Lucy sat on one of the deep leather chairs and tried to force herself to relax. They were back in the bunker, and the itchy feeling in her wrist was bothering her. On instinct she looked at the floor, the wall, the ceiling—anywhere but at the other people in the room—until she remembered that eye contact wouldn't cause her magic to bond, at least for the moment. She forced herself to look up at the people around her but found that even though her magic wasn't tugging at her, she couldn't bring herself to make eye contact.
The others found seats as Bowser went to the kitchen to make coffee. After a few moments he exclaimed, "Who ate all my whipped cream!" making Lucy blush and Daisy giggle furiously and nudge Tony with a "told ya."
"He'll be fine," Tony said, winking at Lucy. "All in the name of coffee—a worthy sacrifice if there ever was one."
Lucy gave a small smile and tucked some loose strands of black hair behind her ears. After scooting uncomfortably in her chair for a few moments, she unzipped the oversized jacket and took it off so her casted arm could breathe a little and she could scratch what parts of her wrist were still accessible to her.
"Is it itchy?" Daisy asked from the seat next to hers, noticing Lucy's attempts to scratch.
"A bit," she replied.
"How do the bracelets feel?" Tony asked.
Lucy held up her wrist and jingled the bracelets together with a smile. "They feel like bracelets," she said.
"We may need to study those bracelets when this is over. I've never seen dampeners like that before," Maverick said, frowning as he eyed the bracelets on Lucy's wrists. Then he added, looking at Lucy, "But for now, let's focus on you."
Lucy blushed and nodded, feeling very uncomfortable with everyone's eyes on her.
"I have to ask you a question that may come as a shock to you," Maverick said, ignoring the frown Tony gave him.
"Okay," she replied.
"Do you remember your brother?" Maverick said.
Lucy frowned, a look of confusion crossing her face. Despite her discomfort, she looked at each of them in turn to make sure it wasn't some kind of joke. It clearly wasn't, and Lucy felt a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, a light dizziness washing over her as she tried to remember.
"No," she said finally.
"We saw him in your mind. He looked like your twin," Tony said gently.
"I'm a twin?" she asked, looking at Daisy, who shrugged, and Maverick, who nodded.
"Yes, I think you are," Maverick said.
"Why can't I remember him?" Lucy asked.
"Do you remember a time in the forest with a tall man and a black stone?" Maverick asked her.
Lucy tried to remember, but every time she did she felt dizzy and nauseous. She shook her head, and Maverick took a deep breath and said, "It's possible that whatever happened to you in that forest also took your memories from you. I don't know what the witches were trying to do, but it seems as though they failed."
"Or they thought they failed," Tony said to Maverick. "They thought she had died, but she was alive at the end of the memory." Then, turning to Lucy, he added, "Your brother showed up. He saw you dead and basically fell apart. I think he really loved you."
Lucy didn't know what to say to this. The idea of having a brother was already so foreign to her, but the idea that she had a family that really loved her was almost unbelievable. Where was he? Why couldn't she remember him? Had he been looking for her all this time? Or did he not care?
"Well, there's nothing to be done for it now. Perhaps in time we will be able to shed more light on your past, but for now, I think it's time for Daisy to try again to assess your powers—if that is okay with you, Lucy?" Maverick asked her.
Lucy nodded and shifted toward Daisy, who smiled warmly and said, "My powers are pretty harmless. When I touch someone, I can tell immediately what their powers are, where the weakness of their power lies, and most of the time I get a flash—an image or a movie—of the moment they got their powers."
"You tried this before, at the park?" Lucy asked.
"Well, yes, and obviously that didn't go so well. Hopefully with the dampeners on it won't be so intense," Daisy said.
"It will be fine," Tony said reassuringly, and Maverick added, "We are here if anything goes wrong." Lucy nodded and gave a small smile to Daisy, who scooted her chair closer and put her hand on Lucy's arm.
Daisy closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she was standing in a long room with tall ceilings and bookshelves on every wall that were filled with books of every kind. There was a fireplace on one wall that was so tall Daisy could have walked into it, and a hot fire was blazing in the hearth. Daisy had never been able to move about so freely when she looked into someone's mind with her power—not like now, at least—and walking over to one of the walls she pulled a book off the shelf. It was green with gold lettering on the cover, and the title was Growing Things. Daisy shrugged and put it back and grabbed another book. This one was leather-bound with intricate engravings on the front, and its title read The Art of Bending and Manipulating Woods, Metals and Precious Stones. The next book was about lifting things without touching them, and another was about going through walls. One book was titled Re-arranging Molecules Without Destroying the Life That Holds Them.
Daisy looked around, confused. The shelves were full of books with titles that were similarly odd; one even read Discerning Powers from Afar and Other Telekinetic Skills. "What is this place?" Daisy wondered aloud as she wandered through the room, picking up book after book and reading the titles until she grew tired and wandered over to the fireplace. There were two chairs sitting around a beautiful coffee table, arranged around the fire in a cozy reading spot.
In the middle of the coffee table was a glass box rimmed in gold, and as Daisy leaned closer to see what was inside she gasped. There, in the center of the box, floating as though it were suspended in space itself, was a miniature sun, blazing with sun flares and miniature little explosions to mimic the real sun. It looked so real that Daisy half expected to feel a scorching heat emanating from the box, but she couldn't feel any heat when she waved her hand over it, and then she giggled at herself for thinking that she would. It was stunning and so lifelike that she found herself drawn to it; she had a sudden, irrational desire to touch it.
Daisy looked around a little guiltily—she wasn't sure why—before leaning over the box and trying to lift the lid. It wouldn't budge; the box was locked shut, and that was when she noticed that there were little black stones just like the ones on Lucy's bracelets inlaid into the gold along the edges of the box, and in the very center was the tiniest keyhole that she had ever seen. She wasn't sure why she did it, but Daisy reached into her hair and pulled out a safety pin she kept there for emergencies, and kneeling down in front of the box she inserted it into the keyhole and twisted.
An explosion rocketed from the box that was so violent it not only grabbed Daisy and flung her out of Lucy's mind and back into her own body, but it continued beyond Lucy's mind, exploding from her like an ultrasonic wave. Daisy opened her eyes and saw the room slip into chaos in slow motion. Maverick and Tony got thrown backward so forcefully their chairs went with them, and Daisy and Lucy were pushed in opposite directions across the room, landing with hard thuds against opposite walls.
It was like a bomb had gone off, breaking everything within ten feet of Lucy's body, including the lights that shone directly above the living room. Daisy groaned and rubbed her head, temporarily stunned by the impact, and then Bowser was next to her, helping her to her feet.
"What the hell just happened!?" he asked in shock, looking at the living room and the people lying haphazardly around it.
"Lucy? Are you okay?" Daisy asked, shaking slightly as she pushed off the wall and stumbled over to where Lucy lay on the floor as Tony and Maverick climbed from the rubble of their chairs and looked around.
"Lucy?!" Tony's voice, full of concern, exclaimed as Daisy reached Lucy and leaned over her.
Lucy looked pale, but there were no obvious signs of injury beyond the already injured arm that she held against her chest with her other arm, having hugged it protectively when she had flown through the air. She opened her eyes and blinked, looking at Daisy like she wasn't sure who she was for a moment. Daisy's heart skipped a beat, suddenly fearing that whatever she had done in Lucy's mind might have erased her memory again.
"Lucy? Are you… are you okay?" she asked.
"I'm fine," Lucy said weakly, and then, pushing herself into a sitting position, she said more confidently, "I'm okay, really."
Tony came over, rubbing his head, and knelt down next to her, looking in her eyes and checking her head frantically as if he were sure he would find some kind of wound.
"I'm okay, Tony, I promise. Nothing else has been broken," she said, waving off his attention and standing up.
Maverick was straightening his jacket and picking up the chair he had been sitting in as if he was going to put it back where it belonged, until it fell into pieces in his hands.
"What happened?" Tony asked Daisy.
Daisy's cheeks turned bright red, and she considered not telling them the whole truth, but then thought better of it and confessed. She explained about the room with all the books, the titles of them that seemed to be types of powers and how to use them, and then when she got to the box on the coffee table she paused.
"What is it?" Maverick asked, noticing her hesitation.
"There was this weird box sitting on a coffee table. It was made of glass with little black stones all around it like the ones on Lucy's bracelets. It had this sun inside of it, floating. It looked just like a real sun, but it wasn't hot, and… and I tried to open it," she said finally.
"Was it locked?" Maverick asked her.
"Yes, so I used a safety pin from my hair and tried to pick the lock," she said sheepishly.
"You did what?!" Tony yelled angrily. "How could you be so stupid, Daisy!"
Daisy flinched and had to hold back the tears. She couldn't hide how much Tony's words stung, and Lucy looked at her with pity, which made Daisy feel even worse, considering she had violated the privacy of the girl's mind.
"Don't be so hard on her, Tony. Honestly, I would have done the same thing. What if what was inside was important and the only way to find out was to open it?" Lucy said.
"She could have done serious damage to your mind, Lucy!" he said more calmly but clearly having a hard time holding back the anger he felt.
"How was I supposed to know that!?" Daisy said, suddenly feeling angry at herself. "I've never experienced anything like what I saw in Lucy's mind. Usually it's a cross symbol and an image of a little girl healing a bird for the first time or a book with a story in it about a boy who lifts a car to save his sister. She had an entire room of superpowers and how to use them!"
Everyone looked at Lucy now, with expressions on their faces that made Lucy blush and feel uncomfortable.
"It implies your powers are endless—that you potentially could do anything with them," Maverick said, looking at her in a way that made her feel nervous.
"That's impossible," Tony said. "The amount of power that would take would destroy a person."
"It seems like it almost has," Maverick said pointedly.
"And what about the sun?" Daisy asked.
"Isn't it obvious?" Maverick replied. "The source of her power is the sun."
"Are you saying the witches are right?" Lucy asked.
"Not exactly. Remember, the witches only ever get things partially right, never fully. If I had to guess, I would say for whatever reason you have powers to rival those possessed long ago by the first to experience such gifts. It would explain the sheer force of light that came from you when you fought the shadows and why your gifts don't seem to have any one clear purpose."
"What I see when I look inside of someone is usually the potential of their magic. The books on those shelves mean you have a lot of potential," Daisy said, a clear note of awe in her voice.
"You just need to learn how to use them," Maverick added.