Look What You Made Me Do (Wanda-SI/OC)

I took a deep breath as the sound of a second explosion—still distant, but closer than the first—filtered in from outside. The PA system crackled to life a moment later and Baron Strucker’s voice, edged with tension, sounded out across the fortress. “Report to your stations immediately. This is not a drill! We are under attack!”

This was it, wasn’t it? It had to be. What I’d been waiting for. I felt Pietro’s hand on mine suddenly, squeezing gently, and I looked over at him. His expression was severe, blue eyes locking with mine and then flicking sideways in an unspoken question. No wisecracking today. Seeing him look so serious put me more on edge than I already was, reminding me uncomfortably of how he’d been in the immediate aftermath of receiving his powers.

I squeezed back and risked a smile that was probably too strained to be reassuring.

Around us, foot soldiers armed themselves, grabbing assault rifles from weapon racks, their heavy-booted feet echoing through the halls as they rushed to the base’s defence. I tugged on Pietro’s hand, leading him past them and up a spiral staircase toward the main command centre. The room was a hive of activity, HYDRA personnel poring over screens displaying live satellite imagery and other sensor readouts as they gave the men in the field tactical feedback, trying vainly to outmanoeuvre the attacking force.

We arrived more or less at the same time as the Baron himself. Strucker normally cut an intimidating figure—shaved head, hawklike nose, dressed in his customary all-black, with his augmented reality monocle implant the only real clue that he was more than a mundane military commander. Now, though, the concern plainly written across his face undercut the unflappable image he liked to project. He cornered a harried-looking comms officer as we watched. “Who gave the order to attack?”

The man fiddled with the handset he had been using a moment ago, nervously wringing it in his hands. “Herr Strucker, it’s the Avengers!” He looked lost, seemingly already resigned to the fact that HYDRA was going to lose here.

Pietro and I hung back, keeping out of everyone’s way as officers rushed back and forth. Dr List bustled past, pausing only to give us a small smile and nod of acknowledgement as he headed toward the Baron. The doctor looked out of place—unremarkable jacket and sweater vest over a button-up shirt and tie that seemed more like office attire, not something you’d expect the head of research at a top-secret Nazi research facility to wear.

The comms officer was rescued by a soldier in full tactical gear: Lieutenant Ivanović, a heavily built, bullish man I’d sparred against numerous times. He hefted an intimidating-looking rifle, leaning it against his shoulder as he addressed Baron Strucker. “They landed in the far woods. The perimeter guard panicked.” Strucker nodded in response and Ivanović took it for a dismissal, heading quickly toward the exit to join the front line.

Noticing Dr List, the Baron lowered his voice to speak to him. They were far enough away that I couldn’t make out the words over the sounds of the busy command centre, but I already knew exactly what he was saying. A moment later, he turned back to the comms officer. “Can we hold them?”

The younger man looked back at him, eyes wide. “…they’re the Avengers,” he said, unable to keep the plaintive whine out of his voice.

The Baron visibly stifled a sigh of frustration and started pacing the length of the room like a caged animal, calling out orders. “Deploy the rest of the tanks, concentrate fire on the weak ones. A hit may make them close ranks.” A step back toward Dr List and he lowered his voice again, but the bitter frustration leaking into his words gave them enough volume to be heard over the bustle. “Everything we’ve accomplished… we’re on the verge of our greatest breakthrough.”

List seemed almost unconcerned. He leaned in, eyes flashing. “Then let’s show them what we’ve accomplished. Send out the twins.”

Strucker looked over at Pietro and I, peering through his monocle. I wondered briefly what information was being displayed on the device’s overlay. “It’s too soon,” he said, shaking his head.

“It’s what they signed up for.”

“My men can hold them.” The Baron ended the discussion, holding my gaze for a moment longer before turning and stepping away. List followed after him, and their attention was no longer on us.

I had no interest in staying to watch the rest of this play out. Instead, I tugged on Pietro’s hand again and we retreated through a nearby open door. No one else was back here—this was where List and the other researchers had their primary workstations, not exactly somewhere that needed to be manned during an attack. I knew that List would follow us here soon enough, following Strucker’s directive to try to erase all of their data before the Avengers could take custody of it, but we would be long gone by then.

I moved toward the back wall, extricating myself from Pietro’s grip so I could reach out and place both hands against the rough surface. I paused a moment, feeling the cool concrete blocks under my fingertips, then pushed firmly. A hidden mechanism activated and the wall slid out of the way, revealing a hidden passage.

Pietro moved to my side, shifting impatiently from heel to heel. “We should be out there, fighting,” he said, an edge of frustration creeping into his voice. “We can beat them.”

I shook my head. “No. Strucker is many things—most of them unpleasant—but right now I think he’s right. It’s too soon. We aren’t ready to win this fight. The important thing is the sceptre. We can’t just let them take it.”

Pietro frowned. “But…”

“Listen to me,” I said, turning to face him properly. “You wanted to change the world, right? Strucker and List… HYDRA. They don’t care about us. You know that. They were using us, but we’ve been using them as well. And now we’ve gotten what we needed.” I lifted my hand, red energy swirling across the tips of my fingers. “We don’t need HYDRA anymore. We can do this ourselves.”

He held my gaze for a few more moments, then set his mouth in a thin line and nodded.

I pushed down a surge of guilt. Surrounded by HYDRA, Pietro had been the only real ally I’d had for the last twelve months. He was the only person I could count on to have my back, and I was lying to him about who I was. Pretending to be his sister. Had maybe even killed his sister, even if unintentionally. I couldn’t be completely honest with him right now. Maybe I never could.

We headed through the secret door and down a long flight of stairs, heading deep into the bowels of the fortress, intermittent caged bulbs dimly lighting our way. Eventually, we reached the robotics laboratory—the place where all of the real research took place.

The stairs exited into a cavernous room, probably originally intended to house several aircraft or similar-sized vehicles. Looming centrally, like a macabre parade float wreathed in work scaffolding and access platforms, was the giant corpse of a Leviathan—one of the flying, whale-like creatures that the Chitauri used as siege weapons and troop transports during the Battle of New York. I ignored it. I’d seen it plenty of times before, and it wasn’t the reason we were here.

I glanced at the rows of workbenches as I moved past, their robotic arms paused in the act of assembling partially-designed, incomplete humanoid drones. Strucker had been working on AI as well, even though it was completely orthogonal to the other research that had been carried out here. While Tony Stark was Ultron’s creator in the original timeline, I had become increasingly convinced that that was only the case because his tech and knowledge base was significantly more advanced than HYDRA’s. If the Avengers had left this place alone for another six months, I had no doubt that something similar would have been birthed here instead—though he would have been called… I don’t know. Nazi-bot or something.

It was the sceptre. The reason we were here. I knew it had some sort of mind-influencing ability, something that drove people in contact with it to conflict. I had pre-committed myself to not using the artifact for any reason—no matter how tempting it was. I’d collect it, and later I would work out how to extract the Mind Stone from it, but until then I wouldn’t use its powers or study it too closely. It was only a theory, but my guess was that it was a failsafe or trap of some kind created by Thanos. The Mind Stone itself wasn’t evil or malevolent, but the blue gem it was currently embedded in channelled some of its power to constantly exert a minor influence on everyone nearby, heightening their aggression, impairing their decision-making, and making them very interested in developing AI with the sceptre’s help.

It was sitting relatively unprotected, hovering within a containment field, a three-dimensional holographic display of energy output and fluctuations steadily orbiting in a ring around it. The gem set in the sceptre’s head glittered coldly with blue light, small discharges of electrical energy grounding themselves in the outer edges of the containment field.

I stepped toward it, eyes fixed on my prize, and took another deep breath to steady myself. This was it. The first real point of divergence.

I’d had a long time to think this through. Honestly, there just didn’t seem like any other way to reliably avert the AI’s creation that didn’t also risk creating a significant, unmanageable butterfly effect. I obviously wasn’t going to mess with Tony’s head the way Wanda did in the original timeline, but I also didn’t think it had been completely necessary. The familiar designs of the drones on the tables around me was evidence enough of that.

Would Tony Stark have created Ultron anyway, even without Wanda’s influence? Maybe, maybe not. If I turned myself in and tried to join the Avengers, would they listen to me if I warned them? Steve Rogers might be sympathetic and he was opposed to messing with that sort of thing on principle, but that hadn’t stopped Stark the first time around and I honestly didn’t think the word of a HYDRA asset would be enough to sway him.

In any case, even if I did surrender, and even if the Avengers did listen to me about the sceptre, then what? The next thing I’d have to do is try to convince Thor that Loki had not actually died in front of him and had secretly replaced Odin, and I had no way of explaining how I knew that. And if I couldn’t convince him, he’d take the sceptre with him back to Asgard and it would end up right back in Loki’s hands. Who knew what would happen from there? Butterflies on butterflies… it all just seemed extremely risky, with too many variables that I had no control over. At least if I had the sceptre, then no one else had it.

I closed my eyes for a moment, centring myself and silently willing my power to protect and insulate my mind. I had no real idea how to form proper mental protections yet—I was still trying to puzzle out the more complex applications of my magic by trial and error—but hopefully my knowledge of the effect the sceptre could have, my pre-commitment to not using it, and my inexperienced attempt at protecting myself would be enough. Once I felt ready, I opened my eyes again and reached out, coating my hand in a corona of red, wispy energy as I plucked the artifact from its place.

I stood still for a moment. Part of me had been vaguely expecting that picking up the sceptre would feel more dramatic, but the lab remained silent except for the occasional distant sounds of battle. Focusing inward, I thought I could feel thin tendrils of influence brushing the edges of my mind. A light touch, barely discernible unless you were expecting it—even with my foreknowledge telling me it was probably real, it would be easy to dismiss as my imagination. Maybe it was. Still, I did my best to try to push it away, reinforcing what I was hoping were sufficient mental defences.

“So we’re leaving?” Pietro asked, his voice low and tinged with frustration. He was still itching for an excuse to go out and face the Avengers.

I turned to him and nodded. “Sorry, just being careful. Let’s go.”

Hugging the sceptre to my chest, I let Pietro scoop me up in a bridal carry, tucking my body into his as closely as possible, and braced my head and neck against his shoulder so I wouldn’t get whiplash. Once I’d prepared myself, I squeezed his arm to let him know I was ready.

The wind hit me immediately. I squeezed my eyes shut to protect them, feeling the world move around me at a pace I was not built to experience it at. Being carried like this wasn’t exactly the most dignified way of getting around, but it was the most reliable way for the both of us to get out of here without being caught—all I had to do was hang on and try not to throw up.

--

Twelve months earlier…

I struggled to pull myself upright, gasping and groaning into consciousness like an oxygen-starved diver breaching the surface of the ocean. My limbs responded oddly—sluggishly, but also strangely in a way I couldn’t quite place. Excited voices chattered above me and I blinked away the spots from my vision to see two men I didn’t recognise leaning over me, their outlines silhouetted against the harsh electric lighting above. My back hurt, and I was lying on… metal grating of some kind?

I was completely lost. I had no idea where I was or how I’d gotten here. The last thing I remembered was being at home, curled up in my bed.

One of the men—the bald one—said something to me I couldn’t understand, leaning in. A hand roughly grabbed my face and pulled an eyelid open as he peered at me. I recoiled from his grasp and smacked my head against the grating, forcing another groan of pain from my lips.

“What?” I said groggily. “Where… who…?” I was struggling to form sentences. My tongue felt odd in my mouth and there was something naggingly wrong with the sound of my voice.

The other man, younger with floppy hair, put a hand under my shoulder and helped me into a sitting position. “What happened? How do you feel?” He had a vaguely German-sounding accent. “We need to get her into isolation, now.”

Hair fell into my face and I sputtered and pushed it out of the way before freezing up for a moment. Was that my hair? It couldn’t be, my hair was short, but pulling at it experimentally only succeeded in tugging my head to the side.

“She’s disoriented,” the bald one said, not waiting for me to respond. Instead, a hand hooked under my armpit and pulled me to my feet. I let them manhandle me, mind racing, in what I presumed was a state of shock. The metal floor was cold on my bare feet—I was standing on a walkway of some kind, in a long room with a mirrored wall at one end and some sort of odd device off to one side, one metal arm sticking out with a blue light glowing at its tip. The two men with me were wearing plain jackets and sweater vests over button-up shirts and ties, their boring office attire seemingly completely incongruous with the concrete-and-metal facility we were in.

I almost immediately fell over again, but the younger man hooked his hand under my elbow, propping me up as I was turned and guided toward a large metal door. Everything felt wrong. The way my limbs moved, my balance, everything. Out of nowhere it struck me as bizarre that the two men were both noticeably taller than me. I was wearing some sort of loose-fitting, dark grey dress or medical robe with what seemed like nothing underneath it, but again, things felt wrong, the material brushing against my skin in ways I wasn’t accustomed to.

One of the men opened the door ahead of us, and we were suddenly through into what looked like some sort of cramped waiting room, metal benches lining the walls. A heavily armed guard was here, in full tactical gear with an assault rifle slung casually from a harness. They bustled me through before I could really take it in and guided me out into a hallway, past another two guards, and through another door into a tiny room. It seemed like everything was just a bit bigger than I’d expect—the top of the doorframes a little too far away, the ground a little too close.

There was an old-looking, boxy TV in a bracket high on the wall, playing some old show at low volume. I was sat down on an uncomfortable metal bench—the room’s sole piece of furniture aside from the TV—and the two men retreated, closing the solid-looking metal door behind them. I was alone.

The bench I was on was bolted to the floor and there was a bar running along the length of it, like something you’d secure inmates in a jail to. Daylight filtered in from a tall window on one side of the room, a metal mesh visible inside the glass. A stone wall lay outside, barely a foot distant from it, giving me no clues as to where the hell I was. The room itself was small, with the stone exterior wall contrasting sharply with newer concrete blocks dividing what at one point must have been a larger room into what I could only describe as a cell. A security camera was mounted on the wall next to the TV, its lens focused on me.

I pressed my hands to my forehead, willing my muddled brain to sort itself out, then paused and pulled them away again so I could look at them. My hands were unfamiliar. More feminine. My mysteriously long hair had fallen into my face again as well, and I suddenly became more acutely aware of my body, what I could feel about it and, notably, what I couldn’t. I surreptitiously squeezed my thighs together, feeling both an absence and something new I wasn’t used to.

Huh.

The shapeless grey dress I was wearing did a good job of obscuring my figure, and had made it so that my initial grogginess and disorientation had made it difficult to work out what was wrong with me. Now that I was starting to feel more alert and actually looking at myself properly, however, I felt a frisson of wonder. I experimentally touched my chest, first gently poking with a finger and then cupping it with both palms, confirming the presence of a pair of breasts that I very definitely did not have yesterday.

Huh.

I took a deep breath and thought back, poring over every bit of detail I could remember about where I was. One of the men had called me ‘she’. There was that device in the room I’d woken up in, which was holding a metal rod with a blue glowing light set in its head. I looked up at the TV. It was angled down slightly, and there was some unidentifiable old sitcom playing on it, looking like something from the 70s or 80s. The TV itself had what I assumed was a brand name enamelled across the top of it, but it was in Cyrillic characters. Russian? Or…

The excitement from discovering the changes to my body dulled as a slowly growing sense of doubt and trepidation overtook me. The details all seemed very familiar.

I stood up, glancing back toward the top of the doorframe. It wasn’t disproportionately high, I was just… maybe 20 centimetres shorter than I was used to being. Still, the TV wasn’t set so high that I wouldn’t be able to reach it. I reached for it, going up on my tiptoes, and turned it off. I stared into the suddenly blank screen, taking in my reflection. The woman staring back at me had long, dark hair down past her shoulders, dark circles under her eyes, and I was pretty sure I recognised her.

I was Wanda Maximoff. I’d just been exposed to Loki’s sceptre—to the Mind Stone. I had powers. Powers I had no idea how to use. And I was trapped, alone, in a militarised research base filled with modern-day Nazis.