Bruce Banner looked worn and skinner than he did the last time any of them had seen him. Beneath his eyes were dark bags. Before him stood The Avengers. He recognized a few of the faces. Tony and Steve, but also the agent. Rumlow, he thought he'd seen him wandering about on the helicarrier. He sipped from a glass of water.
"Hey Bruce, we're going to need you to explain what happened."
"I…I don't think I follow, Cap."
"Bruce, please don't give me that. We saw Hulk and he was…more articulate than what we're used to. I watched a monster burn a whole through the center of your chest and have it suddenly close up."
"It's nothing that you need to worry about," he shot back.
"Bruce. Were your friends, you can talk to us. Tell us where you've been. We thought you died during the battle."
"I did, Tony."
The bomb didn't work like a typical bomb. Bruce felt it. It wasn't anything like a nuke. It struck the center of Manhattan and pulled everything metal towards it. Even as The Hulk, he could feel it. He could feel the iron in his blood and the fillings in his teeth suddenly get pulled from him, all the while his body was buried under everything that wasn't pulled into the bomb. He'd been hit by a bomb once, it was a trip, but it felt nothing like this.
He was buried under the weight of a skyscraper and the weight of it crushed his chest. Before long. And just like that Bruce was dead.
There was a space and in that space was a light. A single pinprick of green in a void. It expanded outwards, turning into a flash of light that was brighter than the sun. In the sky, if it could be described as that was a green door. The whole feeling felt familiar to him as he stepped through it. Crossing through the insurmountable void and into the vast horizon that was both ahead and beneath.
Hulk awoke underground, beneath a collapsed building. Up above the sounds of violence were gone. All the sound above him was gone. A cold silence. It didn't take him long to make his way back up to the surface. To a cold, empty city. A veritable crater in the wake of the battle.
When the day came, he was no longer the Hulk. He was simply Bruce. Bruce, dressed in rags. Running off into the day's light, away from the destruction.
In The Avengers Tower, he explained all of this to the assembly, "I've done this song and dance before. The problem isn't that The Hulk isn't keeping me from dying. It's that the gamma isn't allowing us to stay dead."
"That's kind of morbid, don't you think?" said Tony.
"Morbid doesn't even describe it. It's…It's been like this the entire time and I've somehow not noticed. Every time I've tried to leave or the bomb that did this to me, I've been dead this entire time."
"That doesn't explain why old green jaws suddenly has the vocab of an adult," he replied.
"Because that's not…he isn't the person you knew. For a time. Before New York, when I wandered there was just me and him, but now things are different. This other hulk vanished him. You can't trust what he says, guys."
"Tony, it seems like you've had a rough bit of time. Just relax now. You're safe, we're all safe," said Steve.
"How can you say that with a straight face?" Bruce licked his lip and his expression grew cold. "There are people here that I've never met in my life. Where are Barton and Natasha?"
Steve opened his mouth as if to speak but he could not. Instead Tony spoke for him, "They died when the government dropped the bomb. But I trust Carol and Frank, they're straight shooters, Bruce. Bone's over there, I don't really know him, so I could really go either way with him."
Bruce seemed to ease up a bit when Tony spoke, "I have to stay inside. If night falls, I could turn into him. If I die, I'll turn into him. I'm going to be no help to you all with whatever the new direction is in the initiative."
"That's fine Bruce. We don't need the hulk. We need Bruce and your big brain. You are our friend," said Tony.
"Thanks," said Bruce.
