VORTEX (WandaVision's fanfiction)

4. 10 years of college debt and still counting ...

She hadn't chose the wrong career.

As graduate in Political Science and Astrophysics, with three magistrates, two doctorates and countless graduates, Darcy Lewis had spent more time in college than the average person.

And she did not regret it.

When she witnessed Evan Ra'lk-Uar enter an anomaly research camp of which even the simplest details were unknown, Darcy Lewis was glad she had spent more than ten years (and still counting) in college.

After all, how many (alive) people could say that they had seen Evan Ra'lk-Uar (THE Evan Ra'lk-Uar) on live and direct?

Well, now Darcy Lewis can say it. She and her entire workgroup.

He was even more fascinating and weird in real life than in the videos she had seen -All of them having some kind of blurred, pixelated, or altered frames thanks to the strange radiation that all the multiverse beings emit.

Evan Ra'lk-Uar came in their tent wearing royal clothing (At least that's how the royals dressed in this world): A three-piece black suit, with such exquisite gold embroidery that its pattern seemed to shine on its own, not needing the any light from the big lamps on the roof.

He had shoulder pads and a handkerchief in his front left pocket -Darcy guessed that fashion labels didn't change that much between parallel dimensions.

He walked straight into the Chiefs' office, not looking to his sides, not even for an instant.

Darcy's heart was going to leap.

"My Gooood," she murmured to her partner, Agent Woo, whom she was now quite close to, "and they said that three magistrates weren't going to serve me."

"I'm sure no one told you that."

Darcy wanted to hit him.

They had seen Evan Ra'lk-Uar!  Why wasn't he shaking like her? Darcy wanted to get closer to and away from that man in almost equal amounts.

She could take many important samples from a fragment of his clothes, from a piece of his skin... heck! She was sure that she could pull something out of even a single strand of his hair.

So many questions that could be answered with just one sample ...

"That man scares me."

Jimmy looked at her with a tangled smile on his lips. At least that self-imposed partner of hers understood her predicament.

God knows she wouldn't be able to tolerate another Doctor Selvig in her life.

"I wanna go home."

Captain Rambeau was a good company too. She made discreet and pertinent comments, assertive, even though she was relatively new in that world (The world after THE Blip). She was taking things very calmly, and because of that, Darcy considered she was very, very strong.

One of her gamma wave monitors screeched wildly. Darcy hardly paid any attention to it. In the distance, Evan Ra'lk-Uar shook the hand of one of the Big Chiefs in charge and sat down to observe the display boards with him.

Evan Ra'lk-Uar sat cross-legged, the Lieutenant next to him kept giving him fleeting strange glances, uneasy.

Tall, slim, albino. His scrawny, long-limbed, narrow-chested figure seemed to Darcy like the reflection of a dead branch.

It was easy to sense that something was definitely not okay with him.

Psychics would attribute it to his vibe, psychiatrists to the underlying fear we all have to the unknown. Darcy would say that it was due to the energy that he obviously radiated, something physical and real that all her gadgets marked.