Chapter Text
This time, Leo does not fly. This time, Leo falls.
This time, his SHIELD team does not find him. This time, HYDRA does.
As Leo is falling, in a moment of ecstasy where he feels like he is flying, he remembers this absurd poem related to Alice In Wonderland.
little alice fell
d
o
w
n
the hOle,
bumped her head
and bruised her soul
And then the moment is over and—
Leo falls.
Leo wakes up to pain, pain, pain.
He blacks out.
In the dark, Leo dreams.
He is six years old and it is the middle of a hot Texas summer. His mother is on one of her rare days off and they are outside. She is on a lounge chair on the porch reading a book. Leo is about to poke a worm with a stick.
Esperanza looks up just in time to catch him poke it. She gets up and moves toward him.
“Mijo, stop,” she urges.
Leo looks up at her questioningly.
“Mijo, just like this little worm, you have a thirst for life. Use it well, and use it often.”
Leo reached up his arms in a sign to be picked up.
“Okay, mamá.”
Leo wakes up to a gruff, rough voice.
"He will not do for us as a soldier. He will build us to the next world. He shall be called Vulcan, god of the forges."
In the privacy of Leo's mind, he smiles, a savage thing.
They are going to brainwash him, but luckily, Leo is already a master at repression.
He falls back into the dark.
The next time he wakes, he feels the cold metal of a chair underneath him. There is an IV in his arm and his mind feels fuzzy, suggestible.
There is someone speaking, but the words do not register.
A button is clicked and electricity arches through him.
He blacks out.
When he comes to, he finds that the memory wipe did not work.
The memories of home come flooding in.
“Vulcan, stand.”
He stands.
Might as well pretend.
It may have been hours, maybe days, maybe months. He does not know how long he has been in this hellhole, but it is making him crazy. Well, more crazy than he was originally.
He may have acted like the brainwashing HYDRA did didn’t mess with his mind, but it did. He finds himself with an internal battle, programmed urges warring with his original impulses.
He needs to get out of here.
Once he remembers that he is being watched around the clock, he loses hope.
But then he remembers his mother’s words
“Mijo, just like this little worm, you have a thirst for life. Use it well, and use it often.”
And the hope comes back.
He would take inspiration from Tony Stark, but he realizes that these HYDRA goons are not stupid.
So, he takes inspiration from himself.
In the dark of his workshop, concealed by blowtorch, his palm lights on fire.
For the first time in what could be months, he smiles.
When he says he will take inspiration from himself, he does not mean from his previous escapes from foster homes. He means he will take inspiration from his life, and from his death.
He sets his workshop aflame.
In the chaos of the fire and the heat and the smoke, Leo slips out and runs. He runs like he runs away from his problems, quickly, relentlessly, and with experience.
He makes his way into a town. His clothes are covered in soot and his face is smeared with ash. He knows that he looks like the victim of a fire, and he is, but he does not care. Finds an old phone booth. He takes a moment to smile at it’s blue color, and the references to Doctor Who along with it, and then he steps in.
He dials a familiar number.
“Coulson speaking. May I ask who this is?”
“Me,” he croaks. The only time he has spoken recently is to beg for money for the phone booth, and his voice is hoarse.
“Leo?” Coulson asks, on guard. They didn’t know who took him and this could very well be a trap.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
Leo tries to speak but all that comes out is a squeak. His voice is gone.
“Stay where you are, we’ll come find you.” His voice gets a bit fainter as he turns away from the microphone. “Skye! Track my call, now!”
But all he hears next is a click. The time on the phone ran out and he is alone. He slides down to the floor, his head falling on to his knees. Like so many other times, his vision goes black.
“Leo!” Someone yells. He is standing in his mother’s old workshop and he is not alone. Nico is standing near him, yelling his name.
“Leo! I’m so glad I finally found you. Where have you been?” Nico sounded relieved and out of breath.
Leo looked around, thoughts sluggish.
“Valdez?” Nico sounded concerned now. Why was he concerned? Was Nico okay?
“Valdez!” He yelled.
Leo looked down at himself numbly. Oh. He was fading.
His dream changed and he was falling. His old middle school teacher was singing a poem in a haunting voice.
little alice fell
d
o
w
n
the hOle,
bumped her head
and bruised her soul
He was falling, wasn’t he?
He woke up.
When he woke up to a face leaning over him, he thought he was back in HYDRA’s grasp.
He flailed, trying to kick and yell, but he was strapped down. Then his vision cleared and he had to stare for a moment before he saw that Melinda May was the one hovering over him.
“May?” He slurred.
His head flopped toward her.
Without turning away from him, May called to the door. “Coulson! He’s awake.”
The door opened to the team standing right outside. They were all crowded around the door, trying to get a look in to see how Leo was doing, Jemma right up in the front of the pack.
They all called different variations of his name. “Leo!” “Fitz!” “Turbo!” Okay so that one wasn’t his name.
“Back up,” Coulson told them. “We don’t know what they did to him.” They all took a collective step back. When Coulson turned back toward Leo, they took a step forward.
Coulson just shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose, and muttered, “Children.”
He sat in the chair next to Leo. May stood just behind him on his right side.
“What is your name?” He asked.
“Leo… Fitz.” He said, mouth dry. They were going to interrogate him? Fair.
“What is your father’s name?”
Leo blanked for a moment. In that moment, he saw the whole team freeze. “Heph— Alistair Fitz.” He told them after a brief blunder. They ignored his slip up for now. He mentally thanked the gods for that pass.
“How do you feel about HYDRA?” Everyone tensed at this question.
“I hate them.” Leo spat out. They had tried to ruin his already fragile mind. He needed his brain. And his hands. And his heart.
Everyone relaxed, but they weren’t out of the woods yet.
“What happened while you were gone?”
Leo looked longingly toward the glass of water on the bed stand. May silently reached over and helped him drink it. She then put it back on the night table and stood at Phil’s right hand.
Leo cleared his throat before beginning. “I don’t know how I survived the fall, but HYDRA found me. I don’t think I was conscious for most of the process, but I woke up to pain, probably from the fall. The next time I woke up, I heard them say that I wasn’t fit for a soldier, but I’d ‘build us to the next world,’” he paraphrased. “I don’t know what they meant. They said they would call me ‘Vulcan’ after the Roman god of the forges, fire, and blacksmiths. The next time I woke up, I was in a chair.”
Coulson visibly startled at that. He must have been very shocked. “They put you in the chair?” He near-whispered.
“Yeah,” Leo said and cleared his throat again. “Yeah. Probably similar to the one they put the Winter Soldier in. Anyways, they shocked me. Again, and again, and again. Their memory wipe didn’t work though, for some reason. I think their brainwashing did, but it didn’t stick. It messed me up here, though.” He tried to point to his temple, but he was still restrained. “They told me to stand and I did. Might as well pretend.” He shrugged.
The team looked horrified.
“Soon enough… actually, I don’t know when. Time was weird in there. But eventually, I realized that I had to get out. I set the workshop on fire.” At everybody’s searching looks, he added, “I didn’t get hurt, somehow.”
May just narrowed her eyes at him. He tried for a reassuring grin back.
“Then I slipped out, begged for money, and found a blue telephone box.” He slumped back into his pillows. Talking this much had exhausted him and he didn’t have any extra energy to begin with.
Coulson looked back at the team. The team looked back at him. He sighed, resigned, and jerked his head in Leo’s direction. They grinned excitedly and surged into the room. “Just… don’t overwhelm him.” Coulson sighed again like an exhausted parent. “Too late.”
Coulson perked up. “Oh! The others will be wanting to see you.” He said.
Leo was confused. The others? What others? As far as he knew, there were no “others.”
Coulson whistled. A familiar star-spangled man peeked his head in. “Is he cleared?” Steve Rogers asked in a deep voice.
Coulson nodded, still, after all this time, starstruck.
The Avengers team filed in and squished together in the already crowded room.
Steve reached out his hand to shake Leo’s. Leo looked at his hand, looked down at the restraints, and then back up at Steve. Steve retracted his hand with a sheepish “Oh.”
May stepped forward with a handcuff key to undo his restraints. He nodded thankfully at her. Leo then reached out his hand to shake the American icon’s.
He managed to maintain his composure. Maybe this was caused by meeting literal gods, maybe it was caused by meeting Annabeth Chase and Percy Jackson. Who knows? But whatever caused it, Leo was glad for it.
The Captain looked mildly surprised at Leo’s lack of reaction, but he chalked it up to recent trauma.
The person who Leo really wanted to meet came up next. Tony Stark smirked and offered his hand to shake. Leo’s hand shot out to meet it and their hands clunked. His face flushed bright red, which he still had to get used to, having a complexion light enough to show a blush.
Tony just laughed. It wasn’t a patronizing laugh, or a teasing laugh. It was one that brought a genuine smile to his face.
Leo grinned back at him.
Steve groaned. “How come he gets awestruck and I get unimpressed?”
“Fitz is an engineer,” Natasha Romanoff reminded him. “Tony’s an engineer. You’re just a captain.”
Thor and Bruce Banner walked in, Chairs and stools held in each hand.
“We brought chairs?” Bruce said hesitantly.
Thor narrowed his eyes at Leo but pasted a grin on his face. Could Thor sense his godly heritage even though Leo was from a different pantheon, heck, a different universe.
He swallowed down his nervousness and shifted his eyes away from Thor’s piercing, searching, ones.
He turned his gaze to Coulson. “Do I need to explain it again for them?”
Coulson shook his head. “No. They were listening through my earpiece.” He shifted his head to show Leo the previously hidden earwig.
“Huh.” Leo said eloquently.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Steve said, swinging the chair around so he could sit backwards on it. “Is how you managed to get out of the burning workshop unscathed.” And boy, did that question bring up bad memories for Leo.
Leo flinched back. Everyone's gazes turned towards him. He made eye contact with Thor, whose sharp, but kind eyes seemed to read 'tell them.'
So Leo began.
"I was born July 7th, 1994 to Esperanza Valdez and a god. In a different universe."
“I had a babysitter when I was younger, I called her Tía Callida. She used to put me in fireplaces.” He gave a humorless chuckle. “I don’t burn,” he explained.
Everyone’s eyes were fixed on him.
Thor inclined his head.
“I had suspected,” he rumbled in his deep voice. “That you were not fully human.”
Leo nodded. “When I was eight years old, my mother went back in her workshop to get her keys.” Tears brimming his eyes, he cleared his throat.
“The door locked behind her. A woman appeared in front of me. This was Gaea.”
Thor jerked back in horror. “You met the Earth Mother?” He whispered.
“Yes, I did. She told me that the Fates protected me, that I wasn’t destined to die yet. But my mother wasn’t protected and that the Fates couldn’t stop her from breaking my spirit. She told me to remember this night, when I went to battle against her. And I did. I used it against her. Anyway, I got angry. I got so angry that I threw fire at her.”
He choked up. “But the fire spread. It killed my mother. I killed my mother.”
Jemma stepped forward. “Leo. Leo. You did not kill your mother. If anyone did, it was Gaea. That complete, utter—"
Bucky cut her off. “Leo. You did not kill your mother. But there’s nothing I can say to change your mind, is there?” He had an understanding expression at Leo’s devastation.
Leo took a deep breath and let out a shaky exhale. “To continue…” He went on to explain his life, and then his death.
…
“And then I landed here. As a Scottish, white, sixteen year old.” He sat back, exhausted.
“I know you’re exhausted,” Coulson started apologetically. “But we really need to know what your powers are, for out records.”
Leo startled, a thought occurring to him. “You can’t put this on file,” he said urgently. “I’m not putting other worlds in danger.”
Coulson considered his request and then inclined his head. “Agreed. But I’d still like to know about your powers.”
Leo began again. “I have some measure of technokinesis and technopathy. Basically, I can control technology, to a certain extent. I can also ‘conjure’ fire.” He held up a flame in his hand as proof. “I am also immune to fire. My clothes aren’t, though.
“But now he needs sleep.” Steve slapped his knee and got up, ushering everybody out. They all waved bye as they left.
Leo slept.
“Leo!” Nico sounded relieved, jogging up to him.
He was back in his mother’s workshop, the metal room making Nico’s footsteps echo.
“I’m so glad I finally found you. Where are you?”
Leo tried to answer, but his mouth wouldn’t respond to his prompting. He gestured toward his lips, showing that he couldn’t speak. Nico looked puzzled.
“You can’t speak? That’s never happened before…” Nico trailed off.
In a fit of homesickness, Leo lunged toward Nico, trying to envelop him in a hug. He stumbled as he passed right through Nico.
He looked down at himself to see his body fading again.
“I’m going to try to contact you again!” He shouted as Leo faded away. “Wait for it, okay? Don’t leave your location!”
Leo faded out.
He woke up to Jemma sitting in the visitors chair, leaning on his bed, arms crossing and head resting on them, sleeping. She was snoring softly, quiet snuffles and snorts that made Leo laugh.
She stirred awake at the shaking of the bed that his laugh had caused.
"Leo!" She whispered. At his confused look on why she was whispering, she pointed toward the corner where Skye and Mack were piled. May was sitting on the floor near the door, eyes closed, but Leo would bet anything that she wasn't sleeping.
He chuckled and felt awed. His friends and family stuck by his side throughout everything?
But he was still tired and he fell back to sleep.
little alice fell
d
o
w
n
the hOle,
bumped her head
and bruised her soul
This time, Leo did not fall. This time, Leo flew.