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A lot of things could be said about Clint Barton. Natasha would say he tended to take in strays—to see more in certain people and give them a second chance when others wouldn’t. (That was how she’d ended up with SHIELD instead of another confirmed kill on Clint’s file, so she didn’t complain too much.) For the most part, though, he was considered by the team to be a fair person. He wasn’t the kind of guy to hate someone for doing things when they weren’t in control of their actions.
That being said, it was harder for Clint to be objective about Loki when he started blatantly flirting with Christine. She could handle herself, though, and judging from Loki’s behavior and body language, he accepted her polite rejection without offense, so he let it ride. It was a huge surprise when Loki admitted he was genderfluid (dammit, he was presenting as a male at the moment, so Clint was going to call him a he until Loki told him differently); the archer had been raised in the circus with all the “freaks”, not to mention the wide array of people he came across on missions, so he might have been a bit less surprised than some of his teammates.
Clint spared a glance at Tony; the inventor was on a very short list of men he considered good, but Tony’s mouth had a way of getting him into trouble with people who didn’t know who he was beneath his public persona. For now, though, he didn’t seem inclined to make any comments, dumb or otherwise, so that let Clint breathe a little easier.
“Now, your dear bro there thinks you can maybe help me make some sense of this weird propensity I seem to have developed,” Chrissy changed the subject, drawing the room’s attention even more. “What would you need to do? Can it be done here, or do you need privacy, or-”
“I don’t think privacy will be needed,” Steve said sharply as he stood up.
“Or,” Clint interjected, trying to smooth things over before anything could get out of hand, “let’s just say, while we don’t distrust you enough to keep you out of our place, Loki, we do distrust you enough to not leave you unguarded with our friend who, as bad a bitch as she is, probably is not equipped to go toe to toe with a demigod.”
“Y’all,” Chrissy groaned dramatically, her Southern accent turning the word into a drawl. “As I think I told a certain witch not long ago, trust has to start someplace.”
“No, they are correct,” Loki stated. “I am not trustworthy.”
Geez, were Tony and Loki secretly brothers? From where Clint sat, they seemed to share a lot of the same issues with self-worth. Hell, they even halfway looked alike, ignoring the completely different styles.
Chrissy just fixed Loki with a knowing look. “Doesn’t mean you don’t want to be, though, now does it?”
Before anyone else could speak, the hairs on the back of Clint’s neck suddenly stood on end. A split-second later, a crackling sound came from the other end of the room as a point in the air started to glow with a bright golden color. Everyone who wasn’t already standing jumped to their feet in alarm, some looking at the anomaly, and the rest at Loki.
“Loki?” Thor’s voice was more questioning than accusatory. Clint tore his eyes away from the phenomenon just long enough to gauge Loki’s reaction.
“This isn’t my doing, brother,” Loki answered, sharing a wary look with Thor. “I’ve never felt a power such as this before.”
Great, now Clint was really itching to run and get his bow. He looked back as the crackling grew louder as the point spread, becoming a line wavering in the air, then seemed to stabilize for the moment. Tony was babbling to JARVIS about scans and readings—
The hovering line flashed almost blindingly as a figure flew—no, scratch that, was thrown —from it, seemingly out of thin air, and crashed hard into the wall. Just in the moment when the newcomer slid down to the floor, Clint saw a woman that had been beaten all to hell. Her dark jacket was torn near the left shoulder and wet with what was probably blood, her face was bruised and bloody, a gash near her temple was streaming blood, and some kind of long knife or short sword was embedded in her left thigh. At the impact with the wall (back first), her mouth opened in a choked scream of agony, and Clint added “probable broken ribs” to the list.
As soon as she hit the floor, however, a second figure stepped through with another blinding flash before anyone had recovered enough to move. The second person—male, tall, suit that looked like it was recently roughed up in a fight—was holding the same kind of blade that was stuck in the woman’s thigh, and…wait a second…
Clint froze as he stared at the foreign weapon. He’d seen it before. Hell, he’d thought it was such an awesome weapon that he’d gone to a blacksmith and gotten one made. But that one? It looked scarily like the real deal. Which meant…
He looked back at the injured woman and studied her. The hair, the build, the clothes, the face (what he could see beneath the blood and bruises, at least)…holy fuck, if he was right, then they were screwed.
The woman had recovered enough to glare hatefully at the man who probably wasn’t human, even though it was obvious she was in a lot of pain. As soon as he took a step towards her, though, the entire team including Loki took a step forward.
“Hey!” Tony barked, making the newcomer look at him with a deadpan stare.
“Do not interfere, human,” was all he said before turning back to the woman.
In that instant, the team shared a glance. Clint wasn’t sure if they’d just gotten to know each other that well or if he just had DISTRACT HIM written on his forehead, but they seemed to get the message just fine.
“It’s just that, I have this rule—pesky little things, really—” the man turned to face Tony again, “but if anyone’s gonna get killed in my house, I need to know the reason why before they’re killed, ya know? It’s a courtesy thing, since I’ll have to clean up the mess.”
“You would not understand.”
“Explain it to us, then,” Loki said calmly, looking and sounding like he couldn’t care less either way except for the tip of the blade Clint could see peeking out of his sleeve.
“That thing is an abomination,” the newcomer hissed. “Our leaders have grown soft, rescinding the previous order to destroy its kind, but I have not forgotten my brothers and sisters slain by its hand. Its power is too great to leave alone, and it cannot be controlled. It must be destroyed.”
“Your siblings that perished,” Loki said thoughtfully, “were they struck down in the attempt to destroy her? Or did she hunt them down without cause?”
“It killed them. Its reasons for doing so are irrelevant,” the man said flatly.
Okay, that sounded like self-defense to Clint. Which, if his guess about her identity was right, sounded like her MO. In the corner of his eye, he could see her doing something, but he refused to look at her to avoid tipping this asshole off.
“Sounds an awful lot like self-defense to me,” Steve spoke up, his glare icy, “and those orders sound too much like genocide.”
The newcomer looked at them in disdain. “Hairless apes. It is always the same with you. You make laws and morals, but you apply them selectively at best. And you cannot see the threat it poses. It can reduce your world to ash with the effort it would take you to walk across this room.”
“Hairless apes, huh?” Clint spoke up, ignoring the chill that ran down his spine as those eyes bored into his. Dammit, this was way too surreal, and making him think more and more that he was right about the whole situation, which was scary enough. “Sounds like you don’t care much for us humans, so why bother trying to make us fear her? Has she destroyed planets back in your universe?”
“It is only a matter of time.”
“So that’s a no,” Tony jumped in again. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the reason you’re so gung-ho on killing her is because you consider her species to be an abomination, you can’t control her so you can’t use her powers for yourself, plus she’s killed your siblings when they were dumb enough to hunt her down, right?”
“I have no desire to claim its powers for my own,” the man said. “This is my mission, and I must fulfill it.”
“Too late.” Everyone spun to face the mystery woman. She hadn’t made any attempt to move from where she landed. Her left arm was curled up to her chest (Clint recognized the posture; that hand was useless), while the fingers of her right hand were stained with fresh blood from a symbol drawn on the floor beside her. A grim smile pulled at her lips as she flipped off her would-be killer with her functioning hand. “Enjoy the landing, asshole.”
With that, she slammed her palm down onto the symbol. The man, too late, tried to lunge for her, but instead vanished in a burst of blinding white light and a scream intermingled with a high-pitched noise that almost blew out Clint's hearing aids.
It took a few moments to shake it off, but when he did, Clint saw that the woman was still slouched against the wall. Whatever had kept her conscious since she arrived—adrenaline, rage, and fear, most likely—left her in a hurry. She gave a weak, bloody cough as she started listing sideways, and the team started to rush over, but Loki was the first to reach her.
The demigod’s expression turned grim as his hands hovered over her body; from where Clint was standing, it looked like he was using his magic to examine her injuries. A look shared with Thor made the elder brother quickly pass a pouch from his belt. Hands moving swiftly, Loki pulled what looked like a stone from the pouch and crushed it in his hand, letting the dust from it fall onto her torso.
“What is that?” Chrissy asked.
“A healing stone,” Loki replied, his eyes never leaving the injured woman. “She has several broken ribs, and one punctured her lung.”
“Bruce, come on,” Tony rushed to the elevator, Bruce close on his heels. Clint heard them saying something about a stretcher and medical, but he quickly tuned them out to watch the injured woman.
After a few moments, the woman’s breathing became noticeably easier, and a little of the tension in Loki’s expression eased. With a wave of his hands, her jacket vanished, leaving her in a blood-soaked tank top. There was a deep gash on her right side and a similar one in her left bicep just beneath the shoulder joint that hadn’t healed. Both wounds were also leaking a golden light in addition to blood.
A second portal opened, making the team tense up as they spun to face the intruder, but they relaxed again as the Sorcerer Supreme stepped through, looking alarmed at the scene he’d walked into. “What the hell happened here?”
Chris pulled him aside and gave him a quick explanation of the past few minutes; the portal had closed at some point, so Strange joined Loki at the woman’s side. The former doctor visibly recoiled at the sight of the golden light in her wounds before going back to doctor mode. Like Loki, he seemed to use his magic to assess her condition.
“Aside from that glow, her anatomy matches humans, so that makes diagnosis easier. Contusions, lacerations, possible concussion, stab wound, left ulna and radius broken. She’s lost a lot of blood,” Strange pronounced, then studied the wound in her leg and the weapon embedded there. “Barely missed the femoral artery. Hold her down,” he instructed Loki. Once he was satisfied that Loki had her pinned, he pulled the sword from her leg with one swift motion.
The jolt of pain brought the woman back to consciousness, drawing a hoarse shriek of pain from her as her eyes snapped open. She struggled for a moment against the hands holding her down, clearly still in survival mode and not realizing she was being treated.
“It’s all right, he’s gone, you’re safe now,” Loki told her, using the same soothing tone as when trying to calm a skittish animal. The new woman stared at him for a moment in utter confusion, but quit struggling and closed her eyes as Strange conjured bandages and started wrapping the hole in her leg. “That’s it, little one. We are treating your injuries as best we can. I know you’re in pain, but no one here is going to harm you.”
Clint was…okay, he was impressed. Loki had a better bedside manner than most doctors Clint had dealt with, which was a major surprise from the God of Mischief. As Strange tightened the bandage on her thigh, she let out a pained sound through gritted teeth, eyes squeezed shut; Loki’s hand immediately slipped into hers, and she gripped it like a vise. Strange, on the other hand, worked efficiently—more like an ER doctor who prioritized saving the person over tending to their comfort.
“Get her talking,” Strange instructed Loki as he pressed more bandages to the wound in her side, making her hiss in pain. “We need to make sure she stays conscious for now.”
“What is your name, brave one?” Loki asked as she opened her eyes again. That same confusion was still on her face.
“Kyra,” she whispered hoarsely, “Kyra Singer.” A lead weight dropped in Clint’s stomach as he shared a wide-eyed look with Natasha. Oh fuck, he hated being right.
She started to look around the room, and her eyes fell on the Avengers. The look of stunned surprise on her face was almost comical, and Clint swore there was a glint of recognition in her eyes. A weak, slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up in her throat as she closed her eyes again.
“Am I really surrounded by Avengers, or am I hallucinating from the head injuries?” she asked, making Loki chuckle.
“The former, I’m afraid,” he told her.
“Could be worse,” she agreed, then giggled. “At least I know the score here. I’ve seen the movies.”
“Movies?” Strange echoed, his hands frozen in the act of placing a bandage.
She looked at Strange for the first time; her head tilted sideways, like he was a strange life form she’d never seen before. “Yeah. You guys are comic book characters in my world. I was never really into comics, but I’ve watched all the movies they’ve put out with you guys.”
A ball of ice formed in Clint’s stomach at her words. Then she let out a sharp exhale and muttered, “I’ll take superheroes and aliens over monsters any day of the week.”
“How did you end up here?” Loki asked. Clint wasn’t sure if Loki knew the significance of what Kyra had just said. Maybe he had, and was just as uncomfortable with it? If that was the case, he was showing those wordsmith skills by redirecting the conversation.
“Got ambushed by ten of those assholes,” Kyra hissed through the pain as Strange tightened the bandage on her arm. “When they figured out they were losing, one of them had the bright idea to open the portal. If you can’t kill the freak, banishing it is the next best thing, right?”
“How many of your attackers are left?”
“Including the one that followed me?” she asked, then locked eyes with Loki. A dark look crossed her face. “Three.”
“You killed seven people?” Steve asked, frowning.
Kyra gave Steve an incredulous look. “They ambushed me and were going to kill me. What was I supposed to do, stand there and let them?”
Loki’s shoulders shook in silent laughter as he smiled at her words. “Why would they target you?”
“Pick a reason,” she huffed. “Being a major player in derailing the apocalypse? Upsetting the power structure in Heaven by bringing Michael to justice for all the shit he did? Fucking existing? Who knows?”
“What are you?” Strange asked. Her worst wounds had been bandaged, but now he was examining her head.
“I am nephil,” she told him, her voice deeper somehow. “Descendant of the archangel Gabriel.”
Oh fuck, it really was all true. Christine’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head at the declaration, her hand covering the astonished gasp that left her mouth. Steve went pale; Clint suddenly remembered that he’d been raised Irish Catholic, so he understood the implications of her words as well. Clint had no clue what Strange knew about biblical lore, but he seemed less terrified and more analyzing. The demigods in the room gave no outward reaction to her words, but it was doubtful that they knew just how earth-shattering her words had been. Even without knowing what nephil meant, “descendant of the archangel Gabriel” was pretty hard to misinterpret for the humans in the group.
“Yeah, I know,” Clint found himself saying. Every gaze in the room turned to him, making him want to find a nest. “Well, you said you know us from movies, right? Me and Nat know you from a TV show. Supernatural.”
“He’s a big fan,” Natasha added, the ghost of a smile on her lips. “He went to a blacksmith and had them make an angel blade like you carry in the show.”
A pained chuckle came from Kyra. “Figures,” she wheezed, then hissed again at the light Strange shone in her eyes.
“You definitely have a concussion,” Strange told her once he finished his examination. “Doesn’t look to be severe, but we’ll know more once we can get an MRI.”
“No,” Kyra started to struggle again, eyes wide with what looked to be panic. “Are you nuts?! I can’t—”
“Hospital’s out of the question,” Natasha filled in for her. “As soon as they figure out she’s not human, they’ll call every alphabet agency there is. She’d be lucky if she wasn’t dissected before midnight.”
The non-spies in the room grimaced, but Kyra just pointed in Nat’s direction, relaxing again. “Yeah, that,” she agreed.
Just then, Tony and Bruce emerged from the elevator, dragging what looked like a hospital gurney between them. They stopped a few feet away from the injured woman, who had visibly tensed up at seeing the gurney.
“JARVIS kept us updated on the conversation,” Tony said to her, completely ignoring everyone else as he crouched down beside her head. “We’ve got a medical floor in the tower, state-of-the-art equipment, everything we need to patch you up and no snitching to the government about interdimensional visitors. Sound good?”
Kyra gave a weak thumbs-up, and Tony kept right on going. “Okay, Loki and Strange got you stable enough to move, so let’s get this clusterfuck on the road. You’re half-human, right? If you need a transfusion, would you be able to take it? What’s your blood type?”
“O positive,” she mumbled. “Should work, anyway. I’m baseline human for the next few hours.”
“How does that work?” Bruce asked.
“It’s a spell, basically,” Clint answered, earning a glare from Kyra that made him shiver. “She still has her power, but she can’t access it right now. It’s only temporary, and not a lot of people know it, but still,” he nodded at Kyra, indicating her condition, “dangerous as fuck in the wrong hands.”
“No shit,” Kyra muttered. After a lot of rearranging (and cursing on Kyra’s part), she was settled on the gurney, and the scientists along with Strange headed to the elevator. Interestingly, she hadn’t let go of Loki’s hand, so after a shared look between the brothers, Loki walked with the gurney without complaint, and Thor took up the rear. The elevator looked to be a bit crowded, but no one was complaining as the doors shut.
Steve instantly turned to Clint, exhaling in a loud whoosh. “Holy fuck.”
“Language,” Chris chided gently, then flopped back on the nearest armchair. “Did that seriously just happen?”
“As crazy as that was? I think it did,” Natasha answered as she sat on the arm of the same chair Chris was in. “Team meeting? Let the compound team know what’s going on?”
“Do we even know what’s going on?” Steve asked. Clint walked over to where Kyra had been and stared at the symbol now burned into the floor.
“We know enough, at least till Kyra is patched up,” Clint said.
“Fill us in then, cuz I’m lost,” Steve admitted.
“At the meeting,” Clint said after a moment. “I really don’t wanna explain more than once. It’s a lot. Just…if she’s anything like in the show, and so far she seems to be, she’s on the side of humanity, so she’s not an enemy.”
Steve looked like he wanted to argue, but finally relented. “You’re right. We should all hear it at the same time. Half the team here is with her, so they should be in the meeting too.”
* * *
The group at the compound decided to take the Quinjet to the tower when they were told about the events of the afternoon, so it was an in-person team meeting. Even Loki (being required to stay at Thor’s side during his visit) and Strange were in attendance, and the difference between the two mages was surreal. Tony and Bruce looked tense, with good reason; they had dealt with multiverse shenanigans as a team before, but having two human-looking beings come through—especially when one was clearly hunting the other—was a first. With Kyra currently in surgery for the sword wound in her leg, it was the best chance to gather everyone.
Christine had a tablet and looked ready to take notes, and everyone else was attentive and alert, so Steve decided it was as good a time as any to get started.
“Now that we’re all here,” he said, getting the instant attention of everyone in the room. “A portal from another universe opened in the common room about two hours ago.” Dear Lord, let him not have to say that sentence ever again. “JARVIS, can you play the footage?”
A screen popped up, and the encounter played for everyone who missed it. Everyone from the compound team except Vision cringed when Kyra hit the wall; Sam in particular looked concerned at the extent of her injuries (Steve would bet he was seeing things that he’d missed, given Sam’s background in pararescue). Then the angel stepped through the portal, and the conversation that followed held everyone’s attention up until Kyra spoke; most everyone grinned or let out a chuckle at her quip before banishing the bastard that tried to kill her. The video kept playing all the way until she was loaded onto the stretcher and carried off to the elevator, then turned off.
Stunned silence from the compound team followed for a moment.
“What was that symbol she used?” Wanda asked into the silence.
“An angel banishing sigil,” Natasha answered.
“Blood magic,” Loki added. “Extremely powerful, and not something to be toyed with. Not many practice such rituals in Asgard or its allied realms because of the potential danger to the caster.”
More stunned silence. Steve turned to Clint.
“You said you knew her from a TV show.”
“Supernatural, yeah,” Clint confirmed.
“We need a breakdown of her universe. How it’s different, what we’re dealing with, and what the fuck was going on with an angel trying to kill her,” Tony demanded.
“Okay,” Clint said, then started talking. He explained how in Kyra’s world, monsters were real, along with demons and angels. She was a hunter, friends with the Winchester brothers, and had been neck-deep in the apocalypse along with them. He told them about her abilities, how Gabriel had awakened her Grace (“That glowing stuff? That shit”), and had just explained how she made friends with Lucifer when Steve interjected.
“She made friends with the Devil?!” Steve was horrified at the thought.
“A friendship that ended up stopping the apocalypse,” Nat said pointedly. “The Winchesters were scrambling trying to find a way to kill Lucifer, since they thought it was the only way to stop it. But Kyra? She realized that all the angels, Lucifer included, had free will but didn’t know they had it. She managed to convince Lucifer of this, and since he’d never wanted to fight Michael, he decided not to.”
“You can’t have a celebrity deathmatch if one of the fighters is a no-show,” Clint added. Steve was shaken; Loki and Thor looked confused. “The apocalypse was supposed to end with a fight to the death between Michael and Lucifer. At least half the planet would be decimated during the fight, but angels in general see humans as an inferior species, so what do they care? If Michael won, it was supposed to bring Paradise to Earth, or what was left of it. If Lucifer won, then Hell would be unleashed.”
“This Lucifer is the embodiment of evil?” Thor asked.
“According to Heaven and the angels, yes. But keep in mind, the winning side is who writes history,” Natasha answered evenly. “Lucifer was made into a scapegoat for Heaven to blame everything on, and a warning to other angels who may have considered disobedience. And their word made it into the Judeo-Christian religions, where he was perpetually vilified by mankind without knowing his side of events or even what his ‘crimes’ actually were.”
“And for the record,” Clint threw a glare at Steve, “in their universe, God is an asshole and a deadbeat dad. Lucifer’s ‘crime’ was exercising his free will by refusing to love humans more than God, which was an order from his dad. And God? Threw a fucking hissy fit, and instead of trying to settle things in a calm, reasonable way, he told Michael to throw his little brother out of Heaven, then into the Cage, and that when the apocalypse came around, it was Michael’s job to kill him. And then he skipped out of Heaven without a fucking word and left all the angels to fend for themselves, with a leader who was already traumatized and unstable.”
The more Clint talked, the more horrified Steve became at the idea of even living in a world like Kyra’s. Nobody else was bothering to interrupt him, so he kept going. “And that’s not even getting started on the shit that God did that nobody ever talks about, like how Lucifer’s Grace was corrupted in the first place that led to him being discontent and hating humans when they were created. The point is, Steve,” he made sure Steve was looking him in the eye, “Lucifer was good before all the shit happened, but once it happened, the only things people bothered to remember or talk about were the bad things. He was treated like a monster, so that’s how he fucking acted. Then Kyra comes along and treats him like a friend, in spite of knowing everything that’s been said about him, even after it’s confirmed that she was dealing with the Devil? That one act of being a decent fucking human being changed everything for their world.”
Steve wanted to vomit; really, it wasn’t so different from the way he treated Tony when he first moved in, before Christine figured out that Steve’s SHIELD briefings on him were completely fucked over and the air was cleared. Thor was unusually pale, staring at his younger brother with what looked to be sympathy. As for Loki, that neutral mask was back in place.
“Okay, I’m a little confused,” Pepper stated, tactfully changing the subject. “You said earlier that she’s only half human, but when she started hunting, she was human.”
Nat spoke up; she’d watched the show with Clint several times, so she knew the story as well as he did. “Shortly after she met Lucifer, she went to rescue the Winchesters from a trickster. The thing is, the trickster wasn’t just a trickster. He was actually the archangel Gabriel in hiding…and Kyra was his descendant. He offered her a choice, and she chose to let him awaken her Grace. That’s how she became what she is now, and the reason Heaven began hunting her.”
“What is the distinction between angels and archangels?” Thor asked.
Maybe later, Steve would have an existential crisis over this whole thing. Knowing Clint as he did, the archer would probably laugh his ass off at being in a serious discussion of the Supernatural universe to Thor because his favorite character from the show (and Nat’s too, he was pretty sure) had popped out of a goddamn portal in the living room on the common floor of the Tower. “JARVIS, can you play the scene where Kyra ascended? Season five, episode 8?”
“Of course, Agent Barton,” JARVIS replied smoothly. A moment later, a holographic screen popped up, and the scene played through. The video lasted about ten minutes, and the conversations between the Winchester brothers (Clint named them when they popped up), Gabriel, Castiel, and Kyra gave Steve a lot of insight into her character. They were facing down the literal end of the world, and she chose to step up and ascend to her true self—not because of a desire for power, but because it was the only chance they had to save their world. Steve respected the hell out of her for that alone; it was similar to his own experience with Project Rebirth.
“Castiel, or as Dean called him, Cass, is also an angel. He’s one of the few good ones that we know of. When he learned Heaven was trying to cause the apocalypse instead of stop it like they were told, he defected to help the Winchesters,” Clint explained to the others before they could ask. “He was also loyal to Kyra. He discovered what she really was before he left Heaven—before any of them knew about her bloodline or her relationship to Gabriel—but he chose to keep her secret instead of killing her because he judged her value on her actions instead of her species.”
Damn. With the way Clint talked, Kyra sounded like she had a personality closer to Christine’s, with portions of Natasha’s skill set.
“So how exactly did she save her world?” Loki asked.
To Steve’s surprise, Clint chuckled and pointed at the demigod. “You’re actually gonna like this one. She ended up getting caught by the angels,” his face turned grim, “they tortured her on Michael’s orders—she would’ve died if Gabriel and Lucifer hadn’t found her and saved her. But,” his smile returned, “once she started healing up, she decided to play a little psychological warfare on Michael. Started blasting human songs on Angel Radio, all promising retribution and threatening to expose all the shit he’d done. It went on for months, till the Winchesters figured out she was friends with Lucifer and cornered her. After that, she finally set her plan in motion. Started playing all of Angel Radio’s greatest hits nonstop to piss him off, then baited Michael into facing her personally, without him knowing she had Gabriel and Lucifer both backing her. The three of them together brought Michael to justice. She was gonna kill him, but God finally decided to get off his ass and intervene—stripped Michael of his Grace and made him human instead. He had to earn redemption if he wanted to get his powers back.”
“Did he redeem himself?” Pietro asked.
Clint shrugged. “Don’t know. That was the season five finale; sixth season is in production right now.”
“Kyra said it was late 2019 in her world,” Strange added; Steve’s stomach dropped when he saw the grim look on his face. “Just before she went into surgery, she asked what we knew of the Infinity Stones and Thanos’s plans.”
Oh, shit…it was only spring of 2015 now. What the hell did she know about their world that hadn’t happened yet?! Steve looked around at the rest of the group, and everyone looked about as shocked as he felt when the realization hit them…except Loki, who merely looked uncomfortable.
“She’s clearly willing to talk,” Christine pointed out. “If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have said anything.”
That made the room relax slightly. “Once she’s out of surgery and settled, we can get details from her,” Tony said, getting nods of agreement before turning to Clint. “Okay, this is gonna keep bugging me till I ask; does Kyra have wings? I thought all angels had them, but that guy that followed her didn’t.”
Clint stiffened at the question and leveled a serious look at the inventor. “Look, man, I get that you’re a scientist and inventor and curious as hell about this shit. To answer the question, they all have wings but they’re usually not on the physical plane. Whatever you do, don’t ask to see her wings and don’t bring up Michael.”
The way Clint emphasized that made Steve go cold. That wasn’t a casual, “hey, it’s a rude question, don’t ask it.” That sounded more like, “there’s trauma there and if you ignore me, it’s your funeral.” That suspicion was further cemented by the way Clint and Natasha glared at every single person in attendance, making sure each of them got the message. The team had become a family in the past three years, so for the former spies to look at everyone like that? They were dead serious, and Steve didn’t want to see the results if the warning was ignored.
Thankfully, no one seemed inclined to argue, not even Tony or Loki. The meeting continued as others asked questions about Kyra’s abilities, her personality, her history; Clint and sometimes Natasha answered to the best of their abilities. Everything they revealed made Steve’s heart break just a little more for Kyra. From what they described, she’d been a normal person that went through the hell of her kids being slaughtered, then took up hunting monsters in the noble goal of saving others from the same pain (and avoiding going back to her parents, where she’d freely admitted on-screen that she would’ve killed herself within a week). Her abilities made her job as a hunter easier, but it sounded like a pretty lonely existence to Steve.
Then, with her choice to ascend during the Apocalypse? She became the target of every angel still flying under Heaven’s banner, but she also became one of the most powerful entities that had ever existed. A nephil with archangel blood? Archangels were already the most powerful, primordial beings, second only to God in age and strength. They could bend time and space to their will, with unlimited power at their disposal. Their Grace combined with a human soul, such as in a nephil like Kyra? Anything was possible, and nothing was beyond their capabilities.
There was still the matter of the angel that had assaulted her and followed her through the portal. No one had any ideas on how to track where he’d been banished to, and according to Clint and Natasha, their weapons would be useless against him if he decided to come back and finish the job. Luckily, they added, the banishing sigil Kyra used was pretty powerful, and would likely last at least a full day, which would be more than enough time for Kyra to regain her abilities.
The others were already throwing around the possibilities. Her personality profile eliminated a lot of worst-case scenarios, like going on a homicidal rampage or wanting to take over Earth (or any other worlds) to rule, and Steve was damn grateful for that. She was experienced enough with her powers to make even an accidental death a slim possibility, but the thought still made Steve nervous. She knew who they were and what they stood for, so that took the edge off his anxiety. Maybe she would be willing to help them against Thanos before she returned to her world?
Steve replayed Kyra’s words when she realized who they were in his head: “I was never really into comics, but I’ve watched all the movies they’ve put out with you guys.” Then he thought about how Clint knew about Kyra and her universe in the first place, and a lead weight dropped in his stomach at the same time he felt a migraine start.