WANDA MAXIMOFF + STEVE ROGERS + ELLANA LAVELLAN
HIGH | CHARACTER DEATHS | COMPLETE
They’d all heard it happen. Stuck in the water on rafts, and Wanda could hear the screams of her friends and others watching while when the sharks went for one of the groups. There were several that had come around the raft she’d been in, but between her magic and the help of the others in the raft with her, they managed to keep them at bay. By the time the sharks were gone from their raft, it was too late. People were dead. Friends were dead. They weren’t even killing each other but were still falling one by one. Was this the plan devised by COS to finally wipe out all of them?
She sat in the raft close to Steve and waited. Alicia had ended up elsewhere when they woke up surrounded by water, and she wasn’t exactly sure where she was. Food was harder to come by, and for the most part they were stuck. Wanda flew up in the sky to survey their surroundings a couple of times, but all she could see for miles was water and more water. No land in sight.
The day after the shark attacks, very early in the morning, Wanda woke up and felt something hard beneath her. As she started to come to, she realized that they were back on land.
“Steve,” she said urgently and shook his arm for him to wake up. One look around, and Wanda could tell that they were in another location completely. Not the island or beach, not the mountains, and away from the water. This looked more like a jungle. Close by, there was someone else waking up near the two of them. She didn’t know the woman well but did remember her name.
“Are you alright, Ellana?” She turned to Steve. “We should probably try to find some of the others and see where we are.”
Steve was trying to keep everyone alive, to keep everyone together. He really was. But COS seemed to have other ideas and since they weren’t killing each other, they took hands in their own matters and use the arena to kill them.
He had lost Peggy in one of the other rafts and he prayed she would stay safe, and that the sharks hadn’t gotten to her. He wasn’t sure he could handle it.
He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he was waking up by someone shaking him. He jumped startled and rubbed his face. Another change in the arena, great. He nodded at Wanda and stood up. “Let’s find the others.”
Ellana had dealt with a lot of extremes in her life - Skyhold, after all, was in the middle of a vast and tall mountain range. That had made the mountains easy. The island had been a shock to her system - so muggy, so hot; definitely not what she was used to. But the water? That had been the most terrifying thing so far, she didn’t like that feeling of having no options. It was, after all, a core part of her greatest fears. No options and feeling helpless was something she didn’t handle well though, thankfully for the Inquisitor, she was pretty damn good at keeping her feelings buried deep down and to herself. Not always one of her best traits, but one that was pretty damn useful in these type of survival of the fittest… or most lucky as it seemed to be… situations.
She was groggy, but once she heard Wanda speaking to Steve she’d started to try and prop herself up against a tree at the edge of the clearing where the other two were the closest people she could see. “Well, shit.” She huffed out - looking over to the other two as she sat leaned against a very unfamiliar looking species of tree. “Pretty sure I need some damn water.” The Dalish woman grumbled as she slowly got to her feet and looked around, not entirely pleased with their current situation - actually, that was a pretty big understatement. “We should get out of the sun.” She noted, taking a few steps towards the other two - the rafts had really been the first part of this where she’d really worked with the others. Dalish elves were pretty solitary outside of their clans and with everyone she knew from home being gone, she’d been even less social than normal lately. But this was unfamiliar territory, just like the island - so she figured it was better to lean on people who might know how the hell to handle a jungle since she sure as shit didn’t.
Wanda nodded at both of them. They needed to locate food and fresh water after being stuck on rafts in open seawater for a few days. She normally enjoyed being out in sunlight, but when it did nothing but radiate down without much reprieve, she felt incredibly tired and drained. It didn’t help that food had been a lot more scarce. “We all need some water,” she said and got to her feet. “There has to be something.” Water had been available in the other locations they’d woken up in, so she was hoping this place wasn’t much different.
“I lost my pack of supplies and food in the water, so we should probably try stocking up on food too.” While they could. What Wanda really wanted to do was find Alicia, but she knew that her friend would be able to take care of herself.
“Let’s head west this way to see what we’re able to find,” she said to both of them and waited for confirmation before falling into step with them into the jungle.
Getting out of the sun and finding some water seemed like the best idea. They’d had plenty of sun in the last arena and dehydration wasn’t their best friend. It seemed like they were in some kind of jungle, so there had to be water and a source of food somewhere, they just had to look.
He looked around and found the water bottle with the filter he managed to save in the water. “It’s empty, but at least we have a filter for the water when we find it,” he said.
He nodded to Wanda and Ellana. “Let’s go. We’re bound to find something.”
Everything about this situation had the Inquisitor’s senses on edge - she’d been in survival mode for most of her life. She was a hunter and a spy. She was a general. It came with the territory. But this was different and Ellana was, at this point, just glad she hadn’t had to make any actual decisions about whether or not to fend for herself. Hitting Edmund like she had, despite her protests that may have hinted other wise, had been a happy accident. She’d seen the arrow - figured she’d tried to hit it, it just went a little awry. Things tended to go a little awry with her mark these days. Clearly whatever had been done to stabilize it was starting to… unravel. Not that she’d admit it.
“Well, shit, it’s humid enough here we’ll need th-” All it had taken was one step, apparently, and suddenly they were surrounded. But not by a new environment - not even by animals or anything else that seemed as dangerous as some of the things they’d faced so far. No, instead, they were surrounded by a very literal cage. “Of course.” Ellana breathed out in a frustrated sort of tone. Because, well, of course. She’d been damn lucky so far, and that couldn’t go on forever - not in a place like this. Not with people dying all around them.
They'd started out on their way, but barely a few seconds later there was a sudden clang that sounded and she, Steve, and Ellana were surrounded by a metal cage. Wanda raised her hands defensively and her eyes darted around as she expected something or someone to pop out and attack them whether from inside the cage or outside of it. Looking at the cage itself, there were thick metal bars on all sides spaced close together, and there was no door at all.
"What is this?!" She demanded, but of course no one answered and the others didn't know anymore than she did. Their days in the arena had been wearing on Wanda, but right now she was fed up. She was ready to blast this entire arena apart and find a way back home herself.
A red hex swirled around in her fingertips, and she stepped forward past the others. There was no reason to be conservative with her power, so she let go and poured out her magic onto the bars with the intention to, at the very least, separate them far enough so that they could get through, or at most, blast open the entire back side of the cage to allow them to walk out of it. Those were her intentions, but no matter how much power she used, the cage bars didn't budge even an inch. Once she finally let up, Wanda took a deep breath and turned to the others. "It's not working."
Of course COS wouldn’t let them have not even five minutes of calm before they did something to them. Steve looked around the cage they were all in. Thick bars and no door. Wonderful. There had to be a way out. There had to be one.
While Wanda worked her magic on one side of the cage, he tried to pull the bars apart with his arms, using all of his strength. He tried and tried and tried, but the bars didn’t budge not even one millimeter. Panting heavily, he punched the cage in frustration. He wasn’t going to give up, not when he had people to take care of, people who counted on him. “We have to keep trying. There has to be a way out.”
Ellana wasn’t too keen on the fact that Wanda’s magic hadn’t worked - but what she understood about Wanda’s magic was that it was more reality warping that actually damaging. The sort of magic that you would have wanted to use to infiltrate someone’s camp, the sort of magic you would have wanted to have around if you needed answers out of someone. Not the sort of magic you wanted around if you needed something to go boom. And right now? It was abundantly clear they needed something to go boom. Go very much boom.
Everything had happened so quick and now they were stuck in here. “With the way things have been going, this won’t be easy.” She said - moving to place a hand on one of the bars and give it a little shake. It was a futile effort, it did nothing. Not that she’d expected much if it hadn’t budged for Steve. Ellana’s hand glowed lightly - the containment on it had started to wax and wane lately, and the immediate stress of the situation made it so she couldn’t help but have a little less control of it.
Neither Wanda’s magic nor Steve’s strength had made the bars budge even the slightest. She’d tried forcing them to move, bend, or shift in position, but nothing. Leaning, against the bars of the cage, she looked over to Ellana. Wanda didn’t understand her magic, but she could feel and sense it, recognizing its power.
“If yours doesn’t work on its own, we can try to find a spell and combine our magic.” It wasn’t something she liked doing without practicing together first, but they didn’t have much choice. She gave a nod and took her place close to Steve as the magic began to intensify. Her hands were held in front of her, ready to take action either defensively or offensively, however it might have been needed.
The blast from Ellana's mark hit and when it did, it was so strong that not even a defensive hex was able to block it. The moment that it started to backfire, Wanda instinctively raised her hands and conjured up a quick but weak hex that she intended to protect all three of them. Instead, she barely managed the spell and ended up slammed back into the bars of the cage with sharp pain in her back, side, and arm. She was fairly sure that she'd broken a couple ribs and maybe a bone in her arm.
Arms still in front of her face as the blast cleared, Wanda's hands were shaking as she lowered them to see if Ellana had done it. She saw the woman lying face down at the front of the cage, and Steve was on his side a few feet to the right.
"Steve?" She called out to him weakly. "Steve, wake up." Gingerly, Wanda crawled over to him and carefully turned him over onto his back. His eyes were closed, and his face was cut and bloody. She shook him gently at first and then much more strongly when he didn't respond.
"STEVE!" Tears started to run down her cheeks, and she shook her head in denial. "No, you can't be; not you too. Please no." She clutched his shirt in her fingers and shook him again, refusing to believe that Steve - larger-than-life Captain America - was gone.
Wanda rested her head against his chest and didn't try to stop her tears. Why hadn't put up the hex before Ellana had used her mark? Why hadn't she moved quickly enough? One earlier look at Ellana, and Wanda knew she was gone too. Why wasn't she able to save them?