Chapter Text
When Bruce wakes up, he’s lying on a cold tile floor. The light is too bright. He keeps his eyes shut.
Everything hurts, kind of like he got knocked down the stairs or came down with the flu. It makes him want to stay very still. Sometimes, if he holds still, it’s over sooner.
Where is he, anyway?
Last thing he remembers was entering the command sequence. For a split-second Bruce thought it was going to work, because the air all around the machine had looked weird—thick, like it was taking on density—and then there had been a noise like a lot of people talking really fast all at once, but from a long way away.
He wouldn’t feel like this, though, if it had worked. Maybe the machine had blown up. Maybe it had created an energy pulse that had knocked him off his feet. He doesn’t smell anything burning, so it was probably that. Is there something wet under his face? Maybe there was a fire and it had set off the sprinklers and destroyed the whole lab—Dad’s work would be ruined, he’d probably lose his job, and he was going to kill Bruce—
Unless Dad had already been here. Maybe he came back to the lab after Bruce left the house and caught him where he wasn’t supposed to be. Bruce knew there was a risk of that, going in, but he’d made up his mind to do it anyway.
He doesn’t remember his father walking in on him, but he doesn’t always remember, when he first wakes up.
On the other hand, the room is really quiet. He hears a faint beeping at intervals and the hum of the fans in the air ducts, but no pacing footsteps, no low, angry muttering. And it wouldn’t be like Dad to just leave Bruce lying here; he’d be yelling at him to get on your feet, don’t act like a martyr, your mother’s not here to be impressed.
It feels like he’s alone. Which means maybe he can still make it out, clean things up a little, cover his tracks. Riding his bike all the way to the house is going to hurt like crazy, but he’s done it before.
There’s a chance that he’ll get caught sneaking back in. But Bruce always gets in trouble no matter what he does. So just once, he’d decided to do what he wanted. Because if it had worked…
Bruce opens his eyes, just a crack, and starts feeling around for his glasses.
The first thing he sees when his vision comes into focus is the blood all over the floor. It’s on his clothes too. Now that he thinks about it, his nose feels swollen and sore, and when he touches it his fingers come away red. That’s fine, though. He’s had bloody noses plenty of times. He’ll clean it up before he goes, and it’ll be fine.
Then Bruce looks around and—no. It’s not fine at all.
This isn’t Dad’s lab at the university. This isn’t a lab he’s ever seen before.
The work benches are laid out differently. The lighting isn’t the same. There are machines he doesn’t recognize, and there are huge glass screens everywhere, like windows that don’t look out onto anything.
Stiffly, Bruce gets to his feet.
He’s standing in the middle of a workstation of some kind, a semi-circle of equipment and desks. A stack of folders and journals and a few stained coffee mugs sit next to a strange flat keyboard. Tacked up on the wall over the desk is a diagram of…something, and a few pages containing handwritten equations. Bruce takes a step closer—it looks like figures for space-time mathematics. That isn’t Dad’s field, but Bruce is more interested in particle physics anyway; he’s read all of Einstein’s papers. A little square of pink paper is stuck to the diagram: written in what looks like a girl’s loopy handwriting, it says Let’s call it the Fanner Paradox. There’s a smiley face at the end of the sentence.
Next to the keyboard is a small glass box containing a rock. It’s black, about the size of a grown man’s fist, with silver striations, and veins of some kind of purple crystal. He doesn’t recognize it, but he doesn’t know much about geology.
Hesitantly, Bruce reaches for the keyboard. Then he stops, his hand hovering; what if he sets off some kind of alarm? The technology here is too advanced, it has to be top secret. This is probably some kind of military research installation. Dad…he doesn’t really talk about his work at home anymore, but for a few years he’d been trying really hard to get a job with the government. What if this is his real job now, and his work at the college is just a cover?
Somehow, even if Bruce had knocked himself out when he activated the machine, he can’t see his father finding him, carrying him here, and then leaving him. Especially not if he’s been keeping secrets like that. But who else would bring him here?
Bruce needs to leave; he needs to run, fast, before he gets caught, before he gets arrested. But he can’t stop staring at the equipment, at the equations; he wants to sit down and go through those notebooks and folders, he wants to know everything he’s not allowed to know. He can’t help himself, even though he gets into a lot of trouble that way.
He’s still just standing there like some kind of moron when the door at the back of the lab bursts open and two of the hugest guys Bruce has ever seen in his life come striding in.
Both of them are just incredibly tall, and blonde, with muscles like body-builders, and they aren’t wearing uniforms but they carry themselves like soldiers, not scientists. At least, the one with short hair looks like a soldier; his friend has long hair and a beard, like a biker or something.
“Dr. Banner, we are bid to fetch you for dinner,” the biker says. “You must—ah. He has departed.”
The soldier shakes his head. “Natasha was pretty sure that he hadn’t left the lab since last night. He’s probably passed out at his desk.”
“Then you had best wake him gently.”
“Yeah, I hear he’s a beast when he hasn’t…oh.”
Bruce had started backing away as soon as the door opened, but it’s too late. The soldier is looking right at him. He looks really familiar, like maybe Bruce has seen him on TV. Except he knows Bruce’s dad apparently, so maybe they’ve met before.
That’s it, then. Bruce is in for it now.
“Um, excuse me,” says the soldier, and then the biker is looking at Bruce too, blinking with big eyes and a confused expression.
There’s no way out now that they’ve seen him, and they don’t look angry yet, so Bruce steps forward and lifts his chin.
“Where’s my father?” he says, flat and cold.
The soldier’s eyes get really big. “Your father?”
“Dr. Banner. You just said his name.”
His mouth falls open. The biker turns to him, frowning. “I thought he was without relations,” he says, quietly, like he thinks Bruce won’t hear.
It wouldn’t be that surprising, actually, if Dad just never talked about him at work. He’s ashamed of Bruce, he always has been.
The soldier hasn’t take his eyes off Bruce. “I don’t know where Dr. Banner is,” he says slowly. “We thought he was in here. Can I ask your name?”
“Robert,” says Bruce, just in case. As if there’s still a prayer of him getting out of this mess.
“This is Thor,” says the soldier. “And I’m Steve Rogers.”
Bruce’s heart begins to beat so hard that it sends tremors through his whole body.
Obviously, he’d hit his head harder than he realized. He’s got some kind of brain damage; he’s hallucinating. Captain America is standing right across the room from him.
He knew he recognized the guy from somewhere.
Captain America—Steve Rogers—taps his nose. “You’ve got, uh. On your face.”
Bruce winces. He’d forgotten that he was covered in blood. He must look like some kind of head case.
“You okay?” Captain America says.
“I’m fine,” Bruce snaps.
“Who blacked your eye, young Robert?” says Thor.
Bruce’s face gets hot. He’d had the black eye since last week. It didn’t have anything to do with…whatever this is. Thor looks like he’s waiting for an answer, though, so Bruce just looks away.
There’s a door in the wall to the left of him. Bruce knows better than to think he can outrun a freaking super-soldier, but Rogers is on the other end of the room.
He has to get out of here. He can make it; he just needs a distraction.
“I’m not stupid, you know,” he tells them, in that same flat voice. His mom hates it when he talks that way, but it gets him what he needs sometimes; people don’t expect it from someone his age. “I know what this is about.”
Thor lifts an eyebrow. “Pray enlighten us.”
“You’re experiments.” As soon as Bruce says it, he believes it. “My dad is working on some kind of secret project to recreate the super-soldier program. You’re a clone,” he jerks his head at Rogers, “They used you to reproduce the serum, then they gave it to him. They’re making a whole army, and you’re the prototypes.”
Thor chuckles, and Rogers gives him a quick, disapproving look.
“I’m not an experiment,” he says. “At least, not recently. And Thor isn’t a super-solder. He’s—well, he just looks like that.”
Rogers sounds like he’s trying to be reassuring, but he looks kind of like he’s trying not to laugh, too.
They’re lying, obviously. They’re lying, and they’re making fun of him, and just like that, Bruce is furious.
“You’re strong, but you’re not very bright, are you?” he sneers. “They left intelligence augmentation out of the original experiment. I bet they’re trying to fix that this time around. Give you guys big brains to match your big muscles.” Suddenly, Bruce feels cold. “Is that—that’s it, isn’t it. That’s why my father brought me here. So you can study me. You’re going to experiment on me.”
Neither Thor nor Rogers are smiling anymore. They look very serious, very—cold.
Dread coils around Bruce’s heart and squeezes.
Everything makes a sick, horrible kind of sense now. Bruce is smart—too smart. Dad used to talk all the time about dissecting him so scientists could study his brain, figure out what was wrong him. He doesn’t talk that way anymore—he hardly talks to Bruce at all these days, unless he’s mad at him. But he’d been trying to get a job with the government for a long time, and maybe he told them—maybe, in exchange, he offered—
“Robert.” Somehow, without Bruce noticing, Rovers has managed get a lot closer to him. Just a couple more feet and he’ll be close enough to grab him. “Hey. It’s okay. Don’t get upset.”
Only when Rogers says this does Bruce realize that his breathing has gotten kind of fast and heavy, like he’s about to cry. He’s not going to cry. He’s twelve, he’s not a child.
“I think we’re all a little confused,” Rogers goes on. “Let me take you downstairs. We can talk to some people, figure this out—”
“You must not fear us,” says Thor, and now he’s walking forward, too. Standing together like that, they make a solid wall of muscle, filing in the space between the lab benches. Bruce is never going to make it past them. That’s probably the point. They’ve probably got orders to keep Bruce in the room until someone shows up to drug him and take him away.
“I promise no one’s going to hurt you,” says Rogers. “Just—give us a minute, we’ll figure out what’s happening.”
Bruce thinks about the dull ache in his arms and legs and the way his chest is tight and his whole body is humming with tension. He’d been completely exhausted when he first woke up but he’s not tired anymore. He can run if he needs to. Captain America is faster than him, but Bruce is really good at hiding. He just has to get out of the room. He’ll be okay once he gets out of the room.
He takes a step back and stumbles over a chair on wheels. Spinning, he pushes the chair out in front of him. He’s almost to the door.
“JARVIS,” says Rogers, “tell Tony he needs to get back here, now.”
“He is on his way from the airport, Captain,” says a voice from out of nowhere. There must be speakers hidden in the ceiling—someone must be watching them. “I alerted him as soon as Dr. Banner transformed into his current state.”
“Transformed?” says Rogers, in a high, sharp voice.
He’s distracted. He and Thor are looking at each other. Bruce reaches behind him, finding the door handle. It’s not locked.
Thor shouts his name, but he’s too late. Bruce throws the door open and runs.
*
Tony is having a really shitty day.
Rhodey had been badgering him from weeks to come down to D.C. and take some meetings; Tony hates politicians, but then Pepper had climbed on the nag-wagon, and next thing he knew he was having lunch with the chairman of the Defense committee, a guy who once voted for Ross Perot and currently smells like old cheese.
It had taken heroic, nay, super-heroic restraint not to show up to the meeting already drunk. Afterwards there’d been a delay at takeoff, and then the second the fucking jet was in the air, he’d got the alert about the fucking catastrophe taking place in his lab.
Apparently, Bruce is having an even worse day than he is. If Bruce wasn’t one of the very few people on earth whose welfare Tony prioritizes over his own, he could almost resent him for that.
Now Steve is on the phone talking some kind of bullshit, and Tony’s stuck in Manhattan traffic where he can’t do anything about it, and any second now he’s going to start chewing the upholstery. Any. Goddamn. Second.
“What do you mean, you lost him?” Tony snaps at his phone. “I get that Banner’s an Olympic gold medalist in escape and evasion, but he’s a kid. Aren’t his legs, you know, a lot shorter?”
Steve grimaces at him over the video. “Thor and I went after him, but we…stopped. Tony, he thinks he’s some kind of prisoner here. I didn’t have the heart to chase him into a corner. Besides, JARVIS said he was taking care of it.”
“JARVIS?” Tony catches Happy’s eye in the mirror and motions to him: step on it. Happy rolls his eyes, but they advance through traffic a fraction of a degree more quickly than before.
“Dr. Banner has not left the Tower,” JARVIS reports, where Tony and Steve can both hear. “He has reached the private elevator and appears to be selecting floors at random. I can override the controls and send him to a secure location, if you wish.”
“Yes, I do. I wish that. Stick him the penthouse, then put it on lockdown.”
“Tony.” Steve sound grim. “What if he can still transform?”
“I dunno, Cap.” Tony bares his teeth at the phone. “Think you can take a pint-sized Hulk?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”
“Me neither, which is why JARVIS isn’t sending him to the containment room.”
“But if he—”
“If Bruce thinks he’s a prisoner, sticking him in containment is only going to prove him right. Hulk—grown-up Hulk—knows it’s full of recreational smashing opportunities, but to a kid who doesn’t know better it’s just going to look like a cage.” Happy tapped on the headrest and held up a few fingers. “We’re about three minutes out, Steve, just hold tight and tell Sir Galahad to get Foster on the line.”
“Fine, Tony. Just…”
“What?”
“How did this happen? Was it something he was working on?”
“How the fuck should I know? His parents snubbed the wrong fairy at his christening or something. You could break the bank betting on Banner’s bad luck.” Tony clamps down on the dread roiling in his stomach. “Just hold the fort till I get there.”
He wasn’t going to admit it to Steve, but he doesn’t have the first clue what Bruce is working on these days. They’d worked shoulder to shoulder for a couple of months after Bruce moved in, but then Bruce started getting withdrawn, kind of squirrelly, even for him. Tony hadn’t wanted to spook him by pressing the issue.
The thing is, Bruce is a little smarter than he is. Not in a way most people would notice: Bruce is a theoretician and Tony is an experimentalist. To the layman, the work Tony does is easier to grasp, easier to praise. But Tony knows the difference between them.
Tony is tethered to the earth, to fire and metal and percussive force. Bruce, on the other hand, has one foot in the ether. He’ll chase a theory so far into the abstract that Tony doesn’t even dare try to follow.
But apparently, he’s got no choice but to try.
Just. If Bruce had to be a child, why did he have to be, according to JARVIS’s estimate, twelve?
There’s no such thing as a happy, well-adjusted twelve year old. Tony would know.