The teenage boy clutched the DVD player under his arm as he walked down the corridor towards his apartment. It had been almost four months since his strange encounter with Scottie Casey, and since then he had been kept relatively busy with the small crime throughout Queens and other areas of Manhattan.
Although he had managed to keep his new found abilities to himself, he found that it was getting a little lonely. Especially when he had been watching all of the news about the Avengers solving mission after mission and all he was doing was stopping a few robbers from stealing a bike.
"Hey, May!" Peter yelled as he walked into the apartment, adjusting his pizza scientific t-shirt that he was wearing.
"Mmm. Hey. How was school today?" She called back from where she was sitting on the couch, her eyes still wide as she tried to adjust to the man that was sitting on her couch with a grin on his face.
"Okay. This crazy car parked outside..." Peter started before trailing off as he realised why there was a crazy car parked outside.
Tony Stark was sitting on his couch, half eating a piece of his aunt's walnut date loaf as he turned to smile at the boy.
"Oh, Mr. Parker."
Peter ripped the earbuds from his ears as his jaw dropped at the man in front of him. He felt his hands get clammy slightly as he tried to process exactly what Tony Stark AKA Iron Man was doing sitting in his apartment.
"What- What are you doing...? Hey! Uh, I'm-I'm-I'm Peter," he stammered out, still confused on what was going on. "What are... What are you - What are you - What are you doing here?"
"It's about time we met. You've been getting my e-mails, right?" Tony asked, raising his eyebrows slightly aggressively to make sure that Peter played along with what Tony was trying to say. Peter gaped at him for a little longer before shaking out of it.
"Yeah. Yeah. Regarding the..." Peter trailed off as he tried to think of what excuse Tony might have given his aunt for the billionaires sudden appearance in their life.
"You didn't tell me about the grant!" May exclaimed, causing Peter to snap his fingers as if he had forgotten all about it.
"About the grant," Peter murmured, trying to get rid of the confusion look that had spread across his face.
"The September Foundation. Yeah. Remember when you applied? My colleague recommended you, said she's heard great things," Tony said, reminding the boy of exactly how Tony had caught wind of him. "I approved, so now we're in business."
___
Vision hovered above the ground in the corner of the room, eyes closed and slowly bobbing up and down. Scottie and Wanda sat in silence across from each other, neither saying anything.
"You know, I didn't even know androids slept," Scottie mused, breaking the gut-wrenching silence between herself and Wanda. The red head laughed lightly, the last time Scottie figured she would hear it for a while.
They both knew what was coming next - how could they not? The TV had been playing the news for the past hour on the explosion at the accord signings, how their friends were safe but those who hadn't signed or intended to sign were going to be hunted down as fugitives, how Steve and Sam had escaped government capture along with the Winter Solider.
Scottie knew Wanda was next to go.
"They don't," Wanda murmured gently, Scottie's eyes shooting back to the girl. "He's just in stasis to reserve power."
"Hmm," Scottie mused, not sure what to reply to that. She knew Wanda had spent a lot more time with Vision than she had, but it would always amaze her that they shared such a close friendship. She figured that had she not rejoined the team, Wanda would most likely have spent all of her time with the android.
Scottie fiddled with the leather bracelet on her wrist, knowing that there was something in her pocket that she had planned to give to Wanda before this had all gone wrong. Before everything had been ripped from them. Reaching into her pocket, Scottie pulled out the almost identical bracelet before reaching out and lightly grabbing Wanda's arm.
When Wanda didn't flinch back or pull away like Scottie had almost expected, she reached around Wanda's wrist and fastened the small leather band across her wrist. As Scottie went to move her hands away, Wanda's turned and grabbed on to them.
"I don't want to lose you, Scottie," Wanda murmured, tears pooling in her eyes as she finally looked up and made eye contact with the girl. "But I can't sign those papers. I just can't."
Scottie nodded, a lump in her throat as she raised one hand to Wanda's cheek and rubbed it gently, just like she had done all those months ago in the hospital bed. Wanda let a tear fall down her cheek as she noticed Scottie also was crying.
"I know, but the reasons you won't sign? They're the reasons I will," she reminded Wanda, taking her hands away from the girl as she rose to her feet. Wanda rose too, catching Scottie's wrist just as the girl turned and began to walk away.
Scottie paused as Wanda turned her around, their bodies pressed together as they both stared into each others eyes. They knew neither was going to back down from this fight. And that was just the thing: they both were right. This battle on the horizon wasn't in the black and the white zones of right and wrong, it was all grey. Every single reason that each person had for signing or not signing was valid.
And that's maybe why it hurt the two girls so much. Neither of them was wrong, and neither of them was to blame for this.
Wanda grabbed Scottie's face, searching it for one last time before she pulled their lips together. Scottie's hands wove their way into Wanda's hair, the kiss sloppy and wet from the tears that they were both shedding. It was passionate yet heartbreaking, it was fierce yet soft - and it was most certainly emotional.
As they pulled back, Scottie seemed to withdraw her hands from Wanda's hair, noticing that the temperature around them had risen ever so slightly. Rubbing at her wrists where she usually wore her power suppressors, Scottie seemed to snap out of whatever haze they had both been in for a minute.
"You'd never lose me Wanda, but I can't do this," she muttered, turning on her heel and exiting the room quickly.
Wanda sighed as she felt her heart snap. She had hoped that something would change Scottie's mind, that the girl would even go against her own beliefs to make them work - but she knew Scottie better than that. They were both strong and powerful together, but they didn't need each other for that. They were just the same powerful individuals whether or not they were in a relationship.
Just as she went to slump back into the chair she had been previously sitting on, the room was suddenly illuminated by an explosion outside of the HQ. Wanda jumped as Vision suddenly sprung out of his stasis and appeared right at her side.
"What is it?" Wanda asked, a slight tinge of fear in her voice as she thought about them being under attack.
"Stay here, please," Vision asked of her, his density changing as he flew directly through the window and towards the source of the blast.
Wanda paused for a moment, before something in her subconscious set her off. Turning around, she watched as a knife she compelled with her powers flew straight across the room before stopping directly at a very familiar man's head.
"Guess I shoulda knocked," Clint said, a smile on his lips as he pushed the knife out of the way. He began to walk towards Wanda just as she headed towards him.
"Oh my god! What are you doing here?" She breathed, well aware that the man was supposed to be retired after he refused to sign the accords. It had broken Scottie's heart, but she hadn't been able to tell the man that.
"Disappointing my kids," Clint muttered, pulling his bow from where it had been resting over his shoulder and firing two arrows to the walls on either side of the room. "I'm supposed to go waterskiing. Cap needs our help. Come on," he said, grabbing Wanda's hand and beginning to tug her out of the room.
"Clint! You should not be here," Vision called out, reappearing through the same wall that he had exited from. Clint and Wanda both sighed, hoping that they would have gotten away without Vision trying to stop them.
"Really? I retire for, what, like five minutes, and it all goes to shit!" The archer exclaimed, rolling his eyes at Vision's plea.
"Please consider the consequences of your actions."
"Okay, they're considered," Clint replied back, watching as vision moved forward into the trap that his arrows had made to hold Vision in place for a moment. "Okay, we gotta go. It's this way!"
Clint turned around as Wanda didn't run after him, Vision simply twitching in the force field behind her as she awkwardly rubbed her hands together and played with the sleeves of Scottie's hoodie that she was still wearing.
"I've caused enough problems," Wanda said, beginning to think if what Scottie thought about herself was maybe true for the girl too.
Clint frowned at her words, sighing before running back over to stand next to the girl. He waved his hands slightly in the air as he motioned to the predicament they were in.
"You gotta help me, Wanda. Look, you wanna mope, can go to high school. You wanna make amends, you get off your ass," he muttered, knowing this was exactly how he convinced her to work with the Avengers in the first place. His eyes widened as Vision suddenly broke from the force field using the stone in his forehead. "Shit."
Clint yelped slightly as Vision flew at him, smacking Clint down to the ground. The archer groaned but instantly sprung back up to his feet as his years of training kicked back in.
"I knew I should've stretched," he muttered, flicking out the bow and watching as it turned into a baton. Spinning around, he tried to hit Vision but the weapon just passed straight through the android as he changed density. Clint groaned, trying to punch the android before hitting him with the baton again.
The baton snapped against Vision, causing Clint to yell in anger before trying to kick Vision. As he raised his leg, Clint stumbled as Vision once again changed his density and caused the man to go flying right through him. Just before Clint was able to recover, Vision managed to grab the man in a headlock.
"Clint, you can't overpower me," Vision said, annoyed that the man was trying to struggled against him when it literally defied all forms of logic.
"I know I can't," Clint gasped, his hands clawing at Vision's arms as he looked up and met Wanda's eyes. "But she can."
Vision looked up to see Wanda circling him intently, her hands red and twitching with the ball of energy that was floating in between them. Vision slumped ever so slightly but didn't release his hold on the man.
"Vision, that's enough. Let him go. I'm leaving," Wanda told the android as if she was talking to a dog. They all could hear the pain in her voice as she told him the last part, knowing that when she left she was leaving Scottie behind too.
"I can't let you," Vision argued back, trying to keep to the orders that Tony had given him.
As Wanda's power began to push the man down and into the ground, she muttered an apology to the android. "I'm sorry."
"If you do this... they will never stop being afraid of you," Vision told her, a low blow that they all recognised. Wanda shook her head, thinking back to the conversation she had with Steve only that morning.
"I can't control their fear, only my own," she decided, and with one last push the android was sent hurting down through the ground, most likely by a couple hundred metres into the dirt beneath the facility.
"Oh... Come on. We got one more stop," Clint murmured as they both stared down the hole that Wanda had created. They could see many different floors, but not Vision from the sheer depth of it. Clint couldn't help but wonder how bad that was going to hurt Vision when he recovered from that blast.
"Clint."
Clint and Wanda spun around at the archer's name being softly spoken behind them. Scottie stood at their exit, tall and to attention as she just watched the display between Wanda, Vision and Clint.
Clint reached down, grabbing his bow off the floor as he loaded it up with an arrow slowly. There was a shocking silence as all three of them simply stared at each other, hurt written across all of their faces. Clint shuffled slightly where he stood, readjusting his stance as he gulped before speaking.
"I don't want to hurt you, Scottie," he muttered, and she knew he was telling the truth. But she also knew that didn't mean he wasn't going to fire that arrow at her - oh, she'd known him and Natasha long enough to know that they'd do whatever their mission needed them to do.
"Scottie, please," Wanda murmured, the red energy flowing through her fingers as she thought about having to do what she did to Vision to the girl she loved. "Please don't make me do this."
Scottie shook her head, tears running down her face as she raised her arm towards them. It was then Wanda and Clint noticed that the girl had put her power suppressors back on, meaning that she was much more in control of her actions than without them.
"I'm sorry," Scottie muttered, and before either of them could say anything a beam of energy was streaming directly at them.
Neither of them had the chance to move but it didn't matter, the blast missed them anyway. Wanda looked betrayed until she heard the glass behind them smash, her and Clint spinning around to see Vision had managed to get back to the surface of the hole until Scottie had just hit him out of the window.
"He won't stay down for long," Scottie murmured, unable to swallow as she looked at Wanda with heartbreak all over her face. "You better go, fast."
Clint nodded in appreciation at the girl, running past her with a clap on the back to show that he wouldn't forget what she did for them. Wanda however was rooted in place, her eyes stuck to Scottie's as they both stared each other down.
Clint paused behind Scottie, about to say something but deciding he should give them the chance to say goodbye. He forgot that they were just kids in a war that adults had made, and had been forced to put everything aside for what they believed in.
"I don't understand," Wanda said, moving to stand only inches away from Scottie. "I thought you didn't want me to leave."
Scottie shrugged, a pitiful smile on her lips. "I don't. But I just want you safe, and if I can't do that for you then maybe they can."
Wanda leaned forward, slamming her lips against Scottie's for the last time.
"Scottie, I..." Wanda trailed off, knowing what she wanted to say.
"I know. Now go," Scottie replied, giving the girl a light push as she turned back around to face Vision. Wanda and Clint ran out of the room, Vision staring after them as Scottie looked at the droid.
"I'm sorry Vis, but I had to," she told the droid, her hands up in defence with the energy still sparking from them as she waited for him to make the next move.
But he didn't. The droid simply floated back down beside her and placed a soft red hand on her shoulder.
"I understand."