Grin and Bear It

You woke up in a familiar bunk bed and immediately looked down, surprised to find yourself dressed in your prison jumpsuit. The pain from the serum was gone and so was the gunshot wound. You tested your range of motion, successfully lifting your shirt to confirm the wound wasn’t only healed, it looked like it had never been inflicted in the first place.

“Interesting.” The voice came from outside the cell, and you jumped to your feet, staring through the tiny window into the hallway. Wanda Maximoff stood just outside your door, dressed in an identical tan outfit, her own gunshot wounds miraculously healed.

"What's going on?" you demanded. You tried to open the door even though you knew it was locked, reinforced so well you doubted even your enhanced strength would be able to break it down.

"You tell me, Y/N. Apparently, this is the setting of your most painful memory."

You walked over to the calendar on the wall. You were a stickler for crossing off each day, so it was easy to confirm Wanda was telling the truth. This was not a memory you enjoyed dwelling on. You returned to the window. "Why are you doing this? I'm sorry I shot you, and I plan to properly apologize once I'm not practically comatose but for now, this will have to--"

You stumbled forward into the hallway, your body wrapped in shimmering red tendrils that seemed to emanate from Wanda's hand. You glanced back at the cell door. It was still closed. Which meant...

"Did you just drag me through a solid steel door?"

"This may be your mind," Wanda said, the tendrils tightening around your body. "But I am firmly in control. Which means I can do whatever I want."

Suddenly there was a sharp pain in your abdomen and you looked down. You'd been shot! It took all of your strength to glance up at Wanda, but she held no gun, just a determined, vengeful stare.

"How?" You barely managed to grunt out before you were hit by another bullet, mere centimeters away from the first. It dawned on you; these were the same spots you'd shot Wanda back at the lab. "Is this," you had to pause as the pain settled in, "your memory?"

For a moment Wanda looked impressed, and she let the red tendrils fade away, leaving you to drop to your knees on the hard concrete floor. "Now you know what it felt like. That's better than any empty apology you could give."

You stared up at her, struggling to breathe. "I don't think this is what Natasha had in mind when she asked you to help me."

Wanda brought her hand to your cheek, letting her fingers trail along your tensed jawline. "I am sorry for your pain. I can feel it. It is overwhelming. And I will block it as promised. But this is not your pain. It is mine."

"Quite a loophole," you huffed.

A second later, you found yourself sitting across from Wanda in the cafeteria. The other inmates went about their business, seemingly oblivious to your presence. The pain in your abdomen was still there, but dulled, and you wondered if Wanda was letting it fade out gradually.

"Why were you in prison?"

Something in her tone made you want to tell her the truth. Or maybe it was the worry that, her being in your brain and all, she'd be able to tell if you were lying. And who knows what kind of punishment she'd dole out for that.

"I got caught helping Kilroy rob a rival bad guy's poker night. Except said bad guy didn't know he'd accidentally invited an undercover cop to the table."

Wanda cocked her head. It would be cute if you didn't feel like a hostage. "Kilroy is your handler?"

You scoffed involuntarily. "Foster dad. He's the one who injected me with the serum. The first time," you tacked on as an afterthought. That was gonna take some getting used to.

Wanda's brow furrowed and you gripped your temple, racked with pain. "What are you doing? Stop."

The room suddenly filled with other memories. They flashed by in quick succession -- school field trips, homes you'd forgotten you lived in with other foster kids whose names you couldn't quite remember. Meeting Seb and Louis. Kilroy. Learning how to shoot a gun. Hotwire a car. The first time Kilroy made you kill a man, yelling at you to punch him again and again until he stopped moving.

Wanda froze the image. You averted your eyes when you saw the snarl on your teenage face as you landed the fatal blow.

"How can you still love him?" Wanda's voice was small, quiet. Like you were the last two friends awake at a sleepover.

"I don't. I hate him." You crossed your arms over your chest, trying to look offended.

"You're lying." Wanda said with a knowing raise of her brows. "But not to me."

"I didn't realize I was signing up for a therapy session."

Wanda's look of superiority faded. "Natasha was right. You were just following orders."

"No shit," you mumbled. And that's when you spotted yourself walking across the cafeteria. It was strange, and you made a mental note to work on your posture.

Wanda caught on, following your gaze. Before you knew it, she'd moved you into position behind your younger self, sitting across a table from a beautiful dark-haired woman a few years your senior.

Wanda nudged you. "Who's that?"

"Asha," you said, without taking your eyes off her face. Sure, this was your memory so technically, you could revisit it any time you wanted. But you didn't. You had a whole rolodex of better, happier, options.

Wanda didn't ask any other questions, the memory of your whispered conversation containing all the context that she needed. On the eve of her release, Asha was breaking up with you. Not only that, but she was making it very clear that, as soon as she walked out the doors a free woman, she didn't want to see you again. Ever. Something about needing a fresh start, etc., etc. Truth be told, you were a sniffling mess by that point, so your memory got a little fuzzy.

You caught Wanda staring at you, perplexed. "This is your most painful memory. A breakup?"

Well, when you put it like that, Wanda, you thought to yourself. "You tell me. You're the one who plucked it from the pile."

Suddenly you were standing on a sandy beach on a bright sunny day. Your bare toes dug into the sand, and you stared at Wanda in disbelief. "Where are we?"

"Sokovia," Wanda said, a wistful smile on her face. Her gaze drifted to a family a dozen yards away. A small boy and girl played happily in the sand, building a castle while their smiling parents looked on.

So that was the accent you couldn't quite place. You knew what had happened in Sokovia of course. You'd watched the devastation unfold next to Asha in the rec room, crowded around the TV with dozens of other inmates trying to wrap their heads around a world where the very earth was susceptible to being flung into the air like a frisbee.

You looked out at the water. "It's beautiful." But something nagged at the back of your mind. "Isn't Sokovia landlocked?"

"So, you know your geography." Wanda's smile faded alongside the memory. The sand disappeared and you were inside a cramped, Soviet-style apartment. The two small kids huddled under a worn kitchen table while their parents stood at the window, worriedly watching the street below. Loud bangs punctuated the quiet night and the apartment shook, plaster dust raining down from the ceiling.

Wanda took in the scene. "This is the real Sokovia."

You stared at her. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. It was a very nice beach."

A smile tickled the edges of Wanda's lips. "Thank you."

"At least, I think it was. I've never been to the ocean before."

"Wanda? Wanda." Wanda's eyes flew open, and she was back in the operating room, Bruce Banner's hand gently shaking her shoulder. "I finished the surgery. Y/N's as comfortable as she's going to be until the serum settles down in a day or two."

Wanda stared at your still body, a fresh patch of gauze covering your side where Bruce had removed the bullet.

Bruce looked at Wanda, concerned. "You should go lie down. You're still recovering yourself."

Wanda nodded her head and wandered into the main medical facility. But instead of returning to her own hospital bed she kept walking, catching the nearest elevator to the Avenger's lounge. Wanda was relieved to see the lounge unoccupied, the rest of the team either training or planning their next mission.

"JARVIS," Wanda spoke to Tony's in-house computer system. "Can you find me a recipe for lemon bars, please?"

You didn't completely pass out, but the residual effects of Wanda's tampering in your brain left you in a sort of dreamlike daze for the next few hours. You were able to close your eyes and ignore the bulk of the pain from the serum, which was good, because you had a lot of other things to think about.

Okay, one thing. Wanda. Except every time you tried to figure her out, you only came away with more questions. She'd hurt you, yes. But you didn't sense it had been truly malicious. More like a scientist testing a hypothesis. If she made you feel her pain, would it in turn make her feel better?

And when the answer had been no, she'd stopped, shown you part of her own, clearly troubled, past. But why? She didn't know you. But as soon as the thought formed in your mind you knew it was wrong. After being in your brain, shifting through your memories, Wanda Maximoff probably knew you better than yourself. You knew you should feel terrified but you didn't have the energy. Plus, it didn't help that she was so goddamn beautiful.

"How'd it go?" Natasha cornered Bruce at his desk as he was updating your chart.

"Fine," Bruce said, keeping his eyes trained on his keyboard. Nat sighed. Out of all her teammates, Bruce was by far the worst liar.

"But..." Nat let her unfinished sentence hang in the air. As bad as he was at lying, Bruce was even worse at keeping secrets.

"The serums that work," Bruce turned to Natasha, trying to keep his voice clinical, "and by that, I mean the ones that don't immediately induce fatal cardiac arrest, don't just pump up your muscles, they increase the size and capacity of every organ, every system in the human body. Y/N's body went through that change once and, as far as I can tell, handled it well. It helped that she was still a teenager. Her body was still developing. But a second time?" Bruce shrugged, helplessly.

Nat pushed him for a straight answer. "Are you saying her body can't adapt?"

"No," Bruce said, emphatically. "What I'm saying is –– and you know how much I hate saying this –– is I don't know. What's happening right now is a scientific black hole. All I know is if you blow up a balloon too much, it pops."

Nat glanced over at your bed across the room. Not for the first time she wished she had Wanda's telepathic abilities. Please don't pop, she thought to herself.