NOTICE: THE ENDING WILL BE POSTED TONIGHT!
quiet-raindrop: HAHAHAHA. Oh, Thor. I did love him. I am so happy you loved the reveal!
5mairer: YAY! I made you happy!
Guest "happy dance":: keep on dancing! (while you can ;)
shila1378: I just can't even, thank you so very much for the compliments! Gosh, could you imagine this as a movie? I would just die to see it. And thank you very much for your kindness!
discordchick: Baby Alice and her daddy, Clint the Defender of the Universe (or is he one of many?!) and of course, it all comes back to that man we know and love. The archer who has heart. God, i love him.
khaitosfren: When i wrote that line about Bruce and Natasha, I nearly fell off my chair laughing.
Batghost: :D!
Ms. Hawkeye: Alice is gonna be a little heart breaker for sure!
amy. .9: I am considering, eventually, compiling these stories into a sort of serial writing. It would be too big in print for a single book. However, the perfectionist in me would require a professional to comb through the entire series and assist with the linear nature, hard facts, and copy-to-print work.
ClintandNatasha: Clint's back! But for how long? HMMMM
JRBarton: Thank you so much! I appreciate all the sacrifices you have made for me:)
Chapter 58
"It's called a diaphragmatic hernia. It's when there is a tear in the muscle that separates your chest from your abdomen. Your abdominal organs, in your case your stomach and liver, can shift freely into your chest. Now, it has been healing. That's not an issue. We can leave things exactly as they are. You stay here, and eventually you will recover perfectly well between what Thor and the air here are doing. But, a diaphragmatic hernia is something that can be fixed back on Earth too. The decision is yours. I can only give you the pros and cons of staying or going."
Clint sat up in his bed with Natasha lying next to him, Tony at his feet, and both babies being rotated around the trio. Beside him, a team of healers had gathered to discuss what their next step in Clint's care should be. Currently, Bruce campaigned for an attempt at going back to New York General.
Heho listened to all the points made, and took up the conversation as Bruce ended. "You have progressed quite remarkably. I have no doubt, with time and a steady work ethic, you may again walk normally, though I would not recommend staying from us too long so that such recovery may be assured. Here, it may be another month, or more, before your body finds a way to close the defect on its own power. It will happen, eventually. You may not see it with your naked eyes, but myself and others know very well what it is this air is doing for you. In a way, think of it as a scaffold. To leave may remove that careful bridge keeping your wounds intact."
"Clint's lungs aren't fully working yet. This place is like a hyperbaric chamber. He hits Earth, and his body's not going to know what to do," Tony stated. He sat up and handed Alice to Clint.
Clint cradled his daughter in his lap. He decided to be a passive observer in the conversation until all of the facts hit the table.
"That is a concern. A big one, I might add," Bruce affirmed. "I can have the surgical team prepped on the transport pad with a mobile O2 unit ready to go. We'd arrive through the Bifrost, land on the Heli-Pad, and you'd instantly be put into the O2 chamber."
"Will that be enough?" Natasha asked, giving Ben back to Pepper, who sat on a chair by the bed.
Heho exchanged a glance with Bruce.
"We assume it may. All of this is unprecedented. We have no real way of knowing," the elf said.
"Well, I'm not just going to wait in this bed forever and hope that everything goes as planned. I'm ready to actually do something about it," Clint told them, looking around for opposition. "Thor can have Heimdall waiting at the Bifrost should something go wrong, and I can come back. Right?"
"Such provisions have been arranged already," the Asgardian king stated.
"Besides, I've already died once. I'm not in a hurry to do it twice. First sign of trouble, we come back here."
Heho and Bruce both agreed.
No one knew how the transport would actually go. So much was still unknown about the Untamed Caves and their healing properties in men. Studies done, never fully quantified their success and, despite taking all necessary precautions, it was a real possibility that bringing Clint out of their midst, might reverse a lot of the accomplishments he'd already made. But an attempt must be made. Bruce had to know if the theories he spun in private were being validated by the moment. Was Alfheimr, the breathing planet, keeping Clint alive? If it was, then did he have any chance of leaving the place ever again?
The whole world might have ignored the fact that the Avengers had fallen off the face of the Earth, but they would not continue to walk blindly forever. At the very least, Tony, Pepper, and Bruce must return home. Benjamin Stark wouldn't stay behind without his parents. Natasha may hide out slightly longer and raise no suspicions, though Steve could not. A month had passed already. Only four days of which included a fully aware Clint Barton. None could face the risk of leaving now and, indeed, none planned to. Dash the Earth and all her cares. In this stage of life, only family mattered. The Avengers had everything they required right here.
Bruce and Heho joined the other four healers in the next room. They planned to fashion a gurney to transport Clint on through the Bifrost. First, the troop would land, briefly, on Asgard, and instantly continue on to Midgard from there. Bruce would go ahead of the others, and be sure all his provisions had been met. There was no sense in waiting any longer.
"I think I'll get our things together," Pepper said, passing Ben to Thor.
Natasha grinned. "Yeah, suppose you're right. Alice might freak out if we leave that stuffed crinkle butterfly here. Remind me to tell Happy he has excellent taste in baby gifts." She squeezed Clint's hand as she stood. He held onto her, letting their fingers slowly drift apart as she walked away after Pepper.
Clint watched the sway of her hips as she left before turning his attention down to down the baby in his lap.
Tony considered him for a few minutes, then said, "Amazing, isn't it?"
Clint snickered, glancing over at him. "I just don't know what to think. I mean, one minute I'm unconscious, the next I'm awake and everyone's here, and someone tells me I jumped and had a baby, but that was months ago? I've taken some knocks before, but not a full nine months' worth."
"Forget what you think. Imagine us?" Tony quipped. "God, Clint, you were dead to us. Dead! Not injured, not lying in some bed on Alfheimr. We buried you, how many times, Thor?"
Thor bounced the child in his arms. "Let me see. There was the first ceremony on Alfheimr, then we held a larger one during my father's after that. Xandar had quite the dedication as I recall, which the Guardians spearheaded. And, of course, Midgard."
"There! Four times. Oh, and you might not really get the fact that Natasha went through an emergency c-section, almost died, and your baby came out almost dead. So, for a few hours there, when no one told us anything, I thought we'd buried you all over again. So five. Let's just call it five."
Clint swallowed, sensing the depth of the pain Tony finally brought to the surface. His hand massaged along the baby's stomach, comforting her and himself all at once. He began to say something, an apology perhaps, but Tony stopped him before he ever had a chance.
"Oh, no you don't!" he exclaimed, "You did everything you were supposed to. You fought. You jumped to certain death, animals tore you apart, and you kept fighting. Now you're back, that's all that matters. I don't care if you never go back to Earth, Clint. I really don't. Live here forever if you want."
He smiled a little. Tony didn't exactly mean that. Of course they wanted him to return to Earth, return to the lives they had as young men again. There was something, though, he had caught on to that the others might not admit. He turned his attention to Steve, who was making funny faces at a wide-eyed Benjamin.
"What about you, Steve? You decide to take Thor's offer yet?" Clint asked.
Shocked, Steve paused in the middle of his hand-antlers jiggling on either side of his face. Like a child caught in a secret he should not be keeping, the captain looked about him at the others. Only Thor, Tony, Clint, and the children remained in the room.
Tony folded his arms, cocking an eyebrow. "Oh? And what offer is that, exactly?"
Clint appeared amused. "Aw, come on, Tony. You didn't see that? Thor's the king on Asgard now. He's not going to just give up the throne. With Loki's reformation, that Thor's been talking my ear off about by the way, if he doesn't claim his rights, then Loki can. Honestly, who remembers how that went before?"
Tony spun his hand in the air, trying to get to the point.
"Thor's going back home. Veurr's the new military leader. Pepper said you need a replacement Captain Of The Guard, and I think she considered me taking it. But you know I won't, not with my family I have to look out for. The most logical choice, is Steve. You wanted that job once, as I remember. Odin offered it to you at the end of the Frost Giant War. There's no reason to turn it down anymore."
A slow grin widened over Thor's face. "My friend, I am still unsure whether or not I missed your powers of deductive prowess."
Tony feigned utter shock. "Steven Rogers, you cad! Captain America, leaving the blues and stripes behind for foreign monarchies? You've gone bloody British."
Steve rolled his eyes. "OK, this is why I didn't tell anyone right away. I wanted to, you know, find the right time to kinda suggest it."
"Oh, Clint took your 'right time' and sunk it like a carrier on a Battleship board. You are officially ousted. That's it! You are off the Christmas card list. I simply won't spend the stamps to send intergalactic mail."
Bruce's head popped in through the open doorway. "All right, we're all set here. Thor, might want to get Heimdall to fire up our path."
:(:):(:):
Precious few had any indication that the cargo they currently transported, and waited to care for, was in fact the supposedly deceased legend, Clinton Francis Barton, hero of Hawkeye's Keel, and defender of the universe.
No one on the Earthen medical team knew the true identity of their patient, beyond the fact that he was a survivor of the war, requiring specialized medical attention. Heimdall had been given no prior warning, though the minute Clint was carried out of the Untamed Cave's mouth, the Watcher of Asgard saw him in an instant. Loki, who had wandered into the Bifrost beside him on curiosity's sake, had to hold Heimdall upright when a wave of shock nearly overtook him. Thor laughed slightly at his stricken reaction.
Not understanding the joke, Loki waited until the 'important person' appeared like a flash on Asgard, then banished away again just as fast. His own face turned to a striking, excitable blue when he threw it towards Thor. Asgard's new king laughed a second time over.
Clint arrived as they had carefully planned. A team of elven healers accompanied him, meaning to transition his care as gently as possible. He was excitable, though understandably so. They sensed his heart rate spike on the trip through the Bifrost and landing back on Earth. For the first time in technically seven years, Clint hardly knew how to react. He took it all in at once. The sight of Stark Tower in the distance, Avengers Mansion tucked on the other side of the city, the Empire State Building, Reed Richard's place. The sun setting behind the walls of mortar, brick, and glass. A swell of pride, hominess, and utter relief washed over him. He had fought so hard for this moment.
But then, it began to change. He hadn't troubled over it, at first, for his attention was too focused on all the excitement waiting for him out there. Baseball games on Saturday mornings, hot dogs in Central Park, chlorinated swimming pools in summer, he wanted everything. His body, though, began to fail him.
His heart rate spiked before he was pulled off the gurney. His face flushed, then changed, and a slow, purple-blue tinged the base of his lips and fingers. Clint was gasping, though he didn't realize it until the medical team had crowded almost on top of him and blocked the view of the setting sun.
His vision blurred. A cough formed in his throat that he couldn't hold back, and suddenly the cough became a wheeze. He inhaled, his larynx slamming together, trapping his trachea. It was like inhaling through a straw. Panicked, his eyes widened. He coughed again. Wheezed, inhaled, coughed.
A glass cover slammed closed over the bed he'd been placed on. It sealed him inside, beyond the hands of the men and women around him. Above his head, there came a rush of cold, dry air blasting down at him.
Cough, wheeze, inhale, choking, exhale, cough, wheeze, struggling to get his chest to rise. Eyes clouding over. He wanted to speak, but every effort went to breathing. He had to breathe.
"Bruce? Oh my God, is that him? Bruce, that's him!" Dr. Castillo shot out of the hospital doors, her lab coat fluttering around her. She squeezed in beside her colleagues to stare down at the man squirming beneath the glass.
"Hang on a sec, everyone, we need to see if this is going to work or if we have to take him back," Bruce told them, taking command of the situation. Heho pushed in at his side, double checking the oxygen saturation. They had reached 100%, a difficult task in a mobile unit.
"Is that who I think it is?" One of the other doctor's asked, looking around for confirmation. "That's Hawkeye, isn't it? We're treating Hawkeye!"
Heho looked up at Bruce. Concern, obvious in his eyes. "He deteriorates."
Clint tilted his head back, eyes blinking against the unclear focus. He clawed around the bed beneath him to find something to hold. Instead, he pressed his hand against the glass round top. Wheeze, cough, inhale, exhale, wheeze . . . his throat felt more closed than ever, like a sudden fit of anaphylaxis had grabbed hold of him.
"I recommend sedating him, placing an ET tube. Doctor Banner, we don't have a lot of time on this. Let's get him inside now!"
Bruce could hear the surgeon's demands, repeated once, then three more times. His gaze, though, remained on Clint. He thought back to his conversation with the Elven King, about how it might be Alfheimr keeping Barton alive, how he might never get the chance to leave that place.
One of the doctors grabbed him by the arm, as if to force an answer from him, and Bruce nearly acquiesced. Clint may do better on a mechanical ventilator. His diaphragmatic hernia could tear a larger hole the more he struggled, and continue to hamper his breathing. Sedating him, controlling his airway, made sense for any normal patient they decided to care for.
Then Bruce saw something else. Heho caught the same sign instantly.
"His wounds are tearing. He bleeds again. If he is not returned, the repair he has made might disintegrate completely!" Heho declared.
"Get him back!" Bruce ordered.
As fast as the group arrived on New York General's rooftop platform, the entire troop vanished through the Bifrost once more. They didn't wait to transfer Clint onto the gurney, or even remove him from the oxygen bed. Thor joined them again on Asgard, leaving Loki (despite his hearty plea to join) behind. His brother entertained no good relations with the elven race, given all he had done to see them destroyed in the past. Certain things would take centuries to forgive.
Thor tore the lid off the bed, scooped Clint into his arms and, with Steve taking his feet, they rushed him instantly back inside. Rinon stood in the hall as they passed.
"What has happened?" he demanded, following the progression, "Does he live? Tell me, please, that he lives!"
Thor and Steve set Clint back into the comfort of the down bed. Heho and Bruce set on him instantly with an entire team of Skydale Elves, ready to force a sturdy wind right into his lungs. They peeled his bandages away and, as they had suspected, his carefully-formed new skin and bone had begun to come apart.
Heho sent a critical look toward Banner. "I think we both understand what this entails," he said with an absolute solemnity.
Beneath them, Clint struggled to catch his breath. He saw the ring of his friends and family desperately waiting around him.
How could they possibly stay together now?
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