Chapter Text
Chapter One: We Wish You a Merry Invasion
“Apollo! I’m not kidding!” she shouted.
Eleanor Bishop was a tall, pale woman with short black hair. Normally, she was a calm, collected businesswoman, but right now, she was pissed.
“I’m telling you, you need to move!” Apollo replied. He was in his usual form, a chill, tan, blond surfer dude. Then, however, he was decidedly not chill, as agitated as Eleanor was. “Eleanor, the gods have locked down Mount Olympus. Zeus hasn’t been this paranoid since Hades’ rebellion! I’m the god of prophecy and—”
“And you left me! Us! You waltzed in, looking for some fun, and waltzed right out!” she bellowed.
“That’s, that’s…”
“What? Exactly what happened?” she scoffed. “And now you come back, with conspiracy theories about aliens? What is this, some kind of joke?! An attempt to weasel your way back into our lives? Maybe to score a second time?”
He turned red. “No! I’m not even supposed to be here! Zeus temporarily banned all contact with mortalkind until this all blows over! I’m trying to help you! You’ve got a daughter to think of.”
She scowled. “I’ve got it under control, Apollo. Here on Earth, with us mortals, solutions don’t just fall out of the sky! We work hard for things, and don’t just abandon them because of vague tall tales about aliens!”
Behind them, there was a thud. They turned, each aware of whose room was on the other side.
Eleanor sighed. “Damn it.”
“Do you want to?” Apollo asked.
She rubbed her forehead. “Who are we kidding? You go.”
Apollo knocked at the door. “Kate? Coming in.”
He opened the door into his daughter’s bedroom, taking in the sights of the pink wallpaper, sheets, pillow, everything. In the bed itself, hugging her knees, was Kate Bishop herself. She had curly, dark brown hair, with pale skin.
Apollo sat at her bedside, smiling. “You shouldn’t eavesdrop.”
“Then how would I know what you’re saying when I’m not there?” she asked.
Apollo chuckled softly. “I don’t know how to argue with that. How much did you hear?”
After a moment, she mumbled, “I don’t want to move.”
Apollo sucked in a breath through his teeth. “That much, huh? Look, it’s just for safety. And it seems like your mom won’t do it, anyway. You’re not gonna move.”
“How do you know?” she asked, staring up at him with big blue eyes. “Mommy said things don’t just fall from the sky.”
“Well, yeah, but there’s always gonna be weather. There’s always going to be the big bright sun, watching over you. Some people forget the one thing they can control with fate and destiny; the choices they make in the face of it.”
She looked down, thinking. Abruptly, she asked, “What would you do if the aliens are real?”
He patted her head. “I would do what I always do. Protect you.” He moved his hand to her cheek, lifting her gaze. “Now, why don’t you go have some lunch with your mom?”
He stood, and began walking to the doorway. Just before he left the room, he tossed her a Panda Pillow Pet, summoned out of nowhere. He tossed it to her. “Think fast.”
She caught it effortlessly. He smiled. “That’s my daughter.”
Eleanor smiled down at Kate. “Why don’t you go grab the Checkers? We can liven things up.” They’d finished their grilled cheese sandwiches, sitting on the carpet in their spacious living room.
Kate grinned widely. “All right. Yeah!” She jumped up, went upstairs.
She opened the cupboard where they stored the board games. She grasped the Checkers board, right as a loud boom echoed outside. The chandeliers in the hallway shuddered.
Kate stepped back, looking around nervously. “Mommy?”
Another explosion, this one louder than the first. The lights flickered and the room shook.
“Mommy!” Kate ran out of the hallway, panting hard. She trotted down the stairs as fast as she could, looking around wildly for her mother. “Mommy? Mommy, what’s happening?”
There was no response, save for the sounds of battle and explosions outside. Kate heard whooshing, too, as if people were zooming past the penthouse.
“Daddy, where are you?” She screamed, tears running down her cheeks. “Dad? Dad. Daddy, where are you? Please!”
She yelped as someone grabbed her from behind. She whirled, only to see that it was her mother. “Mommy!” she gasped, and hugged her tightly.
Then, the room tore apart in a blinding explosion. The chandelier slammed to the ground an inch from the pair, as the roof was ripped off like a band-aid, and tiny shards of glass sliced little cuts into Kate's cheeks as they whizzed past her. The windows shattered and the wall collapsed, revealing the horrific scene outside.
Manhattan was under attack, as… things on flying vehicles poured out of a hole in the sky, shooting and killing everything. Whale-sized snakes clad in otherworldly armor rammed into buildings, knocking down skyscrapers like bowling pins. Fires burned and debris fell as far as the eye could see. Overcome with sheer terror, Kate could do nothing but loose a terrible scream.
Drawn by the sound, one of the flying monsters stopped, and approached. It aimed itself, and readied to fire—
An arrow sprouted in its neck, and it fell forwards, leaning on the controls. It careened towards Kate and Eleanor, crashing a few feet in front of them. It exploded, orange and yellow flaring before them. Kate felt the heat slap across her face, and instinctively stumbled back.
Kate stared at the man who’d saved her life, awed. He wore a black and purple outfit, carried a black bow, and had short hair.
Though she did not know who he was then, he would come to be known by the world as Hawkeye.
“Kate!” Eleanor shouted. She gripped her shoulders, and squatted down so they were eye-to-eye. “We have to get out of here.”
“But Daddy! He said he’d protect us! Daddy said!” she was sobbing, her voice breaking.
Eleanor held her close, fighting back her own tears as Kate wept into her shirt, looking out at the ruined city.
There was a citywide wake two weeks later. Demand for funerals had increased so much, actually organizing everyone and getting a coffin and a grave became next to impossible. To alleviate the problem, the city organized a massive memorial service for everyone who had died in the Chitauri Invasion. Hopefully, they reasoned, people would be satisfied with the memorial, and some would decide not to do a personal funeral.
Kate lost three cousins, including a toddler who’d been two weeks from his third birthday, her only aunt and uncle, and her grandparents. She was inconsolable, like many others at the service, crying softly. Eleanor felt the loss as deeply as Kate did, but worked to stay strong for her only daughter.
“W-what if they come back?” Kate managed some time later. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face damp.
“They won’t come back.” Eleanor whispered, stroking her hair.
“How do you know?” she whimpered.
“Because the heroes showed them what would happen. And even though this is scary, I’m still the luckiest woman in the world because I have the greatest little girl in the world.” she sniffled, her resolve cracking slightly. “W-who is not that little.”
Kate wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I need to protect us. Because Daddy… Dad didn’t.” she inhaled shakily.
Eleanor shook her head. “Kate, that’s my job. Okay? Whatever you need, I’m here for you.”
“I need…” she wiped her face again, a steely fire settling into her blue eyes. She remembered the invasion, and the man who saved her life.
“I need a bow and arrow.”
“With the strength you bring us, we’ll rise again!”
“Avengers unite, ‘cause we’ve got to hear you say!”
“I could do this all day!”
Clint Barton sat with his family, at the opening night of Rogers: The Musical, a musical biopic of Captain America’s life that took, er, liberties. No pun intended. He sat in the front with his family, and he wasn’t very impressed.
He’d been trying to avoid looking at her for the entire play, but then Natasha Romanoff’s actress was in the middle of the stage, and he couldn’t look away.
He was back, back on that hellish planet, looking down at her pleading face. The air was brittle and cold, and he hung on to the edge of the cliff, as she clutched his hand.
“Let me go.” she whispered.
He couldn’t see anything through his tears. He shook his head. “No, please… no.”
She smiled sadly. “It’s okay…”
Then she kicked off of him, and she was falling, falling, falling—
“Dad?” Lila asked.
Clint started, and looked over at his daughter’s face. For a moment, she thought, he looked distant, as though he weren’t seeing her. Then, his eyes cleared, and he was sitting beside her again. “Did you turn your hearing aids off?” she asked, though they both knew he hadn’t.
“No, honey, I know what happens. I was there.” he rubbed his face. “But you know who wasn’t there? Is that guy.” he pointed. “Ant-Man.”
He stood. “Um, I need to go to the bathroom.” Muttering apologies, he scooted away towards the bathroom.
He splashed water on his face, trying to catch his breath. He looked down, and his eyes settled on a small black graffitied message.
Thanos Was Right.
A man opened the bathroom door, and gasped. “Holy shit!”
Clint looked up from the bathroom sink.
They mumbled, “A selfie would be really rad, dude. My kids would flip. You’re their absolute favorite!”
“Oh. Um… sure, I guess.”
In the winter after the Invasion, Kate was expelled from her 5th grade school. Thankfully, it had come at the end of the school year, so her mother enrolled her into a school that many other young, rich juvenile delinquents attended: Yancy Academy.
It was there that Kate Bishop met eleven year old Percy Jackson. Well, he turned twelve almost immediately after school started in August, but she liked to pretend he was still eleven, just to needle him. Though, of course, she’d just turned twelve just a few months before, on May 7th. They became fast friends, and poor Grover was forced to watch over two demigods, not just one.
Kate fought Mrs. Dodds alongside him, went to camp alongside him, and quested in June of 2013 to retrieve the stolen lightning bolt alongside him. She rescued Grover with Percy and Annabeth the following summer, and Artemis and Annabeth that winter. She delved into the Labyrinth with her friends in 2015, and defended Manhattan from Kronos’s forces the next year.
When Percy went missing, she did everything she could with Annabeth to find him, including rescuing Leo, Jason, and Piper at the Grand Canyon that year. She was (most unwillingly) a part of the Prophecy of Eight, and successfully (read: barely) stopped the world from ending on August 1st, 2017.
And so, satisfied with her questing, and all that she’d gone through with her friends, the Fates gave her a billion dollars, a private island resort, and let her live to a ripe old age, free from any more strife or conflict. The End.
…Is what she wishes happened after Gaea was defeated. Instead, the mightiest mortal heroes of Earth (well, mortal plus one Norse god) were not as good at their jobs as the demigods had been at saving the world. Not even eight months later, a buff purple alien with a name ironically similar to Thanatos killed half the population of the universe with a snap on March 29th, 2018.
Kate, Percy, and Annabeth, thank the gods, survived. But so many still died. Some of her closest friends. Jason, Leo, Piper, Chiron, Nico, Will, Travis, Clarisse, literally the entire Hephaestus Cabin, and so, so many more crumbled to dust that day. She only managed to sort through the ashes of her life, salvage what was left of camp, only because of her friends.
As though that weren’t enough, her mental health was about as great as Fields of Punishment were for a vacation spot. She became depressed and anxious, at times barely able to function. She was tormented by constant nightmares. Sometimes, she was ten years old again, watching her home be destroyed by grey aliens. Other nights, she was deep in the Labyrinth, running down a corridor from something she could not see, something breathing heavily and intent on killing her, or worse.
She hated it. Absolutely hated it. Percy and Annabeth have trudged in the pits of Tartarus, she wanted to scream. Calypso lost Leo to the Snap, Connor lost a brother, and yet I’m the one who can’t cope? Anything I’ve been through is nothing compared to my friends, so why should I be the one person who can’t handle it?
No matter how much she raged, her problems did not go away.
It was as if she were constantly wrapped in a cocoon, the world outside an indistinct grey blob. She wasn’t sad, exactly, but detached. Detached from the world, from her friends, from any emotion even resembling happiness. She’d heard what depression was like, but it was something else entirely to experience it firsthand.
She was alone, drifting in the ruins of her life. For five years.
She spent those five years in a haze, filling her time with practice and training. She left camp, moved to an apartment in Manhattan she’d inherited, and joined every fencing, archery, martial arts, and gymnastics competition she could find. She dominated, of course—she’d been doing them in life-or-death situations since she was twelve—but the endless rows of medals and certificates still didn’t help. Attending college at Ormsby Mitchel University in New York didn’t either. No matter how hard she tried, she could feel nothing.
Her friends drifted apart, as Kate’s depression worsened and their camps needed them to deal with the fallout of the Snap. Still, they tried to reach out. The handful of times they’d hung out had been marked by sullen silence (from everyone) and the absence of Leo, Jason, and Piper was even more conspicuous.
Then, all of a sudden, everyone came back.