(no subject)

[girlofclay]

 Betty Barnes is not afraid of heights. That would be ridiculous and incredibly inconvenient, to be a pilot and afraid of heights. She loves heights, always has done. Loves flying, loves being up high feeling the weight of the air against her wings. What she doesn't love, though, is falling. She nearly fell off a train once, in the last war in Germany, rescued only at the last second by her best friend's hand around her wrist.

Steve, who wasn't even a pilot, who learned to fly by watching her, who would later willfully fly into the Arctic Ocean, leaving her alone, angry, and not a little guilty. It had taken a few years after the war for Betty to find her wings again, when Howard and Peggy called her up, said they needed a pilot who could handle new and dangerous aircraft without having to worry about other military commitments, and that was how Bombshell Barnes ended up flying for the brand new SHIELD.

Officially they weren't involved in Korea. Officially Leviathan wasn't either, but officially Leviathan doesn't really exist, so that makes things complicated. But it was as a civilian, officially, that Betty ended up flying near enough to the conflict that when she was shot down - and she hated setting the self destruct on that machine as much as she hated bailing out - and it was a US army rescue chopper that was the last thing she heard before finally blacking out.

The first thing she hears when she wakes up are voices, and she sends up thanks to whichever Saint that looks after covert ops pilots, that they appear to be speaking English. 

Comments

[benjaminfranklin]

Hawkeye was trying to catch five minutes of actual sleep, but he had barely closed his eyes (or it felt like it) when Radar was shaking him awake to explain they'd got a call over the radio that a chopper was en-route with an injured pilot, and as the surgeon on duty he was needed.

He hadn't been entirely sure he wasn't asleep when the pilot in question arrived and it was a woman lying unconscious on the stretcher carried into the OR. He didn't have time to question it, though, she was clearly injured and he didn't need to know anything else right that second.

The surgery is long, but successful, and he manages to actually get his nap when he's done - though it's barely an hour before he's back for a Post-Op rotation. He's just discussing the pilot's condition with the nurse when he glances over at her and realises she's waking.

"Aha!" He says, the cheer in his voice belying the lack of decent sleep "Welcome back to the land of the living. You tried very hard to leave it but today was not your day. How are you feeling, uh... Captain? Barnes?"