Rising from the Ashes

Creating a Vision

Ash's POV

Once Fury dropped me and Bruce off at Avengers Tower, he took Maria with him to wherever he was planning on going while the others went to Dr. Cho's lab.

I had gone to change into my lab attire since I had been wearing the same dress from the party and it had gotten dirty and ripped from being abducted by Ultron and my jumpsuit needed to be cleaned quickly.

I was sitting on one of the workshop tables doing the power concentration technique Xay taught me to see what else I was now capable of doing when I felt my new marks heat up steadily and a stabbing pain went through my head before a vision of Earth being swiftly hit by a large fireball from outer space.

Gasping both in shock and pain, I lept off the table and held my head as the stinging started to go away, but the vision left me with a bad feeling of impending doom.

"You OK?" I looked up to see Bruce standing there looking at me worriedly.

"No," I admitted while shaking my head, "I think Ultron's planning on more than just the Avenger's extinction."

I tried to straighten up but I leaned forward and stumbled in place before I could fully stand up straight again.

"Maybe it's just the radiation overload, you haven't deposited into D.R.E.I. in a while."

"Oh yeah..." I looked to the tags on my wrists and realized that maybe I just needed to rid myself of the excess radiation energy that had no doubt been building up inside of me with all the traumatic recent events.

I walked over to the chair on the platform with two circles of metal on the armrests that had tubing leading to underneath the lab where it would be converted into clean energy, but after I sat down and connected the tags with the metal discs, the screen announced that there was no excess radiation within me.

"That doesn't make any sense..." I thought aloud to myself.

"Unless..." Bruce started to say and I realized what he was thinking so I finished his thought as I looked at the tags on my wrists remembering the platinum discs that had been over them earlier,

"Ultron took my extra radiation energy when he captured me for whatever he's planning."

"Are you... doing alright after... all of that...?"

I looked at Bruce considering his question before I answered,

"I don't know..."

"Do you... want to talk about it?"

"Yes." I answered honestly and I moved to face him as he pulled up a chair from a desk nearby.

"I just don't know... I know I should feel happy that we saved Xay and that I have my marks now and I know more about my home now but I just feel... emptier than before and I don't know why... maybe it's because I thought Wanda and Pietro were good and then they turned on me because I refused to let them hurt you and I still think they're good but Ultron's steering them the wrong way and a part of me wants to help Ultron but everything is just so confusing..." Towards the end of my sentence I started to sob and I was pulled into a hug as Bruce comforted me,

"Woah woah hey it's OK..." Patting my back and letting me cry onto his shoulder as I bawled out,

"I just... I wish I could make sense of everything... everything is so confusing right now... I feel like... I don't even know what to believe anymore..."

"Well, part of life is accepting that some things take a while to make sense if at all, but sometimes uncertainty can be a good thing."

"How?"