Jaimie Solace and the Unavoidable Affliction of Love

Chapter Twenty-One - The End

The forest Jaimie found herself sitting in with her two hostages was surprisingly peaceful.

Away from the sounds of fighting, which were now mostly concentrated inside the base, the green trees and the sun beating down on them almost reminded Jaimie of Camp. Of the old Camp.

Jaimie shook her head, clearing her head of those thoughts. She felt pretty useless, not being in there with the fighting and instead guarding someone who was generally useless to the plot (👀), but she knew that she probably shouldn't just tie them to a tree, or something.

However, based on the chatter she was hearing through her comms, things were going well. Aside from the absence of one large, green, scientist. No one really knew where Bruce went, since he certainly wouldn't have been able to calm down enough to get the Hulk to go to sleep, and the Hulk would never miss an opportunity to smash things.

She was confused by that. Jaimie knew that Wanda had joined the rest of the Avengers inside, between herself and the Hulk the assault force that had met them at the jets crash site had taken comically little time to defeat, and Jaimie wondered why the Hulk didn't go to join her.

But Jaimie couldn't really focus much of her energy thinking or worrying about that at the moment, because Amanda would not. Shut. Up.

She just kept going, and going, about basically nothing. How Jaimie and Alice were worthless freaks, how Hydra was a bunch of disloyal, psycho, assholes who couldn't recognize a useful ally when they turned up at their feet. The Hydra guy laughed outright at that, which caused Amanda to glare daggers at him.

"You think we didn't have other weapon smugglers? You gave us one demigod, that was all you were good for," the man spat. Jaimie hadn't bothered to learn his name.

But maybe she should have, because the information he just gave her in two sentences just about made her day. For one, it told Jaimie what tied Amanda to Hydra before the demigod fiasco. She was sure Hydra had a whole network of weapons smugglers at their disposal, and now that they knew Amanda was one of them they would be able to charge her with something that would actually stick. They couldn't charge Amanda with anything Alice related without exposing themselves to SHIELD.

It would be easier now, especially if Amanda had been working with Hydra for a notable amount of time, to cover up the true reason for these raids. SHIELD would accept the cover story that this most recent series of attacks on Hydra bases were to destroy a smuggling ring of theirs that was based somewhere in New York. The team and Jaimie had been able to hold off suspicion for now, but it wouldn't be long before SHIELD wanted more specifics about what exactly the Avengers were so focused on and they needed to have a solid cover story for when that happened.

Jaimie felt a certain amount of relief upon this realization, so much so that she could almost ignore the incessant yapping of the injured woman next to her. Perhaps she should feel bad about Amanda's sorry state, but surely she shouldn't waste her energy healing a woman that seemed disgusted with her magical abilities. Somehow, Jaimie wasn't getting the vibes that Amanda would be very grateful.

And besides, Bruce was still missing. What if he was hurt somehow, and Jaimie would need her powers to help him? Or anyone on the team, for that matter. Perhaps it made her a bad person, but Jaimie just couldn't bring herself to feel sad over Amanda's suffering given that she had led her own daughter to her death.

Jaimie's rambling thoughts were interrupted by a very loud sound. It was a creaking, ripping sort of sound, like something was being uprooted from the ground. A tree, perhaps.

Despite knowing she should probably be scared, Jaimie knew that only one thing in the forest would be able to uproot one of these massive trees. She smiled. Looks like Bruce had finally found her.