Author's Note—there is an illustrated version of this story located on Archive of our Own!
Find it here, delete spaces between dot, org, and the slash: archiveofourown -dot-org/ works/7251481
This story also has a tumblr to follow updates, news, art, and more: reconstruction .kousagi .net
In June, I began uploading this story on Ao3 (since it's intended to have illustrations every chapter, and Ao3 allows for images within posted stories.) I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me to go ahead and share the story here, even lacking the images. But for every chapter, I'll also be providing a link to it's Ao3 location for those who want to read each installment with the illustrations. The story updates every other Thursday (one Thursday, skip a week, then Thursday, skip a week, etc.)
Please look forward to it!
The roar and rattle of the lift's motor and cables echoed against concrete walls. It was loud enough to muffle the quiet, choked sobs of the woman inside, one Wanda Maximoff. She had collapsed against a wall just below a palm-sized smear of blood, stealing this one moment of solitude to mourn. The bruised mess of her face was strained into anguish, and as her head cleared, she spat blood.
She couldn't say what was on the other side of this building's walls or even if the floor she was descending from would even exist in several more minutes. Perhaps the upper levels would simply cease to be, perhaps they would melt into that black, inky flood of tar and come crashing down through the stairwells.
Either way, all she could do was pray that Clint had made it out of there.
Shifting slightly caused pain to shoot up through her leg and side from the stab wound that was quickly soaking through its bandages. Wanda cursed under her breath, every nerve in her leg like fire. If those demons didn't catch up to her first, she was going to bleed out. One or the other. There was not much running left on this leg.
Steadying her breaths, Wanda sought to calm herself. That's what Vision would have encouraged her to do. Nestled in her arms, she cradled all that remained of him—a lifeless head, cut clean down the vibranium seams that met his neck and clavicle.
"Keep him safe." Clint had told her before they parted ways.
Keep him safe, she repeated in her mind. As if there were some hope for him. She wanted to believe it—but she could not sense the myriad of thoughts that had always flowed through his mind before. Nor could she sense the soft, warm glow that always shone inside of him like some distant sun—when death claimed a body, the soul was released and dispersed.
Perhaps Clint truly believed, more than she did, that they would find a way to get Vision back.
The lift's bell sounded as it came to an unplanned stop on the second level.
Wanda bolted up, weak crimson sparks flickering to fragile life on her one free hand. With a rusty groan, the doors screeched open. Wanda was ready to strike, clutching Vision's head close.
In the corridor's gold light, she caught a certain scarlet glint atop the figure's head and instantly, Wanda's fears melted away.
"Nat!" Wanda cried, rushing to the lift's gates. She helped push the heavy machinery open and Natasha was quick to pull her out, one protective arm around her.
"Come on, we gotta move quick." Natasha said, face exhausted and pale.
She didn't look good, either, Wanda realized with a pang of guilt and anger. Natasha was leaving a trail of blood from the gunshot wound in below her ribs. One shaking hand was pressed against the wound. Her body was all of bruised and broken, but still, Natasha carried on, giving her injuries little notice.
Natasha looked back into the empty lift and then back to Wanda, eyes widening for a moment, "Where's Clint?"
Wanda said nothing.
As quickly as Natasha's expression came, it faded, "…we don't have a lot of time left. This place is falling apart. Stay close to me. Can you run?"
Wanda nodded.
"Good. You're going to run."
Natasha was leading her down the mess of a corridor and through the ground level of the warehouse. They turned and made way down a small, half-flight of stairs. The lights had flickered out, leaving them in the dark until the flashlight on Natasha's handgun lit the way.
"The only clear exit is through the loading bay. There's a door on the north wall. Damn thing actually leads outside. Get through it, get out, get to the lake."
Leaning against one another, Wanda and Natasha staggered through the halls. They passed a string of doors, some caved in and smashed by inhuman fists and some burned out and reeking of ash and cinder.
"You're coming too, right?" Wanda asked.
The complexion in Natasha's stoic face seemed to drain a little more with every step. Beads of sweat mingled with smattered blood, dirt, and bruise. Wanda could hear the subtle strain in Natasha's breaths, leading her to wonder if there was damage to her lungs from that shot through the torso. Had her powers not been so frail, she'd have easily dipped into Natasha's mind for the answers to her questions—but they too, were fading just as fast as Natasha.
Natasha ignored Wanda's question and said simply, "…you have to get Vision out of here."
Breaking glass interrupted Natasha. Two cryptids tumbled through an office window's remains and hobbled onto the floor. With loud, wheezing breaths, they carried the burning glow of fire over their long, bony limbs. Shining embers dusted off of their arched backs as they lurched in toward them. Glass caught in their long skirts scratched against the floor with every step.
A stream of inky, boiling tar spilled from the ceiling, just a few meters to Natasha's left. The two of them paled as they watched it pour. One slender pillar of tar, and then another, before several rushing falls had torn through and began to flood the corridors. Boiling heat was fast filling their path and Natasha kicked through the door at the end, guiding them to their destination.
"Go!" Natasha commanded as the bay's north exit came into sight.
Several more of the burning demons were climbing out of the tar that pooled in low spots of the floor. Natasha fired at the ones closest to them, gunshots that deafened in the echo of the bay. Wanda pulled whatever heavy equipment she saw, levitating it into the air and throwing it at the demons. Little more than tools and light crates would budge at her mind's touch—the forklifts and power equipment around was wretchedly impossible to move.
The stench of the boiling tar and every rancid creature the tar pools birthed sickened and dizzied Wanda.
"I'm not telling you again!" Natasha's voice came behind her, "…go! Get out of here!"
"I'm not leaving you!" Wanda cried.
When Wanda turned back to Natasha, she saw just how many of the quaking demons were walking toward them both. Natasha, standing before this growing, glistening hoard, turned her gun on Wanda.
"Go, or I'll take that damn stone myself."
Something inside of Wanda felt like it had been gutted. Shaking her head, Wanda pleaded, "Don't leave me. Please… don't make me go without you. I already had to leave Clint, I'm not leaving you, too."
Natasha's features softened under a bruised pallor.
Tears stung at Wanda's eyes and her body trembled. Inside was a storm of frustration and fury—this sense of powerlessness, of having to run, having to hide, it was as infuriating as it was terrifying. It was a familiar bite from the same beast that hunted her in the past.
"You have to go, Wanda. Protect the stone." Natasha said, her clear eyes fixing on the inanimate head in Wanda's arms, and she added, "…protect him."
Natasha's gloved hand smoothed gently over Wanda's tousled hair. Natasha gave a soft smile, before her hand left Wanda's head. The cryptids were mere meters from them both, now.
"Run. Run and don't look back. I'll see you when I do, kid."
Natasha turned back to their pursuers with a fresh clip in her gun.
Wanda made for the door.
Gunshots rang out in the corridor's concrete walls, deafening ears that were already ringing. The third and final sign of the nightmare reaching its pattern climax arrived in the form of familiar gold tendrils rising up from the pools of tar and climbing walls like possessed vines.
Splintering, crackling, and glittering in what little light filtered in from distant flickering lights, the tendrils were weaving toward them both. She heard more frantic gunshots. Wanda's hand was on a dirty doorknob and it turned with resistance. She heard the empty click of a spent clip.
"Don't look back." Natasha had said.
Wanda pushed open the door and the midnight shine of pale snow filtered in. Frozen wind hit her like a sheet of needles. The door almost threatened to slam shut against the gale. Wanda shouldered the heavy door open in a flurry of red lights. She was met with an icy gale and the wet storm of frost outside.
Over her shoulder, Wanda looked back.
In both hands, the agent held her last two weapons. Wanda could hear Natasha's electric batons light up. That was the last Wanda saw of Natasha before she made her way into the storm.
"Follow the path," Harkness had said, "…and he shall meet you on the lake."
Down several steps and out onto the bank of Lake Wundagore. The surface was frozen solid and Wanda realized she was not alone on this path toward the heart of the lake. A spotted trail of blood almost shone like a scarlet path, illuminated bold against snow and ice.
Onto the path, then.
Wanda pressed forward, cautious, exhausted, trembling. The pain in her leg was agony and the blood loss left her feeling she could be blown away in the wind at any second. The last miserable hours had been the first time in years that she truly could not hear or feel any presence around her. No powers, no red lights, nothing but the overpowering awareness of silence. The suffocating, constant realization that her powers were fading.
She felt the outpour of tears burn down her cheeks. Clutching Vision's head tighter, she cursed under her breath in Sokovian once more. Her foot caught in the crags of shifting ice, tearing her balance away and sending her toppling over onto her knees and side.
Freezing ice bit at her fingertips, her palms, and her cheeks. A hammering pain in her head cried out where it had met the lake's solid surface as though she'd plummeted into concrete. When the half-second of vertigo passed, she realized Vision's head was no longer in her arms. Her resolve broke, tears fell, and she reached out for him, an arm's reach away.
Taking his head back into her arms, she cried.
"Vision…" Wanda's voice quaked. No amount of focus in her powers, on the head in her arms, or even the stone embedded in Vision's forehead lent her any sense that life remained.
She was alone.
Just like in Novi Grad.
Through the dusting of snow on the wind, she saw the dark form of trees and a rhombic rooftop of a derelict structure. Wanda recognized it as the island near the heart of the lake and that small church Harkness had pointed out to her on a clear night.
Keep running, Wanda told herself, willing her body back to its feet and closing the distance between herself and the island.
She could almost see the silhouette of the church's bell tower rising up through the shadows. Wanda could taste blood on her lips, her face too frost-numbed to feel it trickle down her forehead and across her nose.
Wanda certainly heard that low hum, however. Growing louder with each step.
The pain in her leg intensified tenfold when a gold vine tore through the ice beside one foot and then tore through her thigh like a spear—a sense of déjà vu washed over her, but only for a one blissful second before the pain fell on her like a firestorm.
A scream rang out, before Wanda dropped down and felt another vine rip through her shoulder. Several more tendrils cracked through the ice and spiraled around her limbs, tearing her downward. She clutched the head in her arms for dear life and continued a pathetic, hopeless struggle for that island, that church. With a furious and terrified cry, Wanda reached deep into her mind for scarlet lights to tear the wretched binds away.
Reflexively, one hand moved. Nothing.
Her wrist was caught in another splintering vine and it was torn down against the ice.
This was the end, then. A realization that dawned on her just as it did in Sokovia, the moment she felt everything plummet.
This time, there was no Vision to catch her.
The ice groaned and cracked around her as more vines tore into the air around her, each thorn glittering gold. A pull followed under cracked ice. Wanda felt frozen, black water slosh up from beneath each frozen fracture. She panicked and kicked against the vines one last time before water and ice caved in around her body.
Frozen, deprived of air, the vines dragged her down until the surface was just a fading light far above.
Wanda was falling, drowning, freezing, until every sensation unified as null, black nothingness.