These Are The Ones We Cannot Save
SIX
These Are The Ones We Cannot Save
“… siR…”
“… respo…”
“... ease respond…”
“Sir, your position is precarious. Please, wake up.”
Tony winced, his head pounding sharply at a point just behind his right ear. There was a ringing noise in both that left other sounds muffled, but he would recognize Jarvis’ voice anywhere.
“J?”
“Sir!” The AI’s relief was palpable.
Tony grinned but winced at the volume. “Not so loud, J. Got a concussion, I think. Probably.” He swallowed and squinted his eyes open. The HUD screen was dark.
“J?”
“I have dimmed the HUD temporarily, Sir. I can lighten it gradually. Please tell me what you can handle.”
Tony nodded, then winced as the pain arched through his neck. Oh fuck. Not good. He wiggled his fingers experimentally. The suit moved with them and he could feel resistance against his grip. Dirt? He moved his legs.
There was a loud rumbling and something shifted above him.
“Sir, stop!” Jarvis’ modulated tone still held a note of panic. “There is debris above you and it is largely unstable. Please refrain from moving.”
“My neck, J,” he whispered, his lips trembling over the words. “It hurts.”
“The suit was damaged from the blast and the falling debris. I have scanned your skeletal structure. You mercifully have no broken bones, but there are dents around the spinal column of the suit. I suspect you are deeply bruised, Sir, but that will heal in time.”
Tony swallowed hard, ignoring the tears that trickled down his cheeks. “You sure, J?”
“Yes, Sir. I was very thorough in my examination. I promise you are all right.”
“Okay,” Tony breathed. “Okay. Jarvis, lighten the HUD.” Slowly, the screen began to lighten, Tony’s eyes tracking slowly over the information. He could only handle a little bit of light from the screen before he had to have Jarvis stop it growing any brighter. “What’s the damage, J?”
“The suit has sustained mostly superficial damage, asides from some denting in the spinal column and your left arm. Neither have resulted in true puncturing. The filtration system has remained functioning and kept the dirt from entering the suit. The largest concern is that you are currently buried under two tons of rubble from the collapsed building and it is unstable. I fear any movement you make could bring it down upon you.”
Tony had stopped listening around the time Jarvis mentioned collapsed buildings. “What about the rest of the team?” Where had everyone been? They had spread out to better canvas the area. It made sense for Tony to take an aerial view, keeping in constant motion around the building to keep a lookout from all directions.
Cap had vetoed anyone being exposed on the roof, so Clint had been stuck with a window a few floors down from the roof. Inside the building.
Cap had been… he had been inside the building, but the serum might have protected him regardless. Two tons of debris were nothing to the American Adonis.
Natasha had been outside of the building. Her job was going to be to distract and gain information, and that would be best done coming from outside the target point of the proposed thieves, so she was probably safe.
And Bruce had been… Tony tried to search his memory but his head was aching hard and he couldn’t remember. Where had Bruce been? He hadn’t heard the Hulk, and he would appear when - if - Bruce was in danger, but then where was he? Had the building come down too fast? What if he was hurt? And Clint. Clint had been inside the building! He didn’t have the Super Soldier Serum or a suit protecting him. He was just a normal human.
“sIR,” Jarvis’ voice wavered in as though through water. “Sir, you are having a panic attack. Please.” Jarvis’ voice faded out, lost in the hard ringing that seemed to consume everything, the darkness of a cave’s low ceilings, and the phantom smell of desert and dirt.
He was back in the cave.
He was back.
He’d never left.
Bruce loved his lab.
He got a little giddy every time he thought of it like that. His lab.
Tony had all but sat him down and made him repeat it over and over, that it was his lab, and not a lab that Tony owned and let Bruce borrow. It had irritated him at the time, and every time he tried to argue with Tony, it had only seemed to amuse the other man more, until Bruce had given in just to shut him up. He could say whatever Tony wanted. That didn’t mean he had to believe it.
But then Tony had made him create a password for the entry, and Bruce only learned later that the engineer had forbidden Jarvis from revealing it even to him. And Bruce had walked in one day to find a sign above the door that read “Bruce’s Lab.” And every time Tony would come down to the lab, he would knock.
Tony Stark, who once walked in on Natasha while she was dressing because he simply burst into rooms, would knock on the door to the lab.
Eventually, Bruce had simply started referring to it as his lab in his own head, and that’s when it finally became real. This was his lab. Tony Stark trusted Bruce Banner, renowned mad scientist and monster, with a lab of his own.
It had made it all real and it had made the tower home in a way that no place had been in years. Perhaps never had, in fact.
Down here, locked behind doors that no one save Jarvis knew the password to, Bruce was safe. If he wanted, he could stay down here for days. Tony had told him that, showed him how Jarvis could have food delivered, showed him the safe room Tony had built - a room within a locked room where Bruce could go if he felt vulnerable. Here, behind these walls, not even General Ross could reach Bruce. Sometimes, Bruce felt so safe, he didn’t even fear the Hulk.
“Jarvis, could you calculate this for me?”
There was no response from the AI and Bruce looked up from his notes, idly tucking his pencil behind his ear. “Jarvis?”
He clapped his hands over his ears as an alarm began to blare loudly throughout the lab, panels shifting in the walls to reveal lights that flashed an angry red. Bruce felt Hulk stir within him, the monster waking like a bear opening its eyes at the come of spring.
It’s just an alarm.
“Jarvis?” he called loudly over the sound of the sirens.
They shut off a moment later, silenced abruptly, and Jarvis’ voice came over the speakers. “Apologies, Dr. Banner, but Sir requires your immediate assistance.”
“Is everything okay?” Bruce asked, lowering his hands. He watched as a screen lowered itself from the ceiling and flickered to life.
“No,” the AI said sharply, “there has been an explosion at HammerTech Industries. The building that the other Avengers were surveying has collapsed from an internal detonation. Sir is currently buried under rubble. The other Avengers are unaccounted for. My sensors can neither detect them nor access the communication units they carry. I am uncertain that Sir can escape his current position without assistance. We need your help.”
Bruce felt the heat of his rage settle in his eyes and stared at the television screen through green irises. It was an aerial view of the collapsed building that his teammates were buried beneath. The address was displayed on the screen and Bruce committed it to memory, carefully bringing up the directions to that area of the city in his mind.
He drew a deep breath and let the cold heat fill him. As he felt the rage take over, he hoped that no poor fool thought it was a good idea to get in his way. Hulk didn’t take kindly to people trying to hurt Tony.
Nor, for that matter, did Bruce.
“Fuck.”
His mouth moved with the word, he felt it exit him in a burst of air, but he couldn’t hear it.
“Double fuck.”
Clint reached up and touched the hearing aids. Neither of them were physically damaged that he could tell but the only sound he could hear was the low buzzing that always came with the silence.
Removing the aids, he slid them in his pocket as he looked around. His eyes squinted through the darkness and it took him only a moment to pinpoint the source of light that was allowing him to see anything. There was an emergency exit sign hanging in the air, only it was upside-down. In fact… looking around, everything was upside-down, because Clint was standing on the ceiling.
He eyed the collapsed staircase, the way up blocked by falling rubble, and then way down dark.
Clint eyed the emergency exit sign.
Well. That might work.
It took looking around a few minutes before Clint managed to find both his bow and quiver. He had a couple explosive arrows (probably not the best choice), the rappelling arrow, and a bunch of the new arrows Tony had made with the catchphrases on the side.
He was about to sling the quiver over his shoulder when he spotted the words “Tag, you’re it” on the side of one of the shafts.
“Oh, Tony, I will kiss you,” he said, pulling the arrow out of the quiver, and yes, it was one of the tracking arrows. They were set up so that, once activated, they would automatically ping Jarvis and the AI could track the movements over whoever had been hit.
Clint eyed the tip of the arrow, the injection needle inside hidden by casing. He groaned. “Man, this is gonna suck .” He gripped the arrow in his hand and, careful to aim so he wouldn’t hit anything important, stabbed it hard into his thigh.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled. “Fuck!” He pulled the tip of the arrow out and threw it to the side. “Almost makes me want to stop shooting people with arrows. Except the fucker who put a bomb in the fucking building! Him I’ll shoot twice!” He briefly considered the idea that if there was anyone else around, they could hear him yelling. But then, if there was anyone else around, they had bigger problems than him to deal with.
“Man, when I get out of this, I’m gonna take a fucking nap, demand Justin fucking Hammer buy me lunch, and then have another fucking nap!”
His leg twinged angrily. “OW! Better yet, he’s going to buy me my own restaurant. We’ll make sandwiches. I get to eat there free. I’ll call it Clint’s Sandwiches. Number one special is gonna be ‘don’t ever let Tony Stark talk you into an op.’”
He checked the emergency exit sign and was happy to see that it did have a battery backup. Unhooking it from the wall, he held it tightly in one hand as he made his way carefully down the stairs. At least, if he kept walking, the sign would eventually lead him to an exit.
The tink tink tink of pebbles and dirt hitting metal woke Tony. He came to consciousness with a gasp, automatically moving to defend himself. There was a squeal of stone on metal and then Jarvis’ voice. “Sir, your position is compromised, you must stop moving!"
Where was he? Why couldn’t he see anything?
“Javs?” his voice slurred as he turned his head, looking around. “W’r?”
“Please be still, Sir. You are presently pinned beneath some rubble and it is unstable. You cannot move without risking dislodging it. But Hulk is here and he is removing it from above so we can get you out. Please remain calm.”
“Bruce?” Tony asked.
“Yes, Sir. Dr. Banner is here. He and Hulk are digging you out.”
“Not ‘n cave, Jarvs?”
“No, Sir. You are outside HammerTech Industries, in New York. You were working a mission upon Mr. Hammer’s request. A bomb detonated within the building and you became trapped. It is currently thirty minutes since the bomb’s initial detonation. You are in New York and Hulk is here to get you out.”
“‘Kay.” Tony blinked hard. His head hurt and his mouth felt funny, like his lips weren’t moving right. “Javs?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“Don’t leave, ‘kay?”
“I am here with you, Sir.”
“Stay,” Tony whispered, tears rolling hot down from his eyes. “Stay, Jarv’s.”
“I will not leave you, Sir. I promise.”
He wondered how far he would have to walk before he reached ground. Clint thanked gravity for at least being consistent (and wow, he hoped gravity was being consistent) because otherwise he wouldn’t know which way to walk. But if the building had collapsed, he didn’t know if there would be a way out . All of the entrances and exits to the outside could be blocked with rubble.
He glanced down at his thigh where he had implanted Tony’s tracer. If he could count on Tony’s tech to work right (and if he couldn’t count on that, then he couldn’t be sure of anything), then Jarvis would know someone had been pinged with a tracer. At the very least, people would be looking for him on the chance that he set the bomb. So he could count on someone finding him. Hopefully.
He wished his hearing aids hadn’t been fried. What if one of the others was trying to contact him over the comm? He might need to talk to Tony about setting them up with some kind of backup, like a keyboard. Or maybe he should get some sort of phone for ops? He never carried his. He couldn’t count on it to not get in the way or get broken, and then he’d just be distracted because damnit, he loved his phone.
His mind ran through the information he knew.
He had been on the forty-fourth floor of a fifty-floor building. Natasha had been outside the building, keeping watch from a distance for her chance to intervene. Steve had been on the ground floor. Tony had been zipping around the building like a flashy moron. Bruce had remained back at the tower, since Hulk wasn’t too big on stake-out operations that required silence and patience.
The bomb that had gone off had detonated from under Clint. At least ten floors down, if he’d had to guess, though probably more like fifteen. Close to halfway up the building. Clint had been thrown to the floor from the tremors, before he vaguely remembered the entire floor tilting and sending him hard into the wall. Probably around the time the floor became the new ceiling.
He went still as the steps under him shuddered, dropping into a crouch to preserve his balance and preparing to move quickly if he needed to. He felt the steps, or what was left of them, shift beneath him, dropping a few inches before they stopped. He waited a few minutes but they didn’t shift again.
Still. Best not to linger.
He moved down the staircase as swiftly as he was safely able to, kicking away bits of rubble as he made it to the floor… ceiling. He grimaced as the floor quivered beneath him, the slightest tremor he might not have noticed except he had been trained to notice such things. Hard to be safe shooting bad guys from rooftops if you weren’t prepared for the possibility of it crumbling beneath you.
He could tell that the floor was uneven, too. It leaned. Whether that was actually the floor itself or the building, he wasn’t sure, but neither boded well.
Unfortunately, the staircase down to the next floor was completely blocked with rubble. Clint had memorized the blueprints of the building before their operation, so he knew that there were staircases going from the roof to the ground floor on the north and south side of the building. If he was lucky, the south side staircase would still be accessible.
He made his way carefully. There was debris everywhere. Desks broken by the explosion and building collapse lay in pieces, and office chairs were thrown about haphazardly. Electrical wires sparked intermittently and Clint grimaced at the sight. He hoped someone had the brains to shut the power off to this block soon, before one of the wires sparked a fire.
The sharp, almost-burning smell of metal was heavy in the air. Clint recognized the smell from his time spent traversing the inside of ventilation systems. It was the smell of an air conditioning system. There were large units for the building’s central air located on the roof.
He was close, but he didn’t know how close. He might have been stationed near to the roof, but a number of floors had collapsed, for all that he’d managed to traverse some intact staircases.
He had no idea what floor he had woken up on. There hadn’t been any notification of the floor level at the staircases. He could be incredibly close to the roof - just a floor away.
Or the air conditioning units could be leaking coolant. Clint didn’t know much about chemicals and probably even less about air conditioning systems, but he knew that some coolants used in them were poisonous, and flammable.
With all the sparking wires hanging around, the possibility of coolant leaking into the building was a terrifying prospect. There had been people working here. They hadn’t evacuated the building - things had needed to go on as normal.
He was afraid of what they would find when rescue workers began to dig through the wreckage of the building.
Whoever had set that bomb had a lot to answer for.
He was nearing the other side of the floor when he started to get the sense that… someone was watching him.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and gooseflesh ran up his arms. He didn’t stop walking but he slowed his movements slightly, meandered his path a little so he could take in the room with his peripheral vision.
Someone was watching. Or something? He scanned the walls near the floor for video cameras, taking into account that while Hammer was no Tony Stark, he was still an inventor. But he didn’t see anything.
That didn’t mean there wasn’t something. Clint wasn’t an engineer and it was very dark, even with the exit sign for a flashlight. Hammer could have a videographic paint on his walls for all he knew.
His eyes caught the glare of the exit light against the metal doors of the elevator and he huffed a laugh. Thank god he hadn’t been in there when the bomb went off.
Something snagged his pants and Clint spun around, hand reaching for an arrow.
A little girl, maybe seven years old, stared up at Clint with wide tear-filled eyes. Her hair was a ratty mess of dark brown tangles and there were scratches on her face and her lower lip was bleeding, but her fingers stayed locked in the threads of his pants. Clint blinked down at her hard, letting go of the arrow in his quiver.
“Mis’r Hawk?” Her lower lip trembled. “Are… are you here t’save us?”
Us? Clint looked past her, eyes tracing through the dark. If he hadn’t been looking for them, even his eyes wouldn’t have caught sight of them. Tucked in the corner behind the crumbled debris of a shattered desk, two small forms huddled together. At the distance he stood from them, he couldn’t see anything more distinctive than that they were small and that they were shivering.
Clint crouched down in front of the little girl. “Hey, sweetheart. You bet. I’m here and so are the other Avengers. But what are you doing here?”
“We had a--”
She looked away from him, toward the corner where the other children were, and Clint cursed his broken hearing aids. “Honey, I need you to look at me.” She turned back to him. “I can’t hear right now so you need to face me when you talk to me, okay? I can read your lips. Okay?” She nodded. “All right. Now what are you three doing here?”
“We had a field trip with school. Mrs. Trenton brought my class to look at robots, but I got lost.” She sniffed and a few tears leaked from her eyes. “I want my mommy.”
“I know, honey. We’re going to get you back to your mommy. What’s your name?”
“Natalie.”
Clint laughed. “Really? I have a friend named Natalie.” Well, sometimes she went by Natalie, unless she was on an op that required a fresh identity. She preferred the name Natasha now almost exclusively. She’d wrapped herself and the identity she wanted around that name, but he’d known her as Natalie, too, and he loved Natalie just as much.
“Yeah?” Little Natalie wiped her eyes. “Is she pretty?”
“Not as pretty as you.” He winked at her giggle. “Who are you friends? Are they hurt?”
She looked back at her friends and she must have said something because they stood up and moved toward them. She turned back around. “Mattie's ears hurt."
“His ears hurt?” Clint motioned for the two little boys forward. They both had short dark-brown hair and brown eyes, and Clint would guess that they were brothers. “Hey there. What are your names?”
“I’m Jacob. This is my brother, Mattie.” Jacob kept his arm wrapped around Mattie, who clutching his jacket in a white-knuckled fist, but he never looked away from Clint. “He says his ears hurt since the explosion.”
“Are they ringing, Mattie, or do they just ache?”
Mattie didn’t look up at him, but Jacob tapped the boy on the shoulder and then repeated the question in sign language. Clint barely held in a snort of laughter as he watched the other boy sign back “they’re ringing.”
Jacob turned to relay the information and Clint nodded, speaking as he signed at Mattie “That’s because of the explosion. It was really loud. We’ll have a doctor look at you when we get out of here.” He smiled at Mattie’s open mouth. “I wear hearing aids, too,” he said, noticing the little aids in Mattie’s ears now that he was looking for them. “But the explosion broke mine. Good thing we both know how to sign, huh?”
Mattie nodded. “Is Iron Man here?”
Aww, Tony had a tiny fan. “He’s outside. I bet he’s working out a way to fix the building and get us all out, but I hate waiting.” He winked at them. “So what do you say we get out of here?”
Jacob nodded and gripped Mattie’s hand in his. “Yes, please.”
“All right, kiddies, then listen up. We’re close to the roof, so we’re going to try the stairs and see if we can get out that way.” He looked at them all. “You stick with me and I’ll keep you safe, okay?”
They nodded and Clint rose to his feet. “All right. Stay close.”
The staircase was a bust. It got them down another floor but the following floor had it crumbled into a pile of rubble. Both staircases, and the windows weren’t a viable option, either.
“I need to check something, hang on.” Prying the elevator doors open took a minute but he managed it. Clint peered down into the shaft, grimaced at the blackness, and took a few minutes to find another emergency exit sign. Dropping it down into the shaft answered one of the questions he had been wondering about. They were on the forty-eighth floor, two down (or up, in this case) from the roof, and the elevator shaft was intact. Hopefully, that meant that the fiftieth floor was also intact. Or at least the exit doors from the roof.
He turned and looked at the kids, and he apparently didn’t need to explain what he was thinking. Mattie and Jacob were clutching each other’s hands in a tight grip and Natalie had her arms wrapped around herself as she shivered.
“Don’t worry,” he said softly. “It’s going to be okay.”
He could feel Natalie’s shuddering breaths against his ear, the hitch of her chest against his back. Her arms tightened around his neck, heels digging into his stomach.
“Hey, hey, it’s all right.” She was shaking and he could tell by her breathing that she had begun to cry. She was afraid of heights, she had told him. But what little kid wasn’t? “I have superpowered fingers, you know.” The small fingers tightened in his shirt collar. “That’s right, sugar, you just hold on. I’m not gonna let either of us fall.”
He began to descend the service ladder again, feet finding purchase before he let go with either of his hands. It was slow going. He had carried Jacob and Mattie down already, the two boys having been difficult to separate. Jacob had all but demanded to go first, to make sure it was safe, and it seemed the easiest option since neither of the others were jumping at the prospect of being the first to ride piggyback down the elevator shaft. When he’d returned, after opening the doors on the fiftieth floor and telling Jacob to stay out of the shaft, Natalie had told him (lip trembling and crying in her attempts to be brave) to take Mattie first so he could be with his brother.
He’d done it, but damn if it hadn’t gutted him to leave that little girl all by herself up there in the dark.
Now, she clung to him tightly as he descended the service ladder for what was hopefully the last time. His fingers ached and his leg hurt where he’d stuck the tracking bug, and he was beginning to feel the effects of having been tossed around by the explosion. He wanted out of this damn building.
First, though, he wanted out of the elevator shaft. He was worried about the stability of it.
The elevator car was above him and he didn’t know where. Steve had called it back down to the first floor after Clint had ascended, in case he needed to make a swift move to another floor, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been used since then, and it wasn’t below him. If it was still in this section of the building, with a clear path down the shaft, one good tremor from the building shifting could bring that whole car down on their heads.
He prayed if that happened he’d feel it coming.
Natalie’s breath stuttered against his throat, her chin digging into his shoulder.
“Spider Clint, Spider Clint, climbing through your ceiling vent,” he sang softly. “Spider Clint, Spider Clint, pockets full of dryer lint.” He kept descending down the shaft, singing variations of the song under his breath. He heard her fearful breaths shift into giggles. “That’s my girl. You just trust these magic fingers, okay? I’ll get you back to your mommy.”
He felt her nod against him. “We’re almost there, sweetheart. You know, when we get out of here, I bet I can introduce you to my friend Natalie. She’s awesome. And I know Tony Stark. He’s way cooler than Justin Hammer. He has a robot named DUM-E. I bet DUM-E would just love you.”
He continued to ramble until he dropped down from the ladder and slipped through the open elevator doors. He sighed with relief as Steve looked up at him from where he was crouched in front of the two boys.
“Hey, Hawkeye,” Jacob said, grinning at him, “I found Captain America.”
“Good job, Jacob.” He gave Steve a tired grin. “Hey, Cap. Having fun?”
He wasn’t asleep but he must have been dozing because the sudden clatter of stones against the armor had him snapping back into focus. He stared through the HUD with eyes that didn’t seem to want to work right, Jarvis bringing up the pertinent information about pressure and weight and the density of the rubble. He watched as the rocks shifted above him, tensing as he prepared for two tons of weight to come crashing down on top of his torso.
The rocks above him were abruptly replaced by bright sunlight, forcing Tony to shut his eyes with a cry. He vaguely heard Jarvis relaying that he was enabling the tinting of the HUD to protect Tony’s eyes. There was a rumble of falling rocks and then a loud, deep voice. “Tin Man?”
Tony squinted his eyes open cautiously, peering up through the hole in the cave ceiling. A large green face stared back.
“Hey, Hulk," he said through a laugh. "Glad to see you, big guy.”
“Tin Man hurt?”
“Little bit. Think you can dig me out of here?”
Hulk gave a nod and began to pull the rubble away more quickly. Tony winced internally, worried about Hulk tearing out a supporting piece and having a bunch of rubble fall on him, but he closed his mouth a second before he could say it.
Hulk was working efficiently, for certain, but not without thought. It was almost unnoticeable, particularly considering how fast the green monster was working, but he kept eyeing the rocks and rubble with an eye more like Bruce’s gaze scrutinizing an experiment than the instinct-driven look of an animal. Hulk was analyzing . He was pulling the heavy pieces of rubble away, but he was taking care not to leave them in a position that would have them collapsing on top of Tony.
Tony knew Bruce was smart - that was obvious - and he’d known that Hulk was more than just a monster that came forth when Bruce lost control. This, though. This was something he hadn’t expected.
When the heaviest of the slabs of concrete had been pulled away, Jarvis suggested they could break free with minimal damage, so Tony told Hulk to back up a bit before he used his repulsors to blast out of the rubble. He wobbled in the air and landed in front of Hulk with less than his usual finesse. It didn’t go unnoticed.
“Tin Man okay?” The big guy leaned down at looked at Tony’s breastplate. “Still glowing.”
“Yeah, buddy. I’m still glowing.” He patted Hulk’s shoulder. “Is Bruce doing all right? I bet that wasn’t fun to hear about?”
“Banner scared,” Hulk said sagely, baring his teeth. “Then Banner mad . Smash bomb men.” He looked around the area, his large brows drawing down. “No smash?”
“Let’s focus on finding the others first,” Tony said, information flying up on his HUD. “We can find out who we need to smash later.”
Hulk nodded. “Bird and Spider and Captain.”
“That’s right. Hawkeye and Cap were inside the building, but Natasha wasn’t. You think you can help me find her first?” He didn’t want to think about the reasons he wanted to go after Natasha first. The building had detonated at its center, the top portion of the building falling over and landing nearly flat on its roof, scattering dust and rubble everywhere. The lower half of the building had completely collapsed in on itself. It was nothing but a pile of stone and steel. Tony didn’t know if even Steve could survive that, nevermind Clint, or the many people Tony knew who had been working in the building.
“Should’ve evacuated,” he muttered to himself. “I should’ve found a way to make it work.”
“Spider hiding?”
“I hope that’s what she’s doing,” Tony said. “Jarvis, can we get a read on life-signs?”
“I seem to be having difficult getting a read, Sir. I suspect the nature of the explosive may have played a factor in this. I am attempting a satellite image now.”
A map of the area appeared in front of his eyes, a series of lights appearing across it in blue.
“I have detected multiple heat signatures, Sir, and have marked them on your map. I can lead you to the closest, if you’d prefer.”
“Do it, J.” The map vanished, letting him see the area, but a soft blue glow lit up the area to his right. He turned and the blue focused into the form of a person, buried under a slab of rubble. “Hulk, I need you to lift this for me.”
The first person turned out to be lucky. The rubble had fallen in such a way that it tented around her, pinning her down but not doing much more than scratching her up a bit. Others weren’t so lucky.
Jarvis’ scanner picked up on body temperature, not life signs, and for all that it felt like he’d been trapped for days beneath the rubble, it had really only been minutes. So he should have expected it, really. He had been injured while wearing the suit, and pinned down in it despite the strength of both the armor and his repulsors, but it still came as a shock when he found the first body.
He should have expected it, but when he turned over the slab of rock and found the man, he had seen all the blood, but it hadn’t really registered that the man wasn’t simply unconscious. Jarvis had already called for ambulances and assistance and Tony was about to report his location for an ambulance to make its way directly to him when he realized that the wound the man had, and that much blood...
He should have expected it. But then, even expecting it didn’t make it better. The second body was just as much of a punch to the gut. Then the third.
There were so many bodies. The building had been filled with people going about their lives, just a regular work day. They hadn’t expected anything like this. Tony hadn’t expected anything like this.
God, but he should have.
As people began to regain consciousness, there were moans of pain and there was screaming. Tony tried to block it out as people found friends and coworkers who hadn’t survived the explosion. As names were called out of those who hadn’t been found yet. Jarvis directed him to each glowing blue silhouette in the rubble and he and Hulk worked together to free the person or recover the body. Hulk remained silent throughout the process, though Tony couldn’t decide whether that was characteristic or if he was acting unnaturally solemn. Between his desire to block out the cries of pain and loss and his own concussion (though he was doing his very best to ignore that), Tony wasn’t focusing on much more than where people were and what he needed to do to get them out.
He was almost at the point where he was working without having to think about it, every action falling into a continuous movement that didn’t require his input. His mind travelled on different paths, taking note of the detonation point of the bomb and how much force would have been required to destroy the building as it had, the radius of the blast, and where the bomb had probably been placed. He had the blueprints of Justin’s tower memorized. After all, the damn thing had been built in an attempt to match Tony’s tower. Not that it managed it. It was half the size and it had been built by Hammer . Tony had seen Lego structures built by five-year-olds he was more impressed with.
But focusing on that was helping him get through digging out survivors and gathering bodies.
Until he found the first child.
Why were there kids here? Why were there even children here?
Tony’s hands reached out for the tiny form and hesitated, his breath hitching behind the mask, because they were so small .
“Jarvis?” he choked, glad that the AI was blocking his communications from being heard outside the suit. “J, tell me…”
“I am sorry, Sir,” Jarvis said quietly. “I am not detecting any life signs.”
Tony gathered the tiny body up as carefully as he could, tucking the child close to his chest as he stepped away from the collapsed wall that Hulk was holding up. He could feel himself shaking inside the suit and there were tears on his face.
Why were there kids here?
Hulk let the wall drop with a crash and stomped over, peering at Tony’s burden. Big brown eyes looked up from the armful of child to Tony’s face. “Tiny,” Hulk grumbled.
Tony tried to speak but his voice only cracked, so he resorted to nodding. He turned away from Hulk and made his way across the rubble-strewn street. He carefully crouched down and eased the tiny body to the ground at the end of a long line of bodies, laid out and waiting for the arrival of police and coroners.
He wished he wasn’t wearing the suit, as he carefully straightened the little boy’s arms and legs. This little child should be laid down with gentle hands, not the cold touch of metal. He touched his fingers - the fingers of the suit - as gently to the boy’s face as he could. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured.
It wasn’t enough.
He went away for a while after that. He continued to dig people out of rubble. Or maybe Jarvis was the one that kept the suit working. He didn’t know, he didn’t remember anything for a while, he didn’t even know how long. He might have kept going like that, working without any awareness at all, if not for the crying.
He came back to himself in a moment of conscious confusion that was derailed by quiet sobbing.
He detected the closest heat signature - a small form in constant motion, not far from him. He moved quickly, walking around what looked like a pile of shattered glass - the remnants of windows that had burst during the explosion and the half-collapse of the building.
“Hulk, buddy, c’mere.” Hulk stomped over, grumbling low in his throat. “I know,” Tony said softly. All of the bodies were getting to the big guy, too.
“I need you to lift this here, okay?” Hulk nodded with a grunt, grabbing the edge of the slab of stone and lifting it.
There was a shriek of fear and Tony crouched down, peering underneath the lifted slab. There was a little girl, dark pigtails sticking up from where her head was tucked under her arms. There was shattered glass surrounding her and her blue dress was splattered with droplets of blood.
“Hey there, sunflower. Look here.”
The girl sniffed and lifted her head, looking at him with dark eyes that shone with tears. Her face was streaked red from crying but she stared at him for a long moment. She was breathing in sharp jerking gasps, tears rolling down her red cheeks, and she just stared at him blankly.
“How are you doing, sunshine?”
“Non… non poss--so…” (Can’t… I can’t…) Her lip trembled. “Posso uscire.” (Get out.) He could see her hands shaking as she reached up and tugged on one of her ponytails. “Mamma!”
“Shh…” Tony lowered himself further so he could crawl under the concrete and over the shattered glass. “Va tutto, tesoro.” (It’s all right, sweetheart.) He stretched himself out so he wasn’t looming over her. “Sei ferito?” (Are you hurt?)
“Bloc--catto,” she stuttered. (Stuck.) She looked back behind her. “Mia gamba.” (My leg.)
Tony swallowed, thinking about a limb trapped under the weight of an entire building. She said she wasn’t hurt, but that didn’t mean she simply wasn’t able to comprehend the damage. If she was in shock…
“Pro…” She frowned, uncertain, wiping tears from her face only to have more replace it. “Pro’sica,” she mumbled, looking back at her leg.
“Protesi?” Tony asked. (Prosthetic.)
She nodded. “È blocatto.”
Tony glanced uncertainly up at the looming pile of concrete, but he trusted Hulk would say something if it was becoming a strain on him. With a snap, his faceplate popped up, making her startle.
“Facile, stellaluce,” (Easy, starlight) he said, smiling and waving at his face. “Spaventoso cercando, lo so.” (Scary looking, I know.) She giggled wetly. “Fammi vedere la gamba, tesoro.” (Let me see your leg, darling.)
He leaned around her and studied the prosthetic. He hadn’t done much research into prosthetics, but he recognized the systems intentions from how it was structured. It screwed into her legs, which meant getting it off her without a toolkit would be difficult and could hurt her. It would be better just to lift the debris off of her and get her out.
“Okay, sweetheart. Ti faccio uscire di qui.” (Let’s get you out of here.) He grasped the edge of the concrete slab pinning her leg down and lifted it.
The little girl shrieked as glass rained down on top of her, and Tony heard the groaning of stone and the shattering of more glass. “Fuck!”
There was a crash and a sudden rush of light from behind that had Tony hissing as he shifted to block the little girl from being struck with falling debris. He faceplate snapped down as glass and stone clattered against the armor and rained harmlessly around her. “Shh, shh,” he soothed, listening to her sobbing cries as the debris shifted around them.
There was a grumble behind him and Tony realized he had forgotten Hulk was there to help. He was about to tell the jolly green giant to take the weight of all the shit raining down on him when Hulk crouched down next to him and cocked his head at the little girl. Her crying stopped abruptly and Tony hoped she wasn’t about to scream in terror. Bruce really didn’t need that popping up in a memory somewhere and this wasn’t a great time for panic.
Hulk pointed at the little girl. “Tiny dancer,” he grunted.
“Sei verde,” the little girl said, and Tony snorted a laugh. She looked at him with her large dark eyes and Tony smiled reassuringly.
“Va bene, piccola lucciola. Questo è il mio amico, Hulk.” (It’s okay, little firefly. This is my friend, Hulk.)
“Hulk,” she said, looking at the big guy.
“Can you move that slab, big guy? Her leg is stuck.”
Hulk glanced at Tony for barely a second before his eyes went back to the little girl. It didn’t take him long to detect the problem but Tony was a little concerned the big guy would overestimate his strength. It was one thing to yank rocks off the Iron Man suit, but entirely another to throw things around a little girl that didn’t come up to his knee.
He needn’t have worried. Hulk pushed up on the slab a little, just enough for the little girl to pull her leg out, and then set it down easily. He studied the ground for a moment. “Glass sharp,” he grunted. “Hurt.” He held out his hands. “Hulk carry tiny dancer?”
The little girl looked at Hulk’s hands for a moment, then set her tiny little hands in his and let him scoop her up. Hulk held the little girl gently as he stepped away from the rubble Tony was holding back, and once they were back far enough, he flew straight upward and let the whole mess fall.
He landed back near to Hulk, who was staring at the little girl with what might have been a curious look on his face. She had hands on either one of his cheeks and was staring back at his face, and damnit if it wasn’t the cutest thing Tony had ever witnessed.
He glanced around at the sound of dogs.
Rescue workers had arrived, along with police and ambulances. Tony grimaced. He would have to go talk to them about the bodies, though it looked like the EMTs and paramedics had already found the injured people grouped together. That was a plus.
“Stark.”
Tony turned to see Natasha walking toward him and felt his shoulders relax slightly. Her hair was a mess and there was dust all over her face but she appeared unharmed. “Natasha,” he said with more relief than he had intended to broadcast. “Are you injured?”
She shook her head. “No. Is your comm working?”
Tony shook his head. That had been one of the first things Jarvis checked once Tony was lucid again. “I couldn’t get in touch with anyone. Have you?”
“Steve is unhurt,” she said. “I ran into him shortly after the explosion.” Her mouth tightened slightly. “I haven’t heard from Clint.”
Tony swallowed and looked at the building, its upper half collapsed on the ground. Clint had been up there. Who knew how badly he might be injured. “Is Cap inside?”
“He’s looking for survivors in the upper floors.” The message was clear. If Clint was there, Cap would find him.
Tony hoped he found him alive.
“How’re you doing, Hawkeye?”
“Be better once I get out of this building,” Clint said with a laugh. He waved a hand. “Sorry, Cap, hearing aids are busted. I don’t know if anyone's been talking on the comm.”
“There was an EMP set off during the explosion. It fried the comm units.”
That must’ve been what destroyed his hearing aids, too.
There was a niggling thought, not really a thought, in his head. The feeling that there was something he was forgetting, but whatever it was, it wasn’t coming to mind, so he pushed the feeling away. “Tell me we can get out the same way you got in, Cap.”
Cap waves his hand. “Come on.”
Natalie is in front of him and he can’t read her lips, but he’s pretty sure she’s shouting. She’s jumping up and down and the two boys are doing the same. He can see Mattie’s huge smile and he’s trying to sign something to his brother, but all three of them are laughing and jumping around so much that Clint can’t even pick up on what the kid is trying to say.
The group of them follow Steve as he moves through the rubble of the half-collapsed floor. The kids are staying behind Steve, because even super-excited children understand that Captain America is supposed to lead . Clint brings up the rear, completely happy to let Steve take control and just glad to be on his way out of this building.
Even more glad when he suddenly sees light, bright and blinding, shining from a window. Clint laughs and Steve turns to look at him, a smirk on his face. “Oh damn, I am so glad to see sunshine,” Clint says, and Natalie turns around and grabs his hand and he’s suddenly being pulled toward the window by a child who is far stronger than she appears. Or perhaps it’s just that he’s so very tired.
The ceiling (floor) has sloped down here but the window has somehow remained mostly undamaged. The glass is gone, of course, and the broken edges of the frame are sharp, but it’s large enough that even Steve can fit through it. Clint can certainly make it, and the kids won’t have any trouble.
Clint crouches next to it, little Natalie holding his hand in hers. She’s shaking and Clint figures it’s the adrenaline running off. She’s been so brave and he’s so proud of her.
Jacob pushes his brother forward, a worried look in his head but also relief. There is sunshine and a door and Captain America is here. Everything is going to be fine.
Mattie rushes through the door without a backward glance and Clint can’t blame him. Jacob looks at him, asking if he should go, but Clint waves him forward. He has a brother to take care of.
Natalie’s fingers shake slightly where they hold his tightly and Clint understands. It’s frightening in here, with everything thrown all around and the ceiling and the floor messed up. The entire building is lying on top of them, but being inside four walls somehow still feels safer than stepping through a doorway into the open world.
He squeezes her hand gently and she turns to look at him. He reaches up with his free hand and tugs lightly on a ponytail. She giggles, though her eyes are filled with unshed tears. “Don’t you worry, sweetheart. I’m right behind you and Captain America is here to make sure we both get out safe. We’ll find Iron Man and Black Widow and then we’ll get you home to your mommy and daddy.”
“Promise?” She grabs his hands in both of hers, clutching with sharp fingernails, but Clint only holds her hands back just as tight.
“I promise. Go on through and stay with Jacob and Mattie.”
She forces herself to let go of his hand, pulling away from him and crouching down to crawl through the window. She glances back at him once, then slips through the window and out into the light.
He sighs with relief and turns to Steve with a grin.
He’s completely unprepared for the needle that slides into the side of his neck and the cold feeling that bursts there and quickly spreads through his veins. He tries to jerk away but there’s an arm around his back and his chest is being pressed tightly to Steve’s, and then it’s not Steve anymore.
“Don’t worry, Hawkeye, the children will be all right. My employer only wants you.”
There’s a heaviness to his limbs, more than lethargy, and he can feel the strength leaving his legs. His toes and fingertips are tingling and he recognizes a nerve agent, and hates that he recognizes it. Paralytic. He tries to tell the person - he doesn’t know who they are, can’t see them from where his face is shoved into their throat but he can feel breasts against his chest - to kindly go fuck themselves, but his mouth won’t work and he just ends up drooling on them. He hopes saliva grosses them out.
“Don’t worry about your friends, they’re safe. And they won’t bother to look for you.” There’s a shift in her hold on him and he hears something click. A small explosion, not enough to register as one to anyone not trained to listen for them, goes off behind him. The building groans and there’s a shift in the rock. The light he had been able to see by winks out and he understands. The window has disappeared, destroyed in the shift of the building, and he doesn’t need her next words to tell him why no one will be looking for him. He was an assassin. He knows how to fake someone’s death, including his own.
“After all, you’re already dead.”
Another needle in his neck sends his thoughts scattering and he wishes his tongue would work enough for a witty one-liner, but before he can even think of what he might like to say, he feels his eyes slide shut and his thoughts just slip away.