A/N: Huge thanks to dysprositos for volunteering her help with this chapter for me. I was half-step away from letting it wither away on my hard-drive.

Warning: suicide attempt

Know What I Did

He woke up with a start, panting and covered in sweat, his own screams still ringing in his ears. He reached to rub at his eyes with his shaking fingers, but quickly stopped when he saw that his hands were covered with cold wet dirt, and his glasses, as always, were missing.

He was in a forest. Or, well, a grove maybe. The trees were thin and young, most of them leaning to one side in graceful arcs. The thick milky mist permeated the air in all directions, lying heavily on the ground, clinging to the delicate branches, blocking out the sky with its soft light veil.

Bruce felt like he was standing on a lonely island in the middle of oblivion, his mind as blank and fuzzy as the ever present mist, revealing a small clearing at the cost of devouring the rest of the world. He felt sore, like always after a transformation, but also thin and light, cold with tiny droplets of water covering his body and the rags his clothes were reduced to. He felt trapped.

"Jeez, doesn't this place feel like one tiny, wet trap?" Bruce heard behind him, and turned around as quickly as his still-dizzy head let him. And, of course, there he was, standing with his back pressed to a tree, and his hands in his pockets, the bane of Bruce's existence.

"Did I…" Bruce murmured dejectedly, hiding his face in his dirty hands. "D-did I kill them?"

"It was messy, and I didn't get a good look," the ghostly presence of Tony Stark shrugged, "But they were definitely out of it by the end, big guy."

For a second, Bruce was sure he could do it. That if he concentrated on it just enough, he could actually cave the bones of his skull in with his bare fingers. Then maybe the headache, and the pain, and the guilt would go away. But the second passed, and the pain stayed, so Bruce just dug the nails of his fingers as hard as he could into his scalp and let out a long, shuddering breath through his nose.

"You can scream, you know. You're in the middle of basically nowhere," the ghost said quietly.

"Shut up."

"Hey, it's for your own benefit tha…"

"S-shut up!" Bruce choked out, his hands still in his hair. "W-what happened? I only have… glimpses."

"Soo, do you want me to shut up or…"

"I want you to tell me!" Bruce cried out, his voice trembling. "I want to know what I did."

Tony remained silent for almost a minute, and Bruce was ready to yell at him again, when the presence finally talked. "Long story short, they wanted to rob you. And tried to nick you."

"And the wolf tore them apart."

"More or less," Tony shrugged again.

"Where am I?"

"As I said: in the middle of nowhere."

"Aren't you supposed to know these kinds of things?"

"I'm not supposed to anything, buddy."

"Of course. Then why the hell are you here?"

There was a pause, and Bruce was surprised to see Tony nervously biting his lip. "I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Like all the other times you've 'talked' to me about it?" Bruce scoffed, wiping his hands on his shirt with somewhat excessive force. "What, are you here to tell the story of how I…"

"No," Tony said quickly. "And I've never told you that story. That's what you think I've told you, because you don't want to remember the actual conversations," he added, a note of accusation in his voice.

"I remember those conversations," Bruce countered, trying to gather some calm in the face of his building anger. "In vivid detail. Don't think for a second I've forgotten them."

He dragged a dirty hand over his eyes in exasperation, and when he looked up again Tony wasn't there. Bruce took a slow look around.

He stood near a path that was mostly overrun by grass, but there was no way of knowing where it led, since on the both sides it was completely devoured by mist. There were also no signs of where he came from, so any direction he took was as good as the other. Heaving a sigh, Bruce set his feet on the path and went to what he hoped was north.

As he walked, he noticed the lack of changes in the scenery. New trees, delicate and fragile, emerged from the mist only to dissolve into it as Bruce passed. They had no light on them, and casted no shadows. They housed no insects or birds or small animals, strict and elegant in their silence.

"So, the thing I wanted to talk to you about…" rang suddenly from somewhere to Bruce's left.

"Can we do this some other time?" Bruce sighed, but stopped and turned to face his companion. "I'm not… in a talking mood right now, to be fair."

"I figured, but this is the only time we can actually talk, so."

"What, your haunting wouldn't be as effective if I've got a couple of hours of sleep first?" Bruce replied with a half-hearted sneer.

"I'm not 'haunting' you, buddy. I just want to talk," Tony said softly. He took a moment to quickly run a hand over his lips, then tucked it back into his pocket. He lifted his eyes to Bruce's, and began in a careful, patient way that was entirely foreign to him. "You have problems. Massive, anger-related problems."

"Wonder why that is," Bruce murmured under his breath.

"And you refuse to accept any help with them."

"Wonder why that is."

"Because you're making excuses?"

"Because I'm dangerous!" he said, a single breath of anger escaping his control. "And people trying to help me would invariably be put in that danger!"

"You know who's also in danger?" Tony pressed, taking a small step towards the other man. "All the unsuspecting bystanders that get hurt without knowing who you are, what you are and what might provoke you. Are you thinking about them when you run around the world, avoiding any and all means of getting better?"

"I cannot 'get better'. There is no cure for lycanthropy, and you know it."

Bruce noticed Tony's face going a little still at that, the look in his eyes apprehensive and guarded, as if expecting an explosion or a blow to come any minute now. "Well, maybe 'lycanthropy' isn't exactly your problem," Tony whispered.

Bruce blinked. Once, then again. "What?"

Tony inhaled sharply. "I've been… noticing some things over time. You know, weird things, stuff that just doesn't add up. And then I figured it out."

"Figured what out?"

"The glimpses I got after your… episodes, the things they said in the papers, whatever memories I've got from when you were a guest at Stark Mansion… just watching you, really, comparing with some stuff I've heard over the years…"

"I guess you've got a lot of free time on your hands now." Bruce tried to stretch his lips into a smirk, but got no farther than a twitch of his muscles. The ghost spoke in a deliberate, calm way, and Bruce was unnerved. "So, what was your big revelation?"

The answer that came was so quick and quiet that, for a second, Bruce was certain he had mistook it for the sound of leaves on the wind.

"Bruce, you're not a werewolf."

But there was no wind in this forest. There was also no humour, or malice, on Tony's face, no jeer in his voice. If anything, the other man looked rather… sad.

"Okay, I wasn't expecting that…" Bruce tried to chuckle, but the sound of it was heavy and raspy like crumbling concrete. He felt the usual post-transformation headache slowly unfurling behind his eyes.

"I'm serious," Tony went on, never taking his eyes off Bruce. "The Accident never happened. You were never bitten. You never transformed."

Realization dawned suddenly on Bruce then, and he shook his head slightly, as if in disbelief. "Is that… is that your new thing, Tony?."

"I am not Tony."

"…is this a new way to torment me?"

"I'm not trying to torment you, Bruce, for the thousandth time…"

"Then I must say you are slacking on the job here, really!" he yelled in the ghost's face. "Where are you chains and your howls?"

"Bruce, please, just hear me out…"

"Why don't you wake me in the middle of the night, why don't you repeat, over and over, the account of that horrible day…"

"Calm down, and listen…"

"Why… w-why don't you appear covered in blood and dust, with a ruined face and a broken neck," he went on, trembling in agitation, his voice nearing a growl, "Bleeding and festering, why are you always so…"

"Fuck, Bruce, I am not a ghost!"

"You sure? 'Cause if you're gonna say now that you're a hologram only I can see and hear…"

Tony took several quick steps towards Bruce at that, and the other man took as much hasty steps back, his eyes, suddenly full of fear and pain, staring at the figure in front of him. The look on Tony's face was equal parts determination and anger, and Bruce would be damned if he turned away from it even for a second.

He knew how to take his punishments.

Tony's voice, however, was still careful and controlled, though a bit more rushed, when he finally spoke. "Look, Banner, I'm going to say this, even if you'll probably repress this conversation like you repressed it all the other times I had it with you… I'm going to say this. So listen to me." He sighed, and the anger part bled out of his features. "Bruce, buddy? Listen to me. I am not a fucking hologram. I am not some kind of ghost sent to haunt you and torment you. What I am," he said slowly, "Is a pretty elaborate visual-auditory hallucination of Tony Stark, your best friend whom you have killed, accidentally, during one of your psychotic episodes."

The headache unfolded its heavy wings in Bruce's skull, and the cold of the mist droplets on his skin started to singe him. "What… what episodes?" he tried to ask in a weak, mumbling voice. "The wolf, I killed you when I was the wolf…"

"There is no wolf," the apparition of Tony went on, each word wrapping around Bruce's heart like a thick, ice-cold veil. "There never was. Bruce, your father had schizoaffective disorder, your own paranoid schizophrenia was diagnosed when you were fifteen…"

"That… that doesn't mean…" Bruce tried to say something, to find any argument against this nonsense that didn't sound suspiciously like begging. A flash of pain seared through his eye and came out of him in a cry. "I am not insane!"

"You've heard voices ever since you were a kid, remember?" Tony pressed, calm and patient, as if reciting a rehearsed argument. "The first one, gruff and roaring, you called him your wolf, Bruce, do you remember?"

"It was… a-an imaginary friend, a childish fantasy…"

"No, it wasn't. Your aunt has been managing your medication, but then she died and you stopped taking your pills…"

"I never took any pills! I am not insane!"

"…you dropped out of college, and by the time you and I – the real Tony Stark – met, you were hearing voices again, then seeing things, having serious anger issues…"

"No! Stop!" Bruce was pacing now, his dirty nails digging once again into the skin of his temples. He felt his blood pulse, loudly and rapidly, in his ears, and then, quite inexplicably, he wished for his glasses, so he could have something to clench in his hands, something to crush, something to drown out that obnoxious pounding blood. "Stop, you're wrong, you're lying! You're lying!"

"Why would I lie?" Tony looked like he was about to take another step but consciously stopped himself. "Bruce, listen to me, I'm the only honest part of you left! The rational part, remember, the one that compelled you to study nuclear physics and pick things apart! I am the part of you that realizes that you need help…"

"I am not insane…"

"…but there's another, bigger part of you that is so terrified of ending up in a clinic like your father that it cooked up this whole bizarre delusion of werewolves and ghosts and all this magical nonsense!"

No, this was not happening. It was not. It was not right, and it was not true, and it kept getting colder and fuzzier as the mist crept up, closer and closer, catching at Tony's ankles, nibbling at his feet until Bruce had to force himself to close his eyes altogether. "I… I'm…" he choked out, feeling the conviction bleeding out of him, and dull resignation slowly filling his aching head. "I am not… insane."

"Bruce, you… you have to face it, big guy," Tony said with surprising gentleness to his tone. "You have to admit it sounds more reasonable than you surviving a bite from some kind of a fantasy beast and being able to transform into a thousand-pound furry creature while also breaking the law of conservation of mass."

Bruce continued to pace, shaking his head and treading his hands through his hair several times.

"I… I-I get… pains," he said, his voice trembling slightly from strain and desperation. "Intense pains when I, uh… transform. Like someone is ripping me apart. I'm sore for days after." He was still sore, now that he thought about it.

"Psychosomatic," Tony replied simply, his eyes still watching Bruce apprehensively, as if waiting for the man to bolt at any minute. "It hurts because you think it should hurt. I think it's some form of self-flagellation, really."

"But what about… the military, I mean, they've been after me all this time, spying on me, hunting me like an animal, all because of the wolf…"

There was a tiny smirk on Tony's face then. "Uh, well, that's just good old paranoia, my friend. No one's after you. Well, I guess the police are still looking for you back in the States because of the whole Stark-related business, but no-one's hunting you. Seriously."

"What? No!" Bruce's eyes flared at that, all hesitation gone from his rigid posture. "I couldn't have just made it all up, I know it's true!"

"That's pretty much what all the other crazy people say," Tony said softly.

"I am not crazy, do you hear me? J-just stop repeating it! I am not sick, I am not… No… It… no, no…"

His breath hitched on the last words, and a shiver went through his body, making him stumble and catch himself on a nearby tree. He tried to heave a few deep breaths, then slowly lowered himself on the cold ground, drawing his knees close to his chest and hiding his face in his hands.

The pressure in his head pushed and throbbed, and he tried in vain to concentrate on something else, something external, but there was nothing else outside the darkness of his eyelids. The world stood still, waiting for Bruce Banner to face himself.

"I don't want to go to a clinic… Please, Tony, I…" he whispered weakly, hoping that he could be heard over the ringing silence of the forest. "I don't want to go to a clinic."

"Me neither," came from somewhere close.

"Do you… I… really think they can help me?"

For about a minute, there was nothing. Then a voice that sounded so disgustingly, so preciously like Tony Stark, said, "Well, just like there's no cure for lycanthropy, there's no actual cure for schizophrenia either. Medication can help some of the symptoms. But… do you really want to live on like this?" A sigh, and then lower, softer: "They'll care for you there. You won't have to run anymore."

"I won't be able to run anymore," Bruce countered, though not nearly as bitter as he hoped. "I won't be able to… anything. They'll put me in a box and pump me full of drugs, and I will wither and die there."

A pause, filled with nothing.

"Your father got out eventually."

"And where did that get him?"

Bruce did not want to think about it. They let him go but they never cured him. He was still sick. He thought he was good, but he wasn't, he was never good… A thought struck him, made him open his eyes and look at Tony's figure sitting beside him. "Wait, if I am… if I am really ill, which, I admit, sounds far more plausible than… If I am really ill, if this is s-schizophrenia, am I supposed to realize that? I mean, isn't there some kind of mechanism in the brain to prevent me from realizing my own illness?"

"Not necessarily," the figure shrugged. "Besides, you usually have these brighter spots right after an outburst, the only times, really, when I can reach you."

"Because you are the logical part of me."

"Pretty much."

Bruce shook his head, his lips twitching. "How come?"

"Well, I think you better ask yourself that."

Pain pushed at his skull again, like a wave, and he felt tiredness and defeat seeping through his veins and his muscles. It tasted slightly sour on his tongue, and he struggled to find some part of him that still cared.

"So is this all… it is all…" he tried, placing a cold hand over his burning eyes. "I don't want to believe you."

"You never do. As I said, this is not the first time we've had this conversation."

"And if I decide to… repress you… you'll still keep trying?"

"I guess. But it's getting harder each time. I think you're… losing me."

There was some measure of concern in Tony's voice, and it made Bruce drop his hand from his face as if he'd been burned. He forced a sound out of his throat, a sickly little thing not unlike a whimper.

"I… I don't want to lose you, Tony."

The apparition looked back at him, silent and sad. He was going to lose him though. If he went along with the treatments, he would have no other choice. But if Bruce was completely honest with himself, hasn't he lost him already? This wasn't actually Tony after all. Tony had been gone since that cursed day when he… when he…

"God, I…" Bruce began, but his throat closed on him all of a sudden. The pain bounced off the bones of his skull and made him nauseous. "It was me who killed you," he finally croaked. Another shiver raked through him, and he scrambled to his feet in an instant, retreated a few steps, putting some protective distance between himself and the vision of Tony. He felt the mist gather on his forehead, and his hands looked white under the layer of dirt. "Just like he did with... It was me who… not the, the wolf… I mean, it was always m-me, but it was… me. Me who killed…"

"Bruce…" Tony said slowly and got to his feet too, open palms in front of him. Non-threatening.

"I was ill, and I killed you…" Bruce went on, dazed.

"Bruce, control yourself…"

"…with my own hands, and then I…"

"Bruce, calm down, please, try to calm down…"

"Then I ran!" Bruce yelled, an accusation ringing loud in his voice. "Not the fucking wolf, I ran! They should have caught me and sentenced me and executed me but I ran away…"

"Bruce, if you will not calm down now you will…"

"I will what?" he growled, taking another step away. "Transform into that thing?"

"No, you won't, I told you…"

"You were lying to me! I'm a monster, but I'm not fucking insane!"

"Why the hell would I lie to you, Banner?" The vision cried out, exasperated but also slightly… desperate. Afraid.

"You want to lock me up, like they do!"

"Use some fucking logic, Banner, I am not even fucking corporeal!" Tony pressed, coming closer. "I am physically unable to conspire with any authorities to put you anywhere! All I'm trying to do is to stop you from lying to yourself, living in that comfortable delusion…"

Bruce's eyes shot wide in disbelief. "You think living like this is comfortable?"

"Yes," the vision said simply, "And it may only be a testament to just how fucked up you really are, Banner, that for you, this existence is preferable than admitting that you suffer from an illness passed to you from your father, and that during one of the episodes you accidentally killed your best friend."

His body was still shivering, but Bruce felt the fire and tension retreat from his limbs to his skull and curl around his brain. Its wings were hard and heavy, and the stony feathers pricked and chafed against the back of his eyes. But, of course, Tony was right. This was not him. This was not… Bruce Banner did not make a habit of denial. Of slacking off on his responsibilities, however horrible and painful.

Bruce Banner always took his punishments.

"It was me," he began quietly, willing the trembling in his hands to subside. "All this time it was me…"

All this time he was sick. And he had the option to get help, all this time, but he refused, he denied even a possibility of his illness, imposed himself on the people he loved, hurt them…

"Take a deep breath now, buddy," the voice of Tony Stark said softly. "Count to ten. Just… calm down."

For all of your words. For all of your vows. You turned out just like him…

"This is where I lost you before," the voice went on. "You wouldn't have 'transformed'. You would have triggered another psychotic rage, and then subconsciously repressed the whole conversation."

What would Mom say?

"I don't really feel well," Bruce said, though it didn't seem like the words were coming out of his mouth. They sounded thin and brittle, from somewhere to Bruce's left and slightly behind him.

The vision was silent. When Bruce looked at it, he noticed it cast no shadow. But then again, neither did he. There were no shadows anywhere in sight. Only the white of the mist, as far as the eye could see.

Murderer.

"It's rather chilly in here, don't you think," the voice from beside him intoned, each word plain and dull, like a little pebble. "Where am I?"

"I have no idea, Bruce."

"Where do I go now?" I want to go home.

"I think the road will bring you somewhere if you go for long enough."

Bruce felt his head shake slightly from side to side. "I don't want to go down that road."

There was a pause, in which Bruce tried to count the breaths of the fragile voice to his left, but couldn't quite catch a single one. Then the hallucination spoke again, barely above a whisper.

"There's… there's another way, actually."

It turned around, walking into the mist, and Bruce felt his muscles contract painfully and his bones screeched in their sockets as his body moved, following the vision. The white veil parted before him, revealing nothing more than the same old (familiar) trees with their branches lost somewhere high above. But now, Bruce also noticed that not all of them were graceful, elegant curves. Some of them were bent and twisted, like careless strokes of a long unused pen on dusty paper. Some of them were ugly.

Bruce smelled it when they stopped. It smelled faintly of water. But not like the mist; that smell was constantly around them, and this one was different.

It was a lake.

Some part of Bruce's mind wondered idly just how he'd known where to find it, while the rest of it brought his body closer to the water, made him step closer until his ankles were submerged. Surprisingly, and unlike any other thing in his miserable existence, it was not cold.

Bruce lifted his eyes to the vision, that stood behind him on the shore, in a silent question. It just nodded wordlessly back at the lake, so Bruce turned around to look at the water again, and took several cautious steps forwards.

The bottom was soft, warm sand.

He glanced at the image of Tony again. "You will… you will allow me?" he whispered, even though the voice still sounded a bit off, not entirely his own.

The image only nodded, a faint scowl on its mist-covered lips.

Bruce tried to get his throat to work, but only managed to force out something between a cough and a sob, and then, a low "Thank you".

He wanted to start walking again, but he caught his reflection in the water's surface, and almost startled. He looked… ill. And dirty. Like one of those raving lunatics you might see in a horror movie.

He walked a little farther into the water, then, and bent slightly to cup some water into his hands. He splashed it over his face several times until the dirt came off. What would Mom say, indeed. He wasn't a child anymore.

Eventually, though, stalling was pointless, and so he walked further into the lake, feeling the comforting warmth around him. There was a part of him that was afraid and kept asking - what next, what next, is there something next? But it was small, insignificant, like a grain of soft sand in a lake of tiredness, apathy, and dull, throbbing self-loathing.

He turned around one last time.

"And Tony? I'm sorry."

"I'm not Tony."

"I know. I just… wanted to say it."

The reply sounded rather like a wind in the tops of the trees. "You know, I think… I think he would have forgiven you."

Bruce nodded silently, and resumed his walk through the water. It felt so nice, so warm around his chest, and around his neck, and against his lips.

Mom always forgave Father, but Tony was not like that. The real Tony would have never forgiven him, not really.

But that was all right. Because finally, for once in his life, Bruce Banner was taking the right path. He was not going back to ignorance. He was not going to a cage. He was not going to a clinic.

As the water closed over his head, he smiled, and took a deep breath.

He was going home.

A/N: I guess you can call it a "No Powers" AU as well. It incorporates (like all my stories, actually) a comic!Bruce background: Bruce's father, Brian Banner, had schizoaffective disorder and killed Bruce's mother in a fit of psychotic rage, was institutionalized, and released fifteen years later, though hardly cured at all. Bruce had his own mental problems as a teenager, and some authors speculate that he might've developed a disorder similar to his father's eventually, if not for The Accident (though I have to disagree on that one).

Also, I feel compelled to inform the 4,5 people that are reading this that, at the moment, I have only one half-written draft left in store for this thing + a couple ideas + at least two weeks worth of finals, so the date of the next update is extremely hazy right now.

Other than that, I hope you liked this tricky newest installment to the series, and it'd be really nice if you left a review in your spare time.

Next time in Kaleidoscope: it's gonna be a surprise even for me, folks!