AN: Another drabble request from my Tumblr: for Blueberrykisses, to whom I've owed a story for a very long time.
Bruce Banner has a dozen different ways of saying goodbye, all with different meanings attached to them. There's the casual 'see you after your meeting' version, the 'get out of here and stop interfering with my research' version, and a variety of others depending on which mood Tony's trying to put him in at the time. Tony doesn't mind any of those. He's had fun earning each variety, so frequently that he can categorize them in his mind based on inflection and tone.
There are others that he doesn't like so much. The goodbye that means his mind is somewhere halfway around the world, and his feet are itching to catch up. That goodbye means that his bag is already half-packed back in his room, and Tony knows he'll be waking up to an email and an empty lab. Tony doesn't like that goodbye. Bruce will leave for weeks or days, one time barely a weekend, one time ten months solid. He'll turn up in Madagascar or Romania or Dubai, one time Philadelphia, one time the Northwest Territories of Canada in some village whose name was all Us and Ks.
Bruce travels as penance. He helps people whenever he's guilted himself into thinking he owes the world some karmic debt.
But those goodbyes Tony can handle. Hell, he loves unpredictable people. He wouldn't be so fond of Bruce if he didn't take off and come back with new food cravings and stories of the kind of people Tony will never meet no matter how widely he travels. He misses Bruce when he's gone, but he likes that Bruce keeps him on his toes, that he doesn't let himself get seduced by the Stark toys and Tower and the man himself. He likes that Bruce doesn't need him.
The only goodbye he can't handle is probably the most nondescript version in Bruce's collection. It's always said flatly, quietly, like Bruce has to say it but hopes Tony won't actually hear it. He says it when the lines around his eyes are especially pronounced, when he hasn't smiled in weeks and his ghosts are hovering over him like a palpable shadow. His gaze goes distant, his eyes unfocused, and Tony thinks in those moments that Bruce is seeing his life twenty years from now, alone and hunted and hurting people when he loses control that no one in the universe could always hold onto so tightly.
Bruce says goodbye in those moments and there are a thousand other sentiments behind it. Mostly apologies. I'm sorry I'm not strong enough for this, I'm sorry I can't be fixed, I'm sorry I've hurt people and I will never stop hurting people. Sometimes there's a thanks in it, for Tony's friendship, marathon sessions in the lab, wordless give and takes between them that they both understand so perfectly. Thank you for understanding the brain behind the monster, Bruce says without saying it, and I'm sorry that it's me who understands you the same way.
Bruce never comes back from those goodbyes. He is found, he is returned to Tony, but it's never his choice. The first time he was caught by SHEILD somewhere in south Jersey after jumping from a bridge and going green halfway down. He was arrested in the midwest somewhere – and then recovered by SHIELD – after breaking in to a college university and trying to steal some particularly vicious organic poisons.
Tony looks for him, monitors him, after those goodbyes. He doesn't normally, when Bruce is just restless and guilty and looking to wander. But when he knows Bruce is trying to die his nights and days become blurs of security camera feeds, hacking into the systems of airlines and bus companies and trains and the border patrol and the embassies of a thousand different countries.
Bruce is a genius, and one of these days he's going to figure out the right way to trick himself into dying without the Hulk rescuing him. Years into their friendship Tony only gets more desperate, knowing that day is approaching. He starts using SHIELD agents to go get Bruce when he can't make it fast enough, sets up Stark Industries subsidiary companies in South American, Africa, Saudi Arabia, Russia. Just so he can have people already on the same continent when he gets a hit on Bruce's location.
Half the time he gets to Bruce before he can actually try something. The other half his people either find the Hulk or they find the shell that's left after Bruce tries, fails, and manages to Hulk out and then change back to himself without getting caught.
He never puts up a fight, no matter when they find him. Even the Hulk, even the mindless rage machine, seems to understand that they're trying to help, and he doesn't submit to them but he doesn't run or fight.
One day more than six years into their friendship Tony manages to jet down to Guatemala himself to chase Bruce, and he finds the Hulk sitting in a cluster of downed trees with a noose of titanium microfibers cutting into his neck, stronger than the Hulk's bulk can tear free from. Apparently the Hulk sheered a tree in half to get his feet on the ground, but once down he was stuck like a wounded animal, forcing air through the cable choking him.
Strong enough, Tony thinks, it almost worked. He's getting closer.
Tony approaches the beast in his suit, helmet off, JARVIS working on the least threatening way he can slice that cable off.
The Hulk sees him coming and holds out a hand, where the sheared end of the noose is clenched, and glares at Tony with drooping eyes. "No more," he demands, his normal growl thin and muted.
Tony wants to fucking burst into tears, wondering how often the Hulk has been brought to life only to find that the only threat in the room is himself. The Hulk isn't a new person, Bruce has explained haltingly in years past. It's always Bruce, it's just Bruce with most of his consciousness cut off. So Tony wants to cry and agree and conspire with the Hulk to get Bruce to see reason, but he also hopes. Because if the Hulk wants to live, that means that deep down Bruce does, too.
The problem is that Tony has exhausted every possible argument as to why Bruce shouldn't give in to his despair.
"It isn't your fault," he tells Bruce over and over again. "You're a good man, and the world can't afford to lose any of the few good men it's got." And: "There might be a cure, we could be just one discovery away from it. Who knows what we'll figure out tomorrow?" And: "People need you. You're a hero, you've saved so many more lives than you're hurt." He's even tried to be a prick about it: "Only cowards take the easy way out, Banner," and "You really think you have a monopoly on self-pity? You think you're the only person who's got a shitty past and has made mistakes?" and "You're fucking hurting people just by doing this. You're hurting everyone who cares about you."
Nothing works. Bruce has too many arguments for each approach, and as the years go on he doesn't even bother responding out loud. He just listens to Tony and nods and then says his quiet goodbye anyway.
The worst part, the very worst, is that Bruce Banner is more worthy of being saved than anyone Tony has ever met in his life. His despair isn't self-pity, or selfishness, or even guilt. He's a man who was betrayed by his work, by science, by his government and his friends and family and his own body. All he wants is to do the right thing with the hand he's been dealt, and for him to believe so sincerely that the right thing means him dying…
It kills Tony. It seriously fucking tears him up inside. Because Tony can solve every problem he's ever had for himself, usually ending up better off for it, but he can't fix Bruce.
The Hulk recognizes Tony, has for years, so Tony manages the tricky business of slicing through that cord around his neck with the laser equipped in his suit with just a few flinches and growls and jarring ground-thumps from the Hulk. Once the cord falls away, though, the Hulk stands and sucks in air and roars, giving a perfect sound to all Tony's own frustration and anger.
Then he justs sits down, right in that circle of downed trees, leaving a divot in the ground that eventually Bruce wakes up curled inside of.
Tony sits there silently, sweating in his suit, during the slow transformation from Hulk back to Bruce. He sees Bruce wake up, sees him reach for the frayed cord on the ground where it fell, and sees his eyes dim as his fist clenches around it almost the same way the Hulk's had.
When he sees Tony he gets to his feet. Tony doesn't bother with smart-assed comments anymore, and Bruce doesn't murmur apologies. He just accepts the bag Tony tosses him, pulls on some clothes, and waits with Tony for the jet to show up and take them back to New York.
It's not constant. They have so many good days and weeks, more than a year once between incidents. Bruce doesn't laugh often, but he smiles a lot, and he's developed quite a dry sense of humor thanks to Tony's influence. He has good days, joking with Tony in the lab, coming up with some idea that will advance Stark Industries' nanotech leap years ahead of where it was or making some tweak to the smartcrop tech that will let it feed a million more people than it could before at the same cost.
But he doesn't have friends outside of the Avengers and their motley crew of hangers-on. He doesn't date, because he's sure that he can't. He's brilliant and personable and active, but even his best days consist of him waking up in the Tower, working in the lab, talking to Tony and maybe a couple of other people, and going to bed that night. It's not a horrible life, but it's not a good life. It's not a life, really. It's just…continuing, and that's all he sees for himself: in the best of all possible futures, he will simply continue.
It doesn't seem to be enough. Not with the sheer force of will and constant management of anger levels and the fear of being caught and weaponized that it takes to just get him through a day.
Tony runs out of arguments to keep him going, and sometimes he scares himself. Sometimes when he thinks about it long enough, he takes Bruce's side.
Bruce's first day back in the Tower after one of his bad goodbyes is usually sad and quiet, with Tony using JARVIS to monitor Bruce from a distance. But after facing the Hulk and his noose and his 'no more', Tony doesn't want to let that be the case anymore.
He sits there in Bruce's room and watches him wake up, and he speaks before he can second-guess his own openness.
"I need you alive," he says. A lame reason to live, especially when the bigger and more important ones don't work, but it's sincere.
"You'd be better off without me," Bruce answers.
"No," Tony answers. "See, I know what it's like without you here. I know how that feels, but I can tell myself that when you're not here you're out there somewhere being you, and that's enough that I can deal with it. You take that away from me…" He shakes his head.
"Tony…"
"You know something I always liked about you? You don't need me, or my money or my brilliance or anything. But I need you. I need you to be around somewhere, or the world doesn't make sense."
Bruce swallows and sits up and regards Tony. "I make the world make sense?" he says dubiously, in that have-you-forgotten-what-a-freak-I-am voice he adopts often.
Tony smiles at the incredulity. "Yeah. You do. You're my friend, Bruce. If I can't keep you alive then nothing I've ever done means anything. If I'm not enough then what good am I? If I can't save a friend then what's the point?"
"It's not about you, Tony."
"Sure it is. I've tried letting this be about you for years now. I'm tired of being so nice. Now I'm feeling selfish. Now it's about me." He stands and moves to the bed, eyes steady on Bruce. "So that's the deal. If you want to take yourself out, fine, but expect me to be right behind you, ready to make your afterlife hell."
Bruce looks down at his lap, at his hands fidgeting over the covers. "If you make me live for you then I might grow to despise you for it."
"Yeah." Tony shrugged. "Beats the alternative."
Bruce doesn't answer, and Tony leaves him to his thoughts.
Bruce settles back in to the Tower and they work together and smile and have good days. They save the world now and then, and beyond that they both continue, side by side.
Tony keeps on monitoring Bruce's goodbyes, knowing every day that he might hear the one that means the whole thing is going to start again. Bruce seems to understand that Tony's always waiting, always worrying, and on his bad days he can't stop apologizing for everything he puts Tony through.
Tony just waves him off, because what he said to Bruce was true: if he's worried about Bruce then at least the world still makes sense. And that will always beat the alternative.