CONTAINS MATURE CONTENT
He wasn't hurt. Not physically. His scars were roots that ran deep into his soul, and the sight of Toni's ruined body had fractured it. Shattered it.
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Toni knew before the first hit she took that this was a fight she could not win.
In truth, she'd known that the moment she landed on the Raft, had refused the King of Wakanda's offer of backup for that very reason.
This was her price to pay, and hers alone. She would have no one else die because of her choices. Her mistakes.
Sam and Clint had given her a nod before they boarded the quinjet, and Toni took that as a sign of, perhaps, forgiveness, even though Wanda had simply floated into the aircraft using her strange and deadly abilities. Toni didn't let it bother her. Besides, before she even had the chance to feel the sting of guilt, Lang had given her probably the most uncomfortable wave (that was really more of a wince than anything else) she'd ever seen. For the first time in long, long while, Toni had the urge to laugh.
That urge was surely obliterated when the doors to the uppermost level of the Raft had burst open, and a sea of armed soldiers streamed through it like roaches.
So, she's fighting. With everything she has. She even let herself bare a self-assured smirk when her friends took to the skies, their aircraft whizzing passed her in a blur of silvery light.
Toni dodges blow after blow, kick after kick, until her body is so exhausted, her movements so slow, that it's as though she's fighting under water. Her bruised lungs constrict with every breath, the feeling all too familiar, almost enough to send her into a full-blown anxiety attack. The fight's the only thing keeping her from falling to her knees.
"What are you doing?" A security officer shouts at her. "I thought you were the one who put those bastards away!"
"Those bastards," Toni seethes, her voice muffled through the face slit in her mask, "are my friends. And I'll be damned more than I already am if I let you torture them any longer." She lifts her hand, aiming her repulsor at another guard's chest. He goes down with a groan.
"You're outmatched, Stark. Even if you can take all of us from the ground," the security officer gives a pointed look to something behind Toni, "You'll never reach your friends before they're shot out of the sky."
Toni whirls—only for every ounce of air to leave her lungs in one great whoosh. Because other aircrafts were soaring through the air, weapons blazing, headed in the direction of the quinjet that was supposed to be carrying her friends to safety.
Toni doesn't give herself a chance to breathe. Doesn't even hesitate. She shoots the bastard taunting her in the chest and launches herself into the sky, uttering a stream of curses that would impress even Rhodes.
"Give me some juice, Friday."
The new blaster Toni had installed on her way here—the one she'd created to make sure the next time Rhodey, or anyone she cared about, fell again, she'd be quick enough to reach them—forms around her boot jets with the click and shift of titanium. And then she's blasting through the skies, cutting through the air quicker than ever before, and Toni has barely a chance to appreciate the steady work of her hands before she reaches them: the ones trying to put the rogues into the sea.
