Disclaimer: I do not own any of the films in the MCU, nor do I own any of the comics. This is simply a work of fiction and is not meant for any monetary gain or to infringe on any copyright laws
Rating: T for violence and minor language
Author's Note: Hey! So this is my post-Age of Ultron fanfiction, and it will focus on Wanda, Steve, and Natasha, though the other Avengers, new and old, will be present. I will be using and abusing comic canon, so please don't get too upset about that! This first chapter is entirely in Wanda's POV, but I will be changing it up a little for each chapter. There are a few allusions to Agents of SHIELD, but not enough that you have to watch the show to understand; it's more like a bonus for those who do watch the show. Also, feel free to check out my other Avengers' stories.
Chapter 1
It's the dreams that are beginning to drive her crazy. Over and over, every night she relives and rehashes the worst days of her life. And every day she wakes up only to find the present isn't any better. Those awful days she dreams about—they are heaven compared to now.
Sure, she isn't starving anymore. She gets all the food she wants. Sure, she isn't poor anymore. She has a pretty decent and steady income. Sure, she isn't friendless and ally-less anymore. She has a whole team of friends and allies.
But part of her is missing now. Her heart is missing, and her soul is split in half. No matter what she does, who she meets, or what people tell her, she lost a huge part of her that can never be replaced.
The worst part are the psychiatrists. SHIELD makes her speak to them every once in a while, and they all spout the same crap. "You have to let him go to move on." "You have to forgive him." "If you want to heal you have to accept that he's gone."
It's all a bunch of crap. How can she let him go? She never lost him, he left her. He had been taken from her. She already let him go. She already has accepted that he's gone. But she can never, ever forgive him fully for leaving her.
She understands why he left. It had been for a good, worthy cause. He'd saved a father and a husband, and he'd saved a child. Someone's son, maybe even someone's brother. And yet, how could he? How could he leave her?
Growing up, they were all that each other ever had. They'd seen their parent's dead corpses together. They'd hid from the authorities together. They'd starved together. They'd undergone dangerous and nearly fatal experiments together. They'd fought together.
And he'd left her. He'd left her all alone in a harsh and dangerous world. She is a foreigner here, and to many, she's unwanted. Her team is all she knows, and all she has. Even they don't understand her, though.
What they do understand is her unwillingness to talk. They leave her be, they let her suffer in silence. They let her fend off her demons alone, for they all have their own to deal with, and she doesn't want their help anyway.
Speaking of her team, the alarm in the barracks sounds off. She'd been lying in her bunk, thinking, before any of them were up. The amount of sleep she's been receiving is not ideal, unhealthy even, but what is she to do? Waking or sleeping, her life's a mess. It's lonely, sad. And she's always angry and numb at the same time.
Around her the others get up, and she can hear them moving. She continues to lie down, though she moves her hands to channel her power. Her uniform unfolds and lays out on the end of her bed, waiting for her to dress in it. She finally slides out of the bed and the red streams of her power moves the sheets, straightening and tucking them in.
On the bunk above her Natasha Romanoff gets ready. They are the only females on the team, but are far more powerful than the others combined, with the exception of maybe Vision.
"Big day today, huh?" Natasha asks her, shooting her a small smile. The woman is the world's more dangerous and well known assassin, and she could take out entire squadrons of men without breaking a sweat, but she's actually pretty warm towards her. Maybe it has something to do with female mutual respect or something to that degree, but it's a warmth the spy doesn't share with the others.
"I'd only be worried if we weren't ready," she replies, sliding on the multiple rings she usually adorns. She can't bear to look at them anymore, since they remind of him and her parents, but she can't bear to do or go anywhere without them either.
"First big demonstration as a team in front of the council," Steve says as he approaches them. "Are you ready, Wanda?"
Wanda manages something that could be debated as a tiny smile. "What could go wrong?"
Behind her, Natasha snorts. "Everything that can go wrong will go wrong," she says, turning on her widow's bites to check to see if they work. The bracelet that attaches them to her wrists glow blue and spin, and she shuts them off.
"But we're prepared for it," Steve says resolutely. "We've never been stronger."
Natasha raises an eyebrow and touches something on her arm, and the famous red and blue shield with the shining silver star races across the room towards them. Steve steps aside, while Wanda creates a red force to bounce it away from her. The shield finally flies onto Natasha's arm, driven by the magnetic force on her uniform, and she hands it off to Steve.
"As long as you remember to pick up your stuff," she adds, a smirk on her face. Steve rolls his eyes, and the trio begins to walk to the armoury, where the others are suiting up.
Sam is finishing strapping his goggles to his face, and he snaps them against his forehead loudly before looking up at her and grinning. She nods in greeting before picking out a silver knife and strapping it to her thigh. Wanda doesn't need weapons to fight, but she likes to have some reassurance in case something goes wrong.
Natasha is hiding dozens of knives and swords into her uniform pockets and creases. She has a faraway look, a look completely different than the one Wanda is used to seeing. The spy always gets that way before a battle. It's like she's facing her past every time.
Wanda doesn't blame her for steeling herself against her past. She's seen every dark secret Natasha has, and instead of making her afraid it makes her respectful of the assassin.
Steve tucks a knife into his belt before straightening up and looking over his team. They're all misfits, even more so than the original Avengers. Rhodey in his War Machine armour, Sam with his engine pack and metal wings, Vision with his deep red skin, Wanda with her gypsy-like outfit and jewelry, and Natasha with a black catsuit and combat boots, her shoulder length red hair wavy.
In a way they are a bunch of misfits. The first few training sessions were like hell, Steve, Natasha, and Sam the only ones that could coordinate during a fight. Slowly the others adjusted, and now they can all take down an enemy without talking if necessary.
The best part of the team is the lack of fighting. Sam and Rhodey follow Steve without hesitation, Natasha only questions orders occasionally, Vision has the same idealologies as Steve, and Wanda does whatever the others say. Deep down, she really doesn't care anymore. How could she?
Steve moves his shield from his back to his arm, and he raises his chin up slightly like he always does before addressing the group.
"Remember, this is just a test, a simulation. We can handle this easily, but if for some reason something goes wrong you can stop. Get out. I don't want anyone getting hurt because of this stupid thing."
Natasha moves to stand at his right side, his second in command. "But if you do drop out you'll have not only the council to answer to, but also me."
Her threat is perceived by all, and the guys all nod vigorously. Wanda knows they're scared of her, a little bit, at least. Even Vision, who's ten times as powerful as her, gulps. If there's one thing a tough woman can do it's put the fear of God into the most powerful men of the universe.
Steve simply lets out a tiny sigh, and Wanda even thinks he rolls his eyes. She knows Steve and Natasha have a history, and obviously whatever happened to them created mutual trust and respect. Captain Rogers isn't afraid of the spy, and the spy isn't afraid of him.
"On that happy note," Steve says, "Let's go kick some butt."
Inside is a large room with a high ceiling, easily four times the size of a football field. It's empty and the walls are grey, but Wanda knows better. There's a glass window near the top of one of the walls, and though it's a one-way glass she knows the council members sit behind it, watching. Waiting. Judging.
Since the near disaster with Ultron the council demanded to have proof the Avengers are capable of protecting the earth. Silly, yes, and ridiculous, but necessary to keep them satisfied.
The room glows an eerie blue as the hologram projectors light up. The council has designed a suitable threat, and without telling the Avengers what it is they set it up. Now they have to fight it while the council is in attendance, analyzing the team.
The outline of a man flickers in orange before stabilizing. He looks normal, but there's something about his that's off besides his blue skin. Wanda can't tell, though. She tries to look into his mind but there's nothing there. It's empty.
He has no memory, no past.
"It's a Kree, I think," Natasha says. "I read about it in a SHIELD file recently. One of them came to Earth not too long ago."
"What should we know about them?" Steve asks.
"They're strong, and fast, their anatomy similar to that of the Asguardians." Natasha cocked her guns. "And it looks like this one brought company."
The whole room flickered and suddenly they were in an open field, surrounded by humans. The humans look normal, but as soon as the Kree says something they lock their eyes on the Avengers and stalk forward like lions toward their prey.
"Those aren't normal humans, are they?" Sam says with a little sigh.
"I think they are empowered in some sort of way," Vision answers. "My data—well, JARVIS' data—tells me there's been sightings of special humans lately. Humans with supernatural gifts."
"Of course," Rhodey sighs. "What's the mission, Cap?"
"Try to restrain them instead of killing them. There's seems to be no hostages around, so I think our goal is to take out the Kree man." Steve widens his stance and puts forth his shield, preparing for a fight.
"You make it sound easy," Sam says. He readies his wings and tucks his guns into his belt. "Let's see what these guys got."
The humans, about a dozen of them, each begin pairing up and running towards the Avengers. Sam and Rhodey take flight, only to their dismay to see that some of the humans can fly or levitate.
Natasha turns on her widow's bites and readies herself. Steve prepares to throw his shield, but Wanda never gets to see who the victim is before she is forced to turn her attention to her own attackers.
One of the men changes into metal midstep. She reaches for his mind but is repelled by the metal casing. The other attacker is a woman with hair that morphs into writhing snakes like the gorgons in Greek myths. Wanda is quite disgusted.
She summons the red wisps of power from within her and pushes her hands out, sending it straight at the man. It stops him for a second as he turns his back against it, but he recovers quickly. Too quickly.
The woman is upon Wanda now, and she sees the woman's nails are growing out, growing into nasty little knives which she proceeds to thrust straight at the Avenger. Wanda throws out more of her red power, and the hand is thrown back, giving Wanda enough time to step away and summon more of her hexes.
Her assailants become wise and attack her at once. She twists and turns, ducking and dodging and reflecting them and their weapons. Usually she could just mess with their minds and leave them like sitting ducks as they either relive the worst of their past or their worst nightmares, but she can't reach into the mind of the metal man, nor can she get close enough to the woman's head because of the snakes.
Even in the dense battle she feels like a goddess, the way her clothes whirl and the way her body gracefully fights against her onslaught. The power she wields is addictive, and the only reason she hasn't gone insane from it is because she's scared of it. When her brother died she lashed out with all her anger and grief, and it turned out to be more destructive than she thought possible. At the time it had seemed appropriate, but after having time to mull over it she had grown a little fearful.
What if any of her allies had been in the vicinity? They could have become injured. She is easily the most powerful on the team, and she won't be able to forgive herself if someone is hurt because she lost control of her power.
What the others don't know about her powers and Von Strucker's experiments is that is wasn't the initial experiments that killed all the other volunteers—it was the people losing control and self-destructing. She and her brother themselves had a few close calls in the early days. He'd almost run into walls at ninety miles an hour and she had almost dropped things on herself when her telekinesis had been spotty.
Wanda dodges another nail-covered hand, though it grazes her arm and causes hot pain to rush up her body. She needs to be able to waylay the woman before she can focus on the man, and the only way to waylay the woman is to put down the immediate threat (her nails) then the snakes, and then getting to her mind should be easy.
There's a million ways to get rid of the nails, but they're all gory and revolve around the idea of ripping them off. Even though this is a holographic test it still sickens Wanda that she entertains the thought for even a second. There has to be a better solution.
An idea comes. It may or may not work, but she has to try. Wanda summons the red power in her hands and flicks it toward the woman's hands. The nails bend backwards, and the woman jumps back in shock. Wanda throws the metal man a few feet away before advancing on the woman, shooting little red beams towards all the little snakes. They all start to go lax, lulled to sleep by her powers.
The woman looks scared as Wanda places her fingers near her temples, and then her eyes turn red and she scampers away, breathing heavily and lost in her worst nightmare.
Wanda turns to the metal man, who is starting to advance on her again, and lets out a tiny sigh. The woman had been the easy one; now she will really have to get creative.
As long as the man is in metal form Wanda cannot get to his mind. Find a way to make him retract back into human form and things would be a cakewalk.
Wanda fights with him, continuing to duck and dodge blows while observing for any weaknesses at the same time. She gets caught up and steps back at an odd angle, and when she drops to evade a fist she falls, crashing onto the ground. His fist follows, and she barely rolls out of the way before he smashes right where her face had been.
She rolls into a crouch, but has no time to stand before he's back on her. Throwing her arms up in front of her face, she deflects his blow, though at a painful cost. Her arm hurts like crazy. Maybe he is just a hologram but he still can hurt her.
She hears a whooshing sound above her and flattens herself on the ground. The metal man screams in pain as a huge gash appears along his back. His skin starts turning peachy again and Wanda leaps up, nearly throwing her fingers in his face as she summons her power. The metal man—now normal man—lashes out, though not at her. He is deeply lost in his worst memory, courtesy of Wanda.
Rhodey salutes as he flies overhead and heads back to assist the others. She nods in return and begins to run over to where the others are fighting. Scanning the field, she sees Natasha is down to one opponent, the other writhing in pain at her feet—a sign of the widow's bite—and Steve is still facing off two, though they are pretty banged up. Falcon and Rhodey are fighting a couple in the air, and Vision is hand-to-hand combat with another, his other opponent lying unconscious at his feet. The Kree warrior looks on with a straight face, though Wanda knows better. He's disappointed his little army is losing.
Steve shoves off his opponents with his shield and nods toward the alien before facing his attackers again. Wanda starts running at a sprint towards the blue man, wishing—not for the first time—that her brother could be with her, at her side fighting. Or even just there for support and comfort.
He's gone, though, and she has to face it. She has to face her worst nightmare and her worst memory. And at the moment she also has to face an alien warrior.
The Kree spots her and pulls out a spear from a back sheath, wielding it defensively in front of him. Wanda approaches cautiously, reminding herself of her own knife. If she can't get into his mind things could get messy.
"You wouldn't hurt a girl," she says, hoping she can play her cards right. The Kree man simply snorts in response.
"I have faced many female warriors, and none of them are below saying that," he replies. "I saw you take down two of my pet Inhumans."
"Then you noticed I didn't lift a weapon against them," she counters, taking a few tiny steps forward. They are circling each other, though she has no weapons except her mind drawn.
"Well worded," he laughs. "Except I know your weapon. It lies inside of you, much like my warriors. Only yours has been placed, not awakened. You're a science experiment and they are purely natural."
"Experiment, nature, it doesn't really matter in the end, does it?" Wanda challenges. "What matters is how I use it." She jumps forward lithely and extends an arm, hoping to reach into his mind and catch him off guard, but he knocks her hand away almost playfully with his spear.
"And you can't use it unless you get close to me." He waves the spear in front of him. "But you are right, I have many advantages you do not. So I'll even things out a little, eh? My raw power against yours."
He sheaths his spear and faces her off, hands in fists in front of him. This is good, Wanda tries to assure herself. Makes my job easier.
Except that he's an alien, and his natural strength rivals that of even the strongest Asgard warriors. His shoves forward, and Wanda goes flying backwards several feet, landing hard on the ground. Her breath is knocked away and it is all she can do to struggle to her feet again, wiping a small trickle of blood from her nose.
A little anger surges through her. How dare he do that? He's not even real! Wanda starts toward him at a dead run, turning sharply only when he's less than a foot away. He leaned forward to hit her, and she kicked at the back of his knees, shaking his already bad balance. He manages to catch himself, but not before she kicks at his back, using it as a springboard to launch herself a few feet away. He falls, and when he leaps to his feet again he has anger in his eyes.
"This is a battle you cannot win, weakling," he hisses, and his charges forward. She turns and runs, hoping some sort of plan will occur. She makes it no more than a few feet before he dives, grabbing her legs and pulling her towards the ground with him. Thrashing her feet, she continues to crawl forward, though her resistance is futile against his strength.
Suddenly he is thrown off her, and Wanda sees Falcon struggling to fly with the Kree. The alien rips one of the wings off the Avenger, and the two begin to plummet. Wanda uses her telekinesis to guide them safely down to the ground before she stands, and Captain America himself takes on the warrior, having finally disposed of his own opponents.
Wanda sets off at a jog towards the battle. In the sky she sees Rhodey finishing off the last powered human in the air, and even as she watches Black Widow hits her last opponent hard enough to knock him out. The spy makes eye contact with Wanda and nods, and the two take up Steve's flank.
The Kree warrior fights viciously, his spear brought out again and flashing as it whirls side to side, clanging metallically as it bounces off Steve's shield. Falcon is pulling a cord on his engine that enables the extra wing, and Vision is on the other side of the Kree, also trading blows.
Although Steve and Vision are extremely powerful, they are also worn down and exhausted, while the Kree is relatively fresh. The scales are tipped to his side, at least until Natasha sneaks in and jumps on his back, pulling a knife from one of her many hiding places and forcing him to battle on three fronts.
Now the alien is the one to wear down, and Wanda ducks under Steve's arm. Natasha pulls on his hair and wrestles his head back, and Scarlet Witch is able to send her power through his head. Instead of sending him into a memory or a nightmare she shuts down his brain, sending him into sleep.
The field around them flickers and dissipates away until it is only the Avengers and some discarded weapons of theirs in the big room. The lights dim and the exit door opens, seemingly summoned.
"Good job, gang," Steve says as they slowly, tiredly, walk toward the exit door. They have passed, it seems, though now they have to hear what the council has to say about it.
There is no council to answer to. No one to tell them how they did, no one to criticize them. Instead there's a memo from "The Director of SHIELD", who seems to be a mystery.
"What does it say?" Rhodey asks as Steve picks up the white sheet of paper on the empty desk in the empty room.
"It says we passed but we need additional training before being assigned a real mission. They're sending us on a few smaller ones." Steve sighs and puts the paper down.
"Again?" Natasha frowns. "This isn't right. We're ready. The way we all fought without need for communication, without clashing once—we're in better shape than the old Avengers."
"They want something more from us," Vision observes. "The other times the Avengers were called in those had been last-minute and last-case scenarios. This time they're training us for something special."
"But what?" Sam asks. "How bad could it possibly be if we're deemed 'not ready'?"
"That's a good question," Steve replies, though he doesn't have an answer. No one does. And there's no one's minds for Wanda to read and find the answer from.
"I think the first question should be who the director of SHIELD should be," she says. A deep-rooted fear sits in her. What if the director is actually HYDRA? Or even AIM or any of those enemy corporations? SHIELD has had bad eggs in their midst before, what's to stop them from sneaking in again?
"Whoever it is has connections to Fury," Steve puts in. "Fury couldn't have built this base himself or designed those transport ships and the helicarrier. Someone's behind this, and he trusts that person."
"But do we trust Fury?" Natasha asks. "I used to, but after the whole Winter Soldier affair…" She trails off, knowing everyone can follow her thought process. Fury had faked his death without telling anyone except Hill and a small, close team, and he more than likely had details about the HYDRA infiltration that he hadn't chosen to share.
"Looks like we'll have to find out ourselves," Rhodey says, and the Avengers tread wearily back to their bunker to take showers and change out of their uniforms.