Sidelined (an Avengers Story)

Chapter 3: Inhuman

Pietro Maximoff

The hardest bodies to find are the kids.

I don't know why I thought I'd be saving people today. I should have known there was no way we'd be bringing anyone down from this mountain alive. We're recovering the dead. It's noble, I guess. Loved ones can find peace knowing you're not out there somewhere and maybe they could be helping you. It's closure.

I sit on the back of Clint's snow mobile, hands on my knees, swallowing hard and trying not to think of the little girl with blue-white skin who'd probably suffocated before she'd frozen. Her family is just as dead as she is, so closure for them doesn't matter.

I shut my eyes, heart thudding in my chest, as I hear the phantom shriek of the rocket, the sound of the world crashing down around my ears, and screaming as my parents fall. Their bodies had been mangled beyond recognition. I couldn't tell Mama from the woman who'd lived down the hall.

I roll down my ski mask and scrub my cheeks with icy gloves as flashes of Alina's sweet, blue-white face appear with so many others-all later covered by white sheets. Like snow.

I swallow again. My heart pumps so fast my ribcage vibrates. My vision blurs and doubles. I fumble through my utility belt and pull out a protein bar. I'm almost out of food. I'd burned through it quicker than I'd thought, and I'd kill for the Snickers Clint was going on about. Fortunately, the mission's almost over. The search area perimeters that the earlier rescue squads hadn't gotten to are mapped out for us. With Thor flying ahead to survey the land and check for stability, me running out to start the excavation process and then Clint following on the snow mobile, we knocked out the map in hours instead of days. Captain Long and the regular rescue squads join us to pack up what we've found-the corpses-and murmur things as they look at us with round eyes.

I don't speak the language, don't know what they're saying, but a couple of people have offered me drinks and food and bowed afterwards. It could be a cultural act of politeness. I've seen movies where certain cultures bow all the time but, for some reason, I don't think they're just being polite. It's weird. McDonald's and posing for pictures is one thing, but these people? Thor shrugs it off, all smiles and laughter. Clint-well, no one bows for Clint.

And it kind of pisses me off. Clint's probably doing more work than Thor and me, but he's not doing it using super-powered skills. Guess that makes him boring. But I don't think he's boring. I can't help but marvel at how he keeps his voice so calm and how his hands don't shake when he pulls sheets over bodies. He even takes the time to pat my back or squeeze my shoulders, because he doesn't have to say anything for me to know that he gets it.

"Hey."

I jump off the seat of the snow mobile and spin around to see Clint, his head slightly cocked to one side as he stares at me. He holds an extra protein bar out to me.

"You okay?" he asks.

"Yeah-yeah-you-just-surprised-me." I bite my tongue. That sounded fast even to me. I take a deep breath, willing my heart to stop buzzing. "You surprised me."

"You're jumpy," Clint says.

I take the bar from him and tear into it as my stomach growls. I need real food. These snacks are teasing me. "One more section, right?"

Clint nods. "Thor should be back any minute."

"Right-yeah-sure." I plop back down on the snow mobile and sip water from my canteen. It's freezing and hits my stomach like blocks of ice. "I'm ready to go." Home. I watch my breath come out in small white puffs of vapor. Wonder if I can make shapes like Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. God, that was a long movie. It had taken a week to watch, because I had to keep turning it off to do other things.