Avengers Reassembled: Scarlet Witch

author: Lucinda

rating: pg 13

main character: Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch)

disclaimer: the Scarlet Witch is the creation of Marvel comics. I hold no legal rights and am making no profit from this.

distribution: Paula, anyone else please ask first.

note: I am attempting to revise things to fit the Avengers into the world of the X-Men movies. So, this will most definitely be AU.

She'd always known that she was different. Wanda Maximoff was a redhead in a clan of dark haired gypsies, the only person with hair paler than her own being her twin brother Pietro. She knew the explanation, that they hadn't really been born to the gypsy clan, that their 'mother' Belle had found the tiny infants alone in the snow and taken them for her own. They didn't know anything of their birth parents, nor had it been much of a concern. Not at first.

But when she was fifteen, the differences started to grow. Oh, she had the same sort of coordination as any other girl her age, and she had been practicing dancing and acrobatics for years. But nobody was willing to play dice with her anymore. The dice always rolled in her favor. No matter who's dice or how they were weighted, they rolled for Wanda. Just like nobody would run races against Pietro, not since he started being able to run down rabbits, and outrun horses. That was when the whispers started. Different. Mutant.

It had caused their friends to become more distant, and their adoptive parents to worry. The twins had started to feel that there was nobody else that understood them, nobody else like them in all the world. It was a lonely thing, and it changed them both.

She'd started trying to learn more about her differences. She couldn't fly, or change into some other shape, but she could make things happen. Make things go wrong. If she concentrated, and gave a sort of mental push just so... the most unlikely 'accidents' could happen. Things would fall apart. People could fall down. It was frightening and exciting and astonishing all at once. She wondered if this was the whispered hex that a powerful seer or witch could cast in the stories. It had to be, after all, what other explanation was there? So, she began to think of herself as a witch, the Scarlet Witch, as a reference to her hair.

Her brother was fast. Not Jesse Owen, Olympic sprinter fast, but speeding bullet fast. He could run, dodge, or tap dance faster than any person should be remotely capable of doing. Well, that wasn't quite true - Pietro couldn't tap dance. But he'd noticed the whispers as well, and she could tell that they'd hurt him. Pietro had pulled away, emotionally. Instead of the cheerful, laughing boy that he'd once been, he was becoming sullen, aloof and a touch bitter.

Not that she really blamed him. Suddenly, it was as if they weren't enough for the only family that they'd ever known, weren't Wanda and Pietro anymore. They were 'those strange kids' or 'the mutants'.

Then, they'd heard about Magneto. Whispers and rumors of a man who sought mutants, a mutant who believed that they were different, better than the rest of the world. That their differences should be a source of pride, and a badge of power. They'd fallen under his influence, partly due to his own charisma, partly due to the growing fear of the Gypsies that had been all the family that they'd had.

Funny, how much of a resemblance there was between Pietro and Magneto. It was almost as if Magneto was a vision of what Pietro would look like in thirty years. He didn't look too bad, for an old man. But part of that was the intensity of his eyes, and intensity drawn from his power and his vision of the future.

They'd worked with Magneto, not necessarily because they believed that mutants should rule humans, but because it gave them one place where they weren't feared. A place where they could dream that they belonged. And they wanted to belong so hard that they were willing to be the 'villains', the ones that everyone was afraid of - after all, people already feared them, what other choice was there? Starving on the streets? Lives of petty theft and low level crime?

Odds were pretty good that if it hadn't been for Iron Man and Captain America, they would have stayed with Magneto, remained part of his 'Brotherhood of Mutants' until they'd won, or been killed, or lost and been imprisoned. Although she was a bit curious if any jail could truly hold her… But those two had opposed Magneto, not out of a sense of superiority, or confidence in their powers, but just because they felt it was the right thing to do.

Magneto had been captured, imprisoned for a while in a Lithuanian jail. He'd stayed there for a while, possibly sulking over his plan's failure, possibly planning his next effort. The jail certainly hadn't stopped him when he'd decided to leave.

She and her brother had gone to America, amazed and shocked by the deliberate blindness of Americans to the rest of the world. She and Pietro were wanted criminals through most of Europe, and in America, nobody recognized them! They'd tried to start normal lives, to just… live like normal people, instead of traveling, instead of terrorizing, instead of petty theft.

She'd been bored almost to tears in less than a month.

Then, there had been a knock on her door one morning, and she'd opened it to find… Captain America. In front of her apartment. After a moment of shock and worry, she'd invited him inside, offering coffee.

"Wanda... you don't mind if I call you Wanda, do you?" He'd been so polite, almost as if he was uncertain of his welcome.

She'd handed him a cup of coffee, thick and strong the way her mother had always made it, a bowl of sugar cubes and a tiny pitcher of cream within reach. Holding her own cup of coffee, she gestured for him to be seated in the chair even as she sank onto the couch, her hand them smoothing her long skirts in a nervous gesture. "Go ahead… I should mention that the coffee's a bit strong. Um… what brings you here today?"

"I wanted to extend an invitation to you." He'd sipped at the coffee, pouring a bit of cream into it, perhaps as much for the temperature as the bite of it. "I was talking with Iron Man… we had the idea of a group of people, heroes to try to defend America. Eventually, anyhow. We would have to start on a somewhat more local scale… A group of protectors that would help those in need, defend citizens against dangers that they or the police are not equipped to handle. And a sign of the American Dream, a dream of peace and unity. We were wondering if you'd like to join."

She'd been stunned. From almost anyone, the words would have sounded pompous, arrogant. From him, the only sounded sincere. "Unity… including mutants? Immigrants? What about the fact that I was a criminal?"

"Yes, mutants, and people who were altered like myself, and people who've built something wonderful like Iron Man. This fear of mutants is just another sort of prejudice, and it's not right. America has traditionally welcomed immigration, and been a place for second chances." He looked so sincere, his eyes flickering with the intensity of his dream. "Will you help us make it happen?"

"Do you have a name for this group?" She'd smiled, already certain that she would join.

"The Avengers." He smiled, looking almost sheepish. "Will you join us?"

Her own smile held anticipation, and hope. "Count me in."

End Scarlet Witch.