A/N: I risk making people hate me with this chapter, but oh well! Anyway, song I'd recommend for this chapter is Tom Odell- Another Love but the SLOWED version as it feels like it really ticks the box for about the last three-thousand words of this chapter
"I wanna sing a song, that'd be just ours
But I sang 'em all to another heart
And I wanna cry, I wanna fall in love
But all my tears have been used up
On another love"
The elevator didn't go all the way up to the top of the building, and Adara flexed her fingers as she was taken further and further up the building. Ignoring her injuries wasn't easy, her ribs were aching badly, her vomiting earlier hadn't helped either. Even worse, though, was her pounding headache. She just wanted to slump over and sleep, the combination of being drugged and a likely concussion was completely messing with her senses, her ability to see straight, to hear what was going on around her. So, she forced herself to remain upright by pacing up and down the elevator to keep her blood pumping and body moving.
As she approached the top floor, she prepared herself with a deep breath, pulling the two knives from her belt. There was likely security up there, Beck wouldn't be left unguarded. But she didn't want to kill anyone else, just disable them. Avoiding attention would be key, if Beck figured out her location she would be facing his drones, and they were harder to defeat than he was. He was just a man.
"And you're just a girl," said Luka.
Why was it now that ghosts had decided to haunt her?
"Ghosts aren't real," supplied Tony.
Unhelpful, she responded.
The elevator doors opened and Adara raised her weapons, only to be met with an empty corridor. With caution, she stepped out, listening closely but hearing nothing. The elevator doors closed neatly shut behind her as she slowly made her way down the corridor to the stairway which would lead her directly to the door to the roof.
A bang! A flash!
Adara threw herself to the floor, fearing a bomb had just gone off. But, after a few seconds, nothing happened. Cursing her own paranoia, she got to her feet and spotted the window, covered in rain drops but currently clouded by green smoke. Approaching it with held breath, she watched as Mysterio and Spiderman engaged in battle, the drones causing real damage to the buildings around them (noticeably, Oscorp tower went unharmed, that was probably Norman's doing), but it seemed to clearly paint Spiderman as the villain.
It's not real, she reminded herself, even if it looks to be.
She turned away from the illusion and headed back to the door to the stairwell.
She opened the door a little.
"What was that?" Said a man further up the stairwell.
"I'll check it out," said another.
Two men. Good. She could with that.
She allowed the door to close and pressed her back against the wall and waited for it to reopen.
When it did, she moved quickly and silently, wrapping her arm around the man's throat and covering his mouth with her hand. He saw nothing but a flash of blue hair, and then he was being pinned completely, helpless when any movement risked his neck being snapped. Not that Adara would do that, but the threat of it was vital to make her job easier. He attempted to reach for his walkie talkie, but Adara managed to lift her leg to kick it from his belt.
"Shhh," she whispered as his body grew limp.
Not dead, but he wouldn't wake up for a while.
She fiddled with the band on her wrist and suddenly her Bluebell suit changed to that of a security guard outfit, and her body was now a carbon copy of his. Stretching, she picked up the walkie talkie and entered the stairwell, walking up.
"All clear," she said with a shrug, "must've just been the building shaking from the battle outside."
"Tell me about it," the other guard scoffed, "he's going to risk damaging the building if he's not careful. And then we'll be stuck here longer then necessary."
Adara shook her head in mock annoyance, "you know what, I'm gonna ask the fella outside and see if he knows when we can be done with this."
"That would be helpful," remarked the guard, stepping out of the way of the door.
She had to fight back the smirk as she walked past him, swiping up his walkie talkie as she went past, shutting the door behind her and locking it with a click. Reassured, that the other guard couldn't bother her anymore (trapped inside without any way of communicating), she turned to the situation at hand.
Despite the way the rain lashed at her, the haze caused by the weather granted her an easy cover to use to sneak around in. the wind was buffeted by the high ledges that surrounded the roof, probably for health and safety reasons. Except, and she made sure to carefully notice the weakness, there was one point which wasn't blocked off, which was just a straight drop down.
It would be a very long fall, she had to make sure to be careful.
Squinting through the rain, she shifted back into the Bluebell, the form draining less energy than that off the security guard, and her chameleon-particle suit shifted back with her. Part of her was cursing herself for leaving the gun down the stairs, part of her was glad to be rid of it, her knives were a much more comforting presence. Blinking droplets of water from her eyelashes, she spotted the silhouettes of two men milling around, wearing security uniform and carrying rifles.
A scan of the sky told her there were no drones currently buzzing around her head, but the Engine wasn't too far away.
She crept forward, using vents that stuck out from the building as cover as she approached one of them. As she got closer, she could see the Engine, where Beck was dressed in the CGI suit, directing someone on the Engine in between his speeches about how he was the true hero. Neither of them were paying the guards around them much mind, but Adara knew her priority would be taking out the Engine and then the drones. A plan began to form in her mind.
She moved around one of the vents and picked up a stray stone, tossing it across the ground very lightly. The closest security guard heard, head turning in confusion. Either he thought he had imagined it, or suspected it was the wind but began walking towards it anyway. Better safe than sorry, was probably his mindset.
He was then standing in front of her, but back facing her, looking at where the stone had been tossed, pondering over the noise.
"The brachial plexus," reminded Natasha, "back of the neck."
I know what I'm doing, she retorted, granted having ghosts (or was it just her own consciousness?) helping her out was pretty useful. And also a surefire sign that the chloroform was really damaging her system.
She darted forward, a quick as a flash and struck him in the back of the neck. The man was paralysed for a few seconds and collapsed to the ground. Adara made sure his body hitting the floor didn't make a noise as she lowered him gently and then pressed her knee down on the middle of his back.
She snapped his walkie talkie and took his rifle and handgun away from him. They were too noisy for her to use.
It wasn't enough to knock him out for long, and he quickly began stirring, but the knife to his shoulder blade kept him quiet.
"I'm going to kill everyone on this roof," she said, her voice a low whisper, just loud enough for him to hear over the rain. "And you can join them, or you can leave now."
He considered his options and nodded. She checked his hand, wedding ring. Good man, he was married, and while her threat wasn't honest, he probably didn't want to risk that.
"Good," she said, "now, go through the door that's the exit to the roof. You'll find another guard there. Tell him you've been let off early, and so has he. When you encounter the unconscious man in the corridor, take him down with you. He's fine, just hurt. If you breathe a word about this to anyone, you're deader than dead. Understand?"
He nodded.
"Say it," she hissed, increasing pressure on his spine.
"I understand."
With a moment of hesitance, she rolled off of him and watched him stand up. The two shared eye contact for a while, he looked distinctly frightened, and she looked distinctly frightening. He made the wisest move, unarmed and unable to contact anyone, and left. She hoped he would heed her instructions.
One more guard to deal with. She didn't waste time, darting forward under the cover of the rain, and shooting his foot. He didn't have time to yell out in shock as a hand locked around his mouth, silencing him. He looked into fiery green eyes as he was lowered to the ground, a phantom with blue hair in the rain. She put her fingers on her lips, silencing him.
She removed her hand from his mouth slowly, and he moved to shout.
Adara was quicker, smashing his head onto the concrete floor, knocking him out. More brutal than she had intended, but effective all the same. He would live. She dragged his body from view and went back to ducking behind the vent.
Neither the man working at the Engine nor Beck were paying much attention to their surroundings. The first was engaged deeply in the control board, and the second. was pacing in circles.
Circles… The thought occurred to her. At one point, his back would always be to the other man.
She waited until Beck's back was turned and then darted out. The other man didn't see her until it was too late, and she had smashed his head into the control pad, knocking him out and sending him slumping to the floor. Beck might not have heard, had the man's forehead not hit a few of his buttons.
"You, Spiderman, are the real villain— Hey, hey, William, what the hell are—"
He spluttered and hesitated when he saw Adara standing over the engine, leaning against it.
"How do I turn it off?" She asked.
"You son of a bitch," he laughed, "do you really think—"
"You have the Engine, you control the drones," she said, "granted, I don't know how to use it, you do. But you can't get to it, not while I have these—" she held up her knives. "I want to destroy the drones, how do I do that?"
"There's no way," he said, "how did you get past O'Leary?"
"He made a poor choice of words," she said, "just as you've made a poor choice in friends."
He scoffed, "you really think you can stop this?"
"I already have," she began walking towards him, and he obviously thought better. "The Engine isn't as good as EDITH, is it? It's a hassle to transport, more difficult to control than just with voice controls. You can do all the talking as Mysterio, but you can't control the drones unless you use the Engine. And now the Engine's in my hands, so either tell me how to destroy the drones or I'll figure it out myself."
He looked at her.
"Go to hell."
She laughed, "I'll see you there then, I guess."
Beck was just a man, and he was not trained in combat, unlike her. Without his drones, he was nothing. She knocked out his feet from underneath him, causing the glass bowl on his head to smash upon impact with the ground. She kicked it off his head before simply pressing her foot against his throat, seeking out exactly where his windpipe and forcing a little bit of pressure.
She didn't want to break his neck, but she did cut off his airways.
His face went pale for a second as he struggled for breath, and Adara increased the pressure slightly. He thrashed, but hitting his head had dazed him, his movements were sluggish and she managed to overpower him. Eventually, he fell unconscious.
"Just a man," she muttered to herself.
There was a crackle in the earpiece, Ned's voice, "illusion… Ended… Drones… What's… Happening… Adara…?"
She was too high up, too far away from him.
In a brief tone, she simply said, "I can destroy the Engine."
More crackling and she repeated what she said.
"Can anyone hear me? I can destroy it?"
And then, from Ned, "do it."
She walked over to the Engine, undeterred by all of its buttons. Where were the drones now? What were they doing? She couldn't see any button that would indicate a 'self-destruct,' and wouldn't it be dangerous to blow them all up with a crowd so close.
The rain was soaking through her suit now, pouring down on her hair, causing it to stick to her forehead.
"Make them go up," said Tony's voice.
It was hardly scientific. If Tony was really there, he would've told her exactly what button to press, how to destroy the machine and would've bragged about how EDITH was much better than this piece of junk. But he didn't say any of that because he was limited by her own knowledge, he was a voice in her head. Her mind was shattering, overwhelmed by the drug in her system and the amount of times she had banged it off of something.
Her hands were trembling as the adrenaline of the fight flooded out of her. She was so close to ending it.
So she followed her own mind's instructions. Make them go up.
She pressed the button with an arrow on them and looked around as seemingly a million drones rose up to the sky, nothing but grey blurs in the rain. They weren't destroying anything, they weren't moving, they stopped just above Oscorp tower, awaiting orders that would never come.
Adara picked up the rifle dropped by the security guards and pointed it at the Engine, and began shooting.
Bullets ripped through the metal, but she didn't stop until one bullet must've struck something vital and there was boom followed by a wave that sent her flying backwards.
Her back hit the ledge surrounding the building, but she remained conscious, her vision fading slightly around the edges as the rain grew harder but it couldn't put out the beautiful ripple of explosions that started from the Engine and then every drone in the sky followed suit.
In an display of fire, smoke, rain and sparks, every single one of the drones self-destructed, bits of metal burning up into the sky or dissipating to particles like dust, falling back to earth, buffeted by the wind. The grey sky became alight with a symphony of explosions, and Adara couldn't help the drowsy grin that spread across her face as she watched it, not caring that these things were blowing up only a few feet above her head.
She had done it.
"I did it," she breathed and closed her eyes, letting the rain and the smell of smoke wash over her, dust settling in her blue hair. "It's done."
Beck was down, to be arrested once more, his illusions destroyed forever. O'Leary was down and there was no doubt in her mind that Peter had handled Osborn.
It was over for her. She was going to follow Steve's steps, she reckoned, and take a very early retirement. She was going to go to hospital and let her wounds heal naturally, take a month off school, maybe travel the world, visit her parents grave.
"Adara?" Came a voice.
Relief flooded through her. She felt sick, but ignored it, the concussion was really beginning to take it out of her now, and she just wanted to vomit. But at the same time, the elated feeling drowned it out with the sound of that voice. A real voice.
"Steve," she said, stumbling towards where he was.
He could make out his shape in the mist of rain and smoke and her smile grew wider as she fell into a hug.
She still felt sick.
No.
She felt so, so sick.
The realisation hit her too late, as she looked up and saw Steve's face morph and shimmer into O'Leary's. Battered and bruised, but O'Leary.
At the same time, a knife pierced her gut and she let out a sob of pain, gritting her teeth suddenly as she felt the blade enter her body.
Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Should have just killed him. Idiot. Shouldn't have ignored the feeling in her stomach. Idiot. Should have wondered how Steve had gotten into the building when it was on lockdown. Idiot. Should have. Should have. Should have. Idiot.
"Sorry, Adara," came O'Leary's accent as she stared hopelessly up at him. "But you're just in the way."
He had a grip on her head as he drove the knife in further and then twisted it. Adara cried and gasped as she experienced another kind of pain, an impossible kind of pain that drowned out any other kind of pain she felt. She couldn't move, she couldn't breathe, she felt sick. Her body failed her, not moving, frozen in shock probably.
"Please," she croaked out.
The way he suddenly pulled out the knife was a new kind of pain as well, it was all new, she had never felt so much pain before. He pushed her back but kept a grip of her, moving her somewhere that she couldn't fight against as her head pounded.
And then she felt the wind whip around her. Edge of the building, a long way down.
Violence and death is drawn to you like moths to a light. Beck's words rang true, and now that death had finally caught up with her.
"I won," she whispered, "I had won."
"I know," his voice was cold, indifferent. He had killed so many people, so many times. She was just one more annoyance to get rid of. How humiliating. "I know you won, good job."
When the knife entered her gut the second time, she absently realised that this was it. Her throat could produce no more that a lousy whimper as he let go of her head, and it flopped uselessly against his shoulder.
He patted her head as he twisted the knife again, her body twitching in response.
"You beat me, you beat Beck, you beat Osborn," he said. "But you didn't kill me, you really should have. I've got a meeting tonight, and I don't want to be delayed by this."
Unfair. It was so unfair. She had won. She had blown up every drone, she had knocked out Beck, she had knocked out O'Leary, she had helped stop Thanos, she had outlived her father, she took down the Vulture, she had survived Ultron, she had survived Hydra.
She— She— was going to die. She didn't want to die.
How pathetic, remarked a voice that should've been Luka's, but it was her own voice.
Within her, she looked up at O'Leary, looking into his brown eyes that glittered like gold, triumphant. She was aware of an abyss behind her, the wind whipped at them furiously, but O'Leary's grip on her was the only thing keeping her from falling down to the ground below. So many stories. At least it would kill her instantly, that way this suffering could stop.
And if the last eyes she would have to look into were his, she should at least think of something clever.
But then he looked away at something else.
All she could muster within herself was a single, whispered, "merde."
And then he pulled the knife out of her a second time and let go.
Peter raced to the building faster than any person should have been able to when he had seen the drones rise and then explode midair. It meant that they had won, the illusion was down and Beck was defeated, Adara had done it.
But there was this knot of dread in his stomach as he landed on the rooftop and couldn't see her.
"Adara?" He called out and began walking along the roof towards where the door was.
And then his heart dropped.
O'Leary was standing at the edge of the building, gripping a slumped figure with one hand, the other hand holding a knife that had been driven into his victim's stomach.
"No," he shouted and began to run forward.
O'Leary glanced back at him, and smirked before suddenly yanking the knife out of Adara's body and letting her go with a flourish of his hand.
Peter didn't even look at him as he dived off the building, throwing himself off and willing himself to fall faster. Wind rushed past his ears, but he didn't hear it, he didn't feel himself falling, only the desperation in his mind as his fingertips brushed Adara's arm. Close… Closer.
And then he managed to grip her. He quickly pulled her close to him, using one arm underneath her shoulders to support her weight as he used his free hand to shoot out a web to catch them before they hit the floor.
It stuck to a building, one of them, he didn't care, it was all he needed to slow their momentum, enough so he could drop lower, and then fall gently, releasing the web and using his other arm to pick up the rest of Adara's limp body as he landed in the middle of a street. He didn't mind any of what was around him as he lowered her to the ground, propping her head up on her knees as he looked at her, helpless.
"Adara," his voice broke as he said her name. "Dara?"
Her eyes were still open, but the warmth behind them was quickly fading as her gaze flickered to him, confused before she held up her hand. Two fingers.
Twice. Stabbed twice.
Peter forced himself to look at her stomach. Her suit had been pierced, and was now soaked in rain but mainly blood. Stabbed twice, two words that rang clearly in his mind. As he reached for her stomach, desperate to stop the bleeding but the moment he placed pressure on the wound, she winced.
"No," she gasped, "no, please, no."
"I have to— to stop the bleeding," he said, blinded by his own tears. "I have to stop it."
"No," she shook her head, reaching for his hand that was on his stomach and pulling it away. "No, it hurts."
"Dara, we have to—"
"Hurts," was her weak reply. "Ça fait tellement mal. It hurts."
"Please," he gripped her hand, "please don't go, Dara, please don't go. I love you, I can't lose you. Keep your eyes open."
"It hurts, Pete," she broke off to sob, but that seemed to only cause her more pain. "I never— not even— it hurts so much."
"Don't fade away," he begged, "just stay here, with me."
His voice was so quiet, so far away. Adara couldn't even really hear him anymore, or see him. She could feel his hand gripping hers. Her eyes drifted from his face to the sky, blinking as rain droplets hit her face. They were cold against her skin which was uncomfortably, feverishly hot, she let out a soft sight and continued letting her eyes drift to the people that had gathered around her.
Why had they gathered? Oh, she realised. Press. Hadn't someone mentioned something about reporters earlier? They'd see Peter without his mask on! Except they already had… And now they were seeing her without her Bluebell form. Maybe they would think she was someone else, except she was wearing the Bluebell suit, and Spiderman was crouched over her.
Two people were pushing their way to the front of the crowd, some kind soul was holding people back from crowding them, but they were trying to hold those two people back.
"That's my friend," cried MJ, "that's Adara! Let go of me!"
Ned stood frozen beside her, hands clamped over his mouth, disbelieving, horrified.
"Don't fade away," begged Peter.
She wanted to. She had never been in so much pain anymore, it was excruciating, not even the collapsed building had hurt this much, or being shot. She had been stabbed in the stomach but she felt it in her throat, like blood was clogged up there. Her heart was pumping so fast that it rattled her already-bruised rib cage and her stomach just felt so strange. It was agony.
And it was her fault, she was tricked. O'Leary had fooled her.
Don't fade away.
She wanted to, she wanted to so badly. But Peter's grip on her hand kept her stable, present.
"Someone call an ambulance!" Yelled someone in the crowd. "Why hasn't anyone called an ambulance?"
Ambulance, hospital.
She wouldn't make it on time.
"If you want to kill someone," said Luka to her, when she had only been eight. "There's two good methods. If you want to stay quiet, then slit the throat. It's the easiest, quickest and quietest. Good for stealth missions. If you want to be more head on, then straight through the heart should be good enough. Now, while the head is also a quick way to kill someone when you have a gun, its often impractical with a knife."
"If you want someone to suffer, maybe torture them for infomration, then cutting off extremities is the mos effective way. Fingers, toes, if your feeling risky, maybe a hand, but you may accidentally kill them that way. But we're not talking torture, we're talking death. If you want someone to die in agony then stab then in the stomach. It hurts like hell there, but it won't kill them quickly."
"There's a lot of vital organs down there, getting the knife in there a few times is a sure fire way to be sure you've killed them, but also that they'll bleed out first. They'll die in more pain than you could imagine."
He was right, Adara had never felt so much pain. O'Leary had wanted her to suffer, as punishment. And the whole world was watching now.
Don't fade away.
Someone new was beside her, and she regained her senses slightly and looked up. Two taller figures. Bucky. Sam.
And a blonde man. Steve. The real one, she was sure of it as his eyes were a clear blue colour, alight with worry, but he gestured for Bucky to pull Peter away, he was uncontrollable in his sobbing now, barely fighting back as he looked at Peter.
Adara was a little relieved when it was Steve who took her hand, more gently, and held her head carefully. He was calm, he wasn't panicked.
"Where does it hurt?" He asked softly.
"Everywhere," she sobbed again.
"How badly? Give me a scale, one to ten."
"Hundred," she said. "Thousand. He stabbed me twice and twisted. It's unfair, I won, I beat him. I saved the day, I won."
"I know," he said. His voice was so soft, so controlled, so calm. "I know. But you'll be okay."
"I'm going to die," she whispered to him. "I can feel it."
"You'll be okay," he said and brushed her hair out of her face. He hadn't denied her statement. "You'll be okay."
"I don't want to die," she said, her tears were blinding, stinging her. "Not like this. I never lived, Steve, I want to live."
"You've always lived, Adara," he said, "do you remember the house? Me, you and Natasha?"
She swallowed and nodded, dimly aware of more blood pooling out around her, mixing with rainwater.
"Do you remember that one time you and Natasha nearly blew up the kitchen?"
"We were making pasta," she said, "we somehow set it on fire. You were out on a mission, you were so angry when you got back, but we just thought it was funny. Natasha made us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I thought they were gross."
"You two were horrible cooks," he said, flicker of a smile appearing on his face.
"You were better," she said, "and then you tried to experiment—" she coughed and it sent pain straight through her body, and she whimpered again.
"Do you remember the day you woke up from your coma?" Steve asked.
"I didn't believe you were actually there," she said, "I thought I was dreaming you. I fell but you caught me. You had a stupid beard, and Natasha had dyed her hair." Adara smiled a little, "I asked if the whole family was going blonde. Blonde was never my colour."
"I think you'd look alright."
"No…" She said, "no, I'd look terrible."
He had done this before, a part of her mind realised. Steve had fought in World War two, maybe not the frontlines but he had fought enough battles that he had likely found a comrade like this before. Injured, dying, and he had softly talked to them as they slipped away into the darkness. It was peaceful, he wasn't crying, he was calm, it made her feel calm. But she wanted the pain to stop, she wanted it to go away.
"You can go to sleep, Adara," Steve's voice was barely a whisper. "I know it hurts, I don't want you to hurt anymore. You can go to sleep."
"My dreams," she said, already feeling herself fade away, "I have such strange dreams."
"Then don't dream."
"I always dream."
Except this time, she wouldn't.
Her eyes were on the sky and then on the crowd. She looked past Sam, and MJ, and Ned, and Peter and Bucky to someone else. A woman with bright red hair.
Natasha.
And that was the last thought that went through her mind as she slipped into a deep, deep darkness.
From the top of Oscorp tower, O'Leary couldn't make out much except the mob of people that were gathered down there. The boy had saved Adara before she could meet an unflattering end, splattered on the floor after an eighty-foot-drop. But she would still die.
Maybe two stabs in the stomach wouldn't kill her straight away. No, she would suffer first. But he had dug in the knife and twisted it, he doubted many of her vital organs were functioning after that. Adara would die, just as Adelaide did, just as Gregory did, at his hand. Sure, O'Leary had never killed Luka, not that he hadn't wanted to, but he supposed it was fitting that Hydra had killed that man in the end.
Was it fitting that Adara had died because of him? No, probably not, it was a death that lacked any kind of death beyond the superficial. How disappointing.
What would've been a fitting end for her then?
Truthfully, O'Leary didn't care that much. He checked his watch and sighed, he was already going to be late for his meeting, and he still had to make time to change into a clean suit.
No time to think or mourn, he was done being O'Leary, now that there was no other shapeshifter left alive. He could fade back into obscurity, the allusive Faceless Man. A myth, rather than something real. Those who wanted revenge could hunt him, but they would find nothing except Kieran O'Leary, who had been declared dead years ago.
He didn't even spare the unconscious Beck a glance as he headed back downstairs and out of the tower, dusting his hands and wondering what he would do for dinner tonight.
A/N: Told you.
