Chapter Text
I should have felt bad after getting fired, again but I just felt antsy, tense. I needed to do something. But all I could think of was the feeling of Mark’s nose exploding blood on my hand. Hear the breaking of bone. Smell the harsh cooper of blood. It was all I could do not to go back and hit him again. Adrenaline was racing through my veins. My body screaming at me to punch something. Punch someone. I dashed into my box of an apartment and my tiny room. I grabbed the ratty journal off the messy bed. Finding a stubby pencil in the small kitchen I started scribbling in the book. I can’t think. I just need to punch someone. Kick them. Pummel them. I tried to put how I felt on paper but I couldn’t stop my leg jiggling. Reminding me I hadn’t been to the gym in days. I couldn’t get past the block in my head. All I could think of was hitting someone. Exhaling heavily in frustration I grabbed my gym bag and iPod. I ran to the nearby gym a couple of blocks away. It was dark by now and the street was practically free of people.
When I got to the gym I went into the lockers. Stripping and change into the sports bra and shorts I kept in there. I set an alarm for six hours. I put my ear buds in and turned my music on. My body synchronizing to the beats of the music. My heart beating in time, my lungs expanding and contracting rhythmically. The black fog clouding my thoughts cleared slightly. But I knew I wouldn’t last long. I wrapped my hands and clipped my iPod to the waistband of my shorts. I left the lockers and walked out to the bigger room. Heading for the furthest punching bag. Eyes fixed on the floor. My breathing was increasing, becoming erratic. The music wasn’t enough. I could hear voices. Men. There were other people in the room. There was two of them. A well built Caucasian blonde in work out clothes and an African American in a long black cloak. He was wearing an eye patch. The black fog reared its angry head. Whispering ‘punch them, just lay into them, attack them, tear them apart’. Breathing heavily I reached the bag. I stood with my feet close together and bent over to touch my toes. Forcing myself to inhale and exhale deeply. It was partly to focus my restless energy, partly a last ditch effort to try and calm myself down. It didn’t work though I didn’t expect it to.
When I stood up I exploded into action. My fist slammed into the bag, quickly followed by my left. It felt so good just to hit something. Launching off my left foot I slammed my knee into the blue bag.The bag swung back on its chains. Jangling nosily and hitting the wall behind it. Then I kneed the bag again. Higher, harder and on the side. Pivoting on my leg I slammed my other leg into the bag in front of me. My breathing was rapid. My pulse audible in my head. Like whenever I worked out time lost meaning. It was just me and the bag. Soon everything became instinctive. It was easy to lose track of time. To let it slide by unnoticed. Loud irregular bangs broke me out of my reverie. I could hear terrified screaming. Now that I had stopped I felt weak and shaky, all my muscles trembling with exhaustion. My body was caked with layers of dried sweat and I knew without having to look that the armpits of m sports bra would be yellow, but the clarity. I could think so clearly; it was so exquisite; I don’t think my head had been so clear since uni. I grabbed my iPod and looked at the time; my alarm had gone off six hours ago but I hadn’t even heard it, I was too engaged in my work out. I should have gone to the gym yesterday, or rather the day before. I turned it off and let it drop to the ground before I staggered outside the building.
I flinched at the change in brightness before taking in the chaos surrounding me. Cars were strewed haphazardly over the road; dents and holes in the towering buildings were common and craters the road littered. Rubble piled up on the sidewalks. Tall, pale grey creature with strange spears and guns were everywhere .When I looked up I saw something resembling a dark blue hole in the sky. Giant bizarre fish-like things were flowing out of the hole accompanied by what looked to be individual means of transport for these things. One of the grey-skinned creatures holding a spear saw me and started towards where I was standing. I knew the only way I’d win was if I attacked first. So I ran up to it, adrenaline rushing through my body again, pushing the aching pain of my muscles away. I grabbed the closet arm of the creature, spun around and using my hip to lift it off the ground. It was a lot heavier than my usual opponents but I was able to flip it over my back; smashing the alien, being, whatever it was onto the hard concrete before it could do any damage. I braced my foot against the alien’s shoulder, twisting the arm out of its socket and pulled the arm off. Then grabbing the spear in it’s hand I stabbed it in where I assumed the to chest to be.
It convulsed violently as a faint blue light pulsed through the thing’s body. Thick dark liquid oozed from the alien’s shoulder. But I felt no remorse, all the previous exhaustion and aches had vanished; I was reveling in the violence. Being able to just fight, fight viciously, without holding back for fear of hurting someone. Another pale alien was heading towards me, having seen me take out one of its comrades. I was a threat. Not wasting time I sprinted towards the alien. Once I was close enough I used the spear to push off from the ground and swung myself onto the back of the grey alien. Then I used the shaft of the spear to choke the creature, holding on determinedly as it tried it’s best to throw me off. I shoved the spear tighter against the alien’s neck. After awhile it stopped struggling and fell to the ground with a thud. I stood up exhaling heavily, looking around for my next target. Then I noticed another alien in front of me, holing one of the weird guns. It lifted its arm with the gun but before it could I punched it in the face, hearing and feeling the bones breaking. Not giving the creature time to recover I followed up the attack with another jab to the face with my right hand, throwing my shoulder and whole body weight into the attack. The pin pricks of pain from my knuckles only served to sharpen my senses and reflexes. I then threw a hook to where its temple should have been and a punch to its gut.
Watching in satisfaction as it grunted in pain I grabbed its shoulder and slammed my knee into its gut, on top of my punch. The black fog had snuck up on me, demanding blood, violence; death. I swept its feet out from under it and proceeded to repeatedly kick it in the head. Blue patches were starting to appear on the alien and the black fog of rage roared in my head approvingly. When I was sure it was dead I looked around, there was hundreds of the things. The fog had dissipated enough for me to think properly and I could analyze the situation. I knew the three I had killed most likely wouldn’t even make a difference in their numbers, but I’ll be damned if I was going to let them destroy New York City without even lifting a finger. Though I fully intended to do more than just lift a finger, a whole lot more. Fueled by determination I set my eyes on the closest alien and strode over to it. Once it had seen me it started firing the strange gun it had. The adrenaline flooding my body had chased away any fear I had ages ago and made it easy to dodge the balls of bright blue energy it fired at me. I wasn’t even thinking how I would attack, just letting instinct rule me now.
When I was close enough I launched a turn-and-kick at the alien’s head. The force of my kicked obviously surprised the alien, knocking it off balance. It stumbled a coupled of steps. Getting closer I punched it in the gut and then the head. Suddenly the alien raised it’s gun and fired. Shocked, I dodged the balls of blue energy that were hurtling towards me. Apparently it realized that it needed to use more extreme tactics, I had underestimated it’s intelligence. In my peripherals I could see the nearby wall. The shock pushed the rage away, just enough for me to think logically. An idea popped into my head, if it worked the alien’s head would be most likely be smashed; an image that feed my blood-thirsty self that had risen during the last ten or so minutes. The black fog seized the image, claiming it;consuming all my other thoughts. Feeling my muscles coil in preparation, I pushed off from the ground and used the wall to gain height and momentum. Kicking out with my left foot I hit the alien in the chest. As the alien came into contact with the ground, I heard it’s spine break with a loud crack. The sound was soon followed by a smash as the head collided forcefully with the pavement. The thick blue liquid that I assumed to aliens’ blood seeped out from a crack in the alien’s head.
My dramatic move or maybe the trail of alien corpses had attracted quite a lot of their comrades. The fog screamed at me to take them out, to kill them; show them my strength. Show who was boss. The small, barely there voice of reason agreed knew that for once the rage was right and I gave in to the rage. I kicked the nearest alien, pushing it backwards and forcing it to be impaled on the spear behind it. I was about to attack the next alien when suddenly the pale creatures all just fell to the ground. Now that I wasn’t fighting for my life the adrenaline fled my body and I felt the price for pounding the punching bag mercilessly for hours. My breathing was ragged and labored, my muscles burned from the build up of lactic acid, shook from exhaustion and a couple of the little bones in my hands were broken. I staggered over to a nearby car and collapsed against it. Black spots clouded my vision and I was dragged into an exhausted sleep. My next conscious thought was that someone was shaking me awake. I could feel strong and warm hands gripping my shoulders. Opening my eyes I saw pale eyes peering at me and the kind face they belonged to. Then as I took in his dirty blonde hair and strong build it clicked that I had seen him before. He was the blonde from the gym. Only then did I notice his attire.
He was currently wearing similar clothing to a Captain America costume, but clearly with more durable material. I briefly wondered if there was a Comic-con thing on or something in the city. Grabbing onto Blondie’s to steady myself I went to stand up, wincing with the pain from my hand; but stopped when a tortuous cramp spasmed in my leg. I forced myself to stifle a gasp and clutched my leg. “Are you alright ma’am?” Blondie asked, sounding sincerely concerned.“Fine, muscle cramp” I hissed through clenched teeth after I had licked my dry lip. When I could finally stand I squinted at the man in front of me. “What’s with the ‘ma’am’, this isn’t the sixties?” I asked conversationally as I still lent on Blondie, pointedly not answering the question. If I answered truthfully he’d probably take me to hospital and they would figure out that I wasn’t normal. Then before he could begin to answer my question I asked another, “Anyway, why are you wearing hard core Comic-con get up?” Blondie seemed taken aback by my comments. “What is Comic-con?” He asked. Did he really not know what Comic-con? I just put it down to the put it down to the limited knowledge of jocks, I had known a couple of guys like that in uni. “Geek thing. People dress up as their favorite characters” I said as a way of explaining.
Covertly I flexed the muscles in my leg; I was relieved when I could easily move it. To avoid Blondie noticing my actual situation I took stock of the aches and pains in my body. Aside from my dry mouth all my muscles ached terribly. I could see big ugly bruises on my legs, blue bruises from my recent fights and the other dark, purple ones from my work out; my knees, elbows and knuckles were scraped raw from hitting the bag so many times and some of my knuckles had started bleeding sometime. I would be in pain for a couple more days but it was bearable. Blondie must have thought I had gotten them in the...; what even happened? Alien invasion? Well whatever happened Blondie hadn’t remarked on my extensive injuries. Though I could see he wasn’t scratch free either, he had a decent cut on his right shoulder and what looked like a burn mark on the left side of his stomach. My stomach began aching emptily, my mouth felt worryingly dry and my head was dizzy. I wondered how long ago I had eaten or drank anything. “Blondie do you know what time it is?” I asked, trying my best to sound off-handed and casual even though the pain in my stomach was growing and I was beginning to feel faint.
At least fifteen hours had passed since I had eaten anything of substance and the same amount of time since I had a drink, but I had an intense workout somewhat recently and before I passed out I killed five aliens. Also I didn’t know how long I had slept for. “It’s a few hours after 12 ma’am” He answered after a confused pause. I glared at him for 'ma’am'ing me again, I wasn’t old. I nodded and did the math in my head, when I did I paled. I hadn’t eaten or drank for at least eighteen hours. No wonder I felt so weak. “Ma’am, maybe you should sit down” Blondie said sounding truly scared for my health, and they say chivalry is dead. Though the ma’am registered in my brain I couldn’t even glare at him. “How long ago did you eat?” He asked urgently. I realized that he was seriously going to try and help me. I knew that he was just being nice and I wasn’t in the best position to completely lie. “Ten-fifteen hours ago” I eye Blondie’s face as he calculated how long ago that was. Apparently he hadn’t noticed my gym clothes before he seemed to do a double take and blushed fiercely. “You were in the gym since I left?” He asked looking away. I smiled weakly, to exhausted to laugh, at his bashfulness. “Yeah” I replied. I was too dehydrated to really think about what I was saying.
“You worked out for fifteen hours, without eating or drinking?” He asked shocked, I would have shrugged but my shoulder felt so stiff. He looked at my bruises with new eyes, and then took in the mutilated bodies of aliens. Then out of the blue he put his hand to his ear. “Barton, I think we have situation here” He said, suddenly all solider like. Who was he talking about? I was just about to ask him to help me to my apartment when he added “I’ll bring her” I was pretty sure I was the only ‘her’ had seen within the last few minutes. “Hey Solider Boy. If I’m the situation, don’t talk about me as if I can’t hear. I’m not deaf” I snapped, trying my best to stand on my own. I was doing my best to stall him so I had time to formulate an escape, if the people he was taking me to gave me a medical it would be worse then if he took me to hospital. As if he knew what planning he grabbed my wrist and I struggled to get away, but my almost dangerously low blood pressure and complete exhaustion was my making it near impossible. I was about to pass out but I kept fighting, both him and the losing battle with my body; as he tried to drag me towards an intersection until everything went black.