the language of flowers and silent things
Whumptober 2023: day 25 - buried alive
Warnings: thoughts on death
Word Count: 1.3k (gif not mine)
Summary: The tower shakes, and the avengers scramble.
A/N: 6 to go friends. Almost there.
Masterlist
Whumptober Masterlist
.
2014
NEW YORK
Yelena feels nothing as she plummets down.
Death, she thinks, should feel different; life flashing before your eyes, regrets, pleasures; something.
It makes her feel unbelievably sad.
She thought maybe in death, it might be peaceful, a release, not sadness and continued grief for what she doesn’t have.
Closing her eyes, she doesn’t bother to look down, waiting for the inevitable pain of death.
Instead, she hears a whoosh and warm body next to her and a tight grip underneath her armpits, then swinging them both into a nearby window with the momentum from a grappling hook attached to an arrow.
The bundle and roll into the building, enters them into the kitchen, as Clint breaks her fall.
He groans.
“Shit,” she repeats.
Glass everywhere, she picks it out of leg and shakes her hair, then goes to help him up.
“That would have been a stupid way to die,” she smiles at him.
He takes her hand and stands.
“It really would have,” he agrees.
The building groans, and she holds on to both Clint and the nearby bench.
“Do you think it will fall?” she asks looking towards the ceiling.
“Natasha’s up there somewhere.”
Clint nods.
“Yeah, she is, so is some of our friends,” he tells her.
“Oh,” Yelena replies, looking around at the Christmas decorations and stopping for a moment.
“How many do you think?”
“Six? If Bruce - the big green monster, has got out then it’s six.”
She nods.
She’s aware of Natasha’s powerful friends. The man of steel, the monster, the god, and the superhero.
She wonders just who will greet them when they make their way up.
Clint looks up and groans at the amount of stairs.
They both feel the shake, much like an earthquake, that rocks the building again; this time though, parts of the building move with it.
Clint covers over Yelena and raises his arms in protection of them both.
It shocks her, someone protecting her.
It’s never happened, not since Natasha.
She looks up at the man protecting her from debris in a stairwell and feels an intensity of emotion that she doesn’t really understand.
.
Sam smiles at the hole now opened up underneath him, and whilst he realises it can’t be good, he sees a way out and makes his way down the fissure of the tower.
He moves slowly and carefully down, trying not to make anything else move.
He’s surprised not to see Tony and the suits around him, and wonders why we hasn’t come across anyone just yet.
He looks around, dead worry sitting in his chest.
“Hello?” he calls hopefully.
“Sam?”
Peppers voice calls out and then she coughs.
He moves towards the sound of her voice, hoping she’s okay.
“Pepper?”
“Sam, we’re down here, I can’t move out and I can’t find Tony,” she says, slightly panicked.
Sam feels flashes to the war.
Picking bodies out of buildings.
He swallows hard.
“It’s okay Pepper, I’m coming,” he says, hopping further down.
“Keep talking to me, okay? Where’s Tony? When did you see him?”
He finally gets to where she’s stuck.
Sam smiles; trying to be reassuring.
“He’s somewhere here, we were in the room, the door was locked and he was trapped, Tony, he; he was stuck. I think… I think it had fallen on his arm.”
Moving some rubble from around her, he reaches and touches her arm.
“I’ll find him,” he promises, “grab my hand and we’ll try and pull you out, okay?”
He protects her head and helps her out to a clearing: she doesn’t look more worse for wear, just dusty and dirty.
“We’ll find him,” he says again as she hugs him.
.
Steve holds Natasha tight, grabbing Maria’s arm as the building moves.
“We need to get out of here,” he says redundantly.
“Tony, Pepper and Sam are somewhere here,” Natasha says, worried.
Maria nods.
“We’ll find them,” she says confidently.
Steve calls out their names, and they stop, listening for a response but don’t hear anything.
Natasha moves ahead, rounding the corner and calling again.
“Tony?”
“Nat?”
“Sam?”
“We’re down here!”
Maria moves with Natasha, carefully moving down the stairs and following Sam’s voice.
Natasha moves towards Pepper and gives her a hug, her panic visible on her face.
“We can’t find Tony,” she says, tears on her face.
Assessing the situation, Natasha notices the wings on Sam’s back and the fact that building has moved in twenty minutes.
“Do your wings work?” she asks.
Sam nods, “I think so.”
Natasha turns to Maria and Pepper.
“Do you think you can coordinate the fire and police on the ground?” she asks Maria.
Maria looks around and nods.
“I can send more help, I think,” she agrees.
Pepper shakes her head.
“I know what you’re going to say, I don’t want to leave without knowing he’s okay.”
Natasha nods.
“I know, but Clint’s down there too, and probably Bruce and we need to know they’re okay too,” she rationalises.
Pepper looks around to Steve and then Sam and finally nods.
“Okay…” she says, wiping at her face.
“Okay.”
.
The tower doesn’t move.
Sirens fill the air and she’s thankful that the fire below will finally be put out.
She wonders how Clint and Yelena are going and just where Bruce ended up.
Natasha trusts Maria to organise the emergency services, and Pepper to keep it together long enough.
“Tony!” Natasha calls.
“Tony!” Steve repeats.
There’s no response.
She drops down, hitting something soft. She thinks for a minute that it’s a bed or couch but when she sees two large eyes and a nose.
The stupid rabbit.
She laughs despite herself.
Pepper’s stupid Christmas rabbit stuck in between concrete chunks of building.
Tony had put a Christmas hat on it and everything.
She sighs, and then, she sees his hand.
“Steve!” she calls, “he’s here!”
She tries to find a way, to him, blocked by debris.
“Help me,” she says, as he drops down near her.
Steve’s strength is something else, and Natasha has never been so thankful for it.
They clear the way around Tony, and find him knocked out on Pepper’s rabbit.
Steve pulls Tony free, his arm bent strangely and gashes on his body.
“Why wouldn’t he have used his suit to protect himself?” Steve wonders aloud.
“EMP,” Natasha deduces, “killed the power of the entire tower, probably the suits as well.”
She checks he’s breathing and sits back next to him.
Holding his good hand, Natasha sighs.
“What happened?” she asks, “who came? What were they looking for?”
Steve shrugs.
“Jarvis would know,” Natasha says, looking up and around.
“I think the only reason the building is still standing is thanks to the reinforcements Tony put in after the attack.”
Steve checks on him again.
“Tony?”
Still nothing.
“Sam knows to come back right?”
He sits next to Natasha and places his hand on Tony’s leg.
“I think so,” she replies, squeezing Tony’s hand again.
.
Clint feels concrete fall on his head and just manages to stay conscious as he stares down at Yelena, covering her like a child.
Natasha would kill him if anything happened to her.
He moves and drags her with him to underneath a feels like a stable clearing.
“Are you okay?” he asks, resisting the urge to touch his head where he’s sure it’s bleeding.
“Are you?” she retorts.
There’s more commotion above and he hears Natasha’s voice.
“Come on,” he guides and pulls her to the stairs.
.
38 notes
·
View notes