Chapter 24: The Rogue Wave
Soothe! Soothe! Soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,
But my love soothes not me, not me.
~Walt Whitman, from "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"
Hail tumbled out of the twilight sky, pelting the ship and sea at a sharp angle, driven by the howling wind. Visibility was poor, but not poor enough to hide the fact that the waves were huge. Wanda had never imagined ocean waves could grow this big. Mountains of water rising and falling, mountains becoming valleys becoming mountains. She could swear they were higher than the ship, but it was hard to tell, the way the ship was tilting up and down. It was both mesmerizing and terrifying.
She couldn't decide if she should sound an alarm for this. They were far away from any shore, the ocean was too deep here for the anchor to reach the bottom, and the ship's icebreaker hull could surely withstand the force of the waves, so there probably wasn't any actual danger from this storm—at least no danger they could do anything about.
Maybe it was absurd for her to be so afraid. She had, after all, faced so many terrors in her life—some unwillingly and some willingly. She had survived a bombing at age 10, had run away from the orphanage to face life on the streets, volunteered to be exposed to energy from an alien artefact, fought the Avengers, joined forces with a killer robot, joined the Avengers, fought aliens, watched herself turn to dust, faced Thanos with all his forces. It seemed silly to be terrified of a force of nature. But here she was. She felt so helpless, trapped inside a boat that now seemed small and frail, tossed on the surface of a deep, dark, unfathomably enormous ocean. She usually thought of water as soft, fluid, flowing—but this water seemed hard, forceful, unimaginably powerful.
Each minute she thought the waves couldn't possibly get higher, the wind couldn't become more violent, and then somehow the next minute they would be.
The waves broke over the prow and drenched the windows.
Holding firmly to the metal railing that encircled the room, she reached for the alarm button, but hesitated. It wasn't that she believed anyone else could do anything more to protect the ship in this storm, she just didn't want to face it alone. Was that selfish and cowardly of her? She didn't want to wake up anyone who might be asleep—if anyone could sleep through this—and she didn't want Doctor Strange to think any more poorly of her than he already did.
As she warred with herself, a dark shape rose up to the right of the ship: a wave that rose above the others, and kept rising. It seemed impossible, unreal. Wanda stared at it, unable for a moment to believe what was happening. Until it reached the ship, lifting it, tilting it. The wave was several stories high.
It was going to break.
Wanda panicked. She reached out with her power, letting her energy flow through the ship. Could she lift it? Resist it?
No. Being on the ship she was trying to manipulate, she was unable to orient herself enough to stabilize it.
She had to save the ship. All their lives depended on it. And there was only one thing she could think to try.
She flew upward, her feet skidding across the floor and steps when she reached the stairs leading to the deck. Her body and the walls glowed red. She waved her hand and the door flew open.
On the deck, she was instantly pelted by hail and stinging slaps of frigid saltwater. She wrapped her legs around a support post.
Now that there was no barrier between her and the ocean, she sent her power into the wall of water about to capsize the ship.
There were tons of water, easily a skyscraper's mass. There was so much energy. She could feel it, could sense the kinetic force gathering against them, plowing into the boat like a truck against a rabbit. She pitted her power against it, dispelling the energy molecule by molecule. It took more force and more focus than anything she had ever attempted before.
Two breakers crashed to the fore and aft of the ship as the deck angled back toward the horizontal. That much water smashing into water sounded like bombs exploding, and the force of it sent shockwaves that jolted the ship.
Wanda redirected her energy to her own body, trying to hold herself to the ship, but she had exhausted her reserves. The jolt sent her crashing to the deck. The next wave to crash over the prow grabbed her, sucked her up into a roiling maelstrom.
She felt the boat disappear from beneath her.
For a moment, the cold was so shocking her body registered it as nothingness. Then as pain. The shock of it arrested her breathing.
Which was good, because she was underwater.
With open eyes, she saw the glow of the sky through the violently churning waves several meters above her. The waves were darker, the troughs paler blue. It was beautiful. It was horrifying.
She was going to die. She was supposed to save the world, and her life would be snuffed out by a wave.
Would she see her parents? Pietro? Vision? Was her ghost about to join his, wherever he was?
Was there an afterlife?
And then he was there, plunging toward her, his body haloed in bubbles. Beneath the water he flew toward her. His arms scooped her up, just like they had when she was falling in Sokovia.
She didn't think she could move, but without any conscious direction her arms wrapped around his neck.
They shot up, out of the water, then toward the ship.