“Slow down,” the man who’d been introduced a few minutes ago as Nick Fury demanded, “and start from the beginning.” Octavia resisted the urge to scratch her still-healing burns as Natasha and T’Challa took turns catching the man up on what had been happening with Thanos. According to Bruce (after he’d bravely suppressed a gag at seeing the state of her body) she was healing up at a phenomenal rate, and should be back up to 100% by the end of tomorrow.
She had taken that as an official release from medical, and had grit her teeth through a painful and ill-advised shower, pulled on another pair of soft pants and a shirt, and had wandered into the introduction and briefing of the former director of SHIELD. She figured it wouldn’t hurt to listen in, if only to get caught up on everyone’s names.
“Shortly thereafter,” Thor was jumping in, “Thanos attacked my ship, carrying the remainder of Asgard’s people as refugees. He slaughtered about half of our number; the other half escaped in pods. While Loki, Hulk and I held them off…”
According to both Wong and Tony, Strange was going to lose it when he woke up and found out that they’d prioritized saving his life over retrieving the time stone. Octavia’s mind replayed those moments over and over, trying to find another angle she could have swung her sword or a way she could have caught up with the fleeing wizard. While she didn’t regret the decision to choose the life of a comrade in arms over an inanimate object, she did know how bad of a thing it was for Thanos to have it. Particularly if the wizard Mordo could use it the same as Strange had.
“...While Wanda was trying to destroy it - we almost lost Vision,” Natasha continued. “If the ship from Phyra hadn’t shown up when it did…”
Steve had looked like he was going to either hug her or cry when he’d caught sight of her upon her return. She’d made a joke about Venus being too hot for a vacation, and when it fell flat, reminded him that the infinity stone made her able to heal. Eventually she’d managed to push off some of the attention on Peter, pointing out how he’d bravely saved her and Valkyrie at the last moment.
Tony had alternated between worried scolding and beaming pride, and something about the way he and Steve no longer flinched at each other’s presences made her think that someone had forced them to come to an understanding. Maybe it was Shuri, she thought tiredly. She was just glad it hadn’t been her this time.
“And you must be Miss Blake,” the woman who had come with Fury addressed her, holding out a hand to shake. Octavia took it. “Maria Hill, former agent of SHIELD, current hero-wrangler with Stark Industries.”
“Octavia Blake,” she responded, “current human infinity stone.”
“What abilities does it give you?” Fury asked, somehow managing to look like he was staring her down both with his eye and the patch on his left side.
“So far, I can survive having my ribcage crushed by a titan, and a walk on the surface of Venus; if someone touches me and I don’t want them to, they get thrown across the room” she listed tiredly. “And bonus, when I wish that the floor would open up and swallow me, it actually does.” She focused hard on staying where she was, not wanting to accidentally give a practical demonstration right then and there.
“So in general, not a combatant,” Fury summed up. Half the room raised hands and voices to correct him. Octavia smirked while Fury raised an eyebrow, first at the room at large, and then at her.
“You happen to have a course available at SHIELD?” she checked, half sarcastic, half wondering what resources they might have. “How to use your infinity stone in 10 days or less?”
“A course, no,” Fury shook his head. “But,” he added thoughtfully, “I do know someone with experience in that area.”
“Actually, so do I,” Rocket realized aloud. Everyone turned to look at him. “Well, not a lot of experience.” he backtracked quickly. “And he can’t do it anymore. But he did pretty good for himself at the time. And he needs something to do anyway.”
“My option is on the other side of the galaxy,” Fury shrugged. “It’ll take her some time to get here.”
“Mine’s holed up in his room down the hall,” Rocket responded.
-0-
Peter Quill was a horrible teacher.
First, he had no idea what he was doing. His experience was limited to two days living on a planet that was also his biological father (she wasn’t 100% clear on the details there and wasn’t sure she wanted to be). While his ability to control his surroundings sounded a lot like the descriptions she’d gotten of the reality stone’s powers, he understood them about as much as she did - which wasn’t much.
He also insisted on expressing himself in metaphors based on a culture that Octavia had no context for, and didn’t become at all discouraged by her blank looks and complete lack of understanding.
“Once again,” she growled, “I don’t know what the force is, or how to use it, I’ve never heard of Krypton, my name isn’t Daniel-san, and I still don’t understand why the thing you want me to do with the power of the universe is bend a spoon.” She held the piece of cutlery up and waved it back and forth between her fingers, thinking that she could easily bend the metal with only her hands. Hardly a god-like feat.
“Look,” Quill growled right back, “the only time you’ve been able to use it is when you were emotional - you wanted to fall through the floor, you didn’t want the King Panther dude to touch you, you were upset and lashed out. Now when I had my powers, they were tied into my emotions too - you don’t fly the arrow with your head,” he choked off, and Octavia bit down on the inner corner of her lips to try to prevent a scowl.
“I don’t know that one either,” she sighed, but stopped there, noticing that he was tearing up. Rocket had warned that he wasn’t terribly stable - his girlfriend had been killed by Thanos hours before he’d landed on Earth. He’d also described the man as funny, irreverent, friendly, and kind of an idiot. A good friend.
Like Jasper, she thought, heart twisting as he tried to make another joke to smooth over whatever he’d been saying about arrows.
“So what you’re saying with all of this is I need to get emotional,” she summed up.
“Not exactly,” he sighed, rubbing a hand across his eyes, ostensibly in frustration, but clearly also to remove the evidence that he’d started crying. “According to Thor, when his ex had it, it protected her when she felt she was in danger. Now the times you described that you used it, you were in danger too - or thought you were. But you’re not in danger here in this room.”
“So I need to… recreate what I was feeling at the time that I used it to defend myself,” she summed up.
“Yes, exactly,” Quill exclaimed. Octavia could feel herself shrinking on the inside. That toxic combination of fear and despair wasn’t something she wanted to relive.
“And you’re absolutely sure that this is the only way?”
“I’m absolutely sure that this is the only way I know of,” he responded, flinging his arms wide, “since I was only a damn deity for about two days, and I’ve only had my hands on an infinity stone for about thirty seconds. And I barely survived both of those things.” He gave her a confused, awed, pitying look with which she was becoming familiar as the people of Terra-Earth learned the various things she’d survived.
“Something something evolutionary next step ,” she said, waving the spoon dismissively. Then she glared at the curved metal, willing it to bend - for the hundredth time that morning, but this time focusing on the fear and pain she’d been feeling when she ran from the medical wing.
The spoon glinted defiantly at her, a perfect, smooth curve.
She forced herself to go back into the darkest recesses of her head, tracing the thoughts lurking at the edges of her consciousness, threatening to flood in and consume her if she let her guard down.
Functionally immortal. She’d gone from comfortably courting death, knowing that her final rest was on its way and having faith in all the good that would do her people, to possibly never being released from this life. She’d never see Ethan again. Or Jasper. Or Lincoln. Or her mom. And her people would never truly be free of The Dark Year. The last of the human race wasn’t even the last - just an abandoned test colony. It had all been for nothing, she’d given up her soul for nothing…
“-Tavia! Octavia, geez, stop! Stop!” Her eyes snapped to Quill’s wide, terrified ones. The spoon stood, perfect and unbothered by her inner turmoil.
“What?” she began to demand, irritated that this man would demand she tear herself apart with emotional pain only to interrupt her before it did any good.
“I think maybe your problem is less about power, and more about… aim,” he explained quietly, pointing off to the side. Turning her head first one way, then the other, Octavia found her eyes going just as wide as his had.
The columns supporting the room’s roof had all bent down, doubling over in response to her command. She glanced up, noting the red mist holding up the ceiling, and then following the long tail streaming off of it to its source of Wanda Maximoff’s hand.
“Nice catch,” Quill thanked the woman as he stood and dusted bits of plaster off of himself.
Octavia exhaled slowly, making a concentrated effort to calm herself down.
She was accustomed to power. She was accustomed to scaring people.
She was not accustomed to being unable to control those things.
‘The sword doesn’t care what you meant,’ she remembered coldly admonishing Illian, lifetimes ago. ‘It just cuts.’ This power was far more destructive than a sword or a gun, and for the first time in her life, she wasn’t sure if she could stop herself.
“Hey,” Natasha greeted them from the doorway, and three heads swiveled in her direction. “Strange is awake.”
“Awesome,” Quill responded dryly, “he can take over as Mr. Miyagi.”
“About that,” the red-haired agent sighed. “There’s been a complication.”
-0-
“Mordo’s spell was intended to remove his magic at the source,” Wong was explaining as they arrived. “Thanks to Octavia’s timely intervention, he didn’t succeed, but the damage is extensive - and it seems to have reset his memories back to June, 2016.”
“Look, Mr… whatever your name was,” Strange was trying to growl, his hands shaking even more uncontrollably than usual as his voice cracked. “I don’t know who the hell you people are or how I got here, but if someone could quit talking about magical miracle bullshit for ten seconds and call a real hospital, that would be great.”
“I take it June 2016 is prior to him becoming the master wizard we all know and loathe?” Tony sighed, pressing a half-full glass of something brown to his temple.
“Right before,” Wong confirmed. “The last thing he remembers is going to look for Pangborn. We think that that since Mordo’s spell was meant to remove his magic, and said magic is obtained through study and practice, he had to suppress the relevant memories..”
“What the hell kind of hospital allows this many visitors to pile in at once?” Strange grumbled. “What country is this? And who’s in charge here?”
“Well that’s an unfortunate twist,” Octavia sighed, scrubbing her hands down her face as Shuri introduced herself and started to talk about chemical memories and a bunch of other scientific stuff that the warrior didn’t pretend to understand. They were short one time stone, one wizard, and she still didn’t have a competent teacher.
Fear froze through her at the familiar thought that she might be on her own in this, carrying a power she neither wanted nor fully understood, again. Was it too much to ask of the universe that she not be alone to carry such a burden? She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing deeply as Wong had instructed her to do when she felt her mind start to slip down that path.
In, out, Strange’s voice was relieved as he began to realize that Shuri really actually did know what she was talking about.
In, out, this wasn’t her earth, there was no more bunker, no more Blodreina.
In, out, Tony and Steve were discussing how this would affect their plan in low, stressed voices.
In, out, she just needed someone who understood this, who knew what the hell they were doing, she needed she needed she needed she needed so hard that the universe was warping around that need.
She swallowed, clenching her fists against her forehead. Too much, too much power, too much need.
In, out, Rocket was quite vocal about how screwed they were now. Strange was quite vocal - and in a much higher register - about the fact that a raccoon was talking.
In, out, she could feel the power flowing through her, infinity crying out to infinity, the whole universe beneath the soles of her shoes and more, answering her call as it had every time she’d felt cornered and afraid so far.
Her heart pounded, once, twice.
Their hearts pounded, once, twice.
In, out, a green-skinned woman was waking up, breathing herself for the first time in a long time, blinking in confusion at the light coming in through Quill’s window as she threw back the curtains and stared at the city below, trying to get her bearings…
“Octavia!” The hands on her were Wong’s and she realized that she could feel the stone’s power about to throw him off, and reined the impulse in with an iron will, the same as she had the impulses to murder and maim so many times when she was queen. She felt the power rising against her, but she opened her eyes, aiming her fist at the window and letting the burst of red power shatter it. Wong’s hands left her shoulders out of sensible caution - not because she’d hurt him.
Progress.
“I think I’m getting the hang of this,” she commented blandly.
“So the light show and broken window were on purpose?” Rocket snorted.
“That window could withstand a missile blast,” one of the red-armored warriors who followed the princess around said, her eyebrows up. “If that was on purpose, I’d hate to see an accident.”
“Who the hell gave me LSD?” Strange choked.
“Some guy named Mordo,” Octavia responded flippantly, “I’m sure Wong can fill you in. Rocket, Nebula, with me please.” She turned and walked out of the room, knowing and not knowing where she was going all at once. She felt the stone singing beneath her skin, felt another pulling at her, felt a third pricking at the edge of her consciousness, wanting to wake...
“Uh, where are we going?” Rocket demanded, standing up from all-fours after he’d caught up.
“Quill’s room I think,” Octavia responded, turning left and descending a flight of stairs.
“Why?” Nebula shot back, not trying to disguise the irritation and disgust in her tone. Octavia threw open the door to the guest hallway, and came face to face with the green woman, dressed in what were probably Quill’s spare clothes, holding two halves of a broken stand lamp like batons. For a long moment, no one spoke. No one moved. No one breathed.
The poles clattered to the floor as Nebula flung herself at her sister.
I’m going to do my own show called The 200 with a badass lesbian called Aleksa kom foreztkru who lives happily ever after and rules everything and has this girlfriend called Klarc kom speiskru, who have this badass friend called Uctavia (but you can call her U) who’s also a speiskru and has this boyfriend Washington kom foreztkru. Aleksa and Klarc had a son called Eiden, who is cute and also badass, he will inherit the power.
The villian is called Jazon Ruthenburger but he’s stupid and a kitten kills him after five second of his first appearance, I didn’t wanted to kill him but kittens are a big problem, also I need to do that for the storyline, impact, the actor being killed in real life having another work and stuff, you know, but anyway is a war, people die in wars.
