Notes:
TW: injuries, broken bones, bleeding, heights.
"Bucky?" Stone's voice said through his phone's speaker. There was an intensity to her voice and he could hear the hum of a vehicle in the background. "I need to talk to Sam but he's not answering his phone, can you find him for me?"
"Sam? Uh, he's a little busy at the moment."
"Its urgent. Please."
"Give me a minute." He covered the speaker and knocked on the plexiglass barrier. Sam's head turned and Bucky pointed at the phone. The video screen froze and Bucky entered the arena, handing the phone to Sam and helping Steve take the helmet off. They could both hear the conversation taking place on the phone only a few feet away.
"Sam?"
"What's up?" Sam answered brightly.
"I need a lift asap, call came in from Plotter Kill reserve, rescue, hoping not to make it a recovery but they don't know how much longer he'll last."
"I can pick you up in ten, chopper good?"
"Chopper's great, I'm nearly there."
"I'll get the bird ready, park on the far side near the hangers."
"Thanks Sam, you're a lifesaver."
Sam passed the phone back to Bucky and looked at Steve. "Sorry Steve, this'll have to wait."
"Go," Steve said firmly, blinking a little too quickly but smiling reassurance nonetheless. "Godspeed."
Steve and Bucky watched the chopper lift off eight minutes later from the balcony of the common room.
"Plotter Kill Reserve. That's what, an hour and a half drive?" Steve asked conversationally.
"Hour and forty." Bucky corrected; his arms crossed.
Steve rubbed his chin, failing to hide the curling corner of his mouth. "They might need a little more muscle. I could call and ask."
"Sam would have taken us along if that was the case."
"Right…" Steve said, turning his back on the field and leaning against the railing with his head tilted at his best friend. "Well that's it then. They'll be just fine. Nothing to worry about. Right Buck?"
Not worried. Bucky said it to himself as he packed a bag. Not because I care. Just curious, that's all. He kicked the bike into gear and roared down the highway. Professional curiosity, just want to see what its about. Not because I'm worried. Why'd I be worried anyway? Not like we're friends.
We could have been. A contrary voice spoke up from the back of his mind.
I don't need more friends.
No? Even if that was true, what if she does?
Bucky swore softly.
The mission had been to help Stone, and he'd deserted it at the first opportunity.
An hour and a half. He could have flown the chopper. She would have called him for a ride. If he hadn't lost his nerve. It had alarmed him to be looked after so gently. Shame flooded him as he realized he'd repaid her kindness with coldness. Had believed he didn't deserve it, so deeply, despite everything he logically knew, despite every long conversation with Rob. He'd been happy enough to help her out before, when she was drunk and delirious. And the first time she'd had a chance to return the favor, he'd shut her out.
Coward.
He growled low under his breath and pushed the bike to go faster, praying there were no cops on this stretch of highway.
Bucky pulled into the parking lot at the head of the hiking trail to see a tent and a group of volunteers setting out water bottles and speaking to a park ranger in uniform.
"Sir, you can't go up the trail, there's an active rescue taking place and we can't allow…" The woman stumbled over her words as he glared at her and the ranger stepped in with a raised hand.
"What is your business here?"
"Stone, I'm looking for Stone." Bucky said, grunting as he realized how incomprehensible it was to be looking for stone on a mountain. "A friend." Not much better, the park ranger still looking confounded.
"Bucky?" Sam's voice came from around the back of the tent. "Is that you?"
"You know this guy?" The ranger asked, still watching Bucky with suspicion.
"Yeah, he's with me."
"Alright Wilson, be careful out there."
"Will do, hey Lisa, can you toss my buddy a water?" Sam asked, and the petite blonde grinned, handing him the bottle. He gestured toward a maintenance road off one side of the trailhead. "C'mon Bucky, they're up this way."
Ten minutes of walking fast, at first a flattened trail it grew increasingly inclined and left Sam huffing a little. He held Bucky up at the third switchback.
"Whatever is going on, you can't interfere. We're only observers here, you've got to promise me, Buck."
"Fine."
Sam looked him over, squinting at him like he wasn't sure this was wise. "Alright, its just through here." He pointed at a spot a little further up the trail where recent foot traffic had trampled down the undergrowth off to one side.
Following the path, Bucky marched out onto a shallow slope sparsely interrupted by scrub brush. Evidence of previous rock slides lay in long dusty layers to his right. Ahead of them a helicopter waited with the pilot. Sixty yards away to his left, a group of men and woman wearing reflective vests and helmets stood at the bottom of a cut in the mountainside, one sat on the ground with icepacks on his legs.
And there, halfway up the cliffside, tiny at this distance, a figure wearing a yellow vest. Ant sized, a flash of blue on a ledge above revealed the position of the fallen hiker.
Sam spoke quietly, as though sound could bring the whole hillside down on them. "The SAR team is already in position to provide medical assistance and get the patient in the air as soon as they get him down, there's nothing else for us to do right now."
"Is that…?" Bucky's question trailed away as he looked at each member of the team on the ground for the familiar figure of the only person here, he cared about and failed to find it. The climber was too far away to distinguish features beyond the dark hair, but he recognized the intentional movements.
"Stone? Yeah." Sam said in answer to Bucky's distrustful inspection of the scene. "They sent up two of their own guys first, but the rock is too unstable for anchoring above that-" here he pointed at a change in the colour of the cliff-face, "-line there, Stone is one of the best free climbers in the business, she tried to get another one in about twenty feet up from there, but it broke loose on the first attempt. Guy was lucky he was only ten feet off the ground when it came down, he's a little banged up but nothing broken."
"Since when has she…" Bucky started, breaking off and holding his breath as the handhold the climber was using fell away and she swung in midair on only one hand and a single foothold. She was moving very slowly, stopping completely on occasion as a fresh fall of shale trembled off the cliffside around her. She was so far above the topmost anchor point and Bucky was calculating just far she could go and still have any hope of the rope breaking her fall.
"Been working with search and rescue?" Sam finished for him. "She was in their system as an emergency contact ever since she came back from her last deployment, but given her injuries they didn't actually call her in. About a month ago she started volunteering with a local team and this is the first real call she's been on. Don't worry, Buck, they know what they're doing," Sam said putting a comforting hand on his shoulder and giving him a sympathetic look. "There's a jump cushion at the bottom and her belay partner is one of the best in the business, he's got thirty feet to catch her if she falls. This is what they've trained for, they know what their doing."
"Injuries?" Bucky asked sharply.
"Not my story to tell Buck." Sam said turning back to the scene and crossing his arms.
Bucky pondered the new information. Testing she'd said. The extreme attention to detail in her strength and endurance training at the gym now made sense, as did the callouses on her hands.
"Why didn't you go?"
"Fly up there and get him with the Falcon suit you mean?" Sam asked, shaking his head. "I offered, we ran a test on a separate section of the cliff face, but the thrusters destabilized the rock. I scouted out his location but the guy is in bad condition, I wouldn't be able to support him well if there's anything spinal going on. It's still on the board as a last resort, but Stone was confident she could get it done with less risk to him."
One tentative hand hold at a time, scanning the rock for strengths and fault lines, preparing to fall back on a stronger position if it gave way. Stone worked across the vertical incline slowly, every emotion, every fear had fled away the minute she was off the ground. The only thing in the world was the mission and the rock under her fingers.
A whimper sounded a little way above her.
"Marcus Ferman?"
"Yeah- that's me." The middle-aged man grunted, shuddering as a rock skittered past him. "I'm gonna die out here, aren't I? I don't want to die, I've got a kid."
"You're not dying today, Marcus, just focus on my voice, I'm coming up to you so don't move." Stone said, swapping out hand holds and testing another foothold. This was the most sensitive section, not because of the rock itself but the risks. The safety harness she wore was connected to an anchor she'd set some way below them, enough to slow her fall and prevent her death, but it would leave her at the bottom in who knows what condition and the ledge Marcus was on might fracture if her movements caused a slide that undercut his position. "Nearly there. Do you know where you're hurt?"
"Uh, I, everything- kinda, it hurts to breathe and my leg is killing me." A sound of shifting from above and more shards of shale fell, stinging her face.
"Marcus, I need you to keep as still as you can, okay? Don't move. Can you tell if you're bleeding?"
"Uh, yeah, my leg is… well." A dry retching sound followed a sharp inhale and he spoke again in a trembling voice. "it's not looking right, I can't…"
"That's ok Marcus, focus on my voice and look up at the sky, ok? I'm almost to you, and then we'll get you looked after, ok? Just hang in there for another minute."
She was free climbing and testing each tentative hold before letting it take her weight. She'd been climbing for thirty minutes but the ache wasn't cutting through the adrenaline yet. That would come later, for now she only had one goal, broken down into three words: Secure, Stabilize, Extract. Her patient came into view, laying on his side in the fetal position on the left side with his left leg splayed out and back. She climbed onto the ledge, grateful to find it more stable than she'd expected, though dreadfully narrow.
"Alright Marcus, my name is Sarah, and I've got you now. You're going to be okay."
He was trembling despite the coat he wore and she apologized as she zipped it open to feel his ribcage. Three broken ribs, and the soft spongey texture under his skin indicated bleeding in the intercostal spaces but no evidence of lung punctures and he wasn't coughing up anything. The knee was hyper extended, and she took great care in straightening it, probable greenstick fractures and damage to the cartilage in the knee, at most a spiral fracture, but it wasn't displaced, a miracle considering how far he'd fallen. Abrasions from the sharp rock marked his hands and legs and to a lesser extent his face, but the wounds were shallow and had mostly clotted except for a few larger stone shards in his shin which she cushion wrapped immediately.
Stone radioed her findings to the team waiting with the chopper at the bottom of the hill.
"I could try to set an anchor up here, but the way these fracture lines look, I'm concerned we'd just end up bringing the ledge down on top of us. Have to come down the way I came up. ."
"Roger that." … "Is the patient within your weight threshold?"
Stone looked Marcus over and nodded. "Affirmative, permission to move the subject?"
"Granted. We'll have Wilson on standby to catch you if we see signs of a slide."
"I'll stabilize and get moving then, over."
Stone turned back to her patient and began extracting things from her bag. "I'm going to wrap your chest and then we'll splint this leg and get you out of here, ok?"
"I can't move my leg, I can't-" He was beginning to hyperventilate and she grasped his chin firmly but it didn't stop his rambling. "My son, I'm never going to see him. He's only five-"
"Marcus, look me in the eyes." She waited for him to obey and then spoke with perfect conviction, "I know you're scared right now, but I'm damned good at my job, you hear me? Now, I am going to get you off this mountain, but I need you to trust me. So, look at me. I don't look scared, do I?"
"No Ma'am."
"That's right."
She nodded sternly and released his chin, working quickly wrap his ribs and leg to prevent any further damage. Marcus pressed his eyes shut at the fresh scattering of rock as she manoeuvred him into the harness and instructed him on what would happen next.
"You're going to be my backpack, and all I need you to do is to stay as close to me as you can, don't lean back or swing your legs out and keep your head down, can you do that for me?"
"Yes Ma'am."
"Keep your eyes closed. Deep breath, hold it for four, then exhale. I've got you." She said as she clipped the frame on her back and carefully lowered them off the ledge to her last set of holds. Several minutes of retracing her steps hadn't brought them much below the level of the ledge and she paused to catch her breath. It was going to be a long descent.
He relaxed slightly and she could hear him muttering,"three, four, out… three, four. In…"
"What does your son look like?"
"Henry's the spitting image of my wife, he's got this mop of curls and…" Marcus prattled on about Henry and Stone heard the love in his voice as he described the boy and praised his wife for being such a wonderful mother.
It took nearly three-quarters of an hour to reach the belay point and Marcus had grown quiet, offering only single word responses to her prompts. He was tired and the adrenaline was wearing off. Stone understood all too well, her shoulders and wrists screamed every time she had to shift weight between the left and right hands, and her left forearm burned hot.
"I'm taking up the slack." Came the welcome words of Jones through her radio. "Signal when you're ready and I'll let you down real easy."
"What's happening now?" Marcus said behind her, his voice rising again.
"We're nearly there Marcus, this is our anchor here, and now we're going to walk down the wall to the team, just stay close and we'll be on the ground in no time. Ok? You might feel a little jolt, but I'll be as gentle as I can. Just keep taking those deep breaths for me Marcus, can you do that?"
"Yes, yes, I'm… I'm trying." He answered in a quivering tone.
"You're doing really well Marcus, we're almost there."
...
"Sarah?"
...
"Yeah?"
...
...
"Thank you."
Notes:
Are you still holding your breath? I am.
Also... Name Reveal! AHHHHGGGHHHH
Of course, Bucky is still in the dark about it, but the time is growing nearer.
What did you think of the chapter? Stone is very good at what she does but she's not invincible and there may be some opportunities for Bucky to help her when she finally gets back on the ground, so look forward to some trauma drama in the next one!