The Archangel (Avengers Fanfic)

Chapter Two

The armored man, what was it the other one had called him, Tony? I could hear the sounds of his suit and the rapid beat of his heart as he approached apprehensively. He tapped my arm twice resulting in the accompanying metal clangs before yanking his arm back as if expecting me to awaken. When I didn't so much as twitch, he circled me once before grabbing onto my linked metal arms, held tight in the same position, before rocketing into the sky.

It was an odd sensation, when Hydra wanted me moved all they had to do was order me to awaken and do so, being moved by hand had never happened before but it inevitably meant he thought I was just a machine. I felt it as we landed inside a jet of some sort, the presence of his compatriots nearby, though the green beast felt different, more sane and smaller? That couldn't be right, but I know what I sensed. "What's with the statue?" the enhanced human asked.

"Oh, you mean the tincan that tried to kill me? Yeah, I figure it's one of Hydra's prototypes, I'm gonna take it apart, see how it works." Tony said. Yeah, good luck with that, I thought, he wouldn't make it very far if experience was any indicator. I could also feel the presence of that damned scepter that liked to mess with my head, to keep it from burrowing further into my psyche, I slipped deeper into my sleep and ignored the conversation and presence of everything around me.

I didn't resurface again until I heard an odd commotion nearby. Two voices and the scepter but no presence of flesh or machine. They were arguing, one growing steadily more hostile than the other, then there was only one. "Organic metal, how . . . fascinating," a robotic voice sounded, "the next evolution of human kind. I wonder, do you feel pain?" I did, and quite a lot of it, most of the time it wasn't the physical sort, but the kind of wounds that you inflict upon yourself. The voice left and I was left alone for quite some time as I slept, the pain ever present.

***

"I haven't thought about you in ages! Alright, tincan, now it's time to tell me your secrets." That was Tony, what was he doing? "Why did they bother clothing a robot?" Now I was confused, true I wasn't wearing much, just a sports bra and a pair of shorts but they were there for a reason. Who was he talking to? I doubt he was talking to me. But no one answered him.

He started moving around me, examining my limbs and stature, I don't know what he was looking for but he wasn't going to find anything. "Come on, there has to be a switch, a panel, something to get me into the system." I grew uncomfortable when he started touching my wings but didn't awaken. "FRIDAY, scan molecular compound."

A robotic female voice responded, "compound not found." He then proceeded to try and biopsy my arm with some type of blade, then switched to a laser once that didn't work. Though hot, the laser simply bounced off my skin, taking a bit of paint off but not harming me in the slightest, I could hear the reflected beam hit something off in the distance and destroy it.

"Well, shit. What broke, FRIDAY?"

"Mark 7, sir." I could hear him sigh unhappily.

"I'm stumped, how do you work? Tell me, tincan." Tony scoffed when I didn't answer, throwing some sort of screwdriver at me. "I will uncover your secrets tincan." At first I hadn't thought he knew I was sentient, now I wasn't so certain, either he knew and was trying to get me to wake up or he was crazy, I just wasn't sure which.

He tried increasingly to cut off parts of me with different instruments, none of which did a thing to me and often backfired against him. His efforts were actually quite amusing to me as I could hear him cursing in frustration and the occasional groan of pain. He even managed to carelessly cut his hand against the sharp edges of my wings. "Ah shit!" I could smell the iron and rust scent of blood as it filled the air. He proceeded to kick my shin though it only caused him more pain, "I know you have a processing unit somewhere! I hate Hydra." He muttered to himself, "Course they can't make this easy on me."

There was a scream nearby, a woman's scream, "Tony! What happened to your lab?"

"Hey Pepper, turns out this thing is pretty indestructible." He said casually to the woman.

"Let's get you cleaned up, you can save your project for later."

"Fine, fine, but it's going to tell me something when I get back." Maybe I would just to freak him out a little bit but I probably wouldn't be able to without waking up and that was difficult enough without being given the order, so perhaps not. The pressure in my skill if I disobeyed an order was enough to feel pain even in my metal form, something to do with the device attached to the back of my neck. When I say attached, I meant that it was directly connected to my nervous system. They used bursts of phantom pain to control me, they hadn't bothered explaining how it worked exactly, but once given an order, I was powerless to resist it.

***

It wasn't as long this time before I woke up. Tony was there, as were a few others, some were from before, others not. The one presence was odd, I was familiar with it though I knew I had never felt it before, it was kinda like feeling Tony, the not-beast, Ultron, the scepter, and the disembodied voice of JARVIS at the same time. I could feel the presence of Wanda, the enhanced human I came to know as Cap, and the one man I envied the most, Bucky.

The Winter Soldier was valued above me, somehow, though it was a lengthy process to awaken him from his cryo-induced sleep, and they had to wipe him after every mission. Whereas with me, I awoke at a command and when the job was finished I went back to sleep, as simple as that, I never needed to be wiped, I would never return with injuries, and I was an asset beyond time, only aging while I was in my flesh form. And yet somehow, Bucky was still the favorite, he got to keep his will, his choice, as much as one can have in Hydra anyway, and I hated him for it. I was better than him in every way, faster, stronger, indestructible, I could even fly, every part of me was a weapon, all he had was the serum, his training, and his arm.

"There is a malicious presence in this room." The amalgamation of many spoke, I learned later he was called Vision.

Damn right, I thought. I wanted to go toe-to-toe with Bucky, to make him bleed, he was indispensable according to Hydra and I wanted to see what he could do that made him that way and not me. "And it is coming from that." I assumed he was pointing at me.

"Stark, tell me you didn't." Cap spoke, "Not after what happened with Ultron."

"That's not mine, it's Hyrda's, the tin can that attacked me at the fortress, remember?"

Bucky's voice grated against my increasingly more hostile nerves, "the Archangel attacked you and you survived?"

"The robot has a name?" Tony scoffed.

There was a pause, an odd pause where no one said anything. "That's not a robot, Tony." Bucky finally stated. "She's alive."