not possibly be less sincere if he tried, but it’s a nice thought nonetheless.
“Well, if you ever get bored,” Bruce says, lightheartedly but not entirely jokingly, “I could always use a prison penpal.”
Peter balks at him. “What?”
Bruce pauses. God, he always forgets just how old he is. “Do kids have penpals these days? I guess you don’t really need ‘em in the age of cellphones and the internet and all that.”
“What? No, not that,” Peter says quickly. “You’re going back to prison? You just got out!”
Bruce scoffs. “Yeah, I just broke out,” he says. “You think that means I get to walk? That I get to go back to my life now?” He shakes his head. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life behind bars either way. If I turn myself in now, at least I have a chance at staying out of the Raft while I do it.” No matter what he does, his life is over. He got his second chance and he made the most of it while he could, but he’s known all along that it would only take one fuck-up to ruin that, and he sure as hell did fuck up. Gone are the days of good ol’ Professor Banner. The best he can hope for now is that they won’t take him from his prison friends, too.
“No,” Peter says. “No, you’re not going back to prison. This wasn’t your fault; it was–”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bruce says. “The Hulk is a liability. They’ll never let him walk. Not again; not after everything we’ve done.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Peter says.
“Yes, it does,” Bruce says. “But that’s okay. I’ve made my peace with it.”
“No, Dr. Banner, I’m serious,” Peter insists. “I know people. We can fix this. I know a really good lawyer – and he’s great with super people. This is right up his alley.”
Bruce sighs. “Peter, don’t–”
“And I can call the New Avengers!” Peter continues. “I can talk to Black Widow. I’m sure she can–”
“Don’t call her that.” He wants it to sound firm, to come off as a demand. Instead, it’s more a desperate plea, and he hates the way it sounds, even to his own ears.
Peter frowns. “What do you…?”
“She’s not Black Widow,” Bruce says, and he hates how his voice shakes when he says the name, but he does his best to ignore it. “Her name is Yelena.” It hurts less that way. It feels less like they’ve replaced his friend that way. Yelena is not Natasha, will never be Natasha, and that’s okay, but they need to stop talking about her like she is.
Peter nods slowly, and he can watch him process it in real time. “Right, sorry,” he mumbles. “Well, anyway, I’m sure Yelena can pull some strings and keep you out of prison. She has friends in really high places.”
Bruce sighs. “Peter…”
“None of this was your fault, Dr. Banner,” Peter says. “Someone was using you – was using the Hulk. You guys were a means to an end. You can’t let them take your life from you for something that wasn’t your fault.”
Bruce shakes his head solemnly. “I made the Hulk,” he says. “Anything he does is my fault; doesn’t matter what or why or how.”
“Well, the Hulk knows me,” Peter says. “And he must like me, ‘cause he came all the way out here to find me. So if anyone’s gonna be able to keep him at bay, I feel like it’s gonna be me, right? You keep him from coming out, and if he does come out, I can keep him from hurting anyone.”
Bruce presses his lips into a firm line. He wishes he could believe it would be that easy, but he knows himself and he knows the Hulk, and he knows it won’t be. But then, if the Hulk is an unavoidable evil – and he sure as hell feels like one, after dealing with him for so long – it can’t hurt to have the guy who was supposedly his friend, once upon a time, around to talk to him. He’s no Natasha, obviously, but Peter’s obviously proved he can hold his own around the guy, or he wouldn’t be here talking to him right now. Maybe he has a point.
Finally, Bruce sighs. “Talk to Yelena and her team,” he says. “If they think they can do something, they’re more than welcome to try, and if they can’t…” Then it’s back to prison for him.
It’s hardly a vote of confidence. He doesn’t even pretend to have much faith in this plan. But Peter’s eyes light up nonetheless.
“Okay, come on,” he says eagerly. He whips his arm forward, and out shoots one of his signature Spider-Man webs, straight out of his forearm. They latch onto his Spider-Man mask, and he pulls it right to him. “I’m gonna call her right now. We’re going to fix this, I promise.”
They’re not going to fix this. There’s not a chance in hell that they will. But sounds so sure of himself, so full of hope, of certainty, that, in spite of himself and in spite of this shitty situation he’s found himself in and that he’s dragged this poor kid into, too, Bruce can’t help but smile. He can see why his past self would have liked him. He can see why the Hulk likes him, too. He’s a good kid with a big heart. No matter what happens now, one thing’s for sure: the world could use more people like Peter Parker.