I do not own any of the characters present. They belong to Marvel comics. This was written purely for fun. Please note that I am not a trained psychologist.
Also, I posted a poll related to this story. If you're interested in seeing a few one-shot ideas of the rest of the team meeting some of Bruce's personalities, head on over to my profile page and cast your vote. Polls will close when I post the final chapter. Thank you!
***NOTE: TRIGGERS FOR SELF-INJURY AND BLOOD. BE WARNED.***
Tony tried and tried to think up ways to broach the topic with Bruce, but he had no idea how. For starters, this had to do with something Bruce wasn't even aware of, and Tony sure as hell didn't want to be the one who brought that to light. He was sure that Bruce wouldn't have any idea of what he was talking about, anyway, but at least there was someone in the physicist's mind who would. It was just a matter of getting one of the personalities to come out to discuss it with him.
He spent a full day trying to figure out his method. He didn't think he'd be able to wait around like the last time he wanted to talk with one of the personalities, right before he got to meet Archives for the first time. This would continue to eat at him until he got some answers and his curiosity was sated.
In the end, he just grabbed Robby's abstract and took it down to the lab with him the next morning. He placed the artwork on Bruce's work station where it would be quickly noticed, and then headed over to his own.
It wasn't a long wait before Bruce came down to the lab. The whole incident with the nightmare seemed like a thing in the distant past, as the physicist greeted Tony with a mildly pleasant "good morning."
As Tony hummed at the greeting, a mug of coffee was placed at his elbow. The two scientists chatted for a few minutes about a shared project, the conversation between them as easy as always. It was another few minutes before Bruce finally moved off to get started on his own work for the day.
Tony turned back to his work as well, but he listened to his friend walk across the lab to his work station, waiting in anticipation for some clue that Bruce had seen piece of artwork lying on his work desk. He only looked up when he heard the frustrated noise that came soon after. When he glanced over, he saw the Doctor giving him a look that was parts incredulous, angry, frustrated, and uneasy.
"Oh good," Tony said casually, "I want to talk to you."
The silver alter stared for a moment longer in stunned silence before he drew a long breath in and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Did you honestly just jeopardize everything we've worked for to keep Dr. Banner from knowing about us just so we could have a chat?" he asked in a quiet, angry voice. "I thought you were past this."
Tony got up and walked the short distance between them in quick strides before he pointed at the piece of artwork, to the deep red splotch sitting alone in the dark. "Who's that?"
After another moment of glaring at the engineer, the Doctor looked down at the drawing. Immediately, he paled when he saw what Tony was pointing to. His eyes darted back to the man next to him. "Mr. Stark—"
"No," Tony said. "Who is this? And why are you keeping them locked away?" When the alter's brow furrowed, Tony elaborated. "This personality tried to come out after Honey woke up, and the Hulk wouldn't let them. Robby drew them isolated from the rest of you—are these bars that this personality is sitting behind?" He jabbed his finger at the abstract. "Why wouldn't you guys let them out?"
The Doctor was still for a long moment, staring down at the drawing with a worried expression on his face. He finally took a deep breath and looked over at Tony, mercurial eyes uneasy. "Mr. Stark," he began cautiously, "you need to understand something. The entity you saw is dangerous—"
"Y'know, it's funny, Bruce thought the same thing about Hulk," Tony interrupted. "But we know that's not entirely true—"
"The Protector isn't dangerous in the same way Monster is," the Doctor cut in, starting to get irritated.
They stared at each other for a long time, the Doctor looking both worried and frustrated while Tony's expression grew angrier and angrier with each passing second.
"Monster?" Tony repeated in a soft, enraged voice. "What, did you all name him that? Did you—?"
"What?" The Doctor took an aggressive step forward, on the offensive. "That was his name when he opened his eyes," he explained angrily. "We have no say in our names; we just knew his name was Monster when he woke up. We had nothing to do with it."
"So what happened when he woke up? Why is his name Monster?" Tony asked, voice rising to match the silver alter's.
There was a long pause in which the Doctor remained silent. A sad element had entered the personality's angry expression, and he seemed to shrink in a little on himself.
"Something to do with Bruce's father?" Tony pressed, and the Doctor looked vaguely ill.
"Mr. Stark, please—" the silver man pleaded.
Tony was about to forge on, but he saw something in the Doctor's eyes. They almost looked watery and so, so sad. He was suddenly reminded of his conversation with Archives from long ago, about the child personality that had integrated with the Doctor. The child alter had withdrawn after the fateful night of Rebecca Banner's murder. He thought he saw tiny hints of Little Helper in the silver alter's expression now, elements of a lost child there in his eyes, and he now had a vague idea of what triggered Monster's creation.
"Something to do with his mother?" Tony ventured.
The Doctor's expression immediately closed off, and Tony knew he hit the nail on the head. "We are not having this conversation," the silver man hissed, and then turned to leave.
For a single stunned moment, Tony watched the Doctor retreat from him, and for some reason, that pissed him off even more. "Monster was made the night of her murder, wasn't he?" he kept pressing as he started to follow the silver personality to the door.
He could see the tension building in the alter's shoulders, but the Doctor didn't turn around. "Leave it alone, Stark," the personality growled. "If you have any respect for not only ours, but Dr. Banner's privacy, you will—"
"Why are you all caging him?!" Tony demanded. They were out of the laboratory now and were storming down the hallway. "He's probably traumatized! Why—?!"
"Drop it, Stark!" the Doctor yelled, turning a brief and murderous glare over his shoulder before he continued marching down the hall, past the rows of floor-to-ceiling windows lining the walls.
"What happened?!" Tony yelled right back.
Without warning, the silver rapidly disappeared from his skin, leaving tan in its wake. Bruce reemerged suddenly, staggering into one of the windows and coming to an immediate stop. Tony froze in his steps and huffed, absolutely irritated that the Doctor had run off, but in no way put off from demanding information, demanding answers.
Bruce heard the annoyed huff and looked behind him at the engineer, his expression a myriad of confusion, fright, and the beginnings of panic. "…Tony?" he asked slowly in a quiet voice, sounding uncertain.
"What happened, Bruce?" Tony asked, repeating his forceful question previously asked to the Doctor.
The physicist took a shaky step back and put a hand against the window, bringing his other hand up to the side of his head. His confused brown eyes remained locked on his friend for another moment. "Tony, what are you talking about?" He started to glance around the hall, growing more and more distressed. "How…? What—?"
"What happened that night, Bruce?" Tony pressed heatedly. "What happened to her, what happened to you?"
Bruce's eyes widened and shot straight back to the engineer when he realized Tony was asking about that night. Several different emotions crossed his face, warring for purchase and mixing into his confusion and fear. Bruce stared for a moment longer before he slowly shook his head and turned on the heel of his foot. "No. Tony, please," he began as he walked away like the Doctor had, "I don't—"
"What happened to Monster?" Tony cut in fiercely.
His tirade got caught in his throat when he saw one of Bruce's hands go to his chest. A pained gasping breath escaped from the physicist as he crumbled to the ground. Before Tony could react, the muscles across Bruce's body began to ripple and change color.
As his clothes tore and bits of dark, deep red became clear, shouts and groans of agonizing pain filled the hall. Bruce's writhing body grew, but without the full muscle mass from the Hulk. He was a little smaller than the Hulk, but he was still pretty huge. Gasps for air replaced the sounds as the transformation continued, interspersed with yelps of pain as his bones began to crack and reset in a form not at all like the Hulk's.
The bones making up his spine grew jagged beneath dark red skin, creating something like short spikes all along his back. The skin would have surely split, had it not been for the strange scale-like patterns that appeared across the expanse of skin; it took a moment to realize that they actually were scales. The personality was curled against the floor, his face hidden from view as the frankly agonizing-looking transformation continued. Claws grew from the end of each elongated finger, sharp, curved, and deadly in appearance. Each breaking and resetting bone forced a painful noise from the alter, a mixture of a gasp, a scream, and a sob.
Tony stood absolutely transfixed, staring at the morphing being in front of him. The first thing that went through his mind was the simple utterance of 'oh shit.'
Finally, Tony slowly stepped forward. He laid a hand on the alter's shuddering and scaled back, but before he could speak to try to diffuse the situation, Monster let out a bellowing sob and flinched violently. A clawed red hand smacked Tony away with strength close to the full force of the Hulk, the claws thankfully only cutting through his shirt and leaving stinging red marks in their wake upon his chest, but not breaking the skin. He crashed into a nearby wall.
Tony's eyes, slightly blurred from the impact, went straight back to the dark red being before him, and he finally got a good look at Monster's face. The personality's lips were pulled back as he continued to gasp for air through his sobbing, and Tony could see that his teeth had sharpened into fangs. He had qualities not unlike the Hulk, but instead of fury and rage, this alter's expression was full of remembered pain and anguish and terror. The quality that was most different from the Hulk and that shook him to his very soul was how young Monster looked. Past the dark red skin and fangs, the panic and misery, he had the face of a frightened child; even with the monstrous body he was housed in, he was just a boy. His deep red eyes were locked on Tony's crumbled form, tears streaming down his cheeks as he continued to sob.
Tony had no idea what to do. His entire body was ringing with pain, and he couldn't think of anything to do.
Panic flooded through him when Monster suddenly hurled himself at a nearby window with lightning-fast speeds. The personality's head smashed into the glass, which surprisingly didn't break, and a howling sob shook the air. A clawed fist drew back and crashed through the window, shattering the glass and triggering the alarms. He brought his hand back through the broken windowpane, deliberately raking his arm along the broken glass with another cry of pain. Clawed, red fingers left streaks of blood the same color as his skin behind as he wrapped his hand around a jagged piece of glass on the floor, slicing deep into his skin.
Tony shouted out in panicked horror as Monster held the glass up, blood steadily pouring down his arm and ready to stab himself. He felt his heart leap up into his throat. Oh god, oh god, this was what the Doctor had meant when he said dangerous…
Before the blow could be made, Monster cried out again as splashes of green appeared on his skin. As his back arched inhumanly and a shriek tore through his throat, the glass slipped from his bloodied fingers to shatter on the floor. Another gut-wrenching, pain-filled howl escaped from the red alter as he collapsed to the ground, clawing at the glass-littered floor and at himself, slicing deep into his skin. The shards already on the ground cut into his body as more and more green overpowered the red.
Tony's eyes remained glued to the writhing body before him as Monster and the Hulk fought for control. The engineer vaguely heard the sound of approaching footsteps over the combined noise of the alarms and awful noises the alters were making, but he didn't pay the footsteps any attention. He could only stare at the scene taking place a few feet in front of him.
The red faded away from the writhing body before him, and Monster's body slowly began to recede and transform into the Hulk, taking the self-inflicted wounds with him. The blood from the closing wounds that hadn't transferred to the floor remained on his body, smudges of red marring the expanse of green. When the Hulk's eyes finally opened, they looked haunted. Tears continued to run down his green face and he drew shuddering gasps of air.
The alarms shut off, and gusts of wind came in through the broken window. The only sounds aside from the breezes coming in from outside was that of the Hulk's shaky breathing.
Tony had never seen the big guy look so lost and frightened. A stab of pain went through his chest when the Hulk found the blood on his hands and a small noise of distress escaped from his throat, like a sound of a wounded animal. As the Hulk's outstretched hands began to quiver, Tony risked quietly calling his name. "Hulk...?"
It was a mistake.
The giant's head instantly whipped up and went to the area on the wall just above Tony. He rapidly scooted away, growling at a threat only he seemed to be able to see. It was like watching a cornered animal going on the defense, hackles raised, teeth bared, and ready to protect himself. When his eyes found the blood on the floor, though, it triggered something. His green eyes shot wide, and he let out a bellowing roar of outright fury and fear.
The surrounding windows shook with the force of the guttural roar, cracks beginning to appear all along the corridor's glass panes.
An arrow suddenly hit him and bounced off his massive green chest, releasing a cloud of chemicals. The Hulk didn't even seem to notice the chemicals he was breathing in through his gasping. The Hulk immediately scrambled away in an enraged panic and took off away from the labs and down the hall, leaving a trail of destruction unknowingly behind.
Tony stared down at what was left of the arrow that had hit the Hulk. In a daze, he recognized it as the arrowhead he and Bruce had created to hold the tranquillizer they had worked on months ago, before they started their team practices. He had hoped that the chemicals would never have to be used, but Bruce trusted them with it and to know when to use it.
At the thought of Bruce, his eyes shot to the open hall. He stared after the Hulk with wide eyes, only blinking when he saw Thor and Steve run after the goliath, following the path of destruction and the guttural roars that were growing more and more tired and sad. Slowly, he turned his head to glance down the other end of the hall. He found Clint and Natasha there, the archer holding his bow in a painfully tight grip, and the assassin with her hand on the holster of her gun. At first glance, they both looked shaken.
Clint's eyes finally drifted over to Tony, looking both weary and betrayed, before he looked away and ran a hand over his face. Natasha stormed forward, but Tony's eyes remained on the archer, even after she came to a stop in front of him.
"What did you do to him?" Natasha grounded out in a very quiet, very dangerous voice.
Tony didn't bother looking up at her; she already knew the answer. He wasn't sure what he had intended with his line of questioning, but he had never intended for this to happen.
His gaze moved past her to the small pools of radioactive blood surrounding the shards of broken glass and deep gouges in the floor. He vaguely heard the assassin let out a frustrated huff before she walked away, leaving him in a crumbled heap against the broken wall.
An unknown amount of time passed. He blinked from his daze when he heard two heavy pairs of footsteps approaching, and he glanced toward where the Hulk had fled. Steve and Thor returned to the scene, the demigod carefully cradling Bruce's naked, unconscious, and bloody body. Even from where he was sitting, Tony could see the tear tracks on Bruce's face, and he could hardly breathe around the lump of guilt that lodged in his throat.
Thor only spared him a saddened and disappointed look as he walked by. Tony's eyes followed the Asgardian as he walked off with a bloodied Bruce, and Clint and Natasha walked off with him. The engineer saw a pair of legs in his periphery, but he didn't have the willpower to actually meet Steve's gaze, knowing what he'd see on the soldier's face.
An overwhelming silence took over the hallway, smothering him and making it hard to breathe.
"Are you alright?" Steve finally asked in a clipped tone.
Tony remained frozen for a moment longer, and then finally looked away from the empty hallway and forced his stiff and aching body to stand. When he finally met Steve's eyes, he was not disappointed. The soldier regarded him harshly, colder than he had ever looked at him before.
Tony wet his lips and let his eyes wander back to the blood on the floor. He opened his mouth to say something—
"I don't want to hear it," Steve cut him off with the full power of his Captain America voice. "You knew not to pry. He woke up from a nightmare not two days ago about memories, Stark. You were there, you saw how he was afterwards. I—" He cut himself off to let out an angry breath of air, glaring down the destroyed hall. When he looked back, his lips were pressed tightly together and there was disappointed and betrayal mixed into his glare. "You've been going on and on about getting him to relax, about earning his trust. He trusted you, Tony, more than he trusted any of us. Whatever you did to him, I can only hope he has a shred of forgiveness in him, a shred of trust left in him when he wakes up."
That lump in Tony's throat seemed to solidify. Still, he managed to finally find his voice. "I never meant for any of this to happen," he confessed.
"I don't know what you meant to do," Steve replied icily. "You'd better hope for—"
"Pardon the interruption, sirs," JARVIS's voice broke in hesitantly. Tony was almost glad for the intrusion. "Director Fury is on the line. He says it's urgent."
They stared at each other for a moment longer before Steve took a step back. He drew another deep breath in and let it out slowly, as if trying to calm himself down. He glared back at Tony. "Did the red personality hurt you?" he asked.
Tony still felt stiff, and he knew he'd be covered in bruises soon, but nothing felt broken. He jerkily shook his head.
Steve nodded, and then started to walk off toward the elevator at a brisk speed. "Good, because we're already down one person." As he jogged off, he called for JARVIS to announce the call to assemble.
Once the soldier had disappeared, Tony's eyes slowly returned to the broken window. He stared at the blood, leaving crimson trails as it dripped down the glass.
"Sir," JARVIS began carefully, "I advise you to join the rest of your team. I've quarantined off this area until the radioactive biohazard can be taken care of and the structural damage can be repaired."
Tony remained where he was for a moment longer. He tried to take a deep breath, but it was so hard to breathe around the lump of guilt in his throat. There was a lead weight in the pit of his stomach that was making him nauseous. "Where did they take Bruce?" he heard himself ask, as if from the end of a long tunnel.
"Dr. Banner is currently on his floor, still unconscious and physically unharmed," the AI informed him. "Mr. Odinson has washed the blood from his body before he put him to bed. Dr. Banner should wake up in roughly six hours."
Tony nodded to himself, but otherwise didn't move.
"Sir, your team and Director Fury are getting most impatient."
"I'm coming," he said, almost to himself. His step was shaky as he walked cautiously around the shattered glass and radioactive blood. The scene was left behind, but the whole event was seared into his memory.
"Just the five of you?" Fury repeated. "What happened with Banner?"
They were in the conference room, and four of them were seated around the table and facing where Nick Fury was displayed on the screen at the head of the room. Tony had gotten to the room late and stood next to the door, away from the camera and just barely visible to Fury.
"We had a team practice a bit earlier that got a little out of control," Steve said. Had it been any other day, Tony would have applauded the soldier's ability to lie. "We ended up having to tranquillize the Hulk, and Bruce is still out. The rest of us can handle the threat, sir."
Fury didn't question it further, but he did breathe a curse. As he laid out the mission, it became blatantly obvious that they could really use the Hulk. Steve said it just wasn't possible and that they'd make do without. Fury nodded and told them to get to the battlefield ASAP.
Once they ended the call, Steve didn't even bother to look back at Tony. He instead turned his eyes to Natasha. "Were you able to find someone to keep an eye on Bruce?" he asked.
The assassin nodded. "Pepper said she'd be back here in the next fifteen minutes or so," she replied. "Something about a business luncheon she needed to wrap up first."
Steve looked relieved and nodded. He turned a look over at Tony. "We'll handle this when we get back. Suit up; we're leaving in five."
It was a really rough battle, made even harder without the Hulk, but they managed to fight through it and come out successful with limited casualties. They all had to pull the extra weight to make up for their missing team member, and as a result, they had all taken on more damage than normal. Thor and Steve had to be the heavy-hitters for the battle, and Natasha and Clint came out of the fight with more wounds than normal. Tony had already been sore from his interaction with Monster, but now he was aching all over.
On their way back to the tower, Steve had called Pepper for an update. She said Bruce really hadn't stirred all that much and that she'd continue to keep an eye on him.
That was an hour ago, and six and a half hours after the Hulk had been hit with the tranquillizer.
When they got back, Tony immediately headed to Bruce's floor before anyone could intercept him. He felt absolutely wretched with guilt, but he needed to know how his friend was—and find out how much damage he had done to their friendship.
He came to an instant stop in the doorway to Bruce's room, and an overwhelming sadness joined his guilt. Pepper was sitting on the bed, her back pressed against the headboard and her arms around Honey.
The little purple girl was curled against the redhead, crying softly into her blouse. Pepper rocked her body slowly and stroked her hand over the girl's hair, trying to comfort the poor weeping child, but it seemed all for naught.
The child continued to cling to her as Pepper looked up from Honey and gave Tony a sad look. Tony couldn't think of anything to say and just returned her stare with one of his own, only tinged with guilt. She shook her head and returned her attention to the child in her arms.
Pepper drew a breath. "The first thing she said when woke up," she began in a soft voice that sounded tight with emotion, "was Momma's gone."
Honey curled more tightly around the redhead with a choked sob as her weeping intensified. Pepper just tried to keep soothing the crying child, but the girl was inconsolable. The little purple girl wasn't just seeking comfort for an aching body and the protection of a loving adult; she was grieving.
Even as Tony was standing there, watching his girlfriend try to calm a child personality of one of his closest friends, he could feel his heart breaking. He had triggered the memory of Bruce's mother's murder. While Bruce had shared some of his past with Tony over the past few months, Bruce had never brought that night up. There was a certain level of understanding between them that kept them from asking the other certain questions about their pasts. They never asked each other about the other's father, and they rarely discussed their childhoods. It just seemed like an unspoken agreement between them.
And Tony had breached that. He had knowingly breached that level of trust that Bruce had shown him. He should have listened to the Doctor, he should have listened to Bruce when they both said to leave it alone, but his damnable curiosity had demanded to be satisfied.
What was it Bruce had told him months ago? Don't let your curiosity blot out your better judgment?
Tony had failed in that spectacularly, and Bruce was left with the consequences. Tony's curiosity was sated, and Bruce was left with an aching body, tranquillizers running through his system, and flashbacks of his mother's death affecting not only him, but his other personalities as well.
After staring at Honey for a moment longer, Tony's eyes lowered to the ground. He forced himself to leave.