a/n: shoutout to whoever has journeyed back to this silly little fic with me, five years later. y'all are the real ones! so nice to see some familiar names again :)
"Alright, guys, come on, we gotta go."
Natasha looks over their small team as they pile into the quinjet. Steve brings up the rear with a nervous glance her way. She closes the door after him.
Thanos' impending invasion has really rattled the group, with very little words exchanged among them since the news broke. Tony, Strange, and Peter's sudden trip to space hit them even harder—knowing some of their own are currently, and will indefinitely be, unaccounted for.
And then there's the Vision issue.
As Natasha settles into the co-pilot chairs with Clint to prep for takeoff, she overhears Wanda release a shaky breath.
"He wants the Stones," Vision murmurs.
"He can't take it," Wanda says. "We won't let him."
"Wanda…"
"We'll figure it out, Vision," Steve cuts in. "We always do."
"Taking off," Clint announces, ending the exchange.
He pulls them up off the ground, and soon they're speeding away from the European S.H.I.E.L.D. base. Silence fills the quinjet for the first minute or two.
Finally, Clint turns to Natasha. "Maggie okay?"
"As okay as you'd expect." Natasha shakes her head. "Of course this is all happening during her birthweek."
"Oh, it's a whole week now?" Clint snorts.
"Only by her royal decree." Natasha pulls out her phone. "I should probably call to let her know we're in the air."
"Wait, guys." Sam moves to stand between Clint and Natasha's chairs. He points out the window. "What's that?"
Following his finger, sure enough, Natasha sees a strange, dark object flying through the sky.
Flying through the sky toward them.
"Clint—"
As Natasha speaks, Clint forces the quinjet into a nosedive, just in time to dodge the mysterious object…though, as it'd gotten closer, Natasha realized it looked very similar the aliens from the news coverage of Manhattan today.
"Hold onto something!" Clint yells as he swerves hard toward the right, dodging the alien once more.
Sam, gripping to Natasha's seat for dear life, manages to lift his hand long enough to point out the window again. "I think we got another one!"
While the original alien comes at them again from the left, a new one comes at them from the right. Clint swears under his breath as they dive again.
"They're here for me!" Vision yells.
Natasha looks to the back of the quinjet at Vision's words. Vision appears as calm as ever, despite Wanda's wide eyes and death grip on his arm. Steve meets Natasha's eyes.
"Nat, we need to take this fight to the ground!" he says. "We can't win up here."
She nods. "Clint—"
"On it!"
As Clint focuses on their flight maneuvers, Sam straightens up. "I can distract them in the air."
"Sam—"
Before Natasha can stop him, Sam's pulling himself along the wall toward the back of the quinjet. He quickly pulls his Falcon pack on and manages to reach the exit. He slams the release button on the door and activates his wings simultaneously, before jumping out of the quinjet and taking flight.
One of the aliens tries to force their way in through the sudden opening, but Wanda blocks them with a quick wall of magic. Natasha takes the chance to close the quinjet door with the button on her control panel.
"Prepare for a shitty landing!" Clint announces.
Natasha turns her attention back to the sight in front of her, and the ground is approaching really fucking fast—
"Clint!" she yells as they slam into an open field.
They skid across the grass for what feels like hours, finally coming to a stop just before a thick tree line.
Natasha takes quick stock of herself, and, thanks to seatbelt technology, is completely unharmed. (Though, if they make it out of this long enough for her to feel the whiplash later on, she'll definitely kill Clint then.)
"Anybody hurt?" Clint asks.
"Miraculously, no," comes Wanda's dry response.
Steve's the first to recover, freeing himself from his seatbelt with ease. He moves to help Wanda and Vision while Natasha unbuckles herself.
Within seconds, everyone's free and rushing to the door. Though no one was seriously injured from their mission earlier, Natasha knows they're not exactly in tip top shape. Wanda in particular, because she carried most of the mission herself, using a hefty amount of her magic.
Natasha hangs back for a moment, typing a quick message into her phone, before joining the group.
"Vis, you need to stay here," Wanda says, trying to nudge Vision back. "We can't let them take you."
"I'm not leaving you to fight on your own," he says.
Natasha slams the release button for the door before they can settle their disagreement.
"The sooner we take care of them, the better," Clint says.
"And Sam needs backup," Natasha adds.
They rush out into the field. Above them, Sam shoots at the aliens, but their armor repels the bullets. One of them swings their staff out at him, just barely missing him.
"Sam! Come down!" Steve yells into the comms.
Unfortunately, at the same time Sam notices them, the aliens do as well—specifically, they notice Vision and the Mind Stone. The aliens rush down toward them.
Clint starts firing arrows at them, but they dodge them all with ease.
Natasha finally gets a good look at them as they near the ground. One has blue hair and the other wears a thick black armor. They stop in front of their group once they land.
Sam lands next to Clint. Steve steps to the front of their group.
"Why are you here?" he asks.
"We are here for the Mind Stone," the blue-haired one says, pointing her staff toward Vision. Wanda quickly places herself in front of him. "Hand it over and we will leave you in peace."
"What do you need it for?"
"Thanos," the one with the armor grumbles, bearing his own staff.
"We're not giving it to you or to anyone," Wanda says, eyes and hands glowing bright red. "Leave."
"We're leaving with it either way," the blue-haired one says.
She suddenly waves her staff, sending a burst of energy out at their group and knocking everyone back onto the ground. Natasha gathers herself just in time to notice Vision rolling a few feet away from Wanda, giving the armored alien a chance to pounce on him.
Holding Vision down with his foot, the alien jams his staff into Vision's forehead, trying to pry the Mind Stone out of him. Vision's entire body pulses with the yellow shade of the Mind Stone as he cries out in pain.
Sam's back in the air quickly, flying into the armored alien and kicking him away. Wanda half-crawls, half-runs to Vision's side quickly. Natasha's back on her feet just in time to see Clint shoot at the blue-haired alien again, but she blasts him back several yards with her staff.
Steve charges her next, meeting her staff with the shield. It's an even match of strength, which scares Natasha.
But Steve can take care of himself. She rushes toward Wanda and Vision as the armored alien recovers. Wanda tries to stop him with her magic, but the alien Steve's fighting manages to get a shot with her staff in, sending Wanda sailing through the air a good few yards like Clint.
Before Natasha can reach him, Vision manages to stand and tries to blast the alien with a beam of energy from the Mind Stone. His staff, however, redirects the beam back toward Vision. Natasha just barely manages to roll out of the way of the energy beam in time, seeing the grass she stood on just moments ago completely singed. The beam slams into Vision, knocking him back.
While he's dazed, the alien stabs Vision through the torso with his staff. Usually, Vision can phase through solid objects, but this staff makes actual contact. Natasha finally reaches them and launches herself at the alien with her batons, batting back his staff. Sam shoots at the alien again from above, managing to pierce the skin on his face.
While the alien is momentarily distracted, Natasha locks eyes with Wanda several feet away, and then gestures to Vision.
"Take him and get out of here!" she yells.
Natasha knows that, normally, Wanda hates splitting up and leaving teammates behind—but with Vision at risk, she doesn't need to be told twice. With a flick of her wrist, the red magic surrounds Vision's body and pulls him toward her quickly. Wanda then blasts herself up into the air above the tree line and carries Vision behind her, heading into the forest.
Sam suddenly grunts in pain behind Natasha, bringing her attention back to the armored alien, who's pulled Sam down to the ground by his wing. She rushes at the alien with her batons.
Unfortunately, Wanda's sudden burst of energy doesn't last very long, and she feels herself slipping mid-air. She manages to redirect Vision and herself to fall toward the first clearing she sees, but it's a rough landing. She initially lands on her feet, but the momentum sends her body rolling. She stops and steadies herself just in time to catch a quickly falling Vision with her magic, just a millisecond before he would hit the ground.
She's already panting, but she knows she needs to keep going. Though she can't see the field anymore, she can still hear the fight. She takes off running deeper into the forest, carrying Vision with her magic behind her.
Within minutes, her lungs are just about ready to burst, and she can feel her magic carrying Vision start to slip. Distracted, she ends up tripping over a root and falling squarely on her face.
She takes a moment to lie on the forest floor and listen to the wheeze of her lungs. Dead leaves stick to her sweat-soaked skin and she can feel the pain from the bruises and cuts on her legs start to set in. Fortunately, she can't hear the Avengers fighting anymore, so she's put a good distance between them and herself. She rises to her feet, looking at Vision behind her.
He starts to stir. She drops to her knees beside him, helping him sit up.
"Vis, come on. Stand up."
He nods, wordless, and lets her pull him up to a standing position. He leans heavily on her.
"We have to keep going," she says.
"The blade," he says. She looks down at his torso, only to find his stab would still hasn't healed. "It stopped me from phasing."
She can't help the look of panic she gives him. "Is that even possible?"
"It isn't supposed to be."
They take no more than five steps forward before Vision collapses. She manages to keep him sitting upright, but he's panting, his body pulsing with the same yellow light as before, as if he's glitching.
"Wanda," he says, voice distorting like a dying machine. "My systems are failing."
She starts mending his stab wound herself with her magic. She keeps her fingers as steady and on-task as she can, but her own depleted power and exhaustion causes them to shake.
"We're getting out of this," she says, firm.
In the field, things aren't going much better.
Natasha's sent flying through the air for what feels like the millionth time at this point. A sharp pain sparks through her head as she slams into the ground again.
Sam's completely grounded and limited to hand-to-hand combat now, which isn't working well. She gets up just in time to watch him get sent back flying from the blue-haired alien's staff. Clint's already down, lying unconscious a few feet away.
Natasha rushes to help Steve fight the blue-haired alien, ignoring the stabbing pain in the back of her head. Just as she reaches them, the blue-haired alien signals to the armored alien to go after Wanda and Vision in the woods.
"No!" Natasha tries to stop him with her batons, but he knocks her back easily, slicing her arm open with his staff and pushing past her.
Steve falls back again as the blue-haired alien points her staff at his chest.
"It's over," she says.
Suddenly, an arrow hits the alien's hand (Natasha glances over just long enough to see Clint has recovered), causing her grip on the staff to loosen enough for Steve to wrangle it from her. He quickly tosses it to Natasha, who moves quickly, closing the distance between them and stabbing the alien through the torso.
The alien collapses, breathing heavily. Natasha has no idea how alien anatomy works, so this may be far from lethal—but it's a start.
Natasha comes to stand beside Steve over the alien. Sam and Clint join them within a few seconds, the whole group panting heavily.
"Call off your friend," Steve says.
The blue-haired alien stares at them, then shoots into the sky toward the forest before they can stop her.
Wanda's mended Vision's wound as much as she can when she suddenly hears heavy footsteps.
"He's coming," she hisses, roughly pulling Vision to his feet.
They continue walking forward at an unbearably slow pace, Vision's weight depending almost entirely on her. Wanda's own legs are shaking from her unexpected sprint, on top of how much magic she's used in the last ten minutes.
Unfortunately, it all proves to be too much, as she's the one collapsing now, Vision awkwardly falling beside her.
"Wanda!" Concern fills his glitching voice. He tries to push himself up, but falls back down onto his hands.
Wanda hears the footsteps again. Louder. Closer. Her adrenaline kicks back in, and she manages to push herself to her feet. She tries to pull Vision up with her.
"Come on. Come on. Come on, you gotta get up. You gotta get up. Come on." She's pleading at this point, as Vision's eyes start to flutter closed. "Hey. Hey. We have to go. Vis."
"Please…" he says, voice hardly above a whisper. He manages to meet her eyes. "Please leave."
"I'm staying," she says. "We promised—"
"Please."
"Get up."
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and forces as much magic as she can muster from her fingertips to lift Vision once more. Pain explodes in her head and she feels herself cry out, but she just has to keep pushing—
Her eyes fly open at the sound of the armored alien slamming his staff against the ground to announce his presence. He grins, sadistic, as he approaches them.
Wanda lowers Vision back to the ground and staggers around his body to stand between him and the alien. She gathers her magic in her hands again, feeling a fraction of her usual power.
Despite her vision starting to swim, she stands as firm as she can, staring the alien down.
If this is how she's meant to die, so be it.
Suddenly, the blue-haired alien from before appears, landing roughly next to the armored alien. He moves to help her stand.
"Proxima," he says. "Get up."
As quickly as the blue-haired alien—Proxima, apparently—appeared, the rest of the Avengers emerge from the trees, surrounding the two aliens with their weapons pointed.
"We don't wanna kill you," Natasha says. "But we will."
Proxima sizes them all up, then scowls. "You'll never get the chance again."
Suddenly, a blue beam of light appears over Proxima and the armored alien, pulling them up into the sky. The Avengers' eyes follow them up, only to see a circular space ship like the one Tony, Stephen, and Peter are all stuck on. Within moments, it's gone, leaving the Avengers' heavy breathing to fill the silence of the forest.
Until Clint says, "Shit."
Realizing it's safe now, Wanda falls to her knees next to Vision. She tries to continue healing him, but her magic flickers out, like a dead light bulb. Vision takes her hands into his, shooting her a comforting gaze.
"Can either of you stand?" Sam asks.
Steve helps Vision up while Sam helps Wanda. She leans heavily on him, embarrassed at how much her body is still shaking, but he just holds her upright without a word.
The group starts the long walk back to the field.
"Let's get you both back to the quinjet," Steve says.
"There's no way that thing will fly now," Sam says. "What's our next move?"
"Don't worry," Natasha says. "I already called us a ride."
a/n: can you tell i watched wandavision? LMAO i guess the vibranium smart toaster has some rights after all !
for old time's sake, i'm reviving the end-of-chapter-author's-note question game! did y'all watch wandavision? what were your thots?