Orion put a hand flat against Sparkplug's shoulder plate and tried again, quieter this time, telling him they needed to get him somewhere with a roof over it and nothing coming out of the sky. Sparkplug didn't answer. His eyes stayed fixed on the fence, on the dark past it, like some part of him hadn't caught up yet to the fact that he'd already stopped moving toward it.
Latias's hand was still flat against his back. She didn't try to pull him up either. She stayed exactly where she was, letting the contact do whatever talking needed doing right now, and Orion took the hint and didn't push a second time.
Sparkplug's head came up first. Whatever had been coming apart in him telling Latias what happened seemed to pull back together all at once, settling into a harder line, and when his eyes finally landed on Orion instead of past him, there was nothing scattered left in his face at all.
"Are you going after him?"
He didn't dress it up with anything. No please, nothing meant to make it easier to answer. He just asked it and waited, claws still hooked in the dirt, like the answer was the only thing standing between him and whatever came next.
Orion opened his mouth and found nothing solid behind it. He said he didn't know yet. He said he didn't even know if anywhere was still worth looking, or whether going alone would help Tony at all instead of just handing Ultron a second person to deal with, and every word came out true and every one of them landed on Sparkplug wrong, worse than if he'd said nothing at all.
Sparkplug's jaw worked once. He didn't say anything back. He turned his head away instead, toward the fence again, and Orion understood that the silence now was worse than the question had been.
In the gap where neither of them was talking, a thought surfaced that had nothing to do with either of the two things pulling at him right now. Kamala. Barbara. Daisy and Rayshaun, the two SHIELD kids who'd earned their Pokémon fair instead of trying to buy them. People who could actually move, who weren't tied to a fence line the way he was tonight. He didn't know how he'd reach any of them right now, and the thought went nowhere, filed away next to everything else he didn't have time for.
Latias went rigid beside Sparkplug before Orion had time to sit with any of it, her head turning toward the east line a full second before anything out there confirmed it for him.
"The east fence is giving way," she said. "Whatever's left of it."
He followed her eyes and caught the movement past the tree line then, drones peeling off the main formation and angling toward the stretch that had already been thinning before tonight started.
One of them broke ahead of the rest and dove.
The same Forme that had gone down once already clearing the crowd met it head-on anyway, still favoring the one side, claws raking a gash across the drone's underside before it could pull up. The thing spun off trailing smoke into the dark instead of finishing its dive. A second drone came in low behind the first, and the Forme was already turning on the leg it couldn't fully trust, too slow to meet this one clean, and it caught the hit across the same shoulder instead of dodging.
It went down harder this time. The impact cracked across the courtyard.
"Pull one of the gate Formes over," Orion said, not moving from where he crouched. "The crowd's through, they're not needed there anymore."
He didn't wait to see if the order landed before Latias was already relaying it, her voice going distant and layered the way it did when she was talking to more than one mind at once. Orion stayed where he was, one hand still near Sparkplug's shoulder, and hated that this was what running a defense looked like right now, giving orders with his back half turned to the one thing he actually needed to be doing.
The downed Forme got back up again, slower than before, the shoulder plainly not holding, and stayed anyway.
Orion filed that away too, another line added to a column that was already running long, and didn't let any of it reach his face, because Sparkplug was still watching him, still waiting for whatever came after the question he hadn't answered. The drones peeled off, not so much retreating as losing interest, the whole formation banking east in one smooth, unbothered arc, the way a routine sweep moves to the next item on a list Orion had never been on to begin with.
He watched them go, watched the sky empty out one machine at a time, until the only sound left in the courtyard was Pikachu's cheeks discharging one last spark somewhere out on the west line.
The relief lasted exactly as long as it took him to understand what the quiet actually meant. There was nothing left to hide behind now, no work left to busy his hands with instead of looking at the one thing that had been waiting on him the whole time.
He looked at Sparkplug properly this time, not the way he'd been watching him for the last several minutes, keeping him upright and breathing while everything else pulled at his attention. He actually saw him now, the way a person sees someone they're about to owe an honest answer.
Nothing came.
He opened his mouth twice, and both times what tried to come out wasn't an answer, just the shape of one with nothing behind it yet, and both times he closed it again rather than hand Sparkplug something hollow. He moved his hand from Sparkplug's shoulder to the back of his neck instead, the same spot Sparkplug had always leaned into as a hatchling whenever Tony brought him by, and stayed there, close, saying with his hand what he still couldn't say out loud.
Latias's eyes found his over the top of Sparkplug's head. She didn't say anything either. She didn't need to.
Orion made himself do the count anyway, because somebody had to, and it wasn't going to be Sparkplug tonight. The Forme on the east line, down twice now, would need real time before it went back out. A stretch of fence that would hold until morning and probably not much past it. Home was fuller than it had been an hour ago, fuller than it had any real plan for, and every wave that had come through that gate tonight had been smaller than whatever was still sitting somewhere out past the city line, waiting its turn.
The number came out worse than he wanted it to. It usually did, lately.
He stood up slowly, one hand still resting against Sparkplug's neck until the last second he could keep it there, and crossed the last stretch to the gate alone. Home sat behind him, lit and holding, for now. The city sat ahead of him, darker than it had any right to be a week ago, and somewhere out in it was a version of tonight's answer that Orion still didn't have.
He stood there a while, not deciding anything.
Behind him, Sparkplug hadn't moved either.
***
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