tushanshu | 05 ☣ TEXT & VOICE;

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05 ☣ TEXT & VOICE;

Looking to gather some info. Please respond with succinct list of what you would consider unalterable laws of reality in your home dimension, e.g. gravity, conservation of mass, particular laws of magic.

Will attempt to compile results into meaningful commonalities across dimensions. Maybe there's a universal law somewhere.

Would prefer text response if possible. Thanks.

B. Banner

[The message is then repeated in audio, if preceded by Bruce clearing his throat, for those that can't read English.]

[Voice | 60% encrypted to castmates & established CR.]

Finally got fed up with everyone talking over my head and made a trade to see my future.

[A beat.

In utter, dry exasperation,] You're all nuts. What kind of teamwork was that?

[ooc: Bruce is now post-Avengers! If you're not sure if you're established CR, ping me and I'll let you know if they're included, but feel free to play fast and loose.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Gravity, Newton's laws, no one breaking the speed of light.. I don't really remember the rest.

[encrypted 60%]
You.. in a team? What were you doing, mapping DNA?

Well, at least you gave a normal answer, [he says wryly.]

Looking for a mystical device from another dimension by its radiation signature, actually. And then team-oriented directed smashing. It went... better and worse than I thought it would.

[He completely appreciates, and openly agrees with, her skepticism about him on a team, and it's pretty apparent from his tone.]

If you want to ask me about more of the stuff you know, I can try to confirm it?

Oh, right. Totally normal. [He can't see it, but she has the funniest, most bizarre and amused expression on her face.]

[A pause, then she's frowning.] Smashing? Like, you totally let out the terrorizing monster inside of you and destroyed things and killed people and then just walked away? Because it wasn't so bad?

I can send you a short list to look over and you can tell me if anything's different? [and then we can conveniently handwave that list]

[The second part instantly gets him on the defensive, and Bruce has to breathe for a second to contain that reaction and level out his demeanor.]

Yes, I let it out, but it-- he-- didn't kill anyone. We were fighting alien space whales and a god and... Anyway, the collateral damage was all to buildings, not people. And I did walk away afterward.

[Bruce snorts.] Who's going to stop me? [It's not a conceited remark; instead it's slightly bitter and flippant.]

Cool. [And handwaved.]

[Then her voice is disapproving again.] So you didn't kill any aliens? You were just bankrupting people who need to fix their houses and riding off into the sunset like a rock star, because you're right. No one can stop you.

[He contains his frustration enough to say evenly,] They're not aliens like you're thinking of. They were huge, mindless, and trying to destroy Manhattan. And end the world. The property damage was a little incidental at that point.

Look, I don't want to argue this with you.

[Especially because she sounds like the voice of self-doubt and criticism in his mind, whispering that excusing even this one incident, which had helped saved the world, arguably done only good, was setting him on the wrong path. That nothing good could ever come out of the Hulk and all of his recent progress with control was a delusion. Bruce had been battling that voice his entire life, and only very recently begun to get the slightest inch of ground.]

Okay, that makes sense, I guess. But why didn't you stay to try to help clean up?

After what you just said, you really think me sticking around is the best idea?

[A pause. He has a point.]

I get it. There's no right choice, so you choose the less wrong one. As long as you remember that it's not your friend.

[Despite his best efforts, his voice tightens as he says,] How could I forget that, Hayley?

In my experience, it's pretty easy if you stop trying.

[Because it's so easy for abusers to look the other way and be pitied and supported.]

[Considering he actively argues with anyone that tries to pity or support him...]

It's been ten years and I've never stopped. [He speaks flatly, not out of a desire to defend himself-- he doesn't owe her an explanation-- but just because it's such an obvious truth. Bruce lives with it every day, has lived with it every day of those ten years.]

Not like that.

[Whenever he's tried to stop, it's been through taking his own life. Even that wasn't allowed to him.]

[Hayley's quiet for a beat, then says with the utmost softness and sincerity:] Thank you.

[He feels his heart tighten at her thanks. Part of him appreciates it, and part of him resents it. Mostly, what he resents is her identification of him with abusers. Bruce feels a deep, confused pain at the idea that he's already the very thing he's been trying so hard to prevent, and maybe it's the accumulation of everything he's been through lately, but his walls are still partially down and he can't let it stand.]

I'm not like that, [he protests, but quietly, almost like he's speaking to himself. Convincing himself, pained.] I've never hurt anyone that I could...

[That he could prevent. Suddenly he's disgusted with himself, voice low and simmering with self-hatred.] Never mind. It's an excuse. I know what I am.

[His father had told him enough times that he could never forget.]

[Hayley doesn't feel guilty for her words, or for trying to make sure that Bruce is on the right path, but it's important that he understands what she means. She shakes her head, even though he can't see it.]

You aren't that guy. But he- it is. And unfortunately for you? You're the only one who can stop it. If you ever forget that, that's when it will hurt the people you care about and that is what I'm trying to prevent. And you are too. That's good, Bruce.

[Because she wants him to see that he is doing good work.]

Edited (pronouns) 2013-10-01 19:18 (UTC)

[He's silent for a few moments before he decides to respond instead of simply quitting the conversation.]

I used to think that. That it, he, wasn't me. I tried to tell myself that, not to... to absolve responsibility, I've never done that, but because it would mean that wasn't who I was.

[With utter finality,] It's just another excuse. I know what he is and where he comes from, and it's me. Everything he does--

[He breaks off, faltering, even more self-disgust lacing his voice, but matched with a kind of resigned acceptance. It was impossible to deny that conclusion, after ten years of dodging it. Bruce had finally had it irrevocably proven to him.]

[Another short silence as Hayley contemplates his words, then she sounds almost awed when she speaks. There's a resoluteness in her voice, as if she's made a decision about him previously lacking.]

Do you have any idea how lucky you are? Most abusers have this sort of like, dichotomy? There's the nice guy that's supposed to be a good person, that does charity work and who everyone loves and whatever. Then there's the dark side that they secretly love, the one who beats people and steals childhoods. But in most of them, it's all blurred lines and gray area, right? It's one guy who claims he can't control it, who uses the good to cover for the bad and he can get away with that because usually no one knows.

But for you.. You have this like, totally separate entity that represents all those things. I mean, yeah, obviously it's really terrible that it exists and that you can't just kill yourself to get rid of it, but.. There's nothing gray or blurry about it. You know exactly what's your own and what's his.

[Her excitement picks up a little as she continues.]

It's like.. It's like the guy that abused you is living inside of you. I mean, it's still you, I know. But you can separate from it. If you can learn to control it completely? He'll probably always be there, but you don't have to be that monster. You can just be Bruce Banner for the rest of your life.

Edited (cw) 2013-10-02 00:34 (UTC)

[At first, he's trying to keep it together. Emotionally distance himself from the sound of her voice, soft and young, awed at his revelation. It was a revelation, a major shift in the way he thought about himself, his place in the world, and who he was. But it's different hearing someone else say what he's thinking himself, especially when she gets the most fundamental aspect, the most crucial thing, blatantly and totally wrong.

His abuse isn't meant to be spoken about. Bruce himself still hasn't said the word, never applied it to himself. He's not an abuser, and if he pretends hard enough, it's almost like he hasn't been abused, either. In any case, Hayley might know it happened, but that was an unwitting fluke and he wished he could erase it from existence. No amount of personal connection was enough to make up for her knowing.

In a low, terse voice, made all the more disconcerting from how it emerges from the silence without any visual to accompany it, he asserts,] No part of me is my father.

[It's so difficult for him to physically speak the word father that he can't manage anything else. Only seven bare words in response to her monologue, complete refusal. Bruce hates the Hulk, and he wishes he could be rid of the whole mess entirely, but the Hulk has never been an abuser. He's a mindless, destructive force; nothing so deliberately cruel and monstrous as his father. He's a monster, but he's never gone that far.]

[Hayley's quiet. She knew Bruce was abused, but had never connected exactly who it was. His final admittance of the fact and the immediate and stifling parallels between them caused the girl to actually be speechless. Hayley knew how much she dreaded comparing anyone to her own father, let alone accepting that any part of her was a product of his doing. To have done that to Bruce, unintentional or not, was unforgivable and she knew it.

'No, you're not;' 'I'm sorry;' 'I didn't realize.' All the words that come to mind seem so insignificant and devastatingly wrong that it takes her some time before she offers the only thing she can, the least wrong of all possible options.]

Because we make sure we're not. [Not them. She can't help but include herself, the extremely rare vulnerable truth among the sea of insincerity that is Hayley's life.] It's a choice, Bruce. One you make everyday.. and one you can keep making.

[That she doesn't keep arguing with him, tacitly accepts the correction, is a sudden, huge release of tension that had been building him. Bruce was two seconds from hanging up in order to contain his reaction to what they were talking about, knowing no other way to prevent his mounting heart rate. He's staring at his wrist monitor, watching the numbers climb slowly, now leveling off and holding steady.]

I've never needed anyone to tell me that, [he counters almost harshly, unable to speak about this without approaching it defensively. He's so vulnerable just mentioning it peripherally, and here it's so direct it has the potential to cripple him, set him back ten paces on his acceptance.

There's something brittle to his tenor.] I've been doing this a lot longer than you. I've always made that choice.

[He has a point. If she weren't, well, Hayley, then he would be a great person to learn from, a person to pass along his wisdom as she swallows her own experiences. Instead, being Hayley, she remains determined to help him. The thought of an alternative briefly crosses her mind, but it's dismissed. He needs her more than she needs him.

His defensiveness is easily ignored. She would be the same way in the reverse, as she has been before, and so she doesn't take it personally and feels no need to address it.]

I know. But I know that people tell you maybe you can have a different kind of life too, and you want to believe them because you're so tired of making that choice. There isn't another choice. Not for us.

[Bruce doesn't need anyone. He's stubbornly adamant on that. Even the people he'd like to have around, he doesn't need. He's always done without and just because he has some uncommon luxuries while he's here doesn't mean that's changed. Bruce operates on his own, because the scant amount of times he's been given the alternative, he's had the rug swept out from under him.

He's learned not to depend on anyone else anymore. He won't get to keep them.]

What other kind of life? [he asks critically, and somewhat impatiently, uncharacteristic as that is for him. Bruce actively argues with anyone that tries to show him sympathy for is situation, so to say Hayley's preaching to the choir is an understatement.]

I don't have to run. I can be honest. [Here, and apparently in the future back home, with SHIELD's protection.] Maybe I can learn some control. But that's it-- what else is going to change?

I don't need your advice.

[The stubbornness is hardly new, but his flat out rejection of her input is and it takes Hayley a moment to reevaluate. She wraps her hands around her neck to make herself feel better, less careful with her movements when knowing they can't be seen.]

I hope you're right.

[Because his return sounds a little too comfortable with the other guy and that's the last thing that Hayley wants, for Bruce to believe it's not the monster he's otherwise insisted it is. Not everyone can be strong all the time, after all.]

[Stubbornness has always been Bruce's foremost obstacle in anything. It took extraordinary bull-headed determination to hold onto specific ideas for as many years as he had, and part of what enabled that was his ability to block out input from others absolutely.

He has a slew of justifications in any circumstance for why he should. They don't know him well enough (something he ensured was the case), they weren't as smart as him and couldn't understand (true of almost the entire population), they'd never experienced the Hulk firsthand (another thing he actively avoided), they weren't the ones living with it... Hayley was too young, too untrustworthy, and too close to the topic at hand.

It's no effort for him whatsoever to reject her influence as much as he's ever rejected anyone else's, positive or negative. Just as he isn't willing to listen to her, Bruce isn't willing to listen to anyone telling him he isn't a monster, either. He's starting to conclude that he's somewhere in between, not human and not inhuman. Unfortunately, that's no help to him whatsoever.

But he also doesn't want to be mean to her. Just because he shut her down doesn't mean he has to be cruel.] I can manage fine on my own, [he assures her, softer in tone.] But thanks for... not telling anyone. [It isn't lost on him that, as far as he knows, neither one of them has broken their agreement.]

[It again surprises her, another turn. Receiving rejection and kindness is tow is so stiflingly unfamiliar that his soft words make her all the more uncomfortable. She's quiet at first, but then continues with the same tone and determination as before.]

I know you can, but you're not on your own anymore.

[Hayley isn't referring to herself. She's referring to Annabeth, who helped set up the garden. To Tony, who she knows Bruce spends time in the lab with. To.. well, whoever else Bruce's friends are. She's never found a reason to keep track and so doesn't care to remember them, but Bruce's inability to run here means that he's not as alone as he'd like to believe. Not anymore.]

You know what you're doing and the last thing you want is for me to keep talking, I know, but I'd feel bad if you did something you could never forgive yourself for and I didn't take the time to warn you beforehand. That's it, okay? So.. thank you, for actually listening.

[And she means it. Even if he ignores her, his taking the time to hear her out is refreshingly considerate. After a beat, her tone shifts to one slightly more solemn.]

I wouldn't tell anyone, even if I hated you. You know that.

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