“Here, let me,” Carol said, tapping the sides of my arms. I obediently raised them in the air, wincing a little bit as she carefully lifted my dress and pulled it up off over my head. “Oh! Not wearing anything under that, huh?”

  “Long story,” I mumbled, rubbing gingerly at my sore throat as I looked over at Natasha, who was flipping open a large medical kit of some kind on the counter. “Are there… scissors? Or hair clippers? Or something?”

  “Yeah, somewhere around here.” Nat glanced over at me absently as she spoke, then paused and did a little bit of a double-take. “Huh.”

  “Huh? What’s ‘huh’?” I asked, defensively hunching over a little, suddenly a bit self-conscious of how bad I must look.

  “No, it’s just…”

  Carol let out a soft snort. “Oh, good, it’s not just me.” As Carol spoke, she ran a fingertip along my arm, then gently prodded my midsection with the tip of a finger. “When did you get ripped?” she asked.

  I’d been pointedly avoiding doing so until that moment, but that question made me blink and look over at the mirror above the sink. I looked like I’d been through hell. What was left of my hair was ragged—unsurprising, given it had been cut away one handful at a time—and pretty much my entire body was covered in cuts, dried blood and bruising. I had particularly ugly, mottled green and purple markings around my stomach, neck, and crawling up the side of my face. The swelling above my left eye had at least started to go down already, so I could actually open it again, but there’d obviously been some broken blood vessels because the white of that eye had almost entirely been taken over by bloody red. Beyond that…

  I was ripped. Not in an over-the-top way, but I’d definitely lost some weight and my muscles were way more defined than they’d ever been before, in any of my lives. I twisted my body to the side slightly, tensing my stomach and arms to get a better look, and made a small noise in the back of my throat. I had actual visible abs. Good goddamn.

  I tore my eyes away from myself just long enough to shoot Carol a quick glance. “I trained all day yesterday,” I said, a little smugly.

  “Uh huh.” She raised an eyebrow, looking sceptical. Bundling up the dirty, ragged dress that I’d been wearing, she dropped it off to one side before moving briefly over to the shower and reaching in to turn it on. The water hissed, pattering against the tiles. It was a good sound, after what I’d been through over the last few days. A normal sound.

  I returned to examining myself in the mirror, turning this way and that. I didn’t like to brag (ah, who am I kidding? I definitely liked to brag—Pietro and I had that in common, at least), but I had already been pretty damn hot. Once I was healed up properly and had—sigh—grown my hair out again, I was going to look amazing.

  “Done checking yourself out?” Nat teased mildly. She’d finished sorting out whatever she was doing with the medical kit and had stepped closer.

  “No.”

  Carol snorted and shook her head, but Nat just nodded to herself, not saying anything, as she continued toward the shower. As she moved, she stripped off her top, and suddenly I was much less interested in my reflection. “Coming?” she asked as she finished undressing, then stepped in under the water. I hurriedly slipped off my sling ring, dropping it on the counter before following after her.

  It was the least ‘fun’ shower we’d ever had together, but God, it was good. Nat was no-nonsense, focusing on cleaning me up. I leaned into her shoulder as she washed my hair, my eyes closed as she massaged my scalp with her fingertips, just enjoying the closeness and her touch and the feeling of the scaldingly hot water pounding against my back. I relaxed a bit, feeling the tension that had built up in my shoulders starting to ease. One of my hands crept upwards, tracing a path up to her chest.

  “You quite alright there?” Nat asked. I could hear the smile in her voice.

  “Yeah. It’s just… my comfort boob,” I responded, giving it a gentle squeeze.

  “Uh huh.”

  The two of us were practically lobster-red when we came out; it was amazing just how much better I felt after an extremely hot shower. Carol helped dry me off before sitting me down in front of her. While she ran some hair clippers over my head to get what was left to an even length, Natasha dressed and covered some of the worst scratches and scrapes that looked like they might need some extra attention. It wasn’t necessary at all—I was pretty sure it was all stuff that was going to heal overnight anyway—but I still really appreciated having the two of them fuss over me like this.

  After they were done, I looked at myself in the mirror again. My hair was… okay. It didn’t actually look that bad, but it felt a bit closer to a buzzcut than the pixie I’d hoped for. Still, it was okay. Everything was okay. After all of that, I was finally starting to feel somewhat normal again.

  Well, apart from my connection to Thena. It was weird, having this perpetual awareness of exactly where and how another person was. I could have closed my eyes and spun around in a circle, and I’d still be able to point in her exact direction. I’d even have a pretty good guess at the distance—I had no idea if there was a range limit to it, or if I’d still be able to feel her even if I was on another planet. She was currently in the common area, just down the hallway from where we were, feeling guarded, apprehensive, and a little bit annoyed. From what I could tell through our connection, she seemed to have recovered somewhat since the fight with Ikaris, but she was still weaker than she had been when we’d started my training.

  Nat was holding my sling ring, weighing it in her hand. “Did you want me to go get you some clothes, or…?”

  “Nah, I got it.” Taking the ring, I spun up a small portal and reached through to the drawers in Natasha’s apartment, fishing out a few items. Underwear. Sports bra. Pants.

  “No dress?”

  I frowned, indicating my bare midsection with a small wave of my free hand. “Are you crazy? You want me to cover all this up?” I paused for a moment, glancing between the two of them again. “Thanks,” I said, a little more quietly. “I really appreciate you doing this.”

  “You didn’t exactly give us much choice,” Carol said with a small smile.

  I dipped my head, a slight flush creeping into my cheeks. “Sorry.”

  “I’m only teasing.”

  A moment later, Carol opened the door, and the three of us stepped out into the corridor together. I was a little bit surprised to see Pietro and Bucky waiting right there. Bucky was leaning up against the opposite wall, arms folded, his shoulders tense, while Pietro had paused mid-pace in the middle of the hall.

  As soon as I cleared the doorway proper, my brother crossed the space between us in a blur, throwing his arms around me before I’d fully registered the movement.

  I let out a soft ‘oof’ as he hugged me a little too tightly. “Easy,” I murmured into his shoulder, hugging him back. “I’ve kind of been getting the shit kicked out of me for the last few days.”

  He loosened his grip immediately but didn’t pull away. “Where were you?”

  “I was gross, I had to shower.”

  “Not now,” he said, exasperated. He shifted his hands to my arms so he could take a small step back and look me in the eyes. “You freaked everyone out, disappearing like that.”

  “Sorry,” I said. I felt like I was going to be doing a lot of apologising. “Long-ish story. Let’s go to the conference room, I’ll explain there.”

  Bucky hadn’t moved from his place against the wall. He was watching us, face pulled into a tight, guarded expression. Was he angry with me? I gently extricated myself from Pietro’s grip and took a step toward him, trying on a cautious smile. “Hey. Sorry—I didn’t know you were waiting out here. You could’ve come in, you know,” I suggested lightly. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pietro make a disgusted face. I ignored him.

  Bucky straightened, dropping his arms to his sides, though his shoulders were still tense. Before he could say anything, Nat interjected from off to the side. “Buck was just about ready to storm the White House looking for you.”

  I frowned, puzzled. “The White House?”

  Bucky rolled his eyes at her, a little bit of the tension leaving his frame. “We thought Ross might have…” He gestured vaguely with a hand instead of finishing his sentence.

  “Oh.” Yeah, that made sense, actually. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t decide to go to war with the US Government because of me.”

  “Ehhhh,” Pietro made a noise behind me.

  I turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised questioningly. Again, Nat spoke up instead. “You’re not the only one with news. There’s some other stuff that’s been happening that we need to catch you up on, too.”

  “Oh, good.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  She smiled. “One thing at a time, though. The others are probably waiting for us.”

  The five of us moved down the corridor as a group, emerging in the compound’s main common area. Thena and Gilgamesh were both there, sitting on the long couch in the ‘living room’ segment, while Sam was in the kitchenette fiddling with mugs. Tony, Clint, Bruce and Shuri were hovering in a small group at the edge of the open-walled conference room. There was an edge of tension in the room, everyone turning toward us as we entered.

  Gil stood up, turning and offering Thena a hand. She took it, getting to her feet with some visible effort. It hadn’t really clicked in my head just how gingerly she was moving until just now. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t just the aftereffects of the fight with Ikaris, either—with a slightly clearer head, I could feel the edges of her exhaustion through our connection… She was tense and tired. I was a bit more grounded and centred in myself. There was a brittle edge to her usual self-assuredness that felt like an apology. I acknowledged and dismissed it—we had more important things to worry about. She agreed.

  I wasn’t even really looking at them, moving to join Tony and the others instead. Anyone else might have seen it as a slight snub or rudeness, but the level of unspoken communication that was passing between us through our connection felt a little unreal. It wasn’t telepathy—there weren’t any words, just feelings and impressions—but it felt almost as good as.

  As everyone started to gather around the conference table, Sam bustled over with a couple of mugs in his hands. One went in front of me as I sat down, and I shot him a grateful smile. “I put the sugar in last,” he said in an exaggeratedly serious tone, his brow furrowed as he made an open-palmed gesture at the mug.

  That made me chuckle. “Thank you, you’re the best.”

  “I do what I can.”

  “Where’s Steve?” I asked, glancing around the table.

  “He’s at the media centre,” Clint answered. “Won’t be long, he was just wrapping up a few things. Said to start without him.”

  “Okay,” I nodded, then placed both my hands on the table in front of me. “So… You might all be wondering why I called this meeting,” I said authoritatively. There was a small round of reactions—Pietro grinned, Bruce rolled his eyes, Sam snorted, and Nat shook her head.

  “How about you just start with where you’ve been?” Tony suggested, leaning back in his chair as he shot a glance across the table at the two Eternals.

  “Okay. Yeah. So, after you and I had a… let’s call it a ‘vigorous conversation’, I dropped in on Thena and Gil. It’s sort of hard to explain how we got there, but long story short, Thena offered to teach me to fight and it got a bit more intense than I was expecting.”

  “And you didn’t check in because…?”

  “She sort of beat me up, took all of my stuff—including my ring and phone—and said I couldn’t have any of it back unless I could beat her in a fight. I could not.”

  There was a brief beat of silence. After a moment, Clint looked at Thena. “Okay, so I know you guys have been exiled to the desert for like five hundred years or whatever, but around here we call that ‘kidnapping’ and it’s generally considered to be a bit of a social faux pas among humans.”

  Tony nodded. “You gotta at least give her a phone-a-friend.”

  Gil straightened slightly and snapped his fingers. “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?”

  “So you’re up to date enough to get that reference, but not to realise that kidnapping our friend might cause some problems?”

  “Your concerns are not my concerns,” Thena responded unhelpfully.

  “Actually, I kind of think they are?” Bruce interjected. “Ikaris? Ringing any bells?”

  “Yeah, Ikaris,” I jumped back in, trying to keep us on track. “The other Eternals are the most pressing matter right now—we can argue about the rest later. Ikaris came to Australia and jumped us. We managed to scare him off, but it was close. He said you were dead,” I addressed the last bit to Tony.

  He shrugged. “You vanished—no warning, no word, no way to track you. There were a bunch of things we thought might have happened. I went and had a chat with Kingo, he took me to Ajak, and Ikaris happened to be there. It… didn’t work out super well.”

  I buried my face in my hands and made a noise of frustration. This was exactly the sort of thing I’d been trying to avoid with the Eternals. “Did you think at any point that maybe provoking one of the most dangerous people on the planet would be a bad idea? I mean, you know what they say, better safe than… the world’s biggest dickhead.”

  “Okay—”

  I cut him off. “And, and inside your head, there’s like a million more dicks. Like, you cut open a golf ball, and instead of those little rubber bands inside, it’s just, you know…”

  “Dicks?” Tony offered.

  “Oh, so you have heard that.”

  “I’d be offended, but you were sobbing into my chest earlier because you thought I was dead, which was honestly pretty touching. I didn’t know you cared.”

  I glared at him and went to say something I probably would have regretted, but Nat stopped me with a firm touch on my arm. “Argue about the rest later, right?”

  A small sigh escaped my lips and I deflated slightly. “Sorry. I just… I disappear for a few days and everything goes to hell,” I muttered, picking up my mug with both hands and nursing it between my palms as the wheels turned inside my head. My eyes flickered over to the two Eternals. “Okay, so, Plan A: You guys have some pretty heavy-duty mental defences, so I don’t really want to gamble on me being able to force Ikaris and the others to stand down—even with the Mind Stone. Do you think if we got Druig on-side and amped him with the Stone, he’d be able to control them?”

  Gilgamesh shook his head. “Don’t think so. The way Druig’s power works, he can’t force it on another Eternal at all. We need to lower our mental defences and let him in deliberately.”

  That was annoying, but made sense. Otherwise, in the original timeline, Druig probably would have at least tried to just put Ikaris and Sprite to sleep with his power amplified by the Uni-Mind.

  “If that was Plan A, can we assume you have a Plan B?” Shuri asked, speaking up for the first time.

  “Yes.” There was a beat of silence while everyone waited for me to elaborate, then I shrugged. “I mean, I don’t, but you’re free to assume otherwise.”

  “Dr Cho’s looking at that hand you brought with us,” Bruce said. “Not sure whether we’ll find anything we can use, but…” he trailed off with a grimace.

  “…Okay. Ikaris said Ajak was gathering everyone at the Domo.” I glanced at Gilgamesh. “You know where that is, right?”

  Tony cut in before they could answer. “Two steps ahead of you. We weren’t just sitting around glaring at each other while you went to freshen up. Iraq. Or, at least, it was.”

  “It might still be,” Gilgamesh added. “But between Phastos and Sprite, the Domo could be hovering a hundred feet above our heads right now and we wouldn’t know it.”

  “I could try tracking them magically?”

  Tony shook his head. “Already checked in with the Ancient One. No dice, even with the hand as a special ingredient. Whatever Phastos is using to block satellite tracking is messing with magic, too.”

  Man, it still felt so good to have the Avengers and Kamar-taj just casually communicating and helping each other like that. I suppressed a brief smile. Beyond that, Phastos blocking magical tracking made sense—my sling ring hadn’t been able to lock on to Thena and Gilgamesh when we’d first tracked them down, either… but I had still been able to find them. “I could maybe use the Mind Stone?”

  “You can try,” Thena said, folding her arms. “But if Phastos is expecting active efforts to track them, he will be taking precautions. I doubt you’ll be able to find them as easily as you found us.”

  “And we’re sure Phastos is with them?”

  “We gotta assume so,” Bruce said. “We lost track of them near Chicago. Unless you can think of another reason they’d be going there?”

  “That’s something we might be able to use, at least. Phastos will be a weak point if he finds out what’s really going on. He’s another that won’t be okay with the Emergence, and we might be able to leverage that into getting him onto our side or at the very least getting him to sit this out. So, if I’m going to have a stab at finding them with the Mind Stone, I’ll do a pass over the Amazon first to see if I can find Druig, and check Chicago as well while I’m at it. Phastos would be reluctant to leave his family, so even with Ajak there he might not have actually gone with them…”

  Gil let out a small noise of surprise. “Family?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, shooting him a quick smile. “Phastos met someone. Fell in love. It saved him, pulled him out of a pretty dark place and gave him back a little faith in humanity. They’ve got a kid and everything.”

  Natasha nodded briskly. “Alright. So first, Wanda sees if she can locate them. In the meantime,” she looked over at Thena and Gilgamesh. “Ikaris gets back without you two. What’s Ajak’s move? Should we be expecting an attack?”

  “Perhaps,” Thena said, a considering look on her face. “However, Gilgamesh and I being here will complicate things for them immensely. If what Ikaris said is true and they are gathering everyone, there will be problems—I’m not sure how Ajak would be able to navigate things with the others without telling them the truth.”

  “They could just lie,” Bruce said. “Tell the others that we captured the two of you and fought him off.”

  Thena let out a small snort. “No one will believe that.”

  “Hey, come on now,” Tony said, gesturing with both hands. “We are the Avengers, just in case that wasn’t clear.”

  Natasha smiled and shook her head. “That sort of deception wouldn’t work in any case, and Ajak would know that. Things would fall apart the second they engaged us and saw that Thena and Gilgamesh were on our side.”

  “The other Eternals won’t understand why we would fight Ikaris unless they reveal the truth to them. Ajak has little choice,” Gil mused. “Druig will not accept the Emergence, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s defied Ajak. Sersi. Phastos, as you say. That’s too many. Ikaris has always been quick to action, but Ajak will want to talk first rather than fight, I think.”

  “Can we reach out?” Carol asked. “Open a dialogue?”

  Sam was nodding along. “Ikaris didn’t actually kill Tony. You might have cut off his hand, but Ajak can probably grow him a new one, right? So no harm, no foul. If we could try to de-escalate things…”

  Thena didn’t say anything, but I could feel how dubious she was about that. Ikaris was a zealot, and Ajak had been following Arishem’s plans for millions of years. Even if she was harbouring doubts about Earth, this probably wasn’t a situation where it would be easy to negotiate a middle ground. I opened my mouth. “It won’t be simple, but we still have time. The Emergence isn’t due for a few years, at least. If we can talk them into standing down while we figure out a solution that can save Earth and let Tiamut be born…”

  “Okay, I don’t love it, but that at least sounds like the start of a plan,” Tony said. “If Red can use the Stone to find them, we can try talking to them—Cap will be on board with that—but if she can’t…”

  “If I can’t, then we have no idea where they are, no way of finding them, and we won’t have any warning if they decide to drop in right on top of us.” As I spoke, my enhanced hearing had picked up several sets of quiet footsteps on the steps leading up to the common area. My back was to the stairs up from ground level and I didn’t pay them much mind.

  Sam grimaced, but nodded. “I’ll touch base with Maria. We’ll move all nonessential personnel out of the compound, just to be safe. Don’t want to have anyone caught in the crossfire if it does come to another fight.”

  Steve stepped into my peripheral vision—he was suited up in his full Captain America regalia. “Hey! Really good to see you back, Wanda. What have I missed?”

  “Oh, you know…” I was smiling as I turned toward him, but the expression died on my face and I froze, my eyes going wide.

  “Ms Maximoff. It’s good to finally make your acquaintance.”

  The man standing beside Steve was wearing a nondescript black jumper. The hood was up, mostly covering his head, but it wasn’t enough to conceal the wrongness of the shape. His voice wouldn’t have been enough on its own. I might not have even necessarily recognised his face—it had been so long since I’d seen The Incredible Hulk, after all. With the greenish pallor to his skin, the almost-luminescent glint in his eye, the clear misshapenness of his head underneath the hood, though? It only took me a bare half a second to put everything together and realise who I was looking at.

  There was no conscious decision to call the chaos magic to my hands—they simply blazed with power as I leapt to my feet into a tense, ready stance. Next to me, Thena reacted at essentially the exact same time, our movements synchronised by the connection between us, golden wireframes forming in her hands as she stepped to my side.

  Samuel Sterns.

  That was Samuel Sterns.

  While I was gone, the Leader had infiltrated the Avengers.