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The Pen is Mightier! (penismightier) wrote in chaotic_library, @ 2015-01-04 13:27:00

[Bucky Barnes; R] I'll Be Home For Christmas: Chapter 13
Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: R
Notes: Oh my fucking god this chapter. THIS CHAPTER. (BTW, thanks, Bucky, for giving me an easy reason why this military-type installation wouldn't be showing up in real life. You save my bacon, dude.)
Title: I'll Be Home For Christmas- Chapter 13: Syria
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 5348
Summary: "Where'd the transmission come from, JARVIS?" Tony asked once they were in the air and heading up and east, but mostly up at the moment.


"Where'd the transmission come from, JARVIS?" Tony asked once they were in the air and heading up and east, but mostly up at the moment.

Bucky had questioned where Tony had been keeping that suborbital ship that they got it in the air so fast, and he'd brushed it off as Stark Magic.

Yeah, magic. Bucky would just bet on that.

However he'd done it, it was impressive, as was the ship. It was smaller than what he thought a suborbital ship that could hold several passengers in the back with all the military mission requirements should be, and it'd been waiting just above the walkway outside the penthouse of the Tower. Bucky suspected Hydra/SHIELD technology modified by Stark technology.

"I cannot say for certain, sir," JARVIS replied. "The message was too short to track accurately, but it seems to have come from near the near the southwestern border of Hamah that is shared with the Homs province. I have analyzed the security on the signal used, and I can say with seventy percent accuracy that Agents Barton and Romanov are likely in or near a military establishment."

"Probably not a currently used one, then," Steve said. "If they're needing extraction and couldn't stay on the line long enough to tell us exactly where they were, they're probably hiding."

Tony studied the map that JARVIS had brought up for them on the display. "What kind of radius can you give us, JARVIS?"

"I have calculated their location to within a two mile radius." The map zoomed in, showing a small area of land highlighted, about five miles west of the provincial border. "I cannot find any information regarding the presence of a military establishment there, however."

"There's one there," Bucky said. When all eyes turned to him, he elaborated. "Hyrda had microstations set up around the world. I couldn't list them all off by name from memory, and even if I could, we'd be here all day, but that's definitely one of them. I had a mission near Homs, there's some old oil pipelines not far from there. That station was the extraction point."

"Homs is a helluva way from the border," Tony said.

Nobody could see the bitter smile on Bucky's face behind his mask, but it was probably apparent in his tone. "When you want to frame someone else for murder, you don't do it from the scene of the crime."

Tony motioned to the map. "Show us where it is. JARVIS, once we have the coordinates, send them to Hill so she knows where to land us."

While Bucky zoomed in on the map until he was able to mark with reasonable certainty where the base was, Bruce spoke up from where he was going over his medical instruments, a large cooler of blood for transfusions next to him. "Do we know what their missions there were? Clint and Natasha's, I mean, not Hydra's."

"They were spying on the Islamic State," Steve said. "I have no idea anything more than that. The last we saw of Natasha, Clint had contacted her, said things were getting bad over there, she wanted him to leave, he wouldn't, they got into an argument about it. Of course, that was all in Arabic, and I don't speak Arabic, so for all I know, that wasn't true. But whatever happened, she must've decided it was dire enough to join him and abandon her mission in Nebraska to do it."

"Hm." Bruce pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. "He couldn't have been very high in the ranks, it hasn't been enough years since we were fighting the Chitauri. And I suspect even he wouldn't survive the brainwashing required to get beyond a basic level bayat to even get near the Amir. I can't see SHIELD or Homeland settling for less out of a spy of his caliber but access to the khalifa. Government organizations tend to underestimate the mental conditioning that these groups make their members undergo."

"So he was suspected of going where he did not belong," Thor said.

Bruce shook his head. "If they even suspected, he would've already been put to death. They might've started to tangle with some other group, perhaps a cell that didn't take a bayat to the ISIS khalifa."

"Okay, again, not speaking Arabic. What do those terms mean?" Steve asked.

"A bayat is just an oath of allegiance," Bruce said. "The khalifa is the guy in charge of the entire organization, currently Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. You might've heard of him in the news."

"A few times," Steve said. "So how would they get Natasha in without tripping any alarm?"

Thor spoke up before Bruce could do more than shrug his shoulders. "There have been reports in our local news in London of many young Muslim women from Britain leaving for Syria to join the Islamic State," he said. "Perhaps Natasha went under the same pretense."

"Probably," Bruce agreed. "You don't have to be an Arab Muslim to join the fi sabillilah. She probably joined him as his jihadi wife."

"So current theory is they ran into another group that their group didn't like, and they can't get out on their own, and it's too dangerous to stay?" Tony asked, looking around.

"Given what I know of the groups, I'd say likely," Bruce said. "Clint couldn't have been compromised long enough for Natasha to get there before he would've had his head cut off. And if she went as his jihadi wife from America, they couldn't suspect either of them of anything until whatever happened that made them run. And it must've been something bad, you don't violate that bayat without risking certain death. If they catch Clint and Natasha, they're both as good as dead."

"Which is where we come in," Thor said. He studied the display. "If there is a possibility of anyone nearby being after our friends, then we would be best not landing closer than a mile from the establishment they are hiding in. Even that might be drawing too much attention."

Bucky counted off distance from where he remembered the base to be. "Any farther, and we risk them not making it from there to the jet if one of them is injured. We're already taking almost four hours, even with suborbital flight, just to get there. The longer we take to get them to Bruce, the higher the chances one or the other won't make it."

Tony made a frustrated noise. "Yeah, and even as nice as this ship is, it doesn't have the firepower to take out an entire terrorist cell if they all attack. Maybe if we didn't have to risk hitting Barton and Romanov in the process, but those guys are pretty well armed out there."

"May I recommend that everyone secure themselves?" JARVIS interrupted. "We are about to enter suborbit, gravity's effect may be reduced."

Bucky looked at Steve as they strapped themselves in for the rest of the flight until it came time to land. "Betcha didn't think we'd be in space someday when we were kids," he said.

"Can't say it crossed my mind, no," Steve admitted.

"Are you two still getting over culture shock?" Tony demanded from his seat.

"We missed a lot," Steve said, tone bland.

"You are not as lost as I am," Thor said, offering assurance. "Our ships look like actual boats and nothing like this. I think Jane might've commented on it had she not been so dangerously ill from the aether."

Tony sighed. "I am surrounded by the culturally ignorant."

"Suffer," Bucky said.

The rest of the flight was tense and silent, and the closer they got to their destination, the more Bucky slipped into Mission Mode. He suspected that to one extent or another, the others were, too. He wished they knew more, mission unknowns didn't sit well with him. Too much room to screw something up.

Maria landed them within a mile of the defunct Hydra installation. Bucky checked the display map once they were landed. "We're just under a mile east of the extraction point," he said once they were landed, unbuckled, and finishing gearing up.

Tony handed him a pair of black goggles. "Here. Those were going to be a Christmas present, but circumstances, and all that. They're to replace the ones Romanov shot. Made of the same stuff, comes with your own personal HUD. You're using them to look for heat signals, any sign of trouble out there. We're taking your lead, you know the place. You find them, we'll be not far behind."

Bucky took the goggles, staring at them, then up at Tony. "Damnit, Tony, getting my brother up to visit me was supposed to be my Christmas present, not an expensive piece of equipment." He put the goggles on, regardless, staring through them as the computer inside them started displaying a dizzying amount of information, heat signals from his friends, threat analysis, showing all of them to be the identities of friends, and therefore non-threatening. That was going to take some getting used to.

"Those will keep you alive when you and Cap go out," Tony said. "Having your brother over for Christmas Eve won't. You're welcome. Now get out there. We'll follow you."

Bucky wasn't about to argue with Tony, not then, and Tony's plan made more sense, anyway. It'd been a long time since Bucky had been to that particular installation, but he knew its layout, had a good idea where any old security traps might still be. The others were following behind him by several yards.

"Excuse me, sirs," JARVIS said in his ear. "But I recommend haste. My sensors show that there is an incoming convoy of unknown origins to the south and traveling in the direction of the installation."

"Copy that," Bucky said, and sped up only slightly, the installation- and the memories that came with it -looming ahead. He shoved aside the number of casualties reported from that incident, and focused instead on everything he could remember about the installation itself. External security was limited to guards, automatic security system for approaching people unlikely.

That didn't mean the inside was the same way.

"You seeing anything yet, Buck?" Steve asked.

"Not yet," he replied, voice low. The structural integrity of the compound's outer wall didn't look compromised, so he backed up and got a running start, jumping at the wall, hitting it about halfway up. He planted his foot against it, propelling himself up the rest of the twenty feet it stood. He caught hold of the top edge and pulled himself up. No signs of life in the outer compound. A check with his HUD revealed no signs of hidden traps in the ground below him, so he hopped down. "Steve, you'll need a bit of room to make the jump over the wall, unless you want to be carried by one of the fliers."

"I'll take the extra room," Steve said.

"What, you don't want to be carried over a wall by one of us handsome men?" Tony asked.

"Funny, Tony."

Bucky let them banter in his ear while he searched the grounds, his Skorpion in hand. He knew they were on a limited timetable, with the approaching convoy, but going any faster than he was meant one of them could die from a security trap.

The front entrance was boarded up, to no surprise, but there were other entrances. "Going around the east side," he told the others. "The front door's blocked, doesn't look like it's been used."

There wasn't much to the base, it had been meant as an extraction point, and little else, with bare maintenance and staffing. The biggest purpose it served was medical care for injured operatives, and travel in and out. He moved around to the medical personnel entrance, in the northeast corner. The door was hanging open, and even though it could've simply been left that way upon evacuation, Bucky wasn't taking that to chance, and crouched, studying the door frame. His HUD targeted something in the lower left corner of the door frame and he carefully approached it.

A trip wire attached to a C4 explosive. A very basic and somewhat crude rigging, but it looked like it'd been placed recently. He reholstered his Skorpion and went to work at disarming the trap. "I just found a trip wire," he said quietly to the others. "It was placed recently. Heading in now." With the trap disarmed, he grabbed his weapon again, moving with careful, slow steps, achingly slow- that convoy was coming, and each second used was one less second they had to get out of there.

He stopped upon hearing a male voice, only passingly familiar, saying Natasha's name, and then something else in Arabic. He eased his way closer to the voice, mostly certain that it was Barton, and looked for signs of heat sources. His HUD displayed two warm bodies through a partial wall, one crouched on the ground next to the second, which looked to be lying mostly prone.

"Clint Barton?" he called out, declining to just step around the corner and startle him.

He heard the faintest noise of metal on concrete, followed quickly by "who's there?" in Barton's now recognizable voice

"Easy," Bucky said. "I'm the Winter Soldier, I'm here with the Avengers. We got your transmission."

"Move where I can see you," Barton replied. "No weapons."

Bucky put the Skorpion back in its holster on his back. Close enough. He held up his hands, stepping around the corner, focusing first and foremost on the weapon trained on him, his HUD targeting it as a Robinson Armament XCR. Information on it was hiding in his memory, but all that came to mind besides 'don't get shot by that thing' was that it was designed in 2004. Not terribly helpful.

The second thing he took in, even before Barton had a chance to finish making up his mind about Bucky, was that Natasha had been the prone figure, her head resting on Clint's knees. She looked disoriented, a long, thin piece of metal jammed into her thigh. Bucky wasn't sure how long she'd been injured, but she'd obviously lost enough blood that coherence probably wasn't her strong suit just then.

Barton lowered his gun, letting out an explosive breath. "What the hell took you guys so long?!" he demanded. "The shrapnel moved, she started bleeding." He set down the gun and motioned Bucky over. Bucky crouched by Natasha, examining the wound. Her loose fitting pants were ripped around the metal, tucked into the wound by the force of the impalement. There was a tight band wrapped around her thigh just above the wound. "I tourniqueted her, the bleeding started about two minutes ago. She's got another five, ten minutes, max. Please tell me you brought Banner and he came prepared."

"He's on the ship, he's brought surgical tools and some blood. We didn't know what sort of injury we'd be seeing," Bucky assured him, examining the wound. "I found them," he said into the comm. "She's bleeding, it's a thigh injury, looks like shrapnel impaled her femoral artery. Bruce, be ready, we're bringing her back to you."

"We're here, Bucky," Tony said, both in his ear, and from just around the corner and down the hall a bit.

Natasha rolled her head to one side, staring at Bucky blankly, then gave him the tiniest of smiles. "Thought I told you to stay out of trouble," she said.

"I should've said that to you," he told her, looking over when the others arrived. "Tony, you'll have to carry her over that wall, that'll jar her the least and you can get to the ship faster."

"I do hate to interrupt," JARVIS said, "but it seems our convoy friends have arrived. I recommend taking defensive measures."

Before Bucky could do more than look in Steve's direction, Steve was already looking around, evaluating their surroundings. "JARVIS, do we have enough time for Tony to get Natasha out of here without having to take evasive action?"

"I'm afraid not, Captain," JARVIS said.

"Damn," Tony said. "We'll have to try to break a hole in their offenses, get me a shot out of here. Once we get her back to Bruce, I can come back and help mop up." He looked towards the front of the base. "JARVIS is picking up between thirty and forty trucks, not sure how many people in them, but those can carry a lot, especially if you pack in like sardines. I'm seeing a lot of weapons, mostly assault rifles, but there's some stuff that looks bigger on top of the trucks. Guessing they're SRBMs." He lifted his head to look at Steve. "Call it, Cap."

Steve grabbed his shield off his back. "Bucky, you stay here with Clint and Natasha. Clint, you keep her alive, keep that wound plugged up. Bucky, keep them safe, we'll try to keep the worst of the fighting away from your corner here. Thor, if you can pull it off, get out there and see how many of those SRBMs you can knock out with your lightning. Feel free to beat anything that gets by you with Mjolnir. Tony, you and I hold the midline, try to draw some fire away from Thor so he can do his job. Bruce?"

"I'm here," Bruce said. "I'm not coming out to smash, you need me to help Natasha when she gets here."

"Wasn't going to ask you to," Steve said. "Make sure you have everything you need for her ready, you won't get much warning when we're able to get her and Tony out of here."

Whatever Bruce might've said in response was drowned out by the force of an explosion ripping through the perimeter wall and into the front entrance, blowing in cement and leaving an exit hole the size of a small car in the back wall. Response was instantaneous; Steve's shield was brought up to cover himself, Thor ducked down behind Steve to keep his face from getting rubble on it. Tony flew out into the center of the room, square between the entrance and exit holes, facing the oncoming combatants that were spilling out of their trucks, and fired off a series of small missiles from his shoulders, just to create some confusion and buy some time.

"Thor, get through or new back exit, up and over," Tony said, half-turned, motioning towards the blasted hole.

Bucky's HUD started blinking red, and he looked just in time to see an RPG-7 firing a TBG-7V, aimed directly at Tony's back. He yelled Tony's name in warning, too late for Tony to react, but fast enough for Steve to have jumped in and taken the shot with the shield, sending him crashing back into Tony, the force of the explosion knocking them into Thor and further out the exit hole.

Bucky crept forward from his corner, well-placed to hide Barton and Natasha, while giving him a good vantage point to watch the action and call shots. He reached for his Skorpion, intent on clearing some room for the other three to get to their feet when Barton spoke up.

"Here, take that," he said, and Bucky looked back to see Barton holding out the XCR for Bucky to take.

Bucky didn't question, gave him a thanks while grabbing it and laying down some cover fire. The front line of combatants that were storming in through their homemade entrance fell to the spray of bullets.

"JARVIS, who are we playing with?" Tony asked, and Bucky spared just enough of a glance to see him back on his feet, or rather, a few feet in the air, adding to Bucky's line of fire. Bucky ducked back a bit, still able to watch, but not out where he could draw attention to his location.

"Analyzing the flags on the personnel trucks indicates that this is a cell of the Islamic State," JARVIS replied. "I do hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there seems to be another group on its way, coming from the same direction."

"You must be kidding me," Steve said, ricocheting back bullet spray, then flinging his shield, knocking several fighters that had managed to get through the entrance in the heads, the shield smacking against the edge of the entrance and flying back to Steve's hand. "More jihadists?"

"I am not certain," JARVIS said. Outside, thunder rumbled, the sky growing dark and lighting hitting the trucks, causing the externally-mounted SRBMs to explode. The trucks shattered around the mounts, sending shrapnel and men flying, some on fire, some likely hit by the shrapnel from the trucks, and some probably already dead.

Bucky looked back at Barton and Natasha when he heard Natasha make a pained noise. "How's she doing?"

"I have the bleeding slowed," Barton said. "But I don't dare try to put pressure there, I might move the shrapnel more and open the severed ends of the artery. She'd bleed out before we got out of here."

Bucky grunted, turning back out to watch the battle. He raised the XCR, counting the seconds that passed, trying to track how much time they might have to get Natasha to Bruce. Men drew near, most by pure accident as they fanned out to try to circle Steve and Tony. The XCR wasn't terribly precise, not like a snipe would be, and he sorely wished for one then. But the Winter Soldier could make anything precise. He could snipe with a smoothbore from a klick away. Using an XCR with accuracy was easy.

Down one. Another one nearby. Enemy neutralized. One combatant caught sight of them. He ignored the HUD's targeting, stared the enemy combatant in the eye from behind his goggles. Five degrees up, headshot. Fire.

Another combatant down.

Seconds more passed. Tick tick tick.

He heard the rumble of more trucks. JARVIS had no idea who they were, which meant they weren't the Islamic State. Something occurred to him, and he turned back to Barton. "Who out there is after you?" he asked.

"Our jihadi cell," Barton said.

"Anyone else?" Bucky demanded, watching and feeling frustrated at not being able to join in the main fray with Tony and Steve. Thor had landed from wherever he'd been hiding out of Bucky's vantage point, and had joined Tony and Steve in taking on the combatants several of them per one Avenger. "JARVIS says there's another group incoming, he doesn't know who they are."

"Ask him if they have any flags or anything that says 'Shabaab Min Al-Jannah' on it."

"JARVIS, you hear that?"

"I did, Mister Barnes, and I can confirm that Agent Barton is correct. There are no records of a jihadist group with that name," JARVIS said.

"They do," Bucky said, turning back to Barton again.

Barton let loose a Russian swear that almost made Bucky laugh for how creative it was. He might've if he weren't so focused on keeping them safe. "That's the group that chased us off. Tell the others to try to get the jihadists occupied with the incoming Brothers, let them take care of each other, give us an opening to get out of here."

"Copy that." Bucky turned, taking note of where everyone was. Tony was leveling a blast of energy from his hand repulsors, Steve was flinging a live grenade that Bucky could only guess he'd caught incoming out into the crowd that was starting to get stopped by the bodies of their fallen comrades. Thor sent several flying into and through the far wall of the compound with a swing of Mjolnir.

Watching the fight, Bucky almost- almost -wondered if the threatened governments of Syria and Iraq couldn't just hire the Avengers to just wipe the entirety of the jihadists off the map. It was a very distant almost, though. The Avengers were good, but that might push them, and he had a feeling nobody wanted involved in that nonsense more than absolutely necessary.

"Barton says our new friends are another group that's in conflict with our current batch," he said to the others. "Recommending trying to distract both groups with each other while we initiate a 'get the hell out of here' maneuver."

"Sounds perfect to me," Tony said. "Thor, knock one of those trucks back towards the other incoming group, get them mad at each other."

"Doable," Thor replied, leaping over the main line of fighting and landing yards away, near the last of the trucks that had moved into a tight formation around the entrance. Bucky heard yells and curses in Arabic outside, seconds before he saw a truck go flying over the top of the nearer ones. There was a hell of an explosion not far away, and the jihadists that had been trying to swarm the compound turned, ducking out away from the Avengers and back to hold their own line as shots began to fire from farther away.

"They're busy, time to get moving," Tony said, flying over to the corner Bucky was guarding and moving to pick up Natasha. "I'm going ahead, cover my back," he said, very gingerly picking up Natasha and cradling her in his arms.

Thor rejoined them through the back exit, watching the two groups starting to fight each other. Tony took off, and Bucky and the other men followed, keeping half turned to watch for incoming fighters without running into a wall on their way.

"We are fortunate that these two groups do not seem to like each other," Thor said.

Barton was running ahead of them, trying to keep up with Tony. "Yeah, I'll explain later," he said.

Barton was forced to let Thor help him up over the perimeter wall- Bucky wondered how he'd gotten through that with an injured Natasha in the first place -while Steve and Bucky took their running leaps at and over the wall.

Tony had long-since beaten them to the ship, and Bruce was already working on Natasha. Tony was holding up a bag of blood that was attached to an IV that was hooked into Natasha's arm.

"Is she okay?" Barton demanded.

"I just got started, Clint," Bruce said, sounding distracted as he carefully, slowly tugged the embedded piece of metal. "Good tourniquet, that probably saved her life."

"Hill, we're all here," Tony said. "Get us out of here.

"Roger," she said in their ear pieces, and the sloped exit ramp closed behind them. The engines rumbled to life and Bucky felt the distinct force of inertia as they rose. They hadn't had time to engage suborbital flight preparations- either Hill would have to take them the slow way home, which might be bad, as Bruce might not have brought enough blood in the right blood type to keep her alive until he could get to the medical center in the Tower, or she'd have to land somewhere relatively nearby, go through preparations, and then take them up.

"Clint, come take that blood packet from Tony, Tony, I need your non-flesh hands to take this from me, I don't need anyone getting contaminated with someone else's blood," Bruce said, waiting until the men had traded places to finish pulling out the thin piece of metal. Natasha barely reacted, pale and respiration shallow. Bruce handed over the piece of shrapnel and immediately started his surgery. Bucky wished he knew enough about medicine to be a surgery assistant, but he couldn't even tell what Bruce was doing, exactly. He assumed Bruce was clamping the severed artery ends shut, but he couldn't be certain on that.

Bruce asked for one of them to grab another packet of blood, and Steve- the closest of the three men not already occupied helping him -obliged, trading it out with Barton as the first bag emptied, setting up the second bag to the IV.

Bucky stayed back out of the way, quiet and not doing anything to interrupt their work- Bruce operating, Barton holding the blood packets up to drip blood down the IV, Steve trading out full packets for the empty ones. Tony remained as the surgical assistant, JARVIS helping him keep track of Natasha's vitals.

"Bruce, her blood pressure's going way down," Tony said. "She's bleeding too fast."

"I know," Bruce said, expression one of intense concentration. "How much blood do we have, Steve?"

"Another four pints," Steve said after checking in the cooler.

"We'll try to get her through another two before I try Tetradoxine-B, stop the heart from pumping the blood out faster than we can get it in her," Bruce said.

Bucky wasn't a biochemist, and that chemical didn't sound at all familiar. "What's that?" he asked before he could stop himself.

"It's something Bruce developed for stress," Steve said, and Bucky wondered exactly how he knew that. "Slows the heart to one beat per minute. It'll wear off, but it'd buy Bruce time to get the arteries sutured and healing before we run out of transfusion blood."

Bruce didn't look away from his work, but Bucky saw him raise an eyebrow. "How'd you find out about that, Cap?"

"Someone Natasha knows told me. Don't ask me where he got the information, I couldn't say."

Couldn't. That was Steve's only standby lie that got by most people, but never past Bucky. He wondered exactly what it was that wasn't being said that Steve felt he couldn't say safely in that company.

"Bucky, how bad are you with needles?" Bruce asked.

"That depends on if you want me using it on someone else, or if they're coming at me," Bucky said.

"I'm not medicating you," Bruce said. "The Tetrodotoxine's in that steel box, it just needs the injection needle prepped for me. I can't spare my hands to do it. If we get through another two pints, I need you to do that for me."

Bucky maneuvered around Steve and Barton, careful not to jostle anyone, and took up position behind Steve, crouched on one knee by the box. Seconds passed. Tony kept a running update on Natasha's blood pressure, pulse rate, and oxygen levels. Another pint of blood was switched out. Bruce remained as focused on the surgery as Bucky was on mission.

More seconds passed. Bucky mentally counted them.

Tick tick tick.

Natasha's blood loss slowed, but didn't stop.

Tick tick tick.

Their mission had been to save her, even if mission failure didn't result in the death of a fellow Avenger, mission failure in general never sat well on him. Mission failure meant so many bad things, not just for the mission, but for him. He was trying to break that conditioning, but since he and Steve had never failed a mission since becoming mercenaries, Bucky hadn't exactly had time to kill that little fear demon living in the back of his skull and the pit of his stomach.

Add into that failure the death of a friend, and the whole idea shut down everything that might distract him in his brain from focusing on his mission. Keep her alive. But he couldn't do anything but be ready to give Bruce that medicine, ready to inject.

Tick tick tick.

Bruce finally looked up, studying the pint of blood that Barton had held up, two-thirds empty, then back down at Natasha's injury. "Tony, what's her vitals?"

"BP seventy over forty, pulse one fifty, but it's weak. O2 levels at 78. Those are holding steady now," Tony replied.

Bruce let out a sigh of relief. "Good. I got the arteries sutured. The bleeding's stopped. Now it's just a matter of getting more blood into her to bring her back around." He rolled his head, cracking his neck, then went back to work, closing up the wound. "Bucky, you can go sit back down."

Mission successful. Bucky followed Bruce's suggestion and found a seat to sink down into and wait for them to return to the Tower.