Nat stood in the kitchen in full Black Widow gear. The leather of her suit was slick and glistened slightly as she moved around the space. Her face was void of any emotion and her hair was pulled back into a low braid. There was a fight to be had.
"Where is everyone?" Lizzie frowned as she watched Natasha open the small compartment hidden under the kitchen island and remove multiple knives and a small handgun, affixing them to their appropriate holsters and pockets.
"Steve and Bucky snuck out of here about ten minutes ago." Nat spoke with a disinterested tone, focusing on locating the small red button she could never find in the mess of the men they lived with. "Everyone else is getting ready for a mission." She paused when she saw the worry in Elizabeth's eyes, the small puckering of her forehead as she bit the corner of her lip and moved quickly to uncover the button hidden behind Clint's protein powder. "Thanks. Anyway, everyone else is prepping, but it's just a small mission. Want to join us or are you staying here?" She waited for the tiles to shift on the wall to reveal the electrified spider bites tucked away for easy access.
A weight lifted from Elizabeth's shoulders as Nat smiled warmly at her. It had never occurred to her that she would be given a choice in these matters. Not since she became the Time-Bomb.
"You know what, I think I'll hang back this time." She smiled as she spoke. "It will be nice to be back on the medical side of things for once these days."
Natasha nodded as she placed her foot against a chair, slipping another knife into a small pocket by her ankle.
"In that case," she mused, "bets?"
Lizzie laughed loudly. Interrupted by the streak of silver that rushed through the room and up the stairs, she felt the smile drop from her face and her chest ached.
Natasha watched as Lizzie's smile faded and her eyes clouded with a smokey blue that seemed to fuzz the edges of the whites of her eyes. She was in pain.
"I think Clint could take a hit," Nat continued as if Lizzie wasn't worrying about Pietro and gave her a small nudge with her hip as she straightened up. The blue faded away and the smile crept back over Lizzie's face as she watched Nat swan over the the elevator with a grin on her lips. "He's alarmingly cocky at the moment." She shrugged as she justified herself.
Lizzie shook her head laughing as she made her way up the stairs to take a shower.
"Thor!" She shouted over her shoulder. "He's not been on mission for months. Out of practice!"
"Loser gets the team's post-mission take out?" Nat's laughter carried in the open space as the doors closed behind her and Lizzie continued to her room.
*
Lizzie tied her hair into a messy knot on the top of her head and grabbed her lab coat from the hook on the back of her office door with a smile on her face. She skipped over to her desk and threw herself onto the office chair sighing contentedly at the comforting familiarity of the room.
"Dr Halsted?"
Looking up her eyes met the questioning gaze of one of the new interns at Stark Medical. He was small and meek and he looked like he was about to combust any second now as he shifted his weight between his feet. In his hands was a chart that she had no doubt would be hers to look at in one minute or less.
"Liam, right?" Elizabeth smiled and gestured for him to come in as she fired up her laptop. It had been too long since she'd been here. "What can I do for you?"
"We have a child in room 19 and well," he paused, unsure of how to continue.
"No one is used to children?" She chuckled as she took the chart he held out to her and read a few of the notes that had been made. Her eyebrows pulled down into a deep frown as she got to her feet. "Room 19?"
*
"Joe? What's going on?" Lizzie pushed into the room with her head still in the charts. Rosie's temperature was sky high and she'd lost consciousness twice.
"I didn't know what else to do Doc. I just put her in the car and next thing I know I'm here." Joe's voice was strained. His hands shook as he ran them through his hair, staring down at the tiny child in front of them.
Rosie was crying as she lay on the bed, clinging to the ragged blanket she had brought with her, her princess pyjamas drenched in sweat. She stared up at Lizzie with doe-like eyes of sea-foam green as her tears fell and she shook.
"Hey," she whispered, reaching down to brush the strawberry blonde curls back from her forehead. "Hey Munchkin. I'm gonna take a look at you now, okay?" Rosie looked between the two adults standing by her bedside and tried not to cry anymore. Lizzie perched beside her, still gently brushing her hair back, soothing her before she began to inspect her closely.
"You did the right thing Joe," Lizzie mumbled as she searched for any cuts or wounds that could be behind this. "When did this start?"
"Last night. I was sick after dinner, but Rosie was fine. Then around nine she got shaky." His arms were folded across his chest as he paced at the end of the bed, letting Lizzie search for the cause. "The temperature started in the middle of the night and she's been crying since."
"She eat anything out of the ordinary?" Her temperature was still high but the sweat was a good sign. It meant the fever was breaking.
"No."
"Any cuts or falls in the last few days?"
"No? Lizzie, what's wrong with her?"
There. Just between her toes.
"She's got an infection Joe." Lizzie nodded for him to come closer. "She that there? She's got something stuck there and, if you look at that lovely little red circle around it, you can see it's a little painful."
She turned to the small unit of drawers beside the bed and grabbed an alcohol wipe and some tweezers. Gently she cleaned the area before she began to poke and prod at the wound, scratching for the item now embedded in this child's foot.
"She's gonna be okay?" Joe's sniffles and the whimpers of the four year old punctuated the silence around them as Lizzie worked.
"She's gonna be okay. Some antibiotics and a hell of a lot of ice-cream and she'll be right as rain in a couple of days." Lizzie smiled up at her friend as she held the thorn up for him to see. His shoulders slumped forwards and he dropped to his knees beside his daughters bedside, grabbing her hand and kissing it as relief washed over him.
"Thank you Lizzie. Thank you so much."
She got to her feet and patted his shoulder. "Anytime Joe. You know I'd do anything for this little lady."
In the doorway Liam stood awkwardly watching. He took the chart from Lizzie's outstretched hands and smiled at her as she gestured for him to follow her back to her office.
"Thank you for getting me Liam," she sighed. "Put her on some IV Antibiotics and keep a close eye on her for the next few hours. If her temperature drops and stays low after two hours you can discharge her. Any issues arise between now and then, get me."
"Yes Ma'am." The intern turned away quickly and left her standing alone in her office.
Looking around the small space now the comfort seemed to drain from the room and she couldn't shake the feeling that something was coming. It sat on her shoulders and clawed down her spine with ice cold tendrils that wrapped tightly around her chest: dread. The child down the hall was just the beginning of a day of pain. She could feel it in the very air she breathed. She could feel it in her bones. She could feel it in the world around her.
*
Lizzie sat in the middle of the largest suite in the medical centre, her shoulders slumped and her face in her hands as the team around her worked and worked and worked.
"Stop it," Wanda's voice rang clear in Lizzie's mind and her head snapped up to meet the crystal eyes of the wounded red head across the room. "Stop feeling guilty."
Lizzie closed her eyes and pushed with her mind, bringing down walls she didn't even know she had, blocking Wanda out completely.
"Come on Lizzie," Clint sucked in a sharp breath as one of the interns continued to stitch the wound in his side. "What's going on in that pretty little head of yours?" He glanced over at Wanda who simply shrugged as she stood from her chair.
"Yes," Thor boomed, still laughing even though he was covered in deep cuts and bruises. "Tell us why you look so sad while we are the ones in pain?"
Natasha threw a roll of bandages at the God of Thunder, careful not to groan as her shoulder protested against the movement. "Shut up Thor. Shut up now."
"What?" He stood tall as another nurse tried to get him to sit back down and failed. "It's a good thing. She shouldn't be sad!"
In a sudden motion Lizzie stood, pushing through the busy room and out of the medical centre completely, leaving her friends staring behind her as their wounds were treated.
"You know Thor." Tony sat with a cold glass of whiskey in his hand. "Sometimes you are a monumental idiot. She's upset because we're hurt."
He watched as she ran from the room, her shoulders already shaking from the tears he knew would consume her as soon as she was out of sight, and he frowned.
"FRIDAY?" Tony waited for the lilted Irish accent to fill the room with acknowledgement of his call. "Let me know when Barnes is back."