"She's bleeding out!" Cried Shuri, "she's not healing fast enough."
"We're only halfway there," said Okoye nervously over the comms line.
Natasha rushed in, "what's her blood type? Maybe one of us can help?"
"She's O negative," said Shuri hopelessly as she kept the pressure on one of Jane's wounds.
Everyone looked around at each other.
"I'm O negative," said Steve, his eyes darting to Shuri as he kept the pressure on the wound he was tending.
Natasha's eyes shot from him to Shuri, "Steve, the serum!"
Steve's jaw clenched as he considered the implications and Shuri's head snapped up as she registered what Natasha was saying.
"She just saved my life," said Steve, "I have no right to do anything less." He was resolute.
He let go of Jane with one hand, rolling up his sleeve.
Shuri scrambled to collect what she needed to do a live transfusion. Nat walked right up to Steve, who didn't turn to look at her, "are you sure about this?" She asked desperately.
"I'm not letting her die."
Steve willed Shuri's every movement to be faster as she plunged the needle into his vein, her eyes catching his.
"Are you sure you're sure about this?" She asked him earnestly. "There's no going back." Nat had all but stopped breathing next to him.
He gave her a quick nod 'yes', and she connected him to Jane.
He watched with a mix of hope and apprehension as his blood pushed its way down the tube toward Jane's arm. His mind was bombarding him with images of Johan Schmidt with his disfigured face, and he remembered doctor Erskine's words to him the night before he had the procedure that would transform him into Captain America.
"The serum amplifies everything inside, so good becomes great; bad becomes worse."
A sharp breath rattled over Natasha's lips as Steve's blood passed the point of no return.
Shuri tossed a stack of gauze to Natasha. "Keep the pressure on," before she pushed down on Jane again.
They waited anxiously for the serum in Steve's blood to cause some unknown symptom, but nothing happened.
By the time the Fighter landed on the roof of Birnin Zana General, Shuri had managed to put pressure bandages on most of Jane's wounds.
A team of doctors and nurses were waiting for them with a ready gurney.
Steve jogged beside Jane as they made their way quickly to the ER. He didn't know if he imagined it, but it looked like some colour was returning to her face.
Once they reached the ER, Shuri took the needle out of his arm as the ER doctors set to work on Jane.
"Are you sure that's enough?" He asked her, a little woozy.
"It will have to be." She said. "Any more and you'll be too weak."
Steve's jaw clenched and anxiety's grip on his insides grew stronger. They could do no more.
He'd ordered the others to go home after Jane had been in surgery for eight hours, but they refused to leave. T'Challa was on the comms line with his people on the ground to monitor how the situation at the site was unfolding as time stretched on. They had managed to secure the area after having to drive back a monstrous creature drawn out of Serpent Valley by the noise of the battle. It had rampaged through the camp and killed many of Jane's captors. By the time the sun began climbing higher in the sky, they'd managed to round up about thirty prisoners.
T'Challa had been up to the Fighter on the roof with Shuri to check on Nakia, and he'd ordered Ayo to take her to the Design Institute. She was nearly fully healed thanks to Shuri's Vibranium treatment.
Twelve hours after they'd taken Jane, a tired looking doctor approached down the hall. Steve rose to his feet, causing the others to look around and follow suit.
"How is she?" he asked, clutching her bracelet.
The doctor let out a deep breath before he began to speak. "We've closed all the wounds and managed to repair a lot of the damage, it was tricky, because of her accelerated healing," the doctor paused, looking at the ground, "but she's slipped into some kind of coma, and for some reason, the healing has drastically slowed down. We've never seen anything like it before."
"W-What do you mean?" asked Steve, battling with his breaking heart.
Nat had come to stand next to him and had her hand around his wrist.
"Yes, what do you mean?" Shuri's voice followed in the silence after Steve's.
"We're not entirely sure ourselves..." The doctor was non-committal.
"Good lord man, spit it out!" barked Okoye. T'Challa placed his hand on her shoulder.
The doctor licked his lips and swallowed before he spoke. "The level of brain activity we are seeing with her is not at all characteristic of a coma, even though she shows all the other physical signs of it. It is almost as if her body is channelling all of her energy to her brain, delaying the healing in the rest of her body."
"What does that mean for her?" asked Steve from under a heavily knitted brow.
"It means that she is experiencing something, in her mind, like a lucid dream or a memory. Physically, she is badly wounded, but stable."
"Will she be okay?" Steve and Shuri asked almost at the same moment.
"She is stable, for now." Replied the doctor.
Natasha nodded silently next to Steve.
"Is there anything we can do?" asked Sam.
"She needs to rest, you can go in and see her now for ten minutes, but then I'm throwing you out. She needs you to rest too." He finished, turning his gaze to Steve, who was trying to swallow the lump in his throat. He didn't want to leave her.
"Follow me." Said the doctor as he turned and they followed him down the hall and around a corner into a dimly lit room. The curtains were drawn, blocking out the sun. He stopped in the doorway, letting them file in past him.
"Ten minutes," he reiterated, tapping his watch before turning to leave.
The party of six stood around the bed lit by an overhead lamp mounted to the wall. Blinking and beeping machines surrounded Jane. Her body tucked in, almost too neatly under the woven hospital blanket, covering her up to her ribs. Her head lay slightly turned to the window.
A few minutes passed before T'Challa motioned for them to leave to give Steve some space with Jane and they filed out of the room silently, shooting glances over their shoulders at their wounded friend.
Steve waited for them all to leave before he sat down gently on the bed, careful not to disturb her. A sigh rattled out of his chest like an angry ghost. He turned slightly to face her, running his hand through his hair.
It should be me lying there; he thought to himself as his eyes ran over all the wound sites on her body hidden under the hospital gown until they landed on the broken skin on her temple. He hadn't had that wound when she took his, and he wondered how severely she had been wounded herself.
"Why did you do that?" He whispered to her as he felt his broken heart ache in his chest. There was a stray lock of hair on her cheek and he reached over and tucked it gently behind her ear. He hung his head as he tried again to wrap his head around what she'd done, how she drew it all out of him, but he couldn't explain it.
Opening his eyes, he took her hand from where it lay lifeless on top of the blanket at her side and held it like a small bird, letting his thumb stroke the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger. For a while, there was nothing but the beeping of the machines she was connected to, sounding out what was an awful lot like morse code for SOS.
This was a place where he always feared he'd be again, probably his greatest fear, to be right next to someone he cared about in dire need of saving, but unable to save them. He swallowed back the lump in his throat. He worried about what she was living through in her mind. He remembered how upset she was after that first memory when she'd nearly banged down his door and horror flooded his chest at the idea that she might be trapped there, unable to get out.
Anger flared in his chest as he thought of Hendrik. She'd trusted him. Everyone had, and he'd betrayed them all at Jane's expense. His mind strayed to the people who'd blackmailed Hendrik.
"Sir, it's time to go." A nurse said quietly from the doorway. He caught her in the corner of his eye and nodded. He let her walk away a good distance before he slowly got up and gently placed Jane's hand back on the blanket.
"Come back to me." He whispered, his mind knowing he had to leave but his heart keeping his body paralysed next to her.
He bent over and gently kissed her forehead, pausing after his lips had touched her skin.
"I love you." He whispered.
She didn't know how she came to be, or how she came to be here. She knew who she was, though she wasn't herself. This was not her life, yet she knew everything about it.
She was a boy in an alley in Brooklyn, facing a kid much bigger than himself. He was badly beaten up, but he kept getting up defiantly.
"I can do this all day."