Look What You Made Me Do (MCU)
- Thread starter mythSSK
- Start date
- Location
- Norfolk, England
Oh no, she's already mastered the power of kabedon, Wanda's doomed!
Well, you wrote it well enough to get me picturing the Luis-style recap in my head, so take pride in that.
mythSSK
Wanda Wannabe
Not saying healing/regen is completely out of reach (she is a reality-warper, after all), just a long way off. Wanda's already leaps and bounds ahead of where her original-timeline counterpart was at this point, power-wise, but she's still got a lot of growing to do.
Thanks
Glad it work for you. Wanda was picturing it as well:
There's definitely a little bit of black edging to the red in that effect, and it's also worth pointing out that Wanda doesn't regenerate or heal the body of the Illuminati-verse variant Wanda when possessing her. If she were capable of healing herself while she's chasing Strange/America, I think she definitely would have, as she's slowed down a fair bit by the fact that she's injured and limping, so I feel relatively confident in guessing that this particular style of regen is something that she only has access to when she's got full access to the Darkhold.
Carol used kabedon; it's super effective! Wanda's a simple person -- if an attractive person pins/traps her against a wall, her brain shuts down. Simple cause and effect.
Thanks
Glad it work for you. Wanda was picturing it as well:
Last edited:
That's why I suggested the teeny tiny hex bound to a ring as an interim step. Gives her training with hexes and enchanting, but with something super low stakes. Oh, it failed after a few hours? Oh no, the tip of the finger is gone again, NBD.
Chapter 67
mythSSK
Wanda Wannabe
Chapter 67
I sat alone in Natasha's apartment. The lights were off but the TV was on, Netflix playing through season three of Orange Is the New Black. The volume was almost all the way down and I wasn't really watching it at all—I just liked to have something playing in the background. It already felt a little sad to be sitting here by myself, drinking, and it'd be a lot worse if I was sitting entirely in the dark. The images flashing by on screen just did the bare minimum to draw my brain back into the present, letting me still actually process thoughts instead of just staring blankly ahead.
Two bottles of Teacher's sat on the coffee table; one was completely empty and I'd made a start on the second. While the benefits of having taken the Heart-Shaped Herb far outweighed the negatives, it was still extremely disappointing that I was almost immune to mortal alcohol. In the memories I had from another life—now that I was removed from the situation, with the perspective I had on it all now—I was pretty sure I'd been a high-functioning alcoholic and I was really starting to miss being able to get drunk. Maybe I should try Everclear? I was pretty sure there was a 95 per cent version; that might work. I thought I was starting to feel a little bit of a buzz, but it was faint and I might have just been imagining it. I'd definitely have to see if I could get more of that Asgardian liquor once Thor got back. They had to have barrels of the stuff, right? Surely they could spare one.
With any luck, it wouldn't take too long for the Asgardian prince to return with news on the Celestial front. I grimaced to myself, thinking about it. I'd realised a little while ago that I'd probably messed up a bit with the way I'd handled the whole Odin-Loki situation. When I'd first met with the Avengers, I'd held off on telling Thor about what his brother was up to—from his perspective, he'd watched Loki nobly sacrifice his life in a final glorious moment of redemption less than a year ago, and was still grieving his loss. I'd worried that he would respond poorly to me just immediately dumping the truth on him right away… 'Oh, hey, by the way, your brother didn't actually sacrifice himself, he's just as much of a shit as ever' had seemed like a tricky sell.
However, immediately after the successful mission to take down the Red Room had probably been the perfect time to tell him. The mission had pretty definitively established my credentials and earned me the benefit of the doubt with the Avengers. It had almost certainly been enough that Thor would have at least listened without getting angry at me for sullying the memory of his lost brother. I'd just been so distracted at the time, thanks to everything that was happening with Natasha, and by the time I remembered that I'd needed to tell him he'd already departed for Asgard.
When it came down to it, though, it was yet another thing that I didn't actually need to rush on. There were still at least two full years before Ragnarök had occurred in the original timeline, so a couple of extra weeks or months with Odin in a retirement home was probably not going to make a big difference. It was still Thor's personal, family business, so it wouldn't really feel right trying to deal with it behind his back before he returned. I'd wait 'til he got back, then broach the topic whenever it seemed appropriate. Thor might be a little annoyed that I'd held off on telling him about it, but still, I couldn't imagine it would really matter in the long run. He might have even found out on his own by now, in any case—I'd given him lots of things to question 'Odin' about and, when it came down to it, Loki was kind of a terrible actor.
I was a little worried that Thor's little excursion to Omnipotence City had been a wild goose chase, too. I still didn't really have any other good ideas or answers when it came to dealing with the nascent Celestial that was growing within the Earth. The Emergence wouldn't happen for another two or three years, so we still had plenty of time to come up with something, but it was harder to take the long view on something like that when we didn't have any viable plans to deal with it. Maybe it would be worth reaching out to a couple of the Eternals, after all.
Ikaris would probably eventually be a problem no matter what, but the rest of the Eternals were basically just trying to live their lives in peace. I didn't want to drag them into things if I didn't have to but, when it came right down to it, their Uni-Mind was the only thing I knew for a fact could stop the Emergence. I just didn't know how they'd react at this point. Ajak was the only one who knew the truth about their mission. The Blip—humanity being capable of something that saved half the universe—had been what had swayed her, the thing that had caused her to doubt their mission after millions of years. Without that happening, I had no idea what she or the others would do. A couple might side with us, but we couldn't rely on most of them and, if it turned out they didn't want to help, then alerting them to our plans to stop the Emergence risked having them become enemies instead.
Then again, I'd already thought several times about reaching out to Gilgamesh and Thena, living in their self-imposed exile in the Australian Outback. The Mahd Wy'ry that Thena suffered from was essentially a degenerative mental condition, with memories from former lives she'd led 'leaking' out into her conscious mind from where her creator had hidden them. I felt like I'd been getting steadily better at repairing damaged or controlled minds—I had no idea if an Eternal's mind was similar enough to a human's that I could help her, but if I could help her it would be a great way to open relations. Even if we didn't go to them for help with the Emergence, they could still potentially prove to be powerful allies. I'd put it on the list; something to do in the next couple of weeks if Thor hadn't returned by then.
Speaking of damaged minds… I still needed to fix Bucky. I was refreshing the wards keeping the Winter Soldier persona at bay every so often, but hadn't quite worked out how to fully undo what was effectively decades of botched, amateur psychic surgery that HYDRA had wrought on his mind. Ironically, it seemed like the refined nature of something like the Red Room's chemical control process had been easier for me to deal with than the mess that was going on in Bucky's head was.
Or the mess that was going on in mine, for that matter. There was still so much else to do, but taking care of myself was the priority right now. Everything else could wait; there was nothing pressing that I needed to take action on anytime soon. I took a deep breath, making a deliberate effort to push it all out of my mind for now, then drained the rest of my glass and helped myself to another.
Pietro and I had spent a whole year at the mercy of HYDRA, undergoing invasive experimentation and their idea of 'training'—brutal, endless exercises that had nearly broken me time and time again. Then we'd gone on the run from the Avengers, Kamar-taj had tried to banish me from the world, there'd been the mess in Wakanda… we finally eventually managed to sit down with the Avengers, but then there'd been barely any time to breathe before Eliza had fucked everything up. So much had happened.
Nat and Pietro were right. I'd run myself completely ragged. I hadn't taken the time to really process any of what had happened to me—what was still happening to me. I was making mistakes. I was always, always, always rushing around. What I really needed to do right now was slow down. Take some time to get my head on straight. Not everything needed to be a crisis. I had time. I had so much time. I just needed to start acting like it.
I still had no idea who or what I was. At first, I'd thought I was someone else, another mind that had been dropped into Wanda's body. Okay. Isekai. Transmigration. These were things I understood, even if the 'how' or 'why' eluded me. Then, it turned out that my soul was actually identical to Wanda's. Pietro told me that I'd been acting like Wanda the whole time. I started to recall bits and pieces of my memories from before HYDRA. Okay, so there was still Wanda in me, or I was Wanda and had just been given memories from elsewhere, or whatever. That was fine, that had still made some sort of sense.
But then, more recently, I'd started to remember bits and pieces from the original Wanda's life, from her perspective, that hadn't even happened in this timeline. I remembered using my magic to tear apart Ultron's drones, fighting through Novi Grad to stop him and ripping his heart out when Pietro had died. I remembered falling in love with Vision. I remembered him dying. I remembered my children—Billy and Tommy—and I remembered losing them, as well. I could feel the ragged holes that their absences had left inside me. What did that mean? How was that possible? I had no clues, nothing even pointing at a direction that might lead me to answers.
I needed to understand my magic better, too, but I had no idea what the best way to do that was. I wished that Kamar‑taj wasn't still so inaccessible to me—I didn't really know anywhere else I could learn about witchcraft. The Ancient One had said our truce still stood, but being willing to work with us to stop Eliza and Kaecilius was vastly different to being willing to provide me with tools that would actively empower me. Even if she wasn't as worried about me as a threat from another world anymore, I was still the Scarlet Witch and she knew the prophecies about me as well as anyone.
The Hex I'd created in Wakanda was even more of a flawed mess than what had happened at Westview in the original timeline and I didn't know why. I wanted to try again, but I didn't even know where to start understanding what I'd done wrong or how to do better next time.
Westview. God, even thinking about it was painful.
Then again, if I was remembering things from the original timeline—if I did have some connection to that version of myself—then maybe that was my clue? My lead? Fighting Eliza had triggered memories of Ultron. There was the familiarity I felt at the Avengers compound. If I was really serious about working through my issues, maybe this was a potential avenue to better understanding of what had happened to me? If I paid a visit to Westview, it might also kickstart some memories about the Hex and what I might need to fully awaken my chaos magic. To harness my full potential as the Scarlet Witch.
I bit my lip. Part of me rebelled at the idea; I really, really didn't want to go to Westview. Knowing my luck, the place would just be a fucked-up minefield of bad memories.
If I did go, it would almost definitely be bad idea to do it by myself. Part of me didn't want to bother anyone with this. This was just me sorting through my shit. I didn't want to be any more of a burden then I already was. But part of being better about my issues was remembering that I had people who cared about me. Nat had directly told me to ask for her help if I needed it. If I decided to go, without asking for support, and something bad happened… No. I couldn't do that. I'd talk to Nat and Pietro. Plan a trip for sometime next week, maybe, and ask if they'd come with me. After I'd had at least a little bit of time to process and relax.
There were a few other things that would be happening first, in any case. The Stark Relief Foundation had been picking up Peter's medical bills, as I'd hoped they would—I'd been told that he'd been recovering extremely well. After I went and got him fucking shot, I mean. I felt a knot in my stomach as I thought about him. He had every right to blame me for what had happened. Did he hate me, for almost getting him killed? For putting Ned and May in danger? For effectively outing him to them? Part of me thought it might be better if I just left him to the Avengers and cut myself out of the equation entirely, but I also wasn't sure if that was because it would be best for Peter or because I just didn't know how I was going to face him.
The sound of hurried footsteps outside the apartment, followed by someone running into the front door hard enough to shake it in its frame, suddenly roused me from my thoughts. I rose to my feet, facing toward the door, instinctively calling wisps of chaos magic to my hands. After a brief struggle with the door, Yelena burst into the apartment, slamming the door behind her before leaning back against it, practically gasping for air. After a brief second, she looked over and saw me—our eyes met and she froze. She swallowed, trying and failing to get her breathing under control. "Hey," she said, with poorly feigned nonchalance.
"…Hi?" I responded hesitantly, hands still held at the ready. "What's going on?"
She didn't respond right away, staring at me like a deer caught in headlights. "…What?" she asked after a moment, as if there was no possible reason anything would be currently going on right now.
My eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What did you do?"
Yelena straightened up, double-checking that the door was locked behind her, then took a few steps forward, shrugging her shoulders dismissively. "Nothing."
"I thought the Red Room trained better liars. What did you do?"
"Nobody died!" she said, a little defensively.
I dropped my hands to my sides, letting the magic I'd conjured dissipate. "What kind of an answer is that?!"
Yelena finally spied the bottles of alcohol in front of me, an unrecognisable, fleeting expression flickering across her face as she glanced around the dark apartment. "Were you just drinking by yourself in here?"
"No, no, no, you don't get to just change the subject."
She ignored me, stepped briefly over to the kitchen to retrieve another glass before returning and plopping down heavily on the couch. "This is my bed, you know," she said, a little petulantly. "I don't go around sitting on your bed when you're not here." She grabbed my bottle of scotch and helped herself to what looked like a triple, knocking the whole thing back in a single gulp, grimacing slightly as she swallowed and letting out a vaguely pained sigh.
I sat back down next to her. "Sure, Yelena, you can have some of my scotch," I said, my tone sending a little petulance right back at her.
"Don't mind if I do." She refilled her glass.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?"
"No. It's fine. Nothing important." She hesitated for a moment. "Nothing you need to worry about, at least," she amended. She twisted on the couch, bringing one of her legs up under herself so she could face me properly. She motioned to the alcohol bottles. "What have you been doing?"
"Just… thinking," I said.
"Thinking about what?"
"Oh, you know. The horrors."
Yelena blinked. "…and by 'horrors' you mean?"
I smirked and shook my head. I supposed that uncertainty was fair. Given my 'visions', I very well could have actually meant that literally. "Just life. Everything that's happened. Stuff that still needs to happen."
"Right. The horrors. Hilarious."
"You make jokes sometimes, too, you know," I said wryly.
"Yes, but my jokes are good jokes, because I have things like self-respect. And dignity." She gestured vaguely toward me. "Things you are clearly not burdened with."
That made me chuckle. "Fair."
Yelena grinned back, eyes glinting with the reflected light of the TV. "Seriously. What's up?"
On the TV in front of us, Laura Prepon pinned a blonde woman to the floor as they started angrily making out. "You know," I said, my attention held briefly by the scene. "I've never actually watched this show properly. Maybe I should."
"Ugh, что только я для тебя не делаю."
"Natasha asked you to keep an eye on me, didn't she?"
Yelena paused, tilting her head to one side and weighing my expression. "She did. But that's not why I'm asking," she said, shaking her head. "I still owe you, too. A little."
I reached out, grabbing the bottle of scotch. I poured myself another glass, then leant over to top up Yelena's as well before clinking them together.
--
"So then Eliza impaled me on her sword-hand, like, right through here." I tapped the middle of my torso. "And lifted me up into the air like a shish kabob."
"No, but that wouldn't work," Yelena argued, scrunching up her face and shaking her head. Her words weren't slurred, exactly, but her accent was coming out a lot thicker than usual. "Your body weight would pull you down and it'd cut you in half." She reached over, poking me in the spot I had indicated with a finger, then swiped it upwards demonstratively, making a cutting sound with her mouth as she flicked over a quick path up my chest, through my collarbone and out my shoulder.
"Yeah, but she did something," I countered. "Reconfigured her arm inside me so that that wouldn't happen, so she could monologue some more before she killed me."
"Why? That's dumb. You're both dumb. She could have just killed you with the sword that she was literally already stabbing you with."
"She could have. I mean, she was using some pretty…" I paused briefly, trying to keep a straight face, "…cutting-edge technology."
Yelena groaned and threw her head back against the couch dramatically. "Why are you like this? You could be literally any other way."
"The more visceral a reaction I provoke from you, the more it nourishes me," I teased.
"I need another drink."
I obliged her with a grin. We'd already polished off what had been left of my second bottle of scotch and had moved on to a third. "But yeah, when she was talking, I managed to slap her with Wanda-3. She went down and… that was it. Done."
"I still think there had to have been a better way to do things. Creating another AI was a huge risk."
"Eh. It worked, didn't it?" I rubbed at my formerly-severed fingers absently. "I've actually been vaguely thinking about maybe getting a tattoo," I said. Yelena side-eyed me, her expression flat, as though she couldn't tell whether I was joking or not. "…What?"
She shifted position, letting out a small, involuntary grunt of effort as she straightened up and looked at me seriously. "You're not also going to try cutting your own bangs, right?"
I snorted. "It's not like that. To memorialise Wanda-3, I mean. She didn't have a body to bury or anything like that. It doesn't feel like there's any closure there; I don't really have anything physical to remember her by and I'd really like to. Remember her, that is."
"I mean… I guess that sounds like it could be a good idea?" Yelena said uncertainly, slightly listing to one side.
"Oh. That reminds me, I really need to check with Bucky and make sure he's actually going to therapy still."
Yelena let out a soft snort of amusement. "What about you? Shouldn't you be in therapy?"
"Maybe. I don't know. I've tried therapy before. It didn't suit me," I said, shaking my head. I tilted my glass in her direction. "What about you? You've got plenty of your own trauma to unpack."
"The Stark Relief Foundation has a support group for ex-Widows. I went once or twice." She grimaced, then shot me a wry smile. "It didn't suit me."
"What, then?"
"What, what?"
"What are you, you know, doing? You go out a lot but I don't know what you've been up to."
Yelena frowned. "I don't know, really," she confessed. "It's hard, you know? I've never had to decide what to do with myself before. I've just been… around. I don't really know what I want."
"No one really starts out knowing exactly what they want out of life. You missed out on a lot of time because of the Red Room—time you'd normally have had to work things out a bit," I said, taking another swig of alcohol. "Have you thought about joining the Avengers? They'd take you in a heartbeat, I think."
She pulled a face. "Ugh. No. I don't want to be a fancy hero on kids' lunchboxes. That's Natasha's world."
"I understand wanting something for yourself, but don't knock it 'til you try it." I leaned over to nudge her with my shoulder. "Nat's a little bit fixated on being an Avenger. She still feels so much guilt over all the things she did when she was with the Red Room and, for her, it's a way of making up for things. Uh, not that I think either of you should feel guilty or have anything to make up for. None of that was your fault. All I mean is… she's an Avenger because she wants to do something good with her life. At least, that's how it started. They're her family now, just as much as you are. Family's important. Speaking of—"
"If you ask me about Alexei I will punch you," Yelena interrupted me.
"Things going that well, huh?" I let out a small laugh. "Fair enough."
There were a few moments of companionable silence before she spoke again. "…Maybe I should get a tattoo."
I perked up, beaming at her. "A symbol of asserting ownership over your own body, after having it controlled by someone else for so long. Yes! I love it." My eyes widened as a thought occurred to me. "We could get tattoos together! I mean, like, not the same tattoo, obviously, but we could go together. If you wanted to, I mean."
Yelena chuckled, shaking her head. "You're such a dork."
I stood up and started to pace, prowling restlessly back and forth in front of the couch. "What's the time?"
"We are not going to go get drunk tattoos at…" she checked her phone. "Eleven thirty at night."
"Not that," I shook my head. "It's still early. We should go out. Oh! We could go do karaoke!"
Yelena shot me a flat look. "I am not doing karaoke."
Reaching down, I took her by her wrist, hauled her to her feet, and started steering her toward the door. "Come on!"
"This is unfair!" Yelena protested, struggling not to laugh as I pushed at her, disbelief warring with amusement in her tone as she barely managed to put her glass down on the table before I moved her past it. "I'm drunk and you're unreasonably strong!"
I bulldozed over her objections, insistently prodding her toward the door. Yelena complained the whole way, but, even so, less than twenty minutes later she was right next to me, belting out Don McLean's American Pie at the top of her lungs.
It ended up being a pretty good night.
I sat alone in Natasha's apartment. The lights were off but the TV was on, Netflix playing through season three of Orange Is the New Black. The volume was almost all the way down and I wasn't really watching it at all—I just liked to have something playing in the background. It already felt a little sad to be sitting here by myself, drinking, and it'd be a lot worse if I was sitting entirely in the dark. The images flashing by on screen just did the bare minimum to draw my brain back into the present, letting me still actually process thoughts instead of just staring blankly ahead.
Two bottles of Teacher's sat on the coffee table; one was completely empty and I'd made a start on the second. While the benefits of having taken the Heart-Shaped Herb far outweighed the negatives, it was still extremely disappointing that I was almost immune to mortal alcohol. In the memories I had from another life—now that I was removed from the situation, with the perspective I had on it all now—I was pretty sure I'd been a high-functioning alcoholic and I was really starting to miss being able to get drunk. Maybe I should try Everclear? I was pretty sure there was a 95 per cent version; that might work. I thought I was starting to feel a little bit of a buzz, but it was faint and I might have just been imagining it. I'd definitely have to see if I could get more of that Asgardian liquor once Thor got back. They had to have barrels of the stuff, right? Surely they could spare one.
With any luck, it wouldn't take too long for the Asgardian prince to return with news on the Celestial front. I grimaced to myself, thinking about it. I'd realised a little while ago that I'd probably messed up a bit with the way I'd handled the whole Odin-Loki situation. When I'd first met with the Avengers, I'd held off on telling Thor about what his brother was up to—from his perspective, he'd watched Loki nobly sacrifice his life in a final glorious moment of redemption less than a year ago, and was still grieving his loss. I'd worried that he would respond poorly to me just immediately dumping the truth on him right away… 'Oh, hey, by the way, your brother didn't actually sacrifice himself, he's just as much of a shit as ever' had seemed like a tricky sell.
However, immediately after the successful mission to take down the Red Room had probably been the perfect time to tell him. The mission had pretty definitively established my credentials and earned me the benefit of the doubt with the Avengers. It had almost certainly been enough that Thor would have at least listened without getting angry at me for sullying the memory of his lost brother. I'd just been so distracted at the time, thanks to everything that was happening with Natasha, and by the time I remembered that I'd needed to tell him he'd already departed for Asgard.
When it came down to it, though, it was yet another thing that I didn't actually need to rush on. There were still at least two full years before Ragnarök had occurred in the original timeline, so a couple of extra weeks or months with Odin in a retirement home was probably not going to make a big difference. It was still Thor's personal, family business, so it wouldn't really feel right trying to deal with it behind his back before he returned. I'd wait 'til he got back, then broach the topic whenever it seemed appropriate. Thor might be a little annoyed that I'd held off on telling him about it, but still, I couldn't imagine it would really matter in the long run. He might have even found out on his own by now, in any case—I'd given him lots of things to question 'Odin' about and, when it came down to it, Loki was kind of a terrible actor.
I was a little worried that Thor's little excursion to Omnipotence City had been a wild goose chase, too. I still didn't really have any other good ideas or answers when it came to dealing with the nascent Celestial that was growing within the Earth. The Emergence wouldn't happen for another two or three years, so we still had plenty of time to come up with something, but it was harder to take the long view on something like that when we didn't have any viable plans to deal with it. Maybe it would be worth reaching out to a couple of the Eternals, after all.
Ikaris would probably eventually be a problem no matter what, but the rest of the Eternals were basically just trying to live their lives in peace. I didn't want to drag them into things if I didn't have to but, when it came right down to it, their Uni-Mind was the only thing I knew for a fact could stop the Emergence. I just didn't know how they'd react at this point. Ajak was the only one who knew the truth about their mission. The Blip—humanity being capable of something that saved half the universe—had been what had swayed her, the thing that had caused her to doubt their mission after millions of years. Without that happening, I had no idea what she or the others would do. A couple might side with us, but we couldn't rely on most of them and, if it turned out they didn't want to help, then alerting them to our plans to stop the Emergence risked having them become enemies instead.
Then again, I'd already thought several times about reaching out to Gilgamesh and Thena, living in their self-imposed exile in the Australian Outback. The Mahd Wy'ry that Thena suffered from was essentially a degenerative mental condition, with memories from former lives she'd led 'leaking' out into her conscious mind from where her creator had hidden them. I felt like I'd been getting steadily better at repairing damaged or controlled minds—I had no idea if an Eternal's mind was similar enough to a human's that I could help her, but if I could help her it would be a great way to open relations. Even if we didn't go to them for help with the Emergence, they could still potentially prove to be powerful allies. I'd put it on the list; something to do in the next couple of weeks if Thor hadn't returned by then.
Speaking of damaged minds… I still needed to fix Bucky. I was refreshing the wards keeping the Winter Soldier persona at bay every so often, but hadn't quite worked out how to fully undo what was effectively decades of botched, amateur psychic surgery that HYDRA had wrought on his mind. Ironically, it seemed like the refined nature of something like the Red Room's chemical control process had been easier for me to deal with than the mess that was going on in Bucky's head was.
Or the mess that was going on in mine, for that matter. There was still so much else to do, but taking care of myself was the priority right now. Everything else could wait; there was nothing pressing that I needed to take action on anytime soon. I took a deep breath, making a deliberate effort to push it all out of my mind for now, then drained the rest of my glass and helped myself to another.
Pietro and I had spent a whole year at the mercy of HYDRA, undergoing invasive experimentation and their idea of 'training'—brutal, endless exercises that had nearly broken me time and time again. Then we'd gone on the run from the Avengers, Kamar-taj had tried to banish me from the world, there'd been the mess in Wakanda… we finally eventually managed to sit down with the Avengers, but then there'd been barely any time to breathe before Eliza had fucked everything up. So much had happened.
Nat and Pietro were right. I'd run myself completely ragged. I hadn't taken the time to really process any of what had happened to me—what was still happening to me. I was making mistakes. I was always, always, always rushing around. What I really needed to do right now was slow down. Take some time to get my head on straight. Not everything needed to be a crisis. I had time. I had so much time. I just needed to start acting like it.
I still had no idea who or what I was. At first, I'd thought I was someone else, another mind that had been dropped into Wanda's body. Okay. Isekai. Transmigration. These were things I understood, even if the 'how' or 'why' eluded me. Then, it turned out that my soul was actually identical to Wanda's. Pietro told me that I'd been acting like Wanda the whole time. I started to recall bits and pieces of my memories from before HYDRA. Okay, so there was still Wanda in me, or I was Wanda and had just been given memories from elsewhere, or whatever. That was fine, that had still made some sort of sense.
But then, more recently, I'd started to remember bits and pieces from the original Wanda's life, from her perspective, that hadn't even happened in this timeline. I remembered using my magic to tear apart Ultron's drones, fighting through Novi Grad to stop him and ripping his heart out when Pietro had died. I remembered falling in love with Vision. I remembered him dying. I remembered my children—Billy and Tommy—and I remembered losing them, as well. I could feel the ragged holes that their absences had left inside me. What did that mean? How was that possible? I had no clues, nothing even pointing at a direction that might lead me to answers.
I needed to understand my magic better, too, but I had no idea what the best way to do that was. I wished that Kamar‑taj wasn't still so inaccessible to me—I didn't really know anywhere else I could learn about witchcraft. The Ancient One had said our truce still stood, but being willing to work with us to stop Eliza and Kaecilius was vastly different to being willing to provide me with tools that would actively empower me. Even if she wasn't as worried about me as a threat from another world anymore, I was still the Scarlet Witch and she knew the prophecies about me as well as anyone.
The Hex I'd created in Wakanda was even more of a flawed mess than what had happened at Westview in the original timeline and I didn't know why. I wanted to try again, but I didn't even know where to start understanding what I'd done wrong or how to do better next time.
Westview. God, even thinking about it was painful.
Then again, if I was remembering things from the original timeline—if I did have some connection to that version of myself—then maybe that was my clue? My lead? Fighting Eliza had triggered memories of Ultron. There was the familiarity I felt at the Avengers compound. If I was really serious about working through my issues, maybe this was a potential avenue to better understanding of what had happened to me? If I paid a visit to Westview, it might also kickstart some memories about the Hex and what I might need to fully awaken my chaos magic. To harness my full potential as the Scarlet Witch.
I bit my lip. Part of me rebelled at the idea; I really, really didn't want to go to Westview. Knowing my luck, the place would just be a fucked-up minefield of bad memories.
If I did go, it would almost definitely be bad idea to do it by myself. Part of me didn't want to bother anyone with this. This was just me sorting through my shit. I didn't want to be any more of a burden then I already was. But part of being better about my issues was remembering that I had people who cared about me. Nat had directly told me to ask for her help if I needed it. If I decided to go, without asking for support, and something bad happened… No. I couldn't do that. I'd talk to Nat and Pietro. Plan a trip for sometime next week, maybe, and ask if they'd come with me. After I'd had at least a little bit of time to process and relax.
There were a few other things that would be happening first, in any case. The Stark Relief Foundation had been picking up Peter's medical bills, as I'd hoped they would—I'd been told that he'd been recovering extremely well. After I went and got him fucking shot, I mean. I felt a knot in my stomach as I thought about him. He had every right to blame me for what had happened. Did he hate me, for almost getting him killed? For putting Ned and May in danger? For effectively outing him to them? Part of me thought it might be better if I just left him to the Avengers and cut myself out of the equation entirely, but I also wasn't sure if that was because it would be best for Peter or because I just didn't know how I was going to face him.
The sound of hurried footsteps outside the apartment, followed by someone running into the front door hard enough to shake it in its frame, suddenly roused me from my thoughts. I rose to my feet, facing toward the door, instinctively calling wisps of chaos magic to my hands. After a brief struggle with the door, Yelena burst into the apartment, slamming the door behind her before leaning back against it, practically gasping for air. After a brief second, she looked over and saw me—our eyes met and she froze. She swallowed, trying and failing to get her breathing under control. "Hey," she said, with poorly feigned nonchalance.
"…Hi?" I responded hesitantly, hands still held at the ready. "What's going on?"
She didn't respond right away, staring at me like a deer caught in headlights. "…What?" she asked after a moment, as if there was no possible reason anything would be currently going on right now.
My eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What did you do?"
Yelena straightened up, double-checking that the door was locked behind her, then took a few steps forward, shrugging her shoulders dismissively. "Nothing."
"I thought the Red Room trained better liars. What did you do?"
"Nobody died!" she said, a little defensively.
I dropped my hands to my sides, letting the magic I'd conjured dissipate. "What kind of an answer is that?!"
Yelena finally spied the bottles of alcohol in front of me, an unrecognisable, fleeting expression flickering across her face as she glanced around the dark apartment. "Were you just drinking by yourself in here?"
"No, no, no, you don't get to just change the subject."
She ignored me, stepped briefly over to the kitchen to retrieve another glass before returning and plopping down heavily on the couch. "This is my bed, you know," she said, a little petulantly. "I don't go around sitting on your bed when you're not here." She grabbed my bottle of scotch and helped herself to what looked like a triple, knocking the whole thing back in a single gulp, grimacing slightly as she swallowed and letting out a vaguely pained sigh.
I sat back down next to her. "Sure, Yelena, you can have some of my scotch," I said, my tone sending a little petulance right back at her.
"Don't mind if I do." She refilled her glass.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?"
"No. It's fine. Nothing important." She hesitated for a moment. "Nothing you need to worry about, at least," she amended. She twisted on the couch, bringing one of her legs up under herself so she could face me properly. She motioned to the alcohol bottles. "What have you been doing?"
"Just… thinking," I said.
"Thinking about what?"
"Oh, you know. The horrors."
Yelena blinked. "…and by 'horrors' you mean?"
I smirked and shook my head. I supposed that uncertainty was fair. Given my 'visions', I very well could have actually meant that literally. "Just life. Everything that's happened. Stuff that still needs to happen."
"Right. The horrors. Hilarious."
"You make jokes sometimes, too, you know," I said wryly.
"Yes, but my jokes are good jokes, because I have things like self-respect. And dignity." She gestured vaguely toward me. "Things you are clearly not burdened with."
That made me chuckle. "Fair."
Yelena grinned back, eyes glinting with the reflected light of the TV. "Seriously. What's up?"
On the TV in front of us, Laura Prepon pinned a blonde woman to the floor as they started angrily making out. "You know," I said, my attention held briefly by the scene. "I've never actually watched this show properly. Maybe I should."
"Ugh, что только я для тебя не делаю."
"Natasha asked you to keep an eye on me, didn't she?"
Yelena paused, tilting her head to one side and weighing my expression. "She did. But that's not why I'm asking," she said, shaking her head. "I still owe you, too. A little."
I reached out, grabbing the bottle of scotch. I poured myself another glass, then leant over to top up Yelena's as well before clinking them together.
--
"So then Eliza impaled me on her sword-hand, like, right through here." I tapped the middle of my torso. "And lifted me up into the air like a shish kabob."
"No, but that wouldn't work," Yelena argued, scrunching up her face and shaking her head. Her words weren't slurred, exactly, but her accent was coming out a lot thicker than usual. "Your body weight would pull you down and it'd cut you in half." She reached over, poking me in the spot I had indicated with a finger, then swiped it upwards demonstratively, making a cutting sound with her mouth as she flicked over a quick path up my chest, through my collarbone and out my shoulder.
"Yeah, but she did something," I countered. "Reconfigured her arm inside me so that that wouldn't happen, so she could monologue some more before she killed me."
"Why? That's dumb. You're both dumb. She could have just killed you with the sword that she was literally already stabbing you with."
"She could have. I mean, she was using some pretty…" I paused briefly, trying to keep a straight face, "…cutting-edge technology."
Yelena groaned and threw her head back against the couch dramatically. "Why are you like this? You could be literally any other way."
"The more visceral a reaction I provoke from you, the more it nourishes me," I teased.
"I need another drink."
I obliged her with a grin. We'd already polished off what had been left of my second bottle of scotch and had moved on to a third. "But yeah, when she was talking, I managed to slap her with Wanda-3. She went down and… that was it. Done."
"I still think there had to have been a better way to do things. Creating another AI was a huge risk."
"Eh. It worked, didn't it?" I rubbed at my formerly-severed fingers absently. "I've actually been vaguely thinking about maybe getting a tattoo," I said. Yelena side-eyed me, her expression flat, as though she couldn't tell whether I was joking or not. "…What?"
She shifted position, letting out a small, involuntary grunt of effort as she straightened up and looked at me seriously. "You're not also going to try cutting your own bangs, right?"
I snorted. "It's not like that. To memorialise Wanda-3, I mean. She didn't have a body to bury or anything like that. It doesn't feel like there's any closure there; I don't really have anything physical to remember her by and I'd really like to. Remember her, that is."
"I mean… I guess that sounds like it could be a good idea?" Yelena said uncertainly, slightly listing to one side.
"Oh. That reminds me, I really need to check with Bucky and make sure he's actually going to therapy still."
Yelena let out a soft snort of amusement. "What about you? Shouldn't you be in therapy?"
"Maybe. I don't know. I've tried therapy before. It didn't suit me," I said, shaking my head. I tilted my glass in her direction. "What about you? You've got plenty of your own trauma to unpack."
"The Stark Relief Foundation has a support group for ex-Widows. I went once or twice." She grimaced, then shot me a wry smile. "It didn't suit me."
"What, then?"
"What, what?"
"What are you, you know, doing? You go out a lot but I don't know what you've been up to."
Yelena frowned. "I don't know, really," she confessed. "It's hard, you know? I've never had to decide what to do with myself before. I've just been… around. I don't really know what I want."
"No one really starts out knowing exactly what they want out of life. You missed out on a lot of time because of the Red Room—time you'd normally have had to work things out a bit," I said, taking another swig of alcohol. "Have you thought about joining the Avengers? They'd take you in a heartbeat, I think."
She pulled a face. "Ugh. No. I don't want to be a fancy hero on kids' lunchboxes. That's Natasha's world."
"I understand wanting something for yourself, but don't knock it 'til you try it." I leaned over to nudge her with my shoulder. "Nat's a little bit fixated on being an Avenger. She still feels so much guilt over all the things she did when she was with the Red Room and, for her, it's a way of making up for things. Uh, not that I think either of you should feel guilty or have anything to make up for. None of that was your fault. All I mean is… she's an Avenger because she wants to do something good with her life. At least, that's how it started. They're her family now, just as much as you are. Family's important. Speaking of—"
"If you ask me about Alexei I will punch you," Yelena interrupted me.
"Things going that well, huh?" I let out a small laugh. "Fair enough."
There were a few moments of companionable silence before she spoke again. "…Maybe I should get a tattoo."
I perked up, beaming at her. "A symbol of asserting ownership over your own body, after having it controlled by someone else for so long. Yes! I love it." My eyes widened as a thought occurred to me. "We could get tattoos together! I mean, like, not the same tattoo, obviously, but we could go together. If you wanted to, I mean."
Yelena chuckled, shaking her head. "You're such a dork."
I stood up and started to pace, prowling restlessly back and forth in front of the couch. "What's the time?"
"We are not going to go get drunk tattoos at…" she checked her phone. "Eleven thirty at night."
"Not that," I shook my head. "It's still early. We should go out. Oh! We could go do karaoke!"
Yelena shot me a flat look. "I am not doing karaoke."
Reaching down, I took her by her wrist, hauled her to her feet, and started steering her toward the door. "Come on!"
"This is unfair!" Yelena protested, struggling not to laugh as I pushed at her, disbelief warring with amusement in her tone as she barely managed to put her glass down on the table before I moved her past it. "I'm drunk and you're unreasonably strong!"
I bulldozed over her objections, insistently prodding her toward the door. Yelena complained the whole way, but, even so, less than twenty minutes later she was right next to me, belting out Don McLean's American Pie at the top of her lungs.
It ended up being a pretty good night.
Last edited:
Chapter 68
mythSSK
Wanda Wannabe
Chapter 68
"We are extending a great deal of trust, here," King T'Chaka said, his expression serious. "Not all agree that this is wise."
"Baba, if we have learned anything from recent days, it is that we have no other choice. Wakanda can no longer simply watch from the shadows." T'Challa turned, casting his gaze around the throne room and lingering on several of the other, less-impressed looking occupants as he spoke. He was talking to them, more than his father. The king had already made his decision; this little back and forth was mostly just for the Council's benefit. "There are threats in this world—and from beyond it—that Wakanda cannot handle alone. If we are to survive, we must pool our knowledge and resources with trusted allies in the outside world."
M'Kathu—elder of the Border Tribe, his face covered in scarred bumps that mimicked the skin of a crocodile—shook his head and scoffed. "'Trusted' allies like a former arms dealer and the remnants of an American spy agency."
"Tony Stark risked his life alongside my sister and I, as did all of the Avengers," T'Challa reminded them. "He has seen the errors of his past and dedicated his life to protecting the world. Beyond this, he is a truly brilliant man, and the only one I have ever seen meet my sister on an even footing. We will gain much from working with him."
"And what's to stop the Avengers from turning over our secrets to the US Government and other nations? Revealing us to the world?"
"Nothing," T'Challa responded simply. "But if that was going to happen, it is too late to stop it in any case. The Avengers already have much knowledge of our country and our technology. If they wished to betray us, they could simply do so now."
"That is not terribly convincing or reassuring," Zawavari, elder of the Mining Tribe, said, shooting him a wry look as she smoothed out her intricately-patterned blue dress.
"Tony Stark has firmly and repeatedly rejected the efforts of the US Government to obtain his own technology. The Avengers stand to gain many more benefits from holding our trust than they would in outing us to the world. It would be senseless. There are risks involved in this partnership with the Avengers, but they are far outweighed by the potential benefits to our people."
"Benefits that include access to Dr Bruce Banner," M'Kathu pointed out. "Your concerns about your sister's condition are shared by us all, but that does not mean we should risk—"
T'Challa cut him off sharply, a small spike of anger in his tone. "My sister's condition is none of this Council's concern." He paused and sighed loudly, shaking his head as he looked around at the gathered elders. "It is time we consider opening ourselves more to the world. Finally coming out of the shadows. We gain nothing from burying our heads in the sand and continuing on as we always have. Now, more than ever, illusions of division threaten our very existence. In times of crisis, the wise build bridges, while the foolish cower behind barriers."
The Border Tribe elder scowled at him. "Mind your words. You are not king yet. Wakanda's barriers have protected our people for thousands of years."
"And yet, what my son says rings true to my ears," said King T'Chaka, raising a hand to silence the other man. "I have already heard your protests and concerns. This is not my son's decision—it is mine. Vibranium was stolen from us and used to create terrible weapons. Without the Avengers and their allies, Wakanda would have been overcome."
T'Challa nodded firmly at his father, raising his voice slightly as he addressed the Tribal Council once again. "We can no longer stand with our backs to the rest of the world, lest we find a dagger in it. We must instead face forward, a hand extended in peace. We all know the truth—there is more that connects the people of this world than separates us. We must find a way forward, together, as if we were one single tribe."
"And what of the Red Woman?" Zawavari asked mildly. She moved her foot, gently prodding at the claw-like gouges that Wanda Maximoff had carved into the raw stone of the floor between them with the toe of her shoe.
The scars in the rock had since been filled in with silver-black vibranium, textured to look almost molten. T'Challa wasn't completely sure why his father had chosen to memorialise the Red Woman's visit in such a way, rather than to erase the marks. Then again, they did look vaguely like the marks left by a panther's paws, and Wanda—much to T'Challa's ongoing frustration—still held the blessing of the goddess.
"The Red Woman is no longer our concern," T'Challa said firmly, trying not to think about the last conversation he had had with Shuri about the woman. There had been shouting. "The king has rendered his judgement."
"If there is nothing further," the king added, quickly interceding to cut off whatever comments the elders were about to unleash. "I believe my son has a plane to catch." T'Challa's father smiled at him and nodded, dismissing him.
T'Challa bowed his head deeply. "Thank you, baba. I will report back to the Council upon my return."
With that, he turned and left—the Border Tribesmen standing at attention at the entrance to the throne room opening the doors for him before he turned and headed down the hallway leading to the Royal Talon's landing pad.
Less than fifteen minutes later, he had touched down on one of the landing zones flanking the main building at the Great Mound facility and headed inside. Catching the elevator down to Shuri's personal lab, he emerged to find her carefully going over the contents of a hovering trolley laden high with metal crates, checking it against some sort of checklist or other inventory projected on a holographic display above her wrist. The trolley was one of five—vibranium and other supplies that Shuri intended on taking with her to the Avengers compound. His sister was so focused on her task that she did not immediately react to T'Challa's presence, her lips forming the outlines of words as she spoke to herself quietly under her breath, her face a mask of concentration.
"Women always pack too much," T'Challa joked, to catch her attention. "I am not sure there is enough room in the Royal Talon for all of this."
"This is not a holiday, brother. Everything here is necessary," Shuri said tightly—a bare instant later, her shoulders relaxed and she shot him a slightly apologetic smile. She crossed her arms over her chest and he mimicked her, both of them lightly tapping their chests with closed fists. "I'm nervous," she confessed.
"I would be amazed if you were not," T'Challa said with a sympathetic smile. "This will be your first time away from Wakanda."
"It's not that," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "I'm just… I don't know. It will be interesting to work with Tony Stark and Dr Banner again."
"Is my little sister afraid that she cannot keep up with the big, smart, American men without the full resources of the Great Mound at her fingertips and dozens of staff at her every beck and call?" he teased.
Shuri's eyes blazed as she rounded on him. "Careful, brother. It is not wise to make me angry, these days. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
T'Challa grinned, holding up his hands in a silent apology. Though Shuri hadn't directly admitted it, he knew that she had really enjoyed working with the Avengers despite the circumstances of their meeting. While his sister was obviously already used to working with others, she was also used to being the smartest person in the room by a significant margin, and with Tony Stark that position was no longer certain. The man had managed to push and challenge her in new ways, forcing her out of complacent habits and to evaluate things from angles she hadn't considered before. T'Challa was certain that this little temporary residency would be nothing but good for her.
His sister reached over, shoving his chest playfully, then gestured at the assorted materials in front of her. "Give me a hand with all of this," she ordered.
Nearly three hours later, the Royal Talon was sitting on a small landing pad outside the main hanger of the Avengers compound in upstate New York, a pair of Dora Milaje unloading the overstuffed cargo compartment. A stocky, broad-shouldered man with short, dark hair, wearing a suit and tie—Happy, Stark had called him—was trying to lend them some assistance and being amusingly stymied at every turn.
"Looks like you brought half the Great Mound with you," Stark said to Shuri, grinning lightly. "That's a lot of vibranium."
"I've brought some gifts for the team—the prosthetics we talked about, among other things," she said with a nod, pausing before shooting him a mildly smug smile. "Also, after your ancient, lumbering wreck of a suit gave out, I thought perhaps you might be interested in my ideas for some upgrades."
"Christmas, huh?" Dr Banner said brightly, glancing toward his colleague.
Stark's expression had turned thoughtful, wheels already turning in his head. "I am very interested in taking a deeper dive into your nanotech. I may have some ideas myself."
"I suppose I can humour an old man," Shuri said with a sniff.
"A couple of old men," Dr Banner replied with an easy smile. "The facilities here aren't going to be quite what you're used to, I'm afraid—we're still not quite done installing everything in the labs. Getting there, though."
"I'm sure it will do for now. I'll probably have to do some redecorating anyway—American design sensibilities leave much to be desired. How am I supposed to think properly in such a bland environment?" A moment after she'd spoken, Shuri's whole body tensed up, her expression turning wooden, and she almost immediately turned and walked back over to where her belongings were being unloaded.
"Shuri? What—" T'Challa stopped as he noticed that Pietro Maximoff had just stepped out of the nearby main entrance to the hangar.
The younger man stopped, hesitating for a moment, then walked over, closing the distance between them. Dr Banner and Stark exchanged an uncomfortable look, but neither of them said anything. "Hi, um, Prince T'Challa," Pietro said, touching his chest and giving an embarrassed sort of half-bow.
T'Challa held up a hand. "We don't do that."
"Uh, sure. Okay."
There was an excruciatingly awkward silence for a moment before Shuri returned, hefting an almost-comically large bag over one shoulder. "Where will I be staying?" she asked Stark stiffly, completely ignoring the Maximoff's presence. "There are a few things I want to drop off in my room."
Stark nodded and held up a hand to catch the attention of his man, Happy, who came hurrying over. He gestured toward the compound's central building, an asymmetrically-shaped structure with the Avengers' logo emblazoned on the side. "Happy can show you to your new room—your quarters. We'll give you the big, proper tour a little later on. Who've we got her between? She's next to Clint, right?"
Happy nodded. "Yeah, at the end, next to Clint."
"Careful, he snores," Stark warned Shuri with a bit of forced joviality. "I mean, the walls are soundproofed, but that man really snores."
T'Challa watched as the stocky man gestured for Shuri to follow him before the two of them headed off toward her new quarters, waiting a few seconds before turning back to Pietro. "She is fine," he said quietly. "Just give her some time."
"Yeah, okay. I might just… um," Pietro said, awkwardly gesturing away from them. "Good to see you again, Prince T'Challa."
The Wakandan prince exhaled softly through his nose, but gave a small nod. "Likewise. As I said, do not mind Shuri. She is just… nervous about being here."
Pietro returned his nod, then turned and left as well.
"Hey, don't worry," Stark said to T'Challa, stepping up beside him. "We'll look after Shuri. You're leaving her in good hands."
T'Challa let out a small chuckle as he turned back to face the other man. "I am not worried about Shuri. She can look after herself." He looked between Stark and Dr Banner. "If there is anything more we can give you that might help with analysing her condition…"
Dr Banner shrugged, a slightly awkward expression on his face. "We'll keep you in the loop, but we still don't know exactly what we're dealing with here."
Next to him, Stark nodded. "This is the best place for her right now. We'll need time to monitor her so we can pick apart how your Herb thing interacted with the gamma radiation to make her, y'know, Hulk out. Make sure it's safe. This isn't the first time we've seen someone affected by Banner's blood, but at least this particular case does seem to be pretty stable."
"You refer to the Abomination." T'Challa's own expression turned pensive, thinking back to the illusion of Emil Blonsky that Eliza had tricked them with during her attack on the Great Mound.
"Shuri seems fine, though!" Bruce interjected hurriedly. "I think if she was going to mutate like that she would have already. Wanda said a while ago that she saw a 'She-Hulk' in her visions, too, and she did okay… though that was my cousin, not your sister."
"I see," T'Challa said, looking pensive. "I am glad of your decision to not allow Wanda Maximoff to formally join the Avengers. Her brother is one thing, but I am not sure that Shuri could have been convinced to stay if she would have had to see Wanda every day."
Tony grimaced a little. "Little Miss Magic does still visit pretty frequently. We're still working together."
"Even so, the extra level of separation helps."
T'Challa was actually hoping that the semi-regular contact with Wanda and Pietro would help Shuri to get over the worst of her feelings toward them. Call it exposure therapy, almost. T'Challa himself still did not completely trust the Red Woman—she had poor judgement, poorer impulse control and far too much raw power at her disposal for that to make her anything but dangerous—but she seemed to at least be trying to do the right thing.
Wanda had known the truth about his cousin and warned them of it, but Eliza's accidental creation had proven that she didn't know everything. It would also not surprise him if there was still information that Wanda was deliberately concealing from the Avengers, picking and choosing what to share from what she'd supposedly seen to deliberately cast herself in a better light.
Stark nodded and there was another awkward pause. After a few seconds, he clapped his hands together. "Well, how about we show you around a bit?"
--
I'd been a little surprised at how big the upstate Avengers compound was, but I honestly had just never really realised how many support staff they had. There were a whole bunch of people working here under the careful eye of Maria Hill—intel officers, sure, but also engineers to service the Quinjets and other bits of equipment that Tony didn't need to handle personally, a whole call centre and public relations division, and a small contingent of workers who maintained the extensive grounds, among others. They generally remained in the outer structures, with only cleaners and similar staff having reason to enter the main central building where the Avengers were quartered. There were also some areas of the compound still being refurbished—obviously, the Avengers had had to move in here a little earlier than in the original timeline, so it wasn't a hundred per cent ready.
The first parking lot off the road leading into the compound was publicly-accessible, next to a security and media centre blocking the entrance to the rest of the grounds, and today it was packed. I didn't need to worry about parking, of course—it was nearly a two-hour drive from Natasha's apartment in the city out to the compound, a timesaving I definitely considered portal-worthy. I arrived in the gardens and snuck in from the back of the building, instead. It was a hive of activity, public relations and security staff everywhere, and I wandered for a minute trying to work out where everyone was before I was intercepted.
"You know," said Happy Hogan, Tony's head of security and general gofer. He shot me a tight smile, but there was a little bit of resentment in his tone. "You could still just come in through the front door, like a normal person. We've got a lot of people in today and it'd make it a lot easier on security."
"Whatever," I responded, rolling my eyes. "You all know who I am."
I let him usher me through to where a few of the Avengers were waiting for the start of the press conference. Tony was near the set of double doors leading to the press room proper, talking to Pepper, absorbed in something that she was showing him on a tablet. Once I was inside, Happy shot me a look and hurried over to his boss, leaving me to my own devices.
On the other side of the room, Clint and Bucky stood talking quietly to Natasha. Nat perked up a little when she saw me, so I headed over to them, nudging her with my shoulder as I arrived. "Hey!"
"Hey." She grinned and nudged me back.
"Clint! Bucky!" I beamed at the two men, taking in their new matching cybernetic arms, banded silver-black vibranium inlaid with intricate, geometric-patterned golden accents. I knew that Shuri was staying at the compound for a little while—what a surprise that had been to hear! I hadn't seen her yet, but that was mostly on purpose; Pietro had told me it was pretty awkward already, and I thought it was better to give the teen a wide berth for now. At least until she'd had time to settle in properly. "Looking sharp! You know you two have to be best friends now, yeah? That's how this works, right?" I said, gesturing between the two of them.
Bucky shook his head, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and Clint chuckled. "Good to see you, too, Wanda."
I paused, my own expression faltering a little. "How're you doing with… everything?" I asked sympathetically.
He shrugged, raising his metal arm and flexing the fingers. "It's weird. It'll take some getting used to, but it's not as hard as I thought it'd be."
I scrunched up my face, tilting my head a little as I glanced between his arm and Bucky's. "Is it crass to say that I'm sort of glad that it wasn't your left arm? I mean, it'd probably be easier if you had interchangeable parts, but I do like that the two of you have sort of a mirror thing going on, now," I said.
Natasha elbowed me, but Clint let out a small snort of amusement. "Yeah. I'm left-handed; it would have been even more of a pain to lose the other one."
Bucky straightened up, looking past me and lifting his chin in a small gesture. "Man of the hour's here," he said.
I spun around to see Pietro and Steve coming down a set of stairs toward us. My brother was wearing what could only be his new 'official' Avengers outfit; a cross between a superhero costume and high-performance athletics gear—grey, silver and dark blue stretch fabric that flatteringly hugged and outlined his figure, with a stylised lightning bolt slashing across the chest from shoulder to hip and small armoured accents.
I wondered if he was a little uncomfortable being the only one 'in uniform', so to speak, but I understood why they'd done it like this. Everyone else was dressed in fairly plain smart casual attire, which meant that eyes would naturally be drawn to Pietro—this was his big debut, after all.
I rushed over and slammed into him, wrapping my arms around him in a tight hug. "Pietro! You look so good!"
He hugged me back, shaking his head and chuckling slightly before extricating himself. "Thanks." I could hear an edge of nerves in his tone.
Next to us, Steve grinned and patted him on the shoulder. "You ready?" he asked.
"Not really," Pietro admitted.
"Don't stress," I said, looking him over and picking off the tiniest bit of fluff that had gotten stuck to the fabric hugging his collarbone. "You just need to smile and look pretty and say something like 'I'm looking forward to being part of the team'."
"I've been coaching him," said Steve, nodding. "He'll do fine."
Of course, that made sense. Out of everyone here, Steve was the one with the most personal experience at being uncomfortably paraded around like a show pony. There was a burst of hubbub behind me and I turned back toward the doors to the press room—it looked like they'd opened briefly to let Pepper and Happy through, with Tony now beelining toward the three of us.
We met him halfway. He shot me a tight smile before turning to Pietro with a serious expression, thrusting his thumb in the direction of the press room. "Alright, Happy Feet. There're about fifty reporters through those doors—real ones, not bloggers. Let's go introduce the world to the newest official member of the Avengers."
Pietro nodded and we continued forward, Nat, Bucky and Clint moving to link up with us. Bruce had appeared from somewhere as well, the full team now assembled and ready to head out.
A woman wearing a headset and holding a clipboard tight against her chest was standing next to the doors as we approached—she muttered something into her mic, then her face lit up in a welcoming smile as we arrived. "Ms Potts is speaking now; we'll send you in in a moment." She glanced in my direction, singling me out. "Ms Maximoff, you'll need to hang back. I'll let you know when you can go in."
My smile faded a little, but I nodded in acknowledgement. It made sense that I had to wait—I wasn't an Avenger, I couldn't walk in as part of the group—but it still stung slightly. I didn't want to be jealous, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that a huge part of me really wanted to be stepping out there right alongside Pietro.
After a little bit, the woman nodded and gestured for the team to enter. As the Avengers pushed the double doors open and filed through, there was another burst of indistinct hubbub from the crowd; I craned my neck to look past, catching a glimpse of the gathered reporters and camera crews before the doors shut again, leaving me standing alone with the media staffer.
She shot me a tight smile and held up a finger, tilting her head to the side as she listened to what was happening in the other room through her headset. A half-dozen seconds crawled agonisingly by before she dropped her hand and nodded, gesturing to the door. "Keep to the left, against the wall. Mr Hogan will be there."
I nodded my thanks, then took a deep breath and pushed through the doors.
"We are extending a great deal of trust, here," King T'Chaka said, his expression serious. "Not all agree that this is wise."
"Baba, if we have learned anything from recent days, it is that we have no other choice. Wakanda can no longer simply watch from the shadows." T'Challa turned, casting his gaze around the throne room and lingering on several of the other, less-impressed looking occupants as he spoke. He was talking to them, more than his father. The king had already made his decision; this little back and forth was mostly just for the Council's benefit. "There are threats in this world—and from beyond it—that Wakanda cannot handle alone. If we are to survive, we must pool our knowledge and resources with trusted allies in the outside world."
M'Kathu—elder of the Border Tribe, his face covered in scarred bumps that mimicked the skin of a crocodile—shook his head and scoffed. "'Trusted' allies like a former arms dealer and the remnants of an American spy agency."
"Tony Stark risked his life alongside my sister and I, as did all of the Avengers," T'Challa reminded them. "He has seen the errors of his past and dedicated his life to protecting the world. Beyond this, he is a truly brilliant man, and the only one I have ever seen meet my sister on an even footing. We will gain much from working with him."
"And what's to stop the Avengers from turning over our secrets to the US Government and other nations? Revealing us to the world?"
"Nothing," T'Challa responded simply. "But if that was going to happen, it is too late to stop it in any case. The Avengers already have much knowledge of our country and our technology. If they wished to betray us, they could simply do so now."
"That is not terribly convincing or reassuring," Zawavari, elder of the Mining Tribe, said, shooting him a wry look as she smoothed out her intricately-patterned blue dress.
"Tony Stark has firmly and repeatedly rejected the efforts of the US Government to obtain his own technology. The Avengers stand to gain many more benefits from holding our trust than they would in outing us to the world. It would be senseless. There are risks involved in this partnership with the Avengers, but they are far outweighed by the potential benefits to our people."
"Benefits that include access to Dr Bruce Banner," M'Kathu pointed out. "Your concerns about your sister's condition are shared by us all, but that does not mean we should risk—"
T'Challa cut him off sharply, a small spike of anger in his tone. "My sister's condition is none of this Council's concern." He paused and sighed loudly, shaking his head as he looked around at the gathered elders. "It is time we consider opening ourselves more to the world. Finally coming out of the shadows. We gain nothing from burying our heads in the sand and continuing on as we always have. Now, more than ever, illusions of division threaten our very existence. In times of crisis, the wise build bridges, while the foolish cower behind barriers."
The Border Tribe elder scowled at him. "Mind your words. You are not king yet. Wakanda's barriers have protected our people for thousands of years."
"And yet, what my son says rings true to my ears," said King T'Chaka, raising a hand to silence the other man. "I have already heard your protests and concerns. This is not my son's decision—it is mine. Vibranium was stolen from us and used to create terrible weapons. Without the Avengers and their allies, Wakanda would have been overcome."
T'Challa nodded firmly at his father, raising his voice slightly as he addressed the Tribal Council once again. "We can no longer stand with our backs to the rest of the world, lest we find a dagger in it. We must instead face forward, a hand extended in peace. We all know the truth—there is more that connects the people of this world than separates us. We must find a way forward, together, as if we were one single tribe."
"And what of the Red Woman?" Zawavari asked mildly. She moved her foot, gently prodding at the claw-like gouges that Wanda Maximoff had carved into the raw stone of the floor between them with the toe of her shoe.
The scars in the rock had since been filled in with silver-black vibranium, textured to look almost molten. T'Challa wasn't completely sure why his father had chosen to memorialise the Red Woman's visit in such a way, rather than to erase the marks. Then again, they did look vaguely like the marks left by a panther's paws, and Wanda—much to T'Challa's ongoing frustration—still held the blessing of the goddess.
"The Red Woman is no longer our concern," T'Challa said firmly, trying not to think about the last conversation he had had with Shuri about the woman. There had been shouting. "The king has rendered his judgement."
"If there is nothing further," the king added, quickly interceding to cut off whatever comments the elders were about to unleash. "I believe my son has a plane to catch." T'Challa's father smiled at him and nodded, dismissing him.
T'Challa bowed his head deeply. "Thank you, baba. I will report back to the Council upon my return."
With that, he turned and left—the Border Tribesmen standing at attention at the entrance to the throne room opening the doors for him before he turned and headed down the hallway leading to the Royal Talon's landing pad.
Less than fifteen minutes later, he had touched down on one of the landing zones flanking the main building at the Great Mound facility and headed inside. Catching the elevator down to Shuri's personal lab, he emerged to find her carefully going over the contents of a hovering trolley laden high with metal crates, checking it against some sort of checklist or other inventory projected on a holographic display above her wrist. The trolley was one of five—vibranium and other supplies that Shuri intended on taking with her to the Avengers compound. His sister was so focused on her task that she did not immediately react to T'Challa's presence, her lips forming the outlines of words as she spoke to herself quietly under her breath, her face a mask of concentration.
"Women always pack too much," T'Challa joked, to catch her attention. "I am not sure there is enough room in the Royal Talon for all of this."
"This is not a holiday, brother. Everything here is necessary," Shuri said tightly—a bare instant later, her shoulders relaxed and she shot him a slightly apologetic smile. She crossed her arms over her chest and he mimicked her, both of them lightly tapping their chests with closed fists. "I'm nervous," she confessed.
"I would be amazed if you were not," T'Challa said with a sympathetic smile. "This will be your first time away from Wakanda."
"It's not that," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "I'm just… I don't know. It will be interesting to work with Tony Stark and Dr Banner again."
"Is my little sister afraid that she cannot keep up with the big, smart, American men without the full resources of the Great Mound at her fingertips and dozens of staff at her every beck and call?" he teased.
Shuri's eyes blazed as she rounded on him. "Careful, brother. It is not wise to make me angry, these days. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
T'Challa grinned, holding up his hands in a silent apology. Though Shuri hadn't directly admitted it, he knew that she had really enjoyed working with the Avengers despite the circumstances of their meeting. While his sister was obviously already used to working with others, she was also used to being the smartest person in the room by a significant margin, and with Tony Stark that position was no longer certain. The man had managed to push and challenge her in new ways, forcing her out of complacent habits and to evaluate things from angles she hadn't considered before. T'Challa was certain that this little temporary residency would be nothing but good for her.
His sister reached over, shoving his chest playfully, then gestured at the assorted materials in front of her. "Give me a hand with all of this," she ordered.
Nearly three hours later, the Royal Talon was sitting on a small landing pad outside the main hanger of the Avengers compound in upstate New York, a pair of Dora Milaje unloading the overstuffed cargo compartment. A stocky, broad-shouldered man with short, dark hair, wearing a suit and tie—Happy, Stark had called him—was trying to lend them some assistance and being amusingly stymied at every turn.
"Looks like you brought half the Great Mound with you," Stark said to Shuri, grinning lightly. "That's a lot of vibranium."
"I've brought some gifts for the team—the prosthetics we talked about, among other things," she said with a nod, pausing before shooting him a mildly smug smile. "Also, after your ancient, lumbering wreck of a suit gave out, I thought perhaps you might be interested in my ideas for some upgrades."
"Christmas, huh?" Dr Banner said brightly, glancing toward his colleague.
Stark's expression had turned thoughtful, wheels already turning in his head. "I am very interested in taking a deeper dive into your nanotech. I may have some ideas myself."
"I suppose I can humour an old man," Shuri said with a sniff.
"A couple of old men," Dr Banner replied with an easy smile. "The facilities here aren't going to be quite what you're used to, I'm afraid—we're still not quite done installing everything in the labs. Getting there, though."
"I'm sure it will do for now. I'll probably have to do some redecorating anyway—American design sensibilities leave much to be desired. How am I supposed to think properly in such a bland environment?" A moment after she'd spoken, Shuri's whole body tensed up, her expression turning wooden, and she almost immediately turned and walked back over to where her belongings were being unloaded.
"Shuri? What—" T'Challa stopped as he noticed that Pietro Maximoff had just stepped out of the nearby main entrance to the hangar.
The younger man stopped, hesitating for a moment, then walked over, closing the distance between them. Dr Banner and Stark exchanged an uncomfortable look, but neither of them said anything. "Hi, um, Prince T'Challa," Pietro said, touching his chest and giving an embarrassed sort of half-bow.
T'Challa held up a hand. "We don't do that."
"Uh, sure. Okay."
There was an excruciatingly awkward silence for a moment before Shuri returned, hefting an almost-comically large bag over one shoulder. "Where will I be staying?" she asked Stark stiffly, completely ignoring the Maximoff's presence. "There are a few things I want to drop off in my room."
Stark nodded and held up a hand to catch the attention of his man, Happy, who came hurrying over. He gestured toward the compound's central building, an asymmetrically-shaped structure with the Avengers' logo emblazoned on the side. "Happy can show you to your new room—your quarters. We'll give you the big, proper tour a little later on. Who've we got her between? She's next to Clint, right?"
Happy nodded. "Yeah, at the end, next to Clint."
"Careful, he snores," Stark warned Shuri with a bit of forced joviality. "I mean, the walls are soundproofed, but that man really snores."
T'Challa watched as the stocky man gestured for Shuri to follow him before the two of them headed off toward her new quarters, waiting a few seconds before turning back to Pietro. "She is fine," he said quietly. "Just give her some time."
"Yeah, okay. I might just… um," Pietro said, awkwardly gesturing away from them. "Good to see you again, Prince T'Challa."
The Wakandan prince exhaled softly through his nose, but gave a small nod. "Likewise. As I said, do not mind Shuri. She is just… nervous about being here."
Pietro returned his nod, then turned and left as well.
"Hey, don't worry," Stark said to T'Challa, stepping up beside him. "We'll look after Shuri. You're leaving her in good hands."
T'Challa let out a small chuckle as he turned back to face the other man. "I am not worried about Shuri. She can look after herself." He looked between Stark and Dr Banner. "If there is anything more we can give you that might help with analysing her condition…"
Dr Banner shrugged, a slightly awkward expression on his face. "We'll keep you in the loop, but we still don't know exactly what we're dealing with here."
Next to him, Stark nodded. "This is the best place for her right now. We'll need time to monitor her so we can pick apart how your Herb thing interacted with the gamma radiation to make her, y'know, Hulk out. Make sure it's safe. This isn't the first time we've seen someone affected by Banner's blood, but at least this particular case does seem to be pretty stable."
"You refer to the Abomination." T'Challa's own expression turned pensive, thinking back to the illusion of Emil Blonsky that Eliza had tricked them with during her attack on the Great Mound.
"Shuri seems fine, though!" Bruce interjected hurriedly. "I think if she was going to mutate like that she would have already. Wanda said a while ago that she saw a 'She-Hulk' in her visions, too, and she did okay… though that was my cousin, not your sister."
"I see," T'Challa said, looking pensive. "I am glad of your decision to not allow Wanda Maximoff to formally join the Avengers. Her brother is one thing, but I am not sure that Shuri could have been convinced to stay if she would have had to see Wanda every day."
Tony grimaced a little. "Little Miss Magic does still visit pretty frequently. We're still working together."
"Even so, the extra level of separation helps."
T'Challa was actually hoping that the semi-regular contact with Wanda and Pietro would help Shuri to get over the worst of her feelings toward them. Call it exposure therapy, almost. T'Challa himself still did not completely trust the Red Woman—she had poor judgement, poorer impulse control and far too much raw power at her disposal for that to make her anything but dangerous—but she seemed to at least be trying to do the right thing.
Wanda had known the truth about his cousin and warned them of it, but Eliza's accidental creation had proven that she didn't know everything. It would also not surprise him if there was still information that Wanda was deliberately concealing from the Avengers, picking and choosing what to share from what she'd supposedly seen to deliberately cast herself in a better light.
Stark nodded and there was another awkward pause. After a few seconds, he clapped his hands together. "Well, how about we show you around a bit?"
--
I'd been a little surprised at how big the upstate Avengers compound was, but I honestly had just never really realised how many support staff they had. There were a whole bunch of people working here under the careful eye of Maria Hill—intel officers, sure, but also engineers to service the Quinjets and other bits of equipment that Tony didn't need to handle personally, a whole call centre and public relations division, and a small contingent of workers who maintained the extensive grounds, among others. They generally remained in the outer structures, with only cleaners and similar staff having reason to enter the main central building where the Avengers were quartered. There were also some areas of the compound still being refurbished—obviously, the Avengers had had to move in here a little earlier than in the original timeline, so it wasn't a hundred per cent ready.
The first parking lot off the road leading into the compound was publicly-accessible, next to a security and media centre blocking the entrance to the rest of the grounds, and today it was packed. I didn't need to worry about parking, of course—it was nearly a two-hour drive from Natasha's apartment in the city out to the compound, a timesaving I definitely considered portal-worthy. I arrived in the gardens and snuck in from the back of the building, instead. It was a hive of activity, public relations and security staff everywhere, and I wandered for a minute trying to work out where everyone was before I was intercepted.
"You know," said Happy Hogan, Tony's head of security and general gofer. He shot me a tight smile, but there was a little bit of resentment in his tone. "You could still just come in through the front door, like a normal person. We've got a lot of people in today and it'd make it a lot easier on security."
"Whatever," I responded, rolling my eyes. "You all know who I am."
I let him usher me through to where a few of the Avengers were waiting for the start of the press conference. Tony was near the set of double doors leading to the press room proper, talking to Pepper, absorbed in something that she was showing him on a tablet. Once I was inside, Happy shot me a look and hurried over to his boss, leaving me to my own devices.
On the other side of the room, Clint and Bucky stood talking quietly to Natasha. Nat perked up a little when she saw me, so I headed over to them, nudging her with my shoulder as I arrived. "Hey!"
"Hey." She grinned and nudged me back.
"Clint! Bucky!" I beamed at the two men, taking in their new matching cybernetic arms, banded silver-black vibranium inlaid with intricate, geometric-patterned golden accents. I knew that Shuri was staying at the compound for a little while—what a surprise that had been to hear! I hadn't seen her yet, but that was mostly on purpose; Pietro had told me it was pretty awkward already, and I thought it was better to give the teen a wide berth for now. At least until she'd had time to settle in properly. "Looking sharp! You know you two have to be best friends now, yeah? That's how this works, right?" I said, gesturing between the two of them.
Bucky shook his head, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and Clint chuckled. "Good to see you, too, Wanda."
I paused, my own expression faltering a little. "How're you doing with… everything?" I asked sympathetically.
He shrugged, raising his metal arm and flexing the fingers. "It's weird. It'll take some getting used to, but it's not as hard as I thought it'd be."
I scrunched up my face, tilting my head a little as I glanced between his arm and Bucky's. "Is it crass to say that I'm sort of glad that it wasn't your left arm? I mean, it'd probably be easier if you had interchangeable parts, but I do like that the two of you have sort of a mirror thing going on, now," I said.
Natasha elbowed me, but Clint let out a small snort of amusement. "Yeah. I'm left-handed; it would have been even more of a pain to lose the other one."
Bucky straightened up, looking past me and lifting his chin in a small gesture. "Man of the hour's here," he said.
I spun around to see Pietro and Steve coming down a set of stairs toward us. My brother was wearing what could only be his new 'official' Avengers outfit; a cross between a superhero costume and high-performance athletics gear—grey, silver and dark blue stretch fabric that flatteringly hugged and outlined his figure, with a stylised lightning bolt slashing across the chest from shoulder to hip and small armoured accents.
I wondered if he was a little uncomfortable being the only one 'in uniform', so to speak, but I understood why they'd done it like this. Everyone else was dressed in fairly plain smart casual attire, which meant that eyes would naturally be drawn to Pietro—this was his big debut, after all.
I rushed over and slammed into him, wrapping my arms around him in a tight hug. "Pietro! You look so good!"
He hugged me back, shaking his head and chuckling slightly before extricating himself. "Thanks." I could hear an edge of nerves in his tone.
Next to us, Steve grinned and patted him on the shoulder. "You ready?" he asked.
"Not really," Pietro admitted.
"Don't stress," I said, looking him over and picking off the tiniest bit of fluff that had gotten stuck to the fabric hugging his collarbone. "You just need to smile and look pretty and say something like 'I'm looking forward to being part of the team'."
"I've been coaching him," said Steve, nodding. "He'll do fine."
Of course, that made sense. Out of everyone here, Steve was the one with the most personal experience at being uncomfortably paraded around like a show pony. There was a burst of hubbub behind me and I turned back toward the doors to the press room—it looked like they'd opened briefly to let Pepper and Happy through, with Tony now beelining toward the three of us.
We met him halfway. He shot me a tight smile before turning to Pietro with a serious expression, thrusting his thumb in the direction of the press room. "Alright, Happy Feet. There're about fifty reporters through those doors—real ones, not bloggers. Let's go introduce the world to the newest official member of the Avengers."
Pietro nodded and we continued forward, Nat, Bucky and Clint moving to link up with us. Bruce had appeared from somewhere as well, the full team now assembled and ready to head out.
A woman wearing a headset and holding a clipboard tight against her chest was standing next to the doors as we approached—she muttered something into her mic, then her face lit up in a welcoming smile as we arrived. "Ms Potts is speaking now; we'll send you in in a moment." She glanced in my direction, singling me out. "Ms Maximoff, you'll need to hang back. I'll let you know when you can go in."
My smile faded a little, but I nodded in acknowledgement. It made sense that I had to wait—I wasn't an Avenger, I couldn't walk in as part of the group—but it still stung slightly. I didn't want to be jealous, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that a huge part of me really wanted to be stepping out there right alongside Pietro.
After a little bit, the woman nodded and gestured for the team to enter. As the Avengers pushed the double doors open and filed through, there was another burst of indistinct hubbub from the crowd; I craned my neck to look past, catching a glimpse of the gathered reporters and camera crews before the doors shut again, leaving me standing alone with the media staffer.
She shot me a tight smile and held up a finger, tilting her head to the side as she listened to what was happening in the other room through her headset. A half-dozen seconds crawled agonisingly by before she dropped her hand and nodded, gesturing to the door. "Keep to the left, against the wall. Mr Hogan will be there."
I nodded my thanks, then took a deep breath and pushed through the doors.
Last edited:
- Location
- USA
Rule 2: Don’t Be Hateful - Invoking 'trans panic' is implicitly hateful.
I get that the MC is not supposed to be "hypercompetent" and will make mistakes, but is she supposed to be utterly stupid?
*sigh* And I was actually enjoying the en media res beginning. Flashbacks after the first scene is NEVER an interesting way to start a story!
Oh, for FUCK'S SAKE?! WHY THE FUCK is every goddamned story these days a gender-bend? Every fucking time! At least put that in the tags so I can avoid the story. "Female protagonist" plus "transmigration" DO NOT equal "genderbend".
Dammit. I was actually interested in this one but chapter one killed that interest HARD.
mythSSK
Wanda Wannabe
Her choices with the sceptre are, effectively: (1) do nothing and hope nothing bad happens, (2) hand it over to the Avengers and hope they'll listen to her warning them about it even though they have no reason to trust her and plenty of reason to think she would try to trick them, or (3) take reasonable precautions (i.e. pre-committing to not use it, trying to use her magic to shield her mind) and abscond with it so it can be secured/disarmed.
It's the best of a bad lot of options.
Lots of stories use flashbacks effectively. I've tried to do so here.
There are effectively two 'starts' to the story -- when the MC arrived in the world, and when she actually started to cause real divergences. The latter is the real start, as her arrival and the time she spent with HYDRA isn't intended to be a focus.
However, some scenes from that time are essential to establish stuff necessary to the MC's character development that would otherwise be missed/glossed over, and each scene ties thematically into what is happening in the same chapter in the present.
The last of these scenes is in Chapter 6, if it matters.
This is not a genderbend story.
The memories the MC has from her 'past life' are of a trans woman. The trans part is incidental and only referenced fairly rarely.
Last edited:
- Location
- USA
Not in the first chapter or two, though. You haven't even established the basis of the story when you jump back 12 years.
That doesn't make it better. Nor is it clear.
mythSSK
Wanda Wannabe
12 months, and the basis of the story is pretty clearly established in the paired scenes of Chapter 1 -- I'm not sure how clearer it could be.
That part isn't meant to be clear yet, and it's also incidental to the story (i.e. not that important).
Though I really have concerns about what "That doesn't make it better" even means in this context. You expressed concern this was a genderbend story. I clarified that it isn't, that the MC is trans. I can literally only think of bigoted reasons why that might not make it better, and I find myself not particularly interested in engaging with someone with those reasons. Good luck elsewhere.
Last edited:
- Location
- USA
My bad. I knew that, but wrote it wrong. Brainfart.
Where are they going? What is their/her plan for the scepter other than "I'm'a keep it away from Tony"? How are they even getting out of the base, which presumably is locked down? All you've established is that the MC and her brother are betraying the Nazis, but not how or what it will mean. Jumping back to a different time period before finishing the setup for your story is jarring, and pulls me out of it.
It's not better because your tags still don't cover what it is. The sheer number of stories that start with "Huh, I used to have an outie and now I have chesticles" is overwhelming of late, and it'd be nice to know that before starting, no matter what the gender of the protag may be. "Female protagonist" doesn't cover that.
Anyway, I'm not reading this anyway, so none of that matters to me any further. Now that I've clarified, I'm out.
Poor Wanda, only able to participate with the Avengers from afar ...
Anyway! I'm excited to enter unexplored territory. It will be interesting to see what Wanda gets up to on her journey to harness phenomenal cosmic power.
- Location
- Christchurch, NZ
I take it you're not aware of why this site got founded then. And also, it's really, *really* not. I haven't literally canvassed them all to check, but in my experience it's less than 10%, so, you know, less than the rate of actual trans people. Perhaps you feel the number of them is overwhelming though, too?
- Location
- USA
The trans population is somewhere between 0.2% and 2% depending on what study you look at. NOWHERE is it over 10%. If you're just going to make up numbers, do it in a way that's not so easily debunked. Also "in my experience" is meaningless anecdotes, since your experience is no more or less valid than mine.
it's my understanding that tags mostly refer to what's actually important to a story, the MC being trans is almost not a factor and is rarely referenced, it's not a story about being trans after all, that's just a minor background detail that might explain some things about her, it is however a story about a transmigrated female protagonist in the body of wanda maximoff in the MCU acting as a superhero, so i'd say the tags are pretty fitting. although it wouldn't hurt to include some more tags.
I think he meant the number of stories here with trans mc's in it, and it being less than the number of trans users on this site. Not the general trans population.
Last edited:
mythSSK
Wanda Wannabe
That's essentially my understanding of how tags should work, too, and exactly why there's no trans tag on the story. A trans tag would tell you almost nothing about the content of LWYMMD, and might actually be misleading as it would imply that the MC's transness is more relevant/a focus.
I really don't think we have enough stories in general that have incidentally trans characters and protagonists. People wanting a tag when there's only the tiniest little bit of trans content feels very 'Woke Content Detector' to me.
If you have any suggestions for tags that I should add, let me know -- this is obviously my first story posted here, and I just sort of looked at how other people tagged their stories and tried to mimic it. I did somehow miss the Tragedy tag, which I've now added (the story is tagged as such on every other site I'm posting on, I just missed it on SV for some reason).
Last edited:
I'm not a huge expert on tagging, and especially for this site tags are more of a recent thing. I will say that looking at the fic on Ao3, where tags are a lot more ubiquitous, it does seem a little sparse comparing it to other fics. I think you could definitely get away with adding 'Nat/Wanda', 'Wanda&Pietro', 'not a fix it', 'self-insert' and more, although I'm not sure what tags are the best in terms of reach. You might be able to get some viewers with an Agatha tag, given that she's had a fair few POV's thus far and the show did just come out.
I think the bottom line w.r.t. tagging on Ao3 is that its primary purpose is filtering, for example readers will specifically look for fics that contain the tag "Self-Insert" or they'll specifically exclude them depending on what they want to read. You can't tag everything, but the goal in adding a tag should be that if a reader filters by a specific tag and clicks on your fic because of it you want it to be relatively prominent in your fic.
But then again, it's very much not a settled science, going by all the posts on r/ao3 about it.
Last edited:
Chapter 69 (Nice.)
mythSSK
Wanda Wannabe
Chapter 69
I stared at the New York City streets as they passed outside the window, not really absorbing what I was seeing but still enjoying looking at it. Catching a taxi felt like an almost novel experience, these days. I could just use portals to get around the city, but that would have gone against the whole 'slow down, you're not always in a rush' mindset I was trying to cultivate. I wasn't off using them completely, of course—sometimes I was in a hurry, and sometimes the distance involved meant it would be silly not to. I was still mostly using portals to get to and from the upstate Avengers compound, for example; it was almost a two-hour drive each way, so that was something I was absolutely fine with avoiding, but a twenty-minute trip to Hell's Kitchen to visit Jessica and Matt didn't feel overly onerous and I didn't have anything else I needed to do today.
It turned out that portals were going to be the answer to solving my money problems, too. The specific contract details were still being ironed out, but it was Tony—of all people—who had actually come through for me there with a proposal. Turns out, getting stuff into orbit was expensive as balls. I could charge what frankly felt like a ludicrous amount of money, per kilogram, and NASA would still be getting a massive bargain. Tony wasn't completely doing this out of the goodness of his heart, of course. Stark Industries would save me doing any of my own paperwork by acting as a go-between for a cut, and I'd do a few launches for them as well.
After all was said and done, though, I was looking at maybe a half-days' worth of work to earn what would likely be two or three hundred thousand dollars—free and clear, after taking tax into account—a couple of times a year. Now, that was what I called thinking with portals! Stark Industries had even given me an advance, without the contract formally in place yet, which I felt was pretty generous, so that I could afford to actually, you know, live.
Tony's lawyers were drafting up some pretty spicy NDAs for all involved that kept my methods a relative secret—turns out, we could do all of this pretty legally while skirting a bunch of the usual rules around rocket launches since 'magic portals to space' were apparently an edge case that wasn't really covered by any specific US legislation or regulatory body. I was honestly a little bit surprised that no sorcerer had ever tried to do something like this, but I wasn't about to complain. Part of me wondered if the whole thing had been entirely Tony's idea in the first place, or if Nat or Steve had 'encouraged' him. Then again, I also got a sneaking suspicion that he might have approached Kamar-taj first and they'd said no.
Either way, just like that, I was basically rich. It was enough to make me feel a bit guilty for freeloading off Nat, but it had only been a week and a half. I'd find my own place eventually but, in the meantime, I was actually really enjoying living with Yelena. She was a bit of a pain sometimes and an absolute slob, but we had fun. Maybe I'd suggest we find a place together and stay as flatmates? I knew from past experience that—even though I was naturally a bit introverted—I tended to go a bit weird if I lived alone for any significant length of time. I needed people around me to keep my head grounded.
Ava Starr—Ghost—was still at large. I got the distinct impression that Pym and Lang were covering for her, but the Avengers were at least nice enough to pretend like that wasn't the case. Most of them seemed pretty sympathetic to her situation… between Nat, Bucky, Bruce and Clint, a lot of them had had similarly chequered pasts and were prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was finally on track to get a cure for her condition and had no reason to do anything that might jeopardise that, after all. Pushing to go after her, putting her on the run, would only make things worse.
I had made myself available for the discussion with Wakanda about Ava, in case I could think of details that might be relevant, but it had proven unnecessary. Between Natasha and Steve, it was pretty much a masterclass in diplomacy. They never lied, or even particularly stretched the truth, but they managed to make Ava sound so sympathetic even I was surprised. She was a victim. Orphaned as a child by SHIELD, then captured and raised to be an assassin—something that Nat, in particular, heavily empathised with. She was in constant pain, knowing that her condition would eventually kill her. She was vulnerable and Eliza manipulated her. Wakanda weren't entirely convinced, but had eventually agreed to leave her to the Avengers for now and not have their War Dogs actively hunt her down, which was a better outcome than I'd expected.
The taxi pulled over and I paid him before stepping out onto the sidewalk, looking around. Annoyingly, Jessica didn't have any street signage and I'd never been to her home office before, so it took me a minute to find the right building and catch the elevator up. At the other end of the hallway, opposite the elevator, was Jessica's office/apartment—black lettering stencilled on the opaque glass window set into the door spelling out the name of her PI business: ALIAS INVESTIGATIONS.
When I rapped my knuckles on the door, Malcolm—Jessica's friend and sort-of employee—answered it and ushered me quickly inside. I'd called ahead and made an official appointment, so Jess was expecting me, already sitting down at her desk, sipping from a can of energy drink. Mal sat me down in the chair across from her before moving back toward the door, hovering a little awkwardly in the background.
"Hey, Jessica," I said warmly.
Jessica Jones looked overtired and a little like she hadn't showered, as usual—her long, black hair a bit greasy and unkempt—but, if anything, her slightly dishevelled appearance somehow made her even hotter. I was pretty sure she was fully straight but, once I'd finally managed to beat down her defensive façade, I was still kind of hoping against hope that maybe she'd be interested in a fling sometime.
"What do you want?" she asked, folding her arms and staring at me impassively.
"I don't 'want' anything, really," I said, smiling lightly at her usual surliness as my eyes wandering around her disorganised mess of an office. I noted the repairs that had been made to the wall dividing the living-area-turned-office and kitchen, the plasterboard still unpainted. "I just thought I'd check in on you—see how you were doing, whether you'd made any progress with the IGH investigation, that sort of thing—and thought it'd be easier to get hold of you like this than to ask to catch up over coffee."
"So you're wasting my time." Jessica exhaled sharply and shook her head. "I've told you before: We're not friends, Wanda."
"Why not?"
She squinted at me incredulously. "What?"
"Why not?" I repeated with a shrug. "We could be. I'm pretty useful to have around, as far as friends go."
"Because I don't want to be," she said firmly, placing both of her palms on the desk in front of her. "Look, if that's all you're here for, I have other places to be."
Ugh, this was always so frustrating. I let out a sigh. "I know being a prickly, stand-offish asshole that doesn't make friends easily is just who you are, but even so… I've helped you. I've been honest with you, which is something I know you appreciate. You backed me up when we spoke to Matt Murdock. What's the deal? What am I doing wrong, here?" Annoyance had started to leak into my tone, but I stopped myself short of outright asking the question I wanted the actual answer to—'why don't you want to like me?'.
Jessica's jaw worked silently as she glared at me. After a moment, she shook her head. "Fine. You're right, you have been honest with me. So I'll be honest with you." She paused, steadying herself with a breath as she looked down at the table, avoiding eye contact, as if she didn't even want to look at me. "Your powers are fucked up. I don't like being around you because they make me uncomfortable."
I rocked back in my seat slightly, a look of realisation passing across my features. "Oh," I said simply, processing her words.
Of course. I was a fucking moron. The last mind controller she'd met had enslaved her. She'd endured months of what was effectively physical and psychological torture and sexual abuse. Killgrave was dead, at her hand, but that didn't magically resolve all of the trauma and complex PTSD she had. Of course Jessica Jones, of all people, would be uncomfortable around someone with mind control powers.
"I'm sorry. That hadn't even occurred to me," I said slowly, feeling like a piece of shit. "I've… I've been really thoughtless, haven't I?"
"It's fine," she said brusquely, but she didn't look up and was fidgeting slightly with her hands. She looked really uncomfortable. I'd seen her like this with me before, but it just hadn't registered until now what I was actually seeing—I'd thought it was just her being standoffish, utterly blind to her very real discomfort.
"No, it isn't."
I'd never used actual mind control to override her will, but I'd still constantly bulled over all her objections and done what I'd wanted to do, regardless of her wishes, in basically all of our previous interactions. That had to be triggering. God. She wasn't being an asshole—I was. No fucking wonder she didn't like me.
I stood up abruptly, the legs of the chair scraping loudly against the wooden floorboards. "I'll just… I'll go," I said, hesitating for a bare moment. My cheeks had grown hot, burning with shame and guilt, my vision blurring a little. "If you need help with anything; if there's something I can do, just ask. Anything you need. Anytime. You've got my number. Otherwise, I'll just… I'll leave you be. I'm sorry, Jessica, I really didn't mean to."
I turned and fled, barrelling past Malcolm and hurrying out the door, down the hall, and hammered at the button to call the elevator. After it failed to materialise in two seconds, I shook my head, feeling a little wetness starting to run down my cheeks, and thrust my hand into my pocket, fishing out my sling ring instead. The elevator dinged as it arrived, but I'd already spun up a portal and returned to the street below.
I leant back against the cool brickwork of the building's exterior as I dismissed the gateway, ignoring the reactions of the few pedestrians that had seen me appear. Closing my eyes for a minute, I focused on my breathing, forcing myself to calm down and push through the familiar feeling that I was a shitty, worthless excuse of a person. Fucking hell. I should have realised. I'd thought I was better at reading people than that. I'd never meant to make her uncomfortable. I was such an idiot. Even my attraction to her felt gross, now, with that context. I wiped at my face with the back of my hand.
Okay, so, never seeing Jessica again, I guess. Cool. And here I'd thought I was done burning bridges with people I liked. God, I was going to be seeing Peter again soon, too, and I had no idea what was going to happen there. Maybe he hated me. He had every right to blame me for what had happened.
I'd vaguely been thinking about maybe wandering up to Harlem and trying to track down Luke Cage once I was done catching up with Matt but, after what had just happened with Jessica, I was suddenly feeling a lot less social. If Matt's office wasn't so close by, I probably would have just portalled straight home and hid in bed for the rest of the day.
Instead, I steeled myself and took out my phone, bringing up the Maps app to remind myself how to get to Nelson and Murdock from here. It wasn't too far—Jessica and Matt worked within fairly easy walking distance of each other. Straightening up, I started down the sidewalk.
I walked in a bit of a daze, trying not to think too much about what had just happened with Jessica, and fifteen minutes later I stepped past a familiar bronze plaque to a wrought-iron mesh door covered in peeling beige paint. Moving inside and up the stairs, I found the door labelled NELSON AND MURDOCK, ATTORNEYS AT LAW and headed in. The waiting room was basically the same as it had been the last time I was here—haphazard, mismatched folding chairs and a flimsy card table tucked into a corner with some magazines and a lamp on it.
Across from the door, the office manager, Karen, was already standing up from her desk to greet me, a tight smile on her face. "Hi! Wanda Maximoff, right?"
I made a small noise of approval, despite myself. "I'm surprised you remember me."
"…Let's just say you made an impression. Matt's here, but he's busy going over some casework."
"Can you let him know I'm here? He'll make time for me; I won't bother him long," I said, going through the motions for Karen's benefit—even absorbed in his work, there was no way that Matt hadn't heard me come in or speak just now.
"I'm sure he will," she said, sizing me up for a moment before she went over to his office door.
I frowned to myself. Her body language was a bit guarded—she didn't like me, either. Of course. I mean, I'd made basically no effort to talk to her or put her at ease, but still. I was a mysterious unknown, sweeping in here to have private talks with Matt about something she wasn't privy to. Hell, she might have even seen me on the news by now. I didn't like to think of myself as being bad at dealing with people, but after what had just happened with Jessica, seeing Karen also a little visibly uncomfortable with my presence was really just making me want to crawl into a hole and never come out again.
Karen rapped on Matt's door smartly with her knuckles, waited a second, then opened the door and poked her head in to tell him I'd arrived. After a moment, she took a step back and held the door open for me. "You can go right in." She tilted her head toward the open door, still looking at me appraisingly.
"Thanks." I shot her another smile and stepped inside, making sure the door closed behind me and she returned to her desk before turning toward Matt.
He'd stood up as I'd entered, head vaguely pointed in my direction. "Ms Maximoff. Good to see you again."
"Little blind person joke?"
"Have to take the humour where you can, in my line of work. Please, sit," he said, smiling and gesturing to the chair across from him. I sat. Matt did the same. I took a deep breath, sighed, but didn't say anything at first. After a few moments, he shifted position, leaning forward. "What happened? With the Hand?" he asked quietly.
I shook my head. "It's complicated and a lot of it you don't need to know. Their leadership's gone entirely—I guess some of the lieutenants might try to hold stuff together, but they've lost basically everyone that really matters. The rest will probably either dissolve or fall to infighting… or the Chaste will clean them up, I guess."
"I thought you said we had time."
"We did. Something else happened that meant the Hand moved up my schedule, is all."
"I'm assuming this 'something else' has to do with the terrorist attack in San Francisco."
"Is that what they're calling it? Yeah. Like I said, I can't really get into the details." I bit my lip, eyes firmly glued to Matt's desk. "I'm going to go ahead and assume you completely ignored my warnings and got involved with Elektra anyway."
The corner of Matt's mouth twitched and he licked his lips before letting out a small, awkward chuckle. "I don't know what would make you think that."
A small smile briefly touched my face but I banished it, my expression turning serious again. "Don't fuck things up with Karen, okay? Especially not for Elektra."
He paused, processing that for a moment, before he responded. "I won't."
"You're still working the Frank Castle case, right?"
"We're on the docket for next week."
I nodded slowly. "Okay. Well, hopefully this will help you focus on that, then."
"I've been watching Midland Circle; Stark Industries has equipment and drones on site. Iron Legion, same make as the ones that were attacking the Avengers in San Francisco."
"You don't need to worry about Midland Circle anymore. Like I said, the Hand's done. Their plans for what's underneath it don't matter anymore."
"And what are your plans for it?" The question pulled me up short and I glanced up at Matt, surprised. He wasn't looking in my direction, his head tilted, staring vacantly off to one side, but he seemed like he was focusing very intently.
"I don't have any," I said honestly. I hadn't really thought about Midland Circle much at all since Eliza had been created. I'd need to ask about what the investigation into what the AI had been using Stark Industries for had uncovered. "Stark Industries will try to acquire it, probably, and I guess once it's unearthed we'll study it. See if there's some beneficial purpose it can be used for." The most likely scenario I could think of was the Avengers handing the dragon bones over to Kamar‑taj—they seemed best placed to deal with something like that.
"Okay." Matt seemed mostly satisfied with that answer.
"So… yeah. That's about it. I just wanted to drop in and let you know that you shouldn't really have any more problems with the Hand from now on. If you do see Stick again, tell him 'You're welcome' from the Avengers."
There was another moment of silence, then Matt turned to face me properly—his unseeing eyes, hidden behind red-lensed sunglasses, seeming to look right through me. "Are you okay?" he asked, his tone gentle.
I suddenly felt very small. "No, not really," I said. It was pointless to try lying to Daredevil.
"Anything I can help with?"
"Maybe; got any advice on how to be a less shit person?"
He let out a soft snort of amusement. "I think I'm the wrong person to ask for that sort of advice. What happened?"
"Nothing," I ran my tongue along my lips to moisten them, then sighed. "I mean, something, but it's nothing anyone can do anything about. I've had a lot of ups and downs lately and things are just… hitting me a bit harder than they should, I think."
He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. "Okay, well," he said, rising to his feet, a small sympathetic smile lighting his face. "Come on. There's a bar just down the street that I like. I'll buy you a drink."
I blinked, surprised. "It's barely noon."
"You don't seem like the sort of person that that's ever stopped before."
"Touché." He had me there. "…Okay."
--
"You're famous now," Matt said, idly fingering his glass. "After what happened in San Francisco, I mean. Helping the Avengers. Karen recognised you on the news."
We were sitting in a booth at Josie's Bar, the Nelson and Murdock staff's favoured haunt. More light filtered in from the clouded, dirty windows and glass door than was cast by the dim lamp over the battered-looking wooden bar and the few scattered flickering neon signs—the place would be pretty poorly-lit at night, which would probably help to conceal just how worn the place was. Actual daylight did the place no favours. It smelt of stale beer, cheap liquor, and something faintly metallic, like rust. On the face of it, it wasn't the most inviting place, but still… I could see it had its own sort of unpolished charm. We almost had the place entirely to ourselves, with only one older man sitting quietly at the far end of the bar, nursing a drink. I was honestly a little surprised that the place was even open this early.
"Of course she did," I said with a sigh. "Sorry if that makes meeting with me a bit more awkward."
"It's not a problem." Matt leaned his elbow on the table, ear tilted toward me. "Your brother joined the Avengers. There's a lot of gossip and speculation as to why you didn't join as well. Any particular reason he's on the team and you're not?"
I didn't really want to talk about this. I was already in a bit of a mood because of what happened to Jessica, I didn't need to be reminded of my other failures as well. "Politics, mostly. We're still working together."
"You're not happy about that." It was a statement, not a question.
"I'm not," I admitted. "I want to be on the team. It's just… complicated. It was my decision to step back a bit and not join, though."
"You wanted to distance yourself, for some reason?"
"Politics," I said again. Matt seemed to sense that I didn't want to talk about it and didn't press the issue again. After a few moments of companionable silence, I drained the rest of my glass. "Would you want to see again?" I asked, placing my empty whiskey tumbler down on the table between us and looking at Matt seriously.
He let out a small, incredulous laugh, as though he couldn't believe I'd just asked that. "What?"
"If your eyes could be healed. A miracle cure for blindness. Or if you could, for example, speaking purely theoretically, get cybernetic prosthetic eyes. From space. Would you?"
"I've never really thought about it." He seemed amused by the examples. "It would depend, I guess."
I waved a hand dismissively. "Cybernetic prosthetics. You'd need to have the old ones completely removed, I think, but then you could just literally pop them in and they'd work. Plug and play, so to speak."
"…I feel like you might not be talking from an entirely theoretical place, here."
"I might not be."
"If it were safe—"
I cut him off. "Safe. Free. No complications. Shouldn't affect your other enhanced senses. Just your vision back. Would you do it?"
Matt hesitated for a few moments. "…Are you offering?"
"You're really squirming around answering the question, aren't you?"
"I've been blind since I was nine. Would I choose to be able to see again, if I could? Yes. Of course."
I nodded. "Okay. I can't make any promises, but I know some people. I'll look into it for you." Next time I spoke to Carol, I'd ask her about it. If she didn't know where to get some space-tech cybernetic eyes, she'd probably know someone who did. If not, maybe the Guardians of the Galaxy would. I knew Rocket got his hands on one at some point.
Matt went quiet again for a bit, his jaw working silently. After a little while, he took a deep breath. "That… seems like a lot to do for someone you barely know."
"I actually know you better than you might think, Matt. And you're nice to me. Feels like I've had to fight pretty hard to get that from most other people in my life." I chuckled, running a finger along the rim of my empty glass and shooting him a mischievous look. "You know, if you weren't already with Karen, I'd let you take me home right now and have your wicked way with me."
He let out an amused snort. "Because I'm nice to you?"
"Not just because you're nice. You're also pretty cute. It honestly doesn't take much more than that, for me." And maybe it would have helped take my mind off how shitty I felt about what had happened with Jessica.
Matt laughed again and shook his head. "Maybe day drinking wasn't such a good idea."
"That's not it. You've got enhanced senses; use them. Listen to my body, the way I'm talking. Do I seem tipsy at all? Alcohol just doesn't do that much for me, these days. Downside of my powers." I paused, playing back the last minute of conversation in my head for a moment before I heaved a sigh. "Sorry. I shouldn't have even said it. Inappropriate."
"You don't have anything to apologise for," he said with a small shake of his head. "Who knows? If I wasn't seeing Karen, maybe I'd even have taken you up on it."
"I just don't know when to turn it off, sometimes," I confessed, looking down at the table. I picked my glass up by the rim, my fingers splayed, balancing it on the edge of the base and rolling it slowly back and forth across the wooden surface. "I didn't always look the way I do now. It's like… there's this thing, where someone who's experienced poverty—who been through times when they were just never sure when the next meal would come—will overeat when they get the opportunity to. Just pack it in. Because they're conditioned to feel like they might starve again soon, even if that isn't likely to happen. I think it's kind of like that." I let out an incredulous little laugh. "Wow. God, that actually makes me sound really pathetic and desperate when I say it out loud like that, doesn't it?"
"I don't think so," Matt responded, his expression thoughtful. "I think it just makes you sound human."
--
"We… we didn't know what to do. Who else to go to," Brian said, his voice a little unsteady. He stood near the punching bags, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, his eyes darting nervously to the nearby weapons rack. The evening light spilling through the dojo's sliding windows gave the room a golden glow—normally, Colleen would find it comforting and peaceful, but after getting the news she just had, it felt almost stifling.
She didn't respond right away.
Instead, she turned and walked toward the back room, flicking her head to indicate that Mary and Brian—her two former students that had come calling—should follow her. They hesitated a moment, but did so. The small space felt even tighter with all three of them inside. Colleen knelt down in front of an old trunk, unlocked it, then took out her grandfather's katana. Closing the lid, she rested the weapon on top, staring at it for a moment as she knelt, her back to her two visitors as she steadied herself. She could hear Mary shifting behind her, the soft scrape of her shoes on the floor, and Brian's low, nervous sigh.
"Who was it?" Colleen asked softly after a few moments of relative silence, her fingers tracing along the saya—the sheathe—of the sword, lingering on the white bindings wrapping the hilt. "Gao's faction?" Madame Gao was a criminal. A monster. If her disagreements with Bakuto had finally escalated to the point where she'd wanted him removed, then Colleen would—
"Gao's dead, too."
Her head snapped up in surprise and she turned to look at them. That had been far from the answer she'd been expecting. "What? How?"
"They're all dead," Brian said hurriedly, almost tripping over his words. He looked scared. "All of the Fingers. Colleen, there is no Hand. Not anymore. It's all gone."
He might as well have punched her in the stomach. It seemed… impossible. Unbelievable. How could something so good just be gone? For all of the faults of Gao's faction, it wasn't just Bakuto's work with troubled youths that was in jeopardy. What would happen to the charities that Alexandra Reid's foundation managed? The White Hat's outreach programs in Africa? If the Hand was truly gone, there were so many people that were going to suffer who would otherwise have found help and support. Like she had.
Mary and Brian exchanged a nervous look. "It was San Francisco, near as we can tell," Mary said. "That big 'terrorist attack' where they're saying the Avengers fought some evil robots. The Fingers were caught up in it, somehow. We don't know the details… who was fighting who."
"We don't know anything?" Whatever had happened in San Francisco hadn't been just a terrorist attack, Colleen was certain of it. If the Avengers were involved, whatever had happened had to have been serious, but the government and warmongers like Tony Stark had a vested interest in hiding their dirty laundry. They certainly didn't care about the little people that got caught in the crossfire.
"We have a name. That's all."
"What name?"
"Wanda Maximoff," Mary said, her tone deadly quiet, a small twitch of her lip giving away her feelings. She might as well have spat.
There was something about that name… "Why is that familiar?"
"You probably saw her in the news. She was there, in San Francisco," said Brian. "She's been working with the Avengers. Her brother's the newest member."
Of course. Colleen didn't really keep up with celebrity stuff, but a new Avenger joining the team was big, splashy news that had everyone talking about it. Pietro Maximoff… Quicksilver. She didn't know much about him, and even less about his sister. Only that she was Enhanced, somehow. Powerful. Dangerous.
Colleen stood up, turning to face her two former students properly. "Thank you. This… thank you for coming. Leave this with me."
Brian shook his head and took a deep breath, steeling himself. "You don't have to do this alone, Colleen. We're with you," he said.
Next to him, Mary's hands had tightened into fists. "We're all with you."
Colleen felt her heart swell, eyes misting up again, and she smiled. Raising her arms, she ushered the two of them into an embrace, squeezing them tightly. "Thank you. I know you're upset, but this is going to be dangerous. You've still got your whole lives ahead of you." She pulled back, hands lingering on their shoulders, and looked at them seriously. "Take care of the younger ones. Bakuto dedicated his life to helping other people get theirs back on track; you need to honour that legacy. Carry it forward. Promise me, okay?"
Reluctantly, the two of them nodded. Mary's face was twisted into a determined scowl, but Brian looked like he was almost on the verge of tears again. Colleen gave their shoulders a final squeeze before letting go.
"Go," she said. "Keep me in the loop. Let me know if there's anything else I can help with."
Brian reaching over and gently touched Mary on the arm. "Okay," Mary said, nodding again. She exchanged a final look with Brian, then the two of them quietly filtered out.
Once they were gone, Colleen picked up her grandfather's katana, feeling the weight of it, holding the saya tightly as her mind raced. The tenets of bushido demanded that she only carry her blade if she was willing to draw it, and to only draw it if she was willing to use it. To use it meant to cut… and to cut meant to kill.
Bakuto had given her everything. She'd learned so much from him. He'd treated her almost like a daughter. She wouldn't have had Chikara Dojo if it wasn't for him. The training, safety and opportunities she'd helped give to youth who'd needed it—none of it would have happened without him. Bakuto had done so much, helped so many people, touched so many lives… and now he was dead. Murdered. Everything he'd built was collapsing and all the people he would have carried out of poverty, out of despair, would now no longer get that chance.
Her grip tightened. She needed answers. Whoever had done this—whoever was responsible—she would find them and make them pay. She needed to find Wanda Maximoff.
I stared at the New York City streets as they passed outside the window, not really absorbing what I was seeing but still enjoying looking at it. Catching a taxi felt like an almost novel experience, these days. I could just use portals to get around the city, but that would have gone against the whole 'slow down, you're not always in a rush' mindset I was trying to cultivate. I wasn't off using them completely, of course—sometimes I was in a hurry, and sometimes the distance involved meant it would be silly not to. I was still mostly using portals to get to and from the upstate Avengers compound, for example; it was almost a two-hour drive each way, so that was something I was absolutely fine with avoiding, but a twenty-minute trip to Hell's Kitchen to visit Jessica and Matt didn't feel overly onerous and I didn't have anything else I needed to do today.
It turned out that portals were going to be the answer to solving my money problems, too. The specific contract details were still being ironed out, but it was Tony—of all people—who had actually come through for me there with a proposal. Turns out, getting stuff into orbit was expensive as balls. I could charge what frankly felt like a ludicrous amount of money, per kilogram, and NASA would still be getting a massive bargain. Tony wasn't completely doing this out of the goodness of his heart, of course. Stark Industries would save me doing any of my own paperwork by acting as a go-between for a cut, and I'd do a few launches for them as well.
After all was said and done, though, I was looking at maybe a half-days' worth of work to earn what would likely be two or three hundred thousand dollars—free and clear, after taking tax into account—a couple of times a year. Now, that was what I called thinking with portals! Stark Industries had even given me an advance, without the contract formally in place yet, which I felt was pretty generous, so that I could afford to actually, you know, live.
Tony's lawyers were drafting up some pretty spicy NDAs for all involved that kept my methods a relative secret—turns out, we could do all of this pretty legally while skirting a bunch of the usual rules around rocket launches since 'magic portals to space' were apparently an edge case that wasn't really covered by any specific US legislation or regulatory body. I was honestly a little bit surprised that no sorcerer had ever tried to do something like this, but I wasn't about to complain. Part of me wondered if the whole thing had been entirely Tony's idea in the first place, or if Nat or Steve had 'encouraged' him. Then again, I also got a sneaking suspicion that he might have approached Kamar-taj first and they'd said no.
Either way, just like that, I was basically rich. It was enough to make me feel a bit guilty for freeloading off Nat, but it had only been a week and a half. I'd find my own place eventually but, in the meantime, I was actually really enjoying living with Yelena. She was a bit of a pain sometimes and an absolute slob, but we had fun. Maybe I'd suggest we find a place together and stay as flatmates? I knew from past experience that—even though I was naturally a bit introverted—I tended to go a bit weird if I lived alone for any significant length of time. I needed people around me to keep my head grounded.
Ava Starr—Ghost—was still at large. I got the distinct impression that Pym and Lang were covering for her, but the Avengers were at least nice enough to pretend like that wasn't the case. Most of them seemed pretty sympathetic to her situation… between Nat, Bucky, Bruce and Clint, a lot of them had had similarly chequered pasts and were prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was finally on track to get a cure for her condition and had no reason to do anything that might jeopardise that, after all. Pushing to go after her, putting her on the run, would only make things worse.
I had made myself available for the discussion with Wakanda about Ava, in case I could think of details that might be relevant, but it had proven unnecessary. Between Natasha and Steve, it was pretty much a masterclass in diplomacy. They never lied, or even particularly stretched the truth, but they managed to make Ava sound so sympathetic even I was surprised. She was a victim. Orphaned as a child by SHIELD, then captured and raised to be an assassin—something that Nat, in particular, heavily empathised with. She was in constant pain, knowing that her condition would eventually kill her. She was vulnerable and Eliza manipulated her. Wakanda weren't entirely convinced, but had eventually agreed to leave her to the Avengers for now and not have their War Dogs actively hunt her down, which was a better outcome than I'd expected.
The taxi pulled over and I paid him before stepping out onto the sidewalk, looking around. Annoyingly, Jessica didn't have any street signage and I'd never been to her home office before, so it took me a minute to find the right building and catch the elevator up. At the other end of the hallway, opposite the elevator, was Jessica's office/apartment—black lettering stencilled on the opaque glass window set into the door spelling out the name of her PI business: ALIAS INVESTIGATIONS.
When I rapped my knuckles on the door, Malcolm—Jessica's friend and sort-of employee—answered it and ushered me quickly inside. I'd called ahead and made an official appointment, so Jess was expecting me, already sitting down at her desk, sipping from a can of energy drink. Mal sat me down in the chair across from her before moving back toward the door, hovering a little awkwardly in the background.
"Hey, Jessica," I said warmly.
Jessica Jones looked overtired and a little like she hadn't showered, as usual—her long, black hair a bit greasy and unkempt—but, if anything, her slightly dishevelled appearance somehow made her even hotter. I was pretty sure she was fully straight but, once I'd finally managed to beat down her defensive façade, I was still kind of hoping against hope that maybe she'd be interested in a fling sometime.
"What do you want?" she asked, folding her arms and staring at me impassively.
"I don't 'want' anything, really," I said, smiling lightly at her usual surliness as my eyes wandering around her disorganised mess of an office. I noted the repairs that had been made to the wall dividing the living-area-turned-office and kitchen, the plasterboard still unpainted. "I just thought I'd check in on you—see how you were doing, whether you'd made any progress with the IGH investigation, that sort of thing—and thought it'd be easier to get hold of you like this than to ask to catch up over coffee."
"So you're wasting my time." Jessica exhaled sharply and shook her head. "I've told you before: We're not friends, Wanda."
"Why not?"
She squinted at me incredulously. "What?"
"Why not?" I repeated with a shrug. "We could be. I'm pretty useful to have around, as far as friends go."
"Because I don't want to be," she said firmly, placing both of her palms on the desk in front of her. "Look, if that's all you're here for, I have other places to be."
Ugh, this was always so frustrating. I let out a sigh. "I know being a prickly, stand-offish asshole that doesn't make friends easily is just who you are, but even so… I've helped you. I've been honest with you, which is something I know you appreciate. You backed me up when we spoke to Matt Murdock. What's the deal? What am I doing wrong, here?" Annoyance had started to leak into my tone, but I stopped myself short of outright asking the question I wanted the actual answer to—'why don't you want to like me?'.
Jessica's jaw worked silently as she glared at me. After a moment, she shook her head. "Fine. You're right, you have been honest with me. So I'll be honest with you." She paused, steadying herself with a breath as she looked down at the table, avoiding eye contact, as if she didn't even want to look at me. "Your powers are fucked up. I don't like being around you because they make me uncomfortable."
I rocked back in my seat slightly, a look of realisation passing across my features. "Oh," I said simply, processing her words.
Of course. I was a fucking moron. The last mind controller she'd met had enslaved her. She'd endured months of what was effectively physical and psychological torture and sexual abuse. Killgrave was dead, at her hand, but that didn't magically resolve all of the trauma and complex PTSD she had. Of course Jessica Jones, of all people, would be uncomfortable around someone with mind control powers.
"I'm sorry. That hadn't even occurred to me," I said slowly, feeling like a piece of shit. "I've… I've been really thoughtless, haven't I?"
"It's fine," she said brusquely, but she didn't look up and was fidgeting slightly with her hands. She looked really uncomfortable. I'd seen her like this with me before, but it just hadn't registered until now what I was actually seeing—I'd thought it was just her being standoffish, utterly blind to her very real discomfort.
"No, it isn't."
I'd never used actual mind control to override her will, but I'd still constantly bulled over all her objections and done what I'd wanted to do, regardless of her wishes, in basically all of our previous interactions. That had to be triggering. God. She wasn't being an asshole—I was. No fucking wonder she didn't like me.
I stood up abruptly, the legs of the chair scraping loudly against the wooden floorboards. "I'll just… I'll go," I said, hesitating for a bare moment. My cheeks had grown hot, burning with shame and guilt, my vision blurring a little. "If you need help with anything; if there's something I can do, just ask. Anything you need. Anytime. You've got my number. Otherwise, I'll just… I'll leave you be. I'm sorry, Jessica, I really didn't mean to."
I turned and fled, barrelling past Malcolm and hurrying out the door, down the hall, and hammered at the button to call the elevator. After it failed to materialise in two seconds, I shook my head, feeling a little wetness starting to run down my cheeks, and thrust my hand into my pocket, fishing out my sling ring instead. The elevator dinged as it arrived, but I'd already spun up a portal and returned to the street below.
I leant back against the cool brickwork of the building's exterior as I dismissed the gateway, ignoring the reactions of the few pedestrians that had seen me appear. Closing my eyes for a minute, I focused on my breathing, forcing myself to calm down and push through the familiar feeling that I was a shitty, worthless excuse of a person. Fucking hell. I should have realised. I'd thought I was better at reading people than that. I'd never meant to make her uncomfortable. I was such an idiot. Even my attraction to her felt gross, now, with that context. I wiped at my face with the back of my hand.
Okay, so, never seeing Jessica again, I guess. Cool. And here I'd thought I was done burning bridges with people I liked. God, I was going to be seeing Peter again soon, too, and I had no idea what was going to happen there. Maybe he hated me. He had every right to blame me for what had happened.
I'd vaguely been thinking about maybe wandering up to Harlem and trying to track down Luke Cage once I was done catching up with Matt but, after what had just happened with Jessica, I was suddenly feeling a lot less social. If Matt's office wasn't so close by, I probably would have just portalled straight home and hid in bed for the rest of the day.
Instead, I steeled myself and took out my phone, bringing up the Maps app to remind myself how to get to Nelson and Murdock from here. It wasn't too far—Jessica and Matt worked within fairly easy walking distance of each other. Straightening up, I started down the sidewalk.
I walked in a bit of a daze, trying not to think too much about what had just happened with Jessica, and fifteen minutes later I stepped past a familiar bronze plaque to a wrought-iron mesh door covered in peeling beige paint. Moving inside and up the stairs, I found the door labelled NELSON AND MURDOCK, ATTORNEYS AT LAW and headed in. The waiting room was basically the same as it had been the last time I was here—haphazard, mismatched folding chairs and a flimsy card table tucked into a corner with some magazines and a lamp on it.
Across from the door, the office manager, Karen, was already standing up from her desk to greet me, a tight smile on her face. "Hi! Wanda Maximoff, right?"
I made a small noise of approval, despite myself. "I'm surprised you remember me."
"…Let's just say you made an impression. Matt's here, but he's busy going over some casework."
"Can you let him know I'm here? He'll make time for me; I won't bother him long," I said, going through the motions for Karen's benefit—even absorbed in his work, there was no way that Matt hadn't heard me come in or speak just now.
"I'm sure he will," she said, sizing me up for a moment before she went over to his office door.
I frowned to myself. Her body language was a bit guarded—she didn't like me, either. Of course. I mean, I'd made basically no effort to talk to her or put her at ease, but still. I was a mysterious unknown, sweeping in here to have private talks with Matt about something she wasn't privy to. Hell, she might have even seen me on the news by now. I didn't like to think of myself as being bad at dealing with people, but after what had just happened with Jessica, seeing Karen also a little visibly uncomfortable with my presence was really just making me want to crawl into a hole and never come out again.
Karen rapped on Matt's door smartly with her knuckles, waited a second, then opened the door and poked her head in to tell him I'd arrived. After a moment, she took a step back and held the door open for me. "You can go right in." She tilted her head toward the open door, still looking at me appraisingly.
"Thanks." I shot her another smile and stepped inside, making sure the door closed behind me and she returned to her desk before turning toward Matt.
He'd stood up as I'd entered, head vaguely pointed in my direction. "Ms Maximoff. Good to see you again."
"Little blind person joke?"
"Have to take the humour where you can, in my line of work. Please, sit," he said, smiling and gesturing to the chair across from him. I sat. Matt did the same. I took a deep breath, sighed, but didn't say anything at first. After a few moments, he shifted position, leaning forward. "What happened? With the Hand?" he asked quietly.
I shook my head. "It's complicated and a lot of it you don't need to know. Their leadership's gone entirely—I guess some of the lieutenants might try to hold stuff together, but they've lost basically everyone that really matters. The rest will probably either dissolve or fall to infighting… or the Chaste will clean them up, I guess."
"I thought you said we had time."
"We did. Something else happened that meant the Hand moved up my schedule, is all."
"I'm assuming this 'something else' has to do with the terrorist attack in San Francisco."
"Is that what they're calling it? Yeah. Like I said, I can't really get into the details." I bit my lip, eyes firmly glued to Matt's desk. "I'm going to go ahead and assume you completely ignored my warnings and got involved with Elektra anyway."
The corner of Matt's mouth twitched and he licked his lips before letting out a small, awkward chuckle. "I don't know what would make you think that."
A small smile briefly touched my face but I banished it, my expression turning serious again. "Don't fuck things up with Karen, okay? Especially not for Elektra."
He paused, processing that for a moment, before he responded. "I won't."
"You're still working the Frank Castle case, right?"
"We're on the docket for next week."
I nodded slowly. "Okay. Well, hopefully this will help you focus on that, then."
"I've been watching Midland Circle; Stark Industries has equipment and drones on site. Iron Legion, same make as the ones that were attacking the Avengers in San Francisco."
"You don't need to worry about Midland Circle anymore. Like I said, the Hand's done. Their plans for what's underneath it don't matter anymore."
"And what are your plans for it?" The question pulled me up short and I glanced up at Matt, surprised. He wasn't looking in my direction, his head tilted, staring vacantly off to one side, but he seemed like he was focusing very intently.
"I don't have any," I said honestly. I hadn't really thought about Midland Circle much at all since Eliza had been created. I'd need to ask about what the investigation into what the AI had been using Stark Industries for had uncovered. "Stark Industries will try to acquire it, probably, and I guess once it's unearthed we'll study it. See if there's some beneficial purpose it can be used for." The most likely scenario I could think of was the Avengers handing the dragon bones over to Kamar‑taj—they seemed best placed to deal with something like that.
"Okay." Matt seemed mostly satisfied with that answer.
"So… yeah. That's about it. I just wanted to drop in and let you know that you shouldn't really have any more problems with the Hand from now on. If you do see Stick again, tell him 'You're welcome' from the Avengers."
There was another moment of silence, then Matt turned to face me properly—his unseeing eyes, hidden behind red-lensed sunglasses, seeming to look right through me. "Are you okay?" he asked, his tone gentle.
I suddenly felt very small. "No, not really," I said. It was pointless to try lying to Daredevil.
"Anything I can help with?"
"Maybe; got any advice on how to be a less shit person?"
He let out a soft snort of amusement. "I think I'm the wrong person to ask for that sort of advice. What happened?"
"Nothing," I ran my tongue along my lips to moisten them, then sighed. "I mean, something, but it's nothing anyone can do anything about. I've had a lot of ups and downs lately and things are just… hitting me a bit harder than they should, I think."
He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. "Okay, well," he said, rising to his feet, a small sympathetic smile lighting his face. "Come on. There's a bar just down the street that I like. I'll buy you a drink."
I blinked, surprised. "It's barely noon."
"You don't seem like the sort of person that that's ever stopped before."
"Touché." He had me there. "…Okay."
--
"You're famous now," Matt said, idly fingering his glass. "After what happened in San Francisco, I mean. Helping the Avengers. Karen recognised you on the news."
We were sitting in a booth at Josie's Bar, the Nelson and Murdock staff's favoured haunt. More light filtered in from the clouded, dirty windows and glass door than was cast by the dim lamp over the battered-looking wooden bar and the few scattered flickering neon signs—the place would be pretty poorly-lit at night, which would probably help to conceal just how worn the place was. Actual daylight did the place no favours. It smelt of stale beer, cheap liquor, and something faintly metallic, like rust. On the face of it, it wasn't the most inviting place, but still… I could see it had its own sort of unpolished charm. We almost had the place entirely to ourselves, with only one older man sitting quietly at the far end of the bar, nursing a drink. I was honestly a little surprised that the place was even open this early.
"Of course she did," I said with a sigh. "Sorry if that makes meeting with me a bit more awkward."
"It's not a problem." Matt leaned his elbow on the table, ear tilted toward me. "Your brother joined the Avengers. There's a lot of gossip and speculation as to why you didn't join as well. Any particular reason he's on the team and you're not?"
I didn't really want to talk about this. I was already in a bit of a mood because of what happened to Jessica, I didn't need to be reminded of my other failures as well. "Politics, mostly. We're still working together."
"You're not happy about that." It was a statement, not a question.
"I'm not," I admitted. "I want to be on the team. It's just… complicated. It was my decision to step back a bit and not join, though."
"You wanted to distance yourself, for some reason?"
"Politics," I said again. Matt seemed to sense that I didn't want to talk about it and didn't press the issue again. After a few moments of companionable silence, I drained the rest of my glass. "Would you want to see again?" I asked, placing my empty whiskey tumbler down on the table between us and looking at Matt seriously.
He let out a small, incredulous laugh, as though he couldn't believe I'd just asked that. "What?"
"If your eyes could be healed. A miracle cure for blindness. Or if you could, for example, speaking purely theoretically, get cybernetic prosthetic eyes. From space. Would you?"
"I've never really thought about it." He seemed amused by the examples. "It would depend, I guess."
I waved a hand dismissively. "Cybernetic prosthetics. You'd need to have the old ones completely removed, I think, but then you could just literally pop them in and they'd work. Plug and play, so to speak."
"…I feel like you might not be talking from an entirely theoretical place, here."
"I might not be."
"If it were safe—"
I cut him off. "Safe. Free. No complications. Shouldn't affect your other enhanced senses. Just your vision back. Would you do it?"
Matt hesitated for a few moments. "…Are you offering?"
"You're really squirming around answering the question, aren't you?"
"I've been blind since I was nine. Would I choose to be able to see again, if I could? Yes. Of course."
I nodded. "Okay. I can't make any promises, but I know some people. I'll look into it for you." Next time I spoke to Carol, I'd ask her about it. If she didn't know where to get some space-tech cybernetic eyes, she'd probably know someone who did. If not, maybe the Guardians of the Galaxy would. I knew Rocket got his hands on one at some point.
Matt went quiet again for a bit, his jaw working silently. After a little while, he took a deep breath. "That… seems like a lot to do for someone you barely know."
"I actually know you better than you might think, Matt. And you're nice to me. Feels like I've had to fight pretty hard to get that from most other people in my life." I chuckled, running a finger along the rim of my empty glass and shooting him a mischievous look. "You know, if you weren't already with Karen, I'd let you take me home right now and have your wicked way with me."
He let out an amused snort. "Because I'm nice to you?"
"Not just because you're nice. You're also pretty cute. It honestly doesn't take much more than that, for me." And maybe it would have helped take my mind off how shitty I felt about what had happened with Jessica.
Matt laughed again and shook his head. "Maybe day drinking wasn't such a good idea."
"That's not it. You've got enhanced senses; use them. Listen to my body, the way I'm talking. Do I seem tipsy at all? Alcohol just doesn't do that much for me, these days. Downside of my powers." I paused, playing back the last minute of conversation in my head for a moment before I heaved a sigh. "Sorry. I shouldn't have even said it. Inappropriate."
"You don't have anything to apologise for," he said with a small shake of his head. "Who knows? If I wasn't seeing Karen, maybe I'd even have taken you up on it."
"I just don't know when to turn it off, sometimes," I confessed, looking down at the table. I picked my glass up by the rim, my fingers splayed, balancing it on the edge of the base and rolling it slowly back and forth across the wooden surface. "I didn't always look the way I do now. It's like… there's this thing, where someone who's experienced poverty—who been through times when they were just never sure when the next meal would come—will overeat when they get the opportunity to. Just pack it in. Because they're conditioned to feel like they might starve again soon, even if that isn't likely to happen. I think it's kind of like that." I let out an incredulous little laugh. "Wow. God, that actually makes me sound really pathetic and desperate when I say it out loud like that, doesn't it?"
"I don't think so," Matt responded, his expression thoughtful. "I think it just makes you sound human."
--
"We… we didn't know what to do. Who else to go to," Brian said, his voice a little unsteady. He stood near the punching bags, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, his eyes darting nervously to the nearby weapons rack. The evening light spilling through the dojo's sliding windows gave the room a golden glow—normally, Colleen would find it comforting and peaceful, but after getting the news she just had, it felt almost stifling.
She didn't respond right away.
Instead, she turned and walked toward the back room, flicking her head to indicate that Mary and Brian—her two former students that had come calling—should follow her. They hesitated a moment, but did so. The small space felt even tighter with all three of them inside. Colleen knelt down in front of an old trunk, unlocked it, then took out her grandfather's katana. Closing the lid, she rested the weapon on top, staring at it for a moment as she knelt, her back to her two visitors as she steadied herself. She could hear Mary shifting behind her, the soft scrape of her shoes on the floor, and Brian's low, nervous sigh.
"Who was it?" Colleen asked softly after a few moments of relative silence, her fingers tracing along the saya—the sheathe—of the sword, lingering on the white bindings wrapping the hilt. "Gao's faction?" Madame Gao was a criminal. A monster. If her disagreements with Bakuto had finally escalated to the point where she'd wanted him removed, then Colleen would—
"Gao's dead, too."
Her head snapped up in surprise and she turned to look at them. That had been far from the answer she'd been expecting. "What? How?"
"They're all dead," Brian said hurriedly, almost tripping over his words. He looked scared. "All of the Fingers. Colleen, there is no Hand. Not anymore. It's all gone."
He might as well have punched her in the stomach. It seemed… impossible. Unbelievable. How could something so good just be gone? For all of the faults of Gao's faction, it wasn't just Bakuto's work with troubled youths that was in jeopardy. What would happen to the charities that Alexandra Reid's foundation managed? The White Hat's outreach programs in Africa? If the Hand was truly gone, there were so many people that were going to suffer who would otherwise have found help and support. Like she had.
Mary and Brian exchanged a nervous look. "It was San Francisco, near as we can tell," Mary said. "That big 'terrorist attack' where they're saying the Avengers fought some evil robots. The Fingers were caught up in it, somehow. We don't know the details… who was fighting who."
"We don't know anything?" Whatever had happened in San Francisco hadn't been just a terrorist attack, Colleen was certain of it. If the Avengers were involved, whatever had happened had to have been serious, but the government and warmongers like Tony Stark had a vested interest in hiding their dirty laundry. They certainly didn't care about the little people that got caught in the crossfire.
"We have a name. That's all."
"What name?"
"Wanda Maximoff," Mary said, her tone deadly quiet, a small twitch of her lip giving away her feelings. She might as well have spat.
There was something about that name… "Why is that familiar?"
"You probably saw her in the news. She was there, in San Francisco," said Brian. "She's been working with the Avengers. Her brother's the newest member."
Of course. Colleen didn't really keep up with celebrity stuff, but a new Avenger joining the team was big, splashy news that had everyone talking about it. Pietro Maximoff… Quicksilver. She didn't know much about him, and even less about his sister. Only that she was Enhanced, somehow. Powerful. Dangerous.
Colleen stood up, turning to face her two former students properly. "Thank you. This… thank you for coming. Leave this with me."
Brian shook his head and took a deep breath, steeling himself. "You don't have to do this alone, Colleen. We're with you," he said.
Next to him, Mary's hands had tightened into fists. "We're all with you."
Colleen felt her heart swell, eyes misting up again, and she smiled. Raising her arms, she ushered the two of them into an embrace, squeezing them tightly. "Thank you. I know you're upset, but this is going to be dangerous. You've still got your whole lives ahead of you." She pulled back, hands lingering on their shoulders, and looked at them seriously. "Take care of the younger ones. Bakuto dedicated his life to helping other people get theirs back on track; you need to honour that legacy. Carry it forward. Promise me, okay?"
Reluctantly, the two of them nodded. Mary's face was twisted into a determined scowl, but Brian looked like he was almost on the verge of tears again. Colleen gave their shoulders a final squeeze before letting go.
"Go," she said. "Keep me in the loop. Let me know if there's anything else I can help with."
Brian reaching over and gently touched Mary on the arm. "Okay," Mary said, nodding again. She exchanged a final look with Brian, then the two of them quietly filtered out.
Once they were gone, Colleen picked up her grandfather's katana, feeling the weight of it, holding the saya tightly as her mind raced. The tenets of bushido demanded that she only carry her blade if she was willing to draw it, and to only draw it if she was willing to use it. To use it meant to cut… and to cut meant to kill.
Bakuto had given her everything. She'd learned so much from him. He'd treated her almost like a daughter. She wouldn't have had Chikara Dojo if it wasn't for him. The training, safety and opportunities she'd helped give to youth who'd needed it—none of it would have happened without him. Bakuto had done so much, helped so many people, touched so many lives… and now he was dead. Murdered. Everything he'd built was collapsing and all the people he would have carried out of poverty, out of despair, would now no longer get that chance.
Her grip tightened. She needed answers. Whoever had done this—whoever was responsible—she would find them and make them pay. She needed to find Wanda Maximoff.
Last edited:
- Location
- Orange County, California
Nice.
Wanda is probably one of the thirstiest SIs I've read. Her little speech at the end is telling, but it is getting to the point of being a problem. I think when she hit on Captain Marvel is when it started being a bit too wish fulfillment. Far as we can tell, Carol's never had a romantic relationship, even when she got married.
But still a very well written chapter.
- Location
- Christchurch, NZ
The problem with using portals to get things into space is keeping them there: is Wanda moving them into geosynchronous (and manoeuvring from there if needed), moving the other end of the portal at kilometers per second, or do they have some crazy "launch through a portal" setup? All are pretty reasonable, in Marvel, of course.
The real issue is it kind of seems like a sop from Stark, who doesn't seem like he would have any trouble getting anything into space with all the nonsense he has. They do everything except him flying into orbit in his suit alone, with little reason to think he's not capable of it.
The real issue is it kind of seems like a sop from Stark, who doesn't seem like he would have any trouble getting anything into space with all the nonsense he has. They do everything except him flying into orbit in his suit alone, with little reason to think he's not capable of it.
I say this from a place of respect: Magic ain't gotta explain shit to dick. We see Strange portal from one side of the galaxy to the other, from planet to planet, without any sort of issue with the portals.
As for it being a sop from Stark... Eh. Maybe. Tony doesn't particularly like Wanda, but someone being able to swing their hand around to open a portal to orbit beats having to manage flight paths, FAA clearances, weather concerns, fuel (even if we assume Tony is using arc reactor powered repulsors), safety concerns, etc. It's just good business sense, and I can't imagine someone like Pepper not jumping on the chance to save Stark Industries potentially billions of dollars a year*.
*Cursory Google search says that the cost of putting a satellite into space ranges anywhere from 10-400 million.
Last edited:
dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
In the worst case, she's allowing space launches to skip the weight of fairings by going from the launchpad to beyond the atmosphere. Doing that little corresponds to getting $100k-ish per launch.
- Location
- Christchurch, NZ
Personally I really like the idea of a horizontal rocket catapult through a portal.
I should also mention now you're doing all these in a vacuum or we're just handwaving air moving through portals, end of Avengers style.
Nothing is an actual "plot hole" here, of course, more just I really like the idea of some poor Stark tech having to figure out how to vacuum seal a kilometer long mine tunnel with a week's notice 😄
I should also mention now you're doing all these in a vacuum or we're just handwaving air moving through portals, end of Avengers style.
Nothing is an actual "plot hole" here, of course, more just I really like the idea of some poor Stark tech having to figure out how to vacuum seal a kilometer long mine tunnel with a week's notice 😄
mythSSK
Wanda Wannabe
Nice.
Wanda's pretty thirsty, but I dunno about thirstiest. Maybe we just read different fics (we almost certainly do).
Carol hasn't had any official, on-screen relationships. However, it was reported that scenes in The Marvels featuring Valkyrie had been cut/changed, where the original version had originally had explicitly confirmed that Carol and Valkyrie had been together in the past (cut quote: "We work better as friends"). Even without explicit confirmation, Carol is very queer-coded, in any case.
There is a lot of variability around cost depending on what vehicle you're looking at -- SpaceX's Falcon 9 costs about $70 million per launch; Rocket Lab's Electron is the third most launched small-lift launch vehicle and only costs about $7.5 million per launch, etc. There's also the fact that the MCU's general technology base is notably higher than ours. I think it's easy to assume that, with Stark Industries in the field, orbital launches are probably a little bit cheaper in the MCU than they are in the real world.
Wanda's also only saving them the cost of the physical launch. They still need to build and supply the stuff she's putting into space for them. There are a lot more costs involved than just the price of the boosters/fuel required to reach orbit.
Given that the rings are meant to move sorcerers through strange dimensions, I'm going to assume that the rings have some sort of function that stops things like "accidentally venting all of Earth's atmosphere through them" from happening, otherwise every Master of the Mystic Arts is carrying around a world-ending WMD and I don't think the rings are treated as being quite that dangerous, in-setting.
Last edited: