A/N: I haven't written in years. Endgame devastated me. I miss angst!bruce. so have this.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers. :(
Trigger Warnings: domestic abuse, suicide attempt.
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Rage.
Fury.
Bitterness.
He was filled with it, every ounce of his soul; each and every fiber of his being. Deep-seated animosity fueled everything he did. He was blinded by his rage.
Dr. Banner wasn't sure of which felt worse, the immense regretfulness of his losses of control, or the knowledge of the blood on his hands. Either way, it all led back to the same viscous cycle he'd been coursing through since his call to action with the first Avengers initiation. The hail mary event wasn't supposed to last this long, but he became intertwined with this whole ordeal when Stark was so kind enough to ask him to stay.
The physicist was at a stalemate. Avoiding the government would be ridiculously difficult now that his cover was blown. He was no longer incognito and had very, very few options. SHIELD was no better. He knew they'd want to cage him just as much as the U.S. Government did.
Of course, he was reluctant to accept the invitation. Although he was trying to come to terms with the affection and kindness the engineer had in store for him, he didn't want to put his only friend (friends?) he knew he had in danger. Stark refused the cold shoulder and his persistency eventually got the best of Bruce, even though he almost couldn't bring himself to allow Stark to house a beast.
Almost.
Monsters don't deserve love, he'd think to himself.
But, of course, the mastermind Tony Stark himself found a way to prove the sullen doctor wrong. The philanthropist refused to believe that his friend would intentionally lose control, let alone the fact that he was a "monster". Just to give Bruce some peace of mind, he even constructed a Hulk-proof room.
So, in three years' passing, the doctor grew out of his shell. The progress was slow, but it was there. As more time passed, he became closer and closer with his team, his family.
And then, Ultron came to be.
"A suit of armor around the world", as Tony put it.
He should have known something would go wrong. Bruce knew that artificial intelligence wasn't something to toy around with, especially at such a high stake.
But when didn't Stark get what he wanted?
The plot of the mastermind robot unfolded. He recruited Pietro and Wanda Maximoff to help achieve his grand scheme, and the latter of the two wasted no time in accomplishing his biddings.
She provided a vision for each of them.
If only he weren't so easily manipulated. But he couldn't have been to blame, no. No mere mortal is capable of fighting off mind magic. No amount of progress nor self control could have prevented this.
The vision from the Witch was horrible enough to trigger a transformation. Sure, he's had nightmares that managed to conjure up his other side, but this was different.
It seemed so real.
A guttural, earth-shattering roar erupted from the depths of the Hulk's throat. A green-bodied goliath rampaged amongst the busy (and currently terrified) streets of Johannesburg. Blind rage fueled him. He wouldn't stop, not until anything and everything he could smash was demolished under his great force.
Stark almost couldn't fight him off. The Billionaire arrived to the scene inside of a suit the size of his opponent.
The duo brawled endlessly, dealing great damage towards Johannesburg and its citizens.
At last, the fight came to an end when the iron-clad man swooped down and picked up the Hulk by his ankle.
He was flying through the sky, behemoth dangling from below him, when the sound of helicopter rotors grew louder by each passing moment.
Gunshots sounded. The man in the suit was shot in both feet, which paved the road for his fall. In the process of losing flight, the Hulk was released.
The military chopper swooped down and caught the creature with two gargantuan metal containers. When they came together, they resembled claws. As the machine flew off, the container swung about the air, rocking and shaking and whatnot.
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Hours had passed. After landing at an underground lab somewhere in the midst of Europe, they tranquilized the beast. Moments after he was out cold, his muscles retracted, shrank and shifted back into Bruce. The doctor couldn't take it. He fell asleep too.
What seemed like a few minutes later (it was probably more hours), his eyes slowly fluttered open.
The feeling of a cold metal lab table sent goosebumps down his spine and shot him awake. He was strapped down. Being unable to move any of his limbs, he looked around observantly albeit tiredly. The doctor struggled to keep his eyes open. There was something pulsating in his arms. After eyeballing his elbow crease, he took note of the blood being taken.
Slowly, he put the pieces together and figured out who had taken him.
General Thaddeus Thunderbolt Ross.
As if he had a cue, the soldier removed the syringe of blood and slid another one into his arm. A bitter and equally maniacal laugh escaped his clenched teeth.
"Oh, we have you now, Banner. It's taken me years to have this moment. Should've known capturing such an unyielding, uncompromising creature would have taken me seven years."
The physicist was speechless and terrified. His eyes widened at his loss of words.
"Did you really think you'd escape the United States Government?" Thunderbolt spat. "A monster like you isn't too hard to find, especially when you're always transforming. So, what caused your tumultuous rampage this time?"
His heart was racing.
"Was it the thought of the amount of innocents you've killed?"
That was an emotional slap across the face.
"The recollection of the murder of your mother?"
He couldn't take it, but what could he do besides listen? A pleasure-filled grin spread across the face of the General after he saw the slightest bit of uncomfortableness in his prisoner's eyes.
"Or maybe it was you killing the only idiots who dared to consider you to be something like family. Better yet, maybe it was the fact that you've always been a despicably contemptuous monster on the inside, even before your accident?"
Banner was visibly upset. Ross smiled and removed the syringe of blood. After storing it with the rest of the samples he took, he pulled out a pocketknife.
"The world won't be needing you, anymore, murderer."
Just as he shoved it into his victim's shoulder, the door was blown off of its hinges by a laser beam.
"I'll be taking him." The voice was familiar. A shout sounded from the General as Iron Man shot him in the shoulder, returning the favor.
Tony took a panicking Bruce by the arms and unstrapped his limbs from the testing table. He flew him into the quinjet waiting right outside the lab for them, all the other Avengers awaiting their arrival. Stark shot a melee missile at the lab prior to his entrance on the quinjet.
Without anything else being said, he set Bruce down on the floor and they took off.
At first, no words were exchanged between any of the teammates. Stark was patching up Banner, Natasha was flying the jet, Barton was co-piloting, and Steve and Thor were busy thinking about those visions provided to them by the Scarlet Witch. The silence was deafening, but the tension was even louder.
"You should have left me," Bruce said to the man fixing his wounds. Remorse filled his eyes. "I just destroyed an entire city. Why would you come back for me? Now the government is going to come up your ass, and it's all my fault, Tony. You should have left me in that lab to die, it would've been best for all of you."
Tony stopped and stared into his friend's eyes. "I'm never, ever going to leave you behind anywhere. The government may get up my ass about it, but I'm Tony Stark. I am fucking Iron Man, and anyone who wants you for your blood or for containment will go through my stubborn ass first, especially General Thaddeus fucking Ross. You are too valuable to me, as a companion, for me to let you die in a damn lab, Bruce. Okay?"
It was deafeningly silent again. After stitching up Bruce's stab wound, Stark finished, and sat the doctor up on his back. He grabbed his friend a blanket and wrapped it around him.
After that, he sat down. Half an hour had passed, and still no words were spoken. Bruce looked apprehensive; almost emotionless.
"What did you see?" The Billionaire asked. Bruce looked over to him, anxiety in his eyes.
"It was — " He stopped. Tears began rolling down his eyes as he cleared his raw throat, still sore from the unwilling transformation.
"They were all in front of me," He began quietly. "My mother. First it was her. My father began hurting her and hurting her and hurting her, and I felt so damn powerless. He didn't stop until she was dead, and he came for me.. and I took it. I sat there and took it all, Tony. And then there was Betty and Nat, and I've already hurt one of them. I'm scared. I don't want to hurt her. But the Hulk came out, and he.."
The pause was long.
"He hurt them, Tony. First he killed Betty, and then Nat, and all the Avengers came and we fought in the city, and He took each of you out, one by one, each in their own gruesome, painful ways. You were last. I tore you apart because I was so fucking enraged, and then I began hurting others. I wouldn't stop, It was a huge rampage of my abysmal anger, and then I came back to see the aftermath. After I saw what I did, I tried so hard to just.."
There was another pause. Stark looked into the eyes of his friend. Tears were rolling down his face.
"..I tried again, Tony. I tried to kill myself again. I just.." He stopped. He got up despite his severe soreness and hugged Stark while sobbing, who was now leaning against the counter. The Engineer returned the embrace just as hard.
"Bruce, it was just a vision. You're still here and you're still fighting. Physically and mentally."
"But I'm trying so hard, Tony. To see the people you love the most get hurt does something to you, especially when you're the one hurting them and all you can do is watch from the inside what your body is doing on the outside. I was doing so well with keeping the Hulk at bay and this just.. it ruined it. It ruined everything. I was completely out of control earlier and so many people suffered because of it.."
Tony released his hug and looked Bruce straight in the eyes.
"Bruce, progress is never linear. And that's okay. So, you fucked up. It was out of your control."
Another long silence circulated through the atmosphere.
"Tony, I'm so sorry."
The philanthropist looked at his friend yet again.
"Don't be."