avengers cubed

by pastelwolfie

Summary:

when kamala khan realizes there’s no one looking out for the next generation of heroes, she takes matters into her own hands and assembles a new team: the young avengers, made up of powerful, wildly unqualified teenagers just trying their best.

their rising success throws them straight into the crossfire of thunderbolts politics, new avengers bureaucracy, and valentina allegra de fontaine’s truly unhinged idea of “mentorship” and "branding".

the young avengers can only watch and sigh as they manage to deal with threats more effectively than two entire teams of properly-funded, fully adult avengers. maybe the world really, really needs the young avengers. like, desperately. please, the avengers(squared) are going to kill eachother before doing literally anything of help.

OR kamala is getting together her own super-hero team: the young avengers. it goes surprisingly well. art first.

Notes:

welcome to the shit show. enjoy.

mandatory reminder that my ass has never read a comic, this is based entirely on the mcu and my wildest au fantasies. please do not take this too seriously lmao i crave anarchy lol

Chapter 1: the one where a mantle gets passed

when kate entered her apartment, she was immediately hesitant. someone was there. which normally wouldn't be a problem, but kate most certainly lived alone, so. there was half a heartbeat where she wasn’t worried, thinking huh, maybe yelena broke in again, but she immediately noticed the person’s hair was much darker and much longer - she didn’t peg yelena as the wig type - and they were also very short. 

 

so kate had an intruder. yay. not something she wanted to deal with after a patrol, but there really wasn’t much she could do about it now.

 

“can i… help you?” she asked hesitantly, grip on her bow tightening. she hadn’t quite gotten around to putting it down just yet. 

 

“actually, you can!” the person replied, and kate’s anxiety plummeted when she heard how bubbly and young this person was. they turned around dramatically, yes, yelena, very much a poser, with some high-tech tablet thing in her hands. “you’re kate bishop, right? the young hawkeye?”

 

kate opened her mouth to reply, but the girl beat her to it. she was wearing some very super-hero super-hero garb.

 

“of course you are, that was rhetorical. what do you think about joining a team, ms hawkeye?” she asked, barely containing her excitement.

 

“okay,” she started slowly, putting the bow down. “for starters, it’s just hawkeye. not young hawkeye, not ms hawkeye, just hawkeye,” she began, taking the time to actually enter her home.

 

“we’ll workshop it,” the girl commented quietly, smile never fading as she nodded vigorously. kate removed her fingerless gloves and took her hair down from its ponytail, entering her small kitchenette and plling out a pot.

 

what? she was hungry.

 

“second, who are you? why are you here before i’ve even had the chance to shower?” she asked. kate would not be signing up for any mystery teams run by strangers still in highschool. the idea of a team did intrigue her, though. she took a bag of pasta down from its shelf and turned on her hot water tap, waiting for it to turn scalding.

 

“i’m ms marvel, but you can call me kamala. kamala khan.” she replied easily, stepping forward with a hand outstretched. “you aren’t the only kid superhero out there.”

 

“i am not a kid.” kate shook kamala’s hand. she then filled her pot up with water and placed it on the stovetop. 

 

“kid-adjacent. it’s fine.” the girl waved-off, shuffling around her counter to sit on one of the barstools. kate eyed her, but it wasn’t warily, more so just tired. as far as break-ins went, this one wasn’t all that worrying to her. 

 

she was still going to upgrade her security, though. she wasn’t quite sure what she could do, though. legally.

 

“what’s this team meant to be, anyways?” she asked, just to strike up conversation as she let her water start to boil. she opened up her fridge and pulled out the half-finished tub of tomato sauce for her pasta. she leant against the countertop when she was done, assessing the girl as she waited to cook her food. 

 

“for those of us who can make a difference. we shouldn’t be barred from helping just because we aren’t having mid-life crises, so if we need to help each other to help the world, then so be it.” she told her, and kate was a little taken aback by the passion and conviction the kid managed. sure, she was excitable - that much kate could tell by just seeing her - but the way she spoke, that look in her eyes…

 

kate knew it.

 

“so... a team of kid superheroes?” she translated. despite it being a jab, the girl shrugged good-naturedly.

 

“pretty much.” she answered, smiling that heart-cracking smile. oh. okay. relating to the 16 year old who broke into your apartment. thats cool.

 

“sounds like a circus,” she said instead. kate still expected something defensive. this kamala did not give in.

 

“but it’ll be our circus, one where we get to run the show.” she pressed eagerly, jumping on to her jibe as though it had been the beginning of some sort of beautiful metaphor.

 

kate took a few moments of quiet, turning her back to the girl and putting her pasta into the boiling pot of water, sprinkling in some salt and then olive oil. she wasn’t an animal, yelena.

 

she frowned as she mixed the pot.

 

“you… you do know how much like babysitting this sounds like to me, right?” she said slowly, laying her spoon over the pot’s top and leaning back against the counter her stovetop was on. “i’m 23.” 

 

kamala did not seem phased by her scepticism.

 

“and i’m 16, you won’t have to babysit me. i managed to outsmart aliens and interdimensional demon people.” she informed, very chippr. 

 

kate felt her brain lag for a little while, attempting to process- well- that.

 

“okay, wow. that’s a lot to just dump on a person.” she expressed, crossing her arms. perhaps it was just to look cool. why do you care?

 

“i’ll explain it to you in full if you join the team?” kamala bribed, voice lilting in hope. kate sighed.

 

“i’m not babysitting anyone.” she told the girl point-blank.

 

kamala didn’t take it as the rejection kate had meant it to be.

 

“you won’t be, we won’t need it. we’re the young avengers.” she proclaimed proudly, hopping up from her seat and walking around the counter to talk to her face-to-face, closer up. 

 

kate eyes the shorter girl, arching a brow. “the ‘young avengers’ is what you’re going with?” she asked, only a little scathing. very original, she thought sarcastically to herself. like the new avengers or… well… the other new avengers.

 

kate was not going to be on the other other new avengers team. no thank you.

 

“um, yeah?” kamala answered, a little more uncertain. kate sighed, turning back to her pasta and picking up the spoon, giving the pot another quick stir before fishing out a piece of the penne, blowing on it a few times before picking it up and popping it in her mouth.

 

this is my penance for trying to look cool, she chastised herself as the pasta crunched in her mouth. way too undercooked.

 

the put the spoon back down over the pot, reaching up to get a bowl and finding a fork before putting it on her counter next to her stove, giving the girl a glance over her shoulder and a sneaky smile.

 

“we’ll workshop it.” she told the girl. the beaming smile kamala gave her once she’d processed her words was almost worth eating that horrible, uncooked piece of pasta. almost.

Chapter 2: the one where the mantle (accidentally) gets passed

Summary:

kamala goes in search of billy when she finds the SWORD files on him.

Notes:

i forget at the end of agatha all along is billy banishes her ghost or nah but for the purposes of this fic he doesn't, so he just sorta. like. has the ghost of agatha hanging around him. this becomes relevant in a way i do not think will be anticipated.

billy was at the park. every now and again, he liked to go outside to get his work done. he wasn’t entirely sure why, but it probably (definitely) had something to do with agatha not liking everyone to see her as a ghost. ergo, if he was outside in the local part - where people were - she’d leave him alone.

 

he liked the peace and quiet - even if he’d catch a stray thought from an excitable child or two.

 

“hi!” chirped a voice from behind him, and billy nearly jumped out of his skin, turning to see a beaming girl with long brown hair, maybe around his age. he hadn’t even noticed her, let alone her thoughts. they were whizzing so quickly he could scarcely discern them.

 

 “wow, i really should have asked you first. the journey here is so much easier than to new york.” she chattered on, sitting down on the grass next to him, mindful of the small blanket he had out on the grass. so what if he was having a picnic alone? his boyfriend was busy. 

 

billy blinked a few times, realising the girl had spoken to him. like, actually spoken, not just thought. 

 

“uh, ask me what?” he replied, putting his pen down on his homework. even after.. um… making the witches road… he still had to go to school and do homework. he didn’t fully see the point, but he did it nonetheless.

 

“hi, billy kaplan, i’m kamala khan, and i’m starting the young avengers. do you want in?” she asked breezily, smiling at him so earnestly. 

 

please say yes, please say yes, please say yes, her thoughts raced, the anxiety of her thoughts not reaching her outward expression. billy swallowed, considering the words.

 

billy’s last team hadn’t ended so well. 

 

“uh, no, no not really?” he offered as his response, feeling a little guilty when he saw the disappointment flit across the girl’s face. everything about her was so earnest; usually people had dark, hidden thoughts, but this girl - kamala - didn’t really have any.

 

it was different. refreshing. or maybe that’s just what i get for hanging around agatha so much, the told himself.

 

“you haven’t even heard the full pitch yet.” the girl insisted, putting down a glass tablet that he hadn’t really noticed before.

 

i can still convince him, it’ll be fine! and who knows, maybe he’ll be ready to join later. once he sees how good of a team we are! having a sorcerer would be really useful, though…

 

that particular thought caught billy’s attention. his posture stiffened.

 

“how… how do you know who i am?” he asked slowly- people tended to know him for bad reasons. kamala’s demeanour didn’t shift, her positivity never wavered, she just had a string of thoughts along the lines of fair question before promptly replying to him. 

 

“you’re a witch. there’s a file on you.” she told him, picking up the glass tablet and waving it a little before putting it back down. billy scanned her, searching her thoughts.

 

it didn’t seem like she was lying. she was either telling the truth or genuinely thought she was.

 

“and… nothing else?” he asked cautiously. maybe too cautiously. kamala’s smile dropped a little, and she leaned in to ask him:

 

“should there be something else?” she sounded scandalised - but only a little; the prospect seemed to excite her more than anything, and she talked as though they were discussing gossip. 

 

for whatever reason, it put him… at ease.

 

billy blinked a few times, not replying. it’s when his own thoughts managed to catch up with him.

 

“i’m sorry, did you say young avengers?” he asked, baffled. aren’t there already 2 groups of avengers? he asked himself, recalling he news he’d briefly watched. 

 

his mother - wanda - had been an avenger. it hadn’t worked out for her at the end… or, like… at all. but there had been a brief period….

 

“yep!” kamala chirped, excited and smiling again. “already got the hawkeye stamp of approval,” she informed him smugly, tapping her hands happily on her knees. she was sat criss-cross-applesauce across from him.

 

billy frowned. “hawkeye is like… in his forties.” he reminded the girl. she had said young avengers, right?

 

“not that hawkeye,” the girl clarified, rolling her eyes fondly. “his protege, the new hawkeye who insists i call her just hawkeye. she’s 23.” kamala informed him with that proud smile again. billy nodded.

 

“how old are you?” he asked slowly, holding his hands in his lap so he wouldn’t fiddle with them.

 

“i’m 16. like you.” she replied happily, her ever-present smile getting a little unnerving when she gave him his own age. so she knew his full name, age, and that he was a witch. well, kamala had said sorcerer, which wasn’t accurate, but to the uninformed it was close enough.

 

billy tilted his head, side-eyeing her. “you do know it’s super freaky to just… show up here knowing all this stuff about me, right?” he asked kamala, who seemed entirely unconcerned about the whole thing. she shrugged very casually.

 

“in this day and age, i can think of worse.” she replied, and a quick sift through her thoughts - what the worse was - was actually surprisingly reassuring.

 

some of those… options made him shudder. eugh.

 

“... fair enough.” he answered eventually after a few moments of quiet. the two of them had come to a bit of a standstill, no words shared between them for a couple uncomfortable seconds.

 

billy tried to ignore kamala’s thoughts on the awkward silence. he didn’t want to randomly burst out laughing in the strange silence.

 

“so…” camala said, breaking the quie. “what do you say? are you in?” she asked again, her thoughts so overwhelmingly positive and pleading and distracting. gods, her mind was loud.

 

“um…” he responded eloquently. he’d lost the train of conversation. where were they?

 

“here’s this- come to our first meet-up, assess the vibes, decide if you’re in or out. that sound like a plan?” kamala offered, an olive branch.

 

it was a good olive branch. ignoring kamala’s overwhelming thoughts, he managed a reply.

 

“i - sure?” he answered at last, and billy already thought this girl was radiating positivity - but his acceptance made her glow. 

 

it made him smile, just a little. her positivity and excitement was sort of infectious.

 

“awesome! what’s your number so i can give you the details?” she asked him, pulling out her very normal phone. it made billy do a double-take.

 

“isn't that on.. my file?” he asked her, a little perplexed as to why she’d ask. she’d clearly already known who he was, what he was (sort of) and where he lived. 

 

“yeah but asking is like, way less creepy.” she replied, like the answer was obvious.

 

it kinda was. billy shrugged, taking the phone offered to him and typing in his contact details for kamala.

 

“fair point.” he agreed, handing her phone back once he’d typed in his name and number. kamala, entirely unprompted, brought her phone up to his face and snapped a picture of him. a very audible one, one he was not prepared for in the slightest. he watched her, bewildered, as she added the impromptu picture as his contact photo.

 

“amazing! see you then!” she cheered, before standing up and summoning magical.. glowing… crystal… things and using them to just - hop away, walking up the platforms like they were stairs into the sky.

 

billy didn’t even get the chance to ask her to re-take a better photo of him.

 

maybe when i see her next… he thought as he glanced down at his own phone, which had buzzed with a message from an unknown number.

 

unknown number

hey this is kamala!!

 

unknown number

okay, so here’s the details…

Notes:

look at kamala go!! she's recruiting the gang!!

Chapter 3: the one where the mantle gets passed behind her dad’s back

Summary:

kamala tracks down cassie after hearing of her venture into the quantum realm.

Notes:

the brain rot is rotting. i haven't seen quantammania in like 3 years cassie may be ooc. i do not fully care. o7

cassie was just trying to enjoy her iced coffee. that’s all. she wasn't doing anything outlandish or illegal or even weird by her standards- just sitting at a park bench in san francisco, wearing sunglasses too big for her face, sipping a cold brew that her dad would definitely pretend to like but very obviously not like.

 

she liked the park. she liked the quiet. and most importantly, she liked that no one knew she was cassie lang here.

 

well. almost no one.

 

“CASSIE LANG!”

 

cassie froze mid-sip. oh god.

 

a girl came skidding into view, her sneakers loud on the pavement, her breathing extremely dramatic. she had long brown hair, a red hoodie tied around her waist, and the kind of energy cassie usually associated with golden retrievers and gym teachers.

 

“hi!” the girl beamed. “i’m kamala khan! man, sorry, give me a sec, i am so out of breath. san francisco is huge! and very confusing!”

 

cassie blinked behind her sunglasses. “do i… know you?”

 

kamala grinned like cassie had just asked her to sign an autograph. “not unless you keep up with new jersey news. i’m ms marvel.”

 

cassie stared. the name was completely unfamiliar. “o-kaaay?” 

 

kamala took  her un-recognition in stride. “technically i’m a vigilante but people just call me the saviour of jersey city,” kamala continued breezily, like this was a perfectly normal conversation to be having with a stranger in broad daylight.

 

cassie took another slow sip of her coffee. “can i help you?”

 

“actually, yes!” kamala said, and pulled a tablet out of seemingly nowhere. “do you wanna join my team?”

 

cassie squinted at her. not for the first time, cassie was entirely taken aback by the girl’s words “...team?” she asked slowly, looking down her nose at the girl, sunglasses sliding down her nose so she could sceptically eye her.

 

the girl payed it no mind whatsoever.

 

“the young avengers.” kamala plopped down beside her, dropping her tablet onto her lap. she started flipping through holographic folders that floated above it, like this was a powerpoint presentation and not a bizarre recruitment pitch in a public park.

 

cassie’s fight-or-flight instinct had been upgraded over the years. it was now fight-flight-skeptical side-eye. she used it now. “and this is a team of…” she trailed off, still not fully getting what she was trying to pitch her.

 

kamala beamed again, still completely unaffected. 

 

“young superheroes! i’ve got hawkeye- the 22 year old one, not the og- i’ve maybe got a sorcerer that’s kind of like dr strange but also not, i’m scouting you, and also dr strange’s actual protégé and an upcoming tech genius on par with tony stark.” she chattered happily, listing superheroes like groceries.

 

cassie blinked once. twice. 

 

“how is this going to work?”

 

“how all superheroes should,” kamala replied, as if that was the easiest thing in the world. “looking out for each other and the world, helping where and when we can. there shouldn’t be an age cap on who can help, especially if we’re strong enough.”

 

her voice softened just a little at the end — like she meant it. not in a performative way, but in that way cassie recognized deep in her chest, like: yeah. we’ve both seen too much already.

 

cassie was silent for a second. her dad would lose his mind. which, honestly, only made it more appealing.

 

she answered after thinking on it a few seconds. “…okay.”

 

kamala didn’t blink, launching into another pitch speech before stopping herself. “just because- wait, okay?”

 

kamala seemed genuinely surprised her impromptu recruitment had actually worked. was that something that should have been a red flag? maybe. did cassie care? not particularly. the idea of being on a team was really intriguing to her…

 

cassie shrugged. “yeah, sure. i’m in.”

 

kamala made a noise like a microwave going off, or maybe a kettle. either way, she was positively beaming at her. “OH. awesome! can i have your number? so i can text you the details of our first meeting.” she asked, smiling as she took her sunglasses off and put them on the bench next to her, a little enamoured with the girl’s radiating excitement. 

 

“yeah, sure.” she answered easily, handing her phone over.

 

kamala typed with a frankly alarming speed. she even added a picture to the contact profile- a selfie she took with cassie in it, entirely unprompted. cassie looked vaguely startled in it. 

 

she suspected it would be immortalized forever.

 

“sweet! i’ll see you there,” kamala chirped, handing the phone back and getting up in one fluid motion. “also, your iced coffee looks really good.” she informed her, shooting he a completely unnecessary thumbs-up as she backed away.

 

she then proceeded to hop away. like, literally hop. she used these weird, glowing platform things that appeared in front of her and vanished behind her like sparkly polka dots.

 

cassie sat there, looking at her disappear into the sky, then looked down at her phone, still half-full coffee in hand, sunglasses beside her. 

 

“…what the hell,” she muttered. then added after a moment, “...okay but that was kind of cool.”

 

her phone buzzed.

 

unknown number
hey this is kamala!!
i’m so excited. okay here’s the meeting details…

 

cassie smiled.

yeah. this was gonna be fun.

Notes:

my darling my angel riri williams is next oh how i adore her 🫶

Chapter 4: the one where the mantle crosses interdimensional lines

Summary:

kamala finds america and proposes that she join her team of young avengers.

Notes:

i desperately need these two idiots to meet. so hurruh. i shall make them.

america wasn’t expecting visitors.

 

she’d come to this dimension, running from an evil that was hell-bent on hunting her down. she’d stayed becaue… well… she kind of liked it. especially at kmar-taj. 

 

and she especially liked nights like this one. just her, a view of the stars, and a little break from the noise of saving the multiverse. or at least, from the people who kept trying to micromanage her saving the multiverse. and strange trying to teach her the mystic arts. she wasn’t a natural at it, unlike some people.

 

but still. she liked it there. it… maybe it was home.

 

so when someone landed- poorly- on the roof beside her, she was pretty startled. especially when the person turned out not to be strange. 

 

taking in her bewildered and slightly raggedy outfit, she was… unimpressed.

 

“this place is so cool,” the girl announced, looking around like she was touring a museum.

 

america stared.

“…who are you?” she asked slowly. she shook her head and shifted her focus. “how did you get here?”

 

the girl was beaming- tallish, brown skin, long hair in a braid, wearing a hoodie like she hadn’t just crashed into a top-secret outpost, smiling like she’d just seen a puppy. she was also panting like she’d run five blocks.

 

“i’m kamala khan. don’t tell anyone, but i stole a shuttle from nick fury so i could come here and see you.” she placed her hands on her knees, catching her breath, like this was just an average thursday.

 

america took her in, trying to wrap her mind around… that.

“…what?” she asked, completely bewildered.

 

kamala just looked back at her.

“what?” kamala repeated her word, as though she was confused. america was the one that should be baffled here, not her. america didn’t get visitors. that was not a thing.

 

america moved her hands into fists, preparing to punch this girl. one did not simply drop by kamar-taj. their last guest had been wanda and, well…

 

kamala held up both hands in a gesture of peace, clearly aware she was pushing it. 

 

“you’re magic,” she explained quickly, like that answered anything. “fury keeps a file on all enhanced people. ergo, i know too!”

 

“you broke into a classified temple to come… talk?” america asked, still very ready to punch her through a wall. “can i help you…?”

 

kamala perked up. “yes! yes you can!”

 

america raised an eyebrow. “…ookayyy. how, exactly?”

 

kamala’s smile shone like the starts in the sky. it was difficult to perceive her as a threat. “help me help others!” she cheered, taking a few steps closer. america regarded her, but made no move to stop her.

 

“i’m… what?” she managed, still completely and utterly beyond confused.

 

“i’m putting together a team.” kamala’s voice pitched with excitement. “like a new avengers. but not the new avengers. or the other new avengers. the avengers, but different!” she rambled, talking to herself for a little bit before snapping back to america.

 

she squinted. “different how?” she challenged. america had heard about both the new avengers teams. there was captain america’s team- the one strange was consulting on, which completely baffled both her and wong, and then there was the one with the russians on it that she didn’t understand in the slightest. she was pretty sure all of them were criminals wanted for murder.

 

america dragged her thoughts back to the conversation at hand.

 

kamala puffed out her chest. “we call ourselves the young avengers.” she declared, filled with pride.

 

america had an inkling as to where this one was going.

 

“and you’re called that because…” she trailed off, expecting the answer she got. 

 

“we’re on the younger end.” kamala said it like it was obvious. it was.

 

america crossed her arms. “how young?” she asked, arching a brow. 

 

kamala counted off on her fingers. “well, new hawkeye is 22 and i’m 16, so… we’re in that range generally.” she trailed off, and america was actually surprised at that. she was expecting the answer to be twenty-somethings, not 16, like her. this was a team she may actually get to be a part of…

 

america stared at her, trying to asses the girl. she then looked over at the shuttle she’d absolutely hijacked, just… chilling out behind kamar-taj. how had she not noticed it?

america then turned back to kamala, realising she hadn’t said anything in a while.

 

“…i see,” she settled on finally, words very dry.

 

kamala was bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet now. “well?” she asked eagerly, grinning like a toddler. 

 

america blinked. “well what?”

 

“you want in?” kamala asked, absolutely gushing with anticipation. her boundless energy- especially at this hour- was only a little off-putting.

 

america tilted her head, considering.

 

“…you help people?” she asked slowly, doing the logistics in her head. strange would kill her if she joined a superpowered kid team.

 

kamala softened. just a little. “we have the power to help others,” she said, more seriously now. “our age shouldn’t be a barrier for the good we can do.”

 

okay, so that was a cheesy line. maybe.

but it didn’t feel like one.

 

america looked past kamala, out at the stars.

 

she thought of the universes she’d passed through, all the chaos she’d left behind. the ones she might still be able to make better.

 

doing some good in the world. even if it is just this one. it made her smile slightly, a warm feeling beginning to fill her chest. maybe that can be my legacy.

 

“…how do i join?” she asked eventually, voice quiet. i’d like that to be my legacy.

 

kamala’s face lit up like a christmas tree. “give me your number and i’ll text you the details for our first meeting?” she rushed to ask.

 

america gave a quiet huff of a laugh as kamala reached for her phone. “i can do that, yeah.” she answered easily.

 

kamala handed her phone over. it had five percent battery and a crack across the screen. america typed her number in anyway.

 

“awesome!” kamala chirped, practically glowing.

 

“i’ll see you soon, america.”

 

america paused. her head tilted again. it had just occurred to her that america had never told kamala her name, but she’d just known it anyways.

“…how did you-” she began to ask, before she recalled the girl had mentioned something about having a file on her.

 

“right.” she muttered. kamala was already walking away. well, more like skipping- she was radiating victory and joy.

 

america watched her climb back into the shuttle- clumsily- and lift off like she’d done this a hundred times. 

 

not three seconds passed before her phone buzzed.

 

unknown number

hey this is kamala!!
okay so here’s the details…

 

america rolled her eyes. but she smiled. just a little.

Notes:

the pace in which i can write these chapters is insane. the magic of planning your story out i guess??

Chapter 5: the one where the mantle doesn’t want to be here

Summary:

kamala extends the young avengers invite to riri williams, who is less than pleased about the whole thing.

it was fine. she was fine. sure, she was technically trespassing. and sure, maybe she should  “give her space” and "not barge in” and “seriously kamala, let her finish her work before you try your little pitch,” but. but.

 

barging in had worked on kate. and billy. and cassie. and america. seriously, she was 4 for 4 with barging in. so bugger off, kate, this would work.

 

probably. hopefully. maybe.

 

whatever way she spliced it, her mind sorta short-curcuited because there was an iron suit. right there. in the flesh. or, like, in the iron-titanium alloy.

 

kamala stepped carefully over a loose mess of wires that looked like they'd either kill her instantly or accidentally start world war iii. focus. be cool. you are cool. you are the picture of chill. she is literally just a teenage girl genius who built an iron man suit in her dorm, nbd.

 

“give me a minute, nat!” came a shout from behind a massive desk, and kamala- who had been mid-sneaky-step- froze like a child caught in the rays of a fridge light at 3 in the morning.

 

before she could make a decision on whether to hide behind the suit or just bolt entirely, riri williams popped into view.

 

“hey, how—who the hell are you?!” the girl demanded, eyes instantly shifting from a fond familiarity to a fierce wariness when she recognised that kamala wasn’t this nat person. riri had reached for a - a weapon of some sort, kamala didn’t know, and kamala rushed to put her hands up. anything to appear non-threatening. 

 

kamala blinked, panic short-circuiting her brain for half a second. okay. be normal. no, better than normal. be charming.

 

kamala fell back on something she knew all too well, something she was comfortable with.

 

fangirling.

“ohmigosh, is that your ironman suit? it’s so cool!” she gushed, eyes wandering back over to the semi-deconstructed thing.

 

riri looked like she might throw a wrench at her. “wha—hey! i did not say you could come in here! who the hell are you?” she yelled as kamala hopped closer, poking the suit’s arm.

i just touched an ironman suit. oh my gosh. 

 

oh, right. introductions! totally normal thing to start with. “i’m kamala khan,” she said, giving a little wave and smile combo that (hopefully) screamed “friendly!” and not “deranged.” she took a small step to the side, looking at riri now from across her workbench, the iron suit between them. “and you are riri williams.” she informed the other girl.

great going kamala. she definitely knows that. well done. okay, don’t panic. don’t panic, you can bring this back.

 

riri’s eyes narrowed. “yes, i know.” she snapped. this is totally fine! “can i help you?” she asked, entirely unfriendly.

 

kamala lit up. “actually, you can!” she answered, nodding her head vigorously.

 

the look riri gave her was so flat it could’ve been ironed. “that is not how you’re meant to answer that question, man-” she hissed, grip tightening on her weapon. it might’ve been a soldering iron? kamala never payed attention in her design technology classes. it could have been a hacksaw for all she knew.

 

nevertheless, kamala leaned forward, arms flailing just a little as she launched into her pitch. “do you want to be an avenger?”

 

riri blinked. “what? no. screw that.” she replied almost immediately.

 

kamala froze. it took her a second to even process the answer. “you- you what?” she gaped.

 

“no,” riri repeated, already looking back toward her work. “i do not want to be an avenger. i have faced enough avenger-level threats already in my life. goodbye.”

 

oh no. she's a no. she's a hard no. abort? no. wait. kamala. pull it together. you’ve done this four times already. she just needs the pitch. the vibe. give her the vibe.

 

“you don’t want to help people?” kamala asked, dialing back the energy a bit.

 

riri stiffened. gotcha, kamala thought. hook. line. sinker.

 

“…of course i do, i-”

 

kamala pounced. metaphorically. “then meet me. here.” she slid a small card across the cluttered desk like she was passing a mission scroll in a fantasy RPG. very smooth. 10/10 spy work.

 

riri picked it up slowly, eyeing it like it might self-destruct. “is- is this a business card?” she demanded, side-eying her so hard kamala felt like one of her aunties was trying to evict her spirt from her body.

 

“so what if it is?” kamala replied, trying very hard not to bounce on her heels.\

 

“you are insane.” riri told her, point-blank.

 

kamala grinned. “and you are insane -ly smart. we could use someone like you.”

“who the hell is ‘we’? are you the recruiter for the new avengers or somethin’?”

 

kamala puffed up, a little proud. “the young avengers. we’ve got the new hawkeye, ant-man’s daughter, two sorcerers, and myself.”

 

riri blinked. “so a team of nepo-legacies.” she dead-panned.

 

ouch. “i… wouldn’t call it that,” kamala winced.

 

riri turned back to her tools, already half-done with the conversation. “get out of my workspace. maybe i’ll consider it.”

 

kamala brightened again, t aking that as a definite yes because technically, “maybe” is better than “no.”

“look forward to seeing you there!” she chirped, beginning the dangerous dance around all the wires on the floor back to the exit. 

 

riri grumbled something incoherent as kamala skipped back out the way she came, practically vibrating with excitement.

 

she’ll show. they always show. and even if she doesn’t... i still touched an iron suit. and that? that is a win.

Notes:

look at our little girl go 🫶 its gonna be okay y'all kamala's golden retriever energy is so potent, everyone's gonna love her. even riri the local asshat 🫶 god i love riri

Chapter 6: the one where they’re in a room together

Summary:

the young avengers meet for the first time in billy’s not-house and they start to get acquainted with each other.

Notes:

is the riri pov chapter longer than the others? yeah. yeah it is. my bias is showing her true colours and it is riri williams. only enter my house if you like riri williams or are agreeable to having your mind changed. by any means necessary.

:P

riri was very much reluctant to knock on the door. the flight had been long, she was tired, and her body ached from being in her suit for so long. still, she held her helmet in her hand and made her way over to the address kamala had given her.

 

she should not be there. this was, undoubtedly, a horrible idea. and riri was no stranger to bad ideas. 

 

she walked up to the front door and knocked. she’d expected a warehouse somewhere in the middle of a forest, not a cute suburban home.

 

she heard thunderous footsteps  behind the door, before a bare-foot girl- kamala- flung it open with a shining grin on her face.

 

“riri! hi! you came!!” she cheered, eyes widening when she looked at her suit. “ohmigosh, its even cooler on you!” she squealed, reaching out to touch her, but backing away when she came to her senses.

 

what the hell did i just walk into. this was such a mistake.

 

“GUYS, RIRI CAME!” kamala called, running back into the house. with nothing else to do, riri stepped into the home and shut the door behind her, immediately noticing a chill of magic run down her spine.

 

cool. great. a haunted house. or haunted people. awesome. 

 

riri made her way through the home, taking note of furniture that was broken and-or poorly put back together. there was a knife-slash across one of the walls. what the hell even was this place? it looked like if a victorian library and a magic crystal shop got into a fight and both lost. it was worse than the stantons’ store.

 

“still deciding if that was a mistake.” she said in liu of introducing herself, having her suit turn onto sentry mode. she stepped out of it as it unfolded around her, before she placed the helmet back on it and it closed up again, just standing there.

 

it felt so lifeless without N.A.T.A.L.I.E, and she hadn’t managed to make a proper replacement ai yet. she had been… preoccupied, to say the least.

“nooo, it’s gonna be great! here, come meet everyone-” kamala urged, moving into the livingroom where, somehow to riri’s surprise, a gaggle of teenagers were all sat. 

 

here comes the part where i have to learn six names in five seconds and pretend i care.

 

kamala took it upon herself to introduce everyone, skipping to sit in one of the armchairs. 

 

“this is kate-” she indicated to a pale, dark-haired and blue-eyed girl. “aka hawkeye-  not the old one, the new one.” kate nodded to her in acknowledgement. riri folded her arms. “that’s cassie- ant-man’s daughter.” kamala continued, indicating to another pale brunette who gave her a small wave. “billy’s our sorcerer-slash-host.” she said as she pointed to a curly-haired boy. his gaze unnerved her, and she immediately knew it was his magic she’d sensed.  “america can punch stars into being.” kamala casually dropped as she pointed towards a girl in a jean-jacket. “and this is me again, obviously. kamala. ms marvel.” she finished, blushing slightly. 

 

riri just stared at them all for a few seconds. cassie was the one to break her silence.

 

“aaaannnnd you are?” she prompted. riri galred at her for another few seconds, unflinching.

 

“riri williams. bad girl genius.” she introduced herself. the group all nodded, muttering different greetings as riri moved to the arm of the couch america, cassie and kate were sitting on. riri sat on the couch’s arm, looking across to kamala sitting in the armchair then over to billy, who was sitting on a pulled out ottoman. 

 

this is weird. this is beyond weird. how did i get here?

 

no one spoke. clearly, whatever peace had been among them before she got there had been soured. by her. goodie. 

 

“.... should we, like, go around and say, like, names- slash- powers- slash- why- we- joined- this- unofficial- super- team?” kate proposed, eyes flickering around uncertainty. riri refrained from rolling her eyes. she didn’t respond.

 

“you’re literally the one who said no icebreakers, kate.” cassie dead-panned, side-eying the other brunette. 

 

kate leaned back on the sofa, crossing her legs and avoiding eye contact.  “yeah, well, now there’s a new person. and she’s intimidating.”

 

riri snorted, looking down at the girl. “i am literally five-two.” she deadpanned, arching a brow at the girl. 

“emotionally intimidating.” she elaborated, as if that made sense. the others seemed to find the jab funny enough to melt some of the ice she’d brought to the room, snorting or chuckling and relaxing a little bit.

riri shrugged, still playing at her nonchalance and uninterest. not the worst compliment i’ve ever gotten, she thought to herself. she had to remind herself not to smile.

 

“just to fill you in,” billy spoke up, looking right at her. “i have a familiar.” he said bluntly. riri was about to demand what the hell that meant, but a voice directly to her right refuted the claim and almost made her jump out of her skin.

 

“i despise you calling me that,” a random-ass woman grumbled, arms crossed. oh yeah, she was also semi-transparent and glowing purple. “i’m a ghost.” the woman said bluntly, grinning when she saw her startle.

 

“you got a ghost in here?” she demanded, ignoring the chuckles that went around the room. 

 

“she’s harmless. relatively.” billy informed her, somewhat apologetic. the room seemed to wait for her to say… something in acknowledgement.

 

riri nodded, trying to wrap her head around it all.

 

“okay. okay,” she nodded. after the initial what-the-fuckery of it, this ghost wasn’t actually the strangest thing she’d dealt with recently. “this is not a safehouse. this is a cursed dollhouse with wi-fi.” she accused, eyes settling on kamala. she had the respect to look a little sheepish about it.

 

billy took a sip from a teacup riri hadn’t noticed before. “it’s heavily warded.” he informed her. 

 

she rolled her eyes and scoffed. “great. so when the ghost chokes me out mid-zoom call, it’ll be magically encrypted.” she jabbed a finger in the purple ghost’s direction, debating on if she should ask it for its name.

 

kate shrugged. “you’ll get used to the ambiance. the haunted teacups are actually kind of charming.”

 

riri’s glare rolled over to the brunette. “haunted tea-cups?” she demanded, dead-pan.

 

riri sighed in the silence. 

“cool. nice to meet you, i guess.” she relented. 

 

“we’re still kind of figuring stuff out, but like, the vibes are good, right?” kamala hurried to say, looking at her with wide, excited eyes. she was fishing for approval. riri’s approval.

 

riri pointedly ignored the childishness and the pang of something it sparked in her chest.

 

“you’re lucky i’m curious. not sure what kind of team you’re building, but it seems... volatile.” she assessed, ignoring eye-contact with the humanoid puppy sitting in the armchair and casting her gaze across the other gathered people.

“we prefer ‘chaotically aligned.’” billy informed her with a mischievous smile.

 

“you are not aligned,” the ghost snarked.

 

“go away, agatha,” billy bit back, waving his hand in the air. like how zelma did. 

 

just like that, the ghost was just. gone. riri arched a brow at billy, who just shrugged, as cassie spoke.

“we’re all new at this. you won’t be the only one figuring things out.” she informed. riri almost argued back at her, but she refrained from telling her that she wasn't actually in on this team just yet. instead, she just sighed.

great. a whole room full of rookies. just what i needed. at least no one’s tried to shoot anything. yet.

“are you always this skeptical or is that just for us?” the girl in the jean-jacket asked, and it seemed like she was as skeptical of her as she was of them. her name’s america, she recalled.

“i’m always this skeptical.” she replied evenly. riri didn’t back down from the calculating look america was giving her, eyes narrowed and lips slightly downturned. 

“cool. love that. really rounds out the group dynamic.” kate quipped, which made cassie snort and kamala whine out an indignant ‘hey!’, looking mildly offended.

this is so dumb. this is so, so dumb. but none of them have hounded me about parker yet and magical cloaks. so. dumb. but kinda... not the worst?

 

“okay, okay, how about this: we all go around, say what we can do, and one fun fact.” kamala decided, voice still spilling and overflowing with enthusiasm and excitement. it was starting to get a little grating. 

absolutely not. no way, she thought, refraining from scowling, if only to stop the others from scowling back at her. they all seemed oddly attached to kamala’s excitement.

“i’ll start! i have light-based powers, i can turn light into a solid!” she explained, a coat of pink, crystalline glowing something coating her hand when she pulled it into a fist.

 

 “fun fact,” she continued, the crystal disappearing just as quick as it had formed. “i’m technically a jinn.” she told them all. 

 

riri blinked at the girl, who was smiling widely at them all.

 

...concerning.

kate adjusted her posture in her seat before talking. “archer extraordinaire. no powers, just really good aim. fun fact: i have a one-eyes golden retriever named lucky.” she told them all, eyes softening at the mention of her dog.

 

this feels like college icebreakers all over again.

 

“i can shrink and grow,” cassie, on kate’s left, said. “kind of like my dad- ant-man. fun fact: i’ve been arrested twice but only one of them was technically my fault.” she nodded sagely.

...at least i’m not the only criminal in the room, she thought to herself, vaguely bemused. this was all so insane.

 

“i can punch star-portals between dimensions. i’m studying the mystic arts at kamar-taj, too. i guess that’s my fun fact?” america chipped in, before pausing for a second. “i’m also from a different dimension,” she added. 

 

riri wasn’t even phased by the infirmation at this point. she just nodded along with the rest of the group.

“i’m a witch,” billy told them all. “magic, spells, summoning, divinance… all that jazz. not sure what kind of witch i am, though.” he pondered out loud, as if any of them knew what different types of witches there were.

 

riri would probably grill him about his magic later; america too. it was reassuring to know she wasn’t the sole magic-user on this team. 

 

“fun fact,” he continued, thinking for a moment. “um, i’ve met death before. she’s… kinda cool.” he told them all.

 

riri - and everyone else- just stared at him. what the fuck did he mean he met death? how the hell does that happen?

 

riri scrunched her nose and decided not to rebuttal that.

 

i knew death was a woman, she thought to herself instead.

 

the room waas silent for a few seconds, before eyes began to shift to her. it seemed like no one else was going to call billy out on that one, either.

 

riri sighed.

 

“ironheart,” she said, somewhat lazily, pointing a finger over her shoulder at her suit, still in sentry-mode. “i built my suit from scratch at MIT ‘cause i could. fun fact: my suit also has a magic interface.” she informed the room.

 

with that done, silence settled over them once again. awkward, heavy silence.

 

kate broke it again. “okay, we’re definitely a disaster team, but like. in a cool way.” the words were spoken like an assurance, but it seemed as though it was an assurance more so for herself than any of them.

 

kamala nodded cheerily, reaching for a pile of notecards that had been sitting on the table before standing up and handing them out to each of them.

 

riri stared at the card she’d been given. it was covered in red and gold washi tape, an arc reactor sticker, and doodles that riri thinks are of kamala and her high-fiving eachother. it was also filled with locations, dates and times.

“so! here’s the schedule. casual hang today. maybe a training session next week. also i wrote down everyone’s allergies. just in case.” she informed them all. riri glanced around, and the others held notecards of similar calibres in their hands.

she made an allergy list. what is this, a sleepover?

“you’re absurd,” she let out, voicing the sheer stupefaction she was feeling.

 

kamala just smiled happily at her, grinning in a way that showed she knew she had won.

“and yet. here you are.” she chirped, sitting back down in her armchair. 

 

riri looked down at the card, thoughts racing.

ugh. she’s right.i hate that she’s right. how the hell did i get wrapped into this? why am i going along with this? a hang session? seriously.

 

riri looked back up from the card with her umpteenth sigh of the day.

“this better not be a cult.”

Notes:

i NEED them to be in a room together marvel pls. i may be the only person in 'the people' but THE PEOPLE NEEEED IT

anyways i watched quantammania to better write cassie and had. like a fun time watching the movie. like its visually SO ugly but the acting isn't bad and i laughed a lot. just don't take it seriously, that's the medicine. also there's one scene where paul rudd stares death into kang and i felt fear in my bones lol

Chapter 7: the one where they may be a team

Summary:

the team has a new headquarters, and the young avengers begin to learn about one another - on superhero and more personal levels.

Notes:

i just want to put all the silly little kid superheroes into one room and let them unleash themselves on one another. is that too much to ask for?

kate had been unsure if any of the others would show up to the second meeting. she’d texted kamala to come pick her up (she was not getting a cab, thank you) and by the time they’d arrived at billy’s not-house (apparently it belonged to his ghost, agatha, who just let him use it in exchange for watching them. she called them ‘free entertainment’ which was only slightly demeaning), america was there with cassie, and they were only waiting on riri to show up.

 

“are we sure she will?” cassie had asked, sitting in the exact same place on the couch, knees pulled up to her chest. she was sipping a fresh iced-coffee, and kate wondered not for the first time how she’d got there.

 

“she’ll show,” kamala dismissed, very confident in that fact. riri had been incredibly reluctant to be there at all last time, and was the first one to leave, too. she’d put kamala’s hand-written note with all their meet-up times somewhere in her suit, and no one knew if it had shredded the letter or not. 

 

“do we… start without her…?” cassie asked, throwing her head back to look at kamala, who was grabbing some things out of her backpack.

 

kate just glanced at cassie and let her do all the talking.

 

it was weird being the oldest person in the room. somehow, it felt as though she was the most mature one there. and she was very immature.

 

“that’s just disrespectful, man.” kate’s head whipped around and cassie shrieked, jumping in her seat as she turned to look at riri, who was standing at the top of the basement stairs.

 

“when did you get here?” she demanded, eyes wide. riri shrugged.

 

“i let her in half an hour ago,” billy’s purple ghost informed them, walking through a wall to look at her shocked faces.

 

“why, agatha?” billy ashed, seeming more resigned than accusatory.

 

“i like her,” the ghost shrugged, sitting- did ghost sit? - on the back of the sofa, lounging on it like she owned the place. she technically does, kate thought, as she tried to ignore the presence of a ghost sitting behind her.

 

“i was scouting the place.” riri offered as an explanation. 

 

they all stared at her, bug-eyed.

 

“you seriously need to update your security.” riri dead-panned, like breaking in to defunct security systems was the norm.

 

“i can… help with that,” she offered, deciding not to bring up the number of times her own home had been broken into.

 

“full offense, bishop security is ass.” riri interrupted, leaning against the wall and folding her arms. 

 

“where’s your super-suit?” america asked, something accusatory in her words. kate didnt know what gripe she had with riri, but kate was just grateful to not get into an argument with the girl first.

 

kate was not going to be the one responsible for their team to break-up before they had a chance to form.

 

“the basement.” the girl answered, as though it was obvious. 

 

billy shot up in his seat, eyes wide. 

 

“the basement?” he demanded, sounding scared. 

 

kate looked at him.

 

“billy, what’s in the basement?” she asked slowly. 

 

“possibly a pocket dimension?” he answered, sounding unsure.

 

the noise that came out of kamala’s throat sounded half-excited, half horrified.

 

“pocket dimension?” she half-squealed, eyes wide. she almost dropped all her notecards. 

 

“if you take them down the witch’s road, please let me come. i would die again to see that,” agatha snarked, hovering over to billy’s side. the boy glared the ghost away as riri scowled.

 

“where else do you want me to put it?” she asked, clearly unpleased.

 

“uh, could you move it to the tea-room?” billy asked politely.

 

riri just stared at the boy in silence for a few seconds, before she rolled her eyes and trudged down into the basement with a grumble.

 

“you have a tea-room?” cassie cooed, looking at billy like a puppy.

 

it took a few minutes, but after riri re-emerged from the basement in her suit, she went in the direction billy pointed and then returned not long after without the suit again. she went back to leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed.

 

and they were back to the silence. the awkward, stilted silence, that seriously seemed like riri’s fault. like, entirely.

 

kate cleared her throat.

 

 “so, i kinda just, like, have to ask- how did you all end up doing this? superhero stuff, i mean.” she clarified. “also we should make sure none of us, like, accidentally killed anybody else’s dads, so we don't to an iron man captain america divorce thing, like the og avengers.” she added for good measure.

 

no one disputed her question, or out-right refused to answer. which was a good thing! kamala came over with a small pile of notecards and sat on the unoccupied ottoman, looking around eagerly and encouraging someone else to start.

 

america broke first: “i punched a star-shaped hole in the fabric of the universe and got chased across it. dr. strange helped me… sort of. now i’m just trying to use my powers for something that’s, you know- good.” she shrugged, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. 

 

cassie was quick to chirp in after that. “i stole my dad’s old ant-man suit. got arrested. again. built a subatomic hubble telescope in his basement. now i have a new suit and a second chance.”

 

kamala was practically vibrating with energy, perched on the ottoman like she’d been waiting her whole life to deliver this monologue.

 

“i put on a bangle from my great-grandmother’s stuff,” she started, hands fluttering as she spoke. “and next thing i know, i’m hard-light parkouring across jersey city and fighting interdimensional jinn. so… typical high school experience?”

 

she gave a weak little laugh at the end, like she was trying to keep it breezy. kate could see right through it. the girl’s smile wobbled for half a second before she forced it into place again.

 

kate looked over at riri, but the girl was avoiding everyone’s eyes. after a few moments, it became clear she wasn’t going to be saying anything.

 

“i may or may not have accidentally created a magical pocket dimension once,” billy said, voice casual, like he was talking about skipping school, not accidentally opening a hole in space-time. “also, my mom’s the scarlet witch. kinda.”

 

everyone turned to him. even agatha’s ghost floated slightly closer, clearly nosy.

 

riri narrowed her eyes, putting the pieces together. “and you kept it in the basement?”

 

“i said may or may not,” billy shot back, raising his hands. “i closed it. mostly.”

 

kate glanced at the floor like she could suddenly feel pocket dimension energy under them. unsettling.

 

“…i’m good at archery,” she said, mostly to change the subject. it came out lamer than she meant it to.

 

cassie, bless her, didn’t miss a beat. “okay but like, really good. like scarily good. are you genetically enhanced or just traumatized?” she asked, maybe a little too eager.

 

kate opened her mouth to answer, paused, then just said, “definitely traumatized.”

 

kamala brightened at that- which was just a little weird-  and leaned forward, nodding. 

 

“see? we do have what it takes. all of us. we’re different, but that’s what makes us work.”

 

cassie snorted into her iced coffee. “yeah, because when i think ‘world-saving,’ i definitely think teenagers with unresolved baggage.”

 

“it’s the emotional instability for me,” america added dryly, arms crossed, legs kicked up on the coffee table like this was all very routine.

 

kate was about to respond when the air shifted slightly- a weird tug, like the room exhaled. it had less to do with oh shit, is the house alive? and more to do with the fact that agatha’s ghost wasn’t hanging around behind her anymore. kate still had a lot of questions for billy about her. most of them went something like this: WHAT.

 

… and then the kitchen chairs began to hover.

 

like… just slightly off the floor.

 

“…speaking of instability,” she muttered, squinting, “pretty sure your kitchen chairs are levitating.”

 

billy didn’t even look up. “agatha’s throwing a fit. don’t worry about it.”

 

“right. cool.” riri stared at the furniture, visibly trying not to react. “just your standard ghost interior designer.”

 

kate let out a slow exhale, watching the chairs spin lazily. somehow, this wasn’t even the weirdest part of her week.

 

a few minutes passed in semi-comfortable silence. kamala was scribbling something on a notecard. billy was floating one of the chairs back down with gentle hand gestures. cassie was unwrapping a protein bar like it was her emotional support snack.

 

riri, from her post against the wall, finally broke the quiet, “okay but real talk- who’s the leader here? because it sure as hell isn’t me.”

 

every head swiveled to kamala like it was choreographed. she blinked fast.

 

“i- i mean. i kind of thought… maybe… me?”

 

cassie let out a breath that sounded too relieved. “oh thank god. i did not want that job.”

 

“great,” kate said, raising an eyebrow, “our fearless leader. slightly terrified and extremely googly-eyed.”

 

kamala puffed up a little. “actually, i’ve been researching. a lot. there’s a wikiHow on it.”

 

america made a face. 

 

“girl. no.”

 

“wait,” riri said, pointing a finger like she’d caught her red-handed, “is this where you admit you’ve been watching leadership ted talks at 3am?”

 

kamala went bright pink. “…no?” she tried.

 

no one believed her.

 

she signed.

 

“ …maybe. there was one really good one about radical empathy and quarterly goals.”

 

“quarterly goals?” america recited, genuinely offended. “we don’t even have a calendar.”

 

billy perked up. “i can enchant a calendar.”

 

cassie leaned toward him. “will it, like, bleed if i miss a meeting?”

 

“maybe slightly.” he shrugged.

 

kamala looked very much like she was trying to steer the conversation back. “can we focus? on how i’m not a terrible choice?”

 

cassie tilted her head. “we can circle back to the part where kamala is in charge and none of us really questioned it.”

 

kamala blinked. “wait, you didn’t?”

 

kate shrugged. “you showed up at all our doors like a really peppy recruiter with weirdly accurate files. it was either follow you or file a restraining order.”

 

“and let’s be honest,” riri added, “filing restraining orders takes way more paperwork than building an arc reactor.”

 

america huffed. “also, you kinda guilt-tripped me with the whole ‘help me help others’ thing. that was sneaky.”

 

“okay, wow, i wasn’t trying to guilt-trip anyone-”

 

“it worked, though,” billy interrupted, voice quiet but warm.

 

kate looked around at all of them-  cassie half-lounging on the couch, riri pretending she wasn’t amused, america already halfway to a smirk, billy with soft eyes, and kamala still clutching those notecards like they were her armor.

 

“we’re here, aren’t we?”

 

kamala didn’t say anything for a moment. then, so soft kate almost didn’t hear it: 

 

“yeah. you are.”

Notes:

sigh. i love them all dearly. a few more chapter of shenanigans before we get to phase two: even MORE shenanigans, ft the new avengers & the new avengers!! yay!!

Chapter 8: the one where they're not a great team

Summary:

the team begin to dig deep on how to be a team. they watch an avengers doc. it goes poorly. they begin to discuss code-names and costumes.

Notes:

sigh i love them. blinks prettily. they all have a piece of my heart. i can't wait for them to fuck shit up.

one day, when they’re famous and in their own documentary, cassie would conceal how much she played into the events of this very thursday. she would not reveal to the world that it was in fact her chaos that caused whatever their team went on to do.

 

because it was clear they were going to do something. cassie just wasn’t quite sure yet. 

 

speaking of documenteries-

 

“okay, everyone, i found this avengers documentary online! thought it’d be good team-building. let’s watch!” kaa declared, bringing out her lap-top and propping it up on the coffee table. 

 

kate immediately groaned. “ugh, please tell me this isn’t going to be like, two hours of men yelling and capes.” she scowled. cassie had half a mind to be offended- her dad was on that team- but then she remembered her dad could be so lame and so could all his superhero friends, so.

 

“you guys, it’ll be fine!” kamala assured, clacking away on her keyboard to pull it up.  “we can watch it, see what they did right, do it ourselves, and just not do the whole killing each other bit!” she declared, pulling the doc into full-screen and pressing play. 

 

it was difficult to see the screen from the couch, and no way was she gonna let all of them cramp onto it, but before cassie could worry about it too much, billy did something magical and wavy with his hands, and there was a projection of kamala’s screen the size of the fireplace in front of them. 

 

kamala quietly squealed her excitement at the magic, and cassie watched as riri slowly edged away from the thing.

 

riri didn’t seem to like magic all too much. america also seemed pretty sceptical of billy’s magic, too, especially after he mentioned the scarlett witch.

 

there was 100% something there. cassie merely hoped that whatever it was wasn’t bad enough to tear them apart. it was like they said earlier, they didn’t want a repeat of the avenger’s divorce. 

 

the documentary was surprisingly engaging at first, even if it talked mainly about events up until 2014 - ie before her dad was involved. it was mainly about tony stark, which made sense since he was the most… public figure of the avengers. after a while, it started going a lot into his reasonings behind ultron and then the sokovia accords, which were such a drag to hear about and also just a bummer.

 

cassie had zoned out by the point they started talking about the winter soldier. she’d heard most of the story from her dad already.

 

“can someone please explain why this is relevant? i’m bored out of my mind.” riri grumbled, sat away from them at the table that was behind the couch. when cassie glanced at her, she was scrolling on her phone, not even paying attention to billy’s magical tv screen.

 

no one replied. it was less of a ‘shhh we’re watching’ silence and more of a ‘she may have a point’ silence. 

 

cassie turned back to look at the tv. perhaps looking at a shirtless winter soldier was better than whatever silence riri brought around with her. 

 

when they were maybe two-thirds the way through the doc, and it was abundantly clear no one was paying attention anymore, kamala reached forward and hit the mute button.

 

“okay, so… what do we think? team names?” she asked the group, watching the avengers on billy’s magical screen punching each other in silence at the airport. cassie knew all about that.

 

“thank you for bringing it up.” kate gushed, though she didn’t sound all to pleased. “please, no ‘young avengers.’ that name is terrible.” kate told them, looking straight at kamala.

 

she has a point, cassie thought. kamala clearly did not share those feelings.

 

“why? it’s straightforward! it shows we’re the next generation.” she explained, defending her idea like a highschooler defending their really shitty thesis. cassie laughed a little.

 

“it sounds like a boy band. or a breakfast cereal.” cassie didn’t want to say it, but she didn’t want to be on an avengers variant team- she wanted to be unique from her dad, love him as she did. perhaps her more light-hearted insulting of the team name would get her message across.

 

america shifted in her seat, looking pensive. “how about ‘the misfits’? because that’s basically us.” she suggested, and it took a few moments to realise that she was definitely poking fun at them. 

 

riri scoffed at that, not one looking up from her phone.

 

“more like ‘the messfits.’” she corrected. “can we talk uniforms? because i am not changing my suit for you guys.” she told them, at last putting that phone down to look at them. 

 

riri couldn't see many of their faces, since they were on the couch directly in front of her, but most of the looks passed around on the couch were excited, because she was in. like, she was in in.

 

they’d all been back-and-fourth texting the past week about wether or wether not riri would be joining them, and that was all the conformation they needed to put a big, fat yes stamp on the question.

 

kamala’s response was still indignant.

 

“but the outfits have to match! team colors and all that.” she whined, pouting. 

 

“colors are cool, but i’m not wearing anything that restricts my movement. practicality first.” kate told them all, resolute.

 

in the seconds kate had been speaking, kamala had reached down to her backpack and pulled out an ungodly stack of paper and no less than 3 notebooks stuffed to the brim with torn pages and sticky-note tabs pointing every which way, and cassie realised with something akin to horror that they were drawings of them. 

 

as in sketched design options for their suits.

 

cassie tentatively reached for a notebook, in complete awe at the creativity and sheer gaudiness of what she was seeing.

 

“wait, what color are our suits already?” she asked, glancing around like this was a pop quiz no one had studied for. other people had reached for some loose sheets, leafing through them and eyeing kamala warily, who just looked really proud to have her work seen by others. 

 

“mine’s purple,” she added after a beat, and immediately looked away; she wasn’t about to explain to hank that she wanted to change her suit’s colour.

 

billy, who had been relatively quiet in the conversation up to that point, materialized out of nowhere holding a bolt of fabric so shiny it might’ve been sentient. “okay, but what if our costumes reacted to magic or tech?” he asked, eyes gleaming with a very specific kind of magical chaos. “like… they changed based on our powers?”

 

everyone stared at the shimmery fabric he’d seemingly spawned. cassie did not trust it enough to touch it, let alone wear a suit made of the stuff.

 

cassie blinked. “dude, that sounds extra as hell.”

 

“thank you,” america said, not looking up from where she was flipping through a stack of kamala’s drawings. “i’m just gonna show up in whatever jacket doesn’t make me sweat. i don’t have a suit” she told them all, putting the papers down. kate immediately picked them up, forgoing the papers she’d already taken and began sifting through the new pages. 

 

“mine’s, uh, red and blue.” billy told them all, slightly disheartened at the reaction to his ungodly bolt of fabric, which disappeared again with a wave of his hand.

 

“my suit is black and red. also,,” riri cut in, “i’m out if there’s any capes. those things are a death trap.” she declared, and cassie had never known someone so resolutely against wearing a cape. it was almost funny. 

 

kate, looking up from more of kamala’s designs, which now completely littered the coffee table, pointed at riri dramatically. “yes! seriously, can we just agree: no capes, no tights, and for the love of god, no spandex?” she asked exasperatedly. she was practically begging.

 

“but my suit already has a cape!” kamala argued, clutching one of her sketchpads like it had feelings too.

 

riri shot up a hand. “then take it off or i’m out!”

 

“it’s important!” kamala protested, borderline scandalized. “it’s a legacy thing! it’s, like, magic!”

 

“EVEN WORSE!”   riri snapped, eyes wild in a very un-riri-like way, cassie would go as far as to call it deranged.

 

kamala took a deep breath, clearly trying to channel some inner nick fury. “we’re gonna figure this out,” she said, sitting a little straighter. “we have to.”

 

riri just continued to glare at kamala like she’d insulted some god-given birthright of hers, eye twitching. maybe a cape had killed her best friend or something, cassie wasn’t going to judge.

 

except she totally was. riri was completely unhinged about the topic. it was wild.

 

there was a pause, long enough for kamala to shuffle her notecards, shying away from riri’s glare from across the room. 

 

“what are we gonna call each other?” cassie asked, trying to loosen the tension riri was building. it was very clear to cassie who the problem on their team was. “like, in the field. you know- code names?” she elaborated. it was also perhaps her desire for a little bit of chaos that made her ask it. she felt a little out-done by billy’s demonic fabric bolt.

 

speaking of, billy looked up from braiding a ribbon of magical energy between his fingers, which, when had he started doing that, before meekly suggesting: “by our names?”

 

riri snorted. “i am not yelling ‘america’ over comms. that’s a homeland security flag waiting to happen.”

 

kamala perked up. “we’re gonna have comms?”

 

america arched a brow. “i’m not gonna respond to anything stupid.”

 

riri rolled her eyes. “yes, we’ll have comms. how the hell else do you think we’re gonna coordinate- telepathy?”

 

billy looked like he was going to intervene for a moment, but cassie did not want to think about any mind-reading logistics right now, so she moved instead.

 

cassie lifted her hand like she was in school, waiting for eyes to fall on her before talking. 

 

“i’ve actually been brainstorming some hero names for myself.” she told them all.

 

kamala, who had gone on a quiet spiral of ‘of course we’re gonna have comms, what am i talking about? all teams have comms,’,  clapped like she was on a game show. “that’s so cool! i came up with mine myself. ms. marvel. i already got carol’s stamp of approval.” she paused rambled, pausing before adding: “carol danvers. captain marvel.”

 

as though they hadn’t known what she meant when she said carol. cassie had gone on a minor deep-dive on the girl. she’d seen her fanfictions.

 

riri folded her arms, clearly unimpressed with the girl’s hero-worship. “my suit is technically called the ironheart suit, so...” 

 

so we have ms marvel, america (possibly pending), ironheart, and stature! but i haven’t told them that yet, and it’s still a work in progress, so… 

 

billy sighed. “agatha insists my alias should be wiccan.”

 

riri raised an eyebrow. “wiccan? why?”

 

billy shrugged. “apparently ‘billy the undead witch boy’ isn’t good marketing.”

 

kate raised a finger lazily. “i’m already the new hawkeye. branding handled.”

 

america leaned back, arms behind her head. “y’know what? just ‘america’ will do.”

 

riri stared. “absolutely not.”

 

“fine. miss america.”

 

“thin ice. thin fucking ice.” the girl retorted, pointing an accusatory finger at the girl

 

america said sweetly, smirking.

 

“language,”

 

riri stood up, rolling her sleeves up. “so help me god, i am going to beat your ass-”

 

“o-kay, team meeting adjourned!” kamala chirped, waving her notecards frantically.

kate, still looking through some particularly… inane suit designs… muttered under her breath: “we’re gonna die in matching capes, aren’t we?”

 

cassie snorted, picking up another notebook and flipping through the arguably good art as riri made her way over to america, who leapt to her feet ans started to run.

 

cassie had not expected their first… hang session to end in an impromptu game of chase around a haunted house, but she wasn’t gonna complain.

Notes:

upon my rewatch of the 3rd antman movie, i decided that since i got the most enjoyment from it by being unserious, cassie will also by extension be unserious. i make the rules. welcome to my house :)

Chapter 9: the one where they’re lost in the woods

Summary:

the team tries to train together with all their new gear. it is an immediate failure. america accidentally flings them into another dimension.

Notes:

sigh. i love their shenanigans. i think the further into this i get, the longer the chapters i get. its like compound investment lmao.

leaves crunched underfoot as they trudged through the woods, a mess of limbs and backpacks and very little coordination. america was at the front, shoulders squared and jaw tight. kamala bounced beside her, grinning like she hadn’t dragged six teenagers into the forest under extremely vague instructions.

 

“where are we going?” she asked, brushing a branch out of her face. it almost whipped cassie behind her.

 

“somewhere we can train!” kamala chirped, sounding way too excited for someone who’d led them off the path like a disney protagonist about to get eaten by a wolf.

 

riri, trailing behind them with crossed arms and a visible chip on her shoulder, muttered, “is being vague a part of your power-set, or is that just a kamala thing?”

 

“it’s a cool thing!” kamala called back, clearly unfazed.

 

“it’s not cool. it’s dodge,” riri snapped.

 

kamala whirled around, walking backwards now with an exaggerated shrug. “you have an iron suit. what do you think i’m gonna do, kill you?”

 

“yes,” riri deadpanned.

 

kamala’s smile faltered. “oh- oh no. i’d never do that. don’t worry.”

 

kamala sounded genuinely shocked at riri’s admission, scrambling to assure her. america slowed her steps, expression flattening. “you had me portal us to the woods. why not just tell me the right place?”

 

kamala’s shoulders rose a little, proud. “because we shouldn’t have to rely on you to get around.”

 

she’s got a point, she thought begrudgingly. i don’t want to be a one-woman taxi service.

 

behind them, kate ducked under a low branch and grumbled, “we’re literally just walking through the woods. like boy scouts.”

 

kamala flashed her a grin over her shoulder. “okay. keep up, then!”

 

kate blinked. “what?”

 

and then kamala was gone- breaking into a jog and summoning her crystal magic, leaping from platform to platform of glowing dots up into the trees. with a whoop of laughter, she was gone, her scarf trailing behind her like a flag of reckless leadership.

 

“wh- hey! get back here!” cassie shouted, nearly tripping over a tree root as she took off running after her.

 

“screw this,” riri muttered, fishing a necklace from under her sweater “i am not gettin’ lost in these woods.”

 

riri stood still for a few moments, before turning around and just waiting. america was gonna say something snarky to the girl, but with a whistling of air and several loud clanks, america blinked a few times and riri was suddenly in her ironheart suit. just like that.

 

what?

 

cassie, already panting and turning back to them, ran over to riri. “can i hitch a ride?” she asked.

 

riri rolled her eyes. her helmet clicked into place with a hiss, and the jets on her boots flared to life. “don’t get in my way.”

 

america watched as cassie shrunk to rat-sized-cassie and leapt onto riri’s suit, clutching on to her back like some sort of leech before riri lifted herself from the floor, flying off after kamala.

 

america had already decided she was going to portal. kamala’s bangle had an energy signature she could recognise and locate, so she was just gonna wait a little while before making a portal over to her.

 

kate watched cassie and riri fly off, hands on her hips. “...i hate it here.” she grumbled, tying her hair up into a ponytail and preparing to run.

 

“want a hand?” billy asked from beside her, offering a hand with fingers already glowing faint blue, like he’d summoned it just for drama.

 

kate sighed and took it. “much appreciated, billy.”

 

“anytime. just don’t let go mid-air.” he answered happily.

 

“no promises.” kate mumbled as billy took off, following after riri and cassie. 

 

america just continued walking, much less stressed than she was before. at least there was an actual plan- and she didn’t think kamala was the type to run off too far, so she only waited maybe ten minutes or so before focusing on making a portal to the girl.

 

stepping through it, she found kamala in a small clearing; she managed to be the first one there. go figure!

 

“did they all immediately run?” kamala asked, a little too knowingly. she was fidgeting with her hands, hoodie now wrapped around her waist.

 

“yep,” she replied, looking around for something to perch on. there weren’t any conveniently felled logs or sittable-sized rocks, so she settled for climbing the branches of the closest tree and sitting herself on the lowest, sturdiest beach she could. 

 

“we can work on that,” kamala replied, nodding her head to herself. “definitely.” she added, quieter. 

 

it was a few minutes of the both of them watching the wooded area around them before they heard the sound of repulsors, and riri came crashing into the clearing. 

 

“you seriously trying to convince me you’re not tryna’ kill me?” she demanded, mask unlocking from her face. america watched as a pint-sized (not ant-sized) cassie jumped from her back, re-sizing herself to ‘normal’ as she landed; america had no idea when the girl had put her suit on.

 

she shrugged it off. it didn’t really matter so much.

 

“thanks for the ride,” cassie told the girl in the iron armour.

 

“you didn’t get in my way,” the girl shrugged, crossing her arms yet remaining in her suit.

 

a minute or two later- riri and kamala still bickering, cassie had walked over to her and leant against the tree she was perched in- billy landed in the clearing with a flourish of blue magic, kate gracefully holding his hand and landing alongside him. 

 

“you all made it!” kamala cheered, jumping up and clapping her hands proudly. america rolled her eyes fondly. riri scoffed.

 

“what the hell was that?” kate demanded, honing some (nowhere near as much) of riri’s sass.

 

kamala’s grin was mischievous, maybe even a little devious. “getting you to work together.” she replied smugly.

 

surprisingly enough, it was riri who spoke next, and she sounded impressed. “...we just got duped, didn’t we?”

 

“duped into teamwork!” cassie added, a smile starting to play at her lips. 

 

kate was nodding in what was maybe acceptance, licking her lips.

 

“that was cruel.” she said. she didn’t sound upset in the slightest.

 

kamala’s smile was blinding. 

 

“it was effective!” america called from the tree, giving a somewhat fierce grin of her own. 

 

“alright, team!” kamala clapped her hands. “first official training session. we’re in nature. we’re bonding. we’re gonna learn each other’s powers and not accidentally destroy anything!” she whooped, gesturing for the others to head over to her. to circle up.

 

“define ‘ destroy.’” riri asked, words somewhere between casual and smug. 

 

“so… are we just showing off or-?” cassie asked, only allowing kamala the time to look bug-eyed at riri.

 

“i could shoot a tree.” riri suggested, lifting up a hand and pointing it at the tree america had just been sat in, the sound of repulsors whining filling the air as the centre of her palm began to glow.

 

“please don’t shoot a tree.” billy rushed, raising his arms in a ‘placating’ motion. riri stared him dead in the eye- and he stared right back- as she slowly lowered her hand, repulsor turning off.

 

“we’re starting simple!” kamala decided, with forced cheer. “so, no portals, no dimension-hopping, no untested tech- just some light, casual… uh… sparring? i made flashcards.” she stumbled, reaching into her backpack, which was open and next to her feet, bringing fourth a metal ring chock-full of detailed notes on different hand-to-hand combat techniques. 

 

they all stared at them. 

 

“you made flashcards?” kate asked, as if she wasn’t sure if she was hallucinating or not.

 

kamala nodded vigorously. 

 

“yes. i color-coded them.”

 

“i don’t know if i’m impressed or disappointed.” cassie spoke, filling the quiet and taking the notes from kamala, flipping through them with a mix of intrigue and confusion.

 

america watched as kamala steeled herself, before smiling once more and pointing at billy.

 

“okay! billy, you’re first. just a small spell! nothing reality-breaking.” she instructed. 

 

very vaguely.

 

“i… i could do a light shield?” he offered after thinking for a few seconds. they probably should have started with the archery. 

 

“as long as it doesn’t explode.” kamala agreed, seeming very nervous about unwarranted explosions. 

 

billy started doing things with his hands- it was similar to what she did for the mystic arts, but also very different. america had no idea what he was doing.

 

it was working, though, because after a few moments, a thin sheen of blue light appeared around him, coating the air like a dome of glass around him as his hands moved.

 

america was sort of mesmerised by it, how the magic flickered and glowed, flowing like water in the shape billy made it.

 

then billy lost his focus at kamala’s hyped squeal, and it began to flicker, before falling to the floor and dissipating into blue mist.

 

billy winced as his magic got away from him. 

 

“i’m used to, like, power blasts. or more traditional written spells.” he told them, scratching the back of his head. 

 

“that was so cool,” kamala praised, absolutely radiating excitement. 

 

“yeah, at least you didn’t punch a hole in the universe.” america gave billy a light pat on the shoulder, her smile a bit of a grimace. 

 

“maybe… maybe save that for last.” kate recommended, but the way she said it didn’t leave much room for argument. not that anyone looked like they would, but. 

 

with a grin and a quick quip about it being her turn, kate finally pulled out her bow, having been wearing her arrow quiver the whole time. in 3 seconds flat, she had an arrow notched and ready to fire, before aiming and making contact with her decided target.

 

america barely had time to blink and kate had an impromptu cable-arrow shot into the trunk of a nearby tree, perfectly centred. it was a good 20 yards away.

 

“trick arrow,” she explained simply, taking the other end of the cable and tying it around a lower branch of another tree to affix it in place. 

 

america cheered alongside the rest of them, and in the next silence to overcome them, all eyes were on riri.

 

when is this girl gonna get the hang of things? she thought, refraining from rolling her eyes.

 

riri caught on faster than she had before, though, so that was progress. 

 

“fine. i’ll go. but nobody yell if something explodes.” she warned them, taking a few steps back.

 

kamala’s face immediately flooded with concern.

 

“why would it expl-” she started, but the sound of a small explosion did, in fact, cut her off.

 

riri had extended one of her arms, firing a blast at the arrow kate had so expertly fired into the top of the tree. 

 

america jumped back as the cable split with a loud thwang, slumping to the floor. 

 

kamala, who had summoned a crystal sheet to protect both her and billy from the cable, dropped it to the side and it disappeared. she looked very pale.

 

“great! amazing! very effective!” she squeaked. america glared at riri, trying to cover her irritation. riri, who met her gaze very briefly, just moved her eyes and pretended everything was okay.

 

bitch, she thought to herself. keeping secrets and trying to kill us. 

 

america had picked up on some bad magic within riri the second she’d walked up to billy’s house for the first time. every time riri came back, the magic had gotten just a little bit stronger.

 

she had half a mind to tell strange.

 

“can i… get big now?” cassie asked, rocking back and fourth on her heels. she’d already proven she could get small- not like any of them doubted her, or anything- and america immediately had reservations.

 

“wait are we ready for her to get big?” kate asked, saying exactly what america was thinking. this should be, like, a familiarising with each other's powers moment, not a show off the most impressive and badass thing you can do moment. america was not prepared to dimension-hop to another variant of wanda.

 

not today, probably not ever.

 

“uh. maybe half-big?” kamala recommended after a moment of thinking.

 

“too late!” cassie decided, pressing something on the side of her neck that made her mask snap into place, before pressing another button somewhere else and then growing. 

 

“holy shit!” riri called, grabbing her by the hand and yanking her back so she didn’t get crushed underneath cassie’s newly massive foot. 

 

“sorry!” she called, staying still once she was now several stories tall, so she didn’t accidentally squish a future avenger. “do you want me to, like, pick up a tree? i can do that,” she offered, reaching a large hand to wrap around a tree’s trunk.

 

america wasn’t the only one yelling no.

 

“i think you can just get small again. we get the gist.” kate called up, craning her head back to somewhat look cassie in the face.

 

in the blink of an eye (and the press of a button), cassie was once again regular-human sized.

 

“how tall was that?” riri asked, having put her arm down from where it had protectively hovered in front of her.

 

america decided not to question it. or judge it. or think about it. 

 

“tall,” she replied cheekily, bringing her mask back off and smiling brightly at them. 

 

“next time, make sure you don’t squish anyone with your stomping, okay?” riri told her, and any thought america may have had about her tone being nice or in awe at another person disappeared just like that.

 

cassie, somehow, seemed immune to the riri rage and played a faux-indignant tone of voice.

 

“i’m very careful with my stomping!” she gasped, clutching a hand over her heart like she was mortally wounded or offended. 

 

kamala rounded off the moment with a small bounce on her toes, clapping her hands excitedly.

 

“so that’s us! some arrows, some magic, some quantum science, some interdimensional punching.” she acknowledged america, even if she hadn’t displayed her powers, which was probably a good thing. she had a bit more control over them, but they were still a super gimmicky thing.

 

“and the occasional government file.” riri added, like it was very normal and sane. america has the inkling she wasn’t talking about the files kamala had dug up on them.

 

“...i hate this team.” kate mumbled, shaking her head. 

 

cassie made a dismissive noise. 

 

“nah. we’re gonna be great.” she challenged, kamala vigorously agreeing

“okay, that was great! overall, very solid first effort. next up: teamwork drills!” she cheered, reaching down to fish out some more cards from her bag. probably instructional ones, if america had to guess.

 

“pass.” riri immediately dismissed, crossing her arms and closing herself off again.  “i’ve seen enough ‘teamwork drills’ in my engineering group projects. it’s always one genius doing everything and everyone else pretending to help.”

 

america grit her teeth and stayed quiet. she wasn't fully sure why but riri just got to her in a way she couldn’t fully explain, couldn’t figure out.

 

“aw, riri. we’d never pretend to help. we’d just actually be useless.” cassie assured the older girl, smiling innocently up at her- the suit gave her an extra couple inches; riri was actually one of the shorter among them.

 

“can we just fight something already? this is getting boring.” she asked, making her desire to do something known. getting out of kamar-taj was one thing, convincing strange he should let her out was another. america didn’t have all the time in the world to just waste. 

 

“um. i could summon something? like, small? and friendly?” billy suggested, smiling brightly. america almost physically recoiled at his suggestion, a bolt of fear coursing through her.

 

the last time a maximoff had summoned something it hadn’t gone well for her. at all. 

 

america had settled on ignoring what she lovingly called the billy problem, putting a pin in that crisis for now. it was making assumptions that got her into her multiversal mess last time. wanda assumed her kids would want her.

 

they hadn’t.

 

“maybe let’s hold off on summoning-” kate rushed to speak, eyes widening. but billy, billy was already doing something with his hands and incanting words in some god-less language and before anyone could stop him, a circle of earth between them began to bubble and boil, as though it had been liquified.

 

then it stopped, and everything was back to normal.

 

like nothing even happened.

 

america continued to stare at the floor.

 

“okay. see? nothing even happened-” billy tried to soothe, but that was when it happened.

 

there was a loud crack, like a whip of thunder. a ripple of light tore through the air behind them, and when america turned to look at it, her heart dropped. right there, right behind her, was a glowing, star-shaped hole humming with unstable energy, the interior of a building on its other side.

 

“uh. was that the friendly thing?” cassie asked, voice quiet in america’s mind.

 

she didn’t do that. she didn’t do that. it wasn't her. it wasn't.

 

“…that wasn’t me.” she whispered, eyes wide. fear thrummed beneath her skin, lighting up her goosebumps like the devil’s constellation.

 

“you sure? because it’s kind of your whole thing…” kamala retorted, sounding nowhere near as concerned as the current circumstances called for.

 

this was how i destroyed it all last time. i can’t destroy it all. not again.

 

“it’s definitely not me.” she tried, as the light began to pulse and flicker, flashing brighter than the whole night sky in one moment and fading to nothing to next. the location through the portal kept on changing, flitting from place to place. 

 

then america started to feel the tug.

 

“okay, team huddle! new strategy: run!” she yelled, trying to shift her weight to stop her slow traverse towards the portal. the others seemed to be experiencing the same thing, backing up as best they could and trying to get away.

 

“oh my god oh my god oh my god-” kamala’s panicked voice filled the air as the team tried to get themselves away. cassie tripped, riri catching her, and kamala tried to use her magic to block the portal. 

 

it just sucked her crystalline structure right in, promptly switching locations after the fact. it was just gone. 

 

kate had shot one of her trick-arrows at a tree, a cable like her one from earlier appearing. kamala quickly dashed to the side, reaching for the cable to secure herself.

 

riri shoved cassie away towards kamala, who caught the girl, before turning around and grabbing a struggling billy from behind her. 

 

america was so close to the cable - so close - but the portal trying to eat them crackled loudly once more, and with a gust of wind she felt her feet slip from underneath her.

 

with a scream, she could do nothing but scramble as she was drawn into the rift and flung across the multiverse. not again, not again, not again, not again!

 

by the time she landed, flat on her back, she was in the middle of a snow-dusted field of some sort with purple grass. or, she hoped it was grass, anyways. 

 

she immediately shot up, the snow pressing against her bare skin. 

 

she looked around, clocking the yellow sky and two suns, before finding billy and riri splayed out in the field beside her. 

 

america ran over to them, helping a frantic billy to his feet. riri came to on her own, glare immediately finding her.

 

“what the hell, america?!” she demanded, eyes alight with fury. she did a 360 turn, assessing her situation. their situation.

 

“that wasn’t me!” she growled, trying to quell her panic. this was fine. she could get them back! probably. maybe.  

 

“oh, are you sure, mrs star-puncher?” riri continued, scathing. 

 

america had enough. 

 

“what’s your damage, man?” she snapped back, matching the older girl’s anger. riri had something against her, against all of them, and america was getting sick of it. who did she think she was? she had the gall to act all high and mighty- america was not oblivious to the distaste riri had shown her and billy once they said they had magic- and she was walking around with magic of her own.

 

a dark, foul magic of her own. 

 

“my damage is that you yanked us through to an alternate dimension!” she shot right back, arm waving around at the landscape around them. as alternate timelines went, it wasn’t the strangest place she’d ever been. points go to the universe where she and strange were paint for a few seconds. 

“i did not!” she bit back as riri got all up in her face. normally, they were around the same height. riri looked down on her when in her suit.

 

“well, then, just take us back!” she compromised, all attitude and no respect. 

 

“i can’t!” she yelled back.

 

riri’s eyes were wild. 

 

“what do you mean you can’t?” she demanded.

 

“i mean i don’t know how!” she cried, her distress beginning to take ahold of her. 

 

that wasn’t me. it wasn’t. i didn’t do anything, i swear, it was-

 

“how do you not know?” riri spat.

 

“ i don’t get much practice!” she squeaked, hands flying up to her hair to tug at it, anything to keep her hands busy, to keep herself grounded. 

 

“you do-” riri began, but billy cut them off.

 

“ENOUGH!” he yelled, america’s attention snapping to him. what did he do? what did he do?

 

“naw, not ‘enou’-” riri began to argue back, but billy threw a hand up, and with a burst of power that danced around his fingers, riri’s voice cut out.

 

“i said enough,” he snapped, clearly done with her shit. “that one was on me, okay? i tried to summon something from an alternate dimension we could practice fighting with. i clearly messed that up somehow.” he explained, eyes shifting to her. she found a plead for forgiveness in them, an unanswered question of are you okay?

 

america gave him a watery smile. she was going to say something, but the space to her left was suddenly occupied by another person who hadn’t been there a second ago, and in the blink of an eye, cassie was there.

 

“did you give riri a mute button or something?” she asked, smiling cheerily.

 

“jesus!” billy cursed, flinching back. “what are you doing here?” he hissed once he got his bearing back.

 

“i jumped in to try and save you. it… didn’t work,” she explained sheepishly, nose scrunching.

 

billy sighed, and america let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. now there were four of them stuck here. great. even better.

 

“minor warding spell.” billy said, to answer cassie’s question. he gestured vaguely in riri’s direction, her mouth moving but no words coming out. “i’m not entirely sure where i went wrong, so we’re gonna have to work together to fix it, okay?” he decided, voice firm and unwavering despite the mess of stress they were in.

 

“did kamala put you up to this?” cassie asked, still in that low-key, low-stakes way of hers.

 

“don’t make me sigil you too. riri, stop thinking in curses. it’s very loud.” billy answered quickly, shooting riri a quick glare.

 

america’s mind did a couple quick-takes and some form of mental gymnastics at that. she couldn’t stop the words she blurted out next.

 

“think- you can read minds?” 

 

“yes but i can pretty much turn it off, riri’s just thinking very loudly right now.” billy replied, directing that last part at riri with a glare.

 

he looked like her. 

 

god, he looked like her.

 

not in the obvious ways. not in the face or the voice, but in the stillness. the way he held himself, like there was something bubbling just beneath the surface and he had to keep it locked down or it would ruin everything.

 

the glint in his eyes.

 

wanda had been like that, too. right before she tore holes in the multiverse chasing the ghosts of the children she thought were hers.

 

“we’ll put a pin in it for later,” cassie decided, losing some of her ‘chillax-ness’, making a constipated-looking face. “america, do you think you could try?” she asked, shaking away the remnants of her surprise from billy’s confession to them.

 

all eyes fell to her. she could feel her panic start to rise again.

 

“i don’t have a great track record, dude.” she hissed, the panic flaring. she’d gotten her parents killed with her powers. she’d sent her and strange to a universe that ended up undergoing an incursion. they caused the incursion. 

 

“what if we like, combined our powers?” billy suggested, looking at her hopefully.

 

america stared right back at him.

 

“that sounds like an even worse idea,” she hissed, not even wanting to think through the messy logistics of something like that.

 

“no- no, think about it.” billy countered, smiling. how could he smile at a time like this? “i can probably find a link for us in our dimension, something to latch on to.” he explained.

 

“okay?” she replied, unsure where he was going with this.

 

“that way, you can get us there. it can be like, intent or something!” he finished happily, rather proud of himself. america just leveled him with her glare some more.

 

“intent?” she repeated, a little scathing.

 

“all spells need intent!” billy defended.

 

america wanted to tear her hair out, but refrained from snarling at the boy.

 

“it’s not really a spell,” she managed,  “it’s more of, like, a skill!” she tried to explain.

 

gold star to her for not knowing how her powers worked.

 

“okay, then, what do you need from us to help you manage it?” cassie jumped in, looking at her with determination. the immediate offer of assistance threw her off slightly; she was expecting some more panic and distress.

 

america swallowed, thinking back. 

 

“last time, i needed, like, a huge emotional anchor,” she recalled, thinking back to how her magic had worked. she’d used wanda’s emotional turmoil over her kids (and the magical traces of the darkhold) to make her ‘intent’, as billy had called it. “like, lifetimes of trauma levels of emotion, but i don’t really have one right now. my life is pretty great.” she rushed to continue, worried cassie was going to chirpily ask her to think back on all her traumas. 

 

considering what she’d used from wanda’s emotions to be her anchor, america didn’t think she had anything in their home timeline of that much potency.

 

“awe, im glad.” cassie ended up cheering.

 

america couldn't help her smile. “thank you!” she fawned right back, cassie’s genuine smile melting something in her heart. 

 

she was brought out of the surprising, nice moment by riri who was waving frantically like a madman, screaming words none of them could hear.

 

“i think riri wants to say something,” cassie dead-panned, not even bothering to hide her grin.

 

“are you going to be nice?” billy asked pointedly, before pausing for a moment. then: “nicer than your thoughts right now?” he added, replying to something neither she or cassie could hear. “you get one warning.” he told the girl before waving his hands again, and with a flow of magic, riri’s voice was free.

 

“we are going to discuss that. in depth.” she threatened, lip quivering in rage.

 

“riri,” billy warned. riri just rolled her eyes.

 

“i’m getting there. does the emotion need to be yours?” she asked, completely changing direction and firing the question at america.

 

“no,” 

 

“great. can it be positive?” riri then asked, seeming determined to get to the bottom of this. her lack of whining threw her off a little.

 

“i don’t know.” she answered honestly.

 

“okay. that’s fine. it’s okay. it can be a thing to test for later.” she assured, and america found herself stumped by this girl. she had been yelling at her not minutes ago, now she was actually acting level-headed and sane.  

 

“i’d like to get out of whatever this place is before we discover the universe is run by sentient vegetables, so how’d you take someone else’s emotion?” she pushed on. “do you channel it? how’d we do that?” she asked, voice filled with purpose and intent.

 

america thought she had these people all figured out. she was very, very wrong.

 

“whose emotions-“ she began, but riri cut her off.

 

“mine. yeah, i got enough negativity and trauma for the lotta us. i want out of wherever here is. how do we do it?” riri pressed, glossing over her little admission to focus on the task at hand.

 

“um,” she managed. she hadn’t anticipated making progress here.

 

“i can probably transfer it?” billy suggested, magic sparking between his fingers. riri nodded.

 

“it’ll have to do. you better not make me relive any of this shit, though.” riri went on, pointing an accusatory finger.

 

“no promises?” billy answered, voice hitching up. riri sighed, appearing to accept that.

 

“also, we may end up in chicago.” riri clarified, as though she was checking if that was okay with them.

 

who was this girl?

 

“problem for later. let’s go.” cassie urged, nicely telling them to get a move on.

 

america took a breath. okay. okay, we’re doing this. like, actually doing this. alright. okay. cool.

 

billy was doing something with his magic, america had no idea, but he was then doing it to riri, and a few moments later the magic was passing through her and she felt it.

 

muted, sure, but it was like she was swimming in a sea of fear and hate and love and pain. she could pick out some thoughts and words from it all - wakanda, death, pain, stane, parker - but the emotions were so volatile around her that she couldn’t have pieced together a timeline of it all if she wanted to.

 

america had to physically shake herself out of the stupor the emotions had put her in. she wasn’t experiencing them herself, but more so second-hand. she closed her eyes, and tried calling on the innate ability within her and doing what strange had told her.

 

trust herself. 

 

trust herself and hope that riri’s pain was enough to get her home.

 

she could feel something in her veins, climbing down her arms and trickling towards her fists like the dripping of ice, and when it reached her fingertips, she could feel it.

 

it was working.

 

spinning on her feet, she punched her fist out, and in a spark of light and energy, a star-shaped portal appeared before them.

 

when america opened her eyes, she only had hope to cling on to that the portal was to the right place.

 

staring straight at her from across the multiverse were none other than kamala khan and kate bishop. 

 

“YOU’RE OKAY!”   she screamed as she, cassie, billy and riri all made a break for the portal, practically tripping over each other to return to that stupid forest clearing. 

 

without the emotion from riri, courtesy of billy, the star closed on its own a few seconds later, and by some grace of god, they had made it back.

 

they did it. she did it.

 

“oh, thank god.” kate breathed, saying what they were all thinking.

 

thank god indeed.

Notes:

i haven't watched multiverse of madness since it came out so a lot of america's character may be ooc? its okay tho we still love her. also i have no fucking idea how her powers work, i just remember them being vaguely emotion based so. i took that and extrapolated. yay :)

Chapter 10: the one where they do something good

Summary:

the team go on their first ever mission together! they’re tracking down some chitauri tech; it doesn’t all go according to plan, however.

Notes:

i wrote and edited this chapter very excitedly in one sitting. the delay was caused by my parents, go figure.

anyways. look at the sillies go. so silly!!

1. hold. out. repeat.

 

billy had half a mind to enchant his footsteps, something to silence the sound of his feet against the concrete. they didn’t have the time, though. america got them into the building, sure, but they still had to manually get past most of the security inside the warehouse so it wouldn’t go off.

 

they wanted this tech out of criminal hands, and they wanted them to be none the wiser about it. just a blink, then it’s gone.

 

billy could hear every breath- not just his own, but everyone else's. too quick. too loud. but no one said it. they were all trying to be quiet, trying to be good at this.

 

kate went ahead, eyes narrowing around the corner.

“two guards. cassie, you good?” she whispered to her shoulder.

 

cassie, ant-sized and already leaping from her perch on kate’s shoulder, was already moving.

“on it.” she whispered back, voice only audible because she was speaking into her comm.

 

riri had brought them over one day with little to no explanation, other than they’d need it. riri tried to keep things close to her chest, but every now and again, billy would catch a stray thought of hers that was particularly loud.

 

less than a minute later, there were two dull sounds- one after the other- and a single, muted “oof.”  

 

silence again. the guards were down.

 

billy blinked, heart racing in his throat.

 

“we’re really doing this,” he breathed. “like, for real.”

 

“yeah,” riri murmured, already edging forward. “and we’re wasting time. vault’s this way.” she urged, leading them forward. she only had the gauntlets of her suit on, for the repulsors and additional tech for the physical hacks she had to enter. the rest of it had been too clunky, too loud, so they’d left the remainder of her suit on the top of an unoccupied house a block away.

 

the group moved together, cassie and america bringing up the rear, looking out for anyone or anything that could have been following them. riri lead the charge, kamala quick at her side, with billy and kate now falling in step between them all.

 

at the end of the next corridor, they found the door. right where they thought it would be.

 

the team hurried over, riri getting to work on inputting the security information she’d gathered as the rest of the team stood watch.

“okay,” kamala spoke, “everyone stay low. once we’re in the vault, we grab the tech and get out before anyone realizes we’re-”

 

the door hissed open with a soft mechanical whine, interrupting her.

 

fluorescent light blinked overhead, throwing long shadows into the room. rows of containment racks stretched out in front of them-

-completely empty. clean. bare, except for the glowing green status lights on the silent alarm panels.

 

cassie stepped forward, her voice hollow.

 

“…there’s nothing here.” she hissed, her usually unphased tone fearful.

 

billy’s heart dropped. oh. oh no. oh no, oh no, oh no. are we too late? is this a trap?

 

“what?” kate asked, eyes scanning the racks.

 

riri was already at the interior console, fingers flying.

“no, no no- this should’ve been the storage point. my intel said this was it.”

 

america’s jaw was tight, arms folded.

“we’ve been played.” she said, bitter. 

 

billy felt the magic fluttering in his fingers before he consciously summoned it-  the way it always did when something was wrong. he pulled the threads of energy closer, searching for what was missing.

the world shifted slightly, a shimmer overlaying the building’s blueprint in his mind. he frowned.

 

“they moved the tech,” he said, voice steadying. “it’s active. out in the city. they didn’t leave it here, they deployed it.”

 

kamala straightened up fast, resolve snapping into place.

 

“okay. change of plan- evac and intercept.”

 

“you mean fight?” kate asked.

 

“yes,” kamala confirmed. “no time to argue.”

 

riri was already pulling up some controls from her gauntlet, calling the rest of her suit into action.

“great,” she said sarcastically to no-one in particular. “i love when a job turns into a rescue op.” she remarked as the team rushed back the way they came, no longer worrying about how loud they were being.

 

billy gave her a sideways look.

“this’s happened to you before?” he asked as they ran. she gave him a look and didn’t reply.

 

america ignored them both.

“how far out?” kamala asked, rounding a corner and flinging a small sheet of crystalline light at a befuddled guard, knocking him down before he ever got the chance to call for backup or raise an alarm. 

 

billy closed his eyes for half a second, letting the threads of magic thread through his thoughts. the city came into focus like a pulse-  movement, metal, static electricity sparking where it shouldn't be.

 

“not far,” he said. his eyes glowed faintly, the energy dancing at his fingertips. “north. maybe six blocks. moving fast.”

 

“then we move faster,” kate muttered, and was already preparing an arrow.

 

billy barely noticed the transition from corridor to chaos. they burst out onto the street, and it was loud.

 

explosions echoed a few blocks over. screams, car alarms. the sky shimmered with drone movement-  half-human tech, half-chitauri, and wholly volatile and dangerous. they buzzed overhead, targeting fleeing civilians with flickers of unstable plasma.

 

kamala raced to a nearby civilian, bracing herself with a crystalline dome overhead to protect them both from a drone-blast in the nick of time.

“okay! time to be heroes!” she called back to them, and that’s all the team needed to get to work.

 

cassie shrunk down instinctively, muttering under her breath. “this is such a bad idea this is such a bad idea-”

 

“america, get people out. billy, disable what you can. i’ll take the further ones.”

riri’s voice was all business, cutting over cassie’s panic, her suit flying to reach her and forming around her. in a matter of moments, she was already launching into the air in a rush of repulsors and light.

 

billy nodded.

his pulse was still fast- too fast-   but there was something steadier beneath it now. like muscle memory he didn’t remember forming. the energy in his hands sparked to life, threads of blue light weaving outward toward the drones, scanning for disruption points.

 

this was what they were here for.

 

he inhaled.

 

“let’s shut this down.” he said, almost to himself were it not for the fact that his comm was on.

 

the chitauri drones were faster than expected- sleek and glinting with mismatched parts, glowing with unstable energy. they zipped through the air like wasps, firing indiscriminately at anything that moved.

 

america was already vaulting over a flipped car, opening orange sparking, circle-portals and shoving civilians through them by the handful. billy could see them appearing inside various buildings, safe from the firefight out on the streets. america didn’t even look winded.

 

kamala reached out high, blocking a falling streetlamp before it crushed a parked car, face creased in panic.

"i got it! i got it!- wait, no i don’t- yes i do!"

the lamp landed with a crunch, not perfect, but good enough.

 

cassie, giant-sized now, clapped her hands around a chitauri drone, crushing it between her hands and yelping when it exploded within them.

"ow! okay! they're spicy! i hate this!" she cried, shaking her hands like she’d touched water that was too hot. she didn’t seem to be actually injured by it.

 

kate was holding her ground behind a newsstand, firing arrow after arrow with wild precision. one exploded on impact, sending debris scattering like confetti. another got hit by an arrow that exploded in purple foam, and it bounced harmlessly against the asphalt when it dropped from the sky.

 

riri had taken to the sky. sleek, fast, and vicious. she was tearing through enemy tech like it personally offended her. which, considering she was the one to get ahold of all the blueprints and intel, it probably had.

"if one of these dents my suit, i'm suing somebody!" she yelled; billy could just about hear her from the street. she hadn’t spoken it into the comm.

 

billy was standing dead center in it all. in the middle of the street, heart hammering, he used his magic to stop drone debris from hitting the roads, flicking falling pieces out of the way of the frantic civilians, clearing their panicked paths.

 

he was whispering under his breath, and the words- half-spoken, half-thought- flowed out like smoke. a minor protective ward here, an aversion ward there, anything he could remember that would keep people out of harm’s way.

a protection ward shimmered around a group of fleeing civilians, just in time to deflect a blast from a chitauri drone. billy’s attention snapped to the thing, way too close to the road for his liking. with a hand outstretched, energy flowing around his palm, he summoned his power and aimed a short blast at the thing, satisfied with how it exploded in the air upon impact, debris falling to the ground (relatively) harmlessly.

 

another drone came too close- he flicked a hand, and it unraveled midair in a burst of violet sparks.

 

this is fine. this is terrifying, but it’s fine. everyone's alive. he hasn't fainted yet. that's a win, right?

 

with no warning, a sudden pressure, like his ears popping underwater, tightened around his skull. a low pulsing frequency buzzed in his ears, not sound so much as sensation. he turned toward it instinctively, magic prickling across his skin. his vision blurred, then cleared, sharp with light as his eyes began to glow.

 

something was wrong. something bad was about to happen.

 

“something’s about to happen, they’re gonna blow or something,” he warned through the comms, words and actions more frantic. he couldn’t let that happen, he couldn’t.

 

“how bad?” kamala fired back, not missing a beat between asking the question and dashing to shield another civilian.

 

"bad."

 

riri groaned. "no specifics, love that. can you slow it down?" she asked, firing repulsor blasts at another drone. “give me some time to work on the problem and the solve,” she added though gritted teeth as a drone got way too close for comfort.

 

"working on it." he bit back, trying to thread his magic through a drone, from a distance, to find out what exactly it was that made him so sure the things were about to blow.

 

he almost fell to the floor when a shot fired right beside him, and in his scramble to turn and take down the attacking drone, he almost fell over again. in his panic, cassie, still god-knows-how-large (she refused to tell them exactly), reached out an oversized hand and crushed his drone assailant in her palm.

 

“i got you covered,” she told him, and he could see her large eye wink at him through her mask.

 

he thanked her quickly, before going back to trying to figure out how to slow the impending combustion he knew was coming.

 

he was getting somewhere, but it wasn’t fast enough.

 

with a small exhale, he began to focus on the magic thrumming through his body. 

 

right then. time for a hail mary.

 

after a few moments of concentration, a crackle of light burst outward from his palms. starting from where he stood, the street warped, shimmered, then solidified with a glowing dome of magical energy. the dome pushed all the chitauri drones back, clearing them from the street and up into the air all together. some of the drones that tried to push back against the shield crackled with magical electricity, before falling to the ground, deactivated.

 

that only happened to a few, though. there were at least two dozen left.

 

and those drones, they screamed. not literally, but the hum turned sharp, angry. they turned toward him in unison.

 

billy didn’t know how to hold the dome and take them down, it was too big, too much to do both.

 

“a little help?” he called, straining to keep the dome up.

almost instantly, america was at his side, cracking her knuckles. "you hold the shield. i’ll punch the rest." she told him, kate appearing at his other side not long after. 

 

and that made it easier. not easy. just- less alone. 

 

billy maintained his focus on the shield, letting the rest of his team work on dealing with the drones. cassie, now human-sized, was helping direct a steady flow of people away from the side of the dome all the drones were on, just in case. she got big for a few moments to move a chunk of rubble blocking the path to the train station on the road, ushering them all inside the big building and telling them to stay put.

 

riri had landed at his side not too long later, working on something within her suit’s interface and muttering to herself, trying to find a solve for the explosion that was about to happen.

 

it took a few minutes of coordination and stress, but after riri proclaimed she thought she calibrated a solve, she flew up to the protective shield’s barrier, and on her word, he brought the shield down, staggering to the floor from the exertion.

 

riri did something- a specialised emp blast, he thinks, which sent the remaining drones plummeting to the floor, caught by a crystalline slide created by kamala to lessen the property-damage-radius. the zone of impact? billy wasn’t sure what to call it.

 

after kamala’s impromptu slide disappeared, the streets were… they were quiet. 

 

the only sounds were the quiet crackle of scorched alien-done, and someone’s car alarm bleating faintly in the distance.

 

kamala was panting, kate dropping to a knee to help him the second she wasn’t worried about the drones any more. 

 

"…did we do it?" kamala asked, looking around. the destruction was there, but it was relatively minimal, all things considered. a few buildings had scorch marks and a couple dents, a glass pane or two had been shattered, and exactly one car had been stepped on by cassie. sure, the road had a few more… potholes and there was drone debris and blood all over, but it wasn’t that bad.

 

riri landed beside them with a clunk, helmet receding as she did. she moved beside kamala, standing behind the cirl with her suited hands resting on the girl’s shoulders, helping brace her upright. "yup. tech’s dead. you guys bought me enough time to calibrate an emp blast strong enough to get them down." she told them all.

 

the team was silent for a few moments, just looking at each other and breathing heavily. this wasn’t the plan, not at all, but… it had worked.  

 

they had worked.

 

kate was the one to break the silence. "someone get a camera. this is our 'we survived' moment." she declared, and to his surprise, riri was the one to take the picture, using one of the technically advanced gadgets she had that no one (other than maybe cassie) could understand to take a selfie with everyone in it.

 

after the picture, kate turned to him. "you good?" she asked, concern evident despite the casualness of her tone.

 

he nodded slowly. he wasn’t sure what he’d just done- but it had worked. would he ever be able to do something that big again? maybe. right now, though, he just wanted to pass out on a sofa or something and sleep for a couple dozen days. 

 

okay. first mission: survived. team: not dead. civilians: evacuated. property damage: …eh. 

 

a shaky breath escaped him, and then- he smiled. not big. just a little. but it stayed.

 

it wasn’t long, though, before sirens were wailing in the distance.

 

not the blaring, panicked kind. the afterward kind- cleanup crews, responders, the real adults. dust and smoke curled in the air while the singular broken streetlights (not the one kamala caught, a different broken one. there were only two that had been damaged) buzzed. a storefront window had definitely seen better days, and despite everything- they were all standing.

 

or kneeling, in his case, but the point still stood.

 

they had made it, and from what he could tell, not a single person died. for a first op, botched as it was, that was really good. 

 

the firefighters were first on the scene, spotting them almost immediately - three of them looked like classic heroes and riri was in an iron suit, so.

 

(america had just worn what she usually did- some black jeans, a t-shirt, and her jean jacket)

 

riri made a quick deal of instructing the firefighters on the facts of the matter- where the people were, what might have sustained the most (if any) structural damage, and a couple quick details about the felled drones.

 

in a matter of minutes, civilians were trickling out of where cassie had safely stashed them, and injuries were being assessed. 

 

which was when the phones started to come out.

 

not drones, not danger- phones. held up in shaky hands, recording from across the street or leaning out of parked car windows.

 

a kid, maybe ten years old, emerging from the train station as the firefighters and recently-arrived cops help direct people, pointed right at them. 

 

“they did it! they saved us!” the kid declared, many others murmuring their agreement. 

“yo, is that ironheart?!” one voice shouted.

“wait- ms. marvel?!” another called

 

people started to clap. others cheered. some of it felt half-hearted, like no one knew the right protocol for this kind of heroism.

 

a middle-aged woman with her shoes in her hands and a scrape on her elbow stepped forward, looking at america.

 

"thank you," she said, breathless. "i thought… i didn’t think we were gonna make it." she confessed, her every movement and word seeped in gratitude.

 

america blinked, caught off-guard. “…no problem.”

a few seconds later, she lowered down her voice to ask them:

 

“are we supposed to, like, bow or something?”

 

“please don’t,” billy whispered back to the woman, pulse skipping. “i might actually combust.”

 

cassie awkwardly waved at a guy filming with a cracked phone. “uh… hi! we’re not taking interviews!” she asserted, even though no-one had asked. billy managed a small laugh, despite the exhaustion beginning to tug at him, kate standing and helping him to his feet.

 

kamala, flushed and beaming, threw up a peace sign like she’d just won prom queen and saved the world.

 

“if this ends up on tiktok,” riri muttered, “i’m building another emp.” she threatened, though none of the people heard her.

 

kate slung her bow over her shoulder and leaned in toward billy. “you sure you’re okay?” she asked again, concern in her eyes

 

billy waved her off.

 

“ask me in five minutes.”

 

the team started moving- not in formation, not like soldiers or saviors, more like friends leaving a very weird concert. sore. scraped. glowing, maybe just a little.

 

america stepped past a the sole squished car (cassie eyed it, disheartened, as they passed)   and held up her hands, before doing that circly-y mystic arts thing she did, revealing portal and a familiar patch of trees beyond.

 

they’d agreed not to portal directly into or out of the house, and instead to the garden. just so people didn’t see them through the windows, and also to avoid agatha as much as they could. 

 

“portal’s ready,” she said, brushing some dust off her jacket. “last one through buys pizza.” she declared, first to hop though.

 

cassie cursed softly, dashing after her. riri pretended to calculate prices, though didn’t seem to be in any rush. kate immediately broke into a run.

 

billy raced after her, not wanting to be the last one. he, somehow, managed to overtake kate and not be the last one back.

 

they had just done that. he had just done that. sure, they didn’t win any medals. they didn’t walk away spotless. they didn’t even get the thing they came for.

 

but people were safe. and maybe- for now- that was enough.

 

behind them, the sirens had quieted. the lights still flickered. the pavement was cracked, smoke curling gently into the air. someone, out of sight, called after them:

 

“who are you guys?”

 

for a moment, no one answered. but then kamala stepped back into the center of the portal, looking at the scene from the safety of his garden.

 

billy could see her smile.

 

“don’t,” kate threatened quietly, and billy immediately knew what was about to happen.

 

“we’re the young avengers,” she declared, right before america closed the portal.

 

“why?! why would you do that, why?”

 

“i thought we agreed on the champions!”

 

“KAMALA WE TALKED ABOUT THIS-”

 

“no, no, nope, i quit, thats it, no more ironheart, im done-”

 

billy groaned. kamala had sealed their fate.

Notes:

everybody thank billy "the lynchpin" kaplan aka wiccan for his service. these idiots would be so toast without him.

Chapter 11: ma, we’re on the telly!

Summary:

the aftermath of their first ever mission; they’re all over the tv. the team is proud of themselves and each other, until they start getting some calls…

Notes:

the delay in posting this chapter was brought to you by my internet shitting the bed and also the sudden locating of and my acquisition of the heirloom family swords that are ~300 years old. they might be plated in gold and may or may not have blood on them? i'm yet to clean them, so. these are the pros of having a long military family lineage. we're looking for my great grandpa's lost gun, now. i think it may be a bayonet.

kamala had been staring at the tv while everyone had been getting out of their gear, cleaning off the grit and grime from their impromptu battle.

 

she’d snatched the remote and surfed around until she found it.

 

the news. 

 

unlike her vigilantism in jersey city, which had been refined to local channels, their save of that city stretch in boston had made headlines.

 

across the state lines.

 

kamala’s smile only grew as she watched the suited tv anchor talk about them. 

 

“emerging from the smoke like something out of a comic book, a group of super-powered teens, dubbed the ‘young avengers-”

 

“we’re on the news!” she cried, tossing a look over her shoulder at cassie and america, who had made it back first. america grinned, and cassie looked. a little conflicted.

 

kamala flicked to the next news channel, then the next one, and the next, and every single one were showcasing photos of them or clips of them.

 

“yes! oh my god. we’re on every channel!” she gushed, cassie making her way over to the couch, america moving and settling on the ottoman instead. kamala grinned from where she was perched on the edge of her seat in the armchair.

 

kate walked into the room, a dish towel slung over her shoulder. she’d taken her tac gear off and put her equipment away, so she was just inn a tank and her suit pants now. she made a face.

 

 “can we change it to any other channel?” she asked, cringing at herself in the shaky video footage. “i look constipated.” she remarked, when a zoom-in on her showed her in-the-moment concentrated face.

 

cassie made a noise that was dismissive.

 

“look at us! we don’t even look that stupid!” she commented, billy returning from the kitchen with a china tea seat with cups enough for all of them. he was fancy with it, too; he brought a little container of sugar cubes with those sugar-tongues and a small pitcher of milk. 

 

the news anchor was talking about their heroism, putting up close-ups of their faces from the footage onlookers gathered. 

 

“speak for yourself,” kate scoffed, face scrunching when she saw the (admittedly poor) close-up of her. “i’m ninety percent sweat and dust.”

 

“you really called us the ‘young avengers,’?” america demanded, taking the teacup from billy when he passed one her way. kamala had a moment to herself where she felt a little guilty, maybe even a little sheepish, but it was sort of hard to take america seriously when she was pouting at her over a dainty, pink-floral teacup.

 

also kamala had never really considered any of the other names they’d floated around. she knew, deep down, she was always going to call them the young avengers.

 

she said as much.

 

“i mean... it was the og idea!” she tried to defend herself, watching as their tired little group all gave her varying strengths of withering glares from behind their cups of steaming hot tea. 

 

riri, always the last to join them, slowly made her way over, reluctantly taking up the final spot on the sofa as she eyed the tv.

 

“you named us against the vote!” kate argued, though she seemed to be more focused on the news than their argument.

 

kamala just smiled, taking a sip of her own tea, before replying.

 

“branding matters.” she said, words solid and sure.

 

billy just gave her a deadpan look, putting his teacup down.

 

“we literally almost died.” he told her flatly.

 

kamala’s smile dropped. she thought the mission had gone well, that, sure, they may be a little bruised ans sore, but it was a resounding success. that no one had gotten seriously hurt.

 

she could feel the colour draining from her face.

 

“we did?” she swallowed, eyes flickering from teammate to teammate. did someone get mortally wounded and not tell me? we need to make a rule against that, oh no-

 

“i almost died,” billy corrected after seeing the abundant panic on her face. kamala was about to ask a dozen questions, like how, why, when, were you hit, did you use too much magic, are you cursed to never be able to use your magic to its fullest potential and got a harsh remind of it and also are you alright? do you need anything?

 

cassie beat her to the punchline.

 

“but we looked good doing it.” she smirked, watching as she smacked two drones out of the sky on the tv.

 

“no we didn’t.” america deadpanned right back at her, scrunching her nose as the cameras caught and showed as a truly ridiculous shower of dust landed upon her. she winced.

 

“-sources speculate the CIA may be monitoring the team’s activity, though no official statement has been made-”

 

maybe i should have told fury or someone i was doing this, she thought to herself as the tv anchor started to talk about the literal CIA starting tabs on them.

 

on the coffee table, where rir had put her phone (she never went anywhere without it, kamala was realising), kamala heard the tell-tale song of a ringtone chime out across the room.

 

riri’s phone buzzed, vibrating a little across the coffee table.

 

riri frowned, looking a little distressed.  “...uh oh.” she muttered, reaching over and picking her phone up. she stared at her phone screen, not picking up.

 

“please tell me that’s princess shuri congratulating us.” billy remarked, and kamala didn’t have the bandwidth to have her fangirling freak-out over riri knows the princess of wakanda? and didn't tell me? and how does billy know that?

 

“it’s my mom.” she answered, still staring at her phone as though it may bite her.

 

the ringing stopped. riri had’nt picked up.

 

two seconds later, it started ringing again.

 

“oof.” cassie said, wincing a little for the genius. 

 

riri waited for the phone to stop ringing. it immediately started again.

 

riri stood up and sighed.  “pray for me.” she remarked, walking out of the room and finally answering the call.

 

“i don’t know her mom, and even i’m scared of her.” kate whispered to the rest of them, very hush-hush, as though riri’s mother would be able to sense them talking about her. 

 

“at least you’re getting calls.” america said, a little bitter.

 

everything in the room came to a sudden, awkward standstill as they fell into silence.

 

they could hear riri's mother faintly across the rooms yelling at her daughter.

 

no one said anything. no one knew what to say. america had told them all what happened to her parents when she was younger, before filling them in on what she and dr strange went through across the multiverse. 

 

they’d all shared their backstories, very impromptu one day when they were just having a hang-out. kamala told them all about her nani and the bangle- plus her team-up with carol and monica and her literal space travel, billy told them all about technichally being a different person and his origins within wanda’s hex over westview, kate told them all about her christmas shenanigans with the first hawkeye and the tracksuit gang, cassie told them all about her trip into the quantum realm and riri had told them about being expelled from MIT and her troubles with a criminal group in chicago under this dude named parker. 

 

it hadn’t exactly been trauma dumping but it wasn’t… not trauma dumping.

 

kamala swallowed thickly in the silence. 

 

“...sorry.” she managed to say, voice sticky and odd in the otherwise quiet room.

 

america shrugged. “don’t be.” she said, fairly nonchalant.  “just means no one’s yelling at me.” kamala didn’t bring up the prospect of strange yelling at her, but kamala didn’t know if masters of the mystic arts (who weren’t sixteen) watched the news, so…

 

“we actually did something good.” cassie said, possibly an attempt to change the conversation, maybe just a deceleration to herself. 

 

whatever it was, kamala smiled, because they had. it wasn’t like jersey, which had been mostly an accident, or being in space, which had definitely been an accident and also resulted in a lot of deaths (which, speaking of, she really needed to visit new asguard to check on the skrulls, and also thank king valkyrie). this had been planned, from top to bottom (except for the part where it went wrong) and no one had died. they had done a job and they had done it to perfection.

 

even their impromptu rescue had gone just about as well as it could have, considering the circumstances.

 

america scoffed, rolling her eyes as the news as they went through some comments from the youtube videos which, oh yeah, had also gone viral.

 

“and now the entire internet knows about it.” she huffed, cringing at the comment about their brave new heroes who shone above all others. yikes. 

 

kate dismissed america’s comment with a shrug. “so does every intelligence agency ever.” she said, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

 

maybe i didn’t think this through. okay i definitely didn’t think this through.

 

like. at all. 

 

despite that lovely, unnerving piece of information, kamala… well, she didn’t much care.

 

they did good. they saved lives.

 

kamala smiled. “we’re really doing this.” she said to herself, despite the fact she was very much ignoring her own phone - it was in her backpack which was in the entrance hall, and it was most definitely because she didn’t want to pick up any calls from anyone she knew right now.

 

let her have this moment of victory, world.

 

cassie, who had fished her phone from the pocket of her sweatpants, held up her own device and waved it around a little bit. “i have eight missed calls and a text that just says ‘cassie. now.’ from my dad. so that’s fun.” she told them all. cassie was one of those freaks who had her phone on silent always. 

 

it was kind of scary.

 

billy snorted a short laugh. kamala had thought he’d fallen asleep at some point, what with him having his eyes closed and all. “did he use a period? that’s the worst dad-punctuation.”

 

cassie nodded. “he uses it when he’s really mad. or when he’s pretending he’s not mad, which is somehow worse.”

 

kamala had turned her attention back to the tv, satisfied to let her teammates chatter about their missed calls and bajillion texts among themselves.

 

the tv anchor had moved to survivor testimonials, and there were a lot of them. they all had something nice to say, which was a pleasant surprise. there was even this older woman who said she’d been a survivor of the alien invasion in new york back in 2012, and that she moved to boston to avoid all of the drama that had started to come with being a new york local.

 

she’d lost her partner that day. she reported, with heavy praise, that their team had saved her single child, a son. 

 

he had been one of the civilians kamala had protected with her powers. 

 

a warm feeling spread inside her gut, tingling through her body and settling right between her ribs, inside her heart.

 

they had done something good. 

 

the news then switched back to a video of their save, and kamala beamed.

 

“look!” she cheered excitedly, pointing at billy’s tv, “look, that’s the slow-mo part where i made a shield and got those civilians out! and yelled it was time to be heroes!” she recounted, as the news showed the surprisingly un-shaky footage of the scene.

 

she could feel the others smiling, the conversation going quiet. 

 

“you look so cool there,” billy complimented as they all watched past-kamala form her shield, and lo and behold, among the frightened group of civilians was a young boy, maybe 10 or 11, who looked strikingly similar to the woman who had given her testimonial not moments before.

 

their moments of watching the tv were interrupted by riri returning to the room, phone in hand and still in tact, so the call couldn't have gone that bad. riri only looked a little bewildered and slightly uncomfortable, and not drop-dead terrified. yay!

 

“okay. update:” she began. they all turned to look at her as she moved back into the room and sat down again. “my mom is furious, but also kind of proud? it’s confusing. she made me promise to eat more protein.” she reported.

 

kate sighed, melodramatically.

 

“i’d kill for someone to call and yell at me in a nurturing way.” she told them all, ignoring the buzzing of texts she what's constantly receiving from someone called ‘bird momma’.

 

kamala turned to billy. “what about you, billy? anyone blowing up your phone?” she asked.

 

billy shrugged and answered far too quickly for his nonchalance to be real. 

 

“nope. i… turned mine off.”

 

“don’t you have a helicopter boyfriend?” america asked, and kamala recalled the time billy had to ward them all to shut up so he could answer a very long-winded call from said boyfriend when he wasn't at his house house when his boyfriend stopped by for a surprise hang-out. 

 

kate spoke over billy’s shoddy attempt at an excuse.

 

“okay, but like-real talk. that could’ve gone a lot worse.” she told them, leaning back on the couch. kamala reached for the remote to mute the tv, leaving it on, before picking up her teacup and taking another sip. 

 

“exactly!” she chirped, taking the opportunity for a complimentary pep-talk.

 

“we did the thing! people were saved! we’re on the news!” she cheered. okay, maybe her speech skills needed work. she was no captain america - yet.

 

america eyed her. “we’re on a list.”

 

riri scoffed before correcting: “probably several.”

 

abort, abort, abort-

 

“but we won, right?” cassie asked, quieting the team with her words.

 

yeah. they had won. in a big way.

 

billy smiled, putting his teacup back on the tray before leaning back once more. “yeah.” he agreed softly. “we did.”

 

the small, quiet moment of victory among them was spoiled by cassie, whose face dropped as she, presumably, read a text from someone.

 

“oh my god, you guys, we’re on FOX NEWS-” she told them, voice pitching up.

 

kamala’s smile dropped.

 

“oh no.”

Notes:

this is the end of what i have in my notes as 'part one' and we will be moving on to part 2 next chapter, where we will enter... dun dun DUN!! the THUNDERBOLTS!! GASP!!

Chapter 12: legal issues

Summary:

it seems like none of the new avengers want to be avengers. well, the real new avengers, not any of those former-assassin hicks.

Notes:

wooo!! pov shift!! yay!! lets see what good old uncle sam is up too... hehe.. i think i'm hilarious

sam remembered a time where his life was easier. simpler. it had never truly been easy or simple, but it had most certainly been less than whatever it was now. 

 

this was not a call sam wanted to have. but another groupe of rogue super-powered individuals had claimed the avengers name for themselves, which meant he had to deal with it. and if he had to deal with it, so would everyone else. 

 

the call connected with a soft chime that didn’t feel nearly loud enough for the kind of headache he knew was coming. he exhaled through his nose, settling into his chair like a man preparing for impact.

 

“alright,” he said, the weight of the starting migraine already pressing against his temples. “we’ve all seen the footage.” he started with as calls connected all over the world, little pictures of his team popping up on his screen. 

 

joaquin’s voice came in from just off-camera, to his right, rapid-fire over the clack of keys. “six unidentified enhanced minors. a rescue on the outskirts of boston. labelled themselves the young avengers on public record.” he recounted, scooting his chair into the frame as he spoke, shuffling on the wheeled chair to be next to sam’s. 

 

sam didn’t even flinch. he’d grown used to his antics. and bizarre, insane news like this.

 

surprisingly, it was scott lang who piped up, way too cheerful for someone delivering what sam was pretty sure was going to be the worst part of his day. 

 

“uh, not entirely unidentified.”

 

sam glanced sideways at the screen. “you know them?” he asked, even though he really, really did not want to.

 

the situation was already so complicated. 

 

scott nodded, like this was just another tuesday. “well, the one using pym tech is my daughter, cassie, so.”

 

sam blinked. 

 

the new avengers - the superpowered, borderline baby gods running around the united states were lang’s daughter and her friends?

 

what? just- just what?

 

“you’re-” he managed, but all other words got stuck.

 

what the hell kind of people lived in san francisco? and what the hell were they doing in boston? why?

 

“great,” rhodey interrupted, arms crossed and tone like steel. “so we’re just letting kids rebrand the initiative now?”

 

sam dragged a hand down his face, trying very hard not to lose his cool. not in front of the team that already didn’t want to respect him or his time.

 

“apparently.” he deadpanned.

 

sam watched as the various people in the call digested the information. rhodey was glaring at scott, shaun was trying to look interested in the conversation but was on mute and eating chips. ruth was god knows where with the green screen background on, but her camera was shaking like nothing else and the background flickered every now and again. 

 

sam was pretty sure she was in an active fight.

 

shuri just didn’t want to be there, and it showed.

 

she leaned back in her chair, barely glancing up from whatever far more important thing she was doing on her other screen. “is this actually worth my time, or did you call me for color commentary?”

 

sam opened his mouth, but scott beat him to the words.

 

scott grinned. “kids are gonna do what kids are gonna do. teenage rebellion and all that.” he dismissed, which was not the right thing to say at all. those were not the words sam had wanted to say.

 

his jaw ticked. there it was- that casual, parental shrug that might’ve worked if they weren’t dealing with live tech scavenged from an alien invasion. he sat forward in his chair a little, voice low and even.

 

“teenage rebellion is sneaking out past curfew,” he said. “this was chitauri hardware loose on the street. explosions. violence. death. this isn’t rebellion, it’s a liability with a fan club.”

 

joaquin, ever the voice of reason, added quietly from beside him- “no civilian casualties. no major injuries. from what we’ve pulled, it was... coordinated. clean.”

 

“too clean,” rhodey muttered, and now that was a wonderful new brainworm sam didn’t want to deal with. had these wreckless, volatile and powerful kids manufactured a scenario to prop themselves up as heroes?

 

sam didn’t want to think about that. his faith in humanity at this point wasn’t full enough for him to completely dismiss the notion. 

 

“they’re lucky,” he decided on finally. “and talented. and kids. which means we’ve got a choice to make. we either step in, or we wait for someone else to do it for us.” he told them all, and in the silence that followed, sam knew that they knew he was right.

 

he looked at the screen. no argued, not yet.

 

rhodey leaned back in his chair, arms crossed like he’d been holding the position for a century. 

 

“feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen,” he said flatly.

 

on another screen, shaun was sitting at a kitchen table, one he’d assumed was katie’s since she and possibly her mother were in the kitchen behind him doing dishes.

 

shaun was halfway through a bag of chips, leaning forward to unmute himself on his device to talk to them.

 

“to be fair,” he said between chews, then swallowing. “they did stop a drone attack. that’s gotta count for something, right?” he asked like an optimist who’d not been in the business before, or at least hadn’t been in the business very long.

 

“and they looked cool doing it!” katie’s voice floated in from the kitchen. sam heard what he thought was swearing in mandarin, but shaun muted himself again before he could bother deciphering much of it. 

 

sam decided to ignore both. “no IDs confirmed, aside from lang,” he said, scanning the file joaquin had thrown up on their shared server. 

 

“no training. no clearance. one of them might be stark-tech adjacent, another’s definitely throwing around chaos magic. there’s also one with knowledge of the mystic arts, so that’s fun. anyone want to explain how that happened?” he asked the group.

 

no one answered his question. sam sighed.

 

shuri didn’t look up from her tablet, and her expression was neutral, just this side of looking bored. “the girl with the scarf,” she said, swiping lazily. “she’s calling herself ms marvel. from jersey city. her energy signature’s kree-adjacent. possibly temporal displacement. unstable, though.” she informed them all.

 

shuri had been a hard sell to join his team, especially with her joint rule with m’baku, who was certainly much less than a fan of the idea, but the princess had been firm on the notion of having allies. 

 

sam was just glad to have her on his side at all. her aide as black panther (which had very much been a confounding blow when they found out about that) was infinitely important, but so was the tech at her hands, and her genius. wakandan search engines were quite literally built different. built better.

 

“great,” rhodey muttered.

 

joaquin spoke up from beside sam, fingers still flying across the keyboard. “the stark-tech one’s going by ‘ironheart,’ and we’re compiling facial recognition matches now.” he said, sending files over to sam’s second monitor when he could. sam sighed for what felt like the thousandth time this call.

 

“we’ve got ms marvel, no civilian ID. ironheart, still running. no confirmed IDs on either of the magic-users. oh- hang on. the archer’s kate bishop, of bishop security. and, uh… cassie lang.” he finished awkwardly, sending a juvenile record his way for the aforementioned lang. 

 

scott had failed to mention his daughter had been arrested. twice.

 

the man raised his hand. “i tried to call her after i saw the news. no dice. she’s absolutely grounded, though. i called her mom.” he tried to assure them. 

 

rhodey voiced sam’s scepticism for him.

 

“does grounding still work when your kid can grow fifty feet tall?” he arched a brow, looking at the man sitting next to him like he was some sort of headless chicken, or an idiot in the landing zone.

 

“it’s not fifty, it’s more like twenty-” scott tried to counter, and sam could feel a long ramble about logistics and physical barriers and limes coming, so sam decided on cutting that talk off before it could begin.

 

“not the point,” he cut in.

 

before he could steer the conversation, someone else did it for him.

 

a new voice crackled in; ruth’s camera was crooked and the background was still green screened. her voice was echoing, like she was calling in from a stairwell or a cavern. 

 

“so what?” she said, dry and unimpressed. “we drag them in? make it official?”

 

“we don’t know who or what ‘them’ is yet,” sam said, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “and i’m not dragging anyone. i’m just saying maybe we figure out who we’re dealing with before we get more headlines.”

 

shaun gave a lopsided shrug from katie’s kitchen, voice dry when he unmuted himself.  “oh, that ship’s already sailed.” he told them all, with a small wince.

 

sam was not even given the opportunity to ask why.

 

“they’ve got a fan cam edit with a million views!” katie said brightly, popping over to be in the camera’s frame just to say that.

 

sam didn’t want to know how she knew that.

 

shaun sighed, like he regretted knowing too. “one of them yelled ‘time to be heroes’ like it was their battle cry and dramatically declared themselves the young avengers before closing a portal.”

 

rhodey didn’t even blink. “then they’re idiots and liabilities.”

 

shuri, still scrolling through something on her tablet, didn’t look up. “do we even want to intervene?”

 

joaquin glanced at sam, then back to the group. “sam thinks we need to reach out. not militarize. not threaten. just… contact.”

 

sam nodded, voice steady. “i’m not repeating the sokovia accords with literal teenagers. we keep it simple. we talk. we listen. we figure out what they want, and we make sure no one else gets hurt.” he said, laying it all out. the sokovia accords had been, to put it nicely, a huge fucking mess, and were still a pain in his ass to this day. it had been pretty daft when it was introduced, and as years passed, new legislature had just made it even worse and now everything in those damn accords was profoundly stupid and much too invasive for any sane inter-continental government database.

 

sam did not want to talk about it. he actively lost brain cells the more things got added to the accords.

 

rhodey spoke after the few moments of quiet, voice soft, but unmistakably pointed. “you sound like steve.”

 

sam let out a breath and gave him a tight smile. “yeah, well. someone’s gotta.” he managed. sam was- well, he was still getting used to… to it. 

 

he was probably never going to feel normal about it. nothing about it was normal.

 

a beat of silence followed, heavy but not hostile.

 

finally, rhodey gave in with a sigh. “fine. you call them. keep it soft. but if they screw this up-”

 

“then we step in,” sam cut in smoothly. “together.”

 

shuri was already powering down her tablet. “lovely,” she said dryly. “call me when they build a base out of scrap metal and teenage angst.”

 

and her icon went dark, before disappearing entirely. ruth followed half a second later. katie had muted their camera again and shaun raised a single chip in a lazy salute before the camera feed blinked off. scott looked vaguely proud, like he thought this was all some kind of bonding exercise. rhodey was still scowling like someone had personally ruined his day and also his week and also his month and also, quite possibly, the rest of his year. 

 

and just like that, the call was over, and it was just him alone with his thoughts. that is, until joaquin’s voice broke the quiet.

 

“you really think they’ll listen?” he asked, eying sam like he’d grown a second head. 

 

sam leaned back in his chair, staring past the monitor, his voice barely above a murmur.

 

“nope.”

 

considering how stubborn he’d been not so long ago, a group of teenagers would, undoubtedly, be more stubborn. and probably meaner about it, too. sam knew the sting of a teenager. 

 

he’d been one himself, after all.

Notes:

just for clarity's sake: i have. like. completely made up the team for these people lmao. i have made the new avengers rhodey (war machine), sam (cap. america), joaquin (falcon), scott (antman), shaun (shang-chi), shuri (black panther), ruth (former widow, the one from brave new world), and also dr strange but he only shows up once in a blue moon lmao. does the team make sense? no lol. i dont fully care though so EH

Chapter 13: sleeping issues

Summary:

a look into life in the watchtower, from the perspective of someone who haunts it more than lives in it.

Notes:

for a more in-depth look at my thoughts/the full author's note, read the tumblr post: https://www.tumblr.com/pastelwoolfie/790233385975103488/longer-full-authors-note-for-chapter-13-this?source=share

this chapter may differ wildly from past chapters, and that is because ava starr is a very special character instance for me. i have deeply loved her character since ant man and the wasp. which is, fun fact, actually around the time i really got into the mcu as more than a casual viewer! i have a lot of thoughts/feelings on her character that may be completely different from the perceived norm, so please just go along with me here :)

 

living in the watchtower sucked. good god, it was miserable and a pain and she was content.

 

ava had been worried they’d ask too many questions, they’d pry, they’d dig and dig and dig until they knew every little thing about her so that they could satisfy their own paranoias and fears and live their domestic little hero regime lives together and she would just have to deal.

 

ava had always been a wildcard. now, she was a wildcard on a team of wildcards.

 

most of the team had the tact not to comment on her… hiccups, save walker but when was that a surprise?

 

there were things about herself that she hated but could never get rid of, ever control. and it wasn’t just her molecular instability. it was the way she watched, she calculated, she listened, she came back.

 

because ava always came back. she’d be dead the day she didn’t.

 

ava craved something like normalcy so much it hurt, hurt like her body, like her heart, her mind. she craved the way alexei and yelena knew about eachother, spun stories of her childhood and her upbringing; she craved the way that in a fucked up, twisted sense, bucky and walker understood eachother and what it meant to serve; she craved the way bob could go out onto the streets as bob and have no-one bat an eye.

 

ava was a secret that had been spilled, a problem that breached containment. the world knew what she was, but no one really ever knew who she was.

 

ava craved to be known like that. to be known at all, and not just a ghost. the ghost.

 

none of that could really be important, though, not when she was a part of such a mismatched team. sure they were (sort of) the new avengers, and they were all important in that sense, but ava was… ava was sterile. cut-and-dry. 

 

walker was captian america, the captain america, and then he wasn’t. he was a husband and then a father and then he was neither. he’d lost his best and closest friend.

 

yelena was a widow. she was a child assassin raised among others of her type, she was the black widow’s sister, she’d blipped for 5 years and lost the thing that had mattered to her. her family. it took the world nearly ending again for her to get her father back.

 

bucky was the winter soldier. the entire world knew about him, his history, his existence and his losses.

 

alexei was the red guardian. sure, maybe six people total knew who or what that was, but he was also a father. he had a wife maybe, but he most certainly had his daughters. well, daughter now, because natasha was dead, but still.

 

bob had the void.

 

ava was… ava was just no-one. she had no friends, no loved ones, she could’nt remember anything from her life before the accident, nothing except it was all her fault. the connections she’d made were lost during the blip, and they never reached out to her after the fact.

 

the loss stung, and it stung somewhere worse the fact that it wasn’t that bad. the rest of the team had, by far, had it worse. she needed to stop pitying herself so much.

 

today was a bad day, she’d decided. her usual haunts had been particularly boring that night, and everything hurt just a little bit more than she was able to ignore. 

 

ava kept the strangest hours in the tower. she rested easier during the daytime than she did the night, so she had adjusted her hours accordingly to reflect that. 

 

lights on, curtains open, windows cracked just a smidge and chamber on full blast. that’s how she got her best rest. something about the way the sun hit her body, hit her, made it easier. the slight warmth it brought, the subconscious ideal of being seen by something that could make her feel. 

 

valentina had asked several questions. ava hated how she knew the most about her condition, but ava had needed to tell her more so she could get the supplies she needed for her chamber and be best… situated. 

 

so ava slept and rested during the day and was awake at night. that’s how it ended up being.

 

sometimes she’d bump into the night owls- into walker and bob, mostly, but she didn’t like to talk to walker, so it was usually just bob who she talked to. and yelena when she woke in the morning, right before ava went off to rest. 

 

ava would try her best to cook, to teach herself normalcy. she had a lot of learning to catch up on, and it didn’t help that the world wasn’t so kind to under-educated adult women. she’d watched too many of those kid’s helper educational videos to count, far too many for her to be able to comfortably admit. things like etiquette, how to tie her own laces, how to boil pasta and cook basic meals, what a basic meal even was.

 

those things had always been handed to her, or provided for her, and during the blip, she’d done what she needed only to survive. so had the rest of the world. 

 

she had been alone. she had no shame with herself, but around other people, it burned. 

 

so her haunts mainly included her learning how to do normal person things, and catching up on everything she missed growing up. trivia, movies, people, politics unrelated to the jobs she worked. 

 

she had started journaling not so long ago. going out in a hoodie and non-revealing clothes to buy her own wardrobe. try things. go places.

 

now, ava was in her room, her tank, trying to fall asleep as the sun warmed her skin and her body vibrated with something uncomfortable. she never knew why, but for whatever reason, sometimes it would get worse, and sometimes, it would get better. 

 

ava had always dealt with it, but it never really got any easier. it just got… more normal. more practiced. 

 

today, though, for whatever reason, she couldn’t sleep. she’d downed her special-prescribed, valentina-not-approved-but-what-could-she-do-about-it pain meds and then she’d tossed and she’d turned until she just decided fuck it and turned he chamber off. she turned down the lights, grabbed her phone and threw some sweatpants and a hoodie on in place of her sleep-wear and headed out. 

 

she made sure to take all the back stairwells and exits she knew to avoid the others. 

 

she was out on the new york streets before the clock hit noon, and she was making her way over to the calmest outside place she knew. 

 

the second-nearest dog park. a small, kind of sad patch of grass in the middle of th bustling city with a chain-link fence and exactly two benches and one tree. ava liked to sit against the tree when her body wasn’t putting up with the world. she never really knew why, something about the spot just drew her to it and it’d been like this ever since.

 

sometimes a friendly dog would approach her and she’d get to pet it. ava had always liked animals. she was debating weather valentina would put up with her getting a cat or something. she didn’t want to push it. besides, a cat would be leverage, and ava knew all too well how leverage could hurt.

 

ava sat under that tree, scrolling on her phone for what felt like hours. time always seemed to pass slower when her molecular unalignment was more unstable. another sick, cosmic joke from the world. 

 

ava didn’t understand all those social media's yelena and walker were always on, especially whatever the hell alexei did, and she didn’t care much to understand it. it never seemed overly important to her.

 

she did, however, have about eight different news apps and innate data on her phone, as well as a server on her personal computer she kept locked away in her room that swept the internet for any and all remaining SHIELD files from after the HYDRA uprising. no one needed to know about that one, though. 

 

it was through the absurd number of news feeds she had that she learned about the chitauri-based drone attack on downtown boston. the people and cause behind it were still unknown, and ava watched live as the news was updated.

 

she watched live as all her sources reported on a team of unknown enhanced saved the day, and watched as team of unknown enhanced changed to unknown enhanced children to young super-heroes to young avengers. 

 

and it wasn’t the media calling them that, it was the kids themselves. 

 

ava hopped onto another news feed just to double-check. because another group trying to use the avengers name meant PR trouble for them, which meant valentina trouble for them, which meant they almost always ended up going on some stupid, pointless mission that just made them look even worse.

 

ava’s head knocked back against the tree, managing not to phase through it by some miracle. it would probably be best to be back at the tower for when missile valentina hit the team. 

 

with a grunt, she pushed herself to her feet, not even bothering to say hi to the nice pup who’d found its way over to her before taking off on a jog back to the tower. 

 

the news worked fast, but valentina often worked faster, so she’d really have to book it to beat her there. 

Notes:

sorry for the lack of formatting this chapter. it didn't convert properly when i exported the text to ao3 and i am not doing it again!! lol maybe i'll fix it some other time :)

for the sake of clarity: no, the team does not know her phasing causes her pain. no, they do not know she sleeps in a glorified fish tank. yes, i write 'rest' instead of 'sleep' for ava because girl is chronically sleep deprived. yes, all this information will become relevant eventually. :)

please see my full authors note for more detail on why i portray her the way i do <3

Chapter 14: broadcasting issues

Summary:

life in the watchtower isn’t boring, per say, but recently it has been a little… uneventful. that is until a specific tv broadcast plays on their common room tv…

Notes:

yelena makes me smile very much. the black widow movie has been one of mine and my dad's favorite films for a long time! we love watching marvel movies together and we actually managed to watch the black widow movie as a full family, even though we're the only two who really like it.

random infodump lol. enjoy the chapter <3

yelena always has been and always will be an early riser. 

 

it is not something one could get away with not being when a part of the red room. 5am start sharp, meaning you were out of bed, dressed and ready for it. bedtime was always 11, if you weren’t needed for extra training or missions or tests. rest came scarcely on missions- really only if you were with another widow and could take shifts or if you were on a long job.

 

yelena would always rise right before the sun. the ritual was in her blood.

 

yelena was an early riser. she was not, however, the earliest riser in the watchtower. 

 

that medal went to none other than ava starr, aka the ghost, aka yelena has not once seen her sleep in all 8 months of knowing her. 

 

“do you sleep?” walker had asked.

 

“i’ll sleep when i’m dead,” she’d replied. alexei had then gone off on a 20 minute tangent about how that had been his line and he was so proud of his team of little chick-lings (his words, not hers) was growing and adapting. 

 

yelena rose before the sun. walker woke as the clocks chimed noon. bucky slept odd hours but good god did he sleep like the dead. alexei slept seemingly all hours of the day. bob slept from 4am to 2pm. ava didn’t sleep

 

she was always nursing a cup of something when yelena made it into the kitchen. chocolate milk, tea, coffee, juice, always something. whatever they had in the fridge.

 

she’d always pass a cup over to yelena.

 

“what is our menu today?” she would ask. 

 

“coffee,” ava would say. “milk,”, “fruit punch.”

 

on that particular morning, yelena sat across from ava and sipped some rather tasteless hot coco, with far too little coco powder to be considered anything other than vaguely flavoured milk. 

 

ava drank it like it was the greatest thing in the world, though, and yelena wasn’t here to spoil anyone’s fun. well, ava’s fun, anyways.

 

they drank in silence. the world outside was still asleep; the lights above them buzzed faintly, a soft glow catching the steam rising from their cups.

after what was maybe half an hour of quiet company, ava stood, brushing nonexistent crumbs off her jacket. “i’m heading out.”

 

yelena raised a brow. “heading where?” she asked.

 

ava paused just long enough to be irritating. 

 

“out.”

 

“…okay.” yelena replied, eyeing the other woman as she left the kitchen.

 

and just like that, she was gone, silent as ever, slipping out like a shadow.

 

yelena made toast. margarine, no butter, because someone (walker) had used it all for ‘experimental scrambled eggs’ three days ago and refused to acknowledge it.

 

at 7am, a good two hours after she had woken up, bucky wandered in, groggy and vaguely disgruntled, his vibranium limb still unattached. he scratched his shoulder and grunted something that might’ve been “morning.”

 

“you’re up early,” yelena said, tone somewhere between conversational and critiquing.

 

he shrugged. “i was hungry.”

 

he started rummaging through the cupboards.

 

“you making pancakes?” yelena asked. 

 

bucky was the only one of them who could cook unsupervised. walker made anything he touched inedible, ava didn’t seem to know what food groups were, bob could only prepare frozen microwave meals, alexei could make a few slavic dishes but only when supervised by bucky and yelena’s culinary expertise was limited to simpler dishes like mac n cheese and burgers. 

 

when bucky cooked, it went relatively well. he could make all different sorts of cuisines, and would often try new recipes. yelena thinks he finds cooking soothing. bucky did have a tendency, however, to make old war-time meals when certain foods were… rationed. 

 

no one fully trusted a bucky desert. not because they were bad, they were arguably really good, but even yelena was slightly afraid of the sweet treats. especially after the mayonnaise incident.

 

“you want some?”

 

she looked down at her toast, before shrugging. “i’m good.”

 

and with that, bucky started cracking eggs into a bowl.

 

bucky had made batter and started flipping pancakes like it was his profession, and had started procuring a truly unfathomable stack of the things for the rest of the team. yelena had only started getting used to it, but a team of super-soldiers and high-maintenance heroes needed to eat a lot. their monthly grocery bill was almost as large as their armoury bill, according to valentina. 

 

at around 9:30, alexei thundered in like a bear waking from hibernation. he kissed the top of her head, to her chagrin, then dumped half the sugar jar into the mug of coffee he quickly whipped up for himself.

 

“ahhh,” he sighed. “the sweet taste of retirement.”

 

yelena didn’t even look up. “you are not retired.” she deadpanned, having started scrolling on her phone.

 

alexei just chuckled at her, like she was a small, small girl.

 

at 11, john walker stumbled in, bleary-eyed, socks mismatched, hair sticking up like a tree had tried to fight him and he had very much lost.

 

he stopped short in the doorway, blinking a few times. his eyes drifted down to the trash can. he blinked a few more times. “why is our microwave in the trash again?” he asked.

 

bucky didn’t miss a beat. “you don’t want to know.”

 

“…cool.” john muttered, heading over to the kitchen table and grunting in lieu of thanking bucky when he slipped a fat stack of pancakes his way.

 

supersoldiers gotta eat, she thought to herself as walker began to eat the pancakes before him. he was a surprisingly dainty and neat eater. that ex-wife of his had taught him well.

 

bob emerged around 1pm, wrapped in a blanket like a cultist, clutching an unopened energy drink. yelena had migrated to the couch in their shared living space by that point, allowing the three enhanced members of their team to eat every single pancake bucky had made and then manage to put the dishes away without breaking anything. for once. 

 

“what day is it?” bob asked, practically tripping over the ends of his weighted blanket onto the armchair next to the sofa.

 

yelena blinked. “thursday,” she told him.

 

bob just nodded, though yelena didn’t think the action meant very much at all. “huh.” he replied, very informatively.

 

yelena had been scrolling on her phone for a little while, when just after 2, the elevator door to the rest of the tower hissed open and yelena turned around to see ava- windswept, slightly out of breath, her braid half undone, and a leaf stuck to the shoulder of her hoodie.

 

“has anyone seen the news?” she asked, breathless.

 

bucky didn’t even turn around from the sink. “oh no.” she heard him mutter.

 

john groaned. “are aliens attacking another city?” he bemoaned, making his way from the kitchen to the living area and standing behind the couch, next to where ava had planted herself.

 

“not...  exactly.” ava didn’t wait for more questions-  making a beeline for the remote on the coffee table, turning the tv on, and cranked the volume.

 

the news was playing a choppy, shaky video. overhead drone footage, low angles, sparkly costuming, some kid yelling something about “being heroes.” 

 

yelena’s attention caught on the freeze-frame of an archer mid-spin.

 

her heart dropped. no. no. no, say it cannot be so.

 

john winced. “well, there goes my hope of a headache-less day…” he groaned, rubbing a hand over his eyes. 

 

bob squinted from within his blanketed cocoon. “are- are those kids?” he asked, already pulling out his phone, thumbs flying.

 

yelena leaned forward, narrowing her eyes.

 

dammit, kate bishop, what the hell are you doing?

 

“depends on your definition of ‘kids’ ...” she answered him, though she was pretty sure no one had heard her words. the tv’s headline then shifted from “young heroes save downtown boston” to “young avengers: the future of safety?” and yelena groaned.

 

what the hell was kate bishop thinking? scratch that, she obviously wasn’t. 

 

alexei leaned in as well, patting yelena on the shoulder as he spoke. “they are also new avengers? mr america must not be very happy with them, eh?”

 

bucky sighed, having at last put his vibration arm back on. “his name is sam.” he corrected tiredly.

 

alexei waved him off. “he is pain.”

 

yelena tilted her head, voice low. “who are these people, kate bishop?” she asked herself, squinting. sure, kate had been happy to work with clint, but that had been a whole you’re my hero situation. yelena thought kate had been happy to do her solo vigilante-ism in new york. where was this whole team thing coming from?

 

yelena would actually like that last note struck from the record. she’d never have guessed she would be on a team either and now look at her.

 

ava blinked, appearing to be the only one to have caught the words. “kate? you know one of these kids?” she asked, or more so demanded.

 

yelena didn’t look away from the screen, but she sunk into the couch with a tired sigh. “kate bishop is not technically a kid. she’s the archer.” she told her alongside the rest of their group.

 

ava just stared at yelena, she could feel her eyes on her, before looking back to the footage on the tv.

 

then, after a beat: “she looks twelve.” ava deadpanned.

 

“she’s twenty.” yelena retorted, but the words even felt weak.

 

“does she know that?” ava retorted, arching a brow at her. 

 

yelena didn’t dignify that with a response.

 

bob looked up from his phone, gaze flitting from person to person. “well, are- are we gonna… do anything? about this?” he asked, voicing the current question of the hour.

 

were they going to do anything about it?

 

were it up to yelena, the answer would be no. maybe give kate bishop a call and ask hey, what the hell? you get jealous of my avengers team or something?

 

alexei pumped a fist into the air. “arrest them!” he cheered.

 

“NO,” she responded instinctively, voice chorusing with everyone else rejecting the idea.

 

“take them under our wing!” he tried again.

 

yelena pinched the bridge of her nose. “alexei-” she tried to correct, gently, but he was already off in a world of his own.

 

“we are on wheaties box! they can be on granola bar packaging!” he declared, holding both his fists up in victory now.

 

john scowled. “absolutely not.”

 

alexei, like always, was undeterred. “we become mentor! raise new generation of superhero!” he declared and god, would that suck. 

 

would it be humiliating to be on a team of teenagers, even if one of them looked like they had god-like powers on par with the scarlet witch?

 

bucky, with a forced calm that was not actually calm whatsoever, piped up.

 

“except for the fact that they are technically vigilantes. and therefore technically criminals.” he sighed, hands braced on the back of the couch and with a pained look on his face. john had taken it upon himself to sit in the other armchair, leaning back in it and closing his eyes probably trying to ward off whatever migraine he was being hit with.

 

fair enough, she thought.

 

“so we arrest them! then take them under wing! it will be like plea deal!” alexei course-corrected, which was absolutely not what they had meant to happen. 

 

ava sighed. “you do realise this is val’s PR nightmare to deal with, not ours, right?” she told them all, crossing her arms and trying to play it chili, despite having been the one to run in and urgently tell them all the news and was also slightly fuzzy around the edges, struggling between being corporal and non-corporal. 

 

yelena muttered, “val is our nightmare to deal with. which makes her nightmares our nightmare by extension.” she reminded the other woman, who scowled at the reminder.

 

as if summoned by her mere mention, right on cue, valentina’s voice rung out throughout their living space like an unwanted herald of irritation. 

 

“lovely to know what you truly think of me, yelena,” came val’s voice, sharp as a paper cut.

 

yelena didn’t even flinch. “how many times have i told you to eat shit, valentina?” she reminded the woman, not even looking at her. 

 

“fair point.” she clapped her hands once. “i’ll assume you’ve seen the news?”

 

ava didn’t even look at her. “it is quite literally playing right now.”

 

val rolled her eyes. “i’m trying to be polite here, ava.”

 

ava turned to her, perfectly deadpan. “and i’m trying to make you consider early retirement, valentina.”

 

“cool it,” bucky warned the woman, who just folded her arms, physical being glitching slightly more around the edges.

 

“thank you, james,” val said, patting his arm.

 

“don’t call me james,” he said flatly, moving her hand off him.

 

val cleared her throat. “i need you all to make contact. in gear.” she told them all, very promptly.

 

they all took a moment to turn and stare at her in silence. 

 

she looked completely serious. was she being serious?

 

yelena blinked. “what? why?”

 

valentina sighed, clearly exasperated. “because the public already loves these kids and i need them under our roof before anyone else gets any ideas.” she told them all, and everyone in the room could immediately figure out just who she was talking about.

 

bucky raised an eyebrow. “sam isn’t going to do anything, val.” he told her.

 

she gave him a tight smile. “these are unprecedented times, james. he very well might.”

 

alexei was grinning practically from ear to ear.  “we will become best father figures the world has ever seen.” he said solemnly, nodding vigorously at valentina at her instructions.

 

yelena had to suppress another sigh.

 

“dad. no,” she tried to stop him, but didn’t get many words out.

 

val squinted. “what?” she asked him, absolutely confounded by the man. to be fair, most people were. even she was. 

 

“they will be our shiny protégés!” alexei declared. “and teach me how to do the numbers on the tiktok!”

 

val blinked. “okay. yes to the mentorship,” val agreed with him and yelena wanted to sink out of her skin because why was this what they were going with?

 

“-no to absolutely everything else you just said. PR can’t handle your online presence. just delete that app.”

 

alexei didn’t seem to have heard her.

 

“i will go viral! for the glory!” he bellowed

 

val took a steadying breath. “alright then. reach out to them. in gear. public or private, i don’t care how you do it. just bring them in one way or another. preferably without making a huge public scandal.” she instructed them, directing that final part to all of them, but john in particular.

 

john raised a brow. “without a scandal? i don’t know if you’ve realised this, but we are a walking scandal.” he retorted, in that high-and-mighty-uppity-john way of his. 

 

yelena smiled. it was always fun to make fun of val. it never got old. 

 

val turned to him. “without breaking anything.” she clarified after searching for the words for a couple moments.

 

ava turned back around to look at the tv, her back to the older woman. “easier said than done.” she shrugged.

 

val rubbed her temples. yelena had to suppress the magnitude of her grin at val’s irritation.  “just- just figure it out.” she finished lamely, shaking her head and turning around, starting to leave.

 

alexei beamed. “aye-eye, captain!”

 

val didn’t turn around. “i told you never to say that again.” she yelled right back. 

 

alexei was unphased. as happy as he may seem to take her orders, yelena knew he was simply happy to be on the team in the first place- to be in the public eye again. he liked annoying val as much as the rest of them.

 

“aye-aye, capitán,” he called after her.

 

val’s voice echoed down the hall: “this is why people think you’re the b-list avengers.” she yelled, the elevator doors hissing shut behind her.

 

alexei grinned. “avengerz. with a z!” he cheered, still clinging on to that stupid copyright-workaround he’d formulated.

 

the elevator dinged, signifying valentina had truly left their floor. silence.

 

john ran a hand down his face. “so. do we have to, like… call them?” he asked lamely. 

 

bucky was already standing. “no. we’ll make a house call. eventually.” he decided. 

 

yelena groaned. “great. can’t wait to scare the shit out of a bunch of hormonal teenagers.” she mumbled, reaching out to grab her phone. should she give kate a heads-up? it would be funny to scare her and her new little team, but on the other hand, a heads-up would let them scare the shit out of her b team, and she didn't know which would be funnier.

 

ava raised a hand. “dibs on not talking to the magic one.”

 

“nope,” yelena said, pushing herself to her feet. “magic’s yours.”

ava groaned. “damn it.”

Notes:

we're going back to a riri chapter after this but FRET NOT!! after that should be another thunderbolts pov and it. it's gonna get pretty hectic :3

Chapter 15: surveillance issues

Summary:

the young avengers are planning their next move, when riri notices they’re being watched…

Notes:

sorry for the formatting issues again with this one. i seriously need to figure that out. it's killing me here :(

riri was having a hard time focusing on their next plan. it was difficult to focus on debriefing anything with those god forsaken drones circling the block. 

 

still, she didn’t want anyone to freak out, so she continued with their organizing. riri had done most of the research for the plan, and it was kate doing most of the major strategizing with input from cassie and herself. 

 

she was definitely pacing again, though. their mission board (a whiteboard on wheels with photos, magnets, red text and string, all that shabang) was up, the snacks were out, everyone else was chilling, excited to continue hitting the ground running. their last mission (minus one FOX news article) had been a huge success. riri couldn't help it, though.

 

she was spiraling. slowly.

 

“pigeons my ass,” she muttered as kate was talking something over, something about pair work or something, watching as a small, airborne thing passed the house by the window in the exact same path it had ten minutes ago.

cassie tilted her head from where she was sat, eyes watching riri carefully. “are we talking, like, robot pigeons? or mutant pigeons?” she asked, half playful, half serious. 

 

riri was well aware of what her team thought of her. that she was prickly and closed-off. it’d been dead given away after she ripped billy a verbal new one after finding out he could read minds. she’d asked zelma for anything she knew to help prevent that when she got back to chicago. 

riri smiled at cassie, overly sweet. “drone signatures have spiked in a two-block radius since tuesday.” she told her and the rest of the team. “two are cloaked. one’s probably wakandan.”

 

silence. dead, perfectly still silence. all eyes were on her as she glared out the window like something out there may bite her.

 

knowing wakanda, it probably could. it probably would if it got ahold of her. sure, she hadn’t called shuri to help with her parker problem but considering what had happened and her current circumstances, the princess was definitely keeping a closer eye on her.

 

and there was also whoever else the other drones belonged to, but riri was nowhere near as concerned about that. after wakanda and parker, american law enforcement was easy. child’s play, really. 

 

america broke the tense sheet that had settled over them, interrupting the quiet with her voice. 

 

“...what?” she asked, voice softer than usual. does america even know what wakanda is? did they have wakanda where she’s from?

 

riri shook the thought away. if the look on america’s face was anything to go by, the answer was a resounding yes.

“wait, how do you know what a wakandan drone even looks like?” kamala asked after another brief pause, suspicion creeping its way into her words. everyone seemed to sit a little stiffer.

 

riri exhaled sharply.

 

“i don’t-” she began, before cutting herself off. that was going to be a lie that would get her nowhere.

“it’s... it’s just a guess.” she answered lamely, unconvinced by the sound of her own words.

 

billy, who was sitting on the floor, eyed her suspiciously. even though zelma had assured her the ward to protect her mind from being read like a damn book worked, and billy promising them all extra hard that he wouldn’t read their minds, riri made sure to think random, disconnected, and entirely unrelated thoughts.

 

chicken wings. marble floors. the distance between the sun and the earth. fenty 440.

 

“did… did you go to wakanda..?” he asked her slowly.

“no.” she replied immediately, and was instantly kicking herself mentally because that was way too quick to be believable in the slightest. joy! now they were all catching on and wakanda would be even more pissed at her for revealing her interaction with them. great! super! its not like she didn’t already have way too much to worry about, not at all!

billy narrowed his eyes at her. “you sure?” he asked, read: no one in this room believe you, just tell the truth.

riri ran a hand down her face. “okay. maybe.” she answered, and had to resist the desire to tear her hair out braid by braid when she saw america’s excited expression “very briefly. not important.” she urged, glaring straight at their fearless leader. 

 

“what the hell do you mean, ‘not important’?” kate demanded, bug-eyed, throwing her hands up. outside of the avengers who went to wakanda to fight, a total of one person was known to have entered the country, and that was a white man who had been there for politics who also happened to be friends with the late king, so. 

 

riri having been there was maybe sort of a big deal. she knew that. she just really didn’t want to think about it right now.

“did they give you tech?” kamala gushed, eyes bright and sparkling with excitement. she was such a fangirl. riri grit her teeth. “do you have a bracelet?!” she whisper-asked, excitement pooling from her words like a faucet. 

 

how she even know about the bracelets? riri hadn’t thought on it much (lie), but weren’t the kimoyo beads for the royal family and their guard? were they common knowledge? maybe they were somewhere in the wakandan outreach programme she’d refused to look at even since she went there.

 

“no bracelet!” she shut kamala down quickly, the girl looking a little like a kicked puppy. riri only felt a twinge bad about it. “it’s all dealt with, so it’s fine, okay? it’s fine. we’re fine.”

 

america raised a brow, head tilted just enough to be skeptical, eyes narrowing like she was peering straight through riri’s skull.

 

“people who say ‘it’s fine’ that many times usually aren’t.” she deadpanned, encroaching upon the line of concern but staying firmly in the world of flippant.

 

riri’s spine stiffened. she didn’t roll her eyes- she wanted to, an instinct, but held herself back- and her fingers twitched against her thigh, an involuntary giveaway to the turmoil in her mind she was desperately trying to cover up. 

 

“okay, cool, dr. phil. anyway, someone’s watching us.” she reiterated, in more simple terms.

 

that got everyone’s attention

 

cassie lifted her head off the pillow it was resting on, frowning. “maybe it’s the government. or my dad.” she suggested, and riri remembered why cassie grinded her gears like nothing else. cassie was smart, incredibly smart, but she never did anything with it. the things she said were always said too casually, but the tension in her jaw always told a different story.

 

it was pretty hypocritical of her to be judging cassie for hiding a part of herself though, right? one look at the marks along her back, down her arms, and she’d be up to her eyebrows in questions.

 

“or a reality show,” kate added from the couch, legs dangling off the back like she’d lost the will to sit upright sometime in the last hour. cassie’s head-pillow was propped against her shoulder and her legs were dangling over the sofa’s armrest. riri had no idea how the others were already so… so comfortable together. so trusting.

 

kate’s words were still flippant, but not entirely joking.

 

riri stayed standing, though she was pacing now; pacing always. her boots tapped an uneven rhythm against the hardwood. the screen on her gauntlet lit up and dimmed, lit up and dimmed, like her anxiety had synced itself with the HUD. she hated how easy it was to fall into old habits when the threat felt real.

 

“no. these aren’t amateur.” her voice was low now, grounded. “we’re being scoped by someone who knows what they’re doing. cloaking. hovering just out of my sensor range. timed checks. it’s clean. too clean.”

 

kamala blinked slowly, finally pulling her eyes from the borderline conspiracy-board of their in-the-works plan. “and you’re thinking wakanda.”

 

riri’s mouth went dry, and she hesitated.

 

it was in that sliver of silence that too much slipped out.

 

it absolutely is, she confirmed to herself. no one else would make sense, she didn’t tell them.

 

“or someone wakanda-adjacent,” she said, voice tighter than she liked. too late to pull it back. too late.

 

billy, who had been relatively quiet since asking the apparent question of the hour, spoke up again. his voice came softly, almost kindly, like he was trying not to startle a spooked animal.

 

it made all her hairs stand on end, and a brief rush of fear went through her before he even said any words.

 

“riri. who exactly did you make a deal with?”

 

it felt like time slowed.

 

her breath caught. not long- a fraction of a second, if even that. just enough for the damage to land. what on earth did billy mean by that? what connotations was he trying to draw?

 

how much did billy know?

 

the patterns along her skin, the mark of mephisto, burned where it traced the path of her veins, making her feel delirious and feverish when combined with the chill she’d felt in the air.

 

she swallowed. “i didn’t say anything about a deal,” she said, the ice in her tone the only thing holding her together.

 

“you didn’t have to,” billy replied evenly. riri had to almost physically restrain herself, hands clenching into fists, knowing that lashing out or saying something mean would only dig her into an even deeper grave. he’s still talking about wakanda. they only know about that. he can’t know about mephisto, they can’t know about mephisto.

 

riri’s eyes stayed on him. studying him. how much had he figured out? could he sense the magic on her? 

 

he wasn’t smiling. he wasn’t judging. he was just looking. seeing more than she wanted to show.

 

the silence that followed was a different kind of loud. like a vacuum, like static pressing behind her ears. she could feel the weight of their stares. like her skin had turned transparent.

 

damn it.

 

riri swallowed and tried to force her voice back to normal. lighter. dismissive. “it was an arrangement. it’s not a big deal. it’s done. and it’s not relevant.”

 

america leaned forward, arms crossed now. “‘arrangement’ with who?”

 

riri exhaled through her nose. fast. sharp. like that’d push it all away. “look. what matters is- whoever’s watching us? they’re doing it from above. and close. we’re not as off-grid as we thought.” she tried, hoping against all hope that she could somehow distract this group of annoyingly observant teenagers and superhero rejects from her personal history of damage and pain.

 

not superhero rejects, she found herself correcting. you’re the superhero reject. these guys are all… upcoming. on the rise.

 

their expressions shifted again- alert now, the kind of alert that always lived just under the surface with them. kate sat up straight, sitting properly on the couch; cassie rolled to the side to better look at the mission board, head propped on her hand; kamala’s grip on the SWORD tablet she always brought with her tightened.

 

they all understood what it meant to be watched. hunted. 

 

kamala’s voice was small. “so what do we do?”

 

riri rolled her neck until it cracked. her brain kicked into gear. planning was safer than feeling. 

 

“we jam the signal. reposition. maybe set a decoy perimeter? worst-case, we scramble their tech before they scramble us.” she told them all, though she fucking wished it didn’t come to that. destroying a wakandan jet was a sure-fire way to get a visit from the dora milajae or the princess herself, neither of which riri was willing to risk. 

 

“okay,” billy said, slow and steady. “but after that?”

 

riri knew where he wanted her to take the conversation, knew he was trying to steer her back to the uncomfortable truth she was hiding from them all. 

 

riri just soldiered on, pretending to be oblivious to it.

 

“after that we…” riri hesitated, then shrugged. “maybe we invest in a better headquarters. i dunno.”

 

kamala perked up slightly. “i thought about that but… it would be expensive.”

 

kate waved a hand, already bored with the logistics. “i have cash to spare.” she told them all. riri scoffed.

 

cassie peered up at kate. “we’re talking, like, millions here, kate. think avengers compound or stark tower.”

 

kate raised both brows and repeated herself, like they were the ones being dense. “i have cash to spare. you do know i own a multi-million dollar security company now, right? my mom is in jail. i could just-” she made a vague gesture that might’ve meant ‘funnel some offshore money’ or ‘build a space laser.’

 

riri pointed at her. “let’s put a pin in that idea. i’ll get the surveillance off our backs for now, but can we go back to the plan, please? i still haven’t even reached the part with the department of damage control’s intel yet.”

 

kamala groaned. “ooogh… i hate those guys.”

 

“fair enough,” cassie muttered, stuffing the last of a granola bar into her mouth like it might help soak up the dread.

 

a bag of chips sailed across the room, tossed lazily by america. riri caught it one-handed without even looking.

 

america’s voice was teasing, but her eyes were sharp. “and maybe next time, you lead with the ‘i went to wakanda’ part.”

 

riri looked down at the chip bag. it crinkled softly in her hands.

 

“noted,” she said. “totally noted.”

 

but inside, her thoughts were already spiraling- like always. her mind wandered back to the lights in that fuck-ass diner, to the deal inked in unreadable words against her skin and her unravelling, spiraling panic; to the separate plane of existance where she shook hands with something much worse than wakanda.

 

she'd built her armor to protect herself from anything. she hadn't built it to handle the people who were supposed to trust her.

 

not yet.

 

Notes:

watched gotgv3 for the first time yesterday. a little emotionally crushed by it.

anyways in the words of some of the greatest writing of all time
"i piggybacked from a pizza dough freezer :)"
"what??"

no i will not elaborate :3

Chapter 16: mentor issues

Summary:

the thunderbolts have their eyes on these ‘young avengers’. bucky is selected to make first contact.

Notes:

back to your regularly scheduled unseriousness. :)

bucky sighed, slow and deliberate, as he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. it’s too early for this, or too late, or maybe just always the wrong time when val starts a meeting like this.

 

they were all gathered in the briefing room, the one with the perpetually broken overhead light and all their mismatched mugs from defunct coffee shops. someone had made coffee, but it had already gone cold at this point.

 

john was leaning against the wall, arms crossed and brow furrowed like he was chewing on something sour. “they’re actual children,” he said flatly.

 

“children who just dismantled a DODC convoy and escaped with zero casualties,” ava replied without missing a beat, perched on the corner of what bucky liked to call the ‘conference room™ table’ like it was a throne.

 

yelena sipped from her chipped mug, expression unreadable except for the slight arch of her brow. “they look like they get their intel off tumblr.” she snarked, and bucky might’ve found it funny if he knew what a tumblr was. he didn’t, though, so that was that.

 

“they are like tiny babushkas of destruction!” alexei beamed, far too excited for someone discussing teenage vigilantes. “i love them!”

 

bucky didn’t even look up from the alarmingly thin manilla file val had given him on the new team. “you’re not mentoring anyone.” he told alexei, flat-out.

 

john snorted, flicking through his own file. “i mean… they’re reckless. under-trained. emotionally unstable.” he listed off, as if they all needed a reminder on what a teenager was.

 

val gestured vaguely at the tablet in her hands, tapping through profiles with a swipe. “one of them’s wielding chaos magic. actual, verifiable, multiversal-level threat. and one of them is wearing an honest-to-gods ironman suit. also apparently there’s a kree-adjacent mutant in the mix.” she scrolled again, lips pursed. “this group’s like a lawsuit sandwich with a god-tier nuke in the middle.”

 

“so we’re just letting them run wild?” john asked.

 

yelena set her mug down with a clink. “no. we’re sending someone in.” she relented, flicking a vaguely upset look t val. she just nodded in agreement.

 

“soft touch. no gear.” she amended, glare leveled at val and 100% a challenge. the woman didn’t rise to it, no matter how much she looked like she wanted to. “no threats. just… friendly contact.” she decided, and bucky decided to let it happen. it did seem like the best option to him, too. he would have liked nothing more than to not do anything, but val was insisting, and after a week of them not actually doing anything, she’d called this next mandatory meeting, so. 

 

this was one issue bucky would have been happy to ignore. they were literal kids and, from what he could find, they weren’t causing explicit harm to anyone other than black market tech salesmen, so.

 

a silence stretched across the room.

 

then, slowly, every head turned. 

 

towards him.

 

bucky looked up. “absolutely not.”

 

val’s smile was all teeth. “bucky.”

 

“they’re teenagers. i don’t even talk to adults unless i have to.” he tried to counter before the ask was even given.

 

“and yet here you are,” val replies smoothly. “congratulations.”

 

bucky gave her a long, withering look.

 

“and, correct me if i’m wrong,” val continued, folding her arms with mock thoughtfulness, “but how many of us- outside of myself, of course- have held political careers?”

 

alexei raised his hand.

 

val didn’t look at him. “in the united states of america?”

 

alexei lowered his hand.

 

bucky exhaled through his nose, barely restraining the urge to put his head through a wall. 

 

“i’m going to walk into traffic.” he grumbled, holding onto the handle of his mug and just staring at the cold, mediocre coffee in it.

 

yelena shrugged beside him. “i think you’d do better than most of us. you don’t talk too much. they’ll like that.”

 

“plus,” ava added, “you’ve got a tragic backstory. teens eat that up.”

 

“we all have tragic backstories,” bucky muttered.

 

“and if things go sideways,” john chimed in, ever the light in the dark, “you can still punch through a wall.”

 

bucky glared. “so could you.”

 

val clapped her hands together, keen on staying away from the inbound insult match and back onto her course. satisfied. “perfect. you leave tomorrow. bring your charming personality and try not to scare them.”

 

alexei clapped him on the back hard enough to make his shoulders tense. “bring them stickers! teens love stickers!”

 

“do not speak to me.”

 

ava was already halfway out of the room. “at least try to smile once. show them you’re not a government assassin anymore.”

 

yelena followed, muttering, “that’s rich coming from you.”

 

ava didn’t even turn around. “look at the people standing in this room, yelena.”

 

yelena paused, glanced at john, alexei, bucky, and finally val.

 

“…fair point.” she muttered before leaving the room.

 

when it was just him and val left, he didn’t have the energy to complain. he just glared at her, dead-eyed.

 

“don’t be like that. god, you need to socialise more. don’t kill any of them, okay? i want them alive.” she told him pointedly as she left the room, leaving him all alone with several discarded and pretty much useless manilla files. 

 

bucky sighed. they were not payed enough for this bullshit. 

 

………………

 

bucky had wanted to approach these kids outside of an op situation. he wanted to approach them, maybe casually in public or something, and get through the awkward introductions and maybe give them an emergency flip-phone to call him or something. that, surprisingly, had a pretty good track record of working for him.

 

but val had insisted he leave today, and when he managed to track the kids they just so happened to be in gear- not the colourful, flashy getup of their first foray into the public eye or their second, but in more muted, unobtrusive, black tactical gear.

 

so here bucky was, tagging along discretely on what was a stealth operation into some heavily-guarded warehouse facility in massachusetts. wonderful.

 

bucky stayed in the shadows, quiet and deliberate. the young avengers were fast, but not fast enough to avoid leaving a trail. he’d been trailing them for blocks, lingering back, giving them space- enough space to be undetected, but not too far that his enhanced senses and skills couldn’t continue to track them.

 

he’d followed them down winding alleys and dark corners, watching as they opened a window in the back of a large, dull looking building- definitely a storage facility of some sort- and waiting before following after them.

 

he spent 10 minutes carefully following their lead, staying out of sight from sensors and narrowly avoiding guard patrols. these kids ran a tight ship.

 

he turned the next corner, focusing on the sound of the team’s quiet footsteps as they meticulously traversed the facility. he expected to be alone.

 

instead, a black girl with her hair pulled back and wearing skin-tight tac gear stood waiting, planted in the center of the path like she’d known he’d be there. she had a utility belt he’d scanned for a weapon, only finding tech gear and gadgets there. the red-and-black gauntlets with repulsors on her palms told him everything he needed to know.

 

so this was ironheart. her glare could’ve cut through metal.

 

“what the hell are you doing here?” she snapped.

 

bucky lifted both hands slowly in the air, palms out. “easy. didn’t mean to startle you.” he said cautiously, eyes fixed on hers. she didn’t budge.

 

“you’re following us,” she said flatly, calling it exactly as she saw it.

 

“just watching,” he replied. his voice was calm, not defensive. “no harm intended.”

 

her eyes didn’t leave his. she looked like someone trying to decide whether to blast him or just yell louder. “what do you want?” she hissed instead, lip twitching.

 

bucky exhaled through his nose, just a little. “thought i’d check in. make sure you don’t get into too much trouble.”

 

before she could respond, the clatter of boots and hurried footsteps echoed down the hallway, and the rest of the team rounded the corner- ms marvel in the lead, in dark cargo pants and a grey hoodie, though still wearing the red scarf of her usual vigilante gear. her eyes were wide with concern.

 

“ironheart? what’s going on?” she called, voice still quiet, slowing as she caught sight of bucky.

 

the archer was next, bow already half-drawn. “who’s that?” she asked, sharp and focused. her identity had been easy to find- she was kate bishop, of bishop security. it helped that yelena had, apparently, known her. somehow. bucky didn’t ask.

 

stature, the one with pym-tech, skidded in beside them, frowning deeply. “why is there a man here?” she asked, rather casual in contrast to ironheart’s steadfast suspicion.

 

she didn’t move, didn’t even look away from bucky. “surprise! we have a shadow. the shadow, actually. the winter soldier is following us on our op.” she hissed, a venom in her words bucky thought was very much unwarranted.

 

his pleasant demeanour dropped slightly at that name.

 

“i don’t use that name anymore.” he attempted to politely correct, but the words came out much darker than he’d intended. bucky wasn't sure what name he went by anymore, but he would take anything that wasn’t that. 

 

ironheart turned her head back to him from her teammates just enough to shoot him a sarcastic smile. “oh, my sincerest apologies for offending you, congressman barnes.” she snarled, still keeping her voice low to avoid detection.

 

ms marvel looked like someone just told her a celebrity had walked into her living room. “wait- a real avenger is following us?”

 

bucky gave a single, curt nod, despite not knowing if she meant real avenger like the original team, which he technically wasn’t, or real avenger like the team he was on now which was also… not technically… the real avengers… sort of?

 

“yeah. figured it was better than you guys accidentally blowing up the whole place.”

 

kate scoffed, rolling her eyes. “we aren’t blowing the place up. we’re intercepting black-market tech.” she told him bluntly.

 

bucky’s eyes flicked to her. “and what do you plan on doing with it?” he asked slowly. bucky had no idea what a bunch of kids would want with this kind of tech, and he’d so far tried to stuff down the worry he’d felt about it.

 

a new voice chimed in- the so-called wiccan, with no additional information about him online and the god-tier-nuke powers val was so worried about, appearing a few paces behind the others, calm and collected. “sending it to a pocket dimension devoid of life so it can’t ever be used again.”

 

bucky blinked. “okay that… that sounds like a good plan.” he decided, after figuring out that the kid was, in fact, serious about that, and that was apparently just a thing he could do.  

 

val was right to be concerned, holy shit.

 

ironheart rolled her eyes so hard it looked like it hurt. “of course it does. it is a good plan. that you are currently ruining. we have a tight schedule.”

 

kate gestured toward the hallway ahead. “yeah, we have like, twenty seconds to reach the next dark spot before we’re caught.”

 

miss america, another complete unknown, was already halfway past them, waving an impatient hand. “we argue about this later. we need to go now.” she urged.

 

with that, the team surged into motion again, flowing around bucky like a river sweeping up an uninvited rock. one moment he was standing still, and the next he was being jostled into the middle of the pack, with the pym-tech-girl, stature, dragging him by the sleeve and ms marvel whispering instructions over her shoulder.

 

the following ten minutes were more tense than the last. he followed, a little out of his depth, as the team moved around with a coordination and precision he was not privy to. it had been so much easier to follow from behind; he could wait, he could watch, he could calculate, but in the middle of their cohort, he didn’t have that time. one second they were standing, perched behind a corner, and the next they were dashing across a hall to another video dead-zone.

 

bucky’s stress levels had spiked to possibly an all-time high that day by the time the group came to a halt in a dead-end corridor.

 

great. this is what he got for trusting teenagers to do anything. they were now in a perfect position to be cornered.

 

“alright, everyone up!” ms marvel declared, reaching up a hand with an arm that just extended to -

 

an air vent. on the ceiling. bucky wanted to die in his skin right then and there. of course they would pick the air vents to get around. of course.

 

without missing a beat, the teens started helping each other up- ms marvel went first, their designated leader, using her elongated limbs to hoist herself up into the vent. when her legs disappeared, wiccan went next, using his magic to simply fly himself into the vent.

 

bucky stood for a second, blinking at the chaotic choreography.

 

wiccan reached an arm down to pull kate up into the vent behind him.

 

“what?” he breathed, slightly dumbfounded as stature made herself taller to reach the vent, shrinking back down to normal size once she had a hold on the opening. ironheart went last, using her repulsors to reach the vent before pulling herself up.

 

bucky stood, alone, on the floor, unsure how to proceed. 

 

stature’s head popped back into his view, lips turned down in a bit of a pout. ironheart’s voice echoed slightly from across the vent opening.

 

“just leave him, stature, he can get out on his own,” she hissed, words clipped and cold. 

 

the girl didn’t move.

 

“he’s my dad’s friend! i’m not gonna let him get caught by these guys!” she replied, looking at where he assumed the other girl was. bucky frowned. friends with her dad? did he know this kid?

 

“i’m not gonna get caught-” he called back up, voice perhaps a little too loud.

 

how on earth would bucky know this girl’s dad? the only thing that made any sort of sense was maybe he’d fought with her dad? was this girl the daughter of one of the literal hundreds of people he’d fought alongside after the blip against thanos? was this the daughter of someone he’d served with?

 

bucky was very much confused.

 

before he could ask the girl how he knew her dad or who exactly he was, ironheart was groaning and appeared in the vent opening as well, glaring down at him.

 

“okay, no time!” she muttered, reaching a hand down to him. he stared at it for a few seconds before reaching up and grabbing it when she spat at him to hurry the eff up.

 

the girl hoisted him into the air with a surprising amount of ease, all things considered, pulling him up and into the vent. 

 

the space was cramped enough for teenagers, but for him, it was a tight fit. ironheart pulled him back into the vent, so his legs weren’t just dangling out in the open, the action becoming much more of a struggle. she ended up pulling him close to herself, and he ended up uncomfortably shmushed on top of her in the vent as she laid on her back in it to get him fully into the tight space.

 

she glared at him the entire time, muttering curses and other crude things as they awkwardly maneuvred themselves around each other so he wasn’t crushing her. 

 

the girl was panting by the time they were untangled, glaring at him as though he’d killed her puppy or something akin to that. bucky just felt heat pooling under his skin; this was unbearably awkward. he was going to kill the others. yelena or even ava would have been so much better at this. 

 

“five feet behind me. five. feet.” the girl growled after she’d put the vent grate back, staring daggers into his soul.

 

he swallowed. “got it.” he whispered back, waiting for the girl to get ahead of her as she crawled through the vent before moving himself.

 

the vent groaned quietly as they all crawled through, single file. ms marvel was muttering something about how this was way less fun than movies made it look, and kate kept clicking her tongue every time someone’s foot scraped the metal. wiccan was floating slightly to avoid actually touching the vent floor, which bucky had to admit was a neat trick.

 

stature, whom he was still wracking his brain on how he knew, just shrank down to roughly cat-sized and walked. 

 

everything smelled like rust and dust and collective regret.

 

eventually, after what felt like way too long, they reached a grate with a faint sliver of light coming through. bucky watched as ms marvel removed the grate and dropped down first. the others followed without a word.

 

bucky went last, dropping down into the dim space below. it was warm, industrial; pipes lined the walls like steel veins. this was the boiler room- maybe a subbasement, maybe some kind of utility space- and it was quiet. no alarms. no blinking cameras. no hum of sensors.

 

they’d found a dead zone.

 

ironheart straightened up and exhaled, wiping a bead of sweat from her face as she looked around. the silence that followed was thick, broken only by the hiss of steam through a nearby valve.

 

stature gave bucky a sheepish look. “see? not so bad.”

 

he adjusted his jacket. “yeah. just like old times.”

 

kate raised an eyebrow. “old times… in what universe are vents a regular thing for you?”

 

“hydra facilities didn’t exactly have front doors,” he muttered.

 

“oh,” she said. “yikes.”

 

miss america, standing near the back wall, cracked her knuckles and peered up at a heavy maintenance hatch. “alright. plan’s still the same?”

 

wiccan looked toward him with a furrowed brow. “what are we gonna do about him?” he asked, looking between his teammates, unsure.

 

miss america leaned casually against a pipe, crossing her arms. “i can just send him back.” she suggested breezily. 

 

ironheart, not even trying to keep her voice down any more, replied, “you think he’ll go willingly? after he stalked us all the way here?”

 

“okay, listen,” ms marvel said, stepping between them like someone trying to break up a brewing sibling fight. “bucky’s an avenger. he helped fight thanos. that counts for something.”

 

stature nodded quickly. “and my dad helped him out, like, way back when in germany. he’s a good guy.” she told them all.

 

bucky did a prompt double-take. germany? her dad was in germany? that meant she was one of barton’s kids, or-

 

1. pym tech. stature. lang. of course, this girl was a lang.

 

ironheart stared at both of them, as though they’d grown second head. “and?” she demanded.

 

ms marvel, caught off guard, blinked. “and... he can tag along! it'll be fine!” she ended up chirping.

 

ironheart blinked at her, exasperated. “in what world is that a good idea?”

 

“seems like a good idea to me,” little lang said at the exact same time, with entirely too much cheer.

 

bucky stood at the edge of the conversation, arms crossed, not saying a word. he didn’t need to say anything. it was like watching a jury deliberate in real time, and he was the case.

 

“you are all terrible at risk assessment,” riri muttered, mostly to herself, turning back to her gauntlet’s display with visible irritation.

 

kate shrugged, already moving toward the far door. “and you’re outvoted. c’mon, let’s move.”

 

ms marvel raised her hand and counted down under her breath, eyes on her phone- and, of course these teenagers brought their phones on an op. “surveillance blackout in three... two...”

 

ironheart checked her HUD. “we’re good.”

 

she looked back at the group, expression sharp and focused now. “let’s get eyes on the cache.”

 

and just like that, the chaos snapped back into mission mode.

 

ironheart led the way out of the boiler room, her posture all business despite the fact that her gauntlets were still just slightly scuffed from hauling bucky through an air vent. kate was right behind her, arrow notched but relaxed. miss america was checking corners, and ms marvel and cassie flanked wiccan as he tapped through a shimmering map projection in the air, tracking their movement.

 

and bucky walked, too, still tagging along.

 

still not entirely sure if that meant he was trusted- or even tolerated.

 

maybe both.

 

the team filed toward a door in practiced rhythm, every step lighter than the last.

 

bucky lingered at the back for half a second, watching them go.

 

he followed, five feet behind them.

 

just like he was asked.

 

the door to the storage room groaned open on rusted hinges, revealing rows of heavy, wooden crates that stretched all the way to the other side of the room. dim overhead lights flickered to life, casting long shadows across the concrete floor and illuminating the dull gleam of the alien metal within.

 

the entire team stopped short just inside the doorway.

 

“…whoa,” little lang whispered, stepping forward slowly.

 

wiccan blinked, scanning the room with wide eyes. “this is way more than we expected.”

 

“intel said two crates,” kate muttered, already looking around for threats. “not twelve.”

 

ironheart exhaled sharply, rubbing her temples. “okay, cool. love when reality’s a nightmare.”

 

bucky stepped forward, frowning as he examined the contents of one of the crates. it wasn’t anything he recognised, which clued him in on just how far these things had come. 

 

“these are all chitauri?” he asked, eyes flickering to the rest of the crates. kate had been close when she said twelve- it looked like there were 9 crates with actual contents in them, and no less than four empties.

 

“yep,” ironheart replied, slapping one of the crates like she was selling it. “beautifully illegal, outrageously dangerous, absolutely ours now.”

 

bucky winced at her lack of self-preservation. smacking the highly-volatile, potentially and likely explosive alien weaponry was not a good idea. very bad, no good idea. horrid.

 

“new plan,” miss america said, already cracking her knuckles.

 

ironheart spun on her heels. “oh no.” she whispered.

 

“portal time!” the other girl declared with a grin.

 

bucky just stood there and nodded. a portal seemed like a pretty solid plan, considering the optics. they weren’t going to be able to just carry all this stuff out with them. 

 

kate groaned. “please tell me it’s not back to the warehouse-”

 

“nope,” miss america said, popping the “p” as she used her hands in a circular motion in front of the wall, glowing orange and red sparks he was, unfortunately, familiar with forming to make a portal. 

 

“headquarters.” she declared proudly, the other side of the portal leading to a very dingey, certifiably creepy basement of some sort. that, or someone had really strange home interior design ideas.

 

lang jr made a face. “but agatha’s gonna be pissy.” she bemoaned, arm stuck halfway into a weapons crate as she said it. bucky had to physically restrain himself from yanking it right back out.

 

“agatha’s always pissy,” miss america replied, popping open the nearest crate to her and reaching into it to start removing its contents.

 

bucky glanced between them. “who’s agatha?” he asked, starting to get worried. well, even more worried.

 

smaller lang shifted awkwardly. “um. the… legal owner … of our headquarters.” she went for, clearly picking her words very carefully.

 

that was not assuring in the slightest.

 

bucky raised an eyebrow. “are you breaking and entering someone else's house for your headquarters?” he asked the girl, who now held some sort of super-enhanced, alien-looking cannon of some sort in her hands. she looked like she was giving the question some serious thought; not like she was considering lying, no, but like she seriously didn’t know.

 

wiccan didn’t even look up from the spell he was casting to lift an entire crate over to the portal. 

 

“what? no. agatha gave it to me.” he replied for his more tongue-tied teammate.

 

bucky’s eyebrows went higher at that. “to you? how old are you?” he ended up asking, because he couldn’t have been older than, like, 18, and he had no idea how property ownership laws worked anymore. he’d only ever lived in apartments. or the watchtower. or a hut in wakanda. but those were all extenuating circumstances that probably didn’t apply to this situation.

 

“sixteen,” the boy said matter-of-factly. “that’s why it’s hers legally.” he added, as though this was all perfectly normal.

 

bucky inhaled deeply, just taking a moment to come to terms with… with that. all things considered, it wasn’t the strangest thing he’d ever encountered. he was 108 years old. this was nothing.

 

“and she- she’s okay with… this?” he made a vague gesture to the room around them, the kids still moving back and fourth through the portal and carefully putting the weapons down in their ‘headquarters’, this agatha person’s house.

 

wiccan shrugged. “well, no, but she’s dead. so there’s not much she can do.” he said simply and bucky must’ve looked like a very befuddled cat or something because miss marvel saw his face, looked briefly amused, then went over to him to comfort him.

 

she patted the silver plating of his vibranium arm.

 

“she’s a ghost,” the girl offered helpfully.

 

“technically she’s more of a passive-aggressive spectral presence,” wiccan clarified, still not looking away from the crate he had now successfully transported through the portal. he quickly moved on to the next one.

 

“oh, same difference, smartass.”

 

before bucky could question or compute any of that, ironheart was whisper-yelling at them all again.

 

“we are so off-topic again,” she snapped. “focus!”

 

bucky took that as his queue to help. he’d already been roped into their antics, he might as well not be dead weight to them. he went over to the furthest crate that wasn’t empty and just picked it up, heading back over to the portal and giving little-er lang a thankful nod when she helped direct him to put the crate down in their headquarter’s basement.

 

for a group of kids with no formal leadership, no clear supervision, and apparently a haunted house for an hq... they were handling this with surprising efficiency.

 

still, he kept half an eye on the portal as he helped them relocate the tech.

 

and that one crate in the corner- one that was humming just slightly louder than the rest.

 

he frowned. he didn’t trust any of this tech, but that one he didn’t trust in particular.

 

bucky was on crate #4 when things went to shit. well, even shittier. being caught by under-trained juiced up teenagers in like, under an hour was shit hitting the fan. this was just… more.

 

ironheart froze mid-step, some sort of chitauri helmet in her arms, her head tilting slightly like she’d heard something the others hadn’t.

 

“movement in the hallway,” she said, eyes narrowing. her voice was low but urgent.

 

ms marvel didn’t hesitate. “how many?” she asked, looking over from the crate her entire upper body was hung over. 

 

ironhert’s fingers danced across her wrist display, helmet now under one of her arms, pulling up a fuzzy heat signature scan. “too many. we’ve got maybe two minutes.”

 

wiccan, crouched beside the second to last crate, asides from the one he was carrying, was wearily eyeing a pulsating piece of alien tech that really didn’t look like it wanted to be touched. he called to them out without looking up. “last crate’s humming. someone help me, like, turn it off or something before it decides to kill us.” he hissed, voice lower now. the group had reverted back to whispering aggressively at each other when they were told company may be nearby.

 

they had good instincts.

 

“i’m on it,” bucky said, carefully (and as quietly as he could manage) putting the crate down and stepping forward.

 

“no, no, no- you stay back!” ironheart snapped, pointing a finger at him like he was a dog about to touch a hot stove.

 

“i’m not gonna explode, kid.” he sighed, not halting his steps. he kept his eyes on her as he made his way over to the spell-casting boy, watching as a flurry of wildly different emotions crossed over her face. irritation, fear, regret, amusement, just- just a lot. he’d almost go as far as to say the girl seemed almost as emotionally constipated as him, which was- which was just wow.

 

he had over 100 years of fuckery under his belt to deal with. this kid didn’t seem like she had more than, like, 25.

 

“yeah, well, don’t tempt fate!” she hissed back, scowling and turning her back to him when he reached the magician. bucky may not have been a mechanic or an engineer, not by any stretch of the word, but he knew his way around a weapon, no matter the make. that included alien tech, apparently, because the weapon that was, as wiccan had said, pretty much vibrating with energy, was easy enough to disarm.

 

it required him removing a panel and revealing a handful of very crispy looking wires, which most weapons definitely did not have, but still. he had the thing powered down in just under 30 seconds.

 

“thanks,” the boy blinked at him gratefully, before reaching into the crate and removing the weapon. “can you get-” he began to ask, gesturing to the single other content of the crate, and bucky was reaching for it before the boy could finish his sentence.

 

“game faces on, people, company’s almost here,” ironheart told them, voice a little more raised than before. bucky felt the imminence of being spotted that seemed to sweep through the group, putting the weapon he’d picked up in the crate he’d left before hoisting the whole box back up again and heading for the portal.

 

as if summoned by their words, a shrill alarm burst into life, blaring through the building. red lights flashed across the walls like angry eyes and the floor vibrated beneath their feet.

 

kate groaned loudly. “aaaaand there go the alarms.” she mumbled, putting the handful of tech she’d gathered in her arms in the crate cassie was struggling to move, pulling her bow out- where had it come from?- and notching an arrow- where had that come from, either?- and aiming it at the door to the storage room they were pillaging.

 

bucky could absolutely not be caught here with them. being caught here at all would be bad enough, but being caught with the young avengers would be so, so much worse. 

 

valentina would kill him. the team would laugh at him. sam would call him angrily, probably. bucky wanted none of that. none of it.

 

“okay!” miss america shouted. “everyone through the portal- let’s go!” she ordered, clapping her hands to accentuate the command.

 

ms marvel was the first one through, hands grasping as many weapons as she could carry. bucky just sort or stood there lamely as the magical boy and teen-angst ironman took the crate he was hauling from him and just left through the portal, not even uttering a word to him.

 

little-er lang was trying to drag the last, full crate, struggling as it fought her weight. “this one’s heavy-” she grumbled, her attempts to pull the thing towards the portal almost entirely futile. 

 

“shove it!” ironheart yelled, rushing back from the decrepit basement they were moving everything to, helping her with a boost of repulsor power. “physics is a lie!”

 

ms marvel looked back through the portal, worried eyes flashing over him before turning to kate, who had slowly backed up until she, too, was through the portal. “wait, what about-” she began, cut off by the exasperated and victorious noises ironheart and scott’s daughter made when they successfully relocated the crate.

 

kate spun toward bucky, lowering her bow and arrow. “oh no. do we bring him?” she asked, casting a sidelong glance at the other girl.

 

“no,” he tried, but it felt like none of them heard him. all eyes turned.

 

bucky did not need to end up wherever these kids’ headquarters was, and definitely did not need to deal with their haunted house. he did not want to explain a the random-ass pickup spot to his team when this was over. 

 

“i’m not leaving him behind.” the boy hissed, eyes wide. bucky took a step back, raising his non-metal arm to try and portray just how much he was not on board for whatever scheme they were cooking up.

 

“cool,” miss america said, nodding. “let’s grab him.” she shrugged, walking through her portal and back over to him. the boy followed after him, along with ms marvel, scott’s daughter just grinning at him and ironheart looking thoroughly done with their shit.

 

ms marvel seemed to be their leader, that’s what his intel had told him, but ironheart seemed to carry most of the common sense and awareness on the team.

 

“i can walk- ” bucky started, clearly offended and already relenting to the fact that, if they wanted him to go through that portal, he was probably going through. he’d seen what the magical boy could do.

 

“okay grandpa!” ms marvel cheered, surging towards him with her team.

 

bucky admitted defeat right then and there, unable to stop whatever it was they were going to do.

 

in one chaotic motion, three sets of hands grabbed him- by the arms, the shoulders, someone maybe got a boot- and bodily shoved him through the portal like he was just another overly dramatic crate.

 

“hey-!” bucky shouted as he was hoisted through the portal, the thing promptly closing when they were through and cutting off the sounds of that god-awful alarm.

 

it left them all in a total, unnatural silence.

 

the silence stretched.

 

then scott’s daughter flopped onto the floor with a groan. “that went fine. totally fine. normal op.”

 

bucky sat up, dusting himself off, expression unreadable. “you threw me through a portal.” he deadpanned to them, standing up from when he had been unceremoniously pushed to the floor. or dropped. it was difficult to tell, really. 

 

kate, still catching her breath, gave him a thumbs-up. “you’re welcome.”

 

bucky stared, unblinking, at the glowing, hissing, vaguely twitching pile of weapons and crates that had just narrowly made the trip into the world’s most haunted basement. bucky could see some sort of old pictorial symbols etched into the walls. this place was 100% cursed.

 

“…where the hell are we?” he asked, flatly, doing his best to ignore the wild variety of concerning things littered in the basement. there was an entire shelf dedicated to old, probably demonic music boxes. 

 

not creepy at all.

 

“headquarters!” the boy chirped, bounding into the middle of the room like this was all perfectly normal.

 

bucky’s expression didn’t shift. “i have made many regrettable choices in my annoyingly long life,” he remarked as the squadron of kids moved around him, reaching for home-made tech gear that looked kind of like pipe bombs but also somewhat like scanners. “these ones are pretty up there.” he finished, watching the kids start work on whatever it was they were doing.

 

around him, the basement buzzed with energy- literal and otherwise. the chitauri crates were stacked almost comically unevenly and precariously, pulsing with low-frequency menace. one box in the corner hissed faintly, leaking a stream of pale purple smoke that curled unnaturally in the air, like it knew it wasn’t supposed to exist and was determined to be dramatic about it.

 

ms marvel moved to it first, grabbing a fire extinguisher that had certainly been taken from some other place from the wall. “okay, that one’s definitely not normal.” she remarked, approaching it cautiously and very tentatively beginning to spritz it with the fire extinguisher.

 

kate, putting down all her archery gear next to the staircase, made a dismissive noise. 

 

“define normal in a house with a ghost.” she remarked, turning back around and helping lang’s daughter pick up an especially precariously shaped… thing from one of the crates.

 

wiccaan, now elbow-deep in a crate and cautiously using his magic to help him lift out a handful of what bucky could only describe as sci-fi blaster props on to the top of one of the closed crates for closer inspection, protested: “agatha can’t actually hurt you, you know that, right?”

 

he actually sounded a little concerned as he said it, as though he was worried his friends might have actually thought that she could.

 

bucky would not be blaming them for that assumption. ‘ghosts are real, by the way’ came with a certain set of connotations and conclusions to be drawn.

 

mini-scott pouted over her shoulder. “she keeps making the bathroom mirror whisper at me.” she complained, as if to counter the wiccan’s declaration.

 

“she does? agatha leaves me alone most of the time, i think i annoy her,” ms marvel threw in her ten cents, and just like that, they were bickering back and fourth about the ghost that supposedly owned the house he was in right now. he had no idea where he was, let alone what continent, country, hell, even timezone. miss america- which was a wildly stupid name, he wanted to let it be known, and it just seemed wildly out of place- could create portals, and what little he knew about strange and his magic- because he did recognise it- told him they could be in a cabana out on some tiny mediterranean island right now.

 

bucky turned in a slow circle, taking them all in. ms marvel calmly inspecting alien tech; kate lounging like they weren’t surrounded by potentially radioactive death crates; scott’s daughter- what was her name, again?- talking about arguing with a sentient bathroom mirror; wiccan smiling, of all things; and ironheart focused, scanning one of the crates with a gauntlet that looked more advanced than half the SHIELD  labs he’d ever stepped foot in.

 

“…are you sure you’re the good guys?” he asked slowly, staring at them as they moved around him like some well-oiled machine, despite their bickering.

 

“can agatha make the milk go bad? because i swear the carton i brought the other day was in date, and it came out like cheese-”

 

“i think she keeps on making all my hair ties break! like, seven have snapped while i’ve been here, it’s absurd.”

 

“i think she’s been hiding my shoes on the ceiling.”

 

none of them answered him. they didn’t even blink. it was almost impressive, how practiced their actions were- like they’d all made a group pact to never acknowledge his out-of-place-ness.

 

“okay. all this is genuine: chitauri weapon cores, external wiring influences and energy signatures, i think even some bio-matter. someone dumped a lot of money into this.” ironheart declared after finishing her ‘sweep’, whatever it was, of all the tech.

 

kate gave a low whistle. “and we just robbed them blind.”

 

ms marvel made a face. “feels illegal.” she remarked, looking somewhat guilty. bucky had to fight back a sardonic laugh.

 

“we’re technically vigilantes,” miss america offered, pushing a now empty crate into the corner of the basement.

 

scott’s daughter shrugged. “it’s only illegal if you get caught.” she said off-handedly which was absolutely not how that worked, jesus christ. bucky had gotten away with a lot in his life, most if not all of it illegal, and yet hadn’t been caught.

 

and it was a range of illegal activities, too. from stealing some gas to assassinating a US president.

 

bucky still sighed, muttering under his breath, “this is what i get for trusting teenagers.”

 

wiccan, still busy sorting through the weapons he’d fished out of one crate, called over his shoulder. “just let me know when you’re done cataloguing and scanning them so i can start getting rid of the really angry ones.”

 

“gotcha,” ironheart said, still locked in on her readings. “then we need time to figure out who the hell’s funding this pipeline.”

 

there was a beat of quiet- just long enough for bucky to look over the stack of unmarked, very alien, very dangerous hardware and wonder just how much worse this was going to get.

 

“you guys are in way over your heads,” he said at last.

 

smaller lang responded instantly, voice bright. “so were you in 1943.”

 

ironheart, still not looking up, added, “and yet here we are.”

 

bucky looked like he might respond- he wanted to, but after thinking it over for a few moments, decided against it. 

 

“i’m not saying stop,” he said instead. “i’m saying you need backup.” if there was ever a way to ease into the conversation valentina wanted him to have, he supposed. whatever this had been, and whatever it was turning out to be, was certainly… a starting point, that was for sure. and bucky was awkward in even the most casual of social climates. this was trial by fire, if there ever was one.

 

ms marvel smiled, shrugging him off. “we have each other.” she stated, plain and simple. 

 

“and hawkeye’s weirdly limitless bank account,” miss america added with a bit of a devious grin.

 

kate shot her a thumbs-up. “you say that like it’s a bad thing.”

 

bucky just gave his dead-eyed stare to the kids in front of him, expertly filtering his thoughts and not saying them out loud. and yet none of you seem old enough to go drinking even in europe.

 

wiccan cleared his throat loudly, very interested in not continuing the awkward silence they had going on. “okay! let’s get this show on the road.”

 

“yeah,” ironheart muttered with another glare in his direcion. “before agatha gets curious and starts possessing this stuff.”

 

there was a long pause, filled with some head-nods of agreement. 

 

bucky found himself the one to speak amidst the silence as the team started to get to work on the next leg of their plan.

 

“…sorry, what?” he asked, because with all their bickering it did not seem like agatha would be the ‘lets do something good’ kinda ghostly possessor.

 

“you coming, bucky?” miss america called, looking over at him from the pile of weapons she was very casually asessing. “or you gonna stand there and be haunted?” she finished with a small laugh, scanning a smaller, pistol-looking weapon with one of those home-made looking devices, before very recklessly tossing it to billy, which gave him a small heart-attack. only a little one.

 

he let out a long sigh, billy doing something with his magic, the weapon glowing a faint blue before just disappearing in a small twinkle of blue light.

 

a neat trick, he’d give it that. 

 

“i survived hydra. i can survive you lot.” he relented after a few moments, walking over to where ms marvel was struggling to lift up a larger device.

 

once he had it picked up for her, nodding at her small ‘thank you!’, he stopped, not sure what to do with it. he felt very stupid, the only adult in a room full of children who knew infinitely more about the situation he was in than him. 

 

the lang lineage came to his rescue once again, however, when scott’s daughter pointed her totally-not-a-pipe-bomb-scanner at the device, presumably scanning the item before looking at whatever result her device gave her.

 

“safe-ish,” she declared, gesturing him towards the wiccan, who was accepting weapons and devices from whoever handed one to him and making them disappear in a rain of blue sparkles.

 

bucky held the oversized thing for him as he literally worked his magic, before the item was gone in the blink of an eye. bucky took a moment to compute it- like, genuinely process it all- before deciding this actually wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d ever done, and heading over to pick up another weapon and join the well-meaning chaos of the team.

 

and so, the process continued. bucky would pull, lang jr would scan, wiccan would banish. rinse and repeat.

 

for all their chaos, it worked like clockwork.

 

eventually, someone passed bucky an empty crate and pointed toward a dark corner of the basement.

 

“stack duty,” kate said. “make it look less like a war crime in here.”

 

he didn’t argue. not because he agreed- but because, bafflingly, he almost didn’t mind.

 

not yet, anyways. for the time being, it seemed, he was a part of the team.

 

once the last crate was empty and all the weapons were gone, the basement fell into an uneasy calm- if you ignored the faintly glowing wall sigils, the smell of faintly charred wood, and the soft crackling from one corner where a crate had very nearly caught fire.

 

ms marvel clapped her hands together, grinning brightly. “okay, who wants food? i’m hungry. i’m gonna cook something.”

 

“make extra,” kate said, visibly perking up at the mention of food. “i’m starving.”

 

“and me!” lang jr added brightly.

 

“none for me, thanks,” miss america said, already halfway up the stairs.

 

“i could eat,” wiccan chimed in, heading after miss america.

 

their apparent leader looked toward the workbench, where ironheart stood staring at the intel on her gauntlets- probably from the tech they’d spent the last half hour cataloguing.

 

“riri?” she asked, looking at the girl still working.

 

bucky made no visible acknowledgement, and sort of wished he’d missed the slip-up. he had been aware the group was exclusively using code-names on the op, keeping it up at their base with him around. now that he had a name, finding her identity would be 10 times easier. the girl in particular seemed very conscious of not giving away too much, too.

 

bucky hated his job sometimes. scratch that, he hated it most of the time.

 

the girl- riri- didn’t even glance up. “so we’re just gonna ignore the 106-year-old elephant in the room? the elephant you just casually revealed my civilian identity to, by the way?” she demanded, words targeted and sharp, a fact that seemed compounded when she didn’t even flick her eyes up. bucky watched as ms marvel went a little pale, clearly mentally kicking herself- though something in bucky made him think it had more to do with having upset riri than give away her name. 

 

 call it an intuition.

 

“i’m technically 108,” bucky offered, dry, an attempt to stop whatever tension was rising in the room.

 

ms marvel looked to him briefly, before looking back at riri. “well, he helped out, didn’t he? do you want something to eat?” she then asked, directing the question to him.

 

he had not been prepared for that in the slightest.

 

bucky, unsure if this was some very strange trap. “um…”

 

“no,” riri snapped, finally looking in their direction and stalking closer to them. “absolutely not. we are not doing this. america, can you please send him to wherever it is he broods and sharpens knives for fun?” she decided, calling up the stairs at their resident-portal maker, who was watching from the top steps with wiccan.

 

“that’s not how we do things, riri,” ms marvel admonished gently. “it’s a vote-”

 

“says you,” riri shot back, cutting her off. bucky barely had time to even comprehend that this team of kids decided on things by vote before the arguing picked back up.

 

“that was one time.” ms marvel rebutted.

 

“that one time was our team name.” riri growled.

 

“okay, who votes bucky stays for dinner?” ms marvel asked, raising her hand without hesitation.

 

wiccan raised his. lang jr,  too. kate didn’t even look up, just stuck her hand in the air. america gave a shrug and a nod and lifted hers as well.

 

riri stared at them all in abject betrayal. “you are all insane.”

 

ms marvel beamed, smile stretching from ear to ear. “but you love us~” she teased, turning her back and heading up the stairs.

 

kate sat up a little. “can we make mac ‘n cheese? i could really go for some right now.”

 

“ooh!” miss america- or just america, maybe?- perked up. “let me help! i can-”

 

the conversation blurred, voices overlapping, dissolving into the warm, familiar rhythm of a team that had never needed permission to be one. the tension in the room softened into laughter, a creaky floorboard groaning as someone made their way upstairs.

 

with a hesitant and very confused glance at riri, who was glaring at him like a stovetop she’d burned her hand on, the silence between them stretching out for what felt like hours.

 

riri broke it. she scowled, muttering under her breath how ‘their falling apart would be faster than the avengers’ as she made her way up the stairs.

 

half way up, she turned back, the look in her eyes so begrudging and irritated, but bucky, despite all the ire, still got the message loud and clear.

 

you coming?

 

it seems his mission wasn’t quite over yet. he very much feared writing up this mission report.

Notes:

there r a handful of references in here that, maybe some day, someone might recognize <3

Chapter 17: performance issues

Summary:

a pair of unwanted guests bomb the young avengers next op with their presence. oops.

Notes:

sorry for the delay on this chapter! i've been stupid busy and also alexei is SO hard to write. still, i hope you enjoy <3

my formatting is broken again so. um. we just gotta deal with that for now

 

meetings were fun, good for team morale and poking fun at valentina, but he had always been more of a man of actions rather than words. they were a useful tool, of course, but he was a super soldier, not a super speaker.

 

valentina wanted the young avengers, and since the team had agreed, the young avengers she would get.

 

not quite like that. that sounded bad. perhaps this was why alexei preferred to do over to say. the english language was so needlessly complicated.

 

the winter soldier had come back with such amazing and wondrous tales, alexei knew he had to meet the heroes himself. the screen and word never did true justice, this he knew. no record had ever managed to capture the true glory of the red guardian. 

 

so in person it was. he is not the only one to leave on unsanctioned trips, so no one questions his absence from the tower. they are all to discuss the youngling heroes and bicker, as his team was prone to do, but he and the winter soldier were leaders, and leaders led by example. 

 

so alexei would act. and his acting took him all the way to state of oklahoma in a helicopter, where his intel had told him the new heroes would be. the winter soldier had done remarkable on his mission, with much intel they could put to use. he had even coerced the group into letting him stay for team-bonding dinner after making contact, which means they now had much more information and more identities to work with.

 

not only was there kate bishop, the new hawkeye, but cassie lang, daughter of ant-sized hero, the boy billy kaplan, genius riri williams the second coming of stark, leader kamala khan the missus marvel, and completely untraceable powerhouse america, no last name. 

 

bucky had such deduction and sleuthing skills, he had such a reputation for a reason. 

 

alexei was landing his helicopter, singing along to his old anthem when he realised he has company.

 

“lena! what are you doing here!” he greeted his daughter, who had made her presence unknown to him on his flight. such a sneaker, his daughter. 

 

“i can ask you the same thing, alexei.” she replied, crossing her arms. “why are we in oklahoma?”

 

“i am here on mission,” he told her, grabbing his helmet from where he’d stashed it for the flight. “you are following me, it seems.”

 

“i am supervising you,” she corrected him. he waved her off.

 

“the difference is same, мален’кий.”

 

alexei knew where he was going. through this large patch of trees stood a warehouse, an old oil storage facility. whatever it was now home to the young avengers wanted to get their hands on. perhaps technology or still even oil- maybe the new ironman did not have an arc reactor and used oil and gas instead. something that sleek certainly would need much of it.

 

“what is your plan here, alexei?” yelena asked, trailing after him, steps silent. 

 

“what do you mean ‘plan’, lena? i am red guardian! that is the plan!” he cheered, putting his helmet on as they approached the warehouse.

 

“alexei, no, we need a plan. there needs to be a plan,” his daughter urged, so silly.

 

these kidvengers had a plan of their own, and making his own plan could intervene with theirs - that is, of course, what had happened to bucky. at least, with less a plan, not so much planning would get ruined. 

 

the kidvengers had chosen a different entrance, as the door he tried to open did not budge when he moved the handle. yelena was still trying to convince him to stop, all silly words and wide eyes. but he was on a quest! a quest that could be the launchpad of the greatest team in the history of all heroes!

 

alexei has never met a door he could not break. except for those ones he couldn’t. but this one, all metal and old hinges, stood no chance against the sheer power of the red guardian!

 

with little to no run-up, he barged through the doors with his shoulder, sending them clean off their hinges and clattering to the floor with a large, adequately dramatic, plume of dust. 

 

“small heroes!” he bellowed, eyes immediately catching the group huddled behind some sort of old machinery-conveyer-belt-unimportant-thing and glaring at him in shock and fear.

 

“do not be afraid!” he assured, bringing his hands into a less threatening pose. “we are here to offer the help,” he told them, putting names to faces.

 

boy is billy, red scarf is kamala.

 

“guys, we’ve got external interference. west side entry point.” he heard a faint voice crackle as he approached the group, crouching with them to ‘blend in’ as yelena would say, grinning at each of them. they had someone on comms.

 

brown hair is cassie, black hair is kate. brown eyes is america.

 

“we’ve noticed,” the america girl hissed back into her communicator, beady eyes narrowing on him and yelena, who had silently followed in his steps. 

 

“hello, young avengers.” his daughter greeted, using their silly name. alexei would continue to use it if it pissed off sam and valentina, but he himself was more partial to kidvengers. it rolled off the tongue much easier, better for marketing.

 

kate, the one with black hair and the bow-and-arrow strapped to her back, glared absolute daggers at his daughter, which did not appeal him to her in the slightest.

 

“yelena?! what are you doing here?!” she demanded, voice hushed. it was then when he also clocked the dark, not-hero outfits the team was wearing, and realised this must have been some sort of covert, undercover mission.

 

oops. 

 

“i can do what i want, kate bishop,” yelena responded, determined despite how her voice pitched up. alexei still wasn’t sure how she knew this kid. “this is my dad. meet my dad.” she tacked on at the end, patting his shoulder.

 

alexei beamed, waving at the bemused expressions he received.

 

kate’s voice sliced through the air like a thrown knife. "your dad??"

 

yelena didn’t respond right away - instead, she swiftly raised her pistol and shot the man who had just rounded the corner, mid-shout. he dropped with a pained grunt, and without missing a beat, she yanked him down beside her behind the machinery.

 

such a champion, his little girl. so skilled.

 

"surprise," she said dryly, tucking the gun away. "you said you wanted to meet my dad."

 

alexei blinked, something pleased filling him. kate bishop wanted to meet him! this was a good sign, a foretelling of fortune and fortuitous battles together to come.  

 

and yet, she was still somehow underselling the moment. this was a historic event - a diplomatic summit between generations of heroes! a meeting of minds and muscles! and she was calling it... surprise?

 

this was not even yelena’s plan, nor was it his, since she decided to tag along, but still. 

 

from beside them, kate practically choked. "no i didn’t??" she stammered, looking wildly, wildly confused at it all.

 

yelena just shrugged, as if this were normal. "i met your parent. it’s only fair you meet mine."

 

alexei puffed out his chest a little, his grin maybe getting a little softer. she may not be born of his bloodline, but she was still his little girl. she would always make him proud, no matter what she did, but following in his and her sister’s footsteps only made his heart swell all the more.

 

alexei adjusted his helmet, making sure the strap was tightened adequately before making his proper introduction. his entrance had been good for first impressions, but he was yet to make the grand entrance this moment so clearly demanded. he had not made his way all the way out to oklahoma again to sit quietly behind some old, defunct machines. no. now was the time for introductions.

 

“i come in peace! and also with protein bars! to help you grow big and strong!”

 

he fished one from his utility belt - cinnamon flavor, best one - and held it up like a peace offering. they needed energy, these small warriors. protein built muscle. muscle built legacy. he was living proof.

 

the children froze. not in awe, unfortunately.

 

“is… is he wearing pajamas?” one of them whispered in horror. red scarf - kamala, yes, kamala khan. she looked like someone had just told her santa claus was real, and also deeply embarrassing.

 

valentina called him santa clause once. he still wanted to break each of her ribs for it.

 

and, wait the moment - pajamas? this was athletic tactical wear. a matching tracksuit was the mark of a disciplined man. he hadn’t wanted to intimidate them with the full glory of his red guardian suit, opting for only the helmet.

 

“yep,” another said flatly. brown hair girl. cassie lang. “that’s a grown man in a matching tracksuit set.”

 

ah, he thought proudly. at least she noticed. matching was important. branding mattered. it made you memorable in battle. the red guardian always coordinated.

 

“yelena,” kate said again, voice now dangerously close to a full mental breakdown. “why would you bring him to a black market sting?!”

 

alexei tilted his head. that seemed like a rude way to refer to his surprise appearance. and it was his idea, not yelena. he orchestrated this.

 

yelena didn’t even flinch, speaking before he got the chance to. “because i wanted to check in on you,” she said with a shrug, like this had been a casual tuesday decision. “and this seemed fun.”

 

alexei grinned under his helmet, soaking in the moment. see? fun! she was having fun. they were bonding. alexei always has a good time when yelena is happy. more like the child who was so full of joy. seeing her spark back ignited a new one of his own.

 

but still. this occasion was monumentous. and alexei had done his time being dismissed of his service.

 

“actually, this is my plan. she is here for my back-up.” he told the younglings with his trademark smile.

 

“backup?” yelena demanded, a little outraged.

 

“you prefer stowaway?”

 

“i am not stowaway!”

 

“well, you hid in my helicopter, so you are technically stowaway,”

 

“you were too busy singing to notice me! i was not hidden.”

 

“you were behind crate, yes? stowaway!”

 

“does that make us stowaway now, hmm?”

 

“no! now we are planning! there is difference!”

 

yes, sure, they were currently hiding behind old machine and crate, maybe being shot at, and possibly compromising what was, in hindsight, a fairly delicate operation - but these were details. technicalities. the kind you iron out later during the debrief. what mattered was that they were here, together. a family outing. shielding the next generation of heroes under their guiding wing.

 

and no one had even taken one of the protein bars yet. their loss.

 

a voice crackled harshly in the kids’ comms, his super serum allowing him the ability to hear the words.

 

“okay, what just triggered a breach alert on the west side?” the tone was sharp, clipped - the voice of someone who had not accounted for parental interference in the mission briefing.

 

crouched behind a conveyer belt of sorts, america didn’t even blink. 

 

“you’re not gonna like the answer.” she snarked, and alexei frowned a little. he was the red guardian! his presence was cool! good! he was avenger! they should be glad.

 

“it was the wall,” kamala whispered, almost apologetic. “the wall exploded.” she spoke into her comm, pre-emptively wincing.

 

a beat of static, then: “exploded? why did the wall explode?” the voice demanded, loud enough for him to hear even without his enhanced hearing. 

 

kate made a strangled sound, pinching the bridge of her nose like it was the only thing keeping her from screaming. “because yelena’s dad punched it.” she dead-panned.

 

blunt. to the truth. alexei liked that!

 

there was a long pause over the line.

 

“i’m sorry - what?” the girl on the comms demanded, befuddled. it must be the legendary ironheart, seeing as she was not on the site and the only other member of the team.

 

alexei, reminding himself of his moment of which had been referenced again, couldn’t help the swell of pride in his chest. the punch had been perfect, hadn’t it? structural integrity: shattered. hinges? obliterated. dust? cinematic. he was, as always, a man of glory.

 

kate glared across their little group huddle at yelena like she was about to leap over and throttle her. “what are you even doing in oklahoma?!” she demanded after a few moments of quiet, looking over her shoulder across the warehouse for any hostiles.

 

good instincts. his likening grew even more!

 

yelena, after searching for the right words for a few moments, just shrugged. “visiting. with my dad.” she settled on.

 

alexei beamed. pride swelled in his big chest whenever she called him dad. it was a lot of pride. he had a big chest. very big.

 

cassie popped up from behind her cover, a crate a little ways away from them, just long enough to deadpan, “he’s in a matching tracksuit. he looks like a walking adidas ad.” she drawled.

 

“it’s tactical,” alexei muttered indignantly, adjusting the zipper of his jacket. matching gear built unity. it was branding. no one questioned captain america’s star, or iron man’s glowing chest. why, then, the ridicule for his cohesive aesthetic?

 

“he’s… very enthusiastic,” kamala added quietly, like she wasn’t sure if she was afraid or impressed. she gave him an uncertain smile. alexei returned it in spades.

 

riri’s voice cut back in, dry as a desert with a crackle over the comms. “did i just hear you say that yelena’s - an avenger -  dad just showed up on our mission?”

 

america winced. “riri, they blew our cover like three seconds in.”

 

“they? what do you meant they? what- is someone else there? who else is there?”

 

“red guardian and his daughter!” he yelled, hoping his words could be heard through the comms.

 

everyone - even his daughter - shushed him aggressively.

 

“yelena and her dad are here,” kate explained, hurriedly and in a hushed voice.

 

riri began to ramble something over the comms, many profanities and complaints and half-baked re-planning of their mission, but there was no need!

 

“i create distraction!” he said brightly, throwing both arms out - this had been the plan all along! assist new avengers in their mission. 

 

“now you sneak in! classic maneuver!”

 

diversion and infiltration. chaos and control. the great spy plays always started with a bang - he had simply delivered one.

 

“we already snuck in!” kate hissed, eyes blazing. “it was supposed to be stealth!”

 

“and now the whole building’s lit up like christmas,” cassie bit out. “i’ve got at least six guards rerouting from the north hallway alone. we are compromised.” she informed them, looking at her phone.

 

utilising phone for tactical operations. very smart! using the technology available. 

 

yelena rolled her eyes, checking her ammo. “you said i needed hobbies.” she countered kate, pointing her pistol at the ground as she braced to spring up and fight.

 

alexei nodded sagely beside her. he had also said that. many times. proud as he was of his daughter’s lethal efficiency, she had needed purpose. and what better purpose than family? than friends?

 

“this is not a hobby,” america snapped. “your hobby cannot be sabotage!”

 

alexei gave a thoughtful hum, crouching a bit lower behind their defunct machinery as more footsteps thundered in the distance. sabotage was a strong word. he preferred tactical disruption.

 

still - this was going very well.

 

“focus!” riri’s voice snapped over comms, irritated and urgent. “you’ve got four minutes until you’re completely surrounded. extract what you can and prep for portal evac.” she instructed, and alexei watched with an air of awe as the kids surged to their feet and, like a well-oiled machine, began to move.

 

to work.

 

cassie grunted, prying open one of the heavy metal crates they’d been crouched behind with the help of billy’s magic. the both of them scanned the contents before discarding the lid to the side, making sure it landed on the floor as quietly as it could.

 

“what do we do about the avengers crashing our op? again?” she asked, shooting a look he couldn’t quite decipher at him and his daughter. 

 

kate’s jaw tightened. “work around them!” she hissed back, at which the other girl nodded and went right back to their team-working.

 

“we are right here, kate bishop,” yelena said mildly, checking her pistol with an almost bored air. “these things are hurtful.” alexei did not understand the relationship his daughter had with this kate - he’d heard of their meeting, but did not know much of what to make of it. he did not fully understand the way she spoke to her.

 

“just get to work, you guys,” riri cut in, the background roar of her jet audible through the comms. “i can only lead the guards away for so long!”

 

alexei took that as his cue to contribute something deeply inspiring. “such teamwork!” he boomed, clapping once, brushing aside the hisses and squeals of warnings he got at making too much noise. “this is already more fun than my last family reunion.”

 

this was true. no one had even thrown a potato salad yet. a marked improvement.

 

“please lower your voice. please,” kamala hissed from across the warehouse, eyes wide. she must have been making sure the hallway was clear! protecting her team, the mark of a good leader. 

 

“too late,” yelena said, lips curling into a smirk. “you tripped a motion sensor four minutes ago.” she told them mildly, raising her gun and firing once, twice, and alexei heard two bodies thud.

 

that is my girl, he thought proudly. 

 

billy froze mid-gesture. “wait - are you serious?” he whisper-yelled, eyes flickering around.

 

“who knows?” yelena replied, the picture of nonchalance.

 

alexei felt this was the correct attitude for a covert mission: keep your enemies guessing, keep your allies guessing more. that is at least how his team liked to perform, especially with walker. it was always fun to keep walker guessing.

 

across the warehouse, america shoved open a glowing orange portal, much like the one bucky had described, the air bending and glowing at the edges. 

 

“okay, okay - billy, cassie, move the crate. kamala, grab that case! you two -” kate pointed between yelena and alexei “- please just leave.” she begged, exasperated as the others moved around her.

 

“too late!” he announced cheerfully, sweeping in and yanking the crate straight from billy and cassie’s hands before they could object. the perks of a super soldier! he was halfway through the portal before the kids even registered what had happened. with speed and strength, anything is possible. “bonding time has begun!” he cheered, walking straight into the concrete room on the other side of the portal. 

 

perhaps this was the headquarters bucky had described to them!

 

“this is not how you do job recruitment!” kate yelled after him, storming toward the portal.

 

behind them, the thunder of boots grew louder. yelena lobbed a flashbang over her shoulder just as the first of the hostile guards appeared in the far doorway. the bang was deafening; the light turned the edges of the machinery in the warehouse to white outlines.

 

“we’ll debrief later,” she called, slipping easily into the glowing gateway, ending right at his side as the kids began to fall back through the portal after them.

 

already such good trainees, taking after their new mentors.

 

“you all better make it back in one piece!” riri barked through comms as the portal began to shrink.

 

“portal closing in three, two- ” america warned, bracing herself.

 

“this went well!” alexei decided with absolute sincerity. this had been perfect! they had done introductions, helped finish the mission, and no one had been hurt. well, except for maybe a handful of guards, but they had probably deserved it if the avengers were raiding their compounds anyways. 

 

kate seized him by the arm, hauling him the rest of the way through. “shut up!” she snapped, pushing him to the side.

 

the portal slammed shut with a thunderclap, leaving the echo of alexei’s enthusiasm behind in the now-empty oklahoma warehouse with no less than two dozen very confused, and very robbed armed guards.

 

………………

 

“i am never letting kate plan an op again,” riri grumbled as she soared through the sky, allowing her gps systems to guide her and her suit back to chicago. the team could handle the lesser weapons load without her, and she did not want to deal with whatever fuckery kate’s friend and her dad had dragged them into.

which, also a thing they had to discuss. this was the second time the new avengers had tracked their op. and also, how the hell was kate friends with an ex-russian-spy-turned-avenger?

Notes:

the next chapter is already significantly easier for me to write, so it should be up sooner rather than later <3

Chapter 18: communication issues

Summary:

the thunderbolts approach the young avengers as a team. oh, and spider-man is there.

Notes:

ayo who thought it was a good idea to bring bob on the mission?? anyways bob's on a mission :P

 

bob had dreaded his first official mission with the avengers for as long as he’d lived in the tower. at first, he’d volunteer to go, but the rest of the team would - rightfully - fight him on it and also valentina, who knew better now than to ask him to go. 

 

he’d grown to dread the day he had to go, because it would mean things were dire. very dire. anything bad enough to need the sentry would be world-ending. universe-ending. whatever the highest kind of stakes were these days.

 

he dreaded this mission a little less since they said he was going as bob, not as sentry. this was a casual thing - as casual as they could be, that is. everyone was sort of in uniform - as in, wearing clothes they could run or vault things in. ‘just in case’, they’d said. bob didn’t have an official avenger uniform, anyways.

 

that said, not all of them understood the particular dress code for this mission. alexei was in his avenger-Z brand onesie, walker brought his still-taco-shield and ava was fully in her ghost suit, but she’d said it was a power-control thing, so it was probably fine.

 

bob turned on the van’s indicator, coming to a halt at the stop-sign before turning right. he turned his indicator back off. 

 

“they’re going to be there by now,” walker groaned from one of the backseats. 

 

“that’s a good thing.” bucky replied from the passenger seat. bob focused on the road.

 

“i am obeying the posted speed regulations,” he informed, going for firm but - well - that wasn’t really his forte. ever. 

 

“thank you, bob,” yelena said pointedly as walker scoffed and grumbled something he didn’t care to decipher. 

 

“it’s better that we approach them after they get there rather than wait there for them, so it doesn’t come off as us laying in wait.” bucky reminded them, for the ump-teenth time. ever since the group agreed his presence - obscure, unthreatening, endearing (their words, not his) - would be beneficial at the full-meet, he’d gone to all the meetings, including the ones valentina forced them into.

 

this was, thankfully, a topic they had her beat on when it came to intel, so for once they could ignore most of valentina’s directory.

 

bob’s gps pinged with a notification of ‘you have arrived at your destination’ which he promptly dismissed, on the lookout for parking that would help obscure their van.

 

“when we are team, we will not have to drive to missions,” alexei remarked from his seat. he’d refused to wear his seatbelt. yes it put him on edge. “mystery america girl can make teleportation!” he cheered with a grin.

 

“we know,” ava drawled, uninterested.

 

“it is magic!” he cheered.

 

“you’ve mentioned.” ava snipped. 

 

alexei seemed unaffected by her irritation - she seemed like she was in a much worse mood today. bob wasn’t sure why. 

 

nevertheless, bob was in no hurry to park. once he had, he turned his gps off (it was manual, on yelena’s insistence) before unclipping his seat-belt. 

 

“alright. we’re good.”

 

the van’s door slid open and the others piled out, and he remembered to grab the van keys before he, too got out, making sure all the doors were shut properly before locking it and pocketing the keys.

 

“alright, lets get this over with.” ave huffed, clicking her mask into place and phasing out as the team headed for the fire escape. according to their intel, the young avengers would be on the roof of the next building over, in the middle of new york. 

 

why they decided to meet them on a mission when they were in a much, much more populated area was beyond him. still, bob ascended the fire escape after yelena as the team made their way up onto the roof.

 

he was considerably winded by the time they reached the roof, but the rest of the team was full-sail ahead, so he just exhaled deeply and followed after them.

 

the roof had, thankfully, only a few inch gap between the it and the next one, so bob wasn’t making any daring jumps or leaps of faith.

 

bucky was walking, ahead of them when bob noticed the figures on the roof that he presumed where the young avengers. “okay, remember, don’t scare them off, we-” he began, but alexei, in his onesie glory, ran off ahead of him and screamed.

 

“SMALL WARRIORS!” he cheered at full-throttle, catching their attention and having about 4 different weapons drawn on him.

 

“oh god.” yelena groaned, running to catch up with her dad. walker jogged to stand beside where alexei had stopped and bucky just face-palmed. 

 

bob jumped a little as ava materialised to his right, motionless and expressionless.

 

he walked alongside her to reach the rest of the team.

 

“you’re kidding.” the girl with the archery equipment dead-panned upon seeing them.

“hi kate bishop!” yelena greeted, using a tone he had never heard before. huh.

 

bob scanned the rest of the group, quickly putting faces to names. that’s got to be riri williams, the ironheart. that’s america, that’s billy kaplan, then that’s got to be kamala and cassie. 

 

they were all suited up, no longer wearing the stealth kit both bucky and alexei had reported on.

 

his heart beat just a little bit faster. uh oh.

 

just behind the young avengers, all geared up, was another person though - a person that none of their intel had told them about.

 

“why are the avengers here? did you call them?” the spider-man accused, taking a step back from the group he’d - been meeting with? talking with? working with?

 

whatever it was, he immediately seemed to flip on them, looking ready to fight everyone and anyone there. he swallowed. it wasn’t unusual for people not to trust the new avengers, but his suspicion seemed… closer to fear. panic. something personal.

 

“of course we didn’t,” riri snapped, voice projecting from somewhere on her suit - she had her ironheart suit on entirely, which included her face-plate, so he couldn’t see her face to get a good read on her either. from what alexei, yelena and bucky had all said, though, and her tone, she seemed none too pleased for them to be there.

 

“they’re developing this annoying habit of crashing our missions. our stealth missions.” kate drawled, putting her bow down from where she’d aimed it at alexei as he unceremoniously jumpscared them.

 

something in spider-man’s posture changed, and it was as though something about him fundamentally shifted. no longer did his presence exude fear and panic and escape. 

 

he was eerily calm. 

 

“good thing this isn’t one of them.” he remarked, voice feeling entirety different now despite the speaker being the same. it was stilted; a hollow threat.

 

i thought he was the friendly neighborhood spider-man.

 

riri - well, ironheart; it felt weird to call her by her real name when she was in the whole suit thing - sighed again, exasperated, and folded her iron-clad arms. “you decide to bring the whole team this time?” she drawled, and bob could feel her eyes settle on him - he could feel it - despite the glowing slits of her masks eyes not giving anything away.

 

bucky, to his credit, didn’t seemed perturbed by her tone - or the underlying threat. he simple rolled his shoulders in a display of his laxness. 

 

“figured it was time we all got acquainted.” he said, voice that strange ground between monotone and airy. he shot a look over at walker, who returned the glare with equal fervor.

 

bob swallowed as the two just glared at each other in one of their annoying, probably captain-america-derived man-offs. 

 

when the silence seemed to stretch on for too long, bucky groaned and shut his eyes, muttering a curse under his breath before looking back at the young avengers. “fine.” he grumbled, taking a singular step forward. “that’s walker,” he introcuded for the man, who gave a very stiff, stilted nod. “you’ve already met alexei and yelena,” he continued, indicating to where yelena was muttering russian to alexei - probably chastising him, from the looks of it - “you know who i am.” he went on.

 

bucky swallowed, hesitating over his next words.

 

“that’s ava,” he went, indicating towards her. she did not move a muscle; not a flinch, not a twitch. she stayed dead silent.

 

she must have been in a really bad mood today.

 

“and this is bob.” he finished, indicating towards him. bob smiled at the faces that turned to him, waving.

 

“um. hi.” he greeted, determined to be more engaging than the rest of the team combined. so far, half the team refused to speak to the kids, which wasn’t a good thing - but also maybe not a bad thing. walker was an asshole and ava was exuding an energy of mayhaps i’ll kill you if you get too close, so.

 

kate squinted her eyes, gaze on him. he shifted on his feet. “bob?” she echoed; that seemed to be the general reaction to people meeting him, it seemed.

 

“yeah. that’s me. hi.” he confirmed, nodding at the girl. she seemed stumped for a moment before just ducking her head in a nod and seemingly accepting his presence. win!

 

“okay,” ironheart interrupted, drawing attention away from him. he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “i don’t care who you are, you are not ruining another of our missions. especially this one.” she said, tone still vaguely threatening. 

 

“why not?” yelena asked, tone light. bob knew it was in an attempt to keep the situation from escalating into a brawl, but he winced a little because it also came out as a mild threat.

 

“this one’s personal.” spider-man cut in, voice quieting the three different comebacks from the young avengers. they all averted their eyes, looking anywhere but at another person, and it made his skin crawl. there’s something here. something we’re missing. 

 

“personal is dangerous.” bucky warned, saying much more than the words that left his mouth. again, bob felt pretty out of the loop about it. there was a much bigger picture he wasn’t getting here. he could also feel the glare spider-man leveled bucky with through the mask of his suit, filled with a torrent of emotions he couldn’t even begin to decipher.

 

“so am i,” the vigilante replied, voice low and dangerous. 

 

bob watched the small, almost imperceivable shift bucky made, adjusting his weight. there was definitely something there, something more, and bob had no idea what it could be.

 

“go home, yelena.” kate tried, voice stilted in the heavy tension that had begun to form between them. her words didn’t quite cut the tension, but it felt like he could breathe again.

 

“hmm,” yelena pondered out loud, definitely performative. “no.” she added swiftly with a grin, uncrossing her arms and rocking back on her heels before standing up straight once more. “this is much more fun than movie night.”

 

“i thought you liked movie night,” alexei remarked, doing that look that was remarkably similar to a kicked puppy. 

 

“no, i do, i just like this more.” yelena replied quickly, immediately playing to soothe her father’s hurt feelings. bob smiled fondly at their bickering. then he was reminded of his own father, and the fondness drained from his body like water down a drain.

 

“you are young avenger, we are avenger. we should work together!” alexei shifted gears, turning back towards the young avengers and speaking in that big, performative way of his. 

 

“yeah, well, working together means coordination and coordination requires planning, wich you were not a part of, so, beat it.” ironheart snapped, words vicious. it looked like her teammate, kamala - ms marvel - was going to chastise her for a second, but she closed her mouth soon after and looked away. 

 

silence fell over them again, this time more uneasy than tense. bob didn’t know where he was supposed to look, who was supposed to say something, what they were supposed to do. 

 

this was definitely a bad first-mission. sure, he’d been told what most missions were like, but this? this had to be up there, man.

 

“um…” he began, stammering a little after the silence went on for a little bit too long, flushing at the attention shifting to him once more. he swallowed. “she - she has a point…” he said, wringing his wrists as his gaze flitted from teammate to teammate.

 

bucky just sighed again. deeply.

 

“whose side are you on, bob?” walker growled, that growl of his thathe’d grown to be less scared of, but still. 

 

still a little scared. walker could pummel him. and he wouldnt do anything about it lest the void… happen. again.

 

“sorry…” he managed, looking away from him.

 

“no, do not apologise.” yelena chirped, something that would usually make ava scoff and bucky huff fondly. bucky did - but ava was silent as ever. “walker is an asshole.” she conferred, words an echo of the ones he’d said all that time ago, in the vault.

 

bob smiled.

 

“right.” he nodded.

 

“so,” spider-man interrupted, voice still a cold drawl. “are you leaving or am i going to have to cover all of you? because i’m not rescheduling this.” he decided, tilting his head slightly at them all, almost in challenge. im doing this with or without you, it said. 

 

“they won’t leave, let’s just make sure none of them die as we do this, okay?” cassie - that was ant-man’s daughter - caved, uncrossing her arms as she spoke to the rest of her team. they all made small noises of affirmations or nodded. her attention turned back to them.  “are all of you armed at least?” she asked, also sounding a little fed up with them.

 

“obviously.” yelena scoffed, as though it was a stupid question.

 

“no.” he hurried to answer, gaze flickering around as his team began to move, as in oh shit they were doing this. it had not been the plan to join the mission, it had been the plan to make contact. make contact bob could do. join whatever heist or assault or whatever this was? absolutely not.

 

“it’s okay, bob,” yelena assured, walking up to him and patting his shoulder comfortingly. he was not comforted in the least bit. “you can stick with me again. it will be like the vault all over, okay? but this time walker will not harass you, and bucky is also here,” she tried to soothe. all his muscles tensed.

 

“i died,” he pleaded. please lets not do this. anything but this. please.

 

“but you are also alive. and that was your decision, for that diversion. don’t do that this time,” she told him, as if it was that simple. 

 

bob was still coming to terms with the fact that he had died. twice. and still had the remnants of valentina’s killswitch inside him somewhere. therapy was working for him in a lot of ways, but there wasn’t exactly a way to talk about… all of… that… like, at all, so he had been on his own for that one.

 

his final protests died behind his teeth as the group made their entrance - bob dutifully following yelena as she used a ceiling-window to silently slip onto some kind of metal walkway inside the building they’d been on the roof of, on the trail of kate, who kept on giving yelena these exasperated and somewhat fond looks. 

 

bucky slipped in after him, passing him a small earpiece which he struggled to shove into his ear. this was exactly what he did not want to happen.

 

“we wait until the others are in position,” kate whispered to them, crouching near the end of the walkway to remain mostly out of sight. bob hurried to follow suit, scrambling, bucky and yelena doing so with much more ease and grace. 

 

bob wasn’t going to question how they’d gained access to the young team’s comms, or where the extra earpiece had even come from, but cassie’s voice crackled to life clear as day in his ear. 

 

“alright, confirm, is everyone in position? extensions included?” she tacked on a little begrudgingly at the end.

 

“team wiccan in position,” billy replied shortly after.

 

“ready to move. walker’s here too,” america answered next.

 

“got the exit covered,” kamala informed them.

 

“ready.” was all spider-man said.

 

“in position with the russian dude. that ava chick disappeared, though. shame.” riri answered next. a bolt of fear ran through him - ava was missing? had someone got to her already?

 

“she does that sometimes,” yelena countered, speaking into the comms. it was weird hearing her whisper next to him but also hear her clearly through the comms.

 

“don’t care,” riri clipped back.

 

“im in position with the rest. eyes on the target?” kate wrapped up, cutting off that argument before it could really happen. the buzz of the next words swept over him - ava was probably fine, right? she could more than hold her own. she could beat all of them in hand-to-hand combat - as she’d proved several times over.

 

“visual confirmed; target is at the warehouse entrance.” billy spoke; bob had no idea where he or the others were, but that wasn’t really his focus right now. his focus was on staying small and hidden and unseen and not dying, thank you very much. “it’s our guy- toomes’ second-in-command, and if we drop fast, our vulture loses his wings.” he added. kate had her eye on - on something specific, but he didn’t care too much on the details of whatever operation they were on. he just wanted to stay out of it. very out of it.

 

“you say ‘drop fast’ like our numbers didn’t just double,” riri hissed from wherever her location was.

 

“we are not babies. we kill just fine.” yelena said, sounding offended. 

 

“woah, okay, slow your horses: we don’t kill!” kamala whispered frantically back at them.

 

“you aren’t killing anyone on our mission, got it?” kate ordered, turning around to actually give the demand to yelena face-to-face.

 

“you ruin all my fun, kate bishop.” yelena muttered, rolling her eyes. 

 

“focus,” bucky interrupted, words also directed at the whispered chatter that had broken out over their comm line. “we’re here to help. wherever you need the extra manpower or assistance, we’ll be, okay?” he told them all, giving a direction to the very confusing scenario.

 

good for them! not for me, though. staying right here. 

 

“since when do we take orders from kids?” walker snapped, and bob didn’t need to see his face to picture the irritated, fuming look he was no doubt giving.

 

“since you bombed our mission,” riri snapped right back, matching his irritation in spades. 

 

“uh - m-maybe… maybe both? like… both plans? together? like, coordination…?” bob stammered into the comms, the words tumbling out in a rush. his throat felt dry the second they left his mouth.

 

there was the silence. again. too long. 

 

bob winced.

 

“…you know, he’s not wrong,” cassie said at last, sounding more intrigued than anything else. 

 

“see? bob is genius,” yelena cut in smoothly, her smirk practically bleeding through the comms. bob could feel it radiating off her as she directed the look at kate, who returned the smile with a less-happy glare of her own.

 

“fine,” riri snapped, sharp and impatient. “young avengers, hit hard and fast. new avengers cover angles and exits and make sure nobody gets away. happy now?” she instructed, voice clipped and irritated, all business.

 

“not really,” walker muttered, low, with that ugly edge bob hated.

 

“don’t care. move.” riri shut him down flat, words and tone leaving no room for his incessant grumbling.

 

bob watched from the walkway as fighting began to break out - he saw america and walker on the ground floor, punching and kicking their way through a stream of guards and armed men that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. he pressed himself further into the shadows.

 

chaos had seemed to explode from all areas of the warehouse, the sounds of grunts and punches, moving bodies, gunfire and metal-on-metal clanking from every which way. kate was drawing and nothing arrows from her perch, firing excellently to disorient and disarm enemies from the fight below.

 

bob inhaled unsteadily - it was - it was a lot, but the swiftness and… serenity, almost, that both avenger teams seemed to move with was… encapsulating. 

 

“target’s on the move - east side!” billy’s voice hissed through the comms, snapping out of his admiring stupor, voice urgent and low.

 

“oh, dibs,” alexei said brightly, voice pitched like a kid spotting free candy.

 

“alexei, hold position,” bucky snapped, cutting him down before he could charge. “we don’t spook him.” he said, moving after yelena and kate as they began to cross the walkway, before descending the stairs and getting closer to the fight.

 

bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, he cursed himself mentally as he followed suit. 

 

can’t i at least have a gun?

 

“spidey,” cassie called, quick and focused, “can you web his exit?” she asked. bob spotted for a moment what he thought might be her, but may have just been an insect.

 

“it’s spider-man,” came the response, irritated and automatic - followed by the muffled thwip of a web-shooter.

 

on cue, there was a strangled curse from up ahead, raw and startled.

 

“what the hell-?!” they shouted, distorted and far-off in the mics.

 

“got him,” walker crowed, grin audible in his voice. “moving in.”

 

bob rushed behind an old, metal-and-concrete structure in the warehouse-like building to hide behind, doing his best not to draw any attention to himself. he was a sitting duck in a hunting zone - how did they manage to make him agree to `1 of this?

 

“don’t you dare rush him, we’re doing this our-” kamala started, her voice rising.

 

“walker, stand down,” bucky barked, sharp and overbearing, cutting her off.

 

“oh no, oh no, oh no-” bob whispered under his breath, wishing his comm wasn’t live, his pulse rabbit-fast. arguments between walker and bucky rang out through the air - the two not bothering to whisper into their comms anymore, settling for just openly yelling at each other, like they loved to do so much. 

 

“relax, bob,” yelena tried to comfort, appearing at his side. still, she seemed too calm, too amused. “this is the fun part.” she shrugged, popping up to look past the concrete of the structure and firing a few rounds of her pistol before crouching back down again.

 

the world around him exploded with sound - gunfire rattling, metal shrieking, someone grunting in pain, and then the violent crash of something heavy giving way. he pulled his hands up to cover his ears in an attempt to muffle all the noise.

 

“incoming reinforcements - three on the left!” cassie’s voice snapped across the comms, hurried and clipped.

 

“on it - cover me!” riri shot back. her thrusters screamed as she blasted off the ground, repulsors cutting a wide arc of sparks through the air. bob caught sight of her for only a brief moment before she was gonce once more. 

 

“two more, rear side,” bucky’s voice came in flat, like he was reading a grocery list. a moment later, bob heard the bark of his rifle, the mechanical click-click of a clean reload, and the thud of a body hitting the floor.

 

“bob, with me!” yelena snapped, breaking into his head like a whip crack. she yanked him by the sleeve, dragging him from his hiding position to one ever further away, with slightly more cover. “stay low. don’t break cover.” she instructed him, her eyes locking firmly with his.

 

he swallowed. 

 

“r-right… low. cover. got it.” his voice was small, strangled, his legs wobbling even as he forced himself into a crouch.

 

“shit, the north exit’s open - he’s making a run -” riri’s voice cut in again, sharp, panicked.

 

and then - nothing. silence. 

 

she didn’t say another word. 

 

bob’s stomach plummeted.

 

he didn’t have time to dwell on the terror of her not talking, because gunfire erupted overhead, deafening inside the narrow space he’d found himself crammed in. sparks rained down from somewhere above him, making him brace his hands above his head so his hair wouldn’t - what, catch fire? he wasn’t fully sure, but he had no qualms in indulging the instinct either way. 

 

bob watched as best he could from his position, vision obscured as kamala’s fists ballooned to the size of small cars, smashing two men into the floor with a bone-rattling wham. spider-man vaulted over her, landing a split second later with webbing that glued another attacker flat to the wall.

 

“keep pressure on them!” cassie barked, her suit crackling with size-shifting tech as she swung a van door like walker swung his shield. 

 

bob flinched as someone’s rifle fire clipped the wall just in front of his hiding position. his ears rang, heart punching against his ribs, begging him to run, but he tried to calm his mind and focus on what yelena had told him to do, the calm in her eyes despite the chaos around him, the sturdiness in bucky’s voice in the face of the less-than-pleasnt circumstances.

 

the chaos burned itself out in fits - metal shrieking, concrete groaning, a webline snapping taut - and then, slowly, the sounds of fighting thinned.

 

one by one, the reinforcements fell.

 

until none were left standing.

 

“did he get away?” spider-man’s voice cracked over the comms, taut with frustration.

 

“not the south exit,” kamala shot back, breathless.

 

“east is clear!” billy reported quickly.

 

“west is good, too,” cassie confirmed, her words clipped, professional.

 

“riri, do you copy?” kate’s voice came in, sharper, strained.

 

“riri!” kamala demanded, louder this time as worry seeped into her words.

 

“did he get away?” spider-man repeated, more insistent, almost words practically quivering with - with rage? is that what it was?

 

by then, yelena had coaxed him from his corner, gun still drawn as she guided him from his hidden position. she was making her way out, presumably to the north exit, leading him slowly and steadily. 

 

with no prompting, she froze, and when bob peeked past her, his eyes instantly fell on what had stopped her in her tracks.

 

riri was there, armored and rigid, standing just inside the north exit. she wasn’t moving -  not chasing, not speaking, just staring at the open doorway.

 

bob stumbled forward, heart hammering. then he saw it.

 

the target, the man they’d been hunting, stood rooted in place. his hands were up in surrender, face pale with terror. it was a terror so raw and primal that bob could - could practically feel it. it thrummed beneath his skin, sinking into the recesses of his mind like… like the void.

 

the man’s terror was catatonic.

 

and ava was right in front of him.

 

her hand was phased straight into his chest, wrist-deep, her mask tilted down toward him. she wasn’t killing him, not yet - but one flicker of her power, one twitch, and he’d be dead before anyone could blink.

 

the others slowed as they came up behind, their voices over the comms faltering into silence.

 

bucky broke it first. his voice was level, controlled, but heavy with warning. “ava. let him go. you heard the orders. no killing.”

 

ava tilted her head. just a small motion, but wrong - wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, unnatural, inhuman. it made the hairs at the back of his neck rise. when she spoke, her voice was clipped, mechanical. 

 

“i don’t kill.”

 

“…ava,” yelena tried, her confidence cracked around the edges. “step away from him.” she tried to coax, words wavering slightly. she had no idea what to do. she had no idea what was going on.

 

shit.

 

ava didn’t move. it seemed - though none of them could tell for sure - that she was staring at someone, one of them. her mask was unreadable, hiding her face, but she seemed to be looking in their general direction. her voice was sharp, words jarring and disjointed. 

 

“i. don’t. kill.” she repeated, each word punctuated with an agonising pause. the filtering the mask had on her voice was no help, either; it made what little of her emotions he could pick up on impossible to decipher. 

 

“jesus christ, ava, we get it, just take your hand out of his chest!” walker snapped, stepping forward and barking th words at her like an order. it was harsh, like he was trying to force the moment back into something normal.

 

“walker!” bucky’s voice clipped through like a gunshot, sharp enough to silence even walker. yelling was definitely not the way to go in this situation, bob was glad that bucky was seeing that.

 

nevertheless, ava didn’t flinch. didn’t respond.

 

instead, her body flickered once - like static - and vanished. the man gasped, stumbling forward, clutching at his chest, petrified but alive.

 

and ava was gone.

 

the young avengers wasted no time. they weren’t reeling from the implications and ramifications of that, instead moving to do their jobs and secure the man ava had near murdered.

 

they surged in fast, pinning the target, cuffing him, dragging him to his knees and letting spider-man web his legs to the ground, just to be extra secure.

 

bob stood frozen in the middle of the chaos, pulse racing, staring at the empty space where ava had just been.

 

his gaze flickered between the moving bodies of the young avengers to the stock-still ones of his team, all of them glancing uncertainly at each other as they tried to decipher what the fuck they’d just seen. 

 

not minutes later, the sound of radios clicking, boots on concrete, and the faint groans of restrained criminals filled the space like a low, constant hum. law enforcement flooded the scene, taking pointers and notes from the young avengers on what had happened there and where the downed henchmen were. 

 

he kept his hands to himself, drifting closer to bucky and walker’s side, afraid to breathe too loudly, afraid to draw attention.

 

he watched riri hover behind their target - not literally hovering, like, standing close behind him with a hovering presence - arms crossed, breathing heavy but steady, like the weight of everything around her didn’t quite touch her. kamala was moving from side to side, checking corners, scanning for anything they’d missed, always aware. cassie was talking quietly to the law enforcement, coordinating the clean-up, while billy hovered near the edges, tense, but alert. 

 

yelena made her way over to him, bucky and walker, having a silent conversation with them with her eyes. bob got distracted, though, searching for alexei among the madness - bob spotted him leaning against a crate somewhere, smirking to himself like this had all been fun from the start. 

 

and then there was ava. or, well, the lackthereof. bob didn’t look for her; she wasn’t there. her absence was a strange kind of weight in the room, like the air remembered her, but the light didn’t. he felt it, a flicker of tension creeping up his spine, a reminder that even after all this, some things didn’t make sense.

 

he tried to take it all in - the coordinated chaos, the way the young avengers moved together, better than their team ever had, the way everyone knew their place, the way the night had bent and twisted but still ended in… order, somehow. it was exhilarating. 

 

it was terrifying. 

 

and he was exhausted. 

Notes:

wrote this chapter while watching a bunch o stuff hannah john-kamen has been in so. maybe thats why i put some spotlight on my girl. anyways, watch the stranger on netflix, its REALLY good. and also go watch unwelcome it is SO good and deeply, deeply emotionally confusing to me it's a delight. and also go watch welcome to raccoon city, it's a lot of fun. but on that note i love this actress i really do but my girl cannot to an american accent to save her life. it is very startling.

Chapter 19: authority issues

Summary:

the young avengers get a meeting with the boss behind the thunderbolts.

Notes:

val is so fun and interesting and silly to write from. evil and manipulative and also silly and goofy, a wonderful blend :3

getting her avengers before the under-eighteens was surprisingly easy. getting the under-eighteens to like her avengers? different entirely.

 

yelena seemed to be a hit, as was bucky and possibly bob? they were all being cagey about him.

 

anywho, alexei was alexei and walker was walker and ava decided to go all psychopath on her first encounter with them, but 2 of six was better than she’d hoped. she’d been worried, rightfully, since there was that whole thing with barton at christmas that could have put the bishop girl off, and the khan girl was a real hero-worshipper for someone who was decidedly not on her avengers, and the lang girl’s dad was quite literally on wilson’s avengers, not hers. the kaplan boy had been a bit of a wild card, this ‘america’ girl had no record of existing which made her a complete unknown, and riri williams - well, riri williams wasn’t someone she’d expected to ever encounter again.

 

and yet here she was, walking into a small diner in massachusetts with a blank smile on her face and the intention to do what her avengers clearly could not. 

 

sign them on.

 

“a chocolate milkshake, please.” she asked the man behind the counter. “and could you make sure it has one of those cherries on top? i love those,” she requested. the man nodded and asked where she’d like it.

 

“i’m joining some family and friends over there,” she replied, gesturing to the booth where the under-eighteens were sat. the man smiled and nodded, telling her it would only be a short while.

 

she thanked him and went on her way. 

 

“i don’t suppose you mind if i join you?” she asked, pulling up a chair from a nearby table and sitting down before any of the kids could reply. 

 

“i- i’m sorry, do we know you?” the khan girl asked, looking at her team with confusion.

 

she pulled a manilla file from her bag, placing it on the table.

 

“i’d be surprised if you didn’t,” she remarked, keeping her smile up. “i’m valentina allegra de fontaine, former director of the CIA?” she prompted, opening up her file and reaching for the group photo of her and her avengers at a gala event. “you may better know me as the person who assembled the new avengers, though.” she added, looking up at the table as she presented them with the photo and closed her file. 

 

it was all a game of precision and expertise, one she knew all too well - like the back of her hand. 

 

“i’m the one who arranged for the new avengers to introduce themselves to you - of course, i apologise for how it went, my team can be a little… unpredictable sometimes.” she added, playing her cards just right.

 

they all seemed wary of her, but she’d anticipated that. khan - the leader and the one she suspected she could win over the easiest - took the photo and valentina watched the smallest of smiles tug at her lips.

 

“it- it’s fine, i guess,” she replied, putting the photo down. the lang girl immediately picked it up and studied it for a few seconds. 

 

“you coordinated some very tactical operations and raids, i know at least barnes is sorry for intruding on one, he was meant to be gathering intel on the missions you go on.” she continued. 

 

“not the others?” williams snarked, glare boring into her. she brushed it off keeping up her smile. williams was prickly, that much her avengers had made known to her.

 

“belova and shostakov are agents of their own agenda - they snuck out to meet you, you know.” she continued. 

 

america narrowed her eyes at her, mistrusting entirely.

 

“why do you want to know the missions we go on? how did you know?” she demanded, growling a little bit.

 

valentina kept her smile up. always.

 

“we share the avenger name, so people instinctively link the two of us together. we needed to make sure you weren’t wholly misguided in your avenging,” she remarked with a small snort. “and you really aren’t - getting chitauri weapons off the streets is an admirable endeavour," she continued, the lie falling straight through her teeth. of course, she didn’t want others to have the chitauri weaponry - but getting it perhaps for her agents and her avengers would definitely be a good thing. 

 

“also, though i presume you know this, you are all incredibly powerful. i’d be a fool not to keep any tabs on you,” she continued, pursing her lips. “i had surveillance drones sent to monitor your headquarters.” she told them, all her cards on the table.

 

she’d learnt from dealing with her avengers that her lies, while a good net to fall back on, weren't as steady as she liked to let herself believe - so playing more to the truth was in her best interest. especially with these younger generations.

 

“why are you here?” lang asked, folding her arms on the table and leaning forward, eyes narrowed. 

 

valentina thanked the waiter who came and placed her milkshake in front of her, with a small ‘enjoy’ before he left. she shuffled her manilla file slightly to the side.

 

“well, my team has approached you before but, with the strenuous circumstances, they didn’t get to deliver my message as intended,” she began, taking a sip of her milkshake. 

 

it was alright.

 

“i’m interested in working together.”

 

“no,” williams bit immediately, glare never faltering. bishop must have kicked her under the table or something, because she yipped quietly and glared at the other girl, who returned the look.

 

khan’s wide-eyed look at her wavered, glancing at her team.

 

“like, joining your new avengers?” lang asked, eyes wide and mouth parted slightly.

 

valentina took another sip of her milkshake.

 

“in some capacity, yes. it would be more of a - a mentor/mentee situation, but i think we can all agree that working together as one team rather than as separate entities would do us all a favour.” she said carefully, laughing a little at the end there. the picked up the cherry from the top of her shake and popped it into her mouth. it was far too sweet, but that wasn’t why she asked for it in the first place.

 

“god forbid we accidentally end up at the same place at the same time with two separate plans,” she remarked, if only for the emphasis. 

 

“hm,” lang said, taking a sip of her water. “billy?” she asked, looking to the lone teen boy at the table.

 

“yeah?” he answered.

 

“is she telling the truth?” the girl asked and - what?

 

valentina knew the boy had chaos magic, but did that include truth-detection capabilities? a spell or natural ability of some sort? she’d have to pick his brain about that at some point, or perhaps another like him. they knew a scary little amount about the world or magic and witchcraft - which, as it turns out, was real.

 

the boy finally spoke, hesitant but sure, his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance as if he was tuning into a frequency none of them could hear. “she’s not lying,” he said at last, his voice careful, almost apologetic. “but… she’s not telling the whole truth either.”

 

his response made her smile. so he can detect the truth, or, perhaps… my thoughts?

 

kaplan’s eyes flicked to her when she thought it - and the response was all she needed to conform it. 

 

intriguing, and dangerous, she thought, focusing on the more mild of her thoughts on the situation.

 

a useful trick.

 

bishop’s shoulders tensed, her wide eyes snapping to valentina. “that’s not exactly reassuring,” she muttered, dipping her chin.

 

valentina didn’t so much as blink. she’d expected that. teenagers, for all their boldness, always wanted absolutes. black and white. right and wrong. 

 

the real world was never so obliging. 

 

she tilted her head, let her smile soften just enough to feel maternal. “children,” she said lightly, “no one tells the whole truth. that’s not deceit - that’s survival.” she remarked, blinking at them expectantly.

 

america leaned forward, her suspicion razor-edged. “or manipulation.”

 

of course. but it was all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? all partnerships are manipulation. any game of conversation is a give-and-take of the cards one is willing to reveal. 

 

valentina resisted the urge to sigh, instead folding her hands neatly atop the file. “only if i wanted something from you,” she countered smoothly, as if the very idea were beneath her.

 

at the end of the day, everything was manipulation, wasn’t it? even truth. 

 

bishop was quicker than valentina gave her credit for. her bow may have been her weapon of choice, but her mind was sharp as the arrowheads she carried. “don’t you?” she asked, voice even, chin tilted just so.

 

valentina let a beat pass. then another. silence had weight if you used it properly, and she knew exactly how much to give. her smile returned, thinner now, less maternal, more predator. “hm,” she murmured, almost as though considering it herself. “i want you safe. i want you alive. that counts for something.”

 

it wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t a lie, either. safety had its uses. the living could always be convinced, recruited. the dead were only leverage for the grieving, and valentina didn’t want a group of such high potential to be a part of that particular toolkit. 

 

predictably, williams cut through her words like a scalpel, unconvinced as expected. “yeah, sure,” she scoffed, dark eyes burning holes straight through her. “and in return you get leverage.”

ah, riri williams. always the skeptic, always ready to bite before anyone else even knew teeth were bared. 

 

valentina allowed herself the smallest chuckle, tilting her head as though she were impressed rather than irritated. she was still irritated that the girl had managed to evade her so long, her talents and skills and knowledge would have ben invaluable. 

 

“clever girl,” she purred after a pause, letting the words hang in the air like smoke as she shifted her gaze to the girl. riri matched her look, and it occurred to her as she stared at the girl that she didn’t know who she was.

 

that their paths had already crossed.

 

valentina took a sip of her drink. “always was.” she added, redirecting her gaze to her milkshake as lang spoke up.

lang leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “okay, hold on. let’s pretend - for a second - that we even think about this. what’s in it for us?” she asked, intrigued. 

 

valentina had been waiting for the question. she folded her hands neatly, her smile curving like a scythe. 

 

bingo.

 

“resources. intel. training. connections you couldn’t dream of,” she listed smoothly, each word precise, deliberate. “you’d never walk into a fight blind again.”

 

it was bait, pure and simple, and they took it exactly as predicted. khan frowned, suspicion warring with curiosity. 

 

“and what do you get?”

 

valentina let the pause hang. this was the trick - say too much, and they’d recoil; too little, and they’d call her a liar. she leaned back, a perfect picture of nonchalance. “the peace of mind,” she said softly, “that six - seven?” her eyes flickered around, making it known to them that she was in-the-know about their partnership with new york’s resident spider-themed vigilante.

 

 “- remarkably powerful young people aren’t left to stumble around making enemies we can’t afford.”

 

the reaction was immediate. america’s jaw tightened, her glare sharp enough to cut steel. 

 

“that’s not an answer.”

 

valentina’s smile didn’t falter. “it’s the only one you’ll get tonight.” she told them with a dip of her head.

 

silence settled, taut and uneasy. bishop, however, let out a low whistle and shook her head, an almost begrudging grin tugging at her mouth. “…wow. you’re really good at this.” she remarked, dry.

 

valentina tilted her head, as if the observation amused her. of course she was good at this. it was her job. 

“practiced,” she corrected smoothly, gently, plucking the word from the air as if it had been offered to her.

 

williams snorted, her glare hot enough to scorch. “more like rehearsed.”

 

valentina’s smile sharpened, the kind of smile meant to remind people she’d been doing this longer than they’d been alive. “oh, sweetheart,” she murmured, her tone velvet over steel, “i don’t rehearse.”

 

that shut them up. the silence that followed wasn’t relief but tension - thick and coiled, like a bowstring drawn too far. they glanced at one another, restless, uneasy, trying to measure what exactly she was and whether the ground beneath them was safe to stand on.

 

it was kaplan, of course, who broke it, his voice soft and hesitant, but it cut through the tension nevertheless. 

 

“…she really believes what she’s saying.” he remarked, a little confused. 

 

valentina smiled, nodded, and took another sip of her milkshake.

 

khan turned sharply toward him. “billy - ” she began, brows furrowing.

 

“i’m not saying i agree,” he rushed to add, shoulders hunching under the weight of everyone’s eyes. “just… she believes it.”

 

lang exhaled hard through her nose, shaking her head. “that’s somehow worse.” she said wryly, but something about her attitude told her she wasn’t taking everything all too seriously. perhaps that’s what being a legacy hero meant to her.

 

“yeah,” america agreed, flat and final. “a lot worse.”

 

valentina let their judgment roll past her without so much as a flicker. let them frown, let them stew. belief was power - more unnerving than a lie, more difficult to argue with. she leaned in, fingertips resting lightly against the manila folder, and allowed herself the barest hint of satisfaction.

 

“well,” she said, “now that we’ve established trust is a process… shall we keep talking?” she prompted.

 

williams didn’t hesitate, her voice landing like a hammer. “no.” she said flatly, folding her arms.

 

valentina smiled, ignoring her.

 

“wonderful. now, with the intent of trust being a process of give and take, i want to give you something.” she told them, folding her hands on the table in front of her.

 

america’s brow shot up, unconvinced. “is it going to kill or track us?” she scoffed.

 

valentina let a soft chuckle escape her. “no. on the contrary, it’ll let you track my team.” she told them with a smirk. it landed as she’d intended, snagging all of the under-eighteens attention like a fish on a line.

 

“what?” america’s voice hitched an octave, disbelief clear.

 

“well,” valentina continued, voice smooth as silk, “i want you to trust me, and by extension, my team. so this file” - she tapped the manila folder - “is filled with everything they’re happy for you to know about them.” she explained breezily.

 

khan tilted her head, skeptical but intrigued. “huh?”

 

“take it. free of charge,” she joked, flashing her teeth for a moment as she smiled before pushing the manilla file more into the center of the table. 

 

williams’s glare sharpened instantly, probing. “and what do you want?”

 

valentina’s eyes gleamed as she tilted her head, just enough to be playful but not childish. “tell them.” she remarked, gaze flicking towards billy.

 

tell them what i want to know, she thought as she settled her smile on the uneasy boy. what i’d like.

 

he hesitated, then swallowed before answering for her. “she… she wants to know where america came from, and how i got my powers.” he told the group, words slow. unwanted. 

 

valentina’s smile softened, just a fraction, approving. “none of my resources - not a single one - can find anything about you two. it’s impressive.” she praised, shoving away the memories of the irritation it caused her and focusing instead on the impressive factor.

 

teenagers evading her and the power of her government backing. it was truly impressive.

 

she let it sink in. let the weight of her words settle over them, unthreatening but impossible to ignore. it wasn’t manipulation, not exactly. it was the kind of subtle power that demanded attention, respect, and, hopefully, a hesitant trust. the trust that she wanted.

 

“i come from another dimension,” america said after a few moments of silence, voice clipped but firm.

 

that was actually something along the lines of what she was expecting, at this rate. valentina inclined her head, just enough to suggest amusement. “ah. well, that would do it, wouldn’t it?” she remarked with a small laugh.

 

billy’s hands twitched slightly in his lap. “my powers are… complicated.” he settled on, and valentina could recognise in that instant that pushing him on the question would be a bad move. 

 

“and i look forward to the day you might tell me about it,” valentina replied, her tone light, almost teasing, but not prying - an invitation, not a demand.

 

williams, arms crossed and ever impatient, pressed, “and? is that it?”

 

for a heartbeat, valentina let the silence hang between them, letting the tension stretch just so. 

 

“for now? yes.” her smile never wavered. “as much as i’d love to have you all on board right now, i’m smart enough to know that’s not going to happen. so, i’ll leave you with this,” she gestured to the file, “and let you be on your way.”

 

america blinked. “seriously?”

 

“seriously.” valentina reached into her bag and gave the file a gentle tap. “my contact info is in there, too, if you ever need anything. don’t let me keep any more of your time, now. stay safe.” she said, placing a ten dollar bill on the table beside her milkshake.

 

“my cut of the bill,” she remarked with a wink, picking up her bag and heading for the diner exit. 

Notes:

notes from last chapter i forgot to put in the end-chapter notes because i am an idiot:

i wonder why spider-man has such a distaste for the new avenger-Z! maybe it has something to do with past encounters…
ava sure seems upset with these young avengers, but why? what have they ever done to her? or, more accurately, what has she done to them..?
i wonder how riri will react once she recognises val. that won’t be fun. for anyone.

Chapter 20: distribution issues

Summary:

the young avengers gather to go over… well, everything.

Notes:

i love kamala so much. 10/10 perfect character no notes.

speaking of notes, though, america's character is more inspired by her character in secret warriors animated show because um. yeah idk it gives me more inspo sooooo :p

“it’s a little pathetic,” cassie remarked, throwing down her copy of the manilla file valentina had given to them at the diner the other week. “most of this is stuff we already know.”

 

kamala turned her attention to the other girl, eyes widening as she took in what she was saying. what she was implying.

 

“you knew barnes lived in wakanda?” she gasped, “why didn’t you tell us? why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.

 

cassie leveled her with her ‘you’re-fangirling-again’ deadbeat stare, but kamala didn’t let shame sink into her like she would have before. 

 

“it didn’t seem relevant? my dad told me about it, it might even be in his book…” she trailed off, looking away in thought before shaking her head. “still, the walker stuff is publicly available, i already knew all this stuff about barnes, this alexei’s file is communist propaganda at it’s finest, the belova intel is vague at best and lies at worst, this bob dude just seems like a guy and this ava girl’s section is literally fucking empty.”

 

“okay,” kate drawled, making some sort of so-so gesture, words strained. “so translation: she gave us a fancy brochure filled with half-truths and wikipedia-level trivia.”

 

“wikipedia is more reliable,” america shot back without hesitation, bored and unimpressed. “at least it cites sources.” she added after a moment, taking a bite out of the slice of pizza she had on her paper plate. kamala frowned and took a bite of her own pizza, thinking.

 

this got very political very quickly. why is being a superhero so complicated?

 

billy leaned forward, elbows on his knees, brow furrowed like he was assembling puzzle pieces in real time. “no, cassie’s right. this isn’t for us. it’s for them.” he agreed, eyeing one of the files open on the coffee table, 

 

kamala blinked at him. “what do you mean?” she asked through her mouthful of pizza, gaze flicking from him to cassie, then back again.

 

she didn’t feel like much of a leader; not when she felt so in the dark all the time.

 

“it’s not intel,” billy explained, gesturing at the mess of papers that scattered across the living-room like fallen leaves of a tree. “it’s pr. the things she included, the things she left out - none of it’s about what we can learn. it’s about how we see them.” he explained, bringing his knees back down and resting his feet back on the floor, picking up some of the loose copied pages - eyes scanning them for the umpteenth time.

 

kamala had been bewildered when this valentina person just gave them intel on the new avengers - that was definitely not a thing that was supposed to happen, especially not to a team like them, and in the days since the decision only made less and less sense.

 

valentina must have known that they knew that she was using them. so what was her ploy? what was her angle?

 

was this something she could ask fury about? carol? she’d love to see the SABER and/or SWORD files on the woman, but the not-new-ipad-tablet she had… acquired… from fury had run out of battery and she didn’t know how to charge it. 

 

cassie scoffed, tossing herself back into the armchair. “yeah, well, it didn’t work. i see ‘murdery ghost girl with no info’ and think red flag.”

 

“same,” kate agreed dryly. she tapped the file in her hands with one finger. “she might as well have written: please project your worst fears onto this empty page.” she mocked, pitching her voice down to poorly mimic the woman’s voice. kamala sniggered into her next bite of pizza.

 

“mission accomplished,” america said, her voice flat but her jaw set, eyes boring into the blank page of ava.

 

everyone else had something written - full names, dates of birth, super-hero name; the only thing on ava’s page was that: her name and a black-and-white headshot of the woman’s creepy white suit mask.

 

ava no-last-name-given who could put her hand through people, into their bodies. SWORD had to have something on he, or at least power sets like hers, and here she was, the idiot locked out of the goldmine. 

 

she sighed, putting the pizza crust of her now eaten pizza slice back onto her paper plate, swallowing her last bite. she leaned forward to the pizza box also on the coffee table, before she stopped, a thought striking her like a bolt of thor or jane foster’s lightning. preferably jane’s.

 

“wait - hold on,” she cut in, “are we not going to talk about the fact that she’s… watching us? she literally admitted to sending drones to spy on the house.” she reminded them, hand hovering over the pizza as she met the gazes of her team. cassie, like she was with most things, seemed unbothered, billy looked a little constipated which was usual for him, america’s face was fixed in a permanent semi-frown and riri has her head in her laptop like always.

 

kate shrugged, the picture of casual detachment as she reached for her water glass. “so does SWORD. everything’s monitored all the time; it’s probably better to just ignore it - maybe tighten up security and, i don’t know, cast some protection wards or something.” she suggested. kamala nodded slowly as she took the pizza slice, biting into it as she mulled over the decision.

 

so, it was the CIA-slash-new-avengers who had sent the drones after them, not wakanda. good to know. she’s not really sure which one would have been worse, at that point. it being the CIA-slash-new-avengers was probably better, considering how cagey and worried riri had been about wakanda.

 

she flicked a glance at billy, who only frowned deeper at the papers on the table in front of him.

 

“great,” america muttered, leaning back until the couch groaned under her weight. “so we’re sitting ducks in a suburban hostage situation. perfect.” she huffed, gaze moving to the window, searching - probably - for the surveillance drone.

 

“not a hostage situation,” billy corrected quietly, his voice strained with thought. “more like… a test.” he tried, lips pursed into a frown.

 

“we could sic agatha onto the drones,” she wondered out loud, staring at nothing in particular as she ate her next pizza slice.

 

“no. you could not.” the ghost echoed, voice coming from somewhere that was vaguely downstairs. “i am not an attack dog.”

 

“i thought you’d love messing with the government, though,” billy replied, though there was no real oomph to his words. obviously, agatha would love to mess with the government, because she was an entity born and made entirely for chaos, but she also didn’t like to help anyone but herself and going after valentina’s drones would still be helping them, so.

 

it was a fun idea to entertain the few, short seconds it existed.

 

riri slammed her laptop shut so loudly and so suddenly that kamala almost jumped to her feet, the noise startling everyone in the room.  riri’s hands stayed flat on the cover of her laptop, her eyes burning into the table. “you’re all missing the point,” she said. “this isn’t a recruitment pitch. it’s a leash.” she snarled, an unabated anger swirling in her words.

 

kamala still hadn’t been able to figure out why riri was so tightly wound. one moment, she’d be cracking jokes and smiling with them, begrudgingly playing along with the team’s antics, and the next, her eyes would be dark with rage and paranoia, annoyance that spilled and bubbled out of her like an over-flowing bubblebath. 

 

cassie gave a bitter laugh that carried no humor. “cool. love being pawns.” she snarked, and kamala had the intensive feeling that the bitterness had something to do with her foray into the quantum realm with her dad that she didn’t like to talk about very much. 

 

“…so what do we do?” she asked, glancing between them as though they had the answers.

 

they definitely didn’t. it was sort of a miracle that they’d managed to get this far, like, at all. and her good leadership skills, of course, those had a big part to do with it.

 

hopefully.

 

kate leaned forward now, with a smirk on her face now, carrying just enough edge to feel like a challenge. 

 

“well. if the game’s rigged, maybe the only winning move is to play it better than she thinks we can.” she proposed with one of her im-concucting-a-kate-bishop-plan grins.

 

“she’s been in the game a lot longer than we have,” america countered, shaking her head. “she said it herself.”

 

“then maybe it’s time,” kate said, her smirk sharpening into something harder, “to start breaking some rules.”

 

kamala groaned, throwing her hands up. “what rules? what even is this game? guys, you’ve lost me with this metaphor.” she whined, the word-play gone much too far for her to keep up with. 

 

“we need to out-smart her,” cassie said, pointing a finger like she was declaring the obvious solution to a math problem.

 

which, well, it sort of was, they just didn’t really know how to go about making that plan, so…

 

it was sort of like running in a circle. a very frustrating circle.

 

billy nodded his head. “she’d definitely bench us if we agreed to join with her and the avengers.”

 

“okay - hear me out,” cassie began, sitting up straighter with a mischievous glint in her eyes once more. “we join the other avengers. for shits and giggles.”

 

kamala blinked. “other avengers?” 

 

og avengers? other avengers? there are too many avengers. they seriously need to consolidate. or rename. 

 

cassie gestured vaguely, like it should’ve been obvious. “y’know. the team my dad is on? with captain america, new falcon, doctor strange sometimes, this ex-widow chick, colonel rhodes, the black panther - ”

 

“no.” riri cut in sharply, her tone leaving no room for argument. “absolutely not.”

 

“why?” cassie asked, incredulous. “they’d definitely be more willing to let us do our own thing.”

 

riri arched a brow. “you want to be on a team with your dad?”

 

“well, no, but -”

 

“besides,” riri added, her voice dropping lower, “i think shuri might actually kill me if she sees me again.”

 

kate’s head snapped toward her. “what? what did you do?”

 

riri leaned back, crossing her arms with a bitter little laugh. “what haven’t i done?”

 

ominous. ominous and vague. kamala did not like that, not at all. she really wishes she had access to her SWORD database right now. there were 100% absolutely some leads with riri she hadn’t followed when she’d put this team together. and she 100% absolutely needed to get on top of that because sometimes riri acted like she was in some kind of crime syndicate and it was very worrying.

 

“you know,” cassie said slowly, twirling a strand of hair that had fallen from her ponytail with her fingers, “i could probably ask my dad about the new avengers - uh, valentina’s new avengers. see what he knows about them.” she suggested, not making eye-contact.

 

“that would be super helpful, cass, thank you,” she replied earnestly, already perking up. “i’ll check fury’s SWORD databases. once i figure out how to charge the tablet.” she told the group, gesturing to the glass thing that now sat uselessly on the table.

 

riri groaned. “you’re still on that?” she asked, looking wholly disappointed. kamala brushed it off.

 

“…maybe…” kamala admitted, sheepish.

 

“pass it here,” riri said, hand outstretched. “i could’ve done this for you forever ago.” she said. kamala hung her head a little as she passed the tablet to billy, who in turn, passed it to riri.

 

 “what if we just… told them when we’re gonna be out?” billy said cautiously as riri started pulling things from her backpack and began to tinker.

 

america turned toward him, brows furrowed. “what?”

 

“no, like -” billy gestured, fumbling for the words. “tell them about what we’re hunting. just in case?” he continued, voice still not all that certain.

 

kate cocked her head. “how do you mean?” she asked, intrigued.

 

“well, hunting chitauri tech is one thing, right? we can handle that. but, guys-” he hesitated, his voice tightening. “this anti-enhanced plot? it’s… it’s domestic terrorism.” he said finally, words tight yet soft at the same time.

 

kamala winced. “is - are we, uh” she stammered, wracking her mind. “is that really the right term to use?” she asked, voice pitching up an octave.

 

this whole thing had been to get chitauri tech off the streets, sure, but a lot - and she means a lot - of the buyers had been linked, an organisation that had no name but was spread wide throughout the states. on one of their stealth ops - not one the avengers had bombed - they’d found some intel that caught them on to the root of the organisation’s purpose.

 

they called it ‘the call for normalcy’. it was a plan to get rid of enhanced people. mutants, powered people, inhumans, aliens, all of it. for good.

 

“it’s a new kind of underground, planned genocide,” riri cut in flatly, her gaze sharp. “so, kinda.”

 

“oh.” kamala blinked, the weight of it settling into her. “wow. okay. maybe we should tell them.” she agreed hastily, once the concept fully rendered in her mind.

 

because it was, wan’t it? god, it was, and it had been scary before - terrifying - but something about that title, calling it what it really was…

 

kamala couldn’t suppress the shiver that traveled down her spine.

 

“what if we just…” kate let the words hang, pursing her lips as she searched for the words. “tipped them off? let them know there’s an on-world threat they might want to keep tabs on?” she suggested, gesticulating vaguely with her hands as she was so prone to do.

 

america raised a brow. “who’s to say they don’t already know about it?” she countered.

 

“it’d be just in case,” billy said quickly. he’d been bouncing one of his legs since he’d lowered them from his crouched position, nervous energy bleeding into every word.

 

 “maybe she could - i don’t know, organize a reverse smear campaign? drag the psychos down, tell the public, actually shift the narrative?” he continued, rambling a little once more.

 

america folded her arms. “we can do that.” she said flatly, and she was right - she was totally right, they were huge in the public eye they definitely had the platform to do it, but…

 

“but she’s been in the game longer,” cassie pointed out, slumping back into the couch cushions. “she’s definitely better at it.”

 

kate leaned forward, her expression bright with something reckless. “she’s trying to use us, so let’s use her back. mutual parasitism and all that.”

 

riri made a noise halfway between a scoff and a groan. “parasitism is not a word.” she said without looking up from whatever she was doing with her SWORD tablet. 

 

kate smirked. “it totally is.”

 

“is not.”

 

“can be.”

 

riri dropped the tablet into her lap, groaning louder this time. “you suck. all of you.”

 

kamala blinked, stupefied, as after only another moment longer, riri picked the tablet back up before passing it to billy, who once again passed it off to her. there was now a wire trailing from some frankensteined charger she’d clearly cobbled together from scrap in her backpack that she also received.

 

after a few moments of staring at the glass tablet, it flickered to life with a low-power signal. 

 

“you -  that took you, like, five minutes!”

 

riri smirked, leaning back with her arms crossed. “bad girl genius. i told you.”

 

america cut in before kamala could go on a fangirl tangent that riri absolutely deserved, her tone flat. “so we’re telling valentina about our plans?”

 

kate shrugged, all nonchalance. “what we want her to know. just enough of a lead to get her off our tails for a little while, anyways.”

 

cassie shook her head. “she’s not gonna buy it.”

 

“then i’ll tell yelena,” kate said, a little too casually.

 

that caught kamala’s attention. she twisted in her seat, brows furrowed. “you never fully explained how you know her.”

 

kate’s mouth tugged into a wry half-smile. “she tried to kill clint.”

 

kamala’s jaw dropped. “and you’re friends with her?” she gasped, running through a million scenarios in her mind as to the how and the why and the what and the when.

 

kate lifted both hands in a what-can-you-do gesture. “i mean, yeah? she didn’t, so,”

 

“how does fury not know that?” kamala asked, incredulous, willing riri’s charger to work faster so she could immediately scan through every document she had access to to figure out what that was all about.

 

riri snorted, grabbing her laptop and opening it again. “there’s a lot he doesn’t know.” she remarked as her fingers began to fly across her keyboard.

 

cassie groaned, dropping her head back against the couch. “not ominous at all.”

 

“so we’re gonna reach out to yelena?” america asked, looking from person to person, looking for an answer. “that’s our bridge?”

 

“seems like it,” billy said quietly, though he didn’t sound thrilled about it.

 

cassie gave a small shrug. “i can get behind that.”

 

“it can work,” kamala agreed, nodding with a little more optimism than the rest.

 

kate leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “i can arrange the meet. it’ll be easy.”

 

“alright,” america said, glancing around the room. “if we’re in agreement.” she said pointedly.

 

kamala’s gaze shifted to riri, as did the others’, the girl not looking up from whatever it was she was typing away at.

 

she refused to meet any of their gazes. 

 

there was a pause, a reluctant beat, before riri exhaled hard through her nose. “…jesus. fine. we’re unanimous. kate gives yelena a lead.” she gave in, kate whooping a small ‘yes!’ before pulling out her phone. kamala cheered, billy smiling and america’s almost permanent frown lessening slightly as the wave of victory washed over them.

 

kamala would make a smart quip about chess, about paws still being players, but she didn’t know enough about chess to make it.

 

“we so got this,” she settled on instead, warmth blooming in her chest when the others scoffed good-naturedly or snorted a laugh at her top-tear leader-ing.

 

we so do.

Notes:

currently wrestling with which yuri ship i want to include. i love my lesbians and the ship potential is so fruitful idk which one to pick. bishova or starrlight? shuriri or natari? so many choices..

on another note i just spent 20 minutes trying to find the natalie/riri ship name DO WE HAVE ONE??? ive been calling them natariri but girl IDK IM NOT GOOD WITH SHIP NAMES LMAOO

Chapter 21: there’s a problem in town

Summary:

the new avengers are sent to deal with the buyers of some chitauri weaponry. 

Notes:

apologies for the lack of formatting + any potential errors in this chapter, i didn't have the motivation to re-read it and i don't have a beta.
also apologies for the delay in uploading this chapter.

this one's a little more action-focused and grim. sorry 'bout that.

it had been a combination of ruth’s intel and shuri’s intel that led them to the site in downtown new york. ruth had tracked down a small group of black-market buyers related to the vulture from the young avengers latest take-down - the one that bucky and his group of misfits had, somehow, been a part of.

 

whatever seemed to be the case with that, her intel line brought them to a group which shuri had tracked further, and tracing their movements bought them to a convention centre on the outskirts of new york city.

 

landing on the building, he traced the controls on his wrist needed for redwing to activate, sending him out to scan for heat signatures. 

 

“everyone remember the plan?” he asked, glancing across the air to check torres was where he needed to be.

 

he was, and scott’s chirpy reply though the comms made him roll his eyes - but only slightly.

 

“aye-aye, cap!” he called, and sam don’t need to see him to know he was doing a mock salute. scott was just like that.

 

using the roof entrance, he broke the lock and entered the building, checking the scans redwing gave him to figure out where all the hostiles were. intel had only given them blueprints and layouts, really, and shuri was actively working on tracing all the tech present at the scene.

 

“ground team ready for entrance,” shaun’s voice crackled through his ear. the man was still getting used to wearing and working a comm, so sam had come to expect and anticipate some level of crackle from him.

 

“on my word. redwing hasn’t found any signs of life yet. torres, you got anything?” he asked, a sense of dread gnawing at him, settling between his ribs like an inescapable ache.

 

“i’m not seeing anyone. the convention hall is empty, too. not a soul. something is seriously wrong here.”

 

sam made his way down three flights of stairs when he heard it.

 

a sharp, quick, terrified scream.

 

all his hairs stood on end as he recalled redwing, sending him in the direction of the noise.

 

“i may have something,” he whispered, dropping into a crouch and perching behind a corner, just in case.

 

he pulled up redwing’s video feed and his heart plummeted in his chest.

 

“shit, he breathed, instantly forwarding the footage to shuri. “we’ve got a bit issue,” he hissed, eyes locked on the footage.

 

armed personelle with chutauri-grade tech and armour suits were pointing weapons at an entire theater full of civilians, herding them from place to place like cattle.

 

no one had been in the rest of the building because the hostiles had round them up and, from the looks of it, their agenda seemed to be execution.

 

“okay,” he breathed, eyes rapidly scanning the intel redwing was streaming to him. “intel said ‘disturbance.’ not ‘geneva convention violation’,” he muttered, stalking down the hall and closer to the door to the theater - probably some sort of panel room. 

 

the convention hall was completely empty asides from him - stalls, belongings, bags, all abandoned and left alone in the mid-noon sun that streaked through the glass wall.

 

“cool, cool, love that they undersell things. now, when you say war crime, which kind? is this a bio-weapon kinda deal or-“

 

“scott,” he cut the man off; sam did not have the energy to deal with his ramblings and the situation was absolutely above his quips and one-liners.

 

“uh… is that a ferris wheel?” shaun’s voice crackled; sam had no idea what he was referencing, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if it was. 

 

“it’s a convention center,” torres replied for him, still soaring above the building and doing aerial surveillance. “there’s a banner here that says ‘annual inhuman convention’,” he informed after a moment, and the sinking feeling swelling in his chest went stone-cold.

 

oh no.

 

“…inhuman,” ruth echoed slowly, “like capital-i inhuman? powered people?” she asked, and sam could hear the rustling of her jacket from wherever she was moving. 

 

“yes, geniuses,” shuri bit through the comms, voice taught, “the kind of gathering where maybe a couple thousand enhanced individuals are all in one place. now why do you think hostile militia would pick there to make noise?” she snapped, pinging over some files to him on the people she’d managed to identify from within the theater hall - all normal, regular civilians who happened to be inhuman or mutant or powered in some way.

 

they were things like bank-tellers and retail workers; first responders and customer service.

 

innocents. 

 

“because they’re jerks?” scott drawled, losing some of his humour. 

 

“because they’re targeting them.” sam answered for them, saying the obvious. “there’s another four exits to the theater hall - ruth, shaun, you cover the back-stage, scott you get the right. torres, can you cover the soundstage exit?” he ordered, his team chipping in with their affirmations and location call-outs.

 

having strange here would be a blessing, but it was a toss-up if the man would even show on any given day they decided to meet. he was always off doing god-knows-what with god-knows-who.

 

“i just passed an armed patrol - these guys are bad news.” shaun whispered, voice rushed and slightly breathless. “and… those aren’t normal fire-arms.” he remarked. sam withheld a sigh; shaun had been to all the debriefs and meetings, but it was very clear he hadn’t been paying much attention. he’d been too busy nattering away with katie to compute oh, these are alien weapons. 

 

ruth spoke up to explain it to shaun for him. 

 

“chitauri tech. modified. it’s what those kids have been tracking.” she said, words clipped and quiet as she waited for his go-ahead to breach. 

 

he was just waiting on torres to get into position.

 

“do you think they know about this?” shaun asked quietly, lacking his usual spunk or spark. 

 

sam’s jaw tightened. it was clear to him what shaun was asking: did the kids know about this? was this what they were trying to stop? 

 

they were in way over their heads. 

 

“all right. we cut this short before it gets worse. priority’s keeping those civilians safe.” he instructed, clipping his words as he watched men armed to the teeth with lethal, alien-enhanced weaponry round up unarmed civilians.

 

scott’s voice quipped something into their ears - something quick and sharp-witted that sam elected to ignore. 

 

it wasn’t the time to play games, lives were at stake. he knew it was just in scott’s nature, but still.

 

“shut up and do your job, scott.” shuri snapped, quieting the man in an instant. the shuri on his team was nothing like the shuri bucky had told him about, but that one wasn’t forced to be the queen of a nation after the tragic passing of her entire family.

 

“you heard her.” he swallowed, bunching his muscles and watching redwing’s feedback intently, waiting for the perfect moment to move.

 

they had to move quickly, though, so the time for a ‘perfect’ moment never came. “let’s move - clean and fast.” he instructed, only waiting another few moments for the go-ahead. 

 

their plan had changed with the new intel, on the fly; make as much noise and chaos as they could with the breach, draw attention from the civilians, then from each of their entry points, converge around the innocents and defend them as long as it took for them to safely funnel them out of the theater hall. 

 

sam didn’t waste time spelling it out again. his voice cracked sharp through the comms, tight with urgency.

“offensive positions, people! we need to start makin’ some noise!”

 

he was already airborne before the last word hit the air, hurtling himself through the door he’d been crouched outside of, wings flaring wide as he deflected a streak of blue plasma into the ceiling. the hostels, immediately alarmed by his presence, shouted their surprise and orders to take him down, but the rest of his team was in place to aide in the confusion.

 

sparks rained down across the room, momentarily dazzling the crowd and buying precious seconds.

 

joaquín darted in his wake, wing-pack whining as he dove low and scythed through one of the alien rifles in a single clean motion. the metal sheared apart in a burst of sparks, as he flipped over the soldier’s panicked swing, boots cracking across a helmeted jaw as he launched himself forward again.

 

he was getting a lot better at the falcon-combat thing, and having the both of them to provide aerial support had proven to be invaluable on several occasions. 

 

shaun wove into the melee from his entrance, with all the practiced grace of a man who had been in far too many street fights. he ducked under a wild swing from an armed man nearest to him, caught his wrist, twisted, and sent his opponent crumpling to the floor all in a matter of heartbeats. 

 

a sidestep, a palm strike, and another went down. it was efficient, effortless almost, but not without strain - his breath was already rough, shoulders braced like he was holding himself back from truly cutting loose.

 

sam appreciated him not using the rings, especially in such a cramped location with so many civilians. they began to move backwards, trying to put distance between themselves and their captors, giving his team more room to make their moves.

“okay,” shaun grunted as he planted an elbow into another ribcage. “these guys are definitely not town locals.”

the room was filled with the sounds of blasters, grunts and yells, but sam still caught a louder thud that rang out as ruth slammed a hostile into the wall hard enough to rattle the stage lights. sam worried for a heartbeat that they would fall, but had his attention sapped by another plasma-blast that almost clipped the side of his head.

 

sam dove at the man with the larger weapon, drop-kicking him and snatching the weapon before gliding back into the ait.

“this is too organized to be a low-level gang,” ruth said in-between grunts as she took down assailants all twice her size. “this is something bigger.”

 

sam knew that - knew that the moment he sent redwing in - but they didn’t have time to think about the bigger picture, about what an armed, hostile group of psychos could possibly want with this many enhanced individuals.

 

sam veered himself to the left right before he made contact with another hostile, having used one of his vibranium wings to slice the weapon he’d just stole, because he caught a glimpse of scott, roughly dog-sized, charging at the same hostile. the man was shrinking and growing like a strobe. sam could only imagine he was skittering up the barrel of a rifle, because the soldier wielding said rifle flailed in panic, batting at the insect-sized man crawling up his weapon.

 

he re-sized himself to regular and the man, desperate to keep ahold of his weapon, grunted as he was pushed to the floor by his weight. 

“and they smell terrible,” scott remarked as he delivered a punch to the man, knocking him out cold. “is bad hygiene, like, a requirement for militia?” he joked, making himself smaller then larger, smaller than larger, weaving his way through the men nearest to him.

 

they had managed to snag the attention of the militia, that was true enough, but it wasn’t enough - the civilians, crowded and scared - were too scared ans frozen to make for the stage exits.

 

and, sure, they’d downed at least a dozen men, but there were more of them. dozens. their lines held tighter than expected, weapons raised and trained in eerie unison, and it wasn’t for the first time that sam felt a chill skitter along his spine. this wasn’t a gang with stolen gear,  this was something coordinated. something prepared.

 

scott’s triumphant grin barely lasted a second before shuri’s voice crackled sharp in his ear.

“less commentary, more neutralizing the hostile pointing a plasma cannon at your head.”

she snapped, and sam watched as full-sized scott froze mid-step.

“plasma what—?!” he got out, before sam heard more than saw the blast.

 

the cannon fired with a teeth-rattling shriek, and light tore across the room. sam couldn’t turn to look, to check; he was too busy beating up another one of these psychos, but he heard as scott yelped, slamming the trigger on his suit. he ballooned upward in an instant, just big enough to throw his shoulder into the blast and send it ricocheting wide, hitting one of the walls. still,  the impact knocked scott stumbling back, and he almost stepped on the civilians with his oversized feet.

 

the civilians screamed, scattering from scott’s feet so they wouldnt get squished as the man re-gained his balance. sam’s voice cut across the chaos, commanding and urgent as he turned sharply around one of scott’s large legs and barreling into an armed man who had managed to corral a handful of mutants away from the rest of the group.

“keep them away from the civilians! move them south - shaun, ruth, cover the east flank as they get to safety!” he commanded, guiding the small handful of mutants to the nearest stage-exit, which led to the empty vendor hall he’d traversed not 10 minutes ago. 

 

“follow redwing, he’ll get you to safety,” he instructed them, watching the fear in their eyes harden into something more like resolution and they nodded, following after his drone.

 

with them leaving, the other nearby civilians noticed their departure, and began to race after them.

 

opting to stay boots on the ground, he turned back into the chaos and ran straight back in, shield braced to deflect the rounds of ammo that were undoubtedly headed his way.

 

he made it to shaun’s side, shielding the both of them from a plasma blast, before tossing his shield and watching as it ricocheted from one man’s weapon to a second, before hurtling back towards him. 

 

the sound of another blast immediately caught his attention, and he curled a wing around himself and shaun to shield them once more, but the other man was on the move.

 

he pivoted on instinct, ducking the streak of blue energy that hissed past his hair before he snapped back with a quick nod, shouting over the chaos as he vaulted a row of overturned chairs.

 

“i’m on it!” he called, landing a very impressive double-kick to two armed men in his general vicinity.

 

ruth was already there, tossing another hostile over her shoulder with efficient, bone-cracking precision. she didn’t even break stride, calling back flatly, “consider it done.”

 

joaquín’s voice chimed in next, breathless but steady through the comms as he careened above the fray. “heads up, just got word that we’ve got more bogies on the way. truckfulls of ‘em.”

 

sam’s jaw clenched as he took in torres’s words, teeth grinding.

“great,” he muttered under his breath, twisting his body and tossing his shield once more to take out another two men who had locked onto him as a target. “just what we needed.”

 

“little déjà vu here,” scott called out, voice cracking as he shrank down between bursts of gunfire, then sprang back up to kick a soldier clear across the room. “it’s like thanos all over again!”

 

“stop talking and keep their attention drawn!” shuri’s voice barked in his ear, sharp enough to make him flinch even mid-sprint. “you cannot let them start killing innocents. if this whole thing escalates-”

 

sam cut her off, not even allowing her to verbalise the what-ifs of it all.

“you heard her! nobody gets killed! draw them out, now!” he barked, glancing back quickly to take in how well the evacuation had gone. 

 

not well enough. there wass still, what, one, maybe two hundred mutants in the room with them?

 

they needed to hold the hostels back a little while longer, keep the innocents out of the range of fire.

 

shaun slipped back into the chaos like water, fluid motion breaking into bone-cracking force when it mattered - an elbow here, a kick there, each strike clearing space for the civilians still huddling in terror. sam couldn’t focus too much on the man’s impressive form, nor ruth’s tactful and ruthless efficiency, or torres’s little quips and grunts as he dive-bombled too-and-fro in the room. scott pinballed between sizes, sometimes a blur of tiny fists on the back of a hostile’s helmet, sometimes a towering giant swatting weapons from hands, chaos incarnate.

 

and it worked - at least a little. under sam’s shouted orders, the remaining of the panicked families began filing south, away from the main hall, away from the danger. his chest eased a fraction at the sight. not safe yet, but safer.

 

shaun landed a spinning kick, dropped two soldiers at once, then staggered back against a toppled chair, panting hard. “i’m starting to think the whole ‘quiet observation’ thing won’t really pan out!” he barked, barely getting a moment before throwing himself at another opponent. 

 

sam gritted his teeth, blocking a plasma round with the curve of his shield before hurling it into the next line of attackers. the clang of it’s impact echoed through the hall.

“yeah, well,” he spat, wings snapping forward as he took to the air once more. “plan b’s always the same - make sure nobody dies.”

plan be: make sure nobody dies. as far as plans go, it was solid. a good rule of thumb.

 

the hall shook with noise - energy blasts slamming into walls, civilians screaming, the ricochet of gunfire bouncing from every corner. sam ducked through it, wings snapping shut to let him dive, then flaring again to shield a panicked family. he barely had time to catch his breath before the comm crackled with ruth’s voice.

 

“…sam.” her tone was sharp, strangled. “look.”

 

he twisted mid-flight, eyes snapping to where she stood frozen at the edge of the melee. for a second he didn’t see it - then his stomach dropped.

 

two squads of militia were shouting over the chaos, corralling the crowd - but not just corralling. dragging. forcing. adults were shoved hard toward the far exit, stumbling in a terrified cluster. younger teens and children were torn from their sides, shoved in the opposite direction. kicking, crying, begging hands were ripped apart.

 

sam hadn’t even noticed their back-up arrive. shit.

 

from above, joaquín’s wings faltered, his voice cracked over the comms.

“they’re splitting them up.” he said, voice devoid of emotion, more of a husk. sam’s heart could have stopped right then and there, because they were splitting up their hostages - splitting up the children.

 

shaun, locked in a grapple, slammed a hostile to the floor. he looked up just in time to see a boy shoved through one door while his mother screamed from the other. his breath caught.

“wait - no. that’s not random.” his voice went dark. “that’s deliberate.”

 

they were separating the parents from the children. they were separating the parents from the children.

 

that could mean one of two things, and neither was an acceptable outcome.

 

scott disarmed a rifle with a desperate heave, eyes widening. he turned and froze, visibly swallowing. “okay,” he said, high and ragged. “yeah. super not liking the whole ‘kids go in this line’ vibe.” he managed, shrinking once more to punch the next psycho to approach him.

 

their comms crackled to life once more, shuri’s voice a low, deadly current beneath the chaos.

“they’re targeting the children.” for the first time that night, her sharpness bled into something different. something raw. “do not let them get the - the children. do you understand? do not let them die.” she growled, a pent-u flurry of emotions hiding behind her words.

 

sam’s throat burned as he set his jaw, every muscle in his body coiled tight. his wings snapped wide, metal catching the harsh light of the stage. his voice cut through every scream, every blast, every frantic heartbeat.

 

“not happening.”

 

he dove down and slammed his shoulder into the nearest soldier, sending him sprawling across the floor. his boots planted firm against the wooded floor, wings flaring wide, and he drew a hard line between the armed militia and the cluster of terrified kids cowering behind him.

“joaquín!” he barked, pointing with one wing. “get those kids out the south exit - now!”

 

the younger falcon didn’t hesitate, swooping low, metal feathers slicing the air as he herded the frightened children toward the open path.

 

“ruth, shaun - cut it clear!” sam snapped. “scotty, you’re on distraction.”

 

scott whirled, still half-crouched, eyes wide and frantic. “what kind of distraction?” his voice cracked under the panic. “please don’t tell me balloon animals.”

 

sam refrained from rolling his eyes or scolding the man for making jokes. he made bad dad jokes when he got nervous. sam knew him well enough to know that by now.

 

“big. loud. annoying.” she ordered, somehow managing to keep his voice steady. “keep them off the kids.”

 

scott’s lips twisted into a manic grin, relief flickering across his face even as fear burned underneath. “oh, you’re speaking my love language.” he breathed.

 

in a heartbeat, his body surged upward, limbs swelling as he shot past the crowd in a blur of mass and shadow. the ground quaked under his new weight.

 

shaun vaulted forward, slipping through the melee with deadly grace, each strike knocking a rifle or body out of the way. his movements blurred into one fluid rhythm - every enemy downed was another second bought for the children.

 

ruth followed at his flank, colder, sharper. she moved like a scalpel - every strike clean, precise, brutal. no wasted motion, no hesitation, only the clear line she carved through the chaos, keeping stragglers tucked behind her as she forced the militia back step by step.

behind them, kids cried, reaching for missing parents. ahead, the militia pressed harder, desperate to close the gap. and at the center of it all, sam held his ground, wings a steel barricade, voice steady and commanding as the world tried to tear itself apart around him.

 

ruth cut down another soldier with ruthless efficiency, pivoting on her heel as she spotted a girl no older than ten frozen in the chaos. her eyes were wide, trembling hands clutching a stuffed rabbit like it was the only anchor left in the world. ruth dropped to one knee without hesitation, meeting her at eye level even as blasts crackled in the distance.

 

“stay behind me,” ruth said, her voice steady, sharp but calm enough to cut through the girl’s panic. “don’t stop running until you’re out of this building’s sight, okay?” she ordered the trembling girl.

 

the girl’s lip wobbled. “o-okay.” she managed, clutching the stuffed animal that much tighter.

 

before ruth could rise, a guttural order ripped through the hall. the militia leader barked commands, voice full of venom, and his soldiers snapped to obey. one man raised a device the size of his palm - metal, sparking with an ugly, alien charge. 

 

sam’s entire world could have just crumbled around him, as he forced himself to stay calm and not throw up at the sight.

 

a collar.

 

the man had a collar.

 

sam dropped hard to the ground, shield snapping forward and wings spreading to shield ruth and the girl from the scum before him holding the god-damn collar.

“drop it.” he growled, entire body tensed and ready to pounce at the drop of a dime.

 

the soldier sneered, fingers tightening around the device. “you wouldn’t get it, birdman.” he drawled, voice low and teething with a conviction that made his stomach turn. “we’re saving the world-”

 

“by hunting kids?” he demanded, rage bubbling over in his words, the fury finally breaking through his cooler tone. his wings flared, every inch of him radiating with danger and conviction. “you call that saving?”

 

before the man could retort, sam was on him - shield slamming into chest before anyone could even blink. the collar spun loose, sparking across the floor before snapping apart under the the weight of sam’s furry. sparks hissed out, the device destroyed underneath his boot.

 

the hall shook with noise and panic, militia lines pressing harder as if sensing they were losing ground. kids stumbled, clinging to each other, while the new avengers tightened formation, shielding them with everything they had.

 

it was now or never. they had to get out of this room, this building, and make sure the mutants got out unscathed and the hostiles couldn’t follow after.

 

ruth swept to the flank of the small group of remaining civilians, body moving with surgical efficiency as she tore a rifle out of a soldier’s hands and drove him into the wall without breaking stride.

 

“keep moving!” she barked, ushering stragglers toward the light spilling in from the exit.

shaun vaulted the opposite side, a blur of fists and kicks, his strikes clean and practiced, clearing the path faster than the militia could close it again. each man he dropped stayed down.

 

behind them, the ground trembled. scott loomed overhead, his massive frame stomping down hard enough to send a squad scattering like ants. he grunted as a volley of blasts pinged off his shin. “i feel like the world’s worst babysitter over here!” he called, reaching down to swat at the men brave - or stupid - enough to try and engage him.

 

sam landed hard in front of a cluster of kids too panicked to run, his wings snapping wide in a protective arc as blaster fire rained against the vibranium. his voice cut through the chaos, low and grim. “babysitting saves lives, scott. keep at it.”

 

another blast hit his wings. sam didn’t flinch. “nobody lays a hand on them.”

 

the kids stayed under the cover of his wings as he guided them to the exit, ruth and shaun and scott keeping most of the fire off his back as he brought them to safety. 

 

sam turned around, bracing his shield once more, ready to face the militia with 100 times more fervour now the innocents were out of the way.

 

this was not a fight he could afford to lose.

Notes:

if this chapter seems more dour than the usual it's because 1) it's meant to be 2) i wanted to add more stakes into this fic and 3) personal life sorta imploded a little bit. my friend's father passed away incredibly suddenly, so i've been trying my best to help them deal with that

Chapter 22: there’s a new sheriff in town

Summary:

the other new avengers arrive on the scene. everything immediately starts to fall apart.

Notes:

these chapter got way long outta nowhere lol

i love yelena. gotta love yelena. such a silly.

kate had told her ‘there might be something happening here’ before providing her the co-ordinates. she said ‘something might be happening’ and did not specify further. 

 

kate said ‘something’. she said ‘might’. she did not say ‘armed psychopaths are going to try to round up and kill all the inhumans at the inhuman convention’. she did not say ‘thousands of inhumans are going to be caught in the vendor hall of the convention centre by armed maniacs’.

 

and yet here she was.

 

“move, move - watch the civilians!” bucky ordered as they entered the space, weapons drawn and already firing at the armed men in the uniforms. people all around them, kids and adults alike, were screaming and crying, fear etched into every sound that escaped their throats.

 

“you have got to be kidding me,”

 

yelena’s head snapped to the side at the familiar voice, catching sight of none other than the captain america, in his star-spangled, winged glory, charging from what might have been a theater for convention panels.

 

she felt her eye twitch as he made eye-contact with her.

 

“oh good. another man yelling orders. that’s exactly what this party needed.” she drawled, rolling her eyes and turning her back to the captain, weapon whipping around to the armed man who’d charged at her. she pistol-whipped him in record time, and he was on the floor before he knew it.

 

“small children! do not worry! red guardian is here to save you all!” she heard alexei boom, yelling at a group of small kids who just wailed as he hollered at him. 

 

she cursed under her breath in russian, aiming her weapon at the nearest uniformed maniac to her father and those kids and firing, the bullet almost hitting a panicked civilian who charged through her fire range.

 

no shooting then, she thought frantically as she holstered her pistol, got it.

 

“hey, we’re on your side,” walker grunted between taco-shield smacks, each hit sending another gunman careening to the ground. yelena caught the glare he shot sam, and the equally venomous one sam returned. typical. she didn’t have time to dwell on their pissing contest; her eyes snapped instead to the armed woman on her right, the one with her fist tangled in the hoodie of a terrified teenager. yelena moved.

 

“then why are you blowing our cover and wrecking our lines?!” sam snapped, ducking low, wings flaring as he kicked a rifle out of reach.

 

yelena decked the armed woman with a right-hook, hand moving to yank the weapon from her hand. she crumpled to the floor soon thereafter, and the terrified teen thanked her profusely before running off.

 

yelena took a heartbeat to look at sam’s team and judge them. harshly. because calling whatever ‘formation’ they had going on ‘lines’ was… generous thinking, let’s put it. 

 

walker shrugged mid-swing. “because your lines suck.”

 

yelena twisted another soldier’s wrist until his gun clattered to the ground. “he is not wrong,” she called out, tone infuriatingly casual as she headbutted the man and shoved him into the ground.

 

“oh no,” scott groaned, voice miniature and muffled as he climbed up the barrel of a weapon like it was a skyscraper. she jumped back slightly as he enlarged himself and used his momentum to swing the hostile to the floor, knocking them out in one smooth, clean motion. “there are two of them.” he grumbled, eyes cast between her and walker from behind his mask.

 

she managed a quick grin at the man before turning around and kicking the nearest armed person she saw. the movement and action helped keep her thoughts at bay, the crawling unease she felt beneath her skin.

 

she felt a small sinking feeling in her gut - if sam was here, and scott, torres too, and it seemed to be a full-team mission, that meant - 

 

oh no.

 

shaun - shang-chi, one of the new heroes to appear in recent years with another decadently traumatic backstory - emerged from the theater hall already sweaty and wild-eyed, squinted at ava - who had just flickered straight through a vendor booth like it wasn't even there. “who invited these guys..?” he asked, obviously put-off by her fellow teammate as she used her powers to disappear and re-appear to knock out another armed maniac.

 

'knock out' was putting it very politely. the man went to forever sleep. there was no waking back up with a neck at that angle.

 

bob, crouched too low and too awkward to look like anything but a civilian who’d stumbled into hell, ducked a spray of bullets and winced. “uh - hi. sorry. we’re, um… we’re here to help?” he managed, smiling up at shaun as he just looked down at him, brows furrowed and more than confused.

 

“then stand somewhere you’re not in the way,” ruth barked back, tearing a baton from an enemy’s hands and smacking them on the side of the head with enough force to knock him unconscious.

 

yelena purposely pushed herself forward, surging towards the armed group trying to herd a small group of civilians deeper into the building. ruth was battling hostiles in the other direction. seeing her in person sparked memories within her she’d prefer to forget, prefer to leave buried under everything else that swamped her mind and her memories.

 

“you don’t just crash an op like this,” she heard sam yell across the field; a quick glance showed her that, as she’d very much expected, bucky and sam were fighting side-by-side again. a history as long and complicated as theirs didn’t get thrown away over something as stupid as copyright.

 

“we totally do!” she yelled back over the fight, barely audible over the sounds of fighting and screaming. if they were more tech-savvy, they’d link their comms together, but unfortunately, the new avengers(z) were very much lacking when it came to tech-geniuses. they didn’t have a tony stark or a bruce banner; they had an ava starr, and her tech skills started and ended at what she could do with a computer or a bomb.

 

“it’s sort of our thing, now.” she added, landing a well-timed punch that sent another man sprawling to the floor. just to be sure, and assure her sound of mind, she pulled out her pistol and fired 3 rounds into the chitauri-enhanced weapon until it was a sparking, swiss-cheese mess.

 

“we had intel. thought you could use backup.” bucky said between a tackle and excessively forceful punch.

 

yelena scoffed, using one arm to help pull a terrified woman to her feet and murmur a small word of direction to her. yelena would rather perish than tell sam wilson that her intel kame from kate bishop, her friend-slash-informant. 

 

speaking of, yelena was going to have words with kate. this was very bad intel. ‘something happening’ her ass. this was more than ‘something happening’.

 

“backup is coordinated, not whatever the hell you are,” sam snapped, glaring at bucky for a few moments. 

 

“he means ‘complaining very loudly’,” she sniped back, launching herself at one of the armed men targeting bucky as he engaged in his stupid stare-down with sam, completely stopping their movements because that was definitely a smart thing to do.

 

“can you sign the divorce papers later? we’re working,” ava grumbled, appearing next to her and removing her helmet for a moment to pointedly glare at bucky.

 

“that means you, too,” walker snapped, talking through their comms. yelena rolled her eyes, turning around and decking the nearest uniformed idiot, one who had seemingly gotten too cocky after seeing captain america, the winter soldier, a widow and ghost stand together and argue in the middle of what could be best described as a war-zone.

 

in the seconds that followed that, yelena winced as a prolonged, loud and painful whine filled her ears, the chatter of her teammates forced into static as her comm frizzled with a high-pitch feedback loop.

 

then, not five seconds later, it stopped, and a new voice filled her ear.

 

“bast, did that work? can you idiots talk normally now?” an accented voice she did not recognise filling her ears. 

 

“who the hell are you?” walker demanded.

 

“shuri, did you link our comms?” sam breathed thorough her ear. 

 

uh oh.

 

“WHAT IS THIS? SORCERY?” her dad yelled and - ugh, why did these things not have volume control? could she mute him? yelena would very much like to mute him. he was yelling through their comms like they weren’t there.

 

“oh my god, there are two entire teams and i still cannot get one of you to follow basic instructions!” the girl, the techy one, shuri - which, wasn’t that the queen? like, the entire queen of wakanda? - complained into her ear, and yelena seriously debated just taking it out altogether. maybe stepping on the thing, too, just as a bonus.

 

a loud bang drew her attention away from the bickering in her ears, getting blinded momentarily as her vision went white from a flash-bang someone threw at them.

 

“Господи, черт!” she yelped, blinking rapidly to try and clear her vision as she continued to swear frantically in russian.

 

“priority’s civilians!” sam’s voice carried over the thunder of gunfire, sharp with command. “get them out!” he yelled, and yelena wondered how one of the most seasoned vets among them was so bad with comms. he could talk, like a normal person, but nooo, he yelled at them until his voice was the only thing she could think, words ringing loudly through her skull.

 

bucky spun as he dropped a soldier with a nasty elbow from his vibranium arm, snapping back, “i said that when we walked in!”

 

yelena, driving another hostile face-first into an overturned chair, shot them both a venomous glare. “and instead, you two measured egos like it was baking ingredient. good job.” her sarcasm cut through the din, merciless. she spoke to them through the comm, like a normal person.

 

the floor shook as alexei barreled past her like a battering ram, screaming a war-cry as militia scattering in his wake. he barged his way through a table - yes, through, it split in half as he charged at it - before jumping and tackling an armed man with a very large weapon through a vendor stall. the stall and the man crumpled like paper.

 

yelena could hear more than see her father pummeling the man in the wreckage of the vendor stall, but a more shrill, high-pitched scream tore her attention.

 

this scream did not come through her comm.

 

“someone’s stuck under there!” the voice cried, and yelena’s vision was back enough for her to see a young-ish girl in a purple hoodie pointing at where she could just about see her dad swinging his fists over the remains of the stall.

 

yelena began to more, but a blurr rushed past her and halted her in her tracks; ruth didn’t hesitate, intercepting a rifle barrel and twisting it out of its owner’s hands in one fluid motion. “shostakov!” she shouted, voice sharp with fury. “you’re crushing people as fast as you’re saving them!” she barked and of course she knew his name.

 

of course.

 

alexei turned, affronted, the man beneath him groaning something painful. “but i am saving them!” he bellowed, chest heaving, sweat beading in his beard.

 

yelena refrained form face-palming. 

 

“no, you are creating collateral damage!” shuri’s voice crackled through their comms like a whip, and yelena winced at the volume. seriously, did no one have etiquette with these things? like, at all?

 

alexei froze, caught between a wounded pride and the unflinching truth of the words. behind him, the stall groaned as it collapsed further, a panicked civilian’s cries echoing from beneath the wreckage.

 

it seemed to snap him out of the stupor he found himself in, rising to his feet and tearing away pieces of rubble like they were nothing until he freed the battered and bruised man trapped beneath it.

 

yelena, still blinking furiously, threw herself back into the fray, trying her best to ignore the loud calls of her team and the other avengers.

 

they were a complete mess. all of them.

 

yelena drove her elbow into a man’s throat, feeling the crunch under her weight as he went down like a sack of potatoes. she wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand, scanning the hall. civilians screaming, chairs overturned, plasma bolts lighting up the air like a disco from hell. typical american mess.

 

movement caught her eye - shaun, the one with the shiny bracelets - cornered by three militia idiots. he was holding his own, but barely. the man fought like water, but even water could be stopped if enough rocks were piled on top. or some other euphemism of the sort. yelena braced herself, ready  to move , but -

 

“hey - ring boy! duck!”

 

of course. walker.

 

she watched him hurl himself across the floor like some angry linebacker, shield slamming into one militia’s face. shaun didn’t waste the chance; the rings lashed out in crackling arcs, felling the other two in a heartbeat.

 

for half a second, the two men just stood there, shoulder to shoulder, panting, staring at each other like dogs in a standoff. yelena rolled her eyes even before shaun muttered, “…thanks.”

 

walker grunted, predictably grumpy. “don’t make it a thing.”

 

yelena snorted and cracked another militia across the jaw, muttering under her breath, “boys. they hit things together once and already it is… complicated.”

 

she didn’t bother watching the end of the scene. let them sort out their fragile egos; she had more children to drag out of stampedes.

 

yelena turned her focus to the civilians trying to hide behind one of the booths in the vendor hall, crouching down to get on their eye-level.

 

“i am going to clear a path for you, okay? run along the wall until you find an exit. get out of here,” she instructed the woman before her, taking a hold of her hand firmly. the woman, eyes rounded with panic, nodded shakily, swallowing harshly. 

 

“when i say go, got it?”

 

the woman nodded again.

 

yelena spun back around, dodging a plasma-blast that put a decent sized crater into the wall, grabbing the barrel of the gun that had fired and yanking it up, out of harm’s way before balling her fist and punching the dude clean in the nose, with a satisfying crack.

 

they stumbled back, letting go of their alien weapon and clutching their nose with a swear.

 

“go!” she barked, dealing a clean left-hook that sent the man sprawling to the ground. she shifted her focus to another armed man, focusing on directing his plasma-blasting gun barrel away from the fleeing people.

 

“alright, team,” scott said through the comm, and leave it to that man to know how to use the comms best. ugh.

 

“not a team,” walker bit from where he was trying to fist his way through to a man with a huge, canon-esque weapon that he seemed too afraid to fire. 

 

“good news!” scott continued with the same amount of zeal and cheer. “i broke it!” he informed them, and that was not useful. at all.

 

even less useful than kate bishop’s useless intel. broke what? broke why? and why did yelena have the feeling that there was more to what scott wanted to say?

 

“bad news -” he went on and, ah, there it was. “uh, it was powering… something.”

 

yelena’s head snapped to the right, eyes searching for the man, and she found the red-and-grey clad man full-sized, mask up and seemingly staring at a very alien-looking machine that was now smoking a purple smoke that had to be hazardous, nothing that shade of purple wasn’t.

 

and it was rattling and sparking and fuck it might explode.

 

“scott, run!” she found herself calling out, diving for cover herself just in time for the machine scott broke actually imploding on itself, before sending metal shards and nefarious machine-pieces flying throughout the hall in every which direction, crackling with a purple, angry electricity that made the air taste like static around her.

 

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!

 

“what did i just say about collateral?!” shuri shrieked through the comms, having seen the destruction from - well - wherever the fuck she was and, wait, how did she see? yelena had shorted out the security cams in the building herself, was she, like, flying a drone or something?

 

“focus!” sam barked, shrugging metallic debris off his wings from where he’d shielded a small family from the blast. yelena looked up in time to see the ceiling of the vendor hall groan, plaster washing over the room from where an extra-large alien machine chunk had stuck itself. “we can argue later!” he declared briskly, letting the civilians run away.

 

yelena had barely dodged the debris herself, and considering how unstable the ceiling (and, therefore, all the floors above it) now seemed, their timer had at least halved. 

 

“if there is a later.” she heard bucky grumble beside her, strictly not into the comms. the chaos around her had quieted slightly, everyone and their mothers having taken cover from whatever the fuck scott had exploded, but the noise was steadily returning.

 

the clattering of rubble, the creaking of pipes. screams hoarse with terror and dust. angry grunts and irritated orders. 

 

crying.

 

“we’re not winning this,” ruth - fucking ruth - hissed into their comms, grunting as she hoisted a piece of debris off a man that had been trapped. she sounded so defeated, so angry and dark and glowering and -

 

she sounded like a widow.

 

yelena rolled her shoulders, as if rolling away the shudder that crept down her spine. 

 

“we totally are. we’re still alive," she quipped right back, dusting her suit off before drawing her pistol at the drop of a dime, shooting and killing an armed man who had tried to get the drop on her.

 

stupid man. 

 

“well, not everyone got so lucky,” ruth shot right back, glaring at her from across the room.

 

yelena ignored her. the situation would be much worse had they not showed up. this was winning. it had to be.

 

just as yelena was having that thought, born of something like desperation and spite, the glass wall of the vendor hall sealing them inside - well, what was left of it, anyways -  blew inward with a litany of crashing and cracking. the glass sprayed everywhere, blown into a million tiny little pieces, raining across them like a rainstorm.

 

yelena’s mind was brought back to the void for a few moments, in bob’s shame room, in malaysia, the lab and -

 

they weren’t there. they made it out. 

 

she blinked herself back into the present.

 

civilians. armed forces. not dying. right.

 

reinforcements poured in, boots pounding in rhythm, their shouts jagged and ugly. glass crunched underfoot as yelena watched, mouth agape in horror, as a force almost ten times the size they had already faced flooded the remnants of the vendor hall, plucking civilians from the rubble like plucking splinters. their rifles and weapons glowed that unnatural, alein purple and the hum of the weapons filled the air with a vibration that made her uneasy to her very core. 

 

for a heartbeat, they all froze. the avengers. the other avengers. 

 

we are so very screwed. yelena thought it flatly, without panic. just a fact.

 

above them, joaquin’s voice came over comms, grim and clipped. he’d managed to avoid most of the flying glass since he was airborne, and yelena only spotted him briefly in her peripheral.

 

“we’re not containing this anymore.” he said, low and irked. 

 

no kidding, bird-boy.

 

the convention hall was already unrecognizable - collapsed banners, overturned merch tables, broken glass underfoot, concrete and debris scattering the hall. 

 

blood. bodies. 

 

smoke stung her throat. alien energy shimmered through the smoke and plaster dust in the air like veins of lightning; every step she took crunched debris, dragged at bruised muscles. 

 

both their teams were running on fumes.

 

sam was herding civilians toward the far exit, jaw tight, shield and wings flashing as cover. 

 

ruth planted herself at a choke point, her stance screaming don’t even try me. armed men still tried her. they all, very quickly, found out.

 

alexei, of course, was making a spectacle of himself: both a blessing and a curse. he was roaring, plowing through armed militia with his bare fists and his sheer mass - then immediately got clipped from behind. yelena swore under her breath, pivoted, and threw a knife from her thigh, the whip-thin blade immediately finding its mark. 

 

“pay attention, papa,” she snapped, vaulting a fallen piece of ceiling to make her way over to him, yanking her blade free before offering a hand to help her dad up.

 

across the chaos, scott was a blur - shrinking, expanding, popping in and out of cover. his quips had dried up a few minutes ago, and the silence was worse.

 

here i am, missing it, she thought dryly. who’d have thought the day would come?

 

yelena fought dirty because there was no other way left. knee to a gut, elbow to a face, a stolen rifle cracked across a helmet. but for every one she dropped, two more took their place. the militia was tightening the noose around their throats, step by relentless step.

 

“hey, guys, do you think that-” wham!

 

scott’s voice, jovial and upbeat as ever, was cut off abruptly and sharply with a dull, resounding thunk that made her skin crawl. 

 

a militia soldier lunged from the smoke, clamped an arm around his neck, and jammed a chitauri rifle hard against his temple. scott’s scream cracked through the chaos.

 

“hey! hey - whoa, personal space! personal space!” he shrieked, putting his hands up. with how quickly the man had managed to get scott into a headlock, yelena didn’t doubt the man had a quick trigger-finger.

 

scott, it seems, also came to that same conclusion.

 

“NOBODY MOVE!” the man holding scott at gun-point hollered, and yelena found herself raising her hands in a motion of surrender. not that a widow doing that should be reassuring, but still, it was the thought that counts.

 

everything froze. even the gunfire seemed to choke itself out.

 

the militia leader stepped forward from the swarm, helmet visor black and pitiless. he pressed the rifle harder against scott’s temple, the enhanced weapon no-doubt having the capacity to shoot right through his suit and into the side of his head.

 

“everybody down! weapons down - or your little bug-man dies.” he demanded, and yelena could see the stiff movements of the other avengers’s around her. the civilians, who had been terrified all the while, screaming and shouting in terror and confusion, stilled also, the dash of hope they’d mustered at two entire avengers teams coming to aide them withering away.

 

despite all that, yelena’s pulse didn’t spike, not yet. she knew hostages. she knew the choreography of fear. the part that worried her was the militia’s discipline: rifles up, support forming a circle around the chaos, every civilian herded in behind them. too coordinated for a bunch of weekend fascists.

 

somewhere a kid whimpered, muffled in their mother’s coat.

 

sam’s voice cut through, low and steady.

 

“don’t. he’ll pull the trigger.” he said quietly, voice unnervingly soft, yelena’s gaze flickered to the side, where sam was glaring at ruth who had a blade clutched tightly in one hand.

 

walker bristled instantly, shield half-raised, jaw clenched with that self-righteous fire of his.

 

“we can take him -” 

 

“no, we can’t. look around, walker. we’re surrounded.” bucky snapped back, eyes sharp, voice wavering. off course. bucky fought with scott. twice. 

 

were they friends?

 

boots thundered closer, rifles and jeering maniacs forming a jagged perimeter around them all, slowly closing in, forcing them closer together. every exit was blocked by by a wall of armoured militia and their purple-glowing weaponry. 

 

kate bishop and her little team was right. these weapons were a danger. huh.

 

she bunched her muscles to attack, but even she wasn’t cocky enough to pretend she could punch her way out of this, not with scott’s life dangling on a trigger pull.

 

even alexei - her unstoppable, idiotic bear of a father - had stilled, chest heaving, blood dripping down his beard. for once, he didn’t charge. he understood the math.

 

and yelena hated that he was right.

 

alexei’s lip quirked as he moved slowly to stand beside her, eyes fixed on where scott was squirming in the maniac’s grip. “cowards.” he muttered, voice low and quiet so only she could hear. “using hostage-” he spat, voice trailing off.

 

“shut up, papa. he will shoot.” she hissed, hand shooting out, fingers digging into his arm.

 

scott tried to laugh, to abate the tension settling over them like a blanket of soot, thin, and cracking, like the glass underfoot.

 

“okay - hey, hey! - nobody panic. i mean, i’m panicking, but you all look super calm-”

 

“do not antagonize them!” shuri’s voice snapped in every ear, clipped and urgent.

 

across the wreckage, ruth’s stance was unshakable, voice sturdy and as unwavering as her posture. 

 

she was always such a good widow.

 

“let him go. you want leverage, you’ve got it already.” she drawled, a hand gesturing jerkily to the civillians the militia was currently throwing back into their death-circle.

 

the militia leader’s helmet tilted, the cruel curve of a grin visible beneath it. his voice carried, taunting, meant to dig into every crack between them.

 

“oh, i know. see, you people - avengers, mutants, whatever you call yourselves - you fight each other more than you fight us. easy pickings.” he laughed, jerking the barrel of his weapon against scott’s head again.

 

scott went perfectly still, stopping the squirming and scrabbling he’d maintained up until that point. behind the mask of his suit, his eyes were wide, too wide, like a bug caught in glass.

 

yelena couldn’t even bring herself to laugh at the irony of that. she may not like most of sam’s avengers, what with the whole lawsuit thing, but from everything she knew, scott was just a dad. a good one at that. 

 

yelena’s knife itched against her leg where it was holstered. every instinct screamed to move, to end this. but she forced herself to breathe, forced her body to still. not yet. move too soon, and bug-man’s brains paint the floor.

 

she didn’t know how she would explain that one to kate bishop. yes, sorry kate bishop, your intel sucked and now your teammate’s dad is dead. so sorry about that. 

 

she could feel the team fracturing around her - the tension in sam’s jaw, the rage rolling off walker in wavesr, ruth’s restraint stretched thin - they were one wrong word away from breaking apart.

 

and the bastard in the helmet knew it.

 

“…guys? seriously. little help here.” scott pleaded, voice much quieter, desperate.

 

it sounded so - so wrong. ugly. 

 

broken. 

 

the militia jeered, the sound jagged and triumphant, bouncing off the ruined walls and broken glass. for the first time since this nightmare began, silence sank over the hall and it settled. it stayed.

 

silence, and the knowledge that they weren’t in control anymore.

 

smoke curled through the broken hall. civilians whimpered in the death-ring they’d been forced into. every hero yelena could see - sam’s chest rising hard, ruth’s fists tight at her sides, walker’s shield twitching in his grip - was caught in the same trap. and yet they still put themselves between the civilians and the militia. still put themselves between them and execution, a human shield between life and death. 

 

sam broke first, voice low, steady, his whole body straining with restraint.

 

“…okay. okay. nobody moves. nobody escalates.”

 

yelena’s eyes never left the militia leader. her knife was still hidden against her leg but she didn’t dare twitch. not yet. instead, her voice came out flat, clipped, carrying across the hall like a dare.

 

“congratulations. you have our attention.” she drawled, hands still up as she took a slow step towards the man holding scott. 

 

his helmet tilted toward her. she saw the smile, thin and cruel, spread beneath the shadow of the visor.

 

he didn’t even say anything, just grinned that wicked grin.

 

yelena ignored the hammering of her heart in her chest. 

 

one mission. she just wanted one mission where it didn't all go to shit. only one. was that too much to ask?

Notes:

hahah oops. my bad g.

also yelena's russian translates to (according to google translate) 'jesus, fuck!' i think. i wrote it a little bit ago lol

Chapter 23: there’s a… another sheriff in town?

Summary:

the young avengers see the chaos unfolding. they rock up on the scene to help out.

Notes:

there are 3 separate sets of avengers in this chapter that is too many avengers.

im not even half way through everything i have planned. just y'all wait i am taking this plot on about 16 different 180 turns lol

cassie loved hanging out al billy’s place. she’d tell her dad she was going out with a friend, go to the park, and have america meet her there to pick her up, and together they’d teleport to his not-house-headquarters and she’d spend her afternoon there.

 

she had spent a very, very long time talking to her dad about her whole avenging thing, but after pointedly reminding him that he was also doing the avenging thing, they’d come to a… tedious standstill. 

 

she was yet to introduce him to any of her friends, though. that could wait. for as long as possible, preferably. 

 

the conversation about the other new avengers had been significantly unenlightening. 

 

for the most part.

 

he loved barnes, but was remiss about the whole sokovia-house-arrest thing. he knew yelena in passing as a widow, and was told by sam that she was natasha romanoff’s sister or something? her dad was unclear. either way, shostakov was yelena’s dad kind of, and john walker was, and these were her dad’s words, not her’s: ‘a really poor pick at captain america. truly, a swing and a miss of the most immense proportions.’, so. 

 

her dad also said walker and bucky had beef of somekind, because sam and walker had beef, but he didn’t know too much about it.

 

the most important thing she’d found out was about ava, the unknown variable of the other new avengers. she was even more an enigma to cassie because when she’d asked her dad about the woman, he had shut down.

 

completely. 

 

he knew her somehow, he just refused to tell her, no matter how hard she tried. 

 

“the ghost? she’s- she’s….” his voice trailed off.

 

he hadn’t said another word.

 

hope refused to talk about her - hell, hank wouldn’t even look her in the eyes when she brought the avenger up at the dinner table one time.

 

there was some sort of history there that no one would tell her about.

 

and she’d told as much to the rest of her team.

 

cassie popped another piece of laffy taffy into her mouth, smiling at riri and kate’s bickering antics. 

 

“all my other plans have been perfectly fine-”

 

“your plans got crashed by three different avengers!”

 

“only twice!”

 

“three! yelena and her dad, remember?”

 

“yeah! and that was one time!”

 

outside of being a team, they were… well, they were good friends. they stood for the same things she did, and that made something nice blossom in her chest. 

 

riri and kate often fought over details of the missions they chose to go on, and more often than not, kamala would be the one to mediate the two, combining their plans and getting them to work alongside each other and not against each other. she was really good at that sort of thing. 

 

cassie enjoyed the domesticity of it all - she’d never had a normal life. from almost dying at 6 to her dad going on house arrest, lying to the FBI at a very young age for reasons she was still unsure of to having to live in a world where everyone disappeared for five years and being sent ass-backwards into the literal quantum realm.

 

none of them were normal, but together, they built something like normalcy. it was nice.

 

kamala was too busy doing duolingo, of all things, which meant kate and riri were just left to their bickering.

 

she was playing a game of cards with billy and america in the meantime. it was a very calm game of kings in the corner, since it was usually kate and kamala who made it a… frightening experience.

 

they’d played bullshit a total of once. never again. riri almost clawed america’s eyes out. it was terrifying.

 

even agatha’s intrusive and unsettling presence became normal to her. billy had been telling the truth, of course: she was all bark and no bite. except from the times where she’d possess someones shoes, or haunt their reflections in the bathroom, but all her witchery was really mild and billy could often wave it away with a single swipe of his hand. 

 

it was one of those days where they were just hanging out - every now and again she or one of the others would chime into kate and riri’s bickering, but asides from that, it was calm. they’d tipped off the new avengers - uh, the new york new avengers, the ones with congressman barnes and the widow and all that jazz, not her dad’s team - to some activity from the buyer group they’d been tracking. they would let the new avengers investigate and sort it out, since their intel was telling them it was just going to be a small-scale weapons transference operation - something they could almost certainly handle themselves. 

 

it was also a good entrance into the black market world they were tracking. having the new avengers in the know, even at the small capacity they’d shared, was assuring. 

 

cassie was still on the fence about tipping off her dad’s team, but that was definitely more personal than… like… strictly business, so to speak.

 

maybe they’d send the next weapons transaction over to her dad’s team. 

 

wow, she thought with a smile, playing one of her cards before billy could, look at me. giving orders to my dad. that could actually be pretty fun…

 

wish we were a team, though. it was always supposed to be like that. us on a team.

 

“shit,” she heard riri hiss, and cassie scoffed.

 

they argue like an old married couple who should really get divorced.

 

“what now, riri? kate suggest we change the colour of your suit for an op?” she teased, throwing her head back to look at where the short girl was standing next to their very high-tech, top-security whiteboard-slash-pinboard.

 

riri was staring at her phone with wide eyes. cassie’s heart settled something cold in her chest.

 

she turned around in her seat.

 

“hey, what’s up?” she asked, catching on immediately to the shift in the atmosphere.

 

“i just got a ping on that weapons moving in new york,” she replied, bringing herself away from the board, eyes still glued to her phone. 

 

“what about it?” billy asked, putting his cards down, his attention immediately caught. riri was standing in front of the tv now, reaching down to pick up the remote and turning it on without tearing her eyes away from her phone.

 

“shit,” she breathed again, “y’all, we got this wrong, or something must’ve changed, ‘cause-”

 

riri changed the channel to the news, and cassie’s heart immediately plummeted. 

 

“all hell has broken loose at the inhuman convention centre today, as an unknown armed faction have shown up-”

 

“suit up,” kamala instructed, immediately rising to her feet. cassie followed, dashing for her bag where she had her stature suit stashed before throwing herself down the hall and into the bathroom.

 

“they’re rounding up civilians and targeting them! this is bad, guys,” riri called out, the only one who didn’t need an outfit change to gear up. cassie was frantically getting changed, pulling off her oversized sweatpants and pulling her suit on as fast as she could manage.

 

her suit was on in record time, rushing back out to the livingroom and waiting for the rest of the team. 

 

billy had just waved his hand and was in his suit, riri had her suit standing in the corer of the room at any given point so she was ready already, kate was already practiced in the art of the quick-change and america just threw on her jean-jacket.

“how did we not know about this?” kamala huffed, hopping down the hallway as she pulled her other boot on. 

 

“they must have changed their plans, or stepped up their misdirection, fuck,” riri replied, looking at the intel she was getting on one of her gauntlets now.

 

her eyes widened further.

 

“oh, hell no! they’re rounding the civvies up, a death circle,” cassie’s heart stopped. fuck. fuck! “the avengers are cornered in the middle of it, i-” riri cut herself off, swearing again and frantically inputting - inputting whatever it was she did with her gauntlets.

 

“what?” kamala pressed, eyes flickering to america. “are you ready to go?” she asked the other girl, who cracked her knuckles.

 

“yeah,” she replied quickly, but cassie wasn’t focused on her.

 

riri was looking at her. right at her.

 

cassie’s heart was like a jackhammer in her chest.

 

“what?” she breathed, already knowing something horrible had happened.

 

“they have a hostage,” riri said carefully.

 

the words felt like ash on her tongue. noise became a mere echo around her as cassie put the dots together.

 

someone was holding her dad hostage. they were holding her dad hostage with alien weapons and the avengers - both teams of them, apparently, because why else would her dad be there? - were losing.

 

“i guess it’s up to us to say the day, then,” kamala said, in that effortlessly hero way of hers, before america, with her fists clenched, punched out into the air beside her, blue-sparking light in the shape of a star emerging as she created a portal.

 

no more mystic arts; this was america’s powers. 

 

billy and kate threw themselves through as america turned and punched another star, the portal ripping open as swift as the last one and allowing kamala and riri to storm the battlefield from a different location. 

 

she opened yet another one which cassie leapt through, instantly pressing the button at her hand to enlarge herself, coming to a clean 15 feet as she surged towards the faction member holding the barrel of a gun straight at his head. at her dad's head.

 

“pick on someone your own size!” she snarled, enlarged hand smacking him in the side of the head as she reached with her other hand for the barrel of his gun.

 

the startling force of her appearance sent him splaying sideways, gun jolting upwards as he fired - straight into the ceiling.

 

using her superior height and the element of surprise, she tore the weapon from his grasp and threw it to the floor, stomping on it for good measure. 

 

cassie only had a moment to shrink herself, extending a hand for her dad to take to right himself to his feet.

 

“peanut?” he asked, confounded.

 

cassie managed a smile beneath her mask.

 

“hi, dad.” she returned, before turning on her heel and shrinking herself, leaping from piece of debris to debris to launch herself at another militia member, in an attempt to break their ranks.

 

she enlarged herself as she jumped up to swing at one of them, fist connecting cleanly with their visor, the black plastic shattering on impact and the force of her swing sending the man stumbling. 

 

“sorry we’re late!” kate called over the noise, firing one of her trick-arrows at a militia member. 

 

the arrow crackled with electricity, which sparked and spiraled outward among a whole crowd of the armed faction as the current hopped from metal item to metal item among them. 

 

“missed the bus. you know how it is!” she chirped, firing another arrow at another group of the militia, this one exploding in a purple foam. 

 

cassie liked the friendly banter, the quips; but more than that, it made people feel safe. well, safe-er. it’s why she did it so much. why they all did.

 

cassie was hopping from faction member to faction member, doing her best to break them out of the death-circle they’d formed around all the civilians, trying to force them into more disarray and chaos. now that her dad wasn’t, you know, being held at gunpoint, the other avenging teams (they really needed a better name for them. it couldn't be the new avengers & the new avengers. that was stupid. and confusing.) got off their asses and started to fight back, too. 

 

billy and america were taking point in getting civilians out of there, america punching portals into the air and billy using his magic to safely get the civilians from point a to point b without getting shot.

 

cassie was better at fighting and distracting, though, so she left that up to them - and kamala, too - and focused herself on a group of the militia that had caught her eye.

 

not in the good way. they were corralling a smaller group of inhumans and mutants, and when she says smaller, she means both fewer of them and also literally smaller. 

 

as in targeting children.

 

cassie almost threw up in her mask. it was sick, fucking disgusting and cruel and - and -

 

she didn’t have the right words. they were rounding up inhumans and mutants to kill them, and they were trying to prioritise kids.

 

what the fuck.

 

“you wanna pick on kids?” she hissed at the first man from that group she could get her hands on. “try me.”

 

hands on either side of his helmet, she slammed his head down into her knee as she activated her suit, growing to three times her normal size to emphasise the impact of her hit and to shatter the mask on his head. 

 

she swiftly turned to the next man and disarmed and knocked him out, then the next, and the next, and the next, shrinking and leaping and kicking and anything to save the kids.

 

one of the kids, a maybe thirteen-year-old boy with a mop of reddish hair and blue freckles, helped her at one point, grabbing a man who landed a solid punch to her gut by his vest, and in the blink of an eye, his clothes were pooled around his feet on a puddle on the floor - literally.

 

as in, this kid just turned all his gear and clothes to water. 

 

well, that’s certainly one way to do it.

 

cassie nodded her thanks at the kid, before a star portal appeared to her right, and she was helping guide the kids through the portal before she could blink.

 

leave it to them to fix this huge ass mess.

Notes:

really happy to be setting up some more of the anchoring conflicts for future chapters. lowkey SO excited. i love leaving breadcrumbs :33

Notes:

i am truly unhinged i have 100 chapter outlines for this story. help.