Chapter Text
You ride your motorcycle down the snow-covered, uneven road surrounded by decaying homes. You expect most of them to be abandoned, but if someone came out and cussed you out for noise pollution or running through their front yard, you wouldn’t be surprised either. It was heartbreaking to see the country of Sokovia in such terrible condition. Maybe once you and the Avengers flushed out the toxic HYDRA presence, it would restore some peace to its citizens.
Tony cuts through the cloudy gray sky, a blur of red and gold, and is the first to locate Baron von Strucker’s base. He heads in alone to find Loki’s stolen scepter, leaving everyone else to clear the outside.
Thor fights alongside Steve in the forest, their combined forces taking down HYDRA agents by the dozens. The Hulk leaps from acre to acre of land, body slamming concrete forts into gravel. Clint and Natasha provide backup from a distance, while you’ve been given the task of securing the perimeter.
And it was a pretty big perimeter, so you stole a motorcycle from a HYDRA agent and wove your way through the nearby village, bumping along the cobbled streets. When nothing stood out as suspicious, you headed back to the forest to regroup.
“There’s an enhanced individual on the field,” Steve says in your earpiece. “Keep a lookout.”
“Clint’s hit!” Natasha says.
You twist the throttle harder. The wind bites into your exposed cheeks and you regret not listening to your girlfriend to let Tony add a helmet as part of your uniform. Once you clear the last row of homes and fly through the trees of the forest, you make out Clint lying on the ground, Natasha huddled over him.
“Can someone take care of that bunker?” Natasha asks. Your eyes are immediately drawn to the nearby brick structure, roughly the size of a one-story house. Perched on its top was a turret blasting trenches in the ground.
Your wheels kick up snow as you ride past Clint and Natasha. You grip the handlebars as tight as you can, jumping off the seat and somersaulting forward. With your enhanced strength, you pick the motorcycle off the ground and flip it over your head, hurling it at the bunker. It collides with an explosion of fire and the shooting ceases immediately.
“Thanks, babe,” Natasha calls.
“You’re welcome!” Having lost your mode of transportation, you jog back towards her and Clint. A HYDRA agent, crouched in a thick clumping of bushes, has a clear shot at you with his bazooka. However, your movement throws off his aim and when he fires, his rocket hits a tree behind you.
You feel the rush of air from the blast and the heat on the back of your neck before you hear the explosion. The tree trunk splinters into wooden shrapnel with pieces longer than your leg. You’re lucky in that you only catch one, but it impales you right through your stomach.
“Ouch,” you mutter, falling to your knees, black spots popping up in your vision. The Hulk comes by and sweeps the agent off his feet, bending his bazooka like a straw.
“Y/N?” Natasha says when she sees you go down. Her and Clint are unharmed, too far away from the blast to get hit.
You inhale through clenched teeth, slowly reaching for the branch lodged in your gut and closing your eyes to brace yourself. With a hard yank, it slides right out and you toss it away. Blood stains the snow red and you shake your head to stay conscious.
The new hole in your uniform allows you to watch as the wound closes instantly. It takes a moment for the pain of your insides stitching themselves back together to pass, but when it does, you breathe a sigh of relief. You get up and walk over to Clint and Natasha like nothing ever happened.
“Don’t you wish you could heal as fast as me?” you ask Clint, who holds a hand to a burn on his ribcage.
“That’s gross,” he wheezes, pain evident in his voice.
“Clint’s been hit pretty bad,” Natasha tells the rest of the team. “We’re gonna need to get him out of here ASAP.”
“Once we secure the scepter, we can leave,” Thor says.
“Leave? You guys don’t want to hang around, grab some food or something?” you jest, but no one laughs.
“Y/N, we need to move Clint,” Natasha says, ducking as gunfire starts raining down again.
“I got him. You lead the way.” You pick Clint up with ease due to your enhanced muscles, carefully draping him over your shoulders in a fireman’s carry. You follow Natasha out of the forest and into one of the homes you had ridden by on the motorcycle earlier. She enters first, clearing the room, then motions you inside.
The exterior may have looked unappealing, but the interior was even worse. All the windows were broken, glass covering the rotting wooden floorboards. The bullet-riddled curtains flutter like ghosts and a layer of dust covers the kitchen counters. It seems like a strong gust of wind is enough to topple the entire structure.
You place Clint on the floor and Natasha covers his burn with a patch of gauze from her belt.
“How did that happen?” you ask Clint, noticing the paleness in his face.
“Distracted,” he grunts.
“I thought nothing gets in between Hawkeye and his target.”
“I don’t know what it was—who it was,” he says. “He was a blur. I was trying to look for him when I got hit.”
You hear the sound of something falling to the floor in another room. Natasha hears it too and looks to you.
“I’ll check it out,” you offer. There was little that scared you with your ability to heal from any physical injury. But you draw your gun anyway, carefully pieing each doorway and peeking into the adjacent room. It isn’t until you reach the last one, naturally, that you find someone there.
It’s a young girl, no older than ten, her hair matted and streaked with grease. Beneath the layer of dirt on her face, her blue eyes pierce into yours. She wears a raggedy dress patchworked together with different fabrics. She’s also holding a gun that shakes in her thin arms as she points it at you.
“Easy,” you say. “I need you to put the gun down for me, okay?”
The girl shakes her head.
“Here. I’ll put mine away.” You holster yours and slowly drop to your knees, raising your hands in submission. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“That’s what the last person said,” the girl hisses. “And now my mommy is dead.”
“I’m sorry,” you whisper as your heart breaks for her. “I’m here to help, I promise.”
The girl’s arms are trembling from holding up the gun for so long. She’s so tiny that you fear—more than getting shot—that pulling the trigger will blast her back and hurt her.
“We don’t want any trouble,” you say. “My friend is hurt and we need a place to keep him safe.”
“Y/N?” Natasha hears you talking from the other room but doesn’t know who you’re speaking to. The last thing you want is for her to barge in and scare the girl, but you’re confident your healing will make sure you walk away unharmed.
“I’m fine!” you answer. But Natasha’s been with you long enough to hear the nervousness in your voice. Clint notices her stress and squeezes her hand, silently telling her to look for you. She leaves his side and goes searching.
While you try and reason with the girl, a redheaded young woman peers in through the space where the window used to be. Her name is Wanda Maximoff and she is the twin sister of the speedster whom Clint already had an encounter with. When she sees the Avengers logo on your shoulder, her anger spikes, knowing the Avengers’ association with Tony Stark. She uses her magic to manipulate the girl’s mind. You’re too busy with the little girl to notice Wanda’s interference.
“We can help you,” you say to the girl, when suddenly her eyes flash from blue to red. “Hey, are you okay—”
BANG.
Wanda forces the girl to pull the trigger, using her magic to put some extra force behind the bullet.
The bullet finds itself in the spot between your eyes and your head whiplashes back. You’re immediately knocked out and you slump to the floor.
Natasha hears the gunshot and runs in the direction it came from. Wanda runs away from the house before she can be seen by Natasha, who bursts into the room. She sees the little girl holding a gun and you lying lifelessly on the floor with a bullet in your head.
But Natasha won’t harm a child, even if she did hurt you, so she throws one of her taser disks instead. It catches the girl on the arm and her entire body spasms. She drops the gun and falls, lying as limp as you.
Natasha retrieves the gun before checking on you. She’s not too concerned, even when a dribble of blood leaks down your face from the bullet wound. After checking on the girl, Natasha goes back to you and shakes your shoulder lightly. “Come on, Y/N,” she says. “Kick that healing into gear and come back to me.”
But you’re completely motionless, the faint pulse in your neck the only indication of life.
Natasha waits a minute, then two. She’s very protective of you and hates when you get hurt, even though you’re basically invincible. Now, she’s a little worried when your body doesn’t reject the bullet like it usually would.
“Y/N’s down, too,” she says to the others through her microphone, trying to hide her fear as she drags you over to Clint. He sees the bullet in your forehead and raises an eyebrow.
“Not healing?” he asks.
“I’m not sure why not.” Natasha’s stomach cramps at the thought that you might be seriously injured. She’s seen you get shot before, although never in the head, and your body was always able to push the bullets out and heal. For whatever reason, it doesn’t seem to be the same this time.
Thor and Steve arrive to take you and Clint to the Quinjet. Tony successfully locates the scepter and Natasha is called in to calm Bruce down from his Hulk form. The girl who “shot” you is handed over to the Sokovian equivalent of Child Protective Services. Natasha only tells them she was found abandoned in a home, purposely leaving out what she did to you.
The ride back to the Avengers Tower is painfully silent. Natasha doesn’t leave your side, anxiously waiting for your body to heal itself, but it doesn’t. When everyone arrives, Dr. Cho is there to take Clint and easily patches him up. You require a team of doctors to surgically remove the bullet, but once it’s out, it only takes a few minutes for your body to heal the damage to your brain and skull.
They remove your uniform and dress you in a T-shirt and shorts Natasha brings down for you, then move you to a private room to let you wake up naturally. When you crack your eyes open, you feel an ungodly pounding in your temples, like someone took a kitchen mixer to your brain.
You don’t recognize your surroundings either and try to get out of bed before a nurse comes in and stops you. You flop back onto the bed in defeat. Your head feels like a 100-pound weight attached to your neck as it lolls on the pillows.
Natasha is just finishing her shower when Bruce comes to tell her you’re awake. They go down to your hospital room, where Tony and Steve already surround your bed, heads together, whispering to each other in harsh mutters. They cease talking when Natasha arrives and look at her expectantly.
“Hey, Romanoff,” Tony greets. “Glad you could make it.”
“Get out of my way.” Natasha rushes to your side, glad to see your forehead smooth and unpunctured again. She squeezes your shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay.” You’re not sure why you’re getting so much attention from everyone. All you want is to be left alone so you can sleep.
“I knew you’d be okay.” She bends down to kiss your cheek. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
“Sorry?” Your brain is still trying to process the events that led you to this hospital room, and the memories are extremely jumbled.
“The doctor told us he wants to keep Y/N overnight—” Steve starts.
“Why? Everything’s fine,” Natasha replies.
“Well—”
“You’re fine, right, babe?” she whispers into your ear.
“Yeah.” It’s not the truth, but you’ll say anything to get everyone to leave you alone.
“Perfect. How about we go to our room?” she asks. “I know how much you hate the med bay.” Due to your past, she knew you were never truly comfortable in a hospital setting. The smell of disinfectant and the sounds of stainless-steel tools rattling against each other could get your heart racing more than jumping out of the Quinjet without a parachute. But right now, you’re so sluggish you can’t think of anything but the desire to sleep.
“Sure.” You can’t seem to respond in more than one-word sentences. She helps you sit up and step out of the bed.
“Natasha, this might be a little premature—” Steve warns.
“We’ll be fine, Rogers,” she brushes off, wrapping an arm around your waist possessively and helping you stand. She leads you up to the top floor and takes you into a large bedroom. As soon as you see the bed, you immediately start gravitating towards it, but she stops you.
“Don’t you want to get cleaned up first?” she chuckles. You don’t even notice the blood and dirt caked to your body, but at this point, you don’t really care.
“’m just really tired,” you slur.
“It’s okay. I’ll help you.”
For whatever reason, you’re so weak you can barely stand long enough in the shower for her to rinse you off. You almost fall asleep sitting on the toilet while she blow dries your hair before she finally takes you to the bed. You don’t even notice when she slides in behind you, covering both of you with the blankets. The second your head hits the pillow, you pass out.
The next morning, you wake up with your limbs tangled in hers under the blankets. The throbbing in your head has dulled to a manageable ache and you twist around to free yourself.
“Up already?” she says, her voice heavy with sleep. She throws an arm across your chest to keep you from getting up. “What’s your rush?”
“Um…” You look down at her arm on your chest, gently plucking her wrist and pushing her arm off.
“What’s wrong?” She sits up and you mirror her defensively. “How are you feeling?”
“Do nurses sleep with their patients now?” you ask.
“What are you talking about?” Her expression morphs to one of confusion.
You finally decide to voice the concern you’ve had since you woke up in the medical bay yesterday. “Who are you?”