Chatper II "To Hold On"
Pietro is laid neatly on the operation table. Blood soaks his clothes and though he ceases to move, every once in a while a violent shiver seizes his body. Sweat covers Tony's forehead and he too shivers, despite a burning sensation that is going through his body. Involuntarily he remembers bodies like Pietro's. He remembers corpses as well as men who were alive; alive, but not for long. Red splatters and trembling hands, voices from the strongest of soldiers whimpering, begging for their mama.
His guts twist and his ribs shrink around his racing heart. The fright curls its fingers around him in an iron grip. It blocks him from looking away, and throws open the gates of old memories. Memories that shoot through his head like bullets and bombs, like the limbs of children and the tears of mothers. The air in the hospital room is thick with blood. It fills his lungs, leaving behind its metallic scent until it becomes harder and harder to breathe.
He swallows and cracks a smile. "What's the diagnosis, doctor?"
Bruce is leaning over the boy, hands travelling frantically from one wound to another, yet they remain steady like the hands of a skilled doctor. Tony has his own nails dug into the palms of his hands to keep them still. He tries to focus on the precision with which Bruce pulls a bullet out of Pietro's guts. At least his professional way of doing is a reassurance. Bruce learnt to handle what happens around him much better than handling the terror within him. "The diagnosis?" A nervous smile plays on his lips. "Depends on what you want me to tell you."
"So there's good news and bad news?"
"Don't turn this into a joke, Tony," Steve walks into the room. His eyes immediately find Pietro and he slows down to a stop. He looks at something far beyond Pietro and clenches his jaw. If Steve was truly a free man, Tony believes, he would turn around and leave. Any free man with a healthy desire to avoid trauma would leave. However, duty keeps him here. It is a moral plight, a mind that can demand the body to stay where the pain is the greatest. Steve blinks a few times, trying to whip away the images before him. His shoulders are tensed; his whole body is. Tony can't help wanting to pat him on his back silently. They've both been through enough gunfire, held enough hands growing cold and forced enough breaths through their tight throats. Steve's choice to stay is one of strength. And where Steve is strong, Tony can only call himself stubborn. He wants to reach out and put an arm around him, tell him wordlessly that he understands and maybe most of all he wants a warm hand and a watery smile back.
Bruce looks up and draws their attention. "So what do you want to hear first, the good news or the bad news?"
"Good news," Steve says whilst simultaneously Tony says "Bad news."
Bruce cleans a scalpel, his eyes not leaving the boy when he aswers, "Well, he should have been dead already."
Steve inhales sharply. "And the good news?"
For a moment Bruce parts his lips without making a sound. "That's, it's, it's both the good and bad news, actually," He gestures vaguely with the scalpel, "A punctured lung, in combination with, well, I won't get into detail, but it is all fairly lethal," He speaks slowly and tries to take the weight of the words, aware that he has always been bad at that, "but, I mean, he's still alive."
"Can we help?" Steve says while taking a step forward, and Tony has to keep himself from pulling him back. He almost wants to roll his eyes and tell him that it's okay not to give everything. It's exhausting to watch someone pushing their limits for the sake of doing what they deem to be the right thing to do. But he supposes that that's exactly what makes Steve Steve, what makes him Captain America.
Even when he is awed by Steve's capacity to walk over every boundary with the steadiness of a soldiers march, he himself never desired to be that kind of unselfish and self-sacrificing hero. Attempting to become such a hero would be the very reason why it would fail. Steve carries this in his nature; Tony doesn't.
"I just need to, um," Bruce starts looking around the room, and it's hard to tell whether he is looking for simplified medical terms or a life-saving apparatus. "His lung is," He trails off halfway his sentences, talking more to himself than to them. "The wound, I need to close," He cuts himself off with a sigh.
Tony raises an eyebrow. "Want us to find a patch to stitch onto him?"
The glare Steve gives him lasts but a second, and instead of feeling guilty about it, those are exactly the moments he can't withhold his comments, nor feel guilty about them. Like a brutal child, proud of his petulance.
"No, no, this needs to be, um, vacuum." He continues mumbling to himself until a moment later he finds just what he needs and bends over the wound again, "You see, the pressure inside the human body is lower than outside, and because his lung is punctured, the pressure in his body will rise,"
"Which will cause his lung to collapse," Tony finishes for him.
"Pneumothorax." Bruce hums without losing concentration. After that he immediately returns to another wound, situated around Pietro's stomach. "I'm afraid the two of you can't really do much."
"And I?" Her voice is cold, like steel, "Can I help?"
Behind her, Natasha enters and gestures for the two men to leave. They do so, Tony less concerned about showing his relief to be out of there. Clint joins them and their voices and footsteps peter out quickly.
Bruce can't say out loud that he preferred Tony's and Steve's companion, but his glances that nervously hop from one place to another are loud and clear. It's hard to say whose presence weighs heaviest on him, but Wanda reads his fears like an open book.
"I just want my brother to be alive and well," She tells him, "I'll do anything to help."
There are questions burning on his lips. The alliance between the Avengers and the twins didn't exactly happen with his proper presence. He doesn't trust her one bit; she can tell. Perhaps that's why she doesn't expect him to ignore his own instinct and doubt. "His mind, can you control it?"
She lowers her gaze to her brother and steps closer to him. Without looking up she answers, "What do you want me to do?"
There is a short moment of silence before he speaks again. Even in his silences, he never stops moving, always cleaning, inspecting or plucking at wounds. "I can't use anaesthesia. The stuff that is strong enough to numb out the level of pain he is going through can trigger other reactions. It would be safer if you could somehow keep him at least from moving."
She almost finds herself waiting for Black Widow to say something, but the sphere between her and him is tensioned and heavy. "How have you been keeping him quiet up until now?"
"It's because," He starts saying but cuts himself off, "Listen," He says and stops halfway through cleaning away blood from a bullet hole below Pietro's ribs. When he raises his head to meet her eyes she has to resist the urge to push his head back down. "This is all going to be rather unpleasant."
Her lips form a thin line. "Pietro and I have known no pleasantries in our lives. We've had our fair share of blood and death. Get to the point."
Bruce nods and quickly glances back down. "He's mostly been blacking out from pain. There are a few places on the human body that cause a sort of paralysis when pressure is applied too. It's not really safe either way."
"It's safe now," She says and takes a deep breath to keep her voice steady. "He's quiet now." She carefully caresses his cheek. Nausea overwhelms her when she touches his cold skin, and it's too late to keep herself from imagining. Her eyes sting but she blinks it away, believing that weeping would be equal to admitting her loss. And she has not lost him. She will not lose him.
"I will cut him open now, please don't force yourself to watch." He says, but the words leave her head as easily as they entered it. There are more words following, but she doesn't even catch them. All she sees is his a red line drawn over his skin. She sees his flesh, his blood gushing out, and a stranger's fingers reaching into the body of her brother. Her heart beats violently against her ribs.
"Wanda," A soft voice snaps her out of it. Natasha lies her hand on her shoulder. "He needs you to stay calm."
Pietro's fingers curl around the edge of the table, but within a split second his whole body relaxes again. He is shimmering with sweat. When Bruce removes his hand, he pulls something dark and red out of Pietro's body. It's soaked with blood, dripping down his arms, onto Pietro's body and everywhere else. Bruce flings it aside. The organ hits the floor, the sound of it echoing in Wanda's head until she can't hear anything else. Still, Pietro remains peaceful; the way only a corpse can be.
"What did you do?" She breathes. On the floor lies a piece of Pietro. The puddle of blood around it expands rapidly.
"It's his spleen," Bruce mumbles without losing focus. "Not vital." She hadn't even seen his fingers go back into Pietro's body. "It has the tendency to burst and cause massive blood loss. You can't fix it however. It is removed in most cases. Sorry for being messy."
She had never associated being messy with dropping organs on the floor, neither did she want to hear such a thing from the doctor operating her brother. Everything is quite overwhelming these days. Their lives had opened up to new worlds entirely. Change hung in the air and she inhaled it deeply. She was ready for this, whatever it would turn out to be. She believed rebirth awaited them, and they would finally shed their old skins, old hatred and old fears.
And Pietro held on. He held onto the thin string of life that they reached out to him. That string of life that lied within the unwavering belief with which Clint carried him to the hospital. It was within Bruce's hands that cut him apart and stitched him back together, as well as within the mawkish promises Wanda whispered into his head. She whispered, "Just hold on a little longer."
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