Sorry...not sorry!
Chapter 27
Rinon's hands rested along the back of Linnor's pilot's chair. Beside him Lirrie cast a concerned glance up at the Elven leader, but no words followed the expression. What could be said? What comfort drawn from the reality of life waiting to face them down? Nothing at all was left to do but to hurry, fly, and try to do what could be done to stop Thanos' forces in their path. He knew that wasn't enough to soothe Rinon's soul. In fact, it wasn't enough for any elf of good sense. More likely than not Alfheimr was going to burn and there was not a single thing Rinon and all of the might he showed could do to stop it.
"Vanaheim's sending everything they can. They'll be in Alfheimr space in less than twenty four hours. Nova wants to send some of the smaller ships to the Alfheimr portal, but it's being tied up with Earth's evacuation. He planned this. He planned it perfectly." Tony studied the revolving map of the galaxies. Flickering red lights which represented Thanos' impending armada, highlighted the lower left of the screen as they cut three separate paths through the charts. One wave of Kree ships continued to fly downward from the little moon outside Svartalfheim where they'd lured the Alfheimr ships. A second wave had been hunkered down just within Galaxy Red. A Third in Oore. Together, these factions of lights blinked across the screen as they came closer and closer to the little planet in the Nine Reals where Rinon's entire race hailed as home.
The Voiya Rose hovered between the Mars Portal and Earth. Its skeleton crew had gathered on the piloting deck, a single room really, where Linnor and Lirrie, or Linnor and Faraday, could communicate directly with the inner workings of the ship's dynamics. Lirrie, Faraday, Linnor, Rinon, Tony, Pepper, Bruce, Natasha, T'Challa, Logan, and Storm all stood and considered what little options they had.
There was nothing, no one, left on planet Earth but the deceased bodies of those who couldn't be saved. Everyone else, even those who refused aid, were both willingly and unwillingly dragged to safety during the evacuation. It would take time, but soon all of them would be taken to the temporary shelters erected on Nova Luna. The Xandarians set out to help the refugees settle in while the Vanaheim fleet scrambled to join. The company of the Voiya Rose looked amongst themselves to decide who must leave now, join those refugee ships to keep the chaos from reaching hysterical proportions, and who must stay behind and meet Clint in Alfheimr, if there was anything left in the realm when they arrived.
"T'Challa can't be anywhere near Clint," Tony said seriously.
T'Challa raised an eyebrow. "I hope you would think that I contain more self-control than what has been assumed of me. I might also point out, that I am unwed."
"The Sarhorn said it's on you. You betray him. We all agreed you're out. You're the king of a nation, you need to go be with your people, not running around with us." Natasha put her foot down firmly on the subject. The African leader might have sent her an angry look, but she was completely immune to it.
"Logan, you stand in for us and heroes on our side, and the mutant side, look up to you. I think you should go with T'Challa," Storm added.
"And you?" Logan asked.
She grinned. "I'll fly, of course."
Tony nodded. He might have made the suggestion himself if they hadn't. All that remained was Pepper, Bruce, Natasha, the Elves, and himself.
"I'm going." Pepper announced instantly.
Natasha's surprised matched the others. "Really?"
"I helped form the plans for the food rations and I'm on the board for distribution. If I don't go, then the responsibility falls on two others who don't exactly agree. I need to be there and see the project through," she rationalized. Tony was her support, though. If he needed her to stay, she would.
"It makes sense," he said after a time. He didn't like it, but he'd agree with it.
Bruce could see how the decision dropped tension between them instantly. Hoping to diffuse a little of it, he said, "I'll go too. After spending a few months in space on a Kree ship, I think you understand if I wouldn't want to go galloping back to Thanos. I'll stick with Pepper, Tony."
Touched by the tender assurance, he wanted to smile. Unfortunately one, very large, obstacle still stood in his way. He told himself the moment Pepper and he reunited he'd come clean about his cancer. The pain and loss Clint went through, alone, when he kept his own illness secret affected him deeply. With her leaving, he might have to move up his plans and let her know sooner rather than later. His attention changed to the Elves.
"Our duty is to our people," Faraday told them. "Linnor is all that remains of my kin, but I am still one of a clan, and that clan is of a nation. We will go onward to Alfheimr."
"No one would question that," Bruce said.
"Yeah, well, I'm going with Natasha and the Elves," Tony piped in to no one's surprise. "Clint's going to reach the realm before the rest of us can since Loki's on his side of the galaxy. I don't know what he's planning to do when he gets there but I at least want a chance to see him again before all this blows up."
"We do still have time, though it may not seem so. Do you believe that in the coming years you might never reunite?" T'Challa asked.
It took Tony less than a second to decide a proper response to that. "I don't have time. I haven't had time since we nearly lost him before. We've been running for so long on this hamster wheel going from one battle to the next and the next and the next, that you know what? I'm done! The only reason I care about what's about to happen is because of the people that're going to be stuck in it." He straightened, dropping his hands to his side as the anger welled into him. "Cause I don't want to leave Pepper without Clint to protect her and me to love her."
At that news, even Rinon turned in place. He looked over at the group and the revelation he began to see coming dropped on them all.
Pepper took a few steps closer to him. "Tony."
"Aging sucks," he said, deadpan. "It sucks and there's nothing you can do about it. Not special potion, no hoping to some alien race, nothing. There's just this ugliness that you're stuck with till it just wads up and it kills you, and guess what, it's killing me. It's killing me."
Pepper threaded her arms around his neck. The Iron Man dropped his lips into the crook of her and inhaled the scent of fresh lemons and lavender. His whispers consisted of apologies long forgotten, confessions never made, secrets never shared. He laid it all out. Uttered the word that had been eating away at their life ever since it hit Clint first over a year ago. Cancer. It was slowly ruining them, one member at a time.
"I want to see him again, Pep, I haven't told him. He needs to know it from me. Then I'm coming back. You and me are going to sit this one out together." Tony's eyes rose over her shoulder to land on Bruce. "You need to run my ship, trap Galactus. I wont make it there."
Bruce opened his mouth and stood gaping. He could have never anticipated a world without Tony Stark. That wasn't how this planned to go. Tony needed to be there. Bruce needed him there the way he'd needed him ever since leaving his life on the run behind. He could still see Tony's face that day, years ago, as he talked Bruce into joining Stark Industries. His life was surrounded by Stark's friendship on all sides. Though Bruce had others, was close to others, nothing compared to Tony.
"You—You're—Are you sure?" Bruce asked because he could not help it.
"I've never had kids. That was my fault, Bruce, but that ship, that's my baby. You know how to make her fly. She's ready to go, now, should something happen, but I can't do this. I can't anymore. I'm getting too sick to do it," Tony told him. Pepper's arms tightened and he let her.
But I need you too, Bruce thought. It wasn't the science, he could understand that, he just didn't want to. He didn't want to face this without Tony next to him. The guy was selfish and selfless. He cared about everyone and only himself. A complete oxymoron with two legs and a mouth, and that man Bruce cared for like a twin was severing their connection forever. He might have said yes, agreed to whatever Tony wanted as a way to placate him. But that wasn't his heart.
Bruce's core had shattered.
:(:):(:):
The word armada came from the Latin origin armare. It meant, literally, to arm. In the mid-16th century the Spanish played with the sound of the word when they decided to create the famous Spanish Armada which, coincidentally, was crushed by King Philip II of England in 1588. In a way, calling something an armada, was to dredge up that hundreds year old history, and perhaps even cursing the fleet to an eventual doom.
At least, that's what rolled through Hank Pym's mind as he stood in the forward cabin, gazing into that coming fleet of Thanos' ships. As for Clint Barton, no such history floated into his mind. He liked to point out when the situation called for it, that he had never finished his gradeschool education. Having run away from the Waverly orphanage he'd been sent too, Clint continued on in life with nothing but the education of some days in the army and training in SHIELD. Bruce constantly supplemented his poor knowledge in other areas by bribing him into a classroom once in a while.
When Clint kicked the jet into auto-pilot and stood up beside Pym to really take in the depths of everything laid out before them, he looked at it with the eyes of a military man only. A single word crossed through him. Hopeless.
He had a long history with the word hopeless. Fighting cancer was hopeless. Stopping Thanos the first time. Eradicating the UIC-1 virus. Defending mutants during the registration act. Helping Tony to walk again. Having a daughter, though only for a short time. Opening his archery range. Surviving the woods of Alfheimr with elaren venom in him. Overcoming life as a deaf Avenger. Uprooting Hydra…
Everything Clint had ever faced, that mattered, was hopeless. This didn't even compare, he told himself. This was a drop of water in the ocean. A single ripple in a lake. He would defeat Thanos and his armada, come Hell or highwater and it most certainly would not be the first of those.
"What are we going to do?" Pym whispered, as if Thanos might hear.
"Rinon's ships are hours out. We just have to hold them off," Clint said.
"For hours?! Clint, we're one ship! My suit cant touch something like that! What are you planning to do? Throw your arrows at it?"
"It doesn't matter what we do, all Thanos wants is the Infinity Gauntlet and to crush Alfheimr's support. Once he has that, he has everything. So we need to stop him here." Clint moved toward the weapons console and took inventory of what firepower they did have. The minute he sat, he was forced to jockey back up. The time stone rested in his pocket, ununited with the others still. Clint didn't know what would happen if they were to combine and he wasn't about to find out on his ship.
He set the sphere on the console beside him and began sorting through their external munitions. They had fifteen minutes, most, before Thanos' faster ships picked up on their location and began to open fire.
"Clint, this is insane!" Pym continued. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the countless ships on the horizon. Space itself was big, but as far as he could see, as far as the viewscreen stretched, the armada did too. From above and below, Chitauri dead soldiers, their massive floating serpents, and garrisons just kept coming closer and closer. He doubted Alfheimr and Rinon himself could do anything to stop Thanos.
"It's not, we can do this. You just need to calm down and let me think."
"I don't care what race said something about you jumping off some cliff. This, what we're doing now, is suicide!"
The ship rocked as a chunk of stone orbiting Alfheimr's moon collided with them. The sphere rolled from the desk across the floor. Pym chased it down. Clint glanced over his shoulder to see what had happened, but the minute he did, his opportunity to stop the events already passed.
"Hank, no!" Clint exclaimed, lunging out from behind the console.
The stone's careful casing had already begun to clambshell away. The layers of protective metal slid easily from each other like a flower blooming. Pym was transfixed at the sight, even as the little gem within finally came into view. The time stone. An Infinity Gem. It all made sense now. He knew what he had to do. Clint might not understand, comprehend, the fact that they were about to die in that coming armada. Pym did. He could stop it all, right here, with the gem. If he could just hold it for a moment, then it would all be over.
"STOP!" Clint's voice shrieked from some distant place.
Pym grabbed the stone, held its radiance against the flesh of his palm and marveled at the beautiful jewel. It was like an entire world was trapped inside, waiting in his hands to be released. He, Hank Pym, could stop this coming death. He could not only stop it, he could fix it, rewrite it, change everything they'd ever done. Filed with the stone's power his eyes lifted to Barton.
Clint took a step back. Pym's irises were emblazoned in the stone's purple hue. His voice had changed, deepened like some wraithlike spirit had possessed him. The archer called his bow to his hand and grabbed the nearest arrow. It was starting. This was his mistake. He'd let his guard down for a second, and suddenly the twenty predictions were all crashing down around him.
"Thanos has lived long enough with these crimes. Our insignificant lives have been too long spent simply surviving in a galaxy that is not perfect. He will stop those things that make men weak. Destroy the boundaries of mortal men. Usher in an age of greater awakening in the pith of darkness that falls." Pym's fist closed around the purple stone. "He shall feed forever!"
"Pym, you're talking crazy, I need you to let go of the stone!"
"Let it go?" Pym asked, squeezing harder onto it. "No, not until my work is done! Not until my master is served! To GALACTUS!"
A blast of energy slammed Clint backward. He hit the side of the ship's controls, dropped to his knees, and forced his head up to look. He'd never seen anything like it. Suddenly it all made sense. Why Hank Pym would dare defy his friends, expose the entire galaxy to Galactus' wrath, and triggure the events that lead to their eventual demise.
Clutching the power of the time stone, Pym's entire form changed. His face rearranged as if it had been made out of soft puddy. The bones, breaking, reforming, stacking up muscles. Clint scrambled up the console to reach his feet as standing before him now, the shape changing Herald from Galactus appeared out of the form that had once been Hank. Clint blinked, wanting to scrub his hands over his eyes and claim that he must be delusional. But there the creature remained, a wolf among sheep this entire time.
"N—No! No! What happened to Pym! What did you do to him!" Clint screamed.
The eyes blazed like flashes of lightning. Terror seized hold of him and Clint wondered what sort of power he was up against alone.
"No man commands that which Galactus seizes! Sense your death, here!" The Herald thrust his hand into the air. Light radiated from the stone and Clint made his choice. Clint pulled an arrow back. He faced his long time friend, terrified he might have to make the ultimate decision. What if Pym was really in there, somewhere? What if it were Tony standing there? Or Cap? Or Natasha? What if they had been holding the stone, proclaiming to rework the cornerstones of life itself?
His thoughts, briefly, drifted back to the Scarlett Witch. He'd taken the job that no one else would. Made the call to save them all and put an arrow through his old friend's skull. He had to do this, Pym or no Pym. Clint released the arrow, burying the head through the creature's wrist. The Herald shrieked. His impaled arm fell, but the light continued to pulse from him. Clint grabbed for the Infinity Gauntlet. Short of removing the Herald's wrist completely, he couldn't think of a way to get the being away from the Stone. He had to give the time gem a better target, a better host.
Clint slipped his hand into the Gauntlet and banished his bow away. He hurled his shoulder into the Herald, thrusting the it against the wall. Clint grabbed the arrow sticking out of him and used it as a hand hold to get the Gauntlet closer. In the blink of an eye, the time gem jumped.
Clint felt the power blast into him like a shot of Thor's lightning. He jolted sideways, hit the floor on his knees, and shook from head to toe. The Gauntlet morphed, its gems rearranging to allow the latest stone in. the golden cuff moved down, digging its way beneath his flesh and fusing to his bones. A rush, like an adrenaline high, pulsed through him in a wave.
Behind him the shrieking Herald morphed too. It began to split down its center, pulling apart with melted strands of human flesh stretching between him. To the left, the form of Hank Pym fell over sideways and lay heaving along the deck. The other half, the creature of Galactus, began to build himself a second half. As Pym sank to the ground, holding his wrist and wondering what happened to him, Clint started standing.
Clint didn't want this. He never wanted to have the weight of the galaxy fall on his shoulders alone. He never wanted to face Thanos with nothing but his infinitesimal ship standing between Thanos and Alfheimr, least of all with a Herald. There was no getting away from it. Barton had the power to stop him, now, and forevermore.
He was forced to choose. Save Alfheimr, or destroy the Herald. His decision was clear. Whether it became the right one, or the wrong one, he might never know.
"Cl—Clint?" Hank moaned, watching Barton stalk passed him with the Infinity Gauntlet a part of his arm.
The archer never answered. He grabbed the airlock door, forced it open with a flick of his hand and strode inside. He never looked back.
"Clint! Clint, stop!"
He could hear the words in the back of his head. To survive, they must die. To proceed, he must succeed. To win, he must decide. He could reshape the worlds with a thought and yet there was only one thing Clint did want to do. He exited the ship, floating out of the airlock and up to the nose of her with nothing on but his normal clothes. The Gauntlet protected him.
The expanse of space waited from him. He embraced its life, sensing every living creature pulsing beneath his fingertips. He felt the power of them coursing through him. Ecstasy, perhaps, to some creatures who desired such power. For him, it was academic, cold, and controlled. This gauntlet would not possess him. He would possess it, for even this brief time.
Hovering in the darkness, Alfheimr revolving at his back and its moon and star circling over his shoulder, Barton's eyes took in the great death swiftly approaching. All at once, he was no longer hovering over the ship, with Hank Pym. His body hurled through the vortex of space time and mystically he appeared on Thanos's throne. The dictator was turned away at first, directing his attack, but shifted his attention very swiftly when the Chitauri and Kree around him shouted.
Clint just wanted to see his face. Witness the cold terror cross Thanos' eyes before he was gone forever. Thanos's purple jaw quivered for a moment as he glanced down to see the power Clint confidently wielded.
"My Gauntlet!" the dictator cried. He recognized Barton, knew the man the universe claimed he was. How the mortal man survived wielding that power, he would never know, but what mattered more was taking the strength away from him.
Clint's voice stopped them all. "I didn't want this," he said, "But you've forced it. Not all of you are guilty. Not all of you want to be here, but you've been slaved into it, like the Southling girl, Loki, and so many others. It's not your fault. I don't want to murder you. But I can't let you survive here anymore."
Thanos jutted his chin, his heavy boots clanged off the stone floor of his floating fortress. If no one was going to get the gauntlet back for him, he was simply going to get it for himself.
"Release my power, boy! I will crush you with—"
Clint lifted the gauntlet, and the stones shone like stars in compliance. Thanos' body caught into the air. The Kree and Chitauri both pushed back, squatting down in their terror.
"You do not know darkness, Thanos. You think you bring it, dwell in it, and create its very essence in others, but you know nothing of the Dark times." Clint pulled the gauntlet too his chest, and Thanos floated to him. He rested only a few inches from the end of Clint's nose. Somewhere in the expanse of space at his back, the Herald had reformed. It was coming to claim him, to steal the power for Galactus himself. Clint had one single focus before letting that fight rage. Barton's voice dropped, a growl, powered by the celestial force shook the entire bridge of Thanos' flagship and sent a ripple into the rest of the fleet.
"I will show you darkness. I will show you fear. And you will never return. This is my choice. My judgement. I give you your life, but that is the only thing you will wish that I had taken from you."
Clint threw his arm out. The entire ship thrust backward, carrying all the occupants along with it. As he hovered in the vastness of space, he watched as the time stone filled with power. He had no other choice. It was Alfhiemr or Thanos. And now, the universe was never going to be the same again.
He had to buy time. Time was all they ever needed. Time to stop Galactus. Time to be together again. Time to be young men, to live with good health, to survive the trials to come. He felt his power over the Gauntlet shaking the longer he forced his will over the time stone. The physical change over took him, but that wasn't all he needed. Clint had to push harder, farther, touch the others in his life that needed it most.
The Herald came at him swinging. A sledge-hammer blow crashed across his back. Clint spun around, meaning to return the attack, but all he could see was the darkness.
The Herald shifted in it. Its entire body had been enveloped in a chameleon skin of stars and darkness. Clint felt the creature clamped down against his arm to claw the Gauntlet away. The archer had to stop him. He switched his focus, bringing the power of the tesseract down on them. Suddenly they were leaping through portals, exploding across star systems, falling from skies and atmospheres as they fought and wrestled like God and Jacob. Barton knew a man could not win this fight. Not when all of his power, energy, and will power had been drained already. He could only watch as that monster stole the very power of the worlds away from him. The last glimpse Clint caught as the Herald banished him into oblivion, was the passing rocky landmark of a moon he knew all too well . . .
And so end part 2!
All of part 3 is now finished, just working through the edits now. when they are done, I will most likely try to take an afternoon to load ALL of those chapters at once!
Next time: Part 3- WAR