Avengers/X-Men One Shots - The Blood/White Phoenix Saga

ONE-SHOT LIX: No Grave For Revenge

Set during White Phoenix 10

Clint Barton

I had never seen Adelaide like this. So full of hunger for revenge. So full of desire. Pain. Anger. And rightfully so. She had lost her fiance, her brother and everything she had ever known and loved. And all after emerging from a long sleep in cryostasis, where the Wakandans had worked hard to take the control of HYDRA out of her mind. She and I had always been close, even after all the times I had been insensitive to her problems. We somehow clicked, due to our military experience and the pain we'd both been through. I saw her like a little sister, and she saw me as a big brother or a cool uncle at times. We worked well together, and it came to us both losing something very dear to us, anger was a natural response. Ever since she had bumped into me as Ronin, and her returning to her old moniker as the Blood Phoenix, both on separate rage missions, or, and I quote 'killing sprees' as she called it. Now we were together on a quest to pretty much kill everything we saw going wrong with the world after Thanos' snap.

We were both angry.

Out for blood.

And there was no stopping us.

2023. Mexico.

I watched Adelaide gear up. I hadn't seen her old red 'Magneto-look-alike' suit since the fight that split up the Avengers at Leipzig in Germany before we were all imprisoned on the Raft. She looked up at me, as I was already geared up and ready to go. She stood and sheathed her sword behind her cape, both it and her new vibranium arm gleaming in the light of the setting Mexican sun.

'You ready?' I asked. She gave me a knowing smile.

'Definitely.' And with that, she opened the window and unfurling her wings, flew off into the dusk, leaving me to make my way from rooftop to rooftop.

-Time skip-

'I'm on the roof,' I spoke into my earpiece. 'Ready when you are.' I heard a soft beat of wings as she landed next to me, then laid down flat on her stomach, our elbows just touching. She looked through the roof window that I was, examining every threat, every loophole and every possible escape route with a trained eye. I had forgotten she was a former HYDRA operative. A former assassin. I studied her eyes, the way they stared like a hawk for anything amiss. She turned slightly, noticing my staring.

'Why the staring, Barton?' she questioned, giving me a curious eye.

'You look - I just haven't seen this look from you. Ever. The wariness, the way you're surveying your surroundings. I've never seen you do this before.'

'You haven't seen me like this? You should have seen me in Bucharest. I and -' She hastily scrubbed away a tear from her eye. 'But now is not the time for sentiment. Let's go kick some Mexican drug cartel ass.' She withdrew her sword, and standing up, kicked a hole through the window. Then, unsheathing her wings, she jumped through, with me following close behind. We landed on the ground and immediately, the shooting started.

'Ataque (Attack)!' I heard the Mexican cartel guys yell in Spanish. She rushed into the fight first, slicing through people until she took a mild bullet graze to the upper arm. I fired my gun at a nearby cartel guy and he fell from the two consecutive bullets that I fired at him. I saw Adelaide roll behind a stack of packing crates, a spray of bullets following her. I noticed now her cape had somehow retracted into her suit. I saw her rise and shoot at a guy that was coming towards her, with his machine gun raised. She rolled out into the open, and grabbing the M-4, she raised it and shot with expert speed and aim at the cartel guys who were all hiding behind packing crates. She ran and grabbed a guy, and with her wings, she flew up. He tried to fight her, but then she threw him into a set of packing crates and landed in front of him, her wings reflexively folding into her back. She withdrew her 9mm gun from its thigh holster and checked the barrel. She gave a dry, dark chuckle.

'One bullet is all I'll need to kill this bastard.' She laughed darkly again and then stalked over to the cartel man, who was huddling up near the crates, scared.

'You -' he blurted out in English, 'tú eres uno de ellos. Esos ... monstruos. Mutante (you're one of them. Those -freaks. Mutant),' he then said in Spanish. 'El fénix de sangre (The Blood Phoenix),' he spat out in Spanish. She knelt down to his eye level.

'Me alegra que sepas quién soy (Glad you know who I am).'

'Qu'est-ce que vous voulez (What do you want)?' the man asked in French.

'Vous pouvez me parler dans autant de langues que vous le souhaitez, mais je les connais toutes (You can talk me down in as many languages as you want, but I know them all),' she replied back in French.

'But what do you want?' he spoke in English, giving a gulp, attempting to keep calm. She chuckled darkly, then rose to her feet.

'Ah! Now that - I'm afraid you can't give me. Care to do the honours, Ronin?' she asked in English, gesturing to the man.

'Ladies first,' I replied. She smiled and cocking the gun, she raised it to the man's head and fired. The man was dead in an instant. Blood splattered on the wall behind the man, whose limp form was slouched against the wall. I, taking off my mask, looked into her eyes. They were still their blue colour, but they were dull and full of pain and loss. A grim smile decorated her otherwise lovely features. Her eyes were dead as she stared blankly at the man. The man's eyes were just as dead as hers.

Sightless.

Empty.

Nothing.

'You okay?' I asked her. She looked at me, her eyes still dead.

'No grave for revenge. No grave for them,' she said blankly. 'No matter how many souls I send six feet under, it doesn't help. There's no grave for revenge, 'cause it won't ever die.' She put her gun away in its holster, then turned and walked away.