Discimer - All the owners have their respective rights. I only own the characters that came from my addled brain (don’t worry, I am pletely sober).

  Sokovia [September 2014]

  –?–

  She awoke with a gasp, bolting upright as her body shuddered from what she had experienced.

  The tearing feeling she felt as her soul was shredded apart, with her being pletely powerless to stop it. She hated that feeling, it reminded her of her…kids.

  Her vision swam with red before she felt a searing pain in her chest, shog her out of her gaze. Her hao her faot finding the rough texture of her skin as her body had been irrevocably ged by the magics that she had delved deep into.

  agic had a way of leaving its imprint on the body of the practitioner, even if the practitioner was the destined user of agic itself. She could not find the stiffness in her fingers, the heaviness in her chest, or the stant fog she felt in her mind that could only be banished by using more and more of agic. The more she delved deeper into agic, the more her mind was altered, feeling heavier and heavier until it became unbearable, more agic the only avaible cure for it, creating a vicious cycle.

  Finally, her mind cleared up enough to take a look at her surroundings. She was in some sort of prison cell, quite an advanced o that, judging by the crude forcefield that acted as the door to her prison.

  She s the shoddy work on the barrier. She might not be teically oriented, not as much as Shuri or Reed, but she could reise the limitations of the teology with a single g had a single point of failure, and that was the barrier itself. Reed’s barriers were much trickier than this one.

  No matter how muergy she poured into his barrier unless she tapped into one of the Darkhold's inal spells, it was almost impossible to break Reed's barriers without being exhausted herself. He had apparently desighose as a ter for the Hulk himself but it ended up w on all energy oriented beings.

  She s the insult of someorying to imprison the Scarlet Witch with such basic work, and was about to wave her hand, erasing this entire prison from her visiohe sharp pain in her chest stopped her hand.

  “Operative Wanda, report for training,” She looked up as a soldier, covered top to bottom in armour, entered her cell aured to get out. She looked at her hands, her calloused, young, wrinkle free, hands, and looked at the guard before deg to do something she had not done in a long long time.

  She decided to bide her time.

  It was as if the stant haze she was uhe influence of the Darkhold no doubt, was gone pletely, allowio think rationally and make well informed decisions. She simply followed the guard, allowio take a look at the pce where she was bei.

  The guard had addressed her as Operative, so it would be safe to assume that they knew of her being Wanda, but didn’t know of her being the Scarlet Witch, a being of immense power, capable of destroying tries on her lonesome.

  Something of an impossibility because her name had spread far and wide.

  She looked around the base as multiple soldiers, doctors in white coats, and more moved around the pce as a se anised chaos entered her vision. Her gaze swiveled from side to side as her fiwitched a bit, tempted to cast a sensory spell that would allow a live 3D image to be transmitted straight to her brain. It was one of the more nifty spells, allowing her body to react at speeds that her normal eyes simply couldn’t keep up with, like Captain Marvel when they sparred with each other.

  She was taken outside apparently, as a number of metal blocks were pced in front of her, with varying sizes and shapes. She could see that all of them were of varying substances, ging the density of all of them.

  She looked around in fusion, not knowing what they wanted her to do. She had to assume that these guys wanted something from Wanda but she didn’t know if they expected something else. So, she did something that might help speed up the process.

  “Well?” Her voice came out much smoother, much youhan she had expected it to be, also with a very heavy at, an at that she had almost fotten.

  The Sokovian At.

  “What? Don’t tell me you fot in just a day?” The words were apanied by a bout of mog ughter from all the guards assembled.

  “Just lift and mold the things, you bitch. Do your red mumbo jumbo,”

  The words elicited a fsh e in her mind but her st sentence cleared it all away. “Red mumbo jumbo?” She muttered to herself as agic swirled in her arms, the effort of doing something that was once effortless to her, was very evident. Something was wrong with her body.

  “Yes, that mumbo jumbo, you bitch!” The words once again brought a red hot fsh e and she simply eled it all into the magivalesg in her arms. The magic began swirling faster, gaining a much deeper red color, because of the emotions she dumped into the magic. It was good to know that her mental ditioning worked perfectly at least.

  It would have been quite dangerous to be an advanced wielder of agic without having impeccable mental trol, the fog of Darkhold would have swallowed her whole otherwise, as it had probably done for all the previous users of agic.

  She deliberately looked into the eyes of the bitch that cursed her and simply smirked at her, thehe magic go.

  The result was fantastiot the metal blocks, no, that was not even worth mentioning to someone of her powers. No, the fear she could feel all around her was delicious. She simply took in a deep breath, her powers automatically abs the delicious fear all around her, emp her further.

  She would have simply lost herself in the sensation of growing stronger, if not for oartling thing that stood out to be very wrong for her.

  Her body.

  She opened her eyes, hastily dispelling the magic that was beginning to feed on all the ive emotions in the viity, and took in deep breaths as the magic refused to listen to her iron will, rampaging wild inside her still very weak body.

  She took stock of her body and realised that this body was somehow pletely new, uo the weight of the agid its effects. So, that was where the wrong feeling inated from.

  Her body was being, once again, altered by heavy uricted use of agid she desperately wished to avoid that oute this time.

  It was all clear now, she thought to herself as she looked at all the surrounding guards, the HYDRA symbol stitched on their uniforms, and her weak, younger body that was just now getting used to the agic.

  She took a long look at the gathered people and then walked bato the base, leaving pindrop silence behind her. She simply retraced her path, the people walking in front of her, without even fling, not even afraid a little of the being that would go on to rival the Hulk in terms of destructive potential.

  She turned around and reached the room of her little prison when her breath hitched, her breathing being heavier as she realised something.

  There were two cells, not just one.

  Tears gathered in her ears as she realised that he might still be alive right now, running about. The mere thought of that brought so much joy to her that it bsted through all of her carefully structed mental shields and her powers responded in king, creating a red halo around her.

  She didn't shy away from it, instead, she let her emotions feed intic, casting a single elementary level spell, at least aary level Darkhold magie of the strands of her magic cast a small cut on her arm, the wound sealing up soon after, as a small droplet of blood floated in the ter of the vortex of agic.

  Arms began bring in the background as she sensed massive movement, away from her as they probably began evacuating the facility. She didn’t care about that, all she cared about was the still stabilising spell matrix in front of her.

  Her trol had been shot to hell as it was taking so much time to cast su elementary spell.

  Her breath hitched as the spell finally pleted and the result of it was pletely positive. The direct blood retive was alive ahy, and more importantly, very close by.

  Her body began feeling light as her knees gave out, this body still too weak to bear the backsh of using a Darkhold specific spell without beihered to the book itself. She had to do it this way, otherwise, this body too might get corrupted by the Darkhold and its owner.

  She didn’t care that she was going to faint in the middle of a Nazi base. She didn’t care at all because she knew, she knew her brother was alive.

  The st thing she saw before darkness cimed her vision was a small blur of silver heading her way.

  ‘Ah, if this is a dream, let it be my st one'

  _______xx_____

  [October 2014]

  It had been a month since she awoke in this reality. Yes, this reality because she knew she was no longer in her home universe. For one, in her reality, they were kidnapped by HYDRA and then experimented on by Daniel Whitehall because they had tent Alien genes or something, most probably something to do with the Inhumans.

  In this universe, they volunteered themselves for the inhuman painful experiments that Strucker was dug, all in hopes that they would gain enough power to gain revenge for their parents. Revenge on Tony Stark, the supposed maker of the dud missile that eheir home one day.

  It henomenally stupid of her. She should have done something, anything was better than the choices she had made. Not just for herself but for her brother as well. Pietro might have been born 13 minutes earlier, but his mentality was that of a preschooler.

  Just like now, as he messed with her hair and then simply disappeared from her vision. She shook her head in fond exasperation at his antics.

  He might not have noticed but at this point, the entire facility was under her trol, including the Strucker fellow.

  Apparently, the Avengers had struck HYDRA a couple of months prior and had decimated most of their global operations. This, along with a handful of other isoted bases was all that HYDRA had, at least acc to Baron Strucker, and he had no reason to lie to her. After all, she was the mistress of all the people present ihe facility.

  She had already sent away most of the people that had been forced to work here, or only came here because they had no other option, with a healthy sum of money, from Strucker’s stash obviously.

  When she had first met Pietro, she had broken down into sobs, being a babbling mess who couldn’t get a single coherent word out of her mouth. Pietro was so ed.

  After the first time she fell unscious, little fshes, and visions of her life in this universe began fshing in her mind. She still didn’t have the whole set but she had enough of the memories that she could create a solid illusion.

  Of course, she never really hat with Pietro since he was family to her. Everybody else, they could fuck right off. She had her brother back, and it should only be a matter of time before she found her kids, somewhere, in the vast multiverse.

  Now that the fog was lifted from her mind, she khat just pneswalking was a very bad idea, not without taking enough precautions. She probably destroyed a couple of universes doing that.

  She no longer had delusions of reuniting with her children anymore. She had Pietro bad that was more than enough for her.

  She might just meet Vision as well, maybe….

  In the past month, she had not left the facility yet, because she wao acclimatize to the new world before she began taking crete steps.

  She was in no dition, even now, to fight off the Sorcerer Supreme without being severely injured or worse, dying in the process. This space seemed safe enough for now, as she searched through the web, everything about the world.

  Right out of the gate, stark differences were clear to her.

  Jack Sullivan, the Green Guardian of Earth.

  The green cd figure was someone who was the total ter of her attention for a long time simply because of her various extraordinary deeds.

  Defeating and stopping the Chitauri on his own? Repelling the Chitauri Invasion with virtually zero casualties? That was supposed to be impossible a he did it.

  His portals were clearly the signature ones of Kamar Taj, so it ossible that he was a Master of the Mystic Arts as well.

  His barriers meant that, currently, outside of the Sorcerer Supreme, he was the biggest threat to her. She didn’t know how her magic might i with his powers but something told him that fooling him would require more than just brute force.

  Finesse will be required with him, and that was infinitely harder without the Darkhold.

  She began w on the puter once again, as Pietro zipped around, her magic serving as a training tool for him, creating bullet shapes in mid air that he had to dodge, otherwise, they left a nasty bruise that looked painful.

  She was not going to let her speedster brother die of bullet wounds.

  “Pietro?”

  “Hmm?” She looked up only fust of wind to hit her face, strands of her long hair now in her eyes.

  “What? Didn’t see me ing?” The inordinately smug voice of Pietro came from the front area. He liked to do that a lot, testing her rea times.

  She could bypass the need for her eyes entirely by casting a single spell but where was the fun in that?

  Let her elder, mentally younger, brother have all the fun he wao have. She would take care of all the threats that might take her brother away from her once more.

  She would—

  A beat resounded in her entire being as she choked on thin air, her powers refusing to listen to her will, as she looked at her arms, her translut arms.

  ‘Did you think there were no sequences?’ The words reverberated in her mind as the painful feeling began to spread all around her body, turning her entire body into a translut image.

  No! NO!

  She roared in her mind as she flexed her not insiderable amount of willpower and roared at her power to work.

  It worked, as an avanche of red flooded her body, creating a small red halo around her body, rooting her body to the ground.

  ‘How long will you st, I wonder? You are not meant for this world, Wanda. This world is stable, sacred, not for someoainted like you.’ The voice spoke again but she was in no pce to reply. Her entire mind was w on overdrive as she processed this enter.

  Her body was now once again solid, as Pietro hugged her tightly, all the while a single word reverberated inside her mind.

  Tainted.

  Word t - 2672

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