So apparently it's my goal to write an OC fic for all of my favorite fandoms? I described myself as a pull-back car VROOMING out this story after watching some of the MCU that I needed to catch up on. I KNOW I have a lot of stories in the works, but this one basically sprang fully-formed from my forehead and I don't know what else to tell you!
Now, for the real talk. Does this summary read like the premise of every fangirl's first fic? You betcha. I can promise you that it doesn't read like badfic, though. There's some deep characterization scenes in here, some pretty funny moments, action scenes, and hopefully a compelling, realistic romance between two people that never should have met, but for the hand of fate.
The chapter titles are a journey through the phases and names for the sun's light hitting the Earth.
Chapter One: Astronomical Dawn
She woke to the sun, as always.
When she opened her eyes, though, she saw that it wasn't the sun that bathed her in brightness. In fact, there was only one yellow-tinged light, and that was positioned over her bed. The bulbs everywhere else were harsh white, their utilitarianism matching the hospital room she was lying in. Looking down, she saw an IV in one arm and a pulse oximeter soft-taped to the opposite hand. As she blinked rapidly, trying to figure out what had happened- nothing hurt, but that didn't mean much, depending on what was in that IV -to put her in this position, she saw movement at the other end of the room.
A man wearing a white lab coat was bent over a sink, washing his hands.
She had a decision to make: pretend to sleep, wait for him to turn around and notice that she was awake, or call out to him. The man turned before she had a chance to choose for herself, and suddenly, the whole situation made a perverse sort of sense. It was obviously a dream.
The man in the lab coat was Mark Ruffalo.
"You're awake," he said, offering a half-smile. "Good."
Inwardly, she was confused. Sure, she liked the actor, though she'd really only seen him in a few things, most of them Marvel. Why would he be in her dreams over anyone else? Had she watched a YouTube clip the night before and forgotten?
Maybe it was a trick of the light, and any second he'd start looking like a regular person so they could joke about her ridiculous but complimentary first impression.
After drying his hands, the man in the lab coat walked over and stood at the foot of her bed, looking awkward. He still looked like Ruffalo. She told herself that if she had to wake up in a hospital bed, it would be best if she were dreaming anyway. The kinds of accidents where the person didn't even remember what happened tended to be the worst ones.
"I've had almost a week to figure out what to say to you when you did wake up, and here I am. I've got nothing," the man said.
"A week?"
He winced. "See, I should have done better than that." He ran a hand through his hair. "I can promise you, you're in perfect health right now. I'm Dr. Banner-"
"Doctor Bruce Banner is in my hospital room when I wake up. He alludes to my having been in some sort of coma for a week, but not to worry, I'm in good health? Tell me, Doctor: would you believe him?"
"No. No, I wouldn't. You're absolutely right." He sighed, then looked around behind him to grab a folding chair. He opened it and sat down. She scrambled to scoot up in the bed, feeling odd about the idea of talking to someone while lying prone.
She liked that he reached out and pushed some buttons to adjust her bed so she could sit up. Once she was all situated, he said, "All right, maybe I should start over?"
"Nah, just push through it. This is a dream anyway, so it's not like I'll have any lasting psychological damage if this conversation gets scary," she told him.
"A dream?" the man said. "What makes you say that?"
"The part where you're either a fictional character from a superhero movie series, or just the actor playing that fictional character?" she said bluntly. She looked around at the room. It did look a bit more 'futuristic' than an ordinary hospital room. "My mind is ridiculously inventive, that's for sure."
'Bruce-Mark Ruffalo-Banner' looked at her with a mixture of concern and amusement. "'Superhero movie series,' okay. Just because you might have seen me on television-"
"Are you ever on television?" she interrupted. "Like, you, you, not Hulk you? Because Bruce Banner is an incredibly private person, and it's probably been years since he's been in the kind of position to need to do that."
"JARVIS? Encrypt this conversation, would you? Just to be on the safe side," he said.
=Certainly, Dr. Banner. What level of encryption do you desire?=
"The highest."
=Done.=
He raised an eyebrow as he looked back at her. "So you recognize me, you're saying? Would you recognize the other Avengers if I showed them to you?" Before she had a chance to answer, he leaned forward in the chair, a look of compassion on his face. "You know, if the knowledge that you're here in a Stark facility is overwhelming, no one would blame you if you'd come up with some sort of a delusion-"
"Have you ever heard of Mark Ruffalo?" she interrupted. "Paul Bettany?"
The stiff way that 'Banner' straightened in his chair made her nervous. "Bettany… Yeah, I think so. Is that who I look like to you? I can't picture him."
"No, you're the other one. Bettany is the voice of JARVIS, actually."
=Paul Bettany. Shakespearean stage actor of much acclaim. Known for his charity work raising awareness of childhood learning disabilities.=
"Can you play a clip of his voice?" 'Banner' asked, sounding a bit stunned. By the time JARVIS's clip of Bettany had finished playing, she had his full, wild-eyed attention.
"If it's any consolation, Mr. JARVIS, this is a dream, and the whole thing will fade away just out of reach when I wake up. The interesting ones always do," she said, looking up at the ceiling.
= If it's of any consolation to you in return, I shall still be available to assist you once you have determined it is not a dream. =
"Analysis of that voice in comparison to yours, JARVIS?"
=The two are indistinguishable, Doctor Banner. I am forced to conclude that Mr. Stark modeled my voice on Mr. Bettany. It is unsurprising; they have been noted to be seen together at some events both before and after my creation.=
"Is it possible that you've formed this-"
"Don't say delusion again," she warned the doctor.
The sheepish smile that he offered her was pure Bruce Banner circa the first Avengers movie. "Fair enough. But it's a thought, isn't it? There've been some suggestions of an animated series-"
It was her turn to interrupt. "Which you'd probably rather set yourself on fire than participate in! A team of animators creating a cartoon Hulk to smash things?"
"All right, I yield." He laughed lightly.
"I tell you what. You tell me why I'm here at SHIELD or Avengers' compound or whatever, in a hospital bed, and we can decide if it sounds realistic enough not to be a dream, deal?" she said, crossing her arms.
'Banner' winced.
"Yeah, I thought so. Lay it on me anyway, I guess," she said.
He leaned forward, his demeanor shifting to businesslike. "As you might know, the HYDRA organization has revealed itself to have been growing in strength. We believe they have an item of great power, and during our search for that item, we found you."
"This is right out of 'superhero origin story plot points,' and you still think you're not a figment of my imagination?"
"When we got to the base where you were discovered, we cut the power, like always," he said, not reacting to her comment at all. "By the time we got to the heart of the facility, three of the five subjects on artificial support had already perished."
It was on the tip of her tongue to say something like, 'And here's where you tell me I was one of the two, but hear me out: what if I was one of the three, and this is all a death fever dream?!' Something about his bleak tone of resignation stopped her.
"The research we salvaged was about alternate universes. There wasn't much left, but after our guys examined the bodies of the three who died, we understood more." He reached up to scratch at his neck; he looked like he was struggling to figure out how to explain the rest. Considering what he'd already gone over, she couldn't imagine what was yet to come.
"Are you even allowed to tell me this?"
The doctor let out a rush of breath. It wasn't quite a laugh, but it wasn't full of relief, either. "Honestly? I have no idea. But when I was hurt- I wanted to know. I wanted to know everything. Finding out some of the details later… wasn't great."
"If you're dancing around the idea that I have some sort of weird, HYDRA-induced superpower, I'd like to remind you again that this isn't real. And if it was, would you want to anger the woman with a HYDRA-induced superpower? Just tell me!" she said, trying to ignore the way she felt like an exhausted rabbit tied to her hospital bed by IV tubing.
She was ashamed of her outburst when he got up and walked away from her. "JARVIS?" he said, finally.
=Your HYDRA file shows that, through as-yet undetermined means, their scientists found a way to pull you from your original universe into ours. According to the documentation we discovered, this can have the effect of converting the energy created by your absence into a… HYDRA-induced superpower.=
"Did your boss teach you how to be snarky or did you manifest that way as a Stark-induced superpower?" she asked. "And what power? Something really dangerous? Is that why Banner's in here with me? Only Hulk can contain the horror of my abilities, something like that?"
When JARVIS had reused her phraseology, Banner had turned around, his mouth open as if objecting to the blunt way the AI had revealed the information. At her accusation about his presence in the room, though, that objection solidified into refutation.
"No. Absolutely not. I'm here in my capacity as a doctor, you're not dangerous. Quite the contrary, actually." He broke into a crooked smile and walked up to stand directly beside her bed. "You're a healer."
8888888888
The next few hours were spent as if she were filming some Marvel B-roll. She met multiple SHIELD/Stark/Avengers-affiliated doctors and spoke to a woman who looked a lot like Agent Maria Hill-and through it all, her certainty that this was a dream was simply reinforced, over and over.
After all, she couldn't even remember her own name!
Despite telling her with complete confidence that she was a healer of some sort, Banner (he was definitely Banner, not Ruffalo. The latter might be a good actor, but she doubted he had the same subtle undercurrent of self-loathing that Bruce Banner had) had been cagey about how they knew for sure. She suspected the Avengers had video footage from the complex they'd plucked her out of, but this was her dream, and she didn't want to watch creepy HYDRA footage of herself in pain.
She went through a couple gentle questioning sessions with some doctors, then had an encounter with a nervous-looking agent who backed down from his questions about her family every time Banner cleared his throat. Banner's behavior seemed more like a bodyguard or a psychiatrist than a doctor, but she appreciated his presence all the same. Unfortunately, the bodyguard thing didn't last much past the point where someone brought her dinner.
"You've been a lab rat for who knows how long, and stuck in a hospital bed for at least a week. Eat it anyway," Banner said after she'd picked at her food for a full ten minutes without really eating anything.
"Don't you have sciencing to do?"
"It's your dream, you tell me."
She rolled her eyes and started with the jello, just to see if he'd react poorly to dessert first. "I can't believe you thought anything that happened this afternoon would convince me otherwise. I mean, come on."
"I'll admit, it is a bit fantastical."
"Well, so far the only thing in the 'it's real' column is that the food sucks. If this is a dream, it should be amazing. I want my money back." She tossed her empty jello cup onto the tray in mock disgust.
"If everyone could dream a perfect world, food and all, there'd be a lot more sleep tech, don't you think? Hell, I'd invest in it."
Banner looked down at his shoes with a wistful expression, but she felt awful. Of course this man in particular would seek out a perfect dream world. Would it be a place where he could have a bad day and not change color? No, she decided. He probably wished he could just go back to a time when he didn't worry about that happening at all.
Saying 'sorry' would draw attention to her blunder, so she deflected. "So is it weird that I don't remember my name, or is that standard dream stuff?"
Banner's expression shuttered again. "Not strange. Head trauma, psychological trauma-"
She shook her head vigorously. "Nope, don't want to know about that. What's the name on my chart, Bruce?"
"Hyacinth." He lifted his head and smiled, the expression twisted by something she thought might be related to her using his first name without permission. "It's actually Hy Doe, I presume because of where we found you, but I guess one of the nurses was horrified and penciled in a better version."
"That's sweet of her, but is it necessary, at this point? You said you've recovered my files, why not put my true name on there?"
"It's not quite that simple." He took off his glasses with one hand and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the other. "Based on what we learned from the people who didn't make it, there are some big and small differences between universes. You share genetic material, but you're not the same person."
"What happened to that person?"
"It was a swap. A one way trip. We're pretty sure your counterpart couldn't have survived it." Banner's expression was bleak.
Words dried up in her mouth. Everything up to that point had felt otherworldly, reinforcing the dream, but that felt real, somehow. She tried on the name in her mind. Hyacinth. It would do. Now, to push back.
"How do you know I'm a healer, Bruce? Did you see evidence in your HYDRA data? A video?" He shook his head, and she pulled off the pulse ox in a quick, harsh motion, letting it hang on its cord. "You're a bad liar, has anyone ever told you that?" The monitor started beeping. "Can I heal myself, do you think?" Hyacinth asked, resting her hand on the IV.
Banner strode over and grabbed both of her wrists. "JARVIS, kill that, will you?"
=Certainly.=
The beeping stopped.
"You weren't in stasis when we got to the facility," Banner said in a quiet, urgent voice. He was still holding her wrists, but the grip had gentled. "When we got to you, you were trying to heal one of the people who was."
"Trying?" she whispered. "God, what did you see?" Suddenly, she realized he hadn't, he couldn't have. "Shit, never mind." Pulling gently was enough to dislodge his hold on her. This was too heavy a topic. She needed to shift the tone back to the goofy dream world she'd started out in. "Is that person here, in another room? Jeez, you didn't put Stark in there with them, did you?"
Banner scrubbed a hand over his face, and Hyacinth wondered if she'd crossed a line, but when he lowered his hand, he was laughing.
"Thanks for that," he said, backing up enough to drop into the chair. "I only know what I was told. No, the other survivor's not here. He… had a bad reaction to coming out of stasis. And no, we don't think you can heal yourself." He nodded toward the hospital bed, and Hyacinth blushed.
"Right, if I could, I probably wouldn't have needed to be in here." Then, something he'd already said finally registered. "So if I wasn't in stasis… he attacked me, didn't he? The other guy. Bad enough that I needed all this."
Banner nodded, just once.
"I don't feel anything, though. I mean, yes, I've got this IV but no one's added anything to it in at least four hours. If it were pain relief it would have definitely worn off by now."
"It wasn't physical."
"Oh."
Banner checked his watch. "I should get going. I'll stop by tomorrow morning, but I've got a backlog of things to do in the lab."
"You have a phone, right?" she said, amused and touched at the same time.
His brows furrowed. "Somewhere, probably? I usually just use JARVIS."
"I'm not dictating text messages to an AI!" Hyacinth said, laughing nervously. "I mean, this is all moot anyway. I'll wake up tomorrow with the alarm and head to work, just like always, because-"
"This is all a dream," he finished at the same time she did. "Do me a favor, then?" Banner said, walking over to the door and putting one hand on the knob. "Start thinking about what you'll do when you find out it isn't?"
"Bruce, I'm literally calling you Bruce. It's a dream. If it were real, it'd take more dinners, fewer IVs, and about ten years of time spent with you to get to that point, and you know it," she said. "Say hi to RDJ for me tomorrow, okay?"
"Sometimes we have to accept a slightly altered reality, I guess," Bruce shrugged. "It was nice to meet you, Hyacinth."
8888888888
She woke to a brief, sharp pain in her hand.
"Ooh, I'm sorry. I was hoping to get this out without waking you," a voice said. It was a nurse wearing the same uniform as the ones from her weird Marvel dream the day before. As she stared, the nurse continued the process of removing the IV, slapping on a bandaid and squeezing her hand. "Someone dropped this off for you. I don't think it's even out for consumer release yet. Lucky!"
The nurse, whose nametag seemed to be deliberately obscured by a flap on her uniform, handed her a phone. As soon as Hyacinth was alone in the room again, she flipped it over. There wasn't an apple logo on the back.
"No Apple, huh? I guess this is a 'StarkPhone?' " As soon as she spoke, the phone's screen lit up with a message.
JARVIS told me you were awake. How are you handling the whole being wrong thing? I could come by for lunch.
-DBBanner
"JARVIS, isn't that a violation of HIPAA? Or do you even have that legislation in this messed up fake universe?"
=Good morning, Miss Hyacinth. As it happens, Doctor Bruce Banner is your medical proxy, as assigned by an emergency waiver signed by our government liaison.=
"Yeah, sure, why not," she muttered. Louder, she said, "I like you, JARVIS, but I don't know about the whole 'Hyacinth' thing. If I'm going to have to go all in on this being real, can I speak to the manager? That's Fury, right?" As soon as she said it, she remembered the scenes of Fury's attack, his scene in (…was it a barn?) saying he'd be in touch.
=You are scheduled for a meeting with the current Director in the afternoon today, with the caveat that your doctor must sign off on your fitness to attend.=
"One of the two I met yesterday, then, because it would be highly improper for my doctor to be the same person as my medical proxy, and it would be ridiculous to think this facility would do anything that wasn't by the books," Hyacinth said with deep sarcasm.
=Doctor Banner would like to know if there is a problem with your device, as you have yet to respond.=
She looked at the phone. There were no obvious buttons, and though it felt kind of ridiculous, she placed her thumb on a few more obvious areas where a fingerprint scan might have woken it up. Nothing happened. "It's as mystifying as a brick, J. I have no idea how to work this thing."
=Hold it up to your face as if you were reading from it. It has facial recognition.=
"I'm definitely not smart enough for this universe if it's real, but this tracks for one of those embarrassment dreams," she muttered, holding the phone up.
In the seconds before it registered her face, she saw a reflection of herself in the black glass, and gasped.
Her features were recognizable, but her hair-her hair had no color left at all, as if had been shocked white! A few minutes later, while she was still sitting there stunned, the door to her room burst open, and Bruce skidded in. He was out of breath, and she dropped the phone on her lap in surprise.
"I forgot to warn you. I'm sorry," he said.
"What is going on with you?!" she blurted out. "I mean, yes, I'm going to need a mirror right the heck now, but you're like, one of the most private and reticent characters in the whole Marvel cinematic universe, maybe even on IMDB, and you're really just… disproportionately invested in my well being. What gives?"
Bruce held up a finger, stuck his head out of the door and spoke with someone for a few seconds, and then shut it again. She would have expected him to make another 'no, it's really not a dream' joke, but instead, he almost looked guilty.
"JARVIS?" he said, not breaking eye contact with her.
=Encrypting.=
She must have looked like she was about to leap out of the bed and demand answers, because Bruce held up both hands in front of him in surrender. "Stay put, all right? I'll explain."
She nodded begrudgingly and pulled the ponytail holder out of her hair, tugging a chunk of it down to where she could see it. Her hair wasn't blonde or white but a really rich silver color, a full-bodied, shining grey that was obviously not related to aging.
He hadn't said anything, despite promising to explain, so she said, "You knew my hair isn't naturally this color. You have files with my picture on them. Even if they're files from this universe, so not exactly Me me."
"Yes."
A brief knock on the door prompted Bruce to answer it, taking the compact hand mirror from the unseen person offering it. He handed over the mirror.
She gasped again, and didn't have to look up to know he was wincing.
"My eyes," she whispered, stunned. All the color seemed to have been leached away from her hair and eyes. They were both silver, if a person could be described as having silver eyes. The word 'grey' didn't seem to come close enough.
"You know some of my story, I'm sure," Bruce said, coming over to stand next to the bed. His tone was hushed, as if he didn't even want JARVIS to hear what he was saying. "I saw your files before I saw you, and I felt a responsibility- I know what it's like to not be the same after something catastrophic. To not recognize yourself in what's left."
She didn't want to reject his words, not when he'd said them in a way that made clear how much they laid him bare-but she couldn't accept this. It was too much, all of it.
"I'd like to wake up, now, please."
Bruce let out a tiny, miserable sound.
=Excuse me, I thought you should know that I set a do not disturb on the room, but it's about to be-=
Tony Stark's voice on the same intercom broke through JARVIS's warning, brassy and sarcastic.
"Hey, Bruce, sorry to bother you, but I figure you'd like to know your setup here is about to fry some circuits, and the last time I messed with your lab you swatted me like a fly, so…"
Hyacinth's hands rushed to her cheeks on hearing Stark's voice. Her heartbeat started racing and she tasted metal in her mouth. The possibility that she could be sharing a universe with Tony Stark was hitting her like a boxer. For the first time, she wondered if there was a chance, however small, that it was real.
"I gotta go," Bruce said.
She knew she was probably blushing again, so she just nodded. When he'd made it to the door, she added one last thing.
"Say hi to RDJ for me."