Tim doesn't really respond, except to wrap an arm around her knee.  Sleepy Tim doesn't want his pillow to move so much.

She reaches down and puts her hand in his hair.  She pets him gently.  It's a little bit of a luxury - most people would wake up when interacted with this much.  But Tim sleeps like he's been drugged, even when his backlash isn't in play.

"Mmmmrrrghhh."  Cozy.

Cute.

She thinks about the dungeon they'd ran earlier today.  It was on the high end of what she can solo.  In a way, he was really just there so she wasn't constantly burning backlash on those little bastard rats.  It had gotten pretty bad - she'd been swarmed, activated her toughness and left it on even though his power would have been enough to protect her without issues..

In retrospect, she'd panicked.  And fear had evaporated, replaced by rage under the weight of her backlash.  If Tim hadn't armlocked her and physically picked her up, she might have just raged until there was nothing left in the dungeon to kill.

When she was a kid, her parents took her to a specialty outdoorsmanship store. They'd had an exhibit called 'The Final Charge'.  It was two taxidermied moose locked in combat.  The story was that the two moose had got in a dominance contest.

Their antlers got stuck together.  Neither moose was strong enough to shatter the antlers, and they hadn't been able to get free.  Her Dad talked about it as a failure to cooperate.  They both died, even though there was nothing to be gained from locking antlers together and just starving to death.  Well - probably thirst, now that Carol thinks about it.  Staring your hated enemy in the eye until you both die.

Thinking about it, it's probably how she's going to go.  If an esper team can't safely pull her out - safely for them, as well - she'll just get trapped.  Killing and killing and killing until the portal closes or she dies of acute to chronic conversion from power overuse.  Hell, maybe she'll just get to the point where instead of killing things, she just smashes stuff.  Maybe it'll be the core.  God knows she won't be able to manage her backlash enough to not break stuff that annoys her at that level.

And if there's one thing Carol McCleery hates, it's dungeons.

She messages her agent.  She'd like to spend an unusually large portion of her income on 'Get-Hulk-Mode-Carol-Out-Of-This-Dungeon' insurance.  She doodles up a quick little guide for how to defeat her in combat without giving her an opportunity to fight it with precognition or tank through it with her durability.  Gas is the best bet.  Contact knockout drugs are a good second bet, if she can't avoid them.  Anyone within thirty feet of an uncontrolled Carol is in mortal peril.  Anyone further out is probably okay as long as they're bulletproof.

She'll look at it more tomorrow.  For tonight, she reaches down and focuses on the guiding skin contact.  It hadn't happened, so it was just like all those other Carols who might have died if she'd picked a different future.  Irrelevant.  Tonight, she's alive, she has her man, and she's happy.

Still largely asleep, he nuzzles into her hand.

Then it's time to get some sleep.

Eventually.