August 18, 2016

Tony sat slouched over a lab table, his third or fourth beer in one hand, and Bruce's old lab notebook in the other.

His lab was now a storage space he was renting for ten bucks a month. All the money he could spare was going into the equipment for the lab. Ever since he had left Missouri, after acknowledging the fact the Bruce was more than likely dead, he had continued his work on a cure for the gamma radiation. Sure, he no longer had a reason for the cure, or a test subject for it, but it had given him something to do besides watching his entire life crash into rock bottom.

He had been staying in a small apartment walking distance from the storage facility where he did his work. He almost never walked into the apartment unless he had company, which was almost never, or when he ran out of alcohol in the mini fridge in the lab.

Even though he was living almost as cheap as someone could get, he was close to not affording the rent for the apartment anymore. He was also getting pretty lonely, and needed someone to do his boring work for him, so he decided to hire someone as an intern and make them pay their own rent with him. He posted a listing in a science journal that was publishing him online, and he found a couple applicants that seemed worthy.

But of course, Tony really didn't want to have people around anymore, and he kept getting mad at himself for posting the listing anyways. But of course, it was too late and one of the applicants he had chosen was coming for her interview today, so his aggravation from that combined with his frustration with his work lately due to a lack of medical knowledge, he decided it was a good excuse to get drunk. Again. There almost wasn't a moment when he wasn't drunk these days.

Finally, someone, a girl who looked like she was around her twenties, knocked on the side of the open storage unit.

"Hello? Mr. Stark?"

Tony turned around in his chair and set Bruce's journal upside-down. He looked at her and gave her a look that said "what do you want?"

"Um… I'm here for my interview?"

He motioned for her to come closer to him. he picked up the book he had put down and turned a couple of pages back.

"Read these next three pages. If you can figure out what it means, put it in a bottle and give it to me. If you can do that, you've got the job."

He turned back around and drank the rest of his beer in one gulp, then picked up another. The girl looked at him in astonishment.

"Well, aren't you gunu start reading?"

"This is your idea of an interview? If I can't do this, I don't get the job?"

"Well, yeah. See, I haven't figure those pages out in about two weeks, and I need someone who can. That's why I need help. That's the whole point of the job."

"If you can't figure it out, what makes you think I can? Aren't you a born genius or something?"

"Well, yes, but engineering is more of my forte."

"Then why are you working in the medical field now?"

Tony was starting to get aggravated. Because of Bruce was what he wanted to say. This was the first person in four years to actually talk to him like a person. Someone who actually gave a damn, even if it was negative. He really didn't care by this point.

"Because I want to figure that out." He said pointing to the book. "It's pretty important to the person who did all that work, and now I'm here to finish his work."

She skimmed over the pages quickly, astounded by how complicated the equations were and how precise the dilutions to the chemicals were.

"I can't believe I flew all the way from St. Louis for this."

"Is that far? What state are we even in?" The alcohol was starting to cloud Tony's brain slightly. At least he was starting to get the wanted effect.

"Michigan." She spat.

"Right… so, can you figure these pages out or not?"

"No. You know, maybe if you stopped drinking so much, you could figure them out yourself. The only people who would probably figure it out in the world and you and the guy who wrote these notes. Who was it, anyways?"

Tony swallowed back hard. Thinking about Bruce was so tough.

"Someone important to me. And these were important to him. But now he'd dead, so he can't show me what they mean."

She flipped to the front of the book. Inside the first page was scribbled in bad doctors handwriting that she had learned to read through her internships at the hospital:

Property of Dr. Bruce Banner

"…Dr. Bruce Banner?"

Tony held back tears. He hadn't heard his name in years.

"You've probably never heard of-"

"He's not dead." She said sternly.

"What?" Tony jumped out of his seat and walked straight up to her face.

"He's alive."

Tony couldn't believe it. He actually could not believe it at all.

"Wait- what? How? I mean- how do you know? He was in an accident, they said he probably didn't live! I called every hospital in Missouri for weeks and nobody said they found him!"

"He didn't have ID. I'm a receptionist at a hospital in Missouri. He woke up from a coma-'

"Coma? He was in a coma?"

"When he woke up he found out you had called for him- he wanted you to know he's okay. and he says hi."

Tony didn't know what to think. He was excited that Bruce wasn't dead. He was devastated that he was in a coma for four years. He was stunned at what a small world it was that this girl who applied for an internship with him had actually been in contact with him. But the one thing that overcame everything was a strong need to find Bruce right away. Even though he only realized it once he was gone, Tony hadn't stopped loving Bruce from the minute he realized it. Not once.

"Where is he? Do you have a phone number? Anything?"

"N-no," she was caught off guard now. She wasn't expecting him to ask these kinds of questions. "he just left the hospital. He didn't tell anyone where he was going, just left without a word."

Tony grabbed the book out of her hand and started moving small things into a bad.

"What are you doing?" She asked.

"Thank you for everything, really." He said. "But you're no longer needed for the position."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Nope. Now I just need to focus on finding Banner. Then I can get the bastard to tell me what this means."

He walked out of the lab and walked to his apartment, leaving the girl flabbergasted.

And by "this," he didn't just mean the calculations; he wanted to know if "this" was more than friendship to Bruce, too.