Disclaimer: This is Marvel's sandbox, not mine. Though I did bring a few of my own toys.
Benign
Nyssa opened her eyes to darkness. It was still disorienting. She hadn't quite gotten used to waking up this way. She wasn't sure how much time had passed, but she did have vague, distorted recollections of nightmares and screaming. The room around her now was quiet, and she thought she sensed Steve off to her left, but right now she didn't particularly trust her senses.
"Hello?" she ventured. Her head still hurt, and she reached up for it but found her arm stopped after just a few inches, restricted by a soft cloth something around her wrist. Panic coursed through her at being restrained, and for a moment she was back in Sturdy's grasp, waiting for death or worse. The presence she had sensed rushed closer, the voice confirming that it was indeed Steve.
"It's okay, Nyssa," he said, his tone set to calm. "You're safe."
"Why am I tied down?" she asked, trying desperately to keep her voice steady, but fear quavered the end of the question.
"I regret that we had to resort to such measures." She hadn't noticed Kuhle come into the room, and wondered how it had escaped her notice. "You were delirious, and kept pulling out your lines and fighting the staff. We could not medicate you too heavily due to the level of organ dysfunction you presented with, but we also needed to treat your septicemia. This was the safest option, for everyone." Nyssa took a deep breath and let it out, quelling the anxiety whirling through her.
"I'll live, then?" she quipped, trying to keep the tone light, but the reaction she felt from Steve told her it had been closer than she first suspected.
"You will live," Kuhle confirmed. "There was a time I was not too certain of it, but yes. You will live. We had to remove the device from your head, as it was causing further trauma and infection." Nyssa nodded.
"I'm glad to be rid of it," she replied. "Did you keep it? I promised someone he could have it to study if I survived."
"You may have it on one condition," Kuhle said sternly. "That you promise not to actually use it. The materials are not fit for use in human tissue." Nyssa nodded.
"I certainly wouldn't want to put anyone else through this," she said softly. "Speaking of which… I still can't see. Does that mean the blindness is permanent?" The doctor hesitated.
"That is what I wanted to discuss with you, once you had returned to your senses. There is a possible treatment. We usually use it to help restore peripheral nerves, but it has had some success with treating neurodegenerative disorders as well. It has not been used for cranial nerves, particularly ones that have been severed and cauterized, as yours have been. I cannot say what the effect will be, but it is the only treatment option that I think will have even a chance of restoring your sight," she explained. Nyssa considered it gravely.
"Side effects?" she inquired.
"In our past use of it with restoring peripheral nerves, there is some temporary discomfort as the nerve regrows, but it generally fades once the treatment is complete. As I said, it has not been tested on the brain, so it is hard to say what undesirable effects we might encounter."
"I don't tend to respond in standard ways anyhow," Nyssa commented softly. She was silent for a few minutes, weighing her options. "All right, let's give it a shot," she decided finally. "It isn't as if it's going to make me go more blind."
"True," Kuhle replied, and Nyssa could hear the smile in her voice as well as sense her amusement. Deciding to press her luck, she raised her arms as far as they could go before the wrist ties stopped her.
"Could I maybe get these off, now?" she asked meekly. Kuhle's amusement remained, but became edged with caution.
"So long as you promise not to give any more of my staff vivid and horrifying hallucinations, I would be happy to remove them." Kuhle's manner was good-humored, but deadly serious underneath. Nyssa held very still as hands tugged at the restraints on her wrists, setting them free, and then slowly pulled them into her lap, reflecting on the new information. Kuhle left to go make arrangements for Nyssa's new treatment. Nyssa slowly rubbed her hands together, feeling the newly-healed skin at her wrists. Her neck had the same odd feeling of skin still new and overly sensitive. Tentatively, her fingers traveled up to skim over her scalp, but her explorations were deterred by soft bandages. The legs of a chair slid softly across the floor, and she sensed Steve's relief and concern as he sat down next to her bed.
"I was giving the staff 'vivid and horrifying hallucinations,' huh?" she asked softly.
"To be fair, you weren't doing it on purpose," Steve reasoned. "You were caught up in your fever dreams, and you just happened to project them into anyone who came into physical contact with you. The only one who could touch you was Bucky, and then only if he used his left hand." Nyssa's eyes widened slightly.
"The metal arm would give him a buffer, I suppose. Did I hurt anyone?" she asked, her voice hushed. Steve shook his head.
"Not badly. Not permanently." The look she shot him made him forget temporarily that she was blind.
"So in other words, yes," she interpreted pointedly. Steve opened his mouth to argue but her next question cut him off. "Did I hurt Bucky?"
"Bucky's fine," Steve assured her. "He wanted to be here when you woke up, but Sam and I made him go and rest. He was up with you almost fifty-two hours, but your fever broke and you were finally sleeping quietly, so we made him go get some sleep before he started having his own hallucinations. He made me promise to stay, though. And I was supposed to go and wake him up when you were conscious again." Nyssa was already shaking her head, although she could feel that Steve had no intention of waking Bucky prematurely.
"No, let him sleep," she protested quietly. "He must be exhausted." Imagining what she had put him through made her heart ache. Steve's energy turned contemplative. Nyssa half-smiled. "You're giving me the eyebrows again, aren't you?"
"The eyebrows?" Steve repeated blankly. Nyssa chuckled.
"The wrinkle you get between your eyebrows when you're concerned but aren't sure you should say anything," she teased. His energy turned sheepish.
"It's not the first time for Bucky, you know," he said, changing the subject. Nyssa raised her eyebrows for him to continue. "When we were growing up, I got sick a lot. Usually really sick at least once a year. Ma took care of me as much as she could, but she worked long shifts to make ends meet, and she couldn't always stay with me. So Buck spent a lot of time sitting with me when he could have been out having fun and raising hell. I remember once, I got so sick that I lost a couple days. Afterwards, Bucky had a big ol' shiner. When I asked, he said he ran to the store to get supplies and got into a fight with Rusty Durbin over a comment Rusty made about his sister. But when I confronted Rusty about it later, he acted like he didn't know anything about it. I never did find out what actually happened." Nyssa smiled.
"You sucker punched him, thrashing around when your fever started to spike," she explained.
"I thought it might be something like that," Steve admitted.
"I do want to thank you, Steve," she ventured. "You trusted in me, even when you had very good reasons not to." Steve nodded slowly.
"It worked," he acknowledged. "This is the first time I've had hope that Tony and I could bury the hatchet, maybe even be a team again someday." Relief and triumph washed over Nyssa, and it must have showed on her face more than she intended, because the edge of suspicion in him became recognition. "But that was your plan all along, wasn't it?" Nyssa's eyes widened in surprise.
"Are you suggesting that I planned all of this?" she asked dryly, gesturing to the hospital room and her bandaged head. "I didn't plan to be kidnapped, tortured and blinded. I'm not that reckless."
"No, but I'm familiar with that strategy," Steve admitted. "It's called trying to make some good come out of a really terrible situation. Although, I used to have a pretty low success rate with it, personally." He leaned closer. "I know you had a plan. It's the only thing that makes sense. Why you would volunteer to come here, help Bucky, rescue Clint's family, and then get Tony involved when you knew we would be there, too? You're trying to get the Avengers back together, aren't you?"
"Plan might be too generous of a term," Nyssa relented. "There was a lot of improvising involved. But yes, healing the rift in the Avengers was the end goal. The only idea I had initially was to help Bucky. The rest was… just taking opportunities as they came."
"The only thing I haven't figured out, is why? Why would you risk so much?" Steve asked. "We didn't have anything to do with you."
"Because Tony is right," Nyssa sighed. "There's something coming. Something big. I don't know what, but there are… evil forces out there that will put the world in danger, even possibly destroy it." She could feel Steve's disbelief, and sighed. "I've had a built-in alarm system since I was a teenager. Anyone who intends harm sets it off from miles away. Usually it's specific to me, but it was also going off the day of the Chitauri invasion. Ever since then., it's been there as background noise, and getting stronger. Something big, powerful, massive… but far away. I don't know when, and I don't know what. But I know if you are all locked up or scattered when whatever it is happens, then the earth doesn't stand a chance. The Avengers are our best chance of surviving. I'm the closest thing you could find to an expert in rebuilding, but.. you can't rebuild if there's nothing left." She heard rustling as Steve sat up straighter.
"So you healed Bucky to try and save the world," he summarized, amusement coloring his tone. She chuckled.
"That is a very oversimplified synopsis, Mr. Rogers. But not entirely inaccurate," she said with a smirk. She could feel his gaze on her as he grew more serious.
"So, you and Bucky… was that part of your plan, too?" he asked. She shook her head.
"No." She swiveled her head to look at where she sensed he was sitting. "Please don't mention it to him. I don't want him to feel like he was some sort of… of… pawn. Or… something." She frowned at the sudden short-circuit in her vocabulary. It was starting to get hard to concentrate, and she was so, so tired. She was having trouble keeping her eyes open. Steve put a comforting hand on her blanketed leg, and stood.
"I won't mention it. I'll let you get some rest. I'm sure Bucky will be by as soon as he wakes up. I'm glad you're feeling better." Steve's voice sounded like he was at the end of a long tunnel. The bed beneath her was soft and warm, and she sank into its comfort. Her life was no longer in danger, at least for the moment, but it would take time and lots of rest before she would be well recovered.
Bucky paused in the hallway outside Nyssa's hospital room. The door was partially open, and the nurse was setting up her breakfast tray for her, talking her through where each item was in front of her. Nyssa felt for each item, touched one finger lightly next to it with a short nod of her head. The nurse finished and left the room, glancing at Bucky as she passed by him, but he still hesitated to walk through the door, content at the moment just to look. Her hair was brushed, tumbling from the white border of the bandage that wrapped around her head to down around her shoulders. She was seated cross-legged on the bed, which only served to accentuate how small she was. Against the stark white of her Wakandan hospital garb, she remained a little pallid, but not the deathly pale from recent memory, nor the febrile flushed and angry crimson cheeks, counterpoint to sunken, indigo eyes and sickly pallor. She was awake, she was alert, she was alive. Thank you, God. He felt more than saw her expression change as she noticed his presence, a slow smile spreading across her face that made his heart skip a beat. His wabi-sabi Patchwork Doll.
I know you're out there. You can come in. I promise I won't put up such a fight this time. Her words in his mind were gently teasing, a blend of both self-deprecation and gratitude. He entered her room hesitantly, his stomach clenching at the bruises still visible on her skin. She'd had a few when they had rescued her, but those were fading. There was a sprinkling of violet smudges on her forearms, some from flailing around and swinging blindly at her fever demons, others from having to be held still. The one that gave him the most pause was barely visible at her neckline; the clear outline of four fingers, colored in with deep purples and greens like watercolors. He didn't have to compare it to his hand to know it would be a match. The thumb and palm print were hidden by her shirt. He winced a little at the memory. She had been struggling hard at the height of her fever, thrashing so much in the bed that she'd nearly thrown herself to the floor, screaming and striking out at both the staff and things nobody else could see. He'd had to hold her down to keep her from hurting herself or anyone else, but in her delirium, she was freakishly strong. He held her down, her skin burning up under a hand calibrated to tell him exactly how terrifyingly high the fever had gotten, while they tied down her limbs, hating every minute of it but unable to see any other way to get the lifesaving treatments into her and help her body fight off the infection poisoning her, killing her. She had finally gone from desperate struggle to restless slumber, and he lifted his hand to see the red, angry outline on her skin, already starting to darken and bruise. It was that moment that had stalked him through his dreams after he finally had gone to bed. He slipped his left hand into his pocket as he drew closer to her.
"It's good to see you awake," he said finally. She set her spoon down and gave him her full attention.
"Thanks to you," she replied. He raised his eyebrows skeptically.
"Pretty sure the doctors had more to do with it than me," he insisted.
"All their treatments would have been pretty useless if they hadn't been able to get them into me," she pointed out. "And from what I hear, nobody else could get me to cooperate." He sighed. She wasn't wrong.
"Do you remember any of it?" he asked cautiously. She shook her head, and he was disappointed, relieved and ashamed all at once.
"It's all a jumble, mostly nightmares and…. erm, colorful images." He grimaced at her diplomatic description. He'd caught a few glimpses of the terrifying nightmarescape in her head – pretty much everyone who had been within fifty feet of her had – but as long as he only touched her with the metal arm, he could keep from being overwhelmed by them. Unlike a few unfortunate nurses, who had needed to go home early after they began sharing in her hallucinations. He wasn't picking up on much from her now. Her presence was as calm as he was used to it being, though there was more sadness there than he had been aware of before.
"I brought something for you," he said quietly, pulling the necklace she had lost during the attack out of his pocket. "You, ah… you dropped it." After a moment of hesitation, he looped the chain around her neck and fastened the clasp at her nape. He tensed as his metal arm brushed against her skin, pulling it away quickly. She cupped her hand around the stone.
"Thank you, I... thought I'd lost it." The stone was warm from being in his pocket, and still carried traces of his internal conflict. She held her hand out towards him, and he looked at it for a moment.
"I didn't bring anything else," he said with a slight shake of his head.
"Your hand, silly," she requested. He sat down in the chair next to the bed and put his right hand in hers. She laced her fingers through his, then held out her other hand. "The other one, too." He hesitated. "You're afraid," she realized out loud.
"I don't want to hurt you again," He said, his voice barely above a whisper, his hand hovering centimeters away from the mark on her chest but stopping shy of touching her. She covered his handprint with her hand.
"I had wondered where that came from," she murmured. "It's not even very sore, honestly. My tattoos were worse."
"Not the point," Bucky grumbled.
"The point is, you weren't trying to hurt me. You were helping. At the expense of your own comfort and sleep, even. I don't recall any of it, but by all accounts, you were heroic." He snorted in disbelief, but she kept her hand extended towards him patiently, and finally he relented, laying his metal hand in her human one. She tightened her fingers around his. "Don't worry that you will hurt me, Bucky. I don't."
Sam was standing out on the balcony outside his room. From this height, he could see the hustle and bustle of the people on the street below. Their conversations drifted up to him, muted and soft, but it was not their speech that drew his attention. Above them in the treetops, birds warbled, chirped and sang, but somehow his brain was translating them all. He had been vacillating between fear that he was going crazy, and reassuring himself that if he had the presence of mind to wonder if he was, then he must not be. That was how it worked, right? Heaving a sigh, he shook his head and went back inside, closing the door to the balcony to block out their voices. Then he locked it for good measure.
Thanks to DarylDixon'sLover, Qweb, karina001, NotMarge and .2017 for your oh-so-kind reviews!