Chapter Text
AU: I’ve lost my mind. Years ago I fell off the Avengers train because there were too many films for me to keep track of. Then WandaVision, Agatha All Along and Thunderbolts* restored my faith in the franchise and reignited my imagination. So here goes the crackfic, enjoy!
It was supposed to be a simple job. Recon. Nothing new for the Thunderbolts but Yelena felt wrong the minute they neared the mountain.
Snow fell slowly, whipped by the hovering helicopter. Inside, the Thunderbolts checked their gear in silence, weapons free, eyes forward as Val’s voice came over comms.
“Remember you’re there to observe and report. Don’t get any ideas.”
“We hear you the first time,” Yelena replied, before jumping into the storm. Bucky, Ava and John landed on the ice-slick rock beside her. Their boots sank into crimson slush that shimmered faintly. Not blood but thick and pulsating, as if the mountain itself hemorrhaged light.
The helicopter peeled away and the sky darkened.
“Everyone seeing this?” Bucky asked, metal hand twitching as his flashlight flickered along the patterns in the snow in the shape of red runes.
Ava was already scanning the area. “Energy density is unstable. It’s like the fabric of space here’s breathing”
“Then we keep moving. Stay in our reality,” Yelena said, half-grinning. “John, you’re on rear. We find the source, take selfies and finish the job.”
They began their climb, each step crackling underfoot as pockets of reality rippled around them. Rocks floated and fell. Distant voices whispered nonsense and fragmented dreams caught in the wind. They all kept silent and hoped Val would receive their transmission as they entered the cave.
Leave thissss place.
All four froze. Voices echoed all around them, consuming, dark and feral.
Robert lounged in the Avengers tower, headphones on with a forgotten rock ballad drumming through his skull as he tried not to think about what his friends were up to. He hadn’t flown in weeks or lifted anything heavier than a coffee mug. Every time he felt the familiar warmth of sunlight it stirred an intoxicating rush of power in his chest that he clamped down on immediately. He could feel the city below, humming with problems he could solve in seconds if he trusted himself enough.
Val burst through his door without ceremony. “We have a problem.”
Robert’s jaw clenched as he considered ignoring her but was already peeling off the headphones. The team saved him once. They were family now. “What happened?”
“I’ll explain on the way, suit up.” Val tossed him his suit and started walking towards the hangar.
Robert barely had time to register the garment as he matched her brisk pace. “I told you, I’m not—”
“They tripped something and caused a containment failure. All we have are growing energy readings. I’m sending backup but you’ll get there faster if you fly.”
Val opened the hangar into the vast skyline and Robert, now the Sentry, stood there mortified. “Are they ok?”
“I don’t have the answers. I need you to move and contain the situation until our agents get there.” She held his gaze now, unblinking. Robert wanted nothing more than to curl up and forget the world but then he remembered Yelena’s laugh. The way she looked at him like he was a person, not a bomb. “Just hold it together long enough for them to get out.”
“And if Void comes out?” Robert whispered.
“Then we’ll deal with him. Now go.”
Robert closed his eyes. When he opened them again something had settled and he was gone in a flash.
Robert arrived to chaos. The Thunderbolts fought remnants of what looked to be demonic spirits, he felt their energy as the air crackled with light. Bucky wrestled with something that was splitting itself into copies, Ghost flickered desperately half-trapped in a snare of black runes that dragged at her like hooks. Yelena kept vaulting over obstacles, trying to get at the contained sphere pulsing in the center of the cave but kept getting dragged back by the spirits. Only John moved with frantic precision, but Robert could see even he was slowing down.
Robert inhaled.
The warmth answered.
Light flooded his system, gold and binding, rising through his chest like the sun being reignited. Void stretched like an oily presence unfolding behind his thoughts. Let me…
“No,” Robert whispered. “Not today.”
He surged forward. The spirits shrieked and drew in on him, shadows lunged. Robert moved, fighting them with light, energy and punches. Light rippled out from him in a controlled wave, burning away some of the weaker spirits mid-lunge. The forces collapsed.
The Thunderbolts froze, staring.
“Show off!” Yelena called, breathless with relief.
He could feel the darkhold fighting him, trying to wrap around his power, use him. The Void echoed louder in his mind.
Harder. End it now.
“He’s overdoing it,” Ava whispered, watching his energy readings spike as Bucky and Taskmaster skid to a halt beside her.
Robert clenched his jaw and pushed focused light energy directly at the sphere. Whatever it was shattered. Not violently, quietly as if something had exhaled.
In the sudden stillness that followed, gravity reasserted itself.
A body fell.
Yelena was moving before she realized it, sprinting and shouting orders. “Catch her! Move!”
John caught her just before she hit the ground, her body slack, hair matted with soot and dried blood. The red of chaos flickered weakly around her fingers like embers refusing to go out.
“Oh shit, is that Maximoff?” Yelena said, skidding to a halt beside them.
Bucky came over and confirmed. “Val, you seeing this? It’s Wanda.”
She looked…small. Beat and fighting for consciousness.
Ava knelt, careful and gentle as she scanned her. “She’s alive. Barely.”
But the air shifted again. Robert reacted on instinct and flared the light towards the spirit remnants who tried to attack.
It was too much.
End them.
“No!” Robert shouted at his alternate self. “Stay back, I got this!”
Yelena jogged back to him. “Bob, you’re slipping. Stop!”
The Void answered her, smiling through him.
Robert’s vision tunneled as he fought both the remnants of the dark and the darkness within him. It would be so easy to crush them, to wipe everything clean.
A soft gasp cut through the noise.
Wanda’s eyes opened and red met gold.
She pushed herself upright, pain etched into every movement but her focus was absolute. She raised one hand towards Sentry, not in anger or dominance but refusal. “No,” she said.
Reality listened.
Scarlet energy surged towards the remaining spirits disintegrating them on contact, erased so completely that even the idea of them vanished. Then her gaze snapped to Robert. She saw him, all of him.
Void recoiled as her magic wrapped around Sentry, not fighting, but anchoring. She reached into the chaos with practiced care and calmed both sides of the dark fracture.
“Hey what are you—”John began.
“Wait,” Yelena spoke, watching Robert regain control with her help. “She’s helping.”
Robert gasped, collapsing to one knee as the light around him dimmed to something manageable. Human. In control.
Yelena ran up to him, hands gripping his shoulders as if he might disappear. “Hey, hey. You’re ok?”
He nodded, shaking. “Yeah, I will be…I think…who is that?”
“Magic gone wrong,” Yelena remarked, helping him up to his feet.
Wanda exhaled and sank, caught by Bucky as the last of her energy ebbed.
For the first time since arriving, the sunlight reached the cave and the world felt whole.