Age Of Magneto

Meeting The Captive

As soon as K and Pietro were loaded up on the jet, Clint and Jan went to securing them for the flight - and starting the scans to see if there was any tracers or bugs on them - or in K's case, how many bullets she was stuck with under the healed skin.

When they found the tracers, instead of destroying them, Clint tossed them out of the hatch so they could remain on Genosha while Tony and Steve got the jet into the air.

Natasha had appointed herself as guardian over the whole clean up operation, and was simply keeping track of who needed what - and handing the supplies to either Clint or Jan as they cleaned up the injuries on Pietro and the blood off of K.

Jan looked almost wary as she cleaned K up - though when Natasha stepped forward to tighten the restraints on K's hands and feet, Jan shook her head. "That's not ... you don't need to do that."

"I think I do," Natasha replied. "I've read her file about her - or what I could find. She's a piece of work, and I don't think it's smart to be that close to her unrestrained when she does wake up after how they took her down." Natasha gave Jan a soft sort of smile that didn't entirely reach her eyes. "I can take over here if you're uncomfortable."

"No," Jan replied quickly. "No, I've got it, thanks. Really."

"You're sure?"

Jan nodded with a much more confident sounding 'mm-hmm' as she gave Natasha a smile and went back to cleaning up the blood on K. "Healers are so hard to judge about these things," Jan said, already trying to brush it off. "I can't tell if the blood is hers or someone else's."

"Judging by how she was fighting - and the number of bullets we're going to have to get out of her? Probably pretty even," Natasha said, though that only had Jan frowning at K's torn up clothes.

"Yeah. that ... should be interesting. Beast will meet up at the Avengers' HQ to deal with this, won't he?"

"I believe that's the plan, yes," Natasha agreed. "Once the X-Men have all been cleared - seeing as there isn't anything life threatening here. He already gave Pietro a once over."

And while the women were discussing things in the back of the plane, Tony was absolutely paying close attention to the discussion at hand, and doing everything he could to keep from completely busting himself out when he knew that K was okay. Relatively speaking. Especially since it was her idea to keep it quiet - he was trying to respect that much at least. And he was lucky that Jean wasn't anywhere near him because he could hardly focus on flying the jet when he was that shell shocked from all that he'd seen.

The truth was, the Avengers had seen all kinds of miserable situations, but most of them were wrapped around Hydra and their bid for power. They weren't used to seeing little kids in the crosshairs and most of them in the jet were a little out of it, so no one was drawing too much attention by not teasing or picking.

They weren't at the mansion more than an hour before Beast showed up and got to work. Pietro really only needed some pain killers, but K was a trickier case. After a long barrage of X-rays and some careful consideration, to how her vitals were showing, he didn't really have much of a choice but to put an inhibitor collar on her, sedate her, and simply start removing bullets.

Both Tony and Steve watched through the observation window as Hank pulled out crushed round after crushed round until the hollow thunk of lead or copper on stainless steel wasn't so prominent - the spent rounds simply piling up on each other. He stitched up the spots that needed it - even if they wouldn't once the collar was off, and when he was finally done, Tony showed him where he could put the little woman to recover.

Once she was in a bed - though still in a hospital gown - Steve turned Tony's new device on to keep her in the room and Hank laid it out for them after he'd ran his hand over his face. "I'm very sure she'll recover much like Logan. She'll need plenty of protein and water when she wakes up to make up for everything her body is robbing from her stores. She'll likely be weak, dizzy, and worn until she refuels." He paused and gave them both a look. "Having said that -I should caution you ... it will slow her recovery down if you don't give her enough protein. She won't be able to rebuild the muscle lost until she gets it."