Hulk by Peter David (e reader manga TXT) 📕

but didn’t press the matter. Bruce sighed. “I must have seen you or known you,” he said. “If only I could remember.”

“You will,” Betty assured him. “It’ll be painful, but you will.”

His face darkened. “I bet it remembers,” he said, and there was obviously no doubt in Betty’s mind as to just who “it” was. “It must have been a child here, too, inside of me.” He started rubbing his temples. Although he wasn’t intending to, he looked like a mentalist trying to get in contact with the dead. “I feel him now, watching me. Hating me.”

“Hating you?” Betty asked. “Why?”

He lowered his hands and leveled his gaze on her. “Because he knows, one way or another, that we’re going to destroy him,” said Bruce. He sounded determined. He also sounded a bit afraid.

Betty shook her head. “We’re going to understand him.”

“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?” asked Bruce.

Clearly she didn’t comprehend, but Bruce did . . . all too well. The creature drew its strength from rage, and rage came not from what one had, but from what one didn’t have. Rage was the lack of control, of compassion, of love, of understanding. Any of the softer emotions, anything that sought to incorporate the creature into the minds and hearts of humanity, was anathema to it, a crucifix to a vampire. Love drained it of hate, compassion drained it of rage, and without those, it was literally nothing. It was a gamma-irradiated genie released from its lamp, and all the Aladdins in the world weren’t about to stuff it back in. Not if the Hulk could help it.

Banner walked a few steps away, falling into a reverie. Betty continued to follow, but at a distance. Perhaps she was respecting his need for space, or perhaps she was just afraid of him. Well, why not? He was afraid of him.

They wandered among the broken down, deserted houses, the wind stirring up dust and bits of detritus, and carrying with it an almost mournful sound. The image of the ghost town came to his mind again, and then he heard something that triggered a recollection, something just beyond his ability to grasp, so close he thought he could touch it. It was a steady, rhythmic squeaking, and he turned to see that Betty was sitting on an abandoned swing set, absentmindedly swinging.

He noticed a particular house nearby and paused. Deep in the recesses of his mind, there were long shadows that suddenly seemed to have faint light cast upon them, all from the sight of this ramshackle house. He started to walk toward it. He heard the squeaking behind him stop, Betty’s feet treading again on the gravel walk. She was following him, although she likely had no idea why. The blind leading the blind. It didn’t get more ironic than that.

Banner entered the old house, paused, and looked around. Betty entered behind him and Banner froze.

“What is it?” she asked very quietly, as if worried that a loud voice might disturb the long-gone occupants.

Pictures . . . images . . . running . . . screams and hatred and a pounding . . .

He turned to face her, pushing the mental images violently away. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked, suddenly angry. “What’s the point of it? You saw what I am. You know as well as I do it’s no use.” His voice was filled with loathing and self-pity.

“That’s not true,” said Betty.

“It is true,” he fired back. He paced the front hall of the house, stepping over some debris, moving quickly, as if he could outrun the thoughts in his head. He spoke in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “Come on. I’m supposed to have some sort of emotional breakthrough now? Reconnect to my inner child, exorcise my inner demons, find my true self, and everything will be just fine and dandy? Don’t kid yourself.”

“And don’t you kid yourself!” Betty replied. If he’d thought that she was some sort of shrinking violet, that she was in some way intimidated or reluctant to stand up to him, then clearly he was mistaken. She was willing to be sympathetic, patient, loving, but she obviously wasn’t going to be pushed around. “We don’t have any options, remember? At least here we have a chance—”

“A chance to what?” Bruce demanded in exasperation. He felt like pain incarnate. “Don’t you understand? Whatever it is you want me to remember, there’s a good reason I can’t. It . . . might just kill me,” he said, and he refrained from adding, or you.

For that was really his greatest fear. As much as he was capable of understanding Betty’s actions, of forgiving her, he was also certain that the hulking beast within him was equally incapable of doing so. What she was showing him now was stirring up not just memories, but the monster within. It was scrambling forward on its knuckles toward the uppermost regions of his mind like the rough beast, its hour come at last, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born, as Yeats had written in “The Second Coming.” If it got loose again, if it did, it might kill her.

“The centre cannot hold; . . . The blood-dimmed tide is loosed . . .”

It couldn’t know, of course, that to kill Betty was to kill itself, because if it harmed Betty, then Bruce would undoubtedly take his own life the moment he was back in control, rather than live with the knowledge of what he’d done. That, of course, would be the ultimate way to stop the monster.

He just hoped it didn’t come to that, for all their sakes.

He kept looking away from Betty, but she wouldn’t permit it. “It might just kill you,” she repeated his words, and then added, “or save you.”

“And what if I don’t want to be saved,” he said darkly.

“You don’t have to try. You can choose, Bruce. But me, I don’t have a choice,” she said sadly.

He was genuinely puzzled by her