Rising from the Ashes

Battle of Sokovia

Ash's POV

"Three minutes. Get what you need." Steve ordered everyone and we all went to get our things together.

I was in the lab retrieving my suit, which had been cleaned and repaired when I felt a presence behind me and I turned to see Wanda and Pietro, ready to go with new clothes; Wanda wearing Nat's old red jacket with her black dress and boots and Pietro in a white and blue long sleeve shirt and running pants and shoes.

"Ash..." Wanda started,

"Yeah...?" I questioned while looking away as I continued to get my things together.

"We're sorry for not believing you, you were right..."

"He lied to us about what he was really planning... destroying the world along with the Avengers." Pietro added and my eyes widened when I realized,

"It was your vision I was seeing before."

"My vision...?" Wanda questioned doubtfully.

"You saw what she saw?" Pietro asked and I nodded before explaining.

"The Mind stone gave you both your powers, but I think it's a part of me too..." I held a hand over my core before Wanda stepped forward and held a hand out to me, red swirls of light appearing right as my core lit up again, this time giving me a strange sensation; a sinking feeling like when Nat took me to Coney Island and we rode the dropping ride.

"Your mind is cloudy... I can't see very far..."

I knew I should've been bothered by Wanda looking through my mind without permission, but it was overlooked by my curiosity for what she told me next,

"Your planet... I can see it..."

"H-how? I don't even remember it that much..."

"It's like there's a wall between your past and first arriving in... Cal-cut-ta?" As Wanda pronounced it out, I felt a sharp pain stabbing my brain and my hands spontaneously caught fire as I gripped my head but the flames were a bright red instead of orange.

"Stop!" I cried out before waving my hands around to extinguish them before deeply breathing to make the headache go away.

"I'm sorry I-" Wanda started to apologize but a look of realization passed over me and I interrupted her with,

"No wait..."

Before putting my fingers to my head and concentrating on the subsiding pain in my mind, bringing the sensation back before realizing that I remembered more of my home and my family than I ever had before and even better.

I remembered more about my family including our Granaphoran guardian, Gora, that I recognized from the statue I had been carving before the party and how she helped my mother take care of my sister and me when we were growing up and how my sister used to be so free-spirited and always wanted to be doing something whether it was playing in the forest or helping our mother with gardening, even if she didn't exactly have a "green thumb" and how we both dreamed of becoming Protectors of our villagers so we would each pretend to be scary monsters and "fight" each other off with our undeveloped abilities...

I remembered my home; the village I had lived in how every home looked as though they were one with the forest whose trees' wood was our main source of trade because of its durability and capability to convey our abilities through them...

I remembered my mother, Lorinia, beyond just her appearance; her laugh every time me and my sister would make funny faces at each other... her grace when watering the flowers surrounding and growing on vines over our home... how she would lift us up to gather our favorite fruits from the tree leaning over the river that flowed through our village and we would laugh at the colorful juice dribbling down our faces with every bite we took... everything came back to me like being swept along with a rushing river but this time I wasn't fighting it but running with it.