Tony is not a qualified mental health professional and he’s starting to think he’s wandering into territory that requires it. Sure, he can read up on it, or could if he was back at home, but that doesn’t make him qualified to dispense advice. All he has, he thinks, is the benefit of perspective, and that perspective exists because he knows Bruce and he knows the Hulk and he doesn’t have either one’s poor opinion of the other.

He’s also not a simpering idiot who’s afraid of something that’s different from the norm.

“Why wouldn’t he care? Half the time, we can’t stand it when people we don’t even know don’t like us. But people who do know us? People who live with us? We can pretend we don’t care all we like, but you know we do. And for him, it’s got to be a thousand times more important. You’re a part of him, Bruce. Not in some New Age, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo bullshit way. Really a part of him.”

How many times has he heard the saying you’re your own worst enemy? Tony can’t possibly begin to count it. But it’s a lot. He knows that. And he thinks that in Bruce and the Hulk’s case, it couldn’t be truer.

“That whole ‘you can’t say anything worse than what I’ve already said to myself’ line we give people who try to insult us? In your case, that’s probably more poignant than it could be from anyone else.”