Chaos (Sequel to Agony)

Chapter 56

||"She scares the hell out of me and calms my soul at the same time. Maybe that's what love it—a total contradiction that somehow balances out."||

When Wanda snuck into Tony's lab later that day, she found him on the floor, papers scattered all around him, all of which were full of equations and paragraphs she couldn't read or understand.

But the sight of him with a pen in his mouth and a pencil behind his ear, hunched forward studying like a student, made her unbelievably happy.

It reminded her of the weeks that followed after Ultron, after she'd lost Pietro and felt so unlike herself. Because after spending day after day in her new room, crying and feeling numb, she'd sneak out at night after everyone went to bed, padding upstairs to Tony's lab just to watch him work.

There was something very relaxing about watching him get lost in a new project, something calming about listening to him talk to Jarvis.

It's what she spent most of her time doing after losing Pietro—getting lost in someone's else's world so that she didn't get lost in hers.

"Come over here," Tony said, finding her hidden in the shadowy part of his lab, and she eagerly rushed over, sitting down beside him. "It's nothing special," he said, picking up one of the papers from the floor. "But I don't want to leave anything behind incase Markus decides to snoop around."

Oh. Yes. That's right. They were leaving.

Wanda had forgotten all about that, and for some reason, it saddened her.

The compound felt like home just as much as the tower did.

"Are you packing everything?" she asked, looking around the lab, wondering how on earth he'd get all of his stuff out of the room before Wednesday.

Tony huffed a lazy laugh, scanning the room himself. "I've got all of this back at the tower and in some other places, so it won't matter if he blows it up."

It was brief, but Wanda caught a doleful stoop in his voice in there somewhere.

"I don't think leaving is going to stop him," she admitted, twisting the ring Nik gave her around her pinky. "I don't think they'll find him in time."

Rhodey had hope, but Wanda was beginning to think the world was running out of it, that there wasn't any left to give out.

"Wherever Markus is, he thinks he has all the time in the world. There's a good chance he's finished those bombs, a good chance he's ready to attack, but he just isn't. Maybe he isn't ready, maybe he won't be ready for a very long time, which is good for us, but that doesn't take us out of the game, it just puts us right in the middle of it."

Wanda kept her eyes on her hands, on the papers laying around, on the cool, steel floor, hoping to push away the tragic thoughts that were begging to slip into her mind. Thoughts that included death and blood and her nightmare and her agonizing heartbreak she'd felt the moment Pietro died; thoughts that brought on terror and fear and all the things she knew she wasn't ready to control.

Thoughts of pure chaos.

If this truly were a game, then Markus was winning. Not by much, but far enough ahead to start fading into the distance.

"Not to add to the already cheery mood, but, how are you? What are those red eyes seeing that we can't?"

Her eyes were glowing, she realized, and it took a second or two to blink them back to normal. She was so lost in thought that she'd failed to feel her magic rising.

"I'll feel better once everyone is safe," she said, turning her head to look at the screens that showed the compound through the various cameras. It was mid-day, and the sky was still sad, but not sad enough to cry. "But, to answer your question—" she paused, feeling her heart stammer, as if it were struggling to find it's rhythm. She rubbed her chest, smiling a bit so not to worry Tony, then continued. "I'm okay. Yes, I'm okay."