SAVED BY THE AVENGERS

LIES

It was several hours later when Bruce and Dr. Jim emerged from Gwen's sickroom, exhausted, but hopeful.

"She's stable," he announced to the room of waiting superheros. "It looks like whatever she was injected with wasn't ready for human testing. Osborn got impatient."

"Is she going to be alright?" Steve asked the question everyone in the room wanted to know the answer to.

"The serum is wreaking havoc on her body," Dr. Jim took over the answer to that question. "Muscle contractions, fever, seizures, she's been through the ringer. The muscle contractions and seizures have stopped but it seems that the serum isn't giving up its hold on her as she still has a high fever. She's on something to try and reduce her fever."

"That doesn't answer the question," Clint noted, seemingly nonchalant, though there was a hard look in his eyes.

Dr. Jim sighed. "If her fever goes down then the prognosis is good. But there's no guarantee that we can get her temperature to normal levels."

"Is it a side effect of the serum?" Steve asked.

"Not a fever as high as she has," Bruce replied. "If it were on the low side, I would say yes. But as high as it is, I would suspect a secondary factor. Only problem is that she hasn't been given any drugs recently and, according to the charts they kept, her vitals from the past few days have been good. I'm sceptical that she managed to catch a bug the same day they injected her but it's not completely out of the realm of possibility."

"What if it was something already in her system and the serum merely aggravated it," Tony asked.

"We thought about that, but there would be other signs," Bruce said. "We've been going through- Thor?" Bruce broke off mid-sentence when the god of thunder walked into the room.

In all the time the team had been together, not once had they ever seen Thor even slightly under the weather. At that moment he looked extremely sick.

"I don't suppose you have anything for headaches, doctor?" Thor asked, rubbing his temples.

"No offence point break," Tony said, "But you look like shit."

"Thank you for stating the obvious, Anthony," Thor replied.

"Shit, Thor, what's wrong?" Clint asked.

"Magical energy overload," Thor mumbled. "Gwen's energy has been running rampant since we brought her back."

"I think I've got something for you Thor," Dr. Jim said, walking back into Gwen's room to get the bag of supplies he brought with him.

Bruce barely acknowledged the man leaving the room, instead he was staring into space, lost in thought.

"Doc, what's up?" Tony asked. "You've got a look on your face."

think I know what's going on with Gwen's body," Bruce said as Dr. Jim walked back in the room with the medication that he promised Thor. "Jim, what if the serum somehow reacted with Gwen's magical energy and that's what's keeping her fever up. When you were her primary care doctor was there anything that you noticed that was different about her physical make up?"

"I never noticed anything physically," the other doctor replied slowly. "But whenever she was hurt or sick, her mother would sit with her. She would always be telling her to calm down, just keep calm and everything would be alright. She'd do breathing exercises, meditation techniques, the works. I always assumed it was something her mother did to keep her from freaking out. She wasn't completely emotionally stable at times. Panic attacks, flashbacks, she'd forget where she was at times and when she couldn't recognize us and couldn't find her mother... Things sometimes got a little ugly."