When the Party's Over
Breathe In
Breathe Out
Breathe In
Breathe Out
It is as if the entire world has all come together to such a simple task. Breathing. You are one of the most capable people on the planet, and yet here you are, having your entire being surrounded and focusing on something newborn babies can do automatically. This isn’t without due cause though.
The sounds around you are deafening. At least they appear to be. You cannot truly focus on the sounds of people yelling or large amounts of water crashing down on itself when your heart is beating as fast as it is. You should be in pain. It’s in your right leg, your left shoulder, your torso, and a line across your back you know will bruise ugly. But you don’t feel it. You are bleeding out. You will die soon if left untreated, but you need to focus on running.
Wait, you’re running? Oh. That’s good. They are coming for you. They are all coming for you. Hopefully, some of them (the right ones) do. Why would he betray you like this?
Betrayal.
You had a plan, and he knew how criti- No, not important right now. Survival. You need to survive. How will they survive if you don’t? You are good at survival. You did it all your overstayed life.
You see an arrow pass your head. So they are coming after you? Ducking behind a tree, you look behind you to see Clint running back to the quinjet. A quinjet landed? You must have lost a lot of blood if you could not even hear a quinjet land behind you. After a minute, the quinjet takes off and you sigh a breath of relief. Turning fully around, you watch as your plan flies off, but at least they have him.
Him, Bucky.
You crawl under a cracked garage door that was abandoned in the chaos. The squeeze is difficult as you try not to dislodge the arrow from before stuck in your leg. At least you had managed to snap the exposed part in half before meeting up with Bucky. Why did he shoot you? You crawl up the nearby stairs without even trying to survey the area you are in. This is foolish, you know, but as long as your coworkers aren’t in here, that is all that matters. If anyone else is in here, you can just kill them.
You limp over to one of the partly broken windows. The adrenaline is wearing off and you are really starting to feel the impact of that shield from earlier and the bullet wound. Your vision is going dark and you can feel yourself starting to go under. Fuck. You forgot to take the suppressants. Bucky’s going to be so mad. Bucky? Oh god. Bucky.
Bucky left you. Bucky doesn’t like you. Alpha doesn’t like you. Alpha left you. You are alone and are going to die. You are dropping. You grab the window to stabilize yourself but it does you no good. You slowly slide down to the floor and crawl back to make sure you can still see out of it.
You smile. Even though you are in pain and alone, you succeeded. You smile as you pass out, your middle finger extended. The last thing you see is the beautiful sight of 3 helicarriers crashing into the ground and the Potomac River off in the distance. You did that.
Are you too broken to be fixed? Most likely
The day was shining outside and it gave you an optimism you have not felt in a while. Today was your day and no one was going to stop you.
You had gotten off of work early today to go home and get ready for the special day. You worked at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, working with all the wonderful animals that lived there. Animals were less predictable than humans and you could watch them without having the analyze their every move. You were there as a cashier though, because without a degree, becoming a zookeeper was quite difficult, and you did not even have an education of any kind, much less a degree. Your fascination was with aquatic mammals, especially the platypus. The only platypus in the nation was in the San Diego Zoo, but as hard as it was to get this job, you were not willing to risk it.
Luckily, your commute to work was only a walk thanks to you living in Fordham Heights. You lived in a small studio off of Morris Ave. and although it was small, the cheap rent made it worth it. Still, though, you had a night job as a cashier for a local convenience store 3 nights a week to make rent and have enough to live off of.
As you walked into your building, you noticed the usual smell of drugs wafting throughout the entire building was missing. To most people, this would be a great thing, but you knew the smell came from the beta underneath you. While most people would simply glance over at him, call him an addict, and leave as his mates did, you choose to talk to him. Socialization was important and was crucial to your survival in the city, and truly you could let a wall down or two around him. It wasn’t like he was going to remember anything you said anyways. The lack of this smell made you realize that he finally was evicted. You did not necessarily feel sad (you rarely do) about this, but you wished you could have kept your only friend in the city for at least a little while longer.
What is a special day, you ask? Today was the day you were going to grab some balls and walk into the Avengers tower to meet your mates. You’ve known they were your mates since you were 14, roughly a week and a half after you presented. Well, at least some of them.
You take off your uniform from the day and carefully hang it up to be worn the next day. It is mid-October, so today was not that hot and luckily you did not sweat in your outfit today. You turn around to look at the outfit you laid out on your perfectly made bed.
Two weeks ago you ripped fifteen grand off of a drunk Colombia fratboy at one of the clubs down the street. This allowed you to purchase an outfit set out to stun your future living mates. It was a pink long-sleeved crop top with black accents and Chanel buttons. It was layered with a striped jacket and matching pants with the Chanel logo all over it. It was paired with a white Chanel Belt and heels. It was straight off the runway, but you did not know much about style. You wanted to appear put together and what better way with luxury brands? Yes, it looked like Chanel puked all over you, but that was the goal.
Putting your hair into a high bun, you applied light makeup. With your look sealed together, you set off for Avengers Tower. It was a half-hour trip on the 4 train. Fortunately, The Avengers Tower was located directly next to Grand Central Terminal. This meant you did not have to test out your out-of-practice confident walk-in heels.
As you exited your train and made your way to the main area of the terminal, you slowed down your walking to admire the scenery around you. Stark was a rich man and you would likely not return to the subway for some time. This is at least what you were telling yourself. In truth, you were just delaying the introduction. Regardless, after getting in the way of many stressed-out overworked locals, you made your way into the massive skyscraper next door.
You still walked slower than normal and paid attention to the small details you normally would overlook. Combined with constantly looking over your shoulder (a habit you have yet to get rid of), it took you an embarrassing 8 minutes to do so.
Walking into Avengers tower was almost calming strangely. You did one of the two hardest steps to meeting your mates. The next was talking to the front desk workers to get your way to the top. You had your script memorized into your brain.
"Hi, my name is Alyssa Sidorova and my mate owns this building?” They would then look at you with shock and confusion. You would then show them the marks on your arm and their eyes would go wide. They would get on the phone, and after that, you did not know.
During these thoughts, you were standing still in the middle of the lobby. A security guard from the side came up to you from behind to see what you were doing and he made the mistake of grabbing your arm to get your attention when you did not respond to his voice. By reflex, you kicked his legs from under him and switched positions with him so your knee was on his back with him flat on the floor. This took place over three to four seconds. Everyone around you stared at you with horror and the other guards had all drawn their weapons.
With all eyes on you, you quickly looked for an exit. It was going to be difficult if they all attacked at once, but hopefully, they did not. The realization of your situation was setting in and you released the man under you. Standing up, you looked off into space to regain your spiraling mind. You were too stunned by your relapse in thought that you did not move at all. Quickly, you shook your head and made your way over to the front desk.
There was not much for you to do in regards to some four dozen people staring at you, so you ignored it. As you approached the worker, you noticed them too stunned to speak just like you once were. Dammit not again. Trying to appear as shy as possible, you said your rehearsed lines and prayed the worker would do as you had hoped. With hesitation, they did. After light discussion and being told to wait there, you were the perceivable noise of heels clicking on the floor. While your heels also did this, the noise behind you was much different.
Turning around you saw her, Pepper Potts. You fought back your smile with joy as you finally saw your ticket to meet your mates.
“Alyssa?” Pepper said. “I heard you gave them a show down here. Can I see your forearm darling?” You did what she said without hesitation.
“Wonderful! Follow me please”
She turned without giving you much as a second glance and headed towards the elevator. Confused, you followed after her. When you both stepped in, you heard her say;
“Friday, can you please let them know that their ma-”
“Actually” you interrupted. “I was hoping I could tell them myself. If that is ok” You hoped she would not think you were being rude
Pepper looked at you like she was trying to see into your soul, which you knew was not possible. She agreed and told FRIDAY to disregard her last work, but to gather the pack upstairs into a conference room.
The elevator began to rise and after the two of you made it halfway up, you asked her why she was here if she was the CEO of Stark Industries and not Tony’s secretary. She explained herself in a brief way which told you she was not telling the whole truth. This made you wary. You needed as much control of the situation as possible and letting any piece go got under your skin the easiest.
The doors opened and from the windows outside, you could tell you were not at the top floors. Pepper led you to a conference room and asked you to wait.
You tapped your foot anxiously and you waited for whatever would come next. After about 20, eight people walked in. Pepper, who you had already met, was the first one. The other seven you could tell were your mates. The six of them were the avengers, but the middle one was not. She was roughly 5’8 from what your eyes could tell. You knew that the Avengers had another mate besides yourself and you knew that she was black. However, seeing her in the center of all your soon-to-be very light-skinned mates, made her stand out far more than normal.
That and the fact she was an omega. You were overjoyed when you found out that your youngest soulmate was an omega like you were. You hated and rejected the omega side of yourself, so knowing your mates had a true omega made you feel much better about yourself in the pack.
You would think you would focus on the fact that the literal Avengers was before you, but you had seen them before plenty of times (too many times). Your eyes were on her. Her hair was in box braids with gold pieces scattered throughout. The gold in her hair matched the gold collar around her throat. This shouldn’t have caught you off guard but it did. You were used to seeing other omegas with collars on but seeing the one to be your mate, startled you. She was wearing a grey tracksuit, but it looked amazing.
Your eyes were torn away from her as you heard a growl from both sides of the room. The rest of the pack had sat down and been upset at your staring at their omega too long.
“Who are you and why won’t Pepper tell us who you are?” Steve said. He was the most peeved at your blatant staring. That combined with what he heard happened downstairs put him on guard. Normally he wouldn’t have let his omega meet a stranger, but Pepper insisted. He trusted Pepper enough to agree.
You slowly stood up (You do not know why, but you felt like you had to).
Similarly to how you spoke in your head in the lobby you said, “Hello, My name is Alyssa Sidorova and I am your mate.”