Burned

1.04: The Explanation

WITH THE FLAMES IN HER EYES, SHE BURNED.

I had no other choice than to follow Ms. Potts to some kind of living room-like room. Spider-Man and Morgan sat down on a couch, Ms. Potts took a seat in a big chair, looking at me expectantly and Harley leaned against a wall. I noticed he seemed to like leaning against walls. I just stood in the middle of the room, in my right hand still my Book of Spells. I had lost my backpack somewhere in the room where the Witches attacked us.

'Long story short,' I began, chasing the silence away. 'I'm a Witch, they're Witches, they want me dead.'

Harley chuckled and shook his head. 'Yeah, I'm not Sherlock Holmes. A few more details would be nice.'

I sighed, looking at the ground. 'I was born from a Wizard and a Witch, a rare thing. Because both my parents were magical, I had double the potential ordinary Witches and Wizards have. My parents found out when I was about three, tried to run, the Witches gave my mum extreme amnesia and they turned my dad into a tree. I recently found a file about me, saying they wanted to sacrifice me to their Community once I would come off age to gain more power, so I ran.'

'So,' Morgan told me, meeting my eyes, 'what's your plan? I assume you didn't come here without a reason, did you?'

I smiled. Those brown eyes of the young Stark were just like her father's. I could notice it, even if I had only seen the hero on tv. It was remarkable how his whole body language could say that everyone could go and fuck themselves, but his eyes would show genuine damage to his heart. With Morgan it was exactly the same. She could tell me anything with the way she stood, she could tell me that she wasn't touched by my story in the slightest, but her eyes were a well of emotions.

'I know just very little of magic, I need someone to teach me how to use it, control it and how to make myself permanently invisible to the Witches,' I explained the girl while I sighed.

Harley looked up, wanting confirmation on whether he had heard that correctly. 'Invisible?'

'That is so cool!' Spider-Man exclaimed, referring to the invisibility. 'What does it do? I mean, I know you'll get invisible, but does that mean you're like a chameleon or genuinely invisible? And if I would throw paint over you, would you turn pink or would you just be non-existent? What if you-'

'All right, Peter,' Ms Potts interrupted Spider-Man. 'We're getting off the subject.'

You should've seen the horror on their faces.

Spider-Man took off his mask without even moving a finger, revealing the blond boy from earlier whom I was sat with at the table. He was definitely tired of this. There was Morgan, who looked at her mother with wide eyes while she nudged her, having a certain look on her face which said a lot of unspoken words. Harley laughed off the mistake with nervous chuckles, which definitely weren't hard to see through.

'What's the point of having a mask if everyone knows I'm Peter Parker now anyway? N-No offense, Ms Potts,' Peter told the woman politely.

'I didn't know your last name or the way you looked. Peter's a pretty basic name, you know?' I defended the CEO, chuckling a bit.

'I'm still confused,' Harley let me know. 'Invisible? Like the Cheshire Cat?'

'I'm sorry, who now?' I asked him, just as confused as he was.

Morgan moved her head. 'Ignore him. Please continue.'

'Well, you know how when you touch things, you leave fingerprints, don't you?' I rhetorically asked, receiving a nod from all of them. 'Well, it's the same with magic. For every spell I perform, for every second I flip through the pages in my Book of Spells, I leave a magic fingerprints. I need to turn my fingerprints invisible so the Witches won't find me.'

You know what truly intrigued me about Morgan at that moment? She didn't look at me with pity. No, I knew that people with similar personalities as hers hated pity because it just has no value at all. She looked at me with those gorgeous brown eyes of hers, showing me she was thinking. I obviously didn't know whether that thought was how to help me or if she should trust me, but she didn't sit back and watched everything go down.

'I may sound very stupid right now,' Ms Potts said, interrupting the silence, 'why don't you just not use magic then?'

Yeah, there she had a point.

'I still need to learn how to properly control my magic and defend myself,' I decided to say. 'I need to get to Scarlet Witch.'

'You know Wanda isn't a real Witch, don't you? Her powers were created by Hydra,' Morgan told me with her soft voice.

I nodded. 'I do, her wisps are red and Witches' wisps are transparant. But currently she's the closest to a Witch outside the Community, so I really need to speak with her.'

'She's on a mission, as we speak. She's in India together with Steve Rogers. I'll tell them they have to come as soon as possible,' Ms Potts informed me.

I knew you. I had heard of you before, just like I had heard of Tony Stark and Scarlet Witch. You were the soldier who fought in World War II. You were the one and only person who would survive seven decades in ice. And all that without ever losing your clean conscience. You fought in one of the most destructive wars of all time, you watched everyone you loved die and you still somehow were nothing but a good man.

'I can't go back to the Community,' I told the four people, depending on them now.

Ms Potts opened her mouth and by the look on her face I could tell she would send me away, but thank God Morgan was faster than her mother. 'We're supposed to fly back home to Malibu tonight. I'm assuming Harley and Peter will join, too. You're more than welcome to hide until Steve and Wanda are back.'

I met Morgan's warm eyes and for the first time I felt a great feeling inside my chest.

'Yeah,' I smiled, a genuine smile. 'Yeah, I'd really appreciate that.'