Chapter 2
When Tony wakes up, he hurts. A lot. His throat is raw, and the rest of him feels like it was rubbed with sandpaper. When he moves, just a little, it feels like someone stabbed him in the head and twisted the knife around.
Tony can feel a bandage across his eyes, forehead, and his left cheek, as well as several other places on his body, joints seeming to be the most popular spot. A hospital, then. Tony hates hospitals. Who put him in here? Why is he in here, anyway? The genius struggles with his aching head, trying to figure out this seemingly impossible puzzle. They had been fighting those weird robots... Natasha had been screaming. What had he done? He remembered hitting the monster and slamming after it into the building, then... black.
He moves a little, again, even though his head still really hurts. This time, a voice, thick with exhaustion, says his name. "Tony? Are you awake?" Despite his brain starting to work better, it takes him a second to place it. Bruce, their resident doctor and green giant on occasion.
"Whaggazah?" Tony croaks out. Even though he sounded like he had been breathing dirt for several days, Bruce seemed to understand.
"Helicarrier. Avengers suite in the hospital sector. Do you want a drink?" Tony manages to make a sound that is vaguely affirmative, because he doesn't want to move his head again, and then a straw is poking into his mouth and bliss bliss bliss is running down his dry throat. Everything is starting to get fuzzy again, so Tony asks because he knows he's going to fall back asleep.
"Natasha?" There's a rustle of fabric as Bruce takes the straw and the drink away from Tony and a small chink as he sets it down somewhere.
"She's fine, Tony. Everyone's fine. Go back to sleep." And Tony does.
The next time he wakes up, there are voices everywhere. Before trying to move, Tony mentally runs a systems check. Knees, elbows, ankles? Check. Hurting, but not much. Ribs? Check. Throbbing with the fading ache that Tony associates with bruised ribs. Head? Check. There's still bandages on his face; lighter, he can tell, than the ones he had on before, but still enough that the world is dark. The stabbing in his head is fading, but Tony's pretty sure he's not going to want bright lights or loud noises for a few days.
"Guys?" Tony voices tentatively. He can hear at least Thor's rumble, Natasha's silky voice, and Bruce again.
"Tony? How are you feeling?" Asks a voice that is undeniably Steve. Everyone else shuts up when they hear Steve ask, and Tony is pretty sure that he has the undivided attention of five sets of eyes.
"Better... Is everyone here?"
"Yeah, everyone's here. Tasha has a broken leg, but other than a few cuts, bruises, and burns, the rest of us are okay. You got the worst of it." Tony can hear the tired note that enters Steve's voice whenever he talks about a long mission, along with the happiness that accompanies most of his team being relatively unharmed.
He hesitates. There's a long pause in the room.
"What about me?" Tony finally asks. Bruce clears his throat and answers.
"Some minor burns, mostly where the joints of the suit are, and also on your face a little. Already healing, and shouldn't scar. A lot of bruises, especially on your ribs, but nothing broken. We think you got hit on the head really hard also, but... we don't really know. Plus, we couldn't do to much with that until you woke up."
Natasha interrupted. "Because that's what happens when you fly into a fucking explosive rhino robot and then into a building that collapses and blows up, moron!" Even though her voice was getting uncomfortably loud at the end, Tony thought he could detect a little note of thanks hiding in there somewhere. It was as much as he probably would get. The Black Widow didn't do apologies.
"Okay, sorry..." Tony mumbled. "Does Pepper know?" Pepper was at an international meeting in India.
"I called her," Bruce volunteered. "She knows that you should be okay, and will be here when the conference is done, three days. Which is when you should get out of here, providing you rest until then."
Tony nodded, exhausted. "I'm going to go back to sleep now, 'k?" He didn't hear an answer, already too far gone.
Just wait, everyone, the bombshell is coming. Bwahahaha! Please, please review! Thanks for reading! I'll try to post every few days, it will just depend on my amount of school work.