The Velocity of Language

Measured Words, part 1 - Tony can't slow down enough to express himself in words. It makes letting people close a real pain in the ass. It makes interacting with people at all a real pain in the ass, actually.

Tony has a policy.

If people don't understand him when he's talking, they can talk to someone else, someone who can use smaller words. He can't afford to slow down, to delay his cognitive processes enough to put things on their level.

He's got things to do.

There's a whole risk/benefit process going on, every time he stops to pay attention to a conversation with someone, and it usually only wins his attention if he really needs to convince someone of something and Pepper isn't immediately available or doesn't understand the technicalities involved.

Pepper's used to it by now, and to a certain extent they've stopped trying to get each other to understand why a certain thing is necessary and just basically use opposing levels of emotional manipulation to negotiate for what actually gets done and what gets ignored in favor of things that are apparently more important.

It's a system that works for them. Maybe it's not perfect, but it works.

Mostly.

Well.

It works an acceptable percentage of the time, since Tony has never found a better solution for dealing with the dense syrup that is the minds of regular people.

The minute he meets Dr. Bruce Banner, he's delighted to find that they run at compatible speeds. He can see the man think, see him taking in Tony's words with no confusion or glossed politeness, like everyone else in the room, everyone else in the world.

It's enormously refreshing.

And when he starts actively contributing to the discussion...

Tony is absolutely, totally gone for this guy's brain.

They settle in to work like they were made for each other - literally, it's like working with Jarvis, who actually was. Just a word or two, private codes or references, Bruce seems to catch all or most of it with little prompting, all while keeping up the work, following the science and the math (well, leading, actually, and that's even rarer in someone who doesn't bug the hell out of Tony, like Reed Richards). Tony's sinking in like he would in his own workshop, but there's only so much they can do while the algorithm's running, and curiosity gets the better of Tony and he turns his attention to the phenomenon that is Banner's physical transformation and what exactly the parameters are on that.

Bruce yelps, but he doesn't have any superhuman reactions, as far as Tony can see. The questions spill out of his mouth, as they do when he's relaxed and curious.

Unfortunately there's a Captain America in the wings, waiting to tell him what he can and can't do when it's been clear to Tony for a while now that he's the only one qualified to be responsible for the complex and wide-ranging consequences of his own actions.

Like Tony doesn't know that the life of everyone on this ridiculous flying island is in his hands. The lives of everyone in the world are always in his hands. Leaving them to other people just isn't good enough, but he's given up trying to explain things like that to people.

It's the implications about Bruce that bother him more. "No offense" notwithstanding.

Banner replies before Tony can.

"It's all right, I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle... pointy things."

It's incredible how much is buried in those few simple words. The first part is obviously supposed to sound like a reply to Rogers's apology, but the rest of the sentence turns it into something else. A reassurance (or defiant assertion) to Rogers that Tony's not going to cause any disasters. Maybe even a reassurance to Tony that he can handle the occasional insensitive prod at his own capacity for destruction.

The subtlety here is incredible and Tony doesn't know how the guy can handle being that... inoffensive all the time. Especially when he might be - Tony grudgingly admits to himself, probably is - the smartest guy in the room.

Still, he could stand to speak up for himself in clearer terms.

Tony tells Bruce he needs to strut.

Steve tells him he needs to focus, and Tony is hard-pressed not to tell him "Well then go away and let me focus," because he had been so close to achieving scientific nirvana with his new lab buddy. But he does list some of the other factors that are keeping him from having a solution right-damn-now, thank you very much, like the obvious fact that Fury's not being entirely open with the information he has.

Steve doesn't see it. Tony is close to one of his "I'm done talking to dumbasses" moments, so he prods Bruce to see if the physicist has the patience this obviously needs.

Bruce would rather stay out of it, but once Steve has expressed interest in hearing his input, he sighs and explains it patiently, step-by-step, parsing out Loki's words and their implications, how it connects to energy research and the Tesseract.

Tony doesn't know how he does it. Tony is forty steps past that realization and plotting how to keep whatever dumbass thing SHIELD is probably doing from destroying the world. And Bruce is following his logic with every comment, Tony snarking like it's blindingly obvious and Bruce giving that little smile that says he agrees.

Steve sounds like he wants to pick a fight more than he wants to learn from the great masters before him, but Bruce says something both placating and convincing, and the Captain finally, finally leaves.

So much better.

They work on the screens, ideas flying back and forth with gestures, and they talk simultaneously and it's probably the easiest it's ever been for Tony to actually talk to someone with words because he feels like there's less expectation because the other levels are all in use and they have to be working together so there's an established connection on ground he knows and neither of them is focusing entirely on the scary feelings shit.

Bruce starts, answering Tony's curiosity with the revelation that being the Hulk feels raw, exposed, terrifying. Tony opens up in response, just a little, letting Bruce know how he feels sometimes about what he's become, and maybe why.

It's not something he really... talks about. Not usually.

Apparently everyone is in their lab now, and tension is rising, which annoys Stark, and so does the fact that they're accusing him of nonsensical hypotheticals, but he doesn't really get angry until they insult Banner's control. Because if there's anything Tony knows right now, it's that Bruce is a lot more civilized, and fit for human interaction, than most people, himself included.

There's something in the air, something that's making Tony's head ache and making it even more difficult than usual for him to suffer fools. But he and Bruce are a team now, inseperable, and their deep mental rapport is unaffected.

Everyone else in this room is the worst kind of idiot and Tony would like to blast them all into next week. Cap, Cap is telling him he has no right to be called a hero just because he hasn't made the kind of sacrifice that tears you to the bone. Because Tony knows his own value and it lies in being able to find another way.

"Think I would just cut the wire."

"Always a way out."

And Tony's head is full of sarcastic comments, Yeah I'm hoping there is and you'd better hope so too, but he's too busy trying to damn well think of that way out to monitor what he actually says, he knows it's angry and biting and has something to do with what Steve Rogers owes to thinkers, to science, to smartasses, to Starks.

And he just is so done, rubbing his face tiredly, and he's following the conversation with its useless mutterings with half an ear, then Bruce's voice catches his attention. Talking about the cage they made, the one that's obviously an attempt to do away with the Hulk. Bruce knows.

Then he says, "But you can't! I know, I tried."

Time freezes for Tony as he looks at Bruce.

Bruce is what he is because he literally has no other options; he's had to learn to survive as he is, because there is no second choice. No Door #2. Just smile and take it. Because apparently things were bad enough that he's tried that door and found it locked. Tony fixes eyes on Bruce and memories of too-casually flirting with death swarm around him like ghosts and he wills his friend to be okay.

Wills him to know his reason to keep going.

"I moved on, I focused on helping other people."

and Tony just... he gets that. Sometimes that's enough. And in the middle of all this emotional division he and Bruce are just sort of... forged together. To the hilt, to the heart, to the roots.

Because nothing in Tony's life ever works out quite the way it might be expected to.

Then there's an explosion.

Hell.

He needs to fix the engine, and he's going to need help, and it's going to have to be Steve. And he's going to need to walk Steve through it.

Hell.

And he tries to do it the way Banner does, pace out his words so Steve can understand them, talk while he's thinking, getting better at that. Not good enough, Steve is saying, "speak English!"

So he sighs, and tries again. "See that red lever?"

Because without a doubt, speaking English is the one thing Banner can do so much better than him. Bruce adjusts, folds his words to fit the person, the situation, and Tony doesn't understand how he does it and still maintains that focus, that scope in his own head for the big ideas and big projects.

But he's starting to get it when he talks to Steve about Loki, tries to slow himself down, think in words, and he listens as the words go "with his name plastered" and everything clicks and he says "Son of a bitch."

He found the key. Tony found the key. By damn well slowing down enough to speak English.

Bruce could be on to something here.

He's right. Loki's in his tower. Loki's in his house. Standing there like he's the smug bastard that owns it.

Nope. That'd be Tony.

He's gonna try talking. He's gonna try talking to Loki. The suit's not ready and he knows he needs the suit so what he could use here is a little slowing down.

He explains Loki's situation slowly, clearly, thoroughly, and no matter what Loki says, he knows Banner's gonna come and beat Loki up because he understands Banner, he really, really does, and it's the first time since Obie that he's really felt like he could rely on someone untested to be there, to get him, to show up and make sense.

He stalls, he gets his suit, things get intense, and then Banner shows.

He brings in the giant floating armored whale, and he watches as Bruce turns big and green and punches it in the face.

They're all together on the ground now, all protecting each other's backs. As wrong as everything is going, Tony can't help feeling that at this moment, everything is going as it's meant to.

A very momentary feeling, to be sure, and the battle demands his attention, takes it all; he gives himself to the part of the battle assigned to him, keeping things in the battle radius, watching and thinking and darting back and forth like the player in a full-size game of tower defense.

And then there's the nuke.

The fucking nuke.

All the other plans are gone, they're nil, and it's only this, it's simple, really. Get the bomb through the hole in the sky and it doesn't take any more calculations to do it, the calculations are gone and he's got two minutes, maybe, to live and now, of course, all he can think about is all the things he's never managed to say, all the things he wanted people to understand.

Jarvis, of course, can read his mind almost, that's what he was built to do.

"Sir, shall I try Miss Potts?"

And of course he fails, he always, always fails when he tries to do that, tries to slow down and be sincere and communicate something simple. He saves the world at least, he's decent at that, and he closes his eyes expecting to never see that world again.

He wakes up to Hulk roaring in his face, and it's simultaneously the best and most terrifying thing he's ever heard.

Bruce came through, Bruce saved him, caught him out of the sky.

He's back. He's got another chance. And he's got so much new stuff to learn.

There is nothing about Bruce that he does not love.

After that he makes sure Bruce gets settled into the promised labs before he disappears off to Malibu, to be with Pepper and the company and to build suits, to get the stuff done that he needs to get done, and not at all to hide from the rubble of New York and the tightness it brings to his chest when he remembers That Fucking Nuke.

But after he's gotten his Malibu house destroyed and associated with a whole new set of traumas he can't think of a reason to stay away from the Tower any more, and it's really not so bad once he steps inside and it's remodeled and fresh and clean, and also Bruce is there, and it's like a breath of fresh air talking to him, a sensation Tony had almost forgotten.

And like before, talk about emotions flows out easily overtop of communication about work, and soon everything's just spilling out, he sits down and just tells Bruce everything.

He pours his heart out to Bruce, and then he realizes that Bruce hasn't been catching it, has, in fact, been sleeping soundly next to him the entire time.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't, because the fact is that he's talking, Bruce is a person he can talk around in any way, phase, speed he needs to talk in because Bruce is just amazing that way. And he can kind of see the advantage now, because the things he was processing since New York...

They needed slowing down. Because going through them fast just made him panic, flick through possibilities and find doom and terror and panic and panic and panic in increasingly tight spirals.

He needed to talk it through, and Bruce is the only one who that's okay with, the only person who doesn't make it feel like a waste of time.

It works, it works, even when he's asleep, so Tony keeps going, not caring if he puts Bruce to sleep, because if Bruce needs down time, Tony's allowed to need down time too, allowed to need to sit down and untangle the mess that his brain has become, strand by painstaking strand.

He rags on Bruce for sleeping through his story, but tries to convey that he doesn't really mind, just needs the company, needs Bruce's presence, and he's actually glad to see it when Bruce dozes off again.

He's to the part about his parents' funeral when he notices Bruce's eyes on him again.

"And that was about the moment when I stopped caring. Like, really stopped caring. There were crowds and crowds of people there and they all came to talk to me and they just opened their mouths and all I could hear was buzzing. None of them were actually... none of them cared. About me. Except Rhodey, and he had the sense to keep his mouth shut. He's a great guy. Way too good for me, don't know why he hangs around, him or Pepper. We talk at each other, we talk past each other. I don't make sense to people, Bruce, and they don't make sense to me. Kinda got used to that."

The acceptance, the understanding in Bruce's eyes when he catches them is almost too much. He shakes his head, turning away, and keeps rambling.

"If it weren't for Jarvis, I'd have completely self-destructed by now. I built him, pretty much starting then, just took a few years and a few breakthroughs in chip manufacturing before that kind of processing power became really feasible. I built him to be a translator, because, fuck, I can't be the person that people want me to be, someone who talks like them, who can pretend to think it's important whether it's gonna rain or what kind of diet they're on or whatever regular people talk about. I just don't get it. I can't make myself think in those little boxes, Bruce. I just can't. I wanna do what I can to be that guy that people like and trust, I tried, I really did, I've tried till my brain itches, but then an idea hits me and it all just goes up in smoke. And my ideas save people. If I pay proper attention to how they get executed. That's the truth and it does nobody any good to pretend it's not. Can't please everyone. Believe me. I know. I've tried."

That echo of Banner's words on the Helicarrier hangs in the room, in the sudden dead silence. And Bruce hears himself in that, hears how Tony has torn himself apart over the years, tried to be normal, escape from everything he was, all in the service of others, in the service of society at large. How he failed.

Bruce smiles at Tony, warm and understanding. "I'm glad you gave up," he says. "I like the way you are."

Well, that's a good sign.

Tony thinks maybe he's gonna be okay.

Maybe they both will be.