((Author's Note: I haven't actually seen The Incredible Hulk, so literally all of his characterization I got from Avengers only. Let me know if this is totally terrible. Also, I'm throwing a trigger warning up here to be safe. Suicide is the theme of the piece. Just a drabble, but thank you for reading!))

There was only one nightmare Bruce Banner was glad to wake up from. Typically, life was almost worse than the usual dreams that found him in his sleep. The scientist usually woke from those and nothing had changed, the nightmare just slightly more contained. But there was one he could wake up from and escape. That was almost a blessing, to feel relief for even a moment that it was passed, before reality set in again. The worst part was those nightmares were simply memories: the day he tried to kill himself.

When talking about it later, Bruce would use a scientific angle to explain, as if it was more of an experiment than a form of final desperation. But in truth, desperation was the inspiration, the fuel, and the drive. He hadn't been thinking I wonder if this will work but rather please, just let this work. I'm done. He'd taken the gun and brought it to his mouth with doctoral precision, but in the moment before he pulled the trigger, he felt fear. Somewhere inside him was the genuine belief that this would work, that this would be the end. It was the only answer to a self-created problem, an unnatural problem which required an unnatural solution. And with his finger on the trigger he realized all the deep hatred he felt for himself, revulsion more intense than he had known in the hours when there was still hope that maybe it would all get better. When he had that gun pointed at his brain however, there was no more hope. There was nothing to hold back the overwhelming sense of despair that had been following him like a cloud longer than he'd ever admit. And he realized it wasn't merely for the sake of others that he attempted this last act, but because he genuinely wanted to die. If he hadn't figured that out, he probably wouldn't have had the courage to pull the trigger.

But he did, and a lot of good it did him. That day he lost that small comfort of Well, if nothing else works there's always one way out. Bruce supposed he could have tried other methods: poison, car exhaust, whatever, but he doubted if a bullet didn't do it, anything else could. And that was when he knew, if he couldn't kill himself, if he had to live, it had to be without that hatred he'd buried so deeply inside.

And so, Bruce Banner went to India. And that was how the beginning of controlling the Hulk truly started. When he realized there really was no other choice.