Lost at Sea
Memory 10
“Y’all are so useless, I swear!”
An indignant Darcy projected her faux-frustrations onto the group, head thrown back with a dramatic groan. Monica leaned onto the wall behind Darcy’s seat, arms crossed and eyes rolled at her complaining.
“It’s not our fault you suck at Wordle, Darcy.”
“But it is your fault you aren’t helping!”
A boy with a light blue polo shirt and glasses hanging off the tip of his nose smiled lightly to himself at the banter, eyes not leaving the lab notebook he was leisurely writing in.
“It’s alright if you want to give up -”
“NEVER!” Darcy interjected with a brazen shout and slap of her palms onto the table, only to be shushed by Monica with a stern reminder that they are still in a library.
Victor, only half paying attention as he worked away in his own lab notebook, startled inadvertently at the sudden outburst, a huff of laughter escaping him a second later. But the small movement was enough for Darcy to latch onto him.
“Vic, c’mon, help a girl out! We HAVE to beat Bruce! His reign of tyranny can NOT go on!”
Allowing a small smile to upturn the corners of his lips, Victor got up from his seat next to Bruce and walked to the other side of the table, peering over Darcy’s shoulder at her laptop to see the game.
Darcy and Bruce had an ongoing Wordle competition to see who could solve the week’s Wordles in the least moves. Bruce hadn’t initiated the war - rather, Darcy had taken note of his constant scores in their shared group chat, and had made it her personal mission to defeat him. After numerous weeks defeated, Darcy began to enlist Monica’s help. Now it seems Victor was being drafted into this war as well.
The first word Darcy had tried was ‘store’.
_ _ O _ _
“There’s an ‘S’ and ‘T’ in the word, but they’re in the wrong place. And if I want to beat Bruce this week, I have to solve it on my next word! Victor, call upon the academic Gods and save me!”
“Academic… Gods?”
“Listen, with the grades you get, there’s no way you aren’t tapping into some otherworldly powers.”
Victor huffs another small laugh, then begins to think. While he’d love to magically give her the answer, it seems near impossible to get the answer in only one move. A big part of Wordle is simply luck - something Darcy seems to be lacking today.
As he begins to ponder suggestions to quell Darcy’s mini-tantrum, a flash of movement outside the study room’s glass walls across the library catches his eye. When his eyes flick over to look, Victor immediately regrets it, his stomach suddenly heavy with stones of regret.
Wanda.
Her image reflected on his retinas causes a chain reaction in Victor’s psyche, a chemical reaction to stimuli that he can’t hope to stop, memories and emotions bursting out of the safe he’d so carefully locked and hidden deep in the recesses of his mind.
Passing Wanda in the hall. Two ships in the night, except Wanda had been his lighthouse, his beacon to weather the storm. Even with Darcy, Monica, and Bruce manning the sails, keeping him on course, the welcome reprieve of the study room visible in the sea of time for that day, Victor still felt helplessly lost. His physical body had a home, toiling away in the captain’s quarters, neck bent with a permanent crick from long hours spent by candlelight going over work past the point of obsession, of perfection, resolute in his duty to safely charter himself to port. But deep down, the only thing that kept him afloat, kept him from giving up, was fear.
Victor couldn’t swim. If he jumped ship, gave up the journey to paradise lost, death would ravenously stuff him in its foamy jowls, purifying him with saltwater, inside and out. He wished that was his fear - drowning. That could be overcome. Learn to swim, to trust the waves that had ferried him through this academic hell for so long. Water was only a vessel, a tool to achieve his dreams, reach his goals on the distant shores of realities yet imagined. He had no fear of its salty spray, of the swells that lapped at the hull, tempting to capsize him. He didn’t fear the raging gusts of the maelstrom of life that swirled around his deck, scheming to lead him astray - he feared what they prophesied.
The kraken.
It was a myth among the seafarers that wandered the high tide halls of this academy. If you listened closely, on the days between tests taken and results received, you would hear shipmates whisper of the kraken, never spoken too loudly, afraid that the mere mention of its name would attract the beast.
Victor was terrified of it. The kraken. What could he do in the face of a kraken? What would he do if it suddenly emerged from below, constricting him with one of its sticky tendrils? How would he resist its tenacious hold, its malevolent, unfathomable nature, unable to be reasoned with, that dragged him under, submerged him to the depths of failure, inferiority, poverty, a meaningless life with no air, no light, no trace of his existence, swallowed by the maw of these cruel, unforgiving waters? No amount of firepower, of perfectly planned routes, of trusting the waves, would quell a creature of such animosity. It was certain doom.
Victor would rather drown a thousand times over than live a life as a victim of the kraken.
There was no proof it was real. But the possibility lingered all the same. Victor had never seen it in broad daylight, not clearly, definitively, but he could swear he had seen it, slinking through the ocean’s whitecaps in his peripherals. Murmurs circulated on briny ocean gusts between classmates, teachers, even his father, of spotting its murky form underneath the bow, just out of sight, waiting, stalking, and the tendril of fear would squeeze his chest so tight, his ribcage threatened to collapse in on itself. With haste, he’d shout to raise the sails, desperate to escape, to be anywhere but here. Urging the ship onwards through precarious tidings, the weathered wood straining and creaking under the pressure of hungry, persistent swells against port and starboard, eating away at his limits, yet wholly consumed by the need to outrun the imagined shadows dancing in the wake.
When Ultron told him Wanda was a siren, destined to only call forth misfortune and disaster, to lure the kraken to him, that same coil of fear tightened further around his lungs, his gut, his heart. It was a risk Victor couldn’t take. His father, despite his iron grip on the helm, had never steered the ship astray before. He’d practically built it himself, plank by plank. His home, his life vessel, safe from the kraken. No matter how badly he didn’t want Wanda to go… what choice did he have?
Yet on that day a month ago, a voyage through gentle April showers, going and coming from anywhere, Victor saw Wanda.
The fog encasing her ship was so thick, he could barely recognize her sails, their proud, vibrant colors that used to snap powerfully in the wind now lowered to half mast, tattered and soiled, a sorry remnant of their former glory. Her presence was so thin, her course downwind of him concealing her footsteps, Victor was sure if he’d blinked at the right moment, he would’ve missed her altogether. She had become a mirage to him, and his waning sanity from months at sea with no light to guide him made Victor question if his scope had truly caught the edges of her mast in its view or if she was just a figment of his imagination.
A ghost.
“Ghost? That’s actually pretty good! Let me try that.”
Dazed by the violent rush of thoughts that had overtaken him, Victor turns his gaze back to Darcy’s laptop, futilely attempting to ground himself back to reality through the harsh clacks of the keys.
A muttered ‘ no way ’, followed by what Darcy would later describe as a “victory screech” resonates in the room, approaching a decibel that could break the glass and Victor’s hearing for the foreseeable future. Bruce looks up with shock, his previous smirk now one of disbelief, his jaw hanging lamely as he nearly tripped over a leg of the table to reach its other side and see the miracle for himself.
“No fucking way…” Bruce exhales.
“Believe it, Banner! I am VIC -” a sharp knock and glare from the librarian through the glass, “ - torius!” Darcy finishes in a whisper shout, sending an altogether not very guilty grin and wave of apology back to the librarian.
Regaining his composure, Bruce straightens himself and his glasses that almost fell off his face, crossing his arms over his chest defensively.
“I mean, c’mon. Victor helped you - “
“You said two weeks ago I could ask ANYONE for help - “
“I suppose, but it’s not like YOU beat me - “
“Oh please, you’re just mad I won!”
“How did you get it, anyway?”
Monica’s question slices through the banter expertly, traitorously turning the room’s attention back to Victor. Still feeling somewhat numb, he shrugs his shoulders in response and collapses back into his seat, suddenly feeling very fatigued. Darcy gestured to him excitedly, her wide grin beaming at him.
“Yeah, that was amazing, Vic! It was like… like… a blessing from the academic gods! Like… “
With a snap of his fingers, Bruce finished Darcy’s thought, and pointed at Victor decisively.
“A vision!”
Memory 11
Crack!
Natasha tumbled to the mat, a crescendo of dampened piano notes as her limbs connected to the hard leather. Pushing air out in loud, spit-laden huffs through her mouth piece, Wanda stood over her, waiting for her to get back up, the blood pumping through her veins so thick with oxygen and rage that her ears rang with a warning siren that urged her on, vision blurred with a red hue at its edges.
A second of silence hung in the gym.
Natasha didn’t get back up.
Wanda hears a gruff shout, but she can’t parse the words. She feels the vibration under her soles of someone stepping into the ring, and then coach Rogers, Steve, is kneeling beside Natasha, cradling her head carefully in his arms. Thankfully, Natasha lets out a groan and stirs, sitting up with Steve’s arm as lumbar support.
Wanda’s heartbeat begins to steady itself, its erratic, angry rhythm talking itself down. The ring in her ears begins to fade, and her hearing returns.
“... fine, really. It doesn’t even hurt.”
“I don’t care. That was a hell of a fall, Nat. You’re done for today, and you’re not getting back in the ring until you get checked out.”
Wanda steps out of the ring and undos her gloves, tossing them onto the floor. Hands shaking from squeezing her hands into tight fists, she struggles to unlatch her headpiece, but eventually manages, and removes it with a trembling exhale.
Free from the constraints and tunnel vision of her gear, Wanda swallows a lump of cool guilt down her throat that does pitifully little to lessen the furious flames still burning inside her gut.
She doesn’t know what overcame her.
The day was like any other. A sweltering August afternoon, the sun blistering the small New Jersey suburb, nearly melting the asphalt of the parking lot she crosses to reach the gym every week day, withering crabgrass crunching in protest under Wanda’s sneakers. In his futile attempts to salvage the greenery surrounding the building, Steve had told her not to step on the grass. But she does it anyways. She likes the sound.
Walking in around the back of the building, the side wall has been hoisted open like a garage door, allowing the peaceful nature of the more-weed-than-grass-lawn to contrast the grungy concrete interior of the gym, the chirps of songbirds barely audible over the metal music bellowing through the speakers. The local fauna had become fans of the music, its heavy roar signaling that Steve would soon toss birdseed for their tiny audience. Wanda found it hilarious.
Natasha is already inside, wrapping her hands at a slow but methodical pace. She was always early, Wanda was always late; this was expected. They balanced each other out.
They greet each other with a silent nod, the fatigue that comes from a hot, Tuesday afternoon already beginning to drain them, beads of sweat already collecting on their brows.
So Wanda isn’t sure when it began. Maybe it was the heat, the sun’s persistent glare evaporating the last of her self control. Maybe it was the annoying, one-octave-too-high call of a particularly greedy sparrow, indignantly whining for its daily serving of birdseed. Maybe it was her wraps, thoroughly tangled in her bag and taking her several minutes to unwind and yank free of each other. Maybe it was the pat on the shoulder given to her and Natasha by Steve before they began the match.
“Alright, you guys know the drill. Good, clean spar. Three one-minute rounds to start. Focus on technique, not power. Nat, focus on snapping your punches, and getting in longer, more aggressive combos. Wanda, I wanna see that footwork and head movement. Don’t let Nat catch you slacking.”
She barks a muffled affirmative through her mouthpiece, then clamps onto the chewy plastic between her molars, grinding her teeth against its cold, rubbery surface. The muscles in Wanda’s shoulders tense up as she raises into her stance, her body tingling in anticipation. Natasha gives her a wink of camaraderie from her opposing corner of the ring, and then the speakers blared with the starting bell.
Wanda remembers noticing it then. The feeling of something building inside her.
The first round comes and goes well enough. Wanda and Nat exchange their usual punches, bobbing and weaving, working the ring, looking for openings in each others’ defenses. Getting a feel for their strategies for the day.
But a few too many of Wanda’s punches are blocked or miss altogether. Natasha seems particularly light today, dancing elegantly on the tips of her toes, using her slight height advantage to duck in and out of Wanda’s reach. And it grates on her nerves.
By the time the third bell rings, Wanda’s had it. She’s fucking angry.
About twenty seconds in, Wanda manages to corner Natasha. As Natasha begins to weave her way out, Wanda sees the opening, and she moves on primal instinct. Feet firmly planted, she swings her whole weight into a left hook to the temple, connecting it with a sickeningly gratifying crack of leather on leather.
Steve had told her not to punch too hard. But she did it anyways.
She liked the sound.
Afterwards, Wanda and Natasha sit at the small barstool in the front room of the gym, Natasha reluctantly nursing a smoothie Steve had made her while they cool down from the excitement. She takes occasional sips, grimacing each time at the taste, but knows better than to attempt to get out of it. When Steve got into his ‘protective mode’, little could be said to stop him.
Wanda leaned into the cool air emitted by the fan on the counter. It wasn’t that she was too hot (though she definitely was), but that the feeling of it drying the sweat on her face distracted her from the rampant wildfire still blazing inside, making her stomach twist and coil.
A few minutes of silence passed between them.
Wanda offered no apology. Natasha didn’t want one.
“You’ve been different.”
Wanda knows better than to deny it, but she finds herself reluctant to discuss it. So she grunts in response, not turning away from her stare into the fan’s whirring blades to meet Natasha’s gaze.
“At the beginning of summer, you were different then too. Slower, weaker. But you came out of it. Now, though… you’re sloppier.”
Wanda chuckles bitterly, letting herself fall for Natasha’s taunt.
“Says the one who just got knocked by me.”
“Why are you so angry?”
The fan oscillates out of Wanda’s reach, and she’s left bare to the stagnant, heavy summer air between them. Laid vulnerable to the thoughts she’d been vainly trying to beat into submission all summer.
It wasn’t working.
“Only twelve days left until school starts.”
Wanda can faintly feel the draft from Natasha’s considerate nod, her mind mulling over what to say in response.
“Beating the shit out of me won’t change anything, y’know.”
The fan oscillates back to Wanda, and she sighs into its breeze.
“There’s nothing I can do, Nat - “
“Bullshit.”
A hand covers hers on the bar top, and Wanda turns away from the fan to see Natasha’s stubborn eyes boring into her.
“There’s always something you can do. There’s always a choice. The question is… are you angry enough to fight for the change you want to see? Or are you going to let life beat you?”
The inferno inside her warred on, unrelenting. But as Natasha’s words sunk into Wanda’s mind, the embers no longer seared her flesh. The hellfire became one with her, fueling her sense of purpose, thawing away at the numbing ice that had encased her for nearly half a year. A previously subdued power roared within her, its presence long overdue, sorely missed, but never forgotten.
Matching Natasha’s eyes, Wanda’s shown back with a renewed determination, the refreshing rain of hope finally quenching the drought shriveling the forest in her emerald eyes.
“I want to fight.”