Title: If Only
Fandom: Avengers (Movie!Verse)
Rating: G
Length: 634
Author notes: Also written for Challenge #04: The Table of Doom!!! (Phase 3) and tamingthemuse.
Warning: Dark themes including depictions of violence and attempted suicide.
Summary: He was once a simple man.



He knew he had lost everything.

With each shot of Bourbon, he winced, the welcome feeling of burning liquid trailing down his throat all that he was willing to concentrate on. It had been another particularly tiring day where all he did was smile through the pain. He was in pain, he will always be. Gone were the days where his biggest problem was passing a simple exam, getting into college and making a name for himself.

Chuckling at the absolutely funny thing about life that he didn’t find hilarious at all, he looked down at the empty shot glass in his hand. He then glanced at the bottle of Bourbon that he held in his other hand, the liquid density of which that had greatly depleted during the past half hour. He had sat here, in his torn clothes, at a cheap motel that asked no questions at his dishevelled appearance and simply got drunk. Logically, he knew he had reached the appropriate blood-alcohol level that could amount to alcoholic poisoning, but personally, he felt like it still wasn’t enough.

He was a good man once. He knew this. He was an educated man who was working on helping others. Instead, now he was a destructive mass that didn’t know good from bad or right from wrong. The media mocked him, people were scared of him, and everyone knew his face. There was no life for him here; there was no life for him anywhere. He didn’t deserve to live; not like this.

Feeling his laughter leave him, he looked down at the revolver that was placed harmlessly next to the bottle of Bourbon. He had considered the choice carefully. He had considered all possible variables, the pros and cons, as well as the costs that might or might not occur. But it all came down to this: can he live with himself? With his other self?

The answer was ‘no’. He was no hero. He was a means of destruction. How he happened to fight the thing that people needed him to fight was a choice that was nothing more than a misunderstanding. He could turn on them all at a split second, he could kill them all with one mistake.

He had lost everyone because of this. He was a danger to everyone and everything that he had ever cared about. He thought about the life that he had lived, the childhood full of promise and the mundane Sunday evenings that so many people took for granted. He thought about smiling at the girl who served him coffee in the morning, correcting piles of paperwork and making his students laugh. He thought of the hours of lost time he had spent in the lab, studying what had destroyed him, ignoring sleep so he could be there to discover something that would do more harm than good. He regretted that portion of his life, it was hard not to.

With a final sense of determination, he put down the bottle of Bourbon and the shot glass, took the revolver in his steady hands, cocked it, opened his mouth and placed it in a way where he knew the bullet would kill him instantly. He thought of the one person who had believed in him, the one person he loved above all else. He thought of living a simple life; of coming home to his happy wife who would give him a kiss on the cheek and seeing his son run to his arms so he could tell him all that had happened that day. He thought of happiness and laughter, but no tears. There would never be tears.

Thinking of the life he craved, Bruce Banner closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.

If only the Big Guy didn’t make an appearance.