A/N: number one thing, is that i'm not like buried somewhere under all my homework, suffocated and dead. number two, AVENGERS fic. it's not my first time writing one, so i'm pretty into it, and this is a multiple-shot. third, this story is dedicated to all the people that are affected by the Boston bombings. when i read about it on twitter, something in me urged me to dedicate a story to it, and so i did. but i won't forget everywhere else, like the tragedies in Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Iran. so, pray for the world. #prayforboston #prayforvenezuela #prayforafghan #prayforiran #prayforhumanity - I love all of you for doing so. xx.
disclaimer: disclaimed.
"When you were standing in the wake of devastation
When you were waiting on the edge of the unknown
And with the cataclysm raining down, insides crying save me now
You were there and possibly alone."
- Iridescent by Linkin Park
When the first one hit, he'd heard the impact of the blow through the speaker of the phone, as if she was standing right next to where it landed. The debacle had sent a nightmarish discordance of screams filling the air, the sound of panicked civilians.
He shot up from his seat, and he took to Operations with a run, repeatedly yelling her name into the phone to only hear the sound of static crackling in his ear, more screams back-grounding the call. Agents in the building had stared at him like he'd been manically running down hallways.
"Bring up everything you have in Boston, now. Any surveillance footage, cell phone cameras, traffic cameras, everything. Phone calls, radio stations, text messages, everything you can find. Open them, and put it up." He demanded to the agents in Ops. They stared at him incredulously. "Now!"
Fury had come out of his office by then, ready to slap his agent in the head for commandeering the whole of Ops for some no good reason. Clint was speaking to one of the guys on the computer, and he picked up a headpiece that connected the call on his phone to the speaker. He was about to approach the man, until someone had pulled up the voice of a sixteen, maybe seventeen year old boy.
"Mom, mom can you hear me?" It said, and there was a whole flurry of voices in the background, yelling and screaming to no end. The boy sobbed. "Jody got her legs blown out from under her, mom. There's so much blood on the floor... None of us should have gone on this trip! I-I think we're gonna... I think we're going to die."
The audio clip of the phone call had now brought the attention of many into the room as they heard the crackle of the boy's sobs even more. "They're putting us on lockdown. I love you, Mom. Tell Dad and Christy that I love them too. I love you all so-" Everyone flinched as his voice reduced to the monotonous screech of a broken call.
The blurred footage from news helicopters surrounding the area then went up on the screen, high above from the destruction. People that took the size of mere ants, dressed in a wide variety of colors, were scrambling to safety, soon covered by the grey fumes of the explosion. It didn't hold much use anymore, just like the continued crackle of his phone call with Natasha. The call was still on, but with nobody on the other line.
"Oh my god." Fury had whispered to himself, under his own breath. His voice shook as he watched the busied screens of everyone in Ops, all dealing with some sort of footage or a phone call or a text message. "What's happening?" He'd said, as they listened in on another cry for help.
And then they heard the impact of the second bomb through the speakers, shaking the whole of Ops as it did.
She caught onto it just a bare second before it went off, while she clutched the phone in her hand. She had walked right by the package, frowning upon that black package weight that wasn't holding anything down. It stood out on the road, and then she saw the wire through the slightly opened zip.
A class of high school teens, with their teacher, an Asian female, stood by the barricades while two students, a boy and a girl, stood further out into the road; A married man waited for his wife, she guessed from the ring on his left fourth finger, who was about to reach the finishing line of the marathon - he looked like a doctor, the signature clear framed glasses and half formal suit. He'd gone up to a few faint runners to check on them.
Another younger man stood there too, with a velvet box in his hands. He beamed as his girlfriend came into view, and he was telling the ushers beside him that he was going to propose. The doctor smiled at him, and he grinned back; Then there was the seven year old child that had started towards the finishing line to approach both his parents, and her first instinct was to shield the boy from the blast as soon as she'd found out.
She grabbed his little wrist with one hand and fell over him with caution, clutching onto her phone with the other. She had moved to a blinder spot, half guarded by the edge of the barricade, and only felt the impact of the explosion a split second later. Someone's blood had stained her clothing, and the boy writhed under her. A limb or two fell around them, and she hoped to cover the boy's eyes and ears as screams started to fill the air. Her ears rang wildly too, and they might have been bleeding a little.
Bodies fell around her, blood pouring all over the street along with the empty cups on the tables, and some trash cans that lined the marathon route. Natasha looked up, and looked around, getting off the boy that had ran to two bodies side by side. She saw the doctor, unharmed save for a minor shrapnel wound or two, tending to one of the two bodies beside the boy.
One of the two high school students crumpled to the floor, yelling in fear as his female friend convulsed on the ground. Both her legs had been blown out by the impact for she stood a bare six feet from the bomb. The younger man had run to his wife, dropping the dark velvet box somewhere along the bloodied road, and he hugged the woman to his chest. From the way her body slackened, eyes open, she was most probably dead.
She only realized that the boy had started to wail when her focus zeroed in back on him. He was trying to shake his mother awake, choking on his own sobs as he did. But like the younger woman, her body bled from deep shrapnel wounds, and her abdomen looked a little deformed, as if the force of the impact had crushed her ribs. Blood dribbled from her mouth.
Beside her was probably her husband, the boy's father. His bloody fingers, from touching his hip and realizing one leg was gone, and that the other was gone from the knee down, first grasped the doctor. Then he grasped his son.
Natasha had gotten to her feet by then, holding her side that was a little sore and a little numb. She held onto the phone, without the thought to give a heads up that she was fine. In such a tragic situation, the urgency to return a call was really not at the top of her priority list.
"Keane... Keane, are you hurt?" asked the wounded man. The doctor was trying to keep him still but he wouldn't listen.
The boy, Keane, sobbed even harder when he shook his head. As she broke into a light jog to reach him, he glanced at her and something in him made him wrap his fingers around her hand when she was beside him. She crouched down and wanted to check him for any wounds, but Keane had cried and hugged her, recognizing her face.
"Your son is fine, sir. Pulled him to behind the barricade and shielded him from the blast. He's fine." She said. The father started to tear. "Let the doctor tend to you. I'll keep your son safe."
He then nodded, tears starting to trail down his face that had been a little torn by shrapnel, as he told her to 'get my son out of this hell of a place', and she abided to his demand. She took Keane by her arms - he was too afraid to walk.
Everyone around her were on their phones, making phone calls as the police rushed them into secure buildings with the glass windows having been shattered. They called for friends and for family, to tell them last goodbyes as they went on lockdown. The rest of the wounded were on the streets, with not enough medical attention to go around. Muscles and tendons hung off mangled and broken bones, open wounds with nothing beneath. It was all a bloody sight, and she told Keane not to look, so he hid his face in her shirt.
A policewoman had come up to them and told them that they had to go into the buildings, but Natasha knew that with her expertise in damage control and triage she could help the wounded. Yet there was still an obligation that tied her to the boy.
"Let me help." She finally said, though the policewoman objected for a second there, just before the second explosion went off on the street behind the building. The blast had almost knocked them off their feet, and they could feel the ground sway beneath them.
Keane had started to cry again, panicking in her arms. She set him down on the floor and hugged him tight just once, and she smoothened his hair out and looked at him dead in the eye. "You are a brave boy, Keane."
"But I'm scared..." He whimpered, realizing that he didn't know the kind woman's name, but he found security in her green eyes and red hair, and the two silver scars he could see that went from her collarbone to the outer side of her left rib.
"The people that are most afraid are the bravest." It was a quote that she and Clint went by, along with the rest of the team of the Avengers. "You are going to be okay. Your daddy is going to be okay. Everyone is going to be okay, if you do me a favor. Do you want to save all the scared people?"
Keane looked a little scared, and he looked down at his shoes that were the signature logo of Captain America. "Like the hero Captain America? From the bad alien people in New York last year?"
She grinned lightly, for this was a little unexpected. She would have to kindly inform Stark that this boy of hers, for once, wasn't one of his little boy army of supporters, and was Steve's instead.
"Yes. Just like Captain America." She said, pulling a smile, and it made the boy smile too. "He'd be proud to see you help these people. In fact, I work with him, and I think he's watching us right now on his TV." Natasha admitted.
Keane marveled at her words, and though his eyes glistened with fearful tears, he nodded determinedly. She gave him her phone, and he grabbed onto it tightly. "Another friend I work with is on the phone, and he can help these people if you help us. Follow the policewoman into the building and tell my friend whatever he wants to know, alright? Go be a hero."
He nodded once more, but grabbed her arm again before she left. "Please don't end up like the injured people like my mommy and daddy. Promise that you'll come back." And he held out his pinky finger.
It had honestly been a long time since she'd dealt with children of such a young age, minds functioning with the seal of a great promise with a pinky swear. Clint was better with kids than she was, and so was Steve.
Natasha smiled sadly, unwillingly hooking her slender pinky finger to his, which was two thirds as long as hers, and nodded. Her other hand travelled to where it had been numb and sore before. "I promise." She said, and then she requested for a personnel tag from the policewoman.
There was a certain vulnerability in her voice that Keane had recognized, a certain uncertainty; As she stood up, turned and left, his fingers wrapped a little tighter around the phone that she had given to him. He had half a heart to tell the friend on the other side of the line that he had a gut feeling that scared him: That she wasn't going to come back.
TBC