closed;

[trifurcate]

Characters: Bryn Zethir, Wanda Lehnsherr, Roy Harper, Lord Henry Wotton, Bruce Banner]
Date: June 21st and 24th
Location: Fire Sector and Water Sector
Situation: Bryn and Wanda both dealing with weakening/out of control powers, or their complete loss.
Warnings/Rating: Warnings will be marked if a thread warrants one.


[ooc: See threadstarters within.]

Comments

[angermanaging]

He wonders for a moment at what to make of that statement, eying her. “It doesn't solve anything,” he corrects, “but when I'm... like usual, it can keep a lid on things. I have to do it every day. Sometimes more than once a day. And it's just one piece.”

If she's looking for his solution on how to control the uncontrollable, Bruce doesn't have an easy answer. He hasn't found an answer. He's all too aware that what he does is a stopgap, a dam trying to hold back the tide that is always, inevitably, overtaken. He lessons symptoms but he doesn't cure the disease, and even that lessening comes at a steep price, at endless restrictions that he imposes on himself. Bruce can see why Wanda would want to attain some of his calm, given what he knows of her powers and how losing them is probably affecting her, at a guess-- but he doesn't know if she understands what it means for him to hold back the monster inside of him.

[doesthemath]

She nods, understanding entirely what he means. Of course it isn't a solution. It couldn't be for what he has to deal with, but then that was why she assumed that it only helped.

"Yes, I get that," she says, taking another slow, steady breath. She was holding onto her calm after meditation, for now at least. "I meditate often myself. Not every day but...at a few times a week. It helps to keep my mind clear, to keep control..."

On things. Her mind. Her power. Everything that kept her from losing her grasp and using it in reaction to things instead of through conscious effort.

[angermanaging]

It's not often that he runs into someone else that makes as regular a meditation practice as he does. Bruce knows that it's unusual; most people don't have the compelling reasons that he does to keep it up. And it's not hard for him to guess why she'd do that, too, probably for similar reasons as him, with his understanding of how extensive her powers are.

"You must struggle with that, too," he says quietly, understanding without judgement in his voice. "With everything you can do-- not feeling like this is a vacation?" To be without her powers. She seemed thrown off, down somehow, but Bruce wasn't sure what the reasoning behind it was. He knows her abilities aren't all that much like his, even if there are similarities. No one's are really like his. Thankfully.

[doesthemath]

Hearing the question is enough to make her swallow uncomfortably, and once more she's grateful she doesn't have her powers while this upset, even if that in itself is the cause for her state of mind. Stiffly, she shakes her head.

"No, it's not. My powers are part of me. They are part of what makes me a mutant. To be without..." she says, and trails off, finding it hard to put her feelings into words with someone who may not understand. He's human. He's glad of his own power being gone.

It feels too revealing to admit that to be without her powers makes her feel like she's nothing. That without them, she is worthless, as her father would see her. She has confidence in herself as a mutant, but being rendered effectively human makes her less. She's come a long way, to see humans as something more than she was raised to believe, but she's never kicked the belief that being mutant is better. It's okay for them to be human because they always have been. But she's always been something more, even among her people.

And knowing that there's a world out there in which she's done this to nearly her entire race makes it even harder to bear. Knowing another version of her has done this to thousands of people, made them feel the way she does now, is enough to make her stomach flip. It had been horrifying when Santo had first told her about it, but worse once over now that she knew first-hand what it was like to experience it.

"My abilities require discipline and mental strength. They require focus...and at times emotional control. But not to the extent that yours do. In my situation, it's worse to be without something that is part of me than to keep it under control," she finally continues, leaving her feelings and emotions out of her explanation.

[angermanaging]

Bruce can't say that he really understands that mentality. He's spent the entire duration he's had the Hulk wishing he didn't have it, trying to be closer to human than he was. Whether he considers himself human at all anymore is its own question, and not a simple one. He puts everything he can into not being a monster, but that leaves him with the inevitable question that since he's not totally human, either, what is he?

He's never felt that being anything but human was a good thing. But he'd also never had a community to fall back on like he knows exists in her world. There'd never been someone else out there that could really understand what it was like for him, not even in part; not like the people he's found here. However, he doesn't need to understand to listen to her, wait her out quietly, let her speak and respect what she's saying.

"You're still genetically who you are," he offers, which is all he can find to say that's true that might be comforting. "If this energy problem is resolved, you'll have them back. It's not you that changed."

Maybe she won't find that comforting, either, but Bruce at least is highly conscientious of the fact that he hasn't actually been cured. The potential for the monster inside him is still in there, lurking, and at this point he doesn't believe he'll ever truly be free of it. He'd called this a vacation because although they don't know for sure if powers will ever return, inside, he knows that there's no way he could escape the Hulk that easily.

[doesthemath]

It's a paltry comfort, one she understands logically but doesn't feel. It's one thing to be a mutant with powers and abilities. It's another to know that your DNA is different but for all intents and purposes being the same as any other human. She might as well be trying to claim what a huge difference there is between scarlet and crimson.

"Perhaps physically I am the same, but who and what I am would be different. My identity would be altered dramatically," she says quietly, following with another slow breath, and another besides that. "Would it not be the same for you, if our powers never returned?"

The question she gives is curious rather than accusatory. She isn't trying to win an argument, but rather discuss this openly. The more dispassionately she can manage it, the better.

[angermanaging]

Dispassionate discussion is certainly the norm for Bruce, at least. And here, coming out of meditation as he just had, mired in the placidity of knowing that nothing he could do would make him transform, it's even easier to keep a hold on. This is far from a light, easy topic for him; but he has been thinking about it with the powers gone, could hardly stop thinking about it, so the answer isn't one he has to ponder first.

"My life would be altered dramatically," he acknowledges, echoing her words. "But who I am?" Bruce's eyes slide away from hers, look out toward the city, and there's a note of soft, bitter self-acceptance as he says, "Does it stop being a monster if it can't hurt anyone?"

He obviously thinks the answer is no. This isn't something he can escape, now or ever. He'd thought he could, years ago, but the existence of the Hulk has emphatically proved to him otherwise.

[doesthemath]

Wanda tilts her head, looking at him, and while she doesn't want to ruin his calm or what is surely a lovely moment for him, free of stress of transforming, she can't help but notice something about what he's said. She asked about his identity, and he referred to himself first, but oh, when he spoke of the Hulk inside, he called it an it. Not him. Separate.

By that logic, she might claim that if he already disassociates himself from it, then she wants to know what he might think of himself...But at the same time, she can't help but think that the disassociation is something born more of a hope that he and the thing he turns into are separate.

It would be rude to speculate so much about him, so personal in nature, aloud in this discussion. As dispassionate as it is, as upset as she is about her own circumstances, she couldn't be so rude as to analyze him as calmly as she would a simple science experiment.

"I would have never expected you to fall back on the 'If a tree falls in the forest when no one is around, does it make a sound?' argument," she says simply instead, gently teasing.

[angermanaging]

It's definitely for the best if she doesn't call him out on his pronoun usage. In that specific instance, he'd unconsciously attempted to pass it off couched as a theoretical question, in vague terms-- but what it'd really done was reveal his true feelings about the Hulk. That he can talk about how much he's accepted him as part of himself like it's a yardstick he can measure, but in reality it's muddled; it's him, the part of himself that he loathes gut deep until it makes him sick; it's his father; it's someone else, dissociated entirely, refusing to take responsibility for those actions-- and more than anything, it's his fault.

Unraveling that mess is far beyond the capability of an idle chat, with someone who he's met a handful of times and knows him mostly from some alternate dimension incarnation. Bruce isn't even really thinking about it. He'd been waiting for her response, subtle tension across his shoulders, ready to lash out further to protect and justify his self-loathing-- but she doesn't fall into that trap.

She dissolves the tension, and it seeps out of him, makes him look back at her again as he relaxes. "Too much time in Zen temples," he quips back. "And Buddhist monasteries in Tibet. That'll get anyone thinking about the nature of his existence."