𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲-𝐨𝐧𝐞: 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴

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Back in the sanctum, once the other men are gone, Anya sighs in relief. She turns back to Stephen, who is watching her patiently. "Why didn't you you say you knew where Wanda was?"

"I knew you'd be angrier at me even more so than before." He gently says. Well, he isn't wrong. "I won't tell them unless you allow it."

"Do you really think that Wanda can pull this off?"

"If she stops obsessing over bringing back her kids, then yeah. She can make more TemPads."

She gives him a hard glare. "Don't talk about her like that. She's grieving. Which is something she wouldn't have done if you didn't give the Time Stone to Thanos which gave him the power to kill Vision for good."

Stephen sighs. "Anya..."

"Oh, shut up. Don't lecture me about how there was only one way we could win that stupid battle because I don't believe you." Anya glares at him.

"I did what I thought was right."

"You killed my sister." Anya says through a shivering breath, and Stephen had to look away from her intense gaze. "You... you didn't tell me that Loki was dead. And you let me almost kill everyone in the battlefield."

"Anya, I didn't know he was dead. I swear to you, I didn't." Stephen looks back at her with serious eyes, and a grieving tear slides down Anya's cheek. "I told you, I went forward in time. Not backward. If I knew..."

"If you knew Loki was dead, you wouldn't have gone through it? Is that what you're trying to tell me?" Anya aggressively wipes the tear from her cheek. "If you knew that I would have lost the two people most important to me, you wouldn't have done what you did?"

Stephen looks reluctant now, and Anya's lips wobble with so much pain forming in her chest.

"Do you realize that because of you, I have never felt more alone in my entire life?" Anya tiredly states. "I felt alone enough to cause mass murder without even realizing it at first."

"And you saved us all, Anya."

Her whole face is expressionless, minus the deathly glare in her eyes. "And you killed my sister." She shakes her head. "Be honest with me. Is the path that we took the only way we could win?"

Stephen stays quiet, and Anya feels all the emotions build inside her body.

Her blood finally reaches its boiling point and she screams. "Tell me!"

Stephen visibly flinches and his shoulders sag in defeat. "No."

Anya's face twist, and she couldn't help herself. She opens her shaking fist and throws a blue fire ball towards Stephen, screaming in the process. Stephen blocks it out with his shields and the cloak flies towards him to lift him off the ground. Anya's eyes begin to glow a furious color of blue as a wrathful yell bursts from her throat.

"Anya!" Stephen yells back to snap her out of it, but all she could think of is how Natasha could still be alive if Stephen decided to choose the other path. "Anya, listen to me—"

Her palms face the ground and her fire lifts her off the ground, burning the wooden floors underneath her levitating body. The more the distance between her feet and the ground increases, the more her sapphire flames ignite around her to prepare a blast that could take down the entire sanctum.

Stephen's circular shields form in front of his fists. "Natasha and Loki were still set to die in both possibilities. There was no way either of them can come out alive without Thanos succeeding."

Underneath the mask of fury, Anya's face twists with blinding grief from his words. "But you still had to make me suffer by what happened to me at the compound?"

"If I didn't choose that path, then Stark would have died as well." Stephen says with a heavy heart, voice filled with regret.

Anya flinches at the words, and a few minutes later, the blinding sapphire glow forming around her begins to dim and she drops herself back to the ground with a thud. The sanctum is now quiet despite the partial wreckage, but nothing serious that can't be fixed with sorcery.

Stephen sighs in relief before he is back on the floor as well, approaching Anya to help the woman on her feet, but she glares at him so he steps back.

"If you didn't kill Thanos' army by yourself, Stark would've used the stones to snap them away. The gauntlet would have killed him, and leave Pepper widowed, and Morgan Stark fatherless. Peter Parker would lose a father figure. The world, its best defender." Stephen tells her. "I hope you can see why I had such a difficulty in choosing which road to take."

Anya stays defeated on the floor, tears streaming down her face. She has never felt so unimportant since her days in the Red Room. With being one of the Winter Soldiers, she hardly have been herself to even feel any emotion such as importance. But when she was at the Red Room, she was awake. She felt like an object. A weapon.

Now, she felt like nothing will change if she was to die.

But can she blame Stephen? He had to choose between someone who made such an impact on so many lives, and then someone like Anya. Anya wasn't anyone as important as Tony Stark, and even though Stephen won't outwardly admit that, they both knew it.

Yet, she still couldn't admit to Stephen that he made the right decision, because he did.

Stephen offers a hand to Anya and she sighs, accepting it to get on her feet. Her face is emotionless now as she looks at Stephen. "Don't tell Tony about this. I don't want him to feel guilty."

"If that's what you want."

Anya's eyes are bloodshot red and she nods at Stephen. He forms a portal to the compound and she steps through it without another word.

The portal closes behind her and she stands in the middle of her room for a few seconds before sprinting to the bathroom and pushing the toilet lid back, emptying the contents of her stomach into it before falling to the ground and sobbing.

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