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[ The video begins with a dark-haired man centered in the middle of the frame. He’s got dark eyes, a precisely cut goatee, and hair that’s a little too styled to be naturally that neat. There isn’t a lot to see beyond his chin, he’s sitting too close to the camera, but what can be seen looks vaguely like a shirt of shiny red metal.

His brow knits almost immediately after the feed starts recording, his expression edging toward disbelief as his lips twist into a mild frown. ]

Look. I get it. In a time of crisis, rationing’s necessary to keep resources moving in the right direction. Perfectly understandable. You guys needed to save your turtle. What responsible citizen wouldn’t do their part for that noble cause?

[ There’s a slight hint f sarcasm creeping into his voice, as though he’s heard the whole turtle spiel already and not only hasn’t been impressed, but also doesn’t really buy it either. Not even after having spent half a day scouring the network for information about what’s really going on here before making this video. ]

But really? Twenty bucks?

[ The low, indistinct murmur of another voice can be heard, though what it’s saying and who it belongs to is anyone’s guess. Whatever it says, it’s enough to make the man roll his eyes. ]

Juulan. Whatever. Doesn’t matter. The point — [ Whether he’s talking to the camera or the unidentified voice is unclear. ] — is that it isn’t enough for a day, let alone the entire bogus adventure.

[ It isn’t so much the way he looks at the camera – his eyes have never left it – but the change of his tone, less querulous and more curious, that indicates that he’s talking to whoever’s on the other end of the console. ]

So really. Turtle propaganda aside. What’s a guy gotta do to get some decent money around here? Sell his organs? Hit the street corners? Scrub barnacles off the bottom of the turtle? What?

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[ He didn’t really think it could get much worse, but in hindsight, he realizes how stupid such an assumption had been. It always gets worse. There’s always something even more hideous hiding behind the horrible true. It’s been that way all his life.

All twenty-four hours of it.

An impotent sense of helpless frustration rises so quickly inside him that it nearly chokes him. He feels like he’s suffocating on it. On the world and the implications, on the false memories and his crumbling sense of self. He’s not real. None of it’s real. Every terrible memory, every moment of pain and disappointment he thinks he’s suffered, it’s all been a lie. He’s a lie. He’s not superfluous. He’s not a real person. He’s nothing. Nobody.

He can’t breathe. There’s something in his chest clawing to get free and he can’t breathe. He can’t do anything but stare at Bruce as the horror of what he’s hearing sinks in. Finally, he can’t stand it anymore and he breaks away, pushes past him and heads for the suit.

He doesn’t get there. He stops halfway there and stares at it, almost doesn’t recognize it. ]

So they’re dead. [ It’s flat and toneless and he doesn’t turn around. ] Everyone’s dead and we’re just someone’s idea of a sick joke.

No, [he says harshly, feeling his own sense of horror at the reality of their situation abruptly gripping him, too. Betty. He can't believe that Betty is dead because she doesn't exist here.] We don't know that. We don't know anything but what I've told you.

[He takes two quick steps around Tony to see his face again, hand automatically reaching out to take hold of his upper arm, bracing.]

Look at me. Whatever this is, it isn't a joke. And we can find answers. [If anyone can find answers, it's the two of them. Bruce searches his eyes, trying to impart the resolution on him that he feels. Giving him something to do is, he thinks, the best answer to the listless panic that is so easy to fall under given the magnitude of the situation.]

I've already found some. Clues. You can help me.

[ He doesn’t pull his arm back or look away, but his expression is stalled out somewhere between sick and bleak hopelessness when he looks at him. Tony Stark has never been an optimist. He’s tried. He’s pretended toward optimism a few times. But his heart’s never been in it and he’s never seen evidence of his pessimism being anything but well warranted. ]

Help you how? I’m just a…

[ He doesn’t even have a word for it. Tony Stark is an unparalleled genius, that much he remembers. But him? Who is he? He’s looking at Bruce – at the guy who his fake memories say is Bruce – but he’s not really talking to him. The quiet, under his breath mumble is mostly for himself. ]

…A John Doe who’s haunted by a ghost.

[ Maybe he needs an exorcist. The thought makes him laugh, a bitter bark of sound that fades quickly. He’s silent for a moment, just a pause, then he continues in a regular tone, though it stays deadened and hollow. ]

Clues about what?

[It's painful how well he can recognize that hopelessness in him from experiencing it himself, and Bruce isn't about to put up with it if he doesn't have to.]

You think I don't ask myself what I am on a, a daily basis? [There's an echo of that bitter humor in there, too, understanding even as his hand tightens on his arm.] Are you going to help me or not?

[He's not going to play this game where he lists out his positive traits for him. Tony should be well aware of how much he can accomplish when he sets his mind to it, of how incredible his capabilities are. Bruce isn't here to prop up his ego. Tony already knows that, and he doesn't have much patience for using identity issues as a stalling tactic. Bruce is in the same mess as he is, the same boat, and has moreover been even deeper into questioning who and what he is for the past decade.

He demands a firmer answer than that, a commitment, before he'll let this go.]

[ Of course he would ask himself that. He turns into a big green giant when he’s angry. That’s got to cause identity issues.

In Bruce, he reminds himself. In Bruce Banner, who’s probably dead. Like Stark’s dead. Like Pepper’s dead. Like everyone else is dead.

The cognitive dissonance is going to kill him too, he thinks. At least, it’s going to make his head hurt. Because the memories rise up to fill in the blanks automatically, but he can’t trust them, can he? He’s real, he’s not real; it’s an existential crisis that’s going to tear him apart. Already, the cracks are forming. He can feel them. He – Stark – hadn’t been held together by much more than stubbornness to begin with. But stubbornness is no match for this. ]

I’ll help you.

[ Where’s the harm in it? He doesn’t have anything else to lose. He’s just like Clint Eastwood in the Dollars trilogy. If there ever was an Eastwood or a trilogy of movies like that. ]

Good. [He exhales, lets him go, and takes a step back-- recovering his distance and his balance. It's strange being the one who's not falling apart in the conversation, but with the way Tony suddenly shuts up and says barely a few words each time, it's not hard to guess that there's something cracking apart on the inside.]

There's another component to this. A couple, actually, but-- you can make a deal with the Emperor, and she'll show you what happens in the future. As far as I'm aware, it all lines up. If I made one, I'd see the invasion, the Avengers, saving you. I'd say they could just be consistent with their lies, but they aren't SHIELD. They don't have everything manipulated.

We're clones, but we're sloppy ones. There's almost, ten times the rate of silent mutation in my genome as there was before. This isn't some deep scheme. I think they really are desperate. And this is a lot more than just another dimension.

[This is a lot of talking for Bruce, and he's not prone to info dumping to start with. But he's determined to wrench Tony out of the funk he's letting himself sink into, and the best way he knows how to do it is with the practical. Solidifying reality around him, defining the limits as he knows them. It was the only thing that worked for Bruce.]

[ All it takes is mentioning the invasion and he sees it in his mind’s eye, so clearly and immediately that it almost feels like it’s happening right in front of him. Specks of silver darting through the sky. Blossoms of fire exploding out from buildings. The brilliant sapphire sky melting into deep, endless darkness.

The breath he takes is sharp and his fingernails bite into his palms as he tightly clenches his hands into fists. It’s that little spark of pain that brings him back to the moment.

Not real. It didn’t happen to you. Don’t freak out over it. It wasn’t you. Deep breath. Listen to what he’s saying. Who the fuck knows why he wants your help, but he does. Try to give it to him. ]

Desperate for what? Help saving their turtle? Why not go to the source? It’s not too much trouble to look through an interdimensional window but taking the actual step through it is? That doesn’t make any sense. They’ve already got to be expending an incredible amount of energy to get their minds and memories. A little more to get them in the flesh wouldn’t be impossible. They’re already…

[ What had the kedan told him when he’d woken up? Between life and death? ]

They can’t do it, can they? This isn’t another dimension. It’s a different plane of existence.

[This is why he wants his help. The ability to make instant, logical connections to the next leap, to follow exactly what Bruce is thinking, to know instinctively the difference between plane and dimension. He hadn't realized how much he'd had to explain his thought process to everyone since arriving until now, and he feels something relax in relief at being understood.

But that doesn't diminish the seriousness.] That's what I think, [he admits.] There's an enemy we're supposed to be fighting, something metaphysical. We can't say the name outside of the palace. It doesn't follow-- regular rules here.

This is the plane of Life, that we're in right now. But there's also Dreaming and Death. Someone I know got a glimpse into Death a little while ago, while we were fighting the, the enemy. I think there's a way to access it from here.

It's all a lot more complicated than just, clones.

[Not much of a comfort, maybe, but it's all Bruce has to offer, and he's used to taking what he can get and being grateful for it.]

[ That makes absolutely no sense, but none of the rest of it does either. The real world seems like it ought to be the plane of Life. Unless this is some metaphysical, philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Platonic realism in its most visceral form. If this is the plane of the universal Life, if that truly does exist, then maybe it does make a tiny smidgen of sense after all. ]

How do you know that it’s clones at all?

[ He feels the surge of hope but he squashes it down, refusing to give in to it. He’s not asking to validate his existence. He’s asking because it’s a possibility he’d like to strike from the list if it isn’t accurate. ]

If this is some kind of higher plane, something humans can’t exist on on their own, is it possible that we’re not clones? That these — [ He taps a hand against his chest. ] — bodies are like environmental protection suits? They wanted humans to help them but humans can’t survive here, so they built forms for them that could, something that looks like them but is capable of existing here, and then uploaded the minds of the people they were trying to enlist into them?

I think they did upload our minds from the original copies, but I know for certain that we're clones.

[Bruce ruthlessly lays out the evidence for it, not one to flinch from stating facts coldly.]

Months ago, before I arrived, a cloning facility was discovered. It was destroyed before they could gather any real evidence, but there's eye witness testimonies. I did my own tests-- someone with a, a thing from the future sequenced my genome for me in about, ten seconds-- and it's conclusive. I have the portion of my genetic code responsible for my mutation memorized, I've looked at it so often. It's not the same. Accountable only by rapid cell division, or induced further external mutation.

A source I have [because he respects Costigan's desire for secrecy too much to name him] confirms that they have new, replacement cloning facilities. Tanks like lightbulbs screwed into the turtle.

There's no getting around it.

Edited (needed moar science, oops then accuracy of details) 2013-08-05 00:32 (UTC)

[ He likes his theory better. A factory for bodies instead of suits, meant to house the consciousness of people who can’t normally exist on this plane. It’s more logical. And it would give him his identity back.

So naturally it has to be wrong. He’s got the memories of a fuck-up in his brain and the piss-poor luck of the bastard too. ]

Fine. We’re clones. What do you want us to do about it?

[ From his perspective, it doesn’t seem like there’s much that can be done. There’s nowhere for them to go. They aren’t even real people. ]

Figure out why they’re doing it? Stop them? Get the memories taken out? What?

[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.

[ It’s on the tip of his tongue to snap back with I guess I’m not the guy you thought I was, huh? but somehow he manages to redirect the ire that drives it enough to keep silent. He isn’t angry at him. He’s pissing him off, saying things that rake too hard over already bleeding wounds, but it isn’t his fault. Deep down, he knows that.

Neither one of them are at fault for this. ]

I don’t know how long you’ve been dealing with this, but I just got here. So sorry if finding out that my whole life belongs to someone else doesn’t fit into your schedule.

[ It comes out sharper than he thinks it should and he shakes his head, giving up and heading back toward his—back toward the suit. He’s too raw. Too exposed. Too vulnerable like this. ]

I said I’d help you. I meant it. But if you want to wait until my little problems don’t have to affect you anymore, that’s fine too.

[Instantly regretful, Bruce reaches out for his arm again, this time not in a grab but just to stop him with the pressure of his hand if he will. He's not apologetic-- he'd meant every word he said-- but he's taking out his own frustration on him and he knows it.]

No, that's not what I... [An exhale, recentering, taking his hand back. Tony will either listen to him or he won't; he has the right to do either.] Four months, [he says more quietly.] I know it's a hard adjustment. They're not little problems.

[He hadn't meant to minimize the internal struggle that being here requires. Maybe Tony doesn't want to hear that Bruce considers them the same person; maybe what he wants to hear is that he doesn't, and he still wants this one around. That's just as true.]

I am glad that you're here. You specifically. If you need my help, too, then you have it. With anything. [This kind of open offer is extremely rare from Bruce, but he means it, and the honesty is scrawled across his face.]

[ He takes a breath, lets it out, and looks at the floor. There’s a number of different things all vying to be said and all of them are pointless and futile. But he hears what he says, hears him say that he’s glad that he’s here.

If there are solutions to the problems he’s facing, he doesn’t know what they are enough to hazard a guess at them. And he doesn’t know how to talk about them openly. But the memories urge him to try and so far, they’re right in one respect. This man’s at least trying to help him. ]

If I look back into those memories, I see a man who’s always been subject to his name. All of the expectations he’s had and others have had for him, his career, his lifestyle, his identity, it’s all tied to that damn name.

[ He glances up at him, the corner of his mouth twisting into a wry half-smile that isn’t the least bit amused. ]

That’s what I’ve got swimming around in my head. And you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking the ungrateful bastard’s lucky. [ He shakes his head. ] I don’t even have one.

[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.

[ The memories offer up a moment on the SHIELD helicarrier. Barely a few hours into knowing him, and he had spoken of the arc reactor with him in the careless way he never spoke about it with anyone. It had been a kind of trust and it had been repaid a thousandfold when he’d most been in need of it.

Whoever he is, if this man holds to the same tenants as the one the memories recognize, then he can at least trust him enough to speak a little more on the subject. ]

How do you reconcile it? Being a clone of someone else?

[ It feels like an admittance of weakness and it sticks in his throat, but he struggles to get it out. ]

How do you accept the memories as yours?

It isn't easy. [He hesitates, because this isn't easy, either, and forcing Tony to open up demands no less from him in response. Bruce has never liked it, even with someone he knows he can trust, and he has to struggle himself with what to say for a moment.

His gradual coping with the idea of being a clone had been convoluted, slow, and pained. It had happened behind the scenes, with him barely breathing a word to anyone, only short interludes where he'd revealed the intensity with which it affected him. But Bruce had never truly spoken of it, never voiced why and how it affected him.

He looks down, mustering the words.] I don't know if I've really accepted it now. When I change-- I don't remember what I do. Except for, sometimes there's, there's flashes. Violence. Pieces of memory that come back.

It's not the same, but you can't dwell on it. You have to just keep going. Sometimes the worst enemy you have is, is doubting yourself. Second guessing what your memories mean about who you are.

[Self-doubt has been like a tumor his entire life, a cancer that spreads through him and destroys him, cell by cell. It hamstrings him and removes his ability to fight, to keep struggling against the fears he has about who and what he is. Bruce doesn't often reach the end of his rope, doesn't often feel a surrendering of his will, but when he does, it's always because of that. Because of the voice whispering to him, insidious, that nothing he knows about himself is real.

He looks up.] I can't afford not to. I guess that's your answer.

Fake it until you make it?

[ He says it lightly, like it’s as much of a joke in this context as it’s been in any other that the memories offer up to him. But he’s not trying to be funny, however it sounds. Stark's faked a lot of things in his life. He's got an example of how to do it, practically gift-wrapped for him in his mind.

He doesn’t ask for help. Memories surface, reminding him of when he was dying and how he chose to suffer in silence, preferring to struggle to find a nonexistent cure without telling anyone or asking for any kind of aid whatsoever. He doesn’t get help when he needs it, the memories tell him. He never has, he never will, and asking for it is admitting to weakness he can never acknowledge.

But sometimes, all he needs is an example of strength. Something to motivate him into doing the unthinkable.

He meet his eyes and it’s hard. It’s very hard, but he trusts him, fake memories or not. ]

Make you a deal? I’ll remind you who you are when you need it if you remind me when I do.

[Bruce allowing someone else to remind him who he is is just couched terms for allowing them to have input on his self-defined identity. It's a privilege he extends to very few-- before now, essentially only Betty had had that distinction. Although it's not a declaration that he'd accept the input unconditionally, not at all, Bruce's innate unrelenting stubbornness makes any kind of consideration a noteworthy concession. How he sees himself is at the core of his most critical struggles, and it's what outlines his problems and successes with the Hulk, which is the prevailing, overriding issue of his existence.

But this is an even trade. He appreciates that Tony might not be quite as resolutely, bloody-minded independent as he is, but he's close. Bruce answers with a slight, quirked smile, trying to soften what he knows is a huge difficulty for both of them-- exposing weakness, on a projected continual basis. Truthfully, they need the safety net, both of them. If it won't be each other, then who are they going to rely on to do it instead? There's an underlying level of mutual understanding here that Bruce has rarely replicated elsewhere, and a lack of expectation that the other will change. Both points are crucial.]

Deal. [There's a beat, and then he huffs out a breath of self-conscious humor.] If we let each other. But we can try.

[ He gives him a crooked smile, not quite up to the standards of those he was tossing around when he walked into the lab, but it’s an improvement from the bleak sense of helplessness he’d been feeling. It is what it is. He can’t change it, he just has to deal with it. And he’s not alone. Whatever happens, whatever has happened, he isn’t alone.

Not anymore. ]

All right. Existential crisis averted.

[ Maybe not forever. Letting things go isn’t something that comes easily to him. But for the moment, he can push this aside and actually try to get something done that isn’t succumbing to a panic attack. ]

You wanted to do some work, right? That wasn’t on your laptop? Or did you want to put the suit on and take it for a spin?

[It might be less than the smile he'd had when he walked in, but Bruce thinks it's more honest. He takes it as accomplishment enough.

Letting them move on is probably the wisest choice.] What? No, I'm not taking it for a spin. [A slight roll of his eyes, and he walks over to examine whatever Tony had done to his laptop, giving him his personal space back.]

I think the highest priority right now is understanding the nature of the energy that runs this place. It's not strictly ... uh, scientific or magical. Some kind of combination. The tech here's a little weird.

Have you taken a look at the consoles yet?

[ He’s half tempted to press about the suit. It’s stupid and ultimately pointless, but it would be an entertaining distraction. Partial temptation isn’t whole, however, and he drops it to meander back toward the workbench. More mindful of personal space than he might otherwise be, he fetches up near the end and drums his fingers against the top of it. ]

The rejects from the Nineties or whatever they are? Yeah, I messed with mine when I got into the apartment.

[ And had been disappointingly unable to reconfigure it to do what he wanted it to do. Which shouldn’t have been possible, and yet it had eluded him. ]

What’s the deal? Is the rest of the tech in the city like that?

Yeah. It's more organic, and, I guess mystical in nature is the word I'm looking for, than laws of reality should really dictate. [The easy way Bruce says that, if slightly wry, reveals how much he's had to adjust to the revised ideas of technology and physics here.]

But there's another aspect here. [Bruce walks over to where the cobbled together satellite tech is standing out from the rest, visibly and undeniably far more advanced than anything else seen around Keeliai. There isn't much left-- this has been drained of power and is shut down, dead-- but its structure is still there, with an unlit readout panel as a display.]

There was a satellite that crash landed a few weeks ago, and what we salvaged from it looks like this. I had to piece this together for another purpose-- this is all I have left. [He nods down at it. The rest of what he and Stark Industries had had went to the PSDs, which were gone now.]

[ Crossing over to it, he examines what remains of the satellite, trying to fit the missing pieces in to get a sense of what it is. And more importantly, what purpose it served. His eyes are drawn to the panel, dead and lifeless and practically begging to be turned on so that he can extract its secrets.

He taps a finger against it, unsurprised when nothing happens. ]

So why not put it back together, power it up, and turn it on? See what it's for?

[ He says it like it should be a piece of cake to do it. To his mind, it is. All he needs to do is cobble the parts together and he can make a particle accelerator capable of reproducing the element glowing in his chest. So far, that's been able to power anything. ]

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