Steve's hands were still shaking. He never, ever wanted to do anything like that again as long as he lived. Not to anyone, and particularly not to Tony. They way he'd been screaming, Steve had been sure Tony would never even want to talk to him again, but instead, he had actually thanked Steve. Thank goodness he hadn't botched it. Tony's leg was properly leg-shaped again, and securely splinted by Bruce.

Tony hadn't said much after saying thanks, and now he seemed to have fallen asleep, or unconscious. Worry skyrocketing instantly, Steve shook him a little and cupped his face.

"Tony?"

"Mmhhhmm, all awake," he muttered, sounding anything but.

"Bruce? He's getting sleepy."

"That's hardly surprising," Bruce replied. "He's exhausted and finally hurting a bit less. I think we can let him take a nap, Jarvis should alert us if anything untoward is going on."

"Indeed I will," the AI confirmed.

Steve wasn't entirely reassured, but he guessed they knew better.

"I've just about finished packing everything. I left out most of the ropes, we should still have enough in case we need them to get him up some of the climbs. We need to get a move on," Bruce said.

Tony did wake up properly when Steve lifted him off the ground.

"Whuh? What's going on?" he said, flailing a little in Steve's arms, but stopping as soon as he accidentally jarred his leg. "Ow, that still hurts. Put me down, this is ridiculous."

"Just stay still, Tony," Steve told him. "We're getting you out, that's what's going on. Unless you'd rather stay here?"

"That's not even funny. Giddy-up, then! Out!"

They had about thirty feet of easy passage to start with, and then they were faced with the path through the ancient boulder collapse that the Hulk had excavated for them. It hadn't been too difficult to pass earlier on, in the Hulk's wake. Now, it was like walking through a minefield.

Steve could easily support Iron Man's full weight, but there were plenty of challenges aside from that: he needed to keep Tony's leg secure, to move as smoothly as possible, to find steady footing, and to avoid accidentally making the pile of boulders collapse on top of them. Bruce was hovering close by, helping as much as he could. It was slow going, far slower than it had been when the Hulk had been digging through the blockage.

If this wasn't one of the strangest things Tony had ever been through, he didn't know what was. He was still wearing most of his suit, they'd even put on his helmet, and Captain America was carrying him, bridal style, through a collapsed heap of boulders that had been dug open by the Hulk.

He also felt pretty strange, physically. He was just, what, four feet above the ground, but when he kept his eyes open, looking at the wavering view through the HUD, he quickly started getting dizzy. Of course, he felt quite woozy just in general, and a few times he drifted off, only to wake up abruptly each time someone or something jostled his leg. Even though it didn't hurt quite as much anymore, it was still very uncomfortable, like he could feel the ends of bones rubbing against one another, which now that he thought about it was probably exactly what it was.

At one point, he realized he was lying on the ground, and he could hear rocks shifting. He looked around, and really didn't like the sight of all those boulders around him, and felt a bout of panic trying to surface through the drugged stupor. He tried to take as deep breaths as he could and did his best to keep his calm, because he didn't want Jarvis to start chiding him, especially not when the others were there too. Soon enough, Steve was back by his side, scooped him up, and they were on their way again.

Tony's perception of time must have been off, because it felt like they went on like this for days.

Later, when he opened his eyes again, there weren't quite as many boulders around him anymore, and the walls were solid. The way they were manhandling him through the cave would've been downright embarrassing if he hadn't been too lethargic to do anything on his own. There were parts where he was passed over a boulder with Steve on one side of it and Bruce on the other, and a few times, they even used ropes, with Bruce holding him in position and Steve hauling him up.

He complained a few times, but couldn't find it in himself to put very much effort into it. Mostly he was just hanging there and sliding in and out of consciousness. All in all, he really was behaving himself. Steve should be proud. And Jarvis too.

Jarvis, though, clearly wasn't too impressed, but started fretting at some point, and didn't even talk directly to Tony, since he still had the suit's loudspeakers at his use.

"Captain Rogers, Dr. Banner, I'm afraid I must notify you that Mr. Stark's vital signs are not holding within the safe range anymore."

They weren't? Tony had stopped paying heed to the numbers like, a week ago, when the others had found him. He tried to make sense of them, but they were all blurry in his eyes. He wasn't feeling any different, just tired, really tired. Maybe he should go to sleep again, Bruce had said earlier that it would be fine, hadn't he?

Steve gently placed Tony down on the first suitably clear stretch of cave floor that he could find, and opened the faceplate. Tony had been suspiciously quiet for most of the way through the bouldery passage. Steve had trusted Jarvis to let them know if there was anything to worry about –and now the AI had done just that.

Tony peered up at him with half-open, unfocused eyes. "We there yet?"

"Not quite. Just a little break. Don't worry, we'll be out in no time," Steve told him, doing his best to sound reassuring.

While Bruce got busy consulting Jarvis about the decline in Tony's vitals, Steve took note of where they were. He was sure they had almost reached the start of the low passage. If he recalled correctly, there would be a little climb up to it, perhaps ten feet, that hadn't been difficult coming down. Standing up and looking ahead, he could actually see it, around a hundred feet away. After that climb, they'd be in a passage that was too low for walking upright. Then, it would get too low for even crawling on all fours, low enough that Steve couldn't get through unless he emptied his lungs.

"This is bad," Bruce said, not even trying to cover how concerned he was. "He really needs a transfusion – he really needed one a few hours ago, he's not going to last much longer like this."

"But – we've been really careful, his leg isn't bleeding again, is it?"

"No, it's not. It's just that at this stage, he'd be getting worse even resting and doing nothing, and being constantly lifted and pulled and pushed around certainly isn't helping."

"You could give him my blood?" Steve offered. "I'm a universal donor."

"Of course you are, and the sentiment is admirable, but no. That would be far too risky. There's no way to know how he'd react to the serum," Bruce said, pinching his nose, looking grim. "I don't think there really is anything we can do. We could stop and let him rest and wait for help, but we don't know if that's even coming, so we'd be wasting time that he doesn't have. We'll just have to keep moving, keep a close eye on him, and hope for the best."

"We're almost at the low passage now," Steve noted. "He can't stay in the suit much longer."

"Oh hell. Oh shit. I had completely forgotten about that," Bruce said, the first time Steve heard him swear like that during the whole rescue effort. "Jarvis, you're not going to be able to monitor him if we take the suit off, will you?"

"Unfortunately no, Dr. Banner."

"He's not going to fit through in the suit," Steve said.

It was a simple fact and there was no getting around it. The suit's chest had a bigger circumference than Steve's, and it was solid metal, it would not give way like flesh and bone. Without the suit, Tony was probably around the same size as Bruce, and Bruce hadn't had as much trouble as Steve with the squeeze. Then again, Bruce had experience of such things, not to mention he didn't have bruising on his chest that was bad enough to mess with his breathing.

"He's not," Bruce repeated. "I know, I know. We'd better get rid of it now, while we've stopped anyway."