Single Dog Banner
Back in New York, everyone quickly returned to their normal lives, training, research, and so on. Only Tony Stark was incredibly busy lately, because Stark Tower had been completed.
This is a major move by Tony Stark after announcing the closure of Stark Weapons, with the entire building being independently powered by its redesigned reactors. This will be a landmark, a symbol of Stark Industries as a leader in the renewable and clean energy industry.
This also marked the resurgence of Stark Industries. To counter the media that predicted Stark Industries' imminent collapse, Tony even went so far as to have his surname displayed as a lightbox on the building.
He even reserved several floors of space at the top for his personal research and living purposes.
Rather than calling it a skyscraper, it's more accurate to say that Tony built a sky villa atop Stark Tower. Compared to that, Xia Yu's house on the rooftop of the Los Angeles Herbal medicine Group is utterly pathetic. No wonder Xia Yu said that compared to Tony, he's just barely scraping by.
For this building, Tony not only had to independently manage its energy supply, but also had to coordinate with Pepper Potts for various promotional events and activities, flying all over the world. He's basically not seen at the base lately.
So Bruce Banner ended up doing his research alone in the lab. Two people could chat from time to time, but when you're alone, you inevitably have more moments of overthinking.
Especially after just returning from London and being bombarded with displays of affection by Xia Yu and Natasha, I still have to watch them show off their love.
Hawkeye? He's got a wife and kids.
Thor? He spends his free time swinging his hammer, flying through the sky with Jane, watching the moon and stars.
Even Coulson recently met a girl who plays the cello, and he talks to her all the time about how artistic she is, how well she plays the cello, and so on.
Dr. Banner is lonely, melancholy, and losing hair every morning. Why isn't Tony here? Wait, even if Tony Stark came back, he wouldn't be single; he has a powerful female CEO.
Poor Dr. Banner, what he didn't know was that if Tony didn't have Pepper Potts, it would have been an even bigger blow to him.
That's how people are. After escaping the military's pursuit and failing in his suicide attempt, Dr. Banner told himself that he would be grateful to God if he could live a peaceful life, let alone find a wife. At that time, he was focused on controlling his anger and not transforming randomly.
Even after being taken back to New York by Xia Yu and joining the Avengers, his life was relatively stable. He was already quite content, being able to conduct research with top scientists like Tony Stark every day.
He'd never even considered getting a wife. If he lost control of his transformation one day, it would be a disaster. So, honest Dr. Banner thought that having a girlfriend would be like harming someone, and he'd long ago given up on that idea.
Besides, apart from Xia Yu and Natasha being a couple, everyone else in the base is alone, right? Even if they know someone has a wife or girlfriend, they usually just ignore it, since they don't have access to them and don't even think about it.
But after going to London, Banner found himself mentally broken when he returned. He then quietly began to take stock of the people around him and realized that he was the only one who was single.
The more I try to reassure myself that I'm already prepared to be a lone wolf, the more I think about it that way.
For example, during dinner just now, Xia Yu asked Coulson how things were going with his girlfriend. Dr. Banner felt uncomfortable about it. Why did he have to talk about this in front of me? It's just because I'm single.
Banner knew no one was targeting him, but once your mindset collapses, there's no going back.
I've been having insomnia for the past few days. I keep having these thoughts about being with Betty Ross. Every night before I go to sleep, Dr. Banner hypnotizes himself and gives him psychological suggestions: you are not a person who has the right to think about these things, you are an unfortunate person who only brings disaster to others, you do not deserve to live an ordinary life, and so on.
Anyone in this situation would react the same way as Dr. Banner, but as an outsider, it's immediately obvious, so this approach only has the opposite effect.
Dr. Banner's personality is the opposite of Tony Stark's, but they have one thing in common: they both keep their secrets very deep and would never talk to others about them. So, no one noticed anything wrong with Banner these past few days.
"The Captain asked me if I had anything important to discuss lately. He wants to retrace Miss Carter's route through the Europe theater of World War II, which might take a while," Natasha said to everyone, picking up her phone.
"Go away, go away, the Captain no longer belongs to United States."
Are they going on their honeymoon?
Everyone joked around, and for this event that everyone had worked together to make possible, everyone was genuinely happy for the Captain and Peggy Carter.
Peggy Carter waited her whole life for Steve Rogers, only to see him return as a boy when she was old and gray. Unfortunately, she was too frail to even get out of bed. But Xia Yu's Peggy Carter restored her youth. Her lifelong wait was fulfilled, her dream came true. Everyone would bless such a love story.
So Xia Yu was genuinely happy for them. "Tell the Captain that no one will exploit the labor of two centenarians. The Avengers won't, and neither will S.H.I.E.L.D.. Let him rest assured. It would be best if I saw news of a centenarian getting pregnant, haha!"
Everyone was laughing at the Captain from behind, and no one noticed that Banner had already gotten up and left the room.