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Danny Rand stood in the middle of the derelict bar, his mouth pursed. He was wearing his white and gold body suit and face mask, his hand wraps. Iron Fist had been summoned and Iron Fist had come but no one was here. Was this a trap?
He looked around and saw nothing but layers of dust, stairs leading up and down behind the stripped wooden bar on the back wall, an emergency door under a flickering exit sign. That door creaked open and a sword blade extended into the room. Danny relaxed.
"Colleen? Why didn't you just call? Misty put you up to this?"
A compact, athletic women with asian features under red-brown hair slide into the space behind the sword blade and immediately behind her followed a statuesque black woman with a well-groomed afro and a very large gun. She glared at Iron Fist as she holstered her weapon, both of them walking forward fearlessly.
"Danny? If you wanted to take me out for drinks, this is a little sub-standard for you," said the black woman. She walked closer to him, her hand extending and then dropping. They had a strict rule about "no PDA" when they were working.
"I didn't text, Misty. I thought you were both busy."
The women exchanged a look. "We were," Colleen Wing said softly, keeping her katana out. "We dropped the stake-out when the text came through."
"As did I," said a man's voice with a slight English accent, from behind the bar. The air seemed to...unfold..in a swirl of uncanny color and Stephen Strange was standing there, his red cape settling from some unfelt wind. "Though mine was more of a vigil, I suppose."
"I was just watching TV," said another voice, deep, gruff, pure New York. A muscular bald black man stomped up the stairs from the basement, followed by a man in a red body suit, horns on his head. "What about you, DD?"
"Me? I'm wondering who out there has all of our allegedly secret phone numbers," Daredevil remarked calmly, then suddenly stopped and cocked his head. "I suspect the answer to that question lies with the person upstairs."
All six of the heroes in the room went tense at his quiet announcement. Luke Cage curled his hands into fists.
"Get your ass down here and explain, buddy, or we're coming up there," he snarled.
"She's hurt," said Daredevil. "Badly. Give her a minute."
"Her?" said Misty Knight, her gun out again and pointed at the staircase.
There was a thumping noise, as though someone was taking each motion as slowly and loudly as possible. The end of a metal pole was the first thing to appear, then two combat boots, one of them slamming down firmly on the step and the other hovering. There was a pause, an audible hiss of pain and the boots moved down another step, the left one clearly unable to bear weight.
Agonizingly, the figure made its way into the dim light of the room.
It was a woman, tall, with a mass of straight golden hair. She was wearing a black tactical suit with a white stripe down the centre, a long black duster jacket and yellow-tinted goggles. The metal pole was a long segmented staff. Her face was dirty, viciously bruised and masked with blood, some of it still dripping from her mouth and nose.
"Hey, guys," she said in a manic tone. "I guess you're wondering why I've called you here today."
Then she fell off the last two steps to face plant on the floor. Or she would have, but for Iron Fist. Danny caught her easily, sweeping her off her feet and laying her down on one of the banquettes still attached to the walls, her staff still clutched in her hand. He gently pried it out of her grip and laid it next to her.
"Mockingbird? What's an Avenger doing here? And looking like she lost a heavyweight boxing match?" said Cage in a confused tone.
"I literally just saw her on a live news broadcast," said Dr Strange, coming forward. "A few hours ago, she did not look like that and there have been no battles since then. She was waving at the Friday night crowds at the Tower, carrying a box of donuts inside."
"That fucking bitch," Mockingbird said, sitting up abruptly. "Has she no care for my thighs?" She rubbed her face, then yelped. "I tink my nose is broken, can you check Doc? Sorry about the free fall there, got faint for a moment, if you listen carefully you can hear the sugar molecules in my blood screaming as they die."
"Okay, I'm not confirming anything but she sure sounds like Bobbi," Iron Fist said in a mild tone.
"How would you know that?" Misty asked him in a suspicious voice, making Danny jump guiltily and Mockingbird laugh wildly.
"We never fucked, Misty, I swear! He was pure as the driven snow when you got to him." The Avenger looked at Iron Fist. "I like her already, Danny-boy."
Stephen Strange touched her face carefully. "Hush a moment. As much as I want to hear your explanation I can't look at your injuries any longer." He hmmmmed at her for a bit, then placed his hand over her nose and jerked it back into place before she could react.
"Odin! Son of a bitch, Strange, that hurt. However, yay, I can breathe again."
"Your lower leg is broken," said Daredevil quietly. He hadn't moved from the top of the stairs. "I can hear the bones grinding."
"I figured that, but thanks. No wonder it seemed so damn far from the Tower" Mockingbird said in a pained voice.
"Your leg is broken? How did you even get here?" Colleen Wing asked.
They were just north of Central Park. Avengers Tower was over seventy blocks away.
"Walked. Well, hopped."
"How?" Wing repeated in an anguished tone.
"I think you are asking that in a philosophical sense, yes?"
Wing nodded.
Mockingbird shrugged and looked discomfited, ashamed even. "I'm an Avenger, Daughter of the Dragon. When you have to you just...do." She shrugged again, her head down.
"What's going on, Barbara?" Dr Strange said in a serious voice, touching her left leg with the tips of his fingers, his eyes hard and worried.
"Doc, please don't call me that. I really dislike nearly everyone who calls me that and I don't want to lump you in with them. Bobbi's cool."
"Stop deflecting."
"Yeah, what the hell is going on, lady? You send all of us emergency texts, you look like you went fifteen rounds with the Hulk and apparently you're in two places at once? Explain," Cage snapped.
Mockingbird looked around. "I know. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be flippant--"
Iron Fist made a skeptical sound.
"All right I can't help being flippant. It all started with a phone call..."
*****
Four Days Earlier, Avengers Tower
"Clint, get off me!" Bobbi laughed from the living room area of the communal floor. Steve looked over from the kitchen where he was gathering the tray of veggies and dip; Falcon was already settling in with the chips.
Bobbi had been sprawled across one of the big leather chairs, reading from her tablet. When her husband had bounced into the room he'd promptly sat down in her lap, curling up his legs coquettishly and leaning his head on her shoulder.
"What? It's okay when you do it," he said in a wounded tone.
"You weigh like forty pounds more than I do!"
"Are you calling me fat?"
"You're big boned," she said in a strained tone, still giggling. "Well, you have a big bo--"
"I do not need to hear this," Steve called.
The response was a loud mutual raspberry from the Bartons, then a flurry of oofs and giggles as they redistributed themselves in the chair, ending up with Bobbi straddling Clint's lap, her hands hooked over the back of his neck and his clamped firmly on her hips. They weren't quite making out yet but it was clearly the next step in the process. Sam and Steve exchanged a half-disgusted, half-indulgent look over the snacks.
"I think we're watching the movie alone tonight, buddy," Sam said, reaching for the remote.
Bobbi's phone rang with "Itsy Bitsy Spider".
"Damn it, that's Nat. She wouldn't call if it wasn't important. Hold that thought," Bobbi said, swiping her lips over Clint's. He made a deeply frustrated noise that got louder when she rolled out of his lap.
"Tell her you're busy," he hissed.
She made a shushing gesture at him and walked away to the other side of the room. Through the opening credits they could hear her speaking in soft, swift Russian, just clipped words, mostly "Da".
Bobbi exited the call and came back to the TV, leaning down and hitting the pause button. She looked at Clint then focussed on Steve. Captain America instantly sat up, nodding at her to continue.
"Something's up in Siberia," Mockingbird said in a quiet voice.
"She needs the team?"
"No. No actually, it's a...chick thing. I am literally the only person who can help her right now. I can take one of the personal jets and be there in a few hours but I wanted you to know. She's not even sure...it's most likely nothing but it's got the color of...something."
"What color?" Hawkeye asked, his voice anxious.
She looked directly at Clint now. "Red, sport. Blood red." He winced and his hands balled into fists. They all knew what that meant.
"We'll be ready if you call," Steve said firmly.
"Thanks, Cap. Later, Sam. Love you, hawky-poo." Bobbi kissed Clint deeply, passionately, leaving him half-upset and half-dazed as she bustled out of the room.
"Hawky-poo?" Sam asked incredulously.
"You ever use those words again I will put an arrow through your thorax," Clint responded, still looking after his wife with a creased and worried brow.
*****
Fifteen hours later, Siberia
Bobbi landed the mini-quinjet in a bleak rocky field about three km from the coordinates Black Widow had given her. She was already in her cold-weather tactical kit, complete with hood and gloves, though this was technically the Siberian summer and she was going to take so much shit from Nat about the way she was dressed.
("You think is is cold? We wear bikinis to ski in this weather!"
"I was born in California and raised in the tropics and I don't have lava for blood, red-headed wench.")
The ground was climbing steadily as she walked towards Nat's location; she kept coming across the over grown remnants of an industrial road, deeply grooved and pitted. No surprise, it fetched up against a mountain, crossing a tumbled down fence line with high spiked poles, bent and shattered. Scraps of barbed wire twisted in the wind like demonic macramé . Bobbi could see concrete pads that would have been the foundations of buildings, clustered around a wide door set into the side of the rock with such brutalist finality it felt like some sort of visual pun on Soviet-era foreign policy.
Standing next to the mountain was a woman in black, her rich red hair the only color left in the world. Bobbi slogged through the thin snow and rocks to her side.
"Oh, my poor little babushka, shall I build you a fire to warm your delicate hands?" Natasha said with heavy concern as she got within earshot.
Bobbi's middle finger was working fine as it turned out.
"What's shaking here, Widow? Why just me and not the big strong mens?" Bobbi looked up at the door, noted the sniper slits set into the rock walls, the places where bars could have been dropped on the outside, the road and rail tracks leading up to it.
"They would just be sitting around. They wouldn't make it inside much past the atrium. Only child bearers went down into these depths," Natasha said, her voice firm and steady. Too steady. Forced steadiness. Bobbi studied her face openly, saw the lines grinding into the edges of her mouth, the tiniest of tremors in the shoulders. Practically hysterical fits for Black Widow.
The other reason for only Bobbi's presence then. She didn't need to have the Crimson Creche explained to her. Every black ops agent on the planet capable of getting pregnant knew about the Creche; knew about it and feared it down to their souls. She'd figured that was what Nat had found but she'd been holding out hope she was wrong. At least they'd finally found it.
"I had nightmares about this place, wake-up-screaming-drenched-in-sweat night terrors and my imagination didn't scratch the surface. Nat, you don't have to go in there. Let me call Tony and we'll watch him kill it with fire."
"Someone's still down there. Several someones. The defenses are partially active and there are life signs."
Bobbi sat down against a rock, abruptly, her breath gone in horror. "No. No. No." She covered her mouth. "Feral girls? Insane breeders? I'd rather it was C.H.U.D.S. I'd rather it was anything else. Loki on acid! The undead corpses of everyone I've ever killed! Anything else."
Black Widow nodded at her. "As do I and it's both possible and likely the life signs aren't even human. But I can't risk it, Bobbi. I can't."
It was Mockingbird who stood up, cool and calm and steadfast. "Of course we can't. If we can't save them we can at least...avenge their pain."
"Da."
And that was the last reason not to bring the boys. Neither of them wanted Tony or Thor or Bruce or Sam or Steve (times a billion) to see them doing what needed to be done in a place like this.
"Clint would--"
"Da. But I see no reason three of us need to suffer."
Black Widow had already scouted as far as the main meeting room and the small private chambers to each side. Mockingbird studied the tumbled and broken furniture, the stained scraps of mattresses and little else. Her teeth clenched, remembering her own slice of hell in a cabin in the woods. They scouted the entire entry floor carefully, running into several of the defenses that allowed them to pass. Other than the main room, there would have no one capable of causing a pregnancy allowed here at all. The internal breeding programs had been carefully controlled. Only the strongest children had been reared at all, once the supply of orphans started to prove unreliable.
The elevators were a death trap waiting to happen; the metal stairs, bolted into narrow air shafts and shaking down rust with every step not much better. They took them one at a time, gingerly, the other one watching carefully for slips or breaks. The second floor was also empty but they found an old office with a full map still pinned to the wall.
Ten floors, deeper and deeper, rougher and rougher as they went, hacked out of an old copper mine.
They cleared five of them before fatigue and emotional drain wore them both down to nubs, driving them outside again. Bobbi moved the jet closer to the entrance and they slept in it that night, logging brief messages back to New York before silently deciding to combine their bedrolls on the floor. Right before losing consciousness in relative warmth from the shared body heat, Bobbi heard Natasha speak into the darkness.
"You do realize Clint will have an aneurysm that he missed this part."
At least they both were smiling when they fell asleep.
The next day, they made it to level eight before they found anything alive. With each floor the air got colder, danker and the rooms more horrifying. They found incubators, surgical suites, rooms of bunk beds, rooms with shattered cradles. In one large room, the ceiling was covered with bats in a thick layer.
"We'll leave them be, shall we?" Mockingbird asked.
Black Widow just nodded, her eyes shuttered in the errant light of their shoulder lamps and the flickering overhead fluorescents. Mockingbird touched her hand.
"You don't have to go any further. The last two levels are tiny, really. You wait here and I'll go down. The flutter-mice back there were probably the life signs."
"We can't stay in touch, too much metal in the walls. No. I will bear this. I was not raised here, I only visited, when I was very young. I will bear this."
They were taking the last set of stairs, a secondary set that only existed on this level, Mockingbird going first, when the inevitable happened. She had just reached the bottom landing when the staircase sheered off above her and collapsed.
"Oh, gods damn it." Mockingbird looked up the shaft, finding Natasha's white face against the dark stone slightly spooky. "Where'd we leave the rope?"
"Back at the elevators. Hold on."
It was about fifteen minutes before Natasha came back, during which Bobbi had to stamp her feet and jump up and down or feel like she risked freezing. Black Widow fumbled with the rope, having trouble getting it secured, so the cold must have been affecting her too. She scrambled down with much less than her usual grace but Bobbi didn't have the heart to tease her about it. Neither of them was on their top form.
The last level was partially flooded with black freezing water; other wise empty but for multiple tiny rooms set with rusted manacles.
And piles of very small bones.
Bobbi leaned her head against the rock wall of the staircase shaft.
"Who created this program, Nat? Who created it and if they aren't dead let's go to their homes and kill them, right now."
"They are dead now. Dead and buried." Black Widow's voice sounded odd, much more Russian than normal. Bad memories bringing back old habits, the way Mockingbird would curse in Tagalog when she was really upset.
Bobbi went first up the rope, hauling Black Widow up when she seemed to struggle half-way. They were both broken and sick inside; they needed a nice spa day back in New York with jacuzzis and massages and pedicures and then lots of vodka. Bobbi suggested it as she was coiling up the rope and got a soft non-committal sound in return.
"Sorry, sorry," she said, following Natasha down the corridor towards the main stairs. "Flippant and breezy is just my default mode. I don't mean to make light of all this."
"It's fine," Black Widow snapped sharply and Mockingbird subsided with a guilty wince. This was Widow's big bad; she should be showing more respect.
In the slowly brightening light, as they made their way back to the main levels a few floors up, Bobbi noticed that Natasha was walking oddly.
"Nat, you hurt yourself some where? You're really leaning into that hip."
Black Widow turned around, pulled out her handgun and shot at Mockingbird. She missed, the bullet going wide over the blond's shoulder. Without pausing to think or exclaim, Bobbi hurled the coil of rope in her face and kicked her legs out from under her.
She should have back flipped, tumbled, something; instead, Natasha just fell down, onto her back with a loud yelp.
Pitch was too high, not her usual smooth smokey voice. Too high and the timbre was wrong. And she'd missed a shot from maybe two feet. Natasha wouldn't have missed that shot from two hundred.
Conclusion: this was not Natasha.
Mockingbird grabbed the imposter by the shoulders, hurled her into the wall and punched her in the face repeatedly. She landed four; she should not have landed one.
The woman wearing Natasha's face screamed "Pomogite!".
Help
She had allies.
And now Bobbi could hear them, crashing through the debris in the adjoining rooms, coming in from every side.
Another woman's voice echoed through the air, in English. Natasha's voice, desperate, but authentic.
"Bobbi! Run!"
Mockingbird dropped the bleeding screaming woman with her friend's face and body and sprinted for the elevator shaft. The door on this level was partially open; she jammed a baton into it sideways and sprang the hydraulics. The door slammed open.
The thing with Black Widow's face attacked her from behind, punching and striking with her bare hands. Mockingbird turned and threw an open-handed slap that should never in a million years have landed; it rocked the other woman back, blood starting fresh from her nose. They exchanged blows back and forth, Mockingbird always getting the better of the passes...but a little less each time.
The thing had started moving clumsily and as they threw punches and kicks she grew more and more like the real person. More and more like Black Widow.
The doppelgänger was learning.
Mockingbird took over completely, unleashing the rage and skill that had allowed her to once best Captain America hand to hand, sending the smaller woman reeling back down the corridor, stunned. The Avenger leapt into the elevator shaft, grabbed the rusty cables hanging in the centre and began climbing, faster than she could have though possible even moments ago. The metal dug into her palms, even through her gloves, biting cold.
Let the cables hold, she sobbed to herself. More than anything she didn't want to die here, in this pit of horrors, broken and bleeding in the blackness. If she died here, there would be no one to warn the others.
Below, someone fired off several shots at her, bullets spanging off the walls far below her feet and another voice--a man--snarled a Russian sentence that she filed away to ruminate about later. Hand over hand, Mockingbird climbed into the light far above, tears burning and freezing on her face.
The jet was still there when she made it outside and she sprinted for it, eyes clear again.
In the air, with the auto-pilot engaged, she activated the emergency "Assemble" channel.
Static. Silence.
They--who ever 'they' were--had managed to jam it somehow. Bobbi sat in the pilot's seat, trembling and white-faced, hitting the 'open channel' command every few minutes...and it wasn't until she was only a few hours from New York before the signal cleared and she got through to the Tower.
The screen cleared to Steve, looking sleepy but serious.
"Mockingbird, what's--"
She gasped out the whole situation in a long stuttering monologue. Steve's pale, beautiful face went to full on "Captain America" within the first few sentences and by the end he looked like he was carved out of marble and steel.
"You were right to run, Mockingbird. Get back here. We'll figure this out."
"She's still alive, Cap. Or at least she was and something one of them said at the end makes me think they'll keep her that way. And...Steve...something else. Something..."
"What?"
"The man who shouted at the end said, well, I think he said--"
"Spit it out, soldier."
"He said 'Alive! Baba Yaga needs them alive!'. Wake up Thor, Steve. There's magic in this."
Bobbi was out of the jet on the landing pad before the door was fully open. She was still in her cold weather gear, sweating instantly in the New York summer. She shed layers as she charged into the common area, seeing the whole team gathered there, waiting: Steve, Clint, Tony. Thor and Bruce and Sam.
"Anything happen since I talked to you?" she gasped, reaching for Clint instantly. He was standing next to the marble breakfast bar, near the full carafe of coffee on the percolator that was already there. All the cups were out; a box of donuts was on the counter. They were expecting a long haul on this one. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled in her tightly. She buried her face in his neck and took a deep breath. She'd been in radio silence since she'd ended the call to Steve, scared their enemies might be able to track her flight.
"No," Bruce snapped. "Not a word, not a peep. No ransom demand, no one around the Tower. What are they doing to her?" He looked sick.
"I don't...given where they were I really hope I'm wrong...no, of course I'm wrong, she can't...oh gods that was...it was horrible. When this is all over we have to destroy it, Steve. We have to."
"Bobbi, calm down. Calm down, we need you thinking. Run it through again, what exactly do you know?"
"Know?" She stepped away from Clint, ran water in the sink and rubbed her face clean of blood and rust. "I know they--whomever they are--managed to ambush, subdue and replace Black Widow in under fifteen minutes. There is no way in any universe that would be mundanely possible."
"I wonder," Tony said, looking around the room, "maybe they had more time than that. They could have had the...replacement?...ready before you got separated."
"Yes, but they still took out Black Widow to be able to replace her. And they did it quietly. Thor what do you think?"
"Magic of this kind is not my idiom, Lady Barton. I would have to leave to make inquires in Asgard and I am loathe to do so when we are under this unknown threat."
"It may come to that," Steve said firmly.
"I know that it seemed to have to...work in? Like it didn't really know how to walk properly as her right away. It sounded more Russian..she sounded more Russian I suppose. And when we fought it started out...as though we were in a video game and she didn't know how to work the controls properly. But the more time...I watched her...growing...into Black Widow."
Clint reached out and touched her arm. "You did right, running, little bird. We needed to know this."
"Did I?" Bobbi laughed bitterly. "I left her there and I'm not even sure I've reached rock bottom for how sick it makes me feel." She ran a shaking hand over her face and leaned past him to the coffee pot. "Sorry, I need this right now."
Carafe in hand, she straightened up, looked around the room--and threw the whole pot of scalding liquid in Clint's face.
He screamed out--in fluent Russian.
Bobbi smashed the pot on the marble and grabbed two of the largest shards, hurling them over hand at 'Steve' and 'Thor'. The latter missed but the former lodged in the chest of the man wearing the super solider's face, who howled and pulled it out, blood spurting. Vaulting the table in the middle of the room, she kicked the 'Tony' imposter in the face on her way past, sending him reeling with a bloody mouth, spitting teeth.
The double doors to the conference room slammed open and two women came out, one red-head in black and...a tall blonde woman in a body suit with a white stripe.
They had already replaced her too.
Mockingbird surged to the fore, plans and possibilities flickering past her mind's eye like a movie. She had to ignore what she'd seen behind those woman, framed in the door.
Two big blond men, chained to chairs, an uncanny silver glow surrounding them. She had to assume the others were all there, down the row.
"JARVIS! Emergency shut down, all systems. Hide and seek, authorization Mockingbird nine nine nine mark." She turned and ran for the stairs at the other end of the room.
Instantly the very lights flickered and the monitor screens set into many of the walls went black.
"Get her back here!" screamed the man wearing Steve's face.
Mockingbird was two stories up before they even made it through the door. They'd had hours, she guessed, to inhabit these bodies but they weren't the athletes the Avengers had to be. How long before they were, though? They were nearly perfect now.
They'd been pumping her for information, to figure out where they had gone wrong with Widow. And she might have fallen for it, but for their Clint.
*****
"What does that mean?" Misty asked, curious. "How'd you know?"
Bobbi shook her head a little.
"I know Clint, Misty. I know him, body and soul. I know the sound of his breath, the pattern of his steps, the rhythm of his heart beat. I know his hair smells different in the morning than it does at night; I know how the taste of his skin changes depending on what made him sweat." She shrugged, wincing. "I knew, as soon as it touched me, that thing was not Clint."
*****
They were gaining on her and it was ten more stories up to the Nest and the rest of her equipment.
Thankfully, she wasn't actually headed there.
Mockingbird turned and vaulted over the railing, free-jumping from wall to wall, passing the mob of them on the way down. She made it back down to the communal level before they were even turned around, rushing for the open door of the conference room. She could see Steve struggling to raise his head; alive, alive, he was alive, still trying to fight, the man next to him was Clint...
The burned man came out from behind the door, livid and snarling. She stutter stepped in shock, the strobe effect of seeing Clint in two places making her brain melt a moment.
"Fucking American whore!" the man with Clint's face snarled, horribly, horribly in Clint's voice. "I liked this body, this face. I was going to keep it."
And then behind her she heard a new voice, a woman's voice, slow and deep and old.
Old as dust, slow as the movement of the continents, deep as the core of the earth. Her voice was rotting leaves stirring in the deadly wind of the Siberia winter, old bones rattling in a midden heap. It was the middle of the night and she was naked on the tundra and the hunting song of the wolves had started in the distance.
Baba Yaga.
"Hold her, my child. Strong, this one is. On her I shall feed well."
Panic took her, panic such as she had not felt since she was a child. Anything but escape fled from her thoughts. As she turned back towards the stairs, she saw the woman who had spoken: slight and slim, in a long flowing skirt and peasant blouse, face youthful and pale, hair as blond as her own.
And eyes of pure silver.
The pack of predators wearing her friends like second-hand clothes came back through the door and Mockingbird reversed direction, scooping up her long duster as she ran past it onto the deck outside. She struggled with the jacket, terror making her clumsy, as they gathered by the door.
'Steve' smiled at her, the expression cold and evil on his beautiful stolen face.
"Come along, Mockingbird. Come along and bow to the inevitable and I'll chain you down next to your husband. You can spend your last days with him, like a good wife."
She didn't even have enough mind left to taunt him, to mock as she should. She had to get this right or she was about to die horribly and even if she didn't screw up, she was probably going to die horribly.
There and there and it was now or never.
Mockingbird sprinted headlong for the wall of the deck, hearing angry frightened shouting behind her. She used some of the patio furniture for height...
...and dove off the edge into thin air.
The glide suit Tony had built into her duster activated, stiffening the fabric into a wing, snapping out smart tendrils of control ropes onto her wrists, her ankles.
They'd been testing it for a few months, never more than a few stories up. It was proving unreliable but Tony'd told her last week he thought he worked out the last of the bugs.
Stress test, to the max.
Mockingbird flew into the warm New York twilight leaving behind every thing she had ever loved in the hands of a supernatural monster and her servants.
*****
"So, that's where it all stands. I jumped off the god damn Tower, landed really badly, broke my leg and now I'm here. The Avengers have been replaced with mystically created doppelg ä ngers by a Russian folk tale witch...I think...but they're probably still alive. I need all of you to step up and help me save my friends and possibly the world; no pressure."
As one, they all turned and looked at Daredevil. He raised his hands in the most elaborate gesture any of them had ever seen from him: it conveyed frustration, concern and bleak amusement in one deft combination. "Well, she thinks she's telling the truth."
Dr Strange nodded. "It binds with what I was doing before I got the call. I sensed something being transported into the city a day ago, a burst of energy unlike anything I'd ever felt before. It was no where near the Tower but that matters little. I was watching the point where it had made contact with this plane, hoping to catch the moment it opened again."
"Tower's protected magically. Prob'ly couldn't manifest whatever it was inside the barrier ," Mockingbird said in a muzzy voice, lying back down. There was still blood trickling from her nose and now they could see some on her ear as well.
"Ah. I had thought...well, that makes sense then, some of the things I've been noticing . It's very subtle. Very elegant."
"Mmm...yeah. Frigga did it I think," Mockingbird mumbled. "The All Mother knows her shit."
Iron Fist leaned over and slapped her across the face. "Bobbi, you have a concussion . You're greying out. Sit up and stay awake."
Mockingbird popped up and nearly got to her feet before thinking better of it. "Fuck you Rand I do not have a concussion. My skull's fractured; bounced my head off a concrete wall a couple of times on the way into that shitty landing. I'm probably dying, you asshole and you slap me!"
That stopped them all in their tracks. "What? You're dying?" Luke Cage rumbled.
"Think so. Can't really go to the hospital right now, can't sit this out. No way to get you all inside without me, so I gotta keep moving. Keep the brain from shutting down entirely until the rest of them are free. Then I can curl up and shuffle off."
Daredevil broke in . "I know someone--"
"Night Nurse can't patch me up with stitches and surgical glue, sport but it's a nice thought," she blinked at him, sounding drunk. "I can't focus my eyes anymore, so we better make a decision as to what you're all going to do before something clots up permanently in here and I convulse like a drowning swimmer."
Dr Strange dropped to his knees in front of her, taking her head in his hands. "Barbara--Bobbi, listen to me. There is something I can do but I must have your conscious consent and you must know the extent of what it does. There is a spell I can use to heal you--I can perform it here, quickly and easily."
"I'll pay the price," she whispered, her words thick and slow.
"It's high."
"I'll pay it if it will win me the time to save them, I'll pay anything. My life, my soul--if I believed in that. Anything I have. "
"All the pain you have ever endured, all at once. Every injury fresh and real in your mind and body, for the time it takes to heal what is killing you."
She laughed, brightly.
"Do it. Now."
"Your heart might stop from the pain alone."
"Danny can jump start it."
Strange looked at Iron Fist. "Can you?"
He nodded, his mouth set in a hard line, his plain friendly face stern and cold. HIs right hand started to glow softly, the air around it shimmering as though heat rose from his flesh.
Bobbi held out her hands to Cage and Misty. "You better hold me down, this is going to be nasty. And get me something to bite down on, I like my tongue un-severed."
Dr Strange nodded to them and they placed her on the floor at his feet, Colleen and Misty sitting on her legs, Danny holding her waist and Cage pinning her hands down.
"Oooh, group bondage on the first date!" Bobbi said, snickering. Daredevil stepped forward with one of his billy clubs wrapped in a few of the linen napkins they'd found behind the bar. She bit down on it, then nodded at Strange.
The Sorcerer Supreme scraped up a finger-full of the dust from a nearby table and drew a strange complex symbol on her throat, chanting light fast words none of them could quite hear . The pale dirt sparkled like gemdust for a breath and seemed to absorb into her skin.
Mockingbird's eyes rolled back and she convulsed so violently she nearly kicked both Misty and Colleen off of her. legs Dr Strange had to grab her head to keep her from breaking her own neck as she flailed. Despite the make-shift muffler, her scream of agony was loud enough Daredevil covered his ears with a yelp. It seemed to go on for eternity.
Then her eyes popped open, the left one red with a burst blood vessel, spat out the club and snarled "Get off me!"
They all jumped off her as though she was electrified and she staggered to her feet, clutching her head, sobbing. She stumbled to the bar and leaned on it, fists clenched and chest heaving, breath raging in huge gasps.
"Mother...fucker. I get shot waaaaaaayyyyy more than I realized," she finally managed, straightening up. Still panting, she turned towards them. "On the upside, not dead; leg no longer broken." She studied them, staring at her in horror and concern and fascination. "It worked guys. Well done. Thank you, Dr Strange. You should all thank him; you're off the hook now." She walked through them all, still staring at her and picked up her staff, breaking it down into two long batons and then collapsing them till they fit in the holsters on her legs. She delved into a pocket of her jacket and came up with a packet of wet-wipes, cleaned her face, offered the pack to Strange and Danny. "You both have blood on your hands."
"What do you mean, 'off the hook'?" asked Daredevil from his spot by the stairs.
Bobbi was patting through the apparently numerous pockets of her duster, muttering things like "four mags, the knives are still there". She smiled in his direction. "If I'm not about to kick off any more, none of you have to get involved now. I mean, I'm glad you know and I'll set up some sort of dead drop message thing with all of you individually in case I fail but I can move on the Tower myself now. I can't thank you all enough for coming."
"Trust issues," Iron Fist said mildly. He and Misty were sharing a significant look. "She always had trust issues."
"That I do, Danny-boy. Got nothing to do with this, though. I contacted all of you because I do trust you; I'm saying you're out now for the same reason."
"You're saying we're not important enough to help the high and mighty Avengers," Cage snapped.
Mockingbird stared at him. "What? No. What? Not important? You guys are way more important than we are."
"Explain that," Daredevil said in a cold voice, moving closer to the group for the first time.
Mockingbird swept them all with her gaze. "Wow, you don't get it, do you? Okay, so, yeah, we're the big dramatic team out there, stopping the alien invasions and disasters and stuff. We're camera fodder, gods and super soldiers and mysterious spies. We're news. We're important, of course. And we're good at what we do. But you guys? You 'street level' heroes? You're not flashy--well, other than you, Danny. You're not dealing with the world-killing stuff. You're all out here every day, just helping people. I used to do that; can't anymore with the 'A' over my heart. Can't take out the drug runners and abusers and shysters; bad for the image getting caught punching pimps in alleys. But you guys show people face to face that they can stand up. Fight back. That they don't have to lie down and die under the weight of the everyday oppressions this world heaps in them." She folded her hands in front of her and bowed to each of them individually, with respect. "I might save the world but you guys give people hope. That's worth more, in the end. Because if people don't have hope, there's no world to save."
She smiled again, sadly. "I'm not dragging any of you any further into this mess. I owe you all for coming and I'm not sure I can ever repay you--"
"Oh, shut up," said Misty. There was a murmur of general agreement. "I'm not leaving now."
"Me neither," said Colleen Wing.
"Someone has breached the sanctity of my city with foul magic," Dr Strange said firmly. "I will see it cleansed."
"I admire your ability to deliver lines like that," Mockingbird said sincerely. "You and Steve learn at the same elocution academy?"
Cage laughed shortly. "I'm staying. I'm helping. 'nough said. Danny?"
Iron Fist nodded. "I always wanted to fight Captain America, even a fake one."
Daredevil had fallen silent again. Bobbi held out her hand to him. "Thank you for coming at all; I had you at the longest shot."
He didn't move except to cock his head. "You believed that," he said. "That little speech; you believed it."
"Yeah, because it's true."
"You all believed it."
"And you didn't?" asked Iron Fist.
"I'd never thought of it like that before, which surprises me." He stopped. "Mockingbird, you know my identity, don't you?"
"You know I do. I never told the others, they know I know it, but not what it is."
"Good. Then you'll know where to send my body if I don't make it back. God help me, I'm in."
Mockingbird looked around at them all, her face very still and serious. "Thank you. Thank you all." Her eyes grew sharp. "Dr Strange, as much as that hurt earlier, it didn't hurt anywhere near as much as I expected. Like about half as much...I'm wondering if someone up there in the Tower shared the load?"
*****
"We're still locked out of every floor but this one and the ones above and below it. When I get my hands on that bitch I'm going to skin her alive." The man with Clint's face cursed, punching the air. The livid red burns on his face wept fluid from places, raw and painful looking.
The rest of the group were scattered around the room, resting, eating, studiously avoiding looking in the direction of the kitchen area, where Baba Yaga stirred and sprinkled and murmured. The man with Sam's face was staring at himself in the mirror; the one who looked like Tony was trying to gain access to the computer systems and failing, again and again.
The man who looked like Steve glanced up, a grin on his borrowed mouth. He was sitting on one of the couches, studying the limp form of Mockingbird in front of him. She was lying on the other recliner, still mumbling and semi-conscious. "I'm fascinated to think what could have cause Taisia here to scream and collapse like that, Vassily. She had barely recovered from whatever happened to the American at the end of her remarkable flight."
Vassily stared at him hard. "I know that look, Alexi, even on that strange face. No. I won't be a part of any more mad schemes to resurrect the program."
"But think, Vassily! What a breeder she would make, what a blood line to foster a new Red Room. The traitor is unsuitable of course but think about the killers we could make from these imperialist lap dogs. Her eggs, perhaps the good Captain's seed. Or even her husband's, he's a strong warrior in his own right. The engineer for brains..."
"Eh, she's a genius," muttered Katerina in Black Widow's voice. "Or so the traitor bitch thinks, anyway. How much longer, Alexi, must I wear this face?"
"Until we have them all and can gain access to the weapons and technology in this building. Then you may have your money and any form the good Baba Yaga can provide for you." He looked back at Vassily. "Are you sure? We need not even return to the Motherland. I'm sure there are facilities in the west, private and lonely, where we could begin anew. Incubate a whole generation of girls right inside their very borders."
"If you want to fuck the bitch that badly, Alexi, just rape her a few times before Baba Yaga consumes her soul. Make the others watch. That I would be on board for; I'd even take a turn. In fact, I almost insist. This body...knows hers. Less than two days, it's already hungry for her."
Alexi laughed. "Well, I can think of worse ways to spend my time, that is certain."
"You pigs," the woman with Black Widow's face hissed. "No woman would joke about rebuilding that abomination. If you try, I will slit your throats myself, I swear it."
The men exchanged a look and Alexi nodded. "My apologies, comrade, I was musing only. The program is dead; the Motherland is run by pimps and gangsters and lunatics who ride about without their shirts on. There is nothing to preserve. I will take my money and vanish, once I see all these dogs die screaming."
He stood up, stretched, winced as it pulled on the wound in his chest. "I'm still concerned about what Taisia's collapse means, though."
"It....means..." gasped his own voice from the conference room. They looked over to see Captain America's head struggling to rise, fighting both the chains on his body and the magic that bound his spirit. "It...means...Bobbi's...'live."
"It...means...you...guys...'r fucked." That was Hawkeye, his head still down but his agonized, slurring words loud and vehement.
"Oh, how I long to be able to torture them," Vassily muttered.
"Our good patron advises me the whole process of having your soul eaten is very painful. Take comfort in that," Alexi nodded, then walked over and shut the door, leaving the captive Avengers to suffer in the darkness.
*****
"That would make sense," Dr Strange said with a nod. "It would explain why they need to keep the originals alive; any physical damage reverberates onto the copy."
"Quantum entanglement," Mockingbird said.
"Magic," responded Dr Strange, but his tone was teasing.
"Bobbi, do you have a plan?" Iron Fist asked, cracking his knuckles gently.
"Yes, I do. Gather round, my children."
*****
"This is the spot," Mockingbird said shining her flashlight on the wall of the derelict subway tunnel. "Stark's dad paid the city to re-route this line when he built the first tower. Daniel, if you will."
Iron Fist grinned and stepped forward. He stood very still in front of the aged, moss covered brick and breathed out, slowly and audibly. His hands rose up, one vertical to the ground, the other fisted and pressed against his palm. A white glow started with his fingers and extended all the way down to his wrists, under the ragged hand wraps he always wore. Almost gently, Iron Fist reached out and pushed.
The brick shattered like glass in a ragged hole, cracks extending up to the ceiling.
"Here's hoping Danny didn't just wreck the foundations of the building," said Misty, her head on a swivel.
"We thought of that, this area is reinforced," Mockingbird said casually.
"You thought of that?" Colleen Wing asked, incredulous. She was having the most trouble with the whole situation and she was still very game.
"Well, take the current team, right? Three former professional paranoids, the world's greatest soldier and you better believe he always considers logistics, a genius with serious control issues and the most brilliant engineer who ever lived. Contingencies get covered ad infinitum. Hell, I think Thor hangs out with us because he gets to relax and not worry about things when he's here."
"What about Falcon?" asked Cage.
"He likes the hot tub."
They had all been progressing though the hole in the masonry as they were talking, the silent Daredevil last in line. On the other side was an ancient access tunnel ending in a very new, very shiny, very locked door.
"All right, this is the deal. The system is in extreme emergency mode and this is an 'end of the world last ditch' weapons cache. The defenses on both ends of this corridor will go live the instant I open the door and they will be lethal to anyone not in the system. When I've got the door open, don't move...unless something goes wrong and I yell. Then you run."
"We will be able to get away?" asked Dr Strange.
"Nah, it'll give you something to do with the last five seconds of your life." Mockingbird smiled winsomely, then swiped her hand across the keypad, leaned in and spoke a nonsense string of numbers and letters. A blue light came on above her, bathing her whole body. High in the air, a thin whine was building all around them. Cage tensed but held his ground. Misty looked angry, Strange looked resigned and Wing and Daredevil were just...blank. Iron Fist was grinning back at her.
A calm inhuman voice with a fruity English accent spoke out of the air. "Mockingbird, Avenger. Acknowledged DNA scan, voice imprint, biometrics. Unauthorized personal detected. Are you under duress?"
"No more than usual, Jarvis. Come out, come out, where ever you are."
The whine snapped off abruptly and the voice out of the air grew...warmer, some how, without growing more human.
"Ah, thank you, Mockingbird. My database recognizes all these individuals as non-hostile...but then I also recognized the imposters upstairs. Can you insure they are who the say they are?"
"Under the circumstances, buddy, no, I probably can't. And you know you can't trust me anyway, I'm the Mockingbird."
"Bobbi, what the hell?" Iron Fist snapped.
His response was a laugh and the door sliding open.
"Correct response codes acknowledged. Please enter, friends of the Avengers."
"Contingencies," Cage said to Misty, both of them shaking their heads.
"It's not just the scans. We all have different codes for different things. You're just lucky I remembered that one."
"I begin to understand Captain America's oft visible exasperation with you during media events," Dr Strange said.
"Steve loves me, Doc." Mockingbird's face twisted after she spoke, becoming something hard and dangerous. "And if those fuckers have hurt him, they're going to find out how much I love him back."
The large room they had entered was all glass and metal, muted lighting and high tech accessories. Hanging in alcoves were copies of all the Avenger's gear, save only Thor's hammer and Cap's shield. Mockingbird went to "her" alcove and unabashedly stripped off her body suit to change into a new one, talking all the while.
"Hey, hey...what are you doing?" snapped Cage.
"What? I'm changing...oh, please. Are we in grade school? If Captain America and the boys can survive seeing my underwear you can too."
"Yeah, well, okay...it just surprised me, is all," he muttered, embarrassed.
"You seen them in their skivvies?" Misty asked in a casual tone.
Mockingbird threw her a delighted look over her shoulder. "Oh, yeah, and it's glorious let me tell you. Clint 'n Steve 'n Thor all shirtless grabbing weapons...I've got a chest fetish and I've nearly passed out a few times."
"Clint's okay with that?" asked Iron Fist.
"Why yes, Danny, my male owner is very tolerant of my vapors. He even gives me pocket money some times and lets me pretend I have thoughts in my pretty little head." She blinked at him sweetly.
"Just shut up, guys," Daredevil muttered. "Please. Before she cuts you."
Colleen Wing burst out laughing, the first time in living memory.
"Jarvis," Mockingbird asked as she zipped up her fresh suit, finished slotting extra magazines and other toys into places on her body, "what's the situation upstairs?" She walked over to a locker and threw it open, exposing even more fascinating tech and devices. They gathered around and she started the distribution.
"I am only using my passive sensors at the moment, the...individual copying Mr Stark's body has been ceaselessly attempting to override me since you called for the shut down. He is more effective at it than I wish and I don't desire to warn him." He laid out what he could see in a few clipped sentences, relaying the conversation he'd heard earlier between the "Captain America" and "Hawkeye" imposters. Mockingbird's fists clenched so hard they went white but she relaxed a little at the confirmation the Avengers were still alive.
Dr. Strange asked...odd questions about the young woman with the silver eyes. When he was satisfied he nodded to Mockingbird. "I believe I understand this now and your basic thoughts were correct. It should not be a two way street save to her, herself; the power will flow downhill only. Not as precise as science perhaps, but predictable in its own way."
In the end they agreed as a group that the original plan stood.
Mockingbird swiped at another keypad on the far side of the room and that door opened to an elevator.
"Lock and load, boys and girls. Time to assault the Tower."
*****
Taisia had only just woken up, incoherent and whimpering about cabins in the woods and shotguns when the false Avengers heard the elevator on the far side of the room suddenly power up.
They all--but the false Mockingbird--jumped to their feet and drew weapons, mostly handguns. Baba Yaga ignored them all, still mumbling over her little pot of water and herbs and bones. Alexi looked over at Tomas, who wore Thor's form. "It looks very odd, you with a gun."
Tomas shrugged. "I did not expect to be able to lift the hammer."
With the sound of the hydraulics sighing to a smooth halt, the elevator doors slide open.
In the same instant shutters snapped down over the windows and the lights went out, plunging the room into darkness.
"Hold!" Alexi yelled. "This is a distraction, everyone hold."
They all froze, just the sound of the elevator doors closing and the machinations of the witch loud in the darkness.
"Mockingbird, I know you're there. If you expected to what? Free your comrades with a few seconds of confusion? You have failed. My offer stands. Submit quietly and I'll let you die next to your lover."
"Mockingbird's not here, man," growled Luke Cage out of the black.
Behind them.
The lights snapped on and the false Avengers all turned as one to see Cage, Knight, Wing and Iron Fist framed in the hallway.
"Hope we'll do," said Misty Knight, her metal arm exposed and gleaming. Cage laughed, pounded his fists together. Colleen Wing's katana was out, held in graceful stillness at the perfect angle. Iron Fist was grinning, his hands glowing white hot, his lean athletic body looking like living metal.
There was a breathless pause and the room thundered with gunfire. Cage charged forward, bullets hitting him and rebounding or just falling to the floor with dull clinks. Iron Fist danced next to him, hands catching and deflecting the projectiles. Wing and Knight held back, using the men as shields, waiting for their moment.
"That all you got?" Cage roared and then he was among them, fists flying. Iron Fist's strikes slide into the spaces he left, filling them like water to Cage's avalanche of power. Colleen Wing, Daughter of the Dragon, advanced behind her blade, swift precise motions driving the false Falcon and Bruce Banner backwards in panic. Misty just shot anyone who tried to break out of the pack, punching Katerin in Black Widow's face when she ran towards the stairs and clipping their Tony in the shoulder.
Taisia, screaming, crawled along the floor towards the kitchen, still dressed as Mockingbird. Alexi and Vassily and Tomas were all engaged hand to hand with Iron Fist and Cage; Wing was now dueling the Falcon imposter, who had pulled a large knife.
The false Avengers were losing, swiftly and badly.
"Enough," lisped the silver voice of the witch. She had moved away from her pot, her hands out and beginning to shiver with light. Taisia huddled at her skirts, sobbing. "You disappoint me, children."
Her hands clenched and Iron Fist went down on his knees, unable to move. She moved again and Cage was frozen in mid-swing, eyes bulging. Misty started to back-pedal out of the room, nearly making it before she was frozen too. Colleen stood with her katana raised for a killing strike, beautiful and frantic behind her eyes.
Baba Yaga looked at her minions with eyes as wintery as their homeland. "You are weak. Much weaker than the creatures you would have me consume. Were they not so...delectable a meal I would ally with them and devour you all."
"Eat this, monster," the woman dressed as Mockingbird said, standing up in one motion, her baton singing in the air with a vicious uppercut.
Baba Yaga's head snapped back with the strike and for an instant the others were free. Cage slammed one hand into Alexi's head, Iron Fist flipped backwards from his knees, kicking Tomas in the face on the way and Colleen's sword snapped down to impale the false Falcon's shoulder. Misty drew a bead on Baba Yaga's head and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet froze in mid air, cracking and shattering with cold.
The witch's head came back down, her face alien and calm. The baton strike had broken her jaw, hanging askew from her face. Horribly, she still spoke, bones grinding under the words.
"Ah, yes, you. The brave bird. You I will honor once I have your soul. I will take your form for my own."
Then she reached up and lifted Mockingbird--the real Mockingbird--off her feet to dangle in the air.
With the last breath in her lungs, Bobbi screamed. "Daredevil now!"
Inside the conference room, Daredevil "looked" at the bound and captive Avengers. "Sorry, guys." Then he hit the button of the controller that activated the TASER disks pressed against each of their necks.
When the lights had gone out earlier Daredevil and Mockingbird--who didn't need light to see--had come out of the elevator in silence, scooped up the fake Bobbi and replaced her with the authentic item. Daredevil had the fake in the conference room, unconscious. He'd attached the disks to the Avengers and waited for the signal.
The stunners activated and in the same instant the false Avengers screamed and fell down as the energy rebounded on them.
Baba Yaga's silvery eyes winked out for a heart beat and she dropped Bobbi to stagger back and away. Mockingbird turned and sprinted for the conference room door, throwing it open and lunging for Clint's bound form.
The very air seemed to slow, to freeze, growing thick as honey. Mockingbird's hand was reaching out, nearly touching Hawkeye when she was yanked backwards as though on strings. She landed at Baba Yaga's feet, the small woman seeming to grow larger with every breath, her face only barely human now. Her hands were growing claws like a bird and when her skirts swirled up, her feet looked like a chicken's.
Mockingbird looked up at the fairy tale monster and laughed, pointing over her shoulder.
"Baba Yaga, meet my friend, Dr. Stephen Strange. The Sorcerer Supreme of Earth.."
A bolt of golden light struck Baba Yaga in the chest as she spun. Dr. Strange was just stepping out of his concealing spell, his red cloak swirling. He was chanting harsh words, craggy and liquid both and the jewel on his chest pin was bright as fire.
Baba Yaga screamed her own spells, flashes of uncanny fire spearing and writhing in the air between them. Strange staggered back, his eyes shocked, and seemed to redouble his efforts.
From the conference room came the sound of metal stressed to the breaking point.
Captain America had simply stood up out of his chains, some of them splintering into pieces as he rose. Steve's face was death incarnate, a look few people still breathing had ever seen. He was visibly weak, stumbling, but his first action was to turn to Hawkeye and rip the first layer of bonds off of him. Hawkeye himself flexed his arms and the metal on his wrists gave up the ghost with one heave. They both turned to Thor and the three of them together had him free in seconds. Daredevil backed out of the room, his body language wary.
Strange smiled and began a complex pass with his hands. Baba Yaga shrieked again, now in fear. The golden light beat back the silver, inch by inch and if you could see them both you could see the silver faltering as the captives freed themselves. With one final push, Strange encompassed the witch in his light. He looked at Mockingbird.
She nodded, extended the sword end of one of her batons and jammed it into Baba Yaga's eye.
The body fell like a puppet with its strings cut, curled up around itself and vanished.
On the floor, the men and woman with borrowed faces all convulsed...and their stolen forms winked out between one breath and the next.
The Avengers hobbled out into the room, Bruce and Natasha leaning on each other, Thor barely able to stand on his own. Tony dropped onto one of the bar stools and put his head on the counter, making vague gestures at the rack of bottles in front of him. Sam limped over, his upper arms and wrist raw from the chains, and began dragging out glasses. Steve staggered a few steps forward, glanced around and focused on Mockingbird.
"Soldier," he rasped, blood starting on his lips. He coughed--more blood--but with every free breath he stood straighter. "Report!"
He was interrupted by Clint half-falling half-running across the room to wrap his arms around his wife and sink to his knees clutching her tightly, his face buried in her hair.
Mockingbird, crying and laughing at the same time, stroking Clint's back like a colicky child, looked at her friends with the most joyful expression any of them had ever seen. "I inducted some new members into the club, Cap."
Later, when they had stowed the Russians in the holding cells or the morgue (Taisia, the one wearing Mockingbird, had died of shock when Baba Yaga had laid hands on the original and the young Aleut man who'd been Falcon had bled to death before they realized how badly hurt he was) and Jarvis had gotten the debris in the living cleaned up the Avengers and their saviors were sitting around debriefing. All of them had some variety of alcoholic beverage in their hand and the glass coffee table that had some how survived the fight was loaded with sushi and teriyaki.
Danny Rand was sitting next to Tony and pumping him for information about where he sourced his Scotch. The second time he used the phrase "playboy billionaire code, bro!" Misty knocked him off the couch and punched him in the chest repeatedly. He was laughing when he sat up and joined her at the bar.
Clint was sitting in a recliner with Bobbi in his lap. Since the moment he'd been freed he had simply refused to stop touching her. If she moved, he went too.
Natasha had recovered faster than anyone but Steve, her regal beautiful face cold and hard as she told them what had happened in the Creche. The copies of both of the woman had been waiting; they had been planning to take them together but Alexi had thought it would be a good test to see if Katerin could fool Mockingbird. That had backfired spectacularly.
Thor and Bruce had actually taken the worst of the magic and were barely coherent; Strange had confirmed it had taken more effort to subdue them both and there fore the process had wounded them deeper.
None of them wanted to talk about what it felt like, having your soul eaten.
Steve had taken the time to thank each of the newcomers individually, shaking their hands and speaking soft, sincere words in private that had--to the last--awed and humbled each of them. Luke Cage in particular was struck by the super soldier's nobility and demeanor.
"I'd follow that guy anywhere, man," Bobbi'd heard him mutter to Danny. "Like, hell itself."
"Yeah, me too," Danny muttered back. "You see why they work as a team, you know?"
Daredevil, still wearing his mask, was walking around the perimeter of the room, touching the expensive wood and smooth metal of the furniture. It seemed like moving meditation to him. Every once in a while he'd pass near the bar and take another drink of the very very good craft beer Tony kept on hand.
"Who are they?" he asked at one point. Natasha answered.
"The leader is Alexi Shostakov--he was my...handler in the Room." The venom in her voice was enough to kill an elephant. Bobbi leaned over from her chair and grabbed Natasha's hand; the red head raised their clasped fingers to her forehead almost in benediction and then held on for a while, like a security blanket. "Vassily Denovich was his crony from the beginning, they were the direct heirs to the...creatures...who set up the Creche during Stalin's time. The others are too young to have been from my time, though I think perhaps the women were from one of the last Red Room graduations."
Captain America leaned over and snagged the last piece of salmon sashimi. "Who ever they were, they nearly succeeded in destroying us. If it hadn't been for all of you coming to our rescue, we'd be dead."
"If you had been any less than you were, we would have had nothing to defend, Captain," Dr. Strange said quietly. "The thing that called itself Baba Yaga was no fairy tale witch, no folk spirit. It was old and cold, like the depths of space. Older perhaps than the human race itself. I did not realize what I faced until she turned her full attention to me. She nearly defeated me--she should have defeated me as a bear swats a child."
Falcon sat up straighter from his food and alcohol slump. "So, what happened?"
"You happened, Avengers. When Daredevil knocked you all out for those moments and the puppets were no longer acting as a buffer for her, to smooth out the flow of the power, she had to split her attention. She was bound to each of you as she...consumed you...and when you began to free yourselves she had to fight seven very angry superheros as well as myself. If it had not been for all of you, I would be dead at best and her puppet at worst."
"Eight," Clint said from Bobbi's cleavage. He popped his head up and did a quick count. "No, fourteen heros. Didn't have a chance, really."
"Yeah, about that," said Tony, standing up and walking over to the bar. He bent down and came back up with a handful of plastic cards. Shoving a few containers of wasabi and ginger out of the way, he laid six of them down on the table. "If you guys want those, they're yours."
Cage reached out and then pulled his hand back. "What are they?"
"Avenger ID cards. Once you touch one it codes to your DNA, no one else can use it. Gets you access to the Tower--not the personal levels, but most other places. Connects you to Jarvis if you have a question. If you need, it can act like an emergency beacon--everyone with one will get any message you speak."
"What, so you can use it to summon us?" Daredevil said in a low, flat voice.
"No," said Captain America. "So any of you can call on us. We owe you our lives."
"She saved you," said Colleen, pointing at Mockingbird. "Without her--"
"Dosen't work like that, Colleen. I'm in this for the long haul; same as all of them. If we totted up who owed who what around here we'd need a spreadsheet and 'life-debt' accountants. But none of you had an obligation to us. Not even you Danny, shut up, we went on three dates and sparred a few times that is not an excuse to risk your life for anyone. If anything, after South America, I owed you."
"Three dates? South America?" Misty said to Iron Fist, who shrugged.
"We were just friends, Misty. And I didn't think I had the right to talk to anyone about South America. I'll tell you all about it later," he touched her cheek gently and she nodded.
Danny stood up and took one of the cards, firmly. "I'll take this becuase I want you to be able to get a hold of me faster if you need me, okay? But you don't owe me. I mean, what was that old saying? All it takes for evil to triumph--"
"Is for good men to do nothing. No one's going to catch me doing nothing," Cage finished for him, taking his own card. One by one, they were all claimed, Daredevil last, slowly but with decision.
"I'm street-level, like you said, Mockingbird. I have to fly under the radar mostly. But I'm here to protect this city and...you're all part of my city. I'll protect you if I can."
"Thank you, Daredevil, Dr. Strange. Misty, Colleen, Cage, Iron Fist. Thank you for coming when she called. Thank you for healing her head and thank you for risking what you risked to save us," said Hawkeye, his deep voice clear and calm and sincere in a way that not even Steve could manage. "Even if you're not Avengers--even if you don't want to be--you're still heros."
"Takes one to know one, buddy," said Misty.