Information
Unmade
Legacy Name: Unmade
The
Glacier IllumisOwner: Yoko
Age: 13 years, 11 months, 1 week
Born: May 28th, 2012
Adopted: 12 years, 1 month, 3 weeks ago
Adopted: March 9th, 2014
Statistics
- Level: 1
- Strength: 13
- Defense: 10
- Speed: 10
- Health: 10
- HP: 10/10
- Intelligence: 4
- Books Read: 2
- Food Eaten: 0
- Job: Store Clerk
"Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Pull you out and stuff something else in?
Do you know what it's like to be UNMADE?"
well, I'm definitely not alone -- well, I'm not alone.
You're a liar, you're a cheater, you're a fool --
well, that's just like me, yoohoo! (And I know you, too.)
Mister Perfect don't exist, my little friend,
and I tell you it all again, and I do it again:
counting all the assholes in the room,
well, I'm definitely not alone -- well, I'm not alone...
It was dark. Above, the sky was completely veiled in dark grays, shielding the wan moon behind a thick blanket that rippled across the sky like inverse ocean waves. The wind howled around twisting mountain peaks and through deep glacial valleys, carving the ice and snow like a thousand tiny pick-axes. A man slogged through the knee-deep snow, frantic breath wreathing his face with each exhale; he was clearly not dressed for the weather, broad exposed shoulders straining as each exhausting step into the powder drew another ounce of energy from his failing body. Snowflakes whipped viciously across his face as he stumbled haphazardly through the snow, a horribly out-of-place purplish-black dot in the expanse of white and blues.
How had his jet managed to crash? He was a more capable pilot than that! But the blizzard had come up so quickly (almost as if something had called it), and the mountains were much taller than he remembered them being -- he hadn't seen the incoming peak before it was feet in front of his nose, and no amount of veering would avoid a scrape that put the plane into the valley, twisted and warped and smoking in the bitter winter silence. Damn Natasha, dropping off the grid in an inhospitable place like this! If it weren't for her, the marksman wouldn't have been kneeling in the snow, checking the pulses of an ancient Norse demigod and the world's most famous genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. Both were out cold, with some nasty bruises on their heads; but the greatest super-soldier known to man was awake, saved, no doubt, by his keen senses and his inhumanly-fast reaction time. The soldier had still been hit, and was bleeding from a deep gash in one of his broad shoulders and slowly descending into shock, but he urged the marksman to seek out help while he took care of the sleeping ones and attempted to get the communicator back online. Leaving clueless Captain Steve Rogers to mess with any sort of technology gave him no warm fuzzies, but Clint Barton hurried away from the wreckage to find anyone who could be of assistance.
He had been dragging himself through the snow for what felt like hours. The marksman had started off at a pleasant jog, working up a sweat as he kept up the pace for several miles. That hadn't lasted long -- the sweat turned to ice almost as soon as it left his skin, leeching vulnerable body heat away with it and slowing him from a jog to a crawl. Now, he was barely able to put one foot in front of the other; his fingertips were blue, his breath came in short, deep bursts that made his lungs raw with cold, and his lashes were so caked with snowflakes that he could barely see through them. He knew that Steve would patch in if he managed to get the communicator up and running, but his earpiece hadn't made a sound since the crash. Disheartening as that was, it was even more soul-shaking that he could no longer see the emergency lights or the smoke from the downed jet, having been swallowed up by snowflakes some thousand steps ago. All he could do was press on, or stop and rest and wait to die.
And so here he was, the famed assassin Clint Barton, lost and alone in a winter nightmare, breath and blizzard obscuring his view as he floundered through snow like Tony Stark through a sea of women. At least Tony was always dressed for the occasion -- Clint's bare arms were like snowflake magnets, and each flake seared cold into his body. He had lost feeling in his toes and he was fighting off the urge to curl up in the snow and sleep, but he knew that if he didn't keep on putting one foot in front of the other, Captain America would resume his role as a Capsicle, perhaps permanently. And so he set his chattering jaw and pressed on, as did the howling wind and the lashing snowflakes. Each footprint he left behind was rapidly swept away by the blizzard, leaving no trace of where he had come from; who knew if he was walking in circles or not? Clint's wrung-out mind began to wonder if he had just been wandering aimlessly a few blind feet from the wreckage, and if Tony and the others were frozen in the snow just steps away. He thought to scream, to call out for anything in the lonely wilderness, to perhaps wake up his sleeping comrades and save them from an early demise; but as he threw back his head and made himself known with all the pent-up fury of a grizzly bear, the howling wind took his call up into the sky and swallowed it, stamping out any hope of attracting attention to him.
It was his knees that went first, buckling under the seemingly-impossible weight of his body and dropping him into the snow. Even here, so far into his exhaustion that he was half-mad with it, he attempted to crawl on, numb fingers driving tiny tunnels into the snow that were quickly whisked away by the wind. He couldn't let the only living super-soldier become an ice cube again, and he couldn't let his crash cost the world's biggest weapons magnate his life. His exposed arms were wind-burnt and trembling, and the numbness in his feet had progressed up his shins to his boneless knees; it was only when he squinted past his snowflake-encrusted eyelashes to look at his palms, rubbed raw and bloody from the icy blanket he crawled through, that he relented.
His earpiece was silent. Except for his stuttering breathing and the constant whipping of the wind, everything was silent. The marksman lay in the snow, arms close to his chest and eyes encrusted shut as he awaited burial in some sort of snow-and-ice sarcophagus. He pitied his abandoned comrades, who would undoubtedly die in the snow as he was preparing to do, and he felt guilty that he had failed to rescue them from his own mistake. If he had any to spare, he would certainly shed some tears for them, but they had all gone into protecting his eyes from windburn and were now frozen on his cheeks. If only Natasha could see him now -- that would set a fire under him. She would probably call him an idiot for giving up so quickly, so easily, without a fight or even letting a single arrow fly; just that would be enough to get him out of the snow. For her, he would get up and run, even if he had two bloody stumps for feet...
"Da, quaesumus Dominus, ut in hora mortis nostrae Sacramentis refecti et culpis omnibus expiati, in sinum misericordiae tuae laeti suscipi mereamur. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen."
If he could freeze any further, he would have. He didn't know where the words had come from, but he knew the sickeningly-sweet voice that spoke them. How that person had known the recitation of the Prayer for a Happy Death, Clint couldn't begin to fathom; his heart skipped a beat and his breathing shuddered, the only signs of his sudden lapse into worry and disgust. Footsteps met his ears, sharp in the hard-packed snow, and before he could muster up the strength to prize his eyelids apart, he became aware of an ethereal blue light seeping in through his frozen lids as it refracted off the crystals sealing his eyes shut.
"Are you just going to give up here, Agent Barton?" The lilting tone of Loki's voice set his blood boiling, but with anger or fear he could not tell. He heard the Demigod shifting, heard snow crunching and felt the sudden closeness and warmth of his even breathing. "How does it feel to be deprived of the very sense you are named for?" the trickster whispered, and if he weren't so goddamn tired, Clint would lunge and snap his filthy little neck. All he could manage, much to his own chagrin, was a tiny growl out of lips painfully chapped by the blowing snow. There was a satisfied half-laugh, low and menacing, and suddenly, there were fingers on his eyelids, fingers that pried apart the ice with little care for Clint's comfort; he would not give Loki the satisfaction of a pained yelp, though it took considerable effort to hold it in, as his lids had been abused by the stinging flakes. He wasn't sure he would even want to open his eyes once all the ice was gone. Would he simply be witnessing his own death, or worse, his own possession?
"Poor Agent Barton, lost in the snow with friends to save and a debtor to find. If you stay here, you will do neither; you will die, Barton, if you just lie there in the snow. Is that what you want?" Loki's mocking, horribly singsong voice was still close to his ear, bearing down on him as the fingers scraped mercilessly at his eyelids. Clint hadn't wanted to give up; his body had made him give up. He didn't want to let his friends die, or to let Natasha slip through his fingers again. He had enough regrets about all the pain he had caused her and the rest of his teammates during his time under Loki's control. And now, the same Demigod that had tried to wage war on mankind was here in the snow, prizing apart his eyelids and jeering at him in his usual breathy, underhanded manner. What more was Loki going to do?
As if sensing the question, the trickster spoke, sounding much more serious this time: "I am going to offer you a chance." Clint heard snow crunching, then saw the blurred outline of the Demigod as he dared to crack open one eye. He looked much less sinister without that goddamned helmet and scepter, but there was something about him, his presence, his lewd half-smile, that earned an unpleasant shudder from the marksman; maybe it was the complicated and pristine Asgardian garb he wore, or maybe it was that the blowing snow and howling wind seemed to vanish as soon as he had appeared. The bluish light that had signaled his coming was from the waxing moon, which was now the only thing in the pitch-black sky except for a few distant stars; it was as if the blizzard had never happened.
"You see, I am a humble magician capable of a few tricks," Loki continued, face fair and placid as anything and most definitely a ruse to the marksman's well-trained eye. "I can save you from this hellish fate, if you'll let me. All you have to do is accept what I have to give you." Clint frowned inwardly, his face too frozen to make any movements: whatever few tricks Loki was capable of, he was sure they were numerous and powerful, and not to be trusted. He had seen what the trickster had done with the power of the Tesseract; if he wasn't careful, Clint could end up as another pawn in Loki's scheme, whatever that currently was. Even now, as he stood before the archer so coolly, looking for all the world a poised and genuine young man, Clint knew there was a writhing serpent behind the mask, waiting to poison him with promises only Loki's silver tongue could produce.
Evidently, the trickster noticed the marksman's trepidation despite his numb face.
Allies and Enemies:
Turncoat: I haven't forgotten what you did to me, what you made me do...and if I could feel my fingers, there'd be an arrow in your brain faster than you could say "shawarma". If I stay here, I will die...if I try to move on, I will die...I have no choice but to trust you, I suppose.Sabotage: Stop going off the grid! Even I can't follow you there. Its your fault that I'm in this mess; I swear, if I die, I'll find you and haunt you until the day you join me in the afterlife!
Coulson: It was terrible: I knew that you died, and that he killed you, but I didn't feel anything but muted satisfaction until I woke up from that nightmare. I've been completely robbed of my right to grieve for you because of what that bastard did to me!
Thunderbolt: Your brother's got a real way with himself. Be careful.
Lionheart: We're counting on you, Captain.
Addicted: Pass me some of whatever you're havin', pal. I could use a drink.
Irradiate: ...saying 'I'm sorry for making you Hulk out' won't mean much at this point, will it?
Sidekick: Cap's friend? I like your style. I hear you've spent some time with Natasha...
Credits:
Fanpet for Clinton Barton/Hawkeye from the films Thor and The Avengers (2012); I don't own the character, only the changes made to suit Subeta.Overlay by Folara.
Layout and coding by Charles.
Background art by kanapy.
Song lyrics: Still Counting by Volbeat
Prayer for a Happy Death: Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that in the hour of our death we may be refreshed by Thy holy Sacraments and delivered from all guilt, and so deserve to be received with joy into the arms of Thy mercy. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.