Sy
Sy watched as Clint passed the little boy - apparently named Costel - to his sobbing mother. The relief in her voice was like over sweetened tea, soothing but grainy. She peppered the boy with kisses, tears rolling down her cheeks as she cradled the shaking child to her chest. A well of bitter longing filled Sy.
When she dies, her mother would mourn her; the muses had fewer children than the other gods, and tended to remember their progeny. But Calliope will never worry about her like Costel's mom is right now. She will never pepper Sy with kisses, or hug her tight when she's scared. She won't sing her lullabies, or wait up late into the night for her to come home from a quest like Sally Jackson does for any demigod who passes through her apartment. Her dad died half her lifetime ago. He will never do any of those things for her again. He will never coach her through a difficult composition, never make her soup when she's sick, or mumble awkward reassurances after a nightmare. He could hardly do those things while he'd been alive, and while Sy had grown up loved, Cade Melos had no idea what to do with a little girl. By the time he'd started to figure it out, he'd been too sick to do anything about it.
All she has left is Steve.
Steve who sits with her when she wakes up screaming from inky black dreams with glowing red eyes and the excruciating remembered pain in her shoulder. Dreams about the empire state building crumbling to ash, and a cruel golden glow washing over the land, killing everything it touches.
Steve who understands what it's like to be lost in the outside world. Steve who watches movies with her, throwing popcorn at the screen when the characters make dumb choices.
Steve who rescued her from the hell of HYDRA.
Steve who never gives up on her, even when he probably should.
Steve with his warm hugs and warmer laugh and ridiculous hero complex, with his shield that would be gaudy if it was anyone else wielding it. But somehow, on Steve, it makes perfect sense.
Steve who isn't a perfect soldier, but a good man.
Steve who is her family.
Sy drags her eyes away from the helicarrier, where Steve had been evacuated to, wiping away the tears that started to fall. She turned around to see Pietro sitting up on a gurney, a medic working on his bleeding leg, eyes glazed over as the pain medication started to work.
Clint is trying, and failing, at waving his own medic away; Sam strong arming him back onto the bench every time he tries to get up. The archer had also been hit by a bullet, leaving a deep graze along his hip, along with dozens of other smaller injuries. He also looked exhausted. The kind that reaches into bone, and aches for weeks. She snorted at some of the more creative threats Sam was coming up with to keep Clint under the stern gaze of the medic who had moved on from his hip to the many other abrasions and cuts that littered his skin.
Sy sometimes forgets how human most of the team is.
That Clint is just a mortal with freakishly good aim. That Natasha underwent training so cruel it ripped her inside out and broke her into a thousand thousand pieces before putting her back together again to turn her into the Black Widow. Tony is basically a genius in an expensive tin can and Sam is a retired Air Force veteran with fancy equipment. Rhodey is somewhere in between Tony and Sam, and even Bruce, who has Hulk, is still a relatively ordinary mortal.
Mortal. And utterly utterly breakable because of it.
She finds her last crushed square of ambrosia, her flask of nectar long lost somewhere on the battlefield Novi Grad had turned into. She wolfs down half of the godly food, breaking the other half into smaller pieces to smear along the larger injuries on her wings.
Sy walks over to Pietro, the armor covering her wings glittering in the light behind her. Movement jostled them uncomfortably, sending pain shooting through her back with every step. The feverish warmth of ambrosia coursed through her system, and the pain slowly started to numb back into a tolerable ache.
He grabs onto her arm, ignoring the blood coating her hands, a desperate look in his wide eyes.
"Wanda. You must bring her here." His words ran together, slurring into a single breathless plea, but he is more coherent that she expected him to be. Vinegar invades her mouth, along with the salty tang of fear.
"I'll bring her back." She promised, spreading her injured wings. The bronze of her armor glittered in the cold light, feathers bent and broken out of shape, her right wing opening crookedly. The ambrosia had taken care of the worst of the damage. Sy twisted her wings to straighten her feathers out by dragging her fingers through her wings, adjusting the celestial bronze where it bent out of shape.
She would need to preen and take care of them properly later. But for now, her slap dash finger detangling job would have to do. Fancy maneuvers are out of the question, but Sy is more than capable of a quick flight to pick up the other Maximoff.
"No, your wi-" Pietro started to protest. She ignored him, taking off with hardly a second glance, beating her wings hard.
Sy desperately searched for drafts, knowing that eventually she'd have to face the pain that came with pushing her body while it was this injured. Plus she's tired.
Sy soared above the city, hunting for any sign of the other Maximoff sibling. A flare of red, along with a warm flare of familiarity led her to angle her flight to the southeastern section of the city. As helpful as it was to have her sudden inner homing beacon on the things that borrowed her power; Sy moved to the top of her to do list getting rid of that link.
Sy touched down with a stumble, pulling in her wings as she turned to face a half destroyed train car. Deja vu flooded her at the scene in front of her; only the body of Ultron that had been built from vibranium was the body on the ground, only steps away from being nothing more than a pile of scrap. Wanda knelt next to it, a crushed piece of metal gripped tightly in her palm. She dropped it to the ground as she turned around Sy, tears glittering on her cheeks. The other woman looked visibly shocked by Sy's bloody front, but Sy marched forward waving away the concern. She didn't want to think about the fact that Steve bleeding out over her hand might be the last time she gets to see him alive.
That he might die because he was protecting her.
"Wanda, we have to go." Sy scanned the other woman for injuries, trying to find the source of her pain. Wanda shook her head, slumping against the side of the train car.
"No. Pietro, he's gone." Her voice cracked over her brother's name. Sy took a half step back, head shaking slightly. No. He's not, he might not be able to run for a while, but he was fine. The bullet wound wasn't that serious. Not like Steve. A deep puncture on the back of his neck, the bright red blood -
She can't think about that right now.
"No, he's going to be fine Wanda. He got shot in the leg. It's serious enough that he'll need surgery, and probably quite a lot of therapy, but he'll be fine." Brown eyes widened in shock. Wanda lurched forward, gripping the straps of Sy's armor that sat snugly over her hips.
"How? I felt his pain, his fear. Then nothing." Sobs choked Wanda's throat, her desperation cloying and the vinegar flavor of the emotion making Sy recoil at the taste. Sy stopped down, gingerly hugging the other woman back before carefully extricating herself.
"I swear to you, barring some insane unforeseen circumstances, he is going to be fine. You're powers are dialed up, and you probably haven't adapted yet. I also helped him, like I did for you, so his... signature, probably feels different now." Wanda took several deep breaths, visibly pulling herself back together. Sy held out her hand and hauled the other woman to her feet.
No sooner had they exchanged shaky smiles with each other, the world dropped out beneath them.
Rubble rose around them as Novi Grad fell. Wanda watched the world around them, her expression a cross between morbid curiosity and abject terror. Sy's heart skipped a beat, the rush of choice flashing in her head clearly mirrored on Wanda's. But she promised Pietro to bring back his sister. And she'd promised Steve to be careful. And Sy wasn't in the habit of breaking her word. It's a dangerous thing in her world to break promises.
Sy made her choice.
She scooped Wanda into her arms, launching the two of them into the sky. Wanda screamed, her arms instantly reaching to circle around Sy's shoulders, burying her head into the space between her elbow and Sy's shoulder. Dust plumed into the air, plunging her world into darkness. Concrete and rocks and random planks of wood were nothing but shadowy shapes, looming out of the dusty grey roar that currently encompassed her world. She gritted her teeth and plunged through the destruction, wings beating unsteadily as she pressed through the clouds of debris.
Dodging debris definitely count as fancy maneuvering. Something her wings really can't handle at the moment, especially while carrying a second person in her arms. She twisted to avoid a flying chunk of building, her shoulder wrenching as when she overextended in order to accommodate her decreased maneuverability.
Red light flared around them as Wanda created a protective barrier around them, deflecting some of the debris away from them. It wasn't perfect, but it let Sy focus on flying them out of the destruction, rather than dodging so much. It also had the added benefit of increasing Sy's visibility, pushing the dust away from them and leaving clearer air directly around them.
A bed slammed into her side, and Sy dropped couple feet. Her grip on Wanda loosened for a second, shock nearly forcing her to let go, but Sy redoubled her grip and pulled the witch even closer to her body.
"Sorry." Wanda muttered. Sy just shook her head, flapping harder. She didn't have the extra breath to talk right then. She spotted a small gap in the dust, sunlight filtering in, with clear skies just above them. She summoned all the energy she could, and somehow managed to force herself to fly faster. They shot through a thick cloud of dust, emerging into bright sunlight, coughing up building. Her wings were caked in a heavy layer of grey and black dust, her feathers coated in heavy dirt.
Her comms unit crackled in her ear, making Sy wince. Tony's voice came through, heavy breathing breaking up his speech.
"Thor on my mark." He ordered stiffly. Sy glanced down to the earth below, at the trees and forest and buildings and all the little towns dotting the area. Thousands of people who they evacuated from the city are still nearby. Thousands more who lived in the crash radius. Sy pressed her head against her shoulder, activating the mic in her ear.
"Tony, remember, you have to destroy everything!" Tony's response shook her to her core. Her wings ached as she flew clumsily. She desperately needs to land.
"We don't have time! Thor, NOW!"
Sy flew after the city, her muscles burning with strain. Wanda's weight grew heavier by the second, and Sy was already at her limit. She flapped determinedly, wings straining.
"Wanda, can you do anything?" The other woman peeked out from under her arm, and Sy felt a tremor of fear run through her body as she absorbed how high up they are. An arm reached out from around her shoulders, and red flared around the witch's finger tips.
Sy screamed, Wanda nearly ripped out of her arms as a red light encircled the falling city. The fall of destroyed city fell didn't slow, but the cloud of debris was contained. Mostly. Sy roared in pain, Wanda's scream matching hers, as she dragged them both to the right, trying to center the falling debris over the gaping chasm the city had pulled away from.
Lighting flared up beneath them, and the sound of Tony's repulsors firing was almost comforting. Yellow destruction also flickered into view, Vision flying around the edges of Wanda's bubble and Loki's green magic streamed out from the deck of the helicarrier. Huge swaths of the city turned to dust, vaporizing under the concentrated effort of the four Avengers. Wanda let out a sob, the muscles in her arm corded with tension.
"I can't-" The red light flickered and died, Wanda going completely limp in Sy's arms. She shot up several feet at the sudden change in pressure, the force of the city no longer pulling on Wanda; and consequently on Sy. The thunderous roar of the falling city hitting the ground filled the air as Sy spiraled down to the deck of the helicarrier.
She landed with an exhausted stumble, Wanda tumbling from her arms with a grunt. Sy collapsed to her knees, coughing and hacking. She was so tired she felt nauseous, every inch of her body burning. Her wings lay open, draping over her back and on the ground. Wanda was completely passed out, blood trickling down from her nose. Sy crawled over to her and pressed two fingers under her chin, finding her pulse. Relief rushed through her that the other woman was alive. She almost let out a giggle as her adrenaline started to crash, leaving her hands and knees weak and shaking.
SHIELD medics sprinted out to them with stretchers. Sy allowed an orange jacketed woman help her to her feet but refused to get on the stretcher. A certain supersoldier is waiting for her in a hospital bed somewhere.
Steve better be ok when she find him. She refuses to accept any other alternatives.
But Sy does let herself relax, shooing away the medics as she stumbled towards the doors leading inside the carrier. A small smile crosses her face.
They won.