Chapter 35
“Wait, wait, wait.”
Clint shook his head hard, not liking Bucky’s announcement at all. “Didn’t we wipe out Hydra? Are you saying they are going to rise up again in the future?!”
“Looks like you didn’t wipe out all their roots completely.” Castiel pointed out grimly, as he eyed the future Hydra agent cautiously. “They had risen up again in Sydney’s era, but she and her team took them down once more. And every time they rise, one of our descendants always gets in their way.”
The man was watching them all with furrowed brows, listening to their conclusions silently.
“A professional Hydra hitman, goes back in time to our era, taking advantage of the fact that we still think that Hydra is done.” Steve supplied as he watched Bucky from the corner of his eyes carefully. “Tries to confuse us and separate us. Taking each one of us down to Incapacitate us. Disorient us. And while we are distracted and paralyzed, you move on to the next phase of your plan.”
“To kill us?” Thor asked carefully.
“No, they know that our deaths will not just pass by easily, it will cause many problems and the appearance of others who will try to fill our place and avenge us. So, the next phase was to replace us. Or to replace me to be exact.” Steve clenched his fists, as anger tightened his face. “With my long history, they decided that I would work for them, and lead everyone to hell, without anyone knowing I would be a secret Hydra agent.”
“And how were they going to convince you to do that?” Dean raised an eyebrow, looking indignant by the mere idea. “Convince Captain America to be Captain Hydra? That’s just as realistic as a flying pig crashing down on us right now pooping bacon and pork chops.”
“The one who will secretly work for Hydra won’t be Steve, Dean.” Castiel was the one to answer him, a grimace on his face, feeling disgusted by that plan and the thought of it. “It would have been that robotic Steve that he brought with him. The one who ran havoc in the medical examination room earlier.”
“Oh. So that’s why he brought that thing with him.” Rhodey narrowed his eyes with a frown, not sure how he felt about that.
“That’s right.” Steve confirmed Castiel’s words with a nod, “Before returning to his time, he was going to get rid of me one way or another and replace me with that robot. Surely, no one would have noticed any difference. Even if that replacement made any mistakes, people would just say it's because of the traumatic experience I went through with the paralysis and all that.”
“Well, I surely would notice that something is wrong with you.” Tony huffed indignantly, taking that as a personal insult. As if he wouldn’t notice that his husband was replaced by a fucking robot no matter how identical it was to him. “Hell, everyone here knows you enough to notice that something will be wrong!”
“If his plan went accordingly, we wouldn’t have been here anymore, Tony.” Sam pursed his lips in displeasure, thinking that the plan was actually rather horribly genius if he had to admit it.
“He was going to kill us all!” Erik growled, body trembling from the force of his barely-held-back rage. “And he was starting with me back then!”
“Well, aren’t you a team of geniuses?” The man growled in displeasure, eyeing them all. “We were right, you really need to die all of you. You are a danger to us all.” Then he leaned towards them, eyes glinting manically. “But that didn’t mean you will win.”
“You really think so?” Tony raised an eyebrow at him, challenging him.
“Like I said before,” he waved his arms in the air, gesturing wildly. “The entire timeline is in our hands! History is-“
“What if you lose that?” Tony cut him off firmly.
“How would we lose that?” The man furrowed his brows, looking at Tony with suspicion.
“You coming here. In this era. Trying to end us. That was alarming enough to let us know that the Time Ship SHIELD is building will only cause a disaster that will lead to a whole lot of trouble and that there are still Hydra agents hiding among us, waiting for that opportunity. Do you really think they will keep building it after knowing all that?” Tony gave him a cold, seething look.
“What do you mean?!” The man shouted, his eyes widening in alarm.
“He means that the Time Ship we were trying to build was just an idea we got from another future visitor. We started to build it to be ahead of our time.” Fury was the one to answer in a very firm voice from the speakers. “But after what happened with you, we will destroy everything we have about that Time ship. All the designs and information we have, are gone. Meaning that we will not build it. Not in the coming decades at least. SHIELD was not meant to build that ship anyway. It was the design of someone else. It was Sydney’s father. So, you will not be able to get your hands on it if we don’t build it. You lose your most powerful weapon. Your grip on history.”
“Which means, our history is still ours. No one can tamper with it.” Natasha finished firmly, raising her gun towards the man’s face. Everyone followed her lead, and soon everyone was aiming their weapon towards his face, ready to end it all.
Thick silence fell on the room, as the man stood frozen in his place, no expression on his face, looking like an ice sculpture.
“It’s a genius plan.” He finally broke the silence, looking entirely too calm. “But it will fail.”
“And how is that?!” Bucky shouted, his grip on his machine gun tightening.
“Because I am returning to my time with this Time ship.” He announced with a manic smirk, pressing a button in his belt as he said that.
Even though the experts made sure they had cut off any source of power inside the ship, its machines suddenly started to work with the press of that button. The ship was activated, its front starting to glow, preparing to attack.
“Shit! There was a hidden source of power in there!” Fury shouted through the speakers, getting very nervous from this twist of events.
“Stop him, Everyone!” Steve shouted to his team urgently, eyeing the ship as it started to form its first fireball. “Stop him before he gets inside that ship and get away! No matter what it takes!”
“I am glad you said that.” Erik’s eyes gleamed viciously, waiting for that sentence for way too long now, as he raised his hands, causing all the metallic furniture in the room to rise from the floor in a very terrifying scene.
Everyone in the team moved at the same time to both defect the ship’s fireballs and to attack the Hydra agent, half of them focused on the ship, trying to destroy it before it could destroy them, while the others focused on the man.
That wasn’t easy, because no matter how many times they shot, attacked, and threw huge metallic furniture at him, nothing managed to hit him. He would just disappear and appear somewhere else in the room, completely dodging all their attacks. They could have tried much harder, if not for the Time ship throwing deadly fireballs at their faces.
“What the hell is this?! Why isn’t anything hitting him?! How does he keep disappearing like that?!” Dean yelled in frustration, as he kept shooting at the man vigorously, while Castiel stood behind him, protecting his back from the fireballs.
“His belt! It has a teleportation device in it!” Tony shouted back, equally frustrated as he also shot at the man with a gun he borrowed from his husband, he hid behind Steve’s back, and he protected them both from the fireballs with his shield. He didn’t even have a proper moment to reunite with his husband like normal human beings.
“That will make it impossible to hit him if that keeps going!” Steve gritted his teeth in annoyance, watching the man dodging Natasha’s bullets, and her irritated yells. “He will reach his Time ship if we don’t bring him down now!”
“Then I will just collapse the room on top of his damned head!” came Erik’s very creative suggestion, as he tore apart a metallic closet into metallic spears, throwing them all at the man while using one metallic part as a floating shield to protect himself from the fireballs.
“You will kill us all in the process!” Sam exclaimed indignantly, as he dodged from one of Erik’s metal spears before it impaled him on its way to their enemy.
“Then get out of my way all of you! Don’t expect me to hold back after what that fucker did!” Erik growled, pure, homicidal rage itched on his face, a clear sign that said he really wasn’t planning to stop until he turned the man into a shish kebab.
The man was currently laughing manically as he frustrated them all by appearing and disappearing randomly, dodging all the attacks, with nothing even grazing him. They were all already angry, now they were just downright annoyed.
“You will never be able to stop me! My teleportation device was made specifically to dodge the shots of the most professional, expert snipers! You have no chance as long as I am in full focus!” The hydra agent announced manically, as he appeared by the Time ship’s door, getting ready to climb into it. “You lost, Avengers! I will be back again to bring you all down for good! I will not fail the-“
“Where do you think yourself going?”
The man’s body shook violently as that sentence resonated inside his mind, shaking his entire being, feeling as if his brain trembled in his skull.
He raised his eyes in panic as he stared at the open door of the room, where Charles Xavier stood, an ice-cold rage itched on his face as he stared directly at him, burning him with his eyes, staring right through his mind quite literally.
“No.” the man breathed out in utter fear when his eyes landed on him, his hand reaching fast towards the device by his ear that was designed to stop Charles’ powers, but his hand froze in mid-air. Actually, his entire body was frozen. He lost all control of his body. It was too late, Charles had already taken control.
“Charles?! What are you doing here?!” Erik shouted in pure panic when he saw Charles in the battle, where random fireballs were being shot around, as everyone struggled to keep the balls from hitting anyone. The ones who were shooting at the man also stopped and stared at Charles in panic.
Charles wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to wait for them in Fury’s office. However, they now realized it was stupid of them to think Charles would actually take an order from anyone, even his own husband.
“Don’t mind me, Erik, everyone,” Charles called back to them without removing his eyes from the man, his cold expression not changing. “You focus on the time ship. Leave that man to me.”
They were reluctant to do that, but Steve took one look at Charles’ expression and decided to not question it.
“Everyone! Focus on bringing down that ship! Don’t let anything reach Charles!” Steve shouted his order while throwing his shield with all his might towards the ship.
“You focus on the ship,” Erik growled as he flattened his metal spears into metal shields, surrounding Charles with them from every direction. “Leave Charles to me.”
Charles wasn’t focusing on anything else, as he made his way calmly towards the frozen man, who was currently unable to do anything except stare in fear at Charles’ face.
There was a reason why Future Hydra chose this specific year and time to come and get rid of the Avengers. Because it was supposed to be the time when Charles Xavier wasn’t in the country. He was supposed to be in England, away and unaware of all of this. He was supposed to come back after the mission was already done, fall into despair after his husband’s and students’ demise, and never rise again. To never let his descendants be born as well. That was the plan.
He had a specific order. To never cross paths with Charles Xavier. He was the only one that no precautions could be used against him. Even the device that was made to stop his powers was no guarantee to stop him if he really, really wanted to infiltrate his mind, like right now.
His orders were clear. If he faced Charles Xavier, he already lost.
“Did you really think you would get away this easily after what you did?” Charles titled his head to the side as he stood before the man, not caring that he was much larger, much bigger than he was and if he lost control over him, it would be very easy to get killed by him from how close he was, but he had no fear. He wasn’t planning to lose control over him. “After what you did to my home? My family? My husband? My students?”
“Stop. Please.” The man croaked out, his knees weakened as he crumbled, falling on them on the ground, feeling Charles’ eyes burn into him from above, as his mind was being torn apart from the inside out. All the doors in his mind were being forced open, leaking memories, thoughts, and traumas everywhere, making it impossible for him to focus or even move.
“You don’t deserve mercy.” Charles stared down at him, looking like he wasn’t planning to focus on anything else around him. Not his friends attacking the ship, or his husband protecting him from the fireballs. He only focused on tearing that man’s mind to pieces.
He leaned towards the man, a cold, sharp look on his face as his eyes poured into him, “I have a rule. Anyone who harms my family. My students. Will be the last thing they will ever do. And I am a man of my word.”
Blood trickled from the man’s nose as his brain was turning into mush under Charles’ vicious attack as he ripped everything inside. Tore it apart. Leaving nothing untouched. He didn’t even notice or care when the top of the ship was ripped apart by a dual attack from Thor and Castiel, who split the ship into two halves, rendering it useless.
With the last bit of fight inside the man, he let out a pained, manic scream as he shot to his feet, about to snap Charles’ neck, and before even touching him, a nice long metal spear pierced him from the side of his neck all the way to the other side.
“As if I would let you lay a hand on him with me here.” A very satisfied Erik grinned with a glint in his eyes at his perfect hit, perfectly happy to have the killing shot.
The man crumbled to the floor, to die by Charles’s feet, who just stood over him, watching the blood pool around him, aware of the sound of the Time ship following its owner, falling to the ground, destroyed to pieces by the hands of the rest of the team.
Everyone stopped, taking in the scene as everything quieted down all of a sudden. No one actually believes that it was done. The danger was done. They could breathe now. They can calm down.
All eyes turned towards the fallen body of the future hydra agent, who no one bothered to even ask for his name. He didn’t deserve to be remembered by his name anyway.
“Like I said,” Charles spoke to the dead body by his feet of a man dying in an era far away from his own, a hollow feeling filling him, along with a sense of satisfaction. He didn’t feel sadness or pity. He felt nothing. Maybe Erik did rub off on him during their long years together. “This will be the last thing you will ever do.”