Against My Will 4

JULY 10
8 AM EST
THE TRISKELION

It just wasn’t fair.

“-aptain America’s apartment was breached? Who do they think was stupid enough to even try, Bruce?” The seagull perched atop a junction box was loud in the early morning, the sound almost blending into the water around the Triskelion they stood on. Even still, Betty Ross managed to make herself heard above it all, voice strong as ever. “The Arabs, the Chinese, what?”

“Actually, Betty, Cap reckons it was just a bunch of kids.” Robert Bruce Banner held his head down, the excuse of his cufflinks enough to avoid looking the woman in the face as he answered her. “From what the man told me, he’s heading across the street to give them a spanking right now.”

“Kids?” Betty almost ground the word through her teeth, clenched as they were. “You’re telling me…” Both her hands went to her hips, the black pantsuit pulling the eyes toward the shape of them even as Bruce looked away again. “That he’s not showing up because of kids?”

“Y-yes, poor Cap.” Two fingers went to the bridge of his nose, glasses edged back up before they could slip any further. “Spent all last week trawling flea markets to piece together his old record collection and some little brats take some paint-stripper to them.”

“Well, golly gee whiz, Doctor Banner, how tragic that is to hear…” It certainly didn’t sound like it but you never knew with Betty anyway. “But right now, I’m a little more concerned about this televised training exercise nobody’s bothered showing up for.”

“Well, I mean…”

“Well, what?” Sharp brown eyes snapped his way, Betty’s short ponytail swishing behind her as she stared him down. “Spit it out.”

“Well…” It took the effort of ages to keep still, holding the gulp in his throat steady as he looked out toward the flashing cameras over by the hangars just a few dozen feet distant. “There’s Giant-Man.”

“Giant-Man?” Betty raised a hand, Bruce flinching and immediately regretting it as his girlfriend slapped at the air in the direction of the near sixty-foot man in the maroon suit. “As far as the media’s going to be concerned, our team might as well just be Giant-Man.”

That’s… He could only nod at that truth well aware that with Stark in space, Fury busy with Cheney all morning and Janet with Rogers avenging his albums, the team was rather scant when it came to actual members present. “That’s fair, I suppose.”

“‘That’s fair’, he says.” The voice was mocking and entirely unlike how he sounded but it still hurt all the same as Betty screwed up her face at him. “‘That’s fair.’”

“Wh-what, I was agreeing with you, Betty?”

“Of course you were.” That sneer she wore so easily didn’t fade even as she turned away from him again, Bruce could tell that much. Even when he closed his eyes, he could hear every emotion in her voice and all the… the feelings it sent through him.

Every part of him.

“My God, Bruce. Wasn’t it bad enough that Hank Pym had you demoted without you letting everybody down with the new Super-Soldiers too?”

“What…” It was bad enough. “What are you talking about, Betty? I’m not demoted anymore.”

“No, you are.” She scoffed with her back turned to him. “I don’t see you on the Super Soldier project anymore, do I? You should be losing your mind about failing to crack Cap’s serum.”

It’s not fair.

“…this is me losing my mind.”

The words slipped out quiet, his eyes closed as he said it, but Betty didn’t even seem to notice he’d said anything. Whether she wasn’t paying attention or outright ignoring him, neither would be anything new but both options still put a spike of pain in his chest.

“Oh, get over yourself.” Apparently, she had heard him, a single finger raised as she turned back on him with a glare. “The hacks are going to eat us alive for this, you moron. I thought being smart was the one thing you could actually do?”

“I—” Bruce’s mouth hung open, wind blowing his hair over his forehead. “I’m sorry…”

“All you are is sorry. And sorry doesn’t stop me looking like an idiot, now does it?” Her hands went up as Betty finally walked away, leaving Bruce behind as she made her way over to the media circus around Giant-Man, reporters begging him to lift a jet. “Just make sure Fury gets Thor on the team tonight or this temporary break becomes permanent.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

JULY 10
8 PM EST
MANHATTAN

It wasn’t fair.

His left lens was loose.

How, he wasn’t sure exactly, and spending time thinking about that would be less time he had to do what he needed to. Regardless, the shuddering of his frames with each third step left his glasses slipping further and further down his nose and left them in need of even greater repair than before.

Still, Bruce Banner kept walking.

At speed.

Through the rain.

Rain he had known was set to fall, but that had been pushed aside, rendered an irrelevance by the time he was already off the Triskelion and headed into the heart of the city. The urban jungle rushed around him, dozens in close proximity and over a thousand on merely this sidewalk segment alone.

And that was in the rain.

It was perfect, that much he knew for sure.

His legs carried him further down Sixth, or somewhere near it at least; rainwater clouding his lenses making it harder and harder to determine which sign said what. “Hey, w-!” Banner’s head snapped up, anger pulled back at the last moment as an enormous golf umbrella clipped his shoulder going past.

The woman beneath it didn’t even turn around.

He bit down even his thoughts and kept moving, pace quickening down another street. Ninety days.

Well, no—not ninety.

Ninety-one. Arguably, ninety-two if you counted from the night of the actual retrieval, regardless of how close that was to midnight. Although the argument could be made that the retrieval was not the effective start of the research window or his appointment as Chief Science Head of the Jade Project, so… 

Ninety, actually.

Bruce Banner was not much for round numbers usually — they only made one lazy and imprecise — but that fit just enough to calm his heart rate by a half-beat. 

Only a half-beat, though, because ninety days on two consumer devices and what was he left with? What did he have to show for all the backing of an agency with a budget enough to wrestle with all of Ireland?

Beautiful imaging, certainly, and cross-sectional scans of a logic board that made the R&D floor at Stark’s look like a middle school robotic’s club. Layer counts on top of that, a controller architecture he could rattle off enough of to write a paper a dozen pages long, and yet he couldn’t get a single byte off either one of them.

It’s not fair.

The phone… If you could even try and call something like that a phone — a touch screen that liquid and smooth for a phone — was worse than the laptop, honestly. No one expected that at all, least of all him. Just four and a half ounces of glass and metal and it turned back every single approach they had.

To make matters worse, if storage was encrypted at the hardware level the way the layout suggested — the worst of their suspicions — then even destructive methods would leave them just an expensive block of noise.

Some head of scientific research you are, Brucey Boy. A title he’d gotten back solely on the strength of a boy in a crater, and the fact that Hank Pym was too busy to be expected to handle yet another project.

Rain only got worse the longer he kept moving, a drizzle left behind to something that was beating down on his head; his shirt already given up under it as he was soaked deeper than bone.

Deeper than that even, his bones aching all the way from the base of his spine right up to the very back of his brain. Bruce knew that had nothing to do with the rain, though.

Nothing at all.

A cab took the corner at ticket-worthy speed, a sheet of gutter water flying up over the curb and leaving everything below his knees just as waterlogged. Nobody looked his way, not even as he yelped and jumped back; not a single person paid him any more attention than they would a homeless person asking for change.

That was… that wasn’t anything special.

Just a neutral observation, a fairly interesting sociological reality for a city this dense, that a man could be as important and unique and vital as he and register as just another obstruction among five thousand people in the rain.

The woman with the umbrella certainly hadn’t looked.

The guy selling something under the awning hadn’t looked either.

Thor… Thor had looked.

Weeks ago, Thor had actually looked at Bruce like he was a person, not just a whitecoat or someone to mock or step over. A man with a clear and obvious psychiatric presentation, a grandiose delusional structure that just happened to come packaged with a impressive physical presentation and an accent to match. Bruce had stood there in Norway beside Fury with a folder and a frown until the man had simply stared his way across the bonfire and started talking.

About the crying at night and named who and what about and, without wasting a second, Thor continued on like he was reading it off a list — all of Bruce’s deepest insecurities and facts about them laid bare. 

A cold read. He’d decided that on the helicopter ride back. That’s all it is. A documented technique that was right at home with tricksters and hucksters and a man with that kind of charisma had clearly spent years developing it.

Clearly.

Except the crying…

To just throw that in his face, even without the other details. It’s not fair.

A gym bag caught Bruce in the hip as he stepped off a curb to get around a cluster of people who weren’t bothering to even look his way, the scientist only jumping back as a bus horn went off too close for anything like comfort.

If that was it, if that was all, it wouldn’t be so bad.

Thor was weeks ago, that encounter already shelved and packed away.

The news from last week — Stark’s interview where he mocked him for failing to crack the serum on national TV, on Larry King — was just one more in a list of pointless media bites that would be forgotten come the next week.

And even Betty and her… her behaviors was something he’d long grown used to. At the very least, she wasn’t dying her hair pink and fleeing to SOHO again.

It was the newer humiliations, though.

Humiliations from people he thought he could trust, people he thought at the very least had some level of respect for — if not him then — his contributions.

Walking into the recreation room for a quick meal — a decent lunch to share with everyone else in the know — had been his goal and as soon as the door slid open, he heard them all talking and having a laugh.

And who else about but him?

Hank was half-bent over, all six feet of him cackling his lungs out as Steve Rogers stared back entirely nonplussed from the couch. That didn’t stop everyone else from joining in, Hank’s wife and even the Director chuckling over a conversation about simple casting.

The movie Betty’s office had been pushing for weeks, of course, and he walked in right enough for his name to be thrown around as Fury said —

‘Stuart Little’

Which was… fine.

It was a joke, a joke; just a joke about height, the lowest available joke — see, he could join in too — and nothing all important but Janet was arguing about it with her own quickness.

Pym joined in of course, the tall bastard throwing out names; Woody Allen, Buscemi on top of that one, and then the last one — the kid from The Sixth Sense — came with a particular phrase that rankled — bug-eyed.

Hank put his coffee down to laugh even harder as his wife joined in again, turning around the couch as she asked: Would Betty even still want him after a performance by Buscemi?

And they all laughed, of course.

All of them but the good Captain, the man frowning and and distinctly disapproving from where he sat. They all laughed as Bruce stood in the doorway, hand still on the frame and nobody paying him any notice.

Not even the world-class spymaster.

It took a few seconds before they did, before they bothered to even see him standing there like the sad lump Betty referred to him as. And by the time they did, he was already walking away.

Not fair.

His shoe found a puddle deeper than it looked, water invading his sock — just the one — and a flood of people going around him on both sides. Bruce Banner grit his teeth under the rain as his spine prickled, sensation almost close to burning as it trailed into his brain and routed back down and out his arms.

A tingle at the antecubital fossa was enough of a warning — it’s close — as his heart had already picked up by the time the rain started; the rate refusing to lower since. I… I have to get her… He got the phone out of his pants pocket, both hands sliding over the slick of the plastic buttons under rain.

Trembling digits helped him little there, too.

Still, he knew the number.

Even through every change and three area codes, he made sure to memorize it.

Two rings in his ear before— “Bruce, what is it?”

“B-Betty—” The name left his mouth wrong, too fast and with a hitch to it at the start, all the traffic around him — pedestrian and powered — not making any of this easier. “Betty, s-sweetheart, there’s something I have to tell you. It’s very impo—”

“Hold on.” The sound of glassware clinking on her end was enough to stop him short as much as her request. “No, keep going, I’m listening. No, not you, Freddie, one second.”

Freddie.

The burn at the base of his neck deepened, gritted teeth fighting back a groan. “Are you a—”

“I’m at dinner, Bruce, like I told you. With Freddie Prinze Jr.” The tsk at the end was as audible as any curse thrown his way. “Now, what were you saying?”

“R-right. Okay, I…” Dinner. She was at dinner. The music behind her made it clear the place was fancy; soft, well-played classical barely audible over the sound of laughter from someone not too far from Betty. “So, before you say anything, I know h-how this is going to sound—”

“We’re talking about the Ultimates movie, by the way.” Betty hummed, the sound shifting to a giggle at something he couldn’t make out. “Everybody wants Tony. I’ve heard four names thrown in for the casting tonight and three of them are ridiculous.”

“Right. Sure.”

“The fourth is Billy Zane, though.” Betty let out a sigh at that for some reason. “Okay, Bruce, I’m getting bored of this — no, not with you, just one second. It’s not important — so, what’s so serious you had to interrupt my date, Bruce?”

Date. Another spike almost stole the ability to speak from him as his teeth started going numb in his mouth. “I… I solved it, Betty.”

“Solved what.”

“The s-stability problem, the whole problem, the thing I’ve been trying to keep from failing on the back end. I found it, Betty. The actual mechanism was b-b-barely the serum at all, hardly even too important, it w-wa-wa—”

“Bruce.”

“The delivery, Betty. It was always the delivery that was stumping me, and after a stabilizing component from the—”

“Bruce. Slow down.” The laughter in her voice dropped away on her end. “I need you to tell me what you’re talking about. What did you do?”

Bruce stopped where he stood, rain coming down on him like a million little punches he’d long grown used to. “I mixed it, Betty.”

“Mixed what.”

“A sample, Rogers Blood… Captain America’s DNA. I combined it with mine and both with a derivative of the Hulk preparation…” He licked his lips as the rain continued, both top and bottom suddenly dryer than they’d ever been. “Six weeks now, I’d modeled it. And the combined preparation is… it’s just…”

“Bruce, talk to me.”

“I administered it, Betty.” His words were hissed into the phone, Banner almost crouched over as his spine threatened something that wasn’t normal at all. “Into the cephalic vein, antecubital fossa. Same place as any routine draw, standard site.”

“Oh, oh no.” He heard the gasp that came after those words. “Bruce, you injected yourself.”

“Yes.”

The quiet lasted a whole two seconds.

“Why.”

“They need something to fight, Betty. They need it, the entire program hinges on a team that can do something but there’s nothing to do.” Bruce shook his head, the entire justification he’d built up already assembled. “Rogers, Stark, Janet and that sixty-foot asshole waiting in the wings, on top of maybe Thor… who even knows? But there’s nothing to throw them at, no enemy worth the cost and definitely none that can give them what you want.”

“And what’s that?”

“Publicity.” Bruce hissed back. “No enemy, there’s never been an enemy past the mutants and that just looks too close to genocide to air on Good Morning America. Eighty-seven billion in the budget. Billion, B-Betty.”

“Okay…”

“So if I can give the whole team what they need so badly, if I can bring the Hulk back in a real setting, then…” The rest didn’t need to be said.

“Where are you right now?”

He didn’t answer, the heat already deep in his jaw.

“Bruce. Where are you?”

His back teeth pushed tighter against each other, Bruce unable to stop the rain going down his throat.

“I miss it.”

“…what?”

If his voice was low and thin before, he was almost whispering into the speaker now. “I miss being…”

“Bruce, listen to m—”

“Being big.”

He didn’t drop the phone.

No, his fingers did that for him, shuddering open as he stumbled. The yellow little screen struck the wet concrete first before the cellular skipped and scattered under a parked car. Somehow, he could still hear her voice coming out of it under the rain from who knew how far away.

All of a sudden, the sidewalk rushed up and took him across the shoulder, the side of his head meeting that same wet concrete as water ran past his face toward the grate. Cold…

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Voices above him and none of them attached to anything.

“-iir? Sir, can you hea—”

Hands turned him as voices spoke, none of them attached to anything or anyone he could muster up the effort to listen to.

“Yeah, I’m not getting any.” A thumb went hard into the side of his throat, the digit staying there and somebody counting, and then not counting. “C’mon, man. Come… come back!”

Something else sounded out loud. “Charging—”

“Clear!”

His whole body came up off the board and dropped back, the ambulance taking a corner hard enough that everything in the back leaned.

“-ill asystole—”

“Clear!“

Heat came all the way up out of his spine into the back of his skull and kept coming, jaw fixing itself around teeth far too big for a mouth that size.

Bright green eyes snapped open.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Rain fell on twisted steel, smoke trailing into the air as flame burned bright from the back cabin of the crashed ambulance. The rear doors of the ambulance were crushed closed, no door mechanism in the world able to rescue it from that fate.

The occupant need no such thing.

A gray arm the size of a person on its own tore though the burning side panel, white metal peeled back in one yank like the lid off a can. All of a sudden, a monster came up and out of the mess of metal — standing tall and, most importantly, angry.

“HULK WANT FREDDIE PRINZE JUNIOR!“