A/N Thank you so much to everyone who has alerted, faved, and reviewed this so far! I'm glad you guys are enjoying it! I apologize for the shortness of this chapter. The next one will be a little longer.
Don't Tell Me It's Meaningless
Bruce walked toward the front of the car, scanning the road for any sign of Clint as he went. Still not seeing the archer, Bruce circled around the front of the pickup truck that had hit them. He caught a glimpse of the driver slumped over, his nose obviously broken and bleeding. Bruce couldn't tell if he was simply unconscious or worse. He started to go check on the driver when something caught his eye.
There, laying completely unmoving, on his back, in the middle of the intersection, with his face turned away from Bruce, was Clint.
Bruce didn't hesitate to run the remaining twenty feet and drop to his knees next to the archer, checking for a pulse and breathing, both of which, thankfully, were there.
Whereas Tony had almost no visible injuries, Clint was the opposite. Almost his entire body was covered in injuries.
Clint's clothes were ripped and bloody, he was covered in cuts and scrapes, likely from both the glass of the windshield and from skidding across the pavement, and he had a gash that started right above his left eyebrow and wrapped around the side of his head and across his left temple, stopping just short of his ear. The entire left side of Clint's face was streaked in blood.
Bruce immediately tore off some of his shirt and used it to apply pressure to Clint's head.
The next thing Bruce noticed, was Clint's left arm, which was obviously broken, followed by at least two broken ribs that looked out of place beneath the archer's ripped shirt. Bruce sincerely hoped that they hadn't punctured anything.
Then Bruce's eyes stopped scanning Clint's body and locked onto the archer's abdomen. More specifically, on the three inch wide, dagger-like shard of glass sticking out of the archer's abdomen.
It was times like these when Bruce really wished the 'Dr.' in front of his name stood for MD instead of PhD. Bruce knew he was out of his depth but he had to at least do something, no matter how minor. So he was forced to rely on what little he had learned by reading, picked up by practicing in third world countries, and, yes, even a little from what he had seen on TV and in movies.
He quickly tore a chunk off the bottom of his shirt and carefully positioned it around the glass to stem the blood. He didn't dare pull the glass out. There were far too many things that could go wrong if he did that. He knew that much.
"Clint?"
Bruce was so focused on Clint that it wasn't until he spoke, that Bruce looked up to see Tony was standing by the truck that had hit them. Bruce could just see enough of their car to see the passenger door standing open.
"Tony! What are you doing? You shouldn't be moving," Bruce said.
"How is he?" Tony asked, looking at the archer worriedly.
"He's alive. Beyond that... I don't know," Bruce answered honestly.
Tony started to walk toward them when he swayed and placed his left hand against the truck to steady himself, his injured right hand cradled against his midsection. Bruce didn't want to leave Clint but Tony wasn't giving him any choice. Bruce jumped to his feet and ran over to Tony.
He gently grabbed the billionaire's arm and helped him sit next to the truck and lean back against the vehicle.
"Clint," Tony weakly protested.
"Tony, stay here. I'll take care of Clint," Bruce promised.
After a moment, Tony gave him a small nod. Feeling fairly confident that Tony would stay where he was this time, Bruce returned to Clint.
A minute later, Bruce was ready to kick himself. He hadn't thought to call for help. Granted it had only been a few minutes since the crash, but still, that should have been the first thing he did. He started to try to find his phone while keeping pressure on Clint's wounds.
"Bruce," Tony called.
"Yeah, Tony?" Bruce said distractedly.
"It was green," he said softly.
Bruce stopped what he was doing and looked up to meet Tony's agonized eyes.
"I know."
"Hey, you okay?"
Bruce turned to see a young guy, who couldn't be more than eighteen or nineteen, approaching them.
"Yeah, I'm fine but my friend isn't," Bruce replied.
"I called 911. An ambulance is on the way," the guy said. "Anything I can do?"
"Could you go sit with my other friend?" Bruce said, motioning to Tony. "Make sure he's okay?" Bruce asked, more to make sure Tony didn't suddenly decide to go for another walk.
"Sure," the guy agreed and walked toward Tony.
"It was green," Tony said again.
"Is he drunk?" the stranger asked.
"No, he's not drunk," Bruce said.
"Green. It was green," Tony mumbled to himself.
"He sounds drunk."
"He's not drunk! He's concussed," Bruce snapped.
"How do you know?" the guy asked, genuinely curious.
"You mean besides the bleeding head wound?" Bruce asked sarcastically. He had just been in a severe car crash and was currently having to defend one friend's sobriety while trying to keep his other friend alive, so excuse him for being a bit irritated. "His pupils are slightly uneven and aren't reacting to the light quite like they should," he explained.
"Oh," the guy said.
"Look... What's your name anyway?" Bruce asked.
"Thomas."
"Thomas, this wasn't our fault. That guy," Bruce motioned to the driver of the truck, "hit us. Our light was green. That's what Tony keeps rambling about. He's concussed and that can make someone sound drunk because the brain has been injured," Bruce explained more patiently, feeling bad about snapping at the kid. He was only trying to help.
"Okay, I see," the teen said, nodding.
"Good. Now I don't know if Tony has any other injuries so I need you to keep him from moving too much while I deal with Clint. Can you do that?" Bruce asked.
"Yeah, sure," the guy eagerly agreed and crouched down next to Tony who was staring intently at Bruce and Clint.
For Bruce, the next several minutes were one big blur. The Other Guy may have kept him from getting concussed but he wasn't protecting the scientist from shock which was finally catching up to him. When asked later, Bruce couldn't tell anyone what had occurred between Thomas sitting down next to Tony and their arrival at the hospital.
According to Tony, the ambulance arrived within a couple of minutes and the paramedics went to work on Clint. In seconds, they had the archer on a backboard and were placing him on a gurney. Just minutes after arriving, they had whisked the archer away, leaving one paramedic behind to attend to the other victims while they waited for more ambulances to arrive. At one point, Thomas left to talk to the police who had finally arrived. Tony had the presence of mind to thank the kind teenager for his help, causing the young man to smile and wish them well.
Once the paramedic was sure that Tony and Bruce weren't going to die anytime soon, he checked the driver of the other vehicle and confirmed that he was still alive.
After that, Tony stopped paying attention for fear that if he thought about the other driver for long that he would finish the guy off himself. Fortunately, he had a perfectly good concussion to help him zone out until he was being gently shaken by Bruce who looked like he wasn't anymore in touch with reality than the billionaire was. They were both operating on auto pilot, their brains taking care of the important things, like getting into an ambulance, without them ever really registering it all.
Let me know if you liked it! Or even if you didn't. :)
