Chapter Text
It was a strange feeling, to wake up. Especially when he – she? An experimental shift proved that it was definitely she – didn’t expect to wake up at all. And yet, she didn’t know why she would think so.
She remembered the experiment, the scarlet filling her vision, her mind, and her body until everything was irreversibly changed. Alien. She remembered the pain of being torn apart into billions, trillions of little pieces, and then being painstakingly put together anew as something different, foreign. She remembered the feeling of rebirth, of new feelings and new sensations and new powers.
She remembered scarlet smoke curling at her fingertips, as elusive as shadows and yet tangible in the way it clung to her, whispered to her, beckoned to her. She remembered the mind stone, how it carved itself a place in her mind and settled there, a part of her forevermore. Or maybe it was she who became a part of it. An extension of its power, another limb able to act and interact with the physical world as it never could without a proper guardian.
And then… nothing. Only darkness. Except she would never know darkness again. Her dreams were filled with scarlet light like wispy smoke and the whispers of a being so large and powerful and ancient that it exceeded any mortal perception. It whispered to her, not in words but in sensations and broken sort of images. It made no effort to be understood by a mortal mind, its words as heavy as its presence, crushing to any who are weak of spirit.
But her mind was unnaturally flexible, almost welcoming to this terrifying being as it crooned at her. She has yet to understand a single word but couldn't help the way it soothed her regardless.
She sat up in her sparse cot, no more than a piece of metal with a worn-out mattress and a tattered blanket. Even that was a luxury in this place. A sign that she was a successful experiment.
And yet the strange feeling in her bones did not relent. Did not seem to care that she knew nothing of its origin. It simply was, making her feel wrong in her own body, in this place that she entered willingly. She felt like an intruder in her own mind, as if she was supposed to be someone, something else. Perhaps it was the mind stone. Maybe its influence spread farther than even she anticipated. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she forgot something, something important.
She shook the feeling off, she could hardly expect to know everything the stone changed in her right away. The thought, strangely, didn’t unsettle her as she expected it would. It settled easily on a little shelf at the back of her mind. The Mind Stone changed her, irreversibly, down to her molecular level. Not a big deal. It also gave her its power and shared its knowledge. There was no use crying about it. The only thing she could do was move forward.
She looked around her bare room. Stone walls and stone floors greeted her, but there was a door on one wall and an opake sort of glass above it. Observation, she thought immediately, they were watching her.
She flexed her hands, then her legs, then her torso, examining the way each limb moved with interest. She arched her spine experimentally, and her hands automatically went up to extend in a stretch. She snapped them down with a flinch. She hadn’t noticed until now, but both her hands were bandaged up to her fingertips, and there were little plastic things for IVs still inserted in her veins. She flexed her hands again, this time paying special attention to the insides of her elbows, and was pleased to note that it didn’t hurt much, was merely uncomfortable.
Examining her room once more, she noticed a set of blocks down on the floor by her cot, like the ones you give to little children to play with. She tilted her head in curiosity, examining them for a moment before giving in to the impulse and sliding down to the floor clumsily. Her body still felt off, and it made her uncoordinated. She settled cross-legged before the little cubes.
Her hand twitched toward the wooden little things, but then she stopped, curiosity warring with caution. Until the former inevitably won and she twisted her fingers just so, in a gesture that she was unfamiliar with and yet whispered to her from the corner of her mind where she ended and something else began.
Reddish smoke spilled from in between her fingers, wispy and diluted, nothing in comparison to the crimson storms she saw in her dreams. Those nearly sparked with their power. Hers could barely even be called a mist. And yet she stared at her fingers with intense fascination as one of the cubes floated up to hover in the air before her, glowing a faint red. She twisted her wrist the other way and watched with almost childish awe as the cube began to spin.
She couldn’t stop staring, at her hands and at the cubes, at this feat of magic (magic!) she performed.
Carefully, never wavering in her attention, she slowly stacked the blocks into a perfect pyramid without once touching any of them. She twisted them this way and that, testing herself, what she was capable of. She sat there, unmoving if not for her hands and eyes, as more crimson smoke curled between her fingers, as slowly, she found that the smoke was… her.
It was her, and yet it was not. It was the Stone, and yet it wasn't. It wasn’t quite sentient, and yet it wasn’t… not? It puzzled even her, but all she could tell was that her power, her magic, had a mind of its own, though it seemed primitive and mostly an extension of herself, mostly showing itself in unexplainable instincts that prodded her to do this or that.
The stone remained silent in the back of her mind, and if she didn't know better, she would almost call it satisfied. Content to watch her play with her new powers like a child with a new toy.
With a sharp twist of her wrist, the blocks she was floating exploded. They warped and twisted until they were unrecognizable, bending in ways reality should not allow. Wanda released them from her hold in surprise, and they clattered to the ground noisily.
The heavy metal door opened, and her head snapped up. She flinched but refused to cower. She had been here for two years already, she knew the rules. She knew what got you punished, what got you ignored, and most importantly, she knew what got you rewarded.
Wanda stood, coming to a position similar to a parade rest before the people entering. She bowed her head in deference before the scientists and didn’t look at the guards quickly surrounding the room, weapons not pointed at her just yet but clearly at the ready. Before the Stone, she remembered finding this difficult. She remembered brimming with fury at her treatment, at being expected to bow down to these insignificant people. She remembered that the only thing that got her this far was her burning need for revenge and unprecedented compatibility with the Mind Stone.
But now she found the action almost familiar. It felt… natural. It felt strange. There was a distance to her memories before the Mind Stone, as if they weren’t truly hers, like she was a mere observer in a telling of someone else’s story.
She couldn’t look at the guards, didn’t see anything but their boots out of the corner of her eyes, but she somehow knew that their attention was fully on her. Not quite on guard, but cautious.
“Agent Wanda Maximoff, functionality report,” Strucker demanded. He was always like that. He didn’t care about her as a human being. She was his experiment, just with the useful function of being able to communicate now and then.
Wanda looked up, fixed her gaze on the man's sternum, and began to speak. “Body working at eighty percent. Confusion and mild dissociation are obstructions of precision. The symptoms are fading quickly. General lethargy and weakness in the muscles. Agent operational.” She spoke of herself as if she were a weapon at their disposal, dehumanizing herself until she was stripped bare to the bones. That’s what HYDRA did to all their recruits, but it also used to make Wanda furious. Now it brought contradictory comfort and unease, as if being a weapon was more familiar to her than being human.
She could feel the interest with which the scientists studied her as they clustered together, comparing notes and writing something new. They ignored her completely, and that was fine by her, she didn’t like their dissecting gazes on her body.
With a quick ‘Follow’ thrown over their shoulders, Strucker started out of the room, his gaggle of scientists close at his heels. Wanda followed several steps behind, cautious and overly aware of the guards still surrounding them. She wondered what made Strucker distrust her so. She was his favorite until now, a hard-earned place she had clawed towards with bleeding fingernails. Was it the experiment? Did he think something was wrong with her now? Surely not.
When they finally arrived at their destination, Wanda finally understood. The Pit. They wanted to send her in there again, only now with her new powers. They wanted to test her.
They still considered her a test subject. She wasn’t a successful experiment until she could prove she could be useful.
Wanda edged away from the edge, away from the hungry gazes already fixed on her, more beast than man.
“Step forward, Agent Maximoff,” She heard someone say, but could only shake her head mutely and edge farther away, mind filled with screams, mostly her own as she was broken bone by bone, her small size not a cause for pity or concern, but a weakness to be exploited. Somehow, while her memories remained locked away as if by a film, the pain came back all too real, fed by her desperate desire to flee, to not see this place ever again.
There was an aggravated sigh, almost drowned out by a scream of someone being torn open, “Very well. Push her in.”
She scrambled away, too terrified to even consider using her new magic as her eyes flickered frantically between the two men at least twice her size and in heavy armor approaching her, their intentions clear as day.
She was thrown deep inside the pit from which there was no exit, expected to prove herself or die trying. She stood frozen as all eyes turned on her, the golden prize. She was the obvious target, small, slight, weak, and clearly favored if her being escorted by such a large group was any indication. Easy prey, with high reward.
Wanda couldn’t move until something pulsed inside her mind. A clear, furious feeling, and she was suddenly reminded of the Mind Stone. She couldn’t die here, not if she was to get her revenge.
She thought this was over when she agreed to the experiment, that maybe now she would be treated as something more than one of the numerous test subjects. But it seemed she was naive to hope.
She steeled her heart, forcing it quiet and cold in favor of her mind, which she molded like clay in her hands. Survive, she thought. Survive.
She pushed her hair out of her face, (a uniform black, instead of the flaming red it was supposed to be,) and pulled at the part of her she wasn’t quite used to yet. Crimson smoke curled around her fingers, almost pulsing with its power. She wondered if it reacted to her emotional state.
Pushing away any thoughts, Wanda breathed out slowly and pounced.
The thing is, Wanda was always good at adapting.
– – – – – – –
When Wanda was first brought into HYDRA, she had been a terrified little ten-year-old girl, recently orphaned and clutching at her twin brother's hand like a lifeline. HYDRA was their only choice back then. It was to go with the strange men in suits or to go hungry on the streets. It wasn’t a chance they could afford to squander.
The first time she was pushed into the pit, she was swallowed whole. Her stick-thin limbs trembled and shook, her eyes stung with tears and her voice went hoarse as bruises were pressed into her skin, as her bones snapped with sickening sounds that echoed around her head still. She remembered the way grown men stared at her as if she was prey.
And she was. She was weak, new to this cruel game of savagery and survival. They separated her from her brother, of course, and for the first time in her life, she had been alone. With no one to guard her back or share her thoughts.
She had been a sheltered child. With loving parents and a kind brother. She had loved dresses and dolls and playing outside. She had never once gotten in so much as a catfight.
But she was also a hungry thing. Always seeking to fill the empty space inside of her. Always looking for more love, more toys, more friends, more attention, more, more, more.
She loved her brother, loved him to the point of obsession. Because he was hers, he was her twin, a part of her, her missing puzzle piece. But even Pietro was not enough to fill the gaps inside her soul.
Revenge fueled her for a while, white hot and warming her from the inside. But it wasn't enough. It was never enough.
And even now, with crimson mist running through her veins she felt that hunger rear its head and roar.
She had learned quickly.
It was learn to survive and strip away pieces of what you were until you twisted yourself to fit HYDRA’s standards, or break and shatter apart under the pressure.
Wanda chose the former.
She adapted quickly. She was small. Weak. So she became vicious. She became callous, drowned out the screams in her head, and tore chunks of flesh out with her teeth. She survived.
She tried not to think what her parents would have to say about what their little princess had become.
She ducked and weaved and scratched and aimed at all the fleshy bits. She snarled like a wild thing when she got particularly lucky and sunk her fingers into an eye socket, which usually made them stay down for a good long while. Stomach, sides, groin, throat, anything painful she could reach.
But she was not invincible. She was fourteen, and her stamina ran out soon enough, her muscles trembling with the effort of holding herself up. She was going to be overwhelmed, just like all the other times she had been thrown in here.
Wanda ducked low under an attack, using her small size to her advantage, but her exhaustion meant she was slower than she should have been, and the heavy fist moved towards her face almost in slow motion. Knowing she couldn’t move away, she brought her hands up to shield her face. Immediately, crimson smoke followed her gesture and snapped out. Several people were blown back like ragdolls, slamming into the walls of the pit with enough force that she could hear more than one bone snap.
For a moment, everyone froze. There was a moment of shock, everyone, even Wanda herself, trying to figure out what just happened. She snapped out of it first at the urging of some half-formed instinct and dove forward, bringing both hands close to her chest and then pushing outward. Human beings thrice her size blew back, and she leaped on the chance to neutralize as many as she could, stomping on ribs and throats, making sure they wouldn't get up to hurt her later.
Just as she was bringing her foot up once more, someone jumped her from behind. Her head banged painfully against the hard ground as they went down, but she barely acknowledged it, she was more focused on trying to break the grip the man had on her throat. Her airflow cut out, and she wheezed, futilely trying to get some air into her lungs.
Out of desperation, she brought her knee up sharply, aiming for the groin, but the man just grunted painfully and didn’t budge. Her vision was going dark, and she could see more people approaching, finally recovering from their meeting with the wall earlier. She tried pushing the man off, but her meager strength did nothing against a fully grown adult.
Then something happened. Her power reacted to her fear and lurched forward, through her hands that were scrambling at the man’s hands and into him. It pressed down, down with its unending power, and Wanda could suddenly feel something buckle and snap. The man’s eyes turned glassy, and he fell limply on top of her.
Wanda scrambled to get away, coughing and hacking until she could finally take a full breath. She didn’t know what happened, but she knew one thing.
Her power just killed someone by breaking their mind.
A hand tried to grab her, but she was prepared this time and dodged out of the way. She locked eyes with another man, his eyes filled with hatred and something like fear, but it was all overwhelmed by his desperation and pure, animal hunger. She gathered crimson energy at her fingertips and tried to copy what her power did. She sent it out and straight into the man's head.
Immediately she was accosted by images. She saw herself flinging men away from her with a flash of crimson. She saw herself being suffocated. She saw her attacker's eyes go blank. Memories , she thought, this is his mind. She pushed that away to deal with later in the next second and clenched her fist. The mind crumpled. The man's body fell with it, dead.
Wanda grinned, vicious and elated. She finally had a way to protect herself. She could finally hit back. For the first time, she wasn’t a helpless little girl at the mercy of a pride of lions, but a predator of her own.
She lunged into the fray, this time using her powers as well as her fists. It was crude, even she could admit it, as she was only able to fling people about and crush their minds, and even then she didn’t know how to do the latter on a larger scale without being overwhelmed with their thoughts, but it was effective.
She filled the emptiness inside herself with blood until she felt full and complete and so, so very right for the first time in her life. Her eyes glowed scarlet.
She didn’t care for their screams as she twisted their minds, as she found more ways to take them down. She realized her powers allowed her something like telekinesis and slowly found the extent of it. She learned that she could snap bones and necks, cave in ribs, and with enough concentration, she could even explode someone's heart. She tried new things, and while some failed, she realized that most of what she could imagine was now possible to her.
When she invaded a man's mind and forced him to kill for her, she laughed. She laughed as she used his body as a marionette. At least until she was kicked in her unprotected side, at which point she snarled, punctured the man's mind with barely any resistance on his part, and then made him scream as his brain slowly leaked out from his ears.
After all, in a place full of lions, become a hunter, become a monster, and don’t hide it. Be terrifying. People had to tremble when your name was spoken. That way they would run instead of daring to attack. That was the law of HYDRA, or at least what Wanda was able to extrapolate, and she would follow it. No longer would she need the protection of the more powerful. No longer would she cower in fear and bow her head when her only food of the day was stolen. She would be strong, and she would have enough power to do anything.
The last man crumpled to the floor with his chest cavity caved in and Wanda panted harshly, wiping blood and sweat from her brow with a filthy hand. She didn’t leave unscathed, as was proved by the numerous bruises along her body and the arm she was carefully clutching close to her chest, but at least she wasn’t stomped on and half alive. She won.
Wanda laughed, breathless and hoarse. She won.
She was alive.
Slow clapping echoed from above, and her head snapped up to see Strucker watching her with glee and something like possessive greed in his eyes. It made her shiver despite her new power.
“Agent Maximoff,” He said in his oily voice, “You will make a fine weapon indeed.”
Wanda could not help the dread that settled like lead in the pit of her stomach.
– – – – – – –
When Wanda stepped into what amounted to a mess hall for all the trainees and experiments in HYDRA, all eyes immediately turned on her. Some wary, (those who survived her in the Pit,) some cautious, (those who heard about it,) some curious, and some still belligerent. She ignored them despite the way their emotions were like arrows prodding at her and tried in vain to pull her power back into herself. Apparently, it had understood that she was in a very hostile environment and took to reaching out in an invisible mist to constantly monitor her surroundings.
While it was an invaluable skill in a battle, it also made her brain hurt as she tried to sort through the staggering amounts of sensory information. She didn’t like the way she heard snippets of foreign thoughts. It was sometimes hard to differentiate between her own thoughts and those of others.
And it refused to follow her orders no matter how she pulled and tugged on it. It was like trying to control smoke; it just slipped from between her fingers.
She scanned the tables in something like desperation. As soon as her eyes landed on familiar silver hair, she was off. She couldn’t run, that would be showing weakness, and she refused to allow the sharks to smell her blood, but she couldn’t help the way her power reached out. And immediately snapped back in shock.
Pietro shone to her senses, bright like a star. Now that she sensed him, she wondered how she ever missed this. Was his experiment also successful? Did he have the same power as her?
Her brother turned to face her as soon as he heard her approach, and his eyes widened at the sight of her. He was out of his seat in an instant, his food forgotten in favor of tackling her in a fierce hug.
She returned the embrace with equal fervor and tried to keep her eyes from stinging with useless tears.
“How are you?” She whispered as soon as she could.
Pietro grinned at her, as buoyant as ever. Even this place couldn’t keep him down for long. “I’m fine. Check this out,” He said, and then disappeared, only to reappear a few meters away, only a slight breeze to show that he had moved. Then he reappeared back before her, and Wanda had to catch him before he could tip over onto the floor.
Pietro chuckled, “Thanks, sis, I still have to get the hang of that. So what about you? If you’re here, I take it went well?”
Wanda smiled, “Yes, very well. Look.” She gestured at where someone was trying to steal Pietro’s food while he wasn’t looking and the tray immediately zoomed towards her, coming to a stop to hover before her brother.
“That’s awesome!” Pietro exclaimed, and Wanda had to hush him before they attracted any more attention than they already did. Pietro gave her a sheepish smile before continuing in a lower tone, “So you’re like a witch now?”
Wanda shrugged, unsure if she liked that title or not, “I suppose so.”
She left Pietro at the table and hurried to get her food. She couldn’t afford to go hungry again. Now that she was confirmed as a successful experiment, one of two and seemingly entirely unique, she would no doubt be subjected to a large variety of tests. At least now she had the hope that the scientists wouldn’t want to damage her beyond repair. If before she was only peripherally valuable and entirely expendable, now she had the dubious pleasure of being interesting.
She grabbed the tasteless slush they served here and tried to hurry back to her brother when someone blocked her path. Superiority and malice practically rolled off of him in waves. “Where do you think you’re going, little girl? You have something of mine,” He reached towards her food, clearly not expecting any resistance from her. She took a step back and out of reach, shaking her head at Pietro when she saw him stand up as if to come to her defense.
“Leave me alone,” she ground out. “Or you’ll regret it.”
The man laughed loudly. “Did you lose all your fear when you became a lab rat?” His fist swung out toward her head, and Wanda suddenly remembered the hands around her throat. Her power reacted to her momentary spike of fear and lashed out, sending the burly man flying into the wall, where he didn’t get up.
Wanda tilted her chin up at all the stares directed at her and made her way toward Pietro with as much confidence as she could manage.
Her brother squeezed her hand as soon as she sat beside him, and Wanda relaxed the tense set of her shoulders slightly. It was alright. She survived. Pietro survived. They were closer to their goal than ever.
– – – – – – –
Wanda sat stiffly on a clear stainless steel table that reminded her uncomfortably of the one they previously strapped her down for tests. An agent stood before her, unknowing of his fate.
“Use your power on him,” Strucker ordered, standing behind her with a clipboard and pen.
Wanda swallowed, then tentatively reached for the man’s mind with her powers. She had done this in the Pit, but this felt different. In the Pit, it was kill or be killed. Here, this Agent did nothing to her. He probably messed up somehow and was brought to her as his punishment.
She tried to do it carefully, but it felt as though she was trying to pin a fly to the wall with a sledgehammer without somehow killing it. Inevitably, the fly was squashed, and the man fell to the ground limply, a puppet with his strings cut.
The hunger in her bones remained unsatisfied.
Wanda blinked a little, swallowed, trying to assimilate the brief flashes of memories she saw just before she unwittingly crushed the man's mind. She resolutely did not look at the too still body, and tried to ignore the way her stomach roiled. He had done nothing to her. She had no reason to kill him, other than being ordered to. A part of her rebelled at the notion. Another part of her considered it quite reasonable – she was ordered to, so she killed him, simple as that. Another, much quieter part, didn’t care. This man was nothing to her. He wasn’t Pietro, so why should she care about him?
“Report, Agent Maximoff. What did you experience?”
Wanda frowned, trying to think of how to put it. “I… I think I’m getting into their minds, and when I’m not careful, I crush them. I could see brief flashes of memories before he died, so I might be able to read minds somehow.”
She didn’t like the covetous, fascinated look Strucker was giving her. It didn't bode well for anyone.
She was right. It was hell.
They brought her more and more people every day, starting with prisoners and those brought to HYDRA unwillingly. All expendable, all dead within seconds. Then they started bringing agents and other trainees like her. Some people she knew, fought against, bathed next to, slept next to.
They brought more and more people until Wanda learned to slice into their minds with barely a nudge at her power. They let her rest the perfunctory four hours to keep her in top condition and then brought her more people until she learned to trap the fly against a wall. Pin it without squashing it. Until she learned to rifle through people's minds as if they were books open for her perusal.
Her stomach settled by the tenth. She did not avoid the sight of them by the twenty-sixth. By the time the numbers reached the seventies, she just didn’t care anymore. She felt empty. What was the point, anyway? They weren’t people she cared much about, or at all, so why should she be upset? Orders were given, and she was just executing them to the best of her new abilities.
But despite Strucker’s delight, Wanda still felt like a child clumsily playing with a new toy. She knew she could do better. The Stone said she could do better, but she did not know how. It was both infuriating and a relief, because it kept Strucker coming back for more each and every time, manically delighted at every sign of progress. It kept him busy, and it kept him away from Pietro.
Her brother’s powers weren’t as interesting to the scientists. What was super-speed when they had magic at their disposal? It kept Pietro safely away from their attention. He wouldn’t have to go through what Strucker was doing to her. He won’t have to feel his humanity be slowly stripped from him with every body he left cooling on the floor. He would get to keep his innocence, however much there was left.
– — – — – — –
“He will be your trainer for the foreseeable future. You will shadow him on missions and provide support of your expertise.”
For the first time in a while, Wanda felt familiar fear settle like a lead weight in her limbs. The Winter Soldier was looking at her, face blank and posture perfect. His eyes were sharp. They pinned her down and made her feel like prey when she was supposed to be the predator.
The Winter Soldier was almost like a myth in HYDRA’s lower ranks. Except worse, because he was real.
He was a figure of pure power and efficiency. He was set as an example for them all, as an ideal to strive towards. It was whispered that the Winter Soldier wasn’t even human. His sole purpose was to serve HYDRA. His only goal was to complete the mission. His ruthlessness was legendary and his cruelty feared. This man did not fail a mission.
“Asset,” the Winter Soldier immediately looked at the speaker—his current handler, just like Strucker was hers—blank and intent at the same time. “You are to make Wanda Maximoff into an Agent worthy of HYDRA by any means necessary. No permanent damage.” The last was stated almost as an afterthought.
And now she was his mission.
If Wanda thought mindlessly killing people was hell, then she had to rethink her definition of it. The Winter Soldier was as ruthless as the stories said he was, and somehow even colder. He didn’t hesitate to hurt her, to break her, but he never went farther than she could heal. They fought, and she lost. Constantly. Her magic only slowed him down for so long, until he was able to get in close and Wanda was too disoriented to use her magic at all. The only way she could win is if she invaded his mind (which only worked if he didn’t knock her out before she could anyway, or moved too fast for her to lock onto him), and even then Strucker quickly forbade her from doing that.
They wanted her to learn. They wanted her to be the best weapon she could be.
They forbade her from using magic at all. To teach her physical skills, they said. Wanda rather thought they wanted to see the person who could squash their minds suffer.
Her days turned into a haze of pain and exhaustion. It didn’t matter what injuries she sustained the day before, the very next day she had to fight the Winter Soldier once again.
She was given different rooms, outside of the experiment cages. It signified her status as something approaching an officer. If she proved herself to be capable and loyal, then she would be given a proper place in HYDRA’s ranks. That was her advantage over the other experiments. Unlike them, she was here willingly, and for that, she could be trusted. It gave her the freedom to advance in ranks, to be an officer instead of forever being an experiment.
She was getting closer to their goal, but it still left a bad taste in her mouth, because she hadn’t seen Pietro once since this all started.
She couldn’t ask, or it would give them another thing to hold over her head. She could only hope that her brother was alright. It itched and scraped at her, like a bed on nails tearing through the skin of her back, that she was so helpless. Her brother was out there fighting for his life and she could do nothing.
Well, she could do one thing, because despite how painful it was, or how many times she contemplated how many HYDRA agents she could kill before they put her down like a rabid dog, she got stronger.
The Winter Soldier watched her constantly, his gaze a physical weight as he assessed her. He watched her like she was his target, like he was planning her death. He watched her for weaknesses, and he targeted them. He made her look at all the places she was weak. He made her find out just how many different ways he could kill her and then he forced her to fix it. He forced her to be better or suffer the pain of failure.
The Winter Soldier, as it turned out, was an efficient teacher.
She hated him.
But at the same time, she couldn’t quite hate him, because he was making her stronger, deadlier, more lethal. If Wanda’s goal was to survive in this world, then what he was teaching her was invaluable. It tangled her emotions until she didn’t know what to feel. Should she be grateful that his beating of her was proving useful? Should she say ‘thank you’ for all the scars that littered her body?
“Stop attacking head-on,” The Winter Soldier said, and Wanda almost missed it. He did not speak. Ever. To her or to his handler. The rare times she heard his voice was when he acknowledged an order.
She had gotten used to the silence. It had taken her a while to notice, what with being too busy fighting for her life, but the Winter Soldier’s mind was silent. Her powers were constantly growing, stretching out from her body and exploring as more and more of the Stone melted into her. When she first woke up, she could only feel the barest of intentions from the people around her. Now, she felt them constantly, what they felt, even what they thought if they did it loud enough.
It happened automatically, her power brushing against the minds in range and scanning them for trouble. She detested it. Wanda never wanted to know what Strucker wished to do to her if only the higher-ups allowed it. She never wanted to see what all those men with too much power and too little brains thought of her.
But the Winter Soldier’s mind was calm like an island at sea; still, with barely a ripple to disturb the crystalline surface.
“What?” She gasped out, one hand coming to clutch at her ribs where he punched the air out of her chest and probably fractured at least two bones. She was becoming alarmingly good at telling when something was damaged.
“Stop trying to punch through,” The Winter Soldier extrapolated, the Russian on his tongue sounding entirely natural despite it definitely not being his first language. Wanda was jealous, until the Stone, her accent when speaking Russian or English was so thick she was punished for it. She still had it, but now it was a matter of liking the sound of it rather than the inability to erase it. She had to know how to conceal her voice if she was to become an assassin worthy of HYDRA after all.
When Wanda didn’t immediately answer or attack, the Winter Soldier continued, “You are small. You can’t punch through. Redirect instead. Aim for the weak spots.” The bastard didn’t even sound winded at all.
Wanda blinked, taken off guard. That was… awfully good advice. And something she should have known by now. Wasn’t that what she was doing in the Pits? So why was she now trying to match her teenage body strength to that of the Winter Soldier, who had a fucking metal arm of all things? Was it her magic getting to her head? Did she think herself invincible now that she had crimson mist at her fingertips? Did the Winter Soldier not show her that she was nothing without her magic? That even with magic she didn’t know how to use it to its fullest potential?
Was she really so arrogant?
Wanda scowled, furious with HYDRA, with the Winter Soldier, and most of all with herself.
Her hands twitched and crimson smoke started pouring out, but she yanked it back and held it down. Not now. She couldn’t let it out. She had to do this by herself. She will be strong, with or without her magic. She woull not allow herself to be weak.
With a snarl twisting her lips, Wanda lunged back at the Winter Soldier.