Next chapter! Again, thanks so much to everyone reading and leaving feedback of any kind. It's seriously so amazing and I can't say thank you enough! The next update will most likely be Sunday (sorry), it's a super hectic week for me. This chapter is shorter, and so is the next one, but they do get longer and you will see why ;). Countdown to Captain America: Civil War release in the US - 3 days oh my gosh.
Huge thank you to AvengerOfFiction for leaving amazing and thoughtful reviews!
Disclaimer: Do not, and will never own the Avengers. If I do, I'll let you guys know.
Clint knew from experience that when he woke up coughing blood, it wasn't a good sign. The tickle in his throat had led to him waking up, which led to coughing, which led to an immense pain in his chest, which led to blood coming out his mouth. All of these eventually led to him passing out.
When he came to again, Clint made a strong reminder to not cough. Or breathe at all, for that matter. "Don't breathe and you suffocate, dumbass," he could practically hear Natasha nagging him. He nodded, as if in response to the words that she had not said. Clint cracked his eyes open and groaned. Blood spilled out of his mouth and down his chin in the process.
From what he could make out, he was up against a wall. Said wall was part of a building. He was sitting half up, slouched to the side against it. Clint braced his hands underneath him and lifted up so that he was sitting straight up. That one simple motion made his head spin and stomach lurch.
He took a glance down at his legs, which were definitely worse for wear. Long story short, they looked like they had been attacked by a knife-wielding ninja. Blood had soaked through the fabric of his pants from multiple gashes on his limbs. Luckily, they were just gashes. From what he could make out, there were no metal pieces stuck in his leg and there were no chunks of flesh missing. Gashes he could manage with. It would be a pain in the ass, but he could manage. Sure, they stung and slid and pricked and ached all over, but he had been through worse.
Clint pressed a boot heel to the ground, applying a small amount of pressure on each foot. He then rotated each ankle in a slow circle. Nothing seemed to be broken, which was a major relief. He went to sigh and immediately stopped himself.
Legs, arms, hands, face, all could be fixed and tolerated. Internally, however, was where the problems lie. Mentally cursing, Clint tried taking a few breaths to see how much air he could get. The largest without coughing was about half of a normal breath. Press play on more internal cursing.
Once before, he had been on a mission, got caught on the side of a building with enemies closing in, and had no more grappling arrows in his quiver. Rather than be slowly tortured, he jumped off of the two story roof. However, Clint had misjudged his landing and nicked a windowsill, which sent him spinning and tumbling to the ground. On his chest. He ended up breaking four ribs and couldn't take a full breath for months. He always made sure to have four grappling arrows just in case after that.
His lungs and chest felt like they had been before. Broken and mangled and simply painful. It felt as if pieces of shattered bone were picking their way through his lungs, like tens of tiny knives inside his body. Clint was sure that if he listened hard enough, he would be able to hear the bone shift when he breathed. He stopped thinking for a second and cocked his head, realizing something.
Clint could faintly hear rubble falling to his left side, but realized that he couldn't hear anything on his right. He brought a shaky hand up and tapped the hearing aid in his right ear. No response. He pulled it out and looked at it. While it looked decent enough, it had probably gotten too waterlogged. How the left one had managed to work was beyond him, but he was grateful for it.
He stuck the aid back in his ear, praying that it would dry out and start working again. Until then, he was mostly deaf in one ear. What else was wrong?
The pain in his lungs was intense and sharp every time he stole a breath in and forced one out. It felt as if someone were slowly turning a knife inside of his chest, forcing it deeper and deeper each time. The metallic taste in his mouth and blood dripping from his chin didn't help the situation.
Instead of focusing on the injuries that he couldn't fix, he instead stuck a hand into his pocket, searching for his phone. But of course it wasn't there. All three of them had been together, with one burner phone each for contact. Clint didn't have his phone. Chances were that both Steve and Natasha's would be lost of waterlogged also. So all three of them were lost in a post tsunami landscape, probably half dead, with no way to contact each other.
However, he did feel the bulge of his gun against his back. Clint had secured it before leaving, and was now glad that he had. What he would do with a gun, he had no idea. Maybe is another tsunami rose up, he could shoot it.
If his ribs didn't cut into each other with blinding pain, Clint would've laughed at the situation. But he couldn't laugh. So instead, he leaned his head against the wall. There were sirens a few tens of blocks down, but he couldn't see anything beyond the building and street he was facing. Nothing but torn up houses and debris. Wonderful.
Where the hell were Steve and Natasha? They had all been right together, and then the wave had struck. Depending on where they were carried, they could be miles away. Hell, they could literally be anywhere. And he didn't even want to start imagining what shape they were in. If they were in any position like him, it wouldn't be good. He was currently half deaf, had mutilated legs, was suffering from dizziness caused by blood loss and shock, and had severely messed up lungs.
"Great, just great," Clint whispered sarcastically. It turned out that talking had about the same effect as coughing, and soon Clint found himself back in blackness.