Author's Note: In the interest of annotations, I present you with a few asides: there really is an Oscar de la Renta on Madison Avenue. Sarah's cackles are based on Edna Krabappel of 'The Simpsons'. The panoramic entrance to Stark Tower is a nod to the eponymous second arc of Bendis' 'New Avengers' dealing with The Sentry. Also, the locations of the Baxter Building and the ruins of Avengers Mansion, I've attempted to mesh as closely as possible with their in-universe locations; any mistake is mine alone. Finally, my continued thanks to you, readers, for keeping this latest endeavor of mine alive. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have, and I hope this last installment is a small step in the right direction as regards realigning Bob Reynolds with the rest of the Marvel Universe in some meaningful ways. So, thank you again, and as always, happy reading...
The Baxter Building stood at the end of the street, shining like the rest of the city. Its lights and lobby, Bob saw, burning with electric vigor like the rest of the city.
He took a deep breath, and was nervous. The sort of calm nervous where the jaw tightens and gives way to a headache and the look on the face is severe and worried. Where you feel like you don't know what's going to happen in the very next moment, and the fact that you don't even want to find out worries you even more. Where, when that's happened, all you have left is yourself to be the one thing constant and undying. And even that's untenable.
That's Bob Reynolds life, or was. So he tells himself now, and has been telling himself since last Halloween.
He left once already, was forgotten by the people of this planet, to forestall inevitable doomsday. Then he came back, and with him the Void—the unleashed fury, the inevitable doomsday. And he faced that down. With some help.
He shook his head as he thought about it. He always needed help.
Bob thought about it as they flew past the Oscar de la Renta boutique on Madison Avenue. It was coming up on three in the morning, and even (maybe especially) for this part of town, the streets were surprisingly dead. Bob wondered only for a moment where everyone had gone, and then took a deep and relaxed breath. Almost no one on Manhattan's busy streets for once. It was nice.
He sighed, and noticed from his peripheral that Sarah was looking at him, giving the 'are you okay' look. He forced a smile and gave her a peck on the cheek.
She looked forward at the Baxter Building. "What is that?" she asked and pointed with the hand that wasn't latched around Bob's waist.
"The Baxter Building," he said and the nostalgia came in an unwelcome wave. "Invisible Woman, world famous Fantastic Four. Any of that ring a bell?"
"Sort of," she said and her brow furled. "Johnny Storm?"
"Yep."
She gave a monosyllabic cackle at that.
Bob asked, "What?"
"Nothing," she said and was still amused. "Ten years ago, we were all nuts about him."
"Ten years ago," Bob said and tried to play it off slyly. "He wasn't even eighteen, you know."
"And I was still a bright-eyed college co-ed," she said and smiled. "A girl can dream."
Bob hooked a left turn just before the Baxter Building, getting close enough for Sarah to see, and then took a new path. Below them, the foot traffic seemed to pick up. Pedestrians stopped in their tracks and looked at the duo tooling down the street. Some curious, some giddy, as if The Sentry were an elusive celebrity, a superpowered Salinger, and being stared at by a civilian subset that was quiet and maybe even a little affright.
Coming up in the distance, Sarah saw uniform-brown brick walls lining one side of the street. Here there was no foot traffic, no automobiles, nothing to speak of technology in this strange and deserted part of midtown. A spade-black wrought iron gate with a baroque capital 'A' in the center bisected the brick wall, and across the street from that, there was a single oak tree and a latticework park bench underneath.
There was a Mansion beyond the gate, utterly destroyed, its ceiling caved in on the rest of structure, the darkness from it yawning out into the courtyard. Bob flew up and over the gate, and landed between it and a group of stone statues in multifarious stances and crouches.
She recognized some of them.
Captain America. And the Iron Man statue, with its defiant stance and perfect posture and single hand thrown forward in the Gandalf shall-not-pass way. Then she looked at the collapsed mansion for a long moment.
Statues of heroes, living and dead. A ruined old house. Two and two, she thought.
"Avengers Mansion." And then she looked at. "Right?"
He looked at her and nodded.
"I heard the stories," Sarah said. "A rogue Avenger, huh?"
"She was a friend of theirs."
Pause. Sarah looked from one end of the walled-in complex to the other—it took up the city block—and then at Bob. "You…brought me to a mausoleum."
"I wanted to prove a point," he said and his eyes locked on the Captain America statue. "I would never want to put you in any situation you couldn't handle."
"You're asking," she said and measured the words, "if I still want to be part of this?"
"Yes."
She hugged him close, so her head was up against his chest where she could feel the heartbeat. "Sweetie," she said and looked into his eyes and was sincere again. "You don't have to worry about me."
A hundred feet over Stark Tower, in the deepest and darkest part of the SHIELD Helicarrier's conference rooms, private offices and branch labs, Nick Fury sat alone in a darkened room in a simple chair, in front of a simple televisual display.
Bob Reynolds—The Sentry—fraternizing with a civilian in the middle of a locked territory. What had once been Avengers Mansion. His remaining eye narrowed and shallow lines curved across his face.
He rolled the cigar from one end of his mouth to the other, and let out a deep breath.
And opened the line to Stark Tower.
Bob was flying low up Eighth Avenue, nearing Columbus Circle and Stark Tower, and his heart rose in his chest when it didn't need to. He was the Sentry after all. The Golden Guardian of Good. He didn't need to sleep, didn't need to eat, his heart probably didn't even need to pump blood. He still didn't feel good about this decision, this tour of New York in the dead of night business.
This was the nervousness of coming home.
Stark Tower loomed with its monochrome silver-grey finish, its sleek façade screaming modernity and power and loftyness and everything else that sounded good in life, and at its peak the Watchtower was brilliant: a welcome home beacon. For better or worse.
He flew in close to the exterior and the building seemed to angle back away from them as Bob went upright, following the frontage up toward the roof. His head and Sarah's both craned back at the maximum, staring up at the building as it kept reaching. Kept going for the sky.
In no time they reached the top, the roof, the point at which Stark's ingenuity stopped and Robert Reynolds' began.
When Bob had resurfaced as the Sentry—when someone posing as Matt Murdock came into Ryker's asking for Bob's help, when Bob flew Cletus Kassady into space and ripped his deserving ass in half, when these new Avengers were in their infancy—the Watchtower also reappeared over Stark Tower.
It was fate. Serendipity. God's providence.
Something.
And now it was something that Bob Reynolds, the Sentry, was setting down, landing on one of Stark Tower's tripartite landing platforms that formed the building's roof and also served as the main entrance to the Watchtower.
Fifty yards ahead the Watchtower and its deathly blackness seemed to ram straight into the roof. The wall was spade-black and made up one such foundation strut. Sarah watched as a thin line of bright light started at one end and worked its way across the top and down the other side, forming a panoramic door. A moment later, noiselessly, the panel slid open and the brilliant yellow light from within was suddenly everywhere. A group of bodies stepped out from the light, and the panel slid closed just as quickly.
Tony Stark in black trousers and a white button-down, looking genuinely surprised to see Bob. Reed Richards, fumbling with another contraption dreamed of in his REM-sleep. Charles Xavier, in a corduroy brown three-piece, Wolverine at his side. Cool, cruel Natalia Romanova, the Black Widow, in a length black jumpsuit that adhered to all the right curves.
The…unity…surprised Bob. Ten months ago they were ready to kill each other if it meant rooting out a Skrull impostor. And now they were all here, either because they had genuinely mended fences, or were only here as a favor to someone.
His eyes danced across the group.
"Tony," he said and hesitated. "A word?"
Stark and Richards both stepped away from the group and the rest retreated onto the platform, and were gone. Richards stared at the flat grey landing deck a moment longer, then walked toward Sarah. "My name is Reed," he said and then his eyes roved for a moment. "You must be hungry."
Wearily she said, "I am," and fell in tow behind him.
They watched her follow Richards inside, into the blinding yellow of the Watchtower itself, watched the panel slide shut again. Then Stark said: "So your vacation was profitable, I see."
Bob leaned against the railing, his posture slackened and he looked out thoughtfully at the city. "This wasn't a vacation. I left. I fully intended to stay there."
"So why come back?"
"Two reasons. I wanted to show her I was telling the truth." Pause. More apprehensively: "And I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it."
"How'd she take it?"
"Not well," he said simply and then corrected. "We're working on it."
Stark leaned against the railing, too, but the opposite direction, with his back to the city. So he could keep staring at his building and the Watchtower. He took a deep breath, and released it. "Anything else?"
Bob looked Stark square in the eyes. "Since you asked." Pause. "The Void won't be bothering me. Not anymore, I think."
"You're sure about that?"
Bob looked down over the railing and his eyes tracked up the avenue. An ambulance was tooling up the street, its sirens at full-blare. "We talked about it. I admitted that whatever the Void…is to me, or for me, or whatever, I admitted that I need that aspect of my life. In my life. He must've come to the same conclusion." Pause. Then, more judiciously, maybe even a little sad: "That was two nights ago. I haven't heard him since then. Inside my head. You know."
Stark looked unimpressed, and his face still had that worried look. "The Void always loved mind games. Can you be sure he's gone for good?"
Bob's jaw clenched. "I saw it in his eyes," he said. "Anyway…I stopped him before. I can stop him again." And he meant the last part. With every inch of himself, he meant it. He craned his neck slightly, mostly for the whimsy of it. Through walls made of a vibranium- adamantium alloy that took his months to master, Bob could hear Sarah deriding Reed Richards. He smiled briefly, at Sarah's scrappiness and at his own willpower with Stark just now.
"Fair enough," Stark said. "Anything else you want to tell me?"
Bob looked at the starry night, and waited for it. "The mental ghosts Xavier's inside talking about right now are gone. They're not coming back." Pause. "Bob Reynolds and The Sentry learned to coexist. And…The Void learned to deal with it. Maybe." Pause, more calmly, looking at Stark now: "And for the first time in twelve years I'm actually going to be able to live with myself. Try to take this for exactly what it's worth, Tony. But your Golden Guardian is back. For good."
Tony nodded his head, his eyes roved in their sockets, and he thought judiciously of his next move, which ended up as him simply saying, "Okay."
Richards had led Sarah to a long and dark room at the end of a hallway. It had a giant art deco clock mounted high opposite a panorama-window in six panels that comprised the eastern wall. The table was a solid shape in solid oak, impossibly carved from a single piece, and the chairs were high-backed squared affairs. A bowl of Granny Smith apples sat in the exact center of the table.
A dining room. A freaking dining room.
The bald man from before, up on the roof, was sitting at the head of the table and sipping every second or so from a teacup made of Her Majesty's Finest Bone China. His face was blank and calm, his eyebrows angled sharply. Sarah cased him quickly and silently, and the only thing she could dislike him for was the hideous Windsor knot in which he had his tie fixed.
"Please, sit down," Richards said, and she did, at the bald Windsor man's right-side. Richards sat at Windsor's left. A heavy and balding man in a tuxedo slid behind Richards, carrying a tray with two more teacups on it. He handed one to Sarah and one to Reed, who only said, "Thank you, Jarvis." The butler slid away and Richards looked after him, waited until he was gone and then looked at Sarah.
"So," Richards said, breathed out and forced a smile. In that order. "Sarah."
"How do you know my name?"
His eyes darted to Windsor. "This," Richards said, "is Charles Xavier. He's a telepath."
"So you just read my mind?"
"Yes. My name is Reed Richards—"
"I know who you are, Dr Richards."
Xavier said, "We're friends of Robert's."
"He's never mentioned you," she said to Xavier, who in return said, "That's quite all right."
"So let me get this straight," she said. "I'm supposed to do…what? Sit here and listen to you tell me what I already know?"
Richards folded his hands on the table. "No point in dawdling, I see," he said, "Then I'll just get to it. Frankly, there's been a lot of speculation in our community as to what Bob's been up to in his time away. Since he's back, we want to assess any needs or risks that may have come up."
"Okay," she said. And what if there aren't any risks, you officious—
"For my own part," Richards went on, "I want to make sure you know what's at stake." After a pause, he added: "Do you, Sarah?"
"Possibly," she said. "He mentioned you. You were the one that had him forgotten to begin with, Dr Richards." Then she smiled a bit. "Weren't you?"
"There's more to it than that. Bob was a threat to himself and to others, and we were trying to save lives."
Xavier leaned forward: "The world was at stake, Ms Ingvist. You must realize that."
She sat back in her seat, sighed, and ran a finger around the rim of the teacup idly. "Look, I'll save you the effort of giving the big speech." Her eyes went to Richards. "There's nothing you can tell me I don't already know. Bob told me all of it, as a matter of fact about fifteen minutes into the New Year, okay? The drugs, the serum he stole, his first wife, whatever the hell Skrulls are. He spent an hour telling me about this Void thing that had him spooked. All of it. Everything. Including the time you had him forgotten, Dr Richards, and then when you did it again—when, if I remember correctly, this Void thing took the form of a counter-clockwise hurricane bearing down on Liberty Island?"
"Yes," Richards said, and his voice lacked any kind of humanity behind it.
Xavier jumped in: "Ms Inqvist. Robert is a superhero, first and foremost. And in our line of work, we take certain risks associated with who we are and what we do. We come home late at night, or sometimes not at all. We fight people regularly, people who have the means to destroy our lives, our families and ourselves. My question—and I think I speak for Dr Richards as well in this regard—is this. Do you understand that?"
She took another sip of the Ceylon, still trying to be polite, sat back in her chair and mulled it over. She looked at Richards and then at Xavier.
"If I wasn't, I wouldn't be here right now. Is that a satisfactory answer for you, Professors?" She looked from Xavier to Richards. "I love Bob. With my heart of hearts," she said and meant it. "And if you don't believe me, maybe you should ask him."
Xavier glanced at Richards, his brow furrowed.
She spoke: "I mean, what's your angle, Professors? Trying to give me cold feet, to dissuade me from the superhero crowd? Or could it be that you think my being here is gonna bring back this Void thing? Am I some harbinger of doom to you?"
"It's not that at all," Richards said and his mouth was hidden behind steepled fingers.
"Then what is it?" she said. "Frankly, Professors, I think you're the ones that don't understand him. That man out there has been fighting for his life, every day of his life, and you people haven't even given him room to breathe! IChrist, if this is the kind of judgment he gets for being sick, I really understand why he left now."
Richards said nothing, and leant back in his seat and stared at his teacup on the table. He hadn't touched it since Jarvis set it down.
"And he is sick," she said. "And you know it and you just keep pushing him and you know that, too! He needs real psychological help, not a bunch of false friends pretending to do what's best for him. And that's really the only thing any of you have done, isn't it? I know that much." Then she calmed. "And you know where you can stick this 'we care about Bob' bit. Because I don't want to see him hurt anymore. Period."
She sat and finished off the Ceylon with a single swig.
And wondered who she was really lashing out at.
"Now," she said and kept up the charade, "do you want to ask me again if I 'understand' him?"
Xavier stood as he spoke: "Robert is a trusted colleague. I have no doubt that his time away has put him in a better state of mind, but…Sarah, the mind is a beehive with a million interlocking parts. Some part of it remembers everything it touches. My concern is that his old demons will resurface as well and ruin everything he's worked to build. I want to be sure that he can come back to the life he deserves."
"A life of significance," Richards said and changed his tune. "You can give him that, Sarah."
She closed her eyes and sighed. And stood.
They hadn't heard a word.
"I already have," she said, and turned to leave.
Three minutes later, she was out on the balcony again, and there was only Bob there leaning against the railing, one arm holding up his head and his chin, and he was staring out at the city and the skyline.
She was quiet approaching him, imagining the handsome and weather-worn look on his face as he stood there thinking, the one he got every so often when the nights were clear and he'd just stare out the window like he was seeing everything for the first time. She wondered if this was one of those moments, and how sheepishly romantic that'd be.
"Bob?"
He turned around slowly, and his hair (it was short and blonde and perfect) was stiff and stylized at the frontal hairline, but it still managed a little leeway in the night breeze. He smiled, as perfect, and slowly and it was like he was seeing her for the first time, too.
She was a foot away from him now and he said in a very quiet and unoffending way, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm good. I don't think your Dr Richards likes me, though."
"What did you do?"
She waved a passive hand and said, "Oh, I told him off."
Bob smiled at that, and it was a slow and genuine smile, the kind that creeps across the face. Then he said, "I heard."
"Yeah. I know."
"I have to say," Bob said and shook his head lightly. "I've seen Reed weather a lot of abuse. He can handle it when it comes from his best friend, and even from his wife. But, believe it or not, the only person to really stop him dead in his tracks as much as you did was Johnny Storm."
She snickered. "Another thing our fiery friend and I have in common." Then she said, "I guess it was a little unwarranted. I mean, what did this Richards ever do to me?"
"I wouldn't worry. Next week Reed'll be off in the Negative Zone or some pocket universe and won't have time to remember what you just did. And anyway, it was a nice telling-off, I thought. You stood up for me."
One of her eyebrows shot up. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
"No," Bob said. "Just something I'm not used to."
Pause. She looked around again and when she saw none of Bob's superhero people she said, "Look," and then trailed off.
"What is it?"
"I'm glad you brought me out here. Up here. Wherever here is."
"You're an important part of my life," Bob reasoned. "You have a right to know that."
"Bob," she said simply and glanced from side to side as she did. "I don't know what to make of all this. I mean, I've known for years that a guy named Tony Stark exists and that he's richer than God and his two sisters. I idolized Johnny Storm in college. But this. This is up close and personal, horse's mouth stuff, Bob." She sounded worried. Outclassed by the particular breed of super-people she was about to jump in league with. "I don't know what a Negative Zone is, or a pocket universe. I'm just an English major with a chip on my shoulder, okay? I know I don't have a suit of armor or hands that make fireballs, or even those glowing eyes you get every now and then that just make me atwitter. And all that pales in comparison to this place, this Watchtower you've got here, and everything you've done and everything you were.
"I believed you when you told me everything about who The Sentry was. But I guess I didn't actually count on seeing it." Then at a gentle volume, with her eyes once again locked on his, and she came to the crux of the issue: "I can't compete with a dead woman."
Bob's brow furrowed.
"But I'd like to," she said at last.
He let the last part hang in the air for a moment.
Then he simply said, "Lindy's been gone a long time, Sarah." Pause. "And I have no interest in reliving the past. I have you to thank for that, and that's something I'll never be able to repay. You are an important part of my life. The important part." He stressed the 'the'.
"I understand."
"I love you, Sarah. I know it sounds like I say that every twenty seconds, but its only because its true and because its something I'm so…not used to saying. So I hope it has extra meaning for you. And I hope you feel the same way. I know this is all Greek to you, and I'm sorry for the culture shock. But it's something I wanted to show you, and…share with you."
Her face turned into a thin smile and glossy eyes. She leant in and kissed him and it was as passionate as New Years had been. The world melted away but only for a moment. They were together, and nothing they'd been up until now seemed to matter.
Everything they'd been.
She'd been stupid and reckless. Maybe he was too.
But none of that mattered now. Anymore.
"What are we gonna do with the house?"
Bob thought about it for a moment. "It'd be a shame just to sell it. I mean, we have some good memories in that place."
"True."
Innocuously, Bob said, "We could split our time between here and there. You know."
"Yeah," she said and smiled. She could live with that.
In unison, they turned so they could look out at the city, Sarah standing in front of him, his arms slung low around her waist. In the distance, streaks of pastel intercut the dark clouds, and crept up to life: dawn was coming.
Together, their eyes drifted out to look at the city and at the sunrise.
The Void was wrong. Bob wasn't alone. And he wasn't going to be.
The Void was wrong, he thought again. And again. And every time he thought about it, it got a little easier. Every time the words danced across his mind, he felt a little better.
And faced the day, for the first time, with hope.
The End...