PART V: Don't Stop Believin'
The next few weeks fell into a routine for Darcy. She stayed in what she had started calling the Hulk Basement, and studied meditation and shit to try to get a handle on She Hulk.
In the mornings, she woke up cuddled up to Bruce, usually with his monster of a cock poking her in the back or the thigh or something. Seriously, he should be called Hulk just for the size of the rocket in his pocket. Darcy never said anything though, because Bruce always blushed and wouldn't look her in the eye, so it became this big (really big) unspoken thing. Darcy knew that Bruce had a giant dick and that sleeping close to her turned him on, Bruce knew that she knew, they didn't speak of it.
Sometimes she wondered what he'd say if she told him waking up that way turned her on too, but they had enough shit to deal with without adding sex to the mix. One day, though. One day she was just going to get in the bed naked or something and see what he'd do.
During the day Bruce disappeared up to the Science Sisters lab to work on Project Hide the Hulk Junk, and Darcy did her meditation exercises with JARVIS. It didn't take her long to figure out that while Bruce needed quiet, relaxing music to help him with control, Darcy needed to feel confident, not calm, to keep She Hulk from coming out. So she made herself a playlist of power ballads, Lady Gaga, and Adam Lambert, and the world could judge her for her tastes all it wanted, her tastes were clearly awesome because they literally soothed the savage beast.
In the afternoons, Bruce would come back and be Darcy's Yoda for a while. They ate lunch, because Darcy knew he would just eat Jane's stale Pop-Tart crusts if she didn't make him something better, and then they meditated together and talked about having a hulk.
"Does yours talk to you inside your head too?" she asked one afternoon. "Or am I just extra crazy?"
Bruce smiled his little wry smile. "We're all mad here."
They compared notes on conversing with their counterparts.
-l-
On some days, they transformed into Man Hulk and She Hulk and filmed themselves interacting. At Darcy's suggestion, they started reading up on social behaviors between various types of big apes, and found some promising comparisons. (Darcy's first suggestion had been to call Jane Goodall, but Bruce didn't want anyone to know too much about the hulks, and after some thought Darcy agreed.)
"I think it's like… they're not separate from us, you know?" Darcy said. "It's more like they're what's leftover of the primal monkey part of our brains, and the transformation just puts that part in the driver's seat. Look at how Man Hulk defers to She Hulk and brings her things to smash. The bonobos we watched on that Animal Planet documentary did that same posturing thing he does, look."
Bruce was quiet, turning his glasses over and over in his hands.
"Bruce?"
He blinked and looked up. "Sorry. I know that they're us. There's not really a difference. It's just… I've thought of him as separate from me for so long because – "
Darcy cut him off with a hug.
"God, you must resent me so much," she said without meaning to, after several minutes of silence. She immediately wished she could take the words back, because if Bruce did resent her she actually really didn't want to know about it.
"What?" Bruce gasped, gripping her shoulders and pushing her back far enough so that he could look into her face. "Why would you think that?"
Darcy blinked at him. "Umm, because I take up all your time and I'm constantly whining about being a hulk and I won't leave the apartment and it's been so much harder for you. I mean, at least I have you, right? You were all alone for so long, and people hunted you, and – "
"Darcy," Bruce interrupted, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear with one hand. They'd both found that the urge to groom each other sort of carried over from their hulk selves, and had stopped fighting it. "If it wasn't for me, wasn't for my blood, this would have never happened to you. If anything, you should resent me."
Darcy put on her most serious face and reached up to run her thumb over the stubble on Bruce's cheek. "Yeah, no. You don't get to add this to your pile of brooding guilt. I'm like this because a bunch of goons kidnapped me and stuck me full of needles. It's their fault, not yours."
"But – "
"Nope."
"I –"
"Nuh uh."
"Darcy – "
"I will taze you."
Bruce was silent, and Darcy smiled. "That's what I thought."
Bruce's lips twitched into an answering smile. He started to turn back to their hulk research, and then paused. "Darcy?"
"Yeeesss?"
"You're right. I was all alone before. But I'm not anymore."
Darcy gaped for a minute, and then they were hugging again.
-l-
Once a week, Natasha called to video chat with Darcy. These chats always ended with Darcy hulking out and She Hulk listening to her precious Black Widow talk about battle strategies and plans. While Darcy was adamant about not leaving the tower, she agreed that it was a good idea to condition She Hulk to find and ask Black Widow for instructions if she was ever thrust into a combat situation. After an almost alien invasion, who knew what could happen, right?
Besides, Natasha was stubborn as fuck and she'd just keep calling back if Darcy hung up on her.
-l-
Darcy's only visitor besides Bruce was Thor. Any attempt to introduce someone soft and squishy into the Hulk Basement, or to make Darcy leave, resulted in a panic attack that had Darcy mean and green in five seconds flat.
Thor was strong though, and he didn't care if she hulked out. On some days he even asked her to do it so they could arm wrestle, and he could teach She Hulk to fight with a little more finesse than just smashing anything that stood in her way. He came to hang out every Thors-day, just like they had before the whole She Hulk dealio.
"I do not understand why everyone speaks of this as if it were a curse," Thor said. "You have always been a warrior maiden. Now your strength of arm matches your strength of spirit. What is wrong with this?"
And that was why Thor was awesome.
