Anton's got a spark but (cantstartafire) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-17 01:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | captain america, hulk |
Who: Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers
What: Catch up on things
Where: Steve's gym so Anton can perv swoon
When: RECENTLY
Warnings: Excessive adorable and pep talks?
The thing about having Anton Sparke in one’s head was that there was rarely a moment of silence. Add Hulk into the equation and Bruce didn’t have a chance. On the bright side, Anton was amusing. Most of the time he felt like Anton was just some driver in his head and he was some kind of robot that was being driven around from one place to another. But it could have been worse. It was Anton’s presence in his mind that demanded he go meet up with Steve at the gym and he refused to entertain the ideas why. He didn’t objectify his friend, but Anton had no problem with it whatsoever.
Anton’s desire to bear witness to Captain America at the gym was last on his list of things to worry about. The first being what he’d talked to Hank about. On one hand Bruce was honest, and wanted to remain that way. And yet, that other hand that caused so many problems, put Hank in a bad situation. Hank had done some terrible things, some truly terrible things. And while he didn’t defend them he knew that an extra screw loose in his mind he’d likely be doing the same thing. He wanted to believe that Hank was better, he’d handed over the parts to Tony’s suit (which Bruce had returned promptly), he’d handed over the device to power down the suit and the schematics (which Bruce had Anton stow away in his vault on the other side to keep it out of the wrong hands), and he’d admitted to the bug attack. He’d heard of the bugs, but hadn’t been around for them.
The fact was Hank had been in a bad place, there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t go there again, and to make matters worse he’d fallen in with Loki. Which was never a good plan. Bruce had been in that plan before. Nothing good ever came from it. Not to mention now that he’d gone turncoat on Loki...That added another layer of difficulty. Shit. Shit. And Double Shit.
Bruce walked down the street with his hands in his pockets and kept his head down. The exact opposite of how one was supposed to carry themselves in a city like New York, but Bruce had very little fear of being hurt. He had more fear of hurting others. He approached the gym and, as Steve had said, the door was open and he let himself in.
Steve hadn’t thought anything of Bruce request to meet at the gym. Steve spent most of his time there, and it was pretty much a sure bet that he could be found there if he was in New York. The place was in Brooklyn, old, and it reminded him of the gyms he went to as a kid, the ones where he always wanted to be like the guys pumping iron, but where he had trouble doing curls with only the bars for weight. He knew the bill was footed by SHIELD, but he decided just not to ask about it. In the back of his mind, he knew he was still government property, and if that wasn’t changing? Then they might as well pay for him to smash the punching bag across the room as many times as it took for the anger to ebb to something manageable.
So, Steve wasn’t surprised. He was on his fifth round of bags by the time Bruce walked in, four of the things across the room and against the wall, knocked there and left as they fell on the floor. The current one was swinging on a metal chain, and Steve was punching it with enough force that it was sure to join the others pretty soon. He was dressed in khakis and a white shirt - most of his wardrobe these days, leftovers from SSI and created when they tried to lull him into believing he hadn’t spent seventy years on ice. He was sweaty, and the sound of his gloved fists hitting the bag was a constant, rhythmic thump. He was trying to punch the sound of Peggy’s voice out of his head, the fear he’d felt when he thought someone really had her, the disappointment after it was all done, when she still wasn’t around.
But still, Steve heard Bruce’s entrance, his hearing as augmented as the rest of him, and he didn’t turn or stop punching the bag as he listened to Bruce’s approaching footsteps. “How bad is it?” he asked, assuming whatever Bruce wanted to talk about in a hurry wasn’t good. He figured it had something to do with Pym, but if it was pressing enough to talk about before the radio meeting, then he was guessing it was bigger than Pym’s personal issues with Captain America.
Bruce really needed to work on his social skills. ‘How bad is it’ was a greeting he was far too used to. One of these days he was going to just ask someone for a coffee and it would be a sure sign of the apocalypse. Then again, he was fairly certain he didn’t have much business having social skills. “I don’t even know where to start,” he said sitting down on one of the benches near the wall, well out of the way of flying punching bags. “Hank seems to be a bit more together than he was. I don’t know if that’ll stick or not. Loki’s gotten to him, and frankly if the option is be tortured by Loki or behave I don’t know if he’s got the strength for the latter with his current list of issues. I don’t know what to do with this situation.” He would have done better to just leave well enough alone and stay in his damn lab in damn New Jersey and not telling anyone he was here. He saw an opportunity to right some past wrongs, a new shot, and he took it. And he was beginning to think that things were the way they were for a reason.
Loki. It figured it was Loki. Steve was starting to feel about Loki like he had about Schmidt, and that was telling. Soldier or not, part of a team or not, Steve could do vendetta better than nearly anyone he knew. He was quiet for a few seconds, his pace and force with the bag not changing. He was mechanical that way; he could keep it up for hours, the punching, without variation or change. And so, it was loudly startling when he smashed the bag hard enough to send it flying into the opposite wall, the force enough that the metal from the hanging chain left a significant dent in the wall as the bag fell to the ground in a puff of powder. Steve tugged off the gloves, tossed them aside and began unwrapping his knuckles. “Loki’s gotten to him,” he repeated, nothing calm in the all-American kid just then. “What did Loki do?”
Bruce didn’t flinch though he was jarred a bit back into reality when Steve sent the punching bag flying across the room. That. That emotion right there was something he could understand. “When Loki broke into Tony’s place and stole the parts of his suit. He gave it to Hank to make a device that would power the suit down. And he did it. But like I said, by the time I got there Hank was in a better place and handing over everything. Loki’s going to come looking for him, he’s going to come looking for me, It’s a mess. It’s a big damn mess, Steve.” He hadn’t even gotten to the part about the bugs yet. He didn’t know what he was going to do with everyone.
Steve stopped in the process of unwrapping his knuckles. He stopped, and he stared. “But he knows how. He gave it back to you, but he still knows how to do it, to make another one.” Because Hank was a scientist, and Steve knew how scientists were. Handing over the existing device, while a good gesture, didn’t really mean much at the end of the day. “Did you tell Tony?” One thing at a time.
“Yes,” he answered. “I suppose that he does, I don’t know that he will,” there was no way to defend anything, that was impossible. So Bruce didn’t even try. He was doing his best to lay everything on the table. Doing his best to see all sides of the situation. Tony and Steve didn’t understand how things were, how awful things had gotten. How terrifying the situation could become if left unchecked. He’d already alienated Tony, which wasn’t a new thing for Bruce. But it didn’t cut any less. And he hated that he cared. It shouldn’t matter. But what good was knowing things if you couldn’t do anything to stop them from happening. “Of course. I’m not here to cover for anyone,” he’d probably do better if he made a plain and simple decision to call Hank out and start the inquisition or hide everything he’d done from everyone else. One or the other at least had an end in sight.
Steve finished unwrapping his knuckles, and he dropped onto the long bench that Bruce was on and took a long swig from the water bottle that was perched there. “Alright. Tony will find a way to jam anything Hank can do,” he said, believing it, but worrying all the same. Taking precautions was important, regardless of Bruce’s opinion about Hank’s sudden rehabilitation. “Why do you think Loki’s going to come after him?” he asked next, immediately following it with, “and why do you think he’s going to come after you?” Steve was a soldier, and Loki’s threat level was increasing daily. He knew Thor’s angle, that there was a man in Las Vegas that was no threat to anyone, but he also knew Thor’s love for his brother made this complicated for the man. Biased soldiers were always a liability, at the end of the day. Steve had trouble believing that any man that would do this wasn’t a threat, just like he was perfectly willing to admit his gal in Las Vegas was a liability.
“Because he basically gave me everything he’s been working on for Loki, he doesn’t take being double crossed very lightly. And we agreed to just tell the bastard I took it all. It’s not going to be good for anyone. I’m not afraid of him, Steve. But I don’t like this.” It was simple really. He needed to back off and let other people handle things that he had no business getting involved in. There was a reason he had been hunted before, a reason he wasn’t a part of things before, and while he often blamed Hulk’s outbursts for it he wondered if it wasn’t something to do with Bruce in the end. “Look I’ll just get you whatever I can, figure out what I can and just try and avoid making things worse.”
Steve rubbed his face, elbows on his knees and pressure to his temples as he tried to think. Too many years off the battlefield meant it took him longer to kick into warmode than before, but his eyes were focused blue when he looked back over at Bruce. “No. You won’t. We cross over together, so you’re not out here on your own. Where are you staying here? That lab?” Steve assumed the lab was like the gym, somewhere Bruce felt at home, but not necessarily where he lived.
Bruce raised his eyebrows slightly, he was still getting used to anyone looking out for his wellbeing, especially considering everything that had happened recently. “Steve, he can’t hurt me,” he said mostly out of habit. Because that was pretty much his standard answer to anything. “I have an apartment in Chinatown, I’ve been staying there.”
“Feel like some company?” Steve offered, and he didn’t mind that Bruce knew the offer was made out of worry. So far, in this conversation, there was a real and present death threat to Tony, a possible death threat to Bruce, and there was Hank Pym on top of all of it, and Steve didn’t like anything hinging on that disembodied voice in the warehouse.
Bruce really didn’t want to be any trouble, he hated feeling like he was being trouble. But he wasn’t entirely convinced he’d be able to talk Steve out of it, or that he had anything to talk him out of in the first place. And truth be told he did feel like having some company. He was quiet for moment before he nodded, “Yeah, that would be good I think,” he answered simply enough.
Bruce opened up the bag he was carrying and dug around amongst the two novels, stack of wrinkled papers, his journal, a phone, a ton of notepads and a came out with his hand wrapped around the little robot bug Hank had given him. “What are these all about?” he said opening his hand so the little harmless looking thing was resting simply in his palm. “I think this was a little before my time.” He was disappointed in Hank, he didn’t want to further be disappointed, but he was concerned that with everything that had gone so wrong recently that it would go from bad to worse. “He was so angry, Steve. And hurt, and alone and he took it out on all of you. If I’d been around I’d have known instantly what this was about, he wasn’t exactly being subtle with the design. But none of you knew because none of you know him. It never would have gotten to this point if I’d been around. We’d have had this talk and had it worked out ages ago. I’m sorry about that.” And he was. It was out of his control now, but the control freak he so desperately wanted to be was squawking. Big time. “I feel like I have the added advantage of knowing everyone, having seen everyone at their best and worst. Knowing what can happen and knowing where everything went wrong. But I can’t actually seem to help and it’s driving me crazy.”
Steve’s pleasure that Bruce agreed to a temporary roommate was eclipsed by the sight of the bug in his hand. He sighed, and he reached for it and held it up, though he really didn’t need to examine the thing to remember it. “He set them loose on the city. Thor disrupted their signal with some lightning. They ate flesh. Well, I guess animatronics can’t really eat. Probably better to say they tore flesh. Caused a lot of trouble, and hurt a lot of people,” he said, putting the bug down and looking over at Bruce again.
“You can’t know that. You can’t even be sure about it, Bruce. There’s a reason soldiers get discharged when they develop problems, because they’re unstable, and you never know when they’re going to turn the muzzle on their fellow soldiers. You can talk him down, and you can help him, but you can’t expect to be able to control him. Doesn’t work that way,” Steve said apologetically, knowing this was bigger than Hank Pym, at least for Bruce. “He’s not Hulk. Don’t make him out to be like you. He’s one man and, alright, let’s say he’s sick and not evil, but you can’t control sickness either. It spreads, Bruce.” He shook his head. “We hope for the best, but we prepare for the worst.” He held up the bug. “We prepare for more of this.”
Steve paused then, thinking back to the conversation with Peggy C. that he’d been having on the journals. “You’re sure he’s not impersonating Peggy again?”
Bruce nodded, that was pretty much what Hank had told him and he was at least glad that no one had been mincing words. It didn’t stop him from feeling badly about the whole situation but he pushed it down (the same way he pushed everything down) and put the bug back in his bag. He didn’t know what he was going to do with it. Stomp it. Keep it and find out what made it tick wasn’t a bad idea but that was general curiosity at this point, and a “just in case” kind of measure. The best offence was a good defence after all.
“I understand what you’re saying,” Bruce said honestly. Because he did, he completely understood it. What was more he believed it. But having been on the opposite side of the “discharge” he knew how it felt. And he knew how upsetting it was, he did the best he could not to take it personally. “It’s hard not to make him out to be like me because in the end that is exactly how I was made to feel, and I know things are different now. And I hope to hell they stay that way, Steve. I hope that I don’t do anything,” anything else aside from talking to Hank, “that makes anyone afraid of me. Maybe they should be, maybe everything that happened was actually for my own good and the good of everyone else on the damn planet but sitting in my shoes it’s hard to not to think that it’s just a matter of time.”
Bruce hadn’t been aware, not paying attention really, that there was any sort of conversation going on with Peggy and he furrowed his brow. “I honestly don’t think so, he’s not the type to keep going down the same path. He’s a bit less predictable than that. I’m not saying we don’t prepare for more of the same, but it will never be exactly the same, if that makes any sense at all. Are you telling me Peggy is here?” That was a strange new development.
“You’re altered, Bruce. Chemical, gamma rays, whatever did it, you have something in you that’s green and strong and hard to control. I feel like I’ve got that inside me some days, and I know all about not being really human anymore. Hank Pym doesn’t have that excuse. You do, and you still don’t take the out. He doesn’t get to take the out without it, either. I don’t get to blame the serum for the anger I can barely control sometimes. Stark doesn’t get to blame the blue light in his chest. Pym doesn’t get off that easy either,” Steve insisted. He knew Bruce still wasn’t going to see it, because it was too close to home, too close to Bruce’s own fears, but that wasn’t going to keep Steve from saying it.
“I don’t know. I’m going to find out, so if it’s Loki, we’ll know,” was Steve’s response, and he rubbed at his face as he stood. “I better go wash up, just in case. If I don’t come back, Grand Central Station. I expect you to Avenge me,” he said, a joking play on their name that fell flat. “I’ll radio once I’m through.” It was obvious he didn’t expect Peggy at all. He expected Loki, Pym, some other villain he didn’t know about yet, but not Peggy.
Bruce shook his head, “He had an accident too,” he said simply enough. The fact was maybe they were all a bit off kilter, what kind of people wouldn’t be off kilter in their positions? There would be something wrong with them if they weren’t. Bruce saw things from too many different perspectives. Too much life experience, too much knowledge and it wasn’t entirely feeling like a leg up anymore. If anything he was over thinking everything.
Bruce nodded. “I’ll be at the apartment. Just head there,” he said and pulled out a slightly crumpled piece of scratch paper and wrote the address down. “If you don’t show up I’ll be sure you’re good and avenged,” he added with as much of a smile as he could manage. It wasn’t much, but it was sincere.