#hell even agents of shield to some degree

[thereallyreallylatebird]

Being a (romance-neutral/repulsed) aromantic is looking back at the shows/movies/books/etc. you've gotten the most into over the years and realizing that nearly all of them have the common thread of centering some kind of found family where romantic relationships are not treated as more important than every other kind of relationship.

[yourmomxx]

Emily Prentiss(chief or not cheif) X Fem!Reader have been secretly married for several years, (if emily is cheif they’ve been dating since she was an agent and then married when she was a cheif and if not obviously the opposite). No ike knows or expects emily to be in a relationship because she doesn’t say anything until one day she forgets her badge and lunch at home so her wife brings her stuff and the whole place is shocked ? bonus if tara or someone flirts with her

a/n: ooh, I love me some secret relationship trope! Unfortunately, I'm still only on season 5/6 of Criminal Minds, so I just kept Emily as an Agent and not as Chief, if that's alright (Tara is in it, though ;)). I hope you like this, anon!

— ❝ɪɴ ᴛʜɪs ᴛᴇᴀᴍ, ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴏɴᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡs ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴏɴᴇ. Tʜᴇʀᴇ’s ɴᴏ ᴘʀɪᴠᴀᴄʏ. Mʏ ᴘᴇʀsᴏɴᴀʟ ʟɪfᴇ ɪs ᴏɴᴇ ᴛʜɪɴɢ ʟᴇss ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴄᴀɴ ᴘʀᴏfɪʟᴇ.❞ —

-Jennifer Jareau

Emily Prentiss was a private person. She prided herself in it.

I mean try it, hiding something from an entire office of educated professionals in degrees on how to read the most subtle shifts in a persons behavior and building a view based on that information.

Of course, let’s not forget, there’s the general rule, or rather, interdict, of profiling the other members of your team. But sometimes, you can’t help yourself.

Emily had noticed it in herself more times than she would like to admit.

Sometimes, it happened as easy as breathing, a natural trail of thought that let loose when she caught on about something or the people around her. She tried to undermine it as quickly as possible whenever she realized she was doing it, though.

It’s not the fact that she didn’t trust them.

No, that was never the thing, those people were like her second family. Or her first even, maybe.

But after spending almost every waking hour of the past years of her life around them, there were some things that she would rather keep for herself.

Leave them be in their own bubble that was just ‘Emily Prentiss’.

And when she talked about ‘things’, then she was actually talking about you.

The team could find out about her pregnancy, about her resentment towards the church. They could know that she had a phase at fourteen where she liked licorice and hasn’t been able to eat it since those dreadful seven months, or that she still hated her father for being emotionally unavailable and leaving her to deal with her mother on her own; they could know that.

But they couldn’t know about you. Never you.

This is wasn’t an issue of trust, again.

Trust was never in the mix when she made the decision, every morning before work, to lay off her wedding ring and keep it safe on a small chain in her back pocket.

But you were her safe place. A rock, a tow, something for her to hold on to, the only thing that was in no way connected to her work place.

Emily loved you, she did so much, and she’d known it after the first time she saw you smile, and accepted it during the first time she kissed you.

And hiding you, keeping you safe from all of this, was her way of shedding off the horrors and traumas of her job when she came home at night, completely tune out whatever she had experienced mere hours before, and dive back into you.

Your shared house, shared bed, shared sheets, shared kitchen, shared table.

Not talking about you, or even admitting you existed, while she worked and saw the worst sides of what humanity had to offer, drew a distinct line between her life with you and the life she led at work.

Call it a personal protective shield.

So, no, she would never, ever tell them.

“No. For God’s - No.”

Which is why, when Emily Prentiss walked into the bureau that morning, and realized her credentials weren’t in their designated pocket, and also her bag was empty of her lunch box, she knew that she was doomed.

Emily knew about your caring side. The loving, mothering, always everyone's shoulder to cry on-side.

Hell, if she was being honest, it was one of the reasons she started falling so hard for you so easily.

In that moment, though? God, how she wished she would have chosen a narcissist.

(Not literally, though. She'd profiled guys like that before. They really weren't wife- or husband material.)

You had just been on your way out of the house when you had seen your wife's dark lunch box still residing on the counter top where you had prepared it for her an hour ago.

After a quick look at the time on your phone screen, you had short-handedly decided to slightly delay your trip to the pharmacy for some mundane refills, and drop by Emily's office to bring her her lunch.

After all, you knew how busy she could get, and how her focused state had the power to drown out every other basic need her body had.

If you wouldn't make lunch for her, she wouldn't have the time, or the head, to think of buying something for herself, you knew that.

One would think that was clear after almost an entire year of marriage.

The thought alone brought a smile to your face.

You grabbed your car key off the counter and hurried your way out the door, closed it behind you, halted for a moment - and slowly backed up inside again.

You eyed the black case next to the key bowl suspiciously.

"That wasn't there yesterday," You muttered to yourself.

Cautiously, because when your wife worked in the FBI, anything was possible, you reached for the leather-bound case and drew it closer to you.

When you opened it, the tension immediately left your shoulders. You shook your head sighing at the sight of your wife's passport picture and the huge, dark blue letters FBI showing themselves to you.

"Oh, Emily, what am I gonna do with you?"

When you left the house then, it was final.

Hopefully.

"What's up with you, you seem stressed out?"

Emily did her best not to flinch in her already tense state when JJ came up next to her.

She managed her best, reassuring smile and pressed her sweating palms into the side of her jeans.

"Oh, it's nothing," She lied. "Just thought I lost something."

JJ raised an eyebrow. "Alright," She muttered. "If you say so."

Then, she crashed a light brown paper file into Emily's chest.

"This just came in from El Paso, three homicides so far. I'll inform the rest of the team and we'll meet in the briefing room in ten."

Emily couldn't do more than nod, and just managed to grab the file before it slipped to the floor when JJ left.

She wasn't usually like this. She was good at keeping her head in the game.

But right now, the fact that her credentials were missing wasn't exactly stressing her out, because she knew that you would bring them to her as soon as you realized that she had forgotten them at home.

Emily was stressed out because she knew you would bring them to her.

What she didn't know, was, however she should act and how the team would possibly take it.

The elevator you entered took a tremendous amount of time to realize which floor you wanted to go to, and even longer to slide the doors closed and jerking to a start.

You would think that in an official federal office building, the mechanics could be more advanced.

Then again, counting the many times Emily complained about the budget allocation of the bureau when she tought you weren't listening, maybe you shouldn't be all that surprised.

The doors slid closed when the thought suddenly hit you.

You were about to enter your wife's office. Which you had never been to, not once in your life and only knew the address of because goddamn, was it hard to miss.

The building that was probably the only thing that Emily had wanted to keep you out of for as long as she could.

And you came here for a lunch box.

Emily knew you knew. You had talked to her about it, she had answered your questions on why she always got fussy when you asked her how you could finally meet her team, and you had understood, every time, but this?

She couldn't just ask you to actively lie about your relationship in front of most of - all of - her friends, could she?

The last time she had checked your location, it had already shown you in close vacinity to the BAU building. She could figure what was ahead.

Was she about to deny a relationship?

“Can I help you?”

This office had way too many doors, in your opinion, and way too few signs telling you where to find what.

The greeting voice made you look up, and you automatically shifted into your politeness to strangers-mode, upon seeing a woman come up to you, wearing a two-piece and her hair in loose curls.

A very pretty woman, you had to admit.

"My name's Tara Lewis," She introduced herself, "Who are you looking for, sweetheart?"

You quickly waved her off. “Oh, I don’t work here.”

Tara tipped her head, eyes not so subtly shifting up and down your appearance.

“I figured as much, I would have remembered a face like yours.”

You managed an awkward laugh.

Emily had once, in good fun, told you you were easily caught off guard by people showing genuine interest in you all of a sudden.

You hated when she was right.

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.

Just over Tara Lewis' shoulder, you were suddenly able to spot the dark hair that indicated Emily Prentiss approaching from behind her.

You nodded in her direction in recognition, as she came to a halt next to Tara Lewis.

"I'm a friend of Emily's," You lied, and by God, you did it so neatly, Emily was questioning if she had maybe already dragged you down without realizing.

"She texted me that she forgot her lunch and her badge, and since we're close to each other, she asked me to get it for her."

That polite smile was still present on your face, and your voice pitched slightly higher than usual.

You threw Emily small looks in-between, unspotted by the usual eye, but she noticed them.

You were telling her to go along, to play the game, string it all a bit further until it turned into a web that could either wrap around and suffocate her, or catch her when she stumbled.

And she probably should.

Because you made it easy. You had made it so easy for her, laid it out like a red carpet for her to walk on, the lie, that could keep her sanctuary safe-

"I'm married."

In the midst of talking to Tara, your words died in your throat and your mouth stopped, hanging open.

Tara herself whipped her head around so fast, it was a question if she was breaking her neck, eyes ripped wide open in complete and utter schock.

It was quiet. In-between the three of you, a needle dropping would have echoed like the loudest drum.

"Say what now?" Tara didn’t take her eyes off Emily for a moment.

Slowly, movement seemed to re-enter your muscles and your eyes widened at the absolute extent of what had just happened.

"What are you doing?" You hushed at Emily.

Your wife's gaze - who you loved dearly, but in situations like these, could just hold by the shoulders and shake, shake, shake - tumbled between you and her co-worker, and you could almost decipher the exact moment she graciously invited the 'fuck it'-attitude.

Emily's shoulders dropped.

"I'm married," She repeated. Calm, collected, and slow.

All of the things you were totally not feeling right now.

"This is Y/N." Emily stepped next to you and held you gently by your wrist. "My wife."

And if the English Dictionary had demonstrating pictures next to each word, Tara Lewis' face right now would be pinned under 'bafflement'.

It took a moment, actually it took a few, for the Doctor to collect herself again.

She straightened her shoulders, cleared her throat, and shook herself out, as if to remove any unnecessary consideration that kept her from thinking clearly.

"Who knows about this?" It was her first question.

Where your shoulders were ever so slightly touching, you could feel Emily's body stay tense.

"Not really anyone," She admitted.

"Why didn't you tell us?"

Emily shook her head. "Y/N is my personal life," She cleared. "I spend almost every awake minute with you people. I wanted something to myself."

As subtly as you could, you leaned your body the slightest bit closer to her. It wasn't visible to the lazy eye, but Emily could feel it.

She squeezed your wrist.

You were comfort to her.

Tara's eyes flew between the two of you, contemplating, observing.

Then, from one moment to another, her lips broke into a blinding grin.

"A wife," She repeated. Emily ripped her eyes open to interpret her friend that she should keep her voice down.

"Good for you," Tara smiled.

Emily visibly relaxed. A breath she had been holding escaped her lungs soundly.

"Let's just be clear," She told Tara, "This is still my thing." She gestured to you. "My marriage is still my thing. I don't need the entire team on me like vultures, profiling my love life like they do everything else."

Tara nodded earnestly. Her small curls were bumping up and down. She pulled her fingers across her lips and pretented to turn a key in the corner of her mouth.

"My lips are sealed." She threw the imaginary key far, far behind the office desks. "Lovergirl."

Emily ignored her and turned to you.

Your fingers lingered around hers in the movement.

"Thank you," She breathed out quietly. A soft smile played around your lips as you looked into her eyes, recognizing that specific gentleness that you knew she only gifted you with.

"Anytime."

You placed her lunch box in her hands. "It's rice with some peas and corn." Emily smiled. "You're the best."

"And, before I forget-" You pulled out the badge from your bag, but instead of giving it to Emily directly, you opened her suit jacket and found the inner pocket, safely storing the credentials where you knew she kept them every day.

You smoothed out the jacket when you were done.

"There you go."

Emily didn't even know what to say. That warm feeling, that she felt in her entire body every time she looked at you, realized who you were and who you were to her, it made itself known in this moment right now.

Right here, in the middle of her workspace.

And with all the horrors she'd see, it was probably the most content she had felt in this place in a while.

"You are so amazing." The words didn't come close to what she was feeling.

But the way your eyebrows loosened, and your lips slightly parted, she knew you understood.

"This is so sweet, and I hate to be that person, but Prentiss, we have a case to get to."

Emily cleared her throat, being ripped from whatever that moment had been, and reminded on what ground she was standing right now.

"Right," She said. She opened her arms and leaned in to pull you into a hug.

A hug, not a kiss on the cheek.

She wasn't that far yet.

"It's okay." The feeling of your breathed words tickled near her ear. "I understand."

Emily squeezed you a bit tighter.

"Get home safe."

You slowly broke away from the embrace.

"I will," You promised.

Tara mouthed a quick 'I'm so sorry' in your direction. You laughed and waved her a goodbye, before you headed for the elavator again, and she got on her way to follow after Emily, who had already made her way to where JJ had ordered them a few minutes ago.

Tara endured until the top step.

"Oh.my.God. I can't believe it!" She almost squealed as they made their way next to each other to the briefing room.

"Look at us, sharing secrets now. Ah." She shook out her shoulders. "I feel like this is a pyjama party in junior year all over again. Amazing."

Emily couldn't do anything else than grin at Tara's antics.

Suddenly, her pocket vibrated with a short tune, and Emily pulled out her phone to check her display.

It was a message from you. Emily smiled softly as she read it.

Have a good day, my sun. Will hopefully see you tonight<3

"A message from boo?" Tara mocked, and tried to peak over Emily's shoulder.

Emily quickly shut off the display, stuffed her phone back into her backpocket and continued walking.

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

But the lovesick smile didn't leave Emily's face for the rest of the way to the briefing room, partly because she was so caught up in her thoughts about the specific feeling of your skin, that she didn't even notice she was wearing it.

[january-summers]

Excuse me it's 2:30am and I have to be up for a visit to the farmer's market in... not long and instead of sleeping I have Agent Washington on the brain again. So, um, don't mind the ramble?

I have a competency kink. I need you all to know this so you understand how it colours my perceptions of Wash. I need for him to be extremely competent, even if he's being a dork, I need for him to be able to flip that mental switch and be ready and capable of fucking shit up.

anyway, on a completely related note I have a conspiracy theory (secret headcanon) that Wash was fudging his own numbers in real time in order to maintain 6th place on the leader board, because it keeps in on the board without putting him in 'disputed territory.' (aka the ranks everyone is gunning for.)

This is based solely on the fact that of the 5 times we see the board, he's in 6th place 3 times, and 5th place twice. one of those times is when York is in 6th with his freshly messed up eye.

This is spawned by nothing but my competency kink, and the fact that 6th place is an odd place to average/maintain. Like. sure. maybe it's a coincidence, maybe he's just always 6th/5th best on the team, but you have to admit it's a little odd that there isn't more variance when everyone else has much more of a jumble. Apart from Carolina, who only loses her 1st place spot when Texas shows up, only York and North are also on the board every time we see it, and both of them drop to 6th place at least once.

I just. I really like the idea that Wash has less interest in pissing matches with the others because he's high ranked enough for what he wants/needs out of PFL, but also the idea that he understands how the ranking system works in a way the others don't and he's aware enough of his team to estimate their scores and adjust his own performance accordingly on the fly during missions, without endangering said missions.

Is it likely? No, it's probably just a coincidence, but it's fun.

and it also lets me have PFL AUs in which Wash gets to accidentally piss off the other top ten members when Director assigns Wash as team leader for an emergency "oh shit it might be the Flood" mission and Wash gets to pick his team and picks none of the top ten.

Either because there are other Freelancers who are similarly capable as North and York but without the added AI which are too valuable to risk, or less likely to screw up the mission by being competitive like South and Carolina are inclined to.

And the others just don't have the skill-sets he wants, or the compatibility with the Freelancers he needs, to ensure mission success.

or like

based on what little maths we have for sure, Washington may not have finished highschool before joining the UNSC, or he might have joined right after graduation.

And just. imagine him realising he's lacking in certain points of knowledge after he accidentally endangers his team because his army training didn't include a specific technical expertise, so he started doing UNSC approved distance ed in his limited down time, half teaching himself a hell of a lot of things.

So when he gets to PFL, he does the same thing, he looks over the science notes, and he might not have a degree, but he makes sure he understands enough to know the limits of his team mates, their capabilities, their potentials, understands what the equipment is capable of.

and then there's a mission and someone's helmet is cracked, maybe a big hole from a weapon in the side, and they're fine, but the helmet is breached, and actually they're not fine because there's a few new holes in Niner's ship and they are venting atmosphere and the breached helmet cannot keep up, so Wash asks Niner to 'do a thing' that will give them stable atmosphere for a few seconds, asks for some of the other's super power units (in my head it's York's healing unit and North shield) and then tells the broken helmet team mate he can fix their helmet but they need to release the seals for a moment, as soon as Niner 'does the thing.'

and they trust Wash, so they take off their helmet and then everyone freaks out because instead of fixing the helmet Wash takes his off and puts it on his team mate and gets back in his seat and apparently takes a nap.

except no, because he's running at least 2 power units while the ships atmosphere vents because either he can handle it, or epsilon didn't self destruct and he can handle it. (basically using the shield, healing unit, and wash's emp unit to create a more bio-electric field around wash that's not really a shield but acts enough like a shield to protect him from the vacuum of space that's trying to be inside the ship.)

and like, I honestly believe his default personality is friendly and kinda dorky and sociable, but I also am constant running "he's a secret (and not so secret) badass" at all times

and I am not normal about him. and I don't know how this happened.

but for every cool and somewhat normal and sensible plot bunny I share involving Wash, there's more, far more unhinged bunnies lurking in the shadows.

I should go to bed, I passed good decision making. good night. I'll decide if i'm sorry about all this after I wake up. good night.

[xalygatorx]

Worthy (2015) | Chapter 3, "Chosen"

Disappearing sporadically in public spaces quickly becomes Cora Dempsey's least concerning problem when suddenly she captures the attention of the forming Avengers Initiative, the World Security Council, and Asgard's fallen prince all in one week. And the universe is only just getting started with her.

Worthy is a slow-burn SFW Marvelverse (films) romance between Loki and a female OC. For additional details on what canon is used, see the Prologue post.

Summary: Cora disappears again, this time with some help. The Initiative operatives are at a loose end again, but Clint’s perceptiveness has gained them some extra information. Cora confronts her captor and learns a few things about the hammer.

Pairing: Loki x Fem!OC

Warnings: Superhero movie levels of action; kidnapping; Loki chokes Cora to render her unconscious just prior to the kidnapping bit

Word Count: 2.4k

Cora panted from her run, but didn't back down from the men who had pursued her, and who were now regarding her with more than just uncertainty. At least, the bowman was; she couldn't see Tony Stark's expression behind the iconic mask and Steve was too deeply plastered behind him in the rock at the moment for her to even guess at what he might be thinking.

She watched Tony peel himself from his imprint before stumbling forward, sparking a bit at the joints. "Is… Ugh," he clutched his head before shaking it quickly. "Is she allowed to do that?"

Clint could hear Coulson asking questions in his ear and then Fury loudly demanding what the hell was going on, but he ignored it, simply in a state of shock. "This isn't possible…"

He had a feeling Steve was unconscious from the hit he'd taken and now with the mythological hammer no longer on their side, they were severely outnumbered. Clint was well aware that if it had knocked Captain America out cold, it'd render him comatose at best.

Cora was shaking slightly, afraid the nicer agent, Steve, might've been severely injured or even killed from impact. Sick to her stomach, she started to step forward, but froze when she felt a change in the air; the temperature had dropped by a few degrees and an unearthly stillness swept over the immediate area. The bowman seemed to notice it, too; he looked around warily and reached back for one of his arrows. Or maybe he'd just opted to kill her.

Before either of them could figure out what exactly the next course of action would be, Cora sensed someone nearby, the strange presence ambiguous and diffused around the crater before it suddenly concentrated behind her and she felt a pair of steely arms haul her back against an equally hard body, the both of them fading out into limbo before she could muster an open reaction.

A large hand moved up to press to her mouth before she could loose the yelp of distress that hitched in her throat. She heard a small "hm" of contemplation above her head before she was simply tugged off her feet despite her struggling, waltzed out of the crater, and successfully separated from the SHIELD operatives. But at what cost?

She growled testily and tried to swing the hammer back at him, but he kept her arms held tightly down. "Sleep," he muttered frustratedly when she didn't stop making things just a little more difficult for him, and he cut off her airways just enough that she passed out in his hold. "So fragile," he noted with open disgust before tying the leather loop at the base of the hammer around her wrist and tossing her over his shoulder.

Back at the crater, Clint blinked in disbelief. Had she done her trick again? No, there had been someone else there. Very briefly. She'd looked too shocked to have done it herself and she'd skidded backward just before disappearing.

Somewhere through the nearly closed portal in the clouds, Thor watched Clint approach the spot where Cora had been just a moment before, a look of shock on his own face; not because she'd been able to lift the hammer only he, his father, and the blacksmiths who had forged it had ever been able to move, but because of the aura that had flooded the area just before she'd vanished.

"I know that magic," he murmured under his breath, still shreds of equal parts hope and dread on his face as he turned away from the opening that finally snapped shut behind him, striding past Heimdall's knowing gaze and back toward the palace.

Clint frowned faintly, but shook his head, putting the arrow he'd extracted back in his quiver before tapping the bud in his ear. "Still there, Phil?"

"Yes, but could you not smack the earpiece? Sends a lot of feedback my way."

Clint stopped, glancing toward the sky to see that the wormhole had closed. Before Coulson could ask, Clint murmured honestly, "I don't know what the hell is going on, all I can report is that we lost her again."

"What happened?" he asked and it sounded as if Fury had asked the same question in unison, which drew a sigh from Agent Barton's lungs.

"I think… I think that would be best explained once we get back to headquarters, sir." Hearing a groan from the indent in the rock, Clint walked over and peered in. "Agent Rogers, report?"

"I'm fine," Steve replied with a small wince as he started to make his way out of the dry ground. "I would've been fine anyway, but this took most of the impact." He tapped his shield, which was still positioned across his back before he took a look around. "So, she's gone?"

"Yeah," Clint said, frowning as he heard Fury now demanding how in the world Steve had even possibly been less than all right, only with a much more colorful variation of word choice. He wasn't surprised; the iconic hero was amped up with all the strength, agility, and endurance a non-mutated human body could muster; he wasn't someone who could be taken down by just anybody. "As I said, we'll explain everything once we're back."

He started to ask Tony if he was good to go, but realized he'd already shot off, going high into the air and glancing down at the surrounding area before coming back down outside the crater and murmuring, "Take back the suit, JARVIS." The suit started to shift away from his form before clustering and hurtling upward, then backtracking to where it'd come from earlier. Tony looked a bit shaken up, a bit pissed, too, but no worse for wear. He started walking back toward town, leaving Steve and Clint to follow.

Once the two had gotten out of the crater and glanced back over the sheer size of it a moment, Steve looked at Tony, who was about ten yards ahead of them. "So we ended up with a lot of hurt pride and no girl. What even happened back there?"

"Know much about Norse mythology?"

Steve looked thoroughly perplexed by that as he and Clint continued walking back toward Clarkdale's outskirts. "Um… No, I guess I don't."

Clint gave a very half-hearted smirk before noting, "Well, you will."

When Cora slowly resurfaced into consciousness, she felt strangely airborne with a solid pressure against her belly, soon realizing the heat in her head was because she was hanging upside down. She gave a small grunt and weakly brought her untethered fist down on his back just before she felt his hold shift, which was the only warning she got before she was spilled to the ground, wincing as already-sore limbs were bruised. The hammer tied to her arm hit the floor with a metallic thud and she looked at it with wide, startled eyes, the ancient etchings across the head glinting in the sparse sunlight.

Swallowing against a dry throat, Cora glanced up, only half expecting to see the desert crater around her again. She wondered if maybe they'd had some covert operative sneak up on her and get her when she wasn't looking or something, but she hadn't seen anyone else with them and she certainly wasn't where she'd been before. Her eyes fell upon concrete walls and floors, along with shelves of boxes and assorted baubles. They appeared to be in some kind of warehouse and—by the amount of dust littering the contents—she doubted anyone had been there in a long time.

"What are you?"

She tensed, her jaw taut with apprehension as she slowly turned to look at who had spoken: a man of great height with black hair barely touching his broad shoulders and uniquely chiseled features housing eyes the color of vivid pines. He wore strange clothes of emerald and black with what looked like an armored exterior, but that was the least of her concern. Cora's brow creased a little in regard to his offhand question. "Excuse me?"

"I said," the man murmured with his nonexistent patience swiftly decreasing as he looked down his nose at her. "What. Are. You."

"I'm tired. And hungry. And all kinds of things, all leaning toward pissed," she noted with impatience of her own as she glared up at him, her anger renewing her bravery.

"'Pissed'?"

"Mad."

A fissure formed between his own brows at what he saw as impertinence, but he did look down at her with slightly altered consideration. "And which one of those has made it possible for you to wield that hammer?"

"I'd place my bets on the anger," she noted and he seemed to find that amusing in a way not hedged in any way toward humor; he was sardonic with every move and every quirk of his smirking mouth.

"Think you that you have a god's wrath?" he whispered daringly and for the first time she noticed that his crossed arms bore hands clenched into fists. She took that into account as she remained silent. "For that equivalent alone could only reach this weapon's worth, now I will ask one last time: what are you?"

"A… A Californian?"

He frowned, not having expected that. "There is no such realm."

"It's a state. In the US. Here."

He paused heavily, his eyes narrowing before he murmured, "You…are mortal."

"Uhm, yes?"

There was a pause before he scoffed softly and shook his head. "A mortal using… There must be a mistake." The man leaned forward and reached a pale hand toward Cora's, which rested on the hammer.

"No way," Cora muttered and she tugged it away from his reach, turning around and scrambling back a few paces now that her instincts had overridden the shock. "How did I get here and who are you?"

"Stay still or let go of the relic," he growled quietly as he advanced on her.

"Answer my damn questions!" she retorted, getting up and positioning the weapon, ready to swing it if she had to.

He paused and seemed to weigh his options with narrowed eyes holding glimmers of hurt pride and aggravation as the looked between her and the hammer in question. "I will make you a deal. I will answer the questions you've already presented… And you let me see that. Agreed?" Cora considered this very uncertainly, but before she could agree or attempt to disagree, he added, "I do not intend to use it on you. It is a simple test."

Cora pursed her lips and muttered, "Start talking."

He could do little to hide the fury that seemed to roil in him, but made good on his word. "You are here," he gritted softly, "because I brought you here."

"Where is 'here'?"

"That is not of importance and not something you asked."

Cora squinted suspiciously and, after a moment, murmured, "You don't even know where we are, do you?"

He glared at her before admitting, "I have not been to this realm more than a couple of times before."

"Why is everything a 'realm' with you?" Cora asked, slightly relaxing her stance as she realized he didn't seem to be threatening her. At least, not at the moment. His height was a bit intimidating for her though; she was used to being amongst the tallest in the room.

"Everything is a realm, mortal," he pointed out as if she were stupid before presenting his hand for the hammer.

Cora looked at it before asking warily, "What exactly is your test…?"

"We shall both find out once you hold up your end of the bargain," he noted, not looking terribly excited over what might follow. It seemed to be more of a confirmation of something he already knew.

Against her much better judgment, Cora loosed the knot of the cord around her wrist and angled the handle toward him, releasing her hold upon the hammer once he had a grip on it. To her utter shock, the muscular man in front of her plummeted to bend toward the ground, the hammer digging into the dirt with his fingers still latched around it.

"As I said," he gritted, giving it a good pull before giving up. It hadn't even twitched, even with as much force as he'd put upon it just then.

"What…," Cora murmured with wide eyes. "What did you do?"

"It is nothing I did," he snapped as he straightened back up and rubbed a tiny amount of dust off his hands, which had risen up with the hammer's rejection. "Now pick it up."

"If you can't even manage it, how do you—"

"You could before," he interrupted. "So do it again."

Cora gave the hammer a doubtful glance before bending down and taking the handle, pulling up with all her might only to nearly fall on her ass when it came up as reasonably as the first time she'd lifted it. She caught herself on the wall behind her, but barely, and looked down at the hammer with a bewildered expression. "But…"

"Just as I expected," he murmured more to himself than to her with a look of pure exasperation and jealousy, as if whatever was going on was extremely ironic.

"Why is… I sound crazy, but why is it doing that?"

The man looked at her fleetingly, seeming to measure her up again before he turned his back to her. "Stay here."

"Hey, wait! I don't even know where 'here' is and you want me to just—"

He didn't look back at her, just kept moving, his cloak fluttering faintly. "You will stay here, as I said. Stray and I will only bring you back."

"Why?" Cora demanded.

"Because, mortal, as trifling as it is, I can use this oddity of yours to my advantage," he told her. "And in turn, those agents will have lost your scent. Doesn't that sound preferable?"

Cora said nothing for a moment until she saw him start to fade out. She'd not been sure earlier if it had been her power that had pulled them from visual existence, but now she was certain that he'd been the one to make them disappear, which caused even more questions to rise up to her lips. Maybe he knew a way she could manage her power, if that's what it was. "My name isn't 'mortal,' it's Cora. And you never answered my other question."

Once more, his bored, condescending eyes slanted down to her, and he only said, "I am Loki, of Asgard," before disappearing into thin air.

Next chapter: Chapter 4, "The Lightning & the Storm"

[reminiscingtonight]

Sticky Situtation

Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Word Count: 3.4k

A/N: Wishing my bud @vancityfire13 a very happy birthday. Hope you have a great day 🥰

New members weren’t a norm. The members that joined the team after Ultron’s attempted world-ending event were the last ones to join, and even that was a while ago. You would’ve thought that anyone would jump at the chance to stand beside the world’s top heroes. For most it would be a dream to fight side by side with them. 

And for a while it was like that. People from all over came to the compound in hopes of being the next Avenger. 

But like all good things, this eventually came to an end. After Tony hacked and exposed the secret dalliances of the last trial Avenger, word spread about the billionaire's lack of respect for privacy, and with that no one else dared to join. 

So when Fury walked in with an unfamiliar stranger in tow, everyone crowded around like excited puppies. They were all starved for new blood, and you were exactly that. 

Fury had only given you brief introductions with the people present before turning around and leaving. You barely had two seconds to process the fact that Fury had basically thrown you to the wolves before the Avengers were already trying to vie for your attention.

Tony, everso the charmer, was the first to speak. “Alright newbie. I’ve got one question and one question only. What’s so special about you?”

Shrugging, you met his questioning eyes with an unbothered gaze. “Nothing really.”

Taking a step back, Tony narrowed his eyes at you. “No offense, but Fury must have seen something in you in order to send you our way.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. There’s really nothing that special about me.”

Tony was about to protest again, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him in his tracks. Steve flashed you a soft smile, hand outstretched to shake your hand. “Ignore Stark. We’re happy to welcome you to the team.”

And with a simple handshake you sealed the deal. (Y/N) (Y/L/N), new Avenger.

---

Natasha Romanoff was nothing if not cautious. Years spent in the Red Room taught her that treating everything as a threat was a good way to stay alive. So when Natasha first learned about your presence on the team, she tried digging up any and all dirt she could about you.

What she came up with was frustratingly normal. You had come from a small family out in the middle of nowhere America. You did pretty well academically, and after graduating college you went straight into SHIELD, training as a field agent. When SHIELD fell after the discovery of HYDRA, you stayed in contact with Fury. And here you were now. The new recruit.

The redhead felt like something wasn’t adding up, but she knew better than to break the happy bubble everyone else was living in. Steve had been bothering Natasha about coming down to the gym to help him evaluate your fighting skills, and seeing this as an opportunity to scope you out, Natasha agreed.

The first thing Natasha noticed after walking into the gym was how the air seemed to be a hundred degrees hotter than it was a second ago. Her eyes had instantly zoomed onto your abs, a fact that she had cursed herself for doing. Apparently Sam had accidentally spilled his water on your shirt, and you thought it would be a better plan to go shirtless than to train in a wet shirt.

Clenching her jaw tight, Natasha took a deep breath in. This was fine. All she had to do was figure out what was off about you. There was no way in hell that she found you attractive. Nope. No way.

Steve was the first to spot Natasha in the gym. He waved at her before beckoning her over.

“Holy shit. You’re the black widow.”

Natasha did her best to keep a straight face as Sam snickered at the awestruck look on your face. 

“Sorry, it’s just that you’re amazing. And I’m a huge fan.”

She gave you a tight smile before crossing her arms. “Rogers said you’ve had some fighting experience. How much?”

You shrugged. “Basic training? I went on a couple SHIELD missions but Fury didn’t really want me out there that much.”

Hmm, interesting. Natasha let out a hum at your words. “Okay then. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Not even ten minutes later you had Sam, Steve, and Natasha all on the ground, wheezing as they tried to catch their breaths.

Sam had been the first one to go down. A simple punch to the gut somehow ridding all of the air from his lungs. Steve was next. What you didn’t have in stature you made up in speed. With a couple perfectly timed kicks to his legs, you had Captain America on his knees and then on his back. Natasha, who had been studying your takedown of her teammates, took more care in matching your hits for hits. Yet somehow your agility matched that of hers, and within minutes you had flipped and pinned Natasha onto the ground.

Natasha took your offered hand with a skeptical glance. You had barely broken a sweat and Natasha was more than a little suspicious.

Basic training my ass.

When you walked out of the gym joking around with Steve, Natasha came to a conclusion.

There was definitely something off about you.

And she would get to the bottom of it if it was the last thing she did.

---

Hazing was a normal thing the Avengers tried to do to welcome new recruits. Pietro woke up every morning to a bucket of cold water for two months straight when he joined. Sam spent weeks being Tony’s test subject for his experiments. Wanda was the only one who lucked out. No one dared to prank the young woman, lest they be thrown into another nightmare sequence.

It began as a simple prank idea. After noticing how you always drank from the same mug every morning, Clint decided he would swipe it from you. The others had called it a lame hazing attempt but the archer stood firm on his belief that it would be great haze. 

One morning you placed your mug on the counter before turning around to grab a piece of toast. Clint waited until you had fully turned away before dropping through the vents. With his eyes focused on the white mug, he didn’t notice anything was up until he heard his name being called.

“Oh, hey Clint. What’s up?” 

Instantly straightening up, Clint looked up to see you looking right back at him. Dropping to the ground, he gave you his best smile. “Er, nothing much. Was just dropping by for some breakfast.”

You nod, looking a bit confused at his method of transportation. “Okay… Cool. Well I guess I’ll see you later then.”

Clint watched you walk away with a puzzled mind. He could have sworn that you had your back towards your cup. And he hadn’t made a single noise. Was it just a coincidence that you had turned around before he reached your mug?

And with Clint’s failed attempt came a new game. The Avengers started holding bets for who would be the one to steal your mug. 

One of Tony’s bots tried to steal it from your room only for it to jerk backwards from some invisible force. The next thing the video caught was your half confused half amused face.

Sam was stopped before he was even able to take a step towards you in the kitchen. You had thrown something towards the trash can, only to hit him square in the head. He refused to approach you unannounced again.

Natasha usually wasn’t one to join in on such childish games, but something about you intrigued her. So she put her mind into it, trying to figure out how she could get your mug before the others. And then it hit her. Technically all she had to do was steal it. Nothing was said about having to do it covertly.

But it seemed like Pietro had also come to the same conclusion.

Cursing the white haired man’s name, she watched as he sped past her and right towards you. 

Everything happened too fast. One second Pietro was running towards you like a blur. The next second he was sprawled on the ground, clutching his arm as if he was in pain.

Natasha looked from the speedster to you. You were still casually leaning against the counter, mug held loosely in your hand.

What the hell just happened?

She could’ve sworn you hadn’t made a defensive move to stop Pietro. But if that was the case, why wasn’t Pietro able to grab your mug? 

The last thing Natasha saw was Wanda scolding her brother and you looking on with an even more confused look on your face before she slipped out of the kitchen.

Invisible force field was added to her list of hypothetical powers. Right between mind reader and body of steel.

---

Somehow Natasha found herself showing you around the compound. Although it was another perfect opportunity to try to sniff out your secrets, Natasha surprisingly found herself having a good time. Your humor was quite endearing and Natasha realized she was actually enjoying hanging out with you.

The tour had just ended when Steve’s voice came ringing out across the grassy field.

“Watch out!”

Spinning around, the two of you saw a red, white, and blue shield come flying your way. 

There was barely any available reaction time. 

Closing her eyes, Natasha braced for impact.

It never came.

When Natasha cracked open her eyes, she was met with the sight of your body in front of hers, one hand outstretched with the shield snug tight in your grasp.

Her mouth dropped open.

There was no way you could’ve caught that. It had been going full speed at the two of you. A hit with the shield should have at least sent you flying a couple feet back. 

You didn’t even look like you were in pain as you stood still with the shield in your hand.

Steve came jogging over to the two of you, apologizing profusely for the wild throw. You simply waved him off and handed him the shield back without a single care in the world. 

Natasha didn’t miss the confused look on Steve’s face as well. He was staring at your hands as if they had some sort of magical property that he was unaware of. 

You laughed at his expression, misreading it as him being more apologetic.

Natasha set her jaw, coming to the conclusion that the more she got to know you, the more questions she had.

---

“Rogers, he’s headed your way.”

You had gotten your approval to go on a mission within two weeks. Given how the first evaluation went, Natasha wasn’t surprised by how quickly you got the okay to go on a mission. But all that did was exacerbate her suspicions against you. 

Today the lot of you were chasing after a rogue HYDRA agent that had disappeared off all radars the second SHIELD was disbanded. He had resurfaced a couple days ago and you guys were quick to jump onto his trail. You guys had traced him to some abandoned buildings in the corner of the city. He had booked it the second he caught a glimpse of the familiar red and blue shield sparkling from across the street.

Natasha had been tracking him from the building next door, but when she got to the roof, she realized that there was no way she could make it across.

“I can cut him off!”

Frowning, Natasha looked down, trying to spot you on the ground. When she didn’t see your figure, she spoke into the coms again. “(Y/L/N) where are you?”

“Up top. Rooftop access.”

Natasha instantly knew what you were planning to do. She quickly objected to your plans. “The adjacent roof is too far for you to jump, (Y/L/N). Abort your plans.”

“I can do it.”

“Negative. Do not--”

Words dying in her throat, Natasha was left speechless as you suddenly ran past her, flinging yourself off of the roof.

A scream catches in her throat. 

When she rushed to the edge of the roof, she spotted you already on the roof of the other building. You seemed to move at an inhuman speed, making another jump onto the second roof without an issue. With a sudden burst of speed, you were lunging at the target, tackling him to the ground.

What in the world?

You had just cleared two rooftops with ease, chasing down the agent without any issues. There was no way you had just been a simple SHIELD agent. There was something Fury wasn’t telling everyone. Something that you were still keeping to yourself.

Silently fuming, Natasha ripped her earpiece out. The last thing she wanted to hear was the others congratulating you on your save when there was more going on than you were letting on.

---

Tony had decided to throw a small party to celebrate your first successful mission on the team. He had quickly gotten over your apparent “normalness” and was one of the first to praise you for your talents.

The party hadn’t been going on for too long when you felt a cold chill running down your back. You were instantly on edge, watching your back for some sort of threat.

A tingling on the back of your neck was all the warning you needed. 

Sidestepping, the knife missed you by inches.

Blinking, you stared at the weapon with a dumbfounded look on your face. The chatter came to a stop as Natasha stalked towards you with a murderous glare. Clint tried to put out a hand to soothe the ex-assassin, but she pushed past him, nearly causing him to fall over. You gulped hard but stood your ground. 

Before you could even get a word out, Natasha was in your face, an accusing finger poking you right in the chest. “I’ve had it with you.”

“Hello to you too, Natasha.”

Her scowl deepened and you felt your mouth go dry. “What the hell is so special about you?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing special about me.”

Your familiar first words to the team echo in your ears. 

Natasha’s eyes narrow dangerously and for the first time since joining the team you felt like you were in danger. With every step she took towards you, you took one back. “Bullshit. We both know you’re lying.”

“I’m not lying.”

That was apparently the wrong answer.

In a fit of anger, Natasha shoved at your chest. Hard.

Not expecting the push, you let out a grunt of surprise. Feet slipping out from under you, you fall over the edge and plummet towards the ground.

“(Y/N)!”

Eyes wide with horror, everyone rushed to the edge of the roof. Wanda was just about to jump after you when suddenly a white web came shooting above everyone’s heads. Everyone turned just in time to see you swing back up, landing on the roof with a flip.

Brushing off your pants, you stood up only to find everyone’s eyes on you. You gave them all a sheepish smile. “Er… surprise?”

---

Two weeks ago:

“Alright newbie. I’ve got one question and one question only. What’s so special about you?”

Shrugging, you met Tony’s Stark’s eyes with a level gaze. “Nothing really.”

You had to stifle a laugh when he narrowed his eyes at you in disbelief. “No offense, but Fury must have seen something in you in order to send you our way.”

It wasn’t a secret to your superiors that you had powers. An accidental stumble in a lab led to a radioactive spider breaking free and biting you. And from there on out you developed spider-like powers. You’ve read on the news about Peter Parker, the beloved spiderman, but you always laughed at the thought of what the world would say if they only knew that he wasn’t the first one. 

Given that Fury had explicitly told you that you could decide when you wanted to tell the team, you were planning on milking out your “ordinariness” as much as you could before they figured out your powers. So you kept quiet. “I don’t know what to tell you. There’s really nothing that special about me.”

You didn’t know whether or not to be disappointed or relieved when Steve placed a hand on Tony’s shoulder to stop his questions. You shook his outstretched hand. “Ignore Stark. We’re happy to welcome you to the team.”

And with a simple handshake you sealed the deal. (Y/N) (Y/L/N), new Avenger.

---

Bonus scene: 

Now that everyone knew of your special abilities, everyone took joy in seeing just how great your spidey senses were. And of course the way they tested it was by throwing things at your head. 

From the time you left your room to the time you retired to bed, you were constantly catching things thrown at you. There were no safe places, no safe times. 

By this point you’ve caught a book, clothes iron, Clint’s arrows, and countless other weapons. You were slightly dreading the idea of Thor ever partaking in the festivities and throwing his hammer at you.

Today you were in the kitchen making lunch with Natasha when the hairs on the back of your neck stood up. Your hand shot up right before a white blur hit Natasha.

She let out a loud yelp that quickly turned into a glare when she realized that the boys just nearly took her head off because of their bad aim. You, on the other hand, were staring at the chicken-shaped piggy bank in your hands. From the weight alone you could tell that it was almost completely full.

You were contemplating whether or not to throw it back at a sheepish looking Clint when a loud ‘holy shit’ caught your attention.

Peter, who had been sitting at the kitchen counter doing his homework, was looking at you with a look of amazement on his face. “How did you catch that?”

You fought the urge to chuckle at the awestruck expression on his face. You had just met the young boy earlier today so it was obvious that he had no idea that you were just like him. 

Purposefully letting go of the chicken, it hit the ground with a satisfying crack. You didn’t have to look to know that it had shattered on contact. 

“Oops.”

You ignored Clint’s cry of ‘hey!’, choosing instead to step over the spilling coins and turn your attention back to the young teenager.

“Quick reflexes.”

He nods, mouth still wide open. “Is that your power? Mr. Stark said that everyone here has their own thing. Mr. Barton has his arrows, Mr. Wilson has his wings, and Ms. Romanoff… well she’s just a badass.” 

From the corner of your eye you watch Natasha blush at the compliment. “Nah, quick reflexes just comes with the whole package.”

You could tell that the young boy was still intrigued so you let your eyes sweep the kitchen for something you could use. Spotting the cucumber sitting by the sink, you quickly pointed your hands towards it. With a press of your middle and ring fingers towards your palm, you had a web shooting towards the green food and soon it was in your hand.

Peter simply gaped at you. 

You smirked. “What? You thought you were the first one?”

His mouth opened and closed a couple times, nothing ever coming out. You could almost sense how close he was to exploding. 

“Go on. Ask whatever it is that you want to ask.”

And it seemed like that opened the floodgates. Question after question came spilling out of Peter’s mouth and you were quickly drowning under his rapid fire. 

“Slow down spiderling.”

The affronted look he sends you is a little too cute to be intimidating. “It’s spiderman.” 

You pause, looking him up and down. And then you look at Natasha. She shrugs.

“Spiderling,” you repeat, ignoring the noise of protest that escapes him when you do. “You’re a child. Please calm down before you hurt yourself.”

Oh yeah. You were definitely going to have fun here.

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

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[jetaime-jespere]

Old Times All Over (Part 1 of 2)

A very special thank you to @sequinsmile-x for the beta!

Exactly six months pass before he can’t stand it anymore.

Aaron takes a risk and goes to Emily while she's undercover in Paris.

Rating: M

Exactly six months pass before he can’t stand it anymore. The weight of her absence is unbearable; it follows him around as if lingering in hidden shadows and settling deep in his soul, an indelible stain that doesn’t fade as the days pass by. He bears the team’s grief, shoulders it and doesn’t let himself handle his own. It feels wrong to mourn her as if she were actually dead when in reality she lingers somewhere very different, another kind of hellish existence. He often finds himself wondering what she’d say about all of it. Emily would have scoffed at the ornate casket, rolled her eyes at the formality of the Catholic service the Ambassador insisted upon. He’d been the one to make the call on the flight back to DC. Elizabeth knew right away why he was calling, and the detached coldness in her tone was merely a coping mechanism, for the older woman’s grief seeped through the phone as he relayed the news. Aaron could scarcely reach her eyes as he offered condolences in person, the words heavy and thick on his tongue. Elizabeth’s questions were answered with the vague formalities that were constructed as part of a grand lie, held together with threads that ran the risk of being unraveled with the slightest misstep.

Read the rest below the cut or on Ao3

Emily’s life depended on the sanctity of those lies, as did his own.

No one can ever find out about this, JJ had whispered to Aaron and Clyde behind a firmly closed door in the depths of that hospital in Boston. It was eerily dark, their heads bent together in near silence as initial plans were laid. For her safety, and all of ours. It felt oddly conspiratorial to plan her disappearance as she laid just feet away, oblivious to it all and very much alive. But Doyle escaped into the night like a ghost, and that meant Emily had to go too whether they liked it or not. It didn’t matter that they hunted monsters like him every day. They knew the moment her heart started again, that she would pull through, that she’d never be free. He’ll never stop looking for her. Clyde’s voice was like rubbing salt in a wound that burned through his skin.The tension between them was thick, laden with the unspoken tension of a tentative truce and a keen awareness of the pain that coursed within each of them. He will go to the ends of the earth to find her.

Aaron disliked Clyde Easter from the moment he laid eyes on the man. Perhaps it was his closeness to Emily - she trusted him, more so than she did Aaron, as was being made abundantly clear. It still stung - that she’d gone to him in her moment of need without even once considering just maybe the team could have helped. Maybe it was the way Clyde knew her so intimately, almost as well as a lover would - a delicate balance of adoration and indignance, a fierce desire to protect the oaths they’d sworn years ago, loyalty and trust woven from years of brushes with peril only to do it all over again. But it was more than that; he knew from the moment Clyde sat before him in an interrogation room in Boston his loathing ran deep. Only later would Aaron realize they both paid a similar price for loving the same woman.

The idea to go to her comes to him once Dave has finally disappeared for the night and the bottle of scotch is empty once again. It’s a ritual they share now, unspoken yet expected, an attempt at burying the worst of their grief. It never quite hits the mark, because Dave doesn’t know the truth. His words are wise and well intended, but he speaks of loss in terms of death, and it’s one thing Aaron can’t think about for too long. But it’s some of the only company he has once the building quiets down, so whenever he shows up at the door, he doesn’t object. Most nights they leave together after a round. The echo of their shoes striking the marble floors is the only noise between them when they pass the framed photos of agents long gone on the walls, now with Emily among them. He wants to shake someone, tell them she doesn’t belong there. “Don’t look,” Dave tells him every time. “It won’t bring her back.”

He always looks.

Tonight Aaron lingers, the idea now an intrusive thought reverberating through his weary mind. It’s dangerous - violates every rule of her disappearance - and puts anyone who knows at risk. He shuffles the files on his desk only to do it once more, rearranges the pens in the cup and flips through a few reports that still require his signature. His phone rings; he doesn’t have to turn it over to know it’s Jessica asking where he is, that Jack is asking for him. He was supposed to have been home a few hours ago. Instead of answering that phone, he digs for a different one. This one has stayed hidden in his desk since the night they returned from Boston. Clyde had pushed it into his hand at the last possible moment before he boarded a flight, his face stony and solemn. “If you ever need to reach me, use this.” It might be the closest thing to a friendship they’ll ever have, a twisted kind of bond that comes along with a shared secret they very well might take to the grave.

“I was wondering when you would call,” comes the lilting British accent on the other end when the line connects. “I thought for sure it would be sooner.” Clyde’s voice is haunting; it takes Aaron right back to Boston when it was just the two of them in that interrogation room, piercing blue eyes up against his darker ones as the pieces fell into place. If you want to stop that man, you have to put a bullet between his eyes yourself. He barely recognizes his own voice; it strains when he explains exactly why he’s calling, once the doors of his office are firmly shut. Even then, it’s a near whisper.

“You do realize what you’re asking of me?” Clyde demands. He’s not exactly surprised by the request, though. After all, he and Aaron had a few things in common. “The risks of all of this?” He’s whispering, the hiss of his voice biting even from thousands of miles away, wherever the hell he might be. “I thought you did things by the book at the BAU.”

“Can you make it work or not?” Aaron’s terseness matches Clyde’s hostility, a thinly veiled shield for his grief that consumes him.

There’s a pause on the other end, followed by a contemplative inhale as if he’s considering his answer, like he holds the power in his hands himself. “You should have more faith in me, Agent Hotchner.”

...

It’s all a little too easy to coordinate once the initial call is made, much to his surprise. For two weeks, things continue as normal, or as close to normal as possible, a period of limbo-like freefall. A case takes them to Portland, another to Providence. While the team is across the country, Clyde takes care of the multiple identities and aliases Aaron will use in Europe, along with a reservation at a nondescript hotel and God only knows what else. He’s barely back in Virginia for an hour when a text message on the burner phone reveals a series of coordinates, a meeting location.

“A direct flight to Charles de Gaulle might seem suspect,” Clyde whispers, nestled amongst the shadows along the Potomac River three nights before Aaron slated to leave. “There’s a flight from Regan to Heathrow, then to Paris. You’ll have a different identity for each, so best not to get confused.”

Aaron bristles at the snarkiness in his tone. “And my cover story?”

Clyde scoffs, as if disgusted by the question. “You’ll tell your team you’re being called to London to consult with Scotland Yard as a favor to a friend. I’ve already taken care of those details as well - a fake case report. Familiarize yourself with them so they don’t suspect anything.” He passes over the thick envelope, holding onto it for just a moment too long.

“How will I find her? Once I’m there?”

“Leave that up to me, Aaron. She’ll be waiting for you.”

“Thank you,” is all Aaron can say once he holds the weight of it in his hands. “I know you took a huge risk to do this.”

Clyde stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets and shuffles his feet awkwardly. “I love her too, you know.” It’s certainly the most honest he’s ever been, something that looks like hurt flooding his features. But he stiffens a few seconds later with an authoritative clearing of his throat. “Bloody hell, Aaron, for all of our sakes, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

...

Aaron drops Jack off at Jessica’s. He relays the same details he told the team a few hours before with the same feigned degree of calm assurance and mock annoyance - just a few days away, work related. No one suspects a thing. In fact, the rest of them seem almost happy for him to go. “A change of scenery might be nice,” Dave says as they walk out of the BAU.

It’s risky, inherently a bad idea and yet, it isn’t enough to deter him. There’s an element of betrayal he feels for lying to the team, for they’re still reeling from their collective loss. They miss her just as much as he does; none of this is fair. He drowns it out with a pair of headphones and a stiff drink as the plane roars to life and lifts into the sky as the sun sets.

He wakes up hours later in London with a headache and an all too familiar ache in his chest.

…

It’s another few hours of travel before he actually lands in Paris. He’s completely focused, determined as he collects his luggage and leaves the airport. He destroys the first passport moments after the plane touches solid ground and tucks the next one in his jacket pocket for easy access, the others will stay safely in his travel bag. Aaron calls Clyde on a new burner phone, one of several included in the envelope of documents that was passed over in a shadowy spot by the Potomac. He answers on the first ring, doesn’t even bother with a greeting. Instead he rattles off an address Aaron commits to memory and adds, “she’ll be waiting for you,” before the line goes dead. The address, he soon finds, is a small cafe in the fifth Arrondissement, the Latin Quarter. At first it seems risky, to meet in public, but it’s probably safer than somehow having a record of her address.

The woman at the small table in the back of the cafe is inconspicuous, but he spots her immediately upon opening the door. She could be anyone; she fits right in. One slender leg crossed over the other, a chic knee-length boot peeking out under the table. A simple raincoat, hair cut just below her chin. It’s lighter than it was the last time he saw her but still a rich shade of brown.The only giveaway is the state of the nails on her right hand - not manicured, bit down and ragged. It’s her, exactly where Clyde said she would be. He doesn’t make a big show, just simply sits in the empty seat across from her, his heart pounding in his chest when he sees her face for the first time in months. Emily’s hand is unsteady as her fingers wrap around the espresso on the table. “I’ve been waiting.” It sounds formal; she makes no move to shake his hand or hug him, or display any bit of emotion, but her lips tremble and her eyes well up a little.

“I got a little lost along the way,” Aaron shrugs a little, keeping his tone light for any ears privy to their conversation. She smiles, probably picturing him lost on the maze-like streets of Paris, the streets that still don’t feel like home to her either. “I’m here now.” It carries more weight than it ever would; all he wants to do is touch her to prove to himself this isn’t just part of the fucking nightmare he’s lived since March, one he’ll wake from wrapped in sheets damp with sweat and a pounding heart. She’s very much real, very much alive in front of him, but what the Emily he sees isn’t the Emily he remembers. Paris might be beautiful but it hasn’t been kind to her. She’s thinner and paler, shades of exhaustion on her face. Over the years Aaron has seen her sleep deprived more times than he could count - the toll of back to back cases added up - but this is something else entirely. It’s the culmination of fear from constantly looking over her shoulder, the toll of the unknown. Would Doyle ever stop looking for her, or would the rest of her days be spent on the run, alone, days that blend into weeks into months and years? Would she ever come home, to the only family she’s really ever had?

Emily studies him too, undoubtedly shocked at what she sees. Time hasn’t been kind to him, either. He’s a shell of what he used to be. A subtle shadow on his face that’s new, he’s weary eyed and tense. She knows it’s not because of the better part of a day he’s spent traveling - it’s much more than that. It’s a haunting look, with the memory of how quickly things spiraled out of control. He’d been helpless to stop any of it; Emily knows the blame he places on himself. If their hurried goodbye in the hospital was any indicator of the torment of what he’s been through the last six months, then she knows it’s been hell for him. Just like it’s been for her. She pushes another espresso, this one untouched, in his direction. “How much time do you have?” English feels foreign on her tongue. It’s been weeks, months maybe, since she’s had a real conversation not in French. It’s an act. This is all an act, but one her life depends on. Every minute she spends walking the arrondissements is a risk. The fear curls around her spine a little too tightly. She glances around the coffee shop, eyes scanning through without spending too long on any one thing. It can’t look obvious, only effortless.

“Not nearly enough.” Aaron wonders how much she knows about this, just what Clyde told her about the logistics of his visit. “We have about forty eight hours.”

He doesn’t miss the longing, wistful look in her eyes when she nods, the slightest tip of her head. It’s not enough time, it never will be. But it’s all they have, all they might ever have. They speak in short sentences, vague and cryptic, as they sip the espresso. It’s stronger than he expected, she seems immune to its effects. She doesn’t call him Aaron, and he’s careful not to call her Emily. He doesn’t know her new name, either. Not even Clyde could give him that information - it was probably better that way. They make superficial conversation - the rain here and the heat there, the bakery on the corner with chocolate croissants and the headlines on the newspaper that sits on the table. He plays along as she explains, as if he fits into this world she’s had no other choice but to assimilate into. To anyone in the cafe, they could be old friends, lovers even, with years of history between them, a casual intimacy spun like a web. The ease of lulls in conversation, a subtle glance every so often, the comfort of the proximity of someone else.

And hidden somewhere in their conversation, behind a facade of lies, is something else. What no one knows, what they haven’t quite managed to forget themselves, is something happened between them once before.

...

It was spring, after the dust had settled from Foyet and the world started to turn again, albeit slowly. Only when things settled into a new kind of normal - the humble experience of single parenting, relying on Jessica like he never had before - did Aaron realize something had changed between them. Perhaps it was the unwavering way Emily stood by him even when he wouldn’t admit to needing it, or how she picked up his loose ends without making him feel like his life was unraveling before his eyes. It was the way she mourned Haley’s death, a steadfast presence at her funeral, and her attentiveness to Jack in the months after.

He’d been divorced for more than a year, separated for at least two. Aaron no longer mourned his marriage, but the loss of his son’s mother, the woman he’d shared more than half of his life with. But someone else started to preoccupy his mind - dark hair, a blinding grin, a wicked sense of humor. It was becoming harder to ignore; she was everywhere. So a few months later in the spring, when he found Emily, nursing a drink at the hotel bar that had clearly seen better days, after a particularly brutal case in Scranton, he knew exactly how the night would end. It would cross a line - railroad through any professional boundary they still maintained. But an unsub had walked free earlier that night, a child was dead, and while it wasn’t her fault, he watched any trace of composure vanish from her face when they got back to the hotel as she retreated into herself.

It shouldn’t have happened that way - definitely not how he imagined it would. But Emily was desperate in her need to forget, he was desperate to help her do so. It was frantic, the clash of her teeth against his an ironic reminder that this was the first time he ever kissed her. Aaron pressed her back against the wall, sucked a bruise into her neck, and buried himself inside of her with one smooth push. He swallowed her moans with his mouth, the snap of his hips brutal and sharp. She reveled in it, her need for him and this, legs hitched over his hips as she clenched around him.

“Wanted you for so long,” he growled as she came around him. Her fingers were like vices around his shoulders, clinging to him as he fucked her through it, unrelenting. “Thought about you, about this.”

“Me too,” Emily gasped, the simple admission triggering his own release until he came apart and took her with him one more time.

Aaron had to carry her to the bed in the middle of his hotel room. It was the most gentle he’d been all evening, gingerly placing her in the center of it, following her down and pulling her into his arms. She was bruised and sore, he wore the scratches of her nails on his back and shoulders. Emily curled into him like she’d been doing it forever, snuggling into his chest. “I still can’t feel my legs.”

“We should have done that a long time ago,” he mused into the darkness, dragging his fingertips down her spine, listening to her slow, even breaths. It’s an admission more than an observation, and the low laugh that comes from her is all the confirmation he needs to know she thinks the same thing.

It happened again hours later, in the middle of the night, this time softer, slow and unhurried. He made her come twice with his mouth, coaxing her through each one. Aaron took his time, marveling at her and whispering praises into her skin. She beamed under his touch, besotted under his gaze. He studied the sharpness of her ribs, the curve of her waist, the length of her legs. And then he held her hands in his own above her head, rocking into her, metronomic and even. He kissed her like a lover should, his lips still wet with her slick, her legs pressed tightly wrapped around his waist as she crested against him. He collapsed against her shortly after, grappling for her hands, leaving kisses along her collarbones - anything to be as close to her as he possibly could.

But it was over after that.

Timing once again failed them. Not because they didn’t have the chance, but because they were both afraid something would change, whatever friendship they built over time, and they wouldn’t be able to take it back. They never talked about it, never even acknowledged anything had happened in that hotel room in Scranton once it was over. It lingered between them, the awareness of it sometimes all-consuming if she got too close or they somehow ended up sitting beside one another on the jet. But things happened - JJ’s untimely departure, coupled with Seaver’s arrival, the grueling toll of case after case. It was buried, hidden behind the burden of their jobs and the baggage they carried, both too stubborn to admit what was right in front of them.

And then she slipped away, shortly after a case in Montana. Emily’s typical professionalism, her unmatched level of skill was marred by uncharacteristic lateness and a short fuse, as if something had settled into her mind that she couldn’t shake. She was secretive and jumpy, slowly withdrawing from them all before his own eyes. And he’d been too caught up in what they weren’t saying, what they were hiding from, to even ask what was wrong.

Aaron never saw it coming. Until it was too late.

…

The cafe suddenly feels suffocating, the four walls trapping them in. What started as an alluring scent of coffee beans and freshly baked pastries now feels cloying, overwhelming. It’s just a little too loud as their conversation fades into silence. After all, there’s only so much small talk that can be made when he only has one question. Why? Across from him Emily shifts in her chair yet still wears her pleasant smile, still playing the act she’s perfected over the last several months. But she’s tearing at her fingernails, a sure sign that she’s nervous. He knows her tells by now, all of them. “What do we do now?” She asks, her voice barely audible. Whether it’s intentional or not he isn’t sure,

He leans in, takes her hand in his own. “Let’s get out of here.”

[keouil]

safely to a land without war

it takes steve six months to call her ‘natasha’. rated g. 1k+. steve/nat. also on ao3 / twitter / cc.

The first time was an accident. 

In the short span of an hour since the perfunctory introduction in the quinjet, Steve knew exactly three things about Natasha Romanoff: she was a level 10 SHIELD agent, Coulson seemed both in awe and afraid of her, and that she was apparently as deadly with a gun as he was competent with a shield.

He received the mission packets courtesy of Fury beforehand, each brief containing consolidated profiles for everyone he was going to be working with. 

But Steve didn’t believe in words etched into paper. 

The power of them was futile and misleading. They could easily bend the lines between the truth, a con he was no stranger to during his time of forging enlistment papers. It didn’t get him anywhere before, and so he believed, in more than anything: the flesh beneath the fine print.

Only word I care about.

“.. Natasha?”

Steve felt—more than saw—the tides shifting in the room the moment he let it slip. He looked up from the briefing table to find pairs of eyes on him, all on varying degrees of incredulousness. Coulson had a look of pure disbelief in his face, his breath held in place. Steve had supersoldier vision, and he caught that infinitesimal widening of Hill’s eyes just in time before she nursed it back to a lukewarm acknowledgement of his namedrop. Some of the tech agents even sneaked a glance their way, clearly eavesdropping.

Hell, even Fury looked amused.

Natasha only raised an eyebrow at him.

Steve was quick to amend himself. “Sorry, ma'am,” he begins, turning to look at her in earnest. “I mean—”

“Romanoff,” Natasha corrects him, not harshly but not entirely kind either. There was a hint of edge in her narrowed gaze. She wasn’t expecting the premature familiarity, either. “It’s Agent Romanoff in the field, Captain.”

Steve feels himself subsiding slowly at her reminder, the miscalculation tinting his ears a faint pink. Coulson coughs and pretends not to notice.

Fury looks between them both, then says with a tone of finality: “For now.”

.

.

.

Steve will swear on his grave it was a heat of the moment thing.

They’re knee-deep in the guts of several disembowelled Chitauri creatures, rubbles of concrete littered all over the streets of New York and the blaring sound of sirens coming from everywhere.

Steve feels the intimacy of battle like a second skin, the ravaging cries of despair and wailing of suffering not foreign on his ears. It pinches his heart, knowing not much has changed but knowing altogether everything did. The umbrella term for war simply expanded.

The sky is a weeping landfall of monsters and men and gods, and they are human; defenselessly and hopelessly so.

In the middle of all that, Steve finds himself out of the carnage to be the leader. 

“Natasha,” he begins in a voice they were all quickly growing accustomed to, commanding but not demanding. Clint, finally on their side and first-time audience to his tendency for bypassing diplomacy, raises an eyebrow at the amity.

“We can fight these things all day, and God knows I plan to," he turns, looking straight at her with steeled conviction. "But it would make our lives much easier to nip it in the bud. Think you can get yourself up there and make it happen?”

Natasha doesn’t even take a beat to answer, turning to smirk at him with eyes dancing in mirth.

“Only if you give me a boost, Captain.”

.

.

.

Steve apologizes profusely after, when the dust has settled and his heart doesn’t feel as hammered and his stomach is filled with a dizzying concoction of burrito and rice and beans. The shawarma restaurant boasts a homey vibe, and for the first time that day, he allows himself the space to breathe. 

Until he remembers.

“I’m really sorry about that, Agent, I really didn’t mean— It was—” Steve sighs, combing a hand through his frayed locks freed of the suffocating helmet. “I just got caught up in the moment is all. No disrespect meant, ma'am.”

Natasha doesn’t reply. Instead she smiles and edges her plate of curly fries closer to him.

.

.

.

It’s 3 o'clock in the morning and Natasha is at the door of his apartment.

“Suit up, Cap,” she says by way of greeting, pushing past his sleep-deprived frame and leisurely drinking in the sight of his SHIELD-issued one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment. She settles into his reading chair by the living room and crosses her legs, smirking up at him. “Mission brief in 3.”

Steve blinks at her from the middle of the room, still disoriented and failing to put two and two together. They’ve been partners for two months now since New York, and while familiar enough and surprisingly adept at reading each other’s combat styles — to Fury’s absolute delight — this was new territory.

The dropping-by-apartment-unannounced thing.

“Romanoff,” Steve chides, unable to process anything beyond the peculiar fact she always seemed to look primed and ready for battle. Even now, with her lithe catsuit clinging to her skin and not a single strand of her auburn hair vying out of place, it breathed life into ‘if looks could kill’ moniker. "How do you know where I live?”

Natasha waved her hand dismissively, already preoccupied with scanning one of the WWII history books by his coffee table. “Not important,” she answers distractedly, not looking up.

“Pro tip: you may wanna wear that new stealth suit Intelligence sent over for this one.”

Steve waits a beat for her to elaborate. 

Natasha, of course, doesn’t. 

He stifles a grunt and moves towards the kitchen island, going through the motions of preparing coffee. Instincts told him he needed at least some form of sustenance to survive her so early in the morning. “Am I allowed to ask why?”

Steve can feel her grinning. “You can do anything you want, Captain Rogers."

He hears her flipping through the pages. The buzz of the coffee maker jolts him a little, the welcome smell of Robusta beans grinding against each other sobering him up already. He places two mugs on the counter, wooden coasters in place. 

It's quiet for a moment before she speaks up. “But where we’re going, you might need more layers.”

He turns to look at Natasha already appraising him from behind, book neatly placed back into the coffee table, a wicked look in her gaze. It seeps into him, somehow, the ignition of fire in her eyes at this upcoming challenge. The red strands framing her face contrasting porcelain skin is arresting enough, but give anyone five minutes with this woman and Steve doubts they’d walk out still armed. 

Natasha was, at any given time, Black Widow.

“Ever heard of the Lemurian Star?”

.

.

.

"Natalie Rushman. Little Spider. Black Widow. Got it. Anything else?”

Natasha huffs, placing her legs on the dashboard in a way she knows will annoy Steve. The great, big California horizon dawns on them as they cruise through the freeway. “There’s also, you know, my actual name.”

She doesn’t have to look at him to know he has another one of those boyish grins in his face, the one to write home about. “I thought it was "Agent Romanoff" on the clock.”

“Cap,” Natasha begins, nursing her tone to be all-affecting and serious as she tries fighting the grin threatening to break her facade. “We are literally on a getaway car.”

.

.

.

They’re in the barren grounds of a sinking city, but the hollows in his soul are in as much of a flight risk than anything Sokovia could ever tether him to. 

It ebbs inside him, this intimate knowing of grief, and the damning hopelessness of trying to wish for something better than always staring at the face of so much death. It’s like the ice all over again, the currents and tides and waves overpowering and fighting against him. He’s six feet under before he can even claw himself up; drowning, drowning, drowning—

“Steve?”

The raspy timbre of her voice is like a bucket of ice splashed on his skin. The cold is biting, but it does the job of sobering him up.

Russia, he’s quickly learned, can be like that. 

Steve glances at her from his side. Her scarlet palette mingles with the desolate grey surrounding them, an out of place caricature in the depressed buildings and soiled streets. Thin stripes of sunlight dawn on them, illuminating everything in a state of disarray and tranquility all the same.

Sokovia is as breathtaking as it is heartbreaking.

But her gaze, unlike the crumbling buildings and ascending city, holds. Steve thinks it’s like a beacon, the most devastating reminder that he’s long since rooted himself to this imminent burial ground; and that, he knows for sure now, she would too.

There is a question in her eyes, and Steve respects her enough to bare himself open. “I can’t leave them here. I won’t, Romanoff.”

They’ve been through hell and back, to the ends of the earth and the beginning of the end. The world was ending as they knew it, their little corner of the world disintegrating into pieces by the second. Steve thinks maybe he should have tried harder to find Bucky when he could, thinks maybe he should have said yes to Peggy sooner and spare himself the virginal jokes, thinks maybe this is the divine reckoning he deserves after uprooting himself from the shackles of near-death he was destined to belong.

But it is Natasha, of all people, who pulls him up from under the carcass.

“I didn’t say we should leave,” she admits after some time. He looks at her, really looks at her, searching for the spy in the soldier and trying to see how much of himself she’s trying—conditioned—to appease. 

He’s not surprised, by that point, to find none. 

Steve finds it hard to recognize Black Widow then. 

This is Natasha, made and unmade, blazing brave and beautiful against the sun and steadfast on her feet against the shaking earth. This is the moment he will imprint to memory, cage to belief the same way the old pocket watch digging into his suit suddenly feels like it weighs the entirety of the world.

But the sun shining down on them, her red hair swaying with the wind, his own mind made up: feels anything  but.

Natasha is right, there really are worse ways to go. 

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

Motion Sickness 27.1

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I wasn't the sort to dwell on what Weiss had wanted from me. Well I totally was. I dwelt on everything. I was a dweller. But I was also the sort to get my workout in anyways.

Really, my thoughts were on Eminence and her partner. The people I had killed. They hadn't acted like gang members or at least not like the picture I had in my head of gang members. What with the pleas for me to spare their lives and all.

Well maybe the picture I had of gang members was of non-people. Then when I encountered some people and killed them I was surprised to find out that they were the same as anybody else. They had died the same as everybody else would, or at least most people would; together, if they were lucky, and begging for their lives, besides.

Qrow wheeled out on me while I was practicing my Limit Breaks and just watched me move around for a long time.

"Enjoying the view?" I asked.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"How are you feeling, kid."

"Like a murderer and a liar."

"We both know why we had to keep it from Ruby. Now we just have one more favor from Ms. Malachite."

"Assuming she keeps her word. I don't trust these criminals as much as you do."

"She will. She has to uphold deals she makes in front of her men in good faith. Or else they'll start to wonder about their own paychecks. It's a little bit of honor amongst thieves. It's more to prevent backstabbing than out of any real sense of honor, though. Trust that."

"Gee, if you say it like that I really have no choice."

"Tell me how you really feel."

"I feel… all kinds of fucked up. I want to talk to Ruby about it but I can't and it's leaving me more fucked up."

"You know why we can't talk to Ruby about it. As far as she is concerned it's just one favor. Scroll keys out of Don Corneo."

"I'm supposed to just live with this. Live with myself."

"Yeah kid. Just like the rest of us."

"The thing is I think I can do it. I think I can do it easily , too. That scares me."

"Sounds too complicated for me. It sounds like you're struggling; just the same as I do."

I grunted and swung my sword at nothing. "It's not quite the same. And all I have to talk to about it is you."

"Easy kid. Have a drink. Relax. There's nothing you can change about it now and nothing you would want to anyways."

I inhaled a shaking breath. He was right. Qrow needed legs. I had to be the one to kill them. It had to be done. No one of my friends would have done it. Didn't that make it wrong? None of them would have approved. I already had the answers I needed. I just didn't like them.

"Who were they? What did they do to deserve having me come after them?"

"Does it really matter? Come on have a drink."

"I don't want to drink anymore."

"You need to relax somehow."

"I am. This is what I do to relax now."

This was how I'd relax for the rest of my life. I swung the sword fast enough that it made several satisfying thwump sounds in the air.

"Well, we wanted to discuss the matter of infiltrating Don Corneo's workplace with you." It was Ozpin. Someone I wanted to talk to even less.

"What about it? We don't need to risk Ruby or Nora now. And I don't need to wear a dress. We have Yang."

"I'm not super comfortable with my niece going in there."

"But you're comfortable with me killing people." I wiped my brow and glared at Qrow. "Your priorities are fucked."

"Easy on the language, now." Ozpin said with Oscar's mouth. "It's good that we have only one favor between us and getting Qrow back on his feet. Then, thanks to Ms. Xiao Long and Ms. Schnee being with us again, things are better now than they were yesterday."

"What does better for you even mean?" I wondered. "How do you handle the lying and the murder?"

"So long as they don't ask us about it, it's hardly lying. And from what you told Qrow you did kill somebody in a near bar fight. The story you told your friends merely bordered on the truth." Ozpin lectured. "As for killing it never gets any easier. And that's a good thing. Though we take life we don't make any light of it." I exhaled hard. It was no new advice. "And we don't make sport of it. I heard you encountered one of the people drafted to Salem's side."

"The Scorpion."

"Yes. Tyrian. There are others too. Others like Hazel Rainart. They would not be so disturbed by violence as you are. Let them serve as a counterpoint. Would the man who attacked Ruby and yourself be upset if they had killed someone? Perhaps. But not like you are now."

"I get it. I get it." I sighed. "You wanted to talk about the infiltration mission. I vote Yang."

"We should discuss it." Qrow interceded.

"We are." Ozpin and I said at the same time. That pissed me off.

"I don't like the idea of her in there."

"You think I have a chance in a dress? I can rock a dress but I'm missing a certain je ne sais quoi that Yang has."

"You didn't want Ms. Rose or Ms. Valkyrie to do it. Why Ms. Xaio Long?"

"Je ne sais quoi."

"Yes. I suppose so." Ozpin relented. "Over Ms. Schnee too, I suppose. Our Target has a predilection for the type who frequent such places. Ms. Xaio Long is a match for, at least in looks."

"She looks like a party girl who knows how to earn a little extra cash is what you're saying." Qrow wasn't happy about it. "I get it though. Maybe she is our best bet."

"She bragged about going clubbing at Beacon. She has experience I don't. Plus she has infinitely more time spent in a female body than me. She knows how to use it better than I can fathom."

"We should have a backup plan," Ozpin insisted.

"She can wear a wire and everyone else can be waiting outside. There's five of us in huntsman-shape. Speaking of shouldn't they be here for this conversation. Part of being open with everyone."

"I wanted to have a quick think-tank and see what you thought." Ozpin dismissed my jab at him. "Qrow trusts your instincts."

"I don't like any of it. I think somebody is going to get hurt. I think Don Corneo from what we know is a scumbag."

"And what do you think of Leonardo?"

I faltered for a moment. "I don't trust him. I don't like how Cinder and her allies snuck past him." If Ozpin thought hard about it he would see how I don't trust him either. I snuck past him. I could have gotten myself or somebody else killed.

And he picked me over some more qualified student who had a better, more authentic resume. He chose me anyways. Why? Was he incompetent? I sure used to be. Or could he actually see my potential and what I would become and thought it was worth the risk.

If so, then it was a hell of a risk. I could have been one of Salem's agents if only I wasn't such a failure. He trusted too easily in any case that was kind to him.

"If you don't mind me asking, uh- Mr. Arc, how did you get as strong as you are?"

It was Oscar this time and I was stumped for the question. I found my gaze flicking over his head to Qrow for a second who only offered me a shrug.

"What do you mean?" I wondered. "And it's just Jaune."

"Jaune, then. It's your mentality. You have this mindset that sets you apart from everyone else."

"I wasn't always this jaded. If you want strength look at Ruby." Emotional or physical.

"It's not that or at least not just that. I've already asked her too. She's something special. You are too, though. Even with the fate of the world as it is, you still train day in and day out and do everything you have to, even if it hurts you. You've even killed people. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you're not afraid of the dirty work."

"It's not something to be proud of but Qrow's done it too."

"But he's not our age. Or your age, at least."

"I have to. I suppose. Or my friends, those that are still here, will bite it too. That keeps me going. What's left of my team and Ruby's team too."

"Can you teach me?"

"How to have friends? Haven't got a clue. Sorry."

"Not that. I need somebody to teach me swordsmanship. How to use my weapon. Or start to until Qrow is back up."

Qrow gave an enormous sigh from the chair. For my part I hesitated again. I wasn't the sort, didn't have the training myself. But this was one of those things I wasn't sure I could say no to.

The right thing to do would be to teach him. Pyrrha would want me to. Ruby might even ask me to. That pretty much sealed it.

"I won't take it easy on you." I drew the long sword and posited the cross shaped shield on my back. "Can't afford to."

"Really? That's fantastic! I was worried you didn't like me. Wait is this one of those things where you mean right now?"

"Why? Are you too busy?" I mocked him. He took it as friendly teasing. And it was, at least to some degree. The kid was not Ozpin. Not yet.

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There was something in the basement. In the tall white house in the middle of the woods where my sisters and I lived with our mother something definitely lurked away in the dark dusty corners of the underside of our house.

I had to be the brave one. I was the oldest. I was a guy. It was time to be a man. It was time to stop being afraid of the shadows which hung on the walls under soft grey lights.

I’d been in the basement a thousand times and I’d been fine literally every time. But still I was afraid of our basement. I was scared of shutting the lights off and walking up the stairs and turning my back on that total darkness. It was just so empty and complete.

No lights penetrated within and the lights which did shine in the basement were dull and weak. It was always dark down there. It was always dusty and had the faint smell of iron or copper.

I went down to get a gallon of milk for my mother. A little errand for a big boy. It should have been no problem for me.

I walked down the stairs. This was the easy part. I turned on the lights and everything was fine. Dark still. But it was fine. There were no Grimm or other goulish monsters down here. It was fine, I reminded myself that frequently and with force.

You’ve been down here so many times and nothing bad has happened a single time.

That didn’t stave off my irrational fears. Just because I knew a fear was irritation didn’t mean I could suddenly control it. We don’t choose our fears any more than we choose what food to like. It was automatic. It was outside of our control. And the dusty smell of iron pressed in on me as I opened the fridge. The light inside the fridge was brighter than the grey lights of the round bulbs in the ceiling. This was the easiest part. It was the part when the room was most lit up.

I grabbed the jug of milk from the shelf easily enough. There was no problem to that at all either. I was strong enough for this. I turned around. I saw little Lily standing in the stairs by the door. Her eyes bulged in their sockets and grew strangely to cover most of her face in a distorted wave like fashion. Her nose and lips and ears shrank and all her hair fell out. She started screaming.

It was a high pitched wail that made my bones and ears ache. Then she shut the door on me slowly and turned off the lights. I was locked in the basement. Alone in the dark with the cold milk jug in my hand.

I raced to the door and fumbled blindly for the handle. When I finally grasped it it was only to discover the door was locked from the other side. I retreated back into the room and dropped the jug. The plastic shattered and milk went everywhere. It coated my legs nice and cold. I crawled on all fours. I searched for the fridge with reaching hands. A square corner. It wasn’t here. It must be to the left. In the total darkness I found the fridge and opened it to get some light. To get some respite.

Inside the fridge was a skinless, hairless, eyeless thing. It twitched it’s head on it’s neck and turned towards me without eyes. With long limbs it crawled out of the cold fridge and towards me.

It grabbed me by the ankle when I fell back and away. It stood there eclipsing the light in its naked glory. Its limbs were much too long and thin and its body was small and round. It picked me up with it’s one hand and sank its long teeth into my ankle.

I woke up with my ankle humming with a vibrating pleasure. It hurt, yes, but it also felt strangely pleasant. I… I rubbed my ankle in the real world. I stroked softly so the skin slipped swiftly there. It felt good. But I was on edge with fear and adrenaline. The sensations combined into a luring grotesqueness that was a pleasant sensation.

“Jaune…” My mom’s voice whispered to me. I heard it clearly in the soft night. There was no buffer or noise machine. It was silent in the room Ren and I shared.  “I will always be your mother.”

Sometimes, in the throes of a nightmare, when unseen powers whirl one over the roofs of strange dead cities, it is a relief and even a delight to shriek wildly and throw oneself voluntarily along into the where the ginning mist yawns.

I checked a clock. It was four-forty five. I could probably get back to sleep if I really tried or wanted to. I didn’t really want to try. I laid back in the bed. I deserved worse than nightmares for the shit I had done. I was becoming something of a monster myself. Five. I’d killed five people. I’d elegantly unmade and twisted five coils until they certainly weren’t.

I sighed heavily and loudly as I laid back in the bed.

I needed to get out of the rental and clear my head. I need to clear it in a way which didn’t involve shooting myself which was a touch more tempting than I was really letting on.

I got out of bed and got dressed quietly. I made my way out of the rental and onto grey Mistrali gravel. The upper floors really were beautiful. But boy oh boy were the lower floors ugly. In a lot of ways it was two different cities entirely.

The sun was yellow and barely peaking out over the horizon. Beams of course light stretched through the air and I breathed deeply. It was refreshing and crisp this early in the morning. I muddled my way along through a market square clearing. It wasn’t busy but there were people out. I walked past the closed bazaars.

A brown haired girl spun in front of me and I stopped. She had deep green eyes and a red ribbon in her hair. She had to look way up at me to meet my eyes and I stared at her for a moment.

She reached into the basket by her side and pulled out a little white rose. “Here,” she said softly. “For you.”

“A flower?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

I looked away from her. “How much?” I wondered.

“That depends on the customer… for you, no charge. Sound fair?”

“Why?”

“You look like someone who could use a flower,” she returned easily and breezily enough that I thought she might float away.

I reached out a gloved and gauntleted hand. I took the delicate stem gently from her. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I tucked the stem under a strap of my armor.

“Thanks,” I managed.

“Don’t mention it. Have a good day, now,” she bid me and just as swiftly as she appeared she was gone. She weaved her way through the openings in the early crowd. I blinked after her. I was unsure if I really saw her at all but I had the evidence of the encounter pinned to my chest.

I made my way down into a busier street.

I took in the sights of the shops on either side of me. One place was selling those little miniature trees that you trimmed. I wasn’t sure what they were called. There was a jewelry shop next to it and it was still closed. There was a dress shop with something elegant and purple hanging in the window. I stopped and stared at the dress. It would match Yang’s eyes well enough. I glanced a little along in the other window and spotted a flowing red gown which I bet Ruby could rock like no other. It was crimson like the tips of her hair and seemed to have petals flowing around the waist of soft silk. Her eyes could make anything glow and I was sure she would look like a distant dream in this dress.

I shuffled along.

I was suddenly shoved aside as I passed a bakery. The window display confections shattered and a man stumbled out with a cash register under his arm. He bumped into me as he dashed away from the broken window. Inside the bakery some fresh smell was emanating and a fat man in an apron shouted out. There were other customers inside. It smelled of coffee and baking pastries inside. They were open early it would seem. They were robbed early.

“Stop that man!” The man in the apron shouted.

The man with the register under his arm took off down the street.

I activated my semblance with a flex of will and took off after him. My feet… Ren was right. I didn’t touch the ground as I pursued my quarry on a pocket of air. I reached behind me and drew the longsword from the shield. The long triangle shaped blade ran down to the far too long red handle. I gripped it comfortably.

I front flipped in a thirty foot arc that ended with me landing easily in front of the burglar. People gasped and parted around me like I’d made a crater and they seperated around the running man as well. He stopped running with a slide and stared at me with an open mouth.

“Drop it,” I leveled my sword at him. “You can walk away if you drop it.” I watched his whole body tense up. “Don’t,” I suggested harshly.

He went for a gun. I crossed the distance between us in a sapphire blur. I swung my sword up into his hand where he held the gun and collided with green aura. I knocked the gun out of his hands and into the air. I stepped in and shoulder checked him off his feet. Before he landed I swung diagonally down from the right, then diagonally down from the left, then across the bottom in horizontal cut, then one last arching upwards swing that flung him back into a wooden box. He crushed it and his aura dissipated around him.

He dropped the register when I hit him.

He made to crawl towards the gun but, still Limit Broken, I glided forward and took actual walking steps where I kicked the gun off to the side of the street and far away from us. I continued my march and connected my boot with the side of his head in a swift sideways kick with the toe. He fell back and slumped over into unconsciousness.

I stepped away from him and felt my glow dissipate. The power was gone.

I didn’t feel particularly good as I reclaimed the register. I sheathed my sword and walked back down the street and through the gathering crowd. I walked into the bakery over shattered glass which crunched under my feet. I set the register on the counter.

“Thank you, young huntsman,” the baker said.

“It was nothing,” I returned. And it wasn’t. This meant nothing to me.

“Let me offer you a croissant and coffee. Please. Allow me to thank you earnestly and generously from my heart to yours.”

I looked away from him over his head at the fairly crowded establishment. Some people had left but many remained. Some were still partaking in their coffee and pastries even through the chaos. Sure, most had stood up to get a look and were now staring at me and there was a line near the counter of people still mostly organized.

“Fine,” I agreed with a glance back down at the baker. “I’m in no hurry.”

“Thank you. Please, won’t you have a seat. What’s your name?”

“Jaune Arc.”

“Just a moment,” I watched him go behind the counter and pour a coffee and grab a roll. He came back over to me and put them both in my hands.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

“No. Thank you.”

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I walked back into our rental. The police had gotten involved and had had a few questions for me but after that I was free to go.

I ran into Weiss in the kitchen. She turned around and stared at me from where she was washing some mugs in the sink.

“Jaune…”

“Weiss,” I greeted.

“I had the chance to talk to Ruby,” she informed me.

“And?”

“Well, I still think you’re being self destructive. But I see why you wanted me to talk to her. She told me about you two.”

“I figured but couldn’t assume.”

“Where’d you get that?” Weiss asked. She pointed at the little white rose pinned to my chest.

I took it off my person with my gloved hand. I stared down at it for a moment. Then I held it out to her.

“It was a gift, I think,” I said. “Here.”

“Shouldn’t you give it to Ruby?” She wondered. She reached out and took it anyway. She held it up to her nose and smelled it. “It smells like Ruby,” she breathed. “Thoughtful of you.”

“It’s really not. It’s nothing. Besides, I don’t think Ruby is much in the way of gifts. She prefers spending time with me. She doesn’t want presents.”

‘Not even a single little rose as a sign you’re thinking about her?”

“If she doesn’t know I’m always thinking about her by this point I have no clue how to make it stick,” I sighed. “I mean who does she think she is with those tights and that corset?”

“She’s very good looking,” Weiss agreed.

“She’s drop dead gorgeous,” I confessed. I blinked at Weiss. “Of course you are too.”

“Oh?”

“Oh come on. Your entire team is? Ruby doesn’t have any idea but you know. You know that you’re good looking.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You knew that you were out of my league,��� I said. She blinked at me. “We can talk about it. It happened. I had a crush on you.”

“I didn’t reject you because I was better looking than you,” she scoffed. “Though you’re right to say I am.” She gave me a small smile.

“Total ice queen,” I laughed. “I don’t know what Ruby sees in me. So shoot. Tell me why.”

“Tell you why she’s into you or tell you why I rejected you?”

“Both.”

“I’ve met a hundred guys who could actually pull off what you were going for at Beacon. You couldn’t even play the part well. You couldn’t even pretend like you were all that. It was dishonest. And you weren’t even good at lying. So you didn’t even have that going for you.”

“You would have liked me if I was good at lying?”

“It would have been something at least. You came at me with a big ball of nothing. You know it and I know it.”

“So what does Ruby see in me? What did Pyrrha see in me?” I asked openly. “I’m mean, come on. I’m not much. And they are both out of my league by miles.”

“Well. You probably weren’t coming at them with a fake personality. I can only assume that they saw the real you and they liked it.”

“Stupefying,” I confided.

“Is it?” She pressed.

“Little bit.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not much. We went over this. I’m a ‘big ball of nothing.’”

“Are you nothing? It sounds like you put your life on the line for Ruby.”

“Well yeah. I’m nothing and she’s a good person. What decision was there to be made in that? It’s no contest.”

“You’re not ‘nothing.’ You came at me with nothing. They aren’t quite the same thing.”

“Don’t bullshit me. You saw straight fuckin’ through me at Beacon. Don’t hesitate now.”

“I don’t know. I suppose we’ll just have to see what’s there and what’s not.”

“I’m telling you that it’s not a lot.”

“But it isn’t ‘nothing.’ Is it?” She leveraged down on me. She pointed her chin upwards at me as she said it.

“And that’s enough?”

“Enough for what?” She challenged.

“Well, ideally making Ruby happy.”

“It might be. Is what it is worth something? Are you valuable down there at the bottom of yourself?”

“Probably not,” I admitted.

“Well I don’t know,” she confessed right back. “I never got to see the real you.”

“You never wanted to try,” I fired.

“You never gave me the opportunity to try,” she breezed. “If we’re honest you would have tried that fake personality on any date I gave you. So why would I bother?”

“Honestly?” I asked.

“Honestly,” she agreed with an elegantly quirked eyebrow.

“I’d like to believe I would have surprised you,” I said.

“Is that right? So you want to impress me?”

“Always have,” I returned immediately.

“I suppose we’ll just have to see about that,” she folded her arms and leaned back on the counter. She had her lips turned up in a little smirk.

I looked away first and pushed my hand through my hair. I clicked my jaw closed.

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[snowflake-apocalypse]

“English is a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.”

“You need to stop.”

It’s been six months since the formation of Global Justice’s new aces, “Team Go-Possible”. Though, the rhyme and reason of it was wrong, Shego was actually enjoying the partnership with her former rivals. Dare she ever admit it out loud. The three grew to have a good dynamic, she thought. Between conversations about world events and the audacity of Club Banana creating a brach-off store, to the double-edged sarcasm they dished out to their adversaries in combat.

Team GP’s missions took them near and far around globe. This time, it was a nuclear power plant in the blustery Netherlands. Some madman claiming the greed of the world has grown to great. That he was the salvation it needed. His answer to said salvation? Implode the richest nuclear power plant in the world to prove his point.

This has got to be the seventh extremist kook we’ve taken on this month.. though the dude’s not wrong..

Kim and Shego are in route to the mountain side factory. Shego landing their sleek jet on an empty field with concentrated ease.“Okie dokie, let’s go get Mr. Doom Gloom before he turns the mountain side into a mushroom cloud-.” Shego powers their craft down, switching various instruments this way and that.

“-Don’t know about you, Kimmie but I’m looking forward to the bocca coffee. No stupid avalanche is going to ruin that.”

Double checking her equipment, Kim spares the woman a glance. “Heh, glad to know where your priorities are, Shego.-” Kim directs her attention to their mission control via comm link.

“-Hey, Wade you got a lock on our position?”

“Always do.” From GJ headquarters, the tech wiz of the team zooms his screen in on their target.

“That is the most creepy, heartwarming thing I’ve heard from you, Load.” Shego quips, donning her green and black cold weather apparel. When she accepted Betty’s offer, the one thing she swore is that she was keeping her colors.

“Uh..thanks? Anyway, I’ve scanned the interior of the facility, the reactor is located in the south side of the building.” Through the wrist-worn Kimmunictor, a holographic layout of the factory appears. Detailing the whereabouts of their target, only one heat signature appears on the layout. The reactor, they assume.

“Wade, this guy is working alone?” Kim quizzical asks, zooming in on the projection.

“From my latest update, yes. The building has been evacuated for safety. No other intel I’ve collected suggests multiple culprits.-“

Wade swipes through the limited file he has on their perp. He had an uneasy feeling about this caper, but couldn’t justify it from a hunch. ���-But, please still be careful, you two.”

Shego, after getting one last solid look at the diagram, closes her hand on the blueprint. “Will do, dad. Thanks.”

——

Approaching the bolted door of the factory, Kim still voiced her concerns., “Y’know, I just wished we had more information on this guy.”

Shego directs a small concentration of searing plasma at the deadlock, freeing the door. “Yeah, well I wished they’d appear at GJ’s doorstep. Or just stayed home.”

Cautiously pushing the door open, Shego scans the left side of the interior, while Kim covers the right.

“Okay, Wade. It looks as empty as you said.- Wade? Wade.” Kim, only being met with silence, tries and fails to reach their partner. Somewhere along the trek, the so-called incorruptible signal was lost.

“Fan-freakin’-tastic. Guess the altitude is the weakness.” Rolling her eyes, Shego marches on. “Let’s just shut this joint down before we get any more surprises.” Despite her quiet tone, Shego’s voice echos throughout the vast building.

Creeping through the corridors, the women stay on alert. Passing abandoned offices, break rooms, only Kim’s quiet chatter fills the space. “Hey, about that coffee, you also want to stop at Portugal of the Little Ones?”

“Are you serious, Possible? You want to visit a tiny replica city in Portugal?” Shego raises an eyebrow in Kim’s direction.

“...Yeah.”

If you don’t stop making that damn face...

“..Okay, fine. Portugal.” Shego huffs in faux annoyance. The pair rounded the corner to the vast power center of the facility, the two spot the ticking time bomb.

“Bingo!” Shego exclaimed, running up to the reactor. Which had been armed with specialized munitions.

“This is new.. Newer. What the hell kind of explosive is this?” The younger agent puzzles.

The device, almost cybernetic, jet-black with a single blinking blue light. Upon closer examination, Shego makes out a faintly marked two-pronged arch on the surface. Gaping at the realization, she snaps of her shock.

“No.. No way...”

“What’s up? What is it?”

“This looks like a prototype product of Gemini’s splinter cell scientists. Before he broke off to W.E.E. It’s not on a timer, it’s remote detonation.”

“Gemini? Hold on, then how is some random guy get a his hands on-“

Before Kim could finish her statement, a man’s honeyed voice breaks through the atmosphere.

“Well, you always were the most observant of the team, Shego. Bravo.”

On the grated deck before them, stood a man. Medium build, piercing blue eyes, a mop of brown hair turning grey. All pulled together by a navy trench coat and tactical cargo slacks.

“Sorry, don’t think we’ve met. Unless I’ve taken you hostage or saved you from a flooding city before.” Shego deadpanned, hands resting on her hips.

Leisurely leaning on the rail of the balcony, a shiftiness displayed in his eyes. “Oh no, I didn’t expect you to be familiar with me. But I have been following the folly of Global Justice’s new dream team. I must say, you are quite the force to be reckoned with.”

“And we really don’t want you to find out why.” Kim interjects, conviction lacing her voice.

“-So if you could hand over the remote, shut down the detonation, then maybe we can reach an agreement.”

“Possible. Kim. Of all the people in the bloody world, I thought you would be one to know.. it’s never that simple.” Faster than her reflexes, the man draws a sleek laser-gun from his coat and fires upon the unsuspecting woman.

Center mass.

Direct hit.

“Gah!” With a cry, Kim covers the wound with her hand, bracing herself on her knees.

“Hey!” Shego booms. Hands ablaze, she charges their suspect... no, enemy now.

Kim, biting back the shock and pain, rises to her feet.

Damnit... Sloppy. Get up, Possible.

Kim averts her concentration back to the reactor. Without Wade, she scrambles to find a bypass way of disarming the bomb.

Firing scorching blast after blast, Shego dodges the rounds aimed at her. The room being filled with the leaden smell of burning metal, as the balcony gave way to the force of plasma.

“I swear, that god-forsaken organization is more concerned with the stock market and shiny toys than actual global security-and you! You radioactive madwoman, turn your back on your very profession! The Emerald Rage can’t even decide who’s side she’s on!” Anger and outrage boiling from the man the closer she got.

“Yeah.. y’know your twenties when you’re trying figure shit out... a lot of grey area and robberies in there.” Flipping onto the grate, Shego faces the man with a controlled fury.

“Oh, also I’m on my side and no one else’s. Which, coincidently is the side that doesn’t want a giant crater in the middle of the Netherlands!” Weaving between a few more shots, Shego disarms the man. She restrains him in a firm, plasma-fortified grip. Not enough juice for a second degree burn, but it sure wasn’t comfortable.

“Hello.” The welcome rolling off his tongue like an invitation.

Abruptly Shego is met with a viscous head-butt and a solid tungsten bracelet around her wrist.

“Grrr-! What the hell-!?” Collecting her wits, Shego paws at the metal. Kicking up the intensity of her powers in hopes of liquifying the substance.

Her foe stands back in smug satisfaction, watching her ferocity slowly turn to languid effort. Her flames spasmed, then doused like a candle in the wind.

Shego lightheaded and pale, collapses with heavy bang on the cold metal.

Crouching next fallen woman, he gingerly strokes her raven hair. Conceited grin never leaving his face. “Oh, my my. Did dear Mother Director not tell you about the adverse correlation between tungsten and the Aether comet? I don’t blame her. Must’ve been frightening for her to raise super-powered children, especially if she had no way of controlling them.”

The clamber drawing Kim away from her task, horror at watching the strongest person she knew hit the floor. “Shego!”

“No, no.” Motioning to the button on the detonator remote, he actives the explosives. Sending the entire right side of the structure up in blazing destruction.

Kim instinctively covers her head, in an effort to shield herself from the blast. Evading wooden beams and falling debris, Kim steels and drives on towards her ally.

Producing a small syringe from his coat, filled with a concentrated supply of the fatal alloy. He methodically pushed back the sleeve of Shego’s fleece, carefully injecting the liquid into her bloodstream.

“My father, Jeremiah Asbell had so much passion for his work. So much drive to create a better world. What did he receive for his endeavours? Scorn and betrayal by the very people he supported!-“

Jeremiah Absell.. Absell.. Dr. Absolute. Wait, he had a kid?

“-All to be handed back by some punk children who should’ve been left in a crater.”

As the tungsten courses through her system, melds with her mutated cells, Shego braces the pain gripping her body. She clenches her teeth, fighting for some kind of spark of her dwindling power.

Thanks, Betty. Chalk this up to another ‘I got your back, kid.’ move. Trust sure ran deep there.

With a flicker of ginger hair catching her attention behind a wall, Shego arduously motions her head to face Kim. Olive meets emerald eyes.

After all of the years they spent trading blows, like scorpions in a bottle, after the late night discussions they’d have when neither could sleep... they both knew that look. The look of unwavering determination meeting one of unabated stubbornness. With all of the unknown wild cards revealed, Shego couldn’t afford both of them being killed.

Mustering as much strength as she could, Shego discreetly raises her hand, stopping Kim in her tracks.

Don’t you dare.

[swifteforeverandalways]

Notes: so @lilmissriottbliss and I have both been watching a lot of Chicago Med and decided that the Chicago shows now officially take place in Emoverse! This is just a lil’ one shot of Kate being injured, Rhea and Toni taking her to Chicago Med, and everyone finding out Ethan was once SHIELD. If anyone has questions, toss them in my inbox!

“Hold on, just hold on,” Rhea Ripley muttered, half under her breath, as she ran down the street. Kate Kane was laying, half limp, in Rhea’s arms. It was supposed to be a normal trip, a vacation almost, to Chicago before WWE started touring again but it ended in disaster. Even on vacation, Kate brought her Batwoman suit and it ended with her stabbed.

“M fine,” Kate murmured weakly, even as blood steadily bled out of the wound.

“You aren’t fine, you got stabbed!” Toni snapped, her tone shaky. Kate tried to roll her eyes but winced instead as they burst into the Emergency Department at Gaffney Chicago Medical Center.

“Help! We need some help over here!” Rhea shouted. A nurse rushed up to them.

“What’s your name?” She asked.

“I’m Rhea, that’s Toni, and this is Kate. Please. You need to help her!” Rhea pleaded.

“Dr. Halstead, over here!” The nurse yelled. A tall, well built man with red hair rushed up.

“What happened?” He demanded.

“We Uh….we um….” Toni stumbled over the question so Rhea quickly butt in.

“We were at the park and Kate was climbing in a tree and fell,” Rhea quickly lied. Dr. Halstead looked unconvinced but still helped Kate onto a gurney. “Someone page Dr. Choi!” “Already on it!” A nurse yelled.

“You look really familiar,” Another nurse commented. “Kate!” Toni cried

“Listen, will you help my girlfriend or not!” Rhea snapped. A Korean man ran up and checked on Kate, making orders quickly.

“Get me a CBC, CMP, tox screen, and type and screen. STAT,” he commanded.

“Make sure the tubes are green and lavender,” Dr. Halstead said before adding a, “Or Raya will have my ass” under his breath. One of the nurses snorted.

“Looks like whatever stabbed her missed her lung by about a centimeter” Dr. Choi said.

“What the hell stabbed her?” Dr. Halstead asked. Toni paled. “She fell off a tree, I didn’t even look when we picked her up” Dr. Choi looked at the two women, frowning. Kate’s heartbeat went slow. “She’s stable” A nurse said, another snapping her finger. “I know you two! You’re wrestlers!”

“Bloody hell, can’t we go anywhere and not be recognized,” Toni grumbled.

“April, leave them alone,” Dr. Choi said with a smile.

“I’ll take the tubes down to the lab,” a new doctor said, walking up.

“Thanks Nat!”

The doctor walked off with the tubes in hand.

“Where can we wait?” Toni asked

“I’ll show you….I actually have a few questions for you two,” Dr. Choi said. Rhea nodded. Dr. Choi led them to a small room and shut the door behind them, crossing his arms and looking at the two. Rhea did the same, Toni sitting down.

“I’ve been a doctor for a very long time, and I know what kinds of injuries are caused by what. And I know that she didn’t fall out of a tree. So what happened?” Dr. Choi said. Rhea looked him in the eye. “I can’t tell you that”

“Why not? Was this a domestic dispute? Those injuries are more from a knife than falling from a tree”

"It wasn't a fight with us, and that's all I can say"

“Kate helps SHIELD,” Toni added.

“The agency that works with the Avengers?”

“Yes, her father runs Crows Security in Gotham,” Rhea said.

“That explains where I’ve seen her. Used to do medical for Shield”

“So trust us when we say, this wasn’t a dispute with us.”

He sighed. “Fine. But don’t be surprised if Chicago P.D gets involved” Toni nodded

“And we’ll let SHIELD know….why did you leave them?” Rhea asked. Dr. Choi’s jaw tightened. “That’s none of your business”

“Fine,” Rhea snapped, “But some agents will be coming here.”

“Then you can ask them” he left. “What a dick”

“We should call Bobbi and let her know.”

Rhea nodded. Toni pulled out her phone, dialing up the number.

“Hello?”

“Hi Bobbi, do you know a Dr. Choi?”

“Yeah, he used to work for SHIELD. Why?”

“Because Kate had a incident with a knife and I’m pretty sure him and Rhea are gonna hurt each other”

“I’ll be there ASAP”

“Thank you”

About fifteen minutes later, Bobbi Morse strode into the room with Jade on her heels.

“Ethan!” She greeted the doctor

“Bobbi. Jade,” Ethan nodded. Bobbi pulled him into a hug, Ethan awkwardly returning it.

“How have you been? It's been ages.”

“Good”

“Have you been going to therapy or are you still overworking yourself?”

“The second one” Will interrupted.

“Damn, he looks like he could be Romanroger’s kid,” Jade joked. Bobbi snorted, turning to Ethan. “I thought when you retired you said you’d take care of yourself.”

Ethan shrugged, looking away awkwardly. Bobbi sighed, noticing Rhea glaring.

“So why did he leave?” Toni asked Bobbi and Jade. Ethan glared.

“What, you said to ask them,” Toni said.

“Ethan used to be a field agent” Bobbi said

“Ooh,” Rhea and Toni nodded in understanding.

“Went down to medical after a mission, been a doctor ever since” Ethan added

“So what happened to Kate? Is she okay?” Jade asked.

“She was stabbed”

“We’re just waiting on the blood test results,” Will added before his phone buzzed with a text.

“Why is Saraya texting you in all caps?”

“Something about Nat saying we were being rude”

Ethan laughed. Will smacked him. “She might be tiny but she’s gonna kick my ass!”

Ethan laughed again. Will stared at Ethan. “Stop laughing!”

“To be fair, tiny people can be scary. One of our wrestlers…..” Toni shuddered, “Took out a guy.”

“With a broken nose”

There was a knock at the door. Will made a noise.

“Come in,” Ethan said. A small woman holding lab papers walked in, glaring at Will. “Hey Raya” She marched up to him and began poking him in the chest. “You. Do. Not. Get. To. Be. Rude. To. Wrestlers!”

“I apologized!”

“Still rude to be rude to them!”

Ethan silently walked out. “Actually it makes sense he's former SHIELD” Rhea noted.

“He never did say where he was before coming here,” Will mused.

“Was he in the Budapest mission?” Jade asked Bobbi, who nodded.

“Thought I recognized him. What happened?”

Bobbi let out a long breath.

“He got shot in the knee, guy came close to killing him, retired from field work not long after”

“Damn,” Jade shook her head.

“He was a good agent”

Bobbi nodded. “He was”

“A bit. Not much, Jemma did a lot more as did Lincoln”

“Lincoln was smart enough to work in med shit?”

“Had a medical degree and everything”

“We sure he didn’t cheat?” “Jade!”

“What?” Jade grinned cheekily. Bobbi shook her head. “I was on Budapest, hell of a two day mission”

Will frowned as there was another knock on the door. A man who looked similar too but a little bit older than Will, and with darker hair, walked in with Natalie behind him.

“This is Detective Halstead”

“Jay Halstead,” Jay extended his hand, “I understand this involved SHIELD?”

“Yes, we can’t exactly say that out loud” Jay nodded

“What happened to the perp?”

“I might have punched him out and left for CPD to deal with” Rhea flexed. “These aren’t just for TV”

Toni laughed slightly, nuzzling her face against Rhea’s shoulder.

“Wow” Jay said

“So will Kate make it?” Toni asked.

“Well she’s in surgery right but we have the best surgeons in the state”

“Not to mention her blood type is O pos, which we have a good amount of, and the rest of her results look normal,” Saraya added. Rhea breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Anyway, I need to get back to the lab,” Saraya said, handing the lab papers to Will.

“Love you” She mock glared. Natalie laughed, pulling her into a hug.

“Where’s Ethan at?”

“He walked out.”

Saraya sighed. Natalie bumped her shoulder gently. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing much, just thinking about my application to join Shield”

“You applied for SHIELD?”

“Yup. Didn’t get in because of an underlying heart condition”

“Underlying heart condition?” Will frowned.

“Arrhythmia” Saraya said. Will let out a breath.

“Now that I think about it, it was a blessing in disguise. I was able to finish my MLS program”

Will wrapped her into a hard hug. Saraya hugged him back, laughing. “April’s missing too so I assume I know where Ethan is”

“God I was such a bitch to him” Rhea whined.

“Eh, you were worried about Kate. If it had been me injured, Jade would’ve killed him,” Bobbi shrugged. Jade stuck her tongue out.

“Jade’s a bit overprotective,” Bobbi explained, noticing the confused looks on Will, Natalie, and Saraya’s faces. Toni coughed. “Bit?”

“Not my fault I don’t want my wife killed,” Jade shrugged.

“Ethan’s having a panic attack!” April ran down the hall.

“I’ll page Dr. Charles,” Will said but Bobbi grabbed his arm.

“Let me go” She ran after April. In the break room, Ethan was sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees.

“Ethan” Bobbi knelt down and grabbed his hands.

“Leave me alone,” Ethan muttered.

“Not happening” Bobbi sat in front of Ethan, “I know you’re scared, but do you remember what you told me? Back when I was having these?”

Ethan looked up

“That you were safe at SHIELD,” he said.

“Exactly. So you’re safe here”

“How do you know?” Ethan whispered.

“Because you have friends here. You’re alive”

Ethan licked his lips. April leaned down and hugged his head to her chest.

“I’m here for you,” she whispered. Ethan held onto her and took deep breaths. “I’m such a idiot for talking about Budapest”

“Sometimes it feels good to talk about traumas, sometimes I feel better when I talk about….you-know-who,” Bobbi said. Ethan nodded, April kissing his head. “I’m guessing you’re his girlfriend”

April held out her hand. “Fiancée, actually.”

“Nice job Ethan”

Ethan chuckled slightly.

“Alright let’s get up” April eased him off the ground. Ethan smiled at her, hugging her tightly.

“Thank you Bobbi”

“Anytime,” Bobbi smiled.

[agl03]

Finale Predictions

Well guys, it's been quite the ride and here we are ready for the finale.   First and foremost I have to thank you all for sticking with me over the years.  Sending the asks, supporting the theories, dealing with my sometimes crazy metas and predictions, that sometimes hit and sometimes didn’t. And trusting me to be the Fandom Mom. 

As is now an annual tradition I’m putting up my post of Finale Predictions before going dark until after the finale airs.  This is for fun as I always like to see how well I did.    Please no pitchforks if I am wrong on any of these.

So here we go:

Everyone’s favorite villains, Nathaniel, Kora, and SIBYL will all make it to the finale while Garrett will be killed or locked up by the end of the first hour (and it will use some of Fitz’s tech).

SIBYL will eventually get herself a new body.

Nathaniel will turn on Kora and try to take her powers and/or kill her.

Kora has already turned on him and he/we just don’t know it yet.  Either betrays him and helps her sister or tries to kill him herself in revenge for her mother.  Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  

Daisy will be the one to end Nathaniel and it will be oh so satisfying giant fight scene….even if we have to wait until the second hour for it.  Bonus points if Sousa get a hit in first too

Coulson, May, and Elena are able to get to space thanks to Coulson’s new computer Genius Super Power OR Garrett is ordered to bring them so they can lord their victory over them all.

Even though they have pretty much ended Shield and Hydra in the “hot mess” timeline SIBYL and Nathaniel set their sites on the OG Timeline and/or Fitz once they realize he has come into the mix and ruins their plans in the hot mess timeline..   As they are both aware he is the one who ends their little party.

The Chronicoms will not all be super thrilled with what SIBYL has been up too or her methods.   This could be another thing that drives SIBYL into the OG Timeline.   

The battle between SIBYL and Coulson seems to have gotten a bit more personal so my money is on Coulson being the one to take her down.   Close second goes to May and Fitzsimmons. 

Diana didn’t only block Memories of Fitz it took out the memories of people associated with him.  IE she is not going to remember her friends or Deke.

Deke will earn her trust quickly and be an A+ overprotective grandson of his Nana as they are rescued and get back to the team.

The team will rescue Deke and Jemma, take out a few Chronicoms, and Independence Day their way out of there.

While it won’t be the romantic Philinda some fans want we will see some quality Philinda banter over the finale as it seems they’ve settled into a good place between the two.   Coulson has also passed the torch of “team parent” onto her.

Philinda will not end as a couple.

At some point Sousa is really going to question what is going on and his life choices.  AKA He looks around stunned at what is going on.

More quality Dousy flirting and banter….they will kiss again and I do see them being a couple when things end.

Fitzsimmons family feels just a lot of them over the whole finale.  Iain and Elizabeth are going to murder us with feels.  I mean Fitz with his little girl.  I shall perish.

Despite not knowing everyone Jemma is going to be super insistent on building or activating a device (that has been stashed on the Zephyr) that she doesn’t know what it does but just knows she needs to build and activate it.  She will be the only one who can activate it and possibly it will take something very personal of hers to turn it on.  IE how she was hiding Fitz’s ring/necklace in Season 6 she might have the key hiding again.  But lets all freak out that Jemma will literally be the key to getting Fitz.

We won’t see Fitz until near the end of 12 if he is not the cliffhanger.  

That Bar place in the promo pics is either Keonig’s Bar or the Playground of the hot mess Timeline.  Seems to be some sort of secret Shield Base or what is left of them after the big attack as there are some random Shield agents milling/wth/who are these people in the background.  We know The Playground was off the books in the OG Timeline and would make sense it was also in the Hot mess.

Jemma will have her memory resorted relatively quickly after Fitz Kool Aid Man’s in all Star Lord from the portal thing Jemma activates.  And it’ll be the freaking power of her love for Fitz/her Family that overloads her (Gimme my Framework fix here).  Or Fitzsimmons have a fail safe password.  BUT GIMME TRUE LOVE.

CUE THE SECRET CHILD REVEAL!!!!!!!!!!   Yes, I will be screaming.  The team will be stunned.

I’m sticking to my theory that they will give their daughter a “celestial” or astronomical name to pay off “One of these days we’ll find something magnificent out in space,” thing from Season 3 (especially if she was conceived on the way back from Kitson).  Or a name that is very reflective of their Scottish/English roots.  

Everyone needs to hold onto their hats because once Jemma has her memories back it will be because they are gonna want to get home to their Little Girl like yesterday and have one hell of a plan that involves saving the world and taking care of Nathaniel, SIBYL, and the Season 6 Finale attack on the Lighthouse.

This is likely where a ton of the Flashbacks come in.

Where has Fitz been?  He’s been back in our OG Timeline.  The finale confirmation for me came last week when Nathaniel revealed that SIBYL’s time stream couldn’t see him….or their daughter, and that thing sees EVERYTHING in the HOT MESS Timeline.  This would also be why Jemma’s messages didn’t reach him, she couldn’t get them to cross into the OG Timeline and this was something she would have known but Diana blocked as part of hiding where Fitz was.

How has Fitz been watching the Chronicoms?  Insert incredibly complicated timey whimy thing the writers came up with that me and my Marketing degree can not fathom so just go with it okay, via the using the Framework in the OG Timeline to get into the Chronicom’s system.  Little pay back for what SIBYL has been doing in the Hot Mess Timeline.  Him being connected to the Framework explains why he was so exposed.  Because when someone is hooked up to that thing they can get their heads cut off and not know it.

Now reunited and having dropped the baby announcement Fitzsimmons will present the plan for the “Final Mission” the team must embark on to save the world….again.   

And oh baby is it complicated.  

Part of said plan will have them back at the Lighthouse during the Chronicom attack.

The dudes that showed up with Jemma at the Temple will be explained.  IE I think its some of the team and they cleared out of the Zephyr before the time travel party got started.  They also may have grabbed other hunks of the monoliths.

The fight will take place in both the Hot Mess and OG Timelines  

We have not seen the last of the Monoliths.  The fact we are jumping timelines and have Flint in the mix over in the OG timeline makes me think they are gonna need Mr. Swirly’s help in doing said jumping (Mr. Swirly is the Grey Monolith).  Or they really go with the OG and its Harold (Black Space one) that allows for it.  Kind of fitting the Monolith that tore Fitzsimmons apart is now the one that reunites them.  

We will for sure see Enoch (via Flashback), Davis (please not by Flashback #davislivesagain), Piper and Flint as returning Favorites.   

If they have Davis back to life I just gesture exhaustedly at the Monoliths again.  Not even gonna try to explain it.

Small chance we run into the Hot Mess’s Timeline Enoch but he will have no relationship or connection to the team and will make me cry.  

Top Picks for SURPRISE not on the Press Release faces to pop up if we get them:   Ward (I mean really how have we not seen him again yet), Mace, Robbie, Bobbi, Hunter, Koenig (any of them) and Mike.    REALLY WANT IT BUT WON”T GET IT!   Dadcliffe

Who was keeping Fitzsimmons Daughter safe:  

Top Pick:  Piper and Flint:  Given Fitzsimmons would have run into them picking up the Zephyr and they could have been the “we had help” they talked about.

Second Place Because I Badly want him back:  Uncle Enoch 2.0

Left Field Surprise Option:  Huntingbird

LOLA RETURNS

We will get a lot of really fun callbacks to past stories or even lines IE “I’m just the Pilot” For May.

“What We Are Fighting For”:  Family.  The team family….and the Fitzsimmons family.  Also they will have gone 13/13 in that someone will say the titles name at some point in the episode.

We will see old weapons and tech from previous seasons make one last appearance, we’ve seen 2 so far in promos and will see more.

Shotgun Axe gets a proper send off in battle (this one is for Kiddo 3)

Bear will deliver the most amazing soundtrack that we’ll never get to buy.

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story (Sorry Couldn’t Resist)

Nathaniel:  Dies, and we will all cheer.

SIBYL:  Dies, and we will all cheer.

Garrett:  Dies or locked up, won’t make it to the second hour.

Kora:  Toss a coin.  If she dies she killed for trying to take down Nathaniel.  If in her betrayal of Nathaniel she helps Daisy get Jemma and Deke back that could be a good starting place for the sisters to work thing out.   Starting place, she has a long way to go to get in good with Daisy and setting up an 11th hour redemption arc.

Mack:  Still so nervous for him based on how he has been in interviews, especially the SDCC ones last year.  He was so clearly upset by it.  So Mack either falls or does something so out of character (Bails before the finale battle which just is not making sense to me Mack is in such a good place right now) for Mack that Henry was upset by it.  Essentially I am very confused because what I am seeing on screen now isn’t matching with how Henry was talking as Mack has really come around since his Endgame stage.

Elena:   Easily lives.  If Mack doesn’t die, wherever he lands she’ll be with him.  They’ve been a steady ship all season and I see no reason for them to break up outside of death.  And while I have a mountain of concerns for Mack, I have none for Elena..   I also see her still being a presence within Shield, she’s become a good solid agent, and bonus points if she keeps Flint with her….and he gets all the tacos he wants.  

Sousa:   Totally lives (they might give us a good fake out though because he and Daisy are becoming a thing)I can still see him being Director of Shield if Mack falls or steps down.   He’s a good Agent in a new time but he said he is right where he is supposed to be, at Daisy’s side.  Where she goes he goes.  IE he’s not letting her get away and will always be there after she runs into a wall.  So if Daisy leaves Shield, so will he.  If she stays so will he.  If she opens a coffee bar he’ll learn to make an espresso.   

Daisy:   Totally Lives, but there will be something about her ending that some fans won’t like and some fans are going to love.   Staying with Shield or no whatever she does will involve Inhumans be it the Secret Warriors are up and running again, she is mentoring and training new Inhumans coming into Shield, or my favorite option still is she reopens Afterlife.  I’ve been feeling that option for most of the Season and feel like it was really set up with Jaiying as was Daisy looking out for her little sister should the chips fall the right way.     The SS Dousy will be sailing right along.  IF Kora survives I can see her being in Afterlife as well, Daisy taking her mother’s passion that Kora has a good heart to heart herself.  

Deke:   Okay this one is weird because I feel like we are going to lose him somehow, but he won’t die.  I didn’t get the vibe from Jeff, Elizabeth, or Iain that he died and those three are pretty tight.  However,  in that I don’t think I’m going to get my Fitzsimmons Family all settling down in a giant castle in Scotland together.  They set up for him to make a sacrifice, he’s grown, and has something he’s really truly fighting for.   I have loved seeing how close he and Jemma have gotten and how fiercely he’s protected her and her secret.  Even in the face of torture he didn’t betray her.  It will come as no surprise if he doesn’t sacrifice himself somehow.  Either in taking a hit for his family or doing something similar to what he did in Season 5 to make sure they got home.  Bringing things full circle.   He also expressed that he wouldn’t mind being stuck in the hot mess timeline in ‘83.  He built himself a nice life there and Nathaniel did a pretty good job of taking out Hydra...with just a bit of Shield hanging on.  So if it comes down to it I don’t see him minding if he gets stuck there.  Sure him saying goodbye to Nana and Bobo is gonna hurt like Hades but if he ends up alive, I’m good.  

Fitzsimmons:  Both live, yes they will scare the crap out of us more than a few times especially after we know about the daughter, but they will live.  Totally peace out, we’ve done our time, leaving Shield with the adorable daughter and its Perthshire or Bust.   They’ve sacrificed enough and will not be willing to risk it again.

May:   Lives and reminds us all that she is one hell of a pilot.  If Mack decides he wants to step down, dies, whatever I’ll throw her back in contention for Director, especially as I see Sousa Following Daisy if she leaves.  Coulson seemed to have set her on that path and at the very least passed the “Team Parent” torch onto her, that it would be her job to give the Coulson talks to those who needed it.  If she’s not Director, she’ll be whomever is right hand, or I still have that option for the Academy being up and running and she’s running that, training the next generation.

Coulson: Lives.I know SHOCKING.   I think he was very ready to throw in the towel after spending 20 months in the TV but then Enoch’s moving words in his death were what changed his mind about ‘powering down” when this is all over.  Coulson realizes that yes, while it is hard to be the one to leave it is harder for the ones that are left behind but it's also necessary that they move on, and live for those they have lost before.  Like Sousa and Fitzsimmons, he’ll be another that they’ll fake out death a few times.   I see him leaving Shield though, taking Lola and finally just going and seeing the world, watching the history he loves so much happen.  We get to see him driving around or even off in Lola for the last time.   Other options include he does something that will allow him to totally run with his new super computer super power.  The final thing I can see him doing is being the coolest professor at the newly rebooted Academy.  

Flint:  Get’s his tacos.

Piper: Keeps being awesome.

Davis:  Better live dang it.

Kiddos Predictions:

That weird device Jemma makes brings Fitz 

Deke sacrifices himself for Fitz

Fitzsimmons and their kid have to leave Shield

Mack leaves shield

Fitzsimmons, Dousy, Mackelena all stay together

Daisy kills Nathaniel, Daisy needs to quake him up

May or Nathaniel will take out Kora.  But if she survives we want Daisy to take her in.

Fitz takes down SIBYL

Piper is watching the Daughter

The daughters name is Olivia

Robo Coulson will sacrifice himself

GHOST RIDER HAD BETTER BE OUR SURPRISE CHARACTER (this was literally shouted at me).  Kiddo 3 voted for PIkachu (Lincoln)

Have no idea what will happen to May

We will get a “flash forward” ending showing what the team that is still alive is doing

Flint gets his tacos

They save the team and have a full out war at some point in time

The episode is going to be super good

Mom is going to cry

Well there it is.  We’ll check back in on Thursday to see how I did!

[pleasereadmycrap]

Time Gone By II

Pairing: Steve x Reader, Bucky x Reader

“You lied to me,” Steve huffed out as he stormed up to the bar.

“What?” Natasha asked, taken off guard by Steve's question and his sudden appearance. His face was red and puffy, and his eyes were glassy.

“She’s with him.”

“It wasn’t my place to tell you.”

“No, you just didn’t want to tell me!”

“Steve, calm down!” Nat said as she reached what was meant to be a soothing hand across the bar to rest it on his shoulder, but he just shook it off.

The party was in full bloom around them. People were streaming around them decked out in all their finery. It was like a perverted kind of last rights. They all knew of what was to come, but at least they could cover it up with makeup and pretty clothes for the night in an attempt to forget themselves.

Steve started to cry softly, a tear or two racing down his cheeks at a time. Natasha took notice, and poured him a drink before sliding it across the bar to him. He drank the entire thing in one swig without even wincing. He wasn’t even focused enough to feel it.

“You’ll be okay.”

“And what if I won’t? She was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I left her. Now, I have to watch her gallivanting around with my best friend!”

“They hardly gallivant.” Natasha joked.

“Nat!”

“What? You said it yourself; you left her. Now, get over it.”

“Shouldn’t you be a little more sympathetic?”

“I’m Russian. And you’re a soldier. Hell, you’re not even that. You’re a super soldier, and now you’re crying into your glass over a woman. You’ve seen some of life’s worst atrocities. You saw firsthand what Nazis did to people. You’ve fought the worst of the worst. You’ve seen and committed war crimes. You’ve been through a hell of a lot worse than a bad breakup, and you’re acting like a child. It’s pathetic, especially considering that you did this to yourself.”

“So you hate me now too?”

“I said that I had forgiven you, not that I wasn’t still mad.”

“Really, Nat? We’re gonna be fighting on the same team the day after next,” Steve said in his old team leader voice he used to order his fellow teammates around. He could see a slight shift in Natasha when she heard it. She froze and her eyes grew impossibly colder.

“I can bench my feelings. The question is can you?”

“I think I’m gonna turn in for the night.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

“See you tomorrow, Nat.”

When he reached his room, he sat on the bed for a while. Steve didn’t have the energy to take his suit off, so he just sat there, shoes still on and everything. He hadn’t even loosened his tie. He just stared out the window with unseeing eyes.

Everything that you had said was true. He had left, and he couldn’t change that, but he thought that you might have waited for him. It was a stupid notion, and he knew that, but somewhere along the way he got so wrapped up in being Captain America that he forgot to be Steve Rogers. He thought that you would wait around the way that his adoring public always did. Looking back on it, he had been neglectful, and not just when he left. Maybe you were better off with Bucky, but he couldn’t believe that. The two of you were soulmates. Maybe he didn’t treat you like it, but you were his everything.

He should just leave again after the battle. It was obvious that nobody around here needed or wanted him there. Hell, not even Sharon wanted him around anymore. He had no place to go.

He finally had the strength to ask the AI in his room to look up your file. Your smiling face showed up, projected on the window, so different than the one that he had seen tonight. It was the picture from your first day working at SHIELD. You were the handler for the Avengers. Prior to that you had done the same for the Navy SEALS. You had also graduated from Stanford, top of your class, with a degree in International Relations. Needless to say, you were qualified for the job. When Steve scrolled further down on your career achievements, he was confused. When had you become an official member of the Avengers? Training records were linked underneath, and he clicked on them. It read Combat Agent- trained by Natasha Romanoff. He scrolled down further and clicked on one of your training videos. You were sparring with Bucky, and it was clear that he wasn’t pulling his punches. Steve was surprised at how hard he was attacking you, and winced, terrified that you would be hurt. To be fair, you were getting in some good hits of your own. Suddenly, Bucky’s legs were undefended, forgotten in his efforts to defend himself from you, and you swept them out from under him. You pinned him to the floor, the two of you giggling madly in the video. You captured his lips in a passionate kiss right before the video cut off.

That image would be burned into his brain forever. He couldn’t describe the way that it hurt him to see that. If he could take it all back he would. Sometimes he wished that he was just a kid in Brooklyn again, before the serum, and the ice, and the Avengers.

Hell, even that seemed like so long ago. How many more wormholes had torn open the sky since that first one in New York so long ago. Back then it was just the six of them. Now, it seemed like the Avengers were no longer a team, but an army. You were just the latest.

He figured that although the party had ended, Nat would still be awake. She could never sleep easily. Although he was probably the last person she wanted to see right now, he needed to speak to her.

He walked down the hallway, after getting directions to her room, and knocked on her door quietly, in case she was asleep.

“Steve?” Natasha asked as she opened her door.

“When did you start training Y/N?”

“What?”

“I saw that she’s a ‘combat agent’ now,” he said, placing air quotes around the words.

“She is, and she earned that position,”Nat replied coldly.

“When?”

“Right after you left. She was upset, and she wanted to learn. Who was I to turn her down? Every woman has a right to learn to protect herself.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t have you to protect her anymore.”

“Is she going to be fighting the day after next?” Steve asked with increasing concern.

“She’ll stay in the palace and protect Shuri and the labs.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Her safety isn’t your concern, is it?”

“Dammit, Nat, of course I care about her safety!”

“So you cared about protecting her from halfway across the world?”

“Why does everybody have to keep bringing that up?”

“Because it showed your true priorities Steve, and they sure as hell aren’t us. Her safety is no longer your job. It’s Barnes’, and he’s more than up to the task because unlike some people he won’t just leave her,” Nat spat at him coldly.

“Can we just talk, Nat?”

“Come inside. I’ll pour us both a drink.”

Steve walked into Nat’s room and sat on her bed as she poured them both heaping glasses of vodka. Her movements were reserved and sharp, not the relaxed way they used to be when Natasha trusted him. She handed him the glass and folded herself tightly into the armchair across from the bed. Steve took a sip of his drink and gagged.

“You drink this swill straight?”

“I’m Russian,” she said, her explanation for everything. “What did you want to talk about?”

“You understand why I did it right?”

“I don’t know. I know you loved Peggy, but I couldn’t imagine leaving the only family I’ve known to chase after some figment of the past. So I’ll give you the chance to explain it to me.”

“When things were tough or I felt lost, I turned to her. She was my rock, the only thing that made sense to me in these uncertain times. She was the only thing that felt real anymore, so to think that I knew nothing about her, that I didn’t even know Sharon was her niece… it broke me.”

“That sucks, but you could’ve stayed. You could’ve talked to us. Why did you have to follow her?”

“I needed answers,” he said simply in response.

“Did you get any?”

“More questions than answers. You know, she discovered the Red Room. Peggy was the first to put it on SHIELD’s radar.”

“I know.”

“She knew a girl like you, but she was a little harder to reform, Dorothy Underwood.”

“Known as one of the program’s failures. Although, I suppose, so am I. Only the least skilled would ever be caught by SHIELD.”

“Did you ever get the chance to meet her?”

“Once. Fury didn’t like that Clint had brought back a stray until Peggy Carter stormed into the room. She was the one who demanded that I have a position at SHIELD. Without her, I wouldn’t have this family or this life.”

“Just another thing that I never knew about her.”

“There will always be some mystery about her. If there wasn’t she wouldn’t really be Peggy, would she, if that even was her real name?”

“Do you think that everybody will forgive me?” Steve asked as he looked up from his lap with fear etched in his eyes.

“I don’t know. You were fighting with Tony when you dropped everything, and then you just left your only remaining friends.”

“I can’t get her back, can I?” Steve asked, staring down at the glass in his hands.

“I honestly don’t know, but I don’t think you’d be right to try.”

“What are they like together? Y/N and Bucky?”

“He’s good to her, treats her the way she ought to be treated. She was shattered when you left, wouldn't talk, wouldn’t eat, nothing. He really picked up the pieces, put her back together. She’s his everything, now. I mean, you should see the way that he looks at her, like she hung the moon or something, and she’s good for him too. You know, he rarely has panic attacks anymore.”

“I’m happy for them,” Steve said with tears in his eyes.

“Steve-“

“No, I am really. It’s fine. They’re better off without me,” he said before racing out of the room.

He ran back into his own apartment, and collapsed onto his bed before sobbing into his pillow like a little boy. He fell asleep like that.

…

Steve woke up early the next morning, his face stiff with dried tears. Breakfast was already waiting outside his door. It was meager, just a bagel and some sausage, but it was to be expected. Today would be spent preparing for the battle tomorrow. Steve ate his breakfast quickly, and went for a brief run around the palace.

He stopped after a while and found a low wall to sit on. He watched the sun rise over the citadel. He thought back to last night and all that Nat had said. Bucky was better for you, and you two would be happy together. He had to give up. Resigned to his decision, he started to jog back towards the entrance to the palace. He knew that he had to apologize for his actions last night, and he was too impatient to wait until after he showered, so he jogged up to your room and knocked on the door hesitantly.

Hey,” he said nervously as the door swung open to see you standing behind it, still wearing your pajamas and a tired expression on your face. The one thing that hadn’t changed evidently was your reliance on coffee.

“What are you doing here, Steve?”

“I wanted to apologize for last night.”

“Ok.”

“I heard that you're an official part of the Avengers now. Congratulations.”

“Hey doll, who’s at the door?” Bucky called out as he entered the room, having just showered and wearing nothing but a towel. “Oh, hey Steve.”

“Oh, so you and Bucky are living together? That’s uh… that’s… you know, that’s just really great. Good for you two.”

“I don’t remember asking for your approval. What do you really want?”

“I told you,” he stammered quietly as Bucky came to stand beside you at the door, his features contorted with interest. “I wanted to apologize.”

“Well, you’ve done that,” you said before closing the door in his face.

[kyber-crystal]

united we stand || s.r

summary: in which you, sam, steve, and natasha are forced to go on the run after civil war. unfortunately, being a fugitive with government officials out for his blood doesn’t seem to stop the great captain america from falling even more in love with you.

words: ~2.5k

warnings: slight angst, sam and natasha being matchmakers, fluff 

a/n: OMG IM SORRY THIS ONE WAS SO POORLY WRITTEN ADLFJDSF

It doesn't have to come down to this, Tony. Look what you're doing. You're tearing the Avengers apart."

"You did that when you sided with Cap, Y/N."

"What do we do now?"

"We fight."

"He's my friend."

"So was I."

"He killed our parents, Y/N. And you're still willing to take his side? I thought I could trust you. But I guess I can't even rely on my own judgement anymore to make decisions, can I?"

Your heart hammered against your ribcage as you jumped from rooftop to rooftop, a dull ache forming at the edges of your skull due to all the thoughts rushing around in your brain and narrowly escaping a flurry of over two dozen of General Ross's men.

Guilt settled in the pit of your stomach, making your insides churn. You turned against the last family you had left, and now you were paying the price.

You're one hundred percent sure that Tony hates your guts at this point. Leaving your brother for someone else; what had you become?

"What now?" Sam asked, looking around and sending Redwing out to survey your surroundings for any other agents that could be approaching. "What's our next step?"

"We gotta catch a train. Belfast's no longer safe for us," Steve panted as he slid his shield over his back, trying to catch his breath. "Our safety's already compromised as it is."

"Nat's gonna go get the tickets, I'll buy us some disguises. We're less likely to be recognized because you guys are all suited up with your wings and shield," you explained. "Wait here."

A few minutes later you were all dressed inconspicuously in your new disguises, looking like the other civilians that were walking around. You didn't have enough time to check the sizes of the clothing, so Steve ended up wearing some jeans and a light grey T-shirt that was about a size too small for him, outlining every inch of his toned torso.

You quickly tore your gaze away before anyone noticed you staring. Sam caught this, however, and sent you a little wink. You glared at him in response.

"The next train to Glasgow leaves in nine. We gotta hurry," Natasha said as she handed you your tickets. "Come on."

Luckily you weren't recognized as the ticket holder came around, though you tried to keep your heads down low when she passed by.

"It's a 14 hour ride. You fellas might wanna relax, take a nap or something," she said, reclining her seat back and closing her eyes. "We won't be arriving until early tomorrow morning."

You relaxed in your seat, the tension in your muscles loosening a bit. But Steve saw the distressed look in your eyes and placed a gentle hand on top of yours.

"You alright?"

"Could be better, I mean, it's not like I chose to be a fugitive on the run from the entire world," you joked, but the smirk on your face quickly fell. "No. I'm not."

"It's going to be okay, you know. Things'll work out in the end."

"I sure hope so."

You fell into an awkward silence after that, resting your chin on your hand as you stared out ahead, watching the rolling hills whiz by in a blur, the vibrant green a sharp contrast to the powdery blue sky. Ireland was a beautiful country, really. You wished you could stay longer purely for the sake of admiring all the lovely scenery.

"You know, if you just want to talk about anything, we can do that. 14 hours is a pretty long train ride," he finally spoke up about an hour later. Sam was fast asleep at this point, mouth opened slightly as his head rested on Natasha's shoulder, who was sleeping as well.

"Yeah, it is. But we've had worse days, right?"

"We have," Steve agreed.

So you just talked, about whatever came to your minds. Your childhood, your past before joining the Avengers Initiative where you'd previously served as one of SHIELD's top agents for several years, Steve's life back in the 40's before becoming a super-soldier, how much things changed over the years. About past missions.

Soon enough you felt your eyelids droop heavily from fatigue. He noticed your tiredness and reached out his right arm, gently wrapping it around you and pulling you towards his side, encircling you completely in his warm embrace. Slowly but steadily, your muscles began to release the tension in them and you leaned into his touch.

"Why don't you get some shut-eye. We have plenty of time to talk when we arrive."

"Mhm," you mumbled sleepily. He smiled, brushing a few stray hairs away from your face as you drifted off.

...

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is our final stop. We have arrived at Glasgow Central Station," the conductor's voice announced over the intercom as the train began slowing down. "The weather is currently 59 degrees, and it is 5:27 a.m."

"Wake up, lovebirds," Natasha clapped as you stirred slightly, looking confused as you raised your head from where it rested against Steve's chest. "Time to get going."

You yawned and stood up, stepping off onto the platform into the station, surprisingly busy at the crack of dawn. You really just wanted to curl back up into a ball and sleep. Talking for four hours straight with Steve had knocked you out completely.

After getting new SIM cards, Sam quickly created an account to get you checked into a hotel.

"It's a half hour walk. We should probably limit public transportation as much as we can," he stated as he slid his phone into his jacket pocket. "Managed to snag a 40% off deal including a free night, so we're good for the next few weeks until we get an actual apartment."

"You know," Natasha commented, adjusting her baseball cap and aviators as you made your way outside down the bustling street, "if we weren't currently trying to flee from the government's grasp, I'd say I'd wanna come back here for a vacation. And that's on nice architecture."

"With us?" you raised an eyebrow.

"Why not? You're pretty good company. I wouldn't wanna hang out with anyone else."

"Well, what can I say?" Sam puffed up his chest. "I'm smooth with the ladies."

You simply laughed. "Yeah, sure you are."

Glasgow was a breathtaking city. With sprawling Victorian style buildings and cobblestone roads, brightly labeled bars and restaurants, it appeared as if it was pulled straight from a rustic 19th-century painting.

You checked into your hotel after grabbing some food from the nearby bakery. For a cheap price, your room was surprisingly simple but large: a king bed in one room, a pullout couch, and a small balcony so you could stand outside and take in the view of the city.

Despite having no time zone difference between Ireland and Scotland, you were still extremely jet-lagged, most likely due to the flight you'd taken over to Berlin not long ago. After binge-watching reruns of some sitcom for the rest of the day, you fell asleep, clutching your pillow tightly.

Natasha and Sam had good eyes, and could clearly see something was going on between you and Steve.

The truth was, you wanted something to happen but both of you were too chicken to make a move, thinking being in relationship while on the run was inconvenient and unnecessary.

The first few days passed by relatively quickly. You only really went out to buy groceries, and even then you went two at a time to avoid drawing unwanted attention to yourselves. Once, you treated yourselves to a night out at a nice restaurant, enjoying each others' company. It was a way to forget about your currently unfortunate situation.

...

But then the nightmares began.  

You swung your legs over the edge of the bed after waking up in a cold sweat, heading over to the bathroom. Everyone had already gone to sleep long ago, and you envied people like Sam as he could knock out cold almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Staring at your ghostly reflection in the mirror, you squeezed your eyes shut, releasing tears that cascaded down your flushed cheeks in a hot flood. You ran trembling fingers through your messy hair in an attempt to tame it, taking a brief look at your disheveled appearance. The heavy dark circles underneath your bloodshot eyes that were a result of hardly sleeping over the past week were clear, as well as your sunken cheekbones and deathly pale complexion.

You studied the woman that looked back at you, with the same unnerving and hollowed out gaze that she'd worn for years; a façade she learned to develop so that nobody could see when she felt weak; helpless. 

Ten days. 

Only ten days had passed since you arrived in Scotland, yet it seemed as if you aged ten years during that short amount of time. Small creases in between your brows indicated stress and anxiety from leaving everything you knew behind, for a future you could barely see ahead of. For a life that held an endless amount of consequences if you took one misstep, one wrong move.

Your body felt heavy, weighed down as if you carried the weight of a thousand men upon your aching shoulders. You didn't know what to do; what to think anymore.

You didn't look thirty-two anymore, you looked older. Almost as old as Tony. And there was a 10+ year age gap between you and him.

God, Tony.

You betrayed him. The last living member of your family on earth, and you betrayed him.

Turned your back on him, because you didn't believe in the same ideas. Was it really worth turning your back on your own blood just because of a disagreement?

I thought I could trust you.

I thought I could, too. But I guess things don't always work out as planned, do they?

They don't. I don't even know what I can say to you anymore. Hell, I can't look at you without seeing a traitor. You turned your back on all of us, and that's unforgivable.

The Accords, you know I couldn't sign them. It isn't right. I'm fighting for what I believe in.

No, you're fighting for Steve, not yourself. Always running over to precious Cap even if it costs you your safety, if it costs you everything and everyone you ever loved. Because you think that you can rely on him and him alone, to get through this. You won't get very far by keeping this act up, you know.

News flash; the world doesn't revolve around you, Tony. Just because someone doesn't agree with what you believe, doesn't mean you have to tear their team, their family, apart for it.

You're blaming me?

Maybe I am.

"What are you doing up this late?"

Steve's voice jolted you from your train of thought, and you looked up to see him leaning against the doorframe dressed in sweats and another tight-fitting T-shirt, his blue eyes scanning over you worriedly.

"I could ask you the same thing."

"I'm fine, if that's what you're wondering. I'm just a bit jet-lagged," you muttered, hastily wiping away another stray tear that escaped. He pushed himself off the wall and caught your wrist as you were bringing your hand down, tugging you towards him slightly.

"Tell me what's going on."

"I'm fine!"

"No, you're not. What's wrong, Y/N?"

"I..." your voice faltered. You didn’t even realize you’d started crying until you felt your face grow wet from the salty tears that rolled silently into your cracked lips. "I don't know. Everything's wrong."

"Everything?"

"I made a mistake."

"What do you mean, mistake?"

"I turned my back against Tony. My family. I betrayed my own family, Steve." Your voice cracked. "And now I can't even guarantee that I'll ever see him again."

"You did what you had to do," he said softly, placing a hand on your shoulder. You felt your skin burning up under his touch. "You were just trying to do what you felt was right."

"Yeah, by teaming up with the side of the man who killed my parents. I can't imagine what he even thinks of me right now."

A look of hurt briefly passed over Steve's face at the mention of Bucky.

"...But I know their deaths were out of his control, so I don't blame him," you continued. "Still..I hurt him. And now, I have to live with knowing that fact." "Look, I'm sorry."

"What?"

You looked up and met his gaze, feeling his bright blue eyes boring into yours. He didn't seem upset or angry at all; there was an eerie softness and calming feeling about the way he looked at you that made you relax a bit.

"I shouldn't have dragged you into this mess. I never wanted you to have this kind of life; where you're always living in uncertainty. You deserve better than that."

"It's not your fault at all," you swallowed hard. Talking and breathing grew increasingly difficult with the sob that was building up in the back of your throat, that you tried desperately to conceal for so long, "it's mine. I made that decision to side with you, not only because I couldn't stand the idea of signing the Accords. So it's...it's on me. God, I don't know what to do anymore, I can't—"

A wave of grief suddenly hit you from all sides, causing you to keel over, sliding down against the cold wall with a hand clutching your stomach as an agonized scream tear itself through your body and out of your throat. And you were drowning; suffocated by your own tears as you struggled to breathe. You tried desperately to stop them but nothing could seem to hold back the heavy sobs that wracked your body, clawing at your lungs and heart. 

Steve crouched down in front of you and pulled you against him, arms tightening around your body with each cry that escaped your lips. In that moment he wanted nothing more than to take all your sadness and frustration and grief and put it upon himself, to carry the weight on his shoulders so he wouldn't have to watch you endure the pain. He'd much rather have to suffer himself than watch you try and bear the burden and fall to pieces in the process.

Seeing you breaking down before him with your gut-wrenching cries that echoed across the small space, more vulnerable than you'd ever been in front of him before, made it feel as if someone was directly ripping his heart right out of his chest and tearing it into a thousand pieces with their bare hands. 

"Hey, it's okay," he whispered soothingly as he pressed his lips to the side of your temple, "it's okay. I've got you. You're gonna be okay."

Despite how you felt as if your heart was twisting itself into knots, there was something comforting about the way he held you ever so gently in his arms, the way his warm breath fell against his neck as one arm was firmly hooked around your waist, running his free hand through your hair.

So for a moment, you allowed yourself to believe that there was no one else in the world except for just you and him, holding you close, and that everything was fine, even if the feeling only lasted for a second.

[ussjellyfish]

please have snow and mistletoe | gen | Skimmons, Philinda | Agents of SHIELD

written for @agentsofchallenges​ as a pinch hit for @maybebrilliant​!!

Merry Christmas, lovely! I hope you enjoy this. We’ve had some awful weather and that just seemed to work. 

read on ao3

Jemma and Daisy were supposed to go see her parents for Christmas but it's snowing and the flights are cancelled the hotels are full and they're in the worst airport Jemma's ever seen.

So May's going to come get them.

=======

"The flight's canceled," Jemma reports, flopping down on the bench, totally defeated. "So is everything else crossing the Atlantic Ocean that's not a boat, and I think they're turning those back too."

Daisy pats her shoulder and finishes the last of her cold coffee. "Guess we should call your parents."

"They'll be so disappointed," Jemma says, taking a breath. She probably wouldn't be near tears if it wasn't the middle of the night in potentially the worst airport on the eastern seaboard. Newark was crowded, so many flights had been delayed or cancelled that she and Daisy had barely gotten a bench after they'd barely gotten through customs. They'd already queued for hours, had terrible food, and the bathrooms were overcrowded and everyone was annoyed. Everyone was so annoyed that the air seemed to crack with it.

"Hey," Daisy said, smiling. "They'll understand. We can get a hotel or go back to base and we'll try again."

"Before the world ends or we get attacked by killer robots."

Daisy laughs and leans back. "We're good at that though, so it'll have to be another horrible thing."

"Like aliens." Jemma tries to smile. "Or weeping angels."

"Why are the angels sad?"

"Oh they're not actually weeping they're just covering their faces because they're evil and they're going to get you as soon as you stop looking."

Daisy grins. "Wait, what?"

"It's complicated, but the gist of it is that the angels sneak up on you when you're not looking at them."

"And they're evil."

"So evil."

"So let's not fight them." Daisy pulls her feet up and wraps her arms around her knees. "What do we do if there's no flight?"

"We rent a car-"

"Oh no, it's like The Day After Tomorrow death blizzard out there, we're not driving, you get annoyed with the traffic around the Playground."

"I'm only pointing out that roundabouts would be much more efficient."

"Uh huh." Daisy takes another sip of her coffee and frowns. It must be gone. Daisy looks for the bin, but of course there's no bin, this airport is the 8th circle of hell.

"We could get a hotel, hang on," Daisy opens up her laptop, touches something, does something else and even in hell, Daisy has wifi because she's Daisy. She's probably hacking NASA or something.

"Dammit," Daisy mutters after a few minutes.

"Let me guess, they're all booked."

"Everything. So many people are stuck here that I can't find a hotel anywhere within a hundred miles."

"And we'd have to get the hundred miles."

"Yeah." Daisy rubs her eyes. "We could just sleep here."

"In an airport?"

Daisy shrugs. "It's not the worst. It's safe, but the stupid lights are on all night and it's really not very comfortable."

Jemma sighs, buries her head in Daisy's shoulder and groans. "Spending the night in the airport on Christmast?"

"With a couple thousand of our stranded new friends," Daisy mutters. "Better call May and tell her we're not leaving the country."

It's somehow one of the shortest and most touching conversations of her life.

"May's coming to get us."

"What?" Daisy asks, eyes wide. "It's like...actual hell out there."

"She's driving, she said two hours, maybe three, but she'll be here before dinner."

Daisy shakes her head. "Okay."

"That's really nice of her."

"She is really nice."

"I know, I just--" Jemma stops, because she really can't complain about not getting to see her parents for Christmas because she's seen them every other Christmas of her life and she has parents, and a wonderful girlfriend and May who's coming to get them through the worst blizzard of the last sixty years.

She still wants to be home. She's earned it. It's been such a long year. She sniffs, and shakes herself out of it.

"What movies do you have on your laptop?"

Daisy wraps an arm around her and they settle in as best they can. May will be here.

Oddly enough, two hours later it's Coulson who comes in to get them. He's all wrapped out, parka and hate and scarf and a big smile for both of them.

"Come on, May's just outside." He hugs them, Daisy first, then Jemma, and it's so terrible outside that he somehow smells like snow and cold.

"Aren't you--?" Daisy asks and Coulson just smiles.

"I didn't want to leave May alone in the base for Christmas."

"She said she doesn't celebrate Christmas."

"We like not celebrating together," Coulson says, but there's something that makes him smile about that. "Give me your luggage."

"It's on the plane already, or not unloaded, or--" Jemma stumbles over the words, yawning, and Daisy finishes.

"I think they're going to have to drop it off with us."

"That bad huh?"

"It's Newark," Daisy grumbles, folding her arms. "I wanted to just let May fly us."

"We can't possibly ask May to fly us to my parents house."

"She'd love too," Coulson reminds them both, leading them towards the frozen hellscape of outside. They have to stop talking as they reach the doors because the wind screams around them and whips ice and snow like a sandstorm.

Hell is frozen, and all the devils are here. They hurry into the (once) black SHIELD SUV that's covered in so much ice and snow that's it's almost grey-white.

Daisy doesn't even have a hat because it was nice when they left and they tumble into the backseat, rubbing their fingers together and trying to catch their breath.

May turns around, looking at them both with a very gentle smile. "There's food in the backpack, hot chocolate in the thermos and blankets. Phil, where did you put their hats and mittens?"

"They're in the cloth bag. You didn't really take the hard core winter gear."

"Yeah, it was like 40 degrees when we left the base." Daisy buckles up and grabs the backpack. "I'm starving."

"We thought so, the food here is terrible."

"The worst," May agrees, checking that they're in before she pulls out from the curb. Another car slides past them, like actually slides and Jemma grabs Daisy's hand.

Daisy pats her knee with a smile and mouths "It's May."

It's not that Jemma doesn't have every confidence in May, she does. May is a legend at everything she does, it's just that the weather outside is actually legendarily bad. They crawl along on the freeway, surrounded by giant trucks that can't stay on the road and Jemma counts fourteen cars in the ditch before they're even out of New Jersey.

Daisy leans over, close enough that Jemma can smell the hot chocolate on her lips. "Stop panicking."

"Did you not see the cars in the ditch? The overturned lorry trucks? The complete lack of plows and gritters?"

"What's a gritter?"

"Those big lorries that throw grit on the roadway."

"Grit?" Daisy teases, eyebrows high.

"Stop making fun of me, you know what I mean."

"I do, I just like making fun of you."

Jemma rolls her eyes and tries to forget about the chance of them spinning into a ditch and spending the night sleeping in the SUV. Does SHIELD have any anti-ice and snow technology? Is there some kind of SAT NAV that May can follow out of the storm.

"Stop panicking," Daisy whispers again.

"How are you not?" Jemma snaps back in a whisper. "That car almost hit us."

"Look." Daisy points carefully in the dim light. It takes Jemma far too long to figure out what she's looking at.

Coulson's hand is on May's knee. It's innocent enough, maybe he's just- but it's right there and it looks like it's been there a long time.

"That's not all," Daisy whispers, smiling at the secret she's discovered. "Wait a minute."

Jemma curls up with Daisy and the blankets in the backseat and watches as Couls holds on May's tea so she doesn't have to look away from the road. They talk in low tones, and Jemma and Daisy can't hear them over the sound of ice thudding against the roof and the windows, but sometimes one of them will laugh.

May, laughs, while driving through the worst mess Jemma's ever seen. Time crawls, Daisy falls asleep for a while, then Jemma, but when she wakes up again, they're still driving, and Coulson's hand is on the back of May's neck.

She couldn't really tell what he's doing unless May's getting some kind of stress headache, and Coulson's hand is really hidden in her hair, except the snow's softer now and she can hear them talking.

Still not quite the words, but there's something almost flirty in the way Coulson won't stop looking at May.

Of course, they have a connection, years of history. They're really good friends.

Except friends don't really spend lonely holidays together alone at a secret base.

Jemma falls asleep wondering what they're saying, because May's laughing again and even in the middle of the darkest, most miserable, cold and wet Christmas Eve she's ever had, there's something nice about being curled up with Daisy just listening.

====

"We're home," Coulson says, shaking her a little. "Nice and safe and warm in the garage."

Jemma slowly blinks herself awake, stretching as she crawls out of the car. Daisy stands by the other door, still half asleep. They both yawn and check their phones. It's well after two in the morning.

"Happy Christmas, mum and dad," Jemma whispers to her phone and sends them a text. Maybe she'll see them by New Year.

Daisy circles the back of the SUV, whistling at the snow. "I didn't know the roads could be that bad."

"May did a great job."

Hugging Jemma sleepily, Daisy nods. "Course she did, she's Agent May."

Still arm in arm, they walk towards the front of the SUV to thank Coulson and May for coming to get them, but they stop.

They're kissing.

Not just, light, gentle, Happy Christmas, kissing, but wrapped around each other as if this kiss is the first one of the rest of their lives. There should be music with this kiss.

Daisy stops, mouth open.

Jemma should pull herself together but she doesn't. She stares too, because they keep going until both of them are gasping for breath.

"Ummm."

"Merry Christmas," Coulson says, blushing a little.

"Mistletoe," May says, pointing up at the high ceiling of the garage.

There's nothing up there. Jemma looks and Daisy looks and they both nod and May grabs Coulson's hand and they walk into the base together, Coulson's arm around her shoulders.

Daisy stares and stares and then her expression softens, warms. "They--"

Jemma kisses her, stopping her speculation. When they part, Daisy looks at her, confused.

"Mistletoe," Jemma teases and Daisy rolls her eyes.

"You know there's nothing up there."

"Maybe that's the point."

Daisy strokes her hair, then smiles. "Sorry. you're stuck here."

"I'm not," Jemma says, and now, finally, wrapped in Daisy's arms, she might mean it.

[jiskblr]

Blauprinz and his crew

My blood parents I never knew. Berliners, probably, but they left me in an anarchist-affiliated charity orphanage in Potsdam before I was six months old, so all I know for sure is that they named me Artur. I was adopted fairly late as these things go, about five, by the people who I consider my parents: Jurgen and Verena Carolingt. They could have had blood children, but chose to adopt, and frequently. When I was twelve I had five foster-sibs, but they slowed down after that; I only have two more sibs from the next decade, and they were adopted as the eldest four of us moved out. That's not counting Leo, who was their second fosterling; he was a real hellraiser and chafed at the academic's morality they tried to enforce, so he ran away to join a street gang. I got back in touch with him years later; for all that he left, he was as angry as me about - but that's getting ahead of myself.

My parents were academics, professors at Viadrina Universitat in Frankfurt-Oder, but in their more subtle way raised hell just as much as Leo. They grew up during the first partition, Da in East Germany and Ma in West Berlin, and they both hated the idea of hiding what they believed to cater to the powerful. They didn't budge in their convictions that everyone deserved a chance or that their conclusions deserved to be followed to their end. They believed in equality and metahuman rights, even when that was fairly unpopular, and they lived it. I'm a norm as were they, but my sibs are an even split of norms and orks plus one dwarf. They didn't adopt elves, who got snapped up more easily by more prejudiced parents, nor trolls, who posed logistical hurdles they didn't think they could deal with. (They felt bad about leaving out trolls, though, and donated generously to several charities for them. I do too, now, in their memory.) They budged just as little in their research, not even to stay quiet about it. When their research topics - applied sociology and economics of magic, for Da and Ma, respectively - developed from postulates to specific, inconvenient predictions and prescriptions for the practical world which got the corps to lean on their deans to quiet them down or kick them out, even so they stuck to their guns.

That pressure started to build around when I turned 18, and got worse as I went through my degree. When it all went to hell, I was a post-doc in applied modern theology - university-speak for 'shaman-ology' - and Zanne was a thesis candidate in high-energy experimental thaumics - studying when magic goes 'boom'. Gabi had given academia a serious try but it wasn't for her, so she'd become a net security wageslave in Potsdam - though honestly she'd be happier as a SINless decker. Fritz and Deb were undergrads at Viadrina, and Jost, Lotte, and Sascha were still young and at home. I don't understand what exactly was enraging the powers that be about their research; I think Mother had published something demonstrating that the publicly-known processes for producing refined orichalcite should produce a far lower market price, indicating that there was a covert cartel, and Father had models indicating that parts of the Eurowars didn't fit naturally with the known social dynamics pre-bellum, indicating deliberate provocation by some powerful force. True or not, either might have been the provocation. There had been escalating threats, but I wasn't living there, so I didn't hear about that; later, when I researched the background, I learned there’d been a fire started in the garage, broken windows, a chemical warfare agent left hissing in Dad's office after hours. But the first I heard of it was when I was back home, a week in late April, for Easter and Mother's birthday.

When some fucking Johnson carpet-firebombed the entire fucking house.

I don't know if they knew we'd be there. They had to know there were innocent children, there; Jost and Sascha weren't even ten yet. My parents died in the first few seconds, their corpses vaporized. Lotte was hugging Mother, so she was, too, and Fritz was just far enough away to leave dental records. Jost was less lucky; he roasted, but not quickly, and survived three hours before he died in agony. Deb lost a leg and an eye and as far as I know the pain's never stopped. Sascha was in the other room and got out, with severe scarring but none disabling. Zanne as well. Gabi wasn't there; the bosses wouldn't give her time off, and I'm not sure if that was a mercy or a curse. I was next to Father, and as far as the records know, I flash-fried like Lotte. But I'm a shaman of the Dragonslayer, and the fire washed over me. I tried to shield Dad with my body, but my totem isn't a protector; it preserved me, and much better than it would most of its shamans, but that didn't extend to him. I tried to help Jost when I realized he'd lived, but he told me to run and get revenge. I didn't realized Zanne or Sascha made it until much later; Zanne had hit her head and went unconscious quickly, and Sascha's response to pain always was to freeze up. But I kept it together enough to get to the basement, and there was ductwork Zanne had discovered years earlier and shown me, which connected it to three doors down. She'd also shown me the nearest part of the Berlin Underground - we snuck out through that ductwork - which had an ork gang she'd run with sometimes, so I thanked her memory about a hundred times that night. The gang leader by then, Ratbite, turned out to be one of the toughs she'd run with, and recognized me. I wasn't shy about using her memory to get a favor, and traded my shamanic skills - and some medical assistance - to get help going completely dark, wiping me from the databases so I could go truly SINless. He was pretty pissed when he found out she wasn't dead, but by then the favor was spent, and when she went dark as well she did him a couple favors and he mostly forgave me and accepted my excuse that I'd thought I was telling him the truth.

The official story was that the firebombs were thrown by a human-supremacist policlub, Nationale Aktion I believe, who objected to our outspokenly mixed-race family. This was bullshit, but plausible enough bullshit that the department heads and local politicians could easily pretend to believe it and be seen to Do Something in response, without that Something doing anything to harm corporate interests. Sascha I think believes that story, or prefers to act like he does. Deb, Gabi, and Zanne, though, didn't. And Zanne was good at causing explosions, but terrible at keeping her temper in check. She retaliated, with prejudice. Headline-making prejudice, which is how I and my temporary friend Ratbite learned she was alive. She had a big bounty for a couple years, but some anarchists gave her shelter before the corps reacted, and from there she became a runner as well. She didn't know I'd survived, though she did suspect, so I found her first, and joined the crew she ran with at the time. After that one came apart, the two of us have assembled all our future crews together. Well, mostly me, I'm the Face, but she still has better ties in anarchist and goblinoid circles; there's a lot of orks and trolls who won't trust a smoothskin, even one like me with an established rep.

Our vengeance is still a work in progress. The men who carried out the hit were deniable contractors, corp security from a minor place. They went down in an op our second year running, and the company got enough blowback from that job that it folded a year later. Finding out who gave the order is not quite done, but we've narrowed the field. I've got a solid network, and, well, my surviving siblings aren't any happier about it than me. Sascha pushed back when Zanne tried to contact him; I think he wants to put it behind him. Deb's a professor herself now, but she hasn't given up on justice, and Gabi-. She works for the corps, and counter to the ork stereotype is a very cold person in most ways; rationally, I know that gave me reasonable cause to doubt her. But after we finally made contact, we found her heart was cold, but a cold-burning hatred. A grudge aged like wine, but still so raw and deep that it feels unthinkable she could have made any other choice. Even the idea that she might have sided with her bosses over her family feels completely embarrassing to have considered. And Leo, like I said earlier, was almost as mad; he left home, but he still loved them for giving him a home to run from. (I hadn't realized, but he sent them gifts every Christmas, mostly hand-made, from the first year he'd left right through their deaths - he didn't learn about their deaths until he tried to deliver their gifts that year.) He's a complete ork stereotype, though, his anger is intense and searing. He'll let it go for months and then find something that reminds him again and smash up some corp's office, mostly at random. I try to give him more productive outlets when I can, but he refuses to go professional runner so he's probably going to end up landing in an early grave with his gang despite my best efforts. Not that we're really close, but I've lost too much family to let my crazy ex-brother join them.

[imjustthemechanic]

The Price of a Soul

Part 1/? - Agent Russel Part 2/? - The Letter

Of course Agent Russel isn’t who she said she was... but who is she really?  And what is the significance of the letter she left in Peggy’s purse?

-

It wasn’t until she was packing up her things to head home at the end of the day that Peggy noticed the envelope.

Peggy was used to finding envelopes on her desk – it had taken her a while to find a proper apartment in Los Angeles, so she’d used the SSR office as her address and still got mail there.  Her colleagues also left things for her.  But this wasn’t on her desk or even in her desk, it was in her purse, which had been sitting next to her desk all day, except for when it had been sitting next to Daniel’s desk in his office while she spoke with Agent Russel.  Peggy didn’t recall anyone coming near it, but then, she hadn’t been paying that much attention.  What she was sure of was that there had been no envelope in it when she’d left home that morning.

She pulled it out.  There was nothing written on it and the flap was not sealed.  Inside was a single sheet of typing paper.  Peggy unfolded it, and found two typewritten lines of numbers:

74 47 35 95 25 03

Below them was a quickly scrawled drawing of a five-pointed star with two circles around it.

Peggy’s breath caught.  Her first instinct upon just seeing the numbers was, of course, that it represented some kind of code or cipher, but noticing the star… perhaps she was biased, but she was fairly sure that represented Captain America’s shield.  And if it did, maybe the numbers were far simpler than a code.  Maybe somebody knew where the Valkyrie had crashed.  Ninety-five degrees was a long way to the west, and seventy-four was further north than Howard had ever looked.

Who had left her this?  Her initial idea was that it must have been Russel, but why would Russel do that and where would she have gotten such information?  If she had it, wouldn’t she give it to Daniel or to Chief Thompson in New York, or even to the joint chiefs or the president, rather than to Peggy Carter?  Everybody thought of her in association with Captain America, yes, but she’d been a comparatively minor figure in his career.  Maybe it was some kind of trap or a distraction?  But why do that?  It seemed entirely incompatible with Russel’s goal.  But if not her, who?

She folded the page up again.  She was getting ahead of herself, wasn’t she?  She didn’t yet know what those numbers meant.  Possibly she was jumping to conclusions.  She needed a map or a globe.  Peggy did not own one personally.  There was a large map of North America on one wall of the SSR office, but she didn’t want anyone seeing her poring over that and asking why.  Perhaps a public library?  But what if she were followed?

Remaining calm, Peggy put the page back into the envelope and the envelope into her purse.  She gave Daniel a kiss and wished him good night, and said goodbye to Rose on the way out, as if she were simply going home at the end of a tiring day and nothing was wrong in the world.

She did not go home, however.  She went to Howard Stark’s house.

Howard himself wasn’t home, but Edwin Jarvis answered the door and looked delighted to see Peggy, as he always was.  The man never seemed to learn.

“Agent Carter,” he said with a smile.  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m afraid it’s a business call,” said Peggy.  “I need to borrow a book.”

“Of course, come right in,” Jarvis said, standing aside.  “I’ll make tea.  Can I interest you in a slice of apple torte?  Anna has the dog outside, so there’s no need to fear an immediate assault upon entering the kitchen.”

Peggy smiled – the Jarvises had recently acquired a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy, which Anna had named Zoltan.  It was already twice the size it had been when they brought it home and showed no signs of slowing down, while having no idea that it was already much too big to fit in a human lap.  Anna adored the monster, and Edwin pretended to be annoyed with the amount of hair it shed, but could not bring himself to truly dislike an animal that made his wife so happy.

“Thank you, Mr. Jarvis, apple torte sounds lovely.”

In the library she quickly found what she was looking for – an enormous leather-bound Atlas of the World, the sort of book Howard bought because he was supposed to have one and then never looked at because he had the entire geography of the earth memorized already.  Mr. Jarvis brought her pie and tea while she flipped pages, until she found one showing the islands of Northern Canada.

She took the paper out again and spread it out.  Seventy-four and a half degrees north was… just about there, and ninety-five degrees west was… just off the coast of Cornwallis Island, a place choked by sea ice for nearly the entire year.  As she’d suspected, it was very far north of where they’d thought the Valkyrie might have gone down based on its last known trajectory.  Perhaps they’d underestimated the speed of the craft?

Could it really be?  Could somebody have simply handed her the location of Steve Rogers’ body?

The only way to find out would be to look… but looking would be a big undertaking, with people and ships and winter gear.  Peggy did not yet have nearly enough information to start something like that.  Before she could even begin she had to find out who had given her these coordinates, where that person had gotten them from, and how many other people might know about them.  For all she knew, this was some kind of trap.

“Agent Carter?” asked Mr. Jarvis, coming to collect her empty teacup.  “Have you found what you needed?”

“I believe I’ve made a start,” Peggy replied.  “May I use the telephone?”

“Of course,” he said.

She pulled out the card Agent Russel had given her, and asked the operator for the number.  The phone rang… and then rang again… and rang again.  Peggy waited with increasing impatience until it had rung twelve times, and then hung up.  Maybe Russel was still busy, or perhaps she’d gone out for dinner or something.  There were plenty of explanations that didn’t involve her deliberately avoiding Peggy, and Peggy would not improve the situation by becoming paranoid.

She put the envelope back in her purse, thanked Mr. Jarvis, and headed home again.

When she arrived, she rang Russel’s number again but still got no answer.  This was annoying for several reasons, not the least of which was that Russel would be the easiest suspect to eliminate.  Peggy could just ask Russel about it, while her colleagues were a different matter.  If she asked the wrong person and they weren’t the culprit, they might spread the news around and then there would be a big fuss over what might turn out to be nothing.  Peggy didn’t want that.

It did occur to her that this might just be a ploy to distract her from looking for Dottie so that somebody else could take the credit.  That would have been infuriating if Peggy hadn’t long ago let go of caring who got credit for saving the world just so long as it ended up saved.

Before she turned in that evening, Peggy did try one last time to telephone Russel and still got no response.  She told herself not to get cranky about it.  She’d only met this woman yesterday, and an FBI agent was doubtless busy… especially a woman, who would have to be twice as good as the men to get half the respect.  Peggy herself could be almost impossible to contact sometimes.  Howard, Mr. Jarvis, Angie, and even Daniel had all complained of it.  When it was time to panic, she told herself as she shut off the lights, she would know.

- 

As it turned out, the time for panic was around four o’clock the following morning, when Peggy was awakened from a sound sleep by her phone ringing.  She turned the light back on and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Peggy?” it was Daniel.  “Did I wake you up?”

“I should say you did – do you know what time it is?” she asked, having to turn her alarm clock in order to find out for herself.  Ten past four.  If Daniel were calling her now, it was something serious.  “What’s going on?”

“They found Agent Russel,” he said.

Peggy’s heart went into her throat.  “She’s dead?”  That had not been an expected outcome.

“No…” Daniel said.  “The woman who came to see you yesterday wasn’t Agent Russel.  Agent Nedrick Russel has been found tied up in the trunk of a car at the airport.”

Having only just leaped, Peggy’s heart now sank, all the way down to the floor and possibly through it into the apartment below.  “Bloody hell,” she said.

“Can you meet us at the police station?” asked Daniel.

“Absolutely.”  Peggy threw aside the covers and stood up.  “Give me a moment to get ready.”

She hung up without saying goodbye, because now was not a time for pleasantries.  In the washroom to give her hair a quick comb and put on makeup as best she could, Peggy caught her own eye in the mirror and scowled.

“Bloody bugger,” she declared.  “Bloody, bloody bugger.”

She might not know what was going on with the mysterious envelope, but she now knew in her gut exactly what had happened yesterday and it was not at all nice.  Peggy had always been as lenient as she could with Dottie Underwood, though that wasn’t very, because she knew Dottie had been brought up by cruel people who’d twisted her into a monster.  The same was doubtless true of this woman calling herself Nadine Russel… but Peggy was going to have a much more difficult time trying to be kind.

When Peggy arrived at the station near the airport, dressed and groomed but definitely not looking her best, a police officer escorted her into a room where three men from the SSR, including Daniel, and several more police were standing around watching a man devour a ham sandwich.  He was in his early fifties, with graying dark hair and a chisel-straight nose, wearing a white shirt with sweat stains under the arms, his tie and his blue plaid blazer draped over the back of his chair.  His audience didn’t seem to interest him at all.  He was entirely focused on his food.

“Agent Russel?” asked Peggy.

The man glanced up at her, then quickly swallowed his mouthful and washed it down with half a glass of water.  He’d clearly been imprisoned in the car trunk for some time, and it had left him both hungry and dehydrated.  “You must be Agent Carter,” he said.  “This isn’t how I pictured us meeting.”

“Nor I,” said Peggy.  She looked at the police.  “You questioned him?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said the nearest man.  “He says he was having a drink at the Coconut Club when a pretty blonde came up and started flirting with him, and the next thing he remembers was coming to locked in the trunk of his car.  His wallet and his briefcase are both missing.”

Peggy had heard of the Coconut Club, though she’d never been there.  It was a fairly swanky pub not too far away from the airport.  “Do we have a description of the suspect?”

“We’ve got a sketch artist on his way,” the policeman promised.

“She was about so tall,” said Russel with his mouth full, holding his hand at the height of his shoulders to suggest a woman significantly shorter than he.  “Blonde hair, blue eyes, great skin, nails like a tiger.  Black dress with a little bolero, and a choker necklace with a great big rock on it.”  He pointed to his adam’s apple to suggest where that had sat.

“Did she give her name?” Peggy asked.

“She said it was Katherine.  Told me to call her Kay,” Russel said.  “You’re not going to tell Alice, are you?”

Peggy rolled her eyes, and Daniel looked like he badly wanted to.  “Agent Russel,” he said, “the SSR wants to know who this woman is and why she’s interested in finding Olga Barynova.  We don’t care where your wife thinks you were last night.”

Russel had been about to bite into his sandwich again.  Now he hesitated.  “You mean Underwood?  She’s got a real name now?”

“Was that not in the information your assailant took from you?” asked Peggy.

“No…” said Russel.  “No, we’ve got a list of her aliases but none of them were Russian.”

Peggy had already been fairly sure this mysterious Miss Kay must be from the same organization as Dottie herself… now she suspected she knew it for certain.  Had she assumed that the SSR already knew Dottie’s real name?  Or had she only called her that by mistake?  Either way, she’d covered for herself very quickly.

Had Kay gotten the coordinates from Russel?  Peggy would have to find a more private moment to ask him.  In the meantime, she took out the business card her visitor had given her yesterday, and showed him the number.

“Does this telephone number mean anything to you, Agent Russel?” she asked.

His mouth was once again full.  He shook his head.

“Then that’s where I’d like to start,” said Peggy.  Maybe Kay hadn’t thought they would find the real Russel so soon, and was expecting Peggy to try to contact her.  Or maybe it had only been a ruse, to keep Peggy from being suspicious.  She offered the card to one of the policemen.  “Would somebody mind tracing this for me, please?”

The man looked at Daniel, who nodded.  “Do it,” he said.

“And I’ll want to speak to the sketch artist, myself,” Peggy added.  At the moment it was technically only a suspicion that ‘Nadine’ and ‘Kay’ were the same person, but it would be nice to have it confirmed.  Then she could decide what she would try to do next.