I passed a test this week and am currently still breathing, so both are reasons to celebrate! Be on the look out for a new Bucky oneshot I'm posting later too!
Home consisted of the blow out shell of a house, a few overgrown crop fields, and a refrigerator that surprisingly still worked. It was the barn out back where they made camp. Menzel had her eye plastered to the microscope while her other machines whirled away concocting their latest attempt at a "cure." That's what they told Hugh it was at least. The elimination formula was the first one she had perfected as a break in case of emergency plan. Well, if this wasn't one, I was an Avenger.
Menzel had been in that position for hours. She was definitely Asgardian because any human's back would have broken by now. Hugh was entranced in his music, swinging from the tire hung in the middle of the stabled. The door was immediately to my right where I reread over Menzel's old research. It was fragmented and alarmingly delusional for pages on end. If a psychologist ever wanted a look into how the mind of an alien functioned, this was the book to read. Well, one of a series. I was only on the fifth but an entire stack still awaited under where my feet propped up.
I could run away. Menzel would not surface from her own head for several hours. I knew the nearest gas station and the cute geezer who operated it. I could fly away and be safe faster than they could miss me. But then my eyes fell to the cotton swag taped to my inner elbow. The world without Hugh would be a safer place and I could help create that.
So I would.
Something caught her gaze, a miscalculation that affected the outcome of one of the initial ingredients. Surely, Menzel corrected since the date of two years ago.
"Hey," I called. No reply from either of the crazy bunch. "Oh no! I'm losing control. I feel the awful power taking over. Oh!" I feigned swaying on my feet. Still nothing.
I huffed and marched over to Menzel, jamming the torn notebook page between her eye and her work. She blinked, swiped it from me and finally looked up. Settling her glasses back onto her nose and squinted at the near illegible handwriting. "What, Rosales?"
"Do numbers work different on Asgard? Because the chemical mixture you wrote here has composition similar to that of soil. I know because I ordered it all the time to cultivate the fields."
"No. No. I used this a thousand times. I can't have been that careless. I…" she rubbed at her forehead, pulling the blue vial from its place on the rack. "I have to get to work. Bless you, Rosales."
A kiss was pressed to my cheek before she set into a new flurry of mad-sciencing. "Why aren't you fighting me? Why are you helping at all?" Menzel asked as she sought out her supplies.
"Someone told me I should trust what I'm feeling back when you were manipulating me. It was kinda hard to tell what I wanted from what you wanted me to do."
"Didn't have a choice. It was you or the world. This someone the one that you're connected to?"
"I mean we slept together."
"No no. You have Asgardian blood in you now. As does the soldier of winter. We have um, what's the Midgardian word for this? I think you call them soulmates. It's who you fit with on a nonlinear plane. Hugh was mine and I was his. We are rare. Most people have unreciprocated connections. You're lucky, most humans are not permitted the certainty of knowing where their heart lies. Soulmates is what got me into this mess, though."
"Because you couldn't let your husband stay dead?"
"Because of the man who killed my husband. I was his, but he was not mine. He was cruel and jealous and spiteful and took our daughter so I would go to him. Hugh went after her and Loki lashed out. He took everything from me that day, so I ran and tried to take something back." She glanced up again, noting the drag of my eyelids.
"Hugh set up blankets in the guest bunks upstairs. Why don't you go get some sleep? You'll be more useful in the morning. Thank you, though. Sincerely."
I climbed the stairs without complaint, truly swaying now as sleep deprivation reared its head. Between kidnappings, jail and breaking someone out of another jail, sleep had taken a backseat; it was due time I let it drive. I kicked the door shut to the bunk room and face planted on the first bed I saw. Dust and dirt kicked up and I rolled to the wall to cough it out of my system.
My scream upon seeing the man laid out next to me was stifled by the metal covered hand slamming over my mouth. Scott's helmet whipped back revealing his mess of dark hair and dancing green eyes. My fist slammed into the pillow beside his head as I jerked away.
"What the fuck!" I hissed, looking at the thin wooden wall shielding us from two powerful beings in the next room.
"Sorry. Sorry. I had to wait for you to be alone. I was waiting at the prison while the others canvased, well, earth for where the huge bastard had taken you. I hitched a ride since then. Your hair smells horrible by the way, though I'm grateful you didn't shower while I was on board. Where are we, by the way? I might have been napping during the plane ride here."
"So you can tell Stark?"
"Well….yeah?" Scott tilted his head, sitting up now. "You say that like you don't want to be rescued. And…" he jumped, pressing something in his ear. "Wanda wants to talk to you."
"She's safe?" I breathed.
"Of course. We're not completely useless. Stark tends to cover that base. The captain was the one who found her, him and your little arm candy. Emphasis on the arm because how can you miss that thing? Alright, alright," he spoke into the earpiece. He dug it out and held it out for me.
"A) that's disgusting. B) I'm not going anywhere, Scott."
"That sucks, I have been craving caramel apples and I've yet to see one around here."
"Stop joking. Leave."
"Yeah, no. They're already tracking us. I clicked the little red button when you were safe in here with me a few minutes ago."
"I can't just leave. I'm needed her. You don't understand. Menzel is the only one who can stop Hugh and I'm the only one who can help her."
"Pretty sure Stark can learn the biology needed for that overnight and give old hulk wannabe the permanent night night pill."
"Stark isn't Asgardian."
"And this isn't your family, Haven. I know Hugh thinks you're his daughter, I know you lost your parents, but let me tell you Stockholm is a real thing sugar plumb and they've got you so brainwashed you think that exsanguination is the only answer."
"She only takes a little and only when she needs it."
"What happens if she needs it all? If it comes down between you and the beasty. She won't choose you, Haven."
My breath was tight, my chest knit into a spiral that he was only adding knots to with every attempt to unravel it. I knew my decision. I was done letting others make them for me. I was done letting the Avengers pretend they were the law of the land. I had foreign blood in me now, this was no longer my land.
He relaxed when I took the earpiece.
"Wanda?" I asked.
"Thank god. Get back alive so I can kill you. Are you insane?"
"I need you to do something for me."
"Of course. Of course. Do you want me to get Barnes or Wilson? I think they're asleep, but I'm sure they will want to hear from you."
"I need you to stop looking for me."
Scott was asleep in the time it took for me to grab our meager supply bag. My fingertips tingled from the exploitation of my power. Something distracted me from fully completing the job, however. A voice that broke when first used and crumpled my heart up along with it.
"Ace?"
My knees trembled as if I did not already know who spoke. Bucky Barnes who I had been deliberately cutting out of my dreams. My voice would not respond, but my breathing was erratic enough that he knew I was listening to his strained voice. Soulmate. The word was so overused it was almost trivial. But she could picture him now as she sat down hard. He would be across from hair, legs cross and arms folder, shoulders hunched inward in every attempt to make his pure physicality less intimidating. His hair would be in a bun from sleep and no doubt falling this way and that from the stress. And his touch, god his touch would be so gentle while those big blue eyes implored her to give in. To just let him help.
"Ace, I'm on my way."
She smashed the earpiece before she could rethink her decision, before the yearning to be buried in his hug overwhelmed her morality.
She rushed down the stairs, finding Menzel anxiously dancing as one of her concoctions brewed in a beaker. Hugh was nowhere to be seen.
"They found us," I said.
Menzel's excited smile vanished, hardening to stone as a million new plans ran through her head.
"I've got a safe house down in the mountains of south America. I have a little magic that can get us mostly there, but there's shields around it so there will still be a lot of foot travel required, but we can manage if Hugh carries the heavier equipment. I'll have to find us food because it isn't stocked." She shoved a bag into my hands that shifted like it was full of sand that smelled of the rainforest. She wheeled about, muttering to herself as she sorted out what was necessary from what could be left behind.
Her computer beeped, the noise so trivial I would have paid it no mind. But she performed a full 180 to face it, face coloring and lips parting. "That's it," she whispered.
"Did it finish updating or something?" I asked.
"That's the cure. I did it. We did it. By the stars, we can end this."
A few emotions flooded me, most of them resembling that same relief. There was one still thinking about that apple Scott had mentioned, but I shoved that away for later when he would forgive me and we could treat each other. The barn doors swung open on a lazy breeze, but Menzel was too busy staring in wondrous awe to notice. Hugh walked in, gait too stiff, eyes too unfocused. I touched Menzel's arm to point it out. She just skipped into Hugh's arms, hugging his neck as sad tears descended on her cheeks.
"Something is wrong, Joy," Hugh said.
"Everything will be okay soon, I promise. You'll be alright."
But something was wrong. Hugh's skin was flaking off in patches, his eyes reddening as blood vessels gave way. He was deteriorating and his powers taking over as the flesh died off. Menzel reached for the sedating syringe in her back pocket and Hugh reacted, like I had seen him do half a dozen times by now. Death was not slow motion, but entirely too fast. There was no time to register what had occurred and even less to decide how to proceed.
Menzel collapsed as the needle pieced his skin, unmoving unbreathing. Her throat was an ugly blue and purple color consistent with strangulation. The wind screamed along with Hugh at the haunting sight and the roof tore clean free. The wind ripped at my feet, it threatened to knock the cure down, rendering everything unusable. I lunged for it, upsetting Hugh further. The clouds went black and rain poured down as a hurricane he might as well have dragged from the pacific with his bare hands bore down on us. There was a suffocating moment where I flashed back to the house that used to occupy these lands. The house I tore apart when I held no reigns on my powers just like this.
I didn't pity him because he acted like a surrogate father. No, I could be Hugh. It was far too easy to imagine myself in his shoes, hurting those I loved.
I couldn't breathe. Not because of any physical impairments, but because I could not separate myself from the psychotic break happening before me. A stall door flew past me, nearly relieving my torso from the burden of my legs. Instead of moving or running, I just clutched the cure to my chest, thumb tracing over the stopper that held the golden liquid inside.
A body slammed into me from behind, weighed down only by the mass of his suit. Scott squinted through the swirling storm, eyes still heavy from sleep.
"We have to go!" he shouted over the angry air.
I wouldn't have. I would have let Hugh destroy me alongside him. But I couldn't let Scott die. He had a family to get back to. So I reached into the magic pouch and threw the contents at our feet, pleading with every god that it would work even if its mistress was dead.