"Bruce, you're hurt!"
-"Jack hit him with the stick, but Bruce wouldn't hit him back. He just stood there, shaking."
-"Yeah, strange he didn't make a peep. Any other kid would've wailed his head off."
"That's Bruce. He's like that. He's just so... bottled up."
-conversation between Rebecca Banner and neighbor*
in which bruce banner was always a mutant
"…in cases of psionic mutations where the mental input is overwhelming to the subject, the brain may shut down sensory reception in an attempt to protect the subject until such time as he or she can better process the extrasensory intake. In such cases, overcompensation may occur, causing the subject to lack responsivity to all but extreme stimuli. On the opposite side of the spectrum, no input filtration may occur at all, leaving the subject open to diagnoses of schizophrenia or other forms of mental illness…"
-excerpt from a study on psionic mutations by Dr. Charles Xavier
Bruce's mother sat outside in her car to cry. Sometimes her sobs filled his ears, his nostrils, his lungs; they licked at his toes, crawled up his knees, and pulled, hard, until he was completely immersed.
She would never cry in front of him. But he could always hear her.
Bruce knew why his father drank. He could taste all the things his father was trying to burn out of his mouth; the anger, the hate, the guilt. Guilt for bringing a boy like him into the world. But when his skin would flay and his bones would snap under the fury of his father's fists, he knew most of all that his father was right about him.
Because his father was afraid, deathly afraid. No one is afraid of little boys.
Everyone is afraid of monsters.
Bruce hated school. His teacher didn't like him. He could feel her frustration when he asked questions she couldn't answer. Sometimes, when the other kids were mean to him, he knew she felt like he was asking for it.
He quit telling on the other kids.
He quit asking questions.
Bruce was drowning in feelings, more feelings than a little boy could possibly hold. So he built a raft, the biggest one he could imagine, and he lifted himself out of all those feelings. His raft kept him safe from all but the biggest of waves. Its hulking mass buoyed him out of the torrents of emotion and kept him cocooned in its bulk, drifting along, until it scuttled one day on a blood soaked driveway.
And then Bruce felt everything.
His raft had failed him. But it was okay.
He could rebuild.
*exerpt from Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk film which, spoiler alert, sucked ass. i just pulled that scene because it totally fit in with my story.