The waiting game
I went back to my workshop and opened it up. I swept the chain mail samples into a drawer; just felt too frivolous to even think about with so much trouble around. Mr Pointy had been left on the porch along with DB and Martha, having had the mud cleaned off to make sure they were safe. There are amazing people working here. Either the mud or the cleaning had really faded the stain on Mr Pointy; I was going to have to redo it, but that would take a couple minutes of work, tops. The fans were in perfect condition.
I picked up my poleaxe and went out to whack at the tree some more. I had a pretty deep well of anger to fuel me and I stabbed and slashed with all my strength.
"Hey," someone said behind me, and I whipped around to see Bucky, looking pretty much inscrutable as usual. He nodded to the poleaxe. "Don't suppose you have another one?" Wordlessly, I went inside and grabbed the original weapon I'd been given, trotted down the porch steps, and tossed it to him. He caught it with ease, tested the balance, and attacked when he thought I wasn't ready. But I was. I was ready for him, and I'd watched enough videos of reinactments to know how to handle it. I was clumsy, as the tree didn't offer much in the way of a defense, but I was better than Bucky expected and I managed to surprise him by using the pole part to smack his hamstring and cause him to abandon an attack.
"You're better than you were," he said critically. I nodded.
After a few moments of silence, I said, "I had to use it."
He looked at me patiently. "Tell me." So I told him about trying to find the landslide, how I thought I was going to drown in the puddle, how I had to get up, and how it had ended.
"It's never easy for a good person to kill somebody," he said.
"Natasha said you get used to it."
"I hope you don't," Bucky said, surprising me. "I'd hate to see you get... hardened." He hefted the poleaxe again and held it out; I took it and put them both in the workshop. "Fury offered me a position here," he mentioned.
I sat down on the steps, offering him a towel, wiping my own face. "I thought he might, I just didn't expect it to be this soon. What was his offer?"
"When I'm ready, come out here. Join the Avengers. Be in charge of weapons training." He sat beside me.
"What do you think?" I asked.
"I don't know. I'm torn. I can be helpful here, but...I don't want to be here if Steve isn't."
"I understand. You don't need to answer right now though. You can take your time." I hesitated. "How's therapy going?"
He smiled, the first real one I'd seen this visit. "I just cut back from three appointments a week to one."
I grinned back. "That's really good news. Constance wouldn't have cut back if you weren't ready for it." At his look, I added, "We're friends, but she also treated me after my accident, so I have an understanding of what you're going through. It's not at all the same, but I know what it's like to do the work." I smiled. "She still talks me down occasionally." He nodded, and we just sat there for awhile as the shadows lengthened. "I need to go back to medical. You want to come?" I stood and gave him a hand up. We walked down to the clinic in peaceful silence.
We were just about to the clinic when he asked abruptly, "Why do you still work with Constance? I thought you were ok."
My smile was a little sour. "I didn't really want to do this Avenging thing, but there have been enough incidents that have convinced me that I'm safer here than anywhere. I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter, but there have been a couple of attempts to kidnap me. I can't go anywhere by myself these days, just in case. I always have to have at least one of the others with me, so I'm a little...I don't know what to call it. It's irritating and claustrophobic sometimes. And especially at the beginning, Stark and I were always at each others' throats. It wasn't physical, but it was the bare-knuckle verbal equivalent of a brawl, going after each other, hitting as hard and as dirty as possible, trying to inflict maximum damage. Not pleasant for anybody. So she lets me vent, gives me support and constructive criticism." Bucky thought about this as we entered the facility. He went on ahead and I found Dr Rai for my instructions.
He was pretty grim. "Strange left, said he did all he could," he said, and I got the feeling he wasn't the weird doctor's biggest fan. "I need you to see what's going on. We're having a heck of a time keeping Cap hydrated and we can't get enough nutrients in him. His metabolism is ferocious."
"Dr Lister, our wellness doctor, estimated he eats about 10 000 calories a day," I offered.
"No wonder we can't keep up," Rai sighed. "But he's coming to the end of what he can handle. If the infection isn't relieved, he's probably going to die," he told me gently and I worked hard to keep my face impassive. He had enough to deal with without me.
"Right," I managed, and followed him numbly. In the room, he noted the readings on the monitors and I finally let myself look at all the machines. All the lines going in and out of Steve, the ventilator, all providing as much help as was humanly possible. I took a deep breath of the cool, slightly stale air in my suit and spun my vision down. I looked once, quickly, then settled in for a more detailed look. Then I looked at his heart for stress and the blood for its viral content. They'd been filtering his blood, but the hellish viruses had replicated like lightening.
I popped out and sighed. Bucky and Dr Rai were staring at me intently. I smiled. I thought Bucky was going to melt, he was so relieved, and Dr Rai shot questions at me, having me go back in and give him estimates on numbers. "Good, good," he muttered, punching away at his tablet. "These are better numbers. We're not out of the woods yet, but there's light."
I slipped out of the room and by the time I was ready to see my other teammates, I was feeling better. Tony and Jim were still suffering from the worst their diseases could inflict; Jim was sleeping, and I had a brief conversation with Tony. I risked the wrath of the nurses, found a plastic chair, and placed it in the shower for him, letting him hang onto me for support. He was shaking with fatigue at the end of the shower when I came to help him back, but he seemed relieved and happier to be clean. He even reined in the snark. It was helpful because we were caught, as you'd expect. The nurse gave us both a tongue-lashing in a low voice, out of respect for Jim, who was getting some needed sleep. Then out in the corridor, Dr Harris, just coming on shift, also chewed me out. "I know you were trying to help your friend, and Mr Stark has been...fractious, but if he'd fallen, he could have been hurt and been worse off. If you can't follow instructions, you won't be allowed back," she told me forcefully. I took the scolding stoically. She was right, but Tony was normally fastidious, and he'd gotten fixated on how filthy he felt. It hadn't been hard for Tony to talk me into helping him; he'd be more restful and easier to deal with now.
There was good news on my other teammates too: Wanda, Vision, and Thor were being discharged, along with Natasha too, and everybody was improving. I was surprised, but she'd been altered a little during her training and her recovery was swift. I walked back to the residence with them and we arranged to meet in an hour for dinner.
At dinner, I told them how everybody else was doing; details about Steve's condition hadn't been provided to them and their reactions were shocked and appalled. Bruce shook his head. "Makes me want to unleash the Other Guy on that bastard Namitar," he muttered, and Natasha patted his hand.
I smirked a little. "Not necessary," I said, satisfaction flooding my voice. "Bucky paid him a visit." I saw him come into the caf and waved at him. He nodded to me, looked at the others, and went to get his dinner.
"The man of the hour," Natasha said when he sat down. "So what did you do to Namitar?"
The ghost of a smile curved his lips. "I crowded him and told him that I was the Winter Soldier." He addressed his plate.
"And the Academy Award for Most Intimidating Looming goes to James Barnes," I murmured, and everyone laughed, even Vision, who isn't noted for his sense of humor.
"A good fight, though..." Thor mused.
"I got what was needed. He's a carrier for disease, and he was working for someone he identified as Smith." Bucky shook his head. "They used dead drops for communication; it'll be difficult to trace him."
"But not impossible," Natasha said, looking thoughtful.
Bucky toyed with his fork as I was making a note to ask the doctors just what Namitar was a carrier for. "Fury offered me a job here," he said suddenly, watching reactions. So did I; all I saw was surprise and interest. I went back to dinner as the others asked him questions and talked about it. Nick came by while we were discussing dessert.
"So, Barnes, what do you think about my offer?" he said after a minimum of chit chat with the rest of us.
"I need to wait and see what happens to Steve," he said after a moment. "Emma said you didn't need an immediate answer."
Nice. Bucky just shoved me under the bus. I gave Nick a wide-eyed look and shrugged.
"It's not critical that we have a weapons master right this instant," I pointed out. "The doctors have medically restricted all these guys for the next forty-eight hours and everybody is still in the hospital. Bruce is a weapon, and I actually had a sparring session with Bucky earlier. Aside from you, that's everybody accounted for."
"If Emma says so, I guess I can wait for your answer," Nick said, but there wasn't any bite in his words. His coat swirled behind him as he turned to leave. The table seemed to let out its breath, and Natasha laughed.
"Thanks, buddy," I said to a surprised Bucky, deciding that I could use some cake. Seeing as how my encounter with the bus had left me mostly unscathed, a treat was definitely in order.
I was too restless to focus on anything, so after hours of fidgeting, I went into Jim and Tony's rooms for their phones. Tony had been complaining of boredom, which was probably true, or at least speaking of a need for distraction, and I thought Jim could use a break from his roomie, so I brought along a couple of new pairs of earbuds. At the clinic, one of the nurses took the phones away and wiped them down with antiseptic solution. "You know you're not supposed to be here, visiting hours are over," he said, and I looked innocently at the ceiling. He popped the phones and earbuds into plastic bags and handed them to me. "You'll have to leave by yourself, I'm busy." I thanked him and hurried silently to Tony and Jim's room, where they were both sleeping. I left the bags for them and checked the other guys. Scott was going to be released the next day and Clint and Sam were recovering pretty quickly. It seemed that in straight humans, once the supercharged viruses were past the first wave of infection, their strength decreased geometrically, unable to keep replicating themselves and further sickening their hosts. I thought about that on the walk to Steve's room. Maybe that was why Steve had been hit with two diseases; if Namitar knew that his work only produced short-term effects, he might have wanted to make sure. Jim and Tony were the outliers on this scale though; both of them were unmutated and they'd been hit really hard. Maybe it was easier to do better work with yellow fever and leishmaniasis. That kind of genetic manipulation had to be fiendishly difficult to begin with.
I suited up and went in to sit with Steve. I was tireder than I thought; I nodded off at some point. I woke up when I heard movement. I opened my eyes and prepared to grovel to whomever was here to check on Steve.