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cap_ironman2013-07-21 11:31 pm
elspethdixon.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2013-07-21 11:31 pm
Entry tags:
Reassembled, chapter 17
Title: Reassembled, Chapter 17
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 Seventeen
They saw the traffic jam first. Cars were backed up for blocks around Times Square, a solid mass of metal and red and white head and taillights. Up ahead, news helicopters were circling above the general vicinity of Broadway and 42nd Street, filming what they could in the last few minutes before twilight.
"Carol," Steve ordered, "get on the radio and see if you can get them to back off. We-"
"Need some clear airspace for a landing, I know," she interrupted. Without turning from the quinjet's controls, Carol reached up and tapped a finger against her earpiece. "The NYPD is already talking to them."
Steve had been thinking less of room to land, and more of the risk that Doom might decide to start using news copters for target practice. Supervillains had done it before, but the pilots the local news stations hired were apparently fearless.
Beside him, Clint made frustrated noise. "I can't get through to Wanda. Or the Helicarrier. Or Thor. Where the heck is he?"
"Did he tell anyone where he was going?" Steve asked; uselessly, he knew. If Carol or Sam had had any idea where their absent team member was, they would have said something before they'd taken off.
Sam shook his head, fingers never stopping their slow, soothing strokes through Redwing's feathers. The falcon hated riding in the quinjet, even with a hood shielding his eyes. It looked strange to see him wearing one, as if he were an ordinary bird — until you noticed the lack of jesses around his ankles. "I haven't seen him since we got back from the Helicarrier."
Steve forced down his worry; he couldn't afford the distraction right now, when they were about to take on Doom with half their team missing, captured, or out of action. Wanda would have been invaluable right about now, if only she weren't stuck on the Helicarrier, and if only all forms of satellite communication in the city weren't down.
They had lost contact with Peter and Luke first, their communicators going offline abruptly and setting off a wail of alarms in the tower's communications room. The city-wide failures had come later, while they were scrambling into the quinjet.
Peter and Luke were still alive, Strange had assured them of that, but he'd also said that he'd called an ambulance, and given no further details, his astral form fading out of sight seconds after telling them that he'd meet them at Time Square.
Carol banked the quinjet to the left, and the huge tower at One Times Square no longer blocked their view of the streets below. A huge circle of green flame surrounded Times Square, blocking off everything within a three-block radius. Steve could see at least one driver standing on the sidewalk beside their stopped car, yelling and throwing things at the flames. From the flickers of light around the circle's edges, some people were taking pictures of it.
He hoped nobody was trapped inside it, that they weren't about to have a hostage crisis.
Carol brought the quinjet down for a landing, the aircraft shuddering and jolting as if she were trying to land it in a windstorm. When they disembarked, Steve going first with his shield already up and ready, the air was heavy and motionless, without a breath of wind, and so charged with magic that the hair on the back stood up. He should have been able to hear shouts, car horns, the drone of the helicopters overhead, but instead everything was eerily, freakishly silent, as if the flames were devouring all sound.
It was never silent in Times Square.
Doom was standing at the exact center of the crossroads where Broadway and 42nd Street met, a leather book open in one hand and the other flung out dramatically. Beside him, Steve saw with a sinking feeling, was Loki.
Damn, damn, damn, where was Thor? They had to take both Doom and Loki down before Sin arrived with spear in hand; if one of them got their hands on it, it would all be over. They wouldn't be able to stop a vastly more powerful Loki, or a Doom with god-like powers, and would likely die trying.
Doom just stood there, making no move to attack the quinjet while Sam, Clint, and Carol exited it. Either they weren't even worth the effort of attacking anymore, or the ritual he had begun required all of his attention and energy. Steve hoped it was the latter.
"So," Loki said, her gleeful smirk visible even from across the street, "you have come to stop us. Of course you have. You're tiresomely predictable."
"Of course we have," Steve agreed. "Where are Yellowjacket and the Wasp?"
Doom threw back his head and laughed. "You and your pitiful fellow superheroes are no match for myself and Loki working together. You couldn't even defend your own home from me, so how do they imagine you're going to stop me?"
"Where are they?" If Doom had killed them, he'd be gloating about it. He ought to be gloating regardless, threatening to kill them if the Avengers didn't stand aside and let him do whatever he wanted.
Doom lifted one hand, his gauntlet crackling with energy, and Steve raised his shield slightly, just in case. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Clint drawing back an arrow.
"I believe I've said this before, but you are meddling in forces beyond your control." Strange's disembodied voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, and then he and Wong stepped through the flames behind Doom and Loki, Strange's cloak billowing and twisting around them, untouched by the fire. "The power within the spear will incinerate you," he continued.
Doom turned to face him, seeming not to care that he was turning his back on the rest of them. Beside him, Loki was toying with a dagger nearly the size of a short sword, still wearing the same disinterested smirk. If they rushed Doom, would she try to stop them? Carol could be on him in an eye-blink, faster than any normal human could move, but Loki was far from human.
"Such timidity from the great sorcerer supreme," Doom said. "You and Dr. Blake are two of a kind, both afraid of the risks necessary for true power."
They could-Dr. Blake?
"What did you do to him?" Clint demanded it before Steve could, taking a half step forward and raising the tip of his arrow slightly.
Loki's smirk became a true smile, the same wide, gleefully malicious one she'd always worn in her old form. "My stepbrother is awaiting my consort's pleasure. He will be dealt with later."
The twang of Clint's bowstring sounded almost before she'd finished speaking.
It did nothing, of course. She moved almost too quickly for Steve's eyes to follow, knocking the arrow from the air with a swirl of her heavy cloak.
Doom didn't turn away from Strange and Wong. They were fighting one another somehow, Steve was sure, but in no way that he could see.
Loki cocked her head, horned headdress casting distorted shadows on the pavement. "Think you your mortal weapons can harm me?"
"Perhaps not," Strange said, "but I have weapons of a different sort."
Strange, Steve thought, was in his element.
Sam had stepped up to flank Steve's right side, Redwing no longer perched on his wrist. Carol would be overhead now; he knew without having to look. Between the four of them, Strange, and Wong, they had them surrounded and outnumbered three to one. He caught Sam's gaze, then Clint's, nodding towards Doom's back. Carol and Strange could take Loki.
He wasn't sure which way Wong would move — he'd rarely seen the man in a fight, though Iron Fist and Spiderman had both assured him that he was good.
"Pathetic." Doom augmented whatever wizard's duel spells he was using with a blast of energy aimed directly at Strange's head. "I expected more from the man whose spells have so inconvenienced me."
Strange ducked fluidly out of the way, shouting something incomprehensible, and glowing red bands of... something... wrapped around Doom's torso, pinning his arms to his sides.
Steve threw his shield at the same moment that Clint loosed his arrow, already running forward as he did so.
The arrow caught in one of the joints of Doom's armor, the shield bounced off Strange's magical bindings — they were translucent, like glowing smoke, surely it should have passed through them — and then they were on Doom.
He swung around, cape fluttering, and caught Steve's fist in one heavy gauntlet.
His shield was back in his hand now, and the edge left long dents and gouges in Doom's armor. It was sturdier than the recent batch of Doombots had been; he obviously saved the stronger — and rarer — alloys for his own armor.
Sam couldn't glide from a standing start, and Clint's arrows were no use at close range, but there was nothing wrong with either of their right hooks. Unfortunately, Doom barely felt them through his armor.
Steve had just managed to wrench his hand free and duck another of Doom's punches — unlike last time, he'd managed to avoid being either hit or blasted thus far — when the man's cape began to writhe and twist, snaking up to wrap around Clint's neck.
Clint beat uselessly at it with his bow, trying to pull it loose with his free hand, and Steve turned from Doom to help him. The cloth slipped against his gloves, and it took all of his strength just to pull it a few inches away from Clint's throat.
The explosion of pain as Doom's fist caught him in the kidneys was like a flash of light behind his eyes, but then Clint was free, the cloak just a cloak again.
There was a blur of red at the corner of his vision, and Steve automatically focused on it long enough to see Sam dive through Doom's legs to snatch the Dee manuscript up off the pavement.
"Go long," he shouted, and then it was arcing toward Wong, who caught it easily in one hand.
"Return that to me, or I shall take it from your corpse!" Doom snarled. He fired a stream of energy at Wong, missing him by inches, then turned and aimed a vicious kick at Sam's ribs.
Sam, who'd been halfway to his feet, doubled over, but still managed to grab Doom's ankle and yank.
Clint thrust his bow between Doom's legs, hooking his other ankle, and Doom staggered forward just in time to slam into Steve's shield as Steve thrust the flat of it at his face. His momentum added force to the blow, and even with his shield protecting his hand, Steve could feel the impact all the way to his shoulder.
Doom staggered back, swearing in Latverian, and Steve started to smile. He couldn't see what Strange and Carol were doing, but from the sound of the curses he could hear Loki hissing, it was effective.
"You should have picked better allies. At this rate, we'll have you on the ground long before Sin gets here with the spear."
Doom's reply — something in Latverian that Steve didn't have to understand to know was a threat — was cut short by a scream of rage from Loki.
"YOU! How did you escape your chains?"
It was a rookie mistake, but Steve looked to see who she was yelling at. Luckily for him, Doom was doing the same thing.
Thor was landing in the center of the circle of flames, Mjolnir still spinning in his hand.
"About time, big guy!" Carol called. She was struggling to keep Loki in an arm lock, and sporting several long, shallow slices on her arms and thighs. Loki's dagger must be enchanted somehow.
"Release me, mortal-" Loki began.
"Victor von Doom." Jan's voice rang out, shifting in pitch as she jumped down from Thor's shoulder and resumed normal size. "Don's not going to get a chance to rip your lungs out," she continued. "Because I'm going to." She was striding toward them, movements quick and purposeful, growing larger with each step.
She didn't sound as if she were joking. Where was Hank?
Jan backhanded Doom across the face, not even wincing as her bare hand connected with his mask. "Sacrifice this!"
The mask went flying, metal scraping across asphalt as it landed, and Steve had a brief impression of pale skin, livid scars, and an enraged snarl — Doom had a narrower jaw than he'd always imagined, and broader cheekbones — and then Doom was diving for his mask.
"That's it?" Sam blurted out. "That's why you wear that thing? The Red Skull had you beat six ways to Sunday when it came to having a face that frightened small children."
"You'll pay for this, woman!" Doom spat, turning back to Jan with energy crackling over one gauntlet. The other hand held his mask to his face.
How many of those energy blasts could he fire before his power source was exhausted? Tony would have had some idea.
The sudden, delighted laughter seemed to come from everywhere at once. A woman's voice, but with a strange, harmonic echo to it that made Steve's teeth ache and his skin crawl.
Sin stepped through the flames, a short length of spear in one hand.
Sparks were smoldering in her clothing, and Steve could smell the sharp reek of burned hair. She was limping badly, covered in blood, and her left arm hung motionless at her side, flesh dark and swollen.
Her eyes were the worst; blank, glowing white in a face empty of expression.
"Oh, damn," Sam breathed. Redwing landed on his shoulder, huddling into Sam's neck.
"Is that from the spear?" Jan was frowning, the rage of moments before completely derailed.
"At last!" Doom cried, turning away from them as if they'd ceased to exist. "What took you so long? Never mind, just bring it to me."
"You fool," Loki called out. "Can you not see? That is not-"
Sin continued to laugh, flickers of energy spider-webbing over her skin like white lightning. "Do you imagine your pathetic schemes and quarrels concern me? Your minion is no more, Victor von Doom. Only I remain."
"Chthon," Strange said grimly.
Clint shook his head slowly, his fingers tightening visible on his bow. "We are so fucking fucked and it's too late to run."
* * *
Chthon's voice whispered at the edges of her mind, as if she were standing inside Daredevil's cathedral.
'Free,' he gloated, as he had been for what felt like an eternity. 'I will be free! Come to me, little witch. It is time for you to fulfill your purpose.'
Putting her hands over her ears or trying to shake her head to chase Chthon out wouldn't work. The wards on her hands and neck itched and burned, like tight bands over her skin, and as she and Tony drew closer to Times Square, a dull glow began to seep through the back of her gloves.
Wanda tightened her arms around Tony's neck and resisted the urge to look down. She wouldn't be able to see anything yet, not with so many buildings in the way, and the three-hundred foot drop to the pavement below would only feel more yawningly lethal if she looked at it.
Iron Man had never dropped anyone yet. Not accidentally, anyway.
"When we get there-" she began, only to be drowned out by a squeal of feedback from her communicator as the chaos magic surging around them fried something. She turned it off and raised her voice instead, shouting to be heard over the wind and the dull whine of Tony's jet boots. "What you promised, before. If Chthon takes control of me-"
"You won't let him," Tony interrupted.
"If he does," she pressed. He was clawing at the walls she'd put up to keep him out, now, hissing that she wouldn't be able to keep him out for long with so much of her power walled away.
There were seven million people in Manhattan. Almost as many people as she had maimed and destroyed the last time Chthon had had her, but this time he didn't plan to simply mutilate, hurt, or erase. If he broke free, the whole city would burn.
Tony was silent for a moment, his face invisible behind his helmet. "If he does," he finally said, voice more stilted and mechanical than the armor's voice filters would account for, "I'll keep my promise."
It was probably wrong to feel relief. "Thank you," she said — shouted really. The chaos magic that surrounded them surged in a way that made her wards flare with heat, and Wanda pressed her forehead against the cold metal of Tony's chestplate. "I'm sorry," she added.
He didn't reply. Had he even heard her?
Something was glowing up ahead, an eerie green that didn't look or feel like Chthon's power, yet still felt like chaos.
The chaos around them surged again, and for a moment, she could see nothing but black and red, hear nothing but Chthon's whispers. Then they were descending.
Thor and Loki were rolling on the ground, throwing punches at one another. Mjolnir lay several feet away, and Loki was doing her best to keep Thor from reaching it. Everyone else was fighting Doombots. Including... was that Doom?
The Doombots' green surcoats and capes were on fire, burning with the same green flame that hedged them all in, and white and red chaos lightning crawled over their metal armor. Only one still looked normal, and he was trying to simultaneously destroy one of the others and attack a twelve-foot-tall Jan.
The others had found them, then. Hank must be back at the tower, glued to a monitor and storing up complaints about the fact that he'd been left behind. Unless Doom had brought them along as sacrifices, in which case... maybe Hank had gone for help?
It wasn't important. The only thing that mattered at the moment was Sin, and the short length of spear clutched in her left hand.
The air around it rippled with chaotic power. Familiar power. Even if she hadn't already known what the spear was, she would have recognized it. The fierce, barely controllable power that had broken Chthon's hold on her, that had struck down Strange and burned his hands.
Sin turned, either sensing them or hearing Tony's jet boots, and swept the spear sharply in their direction.
A wall of invisible force hit them like a wave, crushing her into the hard metal of Tony's armor, and then Wanda was falling the remaining few feet to the ground.
She landed in a crouch, the shock of the impact jolting all the way up her legs and stinging the soles of her feet. It was a good thing this costume had flat-soled boots instead of heels, or she would have gone sprawling across the pavement.
"Wanda!" Carol half-turned, ducking under a Doombot's flailing arm. "What are you-" the Doombot swung at her again, its motions oddly clumsy, and she wrapped both hands around the limb and ripped it off at the shoulder with a single, sharp jerk — "doing here?"
"We thought you could use the back-up," Tony said, as a repulsor blast took what remained of the Doombot square in the chest. "Agents Carter and Barnes are on their way, along with whatever SHIELD can scramble."
Sin kicked Clint in the chest, sending him flying back nearly ten feet to land on his back. She swung around, gesturing sharply with the spear again, and one of the giant concrete planters the city had installed down the center of the street lurched into the air.
Redwing banked sharply to the left, letting out a steam whistle scream of displeasure, and the planter crashed into a store window.
"I'll tell them to send the Hulkbusters," Tony added.
Steve looked up sharply. "You have live communications?"
Tony dodged another blast of invisible force, and fired at the Doombot still hammering on Steve's shield. It exploded in a miniature fireball that burned both green and orange-white, and the nearly invisible magical explosion that shadowed it stank of Chthon. "Only to the Helicarrier," he said, "and only if I divert power from the rest of the armor's systems to boost the signal. Sorry. Without Extremis-"
"Just do it," Steve ordered.
Clint was lying on the ground, flat on his back, eyes closed. Just beyond him, Jan and Doom were throwing punches at both one another and one of Chthon's Doombot puppets. As Wanda watched, Jan ripped the robot's head off and threw it at Doom. The Doombot stumbled backwards, Chthon's power still animating it even though the circuitry controlling its AI had to be shredded, and Wanda automatically brought her hands up. A small burst of chaos was all it would take to shift the Doombot's path away from Clint, keep it from falling on him.
The air around her was so thick with chaos already that she could barely think, Chthon's presence a choking miasma, and her skin burned as if the wards were being branded onto her. For an endless, frozen moment, she couldn't move. Her chaos magic was tied to Chthon, and with him this close, on the verge of breaking free entirely, just touching it would open herself up to him.
The Doombot was already falling; she wouldn't be able to get to Clint in time.
Sam seemed to come out of nowhere, his shoulder catching the Doombot mid-torso in a tackle straight out of American football. Both of them went tumbling in a mass of metal, wings, and long limbs, and Wanda ran forward, paralysis broken.
She dodged and swerved around energy bolts and flying pieces of metal without thinking about it, and threw herself under another blast of raw chaos from Sin — no, Chthon; she knew better than anyone that that wasn't Synthia Schmidt anymore — to land on her hands and knees at Clint's side.
He was conscious, she saw with a wash of relief. His face was twisted with pain, fingers clawing at the ground and heels scraping across the pavement as he fought to breathe. Sin had hit him hard, hard enough that Wanda had half-expected to find his ribcage distorted and crushed. Instead, it looked normal, which meant the desperate gasping sounds he was making weren't from collapsing lungs.
"Breathe," she ordered. "Slowly." She pushed down on his shoulders, gently, trying to keep him from getting up or moving without hurting him more. "You've just had the air knocked out of you." Once, she could have forced that to be the truth. Now, she just had to hope it was.
"Okay," Clint gasped. "I'm-okay." He didn't sound okay, or look it, but if he could speak, he was breathing again. "She's fav-favoring her left side. I tried to flank her. Don't let her kick you."
"I'll try not to," Wanda managed. Part of her was surprised at how normal she sounded, when the rest of her wanted to scream, or cry with frustration at being so helpless, or curl into a ball and hope Chthon would overlook her if she were very still and quiet. "Can you move?"
Clint pushed himself up onto one elbow, wrapping the other arm around his chest and curling in on himself. "Give me a minute," he wheezed. He flicked one hand vaguely at the battle still raging around them. "Go help... someone."
Without her powers, she was essentially unarmed, and taking on Doombots barehanded only worked if you were Carol or She-Hulk. And Chthon...
There was a flash of red and green at the corner of her vision, and she followed it to see Loki straddling Thor, struggling to keep his right arm — and Mjolnir - pinned to the ground. She had one knee on his elbow, and a dagger held against his throat.
Thor arched his back, twisted his hips, and threw Loki off him, sending her sprawling nearly at Wanda's feet.
Moving automatically, she sprang forward and planted one foot on Loki's cloak, pinning it to the ground with her weight, and kicked at the dagger in Loki's hand. The knife went skidding across the street, and Wong snatched it up, immediately turning to slam the blade into the joint of Doombot's shoulder. It sliced through the metal as if it were cheap tin, as easily as Wolverine's claws.
Uru was one of the few metals as tough as vibranium and adamantium.
"I thank thee, Scarlet Witch," Thor said, climbing to his feet again.
"You should be aiding me, brother," Loki spat, snatching her cloak free. "Or do you wish to see what should belong to Asgard in the hands of Chthon?"
Thor flung himself at her again, holding her back as Tony and Jan charged Sin. "Neither of you shall triumph," he snarled.
She should have grabbed for the dagger herself. She'd never liked using knives or guns, but Steve had put her through the same combat training he'd put them all through.
A shame none of these Doombots had the energy weapons their comrades at the mansion had carried. Guns of all kinds were always so easy to disable.
Instead, Wanda bent down and seized a twisted chunk of metal that had until minutes ago been part of a Doombot's torso. Taking a page from Steve's book, she threw it at the closest Doombot like a discus.
Sam moved in just as the metal caught the Doombot between the shoulder blades, and hooked its feet out from under it with a kick as it started to turn toward her, off balance. It went reeling back directly into Wong and his dagger, as smoothly as if the three of them had planned it.
The Doombots were only a distraction, puppets animated by Chthon to try and keep them from being able to concentrate all their efforts on stopping Sin, but Wanda found herself smiling grimly anyway as she looked around for another piece of shrapnel.
* * *
Sin flung her arm out at him, the shaft of the spear catching Tony across the chest, and then he was flying backwards. He hit the side of a building with bone-jarring force, hard enough that everything went white for a moment.
What- She shouldn't be able to hit so hard. It was like being smacked around by the Hulk. Even with magically boosted strength, Sin was barely five foot four and shouldn't have had the leverage to throw him around like that.
Tony forced himself to his feet — at least the building was sturdy enough that he didn't have to climb out of a pile of rubble — and tried to focus on the blur of red and black that was Sin advancing on him. Steve's shield seemed to come out of nowhere, slamming into her shoulder on her bad side and nearly knocking her off her feet — twelve pounds of metal hitting her at that velocity and not knocking her down was something else that shouldn't be possible — and then Carol was behind her, both arms around Sin's neck in a headlock.
Strange lunged forward and seized the spear in one gloved hand, striking Sin's forearm with the other. He twisted it free of her grasp and leaped back, miraculously avoiding tripping over his cape, just as she broke Carol's hold.
"There is no purpose in this defiance, sorcerer." It was deeper than Sin's voice, the sound buzzing in Tony's teeth and resonating in his bones despite the fact that the armor should have shielded him. "Your will is no match for mine, and my power is greater than yours, even in this inferior vessel."
Strange flung his free hand up, crying, "By the powers of the Vishanti, I," and then he was screaming as the spear flared with light and the glove on his left hand disintegrated.
The spear hit the pavement, still pulsing with sullen red light, and Strange collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, his cloak writhing around him like a living thing.
Tony swore. Of course it had felled Strange; it had done so before. They should have planned for this.
Could any of them touch it safely, other than Loki herself?
"Thor-" he began, intending to tell him to let Loki up to claim the spear, that anything she might do with it was unimportant next to stopping Chthon, and then Doom was moving.
He plowed past Wong like the tank his armor effectively made him, ignoring the chunk of pauldron, backplate, and cape he lost to the man's dagger, firing energy bolts indiscriminately at everyone still standing. One of them grazed Tony's arm, setting alarms blaring in his head and flashing in his helmet display, and he hesitated for one stupid, cowardly instant.
He fired his jet boots, but even though flying was faster than running, it was still too slow. Doom's fingers curled around the haft of the spear just as Steve's shield took him in the side.
Doom hit the ground with a clatter of metal on asphalt, but he kept his grip on the spear. "Too late," he mocked, rising to his feet and kicking the shield out of the way. "I should apologize to Sin. It appears she did her job after all."
"Drop it!" Wanda shouted. "You saw what it did to Strange." She was holding a chunk of shrapnel like a knife, her face covered in a smear of soot.
Doom laughed, raising the spear above his head. "That fool? He'll be the first sacrifice I offer." He swung the spear to point its tip at Sin. "You'll be the second. Elder god or mortal woman, whichever you are, you're going to make me invincible."
"Idiot," Tony wanted to shout, but Doom would never have listened to him. He raised his hands, diverting extra power to his repulsors.
Sin laughed, the sound reverberating in a way that shouldn't have been possible coming from a human throat. She thrust her good hand toward Doom, and Tony's vision dissolved into static as the armor's visual sensors malfunctioned and his helmet display warped into a distorted smear of light. He shut them all down and switched to simply looked through the helmet's lenses, normal vision with nothing enabled, just in time to see the spear hit the ground, the air around it wavering as if from extreme heat.
Sin stepped forward, hooking one toe under the shaft of the spear and kicking it up to snatch it out of the air. "I am chaos!" she shouted, empty, white eyes blazing. "I was there before time began, and when the last star in the universe has crumbled to dust, I will remain. Cower before me, mortal, and perhaps I will let you live."
Lighting was crawling over her skin, her hair lashing wildly around her head in a non-existent wind. It was sickeningly reminiscent of the way Wanda had appeared when Chthon had possessed her; any moment now, she would start levitating.
One good repulsor blast could destroy the spear, but—no, it was uru. Nothing short of the fires of a volcano could damage it. Damn it, they could have used Strange conscious.
Wanda had both hands pressed to the side of her head, her face twisted in pain. If Chthon was able to overwhelm her as well...
"Chaos?" Loki snorted. She was on her feet now, either escaped from Thor's hold or deliberately freed. "Chaos is both creation and destruction. You do nothing but destroy. Give me my spear and be gone. It is mine by right."
Now, while Sin's attention was on her.
Steve moved at the same time he did, both of them charging Sin, Steve from behind and Tony from her lame side.
Sin pivoted on her good leg and lunged at Steve, the spear's head skidding across the face of Steve's shield with an awful, metallic shriek that he'd never heard anything that had hit the shield make before.
Tony grabbed Sin's wounded arm, the swollen flesh splitting and oozing fluid under his gauntlet, and jerked her back around. He thrust his left hand up under her breastbone, and then—froze.
(a round, cauterized hole burned through a man's chest while his dead face still smiled at Tony, friendly, as if still asking for an autograph; the smell of burned meat; Steve standing there in the Meridian's dining room with blackened, smoking holes in his stomach and over his heart, his entire body drenched in blood)
Better her than Wanda, Tony thought, better all of them than the entire city, and made himself fire.
Steve shouted something, his voice angry and desperate, and Sin was still moving, how the hell was she still moving?
The spear went through his armor like a hot knife through butter, and the pain was like Afghanistan all over again.
* * *
It had scratched his shield. The spear had actually — nothing scratched his shield.
Tony was still moving, grabbing Sin and jerking her around, and Steve had a long, horrified second to both see Sin's arm draw back, to see Tony thrust his repulsor gauntlet into her chest, and know exactly what each of them was going to do.
He lunged forward, shouting a warning, already knowing that he was too late, as a repulsor beam blew a hole clear through Sin's torso. And Sin, impossibly still alive and upright, stabbed Loki's spear upwards, straight into the center of Tony's body.
Tony went rigid, back arching, as the spear punched easily through his armor.
"No!" someone shouted — Loki?
Sin ripped the spear back out, sending a spray of blood arcing through the air, and Tony collapsed to the pavement, unmoving.
"Stop her! Blood sacrifice unlocks its power. My power!"
Sin blocked the face of his shield with the spear, breaking the force of his lunge with a strength she'd never possessed. It was like slamming his shield full on into a stone wall, but the jolt that shocked up his arm and into his shoulder was oddly distant. His ribs, still bruised from the fight yesterday, didn't even twinge.
She disengaged and stepped back to face him, her battered and grotesquely swollen face expressionless. The spear's broad, silver head was covered in blood, and a smear of it blotted out the scratch on his shield, a streak of red through the center of the white star.
If it took her in the throat edge-on, the shield would crush her windpipe or break her neck, but if the hole burned through her chest wasn't killing her, that wouldn't either.
She moved abruptly, a gesture with the spear knocking Carol out of the air and into a huge LCD screen, and this time Steve could almost see the blast of power rippling in the air.
The spear was glowing again, red and white light pulsing like a heartbeat. Just looking at it made his eyes hurt and his stomach lurch, and Tony still hadn't moved, and Clint was still down, struggling to sit up, and-
Mjolnir came flying at Sin's head so quickly that Steve didn't hear the whistle of the air parting around it until she had already blocked it.
He moved automatically, the moment he saw her face start to turn away from him. The edge of his shield came down on Sin's right forearm with a crack of shattering bone, and the spear dropped from her hand.
Loki dove for it, hitting the ground in a swirl of green cloak and flashing gold. Her fingers came within inches of the spear's haft—
And Redwing fell out of the sky like a missile, snatching the spear from the ground with a shrill scream that was echoed by Sam.
"Don't-" Steve shouted, uselessly, too late, as Sam folded to the ground with both hands pressed against the sides of his head and Redwing flew to Wanda and dropped the spear directly into her outstretched hands.
***
She had a fraction of a second to think of what the spear had done to Strange, and then it was in her hands, and the world was nothing but white fire. She had thought its power was overwhelming when she'd reached for it in the cathedral, but that had been a slow trickle compared to the violent flood of chaos that engulfed her now.
There was so much of it, raw and pure and completely free of Chthon's touch, and the feel of it pouring into her was something beyond pain, making every nerve in her body sing. She could no longer hear Chthon's voice, could no longer hear anything.
Her hands hurt. Hands, and the back of her neck, a bright flare of pain like hot metal.
Wanda fought to keep herself from dissolving away into the chaos, forcing herself to focus on the rest of the world. Chthon was all around her, the barrier between his prison and the rest of reality nearly worn through, but he couldn't touch her while the spear's power filled her.
So much power, enough to break and remake worlds.
The remnants of the magic Chthon had made her work to erase so many people's mutations would be vaporized if she turned this on them, no matter how much of the spear's energy it took. Just a small pull on probability here, a twist of causality there, and reality would bend and reshape itself and Vision and Scott and Jack would never have died. Her children would exist again, as if they had never stopped, and this time she'd have enough power to make them truly real. They could be a family, herself and Vision and the twins, and Pietro, and-
And Chthon would destroy all of them, and she would be powerless to stop him, because remaking the world to set everything right again would consume all the power she held.
Wanda opened her eyes, and leveled the head of the spear at Sin - at Chthon. With this much chaos magic filling her, she could see the writhing tentacles of magic that engulfed Sin's body more clearly than she could see the woman herself.
The thin place in the dimensional barriers was no longer confined to St. Margaret's - it surrounded Sin now, and the tentacles of energy were stretching through it, almost solid. One of them was reaching out toward her, pulsing with dark energy like a heartbeat.
"GET OUT!" She poured all of the spear's power into the command, letting it flow through her and out through the weapon itself. It hurt, a searing pain that made even the white-hot burn of the wards on her neck and hands fade into insignificance, but when the raw chaos energy hit Sin, the tentacles curled away from it, thrashing and shriveling, and Chthon's screams of rage echoes at the edges of her mind.
He tried to claw at her, to leave Sin's body and force himself into her mind, but this much foreign chaos power filling her, there was no room for him.
"GET OUT!" she shouted again, as every LCD screen in Times Square exploded in a shower of sparks. "I BANISH YOU!" The words didn't matter — it was the intent behind them that incinerated the tentacles around Sin, engulfing them in eye-searing white light and forcing them back through the crack in reality that they'd slithered through.
Chthon's energy vanished, burned away, but the power kept pouring out of her, draining away into the dimensional walls until there was nothing left. Until the walls of Chthon's prison were solid again.
The spear in her hand crumbled to dust, the chunk of melted slag that had once been a narrow, wicked-looking spear-head hitting the ground with a dull clang.
Then everything faded to grey.
* * *
Sorry for the missed posting last week, guys.
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
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.
They saw the traffic jam first. Cars were backed up for blocks around Times Square, a solid mass of metal and red and white head and taillights. Up ahead, news helicopters were circling above the general vicinity of Broadway and 42nd Street, filming what they could in the last few minutes before twilight.
"Carol," Steve ordered, "get on the radio and see if you can get them to back off. We-"
"Need some clear airspace for a landing, I know," she interrupted. Without turning from the quinjet's controls, Carol reached up and tapped a finger against her earpiece. "The NYPD is already talking to them."
Steve had been thinking less of room to land, and more of the risk that Doom might decide to start using news copters for target practice. Supervillains had done it before, but the pilots the local news stations hired were apparently fearless.
Beside him, Clint made frustrated noise. "I can't get through to Wanda. Or the Helicarrier. Or Thor. Where the heck is he?"
"Did he tell anyone where he was going?" Steve asked; uselessly, he knew. If Carol or Sam had had any idea where their absent team member was, they would have said something before they'd taken off.
Sam shook his head, fingers never stopping their slow, soothing strokes through Redwing's feathers. The falcon hated riding in the quinjet, even with a hood shielding his eyes. It looked strange to see him wearing one, as if he were an ordinary bird — until you noticed the lack of jesses around his ankles. "I haven't seen him since we got back from the Helicarrier."
Steve forced down his worry; he couldn't afford the distraction right now, when they were about to take on Doom with half their team missing, captured, or out of action. Wanda would have been invaluable right about now, if only she weren't stuck on the Helicarrier, and if only all forms of satellite communication in the city weren't down.
They had lost contact with Peter and Luke first, their communicators going offline abruptly and setting off a wail of alarms in the tower's communications room. The city-wide failures had come later, while they were scrambling into the quinjet.
Peter and Luke were still alive, Strange had assured them of that, but he'd also said that he'd called an ambulance, and given no further details, his astral form fading out of sight seconds after telling them that he'd meet them at Time Square.
Carol banked the quinjet to the left, and the huge tower at One Times Square no longer blocked their view of the streets below. A huge circle of green flame surrounded Times Square, blocking off everything within a three-block radius. Steve could see at least one driver standing on the sidewalk beside their stopped car, yelling and throwing things at the flames. From the flickers of light around the circle's edges, some people were taking pictures of it.
He hoped nobody was trapped inside it, that they weren't about to have a hostage crisis.
Carol brought the quinjet down for a landing, the aircraft shuddering and jolting as if she were trying to land it in a windstorm. When they disembarked, Steve going first with his shield already up and ready, the air was heavy and motionless, without a breath of wind, and so charged with magic that the hair on the back stood up. He should have been able to hear shouts, car horns, the drone of the helicopters overhead, but instead everything was eerily, freakishly silent, as if the flames were devouring all sound.
It was never silent in Times Square.
Doom was standing at the exact center of the crossroads where Broadway and 42nd Street met, a leather book open in one hand and the other flung out dramatically. Beside him, Steve saw with a sinking feeling, was Loki.
Damn, damn, damn, where was Thor? They had to take both Doom and Loki down before Sin arrived with spear in hand; if one of them got their hands on it, it would all be over. They wouldn't be able to stop a vastly more powerful Loki, or a Doom with god-like powers, and would likely die trying.
Doom just stood there, making no move to attack the quinjet while Sam, Clint, and Carol exited it. Either they weren't even worth the effort of attacking anymore, or the ritual he had begun required all of his attention and energy. Steve hoped it was the latter.
"So," Loki said, her gleeful smirk visible even from across the street, "you have come to stop us. Of course you have. You're tiresomely predictable."
"Of course we have," Steve agreed. "Where are Yellowjacket and the Wasp?"
Doom threw back his head and laughed. "You and your pitiful fellow superheroes are no match for myself and Loki working together. You couldn't even defend your own home from me, so how do they imagine you're going to stop me?"
"Where are they?" If Doom had killed them, he'd be gloating about it. He ought to be gloating regardless, threatening to kill them if the Avengers didn't stand aside and let him do whatever he wanted.
Doom lifted one hand, his gauntlet crackling with energy, and Steve raised his shield slightly, just in case. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Clint drawing back an arrow.
"I believe I've said this before, but you are meddling in forces beyond your control." Strange's disembodied voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, and then he and Wong stepped through the flames behind Doom and Loki, Strange's cloak billowing and twisting around them, untouched by the fire. "The power within the spear will incinerate you," he continued.
Doom turned to face him, seeming not to care that he was turning his back on the rest of them. Beside him, Loki was toying with a dagger nearly the size of a short sword, still wearing the same disinterested smirk. If they rushed Doom, would she try to stop them? Carol could be on him in an eye-blink, faster than any normal human could move, but Loki was far from human.
"Such timidity from the great sorcerer supreme," Doom said. "You and Dr. Blake are two of a kind, both afraid of the risks necessary for true power."
They could-Dr. Blake?
"What did you do to him?" Clint demanded it before Steve could, taking a half step forward and raising the tip of his arrow slightly.
Loki's smirk became a true smile, the same wide, gleefully malicious one she'd always worn in her old form. "My stepbrother is awaiting my consort's pleasure. He will be dealt with later."
The twang of Clint's bowstring sounded almost before she'd finished speaking.
It did nothing, of course. She moved almost too quickly for Steve's eyes to follow, knocking the arrow from the air with a swirl of her heavy cloak.
Doom didn't turn away from Strange and Wong. They were fighting one another somehow, Steve was sure, but in no way that he could see.
Loki cocked her head, horned headdress casting distorted shadows on the pavement. "Think you your mortal weapons can harm me?"
"Perhaps not," Strange said, "but I have weapons of a different sort."
Strange, Steve thought, was in his element.
Sam had stepped up to flank Steve's right side, Redwing no longer perched on his wrist. Carol would be overhead now; he knew without having to look. Between the four of them, Strange, and Wong, they had them surrounded and outnumbered three to one. He caught Sam's gaze, then Clint's, nodding towards Doom's back. Carol and Strange could take Loki.
He wasn't sure which way Wong would move — he'd rarely seen the man in a fight, though Iron Fist and Spiderman had both assured him that he was good.
"Pathetic." Doom augmented whatever wizard's duel spells he was using with a blast of energy aimed directly at Strange's head. "I expected more from the man whose spells have so inconvenienced me."
Strange ducked fluidly out of the way, shouting something incomprehensible, and glowing red bands of... something... wrapped around Doom's torso, pinning his arms to his sides.
Steve threw his shield at the same moment that Clint loosed his arrow, already running forward as he did so.
The arrow caught in one of the joints of Doom's armor, the shield bounced off Strange's magical bindings — they were translucent, like glowing smoke, surely it should have passed through them — and then they were on Doom.
He swung around, cape fluttering, and caught Steve's fist in one heavy gauntlet.
His shield was back in his hand now, and the edge left long dents and gouges in Doom's armor. It was sturdier than the recent batch of Doombots had been; he obviously saved the stronger — and rarer — alloys for his own armor.
Sam couldn't glide from a standing start, and Clint's arrows were no use at close range, but there was nothing wrong with either of their right hooks. Unfortunately, Doom barely felt them through his armor.
Steve had just managed to wrench his hand free and duck another of Doom's punches — unlike last time, he'd managed to avoid being either hit or blasted thus far — when the man's cape began to writhe and twist, snaking up to wrap around Clint's neck.
Clint beat uselessly at it with his bow, trying to pull it loose with his free hand, and Steve turned from Doom to help him. The cloth slipped against his gloves, and it took all of his strength just to pull it a few inches away from Clint's throat.
The explosion of pain as Doom's fist caught him in the kidneys was like a flash of light behind his eyes, but then Clint was free, the cloak just a cloak again.
There was a blur of red at the corner of his vision, and Steve automatically focused on it long enough to see Sam dive through Doom's legs to snatch the Dee manuscript up off the pavement.
"Go long," he shouted, and then it was arcing toward Wong, who caught it easily in one hand.
"Return that to me, or I shall take it from your corpse!" Doom snarled. He fired a stream of energy at Wong, missing him by inches, then turned and aimed a vicious kick at Sam's ribs.
Sam, who'd been halfway to his feet, doubled over, but still managed to grab Doom's ankle and yank.
Clint thrust his bow between Doom's legs, hooking his other ankle, and Doom staggered forward just in time to slam into Steve's shield as Steve thrust the flat of it at his face. His momentum added force to the blow, and even with his shield protecting his hand, Steve could feel the impact all the way to his shoulder.
Doom staggered back, swearing in Latverian, and Steve started to smile. He couldn't see what Strange and Carol were doing, but from the sound of the curses he could hear Loki hissing, it was effective.
"You should have picked better allies. At this rate, we'll have you on the ground long before Sin gets here with the spear."
Doom's reply — something in Latverian that Steve didn't have to understand to know was a threat — was cut short by a scream of rage from Loki.
"YOU! How did you escape your chains?"
It was a rookie mistake, but Steve looked to see who she was yelling at. Luckily for him, Doom was doing the same thing.
Thor was landing in the center of the circle of flames, Mjolnir still spinning in his hand.
"About time, big guy!" Carol called. She was struggling to keep Loki in an arm lock, and sporting several long, shallow slices on her arms and thighs. Loki's dagger must be enchanted somehow.
"Release me, mortal-" Loki began.
"Victor von Doom." Jan's voice rang out, shifting in pitch as she jumped down from Thor's shoulder and resumed normal size. "Don's not going to get a chance to rip your lungs out," she continued. "Because I'm going to." She was striding toward them, movements quick and purposeful, growing larger with each step.
She didn't sound as if she were joking. Where was Hank?
Jan backhanded Doom across the face, not even wincing as her bare hand connected with his mask. "Sacrifice this!"
The mask went flying, metal scraping across asphalt as it landed, and Steve had a brief impression of pale skin, livid scars, and an enraged snarl — Doom had a narrower jaw than he'd always imagined, and broader cheekbones — and then Doom was diving for his mask.
"That's it?" Sam blurted out. "That's why you wear that thing? The Red Skull had you beat six ways to Sunday when it came to having a face that frightened small children."
"You'll pay for this, woman!" Doom spat, turning back to Jan with energy crackling over one gauntlet. The other hand held his mask to his face.
How many of those energy blasts could he fire before his power source was exhausted? Tony would have had some idea.
The sudden, delighted laughter seemed to come from everywhere at once. A woman's voice, but with a strange, harmonic echo to it that made Steve's teeth ache and his skin crawl.
Sin stepped through the flames, a short length of spear in one hand.
Sparks were smoldering in her clothing, and Steve could smell the sharp reek of burned hair. She was limping badly, covered in blood, and her left arm hung motionless at her side, flesh dark and swollen.
Her eyes were the worst; blank, glowing white in a face empty of expression.
"Oh, damn," Sam breathed. Redwing landed on his shoulder, huddling into Sam's neck.
"Is that from the spear?" Jan was frowning, the rage of moments before completely derailed.
"At last!" Doom cried, turning away from them as if they'd ceased to exist. "What took you so long? Never mind, just bring it to me."
"You fool," Loki called out. "Can you not see? That is not-"
Sin continued to laugh, flickers of energy spider-webbing over her skin like white lightning. "Do you imagine your pathetic schemes and quarrels concern me? Your minion is no more, Victor von Doom. Only I remain."
"Chthon," Strange said grimly.
Clint shook his head slowly, his fingers tightening visible on his bow. "We are so fucking fucked and it's too late to run."
Chthon's voice whispered at the edges of her mind, as if she were standing inside Daredevil's cathedral.
'Free,' he gloated, as he had been for what felt like an eternity. 'I will be free! Come to me, little witch. It is time for you to fulfill your purpose.'
Putting her hands over her ears or trying to shake her head to chase Chthon out wouldn't work. The wards on her hands and neck itched and burned, like tight bands over her skin, and as she and Tony drew closer to Times Square, a dull glow began to seep through the back of her gloves.
Wanda tightened her arms around Tony's neck and resisted the urge to look down. She wouldn't be able to see anything yet, not with so many buildings in the way, and the three-hundred foot drop to the pavement below would only feel more yawningly lethal if she looked at it.
Iron Man had never dropped anyone yet. Not accidentally, anyway.
"When we get there-" she began, only to be drowned out by a squeal of feedback from her communicator as the chaos magic surging around them fried something. She turned it off and raised her voice instead, shouting to be heard over the wind and the dull whine of Tony's jet boots. "What you promised, before. If Chthon takes control of me-"
"You won't let him," Tony interrupted.
"If he does," she pressed. He was clawing at the walls she'd put up to keep him out, now, hissing that she wouldn't be able to keep him out for long with so much of her power walled away.
There were seven million people in Manhattan. Almost as many people as she had maimed and destroyed the last time Chthon had had her, but this time he didn't plan to simply mutilate, hurt, or erase. If he broke free, the whole city would burn.
Tony was silent for a moment, his face invisible behind his helmet. "If he does," he finally said, voice more stilted and mechanical than the armor's voice filters would account for, "I'll keep my promise."
It was probably wrong to feel relief. "Thank you," she said — shouted really. The chaos magic that surrounded them surged in a way that made her wards flare with heat, and Wanda pressed her forehead against the cold metal of Tony's chestplate. "I'm sorry," she added.
He didn't reply. Had he even heard her?
Something was glowing up ahead, an eerie green that didn't look or feel like Chthon's power, yet still felt like chaos.
The chaos around them surged again, and for a moment, she could see nothing but black and red, hear nothing but Chthon's whispers. Then they were descending.
Thor and Loki were rolling on the ground, throwing punches at one another. Mjolnir lay several feet away, and Loki was doing her best to keep Thor from reaching it. Everyone else was fighting Doombots. Including... was that Doom?
The Doombots' green surcoats and capes were on fire, burning with the same green flame that hedged them all in, and white and red chaos lightning crawled over their metal armor. Only one still looked normal, and he was trying to simultaneously destroy one of the others and attack a twelve-foot-tall Jan.
The others had found them, then. Hank must be back at the tower, glued to a monitor and storing up complaints about the fact that he'd been left behind. Unless Doom had brought them along as sacrifices, in which case... maybe Hank had gone for help?
It wasn't important. The only thing that mattered at the moment was Sin, and the short length of spear clutched in her left hand.
The air around it rippled with chaotic power. Familiar power. Even if she hadn't already known what the spear was, she would have recognized it. The fierce, barely controllable power that had broken Chthon's hold on her, that had struck down Strange and burned his hands.
Sin turned, either sensing them or hearing Tony's jet boots, and swept the spear sharply in their direction.
A wall of invisible force hit them like a wave, crushing her into the hard metal of Tony's armor, and then Wanda was falling the remaining few feet to the ground.
She landed in a crouch, the shock of the impact jolting all the way up her legs and stinging the soles of her feet. It was a good thing this costume had flat-soled boots instead of heels, or she would have gone sprawling across the pavement.
"Wanda!" Carol half-turned, ducking under a Doombot's flailing arm. "What are you-" the Doombot swung at her again, its motions oddly clumsy, and she wrapped both hands around the limb and ripped it off at the shoulder with a single, sharp jerk — "doing here?"
"We thought you could use the back-up," Tony said, as a repulsor blast took what remained of the Doombot square in the chest. "Agents Carter and Barnes are on their way, along with whatever SHIELD can scramble."
Sin kicked Clint in the chest, sending him flying back nearly ten feet to land on his back. She swung around, gesturing sharply with the spear again, and one of the giant concrete planters the city had installed down the center of the street lurched into the air.
Redwing banked sharply to the left, letting out a steam whistle scream of displeasure, and the planter crashed into a store window.
"I'll tell them to send the Hulkbusters," Tony added.
Steve looked up sharply. "You have live communications?"
Tony dodged another blast of invisible force, and fired at the Doombot still hammering on Steve's shield. It exploded in a miniature fireball that burned both green and orange-white, and the nearly invisible magical explosion that shadowed it stank of Chthon. "Only to the Helicarrier," he said, "and only if I divert power from the rest of the armor's systems to boost the signal. Sorry. Without Extremis-"
"Just do it," Steve ordered.
Clint was lying on the ground, flat on his back, eyes closed. Just beyond him, Jan and Doom were throwing punches at both one another and one of Chthon's Doombot puppets. As Wanda watched, Jan ripped the robot's head off and threw it at Doom. The Doombot stumbled backwards, Chthon's power still animating it even though the circuitry controlling its AI had to be shredded, and Wanda automatically brought her hands up. A small burst of chaos was all it would take to shift the Doombot's path away from Clint, keep it from falling on him.
The air around her was so thick with chaos already that she could barely think, Chthon's presence a choking miasma, and her skin burned as if the wards were being branded onto her. For an endless, frozen moment, she couldn't move. Her chaos magic was tied to Chthon, and with him this close, on the verge of breaking free entirely, just touching it would open herself up to him.
The Doombot was already falling; she wouldn't be able to get to Clint in time.
Sam seemed to come out of nowhere, his shoulder catching the Doombot mid-torso in a tackle straight out of American football. Both of them went tumbling in a mass of metal, wings, and long limbs, and Wanda ran forward, paralysis broken.
She dodged and swerved around energy bolts and flying pieces of metal without thinking about it, and threw herself under another blast of raw chaos from Sin — no, Chthon; she knew better than anyone that that wasn't Synthia Schmidt anymore — to land on her hands and knees at Clint's side.
He was conscious, she saw with a wash of relief. His face was twisted with pain, fingers clawing at the ground and heels scraping across the pavement as he fought to breathe. Sin had hit him hard, hard enough that Wanda had half-expected to find his ribcage distorted and crushed. Instead, it looked normal, which meant the desperate gasping sounds he was making weren't from collapsing lungs.
"Breathe," she ordered. "Slowly." She pushed down on his shoulders, gently, trying to keep him from getting up or moving without hurting him more. "You've just had the air knocked out of you." Once, she could have forced that to be the truth. Now, she just had to hope it was.
"Okay," Clint gasped. "I'm-okay." He didn't sound okay, or look it, but if he could speak, he was breathing again. "She's fav-favoring her left side. I tried to flank her. Don't let her kick you."
"I'll try not to," Wanda managed. Part of her was surprised at how normal she sounded, when the rest of her wanted to scream, or cry with frustration at being so helpless, or curl into a ball and hope Chthon would overlook her if she were very still and quiet. "Can you move?"
Clint pushed himself up onto one elbow, wrapping the other arm around his chest and curling in on himself. "Give me a minute," he wheezed. He flicked one hand vaguely at the battle still raging around them. "Go help... someone."
Without her powers, she was essentially unarmed, and taking on Doombots barehanded only worked if you were Carol or She-Hulk. And Chthon...
There was a flash of red and green at the corner of her vision, and she followed it to see Loki straddling Thor, struggling to keep his right arm — and Mjolnir - pinned to the ground. She had one knee on his elbow, and a dagger held against his throat.
Thor arched his back, twisted his hips, and threw Loki off him, sending her sprawling nearly at Wanda's feet.
Moving automatically, she sprang forward and planted one foot on Loki's cloak, pinning it to the ground with her weight, and kicked at the dagger in Loki's hand. The knife went skidding across the street, and Wong snatched it up, immediately turning to slam the blade into the joint of Doombot's shoulder. It sliced through the metal as if it were cheap tin, as easily as Wolverine's claws.
Uru was one of the few metals as tough as vibranium and adamantium.
"I thank thee, Scarlet Witch," Thor said, climbing to his feet again.
"You should be aiding me, brother," Loki spat, snatching her cloak free. "Or do you wish to see what should belong to Asgard in the hands of Chthon?"
Thor flung himself at her again, holding her back as Tony and Jan charged Sin. "Neither of you shall triumph," he snarled.
She should have grabbed for the dagger herself. She'd never liked using knives or guns, but Steve had put her through the same combat training he'd put them all through.
A shame none of these Doombots had the energy weapons their comrades at the mansion had carried. Guns of all kinds were always so easy to disable.
Instead, Wanda bent down and seized a twisted chunk of metal that had until minutes ago been part of a Doombot's torso. Taking a page from Steve's book, she threw it at the closest Doombot like a discus.
Sam moved in just as the metal caught the Doombot between the shoulder blades, and hooked its feet out from under it with a kick as it started to turn toward her, off balance. It went reeling back directly into Wong and his dagger, as smoothly as if the three of them had planned it.
The Doombots were only a distraction, puppets animated by Chthon to try and keep them from being able to concentrate all their efforts on stopping Sin, but Wanda found herself smiling grimly anyway as she looked around for another piece of shrapnel.
Sin flung her arm out at him, the shaft of the spear catching Tony across the chest, and then he was flying backwards. He hit the side of a building with bone-jarring force, hard enough that everything went white for a moment.
What- She shouldn't be able to hit so hard. It was like being smacked around by the Hulk. Even with magically boosted strength, Sin was barely five foot four and shouldn't have had the leverage to throw him around like that.
Tony forced himself to his feet — at least the building was sturdy enough that he didn't have to climb out of a pile of rubble — and tried to focus on the blur of red and black that was Sin advancing on him. Steve's shield seemed to come out of nowhere, slamming into her shoulder on her bad side and nearly knocking her off her feet — twelve pounds of metal hitting her at that velocity and not knocking her down was something else that shouldn't be possible — and then Carol was behind her, both arms around Sin's neck in a headlock.
Strange lunged forward and seized the spear in one gloved hand, striking Sin's forearm with the other. He twisted it free of her grasp and leaped back, miraculously avoiding tripping over his cape, just as she broke Carol's hold.
"There is no purpose in this defiance, sorcerer." It was deeper than Sin's voice, the sound buzzing in Tony's teeth and resonating in his bones despite the fact that the armor should have shielded him. "Your will is no match for mine, and my power is greater than yours, even in this inferior vessel."
Strange flung his free hand up, crying, "By the powers of the Vishanti, I," and then he was screaming as the spear flared with light and the glove on his left hand disintegrated.
The spear hit the pavement, still pulsing with sullen red light, and Strange collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, his cloak writhing around him like a living thing.
Tony swore. Of course it had felled Strange; it had done so before. They should have planned for this.
Could any of them touch it safely, other than Loki herself?
"Thor-" he began, intending to tell him to let Loki up to claim the spear, that anything she might do with it was unimportant next to stopping Chthon, and then Doom was moving.
He plowed past Wong like the tank his armor effectively made him, ignoring the chunk of pauldron, backplate, and cape he lost to the man's dagger, firing energy bolts indiscriminately at everyone still standing. One of them grazed Tony's arm, setting alarms blaring in his head and flashing in his helmet display, and he hesitated for one stupid, cowardly instant.
He fired his jet boots, but even though flying was faster than running, it was still too slow. Doom's fingers curled around the haft of the spear just as Steve's shield took him in the side.
Doom hit the ground with a clatter of metal on asphalt, but he kept his grip on the spear. "Too late," he mocked, rising to his feet and kicking the shield out of the way. "I should apologize to Sin. It appears she did her job after all."
"Drop it!" Wanda shouted. "You saw what it did to Strange." She was holding a chunk of shrapnel like a knife, her face covered in a smear of soot.
Doom laughed, raising the spear above his head. "That fool? He'll be the first sacrifice I offer." He swung the spear to point its tip at Sin. "You'll be the second. Elder god or mortal woman, whichever you are, you're going to make me invincible."
"Idiot," Tony wanted to shout, but Doom would never have listened to him. He raised his hands, diverting extra power to his repulsors.
Sin laughed, the sound reverberating in a way that shouldn't have been possible coming from a human throat. She thrust her good hand toward Doom, and Tony's vision dissolved into static as the armor's visual sensors malfunctioned and his helmet display warped into a distorted smear of light. He shut them all down and switched to simply looked through the helmet's lenses, normal vision with nothing enabled, just in time to see the spear hit the ground, the air around it wavering as if from extreme heat.
Sin stepped forward, hooking one toe under the shaft of the spear and kicking it up to snatch it out of the air. "I am chaos!" she shouted, empty, white eyes blazing. "I was there before time began, and when the last star in the universe has crumbled to dust, I will remain. Cower before me, mortal, and perhaps I will let you live."
Lighting was crawling over her skin, her hair lashing wildly around her head in a non-existent wind. It was sickeningly reminiscent of the way Wanda had appeared when Chthon had possessed her; any moment now, she would start levitating.
One good repulsor blast could destroy the spear, but—no, it was uru. Nothing short of the fires of a volcano could damage it. Damn it, they could have used Strange conscious.
Wanda had both hands pressed to the side of her head, her face twisted in pain. If Chthon was able to overwhelm her as well...
"Chaos?" Loki snorted. She was on her feet now, either escaped from Thor's hold or deliberately freed. "Chaos is both creation and destruction. You do nothing but destroy. Give me my spear and be gone. It is mine by right."
Now, while Sin's attention was on her.
Steve moved at the same time he did, both of them charging Sin, Steve from behind and Tony from her lame side.
Sin pivoted on her good leg and lunged at Steve, the spear's head skidding across the face of Steve's shield with an awful, metallic shriek that he'd never heard anything that had hit the shield make before.
Tony grabbed Sin's wounded arm, the swollen flesh splitting and oozing fluid under his gauntlet, and jerked her back around. He thrust his left hand up under her breastbone, and then—froze.
(a round, cauterized hole burned through a man's chest while his dead face still smiled at Tony, friendly, as if still asking for an autograph; the smell of burned meat; Steve standing there in the Meridian's dining room with blackened, smoking holes in his stomach and over his heart, his entire body drenched in blood)
Better her than Wanda, Tony thought, better all of them than the entire city, and made himself fire.
Steve shouted something, his voice angry and desperate, and Sin was still moving, how the hell was she still moving?
The spear went through his armor like a hot knife through butter, and the pain was like Afghanistan all over again.
It had scratched his shield. The spear had actually — nothing scratched his shield.
Tony was still moving, grabbing Sin and jerking her around, and Steve had a long, horrified second to both see Sin's arm draw back, to see Tony thrust his repulsor gauntlet into her chest, and know exactly what each of them was going to do.
He lunged forward, shouting a warning, already knowing that he was too late, as a repulsor beam blew a hole clear through Sin's torso. And Sin, impossibly still alive and upright, stabbed Loki's spear upwards, straight into the center of Tony's body.
Tony went rigid, back arching, as the spear punched easily through his armor.
"No!" someone shouted — Loki?
Sin ripped the spear back out, sending a spray of blood arcing through the air, and Tony collapsed to the pavement, unmoving.
"Stop her! Blood sacrifice unlocks its power. My power!"
Sin blocked the face of his shield with the spear, breaking the force of his lunge with a strength she'd never possessed. It was like slamming his shield full on into a stone wall, but the jolt that shocked up his arm and into his shoulder was oddly distant. His ribs, still bruised from the fight yesterday, didn't even twinge.
She disengaged and stepped back to face him, her battered and grotesquely swollen face expressionless. The spear's broad, silver head was covered in blood, and a smear of it blotted out the scratch on his shield, a streak of red through the center of the white star.
If it took her in the throat edge-on, the shield would crush her windpipe or break her neck, but if the hole burned through her chest wasn't killing her, that wouldn't either.
She moved abruptly, a gesture with the spear knocking Carol out of the air and into a huge LCD screen, and this time Steve could almost see the blast of power rippling in the air.
The spear was glowing again, red and white light pulsing like a heartbeat. Just looking at it made his eyes hurt and his stomach lurch, and Tony still hadn't moved, and Clint was still down, struggling to sit up, and-
Mjolnir came flying at Sin's head so quickly that Steve didn't hear the whistle of the air parting around it until she had already blocked it.
He moved automatically, the moment he saw her face start to turn away from him. The edge of his shield came down on Sin's right forearm with a crack of shattering bone, and the spear dropped from her hand.
Loki dove for it, hitting the ground in a swirl of green cloak and flashing gold. Her fingers came within inches of the spear's haft—
And Redwing fell out of the sky like a missile, snatching the spear from the ground with a shrill scream that was echoed by Sam.
"Don't-" Steve shouted, uselessly, too late, as Sam folded to the ground with both hands pressed against the sides of his head and Redwing flew to Wanda and dropped the spear directly into her outstretched hands.
She had a fraction of a second to think of what the spear had done to Strange, and then it was in her hands, and the world was nothing but white fire. She had thought its power was overwhelming when she'd reached for it in the cathedral, but that had been a slow trickle compared to the violent flood of chaos that engulfed her now.
There was so much of it, raw and pure and completely free of Chthon's touch, and the feel of it pouring into her was something beyond pain, making every nerve in her body sing. She could no longer hear Chthon's voice, could no longer hear anything.
Her hands hurt. Hands, and the back of her neck, a bright flare of pain like hot metal.
Wanda fought to keep herself from dissolving away into the chaos, forcing herself to focus on the rest of the world. Chthon was all around her, the barrier between his prison and the rest of reality nearly worn through, but he couldn't touch her while the spear's power filled her.
So much power, enough to break and remake worlds.
The remnants of the magic Chthon had made her work to erase so many people's mutations would be vaporized if she turned this on them, no matter how much of the spear's energy it took. Just a small pull on probability here, a twist of causality there, and reality would bend and reshape itself and Vision and Scott and Jack would never have died. Her children would exist again, as if they had never stopped, and this time she'd have enough power to make them truly real. They could be a family, herself and Vision and the twins, and Pietro, and-
And Chthon would destroy all of them, and she would be powerless to stop him, because remaking the world to set everything right again would consume all the power she held.
Wanda opened her eyes, and leveled the head of the spear at Sin - at Chthon. With this much chaos magic filling her, she could see the writhing tentacles of magic that engulfed Sin's body more clearly than she could see the woman herself.
The thin place in the dimensional barriers was no longer confined to St. Margaret's - it surrounded Sin now, and the tentacles of energy were stretching through it, almost solid. One of them was reaching out toward her, pulsing with dark energy like a heartbeat.
"GET OUT!" She poured all of the spear's power into the command, letting it flow through her and out through the weapon itself. It hurt, a searing pain that made even the white-hot burn of the wards on her neck and hands fade into insignificance, but when the raw chaos energy hit Sin, the tentacles curled away from it, thrashing and shriveling, and Chthon's screams of rage echoes at the edges of her mind.
He tried to claw at her, to leave Sin's body and force himself into her mind, but this much foreign chaos power filling her, there was no room for him.
"GET OUT!" she shouted again, as every LCD screen in Times Square exploded in a shower of sparks. "I BANISH YOU!" The words didn't matter — it was the intent behind them that incinerated the tentacles around Sin, engulfing them in eye-searing white light and forcing them back through the crack in reality that they'd slithered through.
Chthon's energy vanished, burned away, but the power kept pouring out of her, draining away into the dimensional walls until there was nothing left. Until the walls of Chthon's prison were solid again.
The spear in her hand crumbled to dust, the chunk of melted slag that had once been a narrow, wicked-looking spear-head hitting the ground with a dull clang.
Then everything faded to grey.
Sorry for the missed posting last week, guys.
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
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omg
o
m
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O...M...G...
Tony! Wanda!
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*bites nails*
I loved Jan taking on Doom.
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Cliffhangers are evil.
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