NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
2015

"TEN minutes," Tony said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Change. Patch up. Meet back in the lab."

Bucky had June back in their room in seconds. He guided her to the bathroom and had her sit on the edge of the tub, careful not to touch her mutilated hands or brush against her bloody knees.

"James," June tried to protest. Her voice was slow and muddled. "It's not . . . it's not about me. I have to go help. I have to go help . . ." She tried to stand, wobbled, and Bucky eased back down.

"Ten minutes," he reminded her. "Ten minutes are about you. Can I see your hands?"

June didn't look at him. She whispered, "I dunno, can you?"

"June, really—"

"Okay, all right. Shh. Shut up." She held out her palms. They were worse than she thought, flayed and dripping with blood. Shards of glass protruded from the soft skin and stung like a dozen hornets had used her as a pincushion. Bucky had gathered together the first-aid supplies June kept under the sink and busied himself with a pair of tweezers and carefully extracting the glass. It hurt more than June wanted to admit. "I'll do my knees," she said a little more firmly than she'd meant to.

Bucky eyed her but conceded. "All right. I'll be right back—don't go anywhere, okay?"

June lifted her shoulders lamely in reply.

He was only gone a moment and returned with a small ice pack from the kitchen. As June dug glass out of her legs, Bucky stood beside her and held her near him, pressing the ice to a purple knot that formed on the side of her head. "Why does this bother you?" he asked gently.

June remained fixated on her painful task. "I'm sick of being nursed," she mumbled.

"Well," Bucky shrugged, "stop getting hurt."

June lifted out the last glass shard she could find. She doused her wounds in hydrogen peroxide, then took the roll of white cotton bandages that Bucky offered and carefully dressed her hands and knees. "C'mere," she sighed, beckoning Bucky to switch places with her. "You're not looking too hot, either."

She cleaned the gash on his cheek and determined it wasn't quite deep enough for stitches, they just had to keep the bleeding controlled. The cut in his mouth was minor. June did realize, however, that a decent-sized piece of shrapnel had been imbedded behind his shoulder.

"How did you not feel this?" she asked as he unbuttoned his bloodied shirt and tossed it to the floor.

Bucky shrugged. "I've had worse."

June shook her head and rinsed off the tweezers with alcohol. "I know. That's what's so awful."

"You're one to talk," Bucky said. June got a firm hold of the shrapnel—which she realized to be a chunk of the shattered coffee table—and slowly wriggled it out of his shoulder. He winced and hissed sharply with the pain of it, but kept still enough for June to splash the rubbing alcohol over the wound and wrap it up tightly.

"I'm fine," June said as she gingerly tied off the bandages, inhibited by her own. "You know you had it worse."

"That means I can't worry about you?"

With a sigh, June stroked his face, kaleidoscope eyes churning with sadness and gratitude. Sometimes she wondered if Bucky even allowed himself to understand the magnitude of what he had suffered. "You're too good, James," June whispered, fingertips moving to his hair, petting him gently. "How have you stayed so good?"

Bucky fixed his eyes on her. "I'm not. I'm not really. But you understand. You accept that."

June's chest swelled with pity and indignation. She sighed and leaned against him. "One day you'll believe me," she mumbled. "I'll talk your ears off about how wonderful you are, and then you'll get it."

She left him before he could reply. She turned and limped back into the bedroom, undressing gingerly as she went. Her dress was torn and stained with beer and blood, beyond hope of restoration. She kicked it into a corner and grabbed the first pair of leggings she could find, along with a gray MIT pullover Tony had given her and a pair of sneakers.

The glamour of the party was dead.

Bucky pulled on a white T-shirt and a navy jacket, and June, in all her delirium, thought, Goddamn, if the world wasn't about to end . . . With a shake of her head, she retrieved her gauntlets from their case and strapped them around her forearms. She slid her twelve-inch knives into their sheaths and gave Cutlass a hand on the reins.

"Guess we're clocking in," Bucky said dryly.

June shook her head with disdain. "I hate coming in on weekends."

• • •

"EVERYTHING is gone," Bruce announced as he dropped a tablet carelessly on a workbench. They were all back in the lab, everyone angry, everyone confused. "All our work—gone. Ultron wiped us clean. He used the Internet as an escape hatch."

In the center of the floor, Steve stood with arms crossed squarely over his chest, knuckles pressed to his mouth. "Ultron . . ." he muttered.

June ran her hands over her face. "What did he hit?"

"Like Banner said," replied Natasha. "Everything. Files, surveillance—probably knows more about us than we know about each other."

June stiffened at that. If her file was leaked, the public would never trust her again. She stood back against a table, gnawing on her thumbnail, newly anxious.

Rhodey spread his hands. "So he's in your files, he's in the Internet—what if he decides to access something a little more exciting?"

Maria lifted her head from where she sat in Bruce's chair, fishing glass from the bottom of her heel. "Nuclear codes," she said, voice wavering.

Rhodey looked between them all. "Nuclear codes. We need to make some calls, assuming we still can."

"Nukes?" Nat scowled. "He said he wanted us dead." 

Steve shifted. His brow flattened with severity. "He didn't say dead. He said he wanted us extinct."

"And that he'd killed someone," June mumbled, gaze fixated on the floor. Had the thing been lying? Who else would it have encountered if it came directly from Tony and Bruce's program?

"There wasn't anyone else in the building," Clint argued from the corner. Worry sunk his face and made him look years older.

"Yeah, there was," whispered Tony, speaking for the first time since they'd gathered. He produced a small control pad and tapped the air, pulling up what June recognized to be his three-dimensional model of J.A.R.V.I.S.'s consciousness.

It glowed in shattered orange fragments, digital and floating in midair, some still drifting, looking as if they had been ripped apart by claws. An uneasy silence took hold of the room, and cold grief settled in June's stomach. Somehow, J.A.R.V.I.S. was dead.

"This is insane," Bruce mumbled with very Bruce-like bafflement.

"Jarvis was the first line of defense," murmured  Steve. "He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense."

"No," Bruce shook his head briskly and drew up beside what was left of J.A.R.V.I.S., gesturing broadly at the scene. "No, Ultron could've assimilated Jarvis. This isn't strategy, it's . . . rage."

In the corner of her eye June detected movement. She turned sharply and saw Thor—who had left immediately to try and track Ultron down—storm into the lab, boots pounding against the floor, and head straight for Tony, snatching him by the throat and lifting him off his feet.

"Woah, woah, woah," Clint shouted, and June could not stop herself from taking a few steps forward.

"Thor," she said, "come on now, ease up."

"He needs to explain," Thor growled.

"Elaborate," Tony croaked as his face gained an overtone of purple. "Use your words, buddy."

"I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark," Thor spat with intense dislike.

"Thor," Steve barked. "The Legionnaire?"

Thor glanced at him, then lowered Tony to the floor and threw him one last look of distaste. "Trail went cold about a hundred miles out. It's headed North. And it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it. Again." Another seething glance at Tony.

"Genie's outta that bottle," Natasha murmured. "Clear and present is Ultron."

June put her hands on her hips and fixed her stare on the floor. "There's no telling what he would do with that thing," she said. It was a lie. She had a hunch.

Helen Cho stepped to the center of the floor, slightly hesitant, but determined. "I don't understand," she said softly. "You say you built this program—why is it trying to kill us?"

Things got quiet. Tony searched their faces, eyebrows arched, and let out a sharp chuckle. Then another, and another, until he was laughing unabashedly, almost crazed. Bruce shook his head, eyes locked on the ground, muttering at Tony to stop, but Stark kept snickering.

Thor lifted his brow. "You think this is funny?"

"No," Tony answered at once. He straightened. "It's probably not, right? Is this very terrible? Is it so . . . is it so . . ." He considered them all. "It is. It's so terrible." His irony cut through the air like a blade.

"This could have been avoided," Thor growled, "if you had not played with something you do not understand."

Tony's faux smile crumbled. "No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It is funny. It is a hoot," he jabbed a finger at Thor, "that you don't get why we need this."

"Tony," Bruce risked, "maybe now isn't the best time to—"

Tony turned on him sharply. "Really? That's it? You just roll over, show your belly, every time somebody snarls?"

Bruce rose to his challenge. "Only when I've created a murder bot," he countered, eyes wide.

"We didn't. We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?"

Steve narrowed his eyes and something in June was angered by it. It's not Tony's fault, she thought fiercely. "Well," Steve began, his tone characteristically accusatory, "you did something right. And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than Shield."

"Who's to say they're not?" June cut in. "Accidents happen. Ultron was supposed to be a guardian—no one created it to be a killer."

"Then what happened?" Steve retorted. "What flipped the switch the other way?"

"You want my guess?" June said. "The scepter. None of you know the thing like I do. You didn't watch what it did to the Maximoffs. You didn't watch—" her voice broke off. Horrible memories of Strucker's volunteers choked her, memories of the dozens of men and women driven insane by whatever was in that goddamn scepter. Memories of her own hand being forced to put them down. "You didn't see what it can do."

"I have a pretty good idea," Clint mumbled from the corner.

June shook her head. "Strucker didn't use it for mind control. He didn't use the power, he harnessed it. He called it another plane of existence. It was evil and chaotic and . . . and what it did to Wanda . . . was enough to scare even Strucker. After the twins, he didn't try again."

They were all very still and very quiet for a very long moment. Rhodey finally broke the tension. "So," he threw his hands up, "the scepter likes to shit out evil, and now it's in the hands of a robot who wants us smote off the earth." He let out a dry chuckle. "Man, I hate your parties, Tony."

"Thor's right, Stark," Steve said. "This was avoidable."

"Maybe to you," Tony fired back. "But you don't know what's out there. I've seen it. You get to park your darling, righteous self down here, meanwhile there's entire alien armies just fiending for a piece of us." Tony kept his dark eyes locked on Steve, his jaw set stubbornly. "We can bust arms dealers all the live-long day, but that up there? That's . . . that's the endgame. How were you planning on beating that?"

Steve stood for a beat, his face mellowing with something like understanding. "Together," he said softly.

Tony's head twitched in a near-undetectable shake. "We'll lose."

"Then we'll do that together too." He upheld Tony's stare for another moment, then turned slowly away, his eyes primarily on June. "Ultron's calling us out. I'd like to find him before he's ready for us." He swept the room. "The world's a big place. Let's start making it smaller."

• • •

IT had been a bustling, restless night, and June, having not slept a wink, sat catatonically at a conference table in the hall where she had met the Avengers for the first time. Her daggers were still strapped to her arms, bullets still filled her pockets, her hands wrapped around a cup of bitter black coffee. Clint had, bizarrely, taken a trip to Starbucks for them all, despite the occasion hardly calling for it.

Maria Hill held a tablet in front of June's nose and watched her expectantly. "Well?"

"He's dead?" June mumbled, eyes unfocused and drifting on the back wall.

"Super dead," Maria assured her.

June couldn't quite grasp what she was being shown—Strucker, slumped against his cell wall, PEACE painted across the wall above his head in his own blood. It was too good to be real. She released the breath she had kept in since her twentieth birthday. "He's gone," she whispered, gaze still unfocused, hot tears of joy brimming her eyes.

Maria smiled stiffly. "There's one thing you should know. He had a private last will and testament, and he put you in it." The joy flushed from June's soul and a thick chill took its place. Maria pulled up a blurry photograph, though it didn't matter to June, who could see it perfectly before it had even fully rendered. A small piece of white parchment paper hosted several lines of text written in Cyrillic Russian, all scrawled with a messy hand. June skimmed until she found her name.

To my Jekaterina. I leave you my legacy. Should this find you, I am long, long dead. If you are reading this, you have survived, and are therefore worthy to continue what I have begun. My reaped soul gives yours a second chance. Find the twins and build me a statue of marble on their foundation. Mother of Hydra, you are the only thing I ever truly loved. My child, it pains me that we lost so many years together. I regret many things, but none more than letting the witch erase you. I feel you would harbor more sentiment for me if I left you a place in the world. Forgive me and do as I implore—

The picture cut off. June leaped to her feet, her mug falling from her hands and shattering across the floor. She pushed away the tablet, her stomach stinging with horror, and staggered out of the room. It was Wanda, a small, aghast voice kept saying in her head. It was Wanda. It was Wanda.

It was Wanda who destroyed her life. Wanda, whom June had cared for, secretly nursed in the beginning of her and Pietro's experiments, had in return stollen June from the memories of everyone she had loved. Wanda.

June stumbled into a bathroom. She didn't know how, or even if she had ever been there before. But she found herself leaning against a sink, heaving, eyes streaming hot tears. She let out a strangled shout, fists balling, and began to sob. It was a betrayal six years in the making, and it broke her heart. She had loved those poor kids, tried tooth-and-nail to save them—thought she might have.

And all the while she'd been too stupid to realize what had happened. She had never dreamed Wanda had that kind of power—her chaos magic was magnificent, there was no doubt, but the girl was green and untrained.

Or so June had been led to believe.

She remained hidden for what seemed like ages, nothing compelling her to leave. Eventually the tears ebbed. June wiped her cheeks gingerly, her hands still heavily bandaged. Blistering rage replaced her heartbreak. Blistering. She had hardly ever felt anger quite like it. How dare Wanda?

How dare she?

June had never wanted to kill before, despite being learned in the act. Her hand was never moved by the desire for death.

With this rage came something new.

She wanted selfish revenge. Wanted it like a dead man wants air. Wanda took her life? All right. June would take hers.

She opened the door with mechanical slowness and stepped back into the hallway. She found her way not to her previous office, but to a different conference room, and nearly collided with Natasha.

"Oh," Nat said, lifting a brow. "I found her."

The others were there, too, a long table stacked with mildewy cardboard boxes that brought with them a heavy haze of dust. Bucky, Steve, Tony, Thor, and Clint were gathered around the boxes, Natasha shared the doorway with June, and Bruce remained hunched at a computer, squinting eyes darting between June's dark countenance and the website he had pulled up.

"What's wrong?" Bucky asked at once.

"I need to find the Maximoffs," June replied, her eyes unfocused, voice kept at a soft and dangerous whisper.

"Why?" Tony asked reproachfully.

June waited a beat. She wanted them to worry. They should worry. "The girl," was all June said. Her nails carved stinging crescents in the marred skin on her palms. The pain barely registered past June's fury. "I'm going to kill Wanda Maximoff."

A stunned quiet gripped the room, the ferocity of her words and her uncharacteristic malice enough to keep her audience aghast.

Tony was the first to speak up. He cleared his throat. "June, I think we should talk before—"

"She destroyed my life," June growled in a voice she had never used before. It came from high in her mouth, straight through her teeth, a shrill and hideous snarl. "She erased me from every memory of every person I'd ever known. I've never existed in my family's minds. I'm going to kill her, and none of you are going to stop me." No one moved or spoke or even breathed, really. The flaring rage in June's kaleidoscope eyes was enough to keep the room silent. So she kept on. "They're with Ultron, aren't they? Then we all get what we want. We find Ultron, we find the twins, and we get both jobs done."

Her grip on the atmosphere relaxed finally, and Tony gave her a nod. "Okay," he said firmly in a sound acknowledgment of her conditions. "We've located Ultron. They're headed to East Africa. Wakanda. Quinjet can be ready in ten."

June's face remained stony, puffy and red but so far from defeated. "Why Wakanda?"

"It's the only supplier of Vibranium on Earth," Steve said with a sideways glance at his shield where it was propped against the wall. "Strongest metal there is—not a bad upgrade."

"He wants a new body," June murmured.

"Don't we all," chimed Tony.

"How long is the flight?"

"On Air Stark, two hours max," Tony said. "We won't miss them. Might bump into them on the flight path, but it's better than not."

June nodded. "Okay."

That was all. Bucky moved a step closer to her. "June, should you—"

"I'll meet you in the hangar," she said to no one specifically. Her face did not soften or change or lose any of its intensity. Without another word, she turned on her heel and marched down the hall, fists clenched and thoughts fixated on her approaching witch hunt.

• • •
note.
thank you for reading!! the images below are designs for what june's suit could look like and i just photoshopped astrid's face over the icon (1000% an idea stolen from univrsus so run my queen her check)