Radioactive | Bucky Barnes

IRON MAN: CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Tony stood in the large metal robot that looked as if it would collapse if someone tapped it with their fingers. Of course, Rhiley had tested that theory and it stayed together. She looked up at the camera and then back at Yinsen who labored furiously behind the jig. 

"How long do you think we'll have until they notice?" She asked, frustrated when she didn't get a response from Yinsen. At least, not until a bang on the door answers her question for her. 

"Yinsen!" Khalid peeks in, "Yinsen!" 

Yinsen, of course, as he had with Rhiley, ignored the enemy and kept working.

Khalid unlocks the door, but it does not open. It takes him a second until he shoves through and the door explodes. 

Smoke and debris covered the room. No one had been caught off guard by the bomb. 

She heads over to the Doctor, "It's frozen," Tony shouts, "The systems aren't talking to each other. Reset!" 

"No," Yinsen was more calm than Tony, "They're moving. Very slow."

Rhiley glimpsed between the two, her eyes staring at the chest piece placed on Tony, the static whine off the tools as Yinsen seals Tony in. 

Yinsen eyes the laptop, the bars creeping ever so slowly. He turns, listening to the shouting men outside growing louder. "Get to your cover and remember the checkpoints." He yells so Rhiley can hear him, "Make sure each one is clear before you follow me out." 

"This wasn't a part of their plan. 

"Yinsen!" Tony shouted as the man ran. 

Rhiley doesn't even second-guess her decision when she runs after him. A pain erupts through her nerves when she hears Tony yell her name. 

"What are you doing?" Rhiley hissed, watching Yinsen grab the weapon from a dead Khalid. 

"What I should have done a long time ago." He looked at her, eyes full of determination -- something Rhiley hadn't had in a long time. 

Rhiley watched a group of guards turn back around the moment they noticed Yinsen, who chased them without hesitation. He fired madly, unleashing the pent-up rage he's held in onto those men. 

She followed him the best she could until she was slammed into a wall. Weapons could advance and become bigger and more deadly, but they were still the same in the end. Rhiley quickly disarmed the man and shoved him unconscious with his own weapon. She drops it and goes to look for Yinsen. 

Rhiley still hated guns. 

Though slower than she used to be, Rhiley was still able to kick ass. But when a bullet rips through her side and then her gut. She finds herself stumbling into a wall, hands grabbing onto the rocks, flashbacks of the night she almost died popping through her head as the familiar pain rang through her system as she dropped to her knees and gasped. 

"Rhiley."  She heard her brother, and out of the same anger that Yinsen had exploded with. Rhiley grabbed a rifle that had been aimed at her head and snapped it in half with the same strength she had back in her cell. The man looks on in horror. 

She felt her skin warm and with a single punch, Rhiley took down the man, throwing his broken gun on top of him. 

Rhiley followed that punch forward, stumbling, her hand clenching her stomach, blood pooling from her hands. 

She clambered to the side and threw up.

Rhiley doesn't remember how she got outside and how her legs still worked. All she knew that someone was yelling her name, telling her to grab onto him. The next thing she knew she was int he air; flying. 

She blamed her inability to heal herself rapidly for her rapid blood loss, she also blamed herself for getting shot twice and fading in and out of consciousness. Truthfully, she didn't understand how she kept fading into consciousness. She should be dead - at least - she should, right? She should be running out of lives or was she a cat with nine? How many did she take up at this point though?

And why was Tony desperately keeping her alive, carrying her on his back even though his strength was depleted? Rhiley didn't have the energy to ask. The sun ate at her skin, blisters started to pop up. Unlike the gunshots, the sunburn wasn't painful. 

Then Tony staggers down a dune, sending Rhiley tumbling too. She rolled away from him, stopping on her back, eyes half closed, a gust of wind blew her hair out of her face. Then she heard a new voice, yet familiar.

"Saving your ass is getting to be a full-time job." It was Rhodey.

Then before collapsing into another loop of consciousness, she heard Tony one last time. "Rhiley. Hurt bad. help her."

-

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-

Her dreams were always the same, they always took place at her brother's convention and they always ended the same, with everyone disappearing leaving her there alone and Howard, her brother, on stage, looking at her as if she stole everything from him and ruined his life and she did. She left him, she caused him pain, and she broke her promise to come home.

Rhiley finally awoke a few days later, patched up and sore in a hospital bed with a bottle of Wicky and a card next to her bedside. Other than that, nothing. 

A nurse walked in and smiled, "You're awake." She checks Rhiley's vitals, "You had us worried, you lost a lot of blood but you're a fighter, that's for sure." 

Rhiley tried to sit up, but stopped when her head spun, "Tony." 

"Tony Stark?" The nurse smiled fondly, "You wouldn't be here if it weren't for him. Apparently, he dragged you through the desert for three days." She then looked at Rhiley, "What is he like?" Rhiley wanted to punch her. 

"He's a Stark." She didn't have the energy to lift her arms. 

"He had an assistant drop that off." The nurse said before leaving. 

Rhiley picked up the note beside the whiskey and read it to herself.

Thought you deserved a drink after the last three months. F.Y.I - you're fired.

Stark.

Rhiley blinked at the note, reading it over and over again. Tony fucking Stark had fired Rhiley over a single sentence on a note left beside her hospital bed which could have been her death bed.

She crumbled the note up and threw it across the room. She wasn't angry that he had fired her, she was angry that she had to find another job.

The note landed next to the door and the nice dress shoes of a man that Rhiley knew and hadn't seen for a bit.

"Coulson?"