After the War

Home

Wanda

It's strange, coming back from death. You appear back on Earth on the exact location where you died, or at least I did and you're just sorta... there again. Alive. And it's not as if you forget that you died, no, it's far from that. You remember dying, you remember what happened after that. It leaves a scar, a mental scar that you can't share with everyone, that you can't talk about freely because people shy away from it, from the fact that they died, because it scares them. It scares them that something happened to them, something they can't explain. Humans are afraid of things they can't explain. It's why they don't fear most animals, although some humans do fear some animals, but we can explain most of their behavior, we know how to react when we encounter an animal, in most cases it's just, stay out of its way. It's also why we're not afraid of thunderstorms, or dry summers, all because we know why it happens, how it happens. We figured out the science behind it and now we don't fear it anymore. The same goes for mist and the freezing cold. All of that is known to man. But dying and coming back, something that people can't explain. That's what humans fear. That's also why humans fear me.

Two days after we, the dead, came back, so did the Avengers, the ones that did survive Thanos' snap. They even brought some others with them, people I didn't know but that were introduced to me quickly. It wasn't long after they had arrived that two of the people on the ship locked them up in Shuri's lab to do God knows what. Later I learned that they had resurrected someone in there. An alien woman who became the new keeper of the Soul Stone.

As soon as they arrived I sensed that something was wrong. They were... gloomy, sad and angry. They didn't want to talk too much, which wasn't weird for Natasha, but very weird for Clint. Something had happened and for some reason they didn't want to tell me what it was. Maybe because they thought it wasn't my business, or maybe they weren't ready to share it with me. I figured it had something to do with the absence of Banner. They told me he was with them, that all the original Avengers had gone up in space to fight Thanos. I wondered what happened to him but I didn't dare to ask them, not yet.

"Wanda." It was a few hours after they had arrived. Natasha was standing in the doorway of the room that had been appointed to me. "Yes?" "I just thought you wanted to know that Steve said we'd be leaving in two days." "What? Where will we go?" "Home." Home... America I guessed. The Avengers compound. It was our home. The only place I had ever really felt at home since I was ten, since my parents died. "We're going home? Why?" "There's some things we need to do... some stuff we need to arrange..." The answer didn't seem like much, but as a mind reader I saw some flashes of her memories. "Stop reading my mind." "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... It's hard to control." "You better learn to." Natasha had always been cold, but this was colder than usual. "I'll try." "Good," she said as she made to walk off. "Natasha?" She turned around, "Yes?" "What happened?" She didn't say a word, but I saw her memories nevertheless. Thanos stabbed the Hulk with a sword. I saw how he slowly turned to Banner, I heard some of the things he said to Natasha. All in flashes. "I told you to stop reading my mind." "I'm sorry," my voice was barely more than a whisper. "Just... learn to control it..." She tried to walk off again and I did something stupid I couldn't stop myself from. I hugged her. I had felt only a bit of the pain she must have felt when Bruce died, only the memory of it and that had already hurt me. She stiffened, then slowly she turned around and hugged me back. "Thanks..."

Two days after we packed our bags. We would go home using the ship the Avengers&Co. had used to get to Titan to kick Thanos' ass. And we didn't go alone. We took the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. with us. As well as Shuri, T'Challa, Okoye and Nakia. And Tony's old friend Harley, a kid of about the same age as Shuri and one of her good friends it seemed. Scott came with us too, of course, almost forgot to mention him. It took us several hours to get back to America, to get to the compound, but it felt so good, it felt like coming back to the place where you belong. It felt like coming home. And we did, we came home. Finally. Home.