dynamics, 9
“Daisy, how I’ve longed to see you again!”It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. Jiaying was dead, her life ripped from her by Daisy’s father. His final act of penance to make up for all that he’d done under her command, before going through the TAHITI protocol. She was gone. Cal had made sure of that. So how could she be standing here?
“I’m sure you’re very surprised to see me,” Jiaying said, a slight grin on her face that looked ever so slightly wrong. Something was definitely off. “But I couldn’t come to see you, not yet.”
Daisy took a breath, and pointed an ICER straight at her. “Who are you?”
‘Jiaying’ took a step back. “What do you mean? I’m your mother, Daisy.”
“No, you’re not,” Daisy shook her head. “You look like her. You sound like her. But you’re not her. Jiaying is dead. I was there.”
The form shimmered and shifted. It was a slow process, kind of fuzzy. Hard to look at, hard to focus on. Like Daisy’s own mind didn’t want to see. Even as the form was still changing, a voice spoke from within it. “Oh dear. I must have gotten a detail wrong, for the suspension of disbelief to be shattered so quickly. What was it? The expressions? The faces are always so tricky. The movements are there, in my mind, but they just don’t seem to want to come quite as easily.”
Daisy raised the second ICER and got ready to fire. “I’ll ask you one more time. Who are you?”
Before her eyes, the form stabilised. Suddenly, Daisy could see properly again, no war in her mind willing her eyes to turn away. An elderly chinese man. Familiar, even if she hadn’t spent much time around him all those years ago. Unfamiliar, even if Daisy had been expecting to see him here. This was Yat-Sen. “I’m quite sure you know the answer to that, Miss Daisy Johnson. An ever present thorn in my side, you are.”
Nothing else in the room around her changed, even if Daisy now suspected that it might. She’d never known Yat-Sen to have any inhuman abilities, but clearly that was wrong. She didn’t have any answers for how he was still alive, or how he looked the exact same as the last time she’d seen him in person. Daisy knew she should pull the triggers and end this now, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do so. Not after what she’d just seen. Not after how it had shaken her.
“I knew you’d be trouble, right from the very start,” Yat-Sen continued. His fingers laced together in front of him, as though he was entirely unafraid of being harmed. “I told your mother not to bring you in, not after your dalliances with SHIELD. Of course, she didn’t listen. She was headstrong and fierce, just as you are. When the great Jiaying wanted something, she got it. Except, of course, when it came to you.”
Daisy’s brows furrowed. She knew she shouldn’t listen, shouldn’t let the man get to her. So, fighting the compulsion to stay her hand, Daisy pulled the trigger of the ICER in her right hand. The blue neurotoxic pulse rocketed forward, and then came to a stop inches from Yat-Sen’s head. It stilled, suspended in an orange network of signs and sigils that had come into being with but a wave of the man’s hand. Sorcery.
“Now now, no need to be so violent,” Yat-Sen chided. He beckoned Daisy forward, but she refused to move. If the man wanted to talk, he could talk. That just gave Daisy time to figure out where the hell the compulsion not to attack was coming from, and do away with it. “Ah, well. Perhaps even I underestimated you, just a little. I’ve known you were on my trail for quite some time now, and you’ve even brought some friends with you. But it won’t be enough. They won’t make it here, and soon I’ll either have you joining me or add a preserved sample of your tissue to my collection. Oh, yes, your face would be quite a useful one to wear.”
Something was wrong. Even more wrong than before. Daisy was starting to feel woozy, like the room around her was swirling and shifting on its own whims. The only thing Daisy could focus on now was Yat-Sen’s face, and his voice. His smug grin, his whole attitude that screamed confidence and a complete and utter lack of concern. She could only assume he had an Inhuman ability of some kind, whether it was the ability to change his appearance or to cause Daisy’s disorientation. If it was the former, the latter would probably be easier to deal with. Hopefully before her body gave out on her.
“What are you trying to accomplish here?” Daisy forced out past the first signs of nausea. If Yat-Sen wanted to monologue, she might as well point him in the right direction.
“Accomplish? Oh, you know, nothing drastic,” Yat-Sen smiled. “Just the total eradication of all non-Inhuman life on this planet. After all, if we fended off the Kree and persisted this long, I believe that we’ve earned a place for ourselves. The humans will never accept us, so it’s but a simple matter of removing them from the equation.”
Daisy groaned. She could make out the faintest outlines of more sorcery sigils above her, on the ceiling. “You’re trying to finish what my mother started.”
Yat-Sen chuckled, and sat down in his office chair. Daisy vaguely remembered it being lacquered, but it was hard to tell now. “Her work? Her work? Oh, my dear. Your mother was continuing my work. Four generations - that’s how long she led the Inhumans after creating Afterlife. I must say, her founding that community made it quite easy to gather everybody important in one place and earn their ears. And it almost worked, too. Little nudges here and there, coming from a different advisor every twenty or so years. A different face, someone new and wise who could earn that woman’s trust and whisper in her ear. Eventually she came to hate humans. And if not for you, my plan would be much further along. I’d love to tell you about it, see if you might wish to join me. But, oh, I do know better.”
Slowly and carefully, Daisy began twisting her palms. If she could just get them facing upwards without Yat-Sen noticing, she could blast those sigils and hopefully be free of this horrible, nauseous distortion. It was worse than the time Tomoe had drugged Daisy with some kind of mushroom, and that was saying something. “You were behind Jiaying trying to take down SHIELD?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Yat-Sen declared, and sighed. “But you still don’t get it. I was behind everything. How do you think SHIELD even knew to come and take you from your parents? SHIELD’s precious 084, the first 084. They had to find out somehow. And then while your mother was distracted searching for you, I led Afterlife, and curried favour for my cause. Of course, Hive and Lash had to come along and ruin all of that. Honestly, hiding from Hive was the best decision I could have made, because I could simply start again, and find new inhumans to follow me and help cleanse this world.”
Daisy was half-way there. Between the immense discomfort and the knowledge that she couldn’t be too hasty, getting into position was a slow process. How convenient, then, that Yat-Sen was such a talker. “You said you were in Afterlife from the start. How did you live so long?”
“Oh, that?” Yat-Sen waved a hand dismissively, as though to say it was a trivial matter. “Well, I’ve had to turn to new methods ever since that upstart ‘Doctor Strange’ shattered Dormamu’s connection to this plane. Honestly, all those years studying and then serving as a Master of the Mystic Arts did pay off, but I would have liked to keep drawing on that demon’s power for longer. Master of what is now called the Hong Kong Sanctum, I was. Master Ye, though I haven’t used that name in a long time. Quite frustrating, that Doctor Strange. If not for him, I could have offered to use the Time Stone to turn back time and give you a childhood with your parents. Alas.”
Daisy froze. How could she not freeze, when Yat-Sen spoke of giving her that as though it would be easy? When he thought it would work. All in one, that gave Daisy so much information. Enough to turn the tides. Yat-Sen thought that Daisy could be convinced to go back, which meant that he probably didn’t know about Gwen. Daisy would never choose a life that meant leaving Gwen behind, that meant Gwen not even being born. She loved them far too much for that.
She saw it, now. Yat-Sen wasn’t talking and talking and talking just to hear his own voice and feel good about himself. He was trying to get to her. He was trying to weaken Daisy’s resolve and focus, quite possibly out of the knowledge that he couldn’t win on his own, grandstanding aside. With her hands finally in position, Daisy smiled, and let loose.
The sigils above her shattered, and Daisy’s mind and body were free.
Yeah, Peter could do this. Hopefully. He didn’t actually know how Doctor Wilton’s powers worked yet, and they had been enough to make both him and Daisy choose not to go in for the attack when they last saw her. Then again, that had ended up being by far the strategic choice. After setting a web grenade that Peter had made a stack of a couple weeks ago down outside the door to the infirmary, Peter shoved the door open and barged in.
It was just her. The doctor was sitting at the desk in the corner and filling out paperwork, as if the base wasn’t under siege. As if the enemies weren’t all aware that it was under siege and fighting to push Peter and the others back out. It either meant that she was just that confident, or she wasn’t supposed to get involved. Well... there was also the option that she just didn’t want to, but Peter doubted that was likely. Not with how ready she had been to confront buyers a couple weeks back, or how powerful her ability likely was.
“I won’t be patching you up, Spider-Man,” Wilton declared calmly, pushing her paperwork aside and standing up. “You made a mistake in coming here, though. There is work to be done, and I’m afraid I can’t be letting you out of here alive.”
“Huh, maybe I should have brought more apples,” Peter joked. He lowered his stance just a little, so he’d be more prepared to move in any direction. “Whatever happened to the hippocratic oath? Aren’t doctors supposed to do no harm?”
Wilton tilted her head, smiled rather creepily, and took another step forward. She collected a handful of terrigen crystals from her desk, and Peter eyed them warily. Even if they wouldn’t kill him, he still preferred not to get hit at all. Unfortunately, the infirmary was small. Perhaps about four metres by six. “Ah yes. Well, I simply don’t care about that right now. Once this world is rid of all humans and only Inhumans remain, perhaps I’ll take the oath once more.”
“Huh. Bad doctor, zero stars on RateMD,” Peter decided, and launched a few shots of webbing at the woman. Each one passed right through her. “So how does that work, anyway? Gas or intangibility? Actually, don’t answer that. Let me figure it out for myself!”
Wilton tossed a terrigen crystal towards Peter. With one hand, he shot enough web to catch the crystal and toss it against the furthest corner of the room. With the other hand, he shot another web bullet towards Wilton, and watched her very closely. Close enough to see the slightest bit of her torso get pushed outwards where the webbing had passed through, and then reform.
“Ah. Gas,” Peter confirmed aloud. If she had been straight up intangible, that displacement wouldn’t have happened. “That makes this easier, actually. Now I’ve just gotta poke around and figure out your limits, and we can do a little dance. Do you dance? Mama Spider tried to teach me to vogue to improve my fighting rhythm, but I was pretty abysmal at it. I wonder how fast you can reform and how much control you have over the displacement? Hmm, let’s see... Darlene, can you monitor the speed of reformation for me, please?”
When Peter grabbed onto one of the infirmary beds and threw it at Wilton, she still didn’t look fazed. Her entire body turned into a sort of mist as the bed hit her. Peter had made sure to throw it with the length of the bed perpendicular to the ground, to maximise the area that she would have to pass through. When part of her body went over the bed and part went other, Peter simply stood and watched. He needed Darlene to get visual readings, of course.
“Approximately one quarter of a second,” the AI-copy informed him. “All gas converged in on a singular point approximately thirty centimetres closer to you than the point of failed collision.”
“Wow, how about that?” Peter exclaimed. “Pretty impressive, doc!”
Wilton took another pace forward, and threw another crystal. It was no trouble to catch that yet again, and toss it away to safety. “You truly do talk a lot.”
Peter chuckled, and dashed forward. There were still two more crystals in the doctor’s possession, but he was going to have to chance it. He could see the gun holstered on the woman’s waist, and didn’t want to draw things out until she started firing bullets at him. The gun was turning to gas and reforming with Doctor Wilton, and so were the crystals - which meant he’d have trouble getting it off her. Instead, he wanted to press the offensive himself and see exactly what her ability was capable of.
“I wonder how long you can keep up your gas form,” Peter thought aloud, and dashed straight towards her. Before she had a chance to do much of anything, Peter started throwing punches and kicks, and he didn’t stop. After a solid thirty second high intensity workout, it became pretty clear that Wilton could keep going a while longer without having to reform - especially judging by how unbothered she continued to look. “Not bad, not bad.”
“I can do this all day, young man,” Wilton sighed. “All day.”
“You can?” Peter questioned, pouring feigned amazement into his voice. “But you can’t really do much to me while in that form, can you?”
Her brows furrowed - an admission to the fact. Okay, good, Peter could work with that. A plan formed in his mind, and he grinned. He didn’t need to beat her, if he could just contain her to the one room and then move on. Besides, Peter had plenty of webbing to spare, and if he could fill the room with it, she wouldn’t be able to reform. Web up the room, shut the door and seal the gaps, and that was that. Oh, and the vent above. Peter couldn’t forget the vent above.
“Oh nooooo,” Harley exclaimed, voice laden with sarcasm. Whatever Sleepy had done, it had completely powered off Harley’s suit, and it wasn’t turning back on. His mind flashed back to his very first training session with Bobbi, when she had pointed out that he needed to know what to do if a sufficiently advanced EMP was able to take his suit offline. And, well, he did. Harley reached for his batons, and drew them out into a fighting stance. “I’m just helpless without this suit of mine, y’know?”
Sleepy rolled their eyes. “I wish you were telling the truth. I want a nap.”
“So take one?” Harley shrugged, twirling one of the batons idly in his left hand. “I can’t see this goin’ well for you.”
Sleepy responded to Harley’s words with a shrug of their own. “Eh. Knife’s laced with vibranium, I think I’ll be alright. Fight time?”
Harley sighed, and took a step forward. “Fight time.”
For such a tired-looking person, Sleepy moved fast. With frankly impressive agility, they rushed forward and weaved over and around the unconscious bodies of several people Harley had already taken down, lashing out with a knife that had come out of nowhere. When Harley brought up a baton to block the blade, the knife took a chip out of it. And Harley’s batons were well-made, which meant that the knife truly was laced with vibranium, or something equally effective.
Still, for every bit that Sleepy was fast, Bobbi Morse was faster. Harley was used to this, and the speed honestly didn’t pose much of a problem. He just had to take the enemy down before they cut up his batons and suit and got to his important fleshy body inside.
At one point, Sleepy threw the knife at him. On instinct, Harley twisted to the side and out of the way. On another instinct, Harley remembered something else from that first training session with Bobbi. Recall. He ducked, just as the knife soared back into Sleepy’s hand.
“Awww,” Sleepy complained. “Thought you wouldn’t see it coming. “
“Technically I didn’t see it,” Harley quipped. And then, “I’m just that good.”
Sleepy grumbled, and stabbed the knife straight towards Harley’s gut. He jammed an elbow downward, striking at Sleepy’s wrist and knocking the knife to the ground. Bringing the rest of his arm down was sufficient to whack Sleepy in the head and knock them out cold. He didn’t know how they’d done the recall thing - Harley’s best guess was some kind of magnetism - and he wasn’t particularly keen to find out. It was a little unfortunate that Harley’s suit didn’t come back online once Sleepy was down for the count, but he pressed on all the same.
“Fuck,” Harry cursed. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
Green mist was filling the room, and it took most of what Harry had to wrap around it with his magic and try and encase it before any of it reached the crowd of mercenaries who weren’t fleeing. Any kind of witchcraft Harry was versed in wasn’t going to be fast enough to keep this up, not when that bastard Gustavo kept pumping the stuff out of his body without any sign of slowing down. What little of the green gas that did escape Harry’s attempts at containment was enough to start making the affected mercenaries hack and cough all over the place. This was bad.
In theory, Harry knew a sorcery trick that could eliminate the issue of the bystanders, but in practice he wasn’t very good at it. Opening up the Mirror Dimension and shoving people or objects into it was the kind of ability that came from extensive study, not innate ability. What small sorcery tricks Harry could do were the kinds someone could pick up with at most a few weeks’ effort. The next best option was to just stick some shadowy tendrils through Gustavo’s body and kill him, but there was no way Harry was going to do that unless he absolutely had to. He’d never killed before, and he wasn’t planning to any time soon.
“Oh, you poor poor boy,” Gustavo taunted. “What a shame, you seem to be struggling to keep up! But I must confess, I’m having quite a lot of fun here. Maybe some more of my toxic gas ought to do the trick, yes?”
Harry groaned. He really was hitting his limit. Opening up the Mirror Dimension was worth a try, right? And... when he thought about the texts he’d read from both the Sanctum library and his own collection, Harry should have an aptitude of sorts with the Mirror Dimension’s magic. After all, power that drew on Dormamu’s Dark Dimension had a greater influence over the Mirror Dimension, and Chthon’s power was only a few steps to the left of Dormamu’s in terms of quality and characteristics. If he were to ignore the fact that Chthonic magic wasn’t the kind of thing sorcerers drew on, all the logic checked out. What was the worst that could happen?
Everyone in the room dying. That was what. To Harry, even the enemies weren’t casualties he wanted on his hands or conscience. One was better than many, though, so if the trick with the Mirror Dimension failed, Harry was going to have to kill Gustavo. He was going to have to take a life.
Combining his knowledge, innate magical ability, intentions and the power of the sling ring he wore, Harry signed the relevant gesture with one free hand and shoved forward, hoping to catch Gustavo and his toxic gas and none of the mercenaries - if this even worked in the first place.
Magical force burst free from the tips of Harry’s fingers and from the air in front of him, and the world around him changed. His surroundings twisted and fractalised. As the magic travelled forward, it picked up Gustavo and all of the gas he’d released, and pulled them into a different space, a different dimension. Harry could see the mercenaries cowering and coughing and barely just beginning to flee, but they were behind the walls of the space he had conjured up. They were safe.
“Where... where are we?” Gustavo demanded, worry now in his voice for the first time since he had begun toying with Harry ten minutes prior.
And he was right to ask that, because when Harry looked around, he didn’t see the Mirror Dimension. This wasn’t anything like what he’d read about, or what one of Doctor Strange’s understudies had once showed him. It was darker, muggier. Heavier. And it felt familiar, like the space itself called to him. This was the Mirror Dimension, but it also wasn’t.
“No clue at all,” Harry admitted uneasily. “If you play nice, I’ll get us out of here. Are you going to play nice?”
Don’t leave, something called into Harry’s mind. Don’t leave!
Yeah, Harry definitely needed to leave. He already had an inkling of what this was. It was the pull that tipped him off.
“Play nice?” Gustavo hissed. “I wish for nothing more than to take you down several pegs. Ever since I heard about you, I’ve known that you and your friends deserve to be... what’s the word? Humiliated. You heroes have it so wonderfully good, and what does a hard working man like myself get? A pittance. When Yat-Sen offered me power and success, how could I refuse? And soon, all the world will be my stage!”
Come closer. Stay! Join-
“Dude, you clearly have some whole traumatic complex going on and I get that, but we need to get out of here,” Harry insisted. Something was coming, and it wasn’t something good. This whole dimension felt unstable, distorted in ways it wasn’t supposed to be. And... looking down, Harry could see the tips of his fingers begin to blacken.
“Ah, but how about I kill you first?” Gustavo shouted, something maniacal in his eyes. The power that was welling up in this dimension, power that shouldn’t be there at all, was growing. It was taking root in Gustavo, and it was trying to take root in Harry too. When Gustavo’s hand darted forward, a near-solid mass of green lanced out towards Harry. It wasn’t like before. It was far more powerful, something Harry couldn’t contain without using all of his power at once.
“Shit,” he cursed, and hurled himself to one side. The truth was that he couldn’t use his magic to defend himself here. If he did, It would take root. There was no coming back from that. All he could safely manage was one use of the sling ring to get the fuck out of the Mirror Dimension and never look back.
When Harry escaped back into the mortal realm, he knew that this was going to eat at him for a long time. Because he’d seen what happened to Gustavo as he was escaping. How the man’s body became shrouded in darkness and was pulled away into the shadows. The man hadn’t even been given time to scream.
Note to self, Harry thought as a shiver broke loose across his body. Chthon has a connection to the Mirror Dimension. Unsafe for any usage whatsoever.
“Tch,” Yat-Sen spat, surging up from his desk and grabbing a small tube of something, popping the cork stopper open. Whatever he was planning to do with that, Daisy wasn’t intending to let him. Ignoring the ICERs on the ground, she splayed her hands towards the man and let loose a heavy blast. Even as his body was knocked into the wall behind him, the tube remained secure in his grip. Before Daisy could get closer to follow up, Yat-Sen tipped the tube upside down, and whatever fleshy mass had been inside landed on one of his fingers.
Then, Yat-Sen started to change. It was a similar experience to when he had morphed out of his imitation of Jiaying; Daisy felt like she wasn’t supposed to look. The man’s hair grew out and his wrinkles fades. White hair turned to red, a wider frame grew narrower. Dark eyes shifted to green, and slouched posture took on a sharp, dangerous edge. Where Yat-Sen had been a moment ago, the perfect image of Natasha Romanoff was rising from the ground. A twirl of Yat-Sen’s hands was all it took for magic to briefly enshroud his clothing and transform it into what the Black Widow usually wore to battle.
Yat-Sen smiled. “You see? All I need is the biological matter of a deceased or otherwise incapacitated person and I can assume their appearance. And it isn’t just that, either.” His speech halted momentarily as he flipped up onto his feet with perfect form. “My subject’s natural skills become mine.”
Daisy took a cautious step back. “Sure, thanks for telling me. Honestly, I feel like someone who’s been at this as long as you are would have tighter lips. Are you just that desperate for someone to rant to?”
The man snarled with Romanoff’s voice, and lunged forward. If Daisy hadn’t swerved to the left, her windpipe would have been crushed immediately. When Yat-Sen said he inherited the abilities of those he imitated, he wasn’t kidding at all. “Please, it’s not like you’re getting out of here alive.”
“Oh yeah?” Daisy taunted, grasping Yat-Sen’s outstretched elbow with one hand and quaking it as hard as she could. The man winced, but didn’t scream. Daisy had to give him a little credit for that, at least. “But if you’re stuck with just Romanoff’s natural skills, you really don’t stand a chance.”
Yat-Sen grinned. His hands twirled, summoning up sigils that quickly morphed into sharp-looking magical fans. “I never said that was all I could do.”
It only took seeing one of the fans slicing a chunk out of the wall to know that Daisy could not afford to get hit by those. Shit. Maybe the old guy was more dangerous than Daisy had anticipated. Backup sure would be good, but Daisy knew she couldn’t count on it. The fact that he was still using his arm after Daisy had felt the elbow break was only more concerning. Daisy had heard of Masters of the Mystic Arts using sorcery to sustain their bodies through illness and injury, but to see it was another thing entirely.
Now, in a room this small, Daisy was definitely the one at a disadvantage. Perhaps she could flip the script, and try and throw her opponent off with words of her own. “It must be nice, being in charge after all those years of being only second in command. Serving under Jiaying the whole time, and not ever being Sorcerer Supreme? That’s gotta suck, huh?”
Yat-Sen rolled his eyes. It was still unnerving seeing that happen on Romanoff’s face; seeing anything be done with another dead person’s appearance. He swept forward, spinning a kick that forced Daisy up into the air before slashing out with the fans, which Daisy only narrowly avoided by blasting herself up further into the ceiling corner. At least the distance gave Daisy an opportunity to strike back, blasting wide enough with her quakes that there was nowhere to dodge to. Yat-Sen tried to block with his fans, but they shattered quickly and he was flung back. Daisy knew he could reform them just as fast, but took relief in the small victory all the same.
“Not once have I been second best!” Yat-Sen spat. “The Ancient One may have called herself Sorcerer Supreme all those years, but it was I who taught her how to draw upon Dormamu’s power in the first place! It was I who taught Jiaying the intricacies of leadership, and fended off intruders from Afterlife for many years. All this time I have been protecting Inhumans, by all rights you should be joining me!”
“Not a chance in hell,” Daisy retorted as she rolled up from where she’d fallen on the ground and swung a punch aimed right for Yat-Sen’s gut. The thing about him having Romanoff’s abilities, though, was that he easily caught her punch and flipped her on her back. Then the fans were out again, and Daisy had to desperately roll to safety.
She would have lost a few fingers if not for the speeding rush of electrified flesh that hurtled through the open doorway and into Daisy’s attacker.
“Get off my sister!” Gwen snarled. Their body was covered in cuts and bruises, and yet they looked none the weaker for it. “Wait, isn’t that the Black Widow?”
Using the moment of Gwen’s distraction, Yat-Sen had sprung up from the ground and tried to slash straight at her neck. No way in hell Daisy would let that happen either. It was a little easier for Daisy to bring out more of her power when she was fighting to protect someone in sight, evidenced by the force of the blast that threw Yat-Sen into the far wall of the office behind his desk powerfully enough to crack the walls. The physical transformation quickly faded away as the elderly man slumped to the ground once more.
“...not the Black Widow, that makes more sense,” Gwen realised aloud. “This is the big boss guy! Should I-”
“DO IT!” Daisy shouted, seeing the way Yat-Sen’s hands began twitching and clenching. Any time wasted would be another opportunity for him to regain an advantage - but if Gwen acted fast enough, Yat-Sen was done for.
Following a brief, sharp nod, Gwen sped around the room twice - fast enough that Daisy could barely just see the electric trails. It was the safest way Gwen could charge up power; sure, they could build it all up on the spot, but Daisy was well aware that it hurt Gwen to do that. While moving, though, she had free reign over the magnitude of her ability. At the end of the second lap, Gwen hurled themself onto Yat-Sen, and that was that.
The man screamed, and his body simply just gave up.
“Fuck,” Gwen managed through heavy breaths. “Fuck, did I just-”
Daisy leapt over the table and let extremely weak vibrations flow out of her hands and into Yat-Sen’s body. It was a neat little trick she’d checked to assess basic health measures in another person - heart rate and breathing - without wasting any time. The man was alive, but barely. “Nope, he’s still hanging on.”
“Oh, okay. Okay, that’s good... I think?” Gwen questioned. Daisy was pretty sure she and Cailan were the only ones amongst the group to have taken lives, and didn’t want that kind of thing to be something on Gwen’s conscience too soon.
“Yeah,” Daisy sighed. “Good. And hey, you made it just in time. While I’m pretty sure Romanoff herself could have seen you coming and barely just reacted, Yat-Sen wasn’t expecting you, and that saved my life. Well, my fingers at least.”
“Saved your- okay, good. Fuck yeah.”
Just like that, Gwen had shown up and saved Daisy from a fight she would have lost. There was no doubt about it, with just the combination of magic and copying Romanoff, Yat-Sen would have won. And that was without any other ‘biological matter’ he had in his possession, or any other magical abilities he hadn’t yet revealed. Yat-Sen was a threat, and Daisy couldn’t responsibly leave him to continue being a threat. He wasn’t just trying to follow in Jiaying’s footsteps, he was behind them since the very beginning.
It all came down to whether or not Daisy would be a ‘noble’ hero or an agent who got things done. She wanted to be the former; to avoid taking measures that had seemed necessary as a SHIELD agent but no longer seemed right. But what way was there to contain, reform or otherwise prevent Yat-Sen from causing further harm? Perhaps... perhaps he’d lived long enough anyway.
“You might want to look away, sib,” Daisy suggested as she raised her hand to hover right over the unconscious Yat-Sen’s neck.
“Why-” Gwen started to ask, and then stopped herself - presumably when she saw what Daisy was about to do.
Daisy took in a deep breath. This kind of thing was never easy to do. It had caused a lot of emotional turmoil last time, when Daisy had to put Tomoe down. It was going to be just as hard now. Her hand started quivering and shaking, and not because of her powers.
A new set of heavy, metallic footsteps emerged from down the hall, and came to a stop in the office doorway. “Guys? What’s happenin’?”
Without letting herself delay any longer, Daisy pulsed out just enough power to break a human body. Yat-Sen’s neck snapped with a loud crunch. This way he wouldn’t feel anything as he died. It was the only mercy Daisy could give him.
“Oh,” Harley’s suit-distorted voice uttered. “Oh, damn.”
“It’s over,” Daisy declared. “Let’s bring the comms back online and coordinate a cleanup, and then get out of here. We’ll need to find the diviners and all the remaining terrigen crystals and pack those away, and make sure some sort of medical aid gets flagged down to tend to the wounded. I hate to say it, but I think SHIELD might be the best bet to handle this discreetly. I’ll deal with Yat-Sen’s body. Gwen, can you make sure you’re the only one to touch the diviners?”
“Can do, sis,” Gwen answered. Nobody moved to leave the room behind Daisy, which was fair enough. Gwen and Harley probably needed a moment to process everything that’d happened.
“Comms are live again?” Riri’s voice suddenly questioned from within Daisy’s earpiece. “I have acquired a child, by the way. The little shit tried very damn hard to kill me, but I’d like to see to it that she gets a fair chance for a better path. She can’t be more than, what, fourteen?”
“I gotchu,” Cailain’s voice was the first to respond. “I’m good with kids, and happen to think you’re right. No problems on my end. If comms are live, is the Manufacturer down for the count?”
“Down for good,” Daisy answered carefully. She usually got a little shaky when she had to take a life. In time, she would pull herself back together. For now, Daisy would just keep reminding herself that she’d done the right thing. She had to.
“All good on my end,” Peter’s voice sounded over the line just as Daisy was standing up and getting ready to leave. “Though I may have gotten stabbed in the shoulder? Could someone help me stitch it up once we’re back on the jet?”
“Dammit, Spidey!” Harley exclaimed. Daisy stifled a laugh; she was glad to have these guys around her. They were good people.
Given that the expectation for the mission had been that something would go wrong and it could take at least a few days, Peter shouldn’t have been all that surprised to wake up somewhere that wasn’t his own bed. It would have made sense if he’d woken up in some hiding place in Maryland, or even on the jet that had flown the group down to Maryland and back. Until the sleepiness began to fade and the memories came back to him, Peter was a little surprised to wake up in Harley’s bed. He hadn’t even been to Harley’s room before, much less his bed.
Sometime around one in the morning, Peter and Harley had been walking back to campus together from the Playground. Neither of them were really paying attention, and they’d ended up in Harley’s room. Both of them had. Peter had only meant to sit down on Harley’s bed and rest for a moment before getting up and going back to his own dorm room. The next thing he knew, the sun was shining down through the window and Peter was awake, his arms wrapped gently around Harley’s midsection. They hadn’t even had a chance to talk yet, with how fast they’d both fallen asleep.
And it was nice laying like this. Soon, after a certain little conversation, Peter could probably fall asleep and wake up in Harley’s bed often, or Harley in his. They just needed to talk. And Peter knew it would go well, so he wasn’t worried. He hadn’t really gotten time to think it through yet, but there really was no denying how much he wanted this. Raising his head, Peter took a look at Harley’s sleeping form. Harley looked beyond peaceful. Sunlight bounced off his freckles in a way that made them almost look like they were glowing. Peter kind of wanted to run a finger across Harley’s cheek or brush back his hair while counting every single freckle there was to see.
He wanted to wake up next to Harley all the time, give him a good morning kiss and snuggle a little more before getting ready for the day. He wanted to be there through all the good and the bad. To share so much with this person beside him.
Because Peter was falling in love with him.
Oh.
He was falling in love with Harley.
Oh no. Oh no no no no no.
This couldn’t happen. He couldn’t fall in love. Hadn’t he learned his lesson yet? It never ended well. Not for him, and especially not for whoever he’d cursed with his own carelessness. MJ had almost died more than once, and completely forgotten that Peter even existed. That had all been Peter’s fault. May had died. She’d been crushed and shot at and rended to death all because of Peter’s mistakes. And so had Ben - because Peter hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t been responsible enough. Ned didn’t remember him either, and Tony was dead. Tony was dead.
They were all dead or gone. All because of him. All because Peter was cursed.
He couldn’t do that to Harley. Not again.
“No no no no no,” Peter sobbed, his voice gravelly with fear and hurt and panic. He was hardly even thinking as the words spilled from his mouth, as he roughly tore himself away from Harley’s bed. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Peter registered Harley waking up, looking confused and worried. That didn’t matter, though. Peter had to get away, he had to save Harley. He couldn’t let this happen. Not this, not again. “You have to stay away from me, you have to you have to you have to! Just stay away!”
Peter fled.