Scorpio

TWENTY NINE - Family Comes First

The bonsai was writhing, dark limbs changing to a murky orange that danced as if in a tortured reggaeton. Sitting cross-legged in front of its pot was Estella, her fingers splayed across the curved belly of cool, hardened clay; her eyes shut yet still able to see. In her head, everything seemed a muted lilac - as if the depths of her surroundings were felted in wool, and the occasional flashes of red, green and yellow acids were little gems covered with layers upon layers of dust-covered cobwebs.

Wanda sat quietly beside her, absentmindedly sketching in a notebook - meal preparation, perhaps. With Estella's self-diagnosed "stomach bug", the sorceress' dishes seemed to have lost their flavour, and since she couldn't bring herself to blatantly put down Wanda's cooking, her dishes slowly lost their size as well.

Rrrrrrip.

Languidly, Estella turned her attention back to the poor tree she had been experimenting with and tilted her head. The bonsai was now thoroughly deformed, with eight trunks instead of one and branches so awry it resembled a little group of people instead of the decorative tree it once had been.

Almost like a family portrait, really.

Estella opened her eyes.

It was a habit, really - hearing Scorpio's voice, expecting him to be there - even if he wasn't. Something about his distance to the universe, which frankly she didn't understand much of except that it had a whole sciency, astronomical explanation that she didn't really bother to question twice.

But he was right - the new statue in place of the bonsai could, with some imagination, be a crude statue of a family. Stern man, strong woman, graceful young lady and the little man of the house? Check. It was exactly as she envisioned a family to be like. A little too exact, actually...

The similarities struck her almost instantly; their molten faces like a punch to her gut.

No matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise - that their faces were actually those of Sam, Wanda, Shuri - she could hear their voices from the flashbacks Scorpio had so helpfully re-implanted inside her mind: cheering in the stands as she guided a ball up a field, consoling her over broken vases and stolen cookies, singing with her in those daring nights where everyone believed they could hold a tune, shouting merrily as the camera flashed before their ridiculous hats and costumes come Christmas time...

She missed them.

Without thinking, Estella reached for the glowing orange sculpture.

As soon as her hand came within a centimetre to the deformed bonsai tree, she sprang back, the pale skin on her palm rippling away to reveal a gel-like violet substance on the inside of her hand. As she watched, a tiny tube-like object ruptured with a little puff of dark smoke. She stared dumbfoundedly at the mahogany cloud rising to the top of her purple jelly flesh, frozen in time as it collected at the surface of her skin and squeezed a single drop of scarlet liquor down the side of her hand.

Then the nausea hit.

Using her free hand, Estella braced herself on a couch cushion, trying in vain to recall what healing powers Scorpio had gifted her with. Sad thoughts...sad thoughts was key, right? She recalled stitching Vision's hand almost a month ago on the quinjet, the pulsating apple, the glowing synthetic flesh.

She had felt elation, then...and then sadness?

A side effect of amnesia, perhaps.

There was Vision and his hesitance at conversation... Vision's hand burning, Vision pushing her from the quinjet, Vision staring her down from behind the glass with those horrifying golden eyes...