∆ {4¹³} {UNSCHEDULED ARRIVALS} ∆ 

THE SOUND OF Leipzig Flughafen's PA system echoed over the airport, a man's voice letting out instructions to evacuate the airport in tinny German. Tony had been the one to submit the order, and Roxi had done as the man had suggested, riding to the airport in a car with Happy and Peter, ignoring the countless questions that the boy sent her way, instead checking her weapons. Peter had jumped when she'd extended her quarterstaff, and Happy had let out some protest about the fact that she would damage the car.

She hadn't cared much, her mind entirely focused on what was about to ensue. She would be fighting her own team. She didn't want to focus on it; the idea of going up against Steve, Sam, possibly others, it unnerved her to such an end that she was only just able to keep a cap on her emotions, in an attempt not to let her unease have an affect on Peter, who already seemed to be brimming with uncertainty. 

But now she was truly here. She stood just inside of one of the buildings, thankful for the shade it supplied. The sun seemed unnaturally bright today, especially for the inevitable battle that would follow in less than half an hour. Roxi already had the handle of her quarterstaff gripped in her hand, though she had decided firmly while in the car that she wouldn't use the blades. She would not hurt her teammates, and she would prevent any other injury to them if she could help it. She would not allow these Accords to drive them so far apart that one of them would be badly injured. Only then, if that happened, would she fail.

Some of the people on Tony's side, such as T'Challa, Vision, and Rhodey didn't know that she was there, and if they knew before the whole thing escalated into a fight, she was fairly sure that they'd have her arrested. If only, in Rhodey or Vision's case, for her own 'safety'. But her own safety didn't matter, not when something as large as the integrity of her team, of her family was on the line. She would not let them hurt each other, no matter what it did to her in the process.

It was only when Rhodey and Tony actually touched down that she started walking, crossing the tarmac, attempting to keep her strides long, fast, certain. It was warm, and she could heat reflecting off of the ground beneath her, rising in waves that wouldn't fail to make them pour with sweat within the first few minutes of the coming altercation. She couldn't hear Steve's group's side of the conversation until she arrived, slinking into the back of the group. She stayed as low-key as she could until Clint greeted her.

"Hey Ryder." From the way Rhodey and T'Challa turned their faces to her sharply, neither of them had noticed that she was there. Tony let out a sighing breath, as if accepting something that he had expected but not wished for, and Natasha met her gaze briefly, her green eyes full of understanding, and oddly, simultaneously, both pride and fear. Rhodey however, spoke up in his distaste for her being tangled in the situation.

"You shouldn't be here."

"Unfortunately for me, I am. After all, couldn't let you fight without me could I?"

"Yeah, you could've," he scoffed slightly, though she knew that most of his anger and distaste carried from concern, "and you should've." Roxi didn't reply, instead nodding towards T'Challa and Steve in a greeting. The air had grown so thick with tension that walking felt like walking through an icy quagmire. There was a silence - an awful one. The whole airport seemed to still, afraid to break it. But Tony was not scared of breaking the hush. He was afraid of losing those that he'd grown so close to over the past years, and Roxi knew that, even as he spoke.

"All right, I've run out of patience. Underoos!" Peter Parker, dressed in the new suit that Tony had made him, appeared on cue, snatching Steve's shield with his webbing and binding the man's hands, landing on one of the cars used to transport luggage throughout the airport. Everyone's eyes were on him as they surveyed the situation, which had become both more stagnant and less at the same time. 

"Nice job, kid," Tony complimented, Roxi finding herself clenching her grip around her quarterstaff handle, attempting to prepare herself for what was to come, and drive as much fear from her mind as she could. It wouldn't help anyone if she was too scared to act. Cowardly was never a word that she had heard being used to describe her, and she'd rather that it stayed that way.

"Thanks. Well, I could've stuck the landing a little better, it's just the new suit-. It's nothing, Mr. Stark, it's perfect, thank you." Peter's words became more frantic as Roxi tried to relax her slightly shaking breathing, finding herself blocking out the 15-year-old's words. They were addled, and frantic, and would not help her situation in the slightest.

"Yeah, we don't really need to start a conversation," Tony dismissed, looking a little tired of the boy's constant words. Everything else was silent, as Roxi finally managed to calm herself entirely. Her grip on her quarterstaff handle loosened slightly and she straightened her posture, raising her chin to stare at Steve adamantly, determined that an indifferent look would plaster itself over her features, unable to disclose even a fraction of what she was truly feeling.

"Okay. Cap, Captain, big fan. I'm Spiderman." Peter noticed, raising one hand into a salute. In the tension, in the seemingly palpable silence, Roxi felt something dreadfully familiar begin to stir inside of her. It was a thirst, a hunger, sourced by a cloud of white that had been shifting inside of her ever since New York. This was the reality of her powers. That awful gnawing inside of her that yearned to feel in control. At some points, she had let it. Multiple points, in fact.

There had been many points over her two years of break after 2012 where she had let it get the best of her, and that was why she still didn't regret her decision to leave after Loki. She had needed the time to herself, to process what had happened in New York, to come to grips with the burst of power that she had expelled. It had worked, to an extent, though obviously not well enough, as Sokovia had proved so violently.

"Yeah, we'll talk about it later."

"Hey everyone."

"Good Job." Tony sounded utterly exhausted, and at another point, and if their friendship still held as strong as it had in the last few months, Roxi might've chuckled at the idea of a mini-Stark running around and wearing Tony into the ground.

"You've been busy," Steve noted, and while Roxi knew that he could feel her gaze, he was refusing to meet her eyes. Why? She had several theories that she would explore at another moment in time. But not now. Never now. Now required her utmost focus, because she had little idea how this would turn out, even if she knew the general direction it was currently projecting towards.

"And you've been a complete idiot. Dragging in Clint, 'rescuing' Wanda from a place she doesn't even wanna leave, a safe place." That was probably why Steve was refusing to look at her. Roxi hoped that these were recent events, because if Tony had known and hadn't told her over the phone call, she wouldn't be pleased. She was only now, in the act of it, finding out that she was going to be fighting her oldest friend, and the woman she considered her younger sister.

"I'm trying to keep-. I'm trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart." Tony finished, an air of desperation that Roxi had only heard  a few times before underlining his voice. Roxi's mind seem to ache at the though. Her family, ripped in half, because some higher-ups would not relinquish their quest for control, for power.

"You did that when you signed." No, they hadn't. They had simply ensured that they would have a sturdy enough ground to operate off of in the future. Of course, any chance of that for Roxi had vanished the moment that Ross had told her to stay in Berlin, but the more of them that they could keep on firm ground, higher up in the ranks, the better the team in general would do. At least, that was the logic that her decision had been based off of. She only hoped that things hadn't shifted so much in the interval time that it invalidated her reasoning.

"All right, we're done. You're gonna turn Barnes over,  you're gonna come with us, now, because it's us, or a squad of J-SOC guys with no compunction about being impolite," Tony decided firmly, whispering a quiet "come on," in squandering hope, and Roxi felt something inside of her change. It may have been guilt, or sorrow, but either way, it was only now that she'd really realised that Tony was doing the most he could to keep things running smoothly. It was then that Roxi finally set her jaw, clenching her muscles tightly as she'd been wishing to do for the past ten minutes, because she would not allow his efforts to be in vain. No-one would be dying here today, she was certain. She would do her best to prevent any of them from becoming seriously hurt, either, though with so many of them, she wasn't sure how much she would be able to do. Her attention would be divided.

It was then that it began. Steve held up his hands above his head, which were bound by Peter's webbing, and not a second later, an arrow whistled through the air and pierced the webbing, ripping it apart and freeing Steve's hands. There was only one person it could've been. Clint. Roxi drew in a long, deep breath to the point that she could feel her lungs ache, before she dared to focus entirely.

"Hey guys, something-" Peter was cut off as he was hit by something, and someone in a red, black and silver suit quite literally grew from almost nothing, now holding Steve's shield, and handed it back to the man, while Roxi manage to tune out Rhodey's confusion.

"I believe this is yours, Captain America."

"Oh, great," Tony greeted, no doubt as he located the rest of Steve's group throughout the airport. It was then that Roxi pressed the small button on the quarterstaff's handle, and felt the weapon extend on either side, the metal shooting out as she felt her features harden.

"Alright, there's two in the parking lot. One's Maximoff, I'm gonna grab her. Rhodey, you wanna take Cap?" Roxi didn't protest in the slightest, some part of her still dreading facing Wanda after the chaos of the past week. Instead, she would focus her efforts on the new person on Steve's side. She had no idea who he was, but at this point, names barely mattered.

The fighting, in retrospect, had passed surprisingly quickly, and hadn't lasted so long. She was glad for that. She had started by parrying a blow from the man dressed in red, black and silver, continuing to remain on the defensive until she got fed up of the 'fight', and had sent her quarterstaff into his side, rather harshly. He had done his odd shrinking thing in retaliation, and she had flung him away with a careful motion of her hand, trying not to make it too strong - she didn't want to badly injure him. Usually, she was all for attacking as hard as she physically could. But not now. Not when her family were the ones she was up against.

Then, with hands that she was only just stopping from shaking by focusing,  she had had to pull Tony out from under a pile of cars that Wanda had pulled from the multi-story car park behind the man. It had been harder than she was expecting, and had taken her a while, but she'd managed to do it, although it'd taken up more of that odd cloud inside of her than she would've liked to admit. An explosion from a few feet away had attention, where there now lay the flaming carcass of a gas truck, Natasha lying on the ground nearby. 

Roxi had run over as quickly as she could, which was actually quite a considerable speed, and had helped the redhead up, meeting the woman's green eyes and giving her the smile that only Natasha warranted. The woman in question returned a similar one as Tony landed near them and Rhodey made his way over from where he'd been thrown after the explosion.

"Is this part of the plan?" Natasha asked Tony in a slightly accusatory tone and Roxi found her resolves strengthening even further. She wasn't here to side with anyone. Instead, she was here to protect everyone.

"Well, my plan was go easy on 'em, you wanna switch it up?" It was, in fact, Vision that stopped Steve's group of six from reaching the Quinjet that rested in one of the airport's hangars. He seared a line into the tarmac with a beam from the mind stone, and slowly lowered himself in the air.

"Captain Rogers, I know that you believe what you're doing is right. But for the collective good, you must surrender now." And then they all stood, united and divided in discordant harmony. Working more smoothly than ever, and yet shattered by a difference of opinion on politics that were forced upon them because the government didn't see how much that their lives, their jobs, damaged them. Roxi hadn't, by any means, agreed with the Accords, but she'd found herself needing to sign, if only to claim a small amount of freedom for her to keep through, at the very least, the next few years. They stood in  a set of two lines, facing each other. Tony's side had more people, but Roxi wasn't fighting in the same way as the rest of them were. She was sure that that would even it out. Plus. no matter what Peter could do, he was a 15-year-old kid.

Steve was the first to move. He took a step forwards, and the rest of his team quickly followed, as Roxi allowed herself another long, deep breath of the kind she always took to calm her racing heart and prepare herself for what was to come.

"This is gonna end well," Natasha predicted, her tone unsure as she began advancing towards the other six, and the seven of them sped up to a jog, grim looks upon all of their faces - even those who wore masks or helmets.

"They're not stopping," Peter supplied worriedly, though he was already moving as the rest of Tony's side were.

"Neither are we, Queens." Roxi's steady reply came at the same time as Tony's, who had said the exact same thing, minus the nickname that Roxi had adopted to try and distance herself from the boy. Hopefully, they would be able to leave this all behind them and he could go back to a normal life. He'd never have to see them again, and she preferred it that way.

During the brief moments of tension before the two sides met, Roxi carefully met both Clint and Wanda's eyes. Telling them that, yea, it would be okay if she could help it. That this, whatever it was, wouldn't change a thing between them. It was a bond of loyalty that had grown between them, one of trust, something that none of them were quick to offer.

And then they clashed. The clang of Steve's shield rang out over the airport, only to be quickly drowned out by the various fights going on around them. It was Wanda that Roxi met first. It had taken her a few seconds to actually have someone to face off against, while everyone around her had instantly become involved in a fight. It was almost as if they had skirted around her, keen to leave her out of the fighting. Roxi didn't doubt that it was to do with Ross' new orders. They didn't want her to be involved, those that she knew well. Those who she didn't know fondly were likely avoiding her after her display of raw power in Sokovia. She could be intimidating. She was powerful in a way that no-one had truly seen before, and her passive exterior that came from years of being a SHIELD agent only added to that.

There was a moment of incredible silence between the two women. Roxi gave Wanda slight nod. She was letting the Maximoff know that this was okay. That no matter what happened here, it was promised to be forgotten in favour of the closeness that they'd grown over the past year. Wanda returned the motion, a hint of a sad smile twisting her lips, before she raised her hands, scarlet swirling around them, and flung Roxi off of her feet. It was gentle. Softer, perhaps, than even the blows that Roxi had received in the process of training Wanda, and a sense of pride bubbled in the pit of the woman's stomach. Wanda had come so far in such a short amount of time. Unfortunately, not quite far enough, because from the surprised noise that she let out, Wanda hadn't noticed that Roxi had thrown her quarterstaff at the Maximoff using her own powers. Nothing too hard, with the blades still firmly retracted.

It was enough, however, to let Roxi pull herself off of the hot tarmac, only to find that Wanda had quickly been occupied by Natasha and Clint's fight a few feet away. She had thrown the redhead into a metal container, and the woman had let out a pained noise, causing Roxi's brow to furrow in concern. She knew, however, that Natasha had dealt with far worse. She had seen it, when the woman had been shot in DC. Roxi's weapon met the flesh of her hand as she pulled it to her, ignoring the force that it hit her palm with and the sting that it produced, because even in the scale of Roxi's life, such a thing was entirely minute. Even to an average person, it would barely be worth noting. The only reason that Roxi did explicitly notice it, was because it seemed to trigger another one of those dreadful, migraine-like headaches. They always seemed to appear at the worst times. That, after all, was why she had helped Tony look into it; in hopes of a certain answer, and a solution. They were still working on that, however, and Roxi knew it might be a long while until they truly achieved that.

It was Roxi who first noticed Peter struggling to hold up a huge cargo crate, the hydraulics shot out by something, and muttered a few choice words in Spanish as she made her way over. The closer she was to whatever she needed to move, or manipulate, the easier it was. Even so, it took her a tremendous amount of willpower and effort to begin to ease the weight that the 15-year-old carried. Though, after he noticed what she was doing, he put in a burst of strength and threw himself out from under it, yelling a 

"Thanks!" to Roxi. She simply waved a hand in acknowledgement, her breaths becoming shallower as she let go of the container, which slammed to the ground with a loud crash, the metal groaning as she attempted to turn her attention back to the fight at hand, and off of the awful pain that throbbed and radiated through her entire skull.

Unsurprisingly, her attention snapped back to the conflict when the man in red, silver, and black, who seemed to be able to shrink, grew to the length of one of the planes that were parked calmly every couple of hundred meters. Her jaw would have dropped open had she not been clenching it so tightly from the pain resounding throughout her head. He had managed to grab Rhodey's suit by its feet and Roxi made to run closer as she prepared to free the man in his War Machine armour.

"Okay, tiny dude is big now- he's big now."

"Give me back my Rhodey." In a way, the huge man did. He threw Rhodey through the air and Roxi put up a hand, trying to stabilise the man's flight, though she swiftly had to dodge a shot from Sam's drone, Redwing, which had obviously been targeting her to make Sam's job easier. 

But it made her lose her focus. Her attention was now on the small robot, whose shots she dodged only a few times before she threw it as far away from herself as she could, in Sam's general direction.

"Okay, anybody on our side hiding any shocking and fantastic abilities they'd like to disclose, 'caus I'm open to suggestions!" Tony knew they were losing, and there wasn't much Roxi could do without injuring her teammates, not while a good amount of them were flying. If she were to release a shock wave like she had against Ultron, she would hurt those on the ground, and those flying, and it would most definitely be worse for those who were airborne.

Though, the huge man's size controller - she had no idea what its technical name was - seemed to be made out of metal. So perhaps, she could... She allowed Peter to carry out his own hasty plan first, bringing the man to the ground. And then she concentrated. This was odd. It was a familiarity of a metal that she'd felt many times before, but this time, it was laced with something else. An energy, a feeling that she couldn't specify. Either way, she somehow managed to exploit it, because the next moment, the man shrunk and the pain bouncing off of every corner of Roxi's skull seemed to double.

And now, Roxi was distracted. Consequentially, it was only when Tony let out a yell of pure, raw, terror of concern as he screamed his best friend's name that she noticed.

"Rhodes!" Rhodey was falling. No power, no back-up, nothing. Dropping from several hundred feet. Why did it always come back to falling? Even the idea of the nauseating sensation that clawed up Roxi's throat when she dropped was enough for her to shiver, unnerved. She always tried to avoid this, and yet, it seemed to be getting more common. 

It was with desperation that Roxi made her last move. She had taken a large step, and flung her hand out wildly in Rhodey's general direction. With it, there was a wave of power. It was barely contained, only just controlled, but she felt it hit Rhode's suit moments before he hit the ground. She pulled. She pulled as hard as she could, tried to slow him down, but he slammed into the ground a moment later.

Roxi fell from her awkward support, collapsing to a sitting position as she panted, trying to force oxygen back into her lungs. She had no doubt that her eyes were wide with worry, or that she looked like an exhausted mess. She didn't care though, not for once. But that was because she couldn't hear herself think over the searing pain that had exploded through her mind with her last flail of power. It was white-hot, and terrifyingly gradual as it seeped into the very core of Roxi's being.

She didn't fight back when the soldiers came. She had known this would happen, had acknowledged that she had broken part of her 'agreement' when it came to the Accords. Ross wasn't going to let it slide, especially when he seemed so awfully weary of her. 

Yet, even as Roxi was bundled into the back of an armoured vehicle, one thought managed to force its way through the seething mass of agony that seemed to be boiling her mind alive.

And that was of Rhodey. She doubted that she'd done enough. She'd been so adamant on refusing the idea of somebody getting hurt, but it had happened anyway. Now, she had truly failed, and she hated the idea of that. Not only because she had indeed, lost, but because she had no idea if one of her teammates was even alive.

Roxi Ryder had failed, and it wouldn't be the last time.

{A/N:} I'm not gonna lie, this took me a week and a half to write. I really don't like fight scenes. Also this is longer than I thought it was gonna be. Holy crap what a full chapter. There are only two more chapters of Civil War after this, and then we're finally onto Infinity War. I'm trying to find the right words to describe the pains that Roxi's getting caus they're way worse now. Anyway, enough with my little author's ramblings that I put at the end of each chapter. 

I hope you enjoyed. Pls vote, comment, let me know what you think, etc.,

Thanks :)

4250 Words

Written: 11 / 05 / 2021

Published: 28 / 05 / 2021