ponderous | ( au history )

I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S JUST ME, BUT IT SEEMS THAT THINGS AREN'T CHANGING. EVERY DAY IS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME, WITH A LITTLE REARRANGING. IF I DO NOTHING, I CAN'T FAIL— NO BLISTERED HANDS, NO BROKEN NAILS. KILLING TIME, I'M PARALYZED WITH BITTER DREAMS AND HOLLOW EYES. I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR A REVELATION, FOR A MOMENT OF CLARITY. CONQUESTS AND CONVOLUTIONS RICOCHET INSIDE OF ME. THERE COMES A TIME FOR THROWING CAUTION TO THE WIND. I FEEL THE PULSE AGAIN.

(trigger warning: visual images of child abuse; verbal descriptions of abuse, alcoholism, murder.)

Bruce Banner was born to parents Brian and Rebecca. Brian was a nuclear physicist and Rebecca was a nurse. Brian and Rebecca moved to a cookie-cutter suburb to be closer to Brian's work, which meant proximity to a military testing site where they dealt with nuclear materials. Brian was paranoid on a good day, and deeply anti-mutant, which meant he was constantly questioning his work. This only intensified when Rebecca became pregnant. Brian became convinced their child was affected by the proximity to the nuclear material and Brian's possibly mutated genes.

He wasn't wrong.

Robert Bruce Banner was born "fundamentally fucked up," as he'd later put it, echoing the words his father used to say. Rebecca saw that Bruce was born gifted and doted on him from the start. She went from full-time to part-time as a nurse to spend more time with her child, taking an active part in his early education. Bruce remembers her reading to him constantly, taking him to the library and coming home with bags of books, curling up in her lap and listening to her voice until he fell asleep. Rebecca began to devote her life to her son, and her son responded in kind: thriving under her attention, intelligence and compassion flourishing.

But Brian had never wanted children, and it wasn't because of any fear of mutation. Brian was fundamentally self-centered, and a child took away from that. He was always a drunk, but until Bruce was born he'd been an amiable drunk— easily handled if he got the attention he thought he deserved. After Bruce was born, Brian became petulant and incredulous, then demanding, then violent. Brian always had the capacity for abuse, but until Bruce was born he'd always been mollified by Rebecca. That was just one of the reasons Brian blamed Bruce for the situation.

Bruce grew up with a terrified mother and a tyrannical father. He was the brunt of mental abuse while he watched his mother be the brunt of physical abuse, but of course they suffered both. When Brian went to work, Bruce and Rebecca had hours of reprieve that they would spend together, but inevitably Brian would come home. Sometimes, he's already be drunk. Other times, Bruce would have to watch his father descend. To a little boy, who wanted nothing more than love, it was devastating to never figure out the magic combination of variables that would win him that approval.

Brian would rail against Bruce: coward. weakling. you nothing piece of shit, why should anyone love you? And Bruce would sit there, lay there if he'd been hit to the floor, listening to his father tell him how pathetic he was. What a freak.

And the seed was planted: that if only Bruce had the strength, he'd be able to solve all his problems.

There was another seed, there in Bruce's DNA from the time he was born. It clawed, and demanded, and pushed against the inside of Bruce's skin. It felt like anger. It felt like release. Every time Brian got in his face, Bruce felt it, the itch. Like he wanted to sink his teeth into Brian's skin, because he knew that was the only way to reason with an unreasonable man. Like he wanted to embrace unreasonable.

But that wasn't who Bruce was. Rebecca raised him in the gentlest way, and ever since he began showing signs of extraordinary intelligence she'd made sure he understood the dangers of power. It wasn't a hard lesson to learn; he got it every night in their kitchen, when Brian started screaming. Started hitting. Made Bruce watch his peaceful, loving mother take hit after hit.

The itch... it was hard to ignore.

The anger was always there. Perhaps it would have never taken over, if Brian hadn't been a variable. But somehow, Bruce managed to ignore it for most of his childhood thanks to Rebecca's interference. She redirected all Brian's attention and tried to keep Bruce as shielded as possible. In this environment Bruce excelled in all his studies and took a particular interest in the sciences. He channeled his natural curiosity into experiments and projects, and began winning competitions. Soon he was being enrolled in fast-paced programs and won scholarships. But even in those intellectual environments, Bruce found it difficult to fit in. Rebecca's influence and witnessing her actions made Bruce a staunch pacifist from an early age, which wasn't what people wanted to hear. He told himself at least he was among intellectual equals. If he couldn't find friendships, at least he could find stimulation. He always came away energized, a little more willing to admit the world might not be so bad.

All this fueled Brian's resentment and made him convinced Bruce was a mutant. Bruce increasingly became the focus of Brian's drunken tirades, and Rebecca had to try even harder to focus Brian's attention back on her.

When Bruce was 12, it all came to one final confrontation. Brian came home drunk, again, and it all felt very typical— right up until Brian came at Bruce again, and Rebecca stepped in front of Bruce again, and Brian snapped. He grabbed a lamp and swung it at Rebecca's head; she dropped immediately, and the sound she made when she fell was sickening. The sound still echoes in Bruce's dreams sometimes. It was the sound of a corpse collapsing in on itself.

Brian made Bruce swear to secrecy, and Bruce hated himself for how quickly he agreed. (weakling.) He helped his father sell the story that it had all been a tragic accident.

For the next three years, Bruce lived with his mother's killer.

From age 12 to 15, Bruce lived under the terrifying thumb of his unstable alcoholic father. Brian lorded the murder of Bruce's mother over him, using it as a way to control Bruce. No one suspected, and Bruce became convinced it was because of his inaction that his mother was dead. (coward.)

The itch of anger in Bruce grew to a torrent. It became impossible to ignore, because the anger started talking back.

It had always been a presence. Now it was a growl. An urge. It wanted to possess him. It wanted control. And the worst part was: Bruce wanted to let it. Especially around his father. What if Bruce wasn't weak? What if he could finally prove how wrong his father was about him?

But it didn't happen like that. Brian was unstable, and he ended up drunkenly boasting about how he'd gotten away with murder. A few months before Bruce's 16th birthday, his father pleaded insanity and he was moved upstate to live with his aunt and cousin Jennifer. On the outside, it looked like a blessing. Getting away from his father was definitely the best thing Bruce could ever imagine.

Except... except he'd always imagined the voice would disappear, if Brian was out of the picture. But that didn't happen. At all. Because one kind of abuse was replaced with another: his father was out of the picture, but at his new school Bruce was the target of constant bullying. Bruce was scrawny, quiet, nerdy. The smartest kid in the class without trying, but he still cared obsessively about getting the best grade he could, which made him unbearable. Larger, duller guys made him the object of their attention every day, every week, for an entire school year. Bruce turned 16 on a Sunday and the next day was thrown against a locker, his head bouncing off the cheap metal.

The voice grew louder, every day. It itched. It clawed. It... it was unbearable. Bruce lived in a constant state of tension. He didn't know what was happening, or what the solution was. Maybe his father was right, maybe this was a mutation. But he couldn't admit it to anyone. The last thing he wanted was to be looked at as more of an outcast.

But in the end it wasn't the school that broke him. No, he'd never be that lucky.

Days after Bruce turned 17, Brian was released from prison. Bruce learned the news from his aunt, who also told him that Brian's first visit would be to Rebecca's grave. In a daze, Bruce drove there to confront him. Time was suspended, a dull pulse behind his eyes. And the itch — it was throbbing: smash him. see his dumb, stupid face and remember. remember how he laughed. show him weak. show him inhuman. get him. go, run, get him.

Bruce didn't remember the rest of the drive, parking, walking to the familiar plot. Brian was already there. His father's first words were pure vitriol, and Bruce felt it all. A childhood trying to anticipate his father's moods, like a constant flinch. A boyhood watching helpless while his mother took the hits meant for him, hating himself for letting her. All of it, underneath the stormy shadow of terror.

Pent-up fury, frustration, and not a little fear — the perfect chemical combination.

It did feel like release, when Bruce finally lashed out. His leg moved of its own accord, already rippling with inhuman muscle, to kick his father back. Bruce watched his father's head hit his mother's gravestone. The sound it made reminded Bruce of another night, another falling body.

That was the last thing Bruce remembered.

When he woke up, he was in SHIELD custody.

A few months past 18, Bruce Banner is many things.

He's a prodigy, one of the greatest minds of his generation.

He's a killer, having murdered his father in a graveyard.

And he's a freak, his other half manifesting to do the killing.

It didn't take any gamma radiation to draw the Other Guy to the surface. He was always there. It just took the right circumstances, the right chemical combination. Or chemical imbalance. SHIELD hasn't gotten back to him on that.

SHIELD hasn't gotten back to him on a lot of things.

They own him now. SHIELD was the first to respond after the Other Guy began rampaging in that same suburb where Bruce grew up, and they chased him until he ran out of energy and eventually collapsed. The Other Guy has less stamina, not fueled by gamma radiation, and SHIELD quickly realized they only had to wait him out. But his strength is still as infinite as ever, as long as he stays angry. And a teenager like Bruce is almost always angry. For that reason, among others, SHIELD tries to keep him locked up in the helicarrier.

SHIELD thinks of the Other Guy as property. They think of Bruce a potential agent, or a liability, depending on the day. They're interested in his other half, in how they can use it — or kill it. The last thing they think is that he's free to go. Bruce is mostly okay with that, as long as they allow him access to their labs and let him work. As long as it's mutually beneficial.

He's done with abuse.

He's not a weakling anymore.