Chapter 25
It was Stark who gave them the first warning it had begun.
“Guys!” His voice was an urgent warning on their comms. “There are big holes in the sky that are looking eerily familiar right now!”
Ignoring the note of panic in his voice, Peggy looked up to the slate gray, misty skies above to find herself staring at a whole filled with a perfectly lush, green and beautiful landscape somewhere.
“What is that,” she whispered, softly, transfixed at the sight of it.
“Probably a different world,” Foster replied with pointed frankness.
“We all set on the ground,” Steve demanded from his position just below Peggy on the courtyard.
“We’re all set up here,” Foster assured him. “You guys covered, Bruce?”
“Everyone is good here,” Bruce assured in his dry rumble.
“Carters, how about you?”
Peggy looked to Sharon across the courtyard. She signaled with her thumb up. “We are set up here, Captain,” Peggy assured him.
“Romanoff and I are go. Stark, Jameson, any sign?”
Stark was quiet on the comms. Peggy frowned, looking upwards in the sky to see if she could see him. There was no sign of his flashy red and gold armor, but she could see Jake in the quinjet in the distance, hovering past the towers where everyone else was camped.
“No aerial yet, Cap, but we got SHIELD and RAF forces alert and waiting at your signal.”
There was a beat of silence before Steve confirmed. “Copy that. Keep your eyes peeled and your…”
“Cap!” Romanoff’s voice was sharp, causing Peggy to turn up towards the river where she could see the petite form of Romanoff. She was pointing in the distance to something on the water, something...shimmering.
“What the hell,” Sharon whispered.
“You guys seeing this,” Steve asked, clearly not believing what he was seeing himself.
“It’s a Svartálfar warship,” Thor explained, his deep, rumbling voice dark on the devices in their ears. “It has cloaking technology that allows it to mask itself. It’s likely been here since before we arrived.”
“What’s he want,” Darcy asked, softly and more than a bit afraid.
“This is the convergence, ground zero for it,” Selvig popped in. “From here, all those portals will align and he can reach every one of those realms.”
“With the Aether in hand, he can change the reality of the Nine Realms to whatever he wants,” Thor added. “He can remove the light and leave the entire universe in darkness.”
As they spoke, the ship began to move.
“Uhhh, guys,” Romanoff called, already moving further upfield. “That thing is coming towards us and it is huge!”
The shimmer in front of them began to shiver and ripple. In the murky gray waters of the Thames, Peggy could see something cutting through the currents, the waters churning as above it, what looked like a floating skyscraper began to hover towards them.
“We’re on the move,” Steve yelped, as Peggy saw him running from the courtyard and towards the building behind him. She moved to do the same. It was just as well, as the giant tower had made it to the banks of the river, dragging through the earth, concrete and wrought iron, like a plow through a field. It continued up the courtyard of the university campus, tearing through brick, stone and sod, peeling up pavers in the ground as if they were strips of bark, crushing the large statue of King George II in its wake. Like a giant sailing ship cutting through the waves, it moved towards the center of campus, towering over them all, an alien construct of cold, black and silver metal, taller than any of the venerable Georgian buildings around it. It finally came to a stop, tall and terrible, just between the two towers of King William and Queen Mary, hulking above them. In its wake, a great, dark furrow of dark, rich earth lay like an open wound in what had once been pristine grass, brick and concrete.
“Everyone okay,” Steve barked? A chorus of assurances followed, as Peggy loosed a relieved breath.
“Peggy?” There was a slight edge as he snapped her name.
“Here, am fine, Captain. Just...not believing what I am seeing.”
“You and me both,” Banner muttered on his end of the line.
Steve ignored their banter. “You all know your jobs. Keep eyes out for anything moving towards you. Thor?”
“Malekith is moving down. I will go to meet him.” The Asgardian Prince spoke with the sort of threat that said that he had a debt that he very much wished to be paid against this creature. This Malekith had taken the life of his mother and his brother. Peggy hoped that vengeance wouldn’t blind him so much as to be ineffective.
“Keep him occupied while we handle the rest,” Steve ordered. “Stark?”
Again, there was radio silence on the other end. Heart in her throat, Peggy looked to the skies, wondering just what had happened to Tony. Above them, at various heights and in various places Peggy could see portals of all sizes appear, like little windows into other worlds. Had the stakes not been so dire, she would have found it beautiful, fascinating, to see an entire universe of people out there. Stark had warned them about opening wormholes, however, and was wary himself. He couldn’t have gone through one of those by accident, could he?
“Jameson, do you see Stark?”
There was a brief pause, Peggy imagined that Jake was looking for Stark’s familiar form in the quickly crowded skies. “I don’t see him. Maybe he’s having some sort of technical issues and his comms are down.”
Unusual for Tony Stark to have anything as simple as that happen to him. Steve took it in stride, easily maneuvering around the situation. “Jameson, have air forces waiting to take out that ship if necessary and any of its friends coming in with reinforcements. Be careful of those wormholes.”
“Got it,” Jake replied. From the direction where the quinjet hovered, Peggy could see the singular form and flowing red cape of Thor as he swooped into the upper courtyard.
“Eyes up, people,” Steve barked. Peggy had her phone in one hand, the app Darcy had created.. Around the leg of her serviceable trousers she had wrapped her thigh holster, uncaring as to how ridiculous it looked, as it was easier to get to her weapon, ready if she needed. She stood, wary, watching the proceedings carefully.
“Remember,” Steve cautioned them all. “We only have to keep them preoccupied for ten minutes. Thor will keep the main guy distracted, the rest of you, do what you can.”
The crackle of lightning in the air told them all that it had begun.
Peggy couldn’t precisely see what Thor was up to where he was at, but within seconds a body went flying through the air, knocking into one of the elegant columns of the Queen Mary building. It crumbled as whatever it is shot through several like a cannonball, as Mjölnir went flying back to its owner.
“Guys,” Betty called over the comms. “They are heading this way!”
Steve was already redirecting them. “Romanoff, Sharon, Peggy, we need to get up there and distract some of them away.”
“On it,” Peggy replied, breathlessly, at the same time as Sharon. From across the ruined lawn she could see the bright head of her niece making a break for the action further in. Peggy rushed to follow suit.
“Careful,” Foster yelped. “I’m giving these things a try!”
Even as Peggy came into view of what was happening behind the massive ship, she could see a group of them making their way to where Betty, Bruce, and the two interns were hiding, near the darkened and weather worn stone of one of the buildings. The creatures looked vaguely humanoid, with long, silvery hair plaited down their backs in intricate braids. Their silver armor was uniform, and as one turned to scan the courtyard she could see the plain, lifeless masks they wore, like the smooth, perfect face of a doll. It was frankly more than a bit terrifying.
“Jane,” Darcy yelped over the comms.
“Hang on,” she called back, as all of the sudden one of the devices closest to where Foster and Selvig were hiding lit up, blue bands of energy opening. In the blink of an eye, a quarter of the forces on the ground disappeared.
“It works,” Jane crowed, happily.
“How did you do that,” Darcy demanded.
“When the gravitational fields interact with weak spots between worlds, creating…”
“Enough with the physics lesson, Jane,” Banner cut in. “We got incoming.”
Someone must have hit something, as one of the other devices went off, taking with it another swath of the strange creatures...and, as it turned out, Banner, Betty, Ian and Darcy as well.
“Bloody hell,” Peggy swore, her heart in her throat.
“Sorry,” Foster yelped. “They’re fine, they’re...just a few blocks over. They are all on planet!”
The comms crackled, briefly, as Betty’s voice piped up breathless on the other end of the line. “We are good, though...maybe a bit more tense.”
Peggy bit her lip, fearing what that meant for Banner.
“Foster, we need to get them off planet, if possible!” Steve spoke over the comms, but he had come up behind Peggy, assessing the situation.
“I’m trying, but till the convergence hits its peak I have no control over that.”
“Then we need to keep them busy,” He muttered, glancing to where Thor was handling this Malekith. “I’m going to give him backup. Sharon, Romanoff, get over here with Peggy, do what you can to keep the rest penned in.”
Across the courtyard, Thor skid across the ground, dodging some magical, dark crimson substance, so thick it was almost black. Whatever it was, Peggy wasn’t sure she wanted Steve near it.
“Be safe,” she urged, feeling horribly as if this were that fortress in Austria all over again.
For a brief heartbeat of a moment, he seemed to understand, a soft look flickering, before it was gone again. “You got your orders, Carter.”
“Of course, Captain,” she replied, phone in hand. She watched as he ran off, before turning her attention to these so-called elves. A force of them were coming towards her, as she carefully took several steps back and thumbed the button on her phone. The closest device to her went off, as the invasion troops disappeared.
“I got some,” she called over the comms.
“Me too,” Romanoff yelped back, echoed by Sharon.
“Any idea where they are going?” Peggy looked up towards the skies. Even as she did, more portals began to appear, more openings into other worlds.
“I got some idea,” Darcy yelled. “They are coming after us!”
Peggy winced. “Where are you?”
“Other side of campus. Betty and Bruce split from us, she was afraid he might turn green and get violent.”
“Banner changing might not be the worst plan right now,” Peggy muttered, thumbing her phone as a group of five came charging across the lawn at her. “Foster, where are you at?”
“Painted Hall...gallery? I don’t know, the place with the fancy pictures in it.” She sounded breathless. “We got a crowd on our tail and we are making a run for it!”
“Who is closer to help cover Foster?”
“I’m on it,” Sharon replied. Peggy could see her across the courtyard moving towards where Foster and Selvig were at, just narrowly avoiding a ricochet off Steve’s shield as it bounced past her. For his part, Steve and Thor were penning in the strange alien leader, but at every point they got the advantage, Malekith would unleash the strange fluid. In frustration, Thor simply launched himself at him.
And then they both disappeared...into the ground.
Steve, who had caught his shield, stopped at the sudden vanishing of Thor and Malekith, staring at the spot, then up at the portals over the skies, then over to Peggy first, then Romanoff across the way. “What the…”
“They disappeared,” Romanoff murmured, incredulously. “I am not the only one who saw that, right?”
“No, I did too.” Peggy frowned, looking around. Already, the courtyard was a shambles. The stone columns were broken, brickwork and mortar lay everywhere, and that wasn’t accounting for the giant tower of a spaceship in the middle of all of it with the long trough of tilled sod, concrete and brickwork behind it.
“Captain Rogers, we got incoming,” Jake finally cut in. “RAF fighters coming in from the north. They are heading right for those wormholes.”
“Get them to move around. We don’t know where those go.”
“I’m trying,” Jake assured him, though it didn’t sound as if he was succeeding.
“Stark, come in,” Steve snapped, frustration and a hint of worry creeping in.
Overhead, Peggy could see no sign of Stark, but there were two fighter jets incoming, flying low over the city and towards the river. “Jake…”
Too late, the jets dove headlong into one of the wormholes, heedlessly, or perhaps just not aware from their altitude.
“Shit,” Jake swore, loudly. “Um...I’m scanning...maybe they will come back out somewhere close by?”
Steve squinted into the nearest portal, one of a lush, green planet somewhere, filled with thick forests and low mountains. “Keep everyone else out till we get this under control. We can’t risk another group of fighters getting taken out. If they can’t see it, they could all disappear and we won’t be able to get to them.”
“I’ll see what I can do!”
Blessedly, in the blink of an eye, the missing fighters appear again in a different part of the sky, as if they had skipped from one space to the other. Jake breathed a sigh of relief.
“Foster, we have things popping in and out of existence randomly now,” Steve barked.
“Yeah, the weak spots in the barriers of reality, the convergence is just creating random spots where you can travel from one world to another as all of reality begins to touch.”
This wasn’t precisely the sort of thing Peggy had expected to face when she had hopped a plane to London. “So, Thor, will he be able to make his way back?”
“Maybe,” she replied, before yelping, as Sharon could be heard urging her and Selvig to run.
It was just at that moment that at least one of the missing pair of Thor and Malekith made an appearance. Sadly, it wasn't the one that Peggy had been hoping for.
“Rogers,” Romanoff barked, pointing from her position on the other side of the courtyard to where the dark elf leader had tumbled, seemingly out of nowhere. He stood, shaken from wherever he had fallen from, but undeterred in his purpose. Malekith was a strange sight to behold, Peggy couldn’t deny that, with his silver-white hair and his skin darkened to nearly black, one side of it scarred and looking decidedly charred, as if he had been set under a broiler. His dark, gleaming eyes were unearthly, and they regarded Peggy, Steve and Romanoff with as much indifference as one would give to a bit of trash on the ground, as if they were hardly worth the trouble. He looked up to the skies, to the slowly aligning portals, all stacked high overhead.
“Do you think I should do the right thing and try to reason with him,” Steve asked, uncertain.
Romanoff from her end of the grounds whipped her head to stare at him. “Does he look like someone who can be reasoned with?”
“Yeah,” he conceded, softly. “I didn’t think so.”
“Can we take him out,” Peggy asked. They didn’t know where Thor was or why he hadn’t returned with the creature.
Malekith began to move. As he did, so did the wind.
“Banner, where you at?” Steve eyed the growing darkness warily.
The winds picked up precipitously, picking up dust and debris as they waited for his strained reply. “I...uh, we are maybe three blocks away?”
“You think you can bring the big fellow out?”
Banner was a long moment answering as a cyclone formed around Malekith, a cloud beginning to churn about him. “You sure you want that around any of this?”
“Rogers,” Romanoff practically screamed to be heard over the growing howl. “We can’t stand this wind strength!”
“Get the hell out of here,” he ordered, just as he grabbed Peggy’s arm. With the full force of his super soldier strength, he tossed her, without bothering to ask or even warn her, shoving her away from the force of Malekith’s own self-created storm, just as sparks of red glittered from somewhere, turning the entire thing into a hideous maelstrom with Malekith in its center. That was all the more Peggy saw before she went flying, sprawling into the stone of the nearest building, her cheek and jaw connecting painfully as she yelped. She stumbled, slumping to the ground, rolling over to see what was happening beyond.
In the skies above, one of the portals, the one of a lush, green land, had opened so wide, it looked as if it would swallow the whole of the campus. It hovered over the Svartálfar ship, standing erect in the middle of everything, the winds of Malekith’s making now spinning up its sides, swallowing it up. The creature was lost from view, now somewhere in the heart of it, as they all stood by, unclear as to what to do.
“We’re too late,” Foster muttered, as thin, gossamer strands of whatever substance Malekith was wielding began to twist off from the center of the vortex, reaching up through the sky to the various portals. The dim, weak sunlight caught in the autumn gray clouds gilded the scene in a sickly sepia as Peggy watched in fascination and vague horror.
“Foster...what can we do?”
“I don’t know...I don’t…” Her voice shook with uncertainty.
Out of nowhere, an all too familiar, animalistic roar sounded.
Peggy could see Steve turn to it. “Ross?”
Betty didn’t answer. Rather, the Hulk simply arrived, his roared displeasure announcing him across the damaged campus. Betty held on to his thick neck as if her life depended on it, her eyes squeezed shut, her face buried in his shoulder. The Hulk stopped only long enough for her to slide down his back and land to the ground shakily, turning to watch her as she did.
“You needed the big guy,” she gasped, half scared out of her wits. “Here he is!”
“I need Hulk through that cyclone and to Malekith!”
“Wait!” It was Thor’s voice on the comms now, loud and commanding. “Have him take me with him.”
Somehow, Thor had made it back. Peggy looked for him in the skies, but couldn't see him, though that didn't mean much when he could use his magic hammer to fly. Even still, she wasn't particularly convinced that Thor's request was a good idea. Hulk at his best was near unmanageable, listening really only to Betty or Steve, and only if he wanted to. As it was, he was already primed to rush into the madness. Surprisingly, however, he did wait at Betty’s urging, turning in the direction where Thor came sprinting from carrying four of the devices that Selvig and Stark had worked on under his mail-covered arms.
“My friend, think you can carry me through all that to get to Malekith?”
Hulk paused only long enough to look at the vortex with what Peggy could assume was a calculating gaze for the creature, before turning back to Thor with a pleased, nearly feral grin. Without warning, he wrapped a large, beefy green arm around Thor, snatching the god of thunder to his side as if he were a stuffed toy, and bounded happily across the boggy, wet grounds towards the giant, towering ship with its mass of dark, blood red and black substance crawling through the convergence. Without hesitation Hulk ran inside the cyclone, as both he and Thor were soon swallowed.
“Now what,” Steve asked, looking for Foster. As luck would have it, she, Selvig and Sharon all came from the same direction as Thor had come, all looking blown and breathless, but otherwise no worse for wear.
“I’m on it,” Foster responded, her eyes on her phone, gaze flickering from it towards the churning mass. “He’s inside with four of those devices. I am guessing he’s going to put them somewhere where I can activate them and move Malekith off planet.”
All they could do was stand and watch. Peggy picked herself up off the ground, rubbing her now bruised jaw, moving to climb across debris to where Steve stood, his gaze fixed on the swirl of crimson. She thought she could hear the Hulk howl, angrily from inside of it.
“I’ve got one,” Foster called, fiercely. Sure enough, when Peggy looked to her own phone in hand, one of the devices was signaling. Foster activated it as it soon disappeared off the screen. Another device followed, also activated by Foster, but still, the almost liquid, red energy coalesced and turned.
“Foster,” Steve asked, trepidation clear in his voice.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, worriedly “I don’t…”
“Look up there,” Sharon snapped. On instinct, they all looked up to the skies. Streaking overhead was a singular object, coming home to find its owner, crackling with all the lightening that Thor had at his command. It flew inside the red storm, lightening flashing through the red haze, as on her phone Peggy could see another device activate.
As suddenly as the cyclone had formed, it dropped, as the figure of Malekith shot backwards, pinned to the ship he had arrived in, impaled on one of the devices. Without hesitating, Foster hit the button as the menacing dark elf disappeared, taking his strange storm and a part of his towering ship with him.
And just like that, it was over. The winds died. Even the spinning, golden weather vane on the top of the dome of one of the towers finally slowed, stopping its frantic twirling. When the dust settled, Malekith was indeed gone, but Thor lay crumpled on the ground, his red cape covering his still figure. Sitting dazed on the ground beside him was the Hulk, hardly the worse for wear.
“Thor,” Foster unleashed a sharp cry, darting from out of the shelter of the court building she had been hiding in, picking her way around toppled stone columns and scattered debris.
“Jane,” Sharon hissed, rushing to move after her and hold her back from rushing the field. Sharon had good reason. A groan sounded from the Svartálfar ship as it began to teeter dangerously, settling and leaning towards the main part of campus. Foster's device may have sent Malekith somewhere, God knows where, but it also taken a portion of the ship's structure with it, and it now threatened to fall right where Thor now lay, quiescent and unmoving, which in and of itself was terrifying enough.
“Thor,” Foster wailed, trying to shake off Sharon's immoveable hold on her. That this alien god, who could wield lightening and take on the Hulk hand to hand was still unconscious on the ground was a terrifying thought, but one Peggy didn't have much of a chance to ponder. The structure at the bottom of the ship began to screech and buckle, as high above pieces of the ship began to shake off and fall, like rain, to the ground. The entire structure shivered as slowly it began to pitch itself forward, with none of them able to stop it. With his ridiculously fast reflexes, Steve grabbed Peggy and pulled her away, protectively, his shield up to cover them both as they hunkered next to one of the buildings. Peggy didn’t argue as she huddled close to him, feeling the ground tremble under them, fearing that the fall of the giant ship alone could send what was left of the portico tumbling onto their vibranium covered heads. Hidden as she was, Peggy could hear rather than see, Hulk’s defiant cry, drowning out the panicked voices shouting over the comms. And then…
“Stark,” Betty gasped, disbelieving. Shocked, Steve looked down to Peggy in utter surprise, the same as her own, as they both uncurled enough to peek over the protective barrier of his shield. Sure enough, the ship hovered at a broken angle in mid-air, held up by the sheer strength of Hulk on the ground, keeping it protectively off of Thor, but up on high, near the top, was Stark, his suit looking so minuscule next to it. The glare of blue-white light from his feet indicated that he was pushing against it with all of his power.
“Sorry for missing the party, guys! Had a massive malfunction with the new suit, had to do a reboot. JARVIS, you got full thrusters on, buddy?”
Whatever JARVIS’ answer, Peggy didn’t hear it. Frankly, she was too frightened, seeing the pair of them struggle with the massive ship, as it sank, further to earth, pulled towards the ground by gravity despite their best efforts. It threatened to crush Thor, Hulk, and the campus in a single go.
“See if we can push this over to the river,” Stark called. Peggy wasn’t sure Hulk still had the comm device in his ear, but he seemed to understand nonetheless, nodding his head as his fingers dug into metal and his bare feet sank into the soft ground. “Ready? Three...two...one!”
Together, they pushed and strained against an immovable object that didn’t seem to want to give. They could hear Stark’s shouts as he strained against it, Hulks roar from below, and for a horrific second, Peggy thought she may actually see the end of all of them as the ship sank inexorably on. And just when it threatened to overwhelm them…
It disappeared.
Stark went flying forward and up with the sheer force he was exerting, shooting off like a champagne cork into the sky before righting himself several hundred feet above them, narrowly avoiding one of the portals. Hulk was pushing so hard that when the ship was no longer there he pitched forward, planting face first into the soft mud, creating a new trench with the force he spent forward. He was buried up to his shoulders in the muck, something he didn’t seem to like overly much as he pulled himself out, screaming defiantly at the indignity of it all.
The ship was gone.
“Where did it go,” Steve muttered, pushing himself up and away from her as Peggy too straightened. Out from under the crumbling portico they looked up into the sky. The portals were all still there, but diminishing, as the scenes from other worlds slowly faded away. The drizzling, gray clouds of the morning were starting to make way to golden sunlight. Masonry and concrete were scattered about the mud of the courtyard, a deep furrow still scarred the landscape between them and the Thames, but the strange, alien ship and its leader were now gone.
“Thor,” Foster cried, finally pulling herself free from Sharon's stranglehold on her and rushing across the mud, throwing herself at Thor's prone body. By contrast, Betty was far more carefully moving towards a still agitated Hulk, speaking in low tones, as Stark hovered overhead, perhaps to swoop in and assist Betty if needed.
Carefully the others seemed to appear. Selvig made his own way gingerly through the mud to where Foster knelt over Thor, Sharon trailing behind. Romanoff kept an eye on Hulk, who seemed to be calming down somewhat and miraculously listening to Betty. Most relieving for Peggy, at least, was that from the far margin of the campus came Darcy and Ian, alive, breathless, and relieved to see everyone else there too...so relieved that Darcy grabbed the poor boy and kissed him on the spot, frantically.
Well...it was an understandable reaction, Peggy supposed, too happy to see them both well and unharmed to bother being anything but relieved.
“Everyone alive,” Steve asked, already making his way to where Thor still lay with Foster sprawled over his chest. He had managed to move his arms and twist his head, so it was clear he was still alive.
“Seems to be,” Peggy took a quick headcount, noting even Jake up in the quinjet above. “And it turns out we didn’t need the cavalry after all.”
“We got lucky,” Steve cautioned, despite his obvious relief.
They had gotten lucky, Peggy admitted, glancing up at Stark as he watched the Hulk slowly morph into Bruce once more. Even with a man down, they had managed to prevail.