Rescue
Everyone stood together solemnly. It was quiet among them. They knew what the mission was. Why they had all gathered together. While there was still some bad blood between them, their focus was not on that. They were standing together to save one of their own. It hurt Tony to even look at Steve, and from the awkward, uncomfortable way Steve was standing, it seemed to be mutual. Sam was sitting, staring at the ground as if it would burn a hole in it. Rhodey was looking around the room, sternly but not aggressively. Vision was with Wanda, unsurprisingly, and Wanda was carefully avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes. Scott looked out of place and uncomfortable, perhaps not thinking he had a place with them. And Clint…
“We’re almost there, Clint,” Steve said softly to the pacing, agitated archer. After the phone call, they had shown up within several hours, and the first thing Clint had done was pace a hole in his floor from sheer stress. Watching the man fret over his partner and friend was painful to watch, and Tony kept having to look away.
Clint snarled wordlessly in response, looking like he wanted to teleport across the ocean to the Raft and bomb it out of existence.
They had had to wait almost a week for the underwater fortress to rise from the ocean, and they were on a timer to get there in time, stop it from submerging again, and get Nat out. And depending what they found when they got there… blow it up. Tony would be happy with that, Accords be damned.
They had spent nearly a week together, and somehow, did not manage to kill each other. Perhaps because their focus was on their missing member. Or… one of them. He tried not to think about where Bruce was, still missing somewhere out in the world. Never found. No word or sight of him since Ultron. And Thor, somewhere out in space. He at least visited from time to time. That was nice. Well, okay, he had not visited recently.
The Raft was in sight. Clint, at long last, went still, his back rigid as he stared at it. Tony stepped into his armor, ready to fight. Steve was equipped with a baton of some type and a gun. No shield. Because Tony had his shield, didn’t he? He forgot that detail.
“Let’s be quick. Get in without being noticed, then make a mess,” Tony said.
Steve did not argue.
Tony slipped unnoticed onto the deck before blowing the outside door off its hinges. Alarms went off, but it was much too late. “FRIDAY, disable their submersion systems” he ordered, as he plopped a device on the wall.
“Disabling” the AI said.
He moved, watching as agents came running. “What do you think you’re doing, Stark?!” Ross’s angry words came over the speaker.
“The right thing,” he responded, firing his repulsors at the defending agents. The others were in with him, taking down agents and working their way through the compound to the containment area. They moved fast, efficient, easy. Like a team. Unlike usual there were on quips or jokes, no laughing at each other or making fun of the enemy. They had one goal in mind.
Tony burst into the containment area, Clint right beside him, and his eyes fell upon the cell. A limp form lay bound still, curled up on her side. He could see her trembling faintly, the only sign she was alive. She was covered in blood.
Clint made an awful sound next to him, rushing forward. Tony had already seen this, other than the blood, but it was still difficult to look at. He blasted the cell lock, followed up by Clint’s exploding arrow which knocked it open. The shivering woman recoiled at the sound, curling up in panic, shifting on the floor. He could tell she was trying to move away, but wasn’t strong enough to.
“FRIDAY, do a scan of her injuries. Send them directly to the medical team,” he whispered directly to his suit.
There was a ding of confirmation as she began scanning, and he forced himself to ignore the array as his suit scanned the small spy’s body.
Clint walked forward slowly, gently. “Tasha?” His voice was softer than Tony had ever heard it. Tony stood back awkwardly, deciding to keep guard while Clint did his thing. Clint would probably be the safest option to get through to her. They had been through much more together than anyone else.
She shifted, and Tony flinched at the quiet, pained whimper that came from her. She almost never vocalized her pain.
“Hang on,” Clint whispered, carefully untying the hood and pulling it over her head. Tony wanted to punch someone. No, he wanted to kill someone. He wanted to find Ross and beat the bastard of a man to death with his own hands. She looked so thin and pale, jaw bones prominent, bruises of all colors across her face. And her throat. Her throat had bruises in the shape of hand prints, and deeper bruises that looked like a rope had been wrapped tightly around her neck. He wondered, horrified, if they had tightened the rope around her hood to the point she was choking, leaving her bound and helpless to suffocate. Worse was the gag in her mouth, solid metal like the one they had used on Loki. Clint’s hands shook as they moved to remove it, and it came out with the sickening rip of dried, crusted blood.
How long had that been on? He thought, horrified and disgusted.
Her eyes were open, squinting in the light. Bloodshot, glazed over with pain and panic. Her breath was coming in quick, desperate gasps, and she was shuddering in Clint’s arms from a combination of pain and fear.
“It’s okay Nat. We’ve got you. You’re coming home,” Clint spoke in that same soft, gentle voice. “Вы в безопасности.” The man said in Russian. Tony did not ask for a translation, and Friday didn’t give one. She almost began to relax he thought, but then her eyes flicked to Tony in his suit, and they widened again as she began to writhe and squirm, trying to push herself away in fear.
He recoiled. Briefly he had wondered why she was afraid, and then remembered the words he had spoken so carelessly before with Ross. She had definitely heard that.
Perhaps even thought he had been happy about it.
He was going to raise his hands in a pacifying gesture, but realized that would be seen as anything but peaceful, given the repulsors built into the palms of his suit. Instead, he lowered them, and lowered the face plate, nearly choking as he was assaulted by the powerful smell of alcohol - and not the kind he liked. It burned his eyes and nose and mouth, and he wondered vaguely how Clint had not reacted to it.
“I’m here to help,” Tony said, sounding unusually docile.
She closed her eyes, making no effort to speak.
Clint shifted her, attempting to get to her metal shackles to unlock them, but as soon as he shifted her arms she jolted, crying out in pain. Her left arm was severely bruised, and he cringed as the slight bulge in it that told him there might be a break.
“FRIDAY, any critical or life threatening injuries we need to know about?” Tony asked softly. Clint and Natasha could definitely both hear him now, but neither reacted.
Clint didn’t remove his eyes from his partner, gently lying her back down.
FRIDAY was silent for a moment before speaking. Somehow, her robot voice sounded unusually subdued. “There is nothing life threatening currently. She had five broken ribs, however. Two are broken in multiple places. All are in varied states of healing, but they appear to have been broken for some time without being able to heal. Left radius is broken in one place, appears recent. She is showing symptoms of an early respiratory infection with fluid in both lungs. Mild hypothermia. Weight loss of 26 pounds since last known weight. 34% of her body has small to medium lacerations. 58% has bruising from blunt force trauma. Possible damage to her trachea from repeated strangulation.”
FRIDAY stopped, the AI’s voice somehow having sounded more angry over time.
Tony felt like he had been punched in the gut. Clint was shaking, pale, expression furious. Natasha hadn’t moved, her eyes remaining closed, although the way she was breathing made it obvious she was awake.
“We are going to remove these shackles, Nat. Then we are going home,” Clint said, his voice rough.
The spy nodded, but still did not speak. Her lips were speckled red with dried blood.
With a little effort from his 'universal' key invention, the shackles unlocked, and slid off thin wrists that were so bruised and bloodied that it was clear they had been on for an extremely long time. Next they came off her ankles, which showed the same injuries.
Tony swallowed hard.
“Tony.” Clint’s voice was hard and firm. He looked at the archer, whose entire body was tense with fury. “Get her to the Quinjet. I will jostle her too much if I carry her,” the man said, one hand tight around the bow.
Forcing his hands steady inside the suit, he nodded.
“We are getting you out of here,” he said quietly. He was scared the injured woman would break further if he touched her, but knew they had to move quickly to get her some proper medical attention. And although she shuddered at his touch, she did not make an effort to stop him. He did freeze at the hoarse, keening cry that came from her as he lifted her, but he knew, given her injuries, there was no way to pick her up without hurting her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
He moved quickly, making sure she was as immobile as possible. “We’ve got her,” he said into the coms. “Getting her to the jet. Make sure the path is clear,” he ordered. He heard a mix of confirmations.
An agent flew by him, surrounded by red swirls, and did not get up. Wanda appeared, eyes glowing red and met his eyes and then glanced quickly at the burden in his arms. Her eyes widened, shocked and horrified. Whatever she could likely feel from Natasha’s mind was probably not going to be good.
“Destroy this place.” Tony said.
There was no argument. By the time he had her in the jet, setting her down as gently as possible onto a soft cot, trying not to cringe at her muffled, painful sounds, he could already hear the explosions and smell the smoke.
“We’re bringing you home, Nat,” he said.
Finally she opened her eyes, looking up at him with green eyes dull from pain and exhaustion. And fear.
He wanted to get her out of her blood soaked clothes. Tend to her injuries. Fix the broken bones that she had likely been dealing with for weeks. Perhaps longer. She went AWOL months ago, and he had only had occasional tidbits of information popping up that she was still around when he heard about her escaping another ambush. He wanted to hope she had only been there for weeks, but the state of her body, starved and sick and severely wounded, told him a different story.
As the team filed back into the jet, faces grim and angry, he looked back. Steve let out an awful sound, like a wounded animal, when he saw the state of her. Sam recoiled visibly. Scott, despite not really knowing her much, looked away, jaw set in horror. Rhodey’s reaction was harder to see, given he hadn’t lowered his face plate, but Tony could see the trembling of the man’s armor. His legs would shake when he got upset or stressed, and he knew this was definitely a cause for that. Vision slipped in next, the android’s eyes somehow looking solemn and sad.
Wanda flew, and the jet rose into the air, turning to let them all see the Raft and all its torture devices go up in flames, explosion, and the scarlet magic of a furious Wanda. It was a struggle to let the lifeboat get away, but even in their anger, the Avengers knew that not everyone who worked on that Raft had a hand in the torture. Having downloaded their surveillance footage thanks to Friday, they would know who to go after soon enough.
“They will regret what they did,” he muttered quietly, to the agreement of everyone on the jet as they flew home.