Man Out of Time - A Captain America / Avengers Fanfiction

Chapter 82

Chapter 82

Bernice stifled a yawn. The sun had set hours ago and still negotiations were dragging on. She shot Steve a smile where he hovered, along with the other Avengers, watching over her. He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes and fresh battle scars scattered across his body, but he was still the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes upon. Her pencil moved onto the steno pad she had stashed beneath the negotiation table, sketching the scene before her of the President, Fred, and the Avengers standing in the background overseeing it all. Steve was, of course, front and center in her sketch even though he had wandered off to the side some time ago, conversing quietly with Bruce Banner and shooting wary looks at Shapeshifter Fred and the Chitauri babies.

"As much as I would like to promise amnesty to your brothers who incited the Khmer Rouge," the President told Shapeshifter Fred, "this is a democratic society. Once the initial glow of victory wears off, the survivors of that Cambodian genocide are going to come forward and demand retribution."

"But we did not ask them to murder their own people!" Fred protested. "Only to segregate the ones suspected of carrying Deviant DNA from potential breeding stock and send them out into the fields to work. YOUR species took it upon themselves to start killing all of the educated people!"

"Four years from now," the President said. "I will be out of office and a new president will take my place. One who may heed the cry of elected officials who are answerable to the people to revoke those brothers visas on some technicality."

"But do you not have the power of a presidential pardon?" Fred asked.

"I do," the President said. "But I will not lie to you. In a democracy, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The Cambodian genocide is a lot closer in time than the Nazi Holocaust and the Soviet Gulags. There are plenty of survivors who are going to speak out against your people once the glow of victory wears off."

"I warned you of this, Fred," Bernice interceded. "Our moral code is different from yours. Just because you are willing to follow our rules now does not mean we are capable of pretending the past does not exist."

"I am not sure how the others will react when they learn only some of us are welcome here," Shapeshifter Fred said. The visage of the old man he was wearing lost some of that frail expression as Fred unconsciously shifted into what must have been a younger, stronger version of the man he had spent decades impersonating.

Bernice physically touched Fred's hand, projecting through the hive mind the mental image of what he looked like right now. Although she was still Bernice, the sudden inclusion of the thoughts and feelings of thousands of other individuals who thought differently than the way she thought had expanded her ability to see the world through alien eyes.

"Oops, sorry," Fred said with a sheepish expression that reminded her a bit of Doctor Nyi. He shifted back into the visage of the elder Fred.

To the hive-minded Chitauri, it was logical to eliminate any weakness which might jeopardize the hive. They were as brutally merciless with their own weak links as those they perceived in others, as the recent extermination of the Other's fleet had just proven. It was as difficult for them to understand a species that prized mercy as it was for humans to understand a species who prized strength and logic. She could now understand why Herr Kleiser's price for helping had been one small act of mercy. The Chitauri would not have shown human offspring of a conquered leader the same mercy that she had shown the Chitauri babies. The fact that she had shown mercy ... and subsequently controlled the swarm ... was causing the Chitauri to reevaluate everything they thought they had known.