She screamed as she felt herself being torn from her position on the astral plane and then she crashed into a hard floor. She could feel! She was physical again! And then she looked up and saw Strange and the circle and let rip a barrage of swear words. Then she glared at him.
"Let me guess. Step out the circle, I go back to intangibility?"
"Correct."
She swore again.
"Tora…?"
She whipped around. Logan was staring at her with wide eyes. She reached out a hand but froze as her fingers vanished on passing over the line.
"Logan…"
"It is you…"
"Course it is. By the way, don't do that again. It hurts!"
"We… We went to the Underworld, to Valhalla, Hel, Duat… Nothing. We summoned an Angel of Death…"
"Let me guess. Tana?"
"Yes. We're going to have words about that later. She said that you chose to remain on the astral plane to keep an eye on us all."
"Well, obviously. I'm here, aren't I?"
"Tora…"
He reached out a hand but the circle appeared to create a physical barrier he couldn't pass. Hand resting in air. She moved her hand so palms almost touched.
"I'm sorry. Tell Bobby I loved his eulogy. I need to go now. I need to be there for Kurt. He's quite frankly suicidal right now. Someone needs to try and push him away from the building edge."
And she smiled sadly as she stepped out of the circle, right through Logan as he screamed a warning, that the summoning only worked once and she realised she had just lost her chance to explain things to Kurt. She cursed her impatience. And then she was flying, now beside Kurt. She rested her head on his shoulder and burst into angry tears.
xXx
The legends were there. The wild woman, who ran with wolves, a beautiful, graceful woman who would kill any man who looked upon her. Murdoch the Bard sang her praises, and Virginia Dare claimed to have seen the woman, a slender, European woman, with hair the colour of fire. And Rojhas, he spoke of the child stolen by the wolves, who could not speak, who hunted and howled to the moon.
And there she was, washing in the river, her hair appearing to gleam in the night as she splashed water at her pack. The wolf she had splashed, one with a white splash over one ear barked happily then leapt, pinning the woman down. They wrestled together, spray from the river splashing the other wolves.
He stared at her. She was beautiful, wiry and dark, a part of the pack, barking happily to them. Naked except for her long hair, lithe and strong, barking and yapping with them. He shifted and a stick cracked. Instantly they all looked up and she snarled. She ceased to look human. Then she dropped onto all fours and leapt towards him, snarling, her hair flying out behind her, the wolves following.
xXx
The woman glanced over her shoulder at the man.
"Open the door, would you? These bags make it impossible to fit the key in."
The man did so and wondered at the calmness of the woman. The ordinariness of her. She walked past the lift and glanced back when he stopped.
"It doesn't stop at our floor. Anyway, walking keeps us fit."
They climbed to the top and she jerked her head to show him to open this door as well. They entered into a light, airy, open-plan room with views over the Bay from the large windows and she walked over to the unit in the kitchen, dumping the bags down.
"Tora, I'm back."
"Hey. Just a mo, the sink's broken."
He peered round the unit to see a pair of legs sticking out from a cupboard.
"Pass the allen key please. Size 6."
He leant down and handed it in. There was a 'kerlunk' sound, a stream of French that sounded heavily indecent and then the body pulled out. Her hair was pulled up and she looked exceptionally cheerful, despite the scarring on her face.
"So you're the Post reporter? Tora."
She got up and held out a hand, then glanced over at the woman.
"Wanda, please remember to pick your underwear up from the bathroom, it's really rather annoying going in and finding clothes scattered around on the floor."
"We're not all OCD tidiness freaks."
"You could at least stick them in the wash!"
"You're just completely over controlling. You sort your socks by colour!"
"I've given up ironing your clothes because you just shove them in your drawers any old how. You've been spoiled by Jarvis, Wanda."
"I have not!"
"Let's think, I have to do the cooking, because you char everything to briquettes; the cleaning of the bathroom because you have an 'allergy' to bleach and the DIY because you and tools don't bear thinking about."
"I do the washing up…"
"Yes. One thing. Sorry, we're usually like this. And you are?"
"Pete. So… What are an Avenger and an X-Man doing in San Francisco, flatsharing?"
Tora wrinkled her nose.
"We're not actually members of those teams anymore. I was planning to leave anyway –long story, don't ask- and Wanda was questioning her efficiency on an international team. She heard I was planning to move to California –since Spider-Woman returned to the East Coast, there's not been many street-level heroes here- and asked if I'd be interested in working with her."
"Yet you're both two of the most powerful members of your former teams."
Tora shrugged.
"They have Phoenix back. If we're on the same team, all sorts of crazy stuff happens. And most of it can be averted. There just has to be a big distance between us. It's far too complicated to explain in an interview that's scheduled to last half an hour."
Wanda shrugged.
"I really needed to make myself my own person. Anyway, they have Thor. He's more than capable of acting as their…er…"
"Blaster?"
"Tora, that's not nice."
"Come on, you basically shot red energy bolts at them. At least Thor does it with style."
"Is he still seeing Storm?"
"Oh boy… Please don't ask me about that… Have you seen the freak weather patterns Westchester has been getting lately?"
They both laughed then smiled at the journalist.
"Wanda, I'll make the coffee. If you both want to go over there…"
She gestured to the sofa and chairs by the window then turned to the kettle. She heard them talking but ignored them. One peppermint tea with a spoon of honey –else it would be too sharp, one chamomile tea and a coffee. She finished, placed the mugs –one red, one aqua blue, one white- on the tray and walked over.
"Coffee? Wanda, tea?"
"You're a life-saver, Tora."
She picked up the red mug and inhaled the steam.
"And well, when I realised she could make tea and coffee like this –not to mention having wheedled Nightcrawler's recipe for Black Forest Gateau out of him- I knew she had to stay."
Tora laughed as she sat down, picked up the mug and inhaled the fresh mint smell. Going cold turkey on the coffee had helped and now she only kept it as a challenge to not drink the stuff.
"So, we've covered why Wanda wanted to work with you. Can you tell me…?"
"Oh. Yeah. Well, we'd always known of each other. But we met… when was it…? It was to do with Doom… Or was it that whole fiasco with the Goddess…? Or…"
"It was Thanos. You punched him. And called him a 'no-good, useless, stalker-failure.' That's what made me decide I'd like you."
"Oh yeah. And, well, Wanda hexed his clothes off –you'd be surprised how easy it is to stop the bad guys monologuing when they've no dignity- and I just knew I'd have to be properly introduced."
They both laughed, apparently not realising how abnormal their meeting had been.
"And we got to know each other and it was brilliant. Seriously, do you know how many X-Men watch British comedy? Two. One's British and the other was a member of Excalibur. And I'd been banned from Doctor Who. And Wanda –put it this way, we've done the parrot sketch."
"Pardon?"
Wanda sighed.
"She obsesses more than I do. We got to know each other over a shared love of classic Seventies comedy and trying to get over our caffeine addictions. Seriously, want to get addicted to coffee? Join a superhero team. The leader's always a terribly morning-person. Not so bad for her, she's even worse than Cyclops –which is something. But everyone ends up hooked on coffee."
Tora laughed.
"The Brotherhood attacked once, before we'd had coffee. I ignored them all, went into the kitchen, brewed the pot and brought it out to the others, who were all refusing to acknowledge that the Brotherhood was there before caffeine. We all ended up having coffee together. Apparently Magneto's a morning-person too. They weren't happy."
Wanda smiled.
"I remember that. It's horrific, believe you me. Well, back to the story. We were both planning to leave and I mentioned it one day. She said she'd been planning to leave as well and we ended up looking for a flat together. She wanted somewhere warm –seriously, she hates being cold- and I wanted somewhere as far as possible from my dear brother –over-protective? That's an understatement. California seemed the obvious bet and Tora happened to mention she'd heard Spider-Woman was moving back. So San Francisco would have lost their second street-level hero in less than two years. So she mentioned something to a friend who owed a favour, got the flat fixed up and we moved."
"Your first piece of crimefighting was preventing the mayor being kidnapped. How was that?"
They laughed and Tora spoke.
"Oh, we bickered and yelled at each other and tried to work out how to do a Fastball Special and I think the poor woman was terrified her rescuers would end up killing each other but it was great fun."
Wanda sighed.
"See. Gets over the caffeine addiction and moves onto adrenaline."
She grinned in response.
"Oh, you're just jealous."
Pete rose and held out his hand.
"Thank you for your time. It's good to know that we're protected by such devoted people."
Tora nodded.
"You agreed? No addresses and no real names? We like this flat. We don't want it blown up."
He smiled.
"Of course not. Thank you."
They nodded and Wanda accompanied him to the door. Then she came back, rolling her eyes.
"Monty Python? That's the best you could come up with?"
"I panicked. I don't do open notebooks well."
"You're an idiot, that's what you are."
"Well, what could I say? We came here because we hated our teammates? We wanted to live in a better climate? We were kicked off? I know, we should have told the truth! No one would have believed us!"
"This is San Francisco."
"Good point. They would have believed us."
"Huh?"
"All shall be revealed, Phoenix my dear, all shall be revealed."
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what again?"
"The I'm so mysterious, listen to me thing."
"I am not!"