-/\-
-JOURNEY-
-Fleet of the Wind-
-/-\-
Bruce opened his eyes and the sun was shining down, too harsh and white to be comfortable against what had been closed eyes. He raised a hand to cast a shadow over his face, squinting to peer up at a pale blue sky. The tips of vibrantly green trees danced and swayed about the edges of his vision like flowing ocean, rippling and swaying against a light sky. It took several seconds for Bruce to wrap his mind around what he was seeing, mind-numbing disorientation making anything but trying to process the scene than anything else. The ground under him was hard and edged with small rocks, and long green grass pricked at the edge of his face when he shifted. It far longer than it should've for Bruce to realize that he was lying down.
Upon coming to this brilliant conclusion, the doctor slowly sat up; running a hand back through his tangled and longer than he last remembered brown hair. He gazed around and down, both relieved and confused at the same time to realize he hadn't torn his clothes (laced, mid-shin high worn boots, dark leathery brown pants, a loose white shirt, and, most noticeably a dark green cloak—nothing he recognized) because, for one perfect second, he remembered everything and knew what waking up with the absence of clothes meant.
But then, just as quickly as before, and just like that, he forgot.
The trees ceased to be familiar, the cause for his relief vanished, and he was left scrambling for thoughts and half formed questions that he couldn't remember.
Where is—?
What's my flaw this—?
Are we—?
Did—?
And more slowly, as these thoughts fought for control and something twisted violently inside his chest, some emotion that he couldn't place.
…where am I?
His name was Robert Bruce Banner, he was forty years old, a doctor (for what?), they called him Bruce (who is they?), and that was all he knew.
For what?
Who are they?
…who were we for that matter?He had just been thinking 'we' a few seconds ago, hadn't he?
Hadn't he?
He was certain he had.
Then something inside his head glitched again and he forgot that too, staring up in a blatant confusion at the pale sky. There were no clouds, no birds, and he couldn't see the sun even though the sky was still such a pale bluish white. Slowly, Bruce pushed himself off the thick grassy forest floor he had been lying blissfully unaware just moments ago, already having forgotten the first signs of remembering.
Banner. His name was Bruce Banner. His name, at least, was something he would never forget.
Why was he forgetting in the first place?
There was a sharp brittle crack of breaking leaves and wood and Bruce startled, whirling around behind him towards the noise. In its wake, a white rabbit darted from its spot where it had previously stood frozen still and took off through the thick green brush on the left side of the clearing. Bruce watched it go, eyes following it as it dashed off into the forest, before shakily getting his legs under him and standing.
Where am I?
What is this place?
Bruce turned, looking straight up through the break large in the tall forest's trees. No sun—not one he could see anyways. He dropped his head, peering around through the tree breaks and saw nothing beyond the last flash of white from the fleeing rabbit. He was in a forest then. He didn't know the time, or which forest in this huge world he was in— world. World being Earth. He knew that and Bruce waited with an almost painful hesitation a long few seconds before the thought stuck in his head and he didn't forget that too.
He was Bruce Banner, he was a doctor, he was forty years old, and he was (probably) in a forest on Earth. The trees were undeniably strange looking, some with pale white bark crisscrossed with gray feline stripes and soft green leaves that looked like tulips. Others were dark-brown to the point of black and even from this distance the wood looked a cool smooth, darker colored leaves sending him reeling for a biome, a place, to match the trees to. He knew the world and these trees were just subtly different for him to not be able to come up with a place to narrow down where he might be. He knew that. He knew the world.
His name was Bruce Banner, he was a doctor (for what?), he was forty years old, he was (maybe) in a forest on Earth (but why or how could he be anyplace else?), and he knew many things about the world and things in it but nothing else about himself.
He was a doctor. He should've been able to figure this out. Why did he know so much (he could feel it circling, brewing in the back of his mind, waiting to be called upon) about everything else, but when he tried to remember something about him (his family, his friends, where he lived, where he was yesterday) he couldn't? His brain supplied the term amnesia but that didn't make any sense either, because he was almost positive he didn't have a head-wound or—or a disease that would cause that. He felt perfectly fine, even a bit… rested, as strange as that sounded. He checked the back of his head, running a hand tentatively through his hair, just to be sure, and again after that because he didn't trust himself. But the rundown only confirmed what he already know—that there was nothing there that shouldn't have been there. The only remaining cause would be a traumatic event, something his brain decided he would rather just forget than deal with, but—but that wouldn't make sense either because the memory-loss would be more selective, more about the specific event rather than his entire life.
Forty years old and he couldn't remember a second of it. That just didn't make sense. The—the cause would have had to be something else then. Medically induced, maybe? He checked himself over, coarse hands running over smooth skin. No soreness, puncture marks, bruises where IV lines would've been—maybe it was a medicine he consumed? No, no—he was sure, he racked his brain and he found nothing, no remembrance in the medical field over experiments, over anything that could've caused this.
It wasn't a head wound, it wasn't a traumatic event, it wasn't some medical procedure or disease, so then—then it would have to be—
His arm suddenly tingled in pain after he fiddled with his hands and Bruce suddenly looked down at his left wrist. He was surprised to find three long scratch marks there, shallow, wide and a deep crusted red and running down his middle forearm to halfway up his palm. They were warm and tingling, only a few hours old, and he looked down at them in interest, a clue, a puzzle, a mystery to—
There was a bellowing sound, a rumbling roar that made the earth shakes, the vibrations rising up from the ground where his booted feet were unsteadily planted. The sound passed through him, a deep rattling hum that shook him down to his very core. Bruce nearly flailed, trying to catch his balance though the earth didn't really tremble all that violently. It was more the surprise, the alarm that caused something to growl in the back of his mind. It was the complete familiarity yet at the same time completely foreign element to the sound that threw him. For some reason it scared him even if the sound wasn't that bad of one to start with. It was strangely melodic like a low sound of a singing bird or the swell of wind in the trees, and without really knowing what he was doing or planning, Bruce started to run.
He was tearing through the trees, the thick and velvety green cloak he'd woken to find on his shoulders surprisingly light. His feet knew exactly where to place one after another to avoid a root here swerving left there to avoid a section of bushes that he somehow knew were there and he just ran. The sound intensified, crescendoed, and was joined by another to form a harmony to the original song. They both grew louder and louder and louder above him as the trees thinned out, white, green, blues and grays. Finally, he broke through the line of trees with a leap and kept running as the world opened up before him and—Bruce suddenly pulled on the breaks, feet scrambling for purchase on the sudden smooth stone, arms jerking backwards and cloak flying in the sudden wind. His feet scrambled for purchase on the edge of the huge cliff and just in the nick of time he stopped.
But none of it mattered. Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered because here the sounds were the loudest they could be and Bruce looked out, gazed out over the spray of water and light reflected across shattered glass and rainbows from a waterfall just to his left, and just stared.
Just in front of him, flying through the sky with no water in sight as if they were born for this, were two, singing, gigantic blue whales.
In the sky.
As in flying.
He stared just stared as the huge animals sung to each other again across the open expanse of blue, deep haunting melodies that sent chills up his skin, up his spine, through his heart as the spun just dozens of feet away. He struggled to form words, to form a logical, sound reason for the way the huge animals pulled their fins down and sent themselves flying higher, chanting as they do so, and through the clouds that were at his level this high up on the cliff. One of them twirled, a long slow and gorgeous barrel-roll, before it pushed its way up higher through the thin air with the other close on its tail. They were still singing, flying, and the sounds were huge and humbling as they flew away from the cliff and into more open sky away.
Bruce glanced down at the cliff beneath his feet, at the island he was standing on, and couldn't think of anything that could explain why the ground and cliffs branching off from this one in the distance were floating with no land underneath. He couldn't think of a reason why the ground would suddenly disappear and leave the rest floating in mid-air and why these Blue-Whales seemed to have the same disregard to gravity as the land beneath his feet.
He was on a floating island with rocks that hovered in mid-air off the cliff edge and waterfalls that tipped over the side of the cliff and down, down, down to who-knows what in the sky below and trees with white bark and glowing blue leaves and flying whales.
His name was Bruce Banner, he was a doctor (for what?), he was forty years old, he knew many things about the world and things in it but nothing else about himself, and he was on a floating island with flying whales and blue trees and he was not on Earth anymore
AN: How's it going?
The following story is a study in character, description, and the element of fiction Monomyth—or as some of you may know it as 'The Hero's Journey'. Inspired by the actual game Journey which also alludes to the style of writing and my own personal gameplay experience, elements have been taken from the spectacular video-game. However, besides the ultimate goal of reaching the 'Mountain' and the same study in the Monomyth, there is little the same between the two stories. The storyline, plots, and world are my own. Anything else similar to the game is completely unintentional, (or completely on purpose as a salute to the games itself, ie. Natasha and Bruce's Cloaks.) This story will update weekly on Sundays and be approximately 9 chapters of story-length content. I do apologize for this chapter being so short, but, trust me, improvements in length are coming.
Warnings: Violence, implied major-character death, minimal swearing, and no scrabble shall be played (if you know what I mean.) Adventure/friendship/mystery based.
I'm just going to tell you now, lots of questions will be asked, and not a lot of answers are going to be given. The ones that do only will be answered at the very end. The story follows Bruce, with Natasha as the next main character, and the other Avengers/any other-human-freaking-beings will not make a physical appearance. As for the Hulk, I'm not sure yet. We shall see.
Do enjoy. I did.
*salutes*
-Fleet
