#seth is noping away from thanos at all moments

[goldeneyedgirl]

TwiFicmas23 Day 12: Jar of Hearts (All or Nothing)

Happy Christmas Eve!

Today, despite my best-laid plans, is a section from Jar of Hearts as a preview for the upcoming chapter. Yes, it should be the whole chapter, but recent developments have had me contemplating things and making some adjustments to how JoH ends; plus this chapter might need some scenes from Seth and Alice to mix things up. I'm undecided.

Honestly, it was either a JoH snippet or some deleted VS scenes tonight, and Anon made the decision for me ;)

So I hope you enjoy this - another year of Ficmas over, and I have no idea how we made it this far! Happy Holidays everyone!

eight. all or nothing

The truth is that Emmett never saw any kind of war.

He was born right before America joined World War One and was a vampire before World War Two. There had been the shadow of the Great War over his childhood, from what he remembered, but it had always been something tucked away to the side. It hadn’t touched his family specifically; they had been simple people, focused on working hard, putting food on their table, and keeping a roof over their heads.

And then he was gone before World War Two was a worry his parents would talk about in hushed voices (that memory is solid; the hum of his parents’ voices in the next room talking over the big things, the scary things that might actually come for the McCarty boys, as he drifted off to sleep next to his brothers.)

It was one of the few things that he had in common with Carlisle - and even then, Carlisle had seen battles as a medic. Edward had been dazzled by the glamour of World War One before his death, and Jasper… well, it was Jasper. His brother had been fighting one war or another his entire life - and death. 

The closest Emmett ever come to war? That had been the debacle with Victoria. And he wasn’t so arrogant that he believed that it came anywhere near what an actual war was. He remembers the news stories through World War 2, through Korea and Vietnam. He remembers seeing Carlisle’s grim expression, watching Jasper leave the room before the remote landed on the couch next to him, before the news pages settled. He’s never envied his brother his role on the front lines, never really examined how that missing piece separates him from his brothers and Carlisle. It was just one of those things that weren’t part of his human life, and that couldn’t ever really be recaptured.

But this…

This is a war. This is being right in the middle of the trenches with fucking lizard people and aliens charging at him with no sense of self-preservation.  This is not knowing if the movement behind him is friend or foe or someone dying in the mud. This is having foreign blood dry wet and ice cold against his face and sometimes it smells good and other times it smells like rot and death; in not being able to see Alice or Seth in the blur of bodies and movement.

It’s watching a woman in a leather jacket beat the ever loving shit out of an alien for crushing her flask underfoot, and a broad black guy take a bone-shattering punch to the jaw and not even flinch. It’s realising that this is not the time to pull punches or worry about hiding what he is - these people are like them. It’s a weird feeling made weirder by how isolated the last five years have been.

(It’s killing the first alien in two moves and not feeling anything except disgust and impatience because this battle is the only thing standing between him and Rose.) 

//

It feels wrong to admit it, but it’s fucking exhilarating to throw a punch and shatter these monster-alien things. To not hold anything back, to move exactly how he was designed to. More than one hero is caught unaware by his speed; he saves two Wakandan warriors simply by being faster than they are - a crude but effective solution. 

//

It’s hard enough to get across the mud-slick the battlefield has become without running into another alien, another fighter. He hardly recognises half of these people, but more than one he saves from a killing blow - a big-eyed alien girl whose face lights up as he snaps the spine of the alien looming over her. She reminds him of Alice, when she first arrived back in the 50s. But he doesn’t pause, his eyes sliding over the battlefield looking for Alice or Seth, and mentally cursing himself out for not realising that all-black outfits would not be helpful in a battle situation. He should have insisted on reflective racing stripes or something. 

Next time.

(Wait, no. There would never be a next time, a need for fighting ensembles and funny little vests for Seth with reflective panels because they would never find themselves in a fight like this again. That was a promise he was making to himself - for himself.)

And that’s when he finally spots Seth, mud-slicked but alive. 

“No, no, no,” he’s already moving when understands what he’s seeing. wolf Seth, who is no small opponent (last summer, when they’d been bored… well, the short story is that in his wolf-form, Seth weighed double of what Alice did) - is somehow tangling with three aliens, with Thanos looming behind like the shadow of death, his eyes firmly on Seth.

There was no fucking way that the giant purple asshole was laying one goddamn hand on Seth whilst Emmett still had venom in his veins and his head. 

He sees Alice lunging across the battlefield from the opposite direction, her eyes focused fully on the potentially disastrous scene before them. 

“HE’S A FUCKING KID,” Emmett hollers pointlessly, but Seth surprises both him and Alice as he takes the arm clean off an alien, the limb cracking into pieces under the force of Seth’s jaws, before darting with a swiftness that wasn’t expected heading towards Alice before Thanos could move against him. And Alice is there, giving Seth cover to run into the crowd, Thanos giving her a dark look. 

“Watch out, man!” someone yells from above, and he looks up but makes the mistake. A snake-like alien strikes, a blow that shakes him to his bones and before he can use his momentum against the monster, he’s hauled across the battle field to land flat on his back in the mud, his left arm torn off and venom pouring from the wound. The pain is sharp and alive as he reorientates himself - it’s been decades since he lost anything more significant than a finger, and it always makes his head spin (he has no idea how Jasper managed to survive entire campaigns in the south, because he can’t even sit up). 

The alien is laughing at him, mocking him, as his broken arm is discarded in a pile of rubble (still twitching, ugh. No matter how many times he does loose fingers, toes, entire limbs, the twitching never stops being messed up). Thanos smirks but has already turned away from them, to venture deeper into the battlefield. 

Leave Alice and Seth alone. Fuck, Alice, keep Seth out of trouble, please. 

Two horrified superheroes that he doesn’t recognise are staring at him in complete horror, probably expecting him to bleed out - this should be a death sentence, and there’s no way to do triage in this mess. He’s seen a lot of bodies on their side drop in the mud with wounds that could be treated in any other circumstance, but here and now, they get to die in the mud because no one has the time or the supplies or the place to save them. The entire world outweighs saving one bleeding warrior. It’s unfair, but it’s how this has to happen. 

He’s oddly pissed off about the arm, honestly - it fucking hurts. He’d been less mad about the time that Peter took his right leg, honestly. This felt like a matter of honour. 

“Pay attention Emmett!” Alice says as she tears past - her jacket is long gone, and her arms are luminous white in the dull light - and offering no help; she’s clearly got a target in mind as she ducks and weaves out of sight. He scowls at her departing back as he scrambles back to his feet, eyes locked on the alien. 

“Nice move,” he says conversationally as he approaches the alien, who is beyond irritated he’s still moving. “Unluckily for you, this isn’t my first rodeo.”

(Jasper would be proud, he likes to think. Will be proud. More than sixty years of wrestling, play-fighting, and training, and he’s ready. This might not be the Southern Wars - down in Monterrey, they don’t go down as easy as these hydrostatic skeleton bug aliens - but Emmett was trained by the goddamn best.)

It takes three moves - punch, trip, stomp - to have the alien crushed at his feet, eyes dull and dead, and he has to stop himself from shredding the corpse  to burn out of habit. It’s an efficient kill, and then he’s moving quickly towards his discarded arm - ugh, still twitching. 

“Hey, you need to sit down, we’ll get you out of here.”

The man in front of him isn’t recognisable at first. Shaggy brown hair hangs in his face, and he’s swathed in Kevlar. It’s the arm, the once-silver left arm that allows Emmett to identity the man - Bucky Barnes. Cap’s best friend. The legendary marksman. 

“It looks worse than it is, Sergeant Barnes,” Emmett manages as he reaches out for his broken arm. “Just need it to reconnect fast.”

Sergeant Barnes isn’t expecting Emmett to be lucid, or for his arm to line up roughly in the joint; he covers Emmett’s back for the precious moments it takes for his body to recognise and reattach the join sending a shower of warmth and sparks down to his fingers. 

“Fuck, I hate that feeling,” Emmett mutters, flexing his fingers. 

//

Alice is with the Scarlet Witch, and that oddly makes him tense up in worry. But the Witch has Thanos trapped good, so he shouldn’t worry. Just keep taking out aliens, just keep everyone busy whilst smarter people deal with the goddamn glove. 

Alice looks positively hateful in that moment, glaring at Thanos as the Witch restrains him and maybe... maybe they've got him...

And then the Witch and Alice go flying as the world churns up in fire and smoke and Emmett needs to know his sister is okay.