A/N: So I'm really not sure about this story. My writing inspiration came back in a spectacular fashion, and this is what it came up with, so ... any reviews are much appreciated, I guess.
Thanks.
Tony lifts his head weakly. His ears are ringing and his eyes blearily. His throat is dry and sore from the smoke and dust, and he tries to cough. It hurts.
"Help," he calls out painfully. "Over ... here ..."
He trails off as he stares into the lifeless eyes of his bodyguard. The bodyguard he can't even remember the name of. Tony feels a twinge of guilt, but he's pretty sure he's going into shock or something because he's shaking all over and who knows where he could be bleeding and oh God he can't move. Desperately trying to even out his breathing, he twitches his toes slowly and lets out a sigh of relief. Then he realises that he can't move because there is a large human on top of him. Given the circumstances, probably a dead one.
A shudder of revulsion travels through his body and he scrambles out as fast as he can (given the size of the person on top of him, not particularly fast). Then, cursing the lack of light, he remembers his phone and snatches it out of his pocket. He turns it on. The screen is smashed beyond recognition, but by some miracle manages to light up. The first thing he does is turn on the torch, and then he tries to make an emergency call.
The screen flickers and dies, but the torch stays on. "Best thing that's happened all day," he mutters, and shines it into the face of the person who was on top of him. He is blond, and somewhat attractive, Tony admits begrudgingly, and he's ... coughing. And blinking in the sudden light. Tony yelps and jumps back, dropping his phone. "What the hell!"
"Uh ... ow," the guy coughs out, dragging himself into a sitting position. "Ah ... "
"You're - you're not dead," Tony says shakily.
"Well," he gasps, "I don't think so. I'm Steve Rogers. Are you okay?"
"Tony. Stark. And yes."
They shook filthy hands. The whole thing was bizarrely surreal.
"Anyone else in here?"
Shit. He hasn't thought of that.
A sense of foreboding rises in his chest as he shines the torch around. There is someone spread-eagled in the centre of the space, two unconscious but apparently still breathing figures in a corner and one more person towards the right.
"What happened?" he asked quietly.
"You don't remember?" Steve asks, sounding somewhat concerned.
"I - uh, bomb."
Fragments start to come back to him now.
They are in a bank. Definitely a bank.
He was meeting with Bruce Banner, who'd done some interesting work on gamma radiation, and was showing him something in his bank vault.
There was a guy - it must have been Steve - putting something in a safety deposit box next door as well, and some nosy British guy who probably wasn't meant to be there but was just "having a look around".
They were just about to enter the vault when a cry of bomb came from upstairs, followed by a fair amount of screaming, and then Steve started yelling something about getting in the vault, his bodyguard shoved him in, some others ran in as well, and finally a man and woman Tony did not recognise leapt in too, right before they all went flying into darkness.
"I remember," he whispers, and then they both stand up and go to see if anyone else is alive.
"How'd this vault survive?" Steve asks, looking at the remarkably intact walls.
"I made it bombproof," Tony says vaguely, and leans over Dr. Banner, slapping him gently on the cheek. His eyes fly open.
"There's a bomb."
"We gathered," says Tony, helping him to his feet.
"Ah!" a deep, British voice shouts, and they both turn to see a shape leap up from the floor, straight into Steve's nose. Steve staggers away, clutching it. In the dim torchlight, Steve thinks he sees blood.
Bruce goes towards him, frowning, but Steve waves him off. "It's fine," he says thickly.
Tony moves towards toward the final two shapes in the corner. Another torch flicks on as he reaches them, and he can see that one of the figures is a red haired woman with a nasty looking gash on her temple, the other a man whose breaths are alarmingly fast and shallow. He crouches by the woman to check her pulse, his fingers pressing on her neck.
The next thing he knows, she has him in a tight headlock. "Whoa," Steve says. "Calm down. He isn't here to hurt you."
She drops him. He decides that now might be a good time to lie very still on the floor and try to breathe.
But she's already distracted. "Clint?" she says softly, bending down and shaking the guy who was with her. "Clint, come on. Wake up. Come on. You need to - "
"Go fu - ow! Shit, Nat!" he cried out as she started pressing various areas of his torso, apparently checking for damage.
"I'm pretty sure you have a couple of broken ribs," she murmured, ignoring him. "Anyone here have medical experience?"
"Ow, no, that hurts ... Nat ..."
"Call it payback for the time you - " she seems to stop herself. Tony wonders if things like this happen to them a lot. From the way she is disregarding her head injury, either she hasn't noticed because she's distracted or they do happen a lot. And since there is blood dripping into her eye and down her cheek, he can't see how she can have not noticed.
She stands and puts her hands under each of Clint's arms. "This will hurt," she warns, and then hoists him up to a sitting position against the wall. His eyes are closed and Tony can see the muscles in his jaw working.
"They're pretty serious, I'd say."
"Damn right they are." He opens his eyes. "Who are all these people?"
"Uh," she gestures randomly. "I'm pretty sure that guy's called Steve. And ... "
"Tony Stark," says Tony. He's a little surprised that's nobody's recognised him, to be honest.
"The bomb guy?" Clint wheezes.
They all look at him. "I prefer scientific and technological genius," he says. "But I guess that works too."
"Bruce Banner."
"Call me Thor," the British guy says, puffing out his chest.
"Your name is Thor." Nat raises an eyebrow. "As in, the Norse God? Thor."
Thor shrugs. "That's what they call me."
"Because you're godly?" Tony can't help but snicker.
"And you guys?"
"My name's ... Natalie. Natalie Rushman. And this is Clint. Clint, uh, Barron."
Tony turns to Steve, who has been silent, but he's blinking, looking bewildered. "Do - do you know Stark Industries?" he whispers, eyes closed.
"I run Stark Industries."
"And - and they make bombs."
"Yes," Tony says, not sure where this is going.
"Bombs they use in ... Afghanistan?"
"You served?" Natalie asks.
"Apparently. I - I mean, yes," he stammers. Everyone is staring at him now, and he is reddening. "Sorry. Carry on."
Clint distracts them at that moment by having a coughing fit - a bad one. Every breath he takes is followed by a series of coughs which wrack his entire body. "Whoa, whoa," says Natalie, kneeling beside him. "Don't try and hold it in. You'll only give yourself a chest infection. Deep breaths. Yes, it hurts like shit. Okay, now let go of my wrist. You're cutting off. The circulation. Clint." She slaps his arm and he releases her hand. She takes another look around. "Was that a no to the medical experience?"
"Stark," mutters Steve again. "Stark."
"I feel like I'm missing something," Tony says. "Anyone else know what he's going on about?"
But Bruce touches Steve's arm. "Do you need to sit down?" he asks.
"Uh - "
Apparently Steve's legs decide that yes, he does need to sit down, because they start shaking and then eventually give out. He collapses straight into Thor, who does not look like the weight of a fully grown, muscular male particularly bothers him, and slides down his body into a sitting position at his feet before Thor really has time to react. Then he peels up his shirt, suddenly looking white.
"Well, shit," breathes Clint, and they all gaze in horror at the bloodied mess that was apparently once Steve's stomach.
Steve's mind is reeling. For the first time since his accident two years ago, he is remembering something. And not flashes of his mother, or his childhood, or school or college. Something important. Something to do with why he forgot.
A bomb. That's what he remembers. A bomb.
But also a friend. A friend whose name, for whatever reason, is Bucky. And him and Bucky are tight. Tight enough that Bucky keeps nudging him back, away from the bomb, so that if by some incredibly unlikely twist of fate it goes off, Steve has a better chance of survival.
It all comes in flashes.
The name Stark. He remembers that.
And the sudden realisation that this bomb was not a dud.
Panic. On everyone's faces.
Everyone running -
Steve's fastest -
He's always been fastest.
Something slamming into his body so hard he is thrown into the air.
He falls -
The bomb flashes up in his mind again, the white letters of Tony's name glowing.
Then he hits the ground.
Almost immediately after Steve Rogers sits down and pulls up his top, his eyes roll up into the back of his head and he slumps against Thor's legs again. Thor blinks, then stretches him out so he is lying flat on his back. Bruce Banner is already hovering over him, trying to work out what to do.
Clint Barron is still staring, but now his friend Natalie has turned back to him and is talking to him in a low voice. A distant part of Thor's mind wonders what she is saying, but he sits on the other side of Steve. Perhaps he can help.
"What can I do?" he asks.
"Just wait ... I can't even see what did it yet. I think - oh." Banner pulls a long, jagged piece of metal out of the wound and drops it to one side.
"How the hell did he keep going that long?" Tony asks quietly.
"Give me your phone," Banner says, holding out a blood-slicked hand. He shines the torch at Steve's stomach. "It's not as bad as it looks," he tells them finally. "I'm no expert, and I'm not saying he'll live, but I don't think anything major was pierced and look - he's waking up again. It was probably just the shock that knocked him out. Here - " he rips off his sweater and hands it to Thor - "put pressure on it. Not too hard. Just to stop the bleeding."
Thor obeys, looking at the others as he does so. Tony is angrily trying to turn his phone on. Natalie keeps touching her ear as she talks to Clint. They are all trying to ignore the half buried dead body by the space where the door used to be (all that remained now was a sizeable mountain of rubble).
"Anyone else have a phone?" Tony asks hopefully.
They all shake their heads but Thor, who holds up his, the torch glowing. "I have no signal."
"We're buried under a building, what do you expect?" Clint says harshly.
"Hey." Natalie slaps him. "They're trying, which is more than you."
"We should - uh," Bruce says awkwardly. "We should talk about something. Anything."
"Why?"
"Because we're trapped without food, water or a long term source of light and we'll probably be here for days, so we should take our mind off that fact."
"We could sleep," Tony pipes up hopefully.
Bruce shoots him a withering look. "Yes, wonderful idea. Especially for the guy with the stab wound, the one who can barely breathe and Natalie over here who has a concussion."
"I don't have a concussion," says Natalie.
"People who test themselves for concussions are my least favourite kinds of people," Tony says.
"Good thing I got Clint to test me, then, isn't it?" Her voice is dangerously quiet.
"Hey." Thor steps between them. "If we're going to die down here, we should at least do it on good terms."
Clint laughs and begins on another coughing fit. Natalie ignores him and glares at Tony.
"Guys." Bruce, breathing heavily, turns to face them. "Calm down."
"Are you okay, Mr Banner?" Thor asks him.
"It's Doctor. I am a doctor."
"Okay," Natalie soothes, standing up and moving over to him. A good half of her face is covered in blood by now, but the bleeding is slowing. She wipes it with her hand, or as much as she can. Presumably she didn't want to pull the skin too hard and irritate the cut further before, but now as it begins to clot she feels more secure.
Clearly she sensed a storm on its way, because she steps back easily when he lashes out, as if she planned for it. "Hey, we're not here to hurt you. Just take a deep - "
He lashes out again, clumsily, and she dodges it with more ease than Thor is entirely sure is possible. "Deep breath," she repeats.
"Get away from me," he snarls.
She holds up her hands and backs away. Banner retreats into a corner.
"You know what?" Tony says too loudly. "I'm going to start digging." He marches over to the rubble and grabs a piece, throwing it to the side."
"Don't, man," Clint says tiredly. "You don't know how stable it is. You could make the whole thing collapse."
"It's better than sitting here waiting to die," he said defensively.
"But not better than deciding to put yourself out of your own misery this early on. The entire bank could have fallen on here for all we know. You'd just be filling this room up with bits of brick and getting no closer to a way out. Better to sit here."
Clint starts wheezing and closes his eyes.
Thor wonders if this happens every day in America. It was far more interesting than the place where he grew up, that was for sure; of course, it wasn't difficult to be more interesting than a house in the middle of a large forest with five small cabins as the only civilisation for twenty miles. Twenty miles away lived the owners of another large house surrounded by small cabins. Up until recently, they had been on good terms with the owners.
Unfortunately, a boy from the other house (Jotunheim, the house was called) stole something of Thor's. So Thor and his brother went to teach him a lesson.
Then they inadvertently started a war between the two families, and Thor's father sent him away. To a different country.
It might as well be a different world, because Thor is seldom if ever in a room with this many people at once, and he doesn't quite know how to act.
Banner, sat in one corner with his head on his knees, is taking deep, shaking breaths, calming himself down.
Tony is wandering around, opening various steel drawers and looking at their contents. Thor has a niggling suspicion that they are all inventions of his.
Natalie's finger is now glued to her ear and she is talking urgently to Clint, except Clint isn't even listening - he's watching Tony.
Clint jumps every time someone says his friend's name, and then covers it up by coughing a little.
Steve, still lying on the floor, is staring into space, lost to the world. Something about the name Stark acted as a sort of trigger inside him.
Thor doesn't know all that much about other people, but these ones aren't just strangers.
He doesn't know one single thing about them.