Chapter 92
Forcing a smile onto my face, I gave Steve and Bucky a little wave as they stepped through the portal into Nat's apartment. "Hey, guys!"
"Hey!" Steve's return smile faltered a little as he took in my red and puffy eyes. He exchanged a quick look with Bucky, and I saw their eyes narrow briefly in concern. "Everything okay?"
I sniffed, nodding, and turned away, scurrying back over to the kitchen to start laying things out for dinner.
"She's fine," Natasha said, a small, long-suffering smile on her face. The genuineness of her expression seemed to set their minds at ease, and they stood there awkwardly for a moment.
Yelena, who'd been sprawled comfortably on the couch, head on Pietro's shoulder, lifted herself up into proper sitting position and gestured toward the TV. "We were watching the Great British Bake Off while she got stuff ready," she said by way of explanation.
"She cries when the old people get voted off," Pietro added.
I stopped what I was doing to concentrate, sending bowls and sets of cutlery floating through the air toward the coffee table, carried on wisps of red chaos magic. "The old people should be allowed to stay," I responded, mumbling under my breath a little.
Nat flicked her head toward the dining chairs that had been moved over to the living room, grabbing a bottle of wine and some glasses. "Sit down. I'll get you a drink."
Less than ten minutes later, the five of us were clustered in the living room. The TV had been turned off, Steve and Bucky with their backs to it, perched on the chairs that had been moved over from the tiny dining table. Nat was curled up in the armchair in the corner, while I had squeezed onto the couch with Pietro and Yelena. The space wasn't really designed for this many people, but we made it work.
Bucky cleared his throat and everyone hushed, looking at him expectantly. He hesitated, probing the inside of his lip with his tongue for a moment. "For a long time, I didn't really have any hope," he started, then stopped again—a combination of not being entirely comfortable sharing and not really knowing what he wanted to say, I thought. After a moment, he gave an awkward little half-shrug. "Now I do. That's all." He raised his glass. "To new hope."
"To new hope." Everyone was smiling as we repeated it and clinked our glasses together, toasting Bucky's new lease on life.
"Are you crying again?" Yelena said, a note of disbelief in her tone.
"Shut up," I told her, poking her in the ribs with my elbow. Even though Bucky hadn't really said much, my face had grown hot, wetness welling in the corners of my eyes. Stupid emotions.
Bucky grinned, looking at me. "To Wanda," he added, lifting his glass again. "Thank you."
"That is not helping," I laughed, scrubbing furiously at my face with my free hand as everyone cheers-ed again.
Despite being elbow-to-elbow on the couch, with everyone squashed in, it still didn't feel uncomfortable as we tucked into our food. Conversation drifted in easy waves as we ate, touching on half-remembered missions, bad movie plots, and me describing Yelena's first attempt at baking cookies ("The recipe lied," she insisted). It was just… nice. Like we were just one big family. At one point, I realised I couldn't stop smiling, and the realisation made me smile even more.
After everyone was mostly done, Steve leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh, a satisfied look on his face. "That was great, Wanda. Thank you. Really."
"There's leftovers," I said, gesturing toward the fridge. "I made a double batch. You can take some back to the compound with you—have it tomorrow. Just chuck it in the microwave."
"Thanks." He nodded.
Pietro's brow had creased. "Wanda? Your magic causes microwave radiation, right?"
Where had that come from? "Uh, yeah."
"Does that mean you're sort of microwaving people a little bit when you use your magic on them?"
"I kind of wish you hadn't said that," Bucky said mildly, a small smile tweaking the corner of his mouth.
Natasha chuckled and leaned forward a little, shaking her head. "It's just variances in CMB. Background radiation. It's everywhere normally anyway. Don't worry, she hasn't been microwaving your brain."
"Actually," I said, one finger tracing the rim of my bowl. "I'm pretty sure that, since CMB is everywhere, we're all being microwaved all of the time. Just a little bit."
It was Yelena's turn to screw up her face. "That's… I don't like that."
Steve smiled. "Does make sense, though."
"That's what I don't like about it!" Yelena said with a snort.
There were some chuckles, then a lull in the conversation. After a moment, Steve leaned forward again. "So what's this all really about, Wanda?" he asked, catching me off-guard a little. "You wanted to talk about something?"
"What do you mean? We're celebrating." Feeling a brief flare of annoyance, I shot a vaguely reproachful look in Natasha's direction, but she just rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"Nat didn't say anything," Bucky interjected, reaching forward to put his empty bowl on the table. "But you didn't invite us here for dinner for no reason. If it was just to cook and eat and celebrate, you'd have done it at the compound."
"Okay. Yes. I may have lured you here under false pretences." Steve nodded, waiting for me to continue. I hesitated, tapping at the edge of my bowl with my fingernails for a moment, then sighed. "Honestly, I'm starting to feel a little restless. Waiting for Kaecilius to strike has been stressful—we've got that well in hand now, I think, but it feels like he paralysed us, and he's not even one of the bigger threats."
"There's something you want to do," Bucky guessed, catching on quickly. "But it involves sharing some information that you don't feel comfortable airing in front of… everyone." As he'd spoken, he'd glanced around at the others, clearly noting exactly who was here—basically, it was a gathering of the people I trusted the most.
I nodded. "We've got two other major things to worry about, beyond Special K."
"Thanos and the Celestials," Nat supplied.
"Yeah. When it comes to Thanos, I think we're well on track. Last we checked, Carol still hadn't had any luck tracking down the Guardians of the Galaxy but space is a really big place and we've got plenty of time. Thor took word of Thanos' plot to Asgard, and once he's back we can hopefully count on them for support, too. But when it comes to the Celestials…"
Pietro grunted. "Thor's been gone for more than two months and we haven't heard anything."
"Space is a really big place," Steve said, echoing my words back at me.
"Yeah, I know. It's just…" I shrugged helplessly. "Going to Omnipotence City to petition the Celestials there was always just a shot in the dark, anyway. We don't really know anything about the Celestial pantheon or how the ones at the City are even related to Arishem. Thanos can be defeated conventionally, but we don't really even have a plan to deal with the Emergence yet. I want to start laying some groundwork for the future, rather than just sitting on my thumbs waiting for something to happen."
"What are you proposing?" he asked.
"I'm not asking for permission here, but it'd be stupid to do this completely on my own. I was thinking of trying to—carefully—approach some of the Eternals." Steve went to say something and I hurried cut him off, trying to get everything out before he made any assumptions about what I was intending to do, here. "Look, I'm not trying to be divisive, or ask you to go behind anyone's backs. I just… Tony might get ideas about the Eternals, and for the most part they're good people just trying to live their lives. I don't want to jeopardise that any more than we absolutely have to."
Nat leaned forward a little, catching Steve's eye. "Wanda just wants to make an initial approach. Do a little outreach and try to cultivate some initial friendly relationships that we can leverage in future, if we do need to ask them to help. Nothing extreme. Nothing risky."
"Right," I confirmed. "I'm not talking about making any plans about how to deal with the Emergence without everyone else."
Steve glanced at Bucky, his forehead creased slightly, then looked down at the table and thought about it for a moment before he spoke. "I'm not going to tell you not to," he said finally, looking back up at me. "You haven't told us much about the Eternals beyond the fact that they exist—what are your options?"
I shrugged. "I actually already have a specific approach in mind, but we should probably go over the full who's who, just in case—they're sort of all over the place. They each have a unique power, too, in addition to just generally being superhuman across the board."
"You'd mentioned that they fought each other in your visions, right?" Natasha asked. "Some wanted to stop the Emergence, some wanted it to go ahead?"
"Most wanted to stop it, in the end, but they really had to talk it through to get to that point."
Yelena had settled in quietly as we spoke, listening and watching but obviously not keen to insert herself into the conversation. She tucked her feet up under herself on the couch, almost kicking me, and was leaning against my brother's shoulder again. I got the feeling that she was doing it in a mildly bratty attempt to annoy me, but ignored her.
"Do they have a leader?" Bucky asked.
I nodded. "A woman named Ajak. She… uh. I think her power is healing? I didn't see much of her before she died. Even though the Eternals don't really see each other much these days, the rest of them have a lot of respect for her."
"Sounds like she's a pretty key player to get on friendly terms with, then. What side was she on?" Steve asked.
"She died before there were sides, but her deciding that humanity was worth saving is sort of what kicked things off. Which is interesting, since she was the only one who'd known about the Emergence and everything the entire time."
"What made her change her mind?"
"Uh, well, remember that thing where half the universe got destroyed and the Avengers brought it back?" I asked, making a bit of a face. "That was what convinced her."
Bucky winced. "Woman has high standards."
"Yeah. No idea what it'd take, now."
"Who else?" Pietro prodded.
I fished out my phone and tapped at the screen a few times before holding it up, a movie poster displayed on the screen.
"It's a… Bollywood movie?" Steve asked doubtfully.
"Yep. Kingo. He's been in Bollywood forever, just re-debuting as his own son every so often. Basically just loves being famous. He was on the fence about stopping the Emergence, didn't want to pick a side. Can shoot energy blasts from his hands."
"Kingo's an Eternal?" Nat sounded a bit flabbergasted. "Huh."
"Yep. Who else? Um, Phastos is their tech guy. Makes devices out of energy. He's married to a human; they live in Chicago somewhere. He sort of gave up on humanity as a general concept after Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Steve frowned as I said that. "I really don't want to disturb them if we don't have to. Then there's Makkari. She's fast," I said, glancing over at Pietro. "Faster than you."
He made a small noise of surprise, looking interested. "Really?"
"Keeps to herself. Lives in their spaceship, which is in the Middle East somewhere. She helped stop the Emergence, but I doubt we'd be able to talk to her. She's flighty. Druig is…" Actually, if I told Steve what Druig's deal was, would he want to go and try to do something about the Eternal's little mind control cult? Best to keep quiet about that bit for now. "He split with the other Eternals after a disagreement. Lives in the Amazon jungle as a hermit. Tried to stop the Emergence. I'm not keen to speak to him—he's anti-social and has mind control powers."
"Mind control?" Bucky asked. "Like what you can do, or…?"
I let out a small snort. "Druig makes what I can do look like a parlour trick. Casual mass control over large areas." A few people exchanged concerned looks at that revelation. "Like I said, better to leave that one be. Um. Who else? Sersi became the de facto leader after Ajak died. Inorganic matter transmutation. I don't know where she is now, but in a decade's time she was working in a museum in London and living with another Eternal, Sprite. Sprite can basically create BARF-grade illusions on demand as her power, but she allied with Ikaris."
"And Ikaris is…?" Bucky asked leadingly.
"Ikaris is the main reason we really want to be careful about how we engage with the Eternals. He's the strongest, the most dangerous, and he was committed to the Emergence to the point that he murdered Ajak for doubting it. He's essentially got the full Superman package." Referencing Superman while I was literally standing in the MCU felt a little weird, but I'd looked and DC Comics were just as much of a thing here as they had been in the universe my other memories were from. "Highest physicals, flight, eye beams… he's tough. I really don't want to provoke him. We're probably going to have to fight him eventually, but I'd prefer not to try without Thor and Carol here, just to make sure."
Steve blinked. "That strong?" He sounded a little surprised. It made sense—the only other enemy I'd ever spoken of in such terms was Thanos.
"That strong," I confirmed. "I don't know where he spends most of his time, but he visits a few of the others pretty regularly. I think he spends a lot of time with Ajak. Sersi is his ex, so he keeps an eye on her, even though I don't think she's actually seen him in a while. If we want to avoid him, we should avoid them."
"So what did you have in mind, then?" Bucky asked. "They all sound like they have downsides. Kingo?"
I laughed. "No, not Kingo. Too unreliable and I don't know what level of contact he has with Ikaris and the others. There are two more: Thena and Gilgamesh. They're good people. They were fully on board with stopping the Emergence right away, practically."
Nat perked up, looking at me curiously. "When you say 'Gilgamesh', does that mean…?"
"Yeah, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh. Big and strong, can reinforce his fists even further to hit extra hard. Thena's their most technically skilled fighter. She can form weapons out of energy." I paused, biting my thumb absently. "Thena's not well. She's got a type of mental degeneration that can make her violent. Gil volunteered to look after her. They live in the middle of the Outback, alone. They still get visitors, occasionally, but less often."
"Mental degeneration?" Steve asked.
"They call it Mahd Wy'ry," I said, trying not to wince at the dumb-sounding name. "She relives memories from one of her past lives that were locked away by Arishem."
"I think I see where this is going," Bucky said thoughtfully.
Steve was on the same page, too. "You want to help her."
I nodded. "If they'll let me try, yeah. She's a weird cosmic space robot rather than a human, so obviously no guarantees, but," I shot Bucky a brief smile, "I do feel like I'm getting pretty good at fixing people's heads, at this point. The Celestials were the first wielders of the Infinity Stones. I don't know why they don't care about the Stones anymore—maybe they grew beyond the need for them—but their cosmic power is in the same wheelhouse. I think the Mind Stone should work just fine on the Eternals."
Natasha looked at Steve, giving him a small nod. "Thena and Gilgamesh are a little bit more isolated from the other Eternals, they're likely to be in favour of stopping the Emergence once they know the truth, and we have a potential route to building an immediate, strong positive relationship with them," she reiterated. "I think it's worth reaching out."
"I'm convinced," he said, raising his hands in mock surrender. "When?"
"We were thinking the day after tomorrow. Midnight-ish so it's late afternoon there. Nat and Pietro were already going to join me, but I was wondering—if you're free, did you want to come, too?" I asked, looking at Steve hopefully.
"We don't want to crowd them," Nat added. "But they should know who the Avengers are—if not Pietro and Wanda—and you've got a good reputation. Plus, if they have reservations, you could talk through what Wanda did for Bucky."
Steve nodded and I felt a twinge of relief, my shoulders relaxing slightly. The Avengers weren't so controlling of their members that they had to report back on every little thing that came up, of course, but when it came down to it, I wasn't an Avenger, even if some of them did consider me to be part of the team. Natasha had reassured me that Steve would be supportive, but I'd still been a little worried that he'd make a Thing out of it.
There were still risks involved with going to see Thena and Gilgamesh, of course, but they were relatively minor. We definitely wouldn't be telling them the truth about Arishem or the Emergence, so even if the absolute worst-case scenario happened and Ikaris happened to show up, at most he'd be a little suspicious. When it came right down to it, even if we ended up not needing the help of the Eternals to stop the Emergence, helping Thena was something that had been vaguely on my list of things to do basically since we'd escaped from HYDRA. It was always good to make new friends, and the Eternals could make for powerful allies.
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A Note From The Author
Hey, all! I mentioned a few months ago that my cat has been unwell, and I recently got some bad news about my little buddy's long-term prognosis and that plus general life issues has forced me to slow down on writing a fair bit. Accordingly, I'm going to be dropping down to posting just one chapter a week, instead of two. Apologies. I'm not sure when or if I'll be going back to two chapters a week, but I'll be doing my best in the interim. Thanks for reading!
Also: I'm located in Brisbane, Australia, which is just about to get hit by Tropical Cyclone Alfred, so here's hoping I don't get blown away!
