zukosdualdao · 6 months ago
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i'm a worst case kid / in a plague pit town
zutara month, day 1: reluctant allies
summary: ever-slight canon-divergence in which zuko accepts katara's offer to heal iroh after feeling his too-weak, dying pulse, as his injury is bad enough zuko is unsure he will survive otherwise. not much else changes. it was never going to.
warnings: canon-typical depictions of injury, violence, and trauma responses.
other notes: title is a lyric taken from tommy lefroy's "worst case kid". starting pov is zuko's, ending pov is katara's. two pieces of dialogue are directly taken from the show.
*
The wind is whistling in this dry, abandoned, dead town, dead like—
Zuko does not shiver, and he does not cry.
He used to be able to tell himself things like that and mean it. When did that stop being true?
Uncle’s pulse is so faint, for a moment, he thinks it isn’t there at all. Even when he feels it, he knows it might as well not be. He might not have long at all.
Zuko hears the other footsteps approaching, their silence loud and almost mournful, but he bristles on instinct. They can’t see him like this, can’t see Uncle like this—how could he be so stupid as to turn his back on the enemy? 
“Get away from us!” he shouts as he looks back. They’re all staring at his uncle’s prone form, and Zuko turns back to him, too, heaving heavy breaths. He needs to do something, but he is weak, useless, outnumbered—
“Zuko, I can help,” the waterbender insists, and Zuko wants to snarl, yell, reach for his fire, and he raises his hand to do so—and frowns. 
What does she mean?
He looks back to where Uncle lies prone.
A heartbeat shouldn’t feel like that. The Dragon of The West shouldn’t go down so easily.
Uncle shouldn’t be able to seem so small and worn and fragile.
Slowly, Zuko lowers his hand and looks to her striking blue eyes. There’s no pity or malice there, he doesn’t think, she just looks… still cautious and unyielding, but sad and sincere, too.
He’s fallen for tricks like this before, though—Azula has always loved how easily she could fool him—and it feels a little like he’s standing on the edge of a steep precipice.
It would be naive to just… trust the word of an enemy. She has no reason to want to help him. He knows this.
The rest of them still watch his uncle’s maybe-dying form, but the waterbending girl stares at Zuko unflinchingly, almost as though in challenge.
Uncle groans brokenly, the noise like that of a wounded animal. 
“How?”
*
The world is dead silent.
The prince of the Fire Nation is staring at her with tears threatening to fall from his right eye, though not the left, which is twitching lightly. She’s never before noticed how he can’t seem to open it fully due to the scar tissue set against it. She’s never had much reason to take in his features as anything more than the face of their enemy. 
His gaze is still steely and untrusting. In this light, his scar looks violently red and painful. He asks after her offer with a voice that cracks, though he doesn’t seem to pay that any heed. His hair is short but growing in, and he’s traded out his Fire Nation attire for earthly green and brown robes. He looks so different from when they last saw him. 
He looks so… young.
It’s all a little bizarre.
“Be careful, Katara,” Sokka insists from behind her, though when she glances back, his focus is on Iroh, a complicated expression playing on his features. Aang is staring at him, too, eyes wide and verging on teary. She doesn’t yet know Toph very well, but Katara can tell her body is rigid, her feet tense as her toes curl into the dusty ground beneath them. Toph doesn’t know that Iroh has been their enemy. But Iroh also helped them at the North Pole, and again just now against that princess, Zuko’s sister, she supposes, with her calculating eyes and strange blue fire.
Katara nods but says nothing further. If Zuko was going to make a move against them, he could have done it when his sister vanished.
They had turned away from their futile attack against her, and he’d already been kneeling at his uncle’s side.
She approaches slowly, circling to the side opposite him. When she kneels and reaches for her waterskin, Zuko nearly growls and takes hold of the edge of Iroh’s sleeve tightly, like he might try to drag him away.
“I’m not going to hurt him,” Katara says, flush with indignation. The dirt beneath her chafes her knees even through her clothing. “I need space to heal.”
“I’m not moving, so forget it.”
Katara tilts her head and looks into his eyes as he glares back. He now looks every bit the angry, hateful prince that had tracked them around the world for months, but she can see something else filtering through his expression, too, something like fear.
She almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of it. Why should he be afraid of them?
“Fine,” she allows after a moment. “Just don’t get in the way.”
He nods tightly, and at the agreement, Katara opens her waterskin. She calls the water to her and sets it against Iroh’s the right side of his chest, his robes black and charred. Closing her eyes, she calls out to his chi and focuses her energy on it. She doesn’t know if she can do it, doesn’t know if Iroh is truly too far gone…
After a few long moments, his breathing evens, and Katara sighs. Across from her, Zuko’s features soften just a fraction, but when she meets his eyes, somehow, she knows exactly what they both are thinking, united in nothing but this.
It doesn’t change anything, Katara's thoughts insist as her friends draw closer. Zuko tenses again. It can’t.
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goodgirlofglory · 4 years ago
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That which lingered on his mind / Chapter 1
Prologue - Chapter 2
Pairing: Dark!Steve Rogers x reader
Word count: 4,7k
Warnings: 18+, Non-con, dub-con, Explicit sexual content, Explicit language, smut, Graphic descriptions of violence, bondage (bound wrists), oral (f receiving), asphyxiation (choking), Cumplay, Some graphic descriptions of blood.
Chapter summary: Steve Rogers, Captain America and your former neighbor, used to harbour some secret feelings for you before he was turned into a Hydra asset. Now he’s come back to claim what he cannot rid himself of: his desire for you.
Author’s note: This one came to me a dark January night and hasn’t let me go since. This series will be about 7-8 chapters, so stay tuned! Not beta-read, so all mistakes are mine. My work is not to be distributed anywhere but my blog. Reblogs are welcome, though. And I so appreciate reading your replies and tags<3 hope you enjoy ;)
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It started out as any other night. You had a cup of tea and scrolled through your phone for a while before a violent yawn told you it was time for bed. 
It was a normal night.
Until you stood face to face with Captain America. Or at least, who you thought was Captain America. America’s hero and your former neighbor. 
You had never really paid any attention to news about the Avengers or Mr. Rogers, and had never been one to socialize with neighbors. He lived across the hall from you and was quiet and polite, never drawing more attention to himself other than a smile and a curt greeting now and then.
That was until he disappeared off the grid about four months ago. It was all the news could talk about for a good three weeks. Gossip in the building also started flourishing. Where had he gone? What happened? Was he dead?
Apparently not, for there he stood, silent as the grave, inside your apartment, half shrouded in darkness, blocking your way to the bedroom. 
 You didn’t really know what his uniform used to look like either, but from what you could remember he used to have a star on his chest, and not the squid looking emblem he now bore. His face was also an unusual sight, jaw covered in a gruff beard, hair long and pushed back. But worse were the eyes; steely, cold and intent on you.
 Had it only been good ol’ Captain America standing uninvited in your home you would have been scared. But this. This chilled you to the bone.
 What the fuck was going on?
 Your body froze as you stared at the man, who made no effort to speak nor move. Finally you found your voice. 
“Excuse me, but what the hell are you doing in my apartment? Please leave before I call the police.”
You tried to sound tough, but your voice shook slightly at the last word. He must have picked up on that, for his otherwise dead eyes gained a slight glimmer. 
 “Please do. Their deaths will be on your shoulders.”
A small gasp caught in your throat. You were starting to become terrified. This was absolutely not the Captain America you had seen on the news nor the Steve Rogers you had greeted in the hallway. 
“Actually, don’t bother, you’ll never reach your phone,” he continued, sounding far too nonchalant for the ominous aura he was putting off.
Your eyes widened when you remembered leaving your phone on the living room table, all the way across the room behind you. 
What should you do? Run for it anyways? Scream for help? You opted for a seemingly less provoking approach.
“What do you want?” you asked, tears starting to involuntarily form at the corners of your eyes.
His eyes seemed to darken somehow, setting themselves on you with deadly weight, piercing your soul.
“You.”
Your fight reflex kicked in before you could think, and you lunged for the front door across the living room behind you.
But you barely got a few steps in before a thick arm snaked around your waist and janked you back to hit painfully against a hard, unrelenting body. You managed to shriek in fear before a second hand, big enough to cover both your mouth and nose slammed down on your face and muffled your cries, knocking your lips against your teeth. You tasted blood.
You kicked, hit and scratched at your assailant's body, but gained only a mocking snicker in response. His mouth came down to whisper in your ear, sending ice cold shivers down your spine.
“Please, keep fighting, it only makes this more enjoyable.”
You sobbed into his coarse hand, tears springing free from your eyes, wetting the skin of his fingers. 
 He tsked
 “Cuing the waterworks. He wouldn’t like that,” he breathed into your ears and tightened his grip on your face, effectively cutting off your air supply. You squirmed against his arms in panic, new tears falling, not managing to move him even an inch. His grip remained as tight as iron. 
 As your vision blurred and you slipped into dark unconsciousness, you kept wondering what he meant by “he”.
 §
 You awoke groggily, feeling the muscles in your arms ache as they lay over your head. You usually woke up with your arms thrown over your head, so it took a few seconds to remember what had happened.
When you did, your body surged upwards, but was promptly janked back against the bed. Looking up, you registered for the first time that both of your wrists were bound to the bedpost above your head, using the bondage ropes you had gotten as a joke a few years back. Looking down you saw that you were still fully clothed, with your oversized UNI t-shirt and cotton shorts.
 The knot looked intricate and a few janks told you it was secure as well. 
 Your breathing started to race as you understood you were stuck, and a cry ripped itself from your lungs at the realization. 
 “Ah-ah-ah, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a calm voice came from across the room.
“HELP,” you screamed at the top of your lungs, ignoring the man who sat in the chair in the corner. It felt good to defy him, if only for a split second. 
 He made no indication that your behaviour bothered him, his stare as even as ever. 
“I will kill anyone who enters this apartment,” he said calmly. “You don’t want to endanger any of your good neighbors' lives. That’s not who he perceived you to be. I, on the other hand, have no problem killing everyone in this building if it helps you understand what is happening here.”
 “And what the fuck is happening here exactly?” you snarled, still janking at the knot around your wrists, bound just a little too tightly.
He smirked at that.
“Feisty, just like I hoped. It’s more...fun if I can break you first,” he mused.
He got up from the chair and moved over to the bed. When he got close enough you kicked out at him, and you would have hit him right in the gut if he hadn’t caught your foot. Not that it would affect him, you bitterly thought after.
He looked almost amused before twisting your foot around until you shrieked in pain.
“Oh,” he cooed, “remember to be quiet. We wouldn’t want anyone to come checking in on you, would we?”
He let go of your foot, and you recoiled in the pain that shot up through your body. A sob escaped your gritted teeth.
He snickered.
“Pathetic. But I do see the appeal.”
He leaned forward and grabbed your jaw in a harsh grip, making you look him in the eyes as he leaned in so close his breath brushed across your face. There was a slight hint of mint to it.
“What's happening here, sweetheart, is that I’m gonna get some things out of my system.”
His hand let go of your jaw and moved down to slightly encircle your throat, lingering like a taunting threat. Your throat constricted instinctively at the presence of his calloused hand. A smirk played at his lips as you squirmed under his light touch. 
“I’m going to fuck you, Y/N”.
 You thrashed at that, nausea setting in your stomach, your skin prickling as the words landed.  
 “No, no, no, please,” you started to mumble in your panicked state, janking  more desperately on the knot around your bound wrists.
 “Oh yes, and the more you fight, the worse it’ll be for you,” Steve smirked as he moved around the back of the bed and started to climb onto it, grabbing your kicking feet with ease, straddling your thighs.
Helpless to stop it, you watched as he took a fistful of your shirt in both his hands and ripped the fabric open, split down the middle, exposing your stomach and chest underneath. In the chilly night air your nipples hardened and goosebumps spread across your skin.
You saw the feral expression that grew behind his eyes. 
He only hummed in response to your desperate whine, before letting a hand flitter up your hip.
His fingers stroked lightly up your torso, following every dent and bump, and you shivered at how soft it was in contrast to his earlier brutality.
Your breath hitched in your throat and his gaze snapped up to meet yours.
“Does that feel good?” he asked in a low murmur, smugness shining in his eyes, mockery dripping from his voice.. 
You shut your mouth and bit the inside of your cheek, tears welling in your eyes, trying to quell the impulse to scream. 
You had no doubt in your mind that no one in your building could overpower the super soldier, and you were terrified he would keep his word. 
You couldn’t let anyone else die. 
 A painful tweak of a hardened nipple brought you back to the room, and you cried out.
“Don’t disappear now, I need you present for this,” he instructed in a patient voice, almost like you were a disobedient child. 
 He bent down then, and took a pebbled nipple into his mouth while his hands landed on either side of your head, caging you in.
The sensation of his hot and wet mouth in contrast to the cold air of the room sent sparks flying through your body and, more horrifyingly, down between your legs. You bit your tongue out of shame, and tried to squirm away from his wanton mouth. It took only a single hand of his on your chest to effectively pin you down as he continued his ministrations on your nipple, sucking, licking and teasing with his teeth.
He radiated warmth hovering over you like that, his hand a searing presence on your skin, no doubt feeling how hard your heart was beating against your ribcage.
His smell filled your nose, musky, with hints of smoked wood and cedar, and something familiar and sweet - your own perfume. Did he go into your bathroom? Did he use your perfume on himself?
His mouth moved up your chest and to your neck, and he was so close, so overwhelming.
You squirmed slightly at his approach, but noticed that in this position, pinned under his thighs like you were, the fabric of your panties caught on your core, dragging along the awakened skin, and to your horror you could feel the slick starting to gather there. You stifled a whimper, face burning with dread and newly bloomed shame. 
His beard scratched your throat as he buried his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling sharply.
“There’s that smell,” he murmured with a throaty sigh, “that smell he couldn’t get out of his head”.
What was he on about? Who was “he”? 
Your mind raced with questions as his tongue started to lap at your throat, leaving open mouthed and sloppy kisses to your sensitive skin.
You closed your eyes and tried to resist, tried to fight your body’s reaction to his stimulation, but as his teeth nipped at a particularly sweet spot, your whole body shuddered involuntarily and a small gasp escaped your mouth. 
 His face snapped up from your neck, piercing blue eyes finding yours teary and terrified - and no doubt dilated.
He straightened after a second, and shimmied off from where he was still stradling your thighs. As soon as your legs were free, you started kicking out at him, rage and defiance surging, trying and failing to hit him in the chest as he effortlessly caught both your ankles and gathered them in one hand. 
He leaned forward, face smooth and emotionless, and landed an open handed slap across your face a second later.
Your head whipped to the side, and your breath left your body for a second as your head swam, a high pitched ringing filling your ears.
You gasped in shock, your whole body going stiff as pain spread from your cheek.
You had never been hit before, and especially not that hard. Tears sprang forth from your eyes as it dawned on you how utterly fucked you were. 
“Let that be a warning,” he said in a calm voice, seemingly not affected in the slightest by the violence he was so willingly dishing out.
The fight was out of you for now, and you could only breathe through the sharp pain that lingered on your face as he moved in between your thighs.
Sitting back on his haunches he started to remove the tactical suit on his torso, impatiently ripping at the fastenings as his eyes never left your face, red, swollen and wet from your tears. 
You averted your gaze, disgusted by him, disgusted by yourself, desperately trying not to reveal your body’s reaction to his.
When he was completely naked from the waist up, his hands turned to your sleeping shorts, removing them with deft haste and surprising softness before leaning back again, his touch leaving your body. 
Several seconds went by without any action, and your curiosity gained the better of you. Turning your eyes to him, you found him studying your body. His face was as blank as ever, but his eyes betrayed some sort of sentiment you hadn’t seen before.
“He used to dream about you,” he said after a while, seemingly more to himself. 
He bent forward once he realized you were watching him, caging you in again as he hovered over you, moving closer and closer.
Face still stinging from his slap, you didn’t dare move even a muscle as his lips found yours. It started slow, but soon he grew impatient, and his tongue invaded your mouth, hot, wet and dominating, moving languidly against your own. 
Breathless and reeling, a small whimper left your mouth, and the responding groan that emitted from his throat rumbled through you.
While still moving his tongue into your mouth, one of his hands reached down and you felt the distinct calloused warmth of his touch to the inside of your thigh. 
A small, panicked “no” croaked out of you, but he only swallowed it eagerly, not letting up his touch as it zeroed in on your core. 
You could feel his fingers touching the cotton covering you, and by the breathy laughter he huffed against your mouth, he no doubt felt how wet it was.
“Oh, doll, I don’t think you’ve been completely honest,” he mocked as he leaned back again and looked down at your ruined panties. 
You tried to hide your burning face in the nook of your elbow as he ripped your panties off before bunching them up in his hand and bringing them to his face. But his eyes caught yours in a steel grip as he inhaled sharply, eyes fluttering for a second before a pleased sigh left his lips.
You watched as his tongue swiped at the wet patch of the fabric before he put the panties in his pocket.
You thrashed at his obscene actions, nausea burning hot in the pit of your stomach, mixing with your undeniable arousal. 
What the fuck was wrong with you? 
As your mind raced against the reality of the situation, Steve laid down on the bed between your legs. His mouth attacked your pussy. 
A squeak escaped your mouth, hands janking at the knot around your wrists as he started devouring you, mouth moving between your clit and weeping wound with urgency, almost desperation. 
A full on groan left his mouth as he lapped at the juices that were steadily leaking from you. 
His hands found your breasts and started teasing your nipples, and you tried to squirm away.
You needed him to stop, you needed this assault on your senses to cease, because you could feel your resolve burning away as sweet, untainted pleasure started spreading through your body. 
Steve’s tongue swept up and swirled around your clit, and you tried inching away. One of his hands gave your breast a sharp slap before tweaking your nipple painfully again. Another warning. You headed it. 
“Does that feel good?” he asked, but in contrast to the last time it almost sounded like he cared.
You shook your head weakly. 
He chuckled against your mound and gave your breast another slap, sending jolts of pain through your chest. 
“Don’t lie,” he warned, but there was surprisingly little malice in his voice. “But nevermind. This pretty, swollen, soaked cunt tells me all I need to know,” he said almost fondly before giving your clit a few licks. 
“Give in, Y/N, I can feel how much you want to,” he taunted in between licks and all you could do was lay still and take it, new tears streaking from your eyes and wetting the hair at your temples as you squeezed them shut. 
He was right. You couldn’t deny the pleasure he was wringing from your body.
“I’m going to stay still now, and you move however you want,” he said then, before doing just that. 
Somehow, having him stop was more torture than what he had been doing, and your stubborn pride, your better judgement and the stinging feeling of violation that burned in your chest fought against your body’s sudden need for stimulation - for his stimulation. 
Something in you snapped, and you tentatively moved your hips so your clit could find his tongue, stretched out waiting for you. 
You shivered. 
It felt good. 
You rolled your hips again, more firmly this time, and the resulting swipe of his tongue against your sensitive bud of nerves had your breath leaving your body in a shaky exhale. 
His hands gave your breasts an encouraging squeeze, before resuming their attention on your nipples, and you moved your hips with more fervor. 
Before long you were grinding yourself on his mouth, breaths coming out in puffs as your eyes stayed shut, losing yourself in the hot feel of his tongue. 
Desperation grew as you could feel that distinct coil tighten in your abdomen, and every draw of breath fueled the build up. 
Not thinking anymore, you bucked your hips on him in repeated motion, lingering on the edge of the abyss, searching for that which would make the coil snap.
A desperate whimper left your mouth and as a response, a rumbling groan from his throat vibrated right through you and you fell head first into your orgasm, entire body shuddering violently as your mouth opened in a silent scream. 
He was on you as you came down, lapping up your release and groaning as you trembled at the overstimulation. He was frantically groping at your waist and hips, strong arms and hands grounding you as you floated on the aftershocks of your high.
The moment the orgasm faded from your foggy mind, it fell in on itself.
How could you let yourself give in like that? 
You squeezed your eyes shut, your mind trying to escape the whole thing, if only for a moment, go far far away, go numb, go blank. 
You weren’t allowed more than a few seconds reprieve, however, as you faintly heard him rustling around before you felt pressure at your entrance.
Before you had time to protest, Steve pushed his cock into you, giving a pleased huff as your body squeezed instinctively, drawing him in even more. 
Your eyes shot open and met his - wild and pleased.
“There she is,” he said with dark glee as he breathed hard. 
You fought to draw breath as your body seared with pain of the intrusion. His girth was more than you could take. It was all you could do to handle the stretch of his cock bottoming out, pushed inside you to the hilt.
“Feel that? Feel how your willing cunt is swallowing me like that, inviting me in?” 
He started to move a second later, not giving you any time to adjust, setting a punishing pace that sent sparks of pain up through your body.
You cried out at the agony, nails digging into your own palms. 
Above you, Steve growled as he bared his teeth at you, slamming his hips against yours. 
His cock was rock hard as it speared you, and he only seemed to grow harder at your pained cries. 
Through the pain and your strained whimpering sounds, you faintly heard him mumble.
“- all those incessant thoughts about you….never like this….if he only fucking knew...ripe for the taking, and the bastard didn’t as much as ask you out...”
His hand seized your throat as he stuffed his face into the crook of your neck again, inhaling fervently. Hitched breaths was the only thing that escaped you at this point, as he kept up his torturing pace, abusing your pussy without halt. 
“- That fucking smell in the hallway...never escaping it...fuck…gonna fuck those thoughts right out...”
 Was “he” Steve? Was he rambling about himself? Or at least, who he used to be?
The pain had slowly subsided as you’d listened to the man’s crazed rambling, and a deep onslaught of pleasure was starting to make itself known with each punch of Steve’s cock. Soon your body started to tremble, and you fought against the coil starting to build again. 
Steve shifted his hips to run his hands down your sides, and the new angle hit the spot deep within you that made your breathless.
Your mouth opened in a complete and utter moan, and Steve’s head snapped up from your neck, something akin to surprise in his eyes as he took in your face. 
“That’s the spot, isn’t it?” he asked, and his voice was thick with pleasure. 
You tried to avert your eyes, but his hand shot up and gripped your jaw, pulling your face so close that your breaths mingled. His stare locked yours in an iron grip. 
His thrusts slowed, and he rolled his hips, reaching deep, so deep inside you, and a pleasured sigh left your lips to fan across his lips as he found that spot again.  
“Look at you. Steve would never think of you like this - he respected you. Little did he know you were a cock hungry little masochist,” he husked, pupils deep pools of dark desire. Your cheeks burned as you clenched around him at his words.
He grunted, letting his eyes fall close for only a second, and you noticed how his long and beautiful eyelashes fanned across his cheek. 
“Let’s see how much you can enjoy this, huh?” he asked in an almost mocking tone as one of his hands reached down to where his body was rutting into yours, and his thumb found your clit. 
You cried out as he started an unrelenting circling of the sensitive bud, and he mouthed at your jaw as he hummed in response. 
In the back of your mind a small voice was telling you to fight, to gnaw and hit and thrash until he understood that you didn’t want this. Another voice was arguing that you would only be hurt further if you fought more. There was no getting away from his intent and no overpowering him.
A louder voice was whispering that it was okay to give in. Give in to the way he felt on your skin, the way he moved in you, the way he looked at you. Give in to the pleasure.
 Your orgasm washed over you like a warm wave, spasming through every muscle as they sung with exhilaration. A shuddering groan left your lips and your pussy pulsed around Steve’s cock. He growled as he crushed his lips to yours, and you opened yours willingly, moving your tongue against his in a wet and sloppy kiss. 
“Good,” he praised in a groan after breaking the kiss, and to your surprise, something akin to pride bloomed deep in your chest at his praise. 
You were completely lost in the pleasure now, in the drag of his cock against your trembling walls, his musky og smoky scent and those blue, lust-blown eyes piercing you. 
His pace quickened again, and you could tell by the way his muscles tensed that he was closing in on his own release.
“I can feel you fluttering, doll. Listen to the sounds this pretty pussy makes. Maybe I should keep you?” he mused darkly, a small wicked grin on his lips. 
For a moment terror flashed across your eyes. Keep you? In the back of your mind the pain of your still bound wrists alerted you of the implications of that notion. Your cheek was still burning hot from his earlier “warning”.
As if he read your mind, he sneered.
“Take what he never had. Continue to take what he never had. Make you mine, let you have my cock every time I want, keep this tight pussy on a leash”.
You heaved for breath as his thrusts grew frantic, and he raised himself to his haunches, hands a bruising grip on your hips as he looked down at you. 
Under the dim moonlight his muscles rippled, shining in a layer of sweat, his hair disheveled and falling into his face, and those eyes, forever shaking the bones in your body. 
Your name ghosted on his lips as his brows furrowed and your back arched as your third orgasm seized you by every muscle in your body, your head thrown back in a desperate, strangled whine.
 “Fucking shit,” he exclaimed through gritted teeth, and as your cunt pulsed around him, you drew his orgasm right out of his body. 
He gave a few stuttering thrusts before stilling, thrust to the hilt inside you. Through the blood coursing in your ears you heard his snarl as he emptied himself in you.
For a moment his face completely stilled, eyebrows raised, eyes fluttered shut, mouth slightly open. In that moment, you swore you recognised your former neighbor, Steve Rogers, Captain America in those features. 
But in a moment he was gone, and this Steve, whoever he was, was leaning forward to crush his mouth on yours. 
Still coming down from your high, you eagerly opened your mouth for him in a rather intimate kiss, one of his hands coming up to cup the side of your face. 
You almost sighed at the softness of it all when his teeth caught your bottom lip and bit hard enough to draw blood. You yelped in pain as the iron taste filled your mouth and he let you wrench your way out of the kiss, snickering as he leaned back up and licked some of your blood off his lips. His eyes were wicked  as he pulled himself out of you.
The emptiness he left behind was both a relief and a disappointment, even as your lip stung. You licked at the cut, wondering just what brand of danger had forced himself into your bed. 
“God, what a sight,” he murmured above you, fingers dipping down to spread your nether lips apart as his cum dribbled out of you. 
Embarrassment burned your face as he looked on, perverted astonishment painting his features. 
Two fingers swiped your slit, gathering both of your releases on them before bringing them up to your mouth.
When you did nothing but stare at him, he simply whispered “open”.
You obeyed, holding his gaze, and he pushed his fingers slowly into your mouth. The mix of the iron of your blood, the salt of his cum and the tangy taste of yourself made your face scrunch up, and he hummed low in his chest.
“Does that feel good?” he asked, face emotionless but for the shining sin of his eyes.
You couldn’t help yourself, you nodded.
The corners of his mouth twitched up at that, approval coating his features.
“Oh, I’m gonna keep you, alright,” he murmured, dragging his wet fingers down your torso.
As his fingers slowly caressed you, exhaustion drizzled over you, your vision blurred, and you fell into unconsciousness.
 §
 When you awoke, bright daylight was shining in through your window.
The soreness piercing your muscles was like nothing you had ever felt before, but the sleep had been even deeper, sitting like a pleasurable hum in your bones. 
You remembered immediately what had happened in the night and was relieved to find that your wrists were no longer bound. The bruises, purple and pink, would probably last for weeks. 
The ache deep in your core made your gut wrench in remembered dread, but somehow there was a feeling of anticipation there as well.
A quiet voice inside you whispered that you hoped he would stay true to his word, and come back. 
Author’s note: Christ. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a blood kink brewing inside me. 
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starl1ght-child · 4 years ago
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Folie à Deux II
Part 2 of the Paramour Series [Read Part 1 on AO3] Chapter 2 : Ikhnaie [WC : 2.4K]
perma tag list : @mail-me-a-snail @speed-boop @shins-wife @eeviethree @squadnos
Rose didn’t stay in her Tower apartment for long.  After her first few patrols, she found that she was more comfortable out in the wilds than she was in the Last City or at the Tower.  She built herself a home base underneath the protection of a cluster of willow trees.  The hanging branches provided her coverage from prying eyes.  She kept a bedroll in the corner and installed a small kitchen so she could cook for herself whenever she was home.  The cabin was like a small greenery.  She set up an irrigation system so that the plants she cared for didn’t die while she was on patrols and some UV lights and heat lamps so they could thrive in Old Russia’s cold climate.  She raised a small herb and vegetable garden, along with some sunflowers, roses, and lilies.
She would come to the Tower weekly for supplies, but otherwise, she stayed out in the thick forests that stretched an entire region of the Cosmodrome.  During one of her trips into town, she found a vendor that sold custom class armor for Guardians, made out of incredibly strong but lightweight metal or fabric.
She bought a cloak from him, the first of many.  But it was her favorite.  It wasn’t heavy and didn’t weigh her down, but it kept her warm and it moved behind her like a flag in the wind.  The cloak was the color of sunflowers, the design that started at the top of it was intricate, almost resembling the outline of the bloom, with petals that drifted down the length of it.  Those designs were what drew her attention in the first place.  The top was held secure on her shoulders by sturdy metal plating that clipped onto her breastplate.  The hood was wide and loose, and it covered her head before it pooled on her shoulders.  Oftentimes when she was tracking down a bounty, her Ghost would tuck herself into her hood and rest in the crook of her neck.
After a couple of months of successful patrols, Cayde offered her a chance to officially join his scout network.  She was an excellent tracker and with Fallen and Hive constantly encroaching on their borders and Guardians disappearing, he needed her to start tracking down Guardians who were missing in action.  Rose took the position gladly.  
And she was good at it, too.  Rose was good at finding people who were abducted, lost, or just didn’t want to be found.  She always got there just in time, Arc Light dancing around her body, cloak flying behind her like a pair of wings.
People had started calling her Ikhnaie.
Rose was supposed to operate a search and rescue on a Guardian whose final transmission was a panicked request for backup.  They were investigating a Hive nest somewhere deep in the Cosmodrome, preparing it for a strike team when something went wrong.  The Hunter’s comms had been dead ever since. 
Rose got the briefing almost immediately and headed out into the wilderness to find the missing Guardian.  It was the Vanguard’s hope that they could find the missing Hunter quickly and bring them in, securing what intel they had managed to find.  They gave her the coordinates of the Guardian’s transmission, but it was only a starting point.  She would have to follow any trail of them from there.
She left by midday, armed with a hand cannon and a shotgun, a few flares in her pack, and a long, sturdy rope slung across her chest, and rode fast on her sparrow towards their last known location.  She arrived by nightfall at the entrance of a cave somewhere deep in the mountains of Old Russia.  She hopped off her sparrow as it transmatted away.
“Iris, show me those coords again,” she said as she crouched down at the mouth of the cave.  It was dark and seemed to go on forever.  The light that her Ghost emitted didn’t give her much more work with, either.  The coordinates popped up behind the face of her helmet and she glanced at them briefly.  Compared to their current location… that Guardian was somewhere in the depths of this cave.  There was almost a kilometre between her current location and their last known.  Rose sighed, checked her ammo reserves, and placed a hand over her breastplate as she stood, slender fingers covering Alpha Lupi’s crest.  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”
Her first steps into the cave were determined.  At first, there was nothing, everything seemed like it was normal.  She followed the Guardian’s footprints that were just barely recognizable in the dirt.  When she reached the halfway point to the transmission’s location, Hive corruption started to fester and cling to the walls of the cave system.  Rose hated the way it seemed to move and breathe as you went by.
Rose’s footfalls became quiet and cautious the deeper she went in, the closer that she got to the missing Guardian.  She was right on top of their last known coordinates, they were just below her.  Down a dark hole that seemed to lead to nowhere.  She reached into the small pack on her hip and pulled out a flare, ignited it, and dropped it down.  As it fell, she counted the seconds before it hit the ground below.
Five long, quiet seconds before the distinct thunk as it hit the bottom.
“Iris,” she whispered.  “Be ready to light my spark in case this hurts more than I think it’s going to.”
“Why?”  The Ghost sounded so worried as Rose stood up, pulled off the long rope that was slung across her chest, and tied one end around a sturdy rock.  “Are you insane?”
“Only way to find that Guardian is to go down.  And that’s a long fall.”  Rose tossed the rope down the hole then cracked her knuckles and did a few side lunges to stretch her legs.
“Why don’t you just climb down like a sensible human?”
“Iris, we are running out of time.  Stand-by for resurrection.  Just in case.”  Before her Ghost could continue to try and argue, Rose jumped down the hole.  She hit the bottom hard and tucked herself inward, rolling to the side to try and break the fall.  She moaned in pain from the impact.  She felt like she had shattered her ankles, but she could stand up just fine.  Rose walked over to the rope that was dangling behind her and gave it a firm tug, satisfied that it didn’t come loose.  
Iris appeared by her side.  “You’re an idiot,” the Ghost sighed.
“I dunno, I think I stuck that landing pretty well,”  Rose laughed quietly.  “Now focus.  That Guardian has to be around here somewhere…”
The hole they fell down led into a completely new area of the cave system, this chamber was wide open and damp, but there was more Hive corruption here than what she’d seen above her.  The Hunter cloaked herself and turned invisible as she scoured the room for that Guardian and looked for any other offshoots of the cave that they could have gone to hide in.
Rose felt her stomach lurch when she found their corpse, bloody and mangled by the Hive that likely overwhelmed them.  Their Ghost was in their hand, dead as well, drained of its Light.  Her invisibility faded as she crouched down beside their body as her Ghost hovered over and examined them.  There was a pile of empty magazines on the ground.  They spent every last bullet trying to survive.  Rose closed her eyes.
“COD was a single GSW, just underneath the thoracic cavity.”  
“A gunshot wound?”  Rose was astounded by that conclusion.  She looked over at the wound; it was torn around the edges.  She’d never seen any bullet make a hole in someone like this before.  It completely ripped through the flesh with a strange, jagged edge that curled around the outside of it.  “Are you sure?  What kind of gun are we talking about, Iris?”
“I don’t know… It’s not like any wound I’ve seen before.  Guardian… look at this…”
Iris’s light flicked over to their hand.  The Hunter shifted closer and tilted her head with curiosity.  A single, black petaled rose was perfectly tucked in their hand underneath the dead Ghost, clutched in their fingers.  Rose reached over and gently picked up their Ghost, then picked up the bloom just as carefully.  She examined the petals underneath the light from her Ghost.  They were black like the midnight sky and fragile, and dipped in the victim’s blood.
She felt sick to her stomach, but she didn’t know if it was from the smell of the Guardian’s corpse, or if she felt sick from the blood that dripped from the rose onto her fingers.  She closed her eyes and pressed the back of her hand against her helmet, as if she was covering her mouth, and swallowed down the bile that rose to the back of her throat. 
Out of nowhere, a low chittering.  Her head shot up and she stood, rose and the deceased’s Ghost in her hands.   She recognized that low rattle, it sounded like teeth grinding and chattering with a low groan that hissed through the silence.  The Hive were coming, and they could smell her Light.
“Iris, to me,” she said as she started to walk away from the corpse.  She tucked the Ghost and the rose into the pack on her hip.  “We need to get out of here.”  Her Ghost flew over to her quickly and disappeared.  Rose ran over to the dangling rope, jumped into the air and grabbed hold as the chatter grew louder and screams started to echo through the chamber.  She climbed up the rope and pulled herself up, her feet caught the sides of the hole to give herself some leverage.  She pulled herself over the ledge and started to run, her footfalls echoing off the stone walls.  The chittering started to grow louder and louder as Thrall filled the cave behind her.
“C’mon, Rose,”  she muttered to herself as the Thrall started to catch up.  “C’mon.”  Arc Light started to dance around her body, it spread up her arms and her legs as two blades formed in her hands.  Her speed hastened and she cut through any and all Hive that got in her way.  Black blood from their bodies splattered her armor and cloak.  As she neared the cave’s entrance and the light of day started to illuminate the tunnel, the Thrall started to back off.  It was just after dawn when she stepped into the light.
Her legs were sore from sprinting for so long, her pulse was thumping hard in her carotid and sweat slipped down her spine.  She summoned her sparrow and sat down on it to rest, pressed her fingers on the release for her helmet, and air hissed as the pressure released.  She pulled the helmet off and placed it on the hood of her sparrow.  Rose leaned back on the seat, trying to get her breathing under control.
“You alright, Guardian?”  Iris asked as she materialized out of thin air.  “You’re blood pressure is really high.”
Rose turned towards her Ghost and narrowed her eyes.  “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, I just climbed out a hole and ran for my life from a horde of Thrall, no biggie.”  Her eyes rolled as she reached into her pack and pulled out the dead Ghost.  She grimaced at the sight of it, now that she was in some better lighting.  It’s shell was all beaten up and it’s Light was gone.  “I need to notify the Vanguard that their scout was murdered,” she sighed.  She slid the Ghost back into the safety of her satchel then slid her helmet back on her head.  “C’mon.  Let’s head to the Tower.”  She leaned forward, grabbed the controls of her sparrow, and punched the throttle.  After a wide turn around through the trees, she headed off for the Last City.
She gave the report when she arrived.  Every gruesome detail.  She placed Ghost on the table.  Hopefully the Vanguard could get any of the information they needed, but Rose advised against sending a strike team down there.  Their numbers down in that cavern were astounding.  She blamed herself for not getting there in time.  Maybe if she had been faster, she could have saved them before they ran out of bullets.
When she told them about the rose, she saw all of their shoulders tense up.  Ikora was the first one to turn to her.
“Rose…”  The Warlock Vanguard sighed.  “There was nothing you could do.  They were likely dead before we even assigned you the extraction.”
“Who did this?”  Rose asked, her voice was tense with frustration.  Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides.  “You say that like you know who’s responsible for all of these unexplained deaths and disappearances.  Who is doing this to us, Master Rey?”
“We don’t know who they are, Rose,”  Ikora said firmly.  “Nor do we know their motive.  We just know that they are out there, and that they will not stop.  Several of my Hidden are trying to track them down.  Please, do not worry yourself with this.”
Rose’s entire body went rigid as her muscles tensed with anger.  “‘Don’t worry myself with this’?  Are you actually telling me not to worry about someone who is out there, killing guardians for sport?!  Most of the people who have gone missing are scouts, Ikora!  Do you really think that I shouldn’t be worried about it?”
“If you wish to step down from your position, we would—”  Zavala started.
The Hunter slammed her fist on the table.  “Like hell I’m going to step down!”  She snapped.
“Easy there, Rose,” Cayde butt in before she could start cursing out the Vanguard Commander.  He turned to the Titan adjacent to him.  “She’s the best scout I got, Zavala... maybe we could—”
The Titan shook his head.  “Absolutely not.  I won’t put any more of your scouts at risk, Cayde, we can’t afford to lose anyone else.”
“If anyone could find this guy, it’s Ikhnaie!  She earned the name for good reason!”  Cayde exclaimed.  He turned back to Rose.  “If you’re up for the job, of course.  I don’t need to tell you about the risks, you already know them.”
Rose placed her hands flat on the table and looked at the dead Ghost that was between them.  Cayde was right.  She was the only one who was uniquely skilled with tracking.  And she had the rose to go off of.  Evidence that was so uniquely theirs, she could follow similar signs.   Look for patterns in the deaths and disappearances.  But it was dangerous.  Even if she found them, there was no telling if she could get out alive.  She closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath.
“When do I start?”
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cuthian · 4 years ago
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Dancing in the Rain Chapter Six
Hi everyone!
I hope everyone is doing okay and you're all able to stay safe! <3
This is the last chapter of this part.
Thank you all so much for sticking with me for so long! There will be one more (short) work wrapping things up, with Bucky and the others recovering and tying up things neatly (possibly) that I'm working on right now.
Please, read the tags and be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts!
Love Annaelle
Chapter Six
Thule Society Project Persuasion
[United States of America]                                             Mission date(s): [07/27/2011] to [09/15/2011]
Mission objective
Remanding of the Target to Thule Society custody for optimal reconditioning
Destabilisation of target’s mental health by use of Asset’s previous relation with the target – stage sightings of the Asset to ensure a shock to the target’s system and proceed to further intimidation (scripted recordings) until the target is suitably malleable and open to recalibration.
Mission target
Captain Steve Rogers – threat level 9
Status: extremely enhanced
Mission dates
27/07/2011
-        Establishing surveillance in target residence
-        Briefing Asset
[…]
19/08/2011
-        Mission progress report Asset
-        Reconfiguration and recalibration Asset  
[…]
15/09/2011
-        Progression to Phase Two
[…]
Team members
Brock Rumlow – STRIKE handler
Alexander Pierce – Asset primary handler
Jasper Sitwell – mission planning
ELISA SINCLAIR – head technician and physician
-----------
Lobby of the Avengers Tower, New York, Manhattan, New York State, U.S.A.
12:24 a.m., 3 April 2016
Bucky Barnes / The Asset
The Asset eyed the large blond man dressed as a walking flag in confusion.
The woman—sister, Rebecca, Becky, little Cece—leaned heavily on the metal shoulder, and the Asset briefly considered that that could not be comfortable before his eye was drawn back to the walking American flag, who looked alarmingly like he was about to burst into tears.
“Bucky,” the man said again, blue eyes wide and watery. “You’re Bucky.”
The Asset blinked. The name did not mean much to him, but there was something about the blond man—Steve, Stevie, Captain, sweetheart—that made the Asset’s insides churn and twist, that made his flesh hand itch to reach out to him, to touch and soothe, to…
He—it was a weapon.
It could not soothe, it could not comfort, and it couldn’t find the small ticklish spot just above the blond man’s left elbow and press his fingers to it.
“You are,” the woman—Rebecca, a little voice in his head supplied again, Becky—said to him, her fingers digging into his flesh arm. “Bucky Barnes. Remember?” The Asset—Barnes?—looked down at her, wrinkling its nose in confusion before it decided that there were more pressing matters at hand; mainly that the—Rebecca, that Rebecca seemed to be resting more and more of her weight on him.
“You are injured,” the Barnes-Asset pointed out. “You require medical assistance.”
Rebecca looked up at him blearily. “Alright,” she nodded, before turning to the strange man in green who had taken them from the facility and brought them here. “You need to—you need to keep him safe. Make sure no one can hurt him anymore—protect him.”
The man looked quite baffled, but—to the Barnes-Asset’s surprise—only nodded.
“Okay,” Rebecca said. “Okay, good. Bu—Bucky, you go with him. He’ll keep you safe.”
Barnes-Asset frowned. “The Asset is required to remain in close proximity to ensure your safety,” it protested lightly. “The Asset is not efficient when it is not within range.”
“You don’t need to protect me,” she said immediately, although the Asset privately thought the argument lost most of its merit when she swayed so violently both he and the man in green needed to take her arms to steady her. “Others will take care of me,” she continued, although the Asset noted she was paling rapidly and swaying again.
“Rebecca,” the other, bigger blond carrying a large hammer called out, voice wavering, and when the Barnes-Asset looked at him, the man had moved forward a few paces, holding out a hand towards Rebecca, expression pleading. “Please, let me—”
“Thor,” Rebecca breathed, and she started forward, out of the Barnes-Asset’s grasp, stumbling forward into the large man’s waiting arms. The Barnes-Asset watched as she clutched at the large man’s impressive bicep with one hand, dropping the other to her swollen belly. “We need Eir,” she told the man seriously. “I really don’t feel good, and I need Eir—now.”
Before anyone could say more, she went limp in the other man’s grasp.
There was a beat of silence before thunder outside roared and the big blond man bellowed “Heimdall!”
An explosion of colors filled the entire space abruptly and the sound of it—oddly silent but inexplicably loud at the same time—thundered and echoed in the Barnes-Asset’s skull, leaving its ears ringing and its body sluggish and creaky.
When it looked up, the spot where the bigger blond and Rebecca had stood was empty, an intricate symbol burned into the tiled floor where they had stood. The Barnes-Asset looked at his own big blond, who was gazing between the Asset and the spot where Rebecca had stood with a torn expression and swallowed thickly.
“Well,” the man in green said. “That was dramatic.”
------------
Steve Rogers, Becca Barnes and Thor’s Floor in the Avengers Tower, New York, Manhattan, New York State, U.S.A.
3:02 a.m., 3 April 2016
Steve  
Steve felt like he’d aged twenty years in the past five hours.
He felt wrung out and exhausted, his body sore and sluggish like it hadn’t been since before he’d received the serum. He would probably have to call Karen-the-therapist soon, would need to schedule more sessions than he’d had in the past year…
He heaved a sigh and ran a hand down his face.
He had no idea what would be happening now.
He wasn’t sure if Becca and Thor had made it to Asgard alright, or even if Becca was alright—Loki had been frustratingly uninformed on her physical condition, and Bucky hadn’t been able to provide more than a cursory “in need of medical attention”—and yet he found it incredibly hard to care.
He found it so insanely difficult to focus on Becca when Bucky was sitting next to him, breathing and alive and real. He looked to the other man, who sat stiffly on one of the highbacked chairs in his kitchen, eyeing everything and everyone in the room with a great deal of suspicion.
He was afraid to think very hard about the circumstances that had led to Bucky sitting alive, breathing and confused on one of Steve’s dining chairs.
He was pretty sure that if he did think about it too deeply—if he did consider what caused the vacant look in Bucky’s eye, what had happened to him that made him look at Steve with a confused frown—he would lose his marbles and go on a killing spree to murder every single one of the sick sons of bitches that had ever dared lay hands on his Bucky, and Steve couldn’t.
Bucky needed him here, not off in the world burning down Hydra bases.
“I will help him sleep,” Loki spoke quietly, drawing Steve’s eyes to where the God of Mischief stood, still as tall and healthy as the last time Steve had seen him. Steve wanted to marvel over Loki’s miraculous revival, his stunning appearance, but he found he barely had the energy to care overly much anymore.
Bucky, who had since moved from his perch on the dining room chair and was prowling around the room, examining corners and books and everything he could get his hands on, looked up at Loki when he spoke, blue eyes wide and apprehensive.
He had not spoken since the lobby, since he had told Becca that he needed to stay close to her to protect her, since she had told him Loki would care for him.
He looked so scared and lost it made Steve’s heart hurt.
“Yeah,” Steve nodded mechanically. “As long as he’s… He’ll be safe, right?” He looked up at Loki with tears still burning in his eyes, breath wheezing in his lungs.
The god nodded, face twisting into an expression of compassion. “I owe Rebecca a debt. I will not let any harm come to him, I assure you.” They were both silent for a moment before Loki spoke again. “I remember what it is like to be unmade. To be… ripped apart and put back together into something you are not. I will not allow him to suffer. I give you my word, Captain.”
Steve nodded jerkily and swallowed thickly, wrapping his arms around himself to… to keep himself from falling apart all over again. “Just…” Steve hesitated. “Ask him. If he wants—don’t just… He deserves to have choices.”
He watched as Loki approached Bucky, offering the other man a smile and a few words, to which Bucky nodded jerkily before Loki waved his hand and Bucky’s head slumped back, his entire body relaxing into what Steve hoped was a peaceful, dreamless sleep as Loki manoeuvred him onto the couch.
“Why didn’t you tell Thor you were alive?” he blurted, wincing a little at his own lack of tact when Loki spun around with an incredulous expression on his face.
“It was too dangerous,” Loki finally allowed, wrinkling his nose a little as he moved back to the kitchen, where Steve stood leaning against the counter. “The All-Father would have me executed for treason in a heartbeat should he find me, and Thor along with me if he tried to hide me.”
Steve opened his mouth, but he found he really didn’t have the words to express what he needed to say. “I’m sorry,” he finally settled on, softly patting his hand on the back of Loki’s shoulder after a brief moment of hesitation. “That must’ve been an incredibly difficult decision to make.”
Loki looked at him as though he’d grown two heads for a long, tense moment before he nodded. “It was. It helped, knowing Thor had the Warriors Three, Sif and you and Rebecca to care for him.”
Steve looked down and sighed, rubbing his hand through his hair when J.A.R.V.I.S. chimed apologetically from the ceiling, “I apologize for the interruption, Captain, but the Lady Carter has requested you join her on the common floor for a short moment.”
He’d forgotten Peggy and Sharon were on their way here at all, too caught up by Becca showing up in the lobby with Bucky and Loki of all people, and he immediately felt like the worst friend in history, because as much as he loved Peggy and liked Sharon, he wasn’t sure he’d be able—and, God forbid, willing—to make time for them right now… now that Bucky was back.
If the glimpses Loki had caught in Bucky’s mind were any indication, Bucky was going to need all the support in the world to recover from his ordeal, and Steve couldn’t imagine a world where he wouldn’t provide any and everything Bucky could ever need.
Steve just didn��t know how to fit his other friends in there too.
“Go,” Loki said calmly, slipping onto one of the barstools and raising an eyebrow when Steve didn’t move. “I’ll keep watch. No more harm will come to him.”
Steve nodded mechanically, moving towards the door even though there was nothing he wanted to do less. He didn’t want to see the others, didn’t want to see Peggy or Sharon, didn’t want to have to deal with the unavoidable fall-out of Steve’s formerly-dead boyfriend suddenly turning up again.
He just wanted to stay here and sit beside Bucky, run his fingers through that long, unkempt hair and make sure that Bucky wasn’t hurting anymore.
He got onto the elevator anyway.
—————
Natasha
Rebecca Barnes Sr. paced around the couch impatiently, tutting disapprovingly every time she passed the elevator. Sharon sat beside her aunt on the couch, a nurse from the medical floor kneeling by her feet with a medical bag folded open to display an array of bandages, band-aids, disinfectant and cotton balls, checking her for more injuries and helping her care for the minor scrapes and bruises that littered her skin.
The sight of the wounds made something deep in Natasha howl with rage, because the other woman was her friend and a good person, and she’d deserved much better than her fiancé cracking her head open on the dresser and locking her up in their basement.
The nurse had already stitched up the large, deep gash that ran diagonally up from Sharon’s left eyebrow into her hair and applied a cooling gel to the swelling around her eye. “You’ll need an x-ray,” the man said in a soft, calming voice. “I don’t think it’s broken, but there might be hairline fracture or a crack that I can’t feel.” He gently pressed his fingers to the bruised and swollen skin just below Sharon’s eye and sighed. “Just to be sure.”
“I’m not going now,” Sharon said, her voice steely, avoiding the nurse’s eye steadily. “I’m fine. We have other things to worry about than whether or not Brock cracked my eye socket.”
“Miss Carter,” the nurse said slowly, but Sharon shook her head sharply, pushing his hand away.
“I said no,” she bit out. “If he did, it’s been broken for at least forty-eight hours. I’m sure I’ll be fine if I wait a few more hours to get it checked out.”
The nurse stared long and hard at her, and Nat was a little impressed that the man didn’t even flinch when Sharon glared back at him, before he sighed and relented. “Alright,” he said. “Fine. But I expect you down at medical by the end of the day.”
“Fine,” Sharon said, staring ahead again, eyes hard and focused on the picture of the entire Avengers group and most of their friends and family at the last 4th of July/Steve’s birthday barbecue, ignoring the nurse as he reached out to tend to her split lip and visibly forcing herself not to respond as her aunt patted a comforting hand on her thigh.
The man heaved a sigh, but accepted defeat and stood, packing up his medical bag.
“End of the day, okay? We gotta check out your eye,” he told Sharon sternly, pointing at her until she nodded grudgingly.  The man sighed again but turned and left without further comment.
When the elevator doors closed behind him, Tony turned and looked at her, frowning severely, and Natasha sighed too. She’d prefer to wait until Steve was here to discuss everything she and Tony had found, but there were a few things they needed to get out of the way without him interrupting every five minutes to correct them.
“We have to talk,” she said, stepping forward so all eyes were on her.
The room was full. Bruce and Clint had followed her and Tony up here once Steve had taken Barnes and Loki up to his own floor, and Sharon, Peggy Carter and Becky Barnes had arrived not ten minutes later. Fury, Maria and Phil had, thankfully, let themselves get booted from the Tower, although Natasha didn’t doubt they’d be back—if not for Loki, then for Barnes.
“I imagine we have to talk about a great many things,” Peggy Carter said kindly. “But I suppose you have something specific in mind, dear.”
“Yes,” Natasha said curtly, turning to Tony.
They’d not really discussed how much they would tell the others—not without Steve present.
“The man upstairs with Steve,” she said slowly, “he might be more than just Bucky Barnes.” She and Tony exchanged another glance, and she plowed on before the others could cut in with questions. “We think he might be the Winter Soldier.”
Sharon and Peggy Carter both inhaled sharply, and Clint startled, but the others looked a little uncomprehending.
“He’s…” Nat sighed.
“He’s a myth,” Peggy said sternly. “I looked for the Winter Soldier for the last twenty years of my career—he’s a ghost.”
“Yeah, well,” Tony interjected, pulling up a holographic screen with the documents Nat had given him earlier. “Whatever he is—whatever he became with them… they used him to try to break Steve.” Peggy let out a dry sob and pressed trembling fingers to her mouth, reaching out to pull the holographic screen closer, to read through the horrifying content of the reports.
“Are you sure this is about Steve?” Sharon asked skeptically. “All the names are redacted.”
“The dates match up,” Tony said. “With his breakdown. Before he tried to jump off the Tower. The dates, the times—all of it. I called his therapist, but she wouldn’t say if he ever discussed seeing Barnes with her without his permission, so…”
“We’ll have to bring it up with him,” Clint said.
Tony nodded with a grimace.
“You’re sure?” Becky Barnes said quietly. “Is it worth exposing him to a trigger?”
“We have to know,” Natasha said quietly. “And he needs to know. Think of what this means,” she gestured to the documents. “If it really is Bucky Barnes up there, and this document is real… Think of what they’d have to have done to him to make him consciously hurt Steve, of all people. We need to be prepared for the possibility that…”
She bit her lip and glanced towards Becky Barnes—who was, she realized with a jolt, Bucky’s little sister. “…not everyone who has been exposed to that level of brainwashing can recover.”
“He’s my brother,” Becky Barnes said in a small, soft voice. “And Steve loves him. We can’t—we can’t give up on him.” She looked around at the others when no one spoke, and Natasha felt a great wave of sympathy for the older woman. “We’re not giving up on him before he’s even had a chance,” Becky Barnes said again, sternly.
“No one’s giving up on him, Aunt Beck,” Tony said. “But we have to consider the possibility.”
Bruce heaved a sigh. “Depending on the kind of neurological damage they inflicted on him, it is a valid concern.” Natasha eyed the scientist concernedly—it didn’t look like he’d slept at all in the past forty-eight hours—before she turned her gaze to the twins.
They’d been silent the entire time, and since they were the only ones who’d been—however unwittingly—a part of Hydra recently, they might have valuable insights.
Wanda, who undoubtedly felt her gaze, looked up.
“I remember they spoke of a chair,” Wanda said. “That’s why we ran from them. They thought I didn’t understand if they spoke English—they talked about a chair to make us comply. Maybe that’s what they used on him.”
“Maybe,” Nat conceded. “We’ll have to see what he remembers.”
Everyone fell silent, and Nat noted absently that Sharon had swiped one of the nurse’s cotton balls and was dabbing at her split lip and scraped chin lightly. “J.A.R.V.I.S.,” Tony said after another beat, pacing restlessly behind the sofa, his hair standing up in tufts and dark circles lining his eyes. “Is Cap coming down here or what?”
“Yes,” J.A.R.V.I.S. replied pleasantly as the elevator doors opened and Steve emerged. Nat was actually vaguely impressed that they’d been able to pull Steve away from Barnes—if the man upstairs was indeed who Becca, and now Steve, seemed to think he was.
She had seen Steve grieve Bucky Barnes for years, had been privy to and part of a few private conversations about Steve’s previous relationship with him, and she knew that prying Steve away from Barnes now would likely require a crowbar and more than a few bribes.
Or, apparently, a request from Peggy Carter.
Steve walked out of the elevator looking decidedly worse for the wear already, and she hadn’t even brought up the reports they’d found yet. His eyes were rimmed with red and stained with dark circles and his hair was messy. He had only changed out of the top of his uniform, which left him in his dark blue uniform pants and boots and a dark, tight compression shirt—something that attracted attention of everyone in the room even in the current situation.
Natasha barely refrained from rolling her eyes.
They had more important things to deal with than the potential impropriety of Steve’s wardrobe.
“Steve,” Becky Barnes said immediately, springing back up from the couch with surprising vigour and flexibility for a ninety-year-old. “Is it really—how—how’s he—how, Steve?” She grasped at Steve’s forearms and he held her steady with soft, careful hands.
“I don’t know,” Steve admitted, sounding small and unsure, and for the first time in years, Natasha remembered how he’d looked in those first few months after they’d gotten him out of the ice. “Loki’s—Loki’s watching him. He helped him sleep.”
“I want to see him,” Becky told him mulishly, and for the first time Nat really saw the resemblance between Becky and Becca. They had the same stubborn set to their jaw, and Steve reacted almost exactly the same way to Becky’s stubborn glare as he did to Becca’s. If the situation hadn’t been quite so dire, she might’ve smiled.
“Yeah,” Steve nodded, a deeply resigned expression on his face. “Okay. Has anyone heard from Becca and Thor?” He looked away from Becky, glancing at Nat and Peggy in turn, before looking at Tony. “Anything at all?”
“No,” Tony shook his head. “Nothing.”
Nat ignored the painful twist in her chest at the reminder that no one actually knew how Becca was doing and focused instead on the problems that she could fix.
Steve guided Becky back to the couch where Peggy sat before he shuffled over to the twins and unceremoniously dropped himself on the seat between them. He grinned tiredly at Pietro when the youth stuck his tongue out at him and slung an arm around Wanda when she leaned into him.
It was sweet, Natasha realized with a pang, to see him with them.
They looked up to him, had trusted him before they’d trusted any of the rest of them. Wanda had confided to her once that Steve was like the big brother she and Pietro had always wanted, and Nat really saw that now—Steve was drawing as much comfort from their proximity as they were from his.
That was… that was good, considering the conversation they needed to have.
Sharon set down the cotton ball she had taken from the nurse, apparently entirely unaware of the thin trickle of blood that ran down from her lip to her chin immediately. Instead, she leaned forward, eyeing Steve with a breathless kind of intensity that Natasha recognized all too well. She had spent enough time focusing on the mission, on her tasks, on erasing the red in her ledger, to know when someone was trying to avoid thinking about their personal burdens by focusing on work.
She didn’t begrudge the woman her focus.
If anything, she understood.
“We have some things to discuss,” Natasha said, determinately ignoring the feeling of déjà-vu that hit her abruptly. She took a seat beside Sharon and directed her gaze towards Steve. “It’s not… it’s something that might trigger you—but we think you need to know.”
Steve looked at her with wide, blue eyes, chewing on his lip for a second before he said, “Tell me.”
Tony stepped forward and drew up another holographic screen, this one a lot smaller, more discreet, and pushed it towards Steve. “We found this,” he said slowly. “The dates… I know it’s really hard to talk about, to think about, but…” Tony cut off and Natasha sighed, stepping in smoothly.
“Steve, this implies that they used Barnes to destabilize your mental health. And we—” She glanced towards Tony. “Did you see him? Is that why… is that how—”
Steve looked like a deer caught in headlights, his eyes wide and startled, and Natasha felt horrible for bringing it up, but they needed to know. If Hydra had brainwashed Barnes to the point that he was willing to hurt Steve of all people, they needed to prepare to deal with that.
“Before we get into that,” Peggy cut in, and Steve looked so relieved he might cry, until Peggy—delicate as ever—said, “The man upstairs… How sure are we that he is, in fact, Bucky Barnes?”
“I know,” Steve insisted passionately. “I would—I would know if it wasn’t him.”
“Steve,” Becky Barnes said. “We have to know for sure. What if he’s a clone or something?”
“He isn’t,” Loki said, suddenly appearing in their midst with a flash of bright green light. Clint shot off an arrow that passed right through the god without doing any damage whatsoever before Natasha had a chance to shoot him, and when she looked, everyone except Steve and Becky Barnes had drawn some sort of weapon and had it aimed at Loki.
The man barely even blinked. “Honestly, no need for those. I am here on behalf of Rebecca, and as long as I am under her command, I am of no danger to you.” Clint scoffed loudly and Natasha could see his and her own scepticism mirrored on several of the faces in the room.
“He owes her a life debt,” Steve piped in. “He’s telling the truth. She told him to protect Bucky so that’s what he’ll do.”
Loki grimaced in distaste but didn’t contradict Steve either.
Huh.
Nat eyed him. Interesting.
“How do you know it is Bucky Barnes?” she asked him cautiously. “You never met the man.”
“Because,” Loki drawled, gesturing towards Steve with a bored expression. “He is whole when he stands beside Barnes. It was a rare thing, you know, to see a man alive in lìkami and munr, absent hugr. Now that Barnes is beside him, his hugr is returned, and he is whole. Surely even you can see it.”
Natasha blinked.
She’d only understood about half of what Loki had said, and yet, she knew what he meant anyway. There was something different about Steve—she hadn’t noticed before, but… she had never noticed that he slumped his shoulders, before. She’d never quite noticed that he tried to make himself smaller, that he seemed dimmed, whereas now…
It was like he was lighter, like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.
“Okay,” Nat said, and though Clint and Tony both looked at her incredulously, she turned back to Steve. “Okay. So he’s really your Bucky Barnes. She gestured towards the documents still displayed on the holographic screen and said, gently, “Did you see him? Is that why you felt so horrible?”
Steve bit his lip harshly, and he seemed to shrink in on himself before he whispered, “I thought… I thought I was imagining it. Karen said it was normal, to see the people you’d lost, so I thought—I just thought I was going through something normal.”
Wanda rubbed her hand over Steve’s arm, and Pietro leaned against him, and Natasha felt almost bad for asking, but this was what they needed to know.
“He started whispering things,” Steve admitted in a small, trembling voice. “Played into the survivor’s guilt. He told me he was waiting for me, that… that I shouldn’t keep him waiting any longer, and that all the others were with him too, that my mam—”
He broke off abruptly and looked away, and Natasha diligently pretended she didn’t see him wipe away the small tears that had run down his cheeks.
“That’s enough,” Becky Barnes said. “Does that match what the file said?”
“Yes,” Natasha nodded. “Hydra used him against you. They knew who he was to you.”
Steve snorted a weak little laugh. “Well, at least they’re quicker on the uptake than the rest of the U.S. I’m pretty sure our relationship was the worst kept secret in the Army—I was so surprised people didn’t actually know when I woke up…”
Nat smiled a little.
“He is the Winter Soldier,” she said. “A ghost story.” Steve looked at her with those wide, baby blue eyes of his, reminding her distinctly of a confused puppy, and she huffed a sigh. “Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists. He’s credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years.”
Steve looked distinctly nauseated. “How—how do you know it’s him?” he stuttered. “If he’s a ghost story… How do you know that it’s him?”
She hesitated.
This would not be an easy thing to explain to Steve. Not, she thought, because he would react poorly or because he would not understand, but because she was sure it would break his heart.
“We have a history,” she finally said. “Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me. Before that…” she stilled and looked down at her hands, feeling distinctly vulnerable and exposed. “…Before that he and I were in the Red Room together. They let him train us.”
She had been right.
Steve looked faintly green.
“Nicholas is pulling up everything S.H.I.E.L.D. has on the Winter Soldier,” Peggy Carter said primly, leaning forward a little. “But we need to decide if we want to keep this under wraps, and if so, how.”
“What do you mean?” Steve croaked, and Nat diligently pretended not to notice that his eyes were bloodshot and shiny.
Sharon huffed and shook her head. “Think, Steve. Use that big, strategic brain of yours. Barnes obviously wasn’t supposed to saveBecca, and he clearly wasn’t supposed to be discovered. We need to figure out how to handle the media angle if this gets out, and we need to know what to tell other letter agencies when they inevitably come knocking.”
“What we need to know is who was aware of Barnes’ real identity,” Natasha pointed out.
“Well, Brock knows,” Sharon bit out angrily, tossing the cotton ball she’d been using to disinfect her split lip and scraped chin in the little waste basket next to the table.
“We need more information before we can make any decisions,” Steve pointed out, and Natasha noted that he carefully didn’t reply to Sharon’s outburst. “We need to figure out who Brock was working for, why he took Becca, what he was trying to achieve, and how he got his hands on Bucky.”
“How did he survive?” Peggy Carter piped up. “You said he fell off a cliff—no normal person could’ve survived that fall.” She frowned. “Your report mentioned that specifically.”
Nat eyed Steve shrewdly. She didn’t think he would’ve left Barnes unless he was absolutely sure there was no way the man could’ve survived—and yet he had. Carter was right, they did need to know how Barnes had gone from dying at the bottom of a ravine to the most feared assassin of the 20th century.
“Zola,” Steve breathed, his eyes widening with horrified realization.
Natasha frowned in confusion, but Carter—senior—nodded in silent understanding. “Azzano,” she said slowly. “Barnes was experimented on.”
Steve nodded slowly. “They must’ve given him a version of the serum.”
“That would explain a lot,” Peggy Carter agreed, and Natasha nodded in agreement.
The man she’d known had been far too strong to be merely human, and now that Steve mentioned it, she remembered a few instances where the Soldier had been injured on a mission and had shrugged it off like it was nothing—his stoicism had been held as an example for her and the others, and they had fought long and hard to emulate it, but none of them had been quite capable of doing so.
The Soldier had been able to shrug off physical injury like it was nothing—like she had seen Steve do during their longer, more difficult battles.
The Soldier being enhanced too would make a lot of sense. The ultimate counter-weapon.
“Until we know more,” Peggy said slowly, “I think caution and discretion are our best friends. We should keep Barnes’ survival under wraps until we know more, either from him or from other sources.”
“I guess that’s as good a plan as any,” Clint agreed from his spot in the vents, and Natasha nodded while the others made consenting noises. Steve nodded curtly before he rose from his seat and said, stiffly, “I’m going back up. If there’s—if we hear anything more from Thor and Becca—”
“We’ll let you know,” Peggy Carter nodded with a patient smile. “Go see to Barnes, Steve.”
Steve nodded jerkily and stood, but Becky Barnes immediately burst, “I’m coming with you, Steven.”
“Cece, he’s just sleeping,” Steve said beseechingly, but it didn’t seem to deter the older woman, who got to her feet and wobbled over to Steve determinedly.
Natasha watched them, feeling oddly detached, as they disappeared into the elevator.
She kept staring after them for another moment before she dropped into the seat beside Sharon and picked up an abandoned swab to clean up the little streak of blood on her chin.
“Now,” she said as the others gathered around them. “Tell me everything that happened to you.”
------------
Fensalir, Valaskialf, Asgard5 April 2016 – 9:02 a.m. ((Earth UCT+1)
Thor
A hushed silence lay across the lush green gardens Thor’s father had once planted for his mother. A deep, mournful silence that draped across Thor’s shoulders like a well-worn cloak, almost as though the latent seiðr in the gardens sensed his downcast mood and acclimated itself to him.
He had always felt at home in these gardens.
Safe. Sheltered. Cherished.
His mother lingered in these gardens. Her touch, though distant, was what had given life to most of the things that bloomed in these fields, and he could feel her lingering, could feel her, however faintly, and took comfort in her presence.
He had long since lost track of how long he had been sitting in the gardens, his back pressed against the rough trunk of a tree with a base wider than he was tall. He clutched the looking glass that Eir had enchanted for him in one hand, casting furtive glances at it every few heartbeats, although the image remained unchanged since Eir had banished him from the infirmary.
In the end, he had only conceded because she had enchanted the mirror for him.
He’d not have left Becca’s side if he’d not been able to look in on her the entire time. Eir had propped up its twin beside the bed Becca slept in, so the looking glass always gave him an unobstructed view of her. He would be able to see when she started to stir, so he could be there when she opened her eyes.
So he could be the one to tell her that… to… he exhaled shakily and set the mirror down on the grass, rubbing both hands across his face.
Eir had confirmed what he had feared from the moment Becca had stumbled into his arms back on Earth. He’d not needed her to confirm it—he… he was a God of Fertility.
He had known, however instinctively, that Becca carried his child, and so he had also known that the life in her womb was no more, even before Eir had mournfully informed him that there was nothing more she could do. According to the healer, the men who’d kidnapped her had dosed with a kind of Midgardian drug to keep her compliant while they took her—a drug that had been entirely unsafe for the baby.
Coupled with the physical trauma she’d sustained…
There hadn’t been anything—there wasn’t anything they could do.
Thor felt oddly numb.
He’d thought, before, that he knew what grief was… that he knew what heartbreak was.
When Loki and his mother had been torn from him, he’d felt as though they had taken the very air that he breathed with them. For a long while, he had felt as though he had very little to live for anymore—and indeed, it seemed the very Norns themselves agreed with him, because the food he tried to consume thereafter tasted like ashes in his mouth and however much he drank, he was never able to satiate his thirst.
There had been a large part of his soul missing, but, in time, he had grown used to the constant ache and constant yearning to see them again.
He would have given anything for just one more hour with his mother, for one more chance to embrace Loki, but now… now he had Loki returned to him, but he had lost his firstborn, and he didn’t think it was a trade he would ever have considered.
Damn the Norns for ever treating his desperate pleas as true requests.
He found it difficult not to linger on… on what-ifs and should-haves. He had run over the events of the night a million times, had considered the many, many different ways he and the Avengers could have gone about rescuing Becca, had considered what forbidding Becca from doing the mission would have meant for their relationship…
There was little to be said and even less that he could do now.
Perhaps if he had not stalled, in the tower, if he had been out searching from the moment she had been taken—perhaps he’d have found her sooner.
It still would not have saved their child, but… perhaps they could have done more.
Perhaps he could have done more.
He should have done more.
He’d known Becca was… a little concerned about taking the mission, but that she’d had enough faith in Steve and the others to set those fears aside and take the mission anyway and that he probably should have insisted she defy the others, but he had believed Steve when they promised it was not, by far, a dangerous mission.
By all rights, it should not have been.
But it had been, and it had left his beautiful mortal in a broken, vulnerable state, and he was powerless. He’d not had much experience feeling thusly, and in this situation he had absolutely no idea how to handle the influx of feelings it brought.
He barely had any idea how to deal with the grief of losing their child. He did not know if he could cope with the knowledge that he could have prevented all of it too.
He both feared and anticipated the moment Becca should awaken, for he was sure she would agree.
Heimdal had told him his Midgardian friends were concerned about Rebecca, and that Loki—and Norns, he’d barely even begun to think about that—was still with them, keeping watch over the other man that had saved Becca—the man she had called Bucky.
Thor had been rather preoccupied at the time, of course, but he did vaguely recall the familiar hue to the man’s hugr. He wasn’t sure why Loki had accepted Becca’s orders as absolute, and he certainly didn’t know what to think of Loki’s decision to hide, to let Thor grieve him, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to hear it.
Thor did know that when the time came, he wished to hear the words directly from his brother.
But now… his glance strayed back to the looking glass, to where Rebecca lay, small and weak. He couldn’t deal with Loki now too—not while Becca was so weak and ill, not when he would have to tell her their child had passed when she woke…
Not when he did not know how to say the words aloud himself yet.
His eyes fell upon the looking glass again, and he noticed the slightest stir in Becca’s features. He had been sleeping beside her for the better part of four years—he knew her tells. She was waking up, and he needed to return to her side.
He reached out to touch the warm glass. “I’m here, Krúttið mitt. You’re in Asgard, you’re safe.”
He stood, very deliberately trying to shake off the melancholy that wrapped around him like a particularly constricting cape, and made his way back to the palace, walking through darkened hallways and deserted corridors, and praised the Norns for not putting anyone in his path right now.
He did not think he could stand having to speak to anyone right now.
The infirmary was, mercifully, also empty—save for Lady Eir, who eyed him meaningfully—and he was able to move into the sequestered alcove where Becca slept unhindered. He stared down at Becca and swallowed thickly, unable to stop himself from reaching out to touch her, to take her hand in his and to rest his other hand on her belly.
Their child still rested there under a spell of preservation, and would until Becca was strong enough to survive the birth.
He did not tear his eyes from her—from his brave, sweet, strong Midgardian—until he heard someone come up behind him. Sif’s warm, calloused hand fell onto his shoulder, and he looked up to find her looking at him with sadness in her eyes. “Have you slept at all?”
“No,” he admitted. “No, I don’t—I couldn’t. I can’t risk not being there when she wakes.”
Sif eyed him shrewdly before she sighed. “You need to sleep,” she insisted quietly. “And eat. Keep up your strength. You’ll need it.”
“For what?” he replied listlessly, eyes still locked on Becca’s still form. “For what, Sif?”
His eyes burned with unshed tears, and he found, not for the first time, that he couldn’t breathe. Becca was unconscious, in critical condition still, Loki was alive and his child—his baby—his firstborn—was dead. His father would probably be delighted.
“I should’ve…” He choked back a sob and shook his head. “I should’ve felt something. I should’ve noticed that something was wrong—I should never have let her go—”
“Thor,” Sif whispered, softly, brokenly, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t hear, he couldn’t stop—
“What good is being a god,” he cried, “if I cannot even protect my own child? My own kvàn.”
He barely heard Lady Sif’s hurried assurances, the empty platitudes meaningless. “It’s not your fault, Thor,” she insisted. “None of this is on you. You did everything—”
“Everything,” Thor repeated hollowly, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Everything in my power. And yet my child will never draw breath. Rebecca may never speak to me again. How am I supposed to…” He shrugged helplessly, and for all that he had been alive for fifteen hundred years, he had never felt more like a powerless child.
“How am I supposed to tell her? How am I supposed to tell her that—that our—that it’s just—”
“I don’t know,” Sif whispered. “I don’t know.”
She let him lean on her for a while, let him grieve and sob until he was… well, not better, but certainly more in control of his emotions. “I’ll need to go to Earth,” he croaked. “Tell our friends what happened.”
“I can do that,” Sif said kindly. “Rebecca will need you here. That is what you must be strong for. I’ll speak to your Midgardians.”
Thor looked up at his friend with an unimaginable amount relief. “Thank you.”
Sif patted his shoulder. “I know there is nothing I can say to ease your suffering, but this I can do.” She squeezed his shoulder again in support before she left, her footsteps echoing just a little in the empty space before the door fell shut behind her.
A part of him wanted to start crying again, wanted to break down and sob and rage and scream and raze the entirety of the villainous Hydra to the ground, burn it all until there was nothing but ashes left—but he could not go.
He could not leave Becca when she would need him.
He rubbed his thumb across her belly in an unconscious gesture he’d repeated a hundred times before, tears burning anew in his eyes. He would never get to sit upon his father’s throne with their child on his knee to claim her—for it was a girl, they’d have a daughter—as his own. He would never partake in the vatni ausinn with her, would not get to bestow the name he had chosen on her—would never get to see his daughter grow up.
He wouldn’t get to introduce his firstborn to their people and wouldn’t get to see Rebecca take on the role of a mother—one she had never let herself want before.
A role he knew she’d been looking forward to, even though it terrified her too.
Tears ran down his cheeks as he bent forward, resting his forehead against the curve of Becca’s belly. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, both to Becca and their daughter. “I’m so sorry I didn’t protect you.” He exhaled a shaky laugh and continued, “You surprised us—your mother and I—but I was so happy as well. I wish I could’ve met you, my bumbubúi. I wish I could’ve told you everything I planned, that I could’ve… could’ve taught you all the things I wanted to. I love you so much, bumbubúi and I’m so, so sorry that I couldn’t save you.”
Becca stirred again, and he pulled away, wiping a hand across his face to dry his tears before her nose crinkled as she turned her head into the pillow, huffing a tiny sigh. “—hor?”
“Yes, Krúttið mitt,” he whispered, lifting her hand to his lips. “I’m here.”
Her eyes weren’t quite open yet, and Thor was fairly certain she wasn’t quite awake, but her brow was furrowed, and Thor couldn’t resist the urge to smooth out the little wrinkle with his thumb. Becca huffed another sigh, but turned her face towards him nonetheless.
Thor smiled despite himself and pressed another kiss to her hand before squeezing it to his cheek, relishing in the warmth of her skin against his.
She woke slowly, gradually, and a slow, sweet smile tugged on her lips as her eyes fluttered open. “Thor,” she said again, her voice low and rough with disuse, and sweeter than anything he’d heard in hours—he hadn’t realized how afraid he had been of losing her as well, of never hearing her speak again, until she spoke again. “Hey.”
“Hi,” he said again. He pressed another kiss to her hand. “I love you. I love you so much.”
------------
Undisclosed Hydra Base, New York City, New York, United States of America
5 April, 2016 – 5:32 PM
Alexander Pierce
“You lost the Asset?”
Pierce made sure his voice was level, perfectly calm as he stared down the man that kneeled at his feet. Brock Rumlow looked distinctly worse for the wear, his face swollen and beaten—and Pierce wondered how many of those bruises had been put on the man’s face by the Asset and how many by the loyal men he had sent to retrieve their rogue agent.
“It’s not my fault,” Rumlow spat. “That bitch had magical fucking back-up! And how was I supposed to know that the Asset would break free?”
Pierce didn’t deign that with a response and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Was a little competence so much to ask?
He was tempted to shoot the man right then and there, because he had been far more trouble than he was worth and Pierce was disgusted with Rumlow’s impulsiveness and downright stupidity, but he refrained. Barnes would’ve known it was Rumlow who’d taken her, since the Asset had ripped off his mask, and even if she didn’t, there was fucking Carter to consider.
No, it’d be far more advantageous to him to arrange for Rumlow to perish at a more convenient time.
His death could be used to secure the Avengers’ gratitude.  
“Throw him in the deepest, darkest cell we have,” he told Rollins, who stood just behind Brock, holding the man down on his knees with a heavy hand on his shoulder. “I’ll decide what to do with him later.”
Rollins nodded curtly, and he and two other men dragged Rumlow—who was still spitting inane justifications for the clusterfuck he had left Pierce with—out of his office. “Get me Zola,” he told a technician, who cowered in the corner. “Get me a direct connection to Lehigh. We need to coordinate this mess and control the narrative before it controls us.”
He pulled out his phone and dialled the number of the only person who might give him insight into what the Avengers knew—who might slip up and tell him if they had the Soldier.
“Nick,” he said concernedly as soon as Fury answered. “I just flew back in from L.A. and I heard about Barnes’s kidnapping. She’s been a tremendously loyal employee for us in the past decade—I want to help any way I can. Is there any news?”
To Be Continued
---------
Start from the beginning:
In Hell We Stand By You:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Never Feel Alone:
(1) (2)
Decisions: 
 (1)
Dancing with a Limp:
(1) (2)
Chances:
(1)
Starting Over:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Dancing in the Rain:
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Or read it HERE on AO3 :D 
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wahbegan · 5 years ago
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Red’s Retro Reviews - Condemned Criminal Origins
Hello and welcome to the tag where I use my otherwise useless and time-consuming habit of taking very old classic games that I’ve wrung all the enjoyment out of like a troubled child with an injured bird and turn it into entertainment! Maybe one day the editor of some chic magazine will hire me to talk about how much I know about Batman: Arkham Asylum and how much I hate myself for it.
Anyway, this week I thought I’d start off with an overlooked little gem that had a bit of cult notoriety and good critical reception, but which otherwise nobody gave an ounce of rat shit about: the Condemned series. More specifically, the original game.
Now, when I ask you who started the extremely lucrative habit of live-streaming themselves hilariously over-reacting to horror games, you might be tempted to say the Game Grumps, or Markiplier if you’re younger, or Pewdiepie if you’re the kind of person who unironically uses the phrase anti-white racism. But you’d all be wrong and stupid. Also possibly nazi sympathizers, but I digress.
NO! The first college-age white boys who decided it would be a good idea to beam them fucking up a video game to thousands and thousands of people online are..........lost to history because archiving of the exact history of internet trends is such an enormous clusterfuck that for years people were convinced, and some still are, that Slenderman was a real urban legend and not something some dickhead made up for a photoshop competition circa 2009
But ONE of the first was the 4 Players Network, or 4 Players Podcast, or 4PP. I know very little about these guys, so if they all turned out to be nonces and serial killers please don’t @ me, but what i DO know, is that they uploaded a video that changed my life forever. This video was “Holy Crap That’s a Bear !” Certainly not a name that would stand out in today’s massively oversaturated Let’s Play market, but this delightful video documented these two dumb assholes losing their shit over a game. The game of course, being Condemned 2: Bloodshot. Specifically, the level in which you are chased through a hunting lodge by a rabid bear. As an aside, I looked it up, having never heard of the phenomenon, and apparently it’s very rare, but yes bears can and do get rabies, usually with just about as fatal results as you would expect. So sweet dreams!
Anyway, watching this couple of dipshits get jumpscared and mauled to death by a poorly rendered bear again and again as they were repeatedly outwitted at every turn by an entity with a few lines of programming instead of a brain was, in y’know the year 2008,  the absolute most fun a 14-year-old boy could have. Clearly it still is, but you always remember your first time, particularly when the only LPs i have watched since were a handful of markiplier videos with a girl in college who liked to get me very stoned and then put them on because she thought that counted as courtship.
A n y w a y, apart from the unfortunate and definitely a mistake innovation of streaming video games, the sequence of being chased through a claustrophobic environment by a bear which can rip down doors, break through walls, run faster than you, shrug off 15 shotgun blasts to the face without so much as sneezing, etc. seemed incredibly tense and original, an amazing concept for a game. Once again, this was circa 2008 before “Run for your fucking life” had become the norm for horror games.
So then why the fuck are you not reviewing that game?? You might be thinking if you’re still reading this which someone clearly is or my narrative voice would have ceased to exist by now in that tree falling in the woods kind of way. Well, dear reader, while Condemned 2 was better than the first game in a LOT of ways, it’s always worth taking a gander at the one that started it all. Also, Condemned 1 is, if only slightly, probably better known. Also, Bloodshot commits the cardinal sin of over-explaining the first game’s mystery and a result making it kind of goofy and ridiculous see also the entire history of the Halloween franchise, and as a result the ending is....well, a bit shit, to be honest. Finally, and most importantly, it’s not on Steam for 3 dollars, so shut up
The thing about Condemned is that while Let’s Plays and seemingly inanimate objects moving only when you’re not looking at them and unstoppable juggernauts of wanton death have now become the norm for video game horror (and thanks a fucking bunch, Doctor fucking Who, for always being what people say started the inanimate object fuckery even though Stephen King did it in The Shining in the FUCKING 70s and let’s be honest it’s just a primal universal fear and i’ll be in the cold fucking ground before that bloody show sees one ounce of credit where it isn’t due), Condemned as a whole has remained remarkably unique. Not wholly unique, the developers have heavily borrowed from genre-straddling crime horror movies like Silence of the Lambs and Se7en and in fact almost beat-for-beat stole the most infamous jump scare from the latter, but if it still ends with shit in my pants, and it does, I can’t really call it a failure.
Most of the creativity the game DOES have is in the gameplay itself, or rather one aspect of the two aspects of the gameplay. It’s the combat I’m talking about the combat, seeing as that’s basically all there is. Let’s just get this out of the way first, the forensic investigation shit is........well, it’s a bit shit. Oh yes, there’s a couple crime scenes you have to “solve” in a cursory almost a cutscene sort of way, where you have helpful premonitions about where you’re supposed to look and, as your lab tech helpfully informs you, “the system will choose which tool you need for you, so don’t worry about that!” Well, Christ kill me, thank God YOU know between the three fucking tools I have, one of which is an everything sensor and one of which is just a fucking camera which I’m supposed to use, God knows I wouldn’t have liked to have solved that mystery myself. It’s a shame because some of the crime scenes are quite intricate and yes, I would have liked to have put together myself that “wait a minute there’s a handprint in the paint here that matches the killer but the UV light shows an old blood spatter on the wall right above where he’d be sitting to make it, THAT MUST MEAN-” but nope. No you just have a premonition of the guy getting clobbered over the back of the head because the game is so terrified you won’t be able to put two and two together that it points out both the twos and hands you a multiplication table and nudges you and looks meaningfully at four every few minutes if you hesitate.
Anyway, that’s all the whingeing about the gameplay out of the way, because the rest of it is just delightful. Condemned is the rare first person game that focuses almost solely on melee combat and the almost unheard of one that does it well. In fact, it is the only example I can think of that’s not shit. Weapons all have individual stats to do with their heft and how far they can reach and how much of a man’s skull you can cave in at once with it and you have to choose between the plank with nails sticking out of it you can swing three times a second but you have to beat a man so badly with it it’s tiring just to watch and the sledgehammer, which demands a two weeks’ notice in writing if you’re planning on hitting someone with it, but will basically render every living thing in its considerable swing arc sent to the fucking Shadow Realm upon impact.
Something about the sound effects and the way the weapons in this game control really gets under my skin, I was killed by a 300-pound Subway-dwelling crazy survivalist wielding the aforementioned sledgehammer, and when I went down, I was sure I was familiar with the sound effect that played when it struck my skull, a sort of distant, muffled ringing of bone hitting metal. Wait a minute, I thought, I know I’ve experienced this in real life, how did they get this sound effect? Did they kill a man with a hammer to get this sound effect? Was I killed with a hammer in a past life? Killing people is equally fucking unpleasant as even the most vicious and inhuman looking ones don’t go down easily, and you can see them spit gobs of broken teeth and blood and god knows what, hear the lovingly researched impact noises, and almost feel the impact as you necessitate years of reconstructive facial surgery with one swing of your mighty chunk of concrete attached to a rebar. Then some of them have the gall to shakily get to their knees, not quite dead, trying to mumble something and you’re required to hit them AGAIN, which is always harrowing. To quote another underappreciated piece of media about the joys of gruesome murder: Why won’t you just die?! This is hard enough for me!!
The guns you do get are absolute balls, generally having about three bullets in them, you can’t reload them even if you find the exact same type of gun later, you can’t hold them in your inventory, and if you want an aiming reticle you have to actively turn it on in the options menu, and you can almost hear the game laughing at you for being such a shameless pussy.
Well, you now might be thinking to yourself, cheers for making the effort, but I’m not an insane person and therefore do not think the idea of a brutally beating people to death simulator sounds very enticing, but that’s the thing, it’s not really supposed to be. It does have a strangely addictive quality after a while, but for the most part it’s panicky and harrowing and grotesque and you really don’t want to do it but you have no choice, which is absolutely the best kind of survival horror. See, the combat in survival horror is always a bit of a sticking point, isn’t it? Because if you give the player too much firepower it just becomes an action game with spooky set pieces, but if you give them none at all, as is chic today, you better have loads of other surprises in store buddy boy, because the sheen on that trend has died and now you’re just likely to get slapped with the dreaded WALKING SIMULATOR sticker.
No, the best kind of combat for a horror feel is exactly the kind Condemned delivers, so of course they never FUCKING did it again. You leave every fight low on supplies, exhausted, badly wounded, and a bit sick at what you just reduced a human being’s skull to. Too often, the combat in games is, even that word “combat” it’s clean, it’s cold, it’s detached, it’s a very unique euphemism for butchering God knows how many people. I play this little game in my head when I go through games sometimes trying to keep track of how many unique, thinking, feeling entities I’ve just reduced to a mess for the janitor to mop up, and I always lose track around the third level. Condemned isn’t like that. Its violence is violence: horrible, awful, terrifying violence, and it doesn’t let you forget it. 
The graphics also add a lot to the horror if you can get past the dated polygonal weird-ass xbox 360 at launch faces and cutscenes, which is actually pretty easy once you get used to it. The level and character design is fantastic, and really adds a lot to the whole feel of the game. Everywhere you look is dark and labyrinthine, crumbling with rebars jutting out and exposed paneling and plumbing beneath holes rotted in the walls and grime and blood and god knows what just staining everything. This game is really nihilistic in tone, and you get the sense just from the graphics that you’re somewhere nobody gives a shit about, in a part of a city that’s just been left to die and rot. One almost gets the feeling moving around the fourth or fifth condemned (ohhhhh I see what they did there) building that the whole city is just a ghost town full of nobody but violent lunatics, and also that if you keep playing for too long you might get hepatitis just from exposure.
Plot-wise, I could fill another twenty paragraphs with petty gripes. It’s a bit Kill List which i’m sure is a reference you all understand in that it starts as a crime thriller about catching a serial murderer and ends in some bizarre insane bullshit halfway between Hereditary and Hellraiser, and leads you into it gently enough that you never really notice a sudden lurch.
You play as Ethan Thomas, a very boring and generic FBI Agent called in to investigate a serial killer case by two cops who are REMARKABLY blithe about murdering people, and it’s a bit jarring in today’s political climate. Though distrust, fear, and hatred of the police isn’t exactly new, and violence amongst police officers is brought up at one point, albeit in a loading screen, so honestly I can’t be arsed to speculate on what level of self-awareness we’re operating on here. Regardless, it’s bothersome.
“Oh yeah, this place is full of addicts, hopped up on something, I think, just shoot ‘em. What? Lost your gun, eh? That’s fine here’s a fire axe go nuts, kid, we’ll deal with the paperwork later”
Anyway, you are ambushed by a man you believe to be the killer for.......no real reason, really. He was spying on you checking out the crime scene, but we just established this place is full of squatters, what if one of the 8 people I murdered on the way into this ambush was the killer??? Case solved! 
Anyway, needless to say, without wishing to spoil, the dude IS the main antagonist the yellow eyes are a helpful giveaway, and he takes your gun and swiftly shoots Generic Beat Cop and Generic Dick with it, then throws you out a window, whereupon some other asshole whose main role in the game is to be enigmatic and plot-convenient, you know, one of THOSE characters, spirits you away from the scene, making it look like you just killed two cops and fled.
Now, in real life, as we all know, a cop can’t be indicted for murder even if 50 people saw him do it, but in this world, it means you have to go on the run from the FBI (not your lab tech, though, who is somehow assisting you from the lab and sending confidential data to your phone unnoticed??) while trying to solve the murder.
Meanwhile, in the background, in an “I’m sure this isn’t important and will in no way inform the last level of the game going batshit bonkers” kind of way, all of the people, including the cops, in certain dilapidated and neglected areas of the unnamed City City appear to be going what is medically known as balls-to-the-wall kill crazy, and birds are dropping dead from the sky by the thousands. Even you, protagonist, are prone to horrible screaming nightmare visions coming right the blazing blue fuck out of nowhere and that you never feel the need to comment on or go take a lie-down. I’m sure it’s nothing.
The voice acting is what you’d expect from this era of video games i.e. not good and the writing has an absolutely DESPICABLE habit of having characters tell Ethan things he should already god damned well know for the sake of gameplay or exposition, leading to my current theory that Agent Ethan Thomas has some kind of horrible head injury and can’t remember anything from over 2 minutes ago like Guy Pearce in that pretentious movie where he accidentally kills his wife and then runs around for two hours terrorizing random-ass people about it.
The game never full-on plays the AND THE MAN YOU’VE BEEN PLAYING AS WAS CRAZY THE WHOLE TIME card and leaves things a bit ambiguous, but after caving in the 15th vagrant’s head and the 7th vision you’ve had of being murdered by some Cenobite-looking motherfucker while conducting an unsanctioned investigation during a suspension prompted by you presumably murdering the shit out of two guys, you start to think this may not be standard FBI protocol. 
It’s all a bit hard to swallow is me point, a bit hard to sympathize, and a bit muddy if we’re supposed to or not. But you know what? It certainly isn’t boring, and I’d be lying if I told you it wasn’t effective. This game is now one of only two to have genuinely given me nightmares, and I think it’s rather telling that after I played the hallucination part I had the nightmare about, I was having genuine trouble remembering if something happened in my nightmare of it or in the actual version.
Condemned is batshit crazy, hilariously easy to write off as “that game about killing hobos”, and very, very dated. But it is genuinely harrowing and unpleasant, and was clearly genuinely made by artists with the intent of saying.....errr i’m not exactly sure what, but SOMETHING! It’s about as far a cry as you can get from the Triple A crawling with microtransactions like your MCM is with crabs milk-you-for-money-until-your-udders-bleed look-at-how-shiny-we-are games, and even a lot of indie horror games who think it’s a measure of a masterpiece being able just to constantly trigger your fight-or-flight response again and again and again so you can make a hilarious Let’s Play out of it not to name any names Five Night’s at Freddy’s. It’s a relic of a different and i think a better time in gaming history, where big-name publishers were still taking chances and hadn’t quite yet worked out the formula for how to distill games into their most skeletal, malnourished, corporate, addictive, glorified gambling form.
Also it’s 3 dollars on Steam and you can finish it in like ffffffffucking...two days? So really why the fuck not. I have no idea how to assign numbers to things i’d probably give ir a 7 or 8 or 4 out of 5 stars but i’m bad at systems like that, just play it if you give a shit. If nothing else, a bunch of people snapping it up out of nowhere will really fuck with marketing, which is always a noble pursuit
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