I'mma gonna say everything up here, so when you're done reading this everything I say won't sound wildly out of place.
Sorry for the lateness, I'm having some technological issues at the moment.
And it's only 2000 words. Holy, crap I'm slacking off. I just didn't want to draw it out too long; it's only a very short scene. In the book-time itself, the timeframe of the scene is actually only about a minute long—so. I'm trying to write chapters by scenes—events in the story. Some scenes are really short, while others are really long. My scenes have been short as of late. :L Well, the last chapter's going to be freaking 10,000+ words, so.
This song breaks my heart. :( Vesper's Theme from Casino Royale just totally fits Bruce so well. It's chilling, sad, and can be incredibly brooding should time call for it.
BACKGROUND MUSIC?! Vesper by David Arnold from the Casino Royale OST… and then… the Death of Vesper by David Arnold after the intro.
And, yes, before you ask, I've been using the opening scenes to introduce a concept/theme for a chapter. Gosh. Yes, I know it's predictable. Yes, I know they're not as interesting to read—yes. :3 Now go read.
Okay. Serious mode activated.
"…I mean, while bad TV makes everything better," Clint said, voice slightly slurred from his spot on the hospital bed, "this is getting to be kinda ridiculous."
Natasha ignored him, leaning back in a cushioned chair, with arms crossed.
"I mean," the archer babbled on from his spot on the bed, completely oblivious to the hint, "just watching people with bad acting and their petty TV-world problems makes me laugh after all the stuff we've been through. I mean, Full-House can solve any problem in thirty-minutes and end with a group hug—Cap should take notes."
Natasha stared pointedly at the television screen.
"I mean—ow, Tasha, no! Ow!—Tasha, I need that finger, Tasha, nooooowowowoooooo—"
Natasha released his finger, shooting the archer a disapproving look. "You shouldn't have been able to feel that."
Clint gave her a loopy grin. "Force of habit?" He said cheerily, clearly unphased and as high as the Empire State on whatever the doctors had him on. "I mean—"
Natasha made a subtle grab for his finger again. Clint jerked back his hand, giving an actual rather undignified giggle as he did so. She was almost envious of whatever he was on, as she sunk back into the chair again.
"What was that for?"
"The last thirty-six sentences you've started have begun with 'I mean.'"
"My last thirty-six very important sentences."
"Oh, yes. Full-House and Everybody Loves Raymond are both very important topics."
"I'm just saying, these shows are so laughably unrealistic. No problem can be solved that quick."
"I'm pretty sure I can get my current problem solved pretty quick unless you shut up and stop moving around."
"M' just saying," Clint muttered, crossing his arms.
They both stared at the television for a while. Lo and behold, the Full-House's family problem was solved and the episode did end. With a group hug.
Clint scoffed.
Natasha ignored him.
"I mean," Clint stared again, snatching his hands away out of Natasha's reach, "not all problems are that easy. This is a very unstable message these writers are trying to teach."
"Clint—"
"I mean, what if one of them died?"
The room was suddenly very quiet. Natasha's plan of elbowing the other in his broken ribs vanished.
Clint's voice dropped an octave. "I mean, they can't solve that in thirty minutes," he said, turning to look at her sounding so sincere it made her flinch.
Several beats past.
"No," Natasha said carefully, "no, they can't."
Clint flopped back into the elevated bed with a quiet sigh. "They couldn't even pull it off in a two-part or even three-part episode. It'd have to be a recurring theme throughout the rest of the show."
A pause. "I don't think they would ever kill off a character like that in a sitcom."
Clint rolled back over on his side, watching her. "We're not in a sitcom."
"No," she agreed quietly. "No, we're not."
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Just a Game.
Save Them All
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Bruce lay in a heap on his side sixty feet below. The last of the chains and rubble fell slowly around him, the ones that had dragged him down lying limply across his legs and you could barely make him out in the darkness of the pit—the only light small pinpricks from side wall lamps far above. No breath stuttered from his chest, his eyes were closed, and blood was running down the side of his face as the world finally crashed down.
When he had fell, as the chains wrapped and tangled and locked around each other in some sort of horrible mess and dragged him down, and as it crushed his legs and cracked his ribs, the sudden jerk of the chains should've broken his neck.
It didn't.
Breaking his neck at the fall would've been horrible.
But this?
This was a hundred times worse.
Bruce jerked back to life. His whole body started, muscles tensing and rolling himself over onto his back with a gasp for air. Instantly, his inhale caught in his throat, blood sliding down the side of his face and out of his mouth as he erupted into a coughing surge that could've half been hyperventilating by the way he strained for air.
Oh.
Oh.
He was lying on the ground at the bottom of Natasha's chain-game room from so long ago. Rubble littered the floor around him, pillars of rock and dirt and lifeless chains he could only just make out from the pitch-blackness of the pit around him. He shifted, the jingling sound of chains making him jerk, and he strained to pull his head off the ground to see the limp chains still wrapped around his legs. Bruce let his head thump brokenly back onto the dirt ground and one of his hands weakly pushed the chains off his legs still lying down.
It hurt.
It hurt, a lot.
At least now he didn't have to fight against something that would only make the pain worse in the end.
At least now he had permission to die.
Bruce raised a hand in front of his eyes, and it was trembling so bad he almost couldn't keep it up long enough to make it out against the pale small lights sixty feet above him. He let his hand thump to his side.
He wondered if Natasha had at least gotten away.
He doubted it.
Clint.
Tony.
Bruce.
He was as good as dead. Bruce wasn't a medical doctor—but he knew what was fatal and what wasn't.
This?
This was fatal.
This was hell.
Bruce's head rolled once. He caught it before it smacked hard into the dirt floor, something akin to a sob bursting from his throat. He just wished he would hurry up and die already, he was that low. It hurt, it hurt so—why couldn't have he just… just died when he'd fallen? Wasn't this enough? Wasn't this horrible enough already? What purpose was there for the chains to catch on each other and slow the fall just enough so he wouldn't die instantly? What was the point?
What was the point?
"Bruce!" He started at the sound of Natasha's strained call. Bruce's head rolled back, trying to look up, the sound was too faint to be down here with him, so she had survived? She had made it across?
He hated the bitterness that surged up. It was his own decision to enter the room—it wasn't her fault that they grabbed him first.
His own fault.
Just like everything else.
At least she had made it. Maybe there would be someone to finish the job. Maybe there would be someone to get to that room, pull the lever, and pick themselves up and whatever of the team that was left and get them out. Get to that room—pull the lever. Maybe, because if this was just a trap and they hadn't even gotten to the room itself—which Steve had written to be guarded—what chance did anyone have of getting to the lever in the first place?
It hit Bruce very suddenly. It hit him so hard, when he raised his hand again just to see that it was still there and raise to against the light to maybe see the trembling and actually relish in the fact that it wasn't turning a green, that he couldn't breathe. His whole body just stopped, freezing.
He was in the room.
This was the chain room. The chain room that Natasha had talked about had been below this one, and the chains had literally pulled him into the room itself. The chains were the guarded that Steve had written about. He was here.
The room with the lever.
The lever was guarded by chains.
Natasha would be coming back. She would be coming back to find the lever. She would come back and—
The chains by his legs suddenly felt very heavy and very still—still like a cat poised in a stalk. There was no way she was going to ever get close enough to pull the lever and set herself free. All of this? All of it was for nothing. They had to play the game to escape—and no one could survive this game of lives.
Clint.
Tony.
Bruce.
Natasha was going to die trying.
—I can see my hand—
But it had hit him.
Natasha couldn't do it.
—why can I see my hand?—
He didn't know where Thor was.
—it's too far down for the lights to reach—
Steve was playing the game.
—so why can I see it?—
But Bruce could do it.
He could pull the lever—because he could see his hand, illuminated ever so softly by some source of light, a white light, however faint that had peered out from under the rubble.
Natasha stood, not looking back at the bars behind her, only looking at chains that sprung from the ground, over fifty feet below, and ran through the roof. She could just make out the door behind them but she ignored it—focusing on the chains instead. A single beam of light shot up from the ground in the midst of the chains. They quivered, danced in the flickering beam of light, as if awakened by the faint wind as she landed, glinting in the dim light.
The light.
He could see the light.
Alpha was too much of a romantic to not make the lever, the key, the switch, so obvious, so on display, so perfect you would miss it.
The light.
It had to be the switch.
It had to be the lever.
And Bruce was the only one had the slightest of chances of reaching it.
So as Steve stared Alpha down in a room not too far away, as the tension between them grew into a standoff and to the chance of a fight—as they both pulled their attention away from the game itself and from a person they thought dead—as the one person who controlled the chains themselves was distracted from the game itself—Bruce did the most important thing any of them had done this entire game.
They would leave him behind.
But he was dead anyways.
Bruce rolled onto his stomach, body trembling, tsks and gasps of pain shoved to the back of his mind. His legs wouldn't work, so he pulled himself forward. His eyes blurred out and spots erupted into his vision, so he just focused only the only white he could and threw himself towards it. Tony and Natasha argued, Clint and Thor stared each other down, Steve and Alpha talked with words of seething hate—and Bruce pulled himself forward while each inch drained more and more of the life out of him. He pulled himself forward until he reached a pile of rocks and rubble and chains with light filtering out between the cracks.
Then Bruce stopped, shuddered, before reaching out with hands with broken fingers and pushed the rocks away with the heel of his wrist.
Light shot up from the earth. A beam, a single beam of white light. Across the dirt floor was a flat panel of glass, just slightly coming off the earth in a hexagonal prism, strong light flooding from its interior. A handle, a lever, a switch, a key, was just visible under the glass.
Back at the beginning.
Natasha was breaking.
Bruce picked up a rock and smashed the glass to pieces.
Clint was fighting.
He was almost blinded by the surge of white.
Steve was struggling.
He laughed at the irony.
Thor was losing.
It almost came out as a sob.
Tony was the only one still standing.
Bruce wrapped his shaking, blood-stained hand around the lever.
And Bruce was the only one who could save them.
He twisted it to the left.
Save them both.
Bruce closed his eyes.
Save them all.
And he pulled the lever.
I'm just going to let that sink in for a while.
And thus, the last chapters of the story begin to unfold.
COUNTDOWN?! Two more chapters!
UP AND COMING?! "No offense, but I don't think he likes you very much."
"No offense, but I don't think he likes anyone very much."
"He likes me."
IN RESPONSE TO YOUR REVIEWS!
Margaret: Well. I dunno. It would be really hard to pull Bruce outa this one. :L Thanks for your review, and I hope you liked it! :D
Spidey: I make time. :D And, well, I actually thought this was going to be the saddest chapter I ever wrote in my life, but then I wrote the epilog to this thing yesterday, and… :'( It was pretty sad. And a bit slower this time. ;) I gotta keep up my reputation of being completely unreliable and unpredictable.
HodgePoge267: Weeelll… not quite. Heh. Flashback style's the best style! :D Thanks so much for your review, and I hope you liked it!
UnDetected Writer: Suit, yes—Hulk, uh, not so much. xD And trust issues are Natasha's best issues. :3 Thanks so much for your reviews!
Red-Tigress: Haha. You made me looool. In class. During a dead silence. And everyone stared at me. I BLAME YOU. xD I do have a plan. I big one. ;) Hope you liked it, and thanks for your review!
K: Your faith was rewarded. :D Totally cool. I did update quite quickly. And SHHHHH. Don't ruin it for the rest of them. ;) You're actually on the right track. The end of this story, as it is a horror/hc story, it going to be very bittersweet. Unless I can't hold out and post the alternate ending instead. xD I actually considered things very close to your hypotheses during the forming stages of your story, and I did a variation—sort of—for when I finally decided a month or two ago. But, no more hints, you'll just have to wait and see how close you were. :) Thanks for your review!—it was really fun to read. :D Hope you liked it!
Dancing with the Clouds: Looooooooooooooooooool. xD Yup. That's it. I should do a final summery-pull-up of all the clues/vital parts of the story before the last chapter. I need to use this, or something like this. xD Sums it all up perfectly.
Jesse Cardell: Yup! Right on track. We find out what happened next chapter! :D Thank you for your review, and I hope you liked it!
Kaylabeth21: xD Everyone's reviews have been making me loooooool recently, your included. I'm glad you liked it so much! Thanks for your review, and I'm glad you liked it!
AlwaysABrandNewDay: Yup. :L One of the two. I bet you can figure out which one quite easily. I'm not back to updating daily, I'm back to updating vigorously in attempts to finish this story before November, goddangit! xD The world seems against me on that. Yup. Ms. Juliet Burke from the Losties. Love that show. Never really liked her. Till I started writing her. :D Just like with Natasha. Gotta understand someone before you decide whether you like someone or not, eh? xD I actually forgot about Accu being an OC. I was trying to make every single character a reference—side Alpha of course—but Accu was a character from a scene I'd been meaning to write forever, in a fictional version of Alpha's games, who appeared to that girl Jessie Accu'd mentioned earlier. So confusing. But cause of that I forgot she was an OC, so, my streak has been broken! D; And Thor's Epic Adventure of Epicness was a heck of a lot more epic in my head for some reason. Hmph. I'll probably end up rewriting it at some point with the same results. :P Darth Fury reference was there! "I find your lack of faith disturbing." :3 Thanks for your epicly long review, and I hope you liked it! Thanks for the tense alert. I'll be a fixing that…
DarthAbby: Yup. Tasha's epic. And a role-model. Totally. She's so badass, she's actually the only one I'll confirm to 100% survive this story. The others? Not so much. Thanks for your review, and I'm glad you liked it!
Jazzy: Haha, I'm glad! Thanks for your review, and I hope you liked this one!
THAT BE ALL!
*salutes*
-Fleet