Okey dokey. Part 10. Hope you all enjoy and please please please continue to review, cuz the next part isn't happening until there's at least 50 reviews! So there's that. Enjoy!

Part 10

When Rebekah comes to, she's still surrounded by darkness and her breathing catches in her throat as panic threatens to overwhelm her. A hand is gently placed on her arm, and the familiarity of the touch makes her relax. "Clint?"

"It's me."

"The boy?"

He lowers his gaze and shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Becks. He got a lot of rock dropped on him."

She begins to sit up but is greeted by a wave of dizziness, and allows Clint to push her back down. "No. He was… he was still… alive… he was. I saw him." Her breath catches as a desperate sob pushes its way out.

She allows Clint to pull her close and buries her face in his shoulder as she struggles for control. He strokes her hair softly. "I'm so sorry, Becks. You did everything you could. It's not your fault."

As the familiarity of the words hit her, she breaks down sobbing. She's heard those exact words before. After a long time, she regains her composure and straightens. Clint releases her immediately, and she closes her eyes against the wooziness briefly before looking around. "Where… are we?" She starts as she notices Steve standing back a few yards and watching her carefully.

He approaches slowly and replies, "What used to be a parking garage. It's been bombed all to hell, though. We haven't been able to find a way out, and we seem to be buried under enough debris that we can't get any sort of signal on our communicators. Are you alright?"

She nods uncertainly, casting a glance at the small lump lying against one of the collapsed walls of the parking garage. "I am." She pauses, then says, "You shouldn't have come after me."

Steve's face darkens. "You shouldn't have been outside. I specifically told you not to leave the basement for anything!"

She flinches at the tone of his voice and says quietly, "I couldn't leave him." Her voice is more of a plea than a statement, and it's aimed more at Clint than at Steve.

Clint nods. "I know." He brushes the hair back from her face, and when he pulls his hand away, it's sticky with blood. "I need to clean this up," he mutters to Steve.

Steve kneels beside Rebekah as Clint dabs at her temple, sopping up blood with a strip torn from the hem of her shirt. "Listen, Becky, I'm sorry. I was just… you really scared me, running around like that. I don't know what I would have done if anything had happened to you."

She nods. "It's fine, Steve." She winces as Clint presses on a particularly tender spot on her head.

They're silent as Clint finishes with her head; as soon as he moves away, Rebekah scoots over to the little boy and pulls him into her arms. Neither of the men move, and after a long time, she sets him back down and draws her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. "I really thought I could save him…" she sets her chin down on her knees and closes her eyes.

After a long pause, Steve sits down beside her. "You tried, Becky."

She shakes her head. "Not hard enough. Never hard enough, apparently."

Steve frowns at her. "What do you mean?"

She shakes her head again. "Nothing." His look turns skeptical, and she purses her lips. "Not now."

Steve flashes Clint a questioning look, and Clint shrugs. "If she doesn't wanna tell you, I'm not gonna go against her."

"I'm gonna go look for a way out of here," Steve stands and moves away.

Clint watches as Rebekah sits silently for awhile; finally, she comments softly, "He's about the same age, isn't he?"

Clint nods, unable to speak. She would have been such a good mother. She doesn't say anything else, and eventually, he says, "I'll go help Rogers."

She nods and examines him as he moves away. After an hour or so, Steve gives up with an angry snarl and plops tiredly down beside Rebekah. She scoots over and dutifully reaches out to begin massaging his shoulders, but he catches her arm and pulls her into his arms. She leans against him awkwardly and watches as Clint continues to search the walls of rock for enough of a crack to start digging. She can't fully relax with him here. Cuddling with Steve in front of Clint seems almost impossible to her; instead, she sits stiffly with Steve's arms around her and doesn't protest when he rests his head on top of hers.

After a while, Clint calls, "I think I found a weak spot!"

Steve gives Rebekah a quick squeeze before he stands up and joins Clint to inspect a weak spot in the rocks. Within ten minutes, they've got enough cleared out of it that the communicators have regained some spotty reception. "Stark? Stark, can you hear me?" Steve enunciates, and after a moment, he says, "There was a parking garage on 48th Street. We're buried under it. We've been digging on the east wall, but we could use some help."

No more than five minutes later, Steve and Clint both back away from the wall; Steve lifts Rebekah up and carries her as far away from the east wall as possible, then sets her down and kneels over her with his shield held up facing the spot where he and Clint have been working. Clint kneels down beside them and braces himself with a quick comforting glance at Rebekah. Moments after, a loud crash accompanies an explosion of rock and debris as a hole appears in the east wall. Stark's Iron Man mask pokes in. "Okay, fellas, we've got the mess cleaned up. You can come out of hiding now."