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Bruce is hiding out in Brazil,
trying to scrabble his way
through Portuguese and other problems,
when he learns the word
that defines his life.
Tenho saudades de você,
he thinks of his mother
and his childhood home,
both left in the dust of history;
a longing for what was loved
but can never return.
I miss you.
Brazil is full of lost people,
the displaced and the disappeared,
who understand what it is
to be torn away
from all that you hold dear.
There are words for this in particular,
Bruce learns, rolling them in mouth and mind,
saudades de casa ou da família,
homesickness for house or family.
Tenho saudades de você,
he thinks of his lover
with her wild black hair,
heart as tempestuous as his own,
mind as gloriously bright,
the sparks they kindled between them --
missing now, and bound to stay so,
for he has no idea where Betty is
and will not put her at risk
by trying to find her.
I miss you.
This is the love that remains
after someone is gone.
This is the last thing
he has to be grateful for:
that he has people and places to miss.
Tenho saudades de você,
he thinks of his former career,
but his old way of life is gone
and there is no getting it back --
not the security or the salary,
not the occasional glimpses of regard,
not the momentary peace of mind
when the broken record of his memory
skipped itself into silence.
I miss you.
There is not much need for a scientist
in the streets of Rio de Janeiro,
but the battered factories
can use what mechanical aptitude
Bruce can muster, and everywhere
there is always a call
for a doctor in the house.
It is desperation that turns
book-learning into practical skill,
but the people of the favelas
do not care that he is desperate,
only that he is there.
Tenho saudades de você,
he thinks at the monster within,
Ainda mantenha-se portanto posso bater em você.
Bruce has tried, God help him,
to reason with the unreasoning beast
and it has all been useless
or worse than useless.
I miss you. Hold still so I can hit you.
It can be described as an emptiness,
and he feels that so keenly;
there is always a roaring inside him now
as if his skin has hardened into a seashell
and the sound of the surf
beats and beats against the curves of himself.
He wishes that the Other
would go away, go away,
but that is a futile fantasy and
he has no patience for magical thinking.
Bruce learns to build a dam
to hold back his emotions,
let the hollowness of his heart
fill like a river valley
until it becomes a lake,
calm and blue on the surface.
Matar as saudades,
Bruce thinks,
and he wants to kill the regrets,
wishes he could drown his sorrows,
but he knows they can swim like sewer rats.
Regrets are not all
that he thinks about killing,
but no, he isn't ready
to finish that thought --
not yet, not quite.
The people around him
are small and brown, not big and green,
but they know what it is
to be marked;
and even though
he does not look like one of them,
they understand that he is.
Bruce knows what it is like
to live with this constant feeling,
a presence of absence,
the wistful yearning to be whole;
he reflects it back to them,
and perhaps for a time
the sorrow is divided
by being shared.
Then the soldiers come
(the soldiers always come for him)
with their guns and their heavy boots
and they chase but cannot catch him
through the streets and roofs of the favelas
that Bruce knows better than they do.
Bruce is forced to flee
for his freedom, leaving behind
the friends he has made
and his good dog in the little shack
that was not a home
but reminded him a bit of one.
He gets away,
glimpses heaven and hell
in the streets of New York,
and Harlem gets a little bit saved
and a little bit broken,
something like his heart.
He brushes the red brick dust
from his weary feet
and sets himself firmly
on yet another new road.
The morriña overtakes him
along the way, though,
a sorrow so strong it can kill.
Bruce tries that, he does,
once and twice and again
until he loses count
and loses faith in guns
and poisons and perhaps death itself.
The Other Guy can spit out a bullet
but not the taste of defeat.
That bitterness never washes away.
There used to be feelings,
desires, wishes,
hopes and dreams and fears --
lost along with his youth --
it doesn't matter now.
Bruce is tired of them all.
He is just angry.
He is always angry.
Strangely enough, he finds
that this helps a bit.
Bruce makes his way to Goa, India
where he discovers to his surprise
that they still speak a little Portuguese
from the time when it was a colony.
It's a hint of something familiar
in a foreign land, and perhaps
he clings to that small comfort.
He settles into a suburb of Margão,
the largest city, on a street named
Rua de Saudades, the Road of Regrets.
Here is the Christian cemetery
and the Hindu shmashana
and the Muslim qabrastan.
This is a place of mourning and memories,
sadness mixing with happiness
like mud in rainwater.
It is all too apt a place for him,
where people go by thinking of those
whom they have loved and lost
whose remains went down that road.
The residents know what it is
to wish for once-cherished
but never-to-return days
filled with vanished glory;
for them it was the prize of Portugal,
for Bruce it was the pride of science.
All of that is now so much history,
taken out and beaten like a rug.
Bruce believes that he is being discreet
but the Muslim folk disabuse him of this notion.
He learns a new word -- wajd --
for the sheer transparency of feeling
at having loved someone and been happy,
then lost that love into sorrow.
When the Other Guy
comes out to save a child bride
from her abusive husband,
and beats the man into the red clay road,
Bruce has to run again,
but he can't bring himself to care.
The music changes as Bruce travels,
soft ragas played on sitar and tabla,
subtle shifts he can hear but not understand.
He goes to Kolkata.
There is disease there,
breeding in the filthy water,
but he knows it is no threat to him.
If only. If only.
The spy comes to him
(they always come to him)
with tricks and traps
and hair the color of old blood
as she delivers bait and ultimatum.
Bruce rocks the empty cradle,
remembering and mourning
what was never meant to be.
Then he dams up the river of tears
and consents to being a victim again.
The role is old and familiar,
if worn ragged as his pants.
It is not so bad, he tells himself,
to put it on again:
he has survived far worse.
On the Helicarrier
everything goes as it always does,
nobody heeding his warnings
until it is much too late;
but Bruce is resigned to this too.
When the explosion comes,
the walls crack,
and the red-haired spy
lies to him again
as his heart breaks like a dam.
The last thing he thinks is,
Lágrimas de saudade,
tears of regret wetting green cheeks
for a moment before the Other Guy
tries his damnedest to kill her.
About the Battle of New York,
however, Bruce has no regrets.
This time he chooses to let the Hulk out
of the cage in the back of his mind.
This time Hulk chooses to smash enemies
and (mostly) not his new allies.
That they are always angry
is no longer a secret,
but somehow it matters less.
When they can choose,
it's not so bad.
Saudade is huffing to a stop
beside Thor, a moment's lull
to wish for a true friend
and hate him a little bit
for not being that.
Saudade is watching Iron Man
fall without slowing down,
and even though Hulk catches him
there is no response,
vulnerable body limp inside
bright red-and-gold metal.
Only when Stark is gone
is it possible to realize
how much he came to mean
so very quickly and with
so very little notice.
There is more pain than rage
in the roar that brings Stark
back from the beyond.
When the Avengers move into the tower,
they are skittish and bemused,
unsure of how to move through
this suddenly shared space,
so for the most part they choose
not to share it, not really, hiding
each of them in their own sanctuaries.
Sometimes, though,
in the wee hours when
less-troubled people are sleeping
they stumble across each other
in a lab or gym or the common floor.
They are terrible
at comforting themselves,
let alone each other,
but they try anyway.
They are heroes:
it is not in them
to ignore another's pain.
Saudade is that first shattering week
when they all believe that Coulson is dead
and they can barely breathe through the agony,
when Bruce has nothing to offer
but a cup of tea that brings dreamless sleep
and a diffident air that soothes people
who have reason to distrust white coats,
except that Fury is a lying liar who lies
(people always lie to Bruce)
and Coulson comes back after all.
There is a faint taste of sweetness
amidst the bitter salt of sorrow,
and this too is saudade,
something the Brazilians
had tried and failed to explain to Bruce:
that sometimes when you wish for what is lost,
it can come back to you after all,
as Stark had returned for the sake of Hulk's roar.
Bruce watches how Stark and Rogers
flinch whenever they see Coulson,
how Barton and Romanova
want to cling but refuse to do so
and wind up orbiting him instead.
Bruce knows that Coulson is not his
and thus says little to him.
Saudade is speaking to Barton
about what it is like to be taken over,
trapped in the back of your own mind
while someone else controls your body.
Bruce may be the only person
who doesn't say over and over again,
"It wasn't your fault, Barton.
You couldn't help yourself."
Bruce knows that it would do no good,
so he says only, "I understand,"
and he does, oh, he does.
It doesn't make Barton feel better,
but maybe, just maybe,
it makes him feel a little less bad.
Saudade is speaking to Rogers
about loss, because Bruce knows
what it's like to lose everyone and everything;
and about drowning, because he tried that
along with the gun and the poisons,
so he knows how much worse it is
when you breathe icewater that feels like knives
and you can't die, can't escape into death.
Bruce may be the only person
who doesn't tell Rogers,
"Time heals all wounds. Move on.
You'll get over it eventually."
Bruce knows he won't,
knows there is no getting over
something like this.
You just learn to live with the pain,
like a piece of shrapnel next to your heart.
"I hear you," Bruce says instead,
and he does, even when Rogers
does not speak his grief aloud.
Which brings him to Stark, of course,
because that is part of Stark's problem,
a cluster of shrapnel like his own personal briar patch.
Saudade is talking to Stark
about how it feels to give your all
to a career and a dream and a specialty
only to discover that you've shot yourself in the foot
and the price of that knowledge is higher
than you ever could have imagined
and you aren't even the one paying the worst of it.
Bruce speaks of guilt and shame
and blood that won't come off
for any amount of handwashing.
He speaks of sucking chest wounds
and broken hearts and desperation,
emptiness plugged up with unwelcome power.
A terrible privilege.
Yes, yes it is.
Bruce may be the only person
who doesn't tell Stark,
"You've learned your lesson.
You could go back into weapons,
just be more careful this time."
Bruce knows what it means
to beat your own desire to death with a shovel.
"Green power holds a lot of promise," he says,
because they both need to believe in
some kind of light at the end of the tunnel.
Saudade is talking to Romanova not at all
but suspecting that her numbness
is greater than his own.
She no longer reeks of fear,
or anger, or anything at all,
and the hollow space where
her feelings should be
is a terrifying thing indeed.
Bruce is not the only person
who gives her silence a wide berth.
And then there is game night.
Stark has become Tony,
has chosen to invite Bruce
into his life, into the hidden spaces
beneath and behind the armor,
leading him by the hand
because they are both scared
and want something familiar to cling to.
They have, somehow, become that --
familiar, a little fond, two tattered men
puttering around each other's labs
and calling each other "science bro" --
and it helps, just a bit, it does.
Tenho saudades de você,
Bruce thinks of his mother again,
remembering the illusion of safety
and the truth of love taken away too soon.
I miss you.
He expects to be scolded
(someone always scolds him)
but the harsh words never come
and the blows never fall.
It takes time
to learn to relax,
to remember how to play again,
but Uncle Phil gives him that.
Uncle Phil gives him everything --
comfort food and fun games,
a coffee table to hide under,
soft brown jammies to snuggle in,
and as much cuddling as
Bruce can bring himself to accept.
It's strange,
how much this matters;
what should seem silly is instead
far more meaningful
than most of his whole life.
His heart, long cramped,
begins to tingle and revive,
sharp as pins and needles.
By the time Bruce scrapes his knee
he is ready to cry over it,
to let something out
instead of holding it in
to join the sea of rage and pain
that still lies within himself.
Uncle Phil is there
with gentle hugs and
cartoon band-aids
and for once,
Bruce actually feels better.
There is still something missing,
but he does not let himself think of that.
They catch him completely by surprise;
Bruce does not know
what Phil and Tony have done
until they return to the tower
with Betty in tow.
Betty.
Bruce's heart swells with joy
until he thinks that he might die of it,
this moment of perfect happiness
in which no rage remains.
Reuniting with Betty
is what truly teaches him
to believe in hope once more,
to understand what it means
to go from sweet to bitter to sweet again.
This is what I needed, Bruce thinks,
matar as saudades de alguém,
as Betty's small soft hands
pat their way across his body
to reassure herself that he is uninjured,
to kill the sorrows,
to catch up with somebody.
They are not all dead,
his sorrows and regrets,
his misses and memories,
but they are at last
beginning to die down.