I watched, fascinated, as the Wakandan doctor deftly manipulated the holographic representation of the inside of my hand, directing the vibranium nanotech as it reattached my fingers. It was surprising just how simple it all looked, given what was happening beneath the surface. While it might not have looked like it, he was performing a series of complex microsurgeries, reattaching nerves and tendons with impossibly small sutures and glues.
My index and middle fingers had been saved, thankfully, but they hadn’t been able to recover the tip of my ring finger. I was torn between being happy and relieved that my hand wasn’t going to be permanently crippled—provided there were no unexpected complications, at least—while also feeling a bit weird that there was literally a piece of me still missing.
There was no other permanent damage. I didn’t know what the usual recovery times for Wakandan miracle tech were, but I was pretty sure that in a normal scenario I’d be in for months of physical therapy and might never regain full sensation and functionality in those fingers. However, thanks to the Heart-Shaped Herb, it was more likely to only be a day—two or three at the absolute most—before my injuries were completely healed and I was back to a hundred per cent (…if you didn’t count my missing fingertip). This apparently wasn’t the first time someone with Bast’s blessing had had a severed finger reattached and the doctor seemed fairly confident what the likely prognosis was. Apparently, not only should I regain full use of my fingers within a day or so, but I wasn’t even likely to scar particularly badly.
The stab wound that had gone right through me had missed all my vital organs—'All of them?!’ I mentally quoted to myself with a smile—and would also be basically healed overnight. Eliza had more than likely intentionally been dragging things out, and with the Herb I apparently probably wouldn’t have even bled out from it. And T’Challa had expected me to give this up? No, I was never going to relinquish the Herb, no matter how personally affronted he was by that and how much it continued to strain my relations with Wakanda. It was proving far too integral to my continued survival to even consider otherwise.
After Eliza had been defeated and the situation with Shuri had been defused, everything had sort of passed by in a blur. Soon after, a portal had sparked into being and I had honestly never been happier to see the familiar, spiralling orange threads of sorcerous magic. Steve was first through, followed closely behind by the Ancient One and Wong. All of them looked terrible—between the Hand, the Iron Legion, and Eliza’s Extreme Taskmasters, everyone had been put through the wringer.
Everyone else who hadn’t managed to follow after Eliza and I—Bucky, Natasha, Mordo and Okoye—had all been injured or incapacitated during the fight at the warehouse and had had to be evacuated. Apparently, the Hulk had been slowed down quite a bit too, after being blinded temporarily by a point-blank Extremis explosion, but his eyes had repaired themselves pretty quickly.
We pointed out the building that Tony had been buried under and the Ancient One excavated it, using a few precise spells to levitate and move the rubble out of the way. His armour had saved him, as I’d expected—he was injured, but wasn’t in notably worse shape than anyone else. His suit was basically a complete wreck, though, and he’d essentially had to be cut out of it. Killmonger had been immediately secured by Dora Milaje on arrival back at the Great Mound and escorted away—I was pretty sure he’d be standing trial for treason and T’Challa’s attempted murder. I suspected we wouldn’t be seeing him again.
I lay back contentedly and basked in the feeling of being utterly pain-free as the nanotech finished off its work. Wakanda had the best drugs. I felt completely lucid, if a little bit like I was going to go floating away. It was pleasantly like astral projecting. I was fully in control, just… lighter than air. Once the Wakandan doctor was done inspecting the work that had been done on me, my hand was tightly bound with bandages that went rigid after application, so I wouldn’t be able to accidentally aggravate it while it healed. That done, a nurse trundled me out of surgery and into the room that was being used for our team members’ post‑op recovery.
Pietro was there waiting, pacing up and down the length of the room, a comfortingly familiar ball of nervous energy. He’d been mostly fine; the hit he’d taken had looked worse than it actually was. Natasha was there, too, sitting off to one side next to another bed occupied by a sleeping Clint—she perked up as well when she saw me.
Clint… his entire right arm below the shoulder was gone. It had essentially been completely obliterated by Eliza. Unlike with me, there was nothing left that could be reattached. He was permanently crippled, which made me feel just that little bit worse about my own good fortune. If I’d been a little stronger, a little faster… maybe that wouldn’t have happened. There was nothing I could do about it now, though. With any luck, he’d hopefully at least be able to score a cool robot arm like Bucky’s. The room’s final other occupant, also currently either asleep or unconscious post-surgery, was Mordo. The sorcerer had been badly burnt at the periphery of an Extremis explosion—extensive skin graft badly—and was heavily swathed in bandages while they took.
Once the nurse had slid my bed into place Pietro came over immediately, with Nat quickly following after him. My brother lunged in and hugged me—I laughed for a brief moment before a dull spike of pain shooting through my ribcage at the motion. “Ow! Okay! Off!” I wheezed.
“Sorry.” Pietro pulled back, a wide grin plastered across his face.
“Hey,” Nat said, a warm smile crinkling her cheeks. “You had us worried there, for a moment.”
“Eh,” I responded, returning the smile. “You know me. I can be pretty dramatic sometimes.”
Pietro was looking at my bandaged hand. “How are your fingers?” he asked, his brow creasing slightly.
“All good—well, the two we found, at least. I probably won’t be playing the piano for the next few days, but they’ll supposedly heal quickly.”
He let out a huff of air. “I freaked out a bit, when I woke up,” he confessed. “I thought maybe…”
“That’s fair. I was pretty sure I was going to die, too,” I said. “But then I thought to myself ‘I can’t die; I didn’t get to tell Pietro he’s an idiot one last time’.”
Pietro rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling. Nat hesitated, fidgeting slightly, before she reached down and picked up my uninjured hand. She squeezed my fingers gently, and I squeezed hers back. A moment later, she tucked something cold and metallic into my palm. My eyes flicked down to see what it was and I let out a small snort of amusement. My sling ring.
“Don’t tell the Ancient One we found that,” Nat said, a small smile quirked the corner of her lips. “Steve told her he thought Eliza must have destroyed it after she cut it off you.”
“Did he now?” I murmured, looking down at the relic for a moment before closing my fist tightly around it. I admit, I’d been worried that I wasn’t going to be getting it back again. “Speaking of fingers… the Hand?”
“The Hand’s done,” she said. “All the Fingers were killed in the attack.”
Huh. I’d honestly kind of expected Gao or Reid to get away, at least. “All of them? You’re sure? We have all five bodies?”
Pietro let out a soft snort of satisfied amusement. “Three and a half,” he said.
I looked back at Nat, tilting my head questioningly. “We’ll do a proper team debrief—fill everyone in on what happened for the bits they missed—but long story short Murakami and Sowande got caught in an Extremis detonation,” she explained. “There wasn’t much left of them.”
“The witch didn’t get away either, right?” I asked. “Steve said something about a crash.” Given the way that the support platform had fallen out of the sky, my assumption was that Eliza had been actively piloting both vehicles when Wanda‑3 had taken her down.
Nat nodded. “Basically immediately after Eliza went out. Some sort of explosive device went off in the cabin, too. We’re still not sure exactly what happened, but our best theory is that Beck had some sort of explosive collar on him. He was killed instantly. The witch was more intact, but she’s dead too. We’re not sure if the explosion or the crash got her.”
Honestly, I felt a little sorry for Quentin Beck. I mean, he became a villain eventually in the original timeline, but this version of him hadn’t actually done anything yet. He was just some guy who worked for Stark Industries, pressed into the service of a homicidal AI, and now he was just… dead. It felt a bit senseless.
“She had the book and the sceptre with her,” Pietro added. “The Ancient One took them.”
“We’ve been in contact with Nick, too,” Natasha said, looking pensive. “He’s been keeping an eye on things with Pym. Apparently Ghost is with them now, which explains why she wasn’t at the warehouse.”
“That makes sense, I guess. Eliza would have promised her a cure in exchange for her help. They won’t have had time to build a quantum tunnel yet, so she’ll probably stay put, and if she’s already getting what she wants, she’s probably not an immediate threat.”
Nat nodded. “We’ll need to address it at some point. Wakanda want to go after her, but it’s not something we need to deal with right away.”
The Hand was wrapped up. The book and sceptre had been recovered. We had eyes on Ghost. It was really starting to look like there were no loose ends, but I supposed we wouldn’t be completely sure until Tony and Pepper did a full investigation into what Eliza had Stark Industries doing. Even then, there was always a possibility that we’d missed something… “We don’t have any pictures of the witch, do we?” I asked suddenly. “I didn’t recognise her, but I honestly didn’t get that good a look at her.”
Nat nodded, turning and fishing a tablet out of a slim messenger bag she had slung over her shoulder. She tapped at the screen for a moment before handing it to me. I stared at the prone woman, searching her features, hoping for some spark of recognition. She looked… peaceful in death. Her eyes were closed. If not for the ugly, bloody wound at her temple, it would have been easy to imagine she was just sleeping. After a few more seconds, I shook my head and handed the tablet back to Nat.
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“I have no idea who she is,” I said. Just another random casualty of Eliza’s plots, I supposed. A mystery that might never be solved.
“Who cares?” Pietro said dismissively. “She was helping Eliza and now she’s dead.”
I shook my head. “I don’t like not knowing. I’m used to knowing.”
“Well, I suppose you’ll just have to get used to dealing with things like this like everybody else does,” Nat said, her tone lightly teasing. “Do things the old-fashioned way, instead of relying on your visions.”
“What’s next?” I asked.
“I was going to go see Steve,” Nat said. “I think he was talking to T’Challa about you.”
“Ugh. Should I come, or…?”
“Do you want to come?”
I grinned. “I mean, always, but I don’t think my bits are in any condition for playtime right now,” I said. “Give me a couple of days.” Pietro pretended to gag, his face twisting in disgust.
“Well, at least you’re getting back to your usual self,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes and letting out a small chuckle. “It might be better if you leave things to Steve and I. You seem to have a special talent for aggravating the royals.”
As if summoned by our conversation, the door to the room slid open and Steve and T’Challa entered, flanked by a pair of Dora Milaje acting as an honour guard. “Speak of the devil.” I propped myself up a bit more so I could see everyone properly. “T’Challa,” I said, a little tentatively. “How’s Shuri?”
“Angry. Awake and unhurt, but angry.”
“Sorry.”
“I…” he hesitated, his jaw working silently for a moment as he considered his words. “Understand why you thought you had to do what you did.”
“So… no hard feelings?”
His expression and lack of an immediate response answered that for me. After an awkward moment of silence, Steve cleared his throat. “We just came from a discussion with the king. About your trial,” he said, looking between Pietro and I. I groaned, dropping my head back and closing my eyes for a moment.
“I spoke to my father about what I witnessed in San Francisco,” T’Challa started slowly. “With the AI… and with my cousin.”
I shook my head. “You saved me, too. I think that makes us just about even. I mean, ‘thanks for not betraying us and killing me’ is sort of putting the bar in the basement, isn’t it?”
“King T’Chaka is a reasonable man. He knows you aren’t Wakanda’s enemies,” Steve interjected. “You’ve demonstrated that pretty definitively, I think.”
T’Challa paused, once again seeming to pick his words carefully. “The king has decreed that your time imprisoned in the Great Mound, assisting Wakanda against the AI, and exposing N’Jadaka’s schemes, has been sufficient to show your contrition.”
“Time served?” Nat asked, a note of surprise in her tone.
“However,” the Wakandan prince continued, looking mildly annoyed at the interruption. “The two of you are to be banished from our country, never to return.”
“Unless there’s another global threat,” Steve added. T’Challa shot him a warning look, but didn’t contradict him.
I blinked. That was unexpected. After how everything always seemed to go against me, I’d honestly been expecting worse. “That… is a damn good deal. I’ll take that deal.”
“There is one other thing I want to say,” T’Challa said, fixing me with an unnervingly intense look. There was a long, pregnant silence as he searched my features for something before he spoke again. “Do not make me regret saving you.” His tone was serious.
“I’ll try,” I said, nodding slowly.
With that, the Wakandan prince turned and left, his honour guard trailing behind him. It didn’t look like he was kicking us out of the country right that exact instant, which was nice, but the moment Clint was awake and the rest of the Avengers were ready to move, I’d be gone. I didn’t want to test his patience.
Steve and Nat left shortly thereafter, to catch up with the others and wrap up any remaining small matters with Wakanda, and while they were gone the Ancient One came to collect Mordo. She opened a portal right there in the recovery room, a pair of red-robed sorcerers stepping through to help transfer the injured sorcerer to a comfortable-looking bed on the other side, somewhere in Kamar-taj.
Once he was through, the Ancient One glanced in my direction, catching me watching them. She paused, then dismissed her portal and started toward me. I must have visibly tensed, because she held up her hand briefly in a peaceful gesture, stopping a comfortable distance from the side of my bed.
“I wanted to thank you for your help,” she said mildly.
“Sure… and not to ask me, once again, if I wouldn’t mind terribly being banished back from whence I came?”
A smile quirked the corner of the sorcerer’s mouth. “It may have crossed my mind,” she confessed. “But as I said, our truce stands for the time being. Perhaps… perhaps we will even work together again. Kaecilius still plots against Kamar-taj. It may be beneficial to continue our relations with the Avengers.”
“Good,” I said, nodding. “You should keep in contact with Wakanda, too. This is… this is what I wanted. What I was trying to do. Start an alliance strong enough to handle what’s coming.” Despite my words, I frowned as I spoke, a brief shadow passing across my features.
The Ancient One caught my expression. “Is something wrong?” she asked, tilting her head curiously.
I grunted noncommittally and shook my head. Something was bugging me, but it was hard to articulate. I tried anyway. “Something about this isn’t sitting right with me. ‘Things rhyme’, you said, which is true enough. Three fights against Ultron, three against Eliza. Their births, in Avengers Tower. The second fight over resources. Vibranium. The third fight against Ultron was a big one, too, and there are definitely similarities—the army of drones—but he was going to wipe out humanity. We stopped him from basically ending the world. With Eliza… what? There wasn’t any great big end planned. No grand scheme that we foiled.” I sighed, shaking my head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing. I just… I can’t help feeling like there’s something that we missed.”
--
Agatha Harkness let out a small sigh, her shoulders relaxing. Her accommodations at Eliza’s warehouse hadn’t been uncomfortable, but it really did feel good to be home.
The witch gestured and let go of the Darkhold, a minor expression of telekinetic magic returning it to its stand on one of the tables on the edge of the stone chamber. A second flick of her hand sent the page she’d torn from the Book of Cagliostro floating through the air until it seemingly hit an invisible barrier between two pillars. Threads of Agatha’s purple lashed it in place, ready for her to examine it in greater detail at her leisure. The witch took a few steps forward into the centre of the underground chamber, her footsteps echoing hollowly as she looked around. Nothing was out of place; everything was exactly as she had left it.
Eliza was almost certainly dead. Agatha felt fairly confident about that—after the dragon flyer had gone down, there’d been no sign of any of her drones, no attempt at communication. The Avengers had beaten her, somehow. Wanda had beaten her.
As she acknowledged it in her head, Agatha was surprised to feel a small twinge of sadness. She let it sit in her chest, mulling over the feeling. Yes, she was definitely, actually a little sad that Eliza was gone. Not just for the loss of the potential path to power, either. Eliza had been… fun. It had been a long, long time since Agatha had been anything other than a loner; a covenless witch. At her own design, she never really spent an extended period of time with anyone. Not since Nicky—
Agatha took a deep breath, immediately pushing that thought away, her eyes starting to mist over slightly. Why’d she have to go and think about him? A hand went up and rubbed the locket at her throat.
Señor Scratchy—her familiar—hopped out of the shadows, cautiously approaching her feet. Agatha could sense that the demon-in-rabbit-form was worried she was annoyed with him, but she definitely wasn’t. “Hey there, mister,” she said, bending over to pick him up. The witch hunkered down in a half-kneeling crouch, tucking a hand under his chest to support him while his back legs rested on her leg. “Someone was a good boy while I was gone, weren’t you? Pulling yourself back together after what mean old Eliza did to you.”
She stroked his soft fur, then smooshed her face into the top of his head to give him a little kiss. He radiated contentment as the fingers of the hand supporting him gently scratched under his chin. Agatha paused for a moment, face still buried in his fur, and inhaled deeply. His scent was comforting.
Stupid sympathetic connections. This was why she didn’t like using them. It had been necessary to help reinforce Eliza’s trust in her and build up their relationship, but the problem with those sorts of connections were that they cut both ways.
Eliza had been fun. Now she was gone. Agatha would get over it.
Raising her head, she pondered what to do next. Before anything else, of course, she needed to be sure that the Ancient One wouldn’t be able to track the missing page from the Book of Cagliostro. She was hoping that they wouldn’t notice it was gone at all—they’d gotten the book back, so would they even check? If they did, would they even remember that Kaecilius had only ripped out two pages, not three? On the off chance that they did, she needed to make sure there wasn’t a trace remaining of whatever tracking magic the sorcerers had used to locate the book.
It really was a shame she’d had to ditch the Dark Sceptre, but she hadn’t had any other choice. As far as she could tell, Kamar-taj and Wanda still had no clue whatsoever that she’d ever even been involved, and she would very much prefer to keep it that way. They had only ever seen her while she was disguised as the Chinese girl, and they would have found her corpse in the crashed aircraft alongside the sceptre and book. Case closed, no loose ends, no need to look more deeply.
Absently, she lifted Señor Scratchy a little higher, squishing his head against the side of her chin as her fingers continued to give him scratchies.
Once she’d taken the time to make sure she couldn’t be tracked, though… “I think we need a bit of a break, after all of that,” she said, more to herself than to her familiar. It had been less than two weeks since Eliza had first abducted her, but it felt like it had been a lot longer. Maybe she’d have a look around and find another coven of suckers to run the Witches’ Road con on. A little time to decompress and relax would be good… Kill a few witches, get back into her usual groove, that sort of thing.
Then, once she had her head back in the game, she could use the page from the book to track down Kaecilius—as originally planned—and find out exactly what he was up to. Eliza had said that they had potentially months before Kaecilius made his move, but Agatha was still in the dark as to what he was actually trying to do. All she knew was that Eliza was convinced that, if the sorcerer succeeded, he would destroy the world.
The AI, of course, had been completely right about Agatha being motivated to put a stop to something like that… It was where she kept all her stuff, after all. Then again, depending on what exactly Kaecilius and his followers were planning, this could even be an opportunity. Wanda, the Avengers, and Kamar-taj were all aware of the threat that he posed and were already planning to try to stop him. She didn’t know what he had up his sleeve, but the odds were definitely stacked against him. Maybe she could capitalise on the situation. The power of the Scarlet Witch wasn’t quite out of her grasp just yet.
As she turned her head, Agatha noticed something on her shoulder and wrinkled her nose. Reaching up with her free hand, she plucked the small lump off her dress, holding it up between two fingers to examine it for a brief moment. A hard nodule of white—a fragment of bone—attached to a gelatinous grey and red lump. She pulled a face. Looks like she had missed cleaning off a tiny little chunk of Beck’s exploded skull and brain matter.
That had been traumatising. Not seeing Beck’s head explode when the collar around his neck had detonated—it was far from the first time Agatha had seen something like that—but the fact that it had happened without any warning! She’d been midsentence, right in the middle of telling Beck exactly what a whimpering, whiny little bitch he was being. Her mouth had been open. Ugh. So gross.
The witch clucked her tongue, lowering her hand to wave the grisly morsel in front of Señor Scratchy’s nose. He sniffed for a second, nose twitching furiously, before he eagerly chomped down on it, crunching the bone loudly between his teeth for a moment before he finished greedily gobbling it up. She petted him again, letting her hand drape itself entirely over his tiny head.
Agatha glanced over at the page from the Book of Cagliostro, still hanging suspended in threads of her purple. It’d keep for another fifteen minutes. Before she did anything else, she really needed a shower.