Third POV
Ulysses Klaue was sitting in his rundown office that was in a salvage yard off the African coast talking to a business partner on the phone. The man was trying to rip him off from a trade they had made, but no one ever swindled Ulysses Klaue and lived to tell the tale. And Klaue was going to make sure that the man knew that.
"Don't tell me your man swindled you. I sent you six short range heat seekers and a got a boat full of rusted parts. Now, you will make it right, or the next missile I send you will come very much faster," he threatened the man before ending the call and connecting to another.
"Now, minister, where were we," Klaue asked the man as the lights went out and caused a commotion in the salvage yard as the Maximoff twins entered his office.
"Yeah. The enhanced. Struckers prized pupils," Klaue said, ending the call and holding out a dish that was on his desk to the twins. "Want a candy? Oh, sorry to hear about Strucker. But then, he knew what kind of world he was helping create. Human life, not a growth market. You...you didn't know? Is this your first time intimidating someone? I'm afraid that I'm not that afraid."
The twins looked at each other, not knowing what to say. They didn't know about Strucker, but it honestly didn't surprise them. The man had a cruel streak, not that it mattered anymore because the man was dead. It was Wanda who found her voice first, trying her best to be intimidating to the man in front of her.
"Everybody's afraid of something."
"Cuttlefish. Deep sea fish. They make lights, disco lights. Whoom, whoom, whoom! To hypnotize their prey, then whoom! I saw a documentary, it was terrifying," he told the twins, confusing Wanda as Pietro ran over to the candy dish to pick some up before returning to his sisters' side. "So, if you're going to fiddle with my brain, and make me see a giant cuttlefish, then I know you're not in charge, and I only deal with the man in charge."
We watched from the salvage yard as Ultron flew into Klaue's office, destroying the wall. After a few minutes Tony took off after him in his Iron Man suit and the rest of us followed him. Loki and Mum had stayed back in the tower to monitor things while the rest of us followed Ultron. Cassy had her Iron Man suit on which she had taken to calling Iron Heart, which meant she could follow her dad easily. So, I held my hand out to Dad and pulled him on to the back of my comic staff, the same way that we did in Washington and followed them.
When we landed inside Klaue's office alongside Thor, we found Tony taunting Ultron which really wasn't the smartest thing to do. But strangely, Ultron was bantering Tony in a similar way. I guess he took after his creator. Ignoring Tony and his mini me murder bot, Dad turned to the twins and gave them a chance to back away from this whole situation.
"You two can still walk away from this," he said to them kindly.
"Oh, we will," the girl, Wanda replied with a smirk on her face.
"Look, I know both of you have suffered a lot. Let us help you," I offered, making Wanda scoff at me and my offer.
"Ugggg! Captain America and Stargirl. God's righteous man and his little daughter, pretending you could live without a war. I can't physically throw up in my mouth, but..." Ultron said, sounding more like Tony than ever.
"If you believe in peace, then let us keep it," Thor tried to reason with Ultron.
"I think you're confusing peace with quiet," Ultron laughed.
"Yuh-huh. What's the vibranium for?" Tony asked his murder bot.
"I'm glad you asked that, because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan," Ultron said before attacking Tony along with his drones that attacked the rest of us.
I created a wall of ice in front of me, stopping one of the drones from shooting at me before turning the wall in to deadly sharp icicles and sending them straight back at the drone. Then turning on the heel of my feet, I lifted my cosmic staff up and sent a blast at another group of drones. I continued to fight alongside the rest of the avengers until a splitting migraine filled my head and red mist blurred my vision. Then all of a sudden, the world went black.
When I woke up, I wasn't in the scrap yard any more. Looking around, I saw that I was in some kind of maze. Then it dawned on me where I was, it was the same maze that I saw in Urdarbrunnr. Walking backwards, wanting to get out of the hell that was the maze, I fell into one of the walls of the maze that was made from a bush.
"No, no, no... I don't want to be here. I don't want to see this. I want to go back. Don't make me see this!"
I fell to my knee and covered my face with my arms, scared about what I would see if I looked up. But whatever had brought me to this place wasn't letting me off that easy because I was pulling to my feet and forced to walk through the maze. After a few turns, I came face to face with a scared looking Cedric who was trying to make his way through the maze.
"Cedric! You have to turn back! Please listen to me," I begged him as I tried to grab hold of him, but it was like I was a ghost. When I tried to grab hold of his arm, my hand past straight through him and he didn't hear a word I said.
I was forced to follow Cedric as he made his way through the maze, facing what looked like blast ended skrewts and answering a sphinx's riddle among other things. After a few minutes the walls of the maze started to close in on us and nothing could stop them. Cedric clothing was getting caught on the branches of the bushes as he fought his way through, but like before I just walked through everything without getting a scratch. Finally, we made it out of the collapsing maze and I breathed a sigh of relief that it was over. The maze may not have been able to harm me, but I still felt claustrophobic as it closed in on us.
"Get down!" Cedric yelled, making me drop to the ground before I realised that he wasn't talking to me.
I couldn't make out who he was talking to as the were covered in some kind of mist, but they were about be attacked by someone else who's face was obscured from view. But Cedric stunned them with a spell before they could harm anyone.
I watched as Cedric ran up to the stunned person on the ground and kicked the wand out of there hand. But before I could get a look at who the person was the maze faded from view and a graveyard came into view. I knew what was coming as soon as I saw the graveyard and desperately tried to close my eyes but I couldn't. There was no hiding from what was about to happen. Cedric raised his wand to defend himself but I knew it wasn't going to do him any good. Not this time.
"Avada Kedavra," the person cried out and I watched as the green light hit Cedric in the chest with tears streaming down my face.
When he fell to the ground, I ran to his side and desperately tried to get him to wake up even though I knew it wouldn't do anything. His eyes were staring without seeing me just like before. I didn't know if it was a good thing or not, but I could finally hold Cedric as I pulled him in to my lap and held on to him as I cried.
"Cedric! Please wake up! You can't leave me! It wasn't meant to end like this! I did everything right! I learned how to control my powers perfectly!" I cried as I held on to the front of Cedric's shirt.
"No, you didn't. You could have saved me. You should have just left me alone and none of this would have happened," I heard Cedric say, but his voice sounded like it was an echo.
I looked up from Cedric's lifeless body to see his ghost hovering above me. He was looking at me with absolute disgust on his face. Like I was a piece of dirt that needed to be wiped away or a bug that needed to be squashed. In the back of my mind, I knew it was all a hallucination created by the Maximoff twin but it just felt so real and I couldn't fight it.
"No, I did everything right! You shouldn't have died!" I tried to explain to Cedric's ghost but the more I spoke the more he looked at me with hatred in his eyes.
"And you call yourself a hero," he sneered at me. "If you knew what the meaning of the words was, you would have known that a REAL hero would have left me alone to live my life in peace. I was never meant to be a part of YOUR world. It's a world for freaks and now you'll have to live the rest of your pathetic life with my death on your hands."
"No, I did what the Nornir asked of me! I followed their instructions! This shouldn't have happened. I would have gladly laid down my life for yours. I would do anything to swap our places," I pleaded with him, but it was no use.
"You don't deserve to be called an Avenger. You don't know how to be a REAL superhero. You're going to fail and more people will die because of your actions. I hope you will be able to live with that, because I won't be around to remind you of the failure you will become."
Steve's POV
I came out of the hallucination that the Maximoff girl put on me and tried to push the images of Bucky's torture at the hands of Hydra that came along with it out of my mind. I knew that none of what she showed me was real but when it really hit home when he yelled at me that he had become a monster all because I abandoned him.
Looking for the rest of the team, I saw that Clint had knocked the Maximoff girl out and saw her brother run off with her. By the look of things, Clint, Tony and Cassy were the only ones that escaped the hallucinations. But I couldn't see where Elsa was.
Starting to worry, I ran through the scrap yard trying to find my daughter. I was worried that the hallucinations hit her harder because of her magical blood. I knew it was going to be one extreme or the other with Elsa and I needed to find her to see which one it was.
When I turned a corner I found Elsa, she was behind a large crate and was crouched down with her hands over her head, rocking back and forth. I felt like someone had ripped my heart and stomped on it when I saw the state she was in.
"Elsa, snowflake, it's okay. It's not real, just look at me. Everything is going to be okay," I told her as I held her in my arms and tried to get her to uncover her face.
"No, it's not all right. It's never going to be alright. I'm sorry Cedric, I couldn't save you. It's all my fault, all my fault," she muttered, breaking my heart more than it already had.
"Snowflake, it's me. It's your dad. Cedric's okay, he's alive you just need to look at me," I pleaded with her but I just couldn't get through to her.
"No, Cedric's dead. All my fault. I couldn't save him. Don't deserve to be an Avenger. Should have been me, not Cedric," she continued to repeat.
I was at a loss on how to bring her out of the hallucination, so I did the only thing I could. I picked her up and started to carry her out of the scrap yard. The rest of the team where waiting for us and I was vaguely aware of Tony saying Bruce had Hulked out and destroyed part of the city but he and Cassy had him now and they were waiting on the quinjet for us. But at that point of time, I couldn't have cared less. The only thing I could think of was Elsa and what I could do to help her.
"My god, what happened to Elsa?" Nat asked when she saw us and ran to our side.
"It's the hallucination. She can't break out of it and... and I don't know what to do," I told her, my voice breaking as I tried to hold back the tears.
"We must get her to Loki. He will know what to do," Thor said, his eyes filled with concern for Elsa.
"Come on. Let's go. I have got Kimberly and Loki to move to a secure location and were meeting them there. They sooner we get there, the better. We need to Elsa to Loki as quickly as possible," Clint said as a tear fell down his cheek.
"Let's move out," I said as I walked out towards the quinjet, the rest of the avengers close on my heels.
The first thing I saw when I walked onto the quinjet Bruce was sitting on the floor, staring at nothing with unseeing eyes. Whatever he saw was still haunting him. Tony was in the pilot's seat with his head in his hands, while Cassy was sitting on a seat close to Bruce so she could keep an eye on him. But when she saw Elsa in my arms, still locked in her own personal hell, Cassy jumped up and ran over to us.
"What happened to Elsa? Can I do anything to help? Please tell me she's going to be okay," Cassy pleaded as I placed Elsa down on the hospital cot that was on the quinjet.
"It was the Maximoff girl. Elsa can't break out of the hallucination. We need to get her to Loki as quickly as possible," I told her as Tony walked over to me and placed a hand on my shoulder before speaking to all of the Avengers, including Bruce who had broken out of his trance, who had gathered around Elsa.
"Well, what are we waiting for. Let's get her to Reindeer Games."