CHAPTER ONE
Pain.
Searing pain.
Wanda Maximoff has experienced pain before.
Physical pain, emotional pain, and psychological pain.
This pain fell into all three categories in earlier memories, memories that were slipping through her fingers like ash.
Pain that was reminiscent of having her family destroyed in front of her.
Her mother's last kiss, her father's last hug, her brother's last smile – all associated with the pain of having it ripped away before she even knew what was happening.
Wanda grunts in pain, rolling over to her side to alleviate the throbbing in her back, trying to help herself up, but finding herself only clinging to the dirt unable to manipulate her body.
Struggling with the acid that roils within her stomach and the pain radiating throughout her body, she forces her eyes to open.
White. Blindingly white and agonizing light that temporarily blocks out her sense of perception, forcing Wanda to suck in a sharp breath and squeeze her eyes closed, waiting for the white pain behind her eyelids to fade to an ache.
Upon opening her eyes again, she is relieved to see that her vision is not hindered by the earlier pain. She sees a lot of green and brown, some blue and white mixed together but too far away to tell what any of this is. Staring into the space in front of her for a few moments, her vision begins to sharpen, as well as her sense of awareness.
With great effort she is able to move from her fetal position on the ground and sit up, yielding further twinges of agony that she pushes back and breathes through. As Wanda stares at the space in front of her, she finds herself close to the woods in a clearing, alone. …But that doesn't seem right. In fact, the "clearing" that she is in was perhaps not a clearing before she arrived, however that came to be.
Twisting around allows her to see recently upturned dirt and bits of trees blown apart and spread in every direction from her seated position on the ground. Past the waste she finds herself in, she sees bright blue sky and clouds rising over a forest in the distance, as far as she can see.
Heart in her throat and ice in her veins, Wanda manages to scramble up to her feet, shaking with adrenaline.
She can't seem to understand the fear that is racing through her. Why she feels like there should be an answer to why there is so much destruction surrounding her. Why she feels like there should be someone beside her, a small distance of a hand reaching out to grasp…
But there is nothing. There is no one.
No one is here to tell her what happened, where she is, and more importantly who she is. She knows her name – Wanda Maximoff. Besides this single piece of information that jumps out at her from the confines of her jumbled mind, she has nothing else, only herself and this clearing that leads down into denser and unfamiliar woods.
Looking around once more continues to prove that she is lost and alone.
Alone.
She doesn't know why, but that word reverberating around in her head brings up fresh pain.
Not the pain that is slowly dulling into an ache on the back of her body, but a pain that feels distinctly separate from anything she has ever experienced.
A pain that squeezes the breath from her lungs and brings fresh tears to her eyes, a pain that feels like a single, solitary tether has been severed from deep inside her chest and brings her to her knees in the dirt, and ultimately a pain that prevents her from holding onto this new reality she has woken up to.
With one last shuddering and shaky breath, Wanda Maximoff collapses.
