Chapter Songs: Biting Down by Lorde, Sing To Me by MISSIO, and Liebestraum (Love Dream) by Franz Liszt
Headcanon of the Chapter: Jack has a minor pet peeve about long loose strands of hair... more specifically ones left by either of his sisters.
It was all so clear, yet foggy all at once. Everything had fallen in and out of place simultaneously. It had all added up, but she still somehow wound up with wrong answers.
God, why did everything always have to go so wrong for her?
Danielle couldn't help but continuously wonder as she finished digging through the cabinet beneath her sink back in her old room at the Compound. She hadn't visited this place in... well, months, but it was exactly as she'd left it. Not even her bed had been remade after she'd slept in it the last time she was there.
But she wasn't there to reminisce. She had only bothered coming in to grab a few supplies then she found herself back in the living room down the hall. It felt odd being back in the living space portion of the Compound. There were so many memories that lied within these walls, this hall, this room, this building. Sometimes she wished she could forget them all, on days where it felt as though they were taking up too much space in her mind- if that were even possible.
She tried to forget them, push them away as she made her way back into the living room with all the first aid kit supplies she needed to tend to the wounded web-slinger sitting on the sofa. He heard her approach before she'd turned the corner from the hallway, but he didn't acknowledge her presence until she was directly in front of him. He glanced up at her through his hooded eyelids as she pulled up a chair and set all the medical items off to the side on the nearby coffee table.
Danielle let out a sigh, seeing as he was twisting his wrist close to his chest but still not giving it up for her to help him. He was still reeling from Arson's attack... so were Jack, Rae, Tony and herself, but Peter and Jack had gotten the brunt of his attacks.
She held her hand out to him. "Come on... Let me see it," she whispered to him softly as if someone was around to hear them. He clenched his jaw, but remained unwilling. "Peter, please. It's going to get infected if if it isn't treated."
He looked up at her again through his damp curls. After a few seconds of an intense game of 'try not to blink,' Peter eventually gave in with a sigh as he extended his arm out to her. Danielle took it in her hands and gently placed it in her lap to examine what she was working with as she removed the temporary cover of fabric he'd found when they'd arrived back at the Avengers headquarters.
It was a burn. Not a horrible one, but there was still a substantial amount of blood and burnt flesh. Peter barely reacted, his eyes glued to his feet, emotionless. He was pissed to say the least and was using it to try and mask the pain he was feeling right about now as Danielle started to carefully dab at the wound with a wet towel.
He tried not to show he was in pain, but his clenched jaw and tightened fist told Danielle otherwise. She winced. "I have to wrap it, but with your healing it should clear up within the week," she explained to him once she'd covered most of the wound and had started to reach for the bandages and gauze. When she turned back with the bandages in hand, she saw the look on his face. He was... furious. And frustrated. And exhausted. "Hey," she tried to call for his attention. His eyes came up to meet hers. "Talk to me. Please."
Peter let out a heavy sigh. "I just... I couldn't do anything, Elle. He was right there, and I just-" He cut himself off with a shake of his head. "He made me feel useless. Weak. The way I felt before I got bitten by that spider. I couldn't see or breathe. I was back to being pathetic Peter Parker that got... pushed into lockers and tripped by Flash and assholes like him in the halls at school."
Danielle frowned. Tentatively, she brought her hand up to cup his cheek to bring his eyes back up to meet hers. "You're not weak, nor have you ever been. Unless that spider also gave you your bravery, courage, loyalty, kindness, and all of your heroics and awesomeness...?" She gave him a sad smile, but she could tell the small ghost of a smile that graced his lips was even forced. "Peter, you're so much more than your powers. You're more than just that suit."
"Elle- I could barely see three feet in front of me going up against Arson, I couldn't protect you. I couldn't stop him-"
"Peter- did you or did you not swing in just before Tony fired at... at him?" She cut him off with a pointed look. "I distinctly remember getting knocked off my feet just moments before he got shot out of a window. Appreciated, by the way, but my ribs do still hurt." Peter snorted at that and she couldn't help but grin. She was getting through to him. "My point is that even without your powers, you still managed to be the hero and push through to protect me. Powers or not, you'll always be Spider-Man. You'll always be a hero."
He cracked a wry smile for her this time. She hadn't noticed until right in that moment, but both her hands had moved to cradle his injured hand carefully in her lap, their fingers intertwined. She wasn't sure why, but she was suddenly hyper focused on keeping her breathing steady as her eyes darted across his features. He had an already healed scratch on his hairline that still had dried blood splattered across his forehead, and all she wanted to do was wipe it away.
This odd moment of silence and them just staring at one another in a dimly lit room was getting too much for her and she was scared what would happen if she let it go on any further.
The brunette cleared her throat awkwardly and ducked her head, her focus going back to the hand in her lap. She quickly picked up where she'd left off on bandaging the wound carefully. She made sure not to apply it too tightly- it was still a burn, granted whether it would heal in about a few hours or so.
As she worked, she thought the suffocating silence would go on forever until Peter eventually broke through it.
His hand came up to pick out a small piece of soot still stuck in her hair. She imagined there were more, but she still stiffened at the touch. "Who was he?"
She noted his use of 'was', seeing as what he was now was not who she once knew him as.
Danielle didn't bother to look up from her work when she answered. "His name was Noah... He was my friend from my time in Sokovia. Before the Avengers. Before Eris. Before all of this." Before you.
His fingers twitched as she finished up the bandaging around them. "What happened to him?"
What happened to him?
Good question.
"Eat."
Danielle glanced up at the voice ordering her to eat the napkin that was sliding across the table towards her. When she looked up, she could see the familiar hazel gaze staring back at her.
Noah sat across giving her a silent glare as he gestured to the bread in the napkin he'd just pushed in front of her. "Eat. You need to get your strength up in case..." He trailed off, his eyes darkened at the thought.
There was a heavy sigh from a few yards away where their adopted older sister stood with her arms crossed over her chest. "They're not going to capture us. Not again," Wanda turned to the pair seated at the picnic table. At the mention of them- Strucker's men- the tension in the air grew suffocating. They all knew the implication because this hadn't been the first time they escaped that hellhole of a HYDRA base where they experimented on them, and it wouldn't be the first time they caught them. Granted, this was the first time they'd gotten past the extensive security and had actually gained some distant from that place.
"What makes you so sure?" Danielle peered over her shoulder where her brother- Jack- was perched against a tree trunk. He had a look on his face that told them all he was a little less than optimistic about their chances. "They could be here any minute and we'd have no clue. We're sitting ducks, Wanda."
"If they knew where we were," Pietro Maximoff suddenly appeared from within a blue and white flash. "They'd already be here by now." He threw his hands up before slouching against the table beside Danielle. "Ooh- food." He chuckled before snatching up the bread on the napkin in front of her and tossing it in his mouth. Noah threw a glare at the speedster, but Danielle shook her head. She knew Pietro needed it more with his fast metabolism.
"Alright, then," Jack sighed. "If you've got it all figured out... What's the plan, Maximoff Number One?"
Pietro scoffed through his face-full of food. "Mahx-mohff nu'er 'ne? Ser'sly?"
"It's rude to speak with your mouth full, Grey Head," Noah muttered, his head was bowed, but Danielle could see a smile peeping out from beneath his brown curls.
The speedster turned to him, an incredulous look on his face. "Et tu...uh, Human Torch?"
"Human Torch?" Noah glanced up, a mocking smile playing at his lips. "That's the best you could come up with?"
Pietro jokingly mocked the hand movements Noah did when he would create the balls of fire in his hand. "You know what... you're right. Your codename would probably be Match Man."
"Match Man?" Wanda turned to glance back at them from where she stood. Her usual stiff demeanor let down as she smiled over her shoulder. "I think I prefer the Human Torch better."
Noah held a hand up to his chest mockingly. "Et tu, Scarlet Witch?" Wanda rolled her eyes and turned back to facing the woods with her head shaking.
"Oh, so we're keeping the names they gave us... in there then?" Jack prompted.
"We're not keeping them, Statix," Wanda replied, this time not bothering to look at them. "We're reclaiming them."
Pietro shrugged. "They're good names," he defended. "I can't wait to go against Strucker as the ultimate superhero team!"
He laughed as he made his way around the table in a flash of light to the tree where Wanda was. "The twins- Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Unstoppable."
Wanda chuckled as he lightly shook her shoulders before flashing off around the table to Jack's side. He bumped into his arm to steady himself, but bounced back with ease. "The brother and sister duo- Statix-" a flash of blue and white made it's way to Danielle's side. "-and the Goddess herself- Eris." Danielle spared Pietro a small smile, watching as he turned to Noah across the table. "And the sidekick that kind of just tags along- the Human Torch."
Everyone around the table burst out into laughter, Danielle even chuckled beneath her breath at the expensive of Noah who was staring at her across the table. He was smiling, so she knew he didn't take the jokes to heart.
"No way," Jack shook his head. "We cannot tote around a guy with the name like the Human Torch. If we ever get to go up against the Avengers, we'd be nothing but a joke with a guy named the Human Torch."
"They've got someone called 'Hawkeye' on their team," Pietro rolled his eyes. "I doubt they've got much room to talk about weird codenames."
"Alright," Noah relented as he turned to glance up at the speedster. "What should my codename be then, Quicksilver?"
Pietro basked in the sound of his nickname for a moment before starting to strut off to the side of the table. "How about-"
ZZZZ
Suddenly, the speedster was falling to the grown after a flash of bright white stuck onto his back, shot from through the thick brush behind him. His body shook as if he'd gotten stung with a taser of some kind and the sound was too familiar for it to not be Strucker and his men.
"Pietro!" Wanda cried as chaos broke out.
Jack dove for Wanda as she tried to rush over to her brother. Noah jumped over the table to get to Danielle who was moving to get off of the table bench when she watched Noah's chest get hit mid-jump with a white ball of electricity. Danielle screamed as his body fell limp against the table, shaking from the aftershocks of the blow.
She looked around to try and find where Wanda and Jack had gone, but one minute they were shouting her name and the next she was getting hit hard in the head by some heavy piece of machinery.
"Mm-" she hit the ground with a thud. Her head throbbed and everything in her line of sight was fuzzy. The only thing she could make out as she peered through her half-lidded eyes was a foreign dark figure standing over her. She made a move to try and knock them away with her powers, but as her hand came up from her side, there was a loud crackling sound as a jolt of shockwaves went through her chest.
Then there was nothing.
When she came to, all she could feel was aches in her shoulders, a throbbing sensation in her head, and the feeling of scratching against her knees and lower legs. Her head was bobbing at an odd angle and everything was still dark when she tried to open her eyes.
The first thing Danielle noticed was that she was moving. Or... more like she was being moved.
She used all the strength she had to lift her head up just enough to see out of her hair. On one side of her was one white-clad soldier and on her left was another. Both of them were forcefully dragging her by her shoulders, letting her knees drag behind her as they led her into the Cold.
She shivered when the creaking sound of metal bars drowned out her cries just before her body was thrown onto the freezing ground. She barely had time to compute that she had been recaptured by the people they'd only just escaped a couple hours ago before there was a sharp pain in the back of her head from someone yanking her hair back.
"Ah-"
"NO!"
"Don't!"
"Let her go!"
A plethora of shouts came from every which way as Danielle was hoisted up by her hair onto her knees. She whimpered at the cold on her knees from the floor, the bright light blinding her from up above, and the shooting pain coming from her school from the hand forcefully yanking on the hairs in her head.
But through all the pain, she could make out a single person walking forward.
"I'm only going to ask this once..."
Danielle's skin broke out into goosebumps.
Strucker.
"Who got you through the security system in place?"
The sickening man dressed in all black with the single monocle over his eye was standing directly in front of Danielle, but he was addressing people unseen around her. As Danielle's eyes started to focus more, she could see the people he was talking to out of the corner of her eyes.
In one corner was Wanda, the other was Pietro, another was Jack, and the last to her right was Noah. They were all struggling against their own soldiers that were holding large white staffs at their necks, the prickling light from the powered points glistening in the light as they hovered just above their throats. They were helpless.
"Answer the question," Strucker drew out as something silver dropped from his sleeve into his hand. "Or I'll go slowly with this one." Danielle's eyes were hyper-focused on the sharp blade now pointed at the end of her nose.
No one spoke. Maybe everyone was too scared or they just weren't sure what would happen if no one answered-
"URGH-AH!" Strucker roared angrily, the knife swinging through the air before it came down with a slash across Danielle's collarbone.
"AH!" She screeched.
Her breaths came in heavy gasps for air as she scrunched her face up, trying to focus on anything except for the burning pain of the cold, crisp air hitting her open pain receptors open across her chest after the single slice. It burned...
"Who got you past the security system?!" Strucker demanded once more.
"We didn't-" Jack pleaded as he fought against his captors. "We didn't touch the security system! We just ran!"
"You're lying!" Strucker shouted with another slash, crisscrossing the second slash. Danielle cried out, tears prickling her eyes that felt like they were freezing as soon as they hit her pale skin. "It was down for forty minutes before we noticed. One of you took it out. Now tell me- WHO!"
The room was tense, but no one answered, all there were were shouts and pleas and cries because they were telling the truth. No one had touched Strucker's extensive system in place- the force field around the structure that kept unwanted guests out and the Experiments in. It was powered by the same thing that gave them their powers, so it was nearly impossible to penetrate, but they had.
They just weren't sure how.
"Please..." Wanda was openly pleading from behind Danielle as Strucker raised the knife again. "We don't know how we got through-!"
"We're telling the truth!" Pietro shouted.
"-Just let her go!"
Strucker drew a deep breath through his flared nostrils as he glanced down at Danielle. The knife twirling through his fingers as he slowly drew it up to bring it down upon her again.
She closed her eyes, not bothering to shy away when she knew what was coming-
"It was me!"
All eyes turned to the right of the cell where Noah laid sprawled out at the feet of one of Strucker's men. His eyes bulging as he looked between Strucker, the knife in his hand, and Danielle just in front of him.
"It was me..." he repeated in a breathy voice. "I... I used my powers to dampen the shield just enough for me to deactivate it."
The air was tense after Noah's confession, but Danielle still held her breath because despite the fact that she was no longer at Strucker's mercy for the time being, Noah now was.
"Hm," Strucker hummed. He cocked his head to the side in some kind of coded gesture. Before Danielle had time to comprehend, Strucker raised his hand without the knife and backhanded her just as the guards behind her let go of her arms. She fell to the floor on her side with a whimper.
She was still on the ground, left discarded, as they dragged Noah to the front of the large cell to dangle at the hands of the soldiers in front of Strucker. They all had their staffs pointed at his chest, but Strucker had his knife ready to plunge into his stomach.
"You'll be a threat to my cause no more..." Danielle heard Strucker say.
No... she wanted to shout. No. No. NO!
One minute she was lying on the ground and the next she was raising her arms just in front Strucker once more as he brought the knife upward. The blow that was meant to hit the boy behind her was suddenly being cast upon her in the most painful way imaginable.
Danielle felt the knife rip through her skin and pierce her abdomen. Strucker's eyes widened, terrified at what he'd done... and what she'd done that led to the predicament that was now his most powerful subject with a knife in her.
"NO!" There were a series of loud shouts and cries from around the room as Danielle's body slowly began to sink to the floor.
She was almost to her knees when Strucker, panicked, ripped the weapon from her body. He watched with wide eyes as she fell, gasping for air as the freezing atmosphere enveloped her body as she took what he thought were her last dying breaths.
"Danielle!"
She heard Jack scream just before Strucker turn to one of his men and whisper, "Knock them out, take the boy out back... Leave the girl."
There were zaps and moans of pain from all around the room. Wanda, Pietro, and Jack all fell silently to the floor, while Danielle could only watch as Noah was being dragged away, kicking and screaming.
"No- NO! Danielle! Da- Danielle!" He screeched, his screaming and crying continuing as his voice got farther and farther away. "Don't let them kill me! Please!"
But as Danielle's consciousness withered away, her wound had began to heal itself...
The scars along her collarbone seamlessly sealing themselves as Noah's screams echoed through the cold, dark cell- still pleading for his life and calling out to her. There was a soft ringing in her ears as she laid her head down on the floor, turning so her cheek rested on the frozen ground.
For a moment, she felt at peace. It didn't feel like the end of her life, it just felt like a brief moment for her to catch her breath as it left her body. Her fingers twitched in the crisp air, the only warmth she could feel was from the blood pooling at her stomach.
Her eyes flitted for but a moment and as her eyelids began to grow heavier and heavier, before she succumbed to the cold, she could've sworn she saw all the snow follicles floating frozen in the air around her.
But she couldn't have been doing that... she was dying.
"Danielle!"
Back in the present, Danielle's eyes remained glued to Peter's fingers still curled up in her lap. She'd finished wrapping his burn, but she had been so lost in the story, she hadn't felt the need to look up at him to gauge his reaction to her words.
She was also weighed down by this anvil that had grown within her chest... this heavy guilt that built up listening to what she was saying and the memories that had been fleshed out within her mind. It had been so long ago... another life almost.
"Elle," Peter's voice broke through her clouded thoughts. "What happened to him?"
Danielle shook her head, her head still bowed. "We thought they'd killed him... Taken him somewhere unknown and finished what they were going to do before I stepped in front," she answered truthfully. "We didn't even think to look..."
"It wasn't your fault, Elle."
She looked up at him this time as she exclaimed, "He sacrificed himself for me! To save me!"
"He owned up to what he did-!"
"To save me!" She cried. "To get us out of that place... And we just left him," the words left her mouth in a hoarse whisper, her head falling back down.
"You couldn't have known," he tried to reassure her, the hand not residing in her lap coming up to rest on her shoulder. "Elle... This isn't your fault." She said something he couldn't hear beneath her breath. "What?"
She took a deep breath in.
"He was my partner, Peter," she spoke up a little louder. "Before you... he was my partner... And I may not have known he was alive at the time, but for Noah... I just abandoned him. Could you imagine if I'd done that to you?" She had been playing with his fingers still in her lap up until she asked that, her eyes glancing up at him through her dark strands of hair. She could still see specks of soot. "Just... left you for dead in Hell? Would you want to kill me?"
Peter's eyes widened at her question, she could see the question in his eyes about whether or not she was serious and when he realized she was, the confusion in his eyes quickly turned to concern.
"No," he answered almost immediately. "Elle, no."
She was caught off guard when Peter's hands came up to rest on both of her shoulders, squeezing roughly. "You do not deserve this. Whatever happened back then, between you and him. What they did to him- to you was not your fault... You don't deserve him trying to kill you, Elle."
Danielle didn't realize she was crying until she had to sniffle to keep her running nose at bay. And that was when the dam keeping her sobs at bay began to crack beneath the weight of all her emotions if only for a moment. She could feel the warmth of her tears trickling down her cheeks.
Before the dam could completely tumble down, Peter hoisted her to her feet. She wasn't sure if he pulled her into his chest or if she just threw herself into him first, but she didn't care as she let herself fall apart in the crook of his neck.
Despite his aching body, he squeezed her as tightly as he could without hurting her. His hands running along her back and arms as he comforted her, her body shaking with her sobs silenced by his t-shirt.
He thought he heard the words 'I'm sorry' somewhere between the soft cries and whimpers, but all he could do was repeat the sentiment, "This isn't your fault... This isn't your fault... This isn't your fault."
Eventually, her sobs turned into soft sniffles, turned into only heavy breathing, turned into just them silent in each other's company and embrace.
Danielle was content to stay this way until... until...
Well, she wasn't really sure how long she would want to stay this way with him. It just felt right and she wasn't really sure if she even wanted to let go of him... of this. As she held hugged him back, she could feel the subtle indentions on his arms and back from the bumps and stitches he'd needed from facing off against Noah- no... facing off against Arson.
You wouldn't LEAVE HIM!
She tightened her grip just a little bit more.
She didn't want Peter to get hurt... Not for her. She didn't want to lose him. She'd already lost so much... She just wanted this one thing. She just wanted Peter. Safe, preferably.
"No- No! Take me to him! Where is he?"
Danielle and Peter raised their heads as the shouting grew closer from somewhere down the hall. Danielle turned to Peter, her eyebrows furrowing.
"You called your Aunt?"
"What? No," he immediately replied as his arms fell from her shoulders to her elbows.
"Where is Peter, Happy?"
"I don't- how am I supposed to know? I'm not his Keeper, Mrs. Parker!"
Peter frowned, one name falling from his lips, "Mr. Stark..."
Danielle's hands fell from Peter's waist as she heard the footsteps approaching the living room closer and closer until May Parker and Happy came storming in. By the time the pair had finished shouting at one another, Peter had quickly dropped his hands from her arms and had taken a step back. So by the time May had spotted the pair standing across the room, she rushed over at the sight of her nephew.
"Peter," she gasped. Danielle took another step back to give May space to look over the web-slinger. Danielle could see the winces cringes when she glanced over all the bruises, red blotches, the scratches, and the burn wrapped on his hand. Danielle glanced away knowing she was the reason they were there. "Oh... Are you alright? Did that man on the news hurt you?"
Peter tried to swat her prying hands away as he winced. "May, I'm fine," he tried to reassure her, but she wouldn't budge as she made her way to his face... his face that had a bright red mark on his cheek and a scratch above his eyebrow. "They're just small marks here and there. They'll be gone by tomorrow morning."
May pressed her lips into a hard line, both her hands placed on her nephew's cheeks. Danielle could see the pain in her eyes, how hard it must've been for her to let her nephew go out every night knowing that he would get hurt... maybe that he might not even come back.
She turned away from the scene and glanced to her side to see Happy standing awkwardly off to the side.
He cleared his throat. "The team is looking into the name you gave them. Think they found something and are calling for a meeting in the conference room... Whenever you're ready..." Danielle frowned. She could tell Happy was tip-toeing around her after what they'd learned about the man trying to kill her.
"Alright," she replied tentatively. "I'll, uh, I'll be there in a second. Thank you."
"Oh- Danielle." May had suddenly moved on from checking Peter and the next thing Danielle knew, she was being bombarded by May and her questions and hands going over her arms and face checking for wounds like she had Peter. "Are you alright? I saw it all on the news. I can't believe you've gone through two attacks so close to one another. Oh- and this bruise on your neck. Dear God- Happy, is there any way to up the security around these two?"
Danielle pulled away and threw a glance over May's shoulder at Peter. He grimaced apologetically at his Aunt's antics as she and Happy began to bicker back and forth about the teens' security.
"Alright- alright!" Happy relented. "The security has been upped to three times the normal amount-" Both Danielle and Peter rolled their eyes in exasperation. "And I've added security details to both your little friends. What were their names?"
"MJ?"
"Ned?"
"You put a security detail on MJ?" Danielle prompted. "She's gonna know something's up..."
"Doesn't she always?" Peter jokingly asked.
"Well, that's the least of your concerns right now," Happy stated, glancing anxiously between the two vigilantes and May Parker. "They think they found him..."
"Noah Doe."
Rae was seated at the edge of the long conference table, a rag over a gaping wound on her side she was nursing after the fight just a few hours ago. It looked painful to Danielle, but she acted as if it were just a casual bruise. The pained expression on her face definitely wasn't from the blood she was dabbing away at, but the reaction to the name and face plastered on the screen at the front of the room.
"Seriously? His last name is Doe?" she rolled her eyes as she threw down the rag. It fell on the floor just a few feet away from the trashcan.
Danielle frowned from where she sat at the other end of the table. Her fingers idly lifting up from the table, the rag following the movements until it was effortlessly tossed into the trash can.
"No, that was just the name given to him, according to what we could dig up from the old HYDRA files Tony managed to save after Romanoff's little impromptu Press Release a couple years ago," Rhodey explained.
Peter's eyes widened as he sat at the edge of his seat directly behind Danielle. "The Black Widow leaked information about HYDRA? That's-" When he realized all eyes were on him, the beaming smile on his face quickly diminished back into a frown. "That's- yeah, I knew that." He cleared his throat awkwardly and pressed himself further into his seat.
"What did you dig up on him exactly?" Pepper asked as she made her way down the table to hand a First Aid Kit over to Rae.
Danielle watched Rae grab it without so much as a stiffness towards Pepper... She wondered what the relationship was between them. Tony had mentioned they were friends before, but where did Pepper get to meet someone like Rae?
Tony paced across the table near where Rhodey was, his eyes not leaving the screen as he explained, "Not much. Didn't look like HYDRA really kept track of every test subject that went through Strucker's little program- no offense." He threw over to Jack and Danielle.
Jack, who had been standing over in the corner of the room behind Danielle and Peter, shrugged. "None taken. Out of all the people in that program... only seven were actually able to survive. And of the seven, only five were able to contain and possess powers that the Stone gave them-" he gestured to where Vision was seated opposite at the end of the table across from Rae, the yellow Mind Stone glistening at the center of his forehead. "Noah was... he has powers, but one day they decided he was too much of a risk. One they couldn't control, and they..." he trailed off.
Danielle bowed her head once again, her fingers interlocked in her lap. "We thought they'd killed him."
"You couldn't have known he was alive," Vision calmly reassured her in a manner that reminded her of the way Peter had done earlier.
"Yeah, maybe we should have," Jack piped up. "After all, all we heard were screams... we didn't actually see them kill him."
"But if they didn't kill him," Rae winced as she pulled a needle through the gash in her abdomen, unphased by the blood or the task she was doing before continuing. "What happened to him?"
"Well, it was a little vague on Strucker's end of the archives," Tony explained. He clicked a button and two different digital portfolios appeared on screen. One with a map marked 'Sokovia- failed project' and the other a map marked 'DC- Lemurian Star.' "But according to files gathered by Agent Romanoff, apparently they sent him overseas to join Cap's buddies with the STRIKE team where he served with- guess who-" He clicked another button and the picture that popped up on the screen made Danielle's breath falter for a moment.
He looked... different from what she could recall from those nights spent with him in her recurring nightmares. His screams, his charred face, his grueling smile as he threw her mother's death in her face.
"Brock Rumlow," Jack grit through his teeth. "Even dead... he keeps haunting us."
Peter frowned. "Rumlow- Hey, why does that name sound familiar?"
"Because Brock Rumlow was the asshole that blew up that building in Lagos a few months back," Rhodey explained, rolling his eyes. "He's the reason we're all... split up, I guess you could say."
"It wasn't just him..." Danielle muttered in a voice just barely louder than a whisper.
As her eyes trailed up to stare at the two photos of Noah and Rumlow side to side she couldn't help the millions of questions bouncing back and forth of the walls of her skull. Why didn't they kill him? Why did they send Noah there of all places? Did Noah know Rumlow's association with her mother at the time? He'd gotten defensive when she'd mentioned her back at the building. Why did Noah care so much about Rumlow- didn't he know how wicked of a person he was? He had expressed sentiments that he did, but why try and get revenge for someone you know was due for karma to catch up to them?
"Dani," Jack set a hand on her shoulder, jolting her out of her conflicting thoughts that were digging her down a rabbit hole she didn't have the answers to pull herself out of. "What happened with Rumlow... if you and Wanda hadn't done what you did, the causalities would've been-"
"He was there."
There was a beat before her brother glanced down at her in confusion. "What?"
"Noah- he'd quoted what Rumlow told me about Mom verbatim," she exclaimed, turning in her chair to look up at him with wide eyes of realization. "He might not have been there in-person because he'd hinted that he didn't know everything that happened, but he repeated the exact quote as if he'd been listening in..."
"You think even after HYDRA fell he was running with Rumlow's crew?" Rae prompted. "Why would he have the incentive to do that?"
"Perhaps because he had no one else," Vision interjected. When everyone turned to the android, he slowly turned back to face them as he began his explanation. "No one is sure of where this boy comes from, whether he has a family, what his lineage is... He's an outlier, expendable to this organization. And as much as he is a risk for one branch, he is still a valuable prospect to have- especially with his gifts- so they immerse him into a new environment. They place him with a unit that upholds the organizations values and deceive both you and him to manipulate Noah into making him believe you've all abandoned him to force him to become loyal to a cause he might not believe in, but has known nothing except...
"They implanted a motive within him to maintain this loyalty to a single person: Rumlow. A loyalty that upheld even after the fall of the organization which only made his bond with the man grow stronger," Vision continued. "You see... you give a man that's known nothing something to live for, a cause to serve, and he'll remain loyal to the end."
"But why go after Elle?" Peter asked. "He- This Rumlow guy did crappy stuff, but Elle wasn't the only one that... that stopped him in Lagos. The Scarlet Witch did, too, and they were all in the same place before they sent him away. Why is he targeting just Elle?"
Rhodey scoffed. "Well, if the United Nations can't find Maximoff, I doubt with what little resources this guy has he would have a clue where to start either," he replied. "His best bet would be targeting the girl he sees running around New York City every night with the Spider-Man that's been plastered all over the news as of lately after what happened with the Wing-Guy."
Both Danielle and Peter sunk into their chairs just a little bit more after the indirect scolding.
"Rumlow was killed months ago... He's been planning this since before the Summer?" Danielle asked to no one in particular.
"Possibly," Tony shrugged. "Or it could have been the endgame from the beginning. Rumlow manipulates him, gets him to put a target on your backs after what happened in Sokovia... Seeing you on the news now labeled as Avengers after the fall of HYDRA probably just instilled that hatred even more. Rumlow wanted revenge on Rogers and he probably wanted the kid to get something out of it so he tasks your mom with killing Cap-" Danielle winces at the memory she'd since repressed. "And when that doesn't pan out... he goes to finish it himself only to, ya know, get blown away in the process by none other than two people Noah hates the most..."
After Tony's spiel, Danielle is almost too scared to look up. Scared that Peter would be staring at her. Of course he was, he had just found out that her mom had been an assassin that tried to kill Captain America and that she had had a hand in killing the man that turned her mom into a killer. He was probably disgusted... He should've been, she was.
"But... something's not adding up," Jack exclaimed from behind her. "Why would they task... Allisson to kill Cap if they didn't trust her to go through with it enough to be there with a gun for when she refused? They were desperate for that revenge- why not just do it themselves when she failed? They had the shot."
Then the realization dawn on everyone in the room at her brother's conclusions.
"So... he was right," Danielle uttered in a soft gasp. "Rumlow didn't kill our Mom." And she was a murderer.
"You didn't tell them?"
Danielle spun to her left, her eyes narrowed at whoever had asked. She found Rae with a similar look on her face, only it was directed at someone behind her. Danielle followed her gaze to find Tony sitting at the end of the table, a grim look on his face.
"Tony?" Danielle blinked in confusion.
"Tell us what?" Jack gaped. "What- you knew?"
Tony clenched his jaw, his eyes trailing away from the siblings' prying eyes and questions. "Helmut Zemo," he ground out with a deep frown. "The man that we had originally thought was going to release those super soldiers in Siberia... The doctor that released the Winter Soldier back in Berlin-"
There was a white ringing noise that was starting to block out Tony's words from her mind as she was overtaken by a heaving weight in her chest yanking her back into memories she'd long since forgotten. Suddenly, she was back in that dark room at the Joint Task Force Headquarters, red lights flickering up above, knocked out guards littering the floor... and him.
"Hello, Miss Harper."
"I want something you have... the USB drive that's residing in your pocket right now."
"You're wondering how I know about it, considering the only two people who could possibly know about it is you and your deceased mother."
"I'd been watching her for months. Long before you even knew she was alive..."
"...It took a lot of will power not to steal away the USB before she was disposed of, but I have patience..."
How could she not have known?
"When we apprehended him in Siberia, he'd killed all the other Super Soldier Assassins and revealed his real plan all along," Tony continued as Danielle fell apart at the seams a few seats away. "It was him... all of it. He'd planned everything to the 'T.' Starting with framing Rumlow for your mother's assassination that would set you on a warpath to tracking him down... which would lead you to a certain USB your mom kept at the house in Rhode Island.." Danielle whimpered, her eyes clamped shut as if it would keep the implications of his words out of what he was saying.
"You'd eventually figure out where he was headed next... on a job that Zemo had hired him on. You'd show up and Zemo would count on Rumlow being as much of a suicidal maniac for his own revenge after what happened to Allisson," Tony continued. "He knew what Rumlow would do if you got close to him and maybe he hadn't expected for you and Wanda to launch the explosion into a building, but he knew the world would pin the casualties on you and Wanda... creating the Accords movement and, hence, the rift between the team he just tore deeper with by using the Winter Soldier to rip us all apart."
At this point, Danielle couldn't listen anymore as she spun in her chair and jumped to her feet. Her hands on her stomach and her eyes facing up as she tried to keep her breathing at bay.
"So... that's it? That's all I was? That's all she was?" The teen spun on him, the anger boiling over into her tone and voice. "A pawn? I killed someone in cold blood all to be apart of some... some sick scheme? ...And all this time you knew?"
Tony looked upset, but not hurt. She recognized the expression as one she had seen countless of times on herself when she looked in the mirror. The face of someone who knew what they had done was wrong, but there was nothing they could do now. It was over... Just like her killing Rumlow... There was nothing she could do now, but... it wasn't over yet, was it?
"What good what it have done if you knew?" Tony asked her truthfully.
Beside Danielle, Jack looked about ready to kill. His hands were practically shaking when he turned to his mentor. "The man that killed our mom is still alive, sitting in some cell, when all this time we thought this was behind us... And you didn't even have the decency to set the record straight?" Tony didn't answer. "What would have happened if sometime down the line, Zemo got set free or got put on death row... would you have told us the truth then or let bygones be bygones?"
"I was trying to protect you!"
"Like Steve did for you?!"
Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep...
The tense atmosphere suffocating everyone in the conference room was suddenly sliced down the middle at the sound of the screen up at the front of the room beeping. A red dot flickering on some kind of map.
"...What is that?" Peter asked, breaking the tense silence.
"That would be a 98.6% facial recognition match of Noah Doe," Rae explained. Tony reached across the table, his hands still slightly shaking from his shouting match with the Harper siblings, to press a holographic button on the glass table. Up above, the red dot magnified to show up a blurry image of Noah, a red mark on his cheek as he glanced over his shoulder at something unseen.
Danielle's breath caught in her throat.
"Where is this?" Rhodey asked, leaning forward in his seat.
"Navi Grad, Sokovia," Tony answered. "FRIDAY, when was this?"
"Two minutes ago, Boss," came the automated reply from the ceiling speakers.
"He could still be there," Rhodey exclaimed as he stood from his chair.
Rae scoffed as she finished up her stitches, biting off the thread at the end of the needle and slapped on a quick bandage as she pulled herself up to her feet. "Of course he's still there. Four years spent as a ghost and the only time he gets caught by facial recognition is on his way back to where the source of his rage all started... He wants us to go chase after him," she stated.
"No... he wants me to go after him," Danielle clarified. She spun away from the screen towards her brother. "I'm coming with you."
"You can't," he immediately shut her down as the rest of the room erupted into chaos. Rae, Rhodey, and Tony all filing out of the room as they began to bark orders at one another about jets and something about alerting Ross.
Jack looked about ready to follow after them, but Danielle kept persisting. She grabbed at his arm to pull his attention back to her. "I'm the one he wants He'll just hurt you and come track me down once you're out of the way," she shuddered at just the thought of it.. of what he would... what he could do to Jack. "Without your powers, he'll burn you alive."
"Which is why I'm not going alone," Jack insisted. "Vision, Rhodey, Tony and Rae all have my back. He won't have a chance against all of us."
Danielle pulled back when she realized what he meant. "... You don't plan on bringing him in." It wasn't a question.
Jack looked down at his little sister. He let out a heavy exhale. "He's a danger to you and the rest of the world-"
"He's our friend!"
"Not anymore!" He shouted right back at her. She gaped, taken aback at how cruel her brother sounded. "Dani," his voice returned back to a normal volume. "He is trying to kill you for what happened with Rumlow..."
"If we can just talk to him-" she tried to press, but Jack wasn't giving her any room. "What makes you think he'll listen?" He prompted, exasperation tainting his voice as he threw his hands in the air as if waiting for an answer he knew she didn't have. "I know what he meant to you... Who he was to both of us, but... We have no idea what happened to him that day in Sokovia. We changed since then, and so has he... He's past saving."
Danielle's bottom lip quivered as she glared up at her brother. "You didn't think that way when it came to me when I turned on you for Ultron, did you?"
Jack bit the side of his lip as he turned away from her, unable to look her in the eye because his mind was set, and nothing she said was going to ever make him even consider putting her in harm's way... not again.
"Come on, Vis," Jack called to the android that had been hanging back, watching the two Enhanced siblings during their argument. He looked hesitant to leave, even after Jack had already spun on his heel and started out the door. Eventually, when he realized there was nothing to be done about the stiff teenage girl that still remained unmoving in the middle of the conference room, he left, too.
The room was quiet... too quiet after the group had all gone. Even Pepper had made herself scarce when Rae had left the room. May and Happy were probably on their way in soon after everyone was all gearing up to go confront Arson.
The only two constant things in the room with Danielle and her boiling emotions were the beeping on the screen indicating Noah's location... and Peter.
He tentatively stood from his seat a few feet away from where she stood planted firmly at the side of the table. Her eyes were downcast and glazed over, but her bottom lip was quivering while her fingers twitched at her sides. Her hands were clenching and unclenching at an alarming rate. She looked like she wanted to cry, but nothing was coming out.
"Elle," he began in a soft, gentile tone. He slowly made his way towards her, but paused momentarily when she carefully turned back to the table. He watched as her hands shook at her sides while she raised them up until her palms were firmly pressed at the edge. She was still shaking when something snapped inside of her and-
CRACK
Peter flinched when the entire glass conference table split into a million pieces. But when he glanced up at Danielle, she was no longer shaking. In fact, she didn't even look like she was being so overwhelmed with so many emotions like she had been moments ago. Now... she just looked drained.
Her chest was heaving and her eyes were widening slightly as she gazed upon what she'd done. Both her hands pulled away from the broken glass surface, but she didn't let them fall to her sides. They remained held up in place as if she were letting them cool off from whatever she'd just done with a single touch.
Peter figured it must've just been an emotional reaction of some sort as he continued his approach. "Elle." He placed his hand against her arm, paused momentarily... was he expecting a reaction? "Come on. Let's... let's go."
Danielle wasn't sure where Peter led her after that, her mind was still a scrambled mess, but she took the bliss that came with just aimlessly wandering the expanse of the Avengers Compound with Peter at half-past midnight.
He had taken her by her arm in the conference room and she had only become aware that they had even left the conference room was when he'd managed to steer them down the end of the living space hallway where her feet did the rest of the work in leading them to her old room.
Peter stood in the middle of the room as Danielle slowly made her way to the other side where her dresser was. His eyes widened as he took in her small enclosure. It wasn't anything like her room back at the Penthouse. There were posters hung up here, photographs, colorful tapestries... There was a personality in this room. "You... you live here?"
"Lived," Danielle corrected from where she stood before her array of framed photographs. Carefully, she drew her hands up towards the back to a particular framed photo. It was an older picture, one of her playing the piano at a recital when she was a kid. Her and Jack had picked it up from their childhood home in Slovakia from way back when.
The brunette plucked it out from the rows of photos and trailed her fingers along the back of the frame until she was able to pull another small photo from hidden in the back of the frame.
She held it up.
It was burnt on one end. The half of the photo had been charred off, but the rest... It was a photo of her mother. One of the many she'd ripped and thrown into the fire when she'd burned everything that reminded Danielle of her after what she'd done... what she almost did.
"Elle?" Peter called out to her.
Danielle didn't turn to acknowledge him, her eyes remaining glued to the woman in the picture smiling back at her. Her long brown hair and pale white skin that reminded her too much of herself...
"My mom wasn't a good person. Neither was my dad." No need to sugarcoat it for him, he'd find out eventually. She might as well tell him now before he had questions, before she was truly ready to own up to the mistakes of her parents that led her to where she was now... She'd probably never be ready, but who else was she going to tell? And when? "They both made some... bad decisions that hurt people in order to protect my brother and I. The things they did. The people they hurt. It was all just a fruitless attempt to protect us from the inevitable."
Peter took a tentative step towards her. "What's the inevitable?"
As if on cue, Danielle let go of the photo... But it didn't fall. It floated. It remained hovering the air as if she'd never dropped it. Little weightless things like that didn't strain her anymore... She wasn't sure what to make of that, but all it did was remind her of a time where she held up a city-sized meteor.
"What we are. What we've become," she answers. "We call ourselves heroes, we think that we're protecting people... And in reality, we just make it worse, but we just keep going because we want to justify our own mistakes... Just like they did."
The photo tilts slightly to the side, Danielle tilting her head in a mirroring motion. If she focused hard enough, she could pretend her mother's eyes moved to look directly into hers. Maybe they were just her eyes...
"I wish I could forgive them sometimes. Maybe one day I will, but..." she frowns, the photo slowly falling back down until it returns to her clutches. "If I did that, I'd have to forgive myself for all that I've done, and I..." she carefully hides the image of her mother back where she'd hidden it before. "I don't think I deserve that just yet."
"I do."
The brunette finally turned her head to peer over at the boy that had said that she deserved her own forgiveness. She was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to change his mind, recant his decision when he looked into her eyes and somehow saw the monster many people got the chance to. He didn't budge.
Peter set his jaw firmly and took another step closer to her. "There was this scientific study I read one time in the library for fun a few years ago. Before the Bite... before I met you," he began to explain. "Uh, it... It talked about atoms and the make up of the atoms are basically so spaced out that about 99.99999... I, uh, actually forgot how many nines there were, but the percentage was huge." He let out a nervous chuckle, his eyes not quite meeting Danielle's as he fiddled with his fingers out front of him. "Basically, the gist of it was that matter in the universe is pretty much empty space, save for a very small percentage that actually makes up who we are."
"Humans are full of empty space, and it kind of got me thinking just how much we could fit into ourselves if we could find a way to tap into that empty space creation just sort of conveniently left there for us," he exclaimed. "That's kind of what I used to explain my powers to myself... That the bite kind of filled up my matter being a little bit. And it's not just my powers, either. I think everyone in the world kind of fills up that empty space a little more with each milestone they reach... The feeling you get when you watch a sunrise, the climax of that one awesome song, the rush you get when you parachute, your first home run, your first slow dance, your first kiss..."
"Every time you do something that catches you off guard or just feels like you've gained something within yourself, I like to think you filled up that space just a little bit more," Peter concluded with a small smirk. "I think your powers took up a lot of that empty space to the point where you're almost completely filled up, in my opinion," he chuckled.
He ducks his head as he continues to take small steps towards her unmoving body. She hasn't moved not once since he started talking, but every time he says something, he sees her eyes move across his face as if studying his every feature to check if he's lying. A part of him wonders why she'd think he was.
"But... I think that final little piece of empty space is maybe just waiting for you to realize that you're human just like the rest of us, just with a little less empty space. Everyone makes mistakes, not everyone can fill up that empty space, but you... You shouldn't hold yourself to a higher standard. You should let go a little bit, realize that you're not as terrible as you or anyone else may think you are because I've seen the real Danielle up close." He looks up at her this time, his soft pale brown eyes piercing her darker irises that still have streaks of gold at the end of them... at least, that's what he sees. It could just be the light in her room.
"I'm looking at her right now... She's someone you can talk to about anything because she'll listen and even try to help. She doesn't take 'no' for an answer when it comes to saving innocent lives. She has a bad habit of being completely selfless when it comes to protecting people she cares about. She's terrible at keeping secrets-" Danielle has to fight not to smirk, and he can tell. "Her favorite color is blue, but she swears up and down it isn't because all she ever wears is grey scale-" Her smirk escapes at that one. "She listens to classical music because for some reason the chaos of all the instruments together makes sense to her. She likes to look at the stars because she wishes she could live up in the sky with them."
She's smiling now and he's directly in front of her and now he's running out of things to say and she's looking at him with those bright eyes that definitely have a golden hue to them and she's beautiful and he has no clue what to tell her because he's forgetting everything he had initially started to say. Something about atoms and how she needs to forgive herself so that she could finally let him in because he... he...
"She compares herself to chaos, but all I ever feel when I'm with her is..."
The feeling he got when he watched the sunrise from the top of their bleachers by the football field in the morning when he'd used to wait for her every morning. And the sunset from just outside her old apartment window he'd swing by after school during patrols just to make sure she had made it home safely.
The climax of the piano piece he'd heard on her playlist- Liebestraum by Franz List- that he'd watch her idly tap her fingers to during the peak that you hadn't even realized was the climax until it ended, but then it just started back up again- and he didn't want this to end.
The rush he got when swinging through the air without pressing his fingers down to shoot his web shooters out because he knew she'd catch him with her invisible consciousness that kept him afloat.
The first time they'd slow danced together at the Winter Formal years ago when she'd stepped on his feet too many times to count and he was too nervous to really hold her close before she ran off again and again and now she was finally in front of him and wasn't running away this time.
And the feeling he had right now where his eyes were boring into hers, but he allowed his just to trail a little bit further to her lips and all he could think about was what that particular feeling would feel like.
Because what he felt for her was... was...
"... complete."
The air is... empty between them. Like the rest of matter, it's just empty space, yet somehow she's right there. And he's in front of her and their hands are both in front of them, but neither make a move, scared that if even a hair blows with the nonexistent wind within this silent storm he's created between them that they'd both cave in. To what- they're not sure, but a part of Peter would really like to know...
And her eyes disappear for a second when she blinks- no, not blinks. Her eyelids flutter for a second and Peter realizes that they'd moved closer in the millisecond that felt like a day since he had last spoken and now their faces are only inches apart... five inches apart... four... three... two... one...
"Danielle. Mr. Parker."
The teens jump apart, the moment and their closeness abruptly shattered to pieces by the sudden appearance of the maroon android standing near the far wall across the room. His oddly shaped and colored eyes narrowing as he glanced between the two that were not as separated as they had been when they'd first walked into the room almost as if attempting to put distance from what had almost happened.
"Vision," Danielle hiccups. "I thought we discussed the wall thing..." she mumbled, her hand vaguely pointing in the direction toward the wall he'd just phased through.
He bowed his head. "I- sorry," he apologized. "It was just an urgent matter, is all."
Danielle's eyebrows furrowed, Peter now turning completely towards the Avenger, his full attention on him instead of Danielle. "What is it? I thought you were going to Sokovia with my brother?"
"Oh, I still am. It's actually why I'm here," he explained. "They've already left, I merely have time to spare seeing as I fly at nearly three times the speed as the Quinjet and just... stayed behind to notify you of our departure and to tell you that..."
Danielle watched as Vision clamped his mouth shut momentarily, his eyes falling to the floor almost as though he were inwardly debating with himself about telling her something.
"Vision...?"
Eventually, his eyes found hers once more as he finished his previous message, "... The video footage of Noah's... apprehension... will be playing and open for you in the surveillance room. It is free for you to observe and listen, although I highly advise against it."
"If you're against it, why tell us about it in the first place?" Peter prompted him.
"I believe Danielle has the right to know," he answered simply, his eyes still glued to hers as he continued. "You may not be able to be there with us, but... Noah still meant something to you. It would be inhumane not to offer you the chance to see him one last time before..."
Danielle held her breath. He didn't need to finish his sentence.
Before they killed Noah.
A/N: Yes, I am writing through my tears right now. Yes, WandaVision has wrecked me and my life. And, finally, yes, I will be deleting comments that have spoilers in them so please be kind and courteous to those who haven't had their hearts ripped out just yet.
Anywayssssss, hope you guys enjoy this chapter... 0-0 more to come.
Reviews:
amy: lmao, sorry this update took so long- I've been depressed :)
zikashigaku: WELL, if you liked 'Sweet Caring Boyfriend' Peter from the last chapter... let me know how you feel about this chapter. Steve and Danielle's parallels are very striking and Noah is similar to Bucky in a sense, I guess you can say. And, oh, yes... lots to unpack here, as we can see.
PrettyRecklessLaura: Noah's back! Will he be sticking around? Let's see.
Summersdapple: I'm glad you're enjoying it, especially Rae. Rae is actually getting her own story- the first chap has been up for a while, but the story is still being worked on. No specific date on when that'll start getting published regularly, but probably after I finish up the last chapters of this story.
