FIC: Rascals, Scoundrels, Villains, and Knaves (2a/5) (for icecream_junkie) - PG-13
Title: Rascals, Scoundrels, Villains, and Knaves, Part IIa
Author: frea-o
A Gift For: icecream_junkie
Rating/Warning/Pairings: Please see the first post for these.
Summary/Prompt Used: Tortuga, 1745. It’s been three years since they last sailed together, but when an old enemy resurfaces and takes one of their own, it’s up to the crew of the Avenging Angel to assemble and take to the high seas once more. Or: the one where everybody is a pirate except the two canonical characters with eyepatches. Drink up me ’earties, yo-ho.
Part: I | IIa | IIb | III | IV | V
4. Île de la Glace
They gathered, and it was like no time at all had passed. There were provisions to be procured before high tide-Fury was all too willing to help out in that regard, sending Hill and a convoy of those left on Tortuga to the ship with barrels of salted beef and pork, and fresh water, a brace of hens, and bunches of lemons. Even No Legs Charlie sent supplies, as several of his crew had been taken in Loki’s attack. Natasha watched the production as she gathered up her weapons from her various hidey-holes all over Tortuga. She sharpened her cutlass, ensured she had enough ammunition for her flintlock pistols, and oiled Clint’s spare bow. Sailing with the tide that very day was an ambitious goal, but if there was anybody determined enough, Natasha would readily admit that Tony Stark fit that description. Once she had packed everything she would need for the journey, she found him in the sailmaster’s cabin, coat tossed carelessly aside and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The metal brace that extended from his shoulder blade to the tip of his longest finger glinted in the low light. The skin underneath was waxy, the arm atrophied.
“You made good time,” he said without looking up at her.
“Don’t own much. Is Banner aboard yet?”
“Nay. Still gathering his tools, I imagine.” As the ship’s carpenter and surgeon, Bruce took particular care in his tools and books. Since that care had saved the life of almost everybody who served aboard the Avenging Angel, nobody minded. Stark set aside his quill. “The captain’s cabin stands empty.”
“Steve will be glad to hear that. I’ll be in my bunk.” Natasha continued on to the first mate’s cabin. Before their mutiny had turned the ship from the Deviant to the Avenging Angel, the room had been occupied by an odious Russian named Ivan Vanko. Natasha had wasted no time removing all traces of the man. Now the cabin was like every other living space she occupied: bare, plain, and devoid of anything that might mark it as hers.
Stark had done some carpentry work on the cabin in the three years he had had the Angel. It was a little larger than she remembered, but it was still a close fit. There was space only for a bunk and a small table. Natasha hung her canvas bag on a designated hook on the wall, set Clint’s at the foot of the bunk-it was made for somebody taller, so she would have plenty of foot-room-and after a moment of debate placed the water-proofed box she carried in a hold beneath the bunk. It was the first place a marauder would look, but the box was simply too big to squirrel away like she did with the ring she wore on a chain around her neck. That, she slid into a compartment she’d whittled away into the crossbeams that made up the ceiling.
Officially unpacked, she went above. With Clint was not around to examine the lines, somebody needed to fill that absence. She’d just clambered up the bowsprit to check the pulleys when she spotted a figure striding down the dock. “Decided to finally get your sea legs again?” she called.
She could tell he hadn’t spotted her, but Coulson took in the sight of Natasha, legs wrapped around the bowsprit while she dangled upside down, with nary a blink. “Fury seems to think I’d be more help aboard the Angel this time,” he said. “Permission to come aboard?”
“Granted. Though I am only in charge until we get Steve back.”
“I never doubted that,” Coulson said, and headed across the gangplank just as Stark emerged upstairs. “Ho, Stark.”
“Oh, no.” Stark pointed at Coulson. “No, no, no. I am not having one of Fury’s loobies on board, spying and reporting back to that one-eyed tyrant.”
“Your acting captain already invited me, Sir Stark.” Coulson gave him a bland smile. Natasha had to hide her own smile as she righted herself and walked back down to the deck, ignoring the lines that were there to help her balance. “I’ve heard word your ship is in need of a quartermaster. Reporting for duty.”
“We need to talk about taking liberties with taking on new crew,” Stark told Natasha as she hopped back onto deck.
She shrugged. “We’ve no quartermaster, master gunner, top rigger, or captain, for that matter. We need all the help we can get.”
Stark gave them a look that said he was in no way pleased by this development and headed back to his maps. “Quartermaster bunks with the rest of the crew,” Natasha said to Coulson. “My apologies for that.”
“I am, of course, happy to go wherever assigned, Captain Romanova.”
“Do you need to be shown around?”
“I’ll find my way,” Coulson said. Natasha nodded and began climbing the foremast to check the lines.
Within the hour, Bruce had brought all of his tools aboard and Natasha had introduced herself to both Miss Jane Foster and to the crew that was temporarily hers. Without Steve, the job of captaining the ship fell to her, which was puzzling. Steve had picked her for his first mate before they’d even solidified their plans to mutiny against Justin Hammer, then captain of the Deviant. There had always been the undercurrent of “If the curse takes me or if I die, the ship will be yours” in his choice, which puzzled Natasha. Nobody on the Angel had any business trusting her, and yet they never questioned her. Well, everybody but Stark, that was. Stark questioned everything. It was just his nature. It made her perverse, likely, but she found comfort in that.
They caught the tide, the Angel once more underway on a new adventure, missing its captain, its master gunner and most importantly to Natasha, its top rigger. Thankfully, life on a ship changed little, no matter who one served, so they were able to make up their losses among the crew, at least for the first couple of days. They’d sailed under a pirate’s flag for the better part of two years, and Clint had made the claim time and again that the only thing that had changed between piracy and the Navy were the outfits those in charge wore. Also that there were women in the command structure, Natasha had always pointed out. No Navy on the planet would have Lady Pepper Potts as a bosun on any ship-and every Navy was the poorer for it, in Natasha’s opinion.
Two days into their journey found them in the midst of a surprise storm, one that had arose without warning and left the way it came. Every inch gained came at the frustration of the crew, who fought throughout the night. Stark’s modifications to the ship, however, held fast, so dawn saw the ship in one piece, riding the swells and only a little off course.
Still, it was days more before they heard the call from the crow’s nest of “Land ahoy!”
“Bearings?” Natasha called back to Volstagg, who had taken his shift in the crow’s nest upon finishing the day’s dinner. He called out a bearing that was surprisingly accurate for a man who had been sent along by Fury to run the galley.
Natasha pulled the spy-glass from the pouch she kept strung to her belt. As her hands were full with the rigging she was attempting to lash back, she tossed the glass to Pepper, who was nearest.
“I think that might be our island,” Pepper said after a moment. “Our cook’s eyes are better than we knew.”
“Fetch Stark,” Natasha told the nearest deckhand, who scrambled away. There had been rumbles of discontent among the hands hired out of Port Royal, where Stark and Pepper had set sail originally. They hadn’t been too keen to serve underneath a woman. Natasha had dealt with that by meting out punishments the minute they dared cross her. Now they jumped to do her bidding almost before she ordered it.
“Do you think the bounty hunter was telling the truth?” Pepper asked, handing the spy-glass back.
“We’ll soon find out.”
Bruce climbed onto the quarterdeck. “We made good time in spite of everything,” he said, shading his eyes as he peered into the distance. His tunic was threadbare and ripped from years alone in the jungle; Pepper had already begun to sew him a new one, Natasha knew. “How is she doing, Natasha?”
“She’s seaworthy, Banner,” Natasha said. When Pepper looked slightly put out by that, Natasha sighed inwardly. She inclined her head and remembered her manners. Pepper had personally seen to most of the new masts; they fell under her jurisdiction, as she was the ship’s bosun. “The new foremast is probably why we’ve made as good a time as we have, though. It’s quite the addition.”
Stark joined them. After peering through the glass, he closed it with a careless snap that made Natasha glare at him. That glass had cost Clint a pretty coin. “Good, my calculations are as perfect as ever. That inlet matches the drawings I was given. So.” He turned to them with a bright look. “Who’s our raiding party? We’ll need somebody faint of heart, I suspect there is something quite amiss on that island.”
They left Coulson in charge, over Stark’s protests (though the sailmaster was somewhat mollified by Natasha naming Pepper first mate in her absence). Bruce came along in the event that either Steve or Thor required medical attention. She did not expect Jane Foster, who’d thrown herself into whatever duties Natasha had assigned, to insist upon coming, but Stark didn’t have a problem. Volstagg completed their party.
Once they had pulled the longboat onto the beach, Natasha let Stark lead the way. His iron leg put him at a disadvantage in this climate, but he said nothing as they marched on. “Does this island have a name?” Jane, who looked uncomfortable in the trousers she’d borrowed from Natasha, asked.
“If it does, it’s certainly not listed on any of my charts,” Stark said. Natasha wasn’t surprised; the Caribbean was dotted with thousands of tiny, nameless islands that didn’t amount to much. Some trees, some rocks, and if a stranded sailor was lucky, as they had been five years before, a freshwater stream. The larger islands could be crossed on foot in the course of a day or so. This island was much smaller than that: if Natasha had to guess, she would say that it would only take two hours at most to cross.
“I suppose,” Bruce said, “that means we could name it, Miss Foster.”
“Island of the Giant Yellow-Haired Man and the…Other Giant Yellow-Haired Man?” Stark asked. “That lacks poetry.”
“Perhaps it would sound better in French,” Natasha suggested.
Stark glanced back in surprise. “Did our acting captain just jest, Doctor Banner?” he asked.
“Keep a weather eye out for fresh water,” Natasha said, deciding not to address the taunt. “We’ve not used much on the ship, but every little bit helps.”
“That sounds more like Romanova,” Stark said, and Natasha didn’t bother to roll her eyes.
They cut through the jungle to the north, hacking away at vines that grew too thick to pass. That made Natasha nervous, as it was clear that nothing inhabited this island regularly. They saw no signs of other life. Could Stark’s bounty hunter be lying about what he had found?
And if Steve and Thor weren’t here, how much time had they wasted when they could be tracking Loki?
“Well, that is not a good sign,” Stark said, and Natasha unsheathed the cutlass over her left shoulder, moving into position to guard Jane. She craned to get a look, following Stark’s sight line. When she saw what he had indicated, she no longer doubted that they had the wrong island. She felt blood drain from her face.
“How…” Volstagg’s voice trailed off.
Dangling from the trees, too far off of the ground to be hanged, were three corpses. From their state of decay, Natasha guessed that they had been dead a month. Chunks of dried muscle clung to what bones were left, which told her there had, at one point, been birds on this island. The fact that the air was completely silent, however, sent goosebumps racing across Natasha’s arms and back.
Jane paled, but Natasha had to credit the woman for not becoming violently ill. Because Thor had waxed poetic for hours about his betrothed while serving on board the Avenging Angel, Natasha knew that Jane had led a sheltered life on an estate in the Bahamas, nothing that would prepare her for such a vision as the one that presented itself to them now. “How did they come to be like…that?”
“I know not, milady,” Volstagg said.
As one, Stark and Bruce turned to look at Natasha. She sighed and sheathed her cutlass. It took a moment for her to find handholds on the trunk of the tree, but she scurried up. She drew up level to the bodies and looked about, searching for any sign of how they had come to be strung up from the tree. There was nothing. “I don’t see anything. I’m going to climb onto the branch,” she called to the others.
“Do be careful!” Jane said.
Natasha did not hear Stark’s reply to that, but she imagined it wasn’t flattering, so she let it pass. Cautiously, she pulled herself up onto the branch, making sure she had gained her balance before she walked across the branch to the bodies. The ropes holding the bodies were evenly spaced, with nearly a meter between each. She recognized the knots as nautical, as well, which told her this wasn’t necessarily related to anything supernatural. It was also too precise to have been done in rage.
“Anything?” Stark asked.
“It was human, whatever that did this to these men,” Natasha said, scooting over to the next body.
“Human? As opposed to what?” Jane asked, sounding alarmed.
Clearly, Natasha thought, Thor really had left some details out of his history when meeting his betrothed. She tugged on the rope to test its heft and a bone broke loose from the body’s shoulder, plummeting to the ground and barely missing Bruce. “My apologies,” Natasha called when the doctor glared up at her. “These corpses are clearly more rotted than I had suspected.”
“Cut one down,” Stark said. “It will make it easier to see if the good doctor can determine how these unfortunate souls died.”
“This feels like an appropriate time to mention how little I have missed you, Stark,” Natasha said. Wrapping her legs around the branch to secure herself, she bent and began to saw at the rope with her knife. When the final fiber snapped, she grunted and took on the weight.
“Can you handle it?” Stark asked.
“It’s about three stone. I’ve handled worse, Stark.”
“We don’t need to hear what you and Barton get up to when we’re not around, Red.”
Natasha bit her thumb at him. From the ground, she heard Stark’s raucous laughter. It took her a minute to fashion a harness to carry the body down that would leave her hands free, but eventually, she began the climb down. She wondered if any of them had noticed the lack of avian life around them. It was unsettling just how quiet it was.
“So, just how many things do you have in common with your average jungle monkey?” Stark asked.
Natasha glared down at him. “I could drop this on you,” she said. “I assure you, nobody would be heartbroken.”
“Ahem,” Bruce said, clearing his throat. Stark, not in the least rebuked, grinned. Natasha was almost comforted by the fact that even though the crew of the Angel had gone their separate ways three years before, some things remained unchanged between them.
With that in mind, she touched down upon the jungle floor. She reached up to remove the corpse from her back.
Unfortunately, she was interrupted by a figure bursting through the foliage, cutlass out and flashing toward Tony Stark’s throat.
5. In the Cavern
Banner grabbed Stark and threw him to the side, leaping after him so that the attacker’s cutlass struck nothing but dead air. Before Natasha could leap at the attacker, there was another blur of something from her right. She yanked the skeleton from her back, pivoting in place, and swinging it as hard as she could. It crashed with the clatter of bones breaking into the second attacker, who had been aiming to strike at Jane. The woman-for it was a woman, tall and dark and wearing battered green armor-toppled to the ground.
“Sif?” Volstagg asked, gaping at the attacker.
A third enemy appeared out of nowhere. Sif climbed to her feet, shaking off bones and dust from the corpse. She had a cutlass in one hand, a knife in the other, and a look in her eye that made Natasha’s hackles rise.
Volstagg crossed swords with the third attacker, a man who looked like he hailed from the East. “These are Thor’s loyal servants,” he said. “They are not our enemies.”
“Then it is my fear, good man, that somebody here is very, very confused,” Stark said, climbing to his feet.
The first attacker, a blond man with the same look in his eye, went for Bruce. Stark leapt forward, blocking the strike with his iron arm. Natasha pushed Jane back out of the way of Sif’s blow, which came smashing down from above so hard that it nearly broke Natasha’s wrist as she moved to block with her cutlass. Their blades locked together. It took everything Natasha had to dodge the slice to the ribs that followed. She jumped into the air to avoid a swipe to the knees, kicking both feet into Sif’s chest. Momentum sent the other woman tumbling even as Natasha launched into a back-flip. She landed easily, but Volstagg was suddenly between them.
“No,” he said. “They’re-you can’t hurt them-”
“They’re trying to kill us,” Natasha said.
But the cook gave her such a ferocious look that she sighed. “Fine,” Natasha said as Volstagg dove forward, his giant mass enough to knock the third attacker back. “I will wound only.”
Without Volstagg between them, Sif charged. She had, Natasha realized, at least twice the strength of a full grown man. Every clash of their blades sang up her arms. In addition to being strong and immovable, Sif was fast; she parried every blow, dodged every thrust. Natasha’s superiority with the sharpened edge of any blade gave her very little advantage against such an opponent.
Her boot slipped on a wet leaf. With a hiss of air between her teeth, she went down to one knee, barely getting her sword up in time. Sif ignored the sword, grabbed a handful of Natasha’s tunic, and tossed her. The redhead flew, stomach in her throat. She twisted in midair, crashing hard into the ground and immediately flipping to her feet, sword up. She’d been thrown entirely free of the path, into a sandy clearing just beyond. To her left, there was the dark mouth of a cave opening.
Sif smashed through the underbrush. Natasha parried, darted in for a strike, danced back. Behind Sif, she saw a split-second glimpse of Jane through the trees, the woman pale-faced and terrified. “Run!” Natasha said, slicing at Sif’s ribcage. When Sif turned to see who she had addressed, Natasha threw all dignity to the side and delivered a solid kick to the other woman’s posterior. Sif wheeled, glaring. Natasha stuck her tongue out.
The juvenile tactic worked. Sif forgot all about Jane and chased Natasha, who sprinted for the cave. She hoped the cave wasn’t merely a shallow hole in a rock formation that had sprung up, almost unnaturally, in the middle of the clearing. It wasn’t: the entry to the cave led into a tunnel. Natasha dodged and wove, trusting her natural grace on the uneven terrain. Her boots splashed through puddles, her swords leaving sparks whenever she scraped the rock walls closing in on the side of her. Natasha ran on, hoping these tunnels weren’t going to lead to a dead end and possibly her own death.
The tunnel opened into a larger cavern dotted with stalagmites and crannies in the rock walls. In an open space, Sif held the clear advantage. But here, this could only be Natasha’s realm. She raced for the first stalagmite and ran up the foundation until she could back-flip over Sif. She landed and hit the woman, still mid-turn, with the flat of her blade. For an instant, Sif looked confused, like she wasn’t sure where she was.
And then her blade came down so hard that Natasha let out a cry and dropped her own. Pure luck had her tripping backwards and out of the way of Sif’s next blow. She yanked her second cutlass free. Yet more luck allowed her to knock the knife from Sif’s hand, evening the odds somewhat, but Natasha still fought on. She didn’t let the fear infect her, even though her right hand was throbbing. She kept it at bay, even though Sif came at her relentlessly, hacking and slashing at Natasha any way she could.
Natasha’s second mistake was that she miscalculated the distance of her next jump. Her skull bounced off of a stalagmite hard enough that sparks skittered across her vision. She landed on all fours with just enough mental awareness to roll away from the first blow. The second blow, however, she saw coming for her face-until it was blocked mid-swing.
Jane Foster, looking small and terrified, faced the giant of a woman in front of her, holding Natasha’s dropped cutlass. “Back away,” she said, her voice wavering. “I cannot let you-”
Sif swung in an arc that would clearly have taken Jane’s head off-if a giant roar hadn’t reverberated through the cave. It was enough to alter Sif’s swing just enough to miss Jane’s head by a hair.
Natasha’s bowels turned to water. She recognized that roar. Even as Sif stepped toward the cave entrance, puzzled, Natasha sprang to her feet and yanked Jane away. “Run,” she said. She hauled on Jane so that the other woman had no choice but to come with her. “Faster. Run faster.”
“What is that?”
“Banner,” Natasha said.
Jane glanced behind them and let out a cry. They sprinted down another tunnel, hooking a sharp right when the tunnel came to an intersection. Behind them, Natasha could hear precisely what had scared Jane. She recognized the breathing and the roaring, the sound of every object in Banner’s path being smashed to pieces.
Doctor Banner’s other half had come out to play.
As one, Natasha, Jane, and Sif skidded into some sort of chamber. The cave once again abruptly changed, this time from something natural to something obviously man-made. Soft blue light glowed around the base of all of the walls, making Natasha’s hair stand on end. She got a glimpse of runic scribing on all of the walls, but she was more interested in the fact that there seemed to be two pedestals in the center of the cavern, upon which giant blocks of ice, easily large enough to encase a full grown man, rested.
Even more interesting was: “Thor!”
There could be no mistaking Thor’s handsome visage underneath the surface of the nearest block of ice. The other block held Steve; Natasha recognized the blue coat, lighter than his officer’s uniform but still blue.
She was, however, a little bit too preoccupied with the fact that they were currently facing a madwoman with a sword and the possibility of an angry Doctor Banner showing up to process the fact that two of the men she trusted most in the world were frozen and displayed in giant blocks of ice.
So when Jane raced to Thor’s side, Natasha turned and whipped out a throwing knife, aiming for the wall just behind Sif’s head. It hit with a BOOM that shook the floor, making all three of them duck.
For a fleeting second, a look of confusion crossed Sif’s face. “Erm,” Jane said, and Natasha dove at her attacker, hoping to take advantage. Sif batted her away like she was nothing more than a fly.
Natasha hit the wall, hard, with her back. Again, there was the sound of a minor explosion, only this time, the walls shook as well. Sif shook her head like a dog emerging from the water, looking about in blatant confusion. “What is that?” Jane asked.
“I don’t know.” An idea struck; Natasha hit the wall with the flat of her injured hand, watching Sif’s face.
The woman blinked, and there was suddenly life behind her eyes: that of a puzzled, conflicted woman who had no idea how she had come to be holding a sword.
“Stop doing that!” Jane said.
“It’s affecting her.” Natasha ducked under a slice-which hit the wall and made Sif clutch her temple in pain. “I think whatever is in this room, it’s connected to whatever it is that’s possessing her.”
Of course, she thought, a possessed woman was no longer her biggest problem. Bruce’s demon was out in full force. And before long, the demonic form would come looking for them. It had a penchant for chaos, and it enjoyed chasing Natasha. She had enough nightmares about that night aboard the Red Skull as it was.
The only one who had any hope of stopping Bruce in this form, Natasha knew, was also currently encased in a giant block of ice. “You have intelligence and your wits,” she said to Jane as she kicked Sif in the side, sending the woman sprawling. Tirelessly, Sif sprang to her feet and came at her again. Natasha slapped the wall to make her stumble. “See if you can find some way to get the men out of the ice. We’re going to need them.”
“How? This is clearly some sort of sorcery.”
“If whoever had done this wanted them dead-” Natasha parried a blow, ducked, and kicked off the wall to deliver a roundhouse kick to Sif’s midsection. “-they would have just killed them outright. There is some way to remove them from the ice.”
“Oh.” Jane’s eyes widened. She moved away from the wall and darted toward the coffins. Sif checked her swing and turned, unerringly, toward Jane. Whoever had iced Thor and Steve had set up Thor’s loyal servants as guardians to keep others from approaching the temple. That meant that anybody who approached the men in ice would be Sif’s first priority. She wondered if the other two guardians fighting Stark and Volstagg had abandoned their fight the way Sif had just abandoned hers. Natasha dove between Sif and Jane in an attempt to distract the guardian. Sif gave her an annoyed look.
“This is-this is Norse,” Jane said. “I recognize this.”
“You can read Norse?”
“Thor was forever sending me books from his homeland. He wanted to make sure I did not arrive completely ignorant, I think.” Jane’s eyes scoured the walls. “Keep her distracted, I’ll try and free Thor and Captain Rogers.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Natasha abandoned all pretense of fighting with Sif and began pounding on the wall with the hilt of her sword. The percussive blast of every hit hurt her ears, but it kept Sif crumpled on the ground, fists clenched against her temples. In the space between hits, she could hear Jane muttering in Norse. Her accent was likely terrible, but Natasha had never learned any of the Nordic languages, so she couldn’t tell. When Sif let out a cry, Natasha took pity on her and clubbed her in the side of the head.
The woman dropped like a stone.
“One problem down,” Natasha said. “Any ideas, Miss Foster?”
“Jane,” Jane said absently, still staring at the wall. “I have…actually, let me…”
She raised her cutlass, which Natasha fully intended to teach her how to use provided they survived this, and slammed it down hard onto the ice directly over Thor. Blue light exploded like a flame from the point where her blade had struck, knocking Jane and Natasha from their feet. Natasha blinked away the afterimage of the light to see Sif’s eyes open once more. She swore; there was all of her hard work undone. When the warrior sentinel headed for Jane, completely in the thrall of whatever had possessed her, Natasha levered herself up onto her hands, flipped up, wrapped her thighs around Sif’s neck, and twisted, viciously. Sif’s back hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from a normal woman.
Sif merely climbed back to her feet.
“Whatever you just did,” Natasha said as she twisted to knock Sif’s feet out from under her, “it seems to have had some sort of effect.”
“We are going to have a talk about so many things if we live through this,” Jane said, and hit the ice again right as a roar, much closer and much more terrifying, rumbled through the entire cavern.
Because Natasha had prepared for this blast , she landed on her feet and tackled Sif again. It was awkward and clumsy, given that the angle wasn’t ideal, but Sif still went down to her knees with a grunt. From behind her, Natasha heard heavy, pounding footsteps. Instinct made her haul on Sif, spinning them both out of the way just in time.
One of Bruce’s fists, bigger than any ham Natasha had ever seen, swept through the space Sif and Natasha had just inhabited. Natasha didn’t bother with a throwing knife. It would only irritate Bruce’s demonic form. She somersaulted forward to avoid being trapped between the wall and Bruce. True to form, the giant man gave a trousers-wetting terrifying grin and swung again, intended to keep batting at her like a cat with a mouse.
Natasha did not particularly like feeling like a mouse.
“Stay out of sight,” she called to Jane. “If he can’t see you-”
Of course, Bruce turned his head and spotted Jane. Natasha swore under her breath, hoped that Clint would understand why she had done what she was about to do when the others told him she was dead, and threw herself on top of the demon’s nearest arm. He roared and shook her off; she flew once more, backward, hitting the wall so hard that black descended over her vision. When it cleared, she saw the fist hurtling straight for her face, and ducked.
Bruce’s punch hit the wall with a gigantic FWOOSH of noise that made Natasha clap her hands over her ears and cry out, crumpling forward. It made the demon back up a step or two in confusion. After a second, he glowered at the wall that had essentially assaulted him and began to pound his fists again and again into the wall. Noise filled the air loud enough to shatter eardrums; Natasha curled into a ball, her hands over her ears. One wall of sound slammed into her after the next, punctuated by Bruce’s roaring at the offending wall and sound.
Then Sif, of all people, threw a rock.
It hit the demon between the shoulder blades. In the echo of the noise, he froze, and Natasha’s breath caught in her throat. When he turned to look at Sif, disbelieving outrage on his green, overlarge features, the woman smirked.
“Care to hit something that might hit back, monster?” she asked. The dead look in her eyes was completely gone, Natasha saw.
Bruce roared. He clearly did not like being challenged by this puny mortal. When he raced forward, Sif dodged aside.
She could hold her own against the demon for now, and Natasha wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The minute Bruce was truly distracted, Natasha pushed off of the ground and crossed the room in two strides. “Striking the ice seems to do something, as that drew the sentinel’s attention to you,” she said to Jane.
Jane, however, was too busy gaping at the fight between the demon and the woman who had been doing her best to kill them only thirty seconds before. “What is happening? Who is that? Is that a monster from the island?”
“No, that one we brought with us. We should use the distraction while we can get it. Quickly, think, if striking the ice garners a response, surely there’s something we can do.”
“Perhaps…” Jane’s eyebrows drew together as she studied the pallets of ice on either side of her. “Perhaps there’s something in how we strike the ice?”
“I have naught but metal,” Natasha said. She laid a hand on her gun. “And this.”
Jane went pale. “That might be a bit much. What if you shoot the men beneath the ice as well?”
They would survive it, Natasha knew, though it would lead to some discomfort for a few days. “I once saw a man take down a stone wall by hitting it in the right place,” she said, thinking it over. “Perhaps this is a case for precision over brawn.”
“You could be right.” Jane began to run her hands over the ice, frantically. From the way she had her jaw clenched, it looked painfully cold. Natasha’s estimation of Thor’s betrothed went up another notch.
Across the cave, the demon threw Sif. She landed, hopped to her feet, and laughed. Perhaps being completely mad was a Norwegian thing, Natasha thought.
“Wait, wait, do you see this?” Jane bent over the ice, close enough that the tip of her nose was nearly touching it. After a second, Natasha could discern that there was a runic symbol of some sort etched into the ice, directly above Thor’s heart. “It’s the only thing I can find. It must be significant.”
The demon hit Sif. She took longer to recuperate this time, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth as she pushed herself to her feet and gained an unsteady stance in the rubble from the cave wall. Only some pieces of the rocks strewn upon ground glowed with the same faint blue as the rest of the walls. Others were completely dark, like regular rock. When she looked at the wall to her left, which was still whole, Natasha noticed that the glow did not come from the rock itself but from a thousand little symbols carved into it.
Breaking those symbols like the demon had broken the thrall over Sif, she realized.
The tattoo on the fisherman’s shoulder had had a slice through it. He had become free of the thrall, too.
“It is significant,” she said, and pulled out her dagger. With her injured hand, she pulled Jane clear so that she could stab her blade deep into the ice, right in the center of the rune.
This time, the blue light explosion threw both women clear across the room.
Natasha landed in an ungraceful heap, the breath leaving her lungs. When she moved, pain flared from her left ankle. Somehow, it had gotten wedged into the rocks. She pushed Jane off of her, relieved when the other woman moved onto all fours. At least she was conscious.
Natasha’s luck, unfortunately, chose that moment to run out. She turned to look at the ice pedestal, to see if her experiment had worked, but a shadow fell over her. Instead, she looked up into the huge, grinning visage of Bruce’s demon. He ignored Jane completely, leering down at Natasha. Desperately, she scrambled back, but her ankle was trapped, absolutely stuck, and Sif wasn’t there to provide a distraction.
The beast’s chest shook a little in silent laughter as he reached one gargantuan hand toward her.
Then something metal blurred as it flew through the air, catching the hulking beast on the temple. Bruce stumbled back and turned, betrayed.
Thor, Duke of Asgard, stood on the same table where he’d been entrapped in the ice. He was glistening, dripping wet, one hand held out for the battle hammer that had been cursed alongside him. It flew back into his hand.
“Thor!” Jane said as the beast rushed him.
Natasha gritted her teeth and yanked until her foot came free with some ankle pain and some even more annoying scratches on her boot. It would need to be oiled later. “Go get Sif to safety,” she said to Jane. “Now that we know what to look for, I tcan free Steve while Thor distracts Bruce.”
Clearly Jane had questions, but she hurried toward the other side of the cavern, where it looked like Sif was beginning to stir.
Natasha, on the other hand, rolled so that she was protected by the stone table that had housed Thor. The duke and the beast fought, smashing through the entire room so quickly that Natasha wondered idly at the possibility of an avalanche of rocks killing them all. She pushed that cheerful thought from her mind, retrieved the knife she’d used to free Thor, and jumped onto the slab of ice holding Steve captive.
It was so cold it burned. She gritted her teeth once more, limbered up as much as she could and, crouched on top of the ice slab, drove her knife into the tiny rune over Steve’s heart.
This time, as she suspected it would, the blast knocked her straight into the air. She soared up, temporarily losing her grasp on her knife. She caught it right before she landed, one boot on either side of a very confused, very wet Steve Roger’s ribcage.
He blinked up at her in surprise. “Natasha?” he asked.
“Ho, Captain,” Natasha said. With a nimbleness that did not betray her injured ankle, she jumped off the table. She then hauled him off after her in time to spare him from being crushed under one of Bruce’s fists. He landed practically on top of her, but immediately rolled off. It was long enough for her to know that the water dripping off of his skin was freezing. “Welcome back from the dead.”
“Was I dead? Mostly I just feel cold.” Steve patted his hips, searching for a weapon. Natasha handed him her first cutlass and picked up the second from where Jane had dropped it. Steve watched Thor and Bruce fight with wide eyes. “What is happening?”
“Seems like you and Thor were under some sort of sorcery.” Natasha winced when Thor was thrown into a wall. The explosive noise made Steve duck, but Natasha shook her head. “Bruce got a little angry. Do you remember anything? By our accounts, it’s been some eighteen months since anybody has heard from you or Thor.”
“Perhaps we could discuss this later?” Steve asked. “Now does not seem like the opportune time.”
Across the cavern, thankfully out of the fighting path of the two men, Jane was helping Sif sit up. “That might be for the best,” Natasha said, and made a break for the door, Steve not far behind. They knew from past experience that Thor could handle Bruce until the man calmed down to return to his human form. Until then, it was safer not to be underfoot.
Since Sif was able to run, they weren’t hampered as they escaped the cave. Natasha followed after Steve as he led the way into the bright sunlight, all four of them blinking against its harshness. They found the others in the clearing just beyond the cave. The other sentinels, like Sif, were no longer possessed. The blond one was wrapping a wound on his arm while the other conferred with Stark and Volstagg.
“Oh,” Stark said, blinking at all of them but particularly at Steve. “You’re alive. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Good to see you, too, Stark,” Steve said.
“Pardon me,” Jane, who was short of breath and now red in the face because of it, “but I would very much appreciate it if somebody explained something. Anything at all.”
Part IIb
Author: frea-o
A Gift For: icecream_junkie
Rating/Warning/Pairings: Please see the first post for these.
Summary/Prompt Used: Tortuga, 1745. It’s been three years since they last sailed together, but when an old enemy resurfaces and takes one of their own, it’s up to the crew of the Avenging Angel to assemble and take to the high seas once more. Or: the one where everybody is a pirate except the two canonical characters with eyepatches. Drink up me ’earties, yo-ho.
Part: I | IIa | IIb | III | IV | V
4. Île de la Glace
They gathered, and it was like no time at all had passed. There were provisions to be procured before high tide-Fury was all too willing to help out in that regard, sending Hill and a convoy of those left on Tortuga to the ship with barrels of salted beef and pork, and fresh water, a brace of hens, and bunches of lemons. Even No Legs Charlie sent supplies, as several of his crew had been taken in Loki’s attack. Natasha watched the production as she gathered up her weapons from her various hidey-holes all over Tortuga. She sharpened her cutlass, ensured she had enough ammunition for her flintlock pistols, and oiled Clint’s spare bow. Sailing with the tide that very day was an ambitious goal, but if there was anybody determined enough, Natasha would readily admit that Tony Stark fit that description. Once she had packed everything she would need for the journey, she found him in the sailmaster’s cabin, coat tossed carelessly aside and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The metal brace that extended from his shoulder blade to the tip of his longest finger glinted in the low light. The skin underneath was waxy, the arm atrophied.
“You made good time,” he said without looking up at her.
“Don’t own much. Is Banner aboard yet?”
“Nay. Still gathering his tools, I imagine.” As the ship’s carpenter and surgeon, Bruce took particular care in his tools and books. Since that care had saved the life of almost everybody who served aboard the Avenging Angel, nobody minded. Stark set aside his quill. “The captain’s cabin stands empty.”
“Steve will be glad to hear that. I’ll be in my bunk.” Natasha continued on to the first mate’s cabin. Before their mutiny had turned the ship from the Deviant to the Avenging Angel, the room had been occupied by an odious Russian named Ivan Vanko. Natasha had wasted no time removing all traces of the man. Now the cabin was like every other living space she occupied: bare, plain, and devoid of anything that might mark it as hers.
Stark had done some carpentry work on the cabin in the three years he had had the Angel. It was a little larger than she remembered, but it was still a close fit. There was space only for a bunk and a small table. Natasha hung her canvas bag on a designated hook on the wall, set Clint’s at the foot of the bunk-it was made for somebody taller, so she would have plenty of foot-room-and after a moment of debate placed the water-proofed box she carried in a hold beneath the bunk. It was the first place a marauder would look, but the box was simply too big to squirrel away like she did with the ring she wore on a chain around her neck. That, she slid into a compartment she’d whittled away into the crossbeams that made up the ceiling.
Officially unpacked, she went above. With Clint was not around to examine the lines, somebody needed to fill that absence. She’d just clambered up the bowsprit to check the pulleys when she spotted a figure striding down the dock. “Decided to finally get your sea legs again?” she called.
She could tell he hadn’t spotted her, but Coulson took in the sight of Natasha, legs wrapped around the bowsprit while she dangled upside down, with nary a blink. “Fury seems to think I’d be more help aboard the Angel this time,” he said. “Permission to come aboard?”
“Granted. Though I am only in charge until we get Steve back.”
“I never doubted that,” Coulson said, and headed across the gangplank just as Stark emerged upstairs. “Ho, Stark.”
“Oh, no.” Stark pointed at Coulson. “No, no, no. I am not having one of Fury’s loobies on board, spying and reporting back to that one-eyed tyrant.”
“Your acting captain already invited me, Sir Stark.” Coulson gave him a bland smile. Natasha had to hide her own smile as she righted herself and walked back down to the deck, ignoring the lines that were there to help her balance. “I’ve heard word your ship is in need of a quartermaster. Reporting for duty.”
“We need to talk about taking liberties with taking on new crew,” Stark told Natasha as she hopped back onto deck.
She shrugged. “We’ve no quartermaster, master gunner, top rigger, or captain, for that matter. We need all the help we can get.”
Stark gave them a look that said he was in no way pleased by this development and headed back to his maps. “Quartermaster bunks with the rest of the crew,” Natasha said to Coulson. “My apologies for that.”
“I am, of course, happy to go wherever assigned, Captain Romanova.”
“Do you need to be shown around?”
“I’ll find my way,” Coulson said. Natasha nodded and began climbing the foremast to check the lines.
Within the hour, Bruce had brought all of his tools aboard and Natasha had introduced herself to both Miss Jane Foster and to the crew that was temporarily hers. Without Steve, the job of captaining the ship fell to her, which was puzzling. Steve had picked her for his first mate before they’d even solidified their plans to mutiny against Justin Hammer, then captain of the Deviant. There had always been the undercurrent of “If the curse takes me or if I die, the ship will be yours” in his choice, which puzzled Natasha. Nobody on the Angel had any business trusting her, and yet they never questioned her. Well, everybody but Stark, that was. Stark questioned everything. It was just his nature. It made her perverse, likely, but she found comfort in that.
They caught the tide, the Angel once more underway on a new adventure, missing its captain, its master gunner and most importantly to Natasha, its top rigger. Thankfully, life on a ship changed little, no matter who one served, so they were able to make up their losses among the crew, at least for the first couple of days. They’d sailed under a pirate’s flag for the better part of two years, and Clint had made the claim time and again that the only thing that had changed between piracy and the Navy were the outfits those in charge wore. Also that there were women in the command structure, Natasha had always pointed out. No Navy on the planet would have Lady Pepper Potts as a bosun on any ship-and every Navy was the poorer for it, in Natasha’s opinion.
Two days into their journey found them in the midst of a surprise storm, one that had arose without warning and left the way it came. Every inch gained came at the frustration of the crew, who fought throughout the night. Stark’s modifications to the ship, however, held fast, so dawn saw the ship in one piece, riding the swells and only a little off course.
Still, it was days more before they heard the call from the crow’s nest of “Land ahoy!”
“Bearings?” Natasha called back to Volstagg, who had taken his shift in the crow’s nest upon finishing the day’s dinner. He called out a bearing that was surprisingly accurate for a man who had been sent along by Fury to run the galley.
Natasha pulled the spy-glass from the pouch she kept strung to her belt. As her hands were full with the rigging she was attempting to lash back, she tossed the glass to Pepper, who was nearest.
“I think that might be our island,” Pepper said after a moment. “Our cook’s eyes are better than we knew.”
“Fetch Stark,” Natasha told the nearest deckhand, who scrambled away. There had been rumbles of discontent among the hands hired out of Port Royal, where Stark and Pepper had set sail originally. They hadn’t been too keen to serve underneath a woman. Natasha had dealt with that by meting out punishments the minute they dared cross her. Now they jumped to do her bidding almost before she ordered it.
“Do you think the bounty hunter was telling the truth?” Pepper asked, handing the spy-glass back.
“We’ll soon find out.”
Bruce climbed onto the quarterdeck. “We made good time in spite of everything,” he said, shading his eyes as he peered into the distance. His tunic was threadbare and ripped from years alone in the jungle; Pepper had already begun to sew him a new one, Natasha knew. “How is she doing, Natasha?”
“She’s seaworthy, Banner,” Natasha said. When Pepper looked slightly put out by that, Natasha sighed inwardly. She inclined her head and remembered her manners. Pepper had personally seen to most of the new masts; they fell under her jurisdiction, as she was the ship’s bosun. “The new foremast is probably why we’ve made as good a time as we have, though. It’s quite the addition.”
Stark joined them. After peering through the glass, he closed it with a careless snap that made Natasha glare at him. That glass had cost Clint a pretty coin. “Good, my calculations are as perfect as ever. That inlet matches the drawings I was given. So.” He turned to them with a bright look. “Who’s our raiding party? We’ll need somebody faint of heart, I suspect there is something quite amiss on that island.”
They left Coulson in charge, over Stark’s protests (though the sailmaster was somewhat mollified by Natasha naming Pepper first mate in her absence). Bruce came along in the event that either Steve or Thor required medical attention. She did not expect Jane Foster, who’d thrown herself into whatever duties Natasha had assigned, to insist upon coming, but Stark didn’t have a problem. Volstagg completed their party.
Once they had pulled the longboat onto the beach, Natasha let Stark lead the way. His iron leg put him at a disadvantage in this climate, but he said nothing as they marched on. “Does this island have a name?” Jane, who looked uncomfortable in the trousers she’d borrowed from Natasha, asked.
“If it does, it’s certainly not listed on any of my charts,” Stark said. Natasha wasn’t surprised; the Caribbean was dotted with thousands of tiny, nameless islands that didn’t amount to much. Some trees, some rocks, and if a stranded sailor was lucky, as they had been five years before, a freshwater stream. The larger islands could be crossed on foot in the course of a day or so. This island was much smaller than that: if Natasha had to guess, she would say that it would only take two hours at most to cross.
“I suppose,” Bruce said, “that means we could name it, Miss Foster.”
“Island of the Giant Yellow-Haired Man and the…Other Giant Yellow-Haired Man?” Stark asked. “That lacks poetry.”
“Perhaps it would sound better in French,” Natasha suggested.
Stark glanced back in surprise. “Did our acting captain just jest, Doctor Banner?” he asked.
“Keep a weather eye out for fresh water,” Natasha said, deciding not to address the taunt. “We’ve not used much on the ship, but every little bit helps.”
“That sounds more like Romanova,” Stark said, and Natasha didn’t bother to roll her eyes.
They cut through the jungle to the north, hacking away at vines that grew too thick to pass. That made Natasha nervous, as it was clear that nothing inhabited this island regularly. They saw no signs of other life. Could Stark’s bounty hunter be lying about what he had found?
And if Steve and Thor weren’t here, how much time had they wasted when they could be tracking Loki?
“Well, that is not a good sign,” Stark said, and Natasha unsheathed the cutlass over her left shoulder, moving into position to guard Jane. She craned to get a look, following Stark’s sight line. When she saw what he had indicated, she no longer doubted that they had the wrong island. She felt blood drain from her face.
“How…” Volstagg’s voice trailed off.
Dangling from the trees, too far off of the ground to be hanged, were three corpses. From their state of decay, Natasha guessed that they had been dead a month. Chunks of dried muscle clung to what bones were left, which told her there had, at one point, been birds on this island. The fact that the air was completely silent, however, sent goosebumps racing across Natasha’s arms and back.
Jane paled, but Natasha had to credit the woman for not becoming violently ill. Because Thor had waxed poetic for hours about his betrothed while serving on board the Avenging Angel, Natasha knew that Jane had led a sheltered life on an estate in the Bahamas, nothing that would prepare her for such a vision as the one that presented itself to them now. “How did they come to be like…that?”
“I know not, milady,” Volstagg said.
As one, Stark and Bruce turned to look at Natasha. She sighed and sheathed her cutlass. It took a moment for her to find handholds on the trunk of the tree, but she scurried up. She drew up level to the bodies and looked about, searching for any sign of how they had come to be strung up from the tree. There was nothing. “I don’t see anything. I’m going to climb onto the branch,” she called to the others.
“Do be careful!” Jane said.
Natasha did not hear Stark’s reply to that, but she imagined it wasn’t flattering, so she let it pass. Cautiously, she pulled herself up onto the branch, making sure she had gained her balance before she walked across the branch to the bodies. The ropes holding the bodies were evenly spaced, with nearly a meter between each. She recognized the knots as nautical, as well, which told her this wasn’t necessarily related to anything supernatural. It was also too precise to have been done in rage.
“Anything?” Stark asked.
“It was human, whatever that did this to these men,” Natasha said, scooting over to the next body.
“Human? As opposed to what?” Jane asked, sounding alarmed.
Clearly, Natasha thought, Thor really had left some details out of his history when meeting his betrothed. She tugged on the rope to test its heft and a bone broke loose from the body’s shoulder, plummeting to the ground and barely missing Bruce. “My apologies,” Natasha called when the doctor glared up at her. “These corpses are clearly more rotted than I had suspected.”
“Cut one down,” Stark said. “It will make it easier to see if the good doctor can determine how these unfortunate souls died.”
“This feels like an appropriate time to mention how little I have missed you, Stark,” Natasha said. Wrapping her legs around the branch to secure herself, she bent and began to saw at the rope with her knife. When the final fiber snapped, she grunted and took on the weight.
“Can you handle it?” Stark asked.
“It’s about three stone. I’ve handled worse, Stark.”
“We don’t need to hear what you and Barton get up to when we’re not around, Red.”
Natasha bit her thumb at him. From the ground, she heard Stark’s raucous laughter. It took her a minute to fashion a harness to carry the body down that would leave her hands free, but eventually, she began the climb down. She wondered if any of them had noticed the lack of avian life around them. It was unsettling just how quiet it was.
“So, just how many things do you have in common with your average jungle monkey?” Stark asked.
Natasha glared down at him. “I could drop this on you,” she said. “I assure you, nobody would be heartbroken.”
“Ahem,” Bruce said, clearing his throat. Stark, not in the least rebuked, grinned. Natasha was almost comforted by the fact that even though the crew of the Angel had gone their separate ways three years before, some things remained unchanged between them.
With that in mind, she touched down upon the jungle floor. She reached up to remove the corpse from her back.
Unfortunately, she was interrupted by a figure bursting through the foliage, cutlass out and flashing toward Tony Stark’s throat.
5. In the Cavern
Banner grabbed Stark and threw him to the side, leaping after him so that the attacker’s cutlass struck nothing but dead air. Before Natasha could leap at the attacker, there was another blur of something from her right. She yanked the skeleton from her back, pivoting in place, and swinging it as hard as she could. It crashed with the clatter of bones breaking into the second attacker, who had been aiming to strike at Jane. The woman-for it was a woman, tall and dark and wearing battered green armor-toppled to the ground.
“Sif?” Volstagg asked, gaping at the attacker.
A third enemy appeared out of nowhere. Sif climbed to her feet, shaking off bones and dust from the corpse. She had a cutlass in one hand, a knife in the other, and a look in her eye that made Natasha’s hackles rise.
Volstagg crossed swords with the third attacker, a man who looked like he hailed from the East. “These are Thor’s loyal servants,” he said. “They are not our enemies.”
“Then it is my fear, good man, that somebody here is very, very confused,” Stark said, climbing to his feet.
The first attacker, a blond man with the same look in his eye, went for Bruce. Stark leapt forward, blocking the strike with his iron arm. Natasha pushed Jane back out of the way of Sif’s blow, which came smashing down from above so hard that it nearly broke Natasha’s wrist as she moved to block with her cutlass. Their blades locked together. It took everything Natasha had to dodge the slice to the ribs that followed. She jumped into the air to avoid a swipe to the knees, kicking both feet into Sif’s chest. Momentum sent the other woman tumbling even as Natasha launched into a back-flip. She landed easily, but Volstagg was suddenly between them.
“No,” he said. “They’re-you can’t hurt them-”
“They’re trying to kill us,” Natasha said.
But the cook gave her such a ferocious look that she sighed. “Fine,” Natasha said as Volstagg dove forward, his giant mass enough to knock the third attacker back. “I will wound only.”
Without Volstagg between them, Sif charged. She had, Natasha realized, at least twice the strength of a full grown man. Every clash of their blades sang up her arms. In addition to being strong and immovable, Sif was fast; she parried every blow, dodged every thrust. Natasha’s superiority with the sharpened edge of any blade gave her very little advantage against such an opponent.
Her boot slipped on a wet leaf. With a hiss of air between her teeth, she went down to one knee, barely getting her sword up in time. Sif ignored the sword, grabbed a handful of Natasha’s tunic, and tossed her. The redhead flew, stomach in her throat. She twisted in midair, crashing hard into the ground and immediately flipping to her feet, sword up. She’d been thrown entirely free of the path, into a sandy clearing just beyond. To her left, there was the dark mouth of a cave opening.
Sif smashed through the underbrush. Natasha parried, darted in for a strike, danced back. Behind Sif, she saw a split-second glimpse of Jane through the trees, the woman pale-faced and terrified. “Run!” Natasha said, slicing at Sif’s ribcage. When Sif turned to see who she had addressed, Natasha threw all dignity to the side and delivered a solid kick to the other woman’s posterior. Sif wheeled, glaring. Natasha stuck her tongue out.
The juvenile tactic worked. Sif forgot all about Jane and chased Natasha, who sprinted for the cave. She hoped the cave wasn’t merely a shallow hole in a rock formation that had sprung up, almost unnaturally, in the middle of the clearing. It wasn’t: the entry to the cave led into a tunnel. Natasha dodged and wove, trusting her natural grace on the uneven terrain. Her boots splashed through puddles, her swords leaving sparks whenever she scraped the rock walls closing in on the side of her. Natasha ran on, hoping these tunnels weren’t going to lead to a dead end and possibly her own death.
The tunnel opened into a larger cavern dotted with stalagmites and crannies in the rock walls. In an open space, Sif held the clear advantage. But here, this could only be Natasha’s realm. She raced for the first stalagmite and ran up the foundation until she could back-flip over Sif. She landed and hit the woman, still mid-turn, with the flat of her blade. For an instant, Sif looked confused, like she wasn’t sure where she was.
And then her blade came down so hard that Natasha let out a cry and dropped her own. Pure luck had her tripping backwards and out of the way of Sif’s next blow. She yanked her second cutlass free. Yet more luck allowed her to knock the knife from Sif’s hand, evening the odds somewhat, but Natasha still fought on. She didn’t let the fear infect her, even though her right hand was throbbing. She kept it at bay, even though Sif came at her relentlessly, hacking and slashing at Natasha any way she could.
Natasha’s second mistake was that she miscalculated the distance of her next jump. Her skull bounced off of a stalagmite hard enough that sparks skittered across her vision. She landed on all fours with just enough mental awareness to roll away from the first blow. The second blow, however, she saw coming for her face-until it was blocked mid-swing.
Jane Foster, looking small and terrified, faced the giant of a woman in front of her, holding Natasha’s dropped cutlass. “Back away,” she said, her voice wavering. “I cannot let you-”
Sif swung in an arc that would clearly have taken Jane’s head off-if a giant roar hadn’t reverberated through the cave. It was enough to alter Sif’s swing just enough to miss Jane’s head by a hair.
Natasha’s bowels turned to water. She recognized that roar. Even as Sif stepped toward the cave entrance, puzzled, Natasha sprang to her feet and yanked Jane away. “Run,” she said. She hauled on Jane so that the other woman had no choice but to come with her. “Faster. Run faster.”
“What is that?”
“Banner,” Natasha said.
Jane glanced behind them and let out a cry. They sprinted down another tunnel, hooking a sharp right when the tunnel came to an intersection. Behind them, Natasha could hear precisely what had scared Jane. She recognized the breathing and the roaring, the sound of every object in Banner’s path being smashed to pieces.
Doctor Banner’s other half had come out to play.
As one, Natasha, Jane, and Sif skidded into some sort of chamber. The cave once again abruptly changed, this time from something natural to something obviously man-made. Soft blue light glowed around the base of all of the walls, making Natasha’s hair stand on end. She got a glimpse of runic scribing on all of the walls, but she was more interested in the fact that there seemed to be two pedestals in the center of the cavern, upon which giant blocks of ice, easily large enough to encase a full grown man, rested.
Even more interesting was: “Thor!”
There could be no mistaking Thor’s handsome visage underneath the surface of the nearest block of ice. The other block held Steve; Natasha recognized the blue coat, lighter than his officer’s uniform but still blue.
She was, however, a little bit too preoccupied with the fact that they were currently facing a madwoman with a sword and the possibility of an angry Doctor Banner showing up to process the fact that two of the men she trusted most in the world were frozen and displayed in giant blocks of ice.
So when Jane raced to Thor’s side, Natasha turned and whipped out a throwing knife, aiming for the wall just behind Sif’s head. It hit with a BOOM that shook the floor, making all three of them duck.
For a fleeting second, a look of confusion crossed Sif’s face. “Erm,” Jane said, and Natasha dove at her attacker, hoping to take advantage. Sif batted her away like she was nothing more than a fly.
Natasha hit the wall, hard, with her back. Again, there was the sound of a minor explosion, only this time, the walls shook as well. Sif shook her head like a dog emerging from the water, looking about in blatant confusion. “What is that?” Jane asked.
“I don’t know.” An idea struck; Natasha hit the wall with the flat of her injured hand, watching Sif’s face.
The woman blinked, and there was suddenly life behind her eyes: that of a puzzled, conflicted woman who had no idea how she had come to be holding a sword.
“Stop doing that!” Jane said.
“It’s affecting her.” Natasha ducked under a slice-which hit the wall and made Sif clutch her temple in pain. “I think whatever is in this room, it’s connected to whatever it is that’s possessing her.”
Of course, she thought, a possessed woman was no longer her biggest problem. Bruce’s demon was out in full force. And before long, the demonic form would come looking for them. It had a penchant for chaos, and it enjoyed chasing Natasha. She had enough nightmares about that night aboard the Red Skull as it was.
The only one who had any hope of stopping Bruce in this form, Natasha knew, was also currently encased in a giant block of ice. “You have intelligence and your wits,” she said to Jane as she kicked Sif in the side, sending the woman sprawling. Tirelessly, Sif sprang to her feet and came at her again. Natasha slapped the wall to make her stumble. “See if you can find some way to get the men out of the ice. We’re going to need them.”
“How? This is clearly some sort of sorcery.”
“If whoever had done this wanted them dead-” Natasha parried a blow, ducked, and kicked off the wall to deliver a roundhouse kick to Sif’s midsection. “-they would have just killed them outright. There is some way to remove them from the ice.”
“Oh.” Jane’s eyes widened. She moved away from the wall and darted toward the coffins. Sif checked her swing and turned, unerringly, toward Jane. Whoever had iced Thor and Steve had set up Thor’s loyal servants as guardians to keep others from approaching the temple. That meant that anybody who approached the men in ice would be Sif’s first priority. She wondered if the other two guardians fighting Stark and Volstagg had abandoned their fight the way Sif had just abandoned hers. Natasha dove between Sif and Jane in an attempt to distract the guardian. Sif gave her an annoyed look.
“This is-this is Norse,” Jane said. “I recognize this.”
“You can read Norse?”
“Thor was forever sending me books from his homeland. He wanted to make sure I did not arrive completely ignorant, I think.” Jane’s eyes scoured the walls. “Keep her distracted, I’ll try and free Thor and Captain Rogers.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Natasha abandoned all pretense of fighting with Sif and began pounding on the wall with the hilt of her sword. The percussive blast of every hit hurt her ears, but it kept Sif crumpled on the ground, fists clenched against her temples. In the space between hits, she could hear Jane muttering in Norse. Her accent was likely terrible, but Natasha had never learned any of the Nordic languages, so she couldn’t tell. When Sif let out a cry, Natasha took pity on her and clubbed her in the side of the head.
The woman dropped like a stone.
“One problem down,” Natasha said. “Any ideas, Miss Foster?”
“Jane,” Jane said absently, still staring at the wall. “I have…actually, let me…”
She raised her cutlass, which Natasha fully intended to teach her how to use provided they survived this, and slammed it down hard onto the ice directly over Thor. Blue light exploded like a flame from the point where her blade had struck, knocking Jane and Natasha from their feet. Natasha blinked away the afterimage of the light to see Sif’s eyes open once more. She swore; there was all of her hard work undone. When the warrior sentinel headed for Jane, completely in the thrall of whatever had possessed her, Natasha levered herself up onto her hands, flipped up, wrapped her thighs around Sif’s neck, and twisted, viciously. Sif’s back hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from a normal woman.
Sif merely climbed back to her feet.
“Whatever you just did,” Natasha said as she twisted to knock Sif’s feet out from under her, “it seems to have had some sort of effect.”
“We are going to have a talk about so many things if we live through this,” Jane said, and hit the ice again right as a roar, much closer and much more terrifying, rumbled through the entire cavern.
Because Natasha had prepared for this blast , she landed on her feet and tackled Sif again. It was awkward and clumsy, given that the angle wasn’t ideal, but Sif still went down to her knees with a grunt. From behind her, Natasha heard heavy, pounding footsteps. Instinct made her haul on Sif, spinning them both out of the way just in time.
One of Bruce’s fists, bigger than any ham Natasha had ever seen, swept through the space Sif and Natasha had just inhabited. Natasha didn’t bother with a throwing knife. It would only irritate Bruce’s demonic form. She somersaulted forward to avoid being trapped between the wall and Bruce. True to form, the giant man gave a trousers-wetting terrifying grin and swung again, intended to keep batting at her like a cat with a mouse.
Natasha did not particularly like feeling like a mouse.
“Stay out of sight,” she called to Jane. “If he can’t see you-”
Of course, Bruce turned his head and spotted Jane. Natasha swore under her breath, hoped that Clint would understand why she had done what she was about to do when the others told him she was dead, and threw herself on top of the demon’s nearest arm. He roared and shook her off; she flew once more, backward, hitting the wall so hard that black descended over her vision. When it cleared, she saw the fist hurtling straight for her face, and ducked.
Bruce’s punch hit the wall with a gigantic FWOOSH of noise that made Natasha clap her hands over her ears and cry out, crumpling forward. It made the demon back up a step or two in confusion. After a second, he glowered at the wall that had essentially assaulted him and began to pound his fists again and again into the wall. Noise filled the air loud enough to shatter eardrums; Natasha curled into a ball, her hands over her ears. One wall of sound slammed into her after the next, punctuated by Bruce’s roaring at the offending wall and sound.
Then Sif, of all people, threw a rock.
It hit the demon between the shoulder blades. In the echo of the noise, he froze, and Natasha’s breath caught in her throat. When he turned to look at Sif, disbelieving outrage on his green, overlarge features, the woman smirked.
“Care to hit something that might hit back, monster?” she asked. The dead look in her eyes was completely gone, Natasha saw.
Bruce roared. He clearly did not like being challenged by this puny mortal. When he raced forward, Sif dodged aside.
She could hold her own against the demon for now, and Natasha wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The minute Bruce was truly distracted, Natasha pushed off of the ground and crossed the room in two strides. “Striking the ice seems to do something, as that drew the sentinel’s attention to you,” she said to Jane.
Jane, however, was too busy gaping at the fight between the demon and the woman who had been doing her best to kill them only thirty seconds before. “What is happening? Who is that? Is that a monster from the island?”
“No, that one we brought with us. We should use the distraction while we can get it. Quickly, think, if striking the ice garners a response, surely there’s something we can do.”
“Perhaps…” Jane’s eyebrows drew together as she studied the pallets of ice on either side of her. “Perhaps there’s something in how we strike the ice?”
“I have naught but metal,” Natasha said. She laid a hand on her gun. “And this.”
Jane went pale. “That might be a bit much. What if you shoot the men beneath the ice as well?”
They would survive it, Natasha knew, though it would lead to some discomfort for a few days. “I once saw a man take down a stone wall by hitting it in the right place,” she said, thinking it over. “Perhaps this is a case for precision over brawn.”
“You could be right.” Jane began to run her hands over the ice, frantically. From the way she had her jaw clenched, it looked painfully cold. Natasha’s estimation of Thor’s betrothed went up another notch.
Across the cave, the demon threw Sif. She landed, hopped to her feet, and laughed. Perhaps being completely mad was a Norwegian thing, Natasha thought.
“Wait, wait, do you see this?” Jane bent over the ice, close enough that the tip of her nose was nearly touching it. After a second, Natasha could discern that there was a runic symbol of some sort etched into the ice, directly above Thor’s heart. “It’s the only thing I can find. It must be significant.”
The demon hit Sif. She took longer to recuperate this time, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth as she pushed herself to her feet and gained an unsteady stance in the rubble from the cave wall. Only some pieces of the rocks strewn upon ground glowed with the same faint blue as the rest of the walls. Others were completely dark, like regular rock. When she looked at the wall to her left, which was still whole, Natasha noticed that the glow did not come from the rock itself but from a thousand little symbols carved into it.
Breaking those symbols like the demon had broken the thrall over Sif, she realized.
The tattoo on the fisherman’s shoulder had had a slice through it. He had become free of the thrall, too.
“It is significant,” she said, and pulled out her dagger. With her injured hand, she pulled Jane clear so that she could stab her blade deep into the ice, right in the center of the rune.
This time, the blue light explosion threw both women clear across the room.
Natasha landed in an ungraceful heap, the breath leaving her lungs. When she moved, pain flared from her left ankle. Somehow, it had gotten wedged into the rocks. She pushed Jane off of her, relieved when the other woman moved onto all fours. At least she was conscious.
Natasha’s luck, unfortunately, chose that moment to run out. She turned to look at the ice pedestal, to see if her experiment had worked, but a shadow fell over her. Instead, she looked up into the huge, grinning visage of Bruce’s demon. He ignored Jane completely, leering down at Natasha. Desperately, she scrambled back, but her ankle was trapped, absolutely stuck, and Sif wasn’t there to provide a distraction.
The beast’s chest shook a little in silent laughter as he reached one gargantuan hand toward her.
Then something metal blurred as it flew through the air, catching the hulking beast on the temple. Bruce stumbled back and turned, betrayed.
Thor, Duke of Asgard, stood on the same table where he’d been entrapped in the ice. He was glistening, dripping wet, one hand held out for the battle hammer that had been cursed alongside him. It flew back into his hand.
“Thor!” Jane said as the beast rushed him.
Natasha gritted her teeth and yanked until her foot came free with some ankle pain and some even more annoying scratches on her boot. It would need to be oiled later. “Go get Sif to safety,” she said to Jane. “Now that we know what to look for, I tcan free Steve while Thor distracts Bruce.”
Clearly Jane had questions, but she hurried toward the other side of the cavern, where it looked like Sif was beginning to stir.
Natasha, on the other hand, rolled so that she was protected by the stone table that had housed Thor. The duke and the beast fought, smashing through the entire room so quickly that Natasha wondered idly at the possibility of an avalanche of rocks killing them all. She pushed that cheerful thought from her mind, retrieved the knife she’d used to free Thor, and jumped onto the slab of ice holding Steve captive.
It was so cold it burned. She gritted her teeth once more, limbered up as much as she could and, crouched on top of the ice slab, drove her knife into the tiny rune over Steve’s heart.
This time, as she suspected it would, the blast knocked her straight into the air. She soared up, temporarily losing her grasp on her knife. She caught it right before she landed, one boot on either side of a very confused, very wet Steve Roger’s ribcage.
He blinked up at her in surprise. “Natasha?” he asked.
“Ho, Captain,” Natasha said. With a nimbleness that did not betray her injured ankle, she jumped off the table. She then hauled him off after her in time to spare him from being crushed under one of Bruce’s fists. He landed practically on top of her, but immediately rolled off. It was long enough for her to know that the water dripping off of his skin was freezing. “Welcome back from the dead.”
“Was I dead? Mostly I just feel cold.” Steve patted his hips, searching for a weapon. Natasha handed him her first cutlass and picked up the second from where Jane had dropped it. Steve watched Thor and Bruce fight with wide eyes. “What is happening?”
“Seems like you and Thor were under some sort of sorcery.” Natasha winced when Thor was thrown into a wall. The explosive noise made Steve duck, but Natasha shook her head. “Bruce got a little angry. Do you remember anything? By our accounts, it’s been some eighteen months since anybody has heard from you or Thor.”
“Perhaps we could discuss this later?” Steve asked. “Now does not seem like the opportune time.”
Across the cavern, thankfully out of the fighting path of the two men, Jane was helping Sif sit up. “That might be for the best,” Natasha said, and made a break for the door, Steve not far behind. They knew from past experience that Thor could handle Bruce until the man calmed down to return to his human form. Until then, it was safer not to be underfoot.
Since Sif was able to run, they weren’t hampered as they escaped the cave. Natasha followed after Steve as he led the way into the bright sunlight, all four of them blinking against its harshness. They found the others in the clearing just beyond the cave. The other sentinels, like Sif, were no longer possessed. The blond one was wrapping a wound on his arm while the other conferred with Stark and Volstagg.
“Oh,” Stark said, blinking at all of them but particularly at Steve. “You’re alive. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Good to see you, too, Stark,” Steve said.
“Pardon me,” Jane, who was short of breath and now red in the face because of it, “but I would very much appreciate it if somebody explained something. Anything at all.”
Part IIb