Chapter 28 - White Rabbit
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small,
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all.
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall.
- White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane
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The last thing Leonard remembered, the Tesla's airbags had deployed. He wasn't sure what he had been thinking, because in retrospect, he should have known that the electric car would be no match for a security gate constructed of heavy steel bars. Now he was glad that Tony had pressured him into taking the car as a holiday bonus, because at least that meant it was his own car he had totaled.
He hadn't attempted to move yet, which meant the only thing he had seen of the room he was in was the ceiling, which consisted of the kind of white ceiling tiles used in schools and government buildings. It felt stark and clinical. He didn't think he was in the tower's medical floor. Not that he had spent any time staring at the ceiling of the tower's medical floor; the one time he had had a medical emergency since he'd been living there, he had been taken directly to the hospital. But Tony liked to brag about how he had been involved in the design of each and every room in Avenger's tower, and he would never have chosen such a cheap, mass-produced material.
If he was in the hospital again, that would make sense, given that he'd just been in a self-inflicted car accident. One by one, he tried to move each of his fingers and toes and was relieved as each responded. Hopefully, that meant that as much as he felt sore, stiff, and exhausted, he wasn't seriously injured.
"Hey, you awake now?"
Leonard knew the voice, though it was one he hadn't heard in over two years. "Betty?"
"Oh, good. I was starting to worry you wouldn't wake up."
Leonard turned his head towards her, and for a few moments, he considered the possibility that he was dead, that this place was some sort of afterlife he'd never particularly believed in, and that the first person he had bumped into in that afterlife was not his grandmother or Sigmund Freud, but his ex-girlfriend.
But as far as he knew, Betty wasn't dead. Besides, what kind of afterlife looked like a cross between a laboratory and a hospital room?
Betty wore her dark wavy hair loose; it had grown several inches since the last time he had seen her, and her bangs had grown out, giving the impression that she hadn't been to a hairdresser for a while. Or a dry cleaner for that matter; the white button up shirt and black slacks she wore under her lab coat were both more than a little wrinkled. She sat down on the edge of the bed, placed a hand on his arm, and flashed him a smile. "So, apart from driving into security gates, what have you been up to?"
"I'm not really sure where to start," he told her. "Are you alright?"
"You're asking me that? I'm not the one with two black eyes. I hate to break it to you, but you don't look too pretty right now."
Leonard wondered if he really looked that bad. Maybe he was worse off than he thought. Then he remembered why he had driven into that gate. He started to sit up, disregarding how stiff and bruised he felt. "Is Bruce here?"
Betty caught him by the shoulders. "Just say calm. Is that why you're here—you're looking for Bruce?"
Leonard felt guilty; he and Bruce had known that Betty's father had been holding her somewhere against her will for almost a year, but they had never made any progress towards finding her. He also wasn't sure how he was going to explain why he had been so concerned about Bruce.
He also couldn't remember if he and Betty had ever officially broken up. She had told him that she needed space, an opportunity to think things over. He had assumed that meant she was getting back with Bruce, but that hadn't happened. "Hey, quick question—we did break up, right?"
"Are you concerned because you're dating Bruce, and now you're wondering if you've been cheating on me?"
Leonard blinked at her. "How did you know? Did he tell you? Is he here?"
Betty's eyebrows shot up. "I was joking. You're seriously dating Bruce?"
Well, this was awkward. Again, Leonard wasn't sure what to say.
"Wow. I didn't know either of you were bisexual. I mean, you are both bi, right? It's not like I turned you both gay." Betty smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, that was also supposed to be a joke, but it was probably inappropriate. You know what? Just disregard everything I say—I haven't had a real conversation with another human being in two years."
"It's alright," said Leonard. "I know this must be weird for you."
"Maybe just a little, but we can talk about it later. My father has Bruce locked in an isolation chamber."
For a moment, Leonard felt lighter than he had in two days; he had found Bruce, and it sounded like he was still alive and well. His relief was short lived. "Isolation chamber? That doesn't sound good."
"That's because it isn't," Betty confirmed. "I can tell you from experience that isolation isn't good for your mental health, but that's not the worst of it. We need to get him out."
Leonard pushed himself completely upright, ignoring it when m his muscles screamed in protest. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and attempted to stand, but gravity proved too much of a challenge. He fell back onto the bed.
"You're going to hurt yourself," Betty warned him.
"It's alright, just give me a second." This time, Leonard managed to get to his feet, but gravity got him again.
As he lay on the floor next to the bed, Betty leaned over him. "Just stay where you are. I'll be right back, so relax for a few minutes and try not to worry."
After Betty disappeared, Leonard closed his eyes. He would have liked to spend a couple of weeks sleeping off his injuries, but that would have to wait.
When he opened his eyes, Betty was back. "I've got something to help you get you back on your feet," she announced.
"Morphine?" Leonard tried not to sound too hopeful.
"Not exactly, but it should make you feel better almost immediately."
Betty helped him sit up this time, handing him a vial of green liquid. He squinted at it uneasily. "What is this?"
"It doesn't have a generic name yet, but I like to call it the 'Drink Me.'"
"'Drink me?'Like, from Alice in Wonderland?" Leonard laughed; he couldn't help it even though it hurt like crazy. He made a mental note to get an MRI at the earliest possible convenience. "If I drink this, am I going to grow so large that I fill up the entire room? Because I'm not sure how that would help."
"In the story,it's actually the 'Eat Me' cakes that—you know what, it doesn't matter," said Betty, her eyes rolling towards the back of her head. "It's just a code name, sort of. It won't make you grow or shrink, although there might be some other interesting side effects."
Leonard wasn't laughing anymore. "Wait, what kind of—"
"If you want to rescue Bruce, you're just going to have to trust me."
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More than he had in some time, Loki felt an overwhelming sense of melancholy. Since when did he give out either reprimands or advice to youngsters? When had he become old? He had a feeling that the answer lie somewhere between putting his dreams of ruling aside and settling for the life of a petty bureaucrat, and whenever he had started using the word "youngsters."
The unsympathetic brat sitting next to him had grown impatient. "Are you going to take me back in time so I can microchip Bruce or not?"
Maybe it was best to get this over with so that he could get back to the TVA. The TVA wasn't much less depressing than this timeline, but at least there, he wouldn't have to look at his own stupid, young face. Sylvie would be there; they could get drunk together, and he could complain as much as he wanted about how unfair it was that youth was wasted on the young—at least until Sylvie got fed up with him and told him to stop whining. "Fine," he told himself. "When to?"
"I know just the right time. A week before Yule, Bruce fell asleep in his lab. I remember because I took the opportunity to pull the chain on the emergency wash station. Going back to a time and place when I was there wouldn't create a paradox or something, would it?"
"I wouldn't worry about it. The paradox has already happened, or rather it will happen. Or it already happened, in the past or in the future—you know what, I'm really not an expert on temporal paradoxes." He thought there had been a video training on them, but the video trainings were all so dull that he used them as opportunities to sleep with his eyes open.
His younger self narrowed his eyes at him. "Aren't you the co-director of an organization that oversees time itself?"
"Yes well, it's all in the title, isn't it? Co-director. My job is to direct things, not know about them."
"You're not going to get us stuck in the past or something, are you? What would even happen? Would I cease to exist, or would I exist beside myself until my other self goes back in time?"
"You don't have to worry about it, because I'm not going to get us stuck." Loki held up his TemPad. "I even brought a backup power supply for this thing. Believe me, ever since the last time it happened, I try to take precautions."
Young, idiotic him's eyes grew wide. "The last time?"
"Look, I know what I'm doing."
"Do you swear to it? Would you swear an oath on Gungnir were she here?"
Loki looked down his nose at him, which wasn't too difficult; while they were close to the same height, his younger self tended to slouch. "Do you want Banner to be rescued or not?"
"What happens if we just don't do this? Leonard and Tony already went to Virginia to find him."
"And therein lies the paradox. Look, the evidence suggests that since it already happened, we'll have to go through with this plan some time in what's left of our overlapping lifespans. We might as well get it over with. Probably best not to overthink it."
／(=^ x ^)＼ 3 ／(,,◕ ⋏ ◕,,)＼
Bruce laid flat against the floor, but that wasn't enough to save him from breathing in whatever had been piped into his cell. There were some kinds of nerve agent that supposedly had a sweet, fruity aroma, but nerve agents tended to be colorless, and this had a a color—green, but not the yellow-green of chlorine gas. Then again, maybe whatever it was, it was making him hallucinate, which could explain the color. Bruce was beginning to panic, which was a unique feeling, given that he hadn't been able to panic in years without turning into the other guy.
He looked down at his hand, and for once he felt disappointed to see that it still hadn't shifted in hue. Hey big guy, you there? thought Bruce, but he didn't get a reply. The one time he could have used a Hulk, and he was giving him the silent treatment.
"Bruce." This time, he was sure it was Betty's voice he had heard.
The slot in the door slid open, and Bruce crawled towards it. A tray slid through the door, and on it there was—a muffin? A muffin with a card sticking out of it that read, "Eat Me." Yeah, he was probably hallucinating this. "If I eat this, will it make me small enough to fit through that door?"
"Unfortunately, I was fresh out of Pym particles," said Betty. "But trust me, you need to eat it anyway."
If nothing else, he hadn't eaten since sometime the day before. "What kind—"
"Does it matter? Eat the muffin."
Bruce took a bite. "Is there cardamom in this?"
"Among other things. You have toeat the entire muffin,Bruce."
Bruce finished the muffin, then laid down with his head next to the slot in the door. "You don't have another one of those, do you?"
"One should be enough."
"Enough to do what?" Bruce didn't have to wait long for an answer; his vision started to blur and go green at the edges. He thought he heard laughter, and thought it was in the distance, until he realized it was coming out of his own mouth. Once again he was hit by the familiar sensation of being a passenger in his own body—well, not his own body, really, but the body of someone much larger and greener. Time seemed to slow as he backed away from the door, then ran directly into it. The first time he hit the door, he bounced off, but he'd left a Hulk shaped dent in it.
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Loki followed his other self through the portal he had created and discovered that it had taken them to the hallway directly outside of Bruce's office. He had the microchip gun in hand, which he had liberated from an unsecured drawer in Tony's lab before they left; after all, with everyone gone from the tower, that had been relatively easy compared to trying to sneak it out of Tony's lab in the past (which was currently the present, he supposed), when Tony would be there.
He had been forced to tamper with JARVIS a bit. He felt bad about it, especially given the recent confirmation that JARVIS was a sentient being, but it couldn't be helped; he couldn't have him calling Tony to tell on him. This was too important; important enough that he didn't even mind that he would likely be caught. Even if Tony grounded him for a year, it would be a small price to pay to have Bruce returned to them.
He had known about the microchips Tony had placed in his clothing from the beginning. He hadn't been nearly as asleep as Tony had believed him to be the night he had gone through his closet with the gun, using it to place microchips in nearly every piece of clothing he owned. When he was done, Loki had cast an illusion to make it look like he was still in bed so that he could follow him back to his lab and see where the microchip gun was kept. He hadn't known what he would use that information for at the time, but as a rule, he believed that one should know as many potentially useful things as possible.
His other self frowned at the door in front of them. "You're sure he's going to be asleep?"
Loki rolled his eyes. "Yes. I was there, you know. But we only have until I pull the cord on the emergency wash station in the next room, because that was what woke him up."
Older him shook his head. "You realize you're still lucky to still be alive?"
Loki resented that; Bruce was the most in control person he knew. He was much more likely to get hurt playing a practical joke on Clint or Natasha, who tended to shoot first and ask questions later. "Bruce wouldn't be angry with me just because I got into a little mischief."
"Banner's transformation occurs as a response to an increased heart rate," his other self argued. "He wouldn't need to be angry. Excitement, panic, or any kind of increase in arousal could all cause him to—"
"Even if he did transform, Hulk wouldn't hurt me," Loki said, certain of it.
"Oh, he wouldn't?"
"You've seen how protective he is of me. After Sif slapped me, he threw her through a wall."
Some of the anxiety on Other Loki's face slipped, and slowly, a grin spread over his face. "Exactly when did this happen?"
"Yesterday afternoon, right before Hulk and Bruce disappeared."
"Good to know. Alright, let's get this over with, then. Though come to think of it, perhaps I'll just wait out here. If Banner awakes and sees me hovering over him, he'll know something isn't right."
His other self might have had a point, but Loki couldn't resist the urge to taunt him. "Still frightened, are you?"
"Certainly not."
Loki gestured towards the door. "In that case, age before beauty."
"As you will recall, we're technically both the same age."
"Just remember, we have to be quiet. I'm in the next room, and for all either of us knows, the world might implode if I bump into myself."
"You don't have to tell me that," said Loki. "It's more likely that the timeline would split, but either way it sounds like way too much paperwork."
Other Loki entered the little office connected to Bruce's lab first, and Loki followed him, trying to make as little noise as possible. Bruce had fallen asleep at his desk as he remembered. In the weeks prior, Bruce had tended to sleep quite a bit during the daytime. He wasn't sure if that was because he wasn't sleeping at night, or if he was on some sort of medication that made him drowsy. He supposed it wasn't his business; it certainly wasn't anything Bruce had chosen to share with him.
It was unfair, really. Bruce knew almost everything about his various mental health issues, and Loki knew little about his. But he wasn't oblivious; he had known that Bruce hadn't been okay since Natasha had gotten hurt, and perhaps earlier than that. For as long as Loki had known him, Bruce had come off as a little neurotic. Perhaps it was due to the cumulative effects of recent events, or perhaps he had always been that way. Whether or not it had been true of Loki at the time, the man may very well have been projecting when he had compared his mind to "a bag full of cats."
For a moment, Loki stood behind the sleeping scientist, contemplating the best way to go about shooting him in the neck with a microchip gun without waking him up. But before he could work it out, he found himself hit by the overwhelming urge to wake Bruce up, wrap himself around him like a barnacle, and beg him to never disappear in the first place. Instead of doing either, he sat down on the floor, dropping the microchip gun in front of him and burying his face in his hands.
"What are you doing?" his other self hissed. "Are you crying?"
"No," lied Loki.
"Oh, for the Norns' sake." Other him knelt beside him. "Just give me that device, and I'll do it." Loki pressed the microchip gun into other Loki's hands. Seconds later, he was kicked in the thigh. "Get up, we need to go now. There's water starting to creep under the door to the other room."
Loki tried to make himself move but couldn't.
"I said, get up. Get up, or I swear, I'm going to leave you here. If your entire timeline does implode due to the resulting paradox, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to laugh." Bruce moaned, and his other self's trepidation only seemed to increase. "Get up now, or by Odin's crappy beard, I will give you something to cry about."
"Why are you so mean?" Loki demanded, marginally aware that he wasn't exactly moderating the volume of his voice.
Bruce moaned again, and other Loki made a shushing sound. "You're going to get us both killed."
"I already told you that neither Bruce nor Hulk would—" Loki's hand flew up to his mouth as he realized that he really had spoken too loudly that time.
"Loki?" The office chair Bruce had fallen asleep in swiveled towards them, and he blinked sleepily. "What are you—" His eyes scrunched together as he seemed to register that the Loki he was talking to wasn't the Loki he expected. "Wait, what are you doing here?"
Other Loki froze like a rabbit who had heard the footsteps of an approaching bilgesnipe. Then, without moving any other part of his body, he threw up his hands, waggling his fingers in the air. "This is a dream. This is only a dream. Go back to sleep—"
Whatever spell that was supposed to be failed to take effect. Bruce stared back at him for a moment. Then his gaze shifted down to where Loki still sat on the floor. "Loki, are you okay? What's going on?"
Loki jumped up and launched himself at Bruce, throwing his arms around him and landing halfway in and halfway out of his lap. "Bruce, I'm sorry. I promise I'll be good from now on, just please don't—"
Bruce patted his back. "Hey, I have no idea what this is about, but whatever it is, it's going to be okay—why is the floor wet?"
Loki couldn't help it. Here he had just sworn to be good, while his past self got into pointless mischief in the next room. Ashamed of himself, he buried his face in Bruce's neck.
"Doctor Banner, it seems that Loki has activated the emergency wash station in the next room," announced JARVIS.
"Uh-huh. Well, that's probably on me for pointing it out. It's okay, Loki. I know you have trouble controlling your compulsions. It's not that big a deal, we'll just clean it up."
"Doctor Banner," said JARVIS, "you should know that it was our Loki that activated the emergency shower, and not either of these Lokis, who only appeared in the hallway outside your office shortly before—"
Loki cut him off. "JARVIS, activate the 'teapot' protocol."
"I'm a little teapot, short and stout," sang JARVIS. "Here is my handle, here is my spout. When I get all steamed up, then I shout: tip me over and pour me out. I'm a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my spout. When I get all steamed up, then I shout: tip me over and pour me out.I'm a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my spout. When I get all steamed up, then I shout: tip me over and pour me out. I'm a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my spout. When I get all steamed up, then I shout: tip me over and pour me out. I'm a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my spout. When I get all steamed up, then I shout…"
JARVIS continued to sing as the water surrounding them rose to about half an inch. "Loki, what did you just do to JARVIS?" asked Bruce. "And what did he mean, you two just appeared—?"
"I know you're only mortal, but you can't be this unintelligent," other Loki snapped. "The child and I came here from the future of your own timeline. We have come to carry out an important task, but we will be leaving now. Don't tell anyone you saw us, or I'll go back in time and make sure your mother miscarries you."
Loki turned his head in order to glare at his other self, but when Bruce spoke, he sounded almost thoughtful. "You could do that?"
Loki's stomach tied itself into a knot. He had known that Bruce had been feeling down since their trip to Latveria, but how had he not noticed just how badly he had been suffering in the weeks leading up to his disappearance? Usually, he liked to think of himself as above begging, but desperate times called for desperate measures. "Bruce, please. I need you here—"
Bruce patted his back again. "It's okay. I'm not going anywhere. Now, can you please tell me what's going on here?"
Maybe that was why he hadn't noticed; even when Bruce hurt, he put everyone else first. Loki shook his head into the man's shoulder. "I swear we weren't doing anything bad. Just don't tell anyone you saw us. Please?"
To his surprise, Bruce nodded. "Alright, I won't tell anyone."
"You won't?"
"You told me before that you wouldn't swear to anything unless it was in good faith, and I believe you."
"Thank you," whispered Loki. That was what he loved about Bruce the most; unlike so many of the people in his past, he had always been willing to trust him, or at least give him the benefit of the doubt, no matter how undeserving of it he might be.
"Besides," Bruce added, "I'm really not sure I'm not hallucinating this. Maybe I've finally gone completely out of my mind."
Loki held onto Bruce for a few more seconds before his other self yanked him out of his guardian's lap.
"Come on, we've done what we need to do," his other self scolded him. "It's time to go before we're seen by anyone else, or this place sinks. My shoes are already ruined."
"BRUUUCE!" they heard from the other room. "HOW DO YOU SHUT THIS THING OFF? I'M GETTING WET!"
"Is that what my voice sounds like?" asked Loki.
Other Loki grabbed him by the bicep and pulled him into the hallway, where he took out the device he had shown Loki earlier, which looked a lot like a Midgardian electronic dictionary from the later part of the last century. He pressed a few of its keys, and a portal opened in front of them.