"Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it." - J.K. Rowling, 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'

Chapter 2: Disaster Report

"It's so good to meet you." The reporter was a short, but muscular, Hispanic man with a genial smile. Their background checks had yielded so little of interest about him that Clint didn't trust him, Tony thought he must be impossibly boring, and Natasha wasn't even concerned. "Even if your serum makes all my hard work look pretty pitiful."

He was a personal trainer and fitness guru, so yeah, Steve's manufactured muscles were probably a great source of frustration to him and others in his profession. But there wasn't much Steve could do about that, and so he laughed superficially and shrugged apologetically. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Williams. We're glad you could make it."

"Not at all," he said cheerfully, looking over at Bucky with a nervous but excited smile. "This is a big story you're letting me in on."

Bucky nodded in acknowledgement of his smile, but otherwise just stood still next to Clint with his arms crossed.

"Anyway, if we could get set up… Is it all right for me to bring my camera crew in?"

Tony hesitated. "JARVIS?"

"They're all the same people we vetted previously, Mr. Stark."

"You good, Bucky?"

Bucky shrugged. "Yeah, I guess." Steve could tell he was trying to manage the wry, sarcastic humor that was expected of him, but he looked a little too nervous to pull it off yet.

"Alright, J, bring them up," Tony ordered. Then, while they waited, he installed them on two couches which he'd moved over by one of the massive Tower windows. The lighting there seemed adjusted, probably JARVIS' doing, and Tony seemed determined to sit them down where he wanted them regardless of Mr. Williams' wishes. Steve and Clint sat on one couch, Bucky next to Mr. Williams on the other.

Steve didn't much like that arrangement, but there was usually a method to Tony's madness, so he didn't say anything. Bucky shot him an uncertain look, so Steve smiled as reassuringly as he could.

Mr. Williams sat down and folded his hands in his lap as his film crew trooped into the room. There were only two cameramen, and three other people carrying equipment that Steve knew little, if anything, about. They got set up under the combined direction of JARVIS and Tony, and Steve tried his level best to avoid fidgeting. Bucky had gone impressively still, his face set in an expression of total calm. It would have been convincing if it weren't also impossible.

"Alright, we should be set," Tony said, settling down behind the cameras. The other Avengers had settled awkwardly out of the way, Natasha perched (as she often did) on the arm of a chair, Thor seated sturdily upright in that chair. Sam had his arms crossed, standing as close to them as he reasonably could. He'd wanted to be in the interview, so he could help Bucky if things got difficult, but they'd decided it had better be Clint since people more or less knew who Clint was.

"Sir, what kind of lighting do we want?" A tall, scarred man with large sunglasses leaned over the back of the couch casually. "Not like it matters anyway, but..."

"What?"

"Never mind. Just what lighting?"

Mr. Williams sighed heavily. "Wade, we keep talking about this."

"Yeah but the warm light or the… glaring one?"

"Warm."

Wade grinned and went back to work with his irritated-looking companion. Bucky appeared amused by the exchange.

Mr. Williams gave a brief introduction, had Bucky say "hey" to the camera, then properly began.

"So I'm sure you know, Sergeant Barnes, that most of our viewers were taught since their first American History class that you died fighting Hydra. Imagine our surprise upon learning otherwise – what really happened after that fall?"

Steve waited, tense, for Bucky to answer. He knew they couldn't control the answers Bucky gave (although they had reviewed the questions for Bucky's safety) but part of him wanted to.

"Well..." Bucky smiled sadly. "I lost my arm." He held up his new hand and flexed it a little. "Hydra picked me up and, well, I kinda forgot I was supposed to have died in the first place."

Mr. Williams nodded sympathetically. "Now, I understand this can't be easy to talk about, but I want to clarify... You're wanted as a terrorist now, legally. People have seen you killing."

It was all Steve could do to avoid saying something harsh, but Mr. Williams saw his expression and the somewhat panicked look in Bucky's eyes and held up his hands. "I know, I'm sorry. But it's what happened. Can you honestly say, Sergeant Barnes, that there wasn't any part of you that knew what was going on? Who you were?"

"I can." Bucky rubbed his hands lightly on his jeans. "If someone spent seventy years trying to make you forget you were human, Mr. Williams, I think you would too."

"I understand. And I'm sorry I had to ask, I just wanted to get that out of the way."

Bucky waved his hand dismissively, as if to say it was all okay. Steve unclenched his fist, slowly.

"On to brighter things, Sergeant – can I just call you Bucky?"

Bucky grinned and shrugged. "I guess."

"Alright, Bucky. So what's it been like so far in the 21st century?"

"Confusin'," Bucky chuckled. You have no idea, his eyes said. "Besides tryin' to figure out what happened to me, I have to learn all this new stuff about phones and computers and even elevators – actually, I have..." He dug into his pocket. "This smartphone. Why you call it that I don't know. Anyway, I can't for the life of me figure out how to send a text without half the words getting mangled by, what is it?"

"Autocorrect," Clint snorted. "I'm teaching him how to use the phone and he texts me 'this is really hard' but instead it ended up 'rjs is reallLy harsh,' which I'm fairly sure wasn't even autocorrect's fault. He's just got clumsy fingers."

"It isn't my fault I only have one hand to text with," Bucky grumbled, smiling a little.

"I'm out of here," someone suddenly announced. It was the scarred lights guy, Wade. "Some angsty shit is about to go down and I do not wanna die today." He dropped his equipment, took off sprinting, and before anyone could say anything crashed through the window into the open air, plummeting headfirst towards the street.

Tony stared after him in stupefied horror. "What the he-?"

Steve wasn't sure, later, what happened in that moment. He could only recall a concussive pain before everything was swallowed by crisp, unaltered blackness. His next memory would be a slow realization of smell and touch, smoke and concrete and metal and something prickling on his tongue like copper. Next was the pain, the sensation of sharpness at his back and weight on his legs and a steady, all-over burning. Explosion, he realized. Fire. He tried to move his legs and crack open his eyes – he succeeded at the latter but his legs remained stationary. But now he could see that all that was pinning his legs was a couch, so he sat up and painstakingly shoved it away.

Everything was dust and smoke. He couldn't hear anything but the rush of his own heartbeat and a low ringing. Steve struggled upright and tried not to groan from the surge of pain as his clothes brushed against his burnt skin. The clothes themselves were charred or outright smoldering. There was blood tracing along his jaw from his ears – not good.

Looking around, he saw Thor not far away, huddled on the floor, head bowed. Of course he was alright, but the sight still filled Steve with dread. He couldn't quite process why yet, except that something bad had to have happened.

The building was burning. He saw that, smelt it. A wall, several walls had collapsed, and the furniture was flung out in a massive ring away from what had once been the pool table. He knew without needing to see that the elevator and the stairs weren't an option. The world was shifting around him like the ocean. How long before the rest of the walls and ceiling went? The rest of the building?

He saw film equipment and hands under one of the walls, but he didn't change course. Thor was grieving. Those hands were dead. He knew these things.

Why wasn't he dead too?

He opened his mouth and pronounced the name. "Thor." He wondered if he'd even made a sound – his throat felt as on fire as the rest of him.

The god turned, his usually perfectly-groomed hair and beard matted and dusty, stained dark red. His eyes, too, were red, but not from blood. He spoke, and Steve still couldn't hear anything.

So Thor moved aside, shuffling awkwardly and moving his arms to continue cradling a limp head, a pair of slim shoulders. He said something else, and this time Steve thought he saw him saying "Tony". But he didn't focus much on that. His eyes were on the cascading red curls and the staring green eyes of one of his best friends, Natasha Romanoff.

He felt himself buckling, a combination of the weakness of his bruised and burned legs and the sudden, sharp pain in his chest. He was saying something but he didn't even know what. Natasha had been his first friend since waking up in the new world. She was perhaps the strongest woman he'd ever met. He'd never once imagined that she could die - that seemed almost impossible, formidable as she was. But here she lay, looking so small and insignificant in the face of what had happened. He touched her hand tentatively - it was still somewhat warm. For a moment he imagined that she might still wake up, still blink and look at him and be okay.

But she didn't.

Thor hugged him, all firm shoulders and dusty fabric. Then he gently set Natasha down, stood, and gestured for Steve to follow him.

Steve didn't want to, but after running his fingers through Nat's hair, he forced himself to his feet and made himself move. He pushed all his emotions down into a battered chest and locked it shut. There would be time to look at them later – or maybe not. He let the anger stay and smolder.

Thor led him around debris, past broken and overturned furniture, stepping gingerly through broken glass. Steve saw no more bodies until Thor pointed.

Bucky was crouched next to Sam and Tony, his prosthetic arm gone. Sam was sitting up, eyes open and full of tears, although his legs looked all wrong, but Tony... Tony was clearly dead, ribcage smashed past all hope by a twisted mass of metal that must also have trapped Sam's legs. Steve remembered, with a surge of horrible guilt, that the last thing he'd said to Tony was an insult - jokingly meant perhaps, but an insult all the same. How often had he and Tony fought? And over what, really? Differences in ideology? They'd come from totally different backgrounds, of course they saw thinvs differently. Tony wanted the same things as Steve, in the end. To do the right thing, make the world safer, help people. So much time wasted.

Bucky just looked blank as he glanced back at Thor and Steve, although when he first registered Steve's presence, his eyes took on such a joyous relief that Steve wanted to run and hug him. But he couldn't move.

What had happened? How could everything have gone so terribly wrong? What about JARVIS, hadn't JARVIS seen?

He focused on hurrying over to Bucky and Sam and kneeling down. He formed words, aimed them at Thor. "Where's Clint? And Bruce?"

Thor shrugged, then gestured out at the city. Steve didn't see anything but presumably that meant Thor didn't know where Clint was, and Bruce was running rampant. At least they knew Bruce was alive...

Simmons. Everyone else in the Tower. Oh God. Steve pressed his face into his hands and tried to breathe. Thor was the only one of them who could fly, which would be enough to get them out of the building, but everyone else? How long did they have? Had anyone evacuated?

He looked at Thor, angry he couldn't hear. But his friend seemed to understand his many worries (they were leaders, the two of them), and he nodded briefly before launching himself out of the broken window and disappearing from sight. Steve took a quick look at Sam's leg and checked Bucky's arm – his friend's new arm had come off at the socket instead of breaking, or tearing his shoulder.

He wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted to cry. He wanted to curl up in a ball and let himself give in to the horror gnawing at his mind. Tony and Natasha, both dead. Maybe Clint too. Who knew how many others?

But that was not what was needed of him now. So he forced himself to focus on Bucky and Sam and avoid looking at the bloody ruins of Tony's chest.


A/N: Yeah so... Yeah.

Bet you didn't see that coming.

Did you at least enjoy my April 1 Deadpool cameo? It's all good. I'm just gonna leave this here. Anyway.

Since the last time I talked to you I got in a car accident, which was fun. I used that experience to help with this. Don't worry, I was fine, just some bruised legs. I have also started a new job. Yay me!

Love y'all. :)