ext_34821 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
cap_ironman2011-02-06 11:35 pm
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2011-02-06 11:35 pm
Entry tags:
Reassembled, Chapter 4
Title: Reassembled, Chapter 4
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Universe: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.
Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
Reassembled
Chapter Four
The massive, Victorian pseudo-Gothic façade of St. Margaret's Cathedral was wreathed in shadows, the soot-smudged stone seeming to draw the darkness toward itself. The floodlight that usually illuminated its five-story high steeple and the giant cross that topped it had burned out, leaving the upper reaches of the building in shadow. The two stressed-looking trees that grew inside cages of iron railing on either side of the building had lost almost all of their leaves; a handful of them drifted lifelessly across the sidewalk, the wind sending them scraping dryly over the cracked concrete.
From his position on the third-story window ledge of an apartment building across the street from it, Strange could sense the aura of malice that hung around the cathedral. It was thick, suffocating. Hungry.
"It sounds stupid, I know," Matt Murdock's voice was low, rough, the slightly nasal sound of working class New York Irish in it thick enough to cut with a knife. He had only the barest trace of accent in court, voice smoother and at least half an octave lighter – Strange had heard him speak when out of costume, and it was almost like listening to a completely different person. He would have applauded it as an effective trick to keep Daredevil's voice unrecognizable to people who knew him as Matt Murdock, but he suspected that Matt didn't even know he was doing it.
"If I thought your worries were foolish, I would not be here," Strange said. "You're not imagining things; the energy fields around the cathedral have shifted. Dark magic has been used here, and a great deal of it."
"It just..." Matt shook his head. The dull red leather of his mask obscured most of his face, but his body language conveyed unease – he was crouched low on the edge of the ledge, not bothering to look up at Strange as he spoke. Matt generally made an effort to face people when he spoke to them. "It feels wrong, somehow. Different. And I've been having these dreams. That there's something in there. Something that wants to get out."
"Well then," Strange said, "let us go down and investigate your church. There very well may be something inside trying to get out." He most fervently hoped not, given that Chthon was dangerous enough anywhere, and likely to be even more dangerous in such close proximity to Baldur's Bane, especially inside a church. The barriers between dimensions were naturally thin inside sacred places, the more so the older said sacred location was. St. Margaret's had been built nearly a decade before the Civil War.
Strange took a step forward and allowed the Cloak of Levitation to float him gently down to the street below. Behind him, Daredevil climbed down the building façade like a cat-burglar, dropping the final ten feet in an acrobatic jump that would have done an Olympic gymnast proud.
The oppressive atmosphere worsened as Strange drew closer to the cathedral. When he laid his hand on the door, the heavy wood and metal seemed to hum, the mystical vibrations sending a dull ache through damaged nerves and poorly knit bones.
His own protective spells were layered thickly around the nave of the cathedral. Had he not been the Sorcerer Supreme, a novice's uncertainty over a decade behind him, their familiarity would have been reassuring.
The inside of the cathedral was dark, illuminated only by the candles on the high altar, and by the flickering red glow of a dozen or so tiny votive candles left burning below the image of the Blessed Virgin. A middle-aged white man in a green windbreaker was praying at one of the stations of the cross; he didn't look up when they entered, Strange's magic subtly clouding his perceptions and hiding the two of them from his sight.
Other than him, Strange and Matt were alone in the cathedral.
So much the better. An audience would be a hindrance, diverting his attention from the task at hand with the need to keep a dozen pairs of unwanted eyes from witnessing his presence.
"There have been three mugging on this block in the past week, and two fights," Matt said softly, his voice pitched low enough that even without Strange's power masking it, the man praying a few dozen feet away wouldn't have heard. "This isn't exactly a brilliant neighborhood, but even for here, that's unusual. One of the parishioners actually threw a punch at me after mass this Sunday. People don't do that when I'm out of costume. Nobody wants to hit the blind guy."
Strange didn't answer. He focused his senses, opening his mind and reaching out through the Eye of Agamotto to see the unseen reality that surrounded them.
The high altar glowed with power to his otherworldly senses, the chaos energy that saturated the spear emanating up through the stones that covered it. That much had not changed since the last time he had stood here and gazed upon this place.
What had changed was the thin spot in the fabric of reality located just beyond the polished brass altar rail, a blurred space in the air at what would have been head height for a short man – or for a woman of average height. Tendrils of chaos energy writhed invisibly around it, perceptible only to those who had eyes to see, and knew where and how to look.
The energy was different in nature from the hot, orange-yellow-white power of the spear, moving in slow, sullen coils that pulsated with the unhealthy red heat of an infected wound. In the spaces between them, Strange could glimpse a cold, black absence of light, from which emanated unfelt vibrations on the same bone-hurting frequency as the power that had hummed through the cathedral door.
Matt's boots were silent on the stone floor as he came to stand beside Strange, the soles made of soft leather, or something else designed to let him move with barely a sound. "Do you... hear something?" he asked quietly. His chin was tilted up, his head cocked slightly to the left, as if he were trying to pinpoint the source of a sound. "Something whispering?" Strange began to say no, his attention still on the coil of energy in front of him, when he heard it, a faint susurrus of sound just within the threshold of audibility. As soon as he became aware of it, the volume increased, until it sounded as if someone – or something – was whispering in his ear, the words too garbled to make out.
"Try to ignore it, if you can," he advised Matt. "The less contact you have with Chthon, the better."
"In a church? I thought he was a demon."
Strange shook his head. "He is a primordial chaos entity, eons older than Christianity, and both unbound by and uncaring of its rules."
Matt nodded, and shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other, obviously wanting to pace. He talked with his hands when he was out of costume, gestures broader the more agitated he was, and Strange had recognized the signs of a person who didn't like sitting still, who enjoyed grandstanding, who liked to feel in control of his environment. He could guess from experience how long it had probably taken for the other man to teach himself how to stay perfectly still and silent, which he could do eerily well. Not at the moment, though. He had been visibly nervous from the moment they had walked through the front doors.
No doubt he could feel the same aura of evil in the air that Strange could sense; bound to the church as he was, by blood and oaths, he would sense any danger that threatened within these walls.
To ordinary eyes, the inside of the cathedral must have looked entirely normal, the stone wall and polished wooden pews glowing warmly in the dim light. The tiny brass number plates that marked each pew gleamed brightly, and the heavy gold embroidery on the green altar cloth blazed in the candlelight. Chthon's presence did not exist on the physical plane – it would not tarnish the brass candlestick holders or stain the altar screen or heavy wooden crucifix.
The damage his taint would do would be invisible, and far more insidious.
Strange marshaled his thoughts, seeking the degree of mental clarity that would be necessary for a working powerful enough to seal the incipient breach between realities and drive the fraction of Chthon's essence trapped before the high altar back where it belonged. Chthon was likely using the destabilization of magical energies caused by the spear to keep a toe-hold in this world, relying on the thinness of the dimensional barriers here to make it possible.
His influence could only be felt in the immediate area of the church, and with the wards still in place around the building – both the ones Strange had erected, and the ancient, Asgardian protections that had lain heavy on the spear for millennia – leaving the confines of the sanctuary would require more power than Chthon, still trapped largely in the other realm, currently possessed.
To remove the spear from its hiding place and fully access its powers, he would need to possess a human host, and with Wanda sealed away from him, few humans were left who would be suitable for such a task. Even fewer of those would be likely to walk into St. Margaret's.
Strange adjusted the sleeves of his robe, then raised his hands to chest height, gradually ceasing to become aware of the smell of candle smoke and ghost of old incense, of the sound of Daredevil's breathing and the tiny creaks of his leather costume as he shifted, of the weight of the Eye on his chest and the flutter of the Cape of Levitation against his legs, until all that remained was the reality his supernatural senses showed him.
Chthon had only a toehold here, but given time, given the weight of human minds and souls that would press into this church every Sunday and Wednesday to worship, unprotected and vulnerable to his influence, his power would grow, feeding not on their faith, but on their darker emotions – anger, fear, anxiety, despair, all the chaotic and disordered states of the human mind.
"I summon the powers of the Vishanti!" he began, reaching out for the power that lay always waiting, ready for the adept to call upon it. In many spells, the words were, strictly speaking, unnecessary – the true magic was done by the exertion of one's will, with spells and gestures serving merely as a focus for the mind – but when drawing upon the great powers, they were vital. Spoken aloud, an invocation served as both supplication and invitation, addressed to forces who would only grant their aid when the proper forms were observed, or whose touch, if the forms were not observed, could be immensely dangerous.
"In the name of the All-Seeing Agamotto, all thy powers I summon." The magic came in a rush, like light flooding into a room when curtains were pulled back, until he could feel it thrumming within and around him, so vast that the sweetness of wielding it came near the edge of pain.
He focused his will upon the weak spot in reality, envisioning the thick coils of Chthon's power being driven back the through too-permeable barrier, like a reversed form of cellular osmosis. "Let all the Hosts of Hoggoth send you back to the netherworld from whence you came!" he cried, and set the force of his will and magic – both his own, and that lent by the Vishanti, for which he served merely as the conduit – against the cold, heavy weight of Chthon's presence.
It was as if he tried to throw himself against a brick wall. Chthon's snarl of rage rang through his head, and the whispering rose to an eerie almost-scream that blocked out all other sound.
The coils of magical energy were heavy, slick, and almost impossible to shift, slipping out of his grasp whenever he attempted to take hold of them. Strange shaped his fingers into a sequence of complex magical seals, envisioning the currents of power moving with his gestures like a puppet on strings. "Begone!" He forced the word out through the strain and effort, trying to imbue it with all the power and authority of the Sorcerer Supreme, of all the masters and adepts who had held the title before him. The Eye burned against his chest, its heat palpable even through his tunic.
He could feel sweat prickling against his skin, along his ribs and back, could smell the faintest hint of sulfur cutting sharply through the must of candles and incense and old stone as Chthon's power lashed at him. It battered at his shields, against the edges of his mind, full of malicious intent.
"Begone," he hissed, through gritted teeth, ignoring the assault. "I command you!"
You cannot compel me, mage. Chthon's hollow, whispery voice stabbed at his brain, the syllables like the crackling of fire, or the crunching of tiny, dried bones. This place is of Chthon, now. I have claimed it for my own, and all that lies within it.
There was a wordless shout from Matt, and Strange half-turned to look back at him just as the man who had been praying so quietly in the side chapel slammed into him.
He felt a hard blow against his side, and something cold slid between two of his lower ribs, and then Matt was on the man, ripping him away from Strange and landing three hard, effective blows with hand, elbow, and foot.
The man crumpled to the floor, his green windbreaker rustling against the stone.
With a torrent of magic pouring through him, Strange did not feel the pain of the wound in his side, but when he glanced down, the silver handle of a leatherman was standing incongruously out from his side, surrounded by a dark patch of blood.
As soon as he saw the way the fabric of his tunic clung wetly to his skin, he could feel the warmth of the blood soaking into it, but the knife itself might as well have been stuck into someone else entirely.
"You think such petty weapons can disable the Sorcerer Supreme?" he asked, and raised his hands once more, gathering the power he had never lost hold of into them and preparing to launch into another spell.
I will be free, Chthon howled. No interfering mortal gatekeeper shall stop me.
Matt grabbed at him abruptly, his hands pulling on Strange's arms and disrupting the building forces of the spell. "You're bleeding. Hold still and let me see where you're hurt." He began patting down Strange's arms, his torso, ignoring his attempt to pull away – and then his hands brushed against the knife handle.
The pain in his side was sudden and blinding; Strange grabbed for the altar rail, fighting the urge to curl around the pain, his concentration shattered for one brief, fatal moment.
Chthon's will slammed against his cracking shields like a wall of water pounding against a crumbling dam, forcing its way through the cracks and into him – and Strange knew, with an instant's cold clarity, that if his shields failed, if he did not succeed in driving the chaos entity back, out of his mind, then Chthon would possess him utterly, make of him a puppet the way he had the Scarlet Witch.
He reached out wildly for more power, all of his careful training and discipline deserting him, and it was there, waiting hot and orange-gold as fire just beyond his reach.
He stretched out his free hand toward it, seizing at it—
The pain was incredible, like grabbing hold of a live wire, worse than the knife in his side by an entire order of magnitude. Raw chaos magic filled him, corrosive and violent and burning, too immense and wild for control. He flung it at Chthon blindly, an exercise of magical brute force, but even as the chaos entity was expelled from his mind, the spear's power was burning through him from the inside out. "Hoary fucking hosts," he gasped. "I call—upon—"
His knees hit the floor hard. Matt was saying something, trying to pull the writhing Cloak of Levitation out of the way so that he could touch Strange's side again. "Leave the knife where it is," Strange snapped at him, as he struggled to release the power that was flaying his soul. Dark magic, even the powers of Dormammu and Satannish, was still rooted in a kind of order, still obeyed commands. This magic was unstable, dangerous; he had to release it, had to stop drawing on it before it destroyed him.
He managed to wrench himself away from the flow of chaos magic just as his vision began to go dark around the edges. The mocking sound of Chthon's laughter followed him down into darkness.
* * *
The Night Nurse's clinic reminded Wanda of a high tech version of the MASH unit from that old TV show – there were cots instead of hospital beds in some of the rooms, and the operating table was built to be easily disassembled and moved when necessary. All the equipment looked temporary, portable.
"And you are?" the Night Nurse asked coolly, raising an eyebrow at Wanda. She was in her late thirties, dark-haired and attractive in a severe-featured way, and the whimsical old fashioned nurse's uniform sat oddly on her, like a well-made Halloween costume. Wanda suspected that she would have looked more at home in surgical scrubs.
"She's one of Stephen's students," Wong said; he didn't look at the woman while he spoke, his gaze clearly on the camp bed where Strange lay, an IV line in one elbow and bandages wrapped around his torso and both his hands. "She's staying with us at the moment." He turned his head slightly, his attention refocusing on the Night Nurse, and added, "You didn't give me much information over the phone. What happened?"
The Night Nurse shook her head. "I don't know. Daredevil's account of the situation isn't very detailed. I was hoping you could tell me what's wrong with him. That astral projection form of his ought to be hovering over in the corner telling me how to do my job, but instead he's just lying there."
"He wasn't stabbed that badly," Daredevil halted his nervous pacing of the room to proteSt. "I can tell when someone's punctured a lung; their breathing changes, and you can hear the fluid in their-"
"How was he stabbed in the first place?" Wanda interrupted. "He was going with you to make sure Chthon hadn't tampered with the magical protections at St. Margaret's."
Daredevil looked away, and Wanda felt an odd sense of relief to have the opaque red plastic of his mask's eyeholes leave her. There was something unnerving about how steadily and intently he watched people, his head cocked slightly to one side like he was committing every move they made to memory. "There was a man praying in the chapel there. He just lost it, went completely crazy and attacked us. I didn't," he hesitated. "I didn't hear him coming. There was this whispering, drowning everything out, like it was coming from everywhere at once."
"Or inside your own head," Wanda said, remembering the incessant whispering that had battered at the edges of her mind as she'd fled from the church.
"Strange heard it, too," Daredevil protested defensively.
"I'm sure he did," Wong said, his eyes going to Strange again. Strange looked older, lying so still, all the grandiose hand gestures and cool superiority absent.
She'd gone to him for protection, expecting him to wave a hand and solve all her problems, secure in the knowledge that the Sorcerer Supreme was the one person she wouldn't endanger with her presence. She should have known better.
"Chthon can do that," she said, to Daredevil. "It's one of his tricks. Sometimes he'll sound like someone you know."
The Night Nurse eyed Daredevil appraisingly. "I'll check you out when I'm done with Stephen and with those idiots from the bank robbery in room three," she said. "Supervillains," she added. "They always wait until the last minute to come in, and then it just makes my job harder. It took me ages to get the internal bleeding stabilized. Could you tell your friend Rand to hit people a little less forcefully?"
Daredevil shrugged one shoulder. "You'll have to take that up with Iron Fist. If those are the bank robbers I think you're talking about, I think he took objection to them trying to use some kind of poison gas on Luke."
The Night Nurse snorted. "A half hour with an oxygen mask and Cage was fine. Fortunately. I don't know what I'd do if it were ever necessary to operate on him." Then, to Wong, "I stitched and bandaged Stephen's side and treated the burns on his fingers. He can complain about my handiwork when he wakes up."
"I'm sure he wouldn't be that rude," Wong said, with the sound of a man who knew he was offering an empty promise. He brushed one finger gently across the back of Strange's bandaged left hand. "What was he touching, when he did this? Sometimes, if something's hot-"
"He doesn't always notice?" The Night Nurse finished. "I know. They aren't normal burns. It looks almost as if he did it to himself by grabbing some kind of electric wire."
"Whatever spell he was doing blew up in his face." Wanda hadn't meant to speak, and didn't fully realize that she had until everyone in the cramped little room was staring at her.
"He was going to cast Chthon back out of the cathedral," Daredevil said, frowning. "He told him to go back to 'the place from whence he came'. That was when Mr. Gillis tried to stab him."
"Luckily for our sorcerer friend, the knife was single-edged, and only a few inches long, and he managed to miss all the vital organs." The Night Nurse's fingers were taut around the edge of the clipboard she was holding, white surgical gloves stretched tightly over her knuckles. "He ought to be waking up shortly."
Wong shook his head. "Not necessarily. When a spell backfires upon the caster, the effects can be severe. There may be internal damage. From the disordered magic."
"I would have noticed that," the Night Nurse said, voice sharpening. "I don't need your assistance to do my job any more than I need his."
"He feels... there's an aura around him, something familiar. Not Chthon," Wanda hastened to add, before any of the others could suggest it. "Something warmer, sharper." She studied Strange more closely, looking past the bandages and pallor and the tired lines around his eyes to the faint hum of magic that still clung to him. The feel of it brought back a vivid memory of standing at the high altar of St. Margaret's, fingers clenched tightly around the brass altar rail that had been the only thing keeping her on her feet.
"The spear," she said slowly. "He drew power from the spear. A great deal of it."
There was a murmur of sound from the hallway outside – the building was a warren of little hallways and rooms, thin, pasteboard walls partitioning up what had once been either a warehouse or a factory floor – and Wanda lifted her hands, calling her power to her and trying not to notice that the energy she could feel welling up inside her was less intense than it had been before. Even constrained by her new wards, she had more than enough power behind her hexes to take care of anyone unfriendly about to walk through the exam room's door.
Cap entered the room first, ducking his head slightly as he came through the doorframe, as if he expected the jamb to be too low to clear the top of his head; it wasn't, but only by a few inches. He was in civilian clothes, the collar of his old-fashioned trench coat turned up against the cool night air.
If Wanda hadn't know what was in the artist's portfolio he carried slung over one shoulder, she might have been fooled into thinking that he was some ordinary citizen who'd stumbled into the Night Nurse's clinic by accident. Then Tony and Sam appeared in the doorway behind him, flanking him – Tony on the left, in the spot where a left-handed person would do the most good in a fight, and Sam on the right, his eyes glinting gold in the hard fluorescent lighting – and the illusion was shattered.
"What happened to him?" Sam nodded at Strange. "I thought he was pretty much indestructible."
The Night Nurse grimaced. "Only in his own mind, unfortunately."
"I believe he attempted to cleanse the cathedral of Chthon's power," Wong said. "Chthon... took steps to protect itself, and he tried to use the power stored in Loki's spear in his defense."
"It looks like that didn't work out well," Cap said, dryly. Behind him, Jan slipped into the room, shutting the door behind her. She was in street clothes, too, the three-inch heels of her boots somehow nearly silent on the tiled floors.
"It's my fault," Daredevil mumbled. "I dragged him there, and then I didn't hear the guy who stabbed him."
"Stabbed?" Tony's eyebrows arched. "I thought he'd been fried by magical feedback."
"That too," Wanda said. "How did you guys know to come?"
"Wong called us." Jan nodded to where Wong was standing by Strange, exchanging significant glances with the Night Nurse while she wrote something down on the clipboard that Wanda assumed contained Strange's medical information. She wondered what kind of entry one would make on a medical chart for "metaphysically attacked by an elder god."
"How badly is he hurt?" Cap asked, in the tone of someone who had already mentally taken charge of the situation. Cap tended to do that; it made him a good tactical leader for the Avengers. It also made him incredibly frustrating to work with at times, if his idea of the best course of action was different from your own.
Right now, though, it felt obscurely comforting to have Cap stride in and take charge of things. It was something familiar, something Wanda had thought that she had lost forever, during those few brief hours when she had believed that Cap was dead.
It would be dangerous to let herself rely on that comfort too heavily. She had run to Strange for protection from Chthon, and now Strange was unconscious on the Night Nurse's exam table, and he had had the knowledge and abilities to defend himself from a being like Chthon. Cap and the other Avengers had only second-hand experience with magic. If Chthon broke free, all Cap and Clint and Simon would be able to do if they stood against him was die. Again.
The Night Nurse was explaining Strange's injuries to the Avengers, her gestures short and jerky, as if being forced to repeat the information over again offended her. Daredevil had retreated back to the far wall, seeming uncomfortable in the now tightly crowded room. He'd never struck her as a people person.
At least Simon was safe in California. Maybe she ought to be grateful that he hadn't spoken to her yet. Apologizing to Clint had been difficult enough; she didn't know how she was going to face Simon again, after Chthon had used her to destroy Vision. She couldn't afford to mourn Vision yet, not with Chthon still attempting to break free, and she couldn't be around Simon without mourning him.
"You have a really impressive set-up here," Falcon was saying, waving a hand at the array of portable and semi-portable and not-really-intended-to-be-portable-but-jury-rigged-so-that-it-could-be medical equipment that surrounded them. "It looks like you could do just about anything for him that a hospital could. You ought to be getting some kind of support from the city for all this."
"Not as long as I keep treating anyone in a costume without asking what their real name is or how they got that interesting gunshot wound or laser burn. Bloomberg wouldn't like my expense reports." She gestured at Strange. "How would I itemize having him put up wards around the operating room? Or put the kind of injuries he's got now or that half the rest of you get into a normal medical file?"
The Falcon nodded, smiling a little. "I know what you mean."
Tony was frowning at Strange as if personally offended. "This entire thing doesn't make sense. Wanda used the spear's power, and she's fine."
She had been wondering that herself. If Chthon had been able to flatten Strange so easily, how had she managed to get free of him? "I did use it," she agreed, "and it didn't hurt me at all. And Strange has twice the experience I do with magic."
"I think being stabbed probably had something to do with it," Daredevil said, nodding toward Strange.
The Night Nurse shook her head. "I've seen him work magic with more severe injuries than that."
Wong nodded. "Including stab wounds. I believe it was the nature of the chaos magic in the spear. Chaos magic can only be safely accessed if the caster follows one of a number of complicated rituals. If Stephen tried to use it without those precautions..." he trailed off, looking grim.
"I've never needed rituals or incantations to do simple hexes." And even when she did use them, it was to refine and control the magic she had always instinctively been able to tap into. The difference between a sorcerer and an energy mutant, perhaps. "I suppose the fact that my powers work differently protected me."
"So what are we going to do now?" Jan asked the room at large. "Everyone was counting on Dr. Strange to take care of Chthon. The Avengers offered our help, but Wanda's our only magic user these days."
There was a brief, uncomfortable silence, as the Avengers carefully avoided Wanda's eyes. She resisted the urge to tug at her gloves nervously, and turned the half-finished reach to check the tattoo at the base of her neck into a tug at her hair. "I defeated him once," she said. "There has to be a way to do it again."
"Maybe we'll be lucky, and he'll just stay locked up in that church," Sam said. He glanced at Cap, and then both of them shook their heads slightly. "Or he'll find a way out, and we'll all be doomed."
"He'll find a way out," Cap said. "These kind of things always find a way out."
"We've used up far more than our share of good luck recently." Tony met Cap's eyes as he spoke, and the two of them shared a moment of silent communication that made Wanda very aware if how much she'd missed while Chthon had had her. The Avengers had presented her with a united front so far, as if the entire Superhuman Registration fight that she had heard so much about had never occurred, but there were moments when the attempt to put a brave face on things wore thin. They weren't always the moments she had expected, either.
Cap and Tony had always been close, but they hadn't used to have quite so many silent exchanges of glances, or surreptitious little touches that they obviously thought no one else saw. When Cap and Sam exchanged in-jokes or old-friends-who've-worked-together-for-years short-hand, it was mildly annoying, but no different than watching Clint and Hank snipe at one another. When he did the same thing with Tony, it felt oddly uncomfortable, as if Wanda were seeing something she shouldn't.
"There's no medical reason why Stephen shouldn't wake up soon." The Night Nurse touched Strange's bandaged left hand gently, much the way Wong had earlier – but coming from a supposedly clinical and detached medical professional, the gesture looked entirely different than it had coming from a close friend. And she had called him "Stephen."
Wanda told herself not to jump to conclusions – though it would explain both why the Night Nurse seemed almost personally offended by Strange's injuries, and why she had been visibly less than thrilled to see a strange woman arrive with Wong to check on him – and forced her attention back to the topic at hand. There were more important things at stake right now than Strange's admittedly morbidly fascinating love life.
"Even when he does wake up," she said, "I don't think I should keep staying with him. I placed myself under his protection when I ran to the Sanctum Sanctorum, but now, with Strange injured, I'll just be a big, flashing target putting him in danger. You, too," she added, before Wong could object.
"You can stay with us," Cap offered, and gave the other Avengers a stern, firm-jawed glance that dared them to disagree.
"Stark Tower has a lot of innocent bystanders in it," Jan said slowly. She looked faintly apologetic, as if she didn't like pointing it out.
It was true, though. An office building the size of Stark Tower was packed with potential victims for Chthon or any other supervillain from nine to five every day. It was probably a minor miracle that there hadn't been some kind of terrible disaster there yet. "Jan has a good point," Wanda began. "I appreciate the offer, but-"
"The Mansion doesn't have anyone in it right now but Steve and me," Tony interrupted. "You can even have your old room, if you don't mind some construction noises and the near total lack of furniture."
Construction, Wanda assumed, to repair the damage she had done. Saying yes felt strange, presumptuous, after everything that had happened, but she could think of nowhere else to go.
The last time she'd stayed at the mansion, Vision had been there, too. And Scott Lang. And Clint, and Jen, and... The last time she'd been there, the Avengers had still been a team, a family, and Chthon had used her to shatter them.
They were family again, now, but not one that Wanda had a place in. Not anymore.
Still, refusing would have been silly; turning down an offer of help to stay in cheap hotels out of her own sense of trite melodrama wouldn't help anyone, least of all the other guests in said hotels.
"Thank you," she said. "You don't have to-"
"It's Tony's house," Cap said, smiling a little awkwardly, the way he always did when people thanked him for things. "He can invite whoever he wants to stay there."
Wong offered her an equally awkward smile, protesting that she didn't have to leave, which was nice of him considering that she'd landed on his and Strange's doorstep virtually out of nowhere, with a literal demon on her heels.
Wanda thanked him for his hospitality, and told Cap that she'd be at the mansion's front gate by morning. The Sanctum Sanctorum was just one more place to hide. The things she'd done to her team and her home weren't going to go away if she avoided them.
* * *
Tony turned sideways, using his left forearm to block Steve's punch. The follow-up jab at his stomach, heavily pulled so that all it did was hurt rather than bruise internal organs or crack ribs, he unfortunately missed.
The punch had been deliberately easy to block, he realized, as he doubled over and fought to suck in a decent breath. Steve had distracted him with a blow he knew Tony would be able to see coming and react quickly to, and then sucker-punched him when he left his lower torso wide open.
Tony stepped back, out of Steve's reach, and forced himself to straighten up – he was only winded, after all, not actually hurt.
"And you accuse me of holding back," he panted.
"There's pulling your punches enough to avoid hurting your opponent, and then there's being afraid to punch him in the first place." Steve, unfairly, was neither out of breath nor even really sweating. Enhanced endurance had all kinds of benefits.
Just for that, Tony added extra force to the punch he threw at Steve's shoulder. Steve turned to deflect some of the force of the blow, but didn't manage to block it, and Tony felt a glow of satisfied accomplishment for a moment, before Steve launched a kick at his face.
He only just managed to dodge. Tony might have held back the first few times they had begun doing this again, and possibly once or twice after the incident at the Meridian, but he had been giving today's practice his all; his skin felt slick with sweat, and he could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
Exercise came in a decided second on Tony's list of favorite ways to work up a sweat, but it made you feel alive in the same way that very fast cars, flying, or good sex could. There were few other things that could do that.
The gym at the mansion wasn't finished yet, and wouldn't be for at least another two weeks, so they were still using the one at the Avengers Tower – moving into the mansion was proving to be a slow, gradual process, and even now that the vast majority of both of their things had been moved over, and both they and Wanda were sleeping there, they still seemed to spend about eighty percent of their time in the tower. It was where everyone else was, where the fully functional lab was located, and where the gym didn't still have only half a floor.
Even when he was only practicing, Steve moved with a speed and lethal grace that Tony would always only be able to envy; if his attention weren't primarily occupied with trying to guess Steve's next movement, he would have been tempted to just watch and admire.
"I think Wanda's been settling in well," Steve said, as he slowly circled to the right – as attempts to distract Tony went, he had to admit, it was a decent try.
Tony turned to follow Steve's movements, keeping his hands up. "You mean she hasn't been possessed again at any point in the past three days, the Mansion is still standing, and Carol hasn't tried to kill her," he corrected.
"I'll talk to Carol." Steve came at Tony abruptly, aiming a flurry of blows at Tony's arms and shoulders. "We all agreed to give Wanda a second chance."
The next few moments were a blur of fists and impacts and the unbearably sexy muted sounds Steve made when he fought. Tony managed to disengage and dance backwards, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand before it could drip into his eyes. "You had to give her a second chance," he said, grinning at Steve, "or it would have been obvious that you only forgave me because you're sleeping with me."
Steve narrowed his eyes, his gaze never leaving the center of Tony's body mass, and said, with dignity, "I decided to forgive you long before I started sleeping with you."
He lunged at Tony, and Tony sidestepped, grabbed one of Steve's wrists, and forced his arm up behind his back in an arm-lock. "How long," he asked, saying the words directly into Steve's ear, "fifteen minutes?" He didn't have to try and make his voice husky – lack of breath and proximity to Steve did that for him.
Steve's body was flush against his, radiating heat like a furnace, and he could smell the sweat on his skin, the clean scent of the soap he used. It made him dizzy for a moment, suddenly hard and ready to turn this sparring match into something else entirely – and then Steve jabbed him in the ribs with the elbow of his free arm, slammed a heel into his shin, and yanked himself free.
"No," Steve said. "It was more like an hour. Then I saw that tape and almost changed my mind."
That tape – just the thought of what must have been on it still made Tony want to cringe, let alone the thought of other people seeing it. Seeing him break down into a sobbing wreck, telling Steve's body things he would never have said to anyone living, including Steve himself. Desperately trying to justify everything he'd done.
Dum Dum Dugan had seen it. Sal Kennedy, he was sure, had seen it, too. In light of that, it was a minor miracle that Tony had managed to command even a shred of Dugan's respect.
And Steve... Steve had been livid, when Sal had shown it to him. Not, strangely, because he'd failed to accept or believe Tony's explanations, but because he had believed them.
Tony wouldn't have traded away the outcome of Steve's reaction for anything, but still... On the other hand, it had made his crying-and-hallucinating experience last month marginally less humiliating, since whatever he'd said or done under the influence of A.I.M.'s toxin probably wasn't anything Steve hadn't seen before.
"I had good reasons for everything I did," he said now, as he watched Steve move and tried to decide when and how to attack again.
Steve's lips might have twitched slightly. "You always have good reasons. Or at least think you do."
"And I have good reasons now. We owe her. She needs our help." Steve knew that, of course, and being Steve, had offered it before Tony had even had a chance to suggest it
"I think we're the ones who need her help, actually," Steve said, his face wry.
"That too," Tony agreed. "I-"
"Hate magic. I know."
Tony spun on the ball of his right foot and launched a kick at Steve's stomach. Steve's hand clamped around his ankle and yanked, his foot sweeping Tony's supporting leg out from under him, and then Tony was flat on his back, staring up at the high, white ceiling. He rolled before Steve could pin him, and scrambled back to his feet. "I thought we were done with this whole chaos spear thing after Strange took care of it last spring." At least Strange was awake now, though the fact that Chthon had been able to take him out so easily made that less comforting than Tony would have liked. Worse, his hands were apparently going to take days, maybe weeks, to heal completely.
"Doom never lets anything go that easily." Steve bent backwards at the waist, letting Tony's next blow glide harmlessly past him. He was showing off, Tony suspected, the same way he was when he did one-handed back handsprings while holding twelve pounds of unwieldy metal.
"Bite your tongue, soldier boy. The last thing we need is for him to show up. He'd probably break Chthon out of his prison himself, and then we'd have to fight both of them."
"We may not have to fight either," Steve said, with determined optimism. "Wanda only said that he wants to break free, not that he actually can. Without her to take the spear for him, he's in the same place he's always been."
Which was true, but, "Chthon's been causing enough trouble from there. And we don't know she's safe from him." As failsafes went, magic tattoos were probably less-than-reliable. How did you test them? How did you calculate for margins of error when you were working with alchemical symbols and incomprehensible sorcerous scribbles?
Steve rushed him, moving too quickly for Tony's eyes to follow, even with a computer in his head. The floor slammed up to meet him again, and this time, he just lay there for a moment, his eye closed, Steve's knee a hard weight against his sternum.
"Less talking, more action, rich boy."
He could hear the smirk in Steve's voice without needing to open his eyes. He did anyway, and found himself staring up into Steve's flushed, grinning face.
"I can think of more entertaining kinds of action," Tony said, writhing in a vain attempt to buck Steve off. Steve was only a couple of inches taller than he was, the difference in height almost negligible, but forty extra pounds of mass meant that when Steve truly wanted Tony to stay put somewhere, moving wasn't really a viable option.
"I'm entertained," Steve told him. The sunlight from the gym's floor-to-ceiling windows streamed across his face, turning his eyelashes into nearly-invisible glints of gold. The bead of sweat sliding along his throat and down toward his collarbone taunted Tony – close enough to touch, but with both wrists pinned to the floor and Steve's considerable weight on his chest, he was unable to reach up and wipe it away.
Then Steve let go of him and sprang back to his feet, holding a hand down for Tony to grab. "Come on, on your feet, Avenger. You should have seen that throw coming two moves ahead."
Steve was right – it had been an obvious move, and as fast as Steve was, Tony still ought to have been able to avoid it, or at least avoid being so thoroughly pinned. What was wrong with him today? Tony was nowhere near Steve's level in hand to hand combat, and never would be, but he usually managed to avoid being flat on his back twice in under two minutes.
Ten minutes later, he'd hit the mat three more times, and when he wobbled getting back up the third time, Steve declared practice over with.
"We can finish this later, when you're not as distracted."
"I'm not distracted," Tony protested. "You always have my full attention."
"Which is why you answer your email and run virus scans on your armor while we're in bed together." Steve turned away, stripping off his sweat-soaked shirt, and tossed it onto a weight bench.
Tony took a moment to appreciate the sight, resisting the impulse to bend over and plant his hands on his knees, or let himself breathe too raggedly. Gasping and panting in front of Steve was one thing, but in an actual fight, it was an obvious declaration of weakness. He'd worked hard at concealing those, over the years. And Steve worried, after last month. "Once," he said, when he was sure he'd be able to get the word out without sounding too breathless. "I did that once. Pepper doesn't red flag things unless they really are urgent." The repeated emails he'd deleted unread from Sally Floyd since the reversal of M-Day had been red-flagged, too, as was pretty much everything Koening sent him, but Koening hadn't earned the right to have his instant attention at any hour of the day or night. Pepper had. He owed her that much.
Steve raised his eyebrows, skepticism played up just enough for Tony to tell that he was exaggerating it. "How urgent can something be at that time of night? The business world survived just fine for decades before the invention of email, and even these days, every CEO except you has to go offline and get away from his computer in order to sleep." He rubbed a towel over his face and hair as he spoke, every other word half-muffled by the fabric. Muscle glided under his skin with every movement; Steve's body was perfectly sculpted to a degree that an Olympic athlete would envy, not just from the supersoldier serum, but from hours of training and practice – after Tony left to shower and dash down six floors for his nine o' clock meeting with Stark Industries' R&D department, Steve would probably spend another hour here, working first with the gymnastics equipment and then with his shield.
Tony's eyes were drawn down Steve's broad chest to his stomach, flat and ridged with muscle and completely unscarred. Perfect, as if Sharon Carter had never shoved the barrel of a gun against it and pulled the trigger at point blank range.
He would never get used to that unmarred perfection, no matter how often he saw it, touched it. Never get tired of it, either. The memory of the gaping wound in Steve's stomach, strangely bloodless in the autopsy photos, the better to reveal the blackened power burns around it, was going to be in his dreams forever. It was there even when he was awake, sometimes, a ghostly overlay when he looked at Steve. It didn't happen as often, anymore, but like the memory of Happy's face the last time he had seen him – black and purple and completely unrecognizable, and totally absent of any life, the sound of his heart monitor a cruel mockery in Tony's ears – he knew it would never leave him entirely.
He still hadn't completely gotten used to his own absent scars, either, but that was different; he'd had them his entire adult life, though few people had ever seen them. He'd probably been lucky that the shrapnel had hit him in the chest, and not someplace more visible. Like his face.
For someone whose entire body had been seamlessly healed of over a decade's worth of cumulative damage, this sparring match had taken a ridiculous amount out of him. He'd thought he was back in shape these days. A.I.M.'s toxin hadn't sidelined him for that long.
When was the last time he'd eaten? he wondered. Maybe Steve had a point about coffee not actually being breakfast.
"Once I shower, I'll still have twenty minutes before Pepper comes looking for me," he said, smiling at Steve. "I'm going to see if there's anything to eat in the kitchen. Want to come?"
Steve's eyebrows arched. "You're going to voluntarily consume food before nine a.m.?"
"If I don't, I won't be eating until dinner. The board wants to discuss the past quarter's financial reports and stock performance. And then I'm supposed to go sit in on arbitration proceedings for that lawsuit with Hewlett Packard."
Steve said nothing to this, just waved Tony ahead of him toward the door. He was probably tired of hearing about the HP lawsuit, if not half as tired of it as Tony was. He hadn't stolen anyone's designs. He'd analyzed their tablet computer, figured out the basic principles behind it, and designed a completely different – and more importantly, actually functional – piece of technology around the same basic concept. That was going to completely dominate the market as soon as he released it, and end SI's dependence on military contracts and thus the last remnants of Koening's hold on him.
All that trouble, for a project that hadn't been half as interesting as the last thing he'd worked on for SHIELD. Just the thought of the hours of arguing to come made him feel tired, the adrenaline he'd worked up already draining out of him. Maybe if he thought of himself as the Glenn Curtiss of the computing world, valiantly defending his aircraft designs against unfair patent suits, today would be less boring.
At least it had started out on a high note, he thought, and followed Steve out of the room, letting his eyes linger on the broad planes of Steve's back.
* * *
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonUniverse: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:
dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
The massive, Victorian pseudo-Gothic façade of St. Margaret's Cathedral was wreathed in shadows, the soot-smudged stone seeming to draw the darkness toward itself. The floodlight that usually illuminated its five-story high steeple and the giant cross that topped it had burned out, leaving the upper reaches of the building in shadow. The two stressed-looking trees that grew inside cages of iron railing on either side of the building had lost almost all of their leaves; a handful of them drifted lifelessly across the sidewalk, the wind sending them scraping dryly over the cracked concrete.
From his position on the third-story window ledge of an apartment building across the street from it, Strange could sense the aura of malice that hung around the cathedral. It was thick, suffocating. Hungry.
"It sounds stupid, I know," Matt Murdock's voice was low, rough, the slightly nasal sound of working class New York Irish in it thick enough to cut with a knife. He had only the barest trace of accent in court, voice smoother and at least half an octave lighter – Strange had heard him speak when out of costume, and it was almost like listening to a completely different person. He would have applauded it as an effective trick to keep Daredevil's voice unrecognizable to people who knew him as Matt Murdock, but he suspected that Matt didn't even know he was doing it.
"If I thought your worries were foolish, I would not be here," Strange said. "You're not imagining things; the energy fields around the cathedral have shifted. Dark magic has been used here, and a great deal of it."
"It just..." Matt shook his head. The dull red leather of his mask obscured most of his face, but his body language conveyed unease – he was crouched low on the edge of the ledge, not bothering to look up at Strange as he spoke. Matt generally made an effort to face people when he spoke to them. "It feels wrong, somehow. Different. And I've been having these dreams. That there's something in there. Something that wants to get out."
"Well then," Strange said, "let us go down and investigate your church. There very well may be something inside trying to get out." He most fervently hoped not, given that Chthon was dangerous enough anywhere, and likely to be even more dangerous in such close proximity to Baldur's Bane, especially inside a church. The barriers between dimensions were naturally thin inside sacred places, the more so the older said sacred location was. St. Margaret's had been built nearly a decade before the Civil War.
Strange took a step forward and allowed the Cloak of Levitation to float him gently down to the street below. Behind him, Daredevil climbed down the building façade like a cat-burglar, dropping the final ten feet in an acrobatic jump that would have done an Olympic gymnast proud.
The oppressive atmosphere worsened as Strange drew closer to the cathedral. When he laid his hand on the door, the heavy wood and metal seemed to hum, the mystical vibrations sending a dull ache through damaged nerves and poorly knit bones.
His own protective spells were layered thickly around the nave of the cathedral. Had he not been the Sorcerer Supreme, a novice's uncertainty over a decade behind him, their familiarity would have been reassuring.
The inside of the cathedral was dark, illuminated only by the candles on the high altar, and by the flickering red glow of a dozen or so tiny votive candles left burning below the image of the Blessed Virgin. A middle-aged white man in a green windbreaker was praying at one of the stations of the cross; he didn't look up when they entered, Strange's magic subtly clouding his perceptions and hiding the two of them from his sight.
Other than him, Strange and Matt were alone in the cathedral.
So much the better. An audience would be a hindrance, diverting his attention from the task at hand with the need to keep a dozen pairs of unwanted eyes from witnessing his presence.
"There have been three mugging on this block in the past week, and two fights," Matt said softly, his voice pitched low enough that even without Strange's power masking it, the man praying a few dozen feet away wouldn't have heard. "This isn't exactly a brilliant neighborhood, but even for here, that's unusual. One of the parishioners actually threw a punch at me after mass this Sunday. People don't do that when I'm out of costume. Nobody wants to hit the blind guy."
Strange didn't answer. He focused his senses, opening his mind and reaching out through the Eye of Agamotto to see the unseen reality that surrounded them.
The high altar glowed with power to his otherworldly senses, the chaos energy that saturated the spear emanating up through the stones that covered it. That much had not changed since the last time he had stood here and gazed upon this place.
What had changed was the thin spot in the fabric of reality located just beyond the polished brass altar rail, a blurred space in the air at what would have been head height for a short man – or for a woman of average height. Tendrils of chaos energy writhed invisibly around it, perceptible only to those who had eyes to see, and knew where and how to look.
The energy was different in nature from the hot, orange-yellow-white power of the spear, moving in slow, sullen coils that pulsated with the unhealthy red heat of an infected wound. In the spaces between them, Strange could glimpse a cold, black absence of light, from which emanated unfelt vibrations on the same bone-hurting frequency as the power that had hummed through the cathedral door.
Matt's boots were silent on the stone floor as he came to stand beside Strange, the soles made of soft leather, or something else designed to let him move with barely a sound. "Do you... hear something?" he asked quietly. His chin was tilted up, his head cocked slightly to the left, as if he were trying to pinpoint the source of a sound. "Something whispering?" Strange began to say no, his attention still on the coil of energy in front of him, when he heard it, a faint susurrus of sound just within the threshold of audibility. As soon as he became aware of it, the volume increased, until it sounded as if someone – or something – was whispering in his ear, the words too garbled to make out.
"Try to ignore it, if you can," he advised Matt. "The less contact you have with Chthon, the better."
"In a church? I thought he was a demon."
Strange shook his head. "He is a primordial chaos entity, eons older than Christianity, and both unbound by and uncaring of its rules."
Matt nodded, and shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other, obviously wanting to pace. He talked with his hands when he was out of costume, gestures broader the more agitated he was, and Strange had recognized the signs of a person who didn't like sitting still, who enjoyed grandstanding, who liked to feel in control of his environment. He could guess from experience how long it had probably taken for the other man to teach himself how to stay perfectly still and silent, which he could do eerily well. Not at the moment, though. He had been visibly nervous from the moment they had walked through the front doors.
No doubt he could feel the same aura of evil in the air that Strange could sense; bound to the church as he was, by blood and oaths, he would sense any danger that threatened within these walls.
To ordinary eyes, the inside of the cathedral must have looked entirely normal, the stone wall and polished wooden pews glowing warmly in the dim light. The tiny brass number plates that marked each pew gleamed brightly, and the heavy gold embroidery on the green altar cloth blazed in the candlelight. Chthon's presence did not exist on the physical plane – it would not tarnish the brass candlestick holders or stain the altar screen or heavy wooden crucifix.
The damage his taint would do would be invisible, and far more insidious.
Strange marshaled his thoughts, seeking the degree of mental clarity that would be necessary for a working powerful enough to seal the incipient breach between realities and drive the fraction of Chthon's essence trapped before the high altar back where it belonged. Chthon was likely using the destabilization of magical energies caused by the spear to keep a toe-hold in this world, relying on the thinness of the dimensional barriers here to make it possible.
His influence could only be felt in the immediate area of the church, and with the wards still in place around the building – both the ones Strange had erected, and the ancient, Asgardian protections that had lain heavy on the spear for millennia – leaving the confines of the sanctuary would require more power than Chthon, still trapped largely in the other realm, currently possessed.
To remove the spear from its hiding place and fully access its powers, he would need to possess a human host, and with Wanda sealed away from him, few humans were left who would be suitable for such a task. Even fewer of those would be likely to walk into St. Margaret's.
Strange adjusted the sleeves of his robe, then raised his hands to chest height, gradually ceasing to become aware of the smell of candle smoke and ghost of old incense, of the sound of Daredevil's breathing and the tiny creaks of his leather costume as he shifted, of the weight of the Eye on his chest and the flutter of the Cape of Levitation against his legs, until all that remained was the reality his supernatural senses showed him.
Chthon had only a toehold here, but given time, given the weight of human minds and souls that would press into this church every Sunday and Wednesday to worship, unprotected and vulnerable to his influence, his power would grow, feeding not on their faith, but on their darker emotions – anger, fear, anxiety, despair, all the chaotic and disordered states of the human mind.
"I summon the powers of the Vishanti!" he began, reaching out for the power that lay always waiting, ready for the adept to call upon it. In many spells, the words were, strictly speaking, unnecessary – the true magic was done by the exertion of one's will, with spells and gestures serving merely as a focus for the mind – but when drawing upon the great powers, they were vital. Spoken aloud, an invocation served as both supplication and invitation, addressed to forces who would only grant their aid when the proper forms were observed, or whose touch, if the forms were not observed, could be immensely dangerous.
"In the name of the All-Seeing Agamotto, all thy powers I summon." The magic came in a rush, like light flooding into a room when curtains were pulled back, until he could feel it thrumming within and around him, so vast that the sweetness of wielding it came near the edge of pain.
He focused his will upon the weak spot in reality, envisioning the thick coils of Chthon's power being driven back the through too-permeable barrier, like a reversed form of cellular osmosis. "Let all the Hosts of Hoggoth send you back to the netherworld from whence you came!" he cried, and set the force of his will and magic – both his own, and that lent by the Vishanti, for which he served merely as the conduit – against the cold, heavy weight of Chthon's presence.
It was as if he tried to throw himself against a brick wall. Chthon's snarl of rage rang through his head, and the whispering rose to an eerie almost-scream that blocked out all other sound.
The coils of magical energy were heavy, slick, and almost impossible to shift, slipping out of his grasp whenever he attempted to take hold of them. Strange shaped his fingers into a sequence of complex magical seals, envisioning the currents of power moving with his gestures like a puppet on strings. "Begone!" He forced the word out through the strain and effort, trying to imbue it with all the power and authority of the Sorcerer Supreme, of all the masters and adepts who had held the title before him. The Eye burned against his chest, its heat palpable even through his tunic.
He could feel sweat prickling against his skin, along his ribs and back, could smell the faintest hint of sulfur cutting sharply through the must of candles and incense and old stone as Chthon's power lashed at him. It battered at his shields, against the edges of his mind, full of malicious intent.
"Begone," he hissed, through gritted teeth, ignoring the assault. "I command you!"
You cannot compel me, mage. Chthon's hollow, whispery voice stabbed at his brain, the syllables like the crackling of fire, or the crunching of tiny, dried bones. This place is of Chthon, now. I have claimed it for my own, and all that lies within it.
There was a wordless shout from Matt, and Strange half-turned to look back at him just as the man who had been praying so quietly in the side chapel slammed into him.
He felt a hard blow against his side, and something cold slid between two of his lower ribs, and then Matt was on the man, ripping him away from Strange and landing three hard, effective blows with hand, elbow, and foot.
The man crumpled to the floor, his green windbreaker rustling against the stone.
With a torrent of magic pouring through him, Strange did not feel the pain of the wound in his side, but when he glanced down, the silver handle of a leatherman was standing incongruously out from his side, surrounded by a dark patch of blood.
As soon as he saw the way the fabric of his tunic clung wetly to his skin, he could feel the warmth of the blood soaking into it, but the knife itself might as well have been stuck into someone else entirely.
"You think such petty weapons can disable the Sorcerer Supreme?" he asked, and raised his hands once more, gathering the power he had never lost hold of into them and preparing to launch into another spell.
I will be free, Chthon howled. No interfering mortal gatekeeper shall stop me.
Matt grabbed at him abruptly, his hands pulling on Strange's arms and disrupting the building forces of the spell. "You're bleeding. Hold still and let me see where you're hurt." He began patting down Strange's arms, his torso, ignoring his attempt to pull away – and then his hands brushed against the knife handle.
The pain in his side was sudden and blinding; Strange grabbed for the altar rail, fighting the urge to curl around the pain, his concentration shattered for one brief, fatal moment.
Chthon's will slammed against his cracking shields like a wall of water pounding against a crumbling dam, forcing its way through the cracks and into him – and Strange knew, with an instant's cold clarity, that if his shields failed, if he did not succeed in driving the chaos entity back, out of his mind, then Chthon would possess him utterly, make of him a puppet the way he had the Scarlet Witch.
He reached out wildly for more power, all of his careful training and discipline deserting him, and it was there, waiting hot and orange-gold as fire just beyond his reach.
He stretched out his free hand toward it, seizing at it—
The pain was incredible, like grabbing hold of a live wire, worse than the knife in his side by an entire order of magnitude. Raw chaos magic filled him, corrosive and violent and burning, too immense and wild for control. He flung it at Chthon blindly, an exercise of magical brute force, but even as the chaos entity was expelled from his mind, the spear's power was burning through him from the inside out. "Hoary fucking hosts," he gasped. "I call—upon—"
His knees hit the floor hard. Matt was saying something, trying to pull the writhing Cloak of Levitation out of the way so that he could touch Strange's side again. "Leave the knife where it is," Strange snapped at him, as he struggled to release the power that was flaying his soul. Dark magic, even the powers of Dormammu and Satannish, was still rooted in a kind of order, still obeyed commands. This magic was unstable, dangerous; he had to release it, had to stop drawing on it before it destroyed him.
He managed to wrench himself away from the flow of chaos magic just as his vision began to go dark around the edges. The mocking sound of Chthon's laughter followed him down into darkness.
The Night Nurse's clinic reminded Wanda of a high tech version of the MASH unit from that old TV show – there were cots instead of hospital beds in some of the rooms, and the operating table was built to be easily disassembled and moved when necessary. All the equipment looked temporary, portable.
"And you are?" the Night Nurse asked coolly, raising an eyebrow at Wanda. She was in her late thirties, dark-haired and attractive in a severe-featured way, and the whimsical old fashioned nurse's uniform sat oddly on her, like a well-made Halloween costume. Wanda suspected that she would have looked more at home in surgical scrubs.
"She's one of Stephen's students," Wong said; he didn't look at the woman while he spoke, his gaze clearly on the camp bed where Strange lay, an IV line in one elbow and bandages wrapped around his torso and both his hands. "She's staying with us at the moment." He turned his head slightly, his attention refocusing on the Night Nurse, and added, "You didn't give me much information over the phone. What happened?"
The Night Nurse shook her head. "I don't know. Daredevil's account of the situation isn't very detailed. I was hoping you could tell me what's wrong with him. That astral projection form of his ought to be hovering over in the corner telling me how to do my job, but instead he's just lying there."
"He wasn't stabbed that badly," Daredevil halted his nervous pacing of the room to proteSt. "I can tell when someone's punctured a lung; their breathing changes, and you can hear the fluid in their-"
"How was he stabbed in the first place?" Wanda interrupted. "He was going with you to make sure Chthon hadn't tampered with the magical protections at St. Margaret's."
Daredevil looked away, and Wanda felt an odd sense of relief to have the opaque red plastic of his mask's eyeholes leave her. There was something unnerving about how steadily and intently he watched people, his head cocked slightly to one side like he was committing every move they made to memory. "There was a man praying in the chapel there. He just lost it, went completely crazy and attacked us. I didn't," he hesitated. "I didn't hear him coming. There was this whispering, drowning everything out, like it was coming from everywhere at once."
"Or inside your own head," Wanda said, remembering the incessant whispering that had battered at the edges of her mind as she'd fled from the church.
"Strange heard it, too," Daredevil protested defensively.
"I'm sure he did," Wong said, his eyes going to Strange again. Strange looked older, lying so still, all the grandiose hand gestures and cool superiority absent.
She'd gone to him for protection, expecting him to wave a hand and solve all her problems, secure in the knowledge that the Sorcerer Supreme was the one person she wouldn't endanger with her presence. She should have known better.
"Chthon can do that," she said, to Daredevil. "It's one of his tricks. Sometimes he'll sound like someone you know."
The Night Nurse eyed Daredevil appraisingly. "I'll check you out when I'm done with Stephen and with those idiots from the bank robbery in room three," she said. "Supervillains," she added. "They always wait until the last minute to come in, and then it just makes my job harder. It took me ages to get the internal bleeding stabilized. Could you tell your friend Rand to hit people a little less forcefully?"
Daredevil shrugged one shoulder. "You'll have to take that up with Iron Fist. If those are the bank robbers I think you're talking about, I think he took objection to them trying to use some kind of poison gas on Luke."
The Night Nurse snorted. "A half hour with an oxygen mask and Cage was fine. Fortunately. I don't know what I'd do if it were ever necessary to operate on him." Then, to Wong, "I stitched and bandaged Stephen's side and treated the burns on his fingers. He can complain about my handiwork when he wakes up."
"I'm sure he wouldn't be that rude," Wong said, with the sound of a man who knew he was offering an empty promise. He brushed one finger gently across the back of Strange's bandaged left hand. "What was he touching, when he did this? Sometimes, if something's hot-"
"He doesn't always notice?" The Night Nurse finished. "I know. They aren't normal burns. It looks almost as if he did it to himself by grabbing some kind of electric wire."
"Whatever spell he was doing blew up in his face." Wanda hadn't meant to speak, and didn't fully realize that she had until everyone in the cramped little room was staring at her.
"He was going to cast Chthon back out of the cathedral," Daredevil said, frowning. "He told him to go back to 'the place from whence he came'. That was when Mr. Gillis tried to stab him."
"Luckily for our sorcerer friend, the knife was single-edged, and only a few inches long, and he managed to miss all the vital organs." The Night Nurse's fingers were taut around the edge of the clipboard she was holding, white surgical gloves stretched tightly over her knuckles. "He ought to be waking up shortly."
Wong shook his head. "Not necessarily. When a spell backfires upon the caster, the effects can be severe. There may be internal damage. From the disordered magic."
"I would have noticed that," the Night Nurse said, voice sharpening. "I don't need your assistance to do my job any more than I need his."
"He feels... there's an aura around him, something familiar. Not Chthon," Wanda hastened to add, before any of the others could suggest it. "Something warmer, sharper." She studied Strange more closely, looking past the bandages and pallor and the tired lines around his eyes to the faint hum of magic that still clung to him. The feel of it brought back a vivid memory of standing at the high altar of St. Margaret's, fingers clenched tightly around the brass altar rail that had been the only thing keeping her on her feet.
"The spear," she said slowly. "He drew power from the spear. A great deal of it."
There was a murmur of sound from the hallway outside – the building was a warren of little hallways and rooms, thin, pasteboard walls partitioning up what had once been either a warehouse or a factory floor – and Wanda lifted her hands, calling her power to her and trying not to notice that the energy she could feel welling up inside her was less intense than it had been before. Even constrained by her new wards, she had more than enough power behind her hexes to take care of anyone unfriendly about to walk through the exam room's door.
Cap entered the room first, ducking his head slightly as he came through the doorframe, as if he expected the jamb to be too low to clear the top of his head; it wasn't, but only by a few inches. He was in civilian clothes, the collar of his old-fashioned trench coat turned up against the cool night air.
If Wanda hadn't know what was in the artist's portfolio he carried slung over one shoulder, she might have been fooled into thinking that he was some ordinary citizen who'd stumbled into the Night Nurse's clinic by accident. Then Tony and Sam appeared in the doorway behind him, flanking him – Tony on the left, in the spot where a left-handed person would do the most good in a fight, and Sam on the right, his eyes glinting gold in the hard fluorescent lighting – and the illusion was shattered.
"What happened to him?" Sam nodded at Strange. "I thought he was pretty much indestructible."
The Night Nurse grimaced. "Only in his own mind, unfortunately."
"I believe he attempted to cleanse the cathedral of Chthon's power," Wong said. "Chthon... took steps to protect itself, and he tried to use the power stored in Loki's spear in his defense."
"It looks like that didn't work out well," Cap said, dryly. Behind him, Jan slipped into the room, shutting the door behind her. She was in street clothes, too, the three-inch heels of her boots somehow nearly silent on the tiled floors.
"It's my fault," Daredevil mumbled. "I dragged him there, and then I didn't hear the guy who stabbed him."
"Stabbed?" Tony's eyebrows arched. "I thought he'd been fried by magical feedback."
"That too," Wanda said. "How did you guys know to come?"
"Wong called us." Jan nodded to where Wong was standing by Strange, exchanging significant glances with the Night Nurse while she wrote something down on the clipboard that Wanda assumed contained Strange's medical information. She wondered what kind of entry one would make on a medical chart for "metaphysically attacked by an elder god."
"How badly is he hurt?" Cap asked, in the tone of someone who had already mentally taken charge of the situation. Cap tended to do that; it made him a good tactical leader for the Avengers. It also made him incredibly frustrating to work with at times, if his idea of the best course of action was different from your own.
Right now, though, it felt obscurely comforting to have Cap stride in and take charge of things. It was something familiar, something Wanda had thought that she had lost forever, during those few brief hours when she had believed that Cap was dead.
It would be dangerous to let herself rely on that comfort too heavily. She had run to Strange for protection from Chthon, and now Strange was unconscious on the Night Nurse's exam table, and he had had the knowledge and abilities to defend himself from a being like Chthon. Cap and the other Avengers had only second-hand experience with magic. If Chthon broke free, all Cap and Clint and Simon would be able to do if they stood against him was die. Again.
The Night Nurse was explaining Strange's injuries to the Avengers, her gestures short and jerky, as if being forced to repeat the information over again offended her. Daredevil had retreated back to the far wall, seeming uncomfortable in the now tightly crowded room. He'd never struck her as a people person.
At least Simon was safe in California. Maybe she ought to be grateful that he hadn't spoken to her yet. Apologizing to Clint had been difficult enough; she didn't know how she was going to face Simon again, after Chthon had used her to destroy Vision. She couldn't afford to mourn Vision yet, not with Chthon still attempting to break free, and she couldn't be around Simon without mourning him.
"You have a really impressive set-up here," Falcon was saying, waving a hand at the array of portable and semi-portable and not-really-intended-to-be-portable-but-jury-rigged-so-that-it-could-be medical equipment that surrounded them. "It looks like you could do just about anything for him that a hospital could. You ought to be getting some kind of support from the city for all this."
"Not as long as I keep treating anyone in a costume without asking what their real name is or how they got that interesting gunshot wound or laser burn. Bloomberg wouldn't like my expense reports." She gestured at Strange. "How would I itemize having him put up wards around the operating room? Or put the kind of injuries he's got now or that half the rest of you get into a normal medical file?"
The Falcon nodded, smiling a little. "I know what you mean."
Tony was frowning at Strange as if personally offended. "This entire thing doesn't make sense. Wanda used the spear's power, and she's fine."
She had been wondering that herself. If Chthon had been able to flatten Strange so easily, how had she managed to get free of him? "I did use it," she agreed, "and it didn't hurt me at all. And Strange has twice the experience I do with magic."
"I think being stabbed probably had something to do with it," Daredevil said, nodding toward Strange.
The Night Nurse shook her head. "I've seen him work magic with more severe injuries than that."
Wong nodded. "Including stab wounds. I believe it was the nature of the chaos magic in the spear. Chaos magic can only be safely accessed if the caster follows one of a number of complicated rituals. If Stephen tried to use it without those precautions..." he trailed off, looking grim.
"I've never needed rituals or incantations to do simple hexes." And even when she did use them, it was to refine and control the magic she had always instinctively been able to tap into. The difference between a sorcerer and an energy mutant, perhaps. "I suppose the fact that my powers work differently protected me."
"So what are we going to do now?" Jan asked the room at large. "Everyone was counting on Dr. Strange to take care of Chthon. The Avengers offered our help, but Wanda's our only magic user these days."
There was a brief, uncomfortable silence, as the Avengers carefully avoided Wanda's eyes. She resisted the urge to tug at her gloves nervously, and turned the half-finished reach to check the tattoo at the base of her neck into a tug at her hair. "I defeated him once," she said. "There has to be a way to do it again."
"Maybe we'll be lucky, and he'll just stay locked up in that church," Sam said. He glanced at Cap, and then both of them shook their heads slightly. "Or he'll find a way out, and we'll all be doomed."
"He'll find a way out," Cap said. "These kind of things always find a way out."
"We've used up far more than our share of good luck recently." Tony met Cap's eyes as he spoke, and the two of them shared a moment of silent communication that made Wanda very aware if how much she'd missed while Chthon had had her. The Avengers had presented her with a united front so far, as if the entire Superhuman Registration fight that she had heard so much about had never occurred, but there were moments when the attempt to put a brave face on things wore thin. They weren't always the moments she had expected, either.
Cap and Tony had always been close, but they hadn't used to have quite so many silent exchanges of glances, or surreptitious little touches that they obviously thought no one else saw. When Cap and Sam exchanged in-jokes or old-friends-who've-worked-together-for-years short-hand, it was mildly annoying, but no different than watching Clint and Hank snipe at one another. When he did the same thing with Tony, it felt oddly uncomfortable, as if Wanda were seeing something she shouldn't.
"There's no medical reason why Stephen shouldn't wake up soon." The Night Nurse touched Strange's bandaged left hand gently, much the way Wong had earlier – but coming from a supposedly clinical and detached medical professional, the gesture looked entirely different than it had coming from a close friend. And she had called him "Stephen."
Wanda told herself not to jump to conclusions – though it would explain both why the Night Nurse seemed almost personally offended by Strange's injuries, and why she had been visibly less than thrilled to see a strange woman arrive with Wong to check on him – and forced her attention back to the topic at hand. There were more important things at stake right now than Strange's admittedly morbidly fascinating love life.
"Even when he does wake up," she said, "I don't think I should keep staying with him. I placed myself under his protection when I ran to the Sanctum Sanctorum, but now, with Strange injured, I'll just be a big, flashing target putting him in danger. You, too," she added, before Wong could object.
"You can stay with us," Cap offered, and gave the other Avengers a stern, firm-jawed glance that dared them to disagree.
"Stark Tower has a lot of innocent bystanders in it," Jan said slowly. She looked faintly apologetic, as if she didn't like pointing it out.
It was true, though. An office building the size of Stark Tower was packed with potential victims for Chthon or any other supervillain from nine to five every day. It was probably a minor miracle that there hadn't been some kind of terrible disaster there yet. "Jan has a good point," Wanda began. "I appreciate the offer, but-"
"The Mansion doesn't have anyone in it right now but Steve and me," Tony interrupted. "You can even have your old room, if you don't mind some construction noises and the near total lack of furniture."
Construction, Wanda assumed, to repair the damage she had done. Saying yes felt strange, presumptuous, after everything that had happened, but she could think of nowhere else to go.
The last time she'd stayed at the mansion, Vision had been there, too. And Scott Lang. And Clint, and Jen, and... The last time she'd been there, the Avengers had still been a team, a family, and Chthon had used her to shatter them.
They were family again, now, but not one that Wanda had a place in. Not anymore.
Still, refusing would have been silly; turning down an offer of help to stay in cheap hotels out of her own sense of trite melodrama wouldn't help anyone, least of all the other guests in said hotels.
"Thank you," she said. "You don't have to-"
"It's Tony's house," Cap said, smiling a little awkwardly, the way he always did when people thanked him for things. "He can invite whoever he wants to stay there."
Wong offered her an equally awkward smile, protesting that she didn't have to leave, which was nice of him considering that she'd landed on his and Strange's doorstep virtually out of nowhere, with a literal demon on her heels.
Wanda thanked him for his hospitality, and told Cap that she'd be at the mansion's front gate by morning. The Sanctum Sanctorum was just one more place to hide. The things she'd done to her team and her home weren't going to go away if she avoided them.
Tony turned sideways, using his left forearm to block Steve's punch. The follow-up jab at his stomach, heavily pulled so that all it did was hurt rather than bruise internal organs or crack ribs, he unfortunately missed.
The punch had been deliberately easy to block, he realized, as he doubled over and fought to suck in a decent breath. Steve had distracted him with a blow he knew Tony would be able to see coming and react quickly to, and then sucker-punched him when he left his lower torso wide open.
Tony stepped back, out of Steve's reach, and forced himself to straighten up – he was only winded, after all, not actually hurt.
"And you accuse me of holding back," he panted.
"There's pulling your punches enough to avoid hurting your opponent, and then there's being afraid to punch him in the first place." Steve, unfairly, was neither out of breath nor even really sweating. Enhanced endurance had all kinds of benefits.
Just for that, Tony added extra force to the punch he threw at Steve's shoulder. Steve turned to deflect some of the force of the blow, but didn't manage to block it, and Tony felt a glow of satisfied accomplishment for a moment, before Steve launched a kick at his face.
He only just managed to dodge. Tony might have held back the first few times they had begun doing this again, and possibly once or twice after the incident at the Meridian, but he had been giving today's practice his all; his skin felt slick with sweat, and he could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
Exercise came in a decided second on Tony's list of favorite ways to work up a sweat, but it made you feel alive in the same way that very fast cars, flying, or good sex could. There were few other things that could do that.
The gym at the mansion wasn't finished yet, and wouldn't be for at least another two weeks, so they were still using the one at the Avengers Tower – moving into the mansion was proving to be a slow, gradual process, and even now that the vast majority of both of their things had been moved over, and both they and Wanda were sleeping there, they still seemed to spend about eighty percent of their time in the tower. It was where everyone else was, where the fully functional lab was located, and where the gym didn't still have only half a floor.
Even when he was only practicing, Steve moved with a speed and lethal grace that Tony would always only be able to envy; if his attention weren't primarily occupied with trying to guess Steve's next movement, he would have been tempted to just watch and admire.
"I think Wanda's been settling in well," Steve said, as he slowly circled to the right – as attempts to distract Tony went, he had to admit, it was a decent try.
Tony turned to follow Steve's movements, keeping his hands up. "You mean she hasn't been possessed again at any point in the past three days, the Mansion is still standing, and Carol hasn't tried to kill her," he corrected.
"I'll talk to Carol." Steve came at Tony abruptly, aiming a flurry of blows at Tony's arms and shoulders. "We all agreed to give Wanda a second chance."
The next few moments were a blur of fists and impacts and the unbearably sexy muted sounds Steve made when he fought. Tony managed to disengage and dance backwards, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand before it could drip into his eyes. "You had to give her a second chance," he said, grinning at Steve, "or it would have been obvious that you only forgave me because you're sleeping with me."
Steve narrowed his eyes, his gaze never leaving the center of Tony's body mass, and said, with dignity, "I decided to forgive you long before I started sleeping with you."
He lunged at Tony, and Tony sidestepped, grabbed one of Steve's wrists, and forced his arm up behind his back in an arm-lock. "How long," he asked, saying the words directly into Steve's ear, "fifteen minutes?" He didn't have to try and make his voice husky – lack of breath and proximity to Steve did that for him.
Steve's body was flush against his, radiating heat like a furnace, and he could smell the sweat on his skin, the clean scent of the soap he used. It made him dizzy for a moment, suddenly hard and ready to turn this sparring match into something else entirely – and then Steve jabbed him in the ribs with the elbow of his free arm, slammed a heel into his shin, and yanked himself free.
"No," Steve said. "It was more like an hour. Then I saw that tape and almost changed my mind."
That tape – just the thought of what must have been on it still made Tony want to cringe, let alone the thought of other people seeing it. Seeing him break down into a sobbing wreck, telling Steve's body things he would never have said to anyone living, including Steve himself. Desperately trying to justify everything he'd done.
Dum Dum Dugan had seen it. Sal Kennedy, he was sure, had seen it, too. In light of that, it was a minor miracle that Tony had managed to command even a shred of Dugan's respect.
And Steve... Steve had been livid, when Sal had shown it to him. Not, strangely, because he'd failed to accept or believe Tony's explanations, but because he had believed them.
Tony wouldn't have traded away the outcome of Steve's reaction for anything, but still... On the other hand, it had made his crying-and-hallucinating experience last month marginally less humiliating, since whatever he'd said or done under the influence of A.I.M.'s toxin probably wasn't anything Steve hadn't seen before.
"I had good reasons for everything I did," he said now, as he watched Steve move and tried to decide when and how to attack again.
Steve's lips might have twitched slightly. "You always have good reasons. Or at least think you do."
"And I have good reasons now. We owe her. She needs our help." Steve knew that, of course, and being Steve, had offered it before Tony had even had a chance to suggest it
"I think we're the ones who need her help, actually," Steve said, his face wry.
"That too," Tony agreed. "I-"
"Hate magic. I know."
Tony spun on the ball of his right foot and launched a kick at Steve's stomach. Steve's hand clamped around his ankle and yanked, his foot sweeping Tony's supporting leg out from under him, and then Tony was flat on his back, staring up at the high, white ceiling. He rolled before Steve could pin him, and scrambled back to his feet. "I thought we were done with this whole chaos spear thing after Strange took care of it last spring." At least Strange was awake now, though the fact that Chthon had been able to take him out so easily made that less comforting than Tony would have liked. Worse, his hands were apparently going to take days, maybe weeks, to heal completely.
"Doom never lets anything go that easily." Steve bent backwards at the waist, letting Tony's next blow glide harmlessly past him. He was showing off, Tony suspected, the same way he was when he did one-handed back handsprings while holding twelve pounds of unwieldy metal.
"Bite your tongue, soldier boy. The last thing we need is for him to show up. He'd probably break Chthon out of his prison himself, and then we'd have to fight both of them."
"We may not have to fight either," Steve said, with determined optimism. "Wanda only said that he wants to break free, not that he actually can. Without her to take the spear for him, he's in the same place he's always been."
Which was true, but, "Chthon's been causing enough trouble from there. And we don't know she's safe from him." As failsafes went, magic tattoos were probably less-than-reliable. How did you test them? How did you calculate for margins of error when you were working with alchemical symbols and incomprehensible sorcerous scribbles?
Steve rushed him, moving too quickly for Tony's eyes to follow, even with a computer in his head. The floor slammed up to meet him again, and this time, he just lay there for a moment, his eye closed, Steve's knee a hard weight against his sternum.
"Less talking, more action, rich boy."
He could hear the smirk in Steve's voice without needing to open his eyes. He did anyway, and found himself staring up into Steve's flushed, grinning face.
"I can think of more entertaining kinds of action," Tony said, writhing in a vain attempt to buck Steve off. Steve was only a couple of inches taller than he was, the difference in height almost negligible, but forty extra pounds of mass meant that when Steve truly wanted Tony to stay put somewhere, moving wasn't really a viable option.
"I'm entertained," Steve told him. The sunlight from the gym's floor-to-ceiling windows streamed across his face, turning his eyelashes into nearly-invisible glints of gold. The bead of sweat sliding along his throat and down toward his collarbone taunted Tony – close enough to touch, but with both wrists pinned to the floor and Steve's considerable weight on his chest, he was unable to reach up and wipe it away.
Then Steve let go of him and sprang back to his feet, holding a hand down for Tony to grab. "Come on, on your feet, Avenger. You should have seen that throw coming two moves ahead."
Steve was right – it had been an obvious move, and as fast as Steve was, Tony still ought to have been able to avoid it, or at least avoid being so thoroughly pinned. What was wrong with him today? Tony was nowhere near Steve's level in hand to hand combat, and never would be, but he usually managed to avoid being flat on his back twice in under two minutes.
Ten minutes later, he'd hit the mat three more times, and when he wobbled getting back up the third time, Steve declared practice over with.
"We can finish this later, when you're not as distracted."
"I'm not distracted," Tony protested. "You always have my full attention."
"Which is why you answer your email and run virus scans on your armor while we're in bed together." Steve turned away, stripping off his sweat-soaked shirt, and tossed it onto a weight bench.
Tony took a moment to appreciate the sight, resisting the impulse to bend over and plant his hands on his knees, or let himself breathe too raggedly. Gasping and panting in front of Steve was one thing, but in an actual fight, it was an obvious declaration of weakness. He'd worked hard at concealing those, over the years. And Steve worried, after last month. "Once," he said, when he was sure he'd be able to get the word out without sounding too breathless. "I did that once. Pepper doesn't red flag things unless they really are urgent." The repeated emails he'd deleted unread from Sally Floyd since the reversal of M-Day had been red-flagged, too, as was pretty much everything Koening sent him, but Koening hadn't earned the right to have his instant attention at any hour of the day or night. Pepper had. He owed her that much.
Steve raised his eyebrows, skepticism played up just enough for Tony to tell that he was exaggerating it. "How urgent can something be at that time of night? The business world survived just fine for decades before the invention of email, and even these days, every CEO except you has to go offline and get away from his computer in order to sleep." He rubbed a towel over his face and hair as he spoke, every other word half-muffled by the fabric. Muscle glided under his skin with every movement; Steve's body was perfectly sculpted to a degree that an Olympic athlete would envy, not just from the supersoldier serum, but from hours of training and practice – after Tony left to shower and dash down six floors for his nine o' clock meeting with Stark Industries' R&D department, Steve would probably spend another hour here, working first with the gymnastics equipment and then with his shield.
Tony's eyes were drawn down Steve's broad chest to his stomach, flat and ridged with muscle and completely unscarred. Perfect, as if Sharon Carter had never shoved the barrel of a gun against it and pulled the trigger at point blank range.
He would never get used to that unmarred perfection, no matter how often he saw it, touched it. Never get tired of it, either. The memory of the gaping wound in Steve's stomach, strangely bloodless in the autopsy photos, the better to reveal the blackened power burns around it, was going to be in his dreams forever. It was there even when he was awake, sometimes, a ghostly overlay when he looked at Steve. It didn't happen as often, anymore, but like the memory of Happy's face the last time he had seen him – black and purple and completely unrecognizable, and totally absent of any life, the sound of his heart monitor a cruel mockery in Tony's ears – he knew it would never leave him entirely.
He still hadn't completely gotten used to his own absent scars, either, but that was different; he'd had them his entire adult life, though few people had ever seen them. He'd probably been lucky that the shrapnel had hit him in the chest, and not someplace more visible. Like his face.
For someone whose entire body had been seamlessly healed of over a decade's worth of cumulative damage, this sparring match had taken a ridiculous amount out of him. He'd thought he was back in shape these days. A.I.M.'s toxin hadn't sidelined him for that long.
When was the last time he'd eaten? he wondered. Maybe Steve had a point about coffee not actually being breakfast.
"Once I shower, I'll still have twenty minutes before Pepper comes looking for me," he said, smiling at Steve. "I'm going to see if there's anything to eat in the kitchen. Want to come?"
Steve's eyebrows arched. "You're going to voluntarily consume food before nine a.m.?"
"If I don't, I won't be eating until dinner. The board wants to discuss the past quarter's financial reports and stock performance. And then I'm supposed to go sit in on arbitration proceedings for that lawsuit with Hewlett Packard."
Steve said nothing to this, just waved Tony ahead of him toward the door. He was probably tired of hearing about the HP lawsuit, if not half as tired of it as Tony was. He hadn't stolen anyone's designs. He'd analyzed their tablet computer, figured out the basic principles behind it, and designed a completely different – and more importantly, actually functional – piece of technology around the same basic concept. That was going to completely dominate the market as soon as he released it, and end SI's dependence on military contracts and thus the last remnants of Koening's hold on him.
All that trouble, for a project that hadn't been half as interesting as the last thing he'd worked on for SHIELD. Just the thought of the hours of arguing to come made him feel tired, the adrenaline he'd worked up already draining out of him. Maybe if he thought of himself as the Glenn Curtiss of the computing world, valiantly defending his aircraft designs against unfair patent suits, today would be less boring.
At least it had started out on a high note, he thought, and followed Steve out of the room, letting his eyes linger on the broad planes of Steve's back.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven
no subject
no subject
This was a great chapter; I really loved the mix of action and drama in the first part combined with the quiet - for them! - training scene.
no subject
Thanks! Strange actually does cuss in the middle of one of his "Hoary hosts of blah, blah, etc." exclamations in The Oath, so we're using that as our "it's canon that Strange swears! Really!" excuse.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I absolutely love you guys and your writing. I have cleared through way too much of your fic in the past week and a half or so, and since I don't actually know that much about Marvel canon, I've been reading with the help of google for pictures. But I absolutely love your stuff, and it's like 9/10 my idea of what Marvel canon should be. I can't wait for more of this. <3
no subject
But this update is just lovely, thank you! Your prose is so good, such great texture carrying so much characterization. 'The Habits and Mannerisms of Superheroes, In & Out of Costume' would be a hell of a paper to write; I always appreciate your eye for these details because they make me think.
Poor Wanda, so awkward in the midst of distrust and fear and all these ~undercurrents~ she hasn't quite had time to parse yet. I'm not very up on Marvelverse magic users, I've got a vague idea that a few of MI:13's got mystical backgrounds but the only magic-magic user I can think of nearby is Billy Kaplan. (How canon is he and his given origin in this 'verse, if you don't mind my asking?). Aw, Danny/Luke/Jessica, lookin' out for each other. I'm glad they're working, even if only on the periphery.
Tony is someday going to figure out that when his body is telling him something's wrong, something is wrong. And on that day Steve will bake him a fucking cake. *headdesk* I laugh until I cry because my best friend is very similar. Geniuses are idiots sometimes, and it doesn't usually do their health any favors.
re: reassembled 4
Still, could Strange have made it through alright if Matt wasn't distracting him by accident?
Maybe if he thought of himself as the Glenn Curtiss of the computing world, valiantly defending his aircraft designs against unfair patent suits, today would be less boring.
Poor Tony, I could just picture him smiling at the board, while his eyes dart to the windows, praying for doom bots.
It has been so long, I must refresh my memories by reading all the
sex scenes ofpast parts.