Progress

Monica leads them through bright white halls that shine almost painfully under the strip lights that illuminate them. The smell of rubber, antiseptic and something burning fills the air, clinging to every conceivable curve and corner that they encounter. It’d been a sharp contrast to the smell of the lobby, with its artificial citrus smell hanging pungently in the air over the scent of dust, dirt, and stray vehicle fumes drifting in from the world outside the building’s sliding glass doors.

They round one last corner, and Monica directs them towards the second of the three doors embedded in the wall on their left. It opens onto a conference room that’s dominated by the slim, oval shaped table at its centre, with an even thinner table containing refreshments pushed up against the wall to the right of the door. It’s this refreshment table that catches Tommy’s eye, and he’s elbowing Billy and pointing towards it before all of them are even in the room.

To the sound of her sons’ hushed but animated debate over which of the proffered refreshments they should start with, Wanda looks around the conference room, taking notes of all the faces that stand within it. Some, she recognises - Darcy, Jimmy, Doctor Strange, a stocky Asian man she knows works with Strange (though she can’t for the life of her remember his name), the soldier who’d survived the trip to the Dark Dimension, and she’s pretty sure the scruffy teenager is actually Vision in disguise - though there are still a good few that she doesn’t.

Her skin prickles with a sense of dread-laden unease as her eyes settle upon a short, slight woman in military fatigues. A patch stitched into the fabric above her left breast pocket reads Lt. Vertigo, though she doesn’t feel much better about being able to put a name to the face. She can’t say why, but this woman’s presence here feel inextricably wrong, especially when taking into account what Monica had told them about this meeting apparently being to bring all those that have been deemed trustworthy ‘into the loop’.

A warm hand settles into the small of her back. “What is it?” Agatha asks, her voice but a whisper in Wanda’s left ear.

“That woman over there,” she murmurs back, “the soldier, Leiutenant Vertigo. It doesn’t seem right that she be here.”

Agatha hums, adjusts her grip on Irena’s carrier. “Listen to your gut,” she whispers, “if you don’t feel like she should be here, make so that she isn’t.”

Wanda’s brows twitch together as she turns to look at Agatha. “I can’t just kill her,” she hisses in horror. Agatha shrugs with a tilt of her head, this time using both hands to reposition the sweat-slicked plastic handle of the baby barrier against her hip.

“I didn’t say anything about murder,” she answers gently, and begins to walk away. Wanda watches her go, her mind swirling with anxious thoughts and potential ideas. She has to bite back a snicker as she takes note of the way that Agatha’s hips sway, drawing all eyes in the room towards her.

“Oh, Ags,” she breathes to herself, “don’t ever change.”

Eventually, Wanda decides that a simple solution is the best solution. So, when the soldier brings a biscuit to her lips and bites down on it, she’s quick to make the doughy treat expand and catch in her throat, causing the soldier to choke. Alarm spreads throughout the room, and several people rush to the soldier’s side, attempting to help her as her face turns a dark, dangerous shade of red and her fingers claw desperately at her throat.

Brown eyes stare at her, accusatory. Wanda only stares back at her, jaw set and stubborn as she dares the soldier to blame her and deal with the consequences. The woman wheezes, and blood begins to flow freely from the gashes she’s carved into her own skin.

A hand settles against her thigh, and she turns her eyes away from the soldier for the briefest of moments. Enough, Agatha mouths, let her go. She sighs and rolls her eyes, but does what Agatha says, releasing the soldier from her grasp and retracting her magic back into the space beneath her skin, where it belongs.

Air rushes into the woman’s lungs, though her eyes continue to bulge and the blood begins to flow, staining the collar of her fatigues. She glares at Wanda, silently fuming, but doesn’t say anything, even as her breathing begins to steady.

“Take her to medical,” Monica says, her eyes fixed upon the two soldiers - their tags read Lt. Thornn and Lt. Vakume - kneeling at Leiutenant Vertigo’s side. “Make sure she gets seen to.”

They seem reluctant to leave, but nod away, and rise to their feet, each with an arm draped around their shoulders as they all but carry her towards the door. The moment it opens, Wanda flexes her fingers in the shadows beneath the table, and, with a rush of air, those that she doesn’t recognise are flung from the room. The door slams shut behind them and disappears into a kind of nothingness that makes it seem like it had never existed to begin with. Glowing red runes appear in the plaster of the walls and ceiling, in the fibres and floorboards of the carpet, and the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows that make up the wall opposite the room’s door.

It takes three - maybe four - seconds for all this to happen, and she’s sure that it’s the speed of the whole thing that has Monica staring dumbfounded at the spot in the wall where the door had once been. “Wha-what just happened?!” she breathes.

Several pairs of eyes turn towards them, many settling upon Agatha, who raises her chin in open defiance of the suspiscion that they look at her with. “Those aren’t my runes,” she says stubbornly, “I might be a little overdramatic at times, but I’ll have you know that I have enough taste to not be garish with what it is that I do.”

Wanda frowns, unsure of whether she should be offended. “Are you saying I don’t have taste?” she asks a little indignantly.

All eyes turn on Wanda as Agatha places a hand on her thigh and squeezes gently, smoothing over the well-sculpted flesh that she finds there with her thumb. “It’s not that you don’t have taste,” she says, her tone soothing, placating, as she continues to study the runes that Wanda’s cast around the room. “It’s just that we may need to work a bit more on your presentation.”

Wanda huffs, and folds her arms across her chest. “Fine,” she grumbles, “we can work on making them pretty.”

The smile Agatha gives her is vibrant and bright, grey eyes soft with joy that Wanda’s willing to continue to learn from her. “Good girl,” she purrs, and Wanda flushes red, silently praying that the desire those words - especially when uttered in that voice - inspire in her isn’t as obvious as it feels like it is.

A polite cough draws their attention away from each other. Discomfort adorns the faces of many of those looking back at them, with the only exceptions being Darcy and the children. Wanda’s blush darkens with embarrassment as she assumes - not without merit - that the attempts she’d made at hiding the way Agatha makes her feel had failed.

“Are you done?” Monica asks, more than just a little sarcastically. Wanda feels her flush morph into a scowl, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees how Agatha merely raises a brow at Monica, amused contempt twisting the edges of her lips into something that could be called a smirk.

“A little jealous, now are we, Monica?” Agatha remarks, seemingly unfazed by the thinly veiled attempt at instilling something akin to shame in one or both of them. Monica growls - a low, disgruntled sound - in return, and turns her gaze from Agatha to Wanda. She steps up to the edge of the table and presses her hands down against it, knuckles turned back towards her thighs as she leans her weight against the solid surface beneath her and stares straight at Wanda with hard, flinty eyes.

“Care to explain why you just evicted half of my staff from the room?”

Wanda inclines her head, staring stubbornly back at the eyes that are clearly attempting to intimidate her into submission. “You said this meeting was to bring those that could be trusted up-to-date on what was happening. I decided to help facilitate that.”

Monica looks her up and down, tense and uneasy. “That suggests that there was something about my staff that made them untrustworthy.”

Wanda lifts a shoulder and looks down her hands where they’re clasped atop the table. “You yourself have admitted that you were infiltrated by unscrupulous forces. Who’s to say it couldn’t happen again?”

Tension settles in the air, an almost palpable sensation that sits heavy on her shoulders and tastes sour against Wanda’s tongue. Monica stares at her with anxious incredulity in her eyes. “Y-you’re saying we missed a mole?”

“Not necessarily,” Wanda concedes, “I’m merely suggesting that we’re now surrounded by those who can be trusted with whatever it is that you want to finally enlighten us with.”

“How can you be sure?” the stocky Asian man - she thinks she heard someone call him Wong - asks, eyeing her sceptically as he stands near where the door had once been, legs spread wide and arms folded across his chest.

She taps at her temple. “Even when one’s mind is protected against intrusion, it’s still possible to get a sense of whether they mean you well or ill,” she says simply.

“That’s not possible,” Strange declares. “You’d need to be an incredibly talented telepath to just tell that someone is shielding their mind, much less determine what their intentions are, regardless of whether they are or are not shielding their mind.”

“And, once again, you are wrong,” Agatha counters, “as you are in regards to so many of the topics that you’re convinced you’re an expert in.”

Strange lifts his chin in defiance. “What gives you the authority to say whether I am right or wrong, witch?”

Agatha hums, contempt once again settling across the features. “I am over three hundred and fifty years old, child,” she spits back, “I had memorised and mastered the contents of your precious library long before George III evacuated the British throne, and I have studied with many of the masters who’s teachings have long since been lost to the winds of time and the whims of petty, spineless men like yourself.” She cocks an eyebrow, dares him to bite back at her. “Is that enough authority for you?”

Strange’s nostrils flare, jaw clenching in anger. He says nothing though, instead choosing to turn away and stalk towards the refreshments table. He passes Wong as he goes, staring daggers at the man as he looks curiously over at Agatha. “Perhaps we could call upon your resources to further our own knowledge,” he says slowly, “if what you say about the depths of experiences in the world of magic are true, then there is much and more that we could hope to learn from you.”

Agatha smiles, small and uncertain as she returns Wong’s gaze. “Th-that could be nice.”