Bruce Banner (notthatkindofdr) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2019-05-28 16:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, !completed gdoc, !log, ~2019 may, ~25 points, ~~bruce banner (notthatkindofdr), ~~cassie holmes (crappyartist) |
Who: Bruce Banner and Cassie Holmes Banner-Romanoff
What: Bruce is back
Where: their house
When: after school
Warnings: not really
Status: complete gdoc
As much as Bruce was anxious to see his daughter, he was relieved to have a little private time with Natasha to talk about what he’d experienced and the new memories that she gained while he was gone. Their experiences matched up pretty well time wise and he wondered if this was going to hit the rest of their friends too. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened in a wave. He also wasn’t sure how much he should share with people. There wasn’t much good or bad to share. It was all sort of… neutral.
When he heard the door open, he got up from his chair and walked out into the hallway to greet Cassie. He was at least grateful that she hadn’t lost both him and Nat this time around.
***
She couldn't really stand being home for any longer than she needed to be. It was just another reminder that her dad was gone and it hurt. It felt like some kind of impending doom and although it seemed like he was the only one to actually leave, that never really mattered much when it came to her parents' world. People tended to leave en masse and it wasn't ever really good news. She'd started Seeing things, things she didn't understand and couldn't make sense of, but she was keeping them to herself for now. At least until she could figure out what it all meant.
Cassie'd entered the house without any great fanfare, didn't call for her mom or anything, and fully intended to just go right up to her room. Instead, she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw her dad standing at the doorway to the kitchen. "You're back?" Obviously he was, but she had no idea how long he was gone for, what it meant for their family. Nothing was safe in Madison Valley. She'd learned that lesson well.
***
Bruce was already moving to hug her before she spoke. “Yes, I’m back,” he said, burying his face in her hair and allowing himself to take a few moments to appreciate being here with her. “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sure why he was apologizing, since coming and going was never something any of them planned or did on purpose, but he knew that losing him, even just for a couple of days, had hurt his daughter.
“Your mom told me that it seemed to just be me this time.” That was unsettling given the way things usually went with the people from their world. He hadn’t let the others know he was back yet and knew he needed to do that soon. He wanted to see Cassie first though and hadn’t wanted to have that conversation on the network.
***
It took her a minute before she lifted her arms up to return the hug. She'd been worried that it had been just him, but now she was worried for the rest of her extended family. Sure, Cassie didn't get along great with all of them and definitely wasn't buddy-buddy with them, but no one deserved to lose a parent or a husband or whoever. She was used to loss even if it hurt like hell each time. Not many other people were, except maybe Molly.
"Yea. I'm sure the rest will be soon." She didn't mean to be distant. It just hurt every time one of them left and this time, instead of diving into a bottle or getting too mad, she just sort of shut down. It was hard to come back from that instantly.
"How bad was it?"
***
“Not bad at all, actually,” Bruce said. It surprised him too and made him a little nervous. “Tony was rescued from space and we managed to kill Thanos.” He was pretty sure that Cassie was at least aware of who Tony was, even though he couldn’t remember if the other man had left town before or after she arrived. After as long as he’d been around, things sort of blurred together.
Killing Thanos was a good thing too, even if the bastard had destroyed the infinity stones and rendered them incapable of restoring what he’d done. “We couldn’t bring everyone back though.”
***
Cassie knew about Tony, but more from her time as Jane's student than anything else. Jane really didn't like him and often had a running commentary to fill the silence because Cassie hadn't engaged. "Still pretty bad," she pointed out when he said they couldn't bring everyone back.
"You guys lost." That wasn't how it was supposed to work. They couldn't lose. "How did everyone deal with that?" Cassie knew her parents, and she knew Steve. Losing wasn't in their vocabulary and that kind of spiral? She knew that spiral. She'd gone through that spiral. If that was what they were going to come back as, she didn't want it to happen until they could skip past that part.
***
That wasn’t an easy question to answer, not the least of which because Bruce had ended up back here not long after that happened. He shrugged. “At least Thanos can’t hurt anyone else,” he said. It was cold comfort, given all they’d lost, but it was better than nothing.
He wasn’t looking forward to talking to Steve about everything that happened. In fact, he might not even tell anyone else what he’d experienced if they didn’t go through it themselves. There was no need to take away their hope that they might somehow reverse what Thanos did.
“Did I miss anything here?” he asked. “I know it’s only been a couple of days.”
***
Cassie gave him a look that said it wasn’t much of a comfort. He’d already done exactly what he set out to. She remembered when there had been that large wave of people who’d been sent back to their worlds. That had sucked a shit ton and that hadn’t even been half of them. She couldn’t even begin to wrap her head around what the rest of her parents’ team had felt like. Especially since it was their fault.
She shook her head. “It’s been quiet. I have an English paper for you to look over once you’re settled and you talked to everyone.” Cassie wasn’t in any rush with her school work. She was on track to not have to go to summer school, but the number of absences she could have without having to go were very low. It was the consequence of skipping so much and she was willing to deal with it.
“Oh, and I got a tattoo.” She lifted her wrist up so her father could see the little leaf outline she’d settled on. Drawn herself and tattooed herself as well. It had been good practice, and a way to feel pain without giving in to all the other negative emotions that losing a parent had provided. It was fresh, still healing, and she hadn’t told her mom yet.
***
Bruce ignored Cassie’s look. He knew it wasn’t much of a comfort, but he was grasping onto whatever bits of hope and positivity he could. “I can probably take a look tomorrow,” he said. It would be good to do something normal like reviewing his daughter’s English paper. He hoped that she wouldn’t need to do summer school so they could do some fun things this summer like maybe take a trip.
The tattoo caught him off guard and his eyebrows lifted in response. “Your mom didn’t mention that,” he said, taking her hand so he could get a closer look at the work. It looked clean and uninfected, but he would certainly be keeping an eye on that.
***
"Sure. It's due next week so there's time." She wasn't in much of a rush and she'd always been on top of her assignments even if she didn't like actually being at school. Cassie hadn't wanted to add more classes to her life if she could help it, especially not over some boy. Things with Briar were complicated but not in a bad way. Just in a complicated, part of growing up kind of way.
"She doesn't know yet." Cassie shrugged. "I drew it myself." She left out the part where she tattooed it herself, and definitely the part about how it could be modified and grown into a fully blossomed flower. It would grow and get added to as she felt she was ready for the next step in life. "What do you think?"
***
This definitely wasn’t the right time to point out that it was illegal for anyone to tattoo someone under eighteen without parental permission. Bruce figured that in the grand scheme of things, it was a minor infraction and he’d rather deal with a tasteful tattoo than her drinking again or getting pregnant.
“Very nice work,” he said. She was a good artist when she put her mind to it, though he understand why she was hesitant to develop those talents given their connection to her abilities.
He didn’t really want to talk any more about his trip home and he didn’t want to start an argument immediately upon his return by asking about her school attendance, so Bruce opted for a complete change of subject. “I was thinking about running to the grocery store and picking up things to make a lasagna tonight,” he said, knowing that his girls had likely subsisted on take out and junk food while he was gone. “Want to come with me? I’ll let you pick something for dessert.”
***
"Thanks," Cassie replied. She was looking forward to when she was done with high school and could focus on tattooing for a career, since it was a way to use her art skills without it being related to her Watcher abilities, which routinely were never quite useful enough. It was probably not something that would go over well with her parents, but she wasn't keen on picking that fight until she had to. Which meant she was also going to take the positive reaction and not look a gift horse in the mouth.
"Sure, it'll be good to have an actual home cooked meal. I'm pretty sure we would've gotten dragged over to Casa de Ridiculous if you hadn't come back," she said, using her preferred nickname for the Rogers-Mars-Barnes household. There wasn't any heat to it though because she could appreciate that it was good that sort of thing worked for them. It wouldn't ever be her, but it was a good thing that there weren't many people like her either. No one should have had to go through all the shit she had growing up.
***
Usually Bruce would admonish her for using the nickname to describe their friends. Today, he let it slide. “I’m surprised Bucky and Darcy weren’t bringing you guys a ton of food,” he said. Maybe they were trying to stay low key under the assumption that Bruce would return and didn’t want to jump to the worst possible conclusion. Then again, low key wasn’t typically a word that anyone would use to describe either of them.
“It’ll be nice to get back in the kitchen,” he said. There hadn’t really been much time for cooking what with the whole half of the universe disappearing thing. Doing something normal would help him adjust to his return to Madison Valley.
***
Cassie just shrugged. She'd ignored a lot over the past few days just to get through it without doing anything stupid. Like falling into a bottle. That was one less thing to worry about right now seeing as he was back. Plus, a few days she could handle. It was the for good or anything close to a week that she wasn't thrilled about. If he wanted to cook dinner and have her going grocery shopping with him, then that was exactly what she was going to do.
"I'm sure the kitchen appreciates having you back just as much as we do," Cassie teased lightly. It didn't quite land the way she wanted it to, but it was an attempt. That had to count for something. "I don't need my bag, right?" It wasn't like she was driving or paying so she didn't need her wallet or anything. So she was pretty much ready to go aside from that.
***
Bruce appreciated the attempt at a joke. There wasn’t much to laugh at right now, but he wanted to try and get as close to back to normal as possible. “No, I don’t think you should,” he said. “Do you need to change or anything?”
He knew that his daughter wasn’t the type of teenager who was really concerned about fashion or anything, but he figured he would still ask.
***
Cassie just arched an eyebrow. “You know, you haven’t been gone that long,” she pointed out as she turned to lead the way to their front door. “And I hope you’d immediately suspect me of being an imposter if I suddenly started caring what other people think.” It was true that she cared about some people’s’ opinions, but she could count them on one hand with a finger to spare and it was unlikely they’d run into any of them at the grocery store.
“Want to get stuff to make cupcakes too? Do the whole family bonding with comfort food kind of thing?” If he made the cupcakes, they couldn’t screw up with decorating them. Maybe she’d see what movies were at the Red Box at the grocery store and they could make a night out of it. Cassie wasn’t usually the one suggesting family bonding but it felt like a good idea after the past couple days.
***
Her disdain made Bruce chuckle. “Sure, we can do cupcakes,” he said, pleased that Cassie seemed to be on board for a family bonding sort of night. She wasn’t always up for that kind of thing and it was exactly what he needed tonight to fully settle back in to life in Madison Valley.
“I’ll text your mom and let her know where we’re going,” he said. He didn’t want Nat to worry if she came home and neither of them was there.
***
"Okay." That was the plan, then. And now all they could do was wait and see what all happened next because it was never just one of them or two of them that went home. Not from there world. Cassie was steeling herself for it to happen again, for all of them to experience it one way or another. It wasn't a good thing but it was a fact of life in Madison Valley. She was just going to have to figure out how to survive it.
Cupcakes and a movie night were going to have to be enough for now.
***