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cap_ironman2013-07-07 09:52 am
elspethdixon.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2013-07-07 09:52 am
Entry tags:
Reassembled, chapter 16
Title: Reassembled, Chapter 16
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Universe: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.
Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
Chapter Sixteen
She woke up still Wasp-sized, inside a shimmering bubble of energy that she knew already was going to be impenetrable and probably shock her when she tried to touch it. Through the greenish distortion of the bubble, she could see Hank chained spread-eagled to the opposite wall.
The energy bubble did, indeed, shock her when she tried to touch it.
"I-was going to tell you not to try that." Hank's voice was just above a whisper, not that that would actually help if Doom had them under electronic or magical surveillance. From this distance, without decent light, it was impossible to tell if he was hurt of not.
"I knew better," Jan said, tucking her stinging hands against her sides. "Are you okay?"
Hank made a bitterly amused snorting noise—the walls of her cell obviously didn't block or muffle sound. "Fine, for now. I'm not sure if Sin has a policy of not giving her prisoners food or water, or if she's just forgotten she's got us."
The two of them were being held in the corner of a huge, high-ceilinged room, lit only by the steady glow of her 'cage' and by a grid of finely spaced green energy beams that ran from floor to ceiling and walled their corner off from the rest of the room. Jan kicked at the round metal plate that formed the floor of her tiny cell, then flew up a couple of inches to try hammering on the identical plate that formed the ceiling. It did nothing, of course, but it made her feel better.
"How long?" she asked, once her attempt to vent frustration had predictably failed to do anything.
"A while?" Hank's shoulders twitched, the attempt at a shrug cut short by the fact that at least part of his weight was hanging from his arms. "I don't know. Long enough to be thirsty, not long enough to start desperately needing a bathroom, and definitely less than twenty-four hours."
Which meant it wasn't safe yet for Hank to try shrinking down small enough to fit through the gaps in the energy grid. Even twenty-four hours would have been risky — it took longer than that for most psychological medications to completely leave the body — and by that time, Sin was likely to have come back and started in on whatever plans he had for them anyway.
"We're in a warehouse somewhere," Hank went on. "I don't know if it's Manhattan or Brooklyn. Or New Jersey; we could be on the other side of the Hudson River."
"And Sam?" Jan asked. Her last memory of the fight involved one of Sin's goons clubbing him with the butt of a semiautomatic rifle. Had they taken him, too? Chained him up somewhere else? Shot him and left him for dead?
Hank shook his head. "I don't know." He leaned his head backward against the brick wall and sighed. "I don't know," he repeated. "I don't know what happened to any of them."
Jan resisted the impulse to put her palms against the energy field to try and press closer to him; it would only zap her again. She hadn't even thought of the others — Tony, Steve, Clint. Wanda, whom Doom had to be itching to get his hands on. Carol and Thor were hard to injure, nearly impossible to kill, she reminded herself. Sin and Doom wouldn't have been able to capture them with mercenaries and Doombots. And if she'd taken down Steve, Sin would want him chained up and at her mercy. He'd have been here next to them, and Sin would be standing right there with the electrical cables and knives.
"Do you think they got the book?"
"I don't know," Hank snapped, and then, "Sorry. I haven't been awake much longer than you have."
Under normal circumstances, Jan would have tried to say something to lighten the mood, but they were almost certainly being monitored.
Actually, given that they were probably being watched, "The mansion must be in ruins. When the others get here, Sin and Doom are going to regret that." She raised her voice. "You hear that, Mister Man in the Iron Mask? You and Nazi Barbie are going to regret this."
Hank didn't say anything in response, but she could tell he was amused. Jan decided to take that as a positive sign, and the fact that he seemed to be squinting at her energy cage, as if trying to make out the details in the dim light, as another. He'd figure out a way to get her out of here, she'd fly through one of the gaps in the energy grid that was keeping them fenced in, and then she'd turn it off somehow and they'd be out of here. If they were really lucky, there would be one or two of Sin's men on guard outside for her to blast on the way out. Dealing out a round of bioelectrical shocks and mild chemical burns would be very satisfying right about now.
It was impossible to tell how many hours passed before a pair of Doombots teleported into the middle of the warehouse floor in a flash of light. For a moment, Jan's vision was blurred by a smeared purple afterimage. Then it cleared, and she was able to recognize the man held slumped between them.
Don's clothes were torn and stained with something dark, and his head hung forward limply, hair hanging in his face. Behind him stood Doom himself, with one foot propped on Thor's discarded hammer.
How in the name of God — of several gods — had they managed to teleport that?
'Please,' Jan thought, 'let him be a distraction. A decoy.' At any moment, surely, Don would straighten up and lunge for Mjolnir, change back into Thor, and take Doom down with one swing, just before Steve and the rest of the team burst through the warehouse doors.
Doom waved an imperious hand. "Put him next to Pym." He gestured again, and the dim, hulking shape just beyond the energy grid was suddenly and dramatically spot-lit, revealing a generator of some kind. While the two Doombots dragged an unresisting Don toward the corner, Doom keyed something into the machine's controls and the energy grid vanished.
Hank tensed, clearly readying himself to shrink just enough to get out of his restraints and throw himself at Doom. Jan shook her head, and watched with relief as he visibly forced himself to relax again. Hank wasn't always good at subtle signals, and didn't always listen even when he was aware of them.
The Doombots locked Don into a set of empty restraints next to Hank's, then stepped back. The energy grid flickered into place again, and Jan let go of the hope that Don's presence was intentional. He was slumped against the wall, most of his weight hanging from his arms, and seemed too dazed to have even noticed his surroundings — the Doombots' rough handling had barely elicited a reaction. The dark stains on his clothes were blood, clearly visible now that she could see him in the light. His [left? Right?] leg was injured, and badly, if the amount of fresh blood soaking his pants leg was any indication.
Had they been torturing him? How many of the others did they have?
"So you're going to chain him up and leave him here, too? Are you starting a collection?" Hank's voice was at its most caustic and belittling, and he could do belittling better than almost anyone Jan knew. It was all in the tone.
Doom didn't even look at him. "I know you're awake, Dr. Blake. Feigning unconsciousness will do you no good."
Don mumbled something indistinct about Loki, not lifting his head. Jan didn't think he was feigning.
"What did you do to him?" she demanded. Mjolnir was still lying on the floor several yards behind Doom; he might have been able to teleport it here, but almost no one other than Thor was able to lift it by hand. If he'd had the hammer with him, then Don had been Thor when Doom had taken him, and Thor didn't turn back into Don involuntarily anymore. Simply taking Mjolnir away wouldn't have done it.
Magic? Some kind of coercion? Thor would have given himself up for any one of the others, probably even Tony.
Doom glanced at her, then apparently decided she was worth speaking to after all. "I did nothing. Dr. Blake is a gift from my future queen."
Future-
"You're marrying Sin?" she blurted out.
"Don't be an idiot," Doom snapped. "As if I'd tie myself to an insane fanatic who thinks her dead father speaks to her. I am about to become a god; the woman ruling at my right hand could be nothing less."
"She's setting you up," Don mumbled, the words a little less slurred this time.
"Obviously." Doom sounded, if possible, even more disdainful. "But by the time Loki makes her move, I shall be too powerful for a minor chaos deity to touch, something you, my dear doctor, are going to help me with. Once I've absorbed the power of the spear and attained godhood, I shall return here and revert you to your true form. When I sacrifice you to myself and devour Thor's soul, the power of the Odin force will be mine to command. I will rule Valhalla as well as earth, and Loki's powers will useless against me. "
"I knew you were insane," Hank said, "but you can't actually think-"
"You are the one who does not think. You lack vision, even more so than Richards does. I am a genius, a strategist, a master of both science and magic; naturally a second-rate scientist whose only accomplishments were accidents would fail to understand my plans."
Don lifted his head, glaring at Doom with the one eye that wasn't swollen shut. "You're going to destroy yourself. No human can wield the power of the Odin force; it'll burn your soul up like a candle, if Chthon doesn't destroy it for you first."
"You assume my soul is so easily consumed? If you can wield that power, I shall be able to command it easily. As for Chthon, he will be no match for my new powers combined with Loki's." Doom straightened, sweeping his cloak back with a flourish. "My new consort is right — Thor doesn't have the brains or vision to rule Valhalla, and you don't have the strength. It takes someone with ruthlessness and cunning to truly belong on Odin's throne."
"You're not seriously marrying Loki." The very idea was ridiculous, not the least because she couldn't think of anything about it that benefited Loki, aside from the ability to maneuver Doom like a pawn against her enemies, which she would probably be able to do anyway. Who in their right mind would want to marry Doom?
"Be silent." Doom held up one heavy, metal gauntlet. "I need keep you alive only until I have claimed the spear from my soon-to-be-late ally." He paused, and if it weren't for the mask, Jan suspected that she would have been able to see him smiling. "I had originally planned to make do with just Synthia Schmidt as a blood sacrifice for my apotheosis, but three is a much more powerful number than one. You should be thanking me, Wasp. How many people can truly say that their deaths changed the world?"
"Touch them, and you'll find out just how much my father's son I am." The air in the room seemed to grow heavier as Don spoke, like the thick stillness before a summer thunderstorm. She almost didn't recognize his voice as he continued, "First I'll flay the skin off your back, and then I'll use every bit of my training and knowledge to remove your muscles and ribs, so you'll still be alive and conscious when I rip your lungs out through the holes in your back and let you suffocate to death. Then I'll hang your corpse from the tallest oak tree I can find in Central Park until it rots away to nothing, and we'll see who consumes whose soul."
Doom threw back his head and laughed, the sound echoing off the high ceiling. "If I weren't planning to kill you, I'd be tempted to offer you a job." He sounded honestly amused at being threatened with disgusting and overly detailed death, maybe even a little impressed. "Enjoy the next few hours, gentlemen. They're all you have left."
The flash of light when he and his Doombots teleported away was almost anti-climatic.
* * *
Sharon tossed the file she'd just been reading down onto one of the stacks of print-outs that covered the table in front of her. "However Doom's getting around your teleportation blocker, there must be a way to counter it."
"It's magic," Tony said, "so, not necessarily." While it was nice that at least some members of SHIELD still seemed to have faith in him — or at least, his abilities — there were limits to what even he could do with technology. After all the effort he'd put into sweet-talking the medical staff into letting him unhook himself from their monitors and join Sharon's impromptu task force, it was somewhat deflating to admit, but, "I have to obey the laws of physics. Try hunting down Strange."
"We did," Barnes said. "He's never around when you need him."
"That's not always true," Wanda said, a little defensively. Considering that Strange had all but written her off completely as crazy and beyond help a little over a year ago, it was awfully forgiving off her, probably moreso than Tony would have been. The fact that he'd apologized and helped her when she'd escaped Chthon must have gone a long way.
Then again, she'd forgiven Tony and the rest of the Avengers, too.
"True or not, trying to Loki-proof our security is useless." Tony tapped a finger against the print-outs of what data Steve and Carol had managed to salvage from the mansion's security systems. "Forget her. Doom and Sin are the weak links there. Wherever they teleported to, it was within a five mile radius of the Avengers Mansion." Which covered almost the entire island of Manhattan, with no guarantees that they'd teleported directly to their final destination.
Sharon nodded. "For all we know, they're in New Jersey by now, but we can start there."
This entire process would be exponentially faster if he could use the Extremis to access SHIELD's computers and satellite data rather than having to go about everything the long way, or if the mansion's computers were still in working order — not that he'd have been able to use them, with Steve being so ridiculously overprotective.
Given Steve's mood at the moment, it was a good thing he wasn't seriously injured. If Steve had reacted this badly to a migraine, a minor electrical shock, and a few moments of unconsciousness, he would probably have completely lost it over a real injury.
At least it gave Steve something to focus on other than the things Doom had thrown in his face last night.
Tony wished he had a few more things to focus on. Tracking down Doom's location was vital, but it didn't feel like they were accomplishing anything. At least if he had a tool of some kind in his hand, or a computer system to mentally hack in to, he'd feel like he was doing something instead of just sitting in a climate controlled conference room while Hank and Jan were at Doom's mercy.
Helicarrier conference rooms were beginning to tie with medical facilities for places Tony had spent far more hours of his life in than he ever wanted to.
Barnes glanced down at the map he had spread across the table in front of him — it looked like a Department of Buildings map, but Tony suspected that it contained a great deal of information the DoB didn't have access to — and frowned slightly. "There are six possible locations in that area."
"Five," Sharon cut in. "I keep telling you; Doom wouldn't stoop to using a walk-in freezer."
"It's already effectively soundproofed, there are drains in the floor, the restaurant hasn't been open for-"
"Where is it?" Wanda interrupted, leaning forward slightly to peer at the upside down map.
Barnes tapped one metal finger against a building lot that had been highlighted in green marker.
Wanda shook her head. "Not there. That's right in the middle of Hell's Kitchen. He wouldn't risk trying to work magic that close to St. Margaret's."
There were a couple of moments of silence, while they all stared at the five remaining highlighted spots on the map, none of which helpfully stood out as abandoned Victorian Gothic mansions or conveniently empty state of the art lab facilities. Barnes drummed his fingers on the table, then seemed to realize how loud the metal-on-wood tapping was, and stopped. His arm was good work, especially for a Cold War relic, but the designers had sacrificed aesthetics for function — typical of Soviet work. He'd probably refuse an upgrade, but something like Misty Knight's cybernetic arm, with built-in weaponry...
How pressure sensitive was it? Some of the interfaces he'd built for previous iterations of his armor could be modified to provide more neural feedback, including sensory data.
Barnes leaned back in his chair, shoving the map away from him in disgust. "Three quarters of a century, and I'm still doing Nick Fury's grunt work. I'm more skilled and experienced than any agent on board this ship except Natasha — who I helped train — and you," he waved a hand at Sharon, "and he's wasting our time with this. Someone in the Latverian embassy has to know where Doom is, and those who don't probably know who does. At least one of them has to be willing to talk."
"They'd tip Doom off," Sharon said, without looking up from the map. "And we're still on shaky ground with Washington after the Lemurian incident."
After assassinating a foreign dignitary, Tony reflected, it wasn't surprising that SHIELD was on thin political ice, and charging into a foreign embassy and arresting everything that moved would spark off an international incident that would extend far beyond the already tense US-Latverian relations.
Barnes made a face. "By all means, let's not be politically incorrect." From his tone of voice, he didn't mean it in the usual American 'freedom to be rude' sense, but in the Soviet 'agree with the government or else' sense.
Ignoring him as if he hadn't spoken, Wanda leaned forward and brushed her fingertips across midtown, bringing her index finger to a halt at Times Square. "Strange is convinced Doom's ritual to access the spear's power and ascend to godhood will have to be performed here. Some magics are better performed at a crossroads, and Times Square is the biggest crossroads in the world."
"There'll be chanting in Latin or some other dead language," Barnes said. "And some kind of altar. There always is."
"Old Latverian," Tony supplied. Doom wouldn't use anything else, if he had a choice.
The map's hundreds of tiny block and lot outlines blurred for a moment, and Tony closed his eyes, blinking them back into focus. The fine print was almost dizzying, and trying to read it made him feel vaguely sick.
"The Nazis liked High German or Old Norse," Barnes said reminiscently. "Sometimes Latin when they were going on about the holy grail. Cap and the Invaders and I used to stop them all the time. So did the Howling Commandoes. There was this one time when the Invaders had gone off on some secret mission, and Toro and I were left behind with Fury and the Howlers because Steve thought it was too dangerous to take me, and we ended up stopping some SS ritual that was supposed to summon demons or put a curse on the Allies or make Himmler immortal, or maybe all three."
Wanda smiled slightly. "He can be over-protective. He tried to do that to the Avengers a few times when I first joined, and we ended up having to rescue him from the Swordsman."
"In the version I heard, he had to rescue Clint."
"I'm sure that's what he thought he was doing."
Sharon was staring thoughtfully at Barnes. "Was the Red Skull there?" she said slowly.
"At the ritual? He was leading it." Barnes smirked at the memory. "I think he was almost offended that Steve wasn't there."
Sharon was frowning now, a line drawn between her eyebrows. "And Fury helped stop it. We wondered why Sin had it in for him, when he wasn't involved in Red Skull or Crossbones'' deaths. What was this ritual supposed to do?"
Barnes slapped his good hand down on the table, muttering something in Russian that was obviously an obscenity. "I don't know. We didn't bother to find out; all we cared about was stopping it."
If the Red Skull had passed the knowledge down to his daughter, and if it were actually useful and not just another Nazi hoax dreamed up by men obsessed with the supernatural... "It would explain why Doom was willing to work with Red Skull's daughter," Tony said. "And why Sin has it in for Fury. It's obvious why she wants to kill you two so badly."
"He'd be the last surviving person who was present at that ritual, other than me and Dugan." Barnes shook his head, rubbing a hand over his face. "It would be a nice, tidy coincidence if that was it, and they were going to use the same spell to try and make Doom a god, but I can't see it. Sin wouldn't just hand something like that over to a member of an 'inferior race.'"
"No," Wanda agreed. "Doom's one of the people who wouldn't exist in her father's perfect world."
"We know she's getting something out of working with him," Sharon said. "Maybe she's just in it for revenge. Maybe she wants to destroy the world, now that her father's dead. How much does she actually care about Red Skull's goals at this point?"
Barnes shrugged. "Steve would know better than I would."
Wanda frowned down at her hands, studying the tracery of black tattoos for a moment, then looked up again. "We still don't know how Doom's planning to get the spear out of the cathedral. Strange's spells ought to keep him from even going inside. I assumed that's what he wanted the Dee manuscript for, but maybe he's planning to use her."
"The Nazis were obsessed with Norse mythology," Barnes said thoughtfully.
"I know," Tony said. "It makes Thor really angry." Several of the many lawsuits that had been filed against the Avengers over the years had come from neo-Nazi groups trying to sue them because Thor had discovered they were using his name and images of Mjolnir on their websites and gone off to put the literal fear of god into them.* "You think she might know some way to get him access to the spear, or thinks she does?"
Either way, they ought to warn Peter and the others guarding the cathedral that it was a possibility.
It was irritating to have to fish out his Avengers communicator and tune it to Peter and Luke Cage's frequencies when contacting them ought to take only a thought, but at least the two of them were carrying them. Daredevil had refused, saying that it was 'too distracting,' and while Strange technically still carried one, it never worked.
And, at the moment, neither did this one. Had it been fried when Doom zapped — no, this was the spare one he'd started carrying around when he wasn't in armor, after the Extremis had begun acting up. "Wanda, can you reach Spiderman?" he asked, after a brief mental debate about whether this was important enough to risk the return of the crippling headache using the Extremis would cause when it had just started to be bearable again.
The communicator wasn't dead. He could feel it transmitting, if he concentrated, though doing so made his temples throb warningly. It just wasn't picking anything up, and Steve's frequency wasn't working either. What was-
Wanda made a small, choked sound, her communicator clattering onto the table.
Tony looked up to see her tattoos flaring a dull cherry-red, like iron that wasn't quite hot enough to work with.
"It's too late," she said, between gritted teeth. "Chthon's not confined to the cathedral anymore. He's possessed someone, I can feel it."
"Take us back to the Avengers Mansion," Tony said. "I need my armor."
* * *
Once Doom had gone, the other stared at Don silently for a long, uncomfortable moment. Even with his leg bleeding enough that blood was starting to run down into his shoe, he still had enough blood left to blush, because he could feel his face and ears burning.
He wasn't even sure if the snarled threat he'd delivered had come from himself or Thor. Both, he suspected.
"All that eating souls stuff," Jan finally said, "you were just making that up, right?"
Don suddenly felt very tired. Maybe it was the situation, or maybe it was the blood loss. "Where do you think the Odin force comes from?"
"Ew." He didn't have to be able to see Jan's expression to know she was wrinkling her nose.
Hank, on the other hand, was closer and not three inches high, and Don could clearly see him frowning. "Doom can't actually devour Thor's soul, though, can he?" he asked, and Don wasn't sure whether he sounded concerned or morbidly fascinated.
Out of all of his teammates, Hank Pym would be the one he ended up chained up next to. Don sighed, and rested more of his weight on his bad leg, trying to take some of the pressure off his arms — his arms and shoulders were starting to ache almost as much as his bad knee, but anything was preferable to the sickening pain that came when he put any weight on his injured leg. "I'd really rather not find out, since it's my soul, too."
Hank blinked, his attention suddenly utterly focused on Don. It was the kind of look some of the surgeons Don had known had gotten when they'd opened up a patient, or that Tony gave machines. To be on the receiving end of it was disconcerting.
"Hang on a minute," Hank said. "When did you come back from... wherever you were while Thor was dead?"
Did it matter? "During the middle of Tony's stupid registration disaster," and then, feeling suddenly defensive with both Hank and Jan watching him and remembering the stinging slap Jane had given him when she'd first seen him, he added, "It took me a while to get my head together; I came back before Thor did, and it was... confusing... for a while." He'd been just plain Don Blake for over half his life, until the first time he'd touched Mjolnir's handle, but that had been thanks to Odin's magic suppressing Thor's memories and personality. Having that part of himself missing entirely had been... strange.
"Damn," Hank said softly. He leaned back against the wall, his gaze going from Don to some unknown point off in space. "I think Tony was right. I thought he was just delusional from stress."
"This is not the time, Hank." Jan's voice was sharp, stern, and made absolutely no impact.
"He thought that if we made Thor a body, his soul, essence, whatever gods have, would come back." One of Hank's wrists twitched against its cuff, as if he'd forgotten that he was chained up. "Something about gods existing as long as people still believe in them — this from the man who says he hates magic. But if you were already wandering around somewhere, Thor's soul couldn't come back, because you were already using it, so we got..." he broke off for a moment, enthusiasm visibly draining away, then finished, lamely, "what we got."
Tony hadn't mentioned that aspect when Thor had finally gotten an explanation out of him. Don wasn't sure whether it was touching, or disturbing — maybe both. What he was sure of was that he didn't have either the energy or the inclination to discuss this with Hank right now. His leg hurt, he felt cold and slightly sick, and he really wanted to lie down. "Great, so you only created a murderous monster by accident while trying to play god. Why does that sound familiar?" It would have been a thundering denunciation a few months ago, fueled by Thor's anger as well as his own, but at the moment, Thor was too busy being angry at both Loki and himself to have anything left over for Hank.
"It-It wasn't like-," Hank stammered, "Ultron wasn't-"
He'd actually been thinking of Frankenstein, but since Hank had said it first, "You'd think Ultron would have been enough for you. And Clint says that now you're playing with mutant DnA. Do you ever think about consequences for anything you do?"
Having said it, he felt vaguely embarrassed, considering the position Thor had managed to get him into. 'You could have at least gotten Hogun or Heimdall to help you confront her,' he thought.
Hank's wrists jerked, the chains scraping against the wall. "For christ's sake, I've explained this over and over." The words burst out of him, not actually loud, but quick and intense enough that they might as well have been. "Of course I was thinking about the consequences. All the other options were worse. The original supersoldier serum only ever worked properly on three people, and you don't want to know what happened to the others." Hank's face twisted for a moment, something between a snarl and a silent, frustrated sob. "Tony's Extremis virus has a ninety percent fatality rate. Testing that on human subjects would be committing murder in the name of science. Cloning Thor was supposed to be the safer option, the one that wouldn't hurt anybody. I didn't think it would be Thor, but I thought..." he swallowed hard, "at least we'd be creating life instead of destroying it." He looked away, then, head bowed, and added, voice uneven, "No one was supposed to die."
No, none of them had intended for Bill Foster to die, least of all Hank. "I know," Don said wearily. Would he prefer that Thor's memory had been left alone and his body not been violated for the sake of science if the price was an unknown number of dead 'test subjects?' Put like that, it was impossible to say yes. Thor had accepted that — they both had. But it still felt... damn it, there were signed consent forms for medical experiments for a reason.
Hank looked almost as miserable as Don felt, so Don wasn't surprised when Jan spoke up.
"We can talk about this later, when we're out of here," she said firmly. "I really don't want to die in order to make Doom a god. If he's off meeting with Sin, he's too busy to come running back here the moment you shed the cuffs, Hank, so get over here and start figuring out how to get me out of this thing. Carefully." She mimed slipping her wrists out of cuffs.
Hank nodded, his shoulders straightening a little, and then he shrank down slightly, losing only about a foot of height, and worked his suddenly smaller hands through the cuffs. It took an agonizingly long minute to get the first hand free, then he was tugging at the second, and staggering away from the wall as it slipped loose.
Couldn't he have done that before? They could have been out of here hours ago if... no, Don reminded himself, not with no idea where they were and whether or not Doom was about to come charging in at any second. Once Doom or Sin had realized that Hank could use his powers to slip free of his chains, they would have taken precautions to prevent it, probably involving some kind of energy bubble like the one Jan was imprisoned in. When you only had one ace in the hole, it was better not to waste it.
Hank dropped to one knee, braced a hand against the wall, and began to grow, stopping only when his shoulder was in danger of brushing against the energy grid. Then he took the chain attached to Don's right wrist in both hands, and threw his weight against it, pulling for all he was worth.
The bolts attaching the chain to the wall gave with a violent jolt, Hank yelped as some part of him brushed the energy grid, and Don was suddenly dangling from one arm.
He concentrated on breathing in deeply through his nose, willing away the nausea, and then Hank was yanking at the other chain. This one took longer to give, the bolts giving way one by one as the strain in Don's shoulder and arm worsened.
When it finally broke, both Don's legs gave way and he sagged against Hank's three-times-larger-than normal knee. Hank grabbed for him, and managed to only jar his injured leg twice in the process of lowering him to the floor.
"I hate my leg sometimes," Don said, the stab of familiar frustration almost as hot as the knife wound.
"It's not your bad leg that's the problem." Hank pulled at Don's clothes with huge hands, as if searching for injuries. There were fresh, red abrasions at his wrists, and Don found himself automatically thinking of rusty chains and dirt and wondering when Hank had had his last tetanus shot. "You're covered in blood. What did-" and then he found the stab wound and sucked in a sharp, sudden breath.
"What is it? How badly is he hurt?" Jan sounded concerned, her voice sharp and shrill in the way it only was when she was Wasp-sized. "Hank?"
"I don't know. He's been stabbed." Hank shrank back to normal size, then went pale, swaying against the wall. "I hate being out of practice," he muttered. "This never happens when I use my powers regularly." He took a deep breath, then bent down to peer at Don's leg.
"We need something to bandage this with. Can you-"
Don swatted his hands away. "Leave it. If I were bleeding enough for it to be a medical emergency, I'd have passed out already." That was stretching the truth, but there wasn't anything remotely sanitary here to bandage the wound with. Hank's clothing, covered in plaster dust and soot, certainly wasn't. "Focus on getting us out of here. I'll be fine as soon as I can get to Thor's hammer."
It was true — transforming into Thor would heal almost any injury he received — but Hank didn't look convinced. Don gave him a shove in Jan's general direction. "Get her out of there fast. My leg hurts, and Doom could come back any time."
Hank didn't need to be told again.
Don had hoped that deactivating Jan's energy-bubble would be simple and quick, something Hank could do by yanking out a few wires or pressing some buttons, but several endless minutes later, when Hank started mumbling things under his breath, he realized with a sinking feeling that they weren't getting out of there for a while.
"Where are the others?" Jan asked. She was crouched on the floor of her prison, peering down at whatever Hank was trying to do to the circuitry and mechanisms inside the thing's wide base. "Maybe they'll rescue us."
"They're trying," Don assured her. "We didn't know where Doom's headquarters were, or where he and Sin had taken you." Then the embarrassing part. Better to just admit it up front and get it out of the way. "Thor thought he could get some answers out of Loki if he confronted her."
"That was stupid," Hank said, not looking up.
"Yeah," Don admitted. "But you try arguing with him."
"Is Sam-" Jan started, then broke off. "The last time I saw him," she went on after a moment, "Sin was getting ready to cut his throat."
"He's fine. They left him behind when they took off."
Jan's sigh of relief was audible. "Good. When I woke up and he wasn't here, I thought maybe they'd taken him away already." She didn't specify what she thought he'd been taken away for, but whatever it was, was unlikely to be good.
"Tony took a nasty hit from one of Doom's weapons," Don went on, "but he was awake and recovering when I left." Talking wasn't much of a distraction from the way his leg felt, but it was better than nothing. "Doom escaped with the book, but you probably already know that."
Hank hissed something about booby traps and security under his breath, then asked, more loudly, "How long have we been here?"
"Six hours? Eight? I'm not sure." He'd lost track of some time after Sin had stabbed him.
"So about half as long as it's going to take me to crack this thing."
"You're a genius," Jan said. "You'll have me out of here in no time." The cheer didn't even sound forced, though Don suspected it was.
"If this was anyone else's little toy, you'd be out already. Doom likes to put vicious little booby traps in everything he designs; one mistake, and the energy field could collapse in on you and kill you. Or electrocute me." Hank's tone made it obvious he considered the first the worse outcome. "Or it might explode. I could just smash the base panel or short-circuit it, but that could trigger the same response. You need Tony for this. This kind of thing is what he lives for."
He'd managed to get part of the panel covering the inner workings of the machine loose somehow, Don saw, despite not having any tools. No, wait. He had a tiny screw driver in one hand. Where had that come from?
"You have a screwdriver," Don observed.
Hank half-turned, a concerned look on his face. "It was in my pocket," he said. "I forgot about it when I went to bed." He was staring at Don oddly, but before Don could comment on it, he shook himself visibly and turned back to his task. "I wish I'd forgotten the entire shrunken tool kit," he muttered.
"Talk to me, Don." Jan waved at him, the gesture over-exaggerated, probably so he could see it despite the poor light and her size. From this angle, half-sitting/half-lying against the wall, all he could see was her upper body, the rest of her cut off from view by the floor of her prison and the back of Hank's head. "I'm going to go stir crazy in here."
"About what?"
"Where did they teleport you in from? Do you have any idea where we are?"
"Another warehouse." That had looked an awful lot like this warehouse, right down to the brick walls and metal ceiling beams. "Or maybe a different part of this one. The ceiling looks familiar."
"A warehouse where?" Jan pressed insistently. "Where did Thor meet with Loki?"
"I don't know. He tried to summon her to Asgard with the ring she gave me. We should have known it was a trap." He drew his bad leg — his good leg, now — up and bent forward to lean his forehead against his knee. It helped the dizziness a little.
Hank swore, slamming a fist into the ground in frustration. "This is going to take forever. If I were outside the grid, all I'd have to do is destroy the power core on the force-field generator. It's linked to your cage; the two energy fields are the exact same frequency."
"Don't even think about it."
It was a sharp command, distinctly unlike Jan's usual method of giving orders. She was usually the team's diplomat.
"I was just pointing it out," Hank said. "As a last resort. I think Don's going into shock, and Doom-"
"I'm not in shock," Don said. "I just need fluids, and something for blood sugar."
No one listened to him.
"Whatever Doom's got in mind for us will probably make Don's blood eagle look mild. It's probably going to be so gruesome and excruciatingly painful that a quick death would be a mercy."
Between his own memories and Thor's, Don had seen an awful lot of gruesome ways to die, none of which he wanted to experience himself or watch friends experience. "Please stop talking. You're not helping."
"Don't even think about it," Jan snapped. "The world won't end if it takes you a couple hours longer to get me out of here."
Actually, it might, but pointing that out would be even less helpful than Hank's morbid predictions.
There was nothing useful he could contribute for the moment, and he'd need what energy he had left for their escape; Don closed his eyes and let himself doze for a while.
He was jolted awake by the sound of Jan swearing. Jan. What was—
Don jerked upright and opened his eyes to light. A door in the opposite wall had opened, spilling a long line of harsh, fluorescent light across the floor. Silhouetted against it was a man in a dark uniform, a gun in one hand and three water bottles tucked under the other arm.
Hank froze like a deer caught in headlights.
Amazingly, the guard started strolling casually toward them, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He couldn't see them well enough to realize that Don and Hank were partially free, Don realized, not coming from the brightly lit other room into the dark open space of the warehouse floor.
Time seemed to stretch out as the guard came closer, while Don frantically and uselessly tried to will Mjolnir into his hand. When he enters our prison, we may take him as our prisoner by force of numbers. He can be compelled to release the Wasp.
Numbers did them little good as long as he had a gun, Don thought, as he tried to get his feet under him. He could use the wall to push himself upright again, and look at least vaguely like he was still where he was supposed to be.
He was halfway to his feet when the guard realized what was happening. The man shouted, drawing his gun and charging forward.
If he moved, Don knew, he would fall. Damn Loki and Odin both. He had to-
"I'm sorry," Hank blurted out, and then he was moving.
Hank threw himself at the energy grid, shrinking down so fast that he almost seemed to disappear. Then he was through, full-sized again, and slamming into the guard in a flying tackle that would have made Steve proud.
The guard's head hit the concrete floor with a loud crack, and he went limp.
Hank collapsed on top of the guard, limbs twitching in sharp, hyper-reflexive jerks. He took medication now, Don remembered with horror. Anti-depressants. Mood stabilizers. Maybe both. How could he not know what kind? His own teammate was overdosing right in front of him, and he didn't know on what.
Jan was shouting, hammering on the energy bubble with both hands, heedless of the pain it had to be causing her.
Hank pushed himself to his feet, moving like a badly controlled puppet, and staggered over to the controls for the energy grid. He half-collapsed against them, fumbling with something Don couldn't see, and then the energy grid flickered and vanished, along with Jan's cage.
Jan streaked toward Hank, and Don gritted his teeth and forced himself away from the wall. He had to get to Mjolnir. Once he had his hammer, he'd be healed, could get them all out of here.
He crawled the last few feet, gritting his teeth against the pain, and then his fingers were around Mjolnir's haft.
The pain ceased almost instantly. Thor rose to his knees, still holding his hammer, and looked automatically toward the opened door, now the only source of light. No more of Doom or Sin's arms-men were forthcoming, and the one Hank Pym had struck down appeared unconscious.
Perhaps they would escape from this place yet.
Hank was on his hands and knees, vomiting. Jan knelt next to him, one hand on his shoulder, her face twisted with what could be either fear or anger. "Can you walk?" she demanded. "We need to get you both to a hospital."
"I am well. My counterpart's injuries were healed by the transformation." Thor rose, and approached his teammates, concern growing as he neared them. Hank was still being violently ill, his entire body jerking and shuddering, and the part of Thor that was Don Blake was cataloging symptoms, noting muscle tremors, nausea, weakness, lack of coordination.
"I should strangle thee," Thor told him, the familiar pronoun slipping out without thought. "What medicines dost thou take?"
Hank seemed not to hear him, another ill omen.
"Some kind of NDRI, and lithium. The SSRIs made things worse. I think it's the same thing as Wellbutrin, but a different brand name." The words tumbled out in a rush, while Jan touched Hank's hair, his back, his arm, as if unsure what to do. "Is he dying?" she blurted out after a short, jerky pause, her voice cracking. "Tell me he's not dying."
In the recesses of his mind, Don was protesting that lithium toxicity was grave indeed, but Thor overrode him. "Nay, I do not think he shall." Any other outcome was unacceptable. He would not stand helplessly by while a comrade died before his eyes due to Loki's treachery. "But we must be gone from this place, and find him aid."
Fighting their way out would be most satisfying, but they had not the time to spare. Thor raised Mjolnir above his head and began to spin it, building momentum, and then let his hammer fly at the wall he and his teammates had been chained against. The aged brick was obviously part of the warehouse's outer wall, nearly a foot thick, and proved no match for his hammer.
The dim grey glow of twilight appeared through the wide hole in the wall as the cloud of brick dust settled. Through it, less than a spear's-throw away, he could see the river, and the city skyline beyond it. It was not Manhattan, nor were any of the East River's great bridges visible, which meant their prison lay on the West side of the city.
Thor lifted his barely conscious teammate over his left shoulder, allowed Jan to perch on his right shoulder and take a firm hold on his hair, and began to spin his hammer once more, faster and with more force this time. The first throw carried them over the roof of the warehouse and to the top of a neighboring building.
"The closest hospital is that way," Jan said, tugging on his hair to indicate the proper direction, and then they were airborne again, moving father into the city.
They would be in time. He would lose no teammates today, not even infuriating ones.
And then Loki would be called to account.
* * *
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen, part one | Chapter Fourteen, part two | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Epilogue
Happy (belated) Fourth of July/Steve's birthday, guys ^_^.
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonUniverse: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:
dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
She woke up still Wasp-sized, inside a shimmering bubble of energy that she knew already was going to be impenetrable and probably shock her when she tried to touch it. Through the greenish distortion of the bubble, she could see Hank chained spread-eagled to the opposite wall.
The energy bubble did, indeed, shock her when she tried to touch it.
"I-was going to tell you not to try that." Hank's voice was just above a whisper, not that that would actually help if Doom had them under electronic or magical surveillance. From this distance, without decent light, it was impossible to tell if he was hurt of not.
"I knew better," Jan said, tucking her stinging hands against her sides. "Are you okay?"
Hank made a bitterly amused snorting noise—the walls of her cell obviously didn't block or muffle sound. "Fine, for now. I'm not sure if Sin has a policy of not giving her prisoners food or water, or if she's just forgotten she's got us."
The two of them were being held in the corner of a huge, high-ceilinged room, lit only by the steady glow of her 'cage' and by a grid of finely spaced green energy beams that ran from floor to ceiling and walled their corner off from the rest of the room. Jan kicked at the round metal plate that formed the floor of her tiny cell, then flew up a couple of inches to try hammering on the identical plate that formed the ceiling. It did nothing, of course, but it made her feel better.
"How long?" she asked, once her attempt to vent frustration had predictably failed to do anything.
"A while?" Hank's shoulders twitched, the attempt at a shrug cut short by the fact that at least part of his weight was hanging from his arms. "I don't know. Long enough to be thirsty, not long enough to start desperately needing a bathroom, and definitely less than twenty-four hours."
Which meant it wasn't safe yet for Hank to try shrinking down small enough to fit through the gaps in the energy grid. Even twenty-four hours would have been risky — it took longer than that for most psychological medications to completely leave the body — and by that time, Sin was likely to have come back and started in on whatever plans he had for them anyway.
"We're in a warehouse somewhere," Hank went on. "I don't know if it's Manhattan or Brooklyn. Or New Jersey; we could be on the other side of the Hudson River."
"And Sam?" Jan asked. Her last memory of the fight involved one of Sin's goons clubbing him with the butt of a semiautomatic rifle. Had they taken him, too? Chained him up somewhere else? Shot him and left him for dead?
Hank shook his head. "I don't know." He leaned his head backward against the brick wall and sighed. "I don't know," he repeated. "I don't know what happened to any of them."
Jan resisted the impulse to put her palms against the energy field to try and press closer to him; it would only zap her again. She hadn't even thought of the others — Tony, Steve, Clint. Wanda, whom Doom had to be itching to get his hands on. Carol and Thor were hard to injure, nearly impossible to kill, she reminded herself. Sin and Doom wouldn't have been able to capture them with mercenaries and Doombots. And if she'd taken down Steve, Sin would want him chained up and at her mercy. He'd have been here next to them, and Sin would be standing right there with the electrical cables and knives.
"Do you think they got the book?"
"I don't know," Hank snapped, and then, "Sorry. I haven't been awake much longer than you have."
Under normal circumstances, Jan would have tried to say something to lighten the mood, but they were almost certainly being monitored.
Actually, given that they were probably being watched, "The mansion must be in ruins. When the others get here, Sin and Doom are going to regret that." She raised her voice. "You hear that, Mister Man in the Iron Mask? You and Nazi Barbie are going to regret this."
Hank didn't say anything in response, but she could tell he was amused. Jan decided to take that as a positive sign, and the fact that he seemed to be squinting at her energy cage, as if trying to make out the details in the dim light, as another. He'd figure out a way to get her out of here, she'd fly through one of the gaps in the energy grid that was keeping them fenced in, and then she'd turn it off somehow and they'd be out of here. If they were really lucky, there would be one or two of Sin's men on guard outside for her to blast on the way out. Dealing out a round of bioelectrical shocks and mild chemical burns would be very satisfying right about now.
It was impossible to tell how many hours passed before a pair of Doombots teleported into the middle of the warehouse floor in a flash of light. For a moment, Jan's vision was blurred by a smeared purple afterimage. Then it cleared, and she was able to recognize the man held slumped between them.
Don's clothes were torn and stained with something dark, and his head hung forward limply, hair hanging in his face. Behind him stood Doom himself, with one foot propped on Thor's discarded hammer.
How in the name of God — of several gods — had they managed to teleport that?
'Please,' Jan thought, 'let him be a distraction. A decoy.' At any moment, surely, Don would straighten up and lunge for Mjolnir, change back into Thor, and take Doom down with one swing, just before Steve and the rest of the team burst through the warehouse doors.
Doom waved an imperious hand. "Put him next to Pym." He gestured again, and the dim, hulking shape just beyond the energy grid was suddenly and dramatically spot-lit, revealing a generator of some kind. While the two Doombots dragged an unresisting Don toward the corner, Doom keyed something into the machine's controls and the energy grid vanished.
Hank tensed, clearly readying himself to shrink just enough to get out of his restraints and throw himself at Doom. Jan shook her head, and watched with relief as he visibly forced himself to relax again. Hank wasn't always good at subtle signals, and didn't always listen even when he was aware of them.
The Doombots locked Don into a set of empty restraints next to Hank's, then stepped back. The energy grid flickered into place again, and Jan let go of the hope that Don's presence was intentional. He was slumped against the wall, most of his weight hanging from his arms, and seemed too dazed to have even noticed his surroundings — the Doombots' rough handling had barely elicited a reaction. The dark stains on his clothes were blood, clearly visible now that she could see him in the light. His [left? Right?] leg was injured, and badly, if the amount of fresh blood soaking his pants leg was any indication.
Had they been torturing him? How many of the others did they have?
"So you're going to chain him up and leave him here, too? Are you starting a collection?" Hank's voice was at its most caustic and belittling, and he could do belittling better than almost anyone Jan knew. It was all in the tone.
Doom didn't even look at him. "I know you're awake, Dr. Blake. Feigning unconsciousness will do you no good."
Don mumbled something indistinct about Loki, not lifting his head. Jan didn't think he was feigning.
"What did you do to him?" she demanded. Mjolnir was still lying on the floor several yards behind Doom; he might have been able to teleport it here, but almost no one other than Thor was able to lift it by hand. If he'd had the hammer with him, then Don had been Thor when Doom had taken him, and Thor didn't turn back into Don involuntarily anymore. Simply taking Mjolnir away wouldn't have done it.
Magic? Some kind of coercion? Thor would have given himself up for any one of the others, probably even Tony.
Doom glanced at her, then apparently decided she was worth speaking to after all. "I did nothing. Dr. Blake is a gift from my future queen."
Future-
"You're marrying Sin?" she blurted out.
"Don't be an idiot," Doom snapped. "As if I'd tie myself to an insane fanatic who thinks her dead father speaks to her. I am about to become a god; the woman ruling at my right hand could be nothing less."
"She's setting you up," Don mumbled, the words a little less slurred this time.
"Obviously." Doom sounded, if possible, even more disdainful. "But by the time Loki makes her move, I shall be too powerful for a minor chaos deity to touch, something you, my dear doctor, are going to help me with. Once I've absorbed the power of the spear and attained godhood, I shall return here and revert you to your true form. When I sacrifice you to myself and devour Thor's soul, the power of the Odin force will be mine to command. I will rule Valhalla as well as earth, and Loki's powers will useless against me. "
"I knew you were insane," Hank said, "but you can't actually think-"
"You are the one who does not think. You lack vision, even more so than Richards does. I am a genius, a strategist, a master of both science and magic; naturally a second-rate scientist whose only accomplishments were accidents would fail to understand my plans."
Don lifted his head, glaring at Doom with the one eye that wasn't swollen shut. "You're going to destroy yourself. No human can wield the power of the Odin force; it'll burn your soul up like a candle, if Chthon doesn't destroy it for you first."
"You assume my soul is so easily consumed? If you can wield that power, I shall be able to command it easily. As for Chthon, he will be no match for my new powers combined with Loki's." Doom straightened, sweeping his cloak back with a flourish. "My new consort is right — Thor doesn't have the brains or vision to rule Valhalla, and you don't have the strength. It takes someone with ruthlessness and cunning to truly belong on Odin's throne."
"You're not seriously marrying Loki." The very idea was ridiculous, not the least because she couldn't think of anything about it that benefited Loki, aside from the ability to maneuver Doom like a pawn against her enemies, which she would probably be able to do anyway. Who in their right mind would want to marry Doom?
"Be silent." Doom held up one heavy, metal gauntlet. "I need keep you alive only until I have claimed the spear from my soon-to-be-late ally." He paused, and if it weren't for the mask, Jan suspected that she would have been able to see him smiling. "I had originally planned to make do with just Synthia Schmidt as a blood sacrifice for my apotheosis, but three is a much more powerful number than one. You should be thanking me, Wasp. How many people can truly say that their deaths changed the world?"
"Touch them, and you'll find out just how much my father's son I am." The air in the room seemed to grow heavier as Don spoke, like the thick stillness before a summer thunderstorm. She almost didn't recognize his voice as he continued, "First I'll flay the skin off your back, and then I'll use every bit of my training and knowledge to remove your muscles and ribs, so you'll still be alive and conscious when I rip your lungs out through the holes in your back and let you suffocate to death. Then I'll hang your corpse from the tallest oak tree I can find in Central Park until it rots away to nothing, and we'll see who consumes whose soul."
Doom threw back his head and laughed, the sound echoing off the high ceiling. "If I weren't planning to kill you, I'd be tempted to offer you a job." He sounded honestly amused at being threatened with disgusting and overly detailed death, maybe even a little impressed. "Enjoy the next few hours, gentlemen. They're all you have left."
The flash of light when he and his Doombots teleported away was almost anti-climatic.
Sharon tossed the file she'd just been reading down onto one of the stacks of print-outs that covered the table in front of her. "However Doom's getting around your teleportation blocker, there must be a way to counter it."
"It's magic," Tony said, "so, not necessarily." While it was nice that at least some members of SHIELD still seemed to have faith in him — or at least, his abilities — there were limits to what even he could do with technology. After all the effort he'd put into sweet-talking the medical staff into letting him unhook himself from their monitors and join Sharon's impromptu task force, it was somewhat deflating to admit, but, "I have to obey the laws of physics. Try hunting down Strange."
"We did," Barnes said. "He's never around when you need him."
"That's not always true," Wanda said, a little defensively. Considering that Strange had all but written her off completely as crazy and beyond help a little over a year ago, it was awfully forgiving off her, probably moreso than Tony would have been. The fact that he'd apologized and helped her when she'd escaped Chthon must have gone a long way.
Then again, she'd forgiven Tony and the rest of the Avengers, too.
"True or not, trying to Loki-proof our security is useless." Tony tapped a finger against the print-outs of what data Steve and Carol had managed to salvage from the mansion's security systems. "Forget her. Doom and Sin are the weak links there. Wherever they teleported to, it was within a five mile radius of the Avengers Mansion." Which covered almost the entire island of Manhattan, with no guarantees that they'd teleported directly to their final destination.
Sharon nodded. "For all we know, they're in New Jersey by now, but we can start there."
This entire process would be exponentially faster if he could use the Extremis to access SHIELD's computers and satellite data rather than having to go about everything the long way, or if the mansion's computers were still in working order — not that he'd have been able to use them, with Steve being so ridiculously overprotective.
Given Steve's mood at the moment, it was a good thing he wasn't seriously injured. If Steve had reacted this badly to a migraine, a minor electrical shock, and a few moments of unconsciousness, he would probably have completely lost it over a real injury.
At least it gave Steve something to focus on other than the things Doom had thrown in his face last night.
Tony wished he had a few more things to focus on. Tracking down Doom's location was vital, but it didn't feel like they were accomplishing anything. At least if he had a tool of some kind in his hand, or a computer system to mentally hack in to, he'd feel like he was doing something instead of just sitting in a climate controlled conference room while Hank and Jan were at Doom's mercy.
Helicarrier conference rooms were beginning to tie with medical facilities for places Tony had spent far more hours of his life in than he ever wanted to.
Barnes glanced down at the map he had spread across the table in front of him — it looked like a Department of Buildings map, but Tony suspected that it contained a great deal of information the DoB didn't have access to — and frowned slightly. "There are six possible locations in that area."
"Five," Sharon cut in. "I keep telling you; Doom wouldn't stoop to using a walk-in freezer."
"It's already effectively soundproofed, there are drains in the floor, the restaurant hasn't been open for-"
"Where is it?" Wanda interrupted, leaning forward slightly to peer at the upside down map.
Barnes tapped one metal finger against a building lot that had been highlighted in green marker.
Wanda shook her head. "Not there. That's right in the middle of Hell's Kitchen. He wouldn't risk trying to work magic that close to St. Margaret's."
There were a couple of moments of silence, while they all stared at the five remaining highlighted spots on the map, none of which helpfully stood out as abandoned Victorian Gothic mansions or conveniently empty state of the art lab facilities. Barnes drummed his fingers on the table, then seemed to realize how loud the metal-on-wood tapping was, and stopped. His arm was good work, especially for a Cold War relic, but the designers had sacrificed aesthetics for function — typical of Soviet work. He'd probably refuse an upgrade, but something like Misty Knight's cybernetic arm, with built-in weaponry...
How pressure sensitive was it? Some of the interfaces he'd built for previous iterations of his armor could be modified to provide more neural feedback, including sensory data.
Barnes leaned back in his chair, shoving the map away from him in disgust. "Three quarters of a century, and I'm still doing Nick Fury's grunt work. I'm more skilled and experienced than any agent on board this ship except Natasha — who I helped train — and you," he waved a hand at Sharon, "and he's wasting our time with this. Someone in the Latverian embassy has to know where Doom is, and those who don't probably know who does. At least one of them has to be willing to talk."
"They'd tip Doom off," Sharon said, without looking up from the map. "And we're still on shaky ground with Washington after the Lemurian incident."
After assassinating a foreign dignitary, Tony reflected, it wasn't surprising that SHIELD was on thin political ice, and charging into a foreign embassy and arresting everything that moved would spark off an international incident that would extend far beyond the already tense US-Latverian relations.
Barnes made a face. "By all means, let's not be politically incorrect." From his tone of voice, he didn't mean it in the usual American 'freedom to be rude' sense, but in the Soviet 'agree with the government or else' sense.
Ignoring him as if he hadn't spoken, Wanda leaned forward and brushed her fingertips across midtown, bringing her index finger to a halt at Times Square. "Strange is convinced Doom's ritual to access the spear's power and ascend to godhood will have to be performed here. Some magics are better performed at a crossroads, and Times Square is the biggest crossroads in the world."
"There'll be chanting in Latin or some other dead language," Barnes said. "And some kind of altar. There always is."
"Old Latverian," Tony supplied. Doom wouldn't use anything else, if he had a choice.
The map's hundreds of tiny block and lot outlines blurred for a moment, and Tony closed his eyes, blinking them back into focus. The fine print was almost dizzying, and trying to read it made him feel vaguely sick.
"The Nazis liked High German or Old Norse," Barnes said reminiscently. "Sometimes Latin when they were going on about the holy grail. Cap and the Invaders and I used to stop them all the time. So did the Howling Commandoes. There was this one time when the Invaders had gone off on some secret mission, and Toro and I were left behind with Fury and the Howlers because Steve thought it was too dangerous to take me, and we ended up stopping some SS ritual that was supposed to summon demons or put a curse on the Allies or make Himmler immortal, or maybe all three."
Wanda smiled slightly. "He can be over-protective. He tried to do that to the Avengers a few times when I first joined, and we ended up having to rescue him from the Swordsman."
"In the version I heard, he had to rescue Clint."
"I'm sure that's what he thought he was doing."
Sharon was staring thoughtfully at Barnes. "Was the Red Skull there?" she said slowly.
"At the ritual? He was leading it." Barnes smirked at the memory. "I think he was almost offended that Steve wasn't there."
Sharon was frowning now, a line drawn between her eyebrows. "And Fury helped stop it. We wondered why Sin had it in for him, when he wasn't involved in Red Skull or Crossbones'' deaths. What was this ritual supposed to do?"
Barnes slapped his good hand down on the table, muttering something in Russian that was obviously an obscenity. "I don't know. We didn't bother to find out; all we cared about was stopping it."
If the Red Skull had passed the knowledge down to his daughter, and if it were actually useful and not just another Nazi hoax dreamed up by men obsessed with the supernatural... "It would explain why Doom was willing to work with Red Skull's daughter," Tony said. "And why Sin has it in for Fury. It's obvious why she wants to kill you two so badly."
"He'd be the last surviving person who was present at that ritual, other than me and Dugan." Barnes shook his head, rubbing a hand over his face. "It would be a nice, tidy coincidence if that was it, and they were going to use the same spell to try and make Doom a god, but I can't see it. Sin wouldn't just hand something like that over to a member of an 'inferior race.'"
"No," Wanda agreed. "Doom's one of the people who wouldn't exist in her father's perfect world."
"We know she's getting something out of working with him," Sharon said. "Maybe she's just in it for revenge. Maybe she wants to destroy the world, now that her father's dead. How much does she actually care about Red Skull's goals at this point?"
Barnes shrugged. "Steve would know better than I would."
Wanda frowned down at her hands, studying the tracery of black tattoos for a moment, then looked up again. "We still don't know how Doom's planning to get the spear out of the cathedral. Strange's spells ought to keep him from even going inside. I assumed that's what he wanted the Dee manuscript for, but maybe he's planning to use her."
"The Nazis were obsessed with Norse mythology," Barnes said thoughtfully.
"I know," Tony said. "It makes Thor really angry." Several of the many lawsuits that had been filed against the Avengers over the years had come from neo-Nazi groups trying to sue them because Thor had discovered they were using his name and images of Mjolnir on their websites and gone off to put the literal fear of god into them.* "You think she might know some way to get him access to the spear, or thinks she does?"
Either way, they ought to warn Peter and the others guarding the cathedral that it was a possibility.
It was irritating to have to fish out his Avengers communicator and tune it to Peter and Luke Cage's frequencies when contacting them ought to take only a thought, but at least the two of them were carrying them. Daredevil had refused, saying that it was 'too distracting,' and while Strange technically still carried one, it never worked.
And, at the moment, neither did this one. Had it been fried when Doom zapped — no, this was the spare one he'd started carrying around when he wasn't in armor, after the Extremis had begun acting up. "Wanda, can you reach Spiderman?" he asked, after a brief mental debate about whether this was important enough to risk the return of the crippling headache using the Extremis would cause when it had just started to be bearable again.
The communicator wasn't dead. He could feel it transmitting, if he concentrated, though doing so made his temples throb warningly. It just wasn't picking anything up, and Steve's frequency wasn't working either. What was-
Wanda made a small, choked sound, her communicator clattering onto the table.
Tony looked up to see her tattoos flaring a dull cherry-red, like iron that wasn't quite hot enough to work with.
"It's too late," she said, between gritted teeth. "Chthon's not confined to the cathedral anymore. He's possessed someone, I can feel it."
"Take us back to the Avengers Mansion," Tony said. "I need my armor."
Once Doom had gone, the other stared at Don silently for a long, uncomfortable moment. Even with his leg bleeding enough that blood was starting to run down into his shoe, he still had enough blood left to blush, because he could feel his face and ears burning.
He wasn't even sure if the snarled threat he'd delivered had come from himself or Thor. Both, he suspected.
"All that eating souls stuff," Jan finally said, "you were just making that up, right?"
Don suddenly felt very tired. Maybe it was the situation, or maybe it was the blood loss. "Where do you think the Odin force comes from?"
"Ew." He didn't have to be able to see Jan's expression to know she was wrinkling her nose.
Hank, on the other hand, was closer and not three inches high, and Don could clearly see him frowning. "Doom can't actually devour Thor's soul, though, can he?" he asked, and Don wasn't sure whether he sounded concerned or morbidly fascinated.
Out of all of his teammates, Hank Pym would be the one he ended up chained up next to. Don sighed, and rested more of his weight on his bad leg, trying to take some of the pressure off his arms — his arms and shoulders were starting to ache almost as much as his bad knee, but anything was preferable to the sickening pain that came when he put any weight on his injured leg. "I'd really rather not find out, since it's my soul, too."
Hank blinked, his attention suddenly utterly focused on Don. It was the kind of look some of the surgeons Don had known had gotten when they'd opened up a patient, or that Tony gave machines. To be on the receiving end of it was disconcerting.
"Hang on a minute," Hank said. "When did you come back from... wherever you were while Thor was dead?"
Did it matter? "During the middle of Tony's stupid registration disaster," and then, feeling suddenly defensive with both Hank and Jan watching him and remembering the stinging slap Jane had given him when she'd first seen him, he added, "It took me a while to get my head together; I came back before Thor did, and it was... confusing... for a while." He'd been just plain Don Blake for over half his life, until the first time he'd touched Mjolnir's handle, but that had been thanks to Odin's magic suppressing Thor's memories and personality. Having that part of himself missing entirely had been... strange.
"Damn," Hank said softly. He leaned back against the wall, his gaze going from Don to some unknown point off in space. "I think Tony was right. I thought he was just delusional from stress."
"This is not the time, Hank." Jan's voice was sharp, stern, and made absolutely no impact.
"He thought that if we made Thor a body, his soul, essence, whatever gods have, would come back." One of Hank's wrists twitched against its cuff, as if he'd forgotten that he was chained up. "Something about gods existing as long as people still believe in them — this from the man who says he hates magic. But if you were already wandering around somewhere, Thor's soul couldn't come back, because you were already using it, so we got..." he broke off for a moment, enthusiasm visibly draining away, then finished, lamely, "what we got."
Tony hadn't mentioned that aspect when Thor had finally gotten an explanation out of him. Don wasn't sure whether it was touching, or disturbing — maybe both. What he was sure of was that he didn't have either the energy or the inclination to discuss this with Hank right now. His leg hurt, he felt cold and slightly sick, and he really wanted to lie down. "Great, so you only created a murderous monster by accident while trying to play god. Why does that sound familiar?" It would have been a thundering denunciation a few months ago, fueled by Thor's anger as well as his own, but at the moment, Thor was too busy being angry at both Loki and himself to have anything left over for Hank.
"It-It wasn't like-," Hank stammered, "Ultron wasn't-"
He'd actually been thinking of Frankenstein, but since Hank had said it first, "You'd think Ultron would have been enough for you. And Clint says that now you're playing with mutant DnA. Do you ever think about consequences for anything you do?"
Having said it, he felt vaguely embarrassed, considering the position Thor had managed to get him into. 'You could have at least gotten Hogun or Heimdall to help you confront her,' he thought.
Hank's wrists jerked, the chains scraping against the wall. "For christ's sake, I've explained this over and over." The words burst out of him, not actually loud, but quick and intense enough that they might as well have been. "Of course I was thinking about the consequences. All the other options were worse. The original supersoldier serum only ever worked properly on three people, and you don't want to know what happened to the others." Hank's face twisted for a moment, something between a snarl and a silent, frustrated sob. "Tony's Extremis virus has a ninety percent fatality rate. Testing that on human subjects would be committing murder in the name of science. Cloning Thor was supposed to be the safer option, the one that wouldn't hurt anybody. I didn't think it would be Thor, but I thought..." he swallowed hard, "at least we'd be creating life instead of destroying it." He looked away, then, head bowed, and added, voice uneven, "No one was supposed to die."
No, none of them had intended for Bill Foster to die, least of all Hank. "I know," Don said wearily. Would he prefer that Thor's memory had been left alone and his body not been violated for the sake of science if the price was an unknown number of dead 'test subjects?' Put like that, it was impossible to say yes. Thor had accepted that — they both had. But it still felt... damn it, there were signed consent forms for medical experiments for a reason.
Hank looked almost as miserable as Don felt, so Don wasn't surprised when Jan spoke up.
"We can talk about this later, when we're out of here," she said firmly. "I really don't want to die in order to make Doom a god. If he's off meeting with Sin, he's too busy to come running back here the moment you shed the cuffs, Hank, so get over here and start figuring out how to get me out of this thing. Carefully." She mimed slipping her wrists out of cuffs.
Hank nodded, his shoulders straightening a little, and then he shrank down slightly, losing only about a foot of height, and worked his suddenly smaller hands through the cuffs. It took an agonizingly long minute to get the first hand free, then he was tugging at the second, and staggering away from the wall as it slipped loose.
Couldn't he have done that before? They could have been out of here hours ago if... no, Don reminded himself, not with no idea where they were and whether or not Doom was about to come charging in at any second. Once Doom or Sin had realized that Hank could use his powers to slip free of his chains, they would have taken precautions to prevent it, probably involving some kind of energy bubble like the one Jan was imprisoned in. When you only had one ace in the hole, it was better not to waste it.
Hank dropped to one knee, braced a hand against the wall, and began to grow, stopping only when his shoulder was in danger of brushing against the energy grid. Then he took the chain attached to Don's right wrist in both hands, and threw his weight against it, pulling for all he was worth.
The bolts attaching the chain to the wall gave with a violent jolt, Hank yelped as some part of him brushed the energy grid, and Don was suddenly dangling from one arm.
He concentrated on breathing in deeply through his nose, willing away the nausea, and then Hank was yanking at the other chain. This one took longer to give, the bolts giving way one by one as the strain in Don's shoulder and arm worsened.
When it finally broke, both Don's legs gave way and he sagged against Hank's three-times-larger-than normal knee. Hank grabbed for him, and managed to only jar his injured leg twice in the process of lowering him to the floor.
"I hate my leg sometimes," Don said, the stab of familiar frustration almost as hot as the knife wound.
"It's not your bad leg that's the problem." Hank pulled at Don's clothes with huge hands, as if searching for injuries. There were fresh, red abrasions at his wrists, and Don found himself automatically thinking of rusty chains and dirt and wondering when Hank had had his last tetanus shot. "You're covered in blood. What did-" and then he found the stab wound and sucked in a sharp, sudden breath.
"What is it? How badly is he hurt?" Jan sounded concerned, her voice sharp and shrill in the way it only was when she was Wasp-sized. "Hank?"
"I don't know. He's been stabbed." Hank shrank back to normal size, then went pale, swaying against the wall. "I hate being out of practice," he muttered. "This never happens when I use my powers regularly." He took a deep breath, then bent down to peer at Don's leg.
"We need something to bandage this with. Can you-"
Don swatted his hands away. "Leave it. If I were bleeding enough for it to be a medical emergency, I'd have passed out already." That was stretching the truth, but there wasn't anything remotely sanitary here to bandage the wound with. Hank's clothing, covered in plaster dust and soot, certainly wasn't. "Focus on getting us out of here. I'll be fine as soon as I can get to Thor's hammer."
It was true — transforming into Thor would heal almost any injury he received — but Hank didn't look convinced. Don gave him a shove in Jan's general direction. "Get her out of there fast. My leg hurts, and Doom could come back any time."
Hank didn't need to be told again.
Don had hoped that deactivating Jan's energy-bubble would be simple and quick, something Hank could do by yanking out a few wires or pressing some buttons, but several endless minutes later, when Hank started mumbling things under his breath, he realized with a sinking feeling that they weren't getting out of there for a while.
"Where are the others?" Jan asked. She was crouched on the floor of her prison, peering down at whatever Hank was trying to do to the circuitry and mechanisms inside the thing's wide base. "Maybe they'll rescue us."
"They're trying," Don assured her. "We didn't know where Doom's headquarters were, or where he and Sin had taken you." Then the embarrassing part. Better to just admit it up front and get it out of the way. "Thor thought he could get some answers out of Loki if he confronted her."
"That was stupid," Hank said, not looking up.
"Yeah," Don admitted. "But you try arguing with him."
"Is Sam-" Jan started, then broke off. "The last time I saw him," she went on after a moment, "Sin was getting ready to cut his throat."
"He's fine. They left him behind when they took off."
Jan's sigh of relief was audible. "Good. When I woke up and he wasn't here, I thought maybe they'd taken him away already." She didn't specify what she thought he'd been taken away for, but whatever it was, was unlikely to be good.
"Tony took a nasty hit from one of Doom's weapons," Don went on, "but he was awake and recovering when I left." Talking wasn't much of a distraction from the way his leg felt, but it was better than nothing. "Doom escaped with the book, but you probably already know that."
Hank hissed something about booby traps and security under his breath, then asked, more loudly, "How long have we been here?"
"Six hours? Eight? I'm not sure." He'd lost track of some time after Sin had stabbed him.
"So about half as long as it's going to take me to crack this thing."
"You're a genius," Jan said. "You'll have me out of here in no time." The cheer didn't even sound forced, though Don suspected it was.
"If this was anyone else's little toy, you'd be out already. Doom likes to put vicious little booby traps in everything he designs; one mistake, and the energy field could collapse in on you and kill you. Or electrocute me." Hank's tone made it obvious he considered the first the worse outcome. "Or it might explode. I could just smash the base panel or short-circuit it, but that could trigger the same response. You need Tony for this. This kind of thing is what he lives for."
He'd managed to get part of the panel covering the inner workings of the machine loose somehow, Don saw, despite not having any tools. No, wait. He had a tiny screw driver in one hand. Where had that come from?
"You have a screwdriver," Don observed.
Hank half-turned, a concerned look on his face. "It was in my pocket," he said. "I forgot about it when I went to bed." He was staring at Don oddly, but before Don could comment on it, he shook himself visibly and turned back to his task. "I wish I'd forgotten the entire shrunken tool kit," he muttered.
"Talk to me, Don." Jan waved at him, the gesture over-exaggerated, probably so he could see it despite the poor light and her size. From this angle, half-sitting/half-lying against the wall, all he could see was her upper body, the rest of her cut off from view by the floor of her prison and the back of Hank's head. "I'm going to go stir crazy in here."
"About what?"
"Where did they teleport you in from? Do you have any idea where we are?"
"Another warehouse." That had looked an awful lot like this warehouse, right down to the brick walls and metal ceiling beams. "Or maybe a different part of this one. The ceiling looks familiar."
"A warehouse where?" Jan pressed insistently. "Where did Thor meet with Loki?"
"I don't know. He tried to summon her to Asgard with the ring she gave me. We should have known it was a trap." He drew his bad leg — his good leg, now — up and bent forward to lean his forehead against his knee. It helped the dizziness a little.
Hank swore, slamming a fist into the ground in frustration. "This is going to take forever. If I were outside the grid, all I'd have to do is destroy the power core on the force-field generator. It's linked to your cage; the two energy fields are the exact same frequency."
"Don't even think about it."
It was a sharp command, distinctly unlike Jan's usual method of giving orders. She was usually the team's diplomat.
"I was just pointing it out," Hank said. "As a last resort. I think Don's going into shock, and Doom-"
"I'm not in shock," Don said. "I just need fluids, and something for blood sugar."
No one listened to him.
"Whatever Doom's got in mind for us will probably make Don's blood eagle look mild. It's probably going to be so gruesome and excruciatingly painful that a quick death would be a mercy."
Between his own memories and Thor's, Don had seen an awful lot of gruesome ways to die, none of which he wanted to experience himself or watch friends experience. "Please stop talking. You're not helping."
"Don't even think about it," Jan snapped. "The world won't end if it takes you a couple hours longer to get me out of here."
Actually, it might, but pointing that out would be even less helpful than Hank's morbid predictions.
There was nothing useful he could contribute for the moment, and he'd need what energy he had left for their escape; Don closed his eyes and let himself doze for a while.
He was jolted awake by the sound of Jan swearing. Jan. What was—
Don jerked upright and opened his eyes to light. A door in the opposite wall had opened, spilling a long line of harsh, fluorescent light across the floor. Silhouetted against it was a man in a dark uniform, a gun in one hand and three water bottles tucked under the other arm.
Hank froze like a deer caught in headlights.
Amazingly, the guard started strolling casually toward them, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He couldn't see them well enough to realize that Don and Hank were partially free, Don realized, not coming from the brightly lit other room into the dark open space of the warehouse floor.
Time seemed to stretch out as the guard came closer, while Don frantically and uselessly tried to will Mjolnir into his hand. When he enters our prison, we may take him as our prisoner by force of numbers. He can be compelled to release the Wasp.
Numbers did them little good as long as he had a gun, Don thought, as he tried to get his feet under him. He could use the wall to push himself upright again, and look at least vaguely like he was still where he was supposed to be.
He was halfway to his feet when the guard realized what was happening. The man shouted, drawing his gun and charging forward.
If he moved, Don knew, he would fall. Damn Loki and Odin both. He had to-
"I'm sorry," Hank blurted out, and then he was moving.
Hank threw himself at the energy grid, shrinking down so fast that he almost seemed to disappear. Then he was through, full-sized again, and slamming into the guard in a flying tackle that would have made Steve proud.
The guard's head hit the concrete floor with a loud crack, and he went limp.
Hank collapsed on top of the guard, limbs twitching in sharp, hyper-reflexive jerks. He took medication now, Don remembered with horror. Anti-depressants. Mood stabilizers. Maybe both. How could he not know what kind? His own teammate was overdosing right in front of him, and he didn't know on what.
Jan was shouting, hammering on the energy bubble with both hands, heedless of the pain it had to be causing her.
Hank pushed himself to his feet, moving like a badly controlled puppet, and staggered over to the controls for the energy grid. He half-collapsed against them, fumbling with something Don couldn't see, and then the energy grid flickered and vanished, along with Jan's cage.
Jan streaked toward Hank, and Don gritted his teeth and forced himself away from the wall. He had to get to Mjolnir. Once he had his hammer, he'd be healed, could get them all out of here.
He crawled the last few feet, gritting his teeth against the pain, and then his fingers were around Mjolnir's haft.
The pain ceased almost instantly. Thor rose to his knees, still holding his hammer, and looked automatically toward the opened door, now the only source of light. No more of Doom or Sin's arms-men were forthcoming, and the one Hank Pym had struck down appeared unconscious.
Perhaps they would escape from this place yet.
Hank was on his hands and knees, vomiting. Jan knelt next to him, one hand on his shoulder, her face twisted with what could be either fear or anger. "Can you walk?" she demanded. "We need to get you both to a hospital."
"I am well. My counterpart's injuries were healed by the transformation." Thor rose, and approached his teammates, concern growing as he neared them. Hank was still being violently ill, his entire body jerking and shuddering, and the part of Thor that was Don Blake was cataloging symptoms, noting muscle tremors, nausea, weakness, lack of coordination.
"I should strangle thee," Thor told him, the familiar pronoun slipping out without thought. "What medicines dost thou take?"
Hank seemed not to hear him, another ill omen.
"Some kind of NDRI, and lithium. The SSRIs made things worse. I think it's the same thing as Wellbutrin, but a different brand name." The words tumbled out in a rush, while Jan touched Hank's hair, his back, his arm, as if unsure what to do. "Is he dying?" she blurted out after a short, jerky pause, her voice cracking. "Tell me he's not dying."
In the recesses of his mind, Don was protesting that lithium toxicity was grave indeed, but Thor overrode him. "Nay, I do not think he shall." Any other outcome was unacceptable. He would not stand helplessly by while a comrade died before his eyes due to Loki's treachery. "But we must be gone from this place, and find him aid."
Fighting their way out would be most satisfying, but they had not the time to spare. Thor raised Mjolnir above his head and began to spin it, building momentum, and then let his hammer fly at the wall he and his teammates had been chained against. The aged brick was obviously part of the warehouse's outer wall, nearly a foot thick, and proved no match for his hammer.
The dim grey glow of twilight appeared through the wide hole in the wall as the cloud of brick dust settled. Through it, less than a spear's-throw away, he could see the river, and the city skyline beyond it. It was not Manhattan, nor were any of the East River's great bridges visible, which meant their prison lay on the West side of the city.
Thor lifted his barely conscious teammate over his left shoulder, allowed Jan to perch on his right shoulder and take a firm hold on his hair, and began to spin his hammer once more, faster and with more force this time. The first throw carried them over the roof of the warehouse and to the top of a neighboring building.
"The closest hospital is that way," Jan said, tugging on his hair to indicate the proper direction, and then they were airborne again, moving father into the city.
They would be in time. He would lose no teammates today, not even infuriating ones.
And then Loki would be called to account.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen, part one | Chapter Fourteen, part two | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Epilogue
Happy (belated) Fourth of July/Steve's birthday, guys ^_^.
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Can't wait for your next update :-)
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Don/Thor's threat was great, though.
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"Doom can't actually devour Thor's soul, though, can he?" he asked, and Don wasn't sure whether he sounded concerned or morbidly fascinated.
Hee! Oh Hank! I love his scientific mind.
They would be in time. He would lose no teammates today, not even infuriating ones.
Oh Thor. These are the Avengers I love. Brave, fighting for each other, annoying each other, but taking care and forgiving each other in the end.
Also liked Tony thinking about Bucky's arm! I always like to see a mention of his work in that area and wish the comics would pick that bit up again. :D