Chapter 150
“Thanks, Wanda,” May Parker said as she stepped through the portal after her nephew.
“No problems at all.” I dismissed the magic and gestured toward her costume—a simple black dress with a matching, stereotypically wide-brimmed and pointy hat. “I love the dress, by the way. Solidly witchy. Little disappointed in the colour, though, maybe,” I added with a grin and a wink.
“I think it might be a little awkward to come to a party dressed up as someone who was actually going to be there,” she said, chuckling. “Peter usually always insists on being Iron Man, but—”
“May,” Peter cut her off, shooting her a ‘please don’t embarrass me in front of the Avengers’ look. For tonight, at least, he was dressed as Ash Ketchum.
“Sorry.”
I unzipped the small side pouch I was keeping my stuff in and stowed my sling ring away. “What time did you want me to portal you over to your other thing, again, Pete?”
When it came down to it, though Peter was—of course—officially invited to tonight as an Avenger-in-training, he was also only fifteen years old, and there was a quiet understanding that he wouldn’t be sticking around too late in the evening. It’d be a little odd for him to be around everyone all night while we were drinking, after all. He had a more age-appropriate Halloween party, hosted by someone he went to school with, to head off to after spending a bit of time here.
“I told Ned I’d meet him at eight thirty, if that’s okay?”
“No problems, just tap me on the shoulder when you’re ready.”
“Home by midnight, okay?” May reminded him.
“Yeah, I know, I know.”
Oh! Now that she was in front of me, this was a good opportunity to introduce May to Happy. They had gotten together in the original timeline, but here I didn’t think they’d even met yet, thanks to me. Maybe we could fix that? A quick glance around located the stocky man over by the far windows, talking to Maria and Sam. “By the way, May, have you met—” Wait, no, I couldn’t just randomly single out this not-even-an-Avenger for seemingly no reason, that’s way too obvious. I had to be more subtle. “…Everyone?” I finished, a little lamely.
“I, uh, no. I don’t think so.”
“Cool, cool. I just mean there’s a lot of interesting people here, and it’s not like you need to leave when Peter does, so it’s a good opportunity to get to know the whole extended Avengers… family.” Why was I so bad at having simple conversations with people? During a quiet moment, I’d lean in and tell Nat to make sure May and Happy had the opportunity to talk. Better to let her handle it; she was a lot better at the social stuff than I was, after all. “Uh, though, of course, you can just let me know whenever you do want to head off and I’ll portal you home, no problems.”
“Okay.” She gave me a faintly puzzled smile. “I’ll see how I go.”
“Good. Yes. That. Good.” I was already distracted, watching with building anxiety in my stomach as Steve (dressed as Sherlock Holmes in a tweed overcoat, deerstalker and all) and Bucky (who’d declined my request for a skintight Nightwing outfit that showed off his ass and had instead elected to dress as Bilbo Baggins) made their way over to greet us. I forced a smile onto my face.
“Peter, May, glad you could make it,” Steve greeted the new arrivals.
While he wrangled them, Bucky stepped over to me, a warm smile on his face. “Hey! You look great.”
My mouth had gone dry, my heart pounding in my ears. “Yeah, you… um, you too.” The faint fluttering inside of me was suddenly almost unbearable. “The Hobbit… good. You look good. The jacket. I like,” I said, reaching over and giving the sleeve of his corduroy coat a gentle tug.
He paused, looking at me oddly for a moment. “Thanks. You alright?”
“Do you want a drink?” I asked, more focused on trying to keep the anxiety out of my voice than the fact that he already had a beer bottle in his hand. I gestured vaguely toward the kitchen. “I want a drink. I’m just going to go get a drink. I’ll be back in a second.”
That was a lie. I definitely needed some space before I was ready to talk to Bucky like a normal person. But, of course, now I was worried that I was acting weird. If I ran away and didn’t come back, would Bucky think I was avoiding him? That was absolutely the last thing that I wanted right now… Even if I was, technically, intending on avoiding him.
“Oh, hold on, you’ve got something on your face,” I added, cutting him off before he could answer and reaching in as though I was about to wipe something off his cheek. Instead, I gently took hold of his jaw and darted in more fully, planting a quick kiss on his lips before retreating again. “It’s me!”
Then I ran away.
That was almost certainly enough, right? Bucky couldn’t possibly think that I was avoiding him after that. I just needed to get distracted by other people and things all night and never get around to coming back to him. For the next—I checked the time—four hours, probably? At least four hours. Fuck. Maybe I could play up getting pretend-drunk a bit and tap out a little early. But even that would still be suspicious. Sigh.
Escaping to the kitchen, I surreptitiously retrieved my sling ring as I ducked past Helen Cho (wearing a lab coat, which was boring—it doesn’t count as a costume if you already wear one every day) and Shuri (I had no idea what her outfit was, or if she even was dressed as something as opposed to just dressed up, but it was complicated, Wakandan and cool as fuck).
As I opened the fridge, I carefully kept the door angled to block anyone’s view and spun up a portal. Reaching in, I snagged one of the disguised, non-alcoholic bottles I’d prepared earlier in the day. Dismissing the gateway again, I closed the fridge and snuck my ring back into my pouch. Mission accomplished. Easy. Zero suspicions raised.
I opened the bottle, took a celebratory swig to congratulate myself on a job well done, and tried not to let any disappointment show on my face that it was just flat Coke. God, this sucked. Copious amounts of alcohol would have been a welcome tool to help deal with my anxiety about the faint sensation fluttering below my pulse and what it meant, but that was obviously not an option.
I turned back toward the rest of the common room, trying to find an excuse not to go back to the group with Bucky in it. I needed to let myself get ‘distracted’. I needed someone to—
I paused, staring.
Sterns clocked me looking at him almost immediately, meeting my gaze evenly from near the bookshelf at the far side of the lounge. A very small part of me, somewhere in the back of my mind, was a little bit surprised that he’d dressed up at all—I’d kind of expected that, if he came, he’d be one of the lame people that didn’t wear a costume. The rest of me was fully focused on the fact that he was wearing a white, fringed cowboy outfit, complete with a matching ten-gallon hat covering his malformed head.
A small, self-satisfied smile crept across Sterns’s face, banishing any doubt that maybe the costume was a coincidence.
I walked over, feeling a little off-balance. Bruce was there as well, dressed in purple pants and a green singlet, a pair of oversized toy Hulk fists sitting discarded on a chair next to him. I gave him a brief “Hey!” before turning back to Sterns. “How could you have possibly…” I trailed off, unable to even articulate the question.
I’d called him Buster Scruggs one time. I had no idea what year that movie was going to come out in, but it was definitely not anytime soon. Sterns’s power let him thread together disparate pieces of evidence, but he couldn’t find out about something that didn’t exist yet, and moreover, he had no idea about the true nature of my ‘visions’.
“I did a little bit of research,” Sterns said with a shrug, as though what he’d done was merely a little tricky, not literally impossible. “This party was happening, so I thought, why not? Though, I admit, I still don’t actually understand the connection to our previous conversation.”
The script for the Ballad of Buster Scruggs must already be floating around somewhere and he’d done a search that had brought it up. That had to be the explanation. The actual link to Tim Blake Nelson was still opaque to him. He couldn’t pull information from thin air.
“Yeah,” I said, giving him a slightly awkward smile. “It was sort of an… in-joke with myself? Not something that anyone but me would get.”
“That makes sense,” he said with a small nod. “I do appreciate the confirmation.”
“Hey, Wanda!” Darcy’s bright voice broke in from off to the side as she walked up to us. “You’re really rocking the Harley look. Love it.”
Grinning, I tore my eyes away from Sterns to respond. “Yeah, I—” I immediately froze again, staring.
There was a short, awkward pause. Darcy gave me a faintly puzzled smile, caught off guard by my reaction. “What?”
She was wearing a mustard-yellow, zippered dress with orange highlights and matching apron, a little yellow name tag with ‘Max’ on it attached to the breast.
“You just…” I bit my lip, a pained expression on my face as I tried to reconcile what I was seeing with reality. “2 Broke Girls, right?”
She let out a soft huff of amusement. “Yeah! I know it’s not, like, the height of intellectual humour or anything, but it’s still a lot of fun.”
“Yeah,” I said numbly. My brain might have broken a little bit just then. Sterns had softened me up, then Darcy had gone in for the knockout. “Sorry, no, yeah. It’s a good show, I was just… never mind.”
--
I frowned, looking at the downward-facing horns protruding from Thor’s helmet, the layered metal pauldrons on his shoulders, and the rest of his outfit. It didn’t really seem appropriate to call it a ‘costume’, even, because it appeared to be an actual set of armour. Should I recognise it? It didn’t really look familiar.
The thunder god waited for a few moments, but when he saw how blankly I was looking at him, his shoulders drooped slightly. “I’m Bor. Second king of Asgard.”
“I mean, you look cool?” I offered apologetically.
“My grandfather. I thought… Midgard has a lot of legends about Asgard, so I thought—I mean, last year, there was the whole thing with the dark elves, and I was sure that… No? Nothing?”
“Sorry.”
“I’ve had much the same reaction from the others.”
“Yeah… That’s not really surprising.”
“I do greatly enjoy your tradition of All Hallows celebrations, but I have yet to fully understand the subtleties of the costuming,” Thor mused, a note of disappointment lingering in his tone. He tilted his head toward the other side of the room. “Look there. Maria Hill. Her shirt’s statement is not something I would expect as part of her usual attire, so I suppose it is a simple costume of a kind, but I don’t understand the reasoning.”
I followed his gaze. Maria was in a small group with Natasha, Sam and Rhodey, talking animatedly and dressed simply in a pair of form-fitting black pants and a white novelty tee that had ‘MY TITS ARE DOWN HERE’ written in big letters across the chest. She’d also put a temporary red wash through her hair, though her hair was naturally dark enough that it was relatively understated. I’d spoken with her briefly already, just to acknowledge the fit. She had brandished her phone, Twitter app open, and told me that she’d just dressed as the scariest thing she could think of.
I let out an amused snort. “She’s dressed as me.”
“And that isn’t… disrespectful?”
I shook my head. “Well, yes, but also, no? It’s a joke. Some light ribbing is fine among friends.”
Thor’s brow furrowed. “For our first All Hallows celebration at the Tower, I was assured that donning the outfit of a powerful and honourable warrior would be an appropriate homage, so I dressed in the regalia of Captain America. He seemed flattered, but Stark and Barton found it highly amusing for some reason. It all ended up being a bit awkward. I never understood why.”
I chuckled. “Ah. See, that’s a little different. I don’t really know how to start explaining why, though.”
Thor sighed dramatically, then took a long draught of the Asgardian ale in his hand, smacking his lips appreciatively afterwards. “Gilgamesh is, indeed, an accomplished brewer. I look forward to seeing the Eternals again,” he said. “I was but a child when they aided the Asgardian army in the defence of Midgard. Until you brought them up, I had assumed they were long gone.”
“Yeah. Actually, just bringing it up now so I don’t forget, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” I said to him. Thor eyed me curiously, but I followed up the statement with a vague wave of my hand. “Later. Not right now; it’s not really a ‘party’ conversation. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after, we can sit down somewhere and have a bit of a chat? There’s no rush, but…”
Thor nodded. “Of course.”
I really needed to tell him the truth about what was going on with his family. I should have told him after the Red Room mission, once the Avengers had initially started to trust me as a source of information, but I’d been distracted, with everything that had been happening with Natasha, and by the time I’d thought about it again he’d already left. At least, when it came right down to it, a couple of extra months with Odin in a retirement home almost certainly wouldn’t make any real difference. Thor might still—rightfully—be annoyed about the delay, but overall, it wasn’t like it was going to cause any actual problems.
“I have something to ask you, actually,” he said, tipping his drink toward me. “About your time with the Eternals.”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Thena, the goddess of war. You said that she was training you.”
“Yep. It was an experience.”
“Of that I have no doubt. Did she… do anything else?” Thor was watching me very closely, his brow furrowed.
“…Like what?”
“Cosmic energy and divine power are close to the same thing, more or less. The enchantments you’ve placed on yourself and what you’ve been borrowing from the Mind Stone are one thing, but under that, there’s also…” he trailed off, hesitating for a moment. “Something more.”
A memory of Thena flashed through my mind—ethereal and silver beneath the light of the moon, staring down at me with a presence that went far beyond the physical. That pressure I’d felt, the way the air had felt charged with power, a heavy, unspoken weight and significance to the offer she’d made. The connection that had been forged between us, unlike anything else I’d ever felt.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “There was a bond between us. I could feel what she felt. We only spent a couple of days together, but even though she was an Eternal, it seemed like whatever power she was using was taking a pretty heavy toll on her. Gil was… He seemed really worried about it, for some reason, even before we fought Ikaris.”
“Hm.”
“Are you gonna, y’know, elaborate on that, or…?”
Thor paused to drain the remainder of his bottle. “It’s not my place. And it doesn’t matter now in any case.”
“If it doesn’t matter, then just tell me.”
Thor let out a small, sharp laugh. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“You realise that, by telling me not to worry about it, you are ensuring that I will definitely worry about it?”
“My apologies,” the thunder god said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I must have another of these! One for you, as well?”
I fingered the bottle in my hand anxiously. “I’m good for now.”
Thor gave my shoulder a brief squeeze before letting go and heading over toward the kitchen. He half-turned, shooting me a final, brief grin as he moved away.
What was that all about?
--
So far, the party hadn’t been as bad as I was worried it was going to be. Sure, I still wished that I was actually allowed to get drunk and unwind properly, rather than just pretending, but after a few hours and numerous distractions, at least some of the overwhelming anxiety I’d been feeling after this morning’s discovery had dissipated a bit. I’d sent Peter on his way a while ago now, but May seemed quite happy to stick around and was currently over on one of the couches, chatting away to Natasha, Maria and Happy, which was nice. If I wasn’t so anxious about what was currently going on inside my body, I might’ve tried my own luck flirting with her, too.
I made sure to spend time with Bucky here and there, though always in a group and only for short stints, given that being close to him made my stress levels skyrocket. My usual practice at events like this was to flit around, spending short amounts of time with people and some in-between bouts of backing away to do my best impression of a wallflower, so I was really hoping that my usual weirdness was masking things a bit so he wouldn’t feel like I was deliberately avoiding spending any one-on-one time with him. I’d disengaged again just recently, taking the opportunity afforded by ‘needing another drink’ to melt into the background again, retreating to literally the opposite side of the common area for a bit of a break.
Once it got a little later, I was kind of hoping they’d turn up the music a bit and there might be some actual dancing. That’d be fun, a good distraction, and a way I could spend some time with Bucky without having to actually talk to him. Shifting from foot to foot, I swayed back and forth in an almost-dance, absently singing along to the music. “Cuz we’re young and we’re reckless, we’ll take this way too far. It’ll leave you breathless, mmm, or with a nasty scar…”
“Hey, Red, who sings this again?”
I blinked at the question as Tony sidled up to me. “It’s Taylor Swift.”
“Cool. Maybe we should keep it that way.”
“You didn’t need to come over here,” I huffed, though a smile quirked the corners of my lips.
He shrugged. “You’ve been making it pretty hard for me to work in a natural-feeling moment for us to have a one-on-one, so I gave up and thought I’d just…”
“You want to talk to me about something?” I asked curiously.
Tony took a moment, having a sip from the tumbler in his hand—it was a Laphroaig, I could smell the forbidden peaty goodness from here—and running his tongue along the inside of his lips before responding. He sighed. “Look, Red. I’ve kinda been meaning to apologise. For freaking out on you back when we were at Midland Circle.”
“Oh.” This was unexpected.
“Yeah. Don’t make it weird, okay? Just… Sorry. If we hadn’t had that yelling match…”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“I’m not making any promises,” he continued. “But I’ll try not to do that again. Give you the benefit of the doubt a bit more often.”
“Did Nat put you up to this?”
“Hey, how about you give me the benefit of the doubt, here?”
“Sure,” I said, smiling faintly. “I’m sorry, too, for what it’s worth.”
“Good. Okay. We’re good?”
“We’re good,” I agreed. And I meant it. Tony and I had had our differences over the last six or seven months, but I really wanted to put all that behind us. I was an Avenger now. A proper part of the team. And, as a team, we needed to get along. To trust each other.
The music suddenly cut out, replaced by an urgent alert tone. The whole party reacted, the relaxed atmosphere immediately dispelled, with conversations cut off mid-sentence, drinks hastily discarded, and phones hurriedly pulled out of pockets. Mine was vibrating in my side pouch, playing the same alert tone that was sounding over the compound’s internal speaker system, just like everyone else’s was.
“Red—”
“Already on it.” It took me a second of fumbling with my pouch to fish out my sling ring and slip it onto my fingers.
Tony gave me a nod, a determined look on his face.
My pulse quickened, a jolt of adrenaline hitting my system in anticipation. It was almost enough to make me forget about the faint flutter underneath everything. The alert wasn’t a generic one. It was a distinct, recognisable tone, one that had been set up in anticipation of a specific event.
One of the sorcerers’ Sanctums had been attacked.
The portal formed almost instantly, the compound’s main armoury visible on the other side. Tony was the first through, a significant fraction of the room converging on us to follow as I scanned the group and mentally ran through a checklist of team members. My immediate role, on activation of the response plan, was to coordinate getting all Avengers to the armoury as quickly as possible so that they could suit up and be ready for deployment. It was actually really convenient for me that Kaecilius had decided to make his move when basically everyone was in the same location. The only person I’d need to collect from elsewhere was Clint—he was spending Halloween with his family, rather than here.
Thor hadn’t been here for the response planning, but he immediately fell in with the rest, Steve getting his attention briefly to have a very quick word as they hurried over. Yelena was another extra, giving me a tight smile as she hopped through alongside Pietro. She wasn’t an Avenger, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to protest.
At the other end of the rapidly-emptying room, the noncombatants formed a small cluster, with Maria taking charge of them. She had a rapid-fire exchange with Sterns that I didn’t quite catch, even with my enhanced hearing, but I was more focused on making sure everyone else was through the portal before I jumped in after them and let it close, already spinning up a second one to Clint’s family homestead.
“—London Sanctum. There wasn’t any advance warning,” FRIDAY’s voice had already started briefing the Avengers on the situation as everyone rapidly shucked off their Halloween costumes in favour of their tactical gear.
Clint was ready and waiting for the portal as it opened. “And here I thought I was done with trick-or-treating for the evening,” he said with a tight smile as he stepped through.
“What about Master Rama?” Steve asked. “Do we know if he made it out?”
“His emergency alert wasn’t activated and I’ve got nothing on the exterior surveillance.”
A brief frown flitted across Tony’s face. “Contingencies triggered okay? No issues?”
“The Hong Kong and New York reality anchors are active, Iron Legion drones have deployed successfully, and Masters Minoru and Drumm have checked in and confirmed activation of their own protections,” FRIDAY reported. “They’re standing by for your arrival; no contacts yet at either site.”
“Alright, people,” Steve said, raising his voice to make sure everyone could hear him. “Everyone knows their assignments. New York team, you’re with me. Hong Kong, you’re with Tony. Wanda, we need that portal to Kamar-taj up in the next sixty seconds.”
“Yep!” I was in the middle of trading one form-fitting suit for another, carelessly ripping the seams of my Harley Quinn costume as I yanked it off.
My official Avengers outfit was pretty simple and practical: A black sleeveless compression suit with golden stitching across the chest where it covered my Celestial markings, a dark red, form-hugging tactical vest passingly similar to the one Natasha had worn at one stage in my ‘visions’, and metal-shod, knee-high combat boots. I’d considered going for something more magical-themed, but this was intended to be an actual, serious combat suit, not just a costume.
“Hello! I am also here!” called Yelena. She’d ditched her cat ears and stripped out of her clothes, grabbing one of Natasha’s spare armoured suits and a set of Widow’s Bites. She let out a small, annoyed grunt as she adjusted the fit of her borrowed outfit. Nat was next to her, already changed, using a small cloth to quickly remove her makeup, which served as a nice reminder that I should probably do that, too. I grabbed a cloth and scrubbed at my white face, spending a handful of seconds trying to get rid of most of it.
“As am I!” Thor had taken off his horned helmet and laid it on a bench, but was otherwise making no efforts to get changed at all. To be fair, it did look like it was already practical armour, even if it wasn’t exactly his usual style.
“Thor, you’re with the New York team. On me.”
“Well, that’s hardly fair,” Tony said.
I smirked to myself as I tucked my spear away in a small holster at my waist—Tony had shown me how to activate the mechanism that collapsed it down to a concealable, eight-inch rod, which was something I’d been aware Wakandan spears could do but had never actually managed to figure out on my own.
Steve shot Tony a quick grin. “Don’t worry, you can have Yelena.”
“Sure, I guess we can babysit.”
“I am standing right here,” Yelena grumbled.
Thor let out a loud, happy sigh, stretching his arms. “All Hallows celebrations and a glorious battle! I really did get back just in time.”
Lastly, a red Stark tech device, one I’d specifically requested, went snugly against my jawline and chin. I flexed my jaw in a particular way, testing it. The tech activated, immediately flicking out into a metal mask that covered everything below my eyes, like I was a Mortal Kombat ninja. It was fully environmentally sealed and came with ten minutes of breathable air. No more suffocating in space or being affected by knockout gas or whatever other bullshit for this witch, thank you very much. I flexed my jaw again and the mask retracted, folding back into its original configuration. Nova.
Fully dressed and ready with time to spare, I slipped my ring back onto my fingers and spun up a portal to Kamar-taj. “Eh, this won’t be too glorious. Hopefully it’ll be over quickly.”
Pietro gave me a dubious look. “You’re not worried? Don’t think Kaecilius is going to have any tricks?”
“I’m sure he’s going to pull something out of his butt—he’s a master sorcerer, after all, and he’ll be empowered by Dormammu by now—but it’s just him and, what, a dozen of his zealots? Against almost the entire Avengers’ roster, plus the Ancient One and her offsiders, plus our friends from Wakanda? With all the prep work we’ve done?” I shook my head, gesturing for him to hurry up and jump through the portal. “No, I’m not worried. Whatever he’s got up his sleeve, we can handle it.”