Flying lessons

Or: How to throw Captain America through a window, in 10 easy lessons

Summary: "Ready, Wanda? Just like we practiced."

The Captain has a fantastic idea: Teach Wanda Maximoff AKA the Scarlet Witch AKA The Weird Twin to control her powers so she can throw him to places he can't easily jump to. It'll be just like flying. What can possibly go wrong?

Better buckle up that cowl, Cap, it's going to be a wild ride.

(Set in the interlude between Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War. No pairings, no slash)

Lesson 3: Captain America gets broken (it was an accident, I swear!)

I enter the main gym cautiously at 5:53 the next morning. This room is so BIG and those huge glass windows look so fragile. I wonder if the captain would get cut to ribbons sailing through one of them. The thought makes my gut clench with anxiety, so I guess that's the emotion I'm going with again today. It matches the weather outside, where the pre-dawn sky is steel gray and laden with impending rain.

The captain is already there, even though I had hoped to arrive first for once. I don't see him at first, but then I hear, "Hey, Wanda!" When I look up, I spot him standing on one of the elevated walkways that line the walls near the ceiling.

"You're early!" he calls enthusiastically. He sprints to the ladder and slides down, landing with an energetic bounce when he hits the floor. The unpadded floor. Shit. When he comes close enough, I notice that the bruise on his cheek has faded to a sickening bluish-green.

"Why are we in here?" I ask cautiously.

"Well, you were getting pretty good at lateral movement, so I thought we would introduce a target."

"Target? What target?"

"Up there." He points exuberantly at the walkway. "You throw me up there and I'll land on the walkway. Just like flying."

Seriously? He thinks it's that easy? Maybe that easy for him, but not for me. The amount of emotion it would take to summon that much Chaos would take all of my energy, leaving me spent and unable to control the flow. It would be like taking a drink from a firehose, and the captain would be the one getting drenched.

I say none of this, just fold my arms and stare at him impassively, while he looks back at me with an eager puppy grin on his face. I must admit I like that smile, and I especially like it when it's directed at me. Makes me sort of warm and furry inside. Which makes it even harder to summon and control the chaos. I'm going to have to make the smile go away.

"Captain," I say finally, when the silence has dragged on too long. "I don't think it will be as easy as you say."

The smile fades and his lip tightens. "Wanda, you've lifted me up that high before," he responds in a reasonable tone. "It's just adding lateral movement, which we've already practiced. I don't see any reason why you can't do it. You just have to concentrate."

I shake my head vehemently. "Concentrating does. not. help. The more I concentrate, the worse it gets."

"The worse what gets? You're getting better at this!"

"The Chaos!" I shout. "I can't control it!"

His expression softens into something that almost looks like sympathy. I can feel my resolve weaken. "Wanda, you have to learn to control it, and you can. I know you can."

"How do you know that?" I challenge him.

"Because you have already come so far. We want you here, Wanda. I want you here. I know you can be a valuable part of the team."

That's what gets me. "I want to be part of the team too," I say softly.

A ghost of the smile returns. "Then let's keep going," He goes to the bench and picks up his cowl and shield, which he holds up almost triumphantly. "See? I'll be properly protected. You won't need to worry."

While he gears up and gets into position, I focus inward. Emotion with control. Just enough fear to open the door, but enough control to close it again. The familiar anxiety bubbles in my belly, and I use it to open the door, just a crack, and pull the crimson threads out. I roll them around in my hands, shaping them. When I let them go, he flies up nearly three meters. Flick to the side—nope, too fast, he's headed right toward the windows. I stop his momentum, haul him back, and catch him before he can hit the ground. When I release him, he lands with a thump and rolls back up to his feet.

"That was good, Wanda, but we need to go up higher. At least another ten feet. Then to the side."

I sigh. "Yes, ok." Closing my eyes, I repeat the process, this time opening the door a little wider. Garden hose, not drinking straw. This time when I let it go, he flies up into the air. I can't tell if it's high enough, but he tucks in, knees pulled up and shield in front of him, so I gesture to the side. He shoots forward, grabs for the walkway, but he can't quite reach it. I have to stop and catch him again. This time when I drop him, he lands on his hands and knees again. I'm disappointed, but he's not.

"Almost there!" he cries as he pops back up to his feet. "I almost had it. Do that again!"

So I try again, a little more, and this time he lands on the walkway, rolls, crashes through the railing, and tumbles off the other side. I am terrified and ready myself to catch him, but he catches himself with one hand, and hangs there by his fingertips, dangling nearly ten meters in the air.

"If I let go, will you catch me?" he calls down.

"I'll try!" I call back, hands at the ready.

He giggles. "Do or do not—"

"All right, I get it! And yes, there is 'try'!"

"Ok, ok. Ready?"

Because of the fear, it's not hard to summon the Chaos this time, harder to control the flow but I manage. I roll the strings around in my hands until I know they won't leap away before I'm ready. "Yes."

"Letting go now." He releases the bar and falls. The bolt shoots from my fingers and grabs him a meter off the ground, knocks him backward where he lands with a grunt on his back. A second later he is on his feet again, pumping his fist with excitement.

"That was the best yet!" he cries. "See, I knew you could do this!"

His enthusiasm is so adorable that I can't help but smile back, mostly with relief. I got him all the way up to the walkway and he didn't break. Maybe I can do this.

"Let's do it again!"

We do it again, and this time, he lands, rolls, and manages to stay on the walkway. His shout of triumph echoes off the windows and hard walls, and I find myself whooping too. He slides down the ladder and grabs me in a hug, which startles me. Before I have time to react, he pounds me on the shoulder (ouch!), steps back and orders, "Again!"

An irrepressible grin tugs at my lips. I feel a bubble of something unfamiliar break loose in my chest, something I haven't felt for a very long time.

Joy.

I'm happy, actually happy, for the first time since—well, I'm not sure when. Since before Pietro died, at least. Maybe since before the bomb fell on my house and killed almost everything and everyone I loved. It's so foreign and alien that I almost don't know what to do with it. But I have to admit that I like it.

Will joy work to open the door? I have no idea, but it's worth a try. I reach inside and try the door, and this time it opens easily. The strings of Chaos leap out like eager children. I don't even have to work for it—they slide down my fingers and flick out to lift the captain effortlessly, toss him in a smooth arc up on to the walkway, where he lands in a perfect three-point landing. It's epic!

"Yes!" he shouts on his way back down the ladder. "Yes, yes, YES! Again!"

This is fantastic! Why did I never try joy before? It works better by far than any other emotion. And I actually like it! The captain was right, I can do this!

The strings slide down my fingers almost on their own this time, with no effort from me. I'm ready before he even gets into position, and when I let it fly, he shoots up like a cannonball. He gets the shield in front of him in time to land on the walkway and roll to his feet with a hop.

"Pow!" he shouts. "Bad guys down!" Then he leans over the edge and calls "I'm gonna jump down. Catch me!" He does an acrobatic leap over the railing and launches himself toward the floor. With a flick of my fingers I snap the bolt of Chaos out and catch him, but instead of lowering him to the floor, I toss him upward again, where he does a flip in the air with a shout of triumph.

The red strings have grown into a thick rope now, dancing and sparkling with a life of their own, and I'm laughing and almost dancing too, and it's marvelous and perfect and FUN! This, I think feverishly, this is what I was made to do.

The captain plummets toward the earth again, and again I toss him up into the air with a cackle of laughter. "Hey, Wanda," he calls, but the voice sounds very far away and so unimportant compared to the aura of excitement surrounding me that I ignore him. The only thought that remotely registers is MORE! MORE!

The door stands open now, and why shouldn't it? The Chaos that streams out unimpeded is my friend! It has always been my friend! It makes me powerful! Why did I spend so many years trying to control it? There was never anything to fear.

As more tendrils of red light charge through and slide down my fingers, the rope expands further, the strings coiling around each other like beautiful snakes, each racing out joyfully to grab the captain and toss him into the air again, like a toy, higher and higher.

"Wanda!" the captain shouts again, a little louder this time, and suddenly something in his voice breaks through the joy: fear. He is afraid.

But why would he be afraid? I'm in perfect control, of everything. It's what he wanted, isn't it? I just have to show him what I can do and everything will be wonderful. I just have to show him.

Faster than conscious thought, the Chaos responds by throwing him up even higher, almost to the ceiling, before tossing him to the side playfully. He tumbles with his knees tucked up and arms pulled in tightly with the shield over his head. I catch a glimpse of his flexed bicep. His eyes are squeezed shut and his mouth is pulled back in a grimace, not a grin.

Oh.

The bubble of joy surrounding me pops and suddenly I'm lost. I try to reel in the bright red rope, but it won't obey me and instead tosses him upward again, much too hard—he's going to hit the ceiling and there's no way for me to slow him down. Far from powerful, I am completely powerless to stop it. The Chaos has become a firehose, far beyond my ability to control.

The captain holds up his shield and curls his body under it before he slams into the ceiling, and then he is falling at an alarming rate. With a cold hand of terror clenching my throat, I fling out a bolt to catch him, much too hard. The uncontrolled Chaos instead accelerates him into the floor, where he lies crumpled and unmoving.

"CAPTAIN!" I scream. I sprint toward him, terrified. My fingers are still crackling and webbed with red ropes. I ball them into fists to keep the energy from lashing out again and perhaps destroying something else. My only thought is I broke him I broke him I broke him. . .

By the time I reach his side, he is making sort of a crackly, keening noise in his throat. His right leg—oh God, his leg!—lies at an awkward angle, a jagged end of broken thigh bone visible through the ripped fabric of his sweats, with blood pooling rapidly underneath.

"Lie still," I command him in a tremulous voice when he shifts to look at me through heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes. Blood trickles from his nose and mouth. He twists, hands reaching down to grab for his injured leg. "Don't touch it. Please, Captain, you must lie still!" I put my hand firmly on his shoulder to try to keep him down.

"I'm all right," he tries to reassure me, but the way his voice cracks is anything but reassuring.

"No, you're not! The bone is sticking through the skin!"

He lifts up onto his elbows to try to see, and promptly gags, turns his head away from me, and vomits bile and water onto the floor.

"Yeah, ok," he groans, eyes screwed shut and face contorted in pain. "Maybe it's. . . worse than I thought."

"What should I do?!"

His only response is a soft moaning sound. The pool of blood under his leg has expanded at an alarming rate. If I don't do something quickly, he's going to bleed out right in front of me, super-serum or no super-serum.

"FRIDAY!" I screech. "FRIDAY!"

"Yes, Wanda?" the implacable voice of the computer responds. Oh, thank heavens.

"We need an ambulance. And get Sam down here now!" Sam has medical training. He'll know what to do.

"Yes, Ma'am," FRIDAY says in the same even tone. I try to channel some of that calm for my own use, but it's not working very well. Inside my head I am holding the door firmly closed, but my fingers still tingle as I hesitantly hover them over the captain's leg. I'm going to have to put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding, and I know it's going to hurt like hell.

Do it already, I tell myself sternly. What the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen has already happened. I broke Captain Rogers. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

I lay my hands tentatively against the open wound, which causes him to gasp and squirm. I can't hold him still; he's too strong. "Captain, please—" I whimper. "Please. . ." Please what? Don't bleed all over the floor? Don't be in pain? Don't be broken because of something I did? His hand, smeared with blood, comes up, catches a fistful of the front of my borrowed t-shirt, and twists the fabric in his fingers.

Suddenly I hear the clatter of approaching footsteps, and then Sam is there, kneeling beside me with a grim expression on his face. "What the hell—never mind. Cap, lie still. Wanda, I got it." He presses his dark hands against the wound, and the captain cries out in pain, back arching and left foot pushing and sliding against the floor. He disentangles his fist from my shirt, leaving a red smear behind, and bats at Sam's hands, but Sam blocks him with his arm and shoulder. Bright red blood oozes through Sam's fingers to join the growing pool.

"Captain—Steve—Put your hands down, buddy. I gotta put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding," Sam says gently, like he's talking to a child, and the captain responds by balling his hands into fists and pounding the floor with a growl.

I move up to the captain's head and whisper, "I'm so sorry, Captain," but I'm not sure he hears me. Beads of sweat trickle out from under his helmet and slide down the side of his face. His head moves back and forth, lips working but nothing is coming out. Then he is reaching up with one blood-smeared hand to push weakly at the cowl.

"You want this off?"

He makes a noise that could be assent, so I tug the helmet off him, to reveal his sweat-soaked hair and bruised face—not just the bluish-green mark that had been there before, but several new ones: purple-black along his jaw and across his nose.

I hear Natasha's heels clicking on the hard floor, moving fast, and then she hits her knees on the captain's other side, deftly avoiding the puddle of vomit, and lays her hand on his head to gently smooth back his sweat-dampened hair.

"Hey, Cap, you're gonna be all right, ok?" she says quietly. "Gonna be all right. Paramedics are coming."

"Tasha?" His voice has faded to a ragged whisper. ". . . Hurts." His trembling hand comes up and Natasha grabs it and squeezes, ignoring the blood.

"I know, honey. I'm so sorry."

Finally I hear the wail of a siren and Friday announces the arrival of the paramedics. It's only been a few minutes, but it feels like much longer, every second measured in blood volume and the captain's ragged, agonized breathing. Natasha keeps stroking his hair and whispering to him—I can't hear what she's saying, but it does seem to help because, although he is still making little moaning noises, he is no longer writhing in pain.

The paramedics come in at a run, and then he's surrounded by a hubbub of activity, voices calling out numbers and words that I have no reference for, don't know if they mean he is going to live or die. One of the blue-shirted paramedics, a woman with dark hair pulled back into a severe bun, elbows me out of the way without even looking at me. I stumble back, trembling, and am caught by Vision, who wraps strong arms around my shaking shoulders. He is solid and real and I sink into his strength, letting him support almost all of my weight while I watch them work. The whole scene is stained with swirls of red that match the puddle on the floor. The color of blood. The color of Chaos.

One paramedic brings up a wheeled gurney next to the captain, lowers it to the floor, and when they all line up to move him, I catch a glimpse of his profile in the gap between two blue shirts: eyes tightly closed, mouth open in a silent scream, blood and tear-tracks streaking down the side of his face. Please don't die, I want to shout, but my throat is clogged with tears that haven't made their way to my eyes yet, so I just cling to Vision like a lifeline. The captain can't die, can he?

A man's voice cuts through the noise, "Ready on one-two-THREE" and then they all lift together. The captain screams and squirms as his leg is jostled. The woman with the bun slides the gurney under him. When they lower him onto it, none-too-gently, he cries out again and then goes limp, head lolling to the side, face slack. His arm hangs off the side of the gurney until the woman grabs it and tucks it in next to his side with a firm, efficient motion.

Her hand goes to his neck and we all wait for one breathless second, then two, then three before she announces, "Pulse is fast but steady. Let's go," and they all take off at a fast walk, leaving a trail of quarter-sized drops of blood, toward the outer doors where the ambulance waits on the wet tarmac. Sam goes with them, helping to push the gurney, and so does Natasha, who is still holding the captain's unresponsive hand. None of them look back before the double doors close behind them with a solid thunk.

As soon as they are gone, I push Vision away and hit my knees with my hands tangled in my hair. I pull hard on my hair, hard enough to hurt, just to feel the pain. It's only right that I be in pain too, after what I did to him. The tendrils of Chaos trail from my fingers and curl around my head.

"Wanda," comes Vision's reasonable voice. "Are you all right?"

"NO!" I scream. "NOOOOO!" My voice rises in volume and intensity until I am shrieking at the top of my lungs. I can feel the energy building up inside me, higher and higher, until my hands shoot out and the Chaos explodes outward through my outstretched fingertips. The window in front of me wavers, then shatters. Slivers of glass rain down around me, but they don't reach me because Vision is suddenly hovering over me with the captain's abandoned shield held up as a protective barrier.

"Vision," I whisper, voice breaking. "Oh, Vision, what did I do?"

"I am sorry, Wanda." The shards of glass now lie all around us, a glittery minefield dotted with raindrops. Vision drops the blood-stained shield and kneels next to me, pulls me into his arms. His hand, firm and warm, slides over my hair, just like my father used to do before everything changed. I push my face in hard against his chest and sob like a child.

A/N: Coming soon, Lesson 3 cont: Bye bye burek