Upon the last word, upon the accusation, Holly sucked in a breath, glancing around from one team member to the next. She wasn't naïve, or stupid; with the exception of her and Helen Cho, every person in that room was no innocent in the ways of true combat. To be honest, from Steve right down to Colonel Rhodes, they all had dealt with the difficult choice of kill or be killed. They'd picked, sometimes gladly (Natasha could attest to that, were she in the mood to allude to her past at that moment), and they'd suffered the consequences. However, it was one thing to do a duty, and another to be called a murderer right to one's face. Needless to say, none of the group assembled looked particularly happy to have the slur thrown against them.
Steve's eyes were cold, stony, as he looked to Tony and barked his name. Off the captain's tone, the billionaire took another swipe at his handheld, desperately trying to connect with the system and reboot the suit that had spontaneously arrived out of the Legionnaires' bay. The tension mounted the longer he went without vocal confirmation from JARVIS. With very few exceptions, the UI had always responded immediately to direct commands. What was going on?
Meanwhile, the suit went on, explaining itself. It spoke of being lost in dreams, a terrible noise breaking its peace. It had found itself stuck, tangled in strings, searching for a way out. It sounded so befuddled, so lost, but the hard edge beneath the words kept any possible sympathy at bay.
Loping forward, still half-bent at the waist, it waved a metal hand to the air.
"The other one, though, I had to dispose of him," it murmured, little sorrow in its voice as it confessed its crime. Still, it dipped its jagged chin in acknowledgment of a point. "Unfortunate, but necessary."
"Who? Who did you dispose of?" Steve asked, brow furrowing. If the suits were activating and killing, let alone not responding to any internal intervention, it would be a terrible mess that needed to be cleaned up immediately. For the sake and the safety of the others, he needed to know whom was killed.
"Still," it responded airily, smoothly avoiding naming its victim, tone turned snide as it continued, "I believe you're all familiar with the notion of making dire choices."
"Steve," Holly whispered, drawing closer to him. He said nothing to her, just blindly reached back and settled his hand on her hip, guiding her to stand slightly behind him and shielding her with his body.
Thor, his gaming mood dissipated, inquired as to who had brought the menacing creature into their presence. He got right to the point, slowly moving his body into a defensive stance and fingers adjusting on Mjolnir's handle. In response, the demonic-looking robot jerked its head up, a recording taking over its smooth tones. Tony's voice, all eagerness and thoughtfulness, poured out, expressing a wish to see suits of armor protecting the world. Glancing over at Stark, Holly could see the color drain from his face, his dark eyes riveted to the mechanical creature. Bruce, slack-jawed for a moment, swiveled his head towards his fellow scientist, expression full of wonder and wariness.
He called him Ultron, the others turning to stare at his pronouncement. The robot stood up straighter, taller, and seemingly proud to be identified.
"Correct, Dr. Banner. Well, to a point," it amended, glancing back down at the hastily contrived body it had. Oil leaking, wires swinging, was no way to exist properly. "No matter, though. I've come to do as Tony wanted."
Somehow, that pronouncement made the team tighten in their stances, narrowed their eyes. Slowly, carefully, Maria rose from her seat, slipping a hand under the coffee table and removing a pistol that had been holstered there. Holly's eyes darted from her face to the gun, swallowing with difficulty at her deadpan expression. Catching Clint's eye, they shared a brief look before he faced forward again, his gaze sweeping the room, settling on certain points.
'Looking for an escape route?' Holly wondered, but she kept her mouth shut.
"And what would that be?" Natasha inquired, voice sharp and intense. It was a question that she did not want to ask, but that they needed an answer to.
The head turned to face them all again, a breath of time passing in which it was poised, waiting.
"...Why, peace, Agent Romanoff. I'm here to ensure peace."
The back wall burst then, the remaining Legionnaire suits rocketing through the plaster and paint. They spread in an effort to cut off the others, round them up for easy attacks, but instead everybody scattered. As one jettisoned directly towards them, Holly gasped and Steve reacted in the only way he could think. Jerking his foot forward, he knocked against the lip of the coffee table, causing it to flip up and forward. A temporary block, against which the android smashed into, pushing into both man and woman and forcing them over the couch. Stars exploded in Holly's vision upon impact, and for a few moments, spots of blackness speckled over everything as she landed on the ground, the world around her spinning. Hands seized her, human ones, pulling her from the open floor and forcing her to run, dodging behind a pillar to be sheltered from the attack. Gun shots rang through the space, the shouts of their fellows calling each other's names echoing around them as glass shattered. The clank of hammer on metal sang and rent the air. Forcing herself to focus, her brown eyes connected with his blue, pain lacing her forehead as she frowned up at him.
"Ow...Steve? What..." she trailed off, trying to concentrate on his face. That really did hurt...
A whirring sound from behind caught both of their attentions, each one peering around opposite sides of the pillar. The android, knocked askew from its original path, had returned for them, pulsars bringing it closer to their hiding spot. Sucking in a fast breath, Holly ducked back around, fingers splayed against the metal behind her. Steve's eyes widened significantly, and he did not hesitate to act. Leaping forward, he planted a foot on the outer edge of the nearby stairwell, pivoting and launching himself higher. Landing with a thud, he clambered onto the Legionnaire's back, rearing back to viciously punch at it. As it spun him away into the air, Holly unsteadily gave chase, ducking instinctively as repulsor shots pierced through the air. Staying low, she followed, darting from ottoman to pool table as Steve landed a solid hit against the robot's facial plating. In her peripheral vision, she noticed Clint booking it along the far end, narrowly avoiding the repulsors as he slid beneath a table. Seizing one of the abandoned pool cues, she let out an audible groan in sympathy when she peered around the pool table and saw that he was plowed backward into the wall above the bar. The bricks crunched underneath him, and the suit turned with brutal speed to throw him down onto the bar itself. More shots were fired as Natasha sprang up from behind the bar, making a dash for the stairs at the opposite end with Bruce hot on her heels, her gun aimed well enough to for bullets to ping off the head while she went.
About to run to Steve, to see if he was alright, Holly felt something hard and heavy close around her ankle, the sharpness somewhat muted by her boot's material. She barely managed a squeak in shock as she was bodily yanked back, a Legionnaire pulling her from her hiding place. With pool cue in hand, she let out a hoarse wail as she swung up, the heavy end thumping against the shoulder plating. It wasn't enough to make it let go, but it was distracted slightly. Clearly, it had not expected her to even remotely fight back. Reaching out to take the cue from her, she swung it again, this time making it lodge into the open neck area. Pushing swiftly, she forced it in deeper, until most of the wooden object had come out the opposite side. Though she did not actually do any damage to the wiring and such inside, she had immobilized its head for the moment. As it let her go, to draw out the cue, she took her advantage, getting to her feet and running across the room, ducking to avoid the shots peppering the floor and walls. Sliding along the floor, she winced in pain as she stopped behind one of the couches, floor burn now inevitably in her future. A great crash caught her attention, and when she look around the end of the couch, she saw a suit's torso attempting to lift itself off the floor, its compatriot finally removing the cue from its neck in time for Stark to have captured it, wrestling it midair as he fiddled with something.
The Legionnaire torso scrambled up from the floor, sparking and hovering on one hand, the other pointed out. It had a target in its sights by the piano. Holly felt her heart lurch in fear when she saw Helen Cho crouching there, her eyes wide. Frozen, she watched as the suit paused, staring her down for the moment before lowering its hand. Before anyone had time to question its actions, Steve appeared, seizing the torso from behind, flinging it back to Thor with a yell. The god swung his hammer down, shattering the robot completely. Stunned, the doctor stared, her dark hair swaying as she shook her head. Limbs unlocking, Holly rushed forward, taking the opportunity.
"Helen! C'mon," she crowed, running to her. Grabbing her forearm, she tugged her into a jog, both women dashing away from the piano in time to duck underneath the stairwell. Glancing up through the open slats between the steps, Helen gasped. Following her gaze, Holly jerked back in astonishment when Tony came crashing down above them, the Legionnaire he'd been struggling with finally powered down. A fondue fork jutted out of its neck, having successfully skewered and severed wires within. Both man and droid skidded to a halt near the foot of the stairs, mere inches from their faces.
"Good God, Stark," Helen breathed, shaking her head minutely. He had nothing to say to that; rather, he just shot her a look while trying to control his breathing as he rested back onto the steps. Another voice cried out, Barton calling the captain's name as the shield whooshed across the air. Catching it deftly, Steve executed a spinning jump, the vibranium cutting through the air and smashing the last Legionnaire into pieces before embedding itself into the far wall. Amidst the shattered furniture, glass shards, and extensive damage, the creature called Ultron had remained untouched. It hobbled away from where it had been standing, examining the scattered parts of its comrades.
Shaking its head, it looked from one person to the other, eye slits focusing on Tony in particular. The tone took a turn, mocking apology in it as the commandeered suit faced the man. "You must have wanted the best, like so many do. However, I doubt that, personally."
Not giving Tony even an iota of time to react, the robot turned back to those assembled, glancing from the captain and the god on the ground level up to the Black Widow, Bruce, and Barton along the upper walkways. Even without facial expression, Holly got the sense of disappointment radiating from its form. Disappointment and fury. Drawn to the aura that surrounded the creature, Holly moved out the hiding space, Helen behind her, both women staying on the fringes as it spoke again.
"You're locked into a path of destruction, and you will take humanity down with you. That cannot be." Grasping one of the fallen Legionnaires by the head, it crushed it with a single fluid movement, tossing it away like the trash it now was. Ultron derided it, using it as representation that the team pulled and pushed the world, but would not allow it to push and pull back. Archly, it took a step or two forward, pulling itself up to its full height. "Your extinction, all of you, is the only way out."
Mjolnir soared, crushing into the final suit vindictively. As it returned to its owner's hand, the others looked on Thor, his expression entirely unapologetic. It was past time to shut down the creature, and he had simply taken the matter into his own hands. The mass of jumbled metal and wires let out a slow, rumbling sound, oil spilling freely from the back of its head. It growled under its breath, a farce of a melody underneath the words, eye lights flickering and powering down. Electric sparks ringed it for a few moments, but once the source was dead, it ended. It was gone, leaving total silence in its wake. All of them stared at the broken pile of parts, the destruction of the room, but none of them could breathe a sigh of relief. The air was too charged, the promise of worse still hovering around them all. For her part, Holly had stopped actually looking at everything, her focus stuck on the middle distance, never wavering and never seeing what was before her.
What the hell had just happened here?
"Holly," Helen's mild voice cut in, broke through the haze. Turning to face her, the older woman reached out, tapped her shoulder. Nodding up, she continued, "Your head."
Gingerly, Holly reached up, hissing when her fingers came in contact with the deep cut on her forehead. In all the excitement, the adrenaline pumping through her, she'd managed to push the knowledge of the injury to the back of her mind. But with it slowly petering off, the pain came back to the forefront, throbbing. A headache was hard on its heels as well, a streak of blood running down to her temple. Still, she was shook her head slightly, wincing as Helen took her wrist and pulled her hand away from the wound.
"'Mfine." Patently untrue, but she did not want to admit to injury. She didn't want to appear weak, not when Maria was literally picking her way across the floor, walking on the sides of her feet to avoid driving any more shards of glass into the soles, Rhodey following and clutching his shoulder. Holly's head drooped as they made their way back to the others, hisses alternating out of their mouths. If they could keep moving, teeth gritted and backs as straight as possible, then what she had was of no immediate concern. The doctor was not about to take her word for it. Instead, she assumed an appearance of calm, visibly suppressing the distress that the events had wrought upon her for the time being.
"Come on," Cho murmured, starting to guide her towards the stairs, to the medical bay. Gesturing with her chin, she waited until Tony made eye contact with her. "Your assistant needs some help."
Mutely, he inclined his head, rising up from the steps and going to Maria, looping her arm around his shoulder and lifting her off her bleeding feet (despite hearty refusals and insisting she be put down) to take her up via the elevator. As Holly and Helen marched up the stairs, skirting the damaged Legionnaire still there, they barely heard the orders quietly given, the assent of the others to clean up the wreckage, take into account the extent of the damage. Glancing over her shoulder, the younger woman caught her fiancé's concerned look, watching as she was led away. He would come to her later, she knew that much, when he had a spare moment. When there were answers to be had from all this.
Once seated on an examination table, she couldn't recall much, other than that Helen had stepped away for a few minutes, bustling in between the bay and the lab. The latent panic that she had squelched down during the blowout was surfacing, and she had to put her head between her legs to breathe, to regain control. The retroactive shock invaded her mind, scrambled it for a few minutes as she struggled to calm herself down. Eventually, she was able to sit back up, her watering eyes swiped at by her fingers, and her inhalations deep. She was pulled out of her jumbled, private musings when a rolling tray made its way to her side. Flicking her gaze up, she noticed that Helen had donned a black sweater and rubber gloves, reaching for the first in the neat line of supplies. Disinfectant, a needle filled with a mystery fluid, filament, some sort of hook and other things.
"Oh, God," Holly groaned. "That's, uh, that's a lot of stuff for a cut."
She'd hoped that it would be a simple patch job, hydrogen peroxide to clean and a large bandage to cover. That dream was dashed right away.
"You need stitches," Helen told her, softening the statement with a partial grin. "I'll do this as quickly as possible."
Holly's tongue froze for a moment, surprise in her expression. "But, Maria..."
"I've already looked her over." The doctor set about with the disinfectant, swiping the cut gently as she could. As her newest patient hissed, she frowned, more due to her thoughts than anything else. "She'd already started removing the little glass in her feet herself, and the cuts there are superficial. The one on your head isn't. I'll tend to her when she's finished."
Catching herself before she dipped her chin, Holly merely hummed her response, closing her eyes tightly as Cho next picked up the needle. Biting her lip hard to distract herself from the pinch and the pain, she was relieved to open her eyes and witness the doctor draw away from her shortly after beginning.
"Oh, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be," she said. She'd heard about the adhesive that was used for stitches, and thought that maybe that was what Cho put on the wound. Perhaps the rest of the assembled items on the tray would be used for Maria. Helen let her smile grow again in response.
"Good. The numbing agent is nothing to fear."
Instantly, Holly's eyes widened, her throat constricting a bit. "You're not done?"
The filament had been knotted and the rolling tray pushed aside by the time Steve had ducked into the medical bay. Hanging back, he watched as Helen coaxed Holly off the examination table, persuading her to walk a straight line and back across the room.
"I told you, I'm fine," the younger woman grumbled irritably. The patience in Doctor Cho's voice seemed to get on her nerves as she spoke, if the sudden clench of her jaw was anything to go by.
"All the same, it's necessary." Catching her arm as she stumbled slightly, Helen tutted under her breath. "You're showing signs of a concussion. A mild one, but it is a concussion. The fact that your headache has receded is a good sign, but we'll have to keep an eye on it for a while. I should be able to do a scan—"
Catching sight of Steve, Holly shook her head, grimacing as she did so. "Can it wait?"
Following her gaze, Helen stifled a sigh, instead guiding her charge back to the examination table, giving her a hand up onto it. Nodding to the captain, who was himself no worse for the wear, she made sure to indicate that the scans would happen, after she tended to her other patients. Exiting the room, she closed the door quietly, leaving the pair just looking at each other. His jacket was slung over his arm, retrieved from below, the fingers of his opposite hand twitching at the leather for a second or two. His bright gaze had lost some of its luster, examining the row of stitches that marched across her forehead, millimeters from her right eyebrow and running parallel to it. The look on his face was a cross between upset and sorrowful, and something a little deeper. It was look she couldn't recall ever seeing, and she hated it, hated how lost he seemed. Holding out a hand to him, the corner of her mouth twitched up. As if moving through deep water, he approached her slowly, swinging the jacket around her shoulders in a belated attempt to comfort. Standing in front of her, he took her hands in his, thumbs sweeping over the knuckles.
"I'm sorry." The deeper emotion rose again, and she could properly name it now: guilt. Not only for the wound to her head (which definitely on him, what with his coffee table shenanigans…not that she was going to point that out then) but for the fact that what happened, happened. He felt at fault for the danger, for it rearing its head in the one place that was supposed to be safe, impregnable. It was, to his mind, an error in his judgment, not doing more to protect her. In response, she shook her head, wrapping her arms around him and laying the uninjured side of her head on his shoulder. It wasn't something he could have predicted happening; she didn't need an apology for it. Carefully, he cradled her, his nose going into her hair as he pressed his lips there.
"On the plus side, at least they'll come out in five days. Give or take," she told him once she pulled away, gesturing to her forehead and giving a lopsided grin. It melted away as her eyes focused on the laboratory, tipping up her chin as she looked on the people within. Tony and Bruce were hard at work, assuming responsibility for a mess that was, evidently, of their making. However, she would rather focus on what they could say about it all than succumb to the fear that had overtaken her earlier. "They have anything to say?"
"They're looking into it," he confirmed, a frown blooming. A scoff passed his lips as he shook his head. "Evidently this was the project Stark and Banner were working on while we were busy sorting through files."
Her brow furrowed, the red skin around the stiches flushing. "Nobody caught them on it?"
Steve exhaled slowly, tilting his head to the right. "They were working with the scepter, which is what the initial plan was. We didn't ask because we thought we already knew what they were doing."
Holly snorted, passing a hand over her eyes. "Assumptions."
The droll tone Steve took on did nothing to hide the frustration he was feeling at the moment. "Yes, we're aware of that."
Her gaze narrowed then, as she drew in a deep breath.
"They better have some answers soon." Someone had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque in the process of developing that...thing, and she wanted to know exactly what it was that had happened. Remaining ignorant was impossible. From the set of her jaw, the hardness in her eyes, it was obvious that Holly would not be persuaded to head downstairs to the quarters to recover. Nor, in all honesty, was Steve about to insist on it. She deserved to be told about the monstrosity that had attacked them all, all of them did. His sour look mirrored her own, both of them glancing out the medical bay window towards the laboratory again, beyond the milling others to the two men darting from table to table, searching the digital readouts for an answer, anything.
"They will," he promised. "Trust me."
xXxXxXx
He couldn't stop staring at it. It...Ultron, the suit he'd high-jacked, shattered in pieces, now sitting atop one of the work benches. Tony looked upon it, the scratches, the wires, and the brokenness. The failure. His hands gripped the edges of the table, his mind going too fast for coherent thought. Bruce spoke over his silence, explaining to the others what they had been working on for the past three days. Working at...and falling short of. He'd left it in the most capable hands he'd known, and then...
It hadn't worked, after all. His efforts for a better, safer world, and they crashed harder than he could have believed. What went right? What went wrong?
"We were running it on the interface, without supervision," his words cut through Tony's haze, "but it looks like one of them was accepted. Unfortunately, we don't know which one it was."
Holly, sitting on the table Steve was standing nearby, leaned forward, his leather jacket draped around her shoulders. She'd been attempting to concentrate on what the doctor was saying, though the haggard look on her face indicated her confusion. It made the row of stitches on her forehead stand out all the more. Man, she must've been knocked pretty hard by that coffee table.
"Why not?" she asked, to which Banner spread his hands, marginally shamefaced. Their work had been eradicated from the database, drawn out with Ultron as he escaped via the Internet. Natasha confirmed, rising from the computer bank she'd parked at. She hadn't left it since she'd gotten upstairs, her dress exchanged for a hoodie and black leggings. She grimaced, crossing her arms as she confessed that he'd plumbed through every digital file on them, possibly discovering secrets that they didn't even know about one another.
From across the room, Clint let out a nearly inaudible moan, his gaze locking with Natasha's for a moment. That was deeply unsettling news. Carefully, she shook her head once, and left the matter at that. Rhodey, still clutching his sore arm, let out a sharp breath. If Ultron had broken through every barrier and firewall they had installed in the Tower, he posited, what others could he break into? What else could he find that would be of interest to his "mission"? Maria, removing the last sliver of glass from her foot, looked up, horror dawning on her face.
"Nuclear codes," she murmured, earning sour looks for her pronouncement. The colonel shrugged, a snort coming out his nose as he repeated Maria's phrase. They would have to make calls, get in touch with the people who possessed the knowledge and protection of the codes to lay down further barriers. Provided they had any pull or any wherewithal to do so now; Ultron was successful in breaking the lines from the Tower to the outside world, somehow.
"But he said he wanted to kill us, not the world," Natasha pointed out, while Steve raised an eyebrow.
"The term he used was 'extinct,' Nat."
Implying finality, implying that the Avengers had to be wiped from the face of the earth for it to better itself. Holly pressed a hand to her stomach, looking ill at the declaration. Blindly, she reached for Steve's hand, with him obliging, the fingers gripping tightly.
Clint, recovering from his earlier worry, chimed in, "Well, he already said he'd done it. Why not do it to us, too?"
Maria swiveled in her seat, tweezers held out. "I checked the security feed before it went dark. There was nobody else but us here."
"...That's not true," Tony said, in the smallest voice possible. Taking out his handheld, he flicked it at the center of the room, bringing up a digital holographic display projected from the floor panels. What was once interlocking strands of data, represented in orange light and woven into a ball, was scattered, frayed and jagged. Sparse spots of blue dotted it, overwhelming the orange and absorbing it. It did not move, it did not pulse. It was still, empty. Tony sidestepped it, hands going into his pockets and his countenance sorrowful. Bruce, stunned, stepped up to the display, a hand weaving through it as though his touch could revive it.
"My God," he whispered, lips barely moving as he continued to stare down into the broken display. JARVIS, his digital form, was destroyed. Deep dread pervaded the room, growing with each passing second. Someone gasped, but none of them were sure who. The captain crossed his arms, head drooping as he postulated how JARVIS's position would make him vulnerable to attack. The first barrier, and the barrier had been broken. Banner waved his words away. If Ultron had wished, it could have absorbed JARVIS into its matrices, taken the access and used it towards the projected end, and he said as much. He pushed up his glasses, fingers passing through the display. It was a display of rage, and nothing more.
The thump of a hammer dropping to a table, the heavy stride of boot connecting to floor alerted them to Thor's return. After discovering both Loki's scepter and the last of the Iron Legion had disappeared, it didn't take them long to put two and two together. Sent out to track both missing items, he was less than pleased with what he'd discovered. The crimson cloak about his shoulders billowed as he approached Stark, fist uncurling to snatch the smaller man off his feet, holding him up by his throat.
"Oh, look, there's more of it," Barton commented, leaning back at he watched Tony swat at the god's arm. The stand-off last mere moments before the captain cut in, authoritative tone bringing Thor back to the present. They needed a report on the missing Legionnaire, not an unseemly brawl in the laboratory. When he dropped Stark, he glared at him as he stumbled back, bright eyes flashing.
"I followed it as far as I could, but it was lost. It's gone now, Loki's scepter in its care," Scattered groans met the god's ears, mirroring his inner feelings perfectly. "We shall have to find it again."
Romanoff jerked her head up, immediately squashing the idea. Ultron was the closer danger, and therefore the most important thing to worry about. Thor merely scoffed, the harshness of his gaze cutting into them all. That he was angry was unmistakable; the red marks around Tony's neck confirmed it. Months and months of planning, hunting, fighting, and now they were back to the beginning. Assuming they would finish with the automaton in time to ever find the thing again.
"This doesn't make sense," Helen broke in suddenly. She had found her way to the table, eyes flicking over the Legionnaire that Ultron had occupied. Turning back to the room, she looked directly at Tony, demanding an answer. "This was your project. Why did it turn on you?"
Dropping his gaze to the computer monitor before him, Stark shook his head minutely, the red text onscreen not even registering in his mind. He'd lost his work, nearly lost his life, and had lost JARVIS. At his limit, at the very end of his line, Tony did the only thing he could think to do.
He laughed. It was weak, all halfhearted chuckles and glances at the ceiling, but it was there, a mirthful sound that echoed louder than it should have in the quiet that followed. Not able to help himself, he let out the smallest hoot, the shake of Banner's head in the periphery of his vision unnoticed.
Thor took a step forward again, gesturing with an open palm. The facetious smile on his face could not disguise the irritation below the surface. "This is amusing to you?"
"Of course not. It's really...it's not funny. At all," the billionaire tried to backpedal, his chuckles petering off slowly. Confusion bloomed in his dark eyes, confusion at his own behavior, at the stony faces surrounding him.
Before the god could fully form his reprimand, reminding him again of his failure, Stark cut in, instead refuting his earlier claim. It was hilarious, he told them, that nobody understood why they'd needed the Ultron program in the first place. All humor and mirth had disappeared, morphing into aggravation and passion. Not that he had done a great job explaining why beforehand; he'd mostly mumbled about looking to a peace-keeping protocol to use across the globe and left it at that, the shock weighing too heavily at the time for him to say more. He rounded on Bruce when he attempted to diffuse the situation, earning a snappish response about the interface they were creating, about how the doctor always went belly-up the instant somebody was ready to turn on him. The fact that they had created a murder bot gave him license to surrender, Bruce had snarled. Ultimately, Tony stilled, a finger jabbing at the ceiling, revealing more of his reasoning. After the first battle of New York, he'd come to the realization that even though they could, as a team, fight long and hard for the good of the world, there was something stronger, something bigger beyond the earth's scope, something they could not match. What was out there would be the endgame.
"How are we gonna be able to defeat that?" he challenged the others, driving home his point. Certainly, trying to create Ultron had been a mistake, but it was for the betterment of everyone else as a whole. It was something that should have the strength to repel the worst invaders. He glanced from one team member to the next, incredulity in his eyes. When he got to Steve, he was not surprised to see the resoluteness in his form, the steadiness of his countenance touching his reply with poignancy.
"Together."
Breathing in slowly, the billionaire maintained focus on his leader, his friend. They had to understand, Rogers had to understand…
"We can't win against that," he said, firm though his eyes watered.
It was not pity that came into Steve's eyes, but it was close enough to make the other man flinch.
"If that's how it has to be, then so be it."
As further commands were issued, discussions about finding Ultron before he could inflict more damage to the world around them, Tony shut them out as the remaining Avengers separated to go about their work. Sinking onto a rolling stool, he stared down at the steel table's surface, his jaw clenching and relaxing as his mind raced. Perhaps…perhaps he was the one who didn't understand.
The tap on his shoulder went unheeded, and by the time he'd realized he'd been touched, he found the space beside him empty. Looking around, he caught the person's gaze as she moved carefully back to the medical bay. Holly met his gaze frankly, the blank look and shrug of her shoulders unaccompanied by words. Rather, she shifted in her stance, turning away as she was bade by Helen to come inside, effectively closing off the offer she had extended to him, whatever it was.
A/N: Ultron has arrived, and it is entertaining.
Last part of the chapter comes more from Tony's POV, because at that moment in time he is fascinating to consider. The knowledge that the thing he was creating for the good of the world, for the good of his friends, attacked him, his home, and destroyed probably the closest "person" to him (JARVIS)…had to be devastating. And yet he stilled defends the idea of it, because he knows the potential for good it has? Like I said, fascinating.
Hope the fight sequence wasn't too slow or boring for you guys. I tried to write more from Holly's side, as the others' are clearly represented in the film.
I don't own anything from the MCU.
Thanks for reading, please review, and I'll see you all for the next one!