Chapter 21

Bruce's Flashback

"The stars. I once tried to count them all. I actually made it to 4,348."

"You are exceptionally odd."

"I bet you're very popular with the girls."

-A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Clark entered the lounge, his eyes quickly scanning the group, but coming one short. "Thor has left again?" he said, directing his question toward Tony, who was nearest at hand.

"Oh, yeah, came and went. Nothing hot happening in Asgard, he came back here, and left again. Went to see his girlfriend, I think."

"Girlfriend?" Clark suppressed a smile. "Thor has a girlfriend?"

"Yeah, a scientist expert. They met a long time ago, work-related." He gave the term finger quotes in the air. "Kind of like you and Lois."

"Wait a second." Clark sobered. "Lois isn't my girlfriend."

"Or whatever you call it on Krypton. Soulmate, or something."

"Tony," Natasha called from the sofa where she was paging through a pictorial encyclopedia of firearms. "What have we talked about you making fun of other planets?"

"Destroyed planets," Clark murmured. "It's okay. I don't remember it." He smiled "Just don't assume anything... embarrassing, please."

"What is it with you guys and your reluctance in relationships? Gah." Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. "I mean, Steve fell in love with my mom, Clint won't admit it, but he –"

"Shut up," Natasha growled.

"...Yeah. Then there's Bruce, who has zero backstory in that area, that I've been able to pry out of him at least, and so that leaves us -"

"Yeah, leave it there," Steve said, rising and crossing his arms. "You said we were gonna watch a movie, anyway."

"Right!" Tony snapped his fingers and called to the AI, "JARVIS, could we start the movie now?"

"Go ahead, ask if everyone else is ready," Clint grumbled, hurriedly packing up his work as the lights dimmed, and the opening music began to play, the footage on the screen roving the Tennessee countryside.

"What is this?" Steve asked, eying the 40's era crop-duster making its passes over a hazy field on the screen.

"Movie that is so totally Steve," Tony supplied.

"'Pearl Harbor,'" Bruce answered. A shadow passed across Steve's face.

"Am I going to like this?" he asked in a low voice, turning to the doctor.

"I don't know," he replied. "Maybe. Maybe not."

Steve was drawn in by the story, but nearly left the room multiple times after the attacks began. The explosions seemed so close, the fire and the bullets real... Only the continued commentary from Tony's corner of the sofa kept him in the present, and afterward, he was forced to admit when asked if he liked the film, "I don't know. It's a little hard to say."

"What, was it like it really was? Is that what happened?"

"I wasn't there. But... it's got a lot of things that are just a little too close to me to talk about right now."

"Like what?" Tony pressed. Pepper was gone for the week, and weren't the rest of them feeling the results.

"Just leave him alone," Bruce said as the soldier promptly left the room.

An hour or so later, Bruce was walking along the corridor toward the elevator when he heard music coming from Steve's room. It was an upbeat jazzy tune, something that Steve no doubt really listened to in bygone days. But as Bruce descended to the lab, memories of his own returned to him in floods, washing him with locked-away thoughts of retro-night at university, the dark-haired daughter of General Ross, and his own shattered hopes...

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked for the third time. Not eliciting a response from his companion, Bruce simply put on the brakes, dragging his friend to a stop beside him.

"What? Scared?" he taunted. "Of meeting a girl?"

"I'm not that type," Bruce insisted. "And certainly not at a party where everyone is going to be dressed so stupid."

"Aw, come on, get a life, science guy!" His friend punched him. "I've already told her about you."

"Great. That'll settle my nerves," Bruce groaned, looking down at the get-up which he had been persuaded to wear. "What's her name?"

"Betty. Betty Ross. And you all will get on just fine, she's a real weirdo like you."

"So you figured out setting me up with pretty girls didn't work? This is going to be much better. Now not only will she not like me, I won't like her either. Give me a break..." Bruce muttered, following his friend through the doorway into the room filled with noise and flashing lights.

"My scene," the friend proclaimed, and Bruce just shook his head.

"I know. Not mine."

"Yours is a lab, and I can tell you right now no girl wants to be had on an examination table."

"Shut up..." Bruce pushed past him, and took a view of the party which was already well underway. "Who came up with the idea of retro-night anyway? I thought we were supposed to look toward the future. We're supposed to forget the more embarrassing points of history."

"Embarrassing?" The friend grabbed a tumbler of some sort of intoxication from a nearby table and poured it down his throat. "Oh, you haven't seen embarrassing yet. Come on, let's find Betty."

Betty, Bruce thought, immediately conjuring up images of frizzy bangs and thick glasses. Betty. He followed his friend in a daze, unconsciously making his way toward a homely-looking group of dumpy freshman girls, but his friend caught his arm and steered him toward the pool table, where several guys were cheering as a slim, dark-haired beauty lined up to take the perfect shot.

"Come on," her teammates encouraged. "Come on, it's you're time!"

"No, that'll never work!" her opponents jeered. "Look at that angle!"

With a crack, the queue sent the balls spinning across the green, rebounding first from one side, then the other, and pocketing three solids before the white ball rolled to a stop near the corner. The group erupted into cheers, while Bruce's friend gaped.

"Betty!" He pushed his way through to her, and lifted his hands. "How'd you learn to do that?"

"It's just math," she shrugged.

Bruce knew he was staring. Betty. So this was Betty. Beautiful, and brainy too. Maybe this was an okay idea after all.

"Betty, let me introduce Robert Banner, nuclear nerd and general genius," his friend said, gesturing between the two. "Banner, meet Betty."

"Nice to meet you," Bruce said, ducking his head slightly. Gosh. Pretty girls always had this effect on him. They reduced him to brains and elbows and too-big feet, never anything desirable. He brushed a hand across his brow, pushing his dark curls away from his clammy forehead, and stammered, "I- I hear that you've heard about me already."

"Oh, sort of," Betty replied easily. "But I know not to believe this guy." She looked slyly at Bruce's friend, and at his nod, drew Bruce aside a little. "So –" she said in a quieter voice. "What's there to know?"

A nerd who could flirt. Bruce tried not to act a fool. "Nothing, I don't think," he shrugged, mentally kicking himself. Smile, you idiot. Laugh. Try to make her think you're normal. "I mean, it'd bore you. I'm studying nuclear physics."

"That's not boring!" she said honestly. "But it's much too long for right now."

"You're right," he smiled. "So what about you?"

"Oh, gee..." She waved a hand. "I guess you know who my dad is. But it does get a little old talking about me only in reference to him."

Bruce found himself nodding. "I can see where that would get... annoying. But you're confident enough to stand on your own."

Betty gave him a quizzical look. "You think so?"

"Yeah." Bruce broke into a short laugh. "I mean, look at you, back there, running the show..."

"Oh, that..." She rolled her eyes. "They recruited me because I always win. I don't usually come to this kind of thing."

"Really? Me either. But here we are." He sighed, and shrugged his shoulders. They stood in silence for a long moment, and simultaneously let themselves be lost among the commotion.

Betty took the opportunity of scrutinizing Bruce. He looked around them with the interested gaze of a scientist, but the social skills of a rabbit. His face was sensitive and somewhat concealed behind the glasses and the thatch of thick dark hair that hid his forehead and crept forward around his temples and neck. His head was bobbing ever so slightly to the beat of the jazzy tune playing.

"Do you dance?" Betty asked suddenly, seeing several couples beginning to jive to the music.

Bruce hesitated, then shook his head, grinning broadly. "I mean, I do, but it's nothing I'm eager to show off in public."

Betty laughed. "Really. Would you do it if I did?"

"Can you?"

She hesitated, then said in a quiet voice, just loud enough to be heard over the music, "Yeah, but I don't like to."

"I'm the opposite. Don't know how, but I do anyway."

"Come on?"

He shook his head. "Not in front of this crowd."

"In front of the mirror?"

He grimaced. "No way. In my lab when I get a result I want. I do this stupid little jig thingy."

"My dad wanted me to know how to dance. He gave me lessons and everything. I just... hate getting out there like that. I'm actually an introvert," Betty admitted, her blue eyes honest.

"Really?" He nodded. "I can see that. I am too, but I guess I thought you were more –"

"That's the problem." She tossed her head. "There are introverts who talk. There are introverts who interact socially. They just don't enjoy it." Betty quirked her mouth sideways. "I'd rather be with just a few good people than a crowd of..." She gestured at the general melee.

"I agree." Bruce looked at her, and tried to keep his thoughts from getting ahead of him. Whoah, there. Don't go head over heels like some movie. But he had a feeling it was already too late...

Things progressed quickly. Business kept them apart, but the initial spark was there, which was fanned into flame by General Ross's top-secret experimentation, headed by one Dr. Bruce Banner, newly graduated nuclear physicist. After such a prolonged separation – nearly three years of school and other things that somehow take up one's life – it was like an oasis of hope to Bruce. Betty felt the same way toward him. Her quieter nature rebelled against her father's expectations of her, and in the young doctor heading the project, she found understanding and a common view of life.

Then there was the accident. It had happened so quickly. Bruce could barely remember anything. New Mexico. Feverish preparations in the blistering heat, pressing the button on the detonator and watching the timepiece tick toward zero... that foolish boy. That foolish, foolish boy. What on earth was he doing on a nuclear test strip anyway. His father should never have brought him along.

Bruce's feet hit the ground with dull thuds as he sprinted toward the teen. Rick's eyes were wide as Bruce at last closed the distance between them and tackled him, dragging him some ten yards or so, and giving him a shove into the ditch... He turned back for a split second, and then his vision fragmented...

"Leave him alone!" a voice shrieked. "Leave him alone!"

The man was like a beast, enraged, and irrational. He turned toward the woman, and advanced on her, the sounds of blows and cries filling young Bruce's ears. He covered his head and cowered in the corner as his mother was beaten, and only uncovered his eyes when the noise stopped.

Turning, exhausted in his rage, the enormous man grabbed the skinny mop-haired boy and lifted him bodily from the ground. Fear filled Bruce's heart even while anger struggled for the upper hand. He felt his chest swell and begin to ache in a dangerous way as the man pulled his face close.

"You're a mutant, boy," the man breathed, alcohol heavy on his breath as he exhaled into the boy's nostrils. "Nobody gets that on a test without cheating."

"I didn't cheat," Bruce whispered, and his father drew him still closer, so close that Bruce's eyes hurt with trying to focus.

"You see that?" He jerked his head toward the sobbing heap clad in a housedress that was the boy's mother, and broke into an intoxicated smile. "This is your fault. I told her you'd grow up to be a freak. If you were normal, I wouldn't be like this. Just admit you cheated."

Bruce's muddy brown eyes fell closed. "I didn't cheat," he whispered, his mouth dry.

The man only continued in a slow drawl. "I told her you'd be a freak. Turns out I was right."

He released the kid into a heap on the floor, watching him closely as he scrabbled to his feet, his too-short jeans faded and torn, and his shoes stained with evidence of walking to and from school every day.

Lumbering from the room without another word, Brian Banner slammed the door behind him, and with a deep ragged breath, Rebecca rose, and went to her boy, wrapping him in her bruised arms and letting her tears fall into his hair. He was shaking from head to toe. She could not see his face, but after she slowly began to clean up the broken glass and plaster and other evidence of her husband's ongoing rage, he continued to shake, not with fear, but with suppressed anger...