#also... i find it kinda awesome how bruce actually killed cull obsidian.

[angerissue]

@swagvoidengineer asked... 26. Name a time your muse has felt proud of themselves and their accomplishments. From this headcanon meme. Open to everyone.

Bruce hasn't experienced many of these occasions. However, the most recent one was during his interaction with Tony Stark outside of the New York Sanctum, when they were preparing to fight Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian in the streets. Bruce was going to use the Hulk, and Tony decided to equip his new nanotech armour. This was the first time that Bruce had seen the armour, but while someone else might've been fascinated and impressed by it, Bruce's reaction was more lukewarm and sedate. He was indeed curious about its smaller workings, but he wasn't profoundly impressed or boggled out of his mind, because he already understood how Tony had created many of the armour’s features.

Bruce could understand Tony’s armour because he’d already been using nanotech for some time. He began experimenting with it in 2013, after he gained employment with S.H.I.E.L.D. and learned that his transformations into the Hulk were now frequent and requisite. Nanotech became a means to reinforce his pants during the episodes and not worry about them breaking all the time, and since then, he has implemented this technology in all of his pants, and he's tweaked the formula for use in numerous other inventions.

Moreover... This was a validating and proud moment for Bruce because, when Tony revealed the new armour, he noticed just how little mystery there was in it. His own tech had become so advanced that in the process, he'd solved many problems that Tony had only just uncovered and addressed. By extension, Bruce's nanotech must have been on the same level as Tony's own, if not on a higher level, at least in some sense.

At this time, Bruce was giving himself such a pat on the back that he even allowed himself to feel a bit lofty toward Tony. He doesn't usually feel this way because he has a very pronounced sense of humbleness, but it was one of those rare occasions, and he let himself relish it.

Even if, like a gentleman, he didn’t openly show it.

But this wasn't just about Bruce and Tony in a vacuum. In a manner of speaking, it was also a poignant bookend for the hardships and tribulations in Bruce's rearview mirror. Back when Gamma Pulse went to hell in a handbasket, Bruce didn't have the opportunity to flex his scientific muscles for seven years afterward; his work needed to be put on indeterminate hold because he was desperate to cure himself and avoid Ross, and because he didn't have access to resources or funding anyhow. This was a huge impediment to the plans, and overall road map, he’d envisioned for himself and his career.

Only after gaining control of the Hulk did he finally resume his work, and since then, he’d been trying to make up for lost time. At this point, Tony came into the picture in a big way because he was a stationary, constant target for Bruce to measure himself against, and to see how much progress he'd made in relation to someone of a similar acumen as himself. Surprisingly, this was not a new thing for the doctor — Tony had actually been a litmus test and source of comparison for decades, ever since Bruce entered high school and learned about Tony in the newspaper. Back then, he'd seen Tony's potential for achievements and used it to motivate himself, and push himself to do as much as possible. He continued to draw comparisons once he resumed his work at S.H.I.E.L.D..

This extensive, if not one-sided, history between Bruce and Tony made his realization about the armour all the more tangible. It made it all the more rewarding. It made him feel like he’d truly overcome his earlier setbacks, and like he’d finally realigned himself in a way that bore real results. Because when one thinks about it, a moment like this had been decades in the making.

The occasion becomes even more profound when we remember that Bruce's father was Brian, who was abusive and always claimed he would turn out to be a worthless monster. As a consequence of this, Bruce learned to pin his self-worth on something he believed could eventually garner Brian's approval, by means of proving him wrong somehow. For Bruce, this was academic and career success. So it was a massive and soul-sucking blow when the accident happened and cut his career short. He did have some successes before the accident, certainly, including his research on positrons — but this didn't lessen the blow at all. In fact, it was arguably worse than if Banner had never earned those accolades in the first place, because he retained the perspective of how good everything used to be for him. If he'd never earned those accolades, he would've lacked the perspective to know what he'd lost. Needless to say, regressing like this was difficult for him. What he perceived to be his entire purpose and source of worth had been snuffed out and invalidated. If he couldn’t work or achieve things, he couldn’t impress Brian, and he would essentially be worthless.

This was how he felt after the accident. In his eyes, he had failed, and he had nothing going for himself.

(This may also explain why he was so feverish about ridding himself of his condition for years after the accident happened — just like how maintaining a steady course in his career was important to him, returning to that course once he was kicked out was also tantamount.)

So when Bruce felt satisfied with his tech after seeing Tony's own, his existence was validated again. He genuinely felt like he could hold his own regarding his scientific prowess, and more poignantly, like he could waltz up to Brian and tell him just how wrong his predictions were.

I’ll also address, as a side note... This moment does seem frivolous in comparison to other moments in Bruce's life, like the times he defeated prominent enemies such as Ultron and Thanos. However, while Bruce did experience some amount of pride and gratification during these events, it was overshadowed by the notion that defeating these foes was, simply put, the right thing to do. In his eyes, he wasn't going above and beyond by responding to these threats, because it was something that anyone with his capabilities had a moral responsibility to do. It wasn’t something he could boast about.

Not only this, but it was the Avengers teams that had shit the bed and caused the messes with Ultron and Thanos in the first place — or at the very least, allowed the messes to get worse. This limited the amount of pride and gratification Bruce could feel too. For instance, Bruce felt guilty during the last battle with Thanos because he believed there must've been a way to stop Thanos in the previous battle, but he was too inept to see it. And when it comes to Ultron, Bruce had been on board with the project, so it was partially his fault that Ultron hurt so many people. He is painfully aware of that.