Chapter Two
In Which There are Several Unexpected Visits
Sonya wakes up with the worst headache she has ever had. It feels rather like a tiny, angry man is running around inside her head, whacking her skull with a disproportionately large hammer. "Fuck you, tiny angry man." She hisses.
"What?" Sonya whirls to see Steve Rogers giving her a rather concerned look. THE Steve Rogers, Captain fucking America, is in her hospital room. They blink at each other for a moment, then Sonya says.
"I swear I'm not crazy." She points at her head. "Headache. Feels like a tiny, angry man is trying to smash his way out of my skull."
"Oh."
"You're Captain America."
"Yes, I am."
"You hit a guy in a balaclava in the subway. Very harshly. With a shield."
"I hit several guys in balaclavas in the subway."
"When was that? Yesterday?"
"Yeah."
Sonya frowns. "Not to be rude, or anything, but… why are you in my hospital room? And how did I get here? And why were there balaclava clad people in the subway? What happened, exactly? It's all very hazy."
"They were members of Hydra, targeting New York. They set a bomb off in the Subway. The Avengers were deployed to bring them in. You were caught up in the attack, produced a force field of sorts, had a break down, and had to go to the hospital."
"Yeah, okay, I kind of remember that, but why are you in my hospital room?"
"We were concerned, and you have an ability we didn't think was possible. It's kind of my job."
"Your job is to sit in hospital rooms of broke college students?"
"No, my job is to make sure people like you… and me… are safe."
"Also hit people in balaclavas."
"Also hit people in balaclavas."
There's a silence. Then Steve speaks up again, handing her a small card. "You have a very unique ability, Sonya, we (the Avengers and I) were wondering if you would maybe accept some training from us, to be able to control your powers. This doesn't mean you have to abandon your life, though, and it's completely up to you, but maybe this will help you live a more normal life."
Sonya frowns. "I-I don't know. Can I have a moment alone? To think?"
"Sure, you don't have to answer right away… or even today… Just think about it." He turns to leave, before glancing back and saying, "Just so you know, all your medical bills have been paid by Stark Industries." He leaves with that bombshell. Sonya isn't sure if she wants to cry tears of relief, or scream at America's hero to get his star spangled ass back here an explain why Tony Stark wants to pay her medical bills. She doesn't do either, though, and just sort of stares at the wall in shock, then glances down at the card in her hand. It's small, has only a phone number on it, and 'Ask for Darcy. Say you're calling about the internship' scrawled on the back in blue Sharpie.
"Okay." She murmurs.
Sonya is released soon after her conversation with Captain America, and allowed to go home.
She falls on her bed, as soon as she reaches her apartment, her cat, Minerva, lying across her chest.
"At least you don't have creepy-ass powers, kitty." She sighs, petting her. "Lucky."
There's a knock at her door and she groans while rolling to her feet, setting the cat down gently. She opens the door to see none other than Quicksilver. He grins brightly. She frowns severely.
"Hello!" He's lost the jogging sweater from the day before, wearing dark jeans and a Twenty-One Pilots t-shirt
"How the fuck did you find my apartment?"
"The nice lady downstairs. All I had to do was say I was a friend of yours." He shoulders past her in to the apartment, bending down and scooping up Minerva. Sonya is left holding the door, feeling rather invaded upon. "I like your cat." He calls from the tiny sitting room. "What's his name?"
"WHAT'S YOUR NAME?!" She yells.
"Quicksilver."
"Your REAL name?"
"Pietro. Pietro Maximoff."
"Oh. Hi, I guess. I'm Sonya."
"I know."
"And her name." She points to the smug looking cat, "is Minerva."
"Minerva? Like the Roman Goddess of War and Wisdom?"
Sonya shuffles slightly. "Uh… no. Minerva like Minerva Mcgonagall."
"You named your cat after a Harry Potter character?"
"Don't judge me. She turns in to a cat, her patronus is a cat. My cat's a… cat…"
"Makes sense."
"You're actually the first person to say that."
Pietro grins and hands Sonya the cat. "Well, I'll be off. Technically, I'm not supposed to be here, actually. I must leave immediately."
"Why aren't you supposed to be here?"
"Uh… something about civilian's deserve privacy and I can't go barging in to the apartment of a girl I met once…" He pauses, grinning, before climbing out the window. "I stopped listening when Steve started talking about honor, so I'm really not sure."
"You do realize we're three stories up, right?" She asks, a little concerned.
"Yes. Ah, a fire escape."
"What?"
"Bye!" He's off in a flash of blue and loud clattering from the steps. Sonya stares out the window, a little miffed. He wasn't even wearing blue...
"Bye."
Sonya wakes up the next morning to her alarm clock ringing furiously. She groans as she gets ready for work. She has a part time job at a local coffee shop. It's not much, but really compensates for what her scholarship and her only living relative (a grandfather she barely knows) aren't paying for. It's a quiet day at the shop, and a quiet day of classes, and when she gets home, there's a good book and a mug full of tea to help her relax.
There's a knocking at her door and she gets up from her nest of blankets with a grumble and lets Pietro in, because who else could it be?
He's standing there with his arm around a girl their age. "Hi!" He grins. "I brought my twin sister, Wanda."
Sonya smiles and beckons them in. "Nice to meet you, Wanda."
"You, too. I am sorry about my brother."
Sonya chuckles. "It's fine! I'm actually pretty glad to actually make friends with someone in the-!" She pauses, eyes widening. "Y-you were the voice in my head!"
The twins frown with confusion.
"At the subway. Two days ago! There was a voice in my head… Asking me where I was hurting." She explains. Comprehension dawns on Wanda's face, and she nods.
"Yes, that was me. I hope you are not upset."
Sonya shook her head vigorously. "Upset? No! You actually helped me! I don't know what you did, but the pain went away!" She frowned. "Or, well, it faded…"
"I was able to block it out." Wanda says, and tries to explain the schematics of her actions to her brother and the purple-haired girl. It doesn't really help, because about two sentences, the two look hopelessly confused.
"What?" Pietro wonders. "I have no idea what any of that means…"
"Don't worry, Pietro." Sonya assures him. "I have a full ride scholarship, I was valedictorian, I'm training to be a psychiatrist, brains are my thing… and I'm as lost as you."
The three bust out in laughter at that.
"So, what do you guys do, besides saving New York?" Sonya asks.
The twins shrug in unison. "Not much, really." Pietro says.
"The other Avengers are trying to introduce us to a lot of American culture… but mostly they just watch movies with us, and feed us hamburgers." Wanda explains. Sonya gasps.
"How horrid!" She cries melodramatically, dashing to her bedroom and beginning to rummage. She comes out a little later with a box of DVDs, her laptop, and her cat. She dumps Minerva onto Pietro's lap and plunks down between the twins and opens the laptop. "The only correct way to introduce anyone to America is through Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks." She declares. She pulls out a movie. "This is one of my favorites. It's also a classic."
Wanda peers at the case as Sonya puts the movie in. "Toy Story?"
Pietro peers around Sonya. "I haven't seen this one."
"You'll love it." She assures them. "Trust me."
After the movie, as the twins are leaving, Wanda and Sonya make plans to get coffee the next day. "Classes are over for the summer, anyway." Sonya says.
The two girls meet at a Dunkin' Donuts near Central Park. Wanda gets a plain black coffee, but Sonya gets a frappe with all the shots.
"Caffeine is literally the only thing that keeps me going." She explains at Wanda's raised eyebrow. The two of them settle down on a park bench.
"You said you have a full-ride scholarship?" Wanda asks. "What are you studying?"
"Yeah. To Cornell. I'm studying psychiatry. It's pretty cool."
Their chatting moves on to a little bit of everything, Sonya explaining some of her past and Wanda opening up about life with Earth's mightiest heroes.
"It's practically a hazard to even look sad at the Tower." Wanda giggles, "Because Steve will show up at your bedroom door, wearing something cuddly and ask if you want to talk about it. And you really have no choice in the matter."
"Aw, dude." Sonya laughs. "I want to cuddle with Captain America! Wait, does he like, cuddle Thor, too?"
"Those two are the worst! They literally hug anyone within reach! One time I entered the kitchen to see Tony look very resigned to being aggressively cuddled by Thor. Pietro nearly died laughing!"
"I would give my right arm to see that." Sonya replies. She's about to open her mouth to ask a question, when Wanda lays a hand on her arm.
"Don't turn around." She says, "Act like you're still talking to me, but there is a guy watching us… He doesn't mean well."
Sonya's eyes widen, and she takes a shaky breath, then with the same inflections as if she was asking about the weather, says, "What do we do?"
"Lay low." Wanda replies. "I think they may just be normal thugs, but we can't be sure." She stands up, tossing her empty cup in a nearby trash can. "Come on."
As soon as they start walking, there is the sound of running feet behind them. The girls whirl in unison. The first guy had been joined by three others. Wanda throws out her hands to protect herself from the two going for her, her powers flaring out in a crimson ring, and Sonya brings her leg up and kicks one of them in the stomach.
It would've been pretty epic, if Sonya had not fallen on the ground, groaning and clutching her stomach. "This is why I don't get into fights." She says. WAnda rolls her eyes and takes charge
The guys leave in a hurry at the display of Wanda's powers, and the two of them make their separate ways home.
The girls' coffee outings become a daily thing, and Sonya begins to look forward to them. The prospect of hanging out with another girl her age is quite fun. It gets even more fun, when Wanda recruits the other women of the Avengers to come along, too. Soon, the group consists of Wanda, Sonya, Natasha Romanoff, and even Pepper Potts. They meet around nine every morning, guzzle their coffee and a pastry of choice, chat, then go their separate ways. They make quite an imposing picture strolling through the street of New York City, and no one really dares mess with them.
Things calm down, eventually, (well, as much as they can, when you hang out with Wanda Maximoff, Natasha Romanoff and Pepper Potts on a daily basis) so Sonya is understandably surprised when more of Earth's Mightiest Heroes start showing up at her apartment. The first to show up is Hawkeye, AKA Clint Barton. He waves sheepishly when Sonya opens the door and stares at him. "Hi."
"Uh... What are you doing here?"
"I came to visit my best friend's new friend." He says by way of explanation, pushing past her to let himself in. He plops a basket on the coffee table, and puts his hands on his hips, surveying the apartment. "Nice place you got here. Nat said you did, but I kind of wanted to see for myself."
Sonya purses her lips and shuts the door. "Come in, I guess." She mumbles.
"You can call me Clint." He says, plopping on the floor and rifling through her movie collection. "The basket has muffins."
"Cool."
"I brought them as an excuse. Baked 'em myself."
Sonya bites into one of the confections, nodding in approval. "Did you make them from scratch?"
"Yep."
The next Avenger to show up is Captain America. His excuse is checking on her well-being. Tony Stark's excuse is meeting the person he spent money on, just to make sure he didn't waste it. Thor doesn't even have an excuse. He just wants to meet her. Sonya is immediately endeared to him when she throws a pop-tart at him.
Despite the strangeness, Sonya enjoys telling Wanda and Pietro the stories. The twins get a kick out of it.
Sonya wrinkles her nose and wonders at the burning smell, only to round a corner and see her apartment building up in flames. She gasps, freezing. She leaves form an hour on a coffee outing and comes back to see her home in flames.
Firefighters are swarming around busily, one of them emerges from the flaming doorway, and he's holding Sonya's angry cat. She runs up to him, wincing at the burning he's feeling in his lungs. He hands her Minerva and she thanks him profusely, watching in horror. She doesn't know what to do for a moment, then sets down her backpack and shoves the cat inside it, hurriedly calling Wanda on her cell phone. Or, she's about to, but a blue and red streak skids by her, flaring her shirt and hair, and the Maximoff twins are next to her.
"We saw on the TV!" Wanda gasps out. It's a good thing that they're there, because suddenly Sonya feels herself burning, even though she's nowhere near the burning building.
She coughs, trying to clear non-existent smoke out of her burning lungs. "There's someone still in there!" She cries.
"Where?" Pietro asks.
"Fourth floor." He's off like a shot, leaving his sister to support a faint-feeling Sonya. Pietro's back in almost no time at all, smoking slightly, carrying an elderly woman, which he hands to a nearby by firefighter.
"We've got to get Sonya out of here." Wanda tells him. The girl in question is curled on the ground, gasping and shaking.
He nods and picks her up. "My cat's in my backpack." She whispers hoarsely. Pietro raises an eyebrow, a little confused, but Wanda peers in the bag and lifts Minerva out, slinging the bag over her shoulders, arms around the cat.
"You take her to the Avenger's Tower." She tells her brother. "Go quickly."
He nods, and is gone with a gust of wind, and is back in mere minutes, picking up his sister and the cat.
A/N: Longer chapter, this time, a lot of dialogue, not much action... review please! And thanks to everyone who followed and faved this story!