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cap_ironman2009-02-28 12:38 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2009-02-28 12:38 am
Entry tags:
When The Lights Go On Again 11/20
Title: When the Lights Go On Again 11/20
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: 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, this fic owes a great deal totavella, who helped us to shape this into something that didn't have gaping plot holes.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.
When the Lights Go On Again
"They're what? What do you mean, they're moving you?" Jan's voice was shrill, and directly in his ear, but most of Clint's attention was taken up by the freezing wind that was turning his face numb, and the bright, blue-violet sky overhead. It didn't even matter that the sky was tinted purple -- it was still a broad expanse of clear sky, open and endless and dizzying after so long with nothing but the low concrete of the tunnels. Even the vast arch of the main concourse's ceiling didn't compare; the night sky painted there was fake, flat, the stars unmoving and out of place.
"Clint, are you even listening?" Jan demanded. "What do you mean, they're moving you?" she repeated, swatting the side of his neck with one tiny hand to get his attention. It tickled, sending tingles down the back of his neck and his spine.
"Sorry," Clint said automatically. "It's just..." he waved a hand vaguely upwards. "There's sky. I haven't seen the sky in months."
"Hank was the same way." She sounded faintly amused now, though the stress and worry were still there. "This is your first outdoor shift isn't it?"
Clint nodded. "Yeah. How did you guess?" Guarding the station's doors from the outside, considered an unpleasant ordeal by the Argonian guards, was a sign of trust and honor for human axillaries. He had never rated it before.
Apparently, the newly made Arch-Captain Kammani's request to have him transferred to her command had raised his estimation in Arch-Captain Mamitu's beady black eyes, if only because Mamitu enjoyed having something the other officer wanted. "I think it's a bribe to try and make me like my commander better. She's using me as a pawn in some kind of petty grudge war with another officer."
"This is the same one who almost killed you?" the skepticism was obvious in her voice, and Clint snorted.
"Yeah, that would be her. I don't think she even remembers that. I'm not sure how well she can tell humans apart, anyway." Argonians, as far as he could tell, seemed to rely entirely on hair and skin color to distinguish one human from another. Many of them couldn't even determine gender properly, which might explain why the day and a half Clint had spent sleeping in Tony's bed hadn't raised any alien eyebrows. Until Arch-Captain Kammani had shown an interest in him, Clint had probably been indistinguishable from any other blond guard.
"Who cares if she can or not?" Jan's hand was on the side of his neck again. Clint shifted his shoulders slightly, hoping the shivers that were still crawling over his skin would go away. It should have felt unpleasant, having someone that small moving against his bare skin -- like an insect crawling on him -- but instead he found it even more distracting than the sky. He kept wanting to close his eyes and just feel her.
No one had touched him in so long, not for months, unless you counted Tony when he'd been poisoned, and Clint didn’t.
"When are they moving you? Is Tony going, too? What are-"
"That's why I'm moving," he cut in. "They're setting up a new facility for engineers in some police station they've co-opted, for doing sensitive repairs to equipment and manufacturing bombs and things, and Tony's being sent there. I didn't even know about it until a couple of days ago. Do you know what I had to do to make sure I could be transferred there with him? I had to literally get down on one knee to ask Arch-Captain Mamitu to transfer me to the new guard detachment there. She made me swear personal fealty to her. Seriously, fealty. Like in Robin Hood. And I thought Cap and Thor were drama queens."
"They have been rumors," Jan said slowly. "We knew they were about to start large scale weapons production, but we don't know where. The Navy guys in Brooklyn found-" she broke off, then, "Clint, how exactly are you planning on staying in contact with me? I have no idea where you're going to be. I only found you the first time by pure luck!"
Clint grinned, feeling a momentary sense of smugness. "I can give you the location." He wasn't about to tell her how he'd learned it, though. Some things, Jan -- and by extension, Cap, and all the others -- didn't need to know.
"Steve's been trying to find out where they were planning on opening that facility for a month," she said quietly. He'd hoped for startled praise, or at least for her to sound visibly impressed, but Jan's voice was dead serious. "It's one of our top three strategic targets. If you can tell us where it is..."
"One Police Plaza."
Jan stared at him in shock, and he added, "It's actually in the police station; I guess they thought it'd be secure." He'd been in there once, when he'd been young and dumb, and when he'd overheard a couple of Argonian guards disgusing the significance of the strange red statue out front, the entire thing had come flooding back. Agreeing to spar with one of the lowest-ranking Argonian guards to give him practice in beating up humans had just confirmed it. It had also been humiliating, because Clint had had to let him win repeatedly in order to keep him in a good mood, while still fighting just well enough to be entertaining. "It's not as big as this facility, not as heavily defended, either. I think they're relying on the fact that almost no one knows the station is there to keep it secure."
"Clint, that's..." She shook her head -- at least, he thought she did, because her hair brushed against his neck. "We haven't managed to take out one of their bases since Penn Station. If you think we have a chance against this one, it would be the biggest blow we've struck since the military operation in Brooklyn blew up Clark Street and Borough Hall." The Clark Street and Borough hall stations were the first stations on most of the subway lines into Brooklyn; rendering them impassible had, combined with the sabotage of the Manhattan Bridge, essentially cut off all subway access to the entire lower half of Brooklyn, massively restricting the Argonians' ability to operate there.
Brooklyn had become almost as unpopular a duty station as Hell's Kitchen, these days. You had to walk around above ground to get anywhere, and military snipers lurked in the upper floors of buildings, waiting to pick Argonian patrols off one by one.
The Resistance was making progress. Clint told himself that every day. Eventually, the Argonians would have to be worn down enough, would have lost enough men, that they would give up and leave. When it came to a war of attrition, after all, humans had six billion people, and the Argonians... well, he didn’t actually know how many of them there were, but it couldn't be more than a couple million. Maybe less than a million. At least a fifth of them were in New York City, and the resident Argonian forces didn't number more than about a hundred thousand. Even with over two thirds of the city gone, humans still had them outnumbered.
Even if only some of those humans were fighting, they were still making progress. He just wasn't sure they were making it fast enough. The clock to inevitable death-by-scurvy was ticking, after all.
"Tell Cap to blow it up soon," he said, "and get us out of there." He hesitated, then added, "I don't know how much longer Tony's going to last." 'I don't know how much longer I'll last,' he added silently.
Just walking outside had made him want to cry. Jan's slight weight against his neck and shoulder felt like the most intimate human contact he'd ever had, so intense it was almost too much. He was tired all the time, a deep ache settling further into his bones by the day, and he'd never quite regained the energy he'd had before going ten rounds with the Argonian's toxins.
"According to Hank, there's a least another month before the two of you will have full-blown scurvy."
Because Hank the biochemist and amateur robot-building Dr. Frankenstein was an expert on fatal diseases nobody got anymore. "A couple of the older scientists already have bleeding gums." One of the human guards had actually lost two teeth already, but he wasn't sure that counted, because it had been right after the Scorpion had hit him in the face with his metal tail during a training session. "And I've had this," he held up his right hand at shoulder level so that Jan could see the angry, red cut across one knuckle, "for two weeks and it hasn't even started to heal." The small gash, a souvenir of a training session with his sword, was red around the edges, and wouldn't close -- it kept re-opening, and Clint was starting to really hope they could get out of here before they reached the "old wounds start re-opening" stage of scurvy, because if that happened, Tony would probably be springing leaks like a sieve.
Jan crawled out from inside his uniform collar and flew over to land on his hand, balancing lightly on the back of it and peering at the injury. Her weight was barely noticeable, but her hands tickled as she traced one along the edge of the cut.
His eyes felt weirdly hot, and he blinked until the feeling went away. "But that isn't what I meant," he went on, trying manfully to suppress the impulse to blush. What the hell was wrong with him?
No one had cared about his cuts or bruises for a very long time, but he'd never been the kind of guy to start bawling just because somebody showed him a little sympathy. Tony, though... Tony had always been desperate for approval. Back in California, he'd stuck around in what Clint had only later figured out was probably an abusive relationship because he'd been so desperate for friendship or sex or whatever he and War Machine had been to each other then, or maybe because he hadn't thought he deserved anything better. It was a bizarre kind of neediness from someone who'd always been so arrogant, but Tony often didn't make sense.
Every time one of the other scientists shut him out or sneered at him, he did that same pathetic little cringe thing he'd done then, drawing in on himself and staring at the floor. He wasn't sure how to explain that to someone who hadn't been there for it, though. If he hadn't seen it for himself, he wasn't sure he'd have believed that Tony Stark, founding member of the Avengers, self-proclaimed genius, billionaire celebrity who could have any woman he wanted, was capable of being so deeply fucked up.
"I think he's starting to get that thing that makes baby monkeys die," Clint finally blurted out.
Jan, who had been peering intently at Clint's cut, looked back up at him, frowning. "That thing that what?"
Clint shrugged. He could feel his face burning. That had sounded stupid even in his own head. "They did this experiment back in the seventies or something, with monkeys. I saw it on the Discovery channel. It was horrible." Just thinking about it, about the grainy film footage of limp, apathetic little monkeys huddled in the corners of barren cement cages, made him feel sick all over again. "They tortured them," he told her. "Nobody ever touched them or loved them or anything, and they went crazy and died. Because they wanted to prove that people needed love or something. They were in these horrible little cages, and they didn't even have toys or get to play with other monkeys or anything." He broke off, realizing belatedly that he'd begun raising his voice. It had happened ages ago, he reminded himself, and it definitely wasn't something worth getting caught and tortured over.
Jan stared up at him, her eyes fixed on his face. "This documentary really upset you, didn't it? I didn't take you for the animal rights activist type."
"They were babies." And they hadn't looked like animals. They'd had faces, and tiny little hands, like human children. "And they were torturing them," he repeated. He looked away, blinking, as his eyes grew hot again. What the hell? He was not going to cry over goddamn monkeys. They were probably all dead now anyway.
Jan's weight vanished from his hand, and then she was standing in front of him, full size, pulling Clint deeper into the shadow of the doorway so that no one outside of a direct line-of-sight could see them, and down into a fierce hug.
Clint went stiff, completely unsure what he was supposed to do. No one had touched him this gently in months, not counting the time he was sick. Even before the Argonians, no one had... Not since Bobbie died.
Clint took a half-step forward, closing his eyes and leaning into Jan. He had to bend down slightly to do it, and then they were kissing.
He had no idea which of them had started it, and he didn't care. Jan felt nice, tasted nice, even smelled nice -- not like chemicals, or metalworking, or the Argonians' strange musty-sweet fur smell.
Then Jan turned her face away, breaking the kiss, and Clint heard himself make a pathetic little sound of protest.
"I shouldn't have done that."
Clint opened his eyes, blinking at Jan. He probably ought to let go of her, he thought, but he couldn't make himself do it. "No," he agreed, hugging her even harder and burying his face in her hair. "Probably not."
"I really shouldn't have done that." Jan's hands closed gently around his wrists, and she began attempting to disentangle herself from his grasp. "Clint, let go."
Clint didn't do anything to women that they didn't want, even hug them, so he released his hold on her and took a couple of steps back, suddenly realizing how cold it was out here in nothing but standard-issue blacks. Argonians never wore winter coats. They didn't need to; they had fur.
Jan wore nothing but skin-tight black and red, covering her from ankles to wrists, and had to be even colder than he was. She stood there, arms wrapped around herself, staring at Clint as if she'd never seen him before.
"I- I have to go now," she blurted out. "I'll tell Cap about the change in location." She started to reach for him, then abruptly pulled her hand back. "We'll get you out, Clint. You and Tony. I promise. Just hold on a little longer, okay?"
Before he could answer, Jan had shrunk down again and was flying away.
Clint stared after her, feeling empty and painfully alone. Painfully stupid, too.
What the hell had that been about? He knew better than to try and put the moves on Jan; she might not actually be married to Hank anymore, but everyone knew that was just a technicality. The two of them were back together again, and even when they weren't, anytime Jan was with somebody else, it was pretty much guaranteed to be just an attempt to make Hank jealous.
He knew that. He did. It was just... he'd wanted someone to touch him so badly, not even really for anything sexual so much as just physical contact with another person. And it had been Jan, the one person other than Tony whom he could talk to and trust, not to mention a woman he'd found attractive since before he was old enough to drink.
It was a good thing he and Tony had to stay on guard and try to look casual around one another, because otherwise Clint would probably be cuddling up to him like he was a teddy bear, and that was something he would never have been able to live down. Tony would either bitch at him or, worse, try kissing him or something the way Clint just had with Jan, and then Clint's misery and humiliation would be complete.
He shouldn't be letting it get to him like this. He'd volunteered for this; going under had been his idea, and he'd insisted on staying with the Argonians over Jan and Cap's protests. And now here he was, clinging to Jan and practically begging her to rescue him.
He was starting to understand bits of Argonian now, could grasp some of the orders Mamitu snapped at him even when there was no one to translate them into English. He was learning their goddamn language. And he was scared stiff at the idea of being moved someplace else tomorrow. Christ, you'd think after months trapped underground in that miserable cave, he'd look forward to a change of scenery, but all he could do was worry. What if Jan couldn't find him again after all? What if they couldn't arrange a meeting place? What if Clint was stationed in some part of the base away from Tony, and both of them ended up entirely on their own? He couldn't leave Tony alone with the Argonians.
No matter how quickly Cap mounted an assault on the police station, it couldn't possibly be soon enough.
***
She hadn't expected the subway station to be so attractive.
Irkalla herself rarely ventured outside the tight security of Grand Central, but the accounts she had heard of human subway stations from those who had had not been encouraging, to say the least, and the subway cars themselves had born that out, easily living down to expectations.
Mechanikos and human laborers had stripped the filthy floors and original uncomfortable and unattractive plastic seating from the cramped little cars, replacing them with new, clean flooring, and brown and deep maroon leather bench seats that allowed proper room for one's tail. The human advertisements and other trash that had previous adorned the walls had been ripped down, and some especially industrious mechanikos had hammered copper inlay into the metal poles that filled the car's interior, so that each metal pole was wrapped in a loose spiral of script, ranging from quotations from Alulim to stanzas from epic poems.
It helped considerably, but the car was still too small, and the underlying architecture was crude and ugly.
When she stepped out of the car onto the gently curving platform beneath the new scientific installation at City Hall, carefully avoiding the wide gap between car and platform -- the train cars were clearly not designed to properly fit in this particular station -- however, she was pleasantly surprised to find herself standing beneath an arched roof decorated with interlocking tiles in brown, green, and cream. The station was clearly very old, and in some disrepair -- tiles were missing or broken in several places -- but at one time, it must have been truly beautiful. The elaborate glass skylights set into the ceiling were works of art.
The humans had apparently completely closed it down, which made security much easier, since the entrances and exits had all been sealed off. Only one had been re-opened, and six Argonian warriors were standing at attention before it, waiting to escort her above ground and across the open square above into the new engineering and weapons manufacturing installation.
"It is very bold of you to inspect the new facilities personally, Archon," Nergal said smoothly, as he came forward to meet her. "You need not have troubled yourself; Arch-Captain Mamitu or I could have performed the necessary duties easily, without risking exposing you to human attacks."
Irkalla raised her eyebrows. "Are you saying that your soldiers cannot protect me in the brief time it will take to travel from this station to the building?" She indicated the six guards with the end of her tail, the gesture intended to draw attention to her tailbarb. "They look perfectly capable to me. I do not fear attack by humans; what warrior would?"
The end of Nergal's tail began twitching back and forth irritably, but his face and voice remained calm. "Nevertheless, I must urge caution. You are, after all, the last remaining descendant of Alulim."
Was it her imagination, or was there an element of implied threat in that statement? It was not the first time he had brought up her lack of an heir, and while others had mentioned it as well -- including Arch-Captain Kammani -- from his lips, it had sinister overtones that other's words did not. You are the last, it said. Remember how vulnerable you are. How tragic it would be for Argon for Alulim's line to end. Whomever would we find to rule us then?
"There are times when caution is not a virtue, Imperator," she said, walking past him towards the exit. The guards fell into step around her, flanking her on all sides. "Rest assured, I shall not let down my guard."
Nergal had no option but to follow her, of course. Making him scramble up the steps after her was a petty victory, but satisfying nonetheless.
The sunlight outside was blindingly bright, a harsh white glare that made the huge, red thing in the center of the square even uglier. She thought perhaps the large construct of red-painted metal was meant to be some kind of human art -- it certainly served no functional purpose -- but surely the species that had produced the painted ceiling in Grand Central and the tastefully decorated station platform she had just left understood art and was capable of creating it properly. Perhaps it was the product of some human superstition, intended to ward off some form of evil spirit?
The new engineering and weapons installation was another exercise in ugliness, a blocky building that looked as if it had been dropped carelessly where it sat, without regard for whether it belonged with the other buildings on the square or not. It had previously been the command center of a human warrior organization tasked with enforcing the law, which had made implementing appropriate security measure much easier.
The guards stationed at the entrance were a mix of Argonian and human, including one human who proudly wore, not just warrior blacks, but the single copper stud at his collar that marked him as a member of the army's lowest rank. Arch-Captain Kammani had been swift to act upon Irkalla's promise to grant citizenship to deserving humans.
All the guards, humans included, saluted crisply as they approached.
The inside of the building was just as sterile as the outside; the bottom floors had been gutted, and labs, workshops, and maintenance facilities built in place of whatever human things had once been there. Unlike in the subway cars, no attempt had been made to make the surroundings more livable or attractive; most of the workers here would be humans, not Argonians, so it would have been a wasted effort.
They toured the manufacturing facilities first, while a nervous mechanikos, eyes submissively downcast, explained what the various pieces of machinery were for. Irkalla understood less than half of it, but the mechanikos spoke with the air of one who was sure of her knowledge, if intimidated by her audience, so the operation was clearly in competent hands.
Nergal's attention was focused almost solely on the guards and security details, ensuring that the human workers would have no opportunity to commit sabotage, and would not be able to escape, leaving Irkalla free to ask the more important questions, like when the first set of missiles and the replacement aircraft engines would be completed.
The answer, of course, was "not soon enough." And unfortunately, there was little more that could be done to hasten the process.
Still, the awe and pride on the mechanikos's faces when she spoke to them, obviously stunned and pleased that the Archon had visited their stations in person, were more than enough to make her glad she had come. Like everyone else, the Argonians here had lost everything that was dear to them, and been thrust into an unfamiliar and hostile world -- it was vital to remind them that what they were doing was important, that their Archon still cared about them, that their government still functioned, and that they should not give up hope.
It didn't matter that her own faith in their ability to return to Argon was faltering; for her people, for a little while, she could pretend otherwise.
"- a project of vital importance, nin-Irkalla," the russet-furred senior mechanikos responsible for the aircraft engines was saying. "The metal fatigue alone is taking a significant toll on maintenance workers' time. We hope to complete first new engine within the week, now that everything is in place and the main facility has sent us him." He gestured at a human scientist currently standing beside what looked like a pile of metal scraps, but was probably pieces of the engine.
He wasn't particularly impressive -- thin, and short as all humans were -- and his slump-shouldered posture sang of submission and defeat to an extant unusual even for a mechanikos. "Why is this one human of such importance?" she asked.
The mechanikos ducked his head slightly, his ears lowering. "Forgive me, nin-Irkalla. I ought to have explained. He is the one who aided Mechanikos Isimud in drawing the plans for the engine's construction. The humans claim he is a genius, one of their most respected of their mechanikos."
Irkalla gave the human a long, careful second look, but could see no signs of anything particularly special. An Argonian mechanikos would be ashamed to stand in the presence of a warrior -- much less the Archon herself -- with an attitude of such obvious misery and shame. The senior mechanikos had been careful to keep his back straight even when apologizing, no matter how much respect and humility he showed with ears, tail, and downcast eyes.
Even here, even now, Alulim's children were not defeated.
She would have to take heart from that; surely, they could build themselves another empire, wherever they ultimately went, whether out of the ashes of Argon, or on some new world entirely. Preferably an unpopulated one, where they wouldn't have to waste the energies of most of their personnel on pacifying the native population.
Nergal had finished his inspection of the building's security, and was now casting significant glances in her direction, conveying with a meaningful swish of his tail that it was time for her to return to Grand Central where she belonged and leave overseeing their defenses and weapons production to the professionals.
It inspired within her a strong desire to stay much, much longer, and possibly personally interview every single mechanikos in the building, and perhaps even some humans, if any of them spoke a civilized language. However, that would have been childish, and there were matters to see to back at Grand Central.
Irkalla offered Nergal a polite smile, and obediently ended her conversation with the senior mechanikos, crossing the room to stand at Nergal's side like the good little subordinate he so wished to make her.
"Have you completed your inspection, Archon?" he asked, tone as condescending as if he were speaking to a child.
"Yes," she said coolly. "I am quite satisfied." She made a show of looking around the room one final time, taking in the blank, white walls, bare except for a large grey metal panel inset into one of them, the incomprehensible jumble of machine parts, the human scientists still standing stiffly at attention, the mechanikos with their ears tucked down in respect. It was a bleak and depressing room, and she felt a moment's gratitude that Vanderbilt Hall and her own apartments were an entirely different style of human architecture.
For once, walking outside into the painful glare was actually a relief, though nowhere near as much of a relief as walking out of the glare and into the soothing dimness of the subway platform again.
"You were correct about the benefit to moral," Nergal commented, as the two of them boarded the subway car once more. "But it was still a foolhardy risk to take. The humans grow ever bolder, and our situation ever more precarious."
Keeping the contempt off her face took effort. So he was now willing to admit to how desperate their tactical situation was, was he? What a shame this change of heart hadn't come months ago. "I have often said so," she murmured, instead. "I did not expect to hear it from you, however."
"Situations change, and strategies must change with them."
"Indeed." She raised her eyebrows, ears cocked at an angle of polite interest. "I take it you have a change of strategy in mind? Your previous efforts to deal with the situation have met with such success."
His eyes narrowed, but he otherwise kept his composure. "The army has been receiving... conflicting messages of late. They require a strong leader."
"How fortunate, then, that they have you."
His left ear twitched, and he continued, voice serious. "The Empire has always needed strong leaders in times of crisis, since the days of the great Alulim himself. It is what keeps us victorious, even in defeat."
She recognized the work he was paraphrasing, of course. Every well educated Argonian would have. "Ahassunu's treatise on the second Scandian war. It is a brilliant piece of political theory for its time, if somewhat dated."
"There are certain measures that have proven successful in similar situations in the past. When the Tantalans attacked and occupied Argon's lunar colonies-"
"You want to declare a military emergency and make yourself the head of state in my place," she stated bluntly, interrupting. There was an ancient provision in Argonian law that allowed the head of the military to assume control of the empire in times of dire peril, provided the head of the military and the Archon were not already one and the same. Alulim himself had risen to power in such a fashion, first assuming leadership of all of the newborn empire's armies and only later becoming the first Archon, in the wake of his victory at Munawirtum.
"Only temporarily, nin-Irkalla," he said calmly, for once using the proper honorific. "Only so long as the resistance continues to escalate. Once the rebels had been pacified, I would of course step down and hand power back over to you."
"The appointment of an Imperator as temporary dictator requires a unanimous vote by the advisory council, something that is, unfortunately, impossible at the present time," impossible, because the entire council was dead, two of them very probably at Nergal's hand. "It also requires that I willingly surrender power to you."
"Ah, but you forget, Archon. With the rest of your advisors dead, I am your advisory council. And as such I have given you my advice."
'And how long would I live,' she wondered, 'once I took it?'
She had toyed with the idea that Nergal wished for her to make him her consort in order to rule through their child, but it appeared that she had erred in underestimating the extant of his ambitions. He did not simply wish to make her or her hypothetical offspring his puppet; he wished to replace her and rule in his own right.
If she stepped aside -- "temporarily," of course -- and let Nergal rule in her stead, then with the council gone, it required only her death for him to rule completely unopposed. And with the line of Alulim ended forever, the empire would require a new Archon, a new dynasty.
She dropped her gaze to the vertical pole that stood beside her seat, trying to think of an appropriate response. 'Destroying an Empire to win a war is no victory,' the flowing copper characters proclaimed, 'And ending a battle to save an Empire is no defeat.'
Even were her own life not at stake, Nergal's leadership would destroy them all in the end.
"If circumstances were not dire enough to warrant such a measure during out flight from Argon, I do not think they are so now. Unless you truly believe us to be in worse case now then we were then?" Which was something Nergal could not say without admitting that his decision to invade and occupy Earth had been wrong, something that he would never admit at any time, and certainly not within the hearing of his soldiers.
She could not help casting a glance at the black-uniformed soldiers stationed at either end of the car, who had suddenly taken on a much more threatening aspect. How hard would Nergal's handpicked subordinates truly defend if it came to a human attack? Perhaps she would find herself fighting her own people as well as the rebels if such an eventually occurred.
"I would not describe it thus," he said, and she thought she detected a note of discomfort in his voice. "Our situation is not as desperate as it was then, but that does not mean the strong guidance of an experienced military leader would not improve it."
"How fortunate, then, that of the rest of my council, you remain. To offer me your," she hesitated for a fraction of a second, "guidance. You have complete command of the army, Imperator. That ought to be sufficient to accomplish what must be done."
'There is no victory without combat.' Wise words indeed, Irkalla reflected. They had been true when Alulim had first spoken them over a thousand years ago, and time had not diminished that truth.
She had defined victory, initially, as the rebuilding of their Empire. Now, she was more inclined to see it as simply survival, and Nergal stood in the path of both goals, for her people and herself.
There was no victory without combat, and there was no combat without an enemy. And Nergal, she had come to realize, was as much an enemy as any member of the human resistance, or those who had driven them out of Argon.
' I will defend my authority against all challenges,' ran the oath she had sworn upon assuming the mantle of Archon, 'bear the honor and shame of my command upon my own shoulders, and fight to the death against any who would seek to destroy Argon.'
Enemies of the Argonian Empire, by necessity, had a very short life expectancy.
***
Even after months of Argonian occupation, it still felt unnatural to do one's sneaking around in broad daylight, especially at full size.
Wanda, on the other hand, seemed completely at ease with the entire situation. But then, she had been doing this far more often than Jan had. Every time Jan had approached an Argonian stronghold before, she had been small enough to be nearly invisible. This time, she was relying entirely on Wanda's powers to shield them both from discovery.
The two of them were currently standing in front of One Police Plaza, while Wanda, her head cocked slightly to one side, stared up at the giant modernist sculpture someone had planted in the middle of the sidewalk.
"I think I like it," she said, after a long moment had passed. "It's very colorful."
"You like it?" Jan blinked, and turned to stare up at Wanda. "No one likes modern civic art. That's the whole point of it." That wasn't precisely true, of course, but as far as she remember from the art history class she'd had to take while studying design, being aesthetically pleasing had not necessarily been one of modernist or minimalist sculpture's major goals, particularly during the seventies. The giant piece of plop art harmonized oddly well with the blocky, brutalist building that had once housed the NYPD's headquarters, though. One Police Plaza had been deliberately designed to be ugly, which made the fact that it was now home to an Argonian weapons manufacturing plant all the more fitting.
Clint was in there now, and Tony. For the first time since this entire mess began, the possibility of a rescue was within reach; no matter how many guards Jan and Wanda found here, how many security checkpoints and alarms, it was still vastly more accessible than the underground prison the Argonians had been keeping Tony in.
If all else failed, they could always simply blast their way in. Walls did very little to stop Angelica these days, and they'd never been much of an obstacle to Ben Grimm in a bad mood.
"I'm going to take a closer look at the entrance," Jan announced. She took a step to the side, so that Wanda's body was between her and the front of the building, before shrinking down. Wanda had placed a hex over both of them intended to divert the guards' attention away from them, but she wasn't sure it would hold up against the sight of a woman shrinking down to the size of a bug.
"Check the windows, too," Wanda said, turning away from the sculpture to focus on Jan's hovering form. "The best way in isn't always the front door."
Jan shrugged, exaggerating the motion to make sure it was visible. "When you're my size, the best way in is usually the keyhole in the front door."
Wanda's lips -- giant now -- twitched for a fraction of a second, and then she was serious again. "There are perimeter guard posts all around the building, and I think they may have more people stationed in City Hall Park, hiding somewhere in all those trees. Cap wants everyone's location."
"I can-" Jan started.
"The distraction spell works better when it's just me," Wanda cut in. "One of the benefits of working alone."
Her last few missions had been solo, Jan remembered, which struck her as slightly odd, given that most of Wanda's previous missions had been carried out with Carol or Spiderman along for the ride. "Twenty minutes," she said. "I'll meet you back at the sculpture."
There were two guards stationed at the front entrance, and she could see more inside, visible through the windows. The layout of the lobby had been entirely altered, and she found herself wishing once again for the ability to shrink objects; photographs would have been invaluable. One of the many former NYPD officers in the Resistance had worked here, before, but his memories of the building's layout were clearly no longer going to be accurate. She would just have to describe it as best she could, when Steve debriefed her.
She had never quite realized how useful Clint's information on Argonian troop movements, defenses, and guard rotations was until they didn’t have access to it anymore.
Clint...
Clint was inside there, somewhere, maybe only a few hundred feet away. After over a week without seeing him, she couldn't entirely suppress the worry nagging at the corners of her mind. Was he all right? Was Tony all right? Had one of the Argonians scratched them with its tailbarb again? Had they been caught? Were they even still in contact with one another in this new building, or was each of them entirely alone?
She wasn't sure either of them could handle being alone, not under the circumstances. Not anymore.
Clint had been oddly subdued the last time she'd spoken to him, barely smiling. There had been a slump to his shoulders, and his eyes had been ringed with dark circles that had been there ever since he'd been poisoned. And his eyes themselves ... they had reminded her uneasily of the way Tony had looked standing in Grand Central's main concourse, his face turned to the sunlight. Like a starving man in the presence of food and afraid to let himself eat.
And the kiss... he'd clung to her like he was trying to bury himself in her body. That was familiar, too, both from Tony, during their brief, ill-advised fling, and from Hank, at his most depressed and desperate.
How much longer would either of them last if she couldn't get them out?
Jan leaned against one of the third floor windows, pressing her hands and face against the glass in an attempt to see a wide a slice of the room as possible. The glass was cold against her fingers.
Inside the room, a handful of humans were working on what looked like an engine, under the supervision of two Argonian mechanikos and a human guard. Clint and Tony were nowhere in sight. No one she recognized was, except for the guard, who even without his green costume was unmistakably the Scorpion. In black, with his cybernetic tail curled up over his shoulder, he looked like a poor imitation of an Argonian.
She supposed working for the Argonians didn't require much self-justification if your previous employer had been the Kingpin.
If only she were able to get inside, she'd be able to map the layout of the building. As it was, they were going to be going in, not blind, but the next thing to it. At Penn Station, they'd had building plans to work with, know the ins and outs of the building, the dead ends, the potential escape routes. And that had been a train station, designed for easy ingress and egress, not a police station with a vested interest in keeping unauthorized people out of sensitive areas.
One of the mechanikos began to slowly stroll around the room, drawing perilously near the window, and Jan had to duck sideways and tuck herself against the wall of the building until he had passed.
She couldn't afford to hang around here any longer, regardless of whether or not she'd gotten all the information they needed; Wanda's distraction hex was no longer covering her, and every moment she spent peering in windows increased her chances of being caught. All it would take was someone looking her way at the wrong moment.
She took her time flying back to the sculpture, flying low through the cluster of leafless trees that surrounded the building, letting the bare branches shield her from view. By the time she reached the giant, red structure, Wanda was already there waiting for her.
"There are twelve guards stationed around the building, in pairs," Wanda said, by way of greeting, "and a half-dozen more in the park, all alone. They're sure to have a way to call up reinforcements, though."
Jan returned to full size, letting the bulk of the sculpture shield her from sight as she did so, and shrugged on the heavy wool overcoat Wanda handed her, hiding her costume from view. As the two of them walked -- slowly, casually -- out of the square and down Park Row, she gave Wanda a brief description of everything she'd observed.
"It's funny," she concluded. "I kept expecting to see Clint everywhere I looked. It feels wrong to leave without talking to him; that's usually the whole point of these things."
Wanda's step faltered for a second, and she cast a hopeful glance at Jan. "Did you see him?"
Jan shook her head. "No. I didn't see Tony either. I hope they're okay." A cold gust of wind blew past them, whipping her hair into her face; she pulled the coat around herself a little more tightly. "I don't like going this long without hearing from them."
"No," Wanda agreed. "I think not knowing is the worst part."
They walked the next several blocks in silence, until they were far enough away to be out of the danger zone. They were almost back to the hotel when Wanda spoke again.
"Can I ask you something?"
"About what?"
"Carol is..." Wanda looked away, staring at the ground. "I think she's scared of me now."
Carol was... that didn't make any sense. Wanda was more in control of her powers right now than she had been in a long time. Jan frowned. It also didn't sound like Carol. "Carol isn't scared of anything, including things she should be scared of."
Wanda shook her head. "That's not true," she said, sounding almost rueful. "She's afraid of losing her powers, of getting turned away again, of being controlled..." her voice had gone tight and strange, and she hesitated for a second before adding, "all kinds of things."
"Really? She always seems so confident." Which probably sounded as silly as it was; Jan had enough experience with models, designers, and minor celebrities to know that a confident -- even arrogant -- attitude could serve as a mask for a bottomless pit of insecurity. Carol didn't seem like the type, though; most of the painfully insecure women Jan knew based their entire self-worth on how small a clothing size they could fit into and whether their picture -- or a picture of their designs -- made it into Vogue.
"Well, she's not," Wanda said, "any more than Tony or Hank actually are, but that's not the point. She's... I may have made a very big mistake." She bit her lip, silent for a moment, then blurted out, "She and Jessica Drew really were just friends, weren't they?"
Wanda had been there in California after Hank and Tony had both completely fallen apart. Jan still felt guilty about the fact that she hadn't been, that it had taken Hank accidentally hospitalizing himself via spider venom before they had spoken face to face again. It was stupid -- she knew it hadn't been her fault, that she'd had no choice but to leave, that staying with him would only have made things worse -- but she couldn't kill the little bit of doubt that whispered that maybe she could have prevented some of it if she'd done something when she had first realized how much of a mess Hank was. People didn't suddenly begin acting like entirely different people -- erratic and out-off-control different people -- without a reason. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that something was very wrong.
If he found out about Clint, he would think it was his fault, that she had wanted to punish him somehow, or that she wanted to end things again.
Wait, Wanda had said something about Carol and Jessica Drew... "She and-- what? What else would they be?"
"I thought they were involved," Wanda muttered, very quietly. "I thought she was interested in me. So I, ah, kissed her. Then she left me behind in the middle of a mission, and hasn't spoken to me since."
Jan stared at her. "You're bisexual?" It was probably the least important aspect of the whole thing, and she knew she sounded like an idiot, but, "Since when?"
"Since always." Wanda gestured sharply with one gloved hand. "That's not the point."
"You never said anything."
"I'm a half-Romany, half-Jewish mutant who used to be married to a robot. I try to avoid collecting new labels at this point. I've already experienced the joy of men telling me that I ought to find out what it's like 'with a real man.'"
Jan's lips twitched in a smile that had nothing to do with amusement, as she and Wanda shared a silent, knowing look.
Then Wanda turned her face away again, sighing. "Jan, what do I do? Every relationship I've had has gone down in flames; I don't know how to fix this, if I should apologize, or pretend it never happened, or something else. You and Hank have gotten through so much. What do you think?"
"I think I'm the last person who should be giving out relationship advice right now, considering that the last time I saw Clint, I kissed him." It wasn't funny, but she couldn't help laughing a little anyway. "Ill-advised kisses seem to be in vogue at the moment."
Wanda blinked, her eyebrows arching up. "Why? I thought you and Hank were-"
"I don't know," she interrupted. "We are. Clint was just so lonely, and sad, and, and it feels like half of what I do these days is worry about him, and I guess I thought it might... I don't know what I was thinking. I'm not even really sure if I'm the one who started it, but I didn't stop it, and that's all that really matters. How could I have been so stupid? Hank would be crushed if he found out -- he'd be convinced I wanted to break things off again. And Clint," she shook her head, "I don't know what he wants. I'm not sure it was actually about me at all."
"What do you mean, not about you?"
"He was just standing there, clinging to me. Like a little kid with a teddy bear." As she said it, she wondered, not for the first time, what the Argonians were really doing to him. She knew there were things about his mission that he wasn't telling her, details he was leaving out in an attempt to keep her from worrying or avoid sounding less-than-macho, and clearly those things were starting to wear him down.
Wanda frowned. "That doesn't sound like Clint. Clint isn’t needy like that."
Jan raised her eyebrows. "What do you mean, isn't needy? This is Clint we're talking about." Clint thrived on attention, positive or negative, especially female attention.
"Having sad crushes on your female teammates isn't the same as being needy."
Which was slightly mean, Jan reflected, but not untrue.
"Clint lashes out when he's upset," Wanda went on, "he doesn't cling to people. After Bobbi died, he tried to close people out; he didn't do anything like this." She hesitated for a moment, sighing again. "If Clint's in bad shape, Tony must be in even worse shape. He's not as stable as Clint."
"No," Jan agreed, and felt guilty, suddenly for the fact that she was spending so much energy worrying about her relationship with Hank and the fact that Clint had kissed her instead of worrying about the war and Clint and Tony's lives. "He's not. I don't know what you should do about Carol. I don't know what I should do either. I'm not sure it's even that important right now. The Argonians could kill one of us, or all of us, tomorrow."
Wanda shook her head, smiling a little. "You're right. I just don't want to lose anyone else, especially not now. I wish I knew how Cap does it. He always manages to stay focused on the important things, no matter what's going on around him."
In truth, Jan was almost as worried about Steve as she was about Tony and Clintand Hank, whom it felt like she never stopped worrying about. He might be focused, but she wasn't sure it was a good or healthy kind of focus. "Has he talked to you about anything other than tactics since Vance was killed?"
"Not really," Wanda admitted after a moment, "no."
Jan nodded. "I didn’t think so."
Wanda shrugged one shoulder, and pushed a piece of windblown hair out of her eyes. "I know, but I like to pretend that someone in our organization isn't terrified that we'll lose everything we have."
"Well, we're not going to lose Clint and Tony." Because they hadn't yet, and she refused to even let herself entertain the thought that they would. If Clint could survive being poisoned with barely any medical attention, and Tony could survive having his heart filleted by shrapnel, they could live through anything. "They're not hundreds of feet underground anymore. We're getting them out of there if we have to blow the place apart."
"It's odd that you should mention that," and Wanda's smile looked real for the first time today, "because according to what he has told me, that's basically what Cap has in mind."
Jan found herself smiling back, more pleased than she had ever been at the prospect of destroying something. "Good."
***
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: 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, this fic owes a great deal to
tavella, who helped us to shape this into something that didn't have gaping plot holes.X-posted to Marvel Slash.
"They're what? What do you mean, they're moving you?" Jan's voice was shrill, and directly in his ear, but most of Clint's attention was taken up by the freezing wind that was turning his face numb, and the bright, blue-violet sky overhead. It didn't even matter that the sky was tinted purple -- it was still a broad expanse of clear sky, open and endless and dizzying after so long with nothing but the low concrete of the tunnels. Even the vast arch of the main concourse's ceiling didn't compare; the night sky painted there was fake, flat, the stars unmoving and out of place.
"Clint, are you even listening?" Jan demanded. "What do you mean, they're moving you?" she repeated, swatting the side of his neck with one tiny hand to get his attention. It tickled, sending tingles down the back of his neck and his spine.
"Sorry," Clint said automatically. "It's just..." he waved a hand vaguely upwards. "There's sky. I haven't seen the sky in months."
"Hank was the same way." She sounded faintly amused now, though the stress and worry were still there. "This is your first outdoor shift isn't it?"
Clint nodded. "Yeah. How did you guess?" Guarding the station's doors from the outside, considered an unpleasant ordeal by the Argonian guards, was a sign of trust and honor for human axillaries. He had never rated it before.
Apparently, the newly made Arch-Captain Kammani's request to have him transferred to her command had raised his estimation in Arch-Captain Mamitu's beady black eyes, if only because Mamitu enjoyed having something the other officer wanted. "I think it's a bribe to try and make me like my commander better. She's using me as a pawn in some kind of petty grudge war with another officer."
"This is the same one who almost killed you?" the skepticism was obvious in her voice, and Clint snorted.
"Yeah, that would be her. I don't think she even remembers that. I'm not sure how well she can tell humans apart, anyway." Argonians, as far as he could tell, seemed to rely entirely on hair and skin color to distinguish one human from another. Many of them couldn't even determine gender properly, which might explain why the day and a half Clint had spent sleeping in Tony's bed hadn't raised any alien eyebrows. Until Arch-Captain Kammani had shown an interest in him, Clint had probably been indistinguishable from any other blond guard.
"Who cares if she can or not?" Jan's hand was on the side of his neck again. Clint shifted his shoulders slightly, hoping the shivers that were still crawling over his skin would go away. It should have felt unpleasant, having someone that small moving against his bare skin -- like an insect crawling on him -- but instead he found it even more distracting than the sky. He kept wanting to close his eyes and just feel her.
No one had touched him in so long, not for months, unless you counted Tony when he'd been poisoned, and Clint didn’t.
"When are they moving you? Is Tony going, too? What are-"
"That's why I'm moving," he cut in. "They're setting up a new facility for engineers in some police station they've co-opted, for doing sensitive repairs to equipment and manufacturing bombs and things, and Tony's being sent there. I didn't even know about it until a couple of days ago. Do you know what I had to do to make sure I could be transferred there with him? I had to literally get down on one knee to ask Arch-Captain Mamitu to transfer me to the new guard detachment there. She made me swear personal fealty to her. Seriously, fealty. Like in Robin Hood. And I thought Cap and Thor were drama queens."
"They have been rumors," Jan said slowly. "We knew they were about to start large scale weapons production, but we don't know where. The Navy guys in Brooklyn found-" she broke off, then, "Clint, how exactly are you planning on staying in contact with me? I have no idea where you're going to be. I only found you the first time by pure luck!"
Clint grinned, feeling a momentary sense of smugness. "I can give you the location." He wasn't about to tell her how he'd learned it, though. Some things, Jan -- and by extension, Cap, and all the others -- didn't need to know.
"Steve's been trying to find out where they were planning on opening that facility for a month," she said quietly. He'd hoped for startled praise, or at least for her to sound visibly impressed, but Jan's voice was dead serious. "It's one of our top three strategic targets. If you can tell us where it is..."
"One Police Plaza."
Jan stared at him in shock, and he added, "It's actually in the police station; I guess they thought it'd be secure." He'd been in there once, when he'd been young and dumb, and when he'd overheard a couple of Argonian guards disgusing the significance of the strange red statue out front, the entire thing had come flooding back. Agreeing to spar with one of the lowest-ranking Argonian guards to give him practice in beating up humans had just confirmed it. It had also been humiliating, because Clint had had to let him win repeatedly in order to keep him in a good mood, while still fighting just well enough to be entertaining. "It's not as big as this facility, not as heavily defended, either. I think they're relying on the fact that almost no one knows the station is there to keep it secure."
"Clint, that's..." She shook her head -- at least, he thought she did, because her hair brushed against his neck. "We haven't managed to take out one of their bases since Penn Station. If you think we have a chance against this one, it would be the biggest blow we've struck since the military operation in Brooklyn blew up Clark Street and Borough Hall." The Clark Street and Borough hall stations were the first stations on most of the subway lines into Brooklyn; rendering them impassible had, combined with the sabotage of the Manhattan Bridge, essentially cut off all subway access to the entire lower half of Brooklyn, massively restricting the Argonians' ability to operate there.
Brooklyn had become almost as unpopular a duty station as Hell's Kitchen, these days. You had to walk around above ground to get anywhere, and military snipers lurked in the upper floors of buildings, waiting to pick Argonian patrols off one by one.
The Resistance was making progress. Clint told himself that every day. Eventually, the Argonians would have to be worn down enough, would have lost enough men, that they would give up and leave. When it came to a war of attrition, after all, humans had six billion people, and the Argonians... well, he didn’t actually know how many of them there were, but it couldn't be more than a couple million. Maybe less than a million. At least a fifth of them were in New York City, and the resident Argonian forces didn't number more than about a hundred thousand. Even with over two thirds of the city gone, humans still had them outnumbered.
Even if only some of those humans were fighting, they were still making progress. He just wasn't sure they were making it fast enough. The clock to inevitable death-by-scurvy was ticking, after all.
"Tell Cap to blow it up soon," he said, "and get us out of there." He hesitated, then added, "I don't know how much longer Tony's going to last." 'I don't know how much longer I'll last,' he added silently.
Just walking outside had made him want to cry. Jan's slight weight against his neck and shoulder felt like the most intimate human contact he'd ever had, so intense it was almost too much. He was tired all the time, a deep ache settling further into his bones by the day, and he'd never quite regained the energy he'd had before going ten rounds with the Argonian's toxins.
"According to Hank, there's a least another month before the two of you will have full-blown scurvy."
Because Hank the biochemist and amateur robot-building Dr. Frankenstein was an expert on fatal diseases nobody got anymore. "A couple of the older scientists already have bleeding gums." One of the human guards had actually lost two teeth already, but he wasn't sure that counted, because it had been right after the Scorpion had hit him in the face with his metal tail during a training session. "And I've had this," he held up his right hand at shoulder level so that Jan could see the angry, red cut across one knuckle, "for two weeks and it hasn't even started to heal." The small gash, a souvenir of a training session with his sword, was red around the edges, and wouldn't close -- it kept re-opening, and Clint was starting to really hope they could get out of here before they reached the "old wounds start re-opening" stage of scurvy, because if that happened, Tony would probably be springing leaks like a sieve.
Jan crawled out from inside his uniform collar and flew over to land on his hand, balancing lightly on the back of it and peering at the injury. Her weight was barely noticeable, but her hands tickled as she traced one along the edge of the cut.
His eyes felt weirdly hot, and he blinked until the feeling went away. "But that isn't what I meant," he went on, trying manfully to suppress the impulse to blush. What the hell was wrong with him?
No one had cared about his cuts or bruises for a very long time, but he'd never been the kind of guy to start bawling just because somebody showed him a little sympathy. Tony, though... Tony had always been desperate for approval. Back in California, he'd stuck around in what Clint had only later figured out was probably an abusive relationship because he'd been so desperate for friendship or sex or whatever he and War Machine had been to each other then, or maybe because he hadn't thought he deserved anything better. It was a bizarre kind of neediness from someone who'd always been so arrogant, but Tony often didn't make sense.
Every time one of the other scientists shut him out or sneered at him, he did that same pathetic little cringe thing he'd done then, drawing in on himself and staring at the floor. He wasn't sure how to explain that to someone who hadn't been there for it, though. If he hadn't seen it for himself, he wasn't sure he'd have believed that Tony Stark, founding member of the Avengers, self-proclaimed genius, billionaire celebrity who could have any woman he wanted, was capable of being so deeply fucked up.
"I think he's starting to get that thing that makes baby monkeys die," Clint finally blurted out.
Jan, who had been peering intently at Clint's cut, looked back up at him, frowning. "That thing that what?"
Clint shrugged. He could feel his face burning. That had sounded stupid even in his own head. "They did this experiment back in the seventies or something, with monkeys. I saw it on the Discovery channel. It was horrible." Just thinking about it, about the grainy film footage of limp, apathetic little monkeys huddled in the corners of barren cement cages, made him feel sick all over again. "They tortured them," he told her. "Nobody ever touched them or loved them or anything, and they went crazy and died. Because they wanted to prove that people needed love or something. They were in these horrible little cages, and they didn't even have toys or get to play with other monkeys or anything." He broke off, realizing belatedly that he'd begun raising his voice. It had happened ages ago, he reminded himself, and it definitely wasn't something worth getting caught and tortured over.
Jan stared up at him, her eyes fixed on his face. "This documentary really upset you, didn't it? I didn't take you for the animal rights activist type."
"They were babies." And they hadn't looked like animals. They'd had faces, and tiny little hands, like human children. "And they were torturing them," he repeated. He looked away, blinking, as his eyes grew hot again. What the hell? He was not going to cry over goddamn monkeys. They were probably all dead now anyway.
Jan's weight vanished from his hand, and then she was standing in front of him, full size, pulling Clint deeper into the shadow of the doorway so that no one outside of a direct line-of-sight could see them, and down into a fierce hug.
Clint went stiff, completely unsure what he was supposed to do. No one had touched him this gently in months, not counting the time he was sick. Even before the Argonians, no one had... Not since Bobbie died.
Clint took a half-step forward, closing his eyes and leaning into Jan. He had to bend down slightly to do it, and then they were kissing.
He had no idea which of them had started it, and he didn't care. Jan felt nice, tasted nice, even smelled nice -- not like chemicals, or metalworking, or the Argonians' strange musty-sweet fur smell.
Then Jan turned her face away, breaking the kiss, and Clint heard himself make a pathetic little sound of protest.
"I shouldn't have done that."
Clint opened his eyes, blinking at Jan. He probably ought to let go of her, he thought, but he couldn't make himself do it. "No," he agreed, hugging her even harder and burying his face in her hair. "Probably not."
"I really shouldn't have done that." Jan's hands closed gently around his wrists, and she began attempting to disentangle herself from his grasp. "Clint, let go."
Clint didn't do anything to women that they didn't want, even hug them, so he released his hold on her and took a couple of steps back, suddenly realizing how cold it was out here in nothing but standard-issue blacks. Argonians never wore winter coats. They didn't need to; they had fur.
Jan wore nothing but skin-tight black and red, covering her from ankles to wrists, and had to be even colder than he was. She stood there, arms wrapped around herself, staring at Clint as if she'd never seen him before.
"I- I have to go now," she blurted out. "I'll tell Cap about the change in location." She started to reach for him, then abruptly pulled her hand back. "We'll get you out, Clint. You and Tony. I promise. Just hold on a little longer, okay?"
Before he could answer, Jan had shrunk down again and was flying away.
Clint stared after her, feeling empty and painfully alone. Painfully stupid, too.
What the hell had that been about? He knew better than to try and put the moves on Jan; she might not actually be married to Hank anymore, but everyone knew that was just a technicality. The two of them were back together again, and even when they weren't, anytime Jan was with somebody else, it was pretty much guaranteed to be just an attempt to make Hank jealous.
He knew that. He did. It was just... he'd wanted someone to touch him so badly, not even really for anything sexual so much as just physical contact with another person. And it had been Jan, the one person other than Tony whom he could talk to and trust, not to mention a woman he'd found attractive since before he was old enough to drink.
It was a good thing he and Tony had to stay on guard and try to look casual around one another, because otherwise Clint would probably be cuddling up to him like he was a teddy bear, and that was something he would never have been able to live down. Tony would either bitch at him or, worse, try kissing him or something the way Clint just had with Jan, and then Clint's misery and humiliation would be complete.
He shouldn't be letting it get to him like this. He'd volunteered for this; going under had been his idea, and he'd insisted on staying with the Argonians over Jan and Cap's protests. And now here he was, clinging to Jan and practically begging her to rescue him.
He was starting to understand bits of Argonian now, could grasp some of the orders Mamitu snapped at him even when there was no one to translate them into English. He was learning their goddamn language. And he was scared stiff at the idea of being moved someplace else tomorrow. Christ, you'd think after months trapped underground in that miserable cave, he'd look forward to a change of scenery, but all he could do was worry. What if Jan couldn't find him again after all? What if they couldn't arrange a meeting place? What if Clint was stationed in some part of the base away from Tony, and both of them ended up entirely on their own? He couldn't leave Tony alone with the Argonians.
No matter how quickly Cap mounted an assault on the police station, it couldn't possibly be soon enough.
She hadn't expected the subway station to be so attractive.
Irkalla herself rarely ventured outside the tight security of Grand Central, but the accounts she had heard of human subway stations from those who had had not been encouraging, to say the least, and the subway cars themselves had born that out, easily living down to expectations.
Mechanikos and human laborers had stripped the filthy floors and original uncomfortable and unattractive plastic seating from the cramped little cars, replacing them with new, clean flooring, and brown and deep maroon leather bench seats that allowed proper room for one's tail. The human advertisements and other trash that had previous adorned the walls had been ripped down, and some especially industrious mechanikos had hammered copper inlay into the metal poles that filled the car's interior, so that each metal pole was wrapped in a loose spiral of script, ranging from quotations from Alulim to stanzas from epic poems.
It helped considerably, but the car was still too small, and the underlying architecture was crude and ugly.
When she stepped out of the car onto the gently curving platform beneath the new scientific installation at City Hall, carefully avoiding the wide gap between car and platform -- the train cars were clearly not designed to properly fit in this particular station -- however, she was pleasantly surprised to find herself standing beneath an arched roof decorated with interlocking tiles in brown, green, and cream. The station was clearly very old, and in some disrepair -- tiles were missing or broken in several places -- but at one time, it must have been truly beautiful. The elaborate glass skylights set into the ceiling were works of art.
The humans had apparently completely closed it down, which made security much easier, since the entrances and exits had all been sealed off. Only one had been re-opened, and six Argonian warriors were standing at attention before it, waiting to escort her above ground and across the open square above into the new engineering and weapons manufacturing installation.
"It is very bold of you to inspect the new facilities personally, Archon," Nergal said smoothly, as he came forward to meet her. "You need not have troubled yourself; Arch-Captain Mamitu or I could have performed the necessary duties easily, without risking exposing you to human attacks."
Irkalla raised her eyebrows. "Are you saying that your soldiers cannot protect me in the brief time it will take to travel from this station to the building?" She indicated the six guards with the end of her tail, the gesture intended to draw attention to her tailbarb. "They look perfectly capable to me. I do not fear attack by humans; what warrior would?"
The end of Nergal's tail began twitching back and forth irritably, but his face and voice remained calm. "Nevertheless, I must urge caution. You are, after all, the last remaining descendant of Alulim."
Was it her imagination, or was there an element of implied threat in that statement? It was not the first time he had brought up her lack of an heir, and while others had mentioned it as well -- including Arch-Captain Kammani -- from his lips, it had sinister overtones that other's words did not. You are the last, it said. Remember how vulnerable you are. How tragic it would be for Argon for Alulim's line to end. Whomever would we find to rule us then?
"There are times when caution is not a virtue, Imperator," she said, walking past him towards the exit. The guards fell into step around her, flanking her on all sides. "Rest assured, I shall not let down my guard."
Nergal had no option but to follow her, of course. Making him scramble up the steps after her was a petty victory, but satisfying nonetheless.
The sunlight outside was blindingly bright, a harsh white glare that made the huge, red thing in the center of the square even uglier. She thought perhaps the large construct of red-painted metal was meant to be some kind of human art -- it certainly served no functional purpose -- but surely the species that had produced the painted ceiling in Grand Central and the tastefully decorated station platform she had just left understood art and was capable of creating it properly. Perhaps it was the product of some human superstition, intended to ward off some form of evil spirit?
The new engineering and weapons installation was another exercise in ugliness, a blocky building that looked as if it had been dropped carelessly where it sat, without regard for whether it belonged with the other buildings on the square or not. It had previously been the command center of a human warrior organization tasked with enforcing the law, which had made implementing appropriate security measure much easier.
The guards stationed at the entrance were a mix of Argonian and human, including one human who proudly wore, not just warrior blacks, but the single copper stud at his collar that marked him as a member of the army's lowest rank. Arch-Captain Kammani had been swift to act upon Irkalla's promise to grant citizenship to deserving humans.
All the guards, humans included, saluted crisply as they approached.
The inside of the building was just as sterile as the outside; the bottom floors had been gutted, and labs, workshops, and maintenance facilities built in place of whatever human things had once been there. Unlike in the subway cars, no attempt had been made to make the surroundings more livable or attractive; most of the workers here would be humans, not Argonians, so it would have been a wasted effort.
They toured the manufacturing facilities first, while a nervous mechanikos, eyes submissively downcast, explained what the various pieces of machinery were for. Irkalla understood less than half of it, but the mechanikos spoke with the air of one who was sure of her knowledge, if intimidated by her audience, so the operation was clearly in competent hands.
Nergal's attention was focused almost solely on the guards and security details, ensuring that the human workers would have no opportunity to commit sabotage, and would not be able to escape, leaving Irkalla free to ask the more important questions, like when the first set of missiles and the replacement aircraft engines would be completed.
The answer, of course, was "not soon enough." And unfortunately, there was little more that could be done to hasten the process.
Still, the awe and pride on the mechanikos's faces when she spoke to them, obviously stunned and pleased that the Archon had visited their stations in person, were more than enough to make her glad she had come. Like everyone else, the Argonians here had lost everything that was dear to them, and been thrust into an unfamiliar and hostile world -- it was vital to remind them that what they were doing was important, that their Archon still cared about them, that their government still functioned, and that they should not give up hope.
It didn't matter that her own faith in their ability to return to Argon was faltering; for her people, for a little while, she could pretend otherwise.
"- a project of vital importance, nin-Irkalla," the russet-furred senior mechanikos responsible for the aircraft engines was saying. "The metal fatigue alone is taking a significant toll on maintenance workers' time. We hope to complete first new engine within the week, now that everything is in place and the main facility has sent us him." He gestured at a human scientist currently standing beside what looked like a pile of metal scraps, but was probably pieces of the engine.
He wasn't particularly impressive -- thin, and short as all humans were -- and his slump-shouldered posture sang of submission and defeat to an extant unusual even for a mechanikos. "Why is this one human of such importance?" she asked.
The mechanikos ducked his head slightly, his ears lowering. "Forgive me, nin-Irkalla. I ought to have explained. He is the one who aided Mechanikos Isimud in drawing the plans for the engine's construction. The humans claim he is a genius, one of their most respected of their mechanikos."
Irkalla gave the human a long, careful second look, but could see no signs of anything particularly special. An Argonian mechanikos would be ashamed to stand in the presence of a warrior -- much less the Archon herself -- with an attitude of such obvious misery and shame. The senior mechanikos had been careful to keep his back straight even when apologizing, no matter how much respect and humility he showed with ears, tail, and downcast eyes.
Even here, even now, Alulim's children were not defeated.
She would have to take heart from that; surely, they could build themselves another empire, wherever they ultimately went, whether out of the ashes of Argon, or on some new world entirely. Preferably an unpopulated one, where they wouldn't have to waste the energies of most of their personnel on pacifying the native population.
Nergal had finished his inspection of the building's security, and was now casting significant glances in her direction, conveying with a meaningful swish of his tail that it was time for her to return to Grand Central where she belonged and leave overseeing their defenses and weapons production to the professionals.
It inspired within her a strong desire to stay much, much longer, and possibly personally interview every single mechanikos in the building, and perhaps even some humans, if any of them spoke a civilized language. However, that would have been childish, and there were matters to see to back at Grand Central.
Irkalla offered Nergal a polite smile, and obediently ended her conversation with the senior mechanikos, crossing the room to stand at Nergal's side like the good little subordinate he so wished to make her.
"Have you completed your inspection, Archon?" he asked, tone as condescending as if he were speaking to a child.
"Yes," she said coolly. "I am quite satisfied." She made a show of looking around the room one final time, taking in the blank, white walls, bare except for a large grey metal panel inset into one of them, the incomprehensible jumble of machine parts, the human scientists still standing stiffly at attention, the mechanikos with their ears tucked down in respect. It was a bleak and depressing room, and she felt a moment's gratitude that Vanderbilt Hall and her own apartments were an entirely different style of human architecture.
For once, walking outside into the painful glare was actually a relief, though nowhere near as much of a relief as walking out of the glare and into the soothing dimness of the subway platform again.
"You were correct about the benefit to moral," Nergal commented, as the two of them boarded the subway car once more. "But it was still a foolhardy risk to take. The humans grow ever bolder, and our situation ever more precarious."
Keeping the contempt off her face took effort. So he was now willing to admit to how desperate their tactical situation was, was he? What a shame this change of heart hadn't come months ago. "I have often said so," she murmured, instead. "I did not expect to hear it from you, however."
"Situations change, and strategies must change with them."
"Indeed." She raised her eyebrows, ears cocked at an angle of polite interest. "I take it you have a change of strategy in mind? Your previous efforts to deal with the situation have met with such success."
His eyes narrowed, but he otherwise kept his composure. "The army has been receiving... conflicting messages of late. They require a strong leader."
"How fortunate, then, that they have you."
His left ear twitched, and he continued, voice serious. "The Empire has always needed strong leaders in times of crisis, since the days of the great Alulim himself. It is what keeps us victorious, even in defeat."
She recognized the work he was paraphrasing, of course. Every well educated Argonian would have. "Ahassunu's treatise on the second Scandian war. It is a brilliant piece of political theory for its time, if somewhat dated."
"There are certain measures that have proven successful in similar situations in the past. When the Tantalans attacked and occupied Argon's lunar colonies-"
"You want to declare a military emergency and make yourself the head of state in my place," she stated bluntly, interrupting. There was an ancient provision in Argonian law that allowed the head of the military to assume control of the empire in times of dire peril, provided the head of the military and the Archon were not already one and the same. Alulim himself had risen to power in such a fashion, first assuming leadership of all of the newborn empire's armies and only later becoming the first Archon, in the wake of his victory at Munawirtum.
"Only temporarily, nin-Irkalla," he said calmly, for once using the proper honorific. "Only so long as the resistance continues to escalate. Once the rebels had been pacified, I would of course step down and hand power back over to you."
"The appointment of an Imperator as temporary dictator requires a unanimous vote by the advisory council, something that is, unfortunately, impossible at the present time," impossible, because the entire council was dead, two of them very probably at Nergal's hand. "It also requires that I willingly surrender power to you."
"Ah, but you forget, Archon. With the rest of your advisors dead, I am your advisory council. And as such I have given you my advice."
'And how long would I live,' she wondered, 'once I took it?'
She had toyed with the idea that Nergal wished for her to make him her consort in order to rule through their child, but it appeared that she had erred in underestimating the extant of his ambitions. He did not simply wish to make her or her hypothetical offspring his puppet; he wished to replace her and rule in his own right.
If she stepped aside -- "temporarily," of course -- and let Nergal rule in her stead, then with the council gone, it required only her death for him to rule completely unopposed. And with the line of Alulim ended forever, the empire would require a new Archon, a new dynasty.
She dropped her gaze to the vertical pole that stood beside her seat, trying to think of an appropriate response. 'Destroying an Empire to win a war is no victory,' the flowing copper characters proclaimed, 'And ending a battle to save an Empire is no defeat.'
Even were her own life not at stake, Nergal's leadership would destroy them all in the end.
"If circumstances were not dire enough to warrant such a measure during out flight from Argon, I do not think they are so now. Unless you truly believe us to be in worse case now then we were then?" Which was something Nergal could not say without admitting that his decision to invade and occupy Earth had been wrong, something that he would never admit at any time, and certainly not within the hearing of his soldiers.
She could not help casting a glance at the black-uniformed soldiers stationed at either end of the car, who had suddenly taken on a much more threatening aspect. How hard would Nergal's handpicked subordinates truly defend if it came to a human attack? Perhaps she would find herself fighting her own people as well as the rebels if such an eventually occurred.
"I would not describe it thus," he said, and she thought she detected a note of discomfort in his voice. "Our situation is not as desperate as it was then, but that does not mean the strong guidance of an experienced military leader would not improve it."
"How fortunate, then, that of the rest of my council, you remain. To offer me your," she hesitated for a fraction of a second, "guidance. You have complete command of the army, Imperator. That ought to be sufficient to accomplish what must be done."
'There is no victory without combat.' Wise words indeed, Irkalla reflected. They had been true when Alulim had first spoken them over a thousand years ago, and time had not diminished that truth.
She had defined victory, initially, as the rebuilding of their Empire. Now, she was more inclined to see it as simply survival, and Nergal stood in the path of both goals, for her people and herself.
There was no victory without combat, and there was no combat without an enemy. And Nergal, she had come to realize, was as much an enemy as any member of the human resistance, or those who had driven them out of Argon.
' I will defend my authority against all challenges,' ran the oath she had sworn upon assuming the mantle of Archon, 'bear the honor and shame of my command upon my own shoulders, and fight to the death against any who would seek to destroy Argon.'
Enemies of the Argonian Empire, by necessity, had a very short life expectancy.
Even after months of Argonian occupation, it still felt unnatural to do one's sneaking around in broad daylight, especially at full size.
Wanda, on the other hand, seemed completely at ease with the entire situation. But then, she had been doing this far more often than Jan had. Every time Jan had approached an Argonian stronghold before, she had been small enough to be nearly invisible. This time, she was relying entirely on Wanda's powers to shield them both from discovery.
The two of them were currently standing in front of One Police Plaza, while Wanda, her head cocked slightly to one side, stared up at the giant modernist sculpture someone had planted in the middle of the sidewalk.
"I think I like it," she said, after a long moment had passed. "It's very colorful."
"You like it?" Jan blinked, and turned to stare up at Wanda. "No one likes modern civic art. That's the whole point of it." That wasn't precisely true, of course, but as far as she remember from the art history class she'd had to take while studying design, being aesthetically pleasing had not necessarily been one of modernist or minimalist sculpture's major goals, particularly during the seventies. The giant piece of plop art harmonized oddly well with the blocky, brutalist building that had once housed the NYPD's headquarters, though. One Police Plaza had been deliberately designed to be ugly, which made the fact that it was now home to an Argonian weapons manufacturing plant all the more fitting.
Clint was in there now, and Tony. For the first time since this entire mess began, the possibility of a rescue was within reach; no matter how many guards Jan and Wanda found here, how many security checkpoints and alarms, it was still vastly more accessible than the underground prison the Argonians had been keeping Tony in.
If all else failed, they could always simply blast their way in. Walls did very little to stop Angelica these days, and they'd never been much of an obstacle to Ben Grimm in a bad mood.
"I'm going to take a closer look at the entrance," Jan announced. She took a step to the side, so that Wanda's body was between her and the front of the building, before shrinking down. Wanda had placed a hex over both of them intended to divert the guards' attention away from them, but she wasn't sure it would hold up against the sight of a woman shrinking down to the size of a bug.
"Check the windows, too," Wanda said, turning away from the sculpture to focus on Jan's hovering form. "The best way in isn't always the front door."
Jan shrugged, exaggerating the motion to make sure it was visible. "When you're my size, the best way in is usually the keyhole in the front door."
Wanda's lips -- giant now -- twitched for a fraction of a second, and then she was serious again. "There are perimeter guard posts all around the building, and I think they may have more people stationed in City Hall Park, hiding somewhere in all those trees. Cap wants everyone's location."
"I can-" Jan started.
"The distraction spell works better when it's just me," Wanda cut in. "One of the benefits of working alone."
Her last few missions had been solo, Jan remembered, which struck her as slightly odd, given that most of Wanda's previous missions had been carried out with Carol or Spiderman along for the ride. "Twenty minutes," she said. "I'll meet you back at the sculpture."
There were two guards stationed at the front entrance, and she could see more inside, visible through the windows. The layout of the lobby had been entirely altered, and she found herself wishing once again for the ability to shrink objects; photographs would have been invaluable. One of the many former NYPD officers in the Resistance had worked here, before, but his memories of the building's layout were clearly no longer going to be accurate. She would just have to describe it as best she could, when Steve debriefed her.
She had never quite realized how useful Clint's information on Argonian troop movements, defenses, and guard rotations was until they didn’t have access to it anymore.
Clint...
Clint was inside there, somewhere, maybe only a few hundred feet away. After over a week without seeing him, she couldn't entirely suppress the worry nagging at the corners of her mind. Was he all right? Was Tony all right? Had one of the Argonians scratched them with its tailbarb again? Had they been caught? Were they even still in contact with one another in this new building, or was each of them entirely alone?
She wasn't sure either of them could handle being alone, not under the circumstances. Not anymore.
Clint had been oddly subdued the last time she'd spoken to him, barely smiling. There had been a slump to his shoulders, and his eyes had been ringed with dark circles that had been there ever since he'd been poisoned. And his eyes themselves ... they had reminded her uneasily of the way Tony had looked standing in Grand Central's main concourse, his face turned to the sunlight. Like a starving man in the presence of food and afraid to let himself eat.
And the kiss... he'd clung to her like he was trying to bury himself in her body. That was familiar, too, both from Tony, during their brief, ill-advised fling, and from Hank, at his most depressed and desperate.
How much longer would either of them last if she couldn't get them out?
Jan leaned against one of the third floor windows, pressing her hands and face against the glass in an attempt to see a wide a slice of the room as possible. The glass was cold against her fingers.
Inside the room, a handful of humans were working on what looked like an engine, under the supervision of two Argonian mechanikos and a human guard. Clint and Tony were nowhere in sight. No one she recognized was, except for the guard, who even without his green costume was unmistakably the Scorpion. In black, with his cybernetic tail curled up over his shoulder, he looked like a poor imitation of an Argonian.
She supposed working for the Argonians didn't require much self-justification if your previous employer had been the Kingpin.
If only she were able to get inside, she'd be able to map the layout of the building. As it was, they were going to be going in, not blind, but the next thing to it. At Penn Station, they'd had building plans to work with, know the ins and outs of the building, the dead ends, the potential escape routes. And that had been a train station, designed for easy ingress and egress, not a police station with a vested interest in keeping unauthorized people out of sensitive areas.
One of the mechanikos began to slowly stroll around the room, drawing perilously near the window, and Jan had to duck sideways and tuck herself against the wall of the building until he had passed.
She couldn't afford to hang around here any longer, regardless of whether or not she'd gotten all the information they needed; Wanda's distraction hex was no longer covering her, and every moment she spent peering in windows increased her chances of being caught. All it would take was someone looking her way at the wrong moment.
She took her time flying back to the sculpture, flying low through the cluster of leafless trees that surrounded the building, letting the bare branches shield her from view. By the time she reached the giant, red structure, Wanda was already there waiting for her.
"There are twelve guards stationed around the building, in pairs," Wanda said, by way of greeting, "and a half-dozen more in the park, all alone. They're sure to have a way to call up reinforcements, though."
Jan returned to full size, letting the bulk of the sculpture shield her from sight as she did so, and shrugged on the heavy wool overcoat Wanda handed her, hiding her costume from view. As the two of them walked -- slowly, casually -- out of the square and down Park Row, she gave Wanda a brief description of everything she'd observed.
"It's funny," she concluded. "I kept expecting to see Clint everywhere I looked. It feels wrong to leave without talking to him; that's usually the whole point of these things."
Wanda's step faltered for a second, and she cast a hopeful glance at Jan. "Did you see him?"
Jan shook her head. "No. I didn't see Tony either. I hope they're okay." A cold gust of wind blew past them, whipping her hair into her face; she pulled the coat around herself a little more tightly. "I don't like going this long without hearing from them."
"No," Wanda agreed. "I think not knowing is the worst part."
They walked the next several blocks in silence, until they were far enough away to be out of the danger zone. They were almost back to the hotel when Wanda spoke again.
"Can I ask you something?"
"About what?"
"Carol is..." Wanda looked away, staring at the ground. "I think she's scared of me now."
Carol was... that didn't make any sense. Wanda was more in control of her powers right now than she had been in a long time. Jan frowned. It also didn't sound like Carol. "Carol isn't scared of anything, including things she should be scared of."
Wanda shook her head. "That's not true," she said, sounding almost rueful. "She's afraid of losing her powers, of getting turned away again, of being controlled..." her voice had gone tight and strange, and she hesitated for a second before adding, "all kinds of things."
"Really? She always seems so confident." Which probably sounded as silly as it was; Jan had enough experience with models, designers, and minor celebrities to know that a confident -- even arrogant -- attitude could serve as a mask for a bottomless pit of insecurity. Carol didn't seem like the type, though; most of the painfully insecure women Jan knew based their entire self-worth on how small a clothing size they could fit into and whether their picture -- or a picture of their designs -- made it into Vogue.
"Well, she's not," Wanda said, "any more than Tony or Hank actually are, but that's not the point. She's... I may have made a very big mistake." She bit her lip, silent for a moment, then blurted out, "She and Jessica Drew really were just friends, weren't they?"
Wanda had been there in California after Hank and Tony had both completely fallen apart. Jan still felt guilty about the fact that she hadn't been, that it had taken Hank accidentally hospitalizing himself via spider venom before they had spoken face to face again. It was stupid -- she knew it hadn't been her fault, that she'd had no choice but to leave, that staying with him would only have made things worse -- but she couldn't kill the little bit of doubt that whispered that maybe she could have prevented some of it if she'd done something when she had first realized how much of a mess Hank was. People didn't suddenly begin acting like entirely different people -- erratic and out-off-control different people -- without a reason. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that something was very wrong.
If he found out about Clint, he would think it was his fault, that she had wanted to punish him somehow, or that she wanted to end things again.
Wait, Wanda had said something about Carol and Jessica Drew... "She and-- what? What else would they be?"
"I thought they were involved," Wanda muttered, very quietly. "I thought she was interested in me. So I, ah, kissed her. Then she left me behind in the middle of a mission, and hasn't spoken to me since."
Jan stared at her. "You're bisexual?" It was probably the least important aspect of the whole thing, and she knew she sounded like an idiot, but, "Since when?"
"Since always." Wanda gestured sharply with one gloved hand. "That's not the point."
"You never said anything."
"I'm a half-Romany, half-Jewish mutant who used to be married to a robot. I try to avoid collecting new labels at this point. I've already experienced the joy of men telling me that I ought to find out what it's like 'with a real man.'"
Jan's lips twitched in a smile that had nothing to do with amusement, as she and Wanda shared a silent, knowing look.
Then Wanda turned her face away again, sighing. "Jan, what do I do? Every relationship I've had has gone down in flames; I don't know how to fix this, if I should apologize, or pretend it never happened, or something else. You and Hank have gotten through so much. What do you think?"
"I think I'm the last person who should be giving out relationship advice right now, considering that the last time I saw Clint, I kissed him." It wasn't funny, but she couldn't help laughing a little anyway. "Ill-advised kisses seem to be in vogue at the moment."
Wanda blinked, her eyebrows arching up. "Why? I thought you and Hank were-"
"I don't know," she interrupted. "We are. Clint was just so lonely, and sad, and, and it feels like half of what I do these days is worry about him, and I guess I thought it might... I don't know what I was thinking. I'm not even really sure if I'm the one who started it, but I didn't stop it, and that's all that really matters. How could I have been so stupid? Hank would be crushed if he found out -- he'd be convinced I wanted to break things off again. And Clint," she shook her head, "I don't know what he wants. I'm not sure it was actually about me at all."
"What do you mean, not about you?"
"He was just standing there, clinging to me. Like a little kid with a teddy bear." As she said it, she wondered, not for the first time, what the Argonians were really doing to him. She knew there were things about his mission that he wasn't telling her, details he was leaving out in an attempt to keep her from worrying or avoid sounding less-than-macho, and clearly those things were starting to wear him down.
Wanda frowned. "That doesn't sound like Clint. Clint isn’t needy like that."
Jan raised her eyebrows. "What do you mean, isn't needy? This is Clint we're talking about." Clint thrived on attention, positive or negative, especially female attention.
"Having sad crushes on your female teammates isn't the same as being needy."
Which was slightly mean, Jan reflected, but not untrue.
"Clint lashes out when he's upset," Wanda went on, "he doesn't cling to people. After Bobbi died, he tried to close people out; he didn't do anything like this." She hesitated for a moment, sighing again. "If Clint's in bad shape, Tony must be in even worse shape. He's not as stable as Clint."
"No," Jan agreed, and felt guilty, suddenly for the fact that she was spending so much energy worrying about her relationship with Hank and the fact that Clint had kissed her instead of worrying about the war and Clint and Tony's lives. "He's not. I don't know what you should do about Carol. I don't know what I should do either. I'm not sure it's even that important right now. The Argonians could kill one of us, or all of us, tomorrow."
Wanda shook her head, smiling a little. "You're right. I just don't want to lose anyone else, especially not now. I wish I knew how Cap does it. He always manages to stay focused on the important things, no matter what's going on around him."
In truth, Jan was almost as worried about Steve as she was about Tony and Clintand Hank, whom it felt like she never stopped worrying about. He might be focused, but she wasn't sure it was a good or healthy kind of focus. "Has he talked to you about anything other than tactics since Vance was killed?"
"Not really," Wanda admitted after a moment, "no."
Jan nodded. "I didn’t think so."
Wanda shrugged one shoulder, and pushed a piece of windblown hair out of her eyes. "I know, but I like to pretend that someone in our organization isn't terrified that we'll lose everything we have."
"Well, we're not going to lose Clint and Tony." Because they hadn't yet, and she refused to even let herself entertain the thought that they would. If Clint could survive being poisoned with barely any medical attention, and Tony could survive having his heart filleted by shrapnel, they could live through anything. "They're not hundreds of feet underground anymore. We're getting them out of there if we have to blow the place apart."
"It's odd that you should mention that," and Wanda's smile looked real for the first time today, "because according to what he has told me, that's basically what Cap has in mind."
Jan found herself smiling back, more pleased than she had ever been at the prospect of destroying something. "Good."
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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Also, needy!Clint crying about baby monkeys and clinging to Jan? ;_; As Wanda acknowledges, it's not quite in-character for him, but DAMN if it doesn't work for this fic. Also, I like how they realize that Tony's probably in even worse shape.
But does this mean that the long-awaited breakout is next chapter? :DD Huzzah!
(Great job, by the way, sorry for not reviewing sooner. You deserve more compliments. For reals.)
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(You're the first person to tell me that they've recognized the reference, so you really just made me really happy. :) )
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You should have seen my face when I recognised it. All huh, I know that and then "HOLY FUCK!!! It was only a LIME..."
So, so glad I was home alone at that point.
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Please, please have someone give Tony a hug soon. I'm not sure how much longer my heart can take it.
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Woot! Battle!
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Keeps me at the edge of my seat and worrying about everyone, even about the enemy with Isimud and Irkalla.
Can't wait for the next part.
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Oh, i liked that detail of the Argonians being unable to tell the humans apart, just going by hair colors.
I loved Wanda and Jan's talk, their different views of their teammates. Jan thinking Carol is so confident and fearless (lol) and then Wanda not seeing Clint's neediness. and them both agreeing Tony's a little screwed up (lolol). Also it was nice getting a peek into Wanda's head about the whole Carol freaking situation.
"Good."
iawtfc, some aliens need to get blown sky high.
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First, poor everyone. They should be rationing hugs along with the sugar and salt.
Also, I really admire authors who can create interesting original characters. A lot of times I end up scrolling past sections that include them, just because I'm not usually there to read about them. I'm there for the canon folks and their antics. That said, I love what you've done with the Argonians. You developed them so slowly they slipped under the radar, and now I find myself muttering along with Irkalla, waiting for the opportunity for her to smack some Nergal around. So well done!
Can't wait to see where this goes. ^_^
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And I thought Cap and Thor were drama queens.
I had to LOL. *g*
and Clint was starting to really hope they could get out of here before they reached the "old wounds start re-opening" stage of scurvy, because if that happened, Tony would probably be springing leaks like a sieve.
Oh, God, that shouldn't be a funny mental image, but it really is! *giggling helplessly* Poor Tony. He's been poked so full of holes it's ridiculous.
"I think he's starting to get that thing that makes baby monkeys die," Clint finally blurted out.
This whole bit just struck me as so very Clint. It's from the Discovery Channel, and he hasn't exactly articulated the connection in a brilliant scientific way, but it's the right connection, and he really cares. I suspect he wouldn't show how upset it made him, except that he's pretty damn hurt and worn down, too. All his defenses are being rasped away and Jan is safe.
Clint took a half-step forward, closing his eyes and leaning into Jan. He had to bend down slightly to do it, and then they were kissing.
*facepalm*
I understand why he does it, why they both do it, but oh, that's just not going to go anywhere good.
She thought perhaps the large construct of red-painted metal was meant to be some kind of human art -- it certainly served no functional purpose -- but surely the species that had produced the painted ceiling in Grand Central and the tastefully decorated station platform she had just left understood art and was capable of creating it properly. Perhaps it was the product of some human superstition, intended to ward off some form of evil spirit?
You made me so curious I had to google and see what this thing looked like and try to figure out what it was supposed to mean or represent. I came up dry, too. *g*
I probably shouldn't like Irkalla as much as I do, but I can't help it. She's smart.
I liked Jan and Wanda's conversation a lot, and I'm a bit worried about Carol at this point. Well, everyone, but we haven't seen Carol in a bit. (Or Steve and Tony, but I'm biased there. *g*)