NOTE: if I'd have found this chapter title before I started the story, the entire thing would be named Parallel Postulate, instead. Basically, Euclid's Fifth Postulate is describing a line that falls across two other lines. It says that if the angle created by each 'corner' that the joins make are less than 90%, then the other two lines will eventually meet at a single point. Tony is the line that falls, and Cicely and Bruce are the two lines that will eventually meet!
Google: 'wikipedia Parallel postulate'
ALSO: I will admit to never getting a chance to watch the Ed Norton Hulk movie. I have no idea whether Blonsky was 'Emil' enough for Hulk to remember, but we'll say he was.
Chapter Five: Euclid's Fifth Postulate
Bruce's left side was still a bit bruised when he woke up, despite the healing factor of the Hulk. He could feel it, tender and unfamiliar, as he rolled over onto his back on the springy floor of the room Tony had built for him. It had been a long time since he had felt a true serious injury; Bruce wondered exactly how long. Years, that was for sure. All of those injuries, even the one where he'd actually shot himself, had resulted in the Other Guy taking over and his body repairing the damage. For it not to have been fully repaired by the time Bruce was back in control of himself must have meant an extensive injury.
He looked up at the ceiling above him and found the answer.
There was a circular metal collection of slabs, not quite over his head, but close. They were clustered and angled, looking a lot like something he'd seen in the science fiction show Stargate, called the Iris. There it had been used to cover up the titular gate to prevent anything from moving through it without permission. Had Tony built a shaft through his tower to this room? Had he dropped Bruce all that way?
"Dr. Banner, Sir has requested that I monitor your condition and inform him when you are prepared to speak with him over the comm. Shall I give you some more time to adjust or are you ready now?"
He was used to JARVIS, but there was something strange about hearing the AI speaking so casually here, of all places.
"Go on, but I'd like you to do a welfare check on Cicely Besnard. The information I learned that set me off directly relates to her safety."
"Certainly, Dr. Banner."
It stood to reason that Tony had a protocol in place to make sure that simply telling him what had brought forth the Hulk wouldn't do it again, but Bruce remembered what it was, and that information was still relevant. At least, he hoped it was.
"If it isn't the Jaw-y Green Giant! How much do you hate watching videos of yourself as your chartreuse creature?"
"It's not my favorite thing, Tony. Why?"
"He was really chatty during the flight. Seemed like what he was trying to say was important, but I couldn't figure it out."
Bruce was genuinely surprised. He sat up, resting his forearms on his knees, frowning. "Is there audio?"
"Sure. Here, ignore the wind noise:"
He understood what Tony meant as an audio file started to play. The sound of the wind whipping was distracting, but then the Hulk started talking.
"BRUCE'S ANN. ANN DANGER. NEW ROSS HIRE NEW EMIL WATCH BRUCE'S ANN."
He recognized some of the names, but not their context.
"Bruce?"
"Give me a few minutes!" Bruce yelled at Tony. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and added, "I'm not that angry, I just need to think, okay?" He was on edge, and if he wasn't careful, he'd lose it again and Cicely would be in even more danger. Waiting to hear back from Stark's AI was making him antsy.
"There's clothes through a human-sized door activated by your fingerprint, light it up, will you JARVIS?"
Bruce stood and looked around until he saw a (green, of course) blinking light above a door-shaped indent in the padding of the walls. He walked over and activated the controls, opening it up to find a few outfits hanging on the wall. One of them was a t-shirt with Oscar the Grouch on it, which had Bruce laughing despite the serious moment.
"Dr. Banner? I can report that Cicely Besnard is currently at home. The man who has been seen following her around was not visible on any of the surveillance taken from her journey."
"That's less encouraging than it sounds, JARVIS. Someone's hiring people to tail her, that's what made me lose it. We need to tell her, and either move her somewhere safe or arrange for some kind of security until we can find out why. And it sure as hell better not be because of me."
"Shall I inform Mr. Stark about this development?"
"Please."
Bruce dressed quickly, his mind on the names that Hulk had used. He'd sounded upset, in as much as the Other Guy could have variations in demeanor. Ross was obvious, and so was Emil, for that matter, but calling them new was throwing Bruce. And 'Ann?' He couldn't think of any-
Wait.
Betty had told him about a nurse who had been particularly kind to her in the hospital after his initial rampage as the Hulk. The woman had changed shifts, altered her schedule, so she could be there for Betty. That nurse's name had been Ann.
He stumbled out of the changing room, finding the light switch and turning it off with a weak hand. Did Hulk remember that? The creature's thought processes were primitive, he knew, but were they associative?
'New' Ross. 'New' Emil. 'Bruce's Ann.' Bruce's nurse. A bad guy called in an accomplice to watch Bruce's nurse?
"How's it going, Aris-Toss-All? Whatcha thinking?"
"Hulk was trying to warn you I think. The thing that set me off was finding out her stalker wasn't a stalker at all. He was being paid to watch her, referred to a 'them' that had missed a payment."
There was a minute or two delay in hearing Tony's next response.
"All right, JARVIS is on the case, thanks to what you already told him and some enhanced directives from me. But Bruce? I think you're going to have to really watch those videos and see what you can see. AI is one thing, but-"
"No, I agree," Bruce sighed.
"Don't fret. Your impulsive instinct got us the jump on the guy."
"My existence is harmful to her, Tony."
Just saying it out loud hurt. He'd been looking forward to seeing her in person, after warning the stalker off, even though he wouldn't have approached her. The Hulk's determination to pass along Bruce's message in the only way he could think of was very worrisome to Bruce. It meant that Cicely was more important to him than he'd thought she was, which was already too much.
"Seems to me it's too late to worry about that. If there's no way to avoid complicating her life, shouldn't you both at least benefit from it?"
"You got an old laptop you can put on your internal network so I can watch from in here? I don't think I'm ready to head out just yet," Bruce asked, ignoring Tony's question entirely.
"Man, you have no idea how tempted I am to try to set up something on one of those PlaySkool tablets. I won't, though. I know you're taking this seriously."
"Yes, I am."
8888888888
Bruce had been looking through files and sorting them into various folders for about five hours when Tony showed up in his Iron Man suit with a person-sized cot, and some blankets.
"Sorry, sorry," Bruce said, standing up and holding his hands to the small of his back like a man thirty years his senior. "Got carried away."
"Hey, I'm the last person to chastise a good work binge. Getting any headway?"
"There are at least two of them. The guy I scared away and another man," Bruce said grimly. "JARVIS did some background, and I'd just like to say that if I weren't pretty sure this was about the Hulk, I'd be seriously concerned about your access to resources that cross ethics boundaries."
He was being mild. It seemed like JARVIS had the ability to do things that if the US Government did them, they'd be hearing about UN violations for spying on its own citizens. Intellectually, he knew that private citizens were held to a lesser standard, but when it came to some of the things that he'd been involved in over the course of his life, Bruce didn't see much difference in the kinds of people who were willing to cross those lines. That Tony Stark was one of them was concerning. It wouldn't take much to nudge him over into the category of people whose well-meaning concepts were twisted into something horrible.
Bruce would have hoped that the things he'd read about at the Stark Expo a few years back would have taught the man something.
"Bottom line?" Tony asked.
"You're going to need to send someone to approach her. Maybe Romanoff?" he sighed and once again pushed back the protective urgency he'd been feeling all evening.
"Why wouldn't you be the one-"
"Okay, you're Cicely, you recognize me as the person you said something innocuous to only for it to turn out to be a soulmark on my body. You ran away, but I've found you, and uh oh, here I am to warn you that someone other than me is stalking you, and it's probably my fault. How will you react? Favorably, do you think?" Bruce shook his head.
"You watched her do research on you, Bruce. She knows you're a scientist. The woman's smart, she can figure out that it's only logical that you tracked her down. It's not like you picked her out of a list of women." Tony flew up to the iris-looking metal door in the ceiling. "JARVIS says you still have some bruising. Should I fit this with some sort of net?"
"Focus, Tony!" Bruce said, irritated. His own comfort was far from a priority right now. "Ideally we set up someone to speak to her as she leaves for work in the morning. Whoever is tracking her was almost certainly warned that we're onto them."
"I can send Clint to watch the entrance now, if it would make you feel better," Tony said, flying back down and landing near Bruce.
"It would."
"I've got at least five empty apartments here, you know. The commute wouldn't be too bad, and-"
Bruce's frustration exploded into a tirade. "I can't get close to this woman, Stark! Look what happened when she vaguely said something in my direction!"
"Wow, you actually do get green around the ears. I thought that was a euphemism!"
Bruce leaned over with his palms on his knees and started doing his breathing. Whether or not there was some kind of genetic imperative to caring for and/or protecting one's soulmate, he felt responsible for the woman's safety. She'd come into contact with him, and shortly afterwards, she'd become a target. Tony's insistence that he remain involved with trying to get her into a safer situation was quite literally driving him insane.
"I'd kick you out of the tower to put her in instead but you're kind of the one guy who should stick around," Tony pointed out.
"We neutralize the threat, let her get on with her life. It's that simple," Bruce said.
"That's right up there with 'create world peace, everyone is happy,' but okay." Tony was hovering over Bruce in a way that would look nonchalant except for the way he lifted higher every time Bruce looked up at him. "I'll send Clint to watch out for her overnight, and in the morning, Nat will drop by for a friendly chat. She's good at undercover bullshit. Maybe something like a routine sweep of suspicious persons caught two men that had been subsequently seen on surveillance footage following her."
Bruce let out a breath. "That could work," he allowed. "Especially if Natasha questions her gently about whether she knows the guys. It could come across like a sting on them, not an operation to protect her."
"Okay, it's settled. Do you want me to read you a bedtime story?" Tony asked, sounding entirely too excited at the prospect.
"I already know about the book Go The Fuck To Sleep, Tony, but nice try," Bruce laughed.
"Damn. I bought it to swap out for one of the books Cap takes to Children's to read to the sick kids every month, but it turns out he actually does his due diligence and checks the books before he leaves. Knew it was me, too," Tony lamented.
"Get out of here before your soulmate blames me for your absence. Good night," Bruce ordered.
"Yes, Dad," Tony said.
"Wow, no snarky nickname?" Bruce couldn't resist.
"All I came up with on the fly was 'Father Throws Best,'" Tony shrugged.