Bruce Banner (isalwaysangry) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-01-05 22:34:00 |
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Bruce could tell this lab used to be his, which was a strange experience, since he didn't have the memories of setting it up. It was used by more than just him, but there were signatures to scientists, habits that were theirs alone. For Bruce it was an organized chaos, papers and microscopes and files that only connected due to the specific way his brain worked. Long before when he was at college, Betty used to scold him, since no one was going to be able to replicate his research if they didn't understand how he got to the conclusions. This ended up being a good thing; he didn't want anyone to replicate his research. Not for any reason. Dair kept busy - infuriatingly and degradingly busy - and Bruce usually forced him over just to get a break. He wrapped himself up in the lab and his new mission, currently being the symbiote and how to find it. Carol managed to give them a good idea of what to look for, before she seemed to leave town. Or whatever it was called when someone was there one day and gone the next. He was at the lab now, bent over his notes. He was messy in appearance, dark hair tousled, his clothing wrinkled or out of sorts, eraser smell on his fingers, and he hadn't thought about food or sleep since arriving. The usual. If he could come up with a design for a weapon to use, Tony could build it quickly. He had the means, and it would keep them away from OsCorp. Bruce pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The problem was in a focused attack, once they managed to find it, so no one else got caught in the wake. The door was unlocked and the doctor at home; he was currently using the lab as a homebase. Sleeping on the chairs when he needed to. There were some blankets and a yoga mat nearby. Close enough to a bed. He had worse. Gwen had been keeping up the lab, but only minimally. She associated the Chinatown lab with loss, despite the fact that there was no logical or rational connection between her losses and the physical space. Nothing had happened there to leave her alone in this city, but the place was associated with memories, and those memories just made her feel even more alone than she normally did. But now there was a new Doctor Banner, and she was trying to pick things up after the incident with Carnage. So, she made her way to the lab, a messenger bag strapped across her chest, pleated skirt and a warm sweater, plus the requisite coat to keep out the New York cold. Pushing her way into the open lab, she looked like any college student in the city, stockings and boots and snow dotting her blonde hair. "Doctor Banner?" she called out as she walked in, and she stopped in the center of the lab itself. She stared, the girl seeing ghosts that could not scientifically exist. Like religion, ghosts made people feel better and made loss feel less permanent. She understood that, logically, but she could still picture Flash there, cutting up as they built the Venom suit, and Doctor Banner failing to give him any useful advice about winning Mary Jane. And Pete - her Pete - laughing from the makeshift cot in the corner, the one that had been her home for months. She sighed, and she tugged the bag over her head and walked toward the man in the room. "I have a list of possible sightings from my dad's old radio. I was thinking of patrolling the areas, but I need something sonic to take with me." And creating said sonic something would distract her and, after her Christmas trip into the past, she needed a distraction. Bruce had no memories tied to this place, if anything it was the absence of them that disturbed him. But it was a little bittersweet to see a place that he called his own once. It'd been a long time since he had any personal space. He was always moving and hiding, there was no time to connect or find a 'home.' Even now he was hesitant to call it that, preferring to see it as a useful refuge until he found a reason to abandon the city. Bruce would already have gone if he saw a point to it. They were stuck in this strange Door purgatory. He'd have to go back through one no matter what, it might as well be here in New York. He glanced up when he heard Gwen's voice and put his glasses back on. They were slightly eschew, he'd relied on only these ones for years now. It wasn't like he could walk into his optometrist's office and ask for a new pair. "Ms. Stacy," he greeted with an awkward bob of his head. Bruce took to calling her that since she insisted on Doctor Banner, it seemed like a necessary parallel. He slipped up and occasionally called her Gwen, but they were still new to knowing each other, so he was stumbling his way through normal social interaction. Or he was new to it. She was old to it. "Patrolling areas by yourself?" Bruce frowned and shuffled his papers. "I don't think that's a good idea. We have a few big guns left. Well, uh, specifically two." As far as he knew. They had Tony and Thor. He never counted himself, since he was only any good to people for his brain or the green brawn, and that only needed to be brought out in serious situations. "A sonic weapon is good to have on hand, but it's dangerous. Very dangerous." "You can call me Gwen," she said, not acknowledging the parallel without even realizing that she was doing it. She let her bag fall to the floor beside a chair, and she sat down and looked at him. He looked just like her Doctor Banner. Physically, he was nearly an exact duplicate. Maybe he was a little younger, but the difference wasn't something that could be verified, not without testing cell quality and maturity, and she wasn't actually sure if he aged differently than most men. She'd tested Peter's blood plenty of times, and while she knew Peter's body worked at a faster rate, that metabolically it was significantly different, she'd never noted any difference in cellular decay rate. But gamma radiation wasn't the same thing as a spider bite. Regardless, he looked just the same, and she wondered what kind of lives they even lived, that such a thing could be possible. It was just like Peter being gone; he'd disappeared so many times that she just expected some alternate version of him to reappear. They didn't even take time to mourn the old versions anymore, not like they had at the beginning, and wasn't it just like death? Disappearing and being replaced by someone who looked and sounded like you, but who wasn't you at all? Lost in her thoughts, she looked up when Doctor Banner asked if she should patrol the areas by herself. "Not patrolling, exactly. Just asking questions. My dad was the police chief. I know how to shoot," she assured him, assuming he was concerned. She didn't blame him, really. Physically, she was unexceptional. Tiny and blonde, she looked younger than her twenty years, and she knew that wasn't very reassuring in the face of symbiotes and villains. "I was wondering if we can modify a sonic so that it emits bursts that are in short enough duration not to harm anyone but the symbiote? Or, possibly of high enough frequency?" she asked hopefully, and then she sighed and devolved, a girl just past her teens once more. "Christmas was terrible, and I just want a distraction," she admitted. "And you can call me Bruce," he replied, but so far he thought that wasn't going to happen. He offered before already, and she kept calling him Doctor Banner. Not that he minded too much. Until recently most people only called him that. Bruce was getting used to having people around him who were close enough to talk to him like he was more than the title. He didn't hold it against her in the slightest though. She clearly had a personal relationship with him before, a protege from what he could tell. He always wanted one of those, but he kept everyone at arms length. He did extensive tests on himself over the years, looking for a cure. He was done with that. There was no cure, if he could not find it, the leading expert with more information than anyone else. So far Bruce knew he healed at an accelerated rate, even in his normal body. Age slowing was likely, his cells regenerated. Infected cells. Poisonous blood, radiated to the point he should be far beyond dead at this point. "I don't doubt you can, it's just incredibly powerful, but you obviously know that. More than anyone else." She was the expert. The information was handled over and he sorted through it easily, but there was something personal about this for her. Still, Bruce had his reservations. With Peter gone, she was more at risk. "You don't think it would be specifically looking for you, do you?" She was important to it after all. "Yes, that may be possible. It runs a risk, but we can do preliminary tests. I can get our big guns on the look out, as thorough as they can be. Step one is getting a read on him so we can use what we have." It was surprising how easily he did step into studying crime and being in that position. Maybe Tony was on to something when he theorized Bruce could do more than he expected. Dark eyes stayed fixed on her, and he understood, oh how he understood and sympathized. "I'm sorry. Do you want to talk about it?" He was no therapist, he said he didn't have the temperament, but people found him easy to talk to for some reason. "I don't know if I can," she admitted of calling him Bruce. And it was foolish, but she just shrugged. "My dad was a police captain. Respect was really important in our house. I call everyone who's older than me by an honorific, and Mr. Banner just doesn't have the same ring." She knew that there came a point, somewhere after high school, when honorifics stopped being required; she didn't think she was there yet. And that was ridiculous, because she was twenty years old, and she had a job (maybe), and she'd given birth to a child who was three years old, wherever that child was. She should be past this, but she wasn't, and maybe it was just an indicator of how young she still was, even if she felt age weighing down her bones. "I know how dangerous it is. When I was in high school, we were terrified of Venom. I toured SHIELD once, with the other version of you, and Director Fury showed us videos of what the symbiote could do. He made us watch and listen and read, and he tried to scare us into giving him information, so he could destroy whoever it had bonded with. We didn't let him break us, and we made Flash a suit, and there was only one incident with Venom the whole time Flash was here. But I know. I remember those videos." She shook her head, trying to dislodge a memory that clearly wasn't going anywhere. "But I lost him. Harry's right about that. I lost Carnage, and I need to get him back. Flash is gone, Peter's gone, and so is Carol, and the Avengers don't care." And she didn't want Billy or Laura exposed to it, but she didn't add that. He didn't need to know. She opened her bag, and she pulled out the information she'd gathered from the police scanners. The file she handed him was thick, filled with charts, details, cross-referenced details and coordinates. "It wasn't a bad memory. It was a night I went to a party, but I ended up seeing Harry instead. We danced, and he told me he thought of me as a sister." She shrugged her shoulders again, the tic obviously a nervous one, something she did without thinking about. There was a smile on her lips when her cornflower blue eyes regarded him again. "Isn't that completely illogical? With everything going on, I can still get mopey about a boy." She grimaced. "I promise if you call me Bruce, I'll still believe you respect me," he teased gently. Bruce had a wry sense of humor. He couldn't tell a joke. Every time he tried he stumbled over his words and ended up at the punchline at the wrong point. Or he said it too flatly. He wasn't like Tony, where words and charm came easy. "It's fine, I am Dr. Banner. And I'm old enough to be your father, so it makes sense." Boy did that make him feel his age right there, but he was born an old man, or so Betty used to tell him. He wasn't one of those people who was surprised to look in the mirror and find himself older. He counted every day, in case of an incident. He was very aware of time passing. He listened to her explain what happened with Venom, frowning as he pictured it. That sounded like Fury. Bruce was not a fan of Fury, but he would work with SHIELD, if he needed to. They agreed to stand between him and General Ross, at least as long as he was useful, and it was a reprieve he accepted gratefully. "Fury wanted to destroy me too, so I sympathize with this Flash of yours. Well, I'm not sure if destroy is the right word. It was a failsafe. The real plan is always to study me, use me, so on and so forth." He smiled faintly although it didn't reach his eyes. "I care. I'm an Avenger. We'll find Carnage, I promise." Bruce took the files from her and opened them, quickly looking through. He was able to find patterns quickly, so he assumed together they could make some real headway. But they were both partly there out of distractions. He didn't want to go back through the Door, since he really hated that guy. He was able to do more good here. "No, no, it's not … well maybe it is. Illogical." He smiled, this time for real, dark eyes meeting her and then looking away. He was never very good at keeping eye contact. "But life isn't much when it's made of pure logic. It's just existing, day by day, caught in a loop of …." He recognized he was heading off in an unexpected tangent and halted it. "You're young, smart, and beautiful, Gwen. You're going to meet plenty of young, smart men who don't see you as a sister." "But you look like a Doctor Banner," she teased, a hint of her old smile, the one that didn't see light much since her dad died. "And you're not that old. I'm supposed to have sex with Mr. Osborn, and he's a lot older than you are." She'd become somewhat desensitized to all that. Once, it had bothered her so much, the life she was supposed to lead. But then she'd gone back and lived it, and now it just felt like something she'd conquered. There was a fearlessness to that, and it was dangerous, but she was barely aware of it. For all her stellar GPA and advanced cognitive thinking, she'd never been very good at extrapolating feelings and making sense of them on paper. "The you that was here before didn't trust SHIELD. You said they wanted to destroy or contain you. You- He helped Flash, I think, because Flash reminded him of himself. Something SHIELD wanted to study and control." She'd always understood that. She'd never actually seen the monster that Doctor Banner could turn into - the other guy, as Doctor Banner called him - but she knew all the pertinent details. She'd never heard the other Doctor Banner say he was an Avenger, though, that was new. It made her think of all the differences between the Peters, and she nodded when he assured her they would find Carnage. She wasn't sure she believed him, but she wanted to. Once, she'd believed everything he said. But she'd been younger then, and this had been a new place. "It's illogical," she repeated, agreeing with his agreement. That made her smile, and she managed to hold the eye contact longer than he did. "Caught in a loop of?" she asked, wanting him to go back to what he'd been saying. And she had to roll her eyes when he complimented her. "I bet no one sees Mary Jane Watson as a sister," she retorted. "She works for Mr. Stark. Have you met her?" "I … have no idea how to respond to that." He really didn't. Bruce just basically stared at her, wide eyed, for a few beats, and then rubbed a hand over his face. "You're supposed to? I'm assuming it is something I'm missing, since I'm behind on everything." He disconnected from the world on purpose, but it meant he was clueless. Both in terms of his own world, and whatever one she hailed from. He was only starting to catch on to this one. For a smart guy, he was remarkably dense and absent minded. "I'm not sure he's that much older than me. Maybe I wear it better." He doubted that. Bruce did look a little run down, but it was probably because he didn't put effort into it. "SHIELD does. They're upfront about it. I think Fury learned it was safer for everyone to let me go on my own. It only took a few dozen towns destroyed before that settled in." Bruce tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but it was impossible. His life now was a series of bitter, angry, and destructive vague memories, mixed with the fear that it would keep happening. Mostly he managed to push it all down to a weary acceptance. Zen, even, if he was lucky. "The army hasn't learned that one yet." He worried a little. If Ross was somewhere in this world, it might only be a matter of time before it came up again. And who was going to get caught in the crossfire this time? Maybe Gwen herself. He rubbed a hand through his messy dark hair, but didn't follow his loop thought. "The point is it's better to be occasionally illogical than to feel nothing. I'm not great at cheering people up." Bruce thought he was probably better at making things seem more depressing actually. He shrugged at her question. "I don't think so. I've only talked to you, Tony, Pepper, Thor. Carol, when she was here." He was disappointed to see her go, she seemed like a good person. And a good hero to have around. "I hope Tony sees her as a sister, if she works for him." But he was skeptical. She stared at him. She'd never considered the possibility that he wasn't aware of their potential futures, predetermined and general knowledge. She considered the pros and cons of informing him. As a scientist, he would want to know all the facts at their disposal. But she was so tired of realities that weren't theirs, just as she was tired of people disappearing, and of the fact that they'd all begun to accept it as something normal. In the end, she shook her head, and she made the most unscientific decision of them all; she gave a half-truth. "It's nothing," she finally said, giving voice to her decision. "When we arrived, it was believed there was a predetermined outcome for us. It isn't true." Which wasn't a lie, and which minimized enough (she hoped) that he wouldn't question the validity of the information. But she smiled when he said he wore his age better than Mr. Osborn, and the smile was genuine, with the momentary lack of concern that only the young possessed. "You look much better than Mr. Osborn, sir." She tried to match up his experiences with those of the previous Doctor Banner, but it was hard without tangible details. "We don't have a Director Fury here any more. I think he wasn't all bad." But her experience had been limited, and she did know that he would have blown Flash up without thinking about it twice. He believed in the good of the many versus the few, and Flash had definitely been the few. But she wasn't worried about him, not in the way that he seemed to be worried. He'd never gotten her hurt before. Why should now be any different? And she knew he hadn't finished his thought about the loop. She acknowledged it, but she didn't immediately press. "I would rather feel good illogical things," she told him. She'd felt plenty of those. "And it's okay. I loved my Peter, and he loved me. And I love Harry, and they say it's better to have experienced love, and to have lost it, than to never have experienced it at all." Her tone said she wasn't exactly sure if that was true, but the adage was old and familiar, and it was nice to have something that hadn't changed from her life before spiders and doors. "I don't think Mr. Stark sees anyone as a sister, sir," she said, her smile a knowing thing that said she knew all about Tony Stark; everyone did. "Ms. Potts is in love with him, but he's not very smart about it," she said, no hesitation, because she had no filter to speak of; a result of being socially inept and spending too much time staring into a microscope. Bruce knew she was withholding, she hesitated a little too long. But his curiosity wasn't the kind where he pressed until he got an answer. For all he knew, she wasn't giving the full story to protect herself and her privacy. He respected that. "Hm. I know there are alternate reality possibilities. In this situation they could be endless. Carol told me about things that never happened to me, and about the people around me that couldn't be true. I wouldn't put much stock in any ideas of fate in this place. When people can come and go this much, the future is constantly changing." He studied astrophysics and theoretical science about the greater world and universe they lived in. If Asgard existed, anything could be out there. "I wouldn't know, but I appreciate it." He doubted it too. Bruce was an average man. The only thing he had going for him was his intelligence, but he was fine with that. Best skill there was. "No, I didn't say he was bad. He thinks he's doing what is right. They made a cage for me, for the other guy, and if I could make one better myself, I would." Bruce was able to tolerate his situation more and he understood the Hulk was who saved the city, not him, not really. But the creature was unpredictable too, he could control it only so much. "The problem is always what they want to do with him." If they wanted to test him, use it for more experiments, it was a problem. That's how the Abomination came to be and killed a great deal of people. He chuckled, although it sounded more like a rueful huff-chuckle hybrid. "That's an old saying, and it can be right, but it doesn't feel that way in the middle." Bruce told himself over and over again that was how he should look at his relationship with Betty. And he was capable of it, up until the time he saw her. And then he wished it wasn't in him. "My fiance is remarried now, to a good man. Ex-fiance. It's for the best, but I'm illogical about it sometimes." And he was older and more experienced than she was, so the truth was things never really got better when it came to emotions. You just learned to deal with it better. He didn't often talk about Betty, for a variety of reasons. "Tony is in love with her too, he's not very good at it. I'm from later in their timeline, apparently. They're a power couple now. I tried to give advice, but …." He smiled and rubbed a hand against his mouth, as if it was trying to wipe that smile right off his face. "I've only had relationship, what do I know?" She almost clarified that they could be sent back to those fated places, where nothing was alterable, but she didn't. There was little point in the steps she'd already taken to evade giving him unnecessarily negative information, if she was just going to turn around and contradict herself. So she nodded her agreement, and she didn't tell him anything about what it felt like to be thrown off a bridge and have your neck snap. The fear, the pain, the certainty of death, because she'd known. Even when Peter called out that it would be fine, and that he was going to save her, she'd known it wasn't true. Here, at least, he was right about a changing universe. She'd already accepted the fact that the rules didn't apply here. It was the last Peter that had done it, because he hadn't cared for her or Mary Jane. He hadn't even liked Harry very much, and none of that had been right. She'd heard his concerns about SHIELD's intentions for him before. "You thought they would try to use you as a weapon, that they would run tests until they arrived at a manageable version of what you become." It was reality in a way that she'd hadn't known before the doors. Back home, there hadn't been Avengers or X-Men. It had just been her and Peter at first, and she missed those days. They had been so much easier, and the only thing that really mattered had been her GPA. Her cornflower blue eyes settled on him more surely when he started talking about his ex-fiancee. "Did you try to get her back?" she asked. She was still young enough that the option existed, especially if there had been interest before. Harry had never loved her, and therefore the option didn't exist for her, but maybe it did exist for Doctor Banner. As for Mr. Stark, she wasn't so sure if he was in love with Ms. Potts. "Mr. Stark doesn't act like he loves her. He's always with other women," she told him. Maybe this was a discrepancy. "Sometimes, romantic connections are different in alternate universes. It's possible he never falls in love with her in the reality he comes from." Bruce was not of the mind that ignorance was bliss, but he was no stranger to telling people only what he thought they really needed to know at a given time. It would be hypocritical to mind what others did for him. He knew Carol was holding back when she said Ross became a Hulk, there was more to the story, but he pulled out of it. Maybe eventually he would've asked more. Maybe it was better he never did. "If Loki is the one closest to my time point, I give up, the world's crazy." They argued over what happened in New York, so it seemed likely, and it was frustrating. He kept control and hoped Thor could keep him in hand. "Shocking, I know, that the government would use whatever they could to get power." His tone was dry; his opinion on the government was clearly not very high. After a few seconds passed Bruce rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know how much you know about what happened, but I was technically working for them. Not SHIELD. A branch of the government. We were trying to copy the Super Soldier program." It was top secret, and sometimes he still kept those secrets, when it didn't matter anymore. He rarely talked about what happened, since it was one giant shame spiral for him. It wasn't just his life he ruined. He was surprised at her honest and innocent question. She was young, younger than she seemed at times. "No, I can't offer her anything. I'm not capable of that type of relationship anymore." He could be, that was a theoretical idea, he avoided the subject. It was better to avoid complications entirely. Bruce could live without Betty and love, he'd been doing it for years, and if that was how the rest of his life went, that was okay. It was better than setting someone he cared about up for pain. Bruce nearly told her he was positive Tony felt for Pepper; not love yet, probably, but it was headed that way. Unless it exploded in a spectacular way. But that was private between him and Tony, so he nodded his head slowly. "You could be right. Your friend Mary Jane might want to be careful then. I hear he's very good at being a playboy." He respected and cared for Tony, his only real friend, a lot. He wasn't blind to the man's bigger flaws. It worked both ways, or at least it felt like it did. The mention of Loki made Gwen smile. "Loki was a teenager for a long time, and he lived with me. He's not as bad as he wants everyone to think he is." She was fairly certain she was alone in that opinion. Perhaps Thor shared it, but no one else. Still, she'd become fond of Loki during his time at the apartment, and she believed he would help her now, if she needed it. She'd considered contacting him about the symbiote, but it hadn't gotten desperate enough that she felt the need. There were still unexhausted options, or maybe that was just her being hopeful. She heard the distrust of the government in his voice. Once, she would have argued that he was incorrect. She'd been her father's daughter once upon a time, and she'd believed that law enforcement was always good, and that the government was beneficent. She wasn't that starry-eyed girl anymore, not when it came to those things, so she didn't argue with him, and she didn't counter what he said. "You never told me how it happened," she said truthfully. The version of Doctor Banner she had known hadn't wanted to talk about those things. He'd tried to shield both her and Flash from all the bad things the world had to offer. It made her smile to remember it, though it had been futile in the end. They'd grown up, and he'd left, and reality had come barging in. "You can offer her your love," she countered, when he said he couldn't offer Betty anything. And she was young when it came to romance. She still believed love was enough, that it could be enough. It was illogical, but she'd always had spots of whimsy mixed in with her love for science and numbers. She'd dreamed of chocolate houses, and she'd wanted to be a princess, and she'd believed that the tinfoil ring on her finger meant that Harry Osborn loved her. It all felt like a lifetime ago, but some it still lingered. "Mary Jane isn't my friend, and she's in love with Harry. I think she's safe from Mr. Stark," she said, and she reached for one of the folders she'd handed him earlier. "I think I'm going to start here," she said, pointing at a notation that she'd made about a possible sighting a few blocks away. His look at her was skeptical regarding Loki, but after a moment the skepticism turned into contemplation. "You knew that one better, obviously. I don't think he was born a villain. There had to be a point where he was close to his brother and family." Bruce disliked the man he became intensely, but he was very aware of how time and situations could change people. Loki could've been a good man twisted and turned into something else. "I wouldn't assume this one is trustworthy. He killed a lot of innocent people, and would've done more, given the chance." Bruce would rather let Thor handle him, the less he had to deal with Loki the better. Bruce had no real problem with law enforcement, at least not on a smaller level. There was corruption, sure, but there were a lot of good cops just doing their job. He didn't blame everyone for the folly of a few. He didn't even blame the soldiers working under Ross; the Hulk was dangerous. They thought they were protecting people. Their deaths weighed on him too. The Hulk didn't see nuance like that, only people trying to hurt him. "Arrogance. Impatience. Failure. That's what happened." He was rarely arrogant, but when it came to the project, he was consumed with it. Ross pushed him, and he let it happen. The mistake was on both of them, but him most than all, because he knew what the consequences could be. He saw what happened to his father. "I'm not surprised he avoided talking about it. Maybe he still thought he could reverse it, wipe it away like nothing happened." Until recently, so did this Bruce. He gave up. He smiled at her, soft and sincere, when she seemed to think love was all they needed. Betty argued the same, the last time he saw her. If Bruce wanted, she probably would've run away with him. Given up her life and future for it. "It's because I loved her I let her go." It used to hurt to think about, let alone to talk about, and he still felt it, a dull throb in his chest. He almost said Gwen would understand when she was older, but it was a patronizing thing to say. "I see, she's Harry's girlfriend." And Gwen loved Harry. "I'd tell you that hearts mend and it gets easier, but it's different for everyone. I'll cross my fingers for you." He lifted a hand and showed them crossed. He wasn't fool enough to give the usual 'oh sure you'll grow out of it' speech. He looked at where she was pointing to and he crossed his arms. "I'm still not sure you going alone is a good idea. I can go with you." It worried him, his stomach churned, if they were attacked the Hulk would come out. "What about uhhh … Billy?" Bruce didn't know much about him, but he was her age and a superhero, that had to mean something. "I think there was a point where he was kind," she said of Loki. "He was when he was here and young, so something happened in the middle. Jealousy and insecurity." She trailed off there, because she knew about both of those things. Well, not the insecurity so much, not the way Loki was insecure. But jealousy, she'd been feeling that since she'd ended up here with everyone telling her that the boy she loved wasn't hers. Even now, when she didn't love Peter Parker anymore, the jealousy was still there. It was hard, being a teenager in a door where everyone loved the same girl. "I was here when Loki cut our power all winter. Thousands of people died. I know he isn't trustworthy in general, but I don't think he would hurt me." She listened when he talked about failure, and he reminded her a little of her dad. She smiled, though it wasn't really anything to smile about. But the Bruce that had been there before, he'd reminded her of her dad too, in all the best ways. And then he smiled about Betty, and that just finished winning her over. Maybe this wasn't the Doctor Banner that had gotten her and Flash through high school, but he had all the things that mattered about that man whom she'd so respected. "That's very unselfish sounding, letting someone go because you love them. But I'm not sure that's your choice, Doctor Banner." As for Mary Jane being Harry's girlfriend, she shook her head. "Mary Jane and Harry love each other, but he's running Oscorp now and he has to marry someone rich and powerful." She considered him, head tilted and blonde hair tumbling over one shoulder. "He could use someone to guide him." It was leading, but if anyone could offer solid advice, it was him. "You're better at that than anyone I know." She stood, and she tucked her bag across her chest again. "I'll be fine. I'll check in. I've been doing this every day, and nothing's happened to me. I'll call if I run into trouble." She nodded, and she looked at him a second longer. "I'll bring some dinner when I come back." "I hope you're right." Bruce wasn't going to assume as much about this Loki. It was a shame the older one came back at all, if the teenager was decent enough. When he arrived Tony told him that they were fighting with him. Apparently it was right around then this world of theirs decided to bring back the meglomaniac. "I thinking fighting him once was more than enough for all of us." For Thor especially, who seemed to get his heart broken multiple times by his once-brother. Bruce wasn't an optimistic guy, so he expected the worst. So far he was usually right. "She's married, she's happy, that's what matters." And a good distance away from him. He might be a good man capable of making selfless decisions, but being around Betty Ross was dangerous for him. He didn't think rationally when she was involved. Better to keep them separate by states, continents even, most of the time. His eyebrows furrowed when she mentioned him marrying someone rich, and almost said something, but he was trying not to meddle in love affairs. No more of that. He was not Dr. Phil. "I never considered myself much of a guide, Gwen." He really didn't think anyone should want to be like him. Well there was no controlling her, and she was capable of making her own decisions. She knew more about the symbiote than anyone else. He almost told her not to worry about coming back, he might not be there, but he looked back at the papers. Yeah, he likely would. "I'll work on a sonic emitter, one we can carry with us. Just be careful." |