#tagging it just in case bc br*an b*nner is mentioned

[bikerfaggot]

Promise

Warm hands, soft against Bruce’s cheek. “Dear,” came her gentle voice as she crouched next to the bed, her knees creaking just slightly. Bruce shifted to face his mother, his eyes wide with expectation. “Cinderella love isn’t what all of us get,” she continued quietly, “some of us have to work to get there, and others don’t get it at all.” Bruce opened his mouth to voice his dissent, but Rebecca smiled perceptively and shook her head. “I know, I know. It’s not fair.”

He frowned and furrowed his brows, an expression that he would never know how much his mother adored. “Are you and dad in love?” He asked after a long time, earning a pained smile and a few quick blinks.

She raised her hand to brush it over his cheek again, staying silent for what felt like years. Finally, she pulled herself to her feet, whispering a quiet “no, we aren’t.” in response. Before Bruce could say anything else, she was tucking the blanket up to his chin and leaning down to kiss his forehead. “You’ll find it, though, one day. I promise you.” With rapt attention he watched the way her eyes glittered with unshed tears, and it tugged at something deep inside him, something that he couldn’t place. “You don’t need to worry about your dad and I,” she finished, starting to turn towards the door. “Goodnight, Bruce. I love you.”

Bruce lay still in his bed until long after the lights in the hallway had gone out, thinking of those terribly sad tears. He would realize later that he shouldn’t have had to deal with much- well, with any- of the things he had dealt with from such a young age, but at the moment, it had seemed as though mom was just sad again. When he finally slipped into a fitful rest, he dreamed of Cinderella and whiskey.

Bruce startled awake, throwing the blankets off of him as he sat up in a wild panic. He blinked hard and shook his head, trying to recall the last thing that happened. He remembered being on a mission, and a code green being called, but after that, it was blank. There was a memory pressing itself into the forefront of his mind, though, and he realized that Hulk must have been thinking of Rebecca again. He had been doing so more often recently, and the only reason Bruce knew about the occurrence was because every thought of his mother that passed through Hulk’s mind would implant itself into Bruce’s conscious for the next few hours after waking up. It evoked too many emotions inside of him to bother separating them. This one made him sad, he could sense, so he tried to push it to the back of his mind. For now, at least.

The sound of a muffled snore to his left snapped him away from the faint memory. He turned quickly, only to sag back down in relief after realizing that it was only Thor, fast asleep in the chair next to the bed. He was in his clothes from battle, one armored arm crossed over his chest and the other resting on the edge of the bed. He wondered how long he had been out, and if Thor had been there the whole time.

At the sight of Thor, the memory had shoved itself back into his main line of thought, and because Bruce had never had that happen before, he let it quickly run through his mind.

“I promise you,” she had said. Why had Hulk been thinking of this day during the fight? This was the type of memory that Bruce would recall while he was standing in front of Rebecca’s grave, not while he was in the middle of body slamming aliens, or whatever Hulk had been doing.

He glanced over at Thor again, almost as if to make sure he wasn’t awake and watching Bruce run over his problem. Thor’s chest plate was rising and falling slowly, his steady breathing every so often accompanied by another snore. Stormbreaker was leaning against the bedside table, which also housed his helmet from Sakaar. Bruce blinked in confusion, abruptly realizing that he wasn’t in his own room. He was in Thor’s, and the one that was supposed to occupy the room in question wasn’t even in the bed. Rather, he had given it to the man who could’ve easily slept in his own. His own room, his own bed. But Bruce was here instead, being watched over (kind of) by the god of thunder.

And then he registered what hadn’t taken Hulk long to figure out.

Rebecca hadn’t broken her promise.