The villa had no shortage of empty rooms, so Daisy just stuck her in one. Wanda wasn't a caveman; getting dressed and putting herself to bed were the kind of trivial things she could surely handle, so Daisy left her to it.
She checked in on Viper's progress. Viper had already picked up the trail of Kaecilius and his group, and was now in pursuit.
Chasing down a band of sorcerers by ordinary means was no easy thing. But Viper's network spanned the globe, and as long as these sorcerers were still setting foot anywhere on Earth, she'd find her opening.
"Your inside contact was a problem. I got the person out anyway."
"...The intel you gave me wasn't exactly accurate either. These sorcerers can really run!"
The two grumbled at each other a bit, then hung up.
After thinking it over, Daisy made another trip to the Hydra Base to bring back Spider-Woman, Miss Drew. She was Viper's "daughter," after all. A girl with a seventeen-year-old body and a mind still stuck at seven was a pitiable thing.
By the time she'd brought Drew back, Wanda was awake, scanning the room with tense unease, only easing up once Daisy appeared. Drew, for her part, was on full alert at the sight of Wanda. Daisy quickly introduced them. Both were simple souls; they traded a few flat, lukewarm words and could, just barely, be said to have met.
...
"Daisy, do these two need you to be their guardian as well?" Lorna, home in the evening from school, had discovered two dazed, dim-looking women added to the household. Her words dripped with hostility, and the look she gave Daisy was a strange one.
Daisy was starting to feel her villa was turning into a containment camp for troubled girls. She picked her words carefully. "Of course not. They're both adults."
Did U.S. law set the bar for adulthood by the body or by the mind? Legally clueless as she was, Daisy honestly couldn't say.
First she introduced Wanda to Lorna. The two were both Magneto's daughters, half-sisters, though neither of them knew it, and Daisy could hardly explain where her intel came from. For now, let them get along like ordinary people.
"This is Wanda Maximoff. She's a year younger than me, but plenty older than you, so it's fine to think of her as an older sister."
When it came to Miss Drew, things got tricky. Did this one even count as an older sister? Daisy couldn't be bothered to puzzle it out, so she just had everyone call Drew by name.
The maid had no objection to two more freeloading women in the villa, and Elektra, being only a temporary guest herself, had even less to say about it.
Tangbao made to get friendly with the two newcomers, but Wanda's reaction was about what Daisy had expected: she was terrified. Back at Twins Base she'd witnessed prisoners fed to lions, and the image still surfaced in her mind to this day. Wanda backed away, step after step, dreading that the lion would pounce and tear her apart.
Drew was the opposite. Her fists clenched, her spider genes stirring up an urge to defend her territory. A vicious light flared in her eyes, her tongue ran over her lips, and she fixed Tangbao with a thoroughly unfriendly stare.
Tangbao was scared stiff. In his eyes, Miss Drew was a colossal venomous spider. With a yelp he scrambled behind Lorna and cowered there, trembling, lifting his head now and then to check whether Drew was coming after him.
Lorna fearlessly puffed out her chest, blocking Drew's line of sight, secretly delighted. These two dim-witted women had actually driven Daisy's precious pet over to her side. How wonderfully stupid of them!
Daisy thought it was pretty stupid too; her pet was an idiot! A lion, cowed by a spider! Sure, the spider was a little oversized, but come on, you're a lion. Have some spine!
She coughed twice. Drew realized she'd lost her composure and hurriedly bowed an apology to Daisy.
Dinner, awkward as it was, got finished somehow.
The next day, Daisy tracked down Captain America on his run. The two newcomers back home had been cut off from society far too long, and to get them out of the villa and back among normal people, she needed to bring them up to speed.
To that end, she asked Cap what crash-course materials there were for getting up to speed.
Cap held nothing back, seeming glad to be of use. At the end he asked, "Are there still people like that in society now? I mean, besides me."
Daisy laughed it off, neither confirming nor denying. People like that were certainly rare, but she'd pretty much run into all of them.
Cap hesitated, then asked anyway. "Nick Fury seems to be putting together a special team. What are your thoughts?"
"I'm not joining." Daisy's answer was blunt. She had no desire to lead a pack of heroes who each did their own thing, and even less desire to be led.
Captain America was taken aback. "I thought you were on board with Nick Fury? The two of you..."
He couldn't quite work out the relationship between Daisy and Baldy.
"I respect Nick. He's like a teacher to me. But I won't blindly follow his every decision. Captain, you of all people should know: S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded to protect the Earth."
Captain America nodded. Back in his day, S.H.I.E.L.D. had still gone by the Strategic Scientific Reserve, a thoroughly American outfit at the time, but that didn't stop him from agreeing with the ideals S.H.I.E.L.D. held now, or rather, with Peggy Carter's ideals.
Safeguarding the whole world. That was a cause worthy of respect.
The two of them gradually slowed their pace.
Daisy weighed her words. "Honestly, I don't agree with Nick's call on this. No offense intended, but I'd say agents can protect the world just fine. We don't need superheroes for that. S.H.I.E.L.D. did a fine job for seventy years."
Captain America took no offense at her dismissiveness. He rather enjoyed the tenor of a conversation like this.
"But superheroes are an important complement to agents. Surely you won't deny that? On plenty of missions, having superheroes drastically cuts down on casualties."
"Superheroes step up, risk their lives, do what they believe is right. They inspire ordinary people to shoulder responsibility, they fight criminals..." Daisy rattled off a whole string of praise for superheroes. Captain America stayed perfectly composed, listening patiently.
Sure enough, after all that buildup, Daisy pivoted. "But everyone thinks differently and does things differently. The U.S. Constitution doesn't lay out what a superhero should do, or how. So here's the question: when one hero and another hero disagree, in thought and in method, then what?"
Captain America didn't hesitate. "Dialogue. Honest dialogue, just like what we're doing right now."
Daisy gave a small shake of her head. "Steve, dialogue can't solve everything. The heroes' intentions are admirable. I admire them myself. But once you scale that group up, once it's no longer just one or two heroes, how do you coordinate their relationships with each other? With ordinary people? With the government?"
Captain America thought it over for several minutes. "I'll consider what you've said. But right now the world needs a force to safeguard it. It needs someone to step up."
That Cap was ready to be that someone didn't surprise Daisy in the least. That was just who he was. Their conversation wrapped up soon after, and she bought a mountain of books to take home and tutor the two women who'd been cut off from society.