Hey guys! Oh my god it's been a while! I have so much news!
I got into Cambridge!! Can you believe it?! I'm still pinching myself, I only found out last week!
Anyway we have about two chapters left (I think?) so enjoy!
TW: Reference to suicide.
ALINA
The first thing I knew when I came to was that my body felt heavy. Too heavy. As though every fibre of my being was crafted from concrete. As though gravity was dragging me down, down, down, into the pits of hell and then some.
My spine felt bruised, my skin itched like stinging nettles had covered me, it was almost hard to breathe.
I knew someone was carrying me because everywhere they touched me burned, but I didn't have the energy to call out, to tell them to put me down. I just had to wait it out.
I still couldn't comprehend what I'd just done. I had been...floating? In the air? And I had burst into light like some sort of explosive device. It wasn't possible. It shouldn't be possible. But it had happened.
The question still circulating my mind was how? I hadn't been trying turn my whole body into a light bulb, just trying to make the biggest orb of light between my hands that I could.
I didn't want to open my eyes but I knew I would have to. I forced open one eyelid, then the other. I had a good view of the ground as my body bobbed up and down in the rhythm of someone's walk. I knew that walk. The rhythm of it. The surity in it.
"Steve." I croaked. "Steve put me down. Steve, please."
He started upon hearing my voice and the jerk his body made sent searing pain through my limbs. A gutteral groan escaped me.
"Alina, you can't walk-"
"Put her down Cap." It was Tony's voice. "She asked you to put her down."
I didn't have it in me to say thank you, or even to look up, so I waited limply as Steve kneeled down and put me on the ground. The pain didn't go away, but it wasn't so bad. I was thirsty. I wanted to drink something.
"Water. Please."
Steve pressed a bottle to my lips, holding my head up so I could drink. I had no idea where he got it from. He kept glancing up at my face, and every so often I got glimpses of his eyes. He looked as though... well as though he was scared of me.
I felt better after drinking. A lot better.
"Where's Locke?" I asked finally.
"Vanished. Aditi and her big dog are looking for them." Tony crouched down in front of me. "Well kid, ya ruined my armour." He gestured to the suit fragments around the floor.
I opened my mouth to apologize but Tony stopped me, saying, "But I saved this for you." He pressed a chip into my hands with the name 'Cassidy' written onto it in my neat, all capital letter, handwriting.
"Tony I-"
"Don't thank me. Just shut up and build your own next time. And no more cheap spray paint, it's got no class."
I nodded and glanced up. Aditi was on the back of the wolf, Peter behind her, trying to tie up her hair as they went along.
I caught a glimpse of Roara and Loki, clearly having some sort of slightly insulting banter. I took a deep breath in, and grabbed onto Steve's shoulders, pulling myself to my feet.
I knew he was going to say something about needing to rest, so I gave him a look which said back off. He put his hands up in defeat.
I staggered towards the pair and before I knew it, Bucky and Nat were on either side of me, silently placing an arm under each shoulder, helping me walk.
I looked over at Nat on my right. The cut on her cheek, the curls of her hair, the smear of her lipstick. She had made her choice, and I had made mine. I'd gone for Steve. Dependable, kind, trustworthy Steve. And she had chosen to break my heart. Of course she had.
Because, just maybe, that's why I'd developed those feelings. Because I craved something unexpected, wanted someone who would keep me on my toes. Natasha Romanoff would never tell me to stay down and rest. Natasha Romanoff would never tell me it was too dangerous. Natasha Romanoff... Natasha.
"Maybe we should call you the firefly, seeing as you light up like a torch now." She murmured in my ear.
"I think we should concentrate on moving Roara away from Omen, it's a shit name."
"I like it." Bucky grunted.
"You would say her shits smell like eau de toilette Bucky dear." I retorted.
Nat held back a snort.
We were close enough to hear everyone's favourite couple arguing now.
"Look all I am saying is-" Roara began.
"All? What do you mean all? Look he's gone, end of story, we can leave now." Loki interrupted, gesturing wildly with his hands.
"No! Loki, we can't! I have to finish this, I have to-"
"Ugh!" Loki grabbed Roara by the shoulders, shaking her lightly."You will die! He's infected your brain, he dies, that part of your brain dies with him! You'll be brain dead!"
"I KNOW!" Roara shoved him off her. "I know. You know I know." She smiled. "You have to let me go."
Loki shook his head furiously. "No. No I only just-" his voice cracked. And then he broke. I thought I'd seen him shattered before. Before when she was on a bed in the Avengers tower with machines and wires attached to her and the slow, regular beeping was all that reminded him she was still alive. Before when he'd carried her off the spaceship, her limbs limp and flailing, her skin grey and clammy from poison, as he'd placed her so gently onto the table and begged me, for the second time, to save her life. Before when his head had been in her lap and she had been stroking her fingers though his hair and he had cried and she hadn't and she had finally told him that he was the love of her life. And now the tears were falling hard and fast down his cheeks. "We were so close Roara. We were... You and me. We were supposed to make it out. We were supposed to last forever. What's the point of this life when the one person I'm living for isn't in it?"
She smiled, a broad, wide, open grin. It was so infectious I started smiling too, and I could taste the saltiness on my lips as I did so. I was crying. I wiped my tears away. I'd cried enough for one day and I didn't want anyone other than Clint knowing that, let alone Nat. She hadn't noticed. She was too busy looking at Roara and Loki. She wasn't crying. But she looked as though she wanted to.
"The point, my love, is to keep their memory going. You hold them in your heart." She pressed a hand to his chest, above his heart, looking up into his eyes, their height difference striking. "You hold them here, and you hold them tight, and that way you are living for them. That way they continue to live, through you. That's why there is a point."
He nodded, wiped his face, and kissed her quickly on the forehead. I didn't think anyone else had seen, but when he pulled her in and placed his lips onto her hair, she had closed her eyes. She had let out a small, shaky breath, and I could have sworn I saw a single tear drop from her cheeks. And then they were pulling away and the moment of intimacy was over.
"Right you big headed buffoon. You lost Locke, so you find him."
"Hey, I did not loose him, you were the one who-"
"Me?" She whipped out a small dagger and used it to gesture with. "You," she waved the dagger at him, "you were the one who distracted me, and we both know I have better eyesight."
"Better eyesight?" Loki frowned, "Better-" his knives were in his hands, and he was doing some sort of flipping trick with them. I could sense, somewhere in the ether, Roara's heart rate pick up as he did so. "Better eyesight?!"
"Everytime you open the fridge you're like 'where's the juice' and it is ALWAYS right in front of you, so unless you're stupid I'm going to chalk it up to bad eyesight!" Roara declared.
I turned to Nat. "Should we maybe, get them back on track?"
"Shhh." She replied. "I'm watching."
"Roara." Loki sighed, "My love. My darling. My dearest. There is a world of difference between not being able to find juice in a fridge and tracking down a psychopath. you can find juice, I can find psychopaths!"
"You can't do either, I can do both!" She yelled. "Ugh GODS ABOVE YOU INFURIATE ME!"
Bucky moved his head towards me and whispered, "If I hadn't just seen them declare their love for one another I'd think they hated each other's guts."
I nodded in agreement. "I know. How do they switch so fast?"
"I think the immortality messes with their brains." Natasha sighed.
"Want to talk about who's more annoying? You've nearly died about sixteen times now! I mean come on Roara!" Loki yelled.
"You're an asshole." She retorted, but she couldn't hide her grin. Not from Loki. And not from us, her family.
We were together again. Finally. I had... a family. A messy, chaotic, violent family. And I loved them all.
Loki's eyes flashed. He was looking behind Roara's shoulder. And then he lunged, arms out, throwing her to one side. She hadn't even touched the ground when...
Her screams filled the air, filled the whole space, raw and penetrating. It was gutteral.
"No." Nat whispered from beside me. She'd instinctively grabbed my hand. Everything in me told me to push her away, but instead I gripped it tight as waves of shock crashed through me.
Loki had been there a second ago. And now he had gone. A shape stood in the air where he should have been, replacing Roara where she had stood moments before. It looked like a trick of the light, as though everything inside it was refracted, like a vertical pool of shimmering lines. An invisible doorway that you could only tell was there from certain angles.
Blood was trickling out of the bottom of it, dripping onto the ground slowly, running between the lines of cobblestones.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
When I looked back at Roara I took a step back. It was involuntary. I gripped Natasha's hand even harder, terror coursing through me.
Roara looked like a nightmare. Like something out of a fairytale. She looked... like an omen.
Her skin was painted in greens and browns, not an inch of peach to be seen. Her skin rippled like water, and her hair was wafting around her face as though she was a mermaid underwater. Her features had become more angular, less rounded and childlike, though I wasn't sure how much of that was due to her not eating for weeks...no, I decided, it was definitely more than that. It looked alien. Inhuman. Wrong. And out of her head grew...horns. No, antlers. Massive antlers like a de er. Her eyes blazed azure blue, the colour of summer skies. Her watery skin seemed to crack beneath the surface, and lines of red lava began to drip off her, melting the stones beneath her feet.
She bent down and picked up a small piece of metal. A dagger. Loki's dagger. He must have dropped it when...
Drip. Drip. Drip.
She turned it over in her hands, her fingers too long to be human. She wasn't human. I always forgot. She was a demigod. Her mother was the literal earth. Wind swirled around her feet, like the beginnings of a tornado.
In this moment she was the earth. She was every natural disaster, every poisonous plant, every volcano ready to erupt.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
She was the ocean that sailors drowned in. She was the fire that ate at forests until there was nothing but smoke an ash. She was the wind that picked up buildings and threw them aside like lego bricks. She was the thorny rocks beneath the cliff face. She was every nightmare I'd ever had, all wrapped into one, horrifying creature.
And when she spoke she spoke with the voice of centuries gone, an ancient voice that had no place in this time.
"You dare..." She whispered. "You dare."
It was the creaking of old houses, the rain that lashed at window panes, the moving of tectonic plates.
Drip. Drip. Dr-
"YOU DARE!" She didn't even scream it. The words simply exploded, like canon fire, they were surrounding me, inside my head.
Her feet lifted off the ground, held up by a twisting hurricaine. I knew she could use the wind to fly, but I'd never seen anything like this. It didn't make any noise though. It was silent.
The dripping had stopped. I hadn't even noticed.
The screaming sounded far off. Roara didn't even turn to look. It was coming from somewhere above me. I thought this space was contained, but clearly it wasn't. The scream sounded like...Roara's. But she wasn't screaming. Her mouth was closed.
Bucky tensed beside me. "It's Aditi." He whispered so only I could hear. "She feels other people's emotions, especially Roara's. She's the one screaming."
I've always stood my ground. Never in my life have I backed down. But all I wanted to do was run away. Run away where? Grab Steve, grab him and run, it didn't matter. We'd survive.
But it wasn't Steve's hand I was holding. And I would never leave Nat. And Nat would never leave her family.
I realised then that that's all bravery was. It was staying when you wanted to run the most.
I braced myself for what was about to come.
"You dare take him away from me!" Roara's voice made my want to cover my ears. I didn't recognize her. I didn't see my friend. I just saw an Omen of death.
Locke emerged. He'd been hiding in shadows, Thomas by his side.
Locke, Locke was insane. He was... completely insane. He was laughing.
"In all fairness," he chuckled, "it was meant for you. I didn't count on Loki being so heroic, he's never had a flaire for selflessness before."
Roara moved forward through the air.
"We could have ruled together, Roara. You and I. Now I don't think you want to die, but if you kill me..." he sighed and shook his head. "It would be foolish Roara. It's why I'm not intending to kill you. We're connected now. We always will be."
"I would die a thousand times over if it meant you suffered with me." The air set her down in front of Locke.
"I don't want either of us to die. I was intending to move you to a far off planet, with no prospect of ever getting back to earth. And as you're immortal...well. I wouldn't die."
She glanced at the pool of blood beneath the portal.
"Ah yes, well I was intending to hurt you quite a bit, but who could blame me? You ruined my plans, fought your way out from under my control, killed my minions..."
Her eyes narrowed. Thomas took a few steps back. I was glad he did. If I hadn't known that she could literally kill someone with a flick of her wrist I might have used the phrase 'if looks could kill'. If looks could kill though, she'd have murdered entire armies by now.
"If you were wounded you'd survive. You can't seem to die, no matter how bad your injuries are. However I don't know about Asgardians."
Roara seemed to pause, seemed to think, turning over the small dagger in her hands. Her calmness was more unsettling than her rage.
"Yes. Now you see. This was actually a rather happy accident, a good plan B. Now you've got nothing to fight for. I've killed Loki. Has anyone here not lied to you, or used you in some way? Have they not hidden things from you, or broken your heart?"
She turned to look at me. My chest tightened, my head hurt. Was she going to kill me? For lying to her about Loki?
But then, I realised, she wasn't looking at me. She was looking beside me. She was looking at Bucky. I realised, she still loved him. After everything, she still held love for him, that he was the deciding vote in her decision. He always would be.
Bucky took a few steps forward, and I'm sure he was the only one of us who'd have been able to stomach getting closer to her. He still saw her in a way we could not.
"Roara." He said quietly. "We'll be okay. I will be okay."
She nodded. She'd made her decision.
She launched herself towards Locke, Loki's knife in her hands.
Locke grabbed her wrists, twisting her around so she couldn't stab him. Great vines burst from her chest, wrapping around him and squeezing.
He let go of her, his face turning purple, and tried to reach for something but she was too fast. An arc of fire engulfed him. Through the flames I saw what he'd been trying to reach for.
"Roara!" I skidded forwards, my body moving of my own accord. If she dies, I realised as I ran, he dies. She doesn't care. She just wants the pleasure of killing him. But she can't die - can she? Locke was insane, but he wasn't stupid.
I was almost there. I was almost there. Two more steps and-
Roara staggered back. The flames around Locke died down.
She let out a small whimper, and pulled the long spear out of her shoulder. I felt my own chest burn in sympathy, it had only been a few days before that I had been impaled, with the exact same spear. Wheel's spear.
Black liquid trickled out of her. She growled and launched herself again, but as she flew through the air a shining light struck her and she collapsed onto the floor about 10 metres away. He was still using the portals. He smiled. She did not.
Again and again she ran towards him, she used wind, she used flame, she used fire and vines but it was no use. Every time she was thrown out of the portal, onto her knees, onto her face, onto her back. She had scrapes all across her body. Blood was still running from her shoulder. She looked tired, she looked mad, she looked...
Pitiful. Not through her physical self, but I felt it. Not in a medical sense, not with my powers. But with that kind of innate understanding that sisters shared. She looked at me, and shook her head very slightly. I was still standing near Locke. And then I realised, I'd instinctively put my hand on my gun. She thought I was going to fire at him.
Her voice plowed it's way into my head as she charged again and fell through the portal once more.
Shoot him now and it won't be over. He'll survive as long as I do. He's in my head. I have to do it.
I looked around. Nobody else had heard her speak.
I took a step towards Locke and was instantlt transported back.
She shot me a grimace as she got to her feet again. A mix of 'I told you so' and a reluctant 'I wish it had worked'. Funny, her eyebrows still raised themselves in the same way. Same expressions, different face. She tried one more time, and once more was teleported back. She pulled herself up from the ground and gave me a look. She gave a tiny little nod.
She walked slowly towards Locke, spitting grit out of her mouth as she did so.
"You tried to kill yourself once before." Locke mused. I felt myself frown and turned to look at Steve behind me. He shook his head, looking equally as confused.
Locke looked to all of us. "She tried it when she realised I was controlling her. Didn't want to betray her friends. Of course it didn't work."
"And it won't work now." She snarled, that ancient voice still making my ears hurt. "It won't work now because you're still inside me with your stupid little survival instincts. You know things aren't supposed to live forever? We have a circle. That circle means we have an end so that others have a beginning. You have no shame, no honour."
I was getting a glimpse of Roara before the modern day. Before all the technology and before all the wars. When she was just a country girl in a small English village.
"My uncle once told me a soldier fights for his country, and dies for his country with pride. A mercenary fights for his employer, but dies for his brothers in courage. A good king dies for his people, he dies with honour. A bad king is nothing but a coward, who sneaks away to die in comfort. You're nothing but a coward. You used me as a soldier, a mercenary. You put me on the front lines. Used me as a shield. Now you use a child." She rolled her head around her shoulders, taking in a deep breath. "You know-"
Bang.
The smell of gunsmoke. My body quivered as I held the smoking gun in my hands. I'd done it. I'd done it. I just hoped I'd done what she'd wanted me to.
She fell to her knees, a look of surprise on her face. Had I done the right thing? She was going to die, I just knew it, she was going to die. Nobody could take an injury like that in her condition and survive. Had I done the right thing? I'd killed her. I'd killed her. She couldn't survive this. Nobody could survive that. Nobody except-
I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling my trembling body away from the fray.
"He would not have done it, if he didn't trust you to finish it. And you have to finish this now." I knew Thor's voice. It sounded like it was coming towards me through thick smoke.
I knew he was speaking the truth. And so did she. She'd told me she had to do it herself but she'd also said that if she died, he died with her. Someone pulled me further back, the gun was still in my hands. I couldn't stop shaking. Someone pulled it from me. I couldn't stop shaking.
She looked up, clearly in pain, even though she had a face I didn't recognize. She looked at me, a pleading expression on her face. What she wanted from me, I didn't know. Was it gratitude on that face? She want dead, did she want me to shoot her again? had I done the right thing? I didn't have my gun. She wasn't dead.
"Come on Roara." Locke smiled. "Come on and finish the job. Or could just lie down and die now. We'll both die anyway, and you had to get your friend to do it for you. What a shame. No more revenge for you. Your little boyfriend died to protect you for nothing." Locke didn't seem to be faultering, didn't seem to be dying, but she was bleeding out with a hole in her chest.
Her head snapped back to look at Locke. "What did you say?" She asked, her voice like gravel. She was angry now. Angrier than before. Angry because Loki had been taken away, angry that his memory and his sacrifice had been insulted, and most of all angry that she had to do this. That she had to take blow after blow and survive and fight again. She was angry because shooting her hadn't worked. She always had to finish the job.
"I said, did your little boyfriend die for nothing, or are you just incapable of killing me? Are you just too weak?"
And, impossibly, she stood.