Chapter 7
Mephisto hadn’t thought twice about granting the woman’s wish for a baby. It wasn’t a common request he received, usually people desperate enough to call on their devil wanted money, power, substantial things. Substantial to them, at least.
But there had been the occasional desire for a child. Families living within feudal societies in need of heirs, couples wishing to fill some void, what-have-you’s. It was all Greek to him. Or it would be Greek to him if he hadn’t actually known Greek, but he was very familiar. So many calls to so many gods; a people just ripe for his picking.
Thus he thought nothing of Diane Lewis’ wish, nor of signing a contract with her. Hell, he respected the mortal’s determination to negotiate. Most of them never thought to question his terms, not with the object of their desire so close.
Mephisto signed the revised contract and patted himself on the back for getting such a valuable soul. He didn’t realize his mistake then.
Look, running a hell dimension and holding dominion over a horde of souls was time consuming and distracting. It was understandable that he didn’t notice it at first. By the time he understood the gravity of his predicament, he’d already collected on that blasted contract.
He had felt the disturbances, obviously. Mephisto doubted any of the transdimensional beings missed the ascension of another of their kind. There weren’t many who could so much as sense dimensional boundaries, even fewer still who could physically traverse them. Because they were so few, every being was different in how they manifested their abilities.
The ripple this new player sent out when they moved between dimensions had been strong enough to rouse Mephisto from his sleep. He was curious, but unlike that golden-eyed brute of an Asgardian, Mephisto could not see all. For years, he would feel the shift of that unknown being moving between universes, but their identity remained a mystery.
Then Thor fell to Earth.
The boon of the Odinson’s soul, even as a mere mortal, was too great a temptation to resist. Mephisto sent eyes to appraise the situation rather than go himself. A direct visit from him could be seen as an act of aggression to the All-Father, and not even Thor’s soul was worth war with Asgard. Not yet.
The lesser demons he had sent kept him informed, but the oaf prince was back to his own realm in the blink of an eye. Mephisto had been carrying on with his business in the mean time, and in a move that would have made artists weep at the poetry, had naively collected the very soul that had put this whole situation into motion.
It was that idle curiosity that brought him to the desert that very night. His minions had mentioned the faint scent of magic in the air even after the Odinson had left, and though they believed it harmless, they had still reported it to their master. Fresh from collecting the bright soul of Diane Lewis, Mephisto felt like indulging his curiosity. He walked through the miniscule town, observing the mortal drones in their matching black suits with their metal and plastic weapons, and felt the amusement of a child looking at ants through his magnifying glass. At least this batch seemed to recognize the Asgardians for what they were, rather than what the dim-witted mortals of long ago had believed them to be.
It was quite the evolutionary leap: blind devotion to fear.
The surprise was the magic barely misting through the air. His demons had been right to tell him of it, but so wrong in their assessment. For this magic was rare and unique, known only to a few.
At last, he had found the new transdimensional being. In America of all places.
Following the wisps of magic, sulfur and ice to his nose, he walked passed a broad man in purple being yelled at by a small, berobed woman and found the source within the large glass building.
She was seated at the table, back to him and slumped over with her head on her folded arms. It was odd that she didn’t seem to sense him, but she appeared to be asleep, judging from the steady rise and fall of her sloped back. He circled the table for a look at her face.
Imagine his shock at finding that the powerful new player that he had been feeling for years wore the same face as the girl in all the framed photographs gracing the home of one Diane Lewis.
The small woman coming in from outside broke him from his astonished trance. It was then that he understood the mistake he had made those scant years ago. In every other case of granting a baby, there had been a couple in question: a mother and a father. Except with Diane Lewis.
And magic…
Well, magic had rules and demands and consequences.
Nothing created from nothing; everything created from something.
A soul needed two souls to be born, and magic had found the two souls it needed because it always got it’s own way.
Mephisto looked at the young woman, still an infant compared to his long years, and thought to himself ‘Congratulations, it’s a girl’.
A girl he could never touch.
Pierce found himself in a conundrum.
It had been months since New Mexico, but he had yet to make his move on the Darcy Lewis problem. At first, it was because the situation was too hot to touch. Coulson, for all his blandness, was a competent, efficient agent and had insured that Dr. Foster & co were well looked after. The lab in New Mexico had remained well guarded and supported by SHIELD with the agent himself on site to supervise. A waste of a good field agent, in Pierce’s opinion, but he was perhaps biased.
Coulson was Fury’s man through and through, and his presence made it impossible for Pierce to make even smallest wave.
Luckily, the good Dr. Foster had made little progress in her research. The softest whisper into the ear of a single World Security Council member about how ill prepared they had been in the face of alien technology, how a small familial skirmish between gods had levelled a small town, and suddenly SHIELD’s interests lay in weapons development.
Dr. Selvig was moved to work with the Tesseract, Coulson packed up to move on to greener pastures, and Dr. Foster and Ms. Lewis were left alone with a pitiful collection of ‘guards’.
The delay had been for the best. It had given him adequate time to recalibrate the Winter Soldier after his last run in with the mysterious Ms. Lewis. The Soldier was back to peak performance, wiped as clean as a freshly polished pistol.
A good commander gave his soldiers a chance at redemption after a failed mission, after all.
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It was amazing how much less stressful life was when you didn’t have someone spying on you twenty-four/seven. Ok, it wasn’t really that amazing, but Darcy was too drunk on her new-found privacy to be objective. Not even grumpy-pants Jane would bring her down, not today with the sweet taste of freedom.
Darcy found her friend curled up under her desk. From the looks of things, a tired Jane had decided the dark cave was a perfectly fine place to nap. Darcy wasn’t sure how warm the newspapers Jane had spread over herself were, but the astrophysicist seemed comfortable enough.
Thinking it better to let Jane get some rest, Darcy left her where she was and started straightening out the lab. It felt a little sacrilegious to destroy the mini fort she and Jane had built out of pens and rubber bands during a study break the days before, but Darcy hardly ever had full reign of the lab to clean. Better to get as much done as she could before Jane woke up.
It was in the midst of cleaning the dishes that she felt it. One second she was struggling to scrape off dried jelly from a plate, the next second, everything in her body was focused on the pinprick of ice just on the perimeter of her consciousness. She dropped the plate and turned, stopping when she felt the cold in front of her, just out of reach. Beyond the wall she faced was the station for the SHIELD personnel that remained in Puente Antiguo to assist her and Jane. The personnel that Darcy knew now were all dead, the ice she felt as much proof to her senses as seeing their lifeless bodies would have been.
Darcy was crouched in front of Jane without having any memory of making the decision to move, shaking the woman awake. “Jane,” Darcy whispered quietly, “Jane, we have to go.”
The newspaper crinkling as it fell from Jane’s shoulders had Darcy wincing. She could feel that tightening in the back of her throat, knew that whatever had taken out the SHIELD agents was almost to the lab. Not for the first time, she cursed the floor to ceiling windows. They were semi covered by the desk and it’s piles of paperwork, but it still felt too exposed.
Jane blinked sluggishly at Darcy, still half-asleep. “Darce? Is it time to eat?”
Darcy had started humming softly under her breath. It was as involuntary as raising a hand to shield her face from a ball coming towards her on the soccer field as a kid, and with a detached clarity, she realized why. She could see, as though she were standing just below him outside, the figure in black climbing the ladder to the roof of the lab. Darcy wasn’t humming loud enough for Jane to hear, it was only enough vibration to warm her throat, but Darcy could still see the threat clear as day. Jane wouldn’t see anything unless she could hear. The figure was already on the roof and heading for the access panel right above their heads. Darcy recognized that metal hand glinting in the sun.
She knew what that hand could do.
“Jane, I need you to trust me. We don’t have much time. Someone’s coming for us, someone dangerous. I need to get us out of here. Do you trust me?” Darcy wouldn’t be able to out run a bullet. She and Jane weren’t built for combat like Thor, and anyone who could have helped them was dead. Darcy had an idea, but the idea scared her almost as much as the thought of again facing off with Betty’s cyborg assassin.
Jane gulped, but answered gamely. “I trust you. What do you want to do?”
The doctor’s eyes were wide with fear, but her pointed chin held steady. Darcy couldn’t let anything happen to Jane. Wrapping her arms around the other woman, Darcy held on tight. She couldn’t let anyone else she loved die. She’d rather have them hate her.
Darcy tried not to think about how likely that last scenario was as she screamed, arms locked around Jane.
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Admittedly, she hadn’t known for sure that her plan would work. She knew she could move freely to MSS and that she had brought her mom along that one horrific time, but Darcy hadn’t known for sure. In the danger of the moment, Darcy had just done what had come naturally and hoped for the best.
When she opened her eyes, it was to the familiar freezing mists of MSS and to Jane stiff in her arms.
“Darcy,” Jane said, voice full of reproach, “Is there maybe something you forgot to tell me?”
“Um.”
Darcy was scared to move lest she lose her concentration and they be sent back to meet their metallic foe. Jane did not have the same fear. She pushed out of Darcy’s arms to look around them. “Where are we? What did you do?”
Before she could answer, a hole burned through the fog next to them, showing them a picture of the lab they had just left being torn apart by the masked man in black.
Jane shifted towards the window, but Darcy pulled her back by the arm. “Don’t! I…” Darcy was trembling, whether from the adrenaline of seeing the assassin again or from the anxiety of telling her best friend her darkest secret, she didn’t know, “I don’t know how long I can hold us here.”
Jane looked down at where Darcy’s hand was wrapped around her forearm and then again at their surroundings. She removed the hand from her arm and held it loosely with her own. “Where is here?”
“I call it MSS? Stands for Mordor’s Scarier Sister?” Jane snorted at that, and Darcy never knew snorting could be so comforting. “I scream or hum, and I can come here. It’s kind of a long story?”
“You scream, and you go to another dimension.” Jane’s voice was dry, but her eyes narrowed. Her hand gripped Darcy’s. Hard. “Do you mean to tell me that all of this time you’ve been capable of transdimensional travel? That you were literally doing exactly what we’ve been searching for?”
Darcy honestly hadn’t thought of it like that. Shit.
“Um.”
Jane’s fingers were so strong and so bony and definitely cutting of her circulation.
“Maybe you could yell at me after we escape the assassin?”
Jane turned her glare from Darcy to the window. “Fine. But there will be yelling. You said you couldn’t hold us here long?”
“We’ve already been here longer than I ever have. It’s already slipping from me.” She could feel the cold seeping out from her fingers, and tried visualizing everything from igloos to freezers to stave off the warmth. She knew as soon as the cold left, they’d find themselves back in the firing range of the lab.
“Can you put us back outside the lab? Maybe we could make a run for it and get the SHIELD agents from their base?”
Darcy felt terrible about it, but the reminder of the dead agents helped her hold onto the cold. “They’re all dead, Jane,” she got a bewildered look from her friend at that, “Don’t ask, ok, it’s just another thing I definitely know right now. Later.”
Jane shook her head to clear it. “Alright. We’re on our own. And you can’t put us back outside the lab, I’m guessing?”
Darcy could only nod in agreement. Maybe with practice she could move them, but she didn’t know how. She was starting sweat from the strain of maintaining them there. Jane watched a droplet roll down her temple. “We can fight him, maybe? Two of us appearing out of nowhere, we’ve got the element of surprise?”
Darcy wanted to roll her eyes at that, but it was at that moment that her tenuous control broke.
The switch from the cool, dark of MSS to the warm light of the lab was jarring in its immediacy. They blinked at the masked man, and Darcy thought ‘Surprise goes both ways.’
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Say what you will about science nerds, but it turns out they were hella handy in a fight. Darcy didn’t know where Jane had gotten her aim from, but so far three paper weights, a stapler and a novelty bust of Galileo had all found their marks. Their marks being a terrifying murder-bot.
Popping out of thin air had given them little advantage, but they’d made use of it by each taking cover behind different desks. Thank God SHIELD had sprung for the sturdy metal ones; they doubled for barricades.
It quickly became apparent that the man was here for Darcy, but Jane had been ferocious in her attempts to draw him away. Darcy was just happy he hadn’t gotten a clear shot of Jane yet. Being so small did yield some advantages.
The bust had been heavy enough to knock him back a pace, so Darcy darted out from her hiding space, trying to get over to Jane and the exit just behind her.
She should have known she couldn’t outpace him. He caught her shoulder and pulled her back so hard she lost her footing. She heard Jane’s panicked yelp and hoped Jane would forgive her for what she was going to do.
Closing her eyes and gathering her breath, Darcy reached out and grabbed at the straps across his chest as she screamed.
She felt the muscles under her hands tense as the temperature around them plummeted. Once the dampness of the mists kissed the back of her neck, she released him. His hand had fallen off her as soon as she had opened her mouth. Warily, she backed away from him as he frantically turned his head around. His goggles covered his eyes, but she didn’t need to see them to know he was afraid.
She could work with that.
The vision of the snowy mountain was easy to bring to the surface. She felt the arctic wind blow from the window forming behind her. Stepping aside to provide an unobstructed view, she felt oddly powerful. He could surely kill her in countless ways, from the guns or knives strapped all over him to that wicked arm, but they were in her world. She held the cards here.
He stood still, head frozen. Darcy didn’t know what compelled her, but she reached up and removed his goggles and his mask.
He didn’t flinch.
His eyes were blue, deep as sapphire. They would have been beautiful if there had been anything besides pain behind them. Darcy’s heart clenched at the contrast they held with the blankness of his face. His mouth was lax, cheeks smooth, not even a ghost of expression. She turned to the window and found a destroyed train car, the man that stood next to her hanging from a broken rail. Until he fell.
An anguished yell of ‘Bucky’ echoed in the empty mists.
“Are you Bucky?” she asked, watching his body in the window crash against rocks and finally land bloody and limp in the snow.
A shuddering, wet breath exploded from the man next to her. She turned to him and found tears working their way down his cheeks.
He wasn’t looking at her or at the window; he was just staring ahead unseeing. In that moment, he was less the dangerous man who had been trying to kill her and more a lost child. Despite the circumstances of both of her meetings with him, an overwhelming sadness was all she felt as she stood there with him. The scene her screams called up from him felt strange, too. Final, as though they’d already happened.
But that was impossible. She saw death, and he was clearly alive.
Wasn’t he?
A thud brought her out of her puzzlement. The man had dropped to his knees and settled his face in his hands. His shoulders shook as he sobbed.
Darcy let the fog fade away and brought them back to the lab. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care, too busy breaking down.
His cries resounded in the spacious room, each one louder than the last.
Jane materialized at her shoulder, eying the shaking man cautiously. She grabbed Darcy’s hand and quietly dragged her away.
Darcy cast one last look over her shoulder as they left. Her handiwork left a bitter taste.
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The Soldier was late.
Pierce had brought it to this God-forsaken desert himself, unwilling to relinquish such a delicate operation to someone else. There was also the small chance that the Soldier malfunctioned again, and Pierce had no desire for a failure of that magnitude to have many witnesses.
The Soldier should have returned with the girl an hour ago.
A failure: the likes of which were unprecedented.
Pierce was about to send out a man to look for the Asset when a flash of red in the corner of his eye caught his attention.
When he turned his head, he saw the devil himself.
“Alexander Pierce,” the horned figure walked from the shadows as though they were a door, “You’ve put your nose where it does not belong. We can’t have that.”
“What are you?” His voice did not waver, but he certainly felt terror in his gut. Hearing about monsters and gods was quite different than facing them, Pierce was finding.
“Nothing that you’ll remember,” was his only answer, and then the devil smiled.
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Pierce woke up at his desk at the Triskellion, papers stuck to his face with his own drool. He didn’t remember working late, but clearly he had been overworking himself. There was no reason to be looking over these files, anyway. The Thor incident had been months ago, nothing new of note.
The last few days were hazy, and his head felt fuzzy. He might be coming down with something.
He went home, vowing to take a few days off.
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The few technicians still in New Mexico simply put the Winter Soldier on ice when he returned to their makeshift base, preparing his transportation back to DC. Pierce hadn’t told them why they were in the desert which was not unusual. Protocol dictated that the Asset be put in cryo as soon as possible. Wipes were only implemented when Pierce himself ordered them.
The Winter Soldier calmly entered the tube as usual, but was restless after he had been sealed inside. The technicians nervously listened to him thrash. Normally, he was out cold within seconds.
None of them looked to see what it was that he was doing. If they had, they’d have seen his metal hand scratching at the ice creeping up the door.
The last thing the Soldier saw before the cold took him were the letters he’d etched himself.
B-U-C-K-Y.