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cap_ironman2009-09-19 11:36 pm
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2009-09-19 11:36 pm
Entry tags:
When the Lights Go On Again 20(b)/21
Title: When the Lights Go On Again 20(b)/21
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, Carol/Wanda
Warnings: Depictions of torture, and general violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: Aliens have invaded earth, and the Avengers are scattered. While Steve leads the resistance, Tony once again finds himself playing captive scientist. In the midst of a violent alien regime, separated by seemingly insurmountable boundaries, Steve and Tony have nothing to keep themselves going but each other.
A/N #1:The point in volume three that we're branching off from was originally published around '98-'99, but since Marvel time runs at a slower speed than real world time, early volume three is probably four or so years ago in canon time. Hence 2004 and troops in Iraq.
A/N #2: Sorry for the late update; hopefully the fact that this is really long helps? Also, because we don't know how to shut up, the fic has ballooned from twenty chapters to twenty-one, so look for the final part next week.
Also, this fic owes a great deal totavella, who helped us to shape this into something that didn't have gaping plot holes.
When the Lights Go On Again
"There is absolutely no reason for them to keep me here any longer. They don't understand mutant physiology, anyway. I'd be better off at the hotel."
"IVs work just as well on energy mutants as they do on anyone else," Wanda said. Normally, she had to struggle to contain her annoyance when Pietro was in this kind of temper, but the sound of him talking, the sight of his face animated and pinched with annoyance instead of lifeless and still, was too miraculous and wonderful for her to be irritated.
Pietro was still pale, and the swathes of bandaging across his chest were spotted here and there with blood, but after a unit of the Helicarrier's precious and carefully rationed whole blood and an IV full of saline and glucose, his lips had lost that white, colorless look, and he had finally woken up. The medical staff had been openly amazed, one doctor telling Wanda repeatedly that he had never seen someone with hypovolemic shock and severe dehydration and hypoglycemia stabilize so quickly. Doctors rarely knew quite what to make of Pietro; she'd had to tell them three times that 120 beats per minute was his normal resting heart rate and wasn't being caused by some underlying medical condition.
Pietro pushed himself up on one elbow, grimacing in pain as he did so. "There's no privacy here, and I shouldn't have to be stuck here with all these," he sneered, "people." By which, of course, he meant, 'baseline humans who have no mutant abilities or superpowers.' "It's not as if they can make my finger grow back," he went on, nodding at his left hand, which was completely hidden from view by white gauze. "I just need someplace to rest and I can't do that here."
"You wouldn't have any more privacy at the hotel," she pointed out, resisting the impulse to brush his hair, still clumped into stiff brownish spikes by dried blood, back out of his face. "We were sleeping four people to a room there."
It wasn't actually the presence of other people, non-mutant or not, that was bothering him, she knew. Pietro got impatient and bored very quickly when he had to stay still, and the fact that he was in pain only made it worse. His accelerated metabolism meant that painkillers were significantly less effective on him than they were on normal people, and since SHIELD was forced to tightly ration their limited supply, they hadn't given him the triple dose he actually needed, insisting that a standard dose for a human of his bodyweight was sufficient.
Normal doctors and hospitals always assumed that. Proper doses of medication were a continual issue for mutants and other superhumans; Steve had the same problem, with his built-in resistance to narcotics and sedatives, and so did a lot of energy mutants, as well as anyone with a healing factor.
The Avengers Mansion had always stocked extra supplies of basic medications, anticipating the necessity of treating people with unusual physiology. Everyone knew that Pietro, Steve, and Carol needed individually tailored pain relief, the same way they all knew that Tony wasn't supposed to take Tylenol or anything else with acetaminophen in it because his liver couldn't handle it, or that Jan was allergic to penicillin, or that Hank couldn't be given any kind of medication while giant because the extra-large doses necessary at that size would stay in his bloodstream when he shrank back to normal and become toxic.
"I don't care," Pietro was insisting stubbornly. He shoved himself upright and sat there swaying slightly, reaching for the IV line in his left elbow.
Wanda grabbed his wrist. "Don't," she said, more sharply than she'd intended to. "You nearly died, do you understand that? I thought you were dead." The image of Pietro's bloody, broken body hanging from the cell wall in chains flashed into her mind, and she told herself firmly that he was all right now, that he hadn't actually been dead, that poor lighting and fear and hysteria had caused her to misjudge the situation. He hadn't actally been dead. "You need to stay in bed, Pietro. If you try to get up, you'll hurt yourself."
Pietro collapsed back against the mattress, his face pale and tight with pain. "Fine," he sighed, in a longsuffering tone that indicated that this was a great sacrifice and he was only making it for her.
"I thought you were dead when I saw you hanging there," she said, again. He hadn't been, though. He couldn't have been. Her magic wasn't that powerful. Couldn't be that powerful, even out of control the way she had been. "They brought me your finger in a box."
Pietro's eyes snapped open again, his face twisting in disgusted horror. "That's barbaric!"
"They thought it would make me talk," she said, and found herself suddenly unable to look at him. "I should have. They were going to do worse to you if I remained silent, yet I still didn't-"
"Of course you should have talked," he interrupted. "You knew what they were capable of. What if they had tortured you, too? Or killed you?" He was silent for a long moment, eyes closed again, and then, in a much quieter voice, he said, "They wouldn't tell me where you were or what they were doing to you. I thought they were-- I'm glad you're all right."
Wanda longed to hug him, to reassure herself that he was here, alive, all right, that he hadn't been taken from her (not like Vision, not like the twins), but his torso was a mass of bruises and cuts and it would only have hurt him. She took his undamaged hand in both of hers instead. With her gloves gone, burned away by the magic, she could feel how cool and clammy his skin was, proof that he still hadn't completely recovered from his ordeal. "I'm fine," she said, as if she hadn't gone crazy and nearly killed herself and Carol and Clint and Pietro himself. "They never touched me. I think they were afraid to."
They had been right to be. The chaos magic had destroyed their force shield, but if Carol hadn't been able to talk her down, it would have destroyed much, much more than that. She had wanted it to. She had wanted to let them all burn, for taking her twin from her.
It was frightening, how easy it had been to let the magic take over, how close she had come to not coming back. Clint hadn't come near her since then, probably afraid she might lose control once more, and while Pietro had never been intimidated by her powers before, if he knew what she had come so close to doing, what she might have done...
Carol had saved her, just as she'd saved her from the cell. She had reminded her that there were still people left whom she loved, still reasons to force the chaos power back under control, no matter how much it had cost her to do so. Wanda had wanted to be able to rescue Carol, to save her from her own self-destructive behavior, to prove to her that she was beautiful, valuable, strong, no matter what Marcus had done to her, no matter what happened to her powers. Instead, Carol had rescued her, stepping into the maelstrom of chaos magic as if it wasn't even there and bringing her back to herself.
"I would have killed them," Pietro said, "if they had." Wanda believed him. Even battered and shakey-looking in a hospital bed, he said the words with total conviction.
There was more of Magneto in both of them than was good for anyone.
"Do you want me to bring Luna here?" she asked, looking away. The little girl was probably frantic with missing her father, after the past three weeks, and after what the Argonians had done to him... having his daughter here could only be good for Pietro. "Where is she, anyway? She is... all right, isn’t she?"
"She's on the moon," he said, his voice monotone. "With Crystal. The Inhumans wouldn't help us, even after Madripoor, but at least they came and took her."
"I never liked her, you know," Wanda told him. "Crystal, I mean. What did you ever see in her, besides her perfect DNA?"
Pietro raised one eyebrow in a superior fashion, or tried to, anyway. His right eye was bruised and swollen nearly shut, and his eyebrow, split down the middle from the impact, refused to move. "It's not as if your taste is any better."
Wanda smiled sweetly at him. "Because you're my brother, and you're injured, I'm going to pretend you didn't say that." Vision had left her because he'd been damaged nearly beyond repair after being disassembled and reconstructed. Crystal had left Pietro after having an affair with one of Wanda and Vision's neighbors, apparently because Pietro wasn't paying enough attention to her. She hadn't even had the grace to pick someone she actually knew and liked for her extra-marital affaire.
Then she had acted as if Pietro's spectacularly immature temper-tantrum upon finding out about it was a shocking surprise to her, rather than something she had deliberately instigated.
"I'm not that badly injured," Pietro tried again. Being Pietro, he probably wasn't even conscious of how blatant a lie it was; he clearly wanted to believe it. "I don't need to sit around uselessly, especially now that you've brought the shield down and all the actual danger is over."
"Yes," Wanda said, "you do. I'll talk to them about the pain medication again, okay?"
He shook his head minutely. "No, they barely have enough to go around as it is. A competent medical staff would have stocked more, but since they're apparently incompetent..."
Wanda squeezed his hand, letting the complaining without really listening, and Pietro squeezed back.
At least, whatever Carol and Clint thought of her, whatever her powers had done, whatever was going to happen to them all now that the war was over, she still had her brother.
***
"Shouldn't they be in some kind of restraints?" Agent Quatermain cast an uneasy glance toward the group of grey-uniformed Argonians clustered around the water filtration system; undoing whatever it was that Hank had done to it was obviously more complicated than Steve had assumed, because they had ben working on it for hours. "I mean, it's not really possible to disarm them."
"They've given their parol," Steve told him. "And anyway, those are all mechanikos. They don't have any combat training."
"They're still six and a half feet tall, with poisonous scorpion tails."
"And that," Nick Fury said, without turning away from his conversation with Reed Richards and the Argonian Archon, "is why yer guarding them."
Steve felt a moment's rush of gratitude that Nick was there to take charge and deal those kinds of questions. After months of informal command, giving orders and arguing with everyone's attempts to second-guess them ought to have been automatic, but he didn't have the patience for it anymore.
He hadn't seen Tony since he had watched SHIELD medics load him onto a stretcher and take him away, pale and broken and unconscious. He had contacted the informary on the Helicarrier three times, and each time, the doctor on duty had told him that Tony still hadn't woken up. The last time, she had snapped impatiently at him and told him to stop calling.
"See, Archon?" Nick said, gesturing at the bulk of tanks and tubing that made up the filtration system. "We're getting you water that isn't poisoned. Now, you and yer technicians and Dr. Richards here are gonna see about getting that giant nuclear whateverthehell downstairs out of the basement and back into yer spaceship."
"It's really quite fascinating," Reed was saying, beaming at the Archon and the mechanikos who was serving as a translator. "Building a replica is going to take at least a week, though, even with your technicians' assistance."
"A... week..." The mechanikos stared at Reed, its ears stiff with shock.
Reed cocked his head thoughtfully, his neck extending a visible inch or so longer than any normal human's could have. "Well, that's assuming Tony will be able to help me. Otherwise, it will probably be closer to two weeks."
"A... replica?" Steve still wasn't good at reading Argonian facial expressions, and didn't expecially want to be, but he was pretty sure that, had it been human, the mechanikos would have been on the verge of tears.
Tony, he knew, was not going to be helping Reed. Tony was lucky to be alive, and Steve ought to have been up in the Helicarrier with him, not down here helping Nick sort out the Argonians' surrender. Except that the Argonians, according to them, had not surrendered to the United States government, or to the U.N., or to SHIELD. They had surrendered to Steve. Personally.
It had been hours since the shield had fallen, long enough that the sky outside had gone from bright, daylit blue to black, millions of stars glinting with a clarity Steve had never seen in New York, not even as a child. With the force shield's dimming and blurring effect gone, and the electricity still out, the Milky Way was a long path of light across the sky, cold and bright between the black silhouettes of buildings.
And Steve was still stuck in Grand Central, left with the responsibility of overseeing the details of the Argonian surrender, because delegating it would apparently have been some kind of insult -- not that he particularly cared about that -- and because the Resistance was reluctant to take orders from 'outside' authority -- something that was a legitimate concern.
Steve had somehow, without realizing it or intending to, ended up with his own personal army, and while the Army and Navy personnel who had been working more or less on their own in Brooklyn had greeted reinforcements eagerly, the National Guard troops who had been absorbed into the Avengers-led Resistance along with city emergency personal and law enforcement had decided, without ever consulting Steve, that they answered to him now, and not to any other higher authority, be that the US government, the shattered remnants of the New York State government, or the former mayor, who had been released from Argonian captivity that afternoon.
No one seemed to be sure who was in charge, except for Nick, who generally operated under the bone-deep belief that he was, and had since he'd been a sergeant. Becoming a command-grade officer with actual political power had only strengthened this conviction, not created it.
"We need to get the power back on," Sam was saying, next to him. "Once they get their power core out of here, the entire station's going to be black as pitch underground. Plus, it will let the hospitals start running at full capacity again. That is, if there are any ambulance crews left in the city who haven't turned into freedom fighters."
"Have SHIELD send a team of engineers to the Con Ed plant," Steve told Dugan, electing not to bother Nick while he was trying to deal with the Archon. He had told her that Nick had his full confidence and authority to act on his behalf -- he couldn't start undercutting him in front of her now. "See if there's anything they can salvage."
"Already done it," Dugan told him. "Nick gave the order an hour ago." He gave Steve a long, measuring look that was somewhere between sympathetic and amused and said, "They want you in the lobby. They're trying to identify bodies."
Steve couldn't control his flinch. The Argonians had already taken care of their own, with smooth efficiency and remarkable speed -- there had been several large carrion eaters native to the underground caves on Argon, Arch-Captain Kammani had informed him -- which left only the dead Resistance members and the bodies of the human guards, left for their own species to deal with by unspoken consent.
Men whose deaths he had ordered. He had killed some of them himself, taking the lobby from the Argonians. It had been necessary, he reminded himself. If Tony were here, he would have agreed.
Letting Tony sacrifice himself had been necessary, too.
Steve was so goddamn tired of doing what was necessary.
"Thanks," he told Dugan. "I'll just go and, and-"
Sam put one hand on his arm. "You don't have to, you know. For God's sake, Steve, there are other people who can-"
"It's my job," Steve interrupted, voice sharper than he meant it to be. He owed it to them.
If he had known that he could have simply challenged the Imperator to single combat...
"Okay," Sam said. "I get that." His hand stayed on Steve's arm, and Redwing, perched on his shoulder, peered at Steve with fierce golden eyes and made a sort of concerned cooing sound. "We'll come with you."
Steve nodded, unable to think of an objection and inwardly grateful for the support.
The blood-spattered chaos of the lobby had only been partially diminished over thast few hours. The burned rubble that was all that remained of the staircase up to the old Meridian restaurant had yet to be cleared away, though someone had at least swept the broken glass from the windows over against one wall, so that it no longer crunched underfoot.
The gold light fixtures hanging from the ceiling in the side halls had exploded when Wanda had brought the shield down, and the battery-powered floodlights SHIELD had set up to replace them cast bright, white circles of light, turning the arched ceiling overhead into a nest of shadows.
The human casualties had been laid out under one of the floodlights, Resistance and Argonian collaborators together. War Machine was there, still in full armor, and Steve stopped dead for a moment when he saw him. He knew it was James Rhodes under the helmet, but every time he saw a flash of red and gold out of the corner of his eye, or heard the heavy clanking of metal boots against the stone floor, he couldn't stop the wild leap of joy and relief in his heart, even though he knew it wasn't Tony.
"This one was in Rikers," a nondescript-looking man was saying, looking up from the black-uniformed body he was kneeling next to. There was a long gash across the dead man's torso, his uniform tunic stiff with blood, and a second slash across his throat, which gaped open obscenely. He'd been killed by an Argonian's blades, which meant he was one of the handful of guards who had switched sides when the fighting had begun. "He was doing fifteen years," the man went on, in a vaguely familiar voice. He'd been part of the break-out from One Police Plaza, Steve remembered suddenly, one of the scientists -- the one who'd been working for Wilson Fisk. "Drugs, I think, or maybe armed robbery; the non-costumed guys didn't talk to us much, unless they worked for the Kingpin. I didn't know his name. Check the prison records, if there are any left."
Fisk's spy planted one hand flat against the ground and shoved himself to his feet, wincing as if the movement hurt him. "My sentence better be getting commuted for this, Stark," he snapped at Rhodes.
There was a long moment of silence, as Rhodes, Steve, and Sam all stared at him, and a cold knot formed in Steve's stomach at the knowledge that someone who worked for the Kingpin knew that Tony was Iron Man.
"I'm not-" Rhodes began.
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Fisk's man cut in. "I saw you use those repulsor gauntlets during the escape. If they have half the kick of vibrational gauntlets, there's no way you could have been that accurate with them the first time you wore them."
Rhodes pulled his helmet off. "I'm not Tony Stark," he said, again. "Do you recognize any of the others, Dr. Schultz?"
"I'm not a doctor," Schultz said, staring at him. "I didn't even finish college." He shook his head. "Damn. Maybe that was the first time he used the gauntlets." He sounded grudgingly impressed.
Steve turned away, relieved, and tried to put the problem of Tony's secret identity -- and Tony, his body motionless in Steve's arms, nowhere near as heavy as it should have been -- out of his mind. When his eye fell on the nearest body, a woman whose blackened clothing had been fused to her skin by plasma burns, it was suddenly easy.
Officer Chen had been a member of the NYPD for ten years. She had survived being sent into Ground Zero after 911, had been stabbed in the shoulder by an angry woman with a kitchen knife while trying to break up a domestic dispute. She had shown Steve the scar, claiming not to be afraid of the Argonians' swords.
The black-uniformed guard next to her was a stranger, but beyond him was an ex-firefighter whom Steve had seen go down in the initial assault, his open eyes staring blindly up at the ceiling.
He wasn't sure how much later it was when he finally looked up from the last body. Carol had joined him at some point, filling in names for some of the people he hadn't known, or had only known by nicknames.
"Sir?"
There was a young man hovering a few feet away, in the flack jacket and dark clothing that was the defacto combat uniform of the Resistance.
"Yes?" Steve snapped, his mind still on the vacant eyes and exposed guts of that last corpse, and the smell of blood and death that permeated the air.
"There's a General Ross here, from Washington," the kid said, darting uneasy glances at the bodies as he spoke. He looked barely old enough to drink, his dark hair hanging in his eyes the way Vance's had. "He wants to speak to our highest ranking military commander. We told him that was either Master Sergeant Colan or Lieutenant Goodwin, but both of them are taking orders from Colonel Fury now, and he sent me to get you."
"Tell Fury he can deal with the Pentagon himself," Steve said shortly, turning away so that he wouldn't have to see the haunted look in the kid's eyes as he stared at the dead, the expression a silent accusation. "I have better things to do than talk to politicians."
He shouldn't even be here, squandering his time on the dead, not when there was an entire military regime to dismantle and his men didn't even know who to take orders from anymore. The living needed his attention more.
He hadn't even been up to the Helicarrier to check on the wounded. He hadn't seen Clint, or Wanda, or Pietro, or Hank...
The kid flinched, his eyes widening, and a hand settled heavily on Steve's shoulder.
Steve spun around, knocking the hand away and reaching for his shield, to find himself staring at Sam.
Sam held his hands up before him non-threateningly, and met Steve's glare evenly. "Calm down. It's not his fault."
"I know that," Steve started.
"You jumped about a foot when I touched you, and you're bleeding again." Sam nodded at Steve's side, and Steve looked down to see a fresh spot of red on the pressure bandage he'd had Dugan wrap around his ribs. The slashed-open leather and mail over his right side gaped widely where it had been cut, leaving the no-longer-white bandaging clearly visible.
He hadn't even noticed, but now that he was looking at it, the pain hit him, dull and stinging. He pressed a hand to his side, trying to ease the ache in his bruised ribs. "It'll be fine. I can have it looked at later."
"You can have it looked at now." Carol had appeared from somewhere, her face smudged with soot and her combat gear scorched and blackened with burns. "You can barely stand up straight."
"I don't have time."
"Is Tony's special brand of stupid contagious?" Rhodes's voice was distorted by his helmet, but Steve could still hear the exasperation in it. "You’re in charge. Delegate or something."
Sam had taken hold of Steve's arm, pulling him away from the rows of bodies with a strange kind of gentleness. "Let somebody else deal with this stuff. You've done enough. Christ, you've done more than enough. Go get some rest and have somebody take a look at that swordcut."
"But-" Steve gestured at the kid, still standing there uncertainly in his battered combat gear. "I need to- People keep asking me--"
"You're making everyone nervous, Steve," Carol flatly. "You held it together the entire time we were living in abandoned skyscrapers and eating food out of cans, and dodging alien energy weapons, and now we've won and you're acting like a twitchy, bad-tempered nervous wreck."
"I-"
"And before you throw it in my face, yes, I know I've spent months doing the same thing. So you might want to consider that I know what I'm talking about."
Steve shook his head, suddenly completely at a loss for what to say. The arguments he tried to muster for why he was needed here, how much there was to do, wouldn't come, the words fleeing away from him. All he wanted was to see Tony, and maybe, after that, wash the blood, both alien and human, off himself and get some sleep.
"We've got this," Sam said, still in that strange, gentle voice, his fingers firm on Steve's arm. "Take a break for a while."
Steve shook his head, torn between what he wanted and what he knew his responsibilities demanded, and Carol shoved at his shoulder with one hand.
"Go hover over Tony and stop hovering over everyone else before I strangle you." She groaned, shaking her head. "God, I wish I had the time or space to sit down somewhere and have a drink. I'm tired, and just looking at you makes me more tired."
"You're sure you guys have things under control-" Steve started.
"Go get some rest," Sam repeated.
Steve nodded, feeling a wave of guilty relief, and went.
The lights in the Helicarrier's infirmary were dim, in deference to the late hour. Most of the patients were asleep, and a nurse in a SHIELD uniform was moving among them, reading medical charts and waking one or two men up to give them doses of medication.
When he saw Steve, standing uncertainly in the doorway, he came to a stop in the middle of the aisle, staring for a second.
"I'm looking for Tony Stark," Steve said quietly. Speaking loudly would wake some one up, break the silence that hung heavy in the air.
Something cold inside him eased when then nurse nodded toward the curtained off beds at the back of the long room. "He's back there."
Steve started for the row of white curtains, all of his attention focused on Tony, on how pale he'd been, his lips bloodless and the bruise on his face black and sickeningly vivid, on the look in his eyes when he'd said Steve's name, haunted and confused, as if he hadn't been sure that Steve was really there; he stopped abruptly as the nurse laid a hand on his arm.
Steve swung around, his heart lurching in his chest; it took effort not to hit the man, to control the automatic instinct to strike out at whatever had grabbed him. "Let go of me," he said, still quietly.
The nurse's eyes widened a fraction, not quite a flinch, but he stood his ground. "Let me see your side first; it's bleeding through the bandaging."
Steve wanted to refuse, to yank his arm free of the man's grip and press onward, to explain that he could see Tony first and get his own injuries looked at later -- they weren't serious, and leaving them untreated for a few more minutes wasn't going to cause any harm -- but Tony's battered, broken body and haunted eyes flashed into his mind again, and he nodded instead, surrendering.
Tony would be upset, if Steve came to him still covered in blood, with the cut on his side raw and unstitched and bleeding. After what he'd been through, he didn't need to worry about Steve's injuries on top of his own.
The nurse looked relieved, and led Steve to an empty bed, telling him to sit down and wait there while he got a suture kit and some scrubs for him to wear.
Steve hadn't asked for them -- his costume must look worse than he'd thought.
Sitting down only seemed to increase the exhaustion he felt; sitting up straight pulled at his side, and there was no one here to see him sag forward and wrap an arm around his ribs, so he did, waiting for the nurse to re-apear and trying to think of what he was going to say to Tony.
Hank was lying in the bed across the aisle, washed-out and haggard, with Jan curled up on the pillow beside his head, small and half-hidden by Hank's hair, so that Steve had almost missed seeing her at first. He looked all right, except for the bandage on his leg and the IV line in one arm, better than he had when Steve had seen him lying on the floor in the station lobby, waiting to be taken up to the Helicarrier.
At least Hank was going to be okay. For a while, earlier today, Steve had thought that they were going to lose more than one Avenger. That Wanda and Pietro were both alive was a minor miracle, and Hank and Tony both could so easily have died, had nearly died, on the suicide mission Steve had sent them on.
He would never have forgiven himself, if they had, if Hank had been killed trying to meet up with the rest of them or Tony's heart had finally given out from shock and God knew how much sustained abuse just hours or minutes before Steve had found him.
They were alive, he reminded himself, as he watched the nurse come back, his hands laden down with fabric and medical supplies. He shouldn't dwell on what could have happened.
They were alive, and Tony was going to be all right, and the Argonians were leaving. Everything was going to be all right.
Steve repeated the thought to himself while the nurse cleaned the slice across his ribs with antiseptic and stitched it up, ignoring the way the man pressed his lips together and sighed when Steve refused pain medication.
Either it wouldn't be a large enough dose to make a difference, or it would be enough and, tired as he was, it would knock him out.
SHIELD medical personnel were efficient; Steve wasn't sure how long he spent sitting there on the cot, staring at Hank and Jan while the nurse set a long line of stitches in his side and taped a bandage over them, but it couldn't have been very long. Or maybe he had spaced out for a few minutes, because first it seemed as if the nurse had barely started, and then he was pressing the last piece of tape into place.
"Thanks," Steve said, pulling the green SHIELD-issue shirt on and standing before the nurse could suggest that he lay down and rest. "Now would you please tell me where Tony is?"
"Back there." The nurse pointed at the row of curtained-off beds. "The third one on the right."
Steve didn't bother to say thank you, simply picked up his shield from where he'd set it doen beside the bed, pushed past the man, and headed for the white curtain that concealed Tony's bed, not looking back.
His stomach lurched as he pulled the curtain aside and ducked around it, half-afraid of what he might see -- Tony had been so pale, so covered in bruises and cuts and burns. What if he'd been more severely injured than Steve had thought, the blood and grime hiding some other, much worse form of damage?
Tony was lying on his back in a hospital bed, a white sheet pulled up to his waist and his bare torso covered in clean, white bandages. The oxygen tube, saline drip and heart monitor hooked up to him were a familiar sight, if not in any way a reassuring one.
Clint was curled up in a plastic chair next to the bed, asleep with one hand wrapped around the hilt of his Argonian short-sword. It shouldn't have been cute, but Steve found himself smiling anyway. Just being near Tony, looking at him, made him feel better; the slow, steady beeping of the heart monitor a constant, quiet proof that Tony was still alive, still present.
Steve laid his shield against the empty chair on Tony's other side and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. With his gloves gone, Tony's hair was soft against his fingers despite the grime and sweat that had turned it lank and stringy.
Tony stirred slightly when Steve's fingers brushed his cheek, but his eyes didn't open. He didn't look like he was in too much pain, despite the exhaustion carved into his too-thin face -- the circles under his eyes were bigger, darker than they had been before, and his lips were cracked and dry, but his face was relaxed, still. They had him on painkillers, probably because he hadn't woken up yet and started refusing them.
Steve thought of Jan, asleep with one hand wrapped in Hank's hair, and wished that he could do the same, climb in next to Tony and wrap his arms around him -- carefully -- and hold him, but there was no way the narrow hospital bed was going to hold two men who were both over six feet tall. Steve would barely have fit into it on his own.
Tony probably wouldn't be waking up any time soon, Steve thought, struggling not to feel disappointment as he ran his fingers through Tony's hair. It was probably for the best. He needed to rest.
Then Tony's eyelids twitched, and he turned his face into Steve's hand. "Steve," he mumbled, his eyes opening partway to reveal a thin slit of blue. "Got me out. Did it work?"
"Yes," Steve told him, blinking at the sudden prickly heat in his eyes. "We won. They're leaving."
"Oh." Tony sighed and rolled his head to the side, pressing his cheek into Steve's palm, and his eyes fell shut agan. "Good." There was a long pause, while Steve tried to think of something to say.
'I love you,' he thought, swallowing hard as his throat closed up. 'I never would have forgiven myself if you'd-'
Tony frowned faintly, his eyebrows drawing together. "Why is Clint here?" he asked, voice heavy and faintly slurred. "Is he okay?"
"He's fine," Steve said, feeling a sudden, half-hysterical urge to laugh. "I don't know why he's here. He looks too cute to wake him up, though."
Tony's lips twitched for a moments, into something that was almost a smile. "You wouldn' say that if he were in this bed instead of me. He's a terrible patient."
"I tried to get to you in time," Steve blurted out. "I know they- I wish you hadn't had to go through this."
"You did." Tony opened his eyes again, smiling hazily up at Steve. "We won. An' I'm not dead." He frowned again, something like fear coming into his eyes, and added, "I didn' tell them anything. Only what I was... was supposed to. About the virus." He reached up clumsily and wrapped his fingers around Steve's wrist, staring intently at him. "Didn' tell about Hank."
Steve brushed a piece of Tony's hair out of his face again, blinking hard. "I know," he forced out, making himself smile. "I know you didn't."
"Good," Tony said, again, and his fingers relaxed on Steve's wrist, grasping it gently now instead of the almost painful grip of a moment before. "I'm glad they didn't kill me," he said, with an open honesty Steve was sure he'd never be displaying if he weren't drugged. "I wanted to see you again. I kept thinking about you, in there, whenever they..." he trailed off, and then repeated, "Wanted to see you. I didn't want to die without telling you," he broke off, yawning. "Without telling you..."
His eyes slid shut, and the fingers around Steve's wrist went lax. Steve lifted Tony's hand to his face for a moment, closing his eyes and holding it against his cheek, then lowered it gently back to the bed. "I love you too," he whispered.
Then he stood and shook a reluctant and sleepy Clint awake, making him leave to find a bed of his own.
Once Clint had gone, Steve pulled the still-warm chair he'd been sleeping in around to the other side of the bed and settled into it, propping his feet up on the second chair and leaning his head back, making himself as comfortable as possible.
He fell asleep holding Tony's hand.
***
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five (a) | Chapter Five (b) | Chapter Six (a) | Chapter Six (b) | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty (a) | Chapter Twenty (b) | Chapter Twenty One
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonRated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, Carol/Wanda
Warnings: Depictions of torture, and general violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: Aliens have invaded earth, and the Avengers are scattered. While Steve leads the resistance, Tony once again finds himself playing captive scientist. In the midst of a violent alien regime, separated by seemingly insurmountable boundaries, Steve and Tony have nothing to keep themselves going but each other.
A/N #1:The point in volume three that we're branching off from was originally published around '98-'99, but since Marvel time runs at a slower speed than real world time, early volume three is probably four or so years ago in canon time. Hence 2004 and troops in Iraq.
A/N #2: Sorry for the late update; hopefully the fact that this is really long helps? Also, because we don't know how to shut up, the fic has ballooned from twenty chapters to twenty-one, so look for the final part next week.
Also, this fic owes a great deal to
tavella, who helped us to shape this into something that didn't have gaping plot holes."There is absolutely no reason for them to keep me here any longer. They don't understand mutant physiology, anyway. I'd be better off at the hotel."
"IVs work just as well on energy mutants as they do on anyone else," Wanda said. Normally, she had to struggle to contain her annoyance when Pietro was in this kind of temper, but the sound of him talking, the sight of his face animated and pinched with annoyance instead of lifeless and still, was too miraculous and wonderful for her to be irritated.
Pietro was still pale, and the swathes of bandaging across his chest were spotted here and there with blood, but after a unit of the Helicarrier's precious and carefully rationed whole blood and an IV full of saline and glucose, his lips had lost that white, colorless look, and he had finally woken up. The medical staff had been openly amazed, one doctor telling Wanda repeatedly that he had never seen someone with hypovolemic shock and severe dehydration and hypoglycemia stabilize so quickly. Doctors rarely knew quite what to make of Pietro; she'd had to tell them three times that 120 beats per minute was his normal resting heart rate and wasn't being caused by some underlying medical condition.
Pietro pushed himself up on one elbow, grimacing in pain as he did so. "There's no privacy here, and I shouldn't have to be stuck here with all these," he sneered, "people." By which, of course, he meant, 'baseline humans who have no mutant abilities or superpowers.' "It's not as if they can make my finger grow back," he went on, nodding at his left hand, which was completely hidden from view by white gauze. "I just need someplace to rest and I can't do that here."
"You wouldn't have any more privacy at the hotel," she pointed out, resisting the impulse to brush his hair, still clumped into stiff brownish spikes by dried blood, back out of his face. "We were sleeping four people to a room there."
It wasn't actually the presence of other people, non-mutant or not, that was bothering him, she knew. Pietro got impatient and bored very quickly when he had to stay still, and the fact that he was in pain only made it worse. His accelerated metabolism meant that painkillers were significantly less effective on him than they were on normal people, and since SHIELD was forced to tightly ration their limited supply, they hadn't given him the triple dose he actually needed, insisting that a standard dose for a human of his bodyweight was sufficient.
Normal doctors and hospitals always assumed that. Proper doses of medication were a continual issue for mutants and other superhumans; Steve had the same problem, with his built-in resistance to narcotics and sedatives, and so did a lot of energy mutants, as well as anyone with a healing factor.
The Avengers Mansion had always stocked extra supplies of basic medications, anticipating the necessity of treating people with unusual physiology. Everyone knew that Pietro, Steve, and Carol needed individually tailored pain relief, the same way they all knew that Tony wasn't supposed to take Tylenol or anything else with acetaminophen in it because his liver couldn't handle it, or that Jan was allergic to penicillin, or that Hank couldn't be given any kind of medication while giant because the extra-large doses necessary at that size would stay in his bloodstream when he shrank back to normal and become toxic.
"I don't care," Pietro was insisting stubbornly. He shoved himself upright and sat there swaying slightly, reaching for the IV line in his left elbow.
Wanda grabbed his wrist. "Don't," she said, more sharply than she'd intended to. "You nearly died, do you understand that? I thought you were dead." The image of Pietro's bloody, broken body hanging from the cell wall in chains flashed into her mind, and she told herself firmly that he was all right now, that he hadn't actually been dead, that poor lighting and fear and hysteria had caused her to misjudge the situation. He hadn't actally been dead. "You need to stay in bed, Pietro. If you try to get up, you'll hurt yourself."
Pietro collapsed back against the mattress, his face pale and tight with pain. "Fine," he sighed, in a longsuffering tone that indicated that this was a great sacrifice and he was only making it for her.
"I thought you were dead when I saw you hanging there," she said, again. He hadn't been, though. He couldn't have been. Her magic wasn't that powerful. Couldn't be that powerful, even out of control the way she had been. "They brought me your finger in a box."
Pietro's eyes snapped open again, his face twisting in disgusted horror. "That's barbaric!"
"They thought it would make me talk," she said, and found herself suddenly unable to look at him. "I should have. They were going to do worse to you if I remained silent, yet I still didn't-"
"Of course you should have talked," he interrupted. "You knew what they were capable of. What if they had tortured you, too? Or killed you?" He was silent for a long moment, eyes closed again, and then, in a much quieter voice, he said, "They wouldn't tell me where you were or what they were doing to you. I thought they were-- I'm glad you're all right."
Wanda longed to hug him, to reassure herself that he was here, alive, all right, that he hadn't been taken from her (not like Vision, not like the twins), but his torso was a mass of bruises and cuts and it would only have hurt him. She took his undamaged hand in both of hers instead. With her gloves gone, burned away by the magic, she could feel how cool and clammy his skin was, proof that he still hadn't completely recovered from his ordeal. "I'm fine," she said, as if she hadn't gone crazy and nearly killed herself and Carol and Clint and Pietro himself. "They never touched me. I think they were afraid to."
They had been right to be. The chaos magic had destroyed their force shield, but if Carol hadn't been able to talk her down, it would have destroyed much, much more than that. She had wanted it to. She had wanted to let them all burn, for taking her twin from her.
It was frightening, how easy it had been to let the magic take over, how close she had come to not coming back. Clint hadn't come near her since then, probably afraid she might lose control once more, and while Pietro had never been intimidated by her powers before, if he knew what she had come so close to doing, what she might have done...
Carol had saved her, just as she'd saved her from the cell. She had reminded her that there were still people left whom she loved, still reasons to force the chaos power back under control, no matter how much it had cost her to do so. Wanda had wanted to be able to rescue Carol, to save her from her own self-destructive behavior, to prove to her that she was beautiful, valuable, strong, no matter what Marcus had done to her, no matter what happened to her powers. Instead, Carol had rescued her, stepping into the maelstrom of chaos magic as if it wasn't even there and bringing her back to herself.
"I would have killed them," Pietro said, "if they had." Wanda believed him. Even battered and shakey-looking in a hospital bed, he said the words with total conviction.
There was more of Magneto in both of them than was good for anyone.
"Do you want me to bring Luna here?" she asked, looking away. The little girl was probably frantic with missing her father, after the past three weeks, and after what the Argonians had done to him... having his daughter here could only be good for Pietro. "Where is she, anyway? She is... all right, isn’t she?"
"She's on the moon," he said, his voice monotone. "With Crystal. The Inhumans wouldn't help us, even after Madripoor, but at least they came and took her."
"I never liked her, you know," Wanda told him. "Crystal, I mean. What did you ever see in her, besides her perfect DNA?"
Pietro raised one eyebrow in a superior fashion, or tried to, anyway. His right eye was bruised and swollen nearly shut, and his eyebrow, split down the middle from the impact, refused to move. "It's not as if your taste is any better."
Wanda smiled sweetly at him. "Because you're my brother, and you're injured, I'm going to pretend you didn't say that." Vision had left her because he'd been damaged nearly beyond repair after being disassembled and reconstructed. Crystal had left Pietro after having an affair with one of Wanda and Vision's neighbors, apparently because Pietro wasn't paying enough attention to her. She hadn't even had the grace to pick someone she actually knew and liked for her extra-marital affaire.
Then she had acted as if Pietro's spectacularly immature temper-tantrum upon finding out about it was a shocking surprise to her, rather than something she had deliberately instigated.
"I'm not that badly injured," Pietro tried again. Being Pietro, he probably wasn't even conscious of how blatant a lie it was; he clearly wanted to believe it. "I don't need to sit around uselessly, especially now that you've brought the shield down and all the actual danger is over."
"Yes," Wanda said, "you do. I'll talk to them about the pain medication again, okay?"
He shook his head minutely. "No, they barely have enough to go around as it is. A competent medical staff would have stocked more, but since they're apparently incompetent..."
Wanda squeezed his hand, letting the complaining without really listening, and Pietro squeezed back.
At least, whatever Carol and Clint thought of her, whatever her powers had done, whatever was going to happen to them all now that the war was over, she still had her brother.
"Shouldn't they be in some kind of restraints?" Agent Quatermain cast an uneasy glance toward the group of grey-uniformed Argonians clustered around the water filtration system; undoing whatever it was that Hank had done to it was obviously more complicated than Steve had assumed, because they had ben working on it for hours. "I mean, it's not really possible to disarm them."
"They've given their parol," Steve told him. "And anyway, those are all mechanikos. They don't have any combat training."
"They're still six and a half feet tall, with poisonous scorpion tails."
"And that," Nick Fury said, without turning away from his conversation with Reed Richards and the Argonian Archon, "is why yer guarding them."
Steve felt a moment's rush of gratitude that Nick was there to take charge and deal those kinds of questions. After months of informal command, giving orders and arguing with everyone's attempts to second-guess them ought to have been automatic, but he didn't have the patience for it anymore.
He hadn't seen Tony since he had watched SHIELD medics load him onto a stretcher and take him away, pale and broken and unconscious. He had contacted the informary on the Helicarrier three times, and each time, the doctor on duty had told him that Tony still hadn't woken up. The last time, she had snapped impatiently at him and told him to stop calling.
"See, Archon?" Nick said, gesturing at the bulk of tanks and tubing that made up the filtration system. "We're getting you water that isn't poisoned. Now, you and yer technicians and Dr. Richards here are gonna see about getting that giant nuclear whateverthehell downstairs out of the basement and back into yer spaceship."
"It's really quite fascinating," Reed was saying, beaming at the Archon and the mechanikos who was serving as a translator. "Building a replica is going to take at least a week, though, even with your technicians' assistance."
"A... week..." The mechanikos stared at Reed, its ears stiff with shock.
Reed cocked his head thoughtfully, his neck extending a visible inch or so longer than any normal human's could have. "Well, that's assuming Tony will be able to help me. Otherwise, it will probably be closer to two weeks."
"A... replica?" Steve still wasn't good at reading Argonian facial expressions, and didn't expecially want to be, but he was pretty sure that, had it been human, the mechanikos would have been on the verge of tears.
Tony, he knew, was not going to be helping Reed. Tony was lucky to be alive, and Steve ought to have been up in the Helicarrier with him, not down here helping Nick sort out the Argonians' surrender. Except that the Argonians, according to them, had not surrendered to the United States government, or to the U.N., or to SHIELD. They had surrendered to Steve. Personally.
It had been hours since the shield had fallen, long enough that the sky outside had gone from bright, daylit blue to black, millions of stars glinting with a clarity Steve had never seen in New York, not even as a child. With the force shield's dimming and blurring effect gone, and the electricity still out, the Milky Way was a long path of light across the sky, cold and bright between the black silhouettes of buildings.
And Steve was still stuck in Grand Central, left with the responsibility of overseeing the details of the Argonian surrender, because delegating it would apparently have been some kind of insult -- not that he particularly cared about that -- and because the Resistance was reluctant to take orders from 'outside' authority -- something that was a legitimate concern.
Steve had somehow, without realizing it or intending to, ended up with his own personal army, and while the Army and Navy personnel who had been working more or less on their own in Brooklyn had greeted reinforcements eagerly, the National Guard troops who had been absorbed into the Avengers-led Resistance along with city emergency personal and law enforcement had decided, without ever consulting Steve, that they answered to him now, and not to any other higher authority, be that the US government, the shattered remnants of the New York State government, or the former mayor, who had been released from Argonian captivity that afternoon.
No one seemed to be sure who was in charge, except for Nick, who generally operated under the bone-deep belief that he was, and had since he'd been a sergeant. Becoming a command-grade officer with actual political power had only strengthened this conviction, not created it.
"We need to get the power back on," Sam was saying, next to him. "Once they get their power core out of here, the entire station's going to be black as pitch underground. Plus, it will let the hospitals start running at full capacity again. That is, if there are any ambulance crews left in the city who haven't turned into freedom fighters."
"Have SHIELD send a team of engineers to the Con Ed plant," Steve told Dugan, electing not to bother Nick while he was trying to deal with the Archon. He had told her that Nick had his full confidence and authority to act on his behalf -- he couldn't start undercutting him in front of her now. "See if there's anything they can salvage."
"Already done it," Dugan told him. "Nick gave the order an hour ago." He gave Steve a long, measuring look that was somewhere between sympathetic and amused and said, "They want you in the lobby. They're trying to identify bodies."
Steve couldn't control his flinch. The Argonians had already taken care of their own, with smooth efficiency and remarkable speed -- there had been several large carrion eaters native to the underground caves on Argon, Arch-Captain Kammani had informed him -- which left only the dead Resistance members and the bodies of the human guards, left for their own species to deal with by unspoken consent.
Men whose deaths he had ordered. He had killed some of them himself, taking the lobby from the Argonians. It had been necessary, he reminded himself. If Tony were here, he would have agreed.
Letting Tony sacrifice himself had been necessary, too.
Steve was so goddamn tired of doing what was necessary.
"Thanks," he told Dugan. "I'll just go and, and-"
Sam put one hand on his arm. "You don't have to, you know. For God's sake, Steve, there are other people who can-"
"It's my job," Steve interrupted, voice sharper than he meant it to be. He owed it to them.
If he had known that he could have simply challenged the Imperator to single combat...
"Okay," Sam said. "I get that." His hand stayed on Steve's arm, and Redwing, perched on his shoulder, peered at Steve with fierce golden eyes and made a sort of concerned cooing sound. "We'll come with you."
Steve nodded, unable to think of an objection and inwardly grateful for the support.
The blood-spattered chaos of the lobby had only been partially diminished over thast few hours. The burned rubble that was all that remained of the staircase up to the old Meridian restaurant had yet to be cleared away, though someone had at least swept the broken glass from the windows over against one wall, so that it no longer crunched underfoot.
The gold light fixtures hanging from the ceiling in the side halls had exploded when Wanda had brought the shield down, and the battery-powered floodlights SHIELD had set up to replace them cast bright, white circles of light, turning the arched ceiling overhead into a nest of shadows.
The human casualties had been laid out under one of the floodlights, Resistance and Argonian collaborators together. War Machine was there, still in full armor, and Steve stopped dead for a moment when he saw him. He knew it was James Rhodes under the helmet, but every time he saw a flash of red and gold out of the corner of his eye, or heard the heavy clanking of metal boots against the stone floor, he couldn't stop the wild leap of joy and relief in his heart, even though he knew it wasn't Tony.
"This one was in Rikers," a nondescript-looking man was saying, looking up from the black-uniformed body he was kneeling next to. There was a long gash across the dead man's torso, his uniform tunic stiff with blood, and a second slash across his throat, which gaped open obscenely. He'd been killed by an Argonian's blades, which meant he was one of the handful of guards who had switched sides when the fighting had begun. "He was doing fifteen years," the man went on, in a vaguely familiar voice. He'd been part of the break-out from One Police Plaza, Steve remembered suddenly, one of the scientists -- the one who'd been working for Wilson Fisk. "Drugs, I think, or maybe armed robbery; the non-costumed guys didn't talk to us much, unless they worked for the Kingpin. I didn't know his name. Check the prison records, if there are any left."
Fisk's spy planted one hand flat against the ground and shoved himself to his feet, wincing as if the movement hurt him. "My sentence better be getting commuted for this, Stark," he snapped at Rhodes.
There was a long moment of silence, as Rhodes, Steve, and Sam all stared at him, and a cold knot formed in Steve's stomach at the knowledge that someone who worked for the Kingpin knew that Tony was Iron Man.
"I'm not-" Rhodes began.
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Fisk's man cut in. "I saw you use those repulsor gauntlets during the escape. If they have half the kick of vibrational gauntlets, there's no way you could have been that accurate with them the first time you wore them."
Rhodes pulled his helmet off. "I'm not Tony Stark," he said, again. "Do you recognize any of the others, Dr. Schultz?"
"I'm not a doctor," Schultz said, staring at him. "I didn't even finish college." He shook his head. "Damn. Maybe that was the first time he used the gauntlets." He sounded grudgingly impressed.
Steve turned away, relieved, and tried to put the problem of Tony's secret identity -- and Tony, his body motionless in Steve's arms, nowhere near as heavy as it should have been -- out of his mind. When his eye fell on the nearest body, a woman whose blackened clothing had been fused to her skin by plasma burns, it was suddenly easy.
Officer Chen had been a member of the NYPD for ten years. She had survived being sent into Ground Zero after 911, had been stabbed in the shoulder by an angry woman with a kitchen knife while trying to break up a domestic dispute. She had shown Steve the scar, claiming not to be afraid of the Argonians' swords.
The black-uniformed guard next to her was a stranger, but beyond him was an ex-firefighter whom Steve had seen go down in the initial assault, his open eyes staring blindly up at the ceiling.
He wasn't sure how much later it was when he finally looked up from the last body. Carol had joined him at some point, filling in names for some of the people he hadn't known, or had only known by nicknames.
"Sir?"
There was a young man hovering a few feet away, in the flack jacket and dark clothing that was the defacto combat uniform of the Resistance.
"Yes?" Steve snapped, his mind still on the vacant eyes and exposed guts of that last corpse, and the smell of blood and death that permeated the air.
"There's a General Ross here, from Washington," the kid said, darting uneasy glances at the bodies as he spoke. He looked barely old enough to drink, his dark hair hanging in his eyes the way Vance's had. "He wants to speak to our highest ranking military commander. We told him that was either Master Sergeant Colan or Lieutenant Goodwin, but both of them are taking orders from Colonel Fury now, and he sent me to get you."
"Tell Fury he can deal with the Pentagon himself," Steve said shortly, turning away so that he wouldn't have to see the haunted look in the kid's eyes as he stared at the dead, the expression a silent accusation. "I have better things to do than talk to politicians."
He shouldn't even be here, squandering his time on the dead, not when there was an entire military regime to dismantle and his men didn't even know who to take orders from anymore. The living needed his attention more.
He hadn't even been up to the Helicarrier to check on the wounded. He hadn't seen Clint, or Wanda, or Pietro, or Hank...
The kid flinched, his eyes widening, and a hand settled heavily on Steve's shoulder.
Steve spun around, knocking the hand away and reaching for his shield, to find himself staring at Sam.
Sam held his hands up before him non-threateningly, and met Steve's glare evenly. "Calm down. It's not his fault."
"I know that," Steve started.
"You jumped about a foot when I touched you, and you're bleeding again." Sam nodded at Steve's side, and Steve looked down to see a fresh spot of red on the pressure bandage he'd had Dugan wrap around his ribs. The slashed-open leather and mail over his right side gaped widely where it had been cut, leaving the no-longer-white bandaging clearly visible.
He hadn't even noticed, but now that he was looking at it, the pain hit him, dull and stinging. He pressed a hand to his side, trying to ease the ache in his bruised ribs. "It'll be fine. I can have it looked at later."
"You can have it looked at now." Carol had appeared from somewhere, her face smudged with soot and her combat gear scorched and blackened with burns. "You can barely stand up straight."
"I don't have time."
"Is Tony's special brand of stupid contagious?" Rhodes's voice was distorted by his helmet, but Steve could still hear the exasperation in it. "You’re in charge. Delegate or something."
Sam had taken hold of Steve's arm, pulling him away from the rows of bodies with a strange kind of gentleness. "Let somebody else deal with this stuff. You've done enough. Christ, you've done more than enough. Go get some rest and have somebody take a look at that swordcut."
"But-" Steve gestured at the kid, still standing there uncertainly in his battered combat gear. "I need to- People keep asking me--"
"You're making everyone nervous, Steve," Carol flatly. "You held it together the entire time we were living in abandoned skyscrapers and eating food out of cans, and dodging alien energy weapons, and now we've won and you're acting like a twitchy, bad-tempered nervous wreck."
"I-"
"And before you throw it in my face, yes, I know I've spent months doing the same thing. So you might want to consider that I know what I'm talking about."
Steve shook his head, suddenly completely at a loss for what to say. The arguments he tried to muster for why he was needed here, how much there was to do, wouldn't come, the words fleeing away from him. All he wanted was to see Tony, and maybe, after that, wash the blood, both alien and human, off himself and get some sleep.
"We've got this," Sam said, still in that strange, gentle voice, his fingers firm on Steve's arm. "Take a break for a while."
Steve shook his head, torn between what he wanted and what he knew his responsibilities demanded, and Carol shoved at his shoulder with one hand.
"Go hover over Tony and stop hovering over everyone else before I strangle you." She groaned, shaking her head. "God, I wish I had the time or space to sit down somewhere and have a drink. I'm tired, and just looking at you makes me more tired."
"You're sure you guys have things under control-" Steve started.
"Go get some rest," Sam repeated.
Steve nodded, feeling a wave of guilty relief, and went.
The lights in the Helicarrier's infirmary were dim, in deference to the late hour. Most of the patients were asleep, and a nurse in a SHIELD uniform was moving among them, reading medical charts and waking one or two men up to give them doses of medication.
When he saw Steve, standing uncertainly in the doorway, he came to a stop in the middle of the aisle, staring for a second.
"I'm looking for Tony Stark," Steve said quietly. Speaking loudly would wake some one up, break the silence that hung heavy in the air.
Something cold inside him eased when then nurse nodded toward the curtained off beds at the back of the long room. "He's back there."
Steve started for the row of white curtains, all of his attention focused on Tony, on how pale he'd been, his lips bloodless and the bruise on his face black and sickeningly vivid, on the look in his eyes when he'd said Steve's name, haunted and confused, as if he hadn't been sure that Steve was really there; he stopped abruptly as the nurse laid a hand on his arm.
Steve swung around, his heart lurching in his chest; it took effort not to hit the man, to control the automatic instinct to strike out at whatever had grabbed him. "Let go of me," he said, still quietly.
The nurse's eyes widened a fraction, not quite a flinch, but he stood his ground. "Let me see your side first; it's bleeding through the bandaging."
Steve wanted to refuse, to yank his arm free of the man's grip and press onward, to explain that he could see Tony first and get his own injuries looked at later -- they weren't serious, and leaving them untreated for a few more minutes wasn't going to cause any harm -- but Tony's battered, broken body and haunted eyes flashed into his mind again, and he nodded instead, surrendering.
Tony would be upset, if Steve came to him still covered in blood, with the cut on his side raw and unstitched and bleeding. After what he'd been through, he didn't need to worry about Steve's injuries on top of his own.
The nurse looked relieved, and led Steve to an empty bed, telling him to sit down and wait there while he got a suture kit and some scrubs for him to wear.
Steve hadn't asked for them -- his costume must look worse than he'd thought.
Sitting down only seemed to increase the exhaustion he felt; sitting up straight pulled at his side, and there was no one here to see him sag forward and wrap an arm around his ribs, so he did, waiting for the nurse to re-apear and trying to think of what he was going to say to Tony.
Hank was lying in the bed across the aisle, washed-out and haggard, with Jan curled up on the pillow beside his head, small and half-hidden by Hank's hair, so that Steve had almost missed seeing her at first. He looked all right, except for the bandage on his leg and the IV line in one arm, better than he had when Steve had seen him lying on the floor in the station lobby, waiting to be taken up to the Helicarrier.
At least Hank was going to be okay. For a while, earlier today, Steve had thought that they were going to lose more than one Avenger. That Wanda and Pietro were both alive was a minor miracle, and Hank and Tony both could so easily have died, had nearly died, on the suicide mission Steve had sent them on.
He would never have forgiven himself, if they had, if Hank had been killed trying to meet up with the rest of them or Tony's heart had finally given out from shock and God knew how much sustained abuse just hours or minutes before Steve had found him.
They were alive, he reminded himself, as he watched the nurse come back, his hands laden down with fabric and medical supplies. He shouldn't dwell on what could have happened.
They were alive, and Tony was going to be all right, and the Argonians were leaving. Everything was going to be all right.
Steve repeated the thought to himself while the nurse cleaned the slice across his ribs with antiseptic and stitched it up, ignoring the way the man pressed his lips together and sighed when Steve refused pain medication.
Either it wouldn't be a large enough dose to make a difference, or it would be enough and, tired as he was, it would knock him out.
SHIELD medical personnel were efficient; Steve wasn't sure how long he spent sitting there on the cot, staring at Hank and Jan while the nurse set a long line of stitches in his side and taped a bandage over them, but it couldn't have been very long. Or maybe he had spaced out for a few minutes, because first it seemed as if the nurse had barely started, and then he was pressing the last piece of tape into place.
"Thanks," Steve said, pulling the green SHIELD-issue shirt on and standing before the nurse could suggest that he lay down and rest. "Now would you please tell me where Tony is?"
"Back there." The nurse pointed at the row of curtained-off beds. "The third one on the right."
Steve didn't bother to say thank you, simply picked up his shield from where he'd set it doen beside the bed, pushed past the man, and headed for the white curtain that concealed Tony's bed, not looking back.
His stomach lurched as he pulled the curtain aside and ducked around it, half-afraid of what he might see -- Tony had been so pale, so covered in bruises and cuts and burns. What if he'd been more severely injured than Steve had thought, the blood and grime hiding some other, much worse form of damage?
Tony was lying on his back in a hospital bed, a white sheet pulled up to his waist and his bare torso covered in clean, white bandages. The oxygen tube, saline drip and heart monitor hooked up to him were a familiar sight, if not in any way a reassuring one.
Clint was curled up in a plastic chair next to the bed, asleep with one hand wrapped around the hilt of his Argonian short-sword. It shouldn't have been cute, but Steve found himself smiling anyway. Just being near Tony, looking at him, made him feel better; the slow, steady beeping of the heart monitor a constant, quiet proof that Tony was still alive, still present.
Steve laid his shield against the empty chair on Tony's other side and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. With his gloves gone, Tony's hair was soft against his fingers despite the grime and sweat that had turned it lank and stringy.
Tony stirred slightly when Steve's fingers brushed his cheek, but his eyes didn't open. He didn't look like he was in too much pain, despite the exhaustion carved into his too-thin face -- the circles under his eyes were bigger, darker than they had been before, and his lips were cracked and dry, but his face was relaxed, still. They had him on painkillers, probably because he hadn't woken up yet and started refusing them.
Steve thought of Jan, asleep with one hand wrapped in Hank's hair, and wished that he could do the same, climb in next to Tony and wrap his arms around him -- carefully -- and hold him, but there was no way the narrow hospital bed was going to hold two men who were both over six feet tall. Steve would barely have fit into it on his own.
Tony probably wouldn't be waking up any time soon, Steve thought, struggling not to feel disappointment as he ran his fingers through Tony's hair. It was probably for the best. He needed to rest.
Then Tony's eyelids twitched, and he turned his face into Steve's hand. "Steve," he mumbled, his eyes opening partway to reveal a thin slit of blue. "Got me out. Did it work?"
"Yes," Steve told him, blinking at the sudden prickly heat in his eyes. "We won. They're leaving."
"Oh." Tony sighed and rolled his head to the side, pressing his cheek into Steve's palm, and his eyes fell shut agan. "Good." There was a long pause, while Steve tried to think of something to say.
'I love you,' he thought, swallowing hard as his throat closed up. 'I never would have forgiven myself if you'd-'
Tony frowned faintly, his eyebrows drawing together. "Why is Clint here?" he asked, voice heavy and faintly slurred. "Is he okay?"
"He's fine," Steve said, feeling a sudden, half-hysterical urge to laugh. "I don't know why he's here. He looks too cute to wake him up, though."
Tony's lips twitched for a moments, into something that was almost a smile. "You wouldn' say that if he were in this bed instead of me. He's a terrible patient."
"I tried to get to you in time," Steve blurted out. "I know they- I wish you hadn't had to go through this."
"You did." Tony opened his eyes again, smiling hazily up at Steve. "We won. An' I'm not dead." He frowned again, something like fear coming into his eyes, and added, "I didn' tell them anything. Only what I was... was supposed to. About the virus." He reached up clumsily and wrapped his fingers around Steve's wrist, staring intently at him. "Didn' tell about Hank."
Steve brushed a piece of Tony's hair out of his face again, blinking hard. "I know," he forced out, making himself smile. "I know you didn't."
"Good," Tony said, again, and his fingers relaxed on Steve's wrist, grasping it gently now instead of the almost painful grip of a moment before. "I'm glad they didn't kill me," he said, with an open honesty Steve was sure he'd never be displaying if he weren't drugged. "I wanted to see you again. I kept thinking about you, in there, whenever they..." he trailed off, and then repeated, "Wanted to see you. I didn't want to die without telling you," he broke off, yawning. "Without telling you..."
His eyes slid shut, and the fingers around Steve's wrist went lax. Steve lifted Tony's hand to his face for a moment, closing his eyes and holding it against his cheek, then lowered it gently back to the bed. "I love you too," he whispered.
Then he stood and shook a reluctant and sleepy Clint awake, making him leave to find a bed of his own.
Once Clint had gone, Steve pulled the still-warm chair he'd been sleeping in around to the other side of the bed and settled into it, propping his feet up on the second chair and leaning his head back, making himself as comfortable as possible.
He fell asleep holding Tony's hand.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five (a) | Chapter Five (b) | Chapter Six (a) | Chapter Six (b) | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty (a) | Chapter Twenty (b) | Chapter Twenty One
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Finally. I was getting tired of updating the page almost every minute.
God. I love this, the aftermath, the feeling of the whole thing, they won, but still it doesn't really feel like it.
The love, the understanding, the everything!
Ah!!
"Everyone knew that Pietro, Steve, and Carol needed individually tailored pain relief, the same way they all knew that Tony wasn't supposed to take Tylenol or anything else with acetaminophen in it because his liver couldn't handle it, or that Jan was allergic to penicillin, or that Hank couldn't be given any kind of medication while giant[...]"
I loved that part, I tells a lot about how close they are.
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I love the thought you guys put into the details of the medication. Not just the energy mutants, but Steve's medicine problems and Tony's liver and all those little details. It really shows not only how often they're in need of medical attention, but how close they are. I know some families who couldn't reel off who has what allergies like that.
(hugs Wanda and Pietro)
XD OMG I feel like I shouldn't be laughing, but REED. Thats so perfectly him. And the Argonian's response... (cackles)
Oh. (wince) I hadn't thought of that aspect of the surrender. But on the personal honor system that the Argonians seem to work under, it makes sense that they'd only consider Steve the victor. Especially since it allows them to surrender without losing face--they as a people didn't lose, their leader did. Though I sort of laughed at the whole "loyal only to Steve" problem. Steve really doesn't know his own charisma, does he?
Oh, more ow. Steve has his own sort of messed up to get through. (hugs him too) He needs a vacation. Badly. Identifying the bodies. ;-; Ooooh, ow ow ow ow. In fact, I say they all need them. Vacations all around. Last one to Hawaii gets buried in the sand.
"Is Tony's special brand of stupid contagious?"
Yes. *sigh* Yes, it is.
OMG REUNION. (flail) Steve! Tony! Clint awwwwh. He's protecting Tony in his sleep, isn't he?
Oh gods, it hurts so good. Even now, Tony's worried about not letting Steve down. D: He almost died by torture and that's what he's worried about. Oh Tony. And then the confession and... oh. (wibble)
I'm just... going to go be a wreck over here now...
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You've reduced me to keyboardsmash. Happy now?
So much win! So! Much! The emotions are just perfect, one part incredible bone-melting relief and one part lingering tension. Also, I kind of want to hug everyone, possibly all at once.
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And poor Clint, who's still struggling with the fact that he likes some of the Argonians *hugs him*.
I particularly like the way you've been tying up some of the smaller loose ends such as Schultz having seen Tony with the repulsor gauntlets and jumping to (mostly correct) conclusions when he sees Rhodey in the Iron Man-patched armour, though thankfully that was easily resolved. I have to admit, I'd like to see some of the ex-criminals taking the opportunity to go straight in the aftermath of the invasion, but I suspect most (especially the Kingpin's men) will just want to get back to their version of a normal life...
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I think my favorite part was Sam and Carol realizing that Steve was about to lose it and gently talking him down. Or maybe Clint having a meltdown in front of Happy and Pepper, that made me wibble too. (And so great to see Happy and Pepper again!) And that last image of Steve falling asleep holding Tony's hand, aww. I wish I could draw so I could make fanart of that.
♥
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Very often, stories like this will reach the climax -- humans defeat the invading aliens -- and then more or less stop dead. For example, In Sleeping Planet by William R Burkett, once the aliens' plot was decisively foiled, there was just a sketchy epilogue. In the movie Independence Day, there was a hug-and-kiss scene and then the credits rolled. But here, you deal with the aftermath honestly. People (on both sides) are dead, sick, wounded, or just exhausted. There are prisoners of war to deal with, the dead to be identified, war crimes trials to be contemplated, tons of repairs to do; the aliens have been defeated, but it's not over. Everyone has to keep going.
This really is one of the best alien invasion stories I've ever seen. ♥
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I cannot WAIT to find out how you wrap everything up--Steve and Tony, Carol and Wanda, the Argonians (yes, I really really do want to know how Irkalla, Kammani and Isimud rebuild).
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That last line was something we just couldn't resist; it was pure sap, but, well, Steve's kind of a sappy guy, so.
Also, tribbles! Now I have this bizarre mental image of "Trouble With Tribbles" as played by the Avengers. You know, Jan as Uhura, Clint as Chekov, Hank as Bones, and so on.
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Sorry this chapter got so delayed; it was entirely my fault :(.
I loved that part, I tells a lot about how close they are.
I'm really glad you liked that detail; it's actually one of my favorite bits in this chapter.
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Steve is adorable with Tony. And I'm glad Hank and Jan patched things.
Seriously though. Your Clint is adorable. I love him. And I love all of these feelings he's got and showing. His neediness. Not always so cock-sure. Great stuff.
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ALL THE FEELS!
Also, I'm gratified that things aren't suddenly all better. The fallout from war and torture and the horrible things they've all seen and done.... that takes time, and I like that you're taking us/them through it carefully and, dare I say, quite realistically.
I'm also in pre-mourning since I'm almost at the end of this glorious fic >:O(