A/N: Just to warn you, this fic is going to be full of things that make you tilt your head and go wtf? This is an AU backstory that will eventually lead into my own version of the Incredible Hulk movie and The Avengers. Also, since the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in no way associated with the X-Men, my Sebastian Shaw in this story is not the same as in the comics or the X-Men movie. And, Mark Ruffalo's Banner is the one I'm depicting here.
Pairing: Bruce/Sebastian in the beginning, eventual Hulkeye (Bruce/Clint)
Rating: M
Warning(s): Many: SLASH. Violence, bad language, alcohol and drug use, consensual sexual relations, mental illness, mentions of physical child abuse and suicidal thoughts and overall dark themes. Again, this is an Alternate Universe story! Some characters backstories have changed as well. Did I mention this was SLASH. M/M relationships people. You've been warned.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except the characters I've created.
Summary: "It seems to him there are a thousand bars and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed." - Rainer Rilke, "The Panther".
The End of the Beginning
Part 1, Ch. 1
I had pulled the trigger.
It had seemed so easy. Holding the gun, feeling the weight and accepting that it was the only possible way; that it was the only logical conclusion.
What I had done.
My thoughts kept going back. Back to the last time I saw him, held his warm, vibrate and breathing body in my arms. The way he smiled, so shy yet capturing my heart every time he did it. And his lips; so soft and sweet when we kissed. Lying in bed, he told me how much he'd love me.
If I've only known then what I did now. What I had become.
What I was becoming.
I didn't because I thought we were fine. Everything had been so good. There were no signs warning me of the future, or so I thought. For a man who needed answers and truth, the fact that I'd hid it so passionately from myself was startling. My mind was fine. What I felt, what I thought, what I saw and heard was all normal and everything was okay. My truth was that nothing was wrong.
But everything was wrong.
I was afraid, I was scared, and I had ignored the warnings. The things I had done reminded me of my own desperate attempts to calm my father, of convincing him that what he thought of me wasn't real. That I wasn't a monster or a freak.
What scared me the most was the thought of Sebastian leaving me. If it meant nothing and he left, I would have been okay. However, it meant everything. He meant fucking everything and I'd be damned if he left. I couldn't let that happen.
I was convinced that if he left then I would die. Literally die. There was no reason to question that thought. It had been the most absolute thought in my mind for months. That thought spurred my fear, my love, my hate and anger…I believed it as if it was the fundamental truth to my existence.
It was my truth. If he left, I would die.
In a way, I had been right. I just wasn't expecting this. Nor was I expecting the gun to be empty. I mean, why was it empty? I didn't do that.
Turning it in my hand, staring down at the barrel I felt myself smile. It had been in irony; a sadistic twisted little grin. Bringing the gun up, I closed my eyes, took one last breath…
'Click'
The breath that I released shook my body.
Feeling the gun shake against my temple, I nearly cried out in anguish. This couldn't be happening. The magazine dropped to my lap and I saw it was empty. Pulling the slide back, I saw no round in the chamber.
Change of plan.
Tossing the gun across the kitchen, I stood to get a knife but the moment I got to my feet I saw him.
It wasn't the man that would save my life, but the man that might take it from me. General Ross stood in the archway between the back door and the kitchen, the long barrel of a gun aimed directly at my chest. "Bruce...Banner."
His voice was steady despite the disbelief and obvious fear his eyes. It made my own hands flex in rage. The fact that I could still feel anything surprised me and I tensed at the sight of him.
My voice was just as steady as I said simply, "Go 'head, do it. I'm so fucking tired."
With a newly reclaimed strength and courage, he ordered me to put the knife down. I hadn't even realized I had picked it up.
"Bruce, please," he said like he was trying to tame a wild animal, "put the knife down, son, and back away."
It almost worked. I almost dropped it, however, the second I saw him I saw my mother. I saw her lying dead in a pool of her own blood in the driveway of my childhood home and my father kneeling over her body screaming in rage after he'd murdered her. In that moment I knew I couldn't continue going on. I had to stop myself. I had to stop what that man had caused me to do.
I raised the knife as my hands begun to shake as if they weren't mine. They were fighting against the plunging arms that were trying desperately to drive the knife into my own chest. Pain exploded in my legs, buckling my knees as I hit the floor. My back arched and ached as if someone was pulling me from behind as my fingers tensed and I let out a hollowing scream.
What happened after that was all a blur. A green blur of rage. To say I lost it was an understatement.
Then the green fog lifted as I came back to awareness and the only thing I heard through the buzzing in my head and the pounding in my chest were sirens. A hell of a lot of sirens and then I saw the red, blue, and white lights swirling in circles around the tress, snow, and buildings while more guns were being pointed at me.
"Stupid Banner! You didn't run! Wanted to run! Get far away!"
I realized very quickly that I was no longer in my kitchen. There was melting snow under my body, stars and moonlight above me, and it was so fucking cold. Early January bitter air cut through my body and I sucked in a cold breath that froze my lungs.
This time when I was told to get on my stomach, I obeyed. As I rolled over in the snow, I silently willed them to take me out of my misery. I wanted them to kill me, but I would never attack them first. I would never force them to make that life or death decision. I really didn't want to hurt anybody and that included not wanting them to live the rest of their lives knowing that they had ended mine.
"Arms out at your side," a cop ordered. "Legs up. Do it!"
I complied while telling them all, "I'm not going to run."
Suddenly I was surrounded. One cop had crossed my legs at the ankles and was pressing his knee down on them to keep me from getting up while another kneed my back as he cuffed my wrists. The cuffs pinched but I refused to complain. The trees in the distance had begun to blur in my vision and I realized it was from the tears that had welled.
"I didn't mean to do it," I told the cops. "Did I hurt anyone?"
In the silence that enveloped my mind, I swore I heard a sharp intake of breath right before a whisper of God's name. It sounded like Rick's voice behind me but I couldn't turn my head to see the disappointment in his eyes that he had uttered in devastation.
I knew what they were all thinking. They didn't have to speak a word for me to hear them, to see it in their eyes. I was a monster. I had officially lost it. I was a bad man. A bad person.
I had become what I had feared the most.
Despite what they thought, I knew the truth. I knew it wasn't me. Did they really think I was capable of that? Yes, they did. They all thought it.
They knew my past. They knew what my father had done to my mother. They knew why I had so many anger issues. General Ross had told me he'd known, but didn't care. However, they didn't know that I'd also been a victim. That all I could think of when I let just a tiny part of myself get angry was my father standing over me with a deeply troubled frown, hands clenched and at the ready. And all I could hear in my head was his voice berating me, dehumanizing me, calling me a monster and a freak while slamming me into the ground, throwing me against the wall, and hitting me over and over again.
"You've changed." Betty had told me that once and it had stuck in my head like a broken record. I had changed.
Shifting my focus away from the white snow I was staring at, I glared at the tall uniformed man who appeared next to General Ross as my body felt numb; too numb to still be functioning properly.
The uniformed man knelt down in front of me and that was when I read his nameplate. "So, we finally get to meet. I'm Alexander Pierce, and you, Dr. Banner, are now property of the United States government. My property."
I blinked and tried to focus but everything was tinting in my vision to a light green.
The cool expression on Pierce's face suddenly changed as if he was seeing something that frightened him more than God himself. I realized I was smiling again. Then, I heard it, the laughing that came bubbling up from the depths of my tortured and damned soul. It wasn't a laugh generated from humor, but of sorrow from a dying man, of a soul being slaughtered by its own self. Its own protector. My heart felt like it was dropping into my stomach, twisting within the waste. It was the tainted filth that was slowly devouring everything pumping blood and gamma radiation through my veins.
Then, finally, my voice broke free of the pained laughter. "The gun was empty," I said before laughing again. Everyone's eyes were on me as they watched the lunatic lying in the snow. I wasn't crazy. I was getting angry. They would see, just as I have. They would all see what I could do if they made me angry.
Pierce pulled a long thick needle from his pocket and I tensed as he jammed it into my neck. Once the laughter settled, it settled everything else. My mind clouded over as my body relaxed into something resembling dead weight. My legs felt as heavy as cinder blocks. It was like someone was draining the life right out of my body. I could feel the pull in the ground that anchored me.
The cops were gone in a blink replaced by military officials and MP's. Ross disappeared then reappeared with a change of clothes. The next thing I felt was an arm lifting me up. Legs moved with mine, steadying me but pulling me in the direction they wanted and that was to an awaiting van. The cuffs came off and they told me I could dress. Reaching out, I saw for the first time the dried blood that was covering my hands and forearms. I shouldn't have been surprised but was. Turning my hands over, I examined them more closely as if by studying the blood hard and long enough it would give me the answer as to why it was there.
I knew why, but I was still playing the game of denial.
Ross had come closer to hand out the clothes for me to take. I looked into his eyes but he quickly looked away.
It was then that I realized my clothes, what was left of them, were torn to near shreds and barely hung on my body. My shirt was gone. Changing into a pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt, I felt slightly normal and less vulnerable. No one had to instruct me as I put my hands behind my back. Once the cuffs were once again restraining the monster, I was grabbed and pushed into the van.
Blinking back, I looked around and saw no one else in the van. There was an old metal grating separating the driver from whoever was in the back. This was a police van and I was the criminal. The monster.
Sighing, I rested my head against the side and closed my eyes.
"Hey, hey, jackoff, wake up!"
The voice broke through my mind like a whip being snapped and I flinched as my eyes jerk. The van was parked at the back entrance to very huge building. I assumed the door I was staring at was the one they escorted criminals through that lead directly to a jail cell. The cool night air hit me as I got out and let them recapture my shoulders. The building was huge and about six stories and as I looked up, I saw the lights of the top floor on. Beyond the lights of the building I saw the sky but no stars. There was too much ambient light that they were washed out.
I had a feeling it would be the last time I would see the starless sky.
I hoped my death wouldn't be painful. I heard that only the pinprick of the needle was the only pain a murderer felt before they were given the lethal injection that stopped their heart.
They didn't take me to a cell and that confused me before I realized they were taking me to the elevators. My breath caught in my chest and my legs nearly gave out as I was shoved inside and the doors closed. A buzzing started in my head as my chest burned from not being able to breathe. Grey started to creep into my vision as it blurred.
The doors opened and I finally felt a rush of air push out of my lungs. It took a lot of effort to will my legs to move and once they did I was escorted into a room full of desks and computer monitors and people. The looks I got didn't bother me much. I stared right back until they all looked away, ignoring my penetrating dark eyes and pretended I wasn't there.
Cold and grey; it was suffocating.
That was what the room felt like as I tried not to let my claustrophobia get to me in this room. They would try to play me like so many other people, try to get my confession. But first they would make me sweat it out. It was my turn to sit there and await the coming storm. For the truth to be told like a penance. There was no apology in the room. No words could take back what I had done.
Taking my eyes off the table, I looked to the two-way mirror and I felt their eyes on me, burning into my skin. Oh, I knew exactly what was going on. I've been in this position before. I've been watched by so many people like a hawk; I've been stripped down and got to. I've felt more pain, experienced more suffering, breathed in more toxic air than they would even know. Bit-by-bit, I've been taken apart so they could use me to get what they wanted.
It wasn't just the science, but the humanity. I let them tear me apart so no one else would have to suffer. I put myself in that position, as the leader, the volunteer...The goddamn guinea pig, and all for, what, exactly?
For this? And all those people right now on the other side of that glass couldn't touch a single fraction of what I could do.
They couldn't get to me like I could get to me.
They didn't know what I was thinking or how I felt. If they did, they would have known that I didn't want this. That I didn't want to hurt anyone.
I was ready to get up as I slammed my hand down on the table in anger but the door opened and it took all my strength not to move. Staring into both of their eyes, I breathed heavily out as I uttered their names in great pain and misery as the guilt strangled me.
I wouldn't kill anyone, especially not the two of them. Never, not in a million years. They friends, more specifically my friends. I didn't have many of those.
"Rick? Betty?"
"They're here? In this room with you right now?"
Their images faded quickly from my mind, as did the room and the smell of guilt that had whiffed through the air. No, they weren't there. It was all in his head. Memories that plagued my ever waking moment and nightmareish sleep. I shook my head but kept my mouth shut. I refused to answer.
"How about Sebastian?"
Shaking my head, I still didn't say anything.
"And the other guy? Is he here?"
My jaw flexed as I found myself answering, "The other guy...has always been here, and will always be here." I caught myself before I could say too much.
After that, I tried to disappear. I had made too much of a fool of myself already. Besides, he wouldn't understand the importance of what I'd just told him. The significance and what it truly meant.
No one understood.
In trying to disappear, I sat as quietly in the chair as possible, hoping I would be forgotten as I listened to the scratching of pen over paper. The room was cold and freezing as my body slightly shook. Every wall was white; the lights were bright, reflecting like the sun in my eyes. If I looked up, they would blind me. Not daring to take a glance, I kept my eyes downcast and stared at the white tile floor under the blue slippers that covered my feet. They didn't allow shoes with strings, or belts, or free will. They liked to drain that out of you on the first day.
It reminded me of being broken down by my father. Being stripped of thinking on my own, for myself, and having to listen and obey orders. And if I refused...Now, now that I didn't want to think about. All I've done was cower in terror my whole life. The times I stopped listening to them and started listening to myself, well…that meant I had gone fucking crazy, hadn't it? All of them were nothing but hypocrites.
"Do you still dream of her," a deep, almost calming voice asked. The same voice that always asked me ridiculous questions like that day in and day out. "I'm talking about your mother Rebecca this time."
The thought of that man using her first name like it was nothing, meant nothing, set my head on fire. My hands clenched as a tight lump grew as I gave a slow nod. I always dreamt of her. The jerk knew that. He kept notes.
"How do you feel about the dreams?"
Swallowing the tight lump, I weakly answered because why not? Banner always yields, like a weakling. Never standup, never fight back...Puny!…God, shut-up. "Scared."
"Tell me about them?"
Clearing the lump out of my throat, the dryness of my lips pulled tightly on my skin as I answered, "I'm standing there." The cotton in my throat returned as a tight grip of fear at the nightmare, the same nightmare I have had every night, replayed in my mind. "And I see her. She's motionless on the ground, and...she's bleeding." Taking a deeply strangled breath, I finished, "Sometimes, I, uh…I can't tell the difference if it's a dream or real."
"And this scares you? Why?"
Feeling my body start to shake, I needed to know that I wasn't crazy. That she was alive and waiting for me, and that she wasn't dead or worse, a figment of my demented imagination. It was so profound that I trembled with even the slightest of doubt that she had, in fact, never been. "Eh—uh, it, uh…" it was getting difficult to keep all my emotions under control. I felt like breaking, like caving in on myself if it meant that I could continue to see her, hear her, and smell her. "It s-scares me because…" pausing and breathing hard, I shook my head heavily, saying, "of how it happened."
"You've already told me that you knew your father had killed your mother. He did it right in front of you."
I shook my head. He was pulling me along, leading me to the answer he wanted. He knew what I meant. He knew my greatest fear. "It's not that. It's that I don't know if…his anger," I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. "If my father's rage...rages in me."
"Do you know where Sebastian is now?"
I said nothing.
"He's dead."
That sounded like the cruelest lie that was ever told. My head shook furiously back-and-forth as the tears welled.
"You killed him."
A deep strangled cry escaped the tight hold on my throat; the anguish that filled my heart rocked me to my very soul and ripped it out. "N-no…No!" Staring up at the man's eyes that bore into mine, I yelled, "You're lying," as the anger slammed into me like a sledgehammer. "You," the words tumbled out, "son-of-a-bitch."
The man didn't react. Instead, he stayed calmly seated in the chair and pierced my eyes with a pair of cool calculating blue. "I'm your friend, Bruce, you know I'm not lying. If you were so certain than there wouldn't be any doubt. You would have nothing to be scared of."
My throat grew too tight and raw to talk. Sitting back in the chair, I shifted my tired eyes to the floor again. Ignoring my doctor as I tried to regain control. I felt like attacking, like ripping his fucking head off for telling such a lie.
"But you are scared," the doctor continued. "You're scared because you know I'm telling the truth. It's been almost a month; you need to start accepting, you need to start healing."
Shaking my head again and closing my eyes as the tears threatened to fall, I told him, "It's too hard for me to accept this. I, I can't."
"Yes, you can. Listen, Bruce, it's only going to be harder, get harder, if you can't do this now."
"It's already too late, been too long," The damage I had caused. If it was true, then that meant I would never get out of that hospital. Out of my cell. My life was over.
I had no life. I was a murderer.
"Listen to me, Bruce. Are you listening?"
I didn't look up but nodded to confirm to him that I was, indeed, listening.
"I know that it's a terribly frightening, confusing, and disturbing feeling to wake up and discover that you've done something that can't be easily forgiven. But you have to understand, you have to at least accept that it happened. Do you accept this? Bruce, do you accept that you killed a man? That you're responsible for the death of Sebastian Shaw?"
At that last part, my whole body succumbed to the growing fear and exhaustion. Sighing in defeat I buried my head in my quivering hot hands, which was hard seeing how my arms were strapped down to the chair. My forearms flexed against the restraints as I felt my anger surge.
The flexing turned painful as the rage intensified and I was suddenly being drugged as a needle stung my neck. The anger faded but the taunting was still there along with the huffing and deep roar that echoed through my skull.
Over the static in my ears I heard a soft voice calmly ask, "Bruce? Do you accept this as real?"
Breathing deeply into my hot and sweaty hands I gave him a nod, only one, not trusting myself to speak just yet. If I spoke, I would say a lot of things I wouldn't regret, but it would put my treatment back a month. I would have threatened him that I hoped his whole entire world would be set on fire for spewing such filth.
What really set me off was that I was starting to believe the filth.
Sliding my hands down my face, I peered over at the doctor sitting behind the sterile white desk. "Yes," I acknowledge for the first time with a trembling rough voice that had been tightened by my own reluctance to say anything other than 'fuck you'. "I accept."
"Because you want to get better?"
It would have felt so damn good to have told him off. Instead, with a shaking head, I shifted my damned dark eyes up to him as I gravely told him, "I want to forget."
The doctor nodded a little with a shadow of worry etched in his eyes. He should be worried; he tempted a reluctant man who still, in the depths of his soul somewhere, believed that the world he had lived in for the past two to three years was the truth. I felt like a caged beast, an animal, being denied his one freedom in the only world he knew.
It brought that poem to mind; one of my favorites by Rainer Rilke called 'The Panther'. There were many different translations of the German poem, but my favorite version was this:
"His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it can not hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed. Only at times, the curtains of the pupils lifts, quietly-An image enters in, rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone."
The doctor motioned for someone to come forward and then I felt strong arms holding me back to the chair as I started to struggle. The pinprick of another needle injection stung for a second before numbness spread from my arm throughout my entire body. As my will was restrained and soon to be paralyzed just like that of the panther, my intensely focused eyes changed until I was staring wildly at the doctor sitting across the desk. The numbness was taking effect, making me heavy as my arms dropped to my lap as the restraints were unfastened. They were un-caging the animal because there was no longer a threat. Then the chair started to move, taking me further away from the room where I had announced my deepest fear. I could see my words splattered on the walls and dripping with blood as if I were at a horrific crime-scene. The stench of my soul lingered in the air like the tainted smell of death.
The drug paralyzed my body, but not my senses. Not yet anyway.
Darkness and bright light came and went through my clouded eyes making shapes of shadows that I could never be certain were real or imagined. There was no time where I was held; not a window or a clock telling me that the world was still spinning around outside those walls. That the world had gone on without me in it. Finally, blinking up at a dark ceiling, the fog lifted at the same time the pain hit. I groaned as the spot where I had been injected with the needle started to burn. Rubbing my upper left arm, I rolled onto my side and stared at the familiar walls that had become my home for only God knows how long. A month, right? Isn't that what the doctor had said?
Crazy, weak Banner...You're not strong! Never be as strong as Hulk!
I willed that voice away as I looked around the room. The only light in the small room came through the small window in the door. It was a dim light from the hallway, indicating that it was probably night and we were all supposed to be sleeping. The funny thing was I never saw the 'they' I knew had to be there. The 'they' were the other patients. Whenever I was taken from the room, it was only after they drugged me and I had no recollection of seeing anyone except for the man in the office. Doctor Leonard Samson. He was my doctor; the one that had decided that I was crazy. And then the woman, who was the only person to inject the drugs into my veins, was my nurse.
And I couldn't admit that I was, in fact, out of my mind. Was this what my father had been feeling and thinking all those years locked up in a mental hospital? He had been in one for killing my mother. And I was here for killing Sebastian.
At least that was what I was told because I didn't remember what happened to Sebastian...
"You've changed."
Closing my eyes, I wasn't certain of anything anymore. My entire existence was stripped away and what had seemed so real before now only felt like vapors of a non-existent world. The pain in my side grew from lying on the padded floor so I slowly got up so not to get sick. Lesson learned from the last time; I wasn't about to repeat it. The drugs that were still mixing with my blood would make me nauseous if I moved too quickly.
Going over to the door, I stared out at the dimly lit hallway and frowned. I couldn't see anything except a white concrete wall across from the room that encased my body. There were no other doors leading to other rooms, but that didn't necessarily mean that they didn't exist. Or my mind was messing with me again. Making me believe I was the only patient. That I was something if not somewhat special to be trapped in my own private hell.
If I was still questioning my sanity then that had to be good, right? If I questioned my sanity it meant that I was sane? I nearly laughed as I looked around at the padded walls that were starting to move closer, caving in around me. I was in a fucking mental institution, yet I still insisted that I was sane.
It all seemed like a bad dream; a nightmare leaving behind figments in my mind. When I reached out to search my mind to get the details to remember the dream, the figments faded away. I couldn't remember.
There was no hope for me now. Not ever. My body began to sag against the door as my head pounded against the glass. It didn't matter what I had or hadn't done, I was still sitting in a small padded room.
There was only one question on my mind as I gave into exhaustion and slid down the door; and while I wrapped my arms around my legs as I buried my head into my knees.
What was going to happen to me now that they knew about the 'other guy'?
TBC...