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cap_ironman2010-11-14 04:15 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2010-11-14 04:15 am
Entry tags:
Reassembled, part I
Title: Reassembled, part I
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Universe: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.
Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
Authors’ note: This is the final installment in a series of fics that go AU from the end of Civil War, and disregard most canon that took place after that point, including Secret Invasion. Nobody is a Skrull in this verse – Hank Pym, Jessica Drew, et al were all the original article throughout New Avengers and Civil War. Steve was brought back from the dead via magic and began a relationship with Tony, Bucky never put on the Captain America costume, the shadowy conspiracy behind the SHRA was entirely human in origin (again, no Skrull), and Fury is back in charge of SHIELD. There’s only one Avengers team, and both halves of the OTP are on it.
Reassembled
Chapter One
Wanda Maximoff came back to herself 39,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. The yellow and grey padded seat-back in front of her had "Lufthansa" embroidered on it, and the plastic LCD screen set into the back of the chair in front of her was displaying a map of the North Atlantic with a dotted line indicating the plane's flight path – from Berlin to New York.
She couldn't remember how she had gotten from Mount Wungadore to Berlin, couldn't remember boarding the plane. The last thing she remembered clearly was stepping inside the cottage she had been sharing with what she knew, now, was not her Aunt Agatha, and locking herself in.
No art on the walls, no plants, no books. No telephone. No way of contacting the outside world.
She hadn't lived there, despite the false memories of sharing the cottage with her "aunt" that had been poured into her head. She'd been a prisoner there, not only in the house, but in her own body, her own mind.
Everything after that moment when she had realized how wrong things were was a blank, as if something had dragged a hand over her memory and wiped an entire section out. Or perhaps she hadn't been there to remember it at all – the thing-that-was-not-her-aunt might have just switched her off like a doll, and put her away until she was needed again.
There was a half-empty plastic glass of orange juice sitting in the corner of the fold-down tray in front of her, and the taste of oranges in her mouth. She didn't remember drinking it.
The little screen in front of her had a box in the corner displaying the time and date for the plane's projected arrival in New York City. She blinked, rubbing at her eyes with one hand, and then looked at it again.
It had to be wrong. The last thing she remembered clearly was – the world around her warping, shifting, and Xavier refusing to kill her, refusing to stop her, and the thing-that-was-not-Agatha whispering in the back of her head, and when Pietro met her eyes and suggested that she use her powers to give their father what he wanted, she knew that he could hear it, too – standing in the United Nations building with Tony. Tony had been crying, wrenching sobs that shook his entire body, and she could tell, from his flushed face and the way his eyes hadn't quite tracked her movements, that he had been drinking. She remembered feeling indignant, angry, impatient – none of the worry or fear she should have felt for someone she had considered a friend for most of her adult life.
That had been over a year ago.
Everything between then and now was one long blur, only a handful of moments standing out with sharp clarity.
She remembered Carol pleading with her to stop – something, stop what? – and Stephen Strange raising a hand and commanding her to sleep. She remembered Mount Wungadore, walking through the village at the foot of the mountain like a ghost, people smiling and waving at her despite the fact that she had never spoken to any of them, never met any of them. It had altered their memories, too.
She remembered Beast coming to see her, telling her that something had happened to the world's mutants, something bad, and asking – begging – for her help in order to fix it. She had sent him away. It had made her send him away.
Whatever it was, Beast had thought that Wanda had done it, and therefore, that it was within her power to undo it.
It had used her to do something. Something awful – she didn't have to remember in order to know that, not when she could feel the clinging remnants of its evil still lurking in the corners of her mind. It was older than humanity, the weight of eons of malice and hate for everything living like a crushing weight sitting in the center of her chest. Anything she had done in service to its will would be abhorrent.
A flight attendant was pushing a cart down the aisle toward her, collecting all the passengers' trash. When she reached Wanda, the woman gave her a bright, false smile. "Thank you," Wanda said, passing her the mostly-empty plastic cup, and the woman blinked.
"You speak English?" she asked, her own English crisp and British-flavored and free of any hint of German accent. "Why didn't you speak it before? I told you I didn't speak Rumanian."
"Transian," Wanda corrected automatically. "It's a dialect of Rumanian." Technically speaking, anyway. The dialect spoken around Mount Wungadore bore about as much similarity to standard Rumanian as Portuguese did to Spanish. "I'm very out of practice with English," she continued, offering the flight attendant an apologetic smile. "I haven't spoken it in months."
The flight attendant's eyebrows went up, probably in skepticism at the sound of Wanda's fluent, American-accented English, but she didn't say anything – just smiled back and moved on.
The words had felt odd in her mouth, awkward after months spent thinking in Rumanian and Transian, when she'd been thinking at all. She had spoken English to Beast, and to Clint, but other than that... The "English lessons" she remembered taking with Agatha hadn't happened, anymore than any of her other memories of talking to Agatha had.
She had been studying magic with Agatha before It had taken control of her. Had it simply pulled the memories of those lessons from her mind and used them to create the false memories of studying English, of cooking together, talking together, all the little day-to-day interactions that living with another person was made up of?
No wonder she had been so hungry for human contact when Clint had come looking for her – all her supposed interaction with other people for months before that had been a lie. She had been alone in that house for half a year when he had come. Longer, maybe.
No wonder his presence had felt so sharp, so bright. He'd been real, the only real thing she had seen or touched in ages.
She'd fallen asleep in his arms, after reminding him to be quiet because 'Aunt Agatha' was sleeping in the next room.
It had watched her have sex. With Clint.
And then Clint had left again, had taken the smiling lies she had fed him, that the thing-that-was-not-Agatha had told her to think, to say, at face value. Had left her alone again.
Outside the airplane's thick window, the tops of fluffy white clouds glowed in the sun, almost blindingly bright. Only when she touched the window and felt the chill seeping in through the glass did it become obvious how cold it was outside. Those smooth, white mounds of cloud might as well have been snow.
It made no sense. Clint had been her friend for over a decade. He thought of the Avengers as his family. Even if he had believed that she had amnesia, he wouldn't have simply left her there. He wouldn't have slept with an amnesiac woman who didn't recognize him, either. She knew Clint, and that wasn't the kind of man he was – Clint rarely had casual sex, for all that he liked to act like a ladies' man occasionally. Well, except for that one time with Jan, and that had been an unqualified disaster all around.
It shouldn't have been funny, had actually been excruciatingly embarrassing to witness at the time, especially the raw, open pain on Hank's face when he had walked in on the two of them, but the memory of Steve's appalled and exasperated expression when he'd chewed Clint out...
Steve.
Clint had said – he had told her that someone he loved had died, a friend. It hadn't meant anything to her at the time. She had even mused on the irony of it, later, during those brief moments of freedom and lucidity; he'd come to Mount Wundagore because of someone else's death, and had brought something inside of Wanda back to life, without ever realizing what he had done.
She hadn't thought about who her American tourist might actually have been, hadn't wondered about the life he'd had before appearing practically on her doorstep. Hadn't thought about his dead friend one way or the other.
She had kissed him the first time to make him stop crying – silent, embarrassed tears he had been trying to hide behind his hands, his shoulders shaking. "He was like the big brother I never had," he'd said, "and I never got to tell him that, you know?"
She had had some vague thought of comforting him, and then... things were hazy after that, but she remembered feeling satisfied afterwards that she had, indeed, managed to distract Clint, to make him smile.
He'd been talking about Steve. He had told her that Steve was dead, and it hadn't even registered, had meant nothing to her.
What kind of friend was she, to take advantage of Clint's grief in order to seduce him, and hear about Steve's death and feel nothing? What had the thing that had taken her over turned her into?
Steve was dead. Had been killed while she waited obliviously in Transia for orders from the thing that controlled her. If she had been there...
Steve had taught her how to fight, had been the first person other than Pietro to care about her opinion enough to ask her what she thought about the villains they were fighting, and ask for her suggestions on strategy. She and Pietro had had nowhere to go, after running from Magneto, and Steve had given them a home.
A home she had destroyed.
First her mother, then Django Maximoff, her real father, then her children, and now Steve. All her power, and yet Wanda was never able to save her family when it mattered. She had ended up hurting them more than she'd helped, failing them the same way she had failed to save Vision when he had been taken and disassembled.
Vision's body had split apart with a scream of tearing metal, pieces of it reforming even as they broke away, reality bending at the edges and remaking him, warping him –
Wanda froze, staring blankly at the miniature screen in front of her. The little box in the corner still cheerfully counted down the kilometers remaining until they reached the runway at La Guardia.
She had killed Vision. Her magic had infected his body with the Ultron Protocols and literally torn him apart.
She had— It had used her to— She-Hulk had smashed the Ultrons into so much crumpled metal, impossibly delicate computer circuits shattering under her fists. Gone. Dead. Completely destroyed. So much power, the power to alter the world, and she hadn't done anything to change that. Why hadn't she tried to change it? Why hadn't –
Wanda reached inside herself for the chaos magic that always waited there... and found nothing.
Even the attempt hurt, as if she were straining herself beyond her limits.
Hurt. It ought to hurt. Had Vision felt pain when he'd been... when the Ultron Protocols had...
The bathroom at the back of the cabin was blessedly empty. Wanda's hands were shaking hard enough that it took her two tries to lock the door.
As soon as the latch clicked home, she bent over the sink and threw up.
* * *
"Scientific progress must not be hindered by the petty constraints of 'law' or 'morality!'"
Steve didn't dignify that statement with an answer. Six seconds from now, according to the countdown Tony was broadcasting over the Avengers' communicators, the electronic billboard directly overhead would stop broadcasting its current giant Target ad and begin displaying a series of propaganda ads produced by A.I.M., filled with subliminal signals designed to drive every human who saw them insane.
Trusting Jan and Clint to deal with the A.I.M. hirelings he could just catch sight of sneaking up behind him, he turned and threw his shield at the billboard. It hit the giant LCD screen with a shower of sparks, and the red and white animated swirls that had been about to form themselves into the Target logo disappeared as the screen flickered, then went dark.
"Jan-" he began.
"Already on it," she said. She fired one last blast directly into the faceplate of an A.I.M. hirelings' yellow radiation-proof suit, then swooped up toward the billboard, flying toward the black plastic box just visible on its lower edge. According to Tony, the box was some kind of hacking device, programmed to hijack the screen and substitute A.I.M.'s images for its regularly scheduled advertisements. Hopefully, it would also serve to convince the city and whichever company owned this particular Times Square billboard not to sue Steve to within an inch of his life for destroying it.
Steve lifted his shield to block a punch from one of the few A.I.M. hirelings still on his feet, then slammed the front of his shield against the man's face – it split the front of his faceplate with a satisfying crack, and he went down in a crumpled heap of yellow plastic.
A.I.M. had been responsible for the fear toxin that had put both Tony and Jan in the hospital last month.
Steve shoved the memory of Tony huddled in a hospital bed, his eyes fixed on things only he could see, out of his mind, and resisted the impulse to give the downed man a good, hard kick in the ribs.
"Did he really just make air quotes when he said 'law' and 'morality?'" Clint asked. He ducked a roundhouse swing from one of the A.I.M. hirelings and slammed his elbow into the man's ribs, doubling him over. Then he turned back to their main antagonist, an arrow nocked and ready to shoot.
Sean "Head Case" Madigan was no longer capable of facial expressions; his face, inside the plexiglass containment helmet that surrounded his dead body with the chemical mists that kept it animated and functioning, was a nightmare vision of exposed muscle and half-rotted skin. Somehow, he managed to sneer at them anyway.
"You think you've won just because you've stopped us here? This was just part of our plan. We've hidden a series of timed explosives all over the city." Madigan grinned, a particularly gruesome expression that reminded Steve far too much of the Red Skull. "Good luck finding them."
"What, those?" Steve grinned back, knowing the expression didn't look particularly friendly. "Iron Man tracked them all down ages ago. You shouldn't have routed the countdown signal through a satellite."
"We were just the distraction," Clint put in, his voice laden with vindictive satisfaction. "The rest of our team's spent the last half hour disarming them all."
Steve's communicator came to life with a faint hiss of static. "Ms. Marvel just got the last one," Sam said. "You can stop playing with them now."
"You have no bombs remaining, the three of us have you and your friend there," Steve nodded at the only A.I.M. flunky still on his feet, a short, stocky man who had edged backwards so that Madigan was between him and the Avengers, "outnumbered, and the Wasp is removing your equipment from the billboard right now. If you're smart, you'll surrender."
"Fine," Madigan snapped. "But don't think you've won. A.I.M. will break me out of jail in a week."
Clint braced his feet and drew his arm back until the purple fletching on his arrow was level with his ear. He probably wasn't going to fire – Hank had warned them not to breach Madigan's containment suit, saying that he had no idea what the vapors inside would do to a living human body – but Madigan didn't know that. "The guys at Rykers hate terrorists almost as much as they hate pedophiles, so have a fun week."
"Threats don't frighten me; I'm already dead. And I will not allow my father's dream to die!"
Jan landed on Steve's right shoulder with a thud, the weight of the electronics equipment in her arm making her uncharacteristically clumsy. "You tried to have your father killed by turning him into a living bomb," she said.
Madigan shrugged. "That was part of his dream," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. When your father was M.O.D.O.K., maybe it was.
For all his bluster, Madigan went relatively quietly once the police arrived. He might be M.O.D.O.K.'s son, but he hadn't inherited his father's flair for up-close-and-personal mayhem. Madigan preferred to do his killing at a distance, preferably with high-tech explosives.
Tony, Sam, Carol, and Thor arrived while the police were cuffing Madigan and shoving him into the back of an armored police wagon, each with an armful of wires and bits and pieces of plastic and metal that had once been A.I.M.'s twenty-five electronically-triggered bombs.
Tony's armor was still as brightly polished as it had been that morning, completely free of scratches or scuff. He landed beside Steve with a hiss of jetboots and the harsh, metallic scrape of metal on asphalt, and something inside Steve relaxed.
"I really hate A.I.M.," Tony observed conversationally. "The bombs had vials of some kind of chemical in them. I saved a sample for Hank to analyze."
Steve grimaced. "Nice surprise for the emergency personnel when they arrived on the scene. They shouldn't have to worry about that kind of thing." It was difficult enough being a firefighter or police officer in New York City without terrorist organizations trying to poison you, and men and woman who risked their lives to serve the public good deserved better.
"We did well this day." Thor's deep, rumbling voice echoed in Steve's ear, and only long familiarity kept him from jumping slightly. "You were a most admirable distraction, my friend." He clapped Steve on the shoulder with one massive hand, the force of it enough to make him sway forward a little.
Steve turned, grinning up at his teammate. He knew that it was never a good idea for a man to let himself get too cocky or complacent, but he allowed himself a moment to luxuriate in the joy of having his team around him again. Thor's cloak was flapping slightly in the fall breeze, his armor gleaming in the sunlight even more brightly than Tony's did. Several yards away, Clint and Carol were giving statements to police officers, Clint's purple leathers a garish splotch of color that nearly rivaled the billboards and neon signs around them, and if Steve looked up, he knew he'd be able to see Redwing circling overhead, keeping an eye on the situation from above for Sam. If it weren't for the absence of Wanda and Vision, Steve could almost imagine that the disasters of the past few years hadn't happened.
"I wasn't sure the four of you would be able to get all the bombs defused in time," he admitted. "I should have known better than to worry."
"It would have gone ill for the Falcon had we not. He has much skill and valor, but those do not protect against explosions as Ms. Marvel's invulnerability or an Asgardian's strength may."
He didn't mention Tony's armor. Thor had spent most of the past couple of weeks not mentioning Tony, or Hank. It was hard to blame him, as much as part of Steve wanted to come to Tony's defense, but it made for uncomfortable strategy sessions, since he wouldn't speak directly to the two of them, either.
There were moments when it did feel like the Avengers were whole again, the entire messy disaster of Registration over with, but the aftereffects still lingered. The police had seemed relieved to be able to hand the A.I.M. situation over to the Steve and the others, but some of the bystanders who had gathered to gawk at the fight with A.I.M. had just as much fear and suspicion in their eyes when they looked at the Avengers as they did when watching Madigan rant. Nearly a year since Stamford, two months since the SHRA had been repealed, and some people were still suspicious of anyone in a costume.
And while the Avengers might present a united front to supervillains and to the media, under the surface, the damage done during the fight over Registration still lingered.
"We wouldn't have been able to get to them all in time without Thor," Tony said. He turned to Thor, the expressionless faceplate of his helmet hiding whatever emotion lay beneath it, and added, "It was a good thing we had you with us today. Blowing up is not my favorite thing to do."
Thor's fingers tightened around the grip of his hammer, and he turned away to say something to Jan.
Tony's shoulders slumped a little, the motion visible even in the armor.
"At least you didn't get yourself electrocuted this time," Steve offered, resisting the impulse to lay a hand on one dejected metal shoulder. There were news vans from three different television stations parked only a few dozen feet away.
"Thor wouldn't do that," Tony objected.
Steve shook his head slightly. "I meant by the criminal." It wasn't actually a matter for jokes - watching blue-white lightning crawl over the outside of Tony's armor had been far too reminiscent of the stunt Tony had pulled when his armor had been hacked, and Steve had already been anticipating giving him CPR again, steeling himself for the feel of Tony's ribs bending and cracking under his hands, when Tony had groaned and sat up again. The shock his heart had gotten had probably been bad enough as it was, even if it hadn't succeeded in actually stopping his heart this time.
"That wasn't my fault. We didn't know Live Wire had developed actual lightning powers."
"You knew by the second time he zapped you."
Tony shrugged. "I knew the armor could handle it, and I needed to give the Falcon a chance to get into position behind him."
It would, Steve reflected, be reassuring if Tony occasionally demonstrated a little more concern over his own health. The Extremis allowed him to shrug off injuries more quickly these days, but not that quickly.
Sam stepped away from the huddle of law enforcement officials and waved at Steve, coming a few steps closer to them so that they could talk without shouting. "The police want to talk to the two of you." He nodded up at where Steve's shield was lodged in the crackling remains of the billboard. "About that."
"I needed to shut it down quickly," Steve said, suppressing a flash of guilt as he stared up at the damage his shield had done. Someone was going to have to replace that, and he didn't even want to imagine what it was going to cost.
Sam grinned. "Well, that's one way to do it. I always hated those things. I swear they put up more of them every year."
Tony glanced up at the billboard, then turned back to Steve. "Want me to go get it for you?"
Footage of his shield in the middle of the expensive property damage the Avengers had caused was probably going to be on every news program in the city tonight, not to mention the front page of the Daily Bugle. "Please," Steve said.
When Tony handed it to him a few minutes later, he couldn't help running one hand over its polished metal surface, checking for the scratches he knew perfectly well wouldn't be there. Nothing could scratch or dent vibranium, except maybe for Thor's hammer, but old habits died hard. You looked after your equipment.
"This morning," Tony began, "before A.I.M. sent us the ultimatum, I was going to ask..." he trailed off, then began again, "They finished construction on the bottom floor of the mansion yesterday. The decorators haven't been there yet, and there's still construction work going on in the east wing and on the roof, but it's livable again. If you don't mind a little hammering in the background, I mean."
Suddenly, A.I.M., the crowd of reporters filling Times Square, the Fox news helicopter overhead, and the police officers who wanted Steve to come down to the station and discuss A.I.M.'s explosives with their bomb squad seemed like minor annoyances.
"I'm already packed," he said. "When do you want to move in?"
* * *
The plane's wheels hit the runway with a jolt, and the malevolent force Wanda had sensed lurking in the corners of her mind rushed in like water filling a bowl.
"At last," the parody of Agatha's voice sighed inside her head. "We are close; I can feel it. Soon I shall be free. Soon we will be free."
This time, Wanda could hear the flaws in its façade, the open malevolence that Agatha Harkness had never possessed, and wondered how it had ever fooled her.
Something about it felt familiar, however, and not simply because it was mimicking Agatha's voice. As if she had known it her whole life, as if—
Chthon.
Wanda had thought there was nothing left inside of her to throw up, but now she found herself forcing down a fresh surge of nausea. Of course it was Chthon. Who else would have brought her to Mount Wundagore? What else would be capable of warping and controlling her powers so completely?
He hadn't been able to influence her as strongly during the flight because the plane had been too far from the earth, where he was bound. Now that they had landed again, and she was back on solid ground...
Her mind was still her own, but for how long?
She had to act now, find a way to stop him, to break free. Now, before he erased her again.
The plane came to a stop just as she completed the thought, and a blandly pleasant female voice crackled over the intercom, telling passengers that the plane had completed taxiing, and they were now permitted to unfasten their seat belts and proceed to the exits.
Without any input from her, Wanda's hands began unfastening her seatbelt, and she found herself collecting her coat and a carry-on bag she didn't remember packing, and standing.
The blonde flight attendant from earlier was standing by the closest cabin door, bidding passengers farewell with a practiced smile. "Are you all right?" she asked Wanda, halting her just feet away from the exit. Somehow, her eyes managed to convey a frown despite the unfaltering curve of her lips.
'No,' Wanda wanted to say. 'No, I'm not. Help me, please.'
"Fine. I get airsick sometimes, especially on long flights. But thank you for your concern."
Then she turned and left the plane, her feet moving steadily down the ramp despite her desperate efforts to stop, to turn around, to exert any kind of control over her own body. She couldn't even twitch her fingers.
Chthon moved her through customs like a puppet, speaking through her mouth and posing her limbs as if she were a living doll. Hearing her own voice emerge from her lips, calm and polite and completely independent of herself, was utterly terrifying. She was helpless, the way she'd been when she had watched her children die, when she had watched Ultron tear Vision apart at Chthon's bidding. And yet she smiled, and told the customs officer how excited she was to be in New York, perfect sincerity in every word.
Nothing to declare, of course, because she hadn't brought any luggage beyond the carry-on bag. Mindless tools didn't need extra changes of clothing. Was she here for business or pleasure? Oh, pleasure, definitely. Just a brief sight-seeing trip. She had been looking forward to it for a very long time. Did he think she should visit the Empire State Building first, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art? She had never been to the British Museum, and she had heard that the Metropolitan's Egyptian collection was surpassed only by the British Museum and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
He stamped her passport and waved her through, and once again, her pleas for help remained silent, audible only inside her own head.
Chthon took her to a taxi, then onto the subway – the 4/5 line, traveling downtown. When the train passed through the two stops closest to the Avengers Mansion, Wanda was frozen in her seat; she couldn't so much as turn her head unless Chthon wanted her to.
The Mansion might not even still be there. Her memories after Chthon had begun to control her were vague, but the image of the Mansion burning was sharp and clear. Chthon had used Jack of Hearts' body to destroy it, killing Scott Lang in the process.
Scott's little girl would be what, now? Fourteen? Wanda could remember when Cassie had been seven, a tiny blonde girl in an over-sized Avengers t-shirt who had thought having a superhero for a father was the coolest thing in the world. She had collected insects in jars and kept them by her bed.
She got off the subway in midtown, emerging onto the street to see a familiar cathedral spire visible a few blocks away. The giant cross that topped St. Margaret's stood out starkly against the pale violet of the evening sky.
What did Chthon want in Hell's Kitchen?
"At last," he sighed, not bothering to mimic Agatha's voice this time. "Such power. I will be bound no longer."
Wanda could feel it as well, a faint but distinct aura of chaos magic that emanated from the church. Whatever it was, Chthon planned to use it to break free from his prison, probably killing her in the process. Once he was free, there would be no way to stop him. Chthon was an elder god, one of the primal forces of the universe; no one on earth had the power to defeat him in open battle.
'No,' she thought, throwing all the force of her will at the thought of not moving, of stopping, of turning around – of doing anything other than what she did, which was to walk right up to where St. Margaret's massive wooden doors stood open and enter the cathedral. She didn't even stumble on the threshold, despite the evil she carried inside her.
It didn't seem right that an evil as great as Chthon could walk into a church so easily; there ought to have been a barrier across the threshold, to keep the likes of her out of here.
Inside, the chaos magic that had been only faintly detectable from the street was a swirling miasma, almost visible. It seemed to envelope her as she walked closer to the high altar, seeping into every pore of her body. Unlike Chthon's power, it felt clean, pure.
If he touched it, he would twist it to his will the same way he had used and twisted her.
Another step, and she was at the altar rail. She grabbed for it, desperate to stop herself, and felt a jolt of surprise and stomach-twisting relief when her fingers closed around the polished metal. She tightened her grip until it hurt, her knuckles turning white.
She had moved her hand. Because she chose to, not because Chthon had made her. His control must be slipping, or maybe the power that filled the cathedral nave was interfering with it. It didn't matter – all that mattered was the tiny sliver of freedom it gave her.
"No," she forced out, her voice sounding rough and strangled. The word hurt her throat. "No. I will not be your tool."
"What treachery is this?" Chthon's voice boomed in her head, making the world flash red and black for a moment. "You have been my tool since the hour of your birth. It is for this that I made you. Do not fight your destiny. Step forward and claim the spear. Set me free, and you will rule the world as my child."
The people who wanted to use her for their own purposes always sounded the same in the end. "I am Django Maximoff's daughter. Not yours. Not Magneto's."
Her own power was out of reach, still locked away in whatever spell Chthon had tied it up in, but the cathedral was full of chaos magic, magic that didn't belong to Chthon and therefore couldn't be controlled by him. Wanda closed her eyes and grabbed desperately for it, reaching toward the altar with her free hand.
It was like laying her hands on a live electrical wire. Power poured through her like fire, raw and uncontrolled, and only the hard-won control of years kept her from being swept away by it.
Chthon reached for it, his presence like a vast weight in her head.
"No," she hissed again, through gritted teeth, as her knees hit the stone floor. She could feel sweat breaking out along her spine, hear her teeth grinding together.
She lashed out at him with the borrowed magic, feeling a surge of triumph at the pained howl that echoed in her skull, and wrenched her own powers free of the spell that bound them. Reality rippled around her, something that had been warped out of true snapping back into place. The cathedral's massive pipe organ rang like a struck gong, a great chord of sound that echoed discordantly off the stone walls and high, vaulted ceiling.
Her powers flooded back into her, and she staggered to her feet, slamming up magical shields the way Agatha – the real Agatha – had taught her. "Get out of my head," she snarled. "And stay out."
She took a step forward, then grabbed at the altar rail again as the floor lurched under her feet. She could still hear Chthon's whispering, a faint susurrus of sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was too indistinct to make out words, but the volume rose and fell in waves, as if Chthon were alternately shouting and cajoling.
The idea of letting him back inside her made her feel ill.
Wanda straightened, slowly uncurling her fingers from the brass rail and stepped away from it. She could feel cold sweat prickling up and down her sides, sticking her clothing to her skin. She wouldn't be able to hold him out for long – driving him out in the first place had already exhausted her.
She needed help.
She turned on her heel and began to walk toward the doors at a slow, measured pace. It was foolish to fear that Chthon would chase her if she ran – he was an incorporeal demon, not a lion or a wolf or some childhood boogyman. Still, running would call attention to herself, and she had probably already drawn enough of that. Everyone in two block's radius had probably heard the crashing chord from the pipe organ as it was, and drawing the attention of bystanders might give Chthon a chance to use Wanda's powers against them.
The Avengers Mansion was a good thirty blocks away, but if she took the subway – except that Chthon could probably reach her more easily underground, and if he did, she would be trapped in a metal tube with a dozen potential victims. And even if the Avengers Mansion were still standing, the rest of the Avengers had no magical abilities, no way to fight him. And no reason to help Wanda, or believe anything she told them.
The last time they had seen her, she had been insane, possessed, and bent on destroying them all. Going back there now would simply be handing Chthon a chance to finish what he had started, and she wasn't going to give him that chance.
If Doctor Strange hadn't been able to stop her...
Strange. She could go to Strange. The Sorcerer Supreme had faced Chthon before, and managed at the very least to fight him to a draw. Strange was the most powerful magician on Earth; if he couldn't help her, then she was beyond help. And even then, he would be able to do something. Cut off her access to her powers, maybe – it was possible to burn the mutant abilities out of someone. Sinister had done it – or even, if necessary, kill her.
Steve, in that position, wouldn't be willing to— Except that Steve was dead. Tony or Hank might be willing to kill her for the greater good, but Clint, Jan, Simon? They would want to save her at all costs, and there were some costs that she wasn't willing to pay.
Chthon would not use her to harm anyone else she loved. Better to lived maimed and shattered, a shadow of her former self, than be a mindless puppet of evil. Better, if it came to it, not to live at all.
Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum was only a twenty minute walk from Hell's Kitchen. Thirty minutes, in heels. She could be at his door before full dark. Good. Chthon might be more powerful after dark.
Once she was out of sight of the cathedral, she started to walk faster.
* * *
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven
We are posting this as a WiP. The first 200 or so pages of the fic are finished and beta-ed, but the final third or so is still being written. We'll post one chapter every three weeks until the whole thing is done, and then switch to posting a lot closer together.
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonUniverse: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:
dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
Authors’ note: This is the final installment in a series of fics that go AU from the end of Civil War, and disregard most canon that took place after that point, including Secret Invasion. Nobody is a Skrull in this verse – Hank Pym, Jessica Drew, et al were all the original article throughout New Avengers and Civil War. Steve was brought back from the dead via magic and began a relationship with Tony, Bucky never put on the Captain America costume, the shadowy conspiracy behind the SHRA was entirely human in origin (again, no Skrull), and Fury is back in charge of SHIELD. There’s only one Avengers team, and both halves of the OTP are on it.
Wanda Maximoff came back to herself 39,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. The yellow and grey padded seat-back in front of her had "Lufthansa" embroidered on it, and the plastic LCD screen set into the back of the chair in front of her was displaying a map of the North Atlantic with a dotted line indicating the plane's flight path – from Berlin to New York.
She couldn't remember how she had gotten from Mount Wungadore to Berlin, couldn't remember boarding the plane. The last thing she remembered clearly was stepping inside the cottage she had been sharing with what she knew, now, was not her Aunt Agatha, and locking herself in.
No art on the walls, no plants, no books. No telephone. No way of contacting the outside world.
She hadn't lived there, despite the false memories of sharing the cottage with her "aunt" that had been poured into her head. She'd been a prisoner there, not only in the house, but in her own body, her own mind.
Everything after that moment when she had realized how wrong things were was a blank, as if something had dragged a hand over her memory and wiped an entire section out. Or perhaps she hadn't been there to remember it at all – the thing-that-was-not-her-aunt might have just switched her off like a doll, and put her away until she was needed again.
There was a half-empty plastic glass of orange juice sitting in the corner of the fold-down tray in front of her, and the taste of oranges in her mouth. She didn't remember drinking it.
The little screen in front of her had a box in the corner displaying the time and date for the plane's projected arrival in New York City. She blinked, rubbing at her eyes with one hand, and then looked at it again.
It had to be wrong. The last thing she remembered clearly was – the world around her warping, shifting, and Xavier refusing to kill her, refusing to stop her, and the thing-that-was-not-Agatha whispering in the back of her head, and when Pietro met her eyes and suggested that she use her powers to give their father what he wanted, she knew that he could hear it, too – standing in the United Nations building with Tony. Tony had been crying, wrenching sobs that shook his entire body, and she could tell, from his flushed face and the way his eyes hadn't quite tracked her movements, that he had been drinking. She remembered feeling indignant, angry, impatient – none of the worry or fear she should have felt for someone she had considered a friend for most of her adult life.
That had been over a year ago.
Everything between then and now was one long blur, only a handful of moments standing out with sharp clarity.
She remembered Carol pleading with her to stop – something, stop what? – and Stephen Strange raising a hand and commanding her to sleep. She remembered Mount Wungadore, walking through the village at the foot of the mountain like a ghost, people smiling and waving at her despite the fact that she had never spoken to any of them, never met any of them. It had altered their memories, too.
She remembered Beast coming to see her, telling her that something had happened to the world's mutants, something bad, and asking – begging – for her help in order to fix it. She had sent him away. It had made her send him away.
Whatever it was, Beast had thought that Wanda had done it, and therefore, that it was within her power to undo it.
It had used her to do something. Something awful – she didn't have to remember in order to know that, not when she could feel the clinging remnants of its evil still lurking in the corners of her mind. It was older than humanity, the weight of eons of malice and hate for everything living like a crushing weight sitting in the center of her chest. Anything she had done in service to its will would be abhorrent.
A flight attendant was pushing a cart down the aisle toward her, collecting all the passengers' trash. When she reached Wanda, the woman gave her a bright, false smile. "Thank you," Wanda said, passing her the mostly-empty plastic cup, and the woman blinked.
"You speak English?" she asked, her own English crisp and British-flavored and free of any hint of German accent. "Why didn't you speak it before? I told you I didn't speak Rumanian."
"Transian," Wanda corrected automatically. "It's a dialect of Rumanian." Technically speaking, anyway. The dialect spoken around Mount Wungadore bore about as much similarity to standard Rumanian as Portuguese did to Spanish. "I'm very out of practice with English," she continued, offering the flight attendant an apologetic smile. "I haven't spoken it in months."
The flight attendant's eyebrows went up, probably in skepticism at the sound of Wanda's fluent, American-accented English, but she didn't say anything – just smiled back and moved on.
The words had felt odd in her mouth, awkward after months spent thinking in Rumanian and Transian, when she'd been thinking at all. She had spoken English to Beast, and to Clint, but other than that... The "English lessons" she remembered taking with Agatha hadn't happened, anymore than any of her other memories of talking to Agatha had.
She had been studying magic with Agatha before It had taken control of her. Had it simply pulled the memories of those lessons from her mind and used them to create the false memories of studying English, of cooking together, talking together, all the little day-to-day interactions that living with another person was made up of?
No wonder she had been so hungry for human contact when Clint had come looking for her – all her supposed interaction with other people for months before that had been a lie. She had been alone in that house for half a year when he had come. Longer, maybe.
No wonder his presence had felt so sharp, so bright. He'd been real, the only real thing she had seen or touched in ages.
She'd fallen asleep in his arms, after reminding him to be quiet because 'Aunt Agatha' was sleeping in the next room.
It had watched her have sex. With Clint.
And then Clint had left again, had taken the smiling lies she had fed him, that the thing-that-was-not-Agatha had told her to think, to say, at face value. Had left her alone again.
Outside the airplane's thick window, the tops of fluffy white clouds glowed in the sun, almost blindingly bright. Only when she touched the window and felt the chill seeping in through the glass did it become obvious how cold it was outside. Those smooth, white mounds of cloud might as well have been snow.
It made no sense. Clint had been her friend for over a decade. He thought of the Avengers as his family. Even if he had believed that she had amnesia, he wouldn't have simply left her there. He wouldn't have slept with an amnesiac woman who didn't recognize him, either. She knew Clint, and that wasn't the kind of man he was – Clint rarely had casual sex, for all that he liked to act like a ladies' man occasionally. Well, except for that one time with Jan, and that had been an unqualified disaster all around.
It shouldn't have been funny, had actually been excruciatingly embarrassing to witness at the time, especially the raw, open pain on Hank's face when he had walked in on the two of them, but the memory of Steve's appalled and exasperated expression when he'd chewed Clint out...
Steve.
Clint had said – he had told her that someone he loved had died, a friend. It hadn't meant anything to her at the time. She had even mused on the irony of it, later, during those brief moments of freedom and lucidity; he'd come to Mount Wundagore because of someone else's death, and had brought something inside of Wanda back to life, without ever realizing what he had done.
She hadn't thought about who her American tourist might actually have been, hadn't wondered about the life he'd had before appearing practically on her doorstep. Hadn't thought about his dead friend one way or the other.
She had kissed him the first time to make him stop crying – silent, embarrassed tears he had been trying to hide behind his hands, his shoulders shaking. "He was like the big brother I never had," he'd said, "and I never got to tell him that, you know?"
She had had some vague thought of comforting him, and then... things were hazy after that, but she remembered feeling satisfied afterwards that she had, indeed, managed to distract Clint, to make him smile.
He'd been talking about Steve. He had told her that Steve was dead, and it hadn't even registered, had meant nothing to her.
What kind of friend was she, to take advantage of Clint's grief in order to seduce him, and hear about Steve's death and feel nothing? What had the thing that had taken her over turned her into?
Steve was dead. Had been killed while she waited obliviously in Transia for orders from the thing that controlled her. If she had been there...
Steve had taught her how to fight, had been the first person other than Pietro to care about her opinion enough to ask her what she thought about the villains they were fighting, and ask for her suggestions on strategy. She and Pietro had had nowhere to go, after running from Magneto, and Steve had given them a home.
A home she had destroyed.
First her mother, then Django Maximoff, her real father, then her children, and now Steve. All her power, and yet Wanda was never able to save her family when it mattered. She had ended up hurting them more than she'd helped, failing them the same way she had failed to save Vision when he had been taken and disassembled.
Vision's body had split apart with a scream of tearing metal, pieces of it reforming even as they broke away, reality bending at the edges and remaking him, warping him –
Wanda froze, staring blankly at the miniature screen in front of her. The little box in the corner still cheerfully counted down the kilometers remaining until they reached the runway at La Guardia.
She had killed Vision. Her magic had infected his body with the Ultron Protocols and literally torn him apart.
She had— It had used her to— She-Hulk had smashed the Ultrons into so much crumpled metal, impossibly delicate computer circuits shattering under her fists. Gone. Dead. Completely destroyed. So much power, the power to alter the world, and she hadn't done anything to change that. Why hadn't she tried to change it? Why hadn't –
Wanda reached inside herself for the chaos magic that always waited there... and found nothing.
Even the attempt hurt, as if she were straining herself beyond her limits.
Hurt. It ought to hurt. Had Vision felt pain when he'd been... when the Ultron Protocols had...
The bathroom at the back of the cabin was blessedly empty. Wanda's hands were shaking hard enough that it took her two tries to lock the door.
As soon as the latch clicked home, she bent over the sink and threw up.
"Scientific progress must not be hindered by the petty constraints of 'law' or 'morality!'"
Steve didn't dignify that statement with an answer. Six seconds from now, according to the countdown Tony was broadcasting over the Avengers' communicators, the electronic billboard directly overhead would stop broadcasting its current giant Target ad and begin displaying a series of propaganda ads produced by A.I.M., filled with subliminal signals designed to drive every human who saw them insane.
Trusting Jan and Clint to deal with the A.I.M. hirelings he could just catch sight of sneaking up behind him, he turned and threw his shield at the billboard. It hit the giant LCD screen with a shower of sparks, and the red and white animated swirls that had been about to form themselves into the Target logo disappeared as the screen flickered, then went dark.
"Jan-" he began.
"Already on it," she said. She fired one last blast directly into the faceplate of an A.I.M. hirelings' yellow radiation-proof suit, then swooped up toward the billboard, flying toward the black plastic box just visible on its lower edge. According to Tony, the box was some kind of hacking device, programmed to hijack the screen and substitute A.I.M.'s images for its regularly scheduled advertisements. Hopefully, it would also serve to convince the city and whichever company owned this particular Times Square billboard not to sue Steve to within an inch of his life for destroying it.
Steve lifted his shield to block a punch from one of the few A.I.M. hirelings still on his feet, then slammed the front of his shield against the man's face – it split the front of his faceplate with a satisfying crack, and he went down in a crumpled heap of yellow plastic.
A.I.M. had been responsible for the fear toxin that had put both Tony and Jan in the hospital last month.
Steve shoved the memory of Tony huddled in a hospital bed, his eyes fixed on things only he could see, out of his mind, and resisted the impulse to give the downed man a good, hard kick in the ribs.
"Did he really just make air quotes when he said 'law' and 'morality?'" Clint asked. He ducked a roundhouse swing from one of the A.I.M. hirelings and slammed his elbow into the man's ribs, doubling him over. Then he turned back to their main antagonist, an arrow nocked and ready to shoot.
Sean "Head Case" Madigan was no longer capable of facial expressions; his face, inside the plexiglass containment helmet that surrounded his dead body with the chemical mists that kept it animated and functioning, was a nightmare vision of exposed muscle and half-rotted skin. Somehow, he managed to sneer at them anyway.
"You think you've won just because you've stopped us here? This was just part of our plan. We've hidden a series of timed explosives all over the city." Madigan grinned, a particularly gruesome expression that reminded Steve far too much of the Red Skull. "Good luck finding them."
"What, those?" Steve grinned back, knowing the expression didn't look particularly friendly. "Iron Man tracked them all down ages ago. You shouldn't have routed the countdown signal through a satellite."
"We were just the distraction," Clint put in, his voice laden with vindictive satisfaction. "The rest of our team's spent the last half hour disarming them all."
Steve's communicator came to life with a faint hiss of static. "Ms. Marvel just got the last one," Sam said. "You can stop playing with them now."
"You have no bombs remaining, the three of us have you and your friend there," Steve nodded at the only A.I.M. flunky still on his feet, a short, stocky man who had edged backwards so that Madigan was between him and the Avengers, "outnumbered, and the Wasp is removing your equipment from the billboard right now. If you're smart, you'll surrender."
"Fine," Madigan snapped. "But don't think you've won. A.I.M. will break me out of jail in a week."
Clint braced his feet and drew his arm back until the purple fletching on his arrow was level with his ear. He probably wasn't going to fire – Hank had warned them not to breach Madigan's containment suit, saying that he had no idea what the vapors inside would do to a living human body – but Madigan didn't know that. "The guys at Rykers hate terrorists almost as much as they hate pedophiles, so have a fun week."
"Threats don't frighten me; I'm already dead. And I will not allow my father's dream to die!"
Jan landed on Steve's right shoulder with a thud, the weight of the electronics equipment in her arm making her uncharacteristically clumsy. "You tried to have your father killed by turning him into a living bomb," she said.
Madigan shrugged. "That was part of his dream," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. When your father was M.O.D.O.K., maybe it was.
For all his bluster, Madigan went relatively quietly once the police arrived. He might be M.O.D.O.K.'s son, but he hadn't inherited his father's flair for up-close-and-personal mayhem. Madigan preferred to do his killing at a distance, preferably with high-tech explosives.
Tony, Sam, Carol, and Thor arrived while the police were cuffing Madigan and shoving him into the back of an armored police wagon, each with an armful of wires and bits and pieces of plastic and metal that had once been A.I.M.'s twenty-five electronically-triggered bombs.
Tony's armor was still as brightly polished as it had been that morning, completely free of scratches or scuff. He landed beside Steve with a hiss of jetboots and the harsh, metallic scrape of metal on asphalt, and something inside Steve relaxed.
"I really hate A.I.M.," Tony observed conversationally. "The bombs had vials of some kind of chemical in them. I saved a sample for Hank to analyze."
Steve grimaced. "Nice surprise for the emergency personnel when they arrived on the scene. They shouldn't have to worry about that kind of thing." It was difficult enough being a firefighter or police officer in New York City without terrorist organizations trying to poison you, and men and woman who risked their lives to serve the public good deserved better.
"We did well this day." Thor's deep, rumbling voice echoed in Steve's ear, and only long familiarity kept him from jumping slightly. "You were a most admirable distraction, my friend." He clapped Steve on the shoulder with one massive hand, the force of it enough to make him sway forward a little.
Steve turned, grinning up at his teammate. He knew that it was never a good idea for a man to let himself get too cocky or complacent, but he allowed himself a moment to luxuriate in the joy of having his team around him again. Thor's cloak was flapping slightly in the fall breeze, his armor gleaming in the sunlight even more brightly than Tony's did. Several yards away, Clint and Carol were giving statements to police officers, Clint's purple leathers a garish splotch of color that nearly rivaled the billboards and neon signs around them, and if Steve looked up, he knew he'd be able to see Redwing circling overhead, keeping an eye on the situation from above for Sam. If it weren't for the absence of Wanda and Vision, Steve could almost imagine that the disasters of the past few years hadn't happened.
"I wasn't sure the four of you would be able to get all the bombs defused in time," he admitted. "I should have known better than to worry."
"It would have gone ill for the Falcon had we not. He has much skill and valor, but those do not protect against explosions as Ms. Marvel's invulnerability or an Asgardian's strength may."
He didn't mention Tony's armor. Thor had spent most of the past couple of weeks not mentioning Tony, or Hank. It was hard to blame him, as much as part of Steve wanted to come to Tony's defense, but it made for uncomfortable strategy sessions, since he wouldn't speak directly to the two of them, either.
There were moments when it did feel like the Avengers were whole again, the entire messy disaster of Registration over with, but the aftereffects still lingered. The police had seemed relieved to be able to hand the A.I.M. situation over to the Steve and the others, but some of the bystanders who had gathered to gawk at the fight with A.I.M. had just as much fear and suspicion in their eyes when they looked at the Avengers as they did when watching Madigan rant. Nearly a year since Stamford, two months since the SHRA had been repealed, and some people were still suspicious of anyone in a costume.
And while the Avengers might present a united front to supervillains and to the media, under the surface, the damage done during the fight over Registration still lingered.
"We wouldn't have been able to get to them all in time without Thor," Tony said. He turned to Thor, the expressionless faceplate of his helmet hiding whatever emotion lay beneath it, and added, "It was a good thing we had you with us today. Blowing up is not my favorite thing to do."
Thor's fingers tightened around the grip of his hammer, and he turned away to say something to Jan.
Tony's shoulders slumped a little, the motion visible even in the armor.
"At least you didn't get yourself electrocuted this time," Steve offered, resisting the impulse to lay a hand on one dejected metal shoulder. There were news vans from three different television stations parked only a few dozen feet away.
"Thor wouldn't do that," Tony objected.
Steve shook his head slightly. "I meant by the criminal." It wasn't actually a matter for jokes - watching blue-white lightning crawl over the outside of Tony's armor had been far too reminiscent of the stunt Tony had pulled when his armor had been hacked, and Steve had already been anticipating giving him CPR again, steeling himself for the feel of Tony's ribs bending and cracking under his hands, when Tony had groaned and sat up again. The shock his heart had gotten had probably been bad enough as it was, even if it hadn't succeeded in actually stopping his heart this time.
"That wasn't my fault. We didn't know Live Wire had developed actual lightning powers."
"You knew by the second time he zapped you."
Tony shrugged. "I knew the armor could handle it, and I needed to give the Falcon a chance to get into position behind him."
It would, Steve reflected, be reassuring if Tony occasionally demonstrated a little more concern over his own health. The Extremis allowed him to shrug off injuries more quickly these days, but not that quickly.
Sam stepped away from the huddle of law enforcement officials and waved at Steve, coming a few steps closer to them so that they could talk without shouting. "The police want to talk to the two of you." He nodded up at where Steve's shield was lodged in the crackling remains of the billboard. "About that."
"I needed to shut it down quickly," Steve said, suppressing a flash of guilt as he stared up at the damage his shield had done. Someone was going to have to replace that, and he didn't even want to imagine what it was going to cost.
Sam grinned. "Well, that's one way to do it. I always hated those things. I swear they put up more of them every year."
Tony glanced up at the billboard, then turned back to Steve. "Want me to go get it for you?"
Footage of his shield in the middle of the expensive property damage the Avengers had caused was probably going to be on every news program in the city tonight, not to mention the front page of the Daily Bugle. "Please," Steve said.
When Tony handed it to him a few minutes later, he couldn't help running one hand over its polished metal surface, checking for the scratches he knew perfectly well wouldn't be there. Nothing could scratch or dent vibranium, except maybe for Thor's hammer, but old habits died hard. You looked after your equipment.
"This morning," Tony began, "before A.I.M. sent us the ultimatum, I was going to ask..." he trailed off, then began again, "They finished construction on the bottom floor of the mansion yesterday. The decorators haven't been there yet, and there's still construction work going on in the east wing and on the roof, but it's livable again. If you don't mind a little hammering in the background, I mean."
Suddenly, A.I.M., the crowd of reporters filling Times Square, the Fox news helicopter overhead, and the police officers who wanted Steve to come down to the station and discuss A.I.M.'s explosives with their bomb squad seemed like minor annoyances.
"I'm already packed," he said. "When do you want to move in?"
The plane's wheels hit the runway with a jolt, and the malevolent force Wanda had sensed lurking in the corners of her mind rushed in like water filling a bowl.
"At last," the parody of Agatha's voice sighed inside her head. "We are close; I can feel it. Soon I shall be free. Soon we will be free."
This time, Wanda could hear the flaws in its façade, the open malevolence that Agatha Harkness had never possessed, and wondered how it had ever fooled her.
Something about it felt familiar, however, and not simply because it was mimicking Agatha's voice. As if she had known it her whole life, as if—
Chthon.
Wanda had thought there was nothing left inside of her to throw up, but now she found herself forcing down a fresh surge of nausea. Of course it was Chthon. Who else would have brought her to Mount Wundagore? What else would be capable of warping and controlling her powers so completely?
He hadn't been able to influence her as strongly during the flight because the plane had been too far from the earth, where he was bound. Now that they had landed again, and she was back on solid ground...
Her mind was still her own, but for how long?
She had to act now, find a way to stop him, to break free. Now, before he erased her again.
The plane came to a stop just as she completed the thought, and a blandly pleasant female voice crackled over the intercom, telling passengers that the plane had completed taxiing, and they were now permitted to unfasten their seat belts and proceed to the exits.
Without any input from her, Wanda's hands began unfastening her seatbelt, and she found herself collecting her coat and a carry-on bag she didn't remember packing, and standing.
The blonde flight attendant from earlier was standing by the closest cabin door, bidding passengers farewell with a practiced smile. "Are you all right?" she asked Wanda, halting her just feet away from the exit. Somehow, her eyes managed to convey a frown despite the unfaltering curve of her lips.
'No,' Wanda wanted to say. 'No, I'm not. Help me, please.'
"Fine. I get airsick sometimes, especially on long flights. But thank you for your concern."
Then she turned and left the plane, her feet moving steadily down the ramp despite her desperate efforts to stop, to turn around, to exert any kind of control over her own body. She couldn't even twitch her fingers.
Chthon moved her through customs like a puppet, speaking through her mouth and posing her limbs as if she were a living doll. Hearing her own voice emerge from her lips, calm and polite and completely independent of herself, was utterly terrifying. She was helpless, the way she'd been when she had watched her children die, when she had watched Ultron tear Vision apart at Chthon's bidding. And yet she smiled, and told the customs officer how excited she was to be in New York, perfect sincerity in every word.
Nothing to declare, of course, because she hadn't brought any luggage beyond the carry-on bag. Mindless tools didn't need extra changes of clothing. Was she here for business or pleasure? Oh, pleasure, definitely. Just a brief sight-seeing trip. She had been looking forward to it for a very long time. Did he think she should visit the Empire State Building first, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art? She had never been to the British Museum, and she had heard that the Metropolitan's Egyptian collection was surpassed only by the British Museum and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
He stamped her passport and waved her through, and once again, her pleas for help remained silent, audible only inside her own head.
Chthon took her to a taxi, then onto the subway – the 4/5 line, traveling downtown. When the train passed through the two stops closest to the Avengers Mansion, Wanda was frozen in her seat; she couldn't so much as turn her head unless Chthon wanted her to.
The Mansion might not even still be there. Her memories after Chthon had begun to control her were vague, but the image of the Mansion burning was sharp and clear. Chthon had used Jack of Hearts' body to destroy it, killing Scott Lang in the process.
Scott's little girl would be what, now? Fourteen? Wanda could remember when Cassie had been seven, a tiny blonde girl in an over-sized Avengers t-shirt who had thought having a superhero for a father was the coolest thing in the world. She had collected insects in jars and kept them by her bed.
She got off the subway in midtown, emerging onto the street to see a familiar cathedral spire visible a few blocks away. The giant cross that topped St. Margaret's stood out starkly against the pale violet of the evening sky.
What did Chthon want in Hell's Kitchen?
"At last," he sighed, not bothering to mimic Agatha's voice this time. "Such power. I will be bound no longer."
Wanda could feel it as well, a faint but distinct aura of chaos magic that emanated from the church. Whatever it was, Chthon planned to use it to break free from his prison, probably killing her in the process. Once he was free, there would be no way to stop him. Chthon was an elder god, one of the primal forces of the universe; no one on earth had the power to defeat him in open battle.
'No,' she thought, throwing all the force of her will at the thought of not moving, of stopping, of turning around – of doing anything other than what she did, which was to walk right up to where St. Margaret's massive wooden doors stood open and enter the cathedral. She didn't even stumble on the threshold, despite the evil she carried inside her.
It didn't seem right that an evil as great as Chthon could walk into a church so easily; there ought to have been a barrier across the threshold, to keep the likes of her out of here.
Inside, the chaos magic that had been only faintly detectable from the street was a swirling miasma, almost visible. It seemed to envelope her as she walked closer to the high altar, seeping into every pore of her body. Unlike Chthon's power, it felt clean, pure.
If he touched it, he would twist it to his will the same way he had used and twisted her.
Another step, and she was at the altar rail. She grabbed for it, desperate to stop herself, and felt a jolt of surprise and stomach-twisting relief when her fingers closed around the polished metal. She tightened her grip until it hurt, her knuckles turning white.
She had moved her hand. Because she chose to, not because Chthon had made her. His control must be slipping, or maybe the power that filled the cathedral nave was interfering with it. It didn't matter – all that mattered was the tiny sliver of freedom it gave her.
"No," she forced out, her voice sounding rough and strangled. The word hurt her throat. "No. I will not be your tool."
"What treachery is this?" Chthon's voice boomed in her head, making the world flash red and black for a moment. "You have been my tool since the hour of your birth. It is for this that I made you. Do not fight your destiny. Step forward and claim the spear. Set me free, and you will rule the world as my child."
The people who wanted to use her for their own purposes always sounded the same in the end. "I am Django Maximoff's daughter. Not yours. Not Magneto's."
Her own power was out of reach, still locked away in whatever spell Chthon had tied it up in, but the cathedral was full of chaos magic, magic that didn't belong to Chthon and therefore couldn't be controlled by him. Wanda closed her eyes and grabbed desperately for it, reaching toward the altar with her free hand.
It was like laying her hands on a live electrical wire. Power poured through her like fire, raw and uncontrolled, and only the hard-won control of years kept her from being swept away by it.
Chthon reached for it, his presence like a vast weight in her head.
"No," she hissed again, through gritted teeth, as her knees hit the stone floor. She could feel sweat breaking out along her spine, hear her teeth grinding together.
She lashed out at him with the borrowed magic, feeling a surge of triumph at the pained howl that echoed in her skull, and wrenched her own powers free of the spell that bound them. Reality rippled around her, something that had been warped out of true snapping back into place. The cathedral's massive pipe organ rang like a struck gong, a great chord of sound that echoed discordantly off the stone walls and high, vaulted ceiling.
Her powers flooded back into her, and she staggered to her feet, slamming up magical shields the way Agatha – the real Agatha – had taught her. "Get out of my head," she snarled. "And stay out."
She took a step forward, then grabbed at the altar rail again as the floor lurched under her feet. She could still hear Chthon's whispering, a faint susurrus of sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was too indistinct to make out words, but the volume rose and fell in waves, as if Chthon were alternately shouting and cajoling.
The idea of letting him back inside her made her feel ill.
Wanda straightened, slowly uncurling her fingers from the brass rail and stepped away from it. She could feel cold sweat prickling up and down her sides, sticking her clothing to her skin. She wouldn't be able to hold him out for long – driving him out in the first place had already exhausted her.
She needed help.
She turned on her heel and began to walk toward the doors at a slow, measured pace. It was foolish to fear that Chthon would chase her if she ran – he was an incorporeal demon, not a lion or a wolf or some childhood boogyman. Still, running would call attention to herself, and she had probably already drawn enough of that. Everyone in two block's radius had probably heard the crashing chord from the pipe organ as it was, and drawing the attention of bystanders might give Chthon a chance to use Wanda's powers against them.
The Avengers Mansion was a good thirty blocks away, but if she took the subway – except that Chthon could probably reach her more easily underground, and if he did, she would be trapped in a metal tube with a dozen potential victims. And even if the Avengers Mansion were still standing, the rest of the Avengers had no magical abilities, no way to fight him. And no reason to help Wanda, or believe anything she told them.
The last time they had seen her, she had been insane, possessed, and bent on destroying them all. Going back there now would simply be handing Chthon a chance to finish what he had started, and she wasn't going to give him that chance.
If Doctor Strange hadn't been able to stop her...
Strange. She could go to Strange. The Sorcerer Supreme had faced Chthon before, and managed at the very least to fight him to a draw. Strange was the most powerful magician on Earth; if he couldn't help her, then she was beyond help. And even then, he would be able to do something. Cut off her access to her powers, maybe – it was possible to burn the mutant abilities out of someone. Sinister had done it – or even, if necessary, kill her.
Steve, in that position, wouldn't be willing to— Except that Steve was dead. Tony or Hank might be willing to kill her for the greater good, but Clint, Jan, Simon? They would want to save her at all costs, and there were some costs that she wasn't willing to pay.
Chthon would not use her to harm anyone else she loved. Better to lived maimed and shattered, a shadow of her former self, than be a mindless puppet of evil. Better, if it came to it, not to live at all.
Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum was only a twenty minute walk from Hell's Kitchen. Thirty minutes, in heels. She could be at his door before full dark. Good. Chthon might be more powerful after dark.
Once she was out of sight of the cathedral, she started to walk faster.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven
We are posting this as a WiP. The first 200 or so pages of the fic are finished and beta-ed, but the final third or so is still being written. We'll post one chapter every three weeks until the whole thing is done, and then switch to posting a lot closer together.
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"A home she had destroyed.
*add some kind of physical detail here*"
I think this is a leftover beta note?
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Great to have you guys back.
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I love Wanda's flashbacks, her reactions to aTony, Clint, Vision, her thinking of Cassie... I think I like Cthon being completely responsible for the sudden 'reality bending' powers (Atleast I think, that's what you're going for?)
Love that it's not all okay with Tony and Thor (though I hope we find out more bout what actually happened in that first meeting...) And that the public hasn't gone back to magically trusting them again... (The way they seem to have in canon... <_<; The amazing marvel sheeple....) Anyway, awesomeness is awesome! Can't wait for more! :D
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That is definitely what we're going for. Even putting aside the whole 'ovaries + power = crazy' vibe of Disassembled, the fact that Wanda's powers do not work that way, and never have was really annoying.
Love that it's not all okay with Tony and Thor (though I hope we find out more bout what actually happened in that first meeting...)
Yeah, it's gonna take Thor a while to get over the evil-clone thing. He's kind of got issues with people he thinks of as brothers-in-arms betraying him.
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Yay for Wanda (Poor Wanda, hope they can help her) and yay for Thor (hope he'll start trying to interact with Tony and Hank, even if it means fighting)
As was already said it's great that the problems caused by registration and civil wr haven't miraculously gone away. Is the point of that arc mending the cracs in the Avenger family?
Anyway, It's going to be a long three weeks. ^_^
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Yeah, the original goal of RR&R was to get rid of the SHRA and fix Civil War/Steve being dead, but then we realized that the fixit wasn't really complete unless we fixed Disassembled, too.
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Actually that sounds kinda terrible ... good luck getting out of this one.
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Need that now.
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OT: I know your icon is actually John Constantine/some lucky dude and not Roy Harper kissing a shocked Harry Osborn, but that's what I think of every time I see it.
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WHAT BROUGHT THIS INTERESTING IDEA ON?
Also, the dude in the picture is actually a spoof of Bruce Wayne ;) An evil, gay spoof, whose name is a play on the "Stately Wayne Manor"
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If you're interested in seeing context to my icon, I can post scans. Just offering.
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When I saw this last night, I made a noise kind of like that. My pets were worried.
Oh, Wanda. D: Oh Tony and Thor. D:I love what you're doing with Wanda's story. It already makes more sense. And the team! The team is back together! HAPPY CLAPPING!
This has made my week, and it's only Monday!
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So when I saw this posted, I literally SQUEED!! And did the Snoopy dance.
Lovely. I love how you guys write the Avengers, and Tony and Steve's relationship is progressing wonderfully. Thor post-civil war totally rocks; of course it's going to take tons of time to repair their friendship. And Wanda-- I can't wait to see where her story goes here.
I think it was your first story in this series that also made me ship Bucky/Sharon, which now makes so much sense to me that I'm upset it's not canon. And I even like Sharon and Steve in the comics...
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I really like what you're doing with Wanda. I want to give her all of the hugs ever.
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re: Reassembled
It feels like I'm reading the classic comics.
...and Wanda's voice is vivid, I felt horrified too.
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...Also, I hate to be a bother, but the format for this chapter is .... missing? I *will* struggle through the three enormously-big paragraphs that make up the entirety of chapter one if I must, but ... I'd like to request some line breaks? If you've got time? Please?
*huge hugs*
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