Tony gave a vague shrug, "Eh. Same thing, just slightly bigger. Besides, we've got the Nazi killer" - he gestured towards Erik with a wink - "and the guy who punched out Hitler
over a hundred times on our side."
Nikki looked at him blankly, her eyes narrowing before she turned to Steve, "What?"
Steve turned red as he realized Tony was referencing his USO days, but was thankfully saved from having to explain it as the quinjet landed and the cargo door slid open. All
of them hit unbuckled and stood up, with the exception of Thor, who never seemed to sit down inside planes, and Tony, whose suit just didn't fit into the seats.
"Okay," Clint said, standing up and shouldering his quiver. "We know the base is underground, but Dmitri wasn't able to give us an exact location so we're going to have to-"
But Steve stopped listening as Nikki nudged his arm, nodding towards Erik with a grin. Erik stood facing the mountain, and subsequently away from the Avengers, with his eyes
closed. But there was something in his expression that made him look almost contemplative. Then his lips tugged into a victorious grin, his eyes opening as he looks down at
the ground a few feet away. He raised his hand towards the spot, his attention solely on the ground as though he was looking at something beyond the grass, and curled his
fingers inward.
"Lehnsherr," Clint said suddenly, his previous sentence trailing off. "What the fuck are-"
The rest of his words were swallowed by a loud screeching noise as the ground before Erik erupted and something large flew up into the air. Nikki threw up her arm, causing
the dirt flying towards the Avengers to slide over them in a perfect arc. Whatever had flown from the ground, a large metal rectangular sheet from the looks of it, was
levitated down to the side of the hole with a steady wave of Erik's hand. Echoing from the hole, Steve could just make out the sound of several alarms going off.
Looking as though he had simply opened a door, Erik turned to the others and said, "There it is."
Tony, Thor, Steve, Natasha, and Clint all looked to Nikki as if for some explanation. Instead of answering, she looked to Erik.
"How deep is it?"
"This just leads to the first level," he explained. "There seem to be seven or eight different floors, but the elevator shaft goes further. There's another series of rooms down
there, but there's not enough metal, I can't tell how much is down there."
She nodded, "Right. Let's go then, since we've pretty much announced our arrival."
Without waiting for a reply, Nikki walked straight for the hole and leapt in. Erik followed her shortly after.
"Well," Tony said quietly. "That went smoothly."
"Lady Nikki is correct," Thor announced, stepping towards the hole. "Much can happen while we sit idly here."
Steve nodded, following Thor and leaping into the hole. It wasn't that far to the floor, only eighteen or so feet, and Erik slowed down his descent for him. Natasha and Clint
followed him, their weapons at the ready. But Nikki and Erik seemed to have down well without them. It seemed they had broken into a managerial section, what with the rows
of desks and computers, and the handful of HYDRA agents cowering in the far corner of the room seemed to be unarmed. To be far, Steve wasn't certain how brave he would
be had he been faced with Nikki, who had fire swirling around her fingertips, and Erik, who was levitating everything in the room that had even the slightest amount of metal.
"Where are they?" Nikki shouted, her voice more commanding than angry.
None of the HYDRA agents made a move, just staring at the Avengers with wide eyes. To further her point, the temperature of the room drops, a humming noise erupting as
sparks of white fly from Nikki's skin. She lunged forward just a step and the white sparks condensed into a single line as they flew towards the wall above the agents' heads.
Lightning, Steve realized, she created lightning.
"I asked you bastards a question!"
Before any of the agents can answer, a door across from the Avengers slides open, revealing several rows of armed agents.
"Erik..."
There was just a second before the cacophony when Steve could hear Erik say, "They're not metal."
The sound of a hailstorm of bullets was met with the scream of metal being tugged towards them as Erik made a makeshift shield for them. The bullets pushed into the metal
sheeting, creating round indentions, but they didn't break through.
"They're not metal?" Natasha asked, shouting over the noise to be heard.
Erik shook his head, "I can't stop them."
"They knew we were coming," Nikki snapped. "They expected us at some point. Why else would they even develop a gun perfectly suited for Erik?"
"Looks like we've got some double agents to weed out," Clint said, looking towards Natasha. "Just like Xuzhou."
Nikki shook her head irritably, "I'm clearing the way."
Just as she moved to get up, Steve grabbed her hand. She looked back for a second, the anger in her dark eyes giving way just enough for him to see her confusion, and gave
her a reassuring nod.
"Be careful," he said.
Erik cursed under his breath as he watched Nikki phase through the metal sheeting with hardly a second thought, feeling as powerless as he had when he had watched his
daughter die. The second the men had walked into the room, bearing guns that he couldn't feel the in the same way he could feel most others, he had known he could do very
little to save his comrades. Now Nikki was abandoning what little safety he could provide in a reckless step closer to the children she cared for so deeply.
His instincts had been telling him to leave the wall up, to bring the desks and computers crashing down on the HYDRA agents beyond, effectively clearing the way for them.
But now Nikki was on the other side and he couldn't do anything from behind the wall unless he wanted to take the chance of hitting her. Making a split second decision, Erik
wrenched a hole in his wall and ran through. He'd be damned before he'd let Nikki go up against armed soldiers on her own, regardless of how her mutation might help when his
couldn't.
They weren't shooting at him. That thought struck him the second he was on the other side, quickly followed by the question of what the HYDRA agents were shooting at if
not him. He got his answer looking to the crowd of people at the far edge of the room. Nikki had pushed herself into the thick of the fray, disintegrating the bullets which
approached her and burning any hand which came near her, effectively drawing their fire. He could hear the Avengers following him as he rushed forward, pulling what metal he
could from the walls and ceiling to take out the agents on the edges of the crowd.
As the agents thinned out, brought down by the bullets and repulsor beams, Erik watched in horror as Nikki turned to the door they had come from. Throwing her hand towards
it, the panels blew backwards and into the other room. She wasted no time in disappearing through it. Letting out a string of curses, Erik charged after her, dodging plastic
bullets and pushing agents aside.
From behind him, over the din of the fight, he heard the Captain shouting, "Lehnsherr! Wait!"
He paid the man no mind. If Steve Rogers wanted to stand back and let Nikki run straight into danger without someone by her side, then he could do so. Erik wasn't going to.
Avengers and teamwork be damned, regardless of how Nikki viewed their relationship, Erik was not the type of person to make the same mistake twice. He hadn't stood by her
once and it had cost him more than he would ever regain. This time, he would make sure he was doing everything he could to keep her from getting hurt.
Beyond the door was a hallway, empty of all decoration, the walls lined only with rows of doors. At the far e
nd was what looked to be another elevator. Or what used to be an
elevator. The doors were gone, leaving only a gaping hole, and there was molten steel pooling on the floor where they were supposed to be. Cables hung limply from the ceiling
of the elevator shaft, no doubt cut from the top of the car. Erik leaned over the edge of the landing, peering down into the seemingly endless dark as he tried to sense just
how far it extended into the earth.
Giving a sigh, Erik stepped forward and into the darkness. His breath rushed from him in a gasp as the sense of weightlessness tugged his heart into his throat. Extending his
arms as much as he could in the shaft, he subconsciously felt for the metal in his armor and willed it to slow his descent. It had only been a matter of seconds, less than a minute of nothing but darkness and wind and the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears, but it had been enough for a lifetime. He idly wondered if it had been similar to what
Sean had experienced when he had pitched the boy off the side of the satellite. But that didn't matter now.
The elevator gave a soft groan as Erik landed on its roof, the sound of the stressed metal giving way under his weight echoed through the space ominously. He fell into the
elevator car in a crouch. The lack of gunfire caught his attention immediately, the silence sending a chill through his veins, and he looked up to see Nikki standing stock-still in
the middle of the room before him.
"Nikki?" he asked quietly, still wary of anyone who might be within earshot of them. "What are you doing?" - he glanced back towards the elevator - "What were you thinking?
How are the others supposed to-"
He stopped suddenly, his eyes catching on what Nikki had been staring at all along. The wall across from them was covered in computer monitors and displays. On each one
was a different photo or video, some of the images spanning across the lengths of two or three screens, some videos still playing in an endless loop. There was no sound, but
there didn't need to be. Erik could practically hear the screams already. He was certain Nikki was hearing them, too, watching each pained expression with a voice to match.
A girl with auburn hair being pulled in different angles by apparatus, her body stretching like elastic as it pushed her mutation to the brink. A boy with wires pressed against his
temples, the needles sticking just far enough off his skin to be seen, as he went through half a dozen transformations within seconds. A girl with blonde hair on an operating
table, looking for all the world like one of the many victims Erik had seen back in Auschwitz. A man, older than all the rest, his salt and pepper hair hanging limp and dirty
around his face. His eyes were hollow as he stared at the ground, his arms and legs bound by intricate silver chains that held him suspended in the room, looking like a man
slowly losing hope. There were angry red marks where he had obviously tried to pry off the silver collar around his throat.
Erik suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe. And this time it wasn't Nikki, it wasn't the pressure in the room rising or the oxygen being pulled away. It was being face to face with
something he hadn't thought of in such vivid detail in decades.
"Thanks for waiting, guys," a voice said behind him, trailing off before being followed by a quiet, "Fuck..."
Nikki was trembling. She hadn't moved an inch, her eyes glued to the screens of her family, but her entire body seemed to quiver. Whether in grief or guilt or rage, Erik couldn't
tell. And then he watched as her fingers clenched into hard fists, her knuckles white against the red that ran down from her palms, and the screens shattered all at once. He
couldn't see her face when she turned around at last. He can't see her eyes, her hood too far down over her face, but there is a hardness in her jaw and a tension in her
shoulders that he's never seen before. Erik doesn't hesitate to step out of her way as she walks towards the door behind him.
She doesn't move her hand, but the doors almost seem to implode, crumpling and folding in on themselves like paper until they are gone from his sight. They aren't even gone
before she's walking down the hall, her gait slow and concise, the sound of her heeled boots clicking down the hallway.
Erik glances back at the Avengers, barking out, "Check the other doors. We're not leaving until we've found them all."
Without waiting for their response, he goes after Nikki, knowing that they'll be irritated by the two. But he has more important things to worry about. Screams from further
down the hallway only spur him on. They're erratic, incoherent, emphatic - like those of an animal in pain. And there's more than one voice he can hear. Most importantly,
they're not just in his head.
His breathing seems too loud, his pace not fast enough, even though he's sprinting now. Footsteps and screaming, blood and metal on his tongue, present and past seem to merge together as he nears the end of the hall. He can't keep them straight anymore. He's in Auschwitz, in Shaw's laboratory - no, in Colorado, in an underground base - no, in
Volchansk, amidst the smoke and ashes of their home. He'sHe
was staring in disbelief at what he was seeing.
Nikki stood in the very center of the room, the walls and floors splattered with a fine layer of blood like a Jackson Pollock painting. Before her, suspended in the air ten feet off
the ground, a HYDRA agent flailed silently as though he was choking. Nikki was staring up at him, her hood slipping off her head and her dark curls whipping around her face
from a wind that wasn't there.
"Nikki," he said slowly, not taking a step closer to the two. "What are you doing? What have you done?"
"What does it look like?"
Erik didn't answer, too startled by the emptiness in her tone. She didn't sound like the same person anymore. There was something familiar about it, something which told him
that he had heard that indescribable edge in someone else's voice, but he couldn't remember who. He couldn't tell who she sounded like.
"For a long time, Erik, I thought you were heartless," she said suddenly, tilting her head at the agent above her. "I thought you were too cynical, too hard and unforgiving.
That you looked at the world and all you saw was the hatred and misery we were raised in. I thought I could see some light in this world that you couldn't. But you were right.
"They're all the same. Five years, ten, fifty, another goddamn universe, it doesn't matter. The only species in the whole world that does things purely out of spite, out of
hatred, wanting to hurt others simply for the sake of hurting them. And they will hunt us down every time, flay us alive just to see what makes us special. What makes us
superior. They'll never be satisfied."
She sounded like him.
The revelation hit him like a blow to the stomach. She sounded like him, before Trask and the Sentinels, before Charles had let him go, back when she had fled from their home
in fear. And it was terrifying.
She had always been the one to see the good in others, to forgive and forget, even when those around her spit in her face and called her by nasty words. She had always
been the light, the fire, the passion, of their relationship. But Erik couldn't see that in the woman before him anymore. It was like he had so often hoped, for her to stand by
his side and see his reasoning. To support his beliefs whole-heartedly.
Then she glanced over her shoulder to look at him with an expression as cold as her voice. Her eyes were bloodshot, the red nearly blotting out the whites entirely, and her
pupils were blown so wide that her eyes looked black.
"We should have shown them what we were capable of from the start, instead of hiding away from them all."
He didn't want her to side with him anymore.
"You don't believe that."
"I don'
t?"
"I know you don't," he answered, finally taking a step forward. "I know you."
He couldn't see her expression anymore, but he could hear the anguish in her voice when she said, "Then you should know that I've had enough. Why should I suffer more at
the hands of people like this? Why should I watch as they take everyone away from me? They took my family, my parents and my sister, they took Anya, took you, took away
every boy of eighteen at the school, took away Charles, tried to take my life twice. I can't let them take anyone else from me. If I have to burn this miserable world to the
ground to stop them - I won't let them take anyone else."
"This isn't you."
"Maybe it always was," she murmured. "Do you know what Shaw used to call me? His beautiful destruction. He didn't even know about my mutation - that much I managed to
keep from him - but he was certain I was something special. Why else would my sister have tried to protect me so desperately? Maybe that is why I hid it from you. I didn't
want you to see what I truly was."
"I already knew what you truly are. Even then, I knew."
"You didn't even know I was a mutant," she snapped. "How can you say you know me?"
"Because we grew up together," he pointed out. "Because we lived together for years. We may have never seen eye to eye, but I always knew you. Just as you knew me. Let
him down."
Her fist tightened, causing the HYDRA agent to shake like a rag doll, as she spat out, "This is one of the men who hurt my family, who hurt our children, and you want me to
let him go?"
"Yes."
"You would have told me to rip him apart not that long ago."
Erik shook his head, taking the final step in closing the distance between them, "Not that long ago, you told me that I couldn't end cruelty with violence. That starting a war
wouldn't prevent another."
He placed his hand on her shoulder, trailing his fingers down her arm until he gently closed them around her hand. She was crying, fury and grief clear in her eyes, but she
wouldn't look at him. He stepped forward, feeling her tremble against him with each shuddering breath she took.
"I know they've hurt you, that they've hurt your family, but don't do this," he pleaded, keeping his voice soft. "Lashing out in anger will only end in something you'll regret for
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