a/n : cried while writing this one, besties
also sorry for dropping off the face of the world for a hot sec.
please comment, react, and vote!
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SPENCER'S ON A MISSION.
Not like an Avengers one, which she always wanted to do. She tried to get Nat to convince her dad for the longest time, but eventually, Pietro found out, and suddenly both he and Bruce were ganging up on her.
"Spencer, don't be upset-"
"Dad, it's totally unfair!"
"Spencer, listen to your father."
"You're a traitor, Pietro. Wanda will side with me, anyway."
As she stares at the bars of restraint in this transportation vehicle, Spencer wonders what Bruce would say if he knew all about the missions she's gone on in the last month. Guilt sinks her heart. She knows Bruce would never hate her - could never - but when she thinks about all the things she's done, all the crimes she has been an accomplice to. All the horrors she's been a part of.
"What is it, little Merzost?" Madam muses, glancing from the front passenger seat to smirk back at Spencer. The younger girl carefully moves her eyes over to the woman. "Missing Lover Boy already?"
Spencer doesn't say anything. She doesn't let her face give away anything, either. She's not going to let anything risk Pietro, not even if it felt like it was physically burning her.
Her eyes slip over to Soldat, who is sitting across from her, his eyes trained to the wall just behind her head. He doesn't move, even with the rocky road they've been driving on for 20 minutes.
It's been three days since Spencer's seen Pietro. He's gone on his mission, as far as she knows. From the words she hears, Spencer thinks it was France. No one tells her anything, no one ever has. Not even Soldat.
Spencer is beginning to notice that he won't look her in the eye and more.
"We will work on your independence next," Madam tells her, turning back to face the front of the car. The HYDRA agent driving whispers something to her, to which she nods. Then she focuses back on Spencer, "After all, you won't be working with Soldat all the time."
Spencer says nothing. She's never ever considered working with Soldat, and when she checks to see how he thinks of that, how weak he perceives her. But he won't even look at her.
"Not to mention," Madam continues, and Spencer's head turns fully to look at her. "He won't be in the picture much longer."
Soldat? Spencer's eyes skip back to him. He's not reacting, not at all - even if he's been wiped recently, this should invoke some kind of emotion in him.
Madam's shrill, condescending laugh pulls her back from him.
"Not this one, girl," she says, with a little scoff. "The Speedster."
Spencer's body tenses.
"I suppose no one's told you, then," she said, turning in her seat to get a better look at Spencer. She's watching the girl with a sickening smile like she's excited about the reaction. "He tried to call the Avengers on his last mission. And you know what we do to traitors - he's out there right now, I believe. Getting his dues."
Spencer knows exactly what they do to traitors. They're going to kill Pietro - if they haven't already. Her Pietro. The Pietro used to make fun of her name and then kiss her. The boy that never looked at her like she was a monster, never called her one either.
Not to mention, if Pietro dies, Wanda is going to murder her.
(They have this whole pact about keeping him safe since he's supposed to be the one that does stupid shit, not Spencer.)
Her blood runs cold, and her head starts pounding. Her fingers curl around the metal bar next to her seat.
Madam seems pleased with her emotion. She turns more in her seat to get a better look at Soldat.
"What do you think, Soldat?" she teases. "Maybe putting an idea to all ideas of happiness and escape will keep our little Soldier grounded." She sounds happy with herself - like she's so glad she's done it. Doing it, Spencer thinks. There's a chance that he's not dead yet.
He's in pain. He's in so much pain. What If he dies? What if he's dead?
"Soldat!" Madam shouts, and he slowly looks over from the wall. "I asked you what you think. Do you think?"
Soldat doesn't reply immediately. Instead, he finally looks at Spencer. She's hunched over, her face slightly hidden. But it's just enough for him to see her shade of skin changing - her face, her arms, her hands.
He looks back to Madam. "No."
Madam raises an eyebrow. "No? What do you mean, no?"
Spencer's eyes flicker up at his words, and for just a second, they meet eyes.
"Do you think I've made her angry?" Madam suggests, bored with her own words. "Do you think she'll be like her father? Maybe rebellion a little more?"
"Not angry," Soldat says, carefully. He hardly ever talks to Madam, and it's clear he's choosing his words carefully. "Fear."
"Fear?" Madam echoes after a moment, a laugh the following suit. Soldat and Spencer lock eyes for a moment. "Well, wonderful, I've scared the little beast-"
There's a loud noise, the sound of screeching metal.
Spencer broke off a part of the car, and by the time Madam reacts and is looking over, she's broken out of her restraints, too, and is leaping forward.
She goes for the driver, who's already got his gun in his hand. Spencer's less than thrilled when she has to narrowly block a few bullets, but she's able to grip on to the gun, and shove it upwards, then twist it out of the man's hand. She uses the butt of the gun to hit the driver in the head, knocking him out.
Soldat next to her is handling Madam. She puts up more of a fight, and Spencer can tell that he's struggling. She moves to help, but the car jerks.
His eyes shoot over to her. Spencer panics.
"Drive!" he yells, and Spencer is jumping forward, and grabbing the wheel.
The deadweight of the unconscious body in the seat is a bit of a hindrance, and without thinking about it, Spencer uses her free hand to open the door and shove the body out.
When she slams the door closed, she realizes that may have been a little harsh. And a little immoral. Shit.
For a few seconds, Spencer focuses on driving. It's a day outside, but just barely. The sun's setting, and there on some kind of back road, in the middle of the woods.
Soldat and Madam are still struggling, and Spencer's trying to think of something to help. Her eyes flicker to a small compartment. She remembers it - when she used to put up a fight in the back seat, her punishment came from here. She's quick to fumble it open and grab a needle from the pile.
There's a loud gunshot, and Spencer feels a slight pain in her arm. When she forces her heart rate down to get a glance, the pain gets more intense.
"Fuck!" Spencer shouts, and without another thought, Spencer throws out her arm, stabbing Madam with the needle.
She falls limp in Soldat's arm. He shoves it into the back, grabbing the gun and putting on the safety.
The car goes silent. With one HYDRA agent abandoned on the road, and the other passed out in the back, there's not much to say.
Spencer finally glances over to Soldat. "Do you know where he is?"
"Two miles forward," Soldat replies stoically.
Spencer floors the accelerator.
✯✯✯
SPENCER ABANDONS THE CAR ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.
She's made it far enough, as Soldat tells her. The rest is on foot. She doesn't really believe him 100%, but he's all she got. Plus, he handed her an extra gun he'd pulled from Madam's unconscious body, so if he was going to take her into the woods to murder her, he was doing a shitty job.
She feels lightheaded when she steps out of the car, but Soldat is already in front of her, trekking the way, so Spencer pushes aside the pain. The safety of the gun is off, and it feels comfortable in Spencer's hand. Too comfortable, she recognizes when her morality steps in.
"Did you bring him out here?"
It's the first real question Spencer has for Soldat. James, she thinks. He's not really Soldat anymore - not after he beat the shit out of Madam.
James hesitates. Spencer expects the worst.
"He shouldn't be dead yet," Soldat says plainly. There's no emotion in his tone, but Spencer bets he's feeling really guilty right now.
She doesn't give him the chance to say anything else, her eyes back to scanning the area around her. It's so peaceful but so cold. It makes her so much more aware of how nervous she is - the rate that her heart's beating, the pounding in her head.
James steps forward, and Spencer flinches, her hand moving for her gun. If he notices it, he ignores it - his eyes are surveying the ground in front of him. Just as he goes to say something, Spencer is breaking into a run.
James follows to where her eyes had just left - the prints that led in the direction she was running.
Spencer doesn't know if James is behind her or not, and in all honesty, she doesn't really care. Sure, she doesn't want him dead or anything, but at this point, she has zero loyalty to him. Not only did he let her get kidnapped, he then kidnapped her back, and was well aware of Pietro's pretty much planned out murder.
She runs a little faster at the thought.
The woods were always like a maze to Spencer. Even the area outside of the compound caused her trouble on runs - it had gotten to the point that, on the weekends she went to visit her dad there, Pietro would insist on running the track with her. She tried to shove him away, but Pietro was really persistent about it. Said something about being afraid of her getting taken again.
And look where they are now!
There's a clearing up ahead, but Spencer notices that the footsteps fall short of it. She turns, but there's so sign of it anymore. James is nowhere to be seen.
There's a heat flaring up her neck, flooding her cheeks as the fear begins to set in. What if she can't find him? What if these seconds cost him his life? What if she -
There's a rustle, and Spencer's head snaps over to its source. It's just a small bunny running through the foliage, leaping away. It's not much, but Spencer takes it as a sign, sprinting towards the direction it was fleeing.
It takes her a minute of rapid breathing, but Spencer can finally see something ahead of her.
It's not good.
There are two HYDRA agents in front of her, facing forward. On the grass, in between them, is a body. Lying there.
Spencer begins to panic, just as one HYDRA agent lifts his hand, bringing down a metal rod against the limp body in front of him. It lands before she could move, and Spencer doesn't know if she's trembling, or if she can really see Pietro flinch at the action.
"NO!" Spencer screams on the top of her lungs, and just as the HYDRA agent turns to see her, her gun is up, pointed, and safely off.
She can see him there. Pietro. Laying there. Probably dead, if not tittering on the brink of. And still, her body feels like it's overflowing with cement, and she cannot move her finger to shoot the man in front of her.
His friend must notice the hesitation because he lets out a loud, bellowing laugh. It makes SPencer want to kill him. He's going for his own gun, and Spencer still pointed at his partner, who doesn't know what to do.
Finally, control seeps back into her body, and she turns the gun to the HYDRA agent, her finger pressing on the trigger right as a bullet goes through his skull.
Spencer freezes. Her finger hasn't even pushed the trigger fully in. Did she just kill this guy?
But when the second body falls with a grunt, Spencer knows she most certainly is not a killer. Just ahead of her, in the trees that lining the clearing, is James, holding his gun, lowering it just as the man falls.
Spencer's heart skips a beat. She's thankful, for a second, but then her eyes return to the body lying on the ground.
And the blood.
God, there is so much blood.
She's tripping over herself, already feeling her stomach ache and her throat burn as she rushes forward. The crimson that pools on the grass around him, that dyes his grey shirt in stripes, that is spilling from his mouth and nose. It makes her head spin. It makes her stomach churn.
Spencer's on the ground in a moment, crawling closer to him.
She can see everything better now, not that it's good. She can see the slashes through his shirt, putting his deep wounds in the open air. She can see the cuts right around that circle his neck like a collar. She can see the bruises over his eyes. She can see his shallow breaths. She can see his blue eyes blinking open.
Spencer can't stand it - her head shoots up and her eyes catch James.
"LEAVE!" she screams, her words scratching at her throat. She sounds desperate and pathetic, and her entire body is heaving as she tries to breathe. James looks up from the body. "GET OUT OF HERE!" she yells. "T-this is your fault - get the fuck out!"
James looks hesitant, but she can see the regret he's trying to fend off when he looks down at the body in front of her. He starts to run just as Spencer feels something brush at her wrist.
It's Pietro's hand. His fingers, really. Spencer wants to pull away because she can see the stains of blood and feels the bile rushing up to her throat, but she fights against it. Her hand slips into Pietro's. She squeezes it to let him know she's there, his head moving slowly.
Once his eyes finally land on her, Spencer thinks her breathing can resume. He's looking off to the side, first - at her hair, and then his gaze, as dazed as it is, falls to her face.
His busted lip lifts, even as he flinches. He opens his mouth, and Spencer tries not to flinch at the blood on his teeth.
"Dragă."
"I can fix this," Spencer says, giving him a tight smile. She feels horrible, but there are tears streaking down her face. "I can - just give me a second, okay? I - I can help."
Spencer cannot help. She knows she can't but she tries, anyway. Pietro protests with breathy calls of her name, but it's more in disbelief than actually trying to get her attention.
"You can't die," she tells him, stuttering in her breath. "Pietro, listen, I remember everything-"
"Don't do that," Pietro hisses at her, and Spencer stops immediately. He's shaking his head, and his jaw is set - he's angry. "Don't pretend, that's not funny."
Spencer stops short. He thinks she's... he thinks this is a HYDRA tactic. Which is fair - she's been gone for months. Spencer is completely unstable.
"You're right, that was a little too forward," Spencer mumbles to herself. "Maybe I should just tell you I hate you for two months and see if you kiss me some time after that. Only, Steve will probably kill us both by that point -"
"My God," Pietro groans out, and Spencer smiles down at him, tears streaming down her face. His blue eyes are piercing hers. His head is shaking the tiniest bit, grass brushing his hair. "Can't you let me die in peace, woman?"
"Shut up," Spencer snaps back, wiping her face. "You're not dying - shut up."
He doesn't say anything in response, but his eyes never leave Spencer. She places her on his abdomen carefully, framing the biggest cut that's gushing out blood. Even though she's touching the surrounding skin, her hands are staining red, and she's turning her head to gag, even as she's pressuring the skin back together, pressing down.
Pietro's watching her, carefully. After she turns her head to throw up, Pietro gathers the strength to grip the hand she's still holding.
"Look away," he tells her softly. "It's okay."
Spencer's shaking her head before she finds the word, "No." She swallows a sob. Pietro hisses as she adjusts her hold as she tries to close the wound. It doesn't help, and Spencer panics.
Pietro's other hand is grasping for the one on his stomach, and with a little cry of fear, Spencer lets him guide it away from the wounds.
"You'd be a terrible doctor," he tells her, and Spencer lets out a choking noise as he lifts her hand to his face.
She doesn't want to hurt him, so at first, her hand doesn't move at all. But he leans his cheek against it, letting his eyes close a little, so Spencer brushes her thumb just above his hairline.
"Pietro," Spencer calls, and he forces his eyes open just a little to see her. She can tell it hurts him. Her heartaches. "I love you," she confesses.
He smiles, a little. It's more of a smirk, really, and his eyes shift up to the sky as he said, "Of course you do. I'm irresistible."
She lets out a scoff that turns into a breath, disbelieving laugh. It is enough to make Pietro's smirk melt into a smile.
"I love you," he says back, after a moment. His eyes shift back to Spencer to gauge her reaction. "What?" he breathes out, his voice getting lighter by the second. "You... didn't... you..."
Cold burns down her entire body. "Pietro?" she calls, softly, her voice cracking. He doesn't reply. She brushes her thumb against his skin again. Her other hand squeezes at his, but there's no response.
"Please," she croaks out, leaning forward. Her shaking fingers go to his neck, but she can't stabilize it enough to check for a pulse. Instead, she presses her ear over his left side, trying to hear for a heartbeat. She doesn't make out much between her own heavy breathing and the sobs that escape her throat.
But she stays like that, for a minute. She stays like that, head against his chest until she feels so sad that her heart might actually self-destruct. Until her stomach is eating itself.
Until she hears someone yelling her name.
"Spencer?"
It's a man, who's saying it. It's breathy and disbelieving.
"Go away," she whispers strained, her eyes focusing back on Pietro's chest. She can hear the footsteps getting closer. Her head lifts up as she shouts, "Go away! You can't hurt him - go!" her voice is shattering from the screams and the pain that's building in her heart, her chest. She reaches clumsily for the gun at her side, keeping one hand in Pietro's as she whips around, pointing towards the source of her name.
A man stands a couple of hundred feet away from her, his hands held up in surrender. He's not in HYDRA uniform, and so her heart relaxes for a second.
It's Bruce.
It's her dad.
She's pointing a gun at him, her eyes wild.
"Spencer," he calls, softer this time, taking a long look at her. "Hey, kid. I'm here."
There's a sob crawling up her throat again, and the gun falls from her hand. She sees a group of people approaching the clearing.
"It's not my fault," she cries out, and Bruce is at her side for a moment.
"I know, I know," Bruce promises, carefully inspecting her face, then glancing down at the body beside her.
"I didn't do it," she swears, and Bruce nods.
"Just let me take a look at him," he assures her. "Alright?"
Spencer nods, and when she turns around, there's another person kneeling by Pietro. She panics until she recognizes him. Clint.
"Hey, hey," he's calling, shaking Pietro's shoulders. "Come on, buddy."
She knows she's supposed to trust these guys, but Spencer doesn't let go of Pietro's hand.
Clint senses the stare on him but looks up to Bruce first. He's right at Spencer's side, pulling up Pietro's shirts to assess the wound. Once he does, he leans over, going to check his breathing.
It gives Clint a chance to look up at Spencer. She notices he's holding Pietro's other hand but says nothing.
"Hey, Sweetheart," Clint greets with a tense smile. His eyes scan over the two HYDRA bodies lying on the ground around them. "Getting better at sparring, huh?"
Spencer Rebecca Banner does not find this funny.