As it turned out, Ruby's rescue party wasn't the usual emergency services rescue that most explosions warranted. Ruby's rescuers were a government organisation called SHIELD and the man with the eyepatch was the director of said organisation mysteriously named Fury.
It had taken a while for her to accumulate such information for when she had woken up in an infirmary, she had attributed the room feeling as though it had been floating to her headache. The ringing in her ears hadn't ceased but now she could hear minutely better through her right ear, the one she had been able to cover in the onslaught before Spiderman had offered her help. She remembered his face vividly but found enough incentive to keep his identity secret.
The doctors had spoken to her to start with, one forgetting she had gauze taped over her left ear and the second inspecting them and testing her before realising she truly couldn't hear them well enough.
She had read her chart; multiple broken ribs, a ruptured lung, burst left eardrum and a torn ovary. And, scrubbled underneath in pen was impaired hearing.
For a while she was bedridden in the infirmary on a flying ship referred to, by the people she asked, as a helicarrier. It made sense as to how she always felt slightly aloof when she was shipped around in a wheelchair for the first time.
"Turbulence," the doctor told her loudly near her right ear when the helicarrier shuddered on one walk about the infirmary floor, "it rarely affects us." Most of the time, when it was quieter around them, she could just make out the voices of those who spoke loudly near her right ear. To begin with, the sensation was horrible. She hated the tickle of their breath on her neck and the air hitting her sensitive ears but it was worth it to hear the words and not just their vibrations.
The night before this particular stroll she had requested a music player and headphones. She figured that she could still listen to her favourite songs if they were loud enough. And, maybe, if she switched to electric guitar from acoustic she could learn to create her own music again. She could hear in her right ear the words of the music but it was not the same, there wasn't a spark in her brain she once felt at the bass rattling her mind in the best way. This time, as the music blasted at full volume, it was nearly silent in her right ear and the way the bass rattled her brain took her back to lying in the rubble and white noise coming through the speakers. Her scream forced the infirmary into an evacuation and lockdown. The few patients on the level were removed in two minutes, quick enough to preserve their hearing while muffled agents and doctors returned to calm Ruby.
The windows of the helicarrier rattled under her scream and it seemed to be much stronger than the last time. Her disposition changed after the headphones were tossed across the room, she began to cry and doubled over clutching her abdomen.
Her injuries didn't hurt as much as they had due to the morphine filtering through her body but the ghost of the pain she had felt when the first rescue team had dropped the concrete back on her spread across her abdomen. She hugged herself, her body screaming at the movement as she sobbed, brought to silence by the pain.
The doctors were forced to sedate her and the next day she found herself in the hallways experiencing turbulence.
She was turned down a hallway where they usually turned around but, this time they continued on. Narrowing her eyes, she glanced up at the doctor, conscious that they weren't wearing mufflers and her voice was a pain to anyone that heard her. To begin with, she thought they hated the sound of her voice... that she was so unbearable and they were simply being kind out of pity. That perhaps they knew she knew Spiderman's identity and they were keeping her to keep her silence. She soon discovered that the reason was because, by some cursed turn of fate, her hearing had been stolen and her voice had been heightened to such a decibel that it was nearly unbearable to the human ear. It was her own voice that had deafened her own ears.
She hadn't spoken since that day. Keeping silent had never been her forte since she was a child, whether that was through laughter, singing, talking or crying- but silence came easy to her now.
They ended up in a box room with a one-way window on the far wall, and a desk with three chairs around it. She had seen such a room on the television in crime shows where the criminal was taken to be hounded by an investigator until they broke. Ruby told herself that those shows were fictional and, besides, she had done nothing wrong- she was the victim in this show.
They left her in the room, moving one of the chairs to the corner to allow space for her wheelchair, with a notepad and pen. The doctor motioned that it was okay and yelled "they'll be here soon" in her ear before leaving.
Ten minutes passed in agonising silence, leaving Ruby with nothing but the ringing in her head. She tenderly touched the fresh gauze on her ear, imagining it to be the true hindrance to her hearing and when it is finally removed she'll be able to listen to music again.
The door opened and two women entered talking to each other animatedly as if they had known each other for years. One, in a black suit with the SHIELD logo wearing away on the breast, the other in a business suit and a loose-fitting blazer. They each took a seat across from Ruby with a broad smile and amusement in their eyes.
Rationally, Ruby knew the amusement was probably a joke they shared prior to entering the room. But in her injured mind she couldn't help but feel hurt and as though such an amused look was directed at her. After all, she had always been conventionally pretty, following in the footsteps of her beautiful parents. And now? Now she was bruised and scratched and covered in white gauze and bandages. She did not feel pretty, she felt silly and humiliated in the presence of these beautiful women.
The woman in the blazer, a woman with pin-straight brown hair cropped at her pointed chin, held out a hand with a perceivably kind smile but she could've sworn there was pity in there if you looked hard enough. The name tag attached to the blazer's lapel read INSPECTOR NESS but the woman held out a piece of paper for Ruby to take: 'hello Ruby, my name is Zoe. I am a private investigator but I don't work for SHIELD. This is an informal conversation to learn what happened to you and how we can help you moving forward. My partner is Agent Auburn Stark, she is here to assist with any immediate needs you require since she has access to most areas on the ship and I do not.'
Looking between them, Ruby noted that Zoe had become much more professional as she sat straighter and watched her read. Auburn Stark, the name ringing bells in the back of her mind, was much more relaxed in her seat, with crossed arms and her blonde hair wild with fly-aways as though she had been outside moments before entering the room. Auburn had a small smile sitting at the corner of her mouth.
Zoe, she felt comfortable with through each session. It was always Zoe who was prepared for her questions in advance, such as the obvious ones. When Ruby scribbled on her notepad asking why she hurt people when she spoke Zoe was quick to pass her an explanation describing buzzwords such as supersonic and decibels along with the capabilities of the human ear. Her cursed abilities had never been explained to Ruby in such an articulate way. The doctors always dumbed it down to 'really loud' primarily to preserve their voices from the shouting, but it often looked on their faces as though they didn't expect a teenager to understand.
Auburn always watched and contributed very little to the conversation. She never looked bored but when Ruby was writing she often let the facade drop thinking the girl wouldn't notice. In truth, the agent found the process tedious, clearly out of her comfort zone in the small room.
Whenever Auburn did write a question, it always added the informal aspects Ruby had expected. The agent asked about her hobbies, to which she swiftly responded with running and music, the latter eliciting a brief glance between the two women. Auburn's questions often resulted in follow-up questions that always circled back to what they all called "the incident". Until, after nearly two weeks worth of sessions, Ruby rocked her wheelchair restlessly and asked when she could begin her speech therapy.
At this point her wounds were healing nicely and she could walk in short intervals. Her legs were itching for a long jog but she could barely make it to the interview room without collapsing into the wheelchair- pushed along behind her -in agony. The gauze had been removed from her left ear and she was now beginning to process the truth of her reality, however slowly that may be. And with regards to adjusting to her new lifestyle? She was beginning to read lips.
In answer to her question about the speech therapy, Zoe tested her lip reading abilities and said, "How's tomorrow?". Ruby nodded eagerly, desperate to show that she was more than ready and eager to get home. No one had told her how much her parents knew about the incident but she was itching to get back to them and school and her music.