THE WORLD HAS TRIED TO CRUSH ME AND TEAR ME DOWN AND RIP ME APART
BUT I SURVIVED AND PUT MY PIECES BACK TOGETHER AGAIN
SO YOU MAY TRY TO BREAK ME BUT I'M NOT GOING DOWN WITHOUT A FIGHT
When she told her brother that she's going to have to learn to trust that suit of his, she meant it to be a progressive kind of learning, the learning that she will understand within time.
She wasn't expecting to watch her brother fly away with Ultron in tow and be forced to stay in a ship fighting off two enhanced, a bunch of poorly constructed robots and Klaue's men firing at anything and everything.
It's easier fighting with her powers. The lightning bolts and ice shards and hot flames make her opponents severely undermined even with the several weapons and metal skin. Her hand goes electric when she's against one of the robots; one touch and one of the wires burst, taking the robot along with it. The blue sparks in her hand disappear when it's one of Klaue's men—when she's forced to fight flesh and blood. She used a shield of ice instead, punching and kicking her way through the men in a manner that's been engraved in her muscles since she was six.
The ice created by her left-hand breaks when one of the men punches said hand hard enough to invoke some pain. Captain America's shield falls to her right at the same time and she, involuntarily, even though it was pointed out by her brother several moments ago, looks up at the sky and smirks, telling him 'not today' before grabbing the shield to protect her from bullets. Her left hand creates an orb of ice that knocks the men down, bouncing from one man to the other under her control.
She turns around to footsteps and relaxes when it's just Steve.
He nods at her tight grip on the shield, "Looks good on you."
She suppresses her smile only for a moment before she feels her cheeks start to lift, "Sorry. Lost my own."
Handing Steve the shield back, she reconstructs her shield of ice, making it circular as a jibe to the captain.
She looks around them, at the inactivity, and looks for Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, the enhanced twins with some kind of hatred for her brother.
"I'll do recon. Make sure we're all okay." Steve says, grabbing her arm.
She nods and watches him walk away, the shield still firmly in place and her eyes still darting around the now empty floor.
"Tony, are we okay?" She talks to her brother.
The line crackles before she's flinching at the sound of chaos and her brother's laboured breathing.
"Nope, we got a Hulk attack and I don't think a lullaby is going to cut it out this time."
As if on cue, she hears the Hulk's roar through her comms and sprints through the doors of the ship, trying to find Natasha, telling her brother as she runs, "Hold on. I'll bring Nat to you."
When she climbs the stairs and rounds the corner, she freezes.
Elizabeth Stark doesn't remember the last time she froze, the last time she was shocked to a point where her feet refused to move and her brain refused to process and her mind refused to act. Nothing, not her brother flying around in a metal suit, not the good Captain coming back from his supposed death, not aliens attacking earth had surprised her, not when she could do what she did.
She delivered presentations to men who severely doubted her capabilities, she could fluently speak four languages and hold a conversation in an additional three, she could fight the bad guys without batting an eye and walk among cameras and crowds without tripping in her heels.
When she walks up the stairs and rounds the corner and spots her teammates, she freezes.
They're all upright, standing in a poorly formed circle. What daunts her is the blank look on their faces, as if they are not mentally present and the distant look in their eyes. Natasha is shaking almost violently, and Liz goes to her first, grabbing her arm and calling her name only to get no response.
"Thor," She's nearly yelling now, shaking the God of Thunder waiting for him to return back to reality, waiting for him to reassure her that he's fine.
Again, she gets nothing.
She walks in front of Steve and a form of helplessness starts to creep up on her when she sees a single tear trailing down his cheek, she knows now that it was Wanda Maximoff who induced Tony's vision and she wishes she were there earlier to figure out how to snap her friends back.
She slides her hand through Steve's comatose ones, wincing only slightly at how cold they are before squeezing them and calling out his name, once, then twice and then once more.
"Mind control."
She spins around and doesn't berate herself for not noticing Clint, the man whose specialties are sleuth and silence. He's shaking Natasha gently, only stopping when Liz turns around.
"How do we get them out?" She knows that Clint knows as much as she does and she's not surprised when he shrugs.
"You can't. Not until they're done." The voice is accented and she and Clint turn around, stepping forward in front of their friends, two flames of fire on both of Liz's hands and an arrow nocked into Clint's bow.
Pietro Maximoff, with the kind of speed that Liz would have usually marvelled over, attacks Clint, who attempts to fight an opponent he cannot see. It leaves Liz stuck with the telekinetic who can somehow mind control humans, who had a hand in creating this mess she was shoved into.
Liz charges towards the woman in red, and Wanda realizes that the younger Stark is yet to understand that getting close to her will only result in her ending up like the rest of them.
Wanda's glad Elizabeth doesn't know. The girl with control over the elements has always fascinated her, always made her wonder, made her feel a little better about the red that runs out of her own fingers. Out of anyone she can control, Wanda wants to get inside Elizabeth Stark's head, wants to exploit her weakness, wants to see the unbreakable woman crumble just a little so that Wanda can be assured that she is in fact human.
It doesn't work and Wanda is knocked off her feet. Chalking it up to a faulty attempt, she tries again, letting herself get close enough and focused enough to see the red streak hit Elizabeth's skull and bounce right off, as if there were some kind of shield preventing the energy from getting in.
Elizabeth punches her again, not enough to keep her on the ground but enough for it to hurt. She looks up and sees her brother falling to the ground under Clint's attacks and before she can run to save him, an ice block has surrounded her hand and is pinning her to the wall.
And if anyone in the world should understand Wanda's anger, her desperation, it should have been Elizabeth; the same Elizabeth who would destroy the world in a selfish attempt to save her brother if he needed it. In the future when Elizabeth thinks back to this moment, she would understand Wanda's motivations when she raises her hands and uses her powers to choke the life out of Elizabeth Stark.
Everyone regains their consciousness in time to see Elizabeth gasping for air as Wanda lifts herself and the younger Stark. Liz thrashes wildly, her legs flailing and her eyes pleading, searching for a shred of mercy from the woman in front of her, as white spots dance in her vision and she feels her body slowly start to shut down after the shortage of oxygen.
The rest of them are obliterated, most from the intrusion in their heads and one from a fight with a speedster. Their minds are too weak, their strength to fragile to pick up a shield, summon lightning or shoot a gun and it takes too much, hurts relentlessly, but they ignore it. They prioritize Elizabeth Stark the same way she had prioritized them all.
They've forgotten that she's faced far worse than a chokehold grip and merciless opponents. They've forgotten that the world hasn't been kind to Elizabeth ever since she was born. They've forgotten that she's always survived the harshest of punishments the world threw at her, they forget that she was born a survivor; the word is engraved in every single one of her cells.
And not one single person can take their eyes away as the red that was intended to hurt the woman dubbed Infinity, starts to seep in slowly, starting from her fingers until her whole self is a beacon for the red power that she somehow siphons despite Wanda Maximoff no longer using it in her state of shock.
She falls to the ground, burning in red translucent sheets at a speed too rapid to catch. She falls and the red bubble of power that she's somehow created erupts, sending everyone in the room crashing against the impact, sending Pietro in a flurry of movement to pick his sister up and speed away from the ship.
When the Avengers get up, aching bones and all, they find Elizabeth lying there, unmoving and unconscious, eyes rolled into her head and breathing still shallow.
It's Steve, for all his examples of remaining calm and keeping an even head, that is sent into a panic and falls to his knees pressing his index and middle finger against the spot in her neck where he's supposed to hear a steady thump. It's Steve that falls back when he does, that doesn't notice Liz groaning in pain until her eyes open with difficulty and she spews out expletives at the brightness of the world.
"That hurt."
Thor helps her up, gripping onto her frame, which seems so small and fragile compared to her explosive capabilities, as gently as he can. Clint holds onto Natasha and Tony's voice infiltrates their comms with an update on the giant they were not aware was released,
"Hulk is Bruce again. But we kind of levelled a small city so laying low might be an option on the list of what to do next."
Clint takes the lead considering no one else he's with is in a position to do so, "Meet us at the carrier. I know where we can go to regroup."
Tony confirms in an affirmative and then asks, "My sister okay? Lizzie?"
He looks at Liz who can barely keep her eyes open and catches the slightest shake of her head, prompting him to answer, "She's okay. Just a little tired. We're on our way, meet you there."
Clint supposes it'll be better for Tony to see his sister with his own to eyes and validate that she's still very much all right instead of sending him into a panic by telling him that some Hydra witch tried to choke Liz to death before Liz absorbed the powers and nearly levelled the room.
They slowly make their way to the carrier, Natasha, still not present, still pale and frozen limping with his support and the rest of them faring slightly better with an exception of Liz who seems to be gradually regaining her strength in extremely small increments.
Thor gently hands Liz to the Captain, partially to take the lead to their trip to the carrier in case they have to thwart another attack, and partially because he can sense the Captain's unease and fear for the girl and, judging by the way Elizabeth tightly grips the Captain's suit and clings onto him as if he's her lifeline, the young Stark also seems to return the sentiment.
They fill each other on the events once everyone's in the aircraft and after Tony fussing over Liz and everyone reassuring Bruce, Clint gets on the pilot's seat alongside Tony and steers the ship to the one place that feels like home, the Avengers tower a close second.
Steve, after checking in with Nat who still remains unresponsive and making note of Tony on the co-pilot's seat and Liz's head lolling around the moving aircraft, carefully sits beside her, inching closer until her head can rest on his bicep.
Minutes later, after minutes of nothing but silence, Steve bends down, just slightly and asks in a voice so soft no one else can hear but her, "You okay?"
Her response is just a little nod that he can only feel on his arm before she takes in a tiny breath and murmurs quietly, "Did it hurt."
Steve knows he's referring to the insanely powerful blast he was subjected to by her. He knows she'll probably ache for her repressor when she's strong enough to put it back on. He knows she'll never find it because he did and he had pocketed the device, selfishly not wanting to see her hurt.
It's knowing all of this that allows him to respond truthfully, "No. It hurt more watching you nearly choke to death."
Her eyes can barely stay open and her next sentence comes in the form of barely comprehensible mumbles, her nearly unconscious state causing her brain to mouth filter to lack in performance, "Can't keep saying stuff like that or I'll stop finding excuses to stay away from you."
His brows furrow, "Stay away from me why?"
Liz can't even muster up a sentence under the kind of exhaustion that's taking a hold of her, "Heart will break."
She falls asleep before he can ask her more questions, before he can figure out where she got the idea that he'll break her heart, how she assumed that he's not scared she'll break his first.
He reckons that it's his luck that he doesn't get to ask her the question when she wakes up before he does and makes her way to the other side of the plane to coax Natasha into talking. Reckons that luck doesn't want to waste it's time on him when the safe house he assumed they were going to turned out to be Clint's house.
Clint's family farmhouse.