Chapter Text
“What the hell?!” Tony sputtered, stepping down onto the ground, lifting his faceplate up.
“Thor?” Natasha asked, while sharing a look with Clint, who took off jogging towards the jet. The Asgardian stood with a deep frown on his face.
“I had heard the stories told in quiet outside the feasting hall,” Thor mumbled as he ran a hand down his face as he watched the archer rummage around, “but had not believed until now.”
“Everyone okay?” Bruce asked, hesitantly walking towards them, wringing his hands. Clint apologetically nudged past him with box that had held a medical scanner, heading to meet Nat, who held the book out with her fingertips.
“Aye,” Thor sighed. He looked down at his hammer in deep thought. “I believe the Christian apocalypse has again been averted, my friend.”
Steve took a deep breath and bowed his head, the sound of the metal box clanging closed once Nat had dropped the book into it.
“Thor?” Tony asked, eyes wide. “Can you elaborate, man? I mean, Hydra, I get. Nazis and magic. But Lucifer? Really?”
“And what was that thing he called ‘Sam’ that could use your hammer?” Natasha added. She took the handkerchief Bruce held out to scrub her fingers and shake them out as though they had gone numb.
“’Again’?” Steve asked in a tight voice. “What do you mean by ‘again’?”
“What they said,” Clint grumbled. He had handed the box over to Bruce and was now wringing his hands with a frown as Bruce glared down at the closed box.
“I must confer with Heimdall,” was all Thor said before spinning Mjolnir quickly and shooting up and away.
“Anyone else feel like whatever all this was,” Clint gestured to the cemetery, “could have gone a very different?”
“If that gory demon or whatever hadn’t been there,” Natasha trailed off, looking back over at the wooden cross.
There were sighs and quiet huffs, as Bruce and Tony shared a look down at the metal box.
“We need to contact SHIELD for the cleanup.” Steve squared his shoulders. “And locate a catholic church for some holy water.” He eyed the box. “That doesn’t look all that watertight, so we might need something more…secure.”
*****
That night, none of them slept well and whatever exhaustion they fell into was filled with wild dreams about a dark-haired man with blue eyes whose voice rumbled like thunder. While the face kept slipping into other forms than human, only Clint noticed the shadow of what could have been agitated wing movement over the being’s shoulders.
‘Singer.’ Tony flinched at the gravelly voice and shook himself out of the dream.
‘Edlund.’ Steve’s eyebrows twitched before he rolled to sitting on the edge of his bed.
‘Crowley.’ Bruce sat straight up, now wide awake.
‘Winchester.’ Natasha and Clint shuddered as they leapt to their feet into defensive stances from where they had fallen asleep leaning against each other on the couch in their shared apartment.
The SHIELD master assassins moved back to back, both of them holding blades they had pulled from hiding places near or in the couch, their eyes moving over the darkened room.
Throughout the Avengers’ quarters in the tower, Jarvis, brought the lights up and blared the Avenger’s alarm briefly as he did a full sweep. They all jumped to being alert at the same time.
“Sir, the anomaly is no longer being detected,” Jarvis commented quietly in Tony’s penthouse bedroom.
Tony sat up and groaned, taking a deep, scrutinizing look at where Jarvis was projecting information on the wall. While there were privacy protocols in place, one corner held a real time view of the three other areas where the rest were now on alert.
“J? What’s up, buddy?”
“Sir, each of the Avengers awoke at the same time, appearing to be alarmed at something perhaps in their vicinity,” Jarvis replied thoughtfully. “I took the liberty to do a full visual, audio, and digital scan of the areas. There was an anomaly in the radiation spectrum around each of the Avengers, but it is no longer detected and I have not been able to ascertain the source.”
Tony frowned, looking most alarmed at the image of the assassins, wearing matching pajamas, with blades in their hands as they circled their room, back-to-back. Steve was looking around in confusion, fists clenched, and Bruce was wringing his hands and pacing.
“Stand down, kids,” the billionaire had Jarvis transmit to each of the others. “Jarvis says it’s all clear, but I think we need to confab over some caffeine.” He didn’t wait to verify that they moved instantly towards the communal kitchen, but he grabbed his tablet, slipped into his slippers, and jogged down the private stairs he had to the lower floors.
*****
“What the hell are you doin’ here?” Bobby asked the one-eyed man standing on his doorstep, both barrels of his shotgun aiming directly at the chest of the man on his doorstep.
“Nice to see you too, Bobby,” Nick Fury replied. He had eschewed his dramatic leather coat for a black, cable-knit sweater and dark jeans, and once Bobby saw the man drop his eyes first, he knew this wasn’t a pleasure visit. Not like any time Nick dropped by was purely for pleasure.
“Ah, hell,” the grizzled hunter growled. He put the safety back on the shotgun after a sharp glance around the salvage yard. As he took a step back, he laid the gun back in the corner behind the door. “Get in here.”
Nick hesitated, which sent Bobby’s nerves jangling up and down his spine. Not only was this not for pleasure, he was pretty sure, he wasn’t going to enjoy this visit. He fought to not outright sigh before he headed to the kitchen to pull out two mugs. He heard the soft footfalls behind him and the door eased closed.
“I’m here about Sam Winchester,” Nick said as he stepped from the darkened hallway into the muted light in the kitchen.
Bobby’s knees almost buckled. He sucked in a sharp breath, gripping the edge of the counter. He took a coupld of breaths as he flashed back to the last time he’d seen the boy. The gray skies, dead leaves and grass swirling around Sam and Adam as they fell into the gaping hole that had been opened in the middle of the cemetery. Dean’s sobs after they were gone and the hole had closed, sealing Dean’s brother, half-brother, and two archangels in the Cage in Hell. The utter silence after the resurrected angel had healed Dean and fluttered off back to Heaven. The first sound that had filtered back had been a cold wind that had rattled a bare tree limb nearby.
He swallowed heavily as he steadied himself, reaching past the dark roast coffee he had been about to pull out and grabbed the rotgut whiskey instead.
“You better have a damn good reason to be here,” he grumbled as he poured some into one of the mugs to hand off to Nick.
“I’m hoping we can find a way to save him,” Nick sighed, taking the mug and slugging it back with a grimace.
Bobby’s head whipped around, eyes wide. What he saw was not amusement, but honesty. The dark-skinned man had always looked on the edge of amusement when Rufus had been around back in the day. There had been a spark in his eyes that Bobby figured he most likely lost when those aliens attacked New York. Of course he’d seen it on tv, but it was over pretty fast and Nick’s dream of a team of superheroes had come together to save the day.
Now, Nick was here with exhaustion written in every line. It had been a good decade or two since they’d worked a case together, one that saw Nick clapping him and Rufus on the back with the offer that should things get really bad, to call him. Not that they ever had. He had known that Nick had paid for Rufus’ funeral last year when the man had died in his sleep. But they hadn’t spoken about it.
Nick always knew things that he shouldn’t and it still irked Bobby. He suspected he had some psychics on his payroll or in his pocket, that Nick had also helped keep hunters off police radar as much as they could.
But this…
Bobby stared at Nick, who leaned heavily against the doorframe.
“There’s only one way to open the Cage,” Bobby frowned. “And it just can’t be done without releasin’ two pissed off archangels and restartin’ the damned apocalypse.”
“Someone found another way,” Nick nearly whispered, holding out the mug to be refilled. Bobby blinked in shock, refilled the mug with a shaky hand, then tipped the entire bottle to his own mouth for a deep swallow, before running his other hand over his face.
“Dean.”
“Not unless he joined Hydra,” Nick said, sipping the whiskey this time.
“You better get comfortable then,” Bobby growled, dropping into one of the chairs around the little table in his kitchen. “I’ve got the feelin’ this is goin’ to be a long story and you better damn well not leave anything out.”
Nick, flipping one of the other chairs backwards, sat down, dangling his arms over the back of it, the coffee mug filled with whiskey hanging over the table itself.
“Three hours ago,” Nick started, bringing his eyes up to meet Bobby’s stare, “we got a distress call from an inside informant in Hydra that Henrik von Kurtz, some Nazi necromancer leftover from Hitler’s days, had been put in charge of one of their strongholds here in the US.” Nick took a sip and then a deep breath. “He found a book that we all thought was destroyed long ago.”
“No,” Bobby’s eyes widened and he sat up straight.
“Von Kurtz worked out a translation. And he found the cross in Stull Cemetery…”