You supposed dreaming was the strangest.
Not that dreams weren't strange in the first place; it was quite odd how a human could simply close his or her eyes and drift off into a world comprised solely of fiction and imagination, simulated by the firing of neurones within one's subconscious.
But as mentioned previously, your mind wasn't one consciousness. Ever since your first migraine, since the incident that had shattered your mind into a thousand different pieces all at once, every shattered part of the mirror that was once your mind had its own dream, its own separate story to tell. So when you went to sleep, it wasn't just one mind that went to sleep. It was the mind that had roamed all of reality whilst you are a twitching mess on the laboratory floor that dreamed and the mind that remained tethered to your vessel.
Here you could gain visuals of what your mind actually saw during your migraines, when it ripped from your ethereal form and was free to wander across all of time and space. Then again, none of this could be real and you might just be tripping out on some very weird narcotics at this given point.
But even then you were certain that even the most refined drugs on this green-blue planet could not possibly cause you to see what you did in your dreams. No, these were so fantastical that there was no other explanation than that they were real, that they were the places scattered throughout space and time that you visited during your migraines.
The most preferred of these places was one that seemed to exist in multiple eras all at once. It reminded you of the way that people in Northern Europe used to dress before fashion was a thing, where they wore robes and dyed garments that seemed to be made out of the bath towel used last week. You would have written them off as a primitive civilisation; it wasn't saying much, you had visited several worlds where many of the intelligent life forms were just beginning to figure out how to use fire. But when looking closer at the way that the life forms carried themselves, they seemed to possess a more in depth and enriched culture than any primitive world would expect.
That's why this place seemed to exist in both the past and the future through how they dressed and carried out their lives, with futuristic technology so advanced that humans today would have written off as magic. You often called this place Tomorrowland because it reminded you of that one movie you had seen a long time ago.
You were sure that this place, this Tomorrowland, was important. You had visited it on numerous occasions, not just visited it, no, you had also felt it during your travels during your migraines. There seemed to be strands of power that expanded from this planet to almost every corner of the universe, or at least nine major sections of it. If there was glue to most of the advanced civilisations, this world seemed to be the source, even for the human world you lived on, though they did not sense it as much as the other worlds did.
You awoke to a rather large crash sounding from opposite your temporary (though the way you had your clothes thrown across the floor made it seem like it was your permanent residence with every passing day). The sound had caught you unawares and a surge of panic manifested itself into a form of physical energy that caused your right hand to flash a deep violet colour.
You mentally swore and the bright electricity that had crackled over your fingers vanished just as quickly as it had come. The purpose of not using your 'Friends without benefits' was to minimise the chances of triggering another migraine. There was a direct correlation between using your abilities and the nasty migraines that often followed.
"Sorry!" Banner shouted an apology from his laboratory that was coincidentally located straight across your room from which your window offered sight into Banner's work shop. Though there was adjustable tinting on your window, provided by Stark, to offer privacy whenever needed, so it wasn't entirely creepy. The unperturbed look on his facial features suggested that Banner had not seen the temporary 'flare up' of your 'Friends without benefits,' which spared escalating the tension of the situation. Though he was perfectly aware of your abilities following the Incident, you still preferred not to use them, not only for the sake of possibly triggering your migraines, but sparing the way that others often looked at you, that you were different.
It was rather ironic that you would be concerned about the potential of socially isolating yourself from the other individuals within the Stark facility. After all, weren't the Avengers supposed to be Earth's mightiest heroes, strange misfits and mutants that had all sorts of weird abilities?
You thought so. Though, you weren't a mutant. Your abilities hadn't come from enhanced genetics, some random DNA mutation or weird experimentation by German scientists. They had come from somewhere else and you weren't sure if you would ever figure out where, or if you even wanted to. You were different, to put it the least. Plus, you weren't technically an Avenger. The man with the eye patch had never given you the paper work to formally fill out.
A bemused grin flitted across your features as you pushed open your door and entered the laboratory, observing the case of shattered beakers. "I hope those didn't contain radiation or some deadly virus," you chuckled as you walked to the opposite end of the room to grab the broom and dust pan.
"No," Banner confirmed. "Though I was going to store some hydrocloric acid since Stark got one of his shipments in last night."
"Do I even want to know what sort of thing the two of you are building?" You asked as you began to sweep several of the shattered glass contents onto the dust pan.
"No, he just likes to dilute his vodka with it," Banner replied seriously as you dumped the shards of glass into the trash can. "You know, proper laboratory protocol indicates that all glass shards and items be disposed of into the Sharps Bucket."
"Well frankly, I don't give a shit," you muttered and walked out the door, ready to raid Stark's fridge for some pancakes.
"Wait (Y/n)!" Banner's voice called after you as you quickened your pace to find the kitchen as fast as possible. The scientist and his green friend were very different in many respects, including their physical fitness. Whilst one was rather in-shape, the awkward man that chased after you seemed quite out of breath by the time that he reached you. "I know you don't want to talk about last night's epis - "
"If you say episode one more time I'm going to throw you out the window," you snapped, then quickly regretted your comment upon seeing Rogers enter the kitchen.
"Language," he warned. Rogers seemed the most concerned (actually, the only one to give a shit) about the way that you sometimes spoke to Banner, as if even speaking to the scientist would send him into a raging fit. It had only happened once, mind you.
When Rogers had exited the kitchen, you ran to the fridge and began to pull out a bowl of somewhat molded pancake batter. "Fine," Banner muttered, eyeing the entrance to the room to ensure that there were no unwanted ears. "Your migraine - "
"Bingo." You proceeded to shove the pancake batter into the toaster, though you weren't sure if that was how you made pancakes.
Banner hesitated before continuing, somewhat concerned about your breakfast ritual. "I've been monitoring your brain activity during the migraines, which I know you're aware of. It seems to go in phases and a dramatic increase in brain frequency indicates the next level of the migraine. I think that if we monitor your cerebral activity for the next few weeks, we can detect the next event and have a warning sign in advance."
"You're not sticking probes on my head," you muttered and then frowned at the smoke that began to rise from the toaster.
This seemed to irritate Banner. "I'm trying to help you," he pushed. "The only way we can fix this is to monitor it, to collect data and to understand - "
"You can't understand it!" You snapped, turning away from the toaster. "You can't understand any of this! You don't know what it's like to have one of these migraines, to feel like your skull is ripped apart and in two places at once. You think you understand it through charts and graphs, but those are just numbers. I'm not another experiment that you can probe and test to figure out a solution. You can't fix this, you can't fix me."
"I owe it to you - "
"You owe it to yourself." You cut the scientist off. "I warned you to leave the gamma radiation experiment alone, that it was too risky. But when the transmission came through of the incoming wavelengths, you ignored me, you ignored everyone. And when no one volunteered to be your test subject for the new and improved Super Serum that you were sure you had replicated, you stuck the needle into yourself and turned into a green frenzy that almost broke New York City. And you left me alone in the lab, stuck with your machines that were beeping like crazy, warning about the wavelength, the gamma radiation that you had attracted from the depths of space like a magnet and were beaming it to Earth to contain and study. But you left me alone and I had no choice - "
Your voice broke, remembering that night. The night you had spent alone in the cold, in a sterile laboratory while your father raged halfway across the city, consumed within his own work.
His obsession with the Super Serum, to recreate the glorious serum that the U.S army had injected into Rogers to enhance his abilities, was what had led to Banner's downfall. He had been so damn sure that the answer lay with radiation. It made the most sense, he argued. Gamma radiation had the highest frequency of all the known wavelengths and if exposed to it in low enough of a dose, than perhaps it could change the human composition ever so slightly to enhance one's ability.
Of course, there had been no volunteers or willing help for the experiment, so it was often you and Banner working in the laboratory late into the night, nose deep in charts depicting gamma wavelengths.
And then a report had come in of a frequency detected from an astrophysicist, Erik Selvig, you believed his name to be. A few satellite stations positioned at several points across the globe detected faint traces of a burst of gamma radiation that seemed to be sailing across the cosmos. "It must have been going on for all of existence," your father had put it. The radiation may have been traces from the Big Bang itself, mere echoes of the energy back then, but still powerful.
If one could attract it, study the wavelengths and patterns of the radiation, perhaps it would offer a break through for the Super Serum experiment. But how could you attract gamma rays that were soaring half a solar system away?
It was simple, Banner argued, though it wasn't that simple to you. If one were to collect a large amount of antimatter, it would provide an attraction large enough to steer the positively charged gamma radiation towards the laboratory. It wouldn't be all of the gamma radiation, just a small chunk of it.
So the machine was built around a large storage cell to harness and capture the energy that permeated the cosmos. It wouldn't be for several months before the gamma waves would arrive anywhere near to be attracted towards the Earth, so the two of you continued experimenting for several more weeks, attempting to replicate the Serum without the use of the strange wavelengths that seemed to exist since the beginning of the universe.
The closer the cosmic waves got, the more accurate and more strange were the readings. It was not one coherent wave length, but rather six unique wavelengths that travelled under one pathway. They oscillated at frequencies much higher than ever imagined, almost tripling that of gamma radiation. Meaning that it was deadly, meaning that it was probably not the smartest to bring to Earth. You had suggested to Banner that the experiment was shut down, that you dismantle the antiproton containment field before the radiation honed in on it like a beacon and shot towards the Earth.
Banner had reassured you that it would be fine, that absolutely nothing had gone wrong.
That was, until the break through.
Banner had been experimented with a certain frequency of gamma radiation for the last few weeks. It had yielded positive test results on the mice, enhancing their lifespans, metabolism and strength as the Super Serum had done with Steve Rogers back into the 1940's. Perhaps this strange cosmic radiation wasn't even needed, Banner had exclaimed, ecstatic that he had made the breakthrough. He wanted to upscale the experiment to human testing, though you advised against it, saying it was too close to call, especially with the radiation due to arrive any day from the heart of the cosmos.
But Banner didn't listen.
And when it came down to finding human subjects, well, no one on the planet was thrilled to willingly inject high frequency radiation into their system. When no one showed to volunteer and the army knocking on the door for the finalised product, Banner shot the radiation into his arm.
You know the rest.
And when your father was a raging green monster halfway across New York City, the alarm on the antiproton containment field began to sound. The cosmic radiation that had been attracted halfway across the universe was in range and due to arrive within thirty minutes.
The lab was in no state to harness such energy; the fuel cells designed to contain the high frequency energy had ruptured when Banner turned into his green friend for the first time, meaning that the radiation was coming to Earth and there was no way to stop it. To put it in perspective, a small dosage of gamma radiation could kill a healthy human adult (or turn them into a green rage monster), and six isolated frequencies that were three times greater in energy capacity would be deadly for the whole planet if not contained.
There was nothing to do, you were out of time.
You know one of those movies where someone pushes a person out of the way to avoid getting hit by a car, only for them to realise that they're out of time and they get hit instead?
Yeah, it was kind of like that.
You remember bright light that entered from the heavens, six magnificent colours that ruptured through the nighttime sky line over New York City, headed straight for the antiproton field. You stood at the centre, not knowing what to expect, hoping that perhaps a small organic buffer would help minimise the damage done by the radiation.
And you absorbed all of it.
You shook away from the memories, first registering the smell of burning pancakes from the toaster. "You don't owe me anything," you snarled, not sure whether you were angry at the trip down memory lane or that your pancakes had burnt. "You had that chance a long time ago. It wasn't an accident, you had so many chances, so many warnings from me to stop and you ignored them. No, it was an Incident, and that's what we've always called it."
And on those words you pushed past him, not wanting to dwell on it a moment longer.