Hello my darlin' cupcakes!
This is a little on the short side, but there is (finally) some Winter Glow action! I already started writing the next chapter, and it's emotional. I mean, I wrote so many Winter Glow feels in what I have done of that chapter I made myself in dire need of ice cream.
Well, enjoy the chapter! If I get ten or more reviews by Saturday night, I'll post the next chapter Sunday morning. If that doesn't happen, it'll be up by next Wednesday.
I love you to crumbs, cupcakes!
~Christianne
PS~ There are some snipits of what's to come at the end of this chapter!
Anna POV
I shivered as a strong wind blew a cold draft through the disgusting hotel room we were holed up in. After James' little episode at the orphanage, he wanted to go back to Sokovia. Per his usual not-talking-about-his-decision-making, he kept his mouth shut the whole train ride back; I assumed it was the closest of only a handful of places we know was HYDRA free. I asked a few times, just to see if he'd have a change of heart on keeping quiet, but he didn't.
"So, what's the plan, baby-cakes?" I asked, turning my head over my shoulder, while my body stayed close to the radiator. "Wanna snag some hard hats or Red Cross smocks and help the townspeople?"
James, from his place by the window, only grunted in response. Since we arrived at the dinky hotel less than 72 hours ago, Jimmy had busied himself by disassembling and assembling a long-range high-caliber rifle we snagged during a layover in New Zealand. I had to pry both hands from it to get him to eat something now and then.
"Why'd you come back here is all you're gonna do is put together and take apart your gun over and over? You could've done than in India or Thailand," I pointed out, rubbing my hands up and down my upper arms quickly, hoping to bring in a little heat by friction.
"That robot is close," he finally answered.
"You know that we don't have the firepower needed to take him on ourselves," I sighed, falling to sit on the matted carpet. "Ultron would rip us to shreds.
"He's not touching you."
I raised my eyebrows at him and couldn't hold in a small laugh and smile. "Oh really now?" I asked, pushing myself to my feet. Sluggish from the cold, I got to my feet slowly and trudged over to James. I fell back to the floor with a huff. My eyes fell shut as I eased my back onto his. He stiffened, just like every other time I touched him. With my back pressed to his, I was enveloped with warmth; one thing I was very glad HYDRA didn't change was the way he radiated warmth.
"We can't fight Ultron, so why are we here?" I sighed, lolling my head back to rest on James' shoulder as I spoke.
"I know," James admitted. I could feel the muscles of his flesh shoulder work and pull under his skin and shirt. "But...But there are people here."
"Yes...Yes, there are in fact people here in this city." My half-assed attempt at lighty patronizing humor earned me a grunt from the Russian-trained man behind me.
"There are people-...innocent people here...The Avengers will be back, but whose gonna watch them until then?"
"You can't babysit the whole city, James...Not everyone can be saved from danger that may or may not come."
"I know," James answered me casually. "But I can try."
I paused, taking in his words and choosing mine carefully. "Try to do what, baby?"
"Try to save them...All of them...I want to try to be the one to save everyone...Start makin' up for the lives I took."
Omniscient POV
It said in TJ's S.H.I.E.L.D. File that he wasn't recommended for field work; if it was necessary for him to do any, he was required to have an agent with advanced protective combat training to escort him. TJ wasn't a stranger to the rules and regulations that came with being the greatest legacy failures in the history of S.H.I.E.L.D. He was, however, not used to having a high-powered plasma stun-gun (something he actually made for Natasha or Steve, using a plasma cutter from his toolkit and some wire and pipe cleaners found in Clint's basement; Lila helped him decorate it with glittery purple duct tape) shoved into his hands, protective Kevlar-mesh clothing thrown at his face and told to clear a whole building by himself. Oh, and not to mention he was supposed to work with Dr. Banner as both a scientist and keep him from turning green.
"Have you done this before?" Bruce asked TJ, who kept wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
"Uh, yes and no," TJ answered, running a fingerless-glove clad hand through his sweaty hair, giving a rare, clear view of his forehead. Usually hidden under a shaggy fringe of hair, Bruce was surprised to see the lines that creased the pale skin revealed. Natasha was right; TJ never stopped worrying.
"How is 'uh, yes and no' an answer, exactly?" Bruce questioned.
"I've logged a-a very considerable number of hours on a simulator...Most hours and the best scores in my class at the academy and-and later in my decision at the Hub," TJ explained, a hint of nervous pride in his voice.
"But...?" Dr. Banner trailed off, raising his brows.
TJ glanced fleetingly at Bruce, then to the crude, glittery, yellow and orange pipe cleaner striped, powerful weapon in his hand. "I...I've never been in the field long enough to ever clear a whole building...On my own or with a team."
The doctor nodded. In truth, he felt a little bad for TJ, like Steve did. They saw how hard he worked, how dedicated he was, and how S.H.I.E.L.D. ex-agents, like Barton, Natasha and Maria for example, took him less than seriously. TJ's career advancement in S.H.I.E.L.D. was stunted because his family had a James Bond worthy history of 'shoot first, ask questions later' behavior. Suave, charming smiles and knockout punches that the willowy, boyish-faced tech couldn't live up to. No one let him forget about it either.
The earpiece TJ and Banner had on patched them though to both the team and J.A.R.V.I.S. The small lense on TJ's vest ave the AI something to scan.
When the accented, electronic voice told TJ and Bruce that the only survivors of the gruesome lab massacre were on the top floor, so that's where they were going. The elevator door had barely opened when TJ put his makeshift plasma-Ray up. Bruce couldn't say he wasn't impressed by the way Tactical-TJ worked. He'd been around a handful of skilled agents, more than he would have liked, honestly. Most wore heavy body armor that looked constricting, in case they got into a physical fight, and moved like robots; heads forward only, gun up, shot what moved and breathed evenly. TJ had a much more relaxed, slow stance and thinner protective wear (which he designed himself). He stepped carefully over broken glass instead of stomping through it, and slowly opened up doors rather than kicking them in.
"I think we're good here, Dr. Banner," TJ said, and Bruce immediately left the small, shiny white elevator for the damaged lab space.
TJ suddenly dashed to the other side of the lab and skidded to a stop on his knees. He slid on the polished floor longer than he thought he would, and had to throw a hand out to stop himself against a cabinet. The loud, metal Bang! Crash! of TJ's body against the cabinet got Dr. Banner's attention. It also made a feminine, pain-filled cough come from the ground.
"Helen? Hey, Helen! Can you hear me?" TJ asked, dropping his plasma-weapon to the ground so both his hands were free; one grasped the twitching hand at Helen Cho's side, and the other worked on straightening her neck and taking her pulse.
"Yes...I can hear you," Helen answered in a slurred sigh.
"What happened?" TJ asked, helping the doctor lay flat on the cold floor, opposed to being slouched against the wall. The blackened, bloody circle that covered most of the right side of Helen's chest made TJ be extra careful, and it made him a little sick too; she smelt like burning flesh.
"Ul-Ultron," she told him weakly, her eyelids low.
"We need to get all the data and code from the system," TJ said, in what had to be the most authoritative voice Bruce had ever heard from him. "And we need to get Helen some help," he added, squeezing Helen's hand when her grip weakened.
"I'll try to contact the medical-"
"No," TJ cut Bruce off, digging through his vest. "You get the code from the system."
"I don't speak Korean, TJ," Bruce reminded him.
"Yeah, and all my great-granddad only use taught me were the swear words h picked up during his six-month stint in Seoul in '52," TJ answered him smoothly. He pulled a square from his vest; the plastic was clear, exposing the beautifully simplistic circuited board, artfully braided wires, and a shiny end jutted out from one side, where is would plug into a computer. "Use this. Two windows will pop up. One initiates the download, the other makes a second copy in English."
"You do this, TJ," Bruce insisted. He wasn't a real people-doctor, really, but the way Helen's face was drained from it's healthy glow concerned him. "I'll get help for Helen."
"You do the computers, Dr. Banner," TJ insisted firmly, pulling a small black object from his vest. It was about the size of those cheap, thick paperback novels you can buy at airports. Turned out, it was a tiny computer. With one hand, TJ opened it up and began typing. While plugging in a corded headset, he looked up at Bruce.
"Is-Is something wrong?" TJ's question was innocent and full of worry.
Bruce shook his head and went to the massive computer system.
TJ put the headset on, the card dangling from his ear.
"You're gonna be fine, Helen," TJ said in a surprisingly calm voice. He rapidly typed with one hand, glancing between the screen and the young, wounded woman in front of him. Though he was too shy to admit it to anybody, TJ'd had a little crush on the brilliant Korean scientist since he met her a few months ago. After he saved her a few days ago at Avengers Tower, his little crush had turned into a full-blown infatuation; when she kissed his cheek in thanks, his heart nearly stopped.
Through heavily lidded eyes, Helen watched TJ put a hand to the earbud in his ear, the one with the cord. "Hello? Can you understand me?" TJ asked, watching as his sophisticated translation program ran the the small computer. He grinned as Korean words spoken by the emergency services responder were flipped into an electronic sounding English.
"Listen to me," TJ said, yanking off one glove to read the sweat-smeared writing that covered the back of his hand, Palm, and down his wrist. "I-I don't have much time to explain. There is going to be a disaster here in Seoul. I assume you already have my location. That will be the center of it all. Stop all public transportation into the city. Set up medical assistance and evacuation busses in a five mile radius from this building. I mean no disrespect, but stand down within Seoul. The fight that will take place will only cause more damage and casualties with more people involved. Do you understand?"
The sound of rapidly tapping keys came through the line. "Yes," the translation program responded.
"You believe me?" TJ blurted out. It wasn't part of the script Clint and Natasha scrawled onto his arms, but he couldn't help himself.
The Korean spoken by the emergency responder was faintly heard under the simulated, translated voice. "My brother was visiting New York in 2012. If you say a fight is going to happen, I am not taking any chances. I do not want my home destroyed like yours."
TJ would've laughed if Helen's eyes hadn't fallen shut. He put a hand on her cheek, took her pulse, then shook her gently. Her dark eyes opened again, but they were unfocused.
"Send your closest ambulance to my location," TJ said to the responder. "I-I have a woman with extensive...Christ, I don't know what it is, but it looks like she was burned with a laser, it's bleeding like a bullet wound, and it looks like she was hit by some sort of bio-agent too."
"Oh my God..." Bruce said from the computer system. TJ looked over and saw lines and lines of red code roll across the screen.
"Ultron," TJ breathed. Being the computer nerd he was, TJ felt like he was meeting the murderbot himself for the first time as his code was exposed. "Dr. Banner, what the hell was he trying to do?"
"These...These are memories," Bruce concluded vaguely.
"C-Cradle," Helen rasped weakly.
"What?" TJ asked; he was distracted. His usually laser-focus was split between Dr. Banner, Ultron's code, Helen, and the small computer.
"Ultron," Helen breathed tiredly. "He took the Cradle."
With wide, half-panicked eyes, TJ looked at Bruce, who had a similar expression. "An-Any idea why Ultron wound need vibranium and something that creates person parts?" TJ asked nervously.
Bruce, hearing a shrine outside, yanked the drive from the computer. "Not for anything good."
Ellie wasn't entirely sure how she ended up under a highway overpass in the middle of Seoul, but that's where she was.
The ropes that blunder her to the chair in the wear house had been against her bare skin. The rough weave cut the paper thin, raised scars on Ellie's wrists, making them bleed. She'd been so good about not using pain to access the vast power she held in, just below the surface.
As the Maximoff boy ran off, Ellie held her breath. 25 seconds of no oxygen burned her semi-asthmatic lungs. Black dots had begun to color her field of vision. When she exhaled on the final count, she'd never experienced anything like it; she'd lost control plenty of times before, killed dozens of people, but in all her memories, Ellie never lost control to the point of feeling good. Ellie didn't hold back; she chafed her wrists against each other and the remaining rope, opening up decades of old scars, and remembered all the different people that told her she was in control, not her mutation. The power she choked down every day built up as she held her breath. In a gasp-like exhale she let out, it all happened. The crater was formed in less than a second. The material that sat inside the crater was vaporized into nothing. The very atoms and cells that made up each particle of dust a tangible thing was destroyed; it no longer existed in any form.
Ellie sat in the dirt under the highway, hands gripping her head and knees tucked to her chest. She wasn't shaking, or tremor int like she had in the past after using her mutation. Ellie was still on the ground, her breathing even and slow.
About four miles away, Captain America as running. On the small watch screen on his wrist, a purple dot, remaining in the same place, blinked steadily, while a quickly moving red dot approached it. The red dot represented Steve running through the crowded streets, weaving through the vendors and people on his way to the purple dot; Ellie. As much as he wanted to put his shield up and barrel through the people, stands and buildings, he didn't. Natasha told him he couldn't, on Anna's orders. So, he was running at half-speed, or less even, towards the location the tracking software woven into the tactical cloths said she was.
Steve only ran into three cars as he wove through the small overpass. He stopped dead center on the overpass, frowning. According to the software, Ellie and Steve should've been right on top of one another. Captain America, ever the quick thinker, went to the side of the overpass. After throwing his shield onto his back, the Avenger grabbed the rail over the on rate ledge, and swung himself over the edge. The Captain landed easily on the dirt ground fifty or so feet below. After looking around briefly, he made a beeline for the curled up young woman in the shadow of the overpass.
"Hey...Hey Ells," Steve said softly, crouching down to examine her for injuries. There was some blood and dirt on her wrists and ankles; she'd been tied up. "Ellie? Ells, can you hear me?"
Ellie let out a shaky exhale, and Steve took that as her response. He reached for her shoulder with an open hand, thinking he was going to have to pry her arms and knees away from her chest to see if she was hurt, like on the helicarrier. Ellie's shoulder tensed under Steve's gloved hand. He squeezed gently, trying to get her to relax, his other hand took her wrist. Not wanting to hurt her, Steve barely pulled it, only it didn't do a damn thing. When he pulled a little harder, he realized he may as well be pulling a statue.
Captain America plopped down into the dirt next to Ellie, and took a moment to think. He considered just picking her up and carrying her to the quinjet, but a few weeks ago, she'd gotten this way during training. Thor picked her up to take her to her room, and Ellie let loose something that sent the god flying backwards and destroyed the training room.
Finally coming up with a possible way to calm Ellie down, Steve scooted closer to the curled up mutant. He put his arm around her still, small shoulders, tilting her towards his torso. Steve brought a hand to his earpiece and pressed a button on it; it blocked his voice from the others, but still allowed him to hear them.
He cleared his throat, and hesitated for a moment, wracking his brain to remember the beginning of the words to the song from a movie he saw a long time ago; even back during the war, it had been a long time since he'd seen the movie.
"Somewhere, over the rainbow
Way up high," Steve's voice was nothing special, but it was nice enough. "There's a land that I heard of once, in a lullaby."
Emilia had never been more happy to see cabbage.
She'd ran to a stand as fast as she could and slid to a stop behind the abandoned crates of, now ruined, cabbage crates. She grabbed at her head as she tried desperately to calm down.
She was no stranger to war; Emilia had been born into war, and developed her powers in one. The region in Eastern Europe Emilia called home was plagued with bloody battles that never seemed to end. But Ultron was different. He was a machine; blasts of electricity large enough to kill a human were batten away by metal hands. Nuclear energy could do damage, and while it was her favorite energy to manipulate, it drained Emilia more than kinetic or electric.
Fighting had been all she did for the better part of 40 years, in one form or another. She'd killed her fair share of men (and women); so much so, that by the late 1980s, Emilia was desperately clinging to her gypsy heritage so she wouldn't become a soldier, something she vowed never to be.
Gasping the medals around her neck, Emilia did something she hadn't done in a long time; since she was still at the orphanage in Romania and her brother was still with her.
Emilia prayed.
She bowed her head, clasped her hands like her dya taught her to as a child and prayed. Emilia prayed to whatever god was listening (she would accept one of the pagan one at this point) to spare her. Emilia begged to allow her soul to remain on Earth, but not for her own selfish reasons. Truth be told, Heaven sounded magnificent to her; anything that would return her to her family wasn't something she was taught to fear.
Emilia as begging for her life because she wanted to make Anna proud.
In recent years, Anna had expressed her disapproval for Emilia's lifestyle. After the orphanage closed in the spring of 1972, Emilia bounced around Europe and Southern Asia for a few years before settling with a fantastical nomadic group. Most were of Roma heritage like her, others were just people who didn't fit in with the rest of the world. Anna visited only once; she saw more than twenty people using all kinds of mutations, and at least eight people practicing what looked like witchcraft in the first hour. Drugs weren't common in the beautifully eccentric camps, but they weren't exactly shunned either; one in three people had either a bong made of hand-worked crystal or a punch of Magic Mushrooms. Emilia's hardened, uncaring persona was rattled by the disapproval, not that it showed.
The nomadic troupe, 'her people,' had been her family for more than twenty years, and some disapproval wasn't near enough to make her change anything. But, Anna had been Emilia's only family after her brother was killed; she loved Anna like a sister. It was clear Anna would be in Emilia's life until one of them died, so the gypsy girl wanted to do something to redeem herself in Anna's eyes.
What better way than trying to save the world? With the Avengers, no less.
At that moment, when a large piece of debris hit the vegetable stand, sending broken cabbages over Emilia, she only had one thought; Anything would be better than this.
Also in that moment, a blur of blue light whooshed past where Emilia was hiding, scooped her up and took her away.
"Hey!" She yelled once her feet were back on the ground. One hand gripped the shirt Pietro Maximoff wore, and the other was behind her back, ready for another fight. "What are you doing?"
"What Captain America told me to!" Pietro snapped back. His voice intrigued Emilia. It was worried, clearly, and there were equal elements of disdain and pride when he spoke of Steve.
Emilia narrowed her eyes. "Really? And what did the căpitan ask you to do?"
There was a flash of blue, and three seconds later, Pietro was back. "Get civilians out of the way, which you are keeping me from!"
"Get civilians out of the way from what?" Emilia yelled at him harshly.
As if on que, the people began to scream. Emilia could feel the energy; the kinetic energy pushing the train onward, the friction that came from the trackless ground, and the new, oddly inhuman energy that Wanda Maximoff specialized in.
"Take me there!" Emilia demanded suddenly.
Pietro dashed off to move more people, and was back in a time that impressed even Emilia, who was trying very hard to hate him. "You want to go on that derailed train?" Pietro yelled back at her.
Angry now, Emilia switched from her heavily accented English, to a passionate, driven Romania. Pietro had to speak it; the Sokovian dialect he spoke natively wasn't very common, and his file said he was assumed to speak Russian, when Romanian was more likely.
"Are you deaf?" Emilia shouted at him. Pietro was momentarily stunned by her sudden language change. "Yes! I want you to get me on that train!"
This time, along with her Romanian commands, Emilia boldly looped her arms around Pietro's neck and lifted her legs up. Obviously, Pietro caught her, and rolled his eyes as he ran.
In half a second flat, Pietro dropped Emilia's feet on the unsteady floor of the train. "Do not make me regret this, tiganui' dracului!"
Emilia rolled her eyes at the Romanian derogatory slung at her.
"You will only regret it if you die, meeshe!" She shot back, using a slur from her own native language. Her brother taught it to her when his leg was in a particular amount of pain.
When the Maximoff boy was gone, Emilia quickly went to Wanda, who looked at her with wide, threatening red eyes.
I am here to help, Emilia thought, remembering the Maximoff girl's ability to read minds. Her eyes remained red, but they were no longer threatening. The energy from the moving train was something Emilia could've handled on her own, but turning kinetic energy into electrical, or heat energy in the middle of a big city wasn't something Emilia was comfortable with.
Open your mind and hold out your hand, Emilia asked Wanda. Slowly, Wanda's left hand turned its palm towards her. Emilia grabbed it and closed her eyes.
She could feel it.
Emilia could feel the energy of the train being absorbed through her skin; every pore took in excited atoms and pulled them into her chest. It tickled and burned; transforming energy, that is. It filled her lungs with a soft crackle on every inhale, and the mumble of human energy left on the exhale, flying down her right arm, out her fingertips and into Wanda.
It gave the Maximoff girl quite a start when she felt Emilia's energy in her own body. There was a brief, intense connection of their minds, and the animosity between the two girls was gone instantly.
They both desperately wanted the same thing; their family back, alive, even for just one more dinner.
After that, they truly began to work together. It was only a matter of seconds before they stopped the train, only yards away from a building Pietro didn't have a prayer of clearing yet.
The two dark haired women, both breathing heavily, turned to look at each other.
"Hi," Emilia said with a tired, wry smile. "I-I don't think we've met yet."
Wanda let out a soft chuckle. "No...I don't think we have."
"Emilia Dalca," the gypsy girl said, holding out her hand. The material of her chiffon over shirt was blackened and seared from the copious amount of energy that had been taken in and expelled by her hands.
"Wanda Maximoff," the other girl said in her equally heavy accent. They shook hands, a symbolic truce forming between the two, and just stared at one another for a moment.
"So, Wanda," Emilia said, cracking a mischievous smirk. "Have you ever had a real gypsy with the gift read your tarot cards?"
Here's a little sneak peak for you... ;)
"Why?" James asked, only half aware he spoke out loud.
"Why what?" Anna asked, taking a drink from the milk bottle next to her.
"Why did Bucky love you?" He barely breathed the words out; it was a miracle Anna heard him at all. James knew she heard him by the half-gargled sound she let out. Anna choked on her milk.
Anna coughed twice, set the bottle down, and cleared her throat once before she spoke. "Wh-What?"
_-~0O0~-_
"I-I don't know," Anan whispered a moment later.
"You don't know what?" James asked softly. "You-You don't know why you're helping me? Why you care?"
She shook her head, making her wavy hair fall over her huddled form. It upset James to see Anna this way. He liked it when she was strong and bold. Sure, it made him worry about her sometimes, but but it was better than seeing Anna all small and helpless looking.
"What don't you know, Glow?" James whispered to her.
He called her Glow.
When the pet-name that she held so close to her heart was spoken, Anna choked and half-sobbed out her answer. "Wh-Why Buc-Bucky l-loved me!"