thisavrou_log | ( closed ) I get lost in space

( closed ) I get lost in space

Who: Bruce Banner and Tali'Zorah
When: Dec 10th
Where: The engine room
What: Bruce goes check out the engines and power reserves, and runs into someone else there.
Warnings: None, I don't think.

There are only so many books he can read. At this point, he's probably absorbed all the publications in the library about mechanical engineering, anything even remotely related to what goes into the workings of spaceships, not to mention that book that Elizabeth got him with several blueprints and specifications on various other ships. That's about all the knowledge he can get under the current circumstances, but now he needs the practical aspect, to see the actual ship at work, and to try to find where the flaw really is.

So, the engine room is his destination. It's the most important room in the ship, where the power supply is stored, and where he'll find the massive devices that will keep the ship going. If there's a flaw that affects power in general, then it has to be there.

No one seems to mind him coming by the engine room. In fact, as far as he can tell it's completely empty at the moment, and he's not even stopped as he gets himself a pair of ear muffs for the noise and steps farther inside. The room does have an advantage: it's warm. It's hot, even, unlike the rest of the ship, and right now that's a huge relief, even so far as making up for the loud noise that he can practically feel thumping away inside his chest.

He doesn't touch anything, not for now anyway, looking over the control panels, then shifting his attention to the engines, and looking around for where the power's stored away.

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He looks at her every so often, listening to what she's saying even if it seems like he's keeping most of his attention on the engines. Not that it does any good - everything seems to be working just fine, it's just... stopped. In a little while, he imagines, it'll turn back on, and keep going as if nothing ever happened to begin with.

She's right, though. And the way she puts it, talking about the experiences she had before, he knows that this could've been a lot worse. Some people made it out, the crew of the Moira too - even if a couple had to be revived -, and they weren't actively trying to kill the entire population.

It doesn't do much for the guilt weighing down on him, but then, that's probably never going to go away.

"I'm glad some people made it out." He nods slowly. "But that's about the only thing I'm glad for. They might be alive, but they have no home, and some of them probably had their whole families killed. That's on me."

Talking, somehow, is actually helping with her nerves about the engines. She's sure they're going to come back - they have every other time - but the silence of it feels wrong down to the bone. No matter the content of the conversation, having the company, having some noise to fill the silent space growing in the room, is something of a comfort.

"They've got people to help them. At least there's that," she says, and it's almost a question, her tone tilting upwards just a little. She doesn't think it'll make him feel better - it's barely helping her.

"At first I wanted us to hand ourselves over to them - I didn't want us to just get away with destroying their world like I did last time. I still think that a little. Even if we just stayed and helped, it wouldn't have been running away."

Part of her would still rather the people of Cadacus Primary punish them, than they be left to punish themselves, as Tali is.

It's a deafening silence that seems to stretch on, and while Bruce hasn't been down in the engine room before, even he feels a hint of discomfort at the complete lack of noise. Almost as if he can hear some sort of background countdown to when vital functions will start going down, one area of the ship at a time.

"Right." There's that, and he knows it's something, but much like it's the case with her, it's barely enough to make him feel any better. The wound is too raw right now anyway, thinking or talking about it makes him feel like he's rubbing salt on it. Maybe someday, who knows, he will be able to cope with what he did.

There will always be the scar, the memory of it all. The cold hard reminder that there's a void in the universe because of him. But that's something to think about when he gets to that point.

"If only we could know we could have helped, and that they'd let us leave afterwards." The people in Caducus Primary seemed generally peaceful and with a strange kind of calm, but in Bruce's experience, people often want retribution. Justice. While he gets that, he wouldn't have wanted the innocent on board the Moira to be locked up for something he did, and he also doesn't think that the survivors from Caducus Primary would have been capable of building a cage strong enough to contain the Hulk. "But I get that. I wish that we could have done more too. Something... anything to help."

"I never did figure out what I wanted them to do," she says, voice a little lost in the the silence of the room; the sound bounces off the metal, but the split-second echo isn't enough. "I wanted them not to let us go, but...like you said, most of the crew didn't do anything."

Neither, really, did she - except not leave when they told her to. She gave a soft laugh, but there wasn't any real humour behind it. "I'm just going in circles in my own head. I haven't figured anything out. Sometimes I can't... fathom it, you know? It's too big for me. Cadacus Primary, Macha - both of them."

Sometimes she comes close, so close to understanding, but it terrifies her, makes her feel both unbearably tiny in a way even living in space never could, but somehow at the same time...too big, too much. One person shouldn't have the power to be a part of something this terrible and, somehow, she's been there twice. The Neraki are dead, the people of Cadacus Primary have nothing to go back to, and all Tali can do is crash dive into an existential crisis.

The deep breath she takes is hard to fit through the lump in her throat, but she manages, and it eases. "Do you think you'd go back if you could? Help, or give yourself up or...anything."

The thought has crossed her mind. To help, more than anything. But also, selfishly, to atone for something she did in a whole other universe.

He gets what she means. Even if he weren't personally at fault for what happened, he still would feel guilty, responsible in some way. The feeling wouldn't be quite so crushing, he's sure, but it still would be there, and he would want to stay behind too, to help in whatever way he could.

Actually, were he in that situation, he would be a whole lot more inclined to stick around and help. As it is, he just wants to be as far away from that place as possible, as much of a coward that might make him seem. He knows he is, sometimes, and running has been his instinct reaction to situations like this for almost a decade now.

He glances at her when she poses that question. He thinks about lying for a moment, about just saying that he would go back and turn himself in without a moment's thought, but... it would be obvious he would be lying.

"So that I could destroy another planet?" He sounds bitter about that, guilty, regretful. "No. Things... wouldn't work out. They wouldn't build a cage strong enough for the monster. Some people would try to kill me, and that wouldn't work well for anyone. Others might want to use the Hulk for their own purposes. War, more often than not." It's obvious by his tone that he's personally familiar with that particular situation. "I couldn't risk that. Those people are better off with me staying as far away from them as possible. That's the best way to help them."

It's true, she realises it in an instant, as she recoils ever so slightly, body language seeming to shrink. She, Meh and David managed to put something together, but all three of them had been experienced in cobbling together these kinds of technological solutions, or with actual cage-construction, or both. And it had held the creature - The Hulk - but it wasn't perfect, wouldn't have held up forever. Who knew if the people left in the Cadacus system could have done anything, even with more time?

Bruce Banner's help might be the end of their whole people.

"I didn't even think about that, if it happens again." She has the luxury of not having to consider such things. But then he keeps talking - other things she's never had to even think about. But now that she does - using the Hulk as a weapon would be as easy as finding a way to cage him, and unleash him wherever necessary. And it can never happen. The utter hell it must be to have to know that about oneself-- her face twists behind her mask as she shifts agitatedly.

"If you don't mind me asking..." She has to swallow back a lump in her throat. "What happens to set it off? Why does it happen?"

It doesn't surprise him that she didn't think about it. It's only to be expected, when she has no prior experience with the Hulk, no knowledge of what he is, how he came to be, why he happens. Sadly, it's something Bruce has had to think of and even live through more than just a couple of times in his life.

"I wish I could say I don't speak from experience, but..." He shrugs, shooting a tense empty smile her way. He knows it all too well, what can happen when he's too close to people who don't know enough about the monster, and worse yet, when they consciously take actions that can have disastrous effects. One would think that knowing how an uncontrolled Hulk can be would be a strong enough deterrent to anyone trying to use him for their own purposes, but that never stopped General Ross, for instance. And Bruce can't just trust people in a position with enough power that they could actually get to him. It's too much of a risk.

"Well, I'm not sure how similar your universe is to mine, but basically, the transformation happens when my body releases too much adrenaline. I had-- an accident, some years ago. I was working on an experiment, and after getting injected with a drug-resistant serum, my body was flooded with gamma radiation. When it crosses with a certain level of adrenaline, the transformation happens." It's a very basic explanation, when there's a lot more involved in the process, but that's the simplest way to put it. "What happened on the planet specifically was that we were attacked by a group of natives. I couldn't run away, and I wasn't able to stop the transformation from happening."

She has to wonder just how Bruce can come across so...so mild in the face of all this. Well, it seems that he has to be or he would never be Bruce at all. But with what he's seen, and knows about people - what he's done himself, and knowing what people would use him for if they could... How he can bear to be around people at all is a mystery to her, especially this amicably.

"Keelah, that must have been..." She hasn't got the words. She'd been in a panic herself, being dragged to the shuttles by some of the natives - and that was without the knowledge that every second they spent trying to manhandle her was another second closer to that transformation. She shakes her head like trying to fling the thoughts out of it. "I don't know how you ever stay calm at all. If it was me, I'd be panicking so much about setting it off I'd just..."

An odd kind of adrenaline feedback loop. That's a weird thought.

"Well, I don't have much of a choice," he delivers that with a small smile, shrugging a little. It's something he's come to terms with by now, that keeping calm is the only solution, the only way to control himself. His options were always limited, if any at all: even living in complete isolation wouldn't have worked in the grander scheme of things, because the Hulk could run massive distances in a very short time, and while the monster tends to prefer being alone too, Bruce couldn't risk it. Not to mention there were always people looking for him, trying to hunt him down.

And putting an end to it all, well - he tried that. Didn't work all that well either. At least learning to control it meant he could help people, try to do some good. It would never be enough to make up for the lives he destroyed, but it's better than doing nothing at all.

"For what it's worth, I'm glad it's not you. Or anyone else. But I've... learned to live with it." By lack of choice, if nothing else.

Tali's lucky in a lot of ways - through everything that's happened, everything she's seen and done, she's never been so utterly devoid of hope that any permanent option has occurred to her. Not even looking at Bruce now does the idea pop into her mind. Even if it had, it certainly wouldn't be something she'd have the nerve to ask about. Everything about this is painful enough for them both.

"I'm sorry," is all she can think to say. "That you have to live with that - and with people like me interrogating you about it."

At that, she does manage the very smallest of grins.

It's a particularly dark and deep pit when hope is completely lacking. Everyone feels a little helpless and lost at times, but to lose hope entirely, to such an extreme that there's nothing but darkness, no matter where one looks - Bruce has been there, he's felt it himself, for a long time. He wouldn't wish it on anyone.

He's glad he found a way to work through it, though sometimes it feels like he's still, and always, working through it. Finding reasons to keep going. What's happened in Caducus Primary has brought him dangerously close to that dark pit again, but he's doing his best to climb back up before he slips and falls to the deep bottom.

"It's fine. I expected no less," he smiles, relaxing a little. It's only normal that people want to know what kind of creature they're sharing a closed space with, after all. "Sorry-- I never caught your name."

"...I didn't even tell you my name before I started." Before she can help herself, she's laughing a little. Her brain had frozen as soon as Bruce introduced himself - apparently it had frozen all the way past social niceties as well.

"I'm Tali'Zorah. Just call me Tali." She bobs her head in a polite nod...and gestures to where the engines seem to be in the laborious process of restarting. "If you still want that look at the engines, I promise I won't keep interviewing you."

"Well, to be fair I think that asking the guy who destroyed a planet why he did it is a far more pressing matter." He understands, really. He would've probably skipped the introductions and pleasantries himself, were their roles reversed.

"Nice to meet you. Despite the... interviewing." Said with a small hint of humor, trying to diffuse some of the tension from their earlier topic. He nods, glancing over to the engines. "Thanks. I think I'll do that, if you don't mind. If nothing else I'll get to learn a thing or two about the ship." He smiles. "I promise to stay out of your way."

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( closed ) I get lost in space

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