PURE AND TAINTED ( wanda maximoff )

eleven → shawarma sounds amazing

PURE AND TAINTED
CHAPTER ELEVEN
( shawarma sounds amazing )

AS SOON AS ALINE AND NATASHA HAD MADE it to the top of Stark Towers, they had ditched the chariots. They stumbled and quickly rolled to a stop, but Aline immediately felt sick to her stomach. She tightly clutches her stomach and groaned quietly. Although not usually, the tribrid was sometimes prone to motion sickness and couple that with the fact that she was standing very, very high up on the top of a skyscraper, she felt sick. She noticed Natasha was kneeling beside her, watching her with a raised brow.

"I thought you were immortal or something," Natasha commented.

Aline twisted her head to look at the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. "Yeah, immortal, not immune to motion sickness," she retorted. She slowly stretched herself up to stand, rolling her shoulders and squeezing her eyes. Just don't look down, Ali! Keep your eye on the prize!

She turned her attention to the large machine not ten feet from them, with all sorts of cables and wires that Aline had no idea as to how they helped. The Tesseract sat in its middle, glowing its iridescent blue. A large beam of energy was being shot out of its top, leading to the large portal in the sky. A man, who Aline assumed was the Dr. Selvig Fury and Thor had mentioned, was seen kneeling over the edge and looking down at the chaos.

"Doctor," Natasha called out, catching his attention.

"Loki's scepter, the energy..." Selvig said, "the Tesseract can't fight. You can't protect against yourself..." He trailed off.

Aline took a step towards him, offering him a comforting hand. "You didn't know what you were doing," she reassured, feeling a sharp tug at her heart. For a moment, she wondered what it would be like to be someone else's puppet instead of her own.

"Well, actually I think I did," Selvig said. "I built in a safety to cut the power source."

Natasha was the one to connect the dots. "Loki's scepter."

"It might be able to close the portal," Selvig said and looked over the edge. "And I'm looking right at it."

Natasha looked over to Aline and nodded at her. "You think you can do it?"

"What I do think is that you're underestimating my abilities," Aline tried and moved closer to the edge. "Oh, God, we're high up." She inhaled deeply and held out both of her hands, shutting her eyes. A chant was being muttered past her lips, the phrase being said over and over again. Her concentration nearly broke a few times as an explosion and Leviathan roared every five seconds. She even gave a frustrated shout at the number of distractions; she really didn't need this today.

Eventually, she felt something cold touch her hands and she gripped it hard. She opened her eyes and in her hands was the golden scepter, its jewel shining bright in the sunlight. Aline grinned to herself and passed it to Natasha. "All yours."

The red haired woman nodded and took it, advancing towards the machine. The tip of the scepter's edge touched the machine's barrier, and it started to separate. "We can close it!" Natasha shouted through the comms. "Can anybody hear me? We can shut the portal down!"

"Do it!" came Steve's response.

"No, wait!" Tony protested.

"Stark, these things are still coming!"

"I got a nuke coming in, it's gonna blow in less than a minute. And I know just where to put it."

Aline's eyes widened. A nuke? She understood that their situation wasn't exactly the greatest, with several civilian losses and total destruction of the city, but they weren't that screwed that a nuke needed to be sent in, right? Seriously, sometimes the stupidity of humans continued to surprise her. She bit her lip then looked towards the portal. Through it, she could spot something sitting in space, a place where all the Chitauri creatures were coming from. She instantly smirked. "Stark, you clever bastard."

"Stark, you know that's a one-way trip?"

The billionaire didn't respond. Instead, they watched on in anxious silence as Tony gripped the incoming nuke. Aline gnawed at her lip as she watched them fly through the air, slowly tilting upwards until they disappeared through the portal. There was still silence but Aline saw a sudden burst of light from inside the portal and then everything collapsed. The Chitauri soldiers fell to their knees, the Leviathans crashed onto the buildings and streets, and the chariots fell out of the skies.

Aline released a breath and chuckled. "Oh, hell yes!" she cheered, jumping up. The tribrid threw her fists into the air. "Stark, you did it!"

But she did not get an answer. In fact, there was no response or sight of Tony at all. Besides her, Natasha shifted uncomfortably as they stared at the portal. "Come on, Stark," she mumbled.

Steve eventually spoke, his voice halfhearted. "Do it."

Begrudgingly, Natasha touched the scepter to the Tesseract before pulling back, and the energy beam disappeared. The portal started to close but before it did, something fell through it. It shone red and gold, shaped like a man. Tony.

But he kept falling. And falling. And falling.

Aline ran forward, standing closer to the edge. "Someone catch him!" Aline shouted into the comm, pressing a finger to her ear.

Suddenly, Hulk shot up into the air and grabbed Tony in one of his hands, sliding down a building before landing on the ground roughly. Hulk simply tossed Tony onto his back and Thor approached him, ripping off the mask of his helmet. The men on the ground didn't hear anything and they bowed their heads. No one moved until the Hulk roared loudly.

"Ahh!" Tony screamed, his body going rigid with fright. "What the hell?! What just happened? Please tell me no one kissed me!"

Steve spoke, a smile sporting his features. "We won."

"All right, hey, all right," Tony weakly cheered. "Good job, guys. Let's just no come in tomorrow. Let's just take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it."

"Shawarma sounds amazing," Aline sighed, giving her stomach a pat. She sat down on the ground and rubbed her stomach, running another hand through her hair.

"We're not finished here," Steve said after a short pause.

"But after we're done, can we get shawarma?"

"Yes, Aline, we can get shawarma."

Aline shoved both of her fists into the air. "Yes!"