Disclaimer: I own nothing but Willow.


Green is for chlorophyll

by Arasinyah

Chapter 8

The second she landed on its head, the leviathan bucked hard trying to throw her off. Willow laid flat on the metal armour and whimpered, hoping she'd be able to hold on and dug her trembling hands into the armour.

"Why do you hurt so much?" She said in a shaky voice trying not to cry from the pain it felt. "What's wrong?"

It didn't answer simply let out another roar and she sobbed as yet another wave of pain went through her, projected form the whale. Willow hated herself for what she was about to do next but she had no choice, if they continued like this the Avengers would destroy them, already she could see Bruce hulking out below them and there was little time left. Pushing the pain rolling off the leviathan out of her brain she forced herself to calm down and projected her own calm onto the giant creature. She whispered soft soothing words to it and abruptly it stopped, coming to a standstill on the highway and she repeated her words, knowing that it would be able to respond now.

"What's wrong?"

"The armour it hurts!" She heard it say as clear as day even though all the others could hear was an angry growl. Tony moved in closer but she waved him off impatiently.

"I'll do my best to help but you have to stop moving, it'll only hurt you more!"

"Will you free us?"

"I want to and I will try but you have to let me help you!" The giant leviathan slowed down and dipped lower to the ground, stilling in its movements entirely allowing her to get off.

"Please take this metal cage off me, it hurts IT HURTS!"

"How do," She stopped to catch her breath. Willow could feel their pain rolling through her, it was immense and overpowering and made it hard for her to breath let alone talk and she wondered how much worse it was for them to actually feel it. "How do I get this armour off you?" She managed to say before falling to her knees.

"It is pinned at the bottom." The leviathan told her and she nodded before setting to work.

The minute she realised that when it said pinned it meant literally, because there were giant pins that looked like oversized railway spikes hammered through the armour and into the soft flesh of their middle. It was horrifying and took her a few seconds to stop the bile from rising up her throat. She grasped one such spike and doing her best to ignore the painful grunt it emitted, she pulled it out throwing her whole body into it. One sliver of the armour was loosened and even before the bloody stake fell to the ground, the puckered skin revealed began healing itself curling inwards protectively.

A soft sigh of relief came from the giant and it soothed her, allowing her o get up and start on the rest. Before long, most of its armour was loosened and with a ripple of its body the leviathan shook off the chunks of metal. The other leviathans had heard his initial sound of pain and come over to watch and surrounded the two in silence. Willow nearly fell back to the ground again, feeling their pain combined with the ecstasy that the one she had freed was feeling.

"Our turn?" One of them said and she pushed the pain aside to nod and began working on each one.

"Watch out!" Came Tony's voice and startled she jumped to the side narrowly avoiding a blast form a chitauri warrior who was watching them but before Tony or she could react one of the leviathans flicked their armour covered tail and the chitauri flew up into the air for a full fifteen seconds before beginning its descent, landing with a splat.

"The chitauri-"

"Are ours to kill. They have commanded us for too long." The one free leviathan let out a bellow that sounded throughout the city of New York and the chitauri shrieked in response. The few leviathans still in the portal them heard the call and drew closer, flicking the chitauri off and killing them even as they poured out the portal in answer to his call. They stayed low on the round, now making their way through the city carefully, trying to cause less damage and flew down to her.

Willow lifted a hand to the communicator. "Tony the armour pins on the bottom, instead of trying to kill them just take it off, it's barbaric."

"Got it."

Without the leviathans on their side the battle soon came to a near standstill, the chitauri were easier to kill and with Willow having evacuated most of the city the Avengers didn't have to worry much about collateral damage. More and more of the leviathans were freed and as they did they joined the battle against the chitauri, their bodies accepting the pain of the blasts the chitauri aimed at them as nothing compared to that of the armour.

But with every leviathan came a flurry of the chitauri and this caused problems. Now that the leviathans had joined the Avengers, the chitauri took great pleasure in targeting them which put Willow in the middle of a hotspot. A flying scooter zoomed overhead and launched a volley of blasts down the street toward her and some of the foot soldiers began creeping up on the building s around her. She used the armour that the leviathans shrugged off as a shield and with a flick of her hand a pale green rope wound itself around the chitauri's hands and their weapons fell down with a clatter. She proceeded to repeat the procedure for all the other chitauri she could see before stringing them up onto a single thread and fixing it onto the back of one of the flying scooters that Tony was leading down that street.

"Clint, I've attached some hanger-ons to the ones Tony's bringing over." She said into her communicator. She would never ever be okay with killing anything but that didn't mean she wouldn't help line them up, especially since she could sense absolutely no emotion from the chitauri except for bloodlust, even the pain seemed to excite them into violence.

"Keep them coming." Clint replied. "Captain, the bank on 42nd past Madison, they've cornered a lot of civilians down there."

"I'm on it." She heard Steve answer panting heavily and it occurred to her that she had been pretty useless for most of the battle.

"Call me if you need any help evacuating them, this is the last leviathan I need to free."

"Roger that." Steve replied and when she didn't hear form him for a few minutes she presumed the situation to be under control.

"Stark, you hear me? You have a missile headed straight for the city."

"How long?"

"What do you mean there's a missile headed for the city?!" Willow shrieked but Fury ignored her. She spent a few minutes helping the leviathans take off armour and suddenly there was a missile headed for the city?

"Three minutes, max. The payload will wipe out midtown."

"Fury, talk to me what do you mean there's a missile headed for Manhattan?!" Willow said, one hand on her ear while the other pulled out the last pin.

"The World Security Council overrode my authority and ordered a nuclear attack to contain the alien invasion."

"I cannot believe these people are in charge of the security of the world!" She ran over to where Steve and Thor were, the leviathans following close behind.

"I can close it. Does anybody copy? I can shut the portal down." Natasha said in a trembling voice.

"Do it!" Steve exclaimed but Tony stopped them.

"No, wait."

"Stark, these things are still coming!"

Willow hoped Tony wasn't going to do what she thought he was going to do.

"I got a nuke coming in, it's gonna blow in less than a minute. And I know just where to put it." Her hopes were dashed.

"Stark you know that's a one way trip." Steve stated the obvious.

"Don't do it Tony, that's suicidal!" Willow screamed but he had already turned off all communications between them and her pleas went ignored as he flew hard and fast into the portal.

"Come on Stark." Natasha's voice was surprisingly soft and Willow watched with the rest, waiting for Tony to come back out.

A few seconds went by and the chitauri fell to the ground, lifeless, suggesting that Tony had succeeded in putting the nuke away but wouldn't be making that return trip.

"Close it." Steve said and the light making its way up into the sky leading to the portal stopped abruptly.

The portal itself remained open closing slowly and just as it was almost closed Tony fell out of it.

"Son of a gun." Willow could hear the smile in Steve's voice but realised that his blasters weren't deploying, he wasn't slowing down. The leviathan bellowed and made its way towards Tony to save him but before they could reach, the Hulk swung off a building, snatching him in mid air and landing roughly on the ground.

The Avengers moved towards him and Thor tore off the face plate from Tony's Iron Man suit. He wouldn't be very happy about it later but it would be fine once he was reminded of all the other damage his suit had sustained.

"The arc reactor…" She didn't want o think about what that meant but maybe someone could tell her something over the communicator it wouldn't stay like that for long, "It's not glowing."

Silence was all that was heard until the Hulk roared, the sound jolting Tony and suddenly he breathed, lived, snarked. "What the hell? What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me!"

Willow couldn't help it, in that moment the sheer victory she felt coursing through her was only amplified by their own feelings of triumph. "Steve did kiss you but don't worry, he didn't use tongue." She said seriously and Tony spluttered before realising it was a joke. Steve ignored them to look around.

"We won."

"All right hey! Hurray, good job guys, let's just not come in tomorrow, let's just take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma?" Even Steve had to laugh at his tenacity. "There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is but I want to try it."

"Is shawarma vegan?" Willow asked but Thor looked up at Stark tower gravely.

"We're not finished yet." And they realised they had forgotten about Loki. For a man hell bent on taking over the world through war, he hadn't entered the fray much.

"And then shawarma after." Tony was adamant that they try shawarma and Willow was starting to think he wasn't joking.

"You guys go ahead, I need to talk to them." She jabbed a thumb at the leviathans behind her who were still waiting patiently.

"Great I'll need a bit of a kickstart for that," Tony winced and turned to Thor. "Hey Point Break, do the lightning thing would you?"

"I don't understand?"

"Well last time you tried to zap me with lightning my power just jumped up to four hundred percent. Do that again and I'll be able to get us all up there easy-peasy."

Thor swung Mjolnir around a few times and aimed a bolt of lightning at Tony. The sudden charge of electricity shocked him but when it receded the arc reactor in his chest glowed a big bright blue and he picked up the Hulk and Steve easily and shot up into the sky, Thor following close by.

Willow sighed in relief looking at the now clear skies. It had only been a few hours since she'd been falling to the ground in the glass prison and she stood in uptown New York, the battle over already. She'd always thought these things happened over a long period of time but this at least was surprisingly short. Although having a team of super humans and two incredibly motivated assassins had probably helped a lot.

She looked away form the skies with a smile that slid off her face when she saw thirty leviathans just floating all around her, the fins on their sides flapping gently.

"Umm, hi!"

"You freed us."

"Yeah, I guess I did." She did not know how to react to this. The last time she had freed an animal it had been a deer that had been caught in a trap and it had run away immediately. The situation dulled in comparison to the current one where she'd rescued giant space whales from the control of a bloodthirsty warrior species also from outer space, and she was lost.

"We are in your debt."

"That's okay; you saved my life quite a few times by fighting the chitauri so let's call it even." When they continued looking at her she rubbed the back of her neck nervously. "So, do you guys have to get home or something?"

"We are nomads, travelling through space, we have no home."

"So you don't have any plans?"

"We shall return to the barren moon and destroy any living chitauri."

"Well I don't want to keep you waiting any longer." The few leviathans at the back began flying away, surprisingly fast for such huge creatures. She turned to the leviathan that had been talking to her. "So, would you mind giving me a lift?"

Willow stepped off the leviathan's back onto the floor of Stark tower and tottered in, careful to avoid the few glass shards still lying about. When she found her standing she turned back to the whale waving to it as it flew away with the others. Within seconds they had gone so far away she couldn't even see them anymore and then she finally saw the Avengers there with Loki on the stairs with Mjolnir on his foot, grounding him there.

Bruce and Tony simply stared out the window in amazement at the point where the leviathan had been, Thor was looking at his brother as if wondering where he'd gone wrong and Steve was debriefing Fury while the two assassins stood a few feet away from Loki and glared at him.

"Oh my God, group hug everyone!" Natasha disappeared so quickly Loki wondered if she could do magic too, Steve and Thor simply looked confused and Agent Barton faked a migraine from leftover sceptre control before fleeing.

"Pepper won't approve."

"Sure she would I've already cleared it with her!" She said and pulled him and Bruce into a hug before making big 'come here' gestures at the other two. "Come on, hug ball!"

"I do not understand what is this hugba-" Before Thor could complete his sentence he was pulled into the group hug by his cape and Tony shrieked as the God's foot fell upon his toe.

"It's a big hug! Come on Steve, or I'll give you a personalised hug and I know you're way too uncomfortable with the opposite sex for that."

He stepped forward immediately. "Yes Ma'am."

They stayed like that for some time before she finally let them go and turned to the still injured God of Mischief who was looking at them with barely disguised confusion. "Your turn!"

"No!" Bruce protested turning a bit green at the edges and Loki flinched.

"Ma'am, please step back."

"Lady you are crazy." Tony said.

"Lady Willow, I am afraid my brother will not accept-"

Ignoring their protests she threw her arms around the god, careful of his injuries and ran a soothing hand down his back that wasn't really that soothing because he stiffened when she did so.

"What are you doing?" Loki looked up to Thor with wide eyes as if trying to say 'Save me'

"It's okay guys, his head isn't as cuckoo as before."

"What?"

"Well I don't know what happened while I wasn't here but he's better now. Not entirely mentally stable of course, he's still quite sad and angry but it's not as hazy as before."

"After I hit Clint in the head the sceptre's control over him went away." Natasha said.

"Well he looks pretty beat up, did anyone hit him over the head? Possibly repeatedly?" She looked him over in concern and he glared at her.

"The beast-"

"Hulk." She corrected.

"The Hulk threw me around like a rag doll." Loki admitted. "It…cleared things up."

"So you were under the control of the sceptre!" Thor said a sudden light to his eyes now that he could explain his brother's odd behaviour.

"The sceptre didn't control me."

"It muddled him." Loki shot her a look and Willow rolled her eyes. "Well it's true, control is too organised a term for what it really did to you, you were all over the place, it scrambled your emotions."

He stayed quiet, clenching his jaw.

"So," Tony said. "Now can we have shawarma?"