Bird Costume?

[Start date: October 9, 2020]

They were one of the last tables to leave as the restaurant was closing. Steve had most of his dinner in a doggy bag for Sam to inevitably eat later or else throw it away, but they were both pleasantly full enough of wine and seafood and bread for now. They ambled down the street in the general direction of the B&B where they were staying, past the bars and clubs that still leaked music into the autumn evening. Only once they'd turned onto a quieter side-street did Steve speak.

"Thank you," he said. If Sam hadn't been waiting for it, he might have missed it for how quiet the words were.

"Any time, man," he said. After a few more steps, he continued, "How are you feeling? Really."

Steve shrugged. Shook his head.

"Okay," he said. "But then I feel like shit for feeling okay."

Steve breathed a light laugh and added before Sam could respond, "Survivor's guilt. I know. Knowing helps. But I still..."

Steve cut himself off and looked away from Sam, across the street. Sam waited a few paces for Steve to continue; instead Steve stopped walking.

"You all right?" Sam said. Steve didn't answer. Sam followed his gaze and had to fight off a grimace. Across the street, illuminated by dark purple neon and electric candles, was a psychic shop advertising seances, crystal ball readings, tarot -- the usual tourist trap stuff.

"That," Sam said, "is a terrible idea."

Sharon and Sam all but carried Steve into the darkened studio apartment, dropping him on the couch almost as soon as they cleared the threshold. Sam had his trauma kit open on the coffee table by the time Sharon locked the door and turned on the lights, and then they fell into silent but tandem lockstep to get Steve to drink some water while Sam checked his vitals. Steve looked like he was either concussed, dehydrated, or in shock; he either couldn’t or wouldn’t focus on Sam even as he flashed a light directly into his eyes or manhandled his leaden limbs to check his pulse.

“How does he look?” Sharon asked from the kitchenette window.

“He’d look better if he could answer you himself,” Sam said, and just as he’d hoped, Steve’s brow furrowed in response. Sharon entered just as Sam cracked a smile.

“What’s so funny?” she snapped. Steve tried to turn around on the couch to follow her voice, and within seconds, she was on the couch next to Steve.

“Hey,” she said softly. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”

Steve dropped back on the couch and squinted at her, then up at Sam, then closed his eyes and nodded.

justatrainingexercise‌:

flylikeafalcon:

Sam looked from the wizard duo to Jim, who didn’t look like he was going to answer her questions right away, and back to the wizard duo. She wasn’t on fire anymore and, for her part, didn’t look like she was going to punch Sam, though he kept his distance a little bit as he lowered his hands.

“Right now, we have…three for sure, including the two of us. All baseline humans.” Sam made a what can you do? face. “And I think one high-powered guy coming in?”

“The Vision,” Jim supplied through his hand.

“Right. Yeah,” Sam said. “And Jim got all the floor plans and shit from, uh” – Sam took another half-step back – “the person who was actually involved in designing the torture floors. We’re meeting tomorrow to hash everything out.”

Sam glanced to Jim again. Jim didn’t add anything.

“I think that’s about all I’m supposed to tell you right now?” Sam ventured. Jim cocked his head in what Sam figured was a I would fucking think so look.

Man. Jim had really liked this polo. But while Sam talked, Jim shucked it, haphazardly folded it, and pressed it to his nose with as much pressure as he could stand considering his nose was also clearly broken.

“Nothing personal,” Jim said stiffly. “We came here in good faith, but we need to keep our intel close to the chest. We’re meeting at a private residence in Brooklyn. If you want the address, we’ll give it to you, but that’s about all I think we’re prepared to offer right now.”

Jim could feel Sam giving him a don’t be petty face, but he kept his attention on the woman.

“Except,” Jim conceded, “that the place is rife with power dampeners, including magic. Without someone on the inside, you’ll have a hard time getting in there.”

Jim opened his free hand. Take it or leave it.

“Right now, we have…three for sure, including the two of us. All baseline humans. And I think one high-powered guy coming in?”

“The Vision.”

Clea stopped her pacing to turn and stare at Sam like he’d suddenly sprouted an extra limb.  She desperately waited for him to clarify, to tell her more would be coming, but that genuinely seemed to be everyone they had. Four people against an entire prison.

Oh, AND all the information they were working off of was given to them by the person responsible for the more horrific torture going on in the prison.  That particular detail made Clea’s blood boil.

How did they get the floor plans? Were they even viable? Did the perpetrator have a change of heart, or did they make some sort of deal in exchange for information? It could  have just as easily been some sort of elaborate trap, meant to deliver them all directly to the prison…

The sorceress sighed in exasperation, shaking her head. “Oshtur protect us.”  She went back to pacing, if only to try and clear her mind. A horrible sense of dread was starting to creep up on her, so strong that Clea felt as though it would overtake her if she stopped for  even a moment.

She caught a glimpse of Wong, who was watching her with a concerned expression. She turned away quickly, not wanting to meet his gaze. He knew, he knew she was cracking.

“No, Sam Wilson. The existence of worse crimes does not  clear Colonel Rhodes of his own. He knows what he did.” she shot back, venom apparent in her voice.

Clea composed herself, then continued. “I am not going to ask you how you acquired these floor plans, because the answer will likely just make me angrier than I already am.” she started. What the sorceress really wanted to know was who their informant was, but she knew she’d never get that from them. Not after she’d  made her intentions so abundantly clear with Rhodes.

“Though I am assuming that you verified it with a more reputable source?”

Even if the information was accurate, however, their situation was still far from ideal. Humans were terribly frail creatures to begin with, and the three that they had had no powers to speak of. The Vision sounded fairly capable, but Clea didn’t know anything about them.  There was no way for her to compare their power level with that of the others when she didn’t even know what their damn powers were. For all she knew, Sam’s definition of ‘heavy hitter’ was barely above the human average.

Everything about this screamed that it was a horrible idea,  but it was also the BEST and ONLY idea they had. Maybe she was starting to go insane, but the sorceress was willing to take the risk if it meant saving Stephen from that horrible place.

Hopefully she and this Vision person would have enough firepower to get the job done.

Colonel Rhodes was holding his shirt to his nose now, an image that was providing Clea with an extreme amount of satisfaction. She didn’t particularly appreciate his tone, or his threats regarding the magic dampeners, but he could make petty jabs, if he wanted to.

The sorceress took the hand that was offered to her, squeezing it tightly. Not enough to break bones, but enough that it would make Rhodes mildly uncomfortable. “Well, you two certainly could not do it alone either,” Clea smirked at the Colonel “…If a single punch felled you. So I suppose we are both ‘in the same boat’, as they say.”

Clea let go and turned away, taking the brief moment of privacy to rub the fatigue from her eyes. She realized just how tired she really was, now that the adrenaline was fading from her system. Her outburst had been draining, both emotionally and physically, and she hadn’t slept in days…

But she was the sorceress supreme of three dimensions now, and who had time to sleep when you had to protect three worlds from possible destruction?

“Go, before you fall over and I have to drag you upstairs. I’ll finish up here.”

Wong. He was speaking to her telepathically. She shot him an annoyed look from across the room, but he just stared her down until she finally looked away.

“Fine.” she conceded, but she wasn’t happy about it.

Clea turned back to their guests. “I have a few matters that I need to attend to. Wong can take the address and show you out.”

“Gentlemen.” she bowed politely, then vanished up the stairs.  

Once she was gone, Wong approached Rhodes and Wilson to collect the address. “We’ll be in touch.” he said.

With a gesture, the shattered remains of the front door reassembled themselves. Another gesture, and the doors opened on their own.  

Rhodes stared at Wong. “Hey, before we go…“ he started, pointing towards his bloody nose. “…would you mind?”

“Yes. Now get out of my house.”  

flylikeafalcon:

justatrainingexercise:

In hindsight, Jim would wonder why he didn’t expect this. He couldn’t remember the last time talking down a superhuman or metahuman or synthezoid had worked out well for him, if it ever had.

Of course, this time, he was unarmed. He and Sam both were. They’d arrived in good faith, and at best, Jim had anticipated getting turned away – not for the whole goddamn house to quake as the head of the woman in front of him erupted into flame.

“How DARE YOU?”

“Now, hold on – ”

And then the woman was gone. Jim had about enough time to look to the man before someone grabbed him and flung him with ferocious force into the wall. 

“ARE YOU A TERRIBLE LIAR OR JUST A COMPLETE FOOL?”

Jim had to suck in a breath against the dull pain that grasped his chest on impact and took hold of her forearm. Even though he could still feel the wall against his back, he wasn’t looking at the mansion behind her anymore as her voice continued to fill what felt like all of space and time.

Offhand, Jim didn’t recognize the woman in the cell, but he didn’t need to know her to see that she was very pregnant and that the conditions she was being held in were grossly inhumane. He knew it was in he Raft, and somehow – maybe thanks to whatever magic this sorceress was using to show them this – he knew it wasn’t a fabrication.

He’s also seen Steve with his own eyes. Twice. Despite the budgeting and resource suggestions he’d made, he knew now that the people in the Raft were being underfed and largely neglected. Tony, Sam, and Sharon all knew it, and so did these two sorcerers. Present situation aside, Jim knew this was promising; he’d been in enough combat situations by now to keep his head, and he was still confident that they could band together on this if she’d just let him get a word in.

“YOU DID THAT, SO HOW DARE YOU STAND HERE AND TELL ME YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE TORTURE.”

She slammed him into the wall again, and he was about ready to break her hold when she, quite literally, beat him to the punch. A fist to the face was no joke from a baseline human, but this woman was clearly a little to the right on the bell curve and clearly knew what she was doing: she nailed him square in the nose, forcing his eyes to water and pain to rocket up between his eyes.

Okay. Now he was pissed.

Ohh, shit. Oh, shit. There was a lot going on that Sam was not prepared for, starting with a glass door fucking exploding and culminating in a fiery witch woman decking Jim in the face. And the whole time Sam just fucking stood there, his body frozen while his heart raced, so wildly thrown off by the sudden activity that he felt like he was fucking short-circuiting.

Not here. Not now. Jim needs you.

“Wait,” Sam said. To him, his voice sounded like it was coming from half a mile away, but it was enough to get him moving, get him focused. “Hey, whoa, okay – ”

He made it to Jim and the woman and tried to wedge his way between them. Jim, to his credit, made it easier by lacing his own fingers together and dropping them hard on the inside of her elbow, forcing her to loosen her hold on him enough for Sam to pull Jim free. He let Jim stagger off to tend to his profusely-bleeding nose as he faced the woman.

“Okay, don’t trust him,” Sam said, his hands raised, palms out, in supplication. “That’s cool. I’m still not sure I do, either. But listen – regardless of what any of us did or didn’t do, we’re trying to fix this now. If you don’t want in, that’s cool! That’s cool. You can beat the shit out of us afterwards. But seriously, it’s just a handful of us against an entire federal prison. We need you, but more importantly, so does whoever you have on the inside.”

The more Sam talked, the more he felt himself returning to his body, which seemed both a blessing and a curse considering he could also get an ass whooping the longer they stayed there. If the other guy jumped in, Sam and Jim were definitely fucked, but Sam wasn’t ready to leave yet. Even if these two decided not to join Sam and Jim, he wanted them to be prepared for whatever might happen afterwards, especially if they failed.

Clea felt cartilage and muscle shift beneath her fist as it made contact with the Colonel’s nose, followed by an audible crack that seemed to echo endlessly through the Sanctum’s foyer. The force reverberated through her fingers and up to her elbow, bringing a tingling sensation along with it that she couldn’t quite dispel. It didn’t hurt, not yet at least; she suspected it would once the adrenaline wore off.  

Rhodes, on the other hand, was bleeding profusely onto both the sorceress and himself. His eyes were watering as he reeled from the hit, but he didn’t cry out in pain.

She wanted him to. She wanted an audible confirmation that he was suffering just as much as Stephen was in that moment. He deserved to, Clea told herself. It was justified.

But that thought, that need for violence, still made her feel horribly similar to her uncle.

When she became queen of the Dark Dimension, she banished her mother and father for their crimes.  She should have hated them for what they did, but it had hurt her so immensely that she’d been unable to finish the spell without assistance. Clea had empathy for monsters then, so why couldn’t find it now?

"Wait.”

“Hey, woah, okay–”  

The other human- Sam Wilson- was talking behind her, but she could barely hear it over the sound of her blood rushing through her ears.

“Clea, that’s enough.” Wong was calling out to her too, but wasn’t actually making any move to stop her- in fact, he hadn’t moved from his original position over by the staircase at all. By the tone of his voice, it sounded like he cared more about the shattered window than Rhodes’ nose.  

Good. Then they were on the same side.

All the sorceress wanted to do was keep punching Rhodes until she couldn’t feel her hand anymore. He was the source of all her pain,  and she wanted him to feel everything she had over the past seven months. All the anger, fear, and sorrow she had to keep bottled up inside so that she could pretend to be strong for her people.

Stephen was the first person, human or otherwise, who ever bothered to show her real kindness. Losing him felt like losing a part of herself, and she need to do something to try and take that piece back.

Clea roared when someone- Wilson- moved between her and Rhodey, trying desperately to keep her hold on the one person she could punish for all this, but her body betrayed her. She lost her grip when he struck her elbow; enraged, she tried to lunge after him, only to be blocked by Wilson.

“Move.” She hissed. The Flames of Regency continued to flicker over her head, but energy was beginning to pool around her fingertips as well. Clea didn’t want to hurt Sam, but she would if he kept standing in her way.

Wong must have noticed her escalating, because he finally approached and placed a hand on Clea’s shoulder. She turned to look at him, his presence grounding her in reality.  

It took her a few moments to realize that he was purposely radiating a calming aura around her, but by then the effects were already taking hold.

“listen – regardless of what any of us did or didn’t do, we’re trying to fix this now. If you don’t want in, that’s cool! That’s cool. You can beat the shit out of us afterwards. But seriously, it’s just a handful of us against an entire federal prison. We need you, but more importantly, so does whoever you have on the inside.”

He was right, and the sorceress knew it.

She wanted Stephen back more than she wanted to keep throwing punches, and they needed Rhodes and Wilson if they had any chance of freeing her husband.  

Clea slowly unclenched her fists, and the Flames of Regency eventually vanished from above her head. She couldn’t help but be calm now, even as she stared at Rhodes from across the room with a look of utter contempt.

There were splatters of his blood on her clothing and arms, from where it had sprayed out of his nose. She’d never really seen this much human blood before, not since the Cloak of Levitation came home covered in it..

No, she couldn’t think about that right now.

The sorceress hadn’t escaped the fight unscathed either, however. Her knuckles had been sliced open by the punch as well, speckling her hand with her own blood. It was purplish-blue in colour, much brighter than the deep crimson liquid splattered around it.  

Clea closed her eyes “Fine.” she said, turning around so that she could pace the foyer. She was calm now, so there was no need for Wong’s aura anymore. And It was a distraction from her more unpleasant thoughts- not a good one, but it would have to do for now.  

“You say a handful. How many people is that, specifically? What advantages do we have going in?” Clea asked. She’d led a rebellion and stormed a fully armed castle before, she could take down a human prison - granted she had the right tools.

“Do you have any useful information? Floor plans, shift changes- anything.”

Sam looked from the wizard duo to Jim, who didn’t look like he was going to answer her questions right away, and back to the wizard duo. She wasn’t on fire anymore and, for her part, didn’t look like she was going to punch Sam, though he kept his distance a little bit as he lowered his hands.

“Right now, we have...three for sure, including the two of us. All baseline humans.” Sam made a what can you do? face. “And I think one high-powered guy coming in?”

“The Vision,” Jim supplied through his hand.

“Right. Yeah,” Sam said. “And Jim got all the floor plans and shit from, uh” -- Sam took another half-step back -- “the person who was actually involved in designing the torture floors. We’re meeting tomorrow to hash everything out.”

Sam glanced to Jim again. Jim didn’t add anything.

dark-dimension-clea:

Clea had to admit, she was somewhat surprised when James Rhodes and his companion didn’t immediately object to her opinion of the Avengers. It was a  harsh thing to say, yes, but it was also an honest view of their current reality, and not something the sorceress  was willing to ignore. It certainly wasn’t easy, for these men to accept that they had been just as much a part of the problem as their enemies had been, but it was necessary if they were going to be working together. It was interesting to see that Rhodes seemed humbled, not offended, by her words.

“We just learned about the torture ourselves… but I helped design that prison.”

The mood in the Sanctum instantly shifted.

Clea froze at the words, a shiver passing through her as her blood ran cold.  Wong turned away from the two men with a disgusted look, shaking his head. Whatever interest they may have had in these possible allies was gone now, and replaced with a flurry of emotion that neither of them could properly identify.

James Rhodes, the human standing in front of the two sorcerers, had designed the prison. He was  personally responsible for what was being done to prisoners of the raft, and yet he stood there and claimed to just be finding out about the torture now? It was almost laughable, how little self awareness he had.

“I know you have no reason to trust us…“

Rhodes was talking, but Clea couldn’t hear him anymore over the deafening roar of her own thoughts. What had he done to Stephen, under the justification of keeping him imprisoned? Capturing sorcerers was difficult enough in her home dimension, and they had access to magic themselves. What were these humans doing to him, without the aid of spells or hexes?

She’d seen what they’d done to Jane Foster, a pregnant human, In Loki’s memories. It was horrific, and whatever they were doing to hold a magic-user as powerful as Stephen was likely even worse than that. 

And the man responsible for it was standing right in front of her.

 “We understand if you don’t want to risk it. We’ll still get your people out. We wouldn’t say no to whatever firepower you’re packing, though.” 

Firepower? She’d show them firepower.

Clea’s eyes flashed as the flames of regency suddenly appeared above her head, surrounding her face with a crown of living fire.

“How DARE YOU?”

 The house itself seemed to shudder as Clea spoke, the light fixtures overhead flickering and swinging wildly overhead. Behind her, the frosted glass in the front door cracked and shattered under the mystic pressure.

“Clea, the house.”

Wong sounded displeased about the damage to the Sanctum, but she didn’t care. Months of rage and grief and dispair were pouring out of her now, and all she wanted to do was make the person responsible pay. 

The sorceress teleported behind Rhodes and slammed him into the wall, the drywall cracking behind him from the impact.

“ARE YOU A TERRIBLE LIAR OR JUST A COMPLETE FOOL?”

The entire foyer changed as Clea pulled them all into the most vivid of the memories she took from Loki’s mind:  a pregant Jane Foster, Now the All Mother of Asgard, sitting in her cell. She looked underfed and sickly, surrounded by freezing cold water. 

“YOU DID THAT,” she yelled, grabbing Rhodey and slamming him into the wall again for emphasis. “SO HOW DARE YOU STAND HERE AND TELL ME YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE TORTURE." 

Clea punched him in the face. She could have hit him with magic, if she wanted to, but that was too impersonal for this; she wanted to feel it.

In hindsight, Jim would wonder why he didn’t expect this. He couldn’t remember the last time talking down a superhuman or metahuman or synthezoid had worked out well for him, if it ever had.

Of course, this time, he was unarmed. He and Sam both were. They’d arrived in good faith, and at best, Jim had anticipated getting turned away – not for the whole goddamn house to quake as the head of the woman in front of him erupted into flame.

"How DARE YOU?”

“Now, hold on – ”

And then the woman was gone. Jim had about enough time to look to the man before someone grabbed him and flung him with ferocious force into the wall. 

“ARE YOU A TERRIBLE LIAR OR JUST A COMPLETE FOOL?”

Jim had to suck in a breath against the dull pain that grasped his chest on impact and took hold of her forearm. Even though he could still feel the wall against his back, he wasn’t looking at the mansion behind her anymore as her voice continued to fill what felt like all of space and time.

Offhand, Jim didn’t recognize the woman in the cell, but he didn’t need to know her to see that she was very pregnant and that the conditions she was being held in were grossly inhumane. He knew it was in he Raft, and somehow – maybe thanks to whatever magic this sorceress was using to show them this – he knew it wasn’t a fabrication.

He’s also seen Steve with his own eyes. Twice. Despite the budgeting and resource suggestions he’d made, he knew now that the people in the Raft were being underfed and largely neglected. Tony, Sam, and Sharon all knew it, and so did these two sorcerers. Present situation aside, Jim knew this was promising; he’d been in enough combat situations by now to keep his head, and he was still confident that they could band together on this if she’d just let him get a word in.

“YOU DID THAT, SO HOW DARE YOU STAND HERE AND TELL ME YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE TORTURE.”

She slammed him into the wall again, and he was about ready to break her hold when she, quite literally, beat him to the punch. A fist to the face was no joke from a baseline human, but this woman was clearly a little to the right on the bell curve and clearly knew what she was doing: she nailed him square in the nose, forcing his eyes to water and pain to rocket up between his eyes.

Okay. Now he was pissed.

Ohh, shit. Oh, shit. There was a lot going on that Sam was not prepared for, starting with a glass door fucking exploding and culminating in a fiery witch woman decking Jim in the face. And the whole time Sam just fucking stood there, his body frozen while his heart raced, so wildly thrown off by the sudden activity that he felt like he was fucking short-circuiting.

Not here. Not now. Jim needs you.

“Wait,” Sam said. To him, his voice sounded like it was coming from half a mile away, but it was enough to get him moving, get him focused. “Hey, whoa, okay -- ”

He made it to Jim and the woman and tried to wedge his way between them. Jim, to his credit, made it easier by lacing his own fingers together and dropping them hard on the inside of her elbow, forcing her to loosen her hold on him enough for Sam to pull Jim free. He let Jim stagger off to tend to his profusely-bleeding nose as he faced the woman.

“Okay, don’t trust him,” Sam said, his hands raised, palms out, in supplication. “That’s cool. I’m still not sure I do, either. But listen -- regardless of what any of us did or didn’t do, we’re trying to fix this now. If you don’t want in, that’s cool! That’s cool. You can beat the shit out of us afterwards. But seriously, it’s just a handful of us against an entire federal prison. We need you, but more importantly, so does whoever you have on the inside.”

justatrainingexercise:

After another minute or two, the door opened again, and this time an otherworldly-looking woman greeted them.

“We are open to discussion, if you’ll follow us inside.”

Jim and Sam exchanged another glance to establish that they were, in fact, ready to trust the two strangers in the mansion, and then Jim unfolded his arms and nodded.

“Thanks.”

He followed her into the foyer with Sam close behind, careful not to turn around as the door shut behind them. Inside, the mansion looked as ornate and old-fashioned as Jim might have expected, especially compared to Tony’s more postmodern aesthetic. He spared a moment to assess the staircase before them, but as best as Jim could tell, it was just the four of them present in the front room, so he turned back to the mansion’s occupants.

“I probably didn’t make the best first impression,” he said. “We’re not here on behalf of the government. We’re here on behalf of the Avengers. How much do you two know about the Raft?”

“Thanks.”

Clea nodded, then turned to lead the two men into the main foyer. They seemed to be assessing the room as they entered, particularly the stairs, though that was to be expected; this was unexplored, possibly hostile territory for them. It would be foolish not to consider the possibility of an ambush, or any other unforseen dangers that the Sanctum might hold. She would be doing the same thing, if she was in their place.

“We’re the only ones here, if you’re worried about others being present.” she said. The sorceress doubted the humans would simply take her word for it, but it was better to show honesty, if they were going to be working together. “Everyone else was captured, or they fled after my husband was arrested.”

Wong was standing off to the side, arms crossed as he observed the two men now standing in his foyer. He didn’t look happy to be letting them inside, but he and Clea didn’t have any other options. Not if they wanted their people back.  “We lost our last sorceress, Illyana Rasputin, two weeks ago.” he added. “We don’t know her current location, but its likely that she’s on The Raft.”

The tention in the Sanctum was palapable, when the Colonel spoke again. “I probably didn’t make the best first impression. We’re not here on behalf of the government. We’re here on behalf of the Avengers.“

That was a lie. A beautiful one, meant to bring comfort, but a lie nontheless. The truth was that the second the Registation Act became law, the Avengers stopped being protectors of the common people, and became weapons instead. They were simply tools of the Government now, arresting eachother to spread fear and distrust.

 Clea smiled at the Colonel, but there was no joy behind it, only sorrow.

"It makes no difference to me what you call yourselves. The Avengers are registered. An Avenger arrested my husband, and nearly killed him in the process. You may not agree with what has been going on behind closed doors, and I understand how that feels, but you cannot simply seperate yourselves from the government you have been serving for months now.”

The sorceress looked away, shaking her head. This was becoming dangerously personal for her now, even more so than it already had been, but she couldn’t let the guilt from her own past mistakes distract her from saving Stephen.

“How much do you two know about the Raft?”

 They knew next to nothing about it, all things considered. Just the terrible things she had heard from Loki, but it was neither recent nor useful information. Knowing what they were doing to her husband and not being able to act was worse than not knowing anything at all. It was eating her up inside, she couldn’t sleep without seeing his face….

“We know that its hidden somewhere in the ocean, and that its imprenetrable to magic.” she said, trying to maintain her composure, and to keep the anger out of her voice.

 " ….We also know about the the things that they do to the prisoners there, the torture.“

"It makes no difference to me what you call yourselves. The Avengers are registered. An Avenger arrested my husband, and nearly killed him in the process. You may not agree with what has been going on behind closed doors, and I understand how that feels, but you cannot simply separate yourselves from the government you have been serving for months now.”

Sam openly raised an eyebrow at Jim. He wouldn’t throw Jim under the bus, but he also wasn’t above reinforcing his point that the SHRA wasn’t copacetic anymore, if it ever had been to start with. To his credit, Jim did look humbled; if he was going to convince these two that the Avengers could get them into the Raft, he was probably going to have to own up to the depth of his involvement.

“How much do you two know about the Raft?” Jim asked.

“We know that its hidden somewhere in the ocean, and that it’s impenetrable to magic….We also know about the the things that they do to the prisoners there, the torture.”

Jim nodded, more to himself than to anyone else, and crossed his arms again.

“We just learned about the torture ourselves,” Jim said. “But I helped design that prison, and I had a chat with one of the people who was involved in the...with the torture. We’re going to have an opening in a couple weeks to get everyone out, but we need all the help we can get.”

There it was. For the first time since he had lost his cool on Jim and Stark, Sam was starting to feel the bridges rebuild between them -- or, at least, as though there was potential for repair eventually. For now, he trained his gaze on the sorceress and nodded in accord with Jim.

“I know you have no reason to trust us,” Jim continued. “Frankly, I don’t think most of the Avengers roster will trust each other for a while. But...”

Jim stalled and looked to Sam, seemingly unsure of how to put into words the appeal he was trying to make. Sam, of course, was quick to pick up the thread. This was sort of his expertise, after all.

justatrainingexercise:

“Yeah. Well.” Jim scrubbed a hand over his face, then popped his seat belt loose and opened the driver side door. “Let’s go see if these people will help us fix it.”

They approached the front door in lockstep. Jim pressed what looked to be the doorbell. They heard the deep tones of the bell through the door, and then they waited. After almost a minute, Jim and Sam swapped glances, and Jim shrugged.

“There’s no magic password or something, is there?” he said. Sam smiled, and a weight lifted that Jim only now seemed aware was there. It was almost disgusting that he cared about Sam’s approval, but with Tony almost certainly at the Raft (where else would the dumbass have disappeared to this time?), it was steadily becoming more obvious to Jim that he could probably afford to build a few more bridges.

“Dunno,” Sam said. “I’ve always wanted to open a door with ‘open sesame.’”

And then the door opened, just enough to reveal a broad and wary-looking man.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m Colonel James Rhodes,” Jim said. “This is Sam Wilson. I understand you know someone in the Raft. We were hoping to talk to you about that.”

Jim could almost feel Sam rolling his eyes as he leaned over to get a better look at the guy in the door.

“What Jim means is that we want our people back, and we bet you want your people back, so let’s get our people back, you know, together. We could use all the firepower we can get.”

“I understand you know someone in the Raft. We were hoping to talk to you about that.”

Wong narrowed his eyes at the Colonel’s words, clearly not interested in whatever conversation the man wanted to have about Stephen or The Raft. It sounded like a thinly veiled threat more than anything else, or some kind of ploy to gather information in order to further incriminate them. Clea was already wanted on multiple accounts, and while there wasn’t any notable proof that he himself was involved in Stephen’s relocation efforts, he was still illegally harbouring unregistered superhumans in his home.

Speaking to someone who clearly worked for the US government might as well have been a death sentence.

Wong was on his way to uttering a quick ‘No thank you, goodbye’ and slamming the door in their (unwelcome) guests’ faces, but one of the men- Sam Wilson- leaned in just far enough to keep him from doing so.

Clea could only see the faintest outline of the humans through the door, but she saw well enough to know that one of them was getting too close to Wong, and to the inside of the Sanctum. She didn’t like what they were saying before, and she liked it even less now that they were advancing on the door.

Wong visibly tensed as he stared the other man down; behind him, he heard the faint hiss of Clea swearing in her native tongue, and the sound of a blade being unsheathed.

“What Jim means is that we want our people back, and we bet you want your people back, so let’s get our people back, you know, together. We could use all the firepower we can get.”

Wong raised an eyebrow. Were…they offering to help break Stephen out of prison? And casually standing on the front stoop while doing it? His gaze briefly flickered over to Clea, who stared back at him with a similarly confused expression. He turned back to the two men.

“I see.” Wong said, then shut the door on them.

“I can’t tell if they’re trying to trick us into letting them past our defences, or if they’re actually foolish enough to announce their battle plans in public.” Clea said, turning to Wong. She still had her dagger out, but she looked more bewildered than battle ready at that point. It was like they were asking to get themselves arrested, if this wasn’t just some elaborate ploy to earn their trust. 

Wong sighed, shaking his head. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t recognize them, and after what happened to Stephen, I’m not willing to put my trust in strangers.”

Clea looked over at the door; the two humans were still out there, waiting. "Do you think this has something to do with Illyana’s disappearance?”

“I pray to the Vishanti that it doesn’t.. but it’s entirely possible. ” He’d been hoping that she’d just been called back to Limbo,  but even he knew that they’d never get that lucky.

“Well, I suppose there’s only one way to know for certain, isn’t there?” The sorceress asked, and  then tucked her dagger back into her belt.

She placed her hands on her temples, taking a few steps towards the door as she muttered a quick focusing charm under her breath. Humans never bothered to build up any mental barriers, so a simple psychic pass over their minds would likely be enough to know the pair’s true intentions.  

Upon entering, Clea was hit with more information than she’d been expecting to receive. Their minds were troubled, burdened by specific thoughts and memories that all too easily bubbled to the surface.

They knew about what the Raft truly was, about the torture she’d learned about from Loki months ago, but had been helpless to stop. They were registered, and felt guilty over arresting a friend…Steve Rogers. She knew him, he had helped Stephen relocate unregistered superhumans. He was a good man.  

Tony Stark was missing as well, likely arrested and taken to the Raft. Clea wasn’t exactly surprised. As much as she wanted to hate him for what happened to Stephen, she had been inside his dreams before, and had seen the kind of man that Tony was. He was haunted by his past, but wanted so desperately to make up for it, and to improve the world he lived in.

The man supported the registration of superhumans because he thought that was what was best for the world. It was the humans running The Raft who warped the narrative to convince Tony that the questionable activities he saw taking place were necessary for ‘the greater good’. That, or he risked losing his own freedom by defying them.

Clea knew this because she’d done the same thing, at least until she’d had the courage to defy Dormammu and escape the Dark Dimension. She had witnessed horrific things, and suppressed them in favour of blindly following the narrative of a benevolent god who had saved her people. She didn’t act out against any injustices she saw because she was terrified of what would happen to her if she did.

The sorceress had put quite a bit of thought into this, after months of crying herself to sleep and trying to find someone, anyone, to blame for what had happened. One of Tony’s men had nearly killed her husband,yes, and they’d brought him to that horrible place….but hating Tony Stark for his actions  would only make her a hypocrite.

The whole process only took a few moments, and Clea was left trying to shake away the wave of foreign thoughts and feelings from her head. Wordlessly, she turned back to Wong and nodded. He returned the gesture.

Together, they approached the front door and opened it.

“We are open to discussion, if you’ll follow us inside.” Clea said.

Sam frowned at the now-closed door, then turned to Jim, who didn’t look too amused himself.

“Think we came on a little strong?” Sam said dryly. Jim did that thing where he inhaled deeply and held it, nostrils flaring a little as he determined the most diplomatic thing to do, but didn’t say anything. It was usually kind of funny, but Sam was more than kind of tired of diplomacy by now.

Sam raised a hand to knock again, then stopped when Jim turned to him.

“What’s the call, Colonel?” Sam said. Jim’s nostrils flared again.

“Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have led with that,” Jim said, a little more humbly than Sam had honestly expected considering Sam had been joking. “Force of habit.”

Sam had to smile at that. It was getting harder and harder to hold a grudge against the guy the more time Sam spent with him, and Sam usually wasn’t one to hold grudges to begin with.

The Enemy of My Enemy || Rhodey, Sam W, Clea

Clea and Wong both froze when the doorbell suddenly went off one day, the old chimes echoing eerily thoughout the Sanctum Sanctorum. They hadn’t heard the sound in months, not since the SRA had passed and Stephen had started working in secret.

The two remaining residents wordlessly met in the foyer, where two shillouettes were faintly visible through the frosted windows of the front entrace.

The sorceress quickly scanned them. “It’s two humans, no traces of magic.” she said, looking over at Wong. “Should we answer?”

It was a difficult question. The passing of the SRA meant they were both fugitives of the law, and could potentially be arrested at any given moment. So far no one had been brave enough to try and target the Sanctum directly, but they both knew that could change in an instant.

However, this was still the home of the earth’s Sorcerer Supreme. It was their duty to assist anyone who came in search of aid, especially with the difficult times they were currently living in.

“Yes, we should.”

That didn’t meant they shouldn’t ensure their own safety first, however.

Clea pressed herself against the wall, out of view of the open door, but still within arm’s reach of Wong if these ‘visitors’ decided to become hostile. Her hand hovered over the sheathed dagger on her thigh, her body temsed and ready for a fight.

The front door, once open, would be their only entry point into the Sanctum; the dozen or so specialized wards that surrounded the old brownstone would prevent them from trying to enter elsewhere, or breaking the door down once it was sealed. So, in theory, all she and Wong had to do was keep them on other side of it. 

The sorceress had learned from her own rebellion, however, that things rarely ever happened according to plan. She really hoped the humans hadn’t figured out how to break past their wards, otherwise this situation was bound to get far messier than they wanted it to be.

Clea nodded to Wong and he nodded back, before slowly opening the door of the Sanctum. He kept it partially closed, his body blocking the theshold.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Truce notwithstanding, the ride to the magical mystery mansion was decidedly tense. Sam kept his eye on the passing buildings to their right in search of the sigil that was supposed to be on the front of this building, and Jim likewise kept his attention to the left. Only once they found it did either of them speak.

“Ready?” Jim said as he parked along the curb near the gate. Sam cocked his head and nodded.

“Sure, man,” Sam said. He loosed his seat belt and moved to open the door, but Jim turned in his seat toward Sam, prompting Sam to stay put.

“Hey,” Jim said. “I’m on your team here.”

Sam dropped his head against the headrest but kept his eyes on Jim.

“I know, man,” Sam said. “But Hill isn’t, and we thought she was. If even half of what she told you is true, then we all really fucked up.”

Jim dropped his gaze for a moment. It had almost become his default since he’d returned from his visit with Maria Hill in DC, during which time Stark had once again disappeared, and while it wasn’t particularly uplifting to see, Sam did appreciate that Jim had the humility not to defend the Raft or the SHRA to Sam’s face anymore.

[Immediately follows the events of Various Methods of Escape.]

It was with no small amount of chagrin that Sam stood by as the Raft personnel wheeled Steve away, and he made that chagrin clear when he turned to Jim.

“You feel good about throwing him in here twice?” he said. 

Jim’s face plate was up before Sam had finished his sentence.

“There’s a full medical ward here, Sam,” Jim said, as close to nose-to-nose with Sam as he could get in the War Machine suit. “This is literally what you signed up for.”

“I signed up to save my dumbass friend,” Sam said, jabbing a finger at the door through which Steve had just been taken, “and this kinda the opposite of that.”

“How? He’s fine in here -- ”

“He’s lost at least fifteen pounds!”

“-- it’s prison, not the goddamn Ritz!”

They were both almost shouting now, which Sam only noticed when Sharon took hold of his arm.

Sam: I'd say Hi, but every time I hear from you, it's because the government has done something stupid.

Sharon: [sighs harshly] I think I got Steve arrested.

Sam: ...come again?

Sharon: I had a lead on someone he's been looking for, a SHIELD agent that turned out to be HYDRA --

Sam: Yeah, Brock Rumlow, I know.

Sharon: I didn't think he'd run off by himself! I thought he'd at least tell /you/.

Sam: He might have if I hadn't retired.

Sharon: Sam. Please. The only reason I know he got arrested in the first place is because Rhodes just called --

Sam: And how would Jim have known?

[tense silence]

Sharon: He conducted the arrest.

Sam: Uh-huh. Did he happen to tell you where Steve is?

Sharon: No. The Raft is the only superhuman detainment center that's been announced to the public, but there are at least two more that Jim is "contractually obligated" to keep under wraps. Depending on how dangerous Ross thinks Steve is, he could be at any of them.

Sam: Okay. Great. Thanks for letting me know.

Sharon: Sam --

Sam: This isn't your fault, okay? Steve did Steve. We'll get him out.

Sharon: Sam. You need to stay out of this or you could end up in there with him.

Sam: That's hilarious.

Sharon: ...

Sam: I'm just going to talk to Jim. I don't do the guns a-blazing thing anymore.

Sharon: [laughs sadly] Only because you don't have guns to set ablaze.

Sam: Uh, better believe I'm still packing heat. Not enough to take on Jim, though.

Sharon: Oh, God --

Sam: That was a joke, I'm joking. Hey.

Sharon: Yeah?

Sam: I'll keep you posted.

Sharon: ...okay.

Sam: It's gonna be okay.

Sharon: Okay.

Sam: Call you soon.