No, Wanda thought, as she stepped down the quinjet's ramp and looked around at the central plaza of her native city. This is not home.

It wasn't that she objected to its being rebuilt. After what Oraș Nou had been through, the hardest-hearted antiquarian couldn't have denied that a renovation was called for, and Wanda Maximoff was very far from hard-hearted where her motherland and its capital were concerned. And she had sense enough to dismiss her reaction to the piebald contrast of bright and weathered limestone that marked the façade of almost every building; such things had to happen when old buildings were patched up with new stone, and the impression it gave her of a city blotched and speckled with leprosy was unquestionably just her own fancy. It wasn't that, and it wasn't the repair droids flying about the skyline, and it wasn't the hand-drawn picture of Tony Stark she spotted in one person's front yard; it was something broader and more pervasive than all of that – something that Pietro would certainly have dismissed with an indulgent laugh, as he had so many of her other instinctive revulsions, because she could smell it so much more easily than she could put it into words. It had something to do with what she had been saying to Clint a few hours before, about legitimacy springing from love of the land and its ways; what Mr. Stark was doing with this city – what, more importantly, its citizens were letting him and even encouraging him to do with it – was noble and generous and philanthropic, but there seemed no love in it of Sokovia as a place. It made her think of dark old folk-tales about witches who saved men's lives by removing their hearts – and, though she was sure that there was nothing of Baba-Yaga about Tony Stark, still, at the sight of the city of her birth being rebuilt by robots as an abstract service to humanity, she couldn't help shivering and pulling her cape closer about her shoulders.

"Little cold in that getup, Wanda?" said Rhodey, with friendly irony. "I'll trade you any time you like, you know. Middle of June's a rotten time to have your arm in a cast; I never knew what 'prickly heat' meant until now."

Before Wanda could reply, there was a flurry of footsteps along the plaza, and a figure came into view and approached the quinjet. It was the young woman from the television; still in her gown of indigo velvet, and carrying her head as the beggar-girl might have done upon becoming Mrs. Cophetua, she looked like every royal ambassador in the world as she tripped up to the ramp and dipped the descending Avengers a dainty curtsy. "Good morning, gentlemen and Miss Maximoff," she said. "On behalf of Coordinator Stark, I welcome you back to Sokovia."

Then a girlish grin broke through her regal manner. "Actually, he wanted to come and meet you himself," she said, "but there was an incident at Omsgard Prison that required his immediate attention. He says to tell you he's sorry, and to assure you that I'm not an international spy trying to steal your secrets."

"Good to know," said Steve, in a tone that Wanda couldn't easily classify as either ironic or sincere. "So who are you, exactly? We saw you on TV, but I don't think they gave a name…"

"I'm Riri," said the girl simply.

Wanda cocked her head. "That's an unusual name," she remarked.

The girl blushed. "Well, it's really Oksana Wilhelm," she said. "But Riri's what Mr. Stark calls me. Never mind, it's a long story."

"Yeah, no long stories right now," came Clint's groggy voice from the top of the ramp. (Having driven almost the full length of the U.S. Northeast three times in one day seemed to have pretty well drained the hawk-eyed ex-agent; he had fallen asleep almost as soon as the quinjet had left the ground, and only the instincts of a lifetime in black ops had roused him again during its descent.)

Wanda smiled slightly, and heard Sam chuckle behind her. Steve's expression, though, remained as resolutely stern as it had been throughout the flight. "So is Tony going to meet us here, then?" he said to Riri. "Or are we supposed to meet him at his… palace?" (He pronounced the last word as though it tasted of spoiled eggplant.)

"Oh, the Coordinator's only using the Presidential Palace to conduct business," said Riri easily. "He's donated the residential wing to the Emperor Joseph Hospital for the use of convalescents. No, I'm to conduct you and your friend to his provisional residence in the Hotel Măreț."

Wanda blinked. "Our friend?" she repeated.

"Well, I hope I'm still your friend," came a familiar voice off to her right. "If being gone for a week on business in central Europe is enough to make you completely forget about me, there's something wrong with one of us."

Wanda turned to the center of the plaza, toward the medieval church that had twice been the scene of her initiation into new life, and saw a slight, black-clad, wholly unmistakable figure standing in the porch. "Nat!" she exclaimed delightedly, and rushed off the ramp toward her de-facto godmother. "Nat, watch this!"

As she ran, she thrust all ten of her fingers downward, and hexed the air beneath her into a cushion the way she had at Clint's farm. For whatever reason – whether her practice had paid off, or whether her eagerness to show Natasha her new ability had lent her wings – it was the smoothest takeoff she had yet performed: the scarlet cloud that formed about her feet carried her effortlessly off the ground and across the plaza to the church door, where she alit on the top step in front of Natasha with sufficient smoothness to remain standing (though not to keep from wobbling back and forth a couple times before she fully got her balance).

Natasha smiled, and applauded softly. "Brava," she said.

But there was a remoteness in her voice, and an indefinable air of distraction in her usually laser-keen eyes, that made Wanda feel suddenly uncomfortable about what the "business in central Europe" might have entailed. "Nat, what is it?" she said nervously.

Natasha shook her head. "Later, Wanda," she said. "Maybe."

Riri cleared her throat. "So, then," she said, "if you would all please follow me…?"

Compared to some of the hotels Wanda had stayed at since becoming an Avenger, the Hotel Măreț scarcely lived up to its name; still, it was grand enough by Sokovian standards, and, upon discovering that Mr. Stark's "provisional residence" there consisted of the entire second floor, Wanda felt her reluctant admiration for his gesture about the convalescents giving way to a more prosaic emotion.

Riri escorted the six of them to a particularly opulent suite overlooking the main street of the city, and left them with the promise that Mr. Stark wouldn't be much longer. As the others all settled in (Sam stretching himself at length on the big brass bed, Clint ducking into the washroom to splash his face with cold water, etc.), Wanda, glutton for punishment that she was, wandered out onto the balcony, leaned against the marble railing, and gazed out anew on the heartlessly well-meaning reconstruction of the city of her birth.

She tried to tell herself that it was just the inevitable cost of progress, but that was too obviously a lie to be any comfort. Progress meant things becoming more what they were supposed to be, and she was quite sure that Sokovia wasn't supposed to be yet another outpost of American technological imperialism. (In truth, she had occasionally wondered whether America herself was really supposed to be this.) It was one thing to give people the means to alleviate suffering and make their lives easier; it was another thing to tell them that your way of using those means was the only right one, and that, if they wanted your help, they had to become second-rate copies of the thing you were. The former was the act of a friend, the latter that of a destroyer – and, hard as she tried, she couldn't find it in herself to doubt, as she looked out across the Stradă Lieber, that the home she loved was being gently and kindly destroyed.

Or, at least, one of the homes she loved. That was her one consolation at that moment: that even as she saw an impenetrable suit of armor descending upon her native land, she could also hear Rhodey trying to wheedle a beer out of the suite's FRIDAY outlet, and Natasha milking Steve for reminiscences about the Winter Soldier. That, too, was her home now – and that, at least, couldn't be unmade by the imposition of foreign gadgetry.

As she sucked the incomplete but genuine consolation from that fact, she heard the roar of rocket thrusters touching down in front of the hotel; a few minutes later, there came footsteps along the hallway outside the suite, and Mr. Stark entered, still in the black T-shirt and slacks he wore when operating his suit. He nodded briefly to his assembled friends, but his mind was elsewhere, as his first words revealed. "FRIDAY, is that cordon up yet?" he demanded of the wall-mounted speaker next to Rhodey.

"Just about," FRIDAY replied. "There's still a hole or two at the southeastern edge of the city, but it should be patched up before Krake has a chance to get that far."

"And they've all got the proper ordnance?"

"Aye-aye, Boss."

"Good." Mr. Stark's eyes blazed with fierce relish. "Let's see you wriggle out of this one, Mr. Unsung-Genius."

"Problems, Stark?" said Clint, wiping his face as he emerged from the washroom.

Mr. Stark blinked, and seemed for the first time to genuinely realize the others were there. "Oh, just some local creep who'd been throwing his weight around out in the countryside," he said. "I was holding him in the prison here, and was going to put him on trial today as my first official act, but then he somehow sweet-talked his cell door open in the wee hours of the morning, and he's at large in the city somewhere – probably pretty nearby, actually. But I think we've got him trapped now; once we're done here, I'll go finish smoking him out."

He spread his arms. "So: what do you think of the place?"

"Pretty sumptuous for someone playing Monsignor Bienvenu," said Natasha pointedly.

Mr. Stark grinned sheepishly but impenitently, like a schoolboy caught making spitballs. "Well, the hospital really did need the extra space," he said. "You should have seen the place before. But, yeah, I'll admit that wasn't all of it. Ever since I was a kid, staying at the Paris Hilton or wherever on vacation, I've secretly wished I could shoo all the other guests away and just camp out for a month or so. So when I saw this fine old place just basically lying empty, I thought, hey, what's the good of being Coordinator of Sokovia if you can't indulge a few childhood fantasies?"

"And you're not going to eat any more broccoli," said Sam dryly.

"Exactly!" said Mr. Stark, and pointed his thumb at the speaker. "You see? Icarus gets it."

"Tony," said Steve, "we need to talk."

Mr. Stark held up a hand. "Okay, Cap, before you start, let me guess what's coming," he said. "You're going to say that I don't have the right to be coordinating Sokovia or anything else, because I haven't checked all the proper boxes. It's not enough just to be the only person able and willing to fly in and take care of the bad guys; unless you've held an actual election with ballots and Jimmy Carter and smiling goatherds holding up purple thumbs, then, no matter how loud the applause is, it's not really the Will of the People. Right?"

"That's part of it," said Steve.

Mr. Stark nodded. "Yeah, I've thought about that," he said. "And here's what I have to say to it." He pointed a finger at Wanda – or so the startled psychokinetic thought at first, until she realized he was actually indicating the cityscape behind her. "You see out there? That's a country where, up until a couple days ago, some pervert with enough brains and gumption could cow a whole town into letting him kidnap and rape its teenage girls, because there wasn't anyone up top to complain to. And you know who did that to them? We did. The Avengers. Me especially, I admit it; I'm not here to blame the rest of you because my killer robot turned Oraș Nou to rubble and none of us thought about going back to clean up. But the point is that none of us did, and things happened as a result. And I say that when you do that to a place, you've got to step up and make it right, and saying that you've got to win a popularity contest first is just a fancy way of copping out."

Rhodey winced. "Tony, you've got to stop making this stuff personal," he said. "You can't stage a coup d'état just because you're feeling guilty about…" He trailed off.

"About?" Mr. Stark repeated sardonically. "Go ahead, Rhodey, finish. About forgetting Pepper's birthday again? About not making more of an effort to get to know my dad? Or about making it so that Sokovia, for all meaningful purposes, didn't even have an état to couper? Oh, it's easy to dismiss guilt as a motivation, but, you know, sometimes when you feel responsible for things, it's because you damn well are – and, for once in my life, I'm taking that responsibility, whether the U.N. likes it or not."

"And you don't buy that responsibility means keeping promises," said Natasha, "and that a treaty's a kind of promise you made as a citizen with the rest of the world."

Mr. Stark cocked his head. "Do you?"

"I'm just asking."

"Uh." Mr. Stark was silent for a little while, and Wanda had the impression that he was looking squarely at his fundamental principles for perhaps the first time in his life. "No," he said at length. "No, I don't. You can't make promises for other people, just because you're the head of an outfit they belong to; all you can do is make rules for them. And I'm fine with following rules if they don't get in the way of doing what you have to do – but, if they do, then you don't let them stymie you if you have the power to help it."

"How do you run a corporation with that attitude?" said Clint – not critically, but with the abstract curiosity of a scientist pondering a peculiarity of string theory.

"I don't, now," Mr. Stark pointed out. "Never did, really; someone else always handled the day-to-day operations – my dad originally, then Obie, and now Pepper. But if you're worried about me not being able to put the smack-down on dissidents here, don't be. Just because I think you can break rules for the greater good, doesn't mean I won't enforce my own if you can't convince me that the good was greater – and, if you can, that's what executive pardons are for, right?"

Clint nodded thoughtfully. "Looks like you called it, sweetie," he muttered.

Mr. Stark's eyes widened. "Sweetie?" he repeated. "Clint, man, I like you too, but…"

"I was talking to my daughter," said Clint.

Mr. Stark looked mystified, but shrugged agreeably. "Okay, then," he said. "Listen, it's great seeing you guys again, but, if there's nothing else, I really need to get back to tracking down this…"

"Tony," said Steve, "I said that was part of it."

Mr. Stark considered this. "Yes, you did," he agreed. "So what's the rest, then?"

"Have you checked your Tower e-mail lately?"

Mr. Stark shook his head. "Haven't had time," he said. "Been a little busy making Sokovia safe for democracy. –Okay, maybe not democracy," he added defensively, in response to Clint's audible snort, "but the demos, anyway." He turned back to Steve. "Why?"

Wordlessly, Steve withdrew a folded sheet of printer paper from his pocket and handed it to Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark unfolded it and perused it for a minute or so; then he nodded approvingly. "Sounds like a good cause," he said. "Enlightened, statesmanlike, forward-thinking – all that good stuff that the right sort of people like. Maybe you'll land that NPR guest spot yet."

"Maybe," said Steve. "But the thing is, Tony, can you tell me how a statement like that's going to have any teeth and still make it all right for an Avenger to take over a country?"

Wanda honestly couldn't tell whether Mr. Stark hadn't thought of this issue before, or had deliberately been ignoring it. In any case, his face grew suddenly cold and expressionless. "Oh, so that's it," he said. "This isn't about the Rights of Man after all, is it, Cap? It's about me having the nerve to throw a monkey wrench into your pet project."

"It's about both, Tony," said Steve. "We can't let what happened at the U.N. become the norm; we have to make it clear that we're not about the strong just smashing things up to get what they want. And what you've done here is the same kind of thing."

Mr. Stark's face got even colder. "Okay, in the first place, I think there's a little bit of a difference between squabbling over a trinket and giving two million people a chance at decent lives," he said. "And in the second place, who the hell gave you the right to decide what we can and can't do? There's no S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore, no Initiative; it's strictly one-Avenger-one-vote from here on out. And until Bruce, Thor, and Vision start showing up to meetings again, I don't think you're going to be getting any commanding majorities on those terms."

It occurred to Wanda that this was a rather odd way of putting it, coming from a man whose whole contention was that he didn't need to be elected before he could govern. But she didn't say this – and neither did anyone else, though she was sure she hadn't been the only one to think it. They all knew what Mr. Stark meant – and perhaps they all sensed, as she obscurely did, that something far more important than a snappy retort hinged on what Steve said in reply.

There was a tense, frightening silence; the two men locked unblinking gazes, and, though Wanda could only see a quarter of Steve's face, that quarter bespoke such ferocious control over such fierce and turbulent passions that she was glad to have the rest hidden from her. She watched, and she waited, and she waited, and she watched – and then, just as she was ready to scream from the suspense, Steve said, in a dangerously soft tone, "Tony, I don't want to set myself against you. But I have to do what I have to do, the same way you do – and what I have to do right now is make sure that the Avengers set an example of restraint to the world."

"Can't be done," said Mr. Stark simply. "No offense to everyone else in this room, but, so far as the world's concerned, Cap, you and I are the Avengers right now. If the Avengers present a common front on anything, it'll be because the two of us are seeing eye to eye – and I don't think that's going to happen on this one any time soon."

"Maybe we need a new Avengers, then."

Wanda let out a strangled squeal of shocked dismay, causing Clint's head to jerk sharply in her direction. Mr. Stark, though, seemed merely bewildered. "Excuse me?" he said. "What do you mean, a new Avengers? The Avengers aren't some kind of parliament you can dissolve and then summon a new one. They're us, the seven people in this room, plus the three no-shows I mentioned earlier. What, are you going to reach into the mirror universe and pull out Evil Barton with his agonizer-tipped arrows?"

"There are other people like us in the world besides the ten of us, Tony," said Steve. "We saw two of them at the U.N. – three, if you count Kravenoff. Suppose I walk out of here and go find five or six of them, train them, and offer them to the world as Captain America's New Avengers: do you think I couldn't make it stick? You said yourself I'm half the team in the world's eyes; if the other half's busy taking over small countries…" He trailed off pointedly.

Mr. Stark stared at him for a long moment, trying, Wanda thought, to gauge just how serious he was. "You realize what that means, Cap," he said at length. "If you're fronting the New Avengers, first you have to have walked away from the old Avengers. Are you really so married to this PR stunt of yours that you'd tear the team apart for it?"

Steve didn't even flinch. "You did that when you invaded Sokovia," he said.

In the profound hush that followed those words, Clint's hoarse laugh fell like a bomb. "Boy, did I pick the wrong week to get back in this team's business," he said.

Natasha shot him a disparaging look. "You think you could have kept out of this by staying on the farm?" she said. "It doesn't work that way, Clint. Once an Avenger, always an Avenger; the bonds that hold us together are stronger than anything you can retire from. That's what I told Steve's friend, when he expressed concern about our lack of organization; it was true then, and it's true now.

"So understand this, Steve," she continued, turning to lock eyes with the super-soldier. "I'm not going to be taking any jobs in Tony's cabinet; I've handled enough regime change for one lifetime, and anyway I still have work of my own to do in Berlin. And I'll probably be willing to sign any statement of principles you send me, or even give advice if you still want some. But if you're going to turn it into a litmus test for who is and isn't an Avenger… well, you'd better be prepared to play that hand without the Widow."

Steve nodded. "Thanks, Nat," he said. "I'll keep that in mind."

Mr. Stark chuckled. "So no Foreign Minister Romanoff for me, huh?" he said. "Too bad. Rhodey, you wouldn't want the job, would you? …No, I guess not," he added, seeing Rhodey's self-consciously principled glare. "And Clint probably has to get back to his plowing or something…"

"Haying," said Clint. "This is June."

"…and don't think I've missed the stink-eye Wanda's been giving me since I walked in here," Mr. Stark finished. "Well, that's how it goes, I guess. Like Tesla and Galileo, I'll just have to march boldly alone into the future, scorned and forsaken by all my colleagues…"

"Who said all?"

Six pairs of eyes turned, with varying degrees of shock, toward the big brass bed where Sam was sitting up with an expression of wounded neglect. "Sam?" said Steve, with the voice of one who'd just been knifed in the back by one of his own Commandoes. "You agree with what Tony's done?"

"No, he's out of line," said Sam easily. "But he's right. We did mess this place up, and we do need to fix it. Probably there were better ways, but it's too late for that now – and you heard what he said about never having actually managed anything. I'm sure this Riri's a bright kid, but you don't make a teenage girl administer a whole country all by herself."

With a visible effort, Mr. Stark forced his gaping mouth closed. "Right, okay," he said. "Welcome to the Stark government, Wilson. Hope you like U.N. censures."

Sam shrugged dismissively. "That's the Assembly, isn't it?" he said. "If what they did meant anything, we wouldn't be here."

"Fair point," Mr. Stark acknowledged. "Let's get going, then; we've still got that creep Krake to catch, and your eagle eye should come in handy." He arced his hand in a farewell wave wide enough to encompass the whole room. "See you around, everybody. Live long and prosper."

He turned and left the suite; Sam rose from the bed, exchanged a long look with Steve so heavy with sorrow and regret that Wanda half expected the air between them to break like glass, and followed his new chief executive out of sight.

Wanda shut her eyes and turned away, unwilling to see the change that his closest friend's departure had wrought in Steve's face. She had seen and heard too much already today; not only had her beloved motherland been transmuted into a 4,000-square-mile EPCOT knockoff, but the company of heroes that had served her for a new home and family had fallen apart before her eyes. Had she been born under some evil star, that she seemed destined, whenever she truly gave her heart to something, to see it torn from her in the most outlandishly macabre fashion Fate could contrive?

She felt a soft hand on her shoulder, and the tang of white-oleander perfume stung her nostrils. "Be strong, Wanda," Natasha whispered in her ear. "I know it looks bleak, but it'll all come right in the end. God looks after fools, children, and Avengers – and, however far apart we are, and however much we all disagree, nothing can make us not the Avengers."

Wanda swallowed, and nodded. "I know."

And she did. Better, perhaps, than any of the others, she understood that her all-too-brief time as an Avenger had changed her in ways that could never be undone; it was L'Enchanteuse Écarlate's visible testimony to that change that made her devotion to it more than just some childish dress-up game. But that was cold comfort to her now, with the Avengers she knew having dissolved into an atomy of disconnected individual projects. She didn't want the New Avengers, or the new Sokovia; she was sure she didn't have the know-how to help with whatever Natasha was up to; and she couldn't very well ask Clint to take her in and potentially compromise his family's cover. What place, then, was left for the Avenger she couldn't help but be?

Steve's voice, tight with controlled bitterness, broke in upon her dour musings. "We should get going," he said. "Nat, you don't need a lift, do you?"

"Not unless Tony's shut down the Oraș Nou Eurolines station within the last half-hour," said Natasha. "Anyway, I wouldn't want to take you out of your way."

"Okay," said Steve. "Come on, Clint, Rhodey… Wanda, are you coming?"

It was a simple enough question, but to Wanda it was like the last, irrevocable knell. Coming? Back to the quinjet – to America – to the debris of the old Avengers, and Steve's ruthless quest for the New? Again, a piercing sense of being alone in the world came over her – and, with it, a sudden determination to embrace that solitude.

She took a deep breath, and shook her head. "You go on," she said. "I'll find my own way."

Before anyone could reply, she extended her fingers and hexed herself up off the balcony. Vertical takeoffs, by now, were as easy to her as falling off a log; she didn't even open her eyes until she felt the higher-altitude breeze tousle her hair, and heard the wondering exclamations of the civilians on the street below. She smiled down at them, and blew a sad kiss that only the keenest-eyed among them could see; then she opened up the hex field to horizontal influences, and moved on.

Where she was going, she didn't know herself. As far as she knew, one place was as good as another, and her powers used up less energy if she didn't try to impose probability skews. She would just fly until she couldn't fly any longer; then she would land wherever destiny's whim had placed her, and see if there was a life to be made there for a lone Avenger awaiting the reconciliation of her heroic kindred. If so, fine; if not, she would lift herself back up and try again.

Frightening? Oh, certainly. At that moment, Wanda Maximoff was as afraid as she had ever been – which, given her past, was saying something. She yearned in every cell of her body to relax her resolution, descend to the plaza where the others were even now boarding the quinjet, and yield herself to Steve's projected supplanting of the Avengers, or even to Mr. Stark's remodeling of Sokovia, if only she might continue to have at least some of her friends about her. But, whenever she weakened and stole a downward glance, she saw a gleam of scarlet satin and remembered that she was an Avenger, and her heart was strong again.

"Goodbye, my friends," she whispered, as she soared out across the city's southwestern quarter. "Until we meet again."