milliways_bar | (no subject)

He blinks when he notices her closness, and swallows, suddenly nervous.

"Ah... hm, when I get stressed or too afraid, or angry. When I lose control, basically, they gain it."

Serena offers a little coy smile to dispell the tension... "You will not lose control now, will you?"

He smiles reflexively and shakes his head no.

"Um, no. Just nervousness. Joe and the Professor got all the smoothness with women. I am the geek of the minds."

He gulps but smiles a bit.

"Maybe I will have the chance of talking with them, later, another time. Now..." She leans a bit to his arm. "How exctly did they come to be?"

He blinks again, but goes on. She is oddly soothing and he finds himself almost smiling at her.

"When I was a child my father was mentally and emotionally abusive, and I learned to hide and supress any emotion I had. Thus a lot of anger and pain gfot surpressed. As I grew older, I developed mutiple personalities, but my supression was so great that none of them could come out. Until, one day, on my job, there was an explosion. The explosion filled me with radiation. The radiation changed me, unleashing a connection to power that I hadnt known I had, and also awakening a latent shapeshifting ability. Thereafter whenever I am angry or out of control, one of the other personalities gains control, and my body schanges shape."

Scary enough, the medieval lady understands most of that, or at least the general lines. "And it still happens today. You sought several ways of curing it, but each had a flaw, a weakness, a secondary effect..." Guessing? Well, its fairly obvious to her, the logical path.

He blinks.

"Yes... how did you know?"

"Seemed logical, if you work so intensely at it, and have not yet found a solution." No, she is not reading his mind.

Well, maybe a little. But nobody needs to know that.

He nods.

"I guess you're right. It might be impossible. It might be something thsat only years of therapy can cure. It might be the only end csolution will be death. But I havent stopped trying yet."

He grins an off-center grin, the kind some people who have been too alone for too long grin.

"I wont stop as long as I have any hope at all."

"Do not forget to let your friends help you."

He smiles faintly, his eyes slightly darker again.

"I try not to get them involved too much. Being involved with me tends to lead to people's lives ending up in ruins and/or death."

"And it always hurts, no matter how much you try to distance yourself from certain emotions." Serena reaches up, touching his cheek lightly...

He nods, glancing at her. He smiles faintly.

"Always. You seem to understand more than most do."

He swallows then.

"Ah. Can I get you something to drink?"

"Do not worry about that." She smiles and nods. "What are you working on, right now?" While she watches him, Serena takes the chance to scan his mind and spirt; she can see the split personality signs easily... the question to her is, there are split souls as well?

He nods to the laptop and turns it so she can see it. It is full of scientific equations.

"I have been working on a new method of attempting to gain control. A neurological merging of the brainwaves that have become so chaotic in my mind."

His mind and body seethe with energy, but the different pieces are all him, different expressions of desires, fears, angers, lusts. All born out of Bruce Banner's mind and heart.

The woman actually shudders. "You realize that such a thing, if not performed with extreme caution and absolute perfection, can have some very unplesent consequences?"

He cant help it, he snorts slightly, a tisted smile on his face. But one of his hands goes to her gently.

"Sorry. But I know that. I dont long ago, but I do now. I have endured quite a few of those consequences before, trying things, before I knew the whole story. I wont try this unless I know exactly what the dangers are and in as controlled a circumstance as possible and that I have a better than 95 % chance of succeeding. Otherwise... I have caused too much damage, too much death as myself and as them... I wont willingly do so again."

"Bruce... ninety-five in a hundred means just that one mind will survive the procedure. That is still just one in five a chance that it will be yours..."

He looks down and nods.

"I know. That is why I usually prepare... countermeasures."

"Like what?" She is worried now...

"I would not unleash a Hulk with no control on any world... and I make sure there is always something final set up that would catch them off guard if I wasnt inside them. Wont work if I am within them, because, then they could read it from me, but if I wasnt inside anymore, they would be clueless untiul it was too late."

She touches his face again, nodding a bit... such... desperate bravery... Serena can not help herself but be impressed, almost scared.

He glances down, that twisted smile there again.

"So far, I have never had to use it... even when things went wrong, they never quite went that wrong."

He looks up at her with a slightly more true and less strained smile.

"I dont plan on dying any time soon. I just want to be free."

Serena tilts head, and moves closer, pressing her soft full lips to Bruce's a moment, then moving back slightly.

His eyes go very wide when she kisses him, but he doesnt resist. There is a stuinned look on his face when she pulls away. Bruce doesnt get a lot of kisses.

"Ahm..."

Yeah, uh, also, not very eloquent.

"Wow..."

Did we mention the lack of eloquence?