68
You wake up to the crackle of over-starched sheets, the feel of cool air on your skin, the beeping of the monitors in medical, and oh, goddammit, you hate medical.
Maybe if you open your eyes, they’ll let you leave, so you blink into the bright white fluorescents overhead. A shadow looms into the corner of your vision, and you turn your head (oh, that’s painful) to see Steve sitting beside you, arm in a sling and bandages wrapped snugly around his head.
“Tony and Natasha aren’t here,” he says without preamble. “They never made it back.”
You’re not sure what to say, beyond oh, but Bruce shows up right about then and saves you from having to come up with something. Coulson isn’t happy, he reports, and you remember that you and Thor went out to fight against his orders.
“Did the mission succeed?” you ask. They look at each other, and Bruce tells you that Woo is safe, but Sitwell paid the price for it.
You disobeyed orders, and yet Sitwell and Tony and Natasha are dead. You wonder why it wasn’t you, and think, it should have been.