The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 41

Seoul, Korea

Spring 2015

It was all falling apart.

No, it had fallen apart.

What had they done...

Despite her brother's comforting arm around her shoulders and his affected expression of confidence, she knew he was feeling the same thing: they had made a huge mistake.

Ultron was going to destroy everything.

She'd seen it in his dreams, vivid and horrifying and unmistakable.

They never should have helped him.

They never should have trusted him.

This was so much worse than either of them could've dreamed.

And Wanda had no idea what to do next. It wasn't quite helping either that Pietro kept looking to her both in concern and for guidance.

He was the confident one, but he was also brash and reckless and he was well aware of it. She was the rational one, the cautious, circumspect and decisive one even if she wasn't quite so decisive as he was. He almost always deferred to her judgement and her ideas on the truly important things, his confidence giving her confidence. Yet, for all that he quite often joked between them that she was the brains, he was no slouch himself. He just didn't often apply himself to working out real solutions when they found themselves in trouble...which was rather often, if she was being honest. However, he wasn't afraid to challenge her decisions either. Though when he objected to her decisions, it was usually for good reason.

But he hadn't objected to working with Ultron. He had jumped headfirst after the robot's offer just as she had.

And now they were paying the price.

Everyone was going to pay the price.

Unless they did something to stop it.

She did have some ideas there...but she wasn't sure how well they'd be received.

One thought she couldn't shake was that they had to get back to Sokovia. Wanda glanced to Pietro again. That, he would undoubtedly be on board with. They had to return to Novi Grad and retrieve Nina. She knew Pietro would agree to that wholeheartedly, his unacknowledged crush on the pretty blonde nonwithstanding.

It was the next step she wasn't sure he'd be willing to go along with.

They had to make contact with the Avengers.

He was going to hate that idea. She wasn't too fond of it herself, if she was being completely truthful, but she honestly saw no other viable options. They had no choice. Whether Ultron admitted it or not, the Avengers were his biggest threat. It was why he'd been so eager to get her and Pietro and their animosity for Stark and his companions on his side; she hadn't needed to be able to read his mind to figure that out.

Therefore, the Avengers were their—and the world's—best chance to beat Ultron. They had to find them, to share what they knew and—if the team would let them—help them take the robot down.

And that was also where Nina came in.

Whether Wanda liked it or not.

Because whether she wanted to admit it or not, Wanda had come to realize that the Avengers had been looking for Nina back when they'd taken Strucker's base. She hadn't been sure that day—the fragments of thoughts she'd gleaned from Strucker and the dark-eyed woman had been too random and too disjointed to get a proper context to sort through them—but after Johannesburg?