The doctor || MARVEL

Week 1 ⚝ Chapter 25

March 12, 2015

Bucky had only read the first four sentences of the letter before deciding that he had to stop. But it had been three days since the mission ended and the compound still seemed quiet. It was almost like everything was on pause. There was no late-night laughter.

Every night Bucky woke up screaming from nightmares. And it was obvious that her absence affected him very much. But it also hurts everyone else.

Clint went home to be with his family, (Only Nat knew that everyone else thought he was just on leave) He felt the need to protect them since he knew that there was a bigger and upcoming threat in the world.

Natasha was getting grumpier by the day. Nightmares were also plaguing her. She handled it differently than Bucky, she would wake up and go downstairs to maul a punching bag or training dummy.

Thor had gone back to Asgard. Nobody was sure why but he said something about 'Asking an old friend for help' but he was yet to return.

Steve started sleeping less and got scared at every little sound. He was practically living off coffee and nobody dared to stop him. He spent most of his time with Tony and Bruce trying to track her down.

Bruce worked almost non-stop with Tony. Bruce spent most of the time being the one and only rational thinker as Tony was too focused on how to find her next time and Steve was too worried and stressed to form an understandable sentence.

Tony had started to fully neglect sleep much to the dismay of Pepper. He and Bruce had spent hours trying to think of anything that she might have with her location. Of course, the two were much too sleep-deprived to think of the obvious.

Natasha was that one. She had been on a whim of bright thinking and walked into the lab where the three exhausted men worked in almost complete darkness and silence. They might have been honestly dead.

"Hello?" Natasha's voice was flat and lacked the usual sarcasm they all loved. "Anyone home?" She asked, flicking on the light to gain complaints from all the men.

"Oh, Nat, Hi." Tony said looking back down at the tablet that he was looking at "What do you need?"

"For you boys to go to sleep. Me and Bucky came up with how to find her, if we even still can. So you can go and sleep,"

"I'm sorry, how? Care to share with the class?" Tony asked snidely looking back at her as Bruce and Steve's head popped out from behind other things looking at her wide-eyed.

They all looked almost sickly, both pale and dark eyes from not sleeping.

"You know, the files that we were meant to have on the mission? Well some of them have locations of the remaining HYDRA based. We could raid the bases until we found her." Natasha suggested shrugging as if it was the simplest thing ever.

All the men stared at her; dumbfounded. She was right after all, and she did make a good point.

"Natasha!" Steve broke the silence happily "You are brilliant."

"I know" She grinned at him and the room fell silent again.