It wasn’t the best time for Bruce to be in the lab. The past few weeks had been him gradually drawing back into himself, his depression holding him under its waves longer and longer each day which he still did nothing about and then this happens.
Every time he felt he was just a step from finding a cure, he was pushed ten steps back. Having worked in the lab for three days straight with minimal breaks, Bruce had done everything, literally everything he could to figure something out. His math was being done over and over and over and over (you would think that after so long, he would remember to carry the two), small chemical burns covered his hands and bruises mottled the crook of his arms from accidents and taking blood samples. He just. He needed more time. He needed more resources. He had contacted all the best scientists he remembered out there and branched out from them to those that were getting acclaim just to get an idea on what he was doing wrong. On why he was failing.
Bruce rubbed at the bags under his eyes and beneath his glasses.
He did the math.
He created something that should work.
He did. He swore he did.
But her cells exploded.
Just like his have always done. A brief glimmer of hope until it just…burst.
“NO. No, no, no, NO.” He growled out in frustration, feeling his greener half lurking beneath the surface, causing a series of goosebumps to explode over the surface of his skin as he grabbed the microscope and threw it clear across the room.
He failed her.
(All my fault she’s like this, like me, a freak.)
Then the dams exploded and he was subsumed by guilt and pain and failure. Of how little he has done to help and how useless he was in this world, in this house of heroes and geniuses and literal gods.
He failed the people in the village in India.
(So many people were sick and hurt and I left them. I left them because I was selfish and wanted to try for something again. I left them to suffer.)
He failed everyone he ever met or loved or cared for.
(If I hadn’t gotten involved with Maya she would never have fallen for someone as useless as me, she never would have gotten kidnapped. If I never met Betty, if I never went with her that day, she wouldn’t have had t osuffer because of me either. Or Jess. Or my mom.)
In a final bid of desperation, Bruce swiped his arm over the work table, blood, chemicals and beakers falling and breaking and spilling everywhere as he continued to scream out his frustrations, drowned out by the music he had playing in an effort to ignore everyone. He tore his notes, destroyed the tablets he had used and stood there for a moment, breathing heavily and eyes tinted green before he slid down to the ground, head in his hands, the dull thud beginning in the back of his skull.
“Go away. Just…go away.” Voice weak and torn, he sat on the floor and closed himself off from the world.
