Clint's arrow arm was numb again. Pain was a thing of the past and with it had gone all reason. He had reached the point where if he didn't actively tell his arm to pull another bow from its quiver it wouldn't be moving at all. For the first hour pain had throbbed up and down his bicep. No training had prepared him for this.
He still remembered the sound of Nick Fury's voice over his satellite phone; it held an urgency he wished now he had ignored. The avenger's team was more than half here this time, missing one green giant with an anger problem who had been detained and tortured in an unknown location, and one blackened widow he would be lucky to never see again.
Natasha had pulled on his heart strings one too many times. His insides only felt empty now over every situation she had manipulated to make her a victim in their torrid half twisted relationship. She was anything but helpless but her words had bitten to the bone over her role in his life.
He was a warrior first, always would be. She didn't get that part of him wouldn't back down to put her first. It couldn't. He would never be able to live with himself if he did. But how quickly she fell free from his mind and his heart only told him a secret truth he harbored all along. He had never really loved Natasha Romanoff.
Time and breath seemed to escape from Clint's vicinity as he spotted yet another turbine styled aircraft heading back in the direction he had come from. It sailed through the air at break neck speeds and fear shot through him as he saw it close in on the hospital not a mile from where he stood now.
Before he could blink a trick arrow flew from his fingertips towards the ship. An explosion rocked the night air around him and sound seemed to be on a tinny wavelength for a full moment after the ship landed in pieces on the steps leading up to the hospital's main entrance.
He sheltered his gaze from the ongoing blaze and prayed Hope Zion's inhabitants would survive a blast or two more tonight. He hated to think he lingered down the street at the edges of the worst of the attack was because of her. But he knew better than to lie to himself in his own mind.
Her warm gaze filled every other thought since he had first saved her life. The way her soft brown hair had been pulled free of its pony tail and lay scattered about her face. The way it had fallen into her bewildered eyes as she took him in. He had wanted to stop and gently tuck it behind her ears. He had wanted to touch her, grasped at any excuse to do so. He felt the need to linger near her and he couldn't explain it.
Life and death drenched the streets before him. As far as Fury knew and reported team the attacks had come from an alien race called the Wakanda. Sources were still bare and chaos littered the northern hemisphere in small segments reaching from NYC across the west and up into Canada. Three major cities had been hit by rebel forces and their technology was surmounting the abilities of the avenger's team.
Clint refused to acknowledge the sweat shining off his forehead and continued telling his shooting arm to move. He glimpsed a flash of their newest member he had briefly met on the chopper over. Scarlett Witch, she had called herself, a mutant who had the power to manipulate probability through a hex sphere. He wasn't sure he wanted to see what she was truly capable of but he was witness to a sliver of it now as she slowed the momentum of a surrounding group of warriors on the ground and took them on one at a time. No one had said it but Clint could tell she had never played for the good team before and he could only hope she stayed on her side of the fight. He didn't want her near that hospital. He threw a tentative glance back at it for what seemed like the hundredth time and forged ahead into the fray once more.
By the end of this night he would wash his mind of that brunette with the startling eyes, because like it or not, it would be filled with too much death to recover any good memories from.
Alex's mind screamed at her from every different direction possible. Bodies lay in piles with nowhere to put the dead. She helped a frantic and anxious Maggie lift another body to the back of the hospital.
"Alex!" She screeched, blood covered her clothes and stuck in her short brown hair. "This ones alive!" She called from across the room where she had just darted back to. Pain leaked through her adrenaline based frenzy for a second and Alex wondered how she herself would survive this night. She pulled herself together for another round of devastation and threw her mind into the moment once more.
The victim lay motionless and unconscious on a blood soaked gurney they had been using over and over. Cleaning the instruments seemed beyond anyone's ability or time in the rush to keep people breathing. Blood staunched and stopped flowing suddenly from the young man's chest wound and Maggie sat back on her heels a look of horror on her face. The man had died instantly.
Alex leaned in grasping Maggie arm in a desperate attempt to not lose her only solace in all the surrounding horror. "Maggie!" She shouted. "Stay with me now! We are going to get through this! Do you hear me?"
Maggie merely nodded and helped yet another body onto the ever growing pile.
Hours seemed to slip by, body after body, one in what seemed like a hundred being carried up to the ICU while the other ninety-nine lay nameless and claimless on the piles in the adjoining ER rooms that weren't yet pulverized.
Another explosion rocked the hospital and Alex clutched at the table in front of her for reassurance that she was still attached to something. Her fingers bit into the sides of the soft gurney cushion and she welcomed the pain of it.
Another shock shot through the place, this time extinguishing half the lights in the hospital. Alex swore under her breath letting panic take over. Darkness would be their undoing. And just when she thought the worst had happened fate took a turn for the worse releasing the strengthening beams at the ceiling and sending an ICU room full of equipment down onto the space around her.
Plaster hit her before anything else did and she grit her teeth in anticipation of an impact that would most likely end her here and now. The last thing Alex expected was the firm and nearly suffocating grip of an arm around her waist dragging her backward and through a glass window. She only briefly touched on the thought that they were in fact no longer on the ground floor at this part of the hospital. It was more than evident a second later as her and whoever was attached to the arm apparently unwilling to let her go, flashed downward two stories towards the grass below. The impact should've knocked the wind from her but her rescuer hadn't moved position, taking the hit and cushioning her from the force of the fall.
She scrambled to the side, ready for the death of yet another victim playing hero beneath her. But her eyes collided with that of her actual hero of the night. Her mystery man the last few hours of turmoil had convinced her was a myth. He rolled to his feet as if the blow had not been more than trifling thing and Alex gave a glance to the shattered window up over the hill.
This part of the hospital sat on a rather serve incline and while it was still considered the first floor, it's set of steps did lead the way back into a twenty foot drop off from each room window.
She gaped at the man before her, blinking away her astonishment. "I should thank you but I can't seem to get the words out." She said in a half whisper.
His eyes narrowed on her frame as if scanning her for injuries. She followed his gaze and led it back to her face, half smiling at her own shocked state.
"You just did." He mused. A crack of what sounded like thunder sounded in the distance and Alex jumped at the sound. This was the first time she had been back outside the hospital since she had seen him last. She felt like she was losing her mind to the ensuing chaos.
He crossed the distance between them then and reached for a strand of hair thick with blood that had fallen across her lips in the wind. Like a reprieve from the suffocation surrounding her she felt herself take in the vision before her with more clarity as he slide it back into the mass of tangles onto the top of her head.
"I've wanted to do that for what seems like days." He said. Flexing his hands in his gloves he turned from her then and Alex couldn't tell if her lips moved or not when her mind screamed. "Wait!"
When he turned on his heel and cocked a brow at her she flushed at the answer to her own musings. She had said it out loud. Oh god. Breathe, wait don't breathe too fast, passing out is not an option right now. Silence sliced the air between them but he didn't turn to leave again. Merely stared at her as if drinking in the sight of her. Her heart leapt at the way his eyes moved over her. Blood and sweat and tears stained her appearance yet he was looking at her as if she was something more that the mess she knew she was. As if she was something beautiful.
A minute ticked by and Alex prayed it was only a minute and not the hour this moment felt like. This is the part where you say something Alex. Say anything.
"Thank you." She blurted out trying to relieve the tension she felt the need to break up.
He smiled and she could swear the world lit a bit around them. The tension eased from her shoulders at the sight and she wished she had made him smile under different circumstances, she could've actually enjoyed the feeling it gave her.
"You said that already," He teased, and she could've sworn she felt heat staining her cheeks.
She paused, not knowing what to say to this man who had rescued her yet again and seemed to fly in and out of a surrounding war she couldn't even begin to fathom.
"Why?" She asked suddenly as if a dawning had come over her that he had risked his life for her repeatedly time and again when others had been left where they lay, not a hope in the world for them.
He only shook his head for a second as if the question baffled him as much as it did her.
Letting himself take a half step forward he paused, then in a rush backed up further from her. He shook his head again quickly and his features set into a serious mask of hopeless thoughts and constrained emotion. He let a look of worry slip over his features for a second and she shared in that feeling with him over a shower of sparks from the street lights in the parking lot to their left.
Yet neither broke their stare.
A half smile touched his lips again and it disappeared as soon as it had appeared. She watched as he seemed to allow his feet to move towards her once more and even though he never touched her his presence filled every ounce of space she allowed herself to exist in. She tried not to move any closer, telling herself there was a place and time to give in to her very real fantasies about this man and this was the last one on a long list she could ever allow. But he broke their trance a second later with three simple words she would find herself going over and over again in the coming days. Three words she had never expected to hear, but three words she knew now she had been hoping to hear ever since she had asked him why.
"It was you."