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cap_ironman2011-05-01 03:09 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2011-05-01 03:09 am
Entry tags:
Reassembled, Chapter 5
Title: Reassembled, Chapter 5
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 Five
For a SHIELD installation, the building was poorly guarded. Perhaps the research here was considered unimportant, or perhaps they arrogantly assumed that their pretense at being a subsidiary of General Electric would protect them from the likes of her.
There hadn't even been any sentries outside, just a single guard by the front gate.
There were no guards inside, and the security cameras were easily disabled. SHIELD would have detected her presence the moment the first one went offline, but that was all right. Let them come; by the time their agents arrived, Sin and her men would be long gone.
The building was nearly empty at this time of night, but the lights in the lab were still on. Scientists like working late, particularly those working for secret organizations.
The door had a coded lock, but burst of machine gun fire made short work of it. Sin kept firing from the hip as she entered the room, aiming in only the most general sense. The gunfire drowning out the sound of the scientists screaming, bullets smashing through delicate equipment and making the body of the man who'd been standing closest to the door jerk and twitch fascinatingly.
They all wore little nametags on their lab coats, slips of plastic-coated paper with the logo of their imaginary shell company stamped on them. No SHIELD badges or insignia, but they were branded with the enemy's mark as surely as those who wore SHIELD's uniform. They took SHIELD's money, worked to further its goals, and shared in its guilt.
They had taken Brock from her, taken her father. They all needed to pay, and until she could have Barnes and Carter at her mercy, these worker drones would have to suffice.
Synthia. Remember the plan. In and out, and leave nothing standing.
Her father's voice whispered at the edge of her mind, commanding and impatient, as always.
The room was a shambles now, sprayed with blood and filled with smoke from sparking and smoldering equipment. Nick Fury's severed head stared blankly at her from one of the workbenches, a line of bullet holes trailing down its forehead and between empty, robotic eyes. "Check the bodies," she ordered. "Kill anyone still breathing."
One of the scientists was sniveling under a workbench, begging for his life. As she turned to leave the room, there was another rattle of gunfire, and the noise thankfully stopped.
Three more targets to go, and SHIELD's supply of LMDs would be cut off. Without his army of duplicates to hide behind, Fury would have to come out of his hole and fight his enemies in person. When he did, Sin would be waiting for him.
SHIELD had stood in the way of her father's plans for years, stubbornly thwarting all attempts to impose a new and better order on the world. It had survived the Helicarrier's destruction, survived Stark's weak and faltering control, and her agents within its ranks had been eliminated. All attempts to re-infiltrate the organization had met with failure, and Doom had forbidden her to try again.
She had agreed. Let the filthy Latverian gypsy think he had the upper hand; she didn't need new agents within SHIELD, because destroying Fury would cut off the snake's head and draw the organization's fangs.
"Fury must die," her father's voice reminded her. "He knows too much. And then Wilson, and Barnes. And Rogers. We will leave him for last. After we have taken the spear, after our new Reich has risen."
Sin kicked a dead woman's arm out of her path, wrinkling her nose at the smear of blood the untermench left on her boot, and knelt to plant the first of the explosives. She set the timer for fifteen minutes. Any of her men who took longer than that to get out of the building deserved the death they would get.
The explosion, when it came, was a thing of beauty. The shockwave hit her like a wall, leaving her skin hot and tingling the way Brock's fingers had, and the shell of the building left after it was gone burned in a brilliant chemical rainbow, the smoke acrid and stinging.
The rifle bullet she carried in her hip pocket was hard between her fingers, warm from her body heat. "That was for you, baby," she whispered. "You and Daddy. We're going to make them all pay."
The flames lit the horizon behind her as she drove away, on eye on the hypnotizing glow in her rearview mirror, and the other on her dashboard's digital clock.
The robotics lab was only a day's drive away from the city; she would return before that fool, Doom, even realized that she was gone.
* * *
Hank left the elevator quickly, his movements jerky, every line of his body radiating a mix of anger, frustration, and guilt. Clint sidestepped just in time to avoid running into him; Hank had a bad habit of taking his anger out on other people. Verbally, usually, but Clint wasn't in the mood for a pointless argument with Hank right now.
Wanda was downstairs, inside the tower's basement lab, there to undergo whatever medical and scientific tests Hank and Don had been able to think of, and a few that had been suggested by Tony. It was probably as close as he was going to get to speaking to Wanda alone without actually having to hunt her down and ask for a chance to talk to her.
Now he just had to grow some balls and stop lurking in the hallway.
She was down there with Don, he reminded himself. It wasn't like he was going to be cornering her while she was alone. If she wanted him to leave, if being too close to him scared her or made her nervous, all she'd have to do was say so, and he'd be gone, twice as fast as Hank had left.
At least Hank was gone – Don and Hank glaring at one another in icy silence, or sniping nastily at each other, would only have made what was already going to be an excruciating conversation worse. Thor had made his feelings for Hank plain, and Tony as well, and Don not only tended to agree with the big guy, he was significantly bitchier as well. Obviously, the entire stock of sarcasm, spite, and passive aggressiveness that ought to have been split evenly between the two of them had all gone to Don Blake, with none left over for Thor.
Clint drew in a deep breath, sucked it up, and got into the elevator. It descended so quickly that his ears popped, the doors opening silently on mad scientist territory. He edged into the room, letting the doors slide shut behind him, trying to be as quiet as possible.
Wanda was fully clothed, thank God, sitting on a lab bench with her back to him while Don put a collection of intimidating-looking medical equipment away.
"I'd say you were lucky," he said. "There's no permanent damage from your ordeal. As far as Dr. Pym and I can tell, you're fine." He smiled at Wanda, and at Clint, over Wanda's shoulder. "Your brain patterns are normal, your blood work is normal, the genetic scan shows no alterations. You've lost about ten pounds, but that's not surprising considering the circumstances. I doubt Chthon bothered to feed you that often."
"I wouldn't know," Wanda said wryly, and Clint felt a moment of intense gratitude that nothing that left permanent scars or damage had happened to her, that no one had hurt her that badly. And also, selfishly, that he himself had never been under long-term mind control.
They ought to have had Beast come and examine her – he was the mutant expert, and the geneticist – but while Clint was sure he would have come, if one of the Avengers had been willing to ask him, Wanda, when it was suggested to her, had point blank refused and nearly begged them not to contact any of the X-Men. Not yet.
Clint couldn't blame her. He sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to see them. Looking at Wanda sitting there on the lab bench was bad enough.
He couldn't look at the dark hair falling down her back without remembering what it had felt like, couldn't look at the clothing without remembering the body under it. The body she'd never chosen to show to him.
"These marks on your hands..." Don indicated one of Wanda's hands, and the spiky black design on the back that made it look like someone else's. "Did Strange tell you if they were going to affect you in any way?"
She shook her head. "They limit the power I can draw on, and block Chthon's access to me. Other than that, they're no different from tattoos."
"In that case, I think you're all right. But tell me if you start experiencing any unusual symptoms; mind control on this scale, for this long, isn't really covered in medical literature." He shook his head, smiling ruefully. "At least, not that I've read. I've missed a couple of years' worth of it."
Wanda had turned slightly to face him, giving Clint a view of her profile. Any moment now, she was going to notice that he was in the room. Then he would have to say something to her. "I didn't know mind-control was covered at all."
"Dr. McCoy wrote an article on it a few years ago. It dealt mostly with telepathy and brainwashing, though. With magic, all bets are off." He reached for his walking stick, leaning against the edge of a lab bench, and then, turning to Clint, said, "Sorry, Clint. I was just finishing up with Wanda. Is there something you need? Are your ears-"
"I'm fine," he said. "I... um..."
Wanda turned, and her face went stiff when she saw him.
"I wanted to-" he started, and then stopped, his brain abruptly running out of words. He hadn't been this inarticulate since the last time he'd tried to make up with Bobbi, before... he hadn't been this inarticulate for a long time. Maybe he shouldn't ask to speak to Wanda alone. Maybe she didn't want to speak to him.
He owed it to her to give her the chance, though. He cleared his throat and started again, trying to not stare at her or loom or sound suspicious or threatening. "Wanda, can I, um, can I talk to you? Alone? It's fine if you don't want to," he added quickly.
Wanda looked down at her hands, then back up at Clint, her face carefully expressionless. "I think we need to," she said. Her voice was even, but Clint could hear the strain in it.
"I'll leave you alone, then," Don said, and Clint almost told him not to. Asking him to leave was a bad idea; it would probably be less threatening if he stayed, and he was a nice safety barrier between Clint and having to actually look Wanda in the face. Even if the idea of someone else hearing what Clint and Wanda were about to discuss was... well, the whole team might be learning about it soon enough. Maybe it would have been easier to get it over with one at a time.
He'd never be able to speak to Jan or Carol again, or Sam, probably. Sam would be disgusted and disappointed when he heard, and would immediately tell Cap, who would promptly kick Clint off the team. And rightly so, and he probably ought to have left already, except... but he couldn't tell Cap when he hadn't spoken to Wanda, because she might not want Cap or anyone else to know what Clint had done to her. Bad enough, probably, that he'd told Carol and Tony.
If she wanted to keep it quiet, he'd have to think of some other excuse to leave. He'd been putting it off, like a coward, because the team was his home and he had no idea where else he was going to go.
As Don walked toward the elevator, Wanda climbed down off the table and straightened her skirt. It was the same one she'd worn at Strange's place, the drab-looking navy one. She looked awful in it, all pale and washed out.
There were circles under her eyes, and something about the expression in them reminded Clint of Jan and Tony in the hospital, staring at horrible things that didn't exist outside their own heads, or Hank, sick-looking and white-faced after Jan had flinched back from him.
"I don't know how to begin," she said. "There aren't words for it."
Somewhere behind Clint, the elevator doors closed, quietly, like they were trying not to disturb them.
"I know," Clint agreed. "I mean, I didn't know. I..." Maybe Cage and Rand were looking for an extra member for their Heroes for Hire group. Or maybe Rhodes would take him on as part of his superhero training program. Working with Rhodey wouldn't be so bad; he'd done it before, and it had worked well before half their teammates had been... possessed. Oh God.
"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry for what I did to you."
Clint stared at her, not believing his ears for a moment. Maybe he did need to have Don check them out again, because she couldn't have just said–
"I didn't want to," she went on, her face twisting. "He made me. I didn't want to hurt any of you."
He swallowed, feeling sick. She was apologizing to him, as if it had been her fault. After he'd slept with her possessed body without her consent. Had she even known that they'd had sex? The thought made the entire thing seem, if possible, even worse. "You... of course you didn't. You were possessed. You weren't in control of your actions, and I slept with you anyway, and Carol thought you'd used some kind of mind-control or manipulation on me and must have wanted it, but if you were possessed..." Then it hadn't been Wanda who'd wanted the sex. It had been Chthon. And even if Clint had been... influenced... somehow, he'd still had more free will than she had. Like sleeping with a falling-down drunk person when you'd only had a couple of beers. "I'm sorry. Oh God, I'm sorry. I don't know why I did it."
"Clint." Wanda laid her right hand on his arm, and Clint's flow of words instantly dried up. "It's all right."
Things were so far from all right that Clint nearly wanted to laugh at that. "I slept with you while you were possessed, when you couldn't even tell me no, and then I left you there!" He felt weirdly conscious of the weight of her fingers on his sleeve, as if it were far more than the simple, friendly touch she meant it as.
"You were supposed to. Chthon was influencing over half the town, warping their memories to make them accept my presence as if I had always been there." She hesitated for a moment, then her eyes narrowed as she added, "Warping my memories so that I thought so, too." She let go of Clint's arm, frowning now, but he didn't think the expression was meant for him. "He was manipulating everyone around me, by the end, including my brother, or Pietro would never have tried to create Magneto's filthy dream world. Compelling you to leave would have been child's play compared to that. So would making you want me."
Clint shook his head. Standing this close, the circles under her eyes and the pallor of her skin were even more obvious; had she looked like this in Transia, three months ago? Would he have noticed if she had, with Chthon screwing with his head? "I don't remember any of that. Just you, and that bedroom in your house, and then I was in an airport somewhere, and it was days later. I didn't even think of going back for you, not for weeks. I should have done something to help you. If not then, then after."
She made an attempt at a smile, her lips curving upward slightly, but Clint could see the strain in it. "You did help me. Before you showed up, I was like a zombie – I didn't remember anything, not even who I was. You woke me up. It took me a long time to escape from Chthon's control, but without you, I would probably still be locked up in that house on Mount Wundagore. Or, worse, Chthon would already be free." She looked down at her hands again, tracing the line of Strange's tattoo with one finger. "I know I ought to be more upset that it happened," she said quietly, "that Chthon used you that way, but I can't be. I can't be sorry that I escaped from there. But I am sorry you were dragged into it."
Staring at her felt painfully awkward, suddenly, as if he were seeing things he wasn't supposed to. Seeing her naked – except he'd already done that. Clint turned away, pacing over to the nearest lab bench, the one where Hank's fume hood sat, looking like something out of a CSI episode. One where they were dealing with radiation poisoning or some kind of death-by-contagious-disease. Beyond it, in the back corner of the lab, hundreds of ants trundled their way through a glass-walled ants' nest, completely unaffected by Clint and Wanda's presence. "I thought I was going crazy, at first, or that... I don't know what I thought." He reached for one of the little test tubes, then remembered that if he touched anything down here, it would probably poison him or give him chemical burns. "That I'd made you sleep with me in return for not bringing you in, maybe."
"Why would you think that?" She sounded honestly shocked, so much so that Clint automatically turned to look at her; she was still standing by the table, maybe a step or so closer to him than she had been. "You would never do that, and I would never agree to it." There was absolute conviction in her voice, and looking at her, standing there alone with her, suddenly got a little easier. "I don't really... remember much about what we did," she added, much more hesitantly, "it's all kind of vague, but I know you didn't hurt me or force me to do anything. I wanted to help you, because you seemed so sad. Or that's what he made me think, anyway."
This was all... Clint felt like he was missing parts of the conversation. They'd both been mind controlled, she was sorry she'd slept with him, she wasn't sorry she'd slept with him; she'd wanted to, she hadn't wanted to. He tried asking about one of the parts he was mostly sure of. "So... you don't want me to leave the team, then?"
"No!" She shook her head, hard, dark curls swaying with the motion. "You and Cap and the others are some of the only family I have left. I don't even know if Pietro's still alive, or if he'll ever want to see or speak to me again if he is." She paused, meeting his gaze and giving him a long, serious look; Clint had to fight the impulse to glance away. "Clint, I killed you. Twice. And Scott, and Vision. And..." her voice broke, and she looked away, her face twisting. "You sleeping with me while we were both under mind control isn't even in the same league as that."
"That wasn't your fault." She had brought him back from the dead, and she wasn't crazy anymore, and seeing Wanda be Wanda again and knowing that it hadn't been Wanda who had turned on them all and killed him was such a relief that beside that, who cared about some sex that hadn't exactly been unpleasant anyway?
Well, that hadn't been unpleasant for him. He could only hope it hadn't been unpleasant for her. Did it make it better that she apparently couldn't remember it clearly, or worse? Worse, probably – God, he might as well have been sleeping with a puppet, for all the input she'd had.
"I know," Wanda said, in a tight, choked voice, "but that doesn't bring them back. It doesn't make it any easier. I keep seeing it every time I close my eyes – the mansion burning, Vision being torn apart..." She trailed off, one hand pulling and twisting at the fabric of her jacket sleeve.
Clint knew that feeling far better than he wanted to, both the guilt he could see in her face and the way memories you didn't want stayed on constant repeat in your head. After a long moment of silence, he offered, "I used to dream about seeing Bobbi get... burned."
Neither of them spoke for what felt like a very long time. Clint stared at the patch of wall just above and slightly to the left of Wanda's head. She wasn't looking directly at him, either.
The silence stretched long enough to be painful, long enough for Clint to remember exactly what Bobbi's face had looked like when Mephisto's fireball had hit her in the back. He didn't really remember dying, or whether or not it had hurt, and he wasn't about to ask Cap about it, but he suspected that the answer was yes, that it hurt a lot.
"I'm just glad you're back," he said, suddenly needing to say something, anything that wasn't about death or burning or regrets it was too late to do anything about. "And I'm sorry for..." How did you even say this – 'I'm sorry we were mutually date-raped?' 'I'm sorry you have to remember watching your husband die and knowing his killer used you to do it?' – "I'm sorry Chthon did that to you."
She probably would have said something in response to that, but Clint didn't stay to hear what it was. He didn't actually run out of the room, but when the elevator doors closed behind him, he felt as shaky and breathless as if he'd just finished a wildly out-of-control sprint.
It had been Chthon. It hadn't been him. It hadn't been her. He wasn't actually the kind of man that would rape a woman, and she didn't hate him for it, and he hadn't hurt her.
Chthon had been inside his head. In his head, making him do things.
Clint ran his fingers through his hair, then leaned his head back against the wall of the elevator, trying not to think about what else Chthon could have done while he was in there, if he had felt like it. He should probably feel more traumatized. He'd been... rape was much too strong a word for it. He'd been coerced into having sex that hadn't been his idea. He'd been used as a weapon against Wanda the same way she'd been used against the team.
Maybe it was good that he couldn't remember the entire thing very clearly. At least his vivid memories of her naked body and the vague idea that it had been pleasant were all he'd taken away from it, and he didn't actually know what Wanda was like in bed. That would have been... wrong. Even more personal than the things he did remember.
He'd never asked her what she wanted him to tell the rest of the team. Maybe Cap and Sam and Thor didn't have to know; at least she'd have some privacy left that way.
She didn't blame him. She didn't hate him. She didn't want him to leave.
It hadn't been her.
Maybe if he told himself that often enough, it would get easier.
* * *
The elevator between Tony's basement lab and the Avengers' apartments rose with perfect silence; even more than the brass and wood paneling, that spoke for how expensive it was. Don, watching the floor indicator climb with impressive swiftness, wondered morbidly what would happen to anyone who happened to be in the lab if the building's power ever went out. As far as he'd been able to tell, there were no stairs between the lab and the ground floor lobby. On the other hand, forgetting to plan for disaster was not among Tony's failings; there had to be some alternative way out of there, not to mention a way to get massive pieces of equipment in and out. The elevator was the size of a freight elevator, but even it wouldn't have been able to accommodate some of the things that Don had watched slowly disappear from the lab over the past week, which had included giant arc welders, a massive sets of jacks for propping up quinjet engine blocks, and one of Tony's two Cray computers – slightly outdated, but they apparently had some kind of nostalgia value – along with half the contents of a machine shop.
All the medical equipment and bioscience stuff remained, or examining Wanda would have required taking her back to Oklahoma, to his vastly-less-well-equipped-than-anything-Tony-owned clinic. Advanced diagnostic equipment was hard to come by in the middle of nowhere, and Thor had deliberately chosen the middle of nowhere to rebuild Asgard.
She'd been all right, at leaSt. Or mostly all right – if he were a psychologist, he would probably have a laundry list of post-possession warning signs to watch out for, but all of his medical training had dealt with more concrete ailments. Physically, she was all right.
He'd been dreading the alternative. Being the only general practitioner in a small town had its disadvantages, one of which was explaining to a patient whom he'd just diagnosed with cancer that he didn't think the 'out of towners who'd built that big castle' were the kind of gods who performed miraculous healings. There were times when he would have been willing to trade all of Thor's strength and power in return for the ability to cure leprosy or blindness or paralysis with a touch.
Don shoved the thought aside as the elevator came to a halt. He might as well wish for the ability to raise the dead, while he was at it. Asgardian cosmology wasn't as forgiving as some.
Steve and Tony's cat was waiting outside the elevator. It gave an odd, creaky chirp, and did its level best to trip him before he could even get through the elevator doors, rubbing against his ankles and coating his pants with orange fur.
"No," he told it firmly, pushing it away from the closing doors with his cane. "You're not going down there."
The cat – exactly what its name was seemed to depend on who you asked – made an offended wheezing sound, and stalked away down the hall.
"I have no freakin' clue how she got there!" Sam Wilson's voice came loudly from the open door of the communications room, making the cat go low and dash out of sight. "Redwing was watching the outside of the building, and he never saw her."
"She didn't come in; she just... appeared." Tony's voice, equally startled and offended-sounding. "It's either magic, or some kind of teleportation device. Come on; I've told the security guards not to try to approach her."
They had a security breach. Don changed course for the communications room, walking as quickly as he could. 'Morgan le Fay?' he wondered. Some new magical troublemaker? 'Please, don't be the Enchantress,' he begged silently. Amora had sworn she wasn't going to cause any trouble, but her word meant little, and she and the Executioner were probably bored with lying low by now; two months back from the dead, and they hadn't tried to kill or brainwash anybody yet. That was very nearly a record.
He nearly collided with Tony and the Falcon on his way into the room, both of them intent on shoving their way out and toward the elevator. "Carol's in LA, of course. Steve's told her that she needs to pick a team and-" Tony broke off abruptly, jerking to a stop inches away from Don.
Forward momentum kept Don stumbling forward a step despite his attempt to stop, and only the Falcon's hand on his arm kept him from smacking straight into Tony.
"Sorry," Tony said, holding both hands up. "I didn't know you were-"
Don wasn't listening; he could see one of the security monitors over Tony's shoulder, displaying a slightly grainy view of the buildings front lobby.
"Damn it." The words burst out before he remembered that he wasn't talking to Tony. "That's Loki!"
"She's who?" Sam was staring at him, eyebrows arched. "Since when has Loki been a woman?"
"Don't ask," Don muttered. He glanced down at his cane, debating for a half-second the merits of turning into Thor and letting him handle this. On the one hand, with Carol apparently back on the West Coast for the day, Thor was the only Avenger here capable of going toe-to-toe with Loki. On the other hand, Loki might very well react to Thor's appearance in the lobby by blowing the building up, along with all the innocent bystanders who happened to be in it.
He started to run for the elevator, ignoring the way his knee twinged at each step and praying that it wouldn't pick now to suddenly go out from under him. Damn Odin's sense of humor, anyway.
"I don't care who it is," Tony was saying, dashing past him and through the already-opening elevator doors – the whole building did things like that for him, thanks to his new cyborg upgrades. "I want her out of my lobby."
"Clint and Wanda are downstairs in your lab," Don told him, as the elevator doors slid shut behind the three of them. "You should call them and-"
"I don't know if that's a good idea," the Falcon interrupted. "The Scarlet Witch just got rid of the last evil chaos magic thing that possessed her. The last thing we need right now is for her to face off against Loki and get screwed with some more."
"Maybe he's – she's," Tony corrected himself, "maybe she's not here to fight. Maybe she's just here to taunt us."
Wishful thinking, almost certainly, but it did sound like something Loki would do.
"Oh, and you two should probably stand back a couple of feet," Tony added.
Don was about to refuse and stay put when he saw the briefcase clutched in Tony's left hand. He and the Falcon both backed off as far as the confines of the elevator car would let them, while Tony's armor flew around him in a dangerous-looking whirlwind of red and gold metal. When the elevator doors opened on the lobby, moments later, Tony was completely armored up, and Don was the only one left who wasn't in costume.
Loki was standing dead center in the lobby, her feet planted in the middle of the silvery design – some kind of electrical diagram – inlaid in the marble floor. Dark-uniformed security guards and a dozen or so men and women in business attire were clustered nervously against the walls, staring at her.
The green and yellow fabric of her cloak made the colors around her seem dull, and her golden helmet blazed like fire in the natural light that flooded the three-story-high room, courtesy of the immense windows. If it came to a fight, the falling glass from shattering windows alone could be potentially lethal.
"I have come to deliver a message to my stepbrother," she was proclaiming, in a voice that echoed off the high ceiling.
She turned and saw them then, and her face, so eerily similar to Sif's, contorted in a sneer. "I see my darling brother is too busy to speak to me, and sends his mortal companions in his stead. Unless..." her eyes went to Don, and her sneer shifted to something more amused, a sort of contemptuous smirk. "The little doctor. It's always such a pleasure to see you, brother, whatever form you hold, but I cannot fathom your attraction to this fragile mortal shell. It doesn't become you."
"I could say the same thing about your current form." The words were out before Don could think better of them, and he tightened his grip on his cane, ready to slam it into the ground and let Thor take over if Loki responded to his jab with violence.
She laughed, the sound ringing hollow like the sound of bells.
"What do you want, Loki?" Tony asked; his helmet amplified and flattened his voice, making it ring nearly as loudly as hers did.
Loki ignored him, her gaze never leaving Don. "Come closer, my brother. I would speak with you."
"He can hear just fine from over here," the Falcon called back, taking a step forward so that his body was halfway in front of Don and Loki. His teammates occasionally forgot that he was a superhero as well, and every bit as capable of defending himself as they were; maybe it was the cane.
Don stepped sideways, giving himself a clear view of Loki once more. "Speak with me about what?"
"I wish to offer my aid against one of your enemies," she said, smiling faintly as if she thought that there were even the slightest chance of either Don or Thor believing her. "In return, I ask for your assistance in reclaiming what is mine."
Behind Loki, some of the businessmen were creeping silently toward the door. One woman had slipped off her high heeled shoes and clutched them in one hand, walking in her stocking feet to keep from making any noise. If they could keep Loki distracted for a few minutes longer, they would have significantly fewer potential hostages to worry about.
Don raised his eyebrows, not bothering to hide his skepticism. "Pretending for a second that I believe you, which enemy?"
"The Elder God, the embodiment of entropy." Loki waved a dismissive hand, her long nails glinting like talons. "Chthon. Have you any other enemy intent upon stealing one of my possessions?"
"You mean the spear?" Damn it, he was not actually having a conversation with Loki. With new, disconcertingly attractive Loki and her vulpine smile and bottle-glass-green eyes that were the only part of Thor's stepbrother face that he could still recognize in her. "You've been content to ignore it for the past several thousand years. Why do you care what happens to it?"
"Because it's mine." The temperature in the room dropped perceptibly as she snarled the words, and behind him, Don could hear the faint hum of Tony's repulsor gauntlets powering up. "The All-Father hid it from me behind barriers I cannot break, before he tried to banish me to eternal torment. For centuries, I could not even sense where it lay, but now his death has weakened the protections he placed upon it, and that mortal fool Doom's actions in this city last spring damaged them still further, allowing anyone who cared to look to feel the spear's power." She smiled at him, the angry sneer turning into a familiar, ingratiating grin in an instant. In the back of Don's head, he could feel Thor's automatic suspicion – that smile always meant trouble. That was the 'Trust me, I have a plan' smile, and even when they weren't evil, Loki's plans generally ended in humiliation for everyone involved except him, and occasional public crossdressing. "My powers are weaker since my resurrection, brother, and Chthon's have grown. He touches the world, through his human avatars, and seeks to make all chaos power his own. He would use my stolen power, the portion of my essence that is bound within Baldur's Bane, to break free of his prison, and doom all of creation. Not just Midgard, but Asgard and Jotunheimr and all the rest of the nine worlds as well. And Olympus, and K'un L'un, and every other realm connected to this dimension."
"But you're going to help us stop him, just out of the goodness of your heart?" Sam asked dryly. He'd shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, knees slightly bent – ready to move if Loki tried anything.
Loki didn't so much as glance at him. "Use the powers the All-Father left to you to break down his protections, allow me to claim the spear for my own and take its power back into myself, and Chthon will no longer be able to lay claim to it."
The last of the bystanders had slipped through the door now, leaving just the security staff to get caught in any crossfire, and through the glass doors, Don could see Steve outside on the sidewalk, directing people away from the building. Tony must have used his Extremis abilities to call him. Jan, too, he realized – there was a small, moving dot barely visible just inside the door, flying towards the security personnel.
Back-up was here, if not quite the heavy-hitting back-up Carol would have represented.
"So, rather than making Chthon more powerful, you want us to make you more powerful instead?" Don asked. It was as much a rhetorical question as it was anything else – regaining the power stored in the spear would make Loki one of the strongest of the resurrected Asgardians, her powers a match for anything but the Odin force, and Thor preferred to avoid using that at almost all costs. Don didn't blame him; leading Valhalla was a crushing responsibility at times, he knew, but the powers Odin had wielded and passed on to his son were even more oppressive, and not simply because one's own near-death was required in order to master them fully.
She raised an eyebrow. "The power is rightfully mine, not Doom's or Chthon's or anyone else's. Such suspicion. One would think I was offering you threats instead of my hand in aid." Her voice was poisonously sweet.
Steve was standing in the doorway now, his shield in hand. From the look on his face, he was about to throw Loki's offer of 'aid' back in her teeth. Don beat him to it.
Prior to the Ragnarok, Loki had tried to kill Don repeatedly, tried to kill Jane Foster, tried to kill at least a half-dozen other people Don knew, and generally made his life a living hell more times than he cared to count. "Help from you?" he snapped. "So you can turn around and stab us in the back as soon as you have the spear back? You must think we're either insane or stupid."
Loki's smile was cold now, revealing teeth just a fraction too sharp to belong to anything human. "No, I merely had hoped that you would choose to follow the wisest course available to you. My aid is not a thing to be dismissed lightly. We were brothers once; does none of that bond remain?"
The hot flash of rage that filled Don was unexpected – his skin felt too tight, suddenly, his face hot, and he couldn't tell how much of the emotion choking him was his, and how much was Thor's. "You murdered Thor's brother!" he shouted at her. "What the hell do you think? He trusted you once and you betrayed him!" He had trusted him – her – like a brother, fought beside her, drunk mead with her and laughed with her and– The memories of Baldur convulsing in his arms, bubbles of blood at his lips while his breath wheezed with a wet, gluey note that Don's medical training recognized as the sound of someone drowning on the fluid in their lungs... were not his memories. They were still as vivid in his mind as the first time he'd ever had a patient flatline.
Loki made a pouty little moue that filled Don with the desire to wipe the expression off her face, and said, "So bitter. One would think Baldur were still in his grave. Save your anger for those it truly belongs to, brother."
"We're not accepting your help," Steve said, his voice as calm and controlled as if he hadn't just witnessed Don screaming accusations at Loki. "So you can turn around and leave, Mister. I mean, Ma'am."
Loki swung around to look at him, putting her back toward Don. "Bold words, from a mortal with no powers to his name. My business is with Thor, not you."
'I am getting really tired of you treating me like I don't exist,' Don thought, glaring at the iridescent sheen of her cape. "Thor's not here right now," he spat. "And if he were, he wouldn't be inclined to listen to you."
Traitor. The word rumbled in his head. Oathbreaker.
"I think what we're all trying to say," Tony announced loudly, "is that your presence in my lobby is making everyone in the building nervous. I suggest you leave before we end up having to make you. If your offer is sincere, we can discuss it somewhere else. Someplace I haven't just spent several million dollars repairing." He raised both hands, the repulsor ports in his palms a glaringly bright blue-white. "These may not be able to kill you, but I can guarantee it will be painful."
"We're not discussing it. She's leaving." Apparently, Tony hadn't had his fill of working with manipulative scum who wanted to destroy them. One would think he'd have learned, by this point, that there were some people you didn't want to get into bed with, no matter what they threatened or how persuasive they could be.
"I see you've decided not to be reasonable," Loki said coolly. "I had hoped we might discuss this as friends, as befits kinsmen, but since you insist upon spurning my offers of peace..." She shook her head, her expression a parody of regret. "I know where Sif is. Give me the spear, and when I have it safely in my grasp, I will tell you of her location. Persist in this foolish stubbornness, and I shall see to it that you never lay eyes on her again."
This time, the rage was entirely Thor's. Don felt it anyway, magnified by his own frustration at their inability to find his alter-ego's lover; he'd wanted to find her badly, for Thor – at least one of them should get to have a fresh start with the woman he loved.
"Stay away from her," he snarled. "If you're even telling the truth, which I doubt." Loki had not been called the Father of Lies for nothing; she lied as easily as she breathed. And threats against a conveniently absent Sif were exactly the sort of bluff she would make.
Loki smirked at him. Her skin was pale in the bright sunlight, and at one temple, Don could see the edge of a blue tattoo – the tribal markings of a frost giant, not entirely hidden by her hair. She had every reason to hate Thor, and no reason to help him. "You sound most certain, brother. Certain enough to risk thy paramour's life? Ah well," she gave an elaborate shrug, "mayhap Baldur or Heimdall will be more accommodating."
Don's ears popped as the air pressure in the room dropped, and he wasn't sure whether it was he or Thor who growled, "Get out, and stay away from my family."
Loki raised a mocking eyebrow. "Which one?" Her glance around the room at the other Avengers – the first time she'd looked at any of them, save for that one glance at Steve – made her meaning obvious.
"Both of them!"
She strode forward – behind him and slightly to his right, he could hear the Falcon's hard light wings snapping out, hear Iron Man's repulsors crackling – and then she was in front of him, towering over Don by half a foot. "The day will come when you will wish that you had accepted my aid, Thunder God." She reached out and laid one finger against Don's face, just beside his left eye, the end of her talon-like nail resting against his skin. It took an exercise of willpower not to flinch.
"Such pretty blue eyes," she whispered. "Always looking at me with such disguSt. Would she like you as well if I plucked this one out?"
"Step away from him, Loki," Steve called, but he didn't throw his shield, though Don could tell from the way he held it that he wanted to.
Loki's finger slid slowly down the side of his face, coming to rest under his chin. "If you reconsider, Son of Odin, you have but to call me. I am always willing to negotiate. You have but to hold this ring, and utter my name, and I shall hurry hence to do thy bidding." Her hand closed around his right wrist, gripping just hard enough to remind him that she could crush every one of the delicate bones there with a single squeeze, and forced his clenched fingers open, folding them closed again around something hard and round.
Then she took a step backward, and vanished into thin air, her wide, unfriendly smile the last thing to disappear.
Steve's shield whooshed through the air where she had been, a fraction of a second too late, and clanged loudly off one of the support pillars that held up the third-floor balcony.
Don stared down at the gold ring that glinted malevolently up at him from his right palm, and resisted the urge to rub at his face where Loki's hand had been. He could still feel her nail sliding over his face, leaving a trail of tingling skin, as if she were still touching him.
* * *
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
A/N: We have neglected this fic for far too long. Once again, we really are sorry about that; we just bought and moved to a new apartment, and it's consumed our lives for the past four months.
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.
For a SHIELD installation, the building was poorly guarded. Perhaps the research here was considered unimportant, or perhaps they arrogantly assumed that their pretense at being a subsidiary of General Electric would protect them from the likes of her.
There hadn't even been any sentries outside, just a single guard by the front gate.
There were no guards inside, and the security cameras were easily disabled. SHIELD would have detected her presence the moment the first one went offline, but that was all right. Let them come; by the time their agents arrived, Sin and her men would be long gone.
The building was nearly empty at this time of night, but the lights in the lab were still on. Scientists like working late, particularly those working for secret organizations.
The door had a coded lock, but burst of machine gun fire made short work of it. Sin kept firing from the hip as she entered the room, aiming in only the most general sense. The gunfire drowning out the sound of the scientists screaming, bullets smashing through delicate equipment and making the body of the man who'd been standing closest to the door jerk and twitch fascinatingly.
They all wore little nametags on their lab coats, slips of plastic-coated paper with the logo of their imaginary shell company stamped on them. No SHIELD badges or insignia, but they were branded with the enemy's mark as surely as those who wore SHIELD's uniform. They took SHIELD's money, worked to further its goals, and shared in its guilt.
They had taken Brock from her, taken her father. They all needed to pay, and until she could have Barnes and Carter at her mercy, these worker drones would have to suffice.
Synthia. Remember the plan. In and out, and leave nothing standing.
Her father's voice whispered at the edge of her mind, commanding and impatient, as always.
The room was a shambles now, sprayed with blood and filled with smoke from sparking and smoldering equipment. Nick Fury's severed head stared blankly at her from one of the workbenches, a line of bullet holes trailing down its forehead and between empty, robotic eyes. "Check the bodies," she ordered. "Kill anyone still breathing."
One of the scientists was sniveling under a workbench, begging for his life. As she turned to leave the room, there was another rattle of gunfire, and the noise thankfully stopped.
Three more targets to go, and SHIELD's supply of LMDs would be cut off. Without his army of duplicates to hide behind, Fury would have to come out of his hole and fight his enemies in person. When he did, Sin would be waiting for him.
SHIELD had stood in the way of her father's plans for years, stubbornly thwarting all attempts to impose a new and better order on the world. It had survived the Helicarrier's destruction, survived Stark's weak and faltering control, and her agents within its ranks had been eliminated. All attempts to re-infiltrate the organization had met with failure, and Doom had forbidden her to try again.
She had agreed. Let the filthy Latverian gypsy think he had the upper hand; she didn't need new agents within SHIELD, because destroying Fury would cut off the snake's head and draw the organization's fangs.
"Fury must die," her father's voice reminded her. "He knows too much. And then Wilson, and Barnes. And Rogers. We will leave him for last. After we have taken the spear, after our new Reich has risen."
Sin kicked a dead woman's arm out of her path, wrinkling her nose at the smear of blood the untermench left on her boot, and knelt to plant the first of the explosives. She set the timer for fifteen minutes. Any of her men who took longer than that to get out of the building deserved the death they would get.
The explosion, when it came, was a thing of beauty. The shockwave hit her like a wall, leaving her skin hot and tingling the way Brock's fingers had, and the shell of the building left after it was gone burned in a brilliant chemical rainbow, the smoke acrid and stinging.
The rifle bullet she carried in her hip pocket was hard between her fingers, warm from her body heat. "That was for you, baby," she whispered. "You and Daddy. We're going to make them all pay."
The flames lit the horizon behind her as she drove away, on eye on the hypnotizing glow in her rearview mirror, and the other on her dashboard's digital clock.
The robotics lab was only a day's drive away from the city; she would return before that fool, Doom, even realized that she was gone.
Hank left the elevator quickly, his movements jerky, every line of his body radiating a mix of anger, frustration, and guilt. Clint sidestepped just in time to avoid running into him; Hank had a bad habit of taking his anger out on other people. Verbally, usually, but Clint wasn't in the mood for a pointless argument with Hank right now.
Wanda was downstairs, inside the tower's basement lab, there to undergo whatever medical and scientific tests Hank and Don had been able to think of, and a few that had been suggested by Tony. It was probably as close as he was going to get to speaking to Wanda alone without actually having to hunt her down and ask for a chance to talk to her.
Now he just had to grow some balls and stop lurking in the hallway.
She was down there with Don, he reminded himself. It wasn't like he was going to be cornering her while she was alone. If she wanted him to leave, if being too close to him scared her or made her nervous, all she'd have to do was say so, and he'd be gone, twice as fast as Hank had left.
At least Hank was gone – Don and Hank glaring at one another in icy silence, or sniping nastily at each other, would only have made what was already going to be an excruciating conversation worse. Thor had made his feelings for Hank plain, and Tony as well, and Don not only tended to agree with the big guy, he was significantly bitchier as well. Obviously, the entire stock of sarcasm, spite, and passive aggressiveness that ought to have been split evenly between the two of them had all gone to Don Blake, with none left over for Thor.
Clint drew in a deep breath, sucked it up, and got into the elevator. It descended so quickly that his ears popped, the doors opening silently on mad scientist territory. He edged into the room, letting the doors slide shut behind him, trying to be as quiet as possible.
Wanda was fully clothed, thank God, sitting on a lab bench with her back to him while Don put a collection of intimidating-looking medical equipment away.
"I'd say you were lucky," he said. "There's no permanent damage from your ordeal. As far as Dr. Pym and I can tell, you're fine." He smiled at Wanda, and at Clint, over Wanda's shoulder. "Your brain patterns are normal, your blood work is normal, the genetic scan shows no alterations. You've lost about ten pounds, but that's not surprising considering the circumstances. I doubt Chthon bothered to feed you that often."
"I wouldn't know," Wanda said wryly, and Clint felt a moment of intense gratitude that nothing that left permanent scars or damage had happened to her, that no one had hurt her that badly. And also, selfishly, that he himself had never been under long-term mind control.
They ought to have had Beast come and examine her – he was the mutant expert, and the geneticist – but while Clint was sure he would have come, if one of the Avengers had been willing to ask him, Wanda, when it was suggested to her, had point blank refused and nearly begged them not to contact any of the X-Men. Not yet.
Clint couldn't blame her. He sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to see them. Looking at Wanda sitting there on the lab bench was bad enough.
He couldn't look at the dark hair falling down her back without remembering what it had felt like, couldn't look at the clothing without remembering the body under it. The body she'd never chosen to show to him.
"These marks on your hands..." Don indicated one of Wanda's hands, and the spiky black design on the back that made it look like someone else's. "Did Strange tell you if they were going to affect you in any way?"
She shook her head. "They limit the power I can draw on, and block Chthon's access to me. Other than that, they're no different from tattoos."
"In that case, I think you're all right. But tell me if you start experiencing any unusual symptoms; mind control on this scale, for this long, isn't really covered in medical literature." He shook his head, smiling ruefully. "At least, not that I've read. I've missed a couple of years' worth of it."
Wanda had turned slightly to face him, giving Clint a view of her profile. Any moment now, she was going to notice that he was in the room. Then he would have to say something to her. "I didn't know mind-control was covered at all."
"Dr. McCoy wrote an article on it a few years ago. It dealt mostly with telepathy and brainwashing, though. With magic, all bets are off." He reached for his walking stick, leaning against the edge of a lab bench, and then, turning to Clint, said, "Sorry, Clint. I was just finishing up with Wanda. Is there something you need? Are your ears-"
"I'm fine," he said. "I... um..."
Wanda turned, and her face went stiff when she saw him.
"I wanted to-" he started, and then stopped, his brain abruptly running out of words. He hadn't been this inarticulate since the last time he'd tried to make up with Bobbi, before... he hadn't been this inarticulate for a long time. Maybe he shouldn't ask to speak to Wanda alone. Maybe she didn't want to speak to him.
He owed it to her to give her the chance, though. He cleared his throat and started again, trying to not stare at her or loom or sound suspicious or threatening. "Wanda, can I, um, can I talk to you? Alone? It's fine if you don't want to," he added quickly.
Wanda looked down at her hands, then back up at Clint, her face carefully expressionless. "I think we need to," she said. Her voice was even, but Clint could hear the strain in it.
"I'll leave you alone, then," Don said, and Clint almost told him not to. Asking him to leave was a bad idea; it would probably be less threatening if he stayed, and he was a nice safety barrier between Clint and having to actually look Wanda in the face. Even if the idea of someone else hearing what Clint and Wanda were about to discuss was... well, the whole team might be learning about it soon enough. Maybe it would have been easier to get it over with one at a time.
He'd never be able to speak to Jan or Carol again, or Sam, probably. Sam would be disgusted and disappointed when he heard, and would immediately tell Cap, who would promptly kick Clint off the team. And rightly so, and he probably ought to have left already, except... but he couldn't tell Cap when he hadn't spoken to Wanda, because she might not want Cap or anyone else to know what Clint had done to her. Bad enough, probably, that he'd told Carol and Tony.
If she wanted to keep it quiet, he'd have to think of some other excuse to leave. He'd been putting it off, like a coward, because the team was his home and he had no idea where else he was going to go.
As Don walked toward the elevator, Wanda climbed down off the table and straightened her skirt. It was the same one she'd worn at Strange's place, the drab-looking navy one. She looked awful in it, all pale and washed out.
There were circles under her eyes, and something about the expression in them reminded Clint of Jan and Tony in the hospital, staring at horrible things that didn't exist outside their own heads, or Hank, sick-looking and white-faced after Jan had flinched back from him.
"I don't know how to begin," she said. "There aren't words for it."
Somewhere behind Clint, the elevator doors closed, quietly, like they were trying not to disturb them.
"I know," Clint agreed. "I mean, I didn't know. I..." Maybe Cage and Rand were looking for an extra member for their Heroes for Hire group. Or maybe Rhodes would take him on as part of his superhero training program. Working with Rhodey wouldn't be so bad; he'd done it before, and it had worked well before half their teammates had been... possessed. Oh God.
"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry for what I did to you."
Clint stared at her, not believing his ears for a moment. Maybe he did need to have Don check them out again, because she couldn't have just said–
"I didn't want to," she went on, her face twisting. "He made me. I didn't want to hurt any of you."
He swallowed, feeling sick. She was apologizing to him, as if it had been her fault. After he'd slept with her possessed body without her consent. Had she even known that they'd had sex? The thought made the entire thing seem, if possible, even worse. "You... of course you didn't. You were possessed. You weren't in control of your actions, and I slept with you anyway, and Carol thought you'd used some kind of mind-control or manipulation on me and must have wanted it, but if you were possessed..." Then it hadn't been Wanda who'd wanted the sex. It had been Chthon. And even if Clint had been... influenced... somehow, he'd still had more free will than she had. Like sleeping with a falling-down drunk person when you'd only had a couple of beers. "I'm sorry. Oh God, I'm sorry. I don't know why I did it."
"Clint." Wanda laid her right hand on his arm, and Clint's flow of words instantly dried up. "It's all right."
Things were so far from all right that Clint nearly wanted to laugh at that. "I slept with you while you were possessed, when you couldn't even tell me no, and then I left you there!" He felt weirdly conscious of the weight of her fingers on his sleeve, as if it were far more than the simple, friendly touch she meant it as.
"You were supposed to. Chthon was influencing over half the town, warping their memories to make them accept my presence as if I had always been there." She hesitated for a moment, then her eyes narrowed as she added, "Warping my memories so that I thought so, too." She let go of Clint's arm, frowning now, but he didn't think the expression was meant for him. "He was manipulating everyone around me, by the end, including my brother, or Pietro would never have tried to create Magneto's filthy dream world. Compelling you to leave would have been child's play compared to that. So would making you want me."
Clint shook his head. Standing this close, the circles under her eyes and the pallor of her skin were even more obvious; had she looked like this in Transia, three months ago? Would he have noticed if she had, with Chthon screwing with his head? "I don't remember any of that. Just you, and that bedroom in your house, and then I was in an airport somewhere, and it was days later. I didn't even think of going back for you, not for weeks. I should have done something to help you. If not then, then after."
She made an attempt at a smile, her lips curving upward slightly, but Clint could see the strain in it. "You did help me. Before you showed up, I was like a zombie – I didn't remember anything, not even who I was. You woke me up. It took me a long time to escape from Chthon's control, but without you, I would probably still be locked up in that house on Mount Wundagore. Or, worse, Chthon would already be free." She looked down at her hands again, tracing the line of Strange's tattoo with one finger. "I know I ought to be more upset that it happened," she said quietly, "that Chthon used you that way, but I can't be. I can't be sorry that I escaped from there. But I am sorry you were dragged into it."
Staring at her felt painfully awkward, suddenly, as if he were seeing things he wasn't supposed to. Seeing her naked – except he'd already done that. Clint turned away, pacing over to the nearest lab bench, the one where Hank's fume hood sat, looking like something out of a CSI episode. One where they were dealing with radiation poisoning or some kind of death-by-contagious-disease. Beyond it, in the back corner of the lab, hundreds of ants trundled their way through a glass-walled ants' nest, completely unaffected by Clint and Wanda's presence. "I thought I was going crazy, at first, or that... I don't know what I thought." He reached for one of the little test tubes, then remembered that if he touched anything down here, it would probably poison him or give him chemical burns. "That I'd made you sleep with me in return for not bringing you in, maybe."
"Why would you think that?" She sounded honestly shocked, so much so that Clint automatically turned to look at her; she was still standing by the table, maybe a step or so closer to him than she had been. "You would never do that, and I would never agree to it." There was absolute conviction in her voice, and looking at her, standing there alone with her, suddenly got a little easier. "I don't really... remember much about what we did," she added, much more hesitantly, "it's all kind of vague, but I know you didn't hurt me or force me to do anything. I wanted to help you, because you seemed so sad. Or that's what he made me think, anyway."
This was all... Clint felt like he was missing parts of the conversation. They'd both been mind controlled, she was sorry she'd slept with him, she wasn't sorry she'd slept with him; she'd wanted to, she hadn't wanted to. He tried asking about one of the parts he was mostly sure of. "So... you don't want me to leave the team, then?"
"No!" She shook her head, hard, dark curls swaying with the motion. "You and Cap and the others are some of the only family I have left. I don't even know if Pietro's still alive, or if he'll ever want to see or speak to me again if he is." She paused, meeting his gaze and giving him a long, serious look; Clint had to fight the impulse to glance away. "Clint, I killed you. Twice. And Scott, and Vision. And..." her voice broke, and she looked away, her face twisting. "You sleeping with me while we were both under mind control isn't even in the same league as that."
"That wasn't your fault." She had brought him back from the dead, and she wasn't crazy anymore, and seeing Wanda be Wanda again and knowing that it hadn't been Wanda who had turned on them all and killed him was such a relief that beside that, who cared about some sex that hadn't exactly been unpleasant anyway?
Well, that hadn't been unpleasant for him. He could only hope it hadn't been unpleasant for her. Did it make it better that she apparently couldn't remember it clearly, or worse? Worse, probably – God, he might as well have been sleeping with a puppet, for all the input she'd had.
"I know," Wanda said, in a tight, choked voice, "but that doesn't bring them back. It doesn't make it any easier. I keep seeing it every time I close my eyes – the mansion burning, Vision being torn apart..." She trailed off, one hand pulling and twisting at the fabric of her jacket sleeve.
Clint knew that feeling far better than he wanted to, both the guilt he could see in her face and the way memories you didn't want stayed on constant repeat in your head. After a long moment of silence, he offered, "I used to dream about seeing Bobbi get... burned."
Neither of them spoke for what felt like a very long time. Clint stared at the patch of wall just above and slightly to the left of Wanda's head. She wasn't looking directly at him, either.
The silence stretched long enough to be painful, long enough for Clint to remember exactly what Bobbi's face had looked like when Mephisto's fireball had hit her in the back. He didn't really remember dying, or whether or not it had hurt, and he wasn't about to ask Cap about it, but he suspected that the answer was yes, that it hurt a lot.
"I'm just glad you're back," he said, suddenly needing to say something, anything that wasn't about death or burning or regrets it was too late to do anything about. "And I'm sorry for..." How did you even say this – 'I'm sorry we were mutually date-raped?' 'I'm sorry you have to remember watching your husband die and knowing his killer used you to do it?' – "I'm sorry Chthon did that to you."
She probably would have said something in response to that, but Clint didn't stay to hear what it was. He didn't actually run out of the room, but when the elevator doors closed behind him, he felt as shaky and breathless as if he'd just finished a wildly out-of-control sprint.
It had been Chthon. It hadn't been him. It hadn't been her. He wasn't actually the kind of man that would rape a woman, and she didn't hate him for it, and he hadn't hurt her.
Chthon had been inside his head. In his head, making him do things.
Clint ran his fingers through his hair, then leaned his head back against the wall of the elevator, trying not to think about what else Chthon could have done while he was in there, if he had felt like it. He should probably feel more traumatized. He'd been... rape was much too strong a word for it. He'd been coerced into having sex that hadn't been his idea. He'd been used as a weapon against Wanda the same way she'd been used against the team.
Maybe it was good that he couldn't remember the entire thing very clearly. At least his vivid memories of her naked body and the vague idea that it had been pleasant were all he'd taken away from it, and he didn't actually know what Wanda was like in bed. That would have been... wrong. Even more personal than the things he did remember.
He'd never asked her what she wanted him to tell the rest of the team. Maybe Cap and Sam and Thor didn't have to know; at least she'd have some privacy left that way.
She didn't blame him. She didn't hate him. She didn't want him to leave.
It hadn't been her.
Maybe if he told himself that often enough, it would get easier.
The elevator between Tony's basement lab and the Avengers' apartments rose with perfect silence; even more than the brass and wood paneling, that spoke for how expensive it was. Don, watching the floor indicator climb with impressive swiftness, wondered morbidly what would happen to anyone who happened to be in the lab if the building's power ever went out. As far as he'd been able to tell, there were no stairs between the lab and the ground floor lobby. On the other hand, forgetting to plan for disaster was not among Tony's failings; there had to be some alternative way out of there, not to mention a way to get massive pieces of equipment in and out. The elevator was the size of a freight elevator, but even it wouldn't have been able to accommodate some of the things that Don had watched slowly disappear from the lab over the past week, which had included giant arc welders, a massive sets of jacks for propping up quinjet engine blocks, and one of Tony's two Cray computers – slightly outdated, but they apparently had some kind of nostalgia value – along with half the contents of a machine shop.
All the medical equipment and bioscience stuff remained, or examining Wanda would have required taking her back to Oklahoma, to his vastly-less-well-equipped-than-anything-Tony-owned clinic. Advanced diagnostic equipment was hard to come by in the middle of nowhere, and Thor had deliberately chosen the middle of nowhere to rebuild Asgard.
She'd been all right, at leaSt. Or mostly all right – if he were a psychologist, he would probably have a laundry list of post-possession warning signs to watch out for, but all of his medical training had dealt with more concrete ailments. Physically, she was all right.
He'd been dreading the alternative. Being the only general practitioner in a small town had its disadvantages, one of which was explaining to a patient whom he'd just diagnosed with cancer that he didn't think the 'out of towners who'd built that big castle' were the kind of gods who performed miraculous healings. There were times when he would have been willing to trade all of Thor's strength and power in return for the ability to cure leprosy or blindness or paralysis with a touch.
Don shoved the thought aside as the elevator came to a halt. He might as well wish for the ability to raise the dead, while he was at it. Asgardian cosmology wasn't as forgiving as some.
Steve and Tony's cat was waiting outside the elevator. It gave an odd, creaky chirp, and did its level best to trip him before he could even get through the elevator doors, rubbing against his ankles and coating his pants with orange fur.
"No," he told it firmly, pushing it away from the closing doors with his cane. "You're not going down there."
The cat – exactly what its name was seemed to depend on who you asked – made an offended wheezing sound, and stalked away down the hall.
"I have no freakin' clue how she got there!" Sam Wilson's voice came loudly from the open door of the communications room, making the cat go low and dash out of sight. "Redwing was watching the outside of the building, and he never saw her."
"She didn't come in; she just... appeared." Tony's voice, equally startled and offended-sounding. "It's either magic, or some kind of teleportation device. Come on; I've told the security guards not to try to approach her."
They had a security breach. Don changed course for the communications room, walking as quickly as he could. 'Morgan le Fay?' he wondered. Some new magical troublemaker? 'Please, don't be the Enchantress,' he begged silently. Amora had sworn she wasn't going to cause any trouble, but her word meant little, and she and the Executioner were probably bored with lying low by now; two months back from the dead, and they hadn't tried to kill or brainwash anybody yet. That was very nearly a record.
He nearly collided with Tony and the Falcon on his way into the room, both of them intent on shoving their way out and toward the elevator. "Carol's in LA, of course. Steve's told her that she needs to pick a team and-" Tony broke off abruptly, jerking to a stop inches away from Don.
Forward momentum kept Don stumbling forward a step despite his attempt to stop, and only the Falcon's hand on his arm kept him from smacking straight into Tony.
"Sorry," Tony said, holding both hands up. "I didn't know you were-"
Don wasn't listening; he could see one of the security monitors over Tony's shoulder, displaying a slightly grainy view of the buildings front lobby.
"Damn it." The words burst out before he remembered that he wasn't talking to Tony. "That's Loki!"
"She's who?" Sam was staring at him, eyebrows arched. "Since when has Loki been a woman?"
"Don't ask," Don muttered. He glanced down at his cane, debating for a half-second the merits of turning into Thor and letting him handle this. On the one hand, with Carol apparently back on the West Coast for the day, Thor was the only Avenger here capable of going toe-to-toe with Loki. On the other hand, Loki might very well react to Thor's appearance in the lobby by blowing the building up, along with all the innocent bystanders who happened to be in it.
He started to run for the elevator, ignoring the way his knee twinged at each step and praying that it wouldn't pick now to suddenly go out from under him. Damn Odin's sense of humor, anyway.
"I don't care who it is," Tony was saying, dashing past him and through the already-opening elevator doors – the whole building did things like that for him, thanks to his new cyborg upgrades. "I want her out of my lobby."
"Clint and Wanda are downstairs in your lab," Don told him, as the elevator doors slid shut behind the three of them. "You should call them and-"
"I don't know if that's a good idea," the Falcon interrupted. "The Scarlet Witch just got rid of the last evil chaos magic thing that possessed her. The last thing we need right now is for her to face off against Loki and get screwed with some more."
"Maybe he's – she's," Tony corrected himself, "maybe she's not here to fight. Maybe she's just here to taunt us."
Wishful thinking, almost certainly, but it did sound like something Loki would do.
"Oh, and you two should probably stand back a couple of feet," Tony added.
Don was about to refuse and stay put when he saw the briefcase clutched in Tony's left hand. He and the Falcon both backed off as far as the confines of the elevator car would let them, while Tony's armor flew around him in a dangerous-looking whirlwind of red and gold metal. When the elevator doors opened on the lobby, moments later, Tony was completely armored up, and Don was the only one left who wasn't in costume.
Loki was standing dead center in the lobby, her feet planted in the middle of the silvery design – some kind of electrical diagram – inlaid in the marble floor. Dark-uniformed security guards and a dozen or so men and women in business attire were clustered nervously against the walls, staring at her.
The green and yellow fabric of her cloak made the colors around her seem dull, and her golden helmet blazed like fire in the natural light that flooded the three-story-high room, courtesy of the immense windows. If it came to a fight, the falling glass from shattering windows alone could be potentially lethal.
"I have come to deliver a message to my stepbrother," she was proclaiming, in a voice that echoed off the high ceiling.
She turned and saw them then, and her face, so eerily similar to Sif's, contorted in a sneer. "I see my darling brother is too busy to speak to me, and sends his mortal companions in his stead. Unless..." her eyes went to Don, and her sneer shifted to something more amused, a sort of contemptuous smirk. "The little doctor. It's always such a pleasure to see you, brother, whatever form you hold, but I cannot fathom your attraction to this fragile mortal shell. It doesn't become you."
"I could say the same thing about your current form." The words were out before Don could think better of them, and he tightened his grip on his cane, ready to slam it into the ground and let Thor take over if Loki responded to his jab with violence.
She laughed, the sound ringing hollow like the sound of bells.
"What do you want, Loki?" Tony asked; his helmet amplified and flattened his voice, making it ring nearly as loudly as hers did.
Loki ignored him, her gaze never leaving Don. "Come closer, my brother. I would speak with you."
"He can hear just fine from over here," the Falcon called back, taking a step forward so that his body was halfway in front of Don and Loki. His teammates occasionally forgot that he was a superhero as well, and every bit as capable of defending himself as they were; maybe it was the cane.
Don stepped sideways, giving himself a clear view of Loki once more. "Speak with me about what?"
"I wish to offer my aid against one of your enemies," she said, smiling faintly as if she thought that there were even the slightest chance of either Don or Thor believing her. "In return, I ask for your assistance in reclaiming what is mine."
Behind Loki, some of the businessmen were creeping silently toward the door. One woman had slipped off her high heeled shoes and clutched them in one hand, walking in her stocking feet to keep from making any noise. If they could keep Loki distracted for a few minutes longer, they would have significantly fewer potential hostages to worry about.
Don raised his eyebrows, not bothering to hide his skepticism. "Pretending for a second that I believe you, which enemy?"
"The Elder God, the embodiment of entropy." Loki waved a dismissive hand, her long nails glinting like talons. "Chthon. Have you any other enemy intent upon stealing one of my possessions?"
"You mean the spear?" Damn it, he was not actually having a conversation with Loki. With new, disconcertingly attractive Loki and her vulpine smile and bottle-glass-green eyes that were the only part of Thor's stepbrother face that he could still recognize in her. "You've been content to ignore it for the past several thousand years. Why do you care what happens to it?"
"Because it's mine." The temperature in the room dropped perceptibly as she snarled the words, and behind him, Don could hear the faint hum of Tony's repulsor gauntlets powering up. "The All-Father hid it from me behind barriers I cannot break, before he tried to banish me to eternal torment. For centuries, I could not even sense where it lay, but now his death has weakened the protections he placed upon it, and that mortal fool Doom's actions in this city last spring damaged them still further, allowing anyone who cared to look to feel the spear's power." She smiled at him, the angry sneer turning into a familiar, ingratiating grin in an instant. In the back of Don's head, he could feel Thor's automatic suspicion – that smile always meant trouble. That was the 'Trust me, I have a plan' smile, and even when they weren't evil, Loki's plans generally ended in humiliation for everyone involved except him, and occasional public crossdressing. "My powers are weaker since my resurrection, brother, and Chthon's have grown. He touches the world, through his human avatars, and seeks to make all chaos power his own. He would use my stolen power, the portion of my essence that is bound within Baldur's Bane, to break free of his prison, and doom all of creation. Not just Midgard, but Asgard and Jotunheimr and all the rest of the nine worlds as well. And Olympus, and K'un L'un, and every other realm connected to this dimension."
"But you're going to help us stop him, just out of the goodness of your heart?" Sam asked dryly. He'd shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, knees slightly bent – ready to move if Loki tried anything.
Loki didn't so much as glance at him. "Use the powers the All-Father left to you to break down his protections, allow me to claim the spear for my own and take its power back into myself, and Chthon will no longer be able to lay claim to it."
The last of the bystanders had slipped through the door now, leaving just the security staff to get caught in any crossfire, and through the glass doors, Don could see Steve outside on the sidewalk, directing people away from the building. Tony must have used his Extremis abilities to call him. Jan, too, he realized – there was a small, moving dot barely visible just inside the door, flying towards the security personnel.
Back-up was here, if not quite the heavy-hitting back-up Carol would have represented.
"So, rather than making Chthon more powerful, you want us to make you more powerful instead?" Don asked. It was as much a rhetorical question as it was anything else – regaining the power stored in the spear would make Loki one of the strongest of the resurrected Asgardians, her powers a match for anything but the Odin force, and Thor preferred to avoid using that at almost all costs. Don didn't blame him; leading Valhalla was a crushing responsibility at times, he knew, but the powers Odin had wielded and passed on to his son were even more oppressive, and not simply because one's own near-death was required in order to master them fully.
She raised an eyebrow. "The power is rightfully mine, not Doom's or Chthon's or anyone else's. Such suspicion. One would think I was offering you threats instead of my hand in aid." Her voice was poisonously sweet.
Steve was standing in the doorway now, his shield in hand. From the look on his face, he was about to throw Loki's offer of 'aid' back in her teeth. Don beat him to it.
Prior to the Ragnarok, Loki had tried to kill Don repeatedly, tried to kill Jane Foster, tried to kill at least a half-dozen other people Don knew, and generally made his life a living hell more times than he cared to count. "Help from you?" he snapped. "So you can turn around and stab us in the back as soon as you have the spear back? You must think we're either insane or stupid."
Loki's smile was cold now, revealing teeth just a fraction too sharp to belong to anything human. "No, I merely had hoped that you would choose to follow the wisest course available to you. My aid is not a thing to be dismissed lightly. We were brothers once; does none of that bond remain?"
The hot flash of rage that filled Don was unexpected – his skin felt too tight, suddenly, his face hot, and he couldn't tell how much of the emotion choking him was his, and how much was Thor's. "You murdered Thor's brother!" he shouted at her. "What the hell do you think? He trusted you once and you betrayed him!" He had trusted him – her – like a brother, fought beside her, drunk mead with her and laughed with her and– The memories of Baldur convulsing in his arms, bubbles of blood at his lips while his breath wheezed with a wet, gluey note that Don's medical training recognized as the sound of someone drowning on the fluid in their lungs... were not his memories. They were still as vivid in his mind as the first time he'd ever had a patient flatline.
Loki made a pouty little moue that filled Don with the desire to wipe the expression off her face, and said, "So bitter. One would think Baldur were still in his grave. Save your anger for those it truly belongs to, brother."
"We're not accepting your help," Steve said, his voice as calm and controlled as if he hadn't just witnessed Don screaming accusations at Loki. "So you can turn around and leave, Mister. I mean, Ma'am."
Loki swung around to look at him, putting her back toward Don. "Bold words, from a mortal with no powers to his name. My business is with Thor, not you."
'I am getting really tired of you treating me like I don't exist,' Don thought, glaring at the iridescent sheen of her cape. "Thor's not here right now," he spat. "And if he were, he wouldn't be inclined to listen to you."
Traitor. The word rumbled in his head. Oathbreaker.
"I think what we're all trying to say," Tony announced loudly, "is that your presence in my lobby is making everyone in the building nervous. I suggest you leave before we end up having to make you. If your offer is sincere, we can discuss it somewhere else. Someplace I haven't just spent several million dollars repairing." He raised both hands, the repulsor ports in his palms a glaringly bright blue-white. "These may not be able to kill you, but I can guarantee it will be painful."
"We're not discussing it. She's leaving." Apparently, Tony hadn't had his fill of working with manipulative scum who wanted to destroy them. One would think he'd have learned, by this point, that there were some people you didn't want to get into bed with, no matter what they threatened or how persuasive they could be.
"I see you've decided not to be reasonable," Loki said coolly. "I had hoped we might discuss this as friends, as befits kinsmen, but since you insist upon spurning my offers of peace..." She shook her head, her expression a parody of regret. "I know where Sif is. Give me the spear, and when I have it safely in my grasp, I will tell you of her location. Persist in this foolish stubbornness, and I shall see to it that you never lay eyes on her again."
This time, the rage was entirely Thor's. Don felt it anyway, magnified by his own frustration at their inability to find his alter-ego's lover; he'd wanted to find her badly, for Thor – at least one of them should get to have a fresh start with the woman he loved.
"Stay away from her," he snarled. "If you're even telling the truth, which I doubt." Loki had not been called the Father of Lies for nothing; she lied as easily as she breathed. And threats against a conveniently absent Sif were exactly the sort of bluff she would make.
Loki smirked at him. Her skin was pale in the bright sunlight, and at one temple, Don could see the edge of a blue tattoo – the tribal markings of a frost giant, not entirely hidden by her hair. She had every reason to hate Thor, and no reason to help him. "You sound most certain, brother. Certain enough to risk thy paramour's life? Ah well," she gave an elaborate shrug, "mayhap Baldur or Heimdall will be more accommodating."
Don's ears popped as the air pressure in the room dropped, and he wasn't sure whether it was he or Thor who growled, "Get out, and stay away from my family."
Loki raised a mocking eyebrow. "Which one?" Her glance around the room at the other Avengers – the first time she'd looked at any of them, save for that one glance at Steve – made her meaning obvious.
"Both of them!"
She strode forward – behind him and slightly to his right, he could hear the Falcon's hard light wings snapping out, hear Iron Man's repulsors crackling – and then she was in front of him, towering over Don by half a foot. "The day will come when you will wish that you had accepted my aid, Thunder God." She reached out and laid one finger against Don's face, just beside his left eye, the end of her talon-like nail resting against his skin. It took an exercise of willpower not to flinch.
"Such pretty blue eyes," she whispered. "Always looking at me with such disguSt. Would she like you as well if I plucked this one out?"
"Step away from him, Loki," Steve called, but he didn't throw his shield, though Don could tell from the way he held it that he wanted to.
Loki's finger slid slowly down the side of his face, coming to rest under his chin. "If you reconsider, Son of Odin, you have but to call me. I am always willing to negotiate. You have but to hold this ring, and utter my name, and I shall hurry hence to do thy bidding." Her hand closed around his right wrist, gripping just hard enough to remind him that she could crush every one of the delicate bones there with a single squeeze, and forced his clenched fingers open, folding them closed again around something hard and round.
Then she took a step backward, and vanished into thin air, her wide, unfriendly smile the last thing to disappear.
Steve's shield whooshed through the air where she had been, a fraction of a second too late, and clanged loudly off one of the support pillars that held up the third-floor balcony.
Don stared down at the gold ring that glinted malevolently up at him from his right palm, and resisted the urge to rub at his face where Loki's hand had been. He could still feel her nail sliding over his face, leaving a trail of tingling skin, as if she were still touching him.
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
A/N: We have neglected this fic for far too long. Once again, we really are sorry about that; we just bought and moved to a new apartment, and it's consumed our lives for the past four months.
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Loved the conversation between Wanda and Clint. It was a talk they really needed to have, and I as a reader really needed to see. I liked that you didn't make it easy on either of them, and addressed the skeevy implications that canon (as usual) ignored.
Loki showing up to join the plot shenanigans was a great twist. As if the Avengers' lives aren't complicated enough already! I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where this goes.
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(I'm not sure what was supposed to be going on in that Wanda/Clint New Avengers issue in canon - was Clint sleeping with real Wanda? With the robot Wanda? With someone/something pretending to be Wanda? And who or what was in the house with them watching them through that door? I suspect Bendis has forgotten about it and we'll never know).
Reassembled
Re: Reassembled
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Nice chapter, and poor, poor Wanda and Clint.
I really liked the part with Don and Loki, the plot thickens.
that scene was really well done and you could really get into Don's (and also Thor's to some extant) feelings for Loki in a way that was viceral and not melodramatic.
as a side note: Tony and Hank might want to make themselves scarce for a little while. (or it might push for a confrontation?)
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♥ I love this arc.
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Wanda and Clint definitely need more time to sort everything out.
Loki is sooooo sneaky and I like him for being this way... poor Don.
Please write more~~
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Thor will come around eventually (he already has forgiven everybody in the comics, but in the comics, Civil War!Hank was a skrull, and Civil War!Tony died and was replaced by earlier-in-the-timeline!Tony from before Civil War started, so the people who actually cloned him no longer exist).