Disclaimer: Avengers, Hunger Games, and all other elements belong to their relevant owners; I merely borrow them to write this story
Feedback: Always a pleasure to receive.
AN: A few details have been updated about Grounder culture from the previous chapter; nothing too significant in terms of plot, but I thought that it was important you all be aware of the changes.
Falling Hope, Rising Threat
With Finnick and Peeta in charge of piloting us back to Camp Jaha, it wasn't the first time that I'd found myself appreciating the fact that we'd been given a large hovercraft. Not only did it allow us to carry our wide range of weapons, to the extent that Peeta had been known to do some minor work on his armour in one of the rear labs. I would have preferred to go back to the compound myself, but it would be best to let our newest allies know that everything was under control back at the mountain before we moved on to work out our next step, which had led to us being asked to carry a few other people back to the site of the Ark's crash.
The other new members of the team, such as Clarke, Anya and Octavia, were natural passengers at this point, even if Clarke had declined to put on her harness when we were just going home, but Bellamy, Raven, Lincoln, Monty, Maya, and Jasper had also joined us, along with Marcus Kane, one of the Ark's current official leaders. Clarke's mother Abby had considered coming along as well, but she had decided to walk back with the rest of the Ark soldiers. She had claimed that this was because she wanted to show support for the rest of her people, but I personally speculated that it was more about her wanting to guarantee privacy whenever she next had a chance to talk with Clarke about the changes her daughter had been through since her own time in Mount Weather.
It amazed me to consider how much I'd grown as a person, but I could actually see how the other girl was dealing with all kinds of relationship issues with her mother right now. After seeing the different ways Peeta's parents and my mother had reacted to us becoming Avengers (Finnick had lost his own parents prior to him making his deal with Snow to save Annie and Johanna's isolation went without saying), I could see that on one level she was proud of what Clarke had done with her life, but on the other hand she didn't entirely understand why Clarke had chosen to join our team.
As for the rest of the new team members and our current passengers, Kane had chosen to sit at the front with Finnick and Peeta so that he could see where we were going (Peeta was still wearing his armour, even if he'd taken the helmet off) but also have a conversation with Raven for a while. Meanwhile, Monty and Bellamy sat with the core members of our team and Lincoln, Octavia, Maya, and Jasper were resting at the back of the hovercraft in the area that was basically our portable lab, with Fenris staying close to Octavia.
I hadn't seen the wolf up until we had been ready to board the hovercraft, along with everyone that had been with me inside the mountain. Thor had been particularly surprised to see the Asgardian lupine, though the moment had passed. He had told us that Fenris was the result of Asgardian scientists trying to recreate an extinct species from their homeworld, but their flawed experiments had led to one success in the form of Fenris, and even then it seemed as though he was hostile to everyone else, until the wolf had been placed in a preserve to live out his long life in peace.
Thor had no explanation as to why Octavia had felt drawn to go back to Asgard shortly before the assault on Mount Weather, or how she had been drawn to find Fenris in particular. That question was probably the reason the original Avenger had remained silent ever since boarding the hovercraft. Although he assured us he was alright, I could tell something was weighing on the God of Thunder, but decided to respect his privacy. If it was urgent, I trusted that he would tell me when he felt it was appropriate to do so.
Regardless of the questions raised by his presence, Fenris seemed to be a calming influence on Lincoln as well. I could see that the Coalition soldier preferred to be quiet rather than tell us all about his own recent experiences, but he was at least sitting up now rather than lying unconscious, talking quietly with Octavia near the back of the hovercraft. He still got a distant look on his face at times, as though he was thinking about something particularly troubling, but until he decided to actually talk to anyone about it, I was going to give him the chance to deal with things his way.
It was easy enough to see that Octavia was helping him become less tense every moment they spent talking, and I had a sense that it was doing her good to talk to someone who clearly didn't care about the changes she'd gone through recently. The context of the relationships was obviously different, but in a sense their interaction reminded me of the way I'd liked to spend time with Prim just after the Seventy-Fourth Games, as Octavia and I each relied on having someone around who would treat us the same way as they had before our lives had become so complicated…
"So… there's really no way to know how those crystals are going to affect people?" Monty asked, looking curiously around at the rest of us.
"Not as far as we know so far," Bellamy nodded at his friend. "They could kill a person in a very distinctive manner, or they just… well, there's what you just went through."
"That seems a bit… weird," Monty said, looking uncertainly at his arms. So far he hadn't demonstrated any sign that he'd gained powers from his experience with the crystals, and we had all decided not to mention that possibility until he actually did anything unusual. Thor had discreetly confirmed that some powers, according to the tales he'd heard, were relatively 'discreet', such as the ability to talk through statues or able to animate their clay creations, so it was possible that Monty would never learn what he might be capable of…
"We're here," Finnick called back to us, as he set the hovercraft into descent.
"Already?" Monty looked at the pilots in surprise as the rest of us stood up.
"Flight is a very fast way to travel," Clarke said with a brief smile. "I've still been training with my harness, but considering some of the speeds I can pull off at the moment… well, I can only imagine what I'd be capable of once I get confident enough to really push myself."
"Setting yourself high standards, huh?" Johanna looked over at Clarke in approval. "Good call; aim high and you'll never underperform."
"But isn't that a bit of a risk?" Jasper asked as he walked up to join us, looking curiously at the one-armed former lumberjack. "I mean, if you push yourself hard-"
"We can make it work," I said with a cool smile. "That's what distinguishes Avengers from… well, people who are just good at their job."
"Quite," Lincoln said, nodding at me with a slight smile of understanding as he stood alongside Octavia. He might have been here with us, but he clearly understood that he wouldn't be joining Octavia on her new team, and he appeared to accept that with relatively good grace.
"Mockingjay," Kane suddenly said to me.
"Yes?" I turned around to look curiously at the older man.
"It's been a lot to take in over the last few days, but this trip…" Kane shrugged with a solemn expression on his face. "It might be short to you, but it's been enough to let everything sink in."
"What do you mean?"
"I would say it's safe to say Panem is the most civilized and technological society on Earth. Our resources since the descent to Earth have taken a toll. Rebuilding what we've salvaged from the crashed stations into a feasible colony is going to take time and effort as well as resources."
"I gave the Chancellor my own opinion when he asked me about it," Raven added. "Finding working tech out in the wild would be like a scavenger hunt. Finding scrap metal is a lot more likely, and while that would help us in terms of giving Mecha Station the raw materials needed to create new parts for other advanced equipment, the fact is that right now we don't have that much."
"Given that, I was hoping you could speak to your government, in hopes to open dialogue with them," Kane explained. "I believe that this could be a good opportunity for both our people to form a new alliance."
"I… would be open to that," I nodded cautiously at Kane; I agreed with the sentiment he was expressing, but I knew that my authority in situations like this was relatively undefined. "However, I hope you recognise that any deals my government makes with your people will also include our new deal with the Coalition. You can form your own relationship with the Coalition or you can form an alliance with us separate from them, but I have to confirm everyone involved understands that the Avengers are here to protect Panem, the Coalition, and the former inhabitants of the Ark, which means that we can't get involved in any internal conflict between your groups."
"Understood," Kane nodded at me.
"Besides, I can't say we'd object to expanding our contacts beyond Panem," I added with a slight smile. "After all, we're officially Earth's mightiest heroes; we need to go beyond Panem if we're going to truly deserve the title."
"Amen to that," Finnick said as he glanced back at us. "And on the topic of alliances, we're coming into land at the Ark; thought you should all know."
As the ship drew closer to the ground, Kane moved to the front of our small group as we gathered around the door, even if Clarke and I took up our own position just behind him. The rest of the team were relatively disorganised behind the three of us, but a brief glance was all I needed to confirm that Peeta's helmet was back on, Anya's skin occasionally flickered with green, and Johanna's artificial arm was tensed in a manner that made it clear she was ready to grab for her axe if she had any reason to think we were in trouble. I thought about offering to give Clarke the chance to get her harness on, but decided that making that offer would just insult her own ability to handle herself in a fight, to say nothing of the implication that I didn't trust her own people.
With that decision made, we all waited for a moment before the door opened once again, revealing a large group of men and women in guards' uniforms, their weapons at the ready at their sides even if none of them appeared to actually have their hands on their guns directly.
"Welcome back, Chancellor Kane," the guard at the front of the soldiers said. "Is everything settled at Mount Weather?"
"Very much Major Costa," Kane said, though taking in the situation as it was. "You'll forgive me but..."
"Why are my men out here?" Costa supplied. "Better us than others."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, only to spot an answer to my own question when I realised that the focus of their attention was the distinctive dark-haired figure in silver and blue standing near the centre of our group.
Octavia…
"If you've got other clothes, I'd suggest you'd wear them before coming in," Costa said, in a tone that made it clear that it was more than a suggestion. "Wearing that is going to rile the more excitable people up."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Bellamy asked.
"Denby."
I could hear the anger in Octavia's voice as she spoke his name.
"Correct," Major Costa nodded solemnly at us. "Briggs and Hardy brought Denby back to camp, and they were going to put him in the brig when Major Byrne was alerted to their arrival."
"And Byrne is?" Johanna asked.
"She is currently in charge of the Guard following Commander Shumway's treasonous actions aboard the Ark before we fell to earth. We hadn't gotten around to picking a new Guard Commander yet," Kane answered, looking pointedly at the Major. "So where is Denby now? In a cell I imagine."
The grimace on the dark-skinned man's face made it clear that this was a forlorn hope.
"You're kidding us?" Peeta looked at the man incredulously, the 'echo' of his armour's speakers making his indignation all the more apparent. "You've let that guy out?"
"Major Byrne had Briggs and Hardy unshackle him almost as soon as he got here," Costa confirmed. "He's probably continuing to let people know about 'the alien bitch that would kill us all'."
"Alien bitch?" Octavia repeated in outrage, ice shards forming around her knuckles. "He seriously-"
"OK, Ice Miss, I get that you're pissed-" Johanna moved over to place her metal hand over Octavia's arm.
"He's telling people- you don't know what-!" Octavia began and I could see Fenris growling, picking up on the atmosphere around us.
"I know from experience that giving people the psycho they expect you to be just ends up leaving you with nothing more than a bad rep," Johanna replied, the brief flash of pain in her eyes the only sign of the girl who'd never been able to get over the loss of her family all those years ago. "Guy deserves whatever you give him, I won't deny that, but you don't deserve what it would do to you and your rep."
"So he just… are we seriously meant to ignore this?" Bellamy snapped in outrage. "That bastard nearly killed my sister just for being born-!"
"We get that," Finnick looked solemnly at the new firestarter. "Trust me, I can get feeling like you can't do anything for your family, but you're not going to get anywhere getting mad about it."
"And trust me, everyone here knows how messed up this is," Costa put in sharply. "Denby was never my friend but he was someone I thought I could trust to have my six, but to have Major Byrne sweep that kind of abuse under the rug and then hear him spewing out this hatred I never thought he could have... if it wasn't for Captain Rogers I can almost guarantee you'd have a much different reception than this."
"Steve?" I looked around, smiling in relief when I saw my old Avengers mentor standing a short distance behind the other guards, Thor's hammer in his flesh hand.
"Katniss," Steve smiled at me before he walked over to Thor, handing the other Avenger the hammer. "Glad you didn't need this."
"I was assured that it was in safe hands and we followed a wise plan," Thor nodded respectfully at Steve and I as he attached the hammer to his belt.
"It worked?" Steve looked at me.
"It worked," I nodded. "The truly guilty are being punished, the guilty but repentant have been sentenced, and the innocent are being treated on Asgard."
"Excellent," Steve smiled. "Good job handling that situation, Mockingjay."
"We all came up with the plan-"
"But you convinced the Commander to accept our proposed solution," Steve cut me off with a warm grin. "That's why I chose you as the leader, Katniss; whatever situation you're in, when push comes to shove, your goal has always been to ensure that as many people live as possible."
"And… that's why you didn't come along?"
"You need to learn that you can't always rely on me as your 'safety net'," Steve nodded with a tentative smile. "I had faith that you could manage."
"And you needed to help keep things under control here?" Finnick indicated the crowds.
"Captain Rogers… well, I'm not going to lie that even I'm entirely convinced he truly is who he says he is, but he's good at keeping things calm," Costa said, looking thoughtfully over at Steve. "Actually, I think he and I might have something in common; there's an old family legend that a great-great-uncle gave his life to help Cap stop Hydra's big attack during their bid for official power, back when everything started to go to Hell…"
"Really?" Clarke looked between Costa and Steve with a smile.
"Most likely," Steve nodded at Clarke with a thoughtful smile of his own. "Actually, if that's right… Commander Costa's great-great-uncle was the man who originally wore your harness."
"Really?" Clarke repeated, her grin growing even broader at that news.
"OK!" Johanna stepped forward slightly, metal arm raised in a manner that ensured it caught the light and drew our attention. "I get that digging up family history is a fascinating topic for some people, but right now we've got the more immediate issue of the guy who thought he had the right to basically torture a kid, remember?"
"Right…" I conceded with a grim nod.
"Quite," Kane nodded, even as he gave Clarke a brief smile before he turned to Costa. "You should… probably take us to Denby-"
"I'm staying here."
We all looked at Octavia, who wore the most frigid expression I could have seen.
"O," Bellamy began but Octavia shook her head, her right hand on top of Fenris's head stroking it, though whether it was to keep him calm, keep her calm, or even both of them, I wasn't really sure.
"I'm too angry right now, Bell," the dark-haired girl said solemnly. "I go in there, no matter I do to try and put people at ease, that bastard is going to say something to get under my skin and I'll give him what he wants… I can't risk it; I won't let him be right."
The fact that Octavia didn't want him to be right at least assured me that we wouldn't have to worry about it in the future, but I could also appreciate the sentiment behind her decision, particularly when Bellamy walked over to give his sister a supportive hug.
"I'll fix this," he assured her solemnly after he stepped away, seeing Lincoln behind her, knowing he would be staying behind as support. "I am not letting this asshole get away with this."
"None of us are," I added, before the rest of the team followed Kane into the camp, Monty and Jasper taking Maya to talk with some of the others while the 'official' Avengers accompanied Kane further into the camp. It didn't take long for us to reach where the center of the camp. I could see people working in various ways, trying either build up the camp, civilians trying do their part or members of the Ark Guard providing security
"And there he is," I heard Joanna growl. I followed her direction and decided to identify the older, bald guard as Denby unless anyone told me otherwise. For someone who apparently had had all of the forces back at Mount Weather disliking him to varying degrees after Octavia revealed what happened to her in the Ark's prison, he seemed rather pleased with himself as if he had nothing to be concerned about. He speaking to another woman with blonde hair and marking on her shoulder that I vaguely identified as a major's stripes from Steve's past instructions on military protocol
"Major Byrne," Kane spoke aloud, announcing our presence to everyone.
"Chancellor Kane," Byrne replied cordially. "Welcome back. I've heard that conflict down at Mount Weather has been... unusual to say the least. What has happened to our-?"
"Why is this man not in a cell?" Kane cut off the Major, leaving me unsure whether Byrne or Denby were more surprised.
"Sir?" Byrne asked confused.
"I assume the men that brought him to camp told you what happened," Kane observed, still staring coldly at the major. "Of how he tried to undermine the entire effort against Mount Weather, just to satisfy a grudge against a child?"
"Perhaps this… would be better discussed in private?" Byrne grimaced slightly. "This isn't the place-"
"I don't believe this!" Denby snapped, glaring at Kane. "I was ready to give my life to protect you, Marcus. But you told me to return to camp with Costa. You were showing us you were the leader we needed. What's going on? Did the aliens get to you? Everything I have done has been in service to the Ark-!"
"I'm sorry, by what standards are you 'serving' the Ark by torturing an innocent kid just because her mother didn't have her aborted?" Finnick asked with a raised eyebrow and a critical glare.
"Yeah," I said, recalling what Peeta and the others had told me about Octavia's confrontation with this man in the mountain. "I could just about accept you being angry at her mother for going against the rules of your culture, but when you beat a girl whose only crime is that her mother let her be born… well, that's another matter."
"You are aware that you could cause civil unrest by making such accusations against a member of the guard?"
"Civil unrest?" Clarke repeated, staring incredulously at Byrne. "He had a vendetta against a teenage girl just because she was born-!"
"And he's hardly the only guard here who former prisoners could raise allegations against," Byrne cut Clarke off. "If we set such a precedent, we open the floor up for every one of your 'group' to start hurling blame for any perceived mistreatment while they were in the Skybox, against any one of the guard they care to name. We need our soldiers in order to defend ourselves, from all threats."
"Are you actually calling us a threat?" I asked this woman incredulously.
"You are not of our people," Byrne stated firmly. "Everything you have done since you found Chancellor Griffin's daughter and inducted her into your group has been one immediate response after another without even a thought given to us." As though she had said enough to justify her actions, Byrne turned to look firmly at Kane. "These people have bypassed all chains of command by dealing with you directly, and we've simply allowed it to happen; that can't be acceptable."
"Things have moved fast, and it is not as if you were not spoken to about the situation, Major," Kane replied with a cool edge to his voice. "You yourself divided up our guard among those who would stay here to defend our people and who would come to attack-"
"But only after you had committed to their actions without even speaking to me," Byrne countered. "An act of war is a military decision. I am responsible for maintaining the security and well-being of our people, and yet you allow outsiders from a foreign nation to dictate our path-"
"When you're showing up in the middle of a potential shitstorm and don't know who half the key players are on the board?" Johanna cut in. "Yeah, you're really in a position to do anything on your own-"
"What my… colleague… means is that our taking command of your forces during this crisis was a matter of expediency to ensure that our mutual enemy was dealt with as quickly as possible-" Peeta tried to explain.
"Enough of this farce!" Denby exclaimed. "You aren't the Avengers any more than I'm Captain America; you're all a bunch of frauds-!"
"Denby, enough," Byrne said, looking anxiously around at the people gathering to watch the unfolding situation. "This should not be happening out in the open."
"Yes!" Denby snapped, breaking away from the Major, raising his voice even further. "It absolutely does need to be out in the open because everyone needs to know how these fakes are trying to destroy our very way of life."
"I'm sorry, what?" Finnick looked at the rogue guard in surprise. "Aren't you here to find a new way of life in the first place? We can't exactly destroy something if you don't have it."
"Mariner's… OK, that may not have been the best way to say it, but he has a good point," Clarke stepped forward to address the guards. "We're not on the Ark any more; we have to recognise that we've become part of a wider community, and that means accepting their existing rules rather than trying to impose our own-"
"You've been won over by the stupid wings and don't even realise that your new 'friends' just want to us to do what they want!" Denby snapped. "They want us to make nice with the monsters and freaks of this world… or even outside this world!"
Clarke could only blink in silence, obviously lost for what she could say to such rants, as Denby turned to glare at me. "Well, let me tell you something, 'Avengers'! The only thing we need to do to be safe is for you to leave us in peace and we put every last monster freak posing as a human being in the ground! The only good freak is a dead-!"
The yells suddenly came to an abrupt halt as a ball of fire exploded above our heads, our attention all drawn to the source of the blast as we saw Bellamy's right hand reaching up into the air. As soon as he had our attention, he lowered his hand and simply generated a ball of fire above his palm, although the glare he was giving Denby was as cold as ice.
"Shut up already, you racist prick," the new Inhuman said firmly.
Denby stared back at Bellamy in silence, the whole area unable to speak for a few moments, before Bellamy turned around to look at the rest of the gathered guards.
"Is this what happens to us when we get to the ground?" he asked, displaying a sense of authority that must have allowed him to take temporary charge of Clarke's group when they originally came to the ground. "We just let ourselves get stuck in another example of the cycle of hate that could have destroyed the world before? This guy wants to justify hating my sister because she's not human? Hell, we have a Hulk in this room and I've met at least two people with some alien DNA in them, not including me!"
He took a breath to collect himself before continuing. "At Mount Weather, I was captured while undercover. I was set to be executed with others they had sentenced to die by being exposed to something called Terrigen Crystals. The mist that comes from shattering these crystals will kill anyone purely human. As it turns out, I'm one of the 'lucky ones' who had an ancestor that had their DNA altered by aliens for their own purpose. But just because of that doesn't make me or any less human. And what happens if someone else here were to be exposed to the crystals while on earth. None of us know what could, but does that make us 'wrong'? Are we not human just because we have the potential to be something more?"
"He's right," Clarke put in. "We can't judge someone because they just have the potential to be dangerous; fall back on an argument like that and we might as well just kill everyone who might threaten us!"
It was statements like that which helped assure me that I'd made the right choice in making Clarke Griffin my new second-in-command; she was pragmatic enough to be ruthless in a fight, but she was also noble enough that she wanted to keep as many people alive as possible.
"... monsters," Denby muttered in disbelief. "How many more of them are there among us? How many more threats?"
"Oh for- are you kidding me?" Clarke snapped. "Everything that has happened and that's your takeaway? More 'invisible threats'?"
"No, he's right," Byrne said resolutely. "We have to take all potential threats into account, which includes threats from superpowered individuals. Men, take Bellamy Blake into custody-"
"Stand down!" Kane ordered.
"Sir! I don't think you understand the severity of this!" Byrne started and I could see at least paranoia was showing. "We have no idea what this 'alien' thing Blake's talking about actually is! They could be programmed! They need to be isolated and-"
"If you say dissected or executed I will have you removed from the Guard itself!" Kane snapped, stunning Byrne into silence with the scale of his rage. He threw his hands up in exasperation and let out a bitter laugh. "How can you not see it? We just got out of a war with fellow humans and you want go down the same path they did?" He looked over to Major Costa. "What would you do Major?"
Costa looked pensive, not expecting to be put on the spot, but still he answered. "The major is correct, we need to be ready to defend ourselves... but as Miss Griffin pointed out, this isn't the world we expected. We need to adapt with it, not force it to be what we want it to be. We're the minority on the ground, not the majority."
"Exactly," Kane nodded as he indicated me. "We need to start relations with the rest of this country eventually, and that means we have to accept everything this world has to throw at us! Regardless of what we think of them, this world has created a new wave of heroes, and they have chosen some of our own people to stand with them, which means that we have to show that we deserve to be part of this new wave!"
"And speaking as a representative of those heroes, I can confirm that we do not regard having someone who threatens children and considers valued members 'freaks' as an acceptable choice to be in a position of authority," I cut in, surprising myself with my own confidence.
"Thank for the affirmation, Mockingjay," Kane smiled at me, before he turned back to face Byrne. "Major Byrne, you are hereby relieved of leadership of the Guard; from now on, that responsibility will lie with Commander Costa."
Byrne looked absolutely speechless, but Kane wasn't yet done as he walked to Denby. "Hand over your jacket."
"What?" Denby muttered.
"Remove his jacket," Kane looked over at the nearest two guards. "He isn't a part of the Guard any more."
"But- I just- we have to-" Denby protested even as the other guards took the jacket off his shoulders.
"The only reason you're not going to a prison cell right now is that Byrne had a point that there were too many allegations against the guards over the years," Kane said with a bitter glare at the other guards. "The rest of you must understand that a single new infraction will be given full attention, and I'm only even leaving things as they stand on the condition that Denby is dismissed from any kind of authority."
"You can't-!" Denby began, but at this point he saw all of his 'friends' backing away from him. Even Byrne, who had helped him before, was refusing to even look at him.
"Bellamy, this jacket has been stained far too much for anyone to wear it again and mean something," Kane said as he tossed it down to the ground. "If you would be so kind."
"Gladly," the firestarter replied as he held his hand out and fire came forth, burning the jacket to ash in moments.
"NO!" Denby screamed, trying to move in to save the jacket only to be blocked by Costa's men. "That jacket had been worn by my own father! It was ours! You had no right!"
"Then you should have honoured it and him better than this, Denby," Kane stated. I could see the hate growing in Denby's eyes, but the Chancellor just signalled for the guards to let him go and stared back at him in silence. "Go ahead. Take your best shot?"
"... and end up in a cell for the crime of striking the Chancellor?" Denby hissed venomously bitterly. "This is not over. You've taken everything from me, Marcus, but if you think I'll stop telling people the truth about these frauds and freaks-"
"Yeah, I fought a war for the right to say what I thought about people, so right now, I'm going to say that we want you to get out of here right now," Johanna said firmly, shooting a brief glimpse at me that made it clear she was fighting the urge to swing her axe at this man. "You don't have to go to whatever passes for your private home, but you shouldn't stick around here; clear?"
Denby just glared bitterly at the one-armed woman. "One day, your mouth is going to write a check your ass can't cash. And on that day, you are going get what you deserve. You and your fake Avengers," he swore bitterly. "I only hope I'm there to see it happen."
With that said, he turned and walked away.
"Why can't some people just accept that they've lost?" Johanna sighed as she looked after the departing guard.
"Because if we all gave up when we were certain we had lost, many of us would not be here now," Thor observed.
"Maybe, but at least we were fighting to save people," Peeta put in. "Denby just wants to destroy everything he doesn't like…"
"And that's why we're Avengers."
"Huh?" Bellamy looked curiously at Clarke.
"We fight to save lives and don't entirely understand why anyone would fight so hard for the right to kill the innocent," Clarke explained with a slight smile on her face.
"Precisely," Steve and I nodded at Clarke in approval, before we exchanged smiles at that moment of synchronicity.
"So…" Clarke looked around the group for a moment before she nodded in resolution. "If that's everything important dealt with here… maybe we should send someone after Jaha?"
"Jaha?" Steve looked at Clarke curiously. "Who's that?"
"He was the Chancellor before Kane," Clarke shrugged. "Apparently, he got a bit caught up in this tale he heard of this place called the 'City of Light' and went to look for it-"
"What?"
I didn't think I'd ever seen Steve look so panicked as when he looked sharply at my new second.
"The… City of Light?" Clarke repeated, looking uncertainly at my mentor. "Does that… mean something to you?"
"You could say that," Steve looked grimly at her. "It's the last remnant of my team's greatest mistake."
"You mean-?" Thor began.
"I do."
"Uh… not meaning to sound insensitive, but didn't I lose an arm to your greatest mistake already?" Johanna raised the artificial limb in question.
"What happened to Bruce was an accumulation of bad life experiences that just drove him to the brink; nobody made the deliberate decision to push him that far," Steve corrected. "What created the City of Light was Tony's attempt to make up for his past mistakes that only didn't create a bigger monster because he didn't have the resources to make it truly dangerous."