incrediblebanner | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

For someone with a near-indestructible alter-ego, Bryce Banner is not as untouchable as some might think. She has a good protector, and she's hard to capture without massive amounts of collateral damage, but it's not impossible. It can even be done quietly, if planned right. The trick is to grab her when she's unconscious and somewhat vulnerable, such as after she's changed back from the Hulk. Of course, she's hardly ever alone for long then, but it's possible to create a distraction big enough that none of her team members will be able to reach her in time.

The trick is to sedate her when she's still unconscious. In the absence of physical harm, she won't know she's in danger. It's not easy to pull off, but when you're a general with a lot of pull who's taking back a stolen military project, you find the resources.

She doesn't know how long it takes for her to wake up enough to understand where she is. She remembers... vague sensations. Pain, nausea, confusion. At one point, she thought she saw Steve smiling at her encouragingly, but she's not sure if that was a dream, memory, or hallucination. She's strapped down so she can't move, and the Hulk is a dull roar in the back of her mind, angry but so far away.

It's hard to concentrate, take stock. There's a bandage on her arm. Blood sample, she thinks. There are patches of her skin that feel raw and scraped; skin samples, maybe. Her hip hurts; hard to tell why, especially when she can't twist her neck to look at it. Something wrong with one of her ankles - there's a bandage there, too.

"Not so safe with that team of yours as you thought."

She doesn't bother looking, knows that voice. "General Ross." She sounds awful, voice cracking like she hasn't had a drink of water in days.

"We're going to take you apart, Banner. Find out what makes that thing in you tick, and then we're going to make more. You won't be so unique then, SHIELD won't need you. What do you think will protect you then?"

She doesn't say anything. Doesn't need to.

He leans in and grabs hold of her jaw, forcing the angle of her head so she's looking at him. "My daughter won't even talk to me anymore, Banner."

"You did that, General, not me - "

He stabs something into her arm, hard. A needle. The pain quickly fades, goes back to the dull confusion while she slips away from consciousness. She thinks she sees Steve again before her vision gets too vague, trying to squeeze her hand, but it's not real. Just another hallucination.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There are times when Tony Stark will argue with Captain America. When Bryce is missing and they have to infiltrate a military base that's unlawfully kidnapped her...

Not so much.

The Widow and Hawkeye were doing their best kind of work dismantling the security system and ensuring that no assistance would be coming to this particular base. Iron Man was in the skies, watching their exit and instructing JARVIS in the proper way of infiltrating their systems and removing any and all of the data they'd already extracted on Bryce and her physiology. That just left Steve (as Thor was unfortunately not on Midgard at the moment) to actually do the job of getting to her.

It was a job he did with brutal efficiency and... if not pleasure than some deep satisfaction. He knew the soldiers here were merely serving their country, knew they thought of his Bryce as nothing more than a rage machine that bestowed chaos and destruction wherever she went, so he did his best not to use lethal force for normal human targets... but he couldn't help that his arm flew with a certain amount of extra fury and his boots had sent more than a few men flying into walls with a somewhat unpleasant crunch.

Because Bryce did indeed see Steve as she slipped away into unconsciousness, but he wasn't holding her hand, quite yet. Instead, he was using his shield to knock General Ross on his backside to get to her and pull out the needle.

Without a steady drip or even a full dose, she might not be under that much longer. That's the good news. The bad news is that the injection was slammed in so hard that the actual needle broke off in her arm.

(From the way she looks, that's probably about the same level of care she's been receiving the entire time here.)

Not that he doesn't have other things to worry about. General Ross does not take to the invasion of his base kindly. "Stand down, Captain Rogers. We have been authorized to bring in Dr. Banner, with or without her cooperation."

Steve was practically vibrating with rage, but he kept himself in check just long enough to look the man in the eyes and ask him the most important question.

"On who's orders?"

Because the answer didn't change whether or not he'd be taking Bryce out of this place, not by a long shot. The answer would just tell him where he was going next.

"General Ryker." He straightens out, tries to look more reasonable. He's not a fool. He knows he doesn't have a good chance against a super soldier, at least not fighting. "Son, if you walk out of here with her, you are going against the US Army."

"The US Army decided it was against me the second that order came down."

Which was when his fist fell on the man like the judgement of God itself. He was only barely restraining himself from killing force.

"I don't stand with bullies."

Ross... really didn't stand a chance against an angry Steve. It's fair to assume he's not going to be an immediate problem anymore.

And Bryce is starting to wake up. It's not easy to tell at first; she's still pretty heavily drugged. She lets out a quiet, pained noise as she opens her eyes, struggling to focus. It's impossible to tell how long she's been out for this time, and she can tell someone's in the room, but not who.

Ross is not a concern a moment later as he pulls off his glove and carefully tugs the broken piece of needle out of her skin.

"It's me, Bryce. It's Steve. I'm here. I've got you. We're getting you out."

Steve?

It's hard to be sure he's really there or even what he's saying, but she struggles weakly against the restraints holding her in place anyway. It's hard to think straight, but there's something... something important.

"What are you..." Her voice just dies on her while she tries to focus her attention on him.

"I'm here to bring you home," he said gently, leaning down but not too close. At her level.

She tries uselessly to reach out a hand and touch him, make sure he's real this time, but it's still held down.

"They have... Samples. I can't let them..."

He reaches over and undoes the bindings, almost ripping them except that he doesn't want to hurt her.

"Natasha and Clint are handling that."

As was Tony, more than likely. No way Iron Man was staying out when his lab buddy was in danger inside. Any other time, Steve would be slightly annoyed at this but this time, he really couldn't be bothered.

Trying to sit up is a struggle and mostly just serves to uncover another deep ache in her back. Even just trying to use her arms to hold herself up makes her feel dizzy and nauseous.

"Don't. Don't know if I can stand."

He shook his head and slid his hands under her arms and knees.

"You don't need to stand. I've got you."

A few tears prick at the edges of her eyes at that - relief, maybe, or even just exhaustion. She settles her head against his chest once he has her in his arms, reassuring herself that he's really here and this isn't just some extremely vivid dream. "Take me home?"

"Yes, ma'am," he says firmly, leaning down to kiss her hair. All the violence it'd taken to get him there had drained out the rage, leaving nothing but his worries and his concern for her.

"Iron Man, I've got her. I need an exit."

Can do, Spangles!

At some point, she passes out again. She thinks she might have woken up a few times on the way out; vaguely remembers seeing the bright red of Tony's Iron Man suit, Steve holding her hand.

Tony has a doctor waiting for her who takes over quickly. He's calm and gentle and doesn't waste time before reassuring the Avengers that she's in no danger, just needs time to sleep off the sedative and heal.

The next time she's really awake is when she's been set up in her room with a few portable monitors and a saline and nutrient drip. She still feel sluggish, confused, but she struggles into a slightly more upright position so she can get her bearings. "Steve?"

He's dozing in the chair next to her, rousing the second he hears her voice. His hand reaches out to scoop up hers and he offers the warmest smile he can manage, even if it's a little brittle.

"Hey, beautiful."

It's unlikely she looks anything like beautiful at the moment; more exhausted and sick from the drugs, honestly. Bryce tries to smile back, a little.

"My... my chart?" It may not be the best thing for her to see right now, but she can feel the need to know what Ross's people did to her bubbling up with an urgency almost like panic.

He glances down the bed to where the chart is located, but Tony had mentioned it might not be the best thing for her right from the get go. He wasn't stupid, not even close, but the terms on the page meant very little to him and that meant it was hard for him to make a decision on it.

"In a minute," he says with a wince.

"How're you feeling?"

"Not... awful." It's careful, chosen to be more technically true than actually true. "Tired." Drugs are probably still wearing off. She's guessing she was kept on a pretty much constant drip, or at least timed injections.

Bryce looks him in the eye, doing her best to keep her gaze steady. "Steve, please. I need to know what they did."

The expression on his face says that he can see that. Which is why it's obvious he's not happy to reach over to pull the chart up for her to look at. All the same, he's never been one to shield people from the truth, so it's handed to her a moment later.

"Thank you."

Because it's Tony and Tony's doctor, her chart is less paper and more stored on a lightweight, clear tablet. Once it reaches her hands, a little text box pops up from JARVIS, explaining that Nat and Clint saved a copy of the research Ross was doing on her and she's the only person allowed to access it, unless she gives anyone else permission. After a moment, she types out a reply telling him to cross-reference her chart with the files to label any injuries the doctors haven't determined the cause or point of yet.

Bryce grabs hold of Steve's hand and squeezes before she actually starts reading, navigating the information one-handed so she doesn't have to let go. The first few items match up with what she expected. The bruising on her arms suggest she'd been repeatedly drugged. They took blood, more than was advisable but it's since stabilized. Scraped off some skin in a few places, but it's not bad. A few other things, some of which are halfway-healed already.

There's a note from JARVIS on the next page about her cross-reference request, so she takes a second to breathe before she has to go on. This is fine. This is fine. So far, this is barely more than she'd expect from a GP visit. Or at least, that's what she tells herself.

Edited 2014-06-01 21:59 (UTC)

He leans over and very carefully presses a kiss to her temple. Otherwise, he's content to wait and let her read, let her hold his hand, affirm to her that she's somewhere safe.

After about a minute, Bryce figures she's about as ready as she can be to keep going.

The chart is a little jumbled. She suspect JARVIS is arranging it for her reading, slowly working her up from relatively minor issues to the ones that would be harder to read. The next item is a needle-bruise on her hip, which doesn't have an official explanation in the notes but JARVIS's cross-reference tells her was from a bone marrow biopsy. That's... harder to think of as just something that might happen at your GP.

She sucks in a breath and unconsciously grips Steve's hand even harder when she gets to the notes on her back that JARVIS have labeled as being the result of a lumbar puncture. She doesn't even want to think about what kind of shape she could have ended up in if she'd started to wake up or somehow managed to move while they had a needle in her spine.

Steve just gives her a soft squeeze back, a reminder that his hand was there, and reaches over to start stroking her shoulders with his other hand.

"Do you want some water? Food?"

"Water," she says, a little too fast. She should probably stop here for now, let herself get used to things before she reads on.

She has to know about her leg, at least. Bryce does a search for it, and has... gotten considerably paler and set down the chart by the time he returns.

He reaches over to get the pitcher, pouring her a cup before passing it to her. When he notes her palor, he slides in closer and rubs her back more insistently.

That... feels nice, and she leans back into his touch a little. The water's good, too, that helps. She swallows. "They, ah. Cut my leg open and took pieces of the bone."

He winces at the description, glad he hadn't read the report himself. He'd known it was bad, but he hadn't known it was quite that bad.

"Will you... will it cause permanent damage?"

"No," she says, a beat too late for normal conversation. "I have the Hulk. I mean, the change from the Hulk and back basically rebuilds my body, so this should... all be gone. Then."

"Will you need to... I mean, will you be able to walk before then?" he asked carefully.

She tucks some hair behind her ear, mostly for something to do. "It... there's risk with a normal bone biopsy of causing a fracture in the bone. That's with as little bone removed as possible. With what they took... I didn't look at the x-ray, but if it's not fractured already, it most likely will be if I try to put any weight on it."

She lets out a dark chuckle that has about as much to do with amusement as a house fire. "I understand there's a pretty powerful non-FDA-approved variant on a local anesthetic keeping me from feeling it right now."

Something came over his face, a terrible kind of frustration, but it cleared off within seconds, leaving nothing but care and tenderness. He could do that, for her. His anger... she didn't need it right now. She was here and she would get better.

"All right," was all he could think to say.

She offers him a weak smile; it's not all right, really, at all. But she should really be used to setbacks in her life like this by now and is, in a way. At least she's not trying to sort her way through this alone, for once, and she leans back into Steve, feeling suddenly tired.

"You need to rest some more?" he askes, rubbing at her arms as carefully as he can to avoid where he knows she's been hurt.

"Maybe," she admits. It's not exactly a surprise, not after everything. She still feels bad, though, so she adds a "sorry" without really knowing what she's apologizing for.

He waves that off and shakes his head.

"Sleep. I'll be here."

He adds another kiss to her hair.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only