||"She burned too bright for this world."||
If the team was perturbed about Markus and what he planned to do, no one showed it. But Wanda noticed the stares Steve and Natasha shared; she noticed the way Tony kept to himself in his lab, working tirelessly on something she couldn't see. She noticed how Sam kept her and Nik company throughout the day, trying to take her mind off of things, making her smile and laugh.
It had worked, because by the time dinner came around, she had forgotten all about Markus.
They'd also gone around the compound numerous times, Nik finding something interesting every time, spending ten minutes admiring it, then another ten minutes talking about it. She was happy that the both of them had kept her busy.
"So you're telling me you purposely touched her hex?" Sam was amazed at the stories Nik told him, but he was even more stunned to hear that Nik—on many occasions—had touched Wanda's magic, earning him a few marks up his arms.
"I should have known something so beguiling would be hot to the touch."
Sam chuckled, sliding the door open to the dining room. "Can you control that? Whether or not it hurts someone?"
She fumbled with the sleeves of her shirt, nodding expectantly. "I cause damage when I need to, but when I do it for show, I make sure it doesn't sting."
"She never did like when I touched her magic, so by punishing me, she'd have it hurt like hell whenever I snuck a hand through a stream or a bolt." Wanda simpered, taking a seat across from Pietro, who was staring down at his empty plate, his face blank.
He'd been quiet all day, keeping to himself and staying away from Wanda. This is what he did back in Sokovia: he disappeared into himself.
Crystal and Emma strolled in after them, and Wanda was glad to see that Crystal's presence brought Pietro out of his stupor. She sat down next to him, looking up at Nik and giving him a a flirtatious smile. But Nik was too busy admiring the assortment of food to even notice.
"I feel like I haven't seen you all day," Steve said, showing up beside her and sitting down. He was dressed in all black, his t-shirt hugging his muscles in all the right places. The black sweats her wore hung loosely at his hips, and she found herself leaning into him, aching for his touch.
"If there's something you should know about Nik, it's that he finds everything interesting. I'm pretty sure I walked him around the compound three times before he finally got his fill."
Steve, to her pleasure, huffed out a low laugh. "Emma says he's a good kid," he said quietly, looking over at the White Queen, her hair unbound and curled. Wanda noticed she looked strikingly fatigued tonight. Nothing like the poised and bright woman she usually was.
"There are very few people who are brought into this world who manage to stay kind and selfless, even after experiencing an unfathomable amount of hatred and loss," Wanda said, reaching down to wrap her hand over his. "People like him—and you—are like rare stones that wash ashore every few hundred years."
His hand clutched her hand, not roughly, but amorously, and she allowed his warmth to travel up her arm, where it reached her neck, wrapping around her like a necklace made of soft silk.
"How long has Tony been working? I haven't seen him since this morning," Sam said, piling heaps of mashed potatoes onto his plate.
"I'll go get him," Natasha said, standing up from her chair, grabbing a breadstick on her way out.
"One day, that man is going to work himself to death," Emma said, removing her cloak. The claw hanging on her necklace glistened as she sat back in her seat, tapping a jeweled finger on her wine glass. "How was the one-on-one today?" she asked, her eyes focusing on Wanda.
Pietro looked up at her when the question was asked, and she gave him a loving look before answering.
"I think we made some progress," Wanda said, looking to her left, where Nik sat. He was looking up at the ceiling, mumbling to himself as he stared at the chandelier above the table. "Nik," she said to him, poking his leg. He pulled his gaze away from the chandelier, turning to her and smiling.
"I counted 130," he stated, then pointed up at the chandelier. "130 diamonds, all real, no doubt."
"They are," Tony said, walking in with Natasha by his side. "Picked it out myself."
Nik beamed, his curls bouncing as he looked back up at the chandelier.
"Make any revolutionary discoveries while locked away in your cave?" Emma asked, her wine glass now empty. Tony fell down into his chair dramatically, rubbing his temples and breathing heavily. Then, he raised his head and smiled.
"Nothing ground-breaking," he said, grabbing the bottle of white wine in front of him, pouring the ivory liquid into his glass until it reached the rim. "But, there's always tomorrow."
"Are we done pretending there isn't a mad man out there ready to scalp us all?" Natasha looked down at her food, picking a broccoli stem with her fork, completely unfazed by what she'd just asked.
Wanda instinctively looked at Pietro, his eyes already on her.
"We'll figure something out," Steve said. "We always do."
"At what cost, Captain?" Emma asked, and Wanda wasn't sure if her tone was meant to sound so harsh, but either way, everyone looked at Steve expectantly, awaiting his answer. But Emma pushed her wine glass away and stood, her white clothes blinding Wanda momentarily.
"I'm not feeling too well," she said, and Crystal went to join her, but Emma raised her hand. "Stay. Eat your dinner. Don't touch the wine."
"Are you okay?" Crystal asked, her usually leaden voice now soft and worrisome.
"Try not to stay up too late. We have a long day tomorrow."
The White Queen strode out of the dining room, her white cloak still slung across the seat beside her—a second being, forgotten and now exposed.
___
Tony was tempted to check up on Emma after dinner, but with the way she'd asked that question, he knew if was best to leave her be.
But it was hard to notice that with the twins back, she had begun acting off. As if their return unleashed a part of herself that she hadn't even realized was running loose.
Back in his lab, he sat down in his chair, a fresh cup of coffee at his side.
"Find anything, buddy?" he asked aloud, and the whirring of Jarvis' electromagnetic clicking and buzzing grew louder as his hologram showed up in front of Tony's desk.
"Any sightings or reports of Markus Decker haven't shown up in any surveillance systems in the city, nor at any of the police departments. He is a ghost."
"Have you tried expanding the search? Try Connecticut."
Tony sat back, watching as his screen filled with surveillance videos and police reports, all of them being sifted through by Jarvis at incredible speed.
Three minutes later, Jarvis stopped his search.
"The abandoned bunker that Larry Trask was using to build and monitor his Sentinels has since been leased off to someone named Jonathan Doer."
"John Doe," Tony said. "Clever."
"Any surveillance near the bunker is too far to give a clear look at the area."
"Anything else?"
"After the escape of Mr. Decker, a small army base near Nevada was raided—no valuable information was taken, but the artillery, some of the best, was stolen."
Tony swallowed down half of his coffee and swiped through the blueprints of the bunker that Jarvis had pulled up. They were exactly the same, except the tunnels beneath it that led to the factory were closed off. If Markus was using the bunker as some sort of home-base, then he'd be setting himself up for capture.
An hour went by, then another, then another, and yet his eyes were still studying the layout of the bunker, as well as that area around it. With the bunker hiding deep in the woods, there weren't any nearby homes to worry about, but Tony wasn't sure why Markus would return to the very place that got him into trouble.
Before shutting off his computers and calling it a night, Tony sent a quick message to Rhodey, alerting him of Markus' purchase of the bunker.
"Get some sleep, buddy," Tony said, and Jarvis' hologram faded away into the darkness.
As he walked out of the lab, Tony saw that the light in the dining room was still on. Casually, he strolled over and stepped inside, his finger grazing over the switch before stopping abruptly.
Emma was seated back in her seat, her white cloak hanging loosely in her hands, her necklace—the claw—dangling off of her neck, swinging softly as she hunched forward.
He wasn't sure what she was doing until he saw her shoulders shake, and he realized that she was crying into her cloak, the sounds of her sobs muffled by the fabric. And so he rushed over to her, kneeling down in front of her and holding her hands.
She was a mess: black makeup smudged underneath her eyes, swollen lips, puffy eyes, and a runny nose. Her shoulders kept shaking as she held in her sobs, and even as she realized Tony was there, she didn't seem to care about how she looked, because she continued on with her crying, clutching her cloak as if it were a person.
"You're okay," Tony said to her. "You're okay."
Emma brought the cloak up to her face and breathed out into it, her eyes squeezing shut as she struggled to catch her breath.
He'd never seen her so...broken, he never thought he would. But as she wept into her cloak and as he caught a glimpse of that shiny claw dangling from her neck, he knew why his beloved friend was breaking down.
"Let's go," he said, standing up and grabbing a hold of her hand. "You're coming with me."
It took him a moment to help her stand, but eventually she found her balance, then he guided her out of the dining room, and toward his bedroom. Her hand was still holding onto the cloak, and he wasn't sure what she was doing, but he didn't say a word about it, not until he got her into bed, underneath his covers.
When he turned on the bedside lamp, she flinched, turning away to face the darkness.
"Breathe, Emma," he told her, pulling the covers over her body.
The only sound in his room was her hitched breathing; a staccato of breaths that slowly fell down to a calm cycle of inhale and exhale. Her hands were still holding onto her cloak.
"You're falling apart," he said after five minutes of watching her relax. Her eyes were fixated on the ceiling, the claw sitting in the hollow of her neck. "And you have every right to break whenever is necessary—"
"But what?" she asked, her voice hoarse and quiet.
"But nothing," he answered. "You take as long as you need."
She sat up, her arms shaking slightly as she put weight on them. Her head fell back against the headboard and she stared down at her cloak, smudges of black splotched all over. "This was her favorite cloak," she said, running her fingers over the velvet fabric. "She was always telling me to wear it."
Sharon. She was talking about Sharon.
"She loved these," she held up the part of the cloak with the diamonds on each shoulder pad, and the little crystals sparkled as the bedside lamp caught them with its gold light. "She used to say that this was her favorite cloak because it was the one I wore when I first met her."
Her eyes pooled with tears again as she thought back on her memories, and Tony's head bowed and he wasn't sure what to say or how to comfort her. So he just listened as she told him about the day she met Sharon, and he listened as she told him how Sharon used to climb up to the ceilings of Emma's home, lounging around with her tail whipping back and forth; he listened as she told him about the day Emma started teaching Sharon how to read and train and love her human form, as well as her mutant form.
He listened and he listened until Emma was asleep, her hands still clasped around her cloak, the claw somehow a shade darker than it was before, and he couldn't shake the feeling that Sharon had been listening, maybe sitting beside Emma herself, caressing her into a calm slumber.
He shut off the bedside lamp and moved Emma's hair out of her damp face. "Goodnight, Emma," he whispered, taking a seat on the couch in the corner and falling asleep himself.
___
It was dawn when he got out of bed, and though he knew the team would still be asleep, and though he knew the agents around the compound had gone home, and so had the workers, he still went out for a run.
His legs hummed with the familiar ache as she sped through the trees, through the hidden paths and over the clean land.
With the world slowing down around him, he could just run and watch and forget about the things that were bothering him.
Nothing mattered when he was running.
With the sun high above the trees, he finally turned around and ran back to the compound.
Nik and Wanda were out training together when he returned, but they didn't notice him as he slipped by. But before going in, he watched them for a moment, smiling to himself as he heard Wanda's laughter fill the air. She was always so happy when Nik was around.
"Why are we spying?" Crystal whispered, coming up beside him and looking over his shoulder.
"We?" he asked, turning to face her. "There's no we."
"Don't be so grumpy, handsome," she said to him, looking out at Nik and Wanda. "Isn't he just adorable?"
"If you say so," he said grimly, pulling off his hoodie and stalking off toward the training room.
"Don't be jealous, Pietro," she said, catching up to him.
"I'm not."
"That's something a jealous person would say."
He clenched his jaw and halted, turning around to look at her. The richness of her green eyes always took him by surprise, and he found himself struggling to figure out what he was going to say.
Crystal raised her brows and waited, but he just shook his head and continued on.
"Are you coming with us?" she asked, trailing him again. "I'm sure your girlfriend misses you."
Katarina's gold hair and brown eyes came to mind, and he remembered how she smelled of sweet strawberries—he missed her.
"Of course I'm going."
"We're leaving soon, and I'd much rather you take a shower before you get into a small car," Crystal waved her hand over her nose dramatically, and he rolled his eyes and opened the door to the training room.
"I thought you liked it when I was all sweaty?"
Crystal scoffed, crossing her arms, but he saw her cheeks turn pink at his comment.
"There's sexy sweaty, and then there's gross sweaty. Right now, you're gross sweaty, and I am no fan of gross sweaty."
Pietro sighed, turning to walk into the training room, but then he ran over to her, his blue streak intwining around them as he hugged her, rubbing his sweaty skin all over her. She screamed out, pushing him away but struggling under his hold.
"You're so gross!" she yelled, finally breaking free. Her face scrunched up as she stood a few feet away, her arms extended out as she examined herself. "It's everywhere!"
"Looks like you'll need another shower," he said, then grabbed his hoodie off of the floor and walked away. He heard her cursing loudly as he left, and he couldn't help the grin that formed on his lips.
**********************
A/N: My poor Emma:(
Grieving takes time; Emma needs time.
It still hurts, though!