Chapter 14
A few seconds later, Mia reappeared behind an overturned car with Natasha on her left, coughing from the cloud of rock dust enveloping them and settling on her shoulders and hair in a matter of moments after arrival.
"Took you long enough," the assassin muttered, loading another set of rounds into each of her handguns with blinding speed.
"Seemed fast enough to me," Barton commented from a car adjacent to them, where he was notching an arrow to his bow. "Welcome back, Paxton. Nice to see you didn't die from jumping out of a plane without a parachute."
"I've done worse," the journalist replied with a dismissive wave of her glowing hand. She shook off her head.
"Oh really?" Mia's face fell, and she lolled her head to her right, eyes locking on the masked super-soldier. "Like what?"
"Try arguing with a psychotic god in order to convince him to reassess his life's choices, for starters."
"Not that that went well, by the looks of things."
Mia rolled her eyes. "Good to see you too, Rogers." Apparently, Steve hadn't gotten over his grudge just yet.
"Are you even armed?" Barton wondered, looking over at her as if she were crazy.
"You could say that." With a shrug, the journalist jumped to her feet at the same time as Romanoff, firing two second blasts at the individual oncoming Chitauri . A gaping hole was blasted through their chests, occasionally two at a time if the blast went through one and hit another. Some fell from Natasha's bullets, others from Barton's arrows, and still others from Steve's shield.
After the first wave had been eliminated, Mia crouched down behind the car again with Natasha, finding herself sandwiched between the assassin and Captain America. Ignoring her tight quarters, Mia threw Barton a look that said 'well?'
"Fair enough," the archer replied, with a cheeky grin. Mia could have sworn that Steve's arm tensed against her. It was the second time in ten minutes Mia had heard the term, but she liked it much more coming from Barton. Even Steve was giving her a slightly awed sideways look, mingled with apprehension as though she might spontaneously combust any moment.
Mia looked away, hating the condemnation that had found its way into his face. She closed her eyes, replaying the scene she'd glimpsed of the people in the street below. Her face hardened. "Steve, the people."
The Captain turned his eyes onto the street as well. "They're fish in a barrel down there," he realized grimly. He looked across Mia at Romanoff.
"We've got this, it's good. Go." She nodded at Steve, and then Mia.
"Wait, me?" Mia was surprised. Green eyes turned on the soldier beside her, questioning.
Steve looked even more dissatisfied, if possible. "Fine. You're with me." He redoubled his grip on his shield. "Think you can keep up?"
Mia smirked and pulled up a tab on her wrist. She grabbed the edge of her sleeve, then pressed the inside of her wrist to Steve's arm.
"Ow!" for the first time, Steve was shocked by Mia's touch. Did that mean she disliked him now? That was just swell.
Mia ignored this. "I'll be right behind you," she assured him, not meeting his gaze. The suit was now locked onto his biological imprint, and was able to teleport to his location regardless of distance. Not that he knew that, but it was details anyway.
"Good." Steve turned to Barton. "You think you can hold them off?" he asked.
"Captain." Barton's eyes were dead serious. "It would be my genuine pleasure."
Next moment both he and Romanoff began letting off another round. Steve took the opportunity to jump off the bridge. Mia set her hands to her neck, and disappeared, jumping off after him.
Instead of hitting the bus below as Rogers had, Mia formed a sphere of golden energy around herself, slowing down her decent by at least half. She actually had the time to muse on how much she would have looked like Glinda the Good from The Wizard of Oz—that is, if she weren't invisible.
Then she wondered if she'd only thought of that because it was a quote Steve would understand.
Then her delay ran out, and she was hitting the ground, breaking out of the clouds of exploding debris and bolting after Rogers—which was a lot harder than it looked, what with his super-speed. Luckily Mia had a bit of an advantage as well, what with her own skills. Faster metabolism and speed was another byproduct of the Midas effect.
At one point she saw Steve glance back, as if looking for her. Apparently he couldn't see her sphere because of all of the smoke, but she saw him looking slightly panicked because by all rights, she should have been dead where she was standing. After all, the sphere was holding up two cars and a large patch of road behind the giant smoke cloud. Aside from that, it was easily missed behind the free floating sparks from things catching on fire.
A thin piece of metal had managed to slice through the bubble and had grazed her right cheekbone. Mia had simply scowled against the pain and kept running, despite the feeling of blood oozing down her face. She knew that it wasn't going to look nice later, but couldn't find the space to care. She had bigger problems—like the swarm of Chitauri descending on the masses for a third time, opening fire on the civilians.
She tried to block the sight out for the moment, focusing on following the Captain and not on the thousands of screaming innocents around her. He was jumping over all kinds of vehicles, while she was half running, half levitating after him.
Mia began to hear gunshots, and noticed police vehicles forming a barricade midway down the street. Automatically she began scanning the credits on the rear bumper. Old habits die hard, she thought ruefully. She saw cars from the eighth, sixth, second, ninth, and…"Shit, the twelfth's out," she muttered. Her old precinct, out in the middle of all this. This wasn't what they were trained for; they were totally outnumbered, outgunned. It made everything that much more personal.
Another emotional compromise, she realized. Rogers would have her head.
Her luck really was something awful, because Steve jumped right on top of what she was pretty sure she recognized as her overseeing officer's vehicle. Seconds later she landed with a light thud beside him, dropping her shield and setting her hands to her neck. In a shimmer of gold she reappeared on his left.
"Mia?" He asked, a little surprised to see her looking so unharmed—that is, except for the massive gash across her cheek . "You alright?"
"Yeah. Fine," she replied, and looked in front of the car. Well, shit. "Officer Reynolds?"
"Who the hell are you?" the officer answered, a younger thinner man turning around as well.
"You know these people, Paxton?" the Captain asked her.
Mia shrugged breathlessly, tossing her slightly dusty hair to one side. "Used to. This is Reynolds, and what I can only assume is his latest partner."
"Paxton?" The officer repeated, distastefully. "You mean Mia Paxton? That uppity detective wanna-be that quit a handful of years back after her partner got knocked?" he squinted up at them uncertainly.
Mia's eyes narrowed into a line. "Always a way with words, Reynolds. Always a jackass."
Steve looked down at the man, his expression hard. Going into 'captain' mode, as usual. "You need people in these buildings," he commanded, gesturing. "There are people inside and they're going to be running right into the line of fire. You take them through the basements, or through the subway. You keep them off the streets. I need a perimeter as far back as 39th."
"Arnold's maneuver," Mia amended, using a term she knew her old associate would relate to. She saw the rookie beside him square his shoulders and nod, understanding the precinct-famous code phrase. But if she remembered correctly, Reynolds was a bit of an ass who challenged direct orders.
Apparently not much had changed, because that's what he immediately did. "Why the hell should I take orders from you and your ex-cop girlfriend?" he demanded.
As if in answer, a Chitauri ship flew around the corner, blowing up a taxi that was dangerously close. Mia jumped towards the blast, throwing up her hands and creating a solid golden wall that diffracted the explosion away from them. She actually bounced off the wall, then ricocheted back to the ground and landed in a crouch as the shield crumbled into golden dust around her.
Meanwhile, Steve was fighting off two Chitauri hand-to hand. Mia found herself being advanced upon by about five Chitauri, all armed and approaching her hesitantly, not firing—as if afraid of her after her latest display. Mia slowly broke into a grin, rising to her feet and whirling her arms around her torso before pushing her hands out from her stomach and firing circular globes of golden energy at those surrounding her and reducing them to piles of charred bodies and discarded weapons.
Steve promptly knocked out his second attacker, chopping off its arm and taking its gun before knocking it out with his shield.
Then Mia reappeared on his left, where she'd been standing before. They exchanged a look over the rim of his shield.
Reynolds promptly stalked off, giving the orders Steve had laid out to his fellow officers. Mia grinned at his retreating form.
"Congratulations," she told Steve breathlessly. "I think you're the first person to put him properly in his place since his being promoted to sergeant."
"I take it you two didn't get along so well."
"Nah, he hated me. I was so much younger, but I was the detective and he was the blue shirt. He made my job hell whenever he got the chance. The dislike was mutual." A loud beeping from her right arm alerted her to some kind of suit development as a red light began pulsing on her shoulder.
"What's that?" Steve asked quickly, as they started moving again.
"Communication prompt, I think." Mia pressed a finger to her right ear. "Paxton, Mia. Linked up."
"Paxton." Tony's voice greeted her warmly. "Long time no see! How goes the man hunt? Found yourself a demi-god? Or have you decided to go with the blond spangly alternative."
"Both," she replied ambiguously, waving a hand to swat off a beam that had been heading for her and Steve. A wave of sparks threw it away from them and into a nearby crashed and abandoned Chitauri ship, it sticking out like a steak knife.
Mia was pretty sure from the look on Steve's face that despite the helmet, he was arching an eyebrow at her.
"Stark?" he asked her. She nodded sharply.
Steve looked up at the bridge. "We need to reinforce Barton and Romanoff."
"I can do that," Mia replied.
"Yeah? How?"
Mia stepped into Steve's space, mildly surprised that he didn't take a step back. "Hold onto me," she ordered, giving him a sharp look before typing in a string of commands in her sleeve. Seeing him hesitate, she added, "I won't shock you, I promise."
Seconds later she felt his hands settle on her waist, then pulling her close against him. Mia felt the cold curve of his shield behind her head and she looked up at his face, at his lips pursed in a line and his blue eyes fixed on her. She tried not to feel anything, looking into those eyes. It never worked.
"Close your eyes," Mia told him. She watched a flicker of uncertainly flit through blue depths before golden lashes closed. Mia looked at his lips again. It would be so easy to—
"Paxton, don't you dare kiss that Capsicle."
Tony must have been in Steve's headset too, because his eyes sprang open. Confused blue eyes met guilty green ones.
It was at that unfortunate moment that they dematerialized.
. . .
"Agh!"
"Ungh."
These were the sounds they both made as they hit the bridge, Steve actually rematerializing in a jump that took out several Chitauri. Barton and Romanoff were in up to their necks in aliens, and Mia found her previous romantically derived horror morphing into just plain old horror as she summoned her power and whirled, shooting darts of energy from her fingertips like bullets.
They also didn't hit any of her comrades, the bolts bouncing off of Steve's shield and Natasha's gun with ease and not even scratching Barton when a stray bolt scraped his forehead. It had immediately dissolved on contact into golden dust that he'd swiped out of his eyes and moved on from, completely unscathed.
Thirty seconds later the four of them plus Thor stood alone on the bridge, surrounded by dead bodies, abandoned weapons and a lot of ash.
"Lady Mia," Thor greeted. He seemed to always greet her, even when not addressing the others. Perhaps it was by nature of her being his brother's Intended. Maybe it was some sort of rule, in Asgard.
"Hey there, big guy." Mia sighed, swiping sweaty hair from her eyes.
"What the story upstairs?" Steve asked.
"The power surrounding the Cube is impenetrable," Thor told them.
Stark's voice came over the COM again. "Thor's right, we've gotta deal with these guys."
"How do we do this?" Natasha wondered, looking at the chaos around them.
"As a team," the Captain replied staunchly.
"I have unfinished business with Loki—and Lady Mia," Thor supplied.
"Yeah? Get in line." Barton was surreptitiously organizing his arrows.
"Me?" Mia sighed. "Great, and I thought we'd officially called things off."
"Hardly. An Intended is not easily cast aside," Thor told her. "Your fate will be tied to Loki long after this battle has ended. Perhaps to the end of your days."
Mia huffed. "Seriously? Goddammit..."
"That aside," Steve said, sounding slightly miffed, "Loki's going to keep this fight focused on us. And that's what we need. Without him, these things could run wild. We've got Stark up top. He's going to need us to…"
Before Steve could go on, a motorcycle pulled up unexpectedly, carrying a certain scientist dressed in oversized and ill-fitting clothing.
"BRUCE!" Mia yelled, abruptly barreling towards him. The others looked mildly surprised, but made no move to stop her. Next minute, she had her arms thrown around the man's neck. Banner actually laughed at the sudden display of affection.
"Didn't Stark say something about anarchists not being demonstrative?" he asked.
Mia hugged him tighter. "Stark's an idiot. I'm glad you're alright, Banner." She was extremely relieved to see him in one piece—he had, after all, fallen out of a helicarrier.
Banner patted her pack a few times, returning the hug. "Glad to see you too, Mia."
The suddenly emotional journalist turned to see all of the other Avengers staring at her. "As you were," she ordered them stiffly, brushing off her suit. Barton smirked and shook his head bemusedly.
"So," Banner said, gesturing around them. "This all seems…horrible."
"I've seen worse," Natasha said, looking him up and down but obviously referring to his big green counterpart.
"Sorry."
"No," she amended. "We could use a little worse." A mild air of mutual appreciation passed between the two silently.
"Stark, we've got him," Steve said.
"Banner?"
Yup," Mia interjected. "Your science bro has returned."
"Science bro." Tony scoffed at this "Tell him to suit up. I'm bringing the party to you."
Approximately three seconds later—just long enough for everyone to scramble a confused expression—the Iron Man suit cam flying around a distant corner….giant space monster in tow.
"I don't…see how that's a party," Natasha commented weakly.
Mia rolled her eyes at Tony's dramatic ways. "Well, apparently we've all just been Stark'd." Seeing their confused looks intensified she added, "It's like Punk'd, just…"
"A thousand times worse?" Barton finished.
"Yeah. That."
"Doctor Banner?" Steve began. "Now might be a really good time for you to get angry."
"That's my secret, Captain," Banner replied, throwing a wry look back at them all. "I'm always angry."
And right then and there, Banner transformed into the Hulk.
Seeing it firsthand gave Mia a new kind of appreciation for the man. It also made her exceptionally grateful, as she didn't need to morph painfully to access her powers. Still, she was beyond impressed as the Hulked-out Bruce smashed the Chitauri's monster face first into the pavement. Bruce as a rule was so quiet, so kind. Yet she had always sensed a sort of volcano brewing under the surface, and this explained it in full.
The beast's plates began to buckle, its tail end going up in the air from the sudden halt in progression.
"Hold on!" she heard Tony say, and saw him fire several heat seeking missiles at the creature's middle back where the flesh had been exposed.
"Mia, get down!" Steve was calling to her, already kneeling with his shield protecting both himself and Romanoff. Barton had ducked for cover, Thor just stood majestically…and Mia? She did what she did best: threw up her hands and covered all of her exposed friends with a shield of golden sparks.
The monster's body literally slid over the dome of energy, crashing off the edge of the bridge. Once it had come to a groaning halt Mia readjusted the sphere so that it hovered directly over them all as they regrouped. The Hulk walked through the dome with ease, joining their ranks, as did Tony, who hovered downward through the glowing wall effortlessly.
They stood in a circle under Mia's dome, glaring at the enemies around them. Mia stood between Tony and Steve, her hands at her sides and swirling with new sparks, ready for use. She felt an overwhelming sense of pride wash over her. For the first time, she wasn't ashamed of her skills.
"I was wrong," said a voice on her right. Mia turned her head and found Steve looking at her. "You were ready for this. I'm sorry I doubted you."
"Don't mention it, Cap." Mia flashed him a small smile—that, after a moment, faded into a grimace.
"Ugh, don't start flirting now." A hard iron elbow nudged her gently in the ribs.
"Ow! Tony!"
"Hey, that was payback for the shocking I had earlier."
"Jerk."
"Take it like a man, Paxton." Mia just shook her head, and ignored him—then cried out in pain.
Send the rest.
"Mia?"
"I'm…I'm okay." Mia screwed her eyes closed for a moment, wiping away the sound of Loki's thought from her mind. "They're coming," she told them all. "He's sending more through."
"How would you know tha…"Stark began, when a loud creaking sound echoed down from the portal.
"Guys," Natasha said slowly.
They all looked up to see two more of the monstrous brutes worming their way down from the portal, along with an indeterminate number of smaller ships.
"Call it, Captain," Tony instructed.
"All right, listen up."Steve readjusted his grip on his shield. "Until we can close that portal, our priority is containment." He turned to the archer. "Barton, I want you up on that roof. Eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays."
Tony was next. "Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash."
"Can you give me a lift?" Barton asked Tony.
Tony nodded briskly. "Right. Better clench up, Legolas." Neither he nor Barton noticed Mia holding both of her hands up, framing them with a thin clear screen that seemed to be holographic and produced by her sleeves. As Tony and Barton headed for the rooftop, the image of the archer with his arms still around Iron Man's neck was trapped in the screen.
"Is…that a camera?" Natasha asked in disbelief. The Hulk turned and grunted at the sight of Mia smirking.
"Nope, it's blackmail," the journalist replied, squashing her hands together and cancelling out the hologram. She turned back to Steve. "You were saying?"
Steve just stared at her a moment before continuing. "Thor." The god of thunder turned to the Captain expectantly. "You've got to try and bottleneck that portal. You've got the lightning. Light the bastards up."
Thor began whirling Mjolnir, giving Mia one last strong look—perhaps it was the use of the word bastard. "Do not attempt to face Loki on your own, Lady Mia," he warned her, as if reading her mind. "He is far beyond reason now, further than he has ever gone afield before. I ask that you not endanger yourself needlessly." With that, he flew off, leaving Mia, Natasha and Steve on the ground with the Hulk.
"You heard him," Steve told Mia just as firmly. "You, me and Romanoff, we stay on the ground. Keep the fighting here. And Hulk…"
Hulk turned around with an expectant snarl.
Steve pointed a finger upwards. "Smash."
The Tony-proclaimed, 'big green rage monster' actually grinned at this before jumping up at least thirteen stories and beating the daylights out of the building—and the Chitauri clinging to its architecture.
Mia found herself surrounded by more Chitauri soon enough, with Steve and Natasha fighting close by. She actually had to duck several times to avoid Cap's shield, and a few of Natasha's stray bullets actually bounced off of her suit at one point. Mia was certain she would have a spattering of bullet shaped bruises on her mid-torso for at least a month.
It was hot, and the air was thick with dust and smoke and debris. Mia kept her suit its default golden color, because the black would have made her so much hotter in the mid-day sun. She was grateful when Thor summoned up a thunderstorm that blotted out the fierce light. Was it just her, or were the surrounding buildings abnormally bright?
It was then that she looked down on the other side of the bridge, away from the blockaded street. She saw more people still struggling to get away, and realized something.
"Steve!" she called over the noise, as the super-soldier took out two assailants at the same time using their own bodies as weapons against each other.
"Paxton?" he called back. "A little busy here!"
"I can get them out!" she yelled, blasting three foot soldiers and a carrier out of the sky.
"Who?" Steve hollered back, confused.
"Them!" Mia looked down into the street below. Steve's eyes followed her gaze. "I can teleport! If I can create a sphere great enough to cover, I don't know, a few blocks in either direction"—she took out two more Chitauri with dagger blasts—"I can move them out of the danger area, to the safe zone!"
"Paxton, that kind of energy expansion could drain you entirely," Natasha called out calmly, while kicking an alien off of the bridge into a plume of flames from an exploded car.
"Isn't that a risk worth taking?"
"Our mission is to distract the invaders, not perform recon!" Steve told her.
Mia created another glowing force field, tossing several waves of Chitauri away and turning them into charred rubble. "Yeah? Well I'm not a soldier." She turned and shot another off of the Widow's back.
"Romanoff's right, Mia," Tony's voice chided her from inside her earpiece. "Do something that drastic and you'll kill yourself. Don't pull a Captain Spangles on me. Pepper would kill me for letting you do something that stupid."
"Thanks, Stark," Steve said dryly.
Mia cast another longing look down at the people in the street. "Tony, I…"
She wasn't sure how it had happened. She could have sworn they'd successfully taken down every carrier that had swung their way. Regardless, there had appeared as if from nowhere a large swarm of armed Chitauri, taking the street below and opening fire on the unarmed populace.
Opening fire on the children. A particular girl, who looked about eight years old in a light blue coat was trapped under part of a large metal street lamp. Crying. Across the street, on the other side of the advancing Chitauri were the rest of her family—and an older girl, crying as her father held her back. Mia watched the trapped girl's lips for a word, horrifically captivated.
"Iggy!"
There was no air in her lungs. But somehow, Mia found herself jumping over the railing of the bridge with nothing to catch her, firing sparks out of her palms and blasting the aliens into heaps of ash in the middle of the street. She was running towards the little blond haired girl, who now had an especially large and heavily armed alien towering over her. Tears of terror poured down the child's cheeks.
Mia felt an especially large jolt as a flailing Chitauri got a slice at her arm, somehow piercing the material and opening a large gash in her right bicep. She didn't feel the pain though, even after viciously head butting the creature and blasting it into a pile of charcoal.
Then she raised her palms forward, just as the soldier raised his bayonet above the girl—
Mia closed her eyes, and let her grief come pouring out of her.
"NO!" The next moment she was standing in a pile of ash, panting as tears poured down her face. Her hair was singed and burnt, her arm gushing blood down her golden sleeve. She opened her eyes, and saw the little girl looking up at her, blue eyes wide and fearful.
Mia mentally braced herself for the blow, for the name to come pouring out of the girl's mouth. Monster. Freak.
But it never did.
Instead, the little girl raised her arms to Mia, sobbing uncontrollably. "Help me!"
Without hesitation, Mia pulled the bar away from the girl's middle, feeling her for any injuries quickly before the girl's arm were wrapped around her shoulders, her little smudged face tucked into Mia's neck. Mia lifted the girl up, hugging her back and getting to her feet. "It's okay," she told the girl, tears still streaming down her own face. "It's okay. You're safe now. I've got you."
In that moment, she wanted it to be Clem. So, so badly she wanted it to be Clem in her arms, safe and sound and out of their father's reach. But it wasn't. It wasn't, and Mia knew it.
Blinking away smoky, dirty tears, Mia looked up at the bridge to see Steve and Natasha looking down at her, watching. No doubt they had seen everything. Gritting her teeth, she turned away from their gaze and made her way across the ghastly ashen street, weaving through the overturned vehicles to where the girl's family waited.
Already they were sobbing, assuming their child had died in the fight that had just occurred. It was the mother who saw Mia first, and more importantly, the light blue form in her arms. The woman screamed aloud and pointed at her.
"Clara!" She shrieked, and broke down into violent weeping. Mia doubled her pace, seeing the older sister running towards her as the father released her in shock. The girl, who was about twelve or thirteen, was screaming out the child's name. "Clara! Clara!"
The child pulled her face from Mia's shoulder to look at her sister. "Nikki!" the girl cried, launching herself into her siblings' arms. A tiny part of Mia's heart broke at this, both at letting the child go and at the sight of the sibling's reunion. Mia made a vow then and there that if she made it through the day alive, she would see her sister free of her father once and for all.
She looked back at the bridge and saw Steve fighting again, Widow somewhere out of sight. When she turned back, the entire family was in a dog pile around the girl, all crying. All speaking, though it took Mia's ears a moment to register what they were saying.
"Thank you," the mother was sobbing into the girl's blond hair. Thank you for saving my baby. Thank you, thank you…"
"You saved our daughter," the man was saying, his eyes shining gratefully and with tears. "You saved our Clara…"
"You're hurt," the older, dark haired girl observed, wiping away her tears. She looked at Mia with keen eyes, seeing her hands retaining a faint golden sparkle around them. "What are you?" she asked, not rudely as much as interestedly.
Still, Mia recoiled from the question. She'd wondered that same thing so many times it hurt to hear it from someone else.
So before things got too painful, Mia turned away from the family, and ran out into the street.
She saw Tony on the bridge with Steve for a moment before blasting off into the sky once more. They were covered, and she knew what she needed to do.
Taking a deep breath, Mia held her palms together before her. She gathered the sparks from her fingers in her hands, shaping a ball that grew and expanded, until it was the size of a beach ball. Then, with one final surge of energy, she threw it up into the air, spreading her palms from above her head and down on either side of her.
The golden sparks exploded high above her head, spreading out and covering the entire street with a sheet of gold that was raised some three stories in the air. It covered the street in reverse order of her hands, so that the two sheets of gold were running towards a colliding point just above Mia. Several carriers had already bounced off the surface, and the crowds beneath it began to cheer.
Her best shield yet, Mia mused happily. She saw Steve peering off of the bridge again, at what she was doing.
Mia gave a single, weary grin of satisfaction before the bolt struck her from above, a direct head shot. A literal bolt from the blue.
Just as the two sheets of gold collided into one above, she crumbled to the ground in a heap, her suit flickering and fading into black material as the sparks died in her hands and crumbled into golden dust.
"MIA!"