Shattered

“There it is.”

Oh. It took a lot to shake Natasha, but that was- that was huge. How were they supposed to fight any army that needed that big of a ship to house itself?

No. No doubts- having doubts about your own abilities right before a mission led to a higher chance of failure. If she really thought about it, they weren’t trying to fight the army right this minute- they were just sneaking onto their ship (which could actually be easier with the sheer size of it- less chance of running into someone). The fighting bit would come later, when they had more powerful people with them, including but not limited to a wizard, an android, three different gods, and whatever the hell Rocket was. It would be fine.

She looked back up at the ship, and gulped. Well. Maybe they would be fine. 

“Alright, guys. Here’s the plan,” Steve started, strapping his shield to his arm (Tony had slipped it to him before he got on the ship- Steve had immediately tried to give it back, but Tony had insisted, and Natasha had to say he looked much more like Steve when he was carrying it). “Rocket’s gonna do some things with his space computer, and try to make sure we can dock at the ship undetected. If he can slip through some firewalls and grab a floor plan, that would be great- otherwise we’re just gonna have to wing it. We’re gonna try to get in, sneak around, steal anything that looks important, and wait for Thanos to get there with Gamora. Please, let’s avoid an alarm being raised and thousands of aliens coming at us. We really, really don’t need that right now. But- just in case- Rocket’s gonna stay on the ship so we can have a quick getaway and he can man the security cameras.

“Nat, Clint, you’re gonna go together. If possible, get more into the heart of the ship and grab some info- you guys are more stealthy than we are. Sam, Strange and I are gonna take a look around for a good spot to lay low for a while, maybe scrounge up some weapons. Any questions?”

There weren’t any- Steve always left his plans pretty simple, and explained them in clear and concise terms (something that helped when they were crunched for time). 

“Alright then. Rocket, we good?”

“We’re good,” Rocket said, steering the ship towards the Sanctuary. “They won’t even know we’re here, unless someone looks out the window. Then we might be in trouble.”

That seemed like an unnecessarily large hole in the plan to her, but they managed to dock the ship without anyone noticing, so she didn’t say anything about it.

“Everyone ready?”

They all nodded, even though she knew Sam was nervous and Clint was clutching his bow tighter than normal. It was a good thing, she thought, that they weren’t the type of people to not do something just because they were scared to death, or because they thought it might fail- in fact, Clint almost exclusively did things that were bound to fail (Budapest sprang immediately to mind here). 

“Let’s move out.”

Their first immediate problem was that there were aliens already in the room when they walked out of the ship. They seemed to be sitting around playing cards- so there was a universal constant in all of this madness. But they sprang to their feet when they saw them, reaching for weapons.

Before she could so much as point a gun at them, Strange had a bright golden rope wrapped around each of their necks, immediately strangling them. 

Sam cleared his throat. “Suddenly I’m extremely grateful I’m with magic man.”

“You should be,” Strange muttered. “Come on.”

The three of them left- Steve sending one last glance at her and Clint before walking out- and Clint sighed. “Well. Might as well get this over with.”

“Right.” She cocked her gun, and started off down the nearest hallway.

--------------------

She and Clint almost immediately fell into old patterns, and she was strangely comforted by it. It had been far too long since she’d been on a mission with Clint. She’d been a little worried, at first, thinking that Clint wouldn’t come with them when they went to spring him out of house arrest- but that worry had been resolved immediately when all of his kid’s faces had lit up at the mention of space. Really, he’d had no choice but to go, lest he disappoint Lila, who had asked him to take pictures.

“What’s Steve thinking we’re gonna find here?” Clint muttered as they worked through the ship (so far, they had encountered a small squadron of aliens that had been dispatched with quickly).

“I don’t know. I’m not sure he knows, either, but hopefully we’ll find something useful and be able to work with it. Go check that room, it looks important.”

He opened the door (they’d stolen a badge off of one of the aliens) and they walked inside. There were a couple of aliens sitting around, scrolling through files on screens- one of them stood up and made a couple of frantic clicking noises. That was about as far as he got before Clint shot him, and Natasha quickly disposed of the rest.

“I believe that puts me ahead by 5,” she told him, heading towards a computer and trying to figure out how to get its information. She and Clint liked to compete over victims during missions- it was one of the things they did to keep themselves entertained.

“Hey, I got that guy earlier,” Clint complained.

“No, you didn’t. I’m the one who killed him.”

“But I shot him.”

“In the leg! I shot his head, that’s what killed him.”

“I took him down for you.”

“Whatever you want to believe.” She straightened, grinning triumphantly. “Got it. Let’s do something about these bodies and move out.”

They decided to put the bodies in a closet before leaving, and headed back down the corridor. 

“Clint? Nat? How you guys doing?” asked Steve over the comms.

“Fine. Grabbed something off of some computers, couldn’t read what it said- looks like I’ll have to start learning alien languages too- but it looked important.”

“Good. We’ve ran into a couple of guards, but so far, nothing too big. Still trying to find an empty room to set up base.”

“Let us know if you get anything.”

“Roger that.”

Her lips quirked up- Steve used to hate that pun.

“Hey, what’s in here?” Clint asked, stopping. She looked at the room he was pointing towards- it wasn’t anything particularly interesting, just a stone door, but one closer inspection, it did seem more heavily secured than the other ones.

“Only one way to find out.”

She flicked the badge in front of the sensor, and the door slid up. They walked in, startling the two guards in there- she dispatched of them with two quick shots.

“That’s two more for me.”

“I hate this game.”

“I love this game.”

“You always win!”

“I know.”

The door slid closed behind them, and they started towards the room’s most prominent feature- a large, circular cage.

“How does this open?” Clint asked, looking around the room. He found the answer quicker than her- he wasn’t called Hawkeye for nothing- and jammed a button on a nearby console.

Her stomach clenched- there was a woman being kept there, struggling against whatever was keeping her suspended in midair. Clint scanned the control board, jammed another button, and the woman dropped to the floor.

She picked herself up, gasping, and regarded them with suspicion, which Natasha thought was rather unwarranted seeing as they had just freed her.

“Who are you?” she asked, voice raspy and obviously underused.

“That depends. Who are you?” Natasha asked. 

The woman narrowed her eyes at them, and Natasha noticed that one of her eyes almost looked mechanical- in fact, most of her body looked mechanical.

“How is that any of your business?”

“We rescued you. I’d say you owe us at least a name.”

“Are you enemies of Thanos?”

Natasha studied her- she’d been held prisoner here, presumably by Thanos, and she looked angry as she spat out the name “Thanos”, so she decided that, probably, she could trust her. “Yes.”

The woman looked her up and down. “I am Nebula.”

Oh. She knew that name- Loki had mentioned her. One of the people he’d been contacting before, that he thought might rebel against Thanos.

“I’m Natasha. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

Nebula rubbed one of her wrists, snapping her arm back together. “How?”

“Dumb luck and small amounts of skill,” Clint piped up. “But first we gotta meet up with our friends, and rescue this lady named Gamora, so-”

“You know Gamora?”

“Yeah,” Natasha said. “We’re working together to stop Thanos from getting the Infinity Stones.”

“A noble cause. Why is she here?”

“She’s not here yet, but Thanos kidnapped her from her friends along with the Reality Stone, and he’s going to bring her here.”

Nebula looked at them incredulously. “So you’ve already lost an infinity stone to Thanos?”

“Hey, we never said we were good at our jobs, and besides, that was those dumb space guys,” Clint defended. “You gonna come with us or not?”

Nebula kept giving them the side-eye suspicious look, but nodded reluctantly, and said, “Fine,” as if she was the one doing them a favor.

“Come on, then,” Natasha said. She led them out of the room- then, when it became clear that Nebula knew her way around, she fell behind and let her lead.

“Any rooms you know of with useful information?” Natasha asked her.

“Yes. Here, down this-”

If there was an end to that sentence, Natasha couldn’t hear it, because suddenly a red light was flashing, accompanied by a blaring alarm.

“What’s that?”

“The intruder alarm!” Nebula shouted back. “Someone must have seen us!”

She frowned. She didn’t think- oh.

She pulled them into a nearby room, shot the two aliens sitting in it (honestly, it was like Clint didn’t even try anymore, she was kicking his ass at this game), and closed the door.

“That might be our friends.”

Sure enough, right as she said that, the comm went off. 

“Shit. Nat, get back to the ship, we’re in trouble- Sam, get that guy!- we won’t be able to stick around for much longer.”

“Shit,” Natasha cursed. She refrained from kicking the wall- she wasn’t that unrefined. “Alright, we’re coming in.” She looked up at Nebula and Clint. “The boys got caught. We’re gonna have to get out of here.”

“What about Gamora?”

Natasha winced, and drew in a long sigh. “We can’t get her. They’ll tighten security after this, they’ll know if we come back.”

Surprisingly, Nebula nodded once, and jerked her head down the hallway they’d been walking down. “Come on. I know a quick way to the docking bay.”

They slipped through the hallways, not seeing a single soul on their way. When they got to the docking bay, they understood why- Steve, Sam, Strange, and Rocket were all fighting off what looked to be a hundred aliens.

“Nat! Clint!” Steve shouted. “Get to the ship, we gotta go!”

In the ensuing fight, Natasha lost count of how many aliens she killed before she managed to make her way to the ship, Clint and Nebula in tow. “Come on!”

They all made a mad dash to the ship, and Rocket bolted off one last round into the thinning crowd, and pressed on the accelerator.

Everyone clung on for dear life as they shot off back into space.

---------------------------

“What if we jus’, like, set the palace on fire?” 

Hela groaned. “No, Brunnhilde.”

“But it sucks. Look’t all the tacky gold. We c’n just. Burn. Flames. Woooo.”

“How about we rethink that once your a little more sober?”

Brunnhilde, who she was currently half-dragging, half-carrying to the palace, gave her a funny face. “Ew, sober.”

“You know, your drinking problem really isn’t healthy.”

“You’re not healthy.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She liked Brunnhilde, she reminded herself. Brunnhilde was her friend. She should not leave Brunnhilde in the middle of the city alone just because she was extremely annoying when she was drunk.

“I’m bringing you up to Eir. See if they have the same mixes they had when we were here, get you sobered up.”

They did just that, after far too many minutes spent dragging Brunnhilde to the healer. She managed to force a quick solution down her throat (Hela remembered drinking these quite a bit when she was younger to get sober before her father found out she’d been drinking- she also remembered them being extraordinarily disgusting), and in moments, Brunnhilde’s eyes had cleared up a bit.

“Ugh. I feel horrible.”

“You look horrible. Why did you have to go and drink so much?”

“Some bloke bet me I couldn’t outdrink him, and I couldn’t just let that go!”

“Oh Norns.”

“Oh, you’re no fun, you know that? Come on, let’s go back up to the palace. I want to bother Thor.”

“Well, that I’ll happily join in.”

Unfortunately, they didn’t get a chance to bother Thor, because the second they entered the palace, they were ushered to the throne room, where Thor, Stark, Rhodes, and Banner were already sitting.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Thor said, beckoning them over. “We’ve just got a message from Rogers. We told them to wait up for you.”

“Are they there?” asked Rogers from over the comm in Thor’s hand.

“Yep.”

“Alright. We have- some good news, and some bad news. The good news is we got onto Thanos’s ship, Nat managed to grab some files-”

“Um, I helped,” came another voice.

“Did you really, though?” asked Romanoff.

“Anyway,” Rogers cut in. “Both she and Clint also freed Thanos’s other daughter, Nebula. She’s on the ship with us right now.”

“Wait,” said Peter Quill. “On the ship?”

“Yeah, that’s the bad news. We may have accidentally tripped an alarm, and we had to get out of there. Thanos’s guard will be up now, you guys aren’t gonna be able to get to the Sanctuary.”

There was the sound of muffled cursing from the Guardian’s end. “So what do you want us to do, then? Drift around space aimlessly?” Quill finally said.

“You could come here,” Thor spoke up. “If you think about it, Thanos is either going to go to Earth or Asgard next. You guys have nothing else you can do right now, so why don’t you come up here to Asgard?”

“Shouldn’t we go to Earth?” Loki asked. “Nothing against you, brother, but if we put all three of the gods on one infinity stone it’ll be rather an uneven distribution of power.”

“Loki’s right,” Rogers said. “Let the guardians go to Earth to help guard the Mind Stone- and we can head up to Asgard. At this point, Thanos is going to stop spreading out his forces. It’s going to be harder to beat him with a smaller group, and we’ve only got one heavy hitter. If he comes for us with all of his strength, the Time Stone is gone.”

Hela privately agreed- Strange was powerful, but the others? Romanoff was scary, sure, but it would be difficult to beat Thanos just by glaring at him, no matter how terrifying that glare might be. 

“I will tell Heimdall to bring you up through the Bifrost,” Thor told them. “Heimdall!”

“Wha- aaahhhhhh!”

Next to her, Brunnhilde snorted at the sound of the screams coming out of the comm. “Oh my god, Thor, give a guy some warning next time!” As far as Hela knew, Rogers had never sounded more frantic.

“Yeah, you’re gonna make his poor old heart give out,” said Romanoff, who sounded just as shaken but apparently wasn’t going to let that stop her from making a joke about Rogers’s age.

“Heimdall will escort you to the palace,” Thor said, and if she wasn’t mistaken, there was a ghost of a mischievous grin on his face. It must be Loki’s influence rubbing off on him. She shuddered at the thought.

“Yeah, alright.”

The comms cut off, and Thor sat back in his throne, looking, suddenly, about a thousand years older. He snapped out of it after a second, and rose up from his seat, stepping down to the floor. “Well. Let us go welcome our friends!”

----------------------------

“Thank you so much for having us on such short notice,” Vision said diplomatically.

Scott, whose mouth was hanging open too much for any words to come out, just nodded along. In front of them, T’Challa smiled. “It was no problem. My people are… not as ready as I would hope to welcome visitors, but they are ready for war, and that is what you are here for, yes?”

“We don’t know who’s going to come down here, or when,” Wanda said. “We just know that they are coming. And that it will be a great risk for your people-”

“A risk that they are willing to take,” T’Challa reassured her. “It is not every day that you get to fight for the fate of the universe, after all.”

Next to him, Peter Parker raised his hand, seemed to remember he wasn’t in a classroom, and lowered it. “What, um. What did you mean they aren’t ready to welcome visitors?”

As T’Challa talked to him about Wakandan politics, Scott shifted uncomfortably. He was more than a little nervous about having a literal child fighting with them- but it had seemed like there wasn’t much choice in the matter. Peter had staunchly refused him when he had told him he should stay in San Francisco in Scott’s house instead of going to Wakanda, and had been more than a little mad about being left out of the fight against the aliens (though a mad Peter was more adorable than scary, something that he had decided he should not tell Peter about in any circumstance)- Wanda had made him stay in the ship, apparently, not to come out and do anything stupid no matter what happened (he was pretty sure she’d guilted him into it- she’d told him she would get grounded if he got hurt, which Scott found such a wildly profound idea that he hadn’t even asked who had the power to ground Wanda Maximoff).

They were led into the palace, which was so cool that pretty much everyone’s jaw dropped, and he could practically see Peter vibrating with excitement. They met Shuri, T’Challa’s sister, who seemed to speak exclusively in memes, meaning that no one could understand her except for Peter. And, finally, they were led to a more private part of the castle, where they all sat around a grand table for “planning.”

“We don’t know when the enemy will be here,” Wanda, who seemed to have taken up the leadership mantle by default seeing as she and Vision were the only ones who knew what the hell was going on, started, “but we do know that we have friends coming in about 2 hours. They’re a smaller ship, but you will probably pick up on sensors when they get here-”

“I will make sure the right people know that they are coming,” T’Challa said.

“Our primary goal is making sure that Thanos or his army don’t get their hands on that stone,” she continued, pointing at Vision’s forehead. “Because that would be bad.”

“What exactly is this stone?”

“It is an infinity stone,” Vision explained. “An all-powerful magical artifact that, when put together with its fellow stones, has the power to wipe out all life as we know it.”

T’Challa leaned slightly away from Vision. “Ah. I see.”

“I think that keeping Vision in the palace would be wise,” Wanda said. “Along with a small guard, in case they send people in.”

“I should be out on the field,” Vision frowned. “The Mind Stone has power, we should use it.”

“The Mind Stone has power, and we want to keep it in our hands,” Wanda argued back. “You shouldn’t be out in the open.”

Vision opened his mouth to protest, but T’Challa cut him off. “Miss Maximoff is right. I will summon together a group of my best guards to protect the stone, and you may add your own protections as well.”

“Two people from here should do it,” she said. “Who here-”

“How about Janet and I?” Hank said immediately. “They’d never even have to know we were here, if we stayed shrunk down. Surprise attack.”

It was all sound reasoning, but Scott saw through both of them- neither Wanda nor Hank wanted their loved ones in the battle. Scott would have volunteered Hope, but Hope would probably murder him if he tried to protect her by forcing her out of the way, and he also wouldn’t be able to come up with a good reason that she would believe for her to stay out of the battle, so he refrained from doing this.

It was clear that Janet saw right through Hank as well, but she nodded. “Very well. We will stay behind and-”

The door slammed open, and Shuri rushed in. “Brother! Our sensors are picking up on large objects entering the atmosphere-”

About five different people cursed at once, and everyone sprung to their feet. “Already?” Wanda hissed. “The must have already left by the time the Time team got to the Sanctuary-”

“That doesn’t matter now,” Hank said. “You’re sure it’s not your friends?”

“It wouldn’t be several large objects if it were,” Vision said. 

T’Challa rushed over to them from where he’d been talking to his sister, who was running out of the door. “Vision, Hank, Janet- come with me. Ayo! Lead these three to our most defensible room. Gather a group of the Dora Milaje to help guard that stone.” A woman in red armor nodded and led them off. “Okoye! Go and get the White Wolf. Bring him the new arm Shuri has been finishing up.” Another woman in the same armor ran off down the hall. “Yama! Bring these people down to the outskirts of the town, towards where the ships are landing. They will be assisting us in the coming fight.” He turned to them. “She will lead you down to where you need to go. I am going to be assembling my army.”

They all said rushed thank yous, and they all ran off to their respective places. On his way through the palace, Scott glanced out one of the windows to see giant spaceships falling to Earth. His stomach clenched.

Thanos was coming.