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Chapter One
"I'm not leaving you, Bruce," Harry said and he could see the frustration writing itself across the man's face before he took a large breath, smoothing out. The wizard would never admit but he was a bit disappointed, meeting the Other Guy had been an exhilarating experience and fighting him even more so.
"Harry," Bruce said, his tone tight and clipped. "It's dangerous around me. The Other Guy has almost killed you three times—"
"Emphasise on almost."
"—what's to say the next time won't be fatal?"
"What's to say that the next time the army or SHIELD are after you I'll be able to escape with you before people get hurt?" Harry asked and he could see Bruce sober. He didn't like it, pushing these buttons and reminding him that he could nothing when the Other Guy took over, but the times he had gone head-to-head with the green beast Harry had been forced to get stronger.
Something he wanted to happen.
"We have a symbiotic relationship, Bruce, especially with the danger."
Bruce shook his head and went into a pace, looking at Harry at times and violently jabbing a finger in him direction but saying nothing. "You're crazy," he finally said. "You are insane. The humane thing for me to do would be to cart you off to an insane asylum and have you locked up. I'm certainly strong enough."
"But then you'd miss my company," Harry said. Bruce said nothing and that was admission enough.
"I have plants to look at," the taller man said. "Looking at you brings up feelings I shouldn't be having."
Harry let out a breath as Bruce walked away in a huff, nursing the ache at his side, legs and arms. He'd had a bout with the Other Guy three hours before, an hour long spout that had ended with Harry almost crushed by the green monstrosity before he had Apparated a distance away and watched as the Other Guy spent his anger and turned back to Bruce.
He closed his eyes, letting his conjuration engulf him in its comfort. Bruce, all things considered, was not like any person he'd ever met even without the whole turning into a hulking form. The closest he could come to was that he was like a more intense version of Hermione, especially when she had just been introduced to Arithmancy. He took to magic not as this wondrous ability that could not be explained but as something that had rules behind it and somehow fit into the constraints of the universe.
It was adorable in most instances. Harry had to but imagine a shorter, female form, brown hair and he would be able to see Hermione. Perhaps that was the other reason Harry radiated around Bruce, not only that he would satisfy his objective to get stronger but the need that Harry had in each universe to have friends. That desire was dangerous at the best of times, it had caused Harry to lose control of his emotions to release Cursed Fire.
He shook the thoughts away, they belonged to the universe of before and had nothing to do with this. The only things pertinent now were the lessons he'd learnt and the threat he would face sometime in the future. Harry took a long breath and went into his mindscape, the next few hours were those he'd use to filter the memories he would need the most, thereafter putting them in his vault. It was a task Harry didn't like, but it was no less a necessity.
Though he was Master of Death, there really wasn't that much difference between him and the average wizard. He was harder than most muggles to knock down, something he blamed on having played Quidditch through a majority of his young life, and he healed a slight bit faster. This meant that as he got older, passing the age most wizard would have died, his memory started not being as sharp as it should have been, particularly since he had over three hundred years of knowledge under his belt.
Occlumency did its part but even the mental technique could only go so far.
Some memories needed to be destroyed while others were stuffed into his vault. He got to the task and in that moment, the lines between sleep and working on the mind were blurred.
"Harry." The wizard groaned, his eyes coming open and wincing as a bead of sunlight hit him. "Harry wake up. I have food."
It took a moment before a drifting scent of meat over fire hit him and his stomach groaned. He sat up and hissed, his hand going at his side. Bruce frowned but Harry ignored it. The man didn't trust himself, but then again it was hard not to considering the Other Guy was also a part of himself. Harry remembered Moony while he still lived and how he had feared the wolf, but while Moony had had his potion, Bruce was left to deal with the monster within all on his lonesome.
"Where are we?" Harry asked as he looked around, tall trees and humid air the only thing he could go on. The wizard had been forced to Portkey so many times around the world since meeting Bruce that he no longer paid it any attention.
"I'm still not sure," said Bruce. "But from what little I could see we might be in South America. Not sure about the specifics yet."
"Doesn't matter at any rate," Harry muttered. "It's safe?"
Bruce shrugged. "It's been a while since I've been here. I don't think the army or SHIELD will find me here for some time."
"That's good. You went hunting," Harry said, gesturing at what looked like a rabbit over a fire.
"I got bored and hungry, and you left our things behind. I'm getting better with the whole hunting thing, thanks for that by the way. Helps not to need to go into towns as often."
"Thank a man by the name of Mikael for that," said Harry. "He said I depended too much on my wand and seeing as it could easily snapped in half. It helped to be self-sustaining."
"Mikael," said Bruce. "Your mentor. The one who taught you to fight." Harry nodded. "Was he like you too? Magic?"
Harry shook his head. "In a fashion. He was a vampire. The first vampire." The look that Bruce was shooting at Harry was the best he'd ever seen, his eyes shining with shock and excitement.
"Vampires are real?" he asked. "Can you introduce me to one? How has SHIELD not found out? How are they keeping themselves hidden? How strong are they?"
"Not here," Harry said. Bruce's train was derailed and his brows shot up. "Vampires, I mean. I'm not too sure they exist here. I haven't had time to explore yet but maybe they're in hiding."
Bruce frowned as he often did when Harry said something alluding to his travels through dimensions, but their relationship was still growing. It was only a matter of time until Bruce would no longer contain himself though and the curiosity would be overwhelming. Harry decided not to push it and let things take their natural course.
"It would've been cool to see one though," he said after a while. "The daylight thing. Is it true? I mistakenly watched this movie once. Their vampires sparkled."
"No," said Harry with a small chuckle. He remembered reading the book, something he'd thought he would have to forget but with it being a similarity in this world he decided otherwise. "Those without daylight rings burn and those that do are can just walk in the sun as though it isn't a bother."
"So where there are vampires," said Bruce. "I assume there were others like you."
"Different methods but same result yes," Harry answered. "They didn't need wands for one thing. Always thought that unfair to be honest. And I'm a wizard, Bruce," he added. "I doubt any other scientist would look down on you if you did."
"But you're not, are you," said Bruce and there was an excited lilt in his voice. "Magic by definition is chaotic and can't be explained, fuelled at times by belief, but what you've showed me has predetermined rules that can't be broken. You can't bring people back from the dead. Two of your forms of teleportation require one to be stationary and with the other there's a chance of you losing a part of yourself in you do it while moving too fast, and there are more. Those rules and constraints are scientific in nature."
"You say tomato, I say potato, at the end it's the same thing. We eat it."
"I think you know how wrong that is," Bruce muttered. Harry just hand waved it much to Bruce's amusement.
"At any rate call me a wizard, it's what my kind are called," he said.
Bruce shook his head. "I feel dirty thinking about the word."
Harry couldn't help chuckling at that, but his eyes strayed towards the meat as another gust of wind sent the scent to his nose. "When are we eating, anyway?" he asked. "It's the reason you woke me up, anyway."
"I need a knife," said Bruce.
"How did you manage to skin it without one?" Harry asked, frowning.
"Used my hands. It took me an hour and I'm sure there's less meat because of it."
Harry shrugged and moved, calling the Elder Wand from its holster and moving his wand in a complicated pattern before a knife, gleaming as a bead of light hit it, appeared. Bruce grabbed it from it from the air and looked it over, the glimmer in his eyes of excitement. Then he tightened his grip around it and broke it in half.
"Just testing how strong it is," Bruce said, looking abashed at the look Harry shot him. The wizard waved his wand and the pieces of the knife disappeared. He conjured another. This one he did not break, instead he started cutting the meat into strips. "How long would it have lasted had you not made it disappear?"
Harry shrugged. "Stopped counting. I've gotten to the point where I can keep multiple high-level conjurations without it draining me much. I've learnt to swap the links though," said Harry. "There's power in nature and I can use that to fuel my spells. It's something I haven't had time to fully work on though."
"So anything you do," said Bruce. "Requires energy. Where does the energy to keep this knife come from?"
"Me," Harry answered. "My core."
"What's that like?" Bruce asked. "Can it be measured how much power it can give off? Where do you get the energy in the first place, food can't possibly sustain something like the stuff you can make…but then again I've seen you eat when we have money. Even so if you were getting your energy from food with the way we've been having to deal lately and having to keep the Other Guy busy you'd be thinner as your body burnt off all your energy…"
Bruce continued and Harry listened. Sometimes he would speak in terms that were well over Harry's head but his stream of thoughts were something Harry liked. He'd never paid much attention to the muggle world and its advances, but with Bruce those advances were being shoved down his throat in a way that made him question everything.
Where before he'd thought of magic and science as two distinct arts, now the lines were starting to blur.
The next few days became odd after the conversation. Bruce had it in his mind to go hunting again and he didn't stop until each day Harry could say he was sated. Harry wasn't sure if the man was afraid he would pass out at any moment or it was because he'd taken to groaning whenever he shifted, but his scavenging for food was a task that took him away from their campsite for hours at a time.
"Found a village," he said as a week was starting to pass, there was equal parts excitement and dread in his tone, but Harry had learnt that was always the case with Bruce. He couldn't feel happy without feeling scared that the happiness would quickly turn to anger and call forth the Other Guy.
"Yeah?"
Bruce nodded eagerly. "They needed some medical help and were willing to give us vegetables for it," he said. "A change of diet is good. Is meat, vegetable or fruit better at refilling your core?"
Harry only shrugged. "Not something I pay much attention to. I haven't had magical exhaustion in years."
"So that's a thing?" Bruce asked. "I'm guessing when your core runs dry?" Harry nodded. "When it happened, how did you deal?"
"Eat. Sleep. A day at most and I could cast spells without a splitting headache." Harry tried to move and found the pain bearable though his side still slightly ached. He stood and stretched, pushing back the pain until it was a dull ache against his mind.
"Should you be up, your ribs could be broken."
"They're not," Harry said. "Breaks are easily enough to fix. Its bruises I have problems with. They need salves and the like, and I've never been too good at the healing arts. I have a good tolerance for pain though. South America, you said." Bruce nodded. "I'll be right back" And he disappeared before Bruce could say anything.
It was the secret he hadn't yet told Bruce, but if there was nothing that Harry was good at was being paranoid. A threat could not be defeated if it was not understood, which was the reason in the past six months in this world he'd been searching everything he knew about angels and in particular Azrael. Harry had found nothing so far, but he hadn't thought he would make quick progress, particularly since he had to read a majority of the bible first before moving on to other texts. For someone who didn't like reading for the sake of reading, it was a trying experience.
He found a book store that had literature written in English and stole himself a bible. Harry might have felt bad at the crime, but the truth of it was, money was something that would harder to make now since he was undoubtedly at the centre of the public image. Bruce had told him that the army and SHIELD, two organisations which had advances in technology that sometimes gave the Other Guy a hard time, would be after Harry just as they were after Bruce. This would mean Harry couldn't attract too much attention while trying to get back the fortune he had lost through death or he would be putting Bruce in even more danger.
Which meant he had to survive by doing petty crimes and confounding poor muggles.
How far he'd fallen since his first world, when Harry would have felt guilty about the act. Instead of the fact that he now his mind registered it as just another action that had to be done.
It was with that same apathy that allowed him to walk into a grocery store and stole a month's worth of food stock, Obliviating the store clerk before he Disapparated.
AN: This story follows after A Hero's Journal. Hopefully it will encompass all of the MCU but I doubt Doctor Strange will have a place. I don't know the comics and therefore do not have a good feel of who he is.