Three hours passed.
Then four hours.
Then seven.
By the ninth hour, Natasha was throwing knives at a bullseye Tony had hung up in the waiting room.
By the twelfth, Tony was on his phone, creating the specs for a new game he liked to call "pin the eyepatch on the angry guy". Clint would like that when he got better. And he was going to get better.
And finally, after fifteen hours, Jarvis spoke up with some very good news. "Sir, Agent Romanov. Agent Barton's surgery is complete. It seems it has been a success, though he will have to have another surgery in two days. All the aneurysms have been clipped, and all that remains is removal of the necrotic tissue in Agent Barton's brain."
Both Tony and Natasha let out breaths they didn't know they were holding. Times like these were the ones that made him wish Pepper was just his girlfriend, and not his CEO as well. Then she wouldn't be off, halfway across the world, holding meetings with shareholders and board members, at a time like this.
Natasha's muscles were coiled and tense, ready to spring into action at any second. She'd been compromised. Vaguely, she knew that as she leapt from her chair and pinned Dr. Bamer to the wall, her arm pushing the doctor's trachea. She felt the woman (older than her, by a few years) struggle, her hands clawing at the Widow's arm and her feet kicking in the air as she tried to find the floor that was a good six inches away.
"Shit!"
Tony jumped up and tried to wrestle Natasha away. A sick, gagging noise came from Dr. Bamer, whose eyes were bulging and whose face was turning purple.
"What did you do to him!"
The Widow shoved Dr. Mattock and Dr. Blanc aside easily, her eyes pinned on Colleen.
"I heard you two talking. You were the one that was with Clint when he had that attack, what did you do to him!" She was snarling, and part of her knew she was wrong. That Clint was sick, and that he had his first attack while the two of them were together on vacation. That it wasn't this doctor's fault, it was just a coincidence. But she had been compromised, and her rage could only be directed at this woman in front of her, who looked to be a second away from passing out.
Fury's harsh voice cut through the haze in the Widow's mind. "Agent Romanov! What are you doing! Get your hands off of her, and report to my office."
Natasha released the doctor, suddenly losing all momentum, and backed up slowly. There was an embarrassing rush of hotness coming to her eyes. "Yes, sir."
Colleen lay crumpled on the floor, wheezing and coughing. Dr. Mattock and Blanc rushed over and knelt beside her, trying to help her up. 'What the fuck just happened!' her mind screamed. She ran her fingers over her neck. She was sure to have bruising after this. She'd probably have to go to an ENT for this, and maybe have surgery if her trachea was damaged. Absently, she wondered if her injury would lead to the coercion of another doctor into SHIELD employment.
At that moment, Colleen knew that they—she, Dr. Blanc, and Dr. Mattock—were all playing with fire. These so-called heroes, they were unstable. Unstable and violent and trained so well that they could take down any enemy. In fact, they had already taken down everyone who stood in their path. Aliens, demi-gods, soldiers. And she had stupidly marked herself as an enemy, however unintentionally.
She was dry-heaving now, and vaguely aware of her colleagues (technically, superiors) huddled around her. Someone was talking, telling people to bring her to her apartment. She would've laughed if she wasn't so terrified. Was that code for killing her? She saw a pair of shiny black shoes, and felt a firm a firm grip around both her arms. She realized she was being lifted into a wheel chair. As she was moved, she felt the overwhelming urge to vomit, the acid clawing its way up her throat. Colleen leaned over and promptly vomited all over the man's shoes, crying out as it irritated her already hurt throat.
Dr. Mattock spoke up. Thank god he spoke up. "No, take her to the medical ward. We will take X-rays, make sure she hasn't suffered any permanent damage. She may need surgery, if there was any internal dama—"
"NO!" Colleen rasped, her shaking hand clutching at the doctor's coat. "No, no more doctors. No one else." She wasn't sure if anyone understood her, she could barely understand herself. But Dr. Mattock seemed to understand the pleading look in her eyes. Don't involve any more doctors. No one else should be caught up in this mess.
The next two hours were a blur of X-rays and check-ups. She was barely conscious for most of it, and her last thought before she fell into a sweet, blissful sleep, was that she had just vomited on billionaire genius Tony Stark's shoes. Oops.
Fury slammed his office door behind Natasha, glad for the privacy of the floor his office was on. Only those with top security clearance were allowed up, and at 3am on a Saturday, no one was there.
"What the hell were you thinking, Agent Romanov? Attacking a doctor, a SHIELD employee for god's sake! Someone who just spent fifteen hours fixing up your partner. You could've killed her!" The room was soundproofed. He could shout as loudly as he wanted to.
He continued on his tirade, screaming about how unprofessional she was, and how he had let her take almost a full month off so she could be near Agent Barton. He tore into her about the various other spies that had to work overtime to compensate for her and Barton's absence from the field. About how he expected more from her, seeing as she had been in the game for ages. That attacking a civilian was the lowest of the low.
Natasha's face gave away nothing, but her ramrod straight back and clenched fists showed that Fury had hit a nerve.
"Now. Would you like to explain yourself." The quiver in his voice revealed his barely repressed rage.
"I—I just don't trust her. I overheard Mattock. She was the only one there when Clint had his seizure! Even he was suspicious. And speaking of, where the hell did she come from? Who is she? No one's updated any of us on Clint's condition, and who these people are. They could be using him as some science project. No one's done research on alien possessed brains before, they could be—"
Fury held a hand up, cutting her off. "Now, I understand your suspicions. But you really think we haven't done our homework on Drs. Mattock, Blanc, and Bamer? I could tell you where they went to pre-school, where every girlfriend, boyfriend, or spouse of theirs' went to pre-school, and I have their entire family tree. You think we don't have an entire team monitoring their actions? What they do with Agent Barton in the medical ward? I can show you the video clip from this afternoon, and I can tell you, Agent Barton had nothing to fear from Dr. Bamer."
"Yes, sir."
"We must remember that these are civilians. The people we protect." His voice went quiet, and he waved his hand, dismissing her.
Natasha turned and walked towards the door, wanting nothing more than to get out of there and go to the shooting range. "I will inform you when Agent Barton has woken up. I wouldn't expect him to do so until tomorrow afternoon. And I expect an apology to the good doctors. I am sure they will appreciate it."
Steve Rogers hopped out onto the helicopter pad on the roof of Stark Tower. While it was still a huge eyesore, it was pretty convenient having everything he would need in one place. The top twenty floors were reserved for SHIELD use, and the bottom eighty were for Stark Industries use. The levels extending into the basement were split between the two, with a gym, a parking garage, and a shooting range. He felt it would be a little Orwell-ian (he had read the 'Top Ten Most Important Classics of the 20th Century'), living there and knowing that every move he made could be watched. Not that he'Living in Manhattan was certainly different from Brooklyn, but he just reminded himself that SHIELD were the good guys. Minor sacrifices on his part, such as living arrangements, were small fish.
He had ridden his motorcycle down south, past the border into Mexico. There, he was unknown. Anonymity suited him, he found. His skin was tan and the hop in his step had returned. That is, until he found a SHIELD helicopter flying above him, lowering down, with an agent clearly indicating for him to stop.
When the agent informed him of Clint's medical state, Steve immediately hoisted his bike over his shoulder and climbed into the helicopter. He didn't even wait for them to ask him to return. And now he was back, and Clint was due to wake up in a couple of hours. He may have spent a good deal of time fighting against Hawkeye, but fighting with him in a battle against aliens pretty much redeemed the archer, in Steve's mind.
He slung his duffel bag over his shoulder, shouted his thanks at the pilot (who returned with a thumbs up), and headed towards the roof-elevator for a retina and finger scan to enter the building.
After checking in with Fury, he took the elevator to the eightieth floor, which was filled with large, plush apartments. Many of them were empty and had no name engraved on the plaque next to the door. Absently, he noticed that the once empty apartment across the hall from his had a new name engraved in curly script: Colleen Bamer. Not that it mattered. People in New York never got to know their neighbors anyways.
