A/N: I guess I'm back...
I'd just like to mention that I'll be using song lyrics as chapter titles and I don't own them. I won't do this for every chapter because I'm forgetful, but for the story as a whole this is my chapter title disclaimer. Play Guess the Song in the reviews if you're that way in line.
Many thanks to katiebug01410, AsgardianGrizzly and to the Guest who reviewed the last chapter. That was a huge help. Thanks also to those who followed and favourited this story.
(Fun fact: the method Bruce uses to calm himself down is actually genuine. You can look it up and everything.)
Enjoy and please review.
Thanks!
"Hey, Stark," Natasha croaks. "What vault number is this?"
He looks at her blankly. "I don't know. I just tell them my name and they take me down there."
She frowns. Of course it would have to be Stark's vault they're trapped inside. "We're in the vault registered to Stark. Negative on the number."
"Roger that," her controller says. Normally it would be considered fairly stupid to have agents on the scene - either the trapped assassins survive and check in at the designated point at the designated time, or they don't - but Romanoff and Barton are high-level, high-value agents and the agency needs them to get out alive. They'll have people everywhere on the scene. And Coulson isn't the typical controller; he has a bond with Clint and Natasha that he isn't supposed to have. But of course, he is too well respected within the agency's ranks for anyone to try and talk to him about it.
They've now been trapped for six hours, and the near darkness, small space and dusty heat are suffocating. Not one person there thought to bring a bottle of water, and the smoke and dust in the vault anyway make their throats scratched and aching. Natasha can deal with hunger; she's been trained to deal with hunger, and once went four days on a job without consuming anything but water. It's the thirst that's the problem. She knows how it happens.
The body starts to shut down. The subject cannot swallow safely. The kidneys are affected and begin to stop working. The blood can't filter properly. They could have hours. They could have days.
Nonetheless they will still die.
Banner speaks up. He is still in the corner, but he's looking at them now. He seems embarrassed. "I'm sorry about ... that. I have this problem, I guess. I get angry."
"We gathered," Tony smirks.
"I don't think it's funny, Stark," Steve hisses.
"I was experimenting with gamma radiation this one time," Banner continues. "And it went wrong. Badly wrong. I don't remember the details, but when I woke up in hospital, this started happening." He gestures uselessly. "When my heart rate goes up, I get angry. I sort of black out. Did I ... hit you?"
Natasha half-smiles at him. "No."
"Not for want of trying," mumbles Stark, but Bruce doesn't seem to hear.
"Sorry, whatever I did."
"It's okay."
Clint coughs. She turns to him and hoists him up as he slips down the wall slightly.
"Ow," he complains loudly.
"Come on, it isn't that bad," she says.
"How do you know?" he retorts, indignant. "You're not the one with several severely broken ribs."
"If it was really bad, you wouldn't be complaining because you wouldn't want me to be worrying about your imminent death. When it's not that bad, you just want me to feel sorry for you and recite every single thing I did wrong to make you feel better."
There is a chuckle on the other end of the line.
"Not true," Clint says, but he's grinning.
The others, however, are staring at them in alarm. "Does this sort of thing happen a lot, then?" Thor asks.
She realises her mistake almost immediately. Cover stories, she needs cover stories ...
"We're dancers," Clint says evenly, or as evenly as one can when one has broken ribs. "Ballroom dancers. Except we like to do ... risky stuff. Big jumps and lifts, you know ... stuff to make the crowd tense up. It gets pretty dangerous sometimes."
As far as improvised stories go, this one is pretty good. It explains almost everything.
"That doesn't explain why you tried to kill me when I touched your neck," Stark interjects.
Everything but that.
"Once we, uh, we got, uh, attacked. After a - performance. So we took basic self defence classes." He doesn't look entirely convinced. "And that turned into intermediate self defence. And after that I was enjoying kicking Clint's ass every week so we took advanced self defence classes as well."
"Say what you like about not being beaten up," Clint adds, "but it makes you paranoid."
His voice is harsh and dry, and far softer than usual; breathing, clearly, hurts him more than he is letting on. Natasha watches as he closes his eyes and leans his head against the wall. She forces down the pang of worry in her gut. He'll be fine. He always is.
"So, Natalie," Stark says conversationally. "You single?"
She glares at him.
"I guess not."
"Maybe she just doesn't want to sleep with someone like you, Stark," Clint growls, eyes still closed. "I sure as hell wouldn't want to."
"Easy," says Bruce, trying to keep the peace.
There is a long but not necessarily unpleasant silence.
"Did you hear that?" asks Thor. He's been pacing for the past hour and they've all been doing their best to ignore him. Different people cope with trauma in different ways, and if this is his then they're not going to make him stop.
"Hear what?"
"I think I hear movement."
They all listen intently for a few seconds, and sure enough there is a fair amount of scraping. And banging. A whole lot of banging. Natasha feels like she can breathe again for the first time since the bank exploded.
A large piece of rubble is dislodged from the pile blocking the doorway and falls to the ground, inches from Steve, who does not react.
"Steve? You okay, buddy?" Bruce asks cautiously, to no response. "Steve." He's shaking him now. "Come on." Steve's face is ashen. His eyes are closed. "Someone help me move him."
Thor steps forward immediately and together they manage to drag him to the wall furthest from the danger zone.
"Statistically speaking, this is the point where we're most likely to die." Clint, apparently, is not as asleep as he pretends to be.
"Thanks," Tony hisses.
"Seriously. Everything's being moved around, so a ton of rock could cave into the vault and kill us. Alternatively, a load of dust could be knocked in and make the air too dirty to breathe, so we could all die of asphyxiation ... or some sort of chemical in the walls could - "
Natasha punches him on the arm, looking at the tense faces of the people around her. "Stop winding everyone up and go to sleep, you idiot."
"Ow," he says, his eyes flying open. "That hur - "
He is interrupted by the largest coughing fit yet. His entire body is moving, and the force of it pushes his back away from the wall and then smashes it back into it. His eyes are streaming. She doesn't think he can breathe.
"Clint," she shouts. "Breathe."
He carries on coughing. "Nat - " he chokes out. She leaps up, ready to yell at Banner to help her, but everything flips over and her vision blinks out.
The next thing she knows, she's lying on the floor with Coulson yelling in her ear and Banner next to her, examining the cut on her temple. Clint is breathing heavily (and wheezing as he does so) but thankfully not coughing any more. She's shivering - not enough for her teeth to chatter, but enough to not feel comfortable sitting up just yet.
"Natasha, can you hear me? Natasha. Natasha. Black Widow! Answer m..." Coulson's voice fades out with the battery of her comms. unit.
"Shit," she says loudly.
Bruce draws his hand away, saying, "Sorry." Natasha dimly realises that he thinks he hurt her. She hadn't even noticed him poking her head injury.
"It's fine. Not you. Was I ... ?"
"Out long? You woke up about about three seconds after you hit the ground," Tony snorts. "So much for no concussion."
She's really starting to dislike him. "Do you know what happened?"
"I'm really not that kind of doctor," Bruce tells her. "Sorry. My best guess is that it was the head injury and blood loss, paired with the fact that you haven't moved in a while, so when you got up all the blood rushed to your head. Obviously panicking about Clint didn't really - "
"I don't faint," she says shortly.
"And I'm not a medical doctor, so don't take my word for it."
She crawls back to her place next to Clint. "Are you okay?"
"Just fine and dandy," he replies. "You?"
"Never better." She rests her head against his shoulder so nobody can hear what she's saying. "I lost communications with Coulson."
"Shit."
"Yeah." She closes her eyes. If Clint was more awake, he'd be telling her not to sleep, but she's pretty sure Tony's nearly asleep, Bruce is checking up on Steve, Thor doesn't look as though he or anyone he grew up around have ever needed medical attention and is back to pacing, and Natasha herself is in no position to care. If they're going to die down here, be it thirst, crushing or asphyxiation, she'd rather go in her sleep.
An hour ago it was stiflingly hot down here, but now the air - or perhaps the atmosphere - is icy. Everyone is tense.
Everyone is afraid.
She sleeps.
Bruce shakes Steve gently. Tony has fallen asleep too now, and Thor at least has sat down, his legs weakened by the explosion, the relentless pacing and the thirst. Clint and Natalie are both sleeping, and while Bruce isn't happy about Natalie sleeping with a concussion, he's more worried about Steve.
The soldier, or ex-soldier, whatever he is, is on the edge of consciousness, stirring weakly whenever Bruce tries to awaken him but seemingly unable to open his eyes and speak. The wound in his stomach is dressed and bound with both Bruce and Thor's sweaters, but from the looks of things it will easily become infected - the piece of metal was probably dirty to begin with, not to mention Steve's shirt, stuck to it, and the filthy, dust-coated makeshift bandages. Things might be different if they had a little water to wash or rinse it out with - but of course, they're all desperately thirsty and Bruce's insides are aching with hunger.
From above, the sounds of shifting rubble are getting closer and more recurrent. The pile in the middle of the floor is growing steadily closer and more hazardous. To begin with, the fear was a dull ache in Bruce's stomach. He was trapped. Now, panic is beginning to set in - a dull ringing in his ears from the constant noise, savage butterflies tearing at his gut and the brief moment of terror, the cold sweat beading on his brow, whenever another rock falls into their safe haven. It's a miracle he's only had one attack so far.
He hates this. Hates that just because he is a doctor, they all believe him to be a medical expert. Calling him to help a man with an impaling wound in a desperate situation is one thing, but he saw his own name on Natalie's lips when Clint started dying, heard Clint choke out his name when she collapsed. Not Tony, the genius scientist who's probably read an encyclopaedia of medical science in his spare time. Of course it has to be Bruce.
"I have to pee," Tony says loudly, making Bruce jump. "Now."
"Can't you wait?" Bruce shoots back, exhausted.
"Yeah, well I thought that two and a half hours ago. And then we heard them coming to save us, so I thought that would give me hope to carry on, and it did. Until two hours and fifteen minutes passed and they still haven't rescued us and shit, I'm about to wet myself, guys."
"Dude, you're not pissing in here," Clint mumbles. "No way are you pissing in here."
"Yeah, well, I don't exactly have a choice in the matter, do I? I have to - "
There is the largest crash yet and ten or so bricks tumble in, bringing with them a cloud of dust. Coughing madly, eyes streaming, Bruce looks around. Steve, worryingly, has not moved whatsoever. Natalie is coughing slightly but not awake, her body apparently taking over. Clint, through his own chokes, has her bent forward in his arms and is slapping her on the back, trying to clear the congestion. Thor seems remarkably unconcerned and is helping Tony, whose legs are crossed over in a fashion so incredible Bruce has to wonder how he managed it.
He will not die like this.
He will not survive a bomb only to die anyway.
He will not be killed by the people saving him.
When the dust clear, he says, "We should shout."
"Why?" Thor looks blank.
"So they know we're here, Oh Noble God of Thunder," Tony snickers. "They could just be looking for bodies. They don't know we're down here."
As it turns out, people nicknamed after Norse Gods of thunder are incredibly good at shouting for help. Painfully good, in fact.
His heart is pounding. He doesn't know why he hasn't become angry yet but he tries his breathing exercises. Four seconds inhaling. Seven seconds holding his breath. Eight seconds exhaling. He read somewhere that this is supposed to calm you down, and placebo effect or not, it seems to really work on Bruce.
He feels himself begin to steady.
Tony, bladder forgotten, is yelling like he's on fire or something and even Clint has almost managed to join in, although it's more of a loud whisper than anything else.
Their attempts seem futile, however. More pieces of rock fall in, and more dust. They have almost no space now; the floor is littered with rubble and the air so thick with dust that Bruce can no longer see more than a metre in front of him. Tony's voice fades away, and Bruce stops too. There's no point.
Thor is the only thing to hold onto now, his bellows so loud that Bruce has to cover his ears.
He starts coughing again.
Suddenly the noise stops - not Thor's noise, but the sounds of machinery and shifting rock.
He can't find enough oxygen to care.
A chink of light shines through the dust. The light at the end of the tunnel. Crazy. Bruce didn't think he believed in that sort of thing, not after death. Only in hallucinations.
But then again, maybe he isn't dead quite yet, because he's still coughing, and there's not much point in finding oxygen when you're dead.
He tries to inhale again, and that's when Bruce finally blacks out.
Thor is fairly certain that he is the only one conscious at the moment. He's on a stretcher, being wheeled rapidly along a road to what he can only assume is medical help. It comes to his vague attention that he does not in fact much need medical help.
He sits up. "I know how to walk," he says hazily. This is not what he specifically intends to say, and the fact that he is fine is apparently lost in translation because the paramedic puts a firm hand on his chest and tries to push him down.
Problem is, Thor is in moderation stronger than the paramedic, and the paramedic does not like the fact that Thor is not lying down. "Sir, please lie down," says the paramedic. "We're trying to help you here. We gave you some morphine for your leg."
"What do you mean?" Thor tries to say, but it comes out more like, "What leg?"
"Sir, please lie down," the paramedic repeats. Thor does not like this paramedic.
It is now that he becomes acutely aware of a sickening pain in his right leg. He lets out a not inconspicuous shout of agony and suddenly is swarmed with more paramedics, shouting about more morphine and tranquilliser and isn't ketamine what his father gave to that horse?
Thor doesn't remember very much at all after that.