He was nine years old when his father looked him dead in the eye, his mother's blood splattered all over his face and arms. His breath was hot and thick as the smell of lab chemicals and whiskey filled up his youthful nostrils, making him want to gag a little.
"We're all monsters, Bruce…" His father said darkly, holding his blood covered hand gently against the curve of his mother's lifeless cheek. Her limp body was propped up against the armrest of his dad's beat-up recliner, and his gun rested against her shoulder. "Some of us are just better at hiding it," He added, the cocking of his gun vaguely muffled against the blood stained fabric of her clothing.
"You go on remembering that, Bruce…"he whispered softly in conclusion, still holding his wife close to him and looking his son dead in the eye. His voice sounded incredibly… well, sane… for a man who had just murdered his wife in cold blood. His tone was almost melodic, soft and sweet. Perhaps most remarkably, he didn't look like the crazed, abusive man that Bruce had always known. He looked tired and resigned… almost as though he had been waiting for that day… the day he would no longer be able to hide his true self.
That knocked Bruce off kilter… especially because he could also see the underlying comfort and love that his dad was trying to project to offset the horror that his young son had been witness to. So Bruce nodded his head a little, trying to show his father that he had some understanding of what was happening. He hesitated, making sure that his father had finished speaking to him, and could then run to lock himself in his room. He never wanted to come out again.
He knew what was going to happen before his father even pulled the trigger. And a few moments later, he did …
The police found Bruce two days later, sitting in a drying pool of his parents' blood. The carpet and the recliner were stained red with it and their bodies had begun to decay and reek in the summer heat.
He was watching cartoons.
Bruce moved from one foster home to another before he finally decided to run away on his fifteenth birthday. It wasn't because the foster families were bad or abusive; mostly they were actually pretty nice people. Hell, after having had to live with his dad, almost anyone seemed like an extraordinary person… It's wasn't even their fault that he was shoved off to one foster home after another.
It was because he didn't belong anywhere. He unnerved people with his intensity, his love of staring and observing people. The fact that he hadn't said a single word since his parents died was also another strike against him. Not just at home, but everywhere, these things assured that he would always feel like an outsider.
He'd realize through observation that most people—normal people—relied on affection and touch. It was obvious in the way that jocks clapped each other on the back when they played great on a night's game, in the brushing of shoulders in intimate and friendly ways, and in the hugs that parents gave out without hesitation to show their love. People sought out those forms of comfort unconsciously… as though their very being required it to thrive. There was none of it in Bruce's nature.
Unexpected touch made him flinch away like he'd been burned, he stood as far away from people as he possibly could, and hugs made his skin crawl. He couldn't stand to be touched, held, or cuddled… It just wasn't in him to be loved unconditionally and it was not fair to subject nice, normal people to all his damaged parts.
So he packed his bags when his third foster family in a month fell asleep and slipped away in the night, taking his problems and all his dirty, unnatural things about himself, but feeling more free and alive than he had been his entire life.
He just wasn't meant to be around people.
Two nights later, wet concrete is against his back as rain pours from the sky, soaking him through the thin material of his corduroy jacket. And he dreams. It's a simple dream… nothing special. Just beautiful open spaces, grass and cows for miles, and the real feeling of being free and happy on the open road with the summer breeze whipping through his curly hair… but even in his dreams, he can still taste the sharp sting of loneliness in the back of his head—the unbearable part of himself that he just can't seem to run from.
He wakes up slowly with raindrops dripping from his eyelashes onto his cheeks and that sharp edge of self-awareness that he isn't any less alone… freer than he's ever been and surviving… but not any less lonely.
He accepts it and moves on to start the day. But Bruce actually remembers his dream for the first time in years.
America makes him feel caged and depressed; his home country holds too many memories for him… It reminds him of lazy summer mornings dancing around the kitchen with his mother—her voice soft and humming as he giggled, her dark curls shining in the morning sun and her face looking eternal. And the days before alcoholism had taken over his father, locked away in the basement of his lab, staring at beakers and test tubes, smelling the familiar chemicals that he had grown to associate with his father, papers thrown everywhere as his father stares at him lovingly, asking his prodigal son questions that no other five-year-old would normally know.
He's finally able to leave America about two years later, relief gripping him tight in his gut. Those are the nostalgic memories swirling around in his mind when he buys a one-way ticket and boards a boat to Mexico.
Just as with his foster homes, Bruce floats from country to country, from Asia to Africa—settling down for weeks to months at a time. While there, he helps some of the desperate civilians of those towns he settles in when and how he can… patching up wounds, playing sports with the local kids, and offering his troubled friendship… Just because he doesn't seek out companionship doesn't mean that others don't seek his and he's more than willing to respond to their extended hands… within reason.
He doesn't offer his name or profound conversation and they don't ask him for it… he just shares what's not damaged and they take it willingly. And when he can no longer stand being himself, normality and routine making him feel smothered… his restless nature begins to take over, making him itch to leave, move, and never return, never stop.
The odd companions that, if he was normal, he would call friends, don't keep him and, more often than not, give him up with a big and beautiful farewell. Nobody can own him, no matter how much he cares… and these souls understand him well enough to condone this part of him and set him free the best they can.
Life is unbelievably simple out in these third-world countries and, each time, he almost feels something akin to sadness and guilt over leaving that kind of peace behind, taking from the land and its people, without giving anything back when they give him everything… but he doesn't allow himself to dwell on it.
He can't give what he doesn't have…
His aimless wondering leads him to Russia; it's cold and bleak. The air and atmosphere are unforgiving, not giving him an inch of love and space, and he immediately hates it.
Something about Russia rubs him the wrong way, grips him tight and won't let go without taking everything but his blood and bones. A dark and ominous force has taken Russia's heart, making Bruce feel caged almost instantly and he wants to escape, leaving the country behind as a distant memory. But he has no money and nowhere to go until he does so, with heavy reservations, he decides to settle down in a small village near Moscow, where fish is the main source of income.
He's an outsider, an American outsider no less, and he's met with glares and Russian curses wherever he goes, shouting at him to leave and not to return. He has to practically beg one of the locals for a job… but he gets one, setting the shouts he has received to work, and uses them to get himself out of Russia as fast as he can. He wants to leave every bit as much as they want him to depart.
Ivan Petrovitch is the reason that Bruce decides to stay in Russia… He's influential among the village of fishermen that he's settled down in and he likes Bruce, so by proxy the people of that town begin to respect and like him as well. Ivan has big weight in the drug circles of Moscow, Dublin, and Petersburg, and he's willing to extend that hand to the reclusive and reserved Bruce.
"You look like a guy who knows how to keep a secret," he says cryptically, when Bruce raises a quizzical eyebrow at Ivan's offer of a job. "Plus Juan says that you're the most trusted and diligent worker he's ever had… and in a village made of all fishermen that's saying something," he drawls, smiling when Bruce just shrugs his shoulder and sets out to begin gutting the incoming load of fish.
So Ivan is the one who gives him his first 'off-the-books' job. It's small... simple. It isn't really hard to deliver a quart of cocaine from point A to point B by a certain time and to a certain person. The only real 'hardship' Bruce faces is having to remember a sixteen digit password to recite off to the middleman, but Bruce's eidetic memory serves him well when it comes to that.
Ivan gives him another drug run two weeks later.
He's looking down the barrel of a gun on his fifth drug run. Leroy Adams is a fat and vile Irish drug lord with an incredible case of misplaced paranoia and he immediately pegs Bruce as someone untrustworthy.
He can't blame him. Leroy is a complacent man who expects order and routine; he needs someone or something to rely on… So, when an unknown kid comes up to him with a duffel bag of heroin and a look of boredom and indifference on his face, Leroy is already on the defensive.
Bruce just sighs, Drug Lords… strange breed, he muses as he drops the duffel on the ground, and raises his hands up. His posture is relaxed but alert as one of Leroy's bodyguards search him.
Two months into working successfully for Ivan, his co-workers on the docks trust him enough to let him know about Ivan's rumored connections to an underground agency called The Red Room.
The company is an extension of the KGB, they say, but more secret… more deadly. Girls trained from early childhood to be master assassins, experts in the game of subterfuge and espionage… ordinary orphans given a purpose to serve their country and serve it well.
But one girl stands out among the others of the infamous place … Her codename is Black Widow, her real name: Natalia… Not only is she legendary at such a young age, but she's unbelievably beautiful, deadly.
"I meet her once, free agent now," one of the old timers says, a wide grin on his face as he de-bones one of the fish from the new catch. "Ivan likes to work with her when he needs her skill set, likes to teach traitors a lesson. She's quick and efficient, serves her purpose, and has a beautiful face and body while she's doing it."
Bruce can tell by the tone of his voice that he's proud of this, slightly turned on, and finding excitement in it… and it unsettles Bruce. It seems unnatural for people to be trained to be monsters.
His brain is ruled by logic and science… everything has its place in time, its rightful order of business. He guesses that's why he never really cared when people of higher caliber would sneer at him in disgust because of his messy hair and dirty clothes when he was younger; it was his place to be gawked and glared at. He was below them… Sometimes he still is.
So naturally, he doesn't believe in things like the afterlife, reincarnation, or near-death experiences. They don't follow laws of science or the order of logic; it's just blind faith that has edged them into existence… Bruce just doesn't have the capacity and heart to follow things unproven blindly.
In his mind these things are just not plausible but, in his weaker moments, he allows himself a brief luxury to wonder if he'll ever see his mother again. If there is a place like heaven awaiting him in the afterlife… or is hell all he'll be offered? He remembers what his father had said to him before he blew out the back of his head.
And still, to this very day, he takes his father's last words to heart—the only piece of wisdom the old man had ever given him really—turning them on himself, shoving them in his face and the faces of others. He wonders why none of the other drug lords and master criminals that circle around Ivan don't look twice at him, just accept him into their circle with open arms… His lanky and relaxed nature doesn't provoke mistrust or suspicion in them... they actually admire that in him.
"We're all monsters, Bruce…" And it isn't until now, when he's surrounded by drug dealers, thieves, and hitmen in his everyday life that maybe his father is right. He's always been hiding, running; it's second nature… a defense mechanism ingrained in him. But is he hiding from himself too? "Some of us are just better at hiding it."
Is he one of those people? In a room full of monsters who visibly embrace that side of themselves, is he the only one hiding among them? He doesn't look like all the others that inhabit Kiev's Traven… bulky and rough around the edges, always looking to knock two heads together or plunge a knife in the back of an unsuspecting, unwise tourist daring enough to put his foot in his mouth.
Bruce knows what his own reflection looks like; he looks like a mild-mannered college student who's just exploring the outside world for the first time. His eyes soft and resigned, a world-weary view of the universe wrapped up in a defined face with horn-rimmed glasses. If you put him into an expensive suit and shove him through the doors of a high society gala, he'd fit right in… but there's also something underneath all the polish and refined demeanor, something dangerous… and deadly.
He holds himself like a caged animal, beaten down until there's nothing left except to explode and destroy everything in his path. He's a ticking time bomb, a chemical mixture that has an innate sense of chaos, with his hand ready on the detonator… the wire stopping from imploding is frayed and impossible to cut and keeping him from blowing up.
So he finds himself, broken porcelain of a barroom toilet imbedded in his hands, trickles of blood on his knuckles that are beginning to swell. His body shakes with rage as he stands over the barely conscious man who decided to get smart and violent with him. When Ivan asks the man for his money as the guy lays writhing on the floor in pain, he's not surprised. He's a monster with a bad temper and he's ready to explode; this unlucky man won't be the last one hurt by his demons.
Ivan just smiles at him, looking on with pride… like he's seeing his son win a Little League game for the first time… and Bruce ignores the small ping of happiness he feels at that look.
He can't fight his nature, but at least it finally makes someone proud.
You're a monster, his mind echoes over and over again every day of his life… and those are the very words that ring in his head when he meets Natalia Romanov…
TBC...