thisavrou_log | "Get outta here if you don't know"

Are we? [It’s pessimistic but the last twenty-four hours have been an exercise in seeing the other shoe drop. He’s aware of he’s ruined things with his half-baked plans. He can only imagine how much worse things will get as others find that awareness. ] Pretty good reason to walk away. I got someone killed.

[His voice wavers a little on the last word. Bruce would be right in his line of thinking. It wasn’t just some random passerby. The fact that they had shared something close prior was making Peter take J’s death all the harder.]

Do you think I was doing something good? [He can’t seem to settle on a tone. Pleading, sarcastic. He takes a deep breath.] Do you even know what happened? I figured Wanda wants to tell everything, thinks it’s going to help. What did they even tell you?

[ Bruce smiles bitterly, a flickering thing that's there and gone the next moment. So have I, the thought crosses his mind, but he doesn't voice it out loud. It's not about him, none of this is. What experiences he's gone through aren't going to help Peter right this moment.

With time, maybe, he might be able to help him for the simple fact that he understands how he's feeling, to a degree. But he also knows that that understanding will only make him feel worse right now. It won't help. ]

I wasn't told anything. I just saw— [ The footage, really. He doesn't get into details, clearing his throat softly and swallowing dryly before he tips his chin at Peter. ] Will you tell me why you did it? I know what happened, I just... I don't know why. But I'd like to.

[Saw. The video. And isn't that somehow worse? He thinks he'd rather it be stories traded around than there being footage of what happened stored away for anyone to see. He's been too afraid to check his MID for what the captains were sending around.

He flinches, looks to the ceiling.]

It's not the first time we've fought. [He says distantly, slowly. The start to a story.] We got in a fight the very first day I got here. He tried to stab me. Over nothing.

[It was the dog joke, the sass about the program growling. Peter has enough awareness now to know it hits some metaphorical nerve for Rinzler. But he doesn't think that's enough to warrant killing anyone.]

If I hadn't been so fast, I would have been dead right there.

[ Bruce didn't want to hear stories, not when right now a lot of people are mad and worried about this, and opinions can easily color the retelling of an event. The footage at least won't lie to him, and whatever reasons, he wants to hear from Peter, not anyone else.

And when Peter does start to explain, he listens, the package he was carrying set down on his lap, hands resting over it. ]

Right, I... I was told he's unstable. Warned, more like. [ Because no one wants Bruce near someone like that, when they all know what could very well happen. ]

So after that, what happened? Or did you just decide to set up a trap for him after months have gone by? [ Seems unlikely to Bruce. There must have been another trigger; maybe they fought again, or Rinzler attacked someone else, someone Peter cares about. ]

Whoever told you that gave you a good warning.

[Part of Peter regrets not listening to Alice after the first attack. Stay away, talk to the captains. If he'd left once his partner had been picked for the walk, then maybe, just maybe-]

I would have stayed away after that. Surprise, but I kind of don't like people who try to kill me. But then that space walk happened and he was with our group. And he- [He scratches at his face, shifts in bed. Quick agitated movements. It still pisses him off, just thinking about it.] He starts talking about Wanda. Replaying conversations I'd had with her over the MID, conversations where I was talking to friends about her. Taunting me that he knew she was my sister. And I told him to leave her out of it, but he just kept pushing it.

[It's not an entirely accurate account, but it's how Peter remembers it. That spike of fear that someone would go after his family over a stupid spat had blinded him to anything rational. And some of that irrationality, that panicky fear is slipping into his tone now. It's an old, deep seated fear that someone would someday hurt one of his sisters because of him.]

We got into another fight then. He broke my ribs and we both got stuck in the hold for a night. Endangering the crew, they said. [He laughs bitterly.] He tries to off me again and the Captain's didn't give a damn. And I spent weeks waiting for my bones to heal and for something to happen. To her.

His creator talked to me about it. He said he'd take care of it, but he didn't. Rinzler catches me at the prison, pulls his weapon on me again. Nothing changed, nothing was being done by anybody! I had to do something.

[ Bruce lets Peter talk. He lets him just spill his every thought and feeling in one string of words and sentences that stick together with a tone that changes between anger, panic, worry, helplessness. And through it all, he says nothing.

Sometimes people just need to talk. And words may only mean so much but this is good. He's never seen Peter looking anything other than happy and energetic, and now he has no doubt he was keeping things in (everyone is, in one way or another). Those things tend to do more harm than good in the long run, if not handled properly, if not shared at some point. It wouldn't have to be with Bruce, but he'll gladly be here to listen to every single thing Peter has to say, every worried thought that spills from his mouth. ]

Peter. [ He only speaks up by the end of it, lifting a hand and reaching out somewhat tentatively to let it settle over Peter's forearm. ] It's alright. I get it.

[ God, he gets it better than Peter can imagine. And he can't blame Peter one bit for wanting to do something about it, if from his point of view it looked like no one else was going to. ]

You know... your sister's very powerful. I'm sure she could handle herself more than well against Rinzler. [ He tries not to sound bitter when he says that. Truth is, he's seen her abilities in action and he knows what she's capable of, and he's absolutely sure she'd be far more capable of handling a single AI program out of control than either of them are. ]

[He stares down at the hand, nods after a moment. He has to swallow the urge to deny that Bruce could understand it. He's still a teenager. Everything that happens always feels too large and fresh for anyone to have possibly dealt with before.

But he doesn't feel much like arguing about it, not even as riled up as the subject matter makes him.]

She's still my sister. [That much he can argue with, will always argue over.] And she's not some god or something, she can still get hurt.He could still catch her off guard or find her when she's sleeping. Or what if he found out about the others? Billy? River? I can't let that go.

[He thumps his chest with his free hand, regrets it a moment later with a wince.]

I know it doesn't look like it here, but I'm the older one. I can't just let her take care of herself. That's my job.

[ The thing to remember when one is a teenager is that all the adults have been teenagers too, once. Even Bruce, smart and logical as he already was back then, always felt like no one else in the world could possibly understand the pain he went through, the struggle. That there was literally no one else that would understand the triggers that drove him to build that bomb in the first place.

But that's a whole other story, another lifetime ago. Maybe one day that's how this will feel to Peter, maybe not. The point is that it's fresh now, it matters now, it hurts now, and just like it's the same to everyone else, to him the now matters more than anything else. ]

Alright. Fair enough. [ Bruce can't argue with the urge, the need to protect a loved one, to keep them safe. It just so happens that in Bruce's case he often comes to the conclusion that the best way to keep the ones he loves safe is to stay away from them. Or he did, anyway. He's in the process of working through that. ]

But you can't keep doing this, either. Violence only breeds violence, and now he retaliates and you do the same, and it drags on endlessly until everyone on board is involved in one way or another, and you may think you're keeping your sister safe but you aren't. Worse yet, you're putting everyone else at danger.

[ Which, he thinks, Peter already has come to realize. He's sure that J's death has affected him a lot, probably more than he wants to show. But it still bears saying, as many times as it takes for that to sink into Peter's head. ]

And yourself, for the record. Because you matter too, and there are people here who don't want to see you get hurt, your sister and myself included.

[He does realize it. Wanda's already given him her version of a lecture, reminding him he'd broken the main rule of family in keeping quiet. He should have talked to her or Billy or any of them rather than just keeping it between him and Alice. They would have warned him away from the violence, pushed him into a different path.

He's aware that all he's done is turn a potential threat into a definite one and gotten someone killed in the process. But he still flinches, ashamed to hear it out loud.]

I didn't think anyone would be up there, that time of night. I didn't think it would be anyone but me he could go after.

[It's not much as far as excuses go, but it's what he has. He hadn't been thinking, not in the long term and not about retaliation. He didn't think of the other people who could get caught in the cross fire.

And he hadn't thought of himself either. Not in terms of his life. And even hearing Bruce say that, even seeing how Wanda reacted to his wounds, he's still not thinking of his own life.]

I'll try to find some way from keeping everyone out of it. I'm not going to put everyone else in danger. I promise I'm going to figure it out, okay? I know messed up, but I'll find a way to fix it.

[ Well, maybe if he hears it enough times it'll sink in and he'll stop acting so recklessly, or so secretively. It won't do him any good to do these things on his own. Even if there's an issue, there's no point in trying to work through it alone, not here.

It's almost ironic how it's Bruce of all people trying to convey that sentiment, considering how long he was on his own. Then again, that experience might put him in a prime position to say something about this.

But it doesn't seem to be getting through to Peter. Not in the way he intended it to, at least. He lets out a quiet sigh, eyes closing slowly as he shakes his head, shifts a little in his seat. ]

No, that's not— that's not what I'm saying, Peter. What I'm trying to tell you is that you're not alone. You're on a ship full of fighters, soldiers, superheroes, and some of them are your family, your close friends. We don't want you to do this on your own. We don't want you to fix anything by yourself. Whether what you did is right or wrong, you have people who are here to help you, who will always be here for you. We just want you to talk to us if something's going on. If there's a problem, anything, just... just tell us. Alright? We can work on it together, and you don't have to do it all on your own.

[ He smiles a little bitterly. ] Take it from someone who's spent a little too much time alone, and thought that would solve anything.

[That would be logic, wouldn't it? And maybe he's starting to see that, just a little. Enough to know he can no longer keep Wanda out of the loop, and maybe enough to see that there are other people he can to talk to when he's got this sort of overwhelming problem.

It just seems a lesson learned too late and one harder to put into practice than swallow. Maybe it's just baby steps, agreeing to let one person in a little even when that person's objectivity could be called into question about him. But maybe that small progress isn't enough when it comes to an ongoing, critical problem.]

I'm not trying to be alone. I just don't want people to get hurt over me! Do you know how much it sucks to watch someone get hurt for you? To be on your side and it goes wrong? That stays on you, that stays your fault. When someone tries to help you and they get hurt and you're just laying there watching aand you can't do anything-

[He stops, snaps his mouth shut. It's abundantly clear who and what he's talking about. He'd been afraid what had just happened to J would have been the outcome of going to anyone else. Someone trying to help solve the problem and dying for their trouble. When he thought Rinzler had threatened one person he loved, all he could imagine was that all of them would be targets. They would all get hurt or die or be gone permanently just like Wanda's friend and it would be his fault because he'd let the petty drama go on too long.

He'd been terrified of the guilt and he'd ended up with it anyway.]

[ Bruce can tell the instant that Peter's speech starts to derail that he's not talking in a hypothetical or general sense; he's mentioning someone specific, and knowing what he does, Bruce doesn't need to think at all to know it's J that's on his mind. Bruce falls silent too, his eyes drop to the floor and his body slumps in a way that's almost sad, almost defeated.

He really doesn't blame Peter for her death, not in the slightest, even if Peter himself might. But it's hard to act as if her death doesn't affect him, because it does. He didn't even see J after waking up from cryo, it's been over a year; it had been over a year and he didn't even think to seek her out and say hi. And now he'll probably never have that chance again.

But he does know, God... he knows all too well what it's like for the people around him getting hurt just because they were there. Even those he didn't hurt got caught in the crossfire one way or another, and Bruce feels the weight of that guilt nonetheless. And he knows it doesn't matter that the other person doesn't blame him —Betty never blamed him, she never would, but in the end that hardly matters. She still got hurt because of him, and more than once too, just because she was there, because she wanted to help and protect him. ]

I didn't mean people like her. [ His voice is small, but it should be obvious who he's talking about. He doesn't want to say the name, though, for fear that it'll be like pressing a thumb into a sore wound. ] I meant people like... people like me. People who can't... who won't get hurt easily. [ Or at all, as is his particular case. ]

[Of course he knows who Bruce means. It’s a subject that they, that everyone he knows had been dancing around. J had been hanging over every conversation since it happened, haunting him like a ghost he didn’t want rid of.
His voice softens in response to the emotion in Bruce’s.]

But it does mean people like her. She was trying to help me.

[It had been on the network, her call for help. He’d known what she was doing, when he watched her run over. She’d just wanted to help and she’d died for it.]

You might not think you can get hurt, but I think you could. Wanda could. Or Billy or River. Anything could have happened and they could have died. And you could have gotten hurt.

[Or worse, considering the Hulk. But that seems cruel to say when his only reference comes from what he heard of the last unfortunate planet incident and from Wanda’s memory. Peter doesn’t want to rub in what he knows must be hard on Bruce, or to sound like he’s placing blame on the man. Or worse, to sound like he has a real fear. ]

I didn’t want to see that happen to anyone.

So could you. You could get hurt too. And doing it all on your own only makes the chances of that happening even worse.

[ Bruce pauses, lifting his eyes again, a shoulder raising weakly. ]

You getting hurt makes us hurt too, just in a different way. And it would hurt even more because we'd know you never came to us even though you had a problem.

[ Peter doesn't really understand, Bruce doesn't think. The degree to which he can't get hurt, just how much he can withstand— physically and mentally. He's been in incredible lows but it's been a while since then, and if he's managed to work through destroying an entire planet, even if not without feeling that familiar yet unwelcome urge to end it all, then he can work through just about anything. (Almost.)

So, he doesn't insist on that point. He doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't want to get into the details or his life's story right now. ]

You're not the only one who wants to make things right, here or home. And you shouldn't do it alone. There are other ways.

I can outrun bullets. I shouldn't be getting hurt from some stupid fight.

[It was a fluke. He wanted to believe that. If he hadn't froze up he wouldn't have been stabbed. There was an excuse for everything, in his book.

Better me than someone else, is what he wants to say. He's beginning to understand that he's screwed up. He can see how worried everyone has been since he woke up. But he still would rather be the one lying here than be watching his family, his friends take his place. It's like he'd thought when Wanda told him about Pietro; she and they were all stronger than him. He couldn't handle loss, he couldn't handle someone getting hurt for him. He's not a strong person.

He doesn't say anything, just drops his gaze to his hands.]

I know. No more fighting. Kind of can't, for a while.

And I can deflect them. Doesn't mean I'm going around getting in their way.

[ You know, because that's never a pleasant experience, and even as the Hulk, it tends to get the big guy even angrier. That doesn't really help him keep control of things.

But yes, it really is for the best that Peter doesn't say that, because it's not better him than someone else, no matter what he says. What would be better was that this bed was empty right now, and that they weren't mourning the loss of a close friend. And maybe if Peter hadn't thrown himself in head first and tried to talk to more people about his issues instead, then this could've been avoided.

Bruce keeps that to himself. Peter's feeling guilty enough as it is, and the point seems to have been driven home more than once. He sits back on his chair with a faint nod at the last words, eyes falling to the package in his lap. ]

I got you something, by the way. It's not much, it's just... maybe something to keep you distracted for a little while.

[ He hands it over to Peter, and inside he'll find the first book in the Harry Potter series, Philosopher's Stone, and something closely resembling the handheld version of the Tetris game. It's not PONG but he's still working on that. ]

It's not like I make a habit of this kind of thing.

[Not yet, at least.

He stops doing his best impression of an upset toddler when Bruce mentions a gift. Normally the thought of someone getting him something would put a smile on his face, but right now he just looks confused. He'd thought the point of Bruce coming by was the lecture, even as well meaning as the tone had been. A gift seemed more than he thought he deserved at the moment.

That doesn't stop him from opening it.]

Still trying to get me to read? [There's a fondness in his voice when he says it, a little embarrassment creeping in.] You didn't have to do this. Pretty sure I earned the boredom.

[ Not yet, exactly. Hence Bruce's very valid concern. Sometimes he's just a pessimist with a penchant for paranoia, other times he's (unfortunately) right.

He hadn't intended it as a gift, actually, but it does end up looking a little like it. Still, he smiles weakly at Peter's remark, shrugging a little. ]

Can't blame me for trying. But give it a shot, alright? It's really fun. I think you'll like it. [ And he won't tell Peter it's a series of seven books yet or he might never even open the first to begin with. Let him get hooked, then he'll give him more. ]

Maybe. But the book only has so many pages and the battery on that game runs out eventually, so hopefully you'll be getting bored again soon enough.

Yeah, yeah. Not like I have anything else to do. I might as well see what keeps my sister in the library so much.

[And most of his usual activities are off limits when him confined to bed. He honestly needed something to pass the time until they let him out. As much as he hated the stillness reading required, he knew it wouldn't take him long to get through it and at least it was better than staring at the ceiling.

Despite the attitude, he is actually pleased. He sets the book and game in his lap, smiles at Bruce.]

Even if you're trying to make me learn or be cultural or whatever. Thanks.

You mean having an interest in stories and learning things?

[ Aside from liking Wanda or not, reading is a great habit and Bruce will never stop trying to get people he knows and likes from doing it a little more. It just so happens that this is the perfect situation to get Peter to start, even if he wouldn't have wished for him to end up in this situation to begin with. But at least it's something more to keep his mind off things, and Bruce knows well how a good story and a strongly built universe has the ability to draw someone in and make them blend into that whole new reality so well. Peter could use a bit of escapism right now, anyway. ]

You're welcome. Let me know how you like it later, will you? I'd be interested to know what you think about it.

Edited (curse you icon browse) 2016-05-31 12:59 (UTC)

Yeah. That thing. So weird.

[He could sort of understand it, just like he could understand how much his little sister loved watching TV or people liked to listen to music a recording speed. It was just difficult for someone warped perception to stay still for the time needed to do those things. The older he'd gotten, the more he'd written things off instead of trying to develop patience.]

I'll be sure to tell you all my thoughts on in. Real in-dept analysis.

No need for an essay or anything. A simple yes or no will suffice.

[ So Bruce can know whether or not to get him the next book. Not that it's Bruce's ultimate plan to get Peter hooked on Harry Potter or anything like that, but it's a series most everyone enjoys, and it reads well, despite some of the books looking so big. So who knows, it might just work for Peter. ]

I'm going to let you rest a little now. I need to get back to work anyway, but let me know if you need anything?

I probably won't need anything.

[And as close by as Wanda had been sticking to him, he was far more likely to bug her with requests than anyone else. But he appreciates the offer for what it is, gives Bruce a smile and a nod.]

Thank, man. I'll see you when this is over, I guess.

Edited 2016-06-02 19:42 (UTC)

"Get outta here if you don't know"

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