Note: trigger warning: major injury
There is no rest for a king. T'Challa tried to sit up from the hospital bed but was pressed back by a furious woman.
"How could you not tell me? I had to find out what was happening from your mother!"
"Nakia, Nakia, you were safer in California and there was so much to do, I had no-."
"Don't you dare use that excuse with me, T'Challa." In spite of her anger, Nakia smiled at the man she loved. "If I had time to fly home, you had time to call."
T'Challa reached for her, "I am sorry, Nakia." taking a moments comfort from her presence before pressing a kiss to the back of her hand. "I am glad you are here, but I need to get up. Our people need answers. Questions will be asked and decisions must be made."
"You are not going anywhere, even a king needs time to heal."
"Then perhaps it is time for them to have a Queen."
Tony had been dragged unwillingly back to a medical bed and had made every sign that he wouldn't stay there until Nat whispered dangerously in his ear.
"Peter needs you right now, so you're going to sit your ass back on that bed and let him take care of you so he doesn't go insane worrying about Shay and watching you pace."
Tony rolled his eyes at her but he did as she asked.
"Hey Peter?"
"Yes, Mr. Stark?" Peter's eagerness was painful and his mentor winced.
"Please kid, you're an Avenger now, call me Tony."
"Wha… you mea- Avenger- really?"
"You're still my intern though, so where are my ice-chips?"
"Oh, yeah, wow. Right away Mr- uh, Ton- uh, going- I'm going."
Nat smiled approvingly at Tony and left the room. Her first order of business was to check on Clint, who'd had his arm broken in the first half of the battle, her second mission was to find Bruce.
They had survived the end of the world; it was time for that talk.
Opposite the war room, another of similar size and arrangement waited with doors open wide to receive the dead. No low table graced the center, instead many bed rolls had been laid out. An attendant stepped forward at the sight of Steve and the burden he bore, to lay another at the farthest end.
Torches hung along the walls, casting a flickering light across the row of fallen warriors as Steve laid Vision gently on the mat. A bench was placed at Vision's feet and Wanda crumpled onto it.
Steve sat next to her, wrapping an arm around her trembling shoulders. Vision was gone, Shay was barely alive. They had taken relatively few losses, but each man and woman laid in this hall had someone who loved them.
A lone figure stood at attention near the front of the room, the purple draped across the warrior's proud shoulders matched the cloth laid in honour over the figure at his feet.
Shay had been laid upon a bed under a crescent shaped scanner, and her friends were ushered out to watch from beyond the glass.
She had been wounded, and she had taken so much pain into her own body that it was tearing her apart from the inside. The meds blocked her pain receptors, yes, but her muscles had already responded to what her brain believed was life threatening injury, wrapping around un-injured bones and organs to 'protect' her from further harm. Every time the pain returned, they tore themselves apart to try and save her. Millions of muscle fibers ripped across each other like Velcro, creating new micro bleeds even as they cut off supply to the veins of her extremities.
Every ounce of surgical skill, Wakandan tech and magic were needed to stop the terrible cycle.
Shuri placed a bead under Shay's neck, and tapped at the screen. A pulsing light indicated that the temporary disruption of nerve signals had been successful, leaving only the basic functions necessary to keep her heart and lungs going. The rest of her muscles slowly unwound as Dr. Strange manipulated energy and micro nanites through her body.
It was painfully slow going and they worked intently under the watchful gaze of golden eyes.
The wolf had refused to leave and now he sat in silent vigil with his back to the glass door, Bucky slumped against the wall outside, unwilling to leave but no longer able to bear watching them work. Four Merchant Warriors took turns standing guard at the end of the hall, and Bucky could just see a sliver of the green cloaked Asgardian under the door of a nearby room.
Loki too seemed to be holding vigil, and Bucky wondered why. His demeanor had shifted suddenly after restarting Shay's heart and the eyes that looked down at her in pity one moment, had regarded her with a strange and tender intensity the next.
Shay found herself in the clearing, standing on the edge of a small stream and looking on as Thanos fought off Loki and Hulk, throwing Steve and Bucky aside as though they weighed nothing at all.
She felt no fear and no pain, the fight before her had already been decided and she was at peace with the outcome.
Sam flew in next firing his guns. And he was floating, rolling away slowly over rough ground, his arms protecting his head.
She was not alone as she watched herself descend behind Thanos.
The angel used the distraction provided by Thor to land lightly on the Titans back. The curved spikes she pulled from her hair were made of bone with a steel core that ran through to the sharp pointed ends she now imbedded in the joining of purple neck and shoulder.
"You proved you measure." She said calmly to the tall figure at her side before looking up at him.
Loki glanced from her face to the ground and back to the scene before them. It seemed to be frozen in the moment the angel had glowed gold.
"I… I thank you." He felt as though he'd been called into the throne room for the first time, and embarrassment coloured his acceptance of her words. He felt that she knew him, knew how he had looked down at her at their first meeting, how he'd looked down on her race all his life. Loki was shamed.
"Why are you here?" She asked, though her eyes showed that she knew that as well.
His eyes locked on the distant image of her, winged and glowing from each scar and mark on her body. "Why?" He scoffed; at her, at himself, at the burning in his head. "I shared your rage; your vengeance was warranted. You had every reason to tear him apart for what you lost. He was a monster."
His tone was pleading and bitter and condemning.
Shay touched his arm gently. "A monster like you?"
Her soft words felled him. His knees hit soft mossy earth and when he again opened his eyes, he was kneeling in a very different forest. Shay sat next to him on a boulder and pine trees shaded them from the hot sun.
"He thought he was right, he thought he was doing what was necessary. He was terrible, he was wrong, and he was cruel. I knew his heart and I knew that I could not let him live. But that is not what troubles you." She smiled at him gently and for all that he had lived a millennium longer, he felt like a young child at a grandmother's knee. "Death was a just sentence, and…" she looked at her own hands, soft golden light lingered around them. "It was just and necessary. But he lived once, was a child, felt pain and hunger and loss."
Loki choked on her compassion. Her scars still burned brightly in his mind. "So did you."
Shay smiled again, knowing what he left unspoken.
So did I, but you didn't become what we became.
"Monsters are not simply: born or made, they make choices. I choose mercy." So can you, Loki Frigga's Son.
Loki faded out of the projection and back into his own mind, warmed, comforted and deeply shaken. The image of an Angel, her golden wings spread wide seemed burned into the back of his eyelids. He sat there for long minutes, as her presence in the room down the hall grew stronger.
His reflections were disrupted by the door swinging open.
"What is wrong brother?"
Thor's concern broke through the last layer of Loki's defenses.
"I thought- I believed you were dead. My fault- my greed for power, for the tesseract, even after we fought Hela to save Asgard, costed me my brother."
Thor was amazed at the open emotion on the face that had been so long guarded, he accepted the offered hand-clasp and with a wide grin said, "you've faked your death too many times Loki, now perhaps you'll know how it feels."
Unspoken in their embrace was the love of true brothers, long divided, united once again.
"Still with the black eyepatch? I thought you might have found something with a little more… style." Loki teased.
Rhodey and Sam, having grown restless waiting outside the operating room for news of Shay's condition and desperately needing something to do, had taken a ship to go collect Sam's fallen wings. When they returned it was to a city awake and alive again.
People poured from the mountain like smoke as the news spread like wildfire. In the coming days there would be time for celebrations, reporters would come and the world would dance with them. Not yet. There had been losses, not many it was true, but they deserved to be mourned and sung for.
Healing was needed, and their healer, their Angel had already given all that she had.
Inspired by the words Nakia spoke of her sacrifice in battle, the people of Wakanda got to work.
Groups of men scoured the battle field for fallen weapons, controlled fires burned away the tainted grass. The ruts created by the machines were filled in and leveled and the shallow river was set back in its proper course. Families worked together to sweep the city streets and cook great vats of stew and rice, meat and bread over open fires.
They would carry the flame through the night.
Shay sat on the boulder, alone now, and at peace. The sun set in the west and shadows bathed the clearing. Black night, clear as still-water. Stars shone and the aurora borealis danced.
They came to her there in the clearing where she'd once lain in the snow. The same clearing where they had been laid to rest.
Pipon, whose name meant Winter. And Mahikan, white wolf, pale as moonlight.
She'd carried them into battle, and they were with her when she ended it. Her guardians.
Three voices called out across the clearing.
One wolf answered, his joy ringing through a palace in Wakanda.
