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She twisted and locked her fingers deftly, feeling for weak points and then ripping apart the bots, bolts and screws whistling past her face. For the first time, Wanda truly felt like she was getting the hang of this whole powers thing. She sent another drone into the bricks with a flick of her wrist, feeling the energy that flowed through her veins with adrenaline and sending it forwards in vivid streams. She tugged and pulled, and the crimson obeyed.At her feet, heaps of metal shards sparked and smoked. A particularly stubborn mesh carcass flickered with blue light, it’s face still discernible . She pulverised it. As utterly destroyed as they were, she couldn’t help but expect the bots to pull theirselves together again. A sudden whir of of machinery behind her captured her attention, and she poured her energy through her skin into its body. It exploded with a satisfying hiss.She continued like this for hours, massacring wave after wave of metal men. Occasionally, Thor would drop by, summoning bolts of lightning so bright that the forks seared themselves into her eyes for hours. In combination with her powers, the electricity left the church crackling with residual energy. Of the abilities she had discovered, as of now, precognition had not been written down. And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the hairs standing up on the back of her neck weren’t doing so because of the current that lingered in the air. In the distance, she heard the thud of bullets peppering concrete.Suddenly, she jerked forward as if someone had yanked a cord in her mind. Ice flooded her body and the battle froze around her. No... Pietro... it couldn’t be.He was gone.When Wanda closed her eyes and concentrated, she could see the life around her- see the energy of those near. It was almost impossible to explain to those that couldn’t see like her, but as she had once tried to convey to her brother, it was like a thousand blinking lights in her mind; each one flickering softly with the beat of a heart. Pietro was always the brightest, so connected to Wanda that she sometimes felt his odd thoughts and emotions as her own. It had been a huge comfort to her, the soft thrum of her brothers life- a constant in her mind that kept her tied to reality. This new silence was deafening. His light had been extinguished, and her world plunged into darkness. She reached out frantically, eyes scrunched shut, flicking through thousands of life forms in her mind to no avail. She couldn’t find him. He was all she had left.She dropped to her knees with a noise she didn’t know she was capable of making: a terrible instinctual noise of rage and despair. Pietro was dead. Her baby brother was dead. Someone was going to pay for that.Her magic churned furiously within her, spitting and writhing. It boiled in her veins and it licked at her ribs, and as she screamed it surged forward, vaporising Sokovia in one single sweep. She welcomed the burning- the pain was better than confronting the vast emptiness swamping her mind.In the distance, the avengers watched in awe as Wanda rose into the sky, her eyes burning a magnificent red. Her energy pulsed with her sobs, engulfing her in a mass of scarlet static. It writhed around her small frame, spitting and crackling in loops of light.She soared forwards, ferocious anger swelling the fire that spilled from her body. She had only one purpose now. She needed to find Ultron, so she closed her eyes and sent out her magic, pulling it back in and sifting through the information it fed her. It wasn’t hard to locate him. His mind was artificial, and his presence was bitterly cold. If not for the fury that had narrowed her focus, this would have fascinated her. But as it was, she fixated on the contrast and darted towards the train carriage. She slammed into the ground, the brittle earth giving way beneath her. An extraordinary sensation.She strode through the rubble, and met her target. “Wanda,” Ultron pleaded. “If you stay here, you’ll die.” She glared darkly into his emotionless eyes, at the mangled pieces of metal that guarded them. Her expression twisted with malice. Energy coiled restlessly round her fingers, and she contorted it. “I just did. “ “Do you know how it felt?” Her eyes burned as she sent torrents of fire surging through his body, splintering sheets of vibranium and plucking wires like hairs. From his mouth came a high pitched metallic screech akin to a scream, and his chest ruptured as she snatched his cold heart from within. She turned it over in her palm, a lump of smouldering grey.“It felt like that.”With these words, her intense anger subsided, seeping away with her power. Tossing it over her shoulder, tears flowed thickly down her face. She felt hollow.She backed away, stumbling out of the carriage as all the energy drained from her limbs. Her legs crumpled, and she lay exhausted in the dirt, overwhelmed now by the grief that she had staunched with rage. She gazed upwards into the skyline littered with dust and debris, and her eyelids fluttered as she perceived Tony, Steve, Thor, Natasha and Clint rushing towards her. She closed her eyes, and thought of him. Pietro.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
For an endless measure, she floated upon an expanse of blissful obliviousness. She was neither here nor there: she was in Sokovia, she was in Germany, and she strolled through the hazy, undetermined stretch between. It was neither light nor dark, and she wasn’t sad, and she wasn’t happy. Every so often, coherence came to visit, but never for very long. In these moments, the fog thinned, and the light filtered through. In these moments, she could feel herself surfacing, and so she dove right back down, pushing as far as she could go before the pressure squeezed her lungs and she struggled to pull in air. Nestled safely down here, in dark’s cold embrace, it was deafeningly silent. Down here, she traversed the depths, drifting endlessly through the enchanting lull of the grey. She thought of nothing, and she dreamt of everything. Suddenly one day, a vivid flash of red broke the sky, leaking a warmth that poured from her heart, washed over her chest and trickled down her legs. Her magic greeted her softly as it returned, humming its familiar tune. In this place she couldn’t quite reach it, but the length of her body tingled as it purred comfortingly beneath her skin. Although she couldn’t grasp it, the presence of energy was one she had sorely missed; now when she drifted through the mist, crimson curled at her fingertips, playing with locks of her hair and nipping at her ear. With her power, though, arrived dreamy chunks of sound: fragments of spoken words, and long, warbling echoes that faded in and out, in and out, in and out...As time passed, as it did in this place- slowly but surely, then all at once, and not at all- the noise grew ever closer and constant: uncomfortably so. Seconds passed and hours reversed and still the volume grew, until the noise blared so thunderously that her entire world trembled with the force of it. She pressed her way deeper into the mass, but she couldn’t lose it no matter how she tried- it persisted stubbornly, ploughing through the cloud and leaving huge spiraling cracks and rivets in its wake from which silvery light spilled. The walls of her fabrication shuddered and creaked threateningly. Clawing its way through the depths, the noise tore easily through the nothingness and all too soon it found her- it clamped its enormous icy hands around her temples and she shrieked. She didn’t want to go. She kicked and she screamed, but there was nothing she could do; she watched on helplessly as her surroundings filled with harsh yellow light, quashing the darkness that she had become so accustomed to. She hissed through her teeth, perceiving only now that she could feel again, she could feel everything and it hurt. Monotonous beeping pounded in her temples, hammering perpetually against her skull and beating its dull, throbbing ache. Wanda groaned, clamped her hand over her ears, and opened her eyes. Clinical white lights burst from above. All at once, she discovered that she had regained control of her lungs, and she drew in a few long, deep breathes, relishing the sensation. The air tasted crisp, and a light, cool breeze tickled her face. It appeared that she had woken up in some sort of hospital room- a fancy, expensive one too- nothing like the crowded, noisy cabins she had visited before. Unmoving, she peered around the room, noting a tall, sleek unit at her left side that beeped softly in time with her heartbeat, and a large, twitching lump at the foot of her bed that she highly suspected was a lump-shaped person. Despite the presence of the figure, who she deduced was some sort of guard, or a Shield member, or a combination of the two, she felt overwhelmingly alone in this startlingly alien space. She was aware of course, of exactly how she came to be here: she could recall photographically, if she so desired, the exact events that had transpired (yesterday? A week ago? Hours ago?). However, she had absolutely no wish to think on such things. The sadness would come, she was sure of it, and she would sob until she had no tears left to cry, but right now she refused to come to terms with the whole horrible thing- couldn’t afford to. Right now, she had to figure out some things, primarily: where she was, what the hell she was going to do, and how she was going to keep herself alive.If it were not for this ferocious headache that almost split her vision double, she would have been exponentially more prepared-would’ve been able to tune in to every thought scattered throughout her visitor’s head. As it was, she prayed that they hadn’t noticed her rather ungraceful waking up. With the air of a child sneaking out of their room at night, she rose slowly, flattening her back against the wall that she had found behind her. Deeply ingrained caution kept her incredibly still, and the quietist that she reckoned she had ever managed to be. Thousands of schemes rattled around inside her own mind, plans of escape, and plans of fighting her way out, plans of bargaining. Optimism wasn’t her strong point. From this position, Wanda could see so much more than before. The room, which she had initially thought was enclosed, was a long stretch of tiles home to three other medical beds, each with its own square of space but close enough to converse between. A staggered metallic glint in the sunlight caught her eye. Unmissable, etched in neat little print on the side of every little metal monitor was one single word: Stark. Despite having some prior vague impression of where she was and who she would be with, years of fury and pain and brainwashing had deeply rooted horrific connotations in that very word; her immediate instinct was to fight or run away but she caught herself, steadied herself before she spiraled- Stark was good. Stark meant the avengers. She fought alongside him. The avengers were good. She whipped her head around, all too aware that her heart was thumping very loudly and erratically on the machine beside her. Relief came quickly though, when she saw that the figure- the man- at her feet had not moved, he hadn’t given the slightest indication or acknowledgment that he knew she had awoken. Wanda slid slowly back down the wall, pulling up her blanket to her chin and combing over the information she had gathered. If she was in the avenger’s tower, which she was almost certain of now, she was most likely safe. Another thought nagged at her though, and she couldn’t quite chase it away: a nasty little tangle of what ifs. A memory of a bomb with his name scrawled on the side, and all the things Hydra had reminded her daily... No. Hydra lied. She was safe. Probably. She surfaced from her blanket nest and lay flat and still, trying to breathe in a convincing rhythm for one who was unconscious. “I know you’re awake. Thought I’d let you know if you’re done trying to figure out an escape route.” She shot up into a sitting position, immediately regretting the violent motion when her head throbbed in retaliation. Tony Stark himself sprawled lazily on a hard plastic chair at the foot of her bed, tapping swiftly away at some glorified hologram in his palm. His big brown eyes creased with fine wrinkles as he squinted downwards, and dark shadows hung beneath them. She never broke her one sided staring at him as she gathered herself slowly, wearily. “Who said I was trying to escape?” Wanda spoke- attempted to, though upon opening her lips she discovered that her voice was small with disuse, incredibly so. She felt so weak, and she shouldn’t feel this way, because she had woken up alive and she was being pathetic and ungrateful - she had to be strong-this was the only way that this would work. She clutched her sheet more tightly around her, longing achingly for her soft, worn jacket that smelled of home, and of him. She stopped herself abruptly- she couldn’t let herself dwell right now. She had to be strong. Tony Stark was at her bedside. As she moved, unrelenting in her glare, she became innately aware of a persistent itch at her arm- an irksome agitation that burned hot and tight, and the more she thought about it, the more impossible it became to ignore. She felt along her arm, found a thick tube, - “Hey!” Tony called, looking up from his phone finally. “I wouldn’t do that, kid.”- and yanked. Bad decision. She met his eyes for a fraction of a second before the room tilted dangerously and she slumped backwards into her sheets. Swallowing thickly, she squeezed her eyes shut, and willed the nausea to pass. Stark was trying to speak to her, she knew this, but she couldn’t bring herself to answer. Shadows behind her eyelids churned and twisted sickeningly despite the absolute absence of input; she had never before felt such an intense sickness, and she truly could not trust herself to open her mouth without throwing up violently. It didn’t last long, however, and soon when she had managed to pry open her eyelids, the room was blissfully stable once more. “-I’m actually quite surprised and impressed that you didn’t just barf on me, so 5 points for you I guess.” She heard the mechanic mutter, in a low voice she wasn’t sure she was supposed to hear. He dabbed gently at her wrist. “Rhodey definitely did the first time he made that mistake, and I didn’t speak to him for months after.” The chair groaned in protest as he flopped back down, and she made the brave decision to try and sit upright again. “Don’t worry,” he continued, much louder than before, “it doesn’t last long...”“I’m fine,” she grumbled weakly in reply, after eventually giving herself the green light to speak whilst also keeping down the contents of her stomach. Before Tony could talk again, the door beside her swung open violently, and she winced as it clattered against the wall. “She speaks!” called a familiar voice, whose owner strode into the room close behind it with two large coffees balanced precariously in his left hand, and the crumpled remains of a mobile phone in his right. Clint Barton smiled at her, and she made the effort to return it (though she didn’t know if it translated- it took a lot more energy than normal to process her actions). He crossed over the room, handing one of the coffees to Tony who grasped the cup like it was a lifeline, and quickly resumed swiping at his broken phone. Unlike Tony’s elegant technology, this thing was exceedingly ordinary, and it blared obnoxious, tacky music, chirping as he jabbed at the screen. She presumed that she had looked puzzled, or mildly annoyed, because after an unusual sequence of events, where: the archer failed at whatever game he was attempting, succeeded in tossing his phone over his shoulder, and cringed slightly as it shattered into millions of little iridescent scraps, ceasing to exist, he turned to face her apologetically and explained himself vaguely. “Geometry Dash. It’s addictive.” If Stark had found this behavior in any way peculiar, he certainly didn’t show it. “Anyway,” Tony started as he gulped huge mouthfuls of coffee and Clint dragged another chair noisily across the tiles. “You’ve been out for a while.”
“Three weeks today exactly!” Clint exclaimed.
“Bruce couldn’t figure it out, but we reckon it had something to with your, you know,” he mimicked her hand movements. “Must’ve taken a lot out of you... anything like that happened before?” She shook her head. “Well, we put you on an IV for nutrients- that’s the thing you ripped out of your arm- but other than that, you seemed okay on your own. We think it must’ve been some form of exhaustion.” Silently, she nodded in agreement and Tony’s eyes lingered on hers for a second with the slightest flicker of something akin to concern, before he turned to face Clint. “Did you tell the others? I know Nat was worried.”
“Yeah, she should be coming up soon. She might be a while, you know what she’s like.” Tony nodded, and swiveled back round on his comically tiny chair. “You up for meeting Nat, Red? I know you didn’t talk much with her, before...” Before. The unspoken thing. She had presumed at some point that she would have to relive the ordeal in Sokovia, but for now, it remained a topic that no one dare press. Although she wouldn’t admit it, she was significantly relieved, it allowed her to stuff it deep, deep down for the moment. And so, it remained unspoken. She agreed verbally, which seemed to please the man in some sort of way, and for all of 60 seconds, the room lapsed into silence. It took another whole 4 seconds for her to realize that she hated the silence- it wasn’t awkward, per say, but she couldn’t distract herself from her own thoughts. This distraction was a tactic she heavily relied on to stay balanced above the water, just out of reach from the emotions threatening to pull her back down, and crash over the sides. Yet at this moment her thoughts were loud, they were pulled to the foreground, spitting and churning. “Thank-you,” she blurted, displacing the silence, mainly because she didn’t want it to be quiet any longer. “For all of this.” “No problem,” Clint answered, quickly, “I mean... it was Tony who flew you here, and hired the doctor, and provided the stuff, but,” He broke off, looking for another voice. “You’re welcome,” Tony agreed. “It was the least I could do, after everything...” Ah, here they were, back at the unspoken thing, the before. “You saved us a lot of trouble out there,” he spoke softly, and she attempted a meek smile at the praise. It was conflicting- all this time Stark had painted himself as this selfish, arrogant playboy in the past and on the field, and yet here she was, in his home, and she could find little of that. She had risen from her strange dream to find him slumped uncomfortably and unnecessarily at her sick bed- not some underpaid medical staff, but the man himself waiting at the foot of her hospital bed three weeks from the day she had arrived there- almost as if he cared. It was strange. It was as if she was witnessing something that she wasn’t supposed to, something that she realised not many people got to see. Breezy conversation filled the next few minutes, and though she subconsciously zoned out completely for the most part, she caught odds and ends of ideas. For one, she repeatedly heard the name Sam, which was a name quite unfamiliar to her. The second thing she perceived, was that this wasn’t an Official Avengers Discussion, but rather an idle, mundane chatter about Xbox games, and movies that they had to watch soon (You ever seen Baby Driver, Wanda?). It was at an interesting conversation between the two, about some generic American television show, that Natasha Romanoff entered the med bay. If she possessed lingering bruises from the fight, as Wanda suspected she must have done, she hadn’t let them show in the slightest. She wasn’t wearing her combat gear, so to speak, but she was dressed far from the casual attire that Clint and Tony donned. Her wire-straight hair lined her pointed face in a sheet of gleaming, false red, the ends so perfectly aligned that Wanda was certain it was a wig. From somewhere beyond her line of site, the woman produced a tiny, navy stool and perched daintily on the edge; she held her shoulders clinically straight, displaying intentions not of hostility, but a far cry from welcoming. Her pretty face was blank, and her eyes were cold. Calculating. “Hi,” Wanda began nervously, though she had reason to believe her anxiety was unfounded (She couldn’t help it though- Romanoff was a very unnerving person). She was desperate not to appear as frail and vulnerable as she felt- determined to grasp some flimsy aspect of control over this impossibly weighted situation where she was confined to a sick bed. Her efforts at friendliness were met with a bitter silence to begin with, and a glare that bore into her soul. A glare she felt sure was sizing her up, reviewing information from files read before and this meeting in the flesh. After a short moment, Natasha had seemingly found whatever it was she was searching for, and Wanda did not miss how Romanoff’s shoulders released slightly- not obviously, but slightly. “Hi, I’m glad you’re awake,” the older woman exclaimed, with a smile that was neither false, nor overwhelmingly genuine. She wasn’t letting anything go, not the slightest hint of her opinion or stance on this stranger laying in the medical wing. She was very complex- an enigma- extraordinarily hard to work out, and Wanda held the rare suspicion that even with her powers fully restored, she would never truly know everything about the Black Widow. It was fascinating, the way she could see things registering on the assassins face, and yet not understand the emotional response behind them. On the other hand, this was also incredibly frustrating for a person who could generally tap into emotion with little strain, like fiddling with the frequency on a radio. Generally, people were clumsy: terrible at concealing thoughts that played across their faces, their body language, the way they spoke. Only one sentence had been exchanged, and Wanda had discovered so little from the woman, which told her so much. She was in awe.“How long have these two old men been annoying you?” Natasha continued, and she was taken completely aback by the attempt at light humor. Because she couldn’t be certain- Natasha could be playing this way for a reason- but that seemed like an invitation, a genuine offer of friendliness. She assumed that the Widow had approved of her, for now at least. Wanda snorted slightly and looked over at Tony and Clint to gage their reactions, expectant of some exaggerated, melodramatic expressions. Instead, she found two different personifications of confusion... that didn’t add up... had she taken this the wrong way? When she realized, she grinned. Through her fatigue addled brain, it took her a short while to comprehend that Natasha had spoken an entirely different language to the one that she had been speaking since she had awoken. Sokovian Russian. Her home language. Embarrassingly, this was a notion that brought with it a whole muddle of feelings, and she almost had to wade off tears. “Not too long,” Wanda replied, eyes twinkling, her voice animated. She didn’t have to conjugate the words before she said them, didn’t have to pick out every single syllable. The gesture was small, and most wouldn’t even think of it, but her opinion of Natasha increased in her favor tenfold. For the second time today, her previous assumptions of the avengers had been challenged; she was beginning to consider that shielded from the public eye, the team were very different people. “Good,” she answered, her mouth twisted upwards in the closest to a true smile Wanda suspected she would ever receive, “I’m sorry that the first person you met here was Stark.” She sniggered properly this time, especially when Clint caught on- “Hey! I heard your name- they’re definitely talking about you.” “He’s not all that bad,” she declared in Tony’s defense. She could’ve sworn she saw the man smile.“If you’ve done talking shit about me in a language I don’t understand- low move by the way- then there’s some things we gotta talk about. Besides, Barton’s a shitty translator,” he joked, and she felt all promise of a friendly atmosphere dissipate. The panic she had staved off for a while returned full-force, and the last few surreal moments slipped away from her, as did Natasha’s smile. It was as if they’d reversed the last hour or two completely and were back at square one: they had done their introductions and figured each other out, they had finished their laughing and joking, and it was time she was told what awaited her. The fact that she was going in completely blind made this whole thing so much worse, as did the fact that in a last resort, she couldn’t even rely on her powers. Knowing absolutely nothing about the decisions that she knew the team had already arrived at weeks ago, whilst she was knocked out, completely terrified her. She nodded, and looked at her hands. Prepared herself for the worst. The worst often prevailed, it seemed.“I don’t wanna do this right now, god knows you deserve the rest, but Shield won’t lay off me until I do, and I’d rather you’d be here than there, for your sake. So here we are.”
Anticipation crawled the length of her spine. “See, the thing is, whatever records you did have, Strucker destroyed. Which pisses Fury off to no end, and leaves me with a teeny tiny bit of a problem... because officially, no one knows who you are.” This hit her in a muted blow, the very latest in a long line of the sort.
She frowned. “All of them?”
“Afraid so,” Clint confirmed. She was detached resolutely from her identity. She didn’t know how to feel. “That works for you, it doesn’t just work against,” Natasha added, “For one thing, you can very legally claim a citizenship in this country, if you’d like.” Her head buzzed- she hadn’t even considered all of the legal technicalities of her new life. Despite these details, which were undoubtedly significant, more pressing problems overshadowed the slightest concern she held for her legal constitution; imminent, vast problems that clamored loudly for her attention whenever she dared to think even mere moments into the future. How could she possibly ponder over Visas and courtrooms when she couldn’t even be sure if she was being helped, or held? The suggestion of a citizenship seemed quite solid evidence that they weren’t about to throw her in jail, but she had naively fallen into false senses of security before and was extremely wary of doing so again. Strucker seemed friendly at first, and now the very mention of his name spiked her adrenaline. With this memory cast over her, she didn’t accept the possibilities they handed her. Not at first.“But I’m not gonna lie, Red. Shield, the government, the big guys- they’re not just going to let you walk alone. They don’t work like that,” Tony said, rubbing at his eye. Clint joined in, softly, “A lot of people saw your face, and a lot of people saw what you can do. Right now, you’re the topic of a lot of conversations- and that makes you a pretty sizeable target. So you can walk, but you know better than anyone else what it’s like out there.”
She remembered the orphanage. The streets. The bunker.
“If you have somewhere to go we can help you with that,” Tony paused, looked over to Clint who nodded, and resumed. “Clint has a deal with Fury that’s kept his family safe for years. In fact, the people in this room are some of the only people that know they exist.” Distantly, she wondered why he’d elect to tell her, a dangerous, ex-Hydra stranger such a precious piece of information. It dawned on her finally, that these three people were most likely really trying to help her. “Do you have somewhere in mind?”She took this idea for now, this slither of the premise of her safety, and swiftly turned to other concerns. Because, she had realised with a sort of dulled embarrassment, she had no where to stay. No one to stay with. And the future looked lonely; the future looked miserably bleak. She didn’t have the option to keep this fact, so she voiced it, and it sounded small and pathetic. “Nope. I have nowhere to go.” The three unusual members of her bedside committee didn’t seem to be surprised by this news in the least- they shared a long look, a grave, saddened look, though one that conveyed an affirmation of sorts. Tony spoke up first, once again. “We assumed as much,” he told her with a small consoling smile. Something twisted within her- she didn’t want to be pitied. She bit her lip. She also didn’t want to be handed over to Shield, or Hydra. (They wouldn’t? Would they?)Panic rose in her throat, and Tony quelled it. “I want to offer you a place here- it’s the least I can do for you...” She scanned his complexion thoroughly for some hint of untruthfulness, and found only a complacent smile. Inexplicably, she seemed to trust Stark. A warm funny feeling rose in panic’s place, and she realised soon after the initial disbelief that this, this was what she wanted. She hadn’t let herself even consider the possibility, and that made his words so incredibly sweet. “Until you get back on your feet- you’ve been through a hell of a lot.... And who knows, maybe you’ll like it. I’m still babysitting these idiots. Don’t feel pressured, though...” Partially from shock, and partially because she needed a few seconds to form the words for an answer, she didn’t shift remotely.
“Yeah, I know I wouldn’t leap at the chance to board with Tony,” Clint scoffed. This earned him a very perplexed side-eye (“Clint,” spoke Natasha, deadpan. You literally live with the guy.”) Internally, Wanda could have cried, with gratefulness, with joy, with the lingering guilt that she just couldn’t smother. “I know this is like, a lot, very fast, but we saw what you can do. So, if you aren’t convinced to retire for life, I’d like to offer you a place on the team too.” The warm feeling swelled once more, and this time, she grinned. This time, she allowed herself to react. The future was looking a little less grim. It was dark, as she had known, but if she squinted she could just about make out a pinprick of light, dancing on the horizon. Her head swam with a mess of blurry emotions, and a headache that would not relent. “Yes,” she breathed. “All of it, thank-you...” Though she had only been conscious for all of two hours, her life had changed- definitively. She had known that it would, of course, but never like this. This was exponentially better than any scenario she had managed to conjure up- all the schemes she had plotted, when she was certain this would end in a fight.
“Sure thing, like I said, it’s the least I can do,” mumbled Tony, looking away. “I can tell Fury that you’re staying here- that should keep him for now.” Just like that, the room lapsed back into comfortable, friendly chatter. Tony, Clint and Natasha stayed perched on those comically tiny chairs for way longer than she was sure deemed necessary as official protocol. And talking about what they were eating for dinner that night was so much more, she understood, than official protocol required. Within an hour of talking about everything and nothing at all, Romanoff’s small smile had returned, and it grew and grew, and at some point in the middle of it all she let out a short laugh. Every so often, she slouched on her stool before she caught herself. She tucked her hair messily behind her ears. She yawned. Wanda didn’t miss any of this- how over time Romanoff became more human than spy. She hadn’t figured the woman out wholly yet, but she would. Slowly but surely, as her head began to clear, she began to sense little snags of emotions that flowed from Tony and Clint in a constant. They weren’t whole and so she couldn’t make sense of them, not quite. But they were there. Gradually, her energy restored. Therefore, fractions at a time, Wanda let down her guard. Because today was supposed to be a terrible, horrific day- and yet it wasn’t the worst she’d had by far. She was safe; she was alive, and for now it seemed that everything had turned out alright. Relatively. Pietro wasn’t alright. Wanda wasn’t aware of the time in numbers, but sometime in the afternoon, Tony left the medical wing. His nose screwed up in annoyance as he told her, with disdain, of a business meeting he was forced to attend. As he hurried out of the door, dropping scraps of papers that fluttered all around him in a flurry of crumpled white, he shouted to the assassins to “Let Red know about Friday.” She couldn’t be sure that she had heard him right, but she didn’t question the motive, or what was happening on Friday. Shortly after Stark’s departure, Clint left in a bid to inform Shield of her new residence, a job he was only doing because Natasha didn’t want to go, and Natasha was a scary woman. Although she would never, not in a million years, pin Natasha as a friendly person, the woman stayed a little when Barton had left. Freely, they talked at length in Sokovian, about the Tower, it’s maze of hallways and it’s many residents. By the end of the conversation, it had been unofficially arranged that Wanda would meet the rest of the team tomorrow, when she had been discharged from recovery. Most importantly, Natasha implied, when she was ready. Normally, she would’ve brushed this off without a second thought, but she appreciated the concern nonetheless. It was more of an order than a suggestion coming from the widow, anyway. Eventually she stood up to leave, nudging the chairs aimlessly out of her path. “I’ll see you tomorrow, probably. But call me if you need anything, I mean that,” she said, her eyebrows raised like it was a threat. Wanda watched her stride out of the room, when abruptly she turned on her heel at the door. “I almost forgot- we use Friday a lot in the tower, to communicate with each other, to store data, for security, everything really. ” she exclaimed, pointing at someplace on the ceiling. The very blank, very ordinary ceiling. Noting Wanda’s puzzlement, she expanded on her original statement. “She’s Starks new AI.” Artificial Intelligence... unwillingly, her mind flickered to Ultron. She sought to remember the satisfaction of yanking his heart from the depths of his cold, steel carcass, until the thought no longer hindered her. “If you ask for her, she’ll answer, no matter where you are in this place. I’m pretty sure even Stark forgot where he hid the speakers.” “Okay. Thankyou,” said Wanda , trying to express her immense gratitude through two words. With that, she slid out of the room. “Play nice, Friday!” She called. Finally, Wanda was left completely alone again. It didn’t bother her so this time- it wasn’t a suffocating loneliness, it wasn’t cold, or unfriendly, or a stark opposition to what she wanted. Honestly, she wasn’t sure specifically what she wanted, but she knew this was close. She was almost glad for the quiet, which was something she didn’t think she’d be saying for a while. She’d been asleep for three weeks, and yet she was so achingly, bone-deep tired. Even now, now she could be certain there was no imminent danger; now she knew that for the foreseeable future she’d survive, she didn’t allow herself to think of Pietro. Because in truth, the pain was unbearable when she did. Perhaps it was selfish, and perhaps the sharp stabbing guilt that she felt was appropriate, but she couldn’t handle the intensity of her grief and anger to be dialled up by such an extreme: even now when she ignored them, her skull threatened to burst with the force of it all. It was unbelievably easier to leave him for now, repressed deeply and safely under miles of layers, than to confront it. So she thought of nothing, and she dreamt of everything. “Miss Maximoff,” a voice called suddenly, a voice that curled with an accent she had never heard before. Once again, she flew upwards from her blankets. Her fingertips crackled. “I’m sensing your distress. I assure you there’s no need to panic,” it called, consciously softer now, from a place she couldn’t decide. The disembodied voice continued to speak slowly with that strange twang, and she clenched her jaw in frustration because she couldn’t locate the person it belonged to, and that was dangerous. She poured out her magic, but still she couldn’t sense anyone in her vicinity. She couldn’t fight someone that wasn’t there. “Miss Maximoff. Would you like me to alert Sir?” Her eyes darted furiously round the room. Sir. “Friday?” She hissed. “Yes. I’m sorry. I was about to introduce myself.” Wanda froze in the midst of her frenzy, and for the millionth time today talked herself down from blowing up completely. God, this place was going to take some getting used to. She didn’t mind.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
As he grumbled something unintelligible in his sleep, Tony shifted restlessly to the side, Clint Barton’s head lolling on his chest where the arc reactor sat. His eyelids fluttered impatiently. Disgruntled with the unwarranted movement of his makeshift bed frame, Clint’s brow tensed, his frown illuminated by a gentle blue glow. As soon as Stark had settled, however, he immediately resumed his peaceful, rhythmic snoring...For one reason or another, she found the muffled, repetitive sound of his heavy breathing somewhat soothing, his nose all squashed against the leather. Wanda couldn’t recall exactly when Clint’s arm had moved from being comfortingly slung around her shoulders, but she assumed that she’d probably repositioned it around the time he’d fallen asleep so that he looked more comfortable, and less prone to complaining about his neck in the morning. He’d still find a way.From somewhere on the other sofa, Sam Wilson chuckled softly at the television. Although he was awake still, he sprawled like an octopus over the cushions, one long arm dangling over the edge, and the other propping up his head. Steve’s head dipped periodically to the leg resting on his lap, evidently not amused by the film now playing on the screen- a vivid, colourful thing that seemed to have changed since the last time she’d been paying attention, properly. She was certain that whatever she’d been watching was not animated, yet this one definitely was.Besides her, Nat wriggled. Curled into the armrest- the one that she had personally claimed for the foreseeable future- she snuggled further into the cushion, though both her eyes were open; Wanda could see them reflecting the lurid hues of orange and pink from the screen. Both of her cold feet pushed up against her right thigh, still icy despite the three-movie-long time period they’d resided there. Not that Wanda minded, of course- the contact was constant, grounding and if anything else, a remarkably open display of trust. The steady, unbroken pressure brought her back, occasionally. She wondered if Natasha realised.As the world shifted messily into focus once again; as the colours sharpened and she managed to wake up from a dream that never was, Wanda noticed that the cushion clamped steadfast in her hands was damp, and she reached up and traced the tears on her cheeks lightly with a trembling finger. She hadn’t known she’d been doing that. Then again, she hadn’t been all that attentive for a few days, and every time that she came around, she discovered blurry chunks of time where she was simply absent. Either way, the tears weren’t surprising, not in the least: she sincerely doubted they had stopped at all since she’d let the grief in.Grief, she knew, was a multifaceted response to loss. Grief was a huge black thing, and it wouldn’t let go.105 days, Wanda reckoned, had passed since that fateful day in Sokovia. 84 whole days had passed in rapid succession since she had woken up in New York, alone, with everyone in the world knowing her face, and absolutely no one knowing her name. Those 84 days had been hard, the last few impossibly so, but things were getting better, gradually. She didn’t give herself the chance to do any less.Over this short time, she had poured everything into getting to know her teammates- sporadic and peculiar as they were. Admittedly, in the beginning this everything amounted to only a few conversations, yet so far, she had made good ground (judging by the tangle of super spies and blankets in which she was currently encased.) It was a lot more than they’d expected her to.Tony rolled around once again, and Clint promptly fell off the sofa with an enormous crash.—————————————————————On the second day, she’d met Doctor Banner, who had needed to confirm that she was completely physically healthy before he discharged her from medical. She didn’t feel that she ought to tell him about the headache: now a constant, dull throb at the front of her skull. Besides, it was most probably some mystical magical side effect of being telepathic, and she very much doubted the scientist could readily resolve such a thing. The man was quiet and kind as he checked her over, and though he was fascinated by her powers, he didn’t press or pry. She hadn’t seen him again since that occasion, twelve weeks ago almost, which was a shame really. Apparently, it wasn’t anything at all to do with Wanda, Clint often reassured- Bruce was never supposed to be a sociable person; it was a marvel that Tony had been out of his lab for so long. Even so, she especially didn’t blame him for staying clear of the nasty little witch girl who had meddled with his mind; forced him into endangering thousands of innocent citizens. They all remembered the things she’d done, even if most didn’t show it. So yeah, it was a shame, but she more than understood.On the fourth day she met Captain America himself, and unlike Bruce, he stuck around. For better or for worse, she hadn’t quite decided. At first, she had been determined to be on good terms with every single person in the tower. After three weeks of trying to cozy up with Steve Rogers, however, Wanda had concluded that some people were simply predisposed to dislike her.His handshake was cold and his greeting formal, and the whole interaction was as brief as he could afford to make it. Much like Banner, she couldn’t even begin to play the victim. She could hardly blame the man for his less than friendly approach. Because, as much as she’d like to forget, she remembered everything that she had done to him.The sensation of plunging elbow-deep into his subconscious and picking and pulling aimlessly at ties, dragging to the surface ancient recollections of a woman named Peggy, with her hair weaved into intricate rolls. The raw, painful despair, and the desperate longing, and the terrible grief; all that didn’t belong to her, all blurred into one mass of writhing shadow.It couldn’t help but sting a little every time he didn’t return a smile, or every time he excused himself just as she’d arrived. But more than anything, she understood.And she hated herself for it.She stayed entirely in her room for her first week at Avengers Tower. The place was enormous- larger than the whole of her childhood home, she reckoned- sweeping grey walls with a huge sheet of glass at the forefront, peering out over the skyline. Even so, her bed took up the most part of the space, an expanse of silky sheets and huge plush pillows. It was bare though, save for the three black and white stills of Brooklyn hung above the bed frame. It was a far cry from homely.So, after that week or so, she decided to face the world- or a very small portion of it behind exceedingly secure walls.Wanda never really ran out of things to distract herself, what with living with a tower chock full of very colourful people. And as days passed, and the team grew more comfortable with her presence, she was invited along to the daily happenings around the building.Movie nights with Clint very quickly became a staple, which evolved into movie afternoons, and then fully fledged movie marathon days with big fluffy blankets and buckets full of popcorn. There was no limit to the content Friday could provide, and seemingly no limit to the amount of classics that Wanda just had to see. Tony and Natasha joined in frequently when they were bored of poking around in a lab or stabbing people for Shield, respectively.During these gatherings, it became very clear that in Natasha’s opinion, the more blood that was shed on screen, the better. Tony shared a similar appreciation for grisly features, but even he couldn’t stomach more than a couple of Romanoff’s favourites within the space of a week. Perhaps the best thing to arise from these nights was observing Clint’s reactions: the way he squirmed insufferably every time someone happened to lose a limb ( an occasion more frequent than one may initially believe), or the many various ways he managed to inconspicuously hide himself behind a cushion. It could be certain that during the very goriest bits, he would make sure to shield Wanda’s eyes with his hands (“Seriously Tasha! God- that’s disgusting! Are anyone’s organs internal by the end of this thing?”). Considering that to the best of his knowledge, Wanda was an adult who had literally grown up in Hydras hands- Hydra, the notorious terrorists- it was definitely much more for his own benefit than that of anyone else. She didn’t like to think how he’d react if he discovered that she couldn’t even legally watch most of these films at a cinema, here in America...She’d been invited to Tony’s lab a total of one times, a courtesy apparently of the highest regard, but she didn’t really take to the environment, and so she hadn’t visited since. Her lack of recent enthusiasm could also be attributed to events including, but not limited to: a rather nasty combination of chemicals, a rather vibrant warning label she didn’t appear to notice, and a rather large explosion on work bench 17.
Or, the very resolute lifelong ban she had received, which she considered a bit drastic, really.
She couldn’t help that she seemed to display a particular affinity for pyrotechnics.She allowed herself to be steered from room to room, person to person, happily distracted by anything at all. She absolutely did not let herself think of home, or of him, and so she didn’t really think of much worthwhile at all. Wanda wondered sometimes, distantly, whether they’d noticed her blatant refusal to accept, or to grieve, or to move on with her life in the slightest of ways.They definitely did- Clint, Natasha, Tony, Steve even. She saw it in their eyes, heard it in their minds. They were waiting, cautiously almost,
for the cracks between the jokes and the flashy smiles, just for the slightest acknowledgement that she had lost the person dearest to her.If Wanda had a say in it, they’d be waiting a rather long time. Because apart from the relentless headache, she was absolutely without the slightest of doubts, fine. She managed not to think of home or him, or Ultron or Sokovia, or her mum and dad, because she couldn’t, subconsciously. Not anymore. The very notion of such topics, alongside their overwhelming emotional response, were buried forcefully under miles of memories and thoughts, and she would not let them out.And so she continued to smile, and laugh, and joke, as if this whole thing was temporary. Somewhere along the line, they’d started to care.And in the occasional periods between, where the compulsory maiming people for Shield thing that Natasha and Clint took off to do sometimes, Steve Rogers often in tow, happened to cross over with a Tony Stark certified lab tinkering session, she took to wandering.The corridors of Avengers tower were numerous and winding, and perfectly suited for aimless wanders- to see new faces, or just simply for something to do. Not all were completely without purpose, as sometimes, when the rambling constant thoughts of her housemates became much too loud, Wanda needed to physically distinguish them from verbal conversation. It helped, she had learned, to sort the spoken from the internal. It cleared her mind somewhat.She couldn’t help it, then, when she stumbled across conversations that she really shouldn’t be listening in on. And she couldn’t help it when she didn’t just leave as soon as she had realised.Because some things were far too interesting to ignore, even if she definitely probably should.It was on one of these particular occasions, one of these innocent strolls along the conference board wing of the fourth floor, where she heard a whisper that was very interesting, indeed.At first she caught Tony’s voice, contemplating something in it’s calculated way, not the cocky rhythm it usually bestowed- that was intriguing detail #1. Intriguing detail #2 arrived in the form of Steve Rogers reply- Steve Rogers the super soldier who had abstained from a mission alongside his friends, to simply talk to Tony, who he lived with. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So why did this conversation have to happen now, couldn’t it wait? Ah-ha! Intriguing detail #3- Spiderman.In her Hydra days, amidst all of the spiel of how Stark was ‘poisoning the Earth and exploiting its ignorance’, and how the Avengers were ‘a prodigious burden upon the fragility of national and celestial security’, his name would appear. Though they used Wanda’s anger to warp her sense of judgement frequently and successfully, there was something about the vigilante that they just couldn’t seem to twist. It made them mad, oh hell, it made them furious. But no matter the angle from which they chose to attack (‘criminal wraith’, ‘menace upon society’), his story had always seemed favourable to her. From what she’d seen, he wasn’t conceited or arrogant as she’d once believed the Avengers to be- he always fought to win, no matter the scale or the insignificance of the victory. Very often, though she definitely shouldn’t have, she’d seen clips of him scaling trees to safely return kittens to their owners. Wanda could never, even now, imagine the team suiting up to help elderly ladies cross the road. And that was the quality that set Spiderman apart.She’d barely caught whispers of the word in the midst of echoes of ‘Genetically enhanced’ and ‘Non lethal’, when the men inside made to move, and she had to plot a rather abrupt escape route. But she’d heard it, she had definitely heard his mention. And there was nothing she’d like to do more than meet him. Why not?Wanda could hardly ask out right the next day to demand the things the two were plotting, not when she’d never shown a particular interest in the Spider guy before. So she waited... and waited some more...Until, finally, on the 35th day, opportunity presented itself, and opportunity walked and talked like Clint Barton.It was early, though the rest of the world seemed eager to disagree, and she had only just scrambled out of her enormous bed. Wanda quietly made her way down to the communal kitchen with the intention and lingering hope that someone would be there: someone, not Tony, who could sufficiently cook a relatively edible meal. She padded into the room, past Steve who perched on a stool at the island, a book in his hands, Natasha at his side. “Morning, маленькая ведьма,” Nat said overtop of her coffee, the steam rising in spirals; “доброе утро,” Wanda replied with a smile. She’d discovered only recently, when Natasha’s guard- a vast, thick and rigid thing- had been eased, that the woman shared a similar dislike for early morning rendezvous. And because of the constant wall Natasha liked to build, it was still somewhat startling to see her this vulnerable, her hair messy and loose and mascara smudged under her eyes. Not vulnerable, she reminded herself. There were probably three pistols stashed under the counter top alone.“It stopped being morning about three hours ago!” Clint called from the sofa, and she stuck out her tongue, crossing over to meet him. “Good afternoon, then,” she greeted sweetly in a terrible impersonation of a posh English accent as she sat cross-legged on his left. “I can’t help but feel that that wasn’t genuine, Red.” She snorted.A news channel was muted on the screen, though she was certain that Clint wasn’t watching, not by reading the subtitles, but rather daydreaming about something or another; she doubted that he’d put the effort in to read anything that wasn’t strictly necessary. From what she could make out, the screen seemed to display a short segment of footage about an unusually large sheep in Sweden, before the image flickered back to a perky blonde news anchor, her startling lipstick stretched widely into a flashy false smile. Wanda couldn’t catch the words fast enough as they played across the bottom of the screen, squinting as she was. The smiley woman finished her little speech, her blonde bob bouncing as she reported rather enthusiastically. And then without warning, the image changed.A camera spinning 360° around the crumpled remains of a church, little puffs of dust rising as the operator span. A little refugee girl, coppery blood smeared on her cheek. A grave. A more recent drone shot of overhead, over an endless stretch of rubble and debris, of broken lifeless things. Jumpy, pixelated footage of men in navy jackets hauling away lumps of smoking, charred metal.Sokovia.Her breath quickened. She hadn’t seen it since... since then.Another crying child. The ruins of a home.And suddenly, as soon as it had come, it was gone, and the news lady returned, her white teeth positively gleaming in the studio lights. But she wasn’t smiling, she’d adopted some sultry demeanour, and Wanda could almost imagine the careful controlled tone she’d acquired. The captions fluttered across the bottom of the screen in time with the erratic pulse of her heart, and she strained to read them.“Although it’s been almost eight weeks now, since disaster saw this Russian city take to the sky, information is still scarce. Mr Tony Stark has made no further public announcements since that of his relief project, and the welfare of the original Avengers team.”
“Sources in contact with Stark Industries say nothing has been confirmed concerning the origin of the attack, now dubbed by many as the battle of Novi Grad, though rumours are rife. Which brings us along to our next topic, an on going investigation. Who helped the avengers that day, and where are they now?”
A picture flashed up briefly on the screen, a gritty, low resolution image of a busy scene. She froze all the same.Unmistakably, Pietro blurred across the screen, the air shimmering where he had raced across the ground at an impossible speed. The photo was distorted slightly, with the speed at which he had moved completely out matching the shutter speed of the lens. A small voice in the back of her mind queried whether that was the last photo that was ever taken of her baby brother.Momentarily, she couldn’t seem to breathe. He fought to surface from her memories, pulling with him the terrible weight of grief and all that followed, and she shoved it all back down with tremendous force. Her lungs began to fill with sweet oxygen as she tensed all of her muscles in concentration.Not here.
Not here.
The television screen suddenly eclipsed, and once again, so did the struggle. Wanda relaxed. She turned to see Clint, remote in hand, looking incredibly worried, in his strangely serious paternal way. He was watching, then.“I should have thought about...” he muttered, trailing off. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” Wanda noticed the quiet of the entire room, surveyed it for a moment and shook her head fervently, employing a big smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “No,” she exclaimed, a little too aggressively and Clint’s expression intensified, as if he was worried that she was about to break down, or possibly explode. She might’ve, given the correct opportunity, but she was perfectly calm right now: she’d repressed everything back exactly where she liked it. Where the stupid, pathetic feelings couldn’t affect her. “I’m fine,” she said again, forcefully, yet his expression didn’t budge. “I’m okay, Clint.”He frowned for a little and then eventually turned passive, as if he’d come to some sort of decision. Wanda could practically feel the force of Natasha’s anxious glare, boring two little holes in the side of her skull.Out of desperation to break the chain of ringing silence and concerned staring, she was five whole seconds away from launching into aggressively cheerful small talk. Thankfully, Clint made the move, and the room partially lapsed back to normality. “Do you wanna see something cool?” He asked, completely ignoring anything that may have just happened, and she leapt at the chance. For someone as ridiculously silly as Clint, the level of emotional intelligence he often demonstrated was always sort of a surprise.She pulled up her knees to her chin and hugged them; Clint reached down the side of the sofa before making some small noise of triumph, and pulling a Stark pad from the depths of the common room couch. To her absolute astonishment, the undoubtedly expensive device was looking much healthier than his old mobile, may it rest in peace, despite a few crumbs clinging to the screen. He brushed them off lazily.“I saw this guy on YouTube...” he began, jabbing at the screen, “And you have to see what he can do, it’s amazing.”
“Really? This, again?” Natasha called from the other side of the room. Clint stuck out his tongue in her direction. With a few more undeterred swipes a video appeared, reminiscent of the crackly footage from a security camera maybe, fixed somewhere in the city.“I think I’ve seen this!” Wanda exclaimed pointedly, and she was almost certain of it- she recognised the clip from someplace. The feed continued, showing car after car thundering up and down the street, spraying puddles of murky water and blaring their warbling horns at every opportunity. “Wait for itttttt...” Clint said excitedly, fixated on the tablet. She was waiting. For someone who’d obviously seen this video before, Clint was practically falling off of his seat.Suddenly, a blue car swerved dangerously to the left- she wasn’t alert enough to discern the cause- and span wildly out of control, hurtling straight into the path of an oncoming taxi cab. The blue car hit a sidewalk head on and flipped, and- yes! Now she remembered! this was a video of- a smudge of bright red launched into the traffic at the last second, and Clint squealed. “Spiderman!” They cried in unison.“Not you too,” Natasha groaned, and they watched eagerly as the figure caught the car in his hands, barely straining as he lifted it five foot off of the concrete. The taxi cab continued its journey, seemingly unperturbed, and Spider-Man set the car down on the pavement. The feed flickered, and the video cut off.“Did you see that?” Clint asked and she nodded repeatedly, eyes bright in awe. “He caught a car. In his bare hands.” She took in the pure excitement that lit up his face, like a kid on Christmas morning. “I’ve watched his stuff for a while,” Wanda said, though she gave no further context. “Everyone seems to think the videos are staged, but I know they’re real.” “Definitely,” Clint agreed, “ I’ve actually seen him in action once,” he bragged. Her eyes widened: she’d love to meet the one person that Hydra hadn’t been able to turn her against. “From about a mile away,” he added hesitantly. She rolled her eyes.For a while they chatted about New York’s favourite vigilante, and how they were going to convince Tony to ask him to join the team. Clint was exceptionally good at pretending that the whole deal with the television had never occurred, for which she was endlessly grateful. She marvelled at how close of a call it had been.From this occasion, Wanda had gathered sufficient basis from which to pester Steve and Tony at the next possible occasion- Steve himself had witnessed firsthand her appreciation of the hero- and yet she was no closer to meeting Spiderman than she had been when she’d overheard that first conversation. So far, even now, 84 days in, she hadn’t found the right time to ask, or she’d simply forgotten, having been distracted for one reason or another. (Presently, she resolved to continue her investigation as soon as she summoned the energy.)For now, the Spiderman query had grinded to an almighty halt.————————————————————A few weeks later, just as she was beginning to grow tired of meandering aimlessly around the building, the stars aligned, and the higher powers seemed to come together to agree that time had come to allow Wanda to meet new people. If anything else, this was good, solid progress; this meant that the team were no longer wary of her as a security threat, and that they also regarded her as somewhat mentally stable. Which was precisely as she had wished. She was rather bored of all the unnecessary precautions, after all.And so, seven weeks on from waking up, Wanda met Sam Wilson.Surprisingly, she was given no prior warning that she would be meeting any new faces, though she guessed that was so that they could monitor her reactions to the situation. They were rather lucky then, that she’d re-trained her instincts since Hydra.The day was a Tuesday, around 1 o’clock; she sprawled in bed, halfway through a dusty book she’d found lying around, when Friday gave an unexpected alert.
“Good afternoon Wanda,” she delivered. “Miss Natasha Romanoff is requesting your presence in the living area.” Though she would have liked to finish her chapter, Wanda needed no further incentive to get up and move- there was no way she was ignoring an alert from Natasha.She sauntered along a corridor, took at-least three wrong turns, and at long last wandered into the common room expectedly. What she did not expect to see, however, was a stranger playing blackjack on the carpet.From the way Clint and Natasha were closely observing her, Wanda figured that a drastic reaction on her part was being accounted for. But on this certain Tuesday afternoon she wasn’t feeling particularly murderous, so she tried not to falter, and carried on as normal. This was normal- exceedingly so, once upon a time. It was just a little surprising currently, that was all..“Hey, Red!” Clint called from the floor as she walked in to the room. Very much like a young child, he sat cross legged on the rug, sticking out his tongue as he calculated the fan of playing cards in his hand. Opposite from him sat the other man, who looked up from his hands where, he too, was studying a deck. His face was vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t figure its significance, and she wasn’t in the mood to take his name by force. The dark skinned man smiled, a warm, good-natured smile. There was an inexplicable something about him that made her want to crack a friendly joke, and if Wanda hadn’t been successfully manipulated by terrorists for the most part of her waking life, she’d trust him innately.“Hey,” he greeted, and his voice wasn’t nearly as broad or serious as she’d once expected it to be. Briefly, she gave a polite smile in reply. She definitely knew the guy from somewhere, and she definitely only had about three remaining seconds to figure it out before he spoiled the fun. Wanda studied his face intently, but she just couldn’t place it...“Nice to meet you, finally. I’m Sam, by the way. The number one bird-themed avenger.” Mentally, she kicked herself. The falcon, she recalled as all of the information slotted into place. Behind him, Clint spluttered as he fought to relay all of the ‘evidence’ declaring his superiority (“Secondary Avenger, Wilson”), and she chuckled. “Wanda,” she confirmed, though she was certain he already knew.With the slightest of hesitations, she crossed over the room, and plonked herself down besides Natasha on one of Stark’s enormous grey sofas. “Did you want me for something?”“Немного красный,” the widow began sweetly. Almost too sweetly, in her trained, clinical voice adorned with a sugary smile. She was absolutely up to something. “I need you to pretend that we’re having a normal conversation.”
Wanda tilted her head to the side and hesitated for a moment before, answering as casually as she could. “Is this serious?” She studied Sam’s friendly smile again, and as before, struggled to mask her confusion. “Is it about him?”
“Nope, stop worrying. Also, I just made a really funny joke,” she directed and Wanda laughed a little too loudly, now extremely interested in this predicament and mildly concerned for her wellbeing. She was being secretly instructed by a deadly assassin, after all.“You better not be insulting me again!” Clint yelled over his shoulder, evidently frustrated at not being able to understand the exchange. “Believe me Barton, we have better things to talk about,” fired back Natasha, and then it was Sam’s turn to yell some more.He was pawing through his collection of playing cards, but couldn’t seem to locate the thing he was searching so desperately for.“I could’ve sworn I had a king!” he announced exasperatedly, having abandoned his search with a huff. “Are you cheating Barton? I’ll have Stark mess with your arrows again, don’t you think I won’t.” Clint shrugged under his glare.
“Stop accusing me- it’s not my fault you’re bad at this. He wouldn’t be able to find them, anyway.”
The accusations in Sam’s eyes didn’t budge, but he resumed the game, and forgot all about his suspicions (after a short while of inspecting Clint’s every movement, of course).From besides her, Natasha made to get up from the sofa. “Watch,” she stated simply, her wild eyes twinkling.
Wanda did, intently, as she slunk across the carpet, making a great deal of stretching and yawning on her way. When she neared the two men, she bent over and feigned stretching out her arms, reaching all the way down until her fingertips touched the floor, kicking out her legs, “Nat you’re blocking out my light!” Clint whined, and- zip. Neither Sam nor Clint seemed to pick up on the action, but Wanda was certain of the flash of movement. Natasha finished her spontaneous yoga session, pulled her sleeves over her wrists, and rejoined Wanda, who was squinting incredulously.Her focus was interrupted however, by a very forceful, and very sudden, squeal of indignation from Clint.“You stole my ace!” he accused blindly, his stubby finger pointed directly at Sam. Sam batted the finger away.
“Did not!” he argued, his voice particularly emanating that of a five year old who’d been caught by the teacher.
“But it was right there, right by my foot!”
“How is it my fault that you can’t keep track of your cards Legolas?”
The two launched into a constant stream of verbal assault from both sides, and if anyone was to walk in the room at that second, they’d probably have assumed that the men had murdered each other’s families, or something alike.It was increasingly amusing to observe their frustration when eventually they continued to play, sat cross- legged on the rug, eyeing their suspicions. Wanda was, too, wholly absorbed in the spectacular case of the disappearing playing cards when Natasha poked her sharply in the arm.“Hey! What’d you do that for?” The other woman, smirking, brought a pointer finger to her lips. Right, the secret Russian assassin conversation- how could she forget? Wanda did as she was told, and waited compliantly for next instruction.From her sleeve, Nat pulled a shiny rectangle. It was no larger than two inches in width, paper thin... a playing card, she realised. Nat flipped the card. It read the ace of clubs… Clint’s ace! Both incredibly impressed and amused, she snorted and hastened to stifle it. As quickly as she had swiped it, Natasha stuffed the card away, though she needn’t have bothered. The Ultimate Blackjack Showdown had reached such an intensity that its participants probably wouldn’t notice if the world collapsed around them, right there in New York.In fact, Clint and Sam had stopped arguing all together, and were each focusing, with resound determination, on winning. That couldn’t happen! Wanda locked eye contact with a grinning Natasha and clicked her fingers softly.For the first time in weeks, she allowed the red magic to stream from her fingers. In time, she’d liken the sensation to that of dropping an enormous weight.She circled her index and ring finger slowly in diverging rotations, giving the energy direction in which to coil, and then she all but extinguished the charge she had gathered, leaving only a spark resting in the space just inches above her palm. Momentarily, she let it sit there. Relished the tiny buzz and thrum that she had missed so deeply.Wanda smirked at Natasha, who was studying the trick with elation, and then turned to the boys. It was Sam’s turn, she reckoned. Scoping out her target, she strained to get a good, clear view of the cards he possessed, both those fanned in his hands, and the few stragglers scattered at his feet; she singled the card laying closest to her and furthest from him, which seemed to make easy prey. She’d selected her victim, and so when Sam next chose to play a card, she took first opportunity and seized, pulling it sharply from its position. It sliced through the air like a very thin, bright red bullet, and landed silently in Natasha’s hand. Perfect.Eagerly, Romanoff added it to her growing collection and the two couldn’t help but laugh, which earned them a few pointed stares. From there, all hell broke loose.The variety of ways in which Natasha managed to snaffle cards were endless; most ridiculous in theory, but expert in practice. They only seemed to get more creative the longer the whole game went on. The increasingly ludicrous methods peaked with an incredible sequence that involved the woman striding towards the kitchen to get a drink, managing to get a playing card to stick to the sole of her foot as she strolled past, and then return to the sofa with the card still attached.Together, Wanda and Natasha managed to gather an impressive total of thirteen cards, by which time it was a wonder the boys could continue playing at all. They’d shrieked for hours when their plot was finally unveiled, after a rather explosive screaming match between Clint and Sam; the utter bewilderment that plastered across their faces was one that Wanda would never forget. The latter didn’t seem to see the humorous side, at first.After that shenanigan, when Tony had watched the footage and cried actual tears of laughter, movie nights required an extra bucket of popcorn, and the average age rating of the features peaked, specifically so that Sam could enjoy watching Clint wiggle in his seat. When he’d had his fill of making fun of Barton, which admittedly, took at least three films- the spectacle was highly amusing- without fail, a musical would end up on the big screen. And without fail, Sam Wilson would know every single word. He wasn’t all that bad, the new guy.
————————————————Following another few weeks, it was apparent that Wanda still hadn’t used telekinesis to rip the new guy’s head cleanly from his spine. In fact, she’d released her powers in close proximity of Sam, yet the most she’d put them to use was to snatch playing cards from underneath his nose. She hadn’t even looked into his mind, as hard as it was to ignore. She was still uncertain whether the Avengers knew the extent of this ability to begin with, but... still. She’d been perfectly sensible and in control.The dynamic in the tower shifted almost, as its resident four forgot the majority of their precautions. It was almost as if she’d passed all of their tests, what with managing to restrain from a rampaging Hydra-esque killing spree. Wanda also hadn’t tried to escape, preferring to keep Tony’s offer, which she guessed solidified the evidence. From that point onwards, they more or less began to treat her like a real Avenger, not the mopey refugee girl lodging on Stark’s sofa.He’d approached her one afternoon, motor oil smeared over his cheeks; she resisted the urge to scrub it off.
“Hey, how’s it going? The bed big enough for you?”
She smiled and confirmed that yes, the monstrous expanse of bed was indeed sufficient. “Good,” he exclaimed, and he really seemed to mean it, though he still looked suspicious that she was about to burst into tears. That hadn’t changed, then.“I was wondering, and only if you want to, of course...” he continued, coming round to sit next to her, “ We’re going down to train tomorrow.” This caught her attention very quickly. “The whole shebang- suits, powers, weapons. Even Rhodey might show up,” he added as an afterthought.
“War machine?”
“Yeah, you’ve heard about him obviously. He’s coming upstate for a little while, so it’s good to get some practice in.” He seemed very pleased at the thought. “Anyway. If you’re up to it, Red, and only if you’re ready, I think it’d be good for you to join us. Stretch your legs.”Wanda took a moment to think it through, remembering how good it felt earlier with that tiny spark of charge withheld in her palm, and came to her conclusion.“Yeah,” she answered plainly, before she could find the means to take the reply back, “I’ll come.”“Great!” He beamed at her, then his expression softened.
“And listen, Red. If you change your mind at any point whilst we’re down there, we’ll stop.”She scowled at him, and the soft words he had hung in the air. Wanda didn’t need anyone else re-thinking the decision, only herself.“Okay, okay,” he said, arms raised in imitation of surrender, “Just putting it out there.”He got up to leave, patting her shoulder somewhat affectionately, and she considered hugging him, though she decided quickly against it.“See you Thursday!” He called.
“You bet!” She yelled after him, a desperate burning desire to prove him wrong, to prove them all wrong, fuelling her spirit.When Thursday came along, however, her spirit had all but dissipated.She’d laughed and joked with Sam and Natasha all week about finally having a chance to kick their asses, but now the time had arrived, she felt rather sick as they trash talked each other in the corridor. She couldn’t even seem to hide her nerves from Clint, as he led her down to the training room, but he didn’t relay Tony’s monologue. He hugged her briefly which was rather startling, insulted her to balance it out, and then left the room, the doors swinging in his wake.For a brief instance she stood all alone, directly in the centre of the vast room, perpetually twisting her hoodie sleeves into knots. Though she hadn’t forgotten Tony’s promise so quickly, Wanda was completely, and without a slither of doubt, terrified; her heart had began to beat a little faster than she would deem necessary. Absentmindedly, she pulled at a loose thread on her thigh, a stray strand of cotton that she had plucked from her comfy black leggings- that weren’t Kevlar, or leather, or even jeans, and that certainly weren’t appropriate battle attire against five Avengers. It was quiet and still, unnervingly so, and she didn’t know whether they were expecting her to warm up or something, but she sure as hell wasn’t about to start doing lunges on the flagstones. The unsettling peace of the place only succeeded in dialling up her anxiety.The last time that she had fought, she had turned a whole city to dust.
The last time that she had fought, her baby brother was killed.
She didn’t think she could be less prepared for this moment if she tried.The pressure of the whole situation was amplified tenfold by the fact that Stark was sure to be watching attentively for the first instance that indicated she couldn’t handle this; to haul her out of there in the blink of an eye. Completely unnecessary, of course. If she was going to have ever let herself out of this, if she was going to admit weakness and deny this stupid compulsion to prove herself, she’d have run straight out of the gym the second the door swung shut.A voice broke through her monologue. “Okay, Red.” A familiar voice, Tony’s voice. “If you’re sure you’re up to it...” She nodded, firmly. She lied.
“Show us what you got.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It could be said, quite confidently, that Wanda had less than no idea of what to expect from a typical avengers training session, never mind this peculiar sort of initiation/reminiscent-of-an-exam situation. But instead of waiting around aimlessly for the action to find her, (it had been far too quiet for far too long, she suspected,) she reached out and let her magic tell her. Immediately, she found a presence: Clint Barton, stalking towards her from behind. She almost smiled as she imagined him walking three steps into the corridor and turning right back around, but the expression never seemed to make it to her lips. A chill trickled down from the nape of her neck as the man slinked towards her in a very un-Clint like fashion. A very serious, assassin-Barton like fashion. She’d have made some silly quip about how entirely different this persona played alongside civilian Clint if it weren’t for the adrenaline now holding her frozen in place. Because suddenly, this simulation seemed very real. Discord struck in her mind- she would never dream of hurting her new friend, and even though she knew this feeling was mutual, she also knew that the Avengers were desperate to know the extent of her abilities. A distant memory of an arrow and a blinding, impossible agony burst into view, and her magic flared protectively. But if there was any chance of her hurting him, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. And so after a second spent calculating the decision, Clint finally leapt out from the shadows and she flung her right arm backwards and seized. She could visualise how the charge shot from her fingertips with the motion, latching on to its pray as she squeezed. Still blind to the action, she felt for the invisible points where her energy connected to the man, felt the pressure of his full body weight pushing against them. This was the first time in a while that she had released her magic properly and it felt incredible; the rush of power was an elation she was sure she could never tire of. A grunt sounded from behind. Ah, Clint. She spun dramatically to see such a sight that she couldn’t contain herself and she let out an ugly howl of laughter: Clint Barton, Deadly Assassin-Shield Agent-Avenger suspended mid-leap, his limbs spread as if he was flying but his body frozen in a cloud of scarlet static. Darkening progressively, his face screwed up with the effort of trying to break free, and the veins on his forehead were at danger of bursting. It took a lot of effort to concentrate as she was reduced to tears at one of the worlds most dangerous men dangling helplessly mid-air like superman, his bow suspended somewhere below him where he’d dropped it upon impact. The man in question seemed incredibly irked, and in between wiping away hysterical tears, remembering to breathe and taking a whole host of mental photographs, Wanda made sure to adjust her grip so that she was certain she wasn’t hurting him. He quit his struggle and took to glaring at her silently, and she managed to gather herself for a second, before she was overcome with a fit of laughter. “Quit it, Maximoff,” he growled, though his tone read utterly devoid of any aggression. Her magic shuddered as she shrieked, watching on as he floundered. “I mean it! At least end my suffering! C’mon, leave me some shred of dignity!.” Despite the movement she had allowed him, the most that Clint managed to achieve since she had loosened her grip was twisting round slightly, until he had to flap about pathetically in order to face her again. She opened her mouth as if to joke about the shade of red his face had turned, but she couldn’t seem to find the air to do so. “Tony, if you don’t send someone else in here I’m gonna have no choice but to kill Wanda.” Any pretence of a hostile atmosphere had seeped away, and so had her nerves, it seemed. She smiled, and got to her feet, arm outstretched. Cracked her knuckles, cockily. “Bring it, old man.” She barely found time to laugh at the scandalised glower she received as a mechanical whirring echoed across the hall and Sam Wilson, fully decked in his wings and goggles, burst from the rafters. They really weren’t playing around, then. She grinned. High tech suits of armour made for an interesting battle, especially if she had to restrain herself from harming the person wielding said suits. “Clint, you have never looked better.” Sam quipped as he circled round the room, the broad span of his wings casting interesting shadows in the fluorescent lighting. Readily, she coiled charge around her middle and index finger, as if she was looping a piece of rope, then cast it off to her palm where it hissed and spat with building anticipation. She waited meticulously for the exact moment that he would swoop down and make his move. He soon did, and she sprung into action without missing a beat. She propelled the ball of energy by bringing her arm back and slamming it forward, and she watched eagerly as it soared into the air. He tried to swerve in his dive to avoid it but she twisted her wrist and it’s path tweaked, hitting him square in the chest. With a lurid flash of light, the scarlet mass ruptured and soon he was enshrouded in a mass of crackling charge, much like Clint. What with all the endorphins flowing from her mind at this moment, she could barely feel the added strain of his weight and so she plucked him from the air, and with a simple pointer finger directed him next to Barton. “Hey,” the archer mused. She’d barely taken a breath when the action recommenced. This simulation certainly wasn’t slowing, she realised, as Steve strolled into the room, his garish shield poised. Wanda faltered a little in the flow she had found with his entrance (He seemed to reserve just a little bit of hatred for her, after all), until he came close enough for her to discern that Steve Rogers- to her absolute shock- was smiling, warmly. “I’d have to say the same about you, Sam,” he called, and without the slightest of warnings, sent his shield flying straight at her face. Sneaky. She crashed to the floor clumsily, feeling the metal skim the top of her ponytail. With a loud crash, it found target in Sam, and struck his armoured chest (“What the hell man? Are you serious!”). Having crashed, the shield didn’t round back again as he had expected, but instead clattered unceremoniously to the floor. “Sorry!” the proprietor cried, grinning sheepishly. Without his prized weapon, Wanda was at a loss as to how he would continue. Steve, it seemed, faced a similar puzzle, and she watched his internal struggle as he seemed to calculate his options, his broad arms folded. Settling, she was sure, for blatant improvisation, he simply launched himself forwards in a sprint directly towards her. Carefully, she grasped the energy holding up Sam and bundled it in her left fist, freeing up her right arm. Partly out of curiosity, she let Steve continue his run up until the last second where he leapt into the air, much like Clint had attempted previously , but lacking any of the stealth or element of surprise that Barton may have coveted. It wasn’t much of a challenge, then, when she reached out and snatched him from the air. “Rogers,” Clint nodded as the Captain floated down to join him. “Barton.” Wanda flexed her fingers with the added weight of a super soldier, the ache plaguing her left arm just becoming noticeable, irritable; she wasted none of limited time between attacks to draw in strength to vanquish the uncomfortable sensation . After a suspiciously long period of rest and recuperation, she considered peering outwards with her magic to locate the next source of attack. When she closed her eyes in attempt to see however, her balance threw out suddenly and her knees weakened, threatening to buckle. Jeez, she was not trying that little trick again for a while. She must’ve been using a lot more energy keeping the three men at bay than she had initially perceived. “Hey,” Clint called, serious now, as he’d noticed her small flounder, “Are you alright kid?” She gritted her teeth. Oh hell no, this wasn’t how she was going to let this end. With some gentle words from Tony, and a nudge back into the shelter, where they chose their words carefully when she was around, and left her smothered in blankets whilst they were off saving the world. Not now, when she’d got past the first bit, the initial doubt- the hardest bit, because she’d found her ground now, and there was a real chance for her to show off. A chance she was going to run with. “What’s the matter?” She retorted, the playfulness back amongst her voice. “You getting tired up there, old man?” “Hey!” He squawked, but she never heard the rest of what was sure to be a lovely endearing insult, because at that moment, Iron Man burst through the double doors, jets ablaze. Though she had seen it before, in its full glory, the armour was incredible. It was most formidable in person too, and it was apparent that Tony had saved no expense as he came to a stop before her, red and gold plates shifting and whirring around his form. Blue light cascaded from his boot-jets and the reactor embedded in chest; it poured from the eye sockets in his face plate. The entire thing was ethereally aglow as he hovered there, his head tilted to the left. She felt Sam roll his eyes from somewhere behind her. “Jeez,” Tony began, having made his sufficiently dramatic entrance. “I’m still waiting on the day I don’t have to save all of your asses.” Even Steve grumbled in indignation, though she knew he was still smiling- after all, he was sure that he was about to witness Tony Stark be floored by a tiny girl with magic hands. The tiny girl in question straightened up immediately, flicking her long hair over her shoulder. A genius hidden in a thick shell of hardcore artillery and fanciful laser beams... this would be fun, right? “Good luck!” Wanda yelled as she began to pull energy upwards through her bloodstream, setting the charge crackling wildly at her fingertips once again. “Woah, does the attitude come with the red shit?” Tony taunted, and though his mask remained inscrutable as always, she could imagine the eyebrow he’d raised cheekily. She rolled her eyes jovially, and planted her feet. “Hey! I saw that eye roll!” Without further ado, he propelled himself forward on fat streams of blue flame, his heavily armoured hands steady at his sides. Stealthily, he swerved sharply at the very last second- right as she was going to seize her chance- forcing her to duck out of the way as his heavy metal boots swung round. Wanda swooped backwards to avoid the oncoming hit this time, leant over in some crazed limbo. She managed to stay on her feet however, and somehow staggered back to upright as he rounded the room. There was a millisecond spared of action as they both steadied theirselves, and then Tony was back upon her, circling the area like a bright red, roaring hawk. Aiming carefully, she brought up her palm near to her right eye and seized the armour; he staggered immediately, but then the compartments by his shoulder joints rolled effortlessly backwards, and three tiny missiles launched from beneath the plating. As her brain and it’s logic seemed to stammer with disbelief, Wanda fought to get herself to drop the man, watching him plummet to the floor before he managed to shoot back upwards. Clouds of sparks fizzled out dead on the concrete. Dead on the concrete: that’s where she’d be, if she didn’t make her move... now. With all but two seconds until Tony’s artillery blew her corpse into pink mist, she brought her free hand forward above her face and swooped it in the ghost of a circle, focusing now not on accumulating raw, explosive power, but building a sustainable wall between her person and the three heavy duty missiles soon to find home there. One second until impact. Wanda regarded the sheen of the energy shield, sincerely hoping that this particular little trick would work out. She’d only tested it once before, after all... With a spectacular boom, each bomb collided with her shield, and the world turned red. Instead of the typical fiery orange of a mechanised explosion, enormous scarlet clouds bloomed from the devices, huge distortions of kinetic energy fighting to flower outwards. They didn’t send tremors through the building, leaving plumes of thick, black smoke or charred embers, as one would expect- before they could progress to such, the explosions had halted in mid air, shuddering dangerously. Wanda gritted her teeth, focused. And then, miraculously, all at once, they folded back in upon themselves with a soft whump. All of the restless power that had been ignited pulled back inwards, now contained in concentrated beads; in exactly the reverse of the way the bombs had detonated a second ago, as if she’d managed to mould them back into the tiny missiles they’d been prior. Against the almighty roar of the explosions previous, the sudden, resolute silence of the gym was deafening. The three identical beads drifted down to greet her and Wanda held up her left palm, directing them to the centre. This, this, was uncharted territory. Last time she’d managed to contain anything close to similar, she’d held together a comparatively small explosive device (a story for another day, perhaps). And when she’d absorbed its power, god did she remember how it’d burned- she physically winced at the memory. Currently, the first bead was edging closer, and the very moment that the glowing pulse met her skin, thousands of volts jolted coursed through her body. Gasping sharply, she bit back the urge to shriek, as if she’d been electrocuted. Everything raged. Pure, hot, unadulterated energy ravaged through her body, boiling her blood and melting her bones to liquid. She barely felt the initial heat of the second and third as they touched upon her hand, but she could hardly ignore the additional charge coursing through her veins, desperate to be released. Electricity rampaged up and down her bloodstream at an incredible concentration, and everything charged to a thousand. The voltage was overwhelming for her feeble heart, which had begun to beat rapidly, at something close to the rate of a mouse. Her puny lungs fared something similar, though she forced herself to take a breath, one which sent millions of tiny shock waves echoing from her nerves. “What in the hell...” Tony had landed on the floor, his faceplate retracted into the cavities of the suit. His eyes were widened to a significant degree. Hers were red. ...“And listen, Red. If you change your mind at any point whilst we’re down there, we’ll stop.”... If she hadn’t known him as well as she’d presumed, she’d be inclined to believe that he was the one now considering tapping out... “What do you mean?” Wanda called, ignoring the way the energy crackled and spat when she moved. The hostages she had claimed behind her couldn’t seem to do the same, and she heard specifically Clint’s squeal as his invisible restraints sparked and churned. “I think you’ll find that you’re the one who threw live ammunition.” With the voltage circulating her veins, her heart continued to increase its speed, until she could interpret no time passing between beats at all. Neat. “Yeah, and you...absorbed...it?” She shrugged, and charge broiled.“Holy shit, Red that’s impressive,” Sam exhaled, and the four men in the room nodded slowly, awestruck. “I’ll bet,” Steve added, gawking. “Wait- Stark threw missiles at Wanda!” Clint pronounced, clearly exasperated that his words didn’t seem to affect anyone. “Stark threw missiles at her!” “Besides the point,” Tony remarked. “She absorbed them...” “I did do that.” “What in the hell...” Clint spluttered, and white-hot splicing pains fired across her body as she turned to smirk at him. It was worth it. “Dude!” Sam gasped, “Your eyes!” He seemed rather disturbed- had he not been there, in Novi Grad? “You’re... burning!” Evidently not. “Am I?” She attempted to feign sarcastically, though her voice wavered no matter how she tried to mask the agony. She passed it off, in the hopes that they would do the same. Wanda looked down at the discarded fragments of artillery casings that littered the floor and waved her arm in gesture. “Are you accepting defeat yet? Can I go back to bed?” “Huh,” Tony affirmed, “I have concluded that the attitude does indeed come with the red shit.” “And I’d say no to that, by the way. I just watched you brush off three military grade projectiles, and I have a whole lot more where that came from.” With that, his faceplate reformed flawlessly and he leapt from the ground. He made to jet upwards, but Wanda merely raised a finger at his escaping figure and blinding crimson eagerly enraptured Iron Man; he barely made it an inch off the ground. “Friday,” he ordered, “Direct all power to the thrusters.” Obedient as ever, the flames roaring from his boot-jets swelled magnificently, but Wanda could scarcely feel the product of her efforts- not like this. She was pain, pure and inescapable. “Oh c’mon! Nothing?” He yelled, struggling to stay straight as his incredible momentum boost failed to deliver on ounce of thrust. It had gathered at her hands now, twisting and writhing agitatedly, reaching out and snapping, jumping whole metres away from her person without instruction. “I’m gonna have to build a whole new suit- this is embarrassing!” Wanda forced Stark to the ground, where she fed and offloaded waves of excess energy to keep him- and all of his hidden weapons- firmly there, but she was denied any relief she thought the action may bring. Instead, and quite unfortunately, the voltage for which her tiny body was no sufficient container decided it had had enough, and it wanted out. All of that power- that immense build up of thrashing, restless, super powered charge that she had been fighting tooth and nail to keep inside, that she had desperately trying to keep from vaporising Tony, Clint, Steve and Sam- all of that power surged spectacularly. She short-circuited like an overloaded power line. Her organs- that may well have been reduced to soup, for all she could feel- couldn’t withstand the insurmountable heat; her strong, brave heart which had soldiered on for so long sputtered erratically, but she fought for control nonetheless. “You have any tricks left, Stark?” Wanda asked. And then she fell, with absolutely no eloquence or dignity, unconscious, to the floor. Face first, of course. ——————————————————— A deep orange sun was slowly melting into the skyline when Wanda came back into the world: peacefully this time, with a small sniffle and a yawn. Shrieking and struggling through phases of consciousness, like the last time she’d been so intensely unresponsive, seemed distant- immeasurably so. There was a second, as she filtered all of the colourful input, where she wasn’t altogether certain of where she was. Strangely, Wanda didn’t panic, as if a lifetime of constant vigilance had been washed away by some warm, innate sense of trust. She was safe. She wasn’t sure where, but that she did know. And then as soon as it had come, that second has passed, and she’d realised that the soft bed sheets she were stroking were the finest silk; even if she stretched as far as she possibly could, wiggling her toes, she still found plush mattress to rest them upon. Wanda propped herself up on her elbows, and gazed out onto Manhattan, the last embers of sunlight glowing feebly at its feet. She was home. “Friday?” She asked, her voice heavy with sleep, “How long was I out?” “Good afternoon Miss Maximoff, I hope you are feeling well. My data relays that you have been unconscious for 48 hours, as of noon.” She scrubbed her eyes, pleasantly surprised somewhat with that notice. Though she’d probably rather forget it, Wanda could very clearly remember the impressive intensity of power she’d held in the gym, and so 48 hours of recovery was astonishingly minimal, all things considered. Especially since the last time she’d been breathing, her heart had been working 100 times as fast. Yet here she was, in her enormous swamp of a bed, and though her head still ached as always (a constant), she had less than a scratch remaining upon her forehead. That particular little fact was a shade peculiar- she’d fell forwards in her delirium, she was almost certain of it. “Sir wanted me to ask you how you are faring,” Friday delivered, breaking her thoughts. As always, as a sort of juvenile game, Wanda searched for the hidden speakers from which her voice echoed softly. And just like very other time she’d tried, the search remained futile. “He would also like for me to notify you that there is food awaiting in the common room, if you are ready for it.” She smiled contently; hoping that the food was not of Tony’s own creation. If she was honest, she preferred food that she could at least partially digest- but one couldn’t have everything, she supposed. Wanda tossed her covers over the side and began the hunt for something appropriate to wear, eventually pulling out some plain hoodie from the depths of the enormous wardrobe instilled in her wall. It was an impressive thing, seven feet across, and it had been filled entirely with numerous rows of garments since the first day, though she hadn’t strayed much further than the good old reliable section of sweaters and dark leggings. When she’d been controlled by Hydra, fashion was a thing to protect her when she was weak, and to restrain her when whatever it was inside her snapped. Now, as long as there wasn’t a six-headed serpent emblazoned on the sleeve, and it was suitably dark and on-brand, it would suffice. She ragged a hairbrush halfway through a chunk of tangles, pausing when she heard. Unexpectedly, someone was rapping on the outside of her bedroom door. Using her incredibly advanced telepathic abilities, and also the information that the person wasn’t knocking, perhaps, but rather performing We Will Rock You, she deducted that her favourite archer was awaiting her welcome. “Come in!” She yelled, shoving piles of disregarded clothing under the bed frame and out of sight. “Hey! You’re awake!” He greeted warmly as he waltzed in, pulling himself up onto her dresser where he sat, swinging his legs. She greeted him in reply and though she’d already asked Friday, he told her how long it had been and then everything that had happened during that space, absentmindedly poking at a candle that sat upon her dresser as he spoke animatedly. “You look happier than the last time I saw you,” she teased when he’d finished his account, and he stuck out his tongue. “Yeah, well the last time I saw you you were hugging the pavement, so...” She finished brushing her hair, and ragged it backwards into some semblance of a ponytail. “You wanted anything, apart from making fun of me? Because I do happen to remember rendering you immobile for like, twenty minutes or something...” He disregarded her jaunt, and tilted his head as if to study her. “How’re you feeling?” He questioned, with the sincerity he reserved for his caring tendencies. She looked up at him and grinned. “Good, surprisingly. Feels good to let off some energy after such a long time y’know?” “I can imagine.” He returned the smile with a silly grin of his own delightfully silly calibre, and then softened. “Does it happen a lot, the shutting down? Bruce says the closest thing he can compare it to is a coma, but you’re bouncing around like you just woke up from a mid-morning nap.”“A lot less than you’d probably believe.” He raised his eyebrows as if to agree. “Seriously, I’ve done it like, twice in my entire life- or, whenever this started,” she clicked her fingers and the spark ignited. He went to jab the energy with his pointer finger, a child fascinated by the shiny light, and she extinguished it. “I don’t normally have to combat missiles, so...” Clint grumbled something angrily under his breath, but she caught it easily. “I’ve been meaning to talk to Stark about that! I should’ve killed him for throwing actual bombs around- the first time you’d been down for training, too...” She danced across the soft carpet on the very tips of her toes so as to reach him all the way on his perch, and patted his shoulder comfortingly. “Don’t embarrass yourself, Clint.” He stuttered, and his voice became three octaves shriller. “Hey! I will not have you making a joke out of me! I’ll have you know I could knock him flat in seconds if I wanted to- Stark wouldn’t know what hit him!” She stared at him and pouted empathetically, as if she didn’t believe a word he’d said. “Just you watch...” “Yeah, yeah, well, can you wait for a bit? He says there’s food waiting, and I don’t want you disrupting my meal.” His striking eyes lit up at something she’d said, and hers narrowed, perplexed. Eagerly, he stuck out his lean arm and pointed at nothing in particular. “That’s what I was going to tell you!” In part amazed that he had only just remembered the purpose of his visit, and also still very muddled, she willed him to continue. “I knew Tony wouldn’t think it important to tell you, but I thought I’d warn you beforehand,” he explained, “There’s like a little party going on downstairs- nothing big but...” Out of all the things she may or may not have been thinking of, a little party downstairs hadn’t made the list by a considerable margin. Fighting, sparring- it all came with natural ease to Wanda’s hand; or so did the power of the glimmering yellowed stone. Social gatherings were... less of her speciality, but... She supposed she could deal with a party, after everything else she’d dealt with. Maybe. She absorbed three whole bombs. And passed out. She could deal with a party. Sensing her hesitation, perhaps, he elaborated. “Rhodey’s there- he’s leaving again tomorrow, and I don’t think you ever met him?” Wanda shook her head in affirmation. “Apart from that it’s just the usual. A gathering for the team- we never celebrated Ultron, what with...” He waved his arms in wild gesture, and she nodded in understanding. Wanda had lived with the avengers- the very people she’d been trained specifically to murder, who for years she’d been led to believe were at fault for ruining her life, for killing her mum and dad- for months on end. She’d made a home (and she’d made a family), where she should’ve met the purpose of her shitty, Hydra-certified shamble of a life. She could deal with a party. “Okay,” she verbalised simply, trying to convince him that she wasn’t freaking out- she should probably convince herself first, she realised, and plastered a smile across her face. For the seven millionth time since she had met him, Clint looked down at her in concern. “Thanks for the warning,” she cast as a joke a little steadier, though she hoped that he would realise the genuine admiration sewed in the notion; she wandered over to the door and opened it, waiting for him to follow. “S’nothing,” he assured and then after some forgotten thought, he leapt swiftly off the side of the dresser, catching the candle in his left hand as he almost sent it soaring across the room. Her door clicked satisfyingly as it closed, and they walked down the corridor side by side, their feet shuffling in sync on the cold tiles. They continued in silence for a beat, as Wanda processed everything in more detail than she had before; the current situation was prime for her tendency to direly overthink and psychoanalyse. As they neared the common room, new feeds of meaningless thought channeled into the flood that she was having trouble tuning out, what with being left weakened. “So,” she began, resolving her focus, “Have I been banned from training for life?”Clint scoffed heartily. “No way!” He exclaimed, “You have way too many freaky powers for us to poke at!” Vaguely, Wanda wondered just how many of her abilities they were aware of... the telekinetic variety and a small extent of the telepathic, definitely, but... He added as an afterthought, “Let’s not end up on the floor next time though, yeah?” She thought that was reasonable, but she scowled all the same- he would definitely hit the tiles if he withdrew the same level of voltage that had coursed through her tiny frame. “I mean, I can’t guarantee anything.” This, in essence, was entirely truthful. “That’s the attitude!” He chirped, and she rolled her eyes good-naturedly. Having come to a stop, they’d finally arrived at the door leading through to the common room, and through to whichever form of social torture inevitably awaited her there. Above the unfathomable thoughts echoing from the room, she could barely catch a proper intelligible spoken word, though she make out a laugh through the din. Quiet music filtered though the panel, distorted by the thick steel mechanism and the distinctive voices that followed its lead. “You ready to go in?” Clint questioned, nudging her shoulder, and she halted in her speculation. Right. This wasn’t a mission, Wanda chanted to herself repeatedly- there were simply no stakes, and there was no real danger of the physical description. She wasn’t rigorously scoping the area for targets and civilians: she was walking into a party. A little team get together, for a team in which she supposedly held a part. “Yeah,” she replied in a matter-of-fact manner, because of course she was ready. She marched forward swiftly before she could second guess the action, swinging open the door to really make the statement ring true. The scene which Wanda inhaled as it lay before her radiated nothing but blissful, warm domesticity between a group of friends; it was an environment of stifling love, and trust- the unwavering, resolute kind. She’d already known this, of course, but this time it hit her like a wall- perhaps because everyone had gathered together, or perhaps because she’d been away from it for so long. Reels of this information relayed through her senses (the sixth, freakish variety included) the moment she’d entered, and it withdrew her anxiety like seeping poison from a wound. “You’re alive!” Sam greeted as she walked into the room, Clint stalking closely behind. He was sat sunken into the largest sofa, one arm slung round the back, and another balancing a plate piled with food. By his right accompanied Tony and Steve, and everyone else milled around the room to a similar effect. Go time. “Why do you sound so surprised?” She asked, her voice raised in mock offence. He held up his free hand and she high-fived it enthusiastically. “Oh, I don’t know... could it be... the red eyes? The freaky electricity shit? The collapsing?” No one was letting that one go anytime soon, then. “Great way to end the performance by the way, Red,” Tony added, grinning, “Very dramatic. I like your style.”Before she could set them both straight, the man she assumed to be James Rhodes - she’d be hard-pressed to forget the face of a man who’s file she’d once pored over endlessly- spoke. “Don’t let them tease you,” he said, “Especially not Tony. I have endless dirt on him...” The first thing that Wanda distinguished about the man was that, as was the case with Sam, something strange within her trusted him inherently. The second was spent wondering whether or not her vigilance was just becoming lazy. “I can tell he’s still pissed that his suit did nothing against you,” He jeered, and Wanda smiled and chuckled at Colonel Rhodes; lending Tony- whose face had melted into some expression of badly concealed aggravation- a smirk and a shrug. Perhaps it was the familiarity of the Colonel’s good-natured jokes that broke down her guard with all but a nudge. Nonetheless, it was clear that James Rhodes posed no imminent threat to her, or her friends’, wellbeing- that much, she knew without prying. “Nice to meet you finally,” She announced, “I’m Wanda.” They were both aware that the entire charade was rather pointless, really, because what with working for the government and holding highest acquaintance with Tony Stark, the Colonel probably knew everything the officials could scarper- he probably knew her blood type. Undoubtedly, there seemed to be a pattern forming, and she wondered whether she’d ever meet a person who knew mutually as little about her as she did about them. He held out his hand for her to shake, and she politely entertained him with the gesture he was offering. “Call me Rhodey,” He said, smiling. “Everyone else does.” “Yes Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes sir!” Cut in Clint suddenly, with a newfound steaming mouthful of pizza and Natasha in tow, crossing towards them with his arm raised in a salute. Sir Lieutenant Colonel “Call me Rhodey” Rhodes grumbled something about not starting this again, and though she couldn’t be certain, Wanda was sure she heard a few very colourful insults directed towards the US Army and their insistence on titles. “How did you even hear me from over there, man?” He questioned exasperatedly. Wanda, however, was grinning from ear to ear, because she’d just been handed the perfect opportunity to ridicule Clint, which was her most preferred source of entertainment. “I see that we’re insisting on our proper titles,” She began, in an imitation of an absurdly fancy British accent that was far too refined to be a simple party trick, “So hello dear Clinton Francis Barton.” Clinton spluttered, choking slightly on his mouthful of hot cheese, and turned swiftly to Nat (“Wait- Clinton Barton... No way dude that’s bad!” “Seriously, Clinton?”). “Why did you have to tell her that?” He whined as everyone including Wanda laughed amongst themselves at his expense (“Someone actually wrote that on a birth certificate!”), “I mean c’mon Natalia?” He realised his mistake the moment it left his lips: a moment too late to retrace and think over the death warrant he had just signed. Tony let out a low whistle, and they all held their breath. Natasha’s eyes darkened threateningly. “I didn’t tell her,” she said, evenly. “Oh shit!” Sam remarked. Oh shit indeed: Clint’s eyes grew three times their original size, and he stuttered an apology before muttering a string of creative curse words. Natasha glowered silently down at him, and he hastened out of the room citing some ramble about using the bathroom. The widow glared intensely at him every step of the way. When he’d stumbled away, she turned back around slowly, and Wanda realised that she almost felt bad for the archer. “We heard nothing, Natasha!” Sam declared, both his arms raised highly in mock surrender. At this, her steely pretence crumbled and she sniggered, her perfect makeup creasing around laugh lines that she allowed the light of day very rarely. Wanda couldn’t help but giggle alongside her, and now they were all snorting, a loud, infectious laughter that left them wheezing. She almost felt bad for Clint. She’d feel worse if he hadn’t snuck back in moments later via the floor-length window, leaving them all in fits of laughter over how he’d managed the feat. The rest of the evening passed, for the most part, without major pitfalls. Wanda even seemed to find herself rather enjoying the whole experience, wandering round the room talking and joking with friends. It was unlike anything she’d ever done before ( or since she could remember, past the part of her life that she blocked out indefinitely), in the most amazing away. To say she’d been hauntingly close to an anxiety attack when Clint had mentioned the party earlier, it could be said that things were going suspiciously well. Too well, in fact. Unfortunately, the universe seemed to agree with the deepest pits of its huge, ugly heart. It was late in the evening, when she was warm, and happy, and stuffed with delicious food that the higher powers reared their brutish heads to put a stop to the nonsense. “Hey Wanda!” Tony called from behind the bar, pouring himself and three others a small glass of deep amber liquid from an expensive looking canteen. “You want a drink?” She shook her head with a polite smile; she’d never drunk much, what with being a teenager of Hydra and all. In fact, the closest encounters she’d had with alcohol were with the dirty old men prowling the Sokovian streets, who reeked of the stuff, and whose stares lingered a little too long for her liking. “Stop corrupting the kid Stark!” Clint yelled back. She’s like what- five?” Wanda elbowed him sharply, and he staggered backwards with a yelp. “Five or not, none of you managed to get a punch in,” Natasha offered, and Wanda couldn’t help but snort. “I saw the footage,” she continued. “And you are something else,” she directed at Wanda, who became suddenly very interested in her socks, and hurriedly averted her spellbound gaze. A compliment from Natasha (Who always so cool and reserved; extraordinarily talented)she regarded as one of the highest forms of flattery a person could hope to receive. This particular offhand praise from the Widow caught her completely off guard: she was almost blushing- but that was absolutely where she drew the line. “I’d like to see you try, Romanoff,” Steve joked, and she still wasn’t used to seeing him smile. It was almost jarring, the way it softened his face. “Nah, she’d win in seconds. Trust me, it’d be embarrassing,” Wanda declared, having recomposed herself enough to annoy some men- grunts of indignation sounded all across the room from many a wounded male ego. “What can I say? The Black Widow’s always been the strongest avenger. And Nat is way more intimidating than all of you together,” she added as an afterthought. Natasha smiled smugly at Clint, who sighed melodramatically. “It really hurts to have your ass handed to you by a toddler. But this- this is just rubbing salt into the wound, Red.” “Two can play with the age jokes, old guy,” she retorted, and he shrugged, smiling. “How old actually are you?” Sam asked, leant against the marble bar-top. “Me and Tony have a bet going and I could do with some extra cash.” “Sixteen,” she answered, without missing a beat. Oh, hell. дерьмо. дерьмо дерьмо дерьмо! Under circumstances deemed ordinary, when a question of age arises, the answer is most plausibly clear-cut: it is short, and sweet, and considerably few neurones must alight for the brain to both comprehend and answer, all in a second. The answer to the question is something resolute; unless a person should be focused and readily inclined to decide otherwise, it is an immediate response. When a person asks another their age, the recipient speaks before they think. Because the answer is one that does not require a thought process, normally. Evidently, Wanda’s brain had decided, somewhere between the blur connecting Novi Grad and that very fleeting second, that this situation was normal. ...‘The second was spent wondering whether or not her vigilance was just becoming lazy.’... Presently, the multiple pairs of eyes in the room gravitated and fixated solely on her face and no other, each displaying some similar guise of horror. Silence. дерьмо! She’d had no obligation to answer truthfully! Hydra had destroyed every single document that had ever displayed her name- there wasn’t that slightest chance that even Natasha could uncover her lie. If she was being honest, Wanda had never intended to tell the team that she was a child- it was obvious they believed her to be old enough to handle being an Avenger. Why would she readily break the illusion when they were so satisfied with believing she was just like them- when everything was going so well for once. Had it been too long to shrug off her answer as a joke? Wanda felt the warmth flare at her fingertips offensively in response to her distress, but focused instead on sifting through the startling emotion that had flooded the common room neck- deep. The intensity of it all paralysed her with fear and uncertainty. Definitely. She brought herself back to the ordeal at hand, and tried mechanically to gage the situation. Having almost dropped his glass, Clint’s stare darkened murderously; he looked dangerous, as if he was out for blood. When he met her panicked eyes, his expression slowly melted to a soft one, a look that was quite noticeably masking his anger, or whatever it was that had twisted so deeply inside of him. Most alarmingly, even Natasha’s perfect facade had flickered momentarily; her eyes and mouth were frozen in an expression of stunned surprise. Both Sam and Rhodey mirrored this stance: mouths hanging wide open, eyes enlarged with shock, or sadness, or something of a similar wavelength. Tony paled considerably and studied her face hard for a long while- whether in disbelief or denial, she couldn’t differentiate. Wanda could almost hear the whir of the cogs turning frantically in his mind. Besides him, Steve seemed paused in the midst of some internal confliction; he opened and shut his mouth repeatedly before he eventually found the words he sought, which broke the somber, heavy silence. “You’re... you’re just a kid...” he stammered, his strong voice wavering slightly. In the simplest terms, he looked horrified. Not just a kid, sparked a voice at the back of her conscience, an angry, belittled voice. She beat said voice away with a big mental stick. “Yes,” she breathed. “I thought you knew?” She didn’t think that, not remotely. From the way the team had handled her since day one, she’d always known that they hadn’t known she was little more than a teenager. And yet she’d never made to set the record straight for exactly this reason- because in one way or another, no one could ever seem to accept that a child had seen the things she’d seen, done the things she’d done. Hydra had never been the nurturing type of course, but she’d seen it manifested in different ways over the years. The instinct to protect, to shelter. The very last thing that Wanda wanted was to be treated differently. The very last thing that Wanda needed right now was to be benched. “We had some idea, but... I thought at least... Oh god- you’re not even close to eighteen, never mind twenty-one..” Tony confessed, his empty hand clasping his head. The entire team stood sentry in a line before her now, all of them unable to resume normality, because this was a child: a child whose parents had perished right beside her, a child who was illegally experimented on by a terrorist organisation, and whose twin brother died a matter of weeks ago. A child who had shown only hours before that she could best the entire team at once, singlehandedly. A child who could turn them all to dust where they stood. Their anger faded gradually, and pity- thick, and blue- filled the hole. The child at mention didn’t want the pity, truly. Wanda was practically allergic to sympathy. She was young, yes, but she was strong, and she desperately didn’t want them to think less of her- though she can slowly and fitfully to the realisation that she couldn’t amend that for the moment, and so, for once, she didn’t fight it. She’d fight for her ground when the time was right. “And your brother?” Clint questioned, his voice incredibly small, because they both knew, deep down, that he already knew that answer. His question came as something of a shock, though not entirely, and so the dull, bleak pain that echoed throughout her person with his words didn’t catch her entirely off guard. “Twin.” She confirmed, studying the tiles at her feet. Her eyes burned painfully, but there was no way that she was doing this now. Not here. Wanda needed to make sure that they all knew her place as a team member- she could hardly break down- she couldn’t see that that would benefit her cause. In her panic, she didn’t see see how Clint turned away similarly. A sixteen year old kid had given his life for him. The thing against which Wanda had been fighting on and off since opening her eyes all that time ago was threatening to overwhelm her. She felt a hot, uncomfortable prickling feeling in the inner corner of her eyes. She blinked and stared up at the ceiling, furious with herself both for slipping up needlessly and being utterly pathetic at the face of fixing her mistake. Everything had been going so well. “I’m so, so sorry, Wanda.” Clint whispered, his words strangled as though fighting against being spoken. A sixteen year old boy had given his life, for him..“It wasn’t your fault,” she managed through the struggle, and she believed it, truly. The gaping stares of the other six people in the room did not relent for a single second, not Tony and Rhodey in the corner, not Natasha and Clint, not even Steve or Sam by the right. Now the burning feeling in her eyes had found her throat as well. She longed for them all to look away. She’d messed up so awfully. A blur of movement broke the static of the situation, and a pair of strong arms wrapped tightly around her. The angry, entitled little voice in her head told her to fight them away- they were already treating her like a baby- but no amount of anger could make her end this contact prematurely. She had only glimpses of memories of being hugged like this, as though by a parent. The full, crushing weight of everything that had happened recently seemed to fall upon her as Clint held her to him. Ultron’s face twisted in its mechanical snarl, Strucker’s wrangled laugh, her baby brother, broken, punctured and bleeding on the gravel, all spinning around nauseously in her mind until she could hardly bear the strain, the effort of keeping her chin above the water. There was a loud, startling crunch, and Wanda and Clint broke apart. The glass that had previously been in Natasha’s right hand was now no more than a few jagged shards in her fist, and speckles of blood began to ooze from tiny spots in her palm. She seemed to give no acknowledgement of the feat, staring aimlessly downwards for only a moment before padding silently over to the sink, and letting the glass clatter against the bowl. Both Tony and Steve made to inspect the injury as she returned but she swiped them away swiftly, picked up her coat, and strode away without a single word. Out of habit, he supposed, the mechanic hurried to the door in her wake, but hesitated at the handle as if remembering something. Silent assassins never seemed partial to a conversation. “She’ll be fine.” Clint said gently, his words aimed more at Wanda than anyone else. “She just needs to let off a little steam.” Though she had told only the truth, Wanda couldn’t help but feel that she had done something horribly wrong. Natasha was hurt, for God’s sake, and it was her fault. Sensing this almost, Tony managed to send her a small smile, walking back across the room. “She must really care about you, kid,” he said, and though right now he wasn’t certain in himself much at all, he sounded definitively certain of his words. “Damn right.” Clint added. “I haven’t seen Nat that mad for a very long time.” Steve chose this moment to turn on his heel and he paced out of the door, his heavy footsteps fading in the distance. “He’s gonna regret that,” Clint warned. “He’s Steve,” exclaimed Tony, who still seemed sufficiently shaken, “Its probably against like, all three-thousand of his morals to leave her alone.” When Rogers returned, however, he wasn’t sporting a shiny new injury, or anything else Wanda assumed indicative of stalking after a furious Romanoff. Under his broad arm, he cradled a dark, folded material of sorts. “I forgot about this, until just now,” he said, as he presented the object to her at arms length. He couldn’t shake the unease from his voice. Wanda’s heart dropped to her feet as she recognised the design he was holding- her old jacket! Wanda snatched it from his grip and hugged it protectively to her chest, nuzzling her face in the folds and breathing in the smell of home... of cookies in the old stove, of her mum’s sweet perfume, of Pietro. If she wasn’t so determined to keep her emotions at bay, tears would’ve streamed down her face by now. “When I woke up in New York, after everything, the smallest things from home kept me going. I wanted you to have something similar.” She perceived the genuine amity in his tone. “To have gone through the things you’ve gone through- at your age- I couldn’t begin to imagine it...” Hastily, she wiped her eyes on the jacket, clinging to it still. She recalled the day her father brought it home one day- a little under a year, she recalled, before the bomb- having listened to her complaints of the cold for weeks on end. It was real, proper leather, just like her mums, and she appreciated even then that it was very expensive. Admittedly, she hadn’t grown dramatically since the age of ten, but she still marvelled that it fitted just as well as the day it was bought. “Thankyou,” she answered, meeting his piercing eyes. “So much.” Steve clasped her shoulder, nodding. After all this time, it seemed that he was coming around to her, bit by bit. She’d recognised it in the last few days, how his hostility was seemingly fading. Realising her youth must’ve nudged him over the edge he’d been teetering on. Perhaps that was the one thing to come of this situation that wasn’t absolutely hell bent on ruining the life she’d created. She couldn’t shake, though, the fact that Natasha was alone, dangerously angry, through fault of her own. When Wanda searched beyond the towers heavy steel walls, and this hazy filter of emotion blurring her vision, she discovered that she could sense the anger rolling off of the widow in white-hot waves. “Are you sure Natasha’s okay?” She asked, because she needed to know. “She will be.” Clint said. He sighed deeply, in a manner very unlike his usual demeanour. “She sees a lot of herself in you, Red, I can tell. If I had to guess, I’d say she just realised that you’re more like her than she wanted to believe. She won’t show anything close to vulnerability in-front of anyone else- I’m sure you’ve realised. S’why she left just then.” Wanda didn’t have the slightest clue what to do with that information, which perhaps proved its truth. As she stood helplessly, at a loss of what to do, her headache pulsed angrily with the strain of keeping everything steadily contained, and she resisted the urge to rub at her temples. Once she’d decided she couldn’t take it much longer- the pain, watching Rhodey, Sam, Steve and Tony mope about because they too didn’t know what to do with themselves- she excused herself clumsily, all but ran out of the corridor, and burst into her room, bolting her door with a flick of the wrist as she leapt onto her bed. She stayed there until she fell asleep, cradling the jacket she hadn’t realised she’d missed so terribly. Wanda would never find out about how later that night, when she’d shut herself away, every single member of the team bar herself gathered in a secret meeting of sorts. She’d never get to hear the way they whispered, about what they were going to do to try and make this better, about what they were going to do to make this right. She would never get to see the visible horror registered on every face as they came to shocking realisations about her past, as they discussed the obvious, and vented their fury. She didn’t get to hear the conclusions they arrived at, after hours of reviewing and regretting. And most importantly perhaps, she’d never heard the words uttered and agreed upon by every Avenger. Even Steve. Especially Steve. “She’s one of us.”—
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
——————————————————-
“She hasn’t had a normal life since elementary school?”
“That’s a lot of school to miss!”
“Why is that a concern here? Does anyone really need to learn trigonometry?”
“Did the school system fail you that badly, dude?”
“Im just saying, kid skipped out a lot of mental breakdowns.”
“She was literally abducted by HYDRA- I’d say that compensates!?”
“Oh my god, she won’t have gone to prom!”
“SHE NEVER WENT TO PROM?”
“Tony can we have a prom?”
“Should we ask Wanda?”
“Does she know what a prom is?”
“I swear you all better act like normal when she gets here or I will personally ensure that you don’t wake up tomorrow.”
“TASHA!”
———————————————————-
Pain.
That’s the single sensation that Wanda’s half-conscious mind could comprehend: a dull throbbing kind of ache, that built up slowly, surely, and then exploded suddenly with the expulsion of a million tiny, white-hot daggers.
All that she could decipher was pain.
It was only slightly short of a surprise then, that the seventy-second morning of Wanda Maximoff’s residence in Avenger’s tower began abruptly: and quite simply, unbearably...
Following the disastrous events of the previous seventy-first, it was always certain that the day ahead wouldn’t be all that appealing: Wanda had made an awful lot of (accidental) changes in a very short space of time last night, after all.
However, to disregard the events of the previous evening would not remedy the situation at hand, for it had been apparent that the the day would be an irreparable state of affairs from the moment that she had woken up that morning...
At 6:30am.
With a little due perspective, Wanda might’ve eventually been able to forgive the fact that she’d woken up at an absurdly early time, given a couple of hours to adjust and a decent sized mug of sugary coffee.
However, she’d barely pried open her eyes when the uproar hit her ears, an unintelligible mass of pounding, screaming noise- “ I need to send that down to R&D What’s she looking at? This chair is really uncomfortable . Coffee? Katherine brought coffee?”- Voices that Wanda wouldn’t recognise even if she dug to the deepest pits of her memory, that yelled vague notions and odd ends of phrases that she could make no sense of. “Coffee? Coffee? Coffee? Katherine?” The intensity of the blaring- concentrated bullets of senseless noise firing at her skull- stunned her completely at first, leaving her defenceless to the tirade. “ Has anyone seen Miss Potts this morning? Have I seen Miss Potts this morning? Should I call for Miss Potts?” One singular voice shrieked, and for all Wanda could tell by relying on her hearing, the owner of the ear-splitting screech was barely inches away from her own face. If she hadn’t been mildly incapacitated, she didn’t think she’d have the self restraint to not yell back even louder at this Katherine and Miss Potts, who seemed to be causing so much bother. So much loud, painful bother.
One thing that Wanda would come to realise later on was how ridiculous it was that instead of coming to panic that there was a crowd of people invading her room, or quite possibly a mob of blood-thirsty coffee addicts, she instead decided that the best course of action would be to pick up a pillow and bring it back down on her face, smothering her eyes, her ears and the input. Repeatedly. It said a lot about her personality, really.
It was barely gone 6 in the morning, whump ( the pillow came crashing down), the Avengers were probably going to kick her out and off of the team, whump , and she didn’t know who the hell Miss Potts was supposed to be!
For unrelated reasons, a second later, the pillow went crashing into the opposite wall, garnering such momentum that it could probably have passed through the other side with a little motivation.
After a few messy moments of struggling with the pain, managing to properly come round to consciousness and some good old rational thought, Wanda came to the conclusion that she wasn’t actually under physical attack, but rather the blaring voices that she was hearing sounded tinny and warped: the noise wasn’t tangible or tied to a person, because the noise was in her head . Which was so, so much worse. “Why is he scowling? What have I done? Scowl back I knew she wouldn’t buy one for me I need to walk my dog tonight Miss Potts is too busy. Right? Coffee? After dinner maybe. Did someone say we were getting new chairs soon?”
On days like these, the loud days they’d been branded, simply, she could barely fathom her own thoughts from the foreign, meaningless fragments of those in close proximity. Loud days were sparse: few, and far apart, but when they came about, they made their presence known.
Despite logically knowing it wouldn’t help at all, (it hadn’t the first five times, but there’s always a chance the six might’ve turned out differently) Wanda clamped her hands over her ears to muffle it all out, to numb the pain, but the voices came from- “ What date is it? New chairs? Soon? Coffee? Coffee? Coffee? Coffee? ”- inside and the hands did nothing, and closing her eyes did nothing, and the screams filled her head- “I wish he liked me back Where’s the pencil sharpener? Ready to deploy I’m going to call Miss Potts Steve is that you? I’ll book dinner now ”- and she just wanted to go back to bed, was that too much to ask? It seemed to worsen, as the last ebbs of sleep dropped away. Meaningless nothings bellowed from every corner of her bedroom at rapid fire, and she hissed in pain at the overload- “These files are heavy T est 01 to go ahead, 0300 Maybe he does like me back Found it, in the draw The phone is ringing, oh god We should probably talk somewhere else”- but gritted her teeth, because she had so many much bigger things to be dealing with right now. Wanda leapt out of bed, her aching head throbbing in retaliation, and got dressed stone-faced, impossibly angry at the magic in her veins and her weak little mind and how stupid she’d been last night - “What’s that new Italian place called ? Ouch, my arm”- AND FOR GOD’S SAKE, WOULD EVERYONE JUST SHUT UP.
Заткнись!
She didn’t have time for this mess!
Exasperatedly, she pressed her fingers into her face and ran them compulsively across her scalp in some effort of relief or grounding; she scowled all the while, which only succeeding in amplifying the ache that had settled there.
In some sort of habit, as of lately, Wanda began to remind herself of just how easy she had things right now. She’d been through much w orse, she told herself, again and again, over and over. She just needed to shake it off.
So she did.
Marching across the room, Wanda violently flung open her door (and then immediately caught it on its hinge as she remembered that it was 6:30am, which was decidedly not an hour of teenage angst). She continued on the familiar path to the communal room, strange voices chasing her every step of the way.
And here she met another obstacle, painted ghastly red white and blue.
The very last person she’d expected to meet- the very last person she’d expected to meet flipping pancakes in the early hours of the morning - was busy pouring thick batter into a frying pan. Steve’s hair was messy; he tilted the pan so that the mixture covered the entire surface.
Today, it seemed, was full of lovely surprises.
“ Eggs, batter, flour ”, chirped his inner monologue as if she’d dare forgotten about that whole situation, and she used all the force she could muster to block out that particular frequency. She did not need to hear what Steve was thinking.
Logically, Wanda should hardly be shocked: it was 6am after all- a time reserved solely for tiny children and the elderly, respectively- and Steve was the oldest person in the tower by a very wide margin.
Only now, the kitchen seemed half as appealing as it had a few seconds ago.
It wasn’t like Wanda had planned on avoiding Cap forever, but the thing was... before yesterday, they’d hardly been friends... their relationship, as she recalled, had been close to downright unpleasant. And then she’d slipped up, wallowed in her mistake weakly, and he’d been immediately over to comfort the crying child, like a self-righteous moth to a lamp.
Maybe he suddenly felt terrible for the hostility they’d mutually settled upon when he’d realised that she was a kid. But what with being a child herself, and also, admittedly, a human weapon, Wanda had never understood the vast variation in how people were treated depending on their age. ( Asset 5, a tiny scruff of limbs and straggly curls, plunged his knife repeatedly into the target, giggling hysterically all the while. Wanda held back bile as she shuffled along as quickly as her restraint allowed, arms bound behind, head forward, cattle prods humming threateningly close to the skin of her back .)
Kids, apparently, were easily forgiven for the most heinous of crimes- after all, they’re only babies; their bad decisions were always at the fault of the adult in charge. However, Wanda didn’t think she could ever take this sentiment to heart, because the only children she’d been in contact with for years were vicious, violent and unstoppable- very much in their own right.
Child soldiers aside, Steve’s newfound guilt rubbed the largest part of Wanda the wrong way. As a previous victim of her abuse of powers, he was, under no circumstances, allowed to feel bad for not professing his undying love for her- she’d forced painful, private memories before his unwilling eyes. It didn’t matter that she was younger than he’d first expected. Her age didn’t lessen the effects of the things she’d done.
And even so, a small, bitter, twisted part of herself liked that Steve seemed to be feeling quite terrible. In part, because of the way he’d conveniently remembered her jacket only yesterday, which she’d realised when trying to fall asleep last night that meant he must’ve had it all along. So maybe he did deserve to beat himself up, as she could tell he was doing. (he didn’t, it was only a jacket)
Steve and her being friendly to one another... it was hardly an unwelcome change. But it was a change she’d have to become accustomed to, if in permanent effect. Wanda liked a bit of stability, and all this confusion had thrown her control off course.
She was trying to muster the courage to actually enter the room when, through no fault of her own (she was certain), a pile of papers fell off of the side table that she’d took to leaning on, landing with a very loud crash. The commotion caused Steve to look up from his cooking and register her, though his face didn’t noticeably change. Well , there were now no ifs or buts about it, no chance of submitting to her fear, and slipping away unnoticed: she was going in.
The jacket was a peace offering; she could do with one more friend. At least that’s what she told herself, as she crossed through the doorway.
Wanda painted a careful smile on her face, and walked into the kitchen with a cheery greeting. She glanced at the papers now scattered on the linoleum for a second as she stooped over to pick them up, but they contained only scrawled, nonsensical energy readings (this much she could work out, because of the annotations, the digits, and... the big, bold title). Something Tony had left lying around.
“Morning,” Steve grunted in reply to her offering, his voice somewhat rough with sleep. As he spoke, he opened a draw in search of a spatula, and then set about prying a pancake off of the bottom of the frying pan.
Wanda’s stomach grumbled immediately with the smell that wafted over- she could’ve sworn she saw him smirk, but she didn’t let her smile falter for a second- and so she went to search the fridge, returning to the breakfast bar with a very exciting haul of milk, orange juice, and a lonely apple.
As she gulped down bitter orange juice and pretended somehow that it was satisfying, she watched him dance masterfully around the stove, stacking pancake after foamy, golden pancake in a threateningly mouth-watering heap. She watched intently and the pile grew and grew- it was absolutely enormous now- five or six of them, layered on top of one another, towering a foot in the air. Thick, gloopy syrup trickled down the side of the mound, collecting in a golden pool on the plate.
Never before- not lying orphaned on the frozen streets; not curled protectively in the corner of a damp, infested cell- had she been this ravenous. Wanda pictured slicing through one of the steaming, fluffy pancakes, and seriously considered some good old-fashioned murder.
No one would know ever guess it was her, right? It was 7am in the morning, and as they were all now very aware, she was a lethargic, early-morning-intolerant adolescent. All it would take was a ball of the fist, a flick of the wrist, and she’d be tucking into that enormous tower of food: the thought of which actually made her drool, like a dog whose owner was scarfing down a 20 pound steak.
As if listening to her thoughts (Ha- she’d had more than enough of that already) and in purposeful taunting, Steve drizzled more sticky, sugary syrup over the top of his creation, and her stomach growled, audibly this time. Only slightly jealous, she chomped into her apple, completely mismanaged the execution, and bit down on the inside of her cheek, hard . Just a flick of the wrist. Pancake batter sizzled as it hit the pan. That’s all it’d take ...
Easily finishing her meagre collection, she got up and carried her glass over to the sink, where she half-attempted to wash it, and left it covered in suds on the side. At the sight of the pancakes, though, imposing in their glory, she was still unsurprisingly quite hungry, so she began a search for something else edible in the kitchen. For a house full to the brim with people- some even hosting altered metabolisms- unless Tony bought in takeout looking for food in the compound was always a guessing game.
As she wandered over to explore the cupboards, though, Steve caught her arm. The surprise contact sent electric jolts through her entire body, which screamed for her to attack. She very nearly span around and sent a blast of energy square between his eyes, or a scarlet needle straight through that same point, but fortunately her brain caught up with her instincts, and she managed not to commit any grievous bodily harm to the countries favourite boy-scout.
Wanda managed to recollect herself, and settled for a sufficiently confused stare, that she was sure turned to longing as she looked up. In Steve’s other hand , he balanced the entire, half-her-height pancake tower, dripping tantalisingly with syrup. She met his striking eyes, but couldn’t read them. She might have been a tad distracted.
“Pancakes,” he said, simply, and she nodded. He didn’t expand on his little statement, and she restrained the urge to start naming other inanimate objects just for the fun of it.
“They call them that at home, too.”
Her stomach practically folded in upon itself as the steaming tower hovered just beneath her nose.
And then, in a movement that both surprised her and physically burdened her, Steve handed her the heaped plate, and then shuffled away.
“Hey!” She called after him, caught somewhere between desperately wanting to wolf down the lot, and a fear of misunderstanding his gesture. “Aren’t you gonna eat these?” For his own good he’d better answer quickly, because Wanda definitely knew which of the prior inclinations she was leaning towards.
“Nah.” He was far down the corridor now, his voice falling away, “I’m not hungry.”
“Are you sure?” She yelled, still in shock.
There come no reply.
“Steve?”
“I can have these?”
After a second stood frozen- barely that, she was ravenous, and holding the plate was a workout in its self- she scrambled over to the breakfast bar, and located a knife and fork.
“Steve?” She tried again, one last time, and still came no sign of any form of answer, or indication.
“I do believe that Mr Rogers wishes for you to eat them,” Interrupted Friday in her startlingly cheery Irish, and Wanda very much agreed. That was all the conformation she needed.
Unable to wait any longer, Wanda messily sliced a chunk of the top pancake, and pushed it around the plate, coating it thickly in the syrup. She still couldn’t believe her luck, not as she placed a dripping forkful into her mouth, not as she almost passed out because she’d never tasted anything as nice. Another forkful melted on her tongue, hot and sweet and buttery, and she marvelled at the taste.
Back in Novi Grad, Rabbi Safràn spoke often in length about Shamayim (heaven). Wanda was now certain that this is what he was describing.
She shovelled in piece after piece, savouring each one all the while, eating at the pace of a starved child. The food was so good, it was as if she had consumed her earlier anger alongside forty three pancakes; it would be quite hard to scowl with a delicious mouthful after all.
And suddenly, her peace was broken. Shattered.
“Oh SHIT my files! Oh my god my work! What the hell do I tell Miss Potts ?” Yelled an unfamiliar female voice, the same as earlier.
Wanda stabbed the plate.
——————————————————-
Soft music echoed throughout the room, and Wanda shifted lazily, turning the page in her book with so little effort that it curled right back down again. It was now midday and, incredibly, most of the morning’s stress had all but faded away. She was almost bored, which was laughable mere hours ago.
For one, her Telepathic abilities had once again regressed, which was very much a surprise, and one she was so, so thankful for. Clint had woken up a little after 9, and the constant stream of garbled nonsense that fed into her magic was quite enough for anyone to cope with, thankyou very much.
And for another, her intense anxiety about the entire situation surrounding her age turned out to be entirely unnecessary. As the day dragged by, there was was no big, serious conversation, no eviction notice pinned to her door, no child-safety plugs in the outlets. (Did Tony even have outlets? All of the technology in this building and she’d yet to see a cable.)
As a matter of fact, everyone were already cracking jokes : humour was, apparently, the coping mechanism of choice for any and all superheroes. It was tentative at first- though bound to be, by any mile- there’d definitely been an agreement to not push anything on the subject: it was obvious in the way they danced around eggshells in conversation. But then Clint made some quip about not giving the toddler coffee, Nat , and all tension seemed to release; it was like taking a breath of fresh air. This was short of a Christmas miracle, smack in the middle of September.
And suddenly, there was a race to see how many different variations of “kid” they could cram into every single thing directed at Wanda (Natasha won easily, which was a perk of knowing twenty languages).
Tony was determined that that was cheating. Natasha shot him a venomous look, and Tony seemed to let it slide.
The next amusement in line consisted of Clint, Sam and Tony mulling over everything in the tower that needed baby-proofing (She managed to read a whole two chapters before that one grew tired), and following that, they moved on to entertaining themselves by describing increasingly ridiculous things that she ‘hadn’t been alive to see.’
“No way...” gasped Sam, his face pulled into some exaggerated mock of horror. “She wasn’t even born when Loki invaded!”
A dramatic, drawn out gasp sounded from Clint and Tony, and Wanda flicked over a page, evidently unamused.
“I was literally thirteen,” she muttered.
“Oh my god is that her first words? Quick! Someone get the camera!”
Fortunately, Sam soon left alongside Bruce and Tony to go do the closest thing to work that off-duty avengers were assigned. Unfortunately, Clint seemed to show no sign of slowing down, and Sam returned an hour later for lunch.
This time, they wanted to know the comprehensive list of all the things she’d missed out on as she spent her childhood as a terrorist weapon. And in a grave lapse of judgement, Wanda made the unfortunate mistake of playing along. She’d openly invited an interrogation.
“You ever been to a party, Red?” Sam asked first, grinning cheekily. He was obviously starting with the most crucial questions.
“A third grade birthday party,” she replied, looking over her book in amusement. There came the reaction that she’d been looking for: he pulled a dramatic face, evidently dissatisfied. Wanda didn’t think she was missing out on much, if she was being honest.
“When’s the last time you celebrated your own birthday?” He followed up, and she squinted in concentration, counting on her fingers- that part wasn’t even for show.
“When I was twelve,” she finally settled on. This answer seemed to properly trouble Wilson, though she thought that this upset could’ve been easily avoided with a little common sense. Could he really imagine Strucker lighting candles on her cake?
“What about Christmas?” Clint started, bluntly.
“I’m Jewish.”
“Hanukkah?” He diverted.
“Twelve,” she repeated, and his face fell too.
It was starkly quiet for a moment ,as her answers resonated. The two men seemed lost for words, which was an incredible feat for Samuel Wilson and Clinton Barton. Their game hadn’t turned out to be much fun so far.
But then Sam looked up, a mischievous glint restored in his eye, and she knew she didn’t stand a chance of this letting up within the hour. “Ever had a boyfriend?” He said, raising his eyebrows, and she looked over from her book disapprovingly to shut him down. “Girlfriend?”
“ No , Sam.”
“Ooooo,” he taunted, “You did! I saw that look!” Wanda rolled her eyes. “What’s the name? Who’s the lucky kid?”
“What’s the name, Red?” Clint hollered.
“Who is it?”
“We deserve to know!”
“I want to meet the kid!”
“I’ll make Nat find them!”
“No you won’t.”
“I’ll use my own superior skills to find them!”
This continued for far l onger than necessary, until she snapped her book shut.
“You really wanna know?” She teased, and immediately both of them perked up- children in the school yard being fed the latest gossip- and nodded eagerly. She smiled sweetly.
“I didn’t really find time to go dating, what with all the experiments,” she exclaimed, really ensuring that the last part was emphasised. Both Clint and Sam flinched, and promptly shut up, their mirrored expressions contorted into something close to horror. From across the rug, Natasha snickered.
Despite this, once the boys had somewhat overcome her previous answer (or at least forgotten how terrible they’d felt about it after a solid five minutes) their tirade of questions saw no end. In no pure coincidence, she felt a headache come on, hot pain growing behind her eyes.
As they continued in their pestering, though, Wanda decided it was her turn to have a little fun, and her replies became increasingly creative: she mostly answered in the way that would make them the most uncomfortable, which Natasha found hilarious, of course. They didn’t seem to learn.
Only an age of interrogation, brutal (half) truths, and guilty squirming later were they finally silenced, by the ever-cheery voice of the tower’s resident A.I. Wanda, for one, was very glad; her head really was pounding now.
“Excuse me,” Friday called loudly from wherever it was she resided, much louder than she’d been programmed to speak on a day to day basis. The difference in volume swiftly turned every head in the room- the message she was bringing must be urgent- Friday only seemed to really force through her messages when there was an important matter at hand, one that required the attention she had garnered with her volume. “Director Fury has called,” she continued, “Miss Natasha Romanoff and Mr Clint Barton are required on the field. Mr Rogers has been informed.”
Across from Wanda, a loud groan echoed from Clint. “Director Fury can eat sh-“ he began to declare, but was cut off in his cursing very abruptly by a pillow, the trajectory of which traced directly back to Sam’s outstretched arm.
“No swearing in-front of the baby, man,” He exclaimed, sneaking pointed looks at Wanda, “We’ve talked about this!”
She snapped her fingers sharply, and lurid crimson light crackled threateningly in her palm. Internally, she winced. Using her powers was an effective, guaranteed method of aggravating her headaches, she’d come to learn. At a slight delay, Wilson skidded backwards in mock terror, his eyes widened comically. “Clint,” he squealed, “Your kid’s threatening me!”
Clint, who had (admittedly very slowly,) began gathering his gear for the call-out, turned on his heel and nodded in her direction. “Good girl.” For a second, Wanda contemplated kicking up a fuss about being treated like a household pet- no less a child- but she settled instead for lurching forward and poking Sam. The shrill, high-pitched scream that she evoked from the man was very satisfying.
“What’s happening that’s good enough for Shield’s best spy, anyway?” Wanda asked when she’d overcome her fit of laughter; Sam scowled at her from his safety on the other sofa, nursing his left arm dramatically.
“I’m assuming you mean me?” Clint’s muffled voice sounded from the inside of a cereal cupboard, the contents of which he was busy upturning in search of his favourite bow. After flinging away some fossilised tins of soup, he ducked out of the cabinet, a fistful of arrows in his hand and his eyes narrowed in suspicion, to which she shrugged nonchalantly. “Dunno anyway,” he said. “I’ve sent Nat to briefing, so I should be finding out any second now.”
Wanda didn’t even bother to try and recall when Nat had slipped away. That woman was like a cat. Barely a few moments had passed before Clint’s phone pinged enthusiastically from somewhere in a fruit bowl where he’d left it, and he exclaimed a bright “Aha!” as he read the message he’d received. “Killer robots!”
“Robots?” She repeated quietly, and his smile faltered.
“Only the usual kind- the clunky, crappy, wannabe villain variety,” he explained quickly. “We’ve dealt with them since before Loki, Nat and me. There’s something about New-York that just calls for badly thought out robot invasions. It’s probably Dr Doom again, he’s been quiet for a while...”
”Probably got inspired,” Sam added grimly, but she knew he hadn’t meant her to hear. He probably hadn’t even spoken out loud.
Wanda swallowed thickly. Her throat constricted. And then, in a moment she’d grow to refer to as a random and sporadic lapse in her sanity, she darted over to Clint (who must’ve thought he was under attack) and threw her arms around him.
“Don’t mess it up,” Wanda grumbled into his chest, and Clint, who was frozen rigid with surprise, slowly relaxed into the hug. His strong arms settled around her back, and he leaned in, holding her close. “I won’t,” he whispered into the top of her hair.
After only a second, she came to her senses and tore away, immediately making a beeline for the door.
“You probably will,” Wanda called behind her, just so that Clint didn’t garner the ridiculous notion that she was worried about him. He murmured something in reply, but she could tell that him and Sam were still stood stock-still, believing they’d just witnessed proof that Wanda Maximoff cared. So she flipped him off. Lovingly.
By the time either of the men reacted, she was far too long of a stretch down the corridor to witness it firsthand. Sam turned to Clint slowly, his eyes wide, and a disbelieving smile lighting up his face. Clint shrugged, though his grin was enormous. “If she could leave this place, I’d ground her.”
—————————————————
Clint, Natasha and, well, Steve, had only been gone for twenty three and a half minutes (not that she was counting... she
wasn’t
counting), and Wanda was just about ready to shock herself unconscious in order to ease her anxiety. She might’ve already attempted it, if only using her powers didn’t dial up the intensity of her headaches by such a margin that she felt as if her skull was splitting down the centre. Then again, Wanda contemplated, if she was unconscious, she wouldn’t even feel the painful side affects. She’d be
unconscious
.
It was a paradox. And that made her head hurt.
Moping, sitting around all useless whilst the others risked their lives fighting the forces of evil had burdened Wanda with an unhealthy serving of cabin fever, too. And restlessness. And perhaps a generous sprinkle of paranoia.
Her hands, which she were currently trying to force into something as mundane as drawing, itched to be firing streaks of scarlet; she pictured the team backed into a corner, but then she imagined herself swooping in at the last second, saving them with an expert blast of crimson energy.
Without being able to join the fight, however, she had no way of knowing how it was panning out. At this very second, Natasha could be bleeding out on the concrete, her breaths rugged; Clint could be torn in two by a rampaging genocidal murder bot; half of the city could be levelled flat- and Wanda would be none the wiser. There could be a sudden swarm of enemies, forcing the trio back-to-back, and there’d be no last minute red-tinged explosions to distract them. Because instead of knowing that her team were okay, knowing that she could help to protect them if shit suddenly hit the fan-she was trapped behind her quadruple-glazed soundproof windows, coercing her stupid, trembling hands into drawing a pretty little picture!
The entire thing was laughable. She
used
to love drawing, yet now she was definitely of the thinking that it was a talent that had passed over. Back at home, she’d spend hours sketching meticulous landscapes, poring over flashy caricatures, finely detailed portraits, and everything in between. All that her mind would supply now as muse for her present work, though, were flitting intrusive visions of her teammates horrifically and graphically maimed.
As she worked, all of her frustration and fear seemed to spill over her paper in a big, blurry, indecipherable mess of grey. Lovely.
The printer paper was far too thin, Wanda blamed, because it was softer on her ego that way. She’d found a stack of it in her desk drawer- because of course, she had a fully supplied stationary cupboard- and had got to work with a pencil. She’d absolutely hated it at first, the page too gritty and her pencil too rough, but her vision began to blur at around the 2 hour mark, and things had been looking considerably prettier since then.
By seven o’clock, she was forced to stop drawing entirely. Wanda could barely make out the pencil in her hand, never mind the detail of a fine line. This alone wouldn’t have deterred her- she was only taking out her emotions by making a nice big mess by that point anyhow- but her pain was becoming unbearable. The dull ache had morphed into an agonising, searing flare, that was seconds away from bringing back up the morning’s pancakes.
At first, she tried to simply brush it off, and wait for the episode to pass. But then an electric pulse sparked at the side of her skull with such a force that she actually blacked out momentarily, and came round gasping in a ball on the carpet. “Miss Maximoff,” Friday’s voice called, and she had a feeling it’d been sounding for a while before she’d finally heard, “I’m going to call for medical assistance unless you provide verbal confirmation that you are alright within the next thirty seconds,” she said, and Wanda floundered, wincing.
“I’m fine!” She blurted, reeling as the blurry world tilted, and her stomach turned. “I’m alright!”
She was, decidedly, not alright.
For a minute Wanda sat perfectly still, steadying herself, gulping in big breathes of cool air. Through the agony, she formed a suitably independent plan, and then took off on autopilot down the hall, holding her breath.
She stumbled into the living area, trying her best to navigate normally when every object in her line of sight warped and fanned outwards in a strangex, technicolour projection. Drugs. Medicine. That was what she needed: something strong, something heavy- though she knew that all she would find without foraging supplies from the Medbay would be a few paracetamol, littered around. It’d have to do- anything at this point she’d have to make work for her sanity.
“Hey,” someone called from the sofa and she twirled around without thought, instantly coming to regret that action when the floor at her feet swam nauseously. Tony- or rather three of him- tore his eyes away from the television. “What happened to you?” Him and his two fuzzy clones questioned immediately at whatever it was he saw on her face, “You look like you crawled out of a grave.”
“Gee, thanks,” Wanda muttered, and he stared anxiously as she continued making her way clumsily to the kitchen. The intensity of the overhead spotlights as she crossed into the room sent sharp, shooting pains through the side of her head, and a rainbow of bursting colours flared across her vision. She made to carry on, gripping the breakfast bar for support, but after two steps her foot hit something unexpected, and she barely managed to catch herself.
“Woah!” Tony exclaimed, already jumping out of his seat “-Woah, easy, kid.” She intended to reply with something suitably snarky, but the intense throbbing pain clustered in her head distracted her sufficiently otherwise. “Sit down, you look like you’re about to faint,” he said. “Again.”
Against all of her wishes, he grasped Wanda’s arm and guided her to the couch, insistent, despite the numerous times she informed him that she could still walk and function, she was just a little dizzy. He pushed her gently onto the couch- a gesture which she fought purely to be stubborn- succumbing only when she realised just how welcoming it was to feel more grounded, and less like she was rowing a boat through a sea-storm.
Squirming round until she was laying down, Wanda buried her head into the arm-rest, ignoring Tony’s increasing concern. He was even doing his concerned eyes, the ones that were big and dark and round; the ones reserved for times where he knew he might just be out of his depth. “Have you been doing any weird magic crap I should know about?” He asked, utilising his matching concerned voice. She shook her head very slightly so as not to aggravate the pain.
She stayed just like that for a moment or so, relishing in the dark and the quiet, but then recalled that she was close to remedying all of this for herself before Tony had intervened, so she might as well use his help.
“Do you have anything for migraines?” She croaked. The anxiety in his features lessened a touch; all the scenes he’d envisioned of her splintering furniture, or mind-controlling the entirety of Manhattan from her bedroom window, were tossed aside.
“Migraine, huh?” He shot up and walked over to the kitchen, rooting through random cupboards as she’d originally planned to do. “I should have something of Pepper’s lying around somewhere...” He said, plucking out bottles, reading the labels, and discarding them on the work top. “You get them often, Red?”
“Hm?” Wanda murmured, turning on to her back so she could hear him clearly.
“These migraines,” He repeated, “they a regular thing?” She raised her arm and shook her hand in a so-so gesture.
“Headaches, fairly. Double vision’s a new one though,” she mumbled, wincing at the heightened sound of her own voice.
He turned around, two clear bottles of pills in his hand. “That’s pretty nasty.” She grunted some sound of her agreement.
Wanda heard the sound of running water, and soon after Tony came shuffling over with a glass and the medicine he’d secured. “Naproxen for the pain,” he said, handing over one small, chalky tablet alongside the water; she didn’t waste a second in gulping it down, and he handed her the second pill. She choked some semblance of a thanks before reaching for the next capsule. “Chlorpromazine if you’re nauseous,” he cited, and she inhaled that one just as quickly. He looked very pleased with himself, all things considered.
It was almost certain that she’d feel weak and stupid in the morning, but right in this moment there was no space for such feelings to reside. Besides, if Tony every mentioned any of this to another living soul, she might give him a free trial experience of the things she was feeling, courtesy of a little red energy.
“Dim the lights, Fri,” he said softly. Wanda made to argue as he really was going too far for her liking now, but the sudden influx of shadow was like a cool breeze over the hot lava that her brain had become. Instead, she melted into the couch cushions and willed herself to disappear.
The last time she’d endured pain like this, discounting that of her recent dance with a selection of Iron-man missiles, was the early days in the Sokovian bunker. Accepting complete, strict obedience- without batting so much as an eyelash in defence- was very much a learned thing for Wanda.
The experiments she’d been subject to in her time as their favoured plaything were not all repulsive explorations with a scalpel and an infinity stone thrown in the mix to spice things up. But when she acted against Strucker’s will, as she often had before she’d grown accustomed to her enforced routine, the scientists ‘tests’ were immediately reduced to such things. Wanda wasn’t even sure if they had anything to prove at those times, or if they’d just had enough of her mouth. Superpowers weren’t often unlocked with the use of sharp objects, after all.
This, now, wasn’t one bit like that though, not really.
Some similarities could be unwillingly drawn to the
after
, the after where Strucker and his scientists weren’t sure that they could control what they’d created. The
after
where she’d received proper medicine, and hot, solid food, and luxuries that she never ended up touching out of fear of them being laced with something nasty, because it would hardly be the first time.
This was nothing like that, and Wanda knew this. Without a doubt. But she could scarcely re-re-program her entire subconscious.
Withdrawn abruptly from her remembering by a harsh pulse in her temple, Wanda bit down on her tongue so that she didn’t yell into Tony’s couch; he must have felt her go rigid, though, because he turned the concerned eyes back on. She couldn’t see them of course, but there was no mistaking that she could feel them.
If there was anything she could do to stop his weird doting pity, she’d welcome the offer with arms wide open.
“Hey,” Sam said, his footsteps light and steadily approaching.
At the soles of light, she took back everything she’d been wishing for. Mentally, she snatched back her arms. Not anything, not
this
.
“I was coming up to get a drink and Friday stopped me,“ (she couldn’t help that notice that the A.I seemed to have failed. Quite completely.) “...told me something was wrong with Wanda? ”
Wanda scowled somewhere at the ceiling- it was hard being passive aggressive to something that didn’t take physical form, and forced herself shakily upright. She’d let Tony help because she was truly desperate, but now her work here was done. And there was no way that Sam, of all people, needed to see her like this.
“Migraine- a bad one at that,” Tony answered in her place, and the fact that he made conscious effort to lower his voice on her behalf made her recoil.
“I’m fine,” she grumbled stubbornly, but he shut her down immediately.
“Nope,” he argued, still using that infuriatingly considerate tone. “You can tell me it’s not bad when you can tell me how many fingers I’m holding up.” She rolled her eyes, and the nerves behind them imploded.
“You’re telling me you don’t have 8 fingers on one hand?” She said.
“You see, it’d be funny if it wasn’t true.”
At that moment the ache flared horrifically and she tensed completely, despite her best efforts to hide the affliction. Everything she could see churned sickeningly, lights pulsing erratically, and she cursed herself for sitting up so fast.
“The drugs not helping, kid?” He said, and she sensed that his joking on this matter was over.
”A little?” She tried.
Sam, who she hadn’t noticed had come and joined them on the sofa, was turning the pill bottles over in his hands.
“They should’ve started working almost immediately, especially on you, Red- you’re tiny!” He exclaimed, thumbing the labels. Wanda didn’t think that she could deepen her scowl in reaction, yet here she was, always surprising herself.
“Im five seconds away from dragging a Doctor all the way up here,” Tony declared, and Wanda’s mouth went dry. He’d said a
doctor
, not just Bruce in the Medbay. A flash of a stark, pressed white lab coat came to mind; a matte leather clipboard bound with a huge crimson insignia.
“No doctor,” she hissed a little too quickly. He tilted his head, a knowing look upon his face.
“Won’t... help...” Wanda ground out, teeth gritted. The room was still pivoting, hot lava searing her brain.
Tony sighed exasperatedly. “Fri?” He questioned, evidently not accepting her dismissal.
“Miss Maximoff is correct, Boss,” came the chirpy reply after a few seconds of scanning and assessing, “She appears to be in peak physical condition.”
He scowled. “Well then why is she about to lose consciousness on my couch?” He asked, waving his hands animatedly about in frustration.
“May I remind you of a certain magical affliction?” Friday attempted.
“No, she said this isn’t a normal thing- you did say that right, Red?”
Wanda nodded.
“I’ll go speak to Bruce.”
If it wasn’t for her lapse in energy, she would’ve pulled him immediately back down the second he’d stood up. As it was, she watched as he darted out of the room, and three of Sam’s freshly concerned face filled her vision. Wanda could’ve yelled, but she settled for incoherent grumbling.
She didn’t dislike Sam- in fact, the issue sprouted far on the contrary. Wanda liked Sam: she
really
liked Sam. But Sam was funny. She was funny. That was how their relationship began, and how she’d planned to maintain it; they laughed together, and annoyed people together, and in the whole of things she supposed he was like her goofy big brother.
The issue sprouted because he, just like all of the others, wasn’t ever supposed to see her like this- this was where all of her neatly planned lines meshed over in a big, blurry heap, and
already
they’d formed a formidable knot.
Unforgivably, she’d let Clint become tangled when he watched her facade crack messily infront of the TV; she’d already ruined one persons perspective, leaving herself ridiculously vulnerable. Yesterday, after that whole fiasco, she hadn’t exactly fought the team off in waves when they’d gone to comfort her, either. Which was
way
too many people, getting
way
too caught up. Just now she’d allowed Tony to help her again, in a similar moment of weakness and stupidity.
And for some reason yet unbeknownst to Wanda, the thought of a pitiful Sam Wilson was where she definitely and resolutely drew the line. Measured out her strings, and glued them down. Because Sam was
silly
, and they
joked
together, and yet now he was acting like a concerned parent when that role had been overflowed the second she’d let her age slip and she
hated it
.
So, she tried with all she had to untangle her mess; Wanda turned to Sam, and she showed him a smile. Only now, he’d adopted Tony’s concerned eyes, and no matter how long she tried to grin, until her face actually twitched with the effort, he wasn’t convinced.
In fact, he looked deep in thought. As if he was trying to decide something or another, or figure that same thing out. That thing, Wanda realised, was her.
“You’ve been having these headaches a lot lately, huh?” She merely looked over, and he seemed to take this as confirmation. He wasn’t wrong to do so, which was irrationally frustrating.
“Y’know, headaches are common to those suffering from grief,” Sam started, and his words were so unexpected that they hit with the force of bullets. They’d danced around this topics for months, and he was pouring salt on a wound that was especially tender. She deflected very quickly, like a scared animal.
“I’m not grieving,” she blurted. Sam came and sat down, and she realised painstakingly that she could hardly move, never mind run away from this conversation.
“I was a therapist, when I quit the forces,” he continued undeterred, and in a rare moment, his voice was bare of jokes. He wasn’t being funny, or entertaining- he was laying it out to her, straight and simple. “Bereavement comes hand in hand with fighting a war, and I dealt with the same things, day after day.”
This was not a discussion that Wanda was willing to entertain. Not here, not now, and
not
, as she’d established, with Sam Wilson. “I’m okay, Sam,” she tried.
“You see, Red. That’s where I think your problem lies.”
“I’m not one of your soldiers,” she argued, but his voice remained level.
“No. You’ve seen worse. You’re a quarter of the age that I’m used to dealing with, and you’ve gone through so much worse. And you’re right, because I’ve never met a soldier who managed to live with half as much denial.”
Wand opened her mouth to speak, to argue fiercely that he was wrong, that he didn’t understand. But the words never came.
“Can I tell you what I think?” He asked, quietly.
She didn’t reply, knowing already the things he was going to say. She didn’t snap at him, so he continued.
“I think that you’re refusing to acknowledge your brother because it hurts- which ain’t that bad on it’s own, I’ve seen lots of people in denial before. But they realise in the end, and it’s been months and you don’t seem to want to.”
“And I don’t think that you don’t believe Pietro-“ the name
stung
, fiercely- “Has passed, but you act like you don’t remember him at all.”
“Whatever you’re doin to yourself, Red- it ain’t natural. It ain’t healthy. I think you know that.”
The blunt force of Sam’s words had knocked all of the air out of her lungs. Wanda couldn’t reply, even if she’d’ve liked to; she was panicking, at an unaccountable level. He continued, and her head
throbbed
.
“Bottling stuff up- that’s
stuff gets real bad. And when it’s at the level of the shit you’ve been through...”
“You gotta choose which parts of that shit you take with you, and which parts you leave behind. Pietro was a huge part of your life, and now you have to let him go, but you don’t have to leave him in Sokovia. You can remember his life.”
She stared at the ceiling. Her eyes prickled uncontrollably, and her throat and lungs constricted. Piercing, thundering alarms were sounding in her head, and she couldn’t tune them out.
“Its okay to be sad. It’s okay to be angry. Because that’s how we move on.”
Wanda couldn’t take anymore, and instinct overran. She hauled herself up, feeling bile rise in her throat, and squeezed her eyes shut as the floor churned like a whirlpool.
The walls closed in, and she ran.
Wanda darted away, and Tony entered the room, a dishevelled Bruce in tow. Sam was staring out of the door in her wake, sympathy spilled obviously over his features.
“What did you do to the kid?” Tony asked, defensively almost, as he watched the flash of dark red hair disappear down the hall.
“I spoke to her,” Sam answered.
The silence was thick...
“Oh. Is she okay?”
“She will be.”
Tony walked to Sam, and clapped him on the shoulder, mouthing an inaudible thankyou. Sam nodded.
“You wanna watch something until those three get back?”
Bruce shuffled over and joined Sam and Tony in sprawling on a sofa. The roof was undoubtedly the best place to be, when anxiously awaiting the return of teammates, but none of them suggested this change in location, instead getting comfortable, and flicking over television channels.
And it had nothing to do with worrying over the teenager, who’s room was only meters away. Nothing at all.
—————————————————-
Wanda, was breaking.
The barricade of shimmering psychic walls, the thick blocks that she’d enforced subconsciously now so long ago, were crumbling.
With time, they’d worn down and become shallow and flimsy; barely able to dam the churning sea of grief that smashed against them over and over with the tide. Now, they threatened to buckle inwards at any given second. Try as she might to prevent the inevitable, there was nothing that Wanda could do now but let them come crashing down.
Damaged and fragile as they were, it physically hurt to force the walls to withstand: a significant portion of her energy and concentration poured into sustaining the barriers, propping them up hopelessly against the mounting pressure of time and inescapable denial. The strain of it split Wanda’s vision double; it threw out her balance, and it sent sharp, shooting pains throughout her brain.
Because never had the constant pain of her waking life been simply an intense headache, or a killer migraine: it was the product, the incredible stress and tension, of magically repressing months upon months of intense emotions. Sam wasn’t right in his seminar about bereavement, but he’d hit close enough.
And through everything- through the tangled mess of her mind, somewhere beyond it’s swamp of thick festering grief and it’s artificial obstructions - Wanda wanted to remember. He was her little brother, whether alive or gone. And she didn’t want to live, not like this, not if she couldn’t remember a damn thing about the other missing half of her soul.
So, one hundred and five days later, she remembered.
In mere seconds, every wall she’d every created had been obliterated, and Pietro exploded from the depths of her subconscious in a haze of vivid colour.
At first, she was blinded by his beaming smile- saw the big silly grin that he used to pull when she was sulking; his mischievous eyes glittering like ice in the sunlight. Echoing and reverberating about her walls, she became lost in his gleeful laughter, the type after they’d been shrieking for hours, and had been reduced to wheezing like asthmatic pensioners.
The steel-frames walls of her room in Avengers Tower melted like wax, and in their place the crowded streets of Sokovia grew. Rising from the fading heaps of debris of a destroyed city, old red-brick buildings sprouted, and people sprung up in between, Pietro undoubtedly among them.
Wanda turned to see him properly once the fabrication had halted; his hair dark and curly, glistening red in the sunlight, the way it had before the sceptre bleached it white. He was so close, and so solid, that she could see the freckles sprinkled about the creases of his eyes, and yet, she was frozen, completely invisible in the midst of her projection.
Pietro, whose every movement she was desperately scanning, memorising, chatted breezily to a slightly smaller girl at his side. As he spoke words that Wanda couldn’t hear, no matter how frantically she tried, the smaller girl turned to him briefly, her eyes smudged with dark makeup, and Wanda saw her younger self, kicking up dust with her hard leather boots.
Avidly, she watched as her younger self wandered down the street, Pietro lazing behind, amusedly jabbing at pebbles as her brother called out to her. He continued to talk to her, but this wasn’t some fictitious hallucination she’s created: it was the scraps of a real, fading memory. And all that time ago- all those years ago, where she had no idea that the sand in their timer was quickly running thin- she hadn’t bothered to listen.
So now, in this moment, all that she could do was continue to watch in scrappy, muffled distortion, she could only follow Vision-Wanda, who still didn’t answer Pietro- just continued nudging the gravel with the tip of her shoe. She wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention.
Wanda, here in the compound, missed everything about Pietro so much that it hurt, yet here, Vision-Wanda didn’t care enough to turn around and face him. Pietro was speaking to her, and she wasn’t even listening. She’d give anything it’d take to know what he’d been rambling about. But now, she would never get to know what he was saying to her, on that small insignificant afternoon.
The pressure behind her eyes reached bursting point.
The full force of all of her fury, and terrible, insurmountable sadness hit her like a wall, and her fabrication shuddered. Tears spilled in hot streaks down her face and she couldn’t try and stop them, she fell as her knees buckled, sobbing and gasping as she was forced to watch his face disintegrate into tiny specks of light.
Pietro was dead. Pietro was gone, and he wasn’t ever going to come back.
She was never going to be able to hear his voice again, never going to get to hug her baby brother, never going to see him smile gleefully as a butterfly tickled his nose.
And as Wanda finally came to terms with this, as she finally allowed herself to realise her loss, she felt a large part of herself die too.
And the other part... the other half stopped feeling entirely.
She let go, and she drifted. She drifted away from the compound, away from Sokovia, away from Wanda Maximoff and all of her pain, and drifted somewhere above. There was nothing here. It wasn’t quiet, it was just... empty...
It was Clint, who brought her back.
“Hey,” he said softly, as he lowered himself onto to the carpet and offered an arm, tentatively. She didn’t push him away. Shuffling sideways, he edged closer until he could wrap his arm around her. His lean, strong arms pulled her firmly into a hug at his side, and she lay there, safely nestled into the soft folds of his t-shirt like a child. At this contact, Wanda blinked, and she was back, trapped in a superhero compound in North America, unable to escape her torment.
She began to cry, which felt right: thick, choking sobs, muffled against his ribs. “It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, carding his hands through her hair, and rubbing her shoulder. “You’re alright.” She gasped, reeled for oxygen, and when the air wouldn’t find its way to her lungs he grasped her hand and placed it atop his own heart, counting slowly against the own steady rise and fall of his chest. “It’s okay, it’s alright... breathe, kid...” Her heaving stuttered, but she managed to catch a breath with his rhythm, and she slumped against him. “I’ve got you,” he said as he pulled her close.
They stayed like that a while, though she wasn’t exactly aware of time passing; Wanda tucked under Clint’s arm, his gentle hands absentmindedly stroking her hair.
After an even longer while, the last of her tears had ebbed away. Her eyes were puffy and sore, her face raw and red, and she felt empty.
Hollow, Wanda shifted and rested her head on Clint’s shoulder. She couldn’t bring herself to care about the unnerving, grave silence, but she didn’t protest the distraction when Clint began to speak.
He whispered sweet stories of Lila and Cooper and little baby Nathaniel. He told her about Laura, and about Natasha, and somewhere along the line he got to speaking about how one fateful mission long ago, he lost seventy percent of his hearing.
She’d have to meet the kids soon, he said, because she was so much like them, and in turn, Pietro. She’d like that very much. He compensated for her radio silence with funny little rambles and anecdotes, recalling the time that Sam’s wings failed and he tripped flat on his face; or the time Natasha’s gun just wouldn’t fire, and she had no choice but to abandon it. She should’ve seen the look on the mans face, Clint said with a small smile, when the Black Widow came at him with her left shoe.
At some point in the blur, he stood up, cracking his back violently and complaining about his age and the resulting crick in his neck. He grasped her hand, and pulled her up on to shaky legs, supporting almost her entire weight.
“Hey,” he said, softly, “It gets better. I promise.“ He said a whole lot of other things, too, but none of those words filtered through the muddle. There was something vague she registered about not being alone right now, and then Wanda was steered out of her room, and there was a soft cushion beneath her, and Nat’s cold feet pressed up against her thigh.
The whole team was settled on the sofas, Tony’s girlfriend included somewhere, (Pepper?), a tangle of limbs and blankets. Something colourful flickered on the television screen, and someone put a cushion behind her head.
It was soft. And warm.
And away she flew.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“What did I just say, Joey?” Mr Warren demanded, and Peter flinched violently at the sudden outburst. Very elegantly, he then managed to poke himself in the eye, somehow hold back the subsequent yelp, and finally look up to the teacher, who was glaring sternly through the rectangular lenses of his glasses.
Nice one, Parker.
A dusty, lilac tinted fog had settled over the city, the mind-boggling conversations of over three thousand high-schoolers rang in the air in a low buzz, and up until a second ago, Peter Parker had been falling asleep in his hands. Still caught in a haze, whatever it was that Joey scrambled in reply never quite made it to Peter’s ears, which were already constantly bombarded with the efforts of every sound within a square mile. And so, instead of trying to zone in on much at all, he stifled a yawn and picked up his pen; began doodling a senseless scrawl in the corner of his page, purely to give his restless hands something to do.
It wasn’t that Peter was no longer trying in class- absolutely
not
- he’d made that particular promise to May, and he damn well intended to keep it. But it was last period chemistry: kinetic theory, to be specific, and he’d learned this stuff back in grade
five
.
For what was quite possibly the sixth time in the last minute alone, Peter inched his phone out of his pocket to check the time. As was the case for the previous five times, however, the numbers that lit up the screen had the audacity to remain stubbornly at twenty five minutes past two. Exasperatedly, he rubbed his head: his body was being torn in two impossible directions, neither of which were currently feasible. Fifty percent of Peter vibrated with pent up energy, aching to be running and swinging and sprinting and flying. In immediate contrast, the other fifty percent dreamt longingly of his soft, narrow bed. Absolutely
nothing
within Peter wanted to be sat stuck listening to a droning high school lecture that he could recite backwards in Italian.
Nothing at all.
Niente.
For a kid like Peter, this was thoroughly unusual. If he put in a little effort with his academics- and he did, most of the time: he truly did care- he could easily be somewhere close to the very top of every single one of his classes. Peter, though, was decidedly not an average example of this type of gifted teenager. In fact, a huge contributor to his mounting desire to bunk off class all together was his massively heightened radioactive spider senses- all one-thousand of which were currently blinking red. For no discernible reason.
At first, Peter had been absolutely terrified (His senses had never lied before, so why should he think to ignore them?) but after the tail end of three god-forsaken months, he was really beginning to doubt their legitimacy. With all of his instincts constantly on the warpath (
Danger
they told him, every second of every day,
Danger
, and
Run
, and
Peter Something’s Wrong
) he was so highly wound that a simple nudge from Betty sent him sprawling across the classroom, and the act of a door being closed three corridors away elicited a fully-body flinch. It was incredibly difficult to remain focused when his body had permanently resumed its fight or flight response, and every boring day carried the blaring alarm of immediate peril. This horrific Spidey malfunction had yet to see an end, but Peter ploughed through (for May), and as often as he could, gave one hundred percent of his attention to his studies. In the end, both he and Ned (the ever willing recipient of all Peter’s anxieties) chalked it up to being exhausted, which felt…
wrong
. But didn’t everything these days?
With all of the invisible commotion he was facing, he didn’t feel overwhelmingly guilty about not struggling intensely to listen to Mr Warren’s pointless ramble. Thankfully, the school day was almost over- after school was hardly ever better, but at least he’d see May- and all he had to do was survive another half-hour without falling unconscious, or imploding with agitation.
Leaning against his palm, he settled for gazing aimlessly out of the window. There was never much to see, what with the majority of the windows facing only the school yard, but Peter found it somewhat relaxing to lazily regard the flock of pigeons who were cooing softly to one another. He was slowly starting to drift off again, what with the only movement belonging to a bird fluffing its feathers, until…
Peter shook his head, and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie.
That was strange. He could’ve sworn he saw something, something other than his riveting display of New York’s finest winged vermin- something close to a ripple, an unnatural glint in the sky. It was a trick of the light, he decided, however, after a minute of careful investigation; he relaxed back into his slouch on the desk…
But then- there it was again!
This time, he sat up straight, leaning forwards out of his seat. He strained, and squinted… and… sure enough- he managed to spot it!
Invisible to the naked human eye, he surmised (Amy was, too, staring out of the window a few desks down, and she hadn’t noticed anything), a greenish shimmer had settled in the air, becoming apparent only when the breeze shifted and disturbed it. The closest thing that Peter could suggest in comparison was the technicolour sheen of an electromagnetic field: the sort that radiated from power stations, and which pulsed and shimmered weakly in wisps about the generator in his apartment.
That was…
odd
. Energy this concentrated, proliferated over an area this large… he’d never seen anything close to it.
Huh.
Perhaps it was testament to how drained he was that he promptly fell asleep.
———————————————————
Apart from the day that Sherlock had been renewed for a fourth season, Peter had never felt such an intense relief as the rush that hit him when the school bell finally rang. It was as uncomfortably high-pitched and warbling as ever- and it clawed at his sensitive ears- but it was the sweetest music he’d ever heard.
Metaphorically, of course. It really was quite painful. As was the storm of all of Midtown’s entire two-thousand five-hundred wide student body leaping out of their chairs, with a terrible screech of metal dragging across wood.
Forced quite suddenly wide, the doorways strained fit to burst. Simultaneously, hundreds of students threw theirselves through the classroom doors head first: with the sounding of the final bell, all pretences of a humane civilisation were trampled underfoot. The creaking doorways then each promptly vomited out a stream of sweaty teenagers, which joined together in one huge, churning mass of bodies in the main corridor. Peter was pretty certain that this classified as a stampede.
But with his escape wide open at long last, he wasted no time in regarding his own safety. Stumbling blindly into the corridor, he darted through the corridor like a freshman who was late to Spanish class, swerving around legs and gaggles of girls and Flashes’ offending foot.
The doors were getting closer. The air was insufferably thick, and hot, and increasingly hard to inhale, but he powered through, ducking and weaving and dodging, until-
Ah, at last...
Peter had made it.
Freedom
. Sweet, fresh, personal-space-allowing freedom.
He’d forgotten what the trees looked like.
Despite the overbearing clouds, the sunlight was harsh in contrast to the Chem lab. Peter winced, and shielded his eyes, and made his way over to the little nook in the fence where he’d waited every day for Ned since 9th grade.
Typically, Ned was late. He was actually a very punctual person, but due to the fragile mechanics projects often cradled in his arms, he didn’t normally appear until the last dregs of kids had been spat out of the door. Peter never minded- he stood and counted the flowers patiently, itching to sprint through the gates.
Flash, as always, hurled some generic insult as he brushed past Peter unnecessarily on his own way out, but his heart wasn’t in it. Queens was big, but news spread fast, and he wasn’t an emotionless, stone-cold tyrant.
A couple of minutes later, Ned greeted him with a toothy grin, and they turned out of the yard.
The walk from school to their estate was a good thirty-minute feature long trek
through back-alley queens, and yet it had never been something that aggravated Peter. Walking home with Ned- who Peter was
sure
could get a lift, if he asked- had always been fun: a chance to catch up on the day, ever since their classes were split in eighth grade.
Besides, it was better than the subway.
Anything
was better than the subway.
They made it three-quarters of the way, dithering and discussing Peter’s Spidey suit, before turning off, in the opposite direction to home. Neither of the boys thought twice about the diversion- it was a learned thing, a relatively new thing in the scope of an age old tradition- but Ned was happy to walk the extra mile.
“Have you worked on the goggles?” He asked, as they passed a woman painted as a statute, far too distant from tourist NY to be making any money.
“Nope,” Peter said. He hadn’t had much free time at all lately, but he’d come clean to Ned about his whole eight-legged situation a few months ago (“
Wait- holy shit, are you going to grow extra limbs?!”
), and managing the entire Super Vigilante deal had been significantly easier since then.
“I have some ideas about diverting bright light, so you can actually see who you’re fighting, and all that,” Ned voiced, and Peter smiled. He’d been meaning to work on that.
“That would be useful,” he said. “Send me your plans when you get home, and I’ll start designing something.”
“Why don’t you spice it up a little? Change the colour, go all edgy and dark.”
“I like my brand,” Peter insisted. “They’ve already made party costumes, anyway, so there’s nothing we can do.”
“But think about the
aesthetic
, Peter.”
“I have an aesthetic. It’s called ‘Having zero camouflage value unless in a tropical bird sanctuary’.”
They laughed a little; it was nice, and they chatted some more as they continued their endless voyage.
And then they neared Peter’s destination, and the air turned cold as quickly as the talk. He didn’t feel like laughing anymore, as he stood outside the towering white building. Ned waited silently for a second, and then launched into his usual support-group spiel.
“Mum keeps telling me to remind you that you’re always welcome at ours,” he said, cheerily, but the icy change in conversation was undeserving of his sympathy and upbeat tone.
Sensing something in Peter perhaps, Ned quickly tried to increase the appeal of his offer- “I can invite MJ too- or it can just be us, like old times!” He tried, his eyes so genuinely bright and kind; it took all of Peter’s reserve to answer in the same way that he’d had to for months.
“I’m sorry, man” Peter said, his voice somewhat solemn. “I- I can’t leave May right now. I can’t.” This was true, no matter how Peter’s unfaithful brain presented its selfish desires to run away to Ned’s place, and play Xbox and laugh until the early hours of the morning.
“I know, it’s just… I miss you, dude.” Ned was very careful not to look too downcast at his reply, keeping his smile bright as ever, and managing to sound, for Peter’s benefit, as if bring isolated from his best friend was no big deal. Another of the universe’s constant signposts that he did
not
deserve the company of Ned Leeds.
“I’m sorry.”
“Hey- no! Don’t you dare be!” Ned blurted, looking slightly stricken. For some other-worldly reason, at his friends paling colour, Peter was inexplicably forced to hold back laughter. Maybe, this was it. He’d finally gone off the deep end.
“You
know
I didn’t mean it like that,” Ned moaned, once he’d recovered from the shock of possibly offending someone so fragile. He aimed a playful jab at Peter’s side, and, for the record, his useless, broken Spidey senses did less than nothing to alert him of the attack. “I know,” Peter mumbled once he’d regained his footing, and a tiny smile may have ghosted his lips.
True smiles, these days, were an increasingly rare display: Peter missed the way they felt, all warm and fuzzy and lovely in stark contrast to this current prolonged state of fear, of confusion, and oftentimes a healthy portion of pure, unbridled sadness. Quite simply, he missed being happy. It seemed so long since he’s laughed, carefree, at something senseless and stupid- like the word
Beesechurger
- and he missed it
so freaking much
. They’d cried- hysterical, elated tears- at that stupid picture for actual, physical weeks.
All allures of happiness, however, were snatched deftly away with the presence of an ugly, rendered building that stuck out in the middle of the street like a misshapen lump of rock in a bowl of pearls. Although Peter had just spent his entire day counting away the minutes until he made it here, he now discovered that he wanted nothing more than to turn on his heel and run far,
far
away.
At the familiarly unwelcoming sight of Queen’s Memorial Hospital, his stomach churned sickeningly. The sensation was worsened even more so with the immense guilt that followed this realisation. He’d come to see
May
- he should be
excited
!
“You good?” Ned asked, the feathers of his mother-hen wings flapping with the ringing of their distress meter. Peter swallowed, and then nodded. And then Ned tackled him in a bone-crushing hug.
It was a well-established truth that Ned’s hugs were far superior to any competition, and here, enveloped in his friend’s arms, Peter realised that he was freakishly close to bursting into tears in the middle of the sidewalk. “If you need anything, dude, and I mean
anything
,” he said, once he’d finally released Peter, “Let me know.”
Ned was- all round, in every aspect, inside out, and back to front- a wholly good person; a
far
better person than Peter had ever managed to be, and a far best friend than Peter could surely warrant. He was selfless, and generous, and he deserved so much more than the burden of an absent, mopey boy who boasted a larger selection of pity cards than anyone else in the city.
“Thanks, man,” Peter managed, which conveyed only a fraction of the gratitude that he was feeling- he really hoped that his friend could read between the lines a little.
“And Ned?” He called, when the other boy had set off home, already late due to his detour, “About that invite, another time, yeah?” Ned grinned. And Peter set off towards the imposing white-washed building, a whole lot lighter than he’d felt a moment ago.
———————————————————
For a person with a regular olfactory system, the offending smell of hospital disinfectant was often overwhelming. Something about the concentration of the chemicals in the stark, crisp air seemed to sting and burn like acid as it travelled through the nose, bringing tears to the driest of eyes. Perhaps this reaction was somewhat psychological; emphasised by the typical state of distress a hospital’s visitors tended to display.
For Peter Parker, the sensation was close to agonising. And all too familiar.
As of every other time- he’d lost count of his visits, unsurprisingly- the sharp, poisonous stench of iodoform forced down his throat, licking at his eyes and nostrils, and singing the lining of his lungs. He couldn’t seem to build up any sort of resistance to the stuff, which seemed unusual- at the very least he expected to become used to its presence. But as he sat, stuffed awkwardly into his favourite plastic chair, textbook balanced on his knees, his entire body itched insufferably.
The one thing about the chemical that he took solace in, despite all the pain it caused, was that it was much stronger than the scent of diseased human flesh, and that it managed to mask the putrid stench of poisoned blood spilling over the table; crumbling bones rotting in the morgue underfoot, and the horrifically blistered skin of which he’d been the unfortunate witness in the burn unit only a few floors above.
Ordinary people couldn’t notice it, physically. Peter could barely ignore it- he knew for a fact, that once this was all over- however it ended- he’d never set foot in another hospital, but he’d
never
forget the smell. So yeah, he guessed he was almost thankful for the chemical burns. Without the disinfectant, he’d never be able to stomach setting foot within a mile of the place.
Carefully, he turned over the page of his book- biology, how fitting- absentmindedly wiping at his irritated nose with the sleeve of his hoodie. Trying entirely to engross his mind in the fascinating world of molecular genetics, rather than Aunt May, who was so unnervingly, unnaturally still at his feet, Peter was halfway through some light revision of protein synthesis before he was interrupted by a very polite knock at the ward door, as if he owned the place.
From experience, he knew that it was Doctor Ellis (“Call me
Melanie
,” Peter,) far before her vivid fuchsia scrubs and neat braids materialised in the room. However today, in a slight divergence from the usual programming, another younger woman appeared at Ellis’ side- an intern, he hazarded, judging by the wrinkled pale blue scrubs.
“Hey Pete!” Ellis chirped, her smile wide and bright as always, and he made sure to return the gesture even if it was a little forced; he genuinely appreciated the doctor’s good-natured efforts, after all. ”How was your day?” she questioned, routinely checking over the vast selection of equipment and monitors plugged into May.
“Okay, thanks,” he said and she walked around the foot of the bed, clearing tubes and wires and peering over his work. “Whatcha reading?” He tilted the page in her direction, and her bright eyes danced across the text. “Oh- Biology!” She exclaimed, “Finally, that
is
my area! I’d had enough of your forces and your Newtons and your whatsits. Now they’re teaching you something!”
“I like physics,” he mumbled defiantly and Ellis turned to her intern, her eyes crossed, mouth agape and a finger spinning at the side of her head. Peter snorted. Incredibly unsure perhaps of how she was supposed to act in this situation, the flustered intern decided against laughing, and instead scrambled to her senior’s side like a scared puppy. The intern was almost definitely new.
“This,” Ellis announced on cue, “Is my new surgical intern, Doctor Drew.” Doctor Drew practically quivered with nerves at being addressed by her resident, but Ellis was kinder than to remark on the fact. “Hey, Doctor Drew.” “Hello Mr Parker,” the doctor replied quietly, and finally she tried a smile beneath her mop of unruly dark hair.
“If you don’t mind, Doctor Drew will be presenting today,” Ellis continued, and Peter shook his head almost immediately: the very least someone could gain from this ordeal was a little knowledge and experience. If Peter could allow someone that scrap of a benefit amidst of all of this darkness, he wouldn’t think twice. “Okay then, Doctor. Take it away.”
In an almost mechanical voice much in contrast to her prior shaky tone, Drew began to read aloud May’s impressively lengthy chart, checking off all of the items Peter has listed in his mind. “May Parker, female, aged 39. Diagnosed stage four cervical cancer. Metastatic. Currently undergoing radiotherapy for multiple tumours. Mild lymphedema. Hypercalcemia. And as recorded this morning-“Peter broke away from his thoughts, and straightened out his legs- “Cardiac Arrhythmia.”
His breath caught. It had been
weeks
since his Aunt’s condition had noticeably deteriorated. She hadn’t exactly been
stable
, and she obviously hadn’t made any improvements, but…
Harsh breaths settling heavily in his lungs, Peter added yet another complex ailment to his list.
“Is that why she’s asleep? Is she gonna wake up?” he stuttered, his fragile composure very much crumbling- he knew exactly the effects of the condition Drew had named, and yet he couldn’t manage to place it- and Ellis clasped his shoulder, and squeezed.
“The Arrhythmia’s mild, Pete,” she explained gently, and his panic somewhat eased off its choke-hold. “She’s just very tired. She’s had a long day.”
As Ellis and a stammering, fumbling Drew began to turn over May’s sheets, Peter, for the first time in a while, really took in May, really concentrated where his gaze often flitted away subconsciously. Her skin, once flushed and warm, was thin and ghostly pale, bluish under the fluorescents. Gently, Ellis’ steady hand ghosted over Mays thin, lank hair- a frail imitation of May’s bouncy, gleaming waves- smoothing back the broken strands. She took the glasses off of her nose and folded them, placing them on the nightstand for when May awoke.
The sickly woman tucked and bound neatly beneath those crisp white sheets was a horrifically hollow shell of Aunt May. The dark, blackening bruises lining her sunken eyes and the jarringly sharp angle of a prominent jaw bone didn’t belong to Peter’s Aunt. The aggravated, blistered skin and the sore, cracked lips of the patient were alien upon the face of the fierce, charming woman who had raised him.
The only way that Peter could be sure that his May was truly in there, trapped within a useless, frail body, was the way that she spoke. Rarely nowadays, but every time Peter visited and she managed to stay conscious, May drained herself summoning the energy to talk. Her voice was weak and tired, but she lived through the words that she spoke, the Aunt May Peter knew leaping and twirling through her familiar patterns and phrases.
The Aunt May that Peter knew, the Aunt May that Peter loved with every inch of his being, was a fighter. And whenever it was possible, she made sure Peter knew it.
It seemed very unlikely that she’d be laughing and joking and reassuring Peter today. The stark, constant silence from her part today magnified every pock-mark and discolour that littered her body. And it was times like these, where Peter lost all sense of Aunt May’s presence in the hospital. Because that thing in the bed
wasn’t
her.
Peter stared, and then shook his head violently to dispel the unpleasant thoughts rooting there.
The time had reached only 4pm, or so the increasingly obnoxious ticking of the wall clock had told him, when Doctor Ellis completed her daily routine (Though Peter had a very strong inkling that the residents themselves weren’t obliged to be this thorough with a patient). Rolling back her sleeves neatly, Ellis finished her assessment and headed off to treat her many other patients in the oncology unit, Doctor Drew tottering obediently at her heel.
“I’ll be back at seven. Will I be seeing you?” She asked in a voice that somehow remained cheery, hopeful, and yet genuine all the while, gathering her equipment. Silently, Peter nodded, his eyes returned back firmly on the book in his hands. “Well then, I expect you to be able to describe perfectly the process of transcription by the time I’m back round here.” He unglued his eyes from their fixed spot in the text in acknowledgement, and she smiled warmly. Then, in an act of highest unforgivable treason, she reached over and ruffled his hair.
To a kid as academically advanced as Peter, the topic of protein-synthesis was merely child’s play. Both incredibly intelligent Doctor Melanie-Rose Ellis and said prodigy child, Peter, were very much aware of this fact and yet neither quite cared to mention it.
“See you soon, Doc,” he called, and the little goofy wave that she orchestrated as she slipped out of the door filled him with warmth, the kind of which he felt very little these days.
Happiness
… his brain supplied, but he waved the notion away-
this
wasn’t happiness. It simply couldn’t be. Endearment, Peter supposed, was a more accurate term for what he was feeling. It was close, in value, but…
Right. Studying. Messenger Ribonucleic-acid. That’s where he’d left off. Messenger Ribonucleic-acid. Now why couldn’t he remember how to focus?
Only moments later, that question was answered neatly with the interruption of a succession of loud bangs, and a smattering of civilian cries that rung in his sensitive ears.
The answer to Peter’s frustration began with the letter A, ended with the letter S, and shouldered the blame for the ridiculous inflation of the life insurance and living costs of New York smack bang in the middle. After a long period of quiet- of not having to fork out an impossible tax towards damage control- it seems that the avengers were back in the action. Half of the avengers, anyway. Awesome.
Ever since May was admitted here, to Queen’s Memorial, he’d had visions of dragging her out of the confines of her ward whilst the city mass-evacuated for the seventh consecutive occasion in the year, due to aggressive aliens or indeed robots or the next inevitable threat along the line. But to Peter’s intense relief, the fight wasn’t too close for comfort: much the opposite, actually. In fact, he’d only ever been alerted to the minor commotion that was occurring because of the steep spike of noise in lower Manhattan that his enhanced ears couldn’t possibly tune out; his restless senses had also performed a noticeable flip, as if this tiny scuffle was the looming threat of which they’d been aggravating him in warning for months on end.
If Peter consciously strained his eyes, squinting out of the grimy hospital box-window, he could actually make out the startling, garish crimson of Captain America’s shield soaring through the gritty air; could see the vibrantly shaded explosions of Hawkeye’s arrows meeting their mark. Black widow was much harder to spot (Which really was disappointing, because Peter had always l
oved
to watch Widow fight- it was fascinating!), but then again, he guessed, that was kind of her whole deal- what with being a super sneaky Soviet spy and all. Occasionally, a glimmer of red hair flashed like a sunburst over the building tops, allowing him to track her fluid movements for all of three seconds before he inevitably lost her to the commotion.
The one inherently absurd detail of Peter’s peculiar viewing party was not, as one may believe, that he was watching an unnaturally large pensioner pelt his Frisbee at flying robots (Improved Doombots, perhaps?), but rather that he was spectating from entire
blocks
away. Miles and miles in the distance, he could quite leisurely describe most of the events which were unfolding. The incredible merits of the spider bite seemed sometimes few and far between, but, in that moment, Peter was handed an exceedingly rare opportunity: being able, for a little while, to stop cursing that Oscorp spider to the fiery pits of hell. Up here, on his viewing perch, he was able to tell exactly how far the battle was escalating. In the very same second that its participants crossed Peter’s invisible boundary line, he’d be able to snatch May up and swing her to safety.
A neglected part of Peter- a huge part of Spider-Man, that recently he’d had to close away- ached desperately to be out there alongside Hawkeye Cap and the Widow: soaring between skyscrapers, darting between projectiles, fighting with the freaking Avengers! Normally, he could easily distract himself with other things (Other Things covering the horrific, intrusive voice reminding him that when he’d return, all sweaty and exhilarated and grinning, May might be gone.) However, his desire to participate was this time amplified tenfold due to the objective, which felt kind of personal to Peter. Doombots- nasty, clumsy little contraptions- were exclusively Spiderman’s villains. Therefore he deserved to be there, mashing them to a pulp! Doctor Doom had, up until now, been exclusively
Spider-Man’s
villain,
Spider-Man’s
arch nemesis- and yet Spiderman had been laying low for what, a week? And here Peter was, being cheated on with the Avengers of all people! Incredibly unfair. Maliciously heartless. That man held zero regard
for Spidey’s feelings.
Naturally, Peter was torn. Of course he was! But when it came down to it, there was only one option that he’d ever even consider. Even if a heinous crime was currently being committed against his heart, (Villains really were apathetic, these days) there wasn’t a chance that he’d be able to defend himself today. Peter could rip his off his shirt right here, stand readily poised in the full Spidey-Suit in the Queen’s Memorial Foster Ward, tap into the Avenger’s frequency channel and cheerily announce his arrival. And yet, the heart monitor would beep softly behind him, or May would sniffle, and he’d be right back in that chair.
He couldn’t entertain the idea of leaving May like this. He’d never be able to forgive himself when disaster struck, because the binding cosmic influence of the Parker luck would inevitably will it so. And then, the funny thing about this incredibly humourless situation: May herself, she would most likely fiercely disagree with this decision (“
You need to
live,
Peter. Especially when I can’t do the same.”)
.
Peter slumped in his chair. Instead of fighting for the freedom of America, he chose to alternate frequently between studying detailed diagrams depicting the function of ribosomes, and watching the action downtown pan out as if it was playing across a television screen in high definition. He told himself that he wasn’t missing much, but conjured from his own mind, the words weren’t all that convincing. Either way, even though the fight dragged painstakingly slowly for Peter, the entire thing was really over just as quick as it had begun; the Avengers were professionals, unlike Spiderman, but Peter chalked up their efficiency to strength in numbers all the same. Thankfully, civilian casualties were not apparent, and nothing of significance was irreversibly damaged, from what he could see.
As if he’d been holding them in, Peter drew a long, deep breath and flexed his arms. No one had been hurt due to his inability to attend the scene, which was more than he could ever ask for. If an innocent person had been caught between the fray, and Spiderman hadn’t been there to rescue them- well… that was on Peter. And lately Peter Parker was already so weighed down with the stuff, that even a fraction more of guilt would undoubtedly send him toppling over the edge.
Suddenly, May’s heart monitor spiked, sputtering erratically for a few beats, and then evening out once more. Peter barely flinched, heightened senses be damned. His lack of appropriate reaction wasn’t irrational, either: that was the fifth or so time it’d happened, this hour alone…
Messenger Ribonucleic-Acid
. Pick up the ball, Parker.
True as ever to her word, Doctor Ellis returned at 7 o’clock on the mark. Edging well past her shift hours, her neat braids were now let loose around her face, and a jacket, which was comparably sensible to her luminous scrubs, was pulled over her shoulders. As if she simply hadn’t been informed of its occurrence, Ellis didn’t care to mention the flying robot battle a few streets over, but that wasn’t particularly unusual behaviour of the doctor. They were born and bred New Yorkers, for heaven’s sake: this sort of happening made for their weekday entertainment.
“Transcription,” she declared without wasting a second on introductions, wildly shaking the tension out of her hair and clasping a small chain around her left wrist. “Go!” She flipped her head back as she straightened up to catch his answer, but still one stubborn twist remained draped over her face defiantly. Peter snorted, and Ellis glared.
“Transcription is the process by which DNA is copied to messenger RNA, which carries the information needed for protein synthesis,” he began, reeling the information off the top of his head in a manner not dissimilar to Doctor Drew’s mechanical listing.
“Do go on,” said Doctor Ellis with an impressed smile, her hand in motioning.
”Pre-messenger RNA is formed with the involvement of RNA polymerase enzymes,” Peter continued, trying incredibly hard not to be distracted by the very dramatic display now occurring in front of him. “This process relies on Watson-Crick base pairing, and the resultant single strand of RNA is the reverse-complement of the original DNA sequence. Then, RNA splicing occurs.”
“Gold star for Peter Parker!” Ellis whooped with delight, producing both a crumpled roll of stickers from the depth of her breast pocket, and her very own sound effects for the occasion. Before Peter could dodge (Okay,
maybe
he could’ve sensed the movement a whole five seconds prior, but…), she sprung forwards, jabbing a shiny star directly on to the middle of his forehead. As always, he was the highest example of fashion. Peter swatted at her with the textbook in retaliation, but she easily ducked away from the aimless blows.
“And now!” She announced, pausing with dramatic emphasis for an invisible audience, “For my final test…”
“Translation. Go!”
He took a very deep, perhaps slightly exaggerated breath, and then launched into his memorised spiel.
“Firstly, the messenger RNA strand travels through the cytoplasm and attaches to the ribosome. For every three messenger RNA bases, the ribosome lines up one complementary molecule of transfer RNA. These molecules then transport specific amino acids to the ribosome, which they leave behind shortly after lining up opposite to the DNA. “
As he spoke, Ellis clasped a hand over her heart emphatically; she feigned fanning her brow like a fair maiden, as if she might keel over in shock at any second. “Textbook!” She squealed, “The answer was perfect! He’s going to steal my job!” she cried. Hastily, Peter peeled the sticker off his own forehead, before lunging out of his chair and sticking it exactly between Ellis’ perfectly aligned eyebrows. Much better.
Spinning around swiftly, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the dusty glass pane, and giggled at the sparkly sight. “I’m a surgeon,” she said. Had the sticker affected her brain?
“That you are.”
“I’m a surgeon. How is anyone going to believe
that, when I have a gold star on my forehead?”
“Makes you look like a reputable Surgeon,” he offered.
“Somehow, I don’t believe you.”
She crossed her eyes, sticking out her tongue in concentration as she tried to catch sight of the children’s sticker that perched there snugly, just out of reach, and again Peter snorted.
Ellis picked up her discarded clipboard from the foot of May’s bed, and raised it above Peter’s head in attack. “It suits you!” He tried in defence, and she abandoned her ambush.
“You know what? I think you’re right. I think I make it work.”
In a gesture of pure goodwill, she made a last sweep of the room, scanning every single one of May’s machines although it was no longer in her professional interest to do so. “Well,” she started, after she’d finally finished (
For real
, this time), “Since I’m no longer the only expert in the room, I guess I’m not needed anymore.”
“You staying the night?” she asked.
In truth, he hadn’t been back to the apartment all week, not for any longer than the few minutes, the other day, when he’d been forced to drop by to pick up his Lit textbook. With the removal of May, their little dilapidated apartment- that had once been his haven- was now astonishingly devoid of all warmth and appeal. All of the aspects that he’d once treasured had twisted sourly with the circumstances: With his Aunt here, a huge, vital part of his home had been torn out, and the thing that was left behind wasn’t so pretty.
May was soft and warm and sweet, and without her, the place was jagged and cold.
It was becoming harder and harder to will himself to spend time there at all, but it was necessary sometimes for the sake of Peter’s personal hygiene, and Ned and MJ’s tolerance. It didn’t mean he was going to spend any longer than sixty second intervals doing the bare minimum, if it was possible.
Ellis pulled out a cot beside May, and he stuffed his books back into his rucksack, rooting around for a toothbrush. After he’d upturned more or less all of his possessions, he discovered some pyjama pants in the very depths of his bag, and clambered into bed, burying beneath the thin pressed sheet.
It was barely turned eight, but he needed all the sleep he could get. Besides, this place had a curfew.
“G’nite Pete. I’ll see you tomorrow,” said the doctor, and the lights flickered out on cue.
“See, you Doctor Ellis.”
“Melanie.”
“Doctor Melanie.”
“Just Melanie.”
“Bye Just Melanie!”
“I hate you, you know.”
—————————————————————
At six am sharp the following morning, Peter awoke with a start: the fluorescents overhead burst to white, blinding light without so much as a crackle and a low buzz as warning.
Even after the while that Peter spent blundering around the ward, pulling on a wrinkled shirt and fishing his only remaining pen from down the side of a dusty file cabinet, May was still deeply unconscious. (“It’s not a concern, Pete. She’s sleeping. Why don’t you go out with your friends tonight? I’ll ring you when she wakes up, I promise.
Go
. You know I keep my promises.”) But, try as he might to stay positive, this was really,
really
shitty news.
Throughout the entire day, he couldn’t escape his own violating, despairing thoughts- the sort that had been festering in a dark place at the very furthest parts of his mind; that leaked through when he couldn’t bear to hold them all back. These cynicisms stalked him from class to class- that horrific, persistent nag in his temple, the sharp, shooting pain in his heart- because although Ellis had been quick to assure him that May was absolutely fine, her promises seemed feeble when May herself couldn’t sit up and agree. It was hard to keep blind hope in Ellis’ expertise, when May had moved less than a fraction by herself in forty eight whole hours.
She’s never going to wake up
they whispered in his ear, breathed down his neck, as Ned tried and failed to enthuse with him about the morning’s freshest Star War’s meme.
She’s as good as dead
, they purred, as he slammed his history textbook shut at the end of class, but then quickly made sure that MJ knew he was fine, when she questioned otherwise.
It’s probably better this way
, they cooed, over, and over, and
over
…
By his lunch hour, Peter was inches away from breaking point.
It’s a peaceful passing, going in her sleep. Nothing like choking on her blood. Nothing like Ben…
Peter smacked a hand over his face as if he’d said it aloud, his sandwich turning sour in his mouth. Never had he felt so sick to his stomach.
Unsurprisingly, three insufferable lessons later, he was in pieces.
At 2:45, when he came to realise with an enormous spark of panic that he’d had no calls from Doctor Ellis, (
told you, dead),
Peter decided that he couldn’t face it anymore. He couldn’t go to the hospital and perch for hours in that stifling room, staring at his Aunt until she faded away.
How many stage four cancer patients do you really think sleep for three days, and then just wake up?
Nope. Get a
grip
, Parker. Taking a deep breath, he shook his head, and tried to think logically, aside from the cold, snide, plaguing whispers that had decided his Aunt was already gone. May was asleep. Resting. She was going to wake up… she
was
going to wake up, but probably not until tomorrow, at the least. Legs dangling over the cliff face, Peter dug his fingertips firmly into the rock face, and heaved himself upwards with an enormous effort…
May was going to wake up tomorrow. He needed to be there the moment she woke up, of course, but Ellis had vowed to let him know the second anything changed; Peter didn’t think he could stomach the Hospital, not when it was so sickeningly quiet and bleak. Once, he’d have felt guilty for even considering this, but either way he didn’t think he could physically force himself through the doors of Queen’s Memorial today.
He needed a break. He needed somewhere to stay the night. Naturally, Ned was ecstatic when Peter caught him between class.
“Hey, Ned?”
“Yeah?”
“I was thinking- I mean, if the offers still there- I was thinking about going to yours tonight?” He asked sheepishly. Regardless, Ned’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “I, uh… I just need some air,” Peter explained.
“Yeah, sure man,” Ned replied instantly, peering brightly over the mechanics project bundled in his arms. He very evidently hadn’t expected the offer, and he was elated. “Of course!”
“Thanks!”
Pushing between the two, three panicked freshmen sped down the corridor. Peter related to their frenzy to a spiritual degree.
“No problem, dude!”
Another group bustled between him and Ned, evidently oblivious to their disjointed conversation.
“Oh, and hey! I can ask MJ over too, if you want- we’ll make it a thing!” Ned half-shouted.
“Yeah,” Peter said, overtop a large huddle of older boys.
Man
, high school kids were rude. “Yeah, that’d be nice, you should do that.”
—————————————————————
“Cool,” MJ had exclaimed, with absolutely no readable emotion, when Ned proposed their plan. From the sharp tongue of Michelle Jones, this was practically prophetic poetry.
“Let’s go get ice cream, dorks.”
—————————————————————
For an unprecedented stretch of rainbow-tinted hours, the downwards spiral of Peter Parker’s life was miraculously held on pause. It was a rare, colourful blip amongst a reel of dim grey film: he almost managed to forget, somewhat, the dragging feeling of being terribly, overwhelmingly sad.
It was,
well
... confusing.
And yet somehow Ned and MJ kept his guilt at bay the entire, self-indulgent while (Peter knew he’d feel the full-force of it later, but his cheeks ached from smiling, and his lungs were full of fresh air).
For starters, he found himself in an electric purple (albeit, pleasantly faded) booth, shovelling down a whole litre of the best ice cream in Queens- Molly’s mint choc chip, to be specific.
The infallible legacy of Molly’s cafe was not up for dispute; as kids who’d grown up in the chaotic confines of the city, you best believe they’d scouted
all
of the competition, and no other café was yet to touch this funky little diner, with its tacky posters and blinking fairy lights.
Anyone with an ounce of class avoided the diner like the reborn plague: everything between its four magenta walls was either plastic or neon or a combination of the two; sitting in for more than ten minutes guaranteed an eye-strain induced headache; and the only people who ever set foot inside were squealing five year old girls.
It was, in short,
horrific
. And Ned, Peter and MJ wouldn’t dream of eating their ice cream anywhere else.
At Peter’s particular choice in flavour, however, MJ found issue.
“Sociopath.”
MJ was swiftly reminded by both remaining parties of her tendency to eat KitKats whole -without snapping the bar- and yet she had the audacity to defend herself as a fully functioning member of society. Even Molly herself (undoubtedly the latest in a long, long list of Molly’s passed), a short, soft, glittery woman of sixty, agreed wholeheartedly that this was indeed a punishable offence.
When at last all three had finished their world record attempt, they sauntered out of the holographic double doors, each nursing brain-freezes to rival Captain America’s. All of the way from the diner to Ned’s home they laughed hysterically; they joked stupidly; they danced around Ned’s living room to Fleetwood Mac at 3am until they collapsed in a heap.
For a few hours Peter fell quite deeply asleep, twisted in a heap of soft blankets and indecipherable limbs, fresh sunlight spilling softly over the room. Only a tuft of MJ’’s hair remained visible over her blanket cocoon. It shimmered ethereally in the warm light, the same way it had in the diner, under the soft lilac glow of Molly’s string of unicorn lights.
As he came round, his first mildly coherent thought, as always, concerned May; he was just about to unearth his phone from the covers, but was transfixed by the early morning’s view.
Beneath a panel of shutter blinds, the small slithers of dawn’s sky were pink and raw.
And overtop, in a pattern barely visible, they shimmered a pulsing, iridescent green.
Ah.
He’d forgotten about that.
—————————————————————
She was shivering.
Much to her own befuddlement, Wanda was standing aimlessly outside of a conference room- an insignificant, numberless board room- situated on a floor of the tower that to herself as an individual held no possible value. An floor with rather intense air conditioning.
And there were little goosebumps on her arms.
Admittedly, the hows and whys of her location were blurry at the best of times (Sam was of the optimistic thinking that things were getting gradually better, though); Wanda suspected that mostly, she just wandered, and then was guided for a while, until she wandered off again. Every time that she surfaced, it was a mission to understand (Once she’d established her whereabouts, of course) why it was that her faithful little legs had carried her there.
Often, the answer was a necessity like food; sometimes the other side of a helpful conversation with Clint; and sometimes to simply wherever she could find that was alone.
This time, however, Wanda could not, for the life of her, sift through her murky foggy brain to pick out the reasoning as to why she was haunting an abandoned Stark Industries level.
Just as she was beginning to give up, deciding to go and seek out Nat or Tony, Clint or Sam (She really missed them when she was…
absent)
she picked up on a voice, wavering through a supposedly soundproof door. Her hearing wasn’t advanced- her hearing was, in truth, quite awful- but the voices of the mind didn’t diminish when they hit a wall, instead flowing right the way through to Wanda.
She sifted the substance from the meaningless buzz, as one would shake sand from a pile of shells, and she focused, creasing her brow. It was hard. Murky.
But eventually, solid words cut through.
“-can you hold off your golden boy morals for one second if I tell you something? Because I don’t have a lot of time reserved for personal growth, these days.”
“Tony.”
“No, seriously- you better not tell me I’m wrong for this, because I already have a lot on my conscience-“
“
Tony
.”
“Steve.”
“What did you do?”
(Tony? And Steve? Speaking secretly? Déjà vu sparked at her temple. But why was she here?)
“I know who Spiderman is.”
A pause rang.
Immediately, Wanda understood her change in location.
“
Well... well that’s great! Did you speak to him? If we bring him to the tower maybe he can sign a deal with Fury before Ross finds a reason to detain him.”
“That’s the thing- I know who Spiderman is, but I can’t find him. I paid his home a visit the evening that you, Nat and Barton were called away, but he wasn’t there.
“Maybe he was out.”
“I don’t think so- I’ve been back. A lot. And I set up a watch- hey, you promised no judging- You’d think he had to come home sometime but he doesn’t seem to want to.”
“He knows we’re looking for him?”
“Maybe.”
“Are you absolutely sure you got the right guy?”
“Positive. He’s just playing hard to get. I can find him, trust me, Spangles.”
“Without completely invading his privacy?”
“Of course.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
“Friday, scan every camera in Queens for Peter Parker.”
Steve sighed.
And Wanda’s face morphed into something close to a smile.