Cherry Bomb | Marvel Cinematic Universe

1.2 | Mom's Spaghetti

Wanda shut the door behind her and I gingerly rose to my feet. My hand flew to the side of my ribs that had taken a hit. Wanda took a step towards me, arms folded over her body, and her hands hidden by the sleeves of her zip-up.

"That hurt?" She nodded her head towards my ribs.

"Nat's trying to kill me," I joked. In my peripheral vision, I saw Nat rise to her feet beside me. I ducked my head as she swatted a playful hand that just grazed my hairline.

"I am not!" Natasha retorted. "You would have been able to predict my attack if you ever trained outside of our sessions."

"You try writing a history test on three hours of sleep and then getting your ass kicked," I said pointedly. "I'm running on empty here!"

"Why are you writing a test on three hours of sleep in the first place?" Nat asked.

"Do they not teach you health at that prestigious school?" Wanda chimed in. "What is your father paying good money for?"

"Honestly, with the amount of complaining I have to hear from Tony about tuition, you'd think the kids would be better kept," Natasha said to Wanda, as if I had disappeared from the conversation.

"Tony? Complaining about money?" Wanda raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, alright," I cut in, waving my hand between the two women. "Enough. I get it, can we get back to work?"

"Oh, now she wants to work," Natasha rolled her eyes sarcastically. "Good luck with this one."

Natasha and Wanda switched places on the floor like a dance, seamlessly moving around one another. Nat gave me a small pat on the back as she passed. I smiled, but it came out closer to a grimace. I knew I had let her down today. She, along with almost everyone else in my life, was always expecting more.

Wanda lowered herself down to the ground and positioned herself criss-cross applesauce on the floor. With a flick of her wrist, she motioned for me to join her on the mat. While training with Nat involved constant movement and sweating, my training with Wanda was often more low-key. Wanda was an incredibly powerful Avenger, but her powers were completely different than my own. They were the product of exposure to the Mind Stone, which was now housed inside Vision. Wanda often described her powers as being internal, something she could do as easily as breathing.

To me, I felt like my powers were similar to the Arc Reactor embedded in my father's chest. Something outside of myself that was still buried within. I could always feel the energy before I used it, the way it pooled at my core, in the centre of my chest. Only then would it spread outwards, like streams of water running away from a great lake. That energy would collect again in the centre of my palms and extend right to the tips of my fingers, emanating a gentle purple glow while it did. I never knew why it was purple as opposed to any of the other colours. Not that I was complaining, purple had always been my favourite.

I chose not to think about the experiments that I had no memory of, through which I was given my abilities. I still didn't know the full scope of what I was capable of. I just knew that when I got really scared, or really angry, things went flying. We were able to check telekinesis off the list of possibilities in exchange for some sort of gravitational manipulation. I could shift or change an object's gravitational pull. It was all very scientific. And in addition to that, I had very limited manipulation of the elements. Fire, air, rocks, the works. I had considered shaving my head off and getting a blue arrow tattoo once.

I was seven when my powers manifested for the first time. It was a few weeks after my father had been kidnapped overseas. In an instant, my entire world had flipped on its axis, and every little thing would set me off. I was hardly eating or sleeping, and I'd have recurring nightmares about what I imagined was happening to Dad. I remember that one night, instead of waking up screaming I woke up to screaming. When I opened my eyes, Pepper was underneath me and I was floating in my bed. I looked around, and everything in my room was floating, hovering like it was all being suspended by invisible strings. And suddenly all I could see was pure, white fear. When I came to again, I had broken my bedroom window and put multiple holes in the walls. I felt like someone had taken over my body.