Unknownfate
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Chapter 96
🕑 Added 2025-04-12 19:37:03 +0000 UTCThe next morning, we didn’t stick around for long. Kilgrave’s body had been found, so we needed to leave before anyone connected that with us.
“Alright, Mordred, remember to behave yourself this time.” I warned him one last time as I started fiddling with the TemPad.
Mordred groaned. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
I gave her a look. “You started smashing up his wine and all his toys.”
“Details,” she muttered, crossing her arms. “Besides, he deserved it.”
Jessica stood and looked nervous and unsure of what to do. But she was clean and did look more alert and alive than last night.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She nodded slowly. “Just… getting used to the idea that I can leave. That I’m not going to hear his voice again.” Her gaze lingered on the window.
“Alright, I got the location, let's go.” I said before opening the yellow square portal.
Mordred wasted no moment before she stepped through it, disappearing from the room.
Jessica, however, seemed shocked and afraid. And why wouldn’t she? Portals weren’t something you saw every day.
“This is it, you can back out, or follow us.” I said as I stepped through on my own. Not willing to let Mordred be alone for too long. I wouldn’t want to step through and find Stark without a head on his shoulders.
Jessica was left standing alone in that small room. The room in which the person who turned her life into a living nightmare had died. Even now, she could smell the blood in the air.
Here, her life had been saved, and it had been turned upside down. She knew about Camelot and Albion; she had seen it on the news and heard Kilgrave talk about it.
Never in her wildest dreams had she expected she would meet the legendary king Arthur, or dreamt that Arthur was a beautiful woman. Or that Mordred was a tomboyish girl.
Truly, everything had been so confusing, happened so fast.
She looked back at the portal.
The glowing yellow frame pulsed gently in the air like a heartbeat. It was strange—unnatural—but also warm. Inviting. And terrifying.
Jessica clenched her jaw.
She could stay. Go back to surviving day by day. Back to loneliness. Back to the silence he left behind.
Or she could step forward.
Into chaos.
Into something new.
Into freedom.
With one last look at the stained carpet, Jessica took a breath, tightened her grip on her coat, and stepped through.
The air changed instantly.
From a dingy hotel room to polished glass, steel, and luxury. Jessica stumbled forward into the entrance hall of Stark’s home. Her boots clicked against the marble floor.
“Unauthorized entry detected,” a posh voice announced. “Please state your business.”
She flinched again. “What—”
“Relax, it’s just JARVIS,” Mordred said, already halfway across the room. “He’s mostly harmless.”
Jessica turned to see both of them standing casually as if this were routine. Arthuria offered her a nod.
“Welcome to a new start.”
After greeting Jessica, I turned my attention to JARVIS. “Please inform Stark that we have arrived, though I suspect you have already done so.”
“Mr Stark is on his way. I have been asked that you keep Sir Mordred on a leash.” The British voice came, with an unexpected amount of emotion.
I hadn’t given it much thought last time, but for an AI, JARVIS was able to at least simulate emotion really well, sounding like an actual living person, who could feel nervous if the situation demanded it.
Which it often did with Mordred around.
Even I often felt as such, though that was mostly because I worried that she would cause a problem, rather than me or her being in trouble.
Jessica stayed near the entrance, her arms stiff at her sides, eyes scanning the modern architecture like it might collapse at any moment.
“This place is… something else,” she muttered, taking in the floor-to-ceiling windows, the ocean view beyond, and the sleek blend of genius and ego that defined Stark’s entire aesthetic.
“Yeah,” Mordred said, glancing up. “Bit soulless, could use a few armours and weapons on the walls, some paintings as well.” She looked at a modern sculpture, one different from the duck-like one from last time. “That’s supposed to be better?”
“Please refrain from touching the artwork,” JARVIS said dryly.
“No promises,” Mordred replied, already reaching toward it.
I gave her a warning glance.
Then, footsteps echoed on the stairs.
Jessica straightened like she was caught somewhere she shouldn’t be.
Tony Stark entered wearing a robe, sunglasses, and the kind of confidence that came from money, power, and not enough sleep. He had a coffee mug in one hand and a tablet in the other.
“Well, if it isn’t royalty and her personal demolition crew,” he said, without missing a beat.
His gaze moved from me to Mordred, then settled on Jessica.
“And you brought a guest,” he added, eyebrows lifting slightly. “Let me guess—more trouble?”
“She’s recovering,” I replied. “Don’t poke at her.”
Jessica looked like she was trying to decide whether to glare at him or hide behind me.
Tony raised his hands. “Hey, hey—cool it. No poking. I’m just trying to figure out if I need to hide my whiskey or the prototype suits.”
“Hey! I take offence to that,” Mordred complained, but was ignored.
He set the mug down and turned to me. “So, any chance you are willing to explain how you entered and left my place like that? Some kind of portal magic I guess?” He couldn’t help but ask, his curiosity that of a cat.
“Not magic, purely tech, though I hardly understand that kind of thing, so it might as well be.” I said evenly, watching him, seeing if anything about him had changed.
And he did seem slightly different.
I suspected he had gotten some closure about his father, even without that videotape.
“Tech, you say? Who invented teleportation technology?” He asked, now far more interested. After all, he might be curious about magic, but his passion was in technology.
“I know what you want.” I replied. “But this isn’t something I can let you play with, the risk of you breaking it is too great.”
Tony put a hand on his chest. “Break it? Me? I’m hurt.”
He might try to act playful, but I could see that he only got more interested in the TemPad.
“It’s a trophy, from someone not from Earth, so I’m afraid I can’t afford to lose it. When you become an expert in alien and teleportation technology, I might let you have a look.”
He seemed ever more eager to pounce at the chance to study alien technology, but thankfully, the loud sound of something crashing to the floor distracted him, causing him to turn towards the sound, and Mordred kicked the remains of a large art piece.
Tony froze. His head slowly turned toward the shattered modern sculpture now in several uneven chunks on the floor.
Mordred stood proudly next to the wreckage, hands on her hips. “It was crooked. Offended my sense of balance.”
“That piece was worth—” JARVIS began, voice tight.
“Nothing,” Mordred cut in. “It looked like a melted fork.”
Tony exhaled through his nose, pinched the bridge of it. “Okay. Okay. I haven’t had breakfast yet, I’ve barely had coffee, and now I’ve got a headache.”
“Mordred, sit down, and JARVIS, please get us some food, that should keep Mordred from breaking anything else.” I said as I took control of the situation. “Jessica, watch Mordred, please.” I assigned the poor girl a difficult job.
But I figured that it would do her good, give her something to do, some purpose, and more so, rather than being controlled, give her control of a situation.
As soon as food was served and Mordred began stuffing her face like a starved barbarian, I quietly rose to my feet.
“Stark,” I said.
He glanced at me, still rubbing his temple. “Yeah?”
“Walk with me.”
He looked at the pile of destroyed sculpture, then at Mordred, then finally at Jessica—who gave a helpless shrug as if to say Don’t look at me, I’m not her keeper.
Tony sighed. “Sure. Why not. It’s not like I was using this morning for peace and quiet.”
We stepped outside to the balcony. The glass doors sealed behind us, muffling Mordred’s muffled laughter as she tried to get Jessica to eat more.
The ocean stretched out before us, blue and endless.
“You’ve been busy,” Tony said, arms folded. “Three days ago, you vanished through a golden hole in my wall. Since then, we’ve had thirteen confirmed deaths across Hell’s Kitchen. Criminals. Gang members. Thugs.”
He turned toward me now, face unreadable. “Let me guess—you and Mordred decided New York needed a little purging.”
I said nothing.
“I mean, I could buy that it’s coincidence,” he continued. “If I were an idiot. But I’m not. So how about we skip to the part where you tell me why two mythic warriors came to my country, my city, and decided to go full dark-ages justice in my backyard?”
“I’m not here to be interrogated by you, Stark, I’m here for what we agreed upon,” I said coldly.
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “My bad, I’m just curious, you know. I doubt you would have done that for no reason, I mean, first you spend time at the casino, winning big, and then you murder people, you gotta admit, it's strange behavior.”
“I do not murder,” I said flatly. “I pass judgment. There is a difference.”
Tony let out a soft scoff, resting his elbows on the railing. “Yeah, that sounds like something a cult leader would say.”
I didn’t rise to the bait. “Do you think the people we dealt with were misunderstood souls? Wayward kids who just needed a second chance?”
“I think there are courts,” he replied. “There are laws. You don’t get to just decide who lives and dies.”
“Let me remind you that I am a god, and as such, I can pass judgment and decide who lives and dies. But if it reassures you, those people had earned their death many times over, I’m sure you heard the news as well, the blind slaves, the children in the van.” I didn’t feel like explaining myself, but I still did so.
If only because I knew that Stark could become annoying if he wanted to.
That shut him up.
I let the silence hang between us for a moment, let the weight of it settle.
“You think I wanted to get involved?” I continued. “I came to this country for a simple trade. But evil doesn’t wait politely for kings to finish their errands. It festers in alleys and basements, and sometimes the only way to clean it out is with a sword.”
Tony turned his gaze back to the ocean. He didn’t argue. Not right away.
Eventually, he muttered, “You could’ve called me. You’re not exactly alone in this.”
“You had another job to do: gather what I asked, research the new element. Tell me, how did that go?” I asked, changing the subject.
Tony didn’t answer immediately. He tapped the railing of the balcony with his fingers.
“I found it,” he said finally. “The element my father designed. It was real. Hidden in plain sight at the Expo model, just like you said.”
I inclined my head slightly. “And?”
“Well, that’s about it. I mean, you gave me three days, and I can’t do much in that time. I gathered everything about the large reactor—everything needed to build and run it, though you will likely need to train people.”
“As for the element, I have worked a little on it, but haven’t had proper time to try and synthesize it yet, though according to JARVIS, it's impossible to do, which means it's difficult, very difficult.” He continued.
“Well, I guess that will have to be enough.” I wasn’t sure if he would have made the new element, the movie kinda skipped over the work it took him, so I had no idea how long it would take.
“So, with that out of the way, who is the girl? Another knight?” He asked, to which I could only sigh.
“No,” I said, watching the waves for a second longer before turning back to face him. “She’s not a knight.”
Tony raised a brow. “But you’re keeping her close.”
“She’s someone who was broken,” I said. “Not by a battle. By a man.”
Tony’s smirk faded, curiosity replacing it. “Someone you know?”
“Not before,” I replied. “He had control over her. Mind control. Not magic. The result of experiments.”
Tony stared at me, processing that. “I trust you killed him.”
“No,” I said. “Mordred did. Very thoroughly.”
Tony exhaled. “Damn. And I thought I knew what it was like to be kidnapped and forced to do something against your will, but mind control, that’s frightening.”
I couldn’t blame him for feeling that way. Mind control was, without a doubt, the most hated power in the world, in any and all worlds.
Tony glanced toward the glass doors again. “What do you plan to do with her?”
I followed his gaze through the glass, to where Jessica sat beside Mordred. She looked wary but present. Engaged, if only barely. Not lost in herself.
“I don’t know, I figured I would shove her off to you, you got the money, the connections to help her.” I said, shamelessly.
Tony gave me a look. Not a hard one, not amused either. Just… flat.
“Wow,” he said, “You don’t even pretend to ease into it.”
“I thought blunt honesty was your language.”
He pointed a data storage device at me. “It is. I just don’t usually get served a human being with my breakfast.”
“Surprise!” I said with the flattest humor I could muster, and I think it came out well.
He looked back inside, where Jessica was awkwardly swatting Mordred’s hand away from trying to add bacon to her plate.
“She doesn’t look like someone who wants charity.”
“She doesn’t,” I agreed. “But what she does want—she doesn’t know yet.”
Tony was quiet again. A breath passed.
“…Alright,” he said, reluctant but not unwilling. “But I want to know what you were after in New York.”
(End of chapter)
So yeah, the new element, in the film, it wasn’t shown how long it could. But it can’t have been easy, if it was, JARVIS wouldn’t have said it was impossible. So it likely took a bit. And poor Stark, lost another piece of art, he really might as well not bother.
Jessica is still trying to find herself, but I will help the poor girl, she won’t end up as depressed as in her own show.
How could she when she has the eternal ray of sunshine that is Mordred around her?
