Doors Wide Open

If Rory could live in Wakanda, she would.

Not at the moment though. Not with the battle. Not with the outriders. Certainly not with the ugly purple alien that had just arrived. The others were already fighting him, their grunts coming through the comms in her ear.

The sun filtered through the trees above, lighting up the forest floor in patches. The air was nice and fresh. It was the perfect temperature where you didn’t need to wear a jacket but you also didn’t have the urge to rip your clothes off because of the heat. Again, if she could live here, she would.

Unbelievably, that was the thought at the forefront of her mind as she ran as fast as she could, weaving in and out of trees. She would be running faster if she hadn’t been fighting a mob of aliens not even a minute before. Rory had thrown the last outrider off her body when she heard Nat call for help. To be perfectly honest, Rory didn’t think she would be much help. If the rest of the Avengers couldn’t stop him, what good would she do? Heightened senses, super strength, and sticky hands only get you so far against an alien able to hold his own against Thor. Thor, a literal god. Not to mention, Thanos was three times bigger than her. But whatever.

The trees around Rory began to whistle in a wind that wasn’t there a second ago. She slides to a stop and grabs the nearest tree just as a wave of energy rushes around her. If any of the other Avengers saw that she stopped and braced before the wind came, they would say it was her spidey sense.

Then Rory would kill them.

It is not her spidey sense. That’s the stupid Spiderboy’s thing. She was born with the ability to sense danger, so why did Spiderman get to patent it? Truth be told, she didn’t mind him as a person. He was interesting and almost funny. It was just the way that he got all the credit for powers she had first. Actually, now that she was thinking about it, she didn’t know when he got his powers. But that’s not the point. She was born with hers, end of story.

The very faint sound of crying snapped her out of it. She started running again and the trees slowly began to thin out ahead. The wind picked up again but this time going towards where Rory was running. The wave of energy reversed but she didn’t stop this time. The wave gave her a push in the back and she tripped. She recovered so quickly, that you’d be pressed to say she fell in the first place. She was so focused on getting there quickly that she heard almost nothing. None of the fighting between Thanos and Thor. None of the small sniffles of Wanda. None of the moans from the fallen Avengers. She could see the clearing now. She was so close.

“You should have gone for the head,” Thanos’ raspy voice penetrates her focus. Rory keeps going, the tree line in sight. Snap. There is a slight whoosh and then silence. A silence so loud, it was deafening. Rory can see Bucky through a gap in the trees. He’s walking forward holding his hands out in front of him, as if to show someone.

“Steve?” Bucky manages to croak out before falling to…

What? He was just…

“Rory? Where are you?” Nat asks over comms.

“I’m, um, I’m not sure. I just saw Bucky but he’s gone? I’m almost where you said to go,” Rory says. She hears Nat start but doesn’t get the chance to comprehend what she said.

Rory fell.

The ground had opened up underneath her and she fell. It was like going down in an elevator. The world around her rose while the pitch-black underneath filled her vision. Her arms and legs flailed around trying to grasp for anything. She fell through the nothingness for a couple of seconds before landing roughly. Rory glanced down to see what she had landed on and couldn’t see anything.

“Friday, mask on,” Rory says in the darkness as she gets up. The nanotech stretches up her face until just past her hairline, leaving her braids exposed. It covers her entire face and neck. It has white lenses that aren’t nearly as big as Spiderman’s but can move in the same way. Rory turns around to find more of the oppressive darkness.

What the fuck? Nothing. How there be nothing? Not a heartbeat, not a smell. Complete nothingness. This is great. Just what I need.

Rory has to bring her hand up to cover her eyes when a beam of white light appears out of nowhere. The light gets closer and Rory lets her hand fall. She looks at it but has to squint. The light wasn’t shining like a typical light but had a slight glow that contrasted the darkness extremely.

“This will be much easier if you don’t struggle,” the light…spoke? It came into focus after a few blinks and it was a person. If you could even call it that. They had no face, no discernable features anywhere, and were completely white. As in their skin, no clothes, no, the skin was pure white.

Rory must have been studying it in confused shock long enough for them to touch her. She was pulled out of her staring by them beginning to push her off the invisible platform. Their touch was surprisingly gentle and Rory was almost sent right back into the stunned shock. She slapped their hand away and kicked them in the stomach. Well, what Rory assumed was the stomach. She couldn’t really tell. They flew off the edge of the platform and fell into the never-ending darkness. Rory was plunged back into blindness until that same glow came from behind her. Large hands grabbed her from behind and dragged her backward. Her heart skipped a beat, not only because she was being pulled off an invisible platform by a guy with white skin, but because she didn’t sense the danger from them. Her not-spider-sense should have picked up the danger and made her move, but she’s not getting anything from them.

Rory squirmed in their grip, not her most graceful or effective way to get away but the panic coursing through her veins right now was making her desperate. A last-ditch attempt to not get thrown over into the void below. They stopped pulling for a split second when they reached the edge. Rory drove her elbow back and made contact. They grunted but didn’t let go. In fact, that seemed to have resolved the issue, and he began to push her off the edge. Rory gasped and her eyes widened. She kicked and punched in any which direction but none made contact. She dugs her heels in but the floor was solid. She couldn’t stop this.

They gave one last push and she went over.

Rory had imagined that when she fell, the air would rush over her, like skydiving, but it didn’t. She couldn’t feel anything. If she hadn’t just been pushed over a ledge, she wouldn’t know she was falling. A small twinkle appeared right in front of her. The twinkle grew in size rapidly as Rory fell. Once she got close enough, she could see that the twinkle was a circle that would be able to fit a person. Rory only got a split second to make that realization before going through said circle.

Now this, this, is what she imagined skydiving would be like. The wind rushing past your ears, feeling the air resistance around you-

Wait, SKYDIVING?! Oh, shit-

The twinkle? City lights. Rory was currently falling from a rather great height. A squat, 3-story building was directly below her, and it was getting closer fast. Her instinct kicked in and she whipped her head around to look for something to slow her fall. She flicked her wrist and her non-webbing (even though that’s what it was, she just didn’t want to be ‘copying’ Spiderboy) flung out but didn’t find any purchase. The momentum from the attempted webbing to a building made her spin, so her back is now going to take the brunt of the landing. She squeezed her eyes shut and braced for the impact.

Crack!

Rory doesn’t know if that’s her back or the concrete.

The pain vibrates out toward her toes and fingers until every inch of her body throbs with pain. She groans and lets herself stay down for just a few seconds. The pain subsides just a little bit so she sits up.

The perfect weather of Wakanda is long gone. The sun doesn’t shine through and, wait, it’s night. The air is cold and her heater hasn’t kicked in yet. Rain is pouring but thankfully there is hardly any wind so the rain is merely falling and not whipping her. The cold replaces more of the pain and she stands up. An unfamiliar skyline blinks back at her. The ringing in her ears has quietened so she can hear the hustle and bustle of the city. She could hear the usual stuff like cars, voices, and music in the distance. Only, there were other sounds, more malicious sounds. Gunshots, shouting, swearing, crashes.

“Friday, where am I?” Rory asks, her voice changed by her voice modulator. It doesn’t make her sound robotic or tinny, it just changes her accent. When she has the mask on, she sounds like any other American girl. She had also been told to talk like an American. What that was supposed to mean, she had no idea. She guessed she wouldn’t have a problem since she had never in her life said ‘fair dinkum’ or ‘crikey’. Friday stutters. Rory didn’t think an AI could stutter.

“Nowhere,” Friday replies.

Huh? Her panic spikes for a second.

“What do you mean?”

“We’re nowhere.”

“Okay, well we can’t be ‘nowhere’ so you must be malfunctioning from the fall or something-,” she cuts herself off. The rain creates a steady beat and Rory holds her breath. She slowly turns around and scans over the back of the roof. They were almost inconceivable, blended into the shadows. They were perfectly still and almost, almost, perfectly quiet. The only thing giving them away is their heartbeat. To Rory, it seems somewhat erratic. They should have been completely invisible to a normal human.

Rory was no normal human. She still couldn’t see them because of the heavy shadow cast on the wall but she knew that were there.

“Come on out, I know you’re there,” Rory calls out. She waits a second or two but they don’t move. Sighing, she pulls out the gun from the holster on her thigh. She doesn’t really intend to use it, just scare them a little so they’ll come out. She clicks the safety off. (She doesn’t think it needs the safety, she’s the only that can use it because of the fingerprint protection. Apparently, they don’t trust her with a gun.) She raises her arm and aims the gun directly at where they are standing.

“Alright, let’s go. Stop fucking around.” Rory waves the gun in a ‘come here’ motion. “Hurry up.”

They step out into the moonlight with their hands up. Rory gives them a once-over. It was a boy that looked around her age. He has black hair, that is stuck to his forehead from the rain, a black mask with white lenses, not unlike her own. He’s wearing a suit with a red and black color scheme and a utility belt around his waist. And, is that a cape? Rory giggles and it doesn’t go unnoticed by him.

“Why don’t we put the gun down and sort this out?” Cape guy says in a gentle tone. She isn’t picking up any threat from him, which is…unusual for someone with a cape on. She can smell some type of metal concealed in the utility belt and he obviously has some muscle about him.

“You answer my questions, and I won’t have to use it,” Rory says, getting the distinct feeling that she is coming off as a villain right now.

“I would feel a whole lot better if you put the gun away,” Cape guy says almost instantly.

“Will you answer my questions without the gun?” Rory asks. She adjusts her grip on the gun. She listens for his heartbeat again and it somehow sounds less erratic now.

So either this guy goes around finding people with guns on rooftops regularly or he’s so scared that he’s starting to shut down?

“Depends on what questions,” he says after a second. That’s fair. Rory wouldn’t want some rando to ask her anything. She puts the safety back on and holsters the gun. His shoulders relax ever so slightly. She looks him up and down one more time, giving her instincts a chance to sense danger but they don’t, so she turns around to look at the city.

“So, Cape Boy, you spend a lot of time on roofs?” Rory walks closer to the edge of the building. “Or is this a once-off?”

“Ca-Is that a serious question?” He decides to skip over Cape Boy. Rory sits on the concrete fence on the edge of the building and swings her legs over.

“You say that I’m meant to know, so I’m gonna ask a better question. Who are you?”

He stands there for a couple of seconds with his lips parted. Rory glances back and hums.

Uhm, error 404?

“Do you not know? Like, you have no idea?” Cape Guy accentuates his point by putting his hands in a cross and repeating the motion a couple of times.

“Why do you think I asked the question?” Rory tries to make it sound light, maybe flirty, but it comes out with a hint of annoyed sarcasm. At this rate, the gun will have to make another appearance. She needs answers and this dumbass, whoever he is, is not giving them to her.

“I’m Red Robin,” he says after overcoming his shock.

“Oh, snap,” she says absentmindedly. Red Robin? Should she know who that is? She doesn’t recognize it but then again she forgot Sam’s name a couple of times.

“What?” Cape Gu-Red Robin asks.

“I’m Redback. Snap,” she explains. From what little he gives away, Rory knows he doesn’t recognize her name either. That’s not uncommon, though. Redback has only become known to the wider intelligenece world in the last two years. Even then, it’s only the people who are searching for her after the airport in Germany. “Where am I?”

He frowns, properly. He doesn’t try to hide it. “You don’t know?”

No fucking shit Sherlock, that’s why I asked.

“Nope,” she says with one of the most innocent smiles she can muster but then she remembers he can’t see it, so she shakes her head. She doesn’t really like the mask. It serves a good purpose but sometimes it feels suffocating. Other times, she feels like she can’t get her point across without her face and it is quite possibly the most frustrating thing ever. She never wanted the mask, but Natasha and Tony had insisted that she get one for her suit to keep her identity a secret. Something about protecting her safety. She didn’t listen properly. Despite it being an annoyance, it has come in handy. In the aftermath of Germany, she had to go on the run. Prior to Germany, nobody outside of a small community had even heard of Redback, let alone Rory. So when word got out that Redback was an outlaw, Rory wasn’t and that made things considerably easier than it was for Steve or Sam. That meant that she spent a whole lot of time not even thinking about Redback lest she summon General Ross with a thought. Rory tried to keep as low a profile as she could and it worked. No one had any idea where she was. A whole two years of peace. Then Steve shows up at her door saying Wanda and Vision need her help, that’s when shit hit the fan. They hightailed it to Edinburgh where Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive were trying to get the mind stone.

The mind stone…Vision. Is that what that energy wave was? Wanda destroyed it?

Thanos needed all six stones.

But then it reversed. And then Bucky disappeared.

Rory swings her legs back over and stands abruptly, cutting off whatever Red Robin was saying. She swings back around to look at the city then back at the building. Specifically the dent in the roof. She stumbles forward, tripping over her own feet. She falls to her knees in the center of the dent and looks up. The rain has slowed to a drizzle and she can almost see the stars. Not the portal, or whatever it was that dropped her here. Red Robin had followed her over, watching her carefully.

“Are you alright?” he asks carefully. His body language screams worry and that only adds to swirl of emotions in Rory. Why would he worry about her? She just fell out of the sky and got up with no problem. Shouldn’t he be scared? That made her more confused than she already was. First of all, Friday claims that she’s ‘nowhere’. Second, there was the matter of getting to here. She just fell out of Wakanda and into some void. Third, the guy who was running the void didn’t have a face or a real body. Fourth, did Thanos really do it? Why else would Bucky disappear like that?

“We lost,” she mumbles quietly. No, no, no, no, no. How could we lose? We’re the Avengers, we don’t lose. Because what happens to the Earth, to the people. Losing wasn’t an option. That wasn’t the plan. She needed to get back. Get back to Wakanda, get back to the Avengers. She can help. She can do something, right?

You couldn’t do ‘something' when he killed Vision.

Red Robin had crouched down in front of her. “What was that?”

Rory lowered her head so she looked him in the eye. The events of the past couple of days flashed before her eyes. “We lost.”

“Lost? Lost what?” He sounds serious but in a soft way. Urgent, but not pushing.

“Everything.”

They stayed like that for what felt like hours. Rory kneeling in the crater and Red Robin crouching before her. Rory’s world came crashing down around her. Half of the universe was dead. And she was stuck in a city she didn’t know. It wasn’t like she could just catch a plane back to Wakanda. Nobody even knows how to get there. She would just have to wait for the others to collect her then. But they would be dealing with everything going on in Wakanda. They don’t have time to come and get her. That was a stupid idea. She would have to find them.

“Where am I?” she asks, her voice harder now. She had to get back to Wakanda to help the Avengers pick up the pieces.

If Red Robin was shocked about her sudden mood change or the fact she didn’t know where she was, he didn’t show it. “Gotham City.”

Rory racks her brain trying to remember her geography. Well, they were America at least. But…she had never heard of Gotham. She drags herself up slowly, Red Robin coming with her. She nods, despite not being any the wiser as to where she is. She shuffles numbly over to the edge of the building. She needs a plan. She had been told that multiple times. 'Don't go rushing into a situation without a plan, okay? You could have gotten hurt,' her superior officer at S.H.I.E.L.D had told her. She needs to think about this. Find out exactly where she is, then figure out how to find the Avengers.

“Are you okay?” Red Robin asks gently. He walked up beside her and is starting to move in front of her.

She nods.

“Are you sure? That wasn’t very convincing,” he says with a small smile. He’s moved completely in front of Rory now. Why would you move in front of someone walking towards the edge of a building? Oh. Right. This probably doesn’t look too good. She nods again.

“Of course, Cape boy,” she says. “I better be off now. Places to be, people to see.”

“Okay, I can help you down if you want,” he says.

“Nah, I’ve got this covered,” she taps him on the chest with the back of her hand. She sidesteps him and flicks her wrist out. Her webbing grips onto a building a couple of blocks over. “You have fun on the roof, though.”

She takes a running start and jumps off of the roof. Her webbing goes taught, and she swings away. At the top of the arc, she lets go and rotates, flipping mid-swing. She flicks her wrist out again and sticks to another building. She swings away, leaving a rather stunned Red Robin standing on a building by himself.

—

BATCHAT

Tim (12:24): guys.

Babs(12:24): what?

Dick (12:24): what? are you alright?

Tim (12:25): yeah i’m okay. but you’re not gonna believe what just happened.

Steph (12:25): what?

Jason (12:25): this better be good.

Tim (12:26): so i was on patrol when i saw something in the sky. i went to check it out and i saw someone falling. when i got there, she was perfectly fine. like she didn’t just create a CRATER in the roof. i decided to stay hidden. bc like what if she was dangerous? then she turns around and looks me straight in the eye.

Babs (12:27): wait. WHAT?

Dick (12:27): what

Steph (12:27): what