Iron Man/Wolverine: Above the Rain

[equus_vodka]

Title: Above the Rain
Author: smirnoffmule
Fandom:: Iron Man/ X-men Origins: Wolverine
Rating: R
Characters: Rhodey, Bradley, Wade.
Warnings: Fudged helicopter science.
Summary: A young James Rhodes learns some things they never taught him in flight school. Written for likeadeuce for marvel_crossing
Notes: Thanks to voorishsign for letting me pick his brains about Bradley.



James Rhodes is not a man who likes to romanticize flying - at least not out loud - but there's an other-worldly quality to flying in the dark that he hopes he never quite gets used to. It was raining at the airbase in Cherry Point, but he's above all that now, and his only view is the topside of the sea of clouds over North Carolina. The Huey's lights reach out into the dark and touch on nothing, and the thuk-thuk-thuk of the blades starts to colour his thoughts until it is hard to imagine himself as anything but another working part in the machine.

It's an unlooked for hazard in flying, that after hours of squinting at nothing, the pilot starts to drift, but Rhodey knows what he can afford himself, and knows a million tricks to keep his attention ticking over. He passes idle words with ground control, counts seconds in the dark, runs scenarios in his head, a series of what-ifs, each outcome weighed and measured. Preparation is survival, he learned in flight school, and solo nightflights are a new thing; he's not long earned his wings, and takes nothing for granted.

What he never learned in flight school is what to do when you collide with a human being at three thousand feet.

A light pops in front of his eyes like a flash bulb. His first thought is lightening, but the colour is all wrong, and then, just for an instant, hanging impossibly before his windscreen, he sees it; sees him, a figure with flailing limbs, shirt pulling untucked from his faded jeans, his eyes wide and dark, and locked with Rhodey's, and then the impact. A sick, metallic thump. His vision splinters. For a second, he sees red, and then the flash bulb pops again, and all the lights go out. The engine coughs, then cuts, and the silence rushes in with the cold night air through the cracks in his screen.

The Huey hangs for a moment, as though considering the option of gravity. Rhodey scrambles for a thought he can act on; his mind hollers birdstrike, but can't seem to process any further. It's his stomach that informs him when the chopper begins to fall; it lurches to his throat and stays there. He fumbles at the comm, but the only answer is static, and the bellowing wind. He tugs at the controls with a hand that feels like someone else's. The stick has a comforting weight behind it, and as he hauls, the Huey's nose begins to rise. He knows he's only changing the angle of his fall, but it's a start. He swallows biting air, and remembers how to breathe.

On the roof, there is a click and a rattle, like an animal is crawling about there. He sees dark smears on the windscreen, and his blood chills for a second, but he tells himself firmly the noise is good. It's the rotary blades turning free, just like they're meant to, and the Huey's doing its job, and that means he has to do his now. When the engine dies, the blades are meant to unlock, and the updraft as he loses altitude should keep them turning, maybe just enough to let him land. He levels out, his feet numb on the peddles, his hand on the stick curled into a claw.

Suddenly, he's in the clouds, and the clouds are in the cockpit with him, pouring like cold smoke through the gaps in the windscreen. The air tastes heavy and wet, and then just as quickly, he's free, and still falling, and he knows that he's coming down way too fast. The whole hull is screaming with the pressure, the lights live, then die, then live again, and there's rain on his skin. The ground is rearing to meet him, and it's too late to do anything but scream and pray in nonsense vowels that are whipped from his mouth by the wind.

Then the whole craft shudders, and leaps under his hands. The engine gives a great cough like a dying whale, and the dashboard crackles. It's not a lot, but it's all he needs, and he tears at the controls, and the Huey's nose swings upwards. Suddenly, he's in a forest, branches punching at his screen and scraping at the hull. The last few metres are marked with great gunshot cracks that he can only pray are not his bones, and then the ground slaps him in the face so hard he tastes blood. The lights in the cockpit flicker, then stutter out weakly, like they've fainted from shock. For a moment, Rhodey is right there with them, and it takes him a dizzy second to realise that he isn't falling any more.

Stillness, marked by the angry cracking of trees, and the ticking of the hot, dead engine. Everything is dark. Rhodey shifts experimentally. His limbs are numb and rubbery, and his neck feels snapped in two, but everything seems to move when he asks it to. His first articulated clear thought is that he's sitting on a mess of fuel and sparks, and he really ought to look to that. It takes three tries to unbuckle his seatbelt, and he shoulders the hatch weakly before he remembers to try the handle.

Outside, the air is sharp and green with the scent of wet leaves. All around are trees, and the canopy is creaking. Rhodey is flashblind in the dark, and brings his fists to his eyes to rub them. As he does so, something touches on his throat, as quiet as a kiss against his Adam's apple. He thinks at first that he's walked into a branch, and goes to bat it out the way, but his hand falls on something cold and straight and sharp.

Shapes reassemble themselves in the blur. He shifts his weight uncertainly, and the touch on his throat becomes a jab, and then he knows. He's standing at the business end of someone's blade.

His eyes travel along the sweep of steel, and lock with his assailant's. Rhodey has no cards to play but his gaze, so he keeps it steady, and inwardly curses. There's a gun, and a torch, and a battery-powered radio, all in the Huey's lockers, none of which he thought to pick up, and he's really not hurt enough to be that dumb. Because even if this is North Carolina, not 'Nam, he just hit a fucking human being with his helicopter, and that should be a clue that something isn't right here.

The swordsman is young, clean cut, and dressed in fatigues. His mouth is twisted in a cocky smile, which Rhodey doesn't like one bit, and his hand on the blade is rock-steady. His stillness is dangerous. There's no bluffing in a hand that doesn't shake, and all it will take is a touch of pressure, and the blade will open Rhodey's throat.

A second figure moves in his peripherals, a shuffling shadow, but Rhodey doesn't shift his gaze. Behind him, the Huey's lights flicker, then rise, splashing yellow in the swordsman's eyes.

The shadow speaks.

“Wade, that's the pilot,” he says, and his tone is calm, and edging on amused.

“Are you sure?” The point digs. Rhodey grasps at hope.

“I'm sure,” he says, aware this may be the only chance he gets to speak for himself, and praying this is the right thing to say, though he really has no idea who else they might expect to find crawling from the ruins of his chopper.

“Your opinion,” the swordsman tells him.“Really has no bearing, since you'd be bound to say that either way.”

“Look at him,” says the other guy. “Stripes, uniform, climbing out a cockpit. That's not our hostile.” He's English. Both guys are in khakis, but the it's the swordsman who looks like the pro. The other guy has the kind of cut to him that would make him look shabby whatever he's wearing. He has an M16 slung over his back, but he wears it like he's forgotten it's there.

“Hostile?” Rhodey asks, addressing the English guy, who seems to be possessed of the more even temper, and more importantly, no sword.

“Tell Wade you're the pilot,” he says, like he's trying to settle a bet.

“I'm the pilot,” Rhodey tells Wade. He can't keep a natural defiance from his voice, but Wade only responds with a slight theatrical role of his eyes, and lets the blade linger for a pointed second longer before he withdraws. He turns to his companion, hands splays, and addresses him with his full attention, as though Rhodey has ceased to exist.

“What the shit just happened?” he asks. “Can this guy down planes? The sheet did not say anything about him throwing planes at us.”

“Helicopters,” the English guy says absently, running his eyes over the Huey. Rhodey follows his gaze; the nose end is ruined. It looks like the worst kind of birdstrike.

“Thank you, flight engineer,” Wade says. “Do you see how it's on the ground, though? I'm going to take a leap and say that's not how it's supposed to.” He punctuates his points with jabs of his sword, but his friend seems unperturbed. He seems to have picked his distance accordingly.

“Are you okay?” he asks Rhodey. “What happened?”

“Who the hell are you?” Rhodey counters. It comes out a little stronger than he means it to.

“Be nice,” Wade tells him. “It's thanks to my friend Bradley here you're still recognisable as a pilot, and not as a wet patch in the wreckage.”

This makes no sense that Rhodey can figure out, but Bradley grins a little bashfully.

“Hueys are expensive,” he says, as though that explains something.

“More expensive than pilots,” Wade says. “Or than grunts with a gun. You should think about a sword man, it's a rare skill. Maybe stamp a higher price tag on your ass. People remember the dude with the sword.” He swings it for emphasis. Rhodey takes a step back. Wade is tooled up like a martial arts movie, with a second sword at his back, and a pair of sai at his belt.

“Yeah, that's not really standard issue,” he tells him.

“Nor am I,” Wade says. “And nor is Bradley's brain.”

Bradley throws him a look which is both exasperated, and kind of indulgent.

“Special ops,” he says to Rhodey.

Rhodey picks his way backwards through their conversation.

“You're in pursuit of a fugitive?” he asks. He looks up at the sky, and gets fine rain in his eyes.

“Something along those lines,” Bradley says.

Rhodey is silent for a moment, inviting more details, but none are forthcoming. Wade surveys the clearing, while Bradley peers again at the hole in the fuselage.

“What happened?” he asks again. Rhodey doesn't answer; instead he reaches back in through the open door to fumble in the locker for the battery powered radio.

“Probably don't want any third parties involved at this point,” Wade says. Rhodey pauses a moment, but Wade seems to be addressing Bradley, not him. He flicks the radio on and holds it skywards to try and catch a signal. Nothing happens. He gives it a shake, but there's no sign of life. It must have got wet, or some asshole in supplies forget to check the batteries.

“Shit.” He shoves it back in the locker, and turns back to find Bradley watching him intensely.

“There wouldn't, uh, happen to be anything kind of... unusual about this fugitive, would there?” Rhodey asks.

Wade and Bradley share a glance.

“Unusual like what?” Bradley asks. He tries for a neutral tone, but he's a bad actor.

“Like... flying?” Rhodey says. He waits for a laugh, but it doesn't come. Instead, the two guys look at each other again, Wade with a raised eyebrow, Bradley with a frown.

“Why?” Bradley asks Rhodey.

“I hit someone. I hit a person. Three thousand feet up. A living person. A guy.” In his mind's eye the windscreen shatters again, dark with blood. He swallows. Wade and Bradley look at each other for a moment longer, before Wade snaps his fingers.

“Motherfucker bamfed straight up,” he says.

“Fuck,” Bradley says to Wade, then looks at Rhodey. “You hit him? What happened?”

“I told you. I hit a guy. He came out of nowhere. I mean, nowhere. There was nothing, and then there was... this kid. I couldn't miss him.”

“Did you see a light?”

“Yeah, something flashed, and he was there.. Then I hit him, and I think it flashed again. What the fuck is this? Who are you people?”

“If he jumped again before he fell,” Bradley says to Wade. “He might still be alive.” He shakes a radio from his pocket; it whines with static in his hand. Rhodey looks from one to the other, and wishes he had some place to sit down.

“Why is this not a surprise to you?”

“Special ops,” Wade grins.

“Special ops in pursuit of a flying fugitive?”

“Teleporting, actually. But not, apparently, with any great sense of spatial awareness.”

“Wade,” Bradley says, his tone a warning, but not one with very much heat. Rhodey guesses he couldn't stop Wade talking if he tried, and pushes some more.

“He teleported? Up? What the hell for?”

“Nothing motivates the molecules like having Victor Creed on your ass,” Wade swipes his sword at the empty air. “A big, hairy colleague of ours,” he explains. “Chasing our perp, a few miles south of here. Feel lucky you won't get to meet him. What he lacks in charm, he makes up with a badass manicure.”

Rhodey is piecing stuff together; half-remembered stories, rumours round the barracks. Camp fire stories, he always thought before, about guys like these, and the jobs that they deal in.

“Mutants,” he says.

Bradley looks back over his shoulder long enough to say, “Wade has yet to be identified by science.”

He moves off a few paces into the dark, murmuring to the radio. It crackles in response, but Rhodey can't make out the words.

“I just hit a human being at three thousand feet,” he says to Wade. “That was a mutant? They can do that?” He rubs his neck, and suddenly feels dizzy and cold.

“See, you're gonna remember that,” Wade says. “That's how you make an impact. You need to consider your entrances. I mean, landing on our heads in your chopper is a start, but you gotta get some follow-through.” He swings his sword like a golf club for illustration.

Rhodey peers after Bradley, but he's moved out of earshot. He looks again at the Huey, his eye drawn to the damage on the nose. The prop is twisted to hell, and half the nose is caved right in. A fine, soft rain is falling straight into the engine. One shattered headlight is, amazingly, still burning. A moth is buffeting against the ruin of the windscreen, its wings casting huge and eerie shadows across the leaves.

Suddenly Wade darts, his blade flashing in the torchlight. He barely seems to move his body, or maybe he moves so fast that Rhodey only registers a snapshot of stillness. It takes Rhodey a moment to quantify the change; the buffeting shadow is gone, and the dark has retreated back into the leaves. Wade brings his blade back in front of his face and blows on it. The moth's wing flutters free and falls to the ground.

“Impact,” he says.

“Stop bloody showing off,” Bradley hisses at him, striding back into the light. Wade laughs a little, unabashed.

“I guess you're a dangerous when you get bored,” Rhodey tells him.

“He's always bloody bored,” Bradley says, and adds to Wade, “Stryker says they saw a flash just over that ridge just before the chopper came down. We're closest. Fuck.” He shuffles his gun onto his hip. He plainly hates this bit.

“Can I use your radio?” Rhodey asks.

Bradley shakes his head.

“Sorry,” he says. “In a bit, maybe. But we could really do without this place crawling with marines, just for the time being.”

It's the answer Rhodey expected, but he had to try. They'll come looking for him soon, he knows, and they'll spot the Huey easily enough after sunrise, but he hates the thought of waiting for hours on his own, and without answers.

“So what did this guy do?” he tries. “He looked.. I mean, I hardly saw him, but he looked kinda young.”

“Yeah, well, what you see ain't always what you get,” says Wade.

“So, what did he do?”

“Perpetrated some heinous crime against humanity,” Wade says loftily.

“We don't get told that bit,” Bradley clarifies. He points out into the dark. “That way.”

Wade brings his sword up in front of his face, and says “Let's do this.”

“You're doing this with a sword?” Rhodey can't help asking. “Seriously?”

“You did not take that tone when you were staring down the pointy end.”

“Need back-up?” Rhodey asks. Wade shakes his head, but Rhodey looks at Bradley, who's shuffling under the weight of his M16. He considers a moment, then says,“Stay at the back.”

“Civilians, Bradley,” Wade remarks loudly.

“Marine corps,” Rhodey says. “Can I get my gun?” Bradley looks at Wade for a beat before nodding. Wade spins his sword, and says, “Whatever the fuck, man. Just shoot Bradley first, if you're going to try any funny business.”

The cockpit lights fade as they leave the clearing; Rhodey glances back over his shoulder, but sees only their echo on the darkness, burned into his eyes. Wade leads the way, wielding his sword machete style through the thicker brush.

“What do you know this about this guy?” Rhodey whispers at Bradley's back as he follows behind. “The mutant?”

“I read the sheet,” Bradley whispers back. “I've seen a picture.” Wade coughs like a gunshot, making a point of their noise, and they stumble on in silence. The ground is wet and giving beneath their feet. Wade moves like a cat, darting through the dark, his blade lose in his hand like it lives there. Bradley keeps up, but his footfalls are heavier; his boots slip in the mud, and several times, he stops to check his gun, and pat his pocket where the radio is. Rhodey ghosts along behind, his heart in his throat, replaying the impact again in his mind, filling in the drama before and after. A chase through the dark, a desperate jump, the ground dizzy beneath the mutant's feet. The flash that filled his windscreen, the blood that marked it after.

They reach the bottom of a slope, and the trees open out a little. Wade stops dead, and Bradley stops just short of running into his back.

“Light,” Wade suggests, and Bradley lifts a torch from his belt. It fumbles into life in his hands. There's a shape on the ground ahead.

“Shit,” Bradley says. His torch flickers. In the strobing light, it is hard to tell the blood from the mud and the smeared rain.

Rhodey's first thought when he sees the angle the kid's limbs are bent at is, Jeez, I hope he is dead, and then he feels bad for thinking it, but then remembers this is a hostile mutant, and boy, must they start them young.

“So, um, ID?” Wade says. “He looks kinda...”

“Yeah,” Bradley cuts in, without taking his eyes off the figure before them. “That's him.” He brings a hand up to swipe through his hair, leaving a muddy streak across his forehead. Rhodey thinks of his twisted rotary blades, shifts his gun on his shoulder, and swallows air that tastes like the tang of rain.

“Better call it in,” Wade says, looking pointedly at Bradley, who fumbles his radio from his pocket, and stares at it as though it's the last thing he ever expected to find in there. He gives it a half-hearted little shake, but it sits lifeless and dumb in his hand.

“It's not working,” he says. Wade gives him a strange look, but for once, says nothing. Bradley moves off a few paces into the trees. The kid on the ground is staring at the sky; his eyes are full of rain. Rhodey thinks again of the flash that split the night; the kid lived long enough to jump again, but only just to spare himself the fall. He looks until he has to blink, then turns away.

A few minutes pass before Wade clears his throat theatrically, and Bradley steps back into their circle, bringing the light. He doesn't look at the ground, but looks at Rhodey instead.

“We've got to contact our team,” he says. His voice is almost steady. “Get this... cleaned up. You'll need to head back to your chopper, and stay there.”

“If I could get hold of Cherry Point...” Rhodey begins, but Bradley shakes his head.

“Special ops,” he says. “This is our business.” There's a hint of something in his tone like blame. Rhodey tries to read him, but there's too much here he doesn't know.

“This is as irregular as fuck,” he says.

“Which is also our business,” Wade cuts in. He has a watchful air about him, and Rhodey sees he's ready to back up what Bradley's saying, just as hard and as fast as he needs to. He can't see a choice except to do as he's told.

“You realise I have to report this,” he tells them. Bradley nods, like this is inconsequential. Wade chuckles, pointedly, and without humour. Bradley ignores him.

“Can you find your way?” he asks Rhodey instead.

“If you lend me your torch,” Rhodey, splaying his empty hands. Bradley looks at him doubtfully, glances quickly at the ground, then looks away.

“I'd better come with you,” he says. “The batteries are... well, there aren't any, actually.”

“It's on,” Rhodey points out. Bradley sighs, and gives it to him. The bulb goes black as soon as it leaves his hand. Rhodey gives it a little shake. The housing rattles. It feels lighter than it should. He hands it back, wordlessly. Bradley looks almost apologetic as it comes back to life in his hands.

“You should get him to show you his trick with a vacuum cleaner,” Wade says.

Bradley's radio seems to have recovered from its temporarily glitch; he leaves it with Wade, and Wade is rattling information and quips into it in about equal measures as they start to make their way back up the hill. Bradley leads the way back through the trees, picking out their path with his empty torch. Rhodey follows wordlessly behind. The whole night has taken on a dream-like quality.

The cockpit lights flicker on in greeting as they move back into the clearing, illuminating Bradley's dirty face.

“There's no reason why you won't be safe here,” he tells Rhodey, adding “Any more,” as an afterthought. “We'll be gone by the time they come for you.”

Rhodey looks at the carcass of his Huey in the mud, and remembers that last minute shudder in the hull as the electrics surged. He'd been inches away.

“Thanks, man,” he says.

Bradley smiles an absent little smile, and runs his hand across his face. He bites his nails, Rhodey sees. There's dirt jammed under the quicks.

“I'd better go back,” he says. “Before Wade finds something to get bored with.”

The lights give a sigh and die as he ducks into the trees, and Rhodey is left alone in the dark with the rain, and the tick of his cooling engine.