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quietlyimplode · 8 months

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the language of flowers and silent things

Whumptober 2023: Day 29 - What happened to me

Warnings: aftermath of failed mission, grief, drugging after affects

Word Count: 2.1k (gif not mine)

Summary: Pepper tried to keep moral alive. Natasha and Clint have a conversation about the wedding putting it jeopardy. Tony and Yelena have a bonding moment.

A/N: as promised - home stretch now. This is not reread at all so all mistake are my own, we are just going straight from brain to posting now. Almost there <3

Masterlist

Whumptober Masterlist

2014

NEW YORK

There’s nothing they can do.

The sceptre is gone and the tower is still broken.

Pepper feels the frustration and sadness coming from Tony as he stays in the workshop.

“It’s not you’re fault,” she tells him, and he shrugs her off.

He pushed for it.

He wanted revenge.

He hits the metal harder and ignores the world.

The hospital makes Natasha’s skin crawl.

She allows the doctor to check her once more, lies about her headache and dry throat, and nods at his instructions.

Despite everything, she wants to get back to the tower.

She’s worried about Tony, about Pepper being with Tony, and not having someone to help. She’s worried about Clint, even as he sits beside her.

They haven’t talked much, and she knows they both feel the hope of the wedding dwindle.

Pepper does what she does best and hires people to take care of everything.

Slowly, it comes together.

Two days before Christmas Eve, the tower is functional and decorated.

She looks proudly at it, and even though there’s still telltale signs of injury, the decorations make it cheerful and happy; for her anyway.

The bunny, the one that saved Tony, sits in prime position in the entrance, a large Christmas hat on its head, and it makes her smile every time she looks at it.

Tony indulges her.

He flies Christmas lights around at her request and finally she gets a smile out of him when he flies back and looks at his work.

“Pretty,” she says looking at him.

“Yeah,” he replies, pulling her close.

Steve sits by Sam’s bedside, the only avenger not to wake up straight away once given antivirals and straight oxygen.

San wakes, looking left and looks visibly relieved.

“What happened? What happened.. to me?”

They couldn’t determine the gas, likely a hallucinogenic substance from what Tony had synthesised.

“I don’t know,” Steve replies honestly, “but you’re going to be okay.”

He forgets sometimes; how new to this Sam is, how even with his experience in the Army, that the Avengers are different. Worse repercussions for seemingly easy things.

Sam nods, his eyes closing back.

“Thanks man,” he sighs, “for being here.”

Clint watches Natasha carefully.

The drugs had given him visions of her dying. Then nightmares once the antidote or antivirals had been given.

It’s a thought he can’t get rid of.

He hadn’t been brave enough to ask what she saw. She’ll tell him when she’s ready.

Being almost Christmas, he watches her more; especially as she asks Yelena to come back, to spend it with them, promising safety this time.

Clint calls Maria, asks what she’s doing for Christmas.

She promises to come, laughing down the phone telling him Pepper already invited him.

Seems they know, the only way through is together. To have people around and to follow failure with support and regrouping.

They can’t do anything now, otherwise Tony would have done it, found it and they’d be going after the sceptre.

They’re all not used to losing.

On a whim, he calls Gus, and asks him to come too.

To his surprise, Gus agrees.

He sends some details and then calls Pepper who assures him she’ll sort it out.

Clint feels bad imposing, but when he turns to Natasha and finds her staring, he feels that perhaps being around friends and family, may not be a bad thing.

Natasha sits up, the large one seater couch surrounded by thick blankets even though in the tower it isn’t warm or cold.

Clint walks through the door and nods, asking what she’s reading.

“Nothing special,” she replies, putting it down, and standing to kiss him.

“Are you okay?” He opens, wanting to know. Apart from seeing Tony, she hasn’t left the room.

“Yes,” she responds a little too quickly.

Sighing heavily, she shakes her head.

“I don’t want to sleep,” she admits.

He makes her sit back down and sits next to her.

“How’s your arm?”

Natasha’s glances at it, as if it didn’t even register a thought before he’d mentioned it.

The silence is enough to make him recant his words and talk to her about what was really on her mind.

“Why don’t you want to sleep?”

She traces the title page of her book and thinks.

“Hydra, Red Room, Shield, they’re all the same. Corporations all wanting power. All the same fear tactics and ways of controlling people. Hydra in Shield, Hydra in the Red Room, maybe even the Red Room in Hydra. Shield takes down the Red Room but not really, and where do we stand? In the middle playing games.”

She pauses.

“I’m just so tired of it all.”

He starts tracing shapes on her hand and just lets her talk.

“I had a plan,” she says quietly, “we’d get married, and we’d escape for a while. You know like Bilbo does? He puts the ring on and disappears. I thought we could go, not forever but for long enough to get bored.”

He smiles lightly.

“You didn’t tell me,” he replies, the pause obvious for him to respond.

“We need a break, I need a break. I didn’t think you’d mind. But as everything that’s happened in the last two weeks, it’s like…”

“It’s never going to happen,” he finishes.

She sniffs.

“I feel like, there’s so much in my life that has been at the whim of others, dictated by it, caused by it; but this— this lead up - when you asked me, I thought maybe, just maybe it meant that there could be one thing I was in control of, one part of my future that was not dictated by another.”

Natasha’s crying now, tears that sneak out, even though her voice holds steady.

“We can’t get married,” she says sadly.

“We can get away though,” he says hugging her closer.

“No we can’t,” she replies despondently, “there’s always going to be something. There’s always something.”

She looks up at him.

“You haven’t asked me what the hallucinations made me see,” she says, baiting him.

“What did you see, Nat?” he asks, almost not wanting to know the answer.

“Nothing,” she tells him.

“I’ve already lived through so many of my greatest fears; some induced, some produced. What happened to me… I know I can survive it all, even death. Sometimes though; I just want the world to go quiet, I just want to… rest.”

He can count the number of times she’s sounded like this, so fatalistic. Clint knows what follows and fear creeps into his soul.

He decides then and there that he’s going to make it happen.

No matter what.

Even if it’s not ideal, and what they’d planned.

Christmas Eve finds them all at the tower.

Pepper’s pushing and organising successful.

She makes Clint help put up the last of the decorations, asks about Natasha and Yelena and he thanks her for getting Gus there too.

She hands him a drink and he takes it gratefully.

“Did you know Sam had a sister too?” Clint asks.

Pepper shakes her head.

“Is that why he couldn’t stay?”

Clint nods, “he has nephews too.”

She smiles.

“I’ll have to send them something.”

They stare at the television for a while and he finally works the courage to ask.

“How hard would it be for us to get married here?” he asks.

“If we were to organise everything and make it happen, maybe tomorrow? Would it be at all possible?”

Pepper doesn’t say no immediately, which Clint takes to be a good thing.

“Tomorrow?”

She thinks.

“Tomorrow is Christmas.. we have that planned. What about the 27th? It’ll give me one more day to organise everything, flowers, a photographer maybe? We can do it here, everyone will be here already so that’s no issue,” she pauses thinking hard.

“Did Natasha want this too?”

Clint looks at the floor.

“She.. Uhhh, she doesn’t know,” he confesses.

If Pepper is surprised, she doesn’t show it.

“Okay, well you work that out and I’ll work about the rest,” she promises.

“It’s not a stupid idea?”

Clint was sure she would say it was too hard and too much; because already she had done so much. Already she had accepted them into their home, accommodated them, and now their family as well.

Pepper smiles.

“No Clint, I think the idea is perfect.”

If Clint cries in front of others, he would in front of Pepper. Instead he stands to face her.

“Can I give you a hug?” he asks.

Pepper closes the gap and hugs him first.

“What are friends for?”

Yelena explores the tower.

Her room close to Natasha’s as she finds the kitchen and the library and eventually finds a laboratory and a workshop.

The tower feels like it’s throwing up Christmas.

Yelena laughs at the ridiculousness of it.

She counts 47 trees before she stops counting, laughs at the stockings filled with candy canes, and decides that she loves the tiny touches of multicoloured lights adorning all the corners that light up like a runway where she walks.

Christmas holds no symbolism for her, no hope for presents or any wishes or whatever Santa is supposed to bring. She could come around to this though, spending a day with someone she wants too.

After Natasha had left for Berlin, she’d wandered the city, been a tourist in a city that was once terrifying for her.

All the stories the Red Room had told her about America were truth in lies. Capitalism hell; a truth; but the ability to buy anything within a commodity system.

They’d sold it as something terrible.

But Yelena had got pizza at 2am after a bad night, and the man selling it had smiled at her, and suddenly the world hadn’t seemed so bad.

If pizza and capitalism could do that, then who was she to judge it?

She watches Tony bang on a piece of metal and wanders into the workshop.

She’s silent in her movement and she doesn’t think he notices until he holds his hand out and asks her to hand him a phillips head screwdriver.

“How did you know I was here?” she asks curiously.

“I know everyone in my tower,” he responds, attaching another piece of metal.

“That’s impossible,” she tells him.

“Jarvis,” he says, “who’s in my tower?”

Yelena is startled to hear a male voice come through the walls.

“There are 9 people currently in the tower, would you like me to name them?”

Yelena smiles.

“Yes,” she answers for him.

“Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Pepper Potts, Maria Hill, Gustav Santorini, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark and Yelena Belova,” Jarvis recites.

“Neat trick,” she says to Tony.

“Not a trick,” he mutters, still not looking for her.

“What are you doing?”

She walks closer to him, and finally he looks up.

“How is your arm?”

She looks at the seemingly sentient metal, as it magnetizes to create a protective shell every time Tony hits it and frowns.

“What’s that?”

“You’re Yelena,” Tony says redundantly.

“You’re Tony,” she retorts.

“Does Natasha know you’re here?”

“She’s knows I’m here in the general sense, but I don’t know if she knows I’m here, with you.”

Taking a candy cane, she opens it and bites down.

“What’s that?” she repeats.

Suspicion clouds Tony’s eyes and he frowns.

“Nothing.”

“It’s got to be something, and if I had to guess it looks like electromagnetic conductors that absorb impact and have the ability to reform,” she nods.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” he asks.

“Nope,” Yelena responds, popping the P and hopping on the bench.

“Natasha is sleeping, Clint is helping Pepper, and I don’t know anyone else.”

Tony sighs.

“You don’t know me either.”

Yelena nods.

“I don’t know, but I know of you, Natasha has told me.”

Curiosity bites at him and he finally stops.

“What did she say?”

“She said you were kind,” Yelena replies sucking on the candy cane, “she also said you were bull headed but smart.”

Tony scoffs.

“I’m not just smart,” he retorts.