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

I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, looking for any trace of Wanda, but there was nothing. Just me. I’d been in this body for long enough that I’d completely stopped thinking of it as Wanda’s. It was mine. When I looked in the mirror, I just saw me looking back. Not her.

Seeing Wanda in the Ancestral Plane had been… jarring. Unexpected. If the Ancestral Plane was real and I hadn’t just been hallucinating due to my own guilt at displacing Wanda, then seeing her there meant that she really was dead. Her soul had moved on. I found that thought more upsetting than I expected to. If she was dead, then it meant whatever had put me here had killed her.

I wished that I’d had the opportunity to speak more frankly with the Ancient One. If anyone could shed more light on how I’d gotten here or what had happened to Wanda, it’d be her. Hell, I wished I could speak to anyone about my situation. Pietro was always around, but there would always be a gulf between us that I couldn’t cross. I couldn’t talk to him. Not really. Not honestly. Even with him there, I was still alone.

I sighed and retreated from the mirror, leaving the bathroom to drift aimlessly about the rest of the hotel room. After we’d returned from getting what might have actually been the worst McDonalds I’d ever had in either of my two lives, Pietro had headed back out for the evening. He’d made some vague mouth noises about scouting and collecting additional supplies, but I knew he was just bored and wanted to explore. He’d probably find a bar and have a few drinks, maybe try to chat up a pretty Australian girl.

There was no reason to stop him. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be detected here and, even if we were, we were literally as far away from the Avengers as we could get. It would take them a long time to deploy here, even if they moved as quickly as possible. Besides, they probably needed to sleep at some point as well. We were as safe here as we could be and it was important for Pietro to have some space and time to himself to unwind a bit.

I touched the Mind Stone and absently brushed against the surface of my own thoughts—carefully, of course, no sense in doing anything extreme and risk getting trapped inside my own mind in a recursive loop of self-examination or anything stupid. Still, nothing had changed since I’d looked inwardly during my first few months in this body. As far as I could tell, there was no trace of Wanda’s original mind, nothing hidden or locked away. I was alone.

Or was I?

“Uh, Watcher?” Talking to an empty room made me feel a little self-conscious. Clearing my throat, I raised my voice slightly, trying to sound confident. “Watcher! I know you’re watching! I know you can hear me!”

I’d been vaguely meaning to try this for a while, but it had sat mostly-forgotten near the bottom of my to-do list given how much of a long shot it was. I had no idea if he existed in this version of this universe and, even if he did, he had his whole ‘non-interference’ policy and would be incredibly unlikely to respond. It was, at least, an easy thing to try and cost me nothing. There was a tiny chance that my situation was just unique and interesting enough from his perspective that he might humour me for a minute.

“Look, I know you don’t like to interfere in the worlds you observe, but I’m not exactly from here and I figure you might be the only person I could talk to who might actually be able to tell me what’s going on? Watcher! Come on, please. Talk to me.”

The multiverse was a topic I hadn’t broached with Pietro yet, and I didn’t think it was worth getting into a big discussion of it just to tell him that a powerful entity that looked like a dude with an enormous head might be voyeuristically watching everything we do. Pietro had been pretty good about believing me when I told him things, but this one had just seemed like a lot of effort for a very unlikely payoff.

I spent a few more minutes cajoling the empty air before writing it off as a lost cause and collapsed backwards onto my bed with a sigh. I suppose it would have been too much to ask for me to be able to just tap a god on the shoulder and ask him how I’d gotten here.

I stared at the off-white ceiling above me, feeling a little annoyed with myself and the universe in general. Part of me wished I was more tired—the last time we’d actually slept had been an awkward few hours in the jeep we’d stolen from Klaue, on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere on our way to Wakanda. It was honestly a little tough to keep track of time properly when we kept bouncing from time zone to time zone, but it had to have been at least eighteen or nineteen hours ago. I was due some shut-eye, but my body wasn’t tired at all—even if I curled up and tried to have an early night, I knew I wouldn’t be able to turn my buzzing thoughts off very easily.

My mind turned back to the Avengers. I really, really wished our first meeting had been less… fight-y. I wanted them as allies, not enemies, but it didn’t seem like there was an easy way to work towards that. The Mind Stone was a massive sticking point between us, but any scenario where I didn’t keep it close by felt extremely risky. Thanos would come looking for it at some stage and I needed to deny him access to as many of the stones as possible. The only way I could really guarantee that he wouldn’t get it before I was ready for him was to hold onto it directly. Not only that, but an Infinity Stone was a powerful tool to have at my disposal and it could potentially come in handy going forward against any number of threats beyond just the Mad Titan. On top of that, the Avengers would almost certainly just hand the stone over to Asgard, which was currently being run by Loki in disguise and I really did not want to think about how badly that might end up turning out.

At this stage, I didn’t have any real way of convincing them to let me keep it or that Loki was alive and had somehow hoodwinked Odin. What I needed was some massive threat that we could work together to avert so I could earn their trust, but I’d already stopped Ultron from existing and couldn’t think of anything else Avengers-level I could prove myself against—at least, not until Thanos showed up.

Still, I wished there was a way I could safely reach out and open a dialog with them, without risking getting into another fight. Captain America had seemed at least a little sympathetic to our situation and if I could just talk to him…

I paused, kicking myself mentally. The Mind Stone. I’d literally just tried to use it to reach out across space to communicate with the Guardians of the Galaxy. It had failed, but that had felt more like it was because the universe was a huge place and I didn’t have a specific idea of where they were, rather than because it was impossible. Steve Rogers, who was at least on the same planet, should be a lot easier to find.

Sitting up, I hesitated for a moment and wondered if I should wait until Pietro got back. I had no idea how late he’d be out, and it wasn’t like I was in a rush. It’d be easy enough to wait until morning. Then again, we might have an argument about it—he still wasn’t on board with working with the Avengers. Besides, I was only going to project my mind. Even if I accidentally showed up in the middle of Avengers Tower and ended up pissing everyone off, I’d be perfectly safe and my body would be staying right here, on the other side of the world.

My mind made up, I pulled my legs up under me and sat cross-legged on my bed again. Taking a deep breath, I reached into the Mind Stone with threads of chaos magic. Once more, instead of letting my consciousness expand outwards randomly, I focused it on my target. Fixing a mental picture of Steve Rogers in my mind’s eye, I cast the stone’s power out, searching for him. It only took a few seconds. A bright spark in my perception, a mind that somehow ‘matched’ the picture in my head. He was too far away for my own personal magic to reach him directly, so I couldn’t use his senses to build a picture of his location and instead had to push myself toward him blindly. With an effort of will, I manifested, using the Mind Stone to project myself close to where I felt him.

I looked around. This was… a bedroom? The sound of running water filtered through from what must have been an adjoining bathroom. I didn’t specifically recognise it—my memory wasn’t that good and I think it was only shown once or twice—but this must be Steve’s apartment. Early morning light was just filtering in from a nearby window.

For a moment I was stunned at just how poor my timing was. I had no idea what his schedule was like and had sort of been mentally preparing myself for the worst, but what I’d expected the worst to be was for me to accidentally pop into the middle of Avengers Tower in front of the entire rest of the team. Showing up in his apartment while he was in the shower hadn’t even been on my radar. At least I hadn’t appeared in his lap while he was using the toilet.

I hesitated for a moment, unsure if I should wait or come back later, then felt like the decision was mostly made for me when the sound of running water stopped. Unsure what else to do, I sat down on the edge of the bed facing the bathroom door, hands folded nervously in my lap.

It wasn’t until a split second before the bathroom door opened that I noticed the set of clothes—dark jeans, stretch-fabric grey tee, and men’s briefs—laid out on the bed next to me. My eyes widened as a freshly-showered Steve Rogers, hair still damp, stepped out of his bathroom. He reacted to my presence almost instantly, his stance tensing and the towel in his hand shifting to interpose itself between my eyes and his modesty.

“Uh, hi! I am so sorry. Bad timing.” I stammered slightly as I spoke, hands held up in a peaceful gesture, my eyes wide and heat rising in my cheeks as I took in his mostly-nude figure. I knew that actors like Chris Evans needed to put their body through hell to maintain their superhero physiques for filming—apparently, though, that wasn’t a concern for actual Steve Rogers. Did he really look like that all the time?

“Hi…” His voice was guarded as his eyes flicked briefly around the room, probably checking to make sure Pietro wasn’t about to pounce on him. Slowly and carefully, he wrapped the towel around his waist to cover himself, though he didn’t move from the bathroom doorway.

I knew it would have been far more polite to avert my eyes, but I was having a lot of trouble tearing them away. “Before you freak out, I’m not really here. I mean, I am here, but not physically. I can’t hurt you, you can’t hurt me,” I babbled, touching the pendant at my neck. “If I were actually here, the rest of your team would already be on their way.”

“Okay,” he said, his tone uncertain. “Why are you here?”

“To talk. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d be happy to talk to you in a more neutral setting.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call this a neutral setting,” he said, then pointed at the towel around his waist. “And uh, you’ve sort of caught me with my pants down.”

I flushed again, trying and failing once more to do the respectful thing and avert my eyes. “Sorry again. Like I said, just bad timing. I didn’t know exactly where you were—honestly, I’m just lucky that projecting myself to you put me out here instead of, uh…”

Steve let out a slightly forced chuckle. His body language was still incredibly tense, but his face softened. “Yeah, this is awkward enough.” He took a small step forward and to one side, shuffling out of the doorframe and vaguely in the direction of his clothes. “You wanted to talk?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t actually thought through what I wanted to say to him, specifically, and the current situation had frazzled me a bit. It took a bit longer than I would have liked to gather my thoughts, the two of us staring awkwardly at each other for a few long seconds before I finally spoke.

“…do you remember what it felt like, just before you found out that HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD? When you thought Nick Fury had been killed and you had no idea why? Not knowing if you could trust anyone? If you should?” I let out a long sigh, slumping forward slightly and closing my eyes. “It’s been a bit like that for me. There have been a lot of people I’ve wanted to trust—that I felt like I should be able to trust—and things just haven’t worked out.”

“Yeah, I know what that’s like,” he said, his voice quiet.

Taking another deep breath, I opened my eyes again and looked up at him, searching his features. “I want to trust you. Pietro said that he knows you, but he doesn’t. Not really. I do. Better than you could imagine, even. I just… I want to stop running. Things have been hard enough without the Avengers breathing down our necks.”

“I meant what I said in New Delhi. We only wanted the sceptre—the power source. It’s too dangerous for us to leave out in the world.” Steve shook his head. “We don’t have any quarrel with you.”

“You don’t even know what it is. Neither do the Asgardians. It won’t be safe with them. There are so many things I could tell you, but so much of it sounds insane and you wouldn’t have any reason to believe me.”

“Try me. Maybe I’ll surprise you.”

It was my turn to shake my head, a rueful smile at my lips. “There are too many variables. If I tell you certain things and you don’t believe me, it could make things worse instead of better. If I could just convince you…” I straightened up suddenly, a lightbulb going off inside my mind. “Bucky!”

“Bucky?” He blinked, surprised.

I nodded to myself as I thought it through. “You’re looking for him. I can find him, if you want me to. The portals I can make have a sort of… sympathetic resonance, I guess? I don’t know how to explain it, but I don’t necessarily need to know where a person is to be able to open a portal to their location.”

“…you can find him? You’re sure?”

“I don’t know if it will work, not for certain, but I think the chances are pretty good and it’s definitely worth trying. If I open a portal here, will you step through? If it doesn’t work, I’ll send you straight home.” A pleading note had crept into my voice. I could see doubt and hope warring across his face as he listened to me babble and forged ahead. “I know how much you want to find him and I know this sounds risky and like it could be a trap, but… I haven’t had a lot of wins lately. Let me do this for you. Let me do a good thing, no strings attached. Please.”

After a second, Steve let out a soft snort of amusement. “Are you asking my permission to kidnap me?”

“Kind of?” I said, smiling back at him. “But only very temporarily. And you can leave anytime.”

“You really think you can find him?” he asked. There was a note of something hard to identify in his voice. Hope, hunger… desperation, maybe. I nodded firmly, my eyes bright, and Steve looked at me quietly for a long moment before nodding. “Can I at least put some pants on first?”

“Of course.” I leant back, feeling positively buzzed. This was going to work. I let my eyes roam appreciatively over his bare chest and arms. A small smirk curled the corner of my mouth and I bit my bottom lip, tilting my head questioningly. “Unless there’s something else you’d like me to help you with first? We don’t have to go after Bucky right away.”

He coughed, clearing his throat to hide a smile, then shot me a pointed look. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” There was a beat of awkward silence before my brain caught up with the conversation and my smirk turned into a sheepish grin. “Oh! Uh, sorry. Sure thing. One minute, then I’ll open a portal. Be ready to jump through.”

I closed my eyes, focused briefly and snapped back into my own body, returning to the other side of the planet in an instant. Jumping excitedly to my feet, I looked around and hesitated briefly. Pietro wasn’t back yet and probably wasn’t likely to be anytime soon. He wouldn’t be too worried if he returned and I’d ducked out for a bit, but I wasn’t sure how long this was going to take and he was already probably going to be extremely cross with me for making contact with the Avengers without him. Better to have that discussion in person instead of just dropping a note with ‘gone to hang out with Captain America’ on it.

Standing up, I grabbed my notebook and tore out a blank page, scribbled a quick note on it before dropping it on Pietro’s bed: ‘P. Went out for a bit to clear my head. Might be a little while. We’ll talk in the morning. W.’

Stretching my arms wide, I let out a small sigh of satisfaction as I felt the muscles in my shoulders and back pop. The bundle of vibranium spears leaning against the wall in the corner of the room caught my eye for a moment, but I couldn’t imagine a scenario where I’d want or need them. The worst thing that could happen here was a fight against Cap and Bucky and I really wouldn’t want something like that to turn lethal. 

I hadn’t been counting the seconds, but I figured that that was probably long enough. I retrieved my sling ring from my pocket, slipping it on with a slight wince. The burn from earlier was still a little tender. Picturing the bedroom I’d just been in, I gestured, spinning threads of chaos magic into a portal. A moment later, Steve Rogers—now fully dressed in the clothes I’d seen laid out for him on his bed, his shield held loosely in one hand—stepped cautiously through.

 

--

 

Natasha rapped on the door with her knuckles, studying the black lettering stencilled on its opaque glass window as she waited for a response: Alias Investigations. She hadn’t found any listed business hours when she’d done her initial research, but figured that 9AM was a relatively safe bet for someone keeping an office like this—though it was always possible that the woman Nat was here to see had already headed out on an early morning job.

Just down the hall behind her, a door opened and a tall, dark-skinned man stepped out. “Can I help you?” he called out. “Uh, we don’t usually take walk-ins…” he trailed off as Nat turned around to look at him.

She smiled brightly. “Hi, mister…?”

His eyes grew round in shock. “Uh, Ducasse. Malcolm Ducasse. Mal. You… you’re one of the Avengers!”

Nat nodded, shooting him one of her best sheepish ‘I’m just an attractive girl who needs help from a big strong man’ looks. “Yeah. Sorry, I really need to speak to Jessica Jones if she’s available? Do you work with her, or…?”

Blinking, Malcolm nodded furiously. “Yeah, yes, of course. Uh, I’ll just get her,” he said, bustling into the corridor and giving Nat a wider-than-necessary berth as he slid past her. He fished a key from a pocket, fumbling it a few times as he hurriedly tried to unlock the door, then shot her a nervous and apologetic smile as he stepped in and closed the door behind him.

After a few moments there was a rapid knocking inside, followed by Malcolm’s muffled voice. “Jess?! Jess, you up?” There was a response of some kind, but it was further muted by the multiple doors between them and Nat couldn’t make it out completely. “You alone?” Another response, then the faint sound of another door opening. Satisfied that her target seemed unlikely to pull a runner, Nat settled back to wait.

A few minutes later, she was ushered inside to a disorganised mess of an office and offered a seat on the far side of a desk from a slender, pale woman with greasy black hair. Nat watched patiently as Jessica Jones noisily finished downing the entirety of a 20-oz can of energy drink in about five seconds flat.

Jones put the empty can down on her desk, maybe a little too firmly, and peered at her with bloodshot eyes over puffy dark circles. “Alright. So, Ms Romanov,” she said, her tone laced with suspicion. “What does an Avenger want with little old me?”

“Maybe I just want to hire you.”

“Yeah, right. As if there’s anything I can do that Little Miss Superspy can’t.”

“I read the reports about Killgrave. What he could do. What he did,” Nat said quietly. Jones went still. “It’s not exactly the same, but I had a man like him control me once, too. I was in the same situation as you. Made the same choice.”

“Want a medal?” Jones glared at her, her tone frosty.

There was a tense moment of silence before Natasha spoke again, changing tacks. “You’re Enhanced,” she said. “Super strength.”

“So what?”

“So what made you want to be a private investigator?”

“Because I’m good at it. None of your business,” Jones snapped, leaning forward over her desk, eyes narrowed. “What do you want?” Nodding slowly, Nat reached into the slim messenger bag on her shoulder and pulled out a manilla folder. She offered it to Jones, who hesitated for only a very brief moment before taking it. “I expected an Avenger to be a bit more hi-tech,” she said as she flicked it open.

“Well, I was coming to see a PI, so I thought I’d have a bit of fun and go old school, just for you.”

Jones spared a moment to shoot her an exaggerated, sarcastic smile, then frowned as she looked over the series of large, printed photos of the Maximoff twins. “Who am I looking at?” she asked, her brow furrowing slightly as she studied the pictures, taking in every detail.

“You tell me,” Nat said, leaning back to gauge her reaction.

“Brother and sister,” the PI said almost immediately. “Eastern European, at a guess. Pictures weren’t taken in New York—buildings in the background are wrong. Not sure which country. Europe somewhere. You still haven’t told me what this is all about.”

“I’m looking for the answer to a question, Jones. Or do you prefer Jessica?”

Jones just shrugged irritably, gesturing with a hand for her to just get on with it.

“The question is why, when two Enhanced escaped from a top-secret HYDRA facility in Eastern Europe, the very first thing they did once they had access to a computer was to run a search for ‘Alias Investigations NYC’?”

Jones looked at her sharply. “Are you asking me if I work for HYDRA?” she asked incredulously.

“Of course not,” Natasha said, shaking her head. She’s done her due diligence before coming here and if there’d been even a whiff of suspicion that Jessica Jones was secretly working for HYDRA, she wouldn’t have come alone. “Are you sure you don’t recognise them?”

“No.”

“Are their names familiar? Wanda and Pietro Maximoff?”

Jones’s frown grew deeper with each question. “No. Not at all.”

They were interrupted as Nat’s smartphone started buzzing in her pocket, quietly but insistently.

Despite the lack of volume, Jones still winced slightly at the noise. “Gonna get that?” she asked, eyeing Nat resentfully.

Natasha could tell from the ringtone that it was one of the team—if it was anyone else, she’d have let it go to voicemail, but if it was Tony or Bruce then that meant there might have been a development with the Maximoffs. “Give me a sec.” Fishing out the phone, a quick glance at the caller ID told her that Tony Stark was on the other end. She stood and stepped over to the far side of the room, turning away from the room’s other occupant and lowering her voice slightly as she answered. “Hey, what’s up?”

Tony’s voice came through clear but subdued, a note of anxiety in his tone. “Steve’s missing.”

Nat frowned. “What? How?”

“He didn’t come in this morning. Tried calling but he isn’t answering. I stopped by, no one’s home. Shield’s not there, but he left his phone behind. Exterior cameras didn’t show him leave.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s missing,” she pointed out. There were a dozen reasons she could think of off the top of her head why Steve might have briefly gone radio silent, but something had clearly spooked Tony. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

“There was a blip in the tracking algorithm, right here in New York. A short burst, only just noticeable above the background noise—we almost missed it. Did miss it. Only saw it after the fact. Bruce narrowed it down to Steve’s block.”

Her blood ran cold. “You think the twins took him.” It was more of a statement than a question.

“Got it in one. Come in?”

Natasha had spoken to Steve after New Delhi. He was sympathetic to the twins’ situation, but that didn’t make them good people. They had an axe to grind and a suite of powers that would make them an absolute nightmare to deal with if they took the initiative and made a serious run at Tony. If the Maximoffs played it smart, isolated them one at a time… first Steve, who would be next?

Wanda’s powers, in particular, were a serious concern. Nat had had more than her fill of mind control back when Clint had been controlled by Loki using the sceptre and Wanda’s mind-bending abilities were that all over again. If Steve was compromised, they might be in a lot of trouble.

“We’ll swing by his apartment first, we might spot something you missed.”

“‘We’?” Tony asked dubiously.

“I’ll explain later.” She hung up and looked over at Jones, a calculating expression on her face. “How are you with missing persons cases?”