hyperkinesia | ( Savrou ) IC Contact

[ Just going to nod a little at that. ]

That's the one, yes. I'm dating her.

Shut the hell up.

[ HOLDING OUT HIS FIST. ]

Pound it.

[ Staring at Tony like he just grew a second head. He looks like he's about to tell him he's not going to do that, but then...

He knows Tony's just not going to let it go. Ever. He'll sit there with his fist up in the air and probably lift it up again the next time they see each other. So with a purposefully audible groan, he lifts his hand, lazily curled into a fist, and lets his knuckles bump against Tony's with a distinct lack of conviction. That's it, that's all he'll get. ]

[ He smirks, accepting this as the shallow victory that it is, and indulges in one last innuendo before moving on. ]

I said 'pound it', not 'gently massage it', but don't let my expertise override yours, here.

[ Then, somewhat more seriously, ] I'll be on my best behavior, I swear.

Trust me, the latter can do wonders.

[ And that's about all Bruce will say on the matter ever, so take that as you will. ]

I'm not sure that's worth much, considering... [ vague gesturing at Tony ] But thanks. I appreciate that.

[ You just gestured to all of him.

He scoffs in mock offense and pulls himself to his feet, eyes flitting to the observation glass again before falling away. ]

Your faith in me is as heartwarming as ever.

[ He says, tone light, but the nervous fidgeting of his hands gives him away again; he wants to bring up what Steve had told him, now, when they're alone and aren't likely to be interrupted. Wants to find out what Bruce knows. Maybe wants one more confirmation of the truth from a trusted source; not that he doesn't trust Steve, but there would be something else to it, to hear it come from Bruce.

But talk about a moodkiller. ]

I know. You're welcome.

[ Bruce's own voice carries a hint of amusement, but it dies soon after Tony stands up. A year has been more than enough for him to get to know Tony, to learn the little nuances, what certain silences mean. At first it almost passes as avoidance until something clicks and he realizes that there's something else— something more on Tony's mind that he hasn't brought up yet. ]

What's wrong?

[ Said matter-of-factly, because there is something wrong and Bruce couldn't care less that it's a mood killer. He's not letting Tony go on this one. ]

[ Tony pockets his hands and gives him a sideways look. He has to suppress a smile, though the impulse is short-lived; it's nice having somebody so quick on the uptake. It's the kind of intuition he'd expect from Pepper or Rhodey or even JARVIS, but not really anyone else. Saves him a lot of time and energy.

When he does speak up, his words are carefully chosen and measured in a way they usually aren't. ]

Rogers told me about Ultron.

[ He leaves it at that, watching, trying to determine what reaction that earns, if any. ]

[ Concern and curiosity give way to clarity and... well, more concern. It's obvious by Bruce's expression that he knows what Tony's talking about, in fact his very stance partly reflects his thoughts on the subject, his figure tensing and his shoulders drawing together just so. ]

Ah.

[ Bruce's not from that point in time, or else he'd likely feel a lot more intensely about the whole thing. But he does know all about it (or he thinks he does anyway), and it's enough to make him feel very uncomfortable about his involvement with it. Part of him almost can't believe he'll actually do something like that in his future. ]

He told you about the twins too?

[ The shift in posture tells him enough. He won't have to do any explaining of his own, probably — not yet, anyway. But he has no way of knowing this is information Bruce has gathered secondhand, rather than lived.

He crosses his arms and lets out a short breath, not exactly amused. Wry, more like. ]

Yeeeeah, no. I ran into them myself, my first day here.

They're pretty pissed. [ More understatement. ]

[ Bruce's the one not to look at Tony this time around, the answer drawing a sound from him that's somewhere between a snort and a curt chuckle, devoid of any real amusement and dripping with copious amounts of sarcasm and bitterness. ]

Takes a special kind of hypocrisy for that.

[ And oh yes, he sounds pretty pissed himself. ]

[ And that is new and different. Tony looks taken aback for a moment, having never heard Bruce direct that kind of bitterness at anyone but himself. All he knows is that the twins are from Sokovia, and thus have plenty of reason to resent the Avengers. ]

Wanna fill me in on what I'm missing here?

[ There's a pause, a silence almost as tense as Bruce's shoulders, his lips pressed into a thin line. One would think he's trying to come up with a way to put his thoughts to words, but no, he's just trying to do it with an even and detached voice.

He manages, to some degree. ]

During their little... vendetta, against you or the Avengers or whatever, they joined Ultron's cause. Misled, so I've been told, which I'm not disinclined to believe. But the point is, they first came at us while we were trying to stop Ultron and undo the mess we did. The girl... [ The last syllable dissolves into a heaved sigh, slipping beyond the grasp of his control. He reins it back in and swallows it down, grits his teeth, goes on. ]

She got into my head. She wanted the other guy, and she managed to drag him out. Maybe in her delusional mind she thought her powers would be enough to control him, or maybe she just wanted to pitch us against each other so we'd be too busy fighting amongst ourselves to stop Ultron, but the point is he went on a rampage through Johannesburg. Because of her.

[ And yes, he blames himself, will blame himself, would have blamed himself nonetheless, but that doesn't erase her blame in all of it. Nor does it that she thought she was doing something good by trying to stop the Avengers, because the innocent lives who were in Johannesburg, the people who ran and screamed and died crushed beneath the debris of the Hulk's destruction, they had nothing to do with that. There's no excuse for what happened to them. ]

I haven't— haven't lived through it, just for the record. She told me all of this. Steve too. They told me all about what she did to me, in what I assume was some attempt at an apology or repentance on her part. [ He smiles bitterly, glancing at Tony too briefly to even make eye contact. ] Because that makes it all okay, right?

[ Jesus Christ.

His stomach clenches for a moment, and he's probably doing a piss-poor job of not looking stricken, because he knows full well what that kind of incident would mean for Bruce personally—nevermind politically. There's only so much SHIELD can protect them from. There's only so much the Avengers can dodge on good deeds and good graces alone.

He figures a rampage through South Africa probably isn't up there.

And there's another unspoken understanding, too, something his mind immediately supplies as an inevitability to a situation like that ("pitch us against each other," "fighting amongst ourselves"): it would've been on the Avengers to neutralize the Hulk somehow. And that wouldn't be pretty, no matter what form it takes. ]

Hang on. What the hell does "get into your head" mean?

[ He opts for that question before anything else, because he has no idea what Wanda's powers are - only that she presumably has some, if she's on the team at all - and that seems like info he'd like to have on file. Yesterday. ]

[ Bruce is all too aware of the ramifications of something like that. He's been there, lived through it more than once, and he knows how the world takes a rampaging Hulk. People thinking of him as a hero really doesn't matter much, when he knows that all it takes is one moment, one incident, and it would all come crashing down, just like that.

So, he's already played through the whole thing in his head, and he knows— even before he lives through it, he already knows how it'll happen, what the consequences will be. And he knows himself far too well to pretend like he doesn't know what'll happen once it's all over.

The future isn't for him to have. When he meets Wanda, he knows it'll be the beginning of the end. Of his end, his life as an Avenger. ]

It means just that. [ Bruce is actually grateful for the question. Easier to talk about that than literally anything else he's brought up just now. ] It's part of her powers. She can tap into your memories, read your thoughts, and she can make you see things. Simply put, she could likely drive someone insane, if only she wanted to. [ If only she thought she was doing something good or right. And that's one of the things that truly scares Bruce. ]

She can also keep some physical control over people. I'm not sure how strong that hold is— evidently it didn't work with the Hulk, so I assume there's some sort of limit there.

[ For one brief, mad moment, Tony wants to bust out laughing. It would probably sound semi-hysterical, if he did. What was it Wanda had said when he'd welcomed her to the team a few days ago? "You might want to talk to Steve before you say that"?

No fucking wonder.

Too bad Steve isn't the person Tony asked. ]

Jesus, Bruce. [ What more can he say, really? He knows Bruce is playing a constant tug-of-war with the big guy, and that's without being literally mindfucked. The girl must be extremely crazy or extremely stupid to try that on Bruce Banner in the first place. And now Tony's left with the job of trying to piece all of this information together, to form some kind of coherent picture. The only constants seem to be "Tony Stark screws up" and "everything goes to hell", usually with those two realities heavily interacting. He sort of wishes he could be comforted in the knowledge that other people are screwing up too, but that's never been how he operates. ]

You know, I haven't heard a single good thing about our future. How 'bout that? Figures.

[ Based on everything he's been told, what kind of future do the Avengers really have? ]

[ Too bad, indeed. Were this Steve, he'd likely paint the whole situation in other colors, but Bruce doesn't really give a crap about trying to see this from another perspective. His perspective, limited as it may be because he hasn't lived through this yet, is clear enough for him. And he evidently isn't bothering to slap it up on a nice frame and say that the painting's not torn anymore, or that it's just how it is now. ]

Yeah. [ He smiles and chuckles quietly; it comes off incredibly bitter. He looks away from Tony, eyes fixed in some distant nondescript point in the far off distance of outer space. ] Some fucked up future, if you ask me.

[ If there's even one at all to begin with, honestly. Bruce seriously doubts there's any such thing for him, anyway. ]

[ Bruce is bitter, and maybe already resigned. Tony can see that. But Tony, his mind is already running itself through a million alternatives. From what few details he's managed to cobble together from various alarming - and sometimes hostile - conversations, he's imagining every possible outcome to an event that hasn't even happened for them yet.

Strings he can pull. Alternatives. Hypothetical ways out of the cave, as it were. ]

Listen—we'll deal with it. That's what we do.

[ That's what Tony personally tasks himself with doing. ]

[ Bruce is kind of resigned with the fact that it doesn't matter what they do, the future can't be changed. What's meant to happen will happen, and anyway they're not keeping any memories of their time here, so even if they wanted to, they wouldn't be able to remember enough to change a thing.

He'll go back, and he'll get a couple more years with the team at best. He'll hurt and kill all those people anyway, and he'll run, because when it comes down to it, that's all he knows.

That's definitely one of the reasons why he's in no hurry to go back. ]

It's not like we can do anything else, is there?

[ Everything in both their lives has been dealt with, by sheer force of will or a complete lack of other options. The latter more applied to Bruce than to Tony, granted, but still. ]

Anyway, that's... that's about all I know about the future so far. Oh, and Natasha has this handy trick that puts the Hulk to sleep. Kind of like a lullaby. Should prove useful.

I've got some faith in our ingenuity.

[ He's got faith in his own ingenuity, at any rate. If there's one thing he knows, it's that he's pulled himself out of impossible shit almost more times than he can count. Surely the future will be no exception. ]

Nice of her to come up with a totally innocuous secret Hulk-weapon, though. And here I was thinking about designing a Hulk-busting suit.

[ He doesn't know that's going to actually happen, of course. But he and Bruce were probably not very far away from pitching the idea and coming up with initial designs when Tony was plucked up by the Ingress. ]

[ Yeah, Bruce's got a lot more faith in Tony's ingenuity than his own, honestly. And he does know that the thing with Ultron is resolved in the end, but that still doesn't erase everything that happened. Whether it concerns him, everyone else on the team, or the rest of the world. ]

Oh, we're still working on that. You know me, I like to have a lot of options. So we've been developing some projects meant to either contain the Hulk or fight him. Whatever a situation might call for.

[ It's all said very lightly as if he's not talking about getting himself punched around or trapped in a tiny metal cage. Well, 'himself'. ]

[ Tony matches Bruce's blitheness, because... well... this is just how they operate. ]

Huh. Spoilers.

[ As if the rest of that entire conversation wasn't already spoilers. ]

Good to know I was right about you being on board with the idea. I figured you would be, but Pepper made a face when I pitched the concept.

Tell me whenever you want me to stop, and I will.

[ Because Tony hasn't seemed particularly interested in not knowing about his future so far, just saying. ]

Then Pepper doesn't know me too well. Or didn't back then, anyway. [ They were really close friends while she was here, but that's a whole other thing entirely. ] It's still in its planning stages, and we're pretty far from even so much as having a prototype, but we're getting there. There's always the hope we might not need to use it at all, but... [ He shrugs. Better safe than sorry— and Thor isn't always around to go up against the Hulk if something happens.

There's a pause, then. ] We should build one here. If you're up for it.

Yeah?

[ He actually seems surprised, like he hadn't imagined Bruce would want to pursue that little project here, of all places. But then... your Hulk problem doesn't go away just because you're relatively settled down. ]

Well you're not about to hear me say "no, let's not build an awesome, gigantic suit of Hulk-busting armor".

[ No, it doesn't, and he might be settled down but that doesn't make this place any safer. He's had a few instances where he genuinely worried that he'd get triggered, and one when he really was and it had catastrophic consequences, so a Hulk-busting armor isn't only an advantage, as far as Bruce's concerned it's a necessity. ]

I know. You seemed to be having plenty of fun back home. [ Said with an amused smile. His own issues aside, it was a pretty interesting project. And he's always appreciated how candid Tony is about his condition. ]

I still remember the design and some of the specs, so I'll put that together for you. It should be easy enough to pick back up where we left off in no time.

( Savrou ) IC Contact

LMAO IT'S OKAY I love this

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