Chapter Text
Robby sends her home three hours early.
(It goes something like this:
Trinity hobbled back to the hub from Central 9, thoroughly exhausted mentally and emotionally— probably physically, too, given her damn leg. Garcia had stormed off in the opposite direction, not once looking back, even when Santos checked every few steps.
Dana caught sight of her before she could plop her ass down in front of a computer. “Nuh-uh!” she barked before Trinity could lower herself into the chair.
The sharp command pulled Robby’s attention from where he stood at the counter, scribbling something on a Post-It. He ceased his writing, dropping the pen before pocketing the tiny yellow square.
“Robby. Send Santos home,” Dana told him.
Trinity had felt it like a slap of betrayal. “What? Why?” She stared.
“You’re no good like this. That old injury of yours has slowed you down all day and if you keep tryin’ to push it, you’re gonna be even slower tomorrow.”
Dana had raised an eyebrow, daring the young doctor to challenge her. Trinity just sighed and screwed her eyes shut because this day had become a shit show. The nail in the coffin was Dana looking to Robby, asking a weighted, “Well?”
Robby bounced his eyes between them before shaking his head, and for a moment, Trinity felt optimistic. But then the hypocrite opened his mouth and said, “She’s right, Santos. You’ve been off all day and don’t think I haven’t noticed you limping around like a lame dog.”
Fuck. Why were they choosing now to pay attention to their residents? Why weren’t they doing that when Langdon was stealing fucking meds from the hospital?
“Go home, Santos. Get some rest. Take care of your leg. Whatever you need to do to get your head back in the game.”)
So that’s why she’s currently sitting like a sad sack of potatoes on the couch in her sad apartment that she shares with her sad-eyed roommate who was still on shift in the MICU and therefore not even here to be sad and miserable with her. Her right leg is outstretched, resting on the coffee table while she stares unhappily at the injury that has fucked up everything.
Garcia had thrown the casual right back in her face, and she knows she deserved it. She knows she hurt Yolanda when she said it the week before.
She knows she didn’t mean it, either.
Casual.
Fuck.
Trinity stares at the suit draped over the armchair that Huckleberry favors when they make time for movie nights or Top Chef marathons. She hadn’t been lying to him when she said he did a good job on the repair. It’s as good as new; he even reinforced some of the stitching.
She wants to go out. She wants to go do something that matters out there since she got kicked out of the only other place where she feels like she sometimes makes a difference.
But god damn is she tired. She told Dennis that she doesn't need as much sleep anymore, not since getting bitten. Then there are days like today when she feels like she could sleep for ten hours.
So she does.
Maybe not quite ten hours because it’s just after one in the morning when she checks her phone. There’s a text from Huckleberry saying he made chicken fettuccine alfredo for dinner and that there’s leftovers in the fridge. More than one text in the group chat called ‘robby’s problematic children’ checking in on her after she went home early.
Trinity drags herself out of bed. Her leg actually does feel better after that much rest, and when she gives it a onceover, it looks more healed than it did when Garcia demanded to see it. Thank the fucking spider.
While she reheats pasta, Trinity assures the group that she’s fine and she’ll see them in six hours.
And she really does feel fine now. Maybe not at full capacity but enough to pull the suit on after she scarfs down her food. She won’t do a full patrol— just a couple hours out and about to see what’s going on. Just a trial run.
She steps through her bedroom window and onto the fire escape, taking a moment to stretch, though maybe not in any meaningful way. Eventually, she fires a webline without thinking about where she’s headed and simply swings through the night.
Trinity ends up sitting on a billboard between Oakland and Bloomfield, staring at a closed Dunkin’ while thinking an iced coffee and a breakfast sandwich sounds like an excellent idea for later. She’s very purposefully not thinking about how she was headed in the direction of Garcia’s apartment in Bloomfield when she was trying not to think about her or their conversation.
Except it’s all she can think about, her mind drifting back to that moment in the exam room. Garcia’s face and the frustration, fear, and care she found there. The phrase ‘casual hookup’ twisting her insides into something painful.
Trinity doesn’t want casual. She never wanted casual, but she also couldn’t see being serious with the woman if she couldn’t tell her about Spider-Woman. But now… Garcia knows. And maybe if Trinity apologizes enough…
The crack of a gunshot followed by the sound of shattering glass snaps her attention to a commotion just a few blocks away. She traverses the older buildings with leaps and a swift web-zip, finding the culprits holding up a gas station. One has a real gun. The second has what looks to be an airsoft gun with the blaze orange tip cut off and filed down, though still leaving an orange ring around the barrel.
Amateurs, she thinks as she strolls through the front door that’s now missing a window pane. “Evening,” she greets.
Both men spin to face her, eyes wide behind their cliched, half-skullface balaclavas.
The guy with the toy tries to bolt for the rear fire exit. She sends a web straight to his back and yanks, pulling him off his feet. His head cracks against the linoleum floor and he gasps as the air is knocked from his lungs.
Her body throws itself into the air before she can even register she’s diving. She feels the bullets whizz by her, missing by a centimeter. Mid-air, she webs the real gun from the asshole’s hand, slinging it across the store.
She thinks about how mad Garcia would be if she got shot. Thinks of the ways she can apologize to her now— maybe a chocolate croissant from the bakery on the first floor of her building? Thinks how much she wants to take Garcia out on a real date, how much she doesn’t want casual. How much she wants something.
Her head isn’t in the game. That’s what Robby had said. That’s how she misses the backup pistol the jagoff yanks from his jacket. The one he starts firing wildly as he also flees for the rear exit.
The first shot slams into her shoulder, impact spinning her 90 degrees. The second tears through her side, just below her ribs. The third hits closer to her belly button.
Pain explodes through her body.
She fires one last web burst and it pins the shooter to one of the refrigeration units. He struggles uselessly.
Trinity staggers. The room tilts. She thinks she hears the attendant ask if she’s all right.
Wants to ask if she looks all right.
She’s not sure if she can land the sarcasm, right now.
She thinks she’s seeing stars.
She stumbles back the way she entered, more falling into the door than purposefully pushing it open.
The cold air hits her face, and she shoots a webline blindly, instinctively, and begins swinging.
-
Yolanda Garcia is not a deep sleeper.
The first time she was on call, she was absolutely paranoid that she would miss her phone going off in the middle of the night. She turned the volume all the way up and chose the most obnoxious ringtone, setting the vibration pattern to something strange. What she discovered was that anything out of the ordinary would wake her.
The bark of the new puppy her neighbor had adopted. A police siren that chirped a little differently than the usual pitch. Voices across the hall at an odd hour.
And if those sounds became routine, they would stop waking her.
Her phone going off in the middle of the night for whatever reason? Not routine.
Neither is the crash from the fire escape off her kitchen/dining room window.
It jars her into wakefulness, and she jerks upright in bed, heart racing because that was a sound that was definitely not right. She reaches for the bat near her bedside and starts towards the kitchen, moving to the window ever so cautiously.
When she peers out, her heart stops.
“Trinity.”
Spider-Woman is sprawled across the fire escape, barely moving. Garcia yanks the window open, climbing out as she calls Trinity’s name.
“Trinity! Santos! Hey!” she says urgently. “Hey!”
Her breathing is shallow. The suit is soaked with blood, visible even against the dark navy fabric. She’s seen enough gunshot wound victims to know what she’s looking at.
“Jesus Christ, Trinity,” she swears under her breath.
Her immediate instinct is to call 911, but it’s quickly challenged by the knowledge that gunshots mean questions and cops and there’s no way to explain Trinity showing up on her fire escape two stories up after being shot three times.
She doesn’t have the supplies to treat any of this here. Doesn’t know of anybody who—
“Fuck!”
She pulls out her phone. Ignores the blood she’s smearing over everything. Calls the one man she knows is probably prepared for shit like this.
He picks up after one ring. “Abbott,” she says into the phone sharply. “I need your help. Spider-Woman, multiple GSWs. My apartment.”
To his credit, he doesn’t ask any questions, just, “I’ll be there in ten,” before hanging up.
Garcia lifts Trinity Spider-Woman into her arms and carefully maneuvers both of them back into the apartment. Once she lays her down, she unlocks her front door and then sprints to her bathroom for her first aid kit that now seems woefully inadequate and as many towels as she can carry.
She pulls the mask off and pushes the hood back. Trinity’s skin is pale and clammy, and Garcia is so angry and so terrified all at once.
She shoves the feelings away because neither are helpful in this moment. Applies pressure to the worst of the wounds and listens for those breaths, no matter how shallow, because it means Trinity is still alive.
Abbott arrives in less than ten minutes, pushing through the door with a black duffel bag in hand. If he’s shocked by seeing Trinity in the suit, he doesn’t show it. Doesn’t say anything about it at all.
He just kneels beside them both, a look of calm on his face as he opens the bag and starts pulling out the equivalent of multiple surgical trays. Abbott cuts along the seams of the suit, quick but mindful, as if he’s considering how it’ll have to be sewn back together eventually.
Once they’ve stripped away Spider-Woman and have only Trinity in front of them, he says calmly and determinedly, “All right. Let’s get to work.”
It isn’t clean. It definitely isn’t pretty. There’s enough blood that Garcia knows she’ll just throw out the rug and hope it hasn’t seeped into the wood floor beneath it.
Garcia keeps pressure as Abbott digs for bullets with a headlamp on his forehead. Trinity drifts in and out of consciousness through most of it. But they keep her breathing, her heart beating.
They keep her alive.