Vanished {Pietro Maximoff}

Chapter 8

Alex fell backwards, smacking her head against a branch.

"What the fuck?" She was fairly certain she had been in a field— though why, she couldn't remember. Now, she was in what looked like a park as the sun began to set.

The tablet on her arm beeped and, gratefully, Alex looked down, assuming it would be a message from Tony or a map,

No Signal.

From behind her, Alex heard some children laughing and she flinched automatically. Her throat was drier than Tony's humour, though she remembered drinking a full bottle of water this morning. Somewhere else in her scattered memories, there was the taste of salty seawater and diving under water, but she pushed it back, assuming it was from her childhood.

Memories always came back to Alex eventually, even the ones her subconscious had tried very hard to keep away from her. The therapy had helped until Dr Wells had tried to kill her and that had left Alex unwilling to go again, despite Tony promising to do a better background check.

With her main means of communicating with the team missing, Alex went to push her hood down only to realise both her circlet and mask were missing. She was still in her suit and she allowed herself a moment to panic before composing herself. There had to be a reason why she was in her suit without a mask, but finding out that reason would have to wait— she was by no means the most popular superhero, but her dark purple suit and giant red 'V' on the front was easily recognised.

"Thank god for Natasha always making me wear a vest." Alex regretted saying that the moment she had; to get her suit undone required some impressive contortions and the zip that stretched from the top of her neck to just above her waist got stuck easily.

It took a good minute for Alex to realise something was missing, "My backpack!"

Groping at her back as though it would somehow appear, Alex swore viciously. She always had that backpack on her, so what the hell had happened that would be important enough for it to be taken off.

Alex finally yanked the zip to the bottom and pulled her arms out of the suit, tying it around her waist so she was in a more conspicuous black tank top and purple jeans.

"Someone is to blame for this but I refuse to believe it's me."

There was something wrong with her, she felt exhausted but the only exercise she remembered doing was falling of Sam's sofa when Natasha had grabbed her. Alex knew she had to get out of the park though, so she forced herself to start walking.

Luckily, there was a sign at the end of a path that read 'Central Park Conservancy' at the bottom. At least Alex was in familiar territory, and she quickly located someone on a phone.

Doing a little jog towards them, Alex said, "Excuse me, ma'am, but can I borrow your phone?"

The woman sidestepped around Alex, already leaving before she answered, "No."

"Bitch." Alex called after her, quickly ducking when the woman span around to glare at her. She looked disgusted at Alex, which only made the teenager laugh harder.

"I'll call the police on you!"

"They'd have to catch me first." The woman typed on her phone and Alex almost tripped in her hurry to get away.

She thought she'd made it away— a sign for Strawberry Fields appearing in front of her— when someone grabbed her arm roughly and Alex shrieked.

"Alessandra?"

"Craig!" Embarrassed by her reaction, Alex greeted the elderly man with a kiss on the cheek, and when he was busy examining her face, she nabbed some bird seed from his pocket. Craig let go of her face after rubbing his finger over a small bruise on her cheek.