4: Scene Three

Bruce gasped against the pain as he came to, falling back against the elevator wall behind him, trying not to slide down it. For the number of times he was apparently going to have to experience this, he wished it was something he could become accustomed to.

He had been alone again, Pepper failing to visit him in the basement, and that was okay with him. This time, he was determined. This time, he had a plan. This time he had just wanted to get through building the machine as quickly as possible so that he might try again because this time he wasn't going to fail. He wasn't going to rely on convincing Tony of anything. He was going to take matters into his own hands, so to speak.

Still, it took him a moment before the fog cleared and he realized where he was, and then he fought down the pain so that he could appear lucid enough in front of Tony and Steve that he wouldn't be questioned. Still, he could see Tony looking at him skeptically from the corner of his eye as he regained composure.

"It's not that I care about cancelling my appearance at the conference – I cancel speaking engagements all the time – it's just that... I don't know that I want to do all this, you know? The public wedding and –" Tony made a flourish with his hand "– everything."

"Pepper is a smart lady," Steve replied. "She knows what she's doing. And she'll handle it for you. Trust her. You're not going to do any better than her."

Bruce wanted to groan – this was not the conversation he needed to come in on with a splitting headache. It made him feel even more nauseous because Steve was right. She was perfect and he was a two-faced monster, a recluse, a liability... But the unsure look on Tony's face killed. The first time he'd experienced his conversation, Bruce kept his mouth shut. Tony might have been his best friend, but Bruce knew himself well enough to know this was not an area where he could be impartial. Now, however, an echo from another lifetime rang clearly through his mind –

"If I had the chance to do it again, I would make sure he understood how much I loved him."

"He's right," Bruce said quietly, swallowing the bile rising in the back of his throat as he pushed down every bit of affection that was trying to force it's way out of his mouth. "She loves you – more than you know. She's the CEO of Stark Industries and you're Tony Stark – it has to be the wedding of the century."

The look of betrayal that crossed Tony's face as he turned away from him hurt – not quite as bad as the experience of being transported through time, but... The pain lingered in his gut as the doors of the elevator slid open and Iron Man's mask slid down.

It was more than simply the betrayal of a friend, however, because there was a time, once, where Bruce had nearly told him, where he couldn't bare the thought of keeping his feelings inside any longer. He had licked his lips, the words on the very edge of them when Tony had interrupted. Maybe in another life, he'd said, and so this betrayal was more than that. It was the betrayal of what could never be, the proverbial nail in the coffin – Bruce had admitted defeat.

And it made him a little angry that Tony got pissy over his attempt to be supportive. What did he really expect? Tony was engaged – Bruce couldn't pine over him forever. Shouldn't that be what he wanted? Wasn't that what a best friend should say? That was all they could ever be, after all. Pepper had come first and maybe he would've never pushed Tony into some huge public wedding – public affairs pretty much the last thing Bruce ever wanted – but at the same time, if there ever were a world in which he could be Tony's partner, he would never feel comfortable with Tony's publicity stunts. Pepper took them all in stride, always knew the perfect thing to say. Bruce understood not wanting something as intimate as a wedding to be broadcast across every television from here to Dubai, but really, Steve was right. Pepper knew what she was doing. And she loved Tony. She wouldn't lead him astray.

Having lived through this more times than he would've liked, Bruce knew the scene. Tony forging ahead to scope out the situation at the Price Building while he and Steve arrived separately in a SHIELD vehicle. Bruce was impatient, fidgety. It made Steve nervous but he didn't care, he needed to get worked up. Because this time, he had everything sorted out. This time, he was just going take down Mister Electric before he even had a chance to launch an attack.

Already he could feel his anger building, remembering how he held Tony as he died twice in his arms and – worse – how he was already dead when he picked him up the first time. He deserved to see his wedding day and not even time itself would stop Bruce from giving him that opportunity.

He watched as Tony launched into the sky and there was the lingering feeling of dread mixed with the strange and heady desire he always felt when he watched that hunk of machinery encasing the only man who ever deserved his love launch into the sky. Such sleek intelligence and raw power. The way he felt about that left him feeling hollow, like he was really nothing more than one of his million adoring fan girls but he knew the tech inside, knew the brain that was required to create such a thing, and it was beautiful.

Now Steve was looking at him with that same skeptical look Tony had employed earlier and Bruce frowned as he forced his feet forward into the van.

"Are you okay?" he asked as they took their seats, the implication obvious – that he could stay back if he wasn't feeling up to it today.

"Yeah." The singular word came out shorter and more forceful than he'd intended but the conflicting emotions of longing and sorrow and anger boiling inside of him made his throat tight and conversation difficult.

Steve didn't look like he believed him, eyes narrowing through that blue facemask as he studied him, but Bruce was used to being scrutinized and he didn't flinch. Instead, he folded in on himself, reaching out towards the place where the Hulk resided in his mind, feeling for him, letting him know it was almost time to go, making sure he would be there when he needed him.

Everything else was exactly the same, that disconcerting feeling prevalent as they pulled up to the Price building, listened to Tony's description of the scene on the roof over the speakers, not waiting for him to finish before they headed out. Steve lead quickly, Bruce as always following and trying not to fall behind, feeling incredibly out of place in his human form amongst his superhuman colleagues, the perpetual "less than" following the "greater than."

But he focused himself with the memory of Tony's arc reactor flickering out, nothing else mattering, the heat building under his skin, tension coiling in his muscles, readying himself to release the Hulk, the ultimate greater than.

When they entered out onto the roof Tony joined them, Steve striding forward once more to stand in front like some beacon of rationality, asking Mister Electric to stand down and release the hostage.

The mutant laughed at Steve's posturing, just as he had before, but the beginning of his spiel was lost on Bruce as he drew on the Hulk, easily releasing him in the presence of the man who took away the last thing he'd dared to love. Feeling his bones crack and muscles stretch felt like power and it felt like hate and the Hulk had none of Bruce's reservations about displaying the violent nature that lurked inside of him – the Hulk was that violence.

There was a moment where everything seemed as it should be, where neither Steve nor Tony nor even Mister Electric knew what was about to happen, but then it was chaos. The Hulk could hear Steve shouting at him as he charged forward, drawing on the confusion he felt at Bruce's memory of Metal Man dying and honing in only on how angry that memory made him and how the puny man in front of him killed Metal Man and Hulk knew Hulk didn't like that.

With giant fists he ripped the fat man in a suit away from the puny man, throwing him carelessly to the side as he crushed monstrous fingers around the frame of the puny man. And the puny man was laughing and Hulk hated that laugh, crazy and wild in a way that mimicked the inside of Hulk's head and Hulk didn't like it.

"The monster knows my potential," he wheezed out, barely a whisper as Hulk's fingers compressed on his lungs and Hulk grunted, feeling a shiver of static electricity run through him, making the thick, coarse hair on his arms stand on end. "The monster knows I can make you all hurt."

Steve was yelling at him in his periphery and Tony laid his suited hand over Hulk's wrist, trying to get through to him but Bruce's anger ran hot and that anger was the Hulk and he didn't even look at Tony, so singular was his focus. And the puny man smiled and glanced at Tony over his shoulder before Hulk clasped his hands in the killing vice that would crush the puny man's bones and puncture his lungs.

But it was too late. Mister Electric had already attacked, drawing up the power from Tony's arc reactor far more quickly than Bruce thought he would've been able to, and whether he released it before the Hulk snuffed out his life or whether the Hulk's crushing blow let the dam break, the energy build up within the mutant discharged with that heinous thunderclap, running through everyone and everything and killing Tony, just as before.

Hulk felt lost as he held the lifeless form of the puny man in his fingers, letting him roll from them and onto the rooftop with a sickening thud. There was nothing left, no anger to sustain him, just the heartless knowledge that it didn't matter. Hulk had failed. And he turned away from the corpse, eyes searching for Tony, finding him on his knees before him, hand outstretched towards him, having collapsed from the lack of energy sustaining his heart before all the circuits in his suit fried and the arc reactor melted into the suit.

Bruce's naked knees hit the ground as the transformation from the Hulk, the repeated failure of his mission, the understanding that Tony was reaching out to the Hulk – to him, the fact that once more Tony was going to die right in front of him made his knees weak, too weak to support himself.

"What were you thinking?" Tony asked as Bruce's arms reached out to cradle Tony's suited body in his arms – his weak, pathetic, naked, human arms.

"I – I just wanted to fix it," he whispered, the words coming out so shaken he doubted that Tony could even understand. "I don't want you to die."

It was so much harder being human. The vulnerability was so much more intense. The feeling of helplessness totally engulfed him and the emptiness in his chest where his anger was supposed to be left a vacancy he didn't think he would ever be able to fill.

Tony chuckled a little. "Stop it. You're really ruining my moment here."

Bruce laughed too, a painful and short laugh that pierced the veil on his emotions so that tears started rolling uncontrollably down his face. And just like every time before, Tony's arm shifted ever so slightly, leaving the residue of an unfinished arc in the air meant to draw Bruce in and comfort him even though he wasn't the one dying.

"Wish I could lift this damn visor," he whispered as Bruce moved in to bury his head against his metal shoulder, not willing to let him go again, not any more ready for Tony's inevitable death than he had been the previous three times. He just wanted...

He just wanted to fucking fix it. He just wanted to save him. Why was that so damn difficult? What good was building a time machine if he couldn't change time?

Bruce could hear Steve next to him, gently saying his name, his hand on his shoulder, but it didn't matter. He might not have been the one entombed in a hunk of metal, but he was effectively immobile, limbs like granite around Tony's neck – the ultimate albatross.

And although he didn't want to think it – God, fuck, he didn't want to think it – he had to wonder if maybe that was all be would ever be – a gravestone dragging Tony down. He wondered if there was really nothing he could do, no way to change it.

He wondered if it wouldn't be better for Tony if he just disappeared.