Pound of Flesh

DJ’s pushed down to the cold concrete floor, skinning her palms. She sits back on her heels and scowls at the cuffs on her wrists as Doom stalks off towards a machine. “Stop treating me like a dog. If you want something from me you’ll have to take the stabilizers off eventually, and you won’t want me pissed off when you do.”

“You’re mouthier than last time,” Doom comments offhandedly, flicking some switches. “I’m not so sure I like it.”

She sneers and wobbles back up to her feet, unbalanced. “What pity. I do so aim to please.”

“No matter.” He turns a crank and a sterile metal table is lowered vertically into the machine, bindings in each corner. “You won’t be able to talk for much longer, anyway.”

“What’s that?” She asks wearily, backing up as Doom strides back over to her. “It doesn’t exactly look user friendly.”

Doom’s strong fingers tangle in her curls, jerking her head back. “It’s not.”

“So it’s a present for me, then.”
_________________________________________

“Calm down, Steve.” Natasha grips his shoulder both firmly and comfortingly. “She’s obviously got a plan, or she wouldn’t go without a fight.”

Steve shrugs away from her touch before his anger gets the best of him. “She’s got a plan, alright. I just don’t agree with it. Her and Tony have been going behind my back working on those stabilizers I explicitly vetoed.”

“It’s not like that,” Tony rolled his eyes in exasperation. “You make it sound so sordid.”

“You knowingly put her at risk!” Steve bellows, red in the face. “And now look where she is! She’s practically signed her own death warrant!”

Steve shoves Tony into the counter with a clatter, and Tony shoves back with a growl. “She was already dying! She knows it, you know, we all know it! And you can’t make that my fault just because there isn’t a fight you can win to fix it! It was the least I could do- giving her some peace of mind that if she fizzled out she wouldn’t be dragging the people she loved down with her.”

Effortlessly Thor pushes them apart, a stern look on his face. “Quarreling will help no one. There may still be hope. Do not waste precious minutes finding blame.”

“Thor’s right,” Natasha agrees. “And I don’t admit that often. I’ve activated the tracker Tony installed in her jacket; she’s not all that far. We need to move.”
_________________________________________

DJ struggles against the wrist and ankle straps as the machine whirred to life. A robotic arm extends out from the side of the table, a long glowing needle attached at the end. It slowly worms its way under the flesh of her forearm, making her arch her back and howl.

“We haven’t even gotten to the nasty part, yet,” Doom mocks from beside her. “Well, I can only assume what’s coming is worse. I’ve personally never been forcibly ripped apart atom by atom before.”

“It’s fun,” DJ breathes through the pain. “You should try it.”

“Obnoxious to the very end, I see.” Doom shakes his head and flips a few more switches. “You know, you should really thank Mr. Stark when he comes for you. I’d been working on this for months, but when he drew up the plans for the stabilizer it greatly helped the project along. It wasn’t hard to reverse the effects at all."

A metal finger trails teasingly down the side of DJ’s face, making her jerk away in disgust. “Well I highly doubt you’d expend so much effort just to gruesomely murder me, so why don’t you just tell me the crux of this little plan? It’s obvious you’re dying to horrify me with it.”

Doom gestures to the middle of the room with a flick of his wrist, drawing her attention to a large metal arch. “After you’re completely stripped of your self-control your powers will be channeled through to the arc, which will slowly turn to dust everything which comes within range. Of course its range really depends on how distressed you are, but I think I can handle that.”

“That’s a cute plan. Well thought out and all, but the stabilizer cuffs will counteract the destabilizer. You’d have to take them off- which you know- but what’s keeping me from using my powers on you?"

A much sharper, thicker needle appears at her throat. "Safety protocols. You use your power on me and I use my equipment on you.”

“But if you use your equipment on me your machine turns off,” DJ argues back goadingly.

“And you die,” Doom snaps back impatiently.

The smile that curls at her lips is a little manic. “Funny thing about that- I’m already dying. It won’t be a lot of days to lose. In fact, I’m thinking I’m so far gone that your atom arc here won’t last very long.”

“Ah, yes. I heard about that,” Doom said distractedly, more attention on the symbols flitting across his screens than the issue at hand. “Reed’s fault, I believe. His pathetic attempt knocked some things out of order in that brain of yours. No matter. I’ve developed a solution. You won’t die until I allow it.”
_________________________________________

“So there’s just a gigantic tower being used as a villainous base in the middle of the city and nobody noticed?” Tony’s feet land on the sidewalk with a clunk, drawing the attention of the other Avengers.

Clint shrugs. “Seven superheroes live in a gigantic tower in the middle of the city and no one seems to care. Besides, not much we could do until he made his move. Can’t exactly say ‘Hey you look evil’ and take him into custody. Diplomatic relations, and all.”

“Fuck Latveria,” Tony exclaims glibly. “It’s tiny. We can wipe it off the map.”

“So much for world peace,” Bruce remarks dryly.

“Don’t be jealous. I’d threaten to decimate a country for you too, big guy. She’s my friend, and I don’t take kindly to people taking things that are mine.”

Natasha takes a break from scouting the entrances to comment over the comms. “Yours? I’m sure she’d love to hear that. Leave the possessive comments to the Captain.”

“She’s not mine either,” Steve replies indignantly. “Even if we were still together, she’s an independent woman, and-“

“I agree with the Captain,” Thor rumbles. “If anything he belongs to her. I do believe Midgardians use the phrase, ‘she wears the pants.’”

“She does not- I can’t- Why would- Enough chatter!” Steve splutters. “It’s time to be professional. Revenant’s counting on us. Widow, have you found a viable point of entry?”

“There’s a camera trained on every door, window, and vent, and our equipment’s doing nothing to disable them. There aren’t any signs of killer robots on the way, so I’d say our presence isn’t all that unexpected.”

“Good,” and Steve can practically hear the grin in Tony’s voice. “The front door’s always best for making a grand entrance.”

A repulsor blast knocks the door off its hinges with a noisy clatter. Steve tries not to feel mildly placated by the reckless destruction.
_________________________________________

“The more things you try to stick in me, the more it looks like desperate innuendo.” DJ eyes Doom as he swoops towards her with yet another ominously pointy object.

“This one’s not for you,” Doom responds, clearly not amused, as the sharp end is plugged into a jack of a nearby machine. The cord branches out to two small triangles at the end, which Doom sticks to each of DJ’s temples. “These are.”

DJ wiggles her eyebrows experimentally, feeling her skin pinch under the heavy adhesive. “What are these, then? Twenty words or less. You tend to ramble and I tune you out.”

“Consider your brain a computer,” he explains a little smugly. “And this has the capability to restore it to factory settings. Or to revert it to an older version of its self. Consider it augmentation aided by a form of time travel.”

She pauses, staring blankly over at him. “That was definitely thirty-seven words. All these brilliant inventions and you can’t even do simple math.”

“Regardless of how annoying you are, I won’t rip you apart until you’ve served a purpose. But do your friends a favor and shut up. I can control how quickly the process goes.”

Fear grips her like an icy hand around her throat. “You promised. You gave me your word. You said you wouldn’t hurt them, and everyone knows you don’t break your word.”

“Of course.” Doom waves her off. “I won’t lay a finger on them. But I never said you wouldn’t hurt them.”

“You son of a-“

“Quiet now,” Doom demands. ”They’ll be here soon and I’ve got a brain to fix and a… What did you call it? An atom arc? I think I like that. I’ve got an atom arc to start.”

He gently thumbs a button and waves of warmth pulse through her skull. It doesn’t hurt at all- in fact, it’s actually kind of nice. It tingles and she can almost feel something shifting in her head, and the gentle thrum lulls her into a near trance. Her eyes droop and her head sags forward and she very nearly falls asleep.

But then there’s the click of him pulling a lever and the pressure of his hands on her wrists removing the stabilizer cuffs and she feels a searing pain surge down her right arm as the needle jolts forward slightly. All of the equipment in the room shifts an inch and groans as if it’s under tons of pressure. And it probably is, because the arc is glowing. And she’s pretty sure that if she feels like she’s being shredded to pieces, everything else within reach feels the same way.

There’s a crash and a roar and then an agitated Hulk barrels through the wall. Natasha is at his side, gun raised, trained on Doom. DJ wants to call out to them, warn them away, but when she opens her mouth all she can do is scream until her throat is raw and bow her back.

Thor crashes in from the opposite wall with Clint close at his heels. The shorter man drops down to his feet, readying an arrow. Tony bursts up through the floor, Steve on his back. They’re the closest to the arc, and the panic that sets in DJ’s chest makes her powers briefly flare. The six of them slide closer towards the center of the room against their will.

DJ closes her eyes, trying to ignore the pain, ignore the destruction. She takes deep breathes through clenched teeth, calming herself down. “Get… Get back,” she manages through a hoarse voice. “Stay away from the arc.”

Electricity surges from the tips of Doom’s fingers, frying the spot on the ground that Steve swiftly rolls and dodges. But that puts Steve that much closer to the arc.

“Hawkeye, get to work with explosives on the surrounding machinery,” Steve directs as he holds his shield up against another blast. "Thor and Iron Man contain Doom. Take him out if the opportunity presents itself. I want Widow on extraction of Revenant. Me and Hulk will give this arc our worst.”

Mjölnir spins across the room and collides with Doom’s chest, throwing him back a couple feet into the wall. Tony blasts him with a repulsor for good measure, but as Thor’s hammer finds its way back to his huge fist Doom is only incapacitated for a brief second.

Natasha edges around the walls, keeping as much distance between her and the arc as possible until she nears DJ. There’s a high risk- only a few yards separate the blonde and the machine, and there’s no telling if the radius of atomization has increased despite DJ’s efforts. Natasha takes a chance and leaps.

She lands safely next to DJ, expelling the tiniest of sighs in relief. She straightens up and her quick eyes dart over the contraption, lingering on the sharp point just centimeters away from DJ’s jugular vein. When she mutters something in Russian, DJ figures she doesn’t have to be fluent in the language to figure out what it was.

“I agree,” DJ attempts humor through the agonizing pain. It falls flat, but it’s something to distract her from potentially murdering six of the people she loves the most.

An arrow lands and detonates and flaming pieces of debris pass alarmingly close to the two women. The table shakes and the thick needle knicks DJ’s skin, and the needle lodged in her arm jars and causes another bout of excruciating pain.

The arc glows and shakes and purrs and DJ can feel the vines of her power reaching out.

Hulk lifts a piece of heavy wall over his head and hurls it at the machine. It disintegrates into a thousand microscopic bits before it even gets close.

“New plan!” Steve decides after his shield bounces off the ceiling, crumbling down beams and plaster only to have that turned to dust as well. “Explosions are bad. Upsetting Revenant is bad. Redirect to-“

A blast of energy cuts Steve off mid-sentence, tossing him to the ground. Doom strides across the room- leaving Tony whose armor is twitching and short circuiting, and Thor who is dragging himself out from a pile of rubble- to stand over Steve, a heavy foot at the back of his neck.

DJ’s heart rate picks up, she can’t help it, and as Hulk snarls and steps forward his feet are pulled out from under him. He has to curl his giant green fingers around a support beam to keep from getting sucked into the arc.

“Calm down,” Natasha futilely demands, eyes flicking nervously over the board of controls. This time when she curses it’s not in Russian. “Fuck. Captain! I can’t figure out the controls.”

Steve looks more calm than anyone, even under the pressure of Doom’s foot. “Iron Man-“

“Working on it,” Tony groans picking himself off the ground. He only makes it a few feet before the arc draws him closer, too, and it’s only Thor’s strong grip that saves him from being turned into a pile of dust.

Doom tugs on one of Steve’s arms, dislocating a shoulder, before dragging him to his feet with a firm grip around his throat. “I think this is where I make my exit. Take care not to stop me, or your Captain will find himself in pieces.”

“Natasha,” DJ ignores the sharp look sent her way for abandoning field names. “I don’t give a fuck what Steve said. Go after him. Save him. Leave me.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

Regardless of the shooting pain through her body DJ still finds it in her to rolls her eyes. “Yeah. Got it. I’m probably the lowest ranking person at SHIELD, with the exception of the guy who gets caught playing Galaga. But I’m the one in the machine. And I’m the one that knows what to do. That involves you moving your ass out of the way.”

Natasha purses her lips and nods curtly. “When we make it out of this I’ll bruise you in a multitude of ways for talking to me like that.” She pulls out her guns and aims carefully, bullets bouncing off Doom’s armor.

“Clint…” She doesn’t see him, but she knows he’s there.

“Are you sure?”

DJ laughs through another spike of agony. “This is what it’s for, right? I don’t see any other way.”

“I do,” and several pairs of eyes turn to see Bruce hanging from the ceiling.

“Bruce!” Tony exclaims a little hysterically. “What are you doing being Bruce?”

He readjusts his grip, and grimaces in discomfort at being naked. “Not much I could do as a rage monster. But as a scientist I can try and figure that thing out. I’m closer than you, Tony. I have a better chance of making it.”

“You have a better chance at dying!” DJ clarified. “Don’t you dare let go. The pull is getting stronger. You won’t last a second.”

There’s a clunk and a grunt as Natasha gets her thighs around Doom’s neck, and Steve is hurling his shield. Doom hits the floor hard and retaliates with a surge of electricity, which briefly paralyzes Natasha but misses Steve. Natasha’s limp body starts to drag towards the center of the room.

“Clint! Do it!”

“Whatever it may be, action must be taken soon,” Thor grits out. One arm is wrapped tightly around a support pole, while the other keeps Tony from flying to his death. “Even I cannot maintain this grip for much longer.”

Steve lunges and just barely catches Natasha’s hand, and Doom takes that opportunity to escape through the window. The cement floor is starting to crack, and one of the walls is giving away to particles.

“The structural integrity of the place is getting pretty questionable,” Tony warns.

“I can do this,” Bruce insists, one hand slipping from the ceiling beam. “Just give me the chance.”

“No!” DJ screams, and more of the building disappears. “Clint you have a clear shot! Take it!”

There’s a hesitating silence, and then a shuffle from somewhere in the ceiling. “Cap?”

Steve’s beautiful blue eyes meet DJ’s, wide and watery and conflicted. “I… Daisy… No.”

“Think about it Steve,” she pleads, a numbness settling into where her heart should be. “The more upset I get the more powerful this thing is. If I hurt you- any of you… If you die I’m going to be very upset. I could wipe out the entire city.”

“No one has to get hurt,” Steve tries, but his voice sounds defeated. Resigned. “Bruce said he could stop it.”

“He- God damn it! Clint! This isn’t Steve’s call to make! Why do you think the stabilizer’s yours? I trust you! Now take the fucking shot! It’s what I want!”

Bruce lets go of the beam and there’s a terrifying span of seconds where he’s just falling and drifting closer and closer towards the arc and all DJ can do is scream and thrash and cry. But then there’s a sharp pain through her gut and everything just stops.

Her mouth hangs open in shock, body trembling, blood trickling from the wound. Bruce lays only inches away from where the radius of the arc should be. But he’s safe now. Everyone’s safe.

“Thank you,” she breathes as Clint drops down beside her. She slumps forward, body going slack.

Steve stands, back rigid. “Everyone evacuate.” The command is soft, devoid of strength. He looks over at Bruce a little uncertainly. “Can you…?”

Bruce nods as the others scramble to follow the Captain’s orders. The building continues to groan and fall around them. Steve doesn’t seem to notice, walking like a zombie towards DJ’s wilted form.

He’d lost people before. Good people. Like Bucky, to the mountains. Howard, to an accident before he’d even woken up. Peggy, to time. But he’d never been left with a body before.

Bruce fiddles with the switches, and there’s a hiss and whir as the needles move away. He gently peels away the adhesive triangles from her skin, grimacing as he feels her starting to go cold. His hands trace lightly around the cuffs, looking for a release button. Steve gets impatient and leans around him, breaking each restraint with his bare hands.

The body falls into Steve, and he scoops her up in his arms. She’s pale and limp and bleeding, but there’s a shallow rise to her chest that gives Steve hope. The arrow still sticks out- ugly and cruel- but he knows better than to remove it himself.

Him and Bruce maneuver around the destruction, hurrying as fast as they can to avoid being crushed while trying not to jostle DJ’s body. She whimpers and Steve pauses for a brief second at the exit as her hazel eyes crack open.

“Steve…” Her hand weakly reaches up to rest against his cheek, and he nuzzles into it.

“Stay with me,” he whispers. “Please. Stay with me.”

Her lips quirk up into a sad smile. “Now would be a good time to say it…”

“I love you,” his voice quivers as his grip tightens. “I love you, so you gotta stay with me, okay?”

“Love you, too.” She reaches up, making her wince, and pushes his cowl back. “Such a handsome face. Still don’t know how I had you.”

“Have me,” he insists. “You still have me, Daisy. You’re gonna get better and I’ll apologize and everything will be fine.”

There are flashes of cameras and the crash of the building and the roar of a fire. Screams and shouts and the whine of sirens. But all Steve notices is her.

“I’d never been in love before, ya know?” Her voice is thinner. Weak. “But I’m glad I finally got to. And I’m glad it was you.”

DJ’s eyes close and all the sounds come rushing to Steve’s ears.
_________________________________________

The first thought that she thinks is that she never wants to be in another hospital ever again. The first thing she hears is a gasp of surprise from her bedside. But the first person she sees isn’t Steve. It’s Tony.

“Try not to look so disappointed.”

She laughs. “Sorry. I just figured… You know… That he’d be here. I’ve got a few things to say.”

“Well I’m sure he’s got a few things to say to you, too.” Tony sinks back in his chair, relief worming its way onto his haggard face. “He’ll kick himself when he hears you’re awake. He stayed here for eight days straight waiting for you. We all made him go home a couple hours ago.”

“Don’t tell him just yet,” she says, even as the beeps on her heart monitor quicken embarrassingly at the thought of Steve by her side for all that time. “I don’t think he’ll like what I have to say.”

Tony frowns, looking down at the stained floors. “I figured he probably wouldn’t. But if you ask me, you’re being pretty stupid.”

“I wasn’t asking you,” she retorts, not unkindly, just factually.

“Right.” A beat. He looks back up at her. “Was it my fault?”

DJ shakes her head, getting as comfortable as she can in the hospital bed. “No. Doom was working on it himself. It was only a matter of time before he figured it out. You just sped the process up... And, well, if you hadn’t I might have died before he got the chance to use it. And then he wouldn’t have fixed my brain… So in a way you kind of saved my life, didn’t you?”

“Steve’s right,” he huffs. “You are good at that.”

“I hope he hasn’t been telling you what else I’m good at,” she says with a devilish grin.

Tony laughs his first real laugh in over a week. “Regardless of how much I beg, he hasn’t told me about any of that.” His happy expression turns a little bittersweet. “So when are you leaving?”

“It’s not like that,” she sighs.

“Isn’t it?”

“I almost killed you, Tony,” she reasons. “I almost killed all of you. And potentially all of New York. That’s not something I can just get over.”

He moves to sit on the edge of her bed. “And no one expects you to, either. We’re all a little shaken up. It comes with the territory. But that’s what a team’s for. We help each other, or something. I’m still working on that. But you don’t need to be alone. I tried that once. Didn’t work out so well.”

“I won’t be alone.”

Tony scowls. “Logan?”

“No. I’m not just going to- No. I’m not disappearing on you guys, okay? I’m just going home. To my family. My biological one, I mean. It’s where I need to be. I can’t be a superhero right now. I just need to be… I need to be Daisy for now.”

“And this Daisy character, is she still friends with Tony Stark?”

“Best friends. Sadly.” She scrunches up her face in thought. “I need to start hanging out with people my own age.”

Tony generously ignores the last comment. “Is this Daisy still in a relationship with Steve Rogers?”

“What did I tell you about trying to talk to me about relationships?” DJ gives him a stern look.

“Hey, I just want to know how far to stay away from him once you have this little talk.”

“Pretty far.” At Tony’s exasperated expression she arches a challenging brow. “He made a bad call.”

“Haven’t we all?”

She scoffs, brushing off his argument. “He’s your leader. He’s Captain America. Good calls and saving people is who he is. He can’t forget that just because one ‘soldier’ is on the line.”

“And you’re not just a soldier,” Tony snaps vehemently.

“Exactly!” She sits up painfully, trying to get her point across. “And if I’m out there fighting, I have to be or everyone’s in danger. You know it. I know it. He knows it. It’s my responsibility to decide what I want more. To help people, or to have him.”