The drive back from the hospital was a quiet one. He considered, once or twice, turning the radio on; though he had no interest in listening. He'd never been one to listen to FM radio, but he knew that the man he'd left behind would've flipped to the rock n' roll station before he even put the car into gear. As he pulled into the long weaving driveway that led up to the mansion, he noticed the paparazzi had finally moved on to different prospects once evening had fallen, which was a relief, but left the place seeming like a ghosttown— minus the ghost.
Bruce huffed a light sigh as he proceeded inside, immediately heading down to the lab, not even stopping in the kitchen to put his usual kettle of water on the stovetop to heat. He looked around, first left, then right. "You here?" he asked the chamber of the laboratory, almost expecting that if he turned round, there would be the inventor to make a snarky 'Where else would I be?' or another remark. Bruce bit the inside of his mouth. "I guess not…" he murmured, a little surprised at the level of disappointment he felt knowing that he was now truly alone. The way he'd thought he wanted it.
He wandered over to the bookcase, carefully placing the trophy case that held the arc reactor on the middle shelf. He let his fingers skim down the corner of the glass, intently studying the piece of hardware inside. As much as he wanted to attempt to recreate it, he knew he didn't have the means to do so. He was a gamma radiation expert, not a nuclear engineer. And he didn't have a single schematic or diagram to go off of beyond taking it apart and hoping he could put the pieces back together again. He'd helped Tony out as much as he could. The man had even thanked him. It was time to forget what had happened and go back to his own work. Finding a cure for the Hulk.
Bruce turned, flipping on the atomic absorption spectrometer as he went by on instinct. A soft chuckle left his lips, shaking his head before going back to flick it off. No reason to have it on until he had more samples ready. Tony wouldn't want it to overheat.
Tony.
His eyes closed. He hadn't expected it to be this rough. He'd left behind plenty of things and people over the years, but somehow that never made it any easier. And working in Tony's laboratory without Tony…
A scuffling noise from upstairs reached his ears, drawing his eyes back open and his brow down. Was someone in the mansion? Dr. Banner put the microplate down and warily climbed the stairs. When he got to the living room, his eyebrows shot up. A man with short, dirty-blond hair, dressed in a faded maroon t-shirt and jeans was removing a rappelling harness from his lower half.
Bruce stepped forward. "Who are you? How did you get in here?"
The other man didn't seem even remotely alarmed that he'd been caught. Or maybe he hadn't been trying to not get caught and that was why he wasn't alarmed. "Name's Clint. Clint Barton," the stranger introduced. He pointed one finger upward. "And wouldn't you know it, you left one of your skylights on the roof open." He tossed the gear and rope aside, removing his fingerless gloves.
The doctor wet his lips carefully, "Are you a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Mr. Barton?"
"Clint, I said." He paused after the correction, focusing his blue eyes on him and shrugging a shoulder in a blasé manner. "Yeah, I work for them."
"So they sent you to spy on me," Bruce concluded.
"Spying and negotiations are more Nat's deal," Barton answered, beginning to stroll the living room of the mansion, eyes flicking up, down, all around. "Intelligence tells me you two are already well acquainted. Nah, I'm their sniper; they send me in when they need to get rid of someone." He looked back at Bruce again, "No need to get your heartrate up— I'm not here to assassinate you either. I'm here on my off-time. Gotta say though, it was pretty impressive what you managed to do with Stark's suit this afternoon."
"So you know about that. S.H.I.E.L.D. knows about that," Bruce could feel the Hulk stirring up his defenses, ready to smash this unwanted intruder.
"Did I say that?" Clint asked, swivelling about. "I haven't made my report. Sometimes I like to do a little of my own reconnaissance first before I get involved with things… get to know my assignment."
"There's nothing for you to know," Bruce was insistent, his next words more of a threat than a request. "I need you to leave."
"Sure thing. Back door's this way, right?" Clint more said than asked, spritely moving down the stairs toward the laboratory.
Bruce felt his hackles raise, about to descend after the agent and throw him out by force if need be, when movement flashed in his periphery. He double-taked. "Anthony!" he exclaimed upon seeing the apparition standing beside him.
"Hey," the inventor returned, somewhat lackluster.
Clint momentarily forgotten, the doctor continued, "I didn't think you were going to come back here. Didn't you say you were planning to stay at the hospital with your body?" He was thrilled as much as he was flabbergasted the other scientist had chosen to come back.
"Yeah, well, I was," Tony mumbled, wishy-washy. He rubbed the back of his neck. "But I needed someone to talk to. The staff there is trying to get Pep to sign papers authorizing permission to take me off life support."
Dr. Banner gawked. "Already? But it's only been three months, how could they—?"
"I signed a release form," the innovator mumbled. "Poor foresight, I know. I'd take it back now, obviously, but no one at the hospital could hear me. It's a miracle they haven't taken me off sooner, considering."
His brain was whirling in search of a solution. "Hey, where'd you put the suit?" Clint called up the stairs, interrupting his train of thought.
Tony's eyebrows lifted. "Well, that didn't take very long," he snorted.
Bruce blinked. "What didn't take very long?"
"Just who is he?" Tony demanded, pointing a finger down the laboratory stairs where the voice had come from.
Bruce frowned. "He's a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent."
"A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?!" Tony repeated, stepping forward; Bruce stepped back.
"Is there some kind of secret panel you have to open to reveal it or something…?" There was the sound of knuckles wrapping against the walls downstairs, searching out hollow spots.
"He wasn't invited…" the doctor began.
"You don't have to try and explain it, Bruce. I get it," Tony's voice took an accusatory note. "I was out of the picture, most likely permanently, so, obviously, the next step was to sell off my tech to the nearest friendly government agency! Functional design like that… hey, oughta fetch a few grand, right?"
"That's… that's not at all what's going on here," Bruce got out, more than a little insulted by the claim. "He broke in. I was about to throw him out when you got here."
"Really?" Tony folded his arms. "So then just why are you letting him snoop around down there as much as he pleases?"
It was the doctor's turn to step forward. "I don't know, maybe because I'm busy having this pointless argument with you. S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't my friend, Tony. You know that. They hound me, send people to 'check up on me' every other day like I'm some kind of bomb just waiting to go off! And you think I'd sell your life's work to them?"
Clint appeared on the stairwell. "You talkin' to someone up here, Banner?" He glanced left and right to confirm there was no one but the two of them. "Do you take medication? I didn't see 'hallucination' in your records but—"
"I told you to leave," Bruce growled lowly, eyes glowing green.
"Alright, alright, alright," Clint put up his hands defensively. "I'm going." He grabbed his gear swiftly and moved for the front door. Bruce followed on his heels every step of the way, but was caught off-guard when the agent swivelled on the doorstep, putting his palm out to catch the door Bruce had been about to slam in his face. "Listen, I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't've broken in the way I did," Clint apologized, "I realize now I probably could've knocked on the door. You just have to understand it isn't really my style. Thing is, sometimes S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't always make the right call about people. I wanted to access you myself. Get to know you." The man shrugged. "People like you and me… we get isolated. We don't have anyone." Clint shook his head. "Sorry for bothering you, Dr. Banner." With that, the agent turned and left.
Bruce huffed, shutting the door. Tony was looking at the ground guiltily. "I think I owe you an apology," the apparition said, "I… jumped to conclusions—"
"It's fine," the doctor said dismissively. He half-folded, half-hugged his arms and left them there. "It's your life's work. Being protective of it and a little paranoid is understandable. I would be too." He moved past the spirit, going towards the outdoor patio.
Tony nodded, watching the doctor's body language as he followed him outside. "Bruce… what that guy said, about being isolated…"
"He's not wrong," Bruce murmured, staring out at the darkened sea in front of them. "I haven't really worked with anyone else since… well since the accident that made me into…" he gestured his hand limply and sighed again, letting it fall onto the handrail. Quietly, he began again as if reliving the memory, "Betty and I were the ones tasked to work on the super soldier serum. We'd done a lot of tests. We'd thought we had it." His head dropped, "I was the test subject."
"Risky move, but I'm betting you didn't have a whole lot of other willing participants," Tony mumbled.
"I was exposed to gamma radiation. It started to go wrong. I couldn't do anything once the transformation started to take place…" the doctor went on. "It was like I was watching from inside a glass jar… watching as the Hulk tore the entire laboratory apart with his hands— my hands." Bruce closed his eyes, shuddering. "Betty survived, thank God. Though she was hospitalized for a few weeks while she recovered from her injuries." He frowned and looked away. "After that I couldn't stand the thought of hurting her or anyone else. I couldn't risk having that happen again."
Tony listened sadly. "Tell me more about her; what was she like?" he prompted.
The doctor chuckled, pausing to look up at the night sky in his own chagrin that he was talking about this. "Oh you know, she was like any lab partner. Had her own particular way of doing things. She was actually a fair amount like you."
Tony snorted disbelievingly. "Seriously?"
"In a way, yeah," Bruce nodded, looking down at his hands. "For instance, she liked playing music in the lab— jazz mostly— for hours on end; the same songs over and over and over until they were permanently fused into your brain. She wouldn't create digital records of her work. It was impossible for her," he shook his head. "And this stubborn inability to clean microplates. She would just leave them around until there were no clean ones left and workdesk was cluttered into a completely unmanageable condition, bordering on a biohazard. I mean, I'm so…" he bit his lip, coming down from his rant very suddenly. "I'm mad just thinking… about her…" he whispered, eyes watering.
"Bruce…" Tony got out, wishing he could pat the guy on the back.
The physicist drug the back of his hand across his eyes. "This Pep you've been mentioning… she wouldn't really sign those papers, would she?"
Tony swallowed, roughly. "I don't know," he answered uncertainly, taking to staring out at the ocean himself. He knew the woman was stubborn but not to the point of belligerence. "I hope not." He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "Not that it really matters if real-me doesn't wake up soon; my brain activity's decreasing every day I'm in that hospital bed."
"Maybe that's not such a bad thing," Bruce teased light-heartedly, "You're kind of a know-it-all."
Tony chuckled, throwing an elbow into the other man with good humor. "Pretend you don't like it, big guy."
Bruce couldn't. He smiled, quite genuinely. "I don't want you to think I've always been like this. Only working for myself, by myself. More than anything I want to help other people."
"That so?" Tony asked, interested in this aspect of the doctor he didn't know.
The physicist nodded, turning for the lab. "C'mon. I want to show you something."
