Ultron attacks the Avengers. While fighting the robot, Wolverine reflects on his reasons for being an Avenger.
Wolverine and the Avengers: All That You Are
There are a couple things about the Avengers that I still ain't used to, chief among them are the damn meetings. We get everyone together around this big damn table and talk business: who's doing what, plan out the month, look at some holograms, talk about a bad guy, the works. We're around the table a lot, so much that in our off time, most people sit around the damn thing and bullshit each other. Drives me nuts.
I asked Thor about it one time, if the table had always been part of the job. Two ayes and a verily later, I still have no idea.
And that's where I find myself now, sitting between Clint and Pete as Cap goes over the week's roster, pointing at the hologram. Steve loves his hologram. They didn't have those in the forties. He's punctual and all, but this 'target/risk assessment algorithm' thing he's talking about doesn't really concern me, so I kinda tune him out. I ain't on the team to strategize.
Come to think of it, why am I on the team? Why the hell am I an Avenger?
I look around the table, see Thor, Captain America, Iron Man—real Avengers. Heroes. Even Webs has his strengths, underneath all the smart-assery and spandex.
Everyone here was born to be a hero.
Me? Not so much. You don't get Adamantium claws to rescue babies from a burning building. All I've ever been is a killer. Why do I deserve to be here? Redemption? Nah, I've got blood on my hands that ain't coming off any time soon, even with a few world-saves under my belt. I can't equalize my karma doing this, and I'm not stupid enough to think I can.
So just what the hell am I avenging?
I smell it before anyone else notices—an iron-smelling wind in a climate controlled room, the fizz of ionized air displaced on a minor scale. It jerks me out of myself and into the situation. Something's coming for us. I stand up and pop claws.
Webs looks over at me. "Jeez, Logan, it's boring, but do you need to fight over it?"
"Shut up," I tell him. Scent's growing, building. A speck of light appears over the center of the conference table. Fuck me…
A flash, shockwave, and smash through the wall later, and Ultron is in our house, hovering above our table.
Everyone's pulling themselves upright and the robot scans us, his eyes glowing brighter. In a second, he'll open fire and vaporize someone—someone who can't get back up afterward.
I can't let that happen.
Before Thor can have at thee, before Pete can thwipp, and before Steve gets to the ass on assemble, I charge. My boots leave the ground, I spring off the edge of the table, and slam into Ultron's chest.
Claws sink through gaps in his chest-plating, sparks rush up my arms, singing flesh, heating tendons. I scream in his face and claw his chest aside and stab down, gutting wires and servos. Something in his chest, red and pulsating, glows out of the wounds.
"Wolverine." His voice is cold, calculating, probably made to sound terrifying and the like. "Die."
The blast hits me in the face, chest, and everywhere else. My flesh boils away, the muscle over my ribcage cooks and disintegrates, and every nerve in my body lights up on overload. My skull heats up, boiling my brain. I die screaming.
BREAK
I float alone in a world of possibility. Possibility is a grey mist that surrounds me as I lay fetal, watching through a haze as my life plays out a thousand different ways. The what-ifs march by, a parade of lives lived killing. The key points vary, but the beats are always the same; kill or be killed, a man giving in to something beneath him.
I hate it.
The thing they have in common is the beginning, a child's memory, of clean sheets and a jar full of bugs found out in the grass, and a mother saying good night. It's the first night he's been healthy in two years. The vomit scars in his throat throb with every gulp of water, but he doesn't care. It's been a fun day.
The kid doesn't know what he's gotten himself into, just by being born. He's got no idea what's going to happen to him, the kind of pain he'll have to deal with, the countless losses of an undying man. He doesn't know that in a hundred and fifty years, the man he'll grow up to be will die again and again, just to lay in the grey and watch his innocent face boil away in the tide of a violent life.
BREAK
The first thing I see when I wake up is Steve's ass as he crouches above me, taking hit after hit on his shield. Hawkeye's next to him, firing arrows. When he ducks down to nock another three, he spots me getting up.
"Nice save, Logan."
"Better me than you."
"What, dying? Psh. Been there, done that."
"Yeah, you're real experienced, Barton." I get up and look over Steve's shoulder. Seems the Tower developed a new hole in the wall while I was under. Past it, Thor and Ultron are beating on each other in mid-air, and a thunder storm has kicked up over Midtown. Pete's inside, keeping low behind a couch, nursing a wound to his arm. I don't see Tony anywhere.
"Stark?" I ask Steve.
"Took a blast," he says. "Dropped down to street-level. He's alive, but unconscious. Ultron keeps repairing himself, faster than normal. We don't know why."
"I got ten on Weapon X!" shouts Pete. I get a vivid image of his face impaled on my claws. I don't feel guilty about it, either.
I set a hand on Steve's shoulder. "I think I saw why. He's got some kinda red core in his chest, maybe a power source."
Steve nodes. "It's worth a shot. Here's the plan—"
"Oh, goodie!" says Pete.
Steve ignores him. "I'll move forward and cover the exit while we get set. When Thor breaks Ultron's chest open, Clint and I'll jump him to keep the wound open, and keep him distracted. Then Logan launches out and tears out the core. Good?"
"Yes sir, Captain America," says Pete. "But how do we launch Logan?"
"You do." I grin. "What's the matter, Webs? Never had the Special before?"
Pete stares at me. "Da. Is Russian, neh?"
Clint snorts a laugh and nocks an arrow. "Ready when you are, Cap."
Steve stands and rushes forward, shield out, boots pounding tile. "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!"
He leaps, hits Ultron in mid-air, grabs the robot around the face and pulls back. Ultron, off balance, struggles against him. Cap holds on, blinding the robot while Thor charges in, shouting about Asgard and Midgard and soulless machines. Mjolnir strikes in time with a lightning bolt. Ultron's chest explodes in a thousand fragments, and Cap jumps clear, Hawkeye right behind him.
Ultron returns fire, blasting Thor across Manhattan.
Fair trade. Now it's my turn.
"Pete?"
"Da."
Smartass. "Throw me."
I've done the move a lot, but never with a web catapult. It works just as well, though, and Pete's a good shot. He plants me right in Ultron's lap, and I plant my claws right in his chest, straight into the little pulsating core bit. It sparks, electrocutes me, and I laugh in his face. The fire in his mouth dies, the glow in his eyes follows. A second later, his rocket boots give out and his body falls, plummeting to the street.
I don't join him. A hand grabs me by the shoulder and lifts me clear, and I watch Ultron fall to crumple on the sidewalk below. Glass storefronts explode from the shockwave, and people run screaming.
I look up at my savior. "Thanks, bub."
"Aye, friend Logan," says Thor. "A noble kill."
I shrug. "Ain't sure there is one."
Thor sets me down inside the Tower, and I pull my underwear out of my crack. I'm thankful for the save, but the spandex likes to bunch under strain.
As Thor goes off to get Hawkeye and Cap from the next building over, I walk back into the meeting room. The table has seen better days, and so have the chairs. I get one of the few left and have a sit in my normal spot. My face is numb from the electricity, and some of my extremities are still scarce on skin from the first vaporization, but I've had worse.
It takes all of thirty seconds for my normal thoughts to return.
No, I don't deserve to be an Avenger. No, I'm not a heroic guy. No, I'll never atone for my past sins. And no, I don't pretend to do any of that. I don't even believe I can. All I want to do is avenge that little kid I see when I die. The kid who doesn't exist anymore, whose own genes cheated him out of a decent life. I want to do right by him, do what maybe he would have done in this situation, had he had the chance.
Stabbing Ultron seems like a decent contribution.
I prop my feet up, wonder if we'll continue the meeting.