Startled, Wanda's reaction was instinctive, fight or flight. Fingers glowing, she skimmed his brain and emotions, assaulted by fragments of visions that she couldn't put together in her panic and his pain.
Rage. A dark-haired woman and a baby, blood. Two children, a brother and sister? Robed strangers chanting, a sacrifice. A man- no, a monster, Ђаво. Fear. Some terrible forbidden place, full of creatures, демони. The man, this man, he wasn't quite human. He was burning, Ђаво. Something wrong, a strange thing, metallic and foreign. RAGEThen there were men in dark clothes with guns, shooting bullets that bit. Firing energy that burned. Outnumbered, enraged, the man fought them. It was unfair, and terrible. He barely escaped with his life-
A siren shrieked nearby and, with a burst of sudden fear from both, their connection broke. Gasping, Wanda wrenched herself away and threw out an arm, unconsciously blasting over a couple trashcans with her power. "Bože pomozi mi," she panted and dropped to her knees beside a brick wall in the middle of the mess she'd just made.
"Žao mi je. I- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to." She closed her eyes and listened to the fading siren, sorting his own feelings from her own. His rage, his fear, she knew them well. She'd felt them many times before. Protesting and fighting, running from sirens and hiding from tanks, authorities with weapons and all the power leaving those bodies to decompose in the streets. The man's anger was her anger now, a familiar fire as she thought of his men in dark suits with their guns, and remembered her own. Always men with guns, and men with bombs. Destroying everything for nothing.
Whatever he was, whatever he'd been, it didn't matter now. Wanda was resolved to help him. "What can I do?" she asked, approaching him again with her hands raised in a gesture of peace. Her jaw was set stubbornly, and she knelt next to him again. "How can I help you?"