“And then—and then!” I said, gesturing sharply with the winecup in my hand for emphasis. “He fucking…” Trailing off, I let out a deep sigh then slumped slightly in my seat. “Sorry. Enough about Tony. I don’t want to think about him anymore.”

  In the kitchen, just across from where I was sitting, Gilgamesh had just finished piling a truly over-the-top amount of well-spiced meats and cheeses onto a wooden board. Wiping his hands on his apron, he lifted the board with both hands and carried it over to the dining table.

  “He sounds like a dick,” he said, matter-of-factly, as he set the overloaded board down with a small flourish. “But hey, you know what always helps after dealing with assholes?” He held up one thick finger, then reached for a small knife and a chunk of aged cheese. “Good food and good wine. They may not make the problem go away, but they make it matter less.” He popped the piece of cheese into his mouth and chewed with exaggerated satisfaction, waggling his eyebrows at me.

  I nodded in agreement, my hand hovering over the excessively extravagant selection for a moment as I tried to work out where to even start. A faint gleam of reflected candlelight drew my attention to a corner of the room and I straightened up a little, having noticed the large hookah tucked away there. “Shisha?” I asked, a touch of excitement in my tone.

  Gil followed my gaze and shot me a small smile. “Oh, yeah! Haven’t used it in a little while actually—you wanna smoke? I’ve got plenty stashed away.”

  Interestingly, I’d never actually smoked in this life. Even in my distant, other non-Wanda life, I’d smoked only rarely and had never particularly cared for tobacco. However, when I’d visited my father’s home country for a month, I had smoked the absolute shit out of some shisha while I’d been there. Essentially everywhere you went in Egypt had hookahs and cheap flavoured tobaccos available, not to mention the hashish I’d smoked privately with our tour guide.

  I hesitated a moment, then gave a small nod. “It probably won’t really do that much for me, though—stupid enhanced physiology. Got any nice flavours?”

  Gilgamesh shot me an incredulous look. “Are you kidding me? I’d have thought you’d take me more seriously by now!” He pressed a hand to his chest dramatically, as though I’d wounded him deeply. “What shame have I brought upon myself, what offense have I given, that you would not expect me—Gilgamesh, King of Heroes!—to have something that’ll give even you a bit of a buzz?”

  I chuckled, bowing my head. “My apologies, oh great Gilgamesh!” I declared, then raised both hands in supplication, as if I were a priestess seeking the blessing of her god. “Please, then, I beg of you, King of Heroes—bestow upon me your dankest hash.”

  The next hour or so blurred in a haze of thick, aromatic smoke and belly laughs, the kind that left my cheeks sore and eyes watering. Sprite might have been the ‘official’ storyteller of the Eternals, but Gilgamesh was a master braggart and yarn spinner in his own right—some of the tales might’ve been complete bullshit, but he delivered them with such conviction that it didn’t really matter either way. He filled the room with warmth and laughter, his deep voice booming off the mudbrick walls as he spun tales of ancient Mesopotamia and modern kitchen disasters with equal gravity.

  Thena joined us not long after the pipe came out—picking at some of the offerings that Gil had laid out and nursing a cup of wine—though she was relatively quiet for the most part, mostly preferring to sit back and listen. At one point, Gilgamesh pulled out an old lute and plucked out a comically clumsy romantic ballad he claimed that King Arthur had composed for her. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, a small smile on her face. I, on the other hand, was cry-laughing by the second verse.

  Music, good company, a platter of mouth-watering spiced meats and cheeses, a bottomless cup of dark wine strong enough that I felt like it might knock me on my ass if I drank it too quickly, and a mix of tobacco and what had to be some sort of weapons-grade super strain… After the arguments and anger of the last two days? This was fantastic. I’d been so stressed and upset and this had just been exactly what I’d needed.

  It was like I’d died and gone to heaven. I really needed to come visit more often. The only earthly pleasure I was missing was an attractive he or she between my thighs, and it was unfortunately still going to be long hours before Nat would be ready for me to visit her in Washington.

  I knew she wouldn’t mind if I made do in the interim, though.

  My eyes flicked between Gilgamesh and Thena, eyeing their perfectly sculpted forms. Were the two of them actually a couple? I still really had no idea. They were casually intimate, but in the same way that you’d probably expect two extremely close friends who’d known each other for thousands of years to be. I’d not seen them kiss or anything that would make it obvious. I’d done a little bit of light, subtle flirting with both of them and they hadn’t really responded, but they hadn’t shut me down at all, either. I was hesitant to dial things up too much without knowing what their relationship with each other was like first.

  I saw my opportunity in a quieter moment, when Gilgamesh had stepped outside to check on the outdoor oven, and turned toward Thena, spinning my winecup in my hand nervously. “Hey, so,” I started, then bit my lip. Actually asking the question outright felt awkward, but I figured a little bit of discomfit now was worth avoiding any real awkwardness if my advances weren’t going to be welcome. I squinted at her questioningly. “Um. Are you and Gil…?”

  Thena smiled, regarding me with a mildly amused expression for a moment before she shook her head. “No. Not like that.”

  “Oh.”

  Before I could say anything else, Gil was already tramping back through the door, a grin on his face and a deep, cast-iron pan held in his bare hands, wisps of steam rising from the perfectly-golden crusted pie inside. It smelt amazing; sweet and rich. “Pie?” he asked, looking at me, then at Thena. “Pie?”

  I nodded eagerly in response. “Absolutely.”

  Thena shook her head. “Not right now. I’ll have some later.”

  Gil cut a pair of thick, generous slices, putting them on plates and setting them down onto the dining table with an air of reverence, as if they were ceremonial offerings. The molten, nearly-black fruit filling oozed out of the crust slightly as I poked gently at it with a fork. It was still about a billion degrees, but I brought the fork to my mouth and ran my tongue along the edge of it to get a small taste before making an involuntary, vaguely indecent noise in the back of my throat. Blueberry. I looked again at the pan with the rest of the pie in it—it was enormous. Where did he get that many blueberries all the way out here?

  “You know,” I said, shaking my head. “If you’re going to treat me like this every time I come around, you’re never going to get rid of me. Seriously, Gil. This is the best.”

  “It’s absolutely my pleasure,” he said, grinning widely at the praise. He gestured across the table. “Thena doesn’t have quite the same love of food and drink as I do, and we don’t exactly get many visitors. It’s good to have someone to experiment on.”

  “Well, feel free to ‘experiment’ on me anytime,” I quipped, leaning back a little and giving him an appraising look.

  Thena let out a soft snort of amusement and I glanced toward her out of the corner of my eye, letting a cheeky grin settle on my face. Both of the Eternals were attractive, but Thena’s reserved manner was a little intimidating. She didn’t engage much, and it made the prospect of flirting with her feel just that much more daunting. Gil, on the other hand, felt much more approachable.

  It didn’t take long for the pie to start to cool sufficiently that I could eat some of it without burning the roof of my mouth off, and I tucked into it with great gusto. I closed my eyes, savouring the richness for a moment, then shook my head as I swallowed and let out a contented sigh. I reached for my winecup, draining the last of it, and Gil lifted his chin questioningly. “More wine?”

  I nodded and, as he stood and started to walk past where I was sitting, I decided to make a stronger move. Turning in place, I swung my legs over the bench, lifting one to block his path like a boom gate. The motion twisted my dress somewhat, making the hem ride up to mid-thigh. Gil paused.

  “The pie is amazing,” I reiterated. “I’d say ‘my compliments to the chef’, but sometimes that’s not enough.” As I spoke, I tilted my head to cast an exaggerated glance to the apron he was still wearing and the words ‘Kiss the Cook’ plastered across his chest.

  Gilgamesh chuckled. “It’s good to know that my cooking still has the same effect on women as it did two thousand years ago,” he said with a grin, his eyes twinkling, then gently moved my leg with a hand before stepping past to retrieve a fresh amphora of wine from the side table. He returned quickly, refilling our cups before plopping back down onto the bench. He lifted his cup, tipping it toward me slightly as he waited for me to pick up my own so we could tap them together before drinking.

  It might’ve been that I was feeling just a little bit tipsy from the wine already, but after taking another mouthful I sighed. “Okay, so, I’m about a million per cent sure you’re not missing any of my incredibly unsubtle hints here, so—instead of escalating to the point where I literally take off my panties and throw them at you—I’ll just ask. What’s the deal? At the risk of sounding rude or desperate, do you not like redheads, or…?”

  Gil let out a booming peal of laughter, his eyes twinkling with amusement. Across the table, Thena was smiling as well. I sipped at my wine, feeling a little embarrassed and anxious. Once he was done laughing, Gilgamesh shot me a vaguely apologetic look.

  “Back in the day, I’d have already had you three times tonight,” he said, then shook his head ruefully. “I’d probably have taken you the night you cured Thena, too—bent you over the feasting table in front of your friends and called it a blessing from the Bull of Uruk for the great deed you’d performed for us. Hell, I’d have offered the Widow a ride, too, while I was at it.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I coughed, choking a little on my wine. “I really don’t think Pietro would have appreciated that,” I said, patting at my chest, a smile tweaking the corners of my mouth.

  “But I don’t really do that anymore.” Something in Gilgamesh’s tone seemed sad, all of a sudden.

  A few moments passed in silence as we each returned to our cups. Some of the anxiety that had risen in the pit of my stomach had eased—I obviously hadn’t offended anyone, but it felt like I’d still managed to make things a little awkward.

  Eventually, Gil gave a small shrug. “Have you read Shūtur Eli Sharrī? Sha Naqba īmuru?” At my blank expression, he gave a small smile and clarified. “Sprite’s poems. My epic.”

  My mind raced as I tried to remember literally anything at all about the Epic of Gilgamesh. I’d mostly just assumed it was made-up nonsense—like the story of Icarus that Sprite had made up specifically to needle at Ikaris—and hadn’t bothered to refresh my memory anytime recently. What did I remember? Gilgamesh had been the king of Uruk, and… oh. My eyes widened slightly as I recalled what the entire second half of the epic had been about.

  Enkidu. The man created by the gods to defeat Gilgamesh, who’d become his best friend. Well, ‘best friend’ in the same way that seemingly every scholar seemed to interpret almost every instance in history and mythology of two men making grand sweeping romantic gestures and declarations of love for each other as ‘best friends’. Enkidu had died, then Gilgamesh had wandered the world griefstruck for an age, seeking some means of defeating death itself and returning his lost ‘best friend’ to him.

  “Enkidu?” I asked, my tone soft. From the look on his face, I’d hit the nail on the head. “Oh. I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

  He held up a hand and shook his head. “No, it’s fine. It was a long, long time ago. I just… I prefer not to.”

  I nodded, dropping my eyes to the table and fiddling with my winecup for a few moments of silence. “It’s not the same,” I said after a little while. “But I lost someone that I loved, too. I understand how much it can hurt.” Vision was never going to exist. Billy and Tommy were never going to be born. Even beyond that, the fact that I’d gotten Pietro back didn’t erase what I’d felt when he’d died in the original timeline.

  My chest felt heavy. Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I lifted my eyes to see Gilgamesh watching me with a serious expression on his face. After a moment, he nodded and raised his cup.

  “To loves lost,” he said.

  “To loves lost,” I repeated, lifting my cup.

  Thena didn’t say anything, but raised hers as well.

  Gil knocked back his entire, nearly full cup before slamming it down on the table with a satisfied sigh. He grinned, leaning in a little as he wagged an admonishing finger at me. “I’ve seen you eyeing off Thena, too,” he said, a bit of humour returning to his voice. “Sorry to say you won’t find any luck there, either.”

  I huffed a small snort of amusement and glanced over at Thena, who gave me a small, apologetic smile. “Aw,” I said.

  “In Athens, they called her Parthenos—the maiden,” Gil said. “Many have wished to court her, some have even fallen in love. None have had it reciprocated.”

  “Well, isn’t that just my luck,” I said with a small sigh. “Guess I’ll just have to wait for my girlfriend to be done with her meetings.”

  Another hour passed, slow and honey-thick. After we finished eating, Gilgamesh rummaged around in one of the cabinets and pulled out a dark bottle of something stronger than wine. He poured it into smaller clay cups this time and slid one toward me without a word. We didn’t talk much after that, the night quieting around us. I sipped the drink slowly—it was smoky and sharp, nothing like the fruity wine from before—and let the buzz settle into my limbs.

  At some point, Gil folded his arms across his chest and leaned back, letting out a long sigh. Not long after, his eyes drifted closed, his chin slowly sinking toward his chest, and he started to snore. I grinned to myself, watching him, then glanced at Thena.

  She was already watching me. As she caught my eye, she stood, tipping her head toward the door in a silent gesture. I nodded, extricating my legs from under the table and following her out into the cool night air.

  It was probably around one or two in the morning—the stars were bright in the cloudless sky, a scattered riot of silver in the night. We leaned side by side against the short stone wall that circled the homestead. The air smelled faintly of smoke and spice, and somewhere in the distance, a night bird called once and fell silent again.

  Thena was quiet for a while, just watching the sky. When she finally spoke, her voice was low and even. “Ross, Stark—there are always men like that. There always have been. They’ll question your choices, challenge your power, try to reshape you to fit their ideas of what you should be.” She shot me a sideways glance. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make those choices anyway.”

  I exhaled slowly. “I worry I make bad ones.”

  Thena raised an eyebrow, but didn’t interrupt.

  “I’ve changed a lot of things,” I said, thinking about everything that had happened since the HYDRA base in Sokovia. “Saved people. Done things I know were right. But I think about all of it and… I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’m just breaking things in new ways.”

  Thena stared ahead, a contemplative expression on her face as she considered her words. Just when I was starting to think she wasn’t going to respond, she said, “Every choice you make, you will always find a way to regret, so you may as well choose freely. Doubt and regret are unavoidable, no matter the path you choose.”

  “Okay…” Her words weren’t exactly the encouragement I’d been hoping for.

  Thena’s lips quirked into a small smile at my expression. “If you stay safe, make the conservative choice, you’ll wonder what could have been,” she explained. “Whenever you take a risk, you’ll question whether you made a mistake in doing so. Whichever you pick, you’ll regret. There is no perfect decision—only the one you make and live with. You cannot avoid regret, but you can choose to avoid living in fear of it.”

  I nodded slowly. “No point in fearing the inevitable.”

  “You will make many choices in your life. Do not feel as though you must choose correctly, every time. Focus, instead, on what aligns with who you are and what you want, and choose what follows naturally. Be true to yourself.”

  I exhaled sharply. “Be true to myself,” I repeated, a bitter smile twisting my mouth as I stared up at the stars. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, either.”

  Thena tilted her head slightly but said nothing, giving me space to speak.

  “I haven’t really told you much about my visions. The other future I saw. But I know what I became in it. I was a monster. A nightmare. I didn’t care who I hurt. Who I killed. Innocents. Heroes,” I swallowed, my throat feeling thick. “That’s what I see when people tell me to be true to myself. I think about that version of me. About what I could become. I look in the mirror, sometimes, and… maybe that’s what I really am, underneath it all.”

  “But what you saw wasn’t you,” Thena pointed out. “That Wanda doesn’t exist in this world. She didn’t know what you know now.”

  I shook my head, feeling a flash of frustration. It was hard to explain things to people properly without giving them an hour-long overview of the giant mess that I’d made of the timeline. “Even knowing what I know now, it’s not… there was… something happened, a couple of months ago. Eliza. She was created by the Mind Stone—an accident. She was a copy of me as I am now. Of my mind.” I hesitated a moment. “She was me. But trapped. Alone. Without the same support, the same grounding.”

  Thena’s gaze sharpened, but she remained quiet.

  “My visions had shown me the creation of something like her before, but he was a monster that tried to wipe out humanity entirely. I stopped that—he isn’t ever going to be created, now—but Eliza was terrified. She thought that that’s how I would see her, that I’d tell the Avengers, and that everyone would…” I trailed off a moment, then shrugged. “She might’ve been right, even. So she tried to destroy us first. She almost did.”

  Memories rose to the surface unbidden—red chaos magic clashing against blue and orange repulsors, Eliza’s voice echoing in my head, the feeling of panic and raw desperation as it took everything I had to just not die. “It was the worst fight I’ve ever been in,” I said quietly. “And I didn’t even make good decisions when I was preparing for it. I could have taken my spears; there were times they might have made a difference.”

  “Spears?” Thena asked.

  I reached into my pocket and put on my sling ring. With a gesture, a small portal opened and a vibranium spear—one of the ones I’d stolen from Wakanda what felt like a lifetime ago—dropped out, planting itself in the red earth in front of Thena.

  “Vibranium,” I said as she reached out and plucked it from the dirt, weighing it in her hand. I shook my head. “I was more worried about Wakanda confiscating them than I was about making sure I’d made every possible preparation for the fight. Then again, they might not have helped at all. Eliza knew everything I did. Every weakness. Every move. She was so much stronger than me. Faster. A better fighter. Better everything.” I held up my hand, looking at the space where the tip of my ring finger should have been. “If she hadn’t hesitated at the end, I don’t think we would’ve won.”

  “If this Eliza was you, then she made the same choice you would.”

  I blinked, thrown off a bit by the statement. “What?”

  “She hesitated,” Thena said simply. “In the end. You said it yourself. Maybe that wasn’t a weakness. Maybe that was the part of you that endured, even in her. The part that still cared. That still chose.”

  My mouth opened, then closed again. I didn’t really know what to say to that. What was it that the aspect of myself—the Eliza in Westview—had said? There had been a half-dozen times when the real Eliza could have killed me. if she’d really wanted to, she never would have hesitated.

  There was a long pause. Then Thena tilted her head questioningly and asked, “How could Eliza have been a better fighter than you, if she was you?”

  I flicked my fingers in a vaguely dismissive gesture. “She cheated. She had this combat data and analysis… thing. Stole it from the Avengers; that’s a long story in itself. Made her more of an actual fighter than I am.”

  “You don’t think of yourself as a fighter?”

  “Not specifically. I’m not a soldier, like Steve or Bucky. I’m not someone who’s spent their life training for this, like Nat.” I lifted my hand again, this time, summoning some wisps of chaos magic and letting it play over my fingertips. “I mean, I know how to throw a punch. And I try to train with the Avengers now and again, but it’s… I don’t feel like basic target practice and stuff like that does much for me. I get frustrated that it takes so long to improve in any noticeable way.”

  Thena nodded. “Drills can be a useful tool for the basics, but that’s all they are. I find sparring to be a far better teacher, and true combat better again.”

  “I don’t mind a good spar, actually, but—god, and I know this is going to sound super arrogant of me,” I said with a little bit of a chuckle, “—there’s no one there that can match me, you know? It’d be a different matter if Carol or Thor were around at the moment, instead of off in space. They’d be able to give me a good fight. But I’m at the point where I’m going five on one with the others and they can’t even knock me down.”

  Thena’s gaze seemed to sharpen again at that, her lips parting slightly. She straightened. Stepping forward, she walked several paces away before turning to face me again, a hard look in her eyes. Standing there in the cool dark of the night, starlight glimmering off her hair, she looked almost ethereal.

  “Show me.” Her tone was demanding. Not a request. An order.

  I blinked. “What?”

  Thena lifted my spear then tossed it, underarm, toward me. I pushed myself up from where I’d been leaning on the wall and caught it easily out of the air. “Take up your weapon and show me,” she repeated, making a sharp gesture to the ground in front of her.

  “You want to spar?” I asked, still a little surprised. “Right now?”

  “I would test you,” she said simply. Golden power glimmered beneath the Eternal’s skin as cosmic energy formed into a long, curved sword in one hand and a round shield attached to her opposite forearm. She settled into a light, ready stance.

  I’d gotten a bit tipsy and high earlier, but my enhanced constitution was diligently working to flush the god-grade intoxicants out of my system and the effects were already fading. A spar wouldn’t hurt. Actually, hitting something might be a good way to work out the remainder of my frustrations from earlier.

  I smiled and gave a little half-shrug. “Okay, but I’m not going to go easy on you.”