They Got This Chapter 11, an avengers fanfic

She'd been punched, was Jessica's first thought. By someone almost as strong as Luke. And then she heard gunfire crack above her head. She tried to stand, but the world moved sideways and she was on her back; she couldn't breathe. Not the bullet, she realized. Weight. "Get off me!"

"No ma'am." Castle's hand urged her head closer to the floor and, as the shooting continued, she allowed it.

They'd been protected in the hallway, with apartments lining both sides. The little lobby in front of the elevators was lined with windows to the outside world: wide open to snipers. So much for Stark's "associate."

Castle rolled away, but before she could do the same, two hands lifted her and she found herself carried like a child in front of Luke, out of the line of fire.

Karma was a bitch; if she was lucky, no one was taking a picture.

Luke gently deposited her with the others, crouched in the thin line of cover below the windows. There was no clear route to the stairs and, even if Luke walked them there one by one, they had no idea what was waiting for them on the floor below. They were pinned, waiting for the first bright spark below to toss up a grenade.

Colleen's hands pawed at her, Jessica tried to bat them away. "I'm okay. I'm fine. I'm-ow!"

"It grazed her ribs," Colleen reported, after a few seconds of painful probing. "I don't think any are broken."

"You real sure?" Castle frowned. "That was high cal."

"She's tough," Luke said. "Not like me. Kevlar tough, maybe."

"The next person who talks about me like I'm not here goes out the window." Jessica looked over the frame, but couldn't see a damn thing. She dropped back quickly as another bullet thudded into the wall across the foyer. "Where's the shooter?"

"Rooftop, 'cross the street, on our eleven." Castle stared expressionlessly back into the faces that turned his way. "It's where I'd be," he explained, in answer to the unasked question.

Colleen craned her head around Luke's bulk to find Daisy. "If Luke gives you cover, can you reach them?"

Daisy shook her head. "I'd tear up everything in the way. Everything." She looked speculative. "I could jump it."

"And get shot to pieces half way across," Mack growled. "Not happening."

"Don't even think about it, Jess," Luke warned, quickly. "They'd take you out too."

"I wasn't," Jess denied on reflex, but risked another quick peek to gauge the distance. She ducked back again as a bullet hit the frame. "I could throw you."

"Huh," Castle said, quietly, a moment before an incredibly loud, high-pitched squeal came from across the street. "Costume. Red and black. Stark's back-up?"

Shoulders shrugged as they cautiously climbed to their feet and watched the world's weirdest fight play out.

The sniper gave his all to take out the new guy: guns, knives and finally hand-to-hand. It didn't seem like he should have had a problem. The new guy barely landed any hits at all, but he dodged at every turn, and in increasingly outlandish ways: parries and blocks became leap frogs and bullfighter spins, before finally hitting pirouettes.

Flawlessly executed, Jessica had to give him that.

When he did hit, it seemed to be accidental - or, at least, he jumped back guiltily every time, hands waving.

Eventually, the sniper snapped and rushed the screwball, who stepped neatly out the way road-runner style, allowing the man to run full speed into a vent. The sniper staggered back, the costume kicked him unceremoniously in the head.

Then turned, and noticed his audience with an overblown gesture of surprise. Like he hadn't known they were watching the entire time. He waved and held two thumbs up. As an afterthought, he reached down to the unconscious sniper and held his thumb up too.

"Don't know, don't give a crap," Jessica decided and, fingers pressed against her side, headed for the stairs.

-o o-

Here's the question we have to ask ourselves: how afraid are we willing to let them make us?

In the last twenty-four hours, a full cast of heroes and villains have appeared on the stage we gave them, under a director none of us have ever heard of. We've booed and we've cheered, exactly when prompted, and never once tried to look behind the curtain.

-o o-

"Welcome." The man smiled warmly down at Ned, then extended his hand towards Pepper, before dropping it as the logistics of shaking hands with a suit of armor became apparent.

"I'm Danny," he said, turning back to Ned and nodding to another man, red-eyed and rumpled. "This is Franklin Nelson, from Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz. He'll sue pretty much everyone who isn't us. Andthat," he jerked his thumb behind him, to a large number of stern faced men and women in BDUs, "is Rand Security. They'llshoot pretty much everyone who isn't us. You're both safe here."

"I'm Ned," Ned managed, actually beginning to believe they might be. "And that's Ms Potts. This is Ellie."

Ellie nodded nervously, twisting her plushie spider in agitated hands.

"We're friends of Spider-man," Ned went on. "He's going to meet us here. I'm sure he's okay," he said loudly, shaking his head back and forth behind Ellie's back. "He probably stopped off for - for pancakes."

"I know you're lying," Ellie said, voice reed-thin and anxious as she looked back up at him. "Don't lie to me."

"Okay. Sorry. Sorry. But he's okay. I'd know if he wasn't," he tried, comfortingly, but couldn't quite stop himself from going on. "Karen would tell me. Unless she couldn't. But I'm sure she can."

"You were both very brave," Danny said encouragingly, in the wake of Ned's floundering, then looked vaguely panicked. "I'm sure you do very well in school," he finished helplessly.

Ms Potts smiled pleasantly, like the CEO of Stark Industries that Ned had seen on the news. "They've been awake all night," she said. "And they're probably hungry," she added with a note of suggestion.

Ned shook his head, but Ellie nodded with enthusiasm.

"Great." Danny grinned, relaxing and holding out his hand to her. "I have so many different kinds of cereal, you wouldn't believe it. Want to come try them all?"

Ned wavered as Danny led Ellie towards the elevator. He should stay with her, but he wanted to stay with Ms Potts - find Peter.

"Tony's looking for Peter," Pepper said, translating his concern. "Stay with Ellie, keep her calm. I'll stay too. Until Peter and Tony get here."

"Is she really safe now?" Ned asked, wanting to make sure before he allowed himself to edge closer to the private freakout he'd been holding off since Peter had called the previous morning.

Mr Nelson gave a short laugh as he wandered over, hands in pockets. "There's no one in New York she's safer with than Danny Rand." He nodded, off Ned's dubious expression. "Yeah, I had a little trouble with that myself, but, seriously."

-o o-

No one was screaming for help.
No one was screaming in general.
Nothing was crushing him.
Nothing was on fire.
No one was yelling, "Peter Parker's Spider-man!"
No one was throwing paper darts at his head to wake him up in homeroom. Again.

Peter blinked his eyes open; the mask's visual receptors flexed and focused. Which meant it was still on, he registered a moment later. Okay. Good. The same couldn't be said for the rest of his suit, he realised, as he raised his head to look down the length of his body.

He was wearing something between scrubs and pyjamas, and in some kind of white room with a tinted window and rounded everything. It wasn't a cell, but it wasn't exactly a hospital ward either.

There was an IV running into his arm, he craned his head back to look at the bag. Saline, maybe. Or sedative again - he felt kind ofoff. Probably the wholegetting freaking shot thing, he reminded himself, then pushed the thought away and wedged it tight into the back of his mind, so he could have a meltdown at the appropriate time.

Because this? He told himself, firmly. This was not the appropriate time.

At a low beep, he turned his head the other way and saw a small monitor. It seemed to be tracking his heartbeat and dosage. As he watched, the heart rate was increasing. Chances were good it would bring someone in sooner rather than later.

He debated waiting for it to happen - they'd patched him up and kept his mask on: two ticks in the good guy column. But then the floor shuddered and he heard the muffled sound of - gunfire? Laser fire?

Definitely some kind of fire.

And - remembering that insistent buzz in his ear just before he'd, uh,napped - he had a sudden, very clear, picture of exactly what was going down.

Sitting was easy; standing was harder. His hurt leg kept folding, dumping him right back on the bed.

"Peter, you should not attempt to stand," Karen warned. "You still require several hours of healing. Additionally, the IV you're attempting to remove contains a mixture of antibiotics and saline, I highly recommend you leave it in."

Peter pulled the IV line out on his second attempt.

Took a deep, steadying, breath.

And stood.

At least, he reflected as he clung to the wall, Karen hadn't been programmed to say "I told you so."

"That's Mr Stark outside, right?" He inched his way carefully towards the door, keeping his fingertips stuck to the wall. "I'm guessing if you could have called him, you would have. So the only way he's going to stop is if I ask him. And the only way I can do that is to get out there."

Karen was silent for a moment, then. "The door to this containment unit has a magnetic lock, I cannot generate a sufficient level of heat to de-magnetize it. However, the seal around the window is significantly less toughened - you may be able to break through."

Peter crawled half way up the wall opposite the window, then turned to face it. He gathered his legs under him, took a breath, and launched himself hard at the weakest section, which Karen had helpfully highlighted in the HUD.

The window buckled, the steel and plastic around it cracking and falling away in shards. He gathered himself again, and shoved. It fell the rest of the way without much protest, but with a ringing clatter that seemed to echo forever.

"Huh." He crawled out into what seemed to be some kind of huge science lab-stroke-storage area. "That was easier than I thought it would be."

"Yeah, that's actually way less comforting to hear from my perspective." A man's voice, somewhere behind the stacked crates to his right. But the weird, whatever,spidey-sense, hadn't warned him. He hesitated, wondering if he should - or could - make a leap for a ceiling he couldn't even see.

"Easy, easy." The man edged out from behind a crate with hands half-raised. "I told you: we're the good guys, kid. Pinkie swear. We met on the roof? I'm Phil."

"I'm not a kid," Peter said, mostly out of habit.

"You really are. We didn't need to take off the mask to know that. I've never seen Jemma this angry and, I can tell you, there's been some pretty stiff competition."

That didn't sound good. "She's angry at me?"

"At the people who shot you," Phil clarified, lowering his hands. "How's the leg? It was touch and go for a while there - you're a lucky guy. Who apparently has an advanced healing factor, and metabolizes drugs like they aren't even there. You're not Inhuman?"

Peter shook his head. "Radioactive spider bite."

"No way?" Phil grinned widely, and sounded more enthralled than appalled, which was new. "One of Stark's experiments?"

"No," Peter said, trying to work out why Phil looked quite so invested in the answer. "He, uh. Found me. Helped me out."

"Great." Phil looked relieved. "Feel up to making a quick call?"

-o o-

Colleen turned the path of the katana at the last possible moment, striking hard with the hilt, rather than the blade. Her target's head snapped back; he dropped. She turned, ready for her next opponent, but stepped back on seeing Mack neatly dropping the last member of the last fireteam.

Luke stood in the main entrance, ready to provide cover from anyone foolish enough to attack from outside while Castle covered the hallway behind them, in case anyone attempted to attack from above. Jessica sulked next to him, watching his back and removed from the bulk of the fighting.

Their unknown helper kept pace outside, picking his way apologetically through the snipers.

She, Mack and Daisy had quickly formed an efficient team - Daisy would knock their opponents from their feet, she and Mack would ensured they stayed down.

And now they found themselves in the main lobby.

Luke considered the odd silence outside the building. "Think they left?"

"They know Ellie's not here," Colleen pointed out. "Perhaps we were too expensive."

"Coo-ee," a high-pitched, saccharine-filled voice called from the street outside. "Avon calling!"

Luke stepped back to let the costume enter. "You Stark's friend?"

"Oh, we're not friends." The man clasped his hands together, mask eyes widening. "We're more like brothers.Twins ," he said, breathily. "Me and Tony. Tone-tone." He paused and dropped the act. "Eugh, no, roll that one back. Everyone in one piece? Specifically, a piece that can tell me where Vanessa is?

"Or Ellie. If you prefer. Vanessa liked the name - we always said Elle, if our spawn was a girl-spawn. Then we remembered we're completely unsuitable for younger readers, so we adopted Al instead. I digress. Where is she?"

Jessica shook her head, answering as the torrent ran dry. "Freakshow, you're making me less inclined to tell you every time you open your mouth."

"Deadpool," he snapped. "Captain Deadpool, to you. But even as I say that,Freakshow. I like it. I'll have my people call your people. Anyhoo - I helped out. I didn't kill anyone. I playednice. Now tell me where my girl is before I'm forced to-"

Luke took a measured step forward; Deadpool looked up, and up, into his unimpressed expression.

"Ask again," he finished. "Except more politely."

"Danny says they made it," Colleen volunteered, closing her cell phone. "Ellie - Vanessa - is fine. Everyone's okay."

"Spider-man's at the shelter. So's Stark, apparently." Daisy said, dropping her hand from her ear. She took a step back. "We're done here. Tell him where she is, don't. It's up to you."

"It's been…" Mack trailed away. Shrugged. "A real experience. Good luck."

They walked towards the flashing lights of the cops pulling up on the perimeter. Any moment now, Jessica knew, someone would notice Castle was gone, and armed, and honestly she didn't quite have it in her to care. "We'll take you to her," she said.

-o o-

When they made it to the loading bay, Peter turned to ask Phil if he could have his suit back, but there was a conspicuous lack of the other man. Instead, a young woman in a lab coat stood behind him, holding the battered suit. "Hello," she said, with a bright smile. "I'm Jemma."

"Hi. Uhm. Thanks." He took the suit awkwardly.

"No problem at all. But Tony Stark thinks we kidnapped you," she went on briskly as she turned her back, affording him some privacy to change. "So if you could talk him out of declaring war on S.H.I.E.L.D., that would be wonderful - our repair budget's surprisingly limited."

"He doesn't really listen to me, but I'll try." Peter struggled into the suit as quickly as he could. "Did you hear from Daisy and Mack yet? Or Ms Potts? Is everyone okay?"

"We've been in communication - they and everyone else made it out of the flat largely unharmed. And Ms Potts, Ellie and Ned are at Rand Enterprises. The DSD haven't made another try for them. With the sheer number of lawyers and news vans prowling the area, I'm not surprised."

She turned when he tentatively touched her arm, and nodded towards the loading ramp of the jet. "Shall we?"

By the time Peter had limped his way to where Stark stood, fully armored, in the middle of the bay, the area was completely empty of anyone else. And, he realized, Jemma had disappeared.

"So," Stark said, when Peter stopped in front of him. "What have we learned?"

Peter opened his mouth.

"You get one free smart-ass comment. One. Use it wisely."

Peter shut his mouth. Re-considered. "It's not always easy to do the right thing," he said, finally. "Or figure out what the right thing is. Or sometimes there are too many right things? Is that … right?"

Stark blinked. "Well, I was hoping for 'never turn off the user interface,' or even 'always listen to Tony, Tony is always right' but if you want to get deep."

"I got shot." Peter pointed at this thigh. "And then there were a lot of drugs. And before that too. I've been druggedso much today. And I didn't even know I could be. So that was a learning experience. Can we go? I'd really like to go."

"Sorry kid, not yet." Stark stepped forward and looked around the empty hangar. "Who's in charge here?"

"I don't know. There was someone called Jemma. And someone called-"

"Mr Stark," said a smooth voice that Peter didn't recognize. He turned and placed its owner, standing with her hands clasped behind her back, high up on the second level. "Melinda May," the woman said. "I'm in charge of this operation. And I believe it's time for you to leave."

"You're not in charge," Tony said flatly.

May raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"I know who you are, Agent May." Tony shrugged with a crooked smile. "You're one of the best field agents in S.H.I.E.L.D. - Clint Barton wants to be you when he grows up. There's no way they put you behind a desk."

She stood, silent.

"Fine, don't tell me. Answer me this instead: why weren't you there when the rest of your team went to extract 'Elle Iwamura?' I saw the footage. Agents Johnson, McKenzie and Rodriguez, and a six-man fireteam, but notyou.

"Under what circumstance - whatspecific circumstance -wouldn't you send Melinda May to pull someone who looks like a kid out of a bad situation? S.H.I.E.L.D. knew it was a shifter. What was S.H.I.E.L.D. going to do if it turned out to be one they didn't like?"

Still May said nothing.

"Yeah." Stark nodded. "That's what I thought." He turned to Peter. "You wanted to leave? We're leaving."

"But you only just got here," Phil said, from the shadows next to the ramp. He stepped forward, smiling slightly. "Sorry. Seriously - it really is impossible to resist an entrance like that."

"You should probably try harder." Stark crossed his arms, expression shifting too rapidly for Peter to parse. It settled somewhere between cautiously pleased and personally offended. "Agent."

"Mr Stark." Phil nodded, smile still in place. "It's been a while."

"You look - not dead," Stark offered.

"You look older. But time does that. So does responsibility." Phil glanced towards Peter, who, honestly, would have prefered to stay quietly in the background, well away from the undercurrents he was in no way following. "I understand you have some now."

"At least half the gray hairs belong to that," Stark said, waving in Peter's general direction. "I'd disown him, except my lawyers tell me I'm not allowed to without adopting first.

"Okay, pleasantries done. I'll assume you have an inspirational and moving story about recovering fromdeath , so let's skip to the part where you convince me you're the good guys and I shouldn't blast you all out of the sky on sight."

"At no point were we intending to harm the person currently known as Elle Iwamura," Phil said, the smile finally fading as his expression fell into hard lines. "Agent May wasn't involved because she's our pilot."

Stark blinked, actually taken aback. "I'm actually not sure what's more unbelievable: the thing about the kid, or that you haveMelinda May flying this pile of junk."

"It wasn't a pile of junk until you opened fire on us," Phil pointed out. "You owe me a new jet, by the way. We thought Elle might be someone we've been watching for a while. She's a good kid, gets in over her head sometimes."

Stark nodded grimly. "Yeah, I know the type."

"She disappeared. We looked into it, everything I found came back heavily redacted, and you can see my clearance level from space. We tracked down the DSD facility she was being held at, but it was a crater. We figured we wouldn't be the only ones looking for her, so we followed. When they started showing interest in a girl who looked like an out of date photo, we drew some conclusions."

"It's not her," Stark said, bluntly. "Probably."

"We know. Of the other people who escaped, three have been accounted for. Only Kamala, Vanessa Carlysle and Kevin Sydney are still in the wind. In all likelihood, 'Ellie' is Vanessa Carlysle. She isn't an Inhuman, she's enhanced."

"A mutant," Stark said, intrigued.

Phil shrugged. "Yeah, we try not to use that word."

Peter coughed. "Uh, Mr Stark? I don't mean to interrupt, but can I-"

"Right. Right. Come on kid. Let's go pick up Ned, and then I think your aunt wanted to see you. Something about not letting you out of your room until the heat death of the universe? A little harsh, but I think fair."

"Or I could stay here," Peter suggested.

"Sorry, kid," Phil said, sympathetically patting his shoulder. "There are some things even S.H.I.E.L.D. won't fight."

-o o-

Here's the question we have to ask ourselves: how afraid are we willing to let them make us?

Or asked why we're being played to at all.

Here's the question they've already asked themselves: how afraid are they willing to let us make them?

Karen drew back with a sigh, rubbed her eyes. It was meant to be a piece about Spider-man, and all the good he'd done in the city - and how quickly they'd turned on him. And all she kept circling around was how little she knew about the people who'd pulled the strings that made that happen.

She needed to know more; she opened her e-mail.

-o o-

Standing surrounded by Angry Barbie and the Angry Barbie-ettes, Wade hummed along to the muzak in the elevator and rocked gently back and forth on his heels. The security guard accompanying them stared straight ahead, her expression completely neutral.

"How about them Maple Leaves?" He tried.

Nothing.

"Not into hockey." He nodded understandingly. "I get it. I mean, you're all wrong. Clearly. But what can you do without re-education facilities lining every block? Then there's this whole zoning issue and - honestly, some people don't want to be helped."

The doors slid open on the penthouse foyer and there she was. There were other people there, he was peripherally aware as he walked forward. They weren't important.

"Hey," he said, softly. "Remember me?"

Ellie sniffed and ran the back of her hand across her nose. "Wade?"

"Right. Good memory, chicklet. Kind of."

He crouched slowly. Carefully.

Mustn't startle.

Mustn't scare.

So pretty much, in every single way, mustn't be Wade Wilson.

"You went away," she said, in a tiny voice. And he wanted so badly to hear something of Vanessa in there - some little part - but there was no righteous anger, only a tearful accusation.

"I know. I had to talk to some guys. Shoot the - breeze. Hey, look, I brought you something to make up for it." He held out a plastic ring. "Voltron. Defender of the Universe. It's limited edition."

Ellie took the toy with a dubious expression and no hint of recognition.

"Five mini-lion bots come together to form one super-lion bot," Wade said, dully, and looked away. "Don't worry, kiddo. We've got time, right?"

"For five mini-lion bots?" Vanessa's hand rested on his cheek, and gently turned him back to face her. "About three minutes."

-o o-

"That's where you're-"

"You're leaving itthere?"

Trish and Karen stared over the café table with identical outrage.

Jessica sipped her coffee, unmoved. "You asked what happened, that's what happened: the freakshow got the girl, no one died. S.H.I.E.L.D. skittered back behind the refrigerator. I'm pretty sure Stark's gone into wedding planning." She raised her venti in an ironic toast. "Love that happy ending."

"Spider-man's reputation is still in the gutter," Karen pointed out.

"Do I have to do everything?" Jessica looked between them. "You're in the media. Go mediate, or whatever."

"The Punisher's loose," Trish tried, grasping at straws. "You can't think that's a happy ending."

"As if either of you actually care."

Karen looked slightly sheepish, but she rallied. "Stryker and the DSD are rounding up innocent people up every day, and they're getting away with it!"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. is on it. Probably." Jessica looked away, and knew instantly she'd overplayed the nonchalance.

When she risked a glance back, Trish eyes had narrowed. She leaned forward, like a shark at an all you can bleed buffet. "Just S.H.I.E.L.D?"

"The Avengers, maybe." Jessica drank the last of her coffee and pitched the empty into the closest trash can. "Seems like something they'd be interested in."

"And no one else," Karen pressed. "Danny, or Luke. Or you. For instance."

"I did what I was hired to do. I didway more than I was hired to do. I have adulterers in compromising positions to take trashy photos of."

And Luke and Danny to keep out of trouble - that was more than enough for anyone to deal with, like hell she was letting Trish and her new bff get involved.

Trish leaned back. "So you won't mind if we look into it?"

"Are you shitting me?" Jessica threw up her hands. "Why would you even want to?"

"'We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy," Trish started, as Karen smiled sweetly. "We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust.' Thurgood Marshall."

Goddammit, Matt.

Holy crap, we're done! Wow. Okay, so, thank you again again everyone who read, and kudos-ed and commented - you really are 100% the reason this thing got finished. If anyone has any requests for additions to this weird little AU I'd love to have them - let me know! If (..when) I do any more, this fic will end up with a new title and be part of the "They Got This" series, just in case it goes missing and you wonder where it went.

And last but not least, I'm really, really aware this needs a beta. I'm going to go back through it to try and catch the worst stuff, but I'm also looking for red pen wielding volunteers if anyone is feeling amazing!