Chapter Four: Titans and Sirens and Visions, Oh My!
"Come away little lamb,
Come away to the water,
Give yourself so we might live anew.
Come away little lamb,
Come away to the slaughter;
To the ones appointed to see this through.
We are calling for you,
We are coming for you."
Come Away to the Water, Maroon 5.
.oHOPEo.
Hey, look! Loki!
You guys thought that I had forgotten about him, didn't you?
Warning: some emotional Anna-bashing, I suppose you could call it.
Also, mild suggestive humor.
.oCHAOSo.
"No, Loki."
He had heard those words before once, on the lips of another, and at that time they had wrought destruction inside of his anguished and frost-laden heart. Now they came only as an unwanted annoyance.
"But, Lord Thanos," he wheedled, crafting the words skillfully with his tongue of silver, "the Destroyer would retrieve Thor as well as I."
"That is indisputable." Thanos stepped closer menacingly, backing Loki against a wall. Loki's heart beat against his ribcage like the wings of a frightened sparrow. "But I wish for you to do it."
At that, Loki slumped slightly in mediocre relief. He had not angered the mastermind behind his plans, and that was to be celebrated any day.
Thanos's voice transformed into a silky purr. "Your brother was the one who dragged you from Midgard clad in a shameful muzzle and shackles, was he not?" The titan invaded Loki's space even further, pressing his hands against the prince's body and making the Frost Giant shiver in a cross between fear and delight. "Why do you not return the favor?"
Loki imagined dragging the golden prince to the dungeons and the humiliation the act would bring Thor, and he beamed widely.
"Yes, Lord Thanos. With pleasure."
His form shivered, becoming ethereal as he searched for holes in the fabric of Yggdrasil, hidden passageways that would lead him to Midgard.
In the back of his mind, he was reminded vaguely of the secret doorways in the castle that he and Thor had explored as children. But the thought never made the journey to the forefront of his thoughts.
He vanished.
.oCAREo.
Gwen. Gwen. Gwen. I've got a beautiful girlfriend, and her name is Gwen.
Well, he'd like to think that he had a girlfriend named Gwen. He would, if he hadn't promised her father that he would leave her blessedly uninvolved.
Like most of the male Avengers in Stark Tower, Peter kept catching his gaze wandering to Annie. There was something about her – some kind of vibe, aura, whatever – that snatched at the male cornea and forced them to turn.
Look at me, cried her face, and every other part of her body, look at how gloriously shaped and firm I am.
"She's worse than a bag of cats," Bruce declared one day when he, Peter, and Tony were alone. A patch of new marble graced the floor where, with Loki's help, the Hulk had remodeled. "She's a siren."
"This is why we don't have girls on the team." Tony's tone was dry and bleak.
Peter looked at Tony sharply, pushing his father's glasses up his nose (and feeling a pang of melancholy; he wondered how many countless times his father had carried out the very motion). "What about Natasha?"
"Aw." Tony took a swig of the brown and probably alcoholic liquid in his glass. "She's sexy as hell, but she doesn't count. Even if it's not open, everyone knows she's taken; anyways, she doesn't secrete hormones like a horny teenage girl.
"I guess Pepper's lucky that I'm utterly committed."
"Amen." Bruce raised his mug, filled with herbal tea, of course, and he and Tony clinked them together before drinking deeply.
"But have you seen her…" A now-flushed Tony cupped his hands in midair, making a squeezing motion. "I mean, they're just the right size, and…"
Turning cherry red, Peter shook his head and ducked quickly away from Tony's lewd gestures before the conversation could take a turn for the x-rated.
The other girls liked her well enough to her face, but of course it was that thing that girls did to each other; they only made their dislike clear once the girl they disliked turned her back.
Girls were confusing, Peter decided, and he wanted nothing to do with them.
Unless that girl was Gwen.
Then he wanted everything to do with her.
.oHEARTo.
Tony sprawled on the loveseat, investing in some light reading on physics, which was really awhile spent on his tablet while a lonely physics book sat at his side, waiting to be read. He had just settled in peacefully when a harrowed Barton stalked by him, followed by Annie. She wore a sultry denim romper, a white cardigan draped over her shoulders as though a simple cardigan could erase all the naughty thoughts that accompanied the skin-baring jumpsuit.
Tony sighed. Doesn't she own any real clothes?
Pepper was going to kill him if Annie hung around much longer. Hell, she'd caught him glancing – glancing! He was a fiancé, not a corpse – and she'd sent such a fearsome, murderous glare his way that he almost wet his pants.
He'd obviously done something to piss off some cosmic power, and he wasn't sure exactly what.
"So, Cupid," Annie pestered, hanging around Barton like an extraordinarily persistent mosquito, or perhaps a puppy begging for food. "When are you guys going to let me in what happened last month? When do I get to know things?"
Stark's jaw went slack, and he was so taken with shock that he never processed Barton's response.
Why didn't I ever think of 'Cupid'? Sarcasm is supposed to be my area of expertise.
It kind of stung him, that she was taking charge of the "wit" in the group. That was Tony's area of expertise, assigning irksome nicknames and such.
Ah, well; he was still filthy rich.
He just hoped that Annie didn't have millions of dollars stashed away somewhere.
.oDEATHo.
Thanos sensed him, watching from the shadows like a great vulture awaiting his fill of the carnage. "Come forth, Other," Thanos ordered imperiously. "Speak of what troubles you."
The Other stepped from his hiding place tentatively. "Your power over him wanes, Master." The Other hovered at Thanos's side like a timid shadow.
"That is true," Thanos mused thoughtfully, and the Other visibly relaxed at not having offended his master. "Time will wear at any enchantment, no matter how deeply it is rooted in the mind. But fear not."
"But…Master…" Again, the Other hesitated, as though he were crossing dangerous waters. And perhaps he was. "What if he betrays us?"
The temper of the titan changed as a bolt of lightning cracking through the sky: blinding, breathtaking, and terrifying. "Do you think me a fool?"
The Other cowered. "N-no, Master, I only – "
"The Jotün will never dare cross me. His fear of my wrath is too great. Even if he were to somehow wriggle away from me…." The corner of his mouth quirked in a sinister manner. "…He would come crawling back like the scum, the sniveling excuse for a prince that he is."
.oHOPEo.
Anna woke with a start and a short scream, sitting up in bed.
Just a dream.
A dream.
Ha. Dream. What an understatement that was. Nightmare was a far better term. She had dreamt again of water, of drowning, of clear liquid that crawled inside her nose and mouth and suffocated her… the same recurring nightmare that plagued her nights and colored them "sleepless". In the midst of the hallucination, she had heard that haunting voice, as she always did, calling out to her, crying for help. That voice, the voice of a wraith, existed only in her mind. It lingered in the dredges of her consciousness, cropping up when she was most vulnerable.
Still blind to the world, Anna wriggled deeper beneath the heavy, familiar comforter in her epic quest for sleep. She curled into her customary ball and waited.
And waited.
After eons had passed without so much as a drowsy spell, she realized that her valiant efforts were for naught. Her earlier nightmare had spooked and unsettled her mind to the point at which sleep would simply not be obtained.
Might as well do something more constructive, Anna thought, burrowing a tunnel toward the edge of the blanket until her head popped out.
Blinking owlishly, her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Even though she had brilliant nightvision, she thought that her occipital lobe must have picked that night to be a troll, because she was not in her own room.
Where…?
That's right.
She was staying in one of Stark's man guest bedrooms, because the Avengers were officially "assembled", and although she lived in New York, it was easier for all the Avengers to be in the same place at once in case of emergency.
Apparently, they had been faced with some kind of threat which Anna hadn't been told of due to her newness to the team.
How ridiculous.
Her thoughts took a more somber turn, reliving her nightmare in circuits.
There had to be some kind of way to beat fear.
She recalled the wise advice she had received from an acquaintance that had destroyed his crippling fear of heights: conditioning. Get used to fear step by step, run with it, and little by little, it will be overcome.
Well, there was no harm in trying, was there?
The newest Avenger rushed to the luxurious toffee-toned bathroom adjoining her bedroom, and without further ado, stripped. Her glare fell upon the spacious walk-in shower – damn Tony and his flair for glamour, had he never heard of a tub with a plug? – and, consequently, she plucked a fluffy beige handtowel from the rack with the intentions of stuffing it down the drain.
On her way to do so, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror.
The girl standing there was most definitely not Anna. Her hair was wild and tangled from sleep and her eyes alight with fever. The girl on the other side of the glass was terrified and lost-looking.
Annal onged to make her disappear.
The arches of her feet pressed against the frigid floor as she swung open the shower door. Though she was outwardly calm, her anxiety spiked drastically as she shut the glass door behind her. She quelled her fear as it rioted inside of her mind.
I'll be alright, her mind soothed. Just a little water. Nothing more, nothing less, and certainly nothing to be afraid of. I drink water every day, don't I? And over seventy percent of the world is covered in the stuff. I ought to get used to it.
She wadded up the handtowel and shoved it down the drain as a temporary stopper.
Anna twisted the crystal knob and pulled, winching her eyelids tightly shut. Steaming water poured from the showerhead. The fine mist assaulted her face, and that was fine. A river made her hair heavy and trickled in rivulets down her torso, and that was fine, too. Heat pulled insistently at her tense muscles, forcing her to relax. For a few short moments, she knew peace.
But then she moved, and heard the slosh of water around her feet.
Her eyes snapped open and she whimpered, gazing frantically at the froth swirling about her ankles.
Calm down, calm down, calmdown CALMDOWNCALMDOWN!
Anna pounced backwards, slamming her spine against the cream colored wall tiles. Her breath came in wispy, phobia-constricted gasps as the water slapped against her ankles like hands – hands,handsHANDS! Hands that would come from the depths and snatch her and pull her under, hold her head under the surface of the roiling turmoil as her mouth and eyes and nose and lungs filled with water – choking – drowning – and as she thought of hands she began to see hideous creatures writhing and teaming around her feet, malevolent creatures with scarlet eyes and fearsome smiles and cruel smiles filled with fangs ready to tear through her skin and –
Trembling, Anna threw open the shower door and burst from her torture chamber so swiftly that she fell, gashing her arm on the handle. She contemplated the roiling shower before leaning inside cautiously and switching the knob off.
She crawled across the floor until she was in the middle of the room; she hugged her knees tightly to her chest. Only two heartbeats later, she lost her composure.
You're stupid, you're so stupid. Who do you think you are? A hero? HA! An Avenger who's afraid of water, how ridiculous! How laughable! How pathetic! You don't deserve such a title.
She covered her face with her hands. Tendrils of soaking hair stuck to her forehead, back, and chest. Wracking sobs sent tremors through her whole body; she bit down on her fist until the metallic tang of blood filled her mouth.
Tears rolled down her face and coalesced with the water and the blood flowing from her arm; and the concoction scurried unbidden across the floor as though it sought to paint the room with her shame.
The gash and teeth wounds sealed, and her dark brown curls dried and frizzed.
A soft, strangled keen tore from her throat, echoing with a note of finality. Her body and mind calmed, and she unfurled numbly from her crouch on the floor. Anna peered in the mirror once more.
She had replaced the girl in the mirror with someone worse, someone even more unbalanced.
So there was harm in trying, after all.
Squirting a dallop of shampoo in her palm, Anna leaned over the sink, re-wetting her hair and massaging the soap against her scalp. She rinsed, cleansing her face with the excess.
There. The girl in the mirror looked more like Anna now. She tried a few practice smiles – alluring, sweet, dangerous, beaming, venomous – they were watered down, but well on the way to recuperation.
Anastasia set about eradicating the most damning evidence, unclogging the shower drain, mopping up the liquid on the honeyed marble floor, and rinsing away the dried blood with a moist towlette. She bunched up the myriad of towels, washcloths and handtowels and tossed them into the laundry chute (she wondered, offhand, if the chutes lead to an incinerator, and Tony simply bought new towels whenever his stock was low. He was certainly wealthy enough).
She didn't know how long she had spent in the restroom; she'd guess that at least a couple hours had passed.
But she did know that sleep would not come for the rest of the night.
.oHOPEo.
Note: You may be wondering why I included Spiderman, but I think a more accurate question would be, why not?
Honestly, I couldn't tell you why I was so hell-bent on bringing in Peter. I feel that, were he an Avenger, he'd be like a baby brother, tagging along for the ride, and I like that idea.