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cap_ironman2009-04-11 03:12 pm
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2009-04-11 03:12 pm
When the Lights Go On Again 16/20
Title: When the Lights Go On Again 16/20
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: This chapter contains references to torture.
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.
A/N #1: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.
A/N #2: I'm sorry to say, but for the duration of April, we're going to have to revert to posting every other week, so that we can work on our Big Bang fic. Since we hate to do that, if anyone wants to drabble-prompt me, I'll try to write you someting short.
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 left Tony alone for what felt like several hours.
The cell was dark, but not completely pitch black. After a few minutes, his eyes adjusted, and the tiny lines of light from the narrow grill set high up in the cell's door gave him just enough illumination to see the dim outline of his shackled hands, and the cramped dimensions of his cell.
It was an awful lot like Afghanistan, with the exception that this time, he wasn't injured and in pain. Yet.
Tony sat on the concrete floor, his hands in his lap -- he could do little else with them, thanks to the restraints -- and tried to distract himself from what he knew was coming.
He spent the first hour doing a mental over-view of the new redesign for his armor, the suit he'd spent the past several months designing and finessing, the one he was going to build himself if by some lucky chance he survived this.
He spent the second hour thinking about Steve, and the hours after that. Not the sex -- he was saving those memories for later, when he might need them more. He thought of Steve's letters, of the handful of sentences he'd managed to memorize from them. Of the look on Steve's face when Tony had said goodbye to him at the hotel. Of sparring with Steve, both physically, during training sessions, and verbally at Avengers meetings. Of fighting next to Steve, during the escape from One Police Plaza and all the times before that.
He was in the middle of remembering the party they'd had after they'd defeated Kang the Conqueror for the first time, only two weeks after Steve had first joined the team -- he'd spent almost every off-duty hour reading achieved issues of the New York Times that first month, and Tony had had to haul him away from the computer where he was unsuccessfully trying to use a CD-ROM of digitized newspaper clippings Tony had made for him in order to get him to attend -- when his cell door opened and an Argonian officer stepped in.
Tony stayed motionless, refusing to look up or otherwise acknowledge the alien's presence. They would make him talk eventually, he knew, but he wasn't about to make it easy for them. Wait until the interrogation got serious, until the pain started, and then he could 'break,' give them the story he and Hank had worked out to distract them from the fact that the delivery mechanism for the poison was the water. If he made it too easy, they wouldn't believe him, and they were smart enough that they just might discover what was happeing on their own if their attentions weren't directed elsewhere.
They would get the truth story out of him, too, eventually, but he had to make sure he lasted long enough that that wouldn't matter.
Thirty-six hours. He just had to hold out for thirty-six hours.
"Tony Stark. You were believed to have been killed. What explanation do you have for your desertion?"
Tony's head snapped up, and he blinked at the warrior in surprise. English. She was speaking English.
It was Arch-Captain Kammani, he saw, not Mamitu, whose jurisdiction escaped human prisoners ought to have fallen under.
"I didn't think any of you knew English," he blurted out.
"The ability to speak your language has proven useful," she said mildly.
I'll bet it has, Tony thought. Steve had been wondering where the Argonians had been getting their intelligence; Tony would have placed a not insignificant bet that he was speaking to the head of their intelligence network now. A warrior who spoke English would be perfectly position to gather information on the Resistance -- not only would the human guards be willing to speak to her, she could collect information whatever information the mechanikos gained from the captive or volunteer scientist, as well as information forced from random people on the street.
Still... Argonian military rank and matters of jurisdiction were very strict, and Tony already fell within another officer's area of responsibility, valuable information source or not. "Where is Arch-Captain Mamitu? Shouldn't interrogating me be her job?"
"Arch-Captain Mamitu is dead. And you still have not answered my question."
Dead? A smile would have been inappropriate, and it took real strength of will to keep one off his face. She must have died in the escape, possibly when the building burned. "The rebels captured me," he said, trying to make it sound as if it had been a traumatic experience rather than the best twelve hours of his life. "They made me leave with them. It took hours to free myself - they had me under guard."
Her ears swiveled forward, and her huge, black eyes stared at him intently. "The rebels do not take prisoners. Why would they make an exception for you?" She was limping, the bulk of bandages visible under her black uniform. Had she been present during the escape? Damn it, that would make this harder. How much did she already know?
"They used to be friends of mine, Arch-Captain. They were reluctant to kill me."
She considered him for a moment, her tail swaying gently back and forth. Staring up at her looming over him was starting to make his neck ache. "I would like to believe you," she said. "I have been assured of your loyalty by a very trustworthy source. However, I cannot take that risk."
Tony assured her of his loyalty again, for good measure, feeling almost sickened by how easily groveling to Argonians came to him now. "Their fight is futile," he told her. "They have nothing to gain by resisting the Empire. Why would I go back to them?"
"Why indeed?" Kammani asked, the end of her tail flicking gently back and forth. "If you wish to prove your continued loyalty, you may start by telling me everything you know about the attack at the weapons facility. Leave nothing out."
So Tony told her. He told her about the explosions, about the power for the building being knocked out -- neglecting to mention that he had caused said power outage himself -- about the way "the rebels" had come sweeping in with assault rifles and caused as much destruction as possible. He left out everything he and Clint had done, of course, and as much information about the Avengers' specific powers and numbers as he could.
She asked several more questions, making it obvious that she knew at least one of the guards had been a traitor, and, wincing inwardly with self-disgust, Tony gave her Schultz and the Rhino. They were free, out of danger, and the Rhino's betrayal in particular would have been too obvious for the Argonians to have missed. You don't miss a seven-foot grey behemoth charging at you and trampling you flat.
When he had finished, Kammani nodded, her expression pleased. Then she said, "And now you will tell me everything you know about the rebels. Your impression of their numbers. The weapons you saw them carrying. Their special abilities. The location of their hideout."
Damn it. He'd known this was coming. "They knocked me out when they captured me," he evaded. "I woke up tied to a chair and blindfolded, I don't know where. Only two of them every spoke to me."
"You escaped and found your way back here. You must know the route you followed to get here."
He shook his head, then winced and touched his hand to his bruised face. "I wish I did. I was still dazed from the blow to the head at first. I don't even know how I managed to escape."
Her eyes narrowed speculatively. "How can you be sure they didn't simply let you go? That you weren't allowed to return here for some purpose of their own?"
"I don't." He tried to make it sound like a grudging admission, like confessing it pained him. "I can't. I just knew I had to come back. I knew I would be safe from them here."
A blatant lie, of course, but maybe the irony would distract her from wondering too hard about Steve's location.
"From them, yes. Unfortunately, not from us. For your sake, I hope you are telling the truth." It was spooky. She actually sounded sincere.
"What would lying gain me?" Tony asked, not bothering to keep the fear he felt out of his voice. Focus on me, he begged silently, on whether or not you can trust me. Forget about them. "I know what you do to scientists who lie. To traitors. Why would I come back if I was one?"
"Your species is not incapable of valor. If you were truly on the rebels' side, and believed you could help them gain some advantage by sacrificing yourself-"
"They think I'm a traitor," he interrupted, wanting to cut that line of inquiry off as quickly as possible. "They wouldn't take my help even if I were stupid enough to offer it."
Kammani's ears went back, and it was only then that Tony realized, with a sinking sensation, that he had just interrupted an Argonian. Worse, a highly-ranked Argonian warrior. Months of practice at being carefully and pointedly subservient had apparently been completely erased by a few hours with his teammates.
Kammani's blow was so quick that he didn’t see it coming, had no chance to prepare himself for it the way he had with Steve.
There was an instant of star-shot darkness when he hit the floor, knocked backwards by the force of the blow, and then Tony was blinking dizzily at the metal ceiling and wondering vaguely how he was going to sit up again with his arms bound like this. Sitting up using just his stomach muscles, he decided, was going to hurt, given the way his ribs ached.
"You will show proper respect when you speak to me," Arch-Captain Kammani said, in a surprisingly gentle voice. "I don't want to have to do that again."
"No," Tony said, trying to blink the remainder of the dizziness away, "definitely don't want that." He couldn't help smiling a little -- of all the things to get hit for, talking out of order was probably the silliest and most innocuous reason you could ask for. Which didn't mean it hadn’t hurt, or that pulling himself back up into a seated position didn't send a sharp twinge of pain though his side.
"My apologies, Arch-Captain," he managed, when he was sitting upright again. "I meant no disrespect."
There was a moment of silence, and then the questioning resumed, Kammani apparently having decided to accept the apology. "Even if you do not know their location or numbers, you can at least provide us with more information regarding their abnormal abilities. I am surprised my predecessor never sought such information from you, considering your past connection with them."
What was he supposed to say to that? Telling them the truth was out of the question -- any piece of information about the Avengers' powers or fighting abilities was a weapon they could use against them -- but silence would be too suspicious. If he were truly cooperative, he would tell them everything he knew.
Maybe he could lie? No, they had seen at least some of his teammates' powers at work. Kammani already knew some of the answers she was asking for, and without knowing how much information she already possessed, Tiny couldn't spin a credible lie.
Mamitu, Tony was fairly certain, had been only vaguely aware of his existence, and had considered him interchangeable with all the other scientists. He had been grateful for it; questions about his relationship with the Avengers would have made it much harder to maintain his cover. However, it wasn't until this moment that he'd realized just how much of a blessing her indifference had been.
Kammani obviously had a level of patience that Mamitu lacked -- the other Arch-Captain would have been beating answers out of him by now, which was what he'd been prepared for. What could he tell her? What-
"I asked you a question, Tony Stark. How much do you know about your former associates' combat abilities?"
Betraying Steve -- betraying them all -- was out of the question. Death would be better than that.
Since his cover was about to be blown no matter what he did, Tony decided, he might as well go with snide and unhelpful. It had always worked wonders with the Mandarin.
"Sorry," he said, offering Kammani the widest grin his bruised and swollen face could manage. "Can't help you there."
Her eyes narrowed, and one ear flicked back. "Wrong answer," she said.
***
The cell she was locked in was exactly ten feet long and six feet wide, just enough room to Wanda to pace back and forth. She had been locked in smaller places before. Darker places, too -- at least this cell had a little grating in the door that let a tiny glow of violet light in.
The Argonians must not realize how complete darkness affected most humans; otherwise, she was sure, the cell would have been pitch black.
There were sanitary facilities in one corner, but beyond that her metal prison was completely barren and empty. No bed, not even a blanket. Just metal walls and a bare concrete floor.
She wouldn't have minded that, or the dim light, or even the fact that the only food they gave her was some kind of tasteless mush -- and only twice a day at that, so that she was always hungry -- if only she could still access her powers.
The Argonians had clearly designed this cell with her in mind; the force shield around it cut her off from her chaos power as if it had never been, as if she were only a normal human. She would dearly love to know how they had known enough about the exact nature of her powers to be able to block them.
She had been in here for nearly a week, and that time, not one of her captors had entered her cell or even spoken with her through the door. Twice a day, they flipped the grill in the door up and thrust food and water through it, but even then, they remained silent. She had tried to speak to them, but none of them ever answered.
They wouldn't tell her where Pietro was. They wouldn't tell her what they wanted from her.
She had expected to be interrogated, even tortured. Instead, she was ignored.
She had finally realized, from the excessive care shown by the visibly skittish guards when they fed her, that they were afraid of her. Who knew what they thought of her powers; Argonians didn't seem to have anything comparable to mutants, and she had no idea whether or not they believed in magic.
Maybe they had just heard about what she had done to the Argonian patrol in the warehouse district. That would be enough to make anyone fear her.
At first, she had expected to be dragged out of her cell and executed at any moment -- they didn't want information from her, so why else would they be keeping her around if not to stage some kind of bloody public execution? -- but by the fourth day, she was starting to doubt that, as well.
The best explanation she could come up with was that they were using her as bait, hoping to lure the other Avengers into a trap.
It wouldn't work, of course, not as long as they kept her under Grand Central. Even Steve wouldn't try to storm the Argonians' main stronghold for the sake of two people; if he had been, they would have had Clint and Tony out months ago.
When the door opened, on the sixth day, the sudden flood of light was almost blinding.
Wanda climbed slowly to her feet, blinking in the harsh violet glare, determined that she would not meet her executioners on her knees.
The violet glow of the shield covered the entire doorway. Standing just beyond it was an Argonian warrior, with a smaller, grey-clad Argonian hovering respectfully at his elbow.
She wanted to scream at them, to throw herself at them and tear them apart with her bare hands. To make them tell her what they had done to her brother. But there would have been no point to it; if it was possible for her get through the shield, they wouldn't be standing so confidently there on the other side of it, with the door wide open.
"Gentlemen," she said, offering them her best smile. "To what do I owe this honor? I thought you had forgotten about me."
Don't wait for them to speak first, Steve had told her once. Take control of the conversation if you can.
He had taught her more over the years than just how to fight.
The Argonian warrior snarled something, and the smaller Argonian stepped forward slightly and said, in surprisingly good if accented English, "You will address the Imperator with respect."
The Imperator. First they ignored her for nearly a week and then they sent their military dictator to speak to her personally. Wanda raised her eyebrows. "And if I don't?" she asked.
"Then he will kill you," it said. "I suggest you be respectful."
Wanda blinked. Was that humor? From an Argonian?
The Imperator said something else, his tone less of a snarl but still sharp with contempt. He was massive, nearly seven feet tall, and his black uniform was festooned with copper braiding. He was nowhere near as impressive looking as Kang, Wanda told herself. Nowhere near as powerful, either. Really, how frightening was an intergalactic warlord who couldn't even time-travel?
"The Imperator wants to know what your people have done," the translator said.
"Defended our planet." She didn't know which specific piece of Resistance activity they were referring to, but that pretty much covered everything.
The Imperator's eyes narrowed, and he said something cold and brief.
"This planet belongs to the Argonian Empire now," the translator informed her. "Answer the Imperator's question, before he becomes angry. You do not want him to treat you the way he did the other human."
Wanda's stomach lurched. "Which other human?" she asked.
The Imperator's ears perked up in a pleased fashion when the translator relayed this. "We have already questioned your companion, the unnaturally swift one. He chose not to speak to us. Perhaps you will be wiser."
He gave the translator an order, and the smaller Argonian produced a metal box from within his grey lab coat and handed it to him.
The Imperator opened the box and angled it toward Wanda, letting her see what was inside it.
A severed human finger.
It was a man's finger, pale and bloodless and anonymous. It could have belonged to anyone.
She knew it was Pietro's.
'I will not be sick,' she told herself. 'I will not be sick.'. She couldn't let them see how much the sight of her brother's mutilated finger upset her -- they had cut it off of him; that was a piece of Pietro in that box -- or they would try to use it to their advantage, use it as an excuse to torture him further.
"Lovely," she managed, after a moment. She could hear her voice shaking. "Are you going to cut off my fingers if I don't tell you what you want to know?"
The translator shook his head. "That would mean lowering the shield, and we know better than to make that mistake."
The Imperator spoke once more, and the translator's ears twitched. He added, "If you do not answer his questions, the Imperator will have another of your companion's fingers cut off. Then another. Then he proceed to larger pieces. Then, if you still prove uncooperative, you will be executed. Both of you."
Wanda swallowed, feeling cold and sick. In that moment, she hated them -- hated all the Argonians -- so much that if it hadn't been for the shield between them, she would have triggered an explosion in the Imperator's plasma gun and let them both go up in a nuclear fireball. "What do you want to know?' she asked quietly.
The translator regarded her steadily, his ears low and his tail drooping to coil around his feet. He didn’t look happy. He couldn't possibly be as unhappy as Wanda was. "Over the past several hours, both warriors and mechanikos have been stricken with an unidentified illness. It strikes everyone alike -- warrior as well as mechanikos, the healthy as well as the wounded and ill -- and leaves them terribly weakened. Several have already died. The only people who have not been affected are the human guards, prisoners, and laborers. What have your people done to us?"
Wanda laughed. She could hear the hysteria in her voice. "I don't know," she told him. "I don't know." They were getting sick, and they blamed it on the Resistance? Was it pure paranoia, or did Steve, Carol and the others actually have something to do with it? "You've had me locked up in here for a week. You landed on an alien world. Maybe it's the common cold. Maybe you're all catching our planet's viruses and bacteria and dying."
It wasn't the answer they wanted, of course. She couldn't give them that; even if she'd been willing to sell humanity out to them, she couldn't tell what she didn't know. Perhaps it really was some human virus, crossing the species barrier like avian flu.
The translator repeated her words to the Imperator, and one of his ears flicked back, his tail lashing angrily. "I can see you have decided not to be helpful," he said. "Perhaps your companion is feeling more cooperative now that he's had some time to bleed." He stepped backward, away from the cell's doorway, and gestured imperiously.
One of the guards swung the door shut. It made a dull, metallic sound as it closed, and Wanda was in the near-dark again.
"We will be back." The translator's voice came through the open grill. "If you don't answer his questions then, you will be killed in an extremely unpleasant manner."
The metal box, closed now, was pushed through the opening, falling to the cement floor with a loud clatter. "Please," the translator whispered, "tell him what he wants to know next time. People are dying."
Then the grill was shut, and Wanda was left alone, staring at the innocuous-looking little box that held Pietro's finger.
She couldn't answer them. She couldn't answer them, and they were going to torture Pietro to death because of it. Over a virus.
***
Hank had only thought that it took a long time to find the water filtration system. What actually took a long time was finding his way down into what Clint had described as "the mad scientist basement." The immense levels of security posed little problem at two inches tall, but the sheer amount of time it took to move around at this size was maddening.
The converter room was utterly massive -- Hank suspected it would have been huge even if he weren't so small -- and the air had the cool, slightly damp feel he associated with caves, a sign of just how far underground it was.
The walls were bare rock; you could actually see the marks on them where stone had been hewn or blasted away. Hank tried not to think about what it would be like to be stuck down here for four months.
There are no ants down here, either because of the depth, or because the Argonians have killed them with something. There are literally tons of rock between Hank and the surface, more than enough to completely cut off his helmet's signals; he needs to finish his business down here quickly and then get back above ground, where he can signal Spiderman.
Tony had told him to look for Dr. Connors once he got underground, that the former supervillain was a mole working for the Kingpin. In what was probably Hank's first major stroke of luck since getting into the station, Connors was not difficult to find.
Six foot tall crocodile-men tended to stand out in a crowd.
Connors had been a perfectly normal man back when Hank had originally known him; Hank's PhD had been so recent in those days that the ink on his diploma had barely dried, and Kurt Connors had been a legend in the field. He'd never done much work with invertebrates, but Hank had read all of his articles anyway.
He published much more infrequently these days. Several of the major scientific journals wouldn't print your work if you'd ever done a stint on Rikers Island, which was Hank had always thought was incredibly short-sighted of them from a scientific perspective no matter how honorable a moral stance it might be.
Hank peered upwards from his hiding place beside one of the legs of Connors' work bench, and waited for the other scientist to come close enough to hear him. "Down here," he called, just loud enough for the words to carry to Connors and no one else. "Tony Stark sent me. And the Kingpin, too, I suppose." Fisk hadn't been consulted regarding their plan, but no doubt he'd been informed of it by now, and since it involved potential gain for him while all the risk was absorbed by the Avengers, he was probably thrilled by it.
Connors started. Then he deliberately knocked a pair of forceps off his workbench and crouched down, peering at Hank with golden eyes, his vertical pupils narrowed. "Lang," he hissed, almost inaudibly. "What are you doing here? You have a little girl."
Hank pulled off his Ant-Man helmet and shook his head. "It's Hank Pym," he corrected. "Last I heard, Scott Lang was still in California."
"Pym. Of coursse." Connors blinked, both sets of eyelids flickering. "I should have known Stark wass undercover. He wass working with Hawkeye, I imagine?"
Hank nodded. "I don't have much time," he said. "I have to get over to the shield device, then back up to the surface. But before I do, Tony wanted me to give you this." He pulled a tiny piece of circuitry out of one of the pouches on his belt, set it on the ground, and re-grew it to its original size. "Have someone solder it to the control lock on Octavius's arms; it should deactivate it."
Connors blinked again. "Thank you," he breathed. "That'ss... exactly what we need." Then he shook his head ever so slightly, and sighed. "Even with Octavius active again, I'm not sure we can break out of here successsfully. Some of the others can't even walk anymore. We would have to leave them, and I won't-"
"Don't worry about it," Hank interrupted. "You won't have to." He grinned up at Connors, feeling a swell of pride even though the disruptor chip was Tony's work and not his. "The Avengers are coming in to get you."
Connors did not look reassured, and Hank wondered for a moment if he ought to be offended on his team's behalf.
Half his task down here completed, Hank moved on to the next part. The shield's power source was under heavy guard, of course, but no one noticed you when you were the size of an insect. Slipping through the cordon of Argonian warriors was easy, and then Hank found himself staring up at the power core itself.
It was one of the more impressive things Hank had seen recently, a giant, glowing ball of blue fire that gave off no heat whatsoever. If anything, the air was actually slightly cooler the closer he got to it. It almost made tears come to Hank's eyes -- actual cold fusion -- and he wasn't even a physicist. Damnit, Tony was right. The fact that the Argonians had had the capacity to design and build something like this and then lost it was a tragedy.
When he climbed silently up the side of the big, blocky control console to find a familiar dome of violet energy covering the various buttons and toggles that would have allowed him to manipulate or shut down the shield, his eyes really did almost tear up.
Steve had been counting on the shield going down, on being able to rely on the Falcon and SHIELD showing up to join the fight.
Hank swore inwardly, and kicked the top of the console as hard as he could. He could tell just by listening to the faint hum that emanated from the mini-shield that it's frequency fluctuated just as the big shield's did. There was no way to destroy it or go through it, and even if he'd had some form of jamming equipment with him, he wouldn't have been able to pin the frequency down in order to properly block it.
The Argonians must have some kind of mechanism for turning it on and off, but Hank had no idea what it was or where to find it, and he couldn't afford to stay down here any longer. He was pushing his luck as it was.
The temptation to go a little closer and poke at the force-field just in case he was suddenly magically able to reach through it was overwhelming, but the mental image of the energy frying him like some kind of alien bug zapper was enough to bring Hank to his senses. Plus, touching it would probably set off some kind of alarm.
Well, at least he'd accomplished two-thirds of what Tony had sacrificed himself for.
The journey back upstairs took even longer than the trip down, and as hard as Hank tried not to feel like a failure, he couldn't help but picture the carnage that was going to result tomorrow when the Avengers stormed Grand Central without Fury's helicarrier for back-up.
***
"What did your people do to us?" the alien repeated. "We know you know something."
"Even if I did," Pietro sneered, "what makes you think I'd tell you?"
Its eyes narrowed, and its oversized ears twitched back. "Because you want to keep the rest of your fingers?" it suggested.
Pietro couldn't quite conceal his flinch. The pain of the Argonian short-sword slicing through the joint of his little finger had been blinding. The crunching sound of severed bone had been even worse. "I've told you repeatedly that I don't know," he snapped. "Your species' intelligence is clearly over-rated; no wonder you have to kidnap humans to do your work for you."
The second Argonian -- the big one, who didn't speak English and growled orders in their alien tongue to the one who did -- punched Pietro in the stomach, knocking all the air out of his lungs.
For a long, sickening second he couldn't breathe at all. He simply hung there, muscles twitched spasmodically as his body tried to curl into a ball, prevented from doing so by the restraints that fastened him spread-eagled to the cell wall. His legs wouldn't hold him up, knees going weak, and the added weight on his arms made his shoulders scream.
When he finally managed to suck in another breath, there were tears in his eyes. Pietro rapidly blinked them away and sneered at his two interrogators. "I. Don't. Know," he repeated, as slowly and clearly as he could, the tone he reserved for speaking to people who were especially stupid and irritating.
The plasma burn on his left thigh throbbed in time with his heartbeat, his hand was a blaze of agony, and even when he managed to get his right leg back under himself, his left leg wouldn't hold his weight -- it wasn't healing the way it should. He was so hungry and thirsty that he felt lightheaded, and it was affecting his body's ability to recover.
"Do not insult the Imperator," the smaller alien said. It sounded as if the very notion of insulting its precious warlord scandalized it. "You are nothing to him."
Pietro was already well acquainted with that fact; he'd figured out that mutant lives were meaningless to them when he had watched Madripoor burn. Human lives in general meant nothing to Argonians.
He was glad they were falling victim to some mysterious epidemic. Let them all die. They deserved to drop like flies.
"What have you done with my sister?" he forced out, through gritted teeth. He had asked the same question over and over, without getting a response, but Pietro had never believed in giving up, or giving in.
He tried not to imagine the Argonians using their knives on Wanda, hacking off pieces of his sister's flesh, her delicate hands, her feet, her--
"How many people does your organization have within our ranks? What are their names?"
"I. Don't. Know," Pietro repeated. "A lot. You're going to lose. We'll make you pay for all the mutant blood you've spilled. All the innocent blood you've spilled."
They liked that answer as little as they'd liked the previous one.
Pietro closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as the big Argonian ground the hilt of its sword into the burn on his leg. He wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of hearing him scream.
"What are their names?" the little Argonian repeated.
"Are you going to take a shot at me, too, if I don't answer, or do you just like to watch?" It had seemed visibly uncomfortable earlier, when they had cut his finger off. Now, it was glaring at him like he had personally offended it.
"The Imperator is very skilled with a blade," it said. "It is always a pleasure to watch skill in action." It leaned forward, until it was inches away from Pietro's face and he could smell the musky-sweet scent of its fur. It was an animal scent, inhuman, and it made the hair on the back of Pietro's neck stand up. "I don't like watching people suffer, even lesser species, but for you, I will make an exception. Your people kidnapped a friend of mine, and now he is being tortured because the Imperator cannot trust him after you contaminated him." Its massive, black eyes were fixed on Pietro's face - he could see his own reflection in them, a pale blur. "He suffers because of you, so you can suffer, too."
"Friend?" Pietro frowned, confused. The lingering dizziness didn't help. The stump of his severed finger was still bleeding, the wound reopened when the big Argonian had slammed his hand against the wall earlier, and his ears were starting to buzz. "We haven't captured any of you things. We don't take prisoners."
Unless Cap's people had captured an Argonian after Pietro and Wanda had been taken. He couldn't remember how long they had had him anymore; it was difficult to keep track of time when the light never changed and they kept hitting you, and he had lost count of the days.
"What have your people done to us?" the Argonian repeated. "Poison? Biological warfare? What?"
"Nothing," Pietro told it. "It's your own fault for invading an alien planet. Your immune systems are clearly just inferior to ours. Even to those of less evolved humans."
This time, he did scream.
When he had gotten his breath back and hung, half-sobbing, from his wrists, his legs completely strengthless now, the smaller Argonian informed him prissily that humans were the inferior species. Everyone, it seemed, was inferior to Argonians.
Inferior. Pietro's lips twitched, in spite of the pain and the roaring in his ears. They didn't even have powers. The Skrull or the Kree would eat them alive. They hadn't even noticed the Inhuman's city on the moon when they had stopped there on their way to Earth, because their instruments hadn't been sophisticated enough to detect it.
Pietro was intimately familiar with arrogance and xenophobia. He firmly believed that arrogance was justified when you really were superior, which was why Crystal's eventual rejection of him, and her family's refusal to accept him had hurt so much. Because it was true. Because compared to the genetically perfect Inhumans, Homo superior was as crude and un-evolved as an ordinary Homo sapiens was to a mutant. Too inferior for them to bother helping them, even when he had begged. And he had begged, after Madripoor.
They had had no right to reject Luna. She was as perfect as they were, with Crystal's genes, even without passing their barbaric tests. It didn't matter that she didn't have his X gene -- she was still far and away superior to normal humans.
'Luna,' he reminded himself. 'Luna is why you're doing this. Wanda is why you're doing this.'
He wasn't going to talk to them anymore, Pietro decided. He wasn't going to give them anything else, no matter what they did to him.
They weren't worth his attention.
***
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: This chapter contains references to torture.
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.
A/N #1: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.
A/N #2: I'm sorry to say, but for the duration of April, we're going to have to revert to posting every other week, so that we can work on our Big Bang fic. Since we hate to do that, if anyone wants to drabble-prompt me, I'll try to write you someting short.
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 left Tony alone for what felt like several hours.
The cell was dark, but not completely pitch black. After a few minutes, his eyes adjusted, and the tiny lines of light from the narrow grill set high up in the cell's door gave him just enough illumination to see the dim outline of his shackled hands, and the cramped dimensions of his cell.
It was an awful lot like Afghanistan, with the exception that this time, he wasn't injured and in pain. Yet.
Tony sat on the concrete floor, his hands in his lap -- he could do little else with them, thanks to the restraints -- and tried to distract himself from what he knew was coming.
He spent the first hour doing a mental over-view of the new redesign for his armor, the suit he'd spent the past several months designing and finessing, the one he was going to build himself if by some lucky chance he survived this.
He spent the second hour thinking about Steve, and the hours after that. Not the sex -- he was saving those memories for later, when he might need them more. He thought of Steve's letters, of the handful of sentences he'd managed to memorize from them. Of the look on Steve's face when Tony had said goodbye to him at the hotel. Of sparring with Steve, both physically, during training sessions, and verbally at Avengers meetings. Of fighting next to Steve, during the escape from One Police Plaza and all the times before that.
He was in the middle of remembering the party they'd had after they'd defeated Kang the Conqueror for the first time, only two weeks after Steve had first joined the team -- he'd spent almost every off-duty hour reading achieved issues of the New York Times that first month, and Tony had had to haul him away from the computer where he was unsuccessfully trying to use a CD-ROM of digitized newspaper clippings Tony had made for him in order to get him to attend -- when his cell door opened and an Argonian officer stepped in.
Tony stayed motionless, refusing to look up or otherwise acknowledge the alien's presence. They would make him talk eventually, he knew, but he wasn't about to make it easy for them. Wait until the interrogation got serious, until the pain started, and then he could 'break,' give them the story he and Hank had worked out to distract them from the fact that the delivery mechanism for the poison was the water. If he made it too easy, they wouldn't believe him, and they were smart enough that they just might discover what was happeing on their own if their attentions weren't directed elsewhere.
They would get the truth story out of him, too, eventually, but he had to make sure he lasted long enough that that wouldn't matter.
Thirty-six hours. He just had to hold out for thirty-six hours.
"Tony Stark. You were believed to have been killed. What explanation do you have for your desertion?"
Tony's head snapped up, and he blinked at the warrior in surprise. English. She was speaking English.
It was Arch-Captain Kammani, he saw, not Mamitu, whose jurisdiction escaped human prisoners ought to have fallen under.
"I didn't think any of you knew English," he blurted out.
"The ability to speak your language has proven useful," she said mildly.
I'll bet it has, Tony thought. Steve had been wondering where the Argonians had been getting their intelligence; Tony would have placed a not insignificant bet that he was speaking to the head of their intelligence network now. A warrior who spoke English would be perfectly position to gather information on the Resistance -- not only would the human guards be willing to speak to her, she could collect information whatever information the mechanikos gained from the captive or volunteer scientist, as well as information forced from random people on the street.
Still... Argonian military rank and matters of jurisdiction were very strict, and Tony already fell within another officer's area of responsibility, valuable information source or not. "Where is Arch-Captain Mamitu? Shouldn't interrogating me be her job?"
"Arch-Captain Mamitu is dead. And you still have not answered my question."
Dead? A smile would have been inappropriate, and it took real strength of will to keep one off his face. She must have died in the escape, possibly when the building burned. "The rebels captured me," he said, trying to make it sound as if it had been a traumatic experience rather than the best twelve hours of his life. "They made me leave with them. It took hours to free myself - they had me under guard."
Her ears swiveled forward, and her huge, black eyes stared at him intently. "The rebels do not take prisoners. Why would they make an exception for you?" She was limping, the bulk of bandages visible under her black uniform. Had she been present during the escape? Damn it, that would make this harder. How much did she already know?
"They used to be friends of mine, Arch-Captain. They were reluctant to kill me."
She considered him for a moment, her tail swaying gently back and forth. Staring up at her looming over him was starting to make his neck ache. "I would like to believe you," she said. "I have been assured of your loyalty by a very trustworthy source. However, I cannot take that risk."
Tony assured her of his loyalty again, for good measure, feeling almost sickened by how easily groveling to Argonians came to him now. "Their fight is futile," he told her. "They have nothing to gain by resisting the Empire. Why would I go back to them?"
"Why indeed?" Kammani asked, the end of her tail flicking gently back and forth. "If you wish to prove your continued loyalty, you may start by telling me everything you know about the attack at the weapons facility. Leave nothing out."
So Tony told her. He told her about the explosions, about the power for the building being knocked out -- neglecting to mention that he had caused said power outage himself -- about the way "the rebels" had come sweeping in with assault rifles and caused as much destruction as possible. He left out everything he and Clint had done, of course, and as much information about the Avengers' specific powers and numbers as he could.
She asked several more questions, making it obvious that she knew at least one of the guards had been a traitor, and, wincing inwardly with self-disgust, Tony gave her Schultz and the Rhino. They were free, out of danger, and the Rhino's betrayal in particular would have been too obvious for the Argonians to have missed. You don't miss a seven-foot grey behemoth charging at you and trampling you flat.
When he had finished, Kammani nodded, her expression pleased. Then she said, "And now you will tell me everything you know about the rebels. Your impression of their numbers. The weapons you saw them carrying. Their special abilities. The location of their hideout."
Damn it. He'd known this was coming. "They knocked me out when they captured me," he evaded. "I woke up tied to a chair and blindfolded, I don't know where. Only two of them every spoke to me."
"You escaped and found your way back here. You must know the route you followed to get here."
He shook his head, then winced and touched his hand to his bruised face. "I wish I did. I was still dazed from the blow to the head at first. I don't even know how I managed to escape."
Her eyes narrowed speculatively. "How can you be sure they didn't simply let you go? That you weren't allowed to return here for some purpose of their own?"
"I don't." He tried to make it sound like a grudging admission, like confessing it pained him. "I can't. I just knew I had to come back. I knew I would be safe from them here."
A blatant lie, of course, but maybe the irony would distract her from wondering too hard about Steve's location.
"From them, yes. Unfortunately, not from us. For your sake, I hope you are telling the truth." It was spooky. She actually sounded sincere.
"What would lying gain me?" Tony asked, not bothering to keep the fear he felt out of his voice. Focus on me, he begged silently, on whether or not you can trust me. Forget about them. "I know what you do to scientists who lie. To traitors. Why would I come back if I was one?"
"Your species is not incapable of valor. If you were truly on the rebels' side, and believed you could help them gain some advantage by sacrificing yourself-"
"They think I'm a traitor," he interrupted, wanting to cut that line of inquiry off as quickly as possible. "They wouldn't take my help even if I were stupid enough to offer it."
Kammani's ears went back, and it was only then that Tony realized, with a sinking sensation, that he had just interrupted an Argonian. Worse, a highly-ranked Argonian warrior. Months of practice at being carefully and pointedly subservient had apparently been completely erased by a few hours with his teammates.
Kammani's blow was so quick that he didn’t see it coming, had no chance to prepare himself for it the way he had with Steve.
There was an instant of star-shot darkness when he hit the floor, knocked backwards by the force of the blow, and then Tony was blinking dizzily at the metal ceiling and wondering vaguely how he was going to sit up again with his arms bound like this. Sitting up using just his stomach muscles, he decided, was going to hurt, given the way his ribs ached.
"You will show proper respect when you speak to me," Arch-Captain Kammani said, in a surprisingly gentle voice. "I don't want to have to do that again."
"No," Tony said, trying to blink the remainder of the dizziness away, "definitely don't want that." He couldn't help smiling a little -- of all the things to get hit for, talking out of order was probably the silliest and most innocuous reason you could ask for. Which didn't mean it hadn’t hurt, or that pulling himself back up into a seated position didn't send a sharp twinge of pain though his side.
"My apologies, Arch-Captain," he managed, when he was sitting upright again. "I meant no disrespect."
There was a moment of silence, and then the questioning resumed, Kammani apparently having decided to accept the apology. "Even if you do not know their location or numbers, you can at least provide us with more information regarding their abnormal abilities. I am surprised my predecessor never sought such information from you, considering your past connection with them."
What was he supposed to say to that? Telling them the truth was out of the question -- any piece of information about the Avengers' powers or fighting abilities was a weapon they could use against them -- but silence would be too suspicious. If he were truly cooperative, he would tell them everything he knew.
Maybe he could lie? No, they had seen at least some of his teammates' powers at work. Kammani already knew some of the answers she was asking for, and without knowing how much information she already possessed, Tiny couldn't spin a credible lie.
Mamitu, Tony was fairly certain, had been only vaguely aware of his existence, and had considered him interchangeable with all the other scientists. He had been grateful for it; questions about his relationship with the Avengers would have made it much harder to maintain his cover. However, it wasn't until this moment that he'd realized just how much of a blessing her indifference had been.
Kammani obviously had a level of patience that Mamitu lacked -- the other Arch-Captain would have been beating answers out of him by now, which was what he'd been prepared for. What could he tell her? What-
"I asked you a question, Tony Stark. How much do you know about your former associates' combat abilities?"
Betraying Steve -- betraying them all -- was out of the question. Death would be better than that.
Since his cover was about to be blown no matter what he did, Tony decided, he might as well go with snide and unhelpful. It had always worked wonders with the Mandarin.
"Sorry," he said, offering Kammani the widest grin his bruised and swollen face could manage. "Can't help you there."
Her eyes narrowed, and one ear flicked back. "Wrong answer," she said.
The cell she was locked in was exactly ten feet long and six feet wide, just enough room to Wanda to pace back and forth. She had been locked in smaller places before. Darker places, too -- at least this cell had a little grating in the door that let a tiny glow of violet light in.
The Argonians must not realize how complete darkness affected most humans; otherwise, she was sure, the cell would have been pitch black.
There were sanitary facilities in one corner, but beyond that her metal prison was completely barren and empty. No bed, not even a blanket. Just metal walls and a bare concrete floor.
She wouldn't have minded that, or the dim light, or even the fact that the only food they gave her was some kind of tasteless mush -- and only twice a day at that, so that she was always hungry -- if only she could still access her powers.
The Argonians had clearly designed this cell with her in mind; the force shield around it cut her off from her chaos power as if it had never been, as if she were only a normal human. She would dearly love to know how they had known enough about the exact nature of her powers to be able to block them.
She had been in here for nearly a week, and that time, not one of her captors had entered her cell or even spoken with her through the door. Twice a day, they flipped the grill in the door up and thrust food and water through it, but even then, they remained silent. She had tried to speak to them, but none of them ever answered.
They wouldn't tell her where Pietro was. They wouldn't tell her what they wanted from her.
She had expected to be interrogated, even tortured. Instead, she was ignored.
She had finally realized, from the excessive care shown by the visibly skittish guards when they fed her, that they were afraid of her. Who knew what they thought of her powers; Argonians didn't seem to have anything comparable to mutants, and she had no idea whether or not they believed in magic.
Maybe they had just heard about what she had done to the Argonian patrol in the warehouse district. That would be enough to make anyone fear her.
At first, she had expected to be dragged out of her cell and executed at any moment -- they didn't want information from her, so why else would they be keeping her around if not to stage some kind of bloody public execution? -- but by the fourth day, she was starting to doubt that, as well.
The best explanation she could come up with was that they were using her as bait, hoping to lure the other Avengers into a trap.
It wouldn't work, of course, not as long as they kept her under Grand Central. Even Steve wouldn't try to storm the Argonians' main stronghold for the sake of two people; if he had been, they would have had Clint and Tony out months ago.
When the door opened, on the sixth day, the sudden flood of light was almost blinding.
Wanda climbed slowly to her feet, blinking in the harsh violet glare, determined that she would not meet her executioners on her knees.
The violet glow of the shield covered the entire doorway. Standing just beyond it was an Argonian warrior, with a smaller, grey-clad Argonian hovering respectfully at his elbow.
She wanted to scream at them, to throw herself at them and tear them apart with her bare hands. To make them tell her what they had done to her brother. But there would have been no point to it; if it was possible for her get through the shield, they wouldn't be standing so confidently there on the other side of it, with the door wide open.
"Gentlemen," she said, offering them her best smile. "To what do I owe this honor? I thought you had forgotten about me."
Don't wait for them to speak first, Steve had told her once. Take control of the conversation if you can.
He had taught her more over the years than just how to fight.
The Argonian warrior snarled something, and the smaller Argonian stepped forward slightly and said, in surprisingly good if accented English, "You will address the Imperator with respect."
The Imperator. First they ignored her for nearly a week and then they sent their military dictator to speak to her personally. Wanda raised her eyebrows. "And if I don't?" she asked.
"Then he will kill you," it said. "I suggest you be respectful."
Wanda blinked. Was that humor? From an Argonian?
The Imperator said something else, his tone less of a snarl but still sharp with contempt. He was massive, nearly seven feet tall, and his black uniform was festooned with copper braiding. He was nowhere near as impressive looking as Kang, Wanda told herself. Nowhere near as powerful, either. Really, how frightening was an intergalactic warlord who couldn't even time-travel?
"The Imperator wants to know what your people have done," the translator said.
"Defended our planet." She didn't know which specific piece of Resistance activity they were referring to, but that pretty much covered everything.
The Imperator's eyes narrowed, and he said something cold and brief.
"This planet belongs to the Argonian Empire now," the translator informed her. "Answer the Imperator's question, before he becomes angry. You do not want him to treat you the way he did the other human."
Wanda's stomach lurched. "Which other human?" she asked.
The Imperator's ears perked up in a pleased fashion when the translator relayed this. "We have already questioned your companion, the unnaturally swift one. He chose not to speak to us. Perhaps you will be wiser."
He gave the translator an order, and the smaller Argonian produced a metal box from within his grey lab coat and handed it to him.
The Imperator opened the box and angled it toward Wanda, letting her see what was inside it.
A severed human finger.
It was a man's finger, pale and bloodless and anonymous. It could have belonged to anyone.
She knew it was Pietro's.
'I will not be sick,' she told herself. 'I will not be sick.'. She couldn't let them see how much the sight of her brother's mutilated finger upset her -- they had cut it off of him; that was a piece of Pietro in that box -- or they would try to use it to their advantage, use it as an excuse to torture him further.
"Lovely," she managed, after a moment. She could hear her voice shaking. "Are you going to cut off my fingers if I don't tell you what you want to know?"
The translator shook his head. "That would mean lowering the shield, and we know better than to make that mistake."
The Imperator spoke once more, and the translator's ears twitched. He added, "If you do not answer his questions, the Imperator will have another of your companion's fingers cut off. Then another. Then he proceed to larger pieces. Then, if you still prove uncooperative, you will be executed. Both of you."
Wanda swallowed, feeling cold and sick. In that moment, she hated them -- hated all the Argonians -- so much that if it hadn't been for the shield between them, she would have triggered an explosion in the Imperator's plasma gun and let them both go up in a nuclear fireball. "What do you want to know?' she asked quietly.
The translator regarded her steadily, his ears low and his tail drooping to coil around his feet. He didn’t look happy. He couldn't possibly be as unhappy as Wanda was. "Over the past several hours, both warriors and mechanikos have been stricken with an unidentified illness. It strikes everyone alike -- warrior as well as mechanikos, the healthy as well as the wounded and ill -- and leaves them terribly weakened. Several have already died. The only people who have not been affected are the human guards, prisoners, and laborers. What have your people done to us?"
Wanda laughed. She could hear the hysteria in her voice. "I don't know," she told him. "I don't know." They were getting sick, and they blamed it on the Resistance? Was it pure paranoia, or did Steve, Carol and the others actually have something to do with it? "You've had me locked up in here for a week. You landed on an alien world. Maybe it's the common cold. Maybe you're all catching our planet's viruses and bacteria and dying."
It wasn't the answer they wanted, of course. She couldn't give them that; even if she'd been willing to sell humanity out to them, she couldn't tell what she didn't know. Perhaps it really was some human virus, crossing the species barrier like avian flu.
The translator repeated her words to the Imperator, and one of his ears flicked back, his tail lashing angrily. "I can see you have decided not to be helpful," he said. "Perhaps your companion is feeling more cooperative now that he's had some time to bleed." He stepped backward, away from the cell's doorway, and gestured imperiously.
One of the guards swung the door shut. It made a dull, metallic sound as it closed, and Wanda was in the near-dark again.
"We will be back." The translator's voice came through the open grill. "If you don't answer his questions then, you will be killed in an extremely unpleasant manner."
The metal box, closed now, was pushed through the opening, falling to the cement floor with a loud clatter. "Please," the translator whispered, "tell him what he wants to know next time. People are dying."
Then the grill was shut, and Wanda was left alone, staring at the innocuous-looking little box that held Pietro's finger.
She couldn't answer them. She couldn't answer them, and they were going to torture Pietro to death because of it. Over a virus.
Hank had only thought that it took a long time to find the water filtration system. What actually took a long time was finding his way down into what Clint had described as "the mad scientist basement." The immense levels of security posed little problem at two inches tall, but the sheer amount of time it took to move around at this size was maddening.
The converter room was utterly massive -- Hank suspected it would have been huge even if he weren't so small -- and the air had the cool, slightly damp feel he associated with caves, a sign of just how far underground it was.
The walls were bare rock; you could actually see the marks on them where stone had been hewn or blasted away. Hank tried not to think about what it would be like to be stuck down here for four months.
There are no ants down here, either because of the depth, or because the Argonians have killed them with something. There are literally tons of rock between Hank and the surface, more than enough to completely cut off his helmet's signals; he needs to finish his business down here quickly and then get back above ground, where he can signal Spiderman.
Tony had told him to look for Dr. Connors once he got underground, that the former supervillain was a mole working for the Kingpin. In what was probably Hank's first major stroke of luck since getting into the station, Connors was not difficult to find.
Six foot tall crocodile-men tended to stand out in a crowd.
Connors had been a perfectly normal man back when Hank had originally known him; Hank's PhD had been so recent in those days that the ink on his diploma had barely dried, and Kurt Connors had been a legend in the field. He'd never done much work with invertebrates, but Hank had read all of his articles anyway.
He published much more infrequently these days. Several of the major scientific journals wouldn't print your work if you'd ever done a stint on Rikers Island, which was Hank had always thought was incredibly short-sighted of them from a scientific perspective no matter how honorable a moral stance it might be.
Hank peered upwards from his hiding place beside one of the legs of Connors' work bench, and waited for the other scientist to come close enough to hear him. "Down here," he called, just loud enough for the words to carry to Connors and no one else. "Tony Stark sent me. And the Kingpin, too, I suppose." Fisk hadn't been consulted regarding their plan, but no doubt he'd been informed of it by now, and since it involved potential gain for him while all the risk was absorbed by the Avengers, he was probably thrilled by it.
Connors started. Then he deliberately knocked a pair of forceps off his workbench and crouched down, peering at Hank with golden eyes, his vertical pupils narrowed. "Lang," he hissed, almost inaudibly. "What are you doing here? You have a little girl."
Hank pulled off his Ant-Man helmet and shook his head. "It's Hank Pym," he corrected. "Last I heard, Scott Lang was still in California."
"Pym. Of coursse." Connors blinked, both sets of eyelids flickering. "I should have known Stark wass undercover. He wass working with Hawkeye, I imagine?"
Hank nodded. "I don't have much time," he said. "I have to get over to the shield device, then back up to the surface. But before I do, Tony wanted me to give you this." He pulled a tiny piece of circuitry out of one of the pouches on his belt, set it on the ground, and re-grew it to its original size. "Have someone solder it to the control lock on Octavius's arms; it should deactivate it."
Connors blinked again. "Thank you," he breathed. "That'ss... exactly what we need." Then he shook his head ever so slightly, and sighed. "Even with Octavius active again, I'm not sure we can break out of here successsfully. Some of the others can't even walk anymore. We would have to leave them, and I won't-"
"Don't worry about it," Hank interrupted. "You won't have to." He grinned up at Connors, feeling a swell of pride even though the disruptor chip was Tony's work and not his. "The Avengers are coming in to get you."
Connors did not look reassured, and Hank wondered for a moment if he ought to be offended on his team's behalf.
Half his task down here completed, Hank moved on to the next part. The shield's power source was under heavy guard, of course, but no one noticed you when you were the size of an insect. Slipping through the cordon of Argonian warriors was easy, and then Hank found himself staring up at the power core itself.
It was one of the more impressive things Hank had seen recently, a giant, glowing ball of blue fire that gave off no heat whatsoever. If anything, the air was actually slightly cooler the closer he got to it. It almost made tears come to Hank's eyes -- actual cold fusion -- and he wasn't even a physicist. Damnit, Tony was right. The fact that the Argonians had had the capacity to design and build something like this and then lost it was a tragedy.
When he climbed silently up the side of the big, blocky control console to find a familiar dome of violet energy covering the various buttons and toggles that would have allowed him to manipulate or shut down the shield, his eyes really did almost tear up.
Steve had been counting on the shield going down, on being able to rely on the Falcon and SHIELD showing up to join the fight.
Hank swore inwardly, and kicked the top of the console as hard as he could. He could tell just by listening to the faint hum that emanated from the mini-shield that it's frequency fluctuated just as the big shield's did. There was no way to destroy it or go through it, and even if he'd had some form of jamming equipment with him, he wouldn't have been able to pin the frequency down in order to properly block it.
The Argonians must have some kind of mechanism for turning it on and off, but Hank had no idea what it was or where to find it, and he couldn't afford to stay down here any longer. He was pushing his luck as it was.
The temptation to go a little closer and poke at the force-field just in case he was suddenly magically able to reach through it was overwhelming, but the mental image of the energy frying him like some kind of alien bug zapper was enough to bring Hank to his senses. Plus, touching it would probably set off some kind of alarm.
Well, at least he'd accomplished two-thirds of what Tony had sacrificed himself for.
The journey back upstairs took even longer than the trip down, and as hard as Hank tried not to feel like a failure, he couldn't help but picture the carnage that was going to result tomorrow when the Avengers stormed Grand Central without Fury's helicarrier for back-up.
"What did your people do to us?" the alien repeated. "We know you know something."
"Even if I did," Pietro sneered, "what makes you think I'd tell you?"
Its eyes narrowed, and its oversized ears twitched back. "Because you want to keep the rest of your fingers?" it suggested.
Pietro couldn't quite conceal his flinch. The pain of the Argonian short-sword slicing through the joint of his little finger had been blinding. The crunching sound of severed bone had been even worse. "I've told you repeatedly that I don't know," he snapped. "Your species' intelligence is clearly over-rated; no wonder you have to kidnap humans to do your work for you."
The second Argonian -- the big one, who didn't speak English and growled orders in their alien tongue to the one who did -- punched Pietro in the stomach, knocking all the air out of his lungs.
For a long, sickening second he couldn't breathe at all. He simply hung there, muscles twitched spasmodically as his body tried to curl into a ball, prevented from doing so by the restraints that fastened him spread-eagled to the cell wall. His legs wouldn't hold him up, knees going weak, and the added weight on his arms made his shoulders scream.
When he finally managed to suck in another breath, there were tears in his eyes. Pietro rapidly blinked them away and sneered at his two interrogators. "I. Don't. Know," he repeated, as slowly and clearly as he could, the tone he reserved for speaking to people who were especially stupid and irritating.
The plasma burn on his left thigh throbbed in time with his heartbeat, his hand was a blaze of agony, and even when he managed to get his right leg back under himself, his left leg wouldn't hold his weight -- it wasn't healing the way it should. He was so hungry and thirsty that he felt lightheaded, and it was affecting his body's ability to recover.
"Do not insult the Imperator," the smaller alien said. It sounded as if the very notion of insulting its precious warlord scandalized it. "You are nothing to him."
Pietro was already well acquainted with that fact; he'd figured out that mutant lives were meaningless to them when he had watched Madripoor burn. Human lives in general meant nothing to Argonians.
He was glad they were falling victim to some mysterious epidemic. Let them all die. They deserved to drop like flies.
"What have you done with my sister?" he forced out, through gritted teeth. He had asked the same question over and over, without getting a response, but Pietro had never believed in giving up, or giving in.
He tried not to imagine the Argonians using their knives on Wanda, hacking off pieces of his sister's flesh, her delicate hands, her feet, her--
"How many people does your organization have within our ranks? What are their names?"
"I. Don't. Know," Pietro repeated. "A lot. You're going to lose. We'll make you pay for all the mutant blood you've spilled. All the innocent blood you've spilled."
They liked that answer as little as they'd liked the previous one.
Pietro closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as the big Argonian ground the hilt of its sword into the burn on his leg. He wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of hearing him scream.
"What are their names?" the little Argonian repeated.
"Are you going to take a shot at me, too, if I don't answer, or do you just like to watch?" It had seemed visibly uncomfortable earlier, when they had cut his finger off. Now, it was glaring at him like he had personally offended it.
"The Imperator is very skilled with a blade," it said. "It is always a pleasure to watch skill in action." It leaned forward, until it was inches away from Pietro's face and he could smell the musky-sweet scent of its fur. It was an animal scent, inhuman, and it made the hair on the back of Pietro's neck stand up. "I don't like watching people suffer, even lesser species, but for you, I will make an exception. Your people kidnapped a friend of mine, and now he is being tortured because the Imperator cannot trust him after you contaminated him." Its massive, black eyes were fixed on Pietro's face - he could see his own reflection in them, a pale blur. "He suffers because of you, so you can suffer, too."
"Friend?" Pietro frowned, confused. The lingering dizziness didn't help. The stump of his severed finger was still bleeding, the wound reopened when the big Argonian had slammed his hand against the wall earlier, and his ears were starting to buzz. "We haven't captured any of you things. We don't take prisoners."
Unless Cap's people had captured an Argonian after Pietro and Wanda had been taken. He couldn't remember how long they had had him anymore; it was difficult to keep track of time when the light never changed and they kept hitting you, and he had lost count of the days.
"What have your people done to us?" the Argonian repeated. "Poison? Biological warfare? What?"
"Nothing," Pietro told it. "It's your own fault for invading an alien planet. Your immune systems are clearly just inferior to ours. Even to those of less evolved humans."
This time, he did scream.
When he had gotten his breath back and hung, half-sobbing, from his wrists, his legs completely strengthless now, the smaller Argonian informed him prissily that humans were the inferior species. Everyone, it seemed, was inferior to Argonians.
Inferior. Pietro's lips twitched, in spite of the pain and the roaring in his ears. They didn't even have powers. The Skrull or the Kree would eat them alive. They hadn't even noticed the Inhuman's city on the moon when they had stopped there on their way to Earth, because their instruments hadn't been sophisticated enough to detect it.
Pietro was intimately familiar with arrogance and xenophobia. He firmly believed that arrogance was justified when you really were superior, which was why Crystal's eventual rejection of him, and her family's refusal to accept him had hurt so much. Because it was true. Because compared to the genetically perfect Inhumans, Homo superior was as crude and un-evolved as an ordinary Homo sapiens was to a mutant. Too inferior for them to bother helping them, even when he had begged. And he had begged, after Madripoor.
They had had no right to reject Luna. She was as perfect as they were, with Crystal's genes, even without passing their barbaric tests. It didn't matter that she didn't have his X gene -- she was still far and away superior to normal humans.
'Luna,' he reminded himself. 'Luna is why you're doing this. Wanda is why you're doing this.'
He wasn't going to talk to them anymore, Pietro decided. He wasn't going to give them anything else, no matter what they did to him.
They weren't worth his attention.
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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What she said (points up)
Re: What she said (points up)
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D'awww, Isimud's all upset on Tony's behalf. ♥ He's awfully sweet for an alien invader. ♥ ♥ ♥
And yeah, thirding the compliments for how the interrogation scenes are handled!
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Also, I love Pietro and Wanda's sibling love. They are PURE awesome. And Pietro's arrogance? SO in-character. Trufax.
Your interrogation scenes are very well-written, I think. And again, Isimud is love for not enjoying people being tortured, or having his people die... Very good. <3 You've made me love him.
I look forward to your next update! :D
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I'm really liking the way that Argonian politics are lining up. I can definitely see some, ah, interesting discrepancies between Tony's story and Pietro's. And I wonder how Isimud will take to learning that Tony was a spy after all? I have to admit, the interplay of various Argonian motivations interest me as much as if not more than the main plotline. But I expect all will tie together by the end. Which makes it even cooler.
And your Pietro is so in-character! I love him and all his desperate arrogance. :D
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Great chapter with just the people inside the base. I really love Wanda here, and how brave she is. I like the line about Cap teaching what to do if she's captured. I sometimes forget how he kind of raised her, Pietro and Clint at one point.
I am sad that there is not more until the end of the month. However, Big Bang = yay!
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Updats on this have lagged, obviously, while we work on our big_bang fic, but we're going to go right bck to this fic when the big_bang's over.
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And thanks so much for the compliments about the Argonians -- we put ridiculous amounts of work into them, so it's always great to hear that other people are enjoting them, too ^_^.
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Can I ask what's made you wince? There's always room for us to improve, and I'm always interested in hearing what people have to say.
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This is completely and 100% meant to be a compliment, so please don't take it the wrong way, but after this is finished I don't think I'll be able to read it again. It hurts too much. Honestly, if I wasn't holding out for a happy ending (or something approximating one) I don't think I could finish. It's just way, way too moving.
♥ In short, I love this story and fear it both. Wonderful writing.
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Please PLEASE tell me the rest of this won't be too long - I've neglected my work today to catch up on all the delightful parts I missed, and you have no idea how pleased I was when Tony and Steve were FINALLY reunited!
Also, I have no idea how you've made me ship Kammani/Isimud, but it's so happening.
MORE PLEASE!!!
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Also, I have no idea how you've made me ship Kammani/Isimud, but it's so happening.
We didn't really expect to ship them either, but they're all fuzzy, with swishy tails and big, black sugar-glider eyes!
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I'm loving the little ships you keep inserting - Ben/Johnny, Xavier/Magneto!!
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I have seen that your lives are very busy; is there any plan to finish this addictive story?
Eagerly,
Wordwitch
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