It just seems that upstream I keep rowing

[dayswithoutincident]

Manage your expectations. It's a simple enough concept, but one a lot of people struggle with, and Bruce Banner is no exception. There's a trick to it, of stepping apart from yourself and finding true objectivity, of having the strength to recognize your own weaknesses and strengths.

What Bruce hadn't realized until recently, however, was that when it came to his own life, expectations involving any degree of reasonable normalcy were so far removed that they might as well have been on another planet. Another planet in another universe, actually, but only if it was one about fifty trillion lightyears away and at least ten thousand years from producing anything resembling intelligent life.

At this point, Bruce isn't sure what reasonable expectations for the average person would even consist of, but he's pretty sure he can rule out accidentally tripping through wormholes to alternate dimensions. What he's also sure of is that it says a lot about him (and how much time he's been spending with Stark) that it hadn't shocked him much to step out of his bathroom and find himself at Pocket Universe Inn. He has colleagues who use robotic suits and giant hammers to fly; it's probably past time to redefine what 'normal' means.

Not that it didn't occur to him that he should probably be a little worried about the whole benevolent way station vibe of the place. There's apparently some kind of celestial philanthropist of unknown motive providing his room and board, but overall it's calm and quiet, and there are dozens of ways out. He hopes it doesn't come to it, but if all else fails, he can take a running leap into the abyss. It's more than he can say for where he came from.

This is his third day, and he's still deep in the thrall of new discovery, a quiet figure skirting awkwardly around other guests on his way outside. On the lawn he pauses, face upturned like a child. The view of the sky is still breathtaking, the infinite cosmos bending around their little island like a stream parting over a stone.

Comments

[nebaritralk]

"Can't get there now, can I," Chiana replies immediately, and gives him a bit of a smirk. The sort that's tinged with longing, if you're good at reading subtext in facial expressions. Her body language might be different from humans, but facial expressions remain widely the same.

[dayswithoutincident]

"I don't know," Bruce replies with a small shrug and brief, contemplative frown. "Why can't you?"

Perhaps the answer seems self-evident; he knows well enough that sometimes, people find themselves effectively stuck in this dimension. But with all the resources available–All the knowledge, and people like himself wandering around with nothing concrete to do with their time–it's hard to imagine there aren't other options.

[nebaritralk]

"You got a ship hidden somewhere, let me know," Chiana tells him with a smirk that seems to say she would make it worth his while. Then again, she doesn't think he actually does. Nobody's getting in or out of this place without using the freaking doors.

[dayswithoutincident]

"Not me. But I might know somebody who does," Bruce allows, his tone offhand, as he honestly has no idea what Stark and Fury have hidden away. "I take it you're stuck here," he adds with an arch of his eyebrows.

[nebaritralk]

Chiana gives him a clearly searching gaze, trying to determine whether he's telling the truth or running a con on her. "Cut off from my universe, anyway," she answers after a beat. She's gone through doors, but never ones that would bring her back to a world where Nerri existed.

[dayswithoutincident]

"Right," Bruce agrees, correcting himself with a nod. "Stuck really isn't the best word with the way this place works." It's a particularly acute sort of frustration to find yourself with so many options and none of them the one you want. This, he knows intimately.

"Where are you from?" he asks, politely curious.

[nebaritralk]

"The Uncharted Territories," she replies after another beat. She's tired of saying she's from Nebari Prime, when she's never felt as if she belonged there. Home was Nerri, and she had no idea where he was. "You another Earth guy?" A Sebacean wouldn't ask where she's from, after all.

[dayswithoutincident]

"I am," Bruce agrees with a slight nod. This is perhaps the understatement of the century, so much left out that sets him apart from the typical 'Earth guy,' but he's not in the habit of introducing himself to people by telling them he sometimes turns into a furious, green giant–Not even when that person is gray and from another planet.

"I'm Bruce," he says, and holds out his hand. Too late he realizes that the gesture may be entirely foreign, but it seems too late to abort, his hand hanging in the air between them, arm gone stiff with awkwardness.

[nebaritralk]

Chiana looks at the hand as if it might bite her but, after a second, she puts her gloved one in it and gives it a short, firm pump - maybe just a little too firm. "Chiana."

[dayswithoutincident]

"Sorry, I–" Bruce begins, gesturing helplessly with the hand once China has released it. "It was an instinct thing, I really should have known better. How do people greet each other where you come from?" he asks, genuinely interested.

[nebaritralk]

"Depends," Chiana replies, shifting her balance from foot to foot. "How well you know someone, and how - and how well you'd like to know them," she adds, because she never can help herself, with a somewhat predatory grin.

[dayswithoutincident]

Bruce laughs with a sheepish duck of his head, nodding. "Fair enough. That's true on Earth, too," he says. "Generally." He recalls precisely the last time he'd been hugged in greeting, and it's been a very long time. He thinks, maybe, Stark might clamp him in a rough sort of brotherly embrace if he were the hugging kind, but he's not.

"So, how long have you been here?" he asks, figuring that for a safer topic.

[nebaritralk]

"Apart from too frelling long?" Chiana checks, because that one seems so obvious. "Fifty five days." Whether they're also solar days or not, she still can't be sure. She isn't big on the science aspect of things.

[dayswithoutincident]

"Shit," Bruce says under his breath, because she isn't wrong. Fifty-five days in a hotel is too long, whether you're in an alternate dimension or not.

"What do you do with yourself?" he asks. He knows the hotel provides diversions, but he can imagine them wearing thin quickly, especially for someone already restless.