Chapter 11: Perchance to Dream
It took them four days to hunt down all the supplies they needed for the spell. That night, they pushed aside all the furniture in the living room and began to prepare. Steve was reading out the instructions while the rest of them gathered up the ingredients and added them to the beat-up wooden bowl.
"Well, that part's done," said Sam. "What's the next step, Steve?"
"Okay... um... Clint and Pietro need to sit on the floor facing each other and then you can make a circle around them with that stuff," said Steve.
Pietro and Clint sat down in the middle of the room and watched as Wanda poured out the contents of the bowl, creating a slightly wobbly circle.
"Okay, set up the candles," Steve said.
Tony and Natasha surrounded them with black candles, lighting them as they went, then stepped back.
"Now for the slightly less pleasant part..." said Steve.
"Looks like we're up," Pietro said to Clint.
They each took out a knife and sliced the blade across their palms, then clasped hands so that the bleeding cuts were pressed together.
"Good luck, Cap," Clint said.
Then Steve began to read the incantation. He didn't know the language, so he read haltingly and had to pause several times so he wouldn't stumble over the words and risk ruining the spell. As he read, the lights in the room flickered and went out, and a breeze made the candles flutter. Pietro's heart was pounding nervously. Bruce had been right, none of them had ever done anything like this before and there were so many things that could go wrong. He looked at Clint, who was watching him anxiously as though expecting him to keel over at any moment. Pietro tightened his grip on Clint's hand. A trickle of blood ran down his wrist, and Pietro couldn't help but wonder whose blood it was. Another gust of wind blew through the room, ruffling their hair and making the candles dance. Then Steve read the final words of the spell. The candles suddenly went out, throwing them all into darkness.
"Oh shit," Pietro muttered.
"Is this supposed to happen?" said Clint.
"I don't know..." Steve replied.
"Clint..." Pietro said.
"What?"
"I can't move."
Just then, the candles relit, but the light they cast wasn't the usual warm glow of firelight. It was eery and cold, sending weird shadows dancing around the room. Clint was staring at Pietro, looking frightened.
"Pietro... are you... are you okay?" he asked nervously.
Pietro couldn't respond. He could barely even breathe. His vision was swimming, going dark around the edges, flickering in and out between Clint sitting in front of him and... well, he wasn't sure what else he was seeing. Flashes of something, getting more and more frequent until suddenly he couldn't see Clint at all. He stared unblinking at the scene in front of him. He was staring at... himself. Only he hardly looked like himself anymore. He was horrifyingly pale, the light of the candles casting shadows that made his face look skeletal. His eyes were wide and stared at him but saw nothing.
"Pietro?"
He heard Clint's voice, but it was within his own head. No, it was in Clint's head. Pietro was seeing what Clint saw.
"Clint!" he tried to shout, but Clint didn't seem to hear him.
Then everything changed, and he wasn't on the floor of Avengers Tower anymore, but on the floor of the old witch's apartment. He looked down at his hands and saw blood pouring from his wrists, faster than seemed natural. Desperate, not thinking, he tried to staunch the flow of blood with his hands, putting pressure on the deep cuts that had sliced right through his veins.
"No, please," he gasped, his head spinning from blood loss. "I can't die, I have to get back to Clint! I promised. I promised."
His eyes stung with tears that blurred his vision. He blinked and found himself kneeling not in the witch's apartment, but among the ruins of a fallen building. Blood still poured relentlessly over his hands, yet he still hadn't lost consciousness. Then he realized where he was – he was in that city, the one where Clint had...
"No."
Clint lay dead in front of him, staring with glassy eyes at the sky. But his body wasn't riddled with bullet holes. Pietro frowned, scanning over him until he found the cause of his death: Clint's wrists were slit, pools of blood forming on the dirty pavement.
"No..."
Pietro looked down at his own hands and was surprised to find them perfectly clean, his wrists as smooth and unscarred as a child's. Then he saw the patches of blood blossoming on his shirt, the three bullet holes in his chest.
"No..." he gasped again. "Please... Clint, please... help me!"
And then he saw nothing but fire.