thearena | So long, farewell Auf Weidersehen, goodbye!

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So long, farewell Auf Weidersehen, goodbye!

Who| Phil and the Avengers!
What| Phil dies... spectacularly
Where| Avengers hide out
When| Middle of the night
Warnings/Notes| DEATH!
OOC: As per the mods, this will damage the machine in some way. I leave it to you lovely people to play it out. :)

There was always something strange and ethereal about pulling the midnight watch. When he’d had time to get philosophical, he thought that maybe it was because the world was quiet and all was at rest. Something otherworldly came out to play. Or maybe it was just sleep deprivation. That was, after all, a distinct possibility.

Phil once again scanned the area, noting the same places he always noted. Rooftops, old crates, abandoned buildings all the spots that he'd use to mount an ambush. If he'd thought of it there was a fairly good chance someone else had.

If he was honest with himself, there was no way he would have noticed the initial indications of what was to come if he hadn't been in this contemplative watchful mood. There, some sort of stealth flying vehicle. If he hadn't been trained to look that type of tech, he never would have seen it.

He thought he glimpsed the fiery plume of a rocket propelled air to ground missile. No, that couldn't be...he turned around and fuck that was that telltale dot of a laser target on their shelter. Fuck. Fuckity Fuck. Fuck.

He ran back into the shelter driven by adrenaline and fear more than anything, "MOVE OUT NOW, NOW NOW!" He kicked someone and jostled someone else. He didn't notice, or really care. He ran back outside to keep watch or maybe assist people out the door. Phil didn't know and to be honest, he was acting purely out of instinct. He grabbed a bag of machine supplies on his way out.

Perhaps it was on purpose, or maybe it was because whoever was firing truly didn't understand the tech they were using. Whatever the case was, the missile did not strike the building directly. Instead, it struck directly in front...which was where Phil had run with the bag.

There was a flash and a concussive blast. He found himself flying through the air and he landed on the ground with a thud. His ears were ringing and hey, that might just be a broken back there. Unbeknownst to Phil it wasn't the back or the flying through the air that did him in. It was the shrapnel that had severed a femoral artery and pretty much blown an entire foot off that finished the job.

Blood loss...same way as last time...

Everything faded out...slowly...to...nothing...

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Clint was on his feet pretty much the second he heard Coulson's voice cutting through his sleep. He grabbed his ax and the arm of the nearest person to him and took off for the door. He got out just in time to see Coulson go flying and immediately let go of the arm in his hand to head for the agent.

"Coulson! Jesus...don't you dare!"

Phil opened his eyes and tried to smile up at where he though Clint might have been.

"Hey, maybe I'll get it right this time."

His eyes slowly closed, and he took a shaky rattly breath once, twice, three times and then...did not breathe again.

Somewhere far off, a cannon sounded.

Edited 2013-04-20 02:47 (UTC)

"Better not," Clint mutters with an attempt at a laugh, vainly searching for something to stop Coulson's wound.

Even after the cannon went, he tried. He didn't want to do this again, lose someone important again, even if he was going to come back.

Peggy was lucky she had been awake before Clint had blindly grabbed at the nearest person. She staggered after him toward the blaze only stopping once blinded. Clint was ahead of her, reaching for Coulson where he'd fallen and it was with a numb sort of haze that she heard the cannon fire that brought her back into motion.

She stepped carefully around the still lingering flames and the debris that continued to shower and crouched on the other side of Coulson's limp form.

She knew he was dead without looking. Knew it down deep in ways she never liked about herself, knew it before she did a perfunctory pulse check and came back with nothing.

"Clint," she said, tone steady and calm, but perhaps too hushed for all their ringing ears.

"No, no," Clint mutters. "No fucking way. Not again. Not like this..."

He knew too, of course, and worse, he knew there was nothing he could do about this, nothing he could have done. That didn't help at all.

"Clint," she tried again, not reaching for him, not making any moves to stop him, but putting enough steel into her tone that ignoring her was impossible. "Agent Barton, look at me."

Clint snapped his eyes up to her face from Coulson's lifeless form. He was pretty sure he knew what she was going to say too, what Coulson would say in her position.

"He's gone, Clint." He knew. It was in his eyes and it didn't matter to him that he did and it was like a gut punch. "We need to see if any of the others were hurt."

They couldn't sit out there in the open and wait and see if they were targeted again.

"We can't just..." He shakes his head. He was going to say they couldn't just leave Coulson's body out here like this, but he'd seen the footage. He knew the body would be collected.

Clearing his throat, he nods. "Yeah, fine. Let's go."

"I know. I do know." But they had to. There wasn't much choice. A dead soldier was not worth risking the lives of the living, no matter what. It wasn't a lesson Peggy particularly enjoyed.

She stood and offered him a hand. It wouldn't bother her if he chose not to take it at this point.

"Do you know if anyone else managed to get out?"

Clint was not a soldier, and there was a reason he wasn't. Several, really, but part of it was this tendency to value individuals over groups. Dead or alive.

"I didn't see," he admitted. I just grabbed you and went."

Peggy could understand that. She would go so far as to say she had often felt it.

"Then we should go look."

He nodded and chose not to take her hand as he finally pulled himself to his feet. "Right. Let's go."

She did then, move to touch him, just a simple press of her fingers to his arm. Everyone handled death differently, but no one should feel alone in their grief. No one.

"They bombed us." Peggy said it because no one else had. The fireworks had targeted everyone. Every single player. This was targeted at them.

Clint glanced down at her hand briefly but didn't pull away. He gave one last look over his shoulder at Coulson before continuing on.

"Yeah, and I'm pretty sure I know why."

"The machine. Yes." She was a little surprised it had taken them this long. They had the power to destroy it long before now, she had a few ideas of why they hadn't before.

And it all came down to giving and taking away hope with the flip of a switch and a single word. It was disgusting.

She had to wonder if it even would work outside this place. If those made to watch even noticed or cared.

That was the conclusion Clint had come to as well. It was sick and messed up, and he was pretty set on shutting the whole damn thing down if he could.

"Took 'em long enough," he said, and flashed a grin toward where he was pretty sure there was a camera.

"There wasn't much they could have gained with us scattered before. They waited. It was...rather unfortunate and tactically sound."

I hate them, she didn't bother saying. She never hated a group of people more. And for God's sake she fought Nazi's and Hydra and these people still earned more of her vitriol.

The door frame was smoldering, but standing, which was really the best sign they could hope for.

"Is everyone all right?" she called out.

It was some big, flat surface that fell on Steve that actually kept him relatively unharmed. He's got a few nicks and scratches, a few instances where little debris lodged in his skin, but nothing major.

What worried him was that he went blank. He froze. He just lay there, wind knocked out of him and couldn't get up, didn't know what was going on. He kicks it off, whatever it is, and picks himself up upon hearing her voice. "Peggy," he croaks, rushing over. "Peggy, are you hurt?"

"Steve, stop." She could hear him lumbering toward her, not nearly as carefully as she might have liked in a structurally unsafe building, so she moved as best she could in the smoke and darkness and reached for him, cupping his neck and pressing her forehead to his cheek.

"Steve, I'm all right. I'm all right," she repeated to be certain he heard her. "Clint is right behind me. Where are Tony and Bruce?"

"I don't know," he says. "I don't know," he repeats, sounding more helpless and worried, like he should, like all his priorities are in the wrong place and he should rearrange them into the right order. "Where's Phil?" he asks then, eyes sharper than they're meant to be.

"Dead," she says bluntly. She isn't certain she should mention the state she found Clint in when she learned this. Or how she feels they ought to keep a close eye on him going forward. She didn't know him anywhere near as well as Steve did, or the others.

She was fairly certain the only one who did is now dead.

"He didn't suffer. We need to find Tony and Bruce." She frowned and looked over her shoulder. "Clint, do you still have your axe?"

"Yeah, I got it," Clint said, coming up behind her. He was a little surprised he'd managed to keep it with him. He hadn't been thinking of it this whole time. That had to change. He had to get his head on straight if he was going to be any good to anyone.

"I'm sorry," Steve says, head hanged. He tries to keep everything else to himself, thinking Oh God and Why Coulson? But it can't have been long; he must've gone quickly. That's the only thing that comforts him.

"I'll go look for them." It's not quite as real as when someone dies, it's all a game until then.

"We need to get out," he says. "In case they try that again; we need to move. We need to hide. As soon as we find the others, we're leaving this camp."

Tony is not all that difficult to find. Still in the area, he'd run just far enough to get away, only to realize no one was following him. Then things had exploded and he'd seen just enough of what he'd needed to see to know that he didn't want to see it.

So yeah. He's sulking right now. Covered in dust and dirt and a bright red smear of fresh blood down one side of his face where something must have nicked him.

He should have known this was going to happen. He should have been better prepared.

This was not just some random player out there in the night messing with them, and right now, seething in quiet rage was all he wanted to do.

That, and blow a few things up, of course.

Edited 2013-04-27 02:09 (UTC)

Steve finds him, breathing normal but sounding muffled and heavy and echoed in his ears. "Tony?" he asks, as he approaches. "Tony, are you alright? We have to go back," he says, voice steady but on the verge of shaking. He's so put-together, so good with words even when the situation is dire, but he can't keep his damn trap shut. "Phil's dead," he just... blurts out. He looks to Tony as if he might have an answer. He knows it's unfair to expect one, but he can't help that, either.

"Let's head back. Have you seen Bruce?"

Clint is really starting to wish people would stop going on about how Coulson was dead. He knew it was necessary information, but it was not helping him focus at all.

"Was he still in the building?" he asks as he makes his way up to the two of them.

"We're all about to be dead," Tony says darkly, in response to the news. There's an obvious tone of bitterness there. Five times now, and he's never had missiles targeted at him before.

He's pretty sure someone just went and made this personal.

But Steve's right, they do need to get out of here. And they do need to find Bruce.

Unfortunately, Tony has no idea where he is. He'd been half-asleep last time he'd seen the scientist. And his stomach twists at the idea that there may still be bad news to come.

"I think so," is all he can answer. Past that? He doesn't know.

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So long, farewell Auf Weidersehen, goodbye!

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