“Yeah,” Carol drawled, leaning against the door frame. “You can try running with that. I’d say keep me posted, but they don’t really let a lot of mail in and out of the Raft, so that’s gonna be dicey.” It was blunt, and to the point, but she was done playing nice. “Look, Johnson’s down for giving it a shot. I’ve got one more already training, and one guy who didn’t sign up until they had him in handcuffs. You wanna wait for that option? Because I’m not certain I can wrangle that twice in a row, even I have limits.” She squared up, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s do or die right now. I think you can bring something to the table, and I want it at my table. What’s stopping you?”

“We’re not talking like, a thank you card here are we?” Clint asked, tilting his head as he studied the kid in front of him. It was clear enough from their surroundings, the dark alleyway, not too far from his building, shadows casting over their faces and cutting them into jagged, strange shapes. What he was implying, it was nothing to joke about. But that’s where Clint excelled. “I’ve sent some of those messages myself,” he said, shrugging and fiddling with an earlobe. “Sometimes the reply comes back to bite you in the ass.” 

Wanda didn’t have to ask what he meant. Or why he had done what he’d done. She had the benefits of hearing the man’s thoughts, seeing all the terrible things he’d done, every sin racing through his mind as the flaming skull walked towards him. She had heard his scream, but then those images flashed through her mind, women screaming, blood, bruises, children crying, his hand around a gun—

And she did nothing. 

This time, her inaction was not because she was torn between two parts of herself. It was because she had connected with a very deep part of her soul. The part that thrived in chaos when she opened herself up to her fullest abilities. She was no stranger to revenge. To rage. It was in her blood. 

The flames were gone now. In front of her stood a man. Maybe not much older than herself. Wanda nodded at his words, her face curiously blank. “I know,” she said simply. “I saw what he did. Bits of it anyway.” Avengers weren’t supposed to condone murder – or whatever it was she had seen here. But Wanda wasn’t just an Avenger. She wasn’t just a Mutant. She was also a girl who had lived through loss and knew how it felt to come face to face with the one responsible. How it felt to make them pay for what they’d taken. “You were kinder than I’ve been before. To those who deserved to suffer.”