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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Avenged
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Favorite Things - Wade Wilson
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Alexander Pierce is under lock and key like a little bitch at the top of the Triskelion.
Can't say I'm not surprised, after all, what little he knows is that the Vulture was killed in the microprocessor ambush, and so he sent Brock Rumlow to the Tower to collect James Barnes. Now neither of them are answering his texts, calls, messages, facetiming, marco polos, snapchats, tweets, or DMs. There's needy bosses, and then there's Alexander Pierce. He looks like a cross between the neighbor that turns your grandmother into a horntoad and a future president. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
For all Pierce knows, Rumlow and Barnes are totally off the grid, honeymooning in Jamaica.
So yeah, security is a little tight. Not unlike when this suit rides up on a hot day.
I wait patiently for the elevator to DING merrily.
When the doors slide open, I stare at a hallway stuffed with uniformed men, all armed to the dick.
"Ladies and gents, this is the moment you've waited for," I announce loudly. "Agents of Shield, I'm sure you're wondering why the Avenger with no moral compass is here right now. On a show of hands, which one of you is actually secretly a Hydra agent working the Pierce security detail with an order to shoot on sight?"
They all begin firing at once like it's the Third of May. I withdraw my double bladed swords from behind my back and begin twirling them like a pubescent majorette working batons in a parade. Bullets deflected make metallic screaming sounds as they ping back, some of them going right into the person who shot them. Several rounds tear right through me, the elevator doors, the wall behind me, through my limbs -
"Fucking hell that hurts! Shit! Cool it!" I keep advancing down the hall towards the door that leads to Pierce's office. "Oh, hey hey hey! OKAY! Geeze! I get it! Okay, here's a deal - keep shooting at me if you suffer regularly from rectal bleeding!"
BANG BANG BANG BANG -
"Jesus, ALL of you? Like okay I thought maybe some of you but seriously all of you? You need some SERIOUS, SERIOUS clinical help…"
Time to play dirty.
I twist under suddenly and drive the blade of one sword up into the susceptible ribs of the nearest agent, my other wrist twisting back to deflect the bullets aiming for my spine with the blade. It's truly amazing what CGI can accomplish nowadays.
The man keels over towards me, and I roll away from his falling body, sliding across the slick, faux-marble floor to kick out the ankle of the next agent. With a crack like breaking a really thick carrot, his leg gives out and he falls as screams in horror. I cut his gun right out of his hand and plunge the other blade through his chest, cutting off the screaming, and then rolling out of the way.
Bullets still pelt me from the back, like eating a bag of poprocks, except it feels more like bullets, and it's all over my entire body. I scramble to my feet, twirling my deadly baton swords again.
"And now let's bring in the dance team," I announce, running back crookedly to the men at the opposite end of the hall. Most of them are dressed like a strike team, all black, bulletproof outfits, heavy hardware, helmets with little flashlights attached to the side.
I whip my swords out on either side of me like unleashing a Falcon wingspan, my blades effectively beheading the two agents I'm running past. Then the last two get something a little more fancy, one gets a kick in the groin to go down first, the other gets a blade through the abdomen, and while the other one cries, I twist like a figure skater and swing the other blade across his neck. Boom, headshot.
I begin counting who is left in the lost language of ancient Latin.
"Uno, dos, tres, quatro…" I turn and made a speedy dash back down the hall, where the Agents have pushed back against Pierce's door, trying to effectively barricade it with themselves.
"Uno!" I cry out, one of them dropping his gun in favor of the little more hand-to-hand nonsense. My sword cuts off both hands like a boxer a little short on his assets, then I punch him and he falls back on his other assets. Dos launches himself for me, actually succeeds in knocking me backwards, but I flip him up and over my head so that he lands behind me in a heap of tangled arms, legs, and two hands without a body. I pinwheel on the floor like Donald O'Connor, sheathing one of my swords.
"Make 'em LAUGH, sick bastards," I sing loudly, running along the floor and driving my sword into the fallen as I spin by. Then I leap to my feet like a Scandinavian Olympian, cutting down Tres and blocking his gunfire with the blade, but then surprising him with my own gunfire. Right in the Schnoz. He's down, one more to go.
It's always the last one that puts up more of a fight than the others, and they always wait and try to attack you one at the time, because how else can you choreograph the fight scene?
If you make a list of every time this happens, you'll find that it happens every time.
Quatro makes two fists and test-punches the air with massive arms like he's trying out for the Mission Impossible press releases in a bathroom mirror.
"Oh we're going to play like this, are we?" I taunt. I sheath my other sword, holster my gun, hook my thumbs together, make a flapping butterfly motion. His eyes squint confusedly at me, and he flies towards me with a roar, but I was born ready.
I sidestep quickly, and he somehow expects this, shifting around and grabbing the back of my neck - and picking me up and throwing me over his head clear down the hallway.
Oh, and they saved the enhanced being for last after all his mundies go down in glorious deaths. "This is completely typical and I'm adding this to my cliche list," I scream at him, slamming against the wall and going right through. There's an explosion of dust and drywall behind me into the hall. He should contribute to the trope jar.
"You owe me a dollar you sick, sick bastard!" I call out with a groan. My shoes squeak on the floor as I scramble out of the hole I just made, taking out more pieces of wall and knocking more plaster dust into my face as I struggle.
"Come on!" he taunts. "COME ON!"
"I never decline that type of invitation," I respond saucily, rushing back for him. I knock him off his feet and shove his head right through the wall. Bored with my own, I pummel him with one fist in his face, and then let my other hand sneak into his belt (whoa nelly) and withdraw his own special looking handgun, a small glock 26.
I shoot him all too easily in his foot, and he hollers loudly. He manages to get a hand around my throat, lifting me up into the air. So I shoot his other foot.
He goes down, dropping me, and I land right on him. Straddling him, really.
"I have one thing to say," I intone purrishly. "Hay un gato en mis pantalones y no tengo miedo de hacerte cosquillas."
"The hell?" he exclaims, and I punch him one more good time in the face and knock him unconscious. Maybe he doesn't have to die today. We'll leave one Hydra agent alive to tell my story.
I make a shivery ick motion and get off of him quickly, brushing away at my suit as if lint and cat hair is my biggest worry.
"Bienvenidos, mother falcon," I say, thrusting my heel through the doorknob and kicking open the door so hard it flies back, detached from the wall, and lands with a crash on the floor in slow motion. Little clouds of white dust waft away like a spa room for El Chapo.
Alexander Pierce is braced against the window, a gun pointed in my direction.
"Oh no, oh god, oh GOD," I cry out. "Please don't shoot. PLEASE don't shoot me." I drop to my knees, holding my hands up defensively. Then quick as Thor taking a piss, I reach behind me for my sword.
He shoots, and the bullet careens right for my right eye socket, probably in slow motion. I imagine We Are the World might be playing right about now if I hadn't left my ipod behind and the sound engineer hadn't peaced out really early on this project.
We are the woooorld,
We are the childreeeeen…
I block the shot easily with my sword, and it ricochets right back, plunging right through the muzzle from whence it came. With a cry, Pierce drops the gun, shaking out his hand painfully.
"Good morning, you sly son of a bitch," I greet him, sheathing my sword once more, and aiming just one gun for his chest.
Pierce has both of his hands up preemptively.
"I need you to remember this line, otherwise when my jokes come full circle, they won't be funny anymore. Ready? Here's the line: don't move or I WILL kill you. And now I owe a dollar to the cliche jar. Since I had to use it on you, would you mind spotting me a dollar? Never mind, I'll just rifle through your wallet after you're dead."
"Wade," he answers slowly. "I know why you're here."
"It's chicken finger day in the Triskelion cafeteria. Always mysteriously placed right after someone finally bites the dust at that elderly care home down the street. Did you ever notice that? You say chicken, I say Maude."
"Wade!" Pierce says thickly. "Listen to me. I know you've been told about… about certain allegiances. They're not true. They're… they're all lies. I am loyal to Shield. Loyal to this agency, to this country."
"Look. Pierce, I get it, you're scared of finally getting what you deserve," I say, "But I've GOT to get something off my chest. Do you remember that time someone brought a whoopie cushion to the Shield, UN, and Avengers Summit meeting? It wasn't me, but I know who did it. Whoo. That feels good to just - let it all out there. Let that breathe. Ugh, it was really weighing on me. Okay - next one - I just have to pick up where we left off about poetic justice."
"What are you talking about?"
"Look, I should have been the one to kill Adrian Toomes. He threatened my Sugarbear. It would have been so much more spiritually satisfying. I would have loved to kill that slimy bastard. It makes way more cinematic sense for James Barnes to kill you."
"You've gone insane."
"Think about it, man. You've had your fingers tucked into his brain mush like forkless spaghetti for - how many years? Since you started? Even before you were leading here, someone else had their fingers inside him. I mean - well, not like you'd think. But you get it, right?"
"Whatever you heard, it's simply not true…"
"You had control over his mind, so it would be the best revenge story in the world for him to be able to separate your mind-holder from the rest of your body. But naturally you probably told your own robot to Not Harm Master, so it falls to me. All the good ones fall to me."
"Wade, please. I know you think you have it all figured out. But you're wrong. If Barnes told you that I somehow had control over him - he's playing you."
"I can't be played," I answer stonily. "A musical instrument, I am not. Although please consider the likelihood of Deadpool 9 being some sort of musical version."
"Barnes is the best spy on this planet!" Pierce continues desperately. "He's playing you all. He's only doing that to manipulate you, to make you take out Shield agents - good agents - and me. If you do this, you become enemies of the state. The Avengers are over. The world turns against you. If you aren't imprisoned in the icebox, then…"
"No, done already, and it would be a total rip off. Barnes may be a lot of things, but he's the most honest liar I've ever met. And we don't have to believe him, really, do we?"
"So - what?" Pierce gasps. "You're just looking for an excuse to come up here and murder me and my men? Even for you, Wade, that's unlikely…"
"Steve Rogers trusted good ol' Uncle Buck. And that's fucking good enough for us. If Barnes says that you're the bastard that cooked up his dream juices and made him murder people, than, by the power vested in me by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, I will do something very, very terrible."
"Wade, I am begging you," Pierce truly looks contrite, yet somehow totally condescending, like every teacher I've ever had. They only wanted to give me homework to see the joy of life leave my eyes. "I have family. A granddaughter that I love, very, very dearly."
"Listen, dickbreath, Captain Fucking America had a girlfriend that he loved very, very dearly. He had family too, I mean, not related ones, and certainly not legally adopted. We're the fucking island of misfit toys and you don't just take away the water gun that shoots jelly because you fucking feel like it."
"I didn't kill Captain America. He was a hero, a friend…"
"Not today, Satan." I hold up a hand. "We tracked Vulture's sales, you idiot. You were his number one client. Pretending to off load the purchases to a storage facility when they were being partitioned out to your favorite hounds. Or, in this case, weirdly tall sociopaths with Hydra loyalties planted in Shield."
He looks bewildered and dizzy. "I don't… know… who, or what, you're even talking about."
"Grant Ward," I answer. "He's stinking up a basement somewhere. Why? Didn't you realize he was missing? Haven't you heard from him lately?" I grin cattily. "You're deflecting. Why don't you call him up?"
Silence. He doesn't answer, but a vein begins to bulge at his neck. "I'm sure when Grant Ward resurfaces and reports to Nick Fury, I will receive a written report on my desk as usual," he finally says, coldly and professionally. "Wade. Please. See reason."
"Well, woops, not quite done yet, Nipple Piercing. I have one more confession. I didn't get enough screen time and I am sure as hell making up for it now. I stole your fucking code."
Silence.
Pierce blanches, and the facade of a scared old man cracks. He frowns, and his chin appears to clench, his jaw tightening. "What code?" he asks.
"Project insight, jackass. Project insight has been in my hindsight this entire time. I knew that something like that in your hands would probably mean way too much death on a global scale, like, even more death than I'm comfortable with, I mean we're talking like a world-wide dusting worse than every other dusting. I fucking stole the code. Those microprocessors combined with the code would be death on an apocalyptic terrorism scale. I was not about to have that, so, I took it, so that I could have that."
"You stole the codes for project insight," Pierce repeats, still trying to wrap his head around it. "You've had them this whole time?"
"Of course I did. Didn't ANYONE notice how weird I was acting when Steve and I met our informant at Roosevelt ferry and Steve starts telling him about the missing codes? I made a ridiculous amount of effort to tell them to just quit worrying about it… I literally told them that I had it. It went right over their heads."
"I wasn't privy to this meeting you speak of," Pierce replies confusedly. "I wouldn't know what happened! But why would you betray Shield? Stealing a valuable asset such as Project Insight?"
"It was up to ME to make the world a little safer - DAMNIT! That's another FUCKING DOLLAR IN THE JAR!" I slap myself hard in the face, and then take another step closer, really brandishing the gun to get my point across.
Pierce's eyes go wide with fear again.
"That was a bad line," I say, "Ask me why I stole the code." I tilt the gun like a gangster. "Ask me WHY I STOLE the CODE."
Pierce's jaw trembles. "Wh… why?"
"Because shit needs a storm, and I like to fuck shit up." I nod. "That sounds better, doesn't it? More in character? No, no, I think I can do one better. I got it this time. Take three. Say it again."
"I'm not playing this game, Wade," Pierce breathes heavily, his veins popping out in his forehead and neck. If I don't hurry up, he might have a stroke before I actually get to kill him. "You don't know anything. Heard anything from your informant lately? Huh?"
"Scuse me?" I ask, faking an ear dig to clear it out my hearing. "Say what about an informant?"
"Well," Pierce gives me a smile, "You haven't heard anything from him. Not directly."
"Right now on a relevance scale, you're somewhere between a sequel to Eragon and the other two Schuyler sisters. Yeah, surprised? Thought so. There was five of them."
"You're deflecting." Pierce smiles, making my own words come back to haunt me. "Why don't you call him up?"
I clench my jaw. Don't let him get to you don't let him get to you this is what he does…
"I'd sooner call up your granddaughter and let you facetime to say goodbye," I say darkly. "And that, my friend, leaves the DC universe behind and goes straight to Netflix streaming. I'm talking fucking dark, buddy. I'll go dark if you want to play."
"If you're going to kill me anyway you might as well know," Pierce says. "Rumlow was sent for Barnes and Parker. For all I know he was successful. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
I stare at him for a moment in silence. Like I forgot how to use my mouth.
"Your informant is dead."
He's smiling.
This fucker actually thinks Peter Parker is dead.
Tony Stark said that Rumlow was there, this morning, to extract Barnes. What if he's right, and Rumlow wasn't just there to extract him - he was there to kill Peter Parker too?
There is an uncomfortable gap of time here.
Between Peter turning on Vulture during the microprocessor sale. Fighting. Grant Ward fleeing the scene and when I caught up to him...
He could have called Pierce in the meantime and told him who it was.
"Is that what Grant Ward told you before I caught up with him?" I ask, deadly quiet. "Outed my informant? Gave you a name and a face so that Rumlow could hunt him down?"
Pierce would shrug, but I had told him not to move. He's still smiling.
Tony's hesitation…
He's here. We need to have a serious talk when you get back.
I don't do serious.
I don't FUCKING do serious.
Not if someone fucking hurts a kid. That's when I stop doing serious and I start doing real murder.
Nobody hurts my kid.
"It's cute when you try to tell me secrets," I say, after just a second of hesitation far too long. I feel the smile leave my voice, the higher affectations disappearing. "Ask me WHY again," I growl, no ounce of humor for this. "SAY IT."
Pierce's smile disappears, and he keeps his mouth shut, working his tongue over his teeth, containing his rage.
"Do you want to live?" I ask simply. "Ask me why. Once more. For posterity."
Pierce loses that last piece of desperate bravery, a shadow passing over his eyes. Thinking he could goad me into interrogating, instead of killing. Offering me a tidbit of information to see if I'll bite. I have other things I prefer biting.
"Why?" he asks gruffly.
I start to answer. "It's because of the…"
Dramatic pause.
I look over Pierce's shoulder, the white lenses in my mask widening hugely with a horrified expression, looking out at the completely empty view of the D.C. skyline behind him.
"Holy SHIT!" I exclaim with unparalleled fear. "Is that…? It… It CAN'T be…? Cap?"
AND THE OSCAR GOES TO...
Pierce flinches naturally and jerks his head, looking over his shoulder at the window behind him. He barely has time to register that there's nothing actually there, and turn to look back at me with confusion.
I squeeze the trigger.
BANG!
Alexander Pierce goes down like a piano on a comedian, limbs splayed and head knocking into the floor. It takes half a second for confirming his death, as there is no feasible comic book recovery that could bring him back from this. Rule of zombieland - always double tap.
"Told you not to move," I say smugly.
I double tap.
BANG, BANG.
Didn't this exact thing just happen with Grant Ward? Is it really so hard to ask for content that isn't totally repetitive and making use of the same things over and over again?
I've got one reminder; other endings aren't this generous. Usually everyone dies. Scorsese takes a few names and then kills the rest. So unless everyone wants to attend a funeral for literally every hero that they know and love, then I suggest they take the next baby steps with care. STDs are contagious, but so is gratitude.
I'm more than grateful to be the concluding voice for this mission report.
I look down at the body. "Consider my partners fucking avenged."
….
I'm Still Here - Peter Parker
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I gasp loudly and sit up with a sudden jerk, as if my body had been electrocuted. Struggling and wrestling with a white sheet, I jerk it away from my face and push it off of me.
I lean off a table and dry heave over the side.
"What - what - what the hell," I groan loudly, shifting back onto the table and falling back, suddenly exhausted by what little movement I exerted. My chest rises and falls in such rapid movement I still can't quite catch my breath. I press a hand to my sternum and try to count each breath. One, two, three, four…
The last thing I remember…
Bucky promising to kill me. We were fighting, I was definitely going to take him down. I mean - maybe I overestimated myself. I really thought I was winning.
I brace myself up on my elbows. Looking at the room I'm in.
"Oh shit," I whisper. My throat hurts really bad. "I didn't win. I definitely didn't win." There's like, steel appliances or something, but, I'm definitely not in a kitchen.
I think I'm in a… a morgue…?
I glance over to my right.
There's a body beneath a sheet on the table next me.
"HOLY SHIT!" I scream, throwing myself off the table. I land with a painful grunt on the floor, like a cat on all fours. My feet skid on the slick floor as I scuttle to my feet and brace myself on a counter, breathing hard.
There's blood all over the sheets. The sheets that I just vacated. Oh god, what?
I look down at what I'm wearing. I'm still in the sweatpants and T-shirt. The hoodie is… gone. So are the shoes. And socks. I'm barefoot.
It's like someone partially undressed me while I was asleep? Why the hell would they do that unless it's like a hospital and they have to, like, cut your clothes off...
In a panic, I feel my chest, arms, legs, face.
There's dried blood on my forehead and on the back of my head, and it feels sore. Sore and dried blood with absolutely no sign of actual injury. So is it someone else's blood?
But if I had someone else's blood on me - WHY WOULD THEY PUT ME IN A MORGUE?
And under a sheet?!
Maybe it's a joke. A really bad joke. Someone put us in here.
Maybe… maybe Wade Wilson thought it was funny. It seems like something he'd do.
"Hello?" I call out quietly. "Are you… you asleep too?"
I creep crookedly forward to the other table and lift the edge of the sheet -
There's a dead man underneath. Very very obviously dead.
"OH NO, NO NO NO," I fall backwards, running into the table behind me, spinning away from it quickly. It knocks over a tray of sharp-looking tools and instruments off an overbed table on wheels.
CRASH!
It clatters on the hard floor like someone turned the open cupboards of a kitchen upside down and dumped all the contents.
I jump so high that my hands naturally find themselves moving hand over hand, instinctively, till I'm clinging to the ceiling like a scared cat.
"I'm in a morgue," I say out loud. "I'm in a MORGUE!"
Suddenly the large door slides open. A girl with dark hair and glasses walks in very, very slowly, sneaking. She looks down at the floor where the tray is knocked over, all the sharp tools spread across the floor. She looks at the table with the bloodied sheets askew.
The other body, lays perfectly still, still definitely dead.
I can actually hear her heart beating very, very rapidly. Call it spider-sense or enhanced capabilities, but I can feel quailing terror rolling off of her like an icy-cold scent.
"Jesus Christ," she says, and crosses herself quickly.
"Who are you?" I call down.
I've never heard anyone scream so loudly before in my life.
It's truly impressive. I'm surprised the glass in the room doesn't shatter.
She screams, and screams, twisting around, looking wildly around the room, and then jerks her chin up and sees me clinging to the ceiling. Her scream continues, jumping a few octaves in pitch and growing even more horrified.
She's out of the morgue faster than I've ever seen a non-enhanced person move.
"Wait!" I call down, unsticking my hands and dropping down to the floor. A wave of dizziness washes over me from my scalp to my empty, churning stomach. I steady myself on the steel closet, taking deep, shuddering, cleansing breaths.
Then I look at the shape of the body under the sheet. What if were to, suddenly sit up? Like I did?
"Wait for me, please!" I call out, stumbling crookedly out after her. There's a big sliding door, sort of like a blast door in Star Wars.
"Uh, uh, OPEN!" I command. Nothing. I hit a large green button on a keypad beside the frame and it slides open. It even sounds like a Star Wars door. Probably should have tried the button first.
"Whoa," I gasp, stepping through quickly. I feel sort of funny, buzzing and drunk in my arms, lead-lined and heavy in my legs. My head feels like it's been pumped full of helium, and my eye sockets are sore as if I stared into the sun for too long.
I hear the girl running down the hallway, still screaming, but she's forming words now. "ANYONE!" She's screaming. "THE CORPSE IS NOT A CORPSE! HELLO! SOMEONE! IT'S ALIVE! YOU ASSHOLES PUT A LIVE PERSON IN THERE! HELLO? IT'S NOT FUCKING FUNNY!"
I nearly laugh. "Hello?! Wait? Ma'am? Please!"
Suddenly an alarm goes off so loudly I duck and clap my hands over my ears. Above, small white lights begin to flash, and the siren-sound echoes in a rhythmic bwooooop, bwoooooooop…
Fire alarm? There's seriously a FIRE right now?!
And where the hell is Bucky Barnes?! He admitted to being Hydra, after all… I have to find him. Time to finish this fight!
I tip over and faceplant into the carpet.
"Ugh," I groan. "Okay. Okay. Maybe… maybe… in a moment." I brace my elbows into the floor and struggle to my feet, entirely top heavy. Hands pressed against the side of my head, I walk around the corner of the hall. I must have made a wrong turn somewhere, trying to follow the voice of the girl running away.
I enter a wider hallway. Tall, clean windows letting the sunrise in, lighting huge orange patches of warmth on the tiled floor.
Wait… sunrise. Okay. If I haven't been in like - some sort of freaky coma for eighteen years or something - it means that it's only been a few hours. I was probably just unconscious.
Or dead, my brain offers.
No, no way. I had to have passed out for only a few hours. The blood on my head is mostly dry, a little tacky. If it's mine or someone else's - Bucky's, maybe - then it's from just a few short hours ago.
"Hello?" I call again. Nothing. Can't hear the girl anymore, either.
Along my right, there's a few elevators, and a few more turns in other directions. The room has a sleepy, calming feeling… like it should be a hospital waiting room for a maternity wing or something way more hopeful and nice and alive.
I am so turned around. This place is huge. Based on the view from the window, I'm on the other side of the building than where the offices are. Where… where Bucky Barnes and I literally just beat the crap out of each other.
A pair of double doors burst open at the end, and the girl from the morgue points at me with a shaking hand. "I fucking TOLD you!" She screams over the alarm. Then she immediately steps out of the doors again, bumping into several moving bodies, hiding behind the door frame from me. "YOU handle it!" I can hear her shouting back down the hall. "You gave me a LIVE body, you bastards!"
Staring at me, open-mouthed, is none other than Tony Stark. He's flanked by the other Avengers - some of them, anyway. Dr. Banner, Black Widow, Captain Rhodes, and the Falcon.
It was one thing fighting side by side with them while running around like a pretend-crazy criminal with shifting loyalties, in the dark by the logging company, trying to nab the bad guys and steal the briefcase… but then there was watching the Vulture die and then getting attacked by Bucky later… I didn't even have time to process that I had actually met most of my heroes, and not only was able to meet them, but I would get to join them, too.
Only I never got to meet Dr. Banner.
I almost forget everything else except
Holy shit that's Dr. Bruce Banner...Holy shit that's DOCTOR BRUCE BANNER…
Rhodes reaches over and plunges his fist right through the controls for the fire alarm. The siren instantly stops and the lights stop flashing. Then he looks at his fist in surprise. "Oops," he mumbles.
"Kid," Mr. Stark takes a step forward.
"He-Ee-y," I say confusedly.
"What in the hell!" Falcon exclaims loudly. "You were… we were…"
Mr. Stark holds out his hands, as if I'm one step shy of falling off a building by accident and he doesn't want to startle me. "What are…" he starts. "You're…"
"So am I dead?" I ask confusedly. "I woke up in a morgue. And that was… well, I'm kind of freaking out right now. Hey, uh, Dr. Banner," I wave awkwardly. "Big… big fan. Really… really love your study on the effect of gamma radiation versus vita radiation on bacteria. Really… really cool. I'm saying really a lot. Sorry."
"Thank you?" Dr. Banner replies slowly. "Believe me, I'm, I'm flattered, but… " he turns to Mr. Stark and whispers urgently. "We need to get him to the medical wing now."
"Not a morgue this time!" I say in a shrieky tone. Like I'm freaking out too much and my defense mechanisms are trying to make a joke. "So you, uh, you probably won't believe me, but, Bucky Barnes attacked me, and said he was going to kill me, and that he was working for the bad guys this whole time - OH, and I was supposed to tell you, John Garrett from Shield? He's Hydra! They said his name at the drop before you guys… oh, I guess you were there in hiding the whole time, huh? But did you have AUDIO surveillance? If you didn't, you need to know that. Garrett. He's one of the Nazi guys. OH, and I have names of the rest of the Vulture crew that wasn't there, a lot of them - can I call my aunt? I should probably tell Aunt May that I'm back now... I forgot…"
"Kid, zip - zip it for, a second," Tony makes a zipper motion with one hand. "You're… you were dead. You were dead." He takes a few steps closer. "Do you - do you feel okay?"
"I feel like I have a flu or something," I say confusedly. "How dead? Like dead dead?"
Mr. Stark opens his mouth.
"Tony," Dr. Banner warns. "Not another word."
"I'll… I'll track down and call your aunt," says Black Widow. "You… you don't worry about her. We'll bring her here. Okay?"
"Okay… um, wow, thanks, thank you!" I call after her. She shares a weird look with Dr. Banner, before turning and walking stiffly down the hall, holding a hand to her side. "Is Bucky okay?" I ask. "There was something seriously wrong with him. I mean, he attacked me, so… that's a problem… but… there was something else going on too."
Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner exchange a look. So do Rhodes and the Falcon.
"I'm… I'm going to go call in the rest of the nursing staff and ask them to please get in early," Rhodes suddenly waves awkwardly and makes a graceful exit out the door they came from.
"Someone already called the…" Bruce Banner begins, but the door swings shut behind him. "Hours ago," he adds unnecessarily.
"Why don't you… uh… sit down, over here," Falcon points at a bench along the hall wall beneath the wide windows. "I'm going to go find a stretcher."
I don't move. Falcon - Sam, I think his name is… goes out one of the doors on my right.
"Okay so if people can, like, come back from the dead now… how come I'm here?" I ask hazily, "And Captain America isn't? He's way more enhanced than me, right? I shouldn't be here."
Mr. Stark looks like he's had zero sleep in weeks, a few recent shots of scotch. His eyebrows are furrowed and his frown-wrinkles are deep. "Don't think like that," he says calmly, walking towards me and slowly putting a hand on each shoulder. "I'm sure we'll be able to find out what happened. In due time. But don't think like that now. We're just going to focus on making sure you're okay."
"I'm fine," I say shortly.
"Bullshit," Stark says. "You've been working for Steve… and with the worst criminals in this city, for a long time. It's okay to not be okay. But it will be. Why don't we sit over here till Sam gets back?"
I let him push me in the direction of the bench, which I sit on reluctantly. There's still too much I'm confused about…
"He fell off the building," I whisper. "After they shot him."
"I… I know."
"I couldn't catch him. I couldn't catch him. I couldn't…"
"It's going to be okay, Peter," says Mr. Stark.
It's going to be okay, Peter, one of Steve's last words to me. If he poses any danger to you, we'll try another…
I blink rapidly, losing my train of thought. "...he's probably going to… to… hmmmmm..."
I slowly slide off the bench.
"Oh shit," Mr. Stark jams his arm forward, doesn't quite make it.
The carpet around me turns into a giant blanket, the folds lifting up and over my head, caccooning me in a warm, dark tunnel. I feel arms around me, falling with me to the floor and keeping a wide hand between the back of my skull and hitting the floor.
"I've got you, I've got you," says Mr. Stark.
Stars blink out and glisten behind my eyelids, turning red and orange like bursting fireworks. It hurts, like a migraine.
He's not dead.
He's not dead.
He's not dead.
I can still hear Uncle Ben's heartbeat.
I rip the layers of his jacket aside, looking for the wound. I press one hand against the entry where blood is spooling out rhythmically. My hand won't stay, it keeps slipping away from where it needs the most pressure. I rip off my outer plaid shirt, wadding it up with trembling hands, shoving it against the wound.
All too quickly it becomes drenched with scarlet.
No, no no no no…
He's losing blood too fast.
This isn't happening. This isn't real.
"Uncle Ben," I say loudly, bending low over him. "Can you hear me? I need you to stay awake - do you hear me? Stay awake!"
Uncle Ben's eyes drift lazily open, looking confused, unfocused. "Peter," he says, and a wet cough erupts, a drizzle of blood bursting at his lips and trailing down his cheek.
"No, no, no," I sob, trying to wipe the blood away from his mouth. "Uncle Ben - Don't leave me alone! Please don't leave me alone! Please… don't… I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry..."
"Peter?" Uncle Ben repeats. "This wasn't your fault… do you hear me? Nothing - none of this was your fault. It's going to be okay, Peter… it's going to..."
Another horrible heaving of breath, rattling up his lungs and out of his mouth with more blood.
Then nothing. There is no second inhale.
"NO!" I scream at his face. "No - no - no! Don't go! Please don't go, please don't go, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
Someone sticks their hands beneath my armpits and hauls me off of him, pulling me into an unwanted embrace. Paramedics swarm the space, the uniforms surrounding him with tools and lights curling in and out of my vision with glaring red and blue, a siren wailing, wailing, wailing…
I struggle from the arms of the person holding me, but they don't let go. They won't let me go.
"It's okay, it's okay," says the voice. "I've got you. I've got you."
"My fault," I had screamed into the chest of the policeman holding me upright. "My fault, my fault, my fault… it should have been me, it should have been me..."
"Not your fault. Don't you think that. Not for a second. Just let it out, son. I've got you. Not letting you go."
He holds me with a firm, even painful, grip. The more I try to push away to return to Uncle Ben's side, the stronger he seems - but he's not strong at all. He's totally normal. He's not enhanced. I'm not fighting him that hard. I try to push away, realizing somewhere in my logical, unaffected mind still seeing, hearing, perceiving everything, that he's not the policeman that had pulled me away from Uncle Ben's body. And it's not four years ago.
I open my eyes. Mr. Stark is holding onto me with both arms, and we're both sitting on the floor. My legs and arms are sprawled out loosely, weighing a million pounds each. Mr. Stark has one elbow braced under my neck, and one hand is feeling my neck, forehead, and hair. Looking for injuries that aren't there, I realize.
Dr. Banner is kneeling beside me too, I realize. "Welcome back, kid," he mutters.
"Did I die again? Seriously?" I mutter.
"Not this time, and you were only out for a few seconds," Mr. Stark answers. "Jesus Christ, kid. You just about gave me a heart attack."
"M'really sorry," I mumble, embarrassed.
What if I had said anything - about Uncle Ben...
"Don't be sorry," Mr. Stark pulls back for a moment and holds my gaze firmly. "Don't be sorry. Not now, not ever." He looks over my shoulder at Dr. Banner, and then pulls me in for another hug, loosely patting my back like an old, tired dad with a moody child.
Something that was broken long, long ago has had the time it needed. Building up scar tissue, maybe. It makes it easier to feel the grief, let it run its course, and then open the floodgate. It leaves me in a rush, leaving me empty… relieved.
And not alone.
It should have been me, I had thought, when Captain America died. But… maybe that's not true. At all.
The difference between the moment Steve fell from the roof, and now. When Uncle Ben was shot, unknowingly setting me on the course that led me here... I had never felt so lost and alone then. It was a feeling that kept showing up on repeat, again and again. When Agent Parsons was shot by Jackson. When Captain America fell. Jackson Brice, even. Aaron Davis. Those moments of feeling like death itself was comparable to how alone I felt. Maybe I even wished for it myself - maybe never out loud, maybe self consciously. It was wrong then, and I can't believe I'm only seeing that now.
I'm in Avengers Tower. I was supposedly shot in the head and didn't die. I'm walking, talking, crying. I've never felt more relieved to not be dead.
Even after post-traumatic flashback while unconscious, I feel completely safe.
Steve had always said be patient. I guess I was supposed to be patient for this.
In a few hours I'll probably be told why my super-spider-healing and unknown miraculous factors contributed to my being alive by some fancy doctor. I'll explain what I know about Bucky, so that maybe something miraculous can happen to him to, and he'll be okay. I can actually process meeting and fighting beside my heroes. I'll sleep in a real bed.
I'll run across the atrium and throw myself into Aunt May's arms when she arrives, and we'll both cry because that's what we do. I'll call Ned and I'll finally get to tell him what happened. I'll call Michelle, ask her out on a real, real date. Like dinner. And a movie. Nothing violent. Probably something with singing and dancing, if she's into that kind of thing. I don't actually know. I can't wait to find out.
I have… I have things to look forward to. For awhile I thought it was just going to be getting through this mission so that I can sign the Accords and be Spiderman again and swing through the city and do Avengery things. It's more than that. It's all of that. And having my identity back. My life.
"You doing okay, kiddo?" Dr. Banner asks. "You're not passing out on us again, are ya?"
"No," I say in a muffled voice.
"Any idea how… how…" Mr. Stark says. "Resurrection is a pretty rare talent."
"I don't know," I say tiredly, taking a deep breath.
"I have… a theory," Dr. Banner says. "No - no. Not a theory. A suspicion. A nearly-certain suspicion."
"Care to elaborate?" Mr. Stark asks.
"Not here," Dr. Banner replies quickly. "I'll tell you later." He looks down at me and pats my leg hesitantly. "Someone was looking out for you."
"Like… who?" I ask confusedly.
Dr. Banner just shakes his head, picks up my wrist, and feels my pulse. "I dunno," he mutters. "Maybe an angel."
Mr. Stark rolls his eyes.
Maybe all of this… the mission… maybe that was a bad choice. Not the wrong one, but a bad one. That doesn't mean it wasn't right.
We shouldn't have done it like this, we should have done things differently, I should have just taken that train to the Tower, dealt with the fall out, instead of an elaborately staged pick up. Shouldn't have left Michelle or my Aunt hanging. I should have called 911 for Aaron Davis.
"Hey. Pal. Look up here for a second."
My head shifts heavily, leaning back on Mr. Stark's arm and looking up at his concerned face. "Yeah?" I ask.
"I appreciate you trying to give us intel," he says slowly. "But you need to know that you can explain whatever you want later."
"What if…"
"Nope, nada, zilch," Mr. Stark makes a face I dare not protest to. "I have only one focus right now and that's making sure I don't have another dead kid on my hands. Once is enough."
I nod. "Oh. Sure. Okay."
"Bucky Barnes is in lockdown right now," he says. "You're safe from him."
"I don't know if he's safe from him," I say sleepily. "There's a thumb drive. I had it on me, but it's gone, I don't know…"
"Did you hear a word I just said? You are benched, kiddo," Mr. Stark says. "No - amendment. You know who is benched? Peter Parker, the undercover. He's benched forever. In fact I'm firing him."
I shift slightly. "Ooookay…?"
"You, my friend, are getting a second chance," Mr. Stark says. "A reboot. Peter Parker, intern. Nephew to May Parker. Sound good so far?"
"Yes, sir."
"You're part time Avenger, part time intern, full time teenager… er… young adult. College too, if you want."
I feel my eyes get big. "Are you trying to make me pass out again?"
"Maybe let's not overwhelm him too much right off," Dr. Banner says.
"I'm just trying to say," Mr. Stark says, "Your undercover work is done, benched. You, young one, are going to be working in a safe lab environment with safety goggles and closed-toed shoes for the foreseeable future."
There's a lot of things I should have done differently. There's no way to make that determination now… if it was the right choice, to try and be a hero like this, or if it was a mistake.
"That sounds really… really good," I say shyly. This is my second chance.
Maybe it was a mistake, but I'm not.
I'm not.
...
...
NEXT: It's not easy getting back to a normal life, and there's nothing normal about a funeral service for the world's favorite hero.
REVIEWER REPLIES
Tony Stank - Haha I hope it was worth the wait ;)
Sakura-Fiction - I know this wasn't very lighthearted but HEY! he's BACK! I'm forgiven! woohoo! :D
purpleflame2 - HAHA thank you SO much your story made me smile so big
Starnight5 - lol I am glad you are feeling conflicted about Bucky. BUCKY is feeling conflicted about Bucky. Haha :D
Tightpants182 - Ehhh don't worry Tony is fine lol XD glad you enjoyed!
cargumentluv - shortest chapter ever, I know lol. Sorry XD
DaWriter06 - Here you go, friend! hehehe! hope you enjoyed
EleanorGardner - Happy Wednesday! :D thanks for reading!
LoonyLovegood1981 - I too am totally a pacifist but MAN I write a lot of violence, you'd never be able to tell! XD In person I'm very
curry-llama - you're certainly right about that! DP totes lost his shit, lol. :D