Three Days Later
Foundation Medical Facility, Brooklyn
David woke up to the sound of machines beeping and Sofia crying.
Not loud crying. The quiet kind, the type that meant she'd been doing it for a while and had run out of energy for anything more dramatic. He could hear her through the fog of whatever drugs were keeping him sedated, sitting somewhere to his left, sniffling occasionally.
He tried to speak. His throat felt like sandpaper soaked in acid. What came out was a sound that barely qualified as human.
The crying stopped immediately. "David? Oh my god, David!"
Footsteps. Multiple sets. Sofia's face appeared above him, mascara-streaked and terrified. Then Sarah, switching instantly to doctor mode, checking monitors and his pupils and a dozen other things.
"David, can you hear me?" Sarah asked, professional despite the tremor in her voice.
He managed a nod. Barely.
"Don't try to talk yet. Your throat is—well, you did a lot of screaming during the battle. And the seizures after." She grabbed his hand, squeezed it. "Squeeze back if you understand."
He squeezed. His hand felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
"Good. Okay. Good." Sarah was crying now too, trying to hide it and failing. "You stubborn, heroic, absolutely idiotic man. Do you have any idea—three days, David. You've been unconscious for three days. We didn't know if you'd wake up. If there'd be anything left when you did."
Three days. David's mind tried to process that. The invasion. The buildings. Twenty-seven structures collapsing. Had everyone gotten out? Were they safe?
He must have looked panicked because Sofia grabbed his other hand. "Everyone's okay. Well, not everyone—it was an alien invasion, people died. But everyone in your buildings? All evacuated. Zero casualties in the structures you were holding. You did it, David. You actually did it."
Relief flooded through him so intensely that fresh tears leaked from his eyes. Everyone was safe. The buildings had held long enough. It had worked.
"The Foundation?" he rasped out, voice like gravel.
"Standing," Sarah said. "All properties intact and functional. You designed them well. They barely needed your gift during the invasion—just the usual touch-ups you were doing. It was all the other buildings you held that nearly killed you."
"Had to," he managed.
"We know. Everyone knows. David, you're all over the news. Video footage of you manipulating buildings, directing collapses, holding structures together while people evacuated. They're calling you the Architect. Some news station did a whole piece on 'the superhero who builds instead of fights.'" Sofia laughed wetly. "Except you did fight. You fought buildings and gravity and physics and won."
"For a while," Sarah added more soberly. "Then you lost. Hard. David, your brain—we had to bring in enhanced medical support. Regular medicine couldn't handle what you'd done to yourself. Banner helped. Stark brought in some experimental tech. Coulson got us SHIELD medical specialists before SHIELD officially fell apart. Between all of them, they put you back together. Mostly."
Mostly. That word hung heavy.
"Damage?" David asked.
Sarah exchanged glances with Sofia. "We should wait until you're stronger—"
"Now," David interrupted. "Need to know."
Sarah sighed. "Fine. But you're listening to the full prognosis without interrupting. Deal?"
He nodded.
"You had multiple strokes during the battle. Seventeen that we confirmed, probably more we couldn't detect in the chaos. Your brain was hemorrhaging in four places. Your cardiovascular system was in full crisis—heart attack levels of stress for hours. Your gift was burning through your nervous system like an electrical overload. By the time the buildings collapsed and you released your power, you were maybe two minutes from brain death."
David processed that. Two minutes. He'd cut it closer than he'd thought.
"The good news is that you're enhanced," Sarah continued. "Your gift apparently comes with some regenerative capacity we didn't know about. Your brain started healing itself almost immediately. Slowly, but consistently. The experimental treatments Banner and Stark provided accelerated that. Three days later, you're awake, coherent, and your scans are showing remarkable recovery."
"Bad news?"
"The bad news is we don't know if you'll ever be the same. Your cognitive functions are intact—you're clearly thinking, processing, remembering. But your gift?" Sarah shook her head. "We have no idea what condition it's in. You pushed it past every conceivable limit. It might have burned out completely. It might come back different. Or it might be fine and you just need rest. We won't know until you try to use it."
David considered that. His gift, possibly gone. The power that had defined the last three years, that had let him build impossible things and save thousands of lives. Maybe just... burned out like an overloaded circuit.
He reached inside himself, looking for that familiar sense of connection to structures around him. The constant awareness of concrete and steel, the feeling of being woven into the architecture surrounding him.
It was there. Faint, exhausted, barely a whisper of what it used to be. But there. Like a muscle pushed to complete failure—still present, still functional, but needing serious recovery time before it could do anything demanding.
"Still there," he said. "Weak. But there."
Sarah's relief was visible. "Good. That's good. Don't try to use it yet. Your brain needs time to heal, and your gift apparently runs on neural pathways we're only beginning to understand. Rest. Recover. The buildings can wait."
"Team?"
"Everyone's fine. Tired, traumatized, angry at you for almost dying, but fine." Sofia pulled out her phone, tapped something. "They've been rotating shifts sitting with you. Marcus barely left for the first two days. Tyler's been here every night. Isabella organized a prayer circle, which was sweet even though half of us aren't religious. James has been stress-eating and restructuring our insurance policies. Patricia coordinated the entire post-invasion Foundation response while checking on you every three hours. Elena's been managing community support across all our properties while visiting between shifts."
The image of his team taking turns sitting with his unconscious body made David's chest tight. "Want to see them."
"And they want to see you. But first, you need to eat something, drink fluids, and prove to me that you can stay conscious for more than ten minutes." Sarah pulled out her phone. "I'm texting everyone that you're awake. They'll flood in here shortly. But David? When they get here, when they tell you how scared they were, how angry they are that you risked yourself like that? Let them. Don't try to justify it or explain it away. Just let them feel what they need to feel. Okay?"
He nodded. He owed them that. Owed them a lot more than that.
Sarah left to get food and check his medications. Sofia stayed, holding his hand, looking at him like she was afraid he'd disappear if she looked away.
"You scared the shit out of me," she said quietly. "I was monitoring everything remotely. Watching you hold twenty-eight buildings while fighting in Times Square. Listening to your vital signs deteriorate. Then watching all those structures collapse at once and knowing you were directing every single failure while your brain was literally dying." Her grip tightened. "Don't do that again. Please. I can't watch you die a second time."
"Can't promise that," David said honestly. "If the same situation happens—"
"You'll do the exact same thing because you're a stubborn martyr with a hero complex. Yeah, I know." Sofia wiped her eyes. "Just... maybe next time warn us first? Give us time to come up with a plan that doesn't involve you sacrificing yourself?"
"Deal."
The door burst open. Marcus, still in tactical gear like he'd been in the middle of something, crossed the room in three strides and pulled David into a hug that would have broken ribs if David wasn't already broken.
"You son of a bitch," Marcus said into his shoulder. "You incredible, stupid, heroic son of a bitch."
"Can't breathe," David wheezed.
Marcus released him, stepped back, and David saw tears on the man's face. Marcus Webb, former Army Ranger who never showed emotion, was crying. "Three days. Three days of not knowing if you'd wake up. If there'd be anything left of you when you did. Do you know what that's like?"
"Marcus—"
"I watched my best friend's brain die in real-time. Watched you burn yourself out holding buildings together because you couldn't let people die. And I couldn't do a damn thing except coordinate evacuations and hope it was fast enough."
"It was fast enough. Everyone got out."
"Because you held on past the point where you should have been dead!" Marcus's voice cracked. "Two more minutes, David. Sarah said you had two more minutes before total brain death. Two minutes between you waking up today and us burying you tomorrow."
David didn't have a good response to that. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize for saving people. Apologize for not trusting us to find another way. Apologize for making a suicide run without even discussing alternatives. Apologize for treating your life like it's worth less than anyone else's."
"My life isn't—"
"Bullshit. Your life matters, David. To me, to Sofia, to everyone on this team. To the thousands of people who've lived in Foundation housing, who've been treated in Foundation clinics, who've built lives because you gave them foundations to build on. Your life matters."
The door opened again. Tyler, followed by the rest of the team. They crowded into the medical room, exhausted and emotional and looking at David like he was something precious and fragile.
"You're awake," Tyler said. The kid looked like he'd aged five years in three days. "You're actually awake."
"Takes more than a few strokes to keep me down," David tried to joke.
No one laughed.
Isabella walked straight to his bedside and slapped him. Not hard—she was too gentle for that—but firmly enough to sting. "That's for scaring us. This is for saving everyone." She kissed his forehead, tears streaming. "Don't you ever do something like that again without saying goodbye properly."
"I said—"
"You said 'just in case.' That's not goodbye. That's hedging your bets." Isabella grabbed his hand. "If you're going to sacrifice yourself for people, at least commit to the emotional honesty of admitting that's what you're doing."
"Noted."
James hung back, arms crossed, looking uncomfortable with the emotional display. But his eyes were red, and when he spoke his voice was rough. "I've restructured all our insurance policies. Tripled the coverage on enhanced individual operations. Established a trust fund that ensures the Foundation continues if leadership is incapacitated or deceased. Because apparently that's a real possibility now."
"James—"
"Shut up. I'm not done. I also established a separate fund in your name. For medical care, recovery, anything you need. Because you're going to take the time to heal properly, and you're not going to feel guilty about Foundation resources going toward your care. Understood?"
David nodded, throat tight.
Patricia stepped forward, posture military-perfect but eyes soft. "We've coordinated post-invasion rebuilding efforts across all five boroughs. Foundation properties are serving as distribution centers for aid, temporary housing for displaced residents, and coordination hubs for reconstruction. Your buildings held, David. They're doing exactly what you designed them to do. You should be proud."
"I am," he managed.
Elena and Sarah stood together, professional partnership and personal friendship obvious in their body language. Elena spoke first: "The community response has been overwhelming. People who sheltered in Foundation buildings during the invasion are volunteering for reconstruction. Donations are pouring in. Everyone wants to help rebuild. You showed them that infrastructure matters, that preparation saves lives. They learned that lesson."
Sarah added: "And the enhanced medical community has taken note. Banner wants to study your gift's regenerative properties—purely for medical research, he says. Stark's offered to build you custom monitoring equipment to track your power levels and prevent overuse. Even Coulson, in the chaos of SHIELD falling apart, has made sure we have access to enhanced medical resources."
"SHIELD fell apart?" David asked.
The team exchanged glances. Marcus answered: "Three days is a long time. While you were unconscious, Captain America and Natasha Romanoff exposed Hydra's infiltration of SHIELD. The whole organization collapsed. Helicarrier data dump, public revelation of secret Nazi organization embedded in U.S. intelligence. It's been chaos."
David's mind raced despite the exhaustion. SHIELD collapsed. Hydra exposed. That was the Winter Soldier timeline, but it had happened during the invasion instead of months later. Another timeline shift. Another consequence of his presence accelerating events.
"Meridian Holdings?" he asked.
"Gone public as a Hydra front," Sofia confirmed. "Catherine Meridian arrested. Their assets frozen. The network you helped expose is being systematically dismantled. David, you did more than save people during the invasion. Your work identifying Hydra financial structures gave the authorities the roadmap they needed to dismantle the organization."
"We did that," David corrected. "Team effort."
"Team effort led by a man who can apparently hold the laws of physics in contempt through sheer stubbornness," James said dryly. "But sure, team effort."
Tyler had been quiet, standing at the back of the group. Now he pushed forward, looking young and scared and determined. "I need to say something."
Everyone turned to him. Tyler took a breath.
"When you told me goodbye—when you said to keep building, to remember why we build—I thought you were dying. Thought I was going to lose the only person who ever believed in me. And I was angry. So fucking angry that you'd give up, that you'd leave me."
"Tyler—"
"But you weren't giving up. You were making sure someone else lived. And then another person. And another. You held buildings until everyone got out, and then you directed the collapses so nobody got hurt by the debris. You thought of everything. Planned for everything. Even your own death." Tyler's voice cracked. "That's what you taught me. That architecture isn't about buildings. It's about people. About giving them spaces to live and love and be safe. You literally died for that principle. And then you came back, because apparently you're too stubborn to stay dead."
David reached out, grabbed Tyler's hand. "I'm not going anywhere."
"You better not. Because I still have a lot to learn. And you're not allowed to leave until I'm at least half as good as you."
"You're already better than I was at your age."
"Bullshit. But I'll get there. Just... stay alive long enough to see it happen, okay?"
"Deal."
The team stayed for another hour, rotating through to talk to David individually, sharing updates on the Foundation's post-invasion operations, the city's recovery, the enhanced community's response. By the time Sarah kicked everyone out so David could rest, he was exhausted but centered in a way he hadn't been in years.
His people were okay. The Foundation was standing. The city was rebuilding. And he was alive to see it, which had apparently been a closer call than he'd realized.
Sofia was the last to leave. She paused at the door, looking back. "The news is calling you the Architect. They're doing profiles, investigative pieces, trying to figure out who you are and what you can do. The Foundation's going to be under intense scrutiny. Everyone's going to know about your powers now."
"I know."
"That was the thing you were trying to avoid. The visibility, the attention, being known as an enhanced individual instead of just a builder."
"Yeah."
"Was it worth it?" she asked quietly.
David thought about forty-two children in a basement in Chelsea. About families in Hell's Kitchen. About two hundred patients in a hospital that should have collapsed. About eight thousand people sheltered in Foundation buildings and zero casualties in structures he'd held together through impossible determination.
"Every second," he said.
Sofia smiled, fierce and proud. "Good answer. Now rest. We've got a lot of work to do, and you're going to need your strength for what comes next."
"What comes next?"
"Rebuilding, restructuring, probably some uncomfortable conversations with federal agencies about enhanced individual registration. Stark wants to have lunch when you're mobile. Banner wants to run tests. Coulson—or whatever Coulson is now that SHIELD doesn't exist—wants to coordinate on intelligence sharing. And about a thousand reporters want interviews with the man who held Manhattan together." Sofia grinned. "Your quiet anonymous builder phase is officially over, boss. Welcome to being a public figure."
David groaned. "I hate public figures."
"You are one now. Deal with it. Also, Marcus is instituting mandatory bodyguards, so get comfortable with having security shadows. And I'm implementing new digital security protocols because everyone's going to be trying to hack our systems. And James is having a nervous breakdown about the legal implications of everything, so expect a lot of paperwork."
"Anything else?"
"Isabella wants to organize a team therapy session about our collective trauma. Patricia's already drawing up new operational security protocols. Elena's coordinating with about fifty different community organizations for rebuilding efforts. And Tyler's designing a memorial for the invasion victims—he wants your input when you're better."
So much to do. So many people depending on the Foundation, on him, on the infrastructure they'd built. David felt the weight of it settling on his shoulders again.
But this time, he wasn't carrying it alone.
"Okay," he said. "We'll handle it. Together."
"Together," Sofia agreed. "Now sleep before Sarah comes back and sedates you."
She left. The room fell quiet except for the beeping machines and the distant sounds of the city outside. David closed his eyes, reaching inside himself for that faint whisper of his gift. It responded sluggishly, exhausted, but present.
He'd burned himself out saving people. Pushed past every limit. Nearly died in the process. And given the chance, he'd do it exactly the same way again.
Because that was the work. That was what the Foundation was built for. Not just housing or community centers or medical clinics. But the commitment to catch people when they fell, to hold structures together when everything else collapsed, to build foundations that kept standing when the world tried to tear them down.
David had done that. Had literally held a city together through force of will and supernatural architecture.
Now came the harder part: accepting that he was human—or enhanced, or whatever—and that he couldn't hold everything forever. Learning to delegate, to trust, to share the burden he'd been carrying alone for three years.
Learning that his life mattered as much as anyone else's, even if that felt uncomfortable to accept.
The door opened quietly. Marcus, slipping back in after everyone had left. He settled into the chair beside David's bed, and neither of them spoke for a long moment.
"Alexis wants to meet you," Marcus said eventually. "When you're better. She saw the footage of you fighting, read the articles. Asked me who the hell my boss was that he could make buildings move. I told her you were the man who built the Foundation. Who gave me a purpose when I didn't have one. Who taught me that building is just as important as fighting, maybe more."
"What did she say?"
"She said anyone who could make her dad cry probably deserves meeting." Marcus smiled. "She's right. When you're healed up, you're having dinner with us. Both of you. My two favorite people in the world, meeting properly."
"I'd like that."
"Good. Now sleep. I'll be here when you wake up. Someone needs to make sure you don't try to use your powers before Sarah clears you."
"Marcus—"
"Sleep, David. That's an order."
David slept. And for the first time in three years, he didn't dream about the invasion. Didn't see the portal opening, the buildings falling, the people dying.
He dreamed about Tyler's designs for the memorial. About Isabella's community networks expanding. About Sofia's security systems keeping everyone safe. About Marcus and Alexis having dinner together, rebuilding their relationship.
He dreamed about the Foundation's future. About the work still to come.
And when he woke again, hours later, his team was still there. Taking shifts, keeping watch, making sure he never had to face the darkness alone.