Chapter 8
Pietro Maximoff's body lay quietly in the metal casket, tubes and wires pushing his chest up and down mechanically.
“He still looks dead,” Tony said. Rhodey put an arm around his shoulder and Tony felt himself relax slightly.
“You know-” he began when he was suddenly cut off by a loud beeping sound. Helen came running in.
“What's happening?”
“It just started-”
“His brain activity is spiking,” she said, confused. “How is that-”
Pietro sat up suddenly and she screamed in shock. Tony and Rhodey had both thrown their arms up as though they still had gauntlets on to fire against the animated corpse.
“Wanda,” Pietro said, and then collapsed back again, eyes lifeless once more, only the steady beeping of the machine keeping his heart going.
“What the fuck?” Tony screamed. Helen was frantically pushing buttons and checking numbers.
“This is insane,” she muttered.
Sam came bursting into the room.
“What's happening?”
“Whatever Clint and Wanda are doing, I think it's working,” Rhodey said.
Sam shook his head. “They better hurry. An earthquake is coming this way.”
“What?” Rhodey said.
“They picked up one of those warning signs or something-”
“No,” Tony said. Everyone looked to him, bent over his tablet. “This isn't an earthquake. I've seen these readings before.” He looked up. “Get me Cap. It's assembling time.”
“Wanda,” Pietro's ghost called again, stronger and more certain. Then he looked around. “What the fuck are you doing?” he said in Romanian.
The ground beneath them shook before Wanda could answer and a gaping crack opened under her feet. Vision quickly pulled her into the air.
“We've got incoming!” Clint yelled warningly. At the end of the hall, Hel still screamed with rage, a cloud of black gathering around her. Strange winged creatures were flying swiftly towards them out of it.
“Get me to my brother,” Wanda whispered to Vision as the beasts began to descend.
He flew her through the air, jets of red and gold light shooting out towards the beasts who swarmed them. To the side, Clint and Thor were shooting and smashing the seemingly limitless number of demons as they descended.
“Pietro!” she called again. Vision dropped her beside the pale shadow of her brother and blasted a beam of golden light around them in a circle, incinerating the approaching demons. Pietro gaped at her, lost and scared.
“Trust me,” she said.
He nodded. “Always.”
She reached out to him, red tendrils wrapping around his body and pulling tight, squeezing and compressing it into a tight red orb lit from within by a pale blue glow.
A skeletal hand clenched around her throat and all the breath instantly left her body. She could not breathe. She could not even remember what breathing felt like.
“Mine,” Hel snarled.
The world around her was growing pale. Was the pounding in her chest her heart, or was that the sound of the river filling up her body, carrying her away?
She could not remember her own heartbeat.
It feels like this.
A rush of energy flooded her being as Vision's mind touched her own, filling her with the same sparkling energy that had carried her away when he had kissed her.
This is the way your heart beats, the way your lungs expand. You are created to survive. And you are perfection.
She sucked in all of her strength, steeled herself inside – and exploded.
Red light blasted out from her, pushing through everything. Demons incinerated, Vision was sent tumbling back through the air, Clint and Thor clutched at the ground to steady themselves – and Hel's bony grip slipped off her neck. She gasped, grabbed the glowing orb that held her brother's soul and sprinted towards the rest of her team, catching Thor with one hand, wrapping the other around Clint to grab Vision's cape – Thor raised his hammer to the air, crying for Heimdall to open the bridge – a beam of light opened on them – and it faltered and died.
Hel laughed dryly.
“You thought leaving would be that easy?”
Bruce was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room, his glasses off, his eyes closed. For a second the sight of him made Natasha smile, and then it brought tears to her eyes.
“Hey, Doc,” she managed to rasp.
He looked up, startled, and shifted out of his position. “How's your head?” he asked, a little bitterly, a little warily, but it was so dry and so very very Bruce that she had to fight hard against a traitorous smile.
Instead she shrugged. “I've had worse.” She sat down across from him. “I think we should talk.”
“Probably should,” he said.
They sat for a few seconds, watching each other.
“I shouldn't have left the way I did,” Bruce said finally.
“I shouldn't have pushed you off a cliff.”
He shrugged. “I should have realized.”
“Realized what?” she asked.
“This is who you are, Natasha,” he said. “Nothing's ever going to change that. And I can't ask you to change for me.”
“You didn't,” she said.
“I did something.”
“I never lied to you, Bruce,” Nat said quietly.
“I didn't lie either,” he said sadly. “And that's the problem.” He sighed. “We just keep missing each other.”
“So we just stop trying?” she asked desperately.
“I don't know,” he said. “Do you even want to try again?”
“Yeah,” she said, surprising herself a little. “I do. Do you?”
His eyes searched her face, fear and hunger written agonizingly across his expression. “I want nothing more than to be the man who deserves to be with you.”
“Then you're set,” she said.
“I'm not like you, Nat. This isn't my life.”
“You keep saying that,” she said exasperatedly. “But it's not true, Bruce!”
“This isn't a fairytale, Natasha,” he snapped. “Sometimes a beast is just a beast. No matter how pretty the girl.”
“You think I don't know that?” she hissed. “You think I haven't learned in crystal clarity what kind of beasts most men are? You think that is what I like about you?”
He shrugged miserably.
“I met Clint Barton and I thought that was the closest I was ever going to get to love,” she said. “He showed up and he set my world spinning. And everyone else who's ever come close to doing that again, they've always sent me spinning.” She smiled, tears in her eyes. “You're the first person to ever make the world stop. You made me feel safe. You made me feel grounded. And I want that, Bruce. I want that feeling.”
“Nat-”
“Do you want this?” she said. “Do you?”
“I don't know!” Bruce said. “Everything I said, at the farm – it's all true, Nat! There's no future for me!”
“No. You're wrong,” she said. “You do have a future. And it's here. With us. With the Avengers.”
He looked at her brokenly, tears glistening in his eyes. “I just don't know if I can believe that.”
She stepped forward, arms reaching for him – and a klaxon sounded through the base. “Damnit,” she hissed. “Bruce-”
“Go,” he said.
“Wait for me,” she snapped. “We're not done here, Bruce. I know it.”
Thor threw his hammer into the air once more. “Heimdall!”
The light flickered and faded. A crowd of demons was slowly circling around them.
“There is no escape, Avengers,” Hel croaked. “This is my kingdom. My world. I rule all, and you-”
“Oh, shut up,” Clint sighed, firing an arrow towards the goddess. She caught it lazily, glaring at Clint – and the arrow tip exploded in her face.
“They always fall for that,” Clint told Wanda with a roguish grin.
“Heimdall!” Thor roared, and with a crackle of thunder the bridge opened and they were sucked away.
Instantly, they could feel something wrong. The bridge felt heavy, labored, like they were being sucked up through a straw.
“Hold on!” Thor yelled, and Wanda pressed her brother's soul to her chest and obeyed.
“What the fuck is going on?” Natasha yelled, zipping up her suit as she ran next to Steve.
“Tony thinks aliens are about to attack Seoul.”
“And we believe this?”
“He does have proof,” Steve said, handing her a comm. She pushed it into her ear.
“Start talking, Stark,” she snapped.
“The readings I'm seeing are similar to the wormhole that opened in New York,” Tony's voice crackled in her ear. “They're coming from below this time.”
“Does this have anything to do with-”
“Judging by the fact that he sat up, said his sister's name, and then went back to being braindead about a second before this started, I'd say yes.”
Natasha sighed.
“How soon can you get here?” Tony continued.
“Using Jane's Rosie Einstein bridge-”
“Einstein-Rosen,” Tony said, sounding pained.
“Five minutes,” Steve finished. “They're firing it up right now.”
The sound of an explosion burst in their ears.
“Tony!” Steve yelled, stopping dead in the hallway.
“I'm fine,” he crackled. “Get here quick. The others just arrived. And they've brought company.”
The sirens were still blaring in the hallway as Bruce stepped out of his room in time to catch Maria Hill walking briskly past him.
“What is happening?” he called, catching her arm.
“Aliens,” she snarled, managing to sound simultaneously murderous and exasperated.
“What kind of aliens?” Bruce asked with a sinking stomach.
“The first one just crawled out of the smoking hole Thor left in the middle of the street,” Maria said, showing him a video on her tablet. Horned and winged beasts were pouring out of a crater in the middle of a city street.
“Where is this?” he said, his stomach dropping.
“Seoul.”
“They'll never get to Seoul in time,” Bruce said, watching Tony blasting a creature with a sharp twist of guilt in his stomach.
“We have a teleporter now,” Maria said icily. “I'm rather busy at the moment, Dr Banner.” She took the tablet back with a little more force than necessary and took off down the hallway again.
“When did we get a teleporter?” Bruce asked weakly.
A door banged open behind him and Laura Barton swung out, baby in one arm, pistol in the other. “What the hell is happening?”
“You really are Clint's wife, aren't you,” he said dryly. She glared at him and he cleared his throat. “Apparently aliens are attacking.”
“Here?”
“No. Seoul.”
She sighed. “This is all my husband's fault, isn't it?”
Bruce shrugged. “Probably?”
“So we're not under attack,” she said. Bruce shook his head and she relaxed, tucking the gun back into her waistband.
“Why are you still here?” she asked. “Shouldn't you be avenging?”
“I don't- I'm not-”
“I'm not accusing you of anything,” Laura said quickly. “I just thought, if you were back-” she gestured up to the ceiling where the sirens still screamed. “This looks like a code green to me.”
“It's too dangerous,” he muttered.
“And the aliens attacking are somehow less dangerous than you?”
“Probably.”
She smiled softly. “Wow. You really are perfect for Nat, you know that?”
“What?” he said, completely thrown by the shift in the conversation.
“You may be the only person I've ever seen who's just as unnecessarily tortured by his past as she is,” Laura said gently.
“Unnecessarily?”
“Look, don't ever tell Fury this, but there's not much I don't know about you guys' missions,” Laura said. “You've saved everyone on that team's lives at least once. Including my husbands, by the way, so thank you very much for that.”
“Why are you saying this to me?” Bruce said.
Laura shrugged. “Partially out of maternal instincts. Partly because I really do want you and Nat to work this out. Partially because I am slightly worried about the apparent alien invasion and kind of want everything we've got fighting it.”
“You don't want me,” Bruce said. “Trust me.”
Laura sighed heavily. “Bruce. When was the last time you genuinely lost control?” He opened his mouth to speak. “Magical influence doesn't count.”
He closed his mouth again.
“See?” she said with a smile. “You have a handle on it. And you have a team behind you to help you if and when you slip up.” She placed a delicate hand on his shoulder, forcing him to meet her eyes. “I firmly believe that what matters is not what's done to you, but what you do after. You're a good man, Bruce. Natasha deserves a guy like you. But more importantly, you need to realize that you've been given a chance with what's happened to you. You can try and hide it away or destroy it, and the world will just keep on turning. Or you can work to use it, and do some real good with it.” She squeezed his shoulder. “It's your call.”
Bruce smiled distractedly.
“How the hell did Clint manage to marry a woman like you?” he said.
She laughed. “I'll tell you when you get back. Go smash some aliens.”
“Thank you,” he said fervently.
“You're welcome,” she said. “And Bruce? Whatever you decide? You ever pull crap like that on Natasha again and I'll stab you with a rusty kitchen knife.”
He nodded. “Noted,” he said, and disappeared.