in the shadows ? steve rogers

065 ? from dust to dust

"Steve!" she cried. "Help!"

He looked up at the building when he heard Grace's shout through the comm set, seeing two figures falling out the window. "Somebody get to Vision!" he shouted, immediately getting attacked by a soldier.

"I got him!" Banner said, flying over Steve.

"On my way," Wanda added, immediately getting hit in the head and falling into a ditch. Adelaide turned around when she heard her groan.

"Get to Vision," she said to Pietro, taking off on a run towards the witch. "Help him! I got Wanda!"

Pietro hesitated for a moment before nodding and running in the opposite direction towards his sister's robot boyfriend. When Adelaide reached Wanda, one of the female soldiers was standing over her. "He'll die alone. As will you."

"Hey, idiot!" Adelaide called out to her with a frown. "Look around you. She's not alone." She glanced behind her at Natasha. "Unless we're invisible." She looked behind the soldier at Okoye. "Are we?"

Pietro arrived at the same time as Bruce in his Iron Hulk suit, stepping between the two soldiers and Vision. "I think that's enough."

"This isn't gonna be like New York, pal," Bruce said. "This suit's already kicked the crap outta the Hulk." Pietro frowned as he watched the soldiers use the suit's powers against him, and Bruce was sent flying into a pond. "What? No. No."

He pressed his lips together. "I could use a hand over here." He was thrown aside by the second soldier, hitting a nearby rock painfully hard, and he groaned. "I need... some backup!" He looked up just as Vision was stabbed, and he began glitching. He pulled out the dagger, and Vision yelped, dropping to the ground.

Suddenly, Steve ran directly at the soldier, tackling him away from Vision just as Pietro slowly pulled himself off the ground. "Get him outta here!" Steve shouted at Pietro. "Go!"

Grace crawled over to Shuri, shaking her gently. "Hey, hey, are you okay?" she asked her, keeping a watchful eye on the broken window. "Can you sit up?"

"Are the others okay?" Shuri asked, groaning as Grace helped her upright. "My brother?"

"Uh—we need to go," Pietro said to Vision, tugging on him to stand up. "You heard him. We need to go!"

"No," he replied, and Pietro frowned. "We cannot leave him."

Pietro looked over at Steve, who lost his shields and was thrown against a log, getting choked by the soldier. "Ah, shit." Before he knew it, Vision had stumbled over to the super-soldier, jamming the forgotten spear into his chest.

"Vision!" he exclaimed, catching him as he fell from weakness.

"I thought I told you to go," Steve said to him while Pietro held him steady. "Both of you."

Pietro frowned. "Don't look at me. I tried."

"We don't trade lives, Captain," Vision said, and Steve looked at him. "And you deserve to go back to her."

Pietro tilted his head. "It would be a very uncomfortable conversation telling Addy that you died," he agreed. "She loves you too much, and I don't want to tell her that."

⸻ ~~~ ⸻

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐔𝐄𝐃 𝐀𝐍𝐃 Grace was still in Shuri's destroyed lab, watching the fight happen below her. "I need to get down there," she said to Shuri, who looked up at her. "Steve, Addy—everyone is down there."

"I thought he said it would be safer for you up here," Shuri replied.

Grace shrugged. "Look around you; it wasn't safer," she said, chuckling humorlessly to herself. "If I need to be anywhere, it's with the people I love."