[A/N]: Enjoy!
xXx
It was a tradition now. After Wanda's mental attack on the Avengers in Wakanda, they knew they needed to be able to block future attacks from enemies. So every Thursday, one at a time, the Avengers sat down with Wanda and practiced blocking their minds from her.
Most sessions ended with either one or both calling it quits because they couldn't focus any more due to fatigue. Guarding your mind is taxing, Wanda had told them, but so is trying to invade a well-guarded mind.
When Wanda broke past their walls, she typically landed on mundane, everyday memories. Eating breakfast, for example, or talking on the phone. Sometimes interacting with another member of the team.
But sometimes, the memories were worse. Much worse.
xXx
Tony was the first. He had the mental capacity to build extremely strong walls, but he was too confident, and that led to his attention wandering. Wanda had taken advantage of one such instance of distraction to slip past his barriers, pushing her way into the nearest memory. She caught a flicker of a desert landscape, then Tony regained focus, forcing her back with a vengeance. She pushed harder, and finally the memory surfaced.
Gunshots rang out all around him. He half-fell out the door, stumbling as he tried to get away. He heard a rocket being launched, and dove into a dip in the land behind a boulder. A bomb landed right next to him, but didn't detonate. It read, Stark Industries. His heart rate rose sharply, and he scrambled backwards as he attempted to get away from it. But his efforts were fruitless, as it exploded a second later, sending him flying backwards, feeling sharp pains in his chest. Shrapnel. His vision is red-tinged, then it slowly fades to black.
Tony managed to shove her out of his mind. He stood abruptly. "We're done." He stormed out, and she could feel his inner panic (a residual effect that lasted a few minutes). That had been a memory he'd wanted buried. Deeply buried.
xXx
Second was Bruce. He was adamant that he wanted full control of his mind in the future, and so trained hard every day until Wanda was ready to take a break. He'd held her off successfully for a whole minute until she found a crack in his mental wall and used it to her advantage.
He woke up to silence, which was never a good thing in his experience. He sat up, mouth dropping open at the destruction surrounding him. "No," he muttered in disbelief. "I thought I had it under control!" he exclaimed in horror. He looked around, surveying the wreckage. It was hard to tell how extensive it was, or how many survivors there were. He stared at his hands in terror and disgust. "I did this."
Bruce hastily threw up another mental wall and pushed her away from the memory and out of his mind. He waited a beat, then said, "I think I'm finished for today, Wanda," while getting up and leaving, his facial expression perfectly polite but his inner turmoil tinged with guilt.
xXx
Steve was next. He always came into lessons eager to learn, but not wanting to push her too hard. On one such instance she knew he was holding back, so she pushed hard and crumbled the wall in front of her, hurdling into a memory.
It was winter. He could taste the bitter cold in the air as the train thundered along the tracks. His best friend slipped, and was hanging off the train, only holding on with one hand.
"Bucky!" he yelled. "Take my hand!"
Bucky tried, but he lost his grip and fell, leaving him clinging to the side of the train alone as he forced himself to go back inside the train to safety. He was numb. Bucky, a constant in his life, was now gone. And it was his fault.
Wanda was the one to pull back this time. The memory was so painful, so full of grief and guilt and regret and shock that she touched her face and found she was crying, crystal-clear tears sliding down her face.
Steve looked at her, a panicked look on his face, and then half-ran from the room.
Wanda couldn't blame him. She'd just encroached on what appeared to be the most painful memory of his life. But that didn't mean she didn't hate the look on his face as he left. It made her feel like she was a monster all over again.
xXx
Barton's was hard as well. Clint was very determined to build strong mental walls, and he was easily the best on the team (besides Wanda herself). So after the first few practices, Wanda would launch a mental attack and he would try to stop her. Their battles usually lasted several minutes, and left both exhausted. This time was no different. Clint was doing well, but it had been several minutes and his strength was waning. Wanda noticed this, and knocked down a part of his wall, barreling into a memory.
His eyesight was tinged with a bright, unnatural blue. He heard himself speaking, and saw himself performing actions, taking orders from Loki, but it wasn't him controlling those words or actions. It was terrifying, having your body not under your control. He watched himself invade the Hellicarrier where he used to work, watched as he stormed past agents he once knew. He panicked as he faced Natasha, struggling to regain control. No. He wouldn't hurt her. Not his closest friend. No! HE WOULDN'T!
Wanda was thrown out of the memory by Clint as he slammed a hasty wall around it. She looked at him, seated on the couch across from her, head in his hands, breathing returning to steady.
Once he was stable, he looked up at her with a strained smile. "The old man needs a break, kid." He left, leaving her shocked by the memory. No wonder he absolutely loathed people being able to enter his mind.
xXx
Out of all of the hard memories, Natasha's was the worst. The spy rarely engaged in mental exchanges with the Sokovian, but once in a while she did, not wanting to be vulnerable to an attack of any sort. This time, however, it went too far. Both were struggling against each other, but Wanda prevailed in the end, being pulled into a memory.
She tried to sleep, but the handcuff around her wrist wasn't much help. It held her hand close to the radiator, making it uncomfortably warm, as opposed to the biting cold of the rest of the room. The memory changed. She was concentrating hard on her feet and arms as she performed the routine. Anything less than perfection would be punished, as she bruises on the other girls' faces proved. She performed a pirouette, but stumbled at the end. A tall, cruel-looking man beckoned her forward, brass knuckles covering his fingers. The scenery shifted. She was younger, maybe eighteen at the most. She looked down the scope of a gun, situating the sights on her target's head. She put her finger on the trigger, squeezing it smoothly with no hesitation. The man crumpled, and his wife and young daughter hurried to his side, but he was already dead. The lighting was different, and the room was familiar. She sat in an interrogation room, maybe nineteen years old, thirteen pairs of handcuffs restraining her. She sat tall and ramrod straight, eyes never wavering from the one-way glass. A man walked in. Clint Barton, a younger version of him. Twenty-three at the most. He ran a hand through his hair anxiously before speaking. "S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't going to torture or hurt you, Miss Romanova."
"Please, call me Natalya." Her face held an eerie smirk.
"Natalya, then. We want to give you an offer instead."
"And if I refuse? Then you pull out the torture methods?" She seemed bored.
His gaze met hers. "No. We won't. But you will be locked up for the rest of your life."
The redhead considered for a moment. "I'm listening."
Wanda was startled. Natasha's face was cold and stony. The assassin stood in a fluid motion, eyes boring into hers for a brief second before she turned away and left. Wanda noticed her hands were clutched into fists, fingers white, nails surely biting into her palms nearly hard enough to draw blood.
xXx
These revelations were horrifying, but they comforted Wanda all the same. They told her that she wasn't the only one who'd gone through terrible hardships and come out the other side stronger than ever, but still broken in her own right. The entire team was broken, but they were slowly piecing each other back together with wordless gestures and ever-strengthening bonds of friendship and family.
xXx
Inspired by Jessie J's song 'Flashlight'.