Who: Bruce and open Where: Wandering the hallways When: 2am, Sunday morning What: A breakdown and PTSD. Spoilers for Infinity War, if those still matter. Open: Yes Rating: TBD
He could smell them, burning fires and screams, chaos and grief. Nobody able to help, or able to stop it because they'd already lost the war. What Bruce remembered most was Steve's face, his fingers in Bucky's ashes on the forest floor, just another addition to the earth, lost among all the dust. What he wouldn’t have given to go back, land in the Sanctum again and give them a real warning, to reach Thor in time. Without Hulk, Bruce had been too useless, tripping up in the Hulkbuster armour and trying to fight goddamn aliens in a mech suit not made for him.
Sleep was far between; nightmares he knew Darcy knew about. Silence when he couldn’t sleep, just staring into the ceiling and thinking it would cave in on him. Nothing could stop death, he knew that. They’d all come to an end. But Wanda? She was a kid still, grown up during war, family dead, brother dead, experimented on, watched Vision die twice. He avoided the Wanda here. Bruce knew the second she saw him, he would break into pieces.
Steve was… he just couldn’t. They’d agreed to never talk about it, that nobody could know what had happened, but it didn’t make it go away. Thanos would always win, he would always be safe while half the universe grieved and planned funerals without bodies to even bury.
And yet he was here. He didn’t deserve the woman asleep next to him, probably was endangering her already. Bruce’s heart pounded in his chest next to her; he was hurting her too, still, because he just couldn’t tell her. He slipped out of bed as quietly as possible, scribbling a note to lay on the pillow to keep her from worrying. All he needed was space, he needed air to breathe, to hope the universe forgave him.
Grass was between his toes before he knew it. It felt… surreal. Bruce didn’t remember walking down the hallways barefooted. He couldn’t even remember finding the park. His heart had pounded until he was there, standing on grass in the middle of the night, confused and lost and fractured. He was a broken bone, set in the wrong position and healing incorrectly; he just didn’t have the courage to break the bone again and re-set the damn thing. Not even a Hulk to distract him, no anger, just shame. His hand shook by his side.