Wanda meant it when she said it: she did not understand what the hell was going on with Vision.
Vision had been spending a lot of time in Stark's lab. In the two weeks since they rescued Peter, his condition had only gotten stranger. His mind was firing in a way it hadn't ever before; every day it was becoming just a tad more human, and yet Wanda could also tell - no, feel - the mindstone's influence. It was a spectacle the likes of which she hadn't ever seen. Something bursting with rough, wild intelligence that was like looking at a window into a rave; incomprehensible, but her attention was irrevocably drawn to it nonetheless.
As of now, however, she wasn't near Vision. She was in her room, guitar in her arms, her fingers poised centimetres from the strings. Her thoughts were flitting about at an almost dizzying pace. She wanted to play. It would provide a distraction for herself. Developing skills kept the mind sharp.
But part of her wanted to think. Think and think until the sun went down and she'd wasted the day away without accomplishing a single thing except acute mental exhaustion.
The question had grown at a worrying pace. It hung over her like an anvil, engraved on the bottom so that whenever she checked to see whether or not it had been released she would see it in searing, white-hot letters. It dissipated when she was training, but only briefly, and, if anything, came back stronger than it had before, exacerbated by the aching in her musculature.
Wanda knew this lethargy. So much that she had to say, so little capability to express any of it. Each time the thought so much as crossed her mind to tell anyone, part of her panicked. What would the team think of her if she said she didn't know… well…
Wanda dragged herself to her feet and placed her guitar back into its stand, throwing a spare glance at her desk, which was cluttered with spare pieces of paper. Most of it was practice papers for learning English, a few were recipes for various teas, and others contained god knows what else. It struck her that she hadn't felt this way since before the bombing. Her face fell into a frown.
She walked over to her bed and sat back down, half a mind to turn the TV on and watch something, but instead she just looked at her reflection; brown hair that straddled the bar between organized and out of control, with some strands sticking out of place or some edges curling at the ends, and Wanda stared into her reflection, just making out the dry, cracked lips that she always promised herself she'd take care of with chapstick, and forgotten about again. Wanda Maximoff surveyed the young woman holding her gaze with exhausted, unsettled eyes.
Then she shook her head firmly, forcing herself to her feet. No. She glanced at the windows, noting to setting sun, and made the executive decision. She marched out of her room, shutting the door a bit more sharply than perhaps she should have.
She ran through her breathing techniques as she made her way to the courtyard. Fresh air would do her some good, just might - she was aware she was reaching with both hands, yet didn't care - get her out of this funk. Affirm something. Possibly.
The hallways felt labyrinthine. Constricting. She needed to get out of this polished modernity. In some sense. Any sense. Any way. She had to. The doorhandle was cold as she pushed it open, but the sunlight felt warm against her skin. Not quite rejuvenating, but leagues above the sterile fluorescents of the compound's interior. She noticed that Peter was running labs, a few steps behind Steve. She blinked, then shook her head, rolled her eyes, stretched out the kinks in her neck, and made a beeline for the box of shields Steve had taken to keeping outside.
She sifted through them until she found the heaviest one, which was very difficult for her to carry - thing had to weigh at least eighty pounds - and gently set it at her feet. She then closed her eyes, and felt the familiar rush of her powers before picking it up. It weighed far less this way.. Wanda opened her eyes and made it do a figure eight, focusing intently as to keep it perfect, then began spelling out the Sokovian alphabet. She kept the motions of her hands steady, even as pain began to grow in her temple. Within mere moments the small pain grew massive, but she pressed onward.
By the time she set it down with nary an extraneous sound, her forehead had thin layer of sweat, which she wiped with the back of her hand. Satisfaction bloomed, just a bit, amidst the aching of her head.
She felt a gaze on her, and saw Steve tapping Peter's shoulder like it's rude to stare, but the boy ignored him. His jaw was slack and wonder shone in his eyes, before Steve finally managed to get him running again. The teenager swiftly grew a large blush, stuttered something. Wanda couldn't hear it.
Her eyes fell on the practice shield. It felt good - no, wonderful - to have so much control over it. Over anything. She'd spent so long at the whims of others, trying to convince herself that she was free when she was relentlessly under the thumb of another - or herself. And it… it felt… well, now it felt…
Wanda could feel the thoughts come back just a second before her internal debates roared back to life, slightly hindered by her exhaustion, but still strong as ever.
Justin wanted this day to be over with. Over with, then promptly tossed into the garbage bin of his brain so he could forget it all. He had assistants whose job it was to recall all of the necessary details. His was to run the company. Farther than that, he had real matters of import on his mind, instead of dealing with these idiots.
The man across from him was right out of a Boss Tweed cartoon. He stank of greed. No better purpose to him or the practiced smile he was wearing; Justin felt bile rise in the back of his throat, but he maintained a smile of his own nonetheless. The dying daylight made the shadows long and lazy, and the stainless steel HI outside cast a shadow longer twice that of Justin himself.
There were others in the room, all in finely pressed suits, each of them to varying degrees exasperated and tired. This meeting should have concluded hours ago, and yet the small manufacturer Justin was trying to acquire was never satisfied with whatever deal his people managed to negotiate. It had been at least eight years since he'd suffered through this breed of corporate sewage, and he wasn't as young as he was.
He also had another meeting with Rumlow today, and while the man understood the nature of their partnership, that Zemo character did not. Rumlow was the muscle and Justin was the money. Zemo was the weirdo who crashed their party and who they can't get rid of without risking getting raided by a SWAT team.
Justin knew, in theory, that Zemo could help. He already had; Justin had been concerned that a few of his employees were about to flip to the police a few days before, and when he woke this morning, prepared to ask Rumlow to cause some car accidents, he saw in the news that all parties he was concerted over were now tragedies. Justin knew, in theory, that that was a good sign.
But Zemo was just… unnerving. His eyes changed color often because he kept one switching between different colored contacts, and while he clearly lacked the bulk Rumlow did, Justin had seen what happened to the guys who sparred with him. His entire demeanor was far too steady - too sterile, too aloof for someone who did what that man could do. He'd burned the bodies of the married couple he'd killed, then hacked into local airports to order tickets for a vacation in Europe, and then broken into the systems of the airport where they took off from and where they landed. Despite having never actually left their house, the couple was currently skiing in the Alps.
He had told Justin and Rumlow that story without any sort of inflection in his voice. No satisfaction, like Justin would have expected from Rumlow, just matter-of-fact statements. And even if the man didn't lower the temperature of the room by fifteen degrees whenever he entered, he'd just… inserted himself into Justin and Rumlow's agreement. No warning. Justin didn't like that.
Justin deepened his smile as the negotiations concluded. He shook hands with everyone present, while his mind made a heel-face turn to another subject that was knawing at him: Peter Parker.
Kid was smart. Amazing, really; a walking miracle by any normal metric. Naïve, obviously, but give him a few years... Justin was trying to keep the kid as close as he could manage. For the his sake.
He turned to his assistant as he waved the rest of the representatives away. "Has Mr. Parker responded to our emails?"
The young man adjusted his glasses, whose silver frames reflected garishly in the light. "Not yet, Mr. Hammer. We will tell you when he does."
"Send a few more." Justin said, "And if he still doesn't respond, I'll be paying SI a visit."
"Of course, Mr. Hammer."
Justin swiftly made his way to his office, grabbing a cup of coffee and then promptly turning around and heading toward his car.
No hitches on the way to Rumlow's hideout. Justin's drivers were the same as they always were: silent. It left Justin with his thoughts, and gave him time to drink his coffee before he arrived. It seared the back of his throat, making his eyes water heavily, but he downed the entire cup fast as he could.
Rumlow as at his table when Justin walked in; he was narrowing his eyes at his map of the US, with a pin poised above Nevada. Zemo sat in a chair - Justin's chair, thank you very much - watching a TV showing local coverage of Justin himself; notably, loops of his last press conference, and one of the commentators was very bemused over whether or not HI was going to die in the next quarter.
"They're not even using the stuff with my good side," Justin grumbled, taking a seat at the end of the table. Zemo turned his eyes to him, face flat. Rumlow looked up from the map, with purple-rimmed eyes.
"How did your deal go?" he asked scratchily.
"Fine." Justin shrugged. "Did you drink anything at all today?"
Rumlow narrowed his eyes, while Zemo kept up an incredible face of apathy. "We got someone to flip."
Justin blinked. "Really?"
Rumlow nodded, and a faint grin stretched across his face. Justin really, really didn't like how that looked. "Yep. Zemo provided some help."
Rumlow jabbed his thumb toward Zemo who, like the freakshow he was, gave no sign of emotion. He nodded, but nothing else. Justin wasn't sure if hearing the guy speak was better or worse than his silent stare.
"Well, uh," he said, "are they someone important?"
Rumlow's grin deepened. The pinkish scar tissue that racked his face took an uncomfortable shape. "Not unless you consider running the compound's plumbing as important."
Justin frowned. He didn't know much of military tactics or plumbing, but he could hardly see how useful that would be. There was no way that anyone there didn't know how to swim, and he wasn't sure how plumbing was going kill the Avengers.
"Got any ideas what to do with him?" Justin asked cautiously. "'Cause Parker hasn't responded to any of my emails yet. I was planning to visit SI to send a message, but unless we plan to kill him during his shower-" Justin didn't like saying the words, but. "-what can we do?"
Rumlow stood to his full height. "That plumber has connections, Mr. Hammer." his grin became something that showed the yellowing one the bottoms of his teeth. "And yeah, I've got a few."