04 || fall back to reality

"THIS ISN'T ANYTHING LIKE LEIPZIG, ALISON. I DON'T WANT YOU INVOLVED IN THIS."
- Avengers Facility, New York, April 2018-

"Portal's almost ready." Strange called out, finding the location that he desired in Alison's memory, using her recollections to help get a better accuracy on the location of where he was going to portal her. "Say your last goodbyes to the speedster."

The silent movement of Tony and Peter could be heard, Tony's soft footfalls gracing Alison's presence first. The man squatted down, looking at the teenager sorrowfully. Quirking his mouth, as if deciding what to do, Tony spoke.

"Okay, in the tech vault in the Facility, there's a special vault called 17B. There's a surprise waiting for you there. I would've much rather it be used when you officially joined the Avengers, but... it'll keep you safe." Tony instructed the girl, who nodded with a grimace.

"Open it, and use it. I have a feeling you might need it." Patting her leg, Tony looked Alison straight in the eyes. "Stay safe for me, and make sure Sky's alright too, kid. Now don't do anything dumb." After he spoke, he stood up, wanting to say something else but not being able to, not knowing why.

Peter helped Alison stand again, the portal finally ready, Strange gripping the sling ring in his hand. The familiar light of a gold ring was lighting up the ship, a familiar sight on the other side.  "Ali- please, stay safe, for the both of us." He pleaded, squeezing Alison's hand that was grasped in his tightly.

"Who said I'd ever be staying safe?" Alison laughed, using Peter as a crutch to walk to where the portal would be. As she laughed, the girl winced, coughing out small amounts of blood, which she wiped away, trying to keep Peter's amount of concern down to a minimum. "It's you I'm worried about. Are you sure you don't want to come back-"

"Alison, we're Avengers now." He smiled gently, recalling Tony almost dubbing the two as Avengers a few seconds before. "We gotta do what's best for us. My best thing to do is to stay with Tony." Peter spoke, turning his head to look at Alison, who had a glint of worry in her eyes. "Yours is to make sure that Thanos can't get to you. God knows what he would do if he knew you were still alive."

Alison locked Peter into a tight embrace before he could react, not caring how much it hurt. "You need to say safe, okay?" She muttered, burying her face into his shoulder. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost you, too."

Peter, unable to do anything else but hug her back, kissed Alison's cheek as a final goodbye. "I love you." He whispered, releasing the girl before she could react.

Alison could barely stand as Strange was the only one left to say his goodbyes. "Remember your promise. No time travel. Not even now. No matter how much the world may need it, there will be consequences greater than you can imagine."

"Mmhm." Alison nodded, looking at the man. "Can you open the damn thing now, please? I don't know how much longer I can stand."

"Right." Strange agreed, motioning with his hands in a circular motion. A golden ring formed, a sight all too familiar to the girl. "Now, it's going to take you to the facility, when you arrive, make sure that you find Steve Rogers, and make sure that you stay alive."

"Right." Alison took one last look at Tony and Peter, who were formulating a game plan. "Strange, as much as you may need to protect the time stone, promise me you'll take care of them too. Right now, those two are the closest thing I've got to a family besides Charles."

"Of course." Strange sighed, seeing the desperation and worry in the girl's face. He didn't know how much of a promise it would be, but the man made sure to at least make one for the injured girl. "Safe travels, Miss Marnell, and may we meet again."

With that, Strange motioned the portal over Alison, transporting her back to New York, and into the safe hands of the Avengers Facility.

"Yeah, well the hotels weren't exactly five star."  Sam spoke, a small smile coming to his face as he saw Rhodey alright on his own inside of the Avengers Facility. One of his arms was wrapped around a broken Vision, torn and beaten by Corvius Glade and Proxima Midnight.

A crash sounded through the Facility right after Sam spoke, diverting everyone's attention to the room behind Rhodes. "What was that?" Sam asked, his comment forgotten quickly. The group of heroes immediately tensed at the loud noise, readying themselves for something awful.

"Guys? We've got a situation back here." Bruce called out, welcoming himself back into his friend's gaze for the first time in two years. The group immediately relaxed, relieved to see it was an old friend. "You might- you might wanna get back in here." He panted, jacking his thumb back at the room he was in. "Like right now."

Racing over, the group jogged down to a stop, seeing an exhausted and bleeding Alison in one of the arm chairs, gripping her left side of her stomach with a grimacing smile. The last traces of a golden ringed portal remained, sparks fizzing out behind her. "Hey Steve, Sam, Wanda, Nat. Long time no see."

There was a moment of silence- almost a moment of shock to see both Bruce and Alison in the back room, one fine and one...not. Bruce walked away from his group of friends, already squatting beside Alison in confusion and worry for her injuries. Everyone stood there in shock, before Wanda spoke up.

"Alison-" Wanda looked at the girl, her face knotted with confusion. "What happened? How- how are you even here?" She asked, still gripping one arm on Vision. She looked rather different from the last time she had been seen by Alison, her brown waves turned into a color almost like red stained clay.

"Long story short, there was another child of Thanos and he was an evil space alien that stabbed me in a flying donut." The girl barely made out, wincing as she let her hand fall off her stomach, seeing the lines of red grow larger and larger on her fingertips. Feeling a new wave of pain from relieving the pressure off of the wound course through her, Alison hissed out a deep breath, obviously in pain. "Seems like those bastards really want me dead."

"A child of Thanos wants you dead?" Vision repeated, processing the words in his brain. Gesturing for Sam and Wanda to stop supporting him, the android gripped the edge of a table, trying to comprehend what the girl was saying. "But why? You're just a-"

"Seventeen year old with a tendency to never shut up and get into the wrong situations, yeah." Alison winced, the pain in her stomach increasing with every breath she took. "Yet somehow, these freaking aliens keep wanting to kill me. And almost succeeding."

"Alison, we need to get you bandaged up." Rhodes interrupted, looking at the tear in her suit and the severity of the wound. His mind went into overdrive, being a military man, wanting to help the girl. Plus, the girl being one of Tony's "proteges" definitely gave him cause for him to help her. "Maybe some of Tony's new solution-"

"Tried that, doesn't work." Alison replied, pointing at Rhodes. Trying to give a hoarse laugh, the girl failed, wincing as she clutched her stomach again, the pain blooming up again. "Believe me, the man himself swore up a storm about it and how weird teenagers and their power sets are."

"You were just with Tony?" Bruce questioned, his eyes flitting over the girl he barely even knew. Playing with the frayed ends of his sleeve, Bruce looked back down, seeing the pain she was in."But-How are you even here? They're billions of miles up in space."

"A magic portal and some dumb-ass luck." Alison responded, her words getting harder to form, her mind spinning from the loss of blood. "Look this is great talking to you all, but unless there are two of each of you, I'd say that I should probably get this looked at."

Wanda, realizing that they should probably take action, looked over at Bruce. "Doctor Banner, can you, I don't know, try and heal her?" She gestured over at her friend, her other hand lingering at her lip.

"I can try. The most we can do at the moment is bandage the wound, get her stitched up. It'll take some time, and we don't have that much to begin with." Bruce frowned, scratching his chin as he thought of what to do. "I'm no surgeon, but I can try and do it as quickly as possible. We're going to have to put you under though, Alison-"

"No." Alison shook her head, trying to straighten herself out on the chair, wincing as another wave of pain went through her body. "Get it done now, and don't put me under. I've been through a lot worse today, a small needle is the least of my worries." She dismissed, thinking of the zero gravity situation in which she had microsurgery needles stuck in her minutes before.

Bruce, looking nervous at her request to just get it over with just nodded, gesturing to Steve and Rhodey. "I'm going to need you two to try and get her on a flat surface, and make sure that she doesn't bleed out or go into shock. We're going to need to have a blood transfusion on standby just in case, do you know what you are?"

As Steve carefully swept Alison into his arms, hearing a gasp of pain flutter from her mouth as he cradled her tighter.  "Double tap the charm and my essential vitals and stuff will come-" She stopped talking, moving her arm out towards Bruce.

Steve, scared for her safety, held her tighter, silencing her with a shush. "Don't talk. You're only going to injure yourself even more. Just let Bruce get you fixed up, and make sure that you're alright."

Giving out an involuntary groan, feeling her whole body go numb, she looked over at Bruce, who was holding a syringe in his hand by her side. She had no damn clue what drug had just entered her system, but it made the pain stop for a little, Ali's eyes fluttering shut in almost peace for a moment before Steve adjusted his grip, not allowing her to slip out of consciousness.

Bruce gave a frown as he looked  at her, already worried about what  he was going to do next. How in the hell was he supposed to operate on a teenager who refused to have painkillers administered to her? "I don't know how long it'll last for given your metabolism- hell, I think it might even be stronger than Steve's with the way you burn your energy, but it'll make the process less painful. Rhodey, can you-"

"On it." The man replied, walking up to Alison's side, his face melting into one of pity when he saw the almost dazed look coming into her eyes. It was quickly replaced with a sense of hurriedness, the man double tapping the bracelet to see her blood type. "AB negative, Bruce, but hurry, she's going into-"

"Shock. Shit." Bruce began to worry, his medical equipment silently placed on the table beside him by Nat, who offered his gloved hand a small squeeze of reassurance. "Can you get me some of the AB negative blood that we have? I think-"

"I'm the same type." Nat agreed with Bruce, looking at Steve's shocked expression when she predicted what Bruce was going to say. "So what? Alison and I might be the rarest blood type but that doesn't mean we're that few. I'm pretty sure there's some of my bags in the front of the med pack, because it's the hardest to access. And I wouldn't mind giving a transfusion right here. Clint would kill me if I let his niece die on my watch."

"Clint's her uncle?!" Wanda looked to Rhodey and Vision, who were just about as shocked as she was at the revelation. "And when were the people in the room who knew this fact going to tell us that?"

"Maybe when the world wasn't ending." Natasha fired back, already rolling up her sleeve on her arm so that Bruce could get ready to give an emergency transfusion if he couldn't find the med pack blood. "It didn't seem like the right time to do it while she's bleeding out on the couch." She stated blatantly, arching an eyebrow at Sam, who had a skeptical look on his face.

"That would explain why she was at Thanksgiving a few years back." Sam muttered to Wanda, who just nodded in agreement, having heard of their escapade to Clint's farm a few years before. "Although it doesn't explain why you didn't tell us." He glared at Natasha, who just gave him the iciest glance back that he shut up.

"Sam, can you find Nat's blood emergency stash? I don't want her dizzy and light headed if she has to give a transfusion." Bruce ordered, seeing Alison's eyes droop, her eyelids slowly squeezing shut involuntarily. "Alison- you can't fall asleep yet." He flashed a light in her eyes, the girl giving a small wince.

"B't 'm so t'r'd." Alison slurred out, unable to form coherent sentences. "Nat-' t'll 'im I c'n sl'p." She tried to stare at Natasha, who was just within her line of sight. She tried to reach out her hand towards the blurry figure of the woman, feeling something cold under her back, Steve setting her down on the table.

Sam walked over to Bruce, having rummaged through their med pack, finding a very little amount of blood left, handing him the small pack. "Sorry Banner, it's all we have left. Not being able to replenish our supplies for two years really took a toll."

Natasha walked over to Alison, who was still on the verge of consciousness, feeling a flash of helplessness as she watched the girl give a groan of pain as the drug Bruce had given her minutes before was slowly wearing off. "You can't fall asleep yet." Nat disagreed, moving Alison face carefully so her eyes were just on Natasha. "If you fall asleep, you know Uncle Clint will kill you and then me because you got this injured."

"He's m'ss'n thu'gh." Alison protested, a shocked look forming on Natasha's face as she heard the slurred words from Ali. "L'ft 'Unty "aura 'n 'rista's gone too." She was barely able to speak the last sentence, gasping as her metabolism burned through the last of the numbing medicine. Giving another almost inaudible groan of pain, Alison tried to mask her discomfort.

"Alison? I'm going to administer the IV and give you the blood transfusion now." Bruce told the girl gently, not telling her about the other countless drugs he had flowing through another IV, disliking how much she was in pain. "It'll just be a second, and then I'll be able to stitch you up."

"O'ay." The girl muttered, feeling the IV insert into her arm, and within seconds, her body relaxed, looking up at Bruce. "Is 't s'pp's'd to feel l'ke 'is?" Was the last thing Alison said before she passed out, her eyes closing softly, her breathing pattern no longer unstable and raspy.

"Bruce, what the hell did you just do to her?" Natasha questioned, looking over at the scientist with a deadly glare. She had just seen a girl pass out from blood being administered to her, and even the assassin knew that what had just happened was not common.

"I basically just violated the request of her not to be knocked out while she got her stitches. She would probably get a sensory overload from the pain if she hadn't already. She's super flinchy right now, so that meant she'd struggle while she was awake when she needs to be as still as possible." Bruce looked over at his friends, sighing as he got weird glances from them. "Give me ten minutes to do this, and we'll get talking. She'll be up from the drugs in less than thirty, if her metabolism burned through the numbing agent as quickly as it did."

"Alright." Steve nodded, trusting the doctor as he saw Alison lying on the table, her face still semi-scrunched up in pain. "Everybody reconvene in the room in ten miuntes, and until then, no one talks. We need answers, and we're going to get them."

Fifteen minutes later, Bruce had arrived in the room where the rest of the heroes were, Steve and Natasha analyzing holograms of the people they had fought in Edinburgh, Rhodey right next to them. "So we gotta assume they're coming back, right?" The colonel asked, throwing his hand up as if it was obvious.

"And they can clearly find us." Wanda added, her index finger resting on her lower lip, concern plastered all over her face. She was trying to understand why they were attacked, the woman dropping her hand down in almost frustration.

"We need all hands on deck." Bruce emphasized, looking around at the people around him frantically. "Where's Clint?" He questioned, not finding the man within the group that surrounded him.

"After the whole Accords situation, he and Scott took a deal. It was too tough on their families, they're on house arrest. Or at least they were. Through Alison's incoherent mumbling while she was on a cocktail of drugs, she let it slip that Clint's gone missing. So even if we tried to contact him, it would all be in vain." Natasha explained, her gaze like steel as she stared Bruce down. Her arms crossed, she looked over at Steve, who just gave her a concerned look back.

"Who's Scott?" Bruce questioned, looking between the gaze of Steve and Natasha, searching their eyes for the answers that he wanted.

"Ant Man." Steve replied, one hand on his waist as he gave a glowering look to Bruce. His mind was racing, obvious that he was worried about what happened next. He looked up at Bruce, deciding something in those seconds as he spoke.

"There's an Ant Man and a Spider-Man?" Bruce questioned, looking straight at Steve as his eyebrows arched straight up in shock and confusion.  The only response was a nod of agreement at Bruce's confused tone from Rhodey. "Okay look, Thanos has the biggest army in the universe. And he won't stop until-"

"Until he gets the rest of the stones." Alison interrupted the conversation, leaning in the doorway of the conversation. She looked like a mess, her Breakout suit no longer on her, replaced by an oversized MIT shirt (courtesy of Rhodey) and black leggings.

"You burned through that cocktail of drugs Bruce pumped through you fast." Natasha remarked, arching an eyebrow at the girl who was leaning in the doorway. "You sure you're alright for this discussion at the moment?"

"I'm fine." Alison dismissed, shaking her head with a small wince. "I feel like I have the second worst hangover of my life." She gave a small groan, pinching the bridge of her nose in an attempt to try and make it go away. "But this needs to be addressed. Now. Bruce is right. Thanos is coming, and whether we like it or not-"

"He's coming for Vision's stone." Bruce finished, glancing back at Alison with a look of almost relief when she was on the same page that he was. "And he's not going to stop until he gets all six of the stones. The way it's shaking out, we may be the last line of defense between him and his goal."

"And what is his goal, exactly?" Rhodey asked, still confused as to why this was such a pressing concern. "Besides getting all of these... infinity stones, that is." He looked at Bruce and Alison, hoping to find an explanation.

"He wants to destroy half of the universe as we know it."

The room went somber afterwards, everyone not knowing what to say after Bruce had spoken those words. It took a minute of uncomfortable silence before Natasha spoke up, deciding to say something about the situation.

"Well, if Thanos wants Vision's stone, we have to protect it." Natasha looked to the android, who was staring out the window in contemplation. There were murmurs of agreement from the rest of the heroes, no one wanting the situation to end with the worst.

"No, we have to destroy it." Vision disagreed, still staring intently at the window just outside of the doorframe. "I've been giving a good deal of thought to this entity in my head. About its nature. But also its composition. I think that if it were exposed to a sufficiently powerful energy source, something very similar to its own signature perhaps..." The android trailed off, slowly approaching Wanda, his implications crystal clear. "Its molecular integrity could fail."

"Yeah, and you with it." Wanda argued, a knowing look on her face disguising the fear in her eyes of losing the man that she loved. "We're not having this conversation."

"Eliminating the stone is the only way to be certain that Thanos can't get it." Vision spoke softly, protesting Wanda's argument of not having the conversation.  He knew all the logical outcomes, and this was... the most logical, although one of the most sacrificial and emotional.

"That's too high a price." Wanda disagreed, her lip almost quivering at the thought of losing the man he loved. Alison, unsure of what to do with the fact that Wanda- perhaps the only person that was around her age- was dating a robot, just stared at the ground awkwardly as the couple hashed out their argument.

Taking his hands and cupping them around Wanda's face, Vision stared at her with a look of determination and logic. "Only you have the power to pay it." Wanda, almost infuriated by the fact that Vision would ever suggest such a thing, broke away from his hands, looking away in shame.

"Thanos threatens half of the universe. One life cannot stand in the way of defeating him." Vision argued, staring at the rest of the heroes around him, looking for someone to back him up in his argument.

"But it should. We don't trade lives, Vision." Steve argued, speaking up for the first time in the conversation, his stare telling Vision that they would never go through with the plan to sacrifice him. At least not on his watch.

"Captain, 70 years ago, you laid down your life to save how many millions of people?" The android made a point, slowly making his way over to where Steve stood. "Tell me, why is this any different?"

"Because, you might have a choice." Bruce butted into the conversation, all heads in the room turning towards him. "Your mind is made up of a complex construct of overlays. Jarvis, Ultron,  Tony, me, the stone. All of them, mixed together. Learning from one another."

"You're saying that Vision isn't just the stone?" Wanda clarified, her hands stuck in the backs of her jean pockets as she tried to comprehend exactly what Bruce was saying.

"I'm saying that if we take out the stone, there's still a whole lot of Vision left, perhaps the best parts." Bruce agreed with Wanda, pivoting around the center of the room to stare at all of the people in front of him.

"Can we do that?" Nat questioned, looking to Bruce to see if his eyes showed any doubt that he actually could. The answer that she was given from his look was not the one that she was expecting, however.

"Not me, not here." Bruce disagreed, looking down at his feet in almost shame that he couldn't do something about it. "If I could, it'd already be game over by now."

"Well, you better find someone and somewhere, fast." Rhodey scoffed, gesturing to the people around him. "We can't just sit around here all day on our asses hoping that someone magically drops out of space-" He looked to Alison, who just gave him an irritated look in response. "Again to do so."

Steve, who was thinking quietly while all of the conversation occurred around him, nodded, almost as if he knew what to do. Looking at the group around him, his face stoic, he spoke words that no one expected.

"I know somewhere."

<~*~>

hi besties!!

uhhhh so yeah this is kinda really late, but I'm watching infinity war rn and I honestly need to fix so much of this plot because it's like 3 years old but whatever 

also yes we did use the "magical fanfic doctor stuff" in this chapter because you know what?screw it. stitches can save everything because your boy's not a doctor, and never will be.

( PETER SAID I LOVE YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME!! ALI + PETER FANS ARE YOU HAPPY IS THIS ALL YOU WANTED FROM ME )

regardless of all of that, I hope y'all enjoyed and I'll see you in the next one! ( who knows how long it's going to be because school and the fact that I have AP tests and an SAT and some other stuff to worry about butttt) 

bye lovelies!!

-ash