Chapter 3: A Reluctant Recruit

The Ditch is dear to the Drunken man

For is it not his Bed—

His Advocate—his Edifice?

How safe his fallen Head

In her disheveled Sanctity—

Above him is the sky—

Oblivion bending over him

And Honor leagues away.

~Emily Dickinson

Edinburgh, Scotland

Doctor Strange decided to open a portal directly into the room where Wanda Maximoff was staying, mostly because he wanted to make the most dramatic entrance possible.

Walking into the room, he immediately regretted that decision.

Wong stepped out behind him, wrinkling his nose at the smells in the dirty, dusty room: rotten food scraps, mice, unwashed clothes, and stale urine from a large bucket in the corner.

"I did warn you," Strange said.

"You didn't warn me enough."

At first, they thought the room's occupant was out, then they saw movement from a pile of blankets. Strange waved his hand and the blankets flew back, revealing Wanda, awake but clearly still groggy, even though it was almost two in the afternoon.

"What the hell? Get out!"

Her hands glowed red, and a broken chair flew at them from across the room. Strange lifted his hand and stopped it in midair.

"We need to talk to you, Wanda," he said.

"Not interested."

A few trash projectiles surrounded in a red glow flew at him. The Cloak of Levitation flicked out to block them.

While Wanda was focusing on Strange, Wong conjures a net of energy that trapped her hands.

"Hey!"

"Like he said, we need to talk to you. But not here."

Strange opened a portal under Wanda, which swallowed her up before she had time to react. He and Wong portaled themselves to the New York Sanctum, where Strange opened a portal near the ceiling. Wanda fell out of it, spilling onto the floor. She pushed herself up and red light swirled from her hands again, but the Cloak of Levitation flew from Strange's shoulders and wrapped itself around her hands, extinguishing her power. She desperately tried to free her hands, then slumped to the floor in defeat.

"Let me go," she said.

"Hmm...no. Not until we have a little chat," said Strange.

"You can't just...kidnap me like this."

He waved his hand dismissively. "The evidence suggests otherwise. Of course, we probably couldn't have just kidnapped you like this, but—I mean, just look at yourself; you're hardly at the top of your game. To think a year and a half ago you almost brought Thanos down by yourself."

She glared at him. "Why did you bring me here?"

Wong answered, "We were hoping you would help us save the world again."

"Why me?"

"You don't seem to have anything better to do," Strange said. "And I get it that you're not interested; you don't even care about this world anymore, not when you can squander your life spying on yourself and your dead boyfriend in other worlds."

"How do you know about that?"

"Please. Our order is dedicated to protecting this Earth from supernatural disturbances. Did you think poking peepholes in the boundaries between realities daily is something that would fly below our radar?"

"That's how we were able to find you when no one else could. And when one of the most powerful beings on the planet went off the grid weeks after the defeat of Thanos, a lot of people were looking," Wong said. "S.H.I.E.L.D. has been looking for you since you went into hiding."

"Pepper Potts, with all the resources of Stark Industries, hasn't been able to find you," Strange added.

"The Wakandan intelligence network has also been searching for you."

"Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes were looking everywhere for you for months," said Strange. "I would have thought you'd at least want Sam Wilson to know where you were."

"I didn't want anyone to know where I was," Wanda said. "I didn't want people worrying over me."

"It looks to me like you could really use some worrying over."

She looked down, at the cloak still trapping her hands. "I'm not hurting anyone."

"Except yourself."

"You don't get it," she stated. "I'm not hurting anyone. And if you knew the things I'm capable of, the horrors I've committed in other timelines, you'd know what an accomplishment that is. I'm like you said: one of the most powerful beings on the planet, and I'm... I'm not...I'm not stable. Keeping myself away from the world is the best thing I can do for it."

"Is that what you've been telling yourself," Doctor Strange said contemptuously.

"It's the truth. Some of the things I've seen myself do... Do you want to know how many times I've caused the end of the world, or caused some kind of catastrophe that killed thousands? Five. Five times, and that's just the ones I know of."

"And how many times have you saved the world?" Wong asked.

She wrinkled her eyebrows. "I don't know. I don't know if any."

"Well, we wouldn't have beat Thanos without you, so that's one. But it makes sense that it's easier to count how many times you destroy a world than save it. The end of the world really stands out; it usually only happens once per timeline. Saving the world is more like maintanance. It's like sanitation work: the better a job you do at it, the less people notice," he said.

"That...makes sense," Wanda said thoughtfully, the distant look in her eyes indicating she was thinking of something specific.

Strange sighed and steepled his figers. "Believe me, dragging you out of the gutter wasn't my first choice, but there's something coming, and unfortunately we may need your help. Are you ready to hear us out like a grown-up?"

"What's coming?" she asked.

With a flick of a finger, Doctor Strange summoned the Cloak of Levitation back to his shoulders. Wanda stretched her newly freed hands, but didn't revive her powers.

"We're not sure. There are incorporeal entities that attack minds, causing their victims to go insane. They're spreading, and their source seems to be somewhere in the Southern Ocean or Antarctica."

"And you think I can help you with them because attacking people's minds is what I used to do?"

"No, but that's an interesting thought," he said. "The reason we wanted to talk to you is that, seven years ago, Iron Man and Vision went to Antarctica to dismantle a HYDRA base. While Vision was out flying, he saw something he described in his report as nearly ultraviolet lines that writhed as if they were alive, as if they were the outlines of otherwise transparent motile organisms. He speculated it was some unknown atmospheric phenomenon and didn't give any more details. That description matches what I saw when I faced one of these entities. And we know he was secretly seeing you at the time. Did he tell you about it?"

Wanda looked down at her fidgeting hands. "He mentioned it. He didn't tell me much."

"What did he tell you? Anything you remember might be important."

"He said he had no idea what it was, that it was the strangest thing he'd ever seen, that it looked enormous. When he talked about it, he sounded both fascinated and a little afraid. And not much scared him."

As she talked about him, her hands became more active. It looked like her fingers were trying to claw at or strangle each other.

"Did he tell you where it was?" Strange pressed.

"No. Not that I remember."

He sighed and paced. "Well that's useful."

"I'm sorry. That's all I know."

Strange abruptly stopped pacing and turned to her. "Can you see into other people's minds?"

She looked startled at the abruptness of his question. "To an extent. I haven't...tried it for a long time. Why?"

"There have been a rash of sudden psychological breakdowns in previously stable individuals. I suspect they're victims of the entities we've been discussing, but I want to confirm it. Will you help us?" His question wasn't a request, it was an ultimatum.

Wanda hesitated.

"Help us save the world one more time," Wong said encouragingly.

"Then you can crawl back into whatever hole you choose," said Strange.

Wanda shrugged. "I'll help if I can."

"Good. Let's go." Strange opened a portal.

"Wait a moment." Wong looked Wanda over, formed a ball of magic between his hands, and sent it in crisscrossing beams over her. Her torn, dirty coat and pants turned into a clean dark green sweater and crisp jeans. Her mussy, tangled hair was suddenly clean and pulled back in a tight braid.

She glanced down, frowning in confusion. "At midnight do I turn back into a pumpkin?"

"Of course not. For astrological reasons, the spell will be broken at 6:52 p.m. Eastern Standard Time," Strange said.

"Really?"

"No," he scoffed. "Let's get going."