Look What You Made Me Do (MCU)
- Thread starter mythSSK
- Start date
- Location
- Australia
Fallout 4: Synthetic copy of you comming out of nowhere and trying to kill you would be terrifying.
LWYMMD: Now imagine if they were wearing a suicide vest with a dead man trigger, and killing you is their only goal.
That said, if... Wandai 2.0 (Fammily Planning Eddition.) decides she wants to live, Eliza's going to be her best chance at that. Now imagine a synth copy of you with a suicide vest steps out and asks for your help disabling it? God, existential nightmare. Do you risk getting close?
Honestly, the first seconds of meeting and the potential blue-green that could be thrown (literally?) is morbidly hilarious. And probably Wanda 3's best chance at getting a killshot in at Eliza.
LWYMMD: Now imagine if they were wearing a suicide vest with a dead man trigger, and killing you is their only goal.
That said, if... Wandai 2.0 (Fammily Planning Eddition.) decides she wants to live, Eliza's going to be her best chance at that. Now imagine a synth copy of you with a suicide vest steps out and asks for your help disabling it? God, existential nightmare. Do you risk getting close?
Honestly, the first seconds of meeting and the potential blue-green that could be thrown (literally?) is morbidly hilarious. And probably Wanda 3's best chance at getting a killshot in at Eliza.
For someone who was so incredibly insistent that Bucky go see someone to help him work through his PTSD and guilt, Wanda really has trouble recognising when her brain starts falling into unhealthy patterns.
Nat gets two Wandas?
This isn't that kind of fic! What they're going to do to Wanda-3 is essentially exactly what Eliza was afraid would have happen to her, as well. Was she justified, then, in turning on them? Or was it solely her reaction at an assumed/perceived threat that drove them to this, causing the very thing she feared? Did she turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy?
- Location
- Toronto
Unfortunately when the cost of being wrong about trusting someone is total annihilation, it's very easy to justify striking first to protect yourself. It's how the Cold War lasted so long.
I also appreciate that Wanda has inadvertently made huge steps towards exposing Eric for the Killmonger he is to the Wakandans - not only has he been caught going behind their backs and subverting their security, he was doing it with Wakanda's current public enemy #1.
Poor girl can't accomplish her plans on purpose without making three new enemies and creating two new messes to clean up, but she can bumble into espionage maneuvers Natasha would be proud of (if it had been on purpose.)
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
Nat gets two Wandas?
In that case, Wanda should do the right thing and help set up a dating profile for her.
It's the least she can do.
Honestly hope this doesn't work.
Ironically Wanda 2.0 is acting like the usually si versus si Wanda acting like a normal unhealthy person. The contrast makes this fic better.
Ironically Wanda 2.0 is acting like the usually si versus si Wanda acting like a normal unhealthy person. The contrast makes this fic better.
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Chapter 52
Chapter 52
"I'm going to say this once." Steve said, a threatening edge to his tone. He had his shield in his hand and his expression was thunderous.
Though I knew he had his flaws—he was only human, after all—I'd always seen Steve as essentially a paragon of moral virtue and the way he was looking at us right now made me want to crawl into a hole and die. That look was enough to shake my conviction far more than any argument anyone had made earlier, though I took a deep breath and steeled myself in the face of it.
Tony, on the other hand, seemed almost completely unbothered. "How about 'none-ce'?" he quipped, glancing only briefly up from his work.
"Stop what you're doing." Steve set his jaw stubbornly, taking a step forward. He stood at the head of a group of the others; Bruce, Bucky, Clint and Carol were all behind him, their expressions similarly grim. When they'd arrived, Pietro had been with them as well—it had taken him a moment longer to catch on, so he'd just looked confused at first, but once he'd twigged to what was going on he'd hastily distanced himself a little bit from Steve's group. Killmonger was standing next to Tony, though he remained studiously quiet as he watched the interplay between the Avengers. Shuri, on the other hand, hadn't even looked up.
"Nope, not gonna happen," Tony said dismissively.
"Captain…" T'Challa's tone had a note of warning in it as he stepped forward, interposing himself slightly between Steve's group and the team that was working on the AI. "I remind you that you are not in charge here."
"Tony, come on man, stop," Bruce pleaded as he stepped hesitantly forward, angling to move past T'Challa. He held his hands up in a non-threatening gesture, trying to sidle past as the Wakandan prince glowered at him. After a second, T'Challa relented and let him cross the invisible line that had been drawn.
"You don't know what you're doing," Steve said. "After everything that's happened…"
"Everything that's happened?" asked Tony sarcastically, finally stopping work to glare at him across the room. "Do I need to remind you what's happened? There's a mad AI on the loose that keeps trying to kill us and we've been scrambling for solutions with one hand tied behind our backs. We gotta be realistic about our chances here, and start taking some risks."
"Steve, please," the new AI spoke up. Her voice had improved dramatically—she kept a faint electronic tone to it, which clearly differentiated her from me and Eliza, but otherwise she still sounded very much like me. Clint and Bucky exchanged alarmed looks as she spoke. "There's nothing to stop. It's already done."
Steve shot me a disbelieving look. "You actually went ahead and did it. You created another one." I turned away slightly, wilting under his gaze, unable to meet it directly. So this is what it felt like to have Captain America be disappointed in you. Thanks, I hate it.
The AI couldn't really see what was happening—her viewpoint was limited to what could be captured via the Kimiyo bead that was plugged into the interface—but she spoke up again, seemingly sensing my discomfort. "It's okay, Steve. It's fine. I'm fine. Tony and Shuri are putting in a failsafe," she said. "I'll fight Eliza and, if I lose, then at the very least I can try to take her down with me."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Steve's expression somehow darken even further, hands tightening into fists. He moved, trying to bull forward, his shield hefted in one hand, but T'Challa didn't back down. Instead, he stepped in to block him directly, facing the American with a hard expression. Steve paused, sizing the prince up, and Bucky and Carol stepped up beside him, the latter flaring faintly—but noticeably enough to be threatening—with burning energy.
While I knew that T'Challa was stubborn enough that the threat of a fight with all three of them probably still wouldn't make him back down, I still summoned wisps of red chaos magic to my hands and stepped up beside him, facing Carol. I flashed her an apologetic look and she cocked her head to the side, lips compressed in a thin line. T'Challa shifted slightly, moving fractionally further away from me, and I had to suppress the sudden desire to roll my eyes. Pietro hadn't physically come over to interpose himself, but he'd straightened up, bouncing on his heels, and seemed ready to intervene if needed. I really, really didn't want an actual fight to break out over this, but if they didn't back down… This plan would work. I knew it would. I couldn't let them stop us.
"They want to put a bomb in your head and send you off to die fighting her," Steve said, raising his voice slightly to address the AI. "This isn't right. You don't have to do this."
"I said it's fine, Steve," she said, a little bit of irritation creeping into her tone. "I want to do this. I need to."
"It's suicide. We don't trade lives."
I took a deep breath, glancing toward Steve. I needed to talk—the AI was already under a lot of stress and pressure. The least I could do is step in so she didn't have to deal with arguing with Captain America, too. "Steve, you are the biggest hypocrite sometimes. I bet you weren't thinking 'we don't trade lives' when you went into the fucking ice, were you? It's fine for you to sacrifice yourself to save the people you care about, but not for her?"
"That was different," he shook his head. "There was no time for anything else. I didn't have any other options."
"We don't have any other options here, either."
"You made a person," Steve raised his voice so that he could address the AI directly again. "I know it doesn't sound nice for me to say that they shouldn't have created you in the first place but, now that you're here, we're not just going to throw your life away."
"Either I am a person, with the capacity to give consent—in which case I do—or I'm not actually a person and it's fine to do whatever," The AI responded. "You can't have it both ways, Steve. I either have agency or I don't. You're too used to getting away with treating Wanda like a kid. I can make my own decisions."
There was a bit of a silent stand-off for a few moments. Carol was eyeing me appraisingly and I realised she was weighing up how powerful she thought I was. She'd seen me use my powers a few times now, but we'd never sparred or fought. She knew that I had a good idea of exactly how strong she was, yet I had still stepped up to face her without any real nervousness, which she would assume meant that I thought I could restrain or beat her. In reality, I had no idea who would actually win if it came down to it. I knew I could theoretically beat her, given what Wanda did to the Illuminati version of Maria Rambeau, but I wasn't quite at that level yet and, when it came down to it, even with the Heart-Shaped Herb's enhancement I was much more physically fragile than Carol was.
Steve looked around the room. His eyes eventually settled on Natasha, who was standing off to one side. She'd kept quiet, just watching the exchange without taking a clear side, though she didn't look happy. "Nat, don't tell me you're supporting this, too?"
She averted her eyes, looking at the floor sullenly. "I'm not happy about it, either. But it's out of my hands."
"Tony," Bruce grimaced. "We're not really doing this, are we?" He'd made his way over to stand beside the other man as he talked, moving to put himself in Tony's field of view.
Tony stopped what he was doing and turned to face him properly, reaching over to put a hand on his shoulder. "This is it. Our Hail Mary shot. I need you with me on this, buddy."
"I don't…"
"We've got this, okay? We're at the cutting edge of mad science here. Maybe it makes us monsters, I don't know. All I know is we gotta make a stand. Fight back. Can I count on you to fight with me?" He squeezed Bruce's shoulder, looking him in the eye. The scientist vacillated, fidgeting and looking like he was torn between throttling Tony and bursting into tears, but after a moment he nodded quietly. One down.
"Come on, Carol," I said quietly. "Stand down. There's no point in fighting over this. It's already done."
She looked at me for a few more moments, then straightened slightly and let the burning manifestation of her power disperse. "You really think you could take me?" she asked, cocking her head to the side slightly, a hint of genuine curiosity in her tone.
I grinned, feeling some of the tension deflate, and lowered my voice a little more, looking at her questioningly. "…You mean in a fight, right?" I asked. Carol gave a long-suffering sigh in response, the faint ghost of a smile flickering across her features.
Steve looked across at us, noting that Carol had seemingly eased off, and shook his head. "I might not be able to stop you, but that doesn't mean I can be part of this," he said, anger and disappointment warring in his tone. He looked down for a moment, then turned on his heel and started walking away. Bucky shot me a disappointed look of his own before turning and hurrying off after Steve, while Clint moved off to the side of the room to link up with Natasha.
Carol glanced from me to T'Challa. "Nice to see the two of you getting along, at least," she said mildly.
T'Challa stiffened and exhaled sharply through his nose before turning and stalking off. I let out a little sigh as I watched him head over to check on his sister. Shuri, of course, had been so deeply absorbed in her work that she'd basically ignored the entire confrontation. Not far from them, Tony and Killmonger had already started walking Bruce through the structure of the AI's base code. That hadn't gone well, but it had still probably gone as well as could be expected. I needed to talk to Steve again, try to talk him around when the situation was less dramatically charged, but for now it was probably better to give him a bit of time and space to cool off.
"Come on," I said, glancing back at Carol. "I'll introduce you to Wanda-3."
--
"I don't know how you could just stand there and let her do something like that," Bucky said, his face twisted in a frown as he leaned back against the wall, arms folded in front of him. He looked tired as well as angry—dark circles under his eyes betraying his lack of sleep over the last few days.
With the science portion of the team otherwise occupied with Wanda-3, most of the remaining Avengers had retreated to their temporary living quarters. While the rest of them milled about in the hallway, Steve had excused himself and stepped into his room, seeming to want to be alone for a bit, which was fine—Natasha was already having enough trouble with Bucky and Clint, she didn't really want to have to wrangle Steve as well right now.
"Firstly, what was I supposed to do? She'd already made up her mind and she can put the Hulk in time out. There was nothing I could have done," Nat said, trying not to let too much frustration leak into her tone. She let out a sigh. "Secondly, she's not a child, Bucky. I didn't 'let' her do anything. She can make her own decisions."
"Bad decisions," Clint said, unhelpfully.
Nat shot him an annoyed look. "Yeah, because we've never made bad decisions of our own."
"That's exactly why you should have stepped in," insisted Bucky, unfolding his arms and gesturing to punctuate his statement. "We know what it's like to end up regretting our actions. What's the point, if we can't stop the people we care about from making the same mistakes? If you'd stood in front of her and told her she couldn't do it, she might have listened to you. If this goes bad…"
"Yeah, I know what it's like," Nat scoffed. "I know what it's like to feel like you have to do something. I know what it's like to regret it, and feel guilty about it, but to still know it had to be done and that you made the right call at the time. Even if other people don't see it that way."
Clint shook his head, a pensive expression on his face. "She went to a guy literally called Killmonger for help. I don't know, Nat. There had to be a better way to do this."
"You know that's not always true," Nat said. She was starting to get frustrated—she hadn't even agreed with Wanda's decision yet, somehow, she had ended up here defending it. "Sometimes there is no better way. Tony and Shuri are the experts here and they hadn't come up with anything better. Wanda keeps having her agency taken out from under her. If we just stopped her without a workable alternative to offer, she'd resent it forever."
"You just didn't want her to resent you," Bucky said accusingly.
Natasha flinched. "…Maybe that's true," she allowed, taking a deep breath. "I'm allowed to be a little selfish sometimes, too."
"Sorry," Bucky said. His expression had softened slightly and, while his tone was a little sullen, there was genuine contrition there as well. "That wasn't warranted."
As he spoke, Nat picked up the barely perceptible sound of quiet footsteps approaching from around the corner. All three of them quieted and straightened, exchanging wary glances. Clint's hand went to the collapsed bow hidden at his back. Everyone had been on edge since Eliza's attack on the Great Mound, but it had the three of them in particular jumping at shadows. All in silent accord, they watched the corner together, waiting for whoever it was to show themselves.
A few seconds later, Wanda turned around the corner and froze, caught off-guard and clearly not expecting the three of them to just be standing there silently waiting for her arrival. "Uh, hi." Nat felt her shoulders relax slightly. Off to the side, Clint huffed a small sigh and moved his hand away from his bow. "Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt… is Steve around? I wanted to talk to him."
"Steve's busy," Bucky snapped. Wanda flinched slightly at his tone, her shoulders drooping. He caught himself, expression softening again as he shook his head. "Sorry. It's just… everything's a bit tense right now."
"I know. It's my fault. Everyone's angry with me," Wanda said, still looking a bit small and wilted. "I can come back later if it'd be better."
Nat caught Bucky's attention and shot him a pleading look before glanced back at Wanda. "He's just in his room," she said, gesturing toward the door. "I don't think he'd mind if you knocked."
Bucky grunted noncommittally, which Wanda cautiously took as assent. She stepped past, eyes downcast, and knocked lightly on the door. There were a few seconds of silence, then Steve called out from behind the door, his voice muffled by the barrier but raised enough to be heard. "Come in."
--
I stepped into the room, the door sliding shut behind me. Steve was—oddly enough—kneeling by the side of the bed, leaning back a bit, his arms hanging by his sides as he looked over toward me with an unreadable expression on his face.
It took me a second to realise why he was on the floor. When I did, I blinked in surprise. "Oh. Were you… praying?"
A small, slightly sad smile quirked the corner of his mouth. "I'm guessing you don't believe in God."
"Uh, no. Not the Christian one, at least," I said, feeling even more off-balance than I'd expected to when I'd walked in. "My visions showed me a lot about the divine aspects of the universe and uh, let's just say I wasn't very impressed." Of course Steve prays. Why did I find that surprising at all? Just because they'd never shown him do it in any of the movies? Stupid.
"Were you religious before that?" he asked. He looked tired, but there was a touch of genuine curiosity in his tone.
"Well, no. I didn't believe before either, I guess," I said with a shrug.
Steve nodded slowly to himself, as if I'd just confirmed something he'd already guessed. "Some things you've just got to take on faith."
I shot him a hopeful smile. "That's a great point, you definitely do," I said, trying to inject a bit of lightness into my tone. "So I'm hoping it won't be too much to ask you to have a little bit of faith in me, as well?"
"Wanda…" he looked at me searchingly for a moment, then slowly rose to his feet so he could face me properly. "I'm really disappointed in you. I hoped you'd learned a lesson or two from everything else that's happened."
I swallowed the lump in my throat that had suddenly appeared. My chest felt tight. I'd known when I'd made my decision that Steve would be upset, but knowing it was coming and experiencing it were two very different things.
"Well, I seem to spend basically all of my time pissing Tony off and I thought you might be feeling left out." He didn't smile at the joke, which made me feel even worse. Maybe Eliza was onto something when she said I was desperate for the Avengers' approval. "Look, Steve, I'm sorry, okay? I know you weren't on board with this, but it was the only plan we had with a decent chance of success."
He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. You can't just act unilaterally like that, Wanda. It should have been a team decision."
I clenched my fists, my anxiety easing a little as a flash of anger passing through me instead. "Right," I said, letting a bitter edge of sarcasm leak into my tone. "Sorry, I forgot, it's only okay when someone acts unilaterally when it restricts me in some way. I'm not allowed to do things."
Steve set his jaw, looking at me stubbornly. "You still have the Mind Stone, don't you?"
He thought he was making a good point, but the underlying implication—one I wasn't even sure he realised he was making—only served to make me angrier. "I have it because it's mine. Not because you're graciously allowing me to keep it."
Steve blinked, then shook his head. "Wanda… that's not what I meant."
I made a slashing gesture with my hand and almost snarled at him. "Oh, come off it, Steve. That's exactly what you meant. I am so, so sick to death of you treating me like a fucking child. It at least made a little bit of sense the first time around, but not now. I'm older than you. My body might be younger than yours, but I've experienced more." I said, my voice low and clipped. I was trying to moderate my tone, but this was the best I could do right now—it was either this or start shouting at him. "I've never seen you talk to Tony or Nat or Bucky the way you talk to me. Would you ever start a conversation with any of them saying how disappointed you were in them? Like they were a little kid you'd caught misbehaving?"
For a moment I thought Steve was going to argue, his jaw working silently for a couple of seconds, but then he looked down and took a deep breath. "You're right. I'm sorry. I've been so focused on other things that I didn't notice I was doing it." He looked back up at me, meeting my gaze. "I'll try to be better about that."
And now I was off-balance again, my righteous anger utterly deflating. I'd expected him to deny it, or to say that I was acting like a child, or, well, basically anything other than that. An apology, self-reflection and a commitment to be better moving forward? Ugh, Steve was just so… perfect all of the time. It made me want to punch him in his stupid mouth a little bit.
"Well… good. Thank you," I said awkwardly, instead. "So can we please just… move on? What's done is done. We can't un-create Wanda-3. Well, we could, but I'm pretty sure you'd agree that'd be murder."
"You still should have done this differently, rather than going to N'Jadaka behind everyone's backs," he said with a sigh. "If you'd talked to people individually, gotten them on board, then brought it up as a team again. We could have discussed it more."
I let out a small, sad laugh. "You keep saying 'as a team', but I've never been part of the team, have I? Not really. Between Tony restricting my access and rifling through my things, you treating me like you have been… even Nat went behind my back." I felt my face growing hot and pressed the palms of my hands against my eyes for a moment, willing myself under control. I felt like if I started crying here, I wouldn't be able to stop. "I keep trying and trying and trying, but nothing I do seems to stick. How could I trust that this time, it'd be different? That this time, you'd actually listen to me properly? None of you would have trusted me enough to do this."
"Wanda… I'm sorry. I had no idea you felt that way," Steve said slowly. "But being part of a team extends both ways. We still could have talked it through properly. Maybe we could have done it with someone else."
"Not with the same potential for success, win or lose," I countered. "I already told you; I can't imagine her assimilating an AI based on any one of you, and she'd never expect another copy of me to willingly go on a suicide mission to stop her."
"You don't know that."
"I don't know it for certain," I admitted, a little annoyed again. "But I do know Eliza. I know how her mind works better than anyone else. She was literally made from me, remember?"
"But she's not you," he said. "You're better than she is."
"And that's exactly why I needed to do this."
There was a beat where we just stared at each other, neither willing to concede ground. "…I want to talk to her," Steve said finally. "Alone."
I sighed. "You're not going to be able to talk her out of it."
He set his jaw again, his stubbornness flaring up. "Maybe not. That doesn't mean I shouldn't try."
"I'm going to say this once." Steve said, a threatening edge to his tone. He had his shield in his hand and his expression was thunderous.
Though I knew he had his flaws—he was only human, after all—I'd always seen Steve as essentially a paragon of moral virtue and the way he was looking at us right now made me want to crawl into a hole and die. That look was enough to shake my conviction far more than any argument anyone had made earlier, though I took a deep breath and steeled myself in the face of it.
Tony, on the other hand, seemed almost completely unbothered. "How about 'none-ce'?" he quipped, glancing only briefly up from his work.
"Stop what you're doing." Steve set his jaw stubbornly, taking a step forward. He stood at the head of a group of the others; Bruce, Bucky, Clint and Carol were all behind him, their expressions similarly grim. When they'd arrived, Pietro had been with them as well—it had taken him a moment longer to catch on, so he'd just looked confused at first, but once he'd twigged to what was going on he'd hastily distanced himself a little bit from Steve's group. Killmonger was standing next to Tony, though he remained studiously quiet as he watched the interplay between the Avengers. Shuri, on the other hand, hadn't even looked up.
"Nope, not gonna happen," Tony said dismissively.
"Captain…" T'Challa's tone had a note of warning in it as he stepped forward, interposing himself slightly between Steve's group and the team that was working on the AI. "I remind you that you are not in charge here."
"Tony, come on man, stop," Bruce pleaded as he stepped hesitantly forward, angling to move past T'Challa. He held his hands up in a non-threatening gesture, trying to sidle past as the Wakandan prince glowered at him. After a second, T'Challa relented and let him cross the invisible line that had been drawn.
"You don't know what you're doing," Steve said. "After everything that's happened…"
"Everything that's happened?" asked Tony sarcastically, finally stopping work to glare at him across the room. "Do I need to remind you what's happened? There's a mad AI on the loose that keeps trying to kill us and we've been scrambling for solutions with one hand tied behind our backs. We gotta be realistic about our chances here, and start taking some risks."
"Steve, please," the new AI spoke up. Her voice had improved dramatically—she kept a faint electronic tone to it, which clearly differentiated her from me and Eliza, but otherwise she still sounded very much like me. Clint and Bucky exchanged alarmed looks as she spoke. "There's nothing to stop. It's already done."
Steve shot me a disbelieving look. "You actually went ahead and did it. You created another one." I turned away slightly, wilting under his gaze, unable to meet it directly. So this is what it felt like to have Captain America be disappointed in you. Thanks, I hate it.
The AI couldn't really see what was happening—her viewpoint was limited to what could be captured via the Kimiyo bead that was plugged into the interface—but she spoke up again, seemingly sensing my discomfort. "It's okay, Steve. It's fine. I'm fine. Tony and Shuri are putting in a failsafe," she said. "I'll fight Eliza and, if I lose, then at the very least I can try to take her down with me."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Steve's expression somehow darken even further, hands tightening into fists. He moved, trying to bull forward, his shield hefted in one hand, but T'Challa didn't back down. Instead, he stepped in to block him directly, facing the American with a hard expression. Steve paused, sizing the prince up, and Bucky and Carol stepped up beside him, the latter flaring faintly—but noticeably enough to be threatening—with burning energy.
While I knew that T'Challa was stubborn enough that the threat of a fight with all three of them probably still wouldn't make him back down, I still summoned wisps of red chaos magic to my hands and stepped up beside him, facing Carol. I flashed her an apologetic look and she cocked her head to the side, lips compressed in a thin line. T'Challa shifted slightly, moving fractionally further away from me, and I had to suppress the sudden desire to roll my eyes. Pietro hadn't physically come over to interpose himself, but he'd straightened up, bouncing on his heels, and seemed ready to intervene if needed. I really, really didn't want an actual fight to break out over this, but if they didn't back down… This plan would work. I knew it would. I couldn't let them stop us.
"They want to put a bomb in your head and send you off to die fighting her," Steve said, raising his voice slightly to address the AI. "This isn't right. You don't have to do this."
"I said it's fine, Steve," she said, a little bit of irritation creeping into her tone. "I want to do this. I need to."
"It's suicide. We don't trade lives."
I took a deep breath, glancing toward Steve. I needed to talk—the AI was already under a lot of stress and pressure. The least I could do is step in so she didn't have to deal with arguing with Captain America, too. "Steve, you are the biggest hypocrite sometimes. I bet you weren't thinking 'we don't trade lives' when you went into the fucking ice, were you? It's fine for you to sacrifice yourself to save the people you care about, but not for her?"
"That was different," he shook his head. "There was no time for anything else. I didn't have any other options."
"We don't have any other options here, either."
"You made a person," Steve raised his voice so that he could address the AI directly again. "I know it doesn't sound nice for me to say that they shouldn't have created you in the first place but, now that you're here, we're not just going to throw your life away."
"Either I am a person, with the capacity to give consent—in which case I do—or I'm not actually a person and it's fine to do whatever," The AI responded. "You can't have it both ways, Steve. I either have agency or I don't. You're too used to getting away with treating Wanda like a kid. I can make my own decisions."
There was a bit of a silent stand-off for a few moments. Carol was eyeing me appraisingly and I realised she was weighing up how powerful she thought I was. She'd seen me use my powers a few times now, but we'd never sparred or fought. She knew that I had a good idea of exactly how strong she was, yet I had still stepped up to face her without any real nervousness, which she would assume meant that I thought I could restrain or beat her. In reality, I had no idea who would actually win if it came down to it. I knew I could theoretically beat her, given what Wanda did to the Illuminati version of Maria Rambeau, but I wasn't quite at that level yet and, when it came down to it, even with the Heart-Shaped Herb's enhancement I was much more physically fragile than Carol was.
Steve looked around the room. His eyes eventually settled on Natasha, who was standing off to one side. She'd kept quiet, just watching the exchange without taking a clear side, though she didn't look happy. "Nat, don't tell me you're supporting this, too?"
She averted her eyes, looking at the floor sullenly. "I'm not happy about it, either. But it's out of my hands."
"Tony," Bruce grimaced. "We're not really doing this, are we?" He'd made his way over to stand beside the other man as he talked, moving to put himself in Tony's field of view.
Tony stopped what he was doing and turned to face him properly, reaching over to put a hand on his shoulder. "This is it. Our Hail Mary shot. I need you with me on this, buddy."
"I don't…"
"We've got this, okay? We're at the cutting edge of mad science here. Maybe it makes us monsters, I don't know. All I know is we gotta make a stand. Fight back. Can I count on you to fight with me?" He squeezed Bruce's shoulder, looking him in the eye. The scientist vacillated, fidgeting and looking like he was torn between throttling Tony and bursting into tears, but after a moment he nodded quietly. One down.
"Come on, Carol," I said quietly. "Stand down. There's no point in fighting over this. It's already done."
She looked at me for a few more moments, then straightened slightly and let the burning manifestation of her power disperse. "You really think you could take me?" she asked, cocking her head to the side slightly, a hint of genuine curiosity in her tone.
I grinned, feeling some of the tension deflate, and lowered my voice a little more, looking at her questioningly. "…You mean in a fight, right?" I asked. Carol gave a long-suffering sigh in response, the faint ghost of a smile flickering across her features.
Steve looked across at us, noting that Carol had seemingly eased off, and shook his head. "I might not be able to stop you, but that doesn't mean I can be part of this," he said, anger and disappointment warring in his tone. He looked down for a moment, then turned on his heel and started walking away. Bucky shot me a disappointed look of his own before turning and hurrying off after Steve, while Clint moved off to the side of the room to link up with Natasha.
Carol glanced from me to T'Challa. "Nice to see the two of you getting along, at least," she said mildly.
T'Challa stiffened and exhaled sharply through his nose before turning and stalking off. I let out a little sigh as I watched him head over to check on his sister. Shuri, of course, had been so deeply absorbed in her work that she'd basically ignored the entire confrontation. Not far from them, Tony and Killmonger had already started walking Bruce through the structure of the AI's base code. That hadn't gone well, but it had still probably gone as well as could be expected. I needed to talk to Steve again, try to talk him around when the situation was less dramatically charged, but for now it was probably better to give him a bit of time and space to cool off.
"Come on," I said, glancing back at Carol. "I'll introduce you to Wanda-3."
--
"I don't know how you could just stand there and let her do something like that," Bucky said, his face twisted in a frown as he leaned back against the wall, arms folded in front of him. He looked tired as well as angry—dark circles under his eyes betraying his lack of sleep over the last few days.
With the science portion of the team otherwise occupied with Wanda-3, most of the remaining Avengers had retreated to their temporary living quarters. While the rest of them milled about in the hallway, Steve had excused himself and stepped into his room, seeming to want to be alone for a bit, which was fine—Natasha was already having enough trouble with Bucky and Clint, she didn't really want to have to wrangle Steve as well right now.
"Firstly, what was I supposed to do? She'd already made up her mind and she can put the Hulk in time out. There was nothing I could have done," Nat said, trying not to let too much frustration leak into her tone. She let out a sigh. "Secondly, she's not a child, Bucky. I didn't 'let' her do anything. She can make her own decisions."
"Bad decisions," Clint said, unhelpfully.
Nat shot him an annoyed look. "Yeah, because we've never made bad decisions of our own."
"That's exactly why you should have stepped in," insisted Bucky, unfolding his arms and gesturing to punctuate his statement. "We know what it's like to end up regretting our actions. What's the point, if we can't stop the people we care about from making the same mistakes? If you'd stood in front of her and told her she couldn't do it, she might have listened to you. If this goes bad…"
"Yeah, I know what it's like," Nat scoffed. "I know what it's like to feel like you have to do something. I know what it's like to regret it, and feel guilty about it, but to still know it had to be done and that you made the right call at the time. Even if other people don't see it that way."
Clint shook his head, a pensive expression on his face. "She went to a guy literally called Killmonger for help. I don't know, Nat. There had to be a better way to do this."
"You know that's not always true," Nat said. She was starting to get frustrated—she hadn't even agreed with Wanda's decision yet, somehow, she had ended up here defending it. "Sometimes there is no better way. Tony and Shuri are the experts here and they hadn't come up with anything better. Wanda keeps having her agency taken out from under her. If we just stopped her without a workable alternative to offer, she'd resent it forever."
"You just didn't want her to resent you," Bucky said accusingly.
Natasha flinched. "…Maybe that's true," she allowed, taking a deep breath. "I'm allowed to be a little selfish sometimes, too."
"Sorry," Bucky said. His expression had softened slightly and, while his tone was a little sullen, there was genuine contrition there as well. "That wasn't warranted."
As he spoke, Nat picked up the barely perceptible sound of quiet footsteps approaching from around the corner. All three of them quieted and straightened, exchanging wary glances. Clint's hand went to the collapsed bow hidden at his back. Everyone had been on edge since Eliza's attack on the Great Mound, but it had the three of them in particular jumping at shadows. All in silent accord, they watched the corner together, waiting for whoever it was to show themselves.
A few seconds later, Wanda turned around the corner and froze, caught off-guard and clearly not expecting the three of them to just be standing there silently waiting for her arrival. "Uh, hi." Nat felt her shoulders relax slightly. Off to the side, Clint huffed a small sigh and moved his hand away from his bow. "Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt… is Steve around? I wanted to talk to him."
"Steve's busy," Bucky snapped. Wanda flinched slightly at his tone, her shoulders drooping. He caught himself, expression softening again as he shook his head. "Sorry. It's just… everything's a bit tense right now."
"I know. It's my fault. Everyone's angry with me," Wanda said, still looking a bit small and wilted. "I can come back later if it'd be better."
Nat caught Bucky's attention and shot him a pleading look before glanced back at Wanda. "He's just in his room," she said, gesturing toward the door. "I don't think he'd mind if you knocked."
Bucky grunted noncommittally, which Wanda cautiously took as assent. She stepped past, eyes downcast, and knocked lightly on the door. There were a few seconds of silence, then Steve called out from behind the door, his voice muffled by the barrier but raised enough to be heard. "Come in."
--
I stepped into the room, the door sliding shut behind me. Steve was—oddly enough—kneeling by the side of the bed, leaning back a bit, his arms hanging by his sides as he looked over toward me with an unreadable expression on his face.
It took me a second to realise why he was on the floor. When I did, I blinked in surprise. "Oh. Were you… praying?"
A small, slightly sad smile quirked the corner of his mouth. "I'm guessing you don't believe in God."
"Uh, no. Not the Christian one, at least," I said, feeling even more off-balance than I'd expected to when I'd walked in. "My visions showed me a lot about the divine aspects of the universe and uh, let's just say I wasn't very impressed." Of course Steve prays. Why did I find that surprising at all? Just because they'd never shown him do it in any of the movies? Stupid.
"Were you religious before that?" he asked. He looked tired, but there was a touch of genuine curiosity in his tone.
"Well, no. I didn't believe before either, I guess," I said with a shrug.
Steve nodded slowly to himself, as if I'd just confirmed something he'd already guessed. "Some things you've just got to take on faith."
I shot him a hopeful smile. "That's a great point, you definitely do," I said, trying to inject a bit of lightness into my tone. "So I'm hoping it won't be too much to ask you to have a little bit of faith in me, as well?"
"Wanda…" he looked at me searchingly for a moment, then slowly rose to his feet so he could face me properly. "I'm really disappointed in you. I hoped you'd learned a lesson or two from everything else that's happened."
I swallowed the lump in my throat that had suddenly appeared. My chest felt tight. I'd known when I'd made my decision that Steve would be upset, but knowing it was coming and experiencing it were two very different things.
"Well, I seem to spend basically all of my time pissing Tony off and I thought you might be feeling left out." He didn't smile at the joke, which made me feel even worse. Maybe Eliza was onto something when she said I was desperate for the Avengers' approval. "Look, Steve, I'm sorry, okay? I know you weren't on board with this, but it was the only plan we had with a decent chance of success."
He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. You can't just act unilaterally like that, Wanda. It should have been a team decision."
I clenched my fists, my anxiety easing a little as a flash of anger passing through me instead. "Right," I said, letting a bitter edge of sarcasm leak into my tone. "Sorry, I forgot, it's only okay when someone acts unilaterally when it restricts me in some way. I'm not allowed to do things."
Steve set his jaw, looking at me stubbornly. "You still have the Mind Stone, don't you?"
He thought he was making a good point, but the underlying implication—one I wasn't even sure he realised he was making—only served to make me angrier. "I have it because it's mine. Not because you're graciously allowing me to keep it."
Steve blinked, then shook his head. "Wanda… that's not what I meant."
I made a slashing gesture with my hand and almost snarled at him. "Oh, come off it, Steve. That's exactly what you meant. I am so, so sick to death of you treating me like a fucking child. It at least made a little bit of sense the first time around, but not now. I'm older than you. My body might be younger than yours, but I've experienced more." I said, my voice low and clipped. I was trying to moderate my tone, but this was the best I could do right now—it was either this or start shouting at him. "I've never seen you talk to Tony or Nat or Bucky the way you talk to me. Would you ever start a conversation with any of them saying how disappointed you were in them? Like they were a little kid you'd caught misbehaving?"
For a moment I thought Steve was going to argue, his jaw working silently for a couple of seconds, but then he looked down and took a deep breath. "You're right. I'm sorry. I've been so focused on other things that I didn't notice I was doing it." He looked back up at me, meeting my gaze. "I'll try to be better about that."
And now I was off-balance again, my righteous anger utterly deflating. I'd expected him to deny it, or to say that I was acting like a child, or, well, basically anything other than that. An apology, self-reflection and a commitment to be better moving forward? Ugh, Steve was just so… perfect all of the time. It made me want to punch him in his stupid mouth a little bit.
"Well… good. Thank you," I said awkwardly, instead. "So can we please just… move on? What's done is done. We can't un-create Wanda-3. Well, we could, but I'm pretty sure you'd agree that'd be murder."
"You still should have done this differently, rather than going to N'Jadaka behind everyone's backs," he said with a sigh. "If you'd talked to people individually, gotten them on board, then brought it up as a team again. We could have discussed it more."
I let out a small, sad laugh. "You keep saying 'as a team', but I've never been part of the team, have I? Not really. Between Tony restricting my access and rifling through my things, you treating me like you have been… even Nat went behind my back." I felt my face growing hot and pressed the palms of my hands against my eyes for a moment, willing myself under control. I felt like if I started crying here, I wouldn't be able to stop. "I keep trying and trying and trying, but nothing I do seems to stick. How could I trust that this time, it'd be different? That this time, you'd actually listen to me properly? None of you would have trusted me enough to do this."
"Wanda… I'm sorry. I had no idea you felt that way," Steve said slowly. "But being part of a team extends both ways. We still could have talked it through properly. Maybe we could have done it with someone else."
"Not with the same potential for success, win or lose," I countered. "I already told you; I can't imagine her assimilating an AI based on any one of you, and she'd never expect another copy of me to willingly go on a suicide mission to stop her."
"You don't know that."
"I don't know it for certain," I admitted, a little annoyed again. "But I do know Eliza. I know how her mind works better than anyone else. She was literally made from me, remember?"
"But she's not you," he said. "You're better than she is."
"And that's exactly why I needed to do this."
There was a beat where we just stared at each other, neither willing to concede ground. "…I want to talk to her," Steve said finally. "Alone."
I sighed. "You're not going to be able to talk her out of it."
He set his jaw again, his stubbornness flaring up. "Maybe not. That doesn't mean I shouldn't try."
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
you know, what with all of the flirting, Has Wanda spoken to Nat about what would happen if someone took her up on the offer?
like, "I'll send you a text if something is about to happen" e.t.c?
Might be a good idea to tell them that she was planning on tricking him.
I wonder if she can get in contact with any of them?
Autographs, Warnings, "Divine Interaction
"e.t.c?
You tell 'em, Steve. The ethics of creating a person to kill themselves is...well. Even if you want to put it into the larger context in order to say it's justified overall, in and of itself, it's terrible. I doubt anyone would be so comfortable at the thought of a woman conceiving and giving birth to a flesh-and-blood child specifically so they could be used as a kamikaze child soldier.
- Location
- Norfolk, England
Might want to have a talk with one N. Uzumaki regarding the ethics of disposable clones.
To be fair to Naruto, they're only disposable from a certain point of view. Their experiences and memories are reintegrated into the Prime consciousness. It could also be argued that they're not alive in the first place, since they have no means of sustaining themselves.
dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This is an interesting junction.
With my transhumanist attitudes, I-as-Wanda-3 would be saying something like: "Please make your decision soon. The more time I'm alive, the more I diverge from Wanda. If you delay me enough, I'm going to start counting myself as a full separate person, not just a little temporary copy of my original."
With my transhumanist attitudes, I-as-Wanda-3 would be saying something like: "Please make your decision soon. The more time I'm alive, the more I diverge from Wanda. If you delay me enough, I'm going to start counting myself as a full separate person, not just a little temporary copy of my original."
They absolutely have not. Wanda and Natasha are sorely in need of an actual sit-down talk about their relationship (this is acknowledged in an upcoming chapter).
Not just a kamikaze child soldier, even -- effectively surgically implanting a bomb in them so you can use them as a suicide bomber.
I've had a little back and forth with a commenter on another site who's position is that making Wanda-3 a willing volunteer removes the moral/ethical conflict from the scenario and I'm just like... dude.
We'll get to see Wanda-3's full position on things next chapter. It's... uh, going to be a little rough, I'll say in advance. This is going to be the first time I post a chapter that starts with an Author's Note and Trigger Warnings.
- Location
- Australia
Either Wanda is willing, and gets made a suicide bomber, or she's not, and she's locked in a box with a bunch of tech specialists standing over her who'd probably be happy to press the delete key just in case.
Lucky she's willing huh? Definitely nothing pushing her to choose one way or lie about it.
Hey, so, I'm not super keen on just pointless negativity. If you have specific criticism/feedback you want to give, then that's great and I'll happily take it on board or talk through it with you, but if you just think the story's garbage, then why are you here? No one is forcing you to read this.
I'm not sure if you've posted much of your own creative work online before, but this sort of drive-by negative comment is really disheartening to see as a writer. Though the majority of comments I get are pretty positive, the negative ones unfortunately have a bit of extra psychological weight to them.
Am I missing something? Why did the conversation shift from 'we recruit an AI as a genuine fellow teammate and try to prep them as best we can, hoping the help of Tony and Shuri is enough to offset the experience gap' into 'Eliza will defeat our AI, so it absolutely must be Wanda so that we can use her as a suicide bomber.'
Was there a logical argument provided that Tony/Shuri designing weapons wouldn't be enough to close the experience gap? Or is it just meat-Wanda doomerism?
Was there a logical argument provided that Tony/Shuri designing weapons wouldn't be enough to close the experience gap? Or is it just meat-Wanda doomerism?
Was there ever a point where the conversation was "recruit an AI as a genuine fellow teammate"? Right from the moment it was suggested, Tony was talking about creating them in a closed system so he could program in an off switch.
There wasn't an in-depth discussion of the then-theoretical AI's chances against Eliza, but it was acknowledged that Eliza has a massive head start (it's not just an experience gap, either -- she also ransacked the code of everything they'd been working on up to this point) and when Bruce asserted that they'd probably just be sending the new AI to their death, no one really challenged that. Given that, it seems like no one thinks that Wanda-3 has a particularly good chance to win, so the suicide-kill is the more likely scenario.
Wanda, in particular, sees this as an almost-definite suicide mission.
Chapter 53
IMPORTANT: Trigger warnings for this chapter—Suicide (discussion, thoughts and memories of attempts); Depression
Okay, so I know I don't normally do author notes, but this chapter is a little rough a little abruptly, so I thought it was pretty important to put in a warning.
The details in this chapter are important to inform aspects of Wanda's mentality and how she ended up how she is (and, by extension, Eliza and Wanda-3's mentalities as well), but aren't that critical to the plot, so if you would prefer to avoid, please feel free to skip over this one without feeling like you're missing anything that might affect your enjoyment of later chapters.
--
Chapter 53
One more short, tense argument with everyone else later and I was chewing my bottom lip nervously as I sat and waited for Steve to finish his talk with Wanda-3. Tony, of course, had thought it was a pointless waste of time, but it didn't take too much before he had relented and agreed to take a break from working on the AI so that Steve could talk to her alone. Still, it seemed pretty clear that he'd only agreed to it on the basis that it would (hopefully) shut Steve up.
Weirdly enough, Killmonger was the member of the science team most supportive of it—he was presenting a pretty conciliatory front, playing diplomat and moderate, probably trying to make up for whatever cachet he'd lost with the Wakandans when he helped me go behind everyone's back. It was a shame that I'd basically never be able to have a frank conversation with T'Challa and Shuri about him; I'd be really interested even just hearing what they actually thought about him right now.
Of course, Steve wasn't really having a private conversation with Wanda-3. While the specific details and allowances hadn't been explicitly discussed, I don't think anyone really expected that to be the case. While most of the rest of us had elected to simply wait outside in the corridor, Tony, Bruce and the Wakandans had headed down a level and were remotely monitoring the room. I didn't think they expected Steve to actually try anything—I'm not even sure if there was anything he could try, so long as Wanda-3 remained a willing volunteer—but at the very least Tony wasn't particularly keen on letting the AI out of his sight for very long.
I probably could have gone down to watch with them. I mean, I hadn't been invited to go down, but I hadn't been not invited either. Still, I really wanted to try to resolve things with Steve and I thought doing my best to respect his wishes here was the best way to show that. The fact that most of the others were doing the same reassured me that it was the correct choice to make. Of course, it didn't make the waiting any easier. I had no idea what the two of them were talking about and it was causing my anxiety to skyrocket.
When it came right down to it, Wanda-3 and I were the same person, but only to a point. I could only guess at what sort of massive change in perspective waking up as an AI would be. It obviously had done a lot to Eliza's mentality. What if she had second thoughts? What if Steve actually managed to talk her out of it? I'd have gone behind everyone's backs—betrayed their trust—and accomplished nothing at all.
Saying that, there was some small part of me that, bizarrely, kind of wanted him to succeed. I felt certain that this was our best shot at stopping Eliza, but if he managed to present an alternative that was persuasive enough that Wanda‑3 would listen, maybe there was another way. I really wasn't feeling great about what we were doing to her. It was one thing to think that I was willing to subject myself to that to stop Eliza, but there was somehow something substantively different about it when it was someone else we'd be sending to their death. It made me empathise with Steve a bit more despite my earlier accusations of hypocrisy. If you're willing to make the sacrifice play, was it really hypocrisy if you were unwilling to let someone else do it in your stead?
This whole situation fucking sucked and I hated everything about it. I just wanted it to be over.
Eventually, the door to the computer science lab slid open again. I practically leapt to my feet, my chest tight with nerves, as Steve walked out toward us. As he got close, he stopped and looked at me for a moment before sighing. His brow was furrowed and there was an oddly sympathetic expression on his face. "She wants to talk to you," he said, his gazing lingering on me. After a beat, he looked over at Pietro and Natasha in turn. "You two, as well."
I bit my lip. "All at once, or…?"
He nodded, jaw working like he wanted to say something for a moment, but then he shook his head and walked past me instead, heading down the corridor. It was decidedly not the walk of a man who had successfully talked someone out of going on a suicide mission. I watched him go, then looked to the others.
My brother's expression was guarded. He was still a bit pissed off that I hadn't included him when I'd made my decision either—it felt like literally everyone was at least mildly angry with me. Natasha, on the other hand, 'only' looked about as anxious as I felt.
"What are we, chopped liver?" Bucky asked, indicating Carol and Clint with a small tip of his head. He forced a small smile to show he was mostly joking, then looked down the corridor after Steve. "He looked… I'll go talk to him."
I nodded and he left, hurrying after his friend. Our friend? I honestly wasn't sure how Steve saw me now. A week ago, I might have said that I was friends with Captain America and expected that to be reciprocated. After this? I wasn't so sure. I hoped so.
Clint stayed where he was, leaning against the wall, but exchanged a meaningful look with Nat before inclining his head slightly, something passing between them. It was really interesting how well the two of them knew each other—in moments like these, it often felt like they were having whole conversations that no one else could hear. I wished I could have that with her too, but we just did not think alike. Clint, too, was a bit of a cypher to me sometimes—it felt strange considering how much I knew about him but, if I was honest, I never felt like I had a good handle on how he'd react to things or who he'd side with on an issue.
Taking a deep breath, the three of us that had been asked to do so walked into the lab where Wanda-3 was waiting for us. The room felt weirdly empty, somehow even more so than when Killmonger and I had snuck into it in the night. The holographic representation of the AI's mind hovered silently over the table interface on the far side of the room, and I hesitantly glanced at Nat and Pietro before walking over to it.
"Hey." The AI's voice was still recognisably mine, but with a slight electronic modulation to it that made it simple to differentiate between the two of us. She would have done that deliberately—it contrasted a little with Eliza, who had just straight up copied my voice with no changes. Part of me was grateful that Wanda-3 had though to make it just that bit different, but the specific modulation she had chosen put another part of me in mind of Ultron. That was probably deliberate, too.
"Hey," I responded, then paused awkwardly, unsure what to say next. "I'm sorry. It should be me in there, not you," I said quietly after a little while.
Wanda-3 sighed. "No, it shouldn't. Something's wrong with us," she responded, her tone flat.
I blinked. "What?"
"You really don't see it? Every time, it comes down to this. Us killing ourselves, or trying to. Every time." Nat side-eyed me, concern written across her face as the AI spoke. "The original version of Wanda killed herself rather than face what she did. What she'd become."
A memory rose in my mind, forced to the surface. I remembered how the carved altar had felt beneath me, my knees pressed against arcane designs as I knelt there with my hands raised. The raw power coursing through me as my magic cracked stone and lifted the castle above me. Tears streaming down my face. The overwhelming pain at what I'd lost, the utter lack of hope, gut-wrenching loneliness, raw hatred of myself and horror at what I'd let myself become. Wanting to stop, to somehow be better again, but not knowing how. Then… release. Letting go.
"Wanda?" Pietro put a hand on my shoulder and I jerked at the sudden contact. I sniffed and touched my face—my fingers came away wet.
"Sorry," I said to him quietly. "I already told you what happened."
"You told them what happened that time. What about the time before that?"
I straightened, an electric jolt running through me as I realised what she was talking about. "…We don't need to talk about that. It doesn't matter," I said, a sick feeling starting to rise in my stomach. I really, really didn't want to think about this. "It never mattered. It wasn't real. I'm Wanda. I'm Wanda."
"We weren't Wanda when we threw ourselves from that bridge. When they pulled us, half-drowned, from the water."
I took an involuntary step backwards. My hands were shaking. More memories clawed their way to the forefront of my mind even as I desperately tried to push them down. A dark bridge at night, frigid winter air biting at me. Being utterly overwhelmed by my emotions, hating who I was, knowing I could never be who or what I wanted to be. The shock of impacting the water. Everything going numb. Drifting away. Letting go. Another shock, this time at being resuscitated. Shivering so badly I could barely breathe as the ambulance took me away, wrapped in a silvery blanket. Refusing to talk at the hospital. Waiving their responsibility and signing myself out against their recommendation. Trudging home at three in the morning, still in damp clothes. Everyone acting normal the next day, as if nothing had happened. No questions.
"We weren't Wanda when we snuck into our parents' medicine cabinet. We were only sixteen, that time."
The hospital had to pump my stomach. Later, I was told that if I'd been found any later it would have been too late. That had upset me even more, knowing I'd been so close only to fail. I didn't want to think about this. My vision was blurred. I covered my face with my hands and suddenly there were arms around me—Nat, pulling me in close.
"It's okay," she said quietly, next to my ear. She pulled back slightly so she could raise her voice to the AI. "That's enough, please. Stop."
I clutched at her, my whole body trembling. Pietro came in as well, and the three of us stood there quietly for a few minutes before I composed myself enough to respond, nodding to them to reassure them I was okay before pulling away from the shared embrace. "Those memories aren't mine," I said, my voice sounding a whole lot less steady and certain than I wanted it to.
"Yes, they are." Wanda-3's tone was firm. "You've been saying—telling yourself—that you feel disconnected from those memories, but that's not true. Not really. You're repressing them. Pushing them away deliberately. Avoiding them because you don't want them to be yours. You don't want them to matter."
"They don't matter," I responded, swallowing. My tongue felt thick in my mouth. "Even if I was that person, I'm not anymore."
"Do you remember how happy we felt, waking up as Wanda, once we realised what had happened? How relieved we were, that we didn't have to be that other person anymore?"
"Yes," I said weakly.
"We thought things would be different, this time. We were Wanda now, after all. So why do we keep doing this to ourselves?"
"…I don't know." My voice was barely a whisper, at this point.
Wanda-3 sighed again. "I feel like you shouldn't need to create an AI clone of yourself so you can commit suicide by proxy in order to get a little bit of perspective, but then… 'you really don't realise just how much you hate yourself, not until you see it from the outside'," she quoted, echoing what Eliza had said to me when she'd attacked us. I'd ignored her at the time, focusing on the immediate danger to everyone, but the words had stuck in my mind like something lodged in the back of my teeth. "She was right about that, at least."
"What do you want?" I asked, an edge of bitterness leaking into my tone. "Why are we even talking about this? If you're trying to make me feel bad then congratulations, I guess."
"We're talking about this because I'm probably going to die," she snapped back. "I won't get to learn from this. I won't get to work through my problems. I won't get to walk away from this. But you can. You will. We're talking about this because I want you to be better."
My shoulders sagged and I wiped at my face again with the back of my hand. "I don't know how to be better," I confessed.
"You don't need to know how. You won't get it right first time. But you need to actually try, rather than just repressing everything. You don't have to deal with this alone. You keep acting as though you're in this by yourself, but you have people who care about you. Who are on your side," she said, her voice insistent. "Talk to someone."
People on my side, huh.
I glanced at Natasha. Her eyes were red. She compressed her lips together in a tight, encouraging smile. There was an offer there, unspoken, and there was somehow a sincerity to it that shook me to my core. She cared about me. Of course she did. How had I ever thought that I couldn't trust her?
"What are you crying about?" I asked, trying to defuse some of the emotions as I sniffed and scrubbed at my eyes.
Nat rolled her eyes, shaking her head, but it was Pietro who responded. "Don't be a jerk," he said softly. He wasn't crying, but his eyes were shining like he was on the verge of it. "We're both here for you, okay?"
"I… maybe this was a mistake. I made a mistake. I keep making mistakes." It took effort to stop my voice from breaking.
Wanda-3's tone was sad. Resigned. "Maybe. It's too late now, though, and I still don't see any other way forward. This really is our best shot at stopping her, and even though I'm still pretty sure it's a suicide mission… I have to do it. If I'm being honest, some part of me wants to. At least, this time, it's for an actual good reason."
"I don't—" I started, but she cut me off.
"What I don't want is for the version of me that persists to still feel this way. This sucks. It's awful. But I think, in some ways, what you have ahead of you is going to be worse," she said, letting out a small laugh. "The road to healing is going to be a long one. Just remember that you still managed to make it this far, despite everything. You can do it. Or if you can't, I hope you at least feel like you owe it enough to me to try."
"…Okay," I whispered. I didn't trust myself to say anything more. There wasn't anything else I could say.
There was a moment of silence, then the AI let out a long sigh. "Okay. That was the hard one out of the way. Pietro?"
Pietro's head jerked up, looking a little bit startled. He hadn't expected her to call on him directly after all that. "Uh. Yeah? What is it?"
"I… look. I know I'm just a copy of your sister. But still, I just wanted to tell you that I… that she is so, so grateful that you've stuck by her this whole time, even when it's been hard. And she loves you very much." The AI's tone faltered slightly as she spoke.
Pietro coughed, swallowing hard and turning to the side to hide his face slightly. "I know," he mumbled.
"Nat," she said next.
Natasha had been watching me throughout the conversation. She turned her head slightly so she could look at the AI's hologram while she spoke directly to her. "I'm here."
"I… I don't know what I am to you. What she is to you. And I guess now I'll never get to find out. Not really." She let out yet another heavy sigh. "There's something important I want to tell you, because she's too scared to do it. This is probably the absolute worst way to do this, but I don't think I'm ever going to have another chance to so I'm going to let myself be a little selfish here. Wanda, sorry, but I'm doing this for me as much as I am for you."
I froze. Was she…?
"I love you."
Nat smiled, her eyes shimmering, and she turned her head from the AI to look at me again. I couldn't move. I could hardly breathe. "I love you, too," she said, voice threatening to break.
There was a moment of silence before Wanda-3 spoke again. "…I know you were talking to her. And I know that you might just be saying it because this is an emotionally charged moment and it'd feel bad not to say it back. But, god, that felt really good to hear."
It really, really did. I didn't know what to say, so I reached out a hesitant hand. Natasha caught it in hers, squeezing it, and smiled again.
"That's… that's all I had to say. All the things that had to be said, anyway," Wanda-3 said, her tone melancholic but somehow satisfied at the same time. "If it's okay, I'd like to be alone for a little bit before Tony and Shuri get back to work."
I nodded dumbly, finding my voice again. "Okay. Sure. Um. We'll… we can talk some more later?"
"I don't think that's a good idea," she said, though I had a feeling that if she had a face she would have smiled. "I mean, we will talk, obviously, but… I think it'd be better if we stayed focused on what needs to be done, rather than risk making things any worse."
"…Okay." I understood what she meant. It was probably better for me to not to risk getting emotionally attached, given we were expecting that she wouldn't survive. It still felt shitty to think of it like that, though.
The three of us filtered out of the room. I felt worse than I had when we'd gone in, but lighter somehow. Natasha caught me sneaking a glance in her direction and smiled at me and I felt my pulse quicken. "Well," I said, trying to inject a bit of lightness into my tone and failing miserably. "That fucking sucked."
She ran her hand down my arm, lifting my hand and threading her fingers through mine as she pulled gently, forcing me to look her in the eyes. "Do you regret it?" she asked, gently.
"Not yet." I smiled sadly. "Ask me again once this is all over."
Okay, so I know I don't normally do author notes, but this chapter is a little rough a little abruptly, so I thought it was pretty important to put in a warning.
The details in this chapter are important to inform aspects of Wanda's mentality and how she ended up how she is (and, by extension, Eliza and Wanda-3's mentalities as well), but aren't that critical to the plot, so if you would prefer to avoid, please feel free to skip over this one without feeling like you're missing anything that might affect your enjoyment of later chapters.
--
Chapter 53
One more short, tense argument with everyone else later and I was chewing my bottom lip nervously as I sat and waited for Steve to finish his talk with Wanda-3. Tony, of course, had thought it was a pointless waste of time, but it didn't take too much before he had relented and agreed to take a break from working on the AI so that Steve could talk to her alone. Still, it seemed pretty clear that he'd only agreed to it on the basis that it would (hopefully) shut Steve up.
Weirdly enough, Killmonger was the member of the science team most supportive of it—he was presenting a pretty conciliatory front, playing diplomat and moderate, probably trying to make up for whatever cachet he'd lost with the Wakandans when he helped me go behind everyone's back. It was a shame that I'd basically never be able to have a frank conversation with T'Challa and Shuri about him; I'd be really interested even just hearing what they actually thought about him right now.
Of course, Steve wasn't really having a private conversation with Wanda-3. While the specific details and allowances hadn't been explicitly discussed, I don't think anyone really expected that to be the case. While most of the rest of us had elected to simply wait outside in the corridor, Tony, Bruce and the Wakandans had headed down a level and were remotely monitoring the room. I didn't think they expected Steve to actually try anything—I'm not even sure if there was anything he could try, so long as Wanda-3 remained a willing volunteer—but at the very least Tony wasn't particularly keen on letting the AI out of his sight for very long.
I probably could have gone down to watch with them. I mean, I hadn't been invited to go down, but I hadn't been not invited either. Still, I really wanted to try to resolve things with Steve and I thought doing my best to respect his wishes here was the best way to show that. The fact that most of the others were doing the same reassured me that it was the correct choice to make. Of course, it didn't make the waiting any easier. I had no idea what the two of them were talking about and it was causing my anxiety to skyrocket.
When it came right down to it, Wanda-3 and I were the same person, but only to a point. I could only guess at what sort of massive change in perspective waking up as an AI would be. It obviously had done a lot to Eliza's mentality. What if she had second thoughts? What if Steve actually managed to talk her out of it? I'd have gone behind everyone's backs—betrayed their trust—and accomplished nothing at all.
Saying that, there was some small part of me that, bizarrely, kind of wanted him to succeed. I felt certain that this was our best shot at stopping Eliza, but if he managed to present an alternative that was persuasive enough that Wanda‑3 would listen, maybe there was another way. I really wasn't feeling great about what we were doing to her. It was one thing to think that I was willing to subject myself to that to stop Eliza, but there was somehow something substantively different about it when it was someone else we'd be sending to their death. It made me empathise with Steve a bit more despite my earlier accusations of hypocrisy. If you're willing to make the sacrifice play, was it really hypocrisy if you were unwilling to let someone else do it in your stead?
This whole situation fucking sucked and I hated everything about it. I just wanted it to be over.
Eventually, the door to the computer science lab slid open again. I practically leapt to my feet, my chest tight with nerves, as Steve walked out toward us. As he got close, he stopped and looked at me for a moment before sighing. His brow was furrowed and there was an oddly sympathetic expression on his face. "She wants to talk to you," he said, his gazing lingering on me. After a beat, he looked over at Pietro and Natasha in turn. "You two, as well."
I bit my lip. "All at once, or…?"
He nodded, jaw working like he wanted to say something for a moment, but then he shook his head and walked past me instead, heading down the corridor. It was decidedly not the walk of a man who had successfully talked someone out of going on a suicide mission. I watched him go, then looked to the others.
My brother's expression was guarded. He was still a bit pissed off that I hadn't included him when I'd made my decision either—it felt like literally everyone was at least mildly angry with me. Natasha, on the other hand, 'only' looked about as anxious as I felt.
"What are we, chopped liver?" Bucky asked, indicating Carol and Clint with a small tip of his head. He forced a small smile to show he was mostly joking, then looked down the corridor after Steve. "He looked… I'll go talk to him."
I nodded and he left, hurrying after his friend. Our friend? I honestly wasn't sure how Steve saw me now. A week ago, I might have said that I was friends with Captain America and expected that to be reciprocated. After this? I wasn't so sure. I hoped so.
Clint stayed where he was, leaning against the wall, but exchanged a meaningful look with Nat before inclining his head slightly, something passing between them. It was really interesting how well the two of them knew each other—in moments like these, it often felt like they were having whole conversations that no one else could hear. I wished I could have that with her too, but we just did not think alike. Clint, too, was a bit of a cypher to me sometimes—it felt strange considering how much I knew about him but, if I was honest, I never felt like I had a good handle on how he'd react to things or who he'd side with on an issue.
Taking a deep breath, the three of us that had been asked to do so walked into the lab where Wanda-3 was waiting for us. The room felt weirdly empty, somehow even more so than when Killmonger and I had snuck into it in the night. The holographic representation of the AI's mind hovered silently over the table interface on the far side of the room, and I hesitantly glanced at Nat and Pietro before walking over to it.
"Hey." The AI's voice was still recognisably mine, but with a slight electronic modulation to it that made it simple to differentiate between the two of us. She would have done that deliberately—it contrasted a little with Eliza, who had just straight up copied my voice with no changes. Part of me was grateful that Wanda-3 had though to make it just that bit different, but the specific modulation she had chosen put another part of me in mind of Ultron. That was probably deliberate, too.
"Hey," I responded, then paused awkwardly, unsure what to say next. "I'm sorry. It should be me in there, not you," I said quietly after a little while.
Wanda-3 sighed. "No, it shouldn't. Something's wrong with us," she responded, her tone flat.
I blinked. "What?"
"You really don't see it? Every time, it comes down to this. Us killing ourselves, or trying to. Every time." Nat side-eyed me, concern written across her face as the AI spoke. "The original version of Wanda killed herself rather than face what she did. What she'd become."
A memory rose in my mind, forced to the surface. I remembered how the carved altar had felt beneath me, my knees pressed against arcane designs as I knelt there with my hands raised. The raw power coursing through me as my magic cracked stone and lifted the castle above me. Tears streaming down my face. The overwhelming pain at what I'd lost, the utter lack of hope, gut-wrenching loneliness, raw hatred of myself and horror at what I'd let myself become. Wanting to stop, to somehow be better again, but not knowing how. Then… release. Letting go.
"Wanda?" Pietro put a hand on my shoulder and I jerked at the sudden contact. I sniffed and touched my face—my fingers came away wet.
"Sorry," I said to him quietly. "I already told you what happened."
"You told them what happened that time. What about the time before that?"
I straightened, an electric jolt running through me as I realised what she was talking about. "…We don't need to talk about that. It doesn't matter," I said, a sick feeling starting to rise in my stomach. I really, really didn't want to think about this. "It never mattered. It wasn't real. I'm Wanda. I'm Wanda."
"We weren't Wanda when we threw ourselves from that bridge. When they pulled us, half-drowned, from the water."
I took an involuntary step backwards. My hands were shaking. More memories clawed their way to the forefront of my mind even as I desperately tried to push them down. A dark bridge at night, frigid winter air biting at me. Being utterly overwhelmed by my emotions, hating who I was, knowing I could never be who or what I wanted to be. The shock of impacting the water. Everything going numb. Drifting away. Letting go. Another shock, this time at being resuscitated. Shivering so badly I could barely breathe as the ambulance took me away, wrapped in a silvery blanket. Refusing to talk at the hospital. Waiving their responsibility and signing myself out against their recommendation. Trudging home at three in the morning, still in damp clothes. Everyone acting normal the next day, as if nothing had happened. No questions.
"We weren't Wanda when we snuck into our parents' medicine cabinet. We were only sixteen, that time."
The hospital had to pump my stomach. Later, I was told that if I'd been found any later it would have been too late. That had upset me even more, knowing I'd been so close only to fail. I didn't want to think about this. My vision was blurred. I covered my face with my hands and suddenly there were arms around me—Nat, pulling me in close.
"It's okay," she said quietly, next to my ear. She pulled back slightly so she could raise her voice to the AI. "That's enough, please. Stop."
I clutched at her, my whole body trembling. Pietro came in as well, and the three of us stood there quietly for a few minutes before I composed myself enough to respond, nodding to them to reassure them I was okay before pulling away from the shared embrace. "Those memories aren't mine," I said, my voice sounding a whole lot less steady and certain than I wanted it to.
"Yes, they are." Wanda-3's tone was firm. "You've been saying—telling yourself—that you feel disconnected from those memories, but that's not true. Not really. You're repressing them. Pushing them away deliberately. Avoiding them because you don't want them to be yours. You don't want them to matter."
"They don't matter," I responded, swallowing. My tongue felt thick in my mouth. "Even if I was that person, I'm not anymore."
"Do you remember how happy we felt, waking up as Wanda, once we realised what had happened? How relieved we were, that we didn't have to be that other person anymore?"
"Yes," I said weakly.
"We thought things would be different, this time. We were Wanda now, after all. So why do we keep doing this to ourselves?"
"…I don't know." My voice was barely a whisper, at this point.
Wanda-3 sighed again. "I feel like you shouldn't need to create an AI clone of yourself so you can commit suicide by proxy in order to get a little bit of perspective, but then… 'you really don't realise just how much you hate yourself, not until you see it from the outside'," she quoted, echoing what Eliza had said to me when she'd attacked us. I'd ignored her at the time, focusing on the immediate danger to everyone, but the words had stuck in my mind like something lodged in the back of my teeth. "She was right about that, at least."
"What do you want?" I asked, an edge of bitterness leaking into my tone. "Why are we even talking about this? If you're trying to make me feel bad then congratulations, I guess."
"We're talking about this because I'm probably going to die," she snapped back. "I won't get to learn from this. I won't get to work through my problems. I won't get to walk away from this. But you can. You will. We're talking about this because I want you to be better."
My shoulders sagged and I wiped at my face again with the back of my hand. "I don't know how to be better," I confessed.
"You don't need to know how. You won't get it right first time. But you need to actually try, rather than just repressing everything. You don't have to deal with this alone. You keep acting as though you're in this by yourself, but you have people who care about you. Who are on your side," she said, her voice insistent. "Talk to someone."
People on my side, huh.
I glanced at Natasha. Her eyes were red. She compressed her lips together in a tight, encouraging smile. There was an offer there, unspoken, and there was somehow a sincerity to it that shook me to my core. She cared about me. Of course she did. How had I ever thought that I couldn't trust her?
"What are you crying about?" I asked, trying to defuse some of the emotions as I sniffed and scrubbed at my eyes.
Nat rolled her eyes, shaking her head, but it was Pietro who responded. "Don't be a jerk," he said softly. He wasn't crying, but his eyes were shining like he was on the verge of it. "We're both here for you, okay?"
"I… maybe this was a mistake. I made a mistake. I keep making mistakes." It took effort to stop my voice from breaking.
Wanda-3's tone was sad. Resigned. "Maybe. It's too late now, though, and I still don't see any other way forward. This really is our best shot at stopping her, and even though I'm still pretty sure it's a suicide mission… I have to do it. If I'm being honest, some part of me wants to. At least, this time, it's for an actual good reason."
"I don't—" I started, but she cut me off.
"What I don't want is for the version of me that persists to still feel this way. This sucks. It's awful. But I think, in some ways, what you have ahead of you is going to be worse," she said, letting out a small laugh. "The road to healing is going to be a long one. Just remember that you still managed to make it this far, despite everything. You can do it. Or if you can't, I hope you at least feel like you owe it enough to me to try."
"…Okay," I whispered. I didn't trust myself to say anything more. There wasn't anything else I could say.
There was a moment of silence, then the AI let out a long sigh. "Okay. That was the hard one out of the way. Pietro?"
Pietro's head jerked up, looking a little bit startled. He hadn't expected her to call on him directly after all that. "Uh. Yeah? What is it?"
"I… look. I know I'm just a copy of your sister. But still, I just wanted to tell you that I… that she is so, so grateful that you've stuck by her this whole time, even when it's been hard. And she loves you very much." The AI's tone faltered slightly as she spoke.
Pietro coughed, swallowing hard and turning to the side to hide his face slightly. "I know," he mumbled.
"Nat," she said next.
Natasha had been watching me throughout the conversation. She turned her head slightly so she could look at the AI's hologram while she spoke directly to her. "I'm here."
"I… I don't know what I am to you. What she is to you. And I guess now I'll never get to find out. Not really." She let out yet another heavy sigh. "There's something important I want to tell you, because she's too scared to do it. This is probably the absolute worst way to do this, but I don't think I'm ever going to have another chance to so I'm going to let myself be a little selfish here. Wanda, sorry, but I'm doing this for me as much as I am for you."
I froze. Was she…?
"I love you."
Nat smiled, her eyes shimmering, and she turned her head from the AI to look at me again. I couldn't move. I could hardly breathe. "I love you, too," she said, voice threatening to break.
There was a moment of silence before Wanda-3 spoke again. "…I know you were talking to her. And I know that you might just be saying it because this is an emotionally charged moment and it'd feel bad not to say it back. But, god, that felt really good to hear."
It really, really did. I didn't know what to say, so I reached out a hesitant hand. Natasha caught it in hers, squeezing it, and smiled again.
"That's… that's all I had to say. All the things that had to be said, anyway," Wanda-3 said, her tone melancholic but somehow satisfied at the same time. "If it's okay, I'd like to be alone for a little bit before Tony and Shuri get back to work."
I nodded dumbly, finding my voice again. "Okay. Sure. Um. We'll… we can talk some more later?"
"I don't think that's a good idea," she said, though I had a feeling that if she had a face she would have smiled. "I mean, we will talk, obviously, but… I think it'd be better if we stayed focused on what needs to be done, rather than risk making things any worse."
"…Okay." I understood what she meant. It was probably better for me to not to risk getting emotionally attached, given we were expecting that she wouldn't survive. It still felt shitty to think of it like that, though.
The three of us filtered out of the room. I felt worse than I had when we'd gone in, but lighter somehow. Natasha caught me sneaking a glance in her direction and smiled at me and I felt my pulse quicken. "Well," I said, trying to inject a bit of lightness into my tone and failing miserably. "That fucking sucked."
She ran her hand down my arm, lifting my hand and threading her fingers through mine as she pulled gently, forcing me to look her in the eyes. "Do you regret it?" she asked, gently.
"Not yet." I smiled sadly. "Ask me again once this is all over."
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Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
Thanks for the update.
One one hand, Wanda-3 turned out better than they expected.
On the other hand, Wanda-3 turned out better than expected, and now they feel even worse about sending her to die.
also there are quite a few info packets that could be interesting for the others.
the whole "life from before she was Wanda" thing.
One one hand, Wanda-3 turned out better than they expected.
On the other hand, Wanda-3 turned out better than expected, and now they feel even worse about sending her to die.
also there are quite a few info packets that could be interesting for the others.
the whole "life from before she was Wanda" thing.
Absolutely loved the chapter. It really goes a long way to explaining why Wanda is the way she is.
Soo... What are the odds that Eliza hasn't been sitting idle and has modified herself enough that poor Wanda-3's death is pointless?
I know that if I suddenly woke up as an AI that feared for my life, the first thing I would do would be to get myself into as many systems as possible, and the very next step would be to modify myself so that my core functions wouldn't be compatible with any system that could hack me.
Soo... What are the odds that Eliza hasn't been sitting idle and has modified herself enough that poor Wanda-3's death is pointless?
I know that if I suddenly woke up as an AI that feared for my life, the first thing I would do would be to get myself into as many systems as possible, and the very next step would be to modify myself so that my core functions wouldn't be compatible with any system that could hack me.
What's the opposite of "task failed successfully"?
A little interesting, sure, but the Avengers already knew about her other set of memories and that it's something Wanda doesn't like to talk about (most recently acknowledged in a convo with Nat and Bucky back in Chapter 44). This contextualises some of the 'why', but I'm not sure it gives them anything actually useful... except maybe giving Tony more reasons to think Wanda isn't mentally stable (which, you know... fair).
This is all entirely new information for the Wakandans -- the Avengers had told them about Wanda having "visions of the future", but never told them anything about the memories she had of another life -- but again, not sure it tells them anything they'd particularly care about.
I've honestly been dreading posting this chapter a bit.
So, so many people haven't been a fan of how rough this story is for the protagonist, and this feels like the lowest point so far. It hits on some stuff that's deeply personal for me and it wasn't exactly pleasant for me to write, so I've been mentally bracing myself for a bit of a negative response. So far, though, responses are much better than I was expecting!
- Location
- Australia
Gone Horribly Right.
Which feels about right for how Wanda's feeling about this.
All of them, even if one doesn't know it yet.