A/N: Me again. It is LadyMorganaPendragon, but I changed my username because it's a bit of a mouthful and I don't even really watch Merlin any more, so ...
This chapter is kind of long and rambly and uneventful, but stuff should start happening soon.
Many thanks to Cottonballpoofs and katiebug0410 for taking the time to leave a review, and to those who followed and favourited this story.
Review if you want to make me happy :3
Enjoy!
Beep. Beep. Beep.
It is the typical waking-up-in-hospital scene, the blurred vision, the white lights, the nurse watching him. "Good afternoon, Captain Rogers," she says. She is beautiful and the whole thing is far too surreal. He blinks fuzzily. He does not know who Captain Rogers is.
"Where am I?" he asks quietly, but his throat is so dry it comes out too soft to hear. Smiling gently, she passes him a cup of water. He nods his thanks and tries to sit up.
This is his first indication of something wrong. Before he had felt stiff, a little achy, perhaps, but warm and comfortable. When he shifts his weight, pain sears through his head and back. Groaning, he slumps back onto the bed, shivering, nauseous. He thinks he is going to be sick but cannot form a coherent sentence to explain this to the nurse. "Try not to move," she says. "Here. Have a drink."
His eyes close in resignation to the humiliation of having somebody feed him water. He attempts to lift his arm but, exhausted from its ordeal of supporting half his body weight for a split second, it merely twitches feebly and stays at his side, limp, heavy and aching.
The memories will flood back to him in a moment. Where he is, what happened ...
Who he is.
What is his name? How old is he? Where did he grow up?
Panic rises in his throat.
"I don't know who I am!" he shouts, grabbing the nurse's wrist. She turns back to him in surprise. "I don't - I don't remember anything ... please, help me ... "
"Let me find a doctor," she says, and the forced control in the tone of her voice, the false certainty that is too perfect to be real, makes fear spread further up his body. His hands, so devoid of energy, are shaking.
"Please," he says hoarsely.
She is already leaving the room. He rips out the tubs connected to his arm, scared beyond measure. Blood trickles towards his hand and he feels dizzy, but perhaps this is just the toll of the excruciating pain coursing through him. It is blinding. He does not understand how he is still walking, but there are other things he does not understand. More important things he does not understand.
He stumbles into the hallway, ignoring the frenzied alarms coming from inside his room and the looks of horror from people stepping out of other wards. "Somebody, please help me," he calls, but his stumble is by now more of a stagger and a doctor is running towards him.
"Captain Rogers, I need you to get back into your bed," the doctor says calmly, perfectly composed.
"I don't know who Captain Rogers is!" he shouts.
The doctor blinks at him.
"Please come back to your bed," he says, taking him by the arm and leading him back to the room. Its white walls and ceiling and sheets and machines are beginning to make him feel sick.
His knees buckle just before he reaches the bed and the doctor manages to catch him and manoeuvre him onto it. The pain is so intense he can barely even keep his eyes open.
"I'm going to give you some morphine, sir," the doctor says, apparently being careful not to use any names. "It should help you with the pain, but you will probably go to sleep. Is that okay?"
He is hurting so badly that he can only nod.
Tony blinks awake uneasily. He can only assume that he is not dead, because he knows the smell of hospitals and this is most certainly the smell of hospitals. And thus, unless he is very much mistaken, he is in a hospital. More specifically he is in a hospital bed. And why would he be in a hospital bed if he was dead?
After this complicated deduction is complete, he feels slightly more awake than he did previously, and rolls over.
He sees four beds, all occupied. The first contains Thor, who is sleeping soundly but also apparently strapped down, for reasons unbeknownst to Tony at this point in time. The second contains Clint, also asleep, but propped up on a considerable amount of thin hospital cushions (Tony read somewhere that you're meant to stay relatively upright when your ribs are broken). Third is Natalie, sat up, reading some sort of magazine and listening to music through earphones, oblivious to his eyes on her. Finally lies Bruce, stirring slightly and presumably about to wake up.
Tony cannot help but notice the absence of Steve. While he didn't have much time to get to know the guy, he seemed pretty nice - if a little too wonderful and perfect for his liking. When one meets somebody like that, it is difficult not to find a physical or mental flaw, and the harder it is to find one, the harder it is to fully like and trust them. Banner's, for example, is the anger issues. Rushman's is that she doesn't particularly seem to like any of them. Thor's is his underlying self-righteousness (not that it's entirely his fault; someone who is brought up nicknamed Thor is going to have a hard time not trying to rise to their namesake). Barron ... well, his eyebrows are pretty blond. Tony doesn't really know him well enough to think of anything else yet.
(Tony occasionally tries to count his own flaws, and is liable to find many - not a fact he likes to advertise. Of course, at other points - like now - they all seem to mysteriously melt away. It's strange how one suddenly seems so damaged when one is drunk. Not that Tony often gets drunk. It only happens at parties.)
Bruce groans and opens his eyes.
"Well, look who isn't dead either," Tony says cheerfully.
Natalie looks up at him for a second, and then Tony. Her eyes fall on Clint again, watching him breathe, and then return to her reading material.
Bruce sits up slowly, adjusts his pillows and anxiously scans the faces of each person in the room. "Where's Steve?" he asks.
"He's in the ICU." Natalie takes out the earphones. "They won't tell us much but I'm pretty sure he's okay."
"How do you know?"
"Heard them talking," she says vaguely, and Tony has the unnerving supsicion that she has been out of her bed and walking around the hospital before she was even supposed to be awake. "Did you know that you produce enough saliva in your lifetime to fill a swimming pool?"
"I did. What are you reading?"
She shrugs. "The title kinda got lost behind the accusations of Scarlett having an affair and Amber's top fifty fitness tips."
"How long have you been awake?" asks Bruce. "And how long have we been asleep?"
"I've been awake about four hours. You guys slept about twelve. I tried to go back to sleep but they wouldn't let me. Concussions and sleep aren't meant to mix. Ever. On pain of coma."
"Neither are concussions and idiots who try to fall asleep with them," Tony grumbles. She throws her magazine at his head.
"Yes, well, most people find it hard to think rationally when they've been hit in the head so hard that their brain moves around in their skull."
The accuracy and power behind the throw are a little too good for Tony's liking, so he takes the hint and shuts up.
Thor, on the bed next to him, opens his eyes and tries to move his hands. "Why am I restrained?" he asks, bewildered and straining against the straps keeping his hands tied to either side of the bed. Tony looks at the thin hospital gown he is wearing, and then at his own. It has purple flowers on it. The only person not wearing one is Natalie, who is dressed in a loose t-shirt and yoga pants.
"Apparently you kept trying to get up and move around," Natalie says. "Only a brick fell on your leg and you're not supposed to put weight on it, and you're resistant to most sedatives, so they just pumped you full of drugs and tied you down."
They all stare at her.
"Well, I'm guessing the last bit's what happened," she clarifies. "They didn't actually tell me that because it's against hospital policy."
Again, her eyes travel to Clint, who has not moved. "Why isn't he awake?" Bruce asks gently.
She laughs humorlessly. "Bastard went and gave himself a chest infection from not breathing properly. All the dust in the air got everywhere and he couldn't get it out, I guess. He's better now, but he still has a slight fever and they've got him on a load of meds. He'll wake up in a few hours, probably, but the best thing he can do now now is rest."
With a loud grunt, Thor breaks his wrists free of their straps and sits up, looking smug.
"How come you don't get the outfit?" is Tony's next question.
"What is this, some kind of pop quiz? Last time they put me in a hospital gown I broke a doctor's arm and knocked another one out for two hours. I don't like hospital gowns. Clint will have a fit when he wakes up and finds that they let me wear clothes but not him."
"How did they know, though? Weren't you unconscious?"
"I'm pretty sure there's something about it in my medical records."
The door opens and a man in a suit walks in. He hands a book to Natalie. "Thank you," she says. "You're amazing." He then proceeds to produce a box of chocolates and two bunches of flowers, one of which he placed at the end of her bed, the other at the end of Clint's.
"This is Phil," she says, without explaining further, and he offers her a chocolate. She takes one and then gestures that he should offer them to the others, which he does. Tony's is cheap and tastes of hospital gift shops.
A nurse walks in next and immediately starts checking Bruce's vitals. He watches her uneasily. "You're looking good," she says. "We'll keep you here overnight as a precaution, but then you're good to go."
She moves along the beds, muttering things to herself as she goes. When she reaches Thor, she frowns at the broken restraints and orders him not to get out of bed, and then moves on to Tony. "You look good too," she concludes. "You'll all be released tomorrow morning; Mr, um, Thor will need crutches, and Mr Barton will be staying for a couple more days because of his chest infection."
"Barton?" echoes Tony. "I'm pretty sure his name is Barron."
"It's Barron," Natalie says.
"It says on his chart - "
"His name is Barron," Phil says, and gives the nurse a nod that clearly communicates more than just you're wrong.
She nods and goes to leave the room. "Wait," says Bruce. "Tell us about Steve."
The nurse pauses. "I can't disclose - "
"Tell us," Natalie hisses through gritted teeth, and Tony wonders how a ballroom dancer can manage to sound quite so threatening.
At Phil's nod (who is this guy?) she speaks. "Captain Rogers will be fine. The trauma to his stomach was not particularly significant; with immediate medical attention, he could have been on his feet within a few days. Of course, he was waiting a long time, and the cut became infected, which increased his recovery time. He was moved out of the ICU a couple of hours ago and will probably be released in a week or two, depending on how fast he recovers."
Captain. The guy was definitely in the military, but all that apparently I was crap is messing with Tony's head. Has the guy lost his memory or something?
Still. He'll be fine. All of them will.
And there's something to say for that.
Steve's been doing pretty well.
A few days after he woke up, he started remembering bit and pieces about himself. Important things first: his name, where he grew up. Thanks to hours of therapy and even hypnotism, he is even beginning to remember the early years of his life; he knows, for example, that both his parents are dead, and remembers how they died. He remembers running round Brooklyn with his friend, Bucky. He remembers high school and that he didn't like fish but he does now, and he remembers signing up for the army. He also remembers how difficult it was to pass the medical exam, how much he went running and lifted weights.
The things he does not remember mostly consist of the last ten years of his life. Presumably he spent a long time in the army to be promoted to Captain, and he is told that he hit his head when a bomb went off nearby, which is what made him lose his memories.
Those years are a blank hole in his memory, just past his reach.
No matter how hard he tries, he cannot get to them.
"Natasha," Clint whines. If he's going to be in enough pain for her to be worried about overexerting himself then he might as well milk it for all he's worth.
"No," she says shortly, not looking up from the bunch of files in front of her.
"I can't reach the pile."
She picks up the stack and puts them on the floor behind her. "I guess you'll have to stand up and get them," she smirks.
"But - "
"The doctor said to keep moving around every once in a while. Now's your chance."
He sighs and retrieves the files. The first one is on Agent Reginald Stevens, who is on disciplinary observance for ... well, the file is extensive and Clint can't quite be bothered to find out, but he's perfect. "Found one," he grins. "Not only will he have to spend a few weeks tailing somebody, but somebody else will have to spend a few weeks tailing him."
"You have a sick sense of humour," she says. "Have you even checked to see if he's good?"
"If he wasn't good, they would have sacked him. Instead they're taking the time to see if they absolutely have to sack him."
Even Natasha can't argue with that logic.
The deal with Coulson was that they would both be given two weeks' paid medical leave if they could find a suitable replacement to finish their job. Apparently, their target had been classed as lower level risk than he had been originally, because Barton and Romanoff are some of the best the agency have. It would, of course, have only required one of them, but the two tend to stick together.
They are part of what is called the SHIELD program. It is designed for the best and only the best, assassin and covert operatives from all over the world. Usually their missions are solely assassinations of high-risk targets; lower level agents can do the rest. Occasionally they are called on surveillance tasks for targets with high security, such as the one they have just failed to complete.
Coulson walks in. "Hey, we found someone," Clint starts, but Coulson holds up a hand to stop him.
"There's been a change of plan," he says carefully. "We found intelligence suggesting that the bomb wasn't a random terrorist attack after all."
"Then what was it?" Natasha asks.
"An assassination attempt."
"An assassination attempt? How do you know?"
"Another bomb was set off in the hospital an hour after you left. It wasn't released to the public that you were gone."
Clint's heart skips a beat. "How many? How many dead?"
"Seventy three. It wasn't a big one - just targeted at the lower floors. The building's structure remained intact, and they managed to evacuate the patients higher up."
"And Rogers?"
"Survived. He was still in a medically induced coma for the whole thing, and there was no change to his condition."
They both breathe a sigh of relief. In the short time they have known him - and despite the fact that he was unconscious for most of the duration of it - Steve has become something akin to a friend.
"Who was the target? Stark?"
Coulson's voice is level but grave. "That's what we don't know. Stark is likely, but there's also both of you to consider. Rogers was a soldier; he's probably crossed a few people in his time. The accident that gave Banner his anger issues also killed a lot of people. Thor probably isn't an issue, but since we don't know much about his past we're putting him in protective custody with you."
"Protective custody? What the hell, Coulson? We can look after ourselves!"
"But you can't save everyone. Not from a bomb."
Natasha groans. "They all call me Natalie."
"That's because that's what you told them your name was!" Clint can't help but grin. "It's hardly their fault!"
"They've been told that you're government agents. I think you're in the clear to give them your real names."
She doesn't look convinced. "Where are we going?"
"There's a safe house in Alaska."
"Alaska?" Clint's words are laced with alarm. If they're sending them somewhere as far away as Alaska, they must deem the bomber a pretty serious threat. "Shit. Do we get paid?"
Natasha and Coulson both laugh. "Yes," says Coulson. "Since you'll be continuing your surveillance of Stark there, you will."