BAD ENDS

One popular feature of modern video games are Bad Ends, endings alternate to the main storyline that you get if you fail to complete some of the objectives or die during certain battles. Some Bad Ends are also influenced by the player character's choices: if they do or do not do certain things at pivotal moments, that affects what kind of ending they get. Here are a couple of Bad Ends that the Avengers could have gotten at the end of the Labyrinth, if they had made other choices.

PLEASE NOTE: these are not the 'Official' endings for the other Avengers aside from Steve. They are only POSSIBLE endings.

-BAD END #1: THOR

The heart-hill was as large as a great hall, but squat and ugly as a troll's den; lumpy and asymmetrical, with grey walls that had an oddly shiny look to them that did not invite touch. The walls throbbed and contracted with each beat, trembling and glistening with unnatural vitality. Thor walked around the edifice, seeking a way inside.

He came around a corner to the end of the structure and there, set into the wall of the monstrous heart, was a door. A plain metal door with steel hinges and a lever-style handle, with no window, sign or lettering of any type to indicate where it might have come from. It looked bizarrely out of place, perfectly square and plain-faced metal door set into the side of the quivering monstrosity.

Thor stepped forward and tried the handle, but it refused to budge: locked. He tried to force it, putting all his strength into breaking the bolt of the lock, but there was not even a hint of give. He unslung Mjolnir from his belt and slammed it against the lock, then against the door itself, but didn't even manage to chip the paint.

Incredulous, Thor swung again and again, increasing the force of the blow until he was putting all his power into each swing. This could not be! Nothing on Midgard should have been able to stand against Mjolnir like this; there was very little even in his father's realm that could withstand the might of the star-hammer. Yet there was not even a dent in the door or its frame.

Then the screaming began.

Even muffled by the walls between them, even distorted as it was by agony and distance, Thor knew that voice - there was no way he could not have known it. "Loki!" he bellowed, slamming once more against the door. His brother was inside there, somewhere, screaming with the hoarse note of pure agony - and Thor could not reach him. "Loki, where are you? I am here! Let me in!"

The screaming did not abate. He went almost berserk then, driven by the sound of his brother's pain: smashing Mjolnir against the lock, the door, the wall, even the ground beneath it in a frantic search for some entry. He dropped the hammer and threw himself bodily against the door, slamming his shoulder against it until it ached, punching the metal with his fists until his knuckles cracked. He even scratched at the hinges, the seams around the door, until his fingers painted lines of blood against the gunmetal gray, all to no avail.

A sudden memory pierced the haze of bloodlust, an image bursting on him with almost calm clarity: the empty locker, in the basement of the factory far above, containing nothing but a single glinting key. The key which Thor had ignored and passed over, confident in his belief that there was no door which could stand against Mjolnir.

And now he sat here at the bottom of the world, clawing at the door that he could not unlock, while on the other side of the door his brother screamed in unending torment. Despair overtook him, and Thor sagged to his knees, fingers dragging red streaks down the door. "Loki..."

-BAD END #2: CLINT

Clint walked around the last corner and stepped into the room, bow held at the ready. He was nearing the center of this thing - he knew it. He only had one arrow left, and he meant to make this one count.

It was a big room, almost a cavern, with the ceiling well above his head and empty echoing space all around. From the ceiling hung more of those trailing growths, descending from the ceiling like a stalactite, a tangled mess of smooth tubes and pitted surfaces. Half-buried within the surface of the thing - clutched like a jellyfish entangled its prey - was a tumbled mass of human bones and slime. One staring eye socket winked at him emptily; the other was pierced through by a tentacle that had grown into the aperture, holding the skull firmly in place.

And then a voice spoke.

"Ah, Hawk." The voice was dry as two old bones rubbing together. "So you made it all this way. I did wonder if it would be you - or my brother, of course."

A cold chill shot down Clint's spine, the voice going right to some deep-wired part of his brain. Enemy, whispered one instinct, warring with the other, traitorous one that whispered: master.

The body hung head-down, the last few scraps of black straggling hair dangling into the air, and the legs and lower half of the body disappeared into the tangled growth attached to the ceiling. The skin was chalk-white and waxy, the flesh withered down to the very bones, but he still knew that face, knew it as well as he knew the voice that spoke again. "The others may underestimate you," the voice continued. "After all, you are only a mere mortal, with no special powers or equipment to aid you. But you and I, we know better, hmmm?"

"Loki," Clint's voice grated, and he raised his bow. "I should have known it would be you. Anything this ruined, this corrupted, the fucking world going crazy around us - I should have known you'd be pulling the strings."

Loki laughed, a sound coarse and broken. "Is that what you think, my Hawk?" he said mockingly. "I suppose that would be the conclusion you would jump to - that if I am involved anywhere, I must be the mastermind,t he one in charge? Look at me! Do I look like I am in control?"

Clint gritted his teeth. "It looks to me like you're finally getting what's coming to you," he said savagely. "Guess you pissed off the wrong person this time, huh?"

Loki turned his head to face Clint square-on, and Clint's stomach turned at the glinting, dead eye sockets. "Are you satisfied at last, my Hawk?" he said softly. "Is this the fate that you would have wished on me?"

"No," Clint said, and was surprised to find that it was true. "I always envisioned something - cleaner."

"Well, then." Loki bared his teeth in a death's-head smile. "Here I am, without defenses. Go ahead - take your shot."

A twinge of unease shot through Clint, but he shrugged it off. Finally he had the chance to do what he'd been longing to for two damn years - put an arrow through Loki's eyesockets. Maybe now he'd finally sleep at night, without being tormented by the nightmares of horror - and longing. Maybe now, the traitorous whispers would be silenced.

He raised his bow, pulled back the last arrow on the string. "It's funny," he mused aloud as his aim steadied. "All the times I dreamt of doing this, I never thought it would be a mercy."

He released the shot. It flew straight and true, piercing Loki's eye through the shining black film and bursting out through the back of his skull. His body jerked and rocked in the cage, then hung limply. Blood spurted, then ran down the shaft to drip on the floor.

And then, horribly, the lips curved one more time. "Oh, yes," Loki's dead voice said. "A mercy - for me."

What? Clint thought, but there was no time for second thoughts.

Loki's body - melted, dissolving into a cloud of black dust that poured onto the ground. The chamber around them began to rumble and shake, and Clint took a nervous step backwards.

So that was it, right? He'd destroyed the focal point, the centerpiece of this whole damn town. Maybe now he could get out of here, and -

Something tugged at his ankle. Clint stumbled another step, trying to step over it, and found his feet suddenly yanked out from underneath him. He yelled, trying to twist free as the chamber spun around him, and grabbed fruitlessly for any hold. He caught fragmented glimpses of whatever had grabbed him - dark, glistening tentacles wrapped around his ankles.

Then the tendrils pulled him up, up into the ceiling where another cage was waiting. The yelling stopped, and the screaming began.

-BAD END #3: NATASHA

"The boy is me, and I am he; the me of my childhood, of my past."

"That's not possible," Natasha said, although her mind was already working furiously over the possibilities. The boy looked back at her, shocked and frightened, and now that she knew what to look for she could see the ghost of Loki-that-would-become in his face.

Loki made an abortive move of his head that would have been an exaggerated eyeroll, had he still had eyes to do it with. "Really, of all the things you've lived through to get this far, and this is where you draw the line of 'possible' or 'impossible?' " he drawled contemptuously. "In this place the rules of space and time no longer apply, and a living location has no care for animal notions of time and paradox. That boy is my younger self, wandering where he ought not.

"And this gives you an unparalleled opportunity for heroism, Black Widow," Loki continued, while Natasha was still trying to work that one out. "Kill the boy.

"You see, this is my true past self standing beside you today, no facsimile or phantasm. Whatever is done now, will be just as if it were done one thousand years in the past. If you remove him from the timestream now, all the evil that he will one day do - that I have ever done - will be undone. There will never be portals in the sky above New York City, never be aliens streaming down to wreak havoc on the innocents there. Can you truly face down the ghost of three thousand dead, and tell yourself that one small sacrifice is not worth it?"

Natasha stood frozen, stunned by the implications. She had killed children before, after all, and for much less cause. But she'd tried - she'd wanted to leave all that behind, to step into the service of SHIELD and become newborn.

And yet if Fury were here, Natasha thought she knew what his orders would be - the man would probably pull the trigger himself, if not without remorse, then without regret. What if you could do it, a voice whispered. Go back in time and find yourself, there in the Red Room, before it all began, before the first death. If with one bullet you could undo all you'd done, bring back all the people you'd killed - wipe out all the red in your ledger in one small act - would you do it?

"Yes," she said, raised the barrel of the gun and pulled the trigger.

The chamber they were in shook, the walls trembling and the floor heaving. Natasha barely managed to keep her balance, staring in disbelief as the figure of Loki before her melted into black sand and poured onto the floor. He was telling the truth, she thought, surprised.

The walls were pulling - shredding away, opening into a vast space as they peeled into long raw strips of mottled shining gray. In the shadows all around her Natasha caught glimpses of shadowed, hulking figures - here and there, a glint of the raw light off of weapons, long metal bars and chains clutched in massive fists.

Natasha spun wildly in place, looking for a gap in the ranks of monsters. There was none. She was surrounded. Dead-white, fishlike eyes stared at her from the massed ranks, shuffling slowly forward. And there, in the back, a disturbance in the crowd as something huge, something unfathomably strong, scraped along the ground towards her.

"Chert poberi," Natasha whispered.

The Hulk howled. The lights went out.

-BAD END #4: BRUCE

"I won't let you have him," Bruce said, keeping his voice calm despite his inner shaking. He held tight to the child's hand, clammy inside his own. "You'll have to go through me, first."

A chuckle came from the monstrosity that was Loki, somehow linked - controlled by? - the malevolent town. "As you wish, then," he said, his voice slick with condescending amusement. "Not too hard a task, perhaps, without your Hulk to defend you."

The tendrils struck. Bruce dodged the first one, towing the kid along with him as he went, and then the second. A gap opened up and Bruce saw a glimpse of a clear spot against the wall, and made for it.

"Look out!" Loki's high-pitched voice yelled, but Bruce didn't have time to turn before something huge and heavy swept in and struck him on the side of the head, sending him flying.

A fierce clanging set up in Bruce's ears, and over the ringing he could barely hear the noise of the room outside: the child Loki screaming, the harsh booming laugh of the adult Loki. His glasses had fallen off his face and landed who-knew-where; he could see no glint of metal or glass within reach of his fingers. Or maybe that was the darkness tunneling in around his vision, the world dwindling to a point right in front of his face.

Concussion symptoms, the doctor part of him noted clinically. Severe enough to indicate damage to the brain. That's bad. Very bad...

Small hands tugged at his shoulder insistently. "Get up, get up!" the child's voice cried fretfully, barely cutting through the ringing in his ears. "There are more of them coming!"

He was sure Loki was right. But his body was in no condition to respond to the urgent demands; his shoulder was a cracked mass of pain, and he couldn't even feel his leg below the knee. The light pulsed in his vision, tainted with red, as Bruce managed to force himself over onto his back. That was as far as he could get.

Bruce saw the arc of one of the spiked maces whistling overhead; he saw it clearly despite his tunneled vision because it was coming right for him. He heard Loki screaming for him to move, but his body was too sluggish.

Guess I was useless after all, Bruce had time to think. Sorry, Tony...

There was an impact, and then everything went black.

And now, just to leave you on a slightly less sour note, have a Bonus Crack Ending:

-UFO ENDING: TONY AND BRUCE

Tony entered Bruce's lab bearing an offering of jelly donuts, saw what was on the counter, and immediately lost his appetite.

Bruce himself was puttering between a freezer and a micro-filament slicer that Tony had built for him, completely oblivious to Tony's presence. Tony cleared his throat and started to put his box of donuts down on an empty counter, then thought better of it. "So, Bruce," he said.

Bruce looked up at him with a vague smile, glasses nearly slipping down over his nose. "Oh, hello Tony," he said in that mild tone of his, and glanced down at Tony's hand. "Are those donuts? Just give me a minute to wash my hands, and I'll be right with you..."

As he bustled off, Tony glowered at the contents of the lab counter and at Bruce's back alternately. Then he sighed, hitching himself up against one of the tables and swinging one foot freely. "So," he said. "Remember that one time we got sent on a mission to that crazy haunted town in rural Pennsylvania?"

Bruce glanced over his shoulder at Tony, raising one eyebrow. "I'm not likely to forget it, Tony," he called back.

"Well, it would be nice if we could, don't you think?" Tony said. "You know - move on, get past it, put it all behind us, deny it ever happened at all..."

"Yes, I think so too," Bruce said, nodding absently.

Tony scowled more at the lab counter. "Which would be a lot easier to do if you didn't insist on keeping this thing around all the time!"

His arm shot out to point accusingly at the large, blood-red spider with the needle leggings perched happily on Bruce's lab counter. It looked up at him, the eight beady eyes unnerving enough even without the rest of its monstrous body, and clacked its metallic mandibles together inquiringly.

Bruce sent him a reproving look. "There's no need to be like that, Tony," he said. "Robbie is very helpful around the lab. He's one of the best assistants I've ever had. He'd be a great asset in your lab too, if you'd ever let him - all he wants to do is help."

Tony shuddered, imagining that thing in his workshop and coming up with a big red flashing NOPE. "If he shows up in my lab I have an industrial-strength can of RAID ready," he threatened. "Also a flamethrower."

Robbie the spider made a gesture that Tony could swear was obscene. He gawked in outrage. "Did that spider just give me the finger?!"

"Well, it's your own fault for being rude to him," Bruce admonished.

"Now he's - is he mooning me?"

"No, no," Bruce soothed. "That's just a little dance he does when he's happy, you see?"

Tony shuddered. Twerking spiders, that was all he needed in his tower.

~the end (for real.)