SUPREMACY / P. MAXIMOFF

awakening

  "You are going to be okay. I promise. We will be going home together soon."

Eyes raw and blind, a warmth weighed on her chest, her lungs worked double time, all just so she could imagine talking.

"Oh, I really hope so."

How soft and meaningless her inner voice seemed now. Without the reins, without direction, Anastazya was a ghost. But his voice was silver, a flame of white and frost. He left her body to follow, left that lifeless, coarse flesh to rot as it may, but something snagged. A searing pain gripped her throat, ripped her from the light she so desperately craved and wrenched her back into the distortion of an eternal night. A lifeline was not to be toiled with. Soul was bound to body as long as the person may live. She could only ever listen, watch sometimes depending on the strength she could occasionally muster to pull on her leash. Nowadays, that leash had grown tighter, stricter, dragging her toward a darkness she could no longer deny was just the blank space behind her eyes. So she waited and waited. They would be home, together soon. Pietro promised.

Even though over the years, the word 'promise' had lost all of its meaning, Ana decided to feel hopeful for once. She had been stuck in her head for too long with her own pessimistic thoughts for so long that she was slowly driving herself insane.

"Jesus, kid. How many times have you been in a coma in the past three months?"

Ana became aware of herself in her own consciousness. Her inner eyes snapped open and she came face to face with herself - or a distorted version of herself - sitting next to her bedside in the infirmary at the Avengers tower. This version of herself mirrored her exactly, excluding her pure white hair. She smirked at her.

"What the hell?" Ana breathed, reaching out to touch the white haired her, only to have her hand smacked away.

"Don't touch me, that's rude. You don't even know me," she spat, crossing her arms. Ana's eyebrows furrowed together.

"What do you mean 'you don't even know me'? You're me!"

"No I'm not, and thank god for that." The white-haired Anastazya scoffed.

Ana narrowed her eyes at the girl, less confused now and more skeptical. "Then who the hell are you?"

"I am the Mind Stone."

Ana's heart gave a terrible jolt. She had heard very little about the mind stone, only short tidbits from Thor. While working covertly with Ultron, she witnessed him extract the Mind Stone out of the Asgardian scepter, and use it as the core reactor's main source of power.

"No you're not," Ana denied. The white haired Anastazya looked offended. "You are a person. You look just like a person."

The Mind Stone rolled her eyes.

"I have powers, dumb-dumb. I turn into whatever your consciousness is most comfortable with talking to, and talk like you want me to talk. Would rather converse with my pure form? You know, blinding light?"

Ana shook her head before falling back down on her bed, too exhausted to put up with the nonsense any longer.

"You are tired," the Mind Stone observed. "What the humans don't realize is that you are just sleeping, not concussed or fighting an internal battle whether or not to return to the world of light. I would hardly call this a comatose, but if that is what makes you feel better, then--"

"Why am I so tired?"

"You have no more energy left, idiot."

Ana shot back up in bed, looking incredulously at the Mind Stone. "What do you mean?"

"Your energy, you don't have it. Zero. Zip. Zap. None."

"That's impossible!" Ana shouted. "I literally absorbed the energy from the explosion. How can I not have any energy left?"

"You have overexerted your powers once again, but this time it's most likely to the point of no return. You basically reset your inner clock back to zero. If you were to wake up, you'd be rendered useless for days, weeks, months, maybe even years."

Anastazya felt nauseous. Why couldn't she just die?

"Damn it!" she yelled in frustration, clenching her fists so tightly it caused little crescent-shaped indents to form on the inside of her palms.

"Would it be easier if I transformed into the Maximoff boy to deliver this news?" the Mind Stone snickered and Ana rolled her eyes.

"No. No, just tell me what I have to do to wake up. I need to wake up," Ana muttered, looking around the room, eyes filled with panic. The Mind Stone looked unamused.

"You aren't going to find anything to jolt you awake. All you have to do is use what's been graciously provided to you," it hummed. Ana raised an eyebrow but stayed silent.

"You said it yourself, the core reactor was made with my special entities as its source of power. When you absorbed the explosion, you--"

"Absorbed you," Ana finished, and the stone smirked at her.

"Exactly."

Once again, Anastazya was skeptical. "What's the catch?"

"Hmm?"

"There has to be a catch," Anastazya explained. "One of the Infinity Stones is knocking at my door, offering its services to me, and there is no catch? I don't have to bring you to Mordor? There is no Sauron after me, right?"

"Of course not, you stupid girl," the Mind Stone scoffed with a roll of its eyes. "You are the one who absorbed me; I can't just leave you. My power has to be extracted out of you. And I certainly can't manipulate you into doing anything, it's just not in my nature."

Anastazya narrowed her eyes into slits once more, still suspicious. This was too sketchy for her liking. "And what if I don't want to use you?"

"As far as you are concerned, I am the only source of energy you'll find within a million miles, in a thousand galaxies. You don't use me, you die," she spat.

Anastazya sighed, running her hand down her face in frustration before looking up at the Stone with the dirtiest smirk she could muster. "Now I get it. I am your wielder, if I die, so do you. Now I see why you are pushing yourself on me with such fervent efforts."

If looks could kill, the glare the Mind Stone sent in Anastazya's direction would have squashed them both.

Ana held out her hand to the stone.

"What are you doing? I told you not to touch me," the Stone grimaced. Ana rolled her eyes so far back in her head she almost missed the Stone glowering at her again. Almost.

"I want to use you. C'mon, stop wasting my time," Ana muttered. The Stone grinned devilishly at her.

"I knew you'd see it my way," it snickered. "You know, this is going to change everything."

Anastazya nodded. "I know. Now hurry up, dammit. I never expected an Infinity Stone to be so melodramatic."

Anastazya felt a cool sensation envelop her body as the Mind Stone reached out and took her hand. The image of her slowly disappeared until where it sat was nothing but thin air. Clean space. Ana felt strong again, she felt in control. But she knew waking up into the world would be different, she was only this way in her own mind.

Ana opened her eyes.