2: Scene One

The pain was excruciating. It was everything Bruce could do to stop the Hulk from manifesting to protect himself from the searing sensation tearing up through his body and into his brain. But then – then he was the Hulk or at least he was feeling all his bones and ligaments and muscles stretching and growing and he couldn't – FUCK. Reality hit him like a ton of bricks and that hurt more than the pain of being ripped through time into a transformation.

Here he was, one of the worst hours in his pathetic fucking life, and he was stuck rewatching it without the ability to really do anything about it. It was something he hadn't taken into account in his desperation to make this work and now he was going to have to watch from the proverbial back seat, screaming in Hulk's head, because he didn't go far enough back in time to do a damned thing.

It was like the scene out of a bad western gone wrong. They were on the top of the Price building – a highrise in the middle of the city – alone but for Steve, Tony, himself, the building's titular CEO as a hostage, and a mutant with a serious inferiority complex going by Mister Electric. Never could give 'em points for creativity. At least this guy didn't try to rock any kind of costume – he looked every inch of the beaten down middle-manager he likely was: ill-fitted slacks with cheap imitation leather shoes, a bad haircut that only highlighted his middle-aged balding, and some ugly horn-rimmed glasses.

Hulk grunted with impatience and Bruce remembered his feeling of disdain well, thinking – as much as the Hulk ever really "thought" – that this was not a worthy opponent. But he was wrong and there was no real way to communicate that to him. In the same way the Hulk only rested under his skin, a feeling of impending doom and madness, he only existed in the back of Hulk's brain, buzzing around with irritating complexity.

Steve had been trying to argue the man down from dropping his hog-tied boss a hundred and ten stories off the side of the building while Tony was preping himself for a quick dive and mid-air rescue and Hulk was watching the lights in the surrounding buildings flicker as Mister Electric's jaw worked, muscles clenching and unclenching. Hulk felt the same premonition that Bruce knew to be reality – and maybe now Hulk had some inkling of what was about to happen because own big fists twisted against the roof, feeling it give beneath those monstrous hands.

"People like you never understand!" Mister Electric's voice wavered as he called out across the twenty foot gap between them and Hulk could practically feel the energy accumulating around him, his nearly animalistic sense telling him to get ready, creating an uncomfortable discord as Bruce's mind flared in anticipation, knowing what was about to happen. "Everyone loves you. You don't know what it's like to try and try and try and never get anywhere, to never have anyone care about you!"

Even the Hulk snorted at that, irritation rattling him as he tore at the concrete, tired of the talking but waiting at the command of "Flag Man" – aka Steve. It was a ridiculous statement to make in Bruce's presence, his intimate knowledge of what it was like to be unwanted and unloved painful even through the dullness of the Hulk's protective shield on his consciousness. Hulk's eyes shifted to Tony, Bruce's feelings bleeding into his psyche. No one loved him – and the only man who came close didn't love him in anything like they way Bruce wanted. Or at least, he wouldn't let himself. Not in this life. And if that wasn't a testament to how wrong that statement was, well...

Steve tried to speak but his words died when Mister Electric threw the CEO off of the building, Tony whizzing off to his rescue as the mutant turned to face them, squaring his shoulders, hands balling into fists at his sides.

"But I can make you hurt – !" he declared, gritting his teeth and shutting his eyes tight as he released a colossal amount of discharged energy.

Hulk flinched and ducked before the attack came thanks to Bruce's foresight, but it wasn't aimed at him – not specifically. There was a smack like a tremendous thunder clap and the whole building shook as energy swept through him, causing a secondary jolt of intense pain not dissimilar to how it felt to be ripped through time except, this time, Hulk felt it too and thrashed around until his nerves stopped screaming and he was focused on the singular desire to tear apart the source of the pain he'd just experienced.

But Hulk hesitated as a sob that shook Hulk to his core was emitted from the place where Bruce resided in his brain because although Hulk hadn't realized it, and wouldn't, not until Steve took over once more and was apprehending the spent and useless Mister Electric – Tony was dying. And instead of grabbing the limp vestige of a man and slamming him through the roof and into the hundred and tenth floor of his former office building the way he had before, Hulk rushed to the edge of the building and peered over, looking for Tony instead – laying on the cracked concrete where he fell, the CEO laying unconscious on top of him.

Steve still moved forward, mission focused, but Hulk forgot about him completely as he jumped off the building, smashing his hand through the side of it to slow his descent, landing in front of Tony and growling, a deep guttural and wounded sound from his chest. Bruce could never really tell if Hulk's affection for Tony was born of Bruce's love echoing in his bones or Hulk's own genuine feelings for "Metal Man" himself – whatever ability to feel the Hulk possessed outside of anger – but it didn't matter. He was standing before him as one hulking, giant mountain of sorrow and he rolled the CEO off of Tony and gathered his broken suit in his own gargantuan arms.

"Hey buddy," came Tony's voice through his mask as Hulk breathed hot air over him, making his metal fog up and Bruce hated it, hated that he couldn't hold him in his own arms but at the same time he had to be thankful that Hulk had noticed and wasn't going to let Tony die alone. Again.

What Hulk didn't understand, what no one understood except for Tony at that moment and Bruce with the unfair advantage of having experienced this before, was that Mister Electric had accumulated all of the electricity from every power source in a radius of a mile or two – including Tony's arc reactor. And the discharge of that amount of electricity fried fucking everything in it's path – electrical wires, circuitry, overloading the nearest power plant causing a blackout that affected over half the country... and Tony's own suit melted under the strain. His arc reactor was completely depleted but all the casing had melted so that it was unable to be removed. It would take a team over forty eight hours to remove the iron man suit from his corpse so that he could be entombed with dignity in a charcoal-colored one of finely woven wool.

"Metal Man hurt," Hulk groaned, whipping his head back and forth in agitation, looking for something to attack but there was nothing. It was too late. Hulk couldn't help and Hulk couldn't stand that.

"Yeah, I'm hurt pretty bad," Tony admitted with a weak chuckle and Bruce could practically hear the the life fading out of him. "Tell Bruce there, if he can hear me, to study this. Actually pretty damn interesting what he did there, never thought I'd have to build the suit well enough to protect me from myself."

Hulk was confused by this, hearing Bruce's name and getting frustrated by the quick way Tony said the words – Bruce's words, words Hulk didn't understand. Bruce wanted to tell him to shut up. It was so unbearably frustrating to feel like crying and not be able to because you had no body, no form, just thoughts and a scene played through someone else's eyes.

"Shut up," Hulk said and Bruce wanted to laugh now through the tears – they were the same person, after all.

"Hey – this is my last chance. Gotta go out –" His words stopped abruptly and Bruce panicked as Hulk lifted him a little more, shaking him a bit, wanting to make him keep talking even though he'd just told him to shut up. Even the Hulk knew what silence meant.

"Just – just watch out for the team, hey?" Tony's voice was strained and Hulk was nodding dutifully, like a child, and Bruce hated every second of it. He wanted –

He knew he couldn't but he wanted to fucking see Tony.

"Wish I could lift this damn visor," he offered weakly, his arm barely moving in the fried suit as he tried to lift it up and Bruce howled, as pathetic and animalistic as the Hulk himself within the corner of the monster's mind, knowing more intimately than he ever had before why that monster was how his anger and his fear chose to manifest itself.

So absorbed was he in his grief that it took a moment before Bruce realized the Hulk was wailing too, placing Tony gently in the concave crater of concrete he had landed in – so gentle, more gentle than Bruce thought he ever could be – before turning vicious eyes upward towards the man who had done this to him. And in the next second Bruce was lost to the strength of his emotion and Hulk was completely in control, tearing across the space between them, big hands and splayed fingers reaching, grabbing, constricting, climbing upwards, catapulting himself back onto the roof, ripping him away from Steve, big hands wrapped around his pathetic human form.

And Hulk lifted his body and slammed it into the roof, support beams bowing under his strength, Steve's frantic shouts falling on deaf ears as the Hulk lifted him again and again only to break his body once more on the composite steel. Tony had told him watch out for the team and Electric Man hurt Tony and Tony was the team so Electric Man must hurt too. It was a simple progression of thought and it didn't stop until there was nothing more than a bloody pulp of flesh pounded through the roof and into the next floor of the building

Hulk was breathing heavy, blood splattered across his face when he came to his limited senses, the disappointed eyes of Flag Man heavy across the distance as he looked down on him, blond hair whipping across his head from the blades of a SHIELD helicopter arriving on scene. In response Hulk was indignant and he snorted out his disgust until he looked back at the smear that had once been a man and the red looked like the red of – of Metal Man.

And for the first time ever Hulk reached back for Bruce and Bruce wasn't there because Bruce was nothing more than an unfathomable well of sorrow – and Hulk's fists hit the floor and his fists hit his chest and he howled long and loud and low until the whole world shook with the resonance of his pain.

This time – Bruce didn't attend the funeral, merely holed himself up to recreate the machine – better than before, to go back further than before. Strangely, despite being his only companion the first time through, this time Pepper never visited him once. Instead he was left with nothing more than the ghost of Tony in the lab, dragging him from his dreams and his nightmares alike to finish the time machine once more and try again.

This time – he was truly alone.

A/N: I beleive I forgot to mention that this will be updated on Mondays going forward and is nine chapters in total. Thanks for reading. =)