Stranded

Bruce was out of the ship the moment it landed.

“Bruce-”

“No.” he forcefully cut off, inhaling deeply through his nose to take the ragged edge off of it. He shrugged off the remonstrating hand Fury tried to put on his shoulder, shoving past the man and towards the entrance of the Tower. He didn’t care that the Director thought it'd be better for him to remain on standby until they got a better handle on the situation. Bruce wasn't doing that - couldn't do that. That kid in the building wasn’t Fury's. Hell, he wasn’t Bruce’s either, exactly, not like he was Tony’s. That meant more, almost, in a way. Because it was Tony goddamn Stark’s kid in there, it was Bruce’s own friend in there, and for both of those facts it meant that there wasn’t a damn chance that Bruce wouldn’t be going in there for him. To save him. To save all of them.

His throat pulsed, the veins there bulging grotesquely, and he cracked his neck with a heaving breath.

“Bruce!” came again.

Except this time, the call - the shout - of his name had him stopping short fast enough for his shoes to skid on gravel, and he spun on his heel, blinking rapidly and barely orientating himself in time to catch May as she lunged at him. “May?”

“You’re here,” she gasped out, the words sounding like they’d been strangled out of her in a awful mixture of terror and burgeoning relief. Her hair was in a disarray, and her eyes were red-rimmed, cheeks blotchy and lips chewed raw. Her fingers dug into his skin through the thin material of his shirt.

“I’m here,” he echoed her as he took her in, only for his own words made his prior urgency slam back into him with all the force of a sledgehammer, which had him keeping his grip on the mother’s arms from tightening to the point of pain by the skin of his teeth. “Look - May - I’m going in,” he told her urgently, squeezing her forearms and trying to take a step back. His heart felt too big for his chest, pounding like a mallet against his sternum in sync with the blood rushing in his ears. 

She followed the motion with her own, though, not yet releasing her hold on him, and, in the back of his mind, Bruce had the thought that in this moment, he was the only thing keeping her upright. “For -” she swallowed, cutting herself off and squeezing her eyes shut tight. Her jaw ticked out, and her throat bobbed low. A second passed. Two. Tension vibrated in the air. 

She visibly steeled herself, her eyebrows smoothing out and her form shuddering before stilling with the effort of it. When she reopened her eyes, they were alight with something only just barely to the side of burning, raging fury that was hardly dissimilar to his own that he was only just managing to keep at bay. Determination wasn't picky with its fuel, and it was practically seeping from every damn pore of May's body now, her former desperation ruthlessly suppressed. (He knew it was still there.)

“You bring Peter back to me.” she ordered him, her hands on his shoulders abruptly digging into his skin from where they'd tentatively relaxed, nails undoubtedly leaving half moon crescents in his flesh even through the cotton material of his shirt even though her look alone was enough to pin him in place. 

Bruce held her gaze, his own grip on her tightening as her emotions echoed his own and seemed to amplify them tenfold, and he willed her to see the vow in his own eyes, which were undoubtedly circled with violent, pulsing green that he could feel growing under his skin with every second that ticked by. “I will,” he swore. His voice was too rough, too low to be anything bordering on natural, but May didn’t flinch in the face of it. Instead, she nodded sharply, releasing him and taking a step back, her posture rigid and her face now firmly set in stone, any and all emotion having been wiped free from the slate, the only traces being the remnants of her physical disarray.

Bruce knew without questioning that she wouldn't let herself slip again until Peter was in her arms - safe. Alive.

He knew that if she could go in the building herself, she would.

She flattened her lips into a tense, bloodless line, and a single, final word got past her. "Go.”

Bruce went.

-

In the tower, a man attacked a boy.

It wasn’t a fight. It wasn’t a beatdown. 

It was a decimation.

Uncontrolled rage was unleashed upon one undeserving of it, blows raining down upon one already littered with a menagerie of wounds.

A kick, further cracking already damaged ribs.

A punch, shattering a cheekbone. Another, pushing the broken shards into a swollen tongue. 

The victim to it all hung to consciousness by a thread, though even to that he was an unwilling participant. 

Quiet, broken noises leaked past busted lips, one eye swollen so far as to be forced shut, the other streaming too heavily with tears and coated with blood that dribbled freely from a fresh cut from a knuckle splitting the skin along his forehead.

At least the pain was secondary, now. Both physically and mentally, the boy had slipped free as much as he could while still remaining attached to his body. 

For how much longer that last part would hold true, the holding of his soul… it wouldn’t be long, he knew. He hoped as much, anyways. Such a thing would be a mercy, now.

A large, too warm hand wrapped around his throat, squeezing just enough to be able to lift him off the ground, from where he then dangled helplessly, limply. 

Blood dripped, dripped, dripped onto the ground. Quiet plinks that to him remained unheard but imagined in the haze of his mind. A soft, choked gurgle escaped the narrowed passage of his throat. His legs kicked out weakly - an instinctive motion. The hand tightened further around the bruised, fragile column of his throat. 

The edges of his vision began to pulse with black.

He welcomed it.

-

It had taken too long to get into the building, even with all the preparations they’d done, and by the time Bruce was inside and following the heat-trackers to the only one that could be Peter, he was shaking with the strain of holding back his other form.

It didn’t help that there were two shapes instead of just one on the sensor. It didn’t help that the only reason they were sure that one of them was Peter was because the larger outline - the one he knew (they all knew, even if they didn’t say it) couldn’t be the kid - was undeniably attacking the smaller one. 

But Bruce couldn’t let the other guy take over yet. As the Hulk, he wouldn’t be able to fit up the stairs, and he couldn’t climb from the outside of the building because the SHIELD agents had only managed to disengage the front doors to the Tower from lockdown, not the shutters nor the other measures over the rest of it. 

So he held himself in even as he felt like he was bursting at the seams, the agents behind him keeping a wary distance even as they followed, all armed with the potential antidotes for the team as well as sedatives that ranged from dosages safe for normal humans to strong enough to knock out an elephant.

Then, finally, finally, they reached the right floor, and Bruce burst through the door to exit the stairwell with enough force to send the thing careening off its hinges with a screech of tearing metal and a crashing clatter thanks to his arm having rapidly swelled to three times its size for the briefest instant before contact. 

He ruthlessly ignored it, striding through, his pace picking up until he was barreling down the hallway, his chest heaving less from exertion and more from the adrenaline flooding his veins as sweat matted his curls flat against his forehead as he raced for the corner, the corner, where he could already hear the sounds of flesh meeting flesh, of rasping gasps and coughs and deep, vicious snarls. 

He turned into the hall just as he heard the sound of a choked off wheeze.

It took less than a second to take in the scene. 

Steve, face contorted into such a sickening look of hatred that he was utterly unrecognizable, his teeth bared near animalistically and his nose lined like the snout of a rabid dog’s. His piercing blue eyes nearly seemed to glow, imbued with pure, unrepentant malice.

Peter, unrecognizable himself in that his face was ruined. Everything was a motley of purples, blues, and sickly yellow-greens, and from the side, his left eye wasn’t even visible behind the massive swelling of his right. His cheek looked concave as it leaked blood between his parted, puffed up lips, and his nose was a mess of blood and crushed cartilage. Bruises, burns, and cuts littered his skin through the torn and tattered remains of his bloodied shirt, and his left foot was bent at a horrific angle from where it hung limply.

Which brought Bruce back to Steve, whose muscled arm was keeping Peter hoisted in the air by the tight grip of his fist around the kid’s bruised and bloodied throat, in such a vulnerable hold that it would take less than a thought to have it snap.

Steve, who was slowly suffocating Tony's kid, the closest thing Bruce had to a nephew, May's son - to death. 

The Hulk savagely ripped away Bruce's consciousness from him, and Bruce didn’t fight the loss of control. 

No, for once in his life, Bruce wholeheartedly welcomed his vision shifting from pulsing red to toxic, enraged green.