InsaneJournal

This was not good. This was very not good. It had been pure dumb luck that Peter had been passing by the Avengers Compound in time to see the red, sinister glow that he’d become so familiar with these last two years. It never meant anything good, and so Peter had decided that he needed to go check it out.

He’d snuck in, quietly, crawling slowly along with his belly to the roof, careful not to alert Wanda to his presence. There, huddled at her feet, was a body. It took Peter a moment to realize that it was Carol, and his stomach dropped. Was she dead? Please don’t be dead.

And then there was another flash of light, and a scream, and Peter knew she was still very much alive.

He dropped his hands from the ceiling, swinging upside down, and with a quick blast of webbing, he struck Wanda in the face and eyes. “Hey Wanda, so glad to see you again. Sorry I can’t stop by to chat.”

His feet lost their stickiness, and he dropped down to the ground, flipping in mid-air so he landed on his feet in front of Carol, quickly swiping the dial that would switch the web cartridges from the web fluid that took hours to dissolve to the webbing that would dissolve after less than a minute of air exposure. “I changed up my web formula a little. Should be pretty good for the skin, I think. You’ve really let your skincare routine go, Wanda. You need to get on that. Hey Carol, need a lift?”

He didn’t wait for a response, or even any acknowledgement that she’d heard him. He grabbed her, being as careful as he could be without sacrificing speed, and jumped out the nearest window, already swinging as fast as he could to safety. It was easier once he was in the deep woods. He’d grown practised at manoeuvring around the trees, even with his dampened powers. He hoped Wanda would be far enough behind him to give his webbing a chance to dissolve before she could use it to follow his trail.

He wished, God, how he wished, that he could still rely on his Spider-Senses. But if they weren’t tingling, it could mean either that there was no danger, or just that they weren’t working. But from behind him, he heard a shriek of rage that turned his blood to ice, and then heard the sound of something being destroyed. That didn’t bode well for the Compound, but it did give him a little extra time.

Even still, he kept swinging away as fast as he could until his arms felt like they were going to fall out of his sockets – sooner than he would have liked, with Carol’s weight heavy across his shoulders, sooner than he would’ve been tired if he’d still been as strong as he once was – and then swung some more. And then, suddenly, he heard the sound of gently flowing water. Closer than it would have been if he’d come up on it naturally. The forest must have shifted.

He slowed and followed it, and then let out a sigh of relief when he saw the pool of water, surrounded by flowers and fed by a small waterfall. Maybe it was a trap, but Peter couldn’t be worried about that right now. Right now, it looked like a piece of paradise.

He landed hard on the grass, took a few stumbling steps, and managed, narrowly, to not drop Carol. With a grunt, he lowered her to the ground.

He was out of breath enough that he could barely gulp the air down, but he managed to gasp out, “Carol? Carol, are you alright?”

Part of Carol’s routine these days was checking in on the Compound. She, Natasha, and Steve took it in shifts – once a week, just a stop in to make sure everything was intact and keeping out those that needed to be kept out. It stood empty most of the time; a bunch of them had stayed there after Vallo City was taken over for a good couple years, but they’d moved to the Outpost after Tony and Pepper, avoiding memories and being around people who needed them.

Now, it was only occasionally used as a spot for Rebels that needed it to regroup after a battle or an attack. Being armed to the teeth with Stark tech, it wasn’t easy for outsiders to get into, and it was far enough out of reach that the attempts were few. But it was a habit now, with a little bit of sentimentality attached. For all three of them, the Compound had been home once, and if things spiraled any further downward, it might be again. Keeping up with it was only right.

She hadn’t heard anyone coming in until it was too late, until she was yanked to her knees by magic and forced to turn to face Wanda. It was a situation she’d tried heavily to avoid for the last two years, wanting her last memory of being with her to remain untainted as possible. She wanted to remember Wanda as she’d been – happy, glowing, swaying on the dance floor with her when Peter and Kamala’s wedding had ended, and they were the last ones left at the cottage.

Not like this – eyes black and red, black lightning marring her neck and her temples, pale as a ghost. There wasn’t a hint of the human she’d once been – the woman they had all loved – still there. No light in her eyes. No recognition when Carol said her name.

Seeing it, truly facing the situation for the first time, Carol felt like her heart shattered.

After that, it was all a blur – a cocktail of pain, fear, desperation, hopelessness as every bad thing she’d ever done, every fear she’d ever held, every regret she’d ever had, every bit of guilt she’d ever felt played through her mind like a movie of her personal failures. Wanda had always been the one person who could give her a run for her money, even at her most powerful, and that time was long gone. Kree blood came with many attributes, the strength and durability she still possessed among them, but against Wanda’s magic, she was the closest to helpless she could be.

She was clinging onto consciousness by the skin of her teeth when Peter swung in, barely aware enough to tighten her hands in the material of his suit when he swung her over his back. The horrorshow in her head didn’t stop until she hit solid ground and the sound of water running reached her ears.

Still, she stared blankly at Peter for a few moments, brow furrowed, reaching out to pull her knees up to her chest. She was lost in her head – not stuck there by Wanda’s magic anymore but of her own accord – and the fog was thick, flickers of long-buried memories still replaying in her mind.

Finally, she shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut again, and forced out a breath. Her hands were shaking as she raised them to brush through her hair, smoothing it down in an attempt to ground herself again.

“Fine,” she muttered at last. Another deep breath out, then in. She raised her eyes back to Peter’s, nodding. “I’m fine.”

She was not. She was bruised and broken; she wasn’t feeling that right now, but she would, and it was bound to be unpleasant.

“You’re okay,” Peter breathed, relieved. Maybe she wasn’t, not really, there was a shadow in her eye that Peter didn’t like at all, and she looked, well, rough was putting it lightly, but she was awake and talking and cognizant enough of her surroundings to be aware of him, and that was almost more than he’d been expecting.

He let go, falling back onto his ass, and tilting his head back so he could breath in deeply and maybe start slowing his hammering heart.

“What happened?” he asked, once his breath was steady enough to talk again. He hated this, hated the fact that what would have been easy for him six years ago now exhausted him. Hated that Carol, who had once been on equal footing with Wanda, had been so weakened when Wanda seemed stronger than ever.

Carol let her legs drop as the beginnings of the ache started, the result of having her body bruised and battered to within an inch of her life. She still healed faster than your average human, but all that damage inflicted all at once would take some time. It was a good thing they didn’t seem to be going anywhere fast – she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to move yet.

“I…don’t know.” She didn’t. She hadn’t noticed how Wanda came in, where she came in. Maybe she’d left a door open, or a window, or maybe Wanda had bypassed the security with magic – she’d been able to teleport once, before Vallo went to hell in a handbasket, maybe it was that.

She took a slow, shaky breath, tears starting to course swiftly down her cheeks and chin. “She’s gone, Peter. She’s really fucking gone.”

That wasn’t news. Wanda had been Thralled for a long time now. This was what she was, what she’d been, and there was no getting her back. Their people had faced off against her, Peter had made it his personal mission to track her, but Carol had buried the thought of her, shoved it away, vainly hoping that if she ignored it, it wouldn’t be true.

It was a habit she’d broken years ago, but when the news first came in and she thought her heart might break, it had cropped right back up. Self-preservation at its finest – and a far better showing of it than she’d exemplified today.

“Hey, hey,” Peter said, soothingly, and rolled onto his feet into a squat only long enough that he could hop over next to Carol and wrap an arm around her shoulder. “She’ll come back,” Peter said. He wasn’t sure how much he still believed that, really, deep down. But he kept telling himself that he believed it, because if he stopped doing that, then what hope was there? “We’ll find a way. We’ll get them all back.”

Defeating Interitus seemed less and less likely every day, every week, every year. But he still hoped that maybe someone would come through with a scientific answer to break through the mind control. Peter was working on it, without much luck; he hoped other people were too.

Fuck, Carol hoped so. She gritted her teeth and nodded, trying hard to hold onto Peter’s optimism and make herself believe it. That was the goal, what they were all aiming for. Someday, somehow, they would fix this, get back the people that had been Thralled. They wouldn’t get back their dead, but maybe there was hope for the ones taken under Interitus’ control instead.

She really, really hoped so.

“Hope you’re right, kid,” is what she finally breathed out. “Seeing her like that – I don’t know how you do it all the time.”

Peter was hardly a kid anymore – he was married, with a child and everything – but there was still something comforting in hearing Carol use the diminutive.

“Oh, well, you wouldn’t believe how Wanda asks about little Siyah May. Very important to keep her updated on all the little details,” Peter said, and then grimaced at how flat the joke fell. It hurt: he wanted to tell Wanda all about Siyah May. More than that, he wanted to see the woman who’d almost been like a mother to him since he’d arrived in Vallo get to play with Siyah May.

When he continued, the forced levity had been leached from his voice. “Honestly, I know it’s messed up, but sometimes it’s nice to just… know she’s still alive, you know? I do think we can still save her, that there’s still hope. And in the meantime, if I can prevent her from doing at least some things that she’d regret, then it’s worth it.”

He couldn’t prevent it all. He knew that. But he could prevent some of it.

In any other circumstances, that joke might have at least gotten a smirk out of Carol. Right now, it fell terribly flat. She knew Peter meant well, but Carol was struggling out of a state of shock, and all she could think was she wished Wanda was asking about Siyah. She wished Wanda got to sit in Peter and Kamala’s room with her and play with the little one who was, essentially, their shared grandkid.

They’d joked about that after the wedding, wondering if kids would be forthcoming, debating if Carol was more of a Nana or a Grandma while she grimaced like she’d been insulted when, really, the prospect was kind of amazing. It was hard to think of having more kids in such a rough time, but there was a light that came with them – her Marley was the hope she and Emme clung to these days.

“Thanks for saving my ass back there,” she said at last, offering him a sincerely grateful smile. “Hard to believe there was a time I might have a chance of an upper hand in a fight like that, huh?”

“Not that hard to believe,” Peter said, relaxing a little when he saw her smile. “She just got the jump on you is all.” That, and Wanda seemed even more powerful now that she was under the control of Interitus, and the rest of them… were decidedly not. But that was a minor detail. “And I’ll always be there to save your ass. How’re you feeling? Do you want me to take you back to Emme?”

“I feel beat up,” Carol admitted. She was sore all over, although the pain wasn’t as acute as it had been when they’d first landed here. “But I think I can move. Walk me back, though? If she’s still around… Buddy system’s probably best right now. Emme’s going to be worried enough when she sees me.”

“I wouldn’t let you walk back on your own even if you wanted to,” Peter assured her. There were other dangers than just Wanda out there, and Peter wasn’t sure if he entirely trusted Carol to take them out in the state she was in.

He hopped to his feet again and extended a hand out to her. “Let’s get you home.”