The voicemails broke Dr Banner.
He thought the phone conversation had shattered him, it was nothing. The sound of Parker's decaying voice struck him to the core and kept the knife lodged there. Her words sucked all the oxygen from every cell in his body and left him with nothing.
They made him feel hatred, pure loathing for everything around him. Everything was to blame; SHIELD, Loki, the Hulk, the plant pot.
Everything soon became a target for his overriding sense of inadequateness. He had stupidly let Parker enter his life, he had allowed himself the pure essence of happiness and now he couldn't protect it. So Bruce Banner stopped protecting everything else.
His hatred melted and fizzed into rage. His cells filled the void left by oxygen with the unnatural radiation he could never rid himself of. His skin palpitated as the green tinge took the complexion that Parker had fallen in love with and morphed it into a beast.
The heart rate monitor on his wrist sent a buzzing sound that rang in his growing eardrum. His expanding arm muscles ripped it like paper from his skin and hurled it against the glass that smashed under the impact of the small trajectory.
It was the borderline between Bruce and Hulk that now stood in the laboratory, the last thoughts of the human inhabitant being of Parker and the Hulk's first thought being of destruction. And the Hulk doesn't discriminate against what gets smashed.
So the green figure smashed the door leading out of the lab, hell bent on two words; Nick Fury. He snarled as he walked through the doorway and into the corridor.
The alarm finally sounded as if before it was stuck in a state of shock, the high pitch beeping scratching him like an annoying tick. The hulk returned the favour by ripping off the nearest receiver and throwing it out of the window. Almost in revenge it bounced back against the bullet proof glass and feebly hit his bicep.
Bruce picked it up again and crunched it easily under his grip before hurling it forward towards the rest of the incoming Avengers. Some looked calm, some looked puzzled but most them had an underlying feeling of empathy. Bruce had finally let it in, all the hurt was finally in his system and there was no stopping it.
The Hulk never listen to words, never could understand them and fathom their meaning. So his instinct was to destroy and the team of heroes that stood in his way seemed like a good place to start.
Tony Stark was the first one to step forward, he had a glint in his eye that came with seeing the green monster for the first time unfortunately this came with a misplaced, "Bruce!" The man shouted trying to reason with the beast, he didn't have his suit so he only had his ego for protection, "I think you need to calm down."
The Hulk replied with a low gurgling sound and a slight tilt of his lips before smacking the man with the back of his hand. Enough to cause damage but the inner Bruce prevented the death of the billionaire.
"What's Plan B?" Steve Rogers asked as he stared at ever muscle in Bruce's hand flex. Some were almost as big as his forearm.
"I think we're on Plan E by now." Natasha remarked as she fired a round towards the towering figure. The Hulk's head whipped around in a small hint of recognition. He caught all twelve bullets in his palm without any trace of blood.
He released them slowly letting the echo of metal on metal register with every individual in the facility. The sound unsettled monster, human and God alike.
"How have you stopped him before?" Thor asked the group, he held Mjölnir in his hand but right now he wondered how much damage that would do to the lump of adrenaline, rage and muscle coming towards him.
"We isolate," Nick Fury entered from behind and commanded everybody's attention at once. Unfortunately including the Hulk's green eyes which narrowed at the recognisable sight of the eyepatch, "And exterminate the threat."
"But it is the doctor, isn't it?" Thor argued, he had taken a certain liking to the shy Bruce and didn't fancy being an accomplice to his extermination.
The Hulk had enough of waiting and with a sudden urgency his tree trunk size legs carried him towards Nick Fury, the root of every single drop of his anger.
"That's the Hulk," Nick Fury's voice remained calm despite the circumstances as he raised his gun and aimed it to the gap between the green eyes, "There is no Bruce anymore."
He fired the shot, if it wasn't a mutated monster in front of him it would have been deadly. Implanted into his skin but instead it had the effect of changing the monster into its true form; a scared man.
The green began to pale into the colour of sickness, the muscles reducing like the air from a tyre. The creature pathetically shrunk into itself, crouching as its thick arms became thin ones clutched around bony knees. The bullet clattered against the floor clean, like the incident had never happened.
None of the Avengers could see the face morphing. They couldn't see the battle scars of the Hulk fall back into the skin of Bruce; slightly calloused and with now slightly more deep set wrinkles.
The only clue the transformation was complete was a harsh and echoing forced breathing becoming audible. Even then a dull green tinge remained on his skin, he looked like he was dying and in a way, Bruce was.
Nobody dared to move, nobody wanted to disturb the only person in the room that truly bordered between psychopath and hero. Nobody wanted to disturb the nest the Hulk had made himself of debris and destruction. Bruce knew it was all there and forced himself to acknowledge that he caused it; he was the bringer of death.
Thinking of death made him feel empty; feeling empty made him think of the only thing that could ever make him feel whole. Bruce cried for Parker Miller and the normal life his deformity stole away from him. He mourned the simplicity he let Parker believe he could offer. He grieved for a love that was taken from him before he could even declare it.
--
They couldn't leave him there. The Avengers were all human despite the masks they wore and after seeing Bruce's shattered before them a little bit of theirs broke off as well.
Unfortunately it was Nick Fury - just beating Steve Rogers - who spoke first after the awkward silence,"I expected better of you Banner."
"Better?" A muffled voice laughed from where Bruce was, it didn't sound like him, "You expected better!" It was a different sort of anger now; the pathetic self-wallowing anger.
"Yes I did," Fury replied, "You are no closer to locating the Tesseract."
Bruce looked up at the man with furrowed eyebrows, "I'd like to see you try and do it." He had resorted to pathetic sarcasm which made Fury even more disappointed. Bruce wiped his nose on the back of his hand and locked eyes with Tony Stark for a second before the playboy swallowed and looked away.
"It looks simple enough." Fury tested the water of his anger.
"Simple! You think it's simple? You have no idea Fury, none of this is simple. Nothing in this damn organisation can ever be simple." Bruce stood up now and staggered as his vision went black. Instinctively he outstretched his arm out to stop any potential help, which normally came from an overprotective Parker. His time nobody had moved a muscle.
"Solve the problem then."
"I'm working on it." Bruce almost hissed. His anger at himself had been completely redirected back to Fury where it had been all along.
"No, you're hulking out."
"Isn't that what you want me to do! I'm just the alter-ego of the monster, you don't care about me." His own words stung, they didn't care about the casualties the Hulk could cause on the journey or the damage the superheroes could do to civilians. Collateral damage was just something to think about at a later date. But that was all Bruce had ever cared about; keeping people safe.
"That's true," The answer startled everybody, the coldness in Nick Fury's tone and the blatantly disregard for any human emotion, "I care about stopping Loki. You can either help me as the Hulk or you can help me as Dr Banner. And so far neither has helped much,"
Bruce bridged the gap between him and the director, his arm had taken on the green colour of his alter ego and the veins where visible against the pulsing muscle. He lifted his limb and placed it in the air in front of Fury's throat. Bruce mimed the action of strangling him as his nostrils flared and every weapon on the room was on him.
"Still not helping." Nick Fury told him and he let a smug smile come to his lips.
Instead of killing him, Bruce smashed his fist against the metallic floor. It sent earthquake like tremors across the whole ship, cracking metal, plastic and everything in between.
Bruce Banner then, without a word or any other action, went back to what was left of his lab.
Once the figure of the scientist had disappeared Fury turned to the others, "That is a technique we all learned back in my day, it's called emotional persuasion."
"Felt like manipulation." Steve pointed out.
"You can call it that Rogers. In fact you can call it whatever you like but it works," Fury turned on the communicator in his ear, "Now get me someone who can clean this hell hole and put 24 hour security on Banner. If I do much as seeing him going to the bathroom unescorted I will be the angry one. And you don't want to see my when I'm angry."