Heartbeats
Natasha
As soon as the door hissed open I was through it, rushing to where Bruce had collapsed. Tony was only seconds behind me as I frantically searched for a heartbeat along our friend’s neck. The unconscious scientist’s body still pulsed pale green every few seconds, and the magnitude of the situation crashed in on me. The beats were the same.
“There’s a pulse, but it’s not Bruce’s.” I tried addressing the other guy directly. “Hulk, if you can hear me, this would be a great time to come out. Please.”
"NO!" the green face growled back at me, but he didn’t transform any further.
Suddenly, the green was gone, leaving Bruce pale and motionless. The heartbeats stopped entirely.
“FRIDAY, get me the closest AED.”
The next few minutes were a chaotic blur. Tearing open Bruce’s shirt, Tony charging the paddles, CLEAR.
For seconds that seemed to stretch on forever, I thought it hadn’t worked. The green was gone, and Bruce still laid motionless. Then the steady beeping of the heart rate monitor. A shuddering breath.
Tony dropped his glasses and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. “He’s alive.”
I started taking stock of our friend’s condition, looking for the source of the blood. “Any idea what happened, Tony?”
“He was fine this morning.” Tony shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know.”
Peeling back the soaked purple sleeves, I gave a sudden intake of breath. “I think I found the problem. Gauze, please. We need to stop the bleeding.”
Tony took one glance and swore. “Shit.”
A long, deep gash lined the inside of Bruce’s arm. I reached for the other sleeve, even though in my sinking heart I already knew I would find its twin. The blood almost hid the partially healed cuts and older scars, but the wounds together told a very clear story. I felt sick.
Tony kicked the wall with such force that, if he hadn’t been partially suited up, he would have broken several toes. “He told me things were better,” he choked out.
“We can deal with that later. Right now, we need to stop the bleeding and sew him up.” It sounded heartless even to my own ears, but I had long before learned to compartmentalize until it was safe to deal with the emotions. “He didn’t hit the artery, thank God. He needs blood.”
“Nat, we can’t." I could tell Tony was starting to panic. "With his level of gamma radiation, we give him blood and his cells will burn it out of him in four hours, five hours tops, if it even helps at all. Best case scenario he dies in excruciating pain five hours from now instead of one.” He paced agitatedly.
“Then what do we do?” I was grasping at straws, applying pressure to the arms of my best friend, and pleading for answers, anything to stop the inevitable. “You’re too smart to give up. Bruce is dying. He needs you.”
“I’m trying!” Tony snapped. He paused suddenly. “No. No, it’s not me we need, it’s Helen. FRIDAY, start the jet.”
“What’s our play?”
“We give him a blood transfusion and pray it lasts from here to Norway.”
~
The next few minutes were a blur of bots, needles, and stretchers. As the roar of the jet leveled off in the sky, I hung up the cellphone. “They know we’re coming. Any sign of consciousness?”
Tony looked up from where he had finished securing the IV by Bruce’s stretcher. “Nothing yet.” His face was lined with weariness as, with his tasks completed, the ordeal finally hit. “Natasha, I—” His knees buckled and he lowered himself to the floor. “I don’t know how I missed this. He didn’t seem any different; actually, he’d seemed like he was doing better.”
A series of images flashed across my mind. Years of long sleeves, even in back in India. Forearms littered with faint, old scars I’d always attributed to the aftermath of Hulk-outs. Weeks in between New York and Sokovia where he’d disappear, only to return exhausted and without a word of where he’d gone or why. A moment back when he had first joined the team. “I put a bullet in my mouth, and the other guy spit it back out…” * I felt sick.
“Maybe it wasn’t different,” I realized out loud. “Tony…”
Based on the expression on Tony’s face, he had put the pieces together too. “He’s been suicidal for years and none of us noticed.”
“Waking up strapped to a stretcher with an IV in his arm is not going to be pleasant.”
"The transfusion's almost done. I'll make sure the IV's out before he can come around."
An exhausted silence filled the cabin as he worked. Finally, I broke it. “Why don’t you go call Dr. Cho again and brief her more in depth on his unusual physiology? I can sit here with Bruce.”
Bruce
The first thing that pierced through the darkness of unconsciousness was the sensation of bands around my arms. A rising panic filled me. I couldn’t move. There was a needle in my arm, and my veins were burning. I was in the lab. I would never escape. I couldn’t move. I’d never get out. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move.
A scientist loomed over me and I couldn’t get away. I begged brokenly for release through sobbing gasps of air that never seemed to quite reach my lungs but there was no way out. There was never a way out.
My straining against the straps chafed my arms painfully, evoking conflicted memories and stirring up a new source of confusion. The thumping of a foreign heart, blood, Nat… please let us in. There was never a way out. I couldn’t breathe.
“Please, Bruce.” A soft voice cut through like the hesitant glow of an eastern cloud in the early hours of the morning.
Gradually, I became aware of gentle hands holding my shoulders and stilling my thrashing.
“Please, Bruce. You’re safe. You’re with me.”
“Natasha?” I struggled to sit up, but my arms were strapped down. “Are you okay? Where are we? What happened? Are you okay? Is Tony okay?” Another wave of fire arched through my body. “What’s going on?”
“I’m fine, Tony’s okay too.” The hands moved off of my shoulders as if trusting I had stopped trying to get up. “Bruce, what do you remember?”
“Did I Hulk out?”
“Not… not exactly.”
"Did I hurt anyone? You're okay?" I took stock of my surroundings. “Are we on a pla—mmgh.” I bit back a cry of pain as another surge of agony traveled up my arm.
Suddenly everything crashed down on me like a bomb. The scalpel, the blood, the room. “Oh my God.” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the cold reality, but all I could see was the smoothly opening wounds, the welling up of blood, the tingling sense of resolve, that finally, finally, there was a way out. They knew. They knew everything.
“Breathe with me, Bruce, you need to breathe. Tony!”
“I’m so sorry, Nat. I am so, so sorry,” I managed. Another wave of pain, but this time I embraced it. I deserved it.
No,” she said firmly. “I’m sorry. For forcing the other guy out. For not finding you sooner. For not getting to the lab in time and stopping those men from torturing you. I’m sorry for not seeing the scars it had left on your mind until it was too late.” Her hand found mine and grasped it tightly. “Whatever they did or said to you, Bruce, you deserve to live.”
I forced myself to open my eyes, but I couldn’t meet Natasha’s. “You don’t understand, Nat,” I protested quietly. “That isn’t it. This was all my fault, all of it.” I blinked back hot tears. “This wasn’t the first time, okay?”
Natasha
Something inside me told me it was time to just sit and listen and let him talk, so I did.
“Before the Avengers, I tried…” he hesitated, as if unsure how much to disclose, “… a couple times, but nothing came close to succeeding so I gave up for a while.” Unspoken between us was the understanding that a couple times was already more than I wanted to know. “Losing two years to the Hulk and realizing he’s getting stronger… I thought I had to do it soon, or I might never have the chance. Once New Asgard was underway, I slipped away because I thought I could do it. I was wrong. The other guy came out, and he was furious, made a mess, and left. That’s how they found me. When I was tortured, they wanted the Hulk, but couldn’t get him. They wanted to break the Hulk, but the Hulk had abandoned me to take it alone, and I’m not—without him, I’m just a man. They were so angry, so desperate…” Bruce was shaking. “I guess in the end they decided I must have been some sort of hoax and threw me out on the streets. I didn’t even save myself. I’m not a hero, Nat, I’m a monster. And every time I’ve tried to fix that, I’ve just made everything worse.”
“You’re not a monster to me,” I averred. “We will get you through this, Bruce. I promise. You won’t be fighting alone, not anymore.”
Bruce’s body shuddered, and it seemed as if he was trying not to cry out in pain. “What’s going on?” he asked tightly.
“You lost a lot of blood. Your heart stopped. It looked like your body tried to force the other guy out, but he said no.”
I saw a different kind of fear in his eyes as his mind spun rapidly through the potential scenarios. “Nat, that’s not going to work. Blood isn’t going to last very long before my body destroys it. We have to get me off this plane before… Here’s the thing, if Hulk knew what was going on and let my heart stop, if he can choose to let me die… that opens a whole new series of problems. I’m not sure anymore that he’d go with me. You can’t still be on a plane with him when the blood fails. If my heart stops again, you’ll have a maximum of ten minutes before brain death, at which point if my current hypothesis is correct there will be only Hulk.”
“I’ve crunched the numbers,” Tony said, reemerging behind me with his carefully cultivated calm back in place. “And according to my expert guesstimations, you’ve got almost three hours before your body finishes cooking the blood transfusion. We’re only two and a half hours from Dr. Cho’s set-up on the outskirts of New Asgard.”
Bruce’s back arched and he squeezed his eyes shut. His hand tensed around mine. “Breathe,” I murmured. “Just focus on breathing. Don’t worry about us.”
“That would be the blood transfusion,” Tony remarked. “Good news—as long as it hurts, it’s still working. Bad news—it’s gonna hurt.”
“I’m fine,” Bruce managed through clenched teeth. “Tony—I didn’t mean for this… it’s not you, any of you. I really thought I could take him with me. It’s just, if the Hulk ever comes out again, he might never leave. I can’t let that happen. I had to try to destroy us before—”
Tony slammed his fist into the wall. “Had to?” he demanded. “Like you had to run away from Sokovia and abandon the team, and had to run away from New Asgard? Had to always leave us wondering? Does this team mean so little to you that you keep throwing it away?”
“Tony!” I hissed. He hadn’t seen Bruce flinch at the sudden violence, nor noticed the scientist begin to shake as he stared wordlessly past us, but I had. “Hey big guy. It’s okay. You’re on a plane with me and Tony.” I tried to touch him, but he recoiled away from my hand, straining against the arm restraints and snapping out of the mute tremors into a full panic.
“Let me go, please, let me go!” The anguished, broken voice echoed the one I had heard on a video at the lab, shortly before Loki’s rage had incinerated the place. Bruce twisted and pulled against the straps holding him down in clear terror.
Tony looked stricken. “Nat, I—”
“Save it,” I snapped back angrily. “Bruce, you’re safe. Just listen to my voice, okay? Breathe in. Out.”
“Sir,” FRIDAY interrupted. “You have a phone call.”
“NOT NOW, FRIDAY.”
“But sir—“ the AI sounded almost apologetic “—it’s Thor. He’s says it’s urgent.”
I looked up in surprise. “Thor’s calling?”
“That’s not good,” Tony murmured. “FRIDAY, patch him through.”
“Tony, I need you right away. Call the rest of the team if you can, but come quickly. A powerful being called Thanos is after the infinity stones. Half the universe is at stake.”
The audio cut off.
“Thor has ended the call, sir,” FRIDAY informed us unhelpfully.
Tony had already begun to pace. “Not good, not good, not good.”
I processed the information with practiced calm. “Dr. Cho and her team are set up on the outskirts of New Asgard. We can join Thor after we land. In the mean time, we need to get Bruce calm before he hurts himself further.” Bruce’s arms were chafed and raw at the wrist and upper arm where he was strapped down. It was fortunate that the restraints were past his bandages, or he would have re-torn the stitched wounds.
Bruce had stopped crying out and was mumbling over and over, rocking and pulling against the bands that held him down. "Let me go, let me go, let me go."
I shook my head. “We have to untie him.”
“That’s not safe.”
“Look at him, Tony. He’s back in that lab, and as long as he’s scared, in pain, and tied down, we’re not going to convince him otherwise.”
The argument turned out to be unnecessary. With a snap, his straining arms broke through the restraints.
With the straps gone, Bruce curled away from us against the wall, huddled into a ball, shaking. Tony made a move to get closer, but I cut it off with an abrupt wave of my head. Gradually, his breathing slowed.
Bruce looked up, still somewhat dazed. “We’re on a plane?”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d still been holding. “Yes. We’re on a plane."
“Right.” Bruce rubbed wearily at his forehead. “Don’t suppose there’s a restroom? I gotta go.”
Tony
Bruce got up and stumbled his way down the aisle toward the restroom. I stopped him.
“Where are you going?”
Bruce looked at me unbelievingly. “I gotta go, Tony.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“That’s ridiculous!” As he realized I was serious, Bruce’s demeanor sagged. “Please, Tony. I really need to be alone.”
I hesitated. Could I trust Bruce to be safe? Or would the invasion of his privacy make things worse?
“Please, Tony.”
“Fine,” I allowed gruffly. “But if I don’t hear from you in 5 minutes, I’m coming in there.”
Bruce barely waited for the conditions, slipping inside and locking the door. Waiting outside, I heard rather than saw his body sink to the floor in anguish. The deep, wrenching sobs were quiet but tore at my heart. I didn’t know if my friend would ever be okay again.
Bruce
Recognizing the end of Tony’s imposed time limit was approaching, I pulled myself together and did what I had said I had come here to do, splashing water on my face in hopes of hiding the evidence of my tears. It was over. My last hope of escape had failed spectacularly. Even if Hulk would not intervene to heal me, his body was poised to take over entirely, staying alive on his own. I had to live.
The bandages stared back at me from my forearms, mocking me in their pristine whiteness, and standing out starkly against my chafed skin. I dried my hands off on the spotless towel and fumbled with the bolt, feeling suddenly very heavy and clumsy. Tony was waiting for me on the other side.
“Perfect timing,” he joked, but I could see in the weary lines of his face that he was masking frustration, anger, even grief. “Look…I’m bad at figuring out how to say this, but… I’m sorry, about a lot of things.”
“Don’t be,” I murmured. “You’re a good guy, Tony.” I stumbled and put a hand out to catch myself on the wall. “If anybody should be sorry, it’s me. I never intended for you and Nat to have to pick up the pieces of another botched experiment.”
“Jeeze, Bruce,” Tony said angrily. “You’re not an experiment. Your life is not a botched experiment. And trying to kill yourself? That’s one attempt you damn well better botch or I will personally track you down in whatever afterlife there is to give you a piece of my mind.”
Guilt twisted in my heart as I realized that Tony’s eyes were blinking back tears. “Tony, I—”
He waved off the attempted apology and changed the subject. “Come on, Natasha got a more comfortable bed set up for you in the back of the plane.”
I hesitated. “No more restraints?” The words were almost a plea.
Tony’s arm wrapped around the small of my waist and guided me forward. “No more restraints, big guy. I promise,” he reassured me. “Just a bed so you can get some rest.”
The bed turned out to be a welcome suggestion for my weary body. My legs almost gave out as we approached it, but Tony was right there, holding me up and helping me the last few steps.
When Tony finally left me to my own devices, convinced that I had fallen asleep, I curled up against the pillow and wept. Deep inside me, I felt a surge of profound grief far beyond my own.
*quote from The Avengers