Somebody calls Wanda a monster and it's all that Scott can do not to strangle them, right there and then.
Wanda shies away, moving behind Scott and lowering her head. Her shoulders rise and her eyes stay glued to the ground as Scott's fist clenches.
"Want to take that back, buddy?" Scott asks lightly, tilting his head to the side and smiling razor sharp as he cracks his knuckles, the little joints popping in satisfying bits one by one even as Wanda taps his elbow and whispers don't.
He hates this.
Hates seeing Wanda like this.
She's all decked up today, too, in a pretty new bright blue dress with this funky lemon print, her hair in a slick ponytail, no makeup save bright red lipstick and she looked so happy when she dressed up today and this jerk has no right to take it away from her, Scott thinks. This was a nice day. A pretty day. Blue skies and puppies on the streets. What right does a man on the street have to mess up this little girl's day?
None, Scott thinks viciously as the arrogant man smirks at him. He has no right to do that to her.
"Oh, come on," The man barks in laughter, "Is that some attempt at a threat? She killed people," his voice turns into a snarl, eyes narrowing, "If you ask me, she should have stayed all locked up like that in that underwater prison. Who cares if it was illegal. People like her shouldn't be allowed to roam as though they're like the rest of us, not when she's a terrorist and..."
Scott doesn't hear the rest because he yanks his elbow from Wanda's light grip and slams his knuckles into the man's face.
The man staggers back, one step, stable, then wipes his face and glares at Scott. "Oh, you're going to wish you hadn't..." He moves forward to punch Scott, who smoothly leans to the side to dodge and catches the fist, using the momentum to flip the man over his shoulder onto his back on the concrete.
Beside him, Wanda presses her hands to her mouth in mute horror. "Stop," she whispers, when she regains her voice, reaching forward to grab Scott's shoulder, "Stop, we're supposed to be better than this..."
"Better than this shit stain?" Scott scoffs, "Not very hard if you ask me."
"You fucking..." The man moves to attack and instead of letting Scott retaliate, Wanda wraps thin fingers around his forearm and yanks him back.
"Stop," Wanda says quietly. Repremindingly. Scott hates that she can keep that kind of tone when trying to hold him back like this instead of sharing his anger.
Scott stops for her sake.
His hands shake at his sides, and he growls, a snarl, "Better run while you still have the chance, buddy," taking a wrong sort of satisfaction when the man scrambles away, running like the coward that he is. He turns back to Wanda, who looks pale, and says quietly, "Sorry. I know you don't like fighting."
Wanda purses her lips together and shakes her head, "I can fight my own battles."
Scott knows that. He's seen what Wanda's done, what she can do, he's seen so much but, "You shouldn't have to."
"Come on," Wanda sighs, linking her arm through Scott's arm, "It doesn't matter."
Scott bites back an angry but it does, and asks instead, "Feel like going to a fancy cafe and drinking our weight in overpriced lattes?"
Wanda laughs, obviously relieved that Scott has let it drop, and asks lightly, "You have the cash for that?"
"I'll steal Stark's money," Scott winks at Wanda, who rolls her eyes at him.
"Even Stark does not deserve that big of a bill."
Scott pouts at Wanda, who smiles at him, and he forgets about the blood on his knuckles for a brief, fleeting moment.
"Look, look!" Peter drags Wanda to Vision and makes jazz hands at her, proudly presenting Wanda and, presumably, the flower crown that he's woven into her hair. "Vision, Vision, look, look!"
"Yes," Vision tilts his head at Wanda, "You have a flower crown."
Peter huffs and leans in, "Tell her that she looks pretty."
Vision blinks at Peter, bewildered, "But she already knows that she is beautiful."
Wanda blushes a bit from where she is, having obviously heard, but she seems a little bit pleased at that.
Peter rolls his eyes, "Sometimes humans need reminding."
"Ah," Vision nods, determined, and turns back to Wanda, "You look pretty."
Wanda reddens even further, but smiles softly at him, "Thanks, Viz."
Vision nods at her.
"I'll leave you two together, then?" Peter glances at Wanda, who returns him a thankful nod, and skips away, presumably to find Tony or do something odd like try and hold a hot chocolate drinking contest with Clint again. (Both of them ended up quitting due to stomachaches, groaning on the ground, having kept going despite the initial pains because they were both stupidly stubborn.)
Wanda sits down next to him, and a petal flutters down to Vision's lap. He picks it up, a bit amused as he asks, "Should I ask?"
"It's nothing," Wanda answers lightly, fingertips dragging against his collarbone as she leans over to offer him a soft kiss.
Vision frowns, because when Wanda says things like it's nothing, it is always something. All the Avengers are like that, really, and it confuses him, why they always act like the world is perfect when it's crashing, despite the fact that communication is so obviously important to their well-being. "You did not think that I would leave that alone, did you?"
Wanda smiles at him, weary and soft as he traces his thumb against her cheeks, "I suppose it would be foolish to have, wouldn't it?"
Not quite an answer, but adequate for now, he supposes. "What would be the most efficient way to deal with this?"
She leans into him, tucking her head on his shoulder, and she feels oddly small. "Just someone was being silly and Scott got into a fight with them. I felt bad about it, a little, and Peter noticed. I'm better now, though."
"What did they say about you?" Vision presses.
"The usual," Wanda shrugs, trying to pass it off as nothing, "A witch, a killer, you know the drill."
Vision kisses the top of her head as he tries to think of something to say, he closes his eyes and reminds himself that civilians are ignorant and that is no reason to be violent. "Those things do not matter," he says, and somehow it feels as though it falls short.
She cries into his shoulder and he wonders what he should have said instead.
"Do you think that I'm a witch?" Wanda asks Cassie, tickling her.
Cassie pulls away, giggling, and says, in that childish voice that makes it seem obvious, "Of course you are!"
Wanda tries not to let her heart sink.
"That's what makes you so cool!" Cassie throws her hands in the air, and leans in, "I wanted to be a witch for a while, you know. But don't tell daddy. I want to be daddy's partner, now!" She pouts, "Except he has Hope. And Hope is cool. So we'll have three partners when I grow up. But I can't be a witch," she sighs, "Mommy says that I'm not allowed to be either, but when I'm big like you, I'll be able to be whatever I want to be!"
Wanda has a bit of trouble following, but she thinks that she gets the main idea, so she smiles a bit and runs her fingers through Cassie's hair. "And why did you want to be a witch?" She asks curiously.
"Because witches are strong, obviously!" Cassie rolls her eyes, as though Wanda is hopelessly slow, and it makes Wanda smile a bit. "You're, like, the second best... oh, um... third best... well... you can tie for second best hero!"
"Oh?" Wanda raises her eyebrows, "Who's tied with me?"
"Daddy is tied with you as second," Cassie nods.
Wanda blinks, "Then first is..."
"Wasp," Cassie explains, "Daddy's a great daddy, and he's the best grandma," she giggles to herself, an inside joke, Wanda presumes, "But he's kind of clumsy."
"Ah," they share a knowing smile. "So," Wanda twists a curl of hair around her finger, "It's fine that I'm a witch?"
"It's super cool!" Cassie throws her hands in the air, smiling brightly, "You're awesome!"
Wanda ducks her head down and bites back a smile, "Thank you, Cassie," she says.
"No problem," Cassie blinks at her, like she's not quite sure what she's being thanked for, but is gracious enough to accept it nonetheless.
"Again, kid?" A weary voice, and Wanda blinks. It's a little past midnight, and she had assumed everyone else would be asleep, but Stark saunters in and... "Ah. Not the kid, then."
Stark.
It's, ah, a bit awkward between the two, not so bad as Stark and the Captain have it, but still tense. They don't talk, not really.
"I can go," Stark says with a surprising amount of tact.
"It's fine," Wanda answers wearily, patting the seat next to her, "I'm sure we can get through a midnight meeting without any murder attempts."
Stark smiles a bit, trying to be cocky but mostly uncertain, like most of his grins with Team Cap (is that what they'll be called now? It's what the media called them) seem to be. "You sure about that?" he asks, light, joking. Testing the waters.
Wanda tries not to, but she bristles a little, "I won't bite, Stark."
Stark frowns a bit at her, shoulders slumping a bit, and he says, "Of course not. You're not dangerous, I know that."
"Sure," she scowls into her glass of water, "That's why you locked me in the tower."
"I locked you in the tower because the media wanted to scrape you inside out, and the public was willing to throw rocks at you," Stark blinks at her, like he's surprised that she thinks that, "Not because I was worried about you losing control of your powers."
"I killed those people in the hospital," Wanda says flatly.
"You were trying to save Steve and the people on the ground," Stark answers.
Wanda looks away. She can't look at him, "What good did that do?"
"Well, for one thing, Capsicle helped defeat Thanos. So, really, without you saving him, Thanos might never have been defeated," Stark smiles a bit at her, funny and odd, the way he does when he tries to be light about traumatic experiences but fails miserably.
That's... oddly comforting. "It doesn't stop the people that I've killed."
"I suppose not," Stark hums, "But all of... almost all of us have killed. I mean, kid, Cap was in the army. Widow's literally an assassin, Legolas is a sniper, so, like, also an assassin. Hulk is a bit obvious, Thor lived for centuries at war, slaughtering enemies, and there's me, which is also pretty self explanatory... you're not the only one, okay? And beside that, you didn't even want to kill anyone. You just wanted to save people. We killed people on purpose."
Wanda thinks of staring at a Stark bomb from under her bed, waiting for it to kill her, thinks of hating Stark with the image burnt into her head of a fool with champagne who didn't know about the consequences of his actions, thinks of meeting the man and seeing the demons that haunt him wherever he goes.
She thinks about being restrained, thinks of hating him, thinking his fault.
She rubs her chest, and confesses, "I hated you."
To her surprise, he just laughs, "Okay, what else is new."
As though it isn't a revelation. It, she supposes, isn't. She made her dislike fairly clear. "Perhaps it was unfair."
"Doesn't matter," he shrugs, "I can take it. If hating me makes you sleep better at night, it's fine. It doesn't impact my life in any way."
She thinks of the man, snarling witch, and murmurs, "I think I don't quite like being a scapegoat."
Stark blinks at her, owlishly.
"So perhaps you shouldn't be one, either," Wanda muses.
Stark is silent.
"I think that I'm okay with myself," she pats his arm, "You should be, too."
He gapes.
Okay. What would Spider-man do in this situation?
Wanda pumps her fist in the air, "I'm awesome!" She yells, "I'm badass and cool and I'm the Scarlet Witch!"
Stark starts to edge away.
Wanda grins to herself, and she thinks, I've got it.
"I think that I'm awesome," Wanda says, swinging her legs off the rooftop.
"You are totally right," Clint agrees, eating some rainbow ice cream. "You're, like, the third best Avenger."
She pouts at him.
"Look, I don't make the rules!" Clint throws his hands in the air, ice cream nearly flying, "Tasha's obviously the best, but I'm, like, definitely second best."
Wanda raises her eyebrows.
"We can tie for second," Clint amends, pouting at her, "But that's as far as I'm willing to go."
"I cannot believe," Wanda says, mock-offended, "that I am tied with you."
"Oi," Clint bumps shoulders with her, "I am offended by that. You're amazing, I'm amazing, why shouldn't we tie?"
Wanda takes a moment to stare at Clint, who becomes increasingly more condemned in his facial expressions, trying to think of a specific instance past the entire, vague Clint is a disaster human fact that she has floating around in her head. "Clint," she says, slowly, pained, putting a hand on Clint's shoulder, "You ate pizza from between the couch cushions last week."
"They were perfectly fine!" Clint protests.
"You were sick for two days," Wanda stresses, pinching the bridge of her nose, "It had mold on it."
"Mold is edible."
Wanda winces.
Clint wiggles his fingers, forehead creasing, "...a bit?"
Another wince.
"Fine, fine," Clint sighs, "I'm still not budging on the superhero rankings, though."
"I don't have to be number one," Wanda says, humbly in her opinion, "I just need to be higher than you."
Clint makes a high pitched, whining sort of noise in the back of his throat, as though he is highly offended and questioning in the back of his mind just how offended he should honestly be. "Wow. Pain. Emotional pain. My heart. Hurts. Ow. Going down. Only you can save me from my imminent demise."
Wanda raises an eyebrow, "Am I higher than you on the superhero rankings?"
"We can tie," Clint insists, stubbornly.
The eyebrow lowers and Wanda raises her chin, regal and proud, "Then perish."
The severity of it lingers in the air for a full two seconds before she and Clint burst into laughter.
And Wanda is a witch. Maybe even a monster.
But she loves herself, all the same. And maybe... maybe those two things aren't necessarily so bad.