The awakening didn't arrive gradually.
One moment Pietro was sitting in his chair holding his Coke, and the next he was somewhere near the bookshelf with no clear memory of having crossed the room. Then near the window. Then near the door. His body had decided, apparently without consulting him, that the pace it had been operating at for twenty-three years was no longer appropriate and was making adjustments at its own discretion.
Wanda's hands were red. Not burned — illuminated, from the inside, the chaos energy moving through her fingers in currents that had no interest in her attempts to stop them. A framed photograph on Smith's desk lifted two inches off the surface and hung in the air, rotating slowly, held by something she wasn't consciously doing.
Three of Smith's bookshelves were no longer organized the way they had been thirty seconds ago.
Smith moved between them with the calm of someone who had expected exactly this outcome. He caught Pietro mid-transit — one hand, firm enough to arrest the momentum without damage — and put his other hand on Wanda's shoulder at the same moment. The warmth of his ki ran through both contact points, and the chaos in the room decelerated.
Pietro stopped. The red at Wanda's hands dimmed to a faint trace and then went still. The photograph settled back onto the desk.
Smith put the Mind Scepter away.
Pietro looked at the scattered papers, the reorganized shelves, the dented Coke can on the floor that had apparently been in his hand at some point during the process. A trace of apology crossed his face. "I'm so sorry — I couldn't control it, it just—"
"You woke up something that's been dormant your entire life," Smith said. "It's not going to be polite about it." He released them both. "What you need to focus on right now is not technique or application. Just containment — learning to hold the power without it running on its own. Otherwise what just happened will keep happening."
Wanda looked at Smith and asked, "What do we do?"
Smith thought for a moment. "You'll stay here at the base. And then you're going to Korin Tower to train." He looked at them both. "At the top of the tower lives an immortal named Korin. He'll teach you how to bring your abilities under control."
Pietro immediately thought of the tower he'd seen from the sightseeing bus — the one that had risen through the treeline and kept rising, with the figures moving against its surface with their bare hands. His expression opened into something between disbelief and excitement. "There's actually an immortal living up there? No wonder Yelena called it a training landmark."
Wanda asked, more carefully, "An immortal — is he a god?"
Smith considered how to frame it. "Think of Korin as a very powerful enhanced individual. Exceptionally experienced. Old in ways that most things aren't."
Pietro and Wanda absorbed this and arrived, separately but simultaneously, at the same conclusion: this Korin was not ordinary.
Smith called Yelena and asked her to arrange rooms for the two of them at the Fraternity's base. Once she'd taken them out, he sent word for the office staff to come sort out what the awakening had done to his shelves and desk.
Then he went to find Bulma.
A week passed.
Pietro and Wanda settled into the Fraternity's rhythms. The first task Smith had assigned them was straightforward in its description and not straightforward in its execution: climb Korin Tower to the top without using their abilities. Their own bodies, their own hands, nothing else.
Pietro had gone at it the way he went at everything — fast, committed, and without particular respect for what he was attempting. He'd made impressive early progress and then found the upper sections, and the upper sections had their own opinion about impressive early progress.
Wanda had been methodical from the start. Measured pace, conserved energy, treated the climb as a problem to be solved rather than a challenge to be charged at.
By the end of the week, both of them had made it to the top.
The figure waiting for them was a cat — white, round, comfortable in the particular way of very old things that have stopped performing their importance.
Pietro stared at it.
Korin looked back at him with the patience of an immortal who had watched this specific expression cross a very large number of faces over a very long time.
"You made it," Korin said. His voice was the voice of someone for whom surprise had become essentially inaccessible. "Both of you. That happens less often than you'd think."
Pietro looked at Wanda. Wanda looked at Pietro. The look communicated several things at once, the primary one being: accept it and move on.
When Korin demonstrated his own capabilities, both of them stopped questioning the packaging. The strength behind that small, round, apparently unremarkable form was not something that required explanation.
Under Korin's guidance, they began the real work: not developing their abilities, but learning to hold them.
For Pietro, the first lesson was stillness — not stopping, which he could do, but being still while the speed was present. Holding it like a live current without letting it move him. He sat on the tower's upper platform and practiced containing something that constantly wanted to go, until the containment and the power could exist in the same space without fighting each other.
For Wanda, the first lesson was permission. The chaos magic resisted control because she had spent twenty-three years unconsciously resisting it herself, suppressing something she hadn't had words for. Korin sat across from her and said, in the direct way of someone with no stake in her comfort level, "Stop fighting it. It isn't fighting you." That took her several days to actually understand, and several more to begin to act on.
The training continued.
South Florida.
Benjamin sat in the apartment's small kitchen with a bag of ice pressed against his wrist and looked at his partner Claire, who was lying on the bed surrounded by the evidence of a successful afternoon's work — stacks of cash arranged across the comforter with the casual satisfaction of someone who has just solved a problem comprehensively.
"This thing weighs a ton," Benjamin said, about the alien weapon currently stored under the bed. "My wrist is basically broken."
Claire counted another stack. "We are financially free," she said, with the serene confidence of someone making a factual statement.
"How much exactly?"
Claire set the pen down, sat up, and looked at him with the expression of someone who has counted enough to know the answer is good. "Enough," she said. "From now on, whatever you want."
Benjamin stood up, crossed to the bed, took her by the shoulders, and was in the process of arranging a suitable celebration when the neighbor in room 209 turn on the music that had no relationship with any reasonable definition of consideration for adjacent residents.
Claire's expression shifted.
"What is that?"
Benjamin listened to it for a moment. "I actually like this song."
"Benjamin—"
"I'll go tell them. Two minutes. Stay here."
He got up, went out the door, and knocked on room 209.
Behind him in room 210, Claire lay back on the bed and picked up a stack of bills to examine more closely.
The door to 209 opened. The hand that came through it moved with the efficiency of someone who had done this many times — Benjamin was through the door, off his feet, face-down on the carpet, wrists zip-tied behind his back before he had fully registered that the knock had been a mistake.
"Please don't make this complicated," said the man sitting on him, in the tone of someone who hoped for compliance and had prepared for the alternative.
Benjamin assessed his options. He identified the speaker on the table. He kicked it off.
"Claire! Police!"
In room 210, Claire came off the bed in a single motion. She pressed her ear to the wall. The music that was still somehow playing made it impossible to hear clearly. She went to the bed, reached under it, and pulled out the weapon — heavy, alien, not from any manufacturer whose catalog she had ever browsed, for reasons she had no way of knowing.
She pointed it at the wall.
"Get down, baby!"
The man on top of Benjamin — Jasper Sitwell, S.H.I.E.L.D. credentials, HYDRA loyalties, currently executing a directive to recover all civilian-acquired Chitauri technology before its existence complicated anyone's planning — dropped behind the bed frame before the first shot fully discharged.
The laser made a hole in the wall that was not a small hole.
Sitwell moved Benjamin into the space behind the bed with him. Benjamin, mouth covered with the handkerchief Sitwell had produced from somewhere, made urgent sounds and turned his head to indicate the location of the threat.
The second shot widened the hole considerably.
Claire's wrist was announcing its objection loudly. The weapon's recoil had not been designed with civilian comfort in mind. She pushed through it and moved toward the opening in the wall, because Benjamin was in there and not responding clearly.
"Benjamin?"
The room beyond the hole was quiet. She leaned through the gap and looked toward the bed.
Benjamin was on the floor, bound, producing muffled sounds and moving his head with the focused urgency of someone trying to communicate a specific and important piece of information.
The information was: the threat is behind you.
Sitwell stepped out of the room at Benjamin's back, crossed into room 210 through the door, and appeared behind Claire.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~