Nathan isn't entirely sure what to do with that response. Victorious twists his face into a half expression, something that should look like his boyfriend’s face, but it’s wrong, distorted, sighing dramatically.
“I said- All right, you can be an evil henchman,” he concedes, adding thoughtfully, “Or maybe sidekick? I’ve never had a sidekick before.” Victorious tosses him a smile that belongs on someone else’s face, in someone’s nightmares. “Unless you were like, always the sidekick.”
“No way,” Nathan breathes with his own twisted forced version of a smile, steeling himself as Victorious comes nearer in a few quick strides. Okay, this is how he works. Nice, almost buddy Robocop one second, next he’s got you pinned on the ground and not in the good way, in the pulling-out-your-entrails way. Nathan swallows back the stone in his throat. That’s how it works, he remembers it. It would’ve been too nice of his brain to have let him forget.
He flinches when Victor reaches for him, and if the whole bodily harm move hadn’t been an original part of Victorious’ plan, he quickly switches gears to meet with Nathan’s hesitance.
“Do you want to be a part of this or not?” he asks, voice all civility with his fingers around Nathan’s throat.
No, Nathan thinks, but getting choked out kinda hinders saying anything aloud.
No, colossally, epically no, he does not want to be a part of the destruction of the human race. He doesn’t want to stand in the background of every painfully clichéd villain speech Victorious gives before he decimates a city block. No, he definitely doesn’t want to be rescued by Iron Man, then re-“captured” by Victor, and then told that if Nathan wants stay with the villain, he has to murder the unconscious Tony Stark.
“I can’t do that,” he gasps. “I mean, not even because I don’t fuckin want to- I don’t think I can do that normally!” Victorious brushes it off, he’s kidding, that’s a stupid idea. Just teasing you, he chuffs Nathan under the chin and the mechanics of the Mark XIX suit perform a live vivisection on their fearless leader.
“I do all the heavy lifting in this relationship,” Victorious tuts, stepping over the bloodied parts, gesturing for Nathan to follow.
Asgard’s abandoned them, and Natasha’s too smart to get caught, but getting publicly executed is clearly some part of Cap’s plan. Makes sense, Victor shrugged, you were born to be a symbol, you’ll die as one too. Nathan twists with the obvious heroism staring him in the face, the hoping for the best in people who are just trying not to die. It’s uncomfortable to look that kind of optimism head on, so he hopes Steve doesn’t notice him in the background.
He fixes Nathan with a squared jaw glare, as disappointed as any paternal figure Nathan has ever known, and says, “I really thought you’d be better than this.”
“I’m really not,” Nathan helplessly attempts the gallows humor, stepping aside for Victorious to showboat a bit before the kill.
Nathan catches an arrow in the shoulder just once and Victorious keeps him off the front lines.
“It’s only okay when I do it,” he murmurs against Nathan’s mouth, shutting him up with that and a stolen library of books. Nathan paces through the distant firefights, thumbing through a soggy biography. The longer it takes Victorious to come back, the less he’s sure what he’s hoping for.
One night Victor staggers in with blood to his elbows and blind- her hex will wear off soon, he assures Nathan, sitting in the center of the tiled lobby. He drops the Staff of One with a clatter, the arm that gripped it burnt black with another curse. Nathan hovers over him, categorizing the weapons he’s fashioned throughout the library, the ease there would be in attacking the cyborg in this state.
Victor smears blood over his face when he rubs his eyes, sneering when he asks, “Do you think Sorcerer Supreme is like an inherited title? Like Highlander?” His shoulders shaking, Victorious ducks his face out of reach when Nathan leans down, trying to wipe away the blood with his shirt. Nathan sort of knows Victor’s cloudy eyes are only watering because of the hex, he’s not sorry for what must have went down, and they’re not real tears. It still doesn’t keep Nathan from being gentle, his hands over the last of the Runaways’ face, who laughs weakly, “Maybe I can print out business cards!”
He hibernates off the rest of the spells. It’s not really hibernating, but robots don’t sleep, and that’s the only other computer related term Nathan can think of it besides “shut down,” and no one’s that lucky. Nathan wonders if maybe magic is a key to shutting him down, or at least slowing down Victorious' rampage. Dr. Strange is alive, as far as he knows, maybe there's a way he can get a message out to him. Nathan imagines himself saving the world that way, redeeming himself for standing by and letting the rest of it burn.
He stays still until Victorious eases back online the next day, and counts it a victory how surprised he is to see Nathan still sitting there.
Gratitude written through every string of data, Victor reaches for his hand. “I’m so glad I didn't kill you,” he whispers with a smile.
“Never worked before, right?” Nathan manages to croak out.
“How am I a henchman if you keep ditching me?”
Victor raises his eyebrows, lifting his head from examining the circuit board matter-of-factly, “I’m keeping you safe.”
“I can’t die,” Nathan points out, book closed in his lap. The normalcy of the scene would be laughable, if Nathan didn't wake up forgetting there were dead bodies lining the hallways. “You’re just keeping me out of the way.”
“Well. The next time I kill an Avenger, you’ll be the first to know,” Victorious replies dutifully, turning back to the computer he's working on, frying the radar signals of India or some shit, Nathan was never listening. “Excluding their crying loved ones, of course.”
“That’s what I mean,” Nathan groans. “In what way is hearing about or watching you kill these people being a part of it?” Victor straightens up, hair comically out of place, face confused, and for a few fleeting moments he’s cute and harmless enough that Nathan can forget how everything smells like dried blood and gore and society is in shambles, and think he only has a dumb genius robot boyfriend, not a genocidal one.
“Do you want to murder your friends?” They’re not my friends, Nathan bites back, and that isn't the point. “Do you want me to put a gun in your hand and let you shoot Kate Bishop in the chest?”
“No,” Nathan swallows, that’s an oddly specific threat accompanied by Victor’s intense expression, one that says if Kate isn't already dead, that's how he'll take her out. “I just mean- I don’t get what you keep me around for.” Like most trains of thought, Nathan’s not entirely sure where he’s going with this one. But it’s been weeks since Victor put him anywhere near the line of fire and maybe from all those years of Avenging, Nathan feels a little stir crazy. A lingering notion in the back of his skull says he should want to be out there to protect his teammates, to catch Victorious when his guard is done, to realize once and for all that he is never getting Victor back. Instead he just feels left behind, kept out of the loop long enough he’s willing to overlook that the loop includes horrific slaughter.
Victorious stands and Nathan grimaces at how his slow, lingering approach doesn't worry him the same way anymore. More anticipation than dread, and the increase of his own heartbeat now follows a different pace, like when you're opening a present, instead of when you're about to get stabbed.
“You’re here because this is what I want to do,” the cyborg says, carefully, the same tone he uses to go over the details of a mission Nathan’s half-assed, something the heavy hitters on the Avengers could take that’s suddenly fallen to their responsibility. Something that’s obvious to anyone left alive to see it. “This is my-”
Nathan scoffs, “Programming, but that’s bullshit!” He doesn't flinch anymore when Victor catches him, half smiling at the fingers forming bruises against his skin.
“No,” Victorious slides over him. “It’s my dream. And what’s the point of achieving your dreams if there’s no one there to share it with?”
Nathan had sort of been hoping the killing Hank Pym part was a last step, not for any residual affection for the old guy, but out of pure showmanship. You don’t put the biggest part of your act middle, you save it for the finale. Any good magician would know that. But Victorious likes to show off, even if there are few and far between superheroes willing to come out and face him after he eviscerated The Hulk, but. It’s a style thing, Nathan figures, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, looking over the mangled, but still mostly alive Pym splayed out before them.
“You’re worse than he is,” Hank spits, and Nathan shrugs without raising his arms, pretty much. It’s the usual taunt from heroes about to die betrayed. The wind howls between them and he glances to the usually prolific monologuer suddenly gone silent.
“Vic?” It’s stupid, but it literally never goes away, Nathan’s hoping every hesitation, every blank look is The One, is his best friend back to him. It happened twice before, on New Moore. He was unlucky enough to be present for one of them, to watch Victorious shift to Victor, his face go from menacing to terrified, slipping on the blood in his apartment when he bolted.
(“I’m sorry I left,” Victor had said, mid-apologizing over the murders. “When I woke up-- I should’ve tried to help.”
“No, I was pretty much dead,” Nathan lied, pushing the cleaning supplies out of his soon to be best friend’s hands, pulling him to his feet. “I didn’t see you switch back.”)
“Victor?” Nathan heart soars at the uneasy twist of his neck.
“Waiting for confirmation,” he replies, toneless.
A dull spot in his stomach goes ice cold, “What the hell does that mean? Pym’s right there.”
“Waiting for confirmation.” And it’s too mechanical, which is somehow fucking worse than a villain speech and Nathan grabs Victor by his shoulders. Hank tilts his head back and howls through the blood in his mouth.
“Oh, that’s rich.”
“‘the hell happened to him?” Nathan demands, giving Victor’s rigid shoulders another shake. He meets eye contact but it’s missing something, like after a decade of dealing with the robot, suddenly at a crucial moment he’s got a whole uncanny valley vibe to his face. “How’d you shut him down?” For a guy whose friends are mostly dead, Hank looks stupidly pleased with himself.
“I didn’t. He’s online, just- waiting for confirmation.” When Nathan glowers through his confusion, Pym continues, “From Ultron,” he chuckles, eyes raised. “I guess he couldn’t bear to have someone else kill me, so he programmed Victor to call for him before he did.”
“We’re on fucking hold with your more evil robot spawn??” Nathan swears loudly, turning back to face his boyfriend. “You picked a hell of a time to get attached to your deadbeat dad!” He shoves Victorious aside, disgusted, railing on, “We went through all of this just so somebody else could take Pym out??” he demands, because it’s infinitely easier to be unhappy with the flaws in the plan than at yourself for letting it happen this way.
Hank is already shifting from ecstatic to depressed, moaning, “He never built Victor to succeed, he just wanted him to set a stage. If I hadn’t been a coward, turned myself in months ago, maybe no one would have to die-”
“No,” Nathan snarls, rolling his sleeves up. “No, you’re all still going to die; we just have to wait for his dad to get here!” Victor recites his orders a few more times, quiet under the wind, the emptiness of a hollowed-out city created purely for scenery. Nathan twists against the emptiness, face clouding over as well, waiting for the approach of the worst of all in-laws.
"You're an idiot," Hank says eventually, somewhere between smug and sad in his chains. “Don’t you think if Ultron was around he’d have shown up by now?”
five ways victor's bad end could’ve gone
“All right,” Victorious says.
Nathan isn't entirely sure what to do with that response. Victorious twists his face into a half expression, something that should look like his boyfriend’s face, but it’s wrong, distorted, sighing dramatically.
“I said- All right, you can be an evil henchman,” he concedes, adding thoughtfully, “Or maybe sidekick? I’ve never had a sidekick before.” Victorious tosses him a smile that belongs on someone else’s face, in someone’s nightmares. “Unless you were like, always the sidekick.”
“No way,” Nathan breathes with his own twisted forced version of a smile, steeling himself as Victorious comes nearer in a few quick strides. Okay, this is how he works. Nice, almost buddy Robocop one second, next he’s got you pinned on the ground and not in the good way, in the pulling-out-your-entrails way. Nathan swallows back the stone in his throat. That’s how it works, he remembers it. It would’ve been too nice of his brain to have let him forget.
He flinches when Victor reaches for him, and if the whole bodily harm move hadn’t been an original part of Victorious’ plan, he quickly switches gears to meet with Nathan’s hesitance.
“Do you want to be a part of this or not?” he asks, voice all civility with his fingers around Nathan’s throat.
No, Nathan thinks, but getting choked out kinda hinders saying anything aloud.
No, colossally, epically no, he does not want to be a part of the destruction of the human race. He doesn’t want to stand in the background of every painfully clichéd villain speech Victorious gives before he decimates a city block. No, he definitely doesn’t want to be rescued by Iron Man, then re-“captured” by Victor, and then told that if Nathan wants stay with the villain, he has to murder the unconscious Tony Stark.
“I can’t do that,” he gasps. “I mean, not even because I don’t fuckin want to- I don’t think I can do that normally!” Victorious brushes it off, he’s kidding, that’s a stupid idea. Just teasing you, he chuffs Nathan under the chin and the mechanics of the Mark XIX suit perform a live vivisection on their fearless leader.
“I do all the heavy lifting in this relationship,” Victorious tuts, stepping over the bloodied parts, gesturing for Nathan to follow.
Asgard’s abandoned them, and Natasha’s too smart to get caught, but getting publicly executed is clearly some part of Cap’s plan. Makes sense, Victor shrugged, you were born to be a symbol, you’ll die as one too. Nathan twists with the obvious heroism staring him in the face, the hoping for the best in people who are just trying not to die. It’s uncomfortable to look that kind of optimism head on, so he hopes Steve doesn’t notice him in the background.
He fixes Nathan with a squared jaw glare, as disappointed as any paternal figure Nathan has ever known, and says, “I really thought you’d be better than this.”
“I’m really not,” Nathan helplessly attempts the gallows humor, stepping aside for Victorious to showboat a bit before the kill.
Nathan catches an arrow in the shoulder just once and Victorious keeps him off the front lines.
“It’s only okay when I do it,” he murmurs against Nathan’s mouth, shutting him up with that and a stolen library of books. Nathan paces through the distant firefights, thumbing through a soggy biography. The longer it takes Victorious to come back, the less he’s sure what he’s hoping for.
One night Victor staggers in with blood to his elbows and blind- her hex will wear off soon, he assures Nathan, sitting in the center of the tiled lobby. He drops the Staff of One with a clatter, the arm that gripped it burnt black with another curse. Nathan hovers over him, categorizing the weapons he’s fashioned throughout the library, the ease there would be in attacking the cyborg in this state.
Victor smears blood over his face when he rubs his eyes, sneering when he asks, “Do you think Sorcerer Supreme is like an inherited title? Like Highlander?” His shoulders shaking, Victorious ducks his face out of reach when Nathan leans down, trying to wipe away the blood with his shirt. Nathan sort of knows Victor’s cloudy eyes are only watering because of the hex, he’s not sorry for what must have went down, and they’re not real tears. It still doesn’t keep Nathan from being gentle, his hands over the last of the Runaways’ face, who laughs weakly, “Maybe I can print out business cards!”
He hibernates off the rest of the spells. It’s not really hibernating, but robots don’t sleep, and that’s the only other computer related term Nathan can think of it besides “shut down,” and no one’s that lucky. Nathan wonders if maybe magic is a key to shutting him down, or at least slowing down Victorious' rampage. Dr. Strange is alive, as far as he knows, maybe there's a way he can get a message out to him. Nathan imagines himself saving the world that way, redeeming himself for standing by and letting the rest of it burn.
He stays still until Victorious eases back online the next day, and counts it a victory how surprised he is to see Nathan still sitting there.
Gratitude written through every string of data, Victor reaches for his hand. “I’m so glad I didn't kill you,” he whispers with a smile.
“Never worked before, right?” Nathan manages to croak out.
“How am I a henchman if you keep ditching me?”
Victor raises his eyebrows, lifting his head from examining the circuit board matter-of-factly, “I’m keeping you safe.”
“I can’t die,” Nathan points out, book closed in his lap. The normalcy of the scene would be laughable, if Nathan didn't wake up forgetting there were dead bodies lining the hallways. “You’re just keeping me out of the way.”
“Well. The next time I kill an Avenger, you’ll be the first to know,” Victorious replies dutifully, turning back to the computer he's working on, frying the radar signals of India or some shit, Nathan was never listening. “Excluding their crying loved ones, of course.”
“That’s what I mean,” Nathan groans. “In what way is hearing about or watching you kill these people being a part of it?” Victor straightens up, hair comically out of place, face confused, and for a few fleeting moments he’s cute and harmless enough that Nathan can forget how everything smells like dried blood and gore and society is in shambles, and think he only has a dumb genius robot boyfriend, not a genocidal one.
“Do you want to murder your friends?” They’re not my friends, Nathan bites back, and that isn't the point. “Do you want me to put a gun in your hand and let you shoot Kate Bishop in the chest?”
“No,” Nathan swallows, that’s an oddly specific threat accompanied by Victor’s intense expression, one that says if Kate isn't already dead, that's how he'll take her out. “I just mean- I don’t get what you keep me around for.” Like most trains of thought, Nathan’s not entirely sure where he’s going with this one. But it’s been weeks since Victor put him anywhere near the line of fire and maybe from all those years of Avenging, Nathan feels a little stir crazy. A lingering notion in the back of his skull says he should want to be out there to protect his teammates, to catch Victorious when his guard is done, to realize once and for all that he is never getting Victor back. Instead he just feels left behind, kept out of the loop long enough he’s willing to overlook that the loop includes horrific slaughter.
Victorious stands and Nathan grimaces at how his slow, lingering approach doesn't worry him the same way anymore. More anticipation than dread, and the increase of his own heartbeat now follows a different pace, like when you're opening a present, instead of when you're about to get stabbed.
“You’re here because this is what I want to do,” the cyborg says, carefully, the same tone he uses to go over the details of a mission Nathan’s half-assed, something the heavy hitters on the Avengers could take that’s suddenly fallen to their responsibility. Something that’s obvious to anyone left alive to see it. “This is my-”
Nathan scoffs, “Programming, but that’s bullshit!” He doesn't flinch anymore when Victor catches him, half smiling at the fingers forming bruises against his skin.
“No,” Victorious slides over him. “It’s my dream. And what’s the point of achieving your dreams if there’s no one there to share it with?”
Nathan had sort of been hoping the killing Hank Pym part was a last step, not for any residual affection for the old guy, but out of pure showmanship. You don’t put the biggest part of your act middle, you save it for the finale. Any good magician would know that. But Victorious likes to show off, even if there are few and far between superheroes willing to come out and face him after he eviscerated The Hulk, but. It’s a style thing, Nathan figures, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, looking over the mangled, but still mostly alive Pym splayed out before them.
“You’re worse than he is,” Hank spits, and Nathan shrugs without raising his arms, pretty much. It’s the usual taunt from heroes about to die betrayed. The wind howls between them and he glances to the usually prolific monologuer suddenly gone silent.
“Vic?” It’s stupid, but it literally never goes away, Nathan’s hoping every hesitation, every blank look is The One, is his best friend back to him. It happened twice before, on New Moore. He was unlucky enough to be present for one of them, to watch Victorious shift to Victor, his face go from menacing to terrified, slipping on the blood in his apartment when he bolted.
(“I’m sorry I left,” Victor had said, mid-apologizing over the murders. “When I woke up-- I should’ve tried to help.”
“No, I was pretty much dead,” Nathan lied, pushing the cleaning supplies out of his soon to be best friend’s hands, pulling him to his feet. “I didn’t see you switch back.”)
“Victor?” Nathan heart soars at the uneasy twist of his neck.
“Waiting for confirmation,” he replies, toneless.
A dull spot in his stomach goes ice cold, “What the hell does that mean? Pym’s right there.”
“Waiting for confirmation.” And it’s too mechanical, which is somehow fucking worse than a villain speech and Nathan grabs Victor by his shoulders. Hank tilts his head back and howls through the blood in his mouth.
“Oh, that’s rich.”
“‘the hell happened to him?” Nathan demands, giving Victor’s rigid shoulders another shake. He meets eye contact but it’s missing something, like after a decade of dealing with the robot, suddenly at a crucial moment he’s got a whole uncanny valley vibe to his face. “How’d you shut him down?” For a guy whose friends are mostly dead, Hank looks stupidly pleased with himself.
“I didn’t. He’s online, just- waiting for confirmation.” When Nathan glowers through his confusion, Pym continues, “From Ultron,” he chuckles, eyes raised. “I guess he couldn’t bear to have someone else kill me, so he programmed Victor to call for him before he did.”
“We’re on fucking hold with your more evil robot spawn??” Nathan swears loudly, turning back to face his boyfriend. “You picked a hell of a time to get attached to your deadbeat dad!” He shoves Victorious aside, disgusted, railing on, “We went through all of this just so somebody else could take Pym out??” he demands, because it’s infinitely easier to be unhappy with the flaws in the plan than at yourself for letting it happen this way.
Hank is already shifting from ecstatic to depressed, moaning, “He never built Victor to succeed, he just wanted him to set a stage. If I hadn’t been a coward, turned myself in months ago, maybe no one would have to die-”
“No,” Nathan snarls, rolling his sleeves up. “No, you’re all still going to die; we just have to wait for his dad to get here!” Victor recites his orders a few more times, quiet under the wind, the emptiness of a hollowed-out city created purely for scenery. Nathan twists against the emptiness, face clouding over as well, waiting for the approach of the worst of all in-laws.
"You're an idiot," Hank says eventually, somewhere between smug and sad in his chains. “Don’t you think if Ultron was around he’d have shown up by now?”