Chapter Text
Wanda was hardly aware of it when Steve came for her and the others.
Time in the Raft moved strangely for Wanda.
(Is that what that place was called? She heard the soldiers on the plane that took them away from the airport whisper it, but she was distracted, craning her head so she could watch Vision drift towards Rhodes' fallen body out of the window. He let me go, she had thought, horrified and betrayed, he handed me over like it was nothing. He had not fought for her. And she wanted in her heart to blame him, but when she remembered the twenty stories of dirt and concrete she had put him through, she supposed that perhaps Vision was tired of fighting. Of fighting her. Of fighting for her.)
Time in the Raft moved strangely for Wanda.
(She never wanted to go so far. Why could no one ever understand that? She just wanted to be free. She wanted the choice. She wanted to see her future and make it so, and it had been denied to her at every turn. Fighting for it - that didn't make her bad. She wasn't bad. She wasn't.)
Time in the Raft moved strangely for-
"Wanda?"
Clint was approaching her, hands up, the door to her cell miraculously open, and beyond that stood Steve and Sam and the man with those strange shrinking powers - Scott? She didn't know how it happened, hadn't seen Steve arrive. She didn't know how long she'd been here, time moved so strangely-
"Wanda, I'm gonna take the straps off, kay? We're gonna get you out of here."
"This is - barbaric," Steve said, sounding very far away. "I warned Tony, I told him-"
Stark.
Her powers react to the name, try to reach out to the threat and destroy it like he deserved, and just as the sparks leapt to escape her fingertips a wall slammed down in her mind and prevented their escape. Wanda heard a low keening noise and only after Clint put a finger to his lips did she realize it was her.
"What is that?" Steve whispered.
"Power inhibitor would be my guess," Sam responded lowly. Steve cursed and his voice grew dark. "Why wouldn't they? She'd tear this place apart within five minutes otherwise."
They were scared of her. Just like everybody else. They saw her as a weapon.
(She didn't deserve this, she had never deserved any of what happened to her. Children lost their parents every day, and that was a cold truth Wanda had learned to accept, but after that wasn't she entitled to something better?
Not for her. No, not for her, not for Wanda, not for the Witch, she lost everything. They were stolen from her. Taken by a Merchant to be parceled off to others at his leisure.)
"Stark's not here, Wanda," Clint said reassuringly; she must have muttered his name. The archer worked on her straps as he kept talking. "He's not going bother us for a long time, I can guaran-damn-tee you that."
"We'll need him," the Captain said quietly.
Clint snarled a "not now" over his shoulder and threw the straps off to the side, helping her to her feet. "We'll get the inhibitor off once we're out of range, alright? It's bound to set off some kind of alarm if we do it here, and with our luck it'll be the one that Steve forgot to break."
"Where will we go," she whispered. "That they won't find us?" Her body didn't feel like her own; she could barely stand up inside Clint's grip.
Steve stepped forward, holding his hands up and out imploringly but she didn't know what he wanted. She didn't know what she could give him anymore.
(Wasn't she owed? Hadn't she paid? She had given her sorrows, and got nothing but misery in return. She couldn't stand this bargain, or all the ways she had been cheated. The Merchant. Stark. She was owed, she was owed-)
Steve swept her up in his arms, manouevering her until she was draped over his back.
"Where's your shield?" Scott asked.
Steve shuddered, and Wanda longed to curl out a red tendril to feel the sorrow in that small movement. "Gone."
"Where's Barnes?" Clint added.
"Later," Steve said, in the exact same tone. So they had all been cheated, then.
They were all owed.
Steve spirited them away on a jet, and Clint found the inhibitor couldn't be removed without technical expertise and medical equipment on hand in case of a feedback discharge. "Don't worry, Wanda," someone promised her. She might have laughed. She might not have stopped.
Wakanda might have been beautiful. She didn't noticed. T'Challa confined them to one of his family's homes in the country until the 'situation with the Accords could be resolved.' Every morning Steve watched the previous nights' news before heading off to visit James Buchanan Barnes where he lay resting in the facility just up the mountain, taking Wanda with him so the scientists there could work on her collar. Almost free, they told her, and she had fought not to cry at the word.
Every morning they heard Stark's voice echo throughout the living room. Clint was always sure to leave the house then, but Wanda curled in a little corner and watched as Stark spun a story for the world about a world without fear.
"Yeah, they broke out," he said flippantly to one reporter. "I don't know how. They're Avengers. I don't know if you were there for the whole New York invasion, but we're pretty good at problem-solving." And all the other men and women laughed at the reporter's foolish question, the camera gleefully lingering on her embarrassed blush. "Bigger picture is: they're out there. No, they're not gonna hurt you. I can tell you, first-hand, that Captain America? Literally wouldn't hurt a fly." Another laugh and a flinch from Steve. Stark grows serious, gazing straight into the camera. "I know they're wanted men and women, I know that Leipzig has made everybody nervous. I know there's a lot of worry out there, and a lot of misinformation, too. But for some reason, you guys have been listening to me for years so I'll tell you straight, one more time: we need the Avengers. So if you see Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Clint Barton, or Wanda Maximoff, let them know there's a fair trial waiting for them back in civilization. Scout's honor. Nah-ah, before you say it! I was totally a scout! See?" He did some strange gesture with his fingers and Steve turned the television off, reaching to his pocket to thumb at the mobile phone he has recently acquired.
Stark got to live on. Stark got to smile and make jokes. It wasn't fair. It rings all around her head. It wasn't fair.
What did he owe? What has he paid that they haven't? Or did he pay in their lives? Is that still his currency, even for all his protests of change?
Why did he get to live when the world would be better if he didn't? There had to be a balance. An eye for an eye. This was the rule. It had been carved on Wanda's soul since the Sokovian freedom fighters dug her and her brother out of the rubble of their home. An eye for an eye. A life for a life. Stark had sacrificed the world to gain every inch of what he had.
Stark had never known the difference between saving the world and destroying it.
Almost free, the scientists told her again. Almost there.
The collar came off, and the scientists warned her in might be hours before her powers returned as the field the inhibitor produced wore all the way off. They held a little party for her at the bungalow as they waited, tiny cheese wheels and some Wakandan delicacy involving squid.
"Didn't I promise you?" Clint asked her, drunk and smiling because of it. He never smiled otherwise. "This is just the start, kid, okay? Things are gonna get better."
She nodded, slipped out from underneath his arm, and moved to sit beside Steve on the couch, slightly away from the action of Sam and Scott playing air hockey. He smiled tiredly at her. "Any second now, you think?" he asked, gesturing at her fingers.
She tilted her head at him. "You wouldn't mind?" He looked confused, and she raised her hand. "My powers."
"No," Steve said, almost aghast. "Your powers are a part of you, Wanda. I know the world - hell, life - has been tough on you, especially lately, but you have the opportunity to make a difference that no one else has."
"Not even you?"
"Nope. No one can do what you can, Wanda." His voice was so warm. "Don't doubt yourself now."
No one could do what she can. No one had done what she must. An eye for an eye, this was the rule. Stark had bargained with her life. He had taken everything from her, her parents, her brother, her friends, and he paid with her happiness. Her future! If no one was listening out there, if no one would give him his dues-
Red sparked at her fingertips.
-then she would claim them for herself.
"No more," she said, and Steve's brow furrowed.
"Wanda?" He asked, a hand reaching out. Tendrils of chaos sprung out to meet him, swallow him whole, and he tried to shake them off, eyes going wide and scared. "Wanda!"
Don't doubt yourself now.
"No more blood," she seethed. "No more loss. No more fighting. No more of this." The world cracked, and the universe spilled out at the fissures, showing its parts for her to play with. They didn't need it anymore. She could make it better. Didn't she have power? Didn't they all fear her; the monster under their beds, while the real one was right in front of them, selling fairy tales? We're Avengers - good at problem-solving, that's what he said. She would fix this herself.
An eye for an eye, a life for a life, time wasted for time to spend. One could only be paid in the other.
"No more monsters," she wished, and the world went scarlet.