ᛏᛟᚾᛁ ᛋᛏᚨᚱᚲ (iron) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2014-03-22 22:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | !shield, clint barton / hawkeye (mcu), maria hill (mcu), tony stark / iron man (mcu) |
Who: Maria Hill, Clint Barton, Tony Stark & JARVIS
When: Saturday
Where: In the air... beneath the helicarrier. Mostly.
What: An evacuation.
Rating: PG-13
Defending a helicarrier is harder than it looks; umpteen internal passageways, maintenance chambers, cooling vents, and cloaking channels litter its insides -- and that's just outside the main deck. When Maria's team was pushed from command, she led them back through a few of these passages, splitting off teams to meet up with others and retake command. It was impressive how quickly she moved troops through the guts of her ship. It was equally impressive how quickly she ended up alone and cornered. "Alpha team, copy." She pawed up at her SHIELD issued headset to discover what must have been the remains of a bullet graze. Well shit. "Director Hill, surrender your weapon and put your hands up." Maria called Barton instead. “You don't write, you don't call... except now, obviously. Now you call.” "You busy?" A bullet came too close to be a 'warning shot' so Maria did what any SHIELD agent would do -- switched ears. "I can call back later." “Nah, I can talk. Ever since I quit my job I have way more free time.” Clint paused noticing the noise in the background and raising an eyebrow. “Are you at a Halo tournament?” "Halo?" She stretched out, cell phone pinned between her shoulder and cheek, and took aim. "Some of us still have real jobs." A beat was filled with the sharp crack of a bullet searching for purchase. For now. “You know, some people consider it rude to call when you’re in the middle of something. I don’t want to point any fingers, but I kind of feel like I’m not getting your full attention.” Clint's head whipped around to look for the source of the gunshot out of habit, though he knew the source. That one seemed louder than the one before it, didn't it? “Maybe this is a story better told over coffee. Like right now from the sounds of it.” "Coffee might be a bit of a problem for me." Two more shots, and she cleared her corner, easing quickly through a gap in the maintenance shell. One of these days, they needed to have a security meeting about this, though some might wonder how a cloaked ship could be invaded at all. "I'm trying to cut back on my caffeine in the afternoon." “I mean, if you’d prefer shots, I’m sure I’ve mentioned that my current day job has a pretty lax policy on every kind.” As, from the sounds of things, did hers. “If you’re worried about driving, I’m sure we could get someone to pick you up.” "I don't know if the cabs come out this way. I'm in a pretty rough area." Phone in one hand and pistol in the other, she marched down the last twenty feet of corridor, breath coming a little too heavy for this illusion of normalcy they enjoyed; she could sense someone waiting around the corner but whether it was some one or some six, Hill couldn't say. "Hold please." She tucked Clint into the collar of her uniform to make room for a second Glock, rounding the corner without thinking twice (fortune favored the bold? or was it that fortune favored the impatient?). Four soldiers: one with a weapon already raised. Hill retreated down a second hallway in a blaze of crossfire, kicking through a side-door into mixed sunlight. "I don't suppose you've got Stark''s number, do you?" She picked up where she'd left off. "This neighborhood might be in his pick up zone." Not that she had any intention of leaving. “Oh sure, you call me out of the blue for the first time since I committed treason, and all you want to do is talk about Iron Man.” Clint made sure to sound hurt as loudly as possible, so that his dramatization could be heard over the gunfire. But he had sense enough to put her on speaker and pull up Stark’s number to initiate a conference call. “If you’re calling him so you two can make fun of me for not having super powers, I swear to god.” "Well with any luck," she said, shouldering a second door that wouldn't open, "we can do it to your face sooner than later." “I am so telling Fury,” he added, checking on the status of the call. “Hang on, your new boyfriend is picking up.” “Sir, there is an incoming call from someone listed in the directory as a ‘Rico Suave’.” “What?” Stark glanced up from the digital display of the interior of what would be the the renovated clocktower. He swiped his hand through the air, disappearing the new Avenger’s home from sight. “Shit, patch her through. Now -- To what do I owe this honor?” Hill had a surreal moment of genuine relief -- something she didn't often associate with Tony Stark's voice; relief was otherwise in short supply, as she found herself doubling back around an exterior corridor, forced to accept that getting back to command or her teams was a bleaker prospect than Plan B. She didn't like Plan B. "Hey Stark, I don't suppose you're in the country right now--" A bullet cut her off, tearing through metal and leaving a laser beam of sunlight in its path. She leaned heavily into the opposite wall, watching particulate float and settle, trying to follow back the sunlight trajectory and articulate the sentiment help simultaneously. It wasn't something she was used to saying after all. She fired into the dark rafters behind her. Tony didn’t even realise he’d gotten to his feet. But the sound of gunfire was, well, sobering if nothing else. He pushed the sleeves of the shirt he was wearing up to his elbows and started walking. JARVIS moved the phone call with him as he moved from one end of his workshop to the other, smacking a large red button as he passed it to bring the latest model of the Mark XLII up from a compartment beneath the floor. “Hey, you know. You’re lucky. I was in Canada last week and with the weather they’ve been having I thought I might have to step out to Barbados just to get it out of my system. But yeah, yeah I’m here. I’m assuming you’re in the same desperate need for a good Mai Tai?” Hill slid down the wall, peeking for a second before moving through to the next sun-filled passage; another bullet whistled by. "Last week? You're lucky you didn't bump into a mob of angry Senators fans." Crushing the phone back against her shoulder, she tried another door, almost surprised when it opened. She didn't go through it, but left it open a crack while she crept further down the maintenance shaft, voice lower, breathy. "You buying? I'd be down for a stiff drink right about now." “Of course I’m buying.” He held his arms out and the suit dismantled itself, springing to life and flying at him. The pieces of the metal armor slapping so hard against his skin it almost stung, but it didn’t hurt. It anything, it felt good. Better, actually, almost every time he did it. The chest piece slid into place, locking around the edges of the glowing reactor in his chest. He lifted a leg as the boot slipped around his calf, and didn’t even wait for the rest of the suit before he kicked off the ground. There was a ventilation shaft that ran up the inside of the building, it doubled as a flight tunnel that could bring him from his basement laboratory to the roof in seconds. He shot towards it, the second the back of his helmet swung into place. The rest of his armour; the faceplace, his left arm, followed him up the shoot as he headed skyward. There wasn’t even a second of static in the call, it was seamless, and he hovered over Stark Tower by the time the last pieces of his suit found their way to him. “I know the Senators are a hockey team, but I’m still picturing a bunch of should-be retired politicians hitting each other with chairs. JARVIS, lock on to the location of the call. We’ve got a pick-up on aisle five.” "They might as well be after that last game," she said, craning her neck and waiting for the tell-tale sound of bodies to go another way so she could move on. There. At the end of metal and grates, just below the main turbines, she could see a hatch. The deep thrum of powerful engines was exhilarating, but not half so exhilarating as being out on the deck at altitude. Hill took a breath, moving away from the protection of the sidewall with shaky legs until she was draped in sunlight. It had never felt so good, and she let herself enjoy it for a second before popping out Snape's potion from her top pocket. Hadn't needed it after all. "Maria Hill, you are ordered to drop your weapons." Son of a -- A step back gave her more space from the pack of agents and the barrels of their guns, and less space from the rounded edge of the helicarrier's deck. She tried to think. Two hands, three objects. Two hands. She raised the one holding the potion slowly, letting it rest against her lips, letting her thumb pop the cork in one innocuous gesture. The phone was damp with cheek sweat and slipped along her jaw. If she weren't the director of SHIELD still by a mere technicality, they probably would have shot her already. Or maybe the potion, splashing easily down her throat, was already working. "Director Hill. This is your last warning." "Stark." She attributed the tremor to the shake of the engines, because Maria Hill was not afraid of anything. "I hope your math is really good." She turned and ran. “I’ll have you know I have a PhD in Ready Analysis and Multivariable Calculus from Harvard, thank you very much. JARVIS, route all energy output to the thrusters, now!” He was beginning to get an astonishingly clear picture of what was about to happen; what was happening, and it made his heart pound a little faster. He could feel the reactor in his chest start to warm up as the suit cut through the air towards the Helicarrier. For a half-second, he thought about asking after the footage Lucy had uncovered of SHIELD using his stolen tech, but his mother didn’t put him through etiquette school for nothing. He knew what forks to use, and he knew when a good time to hold his tongue might be, even if he rarely complied. New York city was a blur beneath him as he gained speed, coming up on the aircraft in less time then it took a horse to swat away a fly. “Where is she, JARVIS?” “I need time to lock on to her exact location, Sir.” “You’re fired.” He put on the breaks, hovering mid-air a good fifty feet from the Helicarrier, and several yards beneath. It looked like he was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. With his eyes. Ready Analysis? "I don't know what the fuck that is," she panted, "but it sounds good." The flat of her boot hit the edge of the deck with a purpose, lifting her up, over - and a feeling of terrified triumph tore through her. So did a bullet, hot and easy, right through the spaces of her ribs. In typical military fashion she was not grateful for the luck of being on the right side of the engine, rather than shredded inside, nor was she grateful to be alive; instead, she growled -- a horrible, angry, animal noise that was torn away by the wind. The wind tore away her phone, too, and her second gun, for all the good they'd done. She floated weightless, aware only of a certain transcendence and of heat blossoming over her side. He saw her the moment she dropped beneath the flight deck, and stopped breathing. Not because he was worried, but because it reminded him of his own free fall from the wormhole over New York two years ago. And how messy his death might have been, had Bruce not been there to catch him. Hadn’t he just talked to Mary Jane Watson-Parker about that kid from the Six Sense? Now it was his turn to Pay it Forward. “Let’s go, JARVIS.” The suit tilted until he was perpendicular to the ground and he shot forward, not with the same speed that had brought him to the location, but enough to gain on her. He knew that if he came up too fast beneath her, he’d do more damage than good, so instead he aimed to get above Hill. He’d grab hold of her from above and curve them back upwards, cut the velocity and get them far enough away from aircraft that when they landed they’d be impossible to find. He put his plan into motion even as he was thinking of it, and got into position just as the tops of a few of New York’s finest skyscrapers gained dangerously close. He dropped his arms down towards her, only noticing then the blood soaking like black oil into the navy of Maria’s uniform. But there was really no time to make this gentler. He dipped sharply and wrapped his metal arms around shoulders, trying to change direction as fast as he could to keep her legs from penduluming beneath her; causing her back any kind of strain. Hill had always been bad at faith; in hard pews on cold morning while her father stank of alcohol beside her the concept seemed almost embarrassing. In the marines she had learned semper fidelus, in SHIELD, it was trust the system, but she was damaged goods and these were hard pills to swallow. But here in the mere moments before what might have been an untimely death, she recognized her faith in Stark. In either his inherent goodness or his hero complex -- it didn't matter. She expressed this rare sentiment as they came to the conclusion of a messy tumble mid-air by saying: "about time." He spun them through the air in two rolls, sliding one arm beneath her back and turning so he was beneath her, so she could keep her weight on him before switching to auto-pilot. He had her now, and he wasn’t going to let go, so he could exhale and smile at her quip, even though the faceplate remained stone-cold and expressionless. “You know, I’m not really the kind of guy who says I told you so -- but if I was, I’d remind you that I did say I’d be the first person you’d call when you needed something. And geez, didn’t I just come a running, too? You know, I just never learn, do I? And we’ve got to stop meeting like this.” They weaved between two buildings and he slowed their descent. As easy as it would be to keep her up in the air all day, she was hurt, and he wasn’t sure how badly. They needed to get her someplace safe, and probably to a hospital. If she didn’t have a drop-off point in mind, his instincts would take them to the one doctor he trusted with his life, so long as no one made him angry. “So where to? You’re kind of bleeding.” "Why do you think I called Clint--" She felt tired, suddenly -- no, exhausted, slumped heavily against unyielding metal that was almost comfortable. "Barton. Why do you think I called Barton first?" Almost. In a moment of clarity, Hill felt weak and hated it more than the hole in her side. "Put me down, let me -- I need to check it." Never mind if she could stand on her own two legs or not. She'd find out for herself. Her doctor was still on a helicarrier 25,000 feet in the air -- and she'd just abandoned her. Shit. “Oh I see where I am on the Avengers hierarchy.” He adjusted slowly for the landing, sliding an arm beneath her legs and thinking about how likely it would be -- under any other circumstances -- that she’d slap the faceplate right off his suit for subjecting her to a princess carry. He relaxed the thrusters and brought them down into an alley, close enough to the wall that as he set her down, she could lean against it if she needed the support. “Banner isn’t far, I don’t know what kind of equipment he has in his safehouse, but I could bring you anything, or I can take you back to Stark Tower, we have a medical staff that’s signed a confidentiality agreement, mostly because of the stupid ways I hurt myself, but you know. I’m not drunk enough for those stories. Just tell me what you need.” Hill got her feet on the ground the moment they were close enough, but the dizziness remained, stubborn and unforgiving, and she was careening into an alley wall within seconds. "Yeah." She answered vaguely, though he hadn't asked a question. God, Stark talked a lot. Her hands over the wound revealed a lot of blood, which was about as surprising as it was good. "Shit." Okay. She'd been through this before. But she remembered it being more organized, or at least more efficient. Exit wound. Check. Pressure on the wound… difficult. "We need to get back to the helicarrier." The answer to a different problem. “Um. Not to be argumentative, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.” The faceplate slid upwards to the crown of his head before it and the rest of his helmet folded away, disappearing into a compartment at his neckline. Absent-mindedly, he stretched his neck, touching each ear to a shoulder in turn. “I’m just thinking, because they just shot you, and everything.” "Yeah, good point. Okay." Her weight found a focus somewhere in her hip, which ground against exposed brick as she straightened. Fresh nausea doubled her over again, and she blamed this on Snape's potion because it was easier to be angry at someone than feel helpless. "Banner. And then I need you to go back. I have good people up there. Tell me you're going back." “I’ll go back.” If for no other reason than to draw their fire. It would be hard to tell who the good people were, when everyone looked the same, but he figured he could help anyone who looked backed into a corner and hope he guessed right. He stepped a little closer, his boots already lifting him a few inches from the ground, and he let his hand hover just beside her back. Not about to grab onto her without permission. “I’m not trying to get fresh, but I’m gonna hug you.” For a brief moment, the weight of everything cut into Hill's features. Months of angry, sleepless nights, second guessing, the competing rawness of betrayal and of loneliness -- there they were, sprawled beneath her eyes, heavy on the corners of her mouth, buried in the sag of her shoulders. And then, she sighed out relief; even though blood was pooling into her creases, even though she recognized a similar weight bookending Tony's mouth. "You're so fresh they're changing your zip code to 90077," she said weakly, leaning heavily into the proffered hand. "That's Bel Air, by the way." “I had a house in Malibu. It was blown up by a terrorist.” He smiled and moved his arms into position around her, favouring her side as he pulled in close to him. He saw the look in her eyes, he could read the tilt of her head and he knew what it meant; what it must mean. So he pretended not to notice. He slid his foot beneath hers, as he’d had an arch built into it as a bit of a hold. He’d designed it so if he’d ever needed to pick up Cap or one of the other flightless Avengers they’d have something to gain purchase off. He’d gotten the idea during the last fight in midtown where he’d had to relocate Barton to higher ground. His mask reconstructed itself across his face, once again hiding everything he might be thinking or feeling behind his reliable calm, cool exterior. “JARVIS.” “I can’t hear you, Sir. I’ve been fired.” “You’re rehired. Do me a favour, load up the the Mark 40 with everything one might need to assist Banner for a routine flesh wound, maybe bullet removal. I’m not sure if it went all the way through or not. Antibiotics, pain medication, the works. Lock it on to the coordinates in Banner’s tracker and beat me to his location.” “Understood, Sir.” “Okay.” He tightened his grip on her, the strain in his voice the only sign he might be concerned. He used one hand to press against her wound, applying as much pressure as he dared, and shot off from the ground once again. And to think he’s planned to spend his day catching up on the new season of Hannibal. |