Posting quarter of an hour early as a gift to you all. Please see end notes. Love ya!
But then, inexplicably, the Hulk was free, tearing apart every alien within reach and knocking over the ones holding John and Sherlock like dominoes. Once they were able to move they targeted a single soldier and appropriated his gun, using it to paralyze another so Sherlock could take one for himself. Instead of shooting at the alien soldiers around, Sherlock started scanning the windows nearby, and with a cry of pure jubilation shot a green beam into a building. "Ha! You are mine, Moran!"
John turned just in time to see the Hulk tearing apart the aliens who hurt Thor and drove Loki to...whatever it was he'd done. Inhaled dust stung his throat and lungs, and made his eyes water. The gun wavered in Sherlock's shaking arms as he turned to face John with a grin that made him look positively euphoric. Then it hit him that they were together, not just side-by-side, and he grinned too.
An arrow whizzed past John's ear to hit the alien approaching John from behind and explode, pretty potently ruining the moment when the force sent John and Sherlock flying. Bony limbs draped over him, shielding him rather ineffectively from flying shrapnel, but the sentiment was there. Blood dribbled down the side of his face from a fresh gash in his eyebrow. "Alright?" asked Sherlock as he offered a hand up.
"Brilliant," John grunted. "Never better. Where's-?"
The star-spangled shield bounced off the four remaining untouched aliens, sending them all sprawling back onto their backs where Sherlock could finish them off with their own weapons.
"Ah. Found him."
They all turned their weapons on Thanos, who was no longer grinning, and within seconds he flickered and disappeared. The ghost of his last laugh echoed through the still air.
Thor ignored them all, tattered cape flying behind him as he ran for his brother, who was immobile but still alive, if Tasha's stirring was anything to go by. He gently eased his brother upright and against his chest, tears glistening in his eyes. "Brother, how...?" he whispered, stunned beyond all further words as he pushed the hair back from Loki's grimy forehead. Mrs. Hudson, nursing a bruise on her face but no other extreme injuries, picked her way through the rubble to crouch beside them.
"Well, I wasn't looking the whole time, so much going on, you know, but he picked up that hammer of yours, and threw it at the ones who had your big green friend in a fix so he could get away," she supplied while adjusting the collar of Loki's shirt in a motherly fashion.
As they turned to him, the Hulk looked around as though wondering what happened to his fight, panted a few times, then began to shrink back down until Bruce was staggering breathlessly into a pile of rubble. John hurried to his side, pulling off his own jacket to cover him up, and - because the doctor in him just wouldn't believe anyone could be okay after such an ordeal - checked his vital signs. Everything turned out fine, of course, even if Bruce was tired and a little woozy.
John looked around at his friends, grateful that this fight had been a short one, and realized with a pang that, though he wished the war could be over, he would never really be away from the battlefield. No matter who he chose, no matter what side of the Atlantic he lived on, there would always be a fight on the horizon waiting. And even though that wasn't always a bad thing for a recovering adrenaline junkie like him, it certainly put a strain on his nerves for how he worried about those around him. Sooner or later their luck would run out. John just hoped, as he watched Sherlock sprint for the building where he'd immobilized Moran, for that time to come much, much later.
Still, there was no rest for the agents, even when the real heroes had given their statements and retrieved what they could from the rubble of 221 Baker Street. "Nice as the decor is, I think I'm paying for a hotel," Tony announced before planting a kiss on Mrs. Hudson's unbruised cheek and ushering her to Steve's side. "Call me when you're done de-briefing and I'll give you the deets!" Then they climbed into a government-provided car (Thank you, Mycroft) and drove off, leaving John to usher in the emergency teams.
His leg twinged as he shifted some rubble out of the way of a fire truck, but he figured it was just the old psychosomatic pain coming back to haunt him at an inconvenient time. Besides, there was so much to do that even if his leg was hurt bringing attention to himself would only be a hindrance. So he carried on getting the cleanup crews in, gave his statement to the police, did de-briefing with a British representative of SHIELD (he'd wondered where Anthea had gone to; it was nice to see her doing so well), then went in search of Sherlock. The last he'd seen him the detective was running after Moran, but that had been at least an hour ago.
"John."
He turned, wincing as his leg pulled, and smiled crookedly at Mycroft. "Just the man I wanted to see. Where's Sherlock gone?" he asked, ignoring the pulsing whiteness digging in at the corners of his eyes.
The elder Holmes smiled. "Colonel Moran has been taken into custody - custody of the highest order, no chancing with the pedestrian police force this time - and Sherlock is supervising his interrogation as we speak. I was given the honorable task of fetching you, Agent Watson." Something like pride shone in his eyes when he addressed John that way, and John felt his chest imperceptibly swell; his ego had been suitably stroked for the day.
They passed Natasha on their way to the car. She was on the phone with Director Fury, debriefing him on what happened, "when I turn my back for two minutes, you assembled idiots!" in his words. She looked up and smiled at John while Fury let off steam, then frowned when her eyes flickered down to his feet and covered the mouthpiece of her mobile to address him. "John, you're bleeding, you know?" she pointed out with a nod before returning to the call.
John looked down and wrinkled his nose at the steady stream of blood slowly trickling out from under the hem of his trousers. Tracing the trail up his leg, he pulled aside his shirt and found a hunk of shrapnel embedded in his hip. Ah. Well, no wonder I was limping, that ought to hurt, he thought to himself. Then he took another step and white-hot pain seared outward from the injury like an electric current. It was rather like a child not crying until they saw the blood for themselves. His leg crumbled uselessly under him without another moment to spare his pride. EMTs were rushing over with the barest gesture from Mycroft, hauling him up and into a nearby ambulance to clean him up. The pain was almost ridiculous within seconds, making the white fog in his eyes expand. He almost thought he saw two people climbing into a nearby police box as he was being carried, but then a small group walked across his line of sight and it was gone, only Natasha standing - stunned and cursing into her phone - where it had been.
The wound wasn't as bad as it initially looked with all the blood and debris in it, though he did need an armful of stitches and some prescription painkillers for the small fracture in his hipbone that would take weeks to heal. He was going to need physio, and accepted a crutch with a forlorn sigh. At least crutches seemed less permanent than a cane in his addled mind. By the time he'd called Tony to find out where everyone was staying, they all were wondering what happened. "John, where the hell are you?" By the sounds of it, Tony had opened up the mini-bar.
"I'm fine," he started with, knowing how to order his responses, "but I'm just getting out of the hospital. D'you have-?" Sherlock rounded the corner, literally tossing his phone away as he saw John checking out. "Never mind, I've got a ride. Text me the address, yeah? See you later. Hey, Sherlock, where've you-oh!"
The lanky detective's arms were suddenly wrapped around him as tightly as a python. "You disappeared," his voice rumbled against John's chest.
Huffing a laugh, John patted Sherlock on the back. "So did you."
"I thought you were hurt."
"Well, technically..."
Sherlock pulled away and glared at him. "You know what I mean, John. Come on, Moran's in custody and there's nothing more I can do with him. I suppose you want to find your new superpals?" he drawled.
"They're hardly new if I've known them for two years," retorted John with a roll of his eyes, limping toward the doors. "I've known them longer than I've known you, actually."
"Hardly-!"
"I knew you for eighteen months, I've known the team for twenty-five."
"But I was still alive, so technically, you still knew me. I win."
"This isn't a game, Sherlock!" John said, but he was laughing. Sherlock hailed a cab and held the door for John to clamber awkwardly in without pulling his stitches. John gave the cabbie the address Tony texted, ignoring Sherlock's growl of distaste in favor of reminding him that Mrs. Hudson was with them.
Much of the city was undisturbed by the attack, though it seemed that there was a widespread blackout. Candles glowed in many windows and beams of torches bouncing along the walls as children ran around with them, despite the fact that it would still be light out for several hours, but after a certain point lights were still working. The Tube would probably be screwed for days, though. John leaned against the window and watched the city where he'd grown up, the city that harbored him after the war, the city that brought him to Sherlock, slowly slide by. It was strange to know that for the past two years so many things about the city must have changed, and neither Sherlock nor John had been there to see it. Though he supposed the same principle could apply to John and Sherlock of one another. Sherlock was thinner, coarser, more worldly and maybe even something close to humble. John was fitter, steadier, and far more patient and resourceful than even in the eighteen months he lived on Baker Street.
Naturally, Tony chose the swankiest hotel in London to be their temporary home until returning to New York. John hadn't even heard of it before, but it reached the sky and had a doorman. Since they had no things left to bring in they skipped the bellhop and found the others in the hotel restaurant.
"The hell happened to you?" Clint asked with a nod at John's crutch. John explained the shrapnel in his hip, by then feeling a bit loopy from the pain pills, and figured that it had happened when Sherlock had been protecting him from one of Clint's exploding arrows earlier, though he omitted that facet of the story since Sherlock and Tony were already engrossed in a transatlantic pissing contest. Bruce smiled at John across the table and offered John chips from his plate until he could get his own food. With deft hands Steve snatched the liquor menu from John after hearing the pills clack in his pocket. Tasha flicked him in the forehead when he looked like he might protest, then ordered shepherd's pie and an apple juice for him because she knew he didn't care for fizzy drinks. It felt oddly like being part of a family, except...
"Where's Thor? Loki's okay, isn't he?"
Bruce smiled as he rooted around for a crispy chip at the bottom of the stack. "They're talking upstairs, trying to figure out what happened earlier, I think," he said. At John's puzzled look he explained. "Well, your landlady - who is laying down but totally fine - claims she saw Loki pick up Mjölnir and throw her, which by all rights and purposes ought to be impossible."
"I thought you could lift it under special circumstances," frowned John as the waiter brought his juice in a laughably small glass more suitable for children. Clint made a disgusted face until he promised to bring a bigger one.
Leaning forward - but still keeping his elbows off the table like a properly-raised WWII vet - Steve nodded. "It's possible. I did it once; it only lasted a few seconds, just long enough to do what was needed, and I haven't been able to again since. People like Thor, good people, are able to pick up Mjölnir. Not killers like Loki."
"Then how do you think he managed it?" challenged Tasha with an eyebrow cocked. "One of his tricks? Except, oh, wait, he doesn't have his powers. Come on, Cap, don't make me resort to blonde jokes."
"Why are you defending him when he killed Phil?" Steve hissed with a positively shattered look on his face.
"Because he had the chance to kill every single one of us over the past year," snapped Tasha. "Multiple chances, even as a mortal, but the most he did with his opportunity was let his cat pee in my bed a few times and giggle whenever Clint stepped in a puddle. Besides, we've already established that he was being threatened and manipulated by Thanos at the time of the Chitauri invasion. Let's back a wildcat into a corner and see if it doesn't kill someone before warming up to its trainers again. Not that we're his trainers, but the principle's the same."
They clammed up when the waiter came back with John's pie and bigger juice. Seeing that he was too busy yammering with Tony to order anything, John put half his food on a small plate for Sherlock with a long-suffering sigh. He wondered vaguely if he ought to just fetch a measuring tape and have Sherlock and Tony lay them out on the table.
"Thor and Loki have spent a lot of time holed up in their apartment together," John patiently pointed out before the others could start arguing again. "None of us know what they got up to in there, but maybe Thor said something that got through. Or maybe our lovely, shining influence rubbed off on him," he added with a roll of his eyes.
Tasha shrugged. "Either way, I'm giving them another hour before I go up. Tony booked all of the suites so we could get pretty far apart, but we all know how Thor's voice carries."
Clint shot her an odd look across the table (even the honeymoon suite?), she quirked her eyebrows (you bet), and they both smiled secretively.
Hey guys! Just wanted to give a heads-up that I'm not going to post the next chapter right at midnight like I usually do; instead I'm going to bed early and posting it after I wake up. I have an interview Wednesday afternoon and want to be well-rested for it so my hopefully future employer doesn't think I'm a crazy person or a goblin or something. Thank you all for your kindness and support! Be gentle to yourselves.