A/N: I haven't updated in forever and I'm so sorry for that. I'm kind of obsessed with tumblr and Tom Hiddleston and thinking is hard. ^^;;; Anyway, this switches from first person to third, which I hope no one minds...It was hard to write, but I hope it came out okay.
It was never going to stop.
The Other Guy's grip on his psyche was strong as ever and Bruce could feel himself slipping further into the black hole that had taken up residence at the back of his mind when this whole thing started. He had hurt so many people.
No.
Not him.
The Other Guy...had hurt so many people.
But Bruce knew that attempting to separate himself from the Other Guy was impossible. They were one in the same; part of the same hollow being that had taken his place after the accident.
Bruce was not a foolish man. If he kept losing control, God knows what he could do or who he could hurt. He had to find a way to stop the change from happening. He worked in silence, desperately using every ounce of his intelligence to try and find something-anything-that would fix him.
After two months, seven incidents that he tried to rip out of his memories, eighteen nights where he drank himself into a stupor and passed out on the couch and literally hundreds of hours bent over a desk pouring over every bit of gamma radiation research he could get his hands on, Bruce gave up. He didn't snap and get angry, he didn't scream and cry or panic about the hell of a life he was currently living. He just...stopped.
For two days he stared at the gun on the table in front of him. The tears came eventually, and he prayed to a deity he had forsaken in the name of science as he wept. He deeply regretted his actions; the greed and desire for power that had led him to seek out the serum that had created the world's first superhero.
When the moment finally came, Bruce was eerily calm. He picked the gun up, hating how heavy it felt in his hand, hating everything that gun symbolized. He put it in his mouth, closing his eyes tightly and remembering back when he was just a man, before he was transformed into this thing, and pulled the trigger.
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Bruce awoke in the rubble of what used to be his office, nude and aching. Wordlessly, he spit the bullet into his hand and stared at it in disbelief. He cried silently, letting the tears run down his filthy cheeks into the dirt below him. He stayed like that for only a few moments before rising. If he wasn't meant to die, then there was nothing he could do about it. But he would not allow other people to get hurt because of him.
He made a decision that day to remove himself from society, from stress. If he could calm his mind, maybe he could live peacefully. He laughed inwardly at the thought. A peaceful life seemed like a dream; a completely unattainable dream.