[The first glimmer of opening up he's gotten from him, Bruce thinks that maybe he was right. What bothers Tony is that he's not who they'd known. With that in mind, he answers just as honestly.]
If there's anything I know about Tony Stark, [he says with a wry smile,] it's that you don't let anyone else tell you who you are.
[Bruce might not have known him very long, but he knows enough. He'd been in the middle of nowhere, not dead-- he knows the origins of Iron Man as well as anyone else, the famous story of how he'd come back and turned his company on its head out of a desire to better the world. And he knows, too, what came after it, the refusal to share that technology with anyone else. Self-determined was never better embodied.]
You don't need your DNA to tell you. [Suddenly quieting, he finishes,] If I listened to that, I'd have given up a long time ago.
no subject
If there's anything I know about Tony Stark, [he says with a wry smile,] it's that you don't let anyone else tell you who you are.
[Bruce might not have known him very long, but he knows enough. He'd been in the middle of nowhere, not dead-- he knows the origins of Iron Man as well as anyone else, the famous story of how he'd come back and turned his company on its head out of a desire to better the world. And he knows, too, what came after it, the refusal to share that technology with anyone else. Self-determined was never better embodied.]
You don't need your DNA to tell you. [Suddenly quieting, he finishes,] If I listened to that, I'd have given up a long time ago.