A/N: I am sooooooooooooooooooooo sorry guys! Stuff happened and I swear I just had massive writers block! Anyway! I am going to try to finish up this fic in the next couple chapters but don't worry I'm planning a short fic/ sequel after this!

Chapter 8- Recovery

The next thing Elaina was conscious of were words she barely heard, words that struck fear into her of how bad the situation she was in really was.

"Agent Barton is down," she heard Steve say.

All Elaina could feel was pain, horrible, unbearable pain that wrapped around her entire body and she felt she could no longer breathe. She did not know how bad her injuries were, what kind of bullet or what kind of gun Durov had used, she should have noticed at least the gun, but she was too busy worrying over the madman shooting one of her friends. Friends. That was a word she had just started to use to describe the relationship she held with all the Avengers because only now did she understand they felt the same way about her. Of course, her mind was wandering, she was delirious possibly from the shock, possibly dying at that very moment, she sure felt like it, but it was a soothing realization that she now had people who cared for her. It was better than the years she lived alone, knowing there was no one remotely close to her that gave a damn about her or her life. Even now she could hear whisperings of care through the darkness of her mind, yes, she could just barely hear them.

"...ina...can you...me? Elaina..." the whisper said. She knew that whisper had a name, for she heard the tone in which it spoke, it told her everything. Caring yet firm, knowledgeable and protective, though focused, not overwhelmed with her condition however horrible it might be.

Bruce, she thought.

She tried to speak that name to no avail through the darkness that was suffocating her.

"...need...t..et...h...ack. She...nly..et...rse...if we don't...something," came the whisperings of Bruce's voice.

She couldn't feel anything other than the wave of panic washing over her, she was drowning and suffocating simultaneously. Her own body so numb to her because she could no longer feel it either, save the pain, she couldn't control the panic or the pain surging through her no matter how hard she tried to focus. Time was fluid as well, minutes may as well be hours to her, hours could be days, nothing mattered to her uncontrollable mind but pain and panic. Therefore, she didn't know how long it had been until she heard whispers again, proof that she wasn't alone. It was a different tone which she heard this time, a panicked one, yet reserved to some degree, deep with concern.

"Bruce...she's not...n...reathing! What...can w...do? How...w...help!?" one said with concern, an unmistakable voice once her foggy mind could process it.

Much time could not have passed when she heard what seemed to be a quick reply.

"Nothin...can do, not...less...get...er...ack," the reply came from the voice she knew to be Bruce's.

She heard no more whispers for what was to her a long time, but Bruce's last concern had come clear to her even in the murky remnants of her mind: Nothing we can do.

Panic, no matter how strong, confusion, no matter how thick, would have been preferable to the horrible, ripping pain Elaina felt next. Darkness had swirled around her for some time before something even worse started to befall her: torture. Many tortures came from all those who had ever wished to harm her, not real, she knew, but ubiquitous. Ghosts from her past that were far less than harmless memories swarmed her and inflicted the worst pains upon her for all she had done. Yet she knew, through all the pain and confusion, that, in fact she told herself once more, they were nothing but memories. It, however, felt very real, felt as though she was being ripped to shreds in the throes of her memories of which she had no escape, no escape save death. She did have an escape, she just did not realize it at first, her escape was the very thing trying to save her right now: her friends. The Avengers, who cared about her and were probably, no definitely, trying to save her life as she herself was unable to do anything about it.

You have to fight, she thought to herself. They need you.

Though not caught up with the idea she was the sole important member of this mission, she knew the only way the Avengers could track down Durov faster than he could destroy the world was to use her information.

You have to fight, she told herself once more. The world needs you.

Suddenly, she was seeing stars, no a star, a single white star on a blue background. There were voices around her, but she couldn't make out anything except a murmur of sound, nothing was distinguishable. She blinked and the star stayed put, she was being carried again, her jumbled mind could not make out much else. Somewhere she had seen that same single, white star on the constant blue background, it was lost in the depths of her fevered brain. She leaned into the comfort of the blue fabric, instinct making her trust the pattern her thoughts could not recognize. Somehow, this small action was noticed for she heard her name called out, but before she could respond the call seemed to be receding down an endless black tunnel.

Elaina woke to a gripping cold, one that made her fear the worst, that she hadn't woken at all. Her fears were soon replaced by relief when she was able to focus enough to see it was just a simple room, just a cold room, she was laying in. Her whole body ached as she tried to shift so she could see where exactly she was, she could hardly remember anything that happened to her after she had been shot. What made her even more confused was that she knew she had been shot, she had been shot many times before, but this time didn't feel like any other time she'd been shot. It felt more like a truck had plowed over her than a gunshot wound. It was a few more minutes before she became almost completely aware of her surroundings, her mind still slightly clouded. There was an IV in her arm and her S.H.I.E.L.D uniform had been replaced by a hospital-style white, cotton gown. Looking around even more from the white-sheeted bed she saw the unmistakable S.H.I.E.L.D emblem on the wall, she now had a better idea of where she was. The gray-white room was different from any other S.H.I.E.L.D facility she had been in before, through a half-glass door she could see all the walls were glass except for the ones surrounding her room. Due to these glass walls she could see the outline of someone unfamiliar approaching the room. Already she was preparing a way to defend herself if the need arose she knew she was at S.H.I.E.L.D, not what circumstances she was there under. Seconds later the door slid open and a woman in a long, white coat with a clipboard stepped into the room.

"Agent Barton, I know you have some questions, but firstly, I'm Agent Walker, I am in charge of caring for you," the woman said handing Elaina her S.H.I.E.L.D badge, "So we don't have any misunderstandings here."

The way she knew to hand her badge over so Elaina knew she really was a S.H.I.E.L.D agent was enough for Elaina to believe her, but she still took the badge.

"Thank you," Elaina said gratefully, handing back the badge once she had looked at it.

"Don't thank me, thank Dr. Banner, I just provided the equipment," the agent remarked.

Elaina smiled, wondering what Bruce had managed to come up with the save her life.

"Where am I?" Elaina asked the agent.

"At a S.H.I.E.L.D medical facility just outside New Mexico. You are doing much better now, but I can't explain nearly as much as Dr. Banner, I was mostly just following his direction. Would you like me to go get him?" she replied.

"Is he still here?"

The agent gave a small laugh, as if Elaina should have known, "He never left, he wanted to make sure you were okay."

The agent left the room a few minutes later, leaving Elaina to wonder what had happened to her after she had passed out. She was more concerned, however, about where Durov had gotten to after the Avengers undoubtedly stopped pursuing him to save her life. Once again she found herself in the same dilemma, having distracted her team from the mission at hand just by her sheer stupidity. Of course none of the Avengers would ever think of it that way, but in her self-blaming mindset Elaina could only think of how she must have let them down. The truth was, by being attacked by Durov she had saved search time and countless people's lives, she just did not know at the moment. Elaina sat in the bed, fingering the stitches going across the top of her cheekbone, presumably from when she had fallen against the floor. Her arms has minor scrapes and bruises, as did her legs, though the only things that really hurt were her head and chest. She still had no clue what really happened because it certainly couldn't have been a gunshot wound that put her in this hospital. Some of her worrying was lifted when Bruce came through the automatic, glass doors of the room. She smiled at him as he walked in, thoroughly glad to have familiar company in this otherwise strange place.

"I see you're doing better, that's good," Bruce remarked with a smile.

"All thanks to you, I hear," Elaina chimed.

"Maybe not all th-"

"Bruce just take the compliment," Elaina interrupted.

"Fine, you're welcome, it's what friends do."

Elaina decided she was far too curious to let him leave without answering any real questions, so she asked the most important one first.

"So, what happened exactly? Because, Bruce, that was not a regular bullet that hit me."

Bruce ran a hand through his hair nervously looking like he was contemplating whether to tell her the whole truth. Elaina for one wasn't going to settle for anything less, she was beyond pissed with S.H.I.E.L.D and their many secrets, secrets that only got them into more trouble.

"It wasn't a actual bullet, no, it was more like a dart in a dart gun, whatever you want to compare it to really, but the tip was filled with that serum you, Clint, and Steve discovered in the base. I analyzed it, Elaina, it has the potential to make any person it comes in contact with like a zombie completely controlled by Durov. Basically it's mind control," Bruce stated grimly.

"So why am I here and not drooling on myself, walking after Durov to whatever ends he plans on using this for?"

"You're here because I was able to analyze traces of the serum in the bullet and formulate an antidote, well, not an antidote, a way to block the serum from rearranging the chemical receptors in the brain."

Mind control, Elaina wondered what possible reason Durov could have to use mind control on hundreds of thousands of people, what would make him want a bunch of people following him around waiting for orders?

"Durov has a serious problem with his serum if it does what it did to me to everyone else he uses it on, I can still barely think straight enough to have this conversation," Elaina said sarcastically.

"No, it normally wouldn't do that to someone injected with the serum, you almost died, that would present a problem for him I think. You were very lucky, you had a severe allergic reaction to whatever was in that serum, I couldn't pinpoint the exact chemical or substance, but I definitely wouldn't suggest getting injected with it any more," Bruce said with such a serious undertone that it unnerved Elaina.

"Noted," Elaina commented, shifting uncomfortably in the bed.

She was trying to avoid the most dreaded topic as much as she could, fearing she would not be able to locate Durov a third time. At least this time she could narrow it down to just those few cities on the map they found, those papers showed the machine in its final stage, which meant wherever Durov went next was his target. Hundreds of thousands of casualties, surely, because after the people were under his control and served their purpose, whatever that was, he would have no further use for them. Even though she knew what he would do afterwards she didn't know why he even needed people in the first pl-

"Oh, hell!" she muttered under her breath, realizing clearly in that second what his intentions were.

"What is it?" Bruce responded, hearing her muttering and seeing her wide eyes of shock.

"I know where he's going and, more importantly, I know why."

A/N: it may be a short chapter but I do not want to make you guys wait any longer for this! I hope I will be able to update more than this in the future!