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cap_ironman2009-09-05 05:24 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2009-09-05 05:24 am
Entry tags:
When the Lights Go On Again 18/20
Title: When the Lights Go On Again 18/20
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: Depictions of torture, and general 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.
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.
Also, this fic owes a great deal totavella, who helped us to shape this into something that didn't have gaping plot holes.
When the Lights Go On Again
The three Argonians in the room were frozen in a stiff tableau -- Steve, Jan, and Ben's arrival had clearly interrupted some kind of argument. Now, however, they had all shifted the focus of their hostilities, both uniformed warriors brandishing swords, and even the female Argonian in the blue robes -- presumably the Archon -- holding her tailbarb poised and ready to strike.
Steve wanted to be below ground, searching for Tony, more desperately than he had wanted anything in a long time, but this was the best chance they were ever going to get to end this. Both members of the Argonians high command in one room, and only a single warrior, already wounded, between him and them.
The Archon said something incomprehensible in Argonian, and there was a long moment during which Steve cursed himself for just assuming that the Argonians would speak English -- they used mechanikos as translators, Tony and Clint had both told him that -- before the injured warrior spoke.
"The Archon wishes to know if you challenge the Imperator personally," she said, her voice harshly accented. The fangs gave her a slight lisp.
It was, Steve realized with the part of his mind that wasn't either analyzing the aliens' likely capabilities in a fight or envisioning Tony writhing in agony in some Argonian torture chamber, the first time he'd ever heard an Argonian speak words he understood.
"Damn right it's personal," Ben rumbled, his voice like rocks grinding.
The warrior canted her head sideways and indicated Steve with the black barb on the end of her tail. She was some kind of high-ranking officer, by the loop of copper braid on one shoulder; how and why did she speak English, when the other warriors didn't? "I spoke to him, rock creature. He uttered the challenge, if challenge it was. He must answer."
The Imperator -- because with the amount of copper braiding that covered his high-collared uniform tunic, he could be no one else -- was nearly seven feet tall, and broad-shouldered, built like a lion rather than the sleeker panther-like build of most of the other Argonians. The Argonians fought duels over honor, and sometimes even over rank, according to Tony's letters, which meant that even a general highly ranked enough that most of his job ought to involve sitting behind the lines and directing troops would still be in practice and fighting trim, especially given how much weight they seemed to place on hand-to-hand combat. Most societies gave up fighting one-on-one with swords by the time their weapons technology reached the level of nuclear bombs and ray guns.
If they had somehow interpreted his order to surrender or face the consequences as a challenge to some kind of personal combat, then it was likely that the Archon and the female officer would let the Imperator face him alone, without intervening to help him.
"Yes," Steve said. "I challenge him. Personally."
The officer relayed his words to the others, not taking her eyes off Steve, obviously too well-trained to turn her back on an enemy.
One of the Imperator's big cat-ears flicked backwards, and he snarled something at her. Steve didn't have to understand the words to hear the contempt in his voice.
The Archon said something equally contempt-laden to him, her tone challenging, and Steve could fill in the conversation in his head without any trouble. "I'm not going to fight a human." "Don't tell me you're scared of it? Chicken."
The Imperator's ears went back, and he snapped something short and guttural that was probably an obscenity.
The Archon inclined her head to him, a satisfied expression on her face, the copper diadem that rested between her ears flashing despite the dim light. All the lights seemed to be working at half their normal wattage, and Steve wasn't sure which was more disconcerting: the artificially dim light, or the fact that there were electric lights in here at all. He'd gotten used to hurricane lamps and candles.
There was a brief conference in Argonian -- the Imperator angry, the Archon quietly commanding and almost smug, and the officer deferential -- and then the officer said, in English, "The Imperator accepts your challenge. He will face you in the dueling circle. Do you have the authority to serve as champion for your people?"
"What?" Steve frowned, shifting his shield to a slightly higher position.
"Are you an officer? A leader?"
Ben answered before he could. "Yeah. He's got 'authority.'"
"Do you challenge on your own behalf, or on behalf of your rebellion?"
She placed a heavy weight on the second half of the question that made it obvious which answer was the correct one. Perhaps Argonians didn’t honor challenges between enemy combatants if they were made for personal reasons?
"On whatever terms he will meet me under." There, that ought to be safe.
A moment of byplay in Argonian, and then the officer said, with what Steve suspected was the Argonian equivalent of a smile, "Good. You have honor, to let us set the terms. He will fight you to the death."
"I'm not sure this is a good idea," Jan said. She was hovering just above Ben's shoulder, her arms folded, staring at the Argonians with open suspicion. "You know it's probably a trick."
Ben nodded agreement. "We don’t need to do this," he said. "There's three of us and three of them, and their swords don't work on me. We can-"
Steve nodded at the raw, shiny patch on Ben's left arm, where rock had melted and hardened into glass. "Their ray guns do." And both warriors still had theirs. "If they'll let me go up against him one-on-one, I think it's worth the risk."
He turned back to the Argonians, giving the Imperator a broad smile that wasn't the least bit friendly. "I accept."
***
"You," Wanda snarled, pointing at the Argonian who had given her Pietro's finger, "tell me where my brother is."
It eyed her warily, leaning away from her slightly as if it wanted to start backing away. "In one of the other cells," it said, ears twitching violently. "I don't know which key goes with which-"
"Carol," Wanda said, not taking her eyes off the thing's face, "get the rest of the doors open."
There was thud and the metallic groan of warping metal from behind her. Wanda didn't turn around.
"Nothing in this one," Carol called out.
"Which. Cell." Wanda repeated.
It hesitated. For some reason, it's eyes going to Clint, who was staring at her with relief naked on his face. He looked thinner than he had the last time she had seen him, and paler, and there was a large bruise on his face, where one the Argonians had obviously hit him.
All they ever seemed to do was hurt the people she loved. Vision, Clint, Carol, Pietro...
"I'll show you," the Argonian said quietly. It started walking down the platform, never taking its eyes off her.
It was afraid of her, she realized. Good. It ought to be.
Walking after it felt strange, as if she were floating just above the ground, her feet belonging to someone else.
Until five minutes ago, when the shield preventing her from accessing her powers had gone down, Wanda had known that the Argonians were going to execute her for refusing to co-operate. Probably publicly, just after they forced her to look at Pietro's dismembered body.
Then Carol had burst into her cell with a crash like the end of the world and thank God she hadn't listened to her instincts and immediately hexed her into oblivion the moment the door opened. If she hadn't held her fire, waited for what she'd assumed was an Argonian to come further into the cell, where she would have a clear shot... She'd thought that she had fallen asleep and started dreaming about rescue again, for a moment, or begun hallucinating, when she heard Carol's voice, and saw the familiar long spill of blonde hair.
The other Avengers weren't supposed to have come to rescue her. What were Carol and Clint doing, here in the center of the Argonians' seat of power? They would be lucky to make it back up to the surface alive -- in fact, they were lucky they had managed to penetrate this far down without being captured themselves.
They could worry about that later, she reminded herself firmly. Pietro came first.
The Argonians had been torturing him for days, they'd cut pieces off him, done worse, probably; the Imperator had promised when she'd been given Pietro's finger that that had only been the beginning of the torment they would put her brother through, all over some human virus they had caught. He'd told her that all she had to do to end it was give them the information they wanted, and then asked questions she couldn't possibly answer. Even if she had wanted to break, to betray the Resistance, it would have done no good.
As selfish as it made her... for Pietro, she might have broken.
The Argonian indicated one of the metal cells, its featureless bare metal completely indistinguishable from any of the others, nothing to indicate that there was a person inside it.
"And which one is Tony in?" Clint asked.
The Argonian's ears wilted. "I don't know. As a traitor to the empire, the Imperator took a personal interest in him and had him imprisoned separately. They wouldn't tell me where he was." He looked away then, finally breaking his terrified fixation on Wanda. "Arch-Captain Kammani feared that as a mechanikos, my knowledge of him would make viewing his torture too difficult to bear."
Wanda ignored the by-play, all her attention focused on the polished metal door the Argonian had just pointed out to them. The metal grille was smaller than the one in her cell had been, and too high up for her to see through, made for Argonian eyes rather than her own.
Please, she thought, please be alive. Her stomach twisted painfully, and for a single, hysterical moment, she wanted to beg Carol not to open the door, because as long as it stayed closed, as long as she didn't have to see, it meant that Pietro wasn't-
"Open it," she said.
Carol slammed a gloved fist directly into the center of the door, the metal warping under the impact. Then she hit it again, and the upper hinge tore loose, the door hanging at an angle, bent nearly in half.
Wanda threw a hex sphere at it, increasing the probability that the remaining, damaged hinge would break under the additional weight, and the door fell inward with a metallic clang.
For a long moment, she didn't recognize the body hanging limply from the shackles set in the cell's far wall. She ought to have felt pity, or sorrow, but in that split second when the battered and blood-covered features refused to add up to anything familiar, all she could feel was relief, followed by a sharp pang of disappointment.
She was about to round on the Argonian, to accuse him of deliberately lying to them, when she realized that the man hanging motionless inside the cell did not have brown hair, as she'd initially thought.
His hair was matted with dried blood. When she took a step further into the cell, surrounding one upraised hand with chaos energy to give herself light, the handful of locks that were still clean gleamed pure white.
Wanda stumbled backwards out of the cell, fighting the urge to throw up. The platform seemed to tilt and lurch under her, and there was a ringing sound in her ears.
No, no, no. Pietro couldn't be-
"Is he in there?" Clint's voice came to her as if from a great distance.
Wanda shook her head.
"What do you mean? Is it empty, did they move him?"
Carol moved forward, into the cell doorway. "Oh my God," she breathed. "Clint, get in here. I'm going to need help getting him down."
"No,"' Wanda snapped, the world coming back into clarity with a sudden, cold jolt. "Don't touch him. Nobody touches him."
It had always been just the two of them, right from the beginning. No one but Wanda had ever taken care of Pietro. And he'd taken care of her. Always. Even when he'd been cruel to her, after she'd fallen in love with Vision, it had only been because he loved her, because he'd been afraid that Vision, as an android, wouldn't be able to love her back, or that if Vision did return her feelings, Wanda would leave Pietro all alone. Like their mother had, when she'd died. Like Django had, when he'd sent them away for their own safety. Like Magneto had, using them only to further his crusade against humans. Like Crystal had, rubbing his nose in her infidelity before divorcing him.
He had trusted her, had come into New York, put himself in danger, for her, and the Argonians had taken him and hurt him and butchered him while she had been only yards away, completely unable to stop them.
Like their mother, burned to death in a fire her own powers had started. Like Vision, taken from their bed while she slept obliviously next to him. Like her children, screaming as they were absorbed back into Mephisto, while she stood there helplessly, unable to save them.
All because of her. Because she had lost control, had stood by uselessly, had failed to create her children properly. Because she had gotten Pietro captured, and had ignored their demands for information, even when they brought her proof of what they were doing to him.
She should have told them something, anything. She should have made up something to tell them.
"Let us bring him out of there for you," Carol said. Her voice sounded strange. "You shouldn't have to do it."
"They killed him," Wanda said, her voice seeming to belong to someone else. She could feel power filling her, crackling in the air around her -- now, when it was useless, when it was too late -- without conscious effort on her part.
The dimly lit subway platform was bright now -- the metal walls of the cells reflecting back lurid pink light, Carol and Clint's blond hair stained blood-red, the Argonian's grey uniform changed to a weird reddish-black. It had a hand over its eyes, hiding them.
Let it hide. It didn't deserve to look at Pietro. Not after what its people had done to him.
Just because he was human. They were no different than the mob that had tried to burn her when they were children, than the people who had repeatedly sneered at them, spat at them, even shot at them. Than Magneto.
Than anyone else she had ever hated.
"They killed him," she repeated, and there was a shower of sparks from the nearest subway track as the third rail flashed incandescent white and then went dark again.
"We should have come sooner," Clint said, his voice hitching oddly on some of the words. "I'm sorry." He reached out to touch her shoulder, and red sparks flashed around his fingertips.
Clint jerked his hand away with a hiss, eyes wide. "Wanda," he said slowly, "you're starting to scare-"
His voice was meaningless noise. Carol was saying something as well, but Wanda wasn't listening any longer, the screaming hurricane-roar of chaos magic all she could hear.
It wanted loose, as it always did, to wreak havoc on everything around her. Her hex powers were a delicate balancing act, giving probability a nudge in one direction or another, but raw chaos magic was entropy and destruction given shape. Wielding it was a constant exercise in control.
The magic wanted to destroy, to change, to break and distort.
Pietro was dead.
She was tired of fighting.
Wanda closed her eyes and let the raw chaos power inside her free, to do what it wanted.
***
The Argonian officer had drawn a large circle on the polished wooden floor with a stick of what looked like chalk. She limped as she walked, more heavily every time she had to kneel and stand again to draw a different section of the circle, but the line she drew was perfectly straight. "It is unfortunate that you rebels have already seized the Hall of Exile," she said. "There is an official dueling circle there."
Steve had seen the wide copper ring inlaid into the marble floor when they had passed through Vanderbilt Hall. He hadn't stopped to wonder what it was for -- the Argonians added copper inlay to everything.
Once inside the circle, stepping back out again before the conclusion of the fight apparently constituted a forfeit, at which point the Archon or the officer would probably shoot him just on principle.
Ben and Jan were right, he thought. This was insane. They should have charged in, guns blazing, shot the Imperator and his officer, and taken the Archon prisoner. With her as a hostage, they might have been able to force the rest of the Argonians to surrender. As it was, Steve might be able to kill Nergal, but even if he won, he, Ben, and Jan would probably find themselves staring down the barrel of an Argonian ray gun the moment Nergal's body hit the floor. Or the moment Steve's did.
He ought to feel more reservations at the idea of a fight to the death than simply disgust at himself for throwing away a tactical advantage. Looking at Nergal, and remembering the dark shadows of bruises on Tony's body, the haunted expression in his and Clint's eyes, the look of frozen surprise on Vance's face as he fell, a hole burned straight through his chest, the pharmacy owner who'd been executed for helping them treat Johnny Storm's leg... it was hard to feel any moral qualms about killing the creature in front of him in cold blood.
"The Archon has pledged to abide by the outcome of this duel. You will honor it, also. If you are killed, your warriors will tell us how to stop the spread of the disease your agent infected us with." The tip of her tail swished, a gesture he suspected was part disdain and part subtle threat. "Tony Stark has provided little information, despite much encouragement."
Encouragement.
He had hoped -- prayed -- that Tony had simply been imprisoned, that the Argonians would be too distracted by the poison to subject him to the tortures Steve could only too easily imagine.
He had seen what the Nazis did to prisoners they had wanted information from. What the Japanese Army had done to British and American soldiers who had tried to escape from their prison camps. There had been very little left of those men, when the Allies had freed them.
"You sow the seeds of your treason well, human," the officer was saying. "Either you suborned a loyal subject of the empire, or you have planned for this attack from the very beginning. If you show such treachery in the duel, your warriors' lives will be forfeit."
Steve didn't bother to reply. The Argonians had destroyed his city, had enslaved thousands, had brutally slaughtered defeated human soldiers to the last man in Times Square rather than taking them prisoner, had had civilians publicly executed, and were probably torturing Tony right now, as he stood there.
Steve didn't like killing, had hoped, once, before the Argonians had come, that he would never have to take another life again. You didn't always get what you hoped for.
He adjusted his grip on his shield and stepped into the circle.
The Imperator moved with the gliding steps of a large cat, his tail lashing as he prowled the inner edge of the circle, watching Steve intently. Sizing him up.
He would be have to be careful of that tail. It gave the Argonians a distinct advantage in reach. Not to mention that the alien had three bladed weapons to Steve's single shield.
Stay at the edges of his reach and wait for him to wear down, maybe? Steve could outlast any normal human when it came to endurance; how long did it take for Argonians to get tired?
He saw the Imperator's move coming only a fraction of a second before he made it -- a tightening around the eyes, a tensing in his muscles, both subtle enough that only long experience let Steve notice them at all -- and then the Argonian was lunging for him, the short sword in his left hand arcing upwards. He meant to gut Steve with it, to end the fight before it began.
Steve wasn't going to make things that easy on him. He turned sideways and let the blow slip past him, grabbing the Imperator by the wrist and yanking him forward, intending to flip him over his hip and send him crashing to the floor.
Instead, the Imperator allowed himself to be pulled forward, turning the momentum to his own advantage as he clubbing Steve across the torso with the side of his tail. The angle was awkward, preventing him from striking with enough force to break ribs or even knock the breath out of Steve, but the blow was only a distraction.
Steve caught the slash from the Imperator's right-hand sword on his shield, metal sliding across metal with a screech. He thrust the shield forward, slamming the lower edge into the Argonian's thighs, then twisted away, disengaging.
The Imperator was good, fast and every bit as strong as he looked. His reach was easily longer than Steve's, even discounting the tail, and any time spent behind a desk clearly hadn't atrophied his fighting skills in the slightest. But Steve had fought opponents larger and stronger than him in the past, and won. And he would win this time. The stakes were too high not to.
He hefted his shield slightly higher, his eyes on the center of the Imperator's body as they circled one another again, watching for any shifts in weight that would tell him the Imperator was about to launch another attack. His options were limited; if he threw his shield, he'd be left with nothing with which to block the Imperator's blows.
He would have to fight defensively, to let the Imperator come to him and hopefully wear himself out. At least he was male, so Steve didn't have to worry about being poisoned by his tail on top of everything else. Hank had given each of them a vial of anti-venom, but it would do Steve little good in the middle of a fight.
The Imperator said something in Argonian, the tone clearly scornful; the words were directed at the Archon, not at Steve. Steve was in motion before he'd finished the sentence, taking advantage of the slight shift in the Argonian's attention and lashing out with one foot.
His kick landed solidly on the Imperator's right wrist, and the Imperator's hand sprang open, his sword hitting the floor with a loud clatter. Steve kicked it away, watching it go spinning out of the circle, and jumped back, out of reach.
Not quickly enough. The Imperator snarled angrily at him, tail whipping toward him in a downwards strike. Steve twisted sideways as he saw the motion out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn't avoid the blown entirely; the Imperator's tailblade carved a long line down his ribcage, only partly hindered by the scale-mail and leather.
He could feel blood beginning to trickle slowly down his side as he danced away, but the injury didn't hurt yet. It would, he knew.
The Archon made a cool, slightly mocking observation in Argonian, and the Imperator's ears went flat. Steve was starting to get the impression that he was of only incidental importance in this fight, that the real enemy, for the two of them, was each other. Did the Archon actually want the Imperator to lose? That was insane.
'Don't look at her, you fur-covered Nazi wannabee,' he snarled silently, as he and the Imperator slowly circled each other. 'I'm the one who's going to kill you.'
The Imperator charged again, leading with his left foot this time and slashing at Steve with his remaining sword. Steve threw himself backwards, bending back at the waist and letting the blade pass cleanly over his head, and silently thanking Tony for all those sparring matches. He could fight left-handed opponents as easily as right-handed ones now, after years of practice against Tony.
Tony... No. He could worry about him later. Now, he had to concentrate on survival.
He blocked the Imperator's next blow, and the next, jumping to avoid a low swipe of the Argonian's tail as he tried to knock Steve's feet out from under him. The Argonian was slightly off balance as he recovered from each lunge, but Steve couldn't afford to close with him to take advantage of it; if he tried any unarmed combat moves, the Imperator could pin him easily under his seven foot bulk and rip out his throat with his fangs. He'd seen one of them do it, when they'd taken the lobby.
The Imperator struck only with his hands and tail -- Argonians didn't kick unless they had you on the ground -- and Steve's first kick had caught him off-guard. Now, though, the element of surprise was gone. This time, when the Imperator moved closer and Steve pivoted on the ball of his right foot and drove his left foot into the Argonian's stomach, he managed to grab Steve's ankle and pull even as he folded up in pain.
Steve had been expecting the move. He let the momentum carry him forwards and slammed his shield into the Imperator's face with his right hand, even as he grabbed for the short sword the Imperator was driving up toward his groin with his left.
They had figured out the location of the femoral artery in humans, obviously. That, or he was guessing based on the fact that the Argonians had a major blood vessel in almost the same spot.
Steve gritted his teeth, muscles locking as he fought to keep the blade away from him. The Imperator had let go of his foot when Steve's shield had hit him, so he had his balance back, but the edge of the sword was getting closer and closer, and now the Imperator's other hand had him by the throat, claws digging in.
Spots starting to float in his vision, he slammed the edge of his shield into the Argonian's wrist, just above where his own fingers were desperately digging into the creature's tendons. The crack of breaking bone was almost inaudible over the roaring in his ears, but he felt it.
He twisted the Imperator's wrist brutally, feeling something splinter as he did so, and the Imperator's fingers sprang apart, the second sword hitting the floor.
Steve dropped to one knee, reaching for it, and the Imperator kicked it away.
It came to rest just outside the circle, only two feet away, but it might as well have been a mile. If he broke the circle, the female officer would shoot him. She had her ray gun drawn and ready, and had looked more than prepared to use it.
Steve dropped flat as the Imperator's tailblade came straight for his throat, holding up his shield and letting the blow glance off it. He somersaulted backwards and sprang to his feet again, the movement sending a stab of pain through his side. He could feel blood sliding down inside his costume, making the inside of the leather slick and sticky.
His pulse was hammering in his ears, and the world had narrowed down to just him and the Imperator -- he could smell the Argonian's fur, the slightly sweet, musky scent mixing sickeningly with the raw meat smell of human blood.
The Imperator's tailblade whipped toward him again, coming from the side this time, and Steve barely shifted his shield around in time.
The blade struck directly in the center of his shield, the force of the blow numbing Steve's arm to the shoulder despite vibranium's ability to deflect kinetic force, and shattered into pieces.
For a long moment, it seemed as if no one moved. Then the Imperator swung his tail at Steve again, this time like a club.
Steve ducked and rolled under the limb, avoiding a broadside blow that would have crushed his ribs, and grabbed for the largest shard of the broken tailblade, ignoring the sting as the edges sliced through his gloves and into his fingers.
He came up inside the circle of the Imperator's tail, shard of metal in hand, and exploded to his feet, stabbing upward with the blade fragment with the entire force of his body behind his hand.
The blade sank into the Imperator's throat, and hot, purple blood gushed over Steve's fingers, in his face, everywhere.
The Imperator collapsed to his knees, clutching at his throat, tail flailing wildly. Steve took a step back, out of range, and watched as he slowly sagged to the floor, going still.
After a moment, the gush of arterial blood slowed.
He hadn't killed anyone in cold blood in a long, long time. Not since Germany. Not unless the Argonians who had died in the bombing and attacks he'd planned counted. Or the ones who had died from Hank's poison.
No one moved. Steve's mouth was full of the metallic taste of alien blood, the smell and taste making him feel sick, and the only sound in the room was his panting breaths and the pulse he could still hear pounding in his ears.
Then there was a bright flash, the world vanishing in an explosion of red and white light, and scream of static and breaking glass as every light bulb in the room exploded.
***
Wanda was almost too bright to look at, her hair floating around her head as if she were underwater and the air around her crackling with red, pink, and black lightning that Carol knew must be chaos energy.
Clint and their Argonian prisoner had thrown themselves to the subway platform, the Argonians covering its huge, black eyes with both hands.
Lightening was dancing in sheets between the third rail and the ceiling, arcing from one metal holding cell to another, and things in corner of her vision were bending like a fun-house mirror, as if reality were warping at the edges.
"Wanda!" she shouted, and the screaming, roaring sound of the magic swallowed her voice completely. She couldn't even hear herself. "Stop it! You're going to kill us!" Or at least kill Clint. Carol couldn't be electrocuted or fried or zapped by anything other than the Argonians' forcefields and plasma guns.
So why, she thought, was she still just standing there?
Wanda wasn't going to snap herself out of this. Maybe she couldn't. Maybe the chaos magic was beyond her control. Carol's powers had never been difficult to control, even when she'd been Binary, the power of a star burning inside her like a natural part of her, but magic was different. Magic had a mind of its own, an agenda of its own, at least as far as Carol could tell, and Wanda had been possessed by it before.
Carol took a step forward, then another, ignoring the energy swirling around her. It was like trying to move in multiple Gs, her arms and legs feeling impossibly heavy.
The closer she got to Wanda, the harder it was to keep moving. It was like wading through syrup, and energy burned around her with every step. So much power that the air burned with it; Carol should felt stronger, more energized with every step, as her body absorbed the ambient energy out of the air. Magic appeared to be yet another kind of energy she couldn't absorb.
Like the plasma guns' blasts.
Wanda's eyes blazed with pink light, and her skin glowed as if lit from within. Lines of pink and red lightning danced over it, and Carol just knew that touching her was going to hurt.
She was like some kind of ancient goddess, beautiful and terrible in a way that hurt to look at.
"You have to stop this," Carol shouted again. She'd been jealous of Wanda, with her perfect control of her powers, more at ease and secure in her abilities than she'd ever been while Carol's powers slowly crumbled away. Jealous. God. Whatever was in the driver's seat now, it wasn't Wanda; the magic was going to burn her up from the inside out until nothing was left, or it would kill them all and destroy the subway station around them. Neither of those options was acceptable.
Steeling herself, Carol reached out and grabbed Wanda by the arms, shaking her.
It was like touching a live wire, but without the dizzying infusion of energy. Pain flared in her hands, up her arms, sharp and sudden enough to bring tears to her eyes. She could almost feel her hair standing on end.
It didn't seem to be killing her, though.
She shook Wanda harder, saying her name, hoping desperately for some kind of reaction.
Wanda didn't respond. Her face was eerily blank, despite the tears sliding steadily from her burning eyes.
"Wanda," Carol repeated. "Wanda!" She wasn't answering. Why wasn't she answering? Could she even hear Carol anymore?
What if she didn't snap out of it?
She was going to have to knock her out, Carol realized. It was that or stand there helplessly while the world tore itself apart around them.
She let go of Wanda with one hand and drew back her arm, making a fist, forcing herself not to think about what it might do to Wanda to lose consciousness while channeling this much power. She would have to be careful; using her full strength would crush Wanda's skull, break her neck.
Wanda blinked, the light in her eyes flickering for a second. "They killed him," she said, her voice empty in a way that would have made the hair on the back of Carol's neck stand up, if it hadn't already been on end from the chaos magic raging around them. "And I could do nothing. Again."
Carol let her hand drop, reaching for Wanda again. "I know," she said. Her throat hurt, and the blinding light of Wanda's power was hurting her eyes, making them sting and burn. She put a hand on the side of Wanda's face, turning slightly to make the other woman meet her eyes. After a moment or so, the pain of the contact wasn't as noticeable. "They took your power away and made you helpless. You couldn't have stopped them. It's not your fault."
Wanda closed her eyes, the eerie light that had completely drowned out her iris and pupil hidden from view for a moment; Carol wasn't sure, but she thought maybe the storm of energy around them was weakening slightly. "I destroy everything I love. Everything I touch."
Her husband, her children, now her brother -- everything Wanda had loved had been taken from her. It wasn't fair. Carol felt paralyzed, frozen there on the subway platform with one hand on Wanda's face; she wanted more than anything to be able to make it better, to help somehow, to take away Wanda's pain and make everything okay.
She didn't even know how to help herself.
Carol closed her eyes for a second, hating herself for how badly she had fucked their friendship up, and for the fact that she didn’t have the slightest idea of what to do. 'You don't,' she thought. 'You don't destroy things. None of it was your fault.'
She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Wanda, the chaos lightening crawling over both of them. "I'm invulnerable. You can't destroy me."
It was like throwing herself against the Argonians' forcefield, agony jolting through her body. So much power, too much, and she wasn't absorbing it like she was supposed to. "You have to stop this," she whispered, forcing the words out through gritted teeth and trying not to let the pain show in her voice. "You'll kill yourself. You'll kill Clint."
"I don't think I can," Wanda said, and her voice wasn't empty anymore. It was a cracked, shaky thread, but Carol could hear the fear in it. "I let it out, and now it won't listen to me."
"You can," Carol told her. "Please." 'Please,' she repeated silently. 'It hurts.' "Please make it stop." She could hear her voice crack, almost begging.
The roar of the magic stopped abruptly, the pain vanishing with it, and Wanda was suddenly sagging in Carol's arms, her body shaking, burying her face in Carol's shoulder.
"They killed him," she sobbed. "They killed him. Wh-what am I going to tell Luna? First Marilla was murdered in front of her and now-- My whole life, he's always been there. I can't- I..."
Carol closed her eyes and petted Wanda's hair uselessly, not know what to say. She had never lost anyone, not like this.
Then she remembered Clint, and opened her eyes again just as the track lighting overhead flickered back to life. She scanned the platform over the top of Wanda's head, apprehension spiking in her stomach when she found no sign of him or their prisoner.
A second later, she saw movement inside the cell they had found Pietro in, and realized belatedly that Clint and their hostage had taken refuge there, where the out-of-control magic was less likely to strike them.
Everything hurt, like she had been beaten or electrocuted, like a hangover headache that ran throughout her entire body, and for the first time, Wanda's slim body actually felt heavy in her arms.
She didn't want to let go. She wanted to stay here like this, smelling the scent of ozone that permeated Wanda's hair and feeling the curves of her body in her arms and letting the relief and gratitude that Wanda was still alive wash through her.
She hadn't been tortured, or raped, or executed. She hadn't been burned alive by chaos magic.
"I have to go see if Clint is okay," she said.
Wanda nodded against her shoulder and released her, taking a step back. Her face was streaked with tears and grime, her hair was a tangled mess, and Carol could see the raw grief in her eyes. She looked every bit as beautiful as she had when she had been glowing with unearthly power.
How could Carol have ever not wanted to see that?
Wanda followed her to the doorway of the cell, then stopped, clearly not wanting to go in. Carol didn't blame her.
The Argonian flattened himself against the cell wall when Carol stepped in, clearly terrified of Wanda and whatever she might be about to do next. She couldn't actually blame him, either.
Clint was at the far side of the cell, inspecting Pietro's body. Clint looked pale and sick, the bruises on his face standing out starkly, but otherwise all right. Not burned, or somehow disfigured by direct exposure to pure chaos.
"Fuck," he breathed. "They hacked him all to pieces." His voice was hoarse and raw, the voice of someone trying not to cry. "Some of the cuts are still bleeding."
Carol shook her head. "They can't be." Some of the blood that streaked his chest and arms must still be wet. God, if they'd only gotten here a few minutes sooner...
"No," Clint said, the words catching in his throat oddly, "he's still bleeding."
There was a long pause, and then, "Jesus Christ, he's alive. He's still alive. We have to get him down from here."
Carol was at Clint's side instantly, already reaching up to snap the chains holding Pietro in place. Even inches away, he still looked dead, his skin colorless and his body boneless and painfully gaunt, but Clint was right; the cuts on his chest were still bleeding. Sluggishly, but it was definitely fresh blood, being pumped out of the wounds by a still actively beating heart.
Carol began to gently lower Pietro to the floor, and Wanda was suddenly there, helping her. She knelt on the floor, cradling her bother's head and shoulder in her lap and huddled over him, crying so hard her shoulders shook. "You always make me worry," she said brokenly, brushing blood-encrusted hair back from Pietro's face. "Why do you always have to--" she broke off with a sob, and dropping to her knees next to her and putting her arms around her again wasn't even a conscious decision.
Wanda buried her face in Carol's shoulder and cried, Pietro cradled between them, and Clint came over and awkwardly put one hand on Wanda's shoulder.
For the first time in months, Carol allowed herself to believe that the war really was going to be over soon, and that things were going to be okay.
***
The sudden explosion of light and sound died as abruptly as it had begun, and Steve and the others were left in near darkness, the room lit only by the dim light filtering in through the heavily tinted windows. Something about that light seemed different, but there was no time to wonder about it now.
Whatever the energy flair had been, it had lasted only a minute or so, and everyone in the room was still frozen where they had been in when it began. The Imperator's body on the floor, Steve standing over him, the Argonian officer holding a ray gun on him while Ben and Jan watched nervously from several yards away.
The Archon was the first to break the tableau.
She took a step towards him, holder her hands up, palms out, and saying something in Argonian.
"You are the victor," the officer translated. Her gaze had shifted from Steve to the Archon now, and something about the tilt of her ears seemed... speculative.
"Yes," Steve said. 'Tony' he thought. 'Tell me where Tony is.' "I'm going to have to ask for your surrender now. There are three of us and only two of you, and only one of you is armed.
The officer glanced down at the Imperator's corpse, then flicked her tail dismissively and looked back up, meeting his eyes. "The Imperator's death is a great tragedy," she said, and even through the lisp and the accent, Steve could hear the lack of sincerity. "It is a loss I doubt we shall ever recover from."
She hesitated, then, "You have defended your authority. The Imperator has failed to defend his, and it is forfeit, along with his life. And his honor. I will show you where your mechanikos spy has been imprisoned, and your rebel warriors as well. But I ask that-" she broke off, was silent for a moment, and then said, very calmly. "You are the victor. You need make no concessions. But I ask on behalf of my Archon that you tell us how we may treat our people who have been made ill by your virus. There are so few of us left. Every death is- I have cast my honor aside already, learning your language and letting a human fight my battles. I will beg." She bent her head, lowering her ears and letting her tail sag limply to the ground.
The Archon's ears and tail went stiff with surprise, and then she sighed with a resignation that cross all language barriers and bent her own head -- only a fraction -- and lowered her own tail to curl it about her feet. Her ears stayed proudly erect.
"It's not a virus." Ben's voice came from behind Steve, deep and rough, like rocks grinding together. The officer's ears twitched slightly when he spoke, telegraphing her surprise.
"Indeed? The prisoner we interrogated seemed most certain that it was."
Of course he had. Tony and Hank had worked out the cover story either of them was supposed to give out in case of capture in great detail. Tony had doubted his own ability to stick to the script under duress. Tony always doubted himself over the wrong things.
"It's a poison," Jan said, from her perch on Ben's shoulders. "You shouldn't have deprived your prisoners of salt and citric acid. Did you really think we wouldn't figure it out?"
The officer's eyes widened, and the tip of her tail began twitching back and forth. "Sodium ascorbate. The weakness, the dizziness, the nausea... We should have known." She paused, tail still twitching, then, "Your spy was most convincing as he delivered false information to us. I am impressed." She turned and relayed the information to the Archon, and Steve had the satisfaction of seeing her pull her lips back in a snarl.
Then her face relaxed, and Steve could read the relief in her body language. Relief that it was something treatable, something with a simple and non-communicable cause, something that wasn't going to wipe out their entire species like the aliens in War of the Worlds.
Steve ought to have sympathized, ought to have felt guilt over what he'd ordered Hank to do. Later, he probably would. Right now, though, it was hard to make himself care about anything other than Tony, tortured and imprisoned somewhere below him.
He turned to the Archon, about to demand that she have her officer take him to wherever the prisoners were being held, but he never had a chance to get the words out.
"Oh my God." Jan's voice cut him off before he could open his mouth. She launched herself off Ben's shoulder and returned to normal size, her feet hitting the floorboards with a sharp thud. "Ben, break one of the windows, I need to see out."
Ben didn't question her -- he just strode over to the massive window set in the side wall and punched a pane of heavily tinted glass out.
The room was suddenly filled with warm, golden sunlight.
Not purple-tinted or dimmed by its passage through the shield bubble. Bright, unfiltered natural sunlight.
"The shield is down!" Ben crowed. "Danvers' team did it!"
The two Argonians stood frozen, all the horror that had been totally absent when Steve had killed the Imperator plain on their faces now.
The sky outside was blue. Steve hadn't seen blue sky in five months. And hanging there in the blue sky, small but rapidly growing larger, was the ungainly and unmistakable shape of the Helicarrier.
Reinforcements.
They weren't alone anymore.
"You see that?" he said, pointing out the window. He couldn't keep the grin off his face at the sight, and didn't try. "That's a flying aircraft carrier with enough fire power to wipe out the entire city. More. If you're smart, you'll surrender immediately and tell your people to stand down."
Sam. Sharon. Fury. Dugan.
Please let them be alive, he thought. Please let them... He had been afraid he would never see Sam again.
The Archon tore her eyes away from the window and visibly mastered herself. She lowered her ears and inclined her head, saying something calm and matter-of-fact.
"You do not understand," the officer translated. "You, the leader of your people's army, have defeated the leader of our army in single combat. You have already won."
"I... have... what?" Steve stared at them, utterly dumfounded. It couldn't be that easy. Nothing was that easy.
Did that mean he could have ended it weeks, months ago simply by challenging the Imperator to single combat? Before Vance had died, before Clint and Tony had spent months in captivity, before he'd sent Tony back to be tortured?
"You have defeated our commander in the circle of honor. His authority is forfeit to you."
Ben's eyebrows shot up. "Does that mean he gets to tell you people what to do?"
"The victor in such a situation may dictate terms to the loser, yes. It is..." she hesitated. "It is why I lowered myself to beg for a cure. You did not have to offer one."
"You want my terms?" Steve asked. As he spoke, the joy that had filled him at the sight of the Helicarrier drained away, replaced by a slow burning anger. It hadn't been necessary. None of this had been necessary. All the death, the destruction, the loss.
His side hurt, a sharp jagged pain going through him whenever he moved. His mouth tasted like blood, and he had killed over a dozen people today, human and Argonian, and watched his team kill as well. On his orders.
"Get out," Steve said flatly. "I want all of your people to get off our planet and never come back. If you don't, we'll ensure that every water source you drink from will be poisoned, and that every nest you create underground will be blasted into a crater by my friends up there in the flying aircraft carrier."
The Archon was standing stiffly now, ears erect and head no longer bowed. She was squinting slightly against the bright light from the broken window, and the sunlight made her coppery fur blaze like fire. It was almost beautiful.
Strange. For so long, he'd seen the inhuman monsters from one of Lovecraft's horror stories whenever he looked at them, vicious cat/fox/scorpion things dressed up in what looked far too much like Waffen SS uniforms, infesting the subways like the dog creatures from "Pickman's Model" had infested Boston's sewers.
They were just people, no more or less capable of evil than humans were, but he had never thought of anything about them as attractive before, except for the lethal grace in their movements.
The Archon spoke then, solemnly but with steel evident in beneath her words.
"We will leave," the officer translated. "You do not have to destroy your world to keep us from possessing it. That would be waste, and there's been too much of that already. I will take the remainder of my people and go. For too long we have squandered everything that is left to us in a futile attempt to recapture our formal glory. All it has brought us is more death and failure. Our empire is lost to us. We will leave, and build a new empire elsewhere, with our own hands and tails."
That... was it? Steve stared at her, knowing he ought to be thinking more quickly, taking control, but... They were surrendering, just like that? He had expected every last one of them to fight to the death, a bloodbath that would have put Iwo Jima and Okinawa to shame. They slaughtered prisoners, they never let themselves live to be captured.
He had been so sure this was going to end in a massacre or a futile last stand, with victory won by bloody inches, made possibly only because Hank's poison had weakened them enough to make such wholesale slaughter and butchery possible.
What if he, Jan, and Ben hadn't tracked the Archon and Imperator down and confronted them? There would have been so much needless death. There had been so much of it already.
Steve ground his teeth, anger smoldering dully inside him. The Argonians had butchered hundreds of people in New York alone, and now their leader thought that they could just leave, as if all the bloodshed and war crimes and destruction were nothing. And he was going to stand there and accept her surrender and let them go, all of them, because what else could he do?
What else was there to do?
Did the end of a war always feel this empty? Even the grim satisfaction he had expected when he had stepped into the ring with the Imperator was nowhere to be found, not while the blood was still warm and sticky on his costume and his face, and while he had no idea if Tony, Pietro, Wanda, and Hank were alive or dead.
The Archon turned away, her back ramrod straight, and crossed the room to an ornate, copper-inlaid console that was obviously a recent, Argonian-designed addition. She pressed one of the buttons on its surface, and a hollow crackling sound followed -- it was a radio or an intercom of some kind, Steve realized, probably connected to the train station's loudspeakers, or to some other Argonian base, like Penn Station.
He took a step forward, bringing his shield up slightly; it wasn't safe to let her contact the rest of her forces when there was no one there who spoke Argonian. She might tell her troops to stand down and surrender, or she might plan to order them all to storm her apartments and kill the intruders.
A burst of static from the console forestalled him.
The Archon snatched her hand back from it just as Nick Fury's voice echoed tinnily through the room.
"This is the SHIELD Helicarrier, broadcasting on all channels. We are personally authorized by the UN and the President of the United States to blow you all into little, bitty pieces, so I suggest ya respond."
"Nick!" Steve burst out. He didn't quite shove his way past the Archon to get to the console, but it was a near thing. "Your ridiculous flying aircraft carrier is a real sight for sore eyes. We hoped you'd come, if we could get the forcefield down, but we didn't know if-"
"Steve!" Sam's voice interrupted him, full of relief and joy. There was the muted sound of a scuffle, probably him forcing Nick away from the radio. "Thank god you're all right. We thought-" he broke off for a second, then, "Fury's got enough firepower up here to turn the aliens' main base into a glass-walled crater. All you have to do is say the word."
"Actually, that's not..." Steve hesitated, not sure how to say it. It still didn't feel real. "They've already surrendered."
Jan had stepped forward, coming to stand by his shoulder, where she could hear better. Ben was still guarding the door, a seven-foot mass of rock that no intruder was going to be able to get past.
The two Argonians were standing close together, carefully avoiding the chalk circle that surrounded the Imperator's body, speaking quietly together in their own language. Translating what Steve and Sam were saying.
"You're kidding," Sam said.
"I killed their warlord and the Archon just surrendered to me." His voice sounded calm, matter-of-fact. He wondered if, Sam being Sam, he could hear the storm of conflicting emotions Steve was trying to keep under control anyway.
Sam was all right. The war was over. Tony might be dead.
"Shit," Sam blurted out. "You mean I brought half the military forces left in the US in here with me for nothing?"
"Don't worry," Jan put in over Steve's shoulder, giddy relief in her voice. "You made a very impressive entrance."
Steve wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh, cry, or hit something. "We're going to need them," he said. "All of them. The entire city is a disaster zone, and we have prisoners, several thousand of them, and soldiers who need medical attention, and..." he trailed off, feeling as if he had run up against a brick wall. What came next? They had been doing this on their own for so long that now that there was actually a higher authority to answer to, it felt...
Strange. Not real. Too big and too sudden to even really be a relief.
He didn't have to be in charge anymore. He didn't have to be responsible for everyone, for the entire Resistance, anymore. He didn't have to be the leader. He could hand all of this over to SHIELD and go find Tony.
Steve lowered his shield and wrapped his free arm around his side, pressing hard against the slash from the Imperator's tailblade, trying to make it stop hurting, stop bleeding. "Could Fury or you or someone come in here and take over?" he said. "There's something I have to do."
***
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: Depictions of torture, and general 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.
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.
Also, this fic owes a great deal to
tavella, who helped us to shape this into something that didn't have gaping plot holes.The three Argonians in the room were frozen in a stiff tableau -- Steve, Jan, and Ben's arrival had clearly interrupted some kind of argument. Now, however, they had all shifted the focus of their hostilities, both uniformed warriors brandishing swords, and even the female Argonian in the blue robes -- presumably the Archon -- holding her tailbarb poised and ready to strike.
Steve wanted to be below ground, searching for Tony, more desperately than he had wanted anything in a long time, but this was the best chance they were ever going to get to end this. Both members of the Argonians high command in one room, and only a single warrior, already wounded, between him and them.
The Archon said something incomprehensible in Argonian, and there was a long moment during which Steve cursed himself for just assuming that the Argonians would speak English -- they used mechanikos as translators, Tony and Clint had both told him that -- before the injured warrior spoke.
"The Archon wishes to know if you challenge the Imperator personally," she said, her voice harshly accented. The fangs gave her a slight lisp.
It was, Steve realized with the part of his mind that wasn't either analyzing the aliens' likely capabilities in a fight or envisioning Tony writhing in agony in some Argonian torture chamber, the first time he'd ever heard an Argonian speak words he understood.
"Damn right it's personal," Ben rumbled, his voice like rocks grinding.
The warrior canted her head sideways and indicated Steve with the black barb on the end of her tail. She was some kind of high-ranking officer, by the loop of copper braid on one shoulder; how and why did she speak English, when the other warriors didn't? "I spoke to him, rock creature. He uttered the challenge, if challenge it was. He must answer."
The Imperator -- because with the amount of copper braiding that covered his high-collared uniform tunic, he could be no one else -- was nearly seven feet tall, and broad-shouldered, built like a lion rather than the sleeker panther-like build of most of the other Argonians. The Argonians fought duels over honor, and sometimes even over rank, according to Tony's letters, which meant that even a general highly ranked enough that most of his job ought to involve sitting behind the lines and directing troops would still be in practice and fighting trim, especially given how much weight they seemed to place on hand-to-hand combat. Most societies gave up fighting one-on-one with swords by the time their weapons technology reached the level of nuclear bombs and ray guns.
If they had somehow interpreted his order to surrender or face the consequences as a challenge to some kind of personal combat, then it was likely that the Archon and the female officer would let the Imperator face him alone, without intervening to help him.
"Yes," Steve said. "I challenge him. Personally."
The officer relayed his words to the others, not taking her eyes off Steve, obviously too well-trained to turn her back on an enemy.
One of the Imperator's big cat-ears flicked backwards, and he snarled something at her. Steve didn't have to understand the words to hear the contempt in his voice.
The Archon said something equally contempt-laden to him, her tone challenging, and Steve could fill in the conversation in his head without any trouble. "I'm not going to fight a human." "Don't tell me you're scared of it? Chicken."
The Imperator's ears went back, and he snapped something short and guttural that was probably an obscenity.
The Archon inclined her head to him, a satisfied expression on her face, the copper diadem that rested between her ears flashing despite the dim light. All the lights seemed to be working at half their normal wattage, and Steve wasn't sure which was more disconcerting: the artificially dim light, or the fact that there were electric lights in here at all. He'd gotten used to hurricane lamps and candles.
There was a brief conference in Argonian -- the Imperator angry, the Archon quietly commanding and almost smug, and the officer deferential -- and then the officer said, in English, "The Imperator accepts your challenge. He will face you in the dueling circle. Do you have the authority to serve as champion for your people?"
"What?" Steve frowned, shifting his shield to a slightly higher position.
"Are you an officer? A leader?"
Ben answered before he could. "Yeah. He's got 'authority.'"
"Do you challenge on your own behalf, or on behalf of your rebellion?"
She placed a heavy weight on the second half of the question that made it obvious which answer was the correct one. Perhaps Argonians didn’t honor challenges between enemy combatants if they were made for personal reasons?
"On whatever terms he will meet me under." There, that ought to be safe.
A moment of byplay in Argonian, and then the officer said, with what Steve suspected was the Argonian equivalent of a smile, "Good. You have honor, to let us set the terms. He will fight you to the death."
"I'm not sure this is a good idea," Jan said. She was hovering just above Ben's shoulder, her arms folded, staring at the Argonians with open suspicion. "You know it's probably a trick."
Ben nodded agreement. "We don’t need to do this," he said. "There's three of us and three of them, and their swords don't work on me. We can-"
Steve nodded at the raw, shiny patch on Ben's left arm, where rock had melted and hardened into glass. "Their ray guns do." And both warriors still had theirs. "If they'll let me go up against him one-on-one, I think it's worth the risk."
He turned back to the Argonians, giving the Imperator a broad smile that wasn't the least bit friendly. "I accept."
"You," Wanda snarled, pointing at the Argonian who had given her Pietro's finger, "tell me where my brother is."
It eyed her warily, leaning away from her slightly as if it wanted to start backing away. "In one of the other cells," it said, ears twitching violently. "I don't know which key goes with which-"
"Carol," Wanda said, not taking her eyes off the thing's face, "get the rest of the doors open."
There was thud and the metallic groan of warping metal from behind her. Wanda didn't turn around.
"Nothing in this one," Carol called out.
"Which. Cell." Wanda repeated.
It hesitated. For some reason, it's eyes going to Clint, who was staring at her with relief naked on his face. He looked thinner than he had the last time she had seen him, and paler, and there was a large bruise on his face, where one the Argonians had obviously hit him.
All they ever seemed to do was hurt the people she loved. Vision, Clint, Carol, Pietro...
"I'll show you," the Argonian said quietly. It started walking down the platform, never taking its eyes off her.
It was afraid of her, she realized. Good. It ought to be.
Walking after it felt strange, as if she were floating just above the ground, her feet belonging to someone else.
Until five minutes ago, when the shield preventing her from accessing her powers had gone down, Wanda had known that the Argonians were going to execute her for refusing to co-operate. Probably publicly, just after they forced her to look at Pietro's dismembered body.
Then Carol had burst into her cell with a crash like the end of the world and thank God she hadn't listened to her instincts and immediately hexed her into oblivion the moment the door opened. If she hadn't held her fire, waited for what she'd assumed was an Argonian to come further into the cell, where she would have a clear shot... She'd thought that she had fallen asleep and started dreaming about rescue again, for a moment, or begun hallucinating, when she heard Carol's voice, and saw the familiar long spill of blonde hair.
The other Avengers weren't supposed to have come to rescue her. What were Carol and Clint doing, here in the center of the Argonians' seat of power? They would be lucky to make it back up to the surface alive -- in fact, they were lucky they had managed to penetrate this far down without being captured themselves.
They could worry about that later, she reminded herself firmly. Pietro came first.
The Argonians had been torturing him for days, they'd cut pieces off him, done worse, probably; the Imperator had promised when she'd been given Pietro's finger that that had only been the beginning of the torment they would put her brother through, all over some human virus they had caught. He'd told her that all she had to do to end it was give them the information they wanted, and then asked questions she couldn't possibly answer. Even if she had wanted to break, to betray the Resistance, it would have done no good.
As selfish as it made her... for Pietro, she might have broken.
The Argonian indicated one of the metal cells, its featureless bare metal completely indistinguishable from any of the others, nothing to indicate that there was a person inside it.
"And which one is Tony in?" Clint asked.
The Argonian's ears wilted. "I don't know. As a traitor to the empire, the Imperator took a personal interest in him and had him imprisoned separately. They wouldn't tell me where he was." He looked away then, finally breaking his terrified fixation on Wanda. "Arch-Captain Kammani feared that as a mechanikos, my knowledge of him would make viewing his torture too difficult to bear."
Wanda ignored the by-play, all her attention focused on the polished metal door the Argonian had just pointed out to them. The metal grille was smaller than the one in her cell had been, and too high up for her to see through, made for Argonian eyes rather than her own.
Please, she thought, please be alive. Her stomach twisted painfully, and for a single, hysterical moment, she wanted to beg Carol not to open the door, because as long as it stayed closed, as long as she didn't have to see, it meant that Pietro wasn't-
"Open it," she said.
Carol slammed a gloved fist directly into the center of the door, the metal warping under the impact. Then she hit it again, and the upper hinge tore loose, the door hanging at an angle, bent nearly in half.
Wanda threw a hex sphere at it, increasing the probability that the remaining, damaged hinge would break under the additional weight, and the door fell inward with a metallic clang.
For a long moment, she didn't recognize the body hanging limply from the shackles set in the cell's far wall. She ought to have felt pity, or sorrow, but in that split second when the battered and blood-covered features refused to add up to anything familiar, all she could feel was relief, followed by a sharp pang of disappointment.
She was about to round on the Argonian, to accuse him of deliberately lying to them, when she realized that the man hanging motionless inside the cell did not have brown hair, as she'd initially thought.
His hair was matted with dried blood. When she took a step further into the cell, surrounding one upraised hand with chaos energy to give herself light, the handful of locks that were still clean gleamed pure white.
Wanda stumbled backwards out of the cell, fighting the urge to throw up. The platform seemed to tilt and lurch under her, and there was a ringing sound in her ears.
No, no, no. Pietro couldn't be-
"Is he in there?" Clint's voice came to her as if from a great distance.
Wanda shook her head.
"What do you mean? Is it empty, did they move him?"
Carol moved forward, into the cell doorway. "Oh my God," she breathed. "Clint, get in here. I'm going to need help getting him down."
"No,"' Wanda snapped, the world coming back into clarity with a sudden, cold jolt. "Don't touch him. Nobody touches him."
It had always been just the two of them, right from the beginning. No one but Wanda had ever taken care of Pietro. And he'd taken care of her. Always. Even when he'd been cruel to her, after she'd fallen in love with Vision, it had only been because he loved her, because he'd been afraid that Vision, as an android, wouldn't be able to love her back, or that if Vision did return her feelings, Wanda would leave Pietro all alone. Like their mother had, when she'd died. Like Django had, when he'd sent them away for their own safety. Like Magneto had, using them only to further his crusade against humans. Like Crystal had, rubbing his nose in her infidelity before divorcing him.
He had trusted her, had come into New York, put himself in danger, for her, and the Argonians had taken him and hurt him and butchered him while she had been only yards away, completely unable to stop them.
Like their mother, burned to death in a fire her own powers had started. Like Vision, taken from their bed while she slept obliviously next to him. Like her children, screaming as they were absorbed back into Mephisto, while she stood there helplessly, unable to save them.
All because of her. Because she had lost control, had stood by uselessly, had failed to create her children properly. Because she had gotten Pietro captured, and had ignored their demands for information, even when they brought her proof of what they were doing to him.
She should have told them something, anything. She should have made up something to tell them.
"Let us bring him out of there for you," Carol said. Her voice sounded strange. "You shouldn't have to do it."
"They killed him," Wanda said, her voice seeming to belong to someone else. She could feel power filling her, crackling in the air around her -- now, when it was useless, when it was too late -- without conscious effort on her part.
The dimly lit subway platform was bright now -- the metal walls of the cells reflecting back lurid pink light, Carol and Clint's blond hair stained blood-red, the Argonian's grey uniform changed to a weird reddish-black. It had a hand over its eyes, hiding them.
Let it hide. It didn't deserve to look at Pietro. Not after what its people had done to him.
Just because he was human. They were no different than the mob that had tried to burn her when they were children, than the people who had repeatedly sneered at them, spat at them, even shot at them. Than Magneto.
Than anyone else she had ever hated.
"They killed him," she repeated, and there was a shower of sparks from the nearest subway track as the third rail flashed incandescent white and then went dark again.
"We should have come sooner," Clint said, his voice hitching oddly on some of the words. "I'm sorry." He reached out to touch her shoulder, and red sparks flashed around his fingertips.
Clint jerked his hand away with a hiss, eyes wide. "Wanda," he said slowly, "you're starting to scare-"
His voice was meaningless noise. Carol was saying something as well, but Wanda wasn't listening any longer, the screaming hurricane-roar of chaos magic all she could hear.
It wanted loose, as it always did, to wreak havoc on everything around her. Her hex powers were a delicate balancing act, giving probability a nudge in one direction or another, but raw chaos magic was entropy and destruction given shape. Wielding it was a constant exercise in control.
The magic wanted to destroy, to change, to break and distort.
Pietro was dead.
She was tired of fighting.
Wanda closed her eyes and let the raw chaos power inside her free, to do what it wanted.
The Argonian officer had drawn a large circle on the polished wooden floor with a stick of what looked like chalk. She limped as she walked, more heavily every time she had to kneel and stand again to draw a different section of the circle, but the line she drew was perfectly straight. "It is unfortunate that you rebels have already seized the Hall of Exile," she said. "There is an official dueling circle there."
Steve had seen the wide copper ring inlaid into the marble floor when they had passed through Vanderbilt Hall. He hadn't stopped to wonder what it was for -- the Argonians added copper inlay to everything.
Once inside the circle, stepping back out again before the conclusion of the fight apparently constituted a forfeit, at which point the Archon or the officer would probably shoot him just on principle.
Ben and Jan were right, he thought. This was insane. They should have charged in, guns blazing, shot the Imperator and his officer, and taken the Archon prisoner. With her as a hostage, they might have been able to force the rest of the Argonians to surrender. As it was, Steve might be able to kill Nergal, but even if he won, he, Ben, and Jan would probably find themselves staring down the barrel of an Argonian ray gun the moment Nergal's body hit the floor. Or the moment Steve's did.
He ought to feel more reservations at the idea of a fight to the death than simply disgust at himself for throwing away a tactical advantage. Looking at Nergal, and remembering the dark shadows of bruises on Tony's body, the haunted expression in his and Clint's eyes, the look of frozen surprise on Vance's face as he fell, a hole burned straight through his chest, the pharmacy owner who'd been executed for helping them treat Johnny Storm's leg... it was hard to feel any moral qualms about killing the creature in front of him in cold blood.
"The Archon has pledged to abide by the outcome of this duel. You will honor it, also. If you are killed, your warriors will tell us how to stop the spread of the disease your agent infected us with." The tip of her tail swished, a gesture he suspected was part disdain and part subtle threat. "Tony Stark has provided little information, despite much encouragement."
Encouragement.
He had hoped -- prayed -- that Tony had simply been imprisoned, that the Argonians would be too distracted by the poison to subject him to the tortures Steve could only too easily imagine.
He had seen what the Nazis did to prisoners they had wanted information from. What the Japanese Army had done to British and American soldiers who had tried to escape from their prison camps. There had been very little left of those men, when the Allies had freed them.
"You sow the seeds of your treason well, human," the officer was saying. "Either you suborned a loyal subject of the empire, or you have planned for this attack from the very beginning. If you show such treachery in the duel, your warriors' lives will be forfeit."
Steve didn't bother to reply. The Argonians had destroyed his city, had enslaved thousands, had brutally slaughtered defeated human soldiers to the last man in Times Square rather than taking them prisoner, had had civilians publicly executed, and were probably torturing Tony right now, as he stood there.
Steve didn't like killing, had hoped, once, before the Argonians had come, that he would never have to take another life again. You didn't always get what you hoped for.
He adjusted his grip on his shield and stepped into the circle.
The Imperator moved with the gliding steps of a large cat, his tail lashing as he prowled the inner edge of the circle, watching Steve intently. Sizing him up.
He would be have to be careful of that tail. It gave the Argonians a distinct advantage in reach. Not to mention that the alien had three bladed weapons to Steve's single shield.
Stay at the edges of his reach and wait for him to wear down, maybe? Steve could outlast any normal human when it came to endurance; how long did it take for Argonians to get tired?
He saw the Imperator's move coming only a fraction of a second before he made it -- a tightening around the eyes, a tensing in his muscles, both subtle enough that only long experience let Steve notice them at all -- and then the Argonian was lunging for him, the short sword in his left hand arcing upwards. He meant to gut Steve with it, to end the fight before it began.
Steve wasn't going to make things that easy on him. He turned sideways and let the blow slip past him, grabbing the Imperator by the wrist and yanking him forward, intending to flip him over his hip and send him crashing to the floor.
Instead, the Imperator allowed himself to be pulled forward, turning the momentum to his own advantage as he clubbing Steve across the torso with the side of his tail. The angle was awkward, preventing him from striking with enough force to break ribs or even knock the breath out of Steve, but the blow was only a distraction.
Steve caught the slash from the Imperator's right-hand sword on his shield, metal sliding across metal with a screech. He thrust the shield forward, slamming the lower edge into the Argonian's thighs, then twisted away, disengaging.
The Imperator was good, fast and every bit as strong as he looked. His reach was easily longer than Steve's, even discounting the tail, and any time spent behind a desk clearly hadn't atrophied his fighting skills in the slightest. But Steve had fought opponents larger and stronger than him in the past, and won. And he would win this time. The stakes were too high not to.
He hefted his shield slightly higher, his eyes on the center of the Imperator's body as they circled one another again, watching for any shifts in weight that would tell him the Imperator was about to launch another attack. His options were limited; if he threw his shield, he'd be left with nothing with which to block the Imperator's blows.
He would have to fight defensively, to let the Imperator come to him and hopefully wear himself out. At least he was male, so Steve didn't have to worry about being poisoned by his tail on top of everything else. Hank had given each of them a vial of anti-venom, but it would do Steve little good in the middle of a fight.
The Imperator said something in Argonian, the tone clearly scornful; the words were directed at the Archon, not at Steve. Steve was in motion before he'd finished the sentence, taking advantage of the slight shift in the Argonian's attention and lashing out with one foot.
His kick landed solidly on the Imperator's right wrist, and the Imperator's hand sprang open, his sword hitting the floor with a loud clatter. Steve kicked it away, watching it go spinning out of the circle, and jumped back, out of reach.
Not quickly enough. The Imperator snarled angrily at him, tail whipping toward him in a downwards strike. Steve twisted sideways as he saw the motion out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn't avoid the blown entirely; the Imperator's tailblade carved a long line down his ribcage, only partly hindered by the scale-mail and leather.
He could feel blood beginning to trickle slowly down his side as he danced away, but the injury didn't hurt yet. It would, he knew.
The Archon made a cool, slightly mocking observation in Argonian, and the Imperator's ears went flat. Steve was starting to get the impression that he was of only incidental importance in this fight, that the real enemy, for the two of them, was each other. Did the Archon actually want the Imperator to lose? That was insane.
'Don't look at her, you fur-covered Nazi wannabee,' he snarled silently, as he and the Imperator slowly circled each other. 'I'm the one who's going to kill you.'
The Imperator charged again, leading with his left foot this time and slashing at Steve with his remaining sword. Steve threw himself backwards, bending back at the waist and letting the blade pass cleanly over his head, and silently thanking Tony for all those sparring matches. He could fight left-handed opponents as easily as right-handed ones now, after years of practice against Tony.
Tony... No. He could worry about him later. Now, he had to concentrate on survival.
He blocked the Imperator's next blow, and the next, jumping to avoid a low swipe of the Argonian's tail as he tried to knock Steve's feet out from under him. The Argonian was slightly off balance as he recovered from each lunge, but Steve couldn't afford to close with him to take advantage of it; if he tried any unarmed combat moves, the Imperator could pin him easily under his seven foot bulk and rip out his throat with his fangs. He'd seen one of them do it, when they'd taken the lobby.
The Imperator struck only with his hands and tail -- Argonians didn't kick unless they had you on the ground -- and Steve's first kick had caught him off-guard. Now, though, the element of surprise was gone. This time, when the Imperator moved closer and Steve pivoted on the ball of his right foot and drove his left foot into the Argonian's stomach, he managed to grab Steve's ankle and pull even as he folded up in pain.
Steve had been expecting the move. He let the momentum carry him forwards and slammed his shield into the Imperator's face with his right hand, even as he grabbed for the short sword the Imperator was driving up toward his groin with his left.
They had figured out the location of the femoral artery in humans, obviously. That, or he was guessing based on the fact that the Argonians had a major blood vessel in almost the same spot.
Steve gritted his teeth, muscles locking as he fought to keep the blade away from him. The Imperator had let go of his foot when Steve's shield had hit him, so he had his balance back, but the edge of the sword was getting closer and closer, and now the Imperator's other hand had him by the throat, claws digging in.
Spots starting to float in his vision, he slammed the edge of his shield into the Argonian's wrist, just above where his own fingers were desperately digging into the creature's tendons. The crack of breaking bone was almost inaudible over the roaring in his ears, but he felt it.
He twisted the Imperator's wrist brutally, feeling something splinter as he did so, and the Imperator's fingers sprang apart, the second sword hitting the floor.
Steve dropped to one knee, reaching for it, and the Imperator kicked it away.
It came to rest just outside the circle, only two feet away, but it might as well have been a mile. If he broke the circle, the female officer would shoot him. She had her ray gun drawn and ready, and had looked more than prepared to use it.
Steve dropped flat as the Imperator's tailblade came straight for his throat, holding up his shield and letting the blow glance off it. He somersaulted backwards and sprang to his feet again, the movement sending a stab of pain through his side. He could feel blood sliding down inside his costume, making the inside of the leather slick and sticky.
His pulse was hammering in his ears, and the world had narrowed down to just him and the Imperator -- he could smell the Argonian's fur, the slightly sweet, musky scent mixing sickeningly with the raw meat smell of human blood.
The Imperator's tailblade whipped toward him again, coming from the side this time, and Steve barely shifted his shield around in time.
The blade struck directly in the center of his shield, the force of the blow numbing Steve's arm to the shoulder despite vibranium's ability to deflect kinetic force, and shattered into pieces.
For a long moment, it seemed as if no one moved. Then the Imperator swung his tail at Steve again, this time like a club.
Steve ducked and rolled under the limb, avoiding a broadside blow that would have crushed his ribs, and grabbed for the largest shard of the broken tailblade, ignoring the sting as the edges sliced through his gloves and into his fingers.
He came up inside the circle of the Imperator's tail, shard of metal in hand, and exploded to his feet, stabbing upward with the blade fragment with the entire force of his body behind his hand.
The blade sank into the Imperator's throat, and hot, purple blood gushed over Steve's fingers, in his face, everywhere.
The Imperator collapsed to his knees, clutching at his throat, tail flailing wildly. Steve took a step back, out of range, and watched as he slowly sagged to the floor, going still.
After a moment, the gush of arterial blood slowed.
He hadn't killed anyone in cold blood in a long, long time. Not since Germany. Not unless the Argonians who had died in the bombing and attacks he'd planned counted. Or the ones who had died from Hank's poison.
No one moved. Steve's mouth was full of the metallic taste of alien blood, the smell and taste making him feel sick, and the only sound in the room was his panting breaths and the pulse he could still hear pounding in his ears.
Then there was a bright flash, the world vanishing in an explosion of red and white light, and scream of static and breaking glass as every light bulb in the room exploded.
Wanda was almost too bright to look at, her hair floating around her head as if she were underwater and the air around her crackling with red, pink, and black lightning that Carol knew must be chaos energy.
Clint and their Argonian prisoner had thrown themselves to the subway platform, the Argonians covering its huge, black eyes with both hands.
Lightening was dancing in sheets between the third rail and the ceiling, arcing from one metal holding cell to another, and things in corner of her vision were bending like a fun-house mirror, as if reality were warping at the edges.
"Wanda!" she shouted, and the screaming, roaring sound of the magic swallowed her voice completely. She couldn't even hear herself. "Stop it! You're going to kill us!" Or at least kill Clint. Carol couldn't be electrocuted or fried or zapped by anything other than the Argonians' forcefields and plasma guns.
So why, she thought, was she still just standing there?
Wanda wasn't going to snap herself out of this. Maybe she couldn't. Maybe the chaos magic was beyond her control. Carol's powers had never been difficult to control, even when she'd been Binary, the power of a star burning inside her like a natural part of her, but magic was different. Magic had a mind of its own, an agenda of its own, at least as far as Carol could tell, and Wanda had been possessed by it before.
Carol took a step forward, then another, ignoring the energy swirling around her. It was like trying to move in multiple Gs, her arms and legs feeling impossibly heavy.
The closer she got to Wanda, the harder it was to keep moving. It was like wading through syrup, and energy burned around her with every step. So much power that the air burned with it; Carol should felt stronger, more energized with every step, as her body absorbed the ambient energy out of the air. Magic appeared to be yet another kind of energy she couldn't absorb.
Like the plasma guns' blasts.
Wanda's eyes blazed with pink light, and her skin glowed as if lit from within. Lines of pink and red lightning danced over it, and Carol just knew that touching her was going to hurt.
She was like some kind of ancient goddess, beautiful and terrible in a way that hurt to look at.
"You have to stop this," Carol shouted again. She'd been jealous of Wanda, with her perfect control of her powers, more at ease and secure in her abilities than she'd ever been while Carol's powers slowly crumbled away. Jealous. God. Whatever was in the driver's seat now, it wasn't Wanda; the magic was going to burn her up from the inside out until nothing was left, or it would kill them all and destroy the subway station around them. Neither of those options was acceptable.
Steeling herself, Carol reached out and grabbed Wanda by the arms, shaking her.
It was like touching a live wire, but without the dizzying infusion of energy. Pain flared in her hands, up her arms, sharp and sudden enough to bring tears to her eyes. She could almost feel her hair standing on end.
It didn't seem to be killing her, though.
She shook Wanda harder, saying her name, hoping desperately for some kind of reaction.
Wanda didn't respond. Her face was eerily blank, despite the tears sliding steadily from her burning eyes.
"Wanda," Carol repeated. "Wanda!" She wasn't answering. Why wasn't she answering? Could she even hear Carol anymore?
What if she didn't snap out of it?
She was going to have to knock her out, Carol realized. It was that or stand there helplessly while the world tore itself apart around them.
She let go of Wanda with one hand and drew back her arm, making a fist, forcing herself not to think about what it might do to Wanda to lose consciousness while channeling this much power. She would have to be careful; using her full strength would crush Wanda's skull, break her neck.
Wanda blinked, the light in her eyes flickering for a second. "They killed him," she said, her voice empty in a way that would have made the hair on the back of Carol's neck stand up, if it hadn't already been on end from the chaos magic raging around them. "And I could do nothing. Again."
Carol let her hand drop, reaching for Wanda again. "I know," she said. Her throat hurt, and the blinding light of Wanda's power was hurting her eyes, making them sting and burn. She put a hand on the side of Wanda's face, turning slightly to make the other woman meet her eyes. After a moment or so, the pain of the contact wasn't as noticeable. "They took your power away and made you helpless. You couldn't have stopped them. It's not your fault."
Wanda closed her eyes, the eerie light that had completely drowned out her iris and pupil hidden from view for a moment; Carol wasn't sure, but she thought maybe the storm of energy around them was weakening slightly. "I destroy everything I love. Everything I touch."
Her husband, her children, now her brother -- everything Wanda had loved had been taken from her. It wasn't fair. Carol felt paralyzed, frozen there on the subway platform with one hand on Wanda's face; she wanted more than anything to be able to make it better, to help somehow, to take away Wanda's pain and make everything okay.
She didn't even know how to help herself.
Carol closed her eyes for a second, hating herself for how badly she had fucked their friendship up, and for the fact that she didn’t have the slightest idea of what to do. 'You don't,' she thought. 'You don't destroy things. None of it was your fault.'
She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Wanda, the chaos lightening crawling over both of them. "I'm invulnerable. You can't destroy me."
It was like throwing herself against the Argonians' forcefield, agony jolting through her body. So much power, too much, and she wasn't absorbing it like she was supposed to. "You have to stop this," she whispered, forcing the words out through gritted teeth and trying not to let the pain show in her voice. "You'll kill yourself. You'll kill Clint."
"I don't think I can," Wanda said, and her voice wasn't empty anymore. It was a cracked, shaky thread, but Carol could hear the fear in it. "I let it out, and now it won't listen to me."
"You can," Carol told her. "Please." 'Please,' she repeated silently. 'It hurts.' "Please make it stop." She could hear her voice crack, almost begging.
The roar of the magic stopped abruptly, the pain vanishing with it, and Wanda was suddenly sagging in Carol's arms, her body shaking, burying her face in Carol's shoulder.
"They killed him," she sobbed. "They killed him. Wh-what am I going to tell Luna? First Marilla was murdered in front of her and now-- My whole life, he's always been there. I can't- I..."
Carol closed her eyes and petted Wanda's hair uselessly, not know what to say. She had never lost anyone, not like this.
Then she remembered Clint, and opened her eyes again just as the track lighting overhead flickered back to life. She scanned the platform over the top of Wanda's head, apprehension spiking in her stomach when she found no sign of him or their prisoner.
A second later, she saw movement inside the cell they had found Pietro in, and realized belatedly that Clint and their hostage had taken refuge there, where the out-of-control magic was less likely to strike them.
Everything hurt, like she had been beaten or electrocuted, like a hangover headache that ran throughout her entire body, and for the first time, Wanda's slim body actually felt heavy in her arms.
She didn't want to let go. She wanted to stay here like this, smelling the scent of ozone that permeated Wanda's hair and feeling the curves of her body in her arms and letting the relief and gratitude that Wanda was still alive wash through her.
She hadn't been tortured, or raped, or executed. She hadn't been burned alive by chaos magic.
"I have to go see if Clint is okay," she said.
Wanda nodded against her shoulder and released her, taking a step back. Her face was streaked with tears and grime, her hair was a tangled mess, and Carol could see the raw grief in her eyes. She looked every bit as beautiful as she had when she had been glowing with unearthly power.
How could Carol have ever not wanted to see that?
Wanda followed her to the doorway of the cell, then stopped, clearly not wanting to go in. Carol didn't blame her.
The Argonian flattened himself against the cell wall when Carol stepped in, clearly terrified of Wanda and whatever she might be about to do next. She couldn't actually blame him, either.
Clint was at the far side of the cell, inspecting Pietro's body. Clint looked pale and sick, the bruises on his face standing out starkly, but otherwise all right. Not burned, or somehow disfigured by direct exposure to pure chaos.
"Fuck," he breathed. "They hacked him all to pieces." His voice was hoarse and raw, the voice of someone trying not to cry. "Some of the cuts are still bleeding."
Carol shook her head. "They can't be." Some of the blood that streaked his chest and arms must still be wet. God, if they'd only gotten here a few minutes sooner...
"No," Clint said, the words catching in his throat oddly, "he's still bleeding."
There was a long pause, and then, "Jesus Christ, he's alive. He's still alive. We have to get him down from here."
Carol was at Clint's side instantly, already reaching up to snap the chains holding Pietro in place. Even inches away, he still looked dead, his skin colorless and his body boneless and painfully gaunt, but Clint was right; the cuts on his chest were still bleeding. Sluggishly, but it was definitely fresh blood, being pumped out of the wounds by a still actively beating heart.
Carol began to gently lower Pietro to the floor, and Wanda was suddenly there, helping her. She knelt on the floor, cradling her bother's head and shoulder in her lap and huddled over him, crying so hard her shoulders shook. "You always make me worry," she said brokenly, brushing blood-encrusted hair back from Pietro's face. "Why do you always have to--" she broke off with a sob, and dropping to her knees next to her and putting her arms around her again wasn't even a conscious decision.
Wanda buried her face in Carol's shoulder and cried, Pietro cradled between them, and Clint came over and awkwardly put one hand on Wanda's shoulder.
For the first time in months, Carol allowed herself to believe that the war really was going to be over soon, and that things were going to be okay.
The sudden explosion of light and sound died as abruptly as it had begun, and Steve and the others were left in near darkness, the room lit only by the dim light filtering in through the heavily tinted windows. Something about that light seemed different, but there was no time to wonder about it now.
Whatever the energy flair had been, it had lasted only a minute or so, and everyone in the room was still frozen where they had been in when it began. The Imperator's body on the floor, Steve standing over him, the Argonian officer holding a ray gun on him while Ben and Jan watched nervously from several yards away.
The Archon was the first to break the tableau.
She took a step towards him, holder her hands up, palms out, and saying something in Argonian.
"You are the victor," the officer translated. Her gaze had shifted from Steve to the Archon now, and something about the tilt of her ears seemed... speculative.
"Yes," Steve said. 'Tony' he thought. 'Tell me where Tony is.' "I'm going to have to ask for your surrender now. There are three of us and only two of you, and only one of you is armed.
The officer glanced down at the Imperator's corpse, then flicked her tail dismissively and looked back up, meeting his eyes. "The Imperator's death is a great tragedy," she said, and even through the lisp and the accent, Steve could hear the lack of sincerity. "It is a loss I doubt we shall ever recover from."
She hesitated, then, "You have defended your authority. The Imperator has failed to defend his, and it is forfeit, along with his life. And his honor. I will show you where your mechanikos spy has been imprisoned, and your rebel warriors as well. But I ask that-" she broke off, was silent for a moment, and then said, very calmly. "You are the victor. You need make no concessions. But I ask on behalf of my Archon that you tell us how we may treat our people who have been made ill by your virus. There are so few of us left. Every death is- I have cast my honor aside already, learning your language and letting a human fight my battles. I will beg." She bent her head, lowering her ears and letting her tail sag limply to the ground.
The Archon's ears and tail went stiff with surprise, and then she sighed with a resignation that cross all language barriers and bent her own head -- only a fraction -- and lowered her own tail to curl it about her feet. Her ears stayed proudly erect.
"It's not a virus." Ben's voice came from behind Steve, deep and rough, like rocks grinding together. The officer's ears twitched slightly when he spoke, telegraphing her surprise.
"Indeed? The prisoner we interrogated seemed most certain that it was."
Of course he had. Tony and Hank had worked out the cover story either of them was supposed to give out in case of capture in great detail. Tony had doubted his own ability to stick to the script under duress. Tony always doubted himself over the wrong things.
"It's a poison," Jan said, from her perch on Ben's shoulders. "You shouldn't have deprived your prisoners of salt and citric acid. Did you really think we wouldn't figure it out?"
The officer's eyes widened, and the tip of her tail began twitching back and forth. "Sodium ascorbate. The weakness, the dizziness, the nausea... We should have known." She paused, tail still twitching, then, "Your spy was most convincing as he delivered false information to us. I am impressed." She turned and relayed the information to the Archon, and Steve had the satisfaction of seeing her pull her lips back in a snarl.
Then her face relaxed, and Steve could read the relief in her body language. Relief that it was something treatable, something with a simple and non-communicable cause, something that wasn't going to wipe out their entire species like the aliens in War of the Worlds.
Steve ought to have sympathized, ought to have felt guilt over what he'd ordered Hank to do. Later, he probably would. Right now, though, it was hard to make himself care about anything other than Tony, tortured and imprisoned somewhere below him.
He turned to the Archon, about to demand that she have her officer take him to wherever the prisoners were being held, but he never had a chance to get the words out.
"Oh my God." Jan's voice cut him off before he could open his mouth. She launched herself off Ben's shoulder and returned to normal size, her feet hitting the floorboards with a sharp thud. "Ben, break one of the windows, I need to see out."
Ben didn't question her -- he just strode over to the massive window set in the side wall and punched a pane of heavily tinted glass out.
The room was suddenly filled with warm, golden sunlight.
Not purple-tinted or dimmed by its passage through the shield bubble. Bright, unfiltered natural sunlight.
"The shield is down!" Ben crowed. "Danvers' team did it!"
The two Argonians stood frozen, all the horror that had been totally absent when Steve had killed the Imperator plain on their faces now.
The sky outside was blue. Steve hadn't seen blue sky in five months. And hanging there in the blue sky, small but rapidly growing larger, was the ungainly and unmistakable shape of the Helicarrier.
Reinforcements.
They weren't alone anymore.
"You see that?" he said, pointing out the window. He couldn't keep the grin off his face at the sight, and didn't try. "That's a flying aircraft carrier with enough fire power to wipe out the entire city. More. If you're smart, you'll surrender immediately and tell your people to stand down."
Sam. Sharon. Fury. Dugan.
Please let them be alive, he thought. Please let them... He had been afraid he would never see Sam again.
The Archon tore her eyes away from the window and visibly mastered herself. She lowered her ears and inclined her head, saying something calm and matter-of-fact.
"You do not understand," the officer translated. "You, the leader of your people's army, have defeated the leader of our army in single combat. You have already won."
"I... have... what?" Steve stared at them, utterly dumfounded. It couldn't be that easy. Nothing was that easy.
Did that mean he could have ended it weeks, months ago simply by challenging the Imperator to single combat? Before Vance had died, before Clint and Tony had spent months in captivity, before he'd sent Tony back to be tortured?
"You have defeated our commander in the circle of honor. His authority is forfeit to you."
Ben's eyebrows shot up. "Does that mean he gets to tell you people what to do?"
"The victor in such a situation may dictate terms to the loser, yes. It is..." she hesitated. "It is why I lowered myself to beg for a cure. You did not have to offer one."
"You want my terms?" Steve asked. As he spoke, the joy that had filled him at the sight of the Helicarrier drained away, replaced by a slow burning anger. It hadn't been necessary. None of this had been necessary. All the death, the destruction, the loss.
His side hurt, a sharp jagged pain going through him whenever he moved. His mouth tasted like blood, and he had killed over a dozen people today, human and Argonian, and watched his team kill as well. On his orders.
"Get out," Steve said flatly. "I want all of your people to get off our planet and never come back. If you don't, we'll ensure that every water source you drink from will be poisoned, and that every nest you create underground will be blasted into a crater by my friends up there in the flying aircraft carrier."
The Archon was standing stiffly now, ears erect and head no longer bowed. She was squinting slightly against the bright light from the broken window, and the sunlight made her coppery fur blaze like fire. It was almost beautiful.
Strange. For so long, he'd seen the inhuman monsters from one of Lovecraft's horror stories whenever he looked at them, vicious cat/fox/scorpion things dressed up in what looked far too much like Waffen SS uniforms, infesting the subways like the dog creatures from "Pickman's Model" had infested Boston's sewers.
They were just people, no more or less capable of evil than humans were, but he had never thought of anything about them as attractive before, except for the lethal grace in their movements.
The Archon spoke then, solemnly but with steel evident in beneath her words.
"We will leave," the officer translated. "You do not have to destroy your world to keep us from possessing it. That would be waste, and there's been too much of that already. I will take the remainder of my people and go. For too long we have squandered everything that is left to us in a futile attempt to recapture our formal glory. All it has brought us is more death and failure. Our empire is lost to us. We will leave, and build a new empire elsewhere, with our own hands and tails."
That... was it? Steve stared at her, knowing he ought to be thinking more quickly, taking control, but... They were surrendering, just like that? He had expected every last one of them to fight to the death, a bloodbath that would have put Iwo Jima and Okinawa to shame. They slaughtered prisoners, they never let themselves live to be captured.
He had been so sure this was going to end in a massacre or a futile last stand, with victory won by bloody inches, made possibly only because Hank's poison had weakened them enough to make such wholesale slaughter and butchery possible.
What if he, Jan, and Ben hadn't tracked the Archon and Imperator down and confronted them? There would have been so much needless death. There had been so much of it already.
Steve ground his teeth, anger smoldering dully inside him. The Argonians had butchered hundreds of people in New York alone, and now their leader thought that they could just leave, as if all the bloodshed and war crimes and destruction were nothing. And he was going to stand there and accept her surrender and let them go, all of them, because what else could he do?
What else was there to do?
Did the end of a war always feel this empty? Even the grim satisfaction he had expected when he had stepped into the ring with the Imperator was nowhere to be found, not while the blood was still warm and sticky on his costume and his face, and while he had no idea if Tony, Pietro, Wanda, and Hank were alive or dead.
The Archon turned away, her back ramrod straight, and crossed the room to an ornate, copper-inlaid console that was obviously a recent, Argonian-designed addition. She pressed one of the buttons on its surface, and a hollow crackling sound followed -- it was a radio or an intercom of some kind, Steve realized, probably connected to the train station's loudspeakers, or to some other Argonian base, like Penn Station.
He took a step forward, bringing his shield up slightly; it wasn't safe to let her contact the rest of her forces when there was no one there who spoke Argonian. She might tell her troops to stand down and surrender, or she might plan to order them all to storm her apartments and kill the intruders.
A burst of static from the console forestalled him.
The Archon snatched her hand back from it just as Nick Fury's voice echoed tinnily through the room.
"This is the SHIELD Helicarrier, broadcasting on all channels. We are personally authorized by the UN and the President of the United States to blow you all into little, bitty pieces, so I suggest ya respond."
"Nick!" Steve burst out. He didn't quite shove his way past the Archon to get to the console, but it was a near thing. "Your ridiculous flying aircraft carrier is a real sight for sore eyes. We hoped you'd come, if we could get the forcefield down, but we didn't know if-"
"Steve!" Sam's voice interrupted him, full of relief and joy. There was the muted sound of a scuffle, probably him forcing Nick away from the radio. "Thank god you're all right. We thought-" he broke off for a second, then, "Fury's got enough firepower up here to turn the aliens' main base into a glass-walled crater. All you have to do is say the word."
"Actually, that's not..." Steve hesitated, not sure how to say it. It still didn't feel real. "They've already surrendered."
Jan had stepped forward, coming to stand by his shoulder, where she could hear better. Ben was still guarding the door, a seven-foot mass of rock that no intruder was going to be able to get past.
The two Argonians were standing close together, carefully avoiding the chalk circle that surrounded the Imperator's body, speaking quietly together in their own language. Translating what Steve and Sam were saying.
"You're kidding," Sam said.
"I killed their warlord and the Archon just surrendered to me." His voice sounded calm, matter-of-fact. He wondered if, Sam being Sam, he could hear the storm of conflicting emotions Steve was trying to keep under control anyway.
Sam was all right. The war was over. Tony might be dead.
"Shit," Sam blurted out. "You mean I brought half the military forces left in the US in here with me for nothing?"
"Don't worry," Jan put in over Steve's shoulder, giddy relief in her voice. "You made a very impressive entrance."
Steve wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh, cry, or hit something. "We're going to need them," he said. "All of them. The entire city is a disaster zone, and we have prisoners, several thousand of them, and soldiers who need medical attention, and..." he trailed off, feeling as if he had run up against a brick wall. What came next? They had been doing this on their own for so long that now that there was actually a higher authority to answer to, it felt...
Strange. Not real. Too big and too sudden to even really be a relief.
He didn't have to be in charge anymore. He didn't have to be responsible for everyone, for the entire Resistance, anymore. He didn't have to be the leader. He could hand all of this over to SHIELD and go find Tony.
Steve lowered his shield and wrapped his free arm around his side, pressing hard against the slash from the Imperator's tailblade, trying to make it stop hurting, stop bleeding. "Could Fury or you or someone come in here and take over?" he said. "There's something I have to do."
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
Re: Brava
*grins* You see the secret reason for all the OC pov scenes now (beyond just the pure self-gratification of the fact that we liked writing about them) -- we needed to justify Steve's crowning moment of badass killing Nergal with his own weapon and having all the Argonians surrender to him, so we had to set up the Argonian code of honor and dueling thing, and the political conflict with Irkalla not wanting to stay on Earth and already looking for a way to oust Nergal and leave. Well, that, and they were really fun to write -- the more Argonian scenes we started adding because we realized we needed to explain this or that thing, the more it turned into its own subplot with romances and political plotting and everything.