Haha, okay. I completely expected that reaction. ;3 A few of you really liked the ending, while the rest of you were like WTF?! and WHY?! and I'm SO CONFUSED?!
I almost didn't post that ending. I had imagined it a few months ago, when the story was still in its forming stages, and I always had thought it would be a perfect ending. Steve dies in sacrifice, while the other Avengers all get out. Though recently I've been seeing so many tragedy stories where one of the Avengers die and they 'move on' with another family member (or in Steve's case, more often, Bucky or Peggy). I wanted the Avengers to move on together, but I also wanted Steve to have won the game. Basically what I was trying to say, when Tony said 'time is different here' is that they all died at different times. Steve died first, but for reason he arrived at this world last (or first, as Tony said he came for all of them). It's very confusing, but to understand it—you just have to forget about time being linear. Everything there already happened, but has yet to happen, and time jumps around. (because it would totally suck waiting around for a billion year old Norse-God).
That was my take on the Avengers moving on together.
But.
As Juliet said—they're the greatest of combinations. Something this world, and maybe a few others, desperately need.
And as Tony said—they need each other. Anything less than their super six and they would fall apart. Steve's death probably would be the thing to destroy the Avengers from the inside out.
But luckily—for those that still believe in heroes—I wrote this ending too.
Hey! I never said those flashes WEREN'T flashforwards. ;3
The Other Epilog.At least—it was—until—
—something hit him hard in the chest.
"What's happening?" Steve asked, as the whiteness grew until it became pounding, frightening, consuming his vision.
"It's time for you to go," Peggy said, voice sweet and soft against his ear.
Steve felt his knees buckle, the whiteness pounding against his vision until it became almost painful. "Go where?" He gasped out.
"Home," Clint said simply. "Your real home."
"But…"
"You want to stay?" Bruce finished.
Steve slowly nodded his head.
"This place is always here," Thor said next. "A place for when warriors fall. But some fall many times before coming to stay."
"We'll still be here," Natasha added, at Steve's pause. "And you'll come back. Everyone always comes back in the end."
"I thought… I thought you said I died," Steve mildly accused, but by now his head was pounding too much for his half-hearted stare at Tony to be truly hurtful.
"You did," Tony replied. "But I also said we all got out."
There were several half-hearted glares in his direction.
"What?" Tony said, grin flashing across his face before growing somber. "He deserved some peace."
"Will… will I remember this?" Steve asked now, stumbling over the words as he found it harder and harder to speak.
"Probably not," Bruce admitted. "Most people don't. But some do. It's just something that happens—many times for some people—and it's something that some people need."
Steve was vaguely aware that he had slipped down onto his back, hands curling up to his stomach, vision going blurry.
"Am I…?" Steve gasped out finally, voice dipping and hearing starting to fade to the point where he could barely hear his own voice, "…am I going to be… okay?"
Steve almost didn't hear the response. There was just so much white, a veil of silver and flashing streaks against his vision. But he did.
"Yeah. Yeah, Steve—you will be."
And that's when the world exploded.
flashflashflashflashflashfla sh! Explosions, gunshots, rattled his ears.
"My hero. We can practice jumping off of three-story buildings when we're done here."
"I take… offense… to that statement…"
"Leader… to…"
"…a game."
(We're playing a game. A game of survival.)
"Natalie."
(What if I don't want to play?)
"You call upon your weapon—then you also call upon my less gracious side."
(Afraid we don't have a choice.)
"That's all?"
"That's all."
"THE NAME HAWKEYE IS NOT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY!"
"I know what it's like to be a monster."
"You'll get yours. Both of you."
"—bombs and detonators are two very different things."
"DOES THE OFFER STILL STAND?!"
"It didn't work."
"I remember you."
"It's just a game, Mr. Rogers."
"Remember Venice? Tokyo, Hong Kong? Singapore and London? Budapest?"
"You have to fight it."
"Are you going to kill me, Agent Barton?"
"You just lost."
"Run."
"You should've killed me."
"I thought you were dead!"
"I thought you were dead!"
"BRUCE!"
"I know."
"We are not finished."
"It's okay."
"Someone beat you—someone beat you before me"
"No one beat me!"
"THEN WHY ARE YOU SO AFRAID?!"
"I thought I told you I was terrible at chess!"
"You can't win."
"Get lost."
"It worked."
"Take care of them."
"Where are you going?"
"I intend to deliver."
"IT'S JUST A GAME!"
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"I died?"
"Yeah. Yeah, Steve—you did."
"What happens then?"
"You wanna go find out?"
And all was…
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Steve opened his eyes.
At first, all there was—was white. It was a bit nerve-racking at first to be honest—but then Steve felt himself blink and the white flickered for a moment until it blurred into a proper color, off white with faint cracks and bumps. Like a ceiling. Then he was quite suddenly aware that he was lying on his back, under something soft and light, and a faint beeping of some sort of machine started up (or maybe it has been going this entire time, he didn't know). There was a flicker of barely audible sound—like someone shifting or leaning forward in their chair and he inhaled slowly and… and an almost chocolatey smell hit the roof of his mouth.
Steve turned his head.
Natasha was there, sitting in a comfortable striped red and white chair beneath a curtained window. She leaned forward, looking at him fixedly with a mug of what looked to be coffee or hot-chocolate clasped in her hands. They watched each other for a few moments, before slowly, she asked, "Are you awake?"
Weren't his eyes open?—yet somehow Steve could tell the question was deeper than he knew. He thought about it for a few seconds, before finally a nod came.
Natasha visibly relaxed. "How are you feeling?"
How was he feeling? Like he had just woken up from some long dream he couldn't remember. "Fine… I think. Heavy." His voice was rough at first—like it hadn't been used in a while—but slowly it cleared itself.
Natasha smiled faintly. "That would be the drugs. They had to give you about six times the average amount for you to stay out as long as you did."
They.
Slowly, Steve looked around. He was in a smallish room—in a bed—simple and plain. There was a TV on the wall in front of him, and complex looking monitors to his left. Two chairs, one of which was occupied by Natasha and another by a laptop, were to his right. A door was on the wall across from him, shut—but really his still waking up brain couldn't quite put it together. "Where…" Steve stopped and cleared his throat again, shaking his head. "…where are we?"
Natasha sat up again and took a sip of her hot-chocolate. "A SHIELD base in Montana. Pretty fancy—specifically designed for hospital functions—though we're so close to civilization the cover for this place is a rehab facility. Makes it a nicer place to recover than normal, I suppose."
Steve half-listened, still looking around perplexedly. Slowly, getting his arms underneath him, he sat up, Natasha watching him sharply from behind the mug, looking ready to push him back down if necessary. To Steve's credit, all he did was wince as he slowly pulled up and pain spasmed across his stomach.
Hissing faintly, Steve lifted the blanket across his stomach and lifted his shirt—noting the stiff white bandages pulled across his stomach. So it wasn't a dream. "I thought you said I was on drugs."
Natasha sounded almost apologetic, while Steve slowly lowered his shirt and lay back against the elevated bed. "You must've fought them off by now. Do you want me to call a nu—?"
"No, no. I'm okay," he interjected hastily—and really, he was. It was mostly healed by now—healed while he was… unconscious, something that would've normally taken a few weeks for a normal human. "Just… really, really sore."
Natasha nodded. "You're lucky," she noted quietly.
"How long was I out?" Steve asked slowly, a few beats later, glancing around the room for a calendar or clock of some sort.
"Three days," Natasha replied easily, behind the mug as she took another sip of her hot-chocolate. "Though you were only half out for most of it."
Steve's stomach clenched slightly. "That's never happened before."
"You've also never been speared through the stomach before," Natasha commented lightly.
Steve winced. "Very true."
There was a beat. Natasha seemed content to watch him, obviously sensing an inner turmoil building beneath the surface of Steve's mind—which there was. Many questions, now that he was a little more awake, were arising. Steve had known going into the fight with Alpha that he was likely going to die—he knew the second the spear entered his stomach that not even he could heal from all wounds—so how did he—?
"…how…how am I still alive?" He asked, abruptly, bluntly, giving her a sideways glance. "How did SHIELD get there fast enough? Are the other's okay?"
Natasha was silent for a while, looking down into her mug, steam rising from the liquid. "Well," she began finally, setting down the hot-chocolate down on a side table and leaned forward, putting her chin on clasped hands. "You died. Three times. Once with us. Twice on the operating table."
Steve was quietly struck with the irony of that.
"First time you bled out. Tony was freaking out when Thor and I (and Bruce and Clint, but they were pretty much drifting at that point) found you guys. Granted, he had a pretty bad concussion at the time—and there was just so much blood—all over both of you. Bruce jerked himself to his feet just long enough to tell us that you were already gone."
There was a pause.
"Then Clint…" Natasha continued slowly, as if she didn't quite know how to phrase it, "he got this crazy idea—I don't even know where it came from—but he started asking Bruce whether you could take a bullet to the brain. Bruce was pretty out of it—but after several counter-questions, Bruce ended up saying that best, best, best case scenario—you could. Then Clint convinced Thor to hit you with this huge lightning bolt—and we all stepped back and—" Natasha lifted her head off her hands and snapped once—a quiet sound in the small room, "Your heart was beating again. Just like that. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. You weren't breathing—but your heart was beating—and when SHIELD got there less than a minute later, they managed to keep in beating until they could get you blood and oxygen."
"Is that why I feel so sore?" Steve asked, only half-joking.
A smile flickered across Natasha's face. "You were also speared through the stomach," she added.
Steve winced. "Don't remind me."
There was a brief, comfortable silence, before Natasha continued. "As for SHIELD—Pepper apparently did some spy work and figured out our location. She notified SHIELD and they were waiting just outside the force-field, trying to blast their way in as well, but they were able to get to us in less than ten minutes after we all met up again."
Steve sighed, sinking back into bed.
Natasha smiled. "You want me to add you to the list of names of people who really love Pepper right now?"
"Yes, please," he said, voice small. That woman never failed to surprise him—and if she hadn't done whatever she had done, there was no telling where they might be right now.
Natasha half-smiled again. "In terms of injuries, Thor and Tony are mostly okay now. Thor got off with some stiches on his back, and Tony with his concussion and a few burns—but they're both back to normal. Bruce—Bruce probably should be dead—just like you—he broke more things than I can count and had several cases of internal bleeding. Luckily, Hulk stepped in pretty early and half-healed most of his injuries—whatever Alpha gave him before only half did its job. Still, the doctors had their hands full for a while, because Bruce flat out refused to hulk-out to help the process along—but then somehow everyone else found out that Bruce had tried to de-hulk himself permanently and they attacked him until they all came to an agreement for Bruce to spend a little time in the de-hulking room. He's mostly fine now—but on crutches, I think. Which might explain why it's taking so long for him to get back here—he was on watching-you duty before I came to let him take a break."
Steve relaxed slightly. "What about Clint?"
Natasha's face darkened slightly, voice growing somber. "Clint… Clint's in what the doctors can best guess as a coma."
Steve felt himself stiffen.
"He's…" Natasha trailed off, looking down—and for the first time in a long time, she looked at a loss for words. "He… Alpha really got in his head, Steve. And Clint was fighting him the entire time—but at the same time, he was fighting all of us. Trying to take us down. He was exhausted. It's less of a coma, and more of a three plus days sleep that's really well earned. They think he's going to wake up just fine on his own, and soon.
Steve doesn't bother to ask how she knew this. "And you think?
"I think they're right," Natasha replied carefully.
Steve relaxed again. "What about you?" He asked, tiring slightly—but all the more satisfied every time he got an answer.
"I tore and broke my leg in several places," Natasha admitted, gesturing to a pair of crutches in the corner of the room. "Those chains really gave us a tough time."
"I know," Steve replied quietly. But she knew he knew.
There was a silence, an almost mournful one—Steve allowing his head to thump back into the pillow. Natasha, always the perceptive, noticed this—to his very slight irritation (and, he would only admit years later, gratitude). "Go back to sleep, Steve," she said, quietly. "Rest is all you really need, not even counting the fact that you completely deserve it."
Steve instantly began to sit up before he gave in—"But I have to go—" He started, ready to pull himself out of the bed.
"I will strangle you until you pass out," the assassin deadpanned.
Steve instantly stopped sitting up. Anyone who knew her (well, not really knew her—no one truly knows the Black Widow) would know that she was dead serious. He thought about protesting, maybe convincing her to let him just get out of the room and go see everyone for a few minutes—but it was more out of a pure necessity than as per Natasha's request (or threat) that his eyes start to droop again.
Natasha's voice drifted past his ear. "Go to sleep. We'll all still—"
"We'll all still be here."
"—be here when you wake up."
And then Steve fell asleep.
"And you'll come back. Everyone always comes back in the end."
Steve doesn't remember any of this (and what this means, you'll have to decide for yourself) when he wakes up, of shattered dreams, of gently snowing courtyards, of warm faces and complete peace—
"Will… will I remember this?"
—but when he does wake up, and after he makes a quick escape from the prodding nurse as she left the room—
"Probably not. Most people don't. But some do. Some people need to."
—and after he gathers the strength to stand and intrudes on a familiar conversation with Bruce and Tony and drinks—
"You guys are something special."
—and after something he doesn't quite understand in a silent exchange—
"Something amazing, spectacular… fantastic."
—and after he tells Bruce never to leave him alone with the insane combination of genius, the Norse-god, the archer, and the woman—
"You're the greatest of combinations. Something that this world, and maybe a few others, desperately need."
—and after they all meet up in the room, where Clint is awake and both he and Natasha are making fun of and half-watching a rerun of some old television show he'd never seen before, and Clint's shooting tiny paper-clip arrows at the characters on the television screen—
"I already lived my life—so I decided to help you guys live yours."
—and Natasha is nonconspicuously jerking her elbow into one of his cracked ribs every time he starts to make makes a crude comment on some of the female actors—
"So just do me a favor—and when this is all over—don't forget about me. Don't forget about us."
—and after Brue dumps whatever drink Tony ended up giving him right back on his head after Tony makes a snide comment on Bruce cleaning his glasses, yet again—
"And just live."
—and after he nibbles tentatively on a poptart from a box that Thor passed around while everyone else looks on in extreme anticipation—
"Am I…? Am I… going to be okay?"
—and after Coulson appears just for the briefest of moments to throw them the largest bag of shwarma that any of them had ever seen in their entire lives with the faintest of smiles that makes Tony choke on his drink in effort to ask JARVIS (who, of course, he's already installed into all of their rooms) if he got that on the base's cameras—
"Yeah. Yeah, Steve—you will be."
And for the first time, in a very long time, as Steve looks around from his spot in one of the plush hospital chairs, at everyone, at his team—Steve believes them.
And, for now, the game ends.
And all is well.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Just a Game.
The End.
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…right?IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
*wipes tear from eye* I'm… I-I'm gonna cry. Someone play some happy music. Like, The Avengers by Alan Silversti. Yes. That's it. *lets out a long breath* Okay. Okay. I'm good. I'm great. In fact, I'M AMAZING. (coughhintspidermanhintcough) IT'S DOOOOONE. Holy, crap guys, it's over. Can you believe it?
Yes, it's really over. Though if you still can't believe it, try listening to this chapter starting when Steve wakes up to Parting Words by Michael Giacchino. It's absolutely perfect and completely heartwarming. Brilliant piece of work that goes rather well with the scene. ANYWAYS. Yes. It's over. The story—is over. Despite that piece of foreshadowing at the end after those SIX dots. Six. Yes. Well, this was always supposed to be a suspense story, so ending on a slightly creepy note (after heart-warming victory of course) was always the plan.
Yes. Actually, the plan was to let Steve die in the end. You know—it's a suspense/tragedy/angst story, so I always had planned on Steve making the ultimate sacrifice in the end and ending with him really, really, happy in some sort of weird afterlife. Heheh. Because there's so many movies out there with cheesy revivals where the hero makes a sacrifice and 'dies' only to come back alive—Avengers included (but that was just awesome, not cheesy). I wanted to be different. Tragically sad. But, then I started listening to what Tony was saying a chapter or two ago and—yup. The Avengers need each other—they'd fall apart with less than their super-six combo. They are the greatest combinations, after all. I debated for days upon days and long-distance swim sets upon swim sets… and finally decided to post both of these chapters—one for the ending I wanted, and one for \ those who still believed in our hero and wished for a happy ending. So I devised this, and am rather pleased with this chapter. If only to please my reviewers and my secret longing self. And, you know, if I killed Steve—I couldn't whump him anymore. xD
And, well, I think I'm going to end it here. Because, well, it's over. The game is done. All was not well, it is well and I'm just going to go enjoy life right now—and you should too. See ya in another life, or story, brotha—this is Fleet, saying one last goodbye. I hope you enjoyed the story, and thanks for sticking around this long and putting up with my weirdness!
*salutes*
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...who am I kidding? CLICK NEXT CHAPTER (when it gets posted) AND LET'S START THE VICTORY PARTY~ WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII I-OOOOH~! Let's celebrate and let me thank you all for sticking around this long and pushing me to the finish! Go on, clickie clickie!
*salutes*
-Fleet