For once in her life, Darcy couldn't speak. She usually had plenty to say, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. It was like the words were lodged there, right in the back of her throat.

At her silence, the Hulk took a step toward one of the speakers. "Darcy?" Although she may have been imagining it, through the rough, gravelly texture of his voice, the Hulk almost sounded... worried?

After another moment of silence, Jane jabbed her not so delicately in the shoulder, spurring Darcy to speak. "Hey, big guy."

There was no imagining the relieved slump of the Hulk's shoulders at hearing her voice. Or the way he cocked his head, waiting for her to speak again.

"Well I'll be.." Tony drawled in shock, causing the Hulk to frown at the entry of a new voice.

Darcy snapped her fingers to get the billionaire's attention and then made a cutting gesture across her throat. Tony talking was rarely helpful and now was no different. Too many voices would just confuse the poor guy.

Rolling her chair forward, Darcy angled her head up at what she thought was the microphone. "I know you must hate being caged up like this." She did her best to keep her voice calm and sweet, not knowing what could trigger another rage fest. "Do you want to get out of there?"

The Hulk nodded vigorously in response.

Taking a deep breath, Darcy hoped that he wouldn't react badly to what she had to say next. "Okay, but to do that we're going to need Bruce to come back."

Despite speaking slowly, she wasn't sure at first that the Hulk had understood. Then he plopped down on the floor with a loud huff causing a cloud of cement powder to kick up in the air. Oh yeah, he had understood.

"The other guy not feel well," the Hulk rumbled, bowing his head and rolling a basketball-sized rock around on the ground with his pinky.

"I know and that's why we needed you... But now we need Bruce, okay?"

The Hulk flicked his finger at the rock and it went flying across the room. If it wasn't for the fact that he was the size of a small building, the green giant would have looked like an annoyed child who had just been told play time was over. He huffed again. "Okay." The Hulk closed his eyes and slowly inhaled. Exhaled... inhaled. Then an eye popped open. "See Darcy soon?"

A smile spread across Darcy's face at that. "Yeah, big guy. I'll see you soon."

Eyes closed again, the Hulk breathed in and out, slow breaths, the rise and fall of his chest visible from up behind the window. And after a few breaths, just like that, he started to change back.

It was strange watching it happen in reverse. Darcy had seen Bruce transform a handful of times, but watching the impossibly large, green figure shrink down to a small human man was mindblowing.

The size started changing first, limbs getting slimmer and eventually shortening to human proportions. Midway through that change, the Hulk's skin began to shift to a light tan color.

The whole process was over in less than a minute and then it was just an unconcious man laying in the middle of the rocky debri.

There was an overly dramatic gasp to Darcy's right and she turned her head to see Tony looking half annoyed, half thrilled. "We really could have used you for the past few years, our own personal Hulk whisperer. Where have you been hiding?"

Jane snorted. "New Mexico, London, New York... "

"But not Asgard," Darcy added sharply with a glare at Jane, then shot a look back at Thor. She would be forever bitter that her best friend got to visit a mystical land with gods and magic and rainbow bridges. Meanwhile Darcy had had to stay on boring old Earth with Ian as her only company. She shook her in disgust at the hand life had dealt her, then turned to an amused Tony. "Look," she said, pointing to the window. "No more green. So I can go down now, right?"

"Let me go first and check his vitals. Then you can see him." Tony started for the elevator that would take him down to that level then paused, opening a cabinet that Darcy hadn't noticed before and pulling out a blanket along with a pair of pants and a shirt that looked suspiciously similar to what Bruce wore every day. Tony smirked. "Always good to prepared."

A minute later, Darcy could see Tony appear in the corner of the enclosed room and make his way over to Bruce's still immobile body. The first thing Tony did was throw a blanket over his friend for modesty's sake, then pulled out his palm pad.

It was a few, long minutes before Tony rose from where he had been hunched over Bruce and gave the thumbs up. Without being asked, Jane took hold of the wheelchair and pushed Darcy toward the elevator doors, Thor jogging ahead of them to get the button.

By the time the three of them were on the right level, past several security measures, and wheeling forward, Tony had Bruce in a sitting position, his back leaning against a large boulder that a few minutes earlier would have been the size of his fist.

When Jane went to push Darcy forward, she put out a foot to stop the motion. "No, I want to walk for this."

"But Darcy-" Jane started to protest.

Darcy motioned out to the field of rocks before them. "There's no way we can get over all of that in a wheelchair."

"She does have a point," Thor said helpfully, which earned him a grin from Darcy and a deadly 'shut up' look from his girlfriend.

Ignoring Jane's protest, Darcy grimaced before plucking the IV out of her arm and tapping on the clear bag in her lap. "Plus, I'm out of juice. This thing is useless to me empty."

When Jane realized that Darcy wasn't going to listen to reason she sighed. "Fine. You get five minutes and then you're in the chair heading back upstairs to your hospital room."

"Roger that."

It took Darcy an embarassingly long time to walk over to the two men, but she hadn't really thought about the fact that she was barefoot and there was so much debri around. Plus, she was kind of in pain given the lack of aformentioned juice, so yeah, she wasn't going to be winning a race anytime soon.

"Took you a while," Tony quipped when she eventually stopped a foot away. He hadn't taken his eyes off Bruce the entire time, and although he took a step back now to give her some space, his eyes remained locked on his friend, hypervigilant. "I've commed a med team to come down, so that gives you a few minutes. He hasn't woken up yet-"

Ever the contrarion, Bruce chose that moment to open his eyes, squinting in the absence of his glasses. And the first thing they landed on was the woman in front of him.

"Darcy?" Although it was Bruce's voice saying her name this time, it still held the same confusion, the same vulnerability that she had heard in the Hulk's voice. But, this wasn't the Hulk. This was Bruce.

He was awake. And as his eyes were searching hers for answers, she realized she had none. She had been focused on him just waking up and now that he was, she didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say.

"Darcy." This time her name wasn't a question, but rather like a command as it broke into her jumbled thoughts and she focused in on Bruce's face.

He was blinking as if trying to reorient himself and peering around at the large, empty room with what Darcy came to recognize as alarm. She wondered how many times he had woken up in this very room after hulking out.

This time, when he spoke, his voice was pure, solid dread. None of the Hulk remained. It was just Bruce asking, "What did I do?" Voice hollow, devoid of feeling, already numbing himself, prepared to hear a tally of destruction that he'd caused.

"No, Bruce, no," she said, shaking her head. Then gave what she hoped was a good smile. It felt a little weird on her face, but then again everything was feeling a little weird at the moment. "You didn't do anything wrong. You did everything right."

It was obvious that he didn't believe her at first. As her smile stayed put, though, some of the tension seeped out of his shoulders and he ran a hand through his hair. "Well, that's a relief." He almost started to smile himself before his eyes landed on Darcy's hospital gown and widened in concern.

"I'm fine," she rushed to assure him. She was alive, her friends were alive, Bruce was awake, and... she was suddenly very done with the whole thing.

Without planning to, her legs just kind of gave out and she was suddenly sitting down on the ground beside Bruce. She felt like her body had short-circuited.

"Darcy?" It was Tony's voice this time instead of Bruce's and suddenly his face was very, very close.

Darcy blinked, taking a moment to process the height difference, then remembered that she was on the ground. "I think I want to go lie down," she mumbled, closing her eyes. That seemed to help.

"What happened to her?!"

Darcy wasn't sure at first if her brain was going foggy or if Tony was just mumbling his response, but Bruce's enraged "And whose brilliant idea was it to let her down here?!" answered her question quite efficiently.

It was as if her head was suddenly plunged under water, hearing and sight like wishy washy waves coming in and out of focus. Washy? Wishy? Did that make sense?

Another face appeared in the waves then and she felt a hand press against her side. She thought she heard the word "destruction" or maybe it was "concussion." Either one would have been accurate, but Darcy couldn't really find it in herself to care what was being said at the moment.

The last time this had happened, she'd fought to stay awake and make sure Bruce was okay. This time she didn't have the strength and welcomed the black dots, letting them consume her as her world went blissfully blank.

Author's Note:

*waves*

The next update will come when it comes. As will the editing (I'm trying to upload via my phone because my computer has been unusable for the past 2 months, so I hope the formatting isn't weird!)

As always - thanks for reading!