The Marvel Games {An Avengers/Hunger Games Crossover}

Chapter 20: Day 10 (part 2): Sponsors

Chapter 20: Day 10 (part 2): Sponsors

After farewelling Captain Steve Rogers, Tony and I steadily made our way to the bridge control room. Johnny had decided to leave us and I supported his decision, it was getting to the very pointy end of the Games and it wasn’t safe to be in a big alliance, not anymore. It attracted more attention.

Truthfully, I was contemplating leaving Tony. I needed to be on my own for when I finally...died. I wanted my death to be like that, something I could try and control without someone else trying to save me and prolonging what was a definite fate now.

Steve was gone, the only hero, I thought, who would have hesitated to kill me. I was in real danger now. I didn’t feel safe around Tony anymore –in a split second he could turn on me and my survival instincts were screaming at me to run away from that.

But I couldn’t leave him, not now at least. He was wounded –badly. I wasn’t sure if I could help him at all. Initially, I’d thought that he’d only had bruising and a few cuts, but it was far worse than that. I was pretty sure he had some kind of internal bleeding and a bruises spine, which was making it very hard for him to walk.

I had no idea what to do except for maybe making him as comfortable as possible and wait for death to take him.

“Tony, we have to stop.” I told him as he tried to limp on, he ignored me and I kept my voice as quiet as possible but yelled; “Tony!"

“Estelle, we need to keep moving. It’s not safe.” He whipped his head around to stare at me.

“There is no such thing as safety in this game, Tony!” I exclaimed, “We’ve come here to die, don’t you get that? There’s no rescue team or miracle super team coming to save us! Not this time.” It was a low blow and I knew I had really, really hurt Tony by bringing up the Invasion Day. We’d all heard stories about what had happened to the Avengers that day, but none of them were true. I’d been scared to ask for the truth, even though I’d been surrounded by all of the Avengers members. I didn’t want to ask, and I was pretty sure they didn’t want to tell.

“Right.” Tony nodded, his lips in a thin, hard line. “Right, I know. Sorry. We should stop.”

“Tony...Tony I’m sorry.” I sighed and sat down as he leaned against the wall and slid down it, wincing at the pain in his back and abdomen. “I didn’t mean that. It was uncalled for.”

“No, you’re right. We screwed up that day.” He nodded, gazing off in the distance, lost in a memory. “The ships ...They just came so far, we weren’t prepared for that. The portal was bigger than we ever imagined. Thor and Steve tried to keep them from expanding outside the city, Natasha and Clint too. Hulk at the ones keeping hostages, I had the air ships. All I had to do was keep them from getting outside New York...”

Tony’s voice broke on that last sentence and I placed my hand over his own on his knee.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” I told him. “No one blames you. No one, you hear me?”

Tony shook his head and cleared his throat, and changed the subject. “So, what do we do now?”

I sighed and ran a hand through my knotty and greasing brown hair, “I don’t know. You obviously need medical attention and I can’t give that to you. We could go to Bruce but we’d just be risking being killed sooner.”

The two of us sat in silence, like two peas in a pod. We didn’t know what to do or where to go, who to try and get in touch with for help. We’d hit a brick wall and there was no way of climbing over it...we needed to tunnel under it.