Title: Resurrection, Reconstruction, and Redemption, 3/13
Authors: seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony (eventually. We swear!). Various canon ships. Sharon/Winter Soldier.
Warnings: Denial fic. Blatant shipper fic. One non-canonical het pairing in later chapters. A dire lack of porn.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Note: For a rundown of where this fic departs from current continuity, see the notes at the end of chapter one. Familiarity with the events of Captain America #25 and Civil War is encouraged.
/ text in italics / denotes radio/cell phone communication via Extremis. # text in italics # denotes news broadcast received via Extremis.
Thank you to angelofharmony for the wonderful beta job.
Chapter Three:
Steve had been back -- really back -- for less than three days, and the situation had already changed substantially. He couldn't help but feel that it was somewhat unfair.
The blast they had heard had been the Helicarrier exploding. Steve still wasn't sure how to process that.
Almost the most bizarre thing about the whole situation was that they had had to find out through the news. At the moment, it wasn't as if they could simply run out into the streets; they'd had no idea what was happening, and not only was going in unprepared always a bad idea, there was also the offhand chance that it was trap.
So Luke had taken down the small television that had been gathering dust on one of the high shelves of Strange's study and brought it into the kitchen, so that they could all cluster around it.
Unsurprisingly, what had happened to the Helicarrier was all over the news; every station had pictures of the cloud of smoke and ash hanging over the harbor, reports of what had happened, and questions about what action SHIELD was planning to take next.
Sharon was leaning forward in her chair, elbows on her knees, staring intently at the screen; Steve could almost feel her impatience to be there, to be doing something. "I keep thinking I need to report in," she said, shaking her head. "That I should be reporting to a duty station."
Bucky rested his metal hand on her shoulder for a moment, and said, "They'll be busy with this for days. Too busy to be effective at anything else. I need to call Fury."
On the screen, CNN was showing footage of a grimy and water-stained Dum-Dum Dugan, glaring belligerently into the camera. "Get that damn microphone out of my face," he snapped. "Can't you see I've got work to do here?"
Jessica Drew made a little, half-amused sound. "I never thought I'd be glad to hear Dum-Dum Dugan swearing at reporters," she said.
Steve knew what she meant, knew how Sharon felt. He had never been unable to go help with a disaster of this magnitude before, never had to just sit and watch while people he knew might or might not be dead. Helplessness was a new feeling, and one he didn't like.
The camera cut back to an on-the-scene news anchor, her pale blue suit jacket already spotted from the soot falling out of the air.
"That was high-ranking SHIELD officer Thaddeus Dugan," she said, voice coached to a studied seriousness. "As you can see, SHIELD personnel are working diligently to address this tragedy. I'm about to have a few words with SHIELD Director Anthony Stark."
The camera swung away from her then, showing a dizzying moment of footage of the docks, SHIELD agents milling around in what Steve could recognize as a sort of half-organized chaos, then a shot out over the water, with the slowly dispersing cloud of oily grey smoke, before finally settling again.
After everything, it was strange seeing Tony again, especially like this. He had his helmet off, and his hair was matted, damp with sweat, and sticking up in odd tangles. There was a streak of ash on his left cheek, and obvious scorch marks on the armor; he must have been close to the Helicarrier when it blew.
Steve's shoulders relaxed slightly, a knot of tension he hadn't realized that he'd been carrying dissolving slowly. Even now, no matter how badly things had been left between them, he couldn't help but be glad to know that Tony was all right.
The camera jounced again slightly, as the reporter came back into view, clean lines of her pastel suit starting to wilt. "Mr. Stark," she said, voice taking on a sharp tone. "What can you tell us about the current situation? What actions is SHIELD taking to protect the citizens of New York City?"
There was a moment of silence, before Tony said, "Obviously, the situation is still under investigation by SHIELD, so we don't yet have the full picture. However, we're fairly certain that this was a targeted attack aimed at SHIELD; not an act of terrorism. We're deeply sorry that the citizens of New York were affected by it, and I can assure you, measures are being taken to ensure that there won't be a repeat of these events." Even without the voice-distorting effect of the helmet, his words were oddly inflectionless -- calm, slightly regretful, but without any obvious distress. As if the loss of his base of operations and deaths of what had to be at least half his men were just minor setbacks, something he was already trying to spin into better publicity.
Steve really hoped he was just putting on a good face for the press, that Tony's power-trip hadn't progressed to the point where he could simply shrug off this kind of disaster. If the Extremis had truly left him that far removed from the rest of humanity... Once they finished dealing with the current crop of supervillains, they might find themselves needing to take out Tony.
And now that the anger he'd been running on during the fight over registration had burned out, he wasn't entirely sure he could do that.
"Deeply regret," Peter snorted. "That's what he said about you."
"Is there anything that New Yorkers should be doing to protect themselves? Is this the time to consider leaving the city?" the reporter asked, leaning forward in a way that was no doubt meant to convey her intensity.
"I'd actually like to thank New Yorkers for holding up so well in the face of this disaster; this city has dealt with so much over the past year, and its residents have proven themselves incredibly resilient," Tony said, turning slightly so that he was half-facing the reporter, although he managed to keep his eyes fixed on the camera. "People should keep on doing what they have been. Stay calm, and if you can, keep close to home. Let the officials do their jobs; remember, we're here to protect you." The screen's picture was fuzzy, but Steve could still see the hair sticking to his forehead, the sharp angles of his cheekbones. "Furthermore, I want to make sure people know that initial analysis indicates that the perpetrators used plain, old-fashioned explosives," he went on. "No biological agents, no radiation... I wouldn't want to go swimming in the harbor at the moment, but the city itself should be unaffected. No one will put themselves in danger from toxins or radiation by staying."
"Then this wasn't the work of superhumans?"
Tony produced another one of those rueful half-smiles, so obviously false that Steve could spot it even through the bad reception. "Not unless timed explosives are a superpower."
The picture went black for a moment then, before cutting back to the brightly-lit anchor desk. "And that was Kristine Sullivan, live at the docks. We'll have more on the situation as it progresses, or you can check out our website for live updates, found at --"
Luke turned the television off. "Yeah, that's not something we need to be watching," he said. He looked frustrated; Steve suspected that they were all feeling the thwarted urge to be doing something in the face of a crisis like this. They were heroes; they weren't supposed to be hiding, safe when disaster struck.
Jessica Jones laid a hand over her husband's, a sympathetic expression on her face; she might not have been an active hero anymore, but she had been. "Come on Luke," she said, responding to the unspoken sentiment that filled the room. "Don't sulk. It's not like there's anything you could be doing. At this point, they're probably mostly just dealing with the casualties, and you hate working with hurt people."
A slightly sullen expression crossed Luke's face. The fact that Jessica was right obviously wasn't any more of a comfort to him than it was to Steve. "Yeah, well, I've got plenty of practice with Danny. Anyway, that's not the point, and you know it."
"Hey!" Danny said, an irritated expression on his face that probably would have had more impact without the butterfly bandage over his left eyebrow.
"We need to report in with Fury," Bucky said again. He glanced sideways at Dr. Strange and added, "My communicator's been dead since we got here."
"The house is warded against electronic surveillance," Strange told him.
"Of course it is," Sharon said. She looked up over her shoulder at Bucky -- who was still standing behind her -- and then the two of them turned to stare at Steve. "We need to go," she said, and Steve realized with a faint sense of uneasiness that it was the first time she had met his eyes since arriving. "But we'll come back as soon as we can, and then you and I can talk. Alone." Her eyes dropped from Steve's face to his chest, and she added, "We need to talk about what happened."
As she said the words, Steve realized -- suddenly, irrationally -- that he did not in fact want to "talk about what happened," that he very much didn't want to know whatever it was Sharon needed to tell him.
But she needed to say it, and that meant it was important. "When you get back," he agreed.
Doctor Strange gestured for Sharon and Bucky to stand to one side of the room, away from the New Avengers. "When you come back," he informed them, "try the doorbell."
Bucky raised his hand in a quick salute, and Sharon gave him a small, determined smile. "We'll come back soon," she said, meeting his eyes for a moment before looking away again.
Doctor Strange raised his hands, and said a word that made the hair on Steve's arms stand on end, and Sharon and Bucky were surrounded by a cloud of the same swirling pink smoke that they had appeared in.
On the television screen, channel six was showing the same cell-phone camera footage of the Helicarrier exploding again.
In the end, there had really only been one place for the remnants of SHIELD to go.
Fury's old Helicarrier had been hidden under the New York Harbor while a select group of agents had gone over it with a fine toothed comb, searching out and destroying the bugs that had riddled the ship.
It was clean now, and easily the safest place for them to go, since only Tony and those select agents had known where the Helicarrier was while it was being gone over.
For the moment, they were effectively hiding on the old Helicarrier, tending to the wounded and trying to figure out what to do next. It wasn't a question of whether to pull agents from Los Angeles to send them to China anymore; after the kind of blow they had taken, they needed to regroup before they could even begin to consider what they were going to do about the rest of the world. SHIELD was actively under attack, and Tony had the unfortunate certainty that it was because of him.
He had cost the Mandarin his empire, so the Mandarin had destroyed his. Like the terrorist bombing in D.C. that had been a precursor to the destruction in L.A., the suicide bomber in Stark Tower had been just the opening act; the Helicarrier had been the main event.
He had spent the afternoon reassuring the media that SHIELD was still operational, that this was nothing to worry about, that they had the situation under control. But it was a complete lie, of course; things were spiraling out of control at an alarmingly rapid rate, and SHIELD was increasingly only able to play repairman, coming in after the damage had been done to try and put a patch on things.
They had been distracted, caught completely off guard, and now they were paying the price.
Even with all of the agents out in the field, SHIELD had still lost over fifty percent of its force; due to the recent attacks, they had been recalling agents from all non-vital postings, and most of them had been on the Helicarrier, waiting to be debriefed and reassigned.
They also had a number of injured men; there had been quite a few agents still in the air when the Helicarrier had blown, and most of them had been bounced around or burned fairly badly.
The infirmary on the old Helicarrier was filled with people suffering from everything from concussions to third degree burns and internal injuries. The facilities weren't really equipped to handle such large numbers of injured men all at once, and they had been forced to put most of the non-critical cases in re-purposed common areas.
Sending any of the injured to civilian hospitals was out of the question at the moment; SHIELD was badly compromised enough as it was, and they couldn't afford to open themselves up to attack from any other sources. They also didn't need to put anyone else in danger.
Tony ran a hand along the wall as he walked through the dimly-lit corridors on the lower levels of the ship; the infirmary might be near-claustrophobically full, but the Helicarrier itself was less than half-full, and the lower decks were almost completely abandoned.
He had spent the morning helping with the clean-up at the harbor. Once again, they were in the position of just being grateful that there hadn't been any biological or radioactive components to the explosives.
There wasn't much he could do about the wounded, but he had spent the last hour or so in the infirmary anyway, trying to act as moral support if nothing else. He suspected that he had failed rather spectacularly.
He paused for a long moment in a doorway, leaning his head against the wall; he was so tired his bones ached. After everything that had happened over the past few days, Tony knew that he was off his game in more ways than one.
After answering question after question about the explosion, after staring at the three-dozenth burn victim and trying to think of something to say other than, "I'm sorry I screwed up," Tony had hit his limit and retreated down to the lower decks, looking for a quiet moment alone. He wasn't going to be any good to anyone if he couldn't get his head together.
"Sir?"
And there went his quiet moment. "Yes, Dugan?" he asked, straightening and turning to face the man. He didn't have the luxury of showing any kind of weakness.
"The clean-up crews have confirmed your reports that there were no radioactive or biological elements on the Helicarrier. They're still going through the wreckage, trying to find anything useful," Dugan said.
"They're not going to find anything; the Mandarin is nothing if not thorough," Tony said, raising a hand to rub at his eyes; he was going on his third day without sleep, and it was starting to catch up with him. There was no time for that now, though. "But I already knew that. Why did you really come down here, Dugan?"
"We can't hide down here indefinitely. The men need to know what we're doing, what the plan is." Dugan hesitated for a moment, then said, "Look. What happened -- it's not your fault. There was absolutely no way you could have deactivated even one of those bombs in the time we had, and you'd have only gotten yourself blown to hell trying. They took us by surprise."
Tony folded his arms across his chest. This was an unexpected bit of support, and he really had no way to respond to it, because he couldn't help but feel that it was unwarranted. "They shouldn't have been able to take us by surprise like that," he said. "I should have anticipated it." Anticipating the future was what he did, what he'd built half his life on, and yet again and again the important things kept catching him unprepared. And other people kept paying for it.
Dugan frowned, and said, "You can't anticipate everything. We were dumb enough to collect all our forces in one place, and they launched a preemptive strike and caught us by napping. Pearl Harbor, 9/11; sometimes this kind of oversight happens and the important thing is to deal with the aftermath, not waste time going over what you should have done."
"Except Pearl Harbor wasn't aimed at one person," Tony said, closing his eyes for a long moment. The sudden darkness made him feel dizzy, and he opened them again.
"We don't know that this was either," Dugan said, gesturing shortly. "There's no way of knowing why he went after SHIELD; chances are just as good or better that it was because of the kind of threat we present."
"There is that," Tony admitted, lips quirking.
Dugan shifted his weight, folding his arms over his chest, obviously uncomfortable with this kind of conversation. "I still need to know what to tell the men. They need to know that we've got a plan, that they don't just have us on the run."
"For now," Tony said, "we wait. Things in Los Angeles are still fairly bad; She-Hulk and Ares are staying, along with any SHIELD agents already there, to keep a handle on the situation. Ms. Marvel, Sentry, Wasp, and Wonder Man are on their way back; they'll be here within the hour." He had spent half an hour on the line with Carol; she had been less than pleased to discover that there had been two major disasters in New York while she was on the other side of the country.
"So we're waiting on the super-powered cavalry?" Dugan asked, sounding disgruntled.
Tony shrugged. "Yes. Once they've gotten back, we'll have a strong enough operational force that we'll be able to take action without leaving ourselves open to attack again."
Dugan snorted. "I've said before that I don't like this. And I don't," he said, turning away. "But this is a hell of a situation, and I guess we don't have all that many options." And with that, he walked off, leaving Tony alone with his thoughts again.
Sam's bird was watching him again; Redwing kept turning his head from side to side, to stare at Steve with flat, reptilian golden eyes.
Normally, Steve liked Redwing. He was effectively Sam's partner, and was, generally speaking, a well trained bird. Still, it was slightly creepy when he stared like that. Steve had seen him devote the same intense concentration to small, furry things he was about to eat.
Sharon and Bucky had returned early that morning, along with Sam and Nick Fury. Steve would have been flattered that his return from the dead was enough to finally make Nick come out of hiding, but he suspected Nick's appearance had more to do with the destruction of the Helicarrier.
Sam had hugged Steve, slapped him on the back, and spent a solid five minutes yelling at him for worrying them all. Then he had hugged him again. Steve was just grateful that he hadn't cried.
Fury, thankfully, had contented himself with a handshake.
"Ya know, this is just like when the Midnight Racer faked his own death," he had said, clasping Steve's hand firmly.
"Yeah," Steve had said, smiling back at him. It was good to know that some people, at least, never changed. "The Chauffeur fainted when he first saw him."
"Aw, that was only because they liked the sound effect," Fury had said, giving Steve a gruff grin.
Then he had dropped into one of Strange's over-stuffed Victorian chairs, put his boots up on the mahogany end table, and begun debriefing them vis-à-vis Red Skull.
He had covered the Skull's possession of Lukin, the terrorist attacks he had staged in D.C. and LA, and Lukin's repeated visits to the Latverian embassy. Now, he had reached the familiar topic of Red Skull's inevitable contacts within the government.
"There were enough security measures around you to protect three Kennedys," he said, jabbing his unlit cigar in Steve's direction. "You don't want to know how many favors I cashed in to find out what time they were dropping you off at the courthouse. And the Skull knew before I did."
"Because he had spies in SHIELD," Jessica Drew said.
Fury nodded. "Because he had spies in SHIELD. Including Dr. Faustus, who could have given us some useful information if he'd still had an intact skull and a pulse when my agents brought him in."
"He deserved it," Sharon said. The words had the sound of something spoken multiple times, and she looked Fury straight in the eyes when she said them.
"He probably wouldn't have talked anyway." Bucky, too, sounded as if he'd gone over the subject before. "And now we know he doesn't have a hold on Agent Carter anymore."
Steve frowned, and turned towards Sharon. She had her arms folded across her chest, and she wasn't looking at him again.
Sam was also frowning, looking at Sharon with obvious concern in his eyes. Redwing, perched on the back of his chair, was still staring fixedly at Steve.
"So it really was Red Skull, huh?" Peter said, voice strangely flat. He was in costume, leaning his weight against the back of MJ's chair. She and Jessica Jones were sitting together to one side of the room, and had the television on, with the sound muted. They were watching the newscasts showing recycled images of the disaster from yesterday.
"Yeah," Fury said, folding his arms over his chest. "There's no doubt about that. Now what happened yesterday, that was someone else, and we're pretty sure it was that bastard the Mandarin."
"We kind of figured that," Spiderman said, nodding.
"So with everything you know, do you have any idea what the hell Doom's been up to?" Luke asked. "I mean, other than making a damned nuisance of himself?"
"I believe that I may have the answer to that," Doctor Strange said smoothly from the doorway He walked into the center of the room, twitching an eyebrow at Fury's feet. "I have been communing with the fates since I interrupted his ritual the other evening, attempting to find out what his greater intent was; Doctor Doom rarely works on the small scale."
"You got that right," Fury said. "We actually haven't been able to get much of a read on what he's up to, and that's damned unsettling."
"Well, yes," Strange said. "Doom's plans are of a mystical nature; I doubt that they would make much sense to one not initiated into the arts."
"So, what are they, then?" Jessica Drew asked, raising an eyebrow.
"As I was saying," Strange said, just the barest trace of irritation in his voice. "I have reason to believe that Doctor Doom may be searching for an Asgardian Artifact buried deep beneath New York City."
"You mean like Thor's Hammer?" Danny asked, cocking his head to one side.
Strange nodded, expression solemn. "In a sense. But of a far darker nature; the artifact Doom seeks is the spear with which Loki killed Balder. An Uru metal head, probably still coated in the blood of a god; its potential use for chaos magic would be almost unimaginable."
"I think I remember reading about that in school," Spiderman said thoughtfully. "Wasn't it a sprig of mistletoe? And the whole thing was supposed to cause the end of the world, or something?"
"The sprig of mistletoe was symbolic. And yes, it was supposed to ultimately bring about Ragnarok," Strange said.
"Okay," Peter said, "that's not good."
"No," Strange agreed. "It's not. The amount of chaos magic needed to call the dead out of the grave is formidable enough. With Balder's Bane, Doom would have access to levels of chaos power no mortal has ever tapped. The only magician who's ever come close to wielding that kind of power is the Scarlet Witch, and she used it to commit mass genocide." He paused, one hand going up to stroke his mustache, then added, "And she was a good woman once. Doom is already insane."
"You could have just said, 'Yes, Peter, it's not good.'"
Luke was frowning. "If this magical whatchamacallit has been buried under New York that long, how come no one's come looking for it before?"
"Actually, attempting to discover that is what has taken the most effort; there may not be much written concerning Balder's Bane, but there is something. However, there was nothing recorded to say why a sorcerer of Doom's power should have such trouble attaining, or in fact, locating, the artifact." Strange looked faintly smug. "However I believe that I have discovered the reason why."
"Well," Peter asked, bouncing slightly on his toes with ill-concealed impatience, "why?"
Strange seemed to be enjoying this. "Because there is something, or to be more precise, someone, in this city that is acting as a sort of magical protector, a guardian of sorts. And while they are in the city, their presence functions as a sort of shield, keeping Doom, an effective outsider, from discovering the precise location of the artifact." He made a descriptive gesture that encompassed the entire room. "I believe that is why he has been killing people; the spear operates on blood and chaos and death; if he can cause enough of those in its name, he can make the spear powerful enough to be 'visible', even with the guardian still present."
There was a moment of silence while the New Avengers, Sharon, Bucky, and Sam all looked at each other. Nick Fury mostly just looked bored, although Steve suspected all that meant was that he was still processing things.
"So," Luke said, breaking the silence. "Who is this 'magical protector' guy? I mean, it's not like this city's lacking for heroes."
"Let us just say that it is a very good thing that the spear is located where it is." Strange was definitely enjoying this.
"Wait," Steve said. "How do you know where the artifact is, if Doom doesn't?"
Strange didn't quite smile. "For one thing, I am a far more skilled sorcerer than Doom likes to imagine himself. And for another thing, I am, generally speaking, on good terms with the guardian, as much as anyone is; the fact that he dislikes Doom doubtless aids in shielding Hell's Kitchen from him."
There was another moment of silence, then Peter, Luke, and Danny all began to laugh.
"So you mean Daredevil?" Danny said, shaking his head in obvious amusement, finally regaining his composure.
Peter was still snickering; of course, of the lot of them, he probably knew Daredevil the best. "Oh God, Matt's a mystical guardian. That's the best thing ever," he said, absently resting one hand on his wife's shoulder.
"Wait, does Daredevil know he's guarding this thing?" Luke's eyebrows were raised in skepticism, and his lips were still twitching.
"Technically?" Strange said. "No."
"So we tell him, dig it up, and destroy it." Fury shrugged, and mimed shooting something with his still-unlit cigar. "Problem solved."
"If it's made out of the same metal as Thor's hammer," Steve pointed out, "destroying it is probably impossible."
Strange nodded. "Impossible, or nearly so. And digging it up would only make it easier for Doom to find. Instead, I am in the process of searching for a way to seal the artifact, in order to make it impossible for Doom or his ilk to get their hands on."
"Um, guys?" MJ said uncertainly, raising a hand to squeeze her husband's wrist. "I think you should see this." She gestured to the television, still silently tuned to the news.
They had been playing images of the Helicarrier all morning, and Steve had mostly been ignoring the television. Now, though, he could see that they had switched to something else; it looked like an aerial view of the city, and there was obviously something going on in the streets.
The camera shook for a moment, then the image steadied and cleared. Luke groaned. "Aw, man. Don't tell me that's--"
Jessica Jones leaned over and switched on the sound. "-- can see, a horde of what appear to be Doombots are attacking downtown Manhattan. They seem to --" The disembodied newscaster's voice said, only to be cut off in the middle of a sentence by a loud grinding noise. The picture shook again, violently this time, and there was a dizzying view, first of the chaos in the street, and then the interior of the helicopter. Someone said, "Fucking Christ, we've lost the engine." Then the picture went black.
There was another moment of silence as everybody looked at each other, and Steve knew what they were all thinking; it was their job, their duty to go out there and protect the city, but to do so would be to run the very real risk of capture. And if they were all locked in some high-security SHIELD facility, they wouldn't be able to help anyone.
"We're heroes," Steve said simply. "We have to go stop them. It's our job. And anyway, with what happened yesterday, we have no idea whether SHIELD will even be able to turn out at all."
Jessica Jones stood, handing her baby to MJ. "You'll need all of the help you can get," she said. "I'm coming with you."
"Jess--" Luke started.
"I'm a hero, too. Or I used to be. And I'm coming. I had to sit out -- watch -- during everything else. I'm not this time."
Luke still didn't look entirely convinced, but he nodded.
"Very well then," Strange said, gesturing them all to stand together.
MJ stood, and kissed Peter on the cheek. He turned, pulling the mask up over his nose, and kissed her full on the mouth for a long moment. When they broke apart, Jessica leaned over to drop a kiss on the top of her baby's head, while Luke chucked the little girl under the chin.
"Right," Luke said, "let's go."
The New Avengers, Sharon, Bucky, and Sam all clustered together, Redwing fluttering over to perch on Sam's shoulder.
"Aw, hell," Fury said, dropping his feet to the floor and standing. "I can't miss this much fun."
Doctor Strange began to chant, and there was a disorienting moment where everything went white, and Steve couldn't tell what was up and what was down.
Then they were standing in the street, no more than a hundred yards from where the Doombots were wreaking havoc.
Strange turned to them. "Unfortunately, I need to continue searching for a way to permanently stop Doom; it will do us no good to win this battle, but lose the war."
"Hell," Luke said, glancing at Steve, Sam, and the three ex-SHIELD agents. "I think we got a pretty good group here anyway; I mean, we've got Captain America and the real head of SHIELD on our side. It's gonna take more than a few Doombots to stop us."
"I will report in with you as soon as I have any useful information," Strange said. With that, he took a step back, and disappeared in a swirl of smoke.
Steve allowed himself a single moment to miss his shield, then half-turned to the group. "All right, people -- Avengers Assemble!"
/All right, everyone, listen up, because we'll only have time to go over this once./ Tony subvocalized the words and let the Extremis pick them up, transmitting them to everyone's helmet radios and Avengers' communicators. The task force was small enough that he could easily have pulled his helmet off and spoken to them unamplified, but he had more authority this way, with a day's worth of stubble and the circles under his eyes hidden behind red and gold metal.
It didn't matter how badly SHIELD had been hit; they couldn't let Doombots rampage through downtown Manhattan. Thank God Carol, Jan, and Bob had just gotten back from LA. Even with the other Avengers, they barely had enough people to constitute a sufficient fighting force. Without them, he would have been leading the SHIELD team to their deaths.
/Doombots emit a dampening field, so try to keep them as close together as possible. The closer they are to each other, the weaker each individual Doombot is./ The law of inverse proportion in action; Peter would have loved it.
/Why?/ Bob's voice.
/What?/
/Why do they have a dampening field?/
It was probably a good thing no one could see his face, since rolling one's eyes wasn't the sort of professional behavior expected from the director of SHIELD. /Because Doom is a paranoid megalomaniac./
/He programmed them to be able to stand in for him if needed,/ Jan elaborated. She flew over to hover just above Bob's shoulder, and went on, /The field keeps them from ganging up on him and replacing him./
If Tony had been in Doom's shoes, he would have run the stand-in bots via remote control, and skipped the AI component entirely -- considering the track record sentient robots had achieved over the years, the man was practically asking to be abducted and murdered by his own tech.
It was too bad they hadn't done it years ago, and saved him the trouble.
They would just have to hope that Doom wasn't actually there himself; a horde of Doombots was one thing, Victor von Doom was another.
Doom had been spotted around the city recently; SHIELD suspected that he had been behind some of the incidents of ritualized violence that had been showing up over the past few weeks. Doom had also been seen meeting with Aleksander Lukin, the head of the Kronas Corporation. Unfortunately, since Doom was technically the ruler of Latveria, that wasn't enough to convict either of them of anything.
/Just try and keep them closed in, Sentry,/ Tony said. /And keep the collateral damage to a minimum./ He switched frequencies from the Avengers' line back to the wide band that would reach everyone. /Let's go, people./
The modified armor Tony had had made for the strike teams had been a casualty of the explosion, so only the superhero contingent was capable of independent flight. The rest of the strike force would be rappelling from one of Fury's old Huey's.
Hopefully, the Doombots would think it was just another news 'copter, until they got close enough to start launching missiles.
The destruction in the financial district was obvious even from six hundred feet up -- crushed cars, piles of rubble where a building had been knocked down, smoke everywhere.
But, this being New York, people were already fighting back. Tony saw one Doombot explode as he started his descent, and there was a guy in a leather jacket actually shooting at one with what sounded like a semi-automatic.
You had to love New York.
As they closed with the Doombots, Tony saw a stream of webbing splatter against one of the machines, and he bit back a curse; the New Avengers were there. Under other circumstances, he would have been glad for the opportunity to try to convince them to come in. Right now, they might just prove to be another complication; SHIELD didn't have the resources to devote to trying to bring them in, and they certainly didn't have the resources to fight both the New Avengers and the Doombots.
And the House Unregistered Superhuman Activities Committee had been agitating to have some of the recent violence laid on the heads of the unregistered superhumans; bringing the New Avengers in at this moment would be a chancy proposition anyway.
For a moment, he found himself wishing that he'd been a little closer to the Helicarrier when it had gone nova. Then, all of this would have been someone else's problem.
/Sir,/ the Huey pilot broadcast, /what do we do about the capes?/
Close your eyes and hope they go away, Tony thought. /Deal with the Doombots first. They're our main objective./
One of the Doombots looked up then, and Doom must have added some kind of hive-mind function to their programming, because suddenly they were all firing energy blasts skyward.
Tony took a Doombot's arm off with a repulsor blast, and paused for a moment, frowning. Nick Fury was also there, hurling pieces of rubble and imprecations at the Doombots with equal vigor. He was flanked by Agent Carter and the guy with the automatic. A Doombot fired off a laser blast at them, and they scattered, Uzi-guy rolling to his feet with one leather sleeve a smoking ruin. Tony could see the glint of metal underneath. Winter Soldier.
Great. When they finished getting blasted at by the Doombots, SHIELD could just arrest everything that was still moving.
Carol took a hit full in the chest, and went cart-wheeling back through the air, pulling up mere feet away from a skyscraper's window. "That your best shot?" she asked.
The Doombot didn't answer, already turning away from her to aim at the Huey.
And then a manhole cover came sailing out of the smoke and took its head off.
The Huey dropped lower, hovering about fifteen feet over the street. Tony could hear Dugan over the com-link, ordering the team out of the helicopter -- the door opened and a rope was lowered, and Dugan himself was the first man out of the aircraft, sliding down the rope one-handed with an assault rifle held ready in the other.
Tony decreased the thrust from his boot jets until he was hovering just a foot or so above the street, right in front of the lead Doombot. Most models had some level of sentience, so, "You are all under arrest," he told it. "Stand down, and I might not use you for spare parts."
The energy blast was intense enough that he could feel it even through the armor's cooling systems, but compared to the explosion yesterday, it was nothing. Tony planted his feet on the pavement -- broken glass crunched under his boots -- and started powering up his repulsors.
"Cower before Doom!" the Doombot thundered.
The dampening fields were definitely still in effect.
Behind him, one of the SHIELD agents screamed. The systems readout in his helmet reported that the armor's air filters were filtering out carbonized proteins. Tony didn't turn to look.
He raised one hand -- and a small, black-clad form dropped down onto the Doombot's shoulders.
"Hi there! I'm your friendly neighborhood Spiderman, and I'll be your superhero for today." The Doombot made a grab for him, and Peter ducked smoothly out of the way, still clinging to it, and continued to babble. "Would you like a light maiming, or complete and utter humiliation?"
"Cower before Doom!"
"Right. Humiliation it is." Peter coated the thing's head in webbing, then did a handstand on top of its metal skull and flung himself to the ground.
It reached up to rip the webbing away, and Tony blasted the hell out of it.
The repulsor beam vaporized its ratty green cloak and ripped half of its chest plate away, but it kept on coming, walking blindly toward him and chanting, "Doom! Doom!"
For the first time in a long time, Tony started to smile.
He had been helpless against the Mandarin's bombs, but these things... These things, he could kill.
He stepped forward to meet it, slammed a metal gauntlet into its jaw, and ignored the energy blast that washed over him. His body still ached from the impact with the water yesterday, but inside the armor, it was unimportant.
He hit the Doombot again, and followed the blow up with a repulsor blast. The rest of its chestplate went spinning away, and Tony reached inside its torso and ripped out a fistful of wires.
Sparks crackled around the armor's knuckles, and the Doombot froze in place. One down, eighteen more to --
"Tony, behind you!"
Tony whirled around, and everything froze for an endless moment, the world going distant and silent.
This wasn't real. It wasn't real. Because he was... he had...
The Doombot behind him hit him so hard he went flying, and the mirrored-glass wall of a skyscraper came rushing forward to meet him.
He was lying on the ground, metal and concrete pinning him in place. Tony groaned, and put a hand to his head, or tried to. Metal clanged against metal -- oh, right, the helmet. He closed his eyes for a second, struggling to get his breath back, and opened them to see Carol hovering over him.
Tony shoved the metal beam off of his chest and sat up, and Carol dropped to the ground by his side, chunks of concrete and shards of glass crunching under her boot heels.
"Are you all right?" she asked, offering him a hand up.
Her voice was strangely muffled; that last blast must have damaged the circuits in his helmet.
"No," Tony said, shaking his head to clear it. "I'm hallucinating."
"Oh, that's just what we need." Carol muttered, pulling Tony to his feet. As he stood, she said more loudly, "Can you --"
Whatever she had been going to ask him was lost, though, as a Doombot that had been ripped clean in half flew through the wall, sending yet more glass and concrete scattering.
"Sorry!" Bob's voice came drifting through the new hole in the wall.
"God damn it," Carol said, again, more to herself than to Tony. "We don't have time for this. Look, just try to stay down; if there's something wrong with you, we don't need you getting in the way."
With that, she took off again, and in moment, Tony could hear the sounds of her pounding the hell out of some unfortunate Doombot.
Staying down and out of the way would probably have been the safest course of action, but this was already an unevenly matched fight, and aside from one moment of complete insanity, he seemed to be mostly functional.
He'd fought with internal injuries, fought while bleeding out, fought when the armor was the only thing keeping him standing. Sleep deprivation and concussion were minor hang-ups, just two more variables to factor into the equation and let the armor handle.
It had to be just the lack of sleep catching up with him. And he couldn't leave people he was responsible for to fight on their own.
After the relative dimness of the wrecked office, the street seemed almost blindingly bright.
It wasn't until much later that it would occur to Tony that the fact that he could remember almost nothing of the fight after that point wasn't a good thing.
One moment he was in the air, firing a repulsor blast at a group of Doombots about to surround Spiderwoman; the next, he was on the ground, three of them dead at his feet.
It took Jan landing lightly next to him, returning to full-size, to make Tony realize that the fight was over.
"Oh, God," she said. "Is that --"
And it hadn't been just sleep deprivation; he was still hallucinating. Because Steve was dead; he had seen the body, read the autopsy reports. But he was standing there in the street, the New Avengers clustered around him like a wolf-pack, ready to run or fight.
Carol walked past Luke, Peter, and Iron Fist -- and the Falcon? Where had he come from? -- as if they weren't there, until she was face-to-face with the man in Steve's costume. "All right, Mister, who the hell are you?"
Not a hallucination, if Carol was talking to him. An impostor. He should have been angry, offended, something...
The impostor reached up and pulled back his mask, revealing a sickeningly familiar head of blond hair.
Steve Rogers offered the Mighty Avengers a tentative half-smile, and said, "Hello, Carol. I'm not going to let you arrest us this time."
Carol made a tiny, choked noise. "Oh my God," she said, grabbing Steve in a fierce hug.
Jan took that as her cue to push past Tony's elbow, and join in the hug. Bob, who had still been airborne, landed in front of them. He gave Steve a slightly uncertain smile. "Um. It's good to see you," he said, reaching out to lay a hand on Steve's shoulder, before quickly withdrawing it, still smiling awkwardly.
Tony watched them, unable to think or move. He could hear the remaining SHIELD agents talking frantically over their radios -- /"Shit, it's him-"/"... was dead..."/"What the hell do we..."/"Director Stark, what are our..."/ -- but their voices were little more than a distant buzzing.
He barely noticed as Nick Fury strode over to him briskly, obviously a man on a mission.
"Stark!" he snapped, "where the hell is my Helicarrier?"
The sound was still oddly muted; his helmet must have been damaged when he was thrown through the wall. Tony pulled it off, and without turning to Fury, said, "He was dead."
Spiderwoman had grabbed Carol by the arm, and the two of them were arguing now. Steve had both hands up, pushing them apart, saying something Tony couldn't hear.
Fury made a dismissive gesture, just visible out of the corner of Tony's eye. "He got better. You super-people have a way of doing that. Now, what have you done with my ship?"
Tony blinked slowly; Fury's voice still seemed strangely muffled. He turned to face the man, pulling his gaze away from Steve with what was almost a physical effort. "She's under the New York harbor. We finished sweeping her for bugs last week. You probably don't want to know how many we found."
"You put her under the water?" Fury said, frowning and folding his arms over his chest. "You know that's not good for her."
"The water jammed the bugging devices," Tony said, then paused, still trying to process things. "We buried him. How did you--"
Fury shook his head. "Don't ask me. You people confuse me."
"Look," Carol said, loudly enough to penetrate Tony's daze, raising her hands in a placating gesture. "We need to call a truce. The world's a mess right now, and none of us -- none of us -- are going to be able to fix that on our own. We have to work together, now."
"Yeah?" Spiderwoman snapped, hands on her hips. "And how are we supposed to know that this isn't some kind of a trap? That you won't just arrest us as soon as the fighting's over?"
"That's the damned point of a truce," Carol said, glaring, and Tony suddenly remembered that she and Jessica Drew had been close once.
He raised his voice loudly enough to be heard by the assembled crowd. "I've got twelve full pardons. Anyone who helps SHIELD now will be granted automatic amnesty."
"Whether or not they choose to register after the fighting's over," Carol added.
Tony looked back over his shoulder at Steve again -- still standing there, still surrounded by assorted Avengers -- then turned back to Fury. He was about to ask what on earth Fury was doing there, when he'd been MIA for months, when Dugan pushed past him, assault rifle still clutched in one hand and bowler hat askew.
"Colonel Fury! You're back! They replaced you with some hotshot civilian who tried to turn us into a touchy-feely corporate circus!" Tony half expected him to fling his arms around Fury and wail, "Never leave me again, sir!" and for a second, he felt a completely hysterical urge to laugh.
He forced down the impulse and said -- to Fury -- "I put up a suggestion box."
Dugan continued to completely ignore Tony. "You are taking over again, right?"
"They all hate me," Tony said to Fury, voice flat. "Do you want your job back?"
Fury glared. "As soon as you give me back my damn ship."
Tony nodded. "Okay." Fury would probably have taken it back anyway, with or without permission, and it wasn't as if Tony had any kind of record at keeping Helicarriers intact.
"Good," Fury said, taking out and lighting a cigar. "You can take me to her now."
"Okay," Tony agreed again. Leaving would be good. Maybe his ears would stop ringing if he got out of the street.
The collected Avengers were all trying to talk at once, which meant that no one was actually hearing anything anyone else said. Fury snorted in annoyance, and strode out into the middle of the street.
"Everyone shut up and get in the helicopter!" he yelled. "You can have your damned grudges and wars all you want on your own time, but right now, we've got bigger problems then yer hurt feelings. So you can just all get the hell over yourselves."
There was a moment of silence. Then Steve said, "He's right. We can't let things continue like this; we have to help." He paused for a moment, catching Tony's eyes. Tony froze, then glanced away. "We'll come with you if you can promise that the amnesty will come through, and that we won't just be locked up as soon as all of this is over."
Carol nodded briskly. "Like the man said, anyone who helps us now will be granted full amnesty. And -- and we'll deal with the issue of registration later. But no one's just getting locked up," she said, turning to shoot a quick glare at Tony.
"Good," Nick Fury said, clapping his hands. "Now you can take me back to my damned ship."