Chapter Text
Professor Hulk wasn't sustainable. Even though it took Bruce several years of reaching out constantly to the other guy, eventually -finally!- managing to talk to him.
"Hulk not coming!" He'd roared, feeling as though he could shatter Bruce's eardrums.
"You still won't?" Bruce is incredulous. He's gotten past the frustration and now he realizes... "You're afraid," he says softly.
Hulk roars. "No, Hulk smash fear! Hulk don't care!"
"But you are," Bruce says. "I came back - after the ship... everyone on it, except for Thor, was-" his voice chokes off, his glasses blotting with tears as he recalls the bodies. Not dusted, either - that happened later. No, these deaths were just because Thanos felt like killing. Parents, children... refugees without a home, fleeing, not trying to harm anyone.
They had been innocent.
Hulk couldn't stay after that. There was no anger, only fear and hurt and anguish; suffering. Bruce remembers the sight of Thor shaking, sobbing quietly against his brother's body. Who had done all sorts of terrible things, but still. Bruce had gotten to ...know? Him, at least a little, on Sakaar and after they escaped. Hulk had gotten to know Loki too- he was still a puny god, but there was a sense of grudging respect between them.
Mostly.
There just wasn't respect between Hulk and Banner anymore.
At least not until he coaxed the big guy for more than a year. And then Hulk was so angry about being bothered "Go away, Banner!" He barked, but Bruce wouldn't. He was determined to reconcile because otherwise who knows what would occur?
(Bruce knows, it would be just like before the snap Thanos did- when he was fighting inside that Hulk buster style iron man suit and he still couldn't do enough. Hulk had hid, down inside, and he didn't feel anger at the moment of the snap.
All he felt was despair.
He felt - diminished. And Tony didn't talk to anyone, really. They all went different ways, after half of the life in the universe was gone. Bruce thinks - well, he knows - the reason he reached out, or in, to Hulk during those five years was because he was lonely.
It was better to feel the anger, the thought, than to be dragged down in what felt like an endless spiral of despair.
So, eventually, they merged together. Hulk was Professor. The group of them that were still around came back together, and he burned away part of himself to snap everyone back
And then Tony - Tony made the sacrifice play. And Hulk left after that as soon as he could, because he refused to continue dealing with Banner's despair. "It was grief, you big green bastard," Bruce said, but whatever the case, that had been it for Professor Hulk.
It was after that when he'd wake up in boxers, ripped out of his T-shirt and having no memory of the Hulk showing up, but every night there would be some news report, a mention of destruction around New York. Nothing like the major battles the Avengers had once thought, but enough to be noticeable. And bad.
Really bad.
Honestly, Doctor Banner thinks, it's giving a real sense of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which he read in undergrad and it still freaks him out.
Bruce never wanted that book in particular to apply in any way to his life, and yet... He sighs. What can he expect? He's Doc Bruce Banner, but he also is the Hulk.