Title: So Call Me, Maybe
Chapter: Two
Pairings: Bruce/Tony
Warnings: Blood and misplaced limbs in this chapter.
Genre: Drama, Romance, Hurt/Comfort
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After the battle in New York, Dr. Banner is once again off to the furthest corner he can find; but when disaster follows in his footsteps that is none of his own doing, Tony Stark won't sit idle.
Author's Notes: My first Avengers fic. :3 My lousy Filipino was corrected by the lovely thestar-born on tumblr!
It took far too long to get there, for Tony’s taste. Had the suit been ready, he could’ve gotten there much quicker.
By the time his jet leaves, though, he’s managed to get two doctors and a few nurses to jump on board to come aid the wounded- he can’t imagine there are too many doctors with undamaged modern supplies available at ground zero of an earthquake.
As it is, Pepper is already trying to fill him in on everything she can find out; she’d stopped trying to convince him not to go the moment he’d said Bruce was there. She made her contacts, and had just gotten off the phone with someone close to the disaster zone when she called Tony.
“It’s pretty much as bad as it can get, Tony.”
“Tell me.”
“The area was already a slum before the earthquake even hit. No resources nearby,” Pepper explained, and Tony heard her shifting papers around. “Most of the victims are still trapped. They’ve got no way to extinguish the fires. Tsunami warning expired 20 minutes ago, they got lucky there.”
“Not sure if lucky is the word for it,” Tony said, raising an eyebrow though she certainly couldn’t see him at the moment. “Did you get me transportation?”
“You’ve got a runway expecting you at the US base on the main island. From there, they can get you on a military transport helicopter and drop you at their field base, about 3 miles out from the epicenter. After that, you’re on your own.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Tony said with a smirk. He wasn’t worried about the getting out part yet- he’d worry about that once he’d found Bruce.
Pepper’s voice was softer now. “Don’t you think he’d have…you know. If he was conscious. Keeping control there, it can’t…”
“If he’d Hulked out, we no doubt would’ve heard about it by now. SHIELD would be up our asses with their whining by now,” Tony said, taking a glass of whiskey from the stewardess. One of the doctors glanced across the aisle at him curiously, then turned his attention back to the TV monitor set to a news channel playing helicopter footage from the island.
“Do you want me to contact any of the others?” Pepper asked, and Tony knew exactly what she meant- calling on the other Avengers for help.
“No. No, the last thing we need is Captain Spandex blabbing to SHIELD about the doctor being in a disaster zone and at risk of…getting angry. If they find out we’ll never shake them off his case. No, I’ll handle this.”
“Be careful.”
“I’ve got this, stop worrying,” Tony said with his usual air of confidence, hanging up the phone and turning back to the monitor.
He scoured every inch of footage for any sign of the other scientist, but saw nothing.
* ~~~~~~~~ *
“We can’t set up any closer! The smoke would smother us!”
The yell was barely heard over the rhythmic whump-whump-whump of the helicopter, and the craft slowly soared lower, skimming over thick trees. Tony could already see the fires burning on the horizon, like a violent sunrise under a sky black with smoke.
One of the soldiers tossed him a green bandana. “Cover your face if you go in there, Mr. Stark! You don’t wanna breathe this shit!”
A sudden jerk, and the helicopter dipped down into a clearing that was already set up as a base camp of sorts. Tents and floodlights were set up, and rows upon rows of injured and dying people were laid out on white sheets under the largest of the open air tents. The helicopter landed on the other side of the clearing from the makeshift infirmary, and Tony jumped to the grass, staying low until he was clear of the spinning blades.
“You sure about this?” the team leader asked him, and Tony nodded.
“Think I’d be standing here if I wasn’t sure?”
The doctors ran past them toward the infirmary, followed by their assistants, eager to get to work after seeing that there were only two military medics at work helping people so far. Tony turned away and looked toward the west, to where the fires still burned.
Survivors stumbled away from the town, bleeding and burned. Many were crying, or helping others toward the tents.
Tony suddenly felt very alone in the middle of a mess of people, looking for one lost soul amongst the chaos.
It had taken him almost 19 hours to get here, yet as he crossed the threshold into the ruins, time seemed to slow down, almost stop. The roar of the fire sounded like a freight train at his heels, and the smell in the air was one he’d only smelled once before, but it was a smell you never forgot. The smell of burnt human flesh. Wails of agony cut through the thick air, some muffled by piles of wood and stone.
Tony coughed and held the bandana up against his nose and mouth, passing through a cloud of smoke. He passed a man sitting on a crate, and at first, the man seemed fine- until Tony caught sight of the other side of his face. The burned, blistered skin of his cheek was hanging free, a bloody flap that revealed muscles twitching and blackened below.
The man didn’t even seem to take notice of it. He stared ahead, muttering, and Tony looked away and concentrated on activating his earpiece as he kept walking.
“JARVIS, how far?”
“Approximately 2 miles, sir. There is interference with the signal due to radio traffic and environmental factors.”
Keep walking, he thought, moving around a burning pile of debris. He sped up, focusing on his task- find Bruce. Everything else would fall into place, as soon as that happened, he was sure of it. There was fire, and screams, but nothing he could do; the wreckage was too hot to move, the people who begged him as he passed hadn’t realized that their loved one was already dead. Or they just didn’t want to accept it.
No way he’s dead. He would’ve Hulked up when the first beam fell on him. Fire is like a warm shower for the Big Guy, Tony reassured himself, his eyes stinging as a curtain of smoke whipped by him.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour of walking through hell, a familiar voice. “Sir, the signal is coming from approximately 20 meters ahead,” JARVIS informed him, and Tony broke into a run, focusing in on a row of what used to be houses, he was pretty sure. Now it was wood piled on stone and brick and more wood, a pile of nondescript debris, other than the occasional recognizable door or window frame. No fires burned here yet, though.
“Bruce?” he called out, trying to look for a starting point. Not far from him, an older woman picked through the debris, gathering up household items that seemed salvageable; a cooking pot here, a book there. She didn’t look injured. Tony stumbled over the pile to her, and she gave him a confused frown.
“Hi, hi. Um…do you speak English?” he asked, and she pursed her lips together.
“Little.”
“Oh, good. An American doctor was here, in these houses. Have you seen him?”
“Doctor?”
“Yes, a doctor. American.”
The woman shifted and pointed down the road- or what used to be a road, anyway. “American doctor,” she repeated, her accent thick as she struggled for the words. “That way. Not far.”
A wave of relief crashed over Tony, and he sighed. “Thank you,” he said, skidding and almost falling down the pile of debris and onto the road. Bruce was alive. He wasn’t far.
“Bruce!” he yelled, breaking into a jog, the wreckage higher here on both sides of the street. He stopped when he heard a scream nearby, one that sent a chill straight through him- then a softer, familiar voice.
“"Ssh, not much longer. Alam ko masakit, pero kaya mo 'to.”
“Ang sakit...ang sakit!”
Tony stepped around the corner and stopped for a moment, just staring.
Dr. Banner was there, kneeling in a pile of twisted metal. He was covered in soot and dirt, and a filthy cloth was wrapped around his head, drying blood caked down one side of his face. His clothes were torn, in some places on purpose, it seemed- he’d used scraps off his shirt to hastily bandage his head, and his arm too, now that Tony looked closer.
Bruce hadn’t noticed him yet, though. The doctor was focusing on the young woman still trapped under a metal beam. Tony stepped closer, now able to see that her leg was more like ground meat just below the knee, a mess of smashed flesh and splintered bone where the beam pinned it.
It only took a moment to figure out what Bruce was doing. He’d tied a makeshift tourniquet just above her knee, and his hands were slick with dark blood as he worked a knife in under the ruined bone. He was amputating the leg to get her out and get her to help, and she was screaming hoarsely, her voice raw and tired.
Swallowing down the nausea, Tony rushed forward and knelt next to Bruce, rolling up his sleeves. “Tell me how to help.”
Bruce did a double take, then stared for moment, as if he didn’t believe that Tony was actually there. It only took one sob from the girl beside him to snap him out of it, though, and he looked back down at her, flustered by Tony’s sudden appearance.
“Hold her head still. I’m about to cut through a nerve, this is going to be bad,” he explained, reaching back into the mess that was once this girl’s leg. Tony nodded, carefully putting his hands on either side of the girl’s head and holding her head firmly still. She met his eyes, her own brimming with tears and terror.
“Pakiusap,” she said pleadingly, and Tony couldn’t understand, but he could guess.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, just as Bruce twisted the knife carefully, his jaw set and his brow furrowed. The girl screamed and sobbed again, thrashing against Tony’s grip.
“Hang in there. Tama siya, magigiging okay din ang lahat. Kukuha lang kami ng tulong, ah?.,” Bruce said in a tone of voice that Tony hadn’t heard from him before. It was soft, soothing, and just hearing him speak brought a measure of comfort, even in this situation. Even if Tony didn’t understand the words, he still felt it.
Bruce was focused, intense, working quickly with the knife. He finally leaned back and began to search his shirt for another loose shred to use, and Tony held out the green cloth the soldier had given him.
“Use this.”
Bruce nodded, carefully wrapping the cloth over the stump of the girl’s leg. She gripped Tony’s wrist with her own delicate hands, her fingernails leaving bloody crescents that Tony didn’t even notice at the moment.
When Bruce looked up at Tony, the cracks finally showed. Behind the determination there was exhaustion, fear, pain, all of it carefully compartmentalized away, pushed aside. “Do they have anything set up?”
“A field infirmary, a couple miles from here. I’ll help carry her,” he offered before Bruce could even ask. They lifted together, and the girl sobbed quietly s they began to walk, careful to avoid jarring her leg. Or what was left of it, anyway.
“You didn’t call,” Tony accused, and Bruce almost smiled. Almost. Tony raised an eyebrow. “This was exactly what I was referring to when I told you to be careful. No big, bloody disasters.”
“I’ll keep that in mind next time I plan a vacation,” Bruce said dryly, moving the girl carefully so no part of her was near the cut on his arm. “I thought the phone was untraceable.”
“Hey, I only said untraceable by SHIELD. Said nothing about JARVIS.”
Bruce smiled, though it was weary and fleeting. “Somehow I should have figured that.”
“What, not happy to see me?”
Bruce snorted but didn’t answer; Tony caught the wince when Bruce adjusted his arm.
“How bad are you hurt?”
“Just a few cuts. I’m fine.”
“Bullshit,” Tony said. “I’ll have one of the doctors take a look at you-“
“No. I haven’t lost any limbs, or gotten burned. I don’t need a doctor,” Bruce said, then he lowered his voice a bit, though no one was listening to them, for sure. “Besides, my blood is still radioactive. It’s not safe for them to treat me.”
“You use that excuse for every bodily fluid?”
“Tony, now is not the time.”
“Now is always the time. There’s never a better time than now.”
Bruce sighed. “What kind of setup do they have?” He asked, glancing down to make sure the girl was still conscious. She was, still crying softly and trembling. She needed a blood transfusion, and fast, but the likelihood of that happening was very, very low.
“They don’t have much,” Tony admitted. “Not nearly enough. A few medics, a couple doctors, and some crates of supplies. They told me they aren’t sending crews into the city proper till sunrise.”
“Sunrise? That’s hours away! There are still people trapped in here!”
Tony didn’t need to answer; he knew Bruce was right, that help in the morning would be too little too late for most of these people. He could hear the other man blaming himself already, coming up with a million reasons why it’s his fault that there isn’t enough help, his fault these people were dying. Seemed he knew him pretty well already.
“Well, they aren’t keeping us out,” Tony said with a smirk. “So we’ll keep at it till they take over.”
Bruce nodded, though Tony saw the strain in it. The scientist was obviously tired beyond reason, pushed past every limit save one, but Tony knew better than to try and convince him to take a break.
There were still screams and wails coming from the wreckage, haunting their path as they carried the girl into the clearing and towards the infirmary tent.
Chapter: Two
Pairings: Bruce/Tony
Warnings: Blood and misplaced limbs in this chapter.
Genre: Drama, Romance, Hurt/Comfort
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After the battle in New York, Dr. Banner is once again off to the furthest corner he can find; but when disaster follows in his footsteps that is none of his own doing, Tony Stark won't sit idle.
Author's Notes: My first Avengers fic. :3 My lousy Filipino was corrected by the lovely thestar-born on tumblr!
It took far too long to get there, for Tony’s taste. Had the suit been ready, he could’ve gotten there much quicker.
By the time his jet leaves, though, he’s managed to get two doctors and a few nurses to jump on board to come aid the wounded- he can’t imagine there are too many doctors with undamaged modern supplies available at ground zero of an earthquake.
As it is, Pepper is already trying to fill him in on everything she can find out; she’d stopped trying to convince him not to go the moment he’d said Bruce was there. She made her contacts, and had just gotten off the phone with someone close to the disaster zone when she called Tony.
“It’s pretty much as bad as it can get, Tony.”
“Tell me.”
“The area was already a slum before the earthquake even hit. No resources nearby,” Pepper explained, and Tony heard her shifting papers around. “Most of the victims are still trapped. They’ve got no way to extinguish the fires. Tsunami warning expired 20 minutes ago, they got lucky there.”
“Not sure if lucky is the word for it,” Tony said, raising an eyebrow though she certainly couldn’t see him at the moment. “Did you get me transportation?”
“You’ve got a runway expecting you at the US base on the main island. From there, they can get you on a military transport helicopter and drop you at their field base, about 3 miles out from the epicenter. After that, you’re on your own.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Tony said with a smirk. He wasn’t worried about the getting out part yet- he’d worry about that once he’d found Bruce.
Pepper’s voice was softer now. “Don’t you think he’d have…you know. If he was conscious. Keeping control there, it can’t…”
“If he’d Hulked out, we no doubt would’ve heard about it by now. SHIELD would be up our asses with their whining by now,” Tony said, taking a glass of whiskey from the stewardess. One of the doctors glanced across the aisle at him curiously, then turned his attention back to the TV monitor set to a news channel playing helicopter footage from the island.
“Do you want me to contact any of the others?” Pepper asked, and Tony knew exactly what she meant- calling on the other Avengers for help.
“No. No, the last thing we need is Captain Spandex blabbing to SHIELD about the doctor being in a disaster zone and at risk of…getting angry. If they find out we’ll never shake them off his case. No, I’ll handle this.”
“Be careful.”
“I’ve got this, stop worrying,” Tony said with his usual air of confidence, hanging up the phone and turning back to the monitor.
He scoured every inch of footage for any sign of the other scientist, but saw nothing.
* ~~~~~~~~ *
“We can’t set up any closer! The smoke would smother us!”
The yell was barely heard over the rhythmic whump-whump-whump of the helicopter, and the craft slowly soared lower, skimming over thick trees. Tony could already see the fires burning on the horizon, like a violent sunrise under a sky black with smoke.
One of the soldiers tossed him a green bandana. “Cover your face if you go in there, Mr. Stark! You don’t wanna breathe this shit!”
A sudden jerk, and the helicopter dipped down into a clearing that was already set up as a base camp of sorts. Tents and floodlights were set up, and rows upon rows of injured and dying people were laid out on white sheets under the largest of the open air tents. The helicopter landed on the other side of the clearing from the makeshift infirmary, and Tony jumped to the grass, staying low until he was clear of the spinning blades.
“You sure about this?” the team leader asked him, and Tony nodded.
“Think I’d be standing here if I wasn’t sure?”
The doctors ran past them toward the infirmary, followed by their assistants, eager to get to work after seeing that there were only two military medics at work helping people so far. Tony turned away and looked toward the west, to where the fires still burned.
Survivors stumbled away from the town, bleeding and burned. Many were crying, or helping others toward the tents.
Tony suddenly felt very alone in the middle of a mess of people, looking for one lost soul amongst the chaos.
It had taken him almost 19 hours to get here, yet as he crossed the threshold into the ruins, time seemed to slow down, almost stop. The roar of the fire sounded like a freight train at his heels, and the smell in the air was one he’d only smelled once before, but it was a smell you never forgot. The smell of burnt human flesh. Wails of agony cut through the thick air, some muffled by piles of wood and stone.
Tony coughed and held the bandana up against his nose and mouth, passing through a cloud of smoke. He passed a man sitting on a crate, and at first, the man seemed fine- until Tony caught sight of the other side of his face. The burned, blistered skin of his cheek was hanging free, a bloody flap that revealed muscles twitching and blackened below.
The man didn’t even seem to take notice of it. He stared ahead, muttering, and Tony looked away and concentrated on activating his earpiece as he kept walking.
“JARVIS, how far?”
“Approximately 2 miles, sir. There is interference with the signal due to radio traffic and environmental factors.”
Keep walking, he thought, moving around a burning pile of debris. He sped up, focusing on his task- find Bruce. Everything else would fall into place, as soon as that happened, he was sure of it. There was fire, and screams, but nothing he could do; the wreckage was too hot to move, the people who begged him as he passed hadn’t realized that their loved one was already dead. Or they just didn’t want to accept it.
No way he’s dead. He would’ve Hulked up when the first beam fell on him. Fire is like a warm shower for the Big Guy, Tony reassured himself, his eyes stinging as a curtain of smoke whipped by him.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour of walking through hell, a familiar voice. “Sir, the signal is coming from approximately 20 meters ahead,” JARVIS informed him, and Tony broke into a run, focusing in on a row of what used to be houses, he was pretty sure. Now it was wood piled on stone and brick and more wood, a pile of nondescript debris, other than the occasional recognizable door or window frame. No fires burned here yet, though.
“Bruce?” he called out, trying to look for a starting point. Not far from him, an older woman picked through the debris, gathering up household items that seemed salvageable; a cooking pot here, a book there. She didn’t look injured. Tony stumbled over the pile to her, and she gave him a confused frown.
“Hi, hi. Um…do you speak English?” he asked, and she pursed her lips together.
“Little.”
“Oh, good. An American doctor was here, in these houses. Have you seen him?”
“Doctor?”
“Yes, a doctor. American.”
The woman shifted and pointed down the road- or what used to be a road, anyway. “American doctor,” she repeated, her accent thick as she struggled for the words. “That way. Not far.”
A wave of relief crashed over Tony, and he sighed. “Thank you,” he said, skidding and almost falling down the pile of debris and onto the road. Bruce was alive. He wasn’t far.
“Bruce!” he yelled, breaking into a jog, the wreckage higher here on both sides of the street. He stopped when he heard a scream nearby, one that sent a chill straight through him- then a softer, familiar voice.
“"Ssh, not much longer. Alam ko masakit, pero kaya mo 'to.”
“Ang sakit...ang sakit!”
Tony stepped around the corner and stopped for a moment, just staring.
Dr. Banner was there, kneeling in a pile of twisted metal. He was covered in soot and dirt, and a filthy cloth was wrapped around his head, drying blood caked down one side of his face. His clothes were torn, in some places on purpose, it seemed- he’d used scraps off his shirt to hastily bandage his head, and his arm too, now that Tony looked closer.
Bruce hadn’t noticed him yet, though. The doctor was focusing on the young woman still trapped under a metal beam. Tony stepped closer, now able to see that her leg was more like ground meat just below the knee, a mess of smashed flesh and splintered bone where the beam pinned it.
It only took a moment to figure out what Bruce was doing. He’d tied a makeshift tourniquet just above her knee, and his hands were slick with dark blood as he worked a knife in under the ruined bone. He was amputating the leg to get her out and get her to help, and she was screaming hoarsely, her voice raw and tired.
Swallowing down the nausea, Tony rushed forward and knelt next to Bruce, rolling up his sleeves. “Tell me how to help.”
Bruce did a double take, then stared for moment, as if he didn’t believe that Tony was actually there. It only took one sob from the girl beside him to snap him out of it, though, and he looked back down at her, flustered by Tony’s sudden appearance.
“Hold her head still. I’m about to cut through a nerve, this is going to be bad,” he explained, reaching back into the mess that was once this girl’s leg. Tony nodded, carefully putting his hands on either side of the girl’s head and holding her head firmly still. She met his eyes, her own brimming with tears and terror.
“Pakiusap,” she said pleadingly, and Tony couldn’t understand, but he could guess.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, just as Bruce twisted the knife carefully, his jaw set and his brow furrowed. The girl screamed and sobbed again, thrashing against Tony’s grip.
“Hang in there. Tama siya, magigiging okay din ang lahat. Kukuha lang kami ng tulong, ah?.,” Bruce said in a tone of voice that Tony hadn’t heard from him before. It was soft, soothing, and just hearing him speak brought a measure of comfort, even in this situation. Even if Tony didn’t understand the words, he still felt it.
Bruce was focused, intense, working quickly with the knife. He finally leaned back and began to search his shirt for another loose shred to use, and Tony held out the green cloth the soldier had given him.
“Use this.”
Bruce nodded, carefully wrapping the cloth over the stump of the girl’s leg. She gripped Tony’s wrist with her own delicate hands, her fingernails leaving bloody crescents that Tony didn’t even notice at the moment.
When Bruce looked up at Tony, the cracks finally showed. Behind the determination there was exhaustion, fear, pain, all of it carefully compartmentalized away, pushed aside. “Do they have anything set up?”
“A field infirmary, a couple miles from here. I’ll help carry her,” he offered before Bruce could even ask. They lifted together, and the girl sobbed quietly s they began to walk, careful to avoid jarring her leg. Or what was left of it, anyway.
“You didn’t call,” Tony accused, and Bruce almost smiled. Almost. Tony raised an eyebrow. “This was exactly what I was referring to when I told you to be careful. No big, bloody disasters.”
“I’ll keep that in mind next time I plan a vacation,” Bruce said dryly, moving the girl carefully so no part of her was near the cut on his arm. “I thought the phone was untraceable.”
“Hey, I only said untraceable by SHIELD. Said nothing about JARVIS.”
Bruce smiled, though it was weary and fleeting. “Somehow I should have figured that.”
“What, not happy to see me?”
Bruce snorted but didn’t answer; Tony caught the wince when Bruce adjusted his arm.
“How bad are you hurt?”
“Just a few cuts. I’m fine.”
“Bullshit,” Tony said. “I’ll have one of the doctors take a look at you-“
“No. I haven’t lost any limbs, or gotten burned. I don’t need a doctor,” Bruce said, then he lowered his voice a bit, though no one was listening to them, for sure. “Besides, my blood is still radioactive. It’s not safe for them to treat me.”
“You use that excuse for every bodily fluid?”
“Tony, now is not the time.”
“Now is always the time. There’s never a better time than now.”
Bruce sighed. “What kind of setup do they have?” He asked, glancing down to make sure the girl was still conscious. She was, still crying softly and trembling. She needed a blood transfusion, and fast, but the likelihood of that happening was very, very low.
“They don’t have much,” Tony admitted. “Not nearly enough. A few medics, a couple doctors, and some crates of supplies. They told me they aren’t sending crews into the city proper till sunrise.”
“Sunrise? That’s hours away! There are still people trapped in here!”
Tony didn’t need to answer; he knew Bruce was right, that help in the morning would be too little too late for most of these people. He could hear the other man blaming himself already, coming up with a million reasons why it’s his fault that there isn’t enough help, his fault these people were dying. Seemed he knew him pretty well already.
“Well, they aren’t keeping us out,” Tony said with a smirk. “So we’ll keep at it till they take over.”
Bruce nodded, though Tony saw the strain in it. The scientist was obviously tired beyond reason, pushed past every limit save one, but Tony knew better than to try and convince him to take a break.
There were still screams and wails coming from the wreckage, haunting their path as they carried the girl into the clearing and towards the infirmary tent.
calm1 | +
