Differences in Ideology
As soon as Janet marched out of the Quinjet and through the gate into the base, Peter was hot on her heels. He still couldn't wrap his brain around what she did and why. He understood that she had just lost her father and she was still reeling from it. But everyone lost loved ones; and only the crazy ones ever started killing people because of it. She didn't come across to him as crazy.
At least, not until they found that guard on the rooftop en route to meet up with Bucky. He was dressed in black and dark green, in total contrast with the suit clad agents inside the building. He had intended on just webbing him up and leaving him for the authorities, but she had different ideas.
Janet flew passed Peter and blasted the guard until he collapsed in a heap. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from his chest and face, the main targets of her onslaught. "Get up!" she snarled as she yanked him to his feet. "Where's Madame Hydra?! Where is she?!" The man gurgled softly. She shook him roughly.
"I don't know! I don't know!" he insisted.
"Liar!" She fluttered over the edge, hefting him easily and letting him dangle precariously.
"Hey, stop. He said he didn't know," Peter said, trying to cool the quickly heating situation. His words fell on deaf ears.
"Talk!"
"She never tells us which base she's going to, so no one can tell you! I swear! That's all I know, I swear!"
She let out a frustrated snarl. "Then you're useless to me." She let him go. The man screamed bloody murder, flailing his limbs uselessly as he fell.
"No!" Peter flew into action and fired several weblines under the falling man, constructing a net for him to fall safely into. Once he landed, Peter tugged on the lines, closing the net and then pulled him up. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"
She didn't answer him, and still didn't throughout the entire ride back to base.
He shook his head and followed her into Hank's lab. "Get the hell away from me, Parker!" she demanded.
"Not until you explain what the hell that was back there!" he demanded right back.
"I don't have to explain shit to you, so back off!"
Hank looked up from his microscope, bemusedly glancing between the two of them. "Hey, hey; what happen?"
"She threw someone off a roof!" Peter exclaimed.
"He had it coming!" Janet retorted in explanation.
"You almost killed someone!"
"He was just a Hydra agent, Peter! No one gives a flying fuck if he dies!"
Peter stared her down. "You can't just go around killing people, Janet."
She didn't back down an inch. "Says who? As far as I can tell, we'll be killing a lot of those fucks during this little endeavor."
He sighed. She lost her father, so he was going to be patient with her. "Says people with sense. Wanton killing doesn't accomplish anything."
She scoffed dismissively and waved him off. "Whatever. As long as the job is done, who cares how many get offed?"
"I do."
"Well, while your busy coddling the bad guys and making sure that they have fresh diapers and warm milk, I'll be out there doing my job, making sure Hydra pays for what they've done."
He stared at her in amazement. Pure, unrestrained amazement. For as much as he could appreciate and relate to her loss, her thinking was so completely self-centered. It was actually funny how unrepentently selfish she was being. "You… I… you know what? I'm ending this conversation. It's obvious you won't listen and I'm not too keen on wasting my breath." He turned on his heel to leave.
"Bye," she said sharply, with a note of abrasiveness that made his skin jump.
He didn't think she had it in her. He really didn't. When she was holding that guy over the ledge, he had assumed she was just being rough. The level of hate and anger in her voice and permeating off of her, he hadn't seen it in a while. It was dangerous, for someone like her, who seemed so without a care in the world. He had seen it so many times; hate and anger could swallow a person up, turn them into something so wholly opposite of what they were.
He knew the danger of succumbing to anger and revenge. He would tell her, if she would listen. Odds were she wouldn't.
He sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets. Without that talk from Uncle Ben just before he left for that wrestling match, he would have done the exact same thing she almost did. Who was going to be her Uncle Ben?
He found, not his answer, but Reed Richards tinkering with what looked like a power generator hookup to a power grid. Fury was standing over him, hand hidden within the pockets of his leather duster. Power and authority emanated from him like a thick smoke. Thick, choking and impossible not to see even from the farthest distance. Men, gods, and everything in between recognized his authority, whether they liked it or not. Not unbelievably, most didn't, but still yielded to it when it suited them. Like now.
Now, everyone who hadn't joined the Masters were looking to join with SHIELD; which could have only been the reason why Dr. Richards was there. It was nearly impossible to pry the man out of his lab otherwise.
"That should do it, Director," Reed said after tightening the final screw on a panel.
"And that will shrink the time differential to how much again?"
"One to two hour ratio, there to here. Are you sure?"
Fury nodded once curtly. "I am. My agents have been complaining all week, and I doubt we'll need that much time to prepare." Reed nodded and stood to leave. Before he did, he flashed Peter a smile and patted him on the shoulder. "Mr. Parker, what can I do for you?" Fury asked.
Peter grinned widely when greeted by the smartest man in the universe, which very well might not have been an exaggeration. In the same area with two of his idles. It was like a scientific dream come true. "Hm? Oh. Oh, yeah." His demeanor changed rapidly to solemnity. "It's Janet. She tried to kill someone today."
"I know. Barnes told me." For a man with much on his plate, he didn't seem nearly as worked up about this as Peter thought he should have been. Actually, he wasn't worked up at all; the opposite, in fact. "So long as she follows mission parameters and doesn't go off on one of her teammates, I really don't care what vendetta she has against Hydra."
Didn't care. Was she just a means to an end to him, then? "So, what? We should just let her go off on killing sprees every mission?"
Fury whistled out a sigh. "Parker, I can tell you aren't familiar with the finer points of war."
Peter frowned. "No. What does that have to do with anything?"
"The moment, the very second, Zemo put a bullet in Stark's head, we've been at war. This goes beyond a normal, run-of-the-mill superhuman battle that you're accustomed to. This is war; and in war, decisions need to be made that help our chances of victory. If that means we need to cheat, like we are now by being in the Negative Zone, or kill, or maim, or torture to get information we need out of prisoners, then so be it."
"The ends justify the means," he spat. "I don't believe in a word of what you just said. If I can save the day while sparing some criminal's life, because they deserve another chance just like everyone else, then that's great for me. With great power comes great responsibility."
"Your responsibility right now, just like her responsibility and that of every cape in this building, is to save the world. I've done it. If you think that heroes like Iron Man, Captain America and Thor didn't do sordid acts when they needed to, your sadly mistaken."
Peter could have argued. He could have rebutted. He could have turned it into a full-blown ideology debate. He could have said something. But he didn't. Saying something would have just dug himself into hole that Fury would have buried him in. "I'm not a soldier; I'm a hero. I want to do this the right way."
"Then go ahead. But don't get up in arms about someone else doing it how they see fit, of her own free will." Peter felt his shoulders slump slightly as Fury turned to leave. He hadn't meant to come off as preachy; but it was one of those subjects where it was unavoidable.
Janet was… he wasn't sure what she was to him, but being a murder wasn't it. He'd help her, if he could. And if she wanted him to. But, he doubted that she would. She was deadset on revenge, and he didn't think anything was going to knock her off course before it was too late. If it came to it, he would stop her before she finished Viper off. It wouldn't be popular decision, and it would have likely earned him Janet's ire, but if it meant saving her from herself, then so be it.
"You're a bit young to be an idealist."
His head snapped up and turned to the source of the comment. It was Jen, leaning casually on her shoulder against a doorframe. A pair of green eyes, partly obscured by dark green hair, gazed down at him from their high vantage point. Her large muscular, yet strange curvy, frame was barely contained in a pair of daisy dukes and a tight red plaid shirt. A lopsided grin touched his lips. "You're never too young to start believing in something. You heard?"
She nodded slowly. "Hard not to when Van Dyne is ranting and raving."
He inclined his ear, and sure enough, he could just barely hear her screaming. Likely at Hank, about him. He sighed. "Lemme guess; you don't agree. I should just get over it, right?" Because that seemed to be the general consensus as far as Fury and SHIELD was concerned.
She shrugged. "I guess I do," she replied softly. "There's not much else that differentiates us from them." Her arms folded tightly around her chest and a forlorn frown touched her face. For a moment, she looked exactly like how Jennifer would. "But, I'm a Hulk. Casualties can't be helped. Someone always dies when I try to do the right thing."
His smile fell away. He had heard that that was a major problem with super strong metas, but hadn't given it much thought beyond that. Seeing one before him being so broken up about it wasn't easy.
There wasn't anything one could say to make that seem better than it was without sounding patronizing. His hand lightly touched her bicep. The rock hard muscle tensed briefly before relaxing under his touch.
A small smile touched her lips.
He smiled back.
"Wanna get a drink?" she asked. For some reason, his heart started racing. She frowned. "Wait, are you old enough to drink?"
Damn. "Uh, um, maybe. No."
Her eyes narrowed. "How old are you?"
"Um, seventeen," he squeaked.
She smacked his hand away. "You trying to get me thrown in prison? God," she scoffed before pushing off the doorframe and striding toward the mess hall. "Come on, kid, I'll get ya a chocolate milk. If you behave, I'll let you have a piece of cake."
His eyes followed her figure as she walked away. His head sunk. Damn it. Why couldn't he have been born, like, five years earlier?
