this was a bit of a wait, more than I wanted, I really struggled with this chapter and then had a Covid scare of course(just my luck)
Sorry for any errors! enjoy!
"Oh, God" Simone gasps, and drops to her knees fumbling for the silvery cords connected to Ultron. Her mind was spinning, streams of reality rolling over her brain and slipping away before she could grasp on. Her home was attacked, Ultron died, he came back, she almost died, she almost died, holy hell she almost died. She tugs the cords free from his towering, fragmented body. He was hemorrhaging sparks, voice like radio static choking on itself, "Oh God-holy hell-"
The taser comes off in a snap and his body immediately deflates. Still, too still. Without thinking Simone reaches forward and puts a hand on his shoulder, overcome with a desperation to feel he was real, ground his existence beyond a prodigal hallucination, "Oh no-"
"H-Hey come on big guy," she tries, "Don't let me off that easy now, come on."
She waits, hand on his shoulder, one beat, two beats, then three, "Please…"
Instead of answering her Ultron wilts then rises up all at once like a great jack-in-the-box, "Whoopsie-daisy!"
Falling back on her ass, Simone gawks, "You- I- I thought- we-"
"Might want to worry more about yourself, you're welcome for the save, not that anyone's keeping track or anything." He says, one corner of his mouth tugging up in a smirk. That was weird. She wasn't used to seeing an expression match his voice.
He whistled, propping his hands on his hips and making a show of taking in the disarray around them, "Yet who am I to talk it looks like you were set on your own, huh, Sparky?"
"Har har," she drolls.
Ultron falls silent and she watches him take in the scene around them, feeling compelled to follow his gaze; eyes skipping across the frenzied footprints and downed ink-black figures. For a moment she finds herself angry at them, angry at their futility, at their careless rush into the metaphorical lion's den. Like lemmings, she thinks for an awful second.
Ultron fusses over the limp body to his left, until finding what he was searching for with a triumphant 'Aha!'. He tugs off a metal pin and holds it up to the light, laughing, "Now I'll be damned, how did I get on their naughty list?"
He shows it to her proudly, the miniscule button was near comical in the size of his hand yet still grave enough to send frost through her veins. Hydra. Her eyes hadn't been playing tricks on her. Simone felt an overwhelming sense of dread as the tiny, silver button shone, glinting down at her in the morning light. She sees it, seeing her.
"Oh fuck-" She pitches over and empties her stomach in the snow, Ultron shrieks.
"Yuck!"
She can't believe she was worried for his life minutes ago.
"Oh, and one more thing," Ultron carries on, nonplussed by her state as she starts rubbing snow on her tongue, "I can't believe you shot me, tell me Simone what kind of response was that? You wound me...literally, there's a scorch mark look."
What was she supposed to do, kiss it better? She groans piteously, trying to spit out the aftertaste of bile, "Buzz off."
"Hmm," He rises to his feet, brushing off the body of the man in black indifferently as he goes. As casual as flicking rain off his shoulder. Simone stops herself from feeling pity, she saw the slithering epitaph Ultron filched off his lapels. She had no warmth in her heart for Hydra, but she couldn't amputate his humanity. Simone makes a law for herself not to stare; and for the most part obeys it.
"I thought you died," She says, more honest than she likes. Somehow, within all the chaos, Simone had forgotten how dizzyingly tall this new body was. The hole where his left arm belonged sparked, she jerks back slightly.
"You did?" His expression changes, she puzzles after it, so used to the faceless body that lived in her basement all these months. He was still identifiable as himself, his mannerisms, his voice, yet displayed freely in a way she'd never seen before, "Did that bother you?"
Yes.
Simone frowns as hard and convincingly as she could, "In your dreams."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk", He shakes his head before reaching down and yanking Simone to her feet so quickly she didn't realize what was happening until he had her nearly three feet in the air. She wheezes as she lands. Shifting from one foot the other, raw cold stinging her heels.
"You're lucky I'm feeling so benevolent today, Simone, I'm not even hurt! Want to know why?-"
"No."
UItron ignores her, "-because I missed this, the-the clarity of a true body." He let's go of her, which she appreciates. Simone felt like a child with how far up she had to reach just for his hand. Ultron sighes, a great wind leaving his body, "It's like stepping out of a fog."
But stepping in to what? She has to wonder, chewing on the thought as she limped back towards the house. Where would he go from here? Something traitorously close to sadness plucked inside her. Simone shook it off, this was the goodbye she wanted to collect but was too pessimistic to hope for: a mutual separation of paths. She should be happy; he was nothing more than flotsam, in the end, destined to drift to a different shore.
Then why wasn't she more excited?
Simone turns, "Lets go."
He follows quietly despite himself as Simone drifts through the wreckage of her home. Glass shifting under her careful steps was nearly the only noise breaching the solemn quiet. Ultron's body was another; emptiness swallowed by the hum of his engines, like a metal precession. She could feel him watch how she moved, on another day she might tease him for being envious, but now… The woman swiped at her eyes, she wasn't in the mood.
This was the life she built for herself, the life her mother wanted her so desperately to achieve. It wasn't as exciting or world sculpting like that of the lauded few in history's spotlight, but it was hers. She looked at her life husked out, shattered, and it felt like an ending. Simone didn't realize how fragile the illusion of safety really was. The house was always its own dimension to her. A bubble that kept her contained, the one sanctum in a terrible world of titans and mayhem. Simone enjoyed her hermetism, but now her shell was cracked and the enormity of change threatened to swallow her up. Her edges spilling into a vast uncertainty.
Simone clears her throat. She needed to think. She needed a plan.
"I'll be back in 10."
Ultron pauses and looks almost… confused? His new face was still strange to her, any confidence she had in reading his emotions was learned from body-language and tone. Everything was changing faster than she could keep up.
"Don't get lost," he teases half heartedly.
Simone nods and he turns, pausing in the doorway of the basement before deciding better of whatever he was thinking to say. He doesn't close the door behind him so she doesn't hide her watching. Silver disappearing in the dark.
The wall hit her shoulder before she even registered moving to lean for it. She was fucked, surely, and royaly so.
Part of her had still childishly hoped the Avengers would save the day, that was their job wasn't it? Simone scoffs. Sliding down to the floor, rubbing the warmth back into her arms. Bitterness settled inside her with a gentle burn. Stupid. The Avengers cared about big, world threatening evils, not a home invasion featuring last year's wash-up villain and a bunch of goons.
Her home was ruined. Drywall and glass littered the floor, it looked like something out of a movie, not her life. She reaches out and traces over the dusty edge of a bullet hole, one of hundreds, dipping in her finger to see how far it went. She can't feel where it ends, but imagines what that hole would've been like through her head, if she'd been a little too slow.
If Ultron hadn't tried warning her.
If he hadn't come back to save her.
Simone can't process it, not now when she isn't even sure she could stand. It was too much, too fast. Sitting in the rubble of her life, the loss threatens to split her in half, bubble up from her belly and drown her alive. Wouldn't Hydra be pleased if her little heart beat itself to death for them, as if she'd do them the pleasure.
"This is so messed up," she sobs, sucking in harshly and letting out a wet, rattling breath.
Simone was too exhausted to hold down her tears, instead she rose to her knees and faced out the shattered living room window. The glass was split open to a stark, endless question of uncertainty. Blank, white apricity taunted her. She had to leave. The only thing left if she stayed was a way to die, but where could she go that Hydra couldn't find? She stares, searching for where she fit in a world of monsters without forsaking the borders of herself.
Simone remembers what Ultron told her months ago, Quid Pro Quo. And now she had nothing left to offer.
She inhales and let's go shakily. Skin crawling, and does it again, and again, and again until she's as close to ready as she could be.
Stumbling heavily against the wall she makes it to her bedroom and begins the numb process of changing while shoving anything of inseparable value in an old duffle bag she never got around to throwing out. She brushes her teeth and avoids the mirror, afraid she'll find another reason to cry.
One last walk around was all she needed. Simone indulged in her sentimentality, taking time to pause at every room and catalog the detritus of her short 27 years one last time. It was almost funny, the walls were so bare and she never noticed till now. She should've decorated when she had the chance. "Maybe next time, right?" Simone mumbles bitterly to herself.
She supremely doubted she'd ever live long enough to get that chance at all.
By the end of her march, she stood with a white knuckled grip on her bag, stock still in front of the basement door. She swallowed. The door itself was broken, hanging pathetically off one hinge for all its worth and a massive chunk was missing from the wall. She pictured Ultron dashing up the steps furious, urgent, maybe (if she was indulgent) a little panicked on her behalf. Too focused to give a damn about walls or other things that limit normal people like herself in his great new body. Asshole, she thinks, the damage from that alone would cost a fortune to fix.
"Ultron?" She calls, voice small in its unsteadiness.
She fidgets, rocking on her heels slightly until a small crash and hurried 'Coming! Coming!' echoes up from the dark. Affording him some patience, while the ever growing threat of Hydra reinforcements looms in the back of her mind, Simone resituates farther away.
It's his head that pops out first, red eyes almost immediately focusing on her as the rest of him folds through the doorway with an overwhelming single mindedness.
"Well," Ultron begins standing to his full height, "here we are…"
Simone smiles tightly, "Here we are."
They both fulfilled the obligations of their mutual contract. While it was forced to close, she knew that if there was a time to leave him with no bad blood, it was now.
She didn't want that.
There were dead guys on her driveway(even if they deserved it) and now she was actually worried about missing the guy who put them there. God, she was fucked up.
"So...where's next for you?" She tries.
Ultron blinks, and taps his chin making a big show of mulling it over, "Somewhere warm, no offense, I'm sore for a little green."
She doesn't really know what to say to that, what did she expect-oh, funny you asked I just booked two tickets to Florence and you're already Tallyho, human!
Realizing the air grew dead around them, Simone cleared her throat, desperate to keep it from getting awkward while both of them toed… whatever this line was.
"No more basements?"
Ultron looks away and rubs the back of his head almost sheepishly, "Ah, not if I can't help myself, but you know how it is. Might try and finish the set," He says, raising an arm and wiggling his fingers.
Simone swallowed hard, stepped forward, and met his gaze, "I'd, um-" she swallows again, clearing her throat, why was this so hard? What's the worst he could do, say no? He raised a brow at her, waiting as she found the words, she settled for something vague and hoped he'd connect the dots, "I'd like to see that, the full set I mean."
She at least expected a little snark in return, at least- was she not clear enough? Oh God, what if he left her alone in this broken house over a vaguity, "I'm-going-with-you." Simone pauses. Then for good measure,"Please."
Ultron jerks, jaw slack, "What? You're not asking me to prom, take a breath, Simone."
"Right," Simone says, tensing, "Now that the other shoe finally...dropped, and you're leaving - which is fine, whatever. Of course, but now Hydra knows my fucking face, Hydra! This is so beyond me! I'm definitely freaking out again, I totally am, but I think I'm gonna die and you might too, so why not die together, right? Why not?"
"I can't be left here with questions, I can't! I'm a fatalist it'd suck, and-" She sighs, and inhaled till her lungs ached. It all terrifies her, she knows she's shaking but the thought of being alone. Being disappeared. Having to survive Hydra all alone. Of having to guess for the rest of her unlikely life what happened to Ultron... she can't handle it. Not all at once. Of course didn't want to turn on the news one day and see his head crumpled in like a soda can, that was manageable as awful as it felt to think. But to spend the rest of her life without an answer? Hiding? No. Simone couldn't do that. She wouldn't. Ultron was here and real and listening and knew how to make the earth fly.
She paws at her eye again, she started crying somewhere towards the ends of her speech, "Honestly I don't wanna die, I really don't but I'm not-I'm not-," Simone gestures vaguely, "I need your help, Ultron, I really, desperately need it."
A hand on her shoulder makes Simone jump and meet red eyes with her own, looking down at her with something akin to fondness, a half-hearted smile tugging crookedly on his lips, "Are you sure? There's a standing fifty percent survival rate on my human companion scorecard."
"Are you?" She challenges, "I don't care about them, right now I'm asking you to save my life."
Ultron wipes a tear off her jaw, then reaches down to pry the dufflebag from her fist. He hums faintly in the way he does that hints at a greater thought. A heady thought. Huffing once to irony, he pats her shoulder and stands fully.
"Only one way to find out," He says. Simone grins, laughing unabashedly while trying to snort up her runny nose.
Before he has time to move, or she has time to think about what she's doing, Simone throws her arms around Ultron's waist. His body stiffens but she doesn't care, she burrows her face in and lets herself lose control as relief courses through her body like cool salvation. It wasn't goodbye, not yet. She gives one last squeeze before pushing him back, "I'm gonna make you rust, sorry."
Embarrassed at his lack of response but pleased at the gobsmacked look on his mug, she chuckles for lack of anything else to do.
"Not that I can, but no sweat off my back," Ultron clears his throat and stands, shuffling before holding out his hand, "Come one, let's go. Long flight ahead, and between you and me I heard they don't even serve peanuts."
"Mm, what about on board entertainment? I might go a little cuckoo," Two hands wrap around his, and Ultron grins.
"We'll figure something out."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Together, Simone and Ultron step from the house and its wavering daylights into the world, for whatever it may hold. On the same side of the thin, invisible line that stood between them.
Simone be like *experiences stress* *throws up*
Thank you for reading and thank you so much for the reviews! You guys really warm my heart. 3 I hope you all are staying safe and have good health! Thank you!
act 1 is official done! initiate stage 2!
Edit: changed some dialogue at the end!