My heart leapt into my throat as Pietro and I looked at each other, eyes wide. “They’re knocking?” he asked incredulously.

“Uh, just a minute!” I called out, before lowering my voice and gesturing urgently. “We need to get the fuck out of here. We don’t need to fight them.” I wasn’t ready for this. How did they even find us? I wasn’t opposed to a one-on-one chat with Captain America—it would probably even be a really good idea—but he wouldn’t be alone, and it wouldn’t just be a chat. If it was the whole team, I was going to have a hell of a time convincing Pietro not to go on the attack.

Flinching back as if I’d struck him, Pietro’s face twisted in anger as he hissed back. “What do you mean we don’t need to fight them? If Stark is here…”

“I’m coming in,” Captain America announced, following by a crunch as he popped the lock on the door. Pietro and I backed up instinctively, settling into loose, ready stances as the door swung open. Slowly, deliberately, Steve Rogers walked into the room clad in his star-spangled body armour—shield held at the ready, eyeing us both warily. “Easy. Let’s have a conversation.”

My chest felt tight, my breathing starting to quicken. This wasn’t good. We were cornered—there was only one door to the apartment, which Cap was currently standing in front of. There was a window near me, but the curtains were drawn and I couldn’t see outside. If I were planning the Avengers’ approach here, I’d have at least one teammate outside, probably Iron Man or Hawkeye, to provide support if we tried to escape that way. Our only easy escape route would be a portal, and in close quarters it would be difficult to weave one without being interrupted. If I could even concentrate on it well enough while under fire—I was still a novice at creating them, after all.

“You know,” I said, holding out a hand toward Pietro to ward him off from initiating a fight. “Typically, it’s considered polite to wait for the door to be opened rather than breaking the lock.”

Captain America smiled lightly. “Apologies for being a bit forward, but under the circumstances I hope you can understand.”

The corner of my mouth tugged upward as I involuntarily returned the smile. This was Cap, after all. He was a good guy. The tightness in my chest loosened slightly as I looked at him. Steve cut an impressive figure in person; not just his physique and good looks, either, but there felt like there was a reassuring weight to his presence. I mean, the good looks and charisma definitely helped, but…

“Seriously?” Pietro hissed at me, shooting me a look.

I felt my cheeks turn pink. Okay, enough staring. I shot Pietro an annoyed look before turning back to the Avenger. “Okay, here we are.” I cleared my throat nervously. “You wanted to talk, so talk.”

He looked back and forth between the two of us. “When we took down Strucker, you didn’t fight us. You abandoned HYDRA and ran.”

“We did,” I said. “We were never loyal to HYDRA. We just wanted what they could offer us.”

“A chance to change the world. To protect your country,” Steve said, nodding. “I understand that more than most.”

“You understand nothing,” Pietro snorted, shaking his head. He was getting agitated, lightly bouncing on the balls of his feet. “You think you are the same as us? I’ve read about you. You were a volunteer. Another American glory hound, an eager little puppy signing up to ‘fight the good fight’. We did not ask for this.”

Steve relaxed his stance, letting his shield droop, trying to look less threatening. “You’re right. You didn’t. You lost your parents in the bombings. I’m sorry.”

“You think because you read our files you understand what we’ve been through?”

“No, I don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve lost people before, but not like you did.”

Pietro hesitated, seemingly expecting a different answer. I guess he’d expected the US’s poster boy to be more defensive and less understanding. I took the opportunity to interject—maybe we could clear this whole thing up right here, right now. If I could get Pietro to see that the Avengers were good guys… “Do you know who made those bombs? Who sold them?”

The Avenger only looked mildly discomfited by the question. “I can guess,” he hedged.

“We were ten years old,” Pietro said, his tone softening as he looked over at me. I nodded in encouragement. “Having dinner—the four of us. The first shell hits, two floors below, makes a hole in the floor.” He paused, shaking his head at the memory. “It’s big. Our parents go in. The whole building starts coming apart. I grab her, roll under the bed, and the second shell hits. But it doesn’t go off. It just… sits there in the rubble. Three feet from our faces. And on the side of the shell is painted one word.”

There was a moment of subdued silence, then Captain America answered Pietro’s unspoken question. “Stark.” I could see the understanding in his face, the realisation that—for the Maximoffs—this had never been about HYDRA, or our country, or changing the world. Not really.

Pietro nodded. “We were trapped for two days.”

Taking a deep breath, I met Steve’s eyes and pictured in my mind when the twins had explained this to Ultron in the original timeline. It felt important, somehow, that I get the wording right. “Every effort to save us, every shift in the bricks, we think ‘this will set it off’. We waited for two days for Tony Stark to kill us.”

“We know what he is,” Pietro said, venom rising in his tone again. “And we know what you are.”

Captain America was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. “Killing Tony Stark won’t make things right. It won’t undo what was done to you, or bring back your parents. It won’t even make you feel better.”

“I don’t care,” Pietro said simply.

“…I understand. We still don’t need to fight,” Steve said, wisely changing tack. Unpicking the knot that was Pietro’s hatred of Tony Stark was not going to be the work of one conversation. “We’re only here for the sceptre. It doesn’t belong to you. If you hand it over, we’ll leave you be.”

Pietro just snorted. “What, we hand it over and you just walk away? That easy?”

“That easy.”

Pietro glanced at me and shook his head, a dubious expression on his face. I gestured toward the bed. “May I?”

I waited for Captain America to nod a confirmation before wisps of red energy played across my fingers, slipping under the bed and retrieving the discarded sceptre. I floated it through the air toward him and he tentatively reached out a hand, taking it from my telekinetic grasp. He took in the head of the artifact where the power source had been, shards of blue crystal still clinging to the metal, then looked back at me questioningly.

“It, uh, broke,” I said, looking a little sheepish. “So, if that’s everything, we’ll just be on our way?”

“The power source?”

“Gone. Destroyed,” I lied again, then inhaled sharply as I made the connection. “Oh! That’s how you found us. Gamma radiation. I didn’t think… anyway. Uh, the sceptre gave Pietro and I our powers, so, if you’ve detected any stray radiation, it’s probably just us.” I kicked myself internally; that wasn’t how that worked, I was pretty sure they knew that that wasn’t how it worked, and saying it like that was incredibly suspicious. I’d never been the best liar.

“That’s a nice necklace.”

I froze. “Thanks. My brother gave it to me.” Okay, yeah, the jig was up. Iron Man was probably actively scanning the room right now and feeding him information through his earpiece.

“May I see it?”

“Uh, no. It’s… personal?”

Steve gave me a disappointed look and I dropped my eyes to the floor, unable to meet his gaze. It was weird how actually bad it felt to disappoint Captain America. “Wanda, please. I understand why you don’t trust us, but we can’t let you keep it. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m sorry.” It didn’t look like we were going to get out of this cleanly after all. “I’d be much happier talking about this in a more neutral setting, one where you don’t have an entire team ready to pounce on us the moment we look like we’re not going to cooperate.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said softly. “The two of you can still just walk away from this.”

Pietro smirked. “Oh, we will.”

In the time it took for me to wince at that comment, he was already a blur. I didn’t bother trying to track his movement properly, trusting him to take down Captain America and hopefully anyone else lurking in the hallway outside. Instead, guessing that we were almost certainly surrounded, I turned and flung out both arms, summoning a curtain of chaos magic between me and the window. A split second later, my decision was vindicated when twin repulsor blasts utterly obliterated the window and surrounding wall—my shield buckled slightly as it was pelted with a rain of debris, but held.

Through gaps in the red wisps of energy, I could see Iron Man hovering outside, red-and-gold armoured hands extended toward the building, palms still glowing. Where were the others? Thor and Black Widow would almost certainly be in the building, potentially right outside of the door that Pietro had just darted through. Hawkeye might be there, or he might have an overwatch position on the roof across the street. Hulk? No, Banner wouldn’t be too close, they wouldn’t have called in a Code Green just yet.

By the time I looked back at the room, Pietro had darted out into the hallway and Captain America was only just starting to unsteadily pull himself back to his feet. I skittered over to him, one hand wrapped around the locket containing the Mind Stone while the other moved to his temple, his eyes briefly glowing red with chaos magic as I reached into his head.

There was a whine of repulsors as Iron Man shredded my shield with another double-strength blast then swooped inside and aimed his hands toward me. “Alright kid, step away from the Cap, hands where I can see them.”

I obeyed, raising both hands above my head in a gesture of surrender. Glancing over at Captain America, I nodded my head toward Iron Man and twitched the fingers of one hand, massaging the connection I’d just established with his mind. “Quick, HYDRA stole one of Tony’s suits!”

Stark barely had enough time to say ‘what?’ before the vibranium shield bounced off his faceplate with a satisfying whunk, sending him reeling backwards in midair. I ducked past Captain America as he lunged forward to continue the attack, taking just enough time to scoop up my notebook from where it had fallen before running out into the hallway. Pietro was standing over Black Widow and Hawkeye, both heroes seemingly unconscious. No sign of Thor, surprisingly. I didn’t stop, holding out my hands as I ran, trying not to lose my grip on my notebook as I gestured.

I focused on a memory, reasoning it didn’t really matter where we went, so long as it was something I could call up quickly. Red sparks threaded into a portal, energy boiling off the edges of the magical gateway as it appeared at the end of the hallway. “Go!” I yelled, and Pietro ducked through it a few steps ahead of me.

Something slapped my ankle and suddenly every muscle in my body simultaneously seized up and turned to jelly, notebook dropping from my nerveless fingers as I collapsed mid-step. Falling forward, I freaked out internally a bit when my face missed the edge of my escape portal by maybe an inch, a split-second before it winked out of existence. Sprawled out on my side, my muscles spasming painfully, I managed to twist my head to look down at what had tagged me and locked eyes with Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow. She’d managed to pull herself upright enough to hit me with her wrist-mounted stun gun thing.

Incongruously, my heart lifted slightly at the determined look on her face. I really didn’t want to be fighting her. Nat had been one of my favourite characters, alongside Wanda, and her sacrifice to retrieve the Soul Stone had been yet another disappointing waste. One more thing I was determined to avert.

Dragging herself over to me, Nat grabbed my hip roughly with one hand and flipped me over onto my stomach. My face bounced off the tacky patterned carpet and I grunted in protest, desperately trying to get any of my muscles to respond. While I struggled, she clambered on top of me—straddling my ass—and grabbed my wrists, pulling them back to bind them with what I assumed was a zip-tie. Choking out a laugh, I grumbled half to her, half to myself, “Black Widow on top of me, tying me up. I think I had a dream like this once.”

Despite the situation, I was gratified to hear a small snort of amusement from behind me. “Then be a good girl for me and stay put,” she said offhandedly as she double-checked to make sure my hands were secure. “Tony? Steve? There was some sort of… portal. The brother’s gone, I’ve got the sister.”

“When you put it like that, I wish I could,” I said, focusing on my hands. My muscles weren’t seizing up as badly now and feeling was starting to return to them. I wiggled my fingers.

I heard furniture smashing and several muffled clangs coming from the room we’d just exited, then felt Black Widow shift on top of me. “Steve, stand down, you’ve been compromised.”

A few feet from me, Clint Barton groaned in pain, rolling himself onto his back. “Did anyone get the number of that truck?” he sighed, reaching up to rub his head with one hand.

I took a few deep breaths, focusing my mind, then exhaled as I grasped the wellspring of power within me. The locket containing the Mind Stone was digging sharply into my collarbone—I tapped into it, tiny threads of chaos magic weaving around me. My consciousness bloomed outward, expanding just far enough for me to reach into Black Widow’s mind, and I seized control, forcing her to raise her arm and shoot Hawkeye with her stun gun.

She blinked, confused by what had just happened, and I astrally projected, exiting my body backwards and passing invisibly through her. Summoning energy to my astral hands, I blasted her full in the back with a bolt of chaos magic, sending her tumbling off me to land in a heap on top of Clint. Looking down at my bound body, I telekinetically snapped the zip-tie binding my wrists with a sharp gesture, then sunk back down into myself.

I pulled myself to my feet, legs still a bit shaky, as I surveyed the situation. Black Widow and Hawkeye were hopefully down for the count. Still no sign of Thor or Banner at all—were they just not here? Recovering my notebook from where it had fallen, I almost didn’t catch the change in the noises coming from the next room. Turning, I threw up a shield at the same time as the whine of a repulsor signalled Iron Man stepping around the corner.

The shield held, giving me enough time to lash out with a torrent of telekinetic power. I didn’t bother trying to brute force the Iron Man suit, even though I thought I probably could—instead, I sent tendrils of power into it, infiltrating every gap and crevice, and started gesturing rapidly. Stark jerked to one side as he took a step forward, hand raised, but the glow of the repulsor in his palm died abruptly as he tried to fire it again. A small micromissile unit popped out of his shoulder, then sparked and drooped impotently instead of firing. He paused. “Alright, lady, you’re really starting to piss me off.”

I didn’t stop, backpedalling rapidly, flicking my fingers to randomly tear at the electronics inside his suit, doing as much damage as I could. Giving up on his weapon systems, Stark tried lunging forward to try to grab me, but his movements were jerky and slow and I managed to stay ahead of him. Thrusting out a hand, I caught the suit in a web of telekinetic energy. He strained against it, servos whirring and shorting out. I tilted my head to the side, a slight smile touching my lips. “Performance issues, Stark?”

“This usually never happens,” he quipped back, struggling to point a hand toward me. I gestured and his arm was flung out to the side just as a burst of white—fire suppressant?—burst from it, painting the hallway wall instead of my face. “Uh. I’m sorry.”

Oh god, that was perfect, I needed something… something about premature ejaculation? No, that didn’t work. It was on the tip of my tongue. Fuck. Nope, I didn’t have anything. I closed my fist slowly, annoyed that I hadn’t come up with a good line, causing some of his armour plates to buckle alarmingly before I eased off the pressure and sighed. “We don’t have to be enemies, Stark. I don’t want to fight you.”

“Gonna be honest, you’re not doing a real good job demonstrating that.”

I frowned, annoyed. “I’ve been doing the best I can. You’re the ones that came after us.” I gestured to the hallway. “You’re extremely lucky my brother was sent away, otherwise you’d be dead right now.”

“Do you see how, when you say things like that, it does sound like we’re actually enemies?”

“Don’t come after us again. When we’re ready, we’ll come to you.”

“Again, sounding real enemy-like here.”

I sighed, then flicked my hand to the side like I was backhanding a fly that was buzzing in my face. Iron Man was flung sideways, smashing cleanly through the flimsy wall and out of sight. I didn’t wait for him to recover, focusing for a moment before opening another portal.

Pietro was by my side almost instantly, eyes wide and full of worry. “Are you okay? I thought…”

“I’m fine, let’s go.” I said, already halfway through the portal. Once we were both safely on the other side, I dismissed it with a curt gesture and leant my head against the cool stone wall, breathing heavily. We were safe, for now. That had been close. Too close. I’d underestimated how easily the Avengers would be able to find us.

“We’re not staying here long, right?” Pietro asked hesitantly.

I shook my head, raising my head to look around. “I’ll open another in a moment, just catching my breath.”

The silent walls of the HYDRA research base loomed large around us. We were standing in one of the exterior courtyards—one that I knew extremely well. This was the only place I thought I could focus on well enough to open a portal to quickly, with minimal chance of being publicly observed, but I really did not want to linger here. Too many bad memories.

I was already starting to feel trapped by the high stone walls encircling us, even knowing that HYDRA were long gone and the Avengers were a decent distance away. I had no doubt that there were sensors or cameras that would alert the Sokovian authorities to our presence, but I didn’t intend for us to be here long enough for them to mount a response.

I turned, leaning back against the wall and sliding down to sit on the hard cobblestones, knees held close to my chest. I had really, really hoped my first meeting with the Avengers would go better than that. They were already predisposed toward seeing me as an enemy, and while I’d tried to undo some of that bias, I was pretty sure I’d only ended up reinforcing it. Every step I took forward, it felt like I was taking two steps back, moving me further and further away from my goals. I looked down at my notebook, half crumpled in my hand.

Pietro sat down next to me. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I looked over at him. “For what?”

“I don’t know. You looked sad.” He gently nudged my shoulder with his. “I’m glad that you… back there, when we were talking to America.”

“He’s not wrong, though,” I said softly. “We kill Stark. Then what?”

Pietro exhaled sharply, a measured note of anger in his voice. “The big picture, huh?”

I turned my head to look at him searchingly. I knew he had it in him to set aside the grudge and work toward a mutual goal of saving people, but I had no idea how to get him there without the specific sequence of events that I’d already butterflied out of existence.

“Wakanda,” I said eventually.

“Wakanda,” Pietro agreed.

“Johannesburg first, though. There’s something we need to pick up on the way.”