EPILOGUE
Betty Ross stood at the railing looking south over New York Harbor from Battery Park City. She was thinking of the last time she had come this way, on the boat with Bruce from New Jersey. She wondered what had ever happened to that pickup they’d driven up from Tennessee and then abandoned at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel.
And she wondered what had happened to Bruce.
She still had the picture of him on her camera, from right before they got into the truck. She kept it. She would always keep it… and the next time she saw Bruce, she would take another one. He would come back when he was ready, when he could really control the Hulk. Betty knew. She would wait.
In a cabin in the wilderness of western Canada, Bruce got his mail. There was a small package addressed to David B., which was the name Bruce had used in a certain business transaction. He opened the package and removed the necklace Betty had pawned for traveling money. He’d looked for quite a while before tracking it down, but now he had it.
Bruce sealed it in an envelope, addressed it to Betty, and put a stamp on the envelope. He would mail it in the morning, and when Betty got it, she would know he was thinking of her.
Then Bruce meditated. Every day he got a little better at keeping the beast inside. But he wouldn’t be able to hold it in forever. That wouldn’t matter as long as he could control it… and where he had once meditated to hold the monster in, now Bruce was learning how to use meditation to bring the change into the Hulk when he wanted it. On his terms.
He practiced. He kept practicing.
One of these days, when he had it right, he would find Betty again.
Just off-base in Florida, Thunderbolt Ross finished his drink.
He was not feeling good. The Super-Soldier project was a disaster and so was General Thunderbolt Ross’s career. The Abomination had destroyed everything Ross had worked for, and to make matters worse, Bruce Banner was the one who had saved New York—and Betty—from the monster Emil Blonsky had become.
The bartender came back and poured him another one. Ross could see himself in the mirror and didn’t like what he saw. What was next? He’d have to retire. He’d put his feet up, go fishing, and have to chew on his failures for the rest of his life.
And Betty still wouldn’t talk to him. He had people watching her, and she hadn’t been in touch with Bruce, either. No one seemed to know where Bruce was. At moments like this, that suited Ross fine. Bruce Banner could fall right off the face of the Earth, and it wouldn’t bother Ross a bit.
Someone else came in and walked up next to him. “Mmmm, the smell of defeat,” he said. “You know, I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ General, but that Super-Soldier program was put on ice for a reason.” Ross knew without looking up that it was Tony Stark speaking to him. Stark, better known as Iron Man, was everything Thunderbolt Ross was not. He was rich, he was popular, he was a big shot inside S.H.I.E.L.D., and his Iron Man project—unlike Ross’s Super-Soldier project—was a roaring success.
“I’ve always felt hardware was much more reliable,” Stark said.
General Ross turned a weary glare on Stark’s photogenic face. “Stark.”
Thunderbolt Ross didn’t like Tony Stark, and both of them knew it. But occasionally they had been forced to work together.
“You always wear such nice suits,” Ross said, mocking Tony’s reliance on armored suits instead of his own strength.
Tony looked down at himself. He was in fact wearing a nice suit. It had cost a lot of money. “Touché,” he said. “I hear you have an unusual problem.”
“You should talk,” Ross said. He knew some of what had been going on at Stark Industries lately.
“You should listen,” Stark said, getting more serious. “What if I told you we were putting a team together?”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Ross asked.
That’s when Tony Stark sat down and started talking.
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