The first thing Wanda registered was pain. Piercing pain shooting through her skull and eyes, like Thor had taken his hammer and struck her with a gazillion lightning bolts. Dizziness so strong it made her insides roll came soon after and she fought against the urge to upchuck the food sitting heavily in her stomach. The vertigo was so powerful she could tell she was spinning without even opening her eyes. Speaking of opening her eyes, that simple task was taking a titanic amount of effort. They were glued shut, she was sure of it, but who would do such a thing?
“Wanda? Hey, Wanda…oh man”
A voice. That was a voice. They were talking. Were they talking to her? Was she supposed to answer? Could she answer? Wanda couldn’t remember how to speak. Words were on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t understand them never mind speak them aloud. Everything was heavy, why was everything heavy? It was like her bones had been replaced with concrete and her muscles with jelly. Even fluttering her eyelids was difficult.
“Wanda please look at me. We-you need help and I-I need you to wake up”
Was she asleep? She didn’t remember falling asleep. The voice was wavering, it sounded afraid. Guilt pooled in Wanda’s stomach, she didn’t want them to be afraid. Everything was fine, but if that was true then why couldn’t she move?
An inhuman gurgle fell out of her mouth as another lightning bolt struck her head. She really wished that would stop. Her heart was thumping rapidly in her chest, playing a painful staccato against her ribcage. Suddenly, trembling hands were cupping her cheeks and the wet voice was speaking again.
“-orry. I’m sorry. I’ don’t know what to do Wanda, please just…”
Warm drops fell onto her face and trailed lazily down her cheeks. Distantly, she wondered if it was raining. Wanda liked the rain, there was something about the sound of water hitting the pavement, like the white noise you would hear on an old TV…
Fingers were incessantly tapping her cheeks and they wouldn’t stop talking. Something about her eyes, or was it her head? The words the voice was saying were distorted and muffled, like somebody was tearing them apart before filtering them into her brain. She didn’t know how to piece the broken syllables back together, and even if she did she didn’t have the energy to try.
“Wanda. Open your eyes! Come on!”
Ow. Either somebody had cranked the volume up or the person was significantly closer than before because that was deafening. The sheer volume stabbed at her head again and this time Wanda couldn’t help but yelp as she struggled to fight through the searing pain. She gritted her teeth together so tightly her jaw ached. Then, the hands were tapping at her cheeks again and with every tap the pain built until Wanda had no choice but to snap her eyes open.
Holy fucking shit
Bright. God, everything was bright. Groaning, she screwed her eyes shut to protect them from the onslaught of light that was shooting bullets into her retinas. Wanda panted heavily as her hands shook and her brain throbbed. Why was it so goddamn bright? Why did it hurt so much?
“Easy, easy. You’re okay. Come on, try again for me, please”
There it was again. The voice. For a reason unknown to Wanda, it unlocked a strange feeling of fierce protectiveness within her. They sounded like they were crying. Wanda didn’t want that. But what was she supposed to do again?
Open her eyes. That was it. She could do that, right? Had she tried that before? Scattered memories were flashing in her mind’s eye but none of them were clear enough for Wanda to decipher. She couldn’t even remember why her head hurt. She just so knew that it did. A lot.
“Wanda?”
Oh right. Her eyes.
With a strength she wasn’t sure she possessed, Wanda peeled her eyes open and squinted at the sight above her. A red and blue blob was hovering over her, obscuring the rest of her surroundings from her sight. The white blurs in the middle of their face (at least, it looked like their face, there was something off about it though…why was it red?) widened until they nearly took up their whole forehead. Everything was still bright, but with the red and blue blob leaning over her it wasn’t as terrible as before (Wanda was sure there had been a before, but she didn’t know what happened between then and now).
“Oh my God- Wanda? Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay. Are you okay?” the colourful figure asked her, concern colouring his high pitched voice.
A wince that quickly morphed into a full blown groan was all she could manage in return. Nausea had suddenly reared its ugly head and Wanda wasn’t quite ready for the bile that scalded the back of her throat. She clumsily tossed her head to the side (and good lord that was painful) just in time for the vomit to splatter onto the ground. Her aching body convulsed as she heaved, her only comfort being the comforting circles being drawn on her stomach. She was also dimly aware of the fact that her matted hair was being held away from the growing pool of sick next to her face, and Wanda made a mental note to thank the blurry blob for being so considerate (of course, she forgot their act of kindness and the mental note almost immediately, but it was the thought that counted).
After an agonising lifetime (in reality it couldn’t have been longer than a few minutes) her dry heaving ceased, and she was able to slowly manoeuvre her head away from the foul smelling puddle of substances, instead opting to look back up at the person above her pounding head. Their face had become clearer and Wanda was now able to deduce that it wasn’t a face at all, it was a mask. And it was a mask she recognised, but she couldn’t quite place the name. P…Perry? Pedro? Pietro? No, no that wasn’t right. He couldn’t be there, unless…
“Am I dead?” the words were spoken involuntarily, and they came out in a slurred fashion. To be honest, Wanda didn’t even know what she had said so she was surprised when the boy (Pietro? Could it be him?) understood her.
“No! No, you hit your head, Wanda. And, like, the rest of your body too. You fell down a hill thingy I guess- I don’t actually know what you would call it” the voice rambled but the words went in one ear and out the other. Her inability to understand and retain information was incredibly frustrating.
“Pi-Pietro?” her voice cracked, but Wanda didn’t even notice. She wasn’t sure she even voiced the words aloud but judging by the way the boy tensed, she guessed she had said something.
“Jeez- I…no, it’s me. It’s Peter”
Oh.
Oh.
Peter. Peter Parker. Spider-Man. Her part-time flatmate. Her friend.
That made sense. Finally, something made sense.
Pushing away her mounting disappointment at Peter’s answer (she silently berated herself for being so silly, of course it wasn’t Pietro. How stupid of her to get her hopes up) she opened her mouth to ask one of the many questions zooming around her head like a ping pong ball.
Instead though, she heard herself say “Thor’s hurting my head, Pete”
Peter’s face (it was actually there now; the mask was gone. When did that happen?) visibly paled and his brown eyes shone with a medley of confusion and worry.
“Yeah, yeah you hit your head pretty hard Wanda. Do you know what day it is?”
She wanted to answer, she felt like she knew the answer, but when somebody (she still suspected Thor) was tap dancing on her brain with electrified feet, her thinking was somewhat impaired.
“It’s…it’s…Friday!” She announced, a loopy smile settling on her face. God knows where that answer came from, but it felt right. So, it had to be right, right?
“Uh, no, it’s Wednesday, remember? We had taco Tuesday last night” Peter’s eyes were so big and brown and hopeful that Wanda couldn’t bare to disappoint him, so she nodded her head and uttered a small and very unconvincing “Oh. Right. Yeah” before wincing at the agony behind her eyelids.
“I think you have a concussion” Peter informed her wearily as he carefully slid his hands around her head searching for any bumps or abnormalities. She cried out when he reached a swollen mound on the side of her head, it felt like he was plunging red hot tongs into her brain as he prodded it gently.
“Stop! Stop, please!” She begged in between gasps, the whole side of her skull burning hotter than lava.
“Okay! I’m sorry, I won’t do that again” Peter apologised, genuine guilt evident in his round eyes. Taking pity on the kid, Wanda swallowed roughly before lamely assuring him that “it’s fine, ‘s not that sore” to which Peter scoffed in disbelief.
“I’ve phoned Tony, he should be here in 10 minutes, he said that I-uh, I need to keep you awake and alert” Peter recalled, obviously quoting Tony’s exact words from memory. His voice still shook with every sentence, but he sounded less panicked than he did initially.
“What…what happened?” Wanda asked a couple moments later, lucidity gradually returning to her.
“You fell down this ravine thing. Your foot snagged on something I think and then you just toppled down. I tried to catch you, but I was too far behind.” Peter admitted, looking down at his hands.
“Not your fault”
The words were automatic, bursting from her lips before she could even process what they meant but she realised with growing certainty how true it was. Despite not being able to remember the event, there was no doubt in Wanda’s mind that this wasn’t Peter’s fault. She couldn’t remember much, but she knew that he would never try to hurt her. Never.
Peter merely shrugged, clearly not believing her but before she could argue her case he was asking another question.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like my brain has been stuck in a blender for two weeks” she groaned, cautiously raising a hand to massage the front of her head. Peter instantly took over for her, letting her hand fall back down to her side.
“Do you hurt anywhere else?”
Wanda pondered this for a moment as she closed her eyes to focus on the rest of her body. It was difficult to drown out the incessant hammering in her head, but she was able to ignore it long enough to suss out the other sources of her aching.
“My arm hurts a little, but not too much. And my ankle too. It hurts to breathe in as well, it’s like I can only take short breaths” as she listed off the injuries, the pain in them only seemed to worsen, making her wish she hadn’t bothered noticing them in the first place.
Peter nodded along to her words, tapping away on his phone. After a minute he held it up at the top of her head and slowly began working his way down, hand hovering just over her clothes.
“Friday is scanning you to see what other injuries you have” Peter explained when he spotted her puzzled expression. Wanda didn’t really get what that meant, but she allowed him to wave his phone about her arms, legs, torso and head until he sat back with a satisfied grunt.
“So?”
“It’s fine. Your fine. Nothing to worry about” Peter replied, speaking a little too quickly for it to be true.
“Pete” Wanda warned, and Peter relented with a sigh.
“Fractured wrist, broken ankle, bruised ribs and suspected concussion; mild to moderate”
Damn. That wasn’t exactly good. It wasn’t terrible, but it certainly wasn’t good.
“It’s okay though. Tony is only 4 minutes out” Peter reassured her with a squeeze of her hand, however his voice wavered in a way that betrayed his words.
Wanda had wanted to ask more questions like what the hell were they doing in the middle of a forest? (she could see it was a forest now, the towering green trees and the dewy grass beneath her back clued her in) but a wave of fatigue washed over her and all of a sudden keeping her eyes open was almost as hard as opening them had been.
“Hey- hey! No sleeping! Wanda, what’d I say about sleeping?” Peter’s shrill voice cried out somewhere in the spinning circles above her.
What did Peter say about sleeping? She couldn’t remember. Any traces of clarity had gone, washed away by the roaring waves of exhaustion. The roaring was so loud that she couldn’t hear what Peter was saying anymore, though through the tiny slits in her eyes she could see his mouth moving as he fumbled frantically with his phone.
Blackness engulfed her senses and for a while, there was nothing. No pain, no noise, no brightness; just a blissful oblivion of nothingness. That was, until a hard, iron hand slapped her cheek, ripping her from her haven and plunging her right back into the hellfire.
Everything assaulted her at once. The ringing in her ears, the fiery agony in her head, the vertigo that made her surroundings dip to and fro in a dizzying fashion, blurry blobs performing a bizarre and painful light show as she struggled (and failed) to escape from the blinding brightness of her surroundings, harsh voices scraping the inside of her mind and possibly worst of all, their poorly concealed panic ricocheting around her head like blazing bouncy balls.
She screamed out in pain as the mystery, metal hands held her down. The scared voice from before was rubbing her forehead in a soothing manner and while Wanda distantly appreciated the effort, it done little to quell the all consuming agony she was facing. Bile burned at the back of her throat as she choked on her tears. The metal hands turned her head just as her stomach rebelled, but there wasn’t much left in her stomach to come out. The voices were screeching above her head (Wanda wanted nothing more than to beg them to lower the volume but seeing as even blinking drained her little supply of energy, she knew she didn’t have it in her) and then there was the hands cupping her cheeks again, except this time they were large and cool and metal and Wanda didn’t know who they belonged to.
“Hey, kiddo. It’s Tony. You really done a number on that ol’ noggin of yours, huh?”
Iron hand…Iron Man. Stark. When did he get there?
“Wanda, I need you to wake up for me, okay? We’re going to go to the Med Bay right now, but I need you awake”
She was awake. Or was she? It was getting hard to tell. Everything was muddled and twisted and spinning and turning and Wanda couldn’t keep up.
“Hey! Lil witch! Eyes on me!”
Blearily, she blinked her eyes open until they were half-mast and she focused on Tony, or at least, what looked like Tony’s face plate. Things were too blurry for her to tell.
“Fri, am I good to move her?”
“In depth scans are complete. There is no serious damage to Miss Maximoff’s spine”
“Okay dokey, try not to spew all over me, Red”
Then there were strong arms lifting her off the dewy grass and wind whipping against her flushed cheeks and her stomach was dipping and flipping uncomfortably as Stark raced through the city. Then, with a thud, they landed and there was a flurry of activity as several voices shouted medical terms Wanda wouldn’t have understood on a good day never mind on that particularly bad day and she was hooked up to monitors and machines and all the while the blue and red blob held her hand and rubbed her forehead, easing the stress that was crushing her chest because she didn’t know what was happening.
But then, quite suddenly, there was peace. Plump pillows and soft bedsheets had replaced the foreign hands than were prying and prodding at her before and the excessively fluorescent lights were now considerably dimmer. The blazing pain in her head had dulled to a manageable ache and the light-headedness that she was experiencing was more pleasant than the vertigo from before. Instead of feeling like she was on a never ending tilt-a-whirl, she now felt like she was floating dreamily through the air.
“Hey kid, how are you feeling?” a hushed voice asked. Wanda dragged her eyes up to meet Tony Stark’s tired, brown orbs and she smiled dazedly in his general direction.
“I’m floating” she giggled, enjoying how his face swam in and out of view.
“Yep. That’ll be the meds, they have you on some pretty strong ones, short stuff” he chuckled, the lines of worry and stress in his face lessening slightly. She hummed distractedly in reply, her own blue eyes closing of their own accord. She tried to force them back open, but a calloused hand brushed them closed.
“Get some rest, Wanda.” Said Tony, but Wanda had already drifted off, welcoming the blissful oblivion of nothingness with open arms.