[That immediately frustrates him, and all of his impatience with Tony's desire to curl up and ignore the world comes out at once.]

What do I want to do about it? [he asks, somewhere between a demand and incredulous.] Something that's not giving up. I know it's tempting to call it an existential crisis and wash your hands of it, [he goes on, falling into sarcasm,] but we don't have that luxury.

[He never had.]

We can still die, Tony. All of us can still die. Sometimes we come back, new clones, probably, but sometimes we don't. And I'm not just going to say we're clones so it doesn't matter. Like we're-- less than human like this.

[He refuses to relinquish even a drop of his humanity, no matter what. Inside Bruce, there has always been an indomitable will, a fierce stubbornness that refused to be quashed by the circumstances of his life. Sometimes he'd given up, but it'd always been brief, driven truly to the end of his rope after years upon years of despondency. He hasn't gotten nearly to that point yet, here.]

I don't know what I'm looking for, exactly. But I'm not going to just-- sit here and take it. [Pointedly,] I thought you wouldn't, either.