The streets are empty when Joël and Damo begin their walk home, the night sky crowded with stars. Joël has to concentrate really hard to stay on the footpath and not stagger onto the road.
"What I wanna know is, why does everyone always feel sorry for the fucking prick?" he says. "It's a fucking joke. Fucking arsehole. It makes me sick."
"Are you still crapping on about Dom?” says Damo. “For Christ’s sake, dude-”
"Dom slept with my fiancee," says Joël. "Behind my back. And lied about it. For years. He got her pregnant. But everyone's always like "Oh, poooooor Dom." What the absolute fu-"
"Dude, get over it," says Damo. "He's not worth the energy. Hey, you wanna come back to my place for a sesh? I've got some A-grade weed from this dude who grows his own shit and gets seeds in from Shang Simla. I smoked some last night and my brain was like scrambled fucking eggs."
"Nah," says Joël. "I gotta get home and look after Anita." He stumbles into a streetlight and stares at it indignantly.
"You know, Cherone's cousin Maggie's a total babe," says Damo. "I hope I see her again. I told her to come by the pool on the weekend. Do you reckon she'll turn up?"
"Who knows," says Joël. "All I know is that Dom can rot in hell."
As soon as Alya was out of the shield, Marinette in her arms, Hawkmoth moved to approach them. The akuma hadn't been able to drain all of Mari thanks to the entire group getting in front of it, but it had still taken a good chunk and it was vital she was out of sight immediately.
Still unable to move freely, Adrien felt relieved when Nino ran as if his tigh wasn’t wounded and remade his shield in a constricting manner around the enemy, getting a cuss out of the villain's mouth that made his stomach turn. The more Hawkmoth existed, it seemed, the sicker he grew at the mere sight of him.
His entire body should be aching, but the adrenaline was getting too high for it —and for that he was grateful. He shouted against the rain to his friend to protect the other two, straightening himself and feeling the tickling sensation of Tikki's power. She was aprehensive, and he couldn't blame her. Once his friend was gone, the shield around Hawkmoth gave up and the man launched into his direction intent on taking the rare chance of snatching one of the two most powerful miraculous while he was still weak, a mere 5 meters between them.
"You are not getting the chance!"
Under any other circumstance, Adrien would've shouted something, anything to make light of the situation, but all jokes and fun had suddenly dried out. He wasn't fast enough to stop Hawkmoth and fell back to the ground, his legs his only barrier while the man tried to bring his hands close enough to pick one of his earrings out by force.
In a split second he mustered all the strength he had left and gave him a closed fist right to the chin, pushing him back with his legs right after and seeing him roll to the side with a groan. He had no time to revel in the sound, however, and struggled to get back on his feet once more. He needed to put some distance between them and grab his baton back.
Running to the edge of the building they stood on, he could see it shining faintly behind a pipe, but Hawkmoth was up and running right behind him again way too soon.
"You think yourself too smart, don't you" Hawkmoth said in an almost amusing way, and Adrien could almost see the grin on his mouth even without turning around. "But you're too weak! if it was any other miraculous..But using these two will be too much to your body right now. Just give the ladybug to me and I will fix everything!"
"Shut up!
"You prefer to die!?" His plan was working. Talking made the boy go slightly slower, and the energy his new miraculous gave him made him faster. he was just about to touch that damn fool. He just needed to close the gap, just a little bit more...
He wasn't fast enough, however, and halted as he saw Chat Noir take a last second decision to use the wet floor to his advantage, throwing himself on the ground and closing the distance between him and his baton with a slide, arms open and mouth muttering something he didn't need to listen to understand.
A beam of bright white light blinded him for a few seconds, and before he could even see again his instincts made him jump back just in time to avoid something that hit the ground with such force that he could hear the cement cracking before whatever it was was taken back.
He blinked a few times while his sight came back to him, following the thing that had almost caught him: It was Chat Noir's baton, that was for sure, but it was now black and splitted with a bright red cord between the pieces as if it was some sort of nunchaku. It came back to it's master's grip and closed itself as if the cord had never been there before, but it wasn't the new weapon that froze him in place.
Right in front of him was standing the annoying boy he had been trying to get rid of for the past 10 years.
No.
The boy that scrambled his plans over and over again and he swore more than once he would destroy. The boy he almost killed many times.
No.
The boy he almost succeded in killing many times.
His son.
"Cat got your tongue?" Adrien told him with zero amusement, baton in hand growing as it usually did, and he could see when Hawkmoth felt the ground faltering below his feet.
While transforming, there were only two things in Adrien's mind: having enough resources to ditch every move Hawkmoth had into the trash, and be sure that bastard saw his face. And so his kwami friends conceded his wish, and his transformation had all the right bits except the mask to conceal his identity. He knew his eyes were still merged with Plagg's, and he liked it because it meant he could see very clearly through the rain and into the night. All his senses were ready for one thing only: Stop his father.
Without an answer, the hero continued, being thankful for his newfound force and regained energy, and gave a single, slowly step that made Hawkmoth go back one step in response.
"You--Adri--" Hawkmoth started, but jumped again at the leap his son gave to close the distance between them, his baton cracking the ground again just where he stood mere seconds before. "Adrien stop that! You could die!!"
"Death is overrated" His tone was smooth while he got up and leaped again, atacking over and over while Hawkmoth barelly defended himself with his cane.
He had so many things to ask, and yet none of them seemed to be able to blurt out of his mouth while he saw the man fanctically trying to protect his face and both miraculous he had active at the moment — as to not shatter them and undo the only thing protecting him from being dead by a single blow of his baton.
He wanted to say he couldn't care less, but deep down, something in him still cared.
"Why!?" He shouted instead of any other question, but never stopping his blows. Hawkmoth let himself get hit once before using his cane to push into his wounds and he grunted, the seconds he faltered just enough for the other man to jump to the next building to get some space between them.
"You do not understand!" Hawkmoth shouted back, Adrien could see a mix of anger and desperation bulding behind his now pink-ish eyes "I did this for us-I did this for you! If you just give me the Ladybug you'd—"
Adrien grunted once more, out of rage this time, and leaped after him. Hawkmoth conjured a swarm of butterflies that almost made him fall from the building - enough distraction to put even more space between them.
"For me!?" He got up the water tank on a corner and saw the butterflies leave him alone while his enemy listened "For me!?" an unamused laugh this time "The only thing you wanted all these years was power on top of power! You are a manipulative prick, a lying bastard, a killer!"
"I never intended to-"
"DON'T FUCK WITH ME!" He shouted, jumping to the top of the building Gabriel stood on and landing in a cat-like manner, not bothering to get back up before slowly circling him once, analyzing.
"All the people you manipulated to control and all the ones you hurt... Do you want to know how many times I would be fucking dead by your doing if it wasn't Ladybug!?”
That seemed to click something inside Hawkmoth's head, because the man started attacking him back with a mix of cane attacks and butterfly swarms in hopes of making him use his power and greatly reduce the time he had to fight.
"YES, I DID ALL THAT!" He seemed enraged, and Adrien wanted nothing more. "But you and Ladybug know nothing! I did it for a greater purpose! I did did for our family!!"
"Do you want me to enumerate how many innocent people Ladybug brought back to life that died by YOUR akumas!?" Adrien dodged his cane once and crouched when the butterflies tried to get to him "How many people are endangered right now because of you!? There is nothing that would justify what you did- nothing!"
Saying those things out loud made him even more enraged. He could barely get any rest some nights thinking about the amount of times they couldn't completely save the day, how many people were endangered or affected because of their fight. He had no idea how that man even slept knowing what he did.
Gabriel jumped to flee and he went right behind him. Deep down he still wanted a reason, something that was strong enough. He didn't want his father to--
"I DID IT TO BRING YOUR MOTHER BACK!"
This time, it was something inside him that lit up. A fire he did not know he was capable of having, but he felt nonetheless. Before he could even control his own body, he propelled himself full force on a chimney and caught Hawkmoth mid-jump, one hand pulling and throwing his cane away, the other holding his neck.
He could feel the fabric of his suit barely holding against his claws and, this time, he could truly say he couldn't care less.
The older man's head slammed against the wall of the building's lift motor room as they landed, and Adrien saw himself pulling him from it and slamming his father's head against the wall a second time, and then a third.
"Don't you dare." His eyes were wide and his tone was lethal as he pushed Halkmoth out of the ground, still anchored on the wall by his hand holding him in place. "Don't you dare bring her into this"
Gabriel was holding his arm with both his hands now, but Adrien's force was still too much for him to handle, specially now with two miraculous.
"It is--" he coughed, finding it difficult to breathe "it is true!!" He argued "You know the ladybug can do it-If you just- If you just give it to me--"
"You forced Fu to give up his memory." He started in the same tone, ignoring what Gabriel had just said completely, but shifted his gaze to the side. He could see the light changing. A few more moments and the sun would rise. "You made Nathalie permanently ill. You put the entirety of Paris in danger. You made an akuma to steal Ladybug's soul just so you could use the miraculous the same way she does and not suffer any consequences... And you have the nerve to say it was because of my mother? "
His grip got tighter as he pulled Gabriel out of the wall and hanged him out of the building, his hand being now the only thing stopping him from falling.
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't end you right now."
"Adrie--" His voice was hoarse thanks to the pressure, and he saw Adrien's eyes flinch carefully as his gaze went back to him.
"It's Chat Noir for you, Hawkmoth."
" Wouldn't-" he coughed again, holding himself against his arm, but the hero didn't move a single muscle "Wouldn't you.. do everything..it took? Aren't you..too...Trying to bring her back?"
The shine in his eyes gave Adrien the confirmation he didn't need. He was talking about Marinette.
"Aren't we..The same?"
-----------------------------
It had barely been ten minutes, but the waiting was killing her. She was about to make a hole on the ground, walking from one side to the other, when she heard what sounded like muffed excited roars at a distance. What was going on? It sounded a bit like..cheering? She decided to talk to Nino about it, but the sound of his miraculous beeping with a new call distracted her.
“Bunnyx” Nino hid his face behind the hood and googles once more before answering, and the hero on the other side spoke quickly:
“Quick report! Chat and Ladybug are not answering, but whatever you guys did, good job!!” She said excitedly and he could hear people cheering behind her while he looked worriedly at Alya. Her face went instantly pale “The sentimonsters are crumbling, and the akumas are fleei-- Ah, here it comes!! It should get to you guys in no time. I need to help out the civilians! Great job everyone!” and she hung up.
Nino stood up, his heart suddenly skipping a beat. Both him and Alya approached Marinette as they noticed a big wave of ladybugs made out of light coming from all directions.
Author’s Note: Both Gamora and Natasha are stuck in the soul stone. It’s okay, though—they have a lot in common. But it’s not okay, because they have a whole lot to work through. Gamora POV. Part I of II.
>> die side by side
Gamora opens her eyes to a world painted in red and orange.
Red-orange sky, stretching out unbroken to touch a distant horizon. Red-orange water, silent and empty where they lap against her thighs. Red-orange rage, flickering in her soul and burning through the tips of her fingers; a remnant of something she can’t quite place.
A sense of lethargy clings to her as she eases into a sitting position, and her abs protest against the foreign movement. A lock of hair falls over her shoulder: despite just being pulled from the ankle-deep waters, when she touches it, both her hand and her hair are completely dry.
She cups the water in her hands. It’s cool, and wet, and the red-orange reflects against the green of her skin, just like she’d expect. But when she lets it drip through her fingers, every last drop slides seamlessly back to river, as if she’d never touched it at all.
“You’ll get used to that.”
Gamora whirls around instinctively, gathering her feet under her to fall into a defensive position. Barely a stone’s throw away, there’s yet another echo of red and orange: this time, found in a head of hair, half covering the face of a woman she doesn’t recognize.
The spectre smiles. “Hey, stranger.”
The words sound like something Peter would say, but the flat affect sounds like Gamora herself. Warning bells peal softly at the base of her skull—she wishes she could remember why.
Instead, she clears her throat, shifting into a stance that feels safer: spine twisting a little straighter, fists clenching a little tighter.
She jerks her chin in the woman’s direction. “Who are you?”
She doesn’t seem intimidated by Gamora’s demand, but a flicker of something flashes in her eyes. “The Black Widow.”
“Should that mean something to me?”
“No.” Another smile—sharper this time. “No more Daughter of Thanos will mean to me.”
Thanos.
The bells’ tolling turns into the crack of thunder; the fire in her veins to ice.
(And then the red-orange waters fade into blues and purples, brooding skies and angry mountains; a scream ripped from her chest and then the green, green blood dripping at the altar of her father’s—)
Gamora’s fingers grasp for a sword that isn’t there; she weaponizes her voice instead.
(Peter would be so proud.)
“What do you know of Thanos,” she demands, and her voice doesn’t tremble, because that’s what being His daughter means.
“That he killed you,” the woman says. “And then he killed half of everyone else, too.”
The Widow’s words cut far deeper than any sword Gamora’s ever possessed.
“You lie,” she spits, even as she bleeds out. “What is this place? Why’ve you brought me here?”
Something flickers in the woman’s eyes—equal parts determined and resigned; an emotion that feels eerily familiar. “Trust me; I’m no happier about being here than you are. This is where the Stone takes you when you die.”
No.
It can’t be.
Because if she’s here, then that means he—
(The universe has judged you.)
She switches tactics. Rotates onto the balls of her feet. “How do you know me?”
“I don’t.” The woman shifts ever so slightly in kind, enough to cover the new angle of attack. She’s good. “But I knew your sister.”
“Nebula,” Gamora breathes, before she can stop herself. Then, because she’s already revealed her hand, commits all the way. “Is she…?”
“Alive the last I saw her, yes. We worked together for a few years after Thanos.” A shrug, and the red-orange hair falls over her shoulder. “Though I guess after hasn’t happened yet.”
“The hell are you talking about,” Gamora snaps, though it’s not like she really cares.
“I’m from earth,” the Widow says. Gamora thinks, Peter. “After Thanos won, we went back in time to fix it. That meant someone had to die, so.”
Gamora breaks the standoff to gather her bearings, and this time when she looks around, spots a small structure rising in the distance.
“What’s that?”
The woman turns to where Gamora’s pointing, and a wrinkle of surprise passes her face. “I don’t know. I don’t think it was there before.”
Something like hope flares in Gamora’s chest. “A way out?”
“More likely a reason to keep you here,” the Widow says. “There’s nothing in this place that you didn’t bring in yourself. I wouldn’t go if I were you.”
Gamora’s jawline hardens. "I need to get out of here. My friends need me.”
“I don’t think so. If you’re here, that means the stone was restored to its timeline. All we have to do is wait.”
“For what?”
“For Thanos to destroy the stone,” she says. “And presumably, us along with it.”
A fresh jolt of fear runs through her. “That’s your plan? Sit around and wait for the end?”
The carefully constructed nonchalance in the other woman’s stature fractures for half a second, but it’s enough for Gamora to see it exactly as it is: constructed.
“We’re already dead,” she says eventually. “Might as well do it the conventional way, and get it over with.”
“Go to hell.”
The woman laughs: a brittle, ancient sound, and her red-orange hair ripples like water as a gust of wind blows over the lake.
“We might already be there.”
______________________
Gamora walks until the Black Widow becomes nothing but a black mark on the horizon, but no matter how far she travels, her silhouette never disappears entirely. The structure, however, becomes more defined as it looms closer: an open-walled pavilion, carved out of stone with intricate detailing on its columns, and a slanted, slate stone roof. She walks inside and spins slowly around.
Nothing.
She sighs, and stands ramrod straight at the edge, willing it to make sense. If she brought it here as the woman had said, surely it must—
“Daughter.”
It’s one word.
One word, and her entire body freezes, heart tripping over itself to climb out her mouth, chest heaving to pull it back inside.
She turns.
He’s there.
It feels like an eternity passes, the wind quietly ruffling through her hair, both ashamed to be standing in front of the other; neither of them able to speak.
Finally, the only words Gamora manages to claw past her throat:
“Did you do it?”
Did you win? Did you kill them? Did you kill me?
“Yes,” he says, and it’s in response to all of them.
He looks away, like he has the right.
Gamora’s voice trembles now, trembles with rage and hurt and the unfairness of it all. “What did it cost?”
She doesn’t know what she wants him to say. She knows what she doesn’t want him to say.
He stares straight at her, that same stare that always seemed to dissect every part of her, and yet miss her entirely, and says, “Everything.”
He vanishes, and Gamora crumbles to the floor.
______________________
She doesn’t know if the man that looks like her father is real.
All she knows is that every time she comes back to the pavilion, he’s there again, and every time, no matter how often she’s rehearsed a different set of questions, the second she sees him, she forgets all of them and the conversation plays out in the exact same way.
She doesn’t know how many times she tries; just that they never, ever work.
She’s sitting outside the pavilion after another failed attempt, watching the water flow purposelessly through her fingers, when the Widow's shadow falls over her. Gamora doesn’t bother looking up. After a moment, the shadow moves, and then the woman is sitting down beside her instead.
“Natasha,” she says.
Gamora looks up.
“It wasn’t my first name,” the woman shrugs, “but it’s the only one I chose.”
It sounds like an invitation to something, but Gamora’s not sure what. She’s too tired to puzzle it out, but she figures just waiting is permission enough.
“I grew up in a place called The Red Room,” she says, and Gamora instantly recognizes the neutral tone she uses to talk about it. “We were just kids, maybe six years old. All girls. They were training us how to dance.”
Gamora remembers Peter. “Kevin Bacon?”
“Vaganova,” she says. “And occasionally, Legat. But you’d be most familiar with Systema. We used that one to kill each other.”
The familiarity she’d recognized from before slots into place. “I was six, too. When he took me.”
Natasha nods, like she’s not surprised. She probably isn’t. “Is that who you see when you go in?”
Gamora draws her hand out of the water. She holds her five perfectly dry fingers in front of her face, and thinks about futility. “What do you see?”
The other woman looks away. “Red.”
______________________
They hang around each other a lot more after that.
It’s not like they could ever fully get away from the other, even if they wanted to. As Gamora had discovered that first day, no matter how far they walk, they can still see the other on the horizon.
The problem is that that means they can always see the pavilion, in Gamora’s case, and a dance floor, in Natasha’s case, too. They try, once, to see if the other can join them in the strange rehearsal, but however the mechanics work, they’re clearly locked to one person at a time.
Time still passes. They’re not sure how much, or how fast, because they don’t need to sleep, and it doesn’t feel long. But their hair still grows, and sometimes they’ll just braid each other’s hair, trying to one-up the other with the various styles they’ve learned.
Gamora’s in the middle of a complicated twist in Natasha’s hair when the other other woman breaks the silence.
“I had a sister once, too.”
Gamora pauses, glancing down, but Natasha’s expression doesn’t change. She teases out a strand of hair and continues the braid. “How’d it work out?”
“It didn’t.”
The weight of Natasha’s words settles into her bones, and she contemplates them; metabolizes them. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Natasha plays with one of the free strands of her red-orange hair; the red-orange waves lick against the stone.
“What about you?” she asks, finally. “It work out with yours?”
Nebula.
Nebula, attacking her again and again, trying and nearly succeeding in wiping her off the face of the galaxy. Nebula, destined to never be the favoured one, always fighting against fate for just a scrap of acknowledgement. Nebula, coiled with rage and pain and hurt and still straining against everything their father built into her.
Nebula, the girl who only ever wanted a sister.
Gamora shifts the piece of hair into her other hand and grips the fastener between her teeth.
“Yeah. Yeah, it did.”
They were finally in a good place. And now she’s left her.
Natasha waits until Gamora finishes fastening the braid in place. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
______________________
Gamora wipes angrily at her eyes, refusing to meet Natasha’s pointed stare.
“I told you to stop going in.”
“There has to be a way to change it!”
“Maybe there’s not,” Natasha says. “It’s the past. You need to move on.”
“No. he can’t win.”
“By choosing to relive the same memory over and over, hoping that this time it’ll change, aren’t you the one letting him win?”
“He murdered me,” Gamora snaps. “You don’t think I deserve a little closure?”
“People get murdered every day.”
Gamora’s body tenses, ready to strike. Natasha’s responds in kind. “Don’t. Don’t—pretend like this is the same.”
“Don’t pretend like it’s special.”
Gamora launches herself at Natasha.
“Pretend?” she spits, falling into a flurry of strikes, all of which Natasha evades. “The greatest power in the universe looked at Thanos murdering me and decided to call it love, so yeah, I think I deserve the right to be a little pissed!”
Then they're rolling through the water, trading blows at frightening speeds. They’re fast and they’re strong and they’re both very, very good, and Gamora feels more alive than she has since the day she stepped on Vormir.
“It’s—a goddamn—stone, Gamora!” Natasha says, punctuating each word with an attack. “Its central premise is that love is something you should be willing to kill, and you think its approval would be a good thing?”
Gamora attempts to sweep Natasha’s legs out from under her, only to be roughly thrown to the ground when Natasha wraps her hand around her braid and pulls.
“Yield,” Natasha demands, pressing her knee firmly into Gamora’s ribcage to keep her pinned.
Gamora growls and bucks against the weight for a moment, then sags. “Yield.”
“Good.” Natasha slides off, dropping into the water before flipping onto her back and staring up at the sky. She sighs. “Why do you care so much?”
“He didn’t love me,” Gamora says, and it’s so tired; so rehearsed. Cautiously, she tries for honesty this time. “…And I hate that all I ever wanted was that he would. And maybe that’s why it worked.”
“The people who raised me were cruel, fucked up people. And I would’ve given anything for their approval,” Natasha says. “That doesn’t say anything about what love is. Just means they were important, and important things can be good or bad.”
“But the stone—”
“The stone asks you to murder someone just to prove that it’s worth more. It doesn’t know love. It knows jealousy.”
Gamora dips her hair into the water, just to watch the droplets bead and roll off without leaving it wet. “But it worked for you.”
“Yeah, well,” Natasha shrugs. “That’s as far as my advice gets you. But all I know is this: if you’re going to ask something evil to define love, don’t be surprised when you get an evil answer, too.
“So if you really want a good definition of love?” Natasha props herself up onto her elbows and makes sure catch Gamora’s eyes. “Then you go ask someone that’s also good.”
He hadn’t been there long, but certainly long enough to overhear the main conversation. Call it his protective side, call it having worked on the force for so long, call it whatever you liked, but Stefan couldn’t just stand idly by, while someone was being mistreated, or talked down to. Taking a step towards the pair of people in question, he motioned to the one being more aggressive,” Is this person bothering you? “ he asked, keeping the gendering ambiguous, as he knew some people didn’t identify with what some might immediately observe, or assume. Stefan was as observant as a detective ought to be, but he was not about to go insulting someone, even if they were making an ass out of themselves.
