What Wicked Lurks Within (Avengers x Reader)

Chapter 11

"Goddammit Steven!" Tony screamed as his eyes lost track of the man post his entrance to the door, "Why the hell did he have to go back inside!?" Natasha had been able to regain control of her nerves after stepping out of the house, you noticed she was shaking again.

"It's okay, Nat. I am going to get him back." You felt the need to whisper, fearing that a higher pitch would break her. Tony gently squeezed your hand, giving you his tacit support. You were grateful for the gesture, seriously doubting yourself to step foot in that house alone ever again. Tears  flowed afresh out of Natasha's eyes. She was mourning. "You won't." Her voice wavered but did not lack certainty.

"Steve has saved my life more times than I can count, in more ways than one. Whoever is going in to help him, I am coming with." Bucky would have given anything not to venture inside those cursed walls again, but 'anything' did not include his best friend. Sam wanted to go in also - well, not wanted, he would never want that in a million years - rather he felt the need to go in to assist his team.

Sam also saw Natasha, pale as a ghost, on the verge of passing out. He chose to offer his assistance there. Besides, three of the best people he knew were setting out to search for Steve, he was as good as saved. The Falcon firmly stood by Natasha and passed your way an explanatory nod. All of you understood, there had been enough team building exercises for that.

There had been no exercise, however, that had taught any of you not to walk right in the face of certain death. So it made perfect sense when you did exactly that. Three people voluntarily went back into the house. They did not know what they had been expecting but it was definitely not a still body with blood pooling around it, not yet at least.

Steve lay facefirst on the floor, his skull entirely crumbled in, blood seeping out at an alarming rate. If you had to wager a guess about deja vu 2.0, the apparent causality seemed to be a fall from the gantry. A one storey fall would mean nothing for a super soldier, neither would a solid hit from a heavy poker - however, the two of them combined with considerable assistance from the doom that formed the very being of the house had managed to achieve a feat entire organizations had been unsuccessful at.

There was a reason the house had kept Steve's wound fresh and unhealed. Tears stung at your eyes. You felt Tony's grip tighten on your palm and you, in turn, squeezed Bucky's. The iciness of it evoked panic in your heart until you remembered it was his metal arm. "Peggy?" Steve's voice resonated inside the hollow walls and the three of you turned around in sync.

There he stood with his absent eyes, at the door, looking at everything and nothing at the same time. "I know you are here. You called me back. Show yourself!" He desperately beckoned at the hollow walls, at the hollow staircase that lead upward, at the hollow air that encompassed the house. The very foundation of the house shook, equivalent to an animate being savoring a long-awaited breath.

Tony, Bucky and yourself held on to each other tighter than before, prepared for any eventuality except for what the house intended to bring on. A scream materialized from somewhere deep within the house and you would have certainly mistaken it for yours if it hadn't been horse and manly and for good reason - it flickered with the same fright as were you.

A man ran down the stairs - eyes wide open, mouth open even wider - downtrodden, rotten, arms flailing. The scream was his. He ran right into Steve's chest and vanished, no show of smoke and fire - only collided into one end and taken prisoner in the fabric of reality. The house did not allow escape even in death.

Tony's skin crawled because he did not find the sudden presence and equally as sudden absence of the nameless man peculiar. It scared him seven ways to Sunday, there was no doubt about that, yet he did not find it foreign; as if it had always been there in the house scratching at the corners of his eyes like an old lamp or a mug.

Steve's head vaguely tilted towards his chest. Nobody could tell if he had noticed the man, but he did trace his steps up the stairway. "What the hell is happening?" Bucky's eyes tentatively traveled from his best friend's mutilated corpse lying behind him to his best friend mounting the stairs, very much alive even if he didn't look like it.

"Nothing is happening." Your lips could have made no sound and you would not have known. At the moment your mind was racing in leaps and bounds to figure out why the house had chosen you in particular to burden with the realisation. Nonetheless, there was no argument to be made; you knew, with certainty that was irrevocable. "The house is showing as what has happened."

The hands that had grabbed at you in your flight downstairs were now grabbing at Steve, with a different purpose however. The disembodied hands - grey and suffused with death - reached for the gauge wrapped around his head and ripped it to shreds. Blood gushed out with renewed incentive. The man losing blood did not seem to notice; or worse yet, hadn't had half a mind to notice.

Contrary to how it seemed to everyone else, Steve was not wandering around aimlessly. He ascended the steps toward something that was waiting for him at the top - it had been waiting for three days but that was known neither to Steve nor his teammates - something with hollow, seeping voids in the place of eyes and a bled-dry vortex in the place of a mouth.

In a flash, it raised its arm, holding it out for him to take. The action was made twice as eerie owing to the entire lack thereof. The process of an arm being lifted had wholly been skipped - the thing's dull, lifeless arms hung motionlessly at its side at one moment and the next, one of them were proffered to Steve. He took it, even though his mind begged for him not to, for the voice was small. Smothered.

As Steve followed in the thing's lifeless wake, he was reduced to a collection of jerking limbs and distant voices that added up to nothing. At some point Tony had run upstairs to save his friend - the futility of which you were aware of - Steve was close enough to touch and gone too far in time to reach. The thing vaguely floated a few inches off the railing and beckoned one final time.

If any of you had been close enough to your teammate, you would have heard him repeating a single question over and over again, asking anyone who would answer. "What is happening?" There was an almost lively spring in his step as Steve broke into a sprint and ran headlong off the gantry. The old railing gave in to his strength and he collapsed onto the hardwood floor.

The sound that ensued was unmistakably the crunch of crumbling bone - more specifically, a broken neck and a fragment skull. It had all happened so quickly and yet you could have sworn you saw the same clarity, the same sudden, horrified awareness in Steve's eyes as you had in Clint's, a mere moment before the two had succumbed to death.

They had looked at you with pleading eyes, eyes that sought help and knew none would come. Clint and Steve had left you scorched and rooted to the ground, so much so that even as Tony rushed downstairs - with no hands whatsoever grabbing at him and you thanked God for that - and urged Bucky and yourself to leave at once, to you it sounded as if he were speaking from oceans away.

You somewhat registered Bucky conceding against the relentless doors and the paranoia on his face that soon contaminated Tony. It should have come to you next - the unabated strive for self-preservation - but it did not, you knew it would not for you were too far gone.

While the others fought the thick air in an attempt to break the surface and be graced with a gasp of breath, you had yielded, on the ground of finally being able to see what the others could not.

You did not fight because the battle was over and the house had won.

-

Natasha and Sam waited outside, their expectant eyes lying on the open doors of the house and empty hall they saw beyond.

Between the two of them, there was not much hope but they clung to what little they did have; willing the universe to work against the house and its damned secrets, to return their friends back to them.