Flower - Marvel Fanfiction

Thirteen

S H A M R O C K

Elena groaned when the white lights hit her eyes. She shifted in her spot, burying her face deeper in her arms only to have a hand shake her awake. Groggily blinking open her eyes, Elena stifled a yawn. "What time is it?"

"Ten in the morning," Bruce replied. "You missed breakfast."

Elena sat up and startled when her eyes adjusted. This wasn't her suite, she realized. It was the lab. Giving her head a shake, Elena cursed. She must have fallen asleep in the middle of working. What was she working on again?

Bruce frowned at the many tools that were scattered in front of her, narrowing his eyes. He carefully picked up one of the syringes. "What were you doing last night?" he asked, squinting at the label. "Did you drug yourself?"

"No!" Elena said. "Well, yes. Kind of? Look, I needed to extract stem cells."

"Stem cells?"

Elena could see the gears turning in his head, and she couldn't help but grin when the realization struck him. She chuckled at his reaction.

"Stem cells! Of course!" Bruce moved to a screen, pulling up holograms. "Unspecialized cells that can develop into anything given the right conditions." He suddenly paused, his head snapping to face Elena. "But they take days to harvest. You'd have to take that drug for several days before—did you overdose?"

"I know what I'm doing."

"How in the world did you become a doctor?"

"I'm not a doctor anymore, Doctor," Elena sighed. "I don't have to play by the rules."

"You could have killed yourself. Or worse."

"But I didn't," Elena insisted. "I can see my cells. I know when it'll be too much."

"You're spending way too much time with Tony."

She snorted. "Heard that before."

"Y'all talking 'bout me? Good things, right?"

Bruce crossed his arms as Tony strolled in. "You tell me."

Tony made a face, offering a fist bump to Elena only to be declined. He huffed and rolled his eyes, stopping midway when he noticed the syringes on the table. His eyebrows raised when he looked to the holograms that Bruce had pulled up. "What in the world are stem cells?" he muttered. "Jarvis?"

Jarvis didn't even get through the first sentence of the Wikipedia page he had begun reciting before Tony shut him down. "No, that's enough of that." He pursed his lip at the silence that came next. "Now, it's too quiet. Jarvis, play Shoot to Thrill."

Elena groaned at the beat that began playing. She hated hard rock. It was too loud for her tastes. She glanced over at Bruce who didn't even bat an eye. He just turned and began cleaning up the mess she had made last night as if he was used to the music.

Sighing, Elena rummaged through the cabinets for a catheter, or a plastic tube. Closing her fingers around one, she took a deep breath. It had been too long since she held one in her hands.

"You good there, Dumpling?" Tony yelled over the loud music.

"Fantastic." She turned. "You don't happen to have an apheresis, do you?"

"I have everything you've ever dreamed of," he said, nodding to one of the machines against the wall. "Come on. I'll get you hooked up."

Elena nodded and followed Tony, grabbing a chair on the way. Sitting, she let her head roll back and rest on the chair. She watched Tony set up the apheresis, so that it would separate her stem cells.