Movement of Minds (Or: A Mind Like Ementhal)
Summary: To Wanda minds are glowing jewels from a distance, pieces of the world glittering and shining and shimmering with light. Up close they can be anything, and are always complex ways of understanding the person they are of.
A study of the minds Wanda has seen, in approximate order.
Notes: The different minds Wanda has seen, in approximate order, up to and including Bucky's. Includes a description of how she perceives minds, from a distance and in more detail up close. Probably won't be entirely Canon Compliant.
Warnings: Codependency, Canon Deaths.
Wanda watches the minds around her and more often than not they are the first things she sees. Glowing out in the colour-bland world of her usual vision they shine, shine like jewels or like water or like stars, and she learns their colours and their shapes, and how to play with them.
The first mind she ever saw was not her own. The first she saw was Pietro's beside her, glowing blue and silver and grey, like a silver-rutilated piece of aquamarine quartz. The rutilation wove through his mind like a tree, rising from some deep well, and stretching beyond what she could see, once within his mind. Wanda, he had said, when he had felt her there. Your mind looks like blood.
The second mind she had seen had been her own, a cathedral façade over the shape of a synagogue, black and scarlet, gold and deep brown, and spots of silver wherever Pietro had touched. You are welcome here, she had sent to Pietro. You are always welcome here.
The third mind she had seen was Strucker's. It was an oily machine, well-greased, well oiled, but with a build-up of gunk around each join, around where cogs were meant to turn. It looked like a gun emplacement, and one that was on its way to rusting into place, touches of vomit-orange seeping their way over grey-green and dusty shadows. Wanda liked him even less after she had seen that.
The fourth mind she had seen had been Doctor List's. Pristine pale greens and blues, and white sheets over neat steel lines like a checked pattern made of scalpels. There was a precision to the healthcare he offered them, to his suggestions for training, and all of them were edged with a blade which had a tendency to worry the wounds of his mind. Wanda had no taste for his indecision.
The fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth minds she had seen had all been soldiers. Oh she had glimpsed others, other jewels and stars and stones bobbing around her cell, but those next four she had entered. One had been a web of threads in deep and dusty red and blue, and knotted around a bruise-purple knot of trauma. One had been as dark as soot, as glossy as the hide of a bull and shimmered with well-kept secrets. One had quaked with quicksilver fear, emerald and sage greens picking their way up like bile up a throat. The last had faded as she had watched, from the colours of a yellow-and-blue macaw to greys and whites and… nothingness. Nothing at all.
The ninth mind she had seen had been armoured, bold gold and red and a shining white light, stretching out the gold-and-red armour, extending the blinding white light to all around it. I will protect, it had screamed, and then, I will hurt. Wanda had known, without even having to think about it, that this mind belonged to Mr. Tony Stark. When the time came later to send her scarlet snaking through its garish armour and twisting a nightmare into his mind, she was almost glad to.
The tenth mind she had seen looked like a simple home from outside, and a desecrated temple from within. Statues knocked over or shattered, paintings torn from frames, frescoes and murals splattered with blinding white paint or deep bloody red. This, she knew, was the mind of a warrior, and one who has hurt too much. She did not toy with that mind, not just then, and sent her scarlet physical to knock him down the stairs.
The eleventh mind she saw was similar to the twelfth and the thirteenth and all the way up to the twentieth. Minds she sends scarlet darting towards weaving into and out of, making them pause and reminisce and dream while her brother steals what Ultron needs and Ultron takes what vengeance he desires.
The twenty-first mind she had seen was a glowing, burgeoning storm, waiting to strike, poised for it, waiting for it, and holding back all the same. She sent her scarlet into it, watched it vanish into the deep and stormy grey of it even as she stepped away. It vanished, it was gone from sight and for a moment she thought her scarlet is not strong enough to hold the godling, just as he had claimed and – suddenly the lightning had struck in scarlet, crackling through the deep dark grey and Wanda knew she had him.
The twenty-second mind she had seen was a bleak spread of snow. It was the spy's mind, she knew, and for all the thick white blanket, the very tops of gravestones poked out on occasion, or raised mounds higher. In a few places blood spattered the ground, and holes in the snowfall were gradually filled in with more. Wanda's scarlet dug into the dips, into the graves, and hauled the woman's nightmares from her crypts.
The twenty-third mind she had seen was still and watching, poised to take a shot from his high point, and every part of it focussed down into the belly of the ship. There are feathers at the edge of it, black as a raven's but light at the edges like a falcon's. Wanda prepared to send her scarlet in to ruffle those feathers, only lose all vision, even of minds before her brother carried her away.
The twenty-fourth mind she had seen had been a forest. Winds blew through it, nervous and fluttering and uncertain and worried, and always going back to more strongly mind down a creature of green that was not of the forest. Wanda's scarlet kept the winds from holding back the beast, and made it wild with all the splinters she could summon from the breaking, whispering, forest.
Wanda sees many minds, dragged hither and thither by Ultron, and she thinks that the mind she sees in the cradle is the thirty-fifth. It is a shining orange-gold thing, bright and warm like the glowing embers of a fire, like illuminated amber, and its warmth only increases as her scarlet stretches towards it. Then she glimpses Ultron's mind within it and knows they must get out.
The thirty-sixth mind she sees is Helen Cho's and her scarlet darts through its frozen halls, melts the crystal frost that holds the doctor to Ultron's will, and Wanda finds herself very very nearly praying.
The thirty-ninth mind she sees is the android's, the being that is named the Vision by the storm-godling, and Wanda sees the gold and orange, the illuminated amber from before, and sees it warm and stretch out interest as her scarlet stretches to understand it. There are databanks and neurons to it, overlying and overlapping and Wanda does not quite know what to make of a creature with so much knowledge of horror and so much will to kindness.
Wanda sees thousands of minds in Novi Grad, but does not let their wealth of worth and colour overwhelm her. She pushes her scarlet out, weaves it in and tells them, all of them you must get out now. It is all she can do, everything she can do, and she is barely able to analyse the minds before her scarlet is going to another and another and another weaving them in, trying to get them to safety before-
Before Novi Grad is ripped free of the ground and taken to the sky.
Wanda sees her brother's mind fade like the Macaw-Mind had, and nothing has hurt so much before. Not their parents death, not the experiments, nothing but this the first mind she had ever seen, ever known, the first heartbeat she had felt beating with her own fading from bright and burning and beating blue into the blank nothingness of the powerless world.
Wanda cannot help her scream.
Wanda has lost count of the number of minds she has seen when she spots Bucky, hiding in the warehouse. The others don't quite believe her until Natasha's scouting shows evidence of a break in.
"Right," the Captain says. "And how do you know it's him?"
"Because," Wanda says, "His mind has as many holes in it as that cheese Barton likes."
"Ementhal," Barton clarifies down comms, and they can hear him smiling. "You're certain?"
"Yes," Wanda says, and Steve and Sam head in.
End Notes: Reviews are much appreciated!