Grin and Bear It

Dying, you were surprised to discover, wasn't as bad as you thought it would be. In fact, it was kind of nice. Peaceful, even. You were filled with a sense of all-encompassing tranquility. No longer being –– no longer feeling –– was ironically, the best that you'd felt in a long time.

And then your entire body was on fire. At first, your muddled brain thought this was capital H Hell. It made sense. You had a list of crimes and victims longer than a CVS receipt. You'd never spent a lot of time thinking about the afterlife, but you weren't naive. In the scope of options, eternal damnation was probably the best fit. Still, it was fucking painful.

That's when you realized something odd: you were screaming. At least, you felt like you were screaming. Could a soul scream? Did you even have a soul? You tried to move whatever passed for a "body" but nothing worked. If you had fingers or toes, they were useless.

You were suddenly flooded with a wave of nauseating deja vu. Somewhere in the back of your consciousness, something clicked. This was a sensation you'd felt before. This wasn't Hell. This was much, much worse.

"Y/N? Y/N!" Nat gripped your arms, holding you down on the small bench.

"What's going on?" Clint yelled through the jet, evidently realizing Nat had scrapped her comms.

"Just land the damn plane!" Nat yelled back. It came out meaner than she'd meant it, but she was a bit preoccupied, trying to make sure you didn't slide off the bench and onto the floor as Clint completed a less-than-graceful landing procedure.

As soon as the jet touched down, the rear door started to descend, creating a ramp onto the landing pad. Before it was halfway down, Clint was at Nat's side, looking down at you with a mix of fear and wonder.

"How?" was all the archer was able to get out before a team of medics surrounded them, Bruce leading the way.

"Should we sedate her?" A young female medic asked Bruce, confused. Clearly, they had been briefed to expect a patient with a life-threatening gunshot wound on death's door, not a young woman screaming bloody murder.

"I'm not sure," Bruce looked at Nat quizzically, leaving it up to her to provide an explanation. His eyes traveled to the widow's bite still lodged in your chest. "You shot her?"

Nat sighed. "Only after the defibrillator didn't work. But that didn't do any good either. She flatlined. She was dead. I was out of options."

Nat's eyes traveled to the small bag on the floor that held the crushed remnants of the vials. "So, I injected her with the serum."

Bruce's eyes went wide. He looked back at you. It all made sense. He turned back to the medic. "Get her inside and ready for surgery. No anesthetic, no drugs. Her system's overloading as it is."

The medics immediately got to work while Bruce led Nat and Clint out of the way. "What the hell were you thinking?" Bruce whispered to Nat. The look on his face scared her, and she was worried Bruce was moments away from losing control inside the already cramped jet. Clint had the same thought, placing a hand on Bruce's shoulder.

"Maybe we should get some air," Clint suggested, trying to defuse the situation.

But that's when Steve walked in, fresh from training in a sweat-soaked shirt. He took in your body on the stretcher as the medics rushed by, immediately snapping into team leader mode. "What's going on? Is that...?"

"Y/N," Natasha affirmed. "She's been shot."

Bruce gave Nat a stern look for the half-truth. "When she flatlined on the jet, someone had the brilliant idea to resuscitate her using super soldier serum."

Steve didn't even have to guess whose idea it was. His eyes immediately went to Natasha's. "Did you even stop to consider the consequences?"

Of course she hadn't, Nat thought to herself. She didn't have time. "She was dead, Steve. Now she's alive. Last time I checked, that was our whole mission statement."

"At what cost?" Bruce asked. "Do you even understand what that serum does to you? Will her body even be able to handle a second dose? We're in uncharted territory here."

"Well then," Nat said, walking out of the jet, "I guess we better stop talking and go figure it out."

The first time, you'd been drunk. It was your seventeenth birthday and Kilroy had gone all out. There was a cake, candles, even a few scattered balloons. He said it was to make up for not having a sweet sixteen; that every girl needed to feel special on their birthday. Louis and Seb pooled their money and got you a tiara inlaid with real jewels from a residential robbery a few weeks earlier. It was beautiful, and you wore it well after it started digging into the sides of your scalp.

Contrary to stereotypes, you weren't a "bad" foster kid. You got good grades, didn't act out, had never been arrested. You'd also never drank a sip of alcohol. But it was your seventeenth birthday and Kilroy was adamant he make you a cosmopolitan. A classy cocktail, he said, for a classy young woman. You were flattered. It was good. He made you another. And another.

Years later you'd finally gotten up the courage to ask if it was part of the plan. If he intentionally got you drunk so you wouldn't feel the needle pierce your skin. For all the laws they break, criminals are surprisingly honest with their inner circles. Kilroy was no different, and he told you the truth. He'd hoped he could pass off the side effects of the serum as a bad hangover. It didn't work, but it did have one long-lasting impact: you hadn't gotten drunk since. Now, you would've given anything to be so blissful unaware.

Your vision came back gradually. Bright lights flashed above your head. You were moving. Or, more accurately, something or someone was moving you.

"Y/N?" Someone grabbed your hand. You tried to grab it back but your fingers wouldn't cooperate. "You're going to be okay," the voice said. It was deep but feminine. Familiar. Your brain said to trust it but you couldn't explain why.

"Can she hear me?" the voice asked.

"I'm not sure," came the reply. Another woman somewhere near your head.

This was the worst part of the serum, you remembered. Sure, the pain sucked like nothing else but the paralysis was next level. Kilroy had explained that in order to rewrite your DNA, your body had to first destroy itself from the inside out. Which would've been fine, if you were unconscious, but the levels of adrenaline it took to actually accomplish this were so astronomically high it essentially guaranteed you'd be awake, locked inside your body like a prisoner.

You'd been a model inmate during your almost two-years behind bars, but you had spent a long weekend in solitary confinement after getting in a fight on behalf of one of the oldest prisoners. Undergoing treatment for cancer, she was one of the few people allowed to keep pain medication in her cell, which made her an easy and lucrative target for an enterprising gang. Until you stepped in with a few well-placed punches, that is. You tried to imagine yourself back in that lonely, silent cell. Maybe you could trick your brain into thinking that's where you were. Minus the searing pain of course. But it didn't work; your hearing was already too enhanced to drown out all the sounds around you.

A pair of doors were pushed open and you were greeted by an even harsher light. "Natasha, I'm going to need to ask you to leave." It was the woman again, still hovering protectively by your head. So that meant the woman holding your hand was named Natasha. That pinged somewhere in your brain. Natasha, Black Widow, the Avengers. You saw Louis and Seb crumpled on the ground...

From somewhere close by a machine blared and feet shuffled. "Her heart rate's increasing..." this was a different voice. Male. Authoritative. "We've gotta get her into surgery."

"You're going to operate without anesthetic?" That was Natasha again, and you resolved to thank her for asking such a important question on your behalf. Though you were no stranger to what Kilroy called "mob doctors," the idea of dealing with more pain on top of what you were already experiencing seemed next to impossible.

"We can't," the man argued. Ugh, men. "Who knows how it would interact with the serum. Best case scenario, it probably wouldn't work at all. Worst case, you brought Y/N back to life for nothing." Wow, this guy was a real dick.

Natasha was silent for too long. Come on, Natasha, you rooted in your head. You can do it!

"What about Wanda?"