[Dreams of the Waking Man: End of Dreaming VI] Do or Die
brief but important. part of how Eight-ball ends up out of Wade's custody.
warnings: some Dark Avengers. Earth-339. sci-fi. post-apocalyptic (not to be confused with post-Apocalypse, because he doesn't show up for another few hundred years). OCs: Juliet is Laura's daughter, Mike Richards (Juliet's husband) is Frank's son, Katie Ashton is the girl Tommy saved back in Hero. multiple and future character deaths. language: pg (for bastard).
pairing: none/gen (background Daken/Lester).
timeline: 2065, shortly after (Stand up and) Face the Enemy.
disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies, comics, or characters. or the assorted objects of pop culture reference.
notes: 1) the title is a reference to the Pat Benatar song "Invincible." all the titles from the End of Dreaming sequence will be. 2) the ringing bell Wade hears right after the memory wipe is Eight-ball hitting the floor. Forecaster makes the same noise when he bounces off something solida clear, bell-like chime. 3) Renquist is the name of the Valse Faction admiral. 4) INSERT PLOT DEVICE HERE. i had to kill Laura off somehow. 5) the truly attentive will recognize Laura's words here from Wade's memories in Greenie.
Do or Die
Wade’s going on instinct as he flies their stolen escape shuttle through the crossfire of the embattled carriers. He’s missed this adrenaline-thick thrill of jinking along like a will-o’-the-wisp, past four-inch-diameter white-hot pieces of flying metal, between pulses of white plasma and bursts of blue glow that indicate a laser weapon hitting a gravimetric shield.
A mile from relative safety, inches away from death on every side, flying around in a tin can with seats.
Easy.
Like riding a bike.
Bullseye is clutching his safety harness in a white-knuckled grip-he’s never trusted Wade’s flying, for some reason. Maybe he just doesn’t trust anybody’s flying but his own.
Daken’s eyes are glued to the carrier in the distance, like Juliet’s his kid instead of Laura’s.
Wade very carefully doesn’t look at the pillar of smoke on the ground a couple thousand yards away. When he deems they’ve gotten far enough from the Excalibur, punches the detonator for the charges he left on their primary forward engine. It’s a hell of a shockwave, batting them off course like a leaf in a gale, and he almost wishes they’d been facing the other way so he could’ve seen it.
“Couldn’t you have waited until we were back on Providence?!” snaps Bullseye.
“And miss you freaking out like some blue-haired old lady in the back seat of her grandson’s Camaro?” Wade retorts with a grin.
~Fifteen meters right, two down,~ says Eight-ball.
Wade follows the directions, knowing he’s being pointed to a hole in Providence’s failing shields. Inside the bubble, he swings them under the ship to the shuttle bay.
“She’s falling apart,” Daken comments. “Looked like three dead engines and a top deck with more craters than the moon. She’s not going to survive this fight.”
Shrugging, Wade doesn’t bother to power down the shuttle after he lands it. “Probably. That’s why we’ve got an escape pod and a self-destruct button.”
They get out and jog to the deck’s central corridor.
“So we’re gathering the survivors and getting out.”
Wade nods. “I’ll take the bridge, you go to the starboard guns, Bullseye gets port. Rendezvous at the bridge escape hatch in five.”
Daken and Bullseye nod, and the three of them split.
The journey from the shuttle bay to the bridge is short, but indirect; another piece of tactical brilliance from the mind of Tony Stark. There are a lot of twists and turns (memorized long ago), every hatch is secured for battle stations (to keep the place pressurized), and Wade has to jog up a flight of stairs.
He pauses when he’s almost there, because Eight-ball beeps.
~Incoming one-way broadwave from the Dayspring.~
Muttering a curse, Wade digs his comm unit out of his pocket. It has bad reception now, from all the damaged electronics on the ship, but Wade clutches it and listens.
And from the buzz and flicker, a miracle.
~“-elicarrier Dayspring has landed. Repeat, thi-Commander Juliet Richards, the Dayspring has landed. If any-still listening, we’re safe. Mike, Mom, Uncle Wade, Uncle Daken, we-afe. We w-ontinue plans to settle and aw-Year Zero. Come the fortieth, w-be waiting for Nathan and Hope.”~
He smiles and shoves the comm unit pack into his pocket. “Good work, chipmunk.”
~Wade.~
“What now?”
~I’m going to have to rearrange your memory a little.~
“Excuse you?” Wade says, setting Eight-ball down so that he can pry open a stuck hatch.
~Just a little. A minor memory wipe, to fix the worst of the probability contamination. You’ll keep the important parts, and you’ll probably remember it all eventually, anyway.~
“Then why bother?”
~Like I said, probability contamination. And it’ll be easier for you this way.~
“I don’t want easy.”
~I know. But you have to live.~
Wade picks up the Node and steps through. He doesn’t bother resealing the hatch. “You’re not actually going to give me a choice in this, are you?” he grunts.
~No. I’m sorry.~
White light.
A ringing bell.
“What was I doing?” Wade wonders.
The ship quakes with sudden weapons impact.
Saving the world. Again.
Oh yeah. That’s right.
Wade shakes himself and starts walking. The bridge. He has to get to the bridge.
Bullseye and Daken are loading Mike and Katie and the gunners into the last lifeboat, so Wade has to find out if there’s anybody left on the bridge to evacuate, and then set the thing to self-destruct in Renquist’s face.
Just one more bulkhead. At least the hatch isn’t stuck.
The place is a mess. Exposed wiring, collapsed ceiling, sparking consoles.
Dead bodies.
Briggs, Maxwell, Smith. Paula. Marcus.
“Who’s…there?”
Wade scrambles over the bodies of the bridge crew to the collapsed section.
Laura is crushed under several tons of steel, slowly but surely suffocating.
If it were moved, she might regen. Wade tries and can’t even budge it. She has a hand free, and there are deep cuts in the wreckage from her claws, but she’s at a bad angle. If they had time, he’d have Daken try to cut through. They don’t have time. Renquist’s blasting the crap out of the ship now.
She stretches her hand out to him.
“Hey, old man,” she croaks, and smiles wanly.
“Hey, Greenie,” he replies, taking her hand in his. Her fingers are strong, and they hold on like she doesn’t mean to ever let go.
“Did they make it? Did…did my girl make it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, the chipmunk landed her ship safe and sound. I’m just sorry I couldn’t do more for you and Dani.”
“Good…that’s…” Her eyes are fierce with determination, suddenly. “Don’t listen to them. Don’t let them tell you it was your fault, because it wasn’t. Not this, not the Big One, not Nathan.”
He pats her hand and nods, not trusting his voice.
“Get them,” she wheezes, and her grip really does start to crack his bones. “Get the bastards.”
He nods again. “I swear it.”
.End.
merianmoriarty has my formal permission to pimp my fics on various comms (if/when i ever abandon deviantART, i'll go ahead and join the comms myself and take care of getting things posted in the right places). no one has permission to re-post this ANYWHERE, but feel free to share or link.
« [End of Dreaming V] (Stand up and) Face the Enemy ● [End of Dreaming VII] (We're Gonna) Scream Until We're Satisfied »