Hi! Sorry about how late this is going up. I've been super busy and also having massive difficulties with my internet! But now the problem should be solved, and I should be getting the revisions done fairly fast! And now, enough procrastinating on my part, it's time for the story.
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I wake up to a strange hissing sound, a brutal headache, and the feeling that I'm trapped. As a matter of fact, I really can't move; I'm tangled up in some sort of webbing and half-dazed, I decide that a giant spider has caught me and I'm about to be dinner.
Panicked, I start thrashing around, which causes a sharp pain to shoot through my hip and side. And then I become dimly aware of where I am, the grey metal hull of the Quinjet, now scored and dented from impact, and the heavy cargo netting that must have torn loose and tangled around me when we hit.
"Henley? You okay?" Bobbi's pale face, streaked with blood from a cut above her eyebrow, appears in my still quite fuzzy field of vision.
"Think so. My left side hurts and my head's killing me, though."
"Let's get you out of this and then we can get a better idea of how bad it is." Bobbi is already working on the straps with her knife held awkwardly in her left hand. Only then do I notice the odd bend in the right wrist she's holding close to her chest.
"Broken arm?" I ask, although my voice sounds odd to my own ears, breathy and strange, and it's starting to hurt both my head and my chest to speak.
"Yeah." Bobbi shrugs and then winces. "And I think my shoulder's dislocated. I got smashed into the wall pretty hard."
"How's Clint?" I realize I haven't seen him yet.
"Outside with May. He managed to get knocked out by his own quiver, and he still hasn't come around. And May got her leg pinned under the dash, but she got herself out, although she broke her lower leg in two places to do it. She kept insisting she could come help me but really, she can't stand up without almost collapsing."
By this point, my right arm is free and I'm able to get to one of my knives to speed up the process. When I'm finally able to move my legs freely, I attempt to stand and the resulting avalanche of pain forces me back down with a suppressed scream.
Bobbi's forehead tightens, but that's the only indication of her worry. "Ok, Plan B. I'm going to carry you out." She lifts me like I weigh no more than a rag doll and she has to be running on pure adrenaline because there is no way otherwise that someone her size could lift me and I notice a sharp grimace of pain on her face before she shifts me into an awkward version of a fireman carry that doesn't stress her bad arm so much.
She nearly bangs my head on a fallen support strut and I have scratches all up and down my back and arms from where we bumped into things, but finally we tumble, totally exhausted, to the ground several yards away.
I lie on my back, trying to catch my breath and thinking it's oddly warm for how cloudy and breezy it is up here in the mountains. I can hear my own breaths, and maybe Bobbi's too, since she's half-sitting, half-lying next to me, harsh and wheezing, and some odd sound below that that seems to be coming not from me but from something else.
As the deep rushing growl steadily grows, I'm drifting, thinking. I'm not entirely sure how much time passes before I feel Bobbi shaking me, saying, "We've rested long enough, now we have to go."
"Don' wanna move," I mutter, only half-awake, but there isn't much of a choice because Bobbi has me up again, and suddenly I realize why and I'm shocked back to full awareness when the plane explodes in a massive fireball behind us.
I muster up the strength to get a few words out, even though it feels like my chest is full of gravel. "That was close." So that's what the hissing sound was. Fuel, ready to flare up. "Why didn't you say we were three seconds from getting turned into charcoal?"
"I didn't think we needed to add to the stress level of the situation. You were already tense, and oddly enough, most people become paralyzed and basically useless when told they are very likely going to die."
I can't really argue with Bobbi's logic. She's right; if I had known about the imminent danger of fire, I would have been hurried and panicky, and probably not able to help cut myself out as quickly. I want to be mad at her but I just can't, and I realize that any residual anger I had from yesterday's argument is pretty much gone.
It's not like I can blame her much anymore. Strange how much has changed since just twenty-four hours ago. I'm no longer the innocent in all this. I can't pretend that the only thing I will ever have to do in the field is be Clint's ears and be the interpreter. I thought I could do this job without all the baggage that comes with it. I thought if I was the shadow I wouldn't have to be a part of the bad things that happen. That I'd never need to do anything that will keep me awake at night.
But now I have blood on my hands too. And a very real feeling that I have crossed a line. I'm no longer the shadow, the invisible one, the helper, the deadweight. I'm an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. I'm Nightshade now, deadly and dangerous. I'm everything I didn't want to be, and it's strange how little I really care. I've become proud of who I am now, and what I can do. And now I don't ever want to walk away.
The growing agony in my side is a dire reminded that I might not get the choice on whether I want to walk away from this life. This mission could be my last. Or if not now, then the next time. That was another thing I thought being the shadow would protect me from. Not anymore.
May looks up from attempting to splint her leg with the sleeves of her shirt and some sticks as we approach. "Well, that's wonderful. Thing probably blew before our signal got triangulated. I had it on long enough that they'll have a general area, but they'll probably be running search patterns for hours to find us."
Bobbi doesn't say as much out loud, but I can hear her thoughts in her voice. All she says is, "Well, it can't be helped now," but I know she's thinking, some of us don't have those hours to spare.
Bobbi lays me on the gravely outcropping next to Clint, who is unconscious but breathing steadily. That's a relief, and I reach over, in spite of the protests from my body, and twine my fingers into his. It's become normal to me to reach for his hand when I know he can't hear, a sign that I'm still here, that someone is holding onto him and never willing to let go.
Bobbi sits down next to us, and seems to relax instantly. I wonder what other injuries she's hiding, realizing for the first time how tense she's been holding herself while on her feet.
"Thanks for pulling me out of there. I'm sorry I yelled at you last night." I figure I ought to say this now because I'm getting a warm, fuzzy feeling that cannot be a good thing, and my uniform feels oddly tight on my left leg. Internal bleeding, maybe? I'm fairly sure I'll pass out any minute now. Aren't you supposed to kiss and make up on your deathbed? Wait, what? Geez, I must be losing more blood than I think 'cause I am NOT kissing Bobbi. Just apologizing. Which is good, right?
"Everyone has one of those moments where they start to realize that what they signed on for and what they got are two very different things. Just be grateful yours was a hotel room with a trained assassin for a roommate, and not a torture chamber in Myanmar full of deadly scorpions." Bobbi speaks lightly, but I can tell she's remembering what it was like to come to grips with the realities of life in her-our-line of work.
"So, we're still friends?"
"Henley, if you think you could drive me off with that little flash in the pan, you have no idea. Trust me, the only reason I stayed married to Clint as long as I did was because I learned to let it just roll off me. You'd have to do a lot worse than tell me the truth to make me hate you."
I guess I should have known that, seeing as Clint and Bobbi really do manage to stay friends even with the amount of insults and arguments they throw back and forth. That's the last coherent thought I remember before everything starts to wobble and I'm drifting somewhere between reality and dreams.
I'm tugged back to harsh awareness by a movement of the hand in my grasp. Clint is beginning to wake up. He stirs, and then attempts to roll onto his side. He stops with a flinch and a quiet yelp.
"Hold still, you've got a piece of metal in your side," Bobbi says with the dispassionate voice of a doctor speaking to a patient. For the first time, I notice the jagged silver spike that's stabbed through Clint's uniform. Some part of the torn metal from the crash. I wonder why Bobbi didn't tell me about that injury. Or did she and I was too out of it to notice? "Don't try and take it out or you'll bleed to death."
"Where's Henley? Did you find her?" Clint is ignoring Bobbi and still trying to sit up. When he sees the flaming plane he goes paler than even the pain is making him.
It's okay, I'm here. I know he can't hear, so I sign as best I can into his hand. He glances my way as if he's only just noticed that I'm holding onto him. He settles a bit, then notices how still I'm lying.
How bad?
Not sure. Can't really feel anything much anymore. I'm guessing that is not the good sign it seems like it should be.
It's not. "Bobs," Clint asks, turning to her, "How long out do you think they are?"
"They had the longest time of stationary signal May could give them, and they had our general flight plan. Three, maybe four hours if they send someone in out of the Kenya base."
"Aw, plane," Clint mutters, lying back with a small groan when the movement shifts his injury. I'm exhausted too, and despite Bobbi's repeated attempts to keep we awake by poking me with sticks and trying to talk to me, I drift into the darkness again, floating through oblivion.
From all the accounts I've heard, people with serious injuries like mine and drifting into unconsciousness are supposed to have these flashbacks or amazing spiritual epiphanies. Guess I should have learned from the near-drowning incident; those kind of things just don't happen to me.
Instead, I float around in velvety blackness for a while before waking up to a sharp pain that is so sudden I scream shortly before biting it off in a small whimper. For a moment, even with my eyes open, all I can see is blackness and I think, this is it, the end, and then I realize night has fallen.
May is sitting sleeplessly with her back against the rock wall where the Quinjet landed, watching the sky and poking at a small signal fire she must have managed to kindle from the still-smoking wreckage. Bobbi sits next to her, between May and Clint, sound asleep.
The night air this high up in the mountains, and the side of my body that's further from the still-smoldering Quinjet is freezing. That might also be because I'm pretty sure I'm dying, but I'm trying hard not to think about that little detail.
I'm huddled as close to Clint as I can be without injuring either of us further. He's really warm and I know I should be worried because that probably means that he's running a fever from his wound, but really right now I'm just too grateful for the comforting warmth to worry too much about its reasons.
He stirs a little and half wakes up when I move the arm I really can't feel and accidentally bump against the shard of metal that's still impaling him.
"Hen? You awake?" he mutters hoarsely.
Sorry. Go back to sleep. It hurts too much to form proper words with my hands, so I stop signing. Every breath is stabbing my lungs like one of my knives.
"Can't. We can't sleep, Hen." Sounding more agitated, Clint struggles to haul himself upright. "If we do we won' wake up again. Lucky you woke up 'en you did."
"Huh?" He must be able to see well enough to read my lips because he answers.
"Trus' me, I been here, done this. Don' go back t' sleep, no matter 'ow much 'oo wan' 'oo." Now he's slurring too, or is it just my hearing going all wonky? Does that a lot now, since I woke up. Nothing seems real, everything is moving too slowly. My hands don't feel like they're attached to me as I struggle to put one of mine in Clint's.
"'s wha' Buck said, af'er Bar-Ba'ney…and D'quesne…w's rainin', jus' wanted itta sto' 'urtin. But he said, no sleepin'." Clint reaches down, even though the taut lines on his face and the small whimper of pain betray how much effort it is, and pulls me into his lap. "Jus' stay with me 'til they come f'r us, 'k?"
It hurts, but somehow I know that's good because the pain is keeping me grounded. Even more, though, it's Clint keeping me here, keeping his fingers moving as he holds my hand, fingerspelling nonsense that sometimes almost makes me laugh, like the time he tells me the cat is eating a hamburger in the chimney.
But no matter how hard I try, I can't stop the darkness from stealing in. Even as I notice the first tinges of grey and rose on the horizon, over the mountains, my own sight is narrowing and fading away. Clint must be able to tell I'm giving up, because he begins talking to me again, even though it's obviously a struggle.
"D' I 'ver tell 'oo wha' happen'd in Budapest wi' Nat?" I shake my head slightly.
"W's funny. We were there t' find a mole fr'm S.H.I.E.L.D. 'n it was spos' be simple…" He trails off as the early morning sounds of birds and insects are broken by a low droning. "Hen, the plane's com'n. Th're com'n f'r us."
"C'n I go t' sleep now?" He only said I had to wait for the plane.
"Cm'on, Henley, 'ust a little 'onger." I can hear the roar of the search plane coming in now full volume, echoing off the mountain, but I'm too tired to care. Just gonna close my eyes now…
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Sooo, yes, I'm evil. First for making you wait and then again for this ending! But the next chapter, which sadly is my epilogue to this story, should be up within a week! Until then….