Stellar

[Black Widow]

For the Hulk, darlincs.

To be fair, she should have brought him to a SHIELD base nearby, kept him locked in a tiny room. The sedation would wear off soon, and it was entirely likely that she’d be left with a monster on her hands. Then again, she knew how she’d feel, waking up in a locked room without really remembering where she’d been; she’d be ticked off. At this point, no one wanted that. Better to bring him home and calm him down, get him to drink some tea and find him a normal bed for the night. That was the best thing to do.

He was still sedated, and when everyone left and the street quieted down a little, she bent down and with almost no effort at all scooped up the skinny, ragged looking scientist and carried him the seven blocks to her apartment. It wasn’t a difficult walk, though she garnered a fair few stares as she moved. It wasn’t surprising. She was wearing her cat-suit, shiny black material that did little to hide her body shape, and her weaponry of course. Broad shouldered, tall, dangerous looking, of course, and carrying a slim young man in her arms with all of the motherliness that she could muster, which was a fair bit. It didn’t take very long for her to reach the plain brick building she called home, to ascend the narrow staircase to the top floor and perform the difficult juggling act of maintaining her grip on the young man who had, just recently, been tearing apart city streets as well as unlocking the door. She succeeded, however, and in short order they were inside the simple apartment that she called home.

Through an open kitchen and into the living area, she set him lightly on the couch and banged a kettle onto the stove. Pre-empting the inevitable call, she put an earpiece in and leaned against the counter to place a call. “Sir? Yes, speaking, I have him here. In one piece. Sedated… yes sir, tomorrow. Of course, I think he’s waking up. I’ll contact.” She clicked the call off and pulled mugs and teabags from her cabinets, whistling under her breath. Tea steeping in each mug, she brought them into the living room, plunked one on the coffee-table, and sat back in a chair, playing with the paper label on the end of the string that hung from her mug. The turgid form on her couch stirred.

“Are you awake then, Bruce?” She asked, her voice very soft, sedation tended to bring on headaches in some people, she wondered how much aspirin she had lying around.

[hulk]

Dr. Banner was out cold, when previously he was destroying heroes and reformed villains alike. But in the back of his mind he knew that The Hulk was just a childish beast who wanted things his way. It wasn't so much a struggle any more than it was control. Yeah, that's it. Control. There wasn't much he could do when the beast was unleashed though he figured it made for a fun sight. The beast within him was much more than just some "release valve", it was a destructive being capable of leveling city blocks.

The hardest part was keeping himself in control of his streaks of anger. It was hard, considerably difficult by miles, to keep a goliath like The Hulk restrained. It took everything inside of you to keep that monster at bay and that could really frustrate you and stress you out like no tomorrow. That hardly being the point, Banner had undergone anger control exercises in Brazil when he stayed there to hide out from Gen. Ross and his soldiers. Blonsky, now that was a true bastard. He wanted everything that The Hulk was formed of.

... But he couldn't control it.

Suddenly, he heard a banging coming from some feet away and he awoke to a nasty headache. He tried to sit upright without feeling woozy but it, too, proved to be increasingly difficult. However, he had rubbed down his face and noticed a full cup of something sitting before him; he was on the couch, but not in a place so familiar. Immediately, he thought it to be some sort of capture attempt until he heard the sweet voice and thick Russian accent of one Natalia Romanova. The smell was soothing, it was nice warm tea.

He reached down and picked it up, the effects of the headache getting to him. He took a swig of the tea and gave a sigh of relief. "Thank god it's just you, Natalia. Tell me, what... What happened back there?" he asked, the tone of voice sounding slightly confused. He did realize that his clothes had been ripped to shreds save for his pants - now shorts. Now, he did recall the transformation into The Hulk because the Latino gang-bangers had picked on him previously for one reason or another.

[Black Widow]

Natalia gave him her best reassuring smile, her tea held loosely in her gloved hands. She shrugged very slightly when he asked her what had happened, looking him over very closely. She saw him wince very slightly when he sat up, so he did have a headache, there was probably some aspirin in her cabinet. She’d need to get him a few. “I don’t really know; the Hulk was fighting some people, a giant wolf-man, an abominably arrogant creature they were calling Mach V, and Juggernaut. It was lucky I was nearby, I heard the fight and I had the SHIELD issued sedatives on hand.” She set her tea down on the coffee table and extracted herself from the chair, loosing her hair from its braid as she walked across the room. It tangled together when she pulled her hand through it, but she didn’t pay much attention.

A light flicked on in the bathroom, and there was the sound of something rattling in a cabinet. Natalia came back out holding a tiny white bottle of ibuprofen. She set it down in front of him, smiled, and returned to her chair, bending to removed her high boots and start disarming. “You should take a few of those, they’ll help the headache, then finish your tea, and then I think I might have some of Ivan’s old clothes lying around, so we’ll get you a little cleaned up.” She gave another of those reassuring smiles while she tossed her boots to the side, she unclasped her bracers as well and stripped off her long gloves. In short order the explosives and sedatives that formed her belt were in the pile next to her pistols, she was barefoot and bare handed in her suit.

She took another sip of tea, reached back, and pulled a tangle forcefully from her hair. “So are you going to tell me what made you lose control in the first place?” She asked, drawing her feet onto the chair and balancing her mug on the arm while she dug on the side table amidst stacks of papers for her cigarettes and a lighter. Once she had one of the abominable cancer sticks lit she held it off to the side, “You had been getting so much better, I thought. Now I’m worried for you.” And she was worried, looking over the young man whom she’d often found herself to be quite fond of. He was a little maddening, yes, his spurts of obsession could prove to be unbearable, but that didn’t make her like him any less. She was worried for him, that something would happen and the sedatives wouldn’t work and then she’d be caught in a position where she couldn’t just bring him back to her apartment, and calm him down, and let him go. She didn’t want that to happen.