I was talking with my sister about MLP: FiM and Bruce Banner - (shut up, okay? I'm allowed.) - and we came up with a really awesome thing. So. This is that, but in fanfic and not me babbling with her. And also, this is a continuation of Friendship Is Science, sort of, but you don't need to read it to get it, I think.

Hulk Always Derpy

The problem with My Little Pony is that it's insidious, Bruce thinks, turning a small, grey vinyl pegasus over in his hands, careful of her wings - practically reverent.

The messages are applicable and good and honestly delivered; the songs are catchy; the characters are sympathetic.

You can say you hate it as much as you'd like, but from the moment you first watch a clip of it, you are hooked.

It was originally a way to calm Hulk down, to bring Bruce back.

Insidious fucking kids' show.

Three months ago...

With all the internet, vast and bright and a prideful time-suck, at his blunt, green fingertips, Hulk soon managed to master it. He Googled and commented and Subscribed - that alone was a dumbfounding miracle to most, as nobody had ever explained any of this to Hulk; he'd just caught on and soaked it in.

And, eventually, as clever as Hulk was, he noticed patterns - similarities, templates, crowd shots with sixteen of the same faces repeated again and again.

He noticed Derpy.

For a while, Pinky Pie had been his favourite pony; she was loyal and creative and funny and smart, though nobody saw it. She was volatile, but her heart was always in the right place. She transcended her birth, her origins, and became something bigger and brighter and better.

He couldn't help it if he saw a little of himself in her, now, could he?

But as soon as Derpy came into view, he was intrigued; when he learned about her name, about her existence outside the show, he was stuck.

He scrolled through Tumblr tags - something Hawkeye insisted on monitoring, because some things are not acceptable for a giant green rage monster to see, no matter how smart said Brobdingnagian beast is - and image searches and watched fan videos.

Now, take a moment to step back: what is a common reaction, across all fandoms, across the whole of the internet, to idiots and fights and disrespectfulness?

This is why we can't have nice things.

Derpy spoke in an episode, for the very first time. She was cheerful and honest and beyond loyal; she helped as best she could and apologised when she made mistakes and followed orders when given, even if they sometimes went awry.

Hulk couldn't have been happier - Hell, Bruce couldn't have been happier.

For, you see, most every time he came back to the forefront of their shared brain, it was to that show. And as everyone knows, My Little Pony is insidious.

And Bruce is Hulk, and Hulk is Bruce; what one likes, the other enjoys just as much.

Suffice it to say that Hulk's laptop was not the only one in the Tower with brony-related searches in its history.

(There were three at the time; there are now four, but that's a purely corporate interest.)

Identifying with a character who lives more in fandom than in canon is always a tumultuous enterprise. You run the risk of wildly diverse interpretations, characterizations - whole lives, each wildly different from the next, lived by the same person. Or pony. And not every one is to your tastes, and not everyone will like your tastes.

But non-compliant head canons are better than utter annihilation of a beloved character.

In simpler terms, we don't get nice things.

In the simplest possible terms, Hasbro took Derpy. Hasbro sucks.

When Bruce found out, two months into his fandom experience, his eyes flashed a lovely forest green and he was so focused on making his tea to calm down that he accidentally broke the cup, filling one hand with shards of porcelain.

Tony, shaking from caffeine withdrawal after fourteen days in a lab with a broken coffee maker - he wanted instantaneous coffee from actual beans, as in, beans-go-in-coffee-comes-out-before-the-second-han d-ticks - dropped his first cup of sacred soul-black sludge with what may have been the loudest utterance of "Shit" to come from a mortal mouth since the dawn of swearing.

"Hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey, Brucey, we don't damage property outside the designated smash zone. And that includes your hands." He bolted over, cupping Bruce's hands and looking over the damage. Nothing too bad, but there was a lot of blood. "What's up?"

He dragged the First Aid kit out from under the sink, picking out shards with a practised, efficient delicacy. Bruce has only seen him treat his creations with that kind of gentleness.

"Hasbro's a jackass, is what's up." Bruce is the most erudite erudite to ever erudite. He's a definition-filling genius, every criteria checked off like a grocery list. But even the mightiest of minds can be felled by emotion, and Bruce is only human.

And Hulk. But whatever.

"I'm sorry, I don't follow. The- The Pony people?" Tony looked up, brown eyes wide under furrowed brows, and set down the tweezers, reaching mechanically for a packet of disinfecting wipes.

Bruce nodded. "Hasbro is stupid. Hasbro is terrible, terrible people."

"I'm gonna need some clarification, buddy." Tony gingerly swiped the wipe over every cut, callused thumb pushing Bruce's fingers into a full extension or to the side to get at every gash. He stared down at Bruce's hand like it's the burnt remains of the library in Alexandria, and Bruce almost wanted to pull his hand away.

"They killed Derpy." Bruce huffed, sinking into the granite countertop, staring at his feet.

"What? That's a kids' show. Are they trying to ruin childhoods now? I thought that was a parent's job." Tony traced the wipe over a particularly wide cut, and Bruce flinched, hissing. "Sorry."

"Hurts."

"Open wounds kinda tend to do that." Tony looked up again, tossing the wipe into the trash bin. "C'mon, explain."

"They didn't kill her," Bruce clarified. "She was this... She was this character, this crowd-filler mare, and through an animation error, she had crossed eyes. And the fandom, we just took that and ran. She became sort of the stand-in for anyone different."

And Tony got all sympathetic-faced, and Bruce just hated that face. Sympathy is pity, and pity implies something small and weak and defenseless. Bruce is not small, not weak, not defenseless. His whole life had been turned on its' head by his defense mechanism - that's how effective it is.

Besides. Monsters don't deserve sympathy.

"And then, she got to speak, and she had a lisp, and Hasbro thought they could get in trouble if people thought they were making fun of developmentally challenged kids, thought her name was offensive, and there was this big kerfuffle, and so they went back and changed Derpy. She's called Ditzy Doo now, and she's got normal eyes and a normal voice. It's unfounded, really, and they're just flying in the face of their own message." Bruce stared down at his hand, watched it bleed, and squeezed his eyes shut. "I, um... I'm bleeding on the breadbox."

"Fuck the breadbox," Tony said cheerfully, pulling out the catgut stitches and another wipe. "It's the you bleeding that I'm worried about." He swiped Bruce's hand and forearm clean, and shouted, "Dummy!"

The AI rolled in, smashing into the island before redirecting himself and bumping happily into Bruce's calf.

"Dummy, I'm gonna fix Uncle Luck Bear up, okay? But you gotta hold his hand, 'cos this is gonna hurt like balls, so he's gonna squeeze."

Dummy chirped and swiveled his arm, tapping Bruce's uninjured wrist. "Nice way of beating around the bush, Papa Stark."

Tony's hand stiffened, the muscles in his palm going rigid, and his thumb dug into Bruce's hand for a second before he forced himself loose. Daddy issues out the ass, you're wanted on set.

Bruce forced a grin, moving on, taking the discomfort back onto himself. "So, gonna jab me, or don't you think I can handle a little prick anymore?"

"I dunno, Christmas tree, you took that bug zapper pretty well." Tony grinned, grateful beneath his veneer, and threads a sterile steel needle. "Squeeze Dummy's hand."

Bruce took the robot's hand. "Christmas tree?"

"Tall, green...? Plus! - this is the best part - Bruce. Bruce, sBruce, spruce? They're used as Christmas trees." Tony kept babbling about puns he could call Bruce by as he stitched the scientist up, distracting the two of them.

Bruce squeezed Dummy's hand so hard that his hand is bruised later, but that pressure and Tony's ramblings kept him calm.

By the time that Tony wrapped his hand in bandages, Bruce is arguing back and forth about the merit of various nicknames.

"C'mon, string bean. You need some tea." Tony carefully boiled the water - on a stovetop, because Bruce likes the steam in the air and the whistling and the heat better than the shrill beeping of a microwave - and dipped in the two teabags - green, for all the biotic goodies, with lavender because without it, the tea's maybe a little nasty - because, somehow, he remembered the way Bruce takes his tea.

Tony doesn't remember anyone's personal details.

He loved Pepper to death and he forgot about her lethal strawberry allergy. He forgets his own birthday, though that's more intentional than not.

But he remembered Bruce's tea.

He set the hot mug down in front of Bruce and whistled over his shoulder at Dummy. "I gotta go; there's a, um, a thing I gotta do for Stark Industries, but... It's an acquisition, Pepp wants me to look it over."

Bruce nodded and smiled into the thin, sweet steam.

"If you wanna talk, or whatever, I'm gonna be in the lab."

It took a month. Tony, wearing immaculate suits instead of band tees and jeans or boxers or nothing but oil smears and welding gear, spent a month of his life going to negotiations and bothering the crap out of whatever company he was taking over.

He was out of bed at five in the morning, when Bruce and Natasha were the only ones up, tai chi-ing it up in the living room, and out of the house before Steve had finished breaking a punching bag. He was home after Thor finished eating a takeout menu in completion twice over, grinning like a loon, and every damned day, he sat down and gloated that he had them right where he wanted.

Every day.

For a month.

Until, one day, he walked into Bruce's room, grinning, hands clasped behind his back. "So, Christmas tree, ready to feel the audience participation?"

Bruce, clad in a threadbare blue towel, wet curls sticking to his cheeks and forehead, jumped. "Tony! There is a lock on my door! How did you...?"

"JARVIS. Said I had something for you."

Bruce shot him a look so withering in its condemnation that it stung and, somehow, equally amused. "What? And how are you holding audience participation behind your back?"

"JARVIS, play 'Classic Triumph Fanfare', track six."

Trumpet flares filled the room, crescendoing up until Bruce started wincing at the volume. JARVIS immediately dropped the volume to a more manageable level, and Tony's hands swung forward.

Cupped in his weathered palms, cradled in calluses, is a small vinyl figurine of a pale grey pegasus mare with bronze wall-eyes and a blonde mane and bubbles on her flank.

"Tumhārā mum̐ha banda!" Bruce slapped his hands over his mouth, eyes bugged wide, and looked rapidly from the Derpy figurine to Tony's massive grin.

"I don't speak Hindi, My Little Science Brony, but I'm gonna assume that was a good thing." Tony carefully set the mare down on Bruce's bedpost, and Bruce scooped her up immediately.

"It translates roughly to 'Shut your goddamn mouth,' but, Tony, how did you get this? They don't make these! The Derpy character templates were redacted! She doesn't exist except online, and half the original content has been taken down due to copyright breach!" Bruce looked up from the mare, grinning hugely.

"Well, not anymore," Tony grinned. "I bought the show. From Hasbro. I bought the whole damn franchise, Big Green. I now possess the wills of every brony still breathing. So. Derpy's back, in all her wall-eyed glory, and you don't have to break mugs out of frustration." Bruce, very, very carefully, set Derpy down on his bedside table, like he thought she would break, and hugged Tony very, very carefully, like he thought the man would break.

"Thank you, Tony."

That night, Tony opened the bookmarks folder on his laptop titled 'Corporate Research', opened up the sixteenth link on the list, and settled in to watch "Derpface."

(We lied. Brony Number Four? Tony Stark. He feels no shame; that show is effin' flawless.)

THAT'S RIGHT! I WENT THERE! ASDFJKL

I'm sorry, but Tony just bought My Little Pony for Bruce. In this world, Derpy doth continue into perpetuity, eyes crossed and voice lisping, because she is boss and Tony is boss and Bruce is boss.

Please review for the wonder that is Brony!Avengers.