Chapter 15
One might ask Castiel, why didn’t you just fly toward the creature and body slammed it to the side of the building without needing a car to do that? In fact, why did Castiel even need to drive to the hospital with a SHIELD’s car instead of flying to it like Tony did?
The answer was very simple. He can’t.
Castiel may or may have not been completely honest about the injury he got from their battle against their doppelgangers a few months ago. The battle where a version of him decided to have a supernova meltdown right in the middle of the fight, which was very rude by the way, if Castiel was being honest.
He was too close to that explosion. In order to protect his body from getting destroyed, he had to protect himself with his wings. On the bright side, his body managed to survive the explosion with injuries that healed with time, on the other hand, his wings? Not so much. They were pretty much burned off.
The most vulnerable and sensitive part of any angel is its wings. An injury to the wings takes a frustratingly long time to heal. It was a slow process. While his body now was completely healed, his wings weren’t even halfway there yet. He was forcibly grounded for the unforeseeable future. He didn’t even know when he would be able to fly again.
Why didn’t he use his grace then to destroy the creature? Another simple answer. The area was filled with panicking humans. While Tony has the sense to close his eyes when Castiel releases his grace, other humans don’t. He wasn’t very thrilled about burning the eyes of every human in the area out of its sockets, just to kill one creature. That will be excessive even for them.
But he discovered the wonders of running over a creature with a car. That was also very satisfying. He understood why Dean likes doing it a lot.
However, He suspected that Fury wouldn’t like it when he found out that Castiel destroyed one of his cars. He didn’t care though.
The thought of Dean sent a bang in his chest, as he sat on a chair outside Dean’s room, next to a still panicked Charlie, waiting for Tony to come back with help.
He felt defeated. Tired. So tired. He thought it was impossible for an angel to feel tired, but it became a constant feeling the moment Dean closed his eyes and didn’t wake up. Things were tiring without him. Everything seemed too much and painful, when Dean wasn’t there, to make it lighter with an inappropriate joke or a sarcastic comment.
He just felt lonely. Even with Tony and Charlie there, his loneliness didn’t disappear. He only felt their loneliness along with his, making it worse.
He heard the double footsteps rushing towards him and he looked up to see Tony, who did come back with help. He was dragging along a very worried, very confused, very disoriented Bruce Banner.
It was obvious what had happened. During all that time, Bruce was cooped up in his lab in the Tower. The lab had no windows, and soundproof walls and was completely isolated, because of his dangerous experiments there. No one was allowed inside for their safety. It was Bruce’s private haven. Not even JASRVIS had access there.
Bruce could stay there for days, completely unaware of what was happening in the outside world. If the Tower was on fire, or under attack from deranged dragons, or even if a Greek God decided to turn it into a new Mount Olympus, Bruce still wouldn’t notice what was happening.
Obviously, Thor hated that with all he had. So, Bruce only does that when Thor isn’t around. Like right now.
What happened now was a very frustrated and crazed Tony Stark, who marched inside that damned lab and dragged a freaked-out Bruce Banner all the way here, while giving him a summary of all that had happened during his voluntary isolation.
“Why didn’t you get me sooner?!” Bruce exclaimed the moment Tony stopped him in front of Castiel and Charlie, who looked up at him with tired, very very tired eyes. the last couple of hours were just fantastic. “Why did you leave me in the dark till now?! How can you just tell me now that our family is in danger?!”
“We could have told you if you answered your damned phone!” Tony retorted with a growl, burning Bruce with his eyes. “I have called you 52 times! Seriously, why do you even own a phone?! Do you only use it to watch Tiktoks or something?!”
“I-uh-I dropped it accidentally in one of my chemicals,” Bruce murmured sheepishly, looking ashamed and wishing for the ground to open up and swallow him. His family was getting attacked and in danger and he only found out now, he hated himself to the core currently. “I am sorry. I’m so sorry, Tony. Castiel. Charlie. I am very sorry.”
It was impossible to stay mad at him with how apologetic, guilty, and worried he looked, so they just sighed and nodded at him. At least he was here now.
“How are they?” Bruce asked nervously, looking extremely worried.
“We don’t know,” Charlie muttered, clinching her fists in her lap as she stared at her hands. “Dr. Rousseau is checking on them now.”
“That’s why I brought you here.” Tony turned to Bruce, as he tried to hide his shaking hands. “Something had happened to them. I didn’t see it, I figured I should bring you here first so we could check it together.”
“What do you mean?” Bruce looked at him confused, but then the door to Steve’s room opened, revealing Alex.
“How is he?” Castiel asked her in concern, as he and Charlie stood up, while they all faced her.
“Everything is the same as before, nothing changed except that weird thing that happened that I don’t know what it is,” Alex reported grimly, looking personally offended that she didn’t understand what happened. Her eyes trailed over them, before landing on Bruce. Her eyes widened and glowed, as she immediately stood before him shaking his hand excitedly. “Dr. Banner! I can’t believe I got the honor to meet you! I have always admired your work!”
Bruce stared at the excited, wide-eyed, young doctor, and couldn’t help but smile at her. Tony had mentioned her on their way here, and he was caught off guard by how young she was. It was refreshing to see someone so young, yet praised by Tony Stark for being a genius.
Despite the situation, it was cute to see the young doctor so excited each time she met one of them. As Bruce greeted her and thanked her for her words, making her almost fall over from the fact that she was meeting another one of her role models, she finally refocused on the problem and urged Bruce and Tony to get inside Steve’s room to see for themselves what happened.
Inside the room, where Steve was still unmoving on the bed, everything was normal. The machines working as before. Everything is the same.
Except for one thing. Each part of Steve’s skin had a pale pink layer. Like his skin was burned with high, strong radiation.
The same thing for Erik and Dean. The three were in the same state. With pale pink skin.
“While everyone was busy with the creature that I killed with a car, a partner of his sneaked into the hospital, only to kill a few doctors and nurses, then did this to Steve, Erik, and Dean,” Castiel explained to Bruce, grimacing in frustration. He didn’t like being tricked. He took what happened as a personal insult. “The strange thing was their bodies got burned like that, while everything in the room remained unchanged and untouched.”
“Well, of course, that’s normal.” Bruce had just shrugged, as he made his way towards Steve.
“Normal?!” Charlie exclaimed indignantly, as everyone else stared at Bruce in surprise.
Bruce removed a part of the thin pink layer off Steve’s face with his fingers as he explained. “This is a very normal phenomenon, that happens when the body is hit directly by Ultraviolet rays, which causes the burn of the outer, delicate layer of the skin, and make this pink layer that could just be brushed off the skin, without causing any problem.”
“Really?” Charlie exclaimed in utter relief, while Alex looked like she was about to throw herself out of the window, for not figuring out that herself.
Meanwhile, Tony and Castiel frowned as they exchanged a look, a sudden thought came to their minds. A bad thought.
“Charlie, check the results of all the reports about their condition in the main system of the hospital.” Castiel turned to Charlie, giving her the order firmly.
“What? Why?” Charlie looked at him in confusion, while Alex looked worried.
“Now,” Castiel stressed, looking at her pointedly. She didn’t argue anymore, pulling out her tablet to check the hospital system for the reports and results.
“What is on your minds?” Bruce frowned as he trailed his eyes between Tony and Castiel’s grim expressions.
“It’s painfully obvious, Bruce.” Tony sighed, with a shake of his head. “This is all obviously an attempt to remove any trace of that mysterious chemical substance, that caused all this and the crystal shards. First, attacking the research building in SHIELD, erasing all the data on the system there. Then, attacking the labs here, burning the outer layer of Steve, Erik, and Dean’s skin, to remove any trace of that substance.”
“Can’t you get it from their bloodstream?” Bruce asked in worry, as he was hoping to check that substance himself.
“I am afraid we can’t.” Alex was the one to answer with a shake of her head. “It doesn’t leave enough trace in the blood. As if it gets immediately absorbed by the Nerve Fibers and-“
“Oh God!” Charlie cut her off with her exclaim, making everyone turn to look at her in worry. “Everything was removed from the hospital’s system!”
“I expected that.” Castiel frowned, shaking his head bitterly.
“But if that substance really does have two unknown elements, why go all those lengths to remove any trace of it?” Alex asked in surprise, still not able to believe that there were actually unknown elements. “It’s obvious we can’t do anything about it, or even study it unless we figure out what those two elements are.”
“Maybe he is trying to stop us from figuring it out in the future,” Tony muttered absentmindedly, eyes on Steve’s still unmoving form. He missed him so much. It had only been almost two days, but his absence was weighing on him harshly.
Castiel’s brow furrowed at Tony’s sentence like it triggered something in his mind, but before he could linger on that, Charlie reported grimly: “Dammit, he removed all the traces of that second substance that was injected with the Truth Serum. The one that we believe got them out of the coma temporarily. It is also all gone!”
“That one at least still in their blood!” Bruce got excited about that part, as he turned to Alex immediately. “Get me blood samples from all three of them. I will check it personally.”
“Can I help?” Alex’s eyes gleamed with the thought of working with him.
“Of course.” Bruce gave her a smile, that got her excited and moved immediately to get the blood samples from all three patients.
Tony seemed to black out from all of them, as he took a seat next to Steve’s bed, staring at him, as his husband as exhaustion and anxiety took their toll on him.
“As for you,” Bruce patted Castiel’s shoulder, pushing him towards the door. “You will help me out with the harder part.”
“Harder part?” Castiel wondered cautiously, looking over at him as he was being pushed towards the door.
“Yes. We are going to check your victim.” Bruce announced in a serious tone. “Your alien victim.”