AN: SELF CONTROL, WHAT SELF CONTROL? I found this, finished it and decided that since I have nothing to better to do than organise my holiday snaps I might as well post it. It's related to, but not a sequel of my fic 'Mercury Falling' and you don't have to have read that one to get this one. FYI, I watched a really disturbing PETA video on Facebook and then wrote this to make myself feel better, so there's that. Also, while 'Mercury Falling was Jossed by Agents of SHIELD, this isn't...
An Unauthorized Marvel One-Shot: Fire in the Sky
Just outside of a small town in northern China, roughly five-hundred kilometres from Beijing, is what appears to be a farm – which it is, technically, but while the surrounding properties are covered in fields of spring wheat, this farm's fields a covered in weeds and badly turned earth.
Nothing good grows here.
The central buildings are filled with tiny wire cages, and reek of animal faeces, dirty water and fear. Several of outbuildings have sets of purpose built wooden tables with steel collars on their tops. Hung on the opposite wall are pairs of what look like wood-handled spears with thin steel heads, black electrical cables dangling from their bottom ends. Everything smells of metal and blood – just beyond the open double doors is a concrete courtyard, and a pile of skinless bodies, thoughtlessly discarded, their sides gleaming under the merciless moonlight.
Somewhere in the depths of the central builds one of the live animals cries out in its sleep, thrashing hopelessly in its wire prison. The nocturnal ones peer out, the whites of their eyes showing, constantly alert, soaked with adrenaline, listening for the death screams that day will bring.
And then there's a new sound.
A tall dark shape slinks into the building, hood pulled down to obscure his face, a long knife in either hand – easily the length of a machete, curved like eye teeth and so white they seem to glow in the thin, rank darkness. A matching white smile, grim and savage, shows under the hood.
He holds the knives out and makes his way between the cages; there is the repeated ching-ching-ching of popping metal as the knives effortlessly cut open the wire doors and set them swinging. Howls and shrieks of terror and joy fill the building as animals leap from their cages and fling themselves through the building's open doors, streaking towards freedom.
When the last animal has been set loose, he stands alone in the largest of the stinking barns, and smiles again.
He's not done. Not yet…
oOo
Nick Fury stands in the barren field and watches with mild interest as rabbits, raccoon dogs and several species of foxes skitter, leap and generally bolt past him and head for the safety of any underbrush they can find.
The majority of them seem heedless of him, and the helicopter, until one of the foxes dives headlong into his shins, backs up, blinks at him and then lets out a yelp of surprise and takes off smartly back the way he came until he collides with one of its fellows and follows her instead.
Which is about the time the explosions start.
Nick's eyebrows rise in unison as a mushroom cloud of white, gold and vermillion rises roughly seventy feet into the night air. Seconds later several of the out buildings go with a serious of increasingly concussive blasts, each resulting in a slightly smaller, but no less spectacular cloud of glowing heat and debris.
The animals all freeze, watching with him, their dark eyes wide, small faces breathless, as the fur farm goes up in literal smoke, the fires roaring in the cool night air.
There's a flicker of independent movement, and a figure emerges in stark silhouette against the flames, his boots hardly audible over the crackling and popping of the collapsing wood and corrugated iron.
He turns, walking backwards towards Nick, and the Director knows for a fact that he'll be grinning.
That grin falls right off his face when he turns back and sees Nick.
"Director Fury," says Finn Harmerkind. "Uh, hi."
"Mr Harmerkind."
"Um." Finn looks over his shoulder at the former fur farm. There's another explosion as the final shed goes up. "It's not what it looks like."
"Really?" Nick says. "'Cos it looks like you just blew up a bunch of buildings that aren't yours."
"Okay, so it's exactly what it looks like. But I have a really good explanation for it."
"Thrill me."
"Well," Finn says. "They totally deserved it."
oOo
"So what brought this on?" Nick asks, half an hour later in one of Beijing's nicer tea houses.
"Don't you have Facebook?" Finn demands. "Did you not see the PETA video?"
Nick just looks at him.
Finn throws his hands up. "They get electrocuted and then skinned alive," he snaps, arctic blue eyes snapping with barely concealed rage. "Sometimes they wake up and start screaming, and then they get tossed on a heap of bodies and die slowly of shock and exposure."
Nick sighs, puts down his teacup and says, "So you blew up one of these farms –"
"Seven."
"What?"
"This makes eight. I've got six more to do and then I'm going back to New York to rough up some corporate swine; put the fear of gods and the morally-conscious consumer in them."
"Mr Harmerkind –"
"Look," Finn says impatiently, "I get you don't want your assets running around committing rampaging property damage or whatever, but seriously? I could give a rat's ass."
He fixed Nick with a penetrating glare. It was like being cornered by an angry predator with extremely large teeth. Nick really, really got why Roy refused to have anything more to do with Finn after That Incident in Chicago That No One Talks About Around Agent Osborne.
"You ever been skinned alive?" Finn demands, "Because I have. Hydra's men caught me outside of Saltsburg and used steel cables charged with that blue energy that's too classified for me to know about. Thought I'd make a great set of coats for their wives when they came marching home triumphant."
"That wasn't in the file," Nick says quietly.
"No," Finn mutters, looking down at his rapidly cooling cup of oolong, "it wouldn't be. Jordin heard me screaming and came looking. We were the only two that survived that night. And I wouldn't have if Jordin hadn't called for Hellie. Bringing me back nearly killed her, too."
Finn's eyes tick back up to Nick, something strange and thoughtful behind them as he leans back in seat and studies him.
"I've never seen him so angry, you know. I was delirious by that point, but I honestly thought he was going to bring the world down around our ears."
There's a moment of contemplative quiet. Nick takes a moment to wonder how he's always managed, through no fault of his own, to get himself into situations like this. With people like this.
"Why're you really here, Nick?" Finn says, breaking the deepening quiet. "It wasn't to distract me from my strike of furious vengeance."
"No," Nick says, after a pause and some duelling eye contact, "as far as I'm concerned you can blow up fur farms all you want – no business of mine."
He sighs; into the breach…
"I'm here because even though subtlety isn't really your strong point, you're one of the best trackers I've ever seen. And right now I've got someone I want you to keep an eye on."
Finn frowns at him, then looks thoughtful and taps out a tune on his teacup, and nods once.
"I'll do it," he says.
"You don't know who it is yet."
"Eh." He shrugs dismissively. "Whatever. I'll do it, on one condition."
Nick eyes him suspiciously. Please don't be more property damage. "Which is…?"
Finn grins that deeply unnerving frost-bright grin that has caused lesser men to wet themselves in anticipatory terror and makes women of all ages experience violent temperatures in places they'd rather not make public knowledge.
"You gotta give me a badge."
oOo
"What are you, five?" Hellie says and Finn grins madly.
"Only on Thursdays," he pipes giddily. "Look, this is a pretty big deal okay – if Stark were around today, he'd owe me thirty-four French francs!"
"…French francs haven't been in circulation since the Nineties, Finn."
"Not the point! Howard Stark never owed anyone anything; he was too rich, and too damn canny –"
"I'm aware of that, Finn."
"– But not this time!" Finn crows, wagging his newly minted badge about.
On the other end of the very secure line, his sister sighs. "And pray tell why does our dearly departed Howard owe you thirty-four francs?"
"He bet me that Fury would never give me a badge, that I'd be an asset forever instead of SHEILD member."
Finn remembers it like yesterday – '77 in that little dive they'd found in the bowels of Paris' red-light district with greasy tables and mouthy waitresses and illegally imported Belgium beer and some dumb-arse singing really terrible love songs on a wheezy accordion in the corner – and bloody Howard Stark shaking his head at Finn and saying over their fifth pint, "Don't be an ass, Harmerkind, you'd be the kind of agent that'd get all of us blown up and then my wife would kill you for your troubles."
Well, screw him, Finn is going to be the best damn SHEILD agent in the history of ever and when did he devolve into a spiteful teenage girl?
Whatever. He's got his badge, for no other reason than to win his bet and have Stark rolling in his grave (probably with laughter because this is going to go so many strange and hilarious places, Finn can feel it – after all, there are reasons he had to extort a badge out of Fury), and the next thing on his list of manageable mischief will be to head to New York, mentally scar several high-flying, fur-mongering fashion plates and find Tony Stark so he can get his thirty-four francs.
"I never should have let the pair of you out of my sight that trip," Hellie grouses on the other end of the line. "Whenever the two of you drank together stupid, stupid things came to pass…"
"Hey, how much would thirty-four francs be on today's market?" Finn asks as it occurs to him. "I mean, with inflation and everything?"
"Oh, God, no," Hellie says, because she knows him too well, "Finn, no, you cannot go and see Tony and randomly demand money from him."
"Why not? He's got stacks of it."
"Yeah, but he'll want to know why you were making bets with his father back in nineteen-seventy-seven, when he was seven years old, which could lead to awkward questions about how we knew Howard socially and how we haven't aged since then."
"Fine," Finn (who will not, under pain of horrific torture, ever admit to it) sulks, "ruin all my fun why don't you."
"It's what I live for," his sister deadpans. "Now what's this assignment you agreed to in order to con your shiny new toy from Nick?"
And then Finn grins his terrifying grin, all teeth-like-knives, and says, "Oh, Hells-bells, you are going to love this…"
oOo
In the parking lot of a rowdy bar on an unnamed stretch of highway, somewhere in the depths of the mid-west, a row of motorcycles in various states of luxurious or disreputable upkeep stand under a single sputtering lamp…while a lone figure in fourth-hand skinny jeans and a grubby hoody calmly goes about slitting the saddle-bags with a switchblade and picking through what treasure they yield.
The teenager gets to the end of the row, bares his blade, and then freezes in place.
The last bike is a Harley, a softtail with old-world elegance and nostalgia in every sleek black and silver line. The saddle and bags are real, if dusty, leather, plush and strong. She gleams under her coat of road-dust…
…as does the circular shield strapped to her side, red-white-and-blue catching the light like the edges of an ancient sword. Excalibur reborn.
The kid drops his knife, backs away slowly and then bolts from the lot as fast as his skinny legs will take him. He doesn't even pause when his shoulder clips another patron climbing down from his truck.
The man grunts softly, turning his shoulder, and watches from under his ball cap as the kid disappears down the dusty road, apparently pursued by an invisible bear.
"Oh yeah," says his companion as she too climbs down from the truck's cab and eyes up the bar, "This is just great."
Finn grins, all charm and sass and love, and comes around the hood to put his arms around her waist. He kisses her and waggles his eyebrows. "And you say I never take you anywhere nice."
Beth snorts. "I stand by that statement. Also, seeing as how I'm here while you're on a job I figure you still owe me an actual date night, Harmerkind." Then she has to laugh when he ducks in for another kiss that turns into a raspberry against her neck.
"You just wait," he says, and leads her towards the bar, making sure she doesn't spot that gorgeous bike and her marvellous cargo. "You'll be saying thank-you-very-much by the end of dinner. And not just to me…"
AN: See what I did there? Hur hur hur...