Chapter 7: Wondering

Factory windows are always broken.

Somebody's always throwing bricks,

Somebody's always throwing cinders,

Playing ugly Yahoo tricks.

...

Factory windows are always broken.

Other windows are let alone.

No one throws through the chapel-window

The bitter, snarling, derisive stone.

...

Factory windows are always broken.

Something or other is going wrong.

Something is rotten—I think, in Denmark.

End of the factory-window song.

~Vachel Lindsay, "Factory Windows Are Always Broken"

Bruce found the road blocked b

a pair of silver SUVs about a mile away from the town. He glanced at the apparatus in his passenger seat, a pair of electromagnetic field detectors attached to a screen with a moving zigzag line resembling a seismograph.

A man with black hair and a face that managed to be both solemn and impertinent knocked on his window.

Bruce rolled it down.

"Can I see your license please, sir?"

Bruce could only stare at him for a moment. He was impressed that he could ask that with a straight face.

"Seriously?"

"Yes sir."

Bruce took his driver's license out of his wallet and handed it to the man, who looked at it with no change of expression.

"Where are you headed today, Mr. Banner?" he asked, handing the license back.

"Um, it's Doctor Banner, or just Bruce. I've been tracking some glitches in the magnetic field. They seem to be coming from this direction. I'm trying to figure out what's causing them."

"The road's blocked up ahead. I suggest you find an alternate route, Doctor Banner."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing you need to worry about, sir."

"I'm really sorry to ask this, but...you know who I am, right? You look like a smart guy. With normal eyesight. What's your name? You don't look like a cop. You S.H.I.E.L.D.? F.B.I.?"

"I'm Agent Woo, and yes."

"Right. Agent Woo, I'm not going to say I'm a big deal, but..." He gestured to himself. "I'm kind of a big deal, and I'm going to follow this signal whether you let me through willingly or not, so I suggest you get on your phone and tell whoever's in charge that Bruce Banner wants in."

Agent Woo frowned at him, then glanced at the device in the passenger seat. "You a physicist, Dr. Banner?"

"A few of my PhDs are in physics, yeah."

A deliberative expression played across Woo's face. "I'll tell my boss you're here. But for the record, I've dealt with bigger deals than you." He walked away from the car and made a phone call, returning a minute later. "He wants to talk to you."

Bruce drove through the checkpoint, and over the hill he saw a cluster of temporary buildings.

Fury was waiting for him by the roadside.

"I thought you'd show up, Banner. Did Captain America tell you?"

It took a moment to figure out he was talking about Sam and not Steve.

"No. I picked up some electromagnetic resonances that were messing up an experiment I was conducting. I couldn't figure out what was causing them. I tracked them here. What's going on?"

"We're still trying to figure that out. Since you're here, want to help out?"

"Just like old times," Bruce said with just a trace of irony.

"Just like old times," Fury agreed.

He nodded. "What do we know so far?"

If there had been any new developments in S.W.O.R.D.'s investigation of the Westview Event, they hadn't shared it with the two Avengers begrudgingly allowed to monitor the situation.

Bucky and Sam knew that Fury had told the scientists Wanda might be causing the phenomenon. They'd interrogated Sam for hours about what he knew of Wanda's powers.

They were taking a coffee break in their field tent, looking out through the plastic window at the weird ripples in the air that marked the city limits of Westview.

"You're being even quieter than usual," Sam noted. "Is it making you nervous being around secret organization types?"

Bucky shrugged. "It's not really that. I'm just trying to sort out my thoughts, I guess."

"Want to talk it out?"

Bucky flashed him a smile, appreciating the consideration. Despite their rocky start, the two former enemies had gradually become friends over the course of the past year. "You know how it feels to be brainwashed?"

"Not personally."

"It's really nothing more than not asking questions, not wondering. You're given an order, and you don't even think about not following it. You just don't realize that's an option. It feels kind of like patriotism, actually. In the army I knew guys who took pride in following orders without question. That's what it was like in HYDRA; they just shut down the part of my brain that could wonder whether I was doing the right thing. The more you can ask questions, the more you know you're not brainwashed. So I asked myself if what Wanda is doing is bad or good."

Sam frowned. "If we're right that Wanda's behind this, she cut a whole town off from the rest of the world. She's altering people's minds. How can that be good?"

"She's making the people around her feel happy. Making them be kind. True, she's doing it by altering their minds, but everything is mind-altering: good food, sunshine, friendship. Whether it's a bad thing is a question worth asking. I loved how I felt when we were visiting her. But I thought about it and decided stopping her, if we can, is the right thing to do."

"What led you to that conclusion?" Sam asked curiously.

"Feelings like sadness, boredom, and anger are good in the right doses. Necessary even. They let you know you need to change something, try something new, move beyond the way things are. Those are the feelings that lead to progress, improvement, creation. Being happy all the time is stagnant. And if you have no choice but to feel happy, you'll never realize it if something needs to change. Have you ever had a thought pop into your head that you don't want to think? Like if you're, on a tall building and you suddenly start to wonder what if you just jumped off for no reason? Or throw your phone off the edge or something?"

"Yeah. That's called intrusive thoughts. Most people have them. What does it have to do with brainwashing?"

"I think maybe that's your brain reminding you that you always have choices. Even if those choices are terrible, they're always there. The call of the void is a sign that your mind is free. When you choose not to do that dumb thing your brain just thought of, you're exercising that freedom. And sometimes—maybe almost never, but once in a while—that freedom of thought might lead you to realize something you need to do that you never would have thought of otherwise. I bet no one's having thoughts like that in Westview right now."

Sam stared out toward where the town should be. "I bet you're right."

Bucky poured himself more coffee.

Their pensive silence was broken by a familiar but unexpected voice outside their door. "Knock knock."

Bucky frowned in confusion. "Is that...?"

Sam opened the door, revealing a jolly green giant on the other side.

"Banner! I didn't know you were still working for Fury."

"I wasn't until a few minutes ago." He ducked inside. His head almost reached the top of the tent. "I was surprised to hear you guys were here, but I guess I shouldn't be. I know you and Wanda were close, Sam. Do you think Fury's right that she could be causing this?"

"All we know is Wanda was here. We don't know if she was still here when the Westview Event happened, but we have no reason to believe she wasn't," Sam answered.

"Before this happened, we visited her..." Bucky mentioned. He glanced at Sam to make sure it was alright to continue. "We haven't told anyone else this, but we think she might have been...this is going to sound crazy. She might have been using some kind of mind control to make people around her happy and friendly."

Bruce raised an enormous eyebrow. "Really?"

"We don't think she meant to be doing it," Sam quickly added. "We don't think she even knew what she was doing."

Bruce nodded. "Well, she's...she's powerful."

"But I've never seen her do anything even remotely like this," Sam added, gesturing to the wall of energy visible out the window.

Bruce looked out at it and nodded to himself. "You're worried about her."

"Yeah, I am. I'm worried about everyone else in Westview, too. Wanda would never purposely hurt innocent people..." At Bruce's incredulous look, he added, "...anymore. But after everything that's happened, everything she's been through..."

"Who knows what she might do without meaning to," Bruce finished for him.