The next forty-five minutes were spent hammering out the details of the response scenarios, and at the end of it all we had plans in place that—to my amateur eye, at least—seemed really solid.

  Despite my frustration over Tony and Shuri keeping me out of the loop on the development of their reality anchors, I had to admit that, with one stroke, they had effectively neutered Kaecilius as a major threat. He might pull some extra tricks out of his hat but, when it came right down to it, at this point we’d negated almost all of his major advantages and he was heavily outgunned. I wouldn’t be able to cross him entirely off my list of worries until he was actually dealt with, but I didn’t feel like I needed to spend any more mental effort worrying about him. That meant I could move onto other concerns, like the nascent Celestial inside the planet that we still didn’t have an answer for.

  At the end of the meeting, Steve thanked everyone, looking around the table one last time. “I know it’s easy to get complacent in these sorts of situations. It might look like we have everything well in hand, but if any other avenues present themselves, let’s explore them. The world’s in our hands, people—we need to make sure we get this right.”

  “Agreed,” the Ancient One said, rising from her seat before inclining her head in a shallow bow. “Kamar-taj is grateful to the Avengers for your assistance with this matter, Captain Rogers.” The rest of the sorcerous contingent stood as well. Everyone else took that as a sign the meeting was over, and a few smaller side conversations sparked up as others stood to leave.

  I hesitated, feeling conflicted as I stared at the Ancient One—she noticed my gaze and paused, cocking her head to the side curiously. There were a bunch of things I wanted to ask her about, but I’d already been worried that she’d see my questions as red flags, and her little dig about Westview before the meeting had thrown me even further off. Just straight-up asking about the Scarlet Witch prophecy was likely to backfire and I didn’t really want to do that in earshot of Tony in any case. It might be better to probe a little with something less likely to ring any alarm bells first, to see what her appetite was for actually giving me information, and then go from here.

  Touching Natasha gently on the arm, I stood up, maintaining eye contact across the table for a moment, then started circling around toward the sorcerers. Nat stood and followed me over. The Ancient One moved as well, meeting me close to the door before we stepped off to one side, out of the way of anyone who wanted to move past and out. “If you have a moment, I had a question about portals,” I started, glancing between her and her fellows.

  The three sanctum masters, at least, didn’t seem like they intended on sticking around. While Mordo hovered near the Ancient One’s shoulder, the three other sorcerers continued past, exchanging glances and low words with each other as they left.

  The Ancient One murmured something to Master Minoru, a small smile touching her lips, then turned back to me. “You may ask.”

  I felt Nat’s hand lightly touch the small of my back—I wasn’t sure if she intended it as a comfort or as a warning to be careful, but it served well enough as both. I took a deep breath. “Once Carol left Earth, while she was in another star system, I opened a portal to her.”

  “You did what?” Mordo hissed in surprise. He clamped his mouth shut again, his jaw tight as he stared at me—I got the impression that he hadn’t actually meant to speak. The Ancient One, on the other hand, said nothing, her face an unreadable mask.

  “It was… uh, let’s call it ‘extremely difficult’,” I continued, glancing between the two of them. “I was wondering if you could tell me why.”

  A couple of the others had paused and were standing around in the general vicinity, obviously interested in what was being said. Unfortunately, that included Shuri and Tony, who had stepped off to one side near the TV screens on the wall to talk quietly to each other, but were now very obviously listening in.

  The Ancient One considered me for a moment, thinking through her answer before she spoke. “Sorcerers harness energy drawn from other dimensions of the multiverse. Everyone holds within them the potential to learn the basic principles—to a greater or lesser extent—as every living thing possesses the fundamental structures required to channel this energy,” she said. “Some have a deeper natural talent, but a truly powerful sorcerer is one who has spent decades working to align their meridians to facilitate better transfer of power and hone their soul to handle more potent energies.”

  This wasn’t new information to me—except for some of the details, I supposed—and it didn’t really answer my question in any meaningful sense. I was about to gently point that out when Shuri interjected instead. “I’d been wondering how it was possible for you to manage the power requirements for this sort of spatial manipulation. You’re cheating—pulling it from elsewhere.”

  The Ancient One inclined her head, acknowledging Shuri’s words. “Yes, we ‘cheat’. Witchcraft, however, works through a different mechanism. It is innate, drawn from a personal reserve of power. And Wanda’s magic, in particular, is quite… different.” She hesitated and I got the feeling that she was weighing up the potential consequences of whatever she was thinking of saying next. “An ordinary witch, for instance, would not normally be able to use a sling ring—they would need to learn sorcery, separately, in order to do so.”

  “But I’m not an ordinary witch,” I said.

  “No, you are not,” the Ancient One acknowledged. “Your personal magic is touched by chaos and has the power to alter reality; to do things that would normally be impossible. Would I be correct in assuming that you started using a sling ring under a pre-existing belief that you could or should be able to?”

  I blinked. I hadn’t really connected all the dots on that until now. “You’re saying I can use a sling ring because I thought I could use one, and my magic is just papering over the gaps?”

  “Not completely. You’re still making use of the ring’s spellwork, as far as I can tell. However, you lack the knowledge to draw energy from elsewhere to fuel it and substitute your innate magic instead. This would normally not be possible.”

  “And the amount of power necessary to open a portal increases with distance,” Mordo added, tersely. “A powerful enough sorcerer could open one between stars without too much more effort than one that spanned the globe, as he would only act as a conduit, not supply the power himself.”

  He was frowning, his expression hard as he stared at me, and I was pretty sure now that I knew why he’d been so surprised at first. Having enough raw power at my disposal to conjure portals across the planet was one thing, but having enough to cover orders of magnitudes more distance—across space—was another. Tipping my hand here was forcing him to re-evaluate just how strong he thought I was.

  Sigh. So much for not raising any red flags.

  “Ah,” I said, feeling a little stupid. “Well. That makes sense.”

  It also, unfortunately, meant there was no shortcut for me to actually be able to reliably portal interstellar distances—there just wasn’t an easy answer aside from ‘get stronger’.

  “Was that all you wished to know?” the Ancient One asked, watching me carefully.

  I bit my lip. From the way she was looking at me, I got the impression that she’d realised that I had something else I wanted to ask her about, but I really felt like diving headfirst into the conversational minefield of asking about the Scarlet Witch prophecy would be a mistake right now. Especially given Tony was right there. After a moment, I nodded. “That’s all. Thank you.”

  The Ancient One cocked her head to the side for a moment, the ghost of a smile passing across her features, then nodded and turned away. She and Mordo finished saying their goodbyes to the Avengers, then the sorcerers took their leave. T’Challa had disconnected at this point, too, but everyone else was still milling about, having their own little conversations.

  Well, that fucking sucked. I hadn’t gotten any actionable information, I’d actually given away stuff that it might have been better to keep to myself, and access to Kamar-taj’s knowledge of the Scarlet Witch was still off the table for the foreseeable future.

  My eyes landed on Tony and Shuri, my frustration easily morphing into anger. Taking a deep breath, I tried and failed to keep it in check as I moved purposefully over toward where they were standing. As I did so, Nat’s hand closed firmly around my bicep, squeezing—definitely a warning, this time. I ignored it.

  “Hey, Tony, so, what—and I cannot stress this enough—the fuck?” I was trying to keep the volume of my voice under control, but I still managed to draw everyone’s attention. “Why wasn’t I brought in on this?”

  “You didn’t need to be,” he responded, shaking his head, his posture going a bit defensive. “You heard the Ancient One and you’ve said it yourself before: your magic’s different. We need to stop a sorcerer, so we were working based on sorcerous portals.”

  “It wouldn’t have been useful to have a point of comparison? Additional data? Hell, I’d have just liked a heads-up that I might notice something funky happen with my portals, given how often I visit the compound—you’ve presumably been testing this, right?”

  Tony hesitated. “…We already had plenty of data on your portals.”

  “Really.” My expression could have been carved from stone. “Because I thought you lost all your data when Eliza cleared you out, and it’s not like I’ve been portalling into your lab where all your scanners and stuff are.”

  Shuri, who’d been facing away from me for most of this exchange, finally turned around. “We used my data as a basis, from scans taken at the Great Mound.” She set her jaw and stared me down, as if daring me to be annoyed about it.

  And you know what? I was annoyed. “Uh huh. Been secretly plotting against me, huh?”

  “Wanda,” Natasha said, a note of concern in her voice.

  Steve stepped up, moving smoothly to join the rough semi-circle as he held up a hand and shook his head. “No one’s secretly plotting against anyone. Wanda—yes, you should have been brought on board with this project,” he said, shooting a warning glance in Tony’s direction. “But we needed something like this to even the playing field with Kaecilius; it wasn’t developed with you in mind.”

  “Wasn’t it?” I asked tightly. I looked past him to Shuri and Tony again.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Tony said firmly. At my expression, he sighed and rolled his eyes. “What else do you want me to say, Wanda? You want me to apologise? Okay: I’m sorry.”

  “I want you to tell me the truth.”

  “I am telling you the truth.”

  “The truth?” Shuri interrupted, folding her arms matter-of-factly. “When I started working on this project—when I collected my initial datasets at the Great Mound—yes. It was to work out how to contain you.”

  Tony shot her an annoyed look. “Hey, Girl Genius, not helping.”

  I made a noise of frustration in the back of my throat. “And you seriously expect me to believe that Shuri came to you with all this data from scans of my portals and the great Tony fucking Stark couldn’t connect the dots?”

  “Does it matter?” he hedged. “Even if that’s what the data was originally for, that’s not why we were using it.”

  “It does,” Steve said with a sigh, shaking his head. He turned to look at the Wakandan princess, meeting her defiant gaze with the full force of his Captain-American-is-disappointed-in-you look. “Shuri… you’re a guest here, same as Wanda, and we’re all here for the same reasons. We need to be able to work together,” he said patiently, then turned to Tony and shot him a look as well. “Tony, for a project like this you really need to bring the rest of the team in on things. I’m not just talking about Wanda here, either. The Ancient One has concerns about the tech, as well, and I’d have liked the chance to discuss it beforehand rather than you two just showing off.”

  “Kamar-taj were in the loop.” Tony shook his head. “Mordo was keeping her apprised.”

  “You really don’t see the problem here, Tony? Honestly?” Nat asked, folding her arms.

  He rolled his eyes again, looked at the ceiling, looked at the floor, looked anywhere but directly at the others. “I do. Like I said, I’m sorry. Won’t happen again, Cap.”

  Steve didn’t look completely satisfied with that, but he gave a small nod before looking back at me. “You good?”

  I sighed. “…I’m good.”

  That was a lie, but I couldn’t see any benefit to pressing the issue and I was just so, so tired of always getting into arguments with Tony. I didn’t trust him, he didn’t trust me, and I couldn’t see either of those things changing anytime soon.

  Shuri was another story. I turned to her and she visibly tensed—why was she still like this? I’d hoped she might have started to get over things by now, but it really felt like her opinion of me hadn’t shifted at all. “Shuri, look,” I started. “I know we’ve had issues in the past but, if we’re going to be working together, I really don’t think it’s good for either of us, or the Avengers, if you aren’t willing to meet me halfway on things.”

  She crossed her arms and exhaled sharply. “If you think you can just apologise…”

  “Is this about the Heart-Shaped Herb? Look, you know why I’m keeping Bast’s blessing. I’d literally be dead by now—several times over—if I’d given it up. I get why your dad and T’Challa are twisted up about it, but I’m pretty sure you don’t even care about Bast. Why is this such an issue?” I threw my hands up, frustrated. “Look, if I remembered anything about the scientist that successfully replicates the super soldier serum, I’d jump on that instead, but I don’t.”

  “The who who does what now?” Bruce spoke up from the sidelines, surprise in his voice. I glanced around—I’d almost forgotten that the rest of the Avengers were still here. Everyone had gathered in a loose circle at the side of the conference room.

  “Wanda,” Nat gently squeezed my arm. “Sometimes you just drop the most out-of-pocket things right into the middle of a conversation like a grenade and don’t even realise you’re doing it.”

  “You see this? You get all bent out of shape if you’re left out of the loop on something, but you turn around and do it right back to us,” Tony said, accusingly.

  “No, because it doesn’t matter. Me telling you something like that is pointless. Like I said, don’t remember anything about him. All I know is he ended up in Madripoor in like 2024, which—who knows how things will shake out now?” I tried not to sigh. “Yes, I know eventually someone replicates the serum in a decade’s time. So what? I don’t have any other details to give.”

  “It’s still helpful to know that we need to potentially look out for something like that,” Steve interjected.

  “But you already knew that that was a possibility, and after everything I’ve changed it might not even happen now. The serum was invented by a scientist in the first place, so it could always be recreated. You already know that the government was trying to replicate the serum for decades and—” I froze.

  Fuck. They didn’t know about Isaiah Bradley. There were always so many fucking things to keep track of… Should I tell them? I honestly didn’t remember that much about the man, but what I did remember was that Isaiah didn’t want to get involved with anything; he just wanted to be left alone. To live in peace. Tony was one thing, but would telling Steve about Isaiah lead to anything good, or would it just cause unneeded grief for the both of them? That was something I’d need to think through later—definitely not something I should reveal in the heat of the moment to score points.

  “Wanda?” Steve prompted me, a small frown creasing his forehead.

  I hesitated. After a moment, Bruce spoke up again timidly. “I looked over SHIELD’s data on Emil Blonsky, if that’s what you’re talking about. He was unstable even before Sterns infected him with my blood. They got close, but they shuttered human trials years ago. Too many things went wrong.”

  “Exactly,” I said, maybe a little unconvincingly. “Telling you stuff like that is pointless. Yes, someone someday might replicate the super soldier serum. Me saying that isn’t actionable or useful in any way. You have no way of verifying it. There’s lots of stuff like that that’d just sound like I was making things up to make myself look better. Like… Shuri, one of the reasons I went to Wakanda in the first place was to save your brother’s life.”

  “From N’Jadaka.” Her tone was grudging, like it pained her to admit that I’d actually been helpful there.

  “No,” I countered immediately. “Not directly, at least. You beat Killmonger; that part worked out just fine on its own.”

  She frowned but didn’t say anything. Clint, who’d been silent until now, spoke up to ask. “What, then?”

  “One of the big, long-term consequences of Killmonger’s attempt to take over Wakanda was the loss of the Heart-Shaped Herbs—all of them. After he received the blessing of Bast, he burnt the fields. A few years later, T’Challa died from some sort of degenerative disease which could have been cured by the Herb. You’re welcome.”

  “Oh, yes, we should be so grateful to you,” Shuri said acerbically.

  I let out a snort of disbelief and shook my head. “See? Pointless. Then there’s all the stuff I know about that I shouldn’t tell anyone, because even just letting people know about some of them could have massive negative consequences.”

  “Like Talokan?” Tony asked quietly.

  My blood turned to ice in my veins. “…You saw that in my notes,” I said, my voice a little unsteady.

  Steve looked between Tony and me, concern now written plainly on his face. “What’s Talokan?”

  “Don’t,” I snapped, fixing Tony with the harshest death glare I could muster. “You have no idea what could happen. Please, Tony. Just forget you ever read that name.”

  “Is this another Dormammu situation, or…?” Bruce ventured.

  My hands had clenched into fists at my sides. “It’s an ‘even just casually looking into it could have extreme consequences’ situation.”

  Talokan and Namor were yet another thing where the best thing that I could do, for now, was just pretend they didn’t exist. An entire nation of Enhanced, even more xenophobic than Wakanda, with similar vibranium technology, willing to resort to extreme violence to keep themselves hidden from the rest of the world. They only attacked in the original timeline thanks to Riri’s vibranium detector revealing the existence of their own source of the metal—that was something I’d need to keep on eye on.

  “You’re not qualified to make that call on your own,” Tony said, sounding exasperated. “You’ve gotta throw us a bone, here, Wanda.”

  “I’m the only one qualified to make that call. No one else has the right context. And I don’t ‘gotta’ tell you shit, Tony,” I said firmly.

  God, was I acting exactly like the Ancient One, here? But the second I told someone about Talokan, I lost control of that information and I’d already seen how drastic the consequences could be for even tiny actions based on that sort of knowledge. Even if I only gave the bare details, what guarantee did I have that Tony wouldn’t have the bright idea to just do some innocent scans that he thought were undetectable, or something similar, and fuck everything up?

  Scans. That reminded me again: Riri, the one whose invention had sparked off the whole mess with Talokan. Realistically, it was pointless to tell the Avengers about her right now. But… just a little bit of information, as a peace offering, might still mollify or distract Tony. I did want to tell them about her eventually, anyway, along with a few other potential Young Avengers candidates like Kate Bishop and Kamala Khan, so it wasn’t like I was really conceding anything.

  “Fine, Tony, you want a bone? There’s someone we should maybe keep an eye on. Absolutely not urgent or anything we need to act on for years, at least, but her name’s Riri Williams.” I felt a little bad about it, but Riri wasn’t someone who’d had a secret identity as such, and I’d tried to be excessively privacy-conscious with Peter and look how that turned out. “She’d just be a little kid, now. I have no idea where she’s from or anything else about her but, in like five or ten years, you should look at her as a candidate for the Young Avengers program. I don’t think she’s quite on Shuri or Tony’s level, but she’s still right up there.”

  “Riri?” Nat asked gently.

  “R-I-R-I. I don’t know if it’s short for something. Sorry, I literally don’t know anything else about her.” I thought about it for a moment. “I think she was studying at MIT in like… I want to say 2024, 2025? She’s black. That’s all I’ve got.”

  “That’s not a lot to go on,” Tony said.

  There was a brief instant where I very much wanted to pick up Tony Stark and throw him across the damn room. Instead, I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath to try to keep my anger in check. “Are you fucking kidding me? Did you not listen to anything I just said?”

  Nat stepped between us, facing me, and placed a hand gently on my chest, above my heart. “I think that’s about enough for today,” she said, her head turned slightly and her voice a little louder than necessary, to convey that she was talking to Tony as well, not just me. “We should go.”

  “Before I strangle Tony with my bare hands, yes,” I agreed, shooting him another angry glare over her shoulder.

  --

  “I don’t entirely disagree with Tony,” Natasha said carefully, holding her hands up defensively when she saw my expression. We’d retreated back to her apartment—Yelena was out, again, so it was just the two of us, standing beside the bed. “You’ve taken everything onto yourself. You’ve changed things, and some of what you’ve changed has saved lives, but other things haven’t gone the way you wanted. The weight of all that responsibility… You don’t have to struggle with that alone, you know?”

  I sighed and shook my head. “I know. I just… Some of what I know is really dangerous. if I say the wrong thing—share the wrong piece of information with the wrong person at the wrong time—I don’t know what the consequences might be. People could die.”

  Nat took a step closer to me, bringing her hands down and holding them out to me. I took them in mine, leaning forward until our foreheads were lightly touching. “I know,” she said quietly. “I think Tony understands why you feel that way, too. Otherwise, he’d push even harder.”

  “You think this is Tony being nice?”

  Nat chuckled, our foreheads rubbing together a little as she shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly, but Tony… the two of you are more alike than you think.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  “Tony’s mentally put himself in this position where he feels like the safety of the world is his responsibility. Through the Avengers, yes, but also his, personally. It’s why he feels so guilty when things don’t go exactly perfectly, and why he has a tendency to overcorrect. He sees you withholding information from him and worries about the consequences of that, just as much as you worry about the consequences of sharing it.”

  We stood quietly for a moment, gazing into each other’s eyes. Absently, I played with her hands, running my fingers along hers, intertwining and extricating them over and over again. “He’s a butt,” I said finally.

  “He’s a butt,” she agreed, smiling slightly. After a moment, she pulled away and looked at me seriously. “You’ve misread Shuri, too.”

  My forehead creased. “What do you mean?”

  “I think you’re right about her not caring about Bast’s blessing. T’Challa does but, from my brief conversations with her, Shuri doesn’t really seem to buy into the spiritual aspects of Wakandan culture.”

  “So what’s her problem, then?”

  Nat took hold of my hands, clasping them together in hers. “She’s scared of you, Wanda,” she said gently. “I’m not sure if it’s just what happened when you first went to Wakanda, or a combination of that plus the whole Eliza situation, but she’s afraid of you, and she doesn’t know how to deal with it.”

  I looked away from her, a tight, sick sensation rising in my stomach. What was it that not-Eliza had said? They’re afraid of you. All of them. They always have been. They never stopped being afraid of you.

  “What can I…” I paused, biting my lip anxiously. “How do I fix that?”

  Nat let go with one of her hands to reach up and tilt my chin, gently forcing me to look at her again. “You don’t,” she said. “I mean, you can’t. Shuri’s the one that needs to work through her issues with you, and she doesn’t seem willing to accept help. All you can do is keep proving that you’re not a bad person. She’s smart, but she’s still really young—she needs time to work through things. Pressuring her on it won’t help.”