Difficult Patients (Bruce)

[aa_valkyrie]

The Medical Facilities at the SHIELD HQ are gleaming pinnacles of modern (and in some cases alien)technology, equally prepared to handle a simple gunshot wound or a godly blade through the chest. They are the best of the best: men and women with exceptional skills and swift courtesy, poached from the best hospitals and universities around the world. Today they ring the Facility, leaving a width berth around the...decidedly unhelpful figure of Valkyrie. Standing tall with her arms crossed, she stares down one of the nursing staff who brandishes a needle halfheartedly. "I do not see the point in these measures. If you wish to test my fitness, find me a field." "Just a little blood? It won't hurt a tick."

What is Bruce Banner doing here again, in amidst these fine professionals?

Well. He appears to be wandering around in scuffed sneakers and a blue golf shirt that someone has loaned him. The pants clearly don't fit him quite right, either, overly loose and belted to hold them up at his waist. He is not wearing anything doctory. No one is asking him for any blood. It is possible he has glared at enough of them to prevent this from happening.

He spies the commotion from a little ways away and his eyebrows twitch up, the barest hint of humor in his dark eyes as he shrugs his hands into the pockets over the trousers. "They don't have doctors where you come from?" he asks.

Chill blue eyes regard the needle with palpable distaste as Val replies, "You will barely cut flesh with such a puny blade." It's so /small/. She does not uncross her arms to allow the nurse the attempt.

Turning towards Bruce at the sound of his voice, she lifts her brows in what may be greeting. A thread of dark humor curves her lips. "Not like this. We care for our own following a batle, but this..." Upkeep. "Is unnecessary."

Bruce makes eye contact with one of the medical staff, and tilts his head in an obscurely dismissive gesture despite the fact that one of them is licensed to practice and the other is not. For some reason, it works ... at least enough to make enough room for one more doctor to bustle around the Valkyrie. Maybe Banner is scary. Or maybe he is trusted to have peculiar insight into scary people.

Sidling in closer to the very tall woman, he tips his head at her. "I'm surprised to hear you say so," he says. "Do you maintain your ... uh, gear?"

Val is certainly very large and possibly a little scary. Oops. The higher angle of her brow draws wrinkles into her forehead, features lightly lined with age. "Weapons are maintained, yes. Valkyrie are not like you humans, though. We are not so easy to injure. The honor of being intended for war, Doctor Banner."

"Does it offend you that SHIELD wishes that you be maintained, as any other weapon of war?" Bruce's eyebrows are up, his smile slight in a kind of helpless good humor. "I mean, leaving aside the desperate curiosity of the human race presented with beings beyond it," he adds, tilting his head to her in a kind of acknowledging nod.

The warrior woman blinks at that, mouth dropping open slightly before she barks out a rough laugh -- sudden and bright. "You have me there. It does not offend, but I have little desire to be so prodded with useless tools. These /tests/ must have an end," Valkyrie opines dryly, shooting at suspicious glance towards the nurse. "What of you? Do such things pluck at your own curiosity?"

"Dr. Banner," one of the nurses may be heard to say, in a tone of strangled irony.
Bruce ignores this. He smiles a little, a lift of his mouth more at one corner than the other, with a hint of a crease wrinkling at his forehead. "Of course," he says. "I went to medical school. Why not?" He lifts a hand in a kind of delaying gesture: wait, his palm says, open and up. "The thing is," he explains, tilting his head, "--basically that they want to establish a baseline of what's normal for you. If someone manages some kind of weird nastiness that /does/ manage to hurt you, they'll want to be able to know. All the trying to fix it in the world won't matter, if they can't figure out the way you're /supposed/ to be."

"So do they tempt the humors of the Son of Odin with such...curiosity? I must say I imagine his reaction to be rather amusing," Valkyrie offers, cold eyes slowly brightening with a touch of, perhaps surprising, good humor. "I suppose that it does nothing to dissuade their inclination that should that occur it is certain to be a good death?" She asks dryly, looking baffled at this human convention.

"I am sure that they do," Bruce says without missing a beat, "considering who else they have prodded at and tried to get blood from." He glances pointedly back at the nurse, who is eyeing him warily, and then returns his look to Valkyrie. "Do you believe that /any/ death that might find you is a good one?" he wonders, tone gone particularly wry.

"So you as well?" Subtle, Val. "Only the glorious ones found in battle," Valkyrie amends with a flat note of laughter. "I do not ail like I have seen humans do, though. There are not such diseases among my people as within your own."

"You have conquered bacteria and virus, have you?" Bruce studies her with a sardonic slant to his glance, smile tucked into the corner of his mouth. "Are there ballads?"

"Or at the least I have yet to find one that finds me to be easy prey. Your own knowledge of such things is recent as well, perhaps there is one to be found that affects your race as well as mine." Humans. So breakable. "Odin's beard. I certainly hope not," Valkyrie retorts, wrinkles breaking at the corner of her eyes with the breadth of her smile.

"Nah," Bruce tells her easily. "More likely, there's some strange alien bug you're immune to that will slaughter all of our immune systems and kill half the population of the entire eastern seabord before you can say 'Poughkeepsie'."

"That would be unfortunate. We shall have to keep our swords sharp in case of this bug and slaughter it ourselves should it make shore-fall," Valkyrie says seriously, arms unfolding to be ready for such battle. Bacteria and viruses have science programs to thank for her knowledge, but her slang is a little lacking. "Why would I say -- 'Poughkeepsie'?'"

"I-- don't think you can use a sword to do that," Bruce says very carefully, because he is clearly making the nurses nervous with his talk of /terrible plagues/ of massive population destruction. He opens his hands in a shruggy gesture. "I don't know," he says, "maybe you're buying a bus ticket?"

"/Dr. Banner/," says the nurse. Bruce looks innocent.

"I have an excellent sword." No bug is going to get past her. Valkyrie looks towards the nurse at the recitation of Banner's name. Again. "Do you require him for something, madame? Or do you simply stutter?" She wonders without malice, lifting her brows in quiet consternation.

The poor nurse just looks frustrated, throwing her hands up in a huff.

Bruce grins in a sudden flash of humor. He shakes his head, and does not elaborate, but the slant of his look in the nurse's direction shows that he knows full well why she might be annoyed. "If you'd be willing to cooperate with the boffins so that they can establish a baseline, though," he says, "for one thing, you'll be out of here much quicker."

Valkyrie looks back at Bruce rather blankly and lifts her shoulders in a shrug. She must stutter or something. Then she eyes the nurse suspiciously, gaze flickering from her to the needle in her grasp. "Very well. I understand the need to see that a weapon be maintained." Her arm is offered so that the nurse can finally attempt to extract blood from it. Or Bruce can. The nurse may have some significant trouble piercing the needle through the skin.

Of course, Bruce Banner -- like the nurse -- has only perfectly ordinary human strength, and the nurse probably has a lot more experience with localized blood draws ... at least, recently. The medicine Bruce has practiced in the field as of the past few years has been pretty low tech. He stands there hands off, in fact, with hands tucking back into his pockets. "I'm sure they appreciate that," he says, "especially in the event of a, ah, plague."

The nurse drops her visage of professionalism and swears softly as she has to rise up on her toes to /forces/ the needle into the Valkyrie's skin. After doing the necessary prep as quickly as possible in case Val changes her mind again. She turns towards Bruce with a wide eyed and rather incredulous look that speaks volumes. Are you seeing this? Valkyrie merely looks bored and mildly annoyed. She does bleed though. "Do you have many plagues of the sort?" When the nurse struggles to pull the needle free from her skin again, having drawing enough blood, the blonde reaches over and tugs it out herself. There. Fine. "I have not seen anything of the scope you mentioned in a long while since vaccines have been developed."

"No, mostly facetious," Bruce says, dropping a shoulder in a half-shrug for all that he still keeps his hands pocketed. He watchs the poor nurse's progress -- or lack thereof -- with the needle a little quizzically. "There's a pretty familiar tradition of cross-civilization contact resulting in horrible death. Or at least -- genital ... issues." Now he draws his hand out of his pocket to scrub over his jawline. "Anyway," he says, eyebrows arching and then falling in a bob of an expression that's like, /moving on/ from that place he just took the conversation. "So."

It quite the struggle until the needle makes it into the vein. "Genital issues? Harsh term for the mixed offspring of a rough bedding, Doctor Banner." That might be joke. Valkyrie at least looks amused, more so for his expression of 'moving onward.' What? "So. Do you enjoy this -- business," she wonders, waving a hand towards the general atmosphere of SHIELD.

Bruce opens his mouth, closes it, and clears his throat rather than respond directly to the ... joke. He says, instead: "Enjoy? Well." He glances aside, and around the medical facility in an idle skip of glance. He says, "I'm not sure that's the word I'd choose," in this low, wry tone, weighted with breath. "Why did you decide to come aboard?"

"What word would you choose then?" Valkyrie watches him with an unflinching gaze, cold eyes sharp with interest. "I wonder much the same: what draws normal men and women to this cause? On my part...I like this realm. I have walked its curves for far too many years to count and would gladly rise to defend it. The thrill of battle has been lost to me for a time." The nurse backs away, dropping her vials into the appropriate spots on a nearby tray. Val stretches out her sluggishly bleeding arm. Something about her expression hints that it is not all of the story, but it is what she is willing to share.

"'Normal'?" Bruce's eyes crinkle at the corners with humor. "Do you see any normal men and women around here?"

"Is that /your/ word?" Val replies with the touch of a smile. She answered his question, after all. "I see a great number of them who rise to the dangers this presents."

"Mm." Bruce scruffs his hand through his hair, fingers dragging along his scalp. "My word. Well." He hesitates longer, dark eyes dropping for a moment as he considers, and then he looks up at her again with the barest shadow of a smile at one corner of his mouth. "I'd say I find it ... valuable," he says.

"Valuable," she repeats. There is a clarity to Valkyrie's gaze that seems to settle with some new consideration in her eyes. The edges of her mouth tug upward in turn. "Then it suits you well, Doctor Banner. That is good to hear. An ally who is malcontent in his choices is not one that I wish to make. I hope you will not find me so mad as you seemed to that day in the park, now."

"Oh," Bruce says on the draw of a long breath, "no, not mad. Once we understood who you might be--" He favors her with a wider smile, and wiggles his fingers in a vague gesture. "Just not from around here."

"Ah. Yes, you've had a number of our rather less charming members of society," Valkyrie agrees with crooked humor. "Party crashers the lot of them."

"Should we expect more?" Bruce asks, eyebrows up.

Valkyrie shakes her head. "My knowledge of their comings is limited to the news. I rarely travel the distance...home. So to speak."

Bruce tilts his head in a slow kind of acknowledgment. "But you're ... familiar with the troublemakers?" he says. He settles his weight back on his heels, sneaker scuffing a little over the clean, neutral floor of the medical facility. The curiosity that sharpens his gaze as he studies her features seems -- oddly untimely, considering their still-recent success over the Chitauri.

"I am...very old. Neither your people nor mine are immune to growing pains as children, so I am familiar with their stories. Some I do not know personally, they are after the time where I would have been at the Allfather's arm into battle," Valkyrie explains, wiping the blood from her arm with a swipe of sturdy fingers. "Stories of trouble spread quickly."

"Any stories of trouble I wouldn't know?" Bruce asks her. His eyes are alert, a little overbright, although it is nothing like Starkian intensity.

"More than a few no doubt --" Whatever story Valkyrie is about to begin is soon interrupted by the nurse clicking her tongue and flashing him a flat smile. "Excuse me, Doctor Banner. If Agen...Mi...Valkyrie doesn't mind. We have a few more tests to do before we can release her for the day," the nurse says. Val sighs with irritation and ducks her head in a nod. "Another time then. I look forward to speaking with you further," she says to Bruce with a slight smile.

"Sure," Banner says easily. He tips his head in ready acknowledgment, and then turns to amble off for points elsewhere.


Bruce gets Valkyrie to behave for her physical. She is probably still not getting a lollypop.