A/N: After posting last weeks chapter, I went on a bit of a roll and proceeded to write the next three chapters as well. So, please enjoy!
Ruby didn't move an inch as she was tossed into the back of a truck. She wasn't struggling against them, she wasn't crying out for help. This was the plan, the plan that her father had insisted she forgot about the moment it popped into her head. Her skills and knowledge told her not to give up on it, and she was glad she didn't.
They were taking her somewhere, most likely another cave or a small village that they controlled. Either way, she was now out in the open, she was now in a position to send out a signal for help. The Ten Rings wouldn't pick up on the signal, they didn't have the technology to do that, but SWAIN and JARVIS could. She also knew that the military had a pretty good chance of picking it up as well, which was what she was hoping for.
She listened carefully, hearing the men talking about their leader, Raza, going soft. Ruby knew that the man hadn't gone soft, he just didn't want to have the blood of a teenage girl on his hands just yet. It didn't matter that he undoubtedly killed many children before, because she was different. According to him, she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He fight wasn't with her, at least that was what he made it seem like.
"Amerikai lány még életben van?" One of the men called to her as she was prodded a little.
Ruby rolled her eyes a little under the sack. "Lgen, ő az." She replied, surprised that she managed to slip straight into their language.
After that the men fell silent, now realising that she understood Hungarian and could also speak it as well. Ruby knew that she had surprised them, they had no idea how many languages she could speak, thanks to her past with SHIELD.
Eventually the truck came to a stop, and she was pulled out, tossed over someone's shoulder yet again, and carried off somewhere. "Üdvözöljük az új otthonában." The man carrying her hissed in her ear, before throwing her to the ground. She knew what they meant, welcoming her to her new home.
"Ha szerencséd van, valaki megtalálni. Azt mondták, hogy hagyja, hogy élsz, de azt hiszem, ez több móka." He said, before she heard a door slam closed, several bolts being pulled across and then their retreating footsteps.
"Oh, I don't need anyone to find me." Ruby grumbled, as she struggled to yank the sack off her head with her hands still bound together. "I can get out of this myself and live." She said, finally getting the cotton sack off and blinking several times to clear her eyes.
She noticed that she had been left alone, in a wooden shack, with nothing but dust and dirt. They had left her there to die, they had told her that much, even though Raza had ordered them not to kill her. Well, technically they weren't killing her, they just weren't planning on her surviving long on her own.
Her hands slipped into her boot, as she carefully trying to pull something out, something that she had hidden in there. After a few unsuccessful attempts, a piece of sharp metal was caught between her fingers. Carefully, she shifted it in her hands so that she had a tight grip on it, and started to cut away at the rope. She knew it was going to take a while, they were meant to be weapons with sharp points for stabbing, not sharp edges for cutting, but at least it was something to get her hands free.
Ruby sat there, her attention completely focused on what she was doing, cutting away at the rope and making good progress with it. Soon enough the rope fell away and a smile stretched across her face. Now that her hands were free, she could investigate the little shack and plan her escape from there.
She knew that the men had left, she had heard them both get into the truck and drive off. She hadn't heard any other noises, nothing at all apart from her own breathing. All Ruby could think was that the place had been abandoned, most likely due to the fighting. It didn't matter to her, the less people around the better. She didn't want to get into a fight and have to hurt anyone, she didn't want to be fighting for her life anymore. All she wanted was to get herself somewhere safe and send help for her father and Yinsen.
Ruby had heard the door be bolted, and judging by the age and state of the wood, she could probably break it down with a few rams with her shoulder. "Not my best idea." She grumbled to herself as she inspected the wood. "Not going to help with some pretty beaten up ribs still." She added. "It's the only way…"
The minutes passed by slowly, and Ruby had made her decision. There was only one way in and one way out, a way that was locked. She knew it was going to hurt, but it couldn't add too much to the pain she was already pushing herself through. "Now or never." She muttered, taking a few more steps back and preparing herself.
Ruby took a deep breath, before charging at the door with her shoulder. As she expected, it hurt, and she had to bite her lip so as not to scream out from the pain. She shook it off, before doing it again, and again. After the fourth attempt, and a crack from the door, she stopped. Her shoulder was already aching, and her ribs were now throbbing.
"Okay, enough damage to my shoulder." She told herself, pushing herself back up from the ground. Her eyes scanned the wooden framework, and she noticed that it really had started to give way and that she hadn't imagined the cracking noise.
She looked down at the boots on her feet, her mind doing several calculations when she scanned the wood once more. Ruby knew she had to find the weakest point, and a smile stretched across her face as she finally spotted it.
Ruby stood there, eyeing the door, preparing herself once again to batter it, but this time with her foot. "This is what I'm going to do to your face when I find you, Clint Barton." She growled, before sending her foot flying at the door, making it crack some more. "And the same goes for you, Natasha Romanoff." She said, kicking it again, making it give way some more. "And this, this is what I'm going to do to you, Nick Fury, for making me trust you and believe you." Ruby kicked out one more time, this time splitting the wood completely and causing the door to crack in to two parts.
A few more lighter kicks and the door was finally gone and Ruby could feel the sun beating down on her face. She couldn't believe that she had actually managed to kick the door to pieces without doing too much damage to herself. She took a step outside, and the moment she did she sunk to her knees. "I'm out. I'm… I'm actually out." She whispered to herself. "I made it out, dad. And now I'm going to get you out as well." She said, before pulling out her earpiece from her top once more.
She held it in her hand, looking it over, and just praying that the stupid little thing was going to work. Ruby quickly snapped it open, knowing that she needed to check that the wires were all in place, and that it was really going to work. Once she was satisfied that it was going to work, she clipped it back together and put it in her ear.
The moment she did, a beeping sound in her ear, making a smile spread across her face. It was working, it was sending out a signal and probably had been for some time now. All she had to do, was try to work out where she was, and how the hell she could get somewhere safer.
Ruby knew she couldn't stay where she was, there was every chance that someone would came for her, and not someone that she wanted to see. She needed to get somewhere neutral, where she could work out how to get back to the military base at the least.
Her arms felt heavy as she pushed herself back up and off the sandy ground, her legs now feeling like jelly. She strained her ears to hear something, just anything at all. But it was silent, and that was unsettling. All she could hear was the constant beeping in her ear from the tiny bud that was calling for help.
"Definitely deserted." Ruby said, starting to walk around and get her legs working again. She began walking past other shacks, places that used to be peoples homes. Looking through the open doors she could see that people left in a rush, what little belongings they had were still scattered around the homes. Ruby knew that something had happened there, something terrible.
She knew that there really wasn't much point to keep wandering around there. She had found nothing of use to her, and still had absolutely no idea where she was. All she could see was sand, mounds and mounds of sand. Her eyes slowly drew up towards the sky, and she noticed not only the sun, but also the moon making an appearance.
Once again a smile flittered across her face. All she had to do was watch the positioning of the shadows, and she could work out which direction would be best for her to walk towards. So she sat herself down in the shade of one of the shacks, knowing that there was little else she could do.
Ruby must have dozed off a little, as when she woke, it was much cooler and the sun was much lower in the sky as well. "Time to move." She told herself, finally picking a direction to walk in and heading that way.
Before she left the little village, or what was left of it, she grabbed a few blankets, knowing that the temperature was going to drop even more. She didn't want to freeze before help arrived, that wasn't going to do her any good at all.
And she walked. Further and further away from where she had been taken, further and further into the sandy emptiness. As she went, all she could think about was her father, whether he was getting on with the task they had planned, or if he had gone and done something stupid already.
No, he would be working on their plan. He would be working on getting himself and Yinsen out of there, he had promised her he would. Ruby wasn't going to doubt him, she believed in him, she knew he would do it, he was Tony Stark, her dad.
She let her mind drift as she went, trying to ignore the aching in her legs and the pains she felt in her chest every time she breathed. Ruby knew she was in a bad state, but she had more stamina than that, she had been trained by the best. She was going to prove to them that even though she was nothing like them, she could still handle it as if she was one of them.
Her own little bubble popped when she heard a humming noise coming from somewhere in the distance. The sky was pitch black, the only light up there coming from the stars and the moon. If she wasn't in such a bad state, Ruby would have taken the time to actually admire it some more, but she couldn't.
She closed her eyes and listened as carefully as she could, frowning as the sound became a little louder. "I… I know that noise." She whispered to herself, find some recognition in what she was hearing. "That… that sounds like the jet."
Ruby's eyes snapped open and she looked in the direction of where the humming noise had been coming from. It was now at a constant hum, not getting louder, but not getting any quieter either. It was there, but hovering in the air.
Without a second thought, her legs began moving, taking her towards the sound, gradually getting that little bit louder. Her heart was pounding in her chest, a mix of panic, fear, and relief. She hoped that she was right, and that she wasn't just walking straight into the jaws of the beast. She did not go through all of that agony to break through that door just to end up back in a cave again.
As the humming became louder still, a figure appeared before her in the dark. Ruby squinted her eyes, trying to make it out. That was when she saw it, the weapon of choice in their hands, primed and ready to fire at her.
Ruby took a deep breath, preparing herself for what she was about to do, trying to keep herself calm. "I'm going to kick the living daylights out of you, Hawkeye!" She screamed, before charging at the dark figure.
Suddenly the weapon was lowered, before the bow and arrow dropped to the sand completely. His facial expression quickly changed from that of concentration to one of concern and relief. "Jesus, Ruby what the hell…" He was promptly cut off, when Ruby, quite literally, tackled him to the ground. The man fell back with a thump into the sand, taken completely off guard.
"I am going to beat the hell out of you, Barton." Ruby screamed, pinning him down and sitting on his chest, before hitting him around the face. "Where were you? Where the hell were you and Tasha?" She shouted, still hitting him with as much force as she could muster. "You were meant to look out for us. You were meant to make sure this didn't happen!" She managed to land a few more punches before he grabbed hold of her hands tightly.
Clint flipped her over so that she was on her back and he was pinning her down. "Ruby, Ruby you need to calm down." He told her, trying to be gentle with her.
Instead he received a swift kick from her. "Don't you dare tell me what I need to do, Barton!" She spat at him. "You weren't there. You let all this happen. This is all your fault!" She managed to say, before she finally broke down in tears. "You were meant to protect me. You promise you would always be there, but you weren't." Ruby said, a little calmer, as the tears rolled out of the corner of her eyes and down her temples, dropping onto the sand. "You weren't there."
The man pinning her down let out a sigh before touching the black earpiece he had in, letting go of one of Ruby's arms. "Sir, you were right. We got her." He said, before looking back down at the young woman he was still pinning down. "No, sir, just her. She's a mess."
"Of course I'm a bloody mess!" Ruby shouted, knowing who he was taking to and hoping that he could hear her screams. "I've been locked up in a God damn cave for… I don't even know how long, a month, maybe longer. What the hell do you expect? You expect me to be all sunshine and rainbows?"
Clint frowned at her, a worried expression on his face. "Yes, sir." He said, before giving Ruby his full attention. "You going to calm down now, Ruby?" His reply came in the form of her trying desperately to kick him off her. "I'll take that as a no then." He said, before pulling something out from his back pocket. "Ruby, I'm sorry." Clint whispered, before stabbing her with a needle, making her eyes widen as she realised exactly what he was doing.
"When I wake up, you are dead, Barton." She mumbled, before her eyes fluttered closed and her body went totally limp.
He let out a sigh as he moved from her a little, so that he could get a better look at her condition. Straight away he noticed the tear in her cargo pants, or what was left of them, followed by the dirty bandage around her leg. With a sigh, he took a look at her arms, noticing the cuts and bruises that were there. He didn't want to look any further, he knew it was bad, and it was a job for the medical team once he got her back to base.
"Bring down the jet. Red Cobra needs medical attention. Make sure a med team is ready for her the moment we land." He said, talking into his earpiece once more. After that he carefully gathered her up in his arms, knowing that he needed to be careful because of the state that she was in. He was confident that she had more injuries, but in all honesty, he couldn't bring himself to find out just how bad she was.
Ruby had been right, he had promised he would always be there, that he would always protect her. He had failed, and she had every right to want to beat him into the ground. "I really am sorry, Ruby." He told her, before turning to where the jet was just landing. He knew it wasn't going to be too long a trip, the helicarrier wasn't too far away since they had been there searching for Ruby and her father since day one.
The moment the jet landed, there was a group waiting for them. Clint was quick to get Ruby out of the jet and into the care of the med team, who rushed her inside and to get her properly treated. "Good job, Agent Barton." The tall, dark skinned man with an eye patch said, giving him a slight nod.
Clint nodded back. "What do we do now, Director?" He asked, knowing that just because they had found Ruby, it didn't mean that his mission was over.
"Right now, she is our main priority." Fury told him, looking the man over with his one good eye. "Maybe you should take a trip to the medics as well. It looks like she isn't the only one who took a bit of a beating."
"Sir, I think we should focus on looking for Stark now. He can't be too far away from where Ruby was." Clint told him, knowing that he really needed to redeem himself in Ruby's books.
"Right now, you need to get yourself checked over. Update Agent Romanoff of what's happened. We can't really do much more until Miss Matthews has been taken care of and is fit to talk." Fury told him, his voice commanding and just daring Clint to argue with him. Fury had been furious when he had found out what had happened to Ruby and her father, and he was not letting Clint or Natasha forget about it.
"Yes, sir." Clint said, before turning away from the man and finally heading inside. He was annoyed that they weren't going to do anything else until Ruby was awake. He knew they needed to work quickly if they were going to get Stark back as well.
As he was walking through the corridors of the gigantic ship in the air, he bumped into his main partner in crime. "So, I take it she was a little angry?" Natasha asked him, noticing the blood and bruises that were starting to form on his face.
"Angry?" Clint asked her in slight disbelief. "She was furious." He told her. "No, beyond furious. Nat, I really thought she was going to kill me then. The look in her eyes…"
Natasha shook her head at him. "No, you know Ruby isn't like that. She has never been like that. She may have said it, but she would never mean it."
"I don't know, Natasha. She looked like she meant it when she had me pinned down and just kept laying into me with her fists. Thank God she didn't have any knifes on her." He said, running a hand over his face and wincing at the pain slightly.
At his words, Natasha smirked. "She had 11 make shift daggers in her boots." She decided to inform him, causing his head to snap up to look at her, his eyes wide. "I told you, if she had wanted to kill you, she would have."
"We failed her, Nat. We really messed up this time." He told her, letting his shoulders sag.
"Clint, Ruby will understand. Give it time, let her cool off and then once everything is explained, she will understand it all." She assured him, gently placing a hand on his arm. "Now come on, let's get you checked over as well, shall we? I'm sure Ruby is going to love to see her hand work when she wakes."
The man let out a groan as he was lead towards the medical bay, where he knew Ruby was currently going to be checked over and taken care of. "Yeah, I'm sure she is. Nat, I don't even think she is going to remember any of it. Something's wrong with her, she's… I don't know, she isn't well."
"What do you expect, Clint? After everything she has been through. Do you think she's going to be all sunshine and rainbows?" Natasha asked him, a smirk on her face as she repeated the words that Ruby had shouted over the communications. "We both know how strong and stubborn she is, you know she will pull through this." She told him, just as they reached the medical bay.
Straight away one of the nurses came over to him, a slight smirk on her face as she saw the state of him. "You need to stop thinking you can take on the Black Widow and come out unharmed." The nurse told him, taking a look at the marks on his face.
"Oh, it wasn't me." Natasha told the woman. "No, this time it was Red Cobra."
The eyes of the nurse widened in shock. "She has done this? How on Earth did she manage to batter you so much in the condition she's in?" the woman asked.
"How is she? How bad is it all?" Clint asked the woman, not really caring about his own injuries. They were nothing compared to what Ruby had gone through.
The nurse took on a more professional manner at the asking of Ruby's condition. "Infected bullet wound in her leg. Three broken ribs, which caused a punctured lung in the past few hours. She almost dislocated her shoulder as well by the looks of it. But the most concerning thing is her blood glucose. It's way too low. If we don't get that up, then her condition could get a lot more serious."
"She's going to be fine, Clint." Natasha told him, knowing that he was worrying about her even more now. "She's in the best hands. All we can do now is wait."
"She is never going to forgive us for this one Nat." Before Clint could say anything else, Natasha let her own fist come into contact with his face. "What was that for?"
"Stop it, Clint. Just stop it now. We can't change what happened. Sometimes missions go wrong, it isn't the first and it won't be the last. Sure, Ruby can hold a grudge, but she will get over this." She told him, trying to break him out of this spell of bringing himself down all the time because of what happened.
He finally nodded at her, and let the nurse pull him away to get cleaned up and checked over properly, leaving Natasha to report back to the Director on the bridge. "Director Fury, her condition is a little… unstable at the moment." She told him, letting him know what she had just heard about Ruby.
"So I've heard. How she even managed to escape is a miracle in itself, but then she was trained by the best." He said, making Natasha feel a little sense of pride since she had been one of the two who had trained her. "And once again her skills with technology have played a part." He added, holding out the tiny ear bud and showing it to Natasha. "I don't know how she done it, but this is what we were tracking."
She took it from him and looked it over, knowing that it was Ruby's, knowing that the young woman had made it herself. Then it suddenly dawned on her. "Sir, have you informed the army that she has been found?" Natasha asked, wondering if anyone but them knew that Ruby was alive.
The man shook his head at her. "No. I've informed our agent within the army that we are chasing a lead, but until she wakes up and we know what has happened, no one else is to know."
Agent Romanoff nodded at him once again. "I take it Mr Roberts is to be kept in the dark as well?" The look on the man's face answered her question. She understood why he was keeping it quiet for now. There were so many unanswered questions, and they all wanted to make sure she was going to be okay before releasing the information that she was alive. "Director Fury…"
"Agent Romanoff," He said quickly, cutting her off, "I know what you're going to ask. Now go. Make sure she is looked after properly."
She let out a long breath. "Thank you, sir." She told him, before dashing back to medical. He knew she was going to ask to stay with Ruby, to be by her side until she woke up. She wouldn't let any one know, but she was riddled with guilt as well. Clint was right when he said they had failed her, but she knew that Ruby would forgive them when she knew why they hadn't been there to save her.
The moment she arrived, she rolled her eyes. Clint was already there, sitting next to the bed that was occupied by the sleeping woman. "She's going to be fine, Clint. You know she is. She won't die before you, you know, not when she want's to have the pleasure of killing you herself."
"What if she never wakes up, Nat?" He asked her with worry. "I had to sedate her, she was in too much of a mess. What if that was the wrong thing to do?"
"Clint, you made the right call. You always do what is best, even if it goes against orders." She told him, making them both think back to the time when they first met. "Right now all we can do is wait. Don't keep blaming yourself, because that isn't going to change anything."
"You really think she's going to be okay?"
Natasha smirked at him. "Clint, this is Ruby Matthews-Stark, daughter of Tony Stark and Jasmine Matthews. Trained by us. Of course she is going to be okay." She told him, her voice full of hope and reassurance.
But as the days passed, that reassurance started to fade. Ruby still hadn't gotten much better, but she hadn't gotten any worse. What was the most concerning was that after four days, she was still unconscious. There was an air of foreboding on the entire ship, the whole place thick with the anticipation of what was going to happen. No matter how many times Natasha and Fury said that she would pull through, no matter how stubborn they said she was, no one could believe it.
"Come on, Ruby. You got to wake up now. You just have to wake up." Clint whispered, sitting by her bedside once more. He only left when Natasha dragged him away for a few hours. "You need to know what happened, and we need to know what happened as well. Come on, Ruby."
He just stared at her unmoving form. Nothing. Not even a flinch. "Clint, she needs time to rest. We knew it was bad when she came in, she isn't going to get better over night." Natasha told him, sitting on the chair next to him.
"I swear, if you don't wake up, I'm going to find a way to bring you back to life and kill you myself, Red Cobra." He told her, trying not to let the tears fall. He had been holding them back in public, but when he had been on his own he had let them fall. He wasn't an emotional man, but Ruby meant a lot to both him and Natasha. She was their little sister, she kept them both grounded, and he couldn't loose her like this.
"Go jump off a bridge, Barton." A hoarse voice whispered to him, causing both his eyes and Natasha's to snap up.
"Was that an order? Or a request?" Clint asked, looking at Ruby's unmoving face.
"An order. Now do it, Barton, before I throw you off this damn ship myself." Ruby whispered, letting out a groan as she tried to move. Neither of the people beside her really knew what to say, they just stared at her as she forced her eyes open. "Do I have something on my face?" She asked with a frown.
A smile broke across Clint's face as he leaned over and hugged Ruby, only for her to yelp from the pain he had caused her. "Barton, let her go. You're hurting her." Natasha said, scolding him like a child that was holding a puppy too tight. "How are you feeling, Ruby?"
Ruby looked over at the red haired woman, who was looking back at her with pure concern in her eyes. "Like I want to kill two of my best friends."
"You already tried to kill me." Clint told her, pointing to the bruises on his face. "Does that not count?"
"You're still talking, so clearly not." Ruby replied, glaring at him and making him shrink back into the chair and further away from her.
"Awake for a matter of minutes and already threatening my best agents." A deep voice called. "Can you please not kill them just yet? The four of us need to have a discussion first."
Ruby looked up at the man with the eye patch, and she couldn't stop the smile that came across her face. "How ya doing, Pirate Pete?" She asked her voice still a little rough.
"Much better than you by the looks of things." Fury told her, trying, and failing, not to smile. "You had quite a few injuries. You almost died." He told her, not bothering to beat around the bush. That was one of the things Ruby respected about him. He got straight to the point.
Ruby's face quickly turned serious, she knew that if she wanted answers, she was best of asking him. "How long?"
She watched as Fury took a deep breath. "Eight weeks." He told her, watching her face completely fall.
Eight weeks, that was how long she had been missing for, and her father was still missing. She knew he was, because if he wasn't he would have been there, by her side. But he wasn't there, she just knew he wasn't. Ruby had been in that cave for eight weeks, eight weeks of hell. Without even realising it, tears started to roll down her cheeks. The horror was over for her, but her father was still out there, and she needed to get to him. Fast.
A/N: And there you go, Ruby made it out of there alive, and she got to beat the living daylights out of Barton at the same time.
I hope you all liked it, like I said before, I have a few more chapters already written and ready to be posted.
Just a few points from reviews. I'm glad you all like my story and the father/daughter relationship they have. It's nice to know you all approve of it and think I'm doing a good job with it.
Keep your reviews coming, because I really do adore them.
Pippa.