AN: This takes place near the end of CIVIL WAR: YOUNG AVENGERS & RUNAWAYS #4, after they defeat Noh-Varr.

Vision's dialogue is bold and italic.

I do not own these characters, or the part of the scene I borrowed from the comic. (I wish I owned a copy of the comic, though.)

Living Weapon

"Please... let this be... the end..." the white-haired alien gasped out in a pained, tortured voice, as his dead white eyes rolled back into his head, Vision's arm that was phased into his chest still sparking with bright green bolts of electricity.

(Those words—"Please let this be the end"—he knew those words. He'd thought the same thing to himself so many times during the months he'd been imprisoned in Juvie.)

Several feet away, Tommy couldn't stop staring. There was an awful twisting in his gut, a sudden urge to be sick right there in the Cube, to vomit out all the memories that crashed unbidden through his mind, as well as probably vomit out his stomach as well.

Fighting nausea, he watched as Vision, who was still a suit of armor around Chase's body, though the robot was currently in control of their movement and speech, knelt down next to the unconscious alien that had been trying to kill them.

"What are you doing?" Eli demanded, shield on his arm as he stalked over.

"Noh-Varr was correct," Vision intoned in his emotionless voice as he examined the living weapon apparently named Noh-Varr. "My circuitry has merged with the nanites in his blood... already they work to revive him."

"'Noh-Varr'..." Eli said, shaking his head, unable to believe that Vision was calling this, this thing by a name, as if it was a person. The thing was a remote-controlled killing machine! "Vision, we got what we came for. Get your arm and let's go!" he ordered, pointing at the exit.

"Negative," Vision stated coolly. "We could not outrun him..." He reached out to touch his robot arm that was phased through Noh-Varr's chest, wires having reached out of the broken end, over the side of the arm to dig into the alien's flesh.

If even Tommy was feeling sick—and he'd been pretty desensitized to all manner of awful things from his time in Juvie—he couldn't fathom how everyone else wasn't already throwing up, or maybe crying tears of anger and disgust.

"We have to try..." Eli said, though he sounded uncertain.

The living weapon—Noh-Varr—was a monster when it came to fighting. Tommy hadn't been there when Noh-Varr had first attacked the Runaways and Young Avengers, but from the short but intense fight in the Cube, he could tell that this alien, tortured and broken as he was, was a force to be reckoned with.

Though Tommy could watch Noh-Varr's every movement, register the alien's arm moving to catch one of Kate's arrows in mid-flight, he could tell by the baffled expressions on his teammate's faces as Noh-Varr sped by that they had trouble seeing him when he moved like that. So this Noh-Varr was fast—not as fast as Speed, of course, but still fast.

And he was strong, if the way he was holding apart the jaws of a fucking dinosaur were any indication He could run on walls. He was agile. His fighting style was brutal and efficient.

But Tommy knew the signs, and he could tell that with every movement, this Noh-Varr was in pain. That his actions weren't entirely his own, but being forced upon him.

"His internal O.S. has been mangled by foreign code... as if by a child with a hammer," Vision observed as he analyzed the white-haired alien's condition. "He must be in constant pain... unable to discern who he even is."

That could have been me, Tommy realized as he stared at the living weapon lying on the floor. That was it, he was definitely going to be sick. That could have been me...

"What are you suggesting we do?" Eli asked, glancing around to see if any of more Cube defense units were going to crawl out of the woodwork, his tone suggesting desperation.

"I suggest we fix him," Vision said.

"Vision," Eli said, glancing back at the robot that was kind of also Chase but not currently, "I don't know if—"

Tommy had been standing back, trying desperately not to throw up the contents of his stomach, but at this he forced his nausea down and stepped forward, almost with hostility.

"Let Vision fix Noh-Varr, Patriot," Tommy snapped, green eyes cold and hard and haunted. "What he did, trying to kill us? That wasn't him. He was turned into a living weapon. Nobody should have that done to them, no matter whether they're a mutant or an alien."

Eli looked at Tommy, and immediately back down. "Do what you have to do, Vision," he said, before turning to check on the others.

Tommy watched as the Vision separated himself from Chase, the blond Runaway stumbling away in discombobulation, though he was quickly steadied by an adorably concerned Molly.

Reconnecting his stump of arm to the rest of the limb that was integrated into Noh-Varr's body, Vision melded his arm back together, then, once he had control of the entire limb again, turned it intangible and pulled it out of the alien's chest.

Then the Vision placing his 60th century telekinetic armor fingers on Noh-Varr's temples, he started doing whatever crazy sciencey programming thing he needed to do to get rid of the foreign code that had been ingrained into Noh-Varr, and restore his internal operating system to normal.

But wait, wasn't this Noh-Varr an alien? Why would he have an internal operating system? This kind of thing was not in Tommy's area of expertise, but whatever, it didn't really matter the how or the why as long as this Noh-Varr was fixed, as long as he no longer had to be a living weapon controlled by an old man who was fucking insane and a sociopath or a psychopath or something along those lines, because just like the scientists that tortured and experimented on Tommy in Juvie, the man who'd done this to Noh-Varr obviously had no conscious and delighted in the pain and suffering of others.

He remembered being strapped to a cold metal table, needles piercing his skin.

One of the doctors took Tommy's face in white-gloved hands that werestained a vivid sanguinewith the speedster's blood.

"Look at you," came the cold voice from behind that surgical mask. "So weak. Helpless. But don't worry, boy—when we're done with you, you'll be the perfect living weapon. Deadly and oh so obedient." Fingers pressed into Tommy's cheeks. "You'll be a good little attack dog for us, won't you? There's a good boy."

And Tommy really had to stop thinking about this, because he was feeling that horrible sick feeling again, searing anger hot in his chest, bile rising in his throat, burning.

"There," Vision said, pulling back from the unconscious Noh-Varr. "That should have restored him to his previous state."

Eli had come back over. "Now what do we do with him?" the leader of the Young Avengers asked.

"We can't leave him here," Tommy said immediately, crossing his arms. "We're not leaving him in this sick place."

"We can't take him with his," Eli argued.

"And why the hell not?!" Tommy demanded, stalking up to Patriot aggressively.

"He's a prisoner! He committed a crime, probably a large one considering he's in the Cube! He—"

"You busted me out of prison," Tommy pointed out. "What's so different about him?!" Before Eli could even answer, Tommy jabbed a finger into the larger boy's chest and cutting him off with: "Nothing, that's what! We're not leaving him here, so therefore we're taking him with us—"

"Why don't we let Noh-Varr decide for himself?" Vision suggested.

Eli and Tommy glanced over, to see that the alien was waking up, already looking much better. His eyes, when he blinked them open, were a clear green, not the blind white from before, and his skin was no longer all cracked.

"We're offering you an out of this hellhole," Tommy said to Noh-Varr, crossing his arms, expression setting stubbornly. "And if you want to come with us, none of us are going to object." He sent a glare at Eli, who glared back. "Because we're not in the habit of leaving people to get fucked up in shitty hellholes."

Luckily Molly was on the other side of the room with the Runaways, so he could swear as much as he damn well pleased. And this situation definitely called for swearing.

Noh-Varr sat up, and then stood, seeming to test his his body to see whether it hurt or not and if it was under his own control. Vision must have done a good job fixing him up, because the alien grinned.

"I thank you for your assistance," Noh-Varr said, glancing at the Young Avengers, and the Runaways who had congregated on the other side of the room, then at the building around him. There was a vindictive spark in those cold green eyes. "But I think I will stay here."

Tommy had to hand it to the guy—he appeared perfectly healthy both physically and mentally, not seeming to be injured nor traumatized from his experience.

But stay here, in the Cube?! Tommy was about to object, but Vision placed a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

"We respect your decision, and hope that things work out for you from here on out," Vision told Noh-Varr.

The alien just nodded, not paying them much attention as he turned and inspected the inside of the Cube. He was still smiling to himself, but it was more of a smirk, and a dangerous-looking one, at that.

"Come on!" Eli shouted, gesturing for the Runaways and the rest of the Young Avengers to come over. "We're leaving."

They left the way they'd come in—a hole that Nico had blasted in the floor with a spell from her Staff of One, with a little help from the Vision in coming up with the term 'prodigium effodio,' which apparently meant 'excavating monster' in Latin.

Just before leaping through the gaping hole, Tommy took one last glance at the alien, who was standing there with his back to them, arms crossed behind his back and chin raised.

Seeming to sense the speedster watching him, Noh-Varr turned to meet his gaze. The alien's lips quirked.

Tommy turned and sped out.

The white hair. The green eyes. The whole living-weapon thing. There were too many parallels.

That could have been me, Tommy thought again, thinking back to Noh-Varr's condition as he'd fought them. That's what the doctors at Juvie were trying to do to me. That's the kind of monster they were trying to turn me into.

Tommy shuddered. He needed to get far, far away from this place. The faster the better.

AN: All dialogue and action from "Please... let this be... the end..." to "I suggest we fix him," is taken directly from the comic. Everything after that, and all Tommy's thoughts throughout, are made up by me.