Chapter Three

The sun shining brightly through the small window landed on Reyna's tired eyes, momentarily blinding her. She lay on her back, unmoving, wiling her eyes to close again. Her body was so sore. She moved her head ever so slightly to glance at the wall clock across from her.

It read 11:42 am. It was Wednesday. She should have been at work at 8 in the morning.

"Shit!" she yelled. She jumped up from the couch and quickly wished she hadn't. Her head spun and she staggered for a few moments before rushing to the bathroom to fix herself up for the day.

She almost cried when she saw her reflection. She looked absolutely horrible. Her right eye was swollen and dark blue with dried blood caked underneath. Her other eye was slightly puffy from crying last night. Her throat was bruised as well, looking like she had been choked, which she had.

She frantically began laying on the make-up hoping to cover as much as she could. Unfortunately, she wasn't a make-up wizard. She was able to tone down the color a bit but there was still some obvious bruising.

She opted for trousers and flats today. She didn't want to take any chances. She found a casual scarf in her closet and placed it around her neck, hoping to cover that mess as well.

With one final glance in the mirror, she pushed aside the desire to crawl back into bed and headed out the door.

She barely made it out the door when she heard someone call her name. It was Peter who was on his way out as well.

"Don't you leave earlier for work?" he asked.

"Slept in," was Reyna's curt response. She was trying to duck her head enough where he wouldn't see her black eye. "It's been a rough morning. You heading to class?"

"Yeah. You okay?"

Reyna nodded. "Just frazzled this morning."

"You should probably put some ice on that eye of yours," he commanded off-handedly.

Reyna looked at him in surprise, giving him a clear view of her face. He reached over and held her chin, inspecting her eye.

"It's horrible, isn't it?" she asked. Her eyes were starting to tear up as she relived the moments from the previous night. She gave a humorless laugh. "I probably looked worse last night. Spiderman saved me from this creep. He must have thought I was a mess…"

Peter shook his head, letting her face go. They continued walking. "Doubt it. He's a cool guy though, isn't he?"

The brunette agreed. "He's amazing. I was always a bit more partial to Iron Man but after what happened last night, Spiderman's definitely my favorite."

Peter looked at her incredulously. "Iron Man?! He's such a show off! Why would you like him?"

Reyna smiled a bit, trying not to show that that small action caused her pain. "He was my old man crush. Not that he's old, just older than me. Plus, he's my boss now."

"Old man crush? You're weird. I take it you work at Stark Industries then?"

"In the research department," she replied.

"You too good for OsCorp?" he asked jokingly.

"Hey, they weren't hiring!" she defended.

"Right, right. I'm heading this way so I'll see you later." And he was off.

Reyna watched him go for a moment. That was odd. Peter never stopped to actually have a conversation with her before, so why not start? Even though it seemed out of character, the little character that she knew of him, she actually liked conversing with him. He was kind of goofy but funny and easy to talk to. She hoped there would be more conversations to come.

A feeling of dread cloaked Reyna's entire form as she made her up into Stark Tower. She had never been late for work before and she didn't even want to think about the consequences. She desperately hoped they wouldn't fire her for being incompetent.

When she entered the lab, both Stark and Banner were there discussing something. She ducked her face when they looked at her and she rushed over to the biohazard refrigerator they had. How long could she go without showing her face? She took the tube rack holding her specimen and she made sure she was looking to the side as she headed to her work station. She looked guilty for sure.

"Did you party hard last night?" Tony asked. His voice was calm and easy but Reyna could tell he was upset that she was late.

"No, of course not," she replied meekly. "Something happened last night. It's been a rough morning."

"Hate to break it to you babe, but you're going to have to do better than that," Tony scolded.

"I've been trying to work on these antibodies for hours but I couldn't do it without you," Banner started in. "Now I've messed up these samples and we need to start over." Oh great, she was in so much trouble.

Reyna began tearing up again. Why was she so weak? "I'm sorry," she squeaked out. She faced them fully now and when they saw her bruising, she saw their eyes widen and exchange looks of concern between themselves.

Dr. Banner walked forward and began inspecting her face. He looked genuinely concerned and she began crying, mostly out of embarrassment. "Reyna, what happened?"

She shut her eyes tightly as he began touching her face. "Tony, can you get my some ice?"

Reyna whimpered. "I should have put ice on it last night. I was just so exhausted from the stress that I passed out."

"I need you to tell me what happened," he repeated. Tony returned with an ice pack that Banner put on her face immediately.

Reyna grimaced at the sudden cold and struggled to get a grip on herself. "I was walking home last night after leaving the lab and I was attacked by some guy. He was- he was trying to…sexually assault me…I was so scared. He got mad when I-I resisted."

Dr. Banner's eyes never left her face. It almost calmed Reyna, knowing that he was so concerned and nice. It was something she never expected since he was always so quiet and kept to himself. "Did you want to go home?" he asked. "We'd understand if you took the next couple of days off."

"No," she shook her head. "Doing my work will actually get my mind off of this. Please, I wanna stay."

"Okay," Dr. Banner said. He took the ice pack off of her face and placed it in her hand. He then took a step back away from her and Reyna released the breath she didn't realize she was holding. "We'll need new samples to work with. I'll get the blood, and if you don't mind eluting the antibodies again, I'll help you out this time."

Tony left soon after, commenting on how she was gutsy and that he was sorry he wasn't there to help her out. Reyna appreciated it. All the concern helped brighten her mood a bit.

She began looking through the opened tubes, seeing if she could salvage anything when she saw Dr. Banner preparing to stab himself with a needle from the corner of her eye. She blinked a few times to make sure she wasn't seeing things and when he was almost at his arm, Reyna shouted, "No!"

Dr. Banner stopped with a start. "What happened? What's wrong?"

"Are you going to draw your own blood?" she questioned incredulously.

He looked at her like she was crazy. "I do it all the time."

"Dr. Banner, you're going to hemolyze your blood if you do that. Destroying the red cells that way will prevent me from doing any accurate tests. Let me." She walked over to him and put on some new gloves.

"You know how to draw blood?"

"I'm a certified phlebotomist," she told him. "I drew blood all the time at the hospital I interned at. It's not my favorite thing to do but I can do it."

"I'm impressed," he said. He looked like he meant it too, flashing her a big smile. She was surprised at the fluttery feeling she felt in the pit of her stomach. Where did that come from?

She had to play it cool. "Thanks." She returned the smile, hoping she didn't look totally lame. She located his vein and inserted the needle easily, filling up at least five tubes of blood to experiment on.

"Now I feel better," she commented. "I almost had a heart attack when I saw you were doing it on your own. Seriously, if you need more blood drawn, just let me know."

He nodded. "I'll remember that for next time."

At first, Reyna was bummed that she would have to do the grueling process of eluting again but she found that it really wasn't so bad to do, once Dr. Banner joined in the process with her. She explained every step and what was happening to his cells as she did so. He seemed very intrigued, asking questions now and then.

She figured since he was being so open at the moment, she would ask some questions of her own. "You mentioned before that you know a lot about gamma radiation. Is that how you become the Hulk?"

He hesitated before answering her. "Yeah, something like that. Tomorrow we can work with the antisera, right?"

She could take the hint. "No talking about the Hulk, duly noted. And yes, tomorrow's work will be a lot easier."

"Sorry, I wasn't trying to be rude," he apologized. "I guess my alter ego is just a sore subject."

Reyna laughed him off. "I'm not so fragile, you know." Then she remembered how her face was badly bruised and she was in fact a fragile human being. "Eh…you know what I mean."

"Let me walk you home tonight," he said unexpectedly.

Reyna looked at him quickly, suddenly feeling her face get warm. She held her hands in front of her putting space between them. "Oh, no, you really don't have to do that. I'm sure you have better things to do. Maybe get home to your wife or something."

Dr. Banner chuckled. "I'm not married. And I want to walk you home. I want to make sure you get back safe."

The brunette nodded. "If you insist," she replied meekly.

She was secretly pleased on many accounts. First off, he wasn't married which meant she could be as flirty and cute as she wanted without feeling guilty- she didn't mean to but found that whenever she was around good-looking men she tended to have a flirty tone in her voice. Second off, the fact that a good-looking guy wanted to walk her home to make sure she was safe was a very flattering thought. She'd take it.


"Of course, now that you're here there isn't another person in sight," Reyna commented sarcastically. The walk back to her place wasn't very far but since she wasn't exactly rich, it wasn't in the safest area. Many nights she could see thugs walking around but this night, the streets were empty.

Dr. Banner gave a sincere laugh. She was starting to like his laugh. "I just radiate intimidation."

She was very surprised at how not awkward the walk with this man was. She didn't know how the walk was going to go exactly since sometimes he felt like talking and other times he didn't but they shared amiable conversation.

He wasn't very tall, just a head taller than her. But surprisingly, that didn't bother her even though she was always a fan of taller men. Being out of the lab seemed to change his persona completely. In the lab he seemed like an antisocial scientist who was always absorbed in his work and nothing else. Out here, walking with her, he was just a regular guy.

"Maybe if they knew about your split personality," she joked. "Thank you for walking me. Seriously, I appreciate it."

"It was no problem," he remarked.

They made it to the front door and she faced him fully now. He smiled at her and she couldn't help but smile back. "Did you want me to call you a cab or something? It's dark now and I wouldn't want you walking on your own." Great, she sounded like a mom.

"I'll be fine. See you tomorrow, Reyna."

"Goodnight, Dr. Banner," she called out to him.

He looked over his shoulder and with a spark of delight in his eyes he said, "Call me Bruce."


A/N: Any good? Please review!