Picture is Civil War.
Music is "Archangel" by Confidential Music Group.
All rights go to their rightful owners.
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"I know I'm asking a lot. The price of freedom is high. It always has been, and it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it. But I'm willing to bet I'm not." ~Steve Rogers
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CHAPTER THIRTY
"That is a terrible idea," Steve says. "Absolutely terrible, Stark."
"You have any better ideas?" Tony asks, clearly annoyed.
"Yeah, how about we not put the entire free world at risk?"
This bantering has been going on for hours now, and we are no closer to finding a solution than we were three hours ago. We've covered everything from bombing Black Death's lair, to capturing him and putting him on trial, all the way to asking him nicely (thanks for the sarcasm, Clint). No one can agree on anything. No matter what we come up with, someone isn't happy.
I sit silently and watch the news channel. FOX has been covering what happened yesterday since it started. Black Death has stopped infecting people, but now there are mutants everywhere. People who thought they were normal are now having mind control, lazer vision, and super strength. Anyone that had a dormant mutant gene is now a full-fledged mutant.
Black Death hasn't been seen since, but it's suspected that he hasn't left the building. The robotics factor has been turned into an observatory of sorts. He's been building something, something big. Instead of just being an old warehouse, now there is a giant antennae looking device on the roof, a satellite of sorts. Who the realms knows what he plans to do.
Manhattan has been, for the most part, evacuated. Anyone who remains has been told to stay indoors, not that it will help much when doomsday rolls around.
The bickering in my ears is getting on my nerves. My brows furrow together as I try to focus on not blowing everyone in the room to kingdom come. Pietro wraps an arm around my waist and places a kiss on my forehead, sensing my internal struggles. I sigh, leaning into him. Steve and Tony are going full out on the issue.
"Maybe we should just drop a nuclear bomb on him!" Steve shouts, sarcastically.
"Look how well it worked in Japan," Tony says, sipping his coffee as if it's nothing to use weapons of mass destruction.
"You weren't there, were you?" Steve bites back, leaning over the kitchen table. I've never seen him so angry.
"You weren't either. You were too busy being a capcicle." Tony sets his coffee down on the table and crosses his arms. "Nevermind the villain from the 1800s for one minute. What about all the new mutants? Shouldn't they be registered with the inhumans and the other enhanced?"
"They have their rights, just as we have ours."
"Oh, right. Because it's not their fault. Is that it, Rogers?"
I close my eyes and clench my fists, calming my inner Hulk. Don't lose control, Glory. This is not the time for a demonstration on how screwed you are.
"So you want all mutants to register, just because we are more evolved?" Wanda growls, her eyes turning red. "Try me, Stark."
"No one is registering anything," Pietro says, laying a hand on his sister's shoulder. "Right?"
"I don't see the harm," Rhodey says, shrugging. "We may find new enemies before they have a chance to hurt civilians."
"Punishments come after the crime. How many different times and ways do I have to say that?" Steve yells.
"Maybe if you had finished Hydra when they started, none of this would have happened! For all we know, Black Death is working for them!" Tony says.
"At least I learned my lesson!" Steve says, getting in Tony's face. "You built not one robot, but two. You could have ended the world on multiple occasions! All because you got a little curious. Thank God Vision turned out to be friendly, because if not, I would have killed you myself!"
"I just wanted to protect the world!"
"You can't tell the difference between saving and cleasing it!" Wanda growls through clenched teeth.
"Your father helped people! Why can't you be more like him?"
"My father was a coward and a terrible father." I swear there are tears in his eyes. "You haven't exactly helped the world since you came out of that ice, and he made you. What is so different about me trying to create a life that helps people?!"
I open my eyes and scream, "Stop!" The cups on the table rattle, the pictures on the wall shake. Everyone looks to me. "Stop. Fighting! This is exactly what I just warned you two about!" I stand up and go over to Tony and Steve. "Get along. Both of you. There will be no fighting between you both or so help me..."
"We have never gotten along-"
"-And never will."
"Then Steve will die! Along with many, many other people."
There is a long silence between the Avengers. Shocked faces, black expressions, trying to find words. "What do you know that we don't, Glory?" Steve asks, gently.
I groan and close my eyes. "There is a storyline called Civil War. You and Tony take sides against each other in the mutant registration act. Tony is for it, Steve is against it. A lot of people join either side, and a lot of people get hurt," I turn to the others, "and a lot of people die. A lot of innocent people."
"Is that what you wouldn't tell us last night?" Rhodey asks.
I nod, sadly. "So get the hell along. Or I'll kill you both myself."
"I do not believe she is amusing us with lies, Tony," Vision says.
"You can believe her," Wanda whispers. "I saw what she saw in her head. The horrible things that will happen..." Wanda shivers at the thought.
"We are a unit," Thor says. "Let us start behaving like an army, not discord."
Carol nods. "Let's start to think of this from a personal standpoint. What do we know?"
"Pietro was dead," Clint says, lowly. "Tony tried to bring him back, but somehow, Black Death took him to Glory's world, where he regained life."
"So he can create wormholes to alternate realities," Carol sums up. "What else?"
"In my world, he is a 19 year old boy on his way to jail," I add.
"Why is he so much older there, then?" Sam asks.
I shrug. "All the different realities, all the different possibilities, perhaps he was just born earlier here."
"Okay, what else?"
"He has the ability to unlock the dormant mutant gene," Vision says. "And if one does not possess such a gene, they are killed by the virus."
"He has black fire," I mumble. "I saw in it, first in our encounter, then in my dreams."
"He can create nightmares with the black flame," Wanda says. "Her nightmares were no ordinary dreams. They were inflicted by Black Death."
"Okay, so he has Planeswalking abilities, nightmare inducing abilities through black flame, and the ability to unlock the mutant gene," Tony says. "Now, what does he want Pietro alive for? What does it matter if he's alive?"
"It could be that the portals that followed his arrival were ripples, aftershocks, of the first one," Tony says. "Maybe he didn't intend him to come back, let alone with Glory in tow. Maybe he wanted to see if he could transport something from this world to her world."
"Would he want to go to my world?" I ask. "We can't let that happen! They are defenseless!"
"His powers would wear off after a couple days, just as mine did," Pietro assures me.
"But imagine what havok he could cause in two, three, four days!"
"What are his weaknesses, Glory?" Steve asks. "You of all people would know."
I scoot closer to Pietro, his comforting embrace keeping me steady. "He has major anger management issues. Like, worse than Hulk bad. In my world, his girlfriend before me had to file a restraining order because he kept pushing her around, even after they had broken up."
"So anger. What else?"
"He has absolutely no hope in life at all," I recall. "He's not religious in the slightest. He hates God and he's moved away from anything good. I'm not saying all atheists are evil, not at all! But he took being mistreated as a child the wrong way. Instead of growing stronger and moving on, he has so much rage and anger and he doesn't know how to get rid of it."
"He had a rough childhood?" Nat asks.
I nod. "His father abused him, both physically and sexually. His mother did nothing to stop it. He grew up in a terrible home. When I met him, he was just a shy, hurting boy." I pause, remembering a time when he wasn't bad, when he wasn't angry all the time. It's hard to remember; it was so long go. It's been so long, it's hard to believe there ever was such a time. A small smile comes to my face. "I took pity on him, and tried to help him. For a while, he was good. I got him to stop drinking, smoking, doing drugs, taking pills. His father was sent to jail. He was on his way up."
"What happened?" Sam asks.
"His father did his time. When he got out, Gregory was forced to live with him and the beatings and rapes started again. He went down faster than a missile. He started getting rough with me, pushing me around. He started hurting me, by accident at first. Grabbing my arm too tightly, being too pushy, but then he got physical." I pull my knees up to my chest and close my eyes. "He'd hit me, sometimes, but when my friend Vlad found out, he beat him up and told him if he ever came back, he'd cut his man parts off."
I hear a chuckle from Pietro and Clint. "Sounds like my kinda man," Clint mumbles.
I smile a little. "Gregory is a lost soul. He fears being abused, so he abuses others to prove his strength. He hates God because his father was a Medthodist Church pastor. He fears death more than anything in the world because he has no hope in life."
"That is it!" Pietro says, jumping up. "He has no hope in life, and he does not want my to die!" He looks at us like we should understand.
"Explain, love?" I ask.
"I died, and then I was sent to Glory's world, and what happened? I came back to life! The Gregory in this world is nearing the end of life. Maybe he is planning to go to hers, where he will be young and able to try again."
"And he will remember everything, just as you did," Nat says.
"Oh Frigga," I whisper. I turn to the news channel as they look over the building where Black Death has made his lair. "That pole! It's a lightning rod!"
"A power source," Thor mumbles. "Just as I did for the vision, just as was for your portal, and just as the Arc reactor was for ours, that lighting rob will absorb enough power to level a city."
"Or take him to an alternate one," Tony says, a little dazed.
"This is very, very bad," I mumble. "What are we going to do?" I look to Steve. We all look to Steve. "What do we do, Steve?"
Steve sighs. "I wish I knew." He rubs his eyes. Poor thing. He's exhausted.
Carol sits up and lays her hand on Steve's shoulder. "Let's do it like we do best, together." He smiles at her, and she cracks her knuckles, smiling at all of us. "Alright, kids. Here's the plan..."
END CHAPTER THIRTY