Hello, friends, and welcome to Chapter Fourteen! Initially this chapter was much longer, but I assumed you guys wouldn't want to read that many words at one time. As always, please read and review, as I always appreciate the feedback. Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: All characters owned by Marvel.
Chapter Fourteen
The turbulence was unsettling. Even with some of the most advanced technology on Earth; even with her own appreciation for aircraft; and even with the fact that they were finally, finally moving in what she hoped was the right direction, Carol didn't appreciate that she was sitting in the right seat in the Quinjet's cockpit. She understood why she needed to be there, of course, but that didn't mean she liked it.
She looked over her left shoulder, where Jess, Luke Cage, and Dr. Strange were preparing themselves, each in their own way: Cage rose from his seat and rolled his shoulders, then popped his knuckles—the sound reminiscent of heavy pebbles falling upon a hollow slab of shale, even over the roaring engines; Jess pulled on her jacket before sparking a venom blast over her fingertips; and Strange, contrasting the others, sat with his back pressed against his seat, his legs folded beneath himself in meditation. Tony sat in the left seat next to Carol, his armored hands on the yoke, his faceplate up so he could see through the windshield unobstructed.
Despite having someone as powerful as the Sorcerer Supreme with them, Carol didn't feel like it was much. But she sure as Hell knew she didn't want to wait for the rest of the team to get back from a mission to help the X-Men in San Francisco, so they'd had to go with who was available and hope that the others would catch up before things went sideways.
Carol looked to the back again; behind the others, sitting in the same seat her nephew had been when Carol had nearly died the previous year, was May Parker.
Which was why Carol was inside the plane. Thor had taken up the responsibility of external security, flying next to the Quinjet in case their destination had more defenses than expected. But Carol had no interest in leaving May until they knew their destination was safe.
Because that was the thing. This could be the place, the one she'd been searching for since the minute Peter was taken; or it could be another bump in the road, another fork to lead them down a different path. May had had a feeling it was the latter. Carol allowed herself a slight smile at the memory of how May had gotten on the plane in the first place.
XXXXXX
"I have made an executive decision," May said, standing outside the doors to Tony's workshop.
Tony—and the skeleton crew of Avengers they'd managed to assemble, though they were still waiting on Thor and Strange—was standing next to his computer, where he'd just finished confirming the information on the tablet Deadpool had brought them. Pieces of his armor floated all around him, absentmindedly attaching themselves to him as he walked. "Uh, Mrs. Parker," he said, snapping his faceplate up after it slammed onto his head, "As much…"
"Anthony Edward Stark—what did I tell you?" May asked, her lips pressing themselves into a flat line and her arms crossing beneath her chest.
Carol had to smile; Jess gave a light two-part chuckle; and even Cage smirked a bit to see Tony Stark—billionaire industrialist, genius engineer, infamous playboy and founding Avenger—being chided by a frail, elderly woman who wasn't even close to being his mother.
Tony, for his part, sighed. "Aunt May," he said, "I don't really think you're in a position to be making executive decisions."
"Call it a maternal one, then," May replied. "I know this place, where Peter was going. I was a housekeeper there before becoming the mistress of the house for a short time." She stepped further into the room, her white blouse billowing over her jeans with the breeze of her passage, her sneakers squeaking on the solid concrete floor. "I'm not a fool, Anthony," she continued. "I know that this may be dangerous, and am well aware how much of a liability I would be should it become so."
The emotion in May's voice was unmistakable, and Carol's heart broke for her. "But Peter is my boy," May went on, clearing her throat in a failed effort to regain her composure. "I taught him how to tie his shoes. I bought him his first microscope." Her volume rose as memories came to her, and she sniffed as she rubbed her thumb and first two fingers against her forehead. "I told him comforting… platitudes the night after Ben's funeral! The guilt tearing at his soul and I'm standing there just…"
May sighed, winded, and instinctively reached behind herself for a chair or stool to sit on. Carol was in motion before the air had finished leaving May's lungs, and rolled a chair over to her. May gripped Carol's hand as she eased herself back into the seat, and nodded her thanks. Carol gave her a small smile in return, and squeezed May's hand once before letting go, remaining beside the chair.
The old woman took another breath, a light one, and blinked once, slowly. "I held him… the night Gwen Stacy died," she said as she opened her eyes again. Her arms and hands curled into herself, clutching an invisible boy to her chest, trying to shield him from all the world. "The same way I did the day I had to tell him his parents were never coming home." The balls of her hands shook as she tightened her fists further. "His grip on me that night was so hard, I had purple and black handprints on my arms for weeks."
Cage crossed his massive arms over his chest and glanced at the floor, suddenly interested in a crack in the concrete at his feet; Tony turned away from her, the whirr from his armor as he moved the only sound in the room; Jess wiped a tear from the inside of her eye, though she tried to mask it as pinching the bridge of her nose. Carol rubbed at her mouth and chin, her eyes squeezed shut to keep the tears from falling.
May stood again, and though Carol offered a hand to help, she declined it. She approached Tony, and with the lightest touch of her hand on his armored torso, he turned back to her. "Peter's the only family I've got left, Anthony," she said, "And I will not sit idle when I have a chance to help him."
Carol could see the war on Tony's face. May was an old woman, and taking her someplace where there might be a battle waiting for them was the height of irresponsibility. Not to mention that if something happened to her, not only would none of them be able to forgive themselves, but there would be no telling what Peter would do.
At the same time, each of them would have given anything for a parent like May. Jess, born to HYDRA scientists, raised to be a cult assassin; Tony, his father part of the team that created both Captain America and the atomic bomb, and though Tony had eclipsed his father's shadow with his own, it came with the cost of whatever love there was between them; Cage, his father a retired New York detective, whose disappointment in his son grew with each juvenile arrest; and Carol herself, so desperate for her father to see her as an equal that she joined the Air Force on her eighteenth birthday—but even on his deathbed, despite all her accomplishments, all the lives she'd saved and good she'd done, her father could only see her as one thing: inferior.
And then there was May. Not even Peter's biological aunt, she'd accepted the boy into her home without question. All these years later, despite all the madness that his life had heaped upon them, May had nothing but love for Peter in her heart. And that love was pushing her to risk herself, against beings that could be seen as gods, to do what she could—anything she could—to help him.
Carol smiled. In the face of that unflinching love, the Invincible Iron Man didn't stand a chance.
"Alright, May," Tony said, nodding. "Alright."
May stepped back from him, and Tony turned to grab Peter's tablet from the desk. Cage stepped up to him, leaning down to Tony's ear, though his voice carried in the concrete room. "I don't know that I like this, Tony," he said.
"Well you try telling her no," Tony replied.
Carol laughed before placing her hand on May's shoulder. "Don't worry, guys," she said. "She'll stay with me."
"Yes! That's perfect," Tony said. He pointed a metal finger into May's face. "You stay right next to Carol, okay? Promise me."
"Of course, dear," May said. She stepped around his outstretched arm, pulling Carol along with her, and marched toward the door. Carol grabbed the handle, but before May stepped over the threshold, she turned back to the group. "Could we get going? I'd like to find my son."
XXXXXX
"We're here," Tony called, switching the Quinjet to a hover. Carol looked down; cloud cover beneath them was thick, and low, sitting at about three thousand feet, limiting their visibility to almost nothing. She couldn't see what waited beneath them, but it also meant that whoever was down there wouldn't be able to see them, either.
"Alright, Jess, you know what to do." Cage stepped over to the side door and slid it open, a burst of icy air roaring into the plane. Carol walked to the back to sit next to May, radiating a small amount of energy as she did so—not much, but enough to generate warmth, to protect the older woman from the biting wind.
Jess secured her yellowed goggles, zipped up her black jacket, and pulled her hair back into a ponytail before leaping from the plane. Cage observed from the doorway, watching her drop. "She's into the clouds," he called after a few moments.
Carol's grip on May's hand tightened a bit—she didn't even realize she'd been holding on until that moment. "She'll be alright, dear," May said.
"Oh, I'm not worried about her descent," Carol replied.
They were silent for a few small moments before May said, "You're worried about what's on the ground."
"About what we might find down there, yeah."
May's eyebrows knitted together, and she ran a hand through her silver-and-gray hair to pull it out of her eyes. "We're not talking about Jessica, are we?"
Carol shook her head once, slowly, her lips pursed.
"You think this might be it," May said. "And that we'll find…"
"It's just math, May," Carol interrupted her. She edged closer to Peter's aunt as another gust of wind blew through the cabin. They locked eyes, Carol's swimming, her eyebrows upturned, leaving minute wrinkles in her forehead. "It's why I told Steve I didn't want to wait for them to get back, even though he was begging me to."
Again May's face was puzzled. "What do you mean?"
Carol frowned at her—sniffed—desperate to keep herself composed. "Uh… the odds," she said, holding her arms into herself. "The odds of finding a kidnapping victim alive fall—hard—after the first forty-eight hours."
May nodded, finally understanding.
"And Peter's been missing for over a month now, and…" Carol stopped herself, dropping her chin into her sternum and taking in a heavy breath.
"That video of him," May said, leaning forward so Carol could see her, "That was only a week ago."
Carol looked up at her. "And do you honestly think Octavius didn't retaliate? Peter probably put Chameleon in traction."
Before May could respond, Jess keyed up on their earpieces, giving them the all-clear.
Cage shut the side door and returned to his seat as the plane descended. "I don't know, honestly," May said, her voice shaking through the turbulence as the Quinjet passed through the clouds. "But I know what I can choose to believe. The last I saw of my boy, he was alive, and fighting. That's what I'm holding on to."
The plane touched down seconds later, and the group disembarked to the ruins of a Westchester mansion. The walls and brick fencing were crumbling, marked with bullet holes. May tensed as she stepped out onto the lawn; the place was full of memories, Carol assumed, ones that she probably had no interest in reliving.
Thor alighted next to them, himself on May's right, Tony on her left, and Cage in front, while Carol and Strange brought up the rear. Even though Jess had told them the area was clear, the Avengers didn't want to take any chances with her safety.
They entered the house without incident, however, and stood at the threshold of what was once a large set of double front doors. A massive staircase rotted before them, while grass and moss smothered the once-polished hardwood floors. Jess joined them in the dilapidated foyer, having finished checking the grounds outside for threats.
"May," Tony said, "I think your housekeeping skills leave something to be desired."
"Anthony," she replied, "If my hand wouldn't fracture I'd smack you." Carol's hand, however, would have no such problems, so she proceeded in May's stead.
"I deserved that one," Tony said, once the ringing in his helmet died down.
They took several steps into the home, each in a different direction, before Cage turned back to the group and asked, "How the hell are we supposed to find anything in here?"
"And what are we even trying to find?" Jess asked.
Tony turned back to May. "Is there anything odd you remember about the house?" he asked. "Anything at all?"
She stroked her chin for a moment, her fingers rolling the loose, wrinkled skin over her bones. "There was a room," she said finally, walking down a corridor to the right of the crumbling staircase. The Avengers followed her, though Carol attempted to stay as close as possible. "When I was a housekeeper, Otto had told me not to clean it. Once we were engaged I asked him about it, and he told me it was his lab, and that there were things in there that might be dangerous to someone who doesn't know what they are or how to handle them."
They reached the end of the hall, where a door waited on either side. "When I asked him to show me, just out of curiosity, he declined. Said there was nothing in there I would find interesting." May looked to the left hand door. The bronzed handle was clean, free of the blanket of dust that covered the door opposite. May reached out to turn it, but Carol grabbed her wrist before she could.
"Better let me try," she said, "Just in case." Carol's gloved hand grasped the handle, and a jolt of electricity fired into her body, shocking her before she started absorbing the energy. She slammed against the wood, hard, discovering that the door wasn't wood at all, but some kind of metallic alloy. There's least some portion of adamantium in this. Cage joined her, the two plowing their shoulders into the door, but leaving little more than a dent. Finally, Thor added his might to their efforts, striking the center with his hammer. Whatever the door was made of, the hinges holding it in place were not, and the faux wood hurtled into the corridor beyond.
They heard the echo of the metal crashing down a set of stone steps, and Thor stepped forward, Mjolnir held at the ready, lightning arcing over the surface of the Uru metal. "I will take the lead," he said, marching into the dark.