What Wicked Lurks Within (Avengers x Reader)

Chapter 4

Wanda chose a room upstairs. Not that it would make any difference, every inch of that house was chaos. She had barely set a foot in when she noticed a man sitting on the bed, dressed in formal clothing - complete with a hat and bowtie.

"You are not alive." Never one to beat around the bush, Wanda called a spade a spade. "You're a quick one." The man stood up, adjusting his suit. "Can't say that I'm surprised. They told me about you."

"Who?" Wanda was not afraid. Not a lot, anyway. Her telepathy often picked up thoughts and voices that sometimes belonged to no one. This was the first time she was seeing something though. "Them. Us. It's all the same. Let's not talk about me." The man's gaze grew intense, "Let's talk about you. You want to see your brother, don't you?"

Wanda felt a lump rising in her throat. Pietro still was a sore spot for her, always would be, irrespective of the amount of time passed. She flinched when she heard the door shut behind her. The man walked closer. "You have wanted to see him ever since you lost him, all those years ago. Tried to reach out with your mind, you found others but not him. Never him. Do you fancy knowing why?" With each step he took, his immaculate skin grew weary and ragged until it became saturated with the stink of rot.

"Pietro Maximoff has been here since the day death took him. His soul was torn and consumed bit by bit until it lost all sense of identity. Do you know why? Do you know why those horrible, unimaginable things happened to your brother?" He leaned close and smiled. Wanda willed to turn away, for the smell that elicited from the open mouth was like death itself but her eyes remained transfixed on the rotten face, "Because of you. Because they knew you would eventually be here and they wanted you to see him."

Tears flowed out of Wanda's eyes without the slightest of her volition as she stared on in gut-wrenching terror. The door swung open behind her and she stumbled back. "You can see him right now." The man pointed with a bony finger. "He's waiting in the corridor that leads to nowhere."

Wanda ran as fast as her legs could carry her, whether to get away from the thing that defied nature purely by existing or to see Pietro once again - that was unclear. Maybe both. Upon reaching the corridor which supposedly led to nowhere, she discovered that it was empty. Not particularly quiet, but seemingly empty. "HE'S NOT HERE! YOU SAID HE WOULD BE HERE!" Completely in hysterics, she screamed to the howling wind.

"Believing me was entirely your choice." The man stood behind her, to all appearances pleased with himself. Before Wanda could utter another word, she would probably combust in tears, Tony entered into sight. Seeing a familiar face after what felt like eternity caused her to slump to the floor and truly combust into tears. Tony was beside her in a blink. "Hey, hey, hey. What's wrong? Who are you yelling at?"

"Tony, this house..." Wanda failed at being coherent, "We can't..." The thing did not even resemble a man anymore. It was flesh and necrose and bone and apparently, not visible to Tony. It placed rotten fingers on her jaw, forcing her to look into its hollow eyes. "Nuh-uh, sugar. He will find out soon enough."

Wanda's eyes moved back to Tony, who seemed to have marked his priority. He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead and drew his conclusion, "Honey, you are running a fever. It's a miracle all that sweat isn't boiling off of you." Tony stood up with Wanda in his arms. "Alright, let's put some food in you and get you into bed."

Sleep did not come to Wanda that night. Regardless, she never got out of bed. Not even when she heard Natasha's whimpering or Steve's scream.

-

The next day when Wanda finally decided to leave the company of those abhorrent four walls, it was well past noon. Downstairs, the change in air was palpable. While some still bore smiles on their faces, others - their pain pulsated through her. 'They have seen.'

"Come on, Nat. You gotta eat something." Clint tried his hand at coaxing. Natasha, however, was visibly shaken from the previous day's events. "I'm sorry, Steve. I'm so sorry." Her whisper was still tinged with horror. Steve was beginning to feel irked, owing to the throbbing pain in his head and deprivation of closure. "No hard feelings but could you please tell me why you did it?"

Silence fell to the effect of an avalanche - cold and suffocating. For the collective benefit of everyone, you decided to break it. "I don't think bandages will cut it, Steve. You ought to get stitches." Steve looked at you, brows knitted and eyes unforgiving. "I'll be fine." Unbeknownst to you, Steve was not looking at you by any chance. He was staring into space, stiff with terror.

The little boy, the one he had seen yesterday, was standing behind him. 'Can't anybody else see it?' With disbelief came fear. The boy's lips hovered close to Steve's ear. "They lie, they cheat; they laugh at your defeat. Are they really your friends or did you just meet?" Steve's chest heaved, striving for breath. He summoned every bit of courage his body could offer and screamed. "STOP!"

"Alright, man. Point taken. No jokes." Sam conceded. Steve did not know what joke was being made and now he never would, for better or for worse. "Anybody seen Tony?" As you looked around to register a bunch of shaking heads, a fresh arrival caught your eye. "Hey, Wanda. You sure slept through a whole lot of bullcrap last night. Come, sit, I'll fill you in over lunch."

Contrary to what she was told, Wanda walked over to Steve and placed a hand on his cheek. She stared at him as if she were staring at a dying man, her eyes lost and distant, then turned to climb right back upstairs. Steve could barely blink. "Something is happening to the women in this house. Watch out, (Y/N), you might be next." It was the first thing Bucky had said all day. You glared at him. "Not funny, Barnes."

He had not meant to be funny. After what he had seen, Bucky had given an earnest warning.

-

Wanda found a soft, delicate rose pendant lying on her dresser. It brought a smile to her face, the first in two days. She picked it up and looped it around her neck. As soon as the metal touched her skin, she felt it - an eerie presence behind her. Not the same as the man from earlier, hopefully not worse.

"Looks better on you than it ever did on me." It said. Wanda turned around, tears brimming her eyes. 'Not again. NOT AGAIN!' Rose feigned concern. "Tears, huh? I understand Andy paid you a visit. Don't you believe a word he says. He lies. Lied to me all my life. To you, he lied about your brother, he lied about the corridor that leads to nowhere. Of course it leads somewhere, silly!"

Much to her horror, Wanda found herself and the spirit (unfortunately) standing in the corridor in question. It was loud - so loud. She covered her ears, wincing. "Make it stop! Please." Rose caressed the pendant on Wanda's neck, as a direct consequence of which, the skin around it turned black and veiny. "Make it stop yourself. Cross the corridor and see where you go."

Wanda broke into a sprint and only stopped once she entered an enormous room. Over twice the size of the hall downstairs. That didn't make sense, not unless the house was bigger inside than it was on the outside. That also did not make sense.

"Heard you lost your brother. I lost mine too." Rose circled her as a hunter circles its prey, her voice a gravelly rasp coming from hollow bone. "The most beautiful little boy you would have ever seen. Hair the color of the sun, eyes like the ocean. Drank one of those cleaning supplies, don't really know. You see, I was a child myself. You do want to see your brother, don't you? But more than that, more than anything else in the world, you want this deafening noise to stop."

Wanda could not agree more. At that moment in time, she would readily plunge a dagger in her heart just to experience silence again. The house knew that. Rose knew that. "I used to hear those voices too. Drove me mad. You know what helped?" It stuck its hand inside its mouth and felt around. From under its tongue, it pulled out a razor blade. "Here. You know what to do. This will all go away."

Wanda accepted the thin, sharp piece of metal with a shaky hand. She knew what she had to do and she knew she had no say. 'No!' It was almost as if she had broken out of a dream. She realized the house was not only manipulating what she saw, but also what she thought. She would not give in. 'I will fight.'

From behind, a cold, gray hand wrapped around her fingers that held the blade, pulling it closer until the equally as cold metal touched her throat. Wanda knew the presence - the man, Andy as Rose called it. His rancid lips brushed her ear as he spoke. "This will hurt."