Ends and Beginnings
Bullets made an oddly distinct sound when hitting steel doors. The pings that filled the safe room had a certain timbre to it, one that was almost indistinct but still shook Amara’s bones. Not that she’d let it show. Instead, she squared her shoulders and watched as Stark continued to tamper with the machine before him.
“Are you almost done?” Amara asked. Stark waved a hand in a fashion a bit too blasé for the current situation, but that was just how Stark rolled. Even so, it was hardly the time for one to be lackadaisical. People were dying. They could die. Nobody challenged Thanos and walked away unscathed… Another spray of bullets had Amara’s shoulders jumping to her ears.
“Ha. Don’t think didn’t see that.” Amara had to take a breath to keep from yanking Stark’s man-bun. It wasn’t a time for childish antics either. She might’ve been only twenty three, but a day in her life could’ve aged a newborn. She needed to be responsible, cool tempered, level-headed…
“Focus, Stark.” The young man turned, so quickly it almost had Amara jumping again. His somber expression distracted her, though. Where a teasing grin usually rested, a bleak stare rested. It appeared Stark was very aware of the fact that, if they didn’t do this, they would more than likely be no more than the dust beneath their boots. Amara stepped down, nodding her head slowly as Stark turned back to finish building his machine.
More bullets.
“…Are you almost done?” Amara asked after a few more minutes. “I don’t mean to be a killjoy again, but I really don’t want to know how long it’ll take for a more competent patrol team to show up.” Stark grunted, tightening a few screws and testing a few wires. Amara raised her eyes every time sparks leapt from the spherical device. “That looks like it will kill us.”
“And so do bullets, but that doesn’t stop you from charging into the fray.”
“Yes, but it stops you.”
“Unlike some people in my family tree, I don’t have a super suit.”
“As if your grandfather hadn’t left you the schematics.”
“I’m not a hero, Amy, I’m just not. Rushing into battle balls out is more your thing.” Well he wasn’t wrong. Still. Amara gave the machine another skeptical look.
“It works, right?” Stark stood up with an exasperated groan, throwing his gangly arms above his head.
“This is all theoretical, Amara, of course I don’t know if it works! The only reason I agreed to build this is because dying in a blaze of fire seemed slightly better than living another day in this hell.” Amara blinked. The show of genuine emotion was a little new for Phillip Anthony Stark, something aforementioned genius seemed to realize moments after the outburst. He coughed, scratching his cheek and looking to the ground. “It’s ready, though. So. Yeah.”
Amara probably would’ve pressed the situation if she knew there weren’t drones trying to break through their door at that very instant. So instead she rushed towards the machine, careful to step over the piles and piles of extension cords. Ideally, Stark had told her, they needed an arc reactor to stabilize the energy and blah-blah (honestly science made Amara sleepy), but since they didn’t really have access to one, well…
A bunch of power outlets would have to do.
“So, this is the door?” Amara asked, placing her hands against smooth metal. “Are you sure this is going to fit us both? It looks kind of small.”
“It’ll be fine,” Stark assured her, moving to where he’d projected his information on the far wall, typing at this, swiping away that. Amara peered warily at the sphere beside her. It really did look small. A bit too small. But then, it wasn’t like they’d had a lot of materials to use in the first place. It was truly a miracle they’d even been able to build anything at all. “Alright… head inside our baby while I make some last minute adjustments to the system,” Stark instructed.
“I can’t seem to find a handle, Stark. A design oversight?”
“Oh, yeah, let me just…” Stark typed at the holographic keypad and, like magic, the door hissed open. Amara frowned.
“Okay, there’s only one seat in—” Boom! The room shook. Amara spun around, her hands instinctively flying to the solar maces on either side of her thighs. They were coming. By the sound of that specific blast, it was probably a Destroyer.
She could take it.
Unfortunately, Amara didn’t have the chance to test her confidence. Before she could even fully grab at her weapons, she felt something ram into her side, forcing her to fall back into the sphere. She even hit her head against the seat’s edge, causing a kaleidoscope of colors to burst in front of her eyes for a moment.
“What on earth…?” She moved to stand up, to see just what it was that hit her, but right as she started to straighten, she saw the door to the pod close shut. She couldn’t reach it fast enough to stop it from doing so. “Stark? Stark! What the hell’s going on?” There was a small window at the side of the pod, on that’s grey glass brightened so she could see Stark on the other side of it. The somber expression was back. Amara pounded a fist against the window. “Open the door, Stark.”
“I’m sorry, Amara.” He never said that. Amara’s heart fluttered.
“Stark, I’m not playing games with you.”
“I’m not either.” She saw him turn back to the holo-computer, saw him start to type things in. The whole machine began to whir beneath her feat, warming with energy. Oh no. “I’m sorry,” Stark said again, his back still to her, “but this is the only way.”
“What are you talking about?” Amara asked, looking about herself to see if there was a way out. Of course, Stark was too smart a person to leave a visible loophole for Amara to guess. Didn’t mean she wouldn’t still scour for one. “We’re supposed to do this together, Stark, me and you.”
“No, it was supposed to be all of us. The Legacies. Me and you and Rogers and Barton and all of the other Avengers’ bloods who’d sworn to protect the world. But it’s just us now.”
“All the more reason for us to go back together,” Amara said, ramming her foot against the machine’s sidewall as she spoke. Even with her enhanced strength, there wasn’t even a hint of damage. Curse the Stark bloodline and their aptitude with machines. “Stark, please, think about this!” The machinery started whirring louder, spewing steam and churning cogs that threatened to overpower Amara’s voice. “If you stay here you’ll die!”
“I’m already dying, Amy.” Stark straightened up once more so she could look at him, really look at him. He wasn’t the tall, powerful man he’d once been before the war had become particularly dire. He was gaunt, sickly pale, with more hair on his face than fat on his bones. He was a ghost of his former self, which very much had to do with the fact that Natalie Barton—his fiancée—had died at the hands of Thanos himself.
“You don’t have to do this,” Amara cried. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes. She couldn’t even bring herself to care about it, either, not if Stark was really going to do all of this. “Nat wouldn’t want you to do this. You can still change her death, Stark, you can still—”
“This isn’t about Nat! This is about me not having the resources to build something stronger, me not having the time to waste improving my designs to better accommodate two people! We don’t have the power to send both of us back, Amara, we just don’t! And one of us has to make it back, one of us has to stop this!” She didn’t want to hear it.
“Phil,” Amara sobbed, pounding against the small window. “Phil, please don’t do this!” But he turned away from her again, typing furiously. Amara continued banging against the glass as she saw the door rip off of it’s hinges. She continued banging against the glass as she saw Stark flipping the switch. And just before her world spiraled into nothing, she saw Thanos’s henchmen drive a spear through her best friend’s heart.
After that, though, it all went black.
*
Truth be told, Darcy Lewis typically did not have many of what one would call ‘normal days’, not since her boss ran down a Norse god (or Asgardian or Advanced Being or whatever PC term floated through the web). Sure she had quiet days where she could work quietly in her apartment, typing away theses and reading text books for grad school, but they weren’t exactly normal. Most of those, she’d get calls from Jane asking about advice about her Royal Space Boyfriend.
Why Jane asked Darcy such things had less to do with the fact that they were friends and more to do with the fact that Jane couldn’t very well talk to anyone else about it. People weren’t supposed to know that Jane Foster had a thing with the god of thunder—SHIELD kept them all on a very tight leash ever since what went down in New Mexico. So Jane’s ability to divulge details about her love life suffered greatly.
Ahem, anyway.
Darcy didn’t have normal days anymore, not really.
Though when Darcy saw the steaming hunk of something in the middle of her porch, she re-evaluated what she considered ‘normal’. Talking about AWOL mythological men? Normal. Seeing what appeared to be a charred UFO on top of your Gramma’s garden gnome? Not Normal.
“Oh my gosh!” Darcy cried, rushing towards the wreckage. Her first instinct was to pull out her smart phone and document the incident, but that all changed when she saw a brown hand resting limply amongst the debris. Oh my gosh—said out of panic instead of incredulity. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” Darcy wasn’t a medic and she certainly wasn’t good with machines, but she was pretty sure that steaming tech and unconscious person didn’t usually mean good things.
With a hammering heart, Darcy decided to see if the person was okay. Her hands shook as she pried away the metal, as she struggled to free the stranger from whatever had crushed them. Poor pedestrian… probably had been minding their own business when the weird hunk of something had squashed them… Darcy hoped everything would turn out okay.
Moments passed and the pedestrian theory was quickly disproved. This couldn’t be a pedestrian, not with the Tron garb the girl was wearing. Black fabric with bright red accents clung to the young woman’s body, with hardly a scratch on it despite the wearer’s battered state. And Darcy swore she saw some type of hammers on ole girl’s legs…
An alien?
There was a billionaire flying around in a metal suit and, again, Space Boyfriend. Alien wasn’t a totally out there guess.
Alien or not, the girl was unconscious and covered in contusions. A finger to the neck proved she was—somehow—still alive, but Darcy didn’t want to bet money that she still would be in a matter of moments. So, like a sensible human being, Darcy called the ambulance and sat loyally by the woman’s side until help came.
In hindsight, she probably should’ve just thrown her on a hospital’s doorstep and washed her hands of the mess as soon as possible.