Vanished {Pietro Maximoff}

Chapter 42

The first wave of Wanda's magic had knocked Alex off her feet. By the second, Alex was already reaching out to her mind.

There was nothing.

Emptiness.

And then grief hit Alex, so fierce and powerful that she had to bend double in concentration so she didn't lose the connection. It was overwhelming, forcing its way through Alex's thoughts until she was struggling to remember her own name.

Her comm link crackled, multiple distorted voices breaking through,

"Quick...bullets...they hit...go..."

"Plane...Ultron...where..."

"Check in...Alex...we can't...we need...Wanda..."

Alex reached her hand up and pulled her comm link out. Red aura was still twisting around her, wrapping itself around her as though trying to drag Alex down with it and Alex waved it away.

Pietro was in trouble, Wanda must have felt him get hurt— the grief still weighing Alex down was too strong to be felt for anyone else. He was not dead, Alex would not let him be.

She had to find him.

Alex snapped her fingers but nothing happened.

"Fuck!" She tried again, "Pietro, come on."

|| He is somewhere else now ||

"What?" Alex snapped her fingers and this time she felt herself being pulled towards the teleportation dimension but still, she realised, Theundruk was holding her back.

|| I'm sorry I couldn't save him ||

"What do you mean?"

|| There is no time to explain. You must get to the ships ||

"I have to find Pietro."

|| I will not let you ||

"Let me go to him!" Alex threw her hand back, snapping as she did and ignoring a warning shout from Theundruk— summoning all the power she had taken from the stone since her exposure to it.

And then, Alex could feel everything.

Billions of heartbeats sounded in her head, a cacophony of life.

But there was only one Alex wanted.

She reached out, seeking Pietro's. The other hearts were fading now as one got stronger, a slow beat of a heart close to death.

"Not...yet." Alex drew a breath in and there they were; two bullets lodged in Pietro's heart and cranial cavity. She could feel them, from the different components that made them up to the exact hands that had made them.

|| Alessandra, do not do this||

Theundruk's voice had shifted into something softer,
more pleading.

|| The future is predetermined, you cannot change it without paying a price ||

Alex's hand, which had previously been shaking, stiffened.

|| He is not worth it ||

"He could be."

|| Please. Ultron cannot die today ||

"This will stop Ultron? Stop him now?" Alex was panting with the effort of keeping Pietro's mind connected to her. She was not only fighting against Theundruk but fighting against death itself, or at least that was what it felt like.

|| Yes, but there is someone more— ||

Alex snapped her fingers.

The ground tilted and Alex fell with it. The impact of the ground jolted the two bullets now inside her but she refused to cry out in pain. Theundruk had slipped from her hand as she fell and was now lying tantalisingly out of reach.

"Alex." The voice nearly convinced Alex that Tony was next to her until he carried on and she recognised the faint robotic edge to it, "Alex, why did you do that?"

|| Hold on, I can fix this ||

"No. No, you did this. You killed my friend."

|| I didn't want to, please let me heal you ||

"Sacrifices must be made," Ultron whispered.

Yes, Alex supposed, they did.

|| I can heal you, I can heal you ||

Theundruk was still chanting that, pushing power into Alex as Alex used the last of her strength to teleport Theundruk into her hand and sit up. As the knife sunk into Ultron's head, Alex's power exploded.

Similar to the way she had once destroyed Ultron's base, Novi Grad turned to dust. The few people left on the floating island hung in the air for a few, terrifying moments before the last of Alex's power teleported them onto the ground.

Alex fell.