Stand As Heroes » Quicksilver

chapter twenty three

23 x battle wounds

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Pietro reluctantly set me back on my feet. He kept one arm stubbornly around my waist as I continued to try and work on my breathing. 

My heart rate was sky-high, and thanks to the fancy suit that Tony made me, I was hyper-aware of it. My comms at this point sounded like white noise in my ears. 

But I caught pieces. 

"Wilson's down--" 

"--Spider-Man took a hard hit--"

"--Wasp took damage!" 

"--it's a flesh wound, Scott--"

"--getting beat up out here, guys--" 

"--anyone have eyes on Cap?"

It was all white noise and outtakes. 

Then, Wanda's voice, louder than the rest: "Strange and I will close the tear! Keep the Asgardians busy!" 

"We're trying," Bucky insisted through his teeth over the comms. 

Vision said, "I will attempt to incapacitate the Enchantress." 

Thor said, "Vision, wait--" 

And then, clearly over comms, maybe spoken directly to me... Tony. "Short stack, you getting this?"

I pressed a finger to the comm in my ear. "Yeah, Tony." 

"We can't fight the army of undead, and the three Asgardians, and close the tear," Tony said. His voice was as grim as I ever heard it. "There's too many of them, and Strange and Maximoff need to be able to focus, so they can't help us. And with the non-stop flow of undead coming into San Diego... the odds aren't in our favor." 

He was basically reiterating what I already knew. I glanced at Pietro; he had taken the two of us up to a (temporarily) cleared roof, where we had a view of ... most of the mayhem. It was chaos. I could see my teammates, my friends, injured and still fighting. It was as I glanced over at my boyfriend that I realized Pietro could not hear what Tony was saying. 

Which meant his words were only meant for me. 

"If you light everything up," Tony said, "then we stand a chance."

My eyes were on Pietro when Tony spoke through the comms. 

My voice was miraculously steady when I said, "All right." 

"That's my girl." And then Tony's end of the comm crackled out.

I chose to believe that was his doing and not because the worst had happened to him. 

I turned to Pietro. "Can you get me close to the tear?"

Pietro gave me a look that was the very definition of unimpressed. "You mean where the two magical beings and the man with a giant axe are? Along with all of the undead? I believe in English, in war, you call that 'kill zone'."

"You're probably right," I said. And he was actually absolutely right, that area was the kill zone in this battle. "But I need to be there." 

Pietro stared hard at me for five seconds. Five seconds that felt like an eternity, under the circumstances. Then he sighed heavily. "I'm not leaving your side," he warned me. 

The next thing I knew I was in his arms. I wrapped my arms around his neck as he paused. "I'm not asking you to," I promised him, quietly.

Pietro nodded. "Good."