"All this time you knew who she was, and you never told us. Any of us?"
They were standing in the complete darkness of the cemetery that surrounded the mausoleum. Dr. Strange stood beside him, quiet and thoughtful as he watched a small cluster of women work, cutting runes into the grass surrounding the building.
"I had my suspicions, but I couldn't prove anything. And then a few days ago, the blonde paid me a visit."
"Aristelle?"
"Yes. She came to me with an offer. She told me of their father, and his intent on this planet. She told me who Miranda was. What she could do. What she would do if the wrong bricks were laid."
Bucky glanced sideways at him. "What do you mean?"
"There is more yet to this than they have told you." Strange said, his expression darkening as they watched Miranda step out from the mausoleum with Aristelle at her side. Her expression was tight, a smear of blood along her jawline.
He thought of what he had seen in that moment when she had stood up to face down the girl he would later learn was named Dominique. Her eyes had been black as night, her fingers sharp enough to cut. Had he imagined it, or had he simply seen a glimpse of her true self?
Aristelle's fine features were set with determination. A sword hung at her hip, it's scabbard wrought in gold, cut with twisting writhing designs.
"Do you believe them? That they are truly the daughters of the creator of the universe? The four horsemen of the Apocalypse?"
"You don't feel it?" Strange asked, glancing sideway at him. "That complete and total otherness when you are near them?"
Bucky crossed his arms over his chest, wrapping them tightly around himself. He had always felt that he and Miranda had been cut from the same cloth. That they both had been forged into something that they were reluctant to accept. All he felt when he was around her was an undeniable need to be near her.
"I'm not sure what I feel for Miranda is what you speak of."
The sorcerer's smile was tight. "I think it is dangerous to think with anything other than your mind in her presence."
Bucky's eyes narrowed, frowning as he watched Aristelle speaking with Miranda. The fair haired girl was uptight, her words punctuated with sharp gestures. Miranda's expression was carefully closed, listening but never speaking. Aristelle was pointing back towards the mausoleum, encouraging her sister back inside, but Miranda stood her ground.
A sound broke the quiet of the night air. It vibrated up through the ground, through the soles of Bucky's boots and deep into his bones. And then there was screaming. Not just the screaming of the girls who had been in the process of scrawling the protective barrier, but something wilder. Something far more feral and unkempt.
It was a scream that had haunted Bucky for weeks, following him into the dark spiral of his nightmares. But before he could move the dirt beneath their feet ruptured. The sorcerer had been quicker jerking into action seconds before Bucky. His hands flung out, orange sparks dancing in the night, and then Bucky was pressed back, off his feet, by a burning pentagram.
He was like a rag doll, his body thumping hard against the ground. The sound of his own heart beat thundering in his ears was overshadowed by the screech of the monsters rising forth from the beneath ground. He rolled to his feet, pressing up in an attempt to get his bearings. A horrid monster pulled itself from a hole that had burst apart the ground where Bucky had been standing moments before.
It screamed at Strange, who did not retreat as it pulled itself up onto its hind legs, towering over the sorcerer. He could no longer see Miranda or Aristelle. The space between them had been consumed by the creatures. No, not creatures. Demons. They spilled forth in every wicked shape. Their bodies moved in a ragged stutter start of motions in the dappled night. If they stepped beyond the lights of lampposts that lined the cemetery road, they bled into the dark of the night, unseen though not unheard.
"We need light!" Bucky bellowed, unsure who was near but hoping desperately someone could hear him.
A burst of energy shot up from somewhere across the field and shattered in a shower of stars. It offered just enough light to make out the jagged shapes of the demons. They skittered like cockroaches across the ground. Swords and daggers glinted as the girls swung and struck, cutting down any that approached them. A long trail of stardust burst apart, lighting the slim figure of a girl as she was run through the chest by needle sharp talons. Her scream was infinite, chorused by a half dozen others.
The earth moved with it, the wretched ebb and flow of battle. Bucky pulled free a long, serrated blade from the sheath at his thigh and moved to join the frey. His heart beat wildly, threatening to fight its way up his throat as he wrestled back a wave of nausea. What had he done? What was this world he had thrust himself into? This was nothing he had ever trained for.
"You confuse me, soldier."
Bucky froze. He knew that voice. He had heard it only once before, but it had been seared into his memory. And with it the image of Sam on the ledge. That single command… Jump.
He turned to find Olcora. She stood amongst the tombstones like a wraith in the night, her form seeming to blur a bit at the edges, dissolving into the night sky. Almost as if what stood before him was simply the mere idea of her. Any attempt from the eye to pull her form from the surrounding dark was to press her farther from existence.
A sharp smile cracked across her face, gleaming white as bone. "There is no hold on your mind, and yet I cannot reach it. My sister bears no influence over you, and I am beginning to think it is not for lack of trying."
"What are you?" Bucky hissed.
Olcora drifted closer, the tips of her fingers dissolved into a fog of particles, twisting and turning before once again taking shape. Her eyes glowed a lamplight yellow, trails of smoke like tears down her face.
"What am I?" She asked indignantly, a hand sweeping up in one smooth motion to gesture towards her features. He could see traces of Miranda in the sharp cut of her cheekbones, Aristelle in the fine curve of her mouth. "Do you speak to my sister in such a way? Is that what riles her in your bed? Does reminding her of her despicable breeding bow her to your every whim?"
He couldn't stop the memory that rose at her words. Soft light through window sheers. Miranda's mouth on his body. It had been with a tenderness that he was not sure he had ever experienced in his entire lifetime.
"You are nothing like her."
With a snarl, he tightened his grip on the hilt of his knife and struck. It should have cut deep across her middle, slashing through her belly and rupturing organs. Instead he was met with no resistance. It passed through her like she was little more than smoke. Her silhouette stretched, a line accentuating the arch of his blade. The particles misted across Bucky's skin before reforming. He staggered a step, his body thrown slightly without the push back against his momentum.
"Oh," Her lips pulled back in a wolfish smile. Sharp teeth flared in the moonlight. "So she hasn't shown you true self? We shall have to fix that then, won't me?"
Screaming. The kind that raked up your spine, digging in with the pure wretchedness of it. It filled the night as the monsters pressed in, burying the girl's who had until that moment, laid waste to the creatures surrounding them, pushing them back from the mausoleum.
"Where is she, little assassin. Have they hidden her from me? That just won't do…"
Bucky took one unsteady step towards the chaos. The monsters rushed up, horrible and unending, tearing themselves free of the ruptures amongst the tombstones. To face them down, to destroy this many with their depleted numbers would be impossible. Sam and the others were meant to join them. But would they arrive in time?
And then there it was. That singing to his soul. Complete enrapturement. It was as if the whole world took in a breath beside him, pausing to listen. Somewhere in the darkness came the wretched sound of sobbing.
One by one the creatures stilled, leaving an unsettling silence in their wake. They were all turned away from him, facing the mausoleum, drawn like moths to a flame. Aristelle, however, was looking at Bucky. No. Not Bucky. Olcora.
He heard the woman move closer, had intended to turn on her, to strike even if it was a futile effort, but then he saw her. Rising amongst the ruin like a phoenix amongst the stars was Miranda. Her arms were outstretched, fingers fading to nothing at their tips. Her eyes were wide and wholly black. At her back, darkness gathered, a glimpse of something, it's barest bones, but his mind couldn't discern what his eyes were seeing.
"What…" Bucky breathed out the word, unable to set words to what he was seeing.
"She's calling them home." He could hear the smile in Olcora's voice. "They were hers once, after all."
He caught a flicker of movement and turned in time to see the flash of muzzle fire. There was a crack, a sound like the world cleaving in two. An echo as familiar as breathing. He twisted in time to see Miranda's head snap back on a spray of blood and matter. Aristelle was screaming, the air around her shimmering slightly as it folded in on itself, taking her form with it.
Bucky snapped up the pistol at his hip and fired before the shooter even had a chance to reload. The man slumped forward, his army uniform damp with sweat. It was one of the men from the possession on Main Street. He had been on the ledge beside Sam. Their blank faces were burned into his memory. The man looked gaunt now. His unseeing eyes bloodshot, his skin sallow.
Bucky took in one long, slow breath and then turned and sprinted for Miranda. The monsters had begun to scream, sounding mournful and broken. The noise rrose until his ears rang. But all he could think of was her. All he could see, over and over, was the sight of her head blown back. The spray of blood. The way she had crumpled.
A single gunshot to the head.
Unsurvivable.
A mass, heavy and unmoving collided hard with his shoulder. He went down in a spray of dirt, his hands clawing for purchase to pull him back right again. He could see her now, visible from his low vantage point. Her eyes were dull and unfocused, a slim trickle of blood trailing from the hole at the edge of her hairline. He choked out a sob. His fingers dug into soft dirt as he pulled himself toward her. Was that the twitch of a finger?
Impossible.
The air around him pulled back, scratching over the surface of his skin. The world unfolded proffering a familiar form. It dropped her several feet above Miranda, and as she fell to the earth, Bucky caught the glint of a sword. He was too far away to stop it. Her feet landed heavy on either side of Miranda, and with a howl she drove the sword down into Miranda's chest. Aristelle folded over the blade with a sob, and then twisted.
Bucky's vision went wholly red. He roared, dragging himself up from the ground as she pulled the sword down, down, down, tearing through flesh, snapping bone. The pop of cartilage echoed in his ears and he reached out with his metal hand, grasped Aristelle by the arm and flung her.
"What the hell?" He screamed, pulling the sword from Miranda's chest. He nearly vomited at the sight of the blood that sloughed off the blade. Her blood.
Aristelle landed neatly on her feet, crouched low as she watched him. "Buying us time."
Bucky's knees gave way, and he dropped to the dirt beside her. He reached for her, battling to get in a breath past the staggering ache in his chest. "Before what?"
"Before she comes back." Aristelle rushed forward. "Bucky stop. Don't touch her."
He didn't care.
Her blood was unsettlingly warm against his skin as he lifted her from the ground, cradling the mess of her body against his chest.
"Bucky, please." Aristelle's voice broke and she took an unsteady breath. "She couldn't forgive herself if she-if you...if she killed you."
Bucky looked up at her. He wanted to scream at her, to rage and throttle, but all the fight had gone out him like the final dying flash of a snuffed flame. "Why. Why did you do this? Why desecrate her body?"
"The more damage, the longer it takes for her to come back." Aristelle touched a hesitant hand to his shoulder. "I was trying to buy us some time."
He looked up at Aristelle. Her face was drawn and tight. "What happens then?"
"She won't be herself."
Bucky looked down at the girl in his arms. Too limp. Too bloodied. "Who will she be?"
"Her father's daughter."