Rogue (An Avengers Fanfic)

Chapter 22: What's Going On?

It turned out, when you weren't saving the world, being an Avenger was just like any other job... after a while, it became mind-numbingly dull! It had been a few weeks since we had defeated Ultron and all of our time was now occupied by training the new avengers and trying to live a seemingly normal life.

"Attack me," I said to Falcon during a one-to-one training session. He looked sceptical.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said seriously, making me roll my eyes.

"This isn't 'you're a girl, I'm a guy, I can kick your ass' bullshit, is it?" I asked, crossing my arms.

"No!" he shook his head, as if he was offended by my accusation. "This is, 'I can fly, you can't' bullshit," he answered. I laughed. It felt good to laugh.

We fought for a few minutes before calling a mutual time-out.

"Cap worries about you y'know," Falcon said, handing me a bottle of water. "He says you haven't been the same since Sokovia."

I sighed. "I've seen a lot of people die. I've killed people. It changes you," I shrugged, not meeting his eye. The truth was, seeing Pietro die had shaken me. And having to work with Wanda, his closest link, day in and day out, scared me. After a week, she walked into Avengers Tower as normal, as if nothing had ever happened. As if her sole purpose was to be an Avenger. It worried me that at some point, I'd lose all sense of emotion, forget about all of my friendships. I never wanted there to come a time when death didn't shake me, when being an Avenger meant more to me than my friends – my new family.

"It's OK that it affects you... its human," he reassured me. "Don't worry so much, Hazel," he added, standing up.

My breath caught in my throat and my heart began to beat faster.

"You called me Hazel," I said breathlessly. He stopped in his tracks and plastered a fake smile on his face.

"What do you mean?" he asked with a laugh.

"Just now. You called me Hazel," I said, standing up. "And before, when we first met. You said I was the wrong person but you just..." I trailed off, realising why it scared me so much. The vision that Wanda made me see – that woman also called me Hazel. And I was convinced that she was my mother. "Are you hiding something from me?" I asked him suspiciously.

"No!" he said, avoiding eye contact and leaving the room quickly, before I could use my mind control on him. That was how I knew for sure that he was keeping a secret.

***

"Don't look at me, keep looking up," I said, walking into the garden and sitting in the grass.

"What's going on?" Wanda asked, doing what I said. As far as anyone else could tell, we were just sitting in the grass quietly, not speaking. Her eyes were closed and she lay down in the grass as if she were tanning. I was sitting cross-legged by her head, facing away from the Tower.

"You can't tell anyone that I asked you about this," I warned. "Especially Stark, he doesn't know about it."

"You're scaring me," she said in response.

"You remember the vision that you showed me? When we were in South Africa?" I reminded her. She grimaced slightly.

"Yeah, I remember. Sorry about that, by the way."

"Don't apologise, I need to know why you showed me that. I need to know what you know about it," I said. She was quiet for a minute.

"When I show people things, I see what you see and feel what you feel," she clarified. "I can show you your biggest dreams or your most terrifying nightmares. I can show you flashbacks of your past or a completely made-up situation. I showed you a fear, something that you'd dreamt about before, right?" she asked.