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cap_ironman2009-01-17 01:55 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2009-01-17 01:55 am
Entry tags:
When the Lights Go On Again 6b/19
Title: When the Lights Go On Again 6b/19
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, Carol/Wanda
Warnings: No much, really. Some swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: Aliens have invaded earth, and the Avengers are scattered. While Steve leads the resistance, Tony once again finds himself playing captive scientist. In the midst of a violent alien regime, separated by seemingly insurmountable boundaries, Steve and Tony have nothing to keep themselves going but each other.
Author's Note:The point in volume three that we're branching off from was originally published around '98-'99, but since Marvel time runs at a slower speed than real world time, early volume three is probably four or so years ago in canon time. Hence 2004 and troops in Iraq. Also, just a heads up; this fic is really, really long. Like, over two hundred pages long. We'll start by posting every other week, though we're hoping to start posting once a week, eventually.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.
Warning: This chapter was too long for one post; look for part 6a below.
When the Lights Go On Again
Crouched in the bridge's undercarriage, they couldn't actually see the train, but the sound of its approach filled the air, and Carol could feel the bridge's vibrations humming through her bones as it drew closer. She held her breath, time seeming to stretch molasses slow as she waited for Wanda, clinging to a metal girder next to her, to put their plan into motion.
The entire thing depended on split second timing, and if any of it went wrong, Steve would lay the blame on Carol. And in this case, there would actually be some justice to it; she was in charge, so it was her responsibility to make sure things went right.
She hoped Spiderman really had known what he was doing when he laid the explosive charges, that Wanda could stop the train before it ran over them. That Jan, tucked down inside the track waiting to set off the first charge, wouldn't be trapped under the train. That she hadn't overlooked or forgotten something that was going to rear up and bite them in the ass in about three seconds.
The train was almost on top of them now, and Carol was just about to hiss at Wanda to get moving when the other woman let go of her grip on the steel beam with one hand and reached out toward the approaching train. There was a look of fierce concentration on her face, and her lips were moving silently.
Pinkish-red light flared around Wanda's hand and the train's wheels simultaneously, and with a shower of sparks and a drawn-out screech of metal on metal, it began to slide to a halt overhead, the force of its momentum keeping it moving for several long moments after Wanda had disrupted the flow of electrical current to its engine.
This was her cue. Resisting the temptation to look back over her shoulder to where Spiderman and Jan were about to blow the track, Carol launched herself away from the steel beam she had been sitting on and shot toward the back of the train. She landed on the track behind it, and bent down to take hold of the first rail with both hands.
The metal groaned in protest as she ripped a section of rail loose at one end, bending it upward and twisting it between her hands as if she were trying to wring out a washcloth. It was a century-and-a-half old strategy for rendering rails useless; put enough of a degree of torque into it, and simply hammering the rail back into place became impossible.
There was a loud boom, and the entire bridge shuddered as Jan triggered the explosives Spiderman had attached to the rails earlier, hopefully destroying the section of track immediately in front of the train.
Argonian soldiers were boiling out of the final subway car now, plasma guns out. Carol ignored them, reaching for the second rail. It wasn't enough to simply stop the train; they had to completely destroy the tracks on either side of it, make it impossible for the cars to move either backwards or forwards.
Since they were working with primitive explosives Hank had concocted for them in the Waldorf-Astoria's basement, they had only been able to plant them at one end. There had been too much of a risk that that train would set them off when it ran over them to place a second set of charges, hence Carol's role.
Even without her Binary powers, there was still a use for somebody who could be a walking blunt instrument.
A plasma bolt missed her by inches as she grabbed hold of the third rail. The electric power crackled through her, fresh strength and energy filling up the places inside her that were drained and empty, and it was better than a shot of bourbon. At least one plasma bolt hit her dead on while she twisted the rail, but with the electricity crackling around her, momentarily re-igniting her powers, it was barely worth noticing.
Done. Now it was time to grab Wanda and get the hell out. Spiderman and Jan were on their own from here on; they had their own paths back to shore, provided the Argonians hadn't shot them, and that they hadn't been hurt in the explosion.
Carol took off again, plasma bolts sizzling through the air behind her. She flew back under the bridge, coming up just under Wanda's hiding place, and Wanda let go of the steel beam she was clinging to and let herself drop.
Carol caught her without slowing down, and flew as fast as she could back to the western shore, staying beneath the arch of the bridge and using it for cover.
Wanda's arms were wrapped tightly around her neck, and once she hit the Manhattan shoreline and slowed down, Carol could smell soot and the faint scent of burned hair where the spraying sparks had fallen on her.
It felt strange flying in civilian clothing; the sleeves of her t-shirt fluttered against her arms, and she couldn't feel the cool rush of wind against her legs. It felt even stranger to fly this far carrying Wanda. Carol could feel the heat of Wanda's body through their clothes, and the other woman's hair kept hitting her in the face.
It was a minor irritant, though. With the extra power from the electricity still coursing through her, she felt as if she could fly forever. Wanda was weightless in her arms, and for a moment, it was like being in space again, with the power of a star filling her.
Then they reached the edge of the business district, and had to land. This close to the center of the city, there were too many Argonian patrols to risk flying.
Carol touched down and set Wanda on her feet, then tugged her t-shirt straight. "I miss the costume already," she said. "It's distracting to feel fabric flapping around me when I fly. I don't know how you put up with the cape all these years."
"Well, for one thing, I don't fly," Wanda said, straightening her own clothing. "Do you think we lost them?"
"Yes, definitely." It would take at least a quarter of an hour for the Argonians to get off the bridge on foot, and it would be days before that train moved again. It wouldn't completely cut off Argonian access to the other side of the river, not while the subway tunnels under the East River were still operational and the bridges still stood, but it would cut off at least one route, and every inconvenience they could force on the Argonians was one more step to driving them out of the city.
Blowing up the bridges had been suggested as an option, but Steve had immediately declared that they would do so when hell froze over. According to the Falcon, they didn't have access to enough explosives to destroy the Brooklyn or Manhattan bridges anyway, and Tony had backed him up. His most recent letter to Steve had apparently contained an itemized list of all of the reasons why it couldn't be done without a state-of-the-art demolition crew and weeks of preparation, starting with "number one: Have you actually looked at it? You could cut the cables and the bridge span would still be able to support its own weight."
The plan to take out the subway line across the Manhattan Bridge had been a compromise. Steve and Carol had worked it out together, after Hank had assured them that he was more than capable of making homemade explosives, and Spiderman had volunteered that he "totally knew how to blow things up. I mean, I was a chemistry major."
Frankly, Carol hadn't thought Spiderman was old enough to have finished college; he usually acted like he was about thirteen. Maybe he'd started early, like Tony.
"Are you all right?" Wanda was peering closely at Carol. There were smudges of soot on her face, and her clothes were filthy with grime and rust from the bridge's undercarriage. Carol was probably every bit as much of a mess, maybe more so.
"Fine. We need to get to the safe house before someone sees us, though. We'll stand out like a sore thumb with all this grime on us." Carol turned to lead the way, and Wanda inhaled sharply and caught her by the shoulder.
Carol froze, automatically scanning the street around them for danger. "What is it?"
"Your back. You can't walk around like that." Wanda was already shrugging out of her coat, gooseflesh rising on her arms in the brisk November air.
There were advantages to having Kree DNA; Carol barely felt the cold. She started to say so, but Wanda cut her off, pressing the coat into her hands.
"There's a hole burned through the back of your shirt, right between your shoulder blades. You need to cover it up, or someone's going to stop us for questioning."
Carol twisted to look over her shoulder, and sure enough, she could just see the edge of what looked like a large patch of singed fabric. Almost instantly, the skin on her back started to hurt, a hot throb between her shoulders. "I didn't even feel it," she said, pulling on the coat. The sleeves were too short, and it was too tight across her shoulder, pressing against the now-stinging burn.
"I'll take a look at it when we get inside." Wanda hesitated, then added, "If you don't mind."
"Fine." The street was empty; no one had seen them land, and no one was there to see them as they strolled casually out of the side street, and along the five-minute walk to the converted brownstone that would serve as their safe house until tomorrow morning.
In its current incarnation, it was an office building owned by some distant subsidiary of Tony's old company, but it had been empty for months even before the Argonians' arrival. Stark-Fujikawa was headquartered in Japan these days, and had trimmed its operations back considerably.
The electronic thumbprint lock on the front door was, of course, useless. Carol let them both in with a key, the old-fashioned way. Inside, it was eerily empty, all computer equipment and office furniture gone, save for the couple of desks built into the wall.
Hopefully, whoever had stocked this particular safehouse had thought to include food, flashlights, and a place to sleep. And blankets. With the boiler in the basement shut down, the radiators would be so much cold metal, and while Carol might not feel the cold as much as a normal human, Wanda had no such protection.
Wanda held up one hand, rose-colored light gathering around it. The contours of the room sprang into sharp relief, shadows gathering eerily in the corners of the ornate, molded ceiling, the last remaining sign of the expensive townhouse this place had once been.
"What kind of light did they leave for us?" Wanda asked.
Carol opened the nearest closet, to reveal a pair of sleeping bags, a stack of neatly folded fleece blankets, a first aid kit, and a glass hurricane lamp. "We don't rate flashlights," she said, "but there's a kerosene lantern here, and some food. It looks like dinner tonight is powerbars and cold chicken soup."
"Be grateful." Wanda took the lamp from Carol's hands and set it down on the edge of one of the desks, turning the wick up and pulling off the tall, glass cover. "The safehouses in Brooklyn are all stocked with MREs." She struck a match and lit the lamp, then carefully replaced the cover, letting the globe of light around her other hand fade.
Carol shook her head. "MREs are self-heating. I think I prefer that to cold soup." She collected an armful of blankets and the first aid kit, and stood. "Taking the train out really calls for a celebratory drink. Too bad we don't have anything but bottled water."
"Alcohol wasn't a priority when we were stocking the safe houses," Wanda said primly.
And now, of course, the silent judging would begin. "No, but it would be nice," Carol said. "So would hot food."
Wanda smiled. "I think I have enough energy left over to at least do something about that. Let me take a look at your back, and then I'll heat the soup up for us."
A few moments later, Carol found herself sitting cross-legged on an unrolled sleeping bag, her shirt off, while Wanda gently swabbed the burn on her back with one of the tiny alcohol pads from the first aid kit. It stung like hell, and made Carol wish grimly for a glass of real alcohol, to take some of edge off it.
"It doesn't look that bad," Wanda was saying. "There's some burn ointment in here. I'll put that on as soon as I'm done cleaning it; it ought to help. Is this from one of their plasma guns?" The alcohol pad touched her skin again, and Carol forced herself not to flinch. United States Air Force pilots did not flinch over minor first aid treatments. "It should have burned a hole through you," Wanda went on, and Carol could hear the amusement in her voice.
Carol shrugged, and one of Wanda's hands settled firmly on her shoulder, pressing her back to stillness. "The tracks are still electrified. The extra power gave me some of my old invulnerability back. I may have lost the source of my Binary powers, but according to Beast, the 'biological mechanisms' are still there; I just don't have the juice to activate them."
Wanda was smoothing the burn cream across her skin now, her touch curiously soothing. Without the gloves, her hands were warm and gentle. Carol found herself actually regretting it when she took her hands away, the task done.
It was fully dark outside now, the room lit only by the dim, flickering glow of the hurricane lamp. Wanda returned the burn cream to the first aid kit and set the crumpled wrappers that had held the alcohol pads to one side. "You should probably leave your shirt off for a few minutes, until the cream has a chance to soak in."
There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then Carol muttered, "Thank you." Her ears felt hot, and she was momentarily glad to be facing away from Wanda. She didn't need any help from anyone else, not over something as trivial as a burn, but Wanda's concern for her had felt... nice.
She turned back around to find Wanda holding one of the soup cans. "Let me see if I can do something about the soup," the other woman said.
Pink light glowed around her hands again, and a moment later, she handed the warm can to Carol.
"You make it look so easy," Carol commented, trying to suppress to a surge of envy.
"Trust me; it's harder than it looks. There's very little probability that something will spontaneously change temperature. Generating heat takes raw chaos magic, not hexes, and I'm out of practice with that."
Luckily for them -- since the package of food included plastic spoons, but not a can opener -- the soup can had a pull tab. Carol opened it, set the top to one side, and took a bite. It tasted pretty much the way canned chicken noodle soup always did; over salted, with tasteless meat. Warm, it was edible, even good, considering how hungry. Cold, it would have been disgusting.
Wanda, she realized belatedly, did not have a soup can. "Here," Carol said, holding the open can out to her, "you heated it. You should have some."
Wanda held her arms out from her body and studied them. The sleeves of her shirt -- an oversized button-down borrowed from Simon -- were rolled up to just below the elbow, and the bare skin of her forearms was streaked with smears of some dark substance, just as Carol's were. Carol didn't wonder how she'd managed to get so much grime all over her through the sleeves of her coat; on missions like this one, dirt and grease got everywhere, no matter what you wore or did. "I am covered in a layer of rust, oil, soot, and salt," Wanda said. "I need to clean some of this stuff off, first."
Carol shrugged, and ate another spoonful of soup. If anything, she was even filthier, save for her back, which Wanda had cleaned before putting the ointment on her burn. Soot and dirt from the subway rails was ground into her palms; avoiding that outcome was one of the reasons her costume included gloves. "We've eaten meals while covered in worse things," she pointed out.
Wanda made a face. "Not when running water was available."
Carol shook her head, eying the other woman's soot and rust smeared clothing. "You're lucky you never had to go through survival training. An entire week in the woods covered with mud and camouflage paint. I swear, when I finally got back and took a shower, the smell came off in layers." The mental image of Wanda smeared in green camo paint was weirdly amusing. Also oddly cute, and not entirely inappropriate, considering the situation. They were fighting a war, after all.
Wanda smiled. She was stripping off the button-down shirt, unfastening the buttons by touch, without looking down. "Cap had to do the same thing, except it was in the field, not during training, and it was snowing, and he had to walk uphill both ways to get to the camp site." She was wearing a black bra under the shirt, the dark fabric a stark contrast against the paleness of her skin.
Carol smiled; she could picture the slightly sullen expression and determined, arms-folded posture Steve would have assumed while saying that perfectly. "He told that story when he was sulking about something, didn't he?"
Wanda grinned. "He told it whenever Clint complained about anything. He got much less annoying when it wasn't just the four of us anymore and Cap didn't have to be the only one on the team approaching responsible adulthood." She stood, leaving Simon's shirt on the floor, and turned toward the office's bathroom. "I remember how bad Clint and Pietro were at nineteen. I shudder to think of what I must have been like."
Carol watched as she disappeared into the gloom. Moments later, there came the sound of running water from the bathroom.
It was easy to forget, sometimes, just how long some of the other superheroes had been doing this. Wanda was no older than Carol -- probably a few years younger, actually -- and while Carol had been a twenty-three-year old lieutenant learning how to fly jets, Wanda had already been a full-fledged Avenger with an entire career as a supervillain behind her. She had saved the world twice before Carol had ever seen combat.
The long-time superheroes, the ones who had been doing this for close to a decade -- the Fantastic Four, the founding Avengers, the original half-a-dozen-or-so X-Men -- had a kind of bond between them that Carol had always envied. They didn't always like each other, but they understood one another, respected each other, had years worth of shared combat experience behind them. The original team line-ups were closer to families than comrades-in-arms, with all that that implied.
For one thing, they got second chances and the benefit of the doubt where more recent additions to the team didn't.
On the other hand, it was probably a good thing that none of the people she worked with on a regular basis had known her when she was nineteen.
The water shut off, and Wanda returned, carrying a small stack of paper towels and a large plastic cup full of water. "I know, I know," she said, when Carol looked up at her, "it would be more efficient to just wash up in the bathroom. But there's no light in there and I don't feel like fumbling around in the dark. Or trying to wash myself off with one hand while I light the room with the other. That's just asking for a stupid accident."
She knelt down on the floor, just at the edge of the circle of lantern-light, her back to Carol, and unfastened the black bra, setting it on the floor beside her. Then she dipped a folded paper towel in the water and began scrubbing her arms with it.
The soft, flickering light from the hurricane lamp turned Wanda's skin golden, and cast strange, warped shadows across her naked back. Carol ate her soup, and tried not to stare at the way the shadows accentuated the curve of Wanda's spine and the dip of her lower back just above the waist of her jeans.
Just watching Wanda cleaning herself up was making her feel grimy.
"Today went okay, I think," she said, shifting her gaze firmly to her own soot-smeared hands. "As long as Peter and Jan got out okay. Steve will kill me if they didn't. Hell, if it turns out I screwed this up, Hank will have me eaten alive in my sleep by some kind of God-awful tropical insect before Steve even gets a chance to kick me out again."
"No, if Hank were deprived of Jan's stabilizing influence, it would be giant robots."
"It's not funny." Steve had essentially made her his second-in-command while Tony was gone, but that didn't mean he trusted her. One slip-up and she would be gone.
"No," Wanda agreed, sobering. "Not knowing whether your friends are all right is never funny. But I'm sure Jan and Spiderman are fine; they're both smart and experienced."
She had stopped washing herself, hands falling to rest in her lap, her head bent. She was thinking about Vision, Carol knew.
"I'm sure Hank will be able to get Vision online again," she said, forcing confidence she didn't really feel into her voice. There was no question that Hank was capable of it, especially if he called in Tony or Reed Richards to help him, but the cold truth was that none of them were going to be able to do anything until the Argonians were defeated, and that might take years. Some of them might not survive it, and if anything happened to Hank, there would be no one who knew the Ultron protocols well enough to reconstruct Vision properly.
"I shouldn't worry about it so much." Wanda shook her head, hair swaying and brushing against her bare shoulders. She picked up a new handful of paper towels, and resumed scrubbing herself off. "There are bigger things to focus on. Vision is just one man, and I lost the right to put him first long ago. It's just... We've finally gotten to the point where we're friends again. I don't want to lose that all over again."
"We're all worried about things," Carol admitted softly, hoping to make the sudden dejected slump that was rounding Wanda's shoulders go away. "One fuck-up, and I get kicked out again, and this is too important to screw up. We can't win this without all of us working on the same team."
Wanda shook her head again. "Carol, if Cap's willing to ask Spiderman to get Daredevil to cut deals with the Kingpin to help fight the Argonians, he's not going to turn down your help. And we didn't kick you out, you know. You chose to leave."
The chicken soup didn't taste as good anymore; it was starting to get cold. Carol set it to one side, saving the rest for Wanda.
"I left because I knew everyone's minds were already made up. I wasn't going to get a fair hearing. For God's sake, Tony just decided I had a drinking problem without any proof at all. He saw me pour myself one drink! Just because he can't handle alcohol doesn't mean the entire rest of the world needs to avoid it like it's poison." Raising her voice never helped, Carol knew, but damn it, just thinking about it made her angry.
The others didn't understand. After everything she'd lost -- her memories, her emotional ties, her entire identity -- being Binary had been all she had left.
The power of a star, filling her entire body. With that inside her, no one could make her do anything she didn't want to do, didn't choose to do. No one could take anything from her. Not like Rogue had. Not like Marcus had.
It figured that those memories -- the ones of him touching her, manipulating her, forcing himself on her -- would be the one part of her past prior to Rogue's assault on her mind that she'd kept her emotional connection to.
Without her Binary powers, she was back to being plain old Ms. Marvel again, to being the same woman Marcus had taken control of so easily. After all of that, after everything she'd been though, she was entitled to a drink or two to help her deal with things.
Wanda dropped the now-darkened and soggy handful of paper towels on the floor and turned around. "We were not being unfair," she snapped. "It wasn't a court-martial. Well, technically it was, but only because Steve and Thor have an overdeveloped sense of drama. It was supposed to be an intervention."
"Oh, that makes everything better," Carol muttered. "Being condescending is always so much better than being judgmental."
Wanda glared at her. With her dark, curly hair tumbling down over her shoulders, her chest and torso bare, and the lantern flame flickering in her dark eyes, she looked like some kind of Greek oracle. An angry Greek oracle, who was about to proclaim doom. "We wanted to help you. No one realized that anything was wrong with Tony until it was too late for anyone to help him. By the time the rest of us realized something was wrong, he was already on the verge of losing his company and had handed over the armor to James Rhodes." Her face softened, and she looked away, then looked back up and met Carol's eyes again. "You lost part of your powers -- imagine willingly giving them away. It would be like me going to Beast or Hank and asking them to try and deactivate my X gene. That's how bad it got before anyone even tried to intervene."
Tony had done what? He loved that stupid armor more than he'd ever cared about another person. She was pretty sure the only way to get it away from him would be to pry it from his cold, dead hands. "Why did he-" she started.
"He was trying to help you," Wanda interrupted. "Cap, too. He still feels guilty over what happened to Tony. And he... we all feel guilty over..." She dropped her gaze again, hands twisting over one another in her lap. "None of us saved you from Marcus. We wanted to save you from this."
Oh, for the love of God. "There is nothing to save me from. I don't need saving!" Carol jumped to her feet, any trace of exhaustion gone, an edgy, brittle energy taking its place.
"Tony almost died. If we over-reacted, it's because we were afraid. I think Tony was worried you were going to kill yourself."
Carol blinked, her anger momentarily derailed. "Why the hell would he think that?"
"Because he almost did." Wanda said it matter-of-factly, as if it were nothing particularly surprising. She raised her eyebrows, and went on, "And as you so cogently pointed out, Tony tends to project his own problems onto other people."
Carol said nothing. What was there to say? Maybe they had been trying to help, but that didn't change the fact that they had interfered where their help wasn't needed, and nearly ruined her life just as she was starting to put to it back together again.
Wanda shook her head, frowning, her hair doing that distracting sweep over her naked breasts again. "Why are you so angry about this? I wish someone had tried to help me when I was... after I lost my family and my marriage. Maybe then I wouldn't have gone back to Magneto. Maybe Kang wouldn't have been able to manipulate me."
"I'm sorry I wasn't there for that." Carol pulled her eyes away from the dark circles of Wanda's nipples, which she was not going to stare at, and added. "Maybe I could have helped." No one deserved to have Immortus put his filthy paws all over their mind, especially not Wanda, who had already been through so much. Being under mind-control had made her feel filthy and used inside and out. How much worse would out-right possession be?
And Wanda had been through it more than once, at the hands of Chthon as well as Immortus.
"You were in space," Wanda said, the last remnants of anger draining from her voice. "You didn't know. We were right there, watching you. We had to do something."
She could understand that, she supposed, but good intentions didn't excuse the way they had done things, especially considering that it hadn't been necessary. "For future reference? The next time the rest of you feel a desire to 'fix' someone? Don't call an official disciplinary hearing and put them on trial." She picked up the soup can and held it out to Wanda. "Here, eat something. And put on a shirt; you must be freezing."
Wanda glanced down at herself, suddenly seeming to realize that she was topless. She quickly folded her arms over her chest, then lowered them and reached for her discarded bra and Simon's shirt.
Carol got up and went to the bathroom to rinse some of the soot off her hands. It was pitch dark in there by this time, but she needed the space.
When she got back, Wanda had finished the soup and folded herself into her sleeping bag. She couldn't possibly have been asleep yet, but her eyes were tightly closed anyway.
As a signal that they were done talking, it wasn't exactly subtle.
Carol lay down, wrapping herself in her own sleeping bag, and tried to relax, acutely aware of Wanda's silent presence a few feet away.
Part 6a
***
As I'm sure people have noticed, the last few chapters of this have been unbeta'd. It's entirely due to the fact that we're posting this as a work-in-progress, while still trying keep to a regular posting schedule. Combined with the fact that the chapters in this fic have been disgustingly long - over twenty pages, in a few cases - it's just not fair to ask someone to turn around a beta of that length in under two weeks.
So, question for all of you; would you prefer that we continue posting this unbeta'd, but every other week - or even start posting weekly, or that we wait for the betas, and post whenever they're ready?
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five (a) | Chapter Five (b) | Chapter Six (a) | Chapter Six (b) | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty (a) | Chapter Twenty (b) | Chapter Twenty One
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonRated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, Carol/Wanda
Warnings: No much, really. Some swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: Aliens have invaded earth, and the Avengers are scattered. While Steve leads the resistance, Tony once again finds himself playing captive scientist. In the midst of a violent alien regime, separated by seemingly insurmountable boundaries, Steve and Tony have nothing to keep themselves going but each other.
Author's Note:The point in volume three that we're branching off from was originally published around '98-'99, but since Marvel time runs at a slower speed than real world time, early volume three is probably four or so years ago in canon time. Hence 2004 and troops in Iraq. Also, just a heads up; this fic is really, really long. Like, over two hundred pages long. We'll start by posting every other week, though we're hoping to start posting once a week, eventually.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.
Warning: This chapter was too long for one post; look for part 6a below.
Crouched in the bridge's undercarriage, they couldn't actually see the train, but the sound of its approach filled the air, and Carol could feel the bridge's vibrations humming through her bones as it drew closer. She held her breath, time seeming to stretch molasses slow as she waited for Wanda, clinging to a metal girder next to her, to put their plan into motion.
The entire thing depended on split second timing, and if any of it went wrong, Steve would lay the blame on Carol. And in this case, there would actually be some justice to it; she was in charge, so it was her responsibility to make sure things went right.
She hoped Spiderman really had known what he was doing when he laid the explosive charges, that Wanda could stop the train before it ran over them. That Jan, tucked down inside the track waiting to set off the first charge, wouldn't be trapped under the train. That she hadn't overlooked or forgotten something that was going to rear up and bite them in the ass in about three seconds.
The train was almost on top of them now, and Carol was just about to hiss at Wanda to get moving when the other woman let go of her grip on the steel beam with one hand and reached out toward the approaching train. There was a look of fierce concentration on her face, and her lips were moving silently.
Pinkish-red light flared around Wanda's hand and the train's wheels simultaneously, and with a shower of sparks and a drawn-out screech of metal on metal, it began to slide to a halt overhead, the force of its momentum keeping it moving for several long moments after Wanda had disrupted the flow of electrical current to its engine.
This was her cue. Resisting the temptation to look back over her shoulder to where Spiderman and Jan were about to blow the track, Carol launched herself away from the steel beam she had been sitting on and shot toward the back of the train. She landed on the track behind it, and bent down to take hold of the first rail with both hands.
The metal groaned in protest as she ripped a section of rail loose at one end, bending it upward and twisting it between her hands as if she were trying to wring out a washcloth. It was a century-and-a-half old strategy for rendering rails useless; put enough of a degree of torque into it, and simply hammering the rail back into place became impossible.
There was a loud boom, and the entire bridge shuddered as Jan triggered the explosives Spiderman had attached to the rails earlier, hopefully destroying the section of track immediately in front of the train.
Argonian soldiers were boiling out of the final subway car now, plasma guns out. Carol ignored them, reaching for the second rail. It wasn't enough to simply stop the train; they had to completely destroy the tracks on either side of it, make it impossible for the cars to move either backwards or forwards.
Since they were working with primitive explosives Hank had concocted for them in the Waldorf-Astoria's basement, they had only been able to plant them at one end. There had been too much of a risk that that train would set them off when it ran over them to place a second set of charges, hence Carol's role.
Even without her Binary powers, there was still a use for somebody who could be a walking blunt instrument.
A plasma bolt missed her by inches as she grabbed hold of the third rail. The electric power crackled through her, fresh strength and energy filling up the places inside her that were drained and empty, and it was better than a shot of bourbon. At least one plasma bolt hit her dead on while she twisted the rail, but with the electricity crackling around her, momentarily re-igniting her powers, it was barely worth noticing.
Done. Now it was time to grab Wanda and get the hell out. Spiderman and Jan were on their own from here on; they had their own paths back to shore, provided the Argonians hadn't shot them, and that they hadn't been hurt in the explosion.
Carol took off again, plasma bolts sizzling through the air behind her. She flew back under the bridge, coming up just under Wanda's hiding place, and Wanda let go of the steel beam she was clinging to and let herself drop.
Carol caught her without slowing down, and flew as fast as she could back to the western shore, staying beneath the arch of the bridge and using it for cover.
Wanda's arms were wrapped tightly around her neck, and once she hit the Manhattan shoreline and slowed down, Carol could smell soot and the faint scent of burned hair where the spraying sparks had fallen on her.
It felt strange flying in civilian clothing; the sleeves of her t-shirt fluttered against her arms, and she couldn't feel the cool rush of wind against her legs. It felt even stranger to fly this far carrying Wanda. Carol could feel the heat of Wanda's body through their clothes, and the other woman's hair kept hitting her in the face.
It was a minor irritant, though. With the extra power from the electricity still coursing through her, she felt as if she could fly forever. Wanda was weightless in her arms, and for a moment, it was like being in space again, with the power of a star filling her.
Then they reached the edge of the business district, and had to land. This close to the center of the city, there were too many Argonian patrols to risk flying.
Carol touched down and set Wanda on her feet, then tugged her t-shirt straight. "I miss the costume already," she said. "It's distracting to feel fabric flapping around me when I fly. I don't know how you put up with the cape all these years."
"Well, for one thing, I don't fly," Wanda said, straightening her own clothing. "Do you think we lost them?"
"Yes, definitely." It would take at least a quarter of an hour for the Argonians to get off the bridge on foot, and it would be days before that train moved again. It wouldn't completely cut off Argonian access to the other side of the river, not while the subway tunnels under the East River were still operational and the bridges still stood, but it would cut off at least one route, and every inconvenience they could force on the Argonians was one more step to driving them out of the city.
Blowing up the bridges had been suggested as an option, but Steve had immediately declared that they would do so when hell froze over. According to the Falcon, they didn't have access to enough explosives to destroy the Brooklyn or Manhattan bridges anyway, and Tony had backed him up. His most recent letter to Steve had apparently contained an itemized list of all of the reasons why it couldn't be done without a state-of-the-art demolition crew and weeks of preparation, starting with "number one: Have you actually looked at it? You could cut the cables and the bridge span would still be able to support its own weight."
The plan to take out the subway line across the Manhattan Bridge had been a compromise. Steve and Carol had worked it out together, after Hank had assured them that he was more than capable of making homemade explosives, and Spiderman had volunteered that he "totally knew how to blow things up. I mean, I was a chemistry major."
Frankly, Carol hadn't thought Spiderman was old enough to have finished college; he usually acted like he was about thirteen. Maybe he'd started early, like Tony.
"Are you all right?" Wanda was peering closely at Carol. There were smudges of soot on her face, and her clothes were filthy with grime and rust from the bridge's undercarriage. Carol was probably every bit as much of a mess, maybe more so.
"Fine. We need to get to the safe house before someone sees us, though. We'll stand out like a sore thumb with all this grime on us." Carol turned to lead the way, and Wanda inhaled sharply and caught her by the shoulder.
Carol froze, automatically scanning the street around them for danger. "What is it?"
"Your back. You can't walk around like that." Wanda was already shrugging out of her coat, gooseflesh rising on her arms in the brisk November air.
There were advantages to having Kree DNA; Carol barely felt the cold. She started to say so, but Wanda cut her off, pressing the coat into her hands.
"There's a hole burned through the back of your shirt, right between your shoulder blades. You need to cover it up, or someone's going to stop us for questioning."
Carol twisted to look over her shoulder, and sure enough, she could just see the edge of what looked like a large patch of singed fabric. Almost instantly, the skin on her back started to hurt, a hot throb between her shoulders. "I didn't even feel it," she said, pulling on the coat. The sleeves were too short, and it was too tight across her shoulder, pressing against the now-stinging burn.
"I'll take a look at it when we get inside." Wanda hesitated, then added, "If you don't mind."
"Fine." The street was empty; no one had seen them land, and no one was there to see them as they strolled casually out of the side street, and along the five-minute walk to the converted brownstone that would serve as their safe house until tomorrow morning.
In its current incarnation, it was an office building owned by some distant subsidiary of Tony's old company, but it had been empty for months even before the Argonians' arrival. Stark-Fujikawa was headquartered in Japan these days, and had trimmed its operations back considerably.
The electronic thumbprint lock on the front door was, of course, useless. Carol let them both in with a key, the old-fashioned way. Inside, it was eerily empty, all computer equipment and office furniture gone, save for the couple of desks built into the wall.
Hopefully, whoever had stocked this particular safehouse had thought to include food, flashlights, and a place to sleep. And blankets. With the boiler in the basement shut down, the radiators would be so much cold metal, and while Carol might not feel the cold as much as a normal human, Wanda had no such protection.
Wanda held up one hand, rose-colored light gathering around it. The contours of the room sprang into sharp relief, shadows gathering eerily in the corners of the ornate, molded ceiling, the last remaining sign of the expensive townhouse this place had once been.
"What kind of light did they leave for us?" Wanda asked.
Carol opened the nearest closet, to reveal a pair of sleeping bags, a stack of neatly folded fleece blankets, a first aid kit, and a glass hurricane lamp. "We don't rate flashlights," she said, "but there's a kerosene lantern here, and some food. It looks like dinner tonight is powerbars and cold chicken soup."
"Be grateful." Wanda took the lamp from Carol's hands and set it down on the edge of one of the desks, turning the wick up and pulling off the tall, glass cover. "The safehouses in Brooklyn are all stocked with MREs." She struck a match and lit the lamp, then carefully replaced the cover, letting the globe of light around her other hand fade.
Carol shook her head. "MREs are self-heating. I think I prefer that to cold soup." She collected an armful of blankets and the first aid kit, and stood. "Taking the train out really calls for a celebratory drink. Too bad we don't have anything but bottled water."
"Alcohol wasn't a priority when we were stocking the safe houses," Wanda said primly.
And now, of course, the silent judging would begin. "No, but it would be nice," Carol said. "So would hot food."
Wanda smiled. "I think I have enough energy left over to at least do something about that. Let me take a look at your back, and then I'll heat the soup up for us."
A few moments later, Carol found herself sitting cross-legged on an unrolled sleeping bag, her shirt off, while Wanda gently swabbed the burn on her back with one of the tiny alcohol pads from the first aid kit. It stung like hell, and made Carol wish grimly for a glass of real alcohol, to take some of edge off it.
"It doesn't look that bad," Wanda was saying. "There's some burn ointment in here. I'll put that on as soon as I'm done cleaning it; it ought to help. Is this from one of their plasma guns?" The alcohol pad touched her skin again, and Carol forced herself not to flinch. United States Air Force pilots did not flinch over minor first aid treatments. "It should have burned a hole through you," Wanda went on, and Carol could hear the amusement in her voice.
Carol shrugged, and one of Wanda's hands settled firmly on her shoulder, pressing her back to stillness. "The tracks are still electrified. The extra power gave me some of my old invulnerability back. I may have lost the source of my Binary powers, but according to Beast, the 'biological mechanisms' are still there; I just don't have the juice to activate them."
Wanda was smoothing the burn cream across her skin now, her touch curiously soothing. Without the gloves, her hands were warm and gentle. Carol found herself actually regretting it when she took her hands away, the task done.
It was fully dark outside now, the room lit only by the dim, flickering glow of the hurricane lamp. Wanda returned the burn cream to the first aid kit and set the crumpled wrappers that had held the alcohol pads to one side. "You should probably leave your shirt off for a few minutes, until the cream has a chance to soak in."
There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then Carol muttered, "Thank you." Her ears felt hot, and she was momentarily glad to be facing away from Wanda. She didn't need any help from anyone else, not over something as trivial as a burn, but Wanda's concern for her had felt... nice.
She turned back around to find Wanda holding one of the soup cans. "Let me see if I can do something about the soup," the other woman said.
Pink light glowed around her hands again, and a moment later, she handed the warm can to Carol.
"You make it look so easy," Carol commented, trying to suppress to a surge of envy.
"Trust me; it's harder than it looks. There's very little probability that something will spontaneously change temperature. Generating heat takes raw chaos magic, not hexes, and I'm out of practice with that."
Luckily for them -- since the package of food included plastic spoons, but not a can opener -- the soup can had a pull tab. Carol opened it, set the top to one side, and took a bite. It tasted pretty much the way canned chicken noodle soup always did; over salted, with tasteless meat. Warm, it was edible, even good, considering how hungry. Cold, it would have been disgusting.
Wanda, she realized belatedly, did not have a soup can. "Here," Carol said, holding the open can out to her, "you heated it. You should have some."
Wanda held her arms out from her body and studied them. The sleeves of her shirt -- an oversized button-down borrowed from Simon -- were rolled up to just below the elbow, and the bare skin of her forearms was streaked with smears of some dark substance, just as Carol's were. Carol didn't wonder how she'd managed to get so much grime all over her through the sleeves of her coat; on missions like this one, dirt and grease got everywhere, no matter what you wore or did. "I am covered in a layer of rust, oil, soot, and salt," Wanda said. "I need to clean some of this stuff off, first."
Carol shrugged, and ate another spoonful of soup. If anything, she was even filthier, save for her back, which Wanda had cleaned before putting the ointment on her burn. Soot and dirt from the subway rails was ground into her palms; avoiding that outcome was one of the reasons her costume included gloves. "We've eaten meals while covered in worse things," she pointed out.
Wanda made a face. "Not when running water was available."
Carol shook her head, eying the other woman's soot and rust smeared clothing. "You're lucky you never had to go through survival training. An entire week in the woods covered with mud and camouflage paint. I swear, when I finally got back and took a shower, the smell came off in layers." The mental image of Wanda smeared in green camo paint was weirdly amusing. Also oddly cute, and not entirely inappropriate, considering the situation. They were fighting a war, after all.
Wanda smiled. She was stripping off the button-down shirt, unfastening the buttons by touch, without looking down. "Cap had to do the same thing, except it was in the field, not during training, and it was snowing, and he had to walk uphill both ways to get to the camp site." She was wearing a black bra under the shirt, the dark fabric a stark contrast against the paleness of her skin.
Carol smiled; she could picture the slightly sullen expression and determined, arms-folded posture Steve would have assumed while saying that perfectly. "He told that story when he was sulking about something, didn't he?"
Wanda grinned. "He told it whenever Clint complained about anything. He got much less annoying when it wasn't just the four of us anymore and Cap didn't have to be the only one on the team approaching responsible adulthood." She stood, leaving Simon's shirt on the floor, and turned toward the office's bathroom. "I remember how bad Clint and Pietro were at nineteen. I shudder to think of what I must have been like."
Carol watched as she disappeared into the gloom. Moments later, there came the sound of running water from the bathroom.
It was easy to forget, sometimes, just how long some of the other superheroes had been doing this. Wanda was no older than Carol -- probably a few years younger, actually -- and while Carol had been a twenty-three-year old lieutenant learning how to fly jets, Wanda had already been a full-fledged Avenger with an entire career as a supervillain behind her. She had saved the world twice before Carol had ever seen combat.
The long-time superheroes, the ones who had been doing this for close to a decade -- the Fantastic Four, the founding Avengers, the original half-a-dozen-or-so X-Men -- had a kind of bond between them that Carol had always envied. They didn't always like each other, but they understood one another, respected each other, had years worth of shared combat experience behind them. The original team line-ups were closer to families than comrades-in-arms, with all that that implied.
For one thing, they got second chances and the benefit of the doubt where more recent additions to the team didn't.
On the other hand, it was probably a good thing that none of the people she worked with on a regular basis had known her when she was nineteen.
The water shut off, and Wanda returned, carrying a small stack of paper towels and a large plastic cup full of water. "I know, I know," she said, when Carol looked up at her, "it would be more efficient to just wash up in the bathroom. But there's no light in there and I don't feel like fumbling around in the dark. Or trying to wash myself off with one hand while I light the room with the other. That's just asking for a stupid accident."
She knelt down on the floor, just at the edge of the circle of lantern-light, her back to Carol, and unfastened the black bra, setting it on the floor beside her. Then she dipped a folded paper towel in the water and began scrubbing her arms with it.
The soft, flickering light from the hurricane lamp turned Wanda's skin golden, and cast strange, warped shadows across her naked back. Carol ate her soup, and tried not to stare at the way the shadows accentuated the curve of Wanda's spine and the dip of her lower back just above the waist of her jeans.
Just watching Wanda cleaning herself up was making her feel grimy.
"Today went okay, I think," she said, shifting her gaze firmly to her own soot-smeared hands. "As long as Peter and Jan got out okay. Steve will kill me if they didn't. Hell, if it turns out I screwed this up, Hank will have me eaten alive in my sleep by some kind of God-awful tropical insect before Steve even gets a chance to kick me out again."
"No, if Hank were deprived of Jan's stabilizing influence, it would be giant robots."
"It's not funny." Steve had essentially made her his second-in-command while Tony was gone, but that didn't mean he trusted her. One slip-up and she would be gone.
"No," Wanda agreed, sobering. "Not knowing whether your friends are all right is never funny. But I'm sure Jan and Spiderman are fine; they're both smart and experienced."
She had stopped washing herself, hands falling to rest in her lap, her head bent. She was thinking about Vision, Carol knew.
"I'm sure Hank will be able to get Vision online again," she said, forcing confidence she didn't really feel into her voice. There was no question that Hank was capable of it, especially if he called in Tony or Reed Richards to help him, but the cold truth was that none of them were going to be able to do anything until the Argonians were defeated, and that might take years. Some of them might not survive it, and if anything happened to Hank, there would be no one who knew the Ultron protocols well enough to reconstruct Vision properly.
"I shouldn't worry about it so much." Wanda shook her head, hair swaying and brushing against her bare shoulders. She picked up a new handful of paper towels, and resumed scrubbing herself off. "There are bigger things to focus on. Vision is just one man, and I lost the right to put him first long ago. It's just... We've finally gotten to the point where we're friends again. I don't want to lose that all over again."
"We're all worried about things," Carol admitted softly, hoping to make the sudden dejected slump that was rounding Wanda's shoulders go away. "One fuck-up, and I get kicked out again, and this is too important to screw up. We can't win this without all of us working on the same team."
Wanda shook her head again. "Carol, if Cap's willing to ask Spiderman to get Daredevil to cut deals with the Kingpin to help fight the Argonians, he's not going to turn down your help. And we didn't kick you out, you know. You chose to leave."
The chicken soup didn't taste as good anymore; it was starting to get cold. Carol set it to one side, saving the rest for Wanda.
"I left because I knew everyone's minds were already made up. I wasn't going to get a fair hearing. For God's sake, Tony just decided I had a drinking problem without any proof at all. He saw me pour myself one drink! Just because he can't handle alcohol doesn't mean the entire rest of the world needs to avoid it like it's poison." Raising her voice never helped, Carol knew, but damn it, just thinking about it made her angry.
The others didn't understand. After everything she'd lost -- her memories, her emotional ties, her entire identity -- being Binary had been all she had left.
The power of a star, filling her entire body. With that inside her, no one could make her do anything she didn't want to do, didn't choose to do. No one could take anything from her. Not like Rogue had. Not like Marcus had.
It figured that those memories -- the ones of him touching her, manipulating her, forcing himself on her -- would be the one part of her past prior to Rogue's assault on her mind that she'd kept her emotional connection to.
Without her Binary powers, she was back to being plain old Ms. Marvel again, to being the same woman Marcus had taken control of so easily. After all of that, after everything she'd been though, she was entitled to a drink or two to help her deal with things.
Wanda dropped the now-darkened and soggy handful of paper towels on the floor and turned around. "We were not being unfair," she snapped. "It wasn't a court-martial. Well, technically it was, but only because Steve and Thor have an overdeveloped sense of drama. It was supposed to be an intervention."
"Oh, that makes everything better," Carol muttered. "Being condescending is always so much better than being judgmental."
Wanda glared at her. With her dark, curly hair tumbling down over her shoulders, her chest and torso bare, and the lantern flame flickering in her dark eyes, she looked like some kind of Greek oracle. An angry Greek oracle, who was about to proclaim doom. "We wanted to help you. No one realized that anything was wrong with Tony until it was too late for anyone to help him. By the time the rest of us realized something was wrong, he was already on the verge of losing his company and had handed over the armor to James Rhodes." Her face softened, and she looked away, then looked back up and met Carol's eyes again. "You lost part of your powers -- imagine willingly giving them away. It would be like me going to Beast or Hank and asking them to try and deactivate my X gene. That's how bad it got before anyone even tried to intervene."
Tony had done what? He loved that stupid armor more than he'd ever cared about another person. She was pretty sure the only way to get it away from him would be to pry it from his cold, dead hands. "Why did he-" she started.
"He was trying to help you," Wanda interrupted. "Cap, too. He still feels guilty over what happened to Tony. And he... we all feel guilty over..." She dropped her gaze again, hands twisting over one another in her lap. "None of us saved you from Marcus. We wanted to save you from this."
Oh, for the love of God. "There is nothing to save me from. I don't need saving!" Carol jumped to her feet, any trace of exhaustion gone, an edgy, brittle energy taking its place.
"Tony almost died. If we over-reacted, it's because we were afraid. I think Tony was worried you were going to kill yourself."
Carol blinked, her anger momentarily derailed. "Why the hell would he think that?"
"Because he almost did." Wanda said it matter-of-factly, as if it were nothing particularly surprising. She raised her eyebrows, and went on, "And as you so cogently pointed out, Tony tends to project his own problems onto other people."
Carol said nothing. What was there to say? Maybe they had been trying to help, but that didn't change the fact that they had interfered where their help wasn't needed, and nearly ruined her life just as she was starting to put to it back together again.
Wanda shook her head, frowning, her hair doing that distracting sweep over her naked breasts again. "Why are you so angry about this? I wish someone had tried to help me when I was... after I lost my family and my marriage. Maybe then I wouldn't have gone back to Magneto. Maybe Kang wouldn't have been able to manipulate me."
"I'm sorry I wasn't there for that." Carol pulled her eyes away from the dark circles of Wanda's nipples, which she was not going to stare at, and added. "Maybe I could have helped." No one deserved to have Immortus put his filthy paws all over their mind, especially not Wanda, who had already been through so much. Being under mind-control had made her feel filthy and used inside and out. How much worse would out-right possession be?
And Wanda had been through it more than once, at the hands of Chthon as well as Immortus.
"You were in space," Wanda said, the last remnants of anger draining from her voice. "You didn't know. We were right there, watching you. We had to do something."
She could understand that, she supposed, but good intentions didn't excuse the way they had done things, especially considering that it hadn't been necessary. "For future reference? The next time the rest of you feel a desire to 'fix' someone? Don't call an official disciplinary hearing and put them on trial." She picked up the soup can and held it out to Wanda. "Here, eat something. And put on a shirt; you must be freezing."
Wanda glanced down at herself, suddenly seeming to realize that she was topless. She quickly folded her arms over her chest, then lowered them and reached for her discarded bra and Simon's shirt.
Carol got up and went to the bathroom to rinse some of the soot off her hands. It was pitch dark in there by this time, but she needed the space.
When she got back, Wanda had finished the soup and folded herself into her sleeping bag. She couldn't possibly have been asleep yet, but her eyes were tightly closed anyway.
As a signal that they were done talking, it wasn't exactly subtle.
Carol lay down, wrapping herself in her own sleeping bag, and tried to relax, acutely aware of Wanda's silent presence a few feet away.
Part 6a
***
As I'm sure people have noticed, the last few chapters of this have been unbeta'd. It's entirely due to the fact that we're posting this as a work-in-progress, while still trying keep to a regular posting schedule. Combined with the fact that the chapters in this fic have been disgustingly long - over twenty pages, in a few cases - it's just not fair to ask someone to turn around a beta of that length in under two weeks.
So, question for all of you; would you prefer that we continue posting this unbeta'd, but every other week - or even start posting weekly, or that we wait for the betas, and post whenever they're ready?
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five (a) | Chapter Five (b) | Chapter Six (a) | Chapter Six (b) | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty (a) | Chapter Twenty (b) | Chapter Twenty One
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Betalessness in return for more frequent posting seems to be the general consensus, but we wanted to out it to a vote before subjecting everyone to my typos and missing words, and our mutual habit of using the same words and turns of phrase over and over ("apparently" and other qualifiers have to be practically beaten out of
I heart this bit with Ms. Marvel and Wanda. When I see something like this, it strikes me how little personal screen-time the woman superheroes tend to share with each other. It's kind of nice.
*nods*It's really sad, but I think lj comics fandom's slash fic may pass the Bechdel test more often than canon does, when you discount titles like "Birds of Prey."