Iced fingers ran down the back of Wanda's spine. Shit. Josephine seized the syringe and vial filled with red-black liquid, her knuckles holding it in a vice grip as she brandished it at her.

This shouldn't be able to happen. Shuri and Okoye didn't sense me earlier let alone talk to me. "I'm not actually here." Wanda resisted the urge to smile; she got a kick out of seeing her this scared. "You can relax." Jospehine's eyes glittered suspiciously, not assured. Very quickly, she straightened, a mask of calm forcing itself onto her face.

"Strange..." She ventured forward with eerie fascination, glasses eerily enlarging her almond shaped eyes. Wanda backed around a table so there was something between them. Seemingly convinced that she wasn't physically present, Josephine then shoved the syringe and vial into her pocket.

There was something startling about seeing Josephine without the mesh suit or leather coat. She looked strangely normal, in a grey vest and faded pair of baggy jeans; her bare arms were mottled with bruises and scratches, following the pattern of Wanda's roots; a black, apple-sized bruise stuck out inside her forearm, something Wanda doubted was to do with the previous day. The gloves were gone, revealing small, weathered hands, bare and bitten nails, and an elegant silver band with tiny diamonds on her ring finger. Wanda's gaze lingered on the piece of metal, and she briefly wondered what untold story there was.

That's not what I'm here for. Try to find out where this is. She tested trying to access Josephine's mind; all she got was silence. Of course, that would just be too easy. She tried to move her mind beyond the building. There was a river, a dark, dense forest, some snow in the ground. For a moment she saw a small, battered blue road sign; there was a motto written in scratched yellow lettering, hard to make out.

"I knew you were alive. I just knew it." Josephine said, half to herself. Was it her imagination, or did she look... ill? The photon blast burn aside, her skin was waxy and grey, and she was trembling like someone going through withdrawal.

The table between them was covered in a mess of paper and various tools. It seemed to be divided in half - one half seemed to be dedicated to Wanda and Vision, with the newspaper articles and cctv printouts - just more of Josephine's questionable - stalkerish - interior decorating. The sound-absorbing shoes were tossed in the centre of the table next to a black box and a microscope. Wanda itched to move them to the floor; her father, always superstitious, hated shoes on table.

"I want to talk."

Josephine pressed her lips together to form a thin smile. "If you came to me to ask how to fix his brain, you wasted your magic."

"I didn't." Wanda said, coldly.

"They would have been your best option, they were the robotic experts."

"That's your team?" She just shut them in there to die?

"Don't look so uncomfortable. Expired products should be thrown out."

"They were people."

"Don't lecture me about killing people. Your hands are far from clean." Josephine scoffed. "It was them who organised the statue attack and the murders on your Vision's to do list. They were barely human. There was one man in there, Douglas. He dissolved and came back to find that his wife had remarried, and she didn't want to go back to him. You know what he did? He had Vision drown her new partner in a lake."

Wanda's skin crawled as though it were covered with thousands of spiders. "You were still telling Vision what to do. And you tried to murder Clint."

Josephine's monologue continued as if she hadn't heard Wanda at all. "Douglas was in charge. Nothing special, another low life obsessed with Hydra. We never liked each other, and he finally managed to turn everyone else against me. I've done everyone a favour." She leaned back on the metal table. "It's just us now. I have everything I need to kill you."

"Terrifying. It'll be only your ninth attempt to kill me."

"Do your dead boyfriend's attempts count?" Josephine sneered, desperate for a reaction.

Wanda wanted to gloat that she was both outnumbered and overwhelmed. She wanted to scare her, she wanted to see the fear in her eyes as she assured her that Vision was firmly on her side, and that she wouldn't stand a chance when they came for her. Wanda couldn't find the anger that had so easily came to her minutes before; she wanted to understand. She wanted to know what had possessed Josephine to walk into the forest five years before.

"Why did you take him?" There was a distant creaking from somewhere in the facility. A strange look entered Josephine's dark eyes, and the corners of her mouth twitched. Wanda's patience grew thinner and thinner by the second - the tension could have been cut with a knife. "What did I ever do to you?" She snapped. "For once, give me an honest answer!"

"As if I would tell you."

It caught Wanda's attention. There it was on it's chain, glistening level to Josephine's heart. The dead man's ring. "What happened to him?"

Josephine wasn't looking at her. She was looking at the locked room. A shadow moved across the window with the bloody handprint, a faint snarling filtering through. So far nothing fazed Josephine; so why did she suddenly look so pale? The few drops of blood in her cheeks drained away and she stared at the room, eyes haunted by an untold story. Was she secretly afraid of her creation despite her absolute control over it? Was this regret? Had the sound taken her back somewhere, the same way Wanda was dragged back whenever she saw the colour green...?

For some reason, Wanda thought about the alien skull in the river. Some outriders could have slipped away from the battlefield, blindly rampaging through the city... where Josephine and her group were... with the dead man...

"Josie -" The voice crept into her head. "It's coming! Run! Don't let go of me -" Am I hearing her thoughts? For a moment she questioned how. I can hear them. I can access them. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, Wanda tumbled into Josephine's mind.


The small house stood amongst amongst the apple trees, purple in the twilight. The grass rustled on her left, and a young woman dashed past her, the sunny orange fabric of her dress briefly brushing against Wanda's forearm as she passed. She was running after a young man. He was a few inches shorter than Vision, with slightly long, auburn hair and hazel eyes, with a bright smile; he would probably get a lot of second looks while walking down the street. He spun round and scooped her up in his arms, and she shrieked with carefree laughter. Wanda stared at the scene; she wasn't sure what she expected, but this certainly wasn't it.

"4 years today, Josie." He dropped her back to the ground. "Where has the time gone?"

"Time flies when you're in love." Josephine's nose wrinkled and she made a gagging noise. "That's so terrible. I can't believe I just said that. Sorry, Luke. "

"No, it's cute." The man with auburn hair laughed warmly, pausing to steal a kiss.

They were standing in the orchard now, and the man had an apple and a flower in each hand, in the middle of giving them both to Josephine. Flowers and fruit, a traditional anniversary gift for four years of marriage. Wanda looked on like an invisible third wheel as Josephine threw her arms around him, and he looked down at her, eyes hopelessly filled with awe; the way Vision used to look at her. There was a goofy smile spread across Josephine's face; the way Wanda used to smile.

Who is this? This can't be her. It certainly looked and sounded like her, but... cold-hearted, calculating Josephine... she was laughing. Smiling not as a mocking gesture, but because she genuinely wanted to. With black curls hanging above her shoulders and red lipstick, she looked like a modern equivalent of Snow White. The only thing to hint at her future was the chemical symbol earrings hung from her ears.


"Get out of here!" Josephine's real voice cut through once again. "These are private!"

"You watched Vision's memories! All of them! Don't lecture me about privacy!"


Wanda dove back in.

Moments of Josephine's life flashed by like a montage in a film. Wanda looked for parents, family - the only hints were gravestones or torn up photographs. These memories seemed hazy and poorly lit - they just weren't that important. All the brightest parts of Josephine's memories were dedicated, devoted, to Luke. A family of two was perfectly enough for her. They seemed kind of... perfect. There were disagreements and arguments, but they apologized and made up eventually, no bitterness was held.

They travelled through days filled with laughter, sunlight pouring into a bedroom window, walking through cities across the world. Moments plucked across time, the most wildly different of sights, colours and sounds - the only thing that was the consistent was the hand holding Josephine's. The same hand with the silver ring, Luke's same smile in every single memory; he had been there the entire time. They had no one else - just each other throughout the whole journey. Hardly anyone else appeared, except for Cara, laughing over coffee, or sliding pieces of paper across lab tables.

The montage settled onto a scene in a kitchen. The same field stretched out through the window, the apple trees golden in the morning sunshine. There was nothing unusual about this kitchen - a vase filled with blue flowers, a fruit bowl, a refrigerator covered with a collage of photos; a couple of spreadsheets and data files were spotted here and there, indicating that Siren had finally crept into their life. The only thing that was unusual was the dead magpie laying on the kitchen island.

Josephine herself stood a few centimetres away. On a visual level, she was beginning to morph into the person Wanda knew her to be. She was now wearing glasses, hair longer and pulled up, although there were no greys in her black hairline yet. She had syringes laying on the marble counter and a microscope below her face. Luke walked in, auburn hair shorter now and a few more lines in his face.

"Jesus! What's that doing there?" He exclaimed, suitably horrified. "Is that - the bird that's been nesting outside our window?"

"It won't be bothering us again." There was something the way she said it; her grin swiftly vanished at his disturbed face.

"Josie."

She covered her face with a hand, pulling at a loose hair hanging over her forehead as she pressed her eye back to the microscope. "The cat dragged it in this morning. I just got curious." Everything in Luke's hazel eyes screamed that he didn't believe her.

"We've talked about this. You want to experiment, that's fine. Just don't do it in the kitchen."

"Don't worry, I'll disinfect it."

"And uh, Douglas wants us in today."

"Seriously?" Josephine didn't look up from the viewer.

"He bought some new gear from some guy called Adrian Toombes, he wants you to see what you can do with it. Apparently it's some alien tech from last year."

"From New York?" Josephine's eyes snapped upwards. "Why the hell didn't you say so? That'll be fun."

"Yes, very..." Luke said, half-heartedly, not sounding as excited as her. "Josie, please, get rid of that thing. It's probably infested with diseases." He swiftly left the kitchen.

Josephine looked after him, silver eyes glimmering with guilt, before turning back to clinical fascination as she turned her eyes back to the microscope. "Stupid bird." She muttered, before tossing the dead magpie out the window. "Luke, come back. Luke..." Josephine's mouth wasn't moving in time with the voice - it was like a recording playing over the wrong footage. It grew in pitch, becoming more and more distressed. "Come back. Come back!"

The memory glitched forward in time. Suddenly it was cold, like someone had shoved Wanda into a frozen lake. She felt cold, empty, completely alone - no one was holding her hand anymore. It was just Josephine now, stiffly walking through the orchard in the night. Mushy piles of fallen apples collected underneath the almost bare trees, blackened, rotting fruit clinging to the branches - nobody had tended to them for at least a year.

They were inside the house now; Josephine brushed past Wanda like a ghost, a red can hanging from her hand, pouring a continuous line of liquid around the house. It was now dusty and empty, the pictures gone off the fridge, the vase filled with dried up, collapsed stalks instead of flowers. Moonlight filtered in through the smashed windows and kicked-down door. The furniture was gone and nails were hanging on the walls where photoframes once were. A lit match fell through the air. The house burst into flames and Josephine calmly walked down the front steps, not looking back as the house burned.

Wanda saw one last thing before she lost her grasp. For a moment she was Josephine, standing on a sun-baked dirt street in Wakanda. There was something warm and sticky on her cheek, and there was a metallic taste in her mouth. Her shadow stretched over the dead, six-limbed alien collapsed in the middle of the street. Blue blood trickled across the dirt, as the creature took it's dying breaths, chest heaving around the spear jammed through it's back. A hand stuck out between it's shoulder and slumped head, the fingers still twitching faintly.

Not a hand. His.


The grief and pain weighed her down like stones attached to a body in a river. She could taste blood in her mouth the same way Josephine had years before. "I... "

"Those things would never have come to Wakanda, if it wasn't for you." A dangerous coldness entered Josephine's eyes. "Do you have any idea how it feels, to hold someone in your arms as they die? A life just slipping away through your fingers, no matter how hard you hold on?" More than you think. "I blamed all of you at first. I took Vision to spite the Avengers, not just you. But then I opened his mind and I saw it all. I've thought about nothing else for five years." She leaned forwards. "Vision, the android Avenger. So noble, so selfless. Willing to sacrifice himself, without hesitation... but you wouldn't let him, would you?"

"What?" Wanda whispered.

Every syllable of her words began to tremble with anger. "He begged you countless times, and every time, you said no. It was inevitable, you would have saved him a lot of anguish in the long run. And what did you do? Nothing. You only acted when it was too late. By the time you finally blew that stone to hell, Luke's blood was all over the street."

It hit Wanda like a car. "You may have seen everything through him, but you don't understand -" Josephine violently slammed her hand on the metal table, speaking in a deadly, rushed whisper.

"I'll start with the Bartons, then I'll track down Wilson and Barnes, and then everyone else you know will follow. I'll make sure the hybrid gnaws every last scrap of meat off their bones and I don't care who else gets in the way." Her dead-eyed gaze began to come alive, and she lifted off the table, stalking towards her like a fox. Wanda backed away, ice slowly pouring into her veins. "I don't have you yet, but I will. I'm going to find you both, and when I do, I'll tear that stone right out of his skull. And as for you... you won't have to mourn him for long!"

Screams filled Wanda's mind, too loud, shrieking into her bones, begging for help. The high-pitched cries of the kids, Bucky and Sam, Clint, screaming for their lives, for her, to save them...

"Wanda! Help!"

"Sam! Just go -"

"Boys, Lila, run! Just -"

"Help us! Help, do something!" Their shrieks mingled together until they were like demons screaming at her.

Vision's voice, silent throughout this whole encounter, began to break through. "Let go! Get out of there!'

She blindly fumbled in the dark, following his voice, Josephine's demented shrieking echoing off the walls of her skull the entire way back to Wakanda. "I'll kill you both, Scarlet Witch! Just see if I don't!"