fossilised | It's AU time

“I’m not privy to any more information than you,” Tony said as he leaned forward for Bucky to get on the bike behind him. He shouldn’t be actually driving this thing since his arm was still in a lot of pain but Loren had gone to some sort of book convention at the Javitz Center on the far west end of Manhattan and Tony was going to get to him if it killed him. “News is all just speculation right now but I’m not getting involved in War of the Worlds alone here. I’ll take you where you need to come. Come on.”

Taking a bike through the wasteland of cars and toppled possessions was a lot easier than moving around on foot, but it came with it’s own challenges once they reached the center of the city by the major train stations. People had stopped running, those that could were hunkered down inside of buildings, but the thousands and thousands of tourists that had decided to come up to the city on Winter vacations were all just standing on the frosty streets with their luggage, looking lost and afraid. It was nearly midnight by then. Barricades had started to go up around offices and even subway entrances.

Tony couldn’t help everyone, though. He just hoped that they didn’t all freeze to death by the morning.

They were just about to hit Broadway when six armed men in parkas rushed them from the left and right as Tony was navigating a narrow choke point between two cabs that had smashed into each other and bounced off again. He hadn’t seen them coming until they demanded in rough voices for his bike.

Okay that was good. Not that being swarmed by people was ever particularly good, but at least they were human. Those overhead had to be human too, they just looked alien-like as some kind of scare tactic. They were under attack, an invasion or terrorist action, but not some kind of other worldly shit, that just wasn't real.

Bucky levelled the gun, which he had kept in his jacket until then, directly at the one who had demanded the bike.

"Back off, we have people we're looking for and we're not involved in whatever the hell this is. Stark, just keep driving."

He was going to find Steve, and help find Loren, if it was the last thing he ever did. He existed half in reality and half in his own fractured fear right now, but adrenaline and focusing on Steve helped him keep grounded enough.

Luckily, a gun was still a trump card in a fight with bats and Tony’s instinct to just move forward and nearly run over their attackers got them out of the situation. It had only been a matter of hours but without guidance and entirely too many different people and things to blame, society under the most heavily effected population had already started to break down. That worried him.

“Where the hell is-- Shit! Barnes—“

There were a dozen or so people around the corner, trying to pry other people out of what looked like a subway entrance that had been smashed into by a bus. There was a very familiar looking blond with blood in his hair laying curled up on the ground. He’d already been pulled out of the rubble, but the rescuers were more concerned with getting everyone out to see if one they already rescued was alive.

Bucky wasn't surprised by the way people were acting. He'd already been in a warzone, he had already seen how the lack of law and order could make even a usually normal person act like an animal, and he had lost a lot of faith in the goodness of humanity as a result. Steve had been helping to restore that, he was like the kind of person that only existed in storybooks... and now he was on the ground with blood in his hair.

He vaulted from the back of the bike before it had even stopped, hitting the ground running to get to Steve's side and drop to his knees, fingers immediately searching for a pulse.

"Steve. Steve, baby, open your damn eyes and look at me. Please be breathing, please be okay."

He didn't give a shit who was attacking New York right now, whether it was legitimately aliens or another country, all he cared about was this guy right here.

Tony had to get to Loren. Loren could be in the same state as Steve was, or worse. “Pick him up and lets go!” He wasn’t sure how Bucky was going to be able to hold an unconscious man in his arms as they rode, but the other option was that Tony would just leave him. And he didn’t really want to be that guy.

The whole thing made him nervous, though. This waiting when there were a group of armed idiots a few blocks back. And there were crazy space things above them, somewhere, no longer visible in the absence of a sun.

“Barnes, come on!”

He did know that he was being completely ignored right now, though. Especially because Steve wasn’t immediately responding to the way Bucky checked him over.

He would require CPR to restart his lungs, and once Bucky started to try it out with only the one hand, Tony rolled his eyes and slid off of his bike to do the chest compressions. On the second round, Steve finally sucked in a breath on his own, flailing and confused.

Even if Bucky had heard what Tony said, there was no way he was putting Steve on a bike when he could have spine or neck injuries. He wasn't about to move him unless there was literally no other choice, or until proper help came. Getting him breathing was the first issue, though, and he went to that with a desperate will.

He didn't even realise that he was crying as he bent over to Steve to clear his airways when he sucked in a breath, shuddering from head to foot.

"Steve... Steve, please, please open your eyes. I need you to look at me. Don't just fucking sit there, Stark, check him over. Broken bones, wounds that need binding."

Field surgery wasn't exactly his strong suit, but he wasn't about to just give up.

Pale blue eyes lifted towards Bucky, away again, towards Tony, and then back to Bucky where the gaze stabilized. He pressed his lips together and hummed just to feel the vibration against his lips before he leaned into Bucky’s arm. “I’m okay,” he breathed, though it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t all right by the massive gash on the top of his head. “I’m-- Bucky, how did you get here-- I think there was a terrorist attack.”

His ears were ringing, which was not a new sensation, and his vision was just a little fuzzy and clearing up each time he blinked the blood out of it.

He tried to stand up but Tony Stark kept him down for a moment. “Dude, stay put.”

“No, something’s really wrong,” Steve said, hardly knowing the full extent since he’d been trapped underground in the tunnels for several hours now trying to use cell phone lights to navigate the darkness. He had no idea what else was going on.

There was a sudden screech behind them and Tony turned and got to his feet just in time to see some punk taking off with his bike. “God damn it!” This was why you don’t help people!

As far as Bucky was concerned, this was a war zone once more. He was only half here in Manhattan, the sounds of explosions and rioting, and the smell of blood just taking him back to Afghanistan. He knew there were enemies and he knew there were people he had to protect, and losing a transport vehicle in the middle of hostile territory wasn't permitted.

They were going to catch him again, they were going to do terrible things to him again, they were going to--

He raised his gun before he even knew what he was thinking, placing a perfect headshot through the back of the skull of the guy trying to steal Tony's bike, sending him and the bike skidding to a halt a few hundred meters down the road. He didn't even think that he had just committed felony murder. That was the problem with soldiers, they were trained to kill and then sent home to where that was a crime.

"Get the bike, Stark," he said, voice cold and calm. "Steve, stay still, you're hurt. Can you move your fingers and toes?"

There weren't any screams. No one was paying attention to them actually, the gun shots were loud but there were gun shots all over the city and the rescuers were all summarily attempting to continue with their rescue. Steve, however, was agast.

"You-- Buck--"

Tony's stronger but higher pitched voice broke through. The silence gave way to his angry yelling. "Are you fucking nuts?! Put down that god damned gun!" He was already striding away to get the bike because they were a good two miles from the convention center and this was the easiest way to go. "Put down that gun," he repeated calling back over his shoulder. "And you get to helping those people. I'm getting Loren and I'll be back for you!"

Probably. No. No he would would. Absolutely.

He just couldn't deal with seeing anyone else die. There was enough blood on his bike.

Bucky didn't put down the gun, his fingers tightened on it as if it were his only life line. He took up a stance over Steve as if intending to protect him from the world, paying no attention to the orders he had been given at all. If he went to help the others, Steve would be unprotected and might--

"I've got you, Steve."

It was a low murmur. It was probably horrifying to look at him, because his expression and voice were utterly calm, but he was crying so hard that he had to gasp for breath. He didn't want to be back here.

"I won't let them take either of us again, I swear it."

This time, Bucky knew him. This time, Steve had an advantage. He stood, slowly, and used Bucky to keep himself upright. His Equalibrium was off, likely due to the ringing in his ears. He took hold of the man's belt loops as he watched Tony ride off, desperately trying not to look at the dead man on the ground.

"We have to get back home." That was a mission. If Bucky wanted to protect him, he could. But not here.

Steve was exhausted and freezing but if they kept moving, it would give them both a purpose and that was about the only thing he could hope for at this point. He pulled the dog tags out from under his coat and used his scarf to keep his head and ears wrapped.

This was not going to be a good time. He knew that already.

"Do you remember the way you came? We have to get back. Priority one." He hoped he sounded authoritative.

It took Tony an hour to get to the convention center, the monstrous steel and glass building on the water was difficult to get to since all of the roadways and the subway line had been blocked off. He had to park his bike a block away and climb over cars to get to the street in front of the bright orange building. It shouldn't be orange. His mind filled that in. The Javitz Center was burning inside and the glow was bouncing off of the glass.

Edited 2017-04-06 22:29 (UTC)

How could they get back home without the bike? And even if they did get there, what difference would it make? If this was a terrorist attack, then maybe it would get them to safety. But if this was actual aliens (which surely it couldn't be, this wasn't a world where anything existed to fight them off), then nowhere would be safe. The whole world would be in trouble and it sure as hell wouldn't matter that Bucky had just shot a man.

"Get on my back."

Bucky at least knew that Steve was wounded and couldn't be walking, a piggyback was the best option he had for fulfilling the mission parameters. And it was helpful to have a mission, it was useful to have Steve order him with authority in his voice.

Over at the convention centre the blaze had really taken hold, and the whole area was full of people running in confusion. Trying to get to cover, trying to get out, wounded and confused, wondering where the emergency services were. At least Tony would see Loren a short distance away, familiar dark haired head catching the light of the fire. He was sat against a wall of the neighbouring building, arms wound around his stomach as if he were cold and head bowed. It was hidden by his jacket and the way he held himself, but he had a sharp piece of debris lodged deep in his stomach and the only reason he wasn't dead already was because he had been in too much shock to take it out.

Having no eyes for anyone at all but the dark haired man he was tripping over himself to get to, Tony failed to notice that there were a lot of dead people strewn about. The whole convention center had exploded internally and it would be called a small miracle that it didn't collapse into the Hudson River when this was all said and done. Tony ignored the ache behind his eyes as he slid to his knees beside Loren and moved to hug him...

He would find that piece of shrapnel before too long but he was not a doctor. He didn't have anything to help his boyfriend at all, which scared him beyond all recognition. If Bucky was having a triggering moment, like he was back at war, then Tony was relieving memories of his parents' deaths.

He'd been alone since he was twenty-two years old, until this darkly beautiful creature came into his life and they had just clicked.

He lightly touched Loren's cheek and shrugged his coat up to warm him up further. "Don't...don't move. I'm going to find you some help." Or he'd die trying.

Luckily for him, his favorite doctor wasn't very far away at all, trying to help a woman who was missing her legs as she bled out by the escalators leading into the lobby of the convention center. "Banner?!" The man had patched him up so often that Tony insisted only on seeing him whenever he was injured. And that was more frequent than Loren needed to know about. "Banner, I need you!"

Loren felt as though everything happening around him was a dream right now, the only thing that penetrated is consciousness was how cold he was, but that was the shock keeping the pain at bay. He smiled slowly and drowsily when Anthony touched his cheek, murmuring something too low to hear.

It was incredibly lucky that Bruce was here. He had come to the convention on his rare time off to look for a first edition book that he particularly wanted, and it meant he had been on scene to help out those who had been injured. Not that he had made a huge difference so far, he had no medical supplies and no ambulances were getting through yet.

"Tony?" He couldn't help but be surprised, what was one of his most regular patients doing here? "Are you hurt? You have to wait a moment, I'm helping this lady. She's going to be fine."

She wasn't, she was dying even as Bruce worked frantically to try and make a tourniquet and stem the flow of blood, but he couldn't just walk away.

"Fine-- What-- Banner, she is not even conscious," Tony said, grabbing Bruce away, "but my boyfriend is dying. There's something in hi stomach... You've taken lots of sharp things out of me before and I need--" He glanced at the too pale woman, her mouth open with blood on her lips. "She's gone or she will be in about two minutes but there's still a chance for Loren and I swear to God if you do not help me, when the aliens decide to make this worse than what it is, I will suck all of their dicks and get them to turn you into green paste for my trouble."

He was already pulling Bruce up and away with him. He didn't even feel a little bit guilty about the woman left lying in the cold.

A secondary explosion caused people to shriek and move away from the building as Tony dragged Bruce to where Loren was seated. They had been using the convention center for warmth but now, obviously, it was just a ticking time bomb ready to rain glass and fire across them.

A lot of those people were going to die tonight.

Loren would not be one of them.

Bruce allowed himself to be dragged. Even if his heart broke at the idea of leaving anyone, and that poor woman would haunt his dreams forever, he was still a doctor and he knew when he had to go to a patient more likely to make it for the greater good. He had no idea what would happen here, but he thought a lot of people would die tonight and in the following days. If this really was an invasion from another planet, that was the end of civilisation as they knew it. Hospitals would hardly be running.

He crouched beside Loren and carefully got him to sit up a bit further and peeled his arms away from his stomach, brow furrowing in concern when he saw the large shard of metal embedded in his stomach. Pale skin, sweating, probably hypertensive.

"Alright, Loren, can you look at me? Good-- very good, what I need you to do is focus on Tony for a while. My name is Dr. Banner and I'm going to try and help you, but it's going to hurt, so try to keep as focused on Tony as possible."

"Anthony," Loren said, small smile at his lips as he reached a hand out for his boyfriend. "I tried to call you, I found... found a collection of engineering magazines from the fifties, did you want them? What-- what are you doing here?"

Getting seriously hurt had never been an issue for him. Tony took care of Tony and sometimes that meant not taking care of him. He'd not had anyone care for him since his parents and so he never thought of the consequences of getting hurt and how that would affect someone else. Now he knew why Loren hadn't spoken to him for a week after his accident. This feeling of potential loss was the worst feeling he'd ever had. It was worse than actual loss. There was nothing to do about that. This waiting was worse.

"Yeah baby, of course I want those mags to see if my dad's in any of them. We can burn them together," he teased, taking Loren's hand before he kissed the back of it and then warmed it up under his own hands. "And didn't I promise to come and get you for dinner tonight? Sorry I'm a little late, but the restaurant closed early too. I'm gonna write them a bad review on Yelp anyway."

"Good, no business should close early when they have pre-booked patrons to take care o--ah! AH!"

Loren's words cut off into a wet shout, blood staining his lips as Bruce made the executive decision to bind his stomach with the piece of metal still embedded in there, pressing on it to keep it in place.

"Alright, Loren, you're doing really well," soothed Bruce, voice dropping as he looked over his patient to Tony. "He needs a hospital and surgery immediately, but I'm not sure how feasible that is and how widespread this panic is."

Tony let Loren squeeze his hand until he felt all circulation cut off. He felt responsible for this pain, which was ridiculous because he neither booked Loren a ticket or told him about the convention or insisted that he go either. It was just hard to be in love and realize that the person that you were in love with was very likely going to die because there wasn't anything you could do to help.

Bruce's words sliced right into him and Tony found himself gritting his teeth as if he was the one sporting the impressive new body piercing. He smoothed his hand over Loren's hair to sooth him.

"Hey doc, in case you didn't know, we have a slight potential alien invasion happening right now. Not that I've seen any of the aliens... But I've seen a man get shot in the head tonight, though, so maybe this is a whole lesson on fearing ourselves more than we fear the Other. I don't know. I've really gotten away from Star Trek since they rebooted it--" Loren groaned and Tony actually felt himself shatter. It was painless but absolute, like he was empty now.

He couldn't let this be the end, though. Wet eyes drifted to the convention center. There would be a medical station in there. Likely close to the front doors. Sure. It was on fire. But they didn't have much of a choice.

"Tell me the stuff you're going to need. I'll get it and... Well look, no one's bothered to break into that rat infested McDonald's across the street, not that I blame them, so you can take him there and... I'll get whatever you need. Okay? Please?" He was already on his feet after missing Loren's hand. "You go with the Doctor, sweetheart. I'll be back. I promise. I'll be right back!"

Bruce had always quite liked Tony as a patient, but he had seemed like the selfish sort, not the type to run himself into a burning building to save someone else. This Loren must really be important to him, and so he couldn't tell him no. Even if it was stupid, even if it was potentially suicidal, he knew that he would have run through hundreds of burning buildings to save his Betty before she had passed away.

"I need antiseptic, gloves, something to stitch with, a scalpel if they have it, a knife or scissors if they don't. I need gauze, and any painkillers you can find."

He didn't think a convention centre medical room would have all of that, but it was best to give the full list to Tony and maybe he'd be able to find some of it and some substitutions that would work as well. "Take off your jacket, wet it, tie it over your face. Keep low."

Loren let out a sound that was half keen and half groan when Anthony pulled away, but when he tried to speak it was just more blood that dribbled down his chin. He did manage a scream, though, when Bruce bodily picked him up, thus jostling his wounds, and began to run for the McDonald's.

It took an agonizing twenty minutes for a slightly singed and more than slightly smoke logged Tony Stark to pull himself into the chain burger restaurant. The streets were a lot more quiet now with the time rounding two in the morning. It would be daylight soon. People that had the option to be somewhere, if they were thinking clearly of course, were somewhere. Those that didn’t-- well many of them were already dead. The news media would do its best to downplay that in the weeks ahead, of course, and just like the 9/11 attacks, individual stories of heroism would trump the big picture until it was all conspiracy theory and after school specials.

Tony dropped his soaking wet coat in the doorway and rushed across to where Loren was propped up in a molded plastic booth. “I got…” He paused to caught into his own shoulder, “almost everything. No scalpels.”

But considering that this was New York and every New Yorker old enough to remember any of the building collapses, terrorist or otherwise, he’d been able to get almost everything else. Even if the only painkillers were aspirin and the only antiseptic was rubbing alcohol. It would just have to do.

He started to unpack his pockets and the emergency heart defibrillator case he’d snatched from the wall when he coughed again and spit up black soot.

“But there should be some good knives here…maybe. Hopefully. I’ll go look.”

By the time that Tony got back to the fast food chain, Loren was completely unconscious and pale as death. Only the slight stuttering of his breathing indicated that he was still hanging on at all, something that Bruce was doing his best to help out by keeping his airways clear and as much pressure around the wound as possible.

"Run," he advised Tony, and whether he came back with no knives or a meat knife or anything in between, he'd have his sleeves rolled up and Loren's blood soaked t-shirt and jacket peeled off. "I need you to help me. I'm going to pull this out, you need to hold your fingers here-- see, on the pulse, and tell me what happens. I'm expecting it to increase, but I need a running commentary anyway, can you do that?"

His voice and manner were still, somehow, calm. He had worked as a doctor in war zones before, he knew how to keep calm under immense pressure and work with people who might not be trained medics.

"Okay, we're going to do this on three. Tony, look at me, you did really good and this is his best shot, I need you to focus. One... two..."

This was a machine. Loren was not a body, he was the personality that the body contained. Tony had gutted plenty of cars before, rusted junkers and road boats, new sports cars and souped up sweet rides lovingly cobbled together from spare parts into a masterpiece. Inside, they were all basically the same. Tony smelled of grease and sweat on a good day at work, when his job was rewarding and he got into the trenches with the men and women that worked for him. So how was this so different? In the darkness, the blood could be motor oil.

Running commentary was something that Tony was fantastic at, thankfully. He was hardly the most careful with his words and so he could easily fill Bruce in on everything from how he and Loren first met to the texture and ferocity of the blood pouring from his boyfriend’s stomach.

At least he’d gotten Bruce something to cut with. Sharp and thin. It was used to cut apart boxes and now it was being used to cut the mess out of Loren’s abdomen. Tony wished there was a little irony in that, something witty he could quip about, but he had nothing.

“ah, doc, it’s pulsing now. I think there was a nicked artery. That’s what happens right? Well at least that means his heart’s still going,” Tony offered, though that was no consolation to anyone.

Bruce didn't once tell Tony to shut up, even when his commentary became about useless information, because he didn't want the poor guy to go into shock before this was done and Bruce could focus on him. He honestly didn't think Loren would make it, there was evidence that perhaps this debris had done damage to the spine with how deeply it had gone through, but there was no way to tell.

It took five hours for him to get done, but at the end of it Loren was somehow still breathing, and Bruce had managed to sew up the wound and pack it with gauze so that it wouldn't bleed any more.

"Okay-- okay, that's all we can do now without a hospital. Good job, Tony, really good job. Sit back, take a breath."

He fished his cell phone out of his pocket at the same time, checking to see if any signal had come back.

While there would be no signal for Bruce to latch onto and Tony was a nervous wreck of a man who had never had to care so much about someone in his whole life and was likely on the verge of losing them anyway, the sun had risen during Bruce’s makeshift surgery and whatever the news had reported on and more than a million people had seen first hand for themselves in the sky overhead had disappeared. In other parts of the country, reports were coming in of the massive amount of damage that New York had caused to herself. Footage of the alien crafts in the sky and buzzing across the city were played ad nauseum, commentators reporting different angles for hours on end. The world was talking but the government was slow to provide relief. There were too many unknowns to put real boots on the ground and so Manhattan was silent and left silenced until that afternoon.

At half past twelve, the military arrived to the city, moving across the Hudson by boat because of how jammed up the bridges and the tunnels were. Reporters came with them, everyone scrambling for a story, an explanation as to what had happened.

There would be no answers for the attacks, and luckily, it wasn’t important to the vast majority of Americans. The politicians and the upper brass military could do all of the worrying for now, but the police and the armed forces needed to retake New York.

Thankfully, being right on the river, the McDonalds that Loren laid in and Tony was stoically watching over was entered almost immediately by shouting men commanding anyone inside to show themselves. Tony didn’t get angry, though it was pretty rude to treat them as aggressors when they were victims. He was cold to the bone and shivering but he directed the men to Loren. “He needs a hospital.”

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