People assumed that Bruce Banner started out as an average man, that he was just an ordinary scientist whose experiment went horribly wrong and led to the mindless raging beast called the Hulk.
They were so wrong.
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Bruce's father hadn't been a good man. He was a violent drunk who took his anger out on his helpless wife and child.
Young Bruce didn't have a good role model. During the day, his father was an aggressively cruel man. At night, after several drinks, he became even more cruel and, unprovoked, would fly into violent rages pointed at whoever was closest. This person was, more often than not, little Bruce's beloved Mama.
Often he would wake up in the night to the sounds of yelling and crashing. Even worse were the nights that he woke to his mother whimpering in pain as she climbed into his bed for the night, having been literally kicked out of hers.
Because of the increasingly negative environment, Bruce was a very soft-spoken, timidly shy child. His teachers barely would have noticed the unassuming boy, except for his above-average grades. While not indicative of a child-genius, they could see he had a real affinity for math and science. However, he never raised his hand in class. He never spoke up during class activities, simply satisfied with quietly observing, never daring to draw attention to himself.
Inside his mind was a whole different picture. Bruce knew that what his father did to him and his mother was wrong. He saw the loving families of his classmates and was filled with envy. Who was to blame for the difference between his household and their families? His father. This blame incited an anger, buried far beneath the Bruce that anyone else saw.
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The mind is a delicate thing. Even an adulthood trauma can have long-lasting or even permanent repercussions. The impact on a child is even more damaging. It is very easy to damage the psyche in nearly irreparable ways. Mental scarring can be uglier and more devastating than any other kind.
Bruce was only ten when his father, raging about an unpleasant conversation he had with his employers, came storming into the house. His mother hadn't been feeling that well and was lying on the couch, attempting to rest her eyes and aching head before her husband came home. She knew that he wouldn't be home from work for another three hours, so she felt calm and secure in her place.
Of course this had to be the day when Brian Banner's employers confronted him with accusations of embezzling money from the company funds. They sent him home early so that they could review their financial accounts.
Already in a bad mood, his temper simmered on the way home as he began gulping the contents of his personal flask he kept in the car. He was halfway past tipsy by the time he got home, and his anger had burst into roiling flames of outrage.
He barely parked the car in the driveway and stumbled, grumbling and swearing the whole way, up to his front door, which he flung open to find his wife sleeping on the couch. As the door slammed open all the way and an enraged roar left his throat. She jumped up, startled, and turned, only to be shoved up against the wall by her throat.
"You think you can just laze around while I'm working hard to feed you and that worthless son of of ours!?" Putrid breath made what little air the helpless woman could get through her constricted airway that much harder to inhale. "YOU THINK THAT I WORK SO THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO?," this was accompanied by another slam to the wall, "YOU'RE USELESS!"
Drawn by the slam of the front door, Bruce watched in horror from the stairs as his father shoved his mother away. The feeling grew when he helplessly saw his beloved Mama shoved away from the man he called father, all while he screamed violent abuses at her. It all culminated when her head struck the living room table with a sickening crack.
In that moment, Bruce knew she was dead.
When Brian saw that she wasn't responding to his jeers any longer, he nudged her body with his foot. No response. After a furious cry, he muttered the words that were the last straw:
"Now I'll have to dirty my new shovel burying this piece of trash."
Bruce snapped. He had been in a measure of shock, subconsciously understanding what was going on, but his conscious mind refusing to acknowledge it. The rage, the hatred, the disgust simmering beneath his shy demeanor bubbled up to an unexpected explosion. As his father, Brian Banner headed past the staircase, it all came to a head.
"SHE IS NOT WORTHLESS OR USELESS! YOU ARE THE PIECE OF TRASH IN THIS SITUATION!"
And that was when the rage filling his mind overwhelmed him and it all went black.
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When Bruce awoke, he was covered in bruises and curled up in a ball in the corner of the linen closet that had been where his mother stored his clothes. As he peeked out of the doorway, he saw the entire house had been trashed. For all of his battered mind, he couldn't recall how any of it had happened.
Footsteps echoed through the broken windows and the young boy froze. In walked Brian Banner, covered in dirt and grumbling to himself once again. He had a black eye and was walking with a pronounced limp. In his hands he carried a dirty shovel. He looked up at Bruce, scowled and then walked on his way upstairs into the master bedroom. Right before the door shut he uttered the last words that young Bruce Banner would ever hear from his father:
"I never had a son. You better get out of my house, vermin, you aren't welcome here."
Bruce left as fast as he could, taking his birth certificate and some basic necessities while the man was in the shower. Other than that, he took only the beat down bike that his mother had found on the road and a treasured picture of her. He didn't stop to wonder what he had done to his father. He just left.
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Over the years, Bruce's blackouts became less and less frequent. However, the destruction he woke up to grew more and more devastating. He couldn't manage to get anyone to adopt him as a result. Once in foster care, not much changed. He was growing, and only had incidents maybe once or twice a year. After each incident, nobody around him would speak to him, they just sent him on his way.
He learned his basic education with an online home school program, passing high school with flying colors at the age of sixteen. His current foster parents hadn't seen any of his anger issues, but had no problem letting him become emancipated.
Once in college, Bruce was well on his way to being the expert in gamma radiation and firmly set on the pathway that would lead him to the Hulk.
.
It was the longest blackout he had ever had.
Before, he had had a vague sense of the time that had passed while his fractured mind rampaged. Before, he had not had any recollection of his other self's actions, except what others had told him.
After, he had waking nightmares of machine guns and missiles. After, he had leftover rubble from pulverized trees and buildings.
Suddenly, his control was shot. He could no longer hold in the anger for months, even years at a time. He was back to square one, attempting to control the other guy and keep him in for hours at a time instead of months.
Suddenly the other guy, the anger hidden and simmering in the back of his mind, had his own body. Instead of whatever physical limitations Bruce placed on himself, he had a virtually indestructible body which was capable of inflicting much destruction.
No longer was the one who came to be known as the Hulk limited with ways to express that anger. In a way, it was better for both of them. Instead of being recognized as the guy who occasionally went ballistic and destroyed things, people only recognized the big green creature who did this damage. In other ways, it was worse. Constant pursuit left the other personality in a perpetual state of awareness, instead of dormancy until provoked.
Even as he regained control over his own body and the gaps between his blackout incidents grew once again, he knew it was hopeless. Even as he searched for the cure, Bruce Banner knew: while he could try to take away the rage's body, he could never get rid of the mind behind the beast.