Agony (Wanda Maximoff)

Chapter 45

||We can try... we can always try.||

The girl looked absolutely petrified, and Wanda sat there for a second, peering into her mind. For minutes, she tried to weave her way through Katarina's head, but there was a block pushing Wanda back. It didn't take long before Wanda looked over at Emma, who was shaking her head at her. With someone as powerful as Emma around, Wanda's magic felt useless.

"Am I being fired?" Katarina asked, and Bruce quickly informed her that she wasn't. "Then what is this about?"

"We need your assistance, Ms. Trask," Emma chimed, running her hand through her soft hair. Wanda could have sworn that it glistened under the fluorescent lights. "Have you ever heard of the Sentinels?" Emma asked her, and Katarina gave everyone a puzzled expression. Wanda looked over her shoulder to her brother, who was looking down at his hands. 

"The what?" she asked. 

"They're these big ugly robots that kill people like us," Catseye--Sharon--spoke up, earning her a silent stare from Emma. Her tail coiled up behind her and her glowing eyes looked away. 

"I'm sorry, I honestly don't understand what's going on," Katarina admitted, glancing over at Wanda. 

"Do you know your father as well as you think?" Emma asked her, and Wanda noticed Katarina's hands begin to shake. "You're a psychologist, yes?" 

"Um... yes," Katarina answered. 

"Then explain to me how you've failed to realize that your father is a mad man on the verge of killing off an entire species?" 

Everyone in the room looked up to Emma, as if she had said the worst thing possible. Wanda felt nervous for Katarina; bombarding her with with such news seemed wrong. 

"I--I don't understand..." she said quietly, and Wanda leaned forward in her seat, but she felt Pietro's arm reach out, pulling her back. "My dad?"

"Yes, your father, Larry Trask." 

Whether Emma had dropped the shield preventing Wanda from looking into Katarina's head on purpose or not, she took her chance. 

The first thing Wanda saw was a young Katarina looking through her father's textbooks. The memory held a lot of meaning to Katarina, which is probably why Wanda saw it first. Her thoughts shifted, and Wanda then saw a recent memory of Katarina talking to Trask, and she saw on his desk a file titled "Project S." 

She was catapulted out of Katarina's memory when Pietro grabbed her hand. Her eyes glowed momentarily as she adjusted to present time, and she rubbed her temples in an attempt to reverse the headache she felt rising. Wanda was only Katarina's mind for a few minutes, so there was no reason for her energy to drain so quickly. 

"My dad's a good man; you don't know him like I do." Katarina gripped her seat as frustration surfaced, and Wanda could sense the girl's nerves boiling inside of her. "He's a good man," she muttered, as if trying to convince herself. 

"Katarina," Bruce began, kneeling down to meet her eyes. "Your father would do anything to protect you, even if that meant killing those who posed as a threat. These people--" he waved his hand across the room towards the mutants, letting her know. "To your father, they're a threat, and in his eyes, they need to be eliminated. We can't let that happen." 

Pietro's hand tightened around Wanda's, and she silently hoped that Katarina would willingly join their alliance. There was always a chance that Katarina might run off to her father, but then again, they would never let her do that. 

"Humanity over everything," she said, "that's what he tells me all of the time. That's an anthropologist for you." 

"He's been tracking the twins," Steve spoke, walking up to the middle of the room and standing in front of her. From where Wanda stood, she had the perfect view of his side profile. His hair was a mangy mess, and his lips slightly swollen. She smiled to herself. "We brought them here for their protection, but we believe Trask isn't going to stop until he gets what he wants."