The Universe's Mixer

Bruce made it quick. He didn't want to stick around, that fear would always be right there beneath the surface. He was setting himself up for rejection, opening himself up to pain and suffering but it couldn't compare to anything he had already experienced. Liv deserved better, with or without him.

So, he stood before her doorway, staring blankly at the pristinely painted door. He had one just like it a while back, now he barely used it. It didn't seem to matter now.

He pinned ( the letter ) to Liv's door and after a brief knock the scientist turned and walked away quickly. He didn't want to be there when she got it. Just in case...there he was running again.

He sighed, pushed open the front door to the building and disappeared in to the rain.

It had taken a complete stranger to open his eyes. Bruce hated it, but he knew the stranger had been right, and although it terrified him more than he wants anyone to know...he knew those words were the truth. It was odd and yet comforting, those words. They were simple and how he had missed it before he wasn't quite sure. For all of the intellect he posessed, for all of the great things he had done he was still just a man. A lonely man. A lonely man with a monster inside of him.

Bruce had been lingering in a book store, perusing the selections on science theory. A few selections later and the scientist had tucked himself firmly in to a couch in the corner furthest from any signs of life. He must have looked troubled or struggling as he sat there because otherwise he doubted the stranger would have approached him. But what struck him as peculiar was the way the stranger looked. How he carried himself, almost as if he knew the same pain and struggles. But that couldn't be right, could it? Bruce wasn't sure. He hadn't been sure until the man had left. The stranger had come and sat down beside him. A very large bird had rested on one of the man's shoulders until the stranger had sat down. He held no book, nothing of any interest to which Bruce could start up a conversation.

But somehow they had managed to start talking. The stranger was easy to talk to. At first Bruce had been hesitant to open up, reluctant to share. And then by some means they had trickled in to the subject of love, of being with someone.

"A woman is a good weakness to have," the stranger said to the scientist. "The moment you stop letting yourself love someone is the moment you're no longer human anymore. You really do become the monster you keep inside of yourself. Having someone to love means you've become willing to fight, and it means you're willing to allow yourself to be exposed."

Bruce sighed softly. His mouth had opened to argue, to protest....nobody could love a man with a monster. Nobody could understand. But the stranger with the bird was right. "There's nothing more human than admitting you have things to overcome, and if it was me I would pick love over anything. I would choose to have someone to protect, someone to support, even if it was a risk. Because you can't exist with regret in knowing that you could have been happy, and you chose not to be. No man deserves to be unhappy, we simply choose to be because we are afraid. That fear should compel us to overcome it, to deal with it. To have to be brave, and the first step in that journey is to admit you have a weakness just like all of the rest of us. Every person, creature, on this planet needs someone else. For procreation for their species, or simply just to be around. You can't escape it. And it's better to know that feeling than go without knowing it for your whole life."

The book Bruce had been holding had somehow managed to fall to the floor without him knowing.

"Why are you telling me this?" Bruce asked. The stranger just smiled a little bit and shrugged, "You looked like you could use it." And without another word the stranger got up and walked away. The scientist was left with the last moments of that haze and he knew the stranger was right.

Instantly Bruce got up. He didn't realize he was running until he reached the sidewalk outside and he found himself out of breath. He grabbed hold of his bike, mounted it and tore down the streets in the direction of Stark Tower.

He had a lot of work to do. A lot of making up to do.

He needed to reach out to Liv.

A stop at the Tower and he was in his lab almost instantly. He was afraid, deathly afraid, but it felt easier somehow to deal with than before. Sitting down at his desk, Bruce found some clean paper and a pen and began to write a letter. He would take it to Liv's apartment when he was done. But it had to be perfect. And he was almost always perfect when he set his mind to something.

Who knew the kindness of a stranger would have such a profound effect?

With a sigh of relief, Bruce settled and composed, knowing that when it was done he had to find the strength to follow through. He could do it. He would do it. He would take the next step.

After mulling it over, Bruce decided that it was time to reach out to Liv about the completion of the project he was working on for her. The final test was needed to ensure the endeavor was successful. He hoped it had been, and that it brought some measure of comfort and peace to her. He couldn't cure her ailment, it was unique like his own, but that didn't mean they couldn't suppress it for at least some length of time to give her a normal-ish sort of life.

The chemistry had been complex. Bruce had never touched a drug before that and the process of synthesizing something and manufacturing it from scratch had been exhausting in itself. Long, grueling hours spent in the lab, perfecting each component. His little trash receptacle next to his desk had been full of small, crumpled balls of paper too often for him to recall what it looked like empty. Many nights he had collapsed at his desk from exhaustion, or somehow managed to find the comfort of the sagging, brown couch without knowing how he had ended up there.

Bruce had made himself eat, made himself shower and change clothes, but once engrossed in a project those appearances of him outside of the lab was rare and infrequent at best.

Not that anyone had been keeping tabs on his whereabouts, and Jarvis had always chimed in to remind him to nourish himself. That was always an annoying comfort. Maybe someone had been keeping up with him after all.

But now it was complete. Had been for a few days and Bruce had finally gotten himself cleaned up. After talking to Tony, and having a beer or two with his best friend, Bruce knew the time had come to see Liv.

He hoped it would be with good news.

In his pocket Bruce carried a small, metal tin that once had held mints, in which the small tabs of the formula were being kept. Outside of her apartment building, standing on he sidewalk, the scientist pulled out his cell phone, opened a new text box and sent Liv a small message to see if she was home:

Hey Liv, it's Bruce. Sorry to bother you. Didn't know if you were home. I'm outside in front of the building. Have something for you if you have a minute.

He debated on sending more, but he didn't. Instead, Bruce sent the message and waited for a response back.

Tony stared at the plethora of screens projected around him like a dome, mouth hanging open slightly as he stared at the recordings of life around the City. It made no sense. It still didn't. The movements of the locals and architecture, the inexplicable patterns and how they didn't seem to affect daily life in the least bit. It made no sense, and Tony hated it.

If he couldn't even understand how the City operated, how could he hope to grasp it's intent for its kidnap-pees, and how could Tony work out how to prevent losing anybody again?

The inventor felt nauseous from the problem, and dizzy from his position. He was lying, stretched out across the front seat of the hot rod that he worked on eternally as a meditation, the doors open and his head handing off the edge of the driver's seat. The blood had rushed to his head from the length of time he'd stayed this way, but he was determined not to move until he'd seen something. There had to be a clue somewhere.

Liv was used to the flash of memories from the dead. As a zombie that was part of her new reality. They hadn't come in use now that she was in The City, but back home part of the way she dealt with her new undead life was using her abilities to help people.

So when the first flash came, she thought it was from the brains she ate yesterday. Except they weren't from the deceased. They were Liv's memories. And it wasn't just one flash. It was flash after flash after flash.

( Cut for iZombie Season 1 spoilers. Spoiler warning for the rest of the log from here on out. )

Bruce Banner was her closest neighbor. She might have gone to Matt Murdock if he hadn't been a few floors above her. These new memories, reliving everything that had happened to her in Seattle all at once? It was too much to process. Liv didn't want them anymore. She didn't want to be a disgusting brain eating zombie anymore.

She couldn't help it. She was bawling her eyes out on the other side of Dr. Banner's door, the man who she barely knew but had given her ghost pepper jelly, her hand slapping it frantically, hoping he was there to let her in before someone saw her.

( TBC )

She'd tried the zoo. It had been like speaking to a wall. Most of the people that worked there seemed unwilling or unable to comprehend what Clara was trying to do. Instead of flatly telling her no, they played dumb until she got frustrated and decided to look for another plan. Well, they might have been playing dumb or the locals were genuinely stupefied. Clara wondered where they had come from.

The next part of the plan was to try and find the source of the dinosaurs. But the streets of The City kept moving her back to places she'd already been. At first she hoped it was a clue, that The City wanted her to help, but as nothing happened it became more and more clear to Clara that the City was keeping her away. Perhaps it thought it was trying to keep her safe? Clara wanted to think nothing but the best of it's intentions. And despite semi regular reports of dinosaur sightings, most disappointingly, Clara had not seen a single one. It was like The City agreed with Peggy Carter that she was woefully unprepared.

Plan C, find someone else to help. Finding a companion must have been harder than Clara ever realized. The rational response to trouble was to run away from it, and while Clara did a far amount of running with the Doctor, she was also prone to running toward danger whenever needed, happily. Maybe too happily.

Stark Tower looked like it might have the sort of supplies she needed to track dinosaurs. She wasn't entirely sure what Stark Tower was or what it did, but it looked very high tech and that was promising provided it wasn't a secret cover for a dalek invasion or something like that. In the lobby she looked uncertain of where to go until she was greeted by a polite robotic voice.

"Yes, I'm here to see Dr. Banner? Tell him it's a... Dr. Oswald," she said.

Liv was hungry.

Her last meal was just a few cats short of full on animal control disaster. Thankfully the only neighbors that caught on had been more than understanding. She managed to forever homes and that was that. The next person she chose needed to be different, boring. The problem was no one was really boring. Everyone had their own little quirks and eccentricities; things that they loved, things they were good at, habits that made them unique. Liv had never eaten a boring person because as far as she could tell boring people didn't exist.

But that didn't mean she couldn't try, even if she was uniquely qualified to understand that such a brain probably didn't exist. On paper, quite a few of the bodies that came in sounded remarkably similar in their lack of remarkableness. It wasn't a pattern exactly, or perhaps Liv just refused to believe so. She picked the brain of a boring shop girl who died in a car accident and hoped for the best.

As far as she could tell, it seemed to be working. At her apartment, Liv found a message from Dr. Banner telling her to meet him at his office. She didn't notice anything off about the brains she'd eaten at first. The request seemed perfectly agreeable. It wasn't until she met him at Stark Tower, Liv had a vague notion that this brain was different from the others.

She had no strong feelings about Dr. Banner, about The City, about the people brought in or why. She would have described it as contentment, but it wasn't as deep of a feeling as that. It just was. She just was. She was at Stark Tower to have tests done. Because she was asked. The reasoning wasn't so important anymore. The spark in her eyes that differentiated her and the others brought into The City faded until it was barely visible.

If it weren't for Liv's pale skin and hair, she would have passed for native. Instead she looked more zombie than ever before.

She waited patiently in the lobby for Dr. Banner to be escorted through the secured areas of the building.

Bruce had been dreading this. Why? He wasn't sure exactly. He knew that this Tony wasn't his Tony, the man that had spent the last two years since the attack on New York creating things with him in the solace of the newly re-vamped Stark Tower. They had made so many things together that this felt like a step backward. Was VERONICA here? Did Ultron exist? What about FRIDAY? Apparently JARVIS was still functional. That eerily British voice was soothing to the scientist.

Bruce had finally gathered the courage to approach the building itself. He had noticed it on the skyline and Steve had confirmed that the inventor was there. So why was he so nervous in his initial engagement of the facility? Tony had never been one to turn him away. But it seemed he had been here before. How long ago? He wasn't sure. But a part of him had been here and left a significant mark.

"Welcome back, Doctor Banner." Oh Jarvis. He had missed the program a good deal. Having not had the chance to see FRIDAY in action, Bruce had seen the manifestation of JARVIS in The Vision. It was strange seeing Jarvis as an entity and not a program, and yet here...here he was still functional as Tony's right hand. Besides Pepper, of course. Was Pepper here too?

The elevator made it's way up as if it knew where it was taking him. When the doors opened, a laboratory setting greeted him. Welcome back... had he left this all behind? In some strange way?

First things first.

Bruce uploaded the VERONICA protocol to Jarvis' mainframe. It would go into effect and be built immediately. This would help against an outbreak. He couldn't deny Tony or the City this vital piece of equipment. Then, he opened the computers and began to study the data. His eyebrows arched and his eyes widened.

A serum. There was a serum. He had invented it and yet knew nothing about it. Fascinating.

This was going to take a while.

( Avengers Assemble? )

Kuvira had wanted to arrest Bruce Banner for destruction of public property but was promptly commanded not to. Everything about The City's police department frustrated her. She wondered if this was how things were done in Republic City; slowly and with enough red tape to suspend a badgermole from the ceiling. The paperwork required so that she be allowed to modify her blue uniform with the metal strips of her old one and be exempt from carrying a gun, taser, baton or any of the other normal equipment, had been staggering.

Maybe she was being punished after all. There was something wrong with the natives. The only ones that provided decent conversation had been brought into The City like her. Perhaps the spirits had thrown her in for overseeing the weapon of mass destruction she had personally commissioned. It made as much sense as anything else.

If she couldn't arrest the Hulk she was damn sure going to clean up his mess. Kuvira's patrol was on foot, she still didn't know how to drive yet. When she got to broken concrete and cracked pavement where Banner had fought the giant lizard creature - someone called it a T-Rex - there were stares. It looked like a dance at first, tai chi on closer inspection, and something else to those who knew better. She smoothed the pavement, repaired the cracks, and made it safe to walk again, for cars to drive in the area, and strengthened the foundation of at least one building.

A small crowd gathered around her while she worked as if she were a common busker. Kuvira ignored them. This was her city to look after and protect now. She'd let the onlookers gawk as long as they stayed out of her way.

"Officer Kuvira, this is dispatch, do you copy? Officer Kuvira to dispatch." Kuvira looked down at the small radio attached to her uniform. She picked up the small receiver, "This is Officer Kuvira, over."

"What is your location? We're getting a couple more reports of dino sightings. Over."

"Dino?" Kuvira asked.

"The big lizard things. Over."

Kuvira looked around. She didn't see any other T-Rexes nearby. A creature of that size would have caused another panic. There would have been screams at a minimum. It was hard not to scream back at the other voice on the phone, bark commands. That wasn't her place anymore. She took a deep, centering breath.

"Not at my location. Over."

"Alright, keep an eye out and report if you see any suspicious dino activity. Over."

"Ten-four," Kuvira frowned and replaced the radio receiver on her uniform. The crowd was still watching her, expectantly. Kuvira sighed and waived them off, "Move along. Nothing to see here."

Bruce couldn't believe what he was seeing. He had slipped his glasses from his face in wonder as the terrasaur terrorized a city block or two. From where he was standing the sight seemed unbelievable. An honest to God Tyrannasaurus Rex. The fact that it was currently eating citizens of the City was for a moment lost on the scientist. The studious part of his brain was running at full speed and outweighing the probability of danger. He didn't realize he was standing with his mouth agape until a girl nearby screamed.

Snapping his jaw closed, Bruce folded his glasses neatly, stuffed them into a pocket and straightened. He did not want to Outbreak, not in the middle of town but it was seeming as if he was out of options. He couldn't let these people die either by being selfish. He could have run, that was a proven fact. He had run from about everything else in his life so why not this? It seemed unfair, in a sense, to abandon these people that were fleeing for their lives already.

Weighing the options, the petite scientist breathed out hard. Stark would save them, right? They had to have someone...anyone?

Damn it all.

Rushing forward, Bruce regretfully knew it was up to him to stop the beast from further terrorizing the population. And this day had started out so promising...

It took only moments for the Other Guy to emerge in a sea of green muscle mass and tatters of clothes. It roared as loudly at the king of the dinosaurs, earning the attention accordingly. "Hulk smash puny Dino." It was a state of fact.

The gnashing of teeth came at the large green mass but Hulk lifted a mighty fist and drove it into the face of the dinosaur, earning himself a roar of surprise.

A leap into the air to avoid further snapping of teeth, and Hulk soared over the Rex. He landed behind the thing, and before the dinosaur could even try to turn Hulk had grabbed it by the tail. Emitting a roar of his own, Hulk jerked the lizard's tail and began to fling the thing expertly, not caring about damage to buildings or whom might potentially be in the line of fire.

Not even a certain red-headed female that was currently going by the name Effie Nashton, or Enigma. The vigilantee villainess had been crouching behind a car when the Hulk threw the dinosaur into the vehicle, sending the girl, the lizard and the automobile careening across the street and into a building. There was no way she could have survived the impact or the pressure of both the car and dinosaur landing on her amidst the rubble. Hulk had no idea she was pinned beneath the mess.

He stomped forward, grabbed the dinosaur again and began to throw it into buildings and punch it until it was dead and unmoving.

A snort from the green beast and it looked around at the citizens still fleeing. The streets emptied, and the Hulk released a mighty roar of triumph. It made no attempt to clean up any part of its mess, leaving the dinosaur where it lay. Instead, the green monster turned, shot glares at the surrounding buildings and wandered easily into the settling dust.

Bruce cleared his throat.

He glanced around at the obviously empty hallway in the apartment complex. Socked feet padded softly toward the door to the apartment where his new friend Liv dwelled. In his hand he held a small, glass jar filled with a mixture of ghost pepper and a sweet jelly. He had told her about it during their initial conversation and Bruce could recall exactly how the process went. However he hadn't needed to make it at all, he had opened his pantry door and there it had been. And she deserved it more than he did. He doubted he would have wanted anything with that kind of a kick, that was liable to set off the other guy. No. Not a good idea.

Instead of knocking when he reached her door, Bruce paused. He looked down at the carpet in front of her door. Kneeling, Bruce set the glass jar down. He hoped it was a good enough present for her and their prospected potential friendship.

He rose and stepped back from the door. Knock? She probably wasn't home. Could he hear meowing behind her door? She couldn't have friends, but she could have cats? Would cats contract a disease like that? He didn't know. It didn't matter.

Turning, Bruce walked away much quicker than he had come. He didn't leave a note of any kind with the jar, no semblance of who had left it beyond the snippet of conversation and the hope that she would remember.

Reaching his apartment, Bruce didn't look back down the hallway. Instead he pushed the door open, crossed the threshold and shut the door behind himself. Gently, his back pressed against the inside of his door and he breathed out. He felt tired. He needed sleep.

And now he could sleep, for a couple of hours at least. He never had slept very long unless he had been working relentlessly for days and nights. That didn't happen too often lately.

The Hulk was back. It had been in the papers. Liv was too new to have known there was a Hulk in the first place but she was sympathetic to the mindless monster of destruction. Without a steady supply of brains, that could be her, in a smaller, self-replicating sort of way.

The green indestructible giant wasn’t the most interesting part, however. Out of all the stories covering the Hulk only one mentioned Dr. Bruce Banner in tandem, and when she dug deeper into the subject, she found the connection buried in the public record. Yes, it was awful Dr. Banner sometimes became the Hulk, but what she was really interested was his level of experience and knowledge in biochemical research.

Sure, he might not have been able to cure his own condition, but what about a rabies-like zombie virus that may or may not be connected to a new designer drug? Her friend former supervisor Ravi seemed to think there might be a cure, and she was pretty sure he didn’t have the genius required himself to turn himself into Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

It just so happened that Dr. Banner’s name was added to the hospital directory. Liv arrived at work early to see if she could catch him in his office. When she arrived, Liv tapped her pale knuckles on the glass.

“Dr. Banner?”

( Read more... )

The headlines in that day's paper would capture the attention of a lot of citizens in The City. The beast always did have a profound affect on most people, but some would consider the headlines more important than others. The initial story had not been expected, the first full page had been reserved for the mayoral campaign which had abruptly been shoved to settle on page three.

Hulk is back!

The three words spoke volumes to the situation at hand, and the article featured all of the highlights of previous matters in the City proper. Included were photographs of the recent sighting, a large shadow beyond the cloak of a dust cloud just visible through the destruction. A pile of cars and just beyond the cloud was what seemed to be a military issued jet fighter that now lay in a scrap of twisted metal, broken glass and fire.

Shame. Shame was all Bruce could feel besides regret. He held no hope for the aftermath of the rampage. He couldn't remember crash landing here or anything other than waking up in an abandoned grove of bushes and making his way to an apartment that was already waiting for him. The key in his pocket and the fob bearing his name guided him and the place wasn't hard to find. But what kind of a name was Agreeable Apartments? Was it really that agreeable or was that just a clever name?

He was glad that the apartment was cool and vacant. His skin was hot and he was exhausted. The struggle to make it from the place he had awoken in and to the seclusion of the apartment had not been easy. But he had made it and he felt like passing out and sleeping for the next two days. He doubted he would but his head was pounding hard enough to make his thoughts scatter. The darkness was welcome and once the scientist closed the door to apartment twenty, he sank into the first piece of furniture he came across (which was strangely similar to a certain worn out old couch in a lab he remembered in Stark Tower) and even before his head hit the cushion he was out.

Sleep was not something that blessed him often. And being in an apartment complex scared him. But now was not the time for digging into answers. No. He had to regroup first.

When he awoke, Bruce had managed to gather himself, and get a newspaper. The lines screamed up at him from the black and grey article. A duck back into the apartment and he was in for the rest of the day. He couldn't yet bring himself to face anyone just yet. They would come find him, they always managed to. But for now the solace was what he wanted. The sirens could wait.

Bruce was done.

Finished.

He couldn't take it anymore.

The constant reminders made him sick to his stomach and he needed to be free of the burden. Every time he turned around, even in his own lab, he was reminded of her. From the scraps of leftover wrapping paper on the floor that he had yet to pick up, despite Owsin pointing them out, to even the smallest vial of Hulk serum that lay in a heap on the too of his desk....all of it shouted at him. Screamed. And he no longer wanted to hear it.

So the scientist did the only thing he knew how, and that was run. He gathered what he could, small things. A suitcase large enough to hold the plans for Dean and Dinah's costumes, what he could manage of Hulk serum, and a few other precious things. He left the necklace Effie had given him for his birthday on the tabletop in the lab. That was the last thing he needed, to feel her heart beat.

The sadness was infinite and it seemed only to continue to multiply exponentially with every second that dragged by. The last few days had seemed like an endless eternity and a place that had had once felt the most comfortable in the world had become a prison. His sanctuary had become only a burden and he had to escape before it consumed him.

Packing what he could, Bruce instructed Jarvis to watch after Timmy, a task to which the AI dutifully agreed to, albeit with a tone mixed between sadness of seeing the doctor go and loathing for the task at hand. Bruce hated to burden the AI, but Timmy was a robot, and he was most at home there amongst the rest. All of the restrictions on Tony's lab and anywhere else remained. He didn't even bother to lockdown his own lab, he just didn't care anymore.

With that in place Bruce fled.

He took the elevator to the garage but instead of choosing a car Bruce instead mounted up his bicycle and took off for a motel, one he had stayed at before moving into the warehouse with Effie way back in the day. Before everything. With a sadness in his heart at being driven from the one place he had known as home, Bruce peddled as fast as he could and left the looming tower in the distance. And with it the weight finally seemed to abate.

The half-written, tear-stained note broke what was left of the mending pieces of his heart.

It was shattered like a fist through a mirror, and the shards were much too small, scattered and broken to fathom repair. That was the kind of object to be tossed away in the rubbish bin, never thought of except how to replace it. That was sort of what this felt like. A heart too broken, too beyond repair to replace and mostly it was because there would never be another that was exactly the right size. Nothing would be able to repair the hole there, no person, place or thing could ever make the hole go away. The void was an endless expanse of loss and grief, and the scientist wasn't sure how to cope.

He had dealt with grief before. At a young age, and perhaps he had been stronger then. Losing his mother was almost like this and she, too, was irreplaceable. There would never be anyone in his life that could fill that empty space, and it was the same with this. The loss was different because whereas his mother was long since dead, thirty years in her grave by now, Effie was still alive and well.

Bruce trembled at the thought of her being with anyone else, being satisfied, smiling and laughing. He hated the thought of another man giving her these things. Maybe he had driven her away, but if that was the case she wouldn't have tried to take her own life on the roof of Stark Tower. Bruce had agreed to stay married on paper but now....now, he was starting to feel regret. Was it easier to sever ties completely? Let her move on? She didn't seem to want that, but this letter...the writing was half-smeared from the tears, hers and his own, and he didn't know what to do.

He felt like he was standing in front of a wall, unable to go around, climb over it or dig beneath it. A standstill, a checkmate.

He needed to get out of the Tower for a while, relocate. But where? A motel? It seemed more appropriate than this.

With a wipe of his eyes across the sleeve of his lab coat Bruce tossed the note halfway across his desk, a feeble attempt at trying to be rid of its half-hearted words, and he closed his eyes to think. He hates himself, and everything else in that moment. And perhaps even her.

Effie was standing on the edge of Stark Tower's roof, the only thing keeping her from flying off being her stiletto heels hooked over the railing, and the familiar balance she had of standing in such a location. Her father had kept her from any chance of ending her own life for the past week, but he wasn't there with her and she hadn't even been at work an hour before she had found herself up here, staring down at The City below.

From this distance...it seemed so much like Gotham, she could almost hear the screaming, hear the horns honking and police sirens...she never realized just how much she missed home.

Her balance wavered slightly, the wing tugging at her, pulling...caling for her to fly. She shifted her feet, a gravel rock tumbling over the edge of the roof and she watched it blankly, her heart longing to follow it.

Downstairs, Jarvis beeped Bruce, his cool monotone flowing through the man's earpiece. "Sir, your ex-wife is on the edge of the roof."

In the first dream, Oswin relived early Christmas morning with Leto. Only when they kissed and she pleaded with him to stay with her, Leto smiled. It wasn't a nice smile, either. An eyestalk broke the surface of his forehead, his hands reached for her neck and--

In the second dream, Oswin sat up in her bed covered in sweat gasping for air. She hadn't dreamt in years and perhaps the first couple of nights would be unpleasant as she got used to it. She looked to the side of her large bed and smiled at Leto sleeping there peacefully. That was when the Dalek body she left behind became automated and shot it's way between their apartments. Leto shouted for Oswin to run before he was hit by a direct blast and crumpled to the floor dead. Oswin made it to the door before she heard the electronic chime of the blast and--

She woke up. For good this time. Her bed was empty and Oswin was glad that Leto hadn't been sleeping next to her to witness that. Oswin was fearful, trembling, but the terrors of the dream were slowly starting to fade away until she remembered--

"Leto."

There had been two bodies. Oswin's human form and the dalek. Now that Oswin was no longer controlling the dalek, it was impossible to say what kind of danger Leto was in. She ran out the door in cotton pajama pants and a tank top, ready to break down the young emperor's door if she had to, when she realized the apartment next to hers had vanished.

"Leto!"

Oswin turned around wildly, expecting to see that The City had simply moved Leto's apartment elsewhere. When it wasn't obvious, she ran into her place, showered and got dressed.

She spent the rest of her night walking The City trying to find Leto's apartment to no avail. She tried hailing a taxi, but the driver claimed the address she gave didn't exist. Oswin tried looking in a phone book in a retro 1980s themed diner, still there was nothing. She needed something bigger to help her search, the best technology The City had to offer.

Oswin went to Stark Tower.

It was relatively easy breaking in, swiping a badge here, hacking her way past a security protocol there. She went to one of the only labs she remembered, one that belonged to a Dr. Bruce Banner, and made herself home at his desk, her fingers typing rapidly at his keyboard. Oswin had a mission.

And sometimes it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

The door to Bruce's lab dinged, Jarvis warning the man he had a visitor, and a courier wheeled in a food cart covered in a crisp white table cloth and two silver domed meals. He lit the candles on the table and placed a purple coloured rose in the vase before giving a bow and vanishing back out the door, job done.

Resting against the vase was a small card, Bruce's name written on the cover in glittery green ink.

Happy Birthday, Bruce!

Today is the second happiest day of my life, because it's the day you came into the world! I love you, Bruce Banner, for always and always. Give me a few minutes and I'll be downstairs...I'm more then likely upstairs getting ready for our birthday date! And no peeking at dinner before I get there!

-Effie Banner