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Chapter Text

The Academy

"General Lukin."

The man addressed was a man of average height. He was wrinkled, with greying hair and distinguished white wings at the temples, and a little late middle aged spread at the waist, though a look at his face, unfazed in the face of the icy cold, would quickly establish that this was a man not to be trifled with. A casual estimate of his age would put him anywhere between 50 and 65. He was, in fact, in his mid fifties. Roughly the same age as the current President of Russia, with whom he had a fair amount in common. Both of them had risen through the ranks of the old Soviet Union. Both of them had been intimately involved in the shadowy battlefields of the Cold War with the West. Of course, unlike the President, Lukin's battles had moved into territory that was a little more… otherworldly.

And unlike the President, he was not content to sit back and let selected members of the oil mafia grow fat on the lifeblood of Mother Russia whilst taking his share, eliminating potential threats and playing games with parts of the world that few really cared about.

Of course, they shared a goal, of returning Russia to its rightful place as a superpower, one respected and feared, something only rendered necessary thanks to traitors who had turned the country into an international joke. Though, Lukin would admit, in the privacy of his head, the old Soviet Union had lacked a certain agility and flexibility. However, where they differed was in how they intended to do it.

In Lukin's opinion, Volodya was playing an old game in a new world. Yes, increasing Russia's conventional military and steadily pushing back against a war-shy NATO, while spreading the tendrils of Russian influence back into the heartlands it had arguably never really left was a decent enough strategy. But it was also an old fashioned one. It didn't reckon with what some in the West were, ridiculously, calling 'the Heroic Age'. It didn't reckon with the exponential increases in technological advancement, public knowledge of the superhuman, the supernatural and the alien (even if that knowledge was deeply limited, and the proliferation of all three, along with increasingly powerful non-state actors.

For goodness sake, there were gods, actual gods, walking the Earth, beings whose very existence challenged the fundamentals of belief! And that was before you took into account the events of this last year; the rise and fall of HYDRA, the Battle of London and the gutting of SHIELD. What use were ordinary weapons and ordinary soldiers in this extraordinary age? Volodya might have ordered the reactivation of the Red Room, but only as an afterthought, a garnish for the army, a weapon with which to play his old games. He was a fool – the balance of global power was undergoing its biggest shift in a century, perhaps even in a millennium. This was a new world, with new players to contend with and new horizons to reach for. There was no place for old games.

Of course, this was not to say that the old world had nothing of use. All that was required was to… update it.

And that was why he was working with the man who had just called his name. Well, man, he thought as he turned to look at the creature that addressed him. That might be a little generous.

While he was more than capable of disguising himself and looking however he wished – and more to the point, looking human – Essex's true form made it very easy to see how he had got his bevy of other names. He was tall and slender, with long, spidery fingers that it was hard to imagine not holding a scalpel or a syringe and were much, much stronger than they looked. His skin was deathly pale at a contrast with his neatly combed black hair and neatly clipped goatee beard, and his eyes gleamed red, in concert with the red gem-like object on his brow. He tended to dress in dark old fashioned formal clothing, or in a well kept lab-coat, the latter of which he was wearing at the moment. He never showed any sign of feeling either heat or cold, of pleasure or discomfort of any kind.

Lukin didn't know what Essex really was, even though he'd known him for thirty years, when he'd first joined the Red Room. And even then, the older heads had said that Essex had been around for decades, since the very beginning of the Red Room program, in all that time not ageing a single day. Lukin's original theory had been that he was a vampire. Now, that theory having long since been disproved, he'd decided that he didn't really care. He also suspected that Essex had been involved in many similar projects to the Red Room, and decided that he didn't really care very much about that either, so long as the Red Room reaped the benefits.

"Doctor Essex," he said. "Is everything in place?"

"My preparations are complete," Essex replied, his voice almost jarringly normal in comparison to his appearance. His tone, as ever, was calm and clinical. Lukin didn't think that he'd ever heard Essex raise his voice. "Are yours?"

The muscles in Lukin's jaw twitched. No one spoke to him with such implied disrespect. Belova knew not to push him. Essex's other pets, among them that clawed monster, that impudent and frequently incomprehensible thief, and that… thing in the lower levels that he tested subjects against, all put on at least a show of respect. Even Volodya would show him at least the modicum of respect of according him his rightfully earned rank. No one spoke to him like that!

No one, that was, but Essex.

"They are," he said. "Rodchenko has been… persuaded."

"Excellent," Essex said.

There was a silence, then Lukin turned to him.

"You wish to know why I have returned to the Red Room now, and why I was so willing to involve myself in this latest operation," Essex said. It was not a question. Lukin had discovered long ago that Essex numbered telepathy among his many disturbing talents, and even more disturbingly, could navigate his way through Lukin's psychic defences with nonchalant ease. Lukin would have been more worried about this if he actually thought that Essex cared about what he thought. The implied dismissal rankled a little, but Essex didn't seem to care about that either.

"I do," Lukin said. "I have known you for many years, Doctor Essex. You are not normally one to act in the field. Especially when there is such risk attached. Most especially when you do not need to."

Essex smiled a cold smile. "Are you saying that I am a coward, Lukin?" he asked.

"You know very well that I am not," Lukin said coolly. "Even if today was not evidence enough, you work with monsters every day. Half the people on this base would kill you if they thought that they could get away with it. The other half would help them hide the body if they thought it were possible. You know this and have no fear. You are no coward." He gave Essex a flinty look. "But you do not waste your time with work that you feel can be delegated."

Essex tipped his head in acknowledgement. "I have a special interest in this case," he said.

"Your hound could have done it alone," Lukin grunted. "You are lucky that I am the only one who knows how powerful your pet really is, Essex. If anyone else did..." He trailed off meaningfully.

"An attempt at capture would be made," Essex agreed. "It would be inadvisable." His gleaming red eyes settled on Lukin. "As you well know."

Lukin shivered. He knew. He remembered the screams.

"In any case," Essex said. "This case required… delicacy. And it will require yet more."

"That much is true," Lukin said. "We will only have one chance at this. Time is on our side, but only for now. It must be done soon, or…"

"The clay will dry beyond the possibility of moulding," Essex said calmly. "Yes, I am aware." He waved a hand. "Tell your servants to be ready."

Lukin gritted his teeth. "They will be."

OoOoO

6 hours earlier

Diagon Alley

With less than two weeks to go until Harry was due to return to Hogwarts, it was felt that it was time for him to do his school shop, and Carol and Jean-Paul had been invited along – Uhtred was in Asgard with his family and Diana was also in Asgard, enjoying some time with her father. However, there was a distinct lack of available adult supervision.

Thor, Loki and Steve were being quizzed at the UN about Asgard and the Avengers' respective roles on Earth going forward, Clint had been dragged kicking and screaming (or at least, sulking) to the Triskelion to fill out reams of overdue paperwork, Pepper was at work, Tony, Jane and Bruce had been called in to a symposium of the world's most brilliant minds to help piece together the long term effects of Red Sky Day, Darcy was applying for a part time job to work around her Masters degree and Remus was in Wakanda having been invited by King T'Challa.

Wanda had wanted to be present but had been distracted by the emergence of something vile and tentacular from a crack in reality in Tokyo which she and her apprentice – the latter cracking unspeakable jokes about sushi and Japanese pornography – went to deal with it (though not before she firmly chided Harry for thinking that it was his fault for not sewing up Chthon's cracks in reality neatly enough). Natasha, meanwhile, had disappeared a couple of days earlier, saying that she had one or two things to check up on. Jean was more responsible than a good half of the above, but wasn't quite a legal adult. And Sirius, though available, was also unable to come to magical Britain due to that inconvient Kiss On Sight order.

This left only one person to keep an eye on three trouble magnet superpowered teenagers, even if he was a little reluctant to do so for reasons that had nothing to do with the people in question.

On a lighter note, it opened an opportunity for two worlds to meet.

"Hermione," Harry said. "These are Carol and Jean-Paul, two of my friends from New York."

The slender and somewhat fey dark haired young man let out a pointed cough.

"From France via New York in the case of Jean-Paul," Harry amended.

"Hey," Carol said, sticking out a hand, which Hermione shook. "Harry says good things about you – thinks you're one of the smartest people he's ever met, smartest in his school by far."

"Well," Hermione said, flushing slightly and looking at Harry, who shrugged as if to say that he'd merely been stating the obvious. "I do my best."

"Harry doesn't compliment people without reason," Jean-Paul observed, with a faint smile. "And Loki did not choose you for one of his apprentices without reason, either."

"Of course I don't," Harry said. "And of course he didn't." He then turned to the silent, fourth member of the party. "And this, well. I think you can guess."

Hermione focused on the man for the first time, who had previously seemed to fade into the background. Now that she was looking at him, however, there was no way that she wasn't going to recognise him.

The recently resurrected Sergeant James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes, looking like he'd stepped straight out of a 40's newsreel, gave her a slight smile and inclined his head. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Granger," he said.

"A-and you," Hermione stammered.

Harry looked surprised at her reaction. "Hermione?"

"You know," Carol said, amused. "Not everyone's totally accustomed to hanging out with living legends. Give the girl a moment."

"Huh? Oh," Harry said, and coughed, embarrassed.

Hermione herself blushed. "Sorry," she said.

"No need to be," Sergeant Barnes said easily. "I've had far worse reactions." There was a brief, strange silence, before he continued, with an easy, charming smile, "you should have seen how the girls swarmed over Steve back in the war. And the guys, come to that."

Hermione blushed again. Barnes was, after all, quite handsome. "I," she began, then faltered, unsure of what to say.

"Bucky's here as… adult supervision," Harry said helpfully, before eyeing Bucky. "Even -though we can look after ourselves."

"It's a way to help get me back in the world again," Barnes explained, then eyed Harry right back, then Carol, and smiled slightly. "And keep an eye on a couple of dumb kids who couldn't keep out of trouble if you paid them. It's something I have a little experience with."

Harry rolled his eyes and Carol folded her arms and said, "A couple?"

"Sure," Barnes said, smile turning into a smirk. "Jean-Paul's got common sense. You two don't." He raised a finger. "And before you protest, Carol, I have a list of reasons."

Carol, who had indeed been about to protest, subsided grumpily, though not before sticking her tongue out at Barnes.

"What about me?" Harry asked.

Barnes simply arched an eyebrow at him.

"He's right, Harry," Hermione said, amused. "You don't exactly have the best track record in that department."

Harry pouted, actually pouted.

"Don't bother," Barnes said, entirely deadpan. "Tony's better at it than you are."

"He is right, I am afraid, mon cher," Jean-Paul said, patting Harry on the shoulder. "You have many other charms to fall back on, however." He smirked. "I too have a list."

"Thanks," Harry said flatly. "And does Uhtred mind?"

"He helped compose it," Jean-Paul said cheerfully. "As did a certain other someone."

Hermione noticed that Harry darted a glance at Carol, who looked uncomfortable.

"It was Diana," Jean-Paul said.

"Diana?" Harry asked, surprised.

"She thinks you have a rather lovely smile," Jean-Paul said matter-of-factly. His eyes slid over to Carol. "And unlike some, is perfectly happy to say it."

Carol rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him.

Hermione watched this with a mixture of astonishment, happiness and just a hint of jealousy. Astonishment at what looked very much like how she imagined that her, Ron, and Harry looked to the outside world, happiness that Harry seemed so comfortable with the friends that he'd made outside of Hogwarts, and jealous because, well… the kind of trio dynamic she was seeing here was one she thought of as being just theirs. As in, unique to herself, Harry and Ron. Of course, theirs came without snarky adult supervision. And fewer implied dirty jokes. And no hints of UST whatsoever, of course.

Indeed, Hermione found herself briefly entertaining fears that both her and Ron would be edged out of Harry's life entirely, replaced. However, those fears soon faded as she found that she rather liked Harry's friends.

Sergeant Barnes was quiet, but friendly and polite, with a variant on the dry sense of humour that seemed to be endemic among the Avengers and everyone who spent even a little time around them. Hermione thought that it might be contagious.

In any case, he answered her questions about the War fairly freely, and seemed silently grateful that she steered well clear of what had happened after he fell from the train. Otherwise, he let the conversation flow around him.

Carol, the tall, blonde American girl was cynical, sardonic, but friendly too, and the two of them quickly bonded over mutual amusement at Harry's foibles, much to the latter's exaggerated disgust.

As for Jean-Paul, the slender, charming French boy was softer spoken and clearly possessed of a wicked sense of humour that tended towards the very dirty, one that he was more than happy to show in conversation… but somehow, Hermione felt that in his own way, he was every bit as reserved as Barnes.

And that was not the only oddity she noticed. It wasn't anything definite, but she got the very definite sense that Sergeant Barnes wasn't just present as ad hoc adult supervision. There was something very aware about him. Watchful.

It was more obvious in Jean-Paul, who had that same watchful air about him. In his case, however, much of the watchfulness seemed to be focused on Hermione herself, as if he was weighing her up. He was perfectly charming, and spent much of his time cheerfully teasing his friends, even teasing her in a light, gentle fashion, but even still, Hermione wondered.

Carol, meanwhile, seemed to be the most ordinary of the lot of them, coming off for the most part as an ordinary, if particularly snarky, teenager. The latter characteristic was definitely on show, with her and Harry sharing an easy, whip-fast banter. But then, she wasn't just an ordinary teenager, that much had already been implied. And in any case, Hermione privately thought that you weren't likely to be ordinary if you were drawn to Harry, nor, depressing as the thought was, would you be particularly likely to survive the experience if you were.

No, what sealed it for Hermione, however, was the way she moved. She moved like someone who could handle herself, and either hadn't learned how to hide it, or didn't care to do so. Indeed, Hermione found the other girl vaguely reminiscent of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Only taller. And more muscular. And more, ahem, filled out.

Then, of course, there was Harry himself. He'd changed. This wasn't unexpected – after all, she could hardly miss how he'd been changing, physically and mentally, over the last year, ever since he'd rediscovered his father. But in the three and a half months since they'd seen each other last, those changes had almost accelerated. While he'd previously gone from short to tall in what had seemed like the blink of an eye, glasses vanishing in the process, he'd still been on the skinny end of lean, with hands and feet that seemed puppyishly too large for him.

Now, while he'd grown a little bit taller, he also seemed to have grown into his limbs, looking more solid than he had before. The main change, the biggest difference, wasn't physical, though. Hermione couldn't pin it down, but there was an edge to him now, a hardness in his features and a shadow in his eyes, one that hadn't been there before. It vanished briefly when he smiled, but as soon as the smile faded, it came back, like the smile was only a mask.

Of course, she had to admit that that wasn't the surprise it might have been. Being murdered, after all, was likely to leave a mark.

OoOoO

Hermione's musing aside, it was true that Harry had changed. Which, as it happened, was something that he was more than a bit worried about. So while Hermione played tour guide/got to know Carol and Jean-Paul, he and Bucky took a detour.

"Ah, Sergeant Barnes, Mister Potter," Mister Ollivander said. "This is a pleasant surprise."

"Garrick," Bucky said, with a smile, reaching out to shake the other man's hand. "It's been a long time."

Harry blinked. While he intellectually he realised that Mister Ollivander had to have a first name, he'd only ever thought of the wand-maker as Mister Ollivander and suspected that almost everyone else did the same. Bucky, however, was apparently different.

"Indeed it has," Ollivander said, smiling slightly, silver eyes roaming over Bucky, settling briefly on his left arm. "Though I have not aged quite as well as you have."

Bucky smiled tightly. "Being a HYDRA guinea pig has its upsides," he said. He turned to Harry. "We – the SSR – consulted Garrick about wands: specifically, repairing damaged ones, making new ones and identifying captured ones."

"Yes," Ollivander said. "Grindelwald's forces used some truly remarkable wands, drawing on his demonic connections to provide arcane woods and cores. Demon summoning is an abhorrent art, of course, and the wands were often somewhat unstable, particularly in the hands of those lacking the will or the conviction to control them, but still… they were truly remarkable." His tone turned somewhat peevish. "And Howard Stark was forever taking them apart, trying to find 'circuits', 'batteries' or some other means of explaining how they worked."

"He did improve your wand making equipment, though," Bucky said.

"That is true," Ollivander allowed. "I still use his machines, actually."

"Don't you use magic, Mister Ollivander?" Harry asked, and those silver eyes turned to him.

"Not when making wands, oh no," he said. "Wand-making is a delicate process and using magic in creating wands can have grave effects on the wand itself. Now, Mister Potter, what is it that brings you to my shop?"

Harry took a deep breath. "I'm not sure about my wand," he said, drawing the artefact in question. "You've probably heard that my dad is Thor."

Bucky snorted slightly.

"I could hardly miss it, Mister Potter," Ollivander said. "And I must say, the fact that you are a son of the Thunderer himself… I am almost surprised that you were not chosen by an oak wand. But then again, the wand chooses the wizard, and the wand that did was made of the other King of the Forest, one that was unique for entirely different reasons."

"That's just it, Mister Ollivander," Harry said. "I'm not entirely sure I am a wizard any more. Or maybe I won't be for long."

Ollivander's eyebrows rose. "And what makes you say that, Mister Potter?"

"I can still do magic, obviously," Harry said. "But my father's…" He trailed off.

"Harry is beginning to inherit abilities from his father's side of the family," Bucky said quietly. "His Asgardian nature, specifically. And while Lily Potter was a witch, Harry may not have inherited his magic from her. He inherited non-magical psychic abilities from her, either as well or instead. He's worried that he'll lose the ability to use his wand." He glanced at Harry. "Even though I've reminded him that his father is completely Asgardian and can use his wand just fine."

Harry didn't directly answer, instead muttering something about being glad 'Tony and other Harry aren't here.'

"Curious," Ollivander said. "Very curious. I believe that I can set your mind at ease, Mister Potter. While I can hardly say that I am an expert on demigods, my family has been in Britain for a very long time and I have made a study of my ancestors' work and their journals. More than once, they sold wands to children of Asgardians and muggle men and women – more often the latter than the former by far, of course – in whom magical gifts manifested. Apparently it was rather more common than among Asgardians themselves. My ancestor, Edgar Ollivander, noted that Asgardians all possessed the talent for magic but that it usually had to be encouraged to manifest."

Harry nodded at Ollivander's enquiring look. "That's what my uncle tells me," he said.

Ollivander smiled. "Excellent," he said. "In every case, they reported that while choosing the wand sometimes took some time, each witch and wizard was chosen by a wand and never had any problems with it. So no, Mister Potter, I do not believe that you have to worry about your wand losing its allegiance to you. May I see it?"

Harry handed it over and Ollivander took it in long, precise fingers. "Ah…" he murmured. "Holly and Phoenix feather, eleven inches long, nice and supple, in good condition. You have looked after it very well, as it has looked after you." He examined the wand. "This wand is a rare combination of wood and core, very rare. Rare and all the more remarkable for it." His gaze shifted to Harry. "Much like yourself, Mister Potter. This wand is, I think, a better match for you than either of us ever realised."

His gaze shifted back to the wand. "Of course, that is often the case with wandlore. While the basic meanings and preferences of certain wand woods and cores, and combinations thereof, are well known, there is always dispute about the nuance and the detail. On top of that, some favour wands because of mere appearance!" He snorted, as if this was totally absurd. "Silver lime, for instance, went through a significant vogue at one point, not because of its properties, but simply because it made for a beautiful wand. And different woods are popular in different places: Japanese wand-makers greatly favour cherry, while my colleagues in Samarkand have long favoured beech."

He shook his head. "Aesthetics have little effect on wands, though it is true that certain wand-makers work better with certain woods, which can have an effect on the wands themselves, and a witch or wizard dissatisfied with their wand can cause it to perform poorly. In short, Mister Potter, each wand and its relation with each owner is truly unique, where qualities perceived by the wand do not become apparent until much later in life. Your mother, for instance, is a case in point."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"Well, it is remarkable that you should say that your psychic powers come from her," Ollivander said. "For her wand was made of willow, a wood often associated with the mental arts by wanded and wandless practitioners alike – if not quite as much as Silver Lime – and great potential. The healing arts too, of course, due to its medicinal properties. It is also a very emotional wood, one drawn to wielders like it, wielders with a great capacity for emotion, one emotion in particular: love."

"Love?" Harry asked.

"Love," Ollivander said. "Wielders of Willow wands often love deeply and fiercely." His pale eyes focused on Harry with disquieting intensity. "It is rare for someone to love as deeply and fiercely as Lily Potter." His eyes drifted to Harry's forehead. "And much rarer indeed leave behind such a remarkable testament to that love."

Harry shifted his feet uncomfortably. "That was something else I wanted to talk to you about," he said. "Could we… talk in the back or something?"

Ollivander frowned slightly, but nodded, apparently intrigued. He drew his own wand and flicked it. The blinds dropped over the door and the window. "Come with me," he said.

"Well, Mister Ollivander, it's about my mother. And how I got this scar, I suppose," Harry said, omitting to mention that it had quite a lot to do with how he'd got another one.

He told Mister Ollivander everything. Well, not quite everything, but almost everything.

The other man listened closely and carefully, expression fascinated.

"Remarkable," Ollivander said quietly. "I was right to expect great things of you, Mister Potter." Before Harry could reply, his tone became more focused. "You think that this Phoenix entity led to your being chosen by your wand," he said.

"I think so," Harry said. "It was Fawkes' feather and considering how she, the Phoenix, knew Dumbledore, how Fawkes found him afterwards and how he saved me in the Chamber of Secrets… I really don't think that it's a coincidence."

"Curious," Ollivander said. "Curious."

Harry waited patiently.

"I said that your wand was unique for entirely different reasons," Ollivander said. "Holly wands are rare, but Holly and Phoenix Feather is one of the rarest combinations of them all. Holly is a wood much like Willow, in that it is emotional. Unlike Willow, however, it takes it to the point of volatility, its wielders are often protective and they tend to need to overcome anger and impetuosity. They also tend to be the type to engage in quests, though whether those quests are physical or spiritual is another matter entirely."

"Why am I not surprised?" Bucky murmured.

Harry shot him a dirty look. "You mentioned the 'Holly King'," he said. "What's that?"

"Oh, an old legend that the forest is ruled by the King of the Oak in the Summer and the King of the Holly in the Winter," Ollivander said absently. "Evocative and, I suspect, connected to the Summer and Winter Queens of Faerie, perhaps mistaking them for the Winter and Summer Knights of the era. Then again, I have heard rumours of Summer and Winter Kings…"

"They exist," Harry said. "Apparently they represent the opposite side of the season – the Summer King is the Erlking, the Winter King is… well, no one's very sure about him, but I think he goes by Santa these days."

"Really?" Bucky asked, eyebrow raised.

Harry shrugged, and turned back to Ollivander. "I thought most people in the Wizarding World didn't believe in the Fae," he said.

"Any wandmaker worth their salt knows that the Fae exist, Mister Potter," Ollivander said. "Indeed, thanks to their connection to the natural world, aspects of wand-lore and aspects of faerie-lore are intertwined. Hawthorn wood, for instance, makes for complex and often contradictory wands as adept at healing as at cursing. It is also known to burn brightly and poison those creatures that owe their allegiance to the Winter Court." He sighed. "And more than one foolish young wandmaker or an apprentice has attempted to bargain with the Fae for knowledge of the best wand wood trees or for arcane woods from the Faerie realms. The Fae being what they are, such requests are to be made very carefully, if at all, which they usually aren't as making them is often a sign that the person in question is too lazy to learn how to find the trees themselves. More than one has found themselves transformed into or merged with the tree they sought, for instance."

Harry winced.

"But the Phoenix Feather is, by its nature, detached, independent and notoriously picky," Ollivander continued softly. "Where a Holly wand's wielder will throw themselves mindlessly into danger to protect someone else, a phoenix chooses its allegiances and actions very carefully. But once those allegiances are made, they are unbreakable. Together they are a formidable combination, often a mark of heroes and heroines born, renowned for their daring. Often rash, often solitary, but brave and true. You, Mister Potter, are more than adequate proof of that."

Harry shivered slightly under those unnerving pale eyes.

"Indeed," Ollivander added. "From what you have said of this Phoenix Force, I would say that you were chosen by a phoenix a very long time ago." There was a long pause. "Of course, legend has it that it is not the first time such a thing has happened," he said, after a few moments. "Stories of wands and staves created by gods and other powerful entities abound, bestowed upon worthy wielders. The legendary wand, Laevateinn, wielded by Prospero Slytherin, an ancestor of Salazar, is one. It is lost, of course."

"My grandfather mentioned it," Harry said, fingering the golden phoenix feather around his throat. "He didn't say much about it, though. I think it might be related to the Phoenix."

Ollivander inclined his head. "There are others," he said. "But few, in the Western world at least, carry the resonance of one wand in particular. The Elder Wand."

Inexplicably, Harry felt like the room had suddenly got colder. And darker. "Elder Wand?"

Ollivander nodded. "A wand supposedly made by Death himself, made to be the most powerful in all the world," he said. "A wand that could turn back time and rewrite history, a wand that could transmute the elements in a fashion that only the Philosopher's Stone could match, a wand that could even, it is whispered, bring back the dead. With the Elder Wand in hand, none of the laws of magic need apply."

A chill ran down Harry's spine.

"It was said to be one of the three Deathly Hallows, created by Death to reward, to entrap, three brothers who had defied him. It is a children's tale, but as with all tales, it contains a grain of truth. That tale also says that whoever owns all three shall be the Master of Death."

Harry was silent for a moment. "You think it's true?" he asked, not bothering to mention that Death was female and that he severely doubted that three magical objects would grant one 'mastery' over an entity that powerful.

"There is a grain of truth, I think," Ollivander said. "Its power is undeniable, its verifiable feats verging on the impossible, and from the very beginning, witches and wizards have slaughtered each other to possess it, leaving a bloody trail through history. While ordinary wands can change allegiance when they are taken by force, in earnest battle, the Elder Wand is said to only be passed on to a new master when the previous one is dead. Of course, it is more likely that those who steal such a wand are more inclined to kill a rival than to let them live, but one has to wonder… Along the way, it has acquired other names: the Deathstick and the Wand of Destiny prominent among them. But while it has many names, while there are other wands of elder, rare, very rare – they are considered unlucky, in large part because of the story – but they exist, most simply call it the Elder Wand."

"Who was its last owner?" Harry asked, curious.

Ollivander paused, and, oddly, darted a glance at Bucky. "That, Mister Potter, is a piece of information that men have killed for," he said, sounding somehow hurried. "And it often drops out of history for centuries at a time. Putting a definitive location on it in the past is near impossible, let alone the present."

Harry was about to latch onto this suggestion that Ollivander did, in fact, know where it was, when Bucky's hand came to rest on his shoulder.

"I see," he said. "Okay. Thank you, Mister Ollivander."

Ollivander nodded and Harry and Bucky went to leave, heading back through the shop, towards the doors, outside which gathered the usual impatient first years and parents.

"Mister Potter."

Harry turned. "Yes, Mister Ollivander?"

"The days are getting darker, Mister Potter," Ollivander said. "Things are coming out of the shadows, things thought long gone. Things… and people. You would do well to be careful."

"I always am, Mister Ollivander," Harry said.

Ollivander fixed him with a piercing gaze. "Are you, Mister Potter?" he asked softly.

"No," Bucky said dryly. "He isn't. Come on, Harry."

Harry's gaze lingered on Ollivander, before he nodded and left.

Once they were outside and well clear of the shop, he turned to Bucky.

"Why was he looking at you like you knew where it was?" Harry asked.

"Because when we started going up against Grindelwald back in the War, Albus warned us to expect the impossible," Bucky said quietly. "That even the rules of magic might not apply. When Steve asked why, Albus explained about the Elder Wand, told us the whole story of the Three Brothers. And he said that Grindelwald had found it, taking it from a famous European wand-maker who had boasted of possessing it. It was part of why Schmidt, the Red Skull, was so eager to make an alliance with him."

"So Grindelwald had it," Harry said. "Which would mean…"

"Which would mean that it is currently owned by the person who defeated Grindelwald," Bucky said.

"Didn't Doctor Strange beat him?" Harry asked.

"I wasn't around for that part," Bucky said. "But from what I've heard, Strange wore him down and stripped away most of his extra power rather than beating him outright, probably by design. There's a reason he's not known as the one who beat Grindelwald, after all."

Harry's eyes went near impossibly wide as he put it together. "Whoa," he breathed. Then he frowned. "If he had the wand, why didn't he bring back Luna?"

"Even if it were possible, it could be that he didn't know how," Bucky said. "Do you knw everything you can do with your powers?"

Harry grimaced. "No," he said. "Not even close. But Dumbledore…"

"Dumbledore is a genius, but he isn't omniscient," Bucky said. "Besides, if I remember the story correctly, that power belonged to another Hallow, the Resurrection Stone. And it didn't end well."

"How do you mean?" Harry asked, frowning.

"According to the story, the brother who used it brought back his fiancée. She didn't belong in the world of the living, though, and it hurt her," Bucky said. "So in the end, he committed suicide to be with her."

"Do you believe the story?" Harry asked.

"I think it sounds like the fairy stories my mom used to tell me when I was little," Bucky said. "And it has moral to it. In this case, don't try and con a powerful magical entity."

"I don't think that's quite it," Harry said dryly. "And I don't think that Death would be trying to entrap them. Maybe she just gave them what they wanted and let it play out."

"You'd know better than me," Bucky said. "Now, we'd better do your shopping. And find your friends."

"Right," Harry said, eyes going distant as he focused. "I'll get on that."

OoOoO

While Harry and Bucky were in Ollivanders, the others had gone exploring, following Hermione. Wandering up the street, Carol and Jean-Paul drank in the sights of Diagon Alley, the former firing questions at Hermione at a million miles an hour, while the latter simply gazed at the surroundings, seeming to take in everything at once.

Hermione, for her part, was more than happy to expound and answer questions, so the arrangement sorted all three parties equally.

Soon enough, they wound up near the far end of Diagon Alley, which Hermione identified as leading into Knockturn Alley.

"It's a bad neighbourhood," she said. "As far as I know. Harry wound up there by accident a couple of years ago, and from what he said, it was fairly unpleasant."

"Who are they?" Carol asked, watching as a man and woman dressed in what looked like muggle combats covered by long grey cloaks, each with a scabbarded sword at their hip and a carved staff in hand, strode past. They were a grim and harsh looking pair and the denizens of Knockturn Alley seemed to subtly shrink away from them, melting into the shadows.

"Wardens," Hermione said quietly. "The combat troops and policemen of the White Council."

"White Council… Harry's mentioned that," Carol asked.

"Wandless wizards," Jean-Paul said.

"Right."

"The White Council is sort of like the UN for wandless practitioners," Hermione said. "Though membership is restricted only to the most powerful one percent of practitioners. The Wardens are their elite."

"Wait, so if you're not powerful enough, you don't get a say?" Carol asked, frowning.

"Not really," Hermione said unhappily. "Though they don't make laws as such, they just enforce the Seven Laws of Magic and act on behalf of wandless magical practitioners. For instance, if you're having trouble with vampires, you can go to your local Warden for help. They're stretched thin at the moment, though, what with the War."

"War?"

"The White Council is at war with the Red Court," Hermione said. "The Red Court, they're a kind of vampire from South America, Mayan blood demons that wear a flesh mask to conceal what they really are and have powerfully narcotic saliva."

"Ew," Carol said flatly.

"They're not quite as powerful as Grey Court vampires – Dracula, and his kind – but there's more of them, they tend to be better organised and reasonably up to date with modern technology," Hermione said. "The war started when a White Council Wizard called Harry Dresden killed a Red Court Noble. She had a grudge against him for some reason and tricked him into entrapping himself by the rules of courtesy at a supernatural costume ball, then half-turned his girlfriend, who'd snuck in."

"Half-turned?" Jean-Paul asked, eyebrow raised.

"When the Red Court turn someone, they remain human, but with most of the powers of the vampire," Hermione said. "Until they kill their first victim, they remain at least part human. But since the blood lust is very strong…"

"They don't stay human for long," Carol said.

Hermione nodded. "There's no cure," she said. "There are ways to manage it, but not a cure. Anyway, everything she'd done was technically legal under supernatural law. Dresden was officially her guest which meant that he had to abide by the Laws of Hospitality, which she technically hadn't broken. He's famous for not caring very much about rules, though – he advertises as a PI in the phonebook. He's also very powerful and he was very angry. So he incinerated the vampire and her coven. Since he technically broke supernatural law and was acting as a representative of the White Council as the time, the Red Court declared war on the Council."

"Sounds like he made the right call and put boot to ass," Carol said, sounding as if she very much approved. "And his name's Dresden, right? Harry Dresden?"

"Yes."

"Ridiculously tall, dark, kinda hot in an angular sort of way, wears a long black duster?" Carol asked.

"I… I think so," Hermione said, a little startled. "You've met him?"

Carol nodded. "He seemed pretty cool," she said.

"This war… who's winning?" Jean-Paul asked.

"The Prophet doesn't say much about it, so I'm not sure," Hermione said, eyeing Carol. "But since there's not much news, I'd say that not much is happening."

"Well, here's hoping that they wipe the vampires out," Carol said.

"What about the Laws?" Jean-Paul asked quietly.

"If you break one, you're doing dark magic," Hermione explained. "With wanded witches and wizards it's bad enough, but wands serve as a kind of buffer. If a wandless Wizard starts using dark magic, they go beyond the point of no return very quickly and become fairly nightmarish. That's why the sentence for breaking any of the Seven Laws is death."

"No exceptions?" Jean-Paul asked, tone clipped.

"The First Law – thou shalt not kill with magic, basically – has a self-defence clause and the laws only apply to mortals, humans," Hermione said. "But the others, they're set in stone. There are grey areas, and they only apply to wandless magic, but beyond that, there's no flexibility. The best a Warlock, someone who has broken the Laws, can hope for is that someone on the Council decides to take them on and try and reform them. Then the Doom of Damocles is levied; they're on probation. But it's very rare."

"That's horrible," Carol said quietly.

Jean-Paul merely nodded silently.

"I think so too," Hermione said. "But having read some accounts about what a rogue Warlock can do… I think they might be necessary."

"Why?" Carol asked, frowning.

"Because wandless wizards can live for nearly half a millennium even when they don't delve into the Dark Arts to extend that, and they only get more powerful as they get older. One Warlock, Kemmler, engineered the First World War, using it as an opportunity to raise corpses by the hundreds of thousands," Hermione said. "He was killed – and not for the first time – but he resurfaced under Grindelwald's command in World War II. Grindelwald was a wanded Dark Lord, one of the most terrible in known history. Between them, they played a major hand in the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and later, the Red Skull, slaughtering millions. And, if you believe the stories, nearly bringing about Hell on Earth."

"Mon dieu," Jean-Paul said quietly. "Are there many as bad as that?"

"Only a few," Hermione said. "But they're more than enough. You've probably heard of one or two of them."

"Like who?" Carol asked.

"Morgana," Hermione said. "Also known as Morgan La Fey."

"The lady from the King Arthur legends?" Carol asked, surprised. "She was real?"

Hermione nodded. "She was," she said. "So was Merlin, Arthur, Camelot… all of it. Though I think that the histories made quite a few mistakes. The myths certainly did." She stared after the Wardens, frowning. "Back to the Wardens, though… what are they doing here? They're at war with the Red Court, the White and Black Courts too, I suppose, but Britain's almost entirely vampire free – even if no one's sure why. Even so, the only kind of vampire that's ever really turned up here is a few White Court vampires and one or two Grey Court, and they aren't even involved in the war. Maybe they're tracking a Warlock…"

She stopped, noticing that her audience wasn't paying much attention to this. Indeed, Carol and Jean-Paul both stared at her in mutual astonishment. "What?" she asked.

"The King Arthur legends. They're real," Carol said slowly.

"Well, they got a lot of things wrong…"

"Sword in the stone, Arthur and Guinevere, Knights of the Round Table?"

"Well, yes."

"So they're real," Carol said. "Oh my god, this is incredible!"

Hermione smiled. "I suppose it is," she said. "It's amazing how much witches and wizards take for granted. And how much I take for granted, really. It's just that there's so much to take in, so much to absorb, that you don't really have time to stop and think. Then once you do, it's normal."

Carol nodded. "I suppose so," she said. "Still…" She then paused outside a shop that seemed festooned with metal objects, varying from the apparently prosaic, such as a box the size of a desktop computer, to the incredibly intricate, including what looked like a tiny golden ball in a wire mesh cage.

The latter caught her eye not because it was flying; she'd seen enough strange floating things in the form of Tony Stark's robots or in just about every store in Diagon Alley and its environs that another didn't really stand out. It was the way it was flying, darting and hovering like a hummingbird, that caught her eye.

"Carol?"

"Oh dear," Jean-Paul said, looking around at the front of the shop, and at Hermione's puzzled look, elaborated. "Carol likes pointy things."

Carol absently gave him the finger.

There were quite a lot of pointy things on show, spears mounted on intricately carved staves, gleaming silver knives and swords with hilts of gold, silver and mother-of-pearl, inlaid with rubies, emeralds, sapphires, diamonds and pearls.

Hermione, however, followed Carol's gaze, to the tiny golden ball. "Oh," she said. "That's a Snitch."

"A what?" Carol asked, puzzled.

"A Golden Snitch," Hermione explained. "It's one of three kinds of ball in Quidditch."

"And it's the one that the… sneaker goes after."

"Seeker."

"Right."

"Harry told you?"

Carol nodded.

Hermione sighed.

"What's with that?" Carol asked.

"The existence of witches and wizards is supposed to be a secret," Hermione said, a little anxiously. "It's the cornerstone of the laws of Wizarding society, thanks to the Statute of Secrecy."

"So… you're not meant to go around telling people that you're magical?" Carol asked. "Because, uh, he kind of invited me to the Quidditch World Cup."

Jean-Paul chuckled darkly. "Quite," he said. "Who knows what reaction you might get?"

"No," Hermione said. "And there's some very rigorous punishments if you do. Muggles, non-magical people, who do find out have their memories wiped. The only non-magical people supposed to know at all are the parents or guardians of muggleborn students, and there are some people who are saying that even they shouldn't know."

"Are you kidding me?" Carol demanded. "That's completely ridiculous!"

Hermione sighed. "Is it?" she asked. "How do you think humanity in general would react to finding out that they've got people with magical powers, their own laws and societies, living under their noses?"

"Badly," Jean-Paul remarked.

"Okay, fair point," Carol admitted grudgingly. "So… what about us? Is someone going to try and mind wipe us?"

"Does it mean that Harry's going to get in trouble?" Jean-Paul asked, voice crisper than usual. The prospect of obliviation clearly did not worry him. It didn't seem to overly worry Carol either, something that Hermione wondered at.

"No, Harry's basically untouchable, whether he realises it or not," Hermione said. "Something that has very little to do with who his father is. And no. You're Harry's friends and I think the general attitude is that if you've managed to get into Diagon Alley, you're meant to be here."

"What about Dresden? Does he not break this Statute?" Jean-Paul asked.

"The White Council doesn't have the same rules about secrecy as the various Ministries do," Hermione said. "Part of why is that it's not a formal government and another reason why is that they don't use mental magic, they can't."

"Why not?" Carol asked.

"Because wandless mental magic at the very least borders on dark magic," Hermione said. "Wands act as a kind of buffer, as I said, but wandless magic doesn't have that. Two their Seven Laws concern mind magic, and if you break them…"

"One way trip to the afterlife."

Hermione nodded. "Wandless dark magic, as I said, it snowballs very quickly," she said. "It's almost impossible to simply dabble in dark wandless magic, because it corrupts you very quickly, making you do worse and worse things until…" She trailed off. "Well. By the time a Dark Wandless Wizard, a Warlock, is found, they're usually completely insane. And by that point, there's no turning back. Believe me, they've tried. After a certain point, even if they're captured and seem to be improving, a Warlock will inevitably revert. And if they're left to keep going down the dark paths, you get something very much like Kemmler."

"That's cold," Carol said quietly. "I mean, how old are these kids when they get their powers? 11? 12?"

"Anywhere between 10 and 16," Hermione said. "It varies, though the stronger gifts usually manifest earlier."

"Just the right age for bad decisions," Jean-Paul said.

"But if they don't know any better," Carol began.

"Ignorantia non excusat," Hermione said quietly. "And no, I don't like it. I think it's horrible."

"But you can see why they do it."

"Even aside from what I said earlier, dark magic, dark wandless magic, nearly ended the world a couple of months ago," Hermione said. "So yes, I can. Can't you?"

Carol grunted and silence fell.

"What's that?" Jean-Paul asked, nodding at the apparently ordinary man across the street, one who had shrunken out of sight more than most as the Wardens had passed by. Closer inspection revealed a heavier, thickly muscled jaw and slightly inhuman proportions.

"Ghoul," Hermione said. "There are a couple of varieties – one is a fairly minor demon that lives in attics or cellars and eats rats and insects. They're all but harmless. That one, on the other hand… it's one of the other kind. And they're much more dangerous. They're shapeshifters and can pass as human quite easily. They're carnivores, going through forty or fifty pounds of meat a day and they like the taste of human."

"And they haven't been exterminated why?"

"Because they're sentient," Hermione said. "Because they don't have to be malicious and they can be quite civilised when they want to be. And because if they choose, they look exactly like humans until, suddenly, they don't. They're also quite hard to kill, apparently."

There was a moment of silence.

"God, this is depressing," Carol said, and looked around. "So... this place and creep-tastic alley are basically you guys' only streets," she said, looking around Diagon Alley.

Hermione shook her head. "They're the main streets, but not the only ones," she said. "There's a small network of streets branching off one another: Knockturn Alley, as mentioned, which is a little more... dubious, Internation Alley, where foreign embassies, businesses and travel agencies are found, Theatric Alley, which is basically the magical West End - or Broadway, Alchemic Alley, where the Alchemists tend to congregate, Aesthetic Alley, where designers, jewellers and artists live and Gastronomic Alley, which is the bar and restaurant area." She waved around at Diagon Alley. "The most successful businesses, though, are on Diagon Alley, because..."

"Most people come through here, at the very least to get to other magical places," Carol finished.

"Pretty much, yes," Hermione said. "Other large towns and cities have... magical districts, I suppose - Edinburgh's is particularly large - but London's is the biggest."

"Uh-huh," Carol said. "Question: is every street name around here a bad pun?"

Hermione let out a heartfelt sigh. "Yes."

"Well. So much for the famous British sense of humour, then."

After that, they moved on, taking in the wonders of Diagon Alley. Here, a magic lamp with light that supposedly never went out, there a magic box that was according to its seller 'unbreakable and impossible to open for anyone who isn't the owner. Like a mokeskin pouch, but bigger. Why, miss, you can even trap spirits in this one.' Then, a fob watch that with a crystalline face that displayed not only the time, projecting it into the air when opened, but the phases of the Moon, the season and the weather, note paper that transformed into origami birds and flew around the room, dancing around floating candles, even a customisable wig that seemed to swallow up hair and fit seamlessly onto the wearer's head.

There was more, so much more. There weremagical gardens, with small fountains that floated in the air, travelling steadily over the flowers to ensure they were all watered, magical plants with strange properties – and in the case of the Venomous Tentacula, a bad attitude. There was a floating and constantly moving vase of water, tiny homunculi of people, dragons and magical creatures that Hermione compared to robots,gloves that came when called, walking on two fingers, mugs that stirred themselves, pots and pans that warned in increasingly shrill tones when their contents was being overcooked, talking mirrors that advised on appearance, and small glass balls that Hermione said were called Remembralls that filled up with red smoke when their owner had forgotten something. Glass cats stalked along shelves with the liquid grace of the real thing, hats changed colour depending upon their wearer's mood and varieties of incense, some of which sent you to sleep, some of which relaxed you, and some of which even supposedly set you onto an out of body experience.

"Non-magical people have that," Jean-Paul observed.

"Really?" the shopkeeper asked, surprised.

"Oh yes. In tablet form," Jean-Paul said, entirely innocently. "It's called LSD. Ask any person without magic, they will know what you're talking about."

Carol looked disapproving, yet amused.

And there was still more. There were even glasses and goggles that could magnify vision and see into the infrared. Carol, wondering at all of these, muttered darkly about these.

"If magic glasses that can see in the dark are a thing, you can sure as shit bet that some pervert's thought of x-ray glasses," she said.

"I'm sure they'd be illegal," Hermione said, frowning.

Carol just snorted. "Like that's ever stopped anybody."

Then, finally, they came on to the magical musical instruments.

"So… these instruments play themselves?" Jean-Paul asked, examining the row of instruments.

"Yes," Hermione said. "They're enchanted to bring in air at the right times, in the case of the wind instruments, mimic bow and finger movements on the string instruments… it's fascinating, really."

"What's this one playing?" Carol asked, examining an intricately carved wooden flute that was playing a slow, sad melody.

"I don't know," Hermione admitted. "Music, especially wizarding music, isn't really my forte."

"It's one of the oldest songs in British wizarding history," a voice said from behind them. "Said to date from the time of Arthur himself."

All three of them turned to see Draco Malfoy, who smiled politely. "It has two names," he continued. "Based on how it's played. Fast, and it's known as Arthur's Triumph. Slow, like now, and it's known as Merlin's Lament. Legend has it that he composed it after the fall of Camelot."

"Wow," Carol said. "And you are…?"

"Draco Malfoy," Draco said. "Granger and I know each other, as you can probably tell by the fact she's staring at me as if I might bite."

"Malfoy," Carol said. "As in –"

"Lucius Malfoy," Draco said flatly. "Master of HYDRA. Which makes me the son of one of the pre-eminent monsters on the face of the Earth, who was in turn the employer of the very worst, something of which I am very aware." He turned to Hermione. "I did not make the best first, second, third… I did not make a good impression on you in our first two years at Hogwarts," he said, tone very frank. "I insulted you and called you vile names which, while I can blame their use on my upbringing, should not have been used. For that I am sorry and you are well within your rights to hate me. However, please don't treat me as a junior copy of my father, an evil overlord in waiting. I am many things, but I am not my father's son. His deeds are not my deeds and his dreams are not my dreams."

Hermione said nothing, but gave him a long look that was somehow more considering than it had been before. "How are you out and about?" she asked. "I'd have thought that…" She trailed off.

Draco smiled a thin smile. "That SHIELD wouldn't let me out of their sight for fear my father would send someone to snatch me away and they would lose some of their potential leverage over him?" he asked, then jerked his head over his shoulder, indicating a group of otherwise ordinary looking witches and wizards, distinguished only by the air of watchfulness about them. "They don't. When I am out, my mother is kept in a kind of polite imprisonment and vice versa. Not in the Manor, naturally – that is still in ruins and in any case, it has been seized by the muggle government, along the vast majority of the Malfoy family assets, as compensation. And very rarely are we allowed to spend any length of time in the same place." He glanced again at his bodyguards-cum-jailers. "This is, I am informed, for our own protection, and I see the logic in that. I also see the logic of not keeping all your eggs in one basket."

There was an uneasy silence.

"Harry mentioned you," Carol said eventually, eyeing Draco. "A couple of times, actually."

"What did he say, Miss…?"

"Danvers," Carol said. "Carol Danvers. And he said that you'd been a massive jerk in the first couple of years, but recently you'd changed." She tilted her head and regarded him. "I got the impression that he actually rather liked you, following the attitude adjustment."

"Did you?" Draco asked, apparently genuinely interested and somewhat… hopeful?

Carol shrugged, noticing something familiar about the boy. Like her, Jean-Paul, and Harry when she had first met him, he gave a sense of someone not used to having many friends. "He said you'd grown up," she said. "And that you gave good advice."

Draco snorted faintly. "I try," he said, then paused and smiled. "May I make a suggestion? While Hermione knows everything there is to know about the Wizarding World that can be read in a book, I grew up living it, breathing it. For instance, I know Diagon Alley and its various off-shoots rather well. I could give you the tour."

Carol looked first at Jean-Paul, then at Hermione. The former shrugged, while the latter grimaced and gave her a look that said that it was up to her. "Sounds cool," she said.

OoOoO

"And over there is Mister Norrell's bookshop. A bit of a rarity, that one, a wandless Wizard who practically worships books," Draco said, indicating a rather staid and musty looking Georgian bookshop. Inside it was a small, elderly man in an old fashioned wig, arguing with a tall, lean middle aged looking man in fashionable clothing with grey in his messy hair. "As a result, he hardly ever actually sells anything, and never anything particularly valuable, which is why you don't see him challenging Flourish and Blott's for customers."

"And who's that man arguing with him?" Hermione asked curiously.

"That would be Mister Jonathan Strange, his former apprentice – no relation to Stephen Strange, as far as anyone knows," Draco said. "Though I believe that it is still a matter of popular speculation."

Indeed it was, something not helped by Jonathan Strange's own response when asked: "I do not know, for I have very rarely had the pleasure of his company. However, knowing the habit of the gentleman in question for travelling through the ages as an ordinary fellow would down a street, for all I know he could be my father, my son, my grandson, my brother, or even myself from another timeline."

This honest response, designed as it was to quell questions, merely spawned thousands more. Such is the way of gossip.

"Apparently, they've always been like that," Draco continued. "Strange is a more adventurous sort, much known for his communing with the Fae and his resultant mastery of illusion and of mirror magic."

"He's written books about it," Hermione said, nodding. "I remember seeing them in Flourish and Blotts."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "You saw a book you did not immediately devour?" he asked, lightly amused.

Hermione flushed. "I was already over-budget," she said.

"Ah," Draco said understandingly. "Some even say that he taught Margaret Le Fay the basics of the Ways of the Nevernever, before she eventually surpassed him."

"Who?" Carol asked, puzzled.

"A wandless practitioner of great power and notoriety, infamous for her dealings with the Fae and the darker sorts of magical creatures," Draco said. "She died in childbirth. Her son, Harry Dresden –"

"We've met," Carol said.

"You have?"

"A couple of months ago," Carol said. "During the battle. He was with Wanda Maximoff, Harry's godmother."

"They're dating," Harry said, causing Hermione and Carol to jump as he arrived. "Hi guys. Hi Draco."

"Harry," Draco said, nodding, then paused as he eyed Bucky. "Sergeant Barnes," he said, somewhat more guardedly.

"Mister Malfoy," Bucky replied, and inclined his head politely. Draco, after a moment, returned the inclination.

Before Hermione could voice her puzzlement, Carol broke in.

"Jesus fucking Christ, do I have to put bells on you two?" she complained. "Clint and Natasha are bad enough. Would it kill you to make some noise when you move? Loki manages it."

"Probably," Bucky said dryly.

"Does this happen often?" Hermione asked in an undertone.

"Sometimes, in recent months," Jean-Paul replied in the same undertone. "Harry learns quickly. In this case, from Natasha. He has reason." He smirked as Hermione sighed. "And not merely the one you would suppose."

"Sorry," Harry said, a little embarrassed.

"Where's your shopping?" Carol asked.

"Sent home with some portkeys uncle Loki made me," Harry said. "Saves carrying it around."

"Smart," Carol said approvingly.

"I thought so too," Harry said. "Anyway, Dresden; he's her apprentice."

"Which one?" Hermione asked, puzzled. "Boyfriend or apprentice."

"Both," Harry said.

Hermione looked shocked, but Draco, after a moment of surprise, cocked his head, as if listening, then nodded. "It happens in the wandless tradition on a reasonably frequent basis, particularly in the West. The whole legend of Merlin and Nimue, inaccurate as it is, started somewhere after all." He shrugged. "They have much less of a coherent community and are thus more vulnerable to those beings that would use… intimacy to get to them."

"Well, that's enlightening," Carol said. "How was the wand shop?"

"Enlightening," Harry replied, with a smirk.

"Smartass," Carol said, rolling her eyes.

"Blame Tony," Harry said, then looked at her. Carol blinked, cocked her head as if listening, then nodded.

Hermione was puzzled.

"You're doing it again, mes chéris," Jean-Paul said, amused.

"Oh, sorry," both said, in perfect unison, before giving each other a funny look, and bursting out laughing.

"What…" Hermione began.

"They have developed a psychic connection," Jean-Paul said. "It means that sometimes, they slip into speaking telepathically without realising it." His tone turned wry. "Or when they simply do not want to be overheard." He smirked. "I am sure it is for entirely innocent reasons."

Both rolled their eyes at him, missing the fact that Draco was watching them with a surprised expression that was somehow too convincing to be real.

"Sorry," Harry said. "It's a habit we got into, because… long story."

Jean-Paul's smirk faded into something gentler, more serious, and when Hermione was about to enquire further, he laid a hand on her arm. "Some stories are told only when they are ready to be told," he said.

And that, it seemed, was the end of that.

OoOoO

However, it wasn't the end of the strangeness. Conversation swelled up around them like a bubble, comfortably containing all six of them – if one counted the mostly silent Bucky. But like all bubbles, it was ever at risk of being popped.

"And this," Draco said. "Is where the seers gather. Well, supposed seers. Almost all of them are charlatans, little better than Professor Trelawney."

"Professor who?" Carol asked.

"Professor Trelawney," Hermione said. "She's the Divination teacher at school, and a complete fraud."

"Not complete," Harry said quietly. "She's got real power."

Hermione looked confused for a moment, then sighed. "Harry, those Tarot cards of hers were just responding to you," she said. "She's also an accomplished cold reader, and –"

"A lot of what those cards said came true," Harry said quietly. "Some of it, she could just have been guessing. But she said that I would rush into a situation and pay the price. Not too long after that…" His hand rose and he rubbed his chest. "Well. That was exactly what happened. Another card, the Magician. It looked like Doctor Strange, who I hadn't met yet, and who Trelawney didn't recognise. It warned of manipulation, strings being pulled. It also said that I should embrace and tap into my full power." He glanced at Carol and Jean-Paul. "Sound familiar?"

"That is exactly what Doctor Strange said," Jean-Paul said, frowning. "And he is…"

"The String-Puller Supreme?" Carol suggested.

"Fairly much," Harry said. "And then there was another one, about a clash between good and evil, that I was going to be at the heart of."

"Also sounds familiar," Carol said.

Harry nodded. "And an unexpected happy event in my family… she could have been talking about Jean," he said.

"That seems to fit, mon cher," Jean-Paul said. "What were the others?"

Harry explained, and the other boy nodded slowly.

"A red star in a golden field," he said. "Interesting."

"Care to share with the class?" Carol asked.

Jean-Paul shook his head. "It could be nothing," he said. "After all, ma cherie, this was a prophecy aimed at Harry."

Hermione frowned.

"You don't really believe in divination, do you?" Draco said, looking at her.

"Well, no, it's so…"

"lllogical?" Bucky suggested dryly. "Magic often is. And seers are very real."

Hermione frowned. "With respect, Sergeant Barnes," she said. "How do you know?"

"I've met one or two," Bucky said. "Real seers, powerful seers, are incredibly rare. Trelawney's a real seer, with bucket loads of talent but very little control. Aside from things like that Tarot reading, she's made two real, solid prophecies that we know of." He nodded at Harry. "And they were both about him."

"One of them was why Voldemort went after my family when I was a baby," Harry said quietly.

"And the other?" Draco asked.

"She made it to me over the summer," Harry said. "Part of it has already come true." He snorted. "And naturally, it's a list of people wanting to kill me."

"I…" Hermione began, then shook her head. "Harry, I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, well, would life be like without a murder attempt here and there to liven things up?" Harry said with dark humour.

"Boring," Carol said. "Normal, but boring."

"Personally, I could happily go without," Jean-Paul remarked to Hermione. "But those two seem intent on having as many dances with Death as possible."

"I don't look for trouble," Harry said indignantly.

Jean-Paul and Draco raised identical eyebrows.

"… Much."

OoOoO

As they turned into Internation Alley, Draco began explaining the politics of the mystical world as opposed to the mundane one, with occasional interjections by Hermione.

The US and Canada, for instance, were historically a series of nations grouped together in loose and somewhat uneasy federation akin to the Iroquois Confederacy, with a mixture of primarily Native, Hispanic and North European influenced states in a constant state of flux, something driven by immigration, shifting demographics and mutual cultural influence. While the histories made a big deal about their differing origins, in reality, the cultural influences meant that they weren't so different as they liked to pretend. The black community also made its voice known, especially in the South and in the big cities.

More recently, this steady homogenisation had been somewhat forcefully accelerated by SHIELD, which had effectively forced them all together into something approaching a union.

Mexico and Central America were composed of more Hispanic states, with one or two pseudo-Aztec and pseudo-Maya ones thrown in, as well as any number of fiefdoms established by drug lords dabbling in the mystical. There, the influences mingled more freely, yet at the same time, they were all much more fractious, thanks to the Red Court of Vampires, which much preferred playing its various vassals off against one another to the possibility of facing a united front that decided it wanted to be top dog in the region. The picture was further complicated by the fact that the wandless community was taking the war between the White Council and the Red Court as an opportunity to deliver several centuries – even millennia – worth of payback, while the wanded one was trying to avoid getting involved or, sensing an upsetting of the apple cart, either scrambling to take advantage or actively impeding Council efforts.

South America was, naturally, a mixed bag, as might be expected when summarising an entire continent. On the highlands of the West coast, the Inca influence remained strong, while native peoples practising wandless shamanistic magic were common in the Amazon and other rainforests. Urbanised Latino populations, however, tended to mimic the wanded European model; albeit with a few twists.

Western Europe was an interesting situation – Britain was fairly obvious, the wanded community falling under the purview of the Ministry and the wandless under that of the Edinburgh based White Council. Ireland and France were similar due to the more centralised nature of their governments, though France had significantly greater regional differences. Spain was divided into the magical states of Aragon, Castille and Catalonia which consistently bickered over absolutely everything – much like their non-magical counterparts, while Italy was a wanded heartland, almost a miniature Roman Empire with a strangely Catholic bent. Sicily, Sardinia and Naples were under Aragonese authority – this, as Draco remarked, gave muggleborns and half-bloods something of a headache and that the Schengen Agreement was pushed for, and immediately copied by, the various magical states of Europe.

Northern Europe followed a more tribal and feudal model due to a relatively small population spread over a very large area, with the Sami peoples of the furthest north practising wandless shamanic magic. However, wanded magic held a significant sway, especially in Denmark, and the cities of the rest of Scandinavia, especially among the old noble families thanks to Durmstrang.

Central and Eastern Europe was a complex situation – as Carol remarked somewhat acerbically, "what else is new?"

Germany was semi-unified thanks to Grindelwald, Poland was – to the surprise of Carol and the others – a considerable power, despite having had to endure half a century of Communist rule. Nations like Bulgaria were independent, and Russia itself remained a pseudo Tsarist Empire (Communism, after a rocky period in relation to the legacy of Rasputin, didn't really change anything other than encouraging the witches and wizards of Russia to keep quiet, particularly with the advent of the Red Room) with regional power centres and a significant wandless tradition centred around Archangel.

Unsurprisingly, magic thrived in Latveria thanks to it being ruled by a de facto sorcerer-king in Victor Von Doom, and more militant purebloods gloated over his rule as a result, conveniently ignoring the fact that he was a half blood at most. Romani tribes were a notable magical presence in Latveria especially, thanks to its somewhat more tolerant atmosphere, as well as most points east. A number of Ottoman Emirates remained in the Balkans, albeit largely in name only. The Greeks, meanwhile, still sort of clung to the whole city state thing and apparently never shut up about it, while magically Greek communities were prevalent in the Aegean and on the coast of the Black Sea.

As for the Middle East… Sykes-Picot didn't even make a dent. The Magical Ottoman Empire was broadly intact, but far smaller than its muggle counterpart was and very heavily influenced by its predecessor, the Byzantine Empire, despite the fact that the latter fell over five centuries ago. As Hermione explained, longer lifespans and lower reproduction rates, plus general inertia, meant that wizarding societies changed rather slower than the rest of the world unless forced to. Magical Israel, meanwhile, was a bit less controversial simply because magical Jews never really left and immigrated to the Levant pretty much constantly, but perhaps inevitably, the position of Jerusalem was a touchy subject, and muggle politics were making it steadily more and more of an issue. Saudi Arabia and the related emirates were, due to their religious extremism, a bit of a magical dead zone, though some magical populations clustered around Mecca. Majlis al Jinn, meanwhile, was mentioned as a notable thin place in the Nevernever and Way Nexus.

Central Asia was an interesting story, actually thriving where its muggle counterpart was – to Westerners at least – a blank spot on the map only intermittently distinguished, and usually for all the wrong reasons. Samarkand, however, was the centre of an independent state and was thriving. Iran was the formerly thriving Kingdom of Persia, the Islamic Revolution leading to people hopping across muggle borders in the face of militant anti-magic fervour. Now, some were slowly coming back, but cautiously and in small numbers.

China has been unified for millennia, then abruptly stopped being unified after the last Emperor was deposed and the era of the warlords began. The Communist Party was apparently rectifying this by force.

Japan was unified and still rather xenophobic. North Korea's witches and wizards fled South as soon as they realised how crazy the new regime was and did their best to snatch muggleborns out from under the noses of the Kim regime. They weren't always successful and as a result, North Korea had a significant problem with Warlocks.

India, Kashmir, Pakistan and Bangladesh were composed of a series of powerful kingdoms, even more removed from muggle affairs than wizards in the West. Obsessive in pureblood sentiment and primarily wandless, as well as being advanced and monumentally self-centred, they seemed to view the muggle world as beneath their dignity, if not entirely beneath notice. Small but growing wanded communities originally founded via Roman/Byzantine/Arab/Persian trade contact fostered by colonial rule (the previously mentioned wandless didn't really care so long as they were left alone, which they broadly were), were therefore receiving new blood from muggleborns and half-bloods who tend to be ignored or ostracised by the purebloods.

As for the rest, South Asia consisted of prosperous kingdoms along the Indian model due to being in the same cultural orbit, while Thailand was surprisingly centralised, thanks to an enduring monarchy. North Africa had Carthage as a powerful state, while Bedouin handled their own affairs. Egypt was, unsurprisingly, centralised thanks to the lingering remnants of Nasser's iron grip.

Central Africa had a mixture of powerful states and decentralised shamanic practise, while wands were much more prevalent in coastal states, former colonies and urbanised areas. Wakanda was and remained the regional magical power in East Africa, and the influence of the former Wakandan Empire was felt in southern Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia (a powerful state itself) etc. The many small Kingdoms and Emirates of Nigeria were still independent. Southern Africa had a similar situation to the previous, while South Africa, now technically unified, had previously been in a kind of informal apartheid of the 'you leave us be, we leave you be' kind, separate states. 

Australia had Western style states on the coast, while the Aboriginal tribes used to practise wandless magic, some were now adopting wands brought by settlers. As for the rest of Oceania, the Maoris and Pacific Islanders maintain their own traditions and nations - though, again, the more Westernised and urbanised communities were increasingly inclined to try wands.

It was all rather dizzying, a blizzard of facts and figures, stories and legends, embroidered by the blinding displays of colour and variety in the national costumes and accoutrements of witches and wizards from around the world.

It was also where things ended, for time was limited and both Draco and Hermione needed to get back. In the former case, he sighed, bade them all farewell, and made his way over to the escort of well-disguised SHIELD Agents shadowing him, but not before he spoke to Harry.

It was a muted discussion, but clearly quite serious.

As for Hermione, she was a different story, before she left to join her parents in muggle London, she too found herself being drawn aside. This time, by Carol as Harry finished speaking to Draco, then turned to speak to Jean-Paul.

"Hermione," the other girl said. "I need your help. But first, you need to understand something, and I'm going to be blunt here because diplomacy? Not my strongpoint. And I think you'll appreciate honesty."

"Okay," Hermione said. "What is it?"

"Harry's a fighter, a hero. He thinks in a different way than you do."

"I know that," Hermione said, frowning.

"I don't think you do," Carol said. "I'm trying to say this in the nicest way possible, but you have absolutely no idea what he's capable of."

"Actually, I think I do," Hermione said, hackles rising. "He's one of my best friends and I think I know him better than you do."

"Yeah? Maybe you do, in most things," Carol admitted freely. "You've spent years at boarding school together, after all. I've known him for about nine months, most of which he's been at school with you. And a lot of the times when we actually met up, supervillains attacked or the world nearly ended. Which kind of leads into my next question: you may know him as he normally is, but when did you last see him in a crisis? When did you last see him fight?"

"Last year, when Hogwarts was attacked," Hermione said.

Carol eyed her thoughtfully, as if reassessing her. "Before or after he pulled a Jesus?"

"... After," Hermione admitted, not adding that it was the single most terrifying thing she had ever seen.

Carol nodded. "That wasn't him in the driving seat," she said.

"What?" Hermione asked, startled. She'd suspected, of course, what with the way Dumbledore had reacted and the sheer power on display… then again, Harry had demonstrated that he had no shortage of that. But to have it so bluntly confirmed. "Who was it? What was it?"

"That's for Harry to say," Carol said. "And he might not want to. It's a bit painful for him."

"It's about his mother, isn't it?" Hermione said. "Whatever she did that protected him from Voldemort, it protected him again."

"You're sharp," Carol said after a moment. "Scary sharp." She sighed. "Yeah, it's along those lines." She shook he head. "Anwyay. I've seen Harry fight, when it's actually him doing the fighting. And not just when he's fighting, when he's so angry that he comes out on the other side of rage. He gets cold, ruthless and, frankly, downright vicious. His normal morals go completely out the window. To give you one example, when we got into HYDRA's base last year, he switched HYDRA Agents off without blinking – not killed them, knocked them out," she added, at Hermione's suddenly horrified look. "Even so, I think you know as well as I do how he's normally really careful about not going in other people's heads without asking."

"He once told me that the very idea made him feel sick," Hermione said quietly. "It revolted him. And he's always been frightened of his telepathic powers."

Carol grimaced. "Yes and no," she said. "He's scared of them still, what they could do, but he's much more willing to use them. Use them for scary things, if he has to." She waved away Hermione's questions. "It's for him to tell, if he wants to – which he probably doesn't. Anyhow, during that fight I was talking about... it looked like I'd been killed by that necromancer, Gravemoss, and the others were in a bad way. This guy's a Loki level sorcerer, jacked up even further by the Darkhold and by our standards, got some serious physical superpowers. Plus, judging by how Diana reacted around him, there was something seriously off about his presence. Even I could feel something was wrong about him and I'm about as psychic as a turnip. All of that, Harry wouldn't stand a chance, right? He'd be crippled by the bad vibes before he could even move and if he did, he'd be destroyed."

"Right," Hermione said. It sounded like a logical conclusion.

"Well, he didn't. He got mad. He got mad and he reached in with his telekinesis and ripped Gravemoss' ribcage open and tore his heart out," Carol said.

Hermione stared at her in horror.

"It didn't stick, he freaked out a little afterwards, and there was more to it," Carol said. "But that doesn't matter. What matters is that he was capable of doing something like that. You've seen him fight to survive, maybe, or to save someone. That's all well and good. I've seen that too. But when someone he cares about is hurt, though, a switch flicks in his brain and something scary happens: the brakes come off and the darkness comes out to play. I've seen him fight to kill and let me tell that it is one of the most frightening things I have ever seen."

"I can imagine," Hermione said quietly.

Carol let out a mirthless laugh, a disturbingly old and cynical sound for a girl who couldn't be more than sixteen years old. "Trust me, Hermione, you can't," she said. "And that's a good thing, because that's not the sort of thing you want in your head." Her expression turned grave. "I may not have known him as long as you have, or for very long in the grand scheme of things, but Harry is my best friend. We've been through hell together. And... I trust him. That's not something I'm used to or very good at doing. Part of why I trust him is because that rage, it scares him even more than it does everyone else and he's working on controlling it, something he's actually pretty good at now, even though it's really fucking hard since he's a psychic and where those powers are concerned, thought pretty much equals action. But he tries. He tries so goddamn hard. He watches his own thoughts every moment of every day, second-guessing each and every single one, because he couldn't bear the thought of slipping up and hurting someone."

"Are you trying to scare me off?" Hermione asked. "Away from Harry? Because it won't work."

"Good, because I want the opposite, actually. I'm trying to say that there are things about Harry that you don't know and that there's a dark side to him," Carol said. "It's like... all the experiences that should have fucked him up horribly, everything from having his mom's murder as his first memory, his horrendous abuse by those Dursley assholes and all the insane things he's gone through, stuff that that I can't even find the words for, like all of it got distilled into something dark. Something dark that he keeps boxed up in the back of his mind, probably because it's the only way he managed to stay sane."

"Harry's a good person."

"Exactly. He is one of the sweetest, kindest and best people I've ever met, an adorable dork who would do literally anything for someone he didn't even know without even thinking twice," Carol said. "I'm telling you this because I want him to stay that way. Because he can't do it alone, even if he thinks he can. I watch his back, the same way he watches mine. We cover each other's blindspots. And I can't do that while he's at school. Because sometimes, his dark side gets out of its box and you need to be ready when it does."

Hermione was silent for a while. "I will," she said eventually. "But tell me one thing first: the way you talk about what's going on his mind… you seem very familiar with it. Did Harry tell you about it?"

Carol was silent for a long moment. "Not in so many words," she said eventually. "But he showed me a thing or two about himself. Same way I showed him a thing or two about me."

Hermione's eyes widened. Did she mean… No. She couldn't, they couldn't, have.

Then again, she thought, Harry was a very handsome young man these days, even though he wasn't entirely aware of it, tall, leanly muscular and looking at least three years older than he was, his uniquely green eyes, scar and the newly developed lock of white hair adding a layer of mystery that Hermione knew from observation was often considered attractive.

Carol, in her own way, was of much the same mould: tall, muscular but curved in ways that drew the eye of men and boys alike, with golden blonde hair and warm blue eyes that nevertheless carried a glint that warned that this was not a person to be trifled with. Like Harry, her appearance belied her age, even more than his did.

Hermione didn't doubt that most people missed the glint in her eye and saw, frankly, a sex object. She equally didn't doubt that a) Harry didn't see her that way, b) he noticed that glint and if anything, was drawn to it. As far as she could tell, Harry's magnetic attraction to danger extended to his taste in women. He'd certainly seemed particularly drawn to the very dangerous Betsy Braddock, and as she'd seen when she visited the Tower late last year, to the ridiculously dangerous Natasha Romanova.

This, combined with the sense that they were somehow older than their chronological and biological ages would suggest, that their experiences had aged them significantly, and the indefinable but definite bond that existed between them, so strong that they slipped into telepathic conversation by accident, the level of trust that had been implied, made her wonder. Previously, she'd marked them down as entirely platonic, but after the things they'd been through together…

"No."

That jolted Hermione out of her thoughts, to see Carol rolling her eyes, obviously irritated. "I'm sorry?" she asked.

"I know what you're thinking and the answer is no," Carol said. "We're just friends. When I said showed, I meant psychically." She glanced over at Harry. "I mean, yes, he is hot and the poor boy will not know what has hit him when he gets back to that school of yours because the girls will be all over him, but we're just friends."

Hermione nodded. "To be honest, they'd already noticed him last year," she said. "One moment, he was just Harry to them, the next…"

"Yeah, growth spurts will do that," Carol said, voice more than a little bitter. Hermione could only surmise that she was speaking from personal experience.

"They won't bother him, though," she said. "I'll make sure of that."

Carol eyed her, and grinned. "I bet you will," she said. "But like I said: Me and him? Just friends." She gave Hermione a quizzical look. "What about you two?"

"What? Me and Harry?" Hermione asked, startled, before entertaining the thought for a moment. A moment later, she burst into laughter. The very idea was absurd. "He's handsome enough, I suppose, but we'd drive each other mad," she said. "Besides, Harry only very rarely remembers that I'm actually a girl." She smiled. "Like you put it: just friends."

Carol nodded.

Hermione's mind, meanwhile, was one that was rarely at rest. So it latched onto her hypothesis of, for want of a better word, Harry's type and ran with it. The result was that while Harry did tend to be attracted to frightening women, if you took that logic to its inevitable conclusion, Harry would have fallen for Professor McGonagall some time ago. She smiled and shook her head. Well, if that wasn't a lesson not to jump to conclusions, she didn't know what was.

Carol cocked an eyebrow, and Hermione said, "Just a funny thought."

Carol nodded. "We all get those," she said, then stuck out a hand. "Nice meeting you, Hermione."

Hermione shook it. "And you, Carol."

OoOoO

After Harry said his goodbyes to Hermione, it transpired that he had been talking to Jean-Paul both verbally, about unimportant things, and psychically, about something else.

He'd had a thought, a sudden flash of inspiration, from out of the blue. So he'd talked to Jean-Paul about taking him somewhere, without Bucky, a place he'd been meaning to go: Little Whinging, the neighbourhood in which he'd grown up. It was, he said, to get some closure, and he intended on going alone.

However, predictably Carol insisted that he didn't go alone. Someone's got to watch your back, she said.

Carol, even if I did run into any of my childhood bullies and they tried anything, they wouldn't stand a chance, Harry said.

I know, Carol said. That's kind of my point.

Harry's expression closed off.

Look, Harry, you're going to be going back to the place where you spent the worst years of your life, Carol said. Which, if I'm honest, is most of it.

Harry snorted. True, he said. You think I might snap.

I think you'd have to be made of stone not to feel anything, and you'd have to be Natasha not to show it, Carol said. And I'm not coming along as your restaining bolt or whatever. Well, not mainly. Mainly, I'm coming along because… I don't think this is something you should put yourself through alone, no matter what masochistic instincts you have going. If you really don't want me along, fine. I'll stay behind. But… She reached out a hand. You don't have to do it alone.

Harry's expression softened as he looked at the hand. Then, he took it. "Thanks," he said quietly.

"You all ready to go?" Bucky asked, then smirked. "Or to do whatever you're planning."

All three maintained expressions of perfect innocence. Too perfect.

"Don't look so surprised," he began, then stopped. He didn't physically move, but his entire demeanour changed. One moment, there was a relaxed young man keeping an eye on his charges on a day out, the next moment, there was the Soldier.

"Bucky?" Harry asked.

"Go," Bucky said calmly. "Have your fun, then go back to the Tower. I've got something to take care of."

"We can help," Harry sad, looking him in the eye.

"Your standard weapon in combat is large energy blasts," Bucky said, without changing tone. "We're in a crowded street, full of people with magical powers. You cut loose, they'll panic, and soon a large chunk of London will be rubble. Again. Go. I'll handle this."

Harry grimaced, then exchanged looks with the others. "Fine," he said. "Jean-Paul."

And just like that, all three of them were gone. Bucky checked the bug he'd placed on Harry and nodded when he saw that they were heading out of the city.

"Okay, Victor," he said under his breath. "You want to play? I'll play."

Then, he checked his weapons and set off, while considering which one to use.

There was, after all, more than one way to skin a cat.

OoOoO

"What do you think that Bucky was going on about?" Carol asked, as soon as they stopped.

"I don't know," Harry said. "I didn't sense anything in particular. Of course, surrounded by lots of magical people and creatures and…" He made a face. "I wasn't looking."

"Creatures of great power usually have a distinctive mental presence, non?" Jean-Paul said. "Therefore, if you did not sense something out of the ordinary, it was not a being of great power."

"So Bucky can handle it," Carol said. "And he's taken on things big and bad enough to make your senses scream before, Harry. It's probably best we stayed back and let him work."

Harry nodded reluctantly. "We could have handled it," he said. "I mean, if it wasn't that powerful…"

"The Winter Soldier was not that powerful, and he nearly killed your father," Jean-Paul said bluntly. "And I believe that you did not sense him either, correct?"

Harry whirled on him, eyes blazing with anger. Jean-Paul held his gaze without blinking. After several long, tense moments, Harry subsided and nodded curtly. "You're right," he said.

"Wow," Carol said. "This place is so…" She looked around at the identical houses. "Normal."

"Yeah," Harry said quietly. "It is. Very normal. The people round here pride themselves on that. It's very normal, very quiet, and except for when Dudley's gang were playing 'Harry Hunting', very dull."

"You think anyone will recognise you?" Carol asked.

"I doubt it," Harry said. "Last time most of them saw me I was a foot shorter, thin and wearing glasses and Dudley's old clothes." His gaze swivelled up to the white locks. "And I didn't have those."

"You do look pretty different," Carol admitted. "Act different too."

"Really?"

"Yes," Jean-Paul said. "You are more confident. More willing to assert yourself. And your voice is rather deeper, too."

Harry grunted.

"What were you and Draco talking about, by the way?" Carol asked.

Harry was silent for a moment. "He knows," he said eventually.

"About what?"

Harry silently lifted the phoenix feather around his neck.

"Your mom?" Carol asked.

Harry shook his head. "Not in so many words," he said. "He knows about the Phoenix. He knows I have a bit of the Phoenix in me. I'm not sure what he knows about mum."

"Even so, how does he know?" Jean-Paul asked, frowning.

"Apparently, I'm not the only one with the Sight," Harry said. "Which isn't the most helpful thing to say, since most every wandless Wizard has it, along with every Asgardian mage and… you get the idea."

"Yeah, but isn't Draco wanded?" Carol asked.

"Yeah," Harry said. "That's what puzzled me. And his mind… it's shielded. Really, really tightly shielded. I was trying to pick up a stray thought or two, but I could barely even pick emotions."

"What did he want?" Carol asked.

"To let me know that he knew," Harry said. "And to be careful about using it, my Phoenix power."

"Wait, hang on, I thought that it was just a protection," Carol said.

"That's what I thought," Harry said. "But I tapped into it when Voldemort turned up."

"The giant firebird thing, huh? I should have guessed."

Harry shook his head. "No, that was just me," he said. "It was just before. Long story, Voldemort drew me, dad, and Tony into a clearing with the Dark Mark, a lot of Ministry witches and wizards too. It was chaos, everyone throwing everything at each other, while I was trying to protect Pepper in your body. And Voldemort nudged dad's mind, enough so that when he saw my psychic bubble go up, he lashed out. My shield wasn't going to be strong enough. But just as Mjolnir came down, I…" He shook his head. "It was like a fire in my mind. And suddenly, my shield went multi-coloured, Mjolnir hit it, and everything standing within a hundred yards suddenly wasn't, trees and all." He paused. "Also, my clothes went all red and gold and Phoenix shaped."

"Phoenix shaped?"

Harry grimaced. "It's hard to explain if you haven't seen it," he said. "They changed back afterwards."

"Mon dieu," Jean-Paul said quietly. "So, you can use the power of the Phoenix."

"I'm not sure how, maybe only when I'm in real danger, it's…" Harry said, then trailed off. "Yeah. Only a little bit. According to Draco, it's only a fragment, though how the hell he knows I have no idea. But yeah, I think so."

"That… is scary," Carol said. "I mean, no offence, but your powers are crazy strong enough to begin with."

"I know," Harry said unhappily. "Draco said that it was dangerous and that I shouldn't use it unless I really have to. Not just because it's hard to control, but because 'the power of the Phoenix isn't meant to touch the world for long in one place. Every use of it sends a ripple through the Astral Plane, opening cracks only barely closed, and opening doors that should never be opened.'"

"Well, that's creepy," Carol said.

"You say that he changed his outlook," Jean-Paul said suddenly. "Unexpectedly."

Harry nodded. "Just after dad came back," he said. "It was like he'd grown up overnight."

"So, he changed unexpectedly immediately after an event of great importance, he has an exceptionally well shielded mind, and he knows the Phoenix well," Jean-Paul said. "Far better than most, anyway." He looked grim. "I am getting a bad feeling, mes chéris, a very bad feeling."

"Aw no," Carol groaned. "Don't tell me you're thinking what I think you're thinking."

Jean-Paul nodded.

"Damn. I was getting to like the guy."

"There's no proof," Harry said, frowning unhappily. He'd come to like the new and improved Draco. The concept that someone else had simply taken his place and simply acted his way into Harry's good graces was not a pleasant one. "And why would he risk revealing himself to me, of all people?"

"I do not know about you, mon cher," Jean-Paul said. "But with all respect to your mother, if I knew what the Phoenix was capable of and I were in his shoes, I would risk breaking my cover over even the tiniest fragment of her power." He shrugged. "Assuming that it is a cover in the first place."

Harry's unhappy frown remained in place, but he nodded, conceding the logic of this. "I'll talk to dad and uncle Loki about it," he said.

Jean-Paul nodded. "Then if you will excuse me, mes chéris, I have an errand to attend to. I will be back in an hour."

And with that, he vanished in a blur of golden lightning.

"So," Carol said, after a moment. "This has been an interesting day."

Harry snorted. "Just a bit," he said. "You got on with Hermione?"

Carol nodded. "Yeah. Nice girl," she said. "Tougher than she seems. Maybe doesn't have your measure as well as she thinks she does."

Harry looked puzzled.

"She's never seen you in a fight," Carol said.

Harry opened his mouth.

"That thing with the troll doesn't count."

"She saw the fight at Easter, too," Harry said.

"Wait, what?"

Harry explained the entirety of 'the Pensieve Incident'.

"That… sounds horrendous," Carol said quietly. "God, the poor girl. And that Ron guy, too. That must have sucked beyond telling."

Harry nodded.

Carol squeezed his hand. "You know, this kind of proves what I was saying to her," she said. "About you. About your powers."

"What? That they're dangerous? That I'm dangerous?" Harry said bitterly.

Carol rolled her eyes. "No," she said. "That they're dangerous, yes, but that you know it, and that you work so hard to keep them in check, every second of every day. It's amazing, it really is."

Harry looked into her eyes and saw frank admiration, tempered with a fond irritation.

"It also shows how far you've come," she added. "I mean, from that, to performing emotional surgery on me."

"That didn't exactly turn out the way it was intended," Harry said.

Carol smiled. I don't mind, she said.

Harry couldn't stop the smile blooming on his face.

There's the smile Diana was talking about, Carol said. It really is kind of lovely, I can see what she meant. It makes you look like Jean, actually.

Really?

Uh-huh.

Your smile's pretty lovely too, Harry said. The real smile, I mean. Not the smirk.

There is nothing wrong with my smirk, Carol said defensively. Besides, you smirk too – you probably picked it up from Tony.

Or dad. Or Loki. Or Natasha. Or Clint. Or Darcy. Or Sirius. Or even Wanda. It's not like there's a shortage of candidates.

True, true.

By this point, they had reached the swings in the park, settling down on them.

"So," Carol said aloud. "Small, dull park. More of the same, I guess."

"Yeah," Harry said. "I first met Wanda around here."

"Oh?"

Harry nodded. "She kept an eye on me for a while," he said. "Tried to send me cards and presents. The cards all got torn up or burnt and the presents all went to Dudley or were chucked out."

Carol glowered. "The more I hear about these people, the more I want to make them suffer," she said.

"They're already suffering," Harry said. "Apparently. Loki was a bit sketchy on the details when I asked him. Director Fury handled it."

"Handled," Carol said slowly.

"They're alive," Harry said. "Or were when I last asked. I think Fury just locked them away somewhere nasty. Dudley went into foster care."

"I'm surprised he didn't," Carol began, then stopped.

"You're surprised Loki didn't kill them," Harry said quietly.

"Yeah. Sorry."

"I can't blame you. I was a bit surprised too," Harry said. "He said to me that he'd happily have done it. Dad was certainly considering it – Tony had to hold him back, in full armour, and talk him down. Personally, I think Loki just preferred to let them suffer for the rest of their lives."

There was silence.

"I wonder how Bucky's doing," Carol said.

"Probably fine," Harry said. "Bucky can handle himself."

Carol snorted. "There's the understatement of the century," she said, then looked up sharply.

"Carol?"

"Listen," she said.

Harry did, and he heard mocking jeers, carried on the late summer breeze. He closed his eyes briefly and extended his psychic senses, almost immediately detecting a group of minds, four oozing petty malice, one hurt and afraid.

"Come on," he said, setting off at a jog, Carol following. Barely a minute or two later, they found four boys their age surrounding a fifth, one notably smaller than the others. And with a jolt, Harry recognised them.

"Piers, Malcolm, Dennis and Gordon," he said. "Why am I not surprised?"

"You know these ass-clowns?" Carol asked, as the four turned, puzzled.

"Unfortunately," Harry said.

"Who the hell are you?" Piers asked, then leered at Carol. It only compounded his resemblance to a rat. "And who's your friend?"

"So not interested," Carol said contemptuously.

"Maybe I can change your mind," Piers said.

"I really doubt that," Carol said.

At that moment, the younger boy they'd been tormenting made a break for it, but was grabbed by Gordon.

"Let him go," Harry said.

"Or what?" Gordon asked

"I make you," Harry said.

"You've got some big balls on you," Piers said, striding over and trying to bully Harry backwards. Unfortunately, he was an inch shorter and thinner, so didn't quite manage it.

"And you've got terrible breath," Harry said.

Piers grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "Okay, I don't care who you are, but I think you should apologise, before you start having to pick up teeth."

"Interesting suggestion," Harry said, then moved in a blur. There was a crunch and Piers let out a cry of pain, clutching his nose. Harry had nutted him.

"Nice," Carol said. "Where did you learn that?"

"Sif," Harry said.

"Cool."

"Thanks," Harry said, then raised his voice as he sauntered forwards, Dudley's old gang watching him warily as their leader spat blood. It had been quite a comprehensive headbutt. "I suppose I can't blame you for not recognising me. Last time we met, I was a lot smaller. I didn't have white in my hair. I had glasses, too. And I was your old leader's favourite punching bag."

There was a long moment, then the blood began to drain from their faces – and in Piers' case, down their faces too.

Harry smiled a smile with lots of teeth and no humour. "Now, going by how much it was in the papers and the fact that you're all just about able to read, I think you know who I am. Who my dad is. Maybe you've even figured out why Dudley never laid a hand on me after I turned eleven."

"Y-y-you're not human," one of them managed.

"Half-human," Harry said. "On my mother's side. I'm still related to Dudley, more's the pity." He leaned against the wall, arms nonchalantly folded and legs crossed. "I've also got anger issues. Who knew? And hanging out with my family, their friends – you know, the Avengers – means that I've picked up a trick or three. So, unless you want me to work out those anger issues on you, you're going to let the kid go."

"Or what?" Gordon said, and sneered. "Maybe you got a bit bigger, but it's still four against one."

"Two," Carol said. "Though, honestly, I'm just inclined to sit back and watch him kick your asses. Do you know where to get popcorn round here?"

Her tone, though, was belied by her eyes, which were watching Harry carefully.

"I got a whole lot more than that," Harry said, and his eyes flashed. Gordon's hand released the boy's arm and flew up to punch himself in the face. The boy, eyes wide, scarpered.

"What the…" one of the others, Malcolm went, edging backwards.

"You're a freak," Piers managed, through bloodied lips and a broken nose. "Just like Dudley and his mum and dad always said. A freak!"

"A freak with about ten years worth of punching bottled up and superpowers," Harry said. "Whereas you're the one who always held people's arms behind their backs for Dudley to punch. Never did it yourself, never looked anyone in the eye, you were always the small one, the one with the ideas, the one they kept around because you had more imagination than they did and you made yourself useful. You're a coward, Piers, you always have been."

Piers let out a yell of anger that turned into a wheezing whimper, as Harry easily blocked his wild haymaker and delievered a hammer blow into his plexus, then kicked his ankles out from under him, dropping him like a sack of potatoes.

"Stay down," Harry advised.

Piers glared at him, then looked at the others. "Guys," he hissed. "What are you waiting for?"

The others, large, bulky boys, all Harry's height or taller, and most definitely wider, hesitated.

Harry smirked and beckoned. He was starting to enjoy this. "Come on," he said. "Tell you what, I'll make it fair. I won't even use my powers."

After another moment, they charged.

Normally, three against one is something that will end very badly for the one, especially if the three have some faint knowledge of teamwork. This one, however, was a good deal stronger than any of the three, a trained fighter, and much, much faster.

So in the end, the fight was swift, savage and very one sided. One wild punch caught Harry on the cheek, but the puncher, Malcolm, caught a knee to the stomach and a punch to the eye. Gordon took an elbow in the throat. Dennis was most unfortunate, since Harry hit him with the nearest thing that came to hand – Piers.

Less than a minute had passed, and Harry, bloody knuckled, slightly bruised and barely breathing hard, was the only one left standing. Dudley's gang, his childhood tormentors were in a groaning heap on the floor.

It wasn't a satisfying as he'd expected, as he'd hoped. Once, he'd have loved to be able to do this. Not out of any real desire to make them suffer. He just wanted, like most bullied kids, to turn the tables. Just once. Now, having fought monsters and murderers, dark lords and demon gods, it just felt… kind of pointless, really.

Admittedly, even now he'd still dearly love to go a few rounds with Dudley, because some scars didn't fade that fast. But this lot… all they'd ever been were the me-too-ists, the ones who'd followed Dudley because he was the biggest, strongest and thickest bully in the area. The only real reason they were still bullying now was because that was all they really knew how to do, the only way they could feel like big, strong men. It was kind of pathetic really.

"They're not worth it," he said aloud.

"You're right," Carol said.

"Why didn't you step in?"

"Because you weren't doing anything permanent and I figure that assholes like this could do with being given a taste of their own medicine," Carol said.

Harry nodded. "It won't change them, though," he said. "It won't make them better. I found that out with the Ravenclaws. With Luna."

Carol put a hand on his shoulder. "Yeah," she said. "There's not much you can do about that."

Harry paused. "Maybe I can," he said slowly.

"Harry?" Carol asked carefully. "Are you doing what I think you're doing?"

"I'm not rewriting brains," Harry said. "Just…" He hauled up Piers, who groaned and focused on him, then cringed, expecting another beating.

"Look at me," Harry said, voice echoing with command. Piers did. "You are an arsehole," Harry said, voice still still strange, but with different, subtler harmonics.

"I am an arsehole," Piers repeated tonelessly.

"You will stop picking on other people."

"I will stop picking on other people."

"You will go home and rethink your life and be a better person."

"I will go home and rethink my life and be a better person."

Harry then turned to the others. "You will all do the same."

"We will all do the same," the other three mumbled, in that same toneless voice.

Harry nodded. "Good," he said, voice normal again. "Now go. And take your mates with you."

Piers nodded, and started dragging the rest of Dudley's old gang upright.

"Jedi mind trick," Carol said, tone neutral. "Cute."

Harry nodded. "More a strong suggestion than a command," he said. "Maybe they will change. Maybe they won't. It's up to them." He shrugged. "But at the very least, it should make them a little less inclined to go around beating up little kids for the next couple of weeks."

"I'd have thought that having the crap kicked out of them would do that," Carol said, watching them go.

Harry turned to her. "You don't think it was the right thing to do?" he asked. "It's just… well, I tried the beating people up approach on the Ravenclaws. Their Quidditch team, to be exact. But it didn't make them stop what they were doing with Luna, hiding her stuff. It just made them hide it better." He watched Dudley's old gang stagger away. "Same thing would have happened here. So… Jedi mind trick. Non-invasive, just, you know, a suggestion."

Carol watched him for a moment, then smiled. "And you wonder why I say you're basically Luke Skywalker," she said, linking arms with him.

"I am not."

"Oh, you so are."

OoOoO

Such lightness could not last forever.

As the hour wound down, and they wandered along the streets of Little Whinging, passing Harry's old school and heading towards the doctor's surgery.

"I'm guessing you saw the inside of that a lot," Carol said.

"Not as much as you might think," Harry said. "Though the doctor, Doctor Milbury, was nice."

"Milbury," Carol said, and snorted.

Harry frowned.

"Sorry," Carol said. "It's just, seriously, can you sound any more posh English?" She saw Harry's expression. "Sorry."

Harry nodded. "He talked to me a lot," he said. "Didn't just ignore the bruises and stuff like everyone else did. He was pretty serious about his check-ups, actually. And he gave me sweets. Dudley ate them, of course, but it was the thought that counted."

"Why'd he never report it to social services?" Carol asked.

"Maybe he did," Harry said. "He disappeared before I started Hogwarts."

"You think that he asked too many questions and the big bad telepath disappeared him?"

"Maybe," Harry said grimly. "Or… maybe not."

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, the fact that he's walking towards us is a definite clue."

"Huh," Carol said, and eyed the man walking towards them. He was a well-dressed man in his early fifties, with greying dark hair, brown eyes and an astonished expression.

"Harry?" he said. "Is that you?"

"Doctor Milbury," Harry said, shaking his hand.

"I knew it was you," Milbury said in a rush. He looked nervous. "When I saw you, just now. I thought that it couldn't be, that you'd never come back here – after all, why would you? This is fortuitous, very fortuitous indeed." He turned to Carol. "And who is your friend?"

"Carol," she said, shaking his hand. "Carol Danvers."

A spark of interest seemed to appear in his eyes, before vanishing. "Lovely to meet you," he said.

"Likewise," she said. "Why did you say that it was fortuitous? Isn't that British for lucky?"

"It is," Milbury said, before flicking glances left and right. He was definitely nervous.

"Doctor Milbury," Harry said. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Milbury said. "Just fine. I –" He stopped. "Perhaps we should talk inside."

Harry and Carol exchanged a look, then followed him into the surgery, and into one of the offices. "Are you working here again, doctor?" Harry asked.

"Oh, no, just collecting a few files," Milbury said. "A few pieces of data. One or two things that I managed to hide."

"Hide?" Carol asked.

"The telepath," Harry said quietly. "That's why you left. They came after you."

Milbury started. "You know?" he asked, then shook his head. "Of course you would, a psychic as powerful as you, it would be impossible to conceal it forever."

"You know I'm a psychic?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Of course," Milbury said. "I've known for a very long time that you had the potential, and now, well…" He let out a strained chuckle. "It's like standing next to a generator, no, a nuclear reactor!"

"You're a psychic?" Harry asked, astonished.

"Makes sense," Carol remarked. "If you're going to try dodge a psychic, it probably helps to be one in the first place."

"Quite, Miss Danvers," Milbury said, rummaging through the back of his filing cabinet. He picked at the back of the drawer for a moment, before a panel came away, revealing… nothing. "Ah, here we are," he said. Then, he pressed a hand to the panel, and suddenly, part of the wall slid away, to reveal an alcove, containing several files.

"What are these?" Harry asked, as Milbury pulled them out.

"My medical data on you, Harry," Milbury said. "Complete with analysis of your M-Gene, which allows you to perform magic, your X-Gene, which gives you your psychic abilities and, well…" He looked down at the files and lowered his voice to a whisper. "I even believe that I isolated the traits that you have inherited from your father. That make you Asgardian."

"I… I didn't show any sign of dad's side of things until last year," Harry said, frowning.

"Nothing overt, perhaps," Milbury said. "But there were little things, here and there. You healed faster than most boys would in your position, more than can simply be ascribed to magic. You were a little tougher, too, quicker. And, well." He smiled. "DNA does not lie, even when it is the DNA of a demigod."

"Harry's dad was mortal when Harry was, you know, made," Carol said. "And not just stripped of his powers, but in an actual mortal body. Doesn't that change things a little?"

"It does," Milbury said. "Which makes this research so important."

"Why?" Harry asked.

"Because, Harry, it, combined with further analysis of your current state, could contain the secret to something that makes the super soldier serum look like a play thing," Milbury said, excited and nervous at the same time. "A road-map of the process in which someone entirely mortal steadily becomes a god." He poked Harry in the chest. "The secrets to understanding divinity is in you, Harry."

There was a long moment of silence.

"I'm guessing that that's what the telepath wanted," Harry said eventually, voice quiet. "That's why they kept me here. So they could study me. That's what that lab was for, to find out what made me tick."

"Not entirely," Milbury said. "I think that the interaction of your M-Gene and your X-Gene was also of interest, let alone the complexities of how those factors interacted with your incipient divinity. Your psychic abilities alone, and their development as compared to those of your cousin, provide enough material for a lifetime of papers."

"Back off the scientific obsession, doc," Carol said. "Harry?"

Harry had frozen, staring at Milbury. "How did you know that my cousin was a psychic?" he asked quietly.

"Well, you mentioned her," Milbury said. "Mentioned what she did to your other cousin, Dudley, even if you did elide the details somewhat. As a psychic myself, I could hardly miss it."

"No," Harry said slowly. "I didn't tell you. The next day, after she left, I forgot she even existed for years afterwards."

"Maybe your aunt and uncle, then," Milbury said.

"No, they didn't take Dudley to hospital, I remember that much," Harry said slowly, advancing on Milbury. "They were scared of having to explain what happened, of looking mad. They wouldn't have told anyone. Unless…" His eyes narrowed. "You did house calls, didn't you, Doctor Milbury. If that's even your real name. You're not here by chance, are you? Somehow, you knew that I was coming."

Milbury's expression had been even more nervous and deeply confused. Then, the expression simply vanished, fading away to be replaced by one of cool detachment. He nodded. "I made sure that you did," he said. "That thought, that sudden inspiration to come here. Don't you wonder where it came from?"

Harry's blood ran cold.

"I have invested a lot of time and effort into you over the years, Harry," Milbury said. "I will not see it wasted."

Carol struck without warning, putting all her super soldier derived power behind a punch that would have smashed through concrete.

Milbury caught it without even looking away from Harry, responding with a swift and savage punch of his own, one that dropped Carol like a ton of bricks.

"Just because I disdain physical combat," he said coolly. "Does not mean that I am not good at it."

Harry snarled and lashed out with a psychic blast that should have torn Milbury's mind to shreds. Instead, it was batted away by another mind, with almost contemptuous ease.

As Harry whirled to face the new presence, the new and strangely familiar mind, Milbury remarked, "And just because I am here does not mean that I am here alone."

The new presence emerged, and Harry stared in shock.

"Jean?" he whispered.

Then, she reached past his defences with a tendril of blue-white power, as easy as breathing, and sent him to sleep.

"It's done, Doctor Essex," he heard her say, as everything faded away.

Then, all was darkness.

Chapter Text

Avengers Mansion was, unsurprisingly, in chaos.

Thor had, predictably, reacted badly to his son being kidnapped again. The fact that one of his son's friends had been snatched as well only made it worse. Loki, also looking severely displeased, had stayed for long enough to ensure that Thor's anger wouldn't result in New York being consumed by a colossal hurricane and that he would stay put for the time being, then vanished to check his sources.

The rest of the team was similarly furious: Bruce, eyes glowing green, had gone into the specially installed quiet room to calm down, Tony was simultaneously scanning every CCTV camera in the city and beefing up the Mansion's security to hitherto unimagined levels in a truly epic fit of paranoia, Clint had embraced the sort of calm usually seen in snipers about to take a shot and Steve had, after being persuaded not to immediately suit up and head out, gone to the gym to destroy some heavy bags.

Of the rest, Pepper had been profoundly worried, but had largely maintained her calm by doing what she usually did and ensuring that the Avengers remained functional while keeping Ada either in her arms or within arm's reach at all times, Jane was providing moral support for Thor and by her presence, forcing him to remain in control, and Darcy was scowling and toying with her taser.

In short, the Mansion was on a knife edge and teetering, something not helped by the arrival of a furious General O'Neill, whose joy at being called out of a budget meeting had been severely curtailed when he'd found that his beloved niece had been kidnapped. The Avengers were only spared the sharp end of this fury because of the timely arrival of Ivan Petrovitch, Natasha's old mentor, who had been retrieved from his quiet retirement by Loki.

He had calmly and bluntly explained that if whoever was behind this had not wanted Carol for a specific reason – taking it as read that they would want Harry – they would have killed her either as a witness or the moment that her usefulness as a hostage had expired. And though Loki's tracking spells couldn't get a fix, his divinations via her shield, gifted by Odin and mystically connected to her, revealed that she was alive, if not necessarily well.

"Your family's heritage has been discovered before, General," Petrovitch said. "When the Red Room kidnapped your mother. While her mother, Peggy Carter, very thoroughly destroyed and salted the earth of that particular base, it is not impossible that some information survived. Some people who remembered certainly did, myself among them."

"You think that the Red Room are behind this?" Steve asked tensely.

"They are one of my suspects," Ivan said.

"HYDRA could have done it," Clint said.

"It is far too soon. Following the events of London, Lucius Malfoy will have crawled under the largest rock he can find, and he will not emerge any time soon," Thor said bitterly.

"HYDRA does not have the resources to do this," Ivan said.

"The same way that they couldn't have infested SHIELD and made inroads into half the NATO armed forces?" O'Neill demanded. "How do we know we aren't dealing with some HYDRA splinter cell?"

"It's possible," Ivan admitted.

"Do we have any other suspects?" Clint asked. "Anyone else powerful enough and crazy enough to do it?"

"It depends on the motive," Ivan said. "If they want him for his DNA, or for what he could become, that would be different from those who would want him for use as a hostage and bargaining chip, or from those who would simply want to eliminate a threat – though I think that is by far the least likely, since he is not dead yet. Of the two that remain, then: in the former scenario; the Weapon X program, HYDRA and the Red Room. In the latter, I would assume mostly supernatural threats; the Red, Grey or White Court, the Order of the Blackened Denarius, the Winter Court, a representative of one of the old pantheons… there are many possibilities."

"It is not the Winter Court," Thor said. "Queen Mab is cold and cruel, yes, but she is calculating. She knows that a war with Asgard would be one that she would lose, and that an offense such as this could only be answered with war." He drummed his fingers on the table, cracking it in the process. With a grimace, he went on. "The vampires would seek to eliminate him outright, and the Red and White Courts are already at war. They neither want nor need more enemies. The Fallen are mad enough, and they would certainly desire Carol as a host. But Harry is, I believe, too much trouble for them to consider worth the effort, limited as they are, and they have never sought open war with Asgard, which is what such an act would inevitably cause. As for one of the old pantheons…"

"Any suspects?" Clint asked.

"Avalon and Olympus," Thor said shortly. "Avalon and Asgard have a long-standing enmity and Avalon is intimately tied up with the land of Britain. The gods of Avalon will be awake and active. As for Olympus… Hera despises demigods. She has encountered Harry before and the encounter ended with her public humiliation. It would be within character for her to arrange this, to avenge her pride and prove that demigods do not belong in this modern age."

"From what I heard, you scared her pretty good," Steve said. "When she and Harry met, I mean."

"Aye," Thor said. "And Lily had words with her too, through Harry." He sighed. "That could be part of the problem."

"How is Hera in keeping up with the times?" Clint asked. "Because I've gone over the tapes, what we've got, and whoever it was, they were operating with very well trained and equipped extraction team, human trained, using a jet with no manifest from a nearby airfield to get out of the country. It vanished off the radar shortly after it got over the North Sea."

"I do not know," Thor said. "Though I doubt that she would think to do so. In any case, she is used to acting with impunity."

"Dark Ages mindset, then," O'Neill said, with a sardonic smile. "Oh joy." The smile vanished. "Look, let's assume that since we're dealing with people who're using human tech, human know-how and going dark as soon as they can, they're human based and not backed by some major level supernatural badass."

"A valid assumption," Ivan said. "Mostly only the vampires truly employ human forces, and it is unlikely to be them. They cannot afford more enemies. And the fashion these days is for superhuman weapons, which makes me think of the Red Room – HYDRA are too recently diminished and Weapon X are still clawing their way back to relevance. Neither would go for an Omega Class being, even if that being is still a child and not fully realised, much less risking crossing the Avengers, on MI13's territory as well. They would start with weaker, more vulnerable targets." He shrugged. "Of course, I cannot be certain, but I believe that only the Red Room would dare."

"Which still leaves the question of how they subdued him in the first place," Clint said. "And am I the only one who's noticed that Nat and Barnes aren't here?"

A sudden, chill silence descended as the implications set in. And not all of what followed was worries for their well-being.

Tony was roused from his preparations to check the transponder beacon in Bucky's metal arm. It had been in London, as expected, moving slowly in Diagon Alley, before suddenly moving fast across the city, as if he was chasing something. Or being chased.

As for Natasha, there was no sign, there hadn't been for days. And that in itself spoke volumes.

"It is the Red Room," Ivan said, now with certainty. "With that spread of targets, all Red Room associated… they are resurrecting old projects." He stroked his beard. "Natalia and Comrade Winter are missing," he said. "If they have been taken, then perhaps the Red Room has made these two moves in concert because it believes that they know something about Miss Danvers and the Serum. Or perhaps it is the priority is punishment."

"Punishment?" Bruce asked quietly.

"For their defiance, the Red Room will break them," Petrovich said. "Perhaps study them both: Comrade Winter's enhancements were never replicated and I believe that Russia's Infinity Formula was a casualty of the post-Cold War upheaval." He looked grim. "Then, depending on the whim of who is in command, they will either force them to serve once more, or they will kill them as an example." He sighed. "If I had to guess, Natalia would be considered too much of a liability and be executed. As for Comrade Winter… the Winter Soldier would rise again."

"What about my son?" Thor asked. "What about Carol?"

"They will both be studied," Petrovich said plainly.

"Studied," Tony said flatly. "As in, experimented on." Bruce was regulating his breathing, trying to stay calm.

Petrovich nodded.

"Wait, how are they all Red Room associated?" Steve asked. "Bucky and Natasha, yes, but Carol and Harry…"

"Are associated with more than you know," a voice said from the door.

Everyone turned. Alison Carter was standing in the doorway, a cold, hard expression on her face. "Incidentally," she said in a voice of steel as she strode in. "I am not inclined to being kept out of the loop, especially where my family is concerned."

Steve and O'Neill both winced.

"Mom," O'Neill began.

"We will be having words later, Jonathan James O'Neill," she said dangerously, and O'Neill winced. "And with you, dad." Steve also winced. "As I will with my godson," she added, eyeing Tony, who was too engrossed in his computers to notice. She turned to the rest. "Carol is associated through me. I was kidnapped by the Red Room as a child, for the serum in my blood. While that was part of a partnership an alien who is long dead, the Red Room were looking to get a viable version of the serum out of it. I suspect that they did – the Infinity Formula. At the very least, it probably helped perfect it."

"What about Harry?" Clint asked.

"A room, the walls dripping with blood'," Thor quoted. "Trelawney's prophecy. She also spoke of a being within it, 'the Ageless Kingmaker, a Thief with a Thousand Faces'. The Red Room. And a creature within it."

"Interesting," Alison said mildly. "But that wasn't what I was referring to." She looked at Ivan. "Hello, Mister Pietrovitch; and yes, I know very well who you are."

"I would expect nothing less, Vasilisa," Ivan said, moustache twitching in a faint smile.

"Flatterer," Alison said wryly. "I think that I have a theory or two that you might be able to confirm."

"Screw theories, where will they be?" O'Neill demanded. "I'll put a team together and be there within four hours." His tone and expression left no doubt as to the fact that he'd be leading it.

"Any team you could put together wouldn't be a match for the Red Room," Alison said. When O'Neill looked about to protest, she gave him a hard look. "No, Jack. Trust me on this. I've spent the majority of my life fighting these people, I know what they're capable of."

"She is right," Petrovich said. "The Red Room is where monsters live and where they are born. Currently, I believe it is the source of Russia's more successful Iron Man imitations. Whatever they have available, it was sufficient to handle an Omega Class entity, if one still growing into his power. Without at least significant experience of superhuman opponents, your soldiers would be dead men walking."

"How do you know?" O'Neill asked.

"Because I used to work there," Petrovich said. "I defected with Natalia, Natasha. I would rather die than go back, as would she, as would Comrade – as would Barnes. Some have described it as Hell on Earth, General. They are wrong: it is worse. So much worse."

That chilling pronouncement silenced the room.

"He's right, General," Steve said, apparently ignoring the fact that he was talking to his grandson. "Back in the War, I saw brave men who'd fought the Nazis tooth and nail simply be unable to handle fighting superhumans and the supernatural. It takes a different skill set and more importantly, a different frame of mind. You either learn those in training or on the job and your team, whoever you get together, won't have either."

O'Neill opened his mouth to issue a hot reply, thought for a long moment, then, grudgingly, closed it. "Fine," he ground out. "But I want in. And before anyone says anything, this is not my first trip to the world of the weird."

Alison's lips thinned, but when the remaining Avengers looked at her, she nodded.

"What about Carol's parents?" Pepper asked softly.

"I will handle that," Alison said.

"Marie is not going to take this well," Jack predicted. "As for Joe…"

"Joe will know precisely what he needs to and no more," Alison said.

"You're not going to tell him?" Steve asked, frowning. "I know that Carol and he don't see eye to eye, but surely he deserves to know."

"Marie knows the score, Joe doesn't," Alison said bluntly. "And we don't have time to explain it to him." She looked grim. "We have very little time, in fact, if my fears even approach fact."

"And it gets worse," Tony muttered. "Of course it gets worse."

"How?" Thor asked. "How can this possibly get worse?"

"It can always get worse," Alison said, then turned to Ivan. "Tell me, Mister Pietrovitch: what do you know of Project Krasnyy Syn?"

Ivan went deathly white, then nodded slowly. "Of course," he said faintly. "I had not thought of it before. I should have realised."

"What is Krasnyy Syn?" Steve asked.

"And why do I get the feeling that we're not going to like the answer?" Clint added.

"The short version?" Alison asked. "It's a ghost born of the death throes of the Cold War, one that could never have realistically been made to work. Until now. The long version? Well…"

Alison explained.

Clint was right. They didn't like it.

And if it were at all possible, they liked her proposal of who they were going to talk to next even less.

OoOoO

"I do not like this," Thor growled.

"You've said," Alison said. "And I understand why. Alexander Pierce is a vile, traitorous little worm. However, he is the most likely to know where to find them."

"Remind me why," Thor said, in tones that said he knew perfectly well why.

Loki answered anyway. "Pierce ran the HYDRA within SHIELD, but he also played a significant part in the running of SHIELD itself," he said. "The Red Room was an enemy to both HYDRA and SHIELD, a powerful one, even if it was in the process of rebuilding. and therefore an organisation that he would have watched very carefully. Moreover, brother, we do not have the time to be picky."

Thor ground his teeth and nodded.

After some argument, the composition of those visiting Pierce had been determined based on those for whom this was personal, who had the relevant expertise, and could be trusted not to murder Pierce with their bare hands as soon as they got within reach. While Thor would be sorely tempted, that was an advantage – he was present as a looming potential threat. After all, even Loki could hardly be expected to be able to stop his brother in time if he decided to splatter Pierce across his cell, and, indeed, the surrounding states. And that was if he actually intended to try. Pierce would know that, and it would make him wary.

Of course, he didn't show it.

"You know," Pierce said, as they faced him across the table of the visiting room. "When I was told I was going to have visitors, I really wasn't expecting you three."

He was shackled by hand and by foot, dressed in a standard set of orange prison coveralls, a little thinner than he had once been, a little greyer of hair and wrinklier of skin. And yet, he still looked as confident as he had when he had been one of the most powerful men in the world, the sort of person who could topple a nation with a few words and, were it not for Fury successfully decrypting a desperate phone call from Lucius Malfoy, who he had left to swing in the wind, he still would have been. Indeed, he'd likely have become even more powerful, reaping vast gains from the chaos Malfoy's HYDRA had caused. This would have left most ruing their luck, bitter and irate at best. Pierce, however, was not most.

"Who were you expecting?" Alison asked, eyebrow arched.

"Oh, the usual. Interrogators of all sorts, people wanting me to tell them everything I know about HYDRA," Pierce said. He chuckled, sounding for all the world like the genial grandfather he appeared to be. "I mean, I've told them everything, but they insist on trying to wring more out of me." He shrugged. "What can you do?"

"Liar," Alison said evenly. "You know as well as I do that if you'd given up all your secrets, you would have been executed for treason already. You hold as many you can back, and let them slip out from time to time, enough to convince your interrogators that you're still a potentially valuable resource and therefore worth keeping alive."

Pierce simply chuckled. "You always were a sharp one, Alison," he said. "One of the sharpest SHIELD ever had. Still not quite up to your mother's standard, of course. But then, who is?"

Alison didn't even blink. "Let me cut to the chase," she said. "I know the games that you're playing. For now, I have been content to let you play them. But now, I need information."

"And these gentlemen are here for what purpose? To intimidate me into playing ball?" Pierce asked, then tutted. "You must really be up against it. Though I suppose that having your granddaughter kidnapped for the serum enhanced genetics that you bequeathed on her would make you desperate." He glanced at Loki and Thor, the former of whom was expressionless, the latter of whom was angry, but unable to hide a hint of shock. "Along with her young demigod friend too. Goodness me, a lot has been going on since I was shut away."

Alison didn't flinch, or show any overt sign of surprise. But her expression tightened ever so slightly. And she blinked.

Pierce smiled like a shark. "Oh, I know your little secret," he said. "I always had my suspicions, but I confess, I wasn't certain until Easter. You covered your tracks very well. But once I saw the footage Lucius' people recorded of the fight in the Rockies on that botched acquisition mission, it all fell into place." He sat back. "So: our delightful young couple have been kidnapped by person or persons unknown. And you want my help to find them. What makes you think I'll give it?"

Now it was Alison's turn to smile a predator's smile. "Krasnyy Syn," she said.

Pierce went pale.

"Yes," she said. "The Red Room are back. And I think we both know that if they get that project off the ground, your days will be counted in very small numbers."

Pierce grimaced. "Fine," he said. "What do you want to know?"

"Know thine enemy," Alison said. "The Red Room was one of the most dangerous enemies of both HYDRA and SHIELD, and if I was hearing whispers about their resurgence in my cosy retirement, I think that you'd have heard a lot more. Where are they operating out of? Who's running it? And who or what might they have at their disposal?"

Pierce grimaced, then nodded.

"Oh, and Mister Pierce," Loki said, breaking his silence and slipping around the table with disturbingly serpentine grace. "I should add that if I don't think that you've been entirely open or honest with us, then I will take what you know from your mind by force. Considering your position, you'll have psychic traps and defences, ones that will probably turn your brain to soup if they are tripped. The only reason I haven't already done so is because we don't want to run the risk that we might miss something."

He smiled a smile that had last been seen in the depths of his madness. "However, if we think for one moment that you are not being entirely… open, then we will run that risk. And on a personal note, may I add that it would be my very great pleasure." He leaned back. "Also, do be concise. Thor's getting impatient."

Thor growled for emphasis.

"You know," Pierce said, pale but still maintaining his calm. "You can knock off the threats. I've already agreed to talk."

"And I understand that, Pierce," Alison said. "However, when dealing with a treacherous worm that'll squirm any way that suits it, I feel that it's best to be unambiguous. And to provide an incentive."

Pierce grunted. "Very well," he said. "Let's get started."

OoOoO

In the meantime, that was not the only confrontation taking place. And this one was rather less civilised.

Carol had, after an uncertain amount of time, come to, with a throbbing headache. For a creepy psychic doctor, that Milbury guy had one hell of a right hook. In any case, the knowledge that she'd been kidnapped with her best friend, did not improve her mood. While Harry himself was nowhere to be seen, she knew he was around for two reasons.

First, to kidnap her, they'd have had to subdue him, and that Milbury guy had seemed more interested in Harry anyway. Second, she could… well, not precisely feel him, as such, but there was a certain awareness, one she thought was connected to their psychic link. It was decidedly muted, but it was there.

How Milbury had subdued Harry she didn't know. Hell, she was a little bit surprised not to be waking up in medical care, with worried Avengers and/or relatives hovering around her, about to receive the news that Harry had done something fatal to Milbury – who, while she didn't exactly approve of killing, especially not where Harry was concerned, what with his understandable issues, she felt that this particular asshole more than had it coming.

So, she thought, looking around the Spartan… well, it sort of looked like a cell. She was certainly lying on some sort of flat bed, surrounded by armed goons.

"Hey," she said, sitting up. As she moved, so did the guns, all of which were now pointed at her. Slowly, she raised her hands. The atmosphere in the room relaxed, but only a little. These guys were taking no chances.

One of them snapped something at her in something that sounded vaguely like Russian. When she looked puzzled, he impatiently gestured at her to stand up. It was only when she did so that she realised that someone had stripped and changed her, underwear included. A feeling of sick violation crept over her.

"Okay," she said. "If it wasn't a lady who changed me, I'm not going to be happy."

That just got the impassive, blank look of a watchful goon waiting for the next thought to arrive.

"Hey, do any of you know where my friend is?" she asked.

This query was ignored, and the guards started chivvying her along. Carol stood her ground. "No, tell me first," she said.

A gun was shoved in her face and an angry stream of language followed close behind.

Right. Time to gamble. "No," she said. "Answers first, then movement. You need me alive."

The gun was jabbed in her stomach and was followed by another stream of angry probably Russian.

"Yep, alive," Carol said, glad that her guess was right. "Right, where's my friend."

The angry Russian grew louder.

Right. Time for another gamble.

"HEY! I SAID: WHERE DID YOU TAKE MY FRIEND?" Carol yelled. She got no answer, and one turned, baton raised threateningly. "Oh?" she said, and settled back into a fighting stance. "I need to beat it out of you? That I can do. Come on then!"

The guard lunged, baton crackling with electricity. He was fast. Carol was faster, swaying to one side and driving a brutal elbow into his cheek. There was a crack and the guard staggered away, swearing foully, in ways that Carol did actually understand. Her grandmother and uncle had given her a comprehensive education in that regard.

Before she could shake some answers out of him, however, the room was suddenly swarming with black clad guards pointing guns at her and shouting angrily. Raising her hands again, Carol backed off.

"So," she said. "Care to tell me who you guys are?"

"They wouldn't, even if they understood you," a woman's voice, low and almost accent-less, said.

"And you do. I was kind of hoping that someone who did would come along if I shouted loud enough," Carol said, as the guards parted to reveal the speaker. She was a woman of above average height, though shorter than Carol herself, with bob cut pale blonde hair and icy blue eyes. She was dressed in a close-fitting black combat suit with a strangely familiar red hourglass on the belt.

"They might have shot you," the woman said.

"I figured that if I was still alive, you want me to stay that way," Carol said. "I took a risk."

"An unusual calculation," the woman said, arching an eyebrow. "For one of your age to make."

"I'm not your usual teenager, as you've probably figured out," Carol said. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

"I am the Black Widow," the woman said.

Carol arched a brow. "Yeah, hate to break it to you, but that name is taken," she said. "And its owner is probably going to be kinda pissed that you're ripping her off."

The woman's eyes narrowed and her face contorted with anger. "I am the Black Widow! The real Black Widow!" she snarled, accent thickening. "That old woman, that traitor, is nothing but a fraud!"

Carol smirked. "Keep telling yourself that, Black Rip-Off," she said. "Pro tip: the real Black Widow keeps her temper. And she doesn't speak English with an accent." She shrugged and her smirk widened. "Looks to me like you're nothing but a wannabe. Did you find mommy's clothes in the wardrobe and decide to play dress up?"

The woman spat something acidic in Russian, then her hand flickered. On instinct, Carol ducked, barely dodging the knife that had previously been heading for her throat, only in time to take a brutal kick to the face, followed by several lightning fast blows to the throat and the stomach, followed by a series of vicious, bone cracking blows.

Carol, staggering under the onslaught, blindly lashed out, something that resulted in her arm being used as a pivot to slam her into the ground with jarring force, before her arm was hauled up behind her back and used to press her into the floor.

"Not smirking now, are you, little girl?" the woman hissed, voice full rage.

"Well," Carol managed, teeth gritted against the pain. "I kind of am."

The woman drove a knee into her back. "And why is that, you arrogant little bitch?" she snarled.

"I'm guessing that you guys know a bit about me," Carol said. "I mean, if you're who I think you are, you wouldn't have dragged me along as a hostage or something, not if you thought I was just an ordinary girl."

The woman snorted. "So, there is a brain in that pretty little head," she sneered. "Yes, we know who you are, Carol Susan Jane Danvers, a pampered, arrogant little American whore with no concept of hardship. And you are right: we know what you are. We know that you are a super soldier."

"Great," Carol said. "Thought so. Just one thing you didn't take into account."

"And what is that?"

"What being a super soldier really means," Carol said, before she flipped her legs up, scissored them around the woman's throat and as the older woman reached up to try and pry them loose, brought them back down hard.

While the blow was somewhat blunted by Carol's own legs, it stunned the woman for a moment and allowed Carol to scramble to her feet.

The guards had their guns up again and were shouting, but this time, the woman called them off with a few harsh words in Russian, before glaring at Carol, who smirked.

"For one thing," she said. "Being a super soldier? It means killer flexibility."

"That trick won't work twice," the woman said, voice slightly raspy, eyes now burning with hatred.

"The thing about tricks is that they only have to work once," Carol said. "I'm willing to bet that you're a way better fighter than me. But I'm also willing to bet that I only need to get in one good hit. Just one, and you're down, lady."

"You assume that I'll let you get in even one," the woman said, readying the bracelets Carol recognised as modified versions of Natasha's Widow's Bites.

"Belova!"

Everyone looked up to look at the speaker. He was a tall man, with the lean muscle tone of an acrobat and boyishly handsome good looks, with slightly wavy brown hair. A long and shabby brown trenchcoat swirled around his ankles. After a moment, Carol realised that she was giving him a rather lengthy once over. Too lengthy.

Judging by the sly smile on his face, he'd noticed it and had been expecting it. Everything about him said, 'here is a bad boy. A very bad boy, who you should stay away from. But wouldn't it be fun to find out why?'

Since Carol had never been particularly disposed to stay away from things that people thought she should, she was more inclined than most to find out. Her libido heartily seconded this suggestion.

She was not, however, distracted enough to miss four things. First, there was a foot long metal pole holstered inside his coat, one he looked like he knew how to use. Second, his eyes were black, with red pupils. Third, his accent was Cajun. Whoever he was, he was a very long way from home. And fourth and most importantly, he carried authority around here, wherever here was.

"This is none of your business, Gambit," the woman, Belova, spat.

"Doctor Essex t'inks differently," Gambit said calmly. "He ain't gone to the trouble o' bringin' the lady here t' be y' punchin' bag. An' I'm sure dat you've got other things t' do." A deck of cards dropped into his hands. To Carol's puzzlement, the guards, a dozen Russian special forces hardcases, all tensed up. Even Belova's eyes widened slightly, zeroing in on the cards. "Don' you?"

Belova looked up at him and glared. Gambit met her gaze and raised an eyebrow, then fanned the cards with a twitch of a finger. The guards flinched again.

Then, with one last glare at Carol, she stormed out, snapping in Russian at the guards, who followed her.

"Thanks," Carol said. "I could have taken her, though."

"No, y' couldn't, cherie," Gambit said. "You'd have pissed her off even more an' she'd have killed you. I've seen it happen."

"Really?" Carol asked.

"Really," Gambit said. "Gambit have a liking for beautiful women, beautiful, dangerous women, but that one…" He shook his head.

"Lady's got a screw loose," Carol said. "Yeah, I'd noticed. Now, who the hell are you, where the hell am I and where the hell is my friend?"

"Most call me Gambit, ma cherie," Gambit said. "As f'r where we are…" He shrugged. "Truth be told, I never asked. Some things, it's safest not to. Even if I knew, I couldn' tell y', somethin' which just breaks mah heart. As f'r where y' friend is, I t'ink 'e's been sent to de Beast."

"Right, and who or what is 'the Beast'?"

"Someone who some prisoners get sent to, right down at the bottom of the prison. That's where y' go if you're causin' trouble. Or if y' one of the ones dey want to test," Gambit said.

"What is it?"

"Not what. Who," he said grimly. "A mutant, a powerful one. Ah've seen some pretty powerful mutants go in and when dey came out, if dey came out, dey were a real mess."

"What's he look like?"

A smile flickered across his face. "Now, cherie, why would I know somethin' like that?"

"Parce que vous êtes quelqu'un qui sait des choses comme ça," Carol replied evenly.

That earned her a pair of raised eyebrows and a smile. "A pretty lady who speaks French and damn near perfectly if ah say so myself," he said. "Well damn me if it not my lucky day. Is dat your power, cherie?"

"No," Carol said curtly. "And stop changing the subject."

He sighed. "Fine," he said. "'e's a big white boy. About your age, maybe a little older. Big – and I mean enormous - but faster than he look, and strong. The guards like him because 'e's a bully, just like them. 'e gets privileges for what 'e does." He glanced down the hallway. "Ah'm sorry to say this, cherie, but your friend is in a lot of trouble."

"Could you help him?" Carol asked.

"Could, maybe," he said. "Or maybe, I could end up on wrong end of de Beast's fists. Or on the wrong side of the bars." He smiled. "And while that would mean bein' in your company, that is a pleasure I must sadly decline."

"Bars," Carol said. "So, you've been sent to take me to some part of this… whatever this is, probably some kind of base, where people are locked up. Super-people."

"Well, actually, it mostly a dormitory," Gambit said.

"With bars," Carol said.

Gambit grimaced. "Wit' bars," he said. "Y' comin'?"

"What if I don't?"

"Then I knock you out an' carry you," Gambit said. "And I will feel mighty torn up about dat, and I will try to make it as painless as possible, but I'll still have t' do it."

"You think you can?" Carol asked, though mostly for form. She hadn't really fancied herself against Belova alone, let alone a bunch of Russian special forces hardcases armed to the teeth. And yet this guy had had them all on edge and been pretty confident that he could take them all by himself, with nothing more than a metal pole and a deck of cards. Cajun charm notwithstanding, it didn't take a genius to realise that she was dealing with a serious badass.

"What d'y' think, ma cherie?" Gambit asked.

Carol wrinkled her nose. "Fine," she said. "Take me to your leader."

Gambit laughed. "Dat ain't where y' goin', cherie," he said.

"I know," Carol said, following him. "But hey, how often do you get kidnapped by a bunch of bad guys out of an 80's thriller?"

That didn't get a laugh. Instead, it got a serious look. "First t'ing, cherie," Gambit said. "Don' underestimate these people. Dey're as scary as it gets. Y' friend is probably findin' that out right now."

"Harry can look after himself," Carol said.

Gambit looked politely sceptical. "Maybe," he said. "But if y' cross them, den y' aren't too valuable to give to Belova. Or to de Beast."

"I've fought big scary monsters before," Carol said.

Gambit looked grim. "I didn' mean as 'is punchin' bag, cherie," he said quietly. "Like I said – 'e gets privileges."

Carol went pale as she processed this. "And you work with these people?" she managed.

"Every man has 'is price, cherie," Gambit said quietly. "An' this man has 'is debts to pay."

"Money?" Carol asked, disgusted. "Seriously?"

Gambit snorted. "No," he said.

"Then what?" Carol asked, then glanced around. She couldn't see any security cameras. "I mean, you know who and what I am, the way that crazy Belova lady did?"

"I got the gist," Gambit said.

"And you know who my buddy is?" Carol asked.

"Actually, no, ah didn' catch that," Gambit said.

"Harry Thorson," Carol said, and watched with some satisfaction as Gambit stopped in his tracks. Interestingly, though, he seemed not to be so much afraid as thinking furiously.

"Well," Gambit said slowly, after a long moment. "Dat changes t'ings."

"You don't say," Carol said dryly. "Look, you seem like a decent guy, even if you are working for the bad guys. If –"

"If I help y' an' your friend, the Avengers will help me out?" Gambit said.

"Yeah," Carol said. "I mean, your debt to that doctor guy – I'm guessing he was the same one who brought me and Harry in? – whatever it is, they, we, can help you with that."

Gambit regarded her. "Y' really mean that, don' y'?" he said thoughtfully. "Even though y' don' know me at all, y' willin' to offer me an out." His lips quirked into a smile. "F'r one thing, y' really confident that the Avengers will find y' two and get y' out."

"It's kind of what they do," Carol said. "And like I said, you seem like a decent guy. You certainly don't seem to fit in round here."

"An' how d' y' know that I'm not actin', to get y' confidence?" Gambit asked.

"I don't," Carol admitted. "I don't have much of a baseline to compare your behaviour against, either, being that I only met you ten minutes ago. I still kind of suspect that you're up to something, that you might be playing me. But I saw Belova. She wasn't acting. She was genuinely out for my blood. Those rent-a-mooks were following her orders – and I'm guessing that you don't get to be the Black Rip-Off without the ability to pull some serious rank. You faced down all of them at once without blinking, and I'm willing to bet you're not bullet-proof."

"An'?" Gambit asked, watching her.

"And I figure that someone as sharp as you – and you seem pretty sharp – could come up with a dozen reasons for not getting involved," Carol said. "You say that Belova would have killed me. You took a risk getting between her and me. And since I wasn't exactly top priority for processing or whatever, the way Harry was, since I was basically an after-thought, I doubt I'm that valuable."

She folded her arms. "Point being, you got involved when you didn't necessarily have to. If you were just a soulless douche out for himself, only here to pay off a debt, you wouldn't have. You're also American and you can't be more than twenty, meaning that you aren't a soldier here and you're a bit young to be a mercenary. You really don't fit in, either with the psycho Russians or with the creepy doctor guy. So maybe you're just a better actor, a pretty face to open up to. But… call it a leap of faith. I think you're a decent, or part-way decent, guy in a bad situation. Whoever you really are, Gambit, I think that this debt you owe, it's something big that this doctor's got hanging over you."

Gambit watched her for a long moment, then smiled and inclined his head. "Where are my manners?" he asked rhetorically. "The name's Remy, Remy LeBeau."

"Remy the Beautiful?" Carol asked, eyebrows raised. "Wow, you think a lot of yourself, don't you?"

Remy laughed. "It's my real name, cherie, and ah'm adopted," he said, then grinned. "But it fits, non?"

Carol rolled her eyes. "Yeah, by the way, I get the 'cherie' thing a lot," she said. "From one of my best friends. Who's very, very gay. It's safe to say that it doesn't work as a seduction technique, so don't bother. Or a distraction technique. You dodged my question."

"Well, dat's a real pity," Remy said. "Anyway, I may be Remy, but most call me Gambit. And you are…?"

"Carol," Carol said. "Again with the question dodging. And I thought you knew my name?"

"I didn't quite catch it, and now I'm glad I have: a lovely name for a lovely lady," Remy said gallantly.

Carol gave him a flat look. "Pretty words don't impress me," she said. "Nor do pretty men."

Remy grinned a grin that would have been rated eighteen in most countries of the world and banned in most of the others. "Well maybe one day I change y' mind," he said, then stopped as they reached a locked door, flanked by two guards.

"Prisoner?" one of them asked, in heavily accented English.

Remy nodded, and one of them used his key card on the door panel, opening it. It was, Carol noted, most of a foot thick. Not, in other words, something that could easily be punched through.

"Remember what I said," she said.

"A lady such as you is hard to forget," Remy said. And before she could stop him, he reached out, took her hand and laid a kiss on the back of it, neither fleeting nor lingering.

Carol flushed bright red.

"But for now, unfortunately," he said. "I must say au revoir."

"For now?" Carol asked. "You're planning on coming back?"

To her own disgust, that sounded a lot more hopeful than she'd intended.

"Trust me," Remy said. "Just… trust me."

Then, he sauntered off down the corridor and Carol was bundled through the doorway.

OoOoO

"What's happening, Andrei?" one of the guards asked his colleague, who was boredly watching the security screens.

"Same old, same old, Alyosha," the other said. "LeBeau's flirting with a pretty prisoner." He eyed the camera. "Can't blame him, though – I'd have her on her back first chance I got."

Alyosha gave him a look of mild distaste. "She is beautiful," he admitted. "But also dangerous. She went toe to toe with Belova and she didn't look scared at all. Only time she did was when Grigory and Sergei dragged her friend away."

"So?"

"So she'd rip your balls off and make you eat them," he said. "Besides. The doctor is interested in her."

Alyosha's colleague sighed. "True. Should we report LeBeau?"

"No point. He's the doctor's man, he'd never get punished," Alyosha said. "Besides. It's not like he's done anything."

OoOoO

Back in the dormitory, Carol casually looked around, picking out the cameras and calculating their angles, before strolling into a blindspot and opening her closed hand. Inside was a key card and note. Scrawled on it were the words, 'for the right moment'.

"Remy LeBeau, you are full of surprises," she murmured, then slipped the card into her pocket and looked around.

What first struck her was that in the room with her were five other teenagers, two boys and three girls. What next struck her was that some of them looked palpably inhuman.

"Well," she said. "This should be interesting."

Indeed it was.

Soon enough, introductions were done: primarily, name and powers.

Noriko was a Japanese electrokinete who spoke flawless English, had a very bad temper and a set of gauntlets designed to keep her powers from flaring out of control.

Nehzno was a half-Wakandan boy who had metallic looking tatoos designed to control his super-strength and a soft Russian accent. He'd been surprised to say the least when she'd mentioned that she'd met T'Challa.

Jono was a British boy with a strange sort of turtleneck that covered his mouth. This was apparently because when his mutation had manifested a couple of years before, it had blasted off his lower jaw, as well as a considerable chunk of his torso. In its place was a chamber of burning psionic energy, which apparently at least had the benefit of allowing him to speak telepathically and fire energy blasts.

Kurt was a German teleporter, and looked by far the least human of the lot. He was blue, had yellow eye, pointed ears and a spaded tail, as well as three fingers on each hand and two toes on each foot. He was also irrepressibly good natured and the only one of the other teenagers in the 'dormitory' who'd immediately felt like sharing anything beyond a basic introduction. He was, for instance, apparently a devout Catholic in spite of his demonic appearance. Carol found herself liking him.

And then, finally, there was Lorna. She had green hair, an Australian accent and considering her stated magnetic powers, what Carol suspected was probably a very interesting family tree.

None of these powers were demonstrated, however, as their captors made them wear bracelets that prevented them from using their powers outside of specified training sessions. Attempts to do so, or to remove the bracelet, were punished by an automatic electric from the bracelet, which only got stronger as time went on. Eventually, it became lethal.

Sooner rather than later, she found out the name of her captors: the Red Room. She also found out what was planned for them, something that both chilled her to the bone and didn't surprise her in the least. They were to be super soldiers.

Or at least, most of them were. Jono was being trained too, but he mostly seemed to be regarded as a scientific curiosity more than anything else.

And she found out something else too. Time did not move normally around here, and in a more fundamental way than all the days seeming to blur into one. Her fellow prisoners said that they had, by and large, been here for at least six months, up to three years in Jono's case. Their predecessors had been there for longer. When Carol had cautiously enquired about those predecessors, the answer had been blunt.

"You get out of here in one of two ways," Noriko had said. "In a uniform or in a coffin."

Carol couldn't exactly say that she was surprised. And then matters got more complicated, because when they asked her what the date was in the outside world, it didn't match up with the time they'd been imprisoned. By that measure, even Jono had only been away for a year. Moreover, the time dilation seemed to be variable – going by the dates Jono had scribbled down for her on the pad of paper he used to communicate, and after doing a little arithmetic, she found the answer.

"The time difference is increasing," she said eventually. "When Jono came in, it was basically one day in here, wherever here is, one day out in the rest of the world. Now, it's three days in here to every one outside."

"Why not just make it a month in to every day outside?" Lorna asked, frowning. "I mean, not that I'm complaining, but…"

Carol shrugged. "Don't look at me, I just got here," she said. "But if I had to guess, it's one of two reasons. First, screwing with space and time is really difficult. I've seen HYDRA stick their entire base in a pocket dimension, but they had ludicrously advanced tech and insanely powerful magic backing them up, and as far as I know, time passed at the same speed in there. Could be that they can't make it go any further. Harry, a friend of mine – he's here too, actually. Apparently they've taken him to this 'Beast' guy."

Every single one of the other teens paled, and Kurt rested a hand on her shoulder. "I am sorry," he said.

Carol arched an eyebrow. "Thanks, but he'll be fine," she said. "He always is, one way or another."

The others gave her odd looks, ones that shifted to pity.

"Carol," Lorna said. "Anyone sent to the Beast… they don't come back."

"Then he'll be the first," Carol said, unable to quell a sense of unease. Harry was powerful, incredibly so. But the Red Room had managed to capture and subdue him in the first place, when he'd been on his guard. That said something. A bad something. And not only that, but that sense she'd had of his presence? It had disappeared some time ago, shortly after she'd arrived in the dormitory.

"He's one of the most powerful people I know and he's basically indestructible," she said after a moment. "Like I said, he'll be fine." Her expression shadowed. "Honestly? I'm more worried about what'll happen when he loses his temper." She shook her head. "Anyway, he knew someone with a time travel device – it was magic and it only went back a few hours, at most, because it was limited. Like I said, screwing with time is hard."

"And the second reason?" Nehzno asked.

"The second reason is something I more sure of," Carol said. "The people in charge of this probably have massive egos. Higher ups in the government or the military generally do; trust me, I've met loads. Evil douchebags, even more so. Hell, if they're going after Harry, their egos must be insane. Point being? They'll be quite old and they'll want to see this through. Somehow I doubt that they're going to want to sacrifice their lives making us into weapons and not see the pay off."

Jono scribbled something. "'You can't be certain,'" Carol read aloud. "You're right. I can't. But those are my best guesses and I think that they're pretty good ones." She folded her arms. "And personally, I intend on getting out of here before it starts to matter."

"Really?" Noriko asked. "How? By batting your eyes at the guards and asking nicely?"

"Sure," Carol said. "I wasn't planning to, but if picking my moment, sneaking out, and beating the shit out of anyone in my way doesn't work, then I'll try that." She drummed her fingers on the bed. "And a great help in getting out would be, oh, I don't know, a super powerful psychic. Which means that step one is figuring out where the hell my best friend is."

OoOoO

Said best friend had himself been wondering about where on Earth he was– if he was even on Earth.

When he was unceremoniously tossed into the large cell, he immediately rolled to his feet and looked around. The barrier that rose up behind him was humming with power of more than one kind – if he touched it, he'd be fried.

It was a big cell, too. In fact, a more accurate word would be 'stadium' or perhaps, 'arena'. And there was another door on the far side. As Harry watched, it opened and something huge lumbered out.

Cautiously, he reached out with his telepathy to get a sense of what he was dealing with, then froze in shock. His telepathy wasn't responding. He tried, several times, but nothing happened.

"What the…" he whispered, then tried his telekinesis instead, reaching out, trying to move the dust around him. It didn't respond. The power was there, he could feel it, but every time he tried to reach out, it didn't respond.

He checked his magic, and puzzlingly enough, that seemed to respond just fine. He tried his psychic powers again, to see if it had been a psychological thing, but no dice: they weren't working.

It was then he realised that he'd been stripped, his clothes replaced with a tight leather body-suit all in black, with red lines inset.

He cast his memory back to how he'd got here. He and Carol had met Doctor Milbury, who'd turned out to be the mysterious telepath who'd been keeping him at the Dursleys, and proved able to flatten Carol with a single punch – something that set his temper burning, but most of all made him very worried indeed. Where was Carol? Where'd she been taken, what had been done to her? Was she being set up the way he was?

He shook his head. He couldn't think about that now. First, he had to get out of here. Then, he could find out where Carol was. He quickly reviewed the rest of what had happened: just as he'd gone for Milbury, someone else had stepped in. Someone else, someone who was Jean, yet wasn't.

It was a puzzle, he thought. In any case, whoever he was dealing with, they had the ability to shut off his psychic powers – or at least, prevent him from using them – something he hadn't even known was possible, and they had thrown him in this… well, he thought as he looked around. It was a bit big to be a cell. And he wasn't in here alone, either. Which meant that he had an uneasy suspicion that the word to describe the structure he was in now was 'arena'.

All the while, the huge, indistinct figure moved closer. And he was huge, taller than Harry himself, taller than anyone Harry knew who wasn't the Hulk or Hagrid, and massively wide – though going by the way he moved, it didn't seem to slow him down much.

Still, he knew not to judge by appearances. "Hello?" he said. "Look, whoever you are, I'm guessing you've been sent in here to fight me. You don't want to do that. It won't end well for you. We don't have to fight."

Inwardly, he wasn't so sure about that. He had his magic to call on, yes, and he didn't feel much weaker, meaning that he was probably still a great deal faster and stronger than anyone who wasn't a super soldier or similarly enhanced. But equally, he somehow doubted that anyone or anything being sent up against him wasn't at least tougher than human.

Indeed, whoever or whatever he was facing didn't seem so convinced by his claim either, going by the deep, mocking laughter that echoed out of the darkness.

"All right," Harry muttered. "If that's the way you want it..." He snapped a whip of fire into the space in between them, cracking the concrete floor with the heat. It was intended as a warning shot, but it didn't slow the advancing behemoth one jot.

So Harry took a deep breath and with a snarl drove a spear of fire at his opponent that would have burned straight through an oak tree. On this creature, however, it simply splashed over his huge chest, scorching the clothing, but no more. That wasn't what struck Harry, though. It was the face, the face he'd seen in the brief flash of light from his strike. It was… familiar.

He summoned a brighter ball of flame, setting it burning in his hand and held it up for a closer look. And froze, in utter horror.

That face. It was bigger, now, higher up, attached to a body that was now as much bulk as fat. The hair had changed, on top a mohawk, below, the beginnings of facial hair. Most everything around it had changed. But the face, that stayed the same. The face that he had spent his entire pre-Hogwarts life associating with pain, with just about everything he hated and feared, until he went to Hogwarts and left that face and its owner behind in the dust, as an insignificance, and after he'd rediscovered his father, he'd thought that that face would be gone from his life for good.

But it wasn't. Impossibly, Dudley Dursley was back. Back and with superpowers, while Harry himself was stripped of his greatest weapons, superpowers that seemed to be capable of shrugging off whatever he had left.

Slowly, Harry began to back away, panicking.

Logically, a small part of Harry knew that he shouldn't be frightened of Dudley, that it was absolutely ridiculous to panic. Powers or no powers, he'd faced far worse than Dudley, and with far less at his disposal than he had now – the Disir, for instance. Monsters that had destroyed Asgardian armies, that had taken an Allfather to banish, and he'd only had his wand and a bit of luck on his side. Well, and some help from Uhtred and Diana, but even so. And before that, the troll, Voldemort through Quirrell, Riddle's Diary and the Basilisk. He'd faced them too.

Of course, that same logical part of him pointed out that with the troll, he'd had Ron and Hermione's help, with Riddle's Diary and the Basilisk he'd had Fawkes and the Sword of Gryffindor. And while he'd been alone with Quirrell, he'd also had his mum's protection, which had conveniently fried Quirrell. Somehow he doubted it would have the same effect on Dudley.

It also occurred to him that he didn't have his wand, either.

So, unarmed, in an arena with the super-sized and super-powered version of his childhood bully, with the only powers he had at his disposal ones that said bully seemed to be able to shrug off easily.

Was it any wonder that the logical part of his brain wasn't in control?

"Hey freak," Dudley sneered. "Long time no see."

"Hey Dudley," Harry said, circling away. "You've… grown. Mostly sideways, admittedly, but grown."

Dudley simply sneered at him.

"How've you been?" Harry asked, staying on the move, frantically running through his options – and wishing that he'd learned more combat magic. While focusing on his psychic powers had made sense at the time, it was fuck all use now.

Dudley snorted. "You mean, how've I been since your freak dad and your freak friends took all my stuff and destroyed my house? Since they took my mum and dad away?" he asked, tone thickening with anger.

"… Sure, let's go with that."

"Not bad," Dudley said. "The government sent me to this house, with a bunch of losers. I spent a few weeks there. Then, the doctor came and took me away."

This gave Harry a very strange mental image for a few moments. "I'm guessing he didn't have a blue police box," he said.

Dudley's piggy face screwed up in confusion. "What?"

"Never mind," Harry said. "It was Doctor Milbury, right?"

Dudley grinned. "Right, freak," he said. "Yeah. Old Doctor Milbury. I thought he was just a dumb loser with some good sweets, but it turns out that he's something more. Turns out, he saw potential in me. He always knew I was special."

Harry's heart dropped like a stone and he gulped. "Let me guess," he said. "You had powers, powers in you, just waiting to be activated. And he activated them."

Dudley laughed. "Clever, freak," he said. "Yeah. He made me strong, strong like I was always should have been. Stronger than you. He's spent years making me even stronger, strong enough so that I can do whatever I like."

"Years?" Harry asked. "It hasn't even been a year since I first met dad again. Even if, admittedly, it feels quite a lot longer." He paused. "Also, your powers make you special, but mine make me a freak. Right. How does that work exactly?"

Dudley's face wrinkled up in confusion. "No," he said. "It's been years. Three years. He told me. And I know. I'm not stupid, I can count."

"You can?" Harry said. "That's good to know. I always had doubts, you seeee!"

This last was yelped as he ducked Dudley's massive fist, which whizzed overhead with a hiss of air and snarl of rage, missing Harry by a literal hairsbreadth.

"You can laugh," he snarled. "But you won't be laughing much longer. I'm gonna sort you out for good, like I should have when we were kids. I always let you get up and run away and –"

"Then got scared because I got magic?" Harry suggested, weaving away from another punch. "Hate to break it to you, Dudley, but I still have magic."

And with that, he flashed a blast of incandescently bright fire into Dudley's eyes. Instantly, Dudley stumbled backwards, howling with pain. He was quickly propelled even further back by as powerful a kick as Harry could manage, though most of its force was soaked up by Dudley's ample blubber. In the meantime, Harry extinguished his flames and darted back into the darkness, breathing in deeply, focusing and summoning up as much power as he could.

"I'M GONNA KILL YOU, FREAK!" Dudley screamed, enraged. "I'M GONNA TEAR YOUR ARMS OFF AND BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH THEM!"

Harry, tempted to reply, said nothing, instead continuing to draw in power. Going by how tough Dudley seemed to be, he was going to need as much as he could get. As a result, he was going to need as much time as he could get to charge up. Most of all, however, when he was dealing with this much power, this much fire, he couldn't afford to slip for an instant. He was going to need every bit of his concentration.

"YOU THINK THAT YOU'RE THE FIRST?!" Dudley demanded, furious. "I'VE BEEN BREAKING BIGGER AND TOUGHER THAN YOU FOR YEARS, FREAK! YEARS! I BROKE THEM AND I'LL BREAK YOU! EVERY SINGLE BONE IN YOUR BODY, I'M GONNA BREAK THEM! DO YOU HEAR ME? BREAK THEM!"

Of course, he noticed vaguely, this had the side-effect of making him glow with the banked heat of a furnace, the air around him rippling with heat, but that couldn't be helped. He poured all his anger, all his fear, all his panic into the inferno within, stoking it up, making it hotter and hotter.

Dudley, meanwhile, howled and thrashed about in pain, shattering large craters in the floor, sending chips of concrete flying as he did. Sooner rather than later, however, he was glaring out through scorched, streaming, but very much functional eyes. "Where are you, freak?" he managed.

Harry's breath hitched as the sudden quiet disrupted his focus and he nearly lost control of the raging storm of power within him, so strong that he felt like he was going to fly apart.

Dudley's head whipped around, and he bared his teeth as he saw the deep red glow around Harry. "There you are," he snarled. "Hold still, Freak, and it won't hurt much."

"You don't have to do this, Dudley," Harry said quietly. "It's like I said before, it won't end well if you do."

Dudley snorted. "Nice try," he said. "But I'm not scared of you."

"Really? Becaue I'm scared of you," Harry said frankly. "Scared of what you could do? But do you what I'm afraid of more?"

"What?"

"Me. I've had most of my powers turned off. If I hadn't, you'd already be down and out," Harry said bluntly.

Dudley snorted his disbelief.

"Even without those powers, I'm still more scared of what I might do to you, than of what you might do to me," Harry continued. "So. One last chance, Dudley. Stop this. Stop this now, and this doesn't get messy."

Dudley said nothing, instead letting out a roar and charging.

"Fine," Harry said. "I was kind of hoping you'd say that."

And he brought up his right hand, turning side on to Dudley, levelling it, palm out. In his palm, something as bright and white as a star formed. Then, when Dudley was only twenty yards away, a bar of thick, white-hot fire shot across the gap between them and slammed into Dudley with enough force to shake the arena, sending out a wave of expanding super-heated air that kicked up huge waves of dust and chipped concrete across the arena.

After a few moments, Harry could smell the bacon cooking smell of roasting flesh and with a surge of horror, cut off the flames sharply, retching and staggering, partly from the sudden wave of tiredness and partly from disgust. While a very large part of him had wanted to give Dudley a good beating – and if he was honest, still wanted to now – there was a significant difference between giving Dudley a beating and roasting him alive, no matter how much of a superpowered monster he'd become.

He peered at the blackened patch where Dudley had stood, all soot and cracked concrete, the reddish-black hulk of Dudley himself, hunched in on himself. He was also, Harry noted with relief, breathing heavily.

"I warned you, Dudley," he said quietly. "I warned you and you didn't listen."

Dudley slowly unfolded himself, with the sound of crackling skin. Then, he said, in a quiet, disbelieving voice, "That hurt."

"Yeah," Harry said. "And I've got more where that came from." He hesitated, then against his better judgement, strode over.

"That hurt."

"Yeah, you'll get over it," Harry said, offering a hand down. "I know doctors, some good doctors who can fix you up. They can probably even grow your hair back." He looked Dudley over. He could see some pink skin showing beneath the burns. "Look, you're healing already."

Dudley looked up at him and glared, eyes burning with rage. "That," he snarled. "Hurt."

Then, faster than Harry would have believed, he reached out, grabbed Harry's outstretched arm in one giant, meaty hand, and crushed it with a sickening crack.

Harry let out a gurgling scream of agony, one that only intensified as Dudley squeezed harder.

"You hurt me, Freak," Dudley said. "No one does that. No one!"

He lifted Harry up by his broken arm and slammed him to the ground with bone breaking force.

"No one hurts me!" Dudley snarled, then repeated the trick three more times, before hauling the semi-sensible Harry up to eye height. "You hear me?"

Harry coughed up some blood.

"I'm gonna kill you," Dudley said, voice rising. "I'M GONNA KILL YOU TO DEATH, FREAK!"

Then, he slammed Harry into the ground once more, like a rag-doll, before leaving him there.

And as Harry lay on the floor, something poked out of the shooting silvery agony of the breaks, the deep throbbing of his muscles. Something hot and furious, something that blazed.

Fuck this, it said. Fuck going out like this. Even if I don't stay dead, even if he doesn't go through with it, I am damned if I'm going to go down in history as having been beaten by Dudley Dursley. I outgrew that when I was eleven. Since then, I've taken on horrors he couldn't even begin to imagine and what has he done? Been given some super steroids to wake up his X-Gene, been used to beat up some poor bastards who couldn't defend themselves. He's never ever been hurt until now, he said it himself. Me? I've spent all my fucking life being hurt. Unlike him, I know how to handle it.

So I'm damned if I'm letting him be the one who beats me.

So what if he's stronger than before? So am I. I'm stronger than I was, I can take pain better than he can, and I'm much, much smarter than he is.

So how can I use it? Harry asked himself. I can't use my psychic powers…

Can I?

He paused and thought, cudgelling his brain into working. His psychic powers didn't work. But they were still there, he could feel them. He could even summon them up, he just couldn't extend them beyond his body. And why was that?

Then it hit him, and he wanted to smack himself it was so obvious. The suit. The suit was keeping his powers in, somehow. It meant that he couldn't use them outside it.

But.

He could use them inside it.

He'd never tried using his telekinesis on himself before, except maybe for flying, and even then, it hadn't really been an in-depth use, as it were. But, he supposed as he saw Dudley looming over him with a chunk of concrete, there was a first time for everything.

"Oh, you're getting up, Freak?" Dudley taunted, as Harry struggled got to his knees, spitting blood. "Don't bother. Because I'm just getting started."

He dropped the concrete, raised a massive fist, then drove it down towards Harry's head with unstoppable force. It met an immovable object.

Harry's left hand had snapped up in a blur and Dudley's fist met it with a thunderclap. The enormous boy stared at it in incomprehension. And as he did, Harry began to laugh.

It was soft, low and mocking, a fey laugh that echoed around the room and sent chills down Dudley's spine.

"That's a funny coincidence, Dudley," he said, getting to his feet, holding Dudley's fist in a vice grip, pushing him backwards. "Because so I am I."

He regarded his arm. "First things first, though," he said, regarding his right arm. It was most definitely not in the right shape for an arm. Still, he mused. That was easily enough fixed.

Dudley chose that moment to snap out of his shock and try to break free. This had the side effect of jarring Harry and his arm, sending white hot pain surging through him. Harry whipped around, glaring at Dudley and clamped his left hand tighter, driving his fingers into Dudley's fist like pitons, causing Dudley to let out a stifled howl of pain.

"And the tables are turned," Harry said, with a dark satisfaction. He returned his gaze to his right arm and frowned. Now, how was he going to go about this? He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. You never knew until you tried.

There was a hot, grinding sensation sensation, followed by a feeling of coolness, almost like water running over his bones. Then, the pain was gone. He wiggled his fingers at a dumbfounded Dudley. "See?" he said. "Good as new. This is what I can do now." His hand burst alight. "Now, let me show you something else I can do."

And with that, ignoring the still present agony in his ribs, he brought his right hand up and around, trailing white hot flame, and punched Dudley square in the gut with enough force to pulverise concrete. There was flash of light, a roar of fire and a vast thump of displaced air as Dudley flew across the cell and into the stone wall with enough force to crater it. Wheezing, he struggled to his feet as Harry advanced, bloody teeth bared in a fighter's grin, eyes glowing gold, pausing only to heal his ribs – or rather, use his telekinesis to force them back into place. It was a rush job, far from perfect, but it would do for now.

"Here's the thing, Dudley," he said, voice soft and dangerous. "You're not the threat you like to think you are. You aren't some beast in the dark, some great monster. You aren't something to be feared. You're not the big bad. You're just an overgrown bully who stumbled onto what he thought was power. And you used it to do what you always did, to push around anyone you thought was weaker than you." His hands ignited with fire and furious psychic energy. "But this time, it's different. I'm not just your little freak cousin any more. I'm not weaker than you, not any more. I'm a Prince of Asgard, an Omega Class psychic, and I'm going to teach you what real power is."

Dudley lunged forward, swinging a clumsy haymaker. Harry contemptuously slapped it aside. "Lesson the first," he said coldly, as Dudley stumbled forward into an uppercut that cracked half his teeth. "Part of real power is the ability to use what power you have effectively. Martial arts are good for this."

Dudley lashed out blindly, but Harry easily darted back, then in again, landing a brutal stomping kick to the side of Dudley's knee, smashing it inwards with a snapping crunch, drawing a scream of pain, dropping Dudley to the other knee.

"Play to your strengths, that sort of thing," Harry continued, tone unchanged. "For instance, I'm faster than you are, more agile too. Stronger? With my telekinesis, maybe yes, maybe no. What I am, though, is strong enough to make my speed count."

With that, he charged in again. Dudley made an a desperate grab for him, but Harry flipped over his head, landing gracefully, before spinning and deliving a brutal rising kick to Dudley's jaw, snapping his head to one side, breaking bone and sending him reeling.

"Lesson the second," Harry said. "Associated with the first, attack your opponent's weaknesses. Once you have an advantage, exploit it."

Then, before Dudley could gather himself, he struck with a vicious rabbit punch to the back of the skull, before unleashing a hail of lightning fast, powerful and ruthlessly precise blows, drawing on a combination of all he'd been taught; savate, krav maga, sambo, pankration, karate, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a few Asgardian tricks that didn't have names and what could simply described as street fighting.

All of it was ruthlessly focused on joints, exposed soft tissue like the throat, and just about any area that wasn't protected by a thick layer of blubber and muscle. It was designed to disable. And not just to disable – to hurt, humiliate, and make incontrovertibly clear that the tables had turned. A large part of Harry desperately wanted Dudley to know how it felt to be helpless, to be broken, to be unmade.

And so he made did exactly that.

After less than five minutes, Dudley was on his shattered knees.

"Lesson the third," Harry said coldly, body singing with power and the thrill of vengeance. In the long run, he knew that revenge wasn't really all that satisfying, that this kind of savagery would rightly horrify him later. But in the moment, in this moment, when he had one of the people who had made every day of his childhood a misery… it was utterly intoxicating.

"Other knowledge helps too," he said. "Such as a little basic physics." Dudley looked up, in too much pain to say anything, do anything more than let out a rasping whimper. Harry waved a hand. "Wingardium Leviosa."

Dudley twitched and struggled feebly, but he could barely move. Harry looked him in the eye. "Once you're off the ground, it doesn't matter how strong you are – you're just another case of mass times acceleration."

Then, Harry drew back a fist, pouring every ounce of telekinetic power he had left, winding up for something absolutely colossal. "Let me demonstrate," he said, and beckoned with his left hand. "Accio."

OoOoO

Carol looked up as the huge roar of vaporising concrete echoed through the complex, in near perfect synchrony with a shockwave that shook the entire building and everything, and everyone, in it. And outside it, going by the muffled Russian cursing from the door.

She scrambled to the high, barred window, hauling herself up to see a vast cloud of dust rising up from the other side of the complex - itself surprisingly cold and snowy for high summer in what was presumably Russia. There were soldiers too, some in what looked like Iron Man/War Machine rip-offs, all running around like bees around a kicked hive as flashing red lights started up, swearing and panicked shouting overlaid by wailing sirens.

"What was that?" Lorna asked. "What's going on?"

"If my guess is right, and it probably is, that would be Harry losing his temper," Carol said.

"Who?" Lorna asked.

"That friend of mine I mentioned," Carol said. "The one who was brought in with me and was sent to the Beast. Like I said, he was always going to snap at some point."

"You're sure it's him?" Noriko asked.

"Trust me," Carol said. "I've seen it before. It's kinda like Carrie as directed by Michael Bay." At a number of puzzled expressions, she elaborated. "He's sort of a force of nature when he really gets going, with the result being lots fire, screaming – none of it by him – and him showing off his super psychic powers. Super psychic powers which he uses to cause massive fucking explosions."

Oddly enough, her fellow prisoners didn't look especially reassured.

Just because one was a captive of the devil, after all, did not mean that the deep blue sea was any more pleasant a prospect.

OoOoO

Harry followed Dudley's flying body into the courtyard, satisfying himself that he could still fly in the process. On an afterthought, he tried ripping the suit apart via his telekinesis from within, but whoever had made it – probably Doctor Milbury, or Essex, as his real name apparently was – had done so well, and psychic energy ran off it like water off a stone. Magic too, it seemed.

He took a sharp breath as touched down and felt the Arctic cold wind slice into him and saw the eddying snow all around him. Wherever he was, it wasn't somewhere with natural weather conditions. And reaching out… well, he hardly had his uncle's senses, or even his father's, but it certainly didn't feel like Earth. There was too much magic everywhere. That, at least, he mused, explained the weather.

A quick look around told him that he was on a mountain, in a large and strange combination of concrete complex, vaguely resembling HYDRA's headquarters – before he and Carol had reduced most of it to rubble – and a castle that was somehow… gaunt. Hollow. Primal.

Well. This could be complicated.

Oh, and troopers dressed in what looked like Iron Man knockoffs were swarming out of the buildings and from around the perimeter. Dudley was… well, from what could be seen through the trail of destruction his flying body had left, punching a large hole through a couple of hundred feet worth of buildings, he still seemed to be breathing, but he was definitely down for the count this time. Unfortunately, flattening him had left Harry rather drained.

Hmm. Definitely complicated

OoOoO

Maddie watched the boy in the skintight suit as he prepared for a fight, apparently willing to take on all the available Red Room soldiers at once, something that she thought frankly unwise. It was, she knew, a creation of Doctor Essex. The boy… well, she didn't think he was. Doctor Essex didn't lose control of what he created.

But it was the strangest thing. Around him, she could feel a kind of resonance, a paler, weaker version of the one that had struck her several times over this last year. More than that, he had the same colour eyes that she did, a shade of emerald green that until now she had thought was unique to her. Remy had certainly told her so, and while he was flattering her, there was some truth to it.

In any case, when that boy had seen her, he'd said something very puzzling. "Jean." It was a name, she knew that much, and he'd sounded confused, as if she looked like someone he knew. And that was impossible. Wasn't it?

Not only that, but he had the same powers as she did. Not entirely – that trick with the fire was clearly not telekinesis, she could feel the difference. No, it felt more like magic; unpredictable, dangerous and ever so slightly alive.

Other than the magic, though, she feel his powers, and she'd felt them before. He was powerful, the most powerful telepath she'd ever met, even more so than Doctor Essex. More powerful than anyone. Anyone, that was, but her. She'd crushed him, yes, but she hadn't been able to hold back.

Thinking back, it certainly explained a couple of things – she'd felt some absolutely massive pulses of psychic power recently, ones that caused ripples in the Astral Plane, ones that she'd have thought that only she could cause. Well, maybe that other presence, the one she very occasionally felt spreading its awareness across the world like a web, could do it, but that one felt different.

But what it didn't explain was who he was. Where he'd come from. Why he'd had that young woman, that girl, with him, and what purpose she served – perhaps she was his equivalent of Remy? If she was, she was a poor substitute going by the rashness she'd displayed in attacking Doctor Essex. And then there was the matter of who'd made him, because it couldn't be Doctor Essex. He'd made her, yes, but this boy was different. He fought differently to her, using his psionics in ways she'd never even considered – the internalising of his telekinesis to work within the limitations the suit imposed on him, imitating superhuman physical attributes and flight, that was inspired.

And his use of that strength and speed had been ruthlessly effective, semi-reminiscent of Agent Belova, the Black Widow, but more brutality than grace. No one before had defeated Doctor Essex's latest project, the one that many in the compound, even Remy, called 'the Beast' – though in private, Remy sometimes called him 'the Blob' instead, to make her laugh. The Beast was a title with dignity and power. The Blob was not. Her expression turned to one of distaste. He certainly looked, and acted, the part. In any case, there was no denying his raw power – usually he was able to shrug off anything thrown at him and crush his opponent.

And yet, despite seemingly being on course to do exactly the same to the boy in the suit, crushing his arm when, astonishingly, the other boy went to check on his welfare after apparently disabling him. Of course, as expected, the Blob had crushed the boy's offered arm, having endured the firestorm unleashed upon him, and beaten him to a pulp, in a rage at being actually hurt for once. At that point, General Lukin had felt both disappointed and seriously worried and made to call the Blob off, while Belova had sneered and said something contemptuous about soft Westerners. Doctor Essex, however, had shown no such worry.

Then, something astonishing happened. The boy, nursing multiple broken bones, had internalised his telekinesis, repaired the worst of the damage, then proceeded to unleash an absolutely savage beating on the Blob, demonstrating his unquestionable superiority in skill and speed.

In short, he was a talented and powerful telekinetic, and a very skilled fighter, skilled in the sorts of arts that Doctor Essex had never felt the need to teach her. Remy had taught her some of his skills, but they were nothing much. Certainly, nothing compared to this. And yet, in contrast to this, his telepathic skill left a lot to be desired. He knew the basics, certainly, and his shields had been some of the better ones she'd encountered, but he'd resorted to raw power to try and destroy Doctor Essex – something, naturally, which she could not allow. He was her maker, after all. Even if she sometimes felt like she wanted – no. He was her maker. She existed to fulfil the purpose he'd created her for. That was that.

She shook her head slightly. Anyway, his use of his telekinesis had been positively inspired, but his telepathy had been crude, relying on raw power in a way that she hadn't in years. Thanks to Doctor Essex, she knew better than to waste power like that. He'd made sure of it.

He certainly wasn't stupid, she thought. Poorly taught, perhaps, but not stupid. For instance, he'd accepted that with his psionics constrained and his power drained by the fight he'd just been in he was never going to be able to fight his way out of the armoured Red Room Agents that surrounded him, raising his hands over his head in surrender.

And then there was something that baffled her even more. Around his neck had been a chain, on which hung a beautiful golden feather. There was a resonance there too. Resonance, a strange familiarity, and most of all, a sense of power. It felt like something she'd felt before and she didn't know why. Doctor Essex did not encourage curiosity, or introspection, or questioning. For him, it was necessary. He was a scientist. For her, however, it was a flaw, an impediment to what needed to be done, and was only to be exercised if he ordered her to be curious on his behalf.

However, it was one flaw that she still had, one that Remy, as curious a person as she had ever known in multiple senses of the word, had encouraged.

So she'd taken it. It would have been stolen anyway, and she wanted to investigate it. So now it sat in her pocket, digging into her side.

And this was particularly pertinent, because now it felt like it was heating up.

Yes. Definitely a puzzle.

And then things got complicated because the boy seemed to grin, before suddenly snapping the fingers of both upraised hands. The snow on the ground sublimated into boiling steam, before vanishing into the sudden fog bank in something just short of a blur.

Lukin started cursing and snapping orders at his subordinates. Doctor Essex, meanwhile, simply arched an eyebrow, looking mildly impressed, then turned to her. "Bring him in. Undamaged."

Maddie stood up straighter. It was time to fulfil her purpose.

"Yes, Doctor Essex," she said.

OoOoO

Harry breathed a sigh of relief when he discovered that keeping his telekinesis running through him protected him from being burnt by the still hot, if no longer quite boiling, steam. Or at least, he thought, it protected him from being burn too badly.

All around him, there was a lot of angry, confused and agonised shouting in Russian. Harry, who'd picked up a little Russian from Natasha, added a couple of shouts in his best Russian accent, mostly of theme of "he's over there," adding to the general confusion.

Unfortunately, he didn't entirely manage to avoid the Red Room soldiers, as one in armour loomed up ahead of him. Ah well. Time to find out how well telekinetically enhanced fists stood up to titanium.

The Red Room soldier shouted in surprise, setting himself and launching what looked like an ersatz repulsor blast at Harry, who jinked right, then darted left. The Red Room soldier responded by drawing a large, nasty looking knife, more of a machete really, designed as a close combat weapon, and only Harry's Quidditch reflexes saved him from almost being gutted.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with knives?" he taunted. The Red Room soldier, about to shout again, seemed to stare at him, puzzled. "It's a joke about… oh forget it, it probably wouldn't work in Russian," Harry muttered. "Expelliarmus. Accio knife."

The large blade came zooming through the air and Harry's reflexes came to the rescue again as he snatched it out of the air. The Red Room soldier let out a cry of dismay, then tried shift back to his fake repulsors.

"Yeah, no," Harry said, then used a purposefully super-charged banishing charm. "Bye-bye," he said, as the soldier zoomed off into the fading fog, then hefted the chunky knife, grunting slightly. It was clearly designed for someone with superhuman strength. Good thing he qualified. A swipe of his hand sharpened it. "Now, let's see if this works," he muttered, and carefully pressed the tip into the suit at his hip. It went through like butter, giving Harry a nasty scratch in the process, but any pain was replaced by euphoria. As quickly and carefully as he dared, he swept it around his body at his waist, before up the middle of his body, leaving him with a de facto leather coat and trousers, and most importantly…

"Now this," he said with definite satisfaction. "Is much more like it."

… full access to his psychic powers.

"Y' know, homme, that ain't a good look for y'," a man with an accent he'd never heard said.

The man, Harry thought, had a point. He looked ridiculous and the shirtless look was going to go get rather uncomfortable sooner rather than later, but that he could live with.

Of course, the other man couldn't exactly talk. Close-fitting casual clothing over a tatty brown trench-coat wasn't exactly a fashion statement, as far as Harry could tell. That said, the other man – boy, really, he was no more than five years older than Harry himself – wore it with total confidence. And more to the point, he stood with total confidence too, a metal bo staff in hand, and expression that said he could more than handle himself. Plus, the red and black eyes suggested that he wasn't just human.

"It's going to be temporary," Harry said. "And so will this." He focused, ready to knock out the strange accented, French speaking man, but before he could, his Quidditch reflexes kicked in again, making him duck and saving him for the third time in as many minutes as something small and fast shot overhead, glowing pinkish-purple, before it exploded. He blinked in shock. He'd barely seen the other man move, and speaking of which, he was moving again, bo staff discarded, a whole pack of cards gleaming in mid-air between his spreading hands.

He smirked at Harry's expression. "Want me t' deal y' in, homme?" he asked.

"Uh, no thanks," Harry said.

The man shrugged. "Pity," he said, before a hailstorm of cards came shooting at Harry.

Harry instantly threw up a shield, the cards exploding against like grenades, a constant stream of pinkish-purple flashes of light that forced him to squint, a thunder of noise against his ears.

As a result, he didn't see or hear the man take a run up and vault over his shield, didn't even notice him until he glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye, and reacted with a glancing telekinetic blast that sent the man spinning.

As soon as he had an inch of breathing space, Harry went for his mind, and found a shield, a very well constructed shield.

The man smirked. "Tryin' to get in here?" he asked, tapping his skull. "Nice try. But I've had some work done."

"I can see," Harry said with a grimace. It was a good shield. A very good shield, actually, constructed by someone who really knew what they were doing. Milbury/Essex, maybe? Or had it been not-Jean? He could get through it, hell, he could smash through it relatively easily. But doing so would probably leave this man comatose at best, and he wasn't going to do that. Not unless he absolutely had to. That left only three options: work his way through it, fight, or run. The former would take too long, the latter might take too long, and the latter…

He shook his head. He had a job to do. Find Carol, and get them both out of here.

"So," he said, as he started to circle the other man. "You seen a blonde girl anywhere? About so high, blue eyes, smart mouth, right hook that could drop an elephant? It's just that she's a friend of mine, and I'd like to find her without having to pull this complex around down your ears." He shrugged. "Of course, in the mood I'm in, I might just do that anyway."

"I may have done," the man said, feinting at Harry. "Can't tell y', though. Against my contract."

"I see, because professional integrity is of course more important than displaying a scrap of human decency," Harry said sarcastically. The fog was definitely fading now, and the shouts of Red Room personnel were getting closer.

The man shrugged. "A man's word is his bond, homme," he said. "An' some of us ain't got much else." He looked Harry in the eye. "Besides. I think that even y' would have trouble gettin' to the dormitory. Someone like y' on the loose, powerful, rep for rescuing pretty girls in trouble, every guard that ain't chasing y' or protectin' the big men would be goin' to secure the assets." He snorted mockingly. "Good luck, homme. Y're goin' to need it."

Harry started to angrily say that Carol and whoever else was there weren't just assets, they were people – and that knowing Carol, she was less likely to need rescuing, more likely to be the one causing people to need rescuing, from her. Then, he stopped, and replayed what had just been said. And then, he met the man's gaze, seeing a knowing look there.

"I fancy my chances," he said, and hammered a telekinetic blast at the mysterious man. And it might just have been his imagination, but the man seemed to purposefully move just an instant too late, taking the full force of the blast to the chest and hammering him into the wall, stunning him.

Then, he looked up, scanning the complex with his mind. Sure enough, there was a definite cluster of minds, wary and by the sense of it, ready to open fire any moment, surrounding an area that was almost suspiciously blank to his powers.

"Bingo," he muttered, and took off.

OoOoO

Carol had, following the increased intensity of the explosions, prepared to leave, figuring that Harry would probably be heading her way and leaving a large trail of destruction towards the exit of this hellhole, taken the opportunity to eat the note Remy had given her. While this was a strategy taken from watching one spy film too many as a kid, she thought that it might be a good idea.

Logically speaking, if these assholes had managed to take down Harry once – no mean feat – then there was every chance they could do it again. Not only that, but they'd contained a whole bunch of teenage superhumans, some of them quite powerful, and felt able to let them out for training.

Moreover, after Carol had explained that the noises of destruction were almost certainly Harry escaping, Lorna had said something in a subdued voice that had made her blood run cold.

"He's not the first to try," she'd said, with a glance at one of the dormitory's empty beds. The implication had been clear.

In other words, there was at least some chance that if they tried to escape, they'd be recaptured. And if they were recaptured, odds were that the key card Remy had slipped her would be discovered, as would the note. Which, of course, was why she'd eaten it. Logic also dictated that if they got recaptured, or at the very least – if Harry didn't even reach her block – she was investigated on principle, and if Remy wasn't discovered, he could help them again. Or if they didn't survive the escape attempt, maybe he could get the chance to help someone else.

She'd also set herself, waiting for the moment, and advised others to do the same. "Okay," she said. "Hands up who here has a power that's any use in a fight."

Everyone raised a hand, some more hesitantly than others. Somehow, Carol wasn't surprised. After all, if you were training up super-soldiers, why would you waste your time with people whose powers were of no use in combat?"

"All right, better question," Carol said. "Who here actually knows how to use their powers in a fight? And who here will fight?"

There was a moment of silence.

"Come on, people, odds are that we'll have to fight our way out," she said.

"If we fight," Nehzno said quietly. "We could die."

There was a murmur of agreement from the others.

"We could," Carol said bluntly. "But what's the alternative? From what I've heard, the only options if you stay are to become some kind of psycho super soldier for the Red Room, or to die." She cracked her knuckles. "Take it from me, if it comes to it, it's better to go out fighting."

There was shouting from outside, followed by the rattle of gunfire and the howl of energy blasts.

It lasted less than five seconds. Then, there was a moment of silence, before the door, a foot or more of reinforced titanium with, according to Lorna, what felt like a lot of electricity running through it, crumpled like tin foil.

Carol folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. "And what time do you call this?" she asked.

"No idea, someone pinched my watch," Harry said, sauntering in. The other teenagers peered past him, to see a lot of unconscious Red Room personnel.

"Mein Gott," Kurt whispered. Noriko let out an impressed whistle.

"I'm no one's god," Harry said. "I'm…"

"Just your average ordinary everyday super psychic Prince of Asgard," Carol said dryly.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right," he said. "Making new friends?"

"A few," Carol said. "And what the hell are you wearing?"

"This?" Harry asked, glancing down at what had once been a black leather suit and was now, essentially, a leather jacket and trousers. "Oh, a little something I picked up. I think it'll catch on."

"Catch on fire, maybe, that thing's a crime against nature."

"I think it makes me look dashing."

"It makes you look like an escapee from a 90's music video."

"Do you always talk this much when there are more important things to do?" Noriko asked, irritated.

Harry and Carol exchanged a look.

"… No."

"Then let's get going," she said. "Do you know the way out?"

Harry glanced at a guard. "I do now," he said. "And so do you," he added a moment later, as the knowledge quite literally appeared in their brains.

And just like that, faces that hadn't dared hope let themselves believe that this nightmare might be about to end, that they were going to get out in one piece.

So, naturally, that was when it all started to go wrong.

Because as soon as they made to go, hope in their hearts, they saw someone standing in their way. For the most part, she looked fairly innocuous; dressed in grey combats, a tight banded long sleeved grey shirt, with a dark overcoat to finish it off, she wouldn't have been out of place on the streets of most cities in the Northern hemisphere.

"Who the hell…" Carol began. "Harry?"

Harry had tensed up, eyes narrowing. "You," he said warily, staring at the young woman opposite them.

"Me," she said, voice mild.

There was a moment of silence as she stared at them, or more accurately, at Harry. Carol barely got a glance. The others didn't even seem to rate notice.

"Seven against one?" Lorna said, voice low. "Even without our powers and your friend, I'd fancy our chances."

"I don't," Carol said, staring at the young woman opposite them, real, primal fear running through her for the first time since the World Cup. Because now, she knew how the Red Room had subdued Harry. Thugs with guns, psychotic Black Widow wannabes, even creepy psychic doctors who could throw a punch, she could fight them. Maybe not win, but she could fight them. But this… this was way out of her league. "I really, really don't."

Because, the young woman was facing them down with not a shred of fear in her eyes. And save only for a couple of harsh triangular tattoos on each cheek, a bob cut hairstyle and an unnervingly calm expression, she was the spitting image of Jean Grey.

Chapter Text

Meanwhile, the Avengers were collating evidence and extracting the remaining data from the tapes.

"What does it matter?" Thor demanded, patience finally running out. "All we need is to have some idea of where they are likely to be, then Heimdall can find them, and then we will crush them and get Harry and Carol back."

"I do not think that that will be so easy," Loki said quietly. "And I believe that Mister Petrovitch believes so as well."

Ivan nodded. "I recognise the man in some of the footage that has survived," he said. "The one who corresponds to the prophecy you mentioned."

"Why did you not say?" Thor demanded, striding over to loom over Petrovitch, face darkening with fury.

"Because it would not help you," Ivan said calmly. "For one thing, the only names I know for him are obvious aliases or superstitious nicknames – believe me, I have checked each one. Sinister is the one by which he is most often called. For another, as this prophecy hints, he is a shapeshifter of immense skill. He could be another person in an instant. What I do know is that he possesses technology that is unlike any I have seen, much of which is explicitly designed for concealment."

"How would you know that?" Loki asked quietly.

Ivan's lips thinned. "He told me, over forty years ago," he said. "The Red Room had attempted to either kill or capture the inhabitants of the White Council's Archangel base. The attempt failed miserably, and the White Council hit back. Our friend in the footage said that his technology would conceal us even from the finest magical tracking."

Loki nodded slowly. "It would explain why Strange said that he was unable to find him," he said.

"Surely Heimdall would be able to pierce such veils," Thor said, frowning.

"Perhaps," Loki said. "For all Heimdall's near omniscience, there are ways to hide from his sight for those with the skill. I have managed it myself. And technology, very select kinds of technology, can duplicate that feat. Celestial technology, Asgardian, Atlantean, Kryptonian, perhaps even Deviant… all are present on Midgard, in one form or another, and if this creature had access to any of them, it would explain a lot. And while I doubt that it would be of sufficient sophistication to hide completely, it would mostly probably be enough to make them rather harder to find."

"Yeah," Clint said. "Speaking of explaining a lot, so might this." He swivelled one of the screens to public view, revealing an image that JARVIS had just finished enhancing, rendering blurry pixels into something useful. "I think I just figured out how this guy subdued Harry."

On the screen was a young woman. While the image was still somewhat unclear, she quite clearly had ruby red hair.

"It can't be," Thor said. "Jean would never –"

"Jean would never," Loki said. "And it is not her. The style of hair is wrong and…" He pointed at a small part of her face, barely visible. "Look. Tattoos. Or perhaps scars."

"Then what are we dealing with?" Steve asked.

Loki grimaced. "I cannot be certain," he said. "But if this creature has access to the kind of technology I believe he does…"

"Cloning," Alison finished quietly. "It's not unheard of."

"What, Dolly the Sheep style?" O'Neill asked.

Loki suddenly froze. "Oh, I have been a fool," he said softly. "Such a fool."

"Brother?" Thor asked.

"The presence that kept Harry at Privet Drive," Loki said. "MI6, what remains of it, investigated on behalf of Fury. They hit a dead end, but one of the things that they turned up was that the Dursley family doctor, a man calling himself Nathan Milbury, showed an unusual degree of interest in Harry and frequently took blood samples. That doctor later vanished shortly after Harry started Hogwarts. A highly advanced lab was found there by SHIELD, albeit one long disused. Harry was kidnapped from Little Whinging, the neighbourhood in which he grew up."

He began to pace. "It all ties together," he said. "Milbury was our mysterious telepath and shapeshifter. He was studying Harry, likely having discovered him through an interest in Jean, and what better way to do so than to pose as the benevolent family doctor? When Harry started attending Hogwarts, he vanished, not wanting to risk attracting the attention of Albus Dumbledore, perhaps deciding that he had discovered all that he needed from Harry. But then, in this last year, it was revealed that Harry was Thor's son, and his Asgardian heritage has started to shine through. During that period, his X-Gene also activated. And for a brief period, the world got a glimpse of his full adult potential at Easter."

"And suddenly a project that was more trouble than it was worth becomes worth the risk," Bruce said, speaking up. "Harry's genetically unique, and power wise, he's all set to win the lottery."

"The Red Room would slaughter entire nations to access that kind of power," Ivan said. "They would give this creature anything he asked for. An extraction team would be nothing."

"And in Jean's apparent clone, he's got the firepower to subdue Harry," Tony chimed in. "By the way, can I state how unbelievably messed up that is?"

"You can try," Alison said. "But I'm not sure if words can cover it."

"You know what's bothering me?" Bruce said. "It doesn't make sense."

"How do you mean?" Steve asked. "What doesn't make sense?"

"Well, cloning Jean," Bruce said. "I mean, aside from Harry's mom, there's no obvious history of superhuman powers in the Grey family."

"Someone with cloning technology would also presumably have the ability to detect the X-Gene," Alison pointed out.

"Yeah, but how would they know to look?" Bruce asked.

"I did my research into Lily's family," Loki said. "When she and my brother were first married. I focused more on the direct ancestry, since Jean's line showed no signs of superhuman abilities at the time. There were legends, rumours, whispers of superhuman powers appearing intermittently throughout the Grey bloodline, but nothing solid or consistent. I assumed it was the occasional outbreak of magical potential in the bloodline and thought little of it."

"Exactly," Bruce said. "Why would someone with that kind of technology be drawn to Jean's family in the first place?"

"Could he not have taken the sample after Jean manifested her powers?" Thor asked. "Even if he did not have the ability to accelerate the clone's ageing, there are places where time travels swifter than in the material world."

"No," Bruce said. "That doesn't fit. He'd have had to beat Xavier to her."

"He could have taken a sample in the holidays, when she was home from the Institute," Steve said.

"No," Clint said, shaking his head. "This is a guy who's spent a long time getting good at avoiding being spotted. Even Strange can't find him. He wouldn't risk Xavier picking up on him." He turned to Thor. "And remember what Strange said? He said that even he couldn't track him. He also said that he didn't put Harry with Jean because he didn't want Sinister to go after her, more or less."

"Yes," Thor nodded. "I remember."

"Which complicates things," Bruce said. "The records say that he became the Dursley's family doctor in early 1995. That and what Strange apparently said implies that he was interested in Harry back when he was a baby. Harry wouldn't even have turned two yet, and Jean would have been four at most. Her powers didn't manifest until she was six. Harry was the kid of, no offence Thor, an apparently ordinary witch and wizard. What would attract him to Harry?"

"The whole stopping Voldemort thing?" Tony suggested. "I mean, to a scientist, that might suggest buried powers. Buried genetic powers. Maybe he was testing for some super power that allowed Harry to survive Voldemort, not knowing about super-mom, stumbled on his X-Gene, and decided to stick around."

"But that still doesn't fit," Bruce said. "He's got the technology to clone people. Why not just take a sample of Harry and clone him, when he's clearly willing to do it? Why go to all the trouble of watching him up close and risking being spotted? I mean, Dumbledore's people were keeping an eye on Harry, and this guy went out of his way to alter their minds. That's risky."

"Especially since Dumbledore's a legilimens," Steve said, then added, "A magical telepath. He's not even close to as strong as Xavier or someone like that, but he knows what he's doing."

"Indeed he does," Thor said.

"Right," Bruce said. "He's risking detection. Not only that, Harry's being watched by other people. Wanda looked in on him, Loki looked in on him, Huginn and Muninn looked in on him, Strange was almost certainly keeping an eye on him..."

"I also had people keeping an eye on him," Alison said, then, at various looks, half shrugged. "His grandparents were SHIELD, and Fury was close to his mother. It was a professional courtesy." She grimaced. "I had several people roasted over a slow flame after Harry turned up at Hogwarts and it became obvious how he had been treated. I think I owe them an apology."

"You were supposed to be retired," O'Neill said accusingly.

"So?" Alison asked, amused.

Her son sighed.

Bruce nodded. "That just adds to my point," he said. "This guy is taking an insane risk, right from the beginning. He knew Harry's significance from the beginning, but for some reason, he didn't clone him."

"Or he did, and we haven't seen it yet," Clint put in.

"Or he couldn't," Loki said. "Harry's genetic history is complicated, to say the least. He is part magical human, part mutant and part Asgardian, with the Asgardian influence steadily altering the human genes. And then you have to consider the fact that he was imbued with the chaotic energies of a probability altering blessing, and with the powers of the Phoenix."

"That still doesn't explain how he knows about Jean's genetic significance," Bruce said. "Something set him onto Harry, and that had to be knowledge of Jean's X-Gene and its power, despite the fact that it hadn't manifested yet."

"It couldn't be the other way around?" O'Neill asked.

"No," Loki said. "Xavier found Jean in less than a day, and once she was awakened, she was removed to his care within hours, with Doctor McCoy being the practising physician. After that, he kept her in close care. The only way this creature could have beaten him there is by teleportation or already having been there, and if he could teleport, he would not have needed a plane to remove Harry and Carol. It had to have been before."

"Yeah," O'Neill said impatiently. "But he could have found out that the kid had an X-Gene, then tested her before she got powers and got the DNA sample long before Xavier rolled up."

There was a thoughtful silence.

"That could fit," Bruce admitted.

"It could," a new voice said. "Unfortunately, your theory is completely wrong. The truth is much worse."

Everyone twisted sharply to see Fury. He was carrying a briefcase and wearing a grim expression. He was also accompanied by Coulson.

"What do you know," Clint said after a moment. "It really can always get worse."

"How?" Thor asked shortly.

"Earlier this year," Fury said. "We received a letter from the past, written by someone from our future. Harry, to be precise, addressing it to his younger self. Most of it was carefully written so as not to give too much away, while still giving out hints. One thing that stuck with me was that the section on Jean. 'You'll get another nice surprise along with'."

"The clone?" Thor said, surprised.

"It would be like Harry to sympathise with and effectively adopt a clone raised as a living weapon by someone who made his life a misery into the family," Loki mused.

"Your theories are based on a mistaken assumption," Coulson said.

"What's that?" Steve asked.

Fury opened the suitcase and removed an official looking document, sliding it over. Thor took it. "Jean's birth certificate," he said. "What of it?"

Fury pulled out another document, and slid it over. It was another birth certificate. Everyone crowded around it.

"Rachel Grey," Steve said. "Who…"

"She's Jean Grey's twin sister," Fury said. He slid a third document over. This one was different to the others: it was a death certificate. "And she died the same night she was born. However." He glanced at Coulson.

"The night Jean and Rachel Grey was born, a junior doctor at the hospital reported seeing a man he didn't recognise in a smart lab coat with a large shoulder bag heading down to the maternity ward," Coulson said. "A few moments later, another man came in, wearing scrubs, and demanded if he had seen someone heading down to maternity. The junior doctor confirmed that he had, and the man thanked him and ran down to maternity. The junior doctor, curious, followed him. As he did, he heard a loud bang from the hospital nursery and was in the room less than ten seconds later. There was a scorch mark on the wall, the babies were awake and crying, and the window was open. He went to the window, and saw the tall man in hospital scrubs looking around and cursing. There was no sign of the other man. He reported this to Hospital Security, who passed it on to the local police, but they didn't look particularly hard, especially once it transpired that neither man appeared on CCTV. The scorch mark was put down to an electrical fault, despite the fact that it didn't match the imagery of an electrical burn. It was too confined, too controlled, too focused. All of the babies were present and healthy, except for one, a baby girl with no discernible cause of death. That baby was Rachel Grey. At first, the shock of the explosion was blamed, but that was ruled out by the post-mortem. The coroner found SIDS – Sudden Infant Death Syndrome."

"One of the men was Milbury," Thor said. "Or whatever his real name is. Who was the other?"

"The description given fits that of Doctor Milbury," Coulson agreed. "Caucasian, approximately six feet tall, clean-shaven, slim, and dark haired with dark eyes. As for the other man… Caucasian, approximately six feet tall and lean – slim, but larger than Milbury. Goatee beard, blue eyes and dark hair. Dark hair." He took a deep breath. "Dark hair with distinctive white wings at the temples."

"Strange," Steve said. "Which means…"

There was a moment of silence, then Thor spat an epithet so foul that it actually seemed to make the air twist.

"A changeling," Loki said quietly.

"Oh dear god," Alison said softly.

"Yeah," Fury said. "Rachel Grey didn't die that night. She was stolen and replaced." He looked around the room. "Ever since Jean Grey's powers manifested, I have had nightmares about what might have happened, what might still happen, if she fell into the wrong hands. Now we know. The girl who disabled Harry isn't a clone or a copy, she's the real thing."

"Why didn't Strange just track her down?" Bruce asked. "I mean, he's meant to be the Sorcerer Supreme. Shouldn't he be able to do that?"

"Maybe he chose not to," Tony said darkly. "Think about it. Strange is preparing us all to fight this Thanos guy. He needs an army, more than that, he needs soldiers. And he takes the long view. Jean's been trained by Charles, and Strange knows how that works. Charles is nice guy, he's gentle, he coaxes her along, unaware of how powerful she really is until she's ready. That's well enough, but Strange wants to cover his bases."

"You're suggesting that he let Milbury take Rachel," Steve said.

"Why not? Our bad guy is a telepath, one who really knows what he's doing," Tony said. "He trains her in the psychic dark arts, gets her really good at what she does. Then Strange, knowing that this guy wants Harry too, knowing that he won't be able to resist the temptation to get a closer look at him and how he's changed, slides him under our bad guy's nose. The bad guy takes the bait and grabs Harry, not knowing what Strange does about Harry's mom, Harry's personality and not realising the significance of Harry knowing Jean. He's banking on Harry to get under this girl's skin, to show her the life she could have, should have, had. A revelation like that, after a life that she's probably had, as a cross between enforcer and experiment? Combine that with Harry's all-loving family first approach offering her an out and that might just make her turn on our bad guy."

He sat back, a bitter smile on his face. "And so, end result: one bad guy who knows too much about Harry is taken out and the Red Room is probably nothing more than a pile of rubble. Meanwhile, the good guys get a new Omega class psychic who knows how to play hardball, who can teach Harry and Jean how to do the same, and crucially, owes Harry everything."

"That's a nasty mind you've got there, Stark," Fury said.

"Tony," Pepper said, brow furrowed. "He wouldn't…."

"I am not so sure, Lady Pepper," Loki said quietly. "It is a compelling theory, one that fits how Strange operates."

"If he is behind this, then I don't care how many fancy outfits he owns, I'm shooting him," O'Neill said flatly.

"The theory fits Strange's MO, it's not what happened," Coulson said.

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying that Strange wouldn't do that?" he asked. "Because if you are, I have a bridge to sell you."

"I think it's entirely possible that he would do that," Coulson said. "But I'm also pretty certain he didn't."

"And why is that?" Thor asked.

"Strange's personality," Coulson said calmly. "Strange is a control freak. He's not always obvious about it, but it's what he is. While he's been known to disappear for decades at a time, he's always seen around specific crisis points. Which means that he needs to be in moderately good standing with those fighting the crises, like the Avengers. If he'd actually done it, I think it's reasonably certain that he'd get smote or smashed the next time he showed his face. And everything we've seen, and everything he's said, indicates that we're going to be seeing more crises over the next few years. Which means we'll be seeing more of Strange – he can't afford to stay away. And that's not it."

He looked around. "Strange might seem like a gambler at times, especially this summer, when he boiled everything down to Harry making a choice to reject Chthon. But he's not. He arranged everything very, very carefully. He knew who would do what and when, and he arranged circumstances so that they did exactly what he wanted. He couldn't be certain of what would happen, but he stacked the deck as high as he could in his favour. And I can't think of many bigger gambles than allowing a Red Room affiliated scientist and powerful telepath unfettered access to Jean Grey's identical twin, who apparently has all of her powers, for over sixteen years."

"Strange has constructed a well-earned reputation based on a certain mystique," Fury said. "The sort of mystique that let him throw down the gauntlet to the entire White Council, knowing they would never dare to pick it up. That mystique is so pervasive, that you're all forgetting one really damn important thing: Strange is not omniscient, nor is he infallible. He's made a career out of projecting that impression, and it's undoubtable that he's as close to omniscient as we're ever likely to see. But he's still human. He can make, and does, make mistakes. I think that we've just seen one of them." He looked around the room. "There's something else about Strange – he covers his tracks incredibly well and he never, ever lets you see him sweat. It's part of the mystique. And yet here, we've got an account of Strange looking panicked, of being caught cursing, of being caught offguard. Tell me, when was the last time you saw Strange look anything other than completely in control?"

There was a long moment of silence as everyone pondered this.

"He looked a little off when he said that he thought he might be about to die soon," Thor said.

"According to Wanda Maximoff, he said that because he wasn't entirely sure if he would survive the Battle of London," Fury said. "Which I think is true. However, look at the results of what he said. It put us all on our toes and it got Maximoff back in the game again, selecting a new apprentice that Strange pointed her towards, Dresden, whose life Strange had already saved. Dresden took part in the Battle of London, and played a vital role in crippling Gravemoss, forcing him to draw on Chthon to survive fighting Strange, bring the bastard into the open. Not long after, Beaubier hit him hard enough to either vaporise him or blast him into the middle distance, resulting in Chthon jumping ship and winding up in Harry. That was calculated. This was not."

"How do you know?" Loki asked. "I mean, Strange is a master manipulator. How do we know that he hasn't arranged this uncertainty, so we are not to blame him?"

"I don't," Fury said. "Not for certain. But I have a pretty good guess. If Strange had arranged for Rachel Grey to be stolen by this scientist, he wouldn't have been seen. He made sufficient preparation to ensure that he didn't show up on CCTV, but he didn't remember to wipe the memory of the doctor who saw him, or even erase the scorch mark he left behind. He got sloppy. Which means that I think we can take Strange at his word when he said that for whatever reason, he couldn't track this asshole." He focused on Loki. "And I'm guessing that you've been having similar problems."

Everyone turned to Loki, who grimaced and nodded. "I have tried," he said. "Ever since I heard of this telepath, I have tried to track him, both here and in the Nevernever, as well as in various other closely interlinked dimensions. Each time, nothing. It is as if he does not exist."

Fury nodded. "And that's why I don't think that Stark was completely wrong," he said. "Strange can't track this guy. He's tried. But he also can't afford to leave an Omega Class psychic in his hands or the Red Room's, it's far too damn dangerous."

"So he's just throwing Harry in and hoping he makes friends?" Clint asked, eyebrows raised.

"Harry knows Jean. We already know that he's got a psychic connection, a resonance of sorts, with her," Fury said. "A spontaneous one. I would be very surprised if he didn't have one with this girl too. That'll make her curious. And even if he doesn't, the fact that he's the closest thing to someone on her level that she's ever encountered will. After that, even if he assumes she's a clone, Harry's got a hero complex. He's going to try and save Rachel, and in the process, she is going to find out about Jean. Since the best method of controlling someone is through ignorance, I somehow doubt that our bad guy has ever told Rachel the truth about where she comes from. And then there's the new prophecy."

"Look, I don't give a damn about whatever prophecy mumbo-jumbo is going around," O'Neill broke in. "All I care about is the fact that there are two kids stuck behind enemy lines, one of whom is my niece! So can we please save the speculation until after we get them home safely?"

"I am of a like mind," Thor growled, and O'Neill made a 'see?' gesture.

"Jack," Alison said. "I've been through this before. Much as we might want to, we can't charge in until we know as much as possible, or we could get them killed as we're trying to rescue them. We need to know as much as possible before we go in, or we could get blindsided. If it's some scheme of Strange's, we should be able to get in and out relatively easily. But if this guy is smart enough to slip both Strange and Loki's tails, if Strange has nothing to do with this, we could end up wasting time on a wild goose chase in the wrong place entirely. Or worse: we could be walking straight into a trap."

O'Neill grumbled, but didn't disagree. Thor looked grim, but nodded curtly.

"The prophecy," Bruce said after a moment. "What about it?"

"She's in it," Fury said. "'He shall find the lost, rallying them to him. One, a beacon in an ocean of fallen stars, that waits to be lit. Another, a hound in chains, that waits to break free. A third, a memory in a cocoon of frozen time.' I've got a shrewd idea who the first is. The third, I don't have a clue. But the second… I'm pretty sure that that's Rachel Grey. I can't be certain, but the fact is that Jean Grey is the most powerful psychic in recorded history, and I don't think that a prophecy is going to skip over her twin sister. Not when it's already mentioned her boss, the 'Thief with a Thousand Faces'. The text of the prophecy heavily implies that Harry's going to turn her. I think that Strange set him in her path for precisely that purpose, since he can't find and rescue her himself."

"Well that's just great, since we have no idea where they are," Tony said.

"My words exactly," O'Neill said.

"Actually, we do," Coulson said. "You've probably been wondering where Natasha is."

"You could say that," Clint said.

"She's been looking into some contacts, two in particular," Coulson said. "One is an ex-Red Room prisoner. The other? He's inside the Red Room right now. And he works for our bad guy."

There was uproar. Most of it was on the theme of 'and you waited to tell us this why?'

"Natasha's been feeling out this contact for weeks," Coulson said. "Even now, she's not entirely sure of him, not certain that he isn't a Red Room Agent trying to trap her and deceive us, but the situation's forced our hand. What makes it worse is that he's jumpy, which you'd expect – the Red Room are hard enough people to cross when they don't have telepaths working for them."

"If he is in earnest, he must be brave indeed," Loki said quietly.

"I'll say," Alison said. "What's his stated motivation for wanting to leave?"

"Our contact is Remy LeBeau, otherwise known as Gambit," Coulson said. "He's the adopted son of Jean-Luc LeBeau, head of one of the biggest crime families in Louisiana and ruler of the New Orleans underworld. Supposedly he was a street kid who gained a reputation for light fingers and, when he was around seven, nearly managed to pickpocket Jean-Luc himself. LeBeau took a liking to him and adopted him. He's young, believed to be under 20, but prior to his disappearance last year, he had a growing reputation as one of the best thieves in the America. He has a literal calling card, the Jack of Hearts. He also has an advantage: powers. No one's ever got a clear idea of what they are, though the best guess some kind of ability to make things explode. It might seem counterintuitive for a light-fingered thief, but it fits. According to the FBI, he was being groomed as the heir to the LeBeau crime family, though apparently he wasn't interested in being in charge. He also supposedly fell for Bella Donna Boudreaux, daughter of Marius Boudreaux, head of a rival crime family. It was all very Romeo and Juliet. Her older brother, Julien Boudreaux, didn't like it and went after Gambit. He was found dead shortly afterwards, found with injuries consistent with close proximity to a large bomb, but no traces of explosive were found at the scene. Gambit was implicated, and considering his likely ability, was probably guilty. But there was no evidence, and he left town as soon as his father paid bail. Going by the fact that the last people who saw Gambit before he disappeared said that he looked afraid and was staying clear of people as far as possible, the FBI figured that he'd been murdered in revenge for Julien's death."

"Apparently, he wasn't," Alison said dryly.

"Right," Coulson said. "Natasha's got the DNA evidence to prove it. According to Gambit, his powers were developing out of control and our bad guy, who Gambit calls 'Doctor Essex', performed a life saving operation on him. This operation came with a price: Gambit had to work for him to pay off his debt. And until recently, he did."

"He doesn't have the stomach for some of the things that this Essex and his Red Room friends get up to?" O'Neill asked.

"It seems that way," Coulson said. "He was feeling out Natasha for help getting out at first, but according to her, that suddenly changed to help running a rescue mission. Apparently, Harry and Carol aren't the first young people with powers the Red Room have kidnapped."

"He must be brave," Steve said. "Does he have any information to offer us?"

"And how do we know he isn't spinning us a line?" Tony asked. "How do we know that he's even on the same base as Harry and Carol? I presume that they have more than one."

Coulson slid a couple of photos across. They were taken with a button camera. One was of Harry being carried away on a snowy backdrop, while another was of Carol, bruised but defiant looking, facing down a mussed, bruised blonde woman in what looked like a version of Natasha's suit. The other woman's face was contorted with fury.

"The woman is Yelena Belova," Coulson said. "Twenty seven years old, born in Ukraine, chosen for a Soviet ballet school at the age of five, one that was a front for the Red Room. She's one of the deadliest spies and assassins on the planet, and she's been linked to fourteen deaths in the last three years alone. A lot of them are believed to have been former Red Room personnel who refused to cooperate with the revived version of their former employer."

"They are," Ivan said. "I was surprised that it was not her sent to try and… recruit me."

Coulson nodded. "She's also been calling herself the Black Widow," he said.

"Hasn't she heard that there's already one?" Clint asked.

"Going by what we know of her, she does and she wants to claim the title for herself," Coulson said. "Her presence indicates that the Red Room are pulling out all the stops for this, as you might expect."

"This won't be their only base, though," Loki remarked. "I've been hearing whispers of Red Room activity all over Central and South Asia, as well as Eastern Europe."

"Also true," Fury said. "But this one seems to be where they're concentrating a lot of their resources. Which just one loose end before we kick their door down. Barnes."

There was a sudden storm of golden lightning, one that resolved itself into three figures: Bucky, a huge, hairy man in dark, durable and bloodied clothing, and Jean-Paul. Except that unlike usual, his lightning hadn't vanished as he'd come to a stop. Instead, it danced over his skin like motes of dust in a sunbeam. And he wasn't wearing his usual suit, the one given to him by Odin to help contain his power.

"Make that zero loose ends," Fury remarked. "Barnes, Beaubier and unless I am very much mistaken, Victor Creed. What a surprise."

"Who?" Thor asked, puzzled.

"Sabretooth," Clint said. "You've met Logan? Creed's like him, but bigger, uglier and minus the house-training."

"More or less," Alison remarked. "He lacks the adamantium, but he makes up for it in raw strength."

"And you brought him into my house?!" Tony demanded, infuriated.

"Have no fear, Tony," Loki said, watching Sabretooth, who was watching the room with a flat, empty predator's eyes. "He is incapacitated for now, and if he even breathes the wrong way, he will be instantaneously dismembered. Not killed – with a healing factor such as his, that would require decapitation." Those soulless eyes flickered up to him, then, without a word, drifted down to baby Ada in Pepper's arms. Lips rolled away from sharp canines in a parody of a smirk. The entire room tensed up at the implied threat. And Loki's fingers… twitched.

For a moment, nothing happened, then Sabretooth let a muted howl of pain as a deep horizontal gash appeared, destroying his eyes.

"Consider that a warning," he said coldly. "If you wish to be allowed to regrow your eyes, which we do not need, you will be on your best approximation of good behaviour. If you do not comply, I will remove your nervous system from your body, leaving only an attachment to your brain. I will then use it to string a harp and play it, accompanied by the sound of your screams."

There was a deathly silence as Jack looked uneasy. "Are you sure he's not evil any more?" he asked his mother in an undertone.

"Just because you stop walking in the shadows doesn't mean that you forget how," Alison said.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that he can speak the sort of language that Sabretooth understands," Alison said. "Now hush."

Loki crouched down in front of Sabretooth. "Now, let us get down to business," he said. "I presume that you did not simply attack Sergeant Barnes on a whim. I am aware that you are something of a mercenary, one in high demand. I therefore presume that you are employed either by the mysterious 'Doctor Milbury' or the Red Room. Am I correct?"

"And why should I tell you?" Sabretooth asked, in a deep and despite his situation, somehow laconic growl.

"Because my nephew and his friend have been kidnapped," Loki said. "Because I am therefore very angry, like my brother and our friends. Do not let my calm demeanour fool you: I am positively burning with rage. You understand rage, don't you, Mister Creed? You understand that it needs to be released, to be pointed at something and unleashed, before it consumes you."

Sabretooth snorted. "Yeah," he said. "I understand."

"Good," Loki said. "Now, you are a mercenary, and considering the natures of your potential employers, they have likely already cut their losses. Considering the calibre of opponent they sent you up against and their intended targets, you were likely never expected to escape."

Sabretooth let out a snarl, but said nothing.

"You are not my target, Mister Creed," Loki said. "Not my true target. I want to unleash my rage on those who deserve it, those who have offended me. But if I cannot find them, if my nephew and his friend are hurt in the meantime, then I will forced to choose a nearer target. You."

Sabretooth snorted. "Do your worst, pretty boy," he said. "I'm not afraid of you."

Loki… smiled. Or rather, his lips drew back from his teeth, curving upwards. "Oh my dear Mister Creed," he purred. "You assume too much. You assume that I am simply going to hurt you. You assume that pain is my only weapon. But pain is the natural condition of the universe, Mister Creed, and I have had thousands of years to refine my techniques. And my period of insanity helped great deal when it came to thinking outside the box."

Then, he leaned in, and whispered something in Sabretooth's ear.

OoOoO

"Well, Mister Creed was very cooperative," Loki said, as the SHIELD transport took a cuffed and heavily guarded Sabretooth away.

"What the hell did you say to him?" Fury asked.

"I'd like to know that too," Alison said. "Last time SHIELD had Sabretooth in, our best interrogators couldn't break him. Honestly, I thought we were going to have to resort to Charles' services."

"Everyone has a breaking point," Loki said, mildly. "And I made an accurate guess at his. All it took was the right words… and perhaps an illusion or two."

"In any case," Steve said. "We have a location. We can't know for certain that it's true, but we should check it out."

"I will speak to Heimdall," Thor said.

Steve nodded. "That's probably our quickest bet," he said. "Tony, Loki, Bruce, Alison, Fury, Coulson, Clint, pool what information we've got on the Red Room and their ally. I want to know what we'll be getting into. Pepper, call Jane, see if you can dig up the technology you guys used to bring HYDRA's base into the open a few months ago, I get the feeling we might be facing something similar. Bucky, Jean-Paul, we'll debrief. I want to know what happened with Sabretooth and how Harry and Carol wound up in Little Whinging."

"And I'm to stand around, looking ornamental?" O'Neill asked.

"No," Steve said. "I want you to get onto the Pentagon and the White House. If this lead doesn't pan out, then I want the Russian government to know that if they don't tell us where our kids are, we'll be kicking down the doors of the Kremlin."

O'Neill smiled a vindictive smile. "Half the Chiefs of Staff'll have an orgasm when they hear that," he predicted. "The other half will have a heart attack."

"Not my problem," Steve said. "Get on it."

O'Neill nodded and strode towards the door, pulling out his phone.

Finally, Steve turned to Jean-Paul and Bucky. "All right, he said. "What happened?"

OoOoO

The short version was that Bucky had become aware of the fact that they were being stalked, and, suspecting who it was and knowing Harry's proclivity for what could kindly be called overkill, decided to get the kids out of there. And if they made a stop along the way, as they seemed to be intending to do, that didn't really matter so long as it was well away from here. Besides, between them, they were more than strong enough to hold off anyone who came for them for long enough for Jean-Paul to whisk them away again if they got into trouble.

Further to that, Harry had previously demonstrated his ability to defend against high level psychic attack and return fire, sufficiently to overpower his opponent. Therefore, odds were that they would be fine and he would be able to handle Sabretooth without having to worry about the kids who, powerful as they were, weren't ready to go up against some like Creed, who was a) much smarter than he let on, b) more than happy to slaughter civilians for fun, let alone to incite a reaction, or simply use them as hostages. They might win a fight, but it would get incredibly messy.

And on any other occasion, he would have been right.

OoOoO

It wasn't too hard for Bucky to follow Creed's trail, affirming his belief that Creed had been trying to get his attention for whatever reason. Which meant a plan. Which meant that it was a very good thing that the kids were nowhere near here.

Unfortunately, however, that didn't mean that everything was going to run smoothly. For one thing, Creed was stalking through the shadows and the crowds like the predator he was, and almost none in those crowds had even the faintest idea of what was roaming among them. Oh, they knew something was off; you could tell by the way that parents drew their children in closer as he passed, how eyes tracked him as he moved, then ducked in an instant rather than meet his gaze, and the faintest relaxation and sigh of relief as he moved on past.

But even so, with all those instinctual premonitions of danger, none of them knew what Creed was, much less what he was capable of.

Then again, Bucky mused, as he watched Creed apparently disappear in front of his eyes, none of them had any idea of what he was capable of either. If they had the faintest idea of who and what he really was, they'd be running, screaming. But they didn't. And unlike Creed, he didn't radiate menace in the same apex predator sort of way. Creed resembled the beast he took his name from – large, powerful, surprisingly graceful, but not exactly subtle. Bucky was not prone to dwelling on himself and making such comparisons, but if he had to, he would say that he was more of a leopard, something that you usually didn't realise was there until you were already dead.

He wasn't fazed by Creed vanishing. It was temporary, and likely designed to prolong the chase, perhaps to lure him away from the kids – though if that was the intent, it was a laughable failure, considering that they were likely miles away by now, if not already on the other side of the Atlantic.

In any case, he banished such thoughts as he entered the small cut down off Knockturn Alley, eyes roving all around. He needed to be on his toes here. Then, on pure instinct, he spun, knife popping out and slashing open a throat.

"Well, well, well," a man's voice said in a low, laconic and amused sound growl. "Looks like some things never change."

It took Bucky a moment to register that the body whose throat he'd slashed open was wearing robes, a pale, dark haired boy no older than twenty with accusing eyes. The lack of blood spatter clued him into the fact that the boy had already been dead. The fact that the blood was still warm told him that he hadn't been dead for long, and he cursed inwardly. If he'd pushed Creed harder, this boy might have lived. However, he was dead. Very dead, going by the sudden smell of waste mixed in with gore. He'd been eviscerated.

He wasn't alone, either. There was another figure, lying on the ground. This one was not human, something given away by the unnaturally long limbs and extended lower jaw, bunched with muscle. A ghoul, bleeding the brownish watery blood of their kind. It had not lasted long – there was blood under its clawed fingers, but not much, and its throat had been ripped out with brutal ease.

And the perpetrator of both deaths stood not six feet away from. He was tall, taller than Bucky, taller than Steve, maybe even taller than Thor, with a powerful build and dark hair that surrounded his face with mutton-chops that looked more like a mane. His fingers ended in short, sharp claws that dripped with gore, canines that more closely resembled fangs, and he had the stance of a big cat, an apex predator fully confident in its power. That would have been bad enough. But the eyes… the eyes were what gave it away. This wasn't just some unthinking savage, an animal in human form. Because what gleamed in those eyes was intelligence. Intelligence, and malice.

"I've heard of you," Bucky said. "Sabretooth."

"Oh, you've more than heard of me," Creed said, tone amused and mocking. "We both know that. Comrade Winter."

Ice ran down Bucky's spine and Creed smiled. "Yeah, I know who you are. I've known for nearly thirty years now," he said. "We fought side by side once, remember?" He tapped his nose. "And some things don't lie."

Bucky made a non-committal sound while he mentally ran through possible battle strategies and the best way to put Creed down fast. Putting Creed down wasn't the hard part. He could do that – though it wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park. Keeping him down, on the other hand, was an entirely different story.

"Why?" he asked, nodding at the corpses.

"Them?" Creed asked lazily. "The ghoul thought he could poach. I showed him otherwise."

"And the boy?"

"What can I say?" Creed asked rhetorically, and smiled a toothy smile, revealing bloodied fangs. "I got bored." The smile widened. "And hungry." He glanced down at the boy. "Say… doesn't he look a little bit like that boy you're protecting?" He smiled again. "Nice bunch you had there. The girl in particular looked very tasty."

"If you're trying to provoke me," Bucky said. "You're wasting your time. You know that."

"I just wanted to see if that had changed," Creed said nonchalantly. "I mean, everything else has."

"Cut to the chase, Creed," Bucky said quietly. "What are you really doing here? I'll give you one chance to tell me."

Creed cocked his head and half smiled. "You're giving chances, now? Wow, you really have changed. The Winter Soldier I knew didn't give chances: he just killed."

Bucky let the words roll past him like a winter's breeze.

"You never knew me, Creed, and you were never in my league. Wolverine was, and even he wasn't good enough to beat me, even after I went several rounds with Captain America," he said, and smiled inwardly as Creed's eyes narrowed and he growled like a tiger. "I didn't ask you to move because I wanted to show mercy: I asked you to move because you're a mad dog that's not worth my time. So talk, then scat."

Creed was silent for a long moment, eyes blazing with hatred, then he spoke. "You're right. Weapon X never thought I was good enough to face you, the invincible Winter Soldier." These last words were spat out. "Instead, Jimmy got the nod. But he wasn't good enough. And you've lost your edge. You've gone soft, Bucky."

And before Bucky could retort, he surged forward in an avalanche of muscle, bone and savagery.

Instantly on the defensive, Bucky knew not to get sucked in to the belief that Creed was nothing more than untutored savagery in combat. He was an exceptionally skilled fighter, and had over a century and a half of experience under his belt. He also knew how to fight smart – that showed itself in the way he'd confronted Bucky in a tight cut between streets, somewhere he could use his height and weight to full advantage, while inhibiting Bucky's ability to use weapons or technology. While Bucky knew himself to be faster, a relatively even match for strength and arguably the better fighter, Creed's advantage in both bulk and healing abilities made him a real problem.

Make that a very real problem, he thought grimly, as Creed opened up his arm, his real arm.

This could take longer than he'd thought.

OoOoO

Jean-Paul, meanwhile, hadn't been idle. He had spent the hour he had allotted to Carol and Harry to explore the latter's past in Little Whinging finding a very particular person. Draco Malfoy.

Who looked up, somewhat surprised, when Jean-Paul appeared in his room.

"Well, I cannot say that I was expecting a visit," he remarked, putting down his book. "Does Harry have a message for me?"

"No," Jean-Paul said. "He does not."

"No, of course not," Draco agreed. "He is more than capable of telepathically communicating with me if that were the case. This is personal."

"You warned Harry about the Phoenix," Jean-Paul said. "An entity, mon ami, that you should know nothing about."

"Oh, there are writings in the Wizarding World on the Phoenix, if you know where to look," Draco said. "And if you read between the lines."

"Perhaps," Jean-Paul said coolly. "But you also spoke of the fragment of the Phoenix within him. Something that you should definitely know nothing about."

Draco sighed. "The Wizarding World's books on Phoenix manifestations, such as they are, are almost invariably either fourth or fifth hand from ancient sources, or by people who knew nothing about what they were writing about, or both. However, a few commonalities can be identified. One of them is the colossal psychic power someone who wields the Phoenix, even the slightest part, possesses. Whenever that power is used, in even a small way, it sends ripples through the Astral Plane, ripples capable of being detected by most with psychic senses," he said. "Though unless they are strong or trained to know what they are looking, they usually have no idea what they are sensing, or even that they are getting anything other than a mild headache and an intimation of danger. My family has unusually acute psychic senses for a wanded magical family and I have gone to some trouble to hone them, as you would when your house is inhabited by HYDRA's pet monsters."

"And how can you tell the difference between the Phoenix and Harry's own power?" Jean-Paul asked. "It is not inconsiderable."

"It can be difficult to tell the two apart," Draco admitted. "Though the Phoenix makes a rather more dramatic ripple on the Astral Plane than even a particularly spectacular use of Harry's own powers does. And frankly, what with the way he was stabbed through the heart then resurrected by a mysterious force that took the form of a gigantic bird of flame that proceeded to rip apart Hogwarts' heavily warded Entrance Hall and turn HYDRA troopers and Dementors alike to ash and less than ash, it was rather hard to miss." He shrugged. "As for why I warned him, I would imagine that it would be self-evident that such power was dangerous."

Jean-Paul regarded him. "Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps you did indeed merely puzzle it out through reason and research. But how would you know to research the Phoenix in the first place? How would you, a boy, know to read between the lines to see what is truly there? And why would you warn Harry of the Phoenix's danger when that danger is self-evident?" He regarded Draco. "And there is more. Your personality changed, suddenly, very shortly after Harry's heritage was revealed. You speak with the manner of a wise man, when before you were a brat, nothing more than a spiteful child – intelligent, yes, talented, perhaps, but a spiteful child none the less." He leaned forward, expression deadly serious. "No, mon ami. There is far more to you than meets the eye."

Draco regarded him. "You think I am a threat," he said. It wasn't a question.

"If I thought you were truly a threat, we would not be having this conversation," Jean-Paul said quietly.

"I don't think that I am the only one in this room keeping secrets," Draco said. "I couldn't say which ones you are keeping, but you are keeping them, from your friends. I saw you. You stand slightly to one side, you observe, and all the while you play at being a light-hearted young man. You speak with the manner of a man too. A wise one, maybe. A dangerous one, most certainly."

"How do you English say… 'it takes one to know one'," Jean-Paul replied evenly.

Draco inclined his head in acknowledgement. "Then," he said. "You can trust, for the time being, that I had no malevolent inclinations towards Harry." He arched an eyebrow. "Don't you think that if I did, I would have acted before he became as powerful as he is now?"

"Perhaps," Jean-Paul said. "But he is still vulnerable, more so than he realises."

"Yes," Draco said. "On that we agree." He sat back. "So, I can assume that Harry and Miss Danvers have returned home, under Sergeant Barnes' watch? I would imagine that they would have noticed if you simply vanished from their party."

Jean-Paul eyed him, then said, "Harry decided to take a side-trip."

Draco leaned forward. "With, or without Sergeant Barnes?" he asked.

"Why do you ask?"

"Call it a bad feeling," Draco said. "Also, my esteemed hosts and escort seemed to receive a message over the radio that made them all rather more nervous and inclined to return here rather more quickly."

Jean-Paul regarded him again. "Without," he said. "He wished to look around his old neighbourhood. I gave him some time. Carol is with him."

"So," Draco said. "Harry is now away from his watchful and deadly protector – and yes, I know exactly who and what Sergeant Barnes is. He spent quite some time living in my house and masks only conceal so much. And now Harry is separated from you too, meaning he is without his primary means of a swift escape"

Jean-Paul stared at him for a long moment. Then, in a flash of golden lightning, he vanished.

"Now why do I get the feeling that this isn't going to end well?" Draco remarked to himself.

OoOoO

It was official, Bucky thought. He'd underestimated Creed. He'd known that the man fought smart – as evidenced by his choice of battlefield, where his size was an advantage, Bucky couldn't get the room to use anything more sophisticated than a knife, and worse, Bucky also had to worry about collateral damage.

Plus, the eviscerated wizard and gutted ghoul meant that the footing was unsteady to say the least. He could win this fight, he was certain. He had Creed's measure.

However, he also knew that it would take far too long. Creed was up to something, he knew it, and it almost certainly involved the kids. He needed to end this, fast. Which meant doing something that he hadn't tried before, something he sincerely hoped he would never have to try.

"Ah well," he muttered to himself. "Here goes nothing."

OoOoO

To an outside observer, for a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, somehow, Bucky changed, something both indefinable and fundamental. His face smoothed, his gaze turned cold, empty and focused. Creed, seeing this, faltered for a moment. Then, he smiled again. "There you are," he said. "I was –"

What he had been doing remained a mystery however, as the Winter Soldier struck like a thunderbolt.

First, his blade flashed out and carved halfway through Creed's arm, drawing a roar of surprised pain. Before Creed could respond, though, another blow sank deep into the back of his left knee, just as a fist like a jackhammer slammed into the side of it, mangling everything the knife hadn't cut.

Creed swiped at him with a railing he'd ripped clean of its housing, wielding it like a spear, trying to drive him back to get some space. The Soldier, however, simply grabbed it activated one of his new arm's features, an electric charge 25,000 volts, which ran down the arm, through the railing and into Creed, drawing involuntary convulsions and a snarl of pain.

This allowed the Soldier to rip the railing out of his grasp, casting it aside, before delivering a blow that would have caved in an ordinary man's skull. And another. And another. Finally, he reached out and, with a single, savage motion, snapped Creed's neck.

Then, satisfied that Creed was incapacitated, he drew his knife. Wielding the blade with a butcher's skill, he systematically took Creed apart, purposefully targeting areas that would normally take a long time to heal, mangling more complex pieces of his anatomy and slicing through the spine in multiple places, rendering Creed temporarily paraplegic. Finally, he grabbed the railing and rammed it through Creed's guts. Once all that was done, he flipped Creed over, cuffing him.

All in all, it took less than three minutes, and standing back, the Soldier surveyed his work.

OoOoO

Sabretooth neutralised, healing factor occupied. A lack of poison limits my options, so his own waste matter will have to do.

Estimated healing time, 30 minutes minimum, 45 minutes maximum.

Terminate?

No. I need to know what he was doing here.

OoOoO

Jean-Paul's next stop was Little Whinging and, after a forty seconds of frantic searching – an eternity to a frantic speedster of his calibre – he found nothing for miles around.

After that, he stopped for a minute to consider his options. He could check in with Bucky, but odds were that he was occupied. Moreover, Bucky could look after himself. There was someone else that Jean-Paul who might not, who Harry had off-handedly mentioned in two separate prophecies (well, a prophecy and an apparently accurate tarot reading) without knowing the first thing about who he was talking about. Someone else who looked very much like Harry, had near boundless potential in his powers, and who didn't have the first idea about how to protect himself from the sort of people who were clearly on the prowl.

The only problem was that his Asgardian suit limited him to Mach 10, for reasons of safety, and he was abundantly aware that at that speed, he would take at least half an hour to reach Clark, another half an hour to get back. At best. He didn't have that time to waste.

But if he used his powers at full potential without the suit, then he could well die.

After another moment of consideration, he sighed.

"Ah well," he sighed. "Who wants to grow old?"

And then, in less than the blink of an eye, he'd changed out of the suit and vanished in a storm of golden lightning.

OoOoO

Clark was not, it had to be said, expecting a visit from Jean-Paul, not in the middle of the day as he was doing his chores.

It was immediately obvious that something was wrong, from the way that the lightning that accompanied Jean-Paul didn't vanish as he came to a stop the way it usually did, but instead danced around him in an agitated storm, one that matched the expression on his face. He was also carrying the suit Clark had seen under his clothes in a rough bundle, and in general he looked less than his usual impeccably turned out self.

"Jean-Paul?" he asked, surprised. "Are you all right?"

"Are you?" Jean-Paul asked, no, demanded.

"Fine, yeah," Clark said, frowning. "What is –"

"There is no time," Jean-Paul said curtly. "Tell me, have you seen anything, or anyone, odd in Smallville recently?"

"Uh…"

"Answer me!"

"No," Clark said, after a moment. "Jean-Paul, what's wrong?"

"There is no time to explain," Jean-Paul said. "Be on your guard. Be ready to vanish with your parents the moment you see something wrong. Just… be ready."

And with that, he vanished, gone in the blink of even Clark's eye.

"What was all that about?" Clark wondered to himself, distinctly spooked. Then, he noticed that where Jean-Paul had been standing, the corn had spontaneously been turned into popcorn. "Aw great. How am I going to explain this to dad?"

Normal concerns swiftly reasserted themselves.

Well. Normal for Clark, anyway.

OoOoO

In any case, Jean-Paul had retrieved Bucky immediately afterwards, and once the debrief was complete, the two had been taken off for medical examination; Bucky for lacerations, deep bruising and possible hairline fractures, and to help him centre himself and re-emerge from the Winter Soldier persona. Diving back into the latter would normally have earned him an ear-bashing and the sharp end of Tony's paranoia, but everyone was too busy to worry about that.

Jean-Paul, meanwhile, had been stuffed back into his Asgardian containment suit and force-fed nutrient packs to combat potential burn-out, which he ate in worried and faintly mutinous silence.

In the meantime, Steve had made a call to Westchester.

As it turned out, Xavier had already been aware that something was wrong, thanks to Jean, who couldn't sense her baby cousin and was therefore panicking.

When she found out that he had been kidnapped by the Red Room and she hadn't been told, she went through the roof.

Literally.

Once she descended from the lower reaches of the stratosphere onto the doorstep of Avengers mansion, her anger seemed to reach new heights.

As in, Jean was occasionally described as angelic, for her looks and sweet nature. This was a double edged description, however. Because as soon as Steve opened the door, he was confronted by a Jean who resembled an angel more than ever.

That is to say that she was surrounded by an aura of amber-red power, her ruby red hair dancing and lashing about in the telekinetic up-draft like the tail of a particularly angry cat, and she herself was floating several inches off the ground in order to most efficiently scream the following in his face at such volumes that put the horns that brought down the walls of Jericho to shame:

"YOU MEAN THAT YOU KNOW WHO'S TAKEN HIM AND YOU HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING ABOUT IT?!"

Steve, whose hearing was rather better and more sensitive than the average person's, winced. He'd been around quieter bombing raids.

"I'm guessing you picked up the relevant details from the top of my mind, Miss Grey, and decided to cut to the chase," he said.

Jean, expression still furious, nodded.

"Then you should also know why we can't just charge in, no matter how much we might want to," Steve said, tone calm, if a little louder than usual. There was a distinct ringing noise in his ears. He hoped it wouldn't last for long.

Jean, if possible looking even more furious, nodded again.

"Okay," Steve said. "Are you going to do that again? Because while I understand the impulse, Bruce in particular is on edge enough as it is."

Jean glared at him for a long moment, then seemed to deflate somewhat, dropping back down to Earth.

"No," she said, then sighed. "I'm sorry."

Steve put a hand on her shoulder. "I completely understand," he said. "Would you like to come in? We could use your help."

Jean nodded, making her way inside.

Steve shut the door and then, discreetly, stuck his finger in his ear and wiggled. Nope, still ringing.

OoOoO

But as the Avengers were gearing up for war, another battle was already in its earliest stages.

Far from New York, tucked away deep in an unclaimed part of Faerie, within the dimension known as the Nevernever, at the heart of the stronghold of one of the most feared forces in the mortal world, the combatants faced off.

"Harry?" Carol asked hesitantly.

Harry didn't respond, didn't even acknowledge her presence, instead staring unblinkingly at what Carol had to assume was Jean Grey's real life evil twin, who was staring right back at him.

"You don't have to do this," he said quietly.

She tilted her head ever so slightly, but didn't reply. Instead, before she knew what she was doing, Carol found herself making her way over to her bed. It was the most natural thing in the world, which was why everyone else was doing it. Until, suddenly, they stopped mid-step, the impulse cut off like the crack of a whip.

"Don't try that again," Harry said, voice hard now, hard and dangerous. And as he spoke, Carol realised with a chill that Evil Jean had been messing with their heads, without showing any sign of it, not even the signature glow that Harry used.

The tilt of the head seemed to become more interested.

"Last chance," Harry said. "You really don't have to do this. There is another way."

Evil Jean just stared at him. Then, astonishingly, she spoke. "It is my purpose," she said, in what sounded to Carol like a vaguely British accent, rather like the one she'd heard from Milbury, or whoever he really was. Her tone was disturbing calm, even, and almost puzzled, as if she couldn't

"You're not meant for this," Harry said. "No one is."

"I am meant for exactly this," Evil Jean said, frowning. "This is what I was made for."

Not evil twin, then, Carol thought. Evil clone. As she thought that, she noticed a questing presence on the edge of her thoughts, like Harry through their connection, but not. Instead of comfortable and natural, it felt somehow alien. It also felt curious.

Before it could get a good look, though, it vanished, and Evil Jean focused fully on Harry.

"I told you not to try that again," he said evenly. As he said, Carol noticed that she was developing a migraine. Wonderful. As if she didn't have enough problems.

"You aren't a match for me," Evil Jean said. It wasn't a boast, or at least, it didn't sound like one. Instead, it sounded more like a statement of fact.

Carol went to stand by Harry's side, telling herself sternly that all her instincts not to go anywhere near Evil Jean were pointless, since if the other girl wanted to kill her, it probably wouldn't matter if she was a hundred miles away. "Harry," she said, voice low. "She might be right."

"She sucker punched me last time, while I was in shock," Harry said. "Besides, I have a plan." He flicked a finger at the floor behind him. As Carol glanced down, she saw letters of fire arrange themselves on the floor, in short, simple sentences.

PROTECTED YOUR MIND. READ SO SHE CAN'T OVERHEAR, it said. TOO STRONG. CAN'T BEAT HER. TOO GOOD. HAVE SECRET WEAPONS. CAN MAKE IT LONG. STILL LOSING BATTLE.

As Carol was about to say, "Then what's the point?", more words appeared.

BUY YOU TIME. RUN. FIGHT WILL BE NOISY.

"So?" Carol began, then saw a smile crawl up half of Harry's face and blinked as she caught on. "That… is actually a pretty good plan," she muttered. "What do I have to do in the mean time?"

RUN. DON'T DIE.

On cue, a large part of the wall collapsed.

"You sure you'll be fine, once the fight's under way?" Carol asked. "I mean, it's weirdly nice of her to let us talk… oh."

Because Evil Jean's eyes were glowing an eerie blue, at a contrast to Harry's burning gold, while the air around them warped and rippled, the dust around them slowly rising through the air. At the same time, not only had her migraine intensified, but blood was dribbling from her nose. And to cap it all off, a quick glance around the room told her that she was by far the best off, her fellow prisoners, being on their knees, blood running from noses, ears, even eyes.

The fight had already begun. And it was already claiming casualties.

OoOoO

Harry registered Carol leaving, either carrying or dragging her fellow prisoners out through the hole in the wall while cursing up a storm, but only with a very small part of his awareness, the psychic equivalent of peripheral vision. Every other part of him was focused on his opponent.

His opponent was called Madelyn 'Maddie' Pryor according to one of his early telepathic tests of her defences, which were some of the strongest he'd ever come across. Perhaps not as sophisticated as the Professor's, his uncle's, Milbury's, or even Draco's (which, in retrospect, should probably have told him that there was something odd about his former rival's personality change) but they were clever enough. On a par with Betsy's perhaps. And more to the point, they were obscenely strong. Much like his opponent, who he suspected had gleaned far more from her tests of his defences than he had from his tests of hers. The only way he was going to get through that armour was if he found a chink in it, or managed to get her to lower her guard.

For the time being, though, he wasn't exactly interested in getting through her defences. He had material which he was pretty sure would open her up for a sucker punch, but that wasn't his goal. He even had a nuclear option in the Phoenix within him, but since he'd only used that once, by accident, and who knew what the consequences of using it would be… best not to rely on that.

Besides, either of those could, potentially, end the fight – and, in the latter case, cause whatever magic rich dimension they were in to collapse in on itself or burn up like dry tinder. Neither was an appealing prospect. And that wasn't his goal. His goal was to prolong the fight, to make it as long lasting and psychically 'noisy' as possible. His theory was simple: once, he'd managed to make a psychic cry for help carry across dimensions to Asgard. Unfortunately, he had absolutely no idea how he'd done that, and even less on how to replicate it.

However, all those months ago when Alexander Pierce had come to assess him, doubtless with a HYDRA related ulterior motive, he'd said something quite useful. When a psychic used their power on a major scale, it caused ripples in the Astral Plane that were detectable to the right psychics. When a psychic of his power used their power on major scale, those ripples were larger, more waves than ripples. When he and another Omega Class psychic were pointed at each other, going hell for leather at each other? That would cause tidal waves.

So. To recap, all he had to do was to survive and to make it as noisy as possible, against an opponent who was a great deal more powerful and more skilled than he was.

No problem. Should be fun.

All right, he said. I think we're done with the warm-up. Let's kick this up a gear, shall we? Bring it on.

Maddie stared at him for moment. Then, after a moment, a reply came.

Very well. Consider it brought.

OoOoO

Harry was right when he thought that Maddie had gleaned more from him than he had from her. Not, it had to be said, much more, however.

Indeed, Maddie reluctantly had to concede that her opponent's defences were rather strong, certainly much stronger than she'd expected considering the way she'd been able to sucker punch him before. Now, though, he was on his guard, and she could tell that for the first time in her life, she was facing someone who approached being her equal. It was… fascinating. Exhilarating, even. She could and would overpower him, of course, and she was by far the more skilled psychic. But Doctor Essex had drilled into her from an early edge that power was not everything. He had also ensured that she was very well briefed on this particular opponent. He was dangerous.

First of all, he was more than just a psychic. He had magic, and while his training was far from completed, he had had some very competent teachers. The full extent of what they had taught him was thus far unknown. Furthermore, he'd shown a breadth and mastery of pyrokinesis that a wise woman would respect.

Second, Doctor Essex and the Red Room both concurred in their assessment of him that he was exceptionally adaptable and had a knack for doing the unexpected. This extended beyond mere strategy into his use of his powers. While he had already demonstrated that while he was under-trained, especially in the telepathic arts, he was a particularly talented telekinetic, and had used those abilities in ways that she had not even considered.

Third, he had one advantage of her: ample experience of fighting opponents more powerful than he was. Her own training had been designed to ensure the most efficient and effective take-downs of any opponent, often before she knew they were there. She was a hunter. He was very much used to being the hunted, and considering all the enemies he had survived, very, very good at it.

In summation, he was not one to underestimate. However, he had his weaknesses. For instance, he was fighting here to buy time for the escape of someone he cared about, which was… understandable, she supposed. She would do the same thing for Remy. And she had a duty to Doctor Essex, of course. But also for people he didn't even know, who were nothing to him, who, if anything, would only slow him down? He could have scattered them across the complex, then escaped with his partner. If his knowledge of magic was sufficient, he'd likely even have been able to escape under his own power. Instead, however, he intended to stay and fight, to push her as far as he could – that much she had gleaned.

Once, she would simply have accepted this weakness and turned it to her advantage. But here, now, facing someone who was, in many ways, very much like her… she wondered at it. She wondered why. There was something about her current opponent, a sort of resonance, almost, a familiarity, something that made her wonder about things she hadn't before. The golden feather she'd taken from him, once warm and now hot, compounded her confusion.

And that was not the only thing she wondered about. On top of his mind, she'd seen a girl, a young woman of her age, one with the same colour hair, the same colour eyes, the same skin tone, the same features and face shape, even the same build. Oh, there were differences, but they were stylistic. In base format, they were… identical. Was this the mysterious 'Jean' whose name her opponent had said just before she disabled him? And if so, how did they look so much alike? She was created by Doctor Essex for a purpose. What purpose did this girl serve? More to the point, why did they look so much alike?

All these questions bubbled through her mind, before her opponent broke the silence of their mutual testing.

All right, he said. I think we're done with the warm-up. Let's kick this up a gear, shall we? Bring it on.

Maddie stared at him, unsure of how to respond to this challenge. The confusion only lasted for a moment, however. She had a purpose. She had a duty. She would fulfil it.

Very well, she said. Consider it brought.

OoOoO

Carol, already several hundred feet away and hoping to be more, was helping her fellow prisoners stumble along. Mercifully, most of them were on their feet, and Jono, the boy with the chamber of psionic energy in his chest, who had had psychic fire dribbling from his orifices instead of blood (and hadn't that been disturbing), was actually faring best.

Benefits of a psionic constitution, luv, he said in her head with grim cheer.

"Wait, you talk?" Carol asked, nearly dropping a groggy Nehzno.

Sure, Jono said, mental voice sounding very London. But when you're around telepaths like Sinister, his gorgeous-in-leather-trousers dog of war, or even your boyfriend with the skunk stripe, it's safest not to broadcast anything you don't want overheard.

Makes sense, Carol replied. And he's not my boyfriend. Why aren't you bothered now? Also, who's Sinister?

She got the sense of a distinct snort. Sinister's the creepy doctor bloke, the one who's really running things here.

Oh, Milbury. Yeah, we've met. The name fits, Carol said, then grimaced. I'm a bit stronger than human and he knocked me out with one punch.

Woudn't surprise me in the least, luv. My bet is that he's a vampire, Jono said readily. You're used to psychic chatter, then.

A bit, yeah, Carol said. What can you do? Other than this, I mean?

Well, the Russian boffins and Sinister were talking about 'psionic reconstitution' and me being a 'full spectrum psi', whatever the bloody hell that means, Jono said. Right now? If you want something blown up, I'm your man.

Carol's lips curved into a smile. Jono, I like you already. Though you never said why you're comfortable chatting like this.

Jono wasn't able to smile, but his eyes crinkled slightly. Lovable as hell, that's me, he said. Anyway, I'm comfortable chatting because… well you might not be a psychic, but trust me - with those two going hammer and tongs at each other, even Sinister isn't going to pick up something like little old you and me having a natter.

Here's hoping, Carol muttered.

Who the hell is he, then, your friend?

Harry Thorson.

Who?

Right, you've been locked up here since before that all popped up last year. Well, last year in real time, Carol said, then gave a concise explanation of Harry's background.

And you think that death in black trousers is a clone of his cousin, Jono said slowly.

Well, but for hair, tattoos and, you know, personality, they're basically identical, and this Sinister guy is way interested in genetics, Carol said.

Blimey, Jono said, silent for a moment. I actually feel a bit sorry for her now. What these bastards have been trying to do to us, what they have done to some of us, Sinister's been doin' to her since the day she was born. Or made.

Yeah, Carol said quietly. It sucks. But we can't help her. Trust me, with someone that strong, you can't help them unless they want to be. And we don't have the time to try even if we want to.

Yeah… speaking of help, who's going to help us? Your mate's been good about getting us out of our fine accomodations and keeping the Red Room's biggest gun focused on him, but they're going to find us sooner rather than later.

Carol was about to reply, then immediately went on her guard as a figure emerged from the shadows, sauntering into their path.

"Out for a nice evenin' stroll, cherie?" Gambit asked.

Carol raised a hand to stop Jono, who'd visibly tensed. "It's all right," she said. "He's a friend… I think."

You sure about that?

Not really, but he slipped me a key card earlier, so I figure that he wanted us out one way or another. Also, he's a serious badass. With just you and me really standing, I'm not sure if we could take him.

Gambit smirked, doubtless guessing the line of the conversation. Then, gunfire rattled in the distance, and he sobered as everyone tensed. "'ere," he said. "Lemme help."

Before anyone could say anything, he put his hands to Nehzno's temples and closed his eyes briefly. Nehzno, who'd been groggy before, yelped and startled upright, apparently entirely aware.

"What did you do?" Carol asked, puzzled.

"I charge things wit' energy," Gambit said. "Teeny-tiny jolt t' th' brain gets y' people movin' again. Not somethin' ah'd recommend regularly, but it works every now and then."

Nehzno? Jono asked worriedly. You all right, mate?

"I am fine," Nehzno said. "I think. Where are we?"

Carol glanced at him, then Gambit. "Wake everyone else up, then I can give a quick Cliff Notes," she said. Gambit arched an eyebrow, but did so, getting an electric shock off Noriko and teaching Carol some interesting new French swear words in the process. Once that was done, Carol quickly outlined the situation.

"So, we just sit and wait here and hope that your friends come," Noriko said. "Great plan."

"Well, actually, I was hoping that Gambit would be able to point us to the exit," Carol said.

Gambit opened his mouth, but as he did, a ripple passed through the world around them. It wasn't an earthquake, it wasn't even confined to the earth.

"What was that?" Carol asked.

"Somethin' bad, cherie," Gambit said grimly. "Something real, real bad."

Oh bloody hell. The walking cliché's right.

"What?" Noriko asked.

Nori, luv, I think that findin' an escape's going to be the last of our worries.

"Why?"

Well, for starters, the snow's started falling.

"So? It does that all the time here," Noriko said, nervous and trying to hide it.

"Yes," Lorna said slowly. "But… not… upwards."

Inexorably, as if drawn by a magnet, all of their eyes were drawn back towards the building they had left, the dormitory, where two Omega class teenagers, beings so powerful that they could only tenuously be called human, both of whom had shaped, in their own way, into living weapons were locked in a duel. And it was having side-effects.

The dormitory was dissolving, dissolving and being reduced into its smallest molecules, first into dust, then into less than dust, molecules and atoms, going down into the very building blocks of matter. And so was the snow around it and the earth beneath it. Even the air could not escape, as all began to condense around an incandescent ball of warring gold and blue power.

But that was not the concerning part. It would be on the mortal plane, where there were rules, rules that had to be followed, if only in their bending. But here, in the Nevernever, thought influenced reality. The only rules were those that the powerful made. Instead, the concerning part was not the dissolution of the matter in question. Nor even was the concerning part the question of what might take its place as these two titanic powers clashed, their thoughts becoming reality.

No, the concerning part was, going by the sense of building power, that the clash was about to explode, surging out far beyond the tight control of its wielders, who had contained it, constrained it, and directed it – almost – entirely at each other, with unimaginable consequences.

And then it did.

A ripple became a tidal wave, tearing across dimensions, dopplering through time.

And the Astral Plane convulsed.

OoOoO

Everyone felt it. On one level or another, everyone on Earth or its interconnected realms felt it, though Earth was struck by far the hardest, as the consequences of the battle resounded throughout creation, amplified by the ever mutable reality of the Nevernever.

To those without any psychic gift beyond humanity's common 'sixth sense' for danger, the strange feeling of foreboding that cannot be explained, and the elusive phenomenon of déjà vu, it struck as painful headaches.

To those, magical or otherwise, human or otherwise, with untrained psychic senses and weak gifts, the pain was such that they could barely stand.

To those with stronger, trained gifts, even their defences left them only able to gasp and hold onto the floor.

And to the strongest of all, with the most sensitive talents, those who could feel the slightest flutter on the Astral Plane, unless they had their defences at their very height, only unconsciousness awaited as their brains shut down in self-defence. But this was a false mercy, as that darkness was haunted by visions both nonsensical and nightmarish.

Seers screamed mish-mash prophecies as dozens of futures revealed themselves at once.

Ghosts and spiritual entities, already strengthened and emboldened by the thinness of reality's fabric, surged forth, driven to insanity.

Demons were either enraged or exulted in the chaos.

And even the most apathetic of gods took notice.

OoOoO

"What the hell is going on?" Steve demanded, as his head pounded and Jean convulsed on the floor, eyes glowing amber-red.

His first answer was a deep, basso roar from deep within the Mansion, followed by the expensive sounds of exploding wood, plaster and metal reinforcement. The Hulk was loose, likely in a blind rage.

Steve grimaced, adding the problem to the list, before pulling out his expensive phone and sticking it in Jean's mouth as an impromptu method of preventing her from biting her tongue off and, hopefully considering its size, from swallowing it. Then, calculating that the nearest person who knew the most about human physiology was either Loki or, if he was crippled the way Jean was, Tony, he set off at a run, cradling her carefully.

Then, all of a sudden, it stopped. The headache vanished – or at least was replaced by the dull throb of a receding headache – and Jean stopped twitching and convulsing in his arms. Even the Hulk, wherever he was, seemed to have quietened and, presumably, calmed down.

"JARVIS?" he queried.

"The Mansion was under severe psychic attack, Captain Rogers," JARVIS replied. "While there are defences in place for such an eventuality, the severity of the attack meant that I had to recalibrate them. Sorry for the delay."

"It's okay," Steve said, as Jean groaned and said something muffled, before removing the phone.

"What…" she began again.

"You're okay," Steve said, hoping that was the case as he helped her stand on her own two somewhat wobbly feet. "We suckered with a psychic attack. JARVIS has set up some counter-measures."

"Oh, right," Jean said, then grimaced. "That was… ow."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Steve said. "JARVIS, is the attack still going on?"

"Yes, sir, though I fear that it is not limited to the Mansion," JARVIS said. "I am receiving reports of identical symptoms to those displayed by yourself and others within the Mansion worldwide. Based on my database of those with psychic abilities, the effects appear to vary in severity based on the amount of psychic power wielded."

Jean gasped. "The Professor!" she said. "I've got to –"

"If you go out there, you'll be flattened again," Steve said.

"I've got my shields up, Captain," she said. Her eyes, he noticed, were still glowing. "I won't be caught off guard."

"It's still an unnecessary risk," Steve said. "You shouldn't… Jean?"

Jean's expression had gone distant, and the amber-red glow expanded into an aura around her, before collapsing and condensing tight around her body. Suddenly, she gasped, eyes widening. "Harry," she whispered in a strange, resonant voice, then turned and reached out, grabbing what was apparently thin air and ripping it open like a curtain, opening a window onto a world of wonder and horror.

It had once been a concrete and metal facility, perched on high, cold and forbidding mountains like a dragon's fangs, all carpeted in snow and ice. Now, it was a surreal battlefield, with the snow rising up in strange, helix like formations towards clouds made of earth from which bolts of lava and earth sometimes descended, from a mountain made of clouds which periodically erupted with rivers of slow, almost liquid lightning, while the air around surged back and forth like seas, swirling around the cloud-mountain.

And among all this, the unmistakeable sound of gunfire, interspersed with what almost sounded like repulsor blasts, and a lot of panicked and obscene Russian. And an incandescent ball of energy hung at the very heart of it. Steve was not a betting man, in the usual course of things, but he'd have put money on Harry being at the heart of it.

Into this maelstrom, Jean dived without hesitation. Somehow, Steve thought she'd be fine. Primarily, his worry was reserved for Carol and Harry.

And his headache was back. Wonderful.

"JARVIS, call everyone, tell to drop what they're doing and suit up," he said. "We've got our opening."

Chapter Text

Omega class beings were rare, even among the various pantheons of Earth, being a degree of power only granted to the greatest of Greater Gods and to Skyfathers, and one they weren't always able to exercise on Earth.

Historically speaking, they were far rarer among humanity; natural born, that is, not artificially enhanced. The Sorcerer or Sorceress Supreme was one, though a portion of their power came with their position. Merlin had been a natural born Omega, though it was questionable whether he'd been entirely human.

Various pretenders to that status had arisen down the millennia, but most that managed to cross the boundary into full Omega status relied on outside empowerment – the Juggernaut, for instance, the Avatar of Cyttorak, the Champion of Avalon, known more recently as 'Captain Britain', or the Green Lantern, were three more conventional examples. Gellert Grindelwald had managed to become a less than conventional example, accruing demonic power to add to his already vast magical abilities. Either that, or they were a collection of beings pooling their power – the Uni-Minds of the Eternals, for instance.

Divine Omega Class beings had Rules dictating their actions on Earth, especially when it came to confronting one another, if only because all the pantheons of Earth preferred Earth as it was, a nexus of dimensions and magical powers inhabited by interesting creatures, to as it might be if those rules did not apply, a colossal amount of free-floating gravel orbiting the Sun, and would therefore step in (or on) to prevent such a thing happening. Indeed, it was partly for this purpose that they had retreated from Earth in the first place.

Human Omega Class beings did not have such rules or restraints. Furthermore, never before in history had two Omega class psychics, if ones still growing into the fullness of their power, unleashed their raw might on one another. And more to the point, never before in history had they clashed in the Nevernever, a dimension where thought defined reality. And when those thoughts were those of psychics with raw power to spare, only months after the disruptive power of the Elder God Chthon had torn through reality like a razor through wet paper, one of whom had been touched, even contaminated, by that power, and also wielded magic, the very art of telling the universe to shut up and do as it is told… it is safe to say that you have a recipe for something that has got very much of hand.

With this lack of precedent, and his own somewhat vague grasp of exactly how powerful he was, Harry could therefore be forgiven for not realising the consequences of his cunning scheme. Indeed, if he had acted in the mortal world, or at least in a more 'real' and less turbulent dimension, then the consequences would likely have been limited to mass migraines – at the least, reality wouldn't have been warping around him.

But it was, and reality warped as the Psi-War raged.

So when the Avengers stepped into the Red Room's base, they stepped into a place that was not a Heaven, nor a Hell, but instead a world of fantasy.

The mountain beneath their feet was formed of dark, solid cloud, shot through with silver and crackling white-hot lightning that burst forth here and there, flowing down the mountain in sinuous rivers, through forests of trees carved from water, sleet, snow, and ice. The clouds above, thick and swirling as far as the eye could see, were composed dark, rocky earth, glowing with sullen heat, heat that occasionally manifested as bolts of lava and flame, while the a veritable blizzard of snow soared up in a strange helix formation towards those unearthly clouds, adding a thick pall of steam to the upper reaches of the warped world.

The complex itself fared little better. The buildings, once made of concrete, were largely torn apart, leaving behind silvery ghosts made from sand and water that was solid like ice, yet somehow mutable, reflecting and refracting the lightning-light. Nor were they solely confined to the ground, spiralling up at unnatural angles in complete defiance of all laws of logic and geometry, so as to enter one building through the front would be to exit straight upwards through the roof of another, and to exit one would be to be in multiple different buildings at once.

The complex had also acquired any number of ghosts and forsaken spirits, psychic impressions of nightmares so strong that in the Nevernever, they left physical trace, like a prisoner's tally of their days. Normally, all their influence extended to was a cold sensation, a feeling of unease, anything greater being banished or destroyed by Sinister or Maddie. Now, flooded with excess psychic energy, even the faintest shadow of a dream was given physical form. Sometimes, events simply seemed to replay themselves, the participants limned in ghostly silver light. Other times, those who stepped into certain places were trapped in a memory, whether it be of a horrendous experiment, or simply walking the space of ten feet, that repeated itself over and over again.

And not all consequences were so passive. The Red Room was where monsters were born, so they came forth now, scuttling horrors, twisted parodies of humanity, emerging from the darkness. Here, one with spider-like legs and an articulated neck, there, a serpentine creature with fanged tri-partite jaws that spread wide enough to swallow a child whole that swum through the lapping, sea-like air, and things too twisted to describe. All they had in common was that they were creatures born of pain, of fear, of sorrow and above all, of helpless, hopeless rage, and they existed solely to slake a desire for vengeance by people long since dead, unleashed their savagery on all they could see.

Red Room personnel fought back, to give them their due credit, for while these things were monsters, they were monsters themselves. But the monsters poured forth like blood from an artery, each a unique and foul variation on humanity, a snapshot of tragedy, and new hazards emerged, such as patches of time which ran at different speeds; in some, those trapped within simply seemed to be moving through treacle as the air congealed around them. In others, they seemed not to move at all. In others still, they appeared on the other side in an instant, looking older and haggard. And in yet others, all that emerged on the other side was dust.

Moreover, if you looked carefully by lightning-light through the reflections in the water, you could see other alternatives, where the same players played out the same events in different ways, where the world warped in other, eye watering fashions, and where past and future were as one.

And even then, the tapestry of madness was not complete, for the stars began to fall from the sky, punching through the clouds of earth like sparks through tissue, striking in the valleys below to form lakes of cold fire.

And above it all, the unwitting weavers of that tapestry, Maddie and Harry, outshone all else as they danced a deadly dance on high, blazing gold flames clashing with eerie blue, with the vast bulk of their conflict invisible even in this world of thought and idea.

The Psi-War raged.

Reality warped.

And worlds wept.

OoOoO

Far below the cataclysmic duel, Carol clung to the floor beneath her and reflected that this might not have been one of Harry's better plans. Though, on reflection, based on what she'd seen and what Uthred and Diana had said about their first escapade with Harry, as well as Hermione's contributions on the same subject, this one had the virtue of not being completely insane. Just, you know, possibly very poorly judged.

This was, she knew, perhaps an uncharitable view to take when he'd had to whip up a plan in no seconds nothing when Evil Jean had turned up, while also holding off her psychic probes when she was clearly stronger and better than he was. And while she wasn't really an expert on psychic battles, from what she could see of the battle above, Harry's signature golden energy was getting smaller and weaker, while his opponent's eerie blue aura was growing stronger and larger.

However, considering that her brain felt like it was simultaneously frozen and on fire, while also melting and dribbling down her nose and out her ears (as it happened, that was blood, not brains, but Carol felt that it was only a matter of time), and she had a whole bunch of civilians to look after (and all of them were down for the count, but for Jono, who was looking helpless), as well as an ally of dubious trustworthiness to keep an eye on, and the goal of getting the Avengers to home in on the battle didn't seem any closer to success, she felt justified in being a bit uncharitable.

Then, all her uncharitable thoughts vanished in an instant, as a vast flash lit up the landscape, and then, through the huge crackle and roar of the battle above, came the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard – a vast, rolling and very familiar rumble of thunder. And as it resonated in her very bones, she began to laugh like a maniac.

Harry's plan had worked. The Avengers were here.

Not two minutes later, a beautiful woman sculpted in an orange, no, amber-red, energy landed beside them and miraculously, the pain vanished. It was then that Carol realised that the woman wasn't alone, as two figures with her grabbed Carol and pulled her into a brief rib-cracking group hug. It took her a moment to recognise them.

"Uncle Jack? Grandma?! What are you doing here?" she asked, confused.

"Seeing the sights," O'Neill said, carbine now up and sweeping the sight lines. He was, Carol noticed, wearing a strange kind of metallic headband, as was Alison. Both were in standard black combats.

"Psychic inhibitors," her grandmother explained, at Carol's puzzled expression. "Of Tony's design, to prevent your young man's little battle from turning all our brains to porridge." She glanced upwards. "Sometimes, I think that that boy has absolutely no idea how powerful he is. Which is worrying, since I think that the young lady he's up against knows exactly how strong she is, and how strong he is too."

"No, the whole psychic fallout thing was on purpose," Carol said. "He wanted to make a big beacon that no one could miss."

"Well, he managed that," O'Neill said. "I mean, he's given the entire world a lobotomy in the process, but he got our attention."

"Jack," Alison said, giving him a reproving look as she drew a pistol with glowing orange power lines running through it and almost absent-mindedly shot a Red Room Agent in an ersatz Iron Man suit who'd managed to stay on their feet right in the power source, crippling the armour and almost dropping the Agent to the floor under its weight. "It was migraines at worst, for most of us." She glanced at the person she'd just dropped and frowned. "Tony's not going to be happy," she remarked. "Though it was always going to happen eventually." She smiled at Carol. "Now, darling, would you introduce me to your new friends?"

Said new friends, prisoners and Gambit alike, were either staring at Alison and Jack, at the glowing woman – who Carol felt looked naggingly familiar – up at the newly arrived Thor and Tony, or across the battlefield at the other Avengers, who were going through the already half-crippled Red Room Agents like a hot knife through an overused cliché.

"Oh, right," Carol said. "Kurt, Jono, Noriko, Nezhno, Lorna, and the guy in the trenchcoat is Remy, though he goes by Gambit. Guys, this is my uncle Jack and my grandma."

Grandma? Jono asked sceptically. Alison hadn't reapplied her ageing make-up.

"Long story," Carol said, then turned to Alison and O'Neill, the former amused, the latter currently mid eye-roll. "Anyhow, I know Gambit's not a prisoner, but trust me, he's on our side." She turned back to Gambit. "You're on our side, right?" Then, she frowned. "Why are you helping us, anyway? Not that I'm complaining, you understand."

"Is now really the time?" Noriko complained.

"It is a good question," Lorna pointed out. "And an important one."

"Maybe I helped because I wanted to," Gambit said. "Maybe because y' real persuasive when y' want to be. Or maybe it because I'm a New Orleans boy and a few years back, my home was threatened by a hurricane, name of Katrina. It was all set t' practically wipe the city off the map. Then y' friend's poppa, up there, stepped in and the hurricane wasn' a problem no more. And the way I see it, one good turn deserves another." He smiled a smile so devastating that Carol privately thought it should be banned by the Geneva Convention. Or put in a museum. Either or. "Or maybe, it because I believe that people should be free."

"Thanks," Carol said blinking, then frowned. "That isn't the whole answer, though, is it?" Then, she shook her head. "Whatever. We don't have time for it now. He's on our side."

"Don't worry, dear," Alison said. "We already knew about Mister LeBeau."

"What? No, wait, don't care at the moment," Carol said. "Who's Miss Night-Light and, again, not that I'm complaining, how are our brains not melting? Also, how do we get out of here?"

"Tony's armours will be arriving any moment now," Alison said calmly, as she went over to Lorna. "Lorna, it is Lorna, isn't it? I take it that this bracelet is inhabiting your powers?" At Lorna's nod, she smiled reassuringly and said, "Hold still." Then, briskly, she lined it up with her pistol and shot the bracelet off. "Be ready," she said, as she moved onto the others. "We may be attacked at any moment."

"You were saying, grandma?" Carol said.

"Tony's scanned the terrain, we've found you, and now they'll be coming to cover us back through the portal," Alison said, as she blasted off Nezhno's bracelet. As she removed each bracelet, Carol noticed that she had a calm, reassuring word for each. "They would be here, but most of them are securing the portal – it does lead, after all, right into the heart of the Avengers' headquarters and home. Your young friend, Jean-Paul, would also be here, but he was deputised to evacuate the non-combatants." She smiled at their expressions. "Honestly, I'd hardly have stood around chattering if we could have got you through immediately."

"What portal?" Carol asked.

"The one we got here through, maybe?" O'Neill suggested, smirking at his niece. His sarcasm, however, was undercut by relief as he kept darting glances at her, to reassure himself that she was there and all in one piece.

Carol made a rude gesture at him. "And how did you get that?"

"Me," the glowing woman said, and smiled. "Hello, Carol."

"And you are… oh my god, Jean, is that you?"

Jean nodded. "I'd have spoken earlier, but…" She grimaced. "Harry and whoever's he's fighting are throwing off a lot of psychic static. Blocking it takes concentration."

"I vas wondering vhy I could feel my head again," Kurt said vaguely, then smiled at Jean and swept a surprisingly courtly bow. "Danke schön, fraulein."

Jean laughed softly, voice strangely resonant. "It's my pleasure," she said, before casting a worried look at the sky, where the psychic duel continued unabated.

The other prisoners, meanwhile, all looked rather gobsmacked. Gambit mostly looked amused, though underneath the amusement was an undercurrent of tension, as whatever plans he'd been cooking up came to fruition, and it all came down to a last roll of the dice.

"You weren't kidding about the Avengers finding us," Noriko said eventually.

"Like I said," Carol said, shrugging. "It's what they do."

"And… your family."

"It's what we do," O'Neill said, flashing Noriko a brief grin that, while not as charming and a bit more wolfish than Gambit's, was still reasonably impressive. Noriko actually went a little pink and Carol wrinkled her nose. She knew, from the remarks of the girls on the soccer team, that her uncle was a silver fox, but it was still kind of disturbing to see girls her age crushing on him even a little bit.

"Indeed," Alison said. "Oh, and how remiss of us, we haven't introduced ourselves: I'm Alison Carter, this is my son, General Jack O'Neill."

"Nice to meet you," Lorna said, with the others mumbling words to similar effect.

"The pleasure," Alison said. "Jack, 'ware right." O'Neill accordingly turned and fired several chattering bursts of gunfire into something large, deathly pale and semi-humanoid with large teeth and a bad attitude. The bullets tore into the unearthly flesh, ripping away large chunks of both shoulders and face, before a concentrated burst to the head destroyed it, leaving the creature, whatever it was, to slump to the ground. "Nasty bugger," Alison remarked mildly. She hadn't raised her voice. She hadn't even changed her tone. Then, she turned back to the prisoners and smiled a kind, grandmotherly smile. "As I was saying: the pleasure is all ours."

OoOoO

The Agents of the Red Room, Thor had to grudgingly concede, were made of tougher stuff than their HYDRA counterparts which he had faced in London. Like everyone else who was not either protected by Loki's spells, Tony's technology or Jean, many of them were crippled by the telepathic fallout of the immense battle in the skies above – though since those skies had now transformed into what fell more like a giant ocean of lava, calling them skies might not be the most accurate description in the world.

In addition, they were being targeted by a horde of twisted, corpse pale monstrosities, ghosts of those who had died in this vile cesspit, ones that tore anything and anyone the could reach limb from limb, while even some of the buildings were coming to life. However, those Red Room Agents who had managed to either fight off the telepathic fallout or find some method of blocking it were fighting in a disciplined fashion, forming a concerted resistance behind a set of rather advanced looking defensive energy shields.

And in one respect, the chaotic upheaval was actually helping them: Loki had had to teleport a thoroughly Hulked out Bruce to some desolate desert, far from people, which meant that the Avengers were denied their usual method of breaking down stubborn defences (Thor himself could take that role, but he and Tony were generally deployed in the air). Further to that, because the clouds were what all present were standing on, Thor couldn't unleash the full extent of his power for risk of hurting those few innocents present as collateral damage.

Still. All this really meant was that he would have to be a little more precise.

He could manage that.

He examined the Red Room's dispositions with the eye of an experienced soldier, whirled Mjolnir once around his head, and hurled it downwards. The enchanted hammer shot forth in a barely visible blur, circumventing the energy barriers and seeking out its targets with all the inexorable accuracy of laser guided missile.

Some tried to block it. Others tried to dodge it. Most never even knew it was there, as it passed through their skulls faster than any thought had ever done.

Within three seconds, twenty five Red Room Agents were dead. Within ten, so were thirty of the ghosts that Harry's battle had stirred up, though dozens, if not hundreds, more remained.

Normally, as an Avenger, Thor tried not to do any more damage to his opponents than was absolutely required, being aware that mortals were very fragile and that they could get understandably nervous about the power of gods or god-like beings, as well as setting much store by their courts of law.

However, today, he was not merely facing some criminal or criminals, preventing them from committing some crime or apprehending them for the same. Today, he was facing the creatures that had kidnapped his son and his son's dearest friend, the descendant of one of his own dear friends and commander of the Avengers, Steve. In his mind, they had declared war on him and his, and thus they would pay the price.

Mjolnir, cleaned of bodily fluids by the winds of its flight, returned to his hand.

Once it did, Tony, Steve and Bucky attacked on the ground. Tony easily demonstrated the superiority of his technology as compared to those who would copy it and his experience as a pilot of his suits, while Steve inspired panic wherever he went, moving with the speed, smoothness and surety of a great warrior. As for Bucky, he had changed the appearance of his normally well disguised prosthetic arm to that of his previous arm and donned his old mask and goggles, resurrecting the nightmare of the Winter Soldier. Going by the horrified reactions of the surviving Red Room Agents – those who could still stand – it was most effective. Anyone that they did not kill or disable was picked off by Clint, his arrows, for the most part, remaining entirely accurate despite the incredibly adverse conditions. Thor himself had been deputised to watch for and pick off any enemy that looked like they were about to get the advantage of those on the ground.

Natasha, meanwhile, had arrived on the battlefield by undisclosed means – Thor suspected that her mole, this 'Gambit' person, had helped – and was searching the shadows for relevant information, prisoners, or the architects of this foul scheme.

It was tribute to Steve's brilliance as a commander, Thor mused briefly, that he had put such a plan together in moments. And while he might not enjoy his part in it, wanting to go and help his son and/or hunt down this Sinister creature and make it scream, he accepted that of them all, Loki would be best suited to ending that fight without hurting Harry.

Besides, part of the reason he was being told to hang back was the fact that if this Rachel Grey had her sister's power (which seemed fairly apparent) and the kind of skill, ruthlessness and malevolence imparted by her monstrous guardians that he suspected, he might be required to continue Harry's battle – Loki would be occupied smoothing out the damage done to this part of reality and aiding Harry, while Jean was occupied already.

Additionally, he had a lingering fear that no matter what Trelawney's prophecy said and Fury had deduced from Harry's letter, there might be only one option if the fight against Jean's stolen sister must be continued, and that was not a choice that anyone should be forced to make, much less a young woman hardly out of childhood.

As it was, he could only be ready, while he hoped against hope that his son was safe, and that he would not be left with that fateful choice.

OoOoO

The Avengers were not Earth's only defenders to take note of what was happening, either, as was evidenced by a red shape soaring up through one of the lakes of star-fire, treating heat of the likes which the mortal world had never witnessed with the same disregard that most would a light drizzle.

Wanda had taken the field. She had spent the best part of a day finding and destroying the tentacle demons with her apprentice/boyfriend, when she would rather have spent it taking her godson to do his school shopping. However, she accepted it as part of the job. In any case, said apprentice/boyfriend's jokes about Japanese pornography had been amusing at first, but had rapidly become less amusing when it turned out that the cause of the demons' presence was a small coven of practitioners who happened to be otaku and to have got hold of the wrong grimoire, which they cast a spell from at the wrong place and the wrong time. A little too much knowledge and a lot too much imagination (the latter of which most of them used to undress her with their eyes while she was in the midst of interrogating them) plus a little bad luck had led to demons galore, screaming civilians and lots and lots of largely impervious to magic gunk, which she could feel drying in her hair.

All of that, combined with the pain in the arse that was sealing the hole through which the creatures had come through, along with feeling tired, sweaty, grimy, and generally disgusting, had left her in a foul mood to begin with. Now, this had come up, a colossal psychic disturbance that gave her an evil migraine. So, leaving the also exhausted, grimy, and near-exhausted apprentice/boyfriend, who was now bleeding from the nose, in the care of the local SHIELD office, she'd come to investigate, her foul mood now mixed with worry, because one of the few people she knew of who had the power to cause such a disturbance and was likely to get in enough trouble to do it was her godson.

Then, thanks to a little psychic communique from Loki, she found out what happened.

Like the man said: Hell hath no fury like a godmother who's already pissed off and who has just found out that her godson has been kidnapped by the person who has made his life a misery.

And that person soon found out the extent of that fury.

For while Wanda could not cut loose with the full extent of her rage, for fear of hurting her godson, his best friend, his stolen-at-birth cousin (who might have to be hurt, but if it had to be done, it would be done on purpose, not by accident), or any of the other poor children who were prisoners of the Red Room, or indeed the Avengers themselves, the arrangement of the Avengers tactics actually forced her to focus her rage. This wasn't too much of a problem for her – like her father, she was quite good at it. It also helped that she had a very deserving target, one whom Loki had suggested for both personal and tactical reasons.

Wanda knew that the man who'd concealed Harry's treatment by the Dursleys for his ends, wiped the minds of those who would take him away, was a considerable telepath. Therefore, logic dictated that he would either be reacting to the relentless storm of a raw power, which would stand out like a tree on an otherwise bare plane (or, considering his previous facility in concealing himself, like a gap in a jigsaw puzzle), or he would be somewhere hardened against psychic interference, which would also stand out.

As it was, she found him at work on a computer while his lab literally melted around him. It was obvious that it was him: the cloud-earth under her feet screamed of the evil that this… thing had perpetrated. The list of crimes committed here alone would take days to enumerate. But right now, she was only concerned with those he'd committed against her godson, and as she thought of those, the deadly rage that made brave men and women tremble at her father's name surged within her.

Her fists clenched, knuckles whitening as they cracked like gunshots.

The creature looked up. It seemed almost insultingly ordinary in looks, having the look and manner of a well-preserved English local doctor in their early fifties, with fine clothing and neat hair. That little detail almost made her eyes blur red with fury: how dare this creature indulge in the small luxuries of fine clothes and grooming when it had ensured that her godson was kept in a cramped, spider-webbed cupboard, wearing little more than rags. How dare it affect an appearance of harmless benevolence when it had been the architect of much of her godson's misery, and far more besides. And how dare it have the gall to look surprised when it saw her and the anger on her face.

"Ms Maximoff," it said mildly. "I was informed that you were occupied."

Wanda did not reply, instead hurling a hex blast at the computer, which spontaneously melted, much like the lab around it.

This actually drew some emotion from the creature, which was at first surprised and wary, then irritated, glaring at her. "You have just destroyed some rather valuable and utterly unique data on the interaction of two Omega Class psychics abilities," he said. "In doing so, you have committed a crime against science, woman!"

"Somehow, I imagine I will sleep soundly," Wanda said coldly, gathering power, her mutant inheritance rather than her magic. Magic was a force of life, of beauty and wonder, and there were some things that it should be soiled by contact with. "All the more so after I fulfil a promise I made to myself, my sleeping godson, and his father."

The creature was not stupid and struck before she finished her sentence, telekinetically attacking the vulnerable parts of her body; the veins to her brain, the blood vessels in the brain itself, and the valves around her heart, primarily. But Wanda, for all her fury, was not stupid either, and had already prepared herself against such an attack – one did not enter a fight with a psychic without adequately warding oneself beforehand, not if one had a choice. Not twice, anyway.

So, before the creature could respond with a more indirect attack to cover its flight, she struck, a blast that hurled it into the air, where it stuck as if caught in a spider's web. As it did, it stared at her, expression surprisingly calm. Resigned, patient and… thoughtful.

"Interesting," it remarked. Its human disguise had been sloughed away now, leaving a pale, spidery creature with slightly inhuman proportions, dark hair, and red eyes matched in shade only by the strange gem in its forehead. "Despite the lack of socialisation by your father, in your actions, you greatly resemble him."

"I am not like my father," Wanda snarled, another surge of fury running through her like a bolt of lightning. "I am nothing like my father, do you hear me?! I…" She trailed off. In another life, in another time, in another moment, she might have decided then to capture the creature before her, bring it in for interrogation and perhaps worm out its secrets – or just find some new and imaginative way to make it suffer for all eternity. In yet another, she might simply have killed it instantly and left it at that.

But then, she remembered her godson's tears when she had first met, his desperation for affection, the misery of his childhood now compounded by this. She remembered his pain. She remembered her promise. And she smiled a dangerous smile, one befitting the eldest child of mutantkind's dark messiah.

"Actually, no. You're right. I am like my father. I am his daughter. And do you know why? Because I'm going to fulfil that promise I made, a promise to render you down to screaming, traumatised atoms if you ever went near my godson again. And while I'm not going to have the time to make it last, I am going to enjoy it. So scream, you bastard, scream!"

As she spoke, she crooked her fingers and made several jagged, vicious gestures, scarlet power crackling around her hands, and then around the creature too.

There are no words to describe what happened next.

After all, how do you describe the feeling of every single, cell turns on itself simultaneously, while your marrow turns first to red hot lead, then to molten acid? How do you describe the sensation of every single atom in your body attempting to change into another kind of atom, as those which remain in something approximating their natural form are twisted and torn by the radiation unleashed by the purposefully uncontrolled transmutation?

And that was only the start of the horrors. Its nervous system unfurled and twisted around the razor sharp edges of bones that shattered, sending bubbling lead and acid onto those fragile nerves that nevertheless did not burn away entirely, remaining intact enough to feel pain. Its skin slowly tore away from its flesh like a plaster. Horror laid upon horror as Wanda's probability warping powers allowed her to unleash a lifetime's worth of vengeance on behalf of her wronged godson.

The creature known to most as Sinister did manage to scream, briefly. However, within fifteen seconds, his tongue had dissolved. Shortly after, so did the rest of him, leaving a stinking, scorched, protoplasmic mess, in which globules of various minerals and metals floated.

Wanda stared at the puddle, feeling both that she had avenged her godson (and everyone else this thing had tormented, too) and strangely dissatisfied. Nevertheless, she thought as she sent the puddle seeping into the cloud-rock in a thousand different directions, he had suffered and it was done. The Red Room had lost the primary architect of this latest scheme, and likely with him, control of their most powerful weapon.

And there was another niggling sensation in the back of her head. Just how much of her father's darkness was in her? And how much was all her own?

OoOoO

Another with a personal acquaintance with darkness, another who also wondered how much of that darkness belonged to him and how much had been implanted by others, haunted the dark, nightmarish mountain. In a maelstrom of horrors, he was perhaps the greatest horror of them all.

And he wore a mask. Not merely a literal mask, but a figurative mask. It is a common thing, among those who feel they have something to hide, or feel that they need something behind which to hide. Or sometimes, they feel they need a mask so that they can show the world their true face, to be who they really are.

Normally, this man wore the mask of Bucky Barnes. Other times, other, very rare times, he removed that mask and all others, revealing the man who simply went by James. Only Natalia ever saw that one. But here and now, he wore another mask, both figurative and literal, one that had haunted the world for over half century. In black combats, a concealing mask and goggles, and above all, a metal arm with a red star on the shoulder visible to the world, he was making one thing very clear: the Winter Soldier lived again.

He wasn't sure whether this was the mask that was his true face. In all honesty, right now, he didn't care. It was the mask that was needed.

He sized up his opponents, those few who hadn't scattered in terror at the sight of him, or charged into battle, young fools desperate to make a name for themselves, and whose epitaphs were written in blood that drained away through the clouds.

OoOoO

Targets: Five.

Threat level: Three Beta Class – smart, well-trained, experienced. Two Alpha – low Alpha, armoured in weaker copies of the Iron Man armour, armed with a selection of guns, blades and repulsors. Weak at the joints

Estimated Time Required: 90 seconds.

OoOoO

Precisely 90 seconds later, the Winter Soldier looked down at the dead. He wasn't going to shed tears over them, but he did feel a degree of pity towards them. They probably thought that they were genuinely serving the Motherland – Russia – doing what was best for her. In a way, they might even have been right. From a purely logical perspective, in the short term, harnessing such power as Harry and other, weaker superhumans (or greater, judging by Jean Grey's long lost sister) could greatly bolster Russia's position in the post New York and London world.

In the medium term, however, it would lead to the devastation of Russia at the hands of Harry's loved ones, and perhaps even at the hands of those like Magneto, revealing it as a foolish and desperate gambit. Better would have been to take tissue samples and study and clone from there.

In any case: they had involved children. They had stolen children. Even, he suspected, killed them. And that was unforgivable.

The Winter Soldier methodically reloaded his weapons as he thought this, checked them once more, and looked around. He had enemies to kill.

OoOoO

Psychic battles are, broadly, battles of wills. Of course, it's rather more complicated than that – the maxim that knowledge is power applies more in psionics than in any discipline other than magic, and the knowledge of how most effectively to apply power often decides any psychic contest more sophisticated than a mere contest of power.

It also changes as you sub-divide: purely telekinetic battles are predominantly battles of will. But telepathic battles, when held between approximate equals – or at least, between two combatants when one is not simply capable of steamrolling the other – are also battles of will. But the weapons used make them something much more mercurial. They are battles of ideas.

This little fact was one of the few reasons that Harry hadn't been steam-rollered by Maddie, something he was abundantly aware. That and the facts that she'd never really faced a near-equal before (not that it seemed to faze her), her combat telekinesis was rather rusty (though it was getting sharper with every passing moment), and that Harry's tactics were what could be called less than conventional.

While it was true that Harry's more recent strategies had often devolved into 'kill it, kill it with fire', that was partly because he could afford to use such a strategy in many of his more recent fights. Now, however, he couldn't. Simply unloading all his power at Maddie wouldn't work. He'd forced the telekinetic aspect of their fight into what was essentially a direct contest of power, using every bit of ingenuity he had to spare to prolong it. But it was still ultimately defensive.

In the telepathic fight, however, his tactics were a bit different. He never attacked in earnest, instead refusing to play by all conventional rules: where Maddie's imaginings cast it as a fight between two armoured knights, he dodged or parried every blow whilst quoting The Princess Bride. Where it became a chess match, he rolled a set of dice. And when she finally got fed up and constructed an imagining of a death trap that would shame any cheesy spy franchise worth the name, he simply wriggled away via a construct of a sonic screwdriver, if by the skin of his telepathic teeth.

Every single time, in every single way he could, he evaded a stand-up fight, never letting her get her grip on his defences, while never responding with attacks of his own. Or not real attacks. Instead, his responses were more like the psychic equivalent of a light jab in the ribs: startling, something to make you twitch and jump, but hardly a real threat. And that was what they were designed to do – to keep her confused, to keep her on her toes, circling, never quite able to focus and pin him down.

Of course, she was by far the more skilled telepath, and by far the stronger too. Which is why, as time went by, Harry found himself with less room to manoeuvre, his jabs having less startling effect, the confusion lessening as she adapted to his Fabian tactics, understanding the shape of his mind and thus, his thoughts.

Before, he'd danced around her, ducking and weaving to strike again. Now, though, that was changing. Now, he was on the run.

OoOoO

But as Maddie forced the battle into a more direct contest of power and skill, that only upped the ante of the side-effects.

Those psi-sensitives asleep, or in deep comas, struggled and cried out as nightmares of varying intensities tormented them. Even those without any more psi-sensitivity than any other person, nothing more than the faint intuition of something being wrong that every person sometimes gets, suffered at least a little. And throughout this, the psychic turbulence allowed dark creatures to emerge from the Dreaming in ever greater numbers to haunt the minds of mortals.

And the consequences grew more severe. Some of the weakest and most elderly psychics, few in number, were driven to the very edge, clinging onto life with their fingertips. Others of fragile mind had that superficial sanity shattered, their minds fragmenting under the strain.

If the battle had taken place on the mortal plane, the side-effects would have been less severe. But they were in the Nevernever, the close cousin of the Astral Plane, where thought and reality were intimately intertwined, a dimension wrapped around the entire world. Here, the effects were amplified. Here, the consequences were growing.

OoOoO

And creatures from the Dreaming were not the only things to take notice, to celebrate this chaos on which they could thrive.

Other beings, often far older, and most certainly far greater, took notice. Where many of the creatures of the Dreaming that took advantage were the lesser beings of that realm, the barracuda that swarmed and struck when opportunity came along, these were of another realm the Astral Plane. And they were no mere barracuda. These were the Great White Sharks, the Sea-Dragons, the Leviathans, the ancient apex predators of the Astral Plane.

One, a huge creature of darkness and shadows, with only long, needle-like fangs and blank, malevolent white eyes standing out, savoured the taste of terror and saw opportunity for his revenge.

Another, with the appearance of a little old lady, but the mien of something far more terrible than that, watched and smiled.

A third, clad all in dark armour, from the depths of which a pair of eyes gleamed, let out a soft laugh, pleased by the onslaught.

A fourth, smaller, slimmer, almost human but for the wicked, fey gleam in its eyes, stirred restlessly, testing the bonds.

And beyond them, something from another realm, something that made them all look like specks, stirred. And as it stirred, it laughed in a voice of fire.

OoOoO

Lukin stared at the devastation on the screens before him in absolute horror, as the Avengers, and the traitors to the Red Room, tore through his Agents like they weren't even there. He wished he had the already completed weapons at his disposal, but deep down, he knew that they would not make any difference. These were the Avengers. You could put them down, but you could not keep them down. Sooner or later, they would come back at you and unleash their vengeance ten-fold. HYDRA had found that out, only a few months ago. Now, the exact same scenario was playing out here, even down to reality being twisted and warped – though admittedly, this was a realm where reality was flexible to begin with.

A sickening feeling settled in his stomach. He had failed. All of his preparations, all of his works, all of his hopes and dreams, had come down to one roll of the dice. One roll, and he had lost.

"General Lukin."

He looked up, distracted, and was surprised to see Doctor Essex standing not ten feet away from him. Once again, the man – or whatever he was – had proved able to appear out of nowhere. And there was something a little odd about him, something hard to pin down, but visible in the little things; in the shine and apparent freshness of his unearthly pale skin, the slightly damp looking hair, the lack of facial hair, and the change of clothing. Since Lukin did not think that Essex had stopped in the middle of a battle to freshen up, he had to wonder what was going on.

But it was a brief speculation only. With the wrath of the Avengers unleashed, Essex's dog-of-war occupied with trying and failing to subdue Thor's son, and worst of all, the Winter Soldier returned to wreak a horrible revenge, he had no time for speculation.

"Doctor Essex," he said. "Do you have anything to help?"

Essex nodded. "The Spirit World is malleable," he said. "My machines can use that malleability to move my labs through it. They are powering up as we speak. I estimate that they will be able to bring half the base with us."

Lukin felt an unimaginable surge of relief, though he was careful not to show it. Not that there was really any point in hiding it. Essex could sense it, after all, and likely didn't care. "How long?" he asked.

"Ten minutes," Essex said.

"We do not have that much time," Lukin said.

"Your men and women had better make some, then," Essex said plainly. "I have done my part – those creatures, ghosts of a sort, astral imprints that have constructed bodies for themselves out of the vast psychic turbulence. Quite fascinating, really…"

"Yes?" Lukin asked, impatiently.

"I have directed them to attack the Avengers and their cohorts," Essex said. "Especially the children. And I have directed Mister Dursley to do so as well. He should provide a tolerable distraction, physically and psychologically."

It took Lukin a few moments to place the name of Dursley, but then, he did and raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You would cast that thing away?" he asked. "I was under the impression that he was of use to you."

"Limited use," Essex said dismissively. "I have extracted all the relevant information from his genetic code and while his abilities are potentially highly flexible, he shows no signs of the intellect required to explore and harness them in such a fashion. If I need another of him, I will make one."

"And the boy? Your girl?" Lukin asked. The boy, he could understand sacrificing. After all, Essex had taken samples of all the fluids and tissues that could possibly be relevant while the boy was unconscious, and since he could clone people… well, the loss of the chance to monitor the unique growth of such a boy would, Lukin knew, be a great blow to a scientist, but a manageable one. Doctor Essex, after all, knew as the Red Room did when to divest himself of an asset. But the girl, his weapon…

"The boy is a regrettable loss," Essex said calmly. "Though not an unexpected one. As you note, I can replicate him, if not his unique development. As for Madelyn, she will find her way back to me eventually."

"You have faith in her?" Lukin asked, surprised.

"I have faith in her programming," Essex corrected him. "She will do what she was made to do. Nothing more, nothing less."

Lukin nodded. So it was with the Black Widows. Though, as a small voice whispered in the back of his head, the programming of one of those Black Widows had failed…

He shook his head, dismissing the thought, then barked several orders in Russian down the comms. The fighting intensified.

Now all there was, he thought, was to hope that it was enough.

OoOoO

Natasha watched the battle from one of the few high points in the complex that had not been destroyed as part of Harry and Rachel Grey's psychic duel, or the rest of the battle. She suspected that it was part of the original Faerie fortress, explaining its resilience, and malleability.

As she watched, she noticed that the battle had suddenly surged in intensity. This was no last stand, that much she was sure of. They were buying time. As she was about to warn her teammates, something struck her in the temple, hard. Only a lifetime of experience, made her roll with the blow on instinct, robbing it of some its force, and only a lifetime of being used to such blows and, perhaps, the effects of the Infinity Formula kept her conscious, and thus alive.

Rolling fast and getting, somewhat unsteadily, to her feet, she swept the roof for her attacker. She wasn't hard to spot – it was a largely clear roof and in any case, her attacker wasn't hiding. She was tall, for a woman, taller than Natasha herself, and more muscular, dressed in practical combat clothing that mirrored Natasha's own. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and couldn't be older than 30. If anything, Natasha suspected that she was closer to 20. A child, in other words, compared to her, though a dangerous one – she was skilled enough to sneak up on Natasha herself, larger, and probably stronger. Moreover, Natasha could see the spark of madness in her eyes, eyes already dilated by what were probably amphetamines of some kind, and the badge on her belt.

Somehow, she wasn't surprised. This had been coming.

"So," she said in Russian. "You're the Red Room's newest star graduate."

The girl's face twisted in a sneer. "As you once were," she said. "Look at you now: the great Natalia Romanova, an old woman, an old traitor, an old whore, selling herself to a group of Americans in circus costumes."

"Two of them aren't even human, much less American," Natasha said mildly, ignoring the insults. She'd been called far worse. In any case, a lack of response would goad more insults, giving her more time to recover. "Who are you?" She knew perfectly well who her opponent was, but again, it would buy her time.

That drew a proud tilt of the chin. "I am Yelena Belova, a loyal daughter of Russia," she said. "I am the Black Widow now, old woman. I am the future."

"You were also born Ukrainian, going by that accent," Natasha said, tone still mild. "I'm surprised. In my day, the Red Room's speech coaches were far more rigorous about weeding such things out." In truth, there was no discernible accent, but she knew Belova's type. She knew how she would react.

As it was, she was not disappointed, as Belova flushed with anger. "I do not have an accent," she snarled. "I am your better, Romanova. I was trained to be everything you are and more, to be the one who stands over your traitorous corpse and once and for all reclaim the title that you have dragged through the mud, in the service of Russia's enemies. I will be the one to lead Russia out of its corruption and infection by the West, to make it great again."

Natasha tilted her head, inwardly assessing the damage Belova's kick had done. She was as healed as she was likely to be, short of a few hours and an ice pack. It would do.

"You're a child," she said, contemptuous words softened by genuine pity. "You call me old, and I am. But you say that you are the future, when you are living in the past, Agent Belova. You are fighting battles that are already long lost, for a cause long since discarded."

"Discarded by fools and traitors," Belova spat. "Cowards who allowed the Americans and their allies to carve up our empire, to give our rightful inheritance into the hands of the corrupt West, to make us weak!" She jerked her chin. "Now, come, you traitorous whore-bitch. There has been enough talk. It is time for you to fight like a woman and perhaps die with some honour."

Natasha arched an eyebrow, noting that Belova had been doing most of the talking. "Fine," she said, setting herself. "If you think you're good enough to be the Black Widow… show me."

Belova, forgetting that only a moment ago she'd been calling Natasha to come fight her, attacked in a flurry of lightning fast blows. Natasha had to concede, as she retreated under the onslaught, that Belova was incredibly good. She was tall, strong and fast and made yet stronger and faster by whatever cocktail of drugs the Red Room was feeding her in lieu of the Infinity Formula, and extraordinarily skilled. Moreover, her repertoire contained moves that Natasha found out very quickly were designed specifically to break her defences. To break them and to kill her.

Only a little piece of luck, a slight stumble over a fragment of stone, and Tony Stark's superlative inbuilt body armour prevented Belova's now drawn blade from opening her abdomen up the way the younger woman had opened up her defence. As it was, it skittered off her ribs and went high, opening a cut in Natasha's neck. A thin one, not near a vein or an artery, but nevertheless – first blood was Belova's. And they both knew it.

Belova smiled. "It is obvious how this will end," she said, with absolute confidence. "You are as good as they say, Natasha. Almost as good, that is. Because I am better." She beckoned. "Come. You have earned a merciful death."

Natasha arched an eyebrow again. "At the risk of sounding clichéd," she said. "It's not about how it begins, but how it ends. You'll realise that if you ever get to my age."

Belova's smile turned into a snarl. "I will see your age and many years after, knowing that you are rotting in the ground," she hissed, and struck again.

But this time, however, she quickly found every single one of her blows countered, her knife missing every blow, and when she would not relinquish it, Natasha's own knife flickered out, dipping, slicing, removing both knife and Belova's right thumb.

While this did not immediately slow her down, as high as she was on adrenaline and amphetamines, her blows grew wilder, blocked, diverted or evaded with the same ruthless precision.

And then, for the first time, Natasha attacked. The heel of her palm struck Belova's jaw, snapping her teeth shut on her tongue, almost biting through it, filling the younger woman's mouth with blood. As the second Widow stumbled, surprised, Natasha went on the offensive, using moves that Belova didn't recognise.

"You have no concept of what the Soviet Union was really about," she said, punctuating her words with punches, kicks, elbow strikes, knee strikes, and throws. She didn't use her knife. She didn't need to, for her words were chosen to cut sharper than any blade. "You would have been a child when it ended, and you saw the last years, the years of perestroika, of glasnost. You did not see the famines and purges of the 30's, the horror of the Great Patriotic War, and the many dark days between then and the end of the Soviet Union. I saw them. I fought in the War, against the Nazis. I fought against Germans, Japanese, Italians, Americans, Britons, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Chinese, South Vietnamese, South Koreans, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, Greeks, Turks, even Russians and Ukrainians, and so many more. I fought against creatures of our world and this one, and ones that you could not even begin to imagine. I fought them all for the Motherland. I lived through the darkest of days, I did the most terrible things, things that even you, you mad, vicious little girl, could not even comprehend, all for the Motherland. But I came to realise that the Motherland only saw me as a weapon, as a tool. We are Black Widows, Agent Belova. We were not made to be like Captain America, to be paraded, honoured and admired, to be heroes. We were made to be used. And did you think that we were the only ones?" She snorted. "Of course we were not. There have been others, before you, before even me, because we were always meant to be replaced."

"You might be expendable," Belova spat. "They might have been. But they were weak. You are weak. I am not."

"You think that you're different," Natasha said. "Of course you do. You want to. They make you want to, the same way they made me. They took your desire for approval, for admiration, for something even approximating love, and they twisted it. You would do anything for them, just to get a pat on the head and a 'well done, Yelena'. And you would accept that because they taught you that your only purpose was to serve the Motherland, and by the Motherland, they mean them. They told you that you were different from the others, that you could be the best, that they held out special hopes for you. They told me the same thing, and every other girl they thought possessed enough talent. They told us that so we would strive to be the best, to live up to their expectations, to avoid disappointing them. They did it to create loyal little weapons, beautiful, deadly, and completely obedient. And that's all you are, Agent Belova. You are a weapon they programmed."

Belova made to reply, but Natasha launched a snake fast strike at her throat.

"Following orders isn't some kind of superpower," she said, driving a knee into Belova's solar plexus, a heel into the side of her knee and an elbow into the base of her skull. As the younger woman collapsed like a marionette, Natasha looked down at her. Then, after a moment, she knelt down beside her, binding her wound. The thumb was long gone. "Doing as you're told, not thinking outside the box, following your programming… that's why you lost," she said, as she tied off the binding, before standing up to leave, ignoring protesting, bruised muscles and cracked bones. They could wait. "Because the version of me you were programmed to defeat? She's like the Soviet Union. She doesn't exist any more."

OoOoO

Jean was also grappling with existential questions. For one thing, she was baffled by the prospect of someone who wasn't her having the raw psychic power to overwhelm Harry in mental combat. Professor Xavier, of course, had the skill to do something like that, and the power with Cerebro. Betsy had the skill and perhaps the power, with Cerebro, though it would be a reasonably close contest. Equally, she supposed that someone like Harry's grandfather would also be capable of it, being a god of gods. And then there was Harry's mother, who could probably do such a thing with an idle thought.

But none of them would. And more to the point, she'd sensed their minds before, and while Harry's opponent felt strangely familiar, like a scent she'd smelled many years ago, it was not one of them. So who was it? Who could be so powerful, every bit as powerful as she was, as far as she could tell? She was hardly conceited, but she'd been left with the impression by the likes of Doctor Strange, Professor Xavier, and Harry's Asgardian relatives, that she was the strongest natural born psychic in history – a rather dizzying prospect.

Yet, she thought, as she watched golden flame dance around an eerie blue lightning-like fire, there was now someone who was every bit her match who was psychically beating up her cousin. And they were beating him. The golden flames were diminishing in strength, while the eerie blue was growing, and even if that visual cue were not enough, Jean could sense the intricacies of the ferocious battle, which, in truth, was less a battle and more the psychic equivalent of Harry tap-dancing on a rock-slide and trying desperately not to be dragged down and crushed within it.

She had been expressly told not to intervene until she had been called to do so. This was partly because she was still recovering somewhat from being blindsided the vast psychic tidal wave unleashed by this battle, partly because Harry's opponent was clearly extremely skilled, and partly because separating two such powerful psychics without harming at least one of them was a difficult feat indeed.

Also, she was needed to psychically protect those who could not protect themselves; Carol, the other prisoners, and the mysterious, charming and very handsome Gambit. However, since she had seen Loki and Tony Stark both provide methods for the Avengers and those with them to shield themselves from the psychic turbulence, she suspected that she'd been dispatched to do so to keep her out of trouble. Two Omega Class psychics locked in combat was causing quite enough trouble to begin with.

But even so, despite her reluctant acceptance of this charge, she felt something within her, something pulling her up towards the two combatants. It was a resonance, like the one she shared with Harry, but now the mysterious other was here, it was so much stronger.

That resonance nearly proved a fatal distraction, as one of the ghost-like creatures that rampaged through this place of horrors, more like an unearthly cross between panther and serpent, made all of shadow rather than flesh, attempted to pounce on her from above.

Carol, however, was equal to it, moving in a blur, leading with her newly regained shield. While the body blow did not seem to faze it, the shield did, striking blue sparks off its ghostly flesh and eliciting the furious, very human scream of a child in distress. That made them all hesitate for a moment, wondering if this thing was more than it seemed, before Carol's astonishingly young looking grandmother poured five rapid shots into the creature's head. Looking around at them, expression grim, she said, "You can't afford to hold back. No matter what those things look or sound like, you can't blink for a moment."

"What are they?" Nezhno asked, tone troubled.

"De ghosts of de slain," Gambit said grimly. "People taken 'ere. Tortured. Transformed. Killed."

"And you worked for these people?" Noriko demanded.

Gambit gave her a look that was suddenly very cold. "Y' assume ah had a choice," he said bitterly. "An'… when it y' own life on de line, when dey don' ask y' t' take part in de messy parts… it easy to rationalise. Easy jus' t' think o' gettin' out on y' own, jus' leavin' an' runnin' as far an' as fast as y' can."

"So what changed?" Carol asked.

Gambit didn't say anything for a long time, though for a brief moment, Jean got a flickering image through his well-designed psychic defences. It was of a young woman, with hair and eyes just like hers, though the hair was shorter and she had strange tatoos on her cheeks, almost like scars, that lent her an intimidating air. She was smiling, though, which softened her face, especially since it looked like smiling was something she was not accustomed to doing.

"Who is she?" she asked, before she could stop herself.

Gambit looked startled, then angry, then sighed. "Let's jus' say tha' she's someone ah care for," he said. "An' after I got t' know her, ah realised tha' every man 'as 'is moment t' choose t' stan' up an' be counted. Most of all, though, it's like ah said, cherie: if dere is one thin' in dis life tha' ah believe, it is dat people should be free. Especially if dey've never had th' chance."

Before Jean could question him any further, Loki appeared beside her, to the startlement of all present. "Good evening," he said politely. "I am Prince Loki, as you may know. As you will be glad to hear, your exit from this foul place is imminent." He turned to Jean. "Miss Grey, I and Ms Maximoff have need of your assistance in containing and breaking up this battle, to set all to rights." He made a few complex gestures, and a web of light settled on those not protected by Tony's psychic inhibitors. "They will no longer need your protection."

"I can help Harry now?" Jean asked, folding her arms.

"Yes," Loki said, taking arm in a gentlemanly fashion and stepping into space. "Though tactics will need to be discussed."

And with that, they vanished.

Well, Jono said, after a moment. That was unexpected.

OoOoO

Unfortunately, that was not the only unexpected thing that they would come across.

Dudley had, by means unknown to himself, had his rage and sense of humiliation stoked to a furnace's heat. For years now he had been invincible, respected, admired. Any who had crossed him had been crushed. Anything, or anyone, he had wanted had either been given to him or taken by him. As far as he was concerned, this was the natural order of things.

And then, his miserable little freak of a cousin, Harry, had appeared out of nowhere – and while, if Dudley was honest with himself, he looked larger and stronger than he had before, and he had magic, that was no matter. Dudley himself was a great deal larger and stronger than he had been, impervious to harm, stronger than anyone else. A more discerning mind might question why his cousin had appeared all of a sudden, had been given to him to break.

But Dudley merely presumed that it was a reward for his actions, or that providence had simply given him the chance for revenge, for he remembered how the Avengers and Harry's other freak friends had destroyed his life, taken his parents away, and sent him to some filthy home, far from his games and other toys, where he was treated no better than anyone else. After that, of course, Doctor Milbury had arrived, and spoken to him of the great strength within him, awakening it, and over the next few years, he had been given anything he wanted, in exchange for occasionally beating up whoever was sent to him. At first, it had been games, food, and other things like that. Then, as he grew older, his appetites had matured. Food, still, games, sometimes, but alcohol too, drugs, sometimes, and often, girls. The latter weren't usually especially happy to see him, but Dudley didn't really care about that. In his book, it made it more fun. Some had been, though. Power, after all, was an aphrodisiac to some, even if it had a lot to overcome.

Though he did not know it, he was very fortunate that Harry had not been able to come across this thought when they had fought, for if he had, it is almost certain that Harry would have killed him on the spot.

Of course, Dudley would not have heeded any such warnings. He didn't fear his freak cousin, no matter who his father really was, sneering at the coward's attempts to prevent the fight before it began, presuming that he was the stronger. Fool.

But then again… perhaps not such a fool. Some of Dudley's burns were still healing, and even if they weren't, he vividly remembered first Harry's attacking his eyes, before scuttling off to hide in the darkness, then the bright light and the unimaginable agony as he was roasted alive, pain made all the worse by the fact that since Milbury had found him, he hadn't experienced pain. Oh, one or two of the girls had tried to scratch him, but that had mostly tickled. This was something different, something, in truth, like he'd never felt before.

But his cousin had underestimated him, the stupid freak, tried to help him, as if they could be friends. He'd shown him. He'd beaten him. He'd broken him, crushing bones like twigs. He'd have smashed his skull in another few moments.

Then, something strange had happened. Harry had caught his punch. No one caught his punch. And he had laughed. Normally, that would have made Dudley angry, but there was something strange about this laugh, something that made him feel something he'd only ever felt around Milbury and that strangely familiar freak girl of his, the one who was off-limits and had nearly melted his small brain when he'd tried. Then Milbury had shown another side of himself too, one that had cowed Dudley into submission, though he'd never admit it.

But even that hadn't frightened him as much as Harry. The little freak, not so little anymore, had put himself back together, and then repaid the favour, beating Dudley, breaking him, burning him, before the final blow launched him up beyond the mountain's peak, leading to a painful landing. He had waited, body aching, full of pain both blunt and jagged, and burning too, as little fires licked away at his skin from above and below. But the pains slowly began to recede, and it became clear that Harry had not bothered with him. Like Dudley had sometimes done himself, he had dismissed him, considering him beneath notice. From a distance, Dudley saw the battle begin in earnest, as the freak and Milbury's girl freak fought in the weird skies.

Good riddance to them, as far as he was concerned, he thought, and was planning to find a way out. Milbury and the Red Room had been cool, but Dudley could see that they were in trouble. And it certainly wasn't worth him getting caught up in whatever was happening to them.

But as he thought this, something stoked up the banked fires of his rage, at the abject humiliation he had suffered at Harry's hands. No one hurt him like that. No one dismissed him. No one made a fool out of the Beast.

So he had begun to run downhill at speed, ignoring the strangeness of the world around him. One or two of those strange, pale creatures attacked him, but he tore them limb from limb, seeing only the faces of Harry and the other freaks he knew were present, including a beautiful blonde freak who he'd never seen, but somehow knew was Harry's friend, as he did. He wanted to break them, like he had done before, to show them what he really was. And maybe have a little fun in the process. The girl freaks were quite pretty, after all.

Of course, it was Essex at work that made him know Carol's face, that pointed him in the right direction, but Dudley didn't know that. All he cared about, as he charged down the mountain, sometimes galloping on his knuckles like a gorilla, was revenge.

And when he arrived, seeing them sheltering by an empty building that had gone less weird than the others, with an old man and another beautiful freak, both with guns (like that would help them), and being joined by a bunch of metal suits, he was at first a little puzzled. Then, he saw the strange tear in reality, a door to another place, away from here. Most of him was drawn to it, at first, but Essex's influence was strong, stoking the rage. He could leave, but he would take his revenge first.

OoOoO

Alison looked up sharply, and Carol followed her gaze, worry intensified by the fact that Gambit was looking on edge too. "Down!" Alison snapped, in a tone that demanded obedience and received it from the muscles of those commanded, without recourse to their owner's brains.

Everyone dropped to the floor, just as something huge sailed over their heads with a furious, inhuman roar.

At first, Carol thought it was one of those weird ghost creatures, but she was wrong. This thing was splotched, pale skin mixed with angry red, bruise yellow-purple-black and burnt black. It was human, or at least, it looked human, but it was larger in every direction. Taller than Thor, wider than Volstagg, with hands like small frying pans, it looked more like one of the monsters she'd fought in London, or like that troll that Harry had described, than anything human. It was bald as an egg, the smell of burnt hair mixing with a rank smell, like a combination of condensed locker room smell and caged animal. Thankfully, it was fat enough that that and what little remained of its clothing preserved its modesty and Carol's lunch. And its piggy eyes, full of fury and hatred, were staring right at her, as it visibly seethed with rage.

"What the hell is that?" she asked.

"Dat," Gambit said, with grimness that barely covered his fear. "Would be de Beast."

"Otherwise known," Alison said, with a similar grimness. "Unless I am very much mistaken, as Dudley Dursley."

Indeed, the Beast seemed to show recognition of the names, first smirking, pleased, at being called the Beast, then giving Alison a suspicious look on being called by a human name, as if wondering how she did it. The look, of course, carried another undertone, one that seemed to be undressing Alison with its eyes, a similar one to the one it had directed at her, and Carol felt a shiver of both rage and utter disgust. Then, she realised where she'd heard that name before.

"This?" she said incredulously. "This is Harry's cousin?"

That name sparked recognition too in the Beast's eyes, recognition and a renewed hatred.

"Vell, I can see who got zer looks in zer family," Kurt piped up, with a nervous laugh.

Carol wasn't exactly in a rush to disagree, and even if she had wanted to, she didn't have time, for the thing that had once been Harry's cousin, that had been transformed into a monster by the dark doctor who had haunted Harry's life, let out another furious bellow and charged.

The fight was swift and brutal, as the Beast moved with a speed that something that size shouldn't have been able to muster. Gambit unleashed a storm of glowing playing cards from who knew where, which exploded like grenades, demonstrating why Belova and the Red Room hardcases had been wary around him. Their pinkish-purple fire consumed the Beast in a cloud, but it was one that it emerged from, merely infuriated further. Her uncle Jack's bullets simply spalled off its fat flesh, ricocheting off to who knew where. Alison's gun, firing those strange orange energy bolts in a humming roar, seemed to hurt it, knocking it off balance, and drawing an angry bellow.

However, none of the wounds it did seemed to be even close to incapacitating, and the Beast's momentum carried it into Nezhno.

As it did, astonishingly, the slim boy seemed to stop it cold, growing in size and strength like the Hulk did, tattoos humming with power, until they were almost of a size. For a few moments, the two titans struggled, but Nezhno's blows were blunted by the vast amount of fat that the Beast possessed, and as far as Carol could tell in their brief acquaintance, Nezhno was a gentle soul. The Beast, by contrast, was vicious, enraged, and whatever else could be said about its fighting skill or lack of it, it knew how to cause pain.

As Nezhno staggered back, shrinking hand covering a bloodied eye, less than a minute after the fight had begun, still fighting on but clearly losing, Carol realised they needed a plan. The various prisoners of the Red Room were individually powerful, but not skilled enough or experienced enough to use their powers in concert. If they had done so, Dudley would have been crushed, even with all his power. But they did not, and so he was not. Instead, he was the one doing the crushing.

Thankfully, though, Carol had an idea. "Jono, Remy, grandma, buy me time," she yelled.

"Y' got a plan, cherie?" Gambit asked.

Carol nodded.

A good one? Jono asked hopefully.

"Eh."

"We'll make do," Alison said, nodding sharply. "Do what you need to."

Carol nodded back. "Lorna, Noriko," she said. "You control electricity, right?"

"Magnetism, technically," Lorna mumbled, clearly terrified.

"The two are related," Carol said impatiently. "I'm not great at science, but I know that much."

"What are you planning?" Noriko asked.

"Can you control the lightning in the ground?" Carol asked.

"Do I look like Thor?"

"No, you don't have the killer abs. Yes or no?"

Noriko looked doubtful. "Maybe," she said. "What do you want to do with it?"

Carol showed her shield. "This was given to me by Odin," she said. "It's made of the same stuff as Thor's hammer. I'm pretty sure it can do the same things." She grinned. "I want you two to charge it up."

The girls exchanged a look, then flinched as Nezhno let out a yell of pain.

"Now or never, girls," Carol said.

"We'll try," Lorna said eventually.

"That's all I can ask for," Carol said, setting herself, as both girls laid their hands on her shield.

The two girls closed their eyes and, for a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, electricity, electric-blue in Noriko's case and lime-green in Lorna's, began to crackle around their hands, and lightning in the cloud-earth below began to gather around their feet, building, growing brighter and brighter, with white-hot fury, before suddenly leaping up through their bodies and pouring into Carol's shield with a buzzing zap, which drank it all up. And as it did, Carol laughed a mad laugh, because it was working.

After two minutes, minutes that seemed to go on for eternity, it ended, and Lorna and Noriko fell to their knees, smoking and smelling disquietingly of bacon, but alive. Carol, meanwhile, could feel the power humming in her shield, and wasn't entirely sure of how to get it out again, but figured that she'd have to hope.

"Kurt," she began, then stopped as she turned. Nezhno had returned to his previous size, lying on the ground, obviously groaning in pain, clutching an eye. Gambit's bo staff had been snapped and one end driven through his shoulder, just above his heart – something that Carol felt was more a case of poor aim than merciful intent – pinning him, insensible, to the ground like an insect. Her grandmother's gun had been snatched out of her hands and crushed, the woman herself tending to Jack, who was horribly crumpled and still, limbs pointing in entirely the wrong directions, ordering the arriving Iron Man suits – a few of which had already been scrapped by the Beast, torn apart, though they seemed like the smaller models, with the larger ones in reserve – to ferry the wounded away. She turned to Carol and called to her, expression frantic. Carol ignored her.

And Jono was worst of all, because as she watched, the Beast, huge ham like hands around his waist wrung him like a chicken, spine and neck visibly snapping. Carol was just in time to hear, with her mind, not her ears (for those had been deafened by the lightning, rendering her surroundings eerily silent), an agonised scream. With that, he hurled Jono aside, like a rag doll. Then, he turned to Carol. He hardly seemed hurt; more burnt, certainly, perhaps more bruised in places, and truly naked now, the last of his clothes having been destroyed, but not seriously harmed. And as he turned to her, he leered, apparently savouring her fear and despair, which collected in the pit of her stomach like ice, saying something doubtless disgusting that she couldn't make out.

What that leer did, though, was make her angry, a deep, throbbing anger, and suddenly, she knew exactly how she was going to unleash the lightning within her shield. Being trapped in this Red Room complex, it was like turning back time to earlier in the Summer. But she'd faced a giant monster that had once been a person, that had broken a friend of hers before too, on an icy mountain, armed only with a shield, less than six months before – though it seemed like an eternity ago. She'd learnt a lot since then.

"Kurt," she said, barely audible to herself. With a faint smell of sulphur, Kurt was beside her. "Drop me on his head."

Kurt gave her a shocked look, and she repeated her words, before adding, "drop me on his head, then get the girls clear. Do it."

Kurt looked at her askance, but nodded, and grabbed her. There was a moment of twisting, of strangeness, then as requested, she landed on the head of the person formerly known as Dudley Dursley. Locking her legs around his throat, knowing that she had to move fast, before he got over his surprise, she didn't even bother with a quip. And, as she had done on that mountainside all those months ago to a giant werewolf, she did to this monster: she raised her shield and brought it down hard, slamming it like an axe into his piggy eyes, releasing the lightning within with a thought. There was a moment of agony and ecstasy, of a white hot fire that consumed everything before her eyes, and then it felt like she was flying and then… nothingness.

OoOoO

In the chaos of the battle, even as it was being ameliorated by the efforts of Loki, Wanda, and Jean, no one who was not at ground zero noticed Carol's attack, or even the preceding fight.

Almost no one.

Thor was the God of Thunder and Lightning. Storms were a part of him, and he knew their feel anywhere, able to tell a natural storm from an unnatural one in an instant. And he felt the lightning discharge from Carol's shield as soon as it happened, his eyes drawn to it. He saw Carol fly, limbs loose, through the air, catapulted by the sheer power of the lightning strike and the thrashing of her opponent.

Diving fast, he caught her as gently as he could, before giving her into the care of her grandmother, who was sending those remaining prisoners, woefully few in number, through the tear in reality in the care of JARVIS through Tony's armours – several of which had been reduced to scrap, presumably by the huge, monstrous creature that Carol had fought, that was now bellowing and spasming in agony.

"She struck bravely," he said.

"Yes, she did," Alison said grimly.

"She will be well," Thor assured her. "She is strong and I felt the strength of the lightning that coursed through her. She will heal from this, I swear it."

"I'm sure," Alison said briskly. "Now, if you would kindly squash your little bastard of a nephew before he gets up, I would be much obliged."

Thor did a double take. "What?"

"Dudley Dursley," Alison said. "Your nephew by marriage. Presumably a mutant or some experiment of Essex's… which is about to attack, again."

Thor looked up at the creature that was slowly regaining its feet and bearings, then glared at him in recognition and hatred. Now he looked, he could see his son's bully in the creature. Vernon and Petunia's foul spawn had become even fouler in the intervening year, or more, considering that time moved in the Nevernever, going from spoiled child to… this. If there had been any goodness in him before, it was long gone by now.

Thor glanced at Carol, and at the others who had been harmed by this monster. "I will see it done," he said grimly. "Go."

She did, and Thor strode forward. "You do not want to do this, boy," he said quietly.

The vast, naked monster snorted. "I remember you," it said, in a thick, deep voice, full of rage and malice. "You and the other freaks were there when my house was taken away, my things, my parents. You destroyed me!"

"Hardly," Thor said coldly. "Your parents received a punishment far less than what they richly deserved, and it was to be hoped that your time in government care would improve you. Clearly not."

"Oh, I'm 'improved'," Dudley sneered. "I'm bigger, I'm stronger, stronger even than you, freak!" With that last roar, he hurled Carol's shield at Thor, so fast that it was barely perceptible, fast enough to remove the heads of any human in its path, to tear through high gauge steel.

Thor caught it without even batting an eye.

"I doubt that very much," he said. "Come, whelp. Test yourself against me, if you dare."

Dudley bellowed and charged. Thor, silent, waited. And when the double axe-handle blow, one sufficient to crumple the armour of a tank, came down, he blocked it with his left forearm, the impact sufficient to shatter the glass of any windows nearby, if there had been any, and disperse some of the trees of rain and snow about them.

"Pitiful," Thor said contemptuously, as Dudley strained ineffectually, trying to drive his arms down. He might as well have tried to shift a mountain. Inwardly, though, he was a little surprised at the whelp's strength, which compared favourably with that of Volstagg. Monster though he might be, Vernon and Petunia's spawn had grown into a young… man of remarkable strength. Then, he dropped Mjolnir. He would not soil it with such a petty task. "You think you know power. Let me show you what real power is," he said, and drew back a fist.

The impact echoed around the mountains like a thunderclap, and Dudley was driven deep into the mountain of clouds and ice and lightning.

He would survive, Thor was sure enough of that. He had estimated Dudley's strength to be equivalent to Volstagg's, and had therefore struck with commensurate strength – enough to hurt, disable, and teach the whelp a lesson, but restrained enough that he would live to learn it.

It had also, he thought as he took to the air again, been faintly satisfying.

That satisfaction, however, was ultimately short-lived.

OoOoO

Jean had joined Loki and Ms Maximoff in the skies far above the battle, head reeling from what Loki had told her. Harry's opponent had once been an innocent, someone who had been shaped into a weapon by the same monster that had made her cousin's life a misery.

She would have torn off immediately to find him, while swearing through furious tears to tear him molecule from molecule, if it had not been for Loki informing her that Wanda had found him and, apparently, dissolved him. It didn't leave her very satisfied, but it did leave her able to focus better, shaken though she was.

"Now, Jean," Loki said. "I want you try and contain the psychic duel between Harry and his opponent." Now that she'd steadied somewhat, she got the distinct sense that he wasn't telling her something, but now was not the time to ask about that.

Jean must have looked at him askance, because he smiled, as did Wanda, though more tightly in the latter case.

"We'll be smoothing out reality," she said. "Returning it to what it should be. You won't have to stop it all, just leave us some breathing space to work in. Once that's done, we'll help break it up."

Jean took a deep breath, and nodded. "Okay," she said. "Let's do this."

So they did, Jean's amber-red power forming a bubble around the two clashing energies of gold and blue, the resonance growing ever stronger within her. It was a strain, harder than anything she'd had to do since before she'd discovered the full extent of her powers earlier in the Summer, and soon sweat was rolling off her brow as she struggled to contain the fallout of the battle from two other Omega Class psychics, one her equal, one the closest thing to an equal to either her or Rachel that the world had ever produced aside from each other.

The only reason that she even could manage that much was because the two were tired and focused entirely on each other, and perhaps, though she could hardly be sure, she was a smidgen stronger than Harry's opponent. Or at least, she was more accustomed to fully extending her powers, which was a surprise, since Professor Xavier had purposefully taught her of her powers slowly, so she would be able to grow into them, to control them. She somehow doubted that whoever this person's teacher was had been half as kind. Then again, perhaps he had wanted to keep her hidden… and a psychic of their calibre, as Harry had intentionally demonstrated, was very hard to keep hidden if they were going at full tilt.

Either way, she could feel the world around her realigning, reshaping itself under the golden-green and scarlet red stewardship of Loki and Ms Maximoff, returning to something approximating natural: the snow fell downwards, the clouds returned to the skies and and the earth to the mountains below. The creatures she sensed far below, each a fragment of horror and tragedy that made her wanted to tear this base apart for reasons that had nothing to do with what had been done to Harry and his friend, seemed to be fading away, with no more psychic turbulence to empower them.

Then, all of a sudden, that feel away, because within her bubble she saw the powers coalesce into people, apparently carved of energy like she had been, one a young man of golden-white, the other, a young woman of eerie blue. Then, the young man, Harry, lashed out, hand reaching for something that gleamed around the other's throat. And as he did, the resonance suddenly spiked beyond anything she'd ever imagined, drawing her in.

OoOoO

Maddie was only dimly aware of the raging battle, and the consequences of her own psi-war, let alone that she might have another name and a past that she never knew of.

In large part, this was because she was entirely occupied with her opponent. Harry Thorson was, to use a phrase Remy had once coined, 'a slippery little bastard'. Wherever and whenever he could, he slipped away from a direct contest of power and skill, knowing as she did that she was by some way the stronger and more skilled.

However, in pure strength, he was the closest to her match that she had ever faced, bringing a whole new level of challenge to this battle. She wasn't simply able to reach in and switch him off, or use one of her many techniques to slip past his defences – while she had been able to do that once, he was too strong and too wary for that to work a second time. She had tried illusions, creating multiple versions of herself, attempting to bamboozle him, but he had easily detected most of them, and she unleashed some of her most sophisticated illusions, including a labyrinth, he had responded by opening his third eye, the magical trick sometimes known merely as 'the Sight', hitting her with a telepathic piledriver which made up for its lack of subtlety with its raw power, and attached a mocking telepathic message.

I'm the nephew of the god who wrote the book on illusions. Did you really think I was going to fall for that?

This, she had to concede, was likely true, and so had tried direct psychic attacks to his very being. But those didn't work either, for only tendrils could slip through his defences, and he was strong enough to easily swat those aside, where he didn't simply evade them entirely. She had tried attacking from multiple angles, fusing lightning from the cloud-mountain below with psionic energy. That had caused him some bother, as he loudly complained about how, since he was the son of the god of Thunder and Lightning, if anyone was throwing lightning around, it should be him.

Or at least, he grumbled, as he grounded out the last forked bolt. You'd think I'd find it easier to deal with. He'd then seemed to grin at her, a grin every bit as cheeky as any of Remy's. Oh, and thanks for the new trick, by the way.

The meaning of this puzzling remark was then explained when he drew flame down from the volcano-skies in vast quantities, infusing it with psychic power of his own, and hurling it at her in the shape of a giant bird of prey.

Maddie had only just thrown up a shield in time, so startled was she by her opponent's off-the-cuff adaptability. He had not merely endured one of her better attacks, but adapted the technique for his own purposes and turned it back on her. Really, she rather found herself admiring him.

Of course, such moments of direct confrontation were few and far between, as Harry Thorson danced away from each attack, parried each thrust, and evaded every attempt to pin him down, like a cat on a hot tin roof. She'd never seen such a thing before, but Remy had described it for her, and she had to admit, based on what she imagined it would be like, Harry's slippery, agile, and infuriating dodging seemed to fit.

Tactically, she knew that it was the best way to prolong the fight, for it was one that they both knew he could never win. His telekinesis was remarkably adept, true, arguably better than hers, though it was weaker and like him, she had learned from this fight, and his telepathy was woefully raw compared to hers, though not without its sharp edges and unexpected tactics. For instance, after the light psychic jabs had failed to draw further startled reaction, and she'd begun to get a real idea of the shape of his thoughts, beginning to pin him down, whenever she looked like locking him down, he'd thrown a flicker of a memory at her.

Each and every one of those baffling memories featured someone who looked like her, sounded like her, even smiled like her, presumably the mysterious 'Jean'. Well, to an extent. Maddie knew that her own smiles were rare, cautious, shy things, whereas the person who appeared in the fragmented memories Harry Thorson kept throwing at her apparently had no shortage of smiles, warm, confident and kind smiles. Of the other things that she, whoever she was, seemed to have no shortage of, were kindness and what Maddie faintly recognised as love, though of a kind that she didn't think she'd seen before. And then there was something else that struck a far more familiar chord: power. Power, not necessarily stronger than hers, but at least a match, something she had not thought possible. She had not even thought that someone like Harry, at least able to compete with her for power, existed until these last couple of days. And now, there was someone who was her match? Whose power was fiercer, less disciplined, less constrained? And was, above all, even though it was only a second hand memory of power, somehow… familiar?

Each time, it made her hesitate, made her wonder, made her curious as to who this person was, how they looked so alike when she knew that Doctor Essex had made her for a purpose. What purpose did this person have, this person who was like her but not, identical but different in every single way? Who. Was. She.

This question, and her duel with Harry, occupied her so much that she didn't even notice the bubble of psychic power, power created by the one like her but not, surrounded them, and the strange resonant feeling that had been plaguing her ever since she first encountered Harry – no, before, though it hadn't been half as strong.

She didn't notice until they were entirely contained and the two of them, her and Harry, stopped. He was all but at her mercy, the battle nearly complete, and they both knew it. Then, she realised that he was smiling.

You've lost, she said. Why are you happy?

Because I haven't lost, Maddie, he said, exhausted glee hanging off his every psychic syllable. I've won, oh, I've won. No, we've both won.

What do you mean?

I mean that my plan worked. I knew I could never beat you, but I was never trying, came the excited, wickedly gleeful reply, the sort of tone she'd expect from Remy when he'd just done something particularly clever. Didn't you ever wonder why I never attacked in earnest?

Maddie had to admit that she had. She'd presumed it was just caution, trying to buy time for his friends.

You're half right, Harry replied. I was buying them time, but I was also forcing a fight that would cause enough psychic noise for my uncle or my godmother or someone else to pick up on it, to follow it back here, to find us. A delighted laugh echoed between them. And they did. The Avengers are here, and they're not alone. My friend and the new friends she's made, the prisoners of the Red Room and Sinister, Essex, Milbury, whatever you want to call him, they're home free. And you're free too.

Free? Maddie asked, puzzled.

There was long – and by long, she meant that it was measured in seconds, rather than milliseconds, for this was psychic communication.

I suppose I should have guessed, Harry said eventually. You never really realised. His gaze focused on her upper chest – and not her breasts, that young men usually stared at. It was the part where, between her breasts, the feather she'd taken from him laid. And you have something of mine, he said. And before she knew it, he struck out, grabbing the feather before she could stop him.

And the resonant feeling reached a fever pitch, there was a great twisting sensation, and then…

It was strange. It was like they were in a mind-scape, but not in any one person's mind. She looked around. The room was made of stone, probably a tower going by the round shape, like some kind of castle. It was richly adorned in tapestries of red and gold, with similarly coloured squashy sofas and armchairs, glass windows looking out onto a snowy evening, and a roaring fire in the grate.

"Well," someone remarked in a mild tone. "This was unexpected."

She whirled. Behind her, standing next to one of the armchairs, was Harry Thorson, no longer glowing gold or humming with power, but looking mostly ordinary, in a non-descript t-shirt and jeans. However, strangely, his clothes kept shifting between the ordinary outfit and some kind of burgundy red leathers, inscribed with a stylised golden bird, and when they appeared, so too did a golden circlet around his head.

Furthermore, though, around his neck was the golden feather that had called to her. A large part of her wanted it back, for reasons that she couldn't even begin to explain.

He smiled at her, and stuck out a hand. "Hey," he said. "I'm not sure if, between you telepathically laying me out and the psychic battle just now, we were ever introduced. Harry, Harry Thorson."

Uncertainly, suspiciously, Maddie stared at his hand.

"I don't bite, you know," Harry said dryly. "I know people who do, but I don't… and that's far dodgier than I meant it to. Sorry."

Maddie stared at him, baffled. Then, at his entreating expression, slowly took the hand, ready to use one of the blows Remy had taught her if he was about to try something. But he didn't. "Madelyn Pryor," she said, then hesitated. "Remy calls me Maddie," she added, though again, she wasn't sure why.

"Nice to meet you, Maddie," Harry said, shaking her hand. "Shall we?"

Maddie eyed him suspiciously, watching as he took a seat, gesturing at her to do the same. Her suspicious gaze transferred to the indicated armchair.

"The chairs don't bite either," Harry said dryly. "Not unless the Twins have got at them."

Not having the faintest idea what he meant, Maddie slowly, grudgingly, sat down. She knew very well that appearances could deceive, but what puzzled her was that this place, whatever and wherever it was, didn't seem designed to deceive her. She'd never seen it before in her life.

"It's my school common room," Harry said, reading her expression, if not her mind. "I suppose because the feather was responding to me, it created this." He picked it up and eyed it, closing on eye and regarding it suspiciously. "Not entirely sure how, though. According to grandpa Odin, it's just a phoenix feather, but it's obviously something more than that…" He dropped it and clapped his hands, making Maddie jump. "Still, now we're here, wherever here is…" He trailed off and looked hopefully at Maddie. "Actually, considering that you're a far better psychic than I am, or probably will ever be, do you have any idea where we are?"

"The Astral Plane, perhaps?" Maddie suggested, more than a little puzzled. "Perhaps this feather, whatever it is, responded to our power by creating a temporary sanctum of sorts from it, and chose your memories because you acted on it?"

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "You know, I think I actually understood that," he said. "It would make sense." His thoughtful expression turned to her. "So. What's your story, Maddie?"

"Why do you want to know?" Maddie asked suspiciously.

"Can't I just be curious?"

Maddie eyed him.

"Okay, fine," Harry said. "Though, for the record, I'm a very curious person."

"Clearly."

Harry grinned, entire face lighting up. "Sarcasm!" he said, delighted. "Wonderful! You do have a personality!" At Maddie's affronted expression, he chuckled. "Sorry," he said. "I couldn't resist." His expression abruptly turned thoughtful and he studied her, chin resting on the palm of his hand. "You do have a personality, and a mind of your own, I think – you took this feather because you wanted to, not because you were told to. Somehow I doubt Milbury or whatever he's really called cares too much about shiny things, and one of the Red Room thugs would have swiped it otherwise – thanks, by the way. It's nice that someone picked it up who would appreciate it, though I am glad to have it back."

Maddie sat back, startled by the wave of chatter. Of all the people she'd known, only Remy had chatted anywhere near this much, and even he was generally more reserved. And even he never displayed the ability to switch from playful to thoughtful to serious in mid-word.

"So," Harry said, serious and thoughtful again. "You're not just Essex's puppet. You're stronger than he is. Why do you do what he says?"

Maddie frowned. "Doctor Essex created me for a purpose," she said.

"And what would that be?" Harry asked quietly.

Maddie regarded him for a long moment, then shrugged minutely and said, "I find people for him."

"Is that it?" Harry asked, surprised.

"I protect him, too," Maddie added, after a moment. "I also serve as a case study on the development of psychic powers. What were you created for? And who by?"

"I wasn't created," Harry said, then paused. "Well, I was conceived, but that's something I really don't want to get into."

"And you have no purpose?" Maddie asked, surprised. It wasn't entirely uncommon, among prisoners, but even so. Even Remy had seemed to have a purpose, finding things, and sometimes people, but usually things, and acquiring them for Doctor Essex.

Harry opened his mouth, then paused. "Well," he said. "I think I had one. Doctor Strange didn't exactly create me, but… he shaped me, I suppose. Helped me be ready."

"To do what?"

"Remember when the skies went red over the Summer and the world went wibbly?"

"Wibbly?"

"Weird."

"Yes," Maddie said. "I do."

"I was meant to stop Chthon, the thing behind that," Harry said. "In a way, I was the only one who could. So I did. Apart from that…" He snorted. "Well, there's a prophecy or two going around. I'm meant to destroy this dark lord, a wizard and a psychic, called Voldemort. He's not as powerful as I am, or you are, but he's clever and dangerous. And then there's the other prophecy." He smiled at her, a wry smile. "Funny thing. You're in it."

Maddie's eyes widened, confused. Prophecies were not knew to her – Doctor Essex had taught her of such things. But she hadn't imagined that she would feature in one, unless it was about Doctor Essex, and even then, it would be a brief mention.

"In what way?"

"Something about me finding the lost and gathering them to me," Harry said. "Three people. One was someone that a friend of mine seemed to recognise. Another was something about a frozen memory. That one I've got no clue about. But the third… a hound in chains, that waits to break free."

"You think that's me?" Maddie asked. "Impossible." But her tone was uneasy. She knew that she was often called Doctor Essex's hound, even occasionally by Doctor Essex himself. Like a hound, her primary purpose was to find people for him, to track them down. It was something she was especially good at, through telepathy and psychometry. But in chains?

"They might not be obvious chains," Harry said, reading her face again, or just guessing at her thoughts. "But think about it: have you ever thought about leaving him? About going off and discovering the world, of making your own life, free of him?"

Maddie froze. Those words, almost exactly the same words, had once been said to her by Remy. He had wondered the same thing. He had talked of the same thing, in light, gentle tones, of perhaps taking a holiday – something that had had to be explained to her – away from Doctor Essex and everyone else, just the two of them. He had even coaxed her into choosing different clothes from the standard clothes Doctor Essex assigned her, pointing out that if she wanted to blend in out in the world when she was finding people, she had to dress like someone out in the world.

When she had seen tattoos, the very concept had left her fascinated, so Remy had taken her to someone he knew, someone magical who could apply or remove tattoos at will – apparently the ordinary version involved needles and was really rather painful. He'd paid for it, as he had the clothes, which Maddie knew was a generous gesture, out of character for a thief, especially when she could simply have made them believe that she had paid them and that she erased all memory of her anyway.

Doctor Essex had been… puzzled, but not especially bothered, apparently accepting Remy's explanation that if she was to travel out in the world, she would need to blend in. That said, she hadn't seen Remy for a while afterwards, either, and he had been more circumspect about holidays and going away from Doctor Essex – which was good, since after a little talk with Doctor Essex, the details of which she couldn't remember, the very idea seemed ridiculous. She was not a person from out in the world. She was someone made with a purpose.

"Just because you're made to be one thing doesn't mean you can't become something else," Harry said, and she realised that, strangely, she'd said almost all of that out loud. How puzzling. Then again, this was the Astral Plane – probably – thought and reality were close cousins here. "I mean… take my friend Tony. He's Iron Man. He started out as a weapons designer. He made and sold things that killed people and he'd never really known anything else. I mean, that was what he did for a living, what his dad and everyone around him had taught him to be and to do. No one could even imagine him doing anything else. He occasionally did other things, but weapons were the main thing he did. Then, one day, after he was kidnapped and hurt with his own weapons, after he saw what they did, he escaped with the first Iron Man armour, and started destroying his weapons and stopped selling them. Everyone told him he was crazy, that he should go back to weapons. But he didn't listen. Now, he makes clean energy and machines that help people, that make the world better. He's still Iron Man, which does have weapons, but he uses them to protect people. And frankly, though I didn't know him before, I think he's way happier now."

"I'm not unhappy," Maddie said, frowning. "I fulfil my purpose."

"But are you happy?" Harry asked gently.

Maddie frowned. She supposed she was… around Remy. And she did get a certain satisfaction of fulfilling her purpose, for Doctor Essex.

Harry just stared at her, eyes sad. Eyes so like hers. Then, he looked thoughtful again. "Let me tell you a secret," he said. "You've probably noticed that our eyes are exactly the same."

Maddie nodded slowly. She had. She'd been wondering about it.

"Our powers are a lot alike too," Harry said. "Same power-set, though I'm not as strong. And I have magic. And I'm half Asgardian. Okay, so, mostly same power-set. And we sort of… resonate around each other. Our powers recognise each other. We're both drawn to this feather, too. Did you ever wonder why that was?"

Maddie frowned again. "I was a little curious," she reluctantly admitted. She wasn't meant to be curious, but she was.

"Well, I'm not sure either," Harry said. "But there's something odd. Because, change the clothes, lengthen the hair, remove the tattoos… and you look exactly like my cousin Jean."

"The girl you were showing me?" Maddie asked. "The one who…"

"Has powers like ours, is as strong as you are, and is generally a warm, sweet and lovely person?" Harry asked. "Who is free?"

Maddie hesitated, then nodded.

"Free?" another voice asked, one just like hers. Maddie twisted in her chair, as Harry looked up and smiled.

"Hello, Jean," he said.

OoOoO

Jean was, to say the least, confused. One moment, she'd been in a battle in the middle of some alternate dimension, trying to contain the fallout of Harry's battle with someone that the doctor behind Harry's misery had moulded since birth to be a weapon… and now she was in some strange castle room. Some strange, cosy castle room.

She caught the tail end of a conversation. "Free?" she asked, puzzled.

"Hello, Jean," Harry said, looking up from one of the armchairs by the inviting fire. He sounded cheerful. "Jean, I'd like you to meet Madelyn Pryor, otherwise known as Maddie."

Jean looked where Harry indicated and saw someone else twisted in their chair. And she couldn't hold back a gasp. Because it was like looking in a mirror. There were stylistic differences, of course, in clothes (the other girl was wearing what looked like a functional bodysuit, though it kept flickering to a t-shirt and a pair of grey jeans) and in hair, makeup and the strange, yet rather striking tattoos on her cheekbones, but in their basics… the hair was the same colour, the near unique emerald eyes the same shade, the height the same, the build the same, the everything, exactly the same.

"Who are you?" both girls asked, at the exact same moment.

"That," Harry said, standing up. "Is exactly what I'm trying to figure out. You're both as strong as each other, you've got identical power-sets, identical everything really, but for fashion sense… you even sound the same. Mostly. The accent is a little different. Maddie sounds more like me." He coughed, a little embarrassed. "And. Um. I think I have a reasonably good idea what's happened."

"What?" Jean asked.

"Well," Harry said. "I'm no scientist, but…" He paused, then turned to Maddie. "You would know, actually, Maddie," he said. "Can your Doctor Essex clone people? Create copies of them?"

Jean decided not to mention that Doctor Essex was decidedly past tense, since he'd been melted.

Maddie hesitated, then chewed her lip. It made her look much more human. "I think so," she said slowly. "Though I do not know for certain."

Jean suddenly got Harry's implication. "You mean…"

"I think so," Harry said quietly. "Like I said, I'm no scientist, but it fits."

Maddie looked puzzled. "What?"

Jean simply shook her head, in concert with her knees, which seemed on the point of failing her. Harry, bless him, was up and at her side in a moment, helping her into a chair.

"We think that you might be a clone of Jean," Harry said quietly. "A copy. You said that Doctor Essex created you… well, this is who he must have created you from."

Maddie looked troubled, then frowned. "Impossible," she said.

"Why?" Harry asked, eyebrow raised.

Maddie ignored him. "How old are you?" she bluntly asked Jean.

"Seventeen years old," Jean said, puzzled.

Maddie frowned. "So am I," she said.

"Time passes faster here," Harry pointed out.

Maddie waved this away. "I am not often here," she said. "I am usually with Doctor Essex, elsewhere, in the world, or where time moves similarly."

There was a puzzled silence. "Well," Harry said. "This is confusing." He shook his head. "Either way, that doesn't matter. Whoever you are, wherever you came from, in my book, you're one of us. You're family. Please, let us help you. You don't have to do what Doctor Essex says, even if you were made to do it. I know you think for yourself, I know that a part of you wants a life of your own, we can help you get it. It doesn't matter what you were made for. What matters, all that matters, is that you are alive, you can choose. All that matters is what you choose to do."

Then, before they could say anything more, the common room construct fractured around them, sending them whirling back to reality.

OoOoO

Harry barely caught himself in mid-air, and as he did, realised that he was no longer under psychic assault. Indeed, everything seemed to have calmed down. In his hand was the warm, almost hot, phoenix feather. Opposite him was Maddie, no longer glowing, and looking deeply troubled. Jean was equidistant from the two them. And a little away from her were Loki and Wanda, the former of whom was watching Maddie very carefully, while the latter, looking tired, battered and dirty, but no less wonderful a sight for all that, immediately wrapped Harry in an incredibly tight hug. Harry relaxed into it, hugging back as he felt tears on his godmother's cheek.

"I'm fine," he said, answering the unasked question. "I'm fine. It's all fine."

But it wasn't.

Because below, there was a sudden sense of building power around the Red Room base, and Harry instinctively knew what was going to happen, and saw Maddie's conflicted expression.

"Stay," he said. "Please. I'm begging you, please."

Maddie chewed her lip again, but then, the power spiked and her mind was made up. Twisting in mid-air, ignoring Jean's pleas and Loki's attempt to entrap her by magic, she shot down towards the base like an arrow.

"Oh no you don't," Harry muttered, and not for the first time, prepared to do something incredibly noble and very, very stupid.

"Harry?" Wanda asked, then her eyes widened as he gave her an apologetic smile and kiss on the cheek.

"Sorry. Got to go fulfil a prophecy. And save a girl. Bit of both."

"Harry, no, don't – "

"But before she could stop him, Harry wriggled like an eel, slipping free and shooting off after Maddie.

Loki tried to catch him, too, and Jean, but not for nothing was Harry known as the youngest seeker in a century, and he easily evaded his uncle's attempts, watching as a dome grew up around a large part of the base, pouring the last of his power into catching up. Maddie flew in just in time, and, right on her tail, Harry followed her, tackling to the ground.

Something flew in afterwards, the wind-stream grazing his legs, but he barely noticed it, as he and Maddie crashed into the ground, only instinctive telekinetic defences saving them from a messy and embarrassing end.

As it was, though, Harry was completely drained and, in the midst of the courtyard of the remains of the Red Room base as it arrived in a mysterious new location, on an island of some kind, he managed to half-smile up at the astonished Maddie.

"I'm not giving up on you yet," he said. As darkness descended, he thought at her, Just remember: whatever they made you to do, you don't have to do it. You want something else? You can choose it. And you won't have to do it alone, either.

And then, he embraced oblivion.

OoOoO

Loki, Jean and Wanda were not the only ones to see Harry dive through after Maddie, back into the Red Room, following them to wherever they were going next. Just as they were about to disappear, Thor, quick thinking, hurled Mjolnir after him. It followed the two into the shrinking gap, and vanished along with the rest of the base.

"Whatever you have done, my son," he said quietly. "And whyever you have done it…" His lips quirked in a sad smile. "Though I think I have a good idea why. Wherever you go, a part of me is with you. And so, I will find you."

Chapter Text

The mood back at Avengers Mansion was grim, to say the least. While it had seemed as if they had been about to pull off a clean-sweep, rescuing Harry and Carol and half a dozen other prisoners, as well as Natasha's mole, Harry had demonstrated his customary talent for throwing a spanner in the works by chasing after Jean's doppelganger.

Speaking of said doppelganger, there was a good deal of confusion surrounding her, with Carol, Jean, the Red Room prisoners and Gambit all (entirely logically) believing that she was a clone – or at least, in the latter case, assuming that after they saw Jean. However, the truth was far worse.

Madelyn 'Maddie' Pryor had, in fact, been born Rachel Grey. She was Jean's twin sister, and had been stolen the night she was born, replaced with a dead infant by the creature known variously as Essex, Milbury, and Sinister, before a life of brainwashing had transformed her into Sinister's ultimate weapon, his hunting hound and dog-of-war. Jean had narrowly escaped the same fate thanks only to the intervention of Doctor Strange, who had nevertheless failed to save Rachel and prevent her becoming Maddie.

Jean had already been reeling from Harry's first capture, the psychic backlash of Harry and her twin's duel, meeting said twin, then Harry's second capture, diving right back into the Red Room's custody. The failure of her immediate attempts to follow him as she had before had dealt another blow. Now, she was in numb shock, tears streaming down her face as she stared into the middle distance, not responding to any attempt to comfort her.

Carol had come to relatively quickly, and on being informed of what had happened, immediately demanded that they go back and find Harry. When she was told that they were effectively back to square one thanks to the Red Room's escape, she had descended into furious, frustrated tears, loudly castigating Harry's stupidity. The fact that her much loved uncle was still unconscious and critically injured, broken bones having been the least of his problems following his not quite being fast enough to dodge a swipe from the Beast, had not helped. She was also being comforted by her grandmother, who was treating the situation with a kind of grim familiarity.

Gambit was being watched carefully by Clint and Natasha, though he didn't seem to have any thoughts of escape. Indeed, as soon as he had awoken from sedative aided unconsciousness, his first response – after immediate fear that he might be back in the Red Room's hands and foul swearing in response to his rather nasty injury – was to inquire of Maddie's whereabouts. When he'd been told she hadn't come through, he'd slumped in a kind of despair.

The ex-Red Room prisoners didn't much of a stake in what happened to Harry or Maddie – one they hardly knew, and while they were deeply grateful for his part in their escape, and concerned about what had happened to him, he was not exactly their top priority. The other, no matter how tragic her circumstances had been, had aligned herself with the bad guys. She was even suspected to have played a part in bringing them in.

As a result, they were mostly relieved on their own behalf, semi-delirious and disbelieving of the fact that they were free, as well as worried about their own: Noriko and Lorna were barely conscious and somewhat scorched, Nezhno was nursing a nasty eye injury and some considerable damage to his torso from the Beast's fists, while Jono, spine and neck snapped by the same, his internal fires extinguished, quickly put on life-support, seemed to be in a liminal state where it was unclear whether he was alive or dead. Kurt was the only one who'd emerged relatively unscathed, meaning that he was the only one really in a state to worry about others, which he did. For the most part, they wanted to contact their families, and with JARVIS' aid, did so, as well as being offered accommodation at Avengers Mansion or the Xavier Institute for the time being.

The Avengers and Wanda, meanwhile, were in a state of stunned disbelief. They'd had Harry literally in their grasp, and then, in the blink of an eye, he'd gone. Logically, it wasn't exactly surprising that he'd chosen to go after Maddie, since logic rarely featured in Harry's thought process when he made such decisions.

Slowly, though, they started to piece together why, and came to two conclusions. First, Harry honestly believed that he could turn Maddie, and was gambling everything on that. Second, he also believed that she was part of the second prophecy, with her most likely being the hound in chains, something the Avengers had previously theorised themselves.

And while Loki and Wanda had, as soon as they got back, set up a tracking spell based on Mjolnir's connection to Thor, and started calling in favours owed all across the Spirit World, they didn't anticipate much immediate success. The Nevernever was in uproar: while the transformative effects of Harry and Maddie's battle had been confined to the local area, a contested portion of Wyldfae territory not strictly under the suzerainty of either Summer or Winter, it had sent disruptive shockwaves throughout the nearer regions of the Nevernever, which had been on edge to begin with, following the events of the Battle of London and 'Red Sky Day'. And as the Courts were wont to do, they were inclined to blame each other.

Furthermore, any spell tracing the thaumaturgic connection between Thor and Mjolnir, while it successfully circumvented whatever measures Sinister had in place to deflect magical tracking, had to contend with the fact that, by all early indications, the Red Room base had been warped into the deeper reaches of the Nevernever, beyond the borders of Faerie, into the sort of realms where up was down, time condensed into crystals, and the formless took form.

While it was generally suspected that the Red Room – or at least, Sinister – wouldn't pick somewhere too tenuous, it was also suspected that the instability of the realms surrounding it meant that the spells would have to be tweaked time and time again. And that wasn't even getting into the temporal distortions. Furthermore, that same instability meant that even if some knowledge could be gleaned from the remaining chunk of the Red Room base (which, as it happened, mostly consisted of rubble or strangely transmogrified molecules, having borne the brunt of the side-effects of Harry and Maddie's battle), perhaps a list of locations of other bases within the Nevernever, if indeed they existed.

Nevertheless, they persisted. Thor returned to Asgard to speak with Heimdall and his parents. Loki went to pump some of his contacts, both mystical and mundane, for information on the Red Room, while Natasha cross-examined Ivan and her own contacts on the same, and Coulson prepared to speak to Gambit. Wanda went to do the same on the mystical side of things, after retrieving her apprentice, even mentioning turning to John Constantine for help. Clint kept an eye on Bucky at the latter's request while he centred himself again, emerging from the Soldier persona, which he'd dived into twice in less than twelve hours. Tony set his robots to repairing the Mansion and with JARVIS, frantically combed the internet for traces of the Red Room and whatever they might be up to, or wherever they might be. Bruce, devastated though he was, applied himself to medical care of the injured.

And Steve, who saw this as a personal failure on his part, made preparations to demand answers from the Russian President. Up close and personal.

Jean, meanwhile, roused herself to call Professor Xavier, who had managed to insulate himself from the worst of the backlash, having prepared defences against that sort of thing after being caught off-guard by Gravemoss' dark magic the previous year. Within minutes, he had started up Cerebro, and was sweeping the world for any information that could help.

In other words, the mood was, among those not lost in despair, determined. But it was most certainly not optimistic.

OoOoO

Elsewhere, the mood was more… confused.

Maddie, meanwhile, had watched Harry lapse into unconsciousness, confused beyond words. Why had he followed her? Why had he rendered himself vulnerable to people he knew meant him harm? Did he think she would protect him? But why would he need protection in the first place? He'd been free of the Red Room, away from Doctor Essex, both of whom were fleeing, and under the protection of people even more powerful than she was, from whom the Red Room and Doctor Essex were fleeing in the first place. No, protection wasn't his driving motivation.

She thought back to what he'd said and frowned, trying to piece it together. As she did, she vaguely registered a lot of excited voices speaking in Russian, and half a dozen armoured Red Room Agents closed in on Harry with ill-intent. Before Maddie knew what she was doing, she'd struck out, sending all six of them flying, four into crumbling buildings, and at least two into the strange seas of the island around them, with waters flaring like rainbow opals. The chatter got more excited as she stood up and placed herself so that she was standing over him. "You will leave him," she said in Russian. "He will be assessed by Doctor Essex."

Some of them looked dubious, but a mixture of Doctor Essex's name and her expression made them think twice. In due course, Doctor Essex emerged, with the commander of the Red Room, General Lukin. Both of them stared in some surprise at the unconscious Harry, a noteworthy event – General Lukin was generally adept at hiding his feelings and Doctor Essex rarely showed any sign of surprise, or any emotion at all.

Then, Lukin chuckled. "I commend your programming, Doctor Essex," he said. "As you said, your hound returned, and she has brought the greatest of prizes with her."

Doctor Essex dropped down onto his haunches to inspect Harry, Maddie obediently moving out of the way to allow him to do so. "Yes," he said eventually. "She has." He didn't look away, but a couple of Red Room Agents snapped to and vanished into one of the less decrepit buildings, returning with a stretcher.

"I will do it," Maddie said, as they went to load Harry onto it. When Doctor Essex turned to her, eyebrow raised, she was momentarily lost for words. After a moment, however, she came up with a reason. "The superstructure of this base is damaged and rubble strewn throughout," she said. "Creatures stirred up may still infest it. Additionally, he is exhausted and recently injured. A simple shock to his body or a sharp impact could lead to further, perhaps severe, injury. My telekinesis would ensure physical stability, as well as a defence against any surprise attack. Furthermore, I now have a detailed understanding of his psychic defences. I can ensure that he remains unconscious in transit."

Doctor Essex regarded her for a long moment, then nodded. "A logical decision," he conceded. "Proceed."

Maddie nodded, carefully telekinetically lifting Harry onto the now hovering stretcher, being sure to support every part of him. And as she did, she wondered why she had spoken out. Normally, her duties would have run their course by this point, and she would either have been ordered to rest, to be physically assessed, or to take on some other task for Doctor Essex. What happened to a captive was not her concern. Yet this time, she had made it her concern. In this case, she did not want the Red Room laying their hands on him. And she didn't know why.

The trip with Doctor Essex and General Lukin to the special infirmary, one of Doctor Essex's labs, was relatively swift. Once they were there, Maddie placed Harry one of the examining tables, while Doctor Essex activated it and, on being satisfied that it was working, scanned Harry.

"Is he functional?" Lukin asked.

"There is no sign of brain damage," Doctor Essex said. "The physical damage is reasonably extensive, with broken bones being reset by telekinetic means, and the subject's inherent regenerative abilities mean that healing has already begun. No correction seems to be required. Exhaustion is also present, but that is a problem that will fade with time. Sufficiently hydrated and supplied with nutrients, he will heal on his own."

"Excellent," Lukin said.

"What do you plan for him?" Maddie asked suddenly.

Both men stared at her, Lukin startled, Essex considering.

"Nothing that need concern you," Lukin said curtly, after a long moment. "Your master is aware. You do not need to be."

Inwardly, a large part of Maddie conceded the truth of this. Her function was to act on Doctor Essex's commands. This was going beyond her remit, far beyond. However, a small but increasingly large and loud part of her was full of questions. It took her a moment to find a suitable reason for them, but it came quickly enough. "He is a psychic, and a superhuman in general, more powerful than any at your disposal save for myself. He is also a magical practitioner of considerable power and enough skill to be a threat. Additionally, he has sufficient hand to hand combat skill to defeat multiple highly trained opponents and tactical ingenuity to first manufacture an escape from the Beast's arena, before creating cover under which he successfully discerned the location of the other superhuman subjects and free them, before engaging me in psychic combat and despite his clearly deficient training in telepathic combat, draw out the fight for some time. Just now, he claimed that the entire purpose of the fight was to create sufficient psychic turbulence to allow the Avengers and their allies to discover this base's previous location, a claim supported by the fact that he very rarely directly attacked me, and only ever did so in the form of testing strikes, brief counter-attacks, and distractions. Given even the slightest chance, he can and will escape again. I am your only chance of preventing him from doing so. Logically speaking, it would be wise to inform me of your intentions regarding him."

Lukin's expression now warred between outrage, surprise, and grudging consideration of her fabricated but logically sound reasoning. Doctor Essex, meanwhile, was studying her carefully.

"He will be brought into the Red Room's service," Lukin said eventually.

"By what means?" Maddie asked, mind afire with questions. "Given my insight into his motives, and his demonstrated character, I doubt that he would serve willingly." Then it hit her. "You intend to break his will."

She didn't know why, but that seemed obscurely offensive to her. This was odd, even – especially – to her. After all, she had had no problem dominating the wills of others when required to. But that was only a temporary state of affairs, and only done for pragmatic reasons. Even so, once, it would not have bothered her. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it would not have occurred to her to be bothered by it. But now… her exposure to Remy, and this mysterious boy, who had echoed Remy's words on freedom, who had been so earnest in trying to convince her that something about her situation was wrong, that her purpose was not all there was in her life, meant that she was bothered.

He was misguided, of course (of course?), but even so: he had said that she was 'one of us', referring to himself and someone else who he regarded as important to him, a girl who looked just like her, had extended an offer of kinship and friendship based on hardly any acquaintance at all, and… he had been kind to her. It was not something she was used to, certainly not so randomly – even Remy had taken some time to get to know her before offering such open kindness. She wasn't entirely familiar with concepts of morality, of good and bad – they were not things that Doctor Essex dwelt on, as he considered them unnecessary to her purpose, and unnecessary in general – but as far as she could tell, Harry was a good person. His mind was also unique, one she felt was worth preserving.

"Surely there are other methods," she began.

"Enough."

It wasn't said in a particularly loud voice, but a lifetime of habitual obedience caused Maddie's mouth to snap shut at Doctor Essex's command.

"This is not your purpose," Doctor Essex said. "This is not what you were made for. You will cease."

That, however, only fired off more questions. For instance, who was that other girl who looked so like her, who had power just like hers, who Harry had originally thought that she was a clone of? With their appearances and powers, it was a reasonable conclusion, if an incorrect one. However, their similarities suggested that they shared genetic material, and further, that she shared genetic material with Harry, who had eyes of an identical shade to hers and the others, Jean's. If this was not part of her purpose, if this was not part of what she was made for, why was she capable of it in the first place? And why wasn't it part of her purpose? Why was she not allowed to think?

"Essex," Lukin said slowly, doubtless reading her body language, which Maddie had to admit was likely defensive.

Doctor Essex merely raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you really think that I would allow so powerful a subordinate to roam free?" he asked. His tone was calm, mild and seemed to be one of genuine inquiry. It was also unclear as to whether his words were directed at Maddie, Lukin, or both. Then, he ended doubt by focusing on Maddie. "You are my Hound and you will come to heel. Cease this line of thought."

Maddie frowned.

Doctor Essex sighed, impatient. "I see that work will have to be done," he said, then cleared his throat and began to recite. "'Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act… falls the Shadow.'"

With the last word, Maddie stiffened, then relaxed. Her eyes were now glazed and empty.

"She can hear you," Essex said clinically, responding to a question from the now relaxing Lukin, in words that Maddie was only distantly aware of. "And respond on reflex to stimuli such as her name. But she cannot act. She is on my leash once more." He cleared his throat. "Sleep."

And Maddie knew nothing more.

OoOoO

Carol, meanwhile, had not grown any less frustrated and angry, though her tears had mostly dried up, with even the arrival of her mother, who gathered her into a desperately tight hug, only eliciting a few more sobs. Mother and daughter stayed that way for a long time turned out to be rather more on the ball than Carol had previously given her credit for.

Specifically, when Carol was about to broach the subject of why she'd been kidnapped, her response was, "I know."

"You know?" Carol asked, startled.

"About why you were taken. About your powers."

"What powers?" Carol asked, on reflex.

"The ones that crushed a door knob, broke your chair and split your school bag," her mother said dryly. "I wasn't expecting you to start glowing green and fly, but I figure that when you're raising a super soldier, puberty's going to throw a curveball or two."

"Oh," Carol said, and coughed. "Those powers. Look, mom -"

"I know where they come from, too," Mrs Danvers said. "Except for the green ones."

"Those were me using the Green Lantern Ring. It's like Thor's hammer but, you know, a ring. It was a temporary deal. And how did you figure that was me?" Carol asked. "Since when did you know about the super soldier thing?"

"You're my daughter," Mrs Danvers said simply. "I'd know you anywhere." As Carol stared at her, stunned, she continued. "As for the super soldier powers, I've known for a long time. Mom liked to tell stories to me and Jack when we were growing up, same way she did to you, and I could read between the lines. Even if I couldn't have done, I once saw her change our car's tyre without a jack. After that, it wasn't too hard to figure out. The fact she doesn't age just confirmed it."

"You knew?" Carol demanded. "And you never said?"

"What good would it have done?" Mrs Danvers replied. "The serum gave mom powers, but it didn't do much in me and Jack. We were faster, stronger and tougher than most, but that was about it. I thought that the serum degraded by generation and that it wouldn't do much, if anything, to you." She sighed. "Then Captain America, my long lost grandfather, reappeared after seven decades frozen in an iceberg and whatever happened to you last Easter in the Rockies proved me wrong. But even then… I hoped I could keep you away from it all, hide you in plain sight. Now, I see that I never had a chance."

"Why?" Carol asked, frowning.

"Mom told us stories about what she did, about her battles with the Red Room – and yes, I know who they are. Mom was never exactly explicit, but I could read between the lines. And Jack and I, we saw them differently," her mother explained. "Jack saw a whole new world of adventure and excitement, the chance to be a hero. It was like a real life Narnia to him. Me, though, I looked past the monster slaying to what they actually did to deserve slaying in the first place. And like Jack, I saw a whole different world. But the one I saw was one of pain, misery and powers so far above humanity that we might as well be ants, that would crush you if you crossed them, or organisations like HYDRA and the Red Room, machines of pure evil that were never truly defeated and ground up everything in their path. After all, hadn't my grandparents, Captain America and Peggy Carter, been killed in the line of duty? Cap was at that point presumed dead, as was Peggy Carter, even though no one ever found out what happened to her. Mom knows, I'm sure of that much, but she always refused to talk about it. Not only that, but I saw how often mom came home limping or carrying an injury. Jack didn't always, or if he did, he didn't think about it for long but I did. And dad…"

She closed her eyes. "He was a decent, kind and very normal man, who I'm not even sure knew exactly what mom did for a living when they got married. He did later on – I walked in on him patching her up when I was eight. He apparently died of a very normal disease when I was sixteen, cancer. But to this day, I'm not entirely convinced that the cancer was natural. I have no proof, other than how fast it took hold, how it resisted all attempts at treatment, how it wasted him away into nothing in the blink of an eye… and I wonder."

Carol silently supplied a box of tissues, which her mother took with a nod, wiping at her damp cheeks.

"Anyway, I saw the supernatural world and wanted no part of it. I knew about SHIELD back when almost no one did, and I knew that I wanted nothing to do with it, even the missions not involving the supernatural." She sighed. "Mom, of course, always assumed that Jack and I would follow in her footsteps, in Peggy Carter's, and become an Agent of SHIELD. For a long time, it was just taken for granted that I would join SHIELD, which let women see combat, especially if their surname or mother's maiden name was Carter, and Jack would either join SHIELD or the military. Medicine wasn't really discussed, but it was one of the few acceptable alternatives. When it came out that I wasn't even going to do that, the rows were awful. Mom was always driven – once she set out on something, she wouldn't stop until the end of the world. She once quoted something her mother had told her: Compromise where you can. Where you can't, don't. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say, 'No, you move'. She lived by that philosophy. Dad had used to be a tempering influence on her, but he was gone. And worse, this was something she'd never compromise over. You see…"

She trailed off, obviously looking for the words. "Mom always felt that we had a Duty, a duty to stand up and protect those who couldn't protect themselves, to fight evil wherever it could be found, to be the wall that protected ordinary people from the monsters in the darkness. It probably comes of being raised the way she was, growing up on stories of her father, and feeling that she had to live up to her mother's legend after she vanished. That would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that she practically insisted that it had to be through SHIELD or the military. Medicine was fighting to protect people through defeating disease, so that was okay, but it had to be fighting something. But fighting simply wasn't what I wanted to do. I didn't want to fight evil, I wanted to make good. I couldn't see what mom found wrong with that and after what happened to Jack during Desert Storm, I felt I was right. Not only that, but I felt that mom had lied to him about the world, had led him like a lamb to slaughter. That wasn't entirely fair on her or Jack, who was never stupid, even though he was even more hot-headed and stubborn back then than he is now, if you can believe it. But that's the way I felt."

She shook her head. "I was always a disappointment to her, though she never said it and never would." Her mouth twisted. "Though she's never made any secret of the fact that she hates your father. She tolerates him for my sake, and for the sake of you and your brothers, but nothing more. As for Jack, well, he'd probably have shot your father long ago if he thought he could make it look like an accident." She waved this away. "Mom loves me, I know, loves me to pieces. But she doesn't understand me and never has. She expected me to carry on the Carter legacy, the Rogers legacy, and use my gifts like she and her parents had, and to be an example to women everywhere. In other words, to do my duty and be a symbol. But I didn't want to be a symbol, or even an adventurer. As boring, selfish and cowardly as it might sound, I just wanted a life of my own. I just wanted to be an ordinary person. And she couldn't understand that, not deep down. She'd been raised by a living legend in the very midst of the super spy world with her parentage an impossibly important secret, raised from the start to be a hero, to be an Agent of SHIELD. She never knew anything else. Then, you came along."

She smiled sadly at Carol, reaching over to brush her hair out of her eyes. "Oh Carol," she said. "You were the daughter that mom always wanted. Right from the start, you were always the leader, always ready to fight anyone and stand up for what you thought was right. My scrappy little warrior maiden; you were everything that my mother had hoped I would be."

"So you resented me," Carol said bitterly. "Yeah, I can see that."

"No."

Carol had run across a great many things in her young life and had faced them down without blinking, but the vehemence of that one word nearly knocked her out of her chair.

"No," her mother repeatedly, voice soft but fierce. "I have never resented you. I have loved you from the moment you were born, so much that I thought my heart would burst. You were, are and have always been my brave, beautiful and brilliant little girl and I will always love you. I would tear the world apart for you." She shook her head. "I didn't resent you, Carol. I was afraid for you. I was afraid that you would be drawn into SHIELD's, mom's world, a world of monsters and death, the way you have been. You idolised mom, and your cousin Sharon, herself a top notch SHIELD Agent, and why wouldn't you? They were brave, adventurous and inspirational women, and mom of course had all sorts of amazing stories to tell. They were everything you wanted to be. You and your father found that you had a similar mutual lack of understanding that mom and I do, so you decided that you hated him and latched onto Jack as a father figure instead."

She gave Carol a wry smile. "It probably didn't hurt that he let you do just about anything your father said you couldn't out of spite. I love my brother, but he can be very childish sometimes. And he had stories too, half of which I am convinced he made up." The smile faded. "I was afraid that you would be drawn into that world, so I tried to limit contact with mom and Jack – which wasn't entirely difficult, since mom was still working at SHIELD, mentoring a young up and comer called Nick Fury, when you were little and Jack was travelling all over with the Air Force – and sometimes I didn't step in when I should have done, when your father tried to make you into the proper young lady he wanted his daughter to be. I half hoped that he would succeed or, at least, that you would choose to follow my path, or any path but the one that's brought our family so much pain. I'm sorry about that, for all the good that does, I really and truly am. All I can say is that I was afraid, afraid of what you might walk into."

"'You were afraid of what I might walk into', but you're sorry?" Carol said. "You think that that makes it all better?"

"Probably not," her mother said bluntly. "But I'd have locked you away in a nunnery if I thought it would protect you." When Carol opened her mouth, her mother raised a hand. "Did Jack ever tell you what happened to him in Iraq, during Desert Storm?"

Carol closed her mouth, frowned, then shook her head. "He never really wanted to talk about it," she said.

Her mother sighed. "I can't blame him," she said. "He was on a mission behind enemy lines. What he was doing I don't know, but like you were, he was captured. He was one of the few of his team to survive. After that, he was tortured, for weeks. Mom led the rescue op, her last in the field, and got him out… but it left a mark on him. Physically, he healed up fine, though it took months, years. But mentally, he was never quite the same."

Carol, through her horror, noticed that her mother was crying and half thrust out the box of tissues before, on an impulse, hugging her.

"I saw what mom went through, after she got Jack out of there, the look on her face… it was like part of her had died," her mother said eventually. "I can well believe it. And once you were showing signs of turning out like your cousin and uncle, like mom, I started having nightmares about you being the one in that hospital bed, all blood and bandages and… and broken. I'd rather anything than that. I did everything I could to discourage you - everything I could stomach, anyway. It didn't work of course. That much was obvious, even before you met your friend, Harry." She shook her head ruefully. "I closed off every route I could to SHIELD's world, mom's world, and then a whole new way into it waltzed into your life: a brave, handsome and dashing young man who was right in the heart of that world, loved and respected you for all of who and what you were."

"Loved?" Carol asked, startled.

Her mother chuckled sadly. "Honey, he's devoted to you," she said. " And not like those other boys who've chased you in the past, either. I've seen how he looks at you, and how you look at him."

"I'm not in love with him," Carol snapped.

"I never said you were," her mother said calmly, and at her daughter's puzzled expression, elaborated. "I said you loved him. Not that you were in love with him. There are many kinds of love, after all. You love him, very much I think." She smiled sadly and, pulling out a tissue, gently wiped away some of her daughter's dried tears. "You'd hardly be getting so worked up over him if you didn't." Carol wrinkled her nose, but didn't say anything. "As a friend, maybe," her mother added. "But it's still love, even if you don't want to take him to bed."

Carol went scarlet, letting out a non-verbal squawk.

"Or maybe you do," her mother said, with a cheerful wickedness that made it very clear that she was the older sister of Jack O'Neill. "His father is quite a looker, after all, and he does seem to be growing into a rather handsome young man."

"Mom!" Carol squeaked, then glowered as her mother chuckled.

"I have to get my amusements somehow," Mrs Danvers said. "And your face…" She trailed off, and smiled.

Slowly, reluctantly, Carol's glower dissolve into a tentative smile, which faded. "How can I smile right now?" she asked. "Harry's still with those Red Room psychos."

"If there's one thing I've learned, it's that smiles matter more when things are bad than when things are good," her mother said. "As for him, from what I've been told, he went with them willingly this time. Which suggests to me that he has a plan – that boy does not strike me as a fool. A bit reckless, maybe, but not a fool. From what I hear, he's a born survivor. And you'd know better than I how powerful he is."

"If you'd ever heard one of his plans, you'd know how totally not reassuring that is," Carol grumbled.

"Maybe," Mrs Danvers said. "But I do know that the Avengers and just about every other mover and shaker in this world and several others are looking for him, and one of them is famously known as the Star-Spangled Man With A Plan. Considering how quickly they found the lot of you earlier, I think that they'll find your young man sooner rather than later."

"Yeah," Carol mumbled. "But what'll happen to him before they do?" She looked up at her mother. "I mean, what happened to uncle Jack –"

"Will almost certainly not happen to him," Mrs Danvers said firmly. "And I should not have told you that story. Regardless, they went to a great deal of trouble to get hold of him, and you. He's valuable to them, so they won't damage him any more than they have to."

"Yeah," Carol said. "But mom, they've got a psychic even stronger than he is, and the big bad can screw with his mind anyway. What if what they do to him instead will be worse?"

Her mother, who'd been trying to steer her away from this line of thought, took her by the shoulders. "Carol," she said. "Look at me." Reluctantly, her daughter did so. "Don't think like that. Trust me, it will destroy you, and it won't do him the slightest bit of good."

Carol bit her lip. "Then what do you suggest I do?" she asked. "I mean, you've been in this situation before."

"Find some way to distract yourself," her mother said. "Don't forget about the person who's missing, but don't let your fears and pain eat you up, because they will if you give them the chance. And be ready to support them when they come out the other side."

Carol nodded. "And what about after?" she asked eventually. "You going to tell me to stay away from Harry?"

"That would be cruel to both of you. And even if I did, would you listen?" her mother replied bluntly. "No, of course you wouldn't. The two of you are like peas in a pod. And even if I did manage to separate the two of you, I've come to a realisation, one that I'd hoped to avoid. Adventure, finding bad guys to fight, people to help and, frankly, trouble in general, is in your blood. Even if you don't go looking for trouble, it finds you, and it was always going to. You're a hero, Carol. It's who you are. All trying to stop you, to make you be something else, would do is make you hate me. And I couldn't stand that." She smiled sadly, and pulled Carol into a hug. "Besides. I have raised a brave and righteous young woman, whose first concern after going through hell and getting struck by lightning is for others. The least I can do is be proud of her."

Carol sniffed, tears returned. "Y'know," she said. "Technically that wasn't a lightning bolt."

"Well, I, for one, am inclined to overlook the minor details," her mother said. "And for now, I'm just glad that you're safe here with me."

And a large part of Carol had to admit that she felt much the same way.

OoOoO

Carol, however, was left with the feeling that she should have done something. However, before she went to speak to anyone about that, something else struck her. Specifically, about Lorna. Whose powers were very similar to those of Magneto a.k.a. Wanda's Incredibly Scary Yet Polite Dad. And if there was one thing she'd picked up over the last year of her exposure to Harry, was that coincidence was kind of non-existent when superpowers were involved.

So, when Wanda was on a break from her tweaking her tracking spell, something on which she was consulting with Loki and her boyfriend/apprentice, Harry Dresden, who apparently happened to be something of an expert on the matter – according to her grandma, SHIELD rated him as one of the top magical trackers on the planet – she went to have a chat.

"Hey," she said, not entirely sure how one should address one's best friend's godmother/stand-in mother who'd just had to deal with said best friend/godson being kidnapped, then, when they'd got them back, literally slipping through their fingers. It didn't help that she didn't exactly know Wanda all that well. Their prior contacts boiled down to one time over Easter when they were agreeing that Clint's arms were indeed amazing, a brief meeting during the Battle of London, and a whole bunch of times when Harry, post his latest traumatic experience or just because he felt like it, was cuddled up to her. "Uh…"

Wanda looked up and gave her a weary, slightly strained smile. "Hi, Carol," she said. "How are you holding up?" When Carol hesitated, her smile turned wry. "Sorry. That was a little too on the nose. I think I inherited my dad's sense of tact."

Carol thought back to her previous interaction with Magneto, which had mostly consisted of him remarking that she seemed a worthy heir to the previous Green Lantern, and that he knew how the ring worked because he'd come across it a lot, while fighting the previous Green Lantern. Since Carol had what she felt was a fairly good grasp on just how powerful the ring was, and thanks to her chat with/tutorial from Alan Scott's ghost, a good idea of just how good he'd been with it, this little remark – with the implication that he'd gone multiple rounds with Alan Scott several times before and come out honours even – to be even more spectacularly scary than his turning HYDRA's super helicarrier into indestructible tinfoil. "I can see that," she said, drawing a chuckle from Wanda.

"Quite," the older woman said dryly, though there was a shadow in her expression. Carol supposed that having one's beloved godchild kidnapped by the Red Room, then diving back in out of crazy-ass chivalry, would have that effect. "I suppose I got my parenting skills from him too. I mean, I ran from him, and now my godson seems to prefer to dive back into the Red Room to stay with me…"

"Whoa, hey, Harry thinks the world of you," Carol said, startled and indignant.

Wanda sighed. "I know," she said. "And I know why he dived back into the Red Room." She shook her head. "Don't mind me, I'm just a little, a lot, frustrated. Tired too, in truth. Trying to get that spell to track Harry to keep tracking him is like… oh, I don't know, some ludicrously complex and frustrating thing that keeps changing. And…" She closed her eyes and trailed off.

"Yeah," Carol said quietly. "I've been thinking about that too. Mom suggested that I try and think of something else. And I did. Um."

Wanda cracked open an eye and raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Well… you know the other kids who were in with me? The other prisoners?"

"Yes," Wanda said, in a leading tone that wondered where this was going.

"You remember the one with green hair? Lorna?"

Wanda frowned. "Very vaguely," she said.

"Well, she's got powers. Magnetic powers," Carol said awkwardly. "Kind of like your dad's, actually. And your dad, is, well, I'm guessing he's older than he looks, and he's kind of handsome in an older guy sort of way, and I think, just think, that maybe I can see a little bit of him in her. So to speak." She coughed. "So, um, do you think your dad was in Australia about sixteen years ago?"

Wanda's other eye opened wide and she stared at the ceiling. "No," she said flatly. "No, this cannot be happening. This cannot be happening again."

"Uh… so it's possible?"

"Since I have a half brother who's about sixteen now, I'd say yes," Wanda said, voice muffled as she put her head in her hands. "Clearly father spent quite some time celebrating his newly regained youth."

"Regained youth? Also, ew."

Wanda sighed. "There was an incident, most of twenty years ago, where my father and some of his old frenemies, Professor Xavier among them, wound up being rejuvenated," she said. "A living island was involved. Don't ask." She sighed again and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Another half-sibling young enough to be my kid. By the hoary hosts of fucking hoggoth, I do not need this right now."

"Well, it's not guaranteed…" Carol said. "I mean, I'm just guessing. Same powers doesn't mean that they're related… does it?"

"Not necessarily," Wanda sighed, standing up. "My half-brother, Pietro, who I sincerely hope you never meet because he is a complete brat, has super speed."

"Like Jean-Paul?"

Wanda snorted. "He wishes. He's not half as fast," she said. "I'd be surprised if he could break the sound barrier yet." She grimaced. "That said, specific mutations do tend to run in families. Look at Harry – he's got psychic abilities, and so do at least three of his cousins."

Carol frowned. "Three? I mean, there's Jean, her possibly evil twin, and…"

"Tyler," Wanda said. "Another foul little brat, from what I hear. Not one of Jean's siblings, as far as I can gather, but a relative." She waved a hand. "He was a fellow student at the Xavier Institute, then either dropped out or was kicked out. Since Charles doesn't give up on people lightly, I'd guess the former." She shrugged at Carol's expression. "I hear things. Apparently he was a psychic too."

"What about that other cousin of Harry's?" Carol asked.

"Which one?"

"The fat one."

Wanda blinked. "Dudley? Dudley Dursley? I wasn't aware that he had any powers. What does he have to do with anything?"

"Well, he does," Carol said. "And he was huge, mean, and working as muscle for the Red Room and/or that Sinister creep."

Wanda stared at her, then threw back her head and actually cackled. It went on for some time. "Sorry," she said, at Carol's affronted and disturbed expression. "It's just that his parents, Lily's sister and her brother-in-law, were always so adamant about how they were completely and utterly normal. The irony is delicious." Her expression changed. "Except that it resulted in a monster, of course. You had a run in with him?"

"You could say that," Carol said. "He was the one who…" She trailed off.

"Carol?" Wanda asked, tone suddenly gentle and concerned as she looked over the younger girl with a worried and worryingly practised eye. "Did he do something to you?"

"What? No, unless you count trying to kill me," Carol said, then remembered his expression and shuddered. "Though I don't think he'd have objected to the idea."

Wanda laid a hand on her shoulder. "Well, he can't do anything to you now," she said gently. "He was the one who attacked your group, then?"

Carol nodded. "I zapped him with some lightning Noriko and Lorna channelled into my shield," she said, then, at an arched eyebrow, added, "I figured that since it's made of the same stuff as Mjolnir, it might do some of the same things." She shrugged. "It probably didn't do much."

Wanda smiled a crooked smile. "Miss Danvers, I like your style," she said. "And according to James, it stunned your attacker – he didn't exactly say who it was. After that, the boy made the mistake of challenging him, and found himself buried halfway into the mountain in short order."

"James? Oh, Harry's dad's old name," Carol said.

Wanda nodded. "I still sometimes refer to him as James," she said. "Old habits." She shook her head. "In any case, we have digressed. Where was I? Oh yes. The strength could simply be a product of Sinister's experiments, or some exotic application of telekinesis. Magic can be used to enhance strength, though it's a risky endeavour at the best of times. Of course, we don't know for sure, while we can find out very quickly if this poor girl is, in fact, my newest half-sibling. Which she probably is, since coincidence is not something that exists in my life."

"I think I'm beginning to understand that feeling," Carol remarked, then yelped as Wanda took her firmly by the hand, stepped forward, and then the very next moment, they were in the lobby of the Xavier Institute. "You can teleport?" she managed, in a strangled voice.

"Of course," Wanda said. "Every wanded wizard can – it's like getting a driving license for non-magical people."

"But you're wandless," Carol pointed out.

"There's a certain crossover," Wanda said. "In theory, just about anyone can learn to use both, though putting that into practise…" She smiled wryly. "Let's just say that I'm the best in my generation, I was trained by the Sorcerer Supreme, and it took me years to get the hang of it. And practically speaking, only a few people are inclined towards even some aspect of the wandless art, if they're wanded, or wanded art if they're wandless. You need to know how to teach it, and you need to know how to learn it."

"That sounds… ludicrously complicated," Carol said.

"Really? That was the simplified version," Wanda said. "The full explanation involves Quantum Physics, high end theoretical psychology, complex magical theory, debates over nature versus nurture, and possibly a little bit of genetics. That last part is still up for debate."

"… Good to know," Carol said.

Wanda smiled faintly. "There are ways of simplifying it," she said. "A couple of my friends actually managed to figure out to train yourself to be magically ambidextrous, for want of a better description. The best of both worlds, though they did end up splitting the difference on some of the downsides."

"Cool," Carol said, blinking. "Are they teaching, or something?"

Wanda's mouth tightened. "They were killed," she said curtly. "Fighting Voldemort."

"Oh. Oh, god, I'm sorry," Carol said.

Wanda gave her a brief smile. "It's okay," she said. "You weren't to know, and it was many years ago. Their daughter has apparently mastered the art, at a remarkably young age too. Apparently young Zatanna's quite the prodigy."

Carol eyed her. "Don't take this the wrong way, but are you trying to distract yourself?" she asked.

Wanda grimaced. "Busted," she said. "Yes, yes I am." She sighed. "For me, family is complicated. I spent my early childhood with my mother's family in Romania, which was nice, though mostly meant I was surrounded by lots of distant cousins. Then my powers came in when I was 12, and I ran away, afraid I'd hurt someone." Her expression shadowed. "And I did. My father found me then. It was as if he'd been ready, he'd been forewarned. Either way, he beat everyone to me and…" She snorted. "He was like a guardian angel. An avenging angel. And he was my father. Half the supernatural world was after me and he took them all on. I loved him then. In between being terrified at my powers and being driven half-way insane by them as they twisted reality and my perception of reality like playdough, of the bad guys coming to get me, of the good guys wanting to execute me because I was a danger to the world, of course."

"Of course," Carol said.

Wanda smiled wryly. "Yeah," she said. "I've had a weird life. Anyway, Strange took me, helped me get control of my powers and told the Council that if they wanted me, they'd have to fight him for it. They didn't take up the offer. And I didn't see my father again for many years. When I did, he was a cold, calculating, murderous terrorist, halfway mad at the best of times. The only reason he wasn't far worse, a global terror, was because he didn't want to expose mutantkind before he was ready. And because a lot of power groups in the supernatural world didn't want to have modern day witch-hunts starting up, as they inevitably would if the would was was confronted with someone like my father on the rampage..."

"It was covered up."

"More or less. It helped that his worst days were pre-internet, and his powers tend to have a certain effect on electronic equipment if it's not specifically hardened," Wanda said. "Ah, Henry."

"Hello, Wanda," Hank said, stopping. "I would say that it is nice to see you, and it is, but given the circumstances…"

Wanda grimaced. "Yes," she said. "Henry, have you checked Lorna Dane out yet?"

"Beyond a basic physical to ensure that she is in good health, no," Hank said. "While someone who's had a severe electric shock would normally be top of my priorities list, Thor and Loki between them managed to do a rather good job with her and Miss Ashida and I am afraid that Mister Abidemi, Mister LeBeau, Mister Starsmore, and General O'Neill have been occupying my time." He turned to Carol. "Ah, Miss Danvers. A pleasure. Tell me, do you think that Ali, Alison rather, would consent to an attempt to activate the dormant super soldier serum within your uncle?"

"Wait, what? He's going to be okay, right?" Carol asked eyes wide with panic.

"He will be fine, under any circumstance," Hank said. "With magical assistance, I foresee no long term brain damage. His bones have been set, and the internal bleeding has been stopped. Nerve damage, however…" He sighed. "I hesitate to make an immediate prognosis, but the reason I ask because it could be the difference between his making a full recovery and severe permanent damage to his mobility, and possibly his independence."

Carol's eyes widened even further, and she simply stared at Hank.

"Honestly, Henry," Wanda said, folding her arms and frowning. "Did you really have to dump that on her? She's got more than enough to worry about at the moment."

Hank looked embarrassed. "Sorry," he said.

"I don't know," Carol said suddenly, a little distant. "She might. You'd have to ask her." She paused. "Also, Ali? She barely lets anyone call her that."

"I am one of the lucky few," Hank said. "Being that I have known your grandmother since she was hardly more than your age."

"Huh," Carol said, blinking. "Wow. She never said."

"If there is one thing I have learned about your grandmother over the many years of our acquaintance, Miss Danvers," Hank said. "It is that she has secrets to spare. Now, what brings you two here, and what does it have to do with Miss Dane?"

"Have you asked her about her powers yet?" Wanda asked.

"No, I haven't had the time. Why?"

"She's got my father's powers. Carol thinks that she might be my half-sister," Wanda said flatly.

"I'm not certain, but I think it's a pretty good bet," Carol put in.

"Oh my stars and garters," Hank said faintly.

"Quite," Wanda said.

"Well, she's upstairs," Hank said. "And Wanda?"

"Yes?"

"I know that you have many issues with your father," Hank said. "For which I cannot blame you. I've known Erik for many years, and I know how he can be, something which is bad enough when you're just his friend. I would also imagine that, not for the first time, finding out that you have a half sibling young enough to be your own child is not a pleasant surprise."

"What are you saying, Henry?" Wanda asked.

"Just… please be gentle with her," Hank said. "Her parentage, if it is what you suspect, isn't her fault, and as you well know, she has been through hell."

Wanda's expression softened. "Of course I will," she said. "Of course it isn't. And of course I know."

"That is all I can ask," Hank said. "She's upstairs, in the third room on the right."

Carol had been silent throughout this, and was silent as she followed Wanda upstairs. "So… you and your dad have issues," she said.

Wanda snorted. "You could say that," she said.

"I get that," Carol said. "I mean, my dad's not, you know…"

"A superpowered former terrorist with a possibly not so former messiah complex who was and could yet again be a threat to all life on Earth?" Wanda said.

"Right," Carol said. "But him and me, we don't get on either. We see the world in totally different ways, and want totally different things. He wants me to be something I'm not. I'm guessing that your dad did too."

"He did," Wanda sighed. "Though he came around eventually. Regaining his sanity helped in that regard."

"Yeah," Carol said. "Unfortunately, my dad's not crazy. Just, you know, a gigantic asshole."

Wanda laid a hand on the younger girl's shoulder in sympathy. "Family can be hard," she said. "Very hard. Because unfortunately, for the most part, you have no choice in who they are. And no matter how hard you try, you can't shake them off completely."

"Yeah," Carol said quietly.

"But," Wanda said. "That doesn't mean you have to let them define you. Your life is your own. Remember that."

"I will," Carol said.

"Good," Wanda said, then took a deep breath. "Right. Once more unto the breach." Then, she knocked on the door.

"Come in," a melodious female voice said.

Wanda opened the door, letting out the sound of sobbing and revealing two women. One Carol recognised as Lorna, the bright green hair unmistakeable. Her face was buried in the shoulder of the other, a tall, dark and elegant woman with white hair, was one she vaguely recognised as one of the Institute's senior faculty.

"Wanda," the woman – Ororo Munroe, that was her name, Carol remembered, though a lot of the students either called her Ms Monroe or by her codename, Storm. She sounded a little surprised. "And Miss Danvers."

"Ororo," Wanda said. "I wanted to speak to Miss Dane. But if this is a bad time…"

Ororo glanced down at Lorna. "Lorna tried to get into contact with her mother," she said. "As the others with her did with their parents. None of them claimed to remember them, or to know that they even had children. Lorna's mother even accused her of playing some sick joke. None of the local authorities, teachers, or friends that Lorna tried remembered her either."

"That telepath," Carol said, in dawning horror. "He fucked with their memories so no one would go looking, same way he fucked with Jean's mind, her mom and dad's too, to make them forget about Harry."

Ororo nodded, giving Carol's language a pass under the circumstances. "The Professor believes so," she said.

"Well, I don't think he'll be doing it again," Wanda said.

"Oh yeah?" Carol asked. "You know that how?"

Wanda gave her a look that, suddenly, made her look disturbingly like her father. Carol shivered.

"Okay, never mind."

Wanda's expression softened again. "Lorna," she said. "It is Lorna, isn't it?"

Lorna's sobbing, now diminishing into damp sniffles, looked up. Wanda gave her a kind smile. "Yeah," Lorna said, a little suspiciously, darting glances at Carol and Ororo. "Who're you?"

"My name is Wanda," Wanda said gently. "I know you've been through something horrible. In fact, I've actually got a pretty good idea of what you've gone through – I went through something very similar when I was a little younger than you are now, when my powers came through. My godson, Harry – you've met? Good. He's still with them and we're trying to find him again. So I know it's very hard, but I've got a couple of questions I'd like you to answer. Do you feel up to that?"

Lorna stared at her for a long moment, lime green eyes swimming with tears, but eventually she nodded.

Wanda smiled. "Great," she said. "I know that your mum can't remember you at the moment, and I swear, I will do everything I can to fix that, to make sure that everyone remembers you. But did she ever say anything about your father?"

Lorna frowned, then shook her head. "He," she began, then gulped. "She just said he was some bloke she knew ages ago. He wasn't an Aussie and he didn't stick around. He didn't even know that she was going to have me."

Ororo's gaze darted between Wanda and Carol, before her eyes widened.

"Okay," Wanda said, voice wobbling only slightly. "I know this might seem a little strange, but do you mind if I take a couple of your hairs?"

"Why?" Lorna asked, instantly suspicious.

Wanda hesitated, then closed her eyes. "I'm a mutant, like you," she said. "But I have other powers too. Magic. I think I have an idea about who your father might be. I could be completely wrong, but I can check."

"With a coupla hairs?" Lorna asked sceptically.

Wanda smiled. "Magic can do some pretty amazing stuff," she said, plucking a hair or two from her head. "May I?"

Lorna hesitated, then at Ororo and Carol's encouraging nods, let Wanda take a couple of hairs, which separated easily.

At Lorna's expression of surprise, Wanda smiled again. "I thought using a little magic would be less painful and more polite than yanking," she said dryly, drawing a damp chuckle from the younger woman. "Now, this will only take a few moments," she said, laying the hairs alongside one another, and murmuring something in a soft, liquid language. Almost instantly, the hairs glowed a pale blue, then brown and green hairs leapt over to each other, intertwining.

"Does that mean what I think it means?" Carol asked, after a moment, as Wanda stared, stunned at the hairs. "Wanda?"

The older woman didn't respond.

"Wanda," Ororo said.

Wanda shook her head, snapping out of it. "I…" she began, then took a deep, shuddering breath. "My guess was correct. I know who your father is, Lorna."

"What? How?" Lorna asked, confused.

"I suspected because you have his powers," Wanda said, voice carefully measured. "Now that I know to look, there's some resemblance in the face, too. I know because the way the spell responded. Your father, Lorna, is a man called Erik Lensherr. And he's my father too."

Lorna's eyes widened like saucers. "You're my sister?" she whispered, incredulous.

"Half-sister," Wanda corrected, then softened it with a wobbly smile and damp eyes. "Yes. Yes, Lorna, I am your sister."

Lorna stared at her for a long moment, then began crying in earnest, emotionally overwhelmed. Wanda, with the instincts of a mother, sat down beside her and pulled her into a hug, rocking her gently back and forth, murmuring comforting nonsense in her little sister's ear.

Family can be hard. But that doesn't mean they aren't worth it.

OoOoO

Carol, meanwhile, secure in the knowledge that she had done a Good Deed, something which marginally alleviated her monumentally fucking awful last day or two. Unfortunately, it didn't alleviate the crushing sense of failure and self-loathing she felt at not being able to save Harry, instead merely pushing it to one side. Now, distraction completed, it was back in full force.

Intellectually, she knew perfectly well that she had had no way in hell of stopping Harry from doing what he'd done; he'd been in Wanda's fucking arms, and Wanda was the next best thing to Thor or Loki power wise, if not on par with them. Considering how powerful Harry was, there wasn't any realistic way for most anyone short of Thor, much less her, to physically stop him from doing something he really wanted to do. Of course, she was aware that… well. He didn't exactly do what she said, but he did listen to her, more than he did to almost anyone else. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't have gone after Not Quite Evil Jean – real name Rachel, given name Maddie, apparently – if she'd asked him not to, if she'd begged, which was something she never did. But she would have done, she'd have done it a dozen times over to stop him from throwing himself back into the Red Room's clutches again, to be subjected to who knew what tortures.

She was acutely aware of how lucky she'd been to escape almost entirely unscathed from the Red Room, and even more aware that she'd only done so thanks to Harry's insane but effective plan to get the Avengers' attention. After all: look what they, or their very creepy (and apparently very dead, courtesy of Wanda) ally, had done to Maddie. Remembering the almost blank expression on her face, the way she'd been so cold, so calculating, not cruel, as such, just robotic and remorselessly logical, in contrast to Jean, who was all life and warmth and kindness, who'd immediately swept Harry under her big sisterly wing while her doppelganger, her twin sister, had done her level best to smoosh him into the dirt… it made her skin crawl. Just what the hell had they done to her? And what the hell would they do to Harry?

All of this brought her back to the nagging sense that it was her fault, that she could and should have stopped him.

Of course, others disagreed.

"Don't be stupid, darling," her grandmother said briskly. "You couldn't have stopped him, and even if you did manage to, he wouldn't have thanked you for it."

"What, so you think he wanted to be captured and tortured again?" Carol demanded.

"No," Alison said calmly. "What I think is that he considered it an acceptable price to pay to try and save his long lost cousin."

"That's… totally like something Harry would think," Carol said, deflating. "But…"

"You still think you should have saved him," a tired, raspy voice said from the bed next to them. They were in the Xavier Institute's worryingly extensive infirmary. Like everything else in the mansion, one even larger than Avengers' Mansion, it was clear that Professor Xavier had spared no expense. In the bed that Carol and Alison were standing next to was the badly injured, but stable, Jack O'Neill, who had taken about as well to enforced bed rest as crocodiles do to salsa. "Yeah, we've all been there, kid. Fact is, though, you can't save everyone. Not if they don't want to be saved."

"He –"

"The way you tell it, he dived back into the Red Room, knowing that they were about to vanish, to try and save someone else," O'Neill said. "He didn't want to be stopped. Or saved."

"But… you don't leave people behind," Carol said. "I shouldn't have left him behind."

"You were unconscious, darling, it wasn't like you had much of a say in it," Alison said gently.

Carol folded her arms, pretended her eyes weren't watering, and glared at nothing in particular.

"Not that it makes you feel any better," O'Neill remarked. "It's an absolute bastard to deal with, kid."

"Especially when the person you feel that you failed is someone you love," Alison said.

"I'm not," Carol instinctively began to snap, then stopped. Then, after a long moment, she said, in a small voice, "So what if I do love him, as a friend? Is that why it sucks so much?"

"Oh darling," Alison said, voice soft, compassionate and understanding. "Come here."

Carol reluctantly shuffled over and was promptly wrapped in a grandmotherly hug. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, there was a sniff, followed by a shake of the shoulders, then a strangled sob.

"Let it out, darling," Alison said. "Just let it out."

And Carol did. It was not elegant, graceful, or dignified. Pain rarely is. Instead, it was raw, messy, and prolonged, enough that the right shoulder of Alison's shirt was a damp mess and the seemingly inexhaustible supply of tissues that all mothers and grandmothers seem to have hidden on their person, possibly in a portal to subspace, was exhausted.

"I don't understand," Carol eventually said thickly.

"Why he did what he did?" Alison asked.

Carol rolled her eyes. "No," she said. "He's a fucking idiot who just has to save people. That's why he did it." She shook her head. "I don't understand why I keep crying, though."

"You spent most of a day in the hell otherwise known as the Red Room and your boyfriend's there right now," O'Neill said. "I'd say that's pretty good reason to cry."

"He's not my boyfriend," Carol said, glowering at her uncle.

"Tactless though he may be, your uncle Jack does have a point," Alison said gently. "You have every reason to cry. And contrary to what you may have come to believe, tears are not in any way, shape or form a sign of weakness. The only thing that they're a sign of is pain. And there's no shame in that." She smiled. "Besides. A good cry can be quite cathartic."

Carol wrinkled her nose, but didn't disagree.

"Oh yeah, especially with ice cream and a romantic comedy," O'Neill put in. "I just can't get enough of that."

Alison eyed him. "Hank is giving you far too much morphine," she said. "Or perhaps not enough, if you're capable of being that sarcastic." She smirked. "Besides, I remember a certain someone post-break up being utterly absorbed by the Princess Bride."

"I was watching it for the fight scenes and the jokes," O'Neill said mulishly.

His mother fondly patted his arm. "Of course you were, darling," she said, as Carol giggled.

As a wise man once said, happiness can be found in the darkest of times, so long as one remembers to turn on the light.

OoOoO

Not all, however, were so capable of finding the metaphorical light switch.

Thor felt helpless. For someone of his power, a greater god with the strength to wrestle the Hulk, the power to bathe entire worlds in lightning, and a peerless weapon that could comfortably shatter such worlds, it was not a feeling he was accustomed to, and not a welcome one either. And yet, this last year or so, it was a feeling that he found himself facing more and more. It was, he found, one of the unforeseen downsides of fatherhood, one often caused, in his case, by his offspring's bravery, nobility of spirit, and complete lack of common sense.

Jane sat with him, mostly in silence, knowing very well that platitudes would be of no help and having already contributed as best she could by discussing with Loki how to tweak her New Bifrost technology for use in finding and rescuing Harry, her de facto stepson, of whom she was very fond. She had then had to leave it to him, because actually doing so required in-depth knowledge of the Nevernever, intimate familiarity with the enchantments on Mjolnir, and high end thaumaturgical skill, none of which she possessed. Since she found this frustrating to put it mildly, she understood Thor's standpoint very well. Both of them had done all that they could, and for now, they were relegated to the sidelines.

What made it harder for Thor, however, was the certain knowledge that, in Harry's place, he would have done the exact same thing. In fact, he had done the exact same thing, trying repeatedly to reach out to Loki when his brother was in the depths of his madness. The situations were not so different, though in the case of Rachel Grey – or as those who knew her called her, Madelyn 'Maddie' Pryor – she was not so much mad as completely and utterly brainwashed from infancy, to the point where even Thor's optimism on the subject of redemption was challenged. After all, unlike Loki, this was not simply returning to sanity, for want of a better way of putting it, retreading a road long taken, but finding a road never previously taken, with only an earnest but uncertain guide leading the way. But such obstacles were not likely to overly faze Harry, who tended to take any obstruction as a personal challenge. Moreover, Thor had to admit that his son was not merely persuasive, if in a more off-the-cuff fashion than Loki's famous silver tongue, but positively magnetic, and tended to be an excellent judge of people. If he thought that there was something there worth saving, then there most likely was. The testimony of the young man known as Gambit only supported that.

Speaking of whom, he was being interrogated by Agent Coulson as part of efforts to discern where the Red Room would surface next, and what they had planned. Thor himself had nothing he could do. Nothing, that was, but sit and brood and what horrors the Red Room had planned for Harry. For unlike Carol, he knew exactly what horrors those were.

OoOoO

"I owed the man," Gambit said eventually. "If y' can call 'im a man. My powers were actin' up. Hell, they damn near killed me. Essex, 'e saved my life. In exchange, I worked for him."

"Doing what?" Coulson asked.

Gambit shrugged. "I'm a t'ief," he said. "I stole t'ings for 'im, scouted out locations, spied on people for 'im…" His expression grew haunted. "An' sometimes, I found people for 'im."

"Recruits?" Coulson asked. "Or test subjects?"

Gambit smiled bitterly. "A little bit o' both," he said. "I tried t' let a few slip, t' turn a blind eye… but 'e was a telepath, y' know? 'e picked up on it."

"And he punished you," Coulson said.

Gambit nodded tightly. "After dat, ah did as ah was tole," he said, accent thickening. "Den, a few months ago, 'e made me guide a bunch o' his big boys, Sabretooth an' th' like, to a group of mutants who were called de Morlocks."

"Someone's read their Wells," Coulson remarked mildly. "What happened?"

"De useful ones, dey were captured," Gambit said. "De ones dat weren't useful…" He trailed off.

Coulson nodded, not pressing the young man. It didn't take a great deal of imagination to work out what kind of orders someone like Essex would give to someone like Sabretooth in that scenario.

"Ah managed t' slip a few out o' there in de chaos," Gambit continued. "Collapsed th' tunnel after dem, t' let dem get away. But…" He trailed off again, expression haunted.

"You don't think it was enough," Coulson said. "You wonder if you could have saved more if you'd acted earlier. And you don't need to go to sleep to have nightmares any more."

Gambit smiled a crooked, mirthless smile. "Y' sure y' ain't a telepath, Agent Coulson?" he asked.

"No," Coulson said. "I've just been in a similar sort of place." He paused for a moment. "I take it that was what made you plan to help Maddie, later Carol, Harry and the other prisoners brought in with them, escape."

Gambit nodded. "Ah couldn' take it no more," he said. "Though ah'll admit dat when ah first got close t' Maddie, it weren't t' help her, but t' get information on Essex, t' get away, or once I found Agent Romanova, t' bring him down. It weren't too hard. 'e didn' care much about what we got up to off-duty, y' know?"

"You were going to play the honeytrap on a girl at least two, if not three, years younger than you, with next to no life experience and absolutely no conception of the sort of game you were playing," Coulson said, tone entirely neutral.

Gambit sighed. "Yeah. Ah was gonna use her, and ah ain't proud o' dat. But at firs', ah t'ought she was just one o' his attack dogs, like Sabretooth. Hell, 'e called her 'is Hound. Den, once ah got t' know her…" He shook his head. "She was no differen' t' me. She was a victim, even more so dan me. She'd never had a life o' her own. She'd never been free." He looked Coulson in the eye. "And if dere is one t'ing in th' whole damn world dat ah believe, Agent Coulson, it's dat people should be free."

"So instead you did what?" Coulson asked.

"Gave her a taste of freedom," Gambit said. "Worked on her. Used every trick an' bit o' charm an' persuasion that I had t' show her that dere was another way, another choice, another life, one where she didn' jus' 'ave t' be Sinister's slave, t' convince her that no matter if 'e made her or not, she was a person and she had de right t' be free." He grimaced. "O' course, this was before ah knew that she 'ad been stolen as a baby, that she weren't some experiment o' Sinister's." He shook his head. "Ah mean, I knew that de man was vile, but t' steal a baby girl from 'er family, then t' tell her all her life dat she ain't nothin' but an experiment, made t' do his bidding, dat she weren't even human, t' make her accept it…"

"Dehumanisation," Coulson said quietly. "It's an effective technique for controlling someone."

A smile flickered across Gambit's face. "But it weren't perfect," he said. "Maddie, she 'ad a mind of her own. She always did. It was jus' a matter of encouragin' her to use it. T' make her own choices." The smile faded. "But I didn' have long enough to convince her all the way. Ah was getting' close, I know that much, but… it weren't enough." He looked up at Coulson. "Tell me plain, Agent Coulson. Y' think that th' kid's got a chance of gettin' through to her?"

Coulson regarded him for a long moment. "I can't claim to know Harry Thorson very well at all," he said. "However, everything I've heard, everything I've read, suggests that he has a gift for getting under people's skin. Going by the accounts given of Miss Pryor's choice and Harry chasing after her, she was clearly conflicted about doing so. I would have to say that on short notice, without time to really work on her, and considering the ground work you've put in place, I think he's got as good a chance as anyone."

Gambit nodded, then his strange eyes narrowed. "An' tell me this, Agent Coulson. If 'e don' manage t' get through t' her, or if y' superiors just ain't sure, what happens then?"

"I don't know," Coulson said eventually.

Gambit grunted. "Honest answer, ah suppose," he said, sitting up and grimacing at his shoulder injury. "But remember this, Agent Coulson – dere's a good girl in Maddie. She jus' needs t' be given a chance t' make de right choice. An' I figure that any organisation that employs a man who once tried to take over de world should understand de virtue of giving out second chances, especially to people who ain't never got a first one to begin with."

"I'll bear that in mind, Mister LeBeau."

OoOoO

Shortly afterwards, with the various methods of tracking still in progress, the Avengers were briefed on what they might face when they encountered the Red Room again.

"The Red Room was born out of a realisation," Ivan said. "A realisation that while the West had super soldiers, while the Nazis, while HYDRA, had unbelievable technology, all Russia had was its winter. While that stopped the likes of Napoleon and Hitler, at some point, perhaps very soon, even the great General Winter would no longer be enough to stop foreign invasions."

"General Winter?" O'Neill asked, in a wheelchair and currently undecided on whether he was going to have his super soldier genes activated.

"The Russian winter," Loki said.

"Ah."

Petrovitch nodded and steepled his fingers. "So Russia turned to the sciences, to create better defences, better weapons. And thus the Red Room was born. Its job; to create operatives suitable for the changing nature of warfare, to protect the Motherland and her interests by any means necessary."

"Any?" Steve asked tensely.

Ivan gave him a long look, and all of a sudden, you could see that for all he was outwardly no older than his late thirties, he was far older than that. "Any, Captain," he said. "Any you can imagine and many I truly hope that you can not." He turned away from Steve. "I will keep this concise. Using biological treatments and conditioning based on the work of Doctor Pavlov, work that Doctor Pchelintsov and Professor Rodchenko took further after superhumans began to appear, superhumans beyond the usual lot of magical practitioners, vampires, demons and half-human progeny of both. First it was the Red Skull, then it was Captain America, Blade, Namor and Jacqueline Falsworth, the second Spitfire. The magical side of things came to unusual prominence, too – the Dark Lord Grindelwald rose to power with the aid of demons, brought the Dark Lord Kemmler into his service and created a vast dark empire across Europe, North Africa and Western Asia, while Dumbledore and Strange respectively emerged and re-emerged to challenge him. And in the years after the war, more came forth: Xavier. Mar-Vell." He nodded at Alison. "Alison Carter. And a young man of immense power by the name of Jor-El."

"Jor-El?" Thor asked sharply. "Did he look like this?" He shifted to his James Potter form.

Ivan studied his face carefully, then nodded. "Very much like," he said. "I suspect that there is a story behind that, but it can wait. My point, however, is that more and more superhumans were piling up in the West, as was more and more unusual technology, usually emerging from the laboratories of Howard Stark. Anton Vanko had access to some of that technology when he defected, but he was unable to replicate much of it when he returned to the Motherland. HYDRA remained, a lurking threat – weakened, but still a threat. This made affairs more urgent, forced the Red Room to adapt faster. The programming alone went from merely programming in commands and responses to implanting memories."

Bruce's eyebrows shot up and he opened his mouth to ask a question, before frowning and restraining himself. Tony, however, wasn't quite so restrained.

"How?" he asked bluntly. "How the hell is that possible?" He waved his hands. "I mean, memories are basically information, and brains are basically biological computers, so theoretically, yes, it could be done. But how was it possible to actually do it in Soviet freaking Russia in the…"

"The implantation aspect of the program began in the 1970's," Ivan said. "And I do not know. I have my suspicions – not all the technology the Red Room possessed was terrestrial, and such things are capable with magic, if not necessarily replicable. What matters, though, is that it can be done. More so, the Red Room have mastered the art."

"You think that they might apply it to my son?" Thor asked, seething rage in every syllable. Lightning cracked and thunder rolled outside.

"Considering that he is a very powerful telepath in his own right and could possibly unravel, if not simply obliterate, any telepathic binding placed on him, I think that they might well judge it to be the easiest method of controlling him," Ivan said bluntly. "Though I don't think they will try it yet. The Red Room goes through bodies like water, yes, but only with ordinary humans, of which there is no shortage. Your son is unique, and his brain is likely to be as well. I doubt that they will try rewriting it by force while other options remain. However…"

"However?" Thor asked dangerously.

"The man in charge of the Red Room at the moment is General Aleksandr Lukin," Natasha said. "Originally a successful enough infantry commander in the army before being transferred to the Red Room in the early 80s, he was an up-and-comer during the fall of the Soviet Union; old enough to have had real authority and to remember 'the glory days'." These last words had sarcasm venomous enough to melt steel dripping off them. "He's clever enough, but also ambitious, enough to take steps a more sensible man wouldn't. He kidnapped Harry, after all, despite HYDRA's collapse this summer showing exactly what happens to groups who take our people, and despite knowing that the Red Room as it is at the moment doesn't have the technology or raw power that HYDRA did. What it does have, however, is more manpower, more funding, bolt-holes all over this world and apparently the Nevernever, and the support of at least one national government. However, I'm pretty sure that that support will evaporate the moment that Volodya finds out what Lukin's done. He's not a fool, and while he's no friend to SHIELD or the Avengers, he doesn't want to be our enemy, either. Not openly, he knows he can't afford it."

"Hasn't Lukin made the same calculation?" Clint asked.

"He's gambling that he can get Harry under his control, turn him into the Red Son, before anyone has the chance to stop him," Natasha said. "He's also gambling that a converted Harry will be unstoppable – or at least, powerful enough to overpower or kill anyone willing to go all out against him, and with sufficient emotional ties to those who could overpower him in turn that they won't go all out against him."

The Avengers considered the list of people that they knew for certain were more powerful than Harry – or rather, powerful enough that they could feasibly overpower a Harry devoid of all conscience and likely out to kill in a set-piece battle without killing him – and that they trusted. It wasn't very long.

"There is a wild card in play," Loki remarked. "Harry's Phoenix fragment. I severely doubt that this General Lukin knows about it."

"He won't," Natasha said. "Though we don't know whether it'll do anything. It only activates when Harry's in mortal danger or when he consciously taps into it, something he's only done once."

"It isn't something we can rely on," Steve said. "We have to accept the possibility, the probability, that the Red Room will manage to force Harry to obey them." He turned to Ivan. "Who or what else will they be able to call on?"

Ivan shrugged. "Enhancements like those given to Natasha, cybernetics, sorcery, the implantation program, all have been used to create more efficient and deadly spies and assassins. Even genetic manipulation was added to the list, though it was in a relatively primitive state when the Soviet Union was dissolved and the Red Room with it. Now, however, the Red Room renewed will have all the advantages of the leaps in technology since then, as well as scraps scrounged from the Chitauri invasion and HYDRA's fall at the Battle of London, and whatever the creature known as Sinister gave them before his apparent demise," he said. "I suspect a few artificially enhanced mutants, perhaps some super soldier attempts, more advanced versions of their powered armour suits."

Steve nodded. "Can you get a more precise idea?" he asked.

"I will look into it," Ivan said.

Steve nodded again. "Thanks," he said.

"So, now what?" Thor asked bitterly, as the meeting broke up. "We simply sit and wait?"

"No," Steve said. "You think you can keep your temper?"

Thor gave him a dangerous look. Steve met it without blinking. Thor eventually nodded curtly.

"Good," Steve said. "Because we're paying a visit to the Kremlin."

OoOoO

Elsewhere, the Red Room were unaware and likely uncaring of the preparations made to a) retrieve their new prize, b) wind up to literally and figuratively smite them into the Earth's core.

Indeed, the view of the Red Room at large was fairly buoyant. They had done the impossible and escaped right from under the noses of the Mighty Avengers, something even HYDRA under the ever-slippery Lucius Malfoy had not been able to manage (though Malfoy himself had evaded all pursuers). True, they had lost several prisoners for whom they'd had high hopes, and the Avengers had mowed through their personnel like a scythe through dry grass, while the various monsters had also taken their toll. They had also lost a very large chunk of their base, and one of their senior operatives was missing a thumb, a lot of blood, and a good chunk of her remaining sanity.

However, they had retained the bulk of their important research, their key staff had survived (if, in the case of Doctor Essex, to whom the word 'staff' did not really apply, in somewhat puzzling circumstances), the Beast had been found alive and mostly intact, if severely injured after picking a fight with Thor, and Doctor Essex's greatest weapon's programming had triumphed over the attempts of the Avengers and others to influence her.

True, there were whispers among those on the base that it had glitched, but as the weeks went by – and most of a fortnight had already passed in this new location for their base, while less than a day had passed in the real world, it being far deeper in the Nevernever than the original had been – those whispers faded. After all, after that glitch had been repaired, she had apparently proved very useful, not just to her master, but to the Red Room.

Not only that, but Thor had hurled his hammer, Mjolnir, into the base in an apparently misguided attempt to destroy it or Essex's weapon, meaning that they could now study one of the greatest weapons in known history, while bringing in experts and equipment from other Red Room bases and departments, repairing the base and adding other assets to its arsenal. But the best part was that their prize prisoner had been delivered back into their hands by providence and his own misguided nobility.

And now, what with the difference in the rates of the passage of time, they had the time to regroup at leisure.

"Astonishing," Lukin murmured, as he watched the footage of Harry's fights, first with the Beast, then with the Red Room personnel, again. "Look at how he fights: his speed, his grace, his strength... even without enhancement, he has them in abundance and he uses them well. And when they are insufficient, he uses his powers with intelligence and skill." He snorted. "Of course, he has been well trained. By our wayward son, no less."

"Not just him," Belova said coldly. Her hand had been more professionally bound up and, though she was still pale as milk thanks to blood loss and chronic pain – enhanced by her refusal of painkillers – she stood up straight, eyes sharp. "He moves like a Widow." The milk promptly curdled. "Like the traitor."

"Yes," Lukin said. "He bears the mark of another of our wayward children, and a number of others besides. There." He pointed at one particular move, a variation on an Aikido technique. "The Banshee's influence. And then there is an certain ingenuity all of his own… useful as it could be, it is also indicative of a dangerous independence. That will have to be watched for, in case it recurs."

"You think that a mind that powerful will not throw off alterations?" Belova asked.

"Doctor Essex had over ten years to get his hooks into the boy and until now, he has proved capable of controlling the girl. Strong as the boy is, she is by far the stronger of the two, and she was most helpful when the time came," Lukin said. "I believe that they will hold."

"You think that Essex will remain biddable, simply doing as we ask him?" Karpov asked, breaking in. "Because I do not. If he can alter the boy's mind to make him compliant, he can make him compliant to his wishes. With those two at his command, never mind his other freaks, he could do anything. If there are problems, Rodchenko will suffice."

"We cannot make him," Lukin conceded. "But we will need him to. Rodchenko is brilliant, but he does not know the boy's unique physiology as Essex does, as was demonstrated. In any case, Essex is a scientist. He is not interested in power, not beyond what he requires to acquire subjects for experimentation. He wants to study the boy, and now he has the chance."

He turned to live feeds of the other, completed super soldiers: a man with the build of a super soldier throwing a shield down an ever changing target range, a pale and cadaverous looking man with pale, metallic tentacles lashing around him like a cat's tail, a woman wielding energy so dark it seemed to absorb light around it, another woman whose arms morphed into weapons as she took down targets with robotic efficiency, and a man in a laboratory, customising a bulky, powerful looking suit of armour.

"The Winter Guard. Russia's shield against the West, the Chinese, HYDRA, Magneto, SHIELD and the Avengers. Shostakov, Rossovich, Petrovna, Shapandar, Bukharin. The Guardian, the Demon, the Shadow, the Sentinel, the Dynamo." His gaze turned to Belova. "And Belova, the Widow, their leader. For the time being." Belova bristled, but said nothing, as his gaze shifted one more time, to a live feed of Harry, who was sparring with Red Room instructors.

To a passing observer, it would seem little different to the sparring sessions he'd had in Avengers Mansion. But on closer study, differences revealed themselves.

This was not a lighthearted bout between friends, a way of working up a sweat and staying sharp, but an intensive test of skills, each blow snapping out with bone breaking force, with sharp commands being barked from the side lines. Both sides were attacking with intent to disable and incapacitate, with little care for the welfare of their opponent. And Harry, normally a fighter with a preference for ingenuity and doing the unexpected, mixing in multiple styles in his hand to hand combat, was moving through forms with clockwork precision and metronomic regularity.

And finally, the most important difference of all was in Harry's face and eyes. Both were remarkably expressive, usually alight with some emotion or another, or if they were closed off, at least visibly so. Here and now, however, they were completely and utterly empty, blank like a slate wiped clean of all the flotsam and jetsam, the details, quirks, and intricacies that made Harry who he was.

This was not Harry any more.

"Soon to be joined by their final, greatest member… the true Krasnyy Syn; the ever loyal Red Son."

Chapter Text

Now

Maddie took a deep breath as the man opposite her turned on the camera and microphone again. They had stopped and started several times.

"Now, Miss Grey. Start at the beginning. How did it happen? Where did it start?"

"It started," Maddie said. "With the hammer."

OoOoO

Then

Maddie wandered fairly aimlessly through the damaged Red Room complex. Going by the state of the repair works, she estimated that what the medical staff had told her was correct: she had been unconscious for two days. The surviving Agents, knowing who she was and who she served, gave her a wide berth, not that it was really needed – she didn't choose to associate with them, and they generally didn't have to associate with her, something they were profoundly grateful for. Additionally, her clearance could be summed up as Access (Almost) All Areas.

She was currently at liberty – Doctor Essex rarely cared what she did when her presence or skills were not required, so long as she was at his disposal at a moment's notice. When she was younger, he'd assigned her lessons, to ensure that she was suitably literate, numerate, geographically informed, and scientifically educated, to fulfil her function. More recently she'd mostly spent her time practising with her psychic abilities, sometimes using them to conjure images from the books she'd read as part of improving her literacy. Doctor Essex hadn't provided her with many, but one he had provided her with had been a collection of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. These were chosen for the lessons they taught, or were deemed to teach.

The Little Mermaid, for instance, was considered by Essex to warn of the price of lacking caution when bargaining with supernatural entities and, most of all, the folly and risks of stepping out of one's correct place and trying to be something one was not.

The Little Matchgirl warned of the cost of falling for illusions of happiness and abandoning one's purpose.

And The Emperor's New Clothes proved the efficacy of the right degree of psychic persuasion on a large group of people and the ripple effect that it could have, as well as the necessity of ensuring that said persuasion was all-encompassing.

Naturally, these weren't exactly the original morals intended by Mister Andersen, though Maddie never knew to question Essex's interpretation of them. Not, that is, until she met Remy, and he had started sowing the seeds of doubt in her – or, perhaps, nursing seeds that had already been there.

In truth, she wasn't sure, the same way that she wasn't sure what had happened in between her defeat of Subject Thorson (and presumably she had defeated him, otherwise he wouldn't be on site, being studied by Doctor Essex – though going by the fact that she had been unconscious for two days, it had been a very hard fight), and in the same way why she didn't understand why she had doubts to begin with. Was it some flaw on her part, some failing that meant that part of her refused to accept her proper place? Or was it something else?

Whatever it was, she found herself thinking over those stories again. The mermaid chose to gain legs, yes, and yes, she didn't fit in with the human world, suffering horribly for her attempts to be something other than what she was made to be. However, she also chose to sacrifice her chance at returning to her own life for the sake of another, one who she loved, even if he didn't love her in return.

The little matchgirl died seeing illusions of happiness, yes, when she might have lived had she not fixated on those visions. But she died happy.

"But are you happy?"

Maddie jumped, eyes and psychic senses questing for the voice that had suddenly echoed in her mind. It took her several moments to realise that it came from inside her own mind, a fragment of something larger – was it a dream, or a memory?

And as she wondered, her mind returned to the third story, that of the Emperor's New Clothes, where an illusion of what people thought was true, or at least, pretended to think for fear of being deemed unfit for their positions, for what they were, persisted. Persisted, that was, until it was shattered by an out of context moment of clarity, from the mouth of a child.

Why was she thinking of these stories? Why was her mind reinterpreting them, twisting them from what she had always been taught? Was this some symptom of her own flaw, of a part of her having to be reminded of her function and place?

As she wondered, her feet carried her into the central courtyard of the Red Room base, where Agents and minor functionaries were clearing away some of the vast amounts of rubble left behind. For a moment, she was puzzled by what that rubble had been caused by, then she remembered: an attack on the base by enemies of the Red Room, seeking to poach the Red Room's assets. None of her business, really.

It was at this point that she realised that she was being drawn to one of the enemy's discarded weapons, a large hammer at the heart of a large crater. There was something about it, she thought, as she squatted down to inspect it, ignoring the nervous Red Room scientists hovering around her and it, unsure whether it was worth the risk of a melted brain to try and stop her, or whether they were even meant to stop her at all.

She was Essex's Hound, after all, and she went nowhere that he did not wish her to go. Besides, the optimists among them thought that she might provide some unique insight – Mjolnir's unique connection to Thor, after all, was believed to be mystical, perhaps even psychic, considering his ability to summon it back to him. Perhaps she might have some insight into how this worked.

So they hung back as Maddie examined the hammer. Then, slowly, she reached out and touched it.

To her intense astonishment, she felt a mind. Well. Not quite a mind, but certainly something more sophisticated than a mere mystical algorithm designed to respond to certain psychological qualities. It was more primitive than a true thinking mind, but there was a sense of consciousness there.

What are you? she whispered in her mind.

She didn't expect an answer, but she got one, as the consciousness struck out. Instantly, Maddie prepared to defend herself, but as soon as she did, it had already retreated, having apparently examined her mind and come to the conclusion it needed to.

Not Worthy.

Peculiarly, Maddie felt somewhat stung by this, and reached out, irritated, demanding, What is Worthy?

Remarkably, her question got an answer, in a barrage of images:

An old man; or something more than a man, for even in image, he positively radiated Power, with a thick white beard and a single eye. He was powerfully built, clad in rich, strong looking armour, and bore an air of authority as he gazed into a blazing portal of rainbow light. He held up the hammer and whispered, "Whosoever holds this hammer, if they be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor." Some of that power settled on the hammer, forming the basis for what Maddie recognised as the consciousness she was interacting with, before it was hurled into the portal.

A blond man, also bearded, though it was a shorter beard, surrounded by devastation, standing between a vast metal golem that hummed with power and a group of the weak and wounded. That man being swatted like an insect, dying in a woman's arms with a satisfied smile as the golem strode away. The hammer soared to his hand from miles away, transforming him from dead man into a being of almighty power in a flash of lightning, a god, one who swiftly disposed of the imposing golem.

And a girl, several years younger than Maddie herself, with dark hair, smoky blue eyes and a desperate, determined expression, reaching for the handle of the hammer as her friends were bombarded by unbelievably intense energy blasts. The hammer responded to her, again in a blazing flash of lightning, and transformed her into a tall, grown woman, a goddess, who batted aside the energy blasts like they were raindrops.

These images were underscored with words:

Courage.

Compassion.

Sacrifice.

Worthy.

Just as Maddie was about to retreat to consider this, the consciousness struck out again, like lightning, aimed at what Maddie briefly thought was nothing at all. Then, she gasped as a barrage of memories hit her: Subject Thorson – Harry – talking to her in the strange mindscape; the other girl, Jean, who was identical to her, and the questions that raised about where she had come from; their bafflement at her remarks about her purposes, and exhortations for her to be free, just like Remy had talked about. Both begging her to come with them. Sub – Harry following her through and saying that she always had a choice. Her standing over him, protecting him, making up excuses to stay close to him and protect him further, her refusal to allow the Red Room to break his will… and then Doctor Essex spoke and all was darkness.

Before she could absorb this, the hammer spoke again, with just a hint of… satisfaction?

Worthy.

And then, the connection was broken, and Maddie stumbled back, staring at the hammer as the tumble of unlocked memories ran through her mind. She sat in the rubble for a long time, turning them over and over, dealing with the emotions they brought up and examining what they meant. It didn't take her long to come up with certain conclusions – for while she was not used to making her own decisions, she was an intelligent young woman with an analytical turn of mind.

First, Doctor Essex had used a trigger phrase to disable her, then erased certain of her memories, in order to ensure that she remained completely loyal to him. This was something she found offensive on several levels, namely that she was being treated like… like a machine.

Once, it wouldn't have occurred to her to be offended, as she thought herself simply an extension of Doctor Essex's will, and had been content with that. Now, though… now it was a very different story.

Second, if she confronted him with this knowledge, he would likely repeat the process, perhaps more thoroughly. While she was more powerful than he was by some way, something she had always simply accepted as part of her function as his bodyguard and enforcer, she knew that he would have installed further safeguards.

Third, it occurred to her that with Remy leaving, and Harry both echoing his words and attempts to coax her away, then following her, apparently to try and get her to break away, the two people who had treated her as something other than a living machine with a programmed function, who hadn't cared where she'd come from or what she had been, had been ultimately opposed to both the Red Room and Doctor Essex. Indeed, the latter was likely at this moment suffering at their hands.

And from what she had discerned of the other girl, Jean, the one so like her and so not, she had been concerned for her too, reaching out to her, despite the fact that she, Maddie, was aligned with Jean's enemies and had been fighting Jean's kin, Harry. Once, this would have respectively baffled and been dismissed by her, accepting as she had her status as living weapon, that it was what she had been made for and that it was her purpose. Now, crucially, she had doubts.

Everyone who had ever treated her as a person – a status that she was still somewhat bemused by – had been opposed to Doctor Essex and the Red Room. Why was that?

Fourth, helping others was a Worthy choice. It was Right. Which, to someone who had grown up being taught that the only relevant morals were pragmatic execution of one's set function and obedience to Doctor Essex, had only picked up others in a somewhat hazy fashion, and whose Jiminy Cricket had been a thief who was in the process of his own journey of moral self-discovery, was a profoundly strange feeling.

"But are you happy?"

The question echoed again in her mind and on consideration, Maddie realised it was one with two answers. Right now, she wasn't happy. She wasn't merely indifferent to serving Doctor Essex, accepting it as her lot in life, but she was actively unhappy with it. It felt… wrong. More than that, protecting Harry had… well, for want of a better way of putting it, it had felt good. It had felt right.

As she mulled this over, Maddie realised something else.

Like all those figures in all those tales, very soon she was going to have to make a choice.

Then, as she stood up, a psychic scream of agony tore into her mind, raw and undirected, sending her reeling. A quick glance around at the unaffected Red Room Agents and the undirected nature of the scream led her to concluded that this was something on a frequency that only she could sense.

As she realised that, she realised something else. It was familiar. It felt like Harry. And the Red Room had had him for two days.

A strange feeling settled in her stomach. Her sister could have told her what it was: dread.

It took her several moments to realise that she was on her feet again. And she was running.

OoOoO

It didn't take Maddie long to find the laboratory the scream had emanated from. Even the likes of Charles Xavier might have taken a few moments to consciously pinpoint the location of the outburst, especially considering that it seemed to have been a brief breach in an otherwise impermeable defence against psychic energy escaping (Doctor Essex and the Red Room clearly having learnt their lesson). However, Maddie's skills at psychic tracking had been honed to the point where her ability to home in on such discharges was instinctive and instant.

The two guards outside the room tried to stop her, and were promptly swatted against the walls as she passed them, bursting in.

The scene she beheld once she did would have horrified anyone.

The lab itself was fairly innocuous, all humming computers, scanners and other instruments. In the middle, however, was a chair built out of what the observant might recognise as a variant of Adamantium, one that hummed with power both technological and, as confirmed by the runes inscribed on it, mystical, all geared towards the utmost restraint of its inhabitant.

And that inhabitant was Harry, who was so buried in the restraints, which seemed to have contracted to fit him, that he might as well have been wearing them as a suit of armour. All that was clearly exposed was his head, clamped in tight metallic helmet. His face was visible. It was gaunt, drawn, and silent, as if he could simply muster no more screams. Maddie knew better – now that she was through the door, psychic screams, of agony and defiance, were all she could hear.

There were physical signs of that defiance too: a number of the walls were severely dented, likely by either persons or equipment prior to successfully restraining him. The presence of a tall, lean, almost cadaverous looking pale figure in the corner, metallic tentacles lashing restlessly around him as a cruel smile adorned his face, one that Maddie recognised, suggested how he had finally been subdued. Rossovich would have sapped his strength along with his lifeforce.

An unaccustomed surge of rage accompanied this realisation. Even before her more recent moral turmoil, even before she had met Remy, Maddie had recognised Arkady Rossovich for the monster that he was. Even living weapons have standards.

And there was another sign of that defiance, that it continued, one that resided in his emerald green eyes. You didn't have to be an expert at reading body language to see how they burned with rage and pain.

Yet, Maddie noticed as she struggled to control the unexpected tide of emotions, there was something else in there too. Something desperate, as if he was fighting against not just the programming that the Red Room were attempting to force on him, but against something else too. What could it be?

"Madelyn," Doctor Essex said, standing up and regarding her. "What is the reason for your being here?"

"I sensed the psychic outburst and feared that it presaged an escape attempt," Maddie said.

"It did not," Doctor Essex said coolly. "However, your presence may be useful." He beckoned, and Maddie followed, resisting the urge to rip this room, designed solely for the breaking of wills, apart. If she tried, Doctor Essex would subdue her again, and she would be back where she started, without this precious revelation – not the fact that she needed to make a choice, but the fact that she could.

"He is resistant to the programming?" she queried, keeping her tone calm and detached. Harry's eyes, bloodshot, rolled up to look at her, hope suddenly flaring in them. Then, as they saw her expression, that hope shrivelled and died. Maddie had to fight a puzzling urge to reassure him. Both their minds depended on her actions at this moment.

Doctor Essex nodded. "He has resisted all attempts made over the last 48 hours," he said, tone simultaneously intrigued and mildly irritated. "Sedation was the logical course of action, but while they and application of Rossovich's powers have lowered his defences, some aspect of his physiology keeps burning the sedatives out. Attempts to induce a coma have been similarly unsuccessful. Higher levels of sedative and other means have so far been refrained from because of the risk of permanent physical damage to the subject."

"You wish me to overwhelm or undo his defences," Maddie said, keeping her tone neutral. "Depending on their state, that may take time."

Essex nodded. "Do not waste too much effort," he said. "It may be easier simply to clone him and program the blank slate. It would be unfortunate: his development is unique, and owing to the precise environmental factors involved, impossible to replicate. I would like to observe it at closer quarters."

"Is that dependent on his being programmed, Doctor Essex?" Maddie asked. When Essex raised an eyebrow at her, she added, "As you say, the subject is unique. If I push too hard, I could kill him. However, if programming is impractical, I could lobotomise him, rendering him mentally docile, leaving him open for study."

Essex rubbed his jaw. "No," he said. "It is not. As I have said, cloning could yet be the more practical course, though it will take time to perfect."

"Time we may not have, Doctor Essex," Lukin said, standing at the door.

"We are hidden in one of the deeper habitable regions of the Spirit World," Essex said calmly. "We have time."

"We thought we had time before," Lukin said flatly. "And yet, within a matter of hours, we were found. The Avengers have the power and skill to pierce even your methods of cloaking this base, Doctor Essex, and the contacts throughout the Spirit World that they may not need them." He turned to Maddie. "You, girl. Can you lower his defences?"

"I believe so, General Lukin," Maddie said, maintaining her neutral tone.

"Do so," Lukin said. "Clones would be beneficial, but they are a secondary goal."

Maddie glanced at Doctor Essex, who nodded. Turning to Harry, she paused. "I will need the helmet removed. And a chair. This will take some time, and I need maximum contact."

Doctor Essex nodded, and one of the scientists scrambled to find a chair, while the others set about removing the helmet.

"And girl," Lukin said. "If you fail… lobotomise him. Your master may have him for study. One way or another, he will serve Russia. Just make your decision quickly."

Maddie nodded curtly, then sat down and laid her hands on the sides of Harry's face, finger tips pressing against his temples.

"Contact," she murmured.

The real world fell away as she entered Harry's mind, easily slipping through his mental defences; she'd learned the shape of them when they'd fought, and exhausted and strained as he was – he had been resisting the programming of the Red Room, what felt like the telepathic attacks of Doctor Essex, restraining that something else that she couldn't quite identify, and doing so for the best part of two days. Under the circumstances, it had been easy.

She looked around his mind scape. It was a strange mash-up of multiple buildings; stone towers jutted up on either side of the construct, framing a giant silvery glass and metal spire with a giant letter A emblazoned on the side, with the base being formed of some kind of large, red brick mansion, surrounded by the castle's curtain walls and with a roof replaced by ramparts from the same. It looked battered and battle damaged, hastily patched holes abounding, and the whole thing looked increasingly ramshackle.

Maddie looked around. "Harry?" she called out. "I… I'm here to help," she said.

There was no answer. Maddie wasn't exactly surprised. It wasn't like he had any reason to believe her. Before he'd been put through this, perhaps, when he'd begged for her to stay, but after what had been done to him… while trust wasn't something she was entirely familiar with (part of what she was increasingly aware was a very long list of things that she was unfamiliar with), she knew enough intellectually to understand that it was likely in limited supply.

So she opted for bluntness. "I am inside your mind," she said. "I am more powerful and skilled than you are, as well as being well-rested, and not having been under constant physical and psychic attack, or deprived of sleep. I will find you sooner rather than later. However, I may not have the time. I have been sent in as a last resort. If I do not find you, you will be –"

"Killed?"

She whirled. It was Harry, yet not quite. For starters, this version was younger; small, skinny, and thin faced, wearing old, oversized clothing, as well as a pair of battered and taped glasses. His hair also lacked the distinctive white forelocks. The only immediately obvious similarities were the emerald green eyes, the messy dark hair, and something about the expression – which was, right now, bitterly sardonic. He looked tired, tired and battered as the rest of his mindscape, but that same defiance she had seen in his eyes before remained.

"It's not like it would be the first time," he said.

Maddie raised an eyebrow. "Actually, you'll be lobotomised," she said. "Studied and experimented on. Meanwhile, the Red Room and Doctor Essex will clone you and program the clones in your place."

"Then I'll stop them, and you," Harry said flatly.

Maddie raised the other eyebrow. "Why haven't you done so yet?"

His eyes flashed, and he stepped forward. Suddenly, the little boy wasn't so little, transforming in mid step into something closer to the young man she'd fought, who'd pleaded with her, but different: this version was clad all in a red so dark that it was almost black, a sash like a flickering golden flame at his waist, boots of the same shade melding with the trousers of the suit. His features were lengthened slightly, somehow predatory and inhuman, and his skin seemed like a thin container for the inferno of power that roiled within him, one that found a way out through the strange, simplified bird shape emblazoned on his chest, and his eyes, blank white and blazing with that same power.

"Just because I don't want to, Maddie, doesn't mean that I can't!" he snarled in a deadly dangerous voice, one that crackled with fire and power and threat.

It was power unlike any she had felt before, one that made her breath catch, even in the real world. The closest comparison was the echo of the power that the old man – old god – had used to enchant Thor's hammer, Mjolnir, that she had sensed in the vision that the hammer had shown her, and even then, this was something else.

Yet… that wasn't quite true. She had felt this power before, during the summer, and even beyond that, there was something achingly familiar about it, something terrifying and intoxicating and magnetic, something that drew her to it, whispering her name, calling to her in the language of souls.

The Harry in front of her closed those blazing eyes, shutting of their glow, and that seemed to be the signal for the clothing to vanish, that unearthly aura to diminish. But he didn't revert to the little boy, either, instead staying as something more like the young man she'd faced. Though the glasses remained, she noticed. It seemed to be something of a middle ground.

"So," Maddie said thoughtfully. "That's what you've been holding in check. What is it?"

"A side of me that you don't want to meet," Harry said darkly. "If I cut loose with it… I don't know what will happen. Though it won't be pretty." His eyes narrowed. "But if the alternative is being a weapon or an experiment while weapons are made out of me, then you'll get to see that side of me." He folded his arms. "So. Whatever plan of attack you've got, go ahead. Bring it on. I've survived worse."

"I'm not here to fight you," Maddie said. "I… I meant what I said just now. I want to help you."

"Why?" Harry asked, frowning sceptically.

"I don't know," Maddie admitted. "It isn't logical. I wasn't made for it. But… I do. I care." She stuck out a hand. "I'm not good with words. Let me show you."

Harry eyed her suspiciously, then reached out and took it.

And Maddie showed him, letting him into her mind and plunging him into her memories, of her confusion, her trying to protect him, Essex blocking her memory of it, the hammer unblocking it, and her dilemma: could she be Worthy? Could she make a choice, let alone the right one?

"You were part of it," Maddie said. "What you said. You said what Remy had been telling me. I suppose it took until now for me to understand."

Harry just stared at her. "You really do want to help me," he said, in a kind of wonder. The suspicion and cynicism seemed to have melted away, to be replaced by dazed amazement.

"You believe me?" Maddie asked, startled.

"Is there any reason I shouldn't?"

"Well, no," Maddie said, frowning. "It's just…"

"You didn't expect me to trust you again so quickly?" Harry suggested. When Maddie nodded, he smiled. "You're rebelling against someone who's had you under his influence or full on control for your whole life. Do you have any idea how amazing that is? You tried to protect me without even knowing why, without even having a reason. And whoever you are, wherever you came from, I know that you're family." He reached out a hand. "You may have made mistakes. You may have done terrible things. But so have Bucky and Natasha. My dad, my uncle, Tony and Clint too. I've done a few nasty things too. But you're trying to be better, and that's what matters. Put it together? It's more than enough for me."

Maddie just stared at him. Even Remy had never openly expressed such… she didn't even know what the word was.

"Faith," Harry said. "The word you're looking for is faith." He smiled crookedly at her expression. "You're in my mind, remember? And I might not be as good, as strong, or everything else as you are, but I'm not exactly useless, either."

Maddie nodded. "Clearly not," she said. "These last two days you have resisted the attempts of the Red Room and Doctor Essex to reprogram you."

"So that's his real name," Harry muttered. "I wondered. And it's been two days?"

"Yes. You didn't know?"

"Well, after the first couple of hours of screaming electrocution, drugs and telepathic attacks, it all kind of blurs. So, no, I didn't know," Harry said, then frowned.

"You thought that they would have found you by now," Maddie said, then nodded. "General Lukin is worried that they will. Doctor Essex says that we are deep inside the Spirit World. Time will pass faster here, relative to the real world."

Harry grimaced. "Wonderful," he said. "So for all I know, only five minutes have passed in the real world."

Maddie paused, then nodded. "Have they let slip any information about what you are intended for once programmed, or why they and Doctor Essex sought you out specifically?" she asked. "I know that he has an interest in your unique genetic development, but that does not strike me as the reason for the Red Room's interest. I inquired of General Lukin, but he did not say, precisely."

"Not really," Harry said. "Why do you ask?"

"I have a plan," Maddie said. "However, to enact it successfully, or to even have a chance of doing so, I need to know as much as I can about what your programmed self is intended for."

Harry frowned, nodding. "Near the start, when it was just him studying me, I did manage to get Essex talking," he said. "It might help." As he spoke, the scenery shifted around them, transforming into the laboratory that their bodies occupied in the real world. Though in this case, the only occupants were Harry and Doctor Essex, the former conscious and wary looking, while the latter calmly moved around the laboratory.

Maddie frowned and leaned forward, studying the memory as it began to play out.

"What makes my family so interesting, anyway?" Harry asked. "It can't be dad – you didn't know he was a god, and pureblood wizards aren't that uncommon. So it must be mum, and her family. Jean."

"In that much you are correct," Essex said. "The power of your paternal bloodline was, at first glance, largely unremarkable. Later study proved otherwise, of course, but it was your maternal bloodline that first attracted my interest. The power of that bloodline goes back a very long way. I happened upon it by chance as a young man, investigating unusual abilities, ones that I believed could be inherited, that I thought represented an evolutionary leap. I delved into archives, travelled across Britain searching for folk tales, parish records, old stories. As I did, I spread my search, travelling across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, following the Silk Road east, before turning to the New World. Rarely, very rarely, I found what I was looking for. Most times, I did not. Once, I found something beyond my wildest dreams, something that opened my eyes to new horizons, that gifted me with the knowledge to extend my search indefinitely, to refine it immeasurably. And once, in Egypt… I found something else entirely."

He was silent a moment, seeming to drift off into memory. Then, he snapped back to the present.

"I found enough to establish a pattern, to realise that these were not simple one offs," he said. "Some were magically gifted, and while they were of some interest, particularly the more varied wandless breed, they were simply different approaches to the same template. There was another that caught my eye. More varied, more individually specialised than those with magical abilities, they fascinated me. They were the gold in the muck of ordinary humanity and your bloodline was a rich seam. While records were incomplete, with the aid of the magical contacts I had accrued on my search, some I managed to verify."

He went to the computer banks and brought up images of manuscripts and inscriptions.

"The Monks of Lindisfarne for instance, record a tale they had heard from their Scottish brethren. Ffion Grey, a girl in Kingdom of Dàl Riata in the 7th century: her coastal village was the victim of a Northumbrian raid, her father was killed, her mother and sister were raped and enslaved. She escaped thanks to her burgeoning abilities, which killed the three warriors who tried to take her. The Northumbrians retreated from what they believed to be a sorceress, while she remained, paralysed by terror of them and herself," he said. "She was taken in by a nearby nunnery and made a novice, despite protesting that she wanted to find her mother and sister. Through the enforced quiet contemplation, she learned to control her abilities of telepathy and telekinesis and stoked the fires of revenge. At the age of 15, she left the nunnery and used her powers to hunt down those who had taken her family. Several years later, she found them in Northumbria. Her mother and sister were both dead, the latter in childbirth. In rage and despair, she destroyed the village and everyone in it, burning it to the ground. Then, she took her sister's child and then disappeared from history, last being seen headed into the far north of what is now Scotland."

He looked up and added, "you are of course directly descended from another branch of the family," as if this was the first question that would spring to any reasonable mind on being told this tale.

He turned back to the computers.

"She was the earliest I could prove, though there were rumours and whispered tales of others before her. Others appeared as the family spread far and wide – one branch culminated in Lady Jane Grey, briefly Queen of England, though that branch exhibited few signs of anything beyond the ordinary. In the less politically significant branches, I found others. Sir Malkin Grey, a Marcher Lord of the 13th century who was considered a warlock by his peers and said to be capable of possessing others from afar. This was nonsense, of course – analysis of genetic material extracted from his skeleton proved that he was, in fact, a mutant. But there was truth in the myths, and so it went with the others. Lord Charles Grey was a moderately influential politician of the Tudor period noted for his ability to discern the feelings of others and his astonishing charm – a telepath or, more likely, a skilled empath. And Lady Elizabeth Grey, who became a sensation in the court of Charles II by reading the past and even the future of people and objects with a touch, even, some said, moving things with her mind. I verified each of these claims and many others by various means. Once that was done, once I had isolated the bloodlines of interest, I watched and waited. Sometimes, I intervened, to cure a disease or to divert the subjects from mortal danger. While a little peril and stress is in my experience a fine catalyst for the manifestation of both the X-Gene and the M-Gene, you can have too much of a good thing."

"So what were the Dursleys?" Harry asked bitterly. "Just right?"

"Suitable enough," Essex said, shrugging. "While I would have preferred that they fed you more – the body can do little without fuel, after all – your magic and your psychic abilities both manifested in satisfactory fashions while you were there."

"My psychic abilities didn't kick in until last year," Harry said, willing to play for time.

"That was the first time you noticed them, to be sure, but they were present beforehand," Essex said. "That time you were chased by the young Dursley's gang, for instance, you jumped behind the bins and found yourself flying up onto the roof. A clear cut case of telekinesis, something that my instruments detected. At the same time, you showed a remarkable ability to fade into the background, to avoid the attentions of your peers and adults: your telepathy at work. Unconscious, of course, but still in use."

He turned to Harry. "I also noticed that once other factors were controlled for, female Grey psychics tend to be the more powerful, something I confirmed in the observation of your generation. And the hair of male Grey psychics tended to go white early." He examined Harry. "It wasn't invariable, and like with yours, I suspect that it was a result of psychic trauma. Nevertheless, the pattern was distinct and interesting. And there was the one thing that all of them held in common: eyes like yours, eyes a unique shade of emerald green."

His gaze met Harry's.

"Madelyn is the peak of your bloodline's genetic potential, an Omega Class mutant. So is Jean Grey, your cousin. They are goddesses among men."

"And you use one of those 'goddesses' as your minion?" Harry asked, eyebrow raised.

"That is how she is of most use to me," Essex said bluntly. "It also spurs her development. It is her sole purpose."

"What, giving you someone to hide behind?" Harry sniped.

Essex ignored that remark. "They are as goddesses. But you, Harry, while you are an Omega Class mutant, if of a lesser degree… you are also something else entirely," he said. "I had hoped to see perhaps an unusually powerful wizard with a greater predilection towards psychic abilities, maybe a Seer, or perhaps a rare combination of magical and mutant, like Wanda Maximoff. Yet nature, or perhaps supernature, surprised me once more. Your father was not merely a mortal wizard. And so you began to grow into something, potentially, even greater, a synthesis of the mightiest of mortals and the truly divine. You are unique in all of history, a hybrid evolved beyond even death itself."

Harry said nothing, figuring that explaining the details of his mother and the Phoenix was pointless.

"I say without ego that the two of you, yourself and Madelyn, are my finest works," Essex said.

"Bullshit," Harry said. "You had no idea that my dad was anything other than a wizard until he got his memories back and came back to Earth. And you didn't make me into anything."

Essex smiled. It was not a nice smile. "Didn't I?" he asked. "Oh, I didn't know exactly who he was or where he was from, but I knew that was something more than human in your DNA. It was well hidden, I'll say that much, but I wasn't lying when I said that I found it." He met Harry's gaze. "And you may continue to delude yourself otherwise, but the fact is this: your parents conceived you, but I have shaped you into what you are today. You will conform to my wishes, because that is what you always have done. Your free will is an illusion, soon to be shattered. You are my experiment, Harry. And now, I have reclaimed you."

Harry stared at him, then said, "Me and my free will have a message for you."

Essex arched an eyebrow.

"Come closer."

"If you are planning to attempt to incapacitate me with a close range physical blow, likely delivered with your skull, you will only succeed in damaging yourself," Essex said. "And even if you did succeed, you would still be contained in this chair. All you would achieve is a pointless gesture of defiance."

"I know," Harry said. "But don't you want to know what it is?"

Essex arched the other eyebrow, then shrugged infinitesimally and moved to Harry's side, at which point, Harry reared like a striking cobra, and spat full in his face.

"That was the message," he said.

Essex sighed, stepping back and retrieving a handkerchief from his suit pocket. "Pointless," he said. "Absolutely pointless."

"Oh, I don't know," Harry said. "It makes me feel a lot better." He smirked. "Besides. If I was really just your experiment, doing what you want me to, do you really think that I would have done that?"

Essex's eyes narrowed. "As I have come to discover," he said. "Even the finest programming has flaws."

The memory faded.

"That was about when the torture started," Harry said conversationally. "You'd almost think I'd annoyed him." He looked thoughtfully at Maddie. "That bit about the programming, that was about you, wasn't it?"

Maddie nodded. "I believe so," she said quietly.

"Did it help?"

Maddie frowned. "Not directly," she admitted, not adding that it had bolstered her resolve. After all, if Doctor Essex saw Harry as simply something to be studied and used, he was hardly likely to see her as any better. He'd said so himself. In truth, she'd always known it. But now, it bothered her.

"Well," Harry said. "I kept the Red Room programming at arm's length, and didn't want to take a look at it, because I thought that if I did, it might start getting through. But if I had to guess…" He looked at Maddie. "This General Lukin. What can you tell me about him?"

"Middle aged. Moderately intelligent. Authoritative as Commander of the Red Room, but practically speaking, subordinate to Doctor Essex," Maddie said. "He is ambitious. He envies Doctor Essex's use of me."

Harry's lips thinned. "I'll bet he does," he said. "And the Red Room used to have the Winter Soldier." He looked at Maddie. "Which means that he wants me to be something that's part you, part Winter Soldier."

Maddie paused. "That would seem a likely conclusion," she said, as her mind ran over the implications of this, doubt flooding into her mind again. If Harry's will needed to be broken to turn him into something like her, did that mean that she had a will at all? Did it mean that she was, completely unaware, acting at Doctor Essex's will in trying to defy him?

"Hey."

She looked up. "It is a possibility," she said bluntly, not bothering to wonder if he knew what she had been thinking. The longer she spent in this position, in his presence, the lower her mental barriers were getting. It was unnerving, but somehow… liberating.

"Maybe," Harry admitted. "But like I said. I have faith. Faith in you."

As Maddie stared at him again, he sat down in a suddenly conjured squashy armchair. "So," he said. "What's your plan?"

Maddie hesitated, then told him.

OoOoO

Now

"He just accepted the plan?"

"We had no practical alternative," Maddie said.

"You could have destroyed them all and freed him that way. So could he."

"With Doctor Essex having us both under close observation and Harry being exhausted and in restraints, we were in a poor position. I could not be sure of the outcome. Equally, Harry's only means of doing so was not a practical option," Maddie said, then hesitated. "It was a good plan."

"Under the circumstances, it was. However…"

Maddie nodded tightly. "That was when it all began to go wrong," she said.

OoOoO

Then

Maddie emerged into the real world. "It is done," she said.

"He is compliant?" Essex asked.

"You broke his will?" one of the Russian scientists, a nervous looking man called Rodchenko, who seemed like this was the last place in the world that he wanted to be, asked.

"I erased his mind," Maddie said. "You said that a blank slate would be easier to program. Additionally, without a mind, he has no will with which to resist. So, with the exception of certain parts of the Cerebellum that govern muscle memory, including skills that I believe would be useful, I erased it. Certain basic memories may remain, but in a limited, fragmentary state. A new purpose and identity can easily be put into place."

This raised a muted but genuine cheer from the scientists around her, and murmurs of fear, admiration, and faint resentment. She, after all, had achieved in less than an hour what they had failed to do in over two days of constant work.

"Good," Lukin said gruffly from the gantry above, his tone belying the hunger and excitement in his eyes. "Now, Doctor Essex, Doctor Rodchenko. Do you foresee any further difficulties?"

"None," Essex said plainly. "Excellent work, Madelyn. Though I noticed that you forged a deeper psychic connection than expected, one that would allow him entrance into your mind. There was also no sign of telepathic struggle. Why was this?"

"Subject Thorson trusted me," Maddie said plainly. "An emotional attachment born out of a resemblance to certain female figures in his life, a shared power-set, and a desire to 'save me'. I encouraged him to connect to my mind to demonstrate that I shared that attachment, then used the opening to attack. Exhausted, inexperienced, and weaker than I was to begin with, he was easy to overwhelm."

Essex nodded. "Excellent," he said. "You are no longer needed here."

"I will retire to my quarters, Doctor Essex," Maddie said.

"No," Essex said. "I mean that you are no longer needed on this base. You will not be required for what follows. There are other matters for you to attend to elsewhere, in the physical world. You will attend to them while I continue my work here."

It did not take a genius, a telepath, or a body language expert to read the words I do not trust you in the subtext. Certainly, Maddie could see it plainly enough.

Maddie hesitated, then nodded. "Of course, Doctor Essex," she said. "Do you wish me to retrieve Remy LeBeau, and the other escaped assets?"

"No," Essex said. "They can wait. I wish you to escort a subject of experimentation to one of my laboratories." And just like that, Maddie knew which one. "You will keep it contained. You will also perform a psychic self-diagnostic, to ensure that the destruction of Subject Thorson's mind, performed as it was while you were in connection to him, did not have lasting side-effects. When that is done, you will maintain yourself and ensure that you are ready for when you are needed. Is this understood?"

"Yes, Doctor Essex," Maddie said.

"And I will take that," Doctor Essex said, pointing to the golden phoenix feather pendant around her neck. "I believe it is worth studying."

Maddie nodded, concealing a racing heart, as Essex removed it from around her neck with his telekinesis. Because for all that she was a logical thinker, unlike Harry, she was not used to having to adapt her plans – indeed, she was not in the slightest bit used to making them in the first place. And this plan, her first real plan, had just started to go horribly wrong.

OoOoO

Now

"I see," Agent Coulson said. "Okay, thank you. We'll take a break there, Miss Grey."

Maddie frowned. "You are unsatisfied with my testimony?" she asked.

"No," Agent Coulson said. "We're building up a fuller picture of what happened, which means multiple accounts of events happening at different times. Also, a rest will allow you to collect your mind and make your way through the testimony at your own pace, remembering things that continuing now, you might have missed. I also thought that you would appreciate the opportunity to visit Harry and see how his recuperation is going."

Maddie nodded, standing up. "I understand," she said, then hesitated. "And… thank you, Agent Coulson. I would like that."

Coulson inclined his head. "You're welcome," he said. "Could someone send in Miss Danvers?"

OoOoO

Now

Carol sat down and folded her arms. "All right, secret agent man. Let's get this over with," she said. "Where d'you want me to start?"

"In the beginning, please, Miss Danvers."

"Okay. In the beginning, there was nothing, then it exploded."

"Maybe not quite that far back. How about when you were move to Asgard?"

"Fine. It went like this…"

OoOoO

Then

A week had passed, a week which Carol, Jean, and Jean-Paul had largely spent in Asgard, having been packed off post-haste, despite their protestations that they could help. But they were coolly shot down. Carol and Jean were targets, and Jean-Paul likely was one now, and, more to the point, was still suffering from cutting loose with his speed.

"You know, I'm surprised I hadn't got round to asking this before now – or maybe not, considering how long you've spent having your body basically put back together, but where did you go, anyway, Jean-Paul?" Carol asked Jean-Paul, frowning. "That hour, where did you go?"

"To speak to Draco Malfoy," Jean-Paul said. "To discover if our suspicions were correct."

"Suspicions?" Uhtred asked, frowning. "This Draco, of the family Malfoy, you think he is a threat?"

"He doesn't act like one," Carol said. "But…" She laid out their suspicions, namely that Draco might be possessed and Up To Something. "What impression did you get?"

"There is some influence on him," Jean-Paul said. "Or so I believe. Though I do not believe that it is a possession, more likely a willing partnership." He drummed his fingers on the table. "In truth, we did not have much time to speak, before he pointed out that your and Harry's excursion took you away from the protection of Sergeant Barnes, and my visit to him took away your swiftest method of escape. After that…"

Carol nodded. "Okay," she said. "Now, stop bullshitting me."

"Excusez-moi?"

"First, that wouldn't take an entire hour. Second, as far as I heard, you were the one who dropped Bucky and that psycho who was meant to get his attention off at the Mansion. Third, when you did, you'd taken off the suit. You were going at full throttle, despite knowing how insanely dangerous that is for you, and going at full throttle, you wouldn't have taken that long," Carol said. "You made at least one stop somewhere else. Where was it, and why?"

Jean-Paul stared at her for a long moment, then smiled reluctantly. "Sometimes," he remarked. "I forget how insightful you are, ma cherie." He paused, drumming his fingers. "There is someone I wished to check upon. Someone who is in many ways very normal, and in many others, unlike anyone, or anything, that I have ever encountered."

"What do you mean?" Diana asked.

"This person has believed for most of his life that he is human, perhaps a mutant," Jean-Paul said. "Yet he is most definitely not. In truth, I do not know what he is."

"How do you know that this person isn't a mutant?" Jean asked.

"He has too many powers," Jean-Paul said. "And… you recall when I lent you all my speed?"

Jean looked puzzled, but Carol, Diana, and Uhtred all nodded.

"In doing so, I felt you all," Jean-Paul said. "I know how an Asgardian feels, an Olympian demigoddess, an Asgardian demigod mutant, and a mortal super soldier."

Jean looked a little startled and Carol, noticing this, said, "I'm Steve's great-granddaughter. Long story."

"I… see," Jean said, having not previously been informed of this. "Why did no one mention it?"

"It never came up," Carol said. "And, frankly, it's not the sort of thing I talk about, because, you know, kidnapping psychos."

"Right," Jean said.

"If you do not know what he is, then what do you think he might be?" Diana asked.

"And is he dangerous, or in danger?" Uhtred asked, frowning. Jean-Paul was his sort of boyfriend, and he was concerned, even if Jean-Paul happened to be one of the most dangerous people on Earth when the mood took him.

Jean-Paul considered this. "He could be extremely dangerous," he said. "When I accelerated him, I felt his power. He is powerful, far more than he has even begun to realise. For the time being? He is superhumanly fast – not as much as I am, not even close, but faster on foot than anyone else I have encountered. He is strong, too. How strong exactly, I do not know, but at a guess… I would say that at most, he is Diana's equal, at least, Uhtred's. His durability I estimate to be equivalent. According to him, he has never been sick, either, suggesting a healing factor. And as time goes by, he is only growing stronger."

There was a stunned silence. Diana was, though she did not look it, one of the physically most powerful beings on Earth when she spent time there. Of course, there were those whose might was far beyond her, but they tended to be gods, godlike, or designed to battle gods and godlike beings, in the case of Tony's most powerful suits. For strength, she already had few peers who did not fall into one of those categories. Uhtred, meanwhile, was set to match and surpass Volstagg, himself the strongest Asgardian who was not part of the Royal Family, Heimdall, or, theoretically, Sif, accessing the full breadth of her powers as the Goddess of War, and officially ranked as a 'Greater God' on the hierarchy of divine power. Even now, for pure physical might, he was peerless among Asgardians of his age, stronger than many already full grown. For someone to be comparable to either was no mean feat.

"But he is not even close to being aware of the true extents of his gifts," Jean-Paul said. "He is also… sweet. Idealistic. And perhaps a little naïve. He is not stupid, and he is well drilled in the need to keep his secret from those who would exploit him, but… I would say that he could be dangerous, as much as any of us, save Miss Grey."

There was no dispute of this point. Diana could feel the raw psychic power that radiated off Jean, and was thus perfectly aware of how powerful she was.

Uhtred did not have any especial psychic senses either, but he knew Harry's power and trusted his judgement. So when Harry stated that Jean outclassed him the way the Sun outshone the Moon, he was disposed to take it seriously. And were that not enough, it was also common knowledge that Jean had been the one to undo the psychic effects of the dark spells Gravemoss had placed on the bullet that had put Thor in a coma, and had done so while remaining on Midgard. This deed alone, Cerebro or no Cerebro, was considered both a reason to honour her and a testament to the sheer depth of her power.

As for Carol, she'd seen both Harry and Jean going all out, and could draw her own conclusions just fine, thank you very much.

"However," Jean-Paul added. "What could be is not what is. And right now, I would say that he is far more in danger than he is dangerous."

"Why him in particular?" Jean asked. "And why are you so sure that he's not a mutant, or something else magical?"

"Yeah," Carol said. "I mean, Jean here's testament to how strong mutants can get. And believe me, that psychotic cousin of hers and Harry's proved that it can get into super strength and stuff too."

"What cousin?" Uhtred asked, frowning.

"You know how Harry grew up with an aunt and uncle who treated him horribly?" Carol asked.

Uhtred nodded, frowning.

"Harry's cousin, their son, who's also Jean's cousin, turned out to have superpowers too," Carol said. "Apparently he was a massive jerk to begin with. A few years in that weird spirit world place, with powers and pretty much a license to take whatever the hell he wanted? You've got a major league monster on your hands." She looked grim. "He's not even close to strong as Harry, let alone Jean. But he was strong enough."

"How strong?" Diana asked softly.

"Harry hates him and they went toe to toe," Carol said flatly. "He survived something that blew up half the complex we were. Maybe he only survived because Harry decided that he had better things to do, but that says a lot."

Jean-Paul, Uhtred and Diana all nodded grim, serious nods.

"And this guy still had enough left to take on me, grandma, uncle Jack, and a bunch of mutants, one of whom had serious super strength, and leave us all on the ground. Two of the mutants, Lorna and Noriko, channelled a couple of lightning bolts into my shield, and I blasted him in the eyes with that," Carol said. "He was still standing, though apparently it really fucking hurt. After that, he still had enough to attack Thor. Who, you know, took him out in one shot, but that's because Thor is fucking Thor."

"Survived?" Jean asked, noticing the inflection.

Carol and the others, who had seen Harry cut loose, shared looks. "Jean… Harry's a lovely guy," Carol said slowly. "But…"

"He has the blood of warriors in him," Uhtred said. "That blood runs hot."

"And cold," Diana said quietly.

"What are you saying?" Jean asked.

"I'm saying that I know you see him as your sweet little cousin, your baby brother – and he is that sweet," Carol said. "He's one of the best people I've ever known. He's got so much power and he holds it in check every single damn day, watching every single thought, and it is absolutely incredible. But he has been through hell in his life. And while it looks like he's shrugged it off, or at least survived it, there's a part of him that it twisted." She met Jean's gaze as the other girl looked away. "You know, don't you? You've been inside his mind, same way I have, and you'd know what to look for much better than I would."

Jean said nothing. But she didn't disagree, either.

"Yeah," Carol said, subdued. "I thought so. He keeps it boxed up, all the time. She met Jean's gaze. "He knows it, and it scares the hell out of him, which is why he locks it away and watches every thought every moment of every day. Except… except for those times when he's so angry that it gets out. And when it does, he's capable of some of the most pants-shittingly terrifying things I have ever seen." She looked away. "Am I saying that I think that Harry's capable of killing someone? Yeah. Because I know he is. I watched him rip Gravemoss' chest open like a book and tear his heart out. All of us did. It freaked him out when he stopped to think, and Gravemoss a) deserved it, b) survived – actually, being whatever the fuck he was meant that all it did was piss him off, but…" She looked up at the ceiling. "Honestly? If I was him, kidnapped by the guy who made my childhood hell, waking up in some kind of freaky Thunderdome in some sort of power suppressing suit on, with my childhood bully who'd into some giant monster with superpowers, enough to hurt me – and he was hurt, believe me, I saw it, and badly… I don't think that I'd stop to think. I think that I'd stop holding back. Stop watching my thoughts. Take out a lifetime of hurt and anger on the guy." She shrugged. "Of course, Harry didn't go after him to finish the job, which probably says that he's a better person than I am. Maybe he wasn't out to kill, just to take out his anger on a superpowered punching bag, because it's not like he's short of that. But. Like I said. I can easily imagine that he would have been out to kill. Or at least, wouldn't have immediately cared if he did. He would afterwards, hell, he'd have been absolutely horrified. That's why he's the good guy. But he's got a dark side and more issues than the New Scientist." Her gaze slid to Uhtred and Diana. "And as those two could tell you, he's got that warrior's blood thing too. Which, frankly, is not a good mix."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Why am I?" Carol wondered aloud. "I mean, you're not the first person close to Harry I've had to tell; that Hermione chick, his friend from school. Smart, cool, and a tough cookie. A bit like you. But like you, she didn't get what Harry is capable of when he's really, really pushed. Like her, I'm not trying to warn you off or paint him as some kind of dark lord in waiting. I'm trying to fill you in, because it's something that you need to know – something, frankly, that you in particular should damn well know without me having to tell you!"

"Carol," Diana said softly.

Carol sighed. "Sorry," she said. "Bad day."

"I know," Jean said. "I had one of those once."

Carol eyed her, then smiled a crooked, disturbingly old smile. "I guess you did," she said. "Anyway – if, fuck it, when Harry has his mind fucked with, those Red Room psychos could find out that they've unleashed something that they've got absolutely no way to control. Worst case nightmare scenario? They unleash it, and he can't get it back under control. There aren't many people who could stop him in that case. Not many people who could, who would, and even fewer I'd trust to do it. You're one of them, and if you're going to fight him – and yeah, it's a possibility – you're going to need to be ready for what you might face."

There was a stunned silence.

"That's what you're thinking about?" Jean asked, astounded and not a little angry. "He could be being tortured and –"

"And twisted into a weapon, like the Winter Soldier or that psycho version of Natasha," Carol snapped. "They don't have any powers beyond, at most, super soldier level physicals, and Harry's got those, plus major league magic, psychic powers second only to you and that evil twin of yours – who, odds are, we'll be running into again – and two psychic teachers who are going to take his skills up to a whole new level if they succeed in turning him." She looked away. "I don't like thinking it. I don't like that when my best friend is in the hands of total monsters who I just know are going to take him, hurt him, maybe even break him, and try and destroy everything he is, part of brain automatically starts a threat assessment and figuring out ways to stop him. I hate it! But it's part of who I am, it's fucking necessary, and it is what he would want, because if he was under their control and he hurt one of us, when he got out from under it, it would absolutely destroy him." She looked up, tears in her eyes, but a diamond hardness too. "Look me in the eye and tell me I'm wrong, Jean. Look me in the eye and tell me that, and I might just believe you."

Jean looked her in the eye. But she didn't say anything of the sort.

"She is right," Jean-Paul said quietly.

Diana nodded, a sad look on her face.

"This is wrong," Uhtred said, in a low voice. "He is our friend, my liege, Lady Jean's cousin. We should be plotting how to help him, not how to destroy him."

"This is plotting how to help him," Carol said. "We don't have any way of helping to find him – and believe me, if we did, I would be on that – so this is the next best thing. Because not doing so, winding up helpless in the firing line – and you can bet that Jean at least is on their hit-list, because they'll be shit scared of her – and…" She trailed off. "That would destroy him. And you all know it."

"It does not sit right with me," Uhtred said eventually.

"Me neither, big guy," Carol said. "Me neither." She eyed Jean-Paul. "Speaking of being in the firing line… just why do you think that this guy of yours is so likely to be a target? And how do you know that he's not a mutant or something magical, like Jean said earlier? Because it sounds to me like he's done a pretty good job of pretending."

"I know how magic feels, and how mutants feel," Jean-Paul said. "He does not feel like either. As for why he is a target, that is simple. For some reason that I have been unable to decipher, he looks exactly like Harry."

There was a stunned silence.

"When you say exactly," Jean began.

"But for green eyes and certain, subtle differences in build, the messiness of his hair, and perhaps a touch in face shape, with only the eyes being obvious even on moderate inspection, I would say that they were born identical," Jean-Paul said. "The only immediately noticeable differences lie in the eyes, Harry's scar, and his locks of white hair." He shrugged. "The way they stand, the way they hold themselves, their attitudes in general, those are very different, of course," he added, as if these were all perfectly obvious and only of passing notice. "But still. They are near identical. And for the life of me, I have no idea why."

"I'm gonna be completely and utterly obvious and say that this isn't a wacky coincidence," Carol remarked.

Jean-Paul gave her a dry look. "It is unlikely, cherie."

There was a long silence.

"Why are we here, anyway?" Jean asked. "I mean, not that I'm grateful to King Odin for putting us up, but…"

"You are blood family to Prince Harry," Uhtred said. "You have done great deeds as a hero, including healing Crown Prince Thor. And Jean-Paul and Carol are honoured heroes, the latter of the blood line of Steve Rogers himself, the greatest of Midgard's Great Captains. Do you think that you are undeserving?"

"It is also beyond the reach of even this Red Room you speak of," Diana said.

"Yes, no, I… it's not about that," Jean said. "I don't think." She looked around. She'd seen Asgard before, but only in passing, on another mission. Now, having spent several days there… it was breathtaking. Overwhelming even, like something out of some kind of film fusion of high fantasy and higher sci-fi. "I just worry about the others."

"Professor Xavier, Loki and Wanda found somewhere for them," Carol said. "And between those three, it's probably safe as anywhere you'll find; probably off in some kind of pocket dimension somewhere."

"I wouldn't be certain of that," Jean said darkly.

Carol raised an eyebrow.

"That portal that led from Avengers Mansion to the Red Room," Jean said. "Remember it?"

"Vaguely," Carol said. "What with me being unconscious when I actually went through it and all. Jane's work?"

"Mine," Jean said. "I sensed Harry was in trouble, so I reached out and ripped a hole in the fabric of reality to get to him."

There was a stunned silence.

"Okay," Carol said. "I'll add that to the list of things that make you a terrifying super badass. But while trans-dimensional thingummy-whatsits…"

"Mechanics," Jean-Paul supplied.

"Right, aren't my strong point… isn't this Nevernever place meant to be way closer than Asgard is?" Carol asked. "Also, I'm guessing that this isn't a trick you could exactly repeat, or you'd have done it already."

"I've tried," Jean said. "Several times. But… when I helped Thor wake up over the summer, I used Cerebro – it's this machine that Professor Xavier built, it amplifies psychic powers – to project myself into Asgard, through the World Tree. Though, I had a bit of help from Huginn and Muninn in getting there on time. I'm pretty sure the skills are transferrable."

"And you did not mention this before?" Uhtred asked, anger and concern edging his voice.

"I did," Jean said. "To Huginn and Muninn." She shook her head. "Besides. I don't know how I did what I did, and of the two of us, I'm the one who has even a very vague idea of how to do that and find Asgard through the World Tree, not her." Her gaze drifted to the fire. "It's been less than three months since I found out just how strong I really was. Or I thought I did. Truth is, I don't have any idea how powerful I really am, let alone what I'm capable of. She does. She's been trained as a weapon from birth. Even Harry, who's not as strong and not even half as trained, has a better idea of what he, we, can do."

"Then you will have to find out," Diana said. "Even if you might be afraid of it." When Jean shot her a startled look, the younger girl smiled a gentle, wise smile. "You are not the only one who has been afraid to embrace their full gifts."

"That you are most certainly not," Jean-Paul agreed.

Diana nodded, then looked thoughtful. "You have a connection to Harry," she said. "When he was wielding his powers to their full extent, or near enough, you could follow that connection."

"And I could pour power into my end of the connection and follow it," Jean said. "I know. I tried. It didn't work."

"I know," Diana said. "I had assumed so. But you are not the only one with a psychic connection to Harry." She turned to Carol. "And I believe that he was not half as careful, or as skilled, when he made it."

Carol and Jean's eyes both widened.

"Loki said that Harry didn't protect his own mind when he went into mine," Carol said. "And I went into his."

"Meaning that there are parts of his mind in yours and yours in his," Jean said slowly. "They resonate."

Both turned to Diana. "Diana, you're a genius!" they said, in perfect unison.

Diana smiled. "I know," she said.

"Now," Jean-Paul said. "We need to find someone to help us make it work. Preferably before the Red Room manage to do what they have set out to do."

"Queen Frigga," Uthred said. "She must know of this, and she will be able to help."

As it was, however, their wonderful idea was too late.

OoOoO

"Your idea is a good one, Diana," Frigga said. "And it may still be needed. But."

"But?" Carol asked, before adding, "your majesty?"

"Please, Frigga will do," Frigga said, before her expression turned grim. "I am afraid that your task may well have become much harder." She gestured, and screens rose up, displaying footage from news organisations worldwide. And the news was grim. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria had all announced their intentions to leave the European Union and NATO with immediate effect, returning to the Commonwealth of Independent States, now no longer a piece of post-Soviet hubris, and joining the Eurasian Economic Union, signalling far greater ties with Russia.

Were any more indications required, those same nations had expelled their American, British and Chinese ambassadors, with the French and Germans apparently remaining solely on sufferance. And a number of functionaries from those embassies, and businesspersons connected to those nations, had been steadily vanishing. Furthermore, economic alliances were being followed by talk of closer military and intelligence ties, "to ensure the security of our peoples and our common heritage in the face of an uncertain world." All the while, Russians signed up to the military in their thousands.

Event that was not it. For there were also reports of multiple sightings of the Winter Soldier, often followed by disappearances. And in some cases, when the disappearance was obvious, when a point was clearly being made, a red five pointed star was painted on the wall, with an inscription beneath, one seared into the walls: 'Forever Red.'

The message was clear: Russia was strong again. Russia would not bow to enemies of any kind. And if you joined up, if you served, then you too could share in the glory

"What the hell," Carol breathed.

"The Red Room have succeeded," Frigga said quietly. "What you see here are only the ripples perceptible to most mortals. The politicians and power brokers in the nations mentioned have had their minds altered. Loki informs me that agents of all powers opposed to the Red Room and their agenda are being hunted down, drained of all knowledge, then either thrown away as refuse, or executed as an example, with the knowledge taken leading to others. Internal dissenters are similarly treated. Others with secrets, of technology, of magic, or anything of value, are also being manipulated, though in more subtle fashions. The mundane world is also not the only one to feel the brunt of their wrath, of my grandson's power. He and a group of other enhanced mortals, ones apparently known as 'the Winter Guard', have hunted down and destroyed White Court, Black Court, Grey Court and Red Court enclaves. The White Council have withdrawn all their operatives from the Red Room's sphere of influence – they already have a war to fight. The wanded community, those not sensible enough to flee, and those with less power in the wandless community who could not, have been made to kneel."

"They can't hold down all that," Carol said. "No way. Not even with Harry."

"Right," Jean said. "Harry's strong, incredibly strong, but even he couldn't…"

"Control half a continent?" Frigga said. "They do not need him to. After all, to the mortal world, it appears that all of this is being done without supernatural intervention. And all they need him to do is to act in the right place, then exploit the changes he has made."

"And is no one trying to stop this?" Jean asked, stunned and horrified.

Frigga gave her an unusually cool, hard look. "Everything that can be done, is being done," she said. "My younger son, Professor Xavier, Lady Braddock, and the finest psychics and mental mages to be found are travelling far and wide, seeking to repair the damage and undo the alterations. Were it not for them, this would have happened far faster and been much worse. But this is not like HYDRA. To my understanding, this Red Room is backed by the might of a sovereign state, and though it now acts of its own will, its leader seeking to use my grandson to usurp his nominal masters, it has wealth, manpower, and rat-holes to spare. Additionally, the mortal organisation designed to combat it, SHIELD, was already weakened by HYDRA's poison, and is now in disarray." She looked grim. "Scum they may be, but they have chosen their moment well."

"And what has been Asgard's response, my Queen?" Uhtred asked, in a careful tone.

Frigga gestured, bringing up more screens. These showed failures at every mine, oil rig, gas pipeline, and every other source of mineral and metallic wealth in Russia, ones that spread into the lands where the Red Room was establishing its hold. All that came forth was a dry, dead, dust. "The resources they so prize, the ones that drive their machines and economy, turn to dust," she said, voice cold and hard. "Any they try to import will meet the same fate. Soon, their food will turn to ash in their mouths. Then, their water to sand. Their crops will fail, and any that they attempt to import will rot and wither. The land will become barren and inhospitable." Her eyes narrowed. "They may have the cruelty of demons, but they still have the bodies of men. They will not receive the honour of dying in battle, or of open war. They are vermin, and unless they learn the error of their ways very soon indeed, they will die as such."

Carol gulped.

OoOoO

Now

"So, yeah, Harry's grandma is kind of terrifying. Who knew?" Carol said.

"It is fairly logical to expect the woman who raised Thor and Loki to be every bit as formidable as they are, and more besides."

"Good point," Carol said. "But yeah… everything was going crazy. I mean, the Red Room started with Eastern Europe, then they started turning to Central Asia; Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, those kinds of places. I even heard that they were gearing up to do something big on the Chinese border, though I never heard what."

"That part we know about, Miss Danvers."

"Yeah, well, there's one part you don't know about. At least, not how it happened."

"I know."

"And you want me to tell you."

"That would be helpful."

"Harry only told me –"

"Because he trusts you. I know. But we need to know what happened, and he's in no state to say. It's an important moment for more reasons than the obvious – the personal, the geopolitical…"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Carol said. There was a silence. "Who hears this?"

"Myself, Deputy Director Hill, Director Fury, and when she's reconfirmed, Deputy Director Carter. Your grandmother."

"I haven't forgotten who she is, you know. And who hears about it? The details, I mean, the report you put together."

"I can't tell you that."

"Not good enough."

"Then you can live without it."

"Miss Danvers –"

"You know what happened. It's not hard to figure out. And it's not exactly key to this story, is it?"

"It's more important than your realise."

Another silence.

"I can elide the details in the written report."

Another silence.

"Fine. I'll tell you about how that Lukin guy finally jumped off the deep end. I'll tell you how he killed the Russian President. And how he used Harry to do it."

OoOoO

Then

In a location so secret that few knew existed as anything more than a patch of land, two groups drew up. At first glance, one gravely outnumbered the other; a cavalcade of jeeps and personnel carriers, carrying over seventy of the best trained and best armed soldiers in the Eastern hemisphere, if not the world, shadowed by ten 'Hind' attack helicopters, with five Su-25 jets optimised for ground attack circling 20 kilometres away.

The other, by contrast, was composed of nothing more than a middle aged man in a Russian general's uniform, a blonde woman with an artificial thumb, a practical looking set of tactical gear, and a cold expression, and a young man in a military baseball cap that concealed his face and fatigues, carrying a tray. On it were two glasses of vodka.

"Quite the entrance, Volodya," Lukin remarked, as another middle aged man, of average height, fine suit and furious expression, leapt out of one of the jeeps.

"What the hell have you done, Lukin?!" the other man snarled.

"Me?" Lukin asked, amused. "I have given Russia back the means to take what it is rightfully hers. I am making Russia great again, restoring her stolen might, regaining her lost respect. As I was doing before you called this meeting." He smirked. "If you had wanted a status report, Volodya, you could just have asked."

Volodya went nearly purple with rage. "'Making Russia great again'? Are you insane?!" he almost screamed. "Explain to me, Lukin, how purposefully enraging Asgard by kidnapping the son of its Crown Prince, upending the work of decades in a week, and in the process frightening every other nuclear capable nation on the planet so much that they are reaching for those weapons, is by any measure making Russia great again?"

"They will not be a concern," Lukin said calmly. "Your plans were commendable in intent. But they were taking too long. And the world has changed, Volodya. Your plans are obsolete. They left us at risk of being left behind by the Americans, the Chinese, even the British, who have embraced the superhuman revolution. As for that fear, that is good. It means that Russia is being respected once again. You need not fear that they will reach for their nuclear weapons – even if they do, all I need do is say a word, and they will never fire them. Instead, they will fall on their knees in supplication and give them to us."

"And Asgard?" Volodya demanded. "Do you think that you can fight the gods themselves? My god, Lukin, they have already crippled our nation! Oil, gas, coal, metallic ore, all of it turns either to dust or to nothingness, and only, mark you, within our borders and those that your insane actions have prematurely brought into our orbit. Any we attempt to import meets the same fate. Soon, the country will grind to a halt, and then, it will fall to its knees."

Lukin shrugged. "The nuclear reactors will provide the necessary power," he said. "And soon enough, we will have the full secrets of arc reactor technology, not merely the crude copies we have scraped together from Anton Vanko's memories and Ivan Vanko's surviving blue prints. All will be provided for."

Volodya stared at him. "You have gone completely insane," he said slowly.

"Perhaps," Lukin said. "But if the alternative to insanity is cowardice, then I can live with it. As for Asgard, why would I worry? One god already does my bidding." He smiled pleasantly and took the glasses from the tray. It hadn't tremored by even a fraction, despite the heat beating down in the summer sun. "Vodka?"

Volodya stared at the offered glass, then narrowed his eyes and stared hard at the young man holding the tray. Then, they shot open wide and he took half a step back. "Is that…"

Lukin glanced casually at the young man with the tray, then knocked back his own glass. "Yes," he said. "Yes, it is. And no it isn't. He is something, someone, more than he was. Volodya, allow me to introduce you to the Red Son; a loyal child, unlike his wayward older brother, the Winter Soldier, and Russia's salvation."

Volodya looked at him, then narrowed his , he took a dozen deliberate steps back and raised a hand. Instantly, every single one of the soldiers, who had previously taken up positions of watchful readiness, dropped into firing positions.

"So, you won't be wanting the vodka, then," Lukin remarked, then shrugged, before knocking back the second glass, placing them both back onto the tray.

"I had a visit, Lukin," Volodya said. "From Captain America and Thor. They had a message and broke into my office in the Kremlin simply to deliver it, as a demonstration of how easy it would be for them to kill me. But it is not me that they want. They only want three things. The boy, unharmed. You, on a silver platter, preferably with the creature that calls itself 'Essex'. And the Red Room destroyed, for good."

Lukin's eyes narrowed. "And you mean to accept."

"In bringing him here, you have made my life much easier," Volodya said coldly. "A suitable recompense considering how much harder you have made it this last two weeks. And while I imagine they would prefer you alive, I am sure that your corpse would equally satisfy them."

Lukin's eyes narrowed further, then he barked out a curt order.

The Red Son discarded the tray and set himself, eyes aglow.

Nothing happened.

"I am not a fool, Lukin," Volodya said. "My men were equipped with the finest psychic shielding technology that can be found. Goodbye, old friend." He glanced at the soldiers. "Make sure that you don't hit the boy." He raised his arm again, then brought it down sharply.

Bullets roared out in a hail of metal.

Nothing happened.

"Bozhe moi," one soldier whispered.

As had happened only a few months before, thousands of bullets hung in the air like a curtain of metal. As before, they fell in a tinkle of metal at a gesture.

"You are not a complete fool, Volodya, but still fool enough," Lukin said. "My loyal son is not merely a telepath. He is a telekinetic too, as you should well know. Bullets are no trouble for him." He picked one up and examined it. "Even adamantium, enchanted bullets." He smiled at Volodya's sudden fear. "Red Son."

The boy snapped to attention.

"These men are traitors to Russia. Cowards, grovelling at American feet, doing the Americans' bidding. The soldiers are no longer fit to wear their uniforms or bear their arms."

The Red Son gestured, and all the soldiers' uniforms were ripped away, as their rifles rose away from their owners, sometimes dragging them along the floor as they tried desperately to cling on. Volodya snapped desperate words into his radio, and barely moments later, giant bullets, like fat, metal bees, arrived moments before the distant roar of their firing.

None of them had any effect, pinging off a barely visible shield as the rifles reloaded themselves.

"Destroy those helicopters."

The hail of gunfire continued for a moment, before their was a sudden, distant crunch of grinding metal, like five attack helicopters being turned into compacted scrap. Someone with especially sharp hearing might have heard some very brief, but nonetheless terrified screams.

Belova smirked cruelly at the shock and fear on the faces of the now naked and disarmed soldiers, and most of all on the face of Volodya.

"General Lukin, Alek…" the latter began.

"Make them kneel," Lukin said. "Oh, not you, Volodya. I want you to see this."

The Red Son, expression blank as a slate, didn't move. But each and every one of the soldiers was inexorably forced to their knees.

"Alek, please, don't!"

"Execute them."

Each of the rifles cracked once. There was a series of synchronised thumps, as a series of corpses with identically placed bullet holes between their eyes collapsed to the ground.

"You did not have to do that," Volodya said bitterly.

"Of course I did," Lukin said calmly. "Power is not power if it is not accompanied by respect. They did not respect me. You did not respect me. And now I will demonstrate why you should have done. Red Son. Make him kneel. No, make him crawl to me."

The Red Son looked at Volodya, forcing him to do as Lukin bade, slowly dragging him across the stony ground until he knelt before Lukin.

"Any last words from a traitor?"

"You call me a traitor? It is you who is the traitor!" Volodya snarled. "Your madness will be Russia's ruin. You have won the opening battles, but you will not win the war. The boy is your slave for now, but for how long? His family will reach across the stars to find you, and when they do, I will watch from heaven as you burn in the hell reserved for traitorous scum!"

Lukin snorted. "So you say," he said. "I think that you will be disappointed." He drew a pistol and pressed it against Volodya's forehead. His lips quirked in a wry smile. "Goodbye… old friend."

The pistol cracked.

Another body slumped to the ground.

The Red Son watched dispassionately, merely noting it as one less potential hostile and a completed objective, then turned to his master, awaiting further orders.

"Yelena," Lukin said. "Are those Rooks getting any closer?"

"No," she said.

"Good," Lukin said. "I would hate to waste more Russian blood." He glanced at them both. "Come. We are done here."

The Red Son nodded and obeyed.

It was his purpose, after all.

Chapter Text

Now

"Okay, Miss Danvers, you're done for now. Thank you for your testimony."

"Yeah," Carol said, standing up. "Whatever. Call me the next time you want me to relive one of the worst weeks of my life."

"I will. Please send Miss Grey back in."

"Which one?"

That got her an unamused look.

"What? There's two of them now."

"Madelyn. Otherwise known as Maddie or, indeed, Rachel."

"Okay, okay, I'm doing it."

A long few moments pass. The door opens.

"Okay, Miss Grey. Are you ready?"

"I think so."

"Good," Coulson said. "Now, how about we pick up where we left off. You had been sent away to another of Doctor Nathaniel Essex's… I'm not sure if the appropriate word is laboratory, base, or possibly morgue."

"They served all three purposes."

"Fair enough. You were sent away with a consignment for study. Your plan had gone wrong. What happened after that?"

"Well…"

OoOoO

Then

Maddie had obeyed Doctor Essex. She hadn't really had any other choice – if she'd blinked, he'd have been onto what she'd done. If he hadn't been already.

Worry and fear ran in circles in her mind, gnawing away at her, so that her body had worked on autopilot, taking the consignment to the designated location and easily packing it up with a few thoughts. She was so deep in her worries, over what would or could happen next, so frustrated in her helplessness about what to do next, that she almost didn't notice that when her psychic powers touched one of the containers, they made contact with a brush of psychic energy.

Frowning, she examined the container. It was a smooth cylinder, with an interface that she recognised as fitting in to certain parts of the lab for analysis.

For a moment, she stared at it, wondering what it was, and what she should do with it.

Then, she made her decision. Childish as it might be, the idea was simple. Doctor Essex was going to hurt that which she cared about - or, at least, she dimly recognised Harry as fitting the criteria for something/someone she cared about. Remy excepted, it wasn't something which she'd had any experience with. Therefore, she was going to hurt something he cared about.

With a thought, the canister broke neatly in half and an orange energy seeped out, forming into a cloud.

"What are you?" Maddie murmured.

The reply was almost instant.

I'm the genie of the lamp, luv, and as thanks for freeing me, you get three wishes.

There was a pause.

"None of that made any sense."

No, I suppose it wouldn't, not to you, the voice replied. It was telepathic, that much was obvious.

"You're a spiritual entity," Maddie said, frowning and getting down on her haunches to examine the orange cloud. "Except… there is something about your mind that is familiar."

Yeah, we've met, luv. You were mind-controlling me and my friends into sitting back down onto our beds and being good little prisoners. Which makes it all the more surprising that you're popping the one me out of my prison – not that I'm complaining. It was bloody boring in there. I'm just not sure why you did it.

Maddie frowned. "Subject Starsmore," she said, then paused. "Jonothon. Jonothon Starsmore. A living chamber of psychic energy, a psionic reactor. I remember you. How did you come to be in this state?"

Jono for short, luv. And I got a little too close to that big friend of yours, 'the Beast'. Turns out that he's apparently the cousin of Thor's lad, according to the lovely Carol. Who'd have thought it, eh?

"He is no friend of mine," Maddie said. "And really?" She frowned. That would mean that 'the Beast' was related to her. Not a notion she enjoyed considering, she had to admit.

Anyway, yours truly was wrung like a chicken. Next thing I know, I'm an experiment in a jar.

"Not any more," Maddie said, then frowned. "Your essence… it isn't stable, outside of your body."

Well, no, I'd think not. I'm sort of a ghost now, luv.

"Ghosts are psychic imprints left by the dead," Maddie said. "Usually, they simply go through the motions of their old lives. Or go insane. You are more like a free-willed spiritual entity."

There's a difference?

"A significant one," Maddie said, sitting cross-legged and frowning at the cloud of energy that made up this particular spirit. "You should be able to manipulate your essence into a solid form."

… What?

Maddie stared at him, then nodded as she understood. "Doctor Essex never taught you what you were capable of," she said. "For fear that he wouldn't be able to contain you." Her expression turned bitter. "A being like you, after all, couldn't be programmed."

Excuse me?

"You have no reason to trust me," Maddie said. "But…" She related her recent revelations, and her recent desire to be something… worthy. She poured it all out, in fact, not knowing why she was confessing all this to a disembodied spiritual entity, just that she had to talk to someone.

Well, Jono said eventually. Can't say I'm entirely surprised. Carol reckoned you were a clone of wonder boy's cousin.

Maddie took a moment to parse this. "Yes, they thought so too," she said. "But I am the same age as she is. And much of my life has been spent in the real world or dimensions close to it, where the temporal disparity is limited. Equally, I remember my early life and training well enough to know that it isn't simply programming."

Well, that's a puzzler. Are you sure?

"Doctor Essex would not bother to implant false memories into me. He believes that I am totally under his control," Maddie said bitterly.

Bloody hell. I'm sorry, luv. I'm really sorry.

Maddie's brow crinkled. "Why? You had nothing to do with it."

What? Oh. I mean that I feel sorry for you, luv. It's called sympathy.

"Oh," Maddie said, frowning. "I see. I… thank you."

Yeah, well. You've been dealt an absolutely rotten hand by the sounds of it. But now you're trying to change things.

"Trying, but not succeeding," Maddie said unhappily. "What is the point if all my attempts to improve matters for others and myself simply make them worse?"

Hey, hey. From what I understand, you've already made it a bit better. Your kid cousin's mind is somewhere safe –

"I would question that definition under the circumstances."

Relatively safe, then. Safer than it would have been. He ain't been lobotomised, his mind is intact. You can still fix things, Jono said, tone reassuring.

"But how?" Maddie wondered aloud, then paused. "I may not be immediately able to help my… cousin." She stopped again. Cousin. She was uncertain of her status, of what kind of being she was. She'd never questioned it before, but she was now. And it had certainly never occurred to her before now, even when both Harry and her doppelganger, Jean, had offered her kinship, to think of herself as part of a family.

"But," she continued, after a long moment's thought. "Being Worthy does not mean merely protecting my cousin. You are here. I think that I can help you." She started to reach out.

Whoa, wait up, luv. I appreciate the offer, but what are you planning?

"To help you form your energy into a practical physical form," Maddie said.

… Bloody hell. You can do that?!

"I believe so. You are composed of psychic energy. I have been learning various means and methods of manipulating psychic energy all my life. Illusions are simple enough, and with your energy to give it solidity, I believe I can help you create a psychic construct body," Maddie said.

There was a long, stunned pause.

Bloody hell.

"You have already said that," Maddie pointed out.

And I'm sayin' it again. Bloody hell. Bloody fucking hell.

Maddie waited as Jono deliberated.

All right. Let's give it a go. But next time, ask first, okay luv? If you're trying to be better, rule one is not going into other people's minds and messin' about with them without asking. Not unless you don't have a choice. Or they're trying to kill you. Which, I suppose, falls under 'don't have a choice'.

Maddie paused, then nodded, reaching out again, then hesitated. "If you will permit me?"

She felt… the psychic equivalent of a smile, she supposed. Yes, luv. I do permit. Just be gentle. This is my first time, remember.

Maddie stopped and narrowed her eyes at the energy cloud. "That was sexual humour, wasn't it?" she said. "Remy sometimes made such jokes."

This time, there was a psychic laugh. You're learning, luv. It's a way to break the tension.

"Understood," Maddie said. "Though at least next time have the courtesy to be funny."

That got another, louder laugh. I'll do my best, luv.

"I suppose that that will have to do," she said, in arch tones. "Now," she said, taking a deep breath. "Let us begin."

OoOoO

Now

"You can create psychic constructs that complex? And maintain them?" Coulson asked.

"That was a unique scenario," Maddie said. "What I was doing was less the creation of psychic construct, more the manipulation of existing energy into construct form, then leaving the guiding sentience behind that energy – Jonothon – to maintain it. It helped that he had… memories, I suppose, of being in human form and shape. Those were a useful framework."

"So you used his memories as a framework, guided the energy into place, then let him hold it there?"

"An apt summation."

"That is genuinely remarkable, Miss Grey."

Astonishingly, Maddie blushed slightly. "Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome. What happened after that?"

"In truth? Very little, for some time. My next serious involvement was… was when matters came to a head."

"I see. Very well, Miss Grey. Thank you for your time. We'll adjourn for now, and fill in some of the gaps. Send in Agent Romanova."

A pause.

"Hello, Natasha."

"There's no need for the soft serve, Coulson. Where are you up to?"

"Miss Grey and Miss Danvers have covered their sides of the missing two weeks – or at least, the relevant parts."

"And you want my side of it."

"Correct."

"Okay."

OoOoO

Then

"Twelve days," Fury said. "Twelve days. Is that really only how long it takes to set a continent on fire?"

"So it would seem," Loki said quietly.

Thor's jaw muscles clenched, and he said nothing.

Fury sighed, and rubbed at his eye. He looked exhausted. To be frank, they were all exhausted, emotionally if not physically.

"Just about everywhere East of Berlin and West of Kashgar is following the Moscow line – the new Moscow line, since the Russian President has mysteriously resigned his position, along with just about all his hardcore loyalists, and gone into seclusion. They've been replaced by a bunch of malleable nobodies who are almost certainly Lukin's patsies," he said. "We've got good intel that suggests that Red Room bases are opening up all over Asia and Eastern Europe, and they're reactivating a few old ones, including Mount Yamantau."

"Yamantau?" Thor asked shortly.

"One of the last big Red Room facilities to open up before they were originally, unsuccessfully shut down," Fury said. "The Russians insisted on decommissioning it themselves, and considering everything else we had to handle at the time, we weren't that interested in pushing. As far as we know, it's a research and development facility specialising in alien technology."

"Like Area 52," Tony said. "Or are they calling it Project Blue Book again?" When Fury eyed him, he smiled an unpleasant smile. "Like a SHIELD Agent of my acquaintance once said to me, if I can get into it, so can someone else less friendly. Tighten up your security."

Natasha rolled her eyes, but said nothing.

"Oh, believe me, I will," Fury said, in tones that suggested that SHIELD's Cyber-Security unit was about to have a rocket put under them again. "Point is, the Red Room are flexing their muscles, spreading as fast as they can. They don't want to get caught cold in one place like HYDRA were, and by taking out the Russian President and replacing him and several others with puppets on telepathic strings – which I think we can safely assume they have – they've got one of the most powerful nations in the world at their disposal." He glanced at Thor and Loki. "Asgard's intervention has put their power projection, internal and external, on a timer, though. No army in the world can function without transport, much less support systems. Which leads to the question of what they're going to do next. Hill reckons that Lukin will turn his people inwards, consolidate what they've got, and start by bringing the Chechens to their knees. Or killing them. I don't think he's that picky."

"Perhaps he has already tried, and," Thor began.

"Harry as we know him is off the board as an effective player," Fury said. "Red Room programming isn't infallible, as we well know, but it's damn close. And that's before you take into account an Omega Class telepath who's ever stronger than he damn well is. She's got under his guard before, and from all you've said, she was having the better of their brawl. Factor in exhaustion, drugs, starvation, thirst, and probably torture, and stubborn as the kid is, he is not going to be able to resist her."

"You assume that she would betray him like that," Thor said.

"LeBeau may believe that there's something in her, and the prophecy and his letter may hint at it, but for now, I am going with the worst and most likely case scenario," Fury said. "It's not a betrayal if she was never loyal to him in the first place. Harry's a smooth talker when he wants to be, and he's magnetic, thanks to Wanda's blessing and his own personality. But I somehow doubt that that is going to overcome a lifetime of programming. Especially since her boss is apparently dead – odds are that she'll fall back on old ways."

"He is dead, Nicholas," Wanda said. "I made very sure of it."

"Considering that we once thought the same thing about Arnim Zola, and if I remember what Strange said right, we're talking about the creature that damn well taught him everything he knows, I'm disposed to suspect otherwise," Fury said. "For one thing, cloning technology exists and I believe that they possess it. For a telepath that strong, it's a get out of jail free card – the Shadow King proved that."

Wanda's hands clenched into fists. "Then I'll kill him again," she said coldly. "And again, and again, and as many times as necessary."

"Careful Wanda," Clint said.

"Now is not the time for careful, Clint," Wanda snapped. "At best, we've been firefighting! The Red Room are always one step ahead of us because they have Harry and unlike us, they know what they're doing!"

"That and the fact that they have a hideaway where time moves far faster than it does here, meaning that they can conduct multiple missions back to back in normal time," Natasha observed.

"I wasn't talking about that," Clint said. "You're sounding a lot like your father used to, was what I meant."

Wanda's eyes widened, a spark of something furious, something that bordered on madness, something that had once driven her father to become a whispered fear equalled only by the Winter Soldier, a nightmare with the powers of a wrathful god.

Clint, a man whose powers extended to an enhanced set of eyeballs and a casual disregard for his own safety, stared at her down.

A lot can be said in a locked stare, even when one of the participants isn't a sorcerous mutant without equal and the other a man who can see souls. More still can be said when the two participants were once lovers.

Ultimately, Wanda looked away. "I suppose I am," she said. "But that's not important right now. What are we going to do?"

"The only thing we can," Steve said. Everyone turned to him. It wasn't a conscious thing. It wasn't even the words. If he'd said 'I think we should have lunch', everyone would have still turned to him, attentive and waiting on what suggestions he would make about the composition of their midday meal. "The Red Room are playing their own tune. We have to make them dance to ours. We need to draw out the Red Son."

"What do we have that would persuade them to send him?" Bruce asked.

"Me," Natasha said. "You have me."

OoOoO

Now

"So, you volunteered yourself as bait."

"It was the logical choice. Lukin was driven by ego and pride, to recreate and expand the old power of Russia and the Red Room. The existence of three high profile defectors from the Red Room, even if one of them wasn't publicly known as one, would be a sore, niggling away at his pride. I estimated that he would want to take out at least one of us, to show his power, Russia's power, and to demonstrate that we were obsolete. Ivan's main value is as an information broker. With an Omega Class telepath on their side, even one not fully grown, they didn't need that. He's also low profile, and has spent a lifetime ensuring that. He could wait. Sending out James, Bucky, alone and making him look vulnerable would immediately raise suspicions of a trap. The Winter Soldier is never vulnerable. He is never easy prey. And, again, he is publicly believed to have spent most of the twentieth century as a HYDRA trophy," Natasha said. "I am public, an Avenger. I am widely known as a defector from Russia, and those who know anything about the Red Room know where I come from. I am the Black Widow. And I have a lifetime of experience at making myself look more vulnerable than I am."

"You staged a press conference."

"Discussing the Red Room, blaming them for what was happening, with a few coded insults slipped in," Natasha said. "That would draw mixed reactions from Lukin. On the one hand, he wants the Red Room to be feared. Public awareness helps with that. On the other hand, they, we, always did their best work from the shadows. We, the Avengers, didn't know the details of Lukin's endgame, how he planned to take on the world when they inevitably figured out what kind of weapons he had at his disposal and went after him out of self-preservation. But we did know that it wasn't ready yet. The Red Room was spreading again, but too fast. Lukin didn't want to be caught cold like HYDRA were, and he had a lot of people he could just recall to the ranks, by persuasion or force. He'd already been doing it for over a year, after all. A telepath and the resources of a nation, even crippled by Asgard, meant that he could do it a lot faster. However, they didn't have time to consolidate. SHIELD and Yeltsin's purge, plus the passage of time and the chaos of nineties Russia and its former satellites, meant that a lot of key players from the old days were gone." She folded her arms. "His inevitable reaction was obvious – kill or capture me and the Red Room's reputation for terror gets bolstered even further. They're revealed, so run with it."

"And that's when they attacked."

"Yes."

OoOoO

Then

Natasha opened the door of her safehouse. Well, one of them. One of the better concealed ones, at that. But concealment was as concealment did.

That was why she was not surprised to Yelena Belova lounging in her armchair, a cruel smile on her face, as a fire crackled in the grate and cast deep shadows. "Hello, Natasha," Belova said. "Tell me, do you have any refreshment to offer a weary traveller and countrywoman?"

"Sure," Natasha said, putting down her bags and going to the fridge. "I could spot you a beer." She pulled one out, lobbing it at Yelena, who caught it easily. Then, Natasha paused, frowning exaggeratedly. "Oh, damn. I don't think I have a bottle opener. That's a pity." She smirked slightly. "Does your fancy new thumb come with a suitable attachment?"

Belova's eyes narrowed.

"No? That's a pity. You'd think that the Red Room's budget would extend to a Swiss army thumb," Natasha said, pulling out another bottle. "I mean, they value you so highly, don't they?"

"All these jokes do is show your fear, Natasha," Belova said, cold, seething rage caressing every syllable.

"Last time we fought, I took your thumb," Natasha said. "The only reason I didn't take everything else was because I was hoping that the lesson would get through your skull. Apparently not." She casually knocked the top off her beer on the table's edge. "I'd suggest you try that trick," she added. "But it's a skill that comes with age." She sipped her beer. "So. Lukin didn't like my little press conference, then? Was it the part where I revealed the return of the Red Room and that they were behind this, or the part where I implied that he was an arrogant little man over-compensating for his many personal inadequacies?"

"A little bit of both," Belova said.

Natasha nodded. "I thought that'd be it," he said. "You really think that this'll go better than last time?"

"Last time," Belova said. "We were alone."

The deep shadows vanished, or at least, thinned, revealing a series of figures.

First, a man of little more than average height, hard, tight muscle, lean, verging on cadaverous, and unnaturally pale, with gleaming metallic tentacles lashing idly.

Second, an Indian woman with a blank, almost mechanical expression and an arm that had transformed into a cannon that hummed with power.

Third, a man in a suit of red, blue and white striped armour, almost as streamlined as Iron Man, with the glow of an ersatz arc reactor at its heart.

Fourth, a blonde woman whose expression of intense concentration was fading as the darkness receded, gathering around her hands.

And finally, a tall young man stood in the middle of the room. He had the build of an athlete, or a martial artist, though now he was bulkier. He was taller, too, though only slightly – in general, he seemed to have grown into his proportions somewhat. He had pale skin, paler even than before thanks to a lack of sunlight, messy dark hair with a white streak at the front, and green eyes that were as flat, hard, and blank as the emeralds they so often resembled. The Red Son stood in Natasha's living room, and there was no recognition in him of her as anything other than a target.

Natasha looked at them all, expression impassive, then turned to Belova. "A psychotic failure and Weapon X reject, an Iron Man knock-off, a mutant with some talent for concealment, what looks like a robot, and my teammate's brainwashed teenage son. I'd be disappointed if I didn't know that this was the best you could scrape together," she said. "Seriously, If you're expecting shock, fear, or even surprise, Yelena, you're going to be very disappointed."

Belova let out a mocking chuckle. "Always the brave face, Natasha," she said. "You claim to be better than me. And when we last fought, you were. Why? Because my mind was clouded. Drugged. Obsessed. Now, I realise what makes me truly better than you. You broke the cardinal rule of the Widows. Not leaving – caring. You care about others. Others who will inevitably leave you, fail you, and never, ever return your affection. I have you to thank for this realisation, actually. So... thank you, Natasha. Thank you. You have taught me well. Now, let me teach you."

She strode over to the Red Son and idly trailed a finger across his shoulders, then around his face. "You and I both know the turmoil you feel deep down. Because you care for this boy. Why? Is he the child you and Comrade Winter could never have? Or is it because you resemble his mother and feel you can fool yourself that you are playing a part when you take her place in his life, maybe as a prelude to taking her place in his father's bed? Or…"

She took the Red Son by the chin and examined his face, cruel smile widening. "Is it his bed you are preparing? It took a long time to break his resistance, Natasha, a very long time indeed, even with the help of two telepaths. It took so long and was so thorough that there wasn't really much left. Well, anything, really. But as we broke that resistance, we saw all sorts of memories. Including one where the two of you shared a bed. He was a boy then, sickly, though old enough to know that he shared a bed with a woman." The cruel smile showed a tooth or two as she cast a look at Natasha. "Old enough to enjoy it."

She turned back to the Red Son. "But he is more than that now. Time passes differently where we are. Soon enough, he will be a grown man," she said. Suddenly, she lunged, capturing his lips in a ferocious, hungry kiss, hand slithering down his back to grab his rear in a vicious, possessive gesture. The Red Son didn't respond. She didn't mean him to. That, after all, was not the point. After a few moments, she broke away. "Mmm. Still cooking, but almost done. And when he is, Natasha… I will show him the real meaning of pleasure."

Natasha barely blinked, coolly categorising the act, noting its intent to provoke, then filing it away to be addressed at a later date. She also noted that the woman with black energy humming around her hands looked profoundly disturbed. From his body language, she could tell that the armoured man was similarly unnerved.

"Would you like a white cat to stroke during your next villainous monologue about how you intend to molest a child, Yelena?" she asked. "I don't have one to hand, but I'm sure that I have a white fur hat somewhere that could serve the same purpose."

Blotches of red appeared high on Belova's cheeks.

"Enough of these games," Rossovich, Omega Red, snarled, tentacles twisting in earnest now. "Let us take her."

"Hey, at least let me finish my beer," Natasha said, casually knocking her bottle back. She put it down on the table and grimaced. "Warm. Disgusting. These American beers never do well in the heat."

Belova paused, glanced at the fridge, then touched her previously discard bottle of beer. It was warm. Too warm.

"I know you're kind of new to this," Natasha said, as the house began to melt away around them. "So I feel I should give you a tip. This is what we call 'a trap'."

Belova didn't even have time to snarl as a large blur slammed into Omega Red, sending the vampiric mutant cyborg flying. A mere half instant later, that blur resolved into Thor.

Belova's eyes widened and she spat an attack order. But as the Red Son raised a hand to unleash psychic destruction, nothing happened, and for a moment, there was the almost comical spectacle of the world's deadliest super soldier staring at his hand like it was a malfunctioning piece of machinery. Belova stared at it too, expression one of dawning horror.

"Like I said," Natasha said casually. "Trap."

In that moment, the rest of the Winter Guard attacked, thinking/hoping that an unarmed Thor was a less dangerous Thor. They could not have been more wrong.

First, the Dynamo and the Sentinel unleashed powerful energy blasts, sufficient to reduce concrete to rubble, steel to a twisted ruin, and humans to ash. Thor shrugged them off like a warm shower, delivering a brutal body blow to the Sentinel, doubling her over, then reaching out and grabbing the Dynamo armour's arms and easily dragging it downwards, crushing the gauntlets and forcing the armour to its knees, then ripping the metal mask off, before reaching out, grabbing it by the torso and ripping outwards, tearing it open like wet cardboard. After that, he reached in, grabbed the stunned pilot, ripped him out with little care for the damage that sharp edges and detached neural links might have, and hurled him to one side.

The Sentinel recovered faster than expected, being mostly cybernetic and the doubling over a mere side-effect of a mostly human nervous system, closing at blurring speeds to deliver a textbook series of brutal disabling attacks, catching Thor off-guard. This culminated in a savage elbow strike that would have torn through a foot of titanium and actually drew a spot of blood from Thor's lip. He wiped it away and smiled a hard smile.

"That's good," Natasha said. When Belova turned to her, disbelieving, she added casually, "He's been looking for a punching bag to take his frustrations out on for a little while now. We let him have this because we figured that your minions might actually make him sweat a little."

"We will do a great deal more than make you sweat," Belova said darkly. "Even though your sorcerous murderer has dampened his psychic abilities –"

"Oh, that's not Loki," Natasha said. "And his abilities aren't dampened, as such, just blocked. He'll figure a way around it any… moment… now."

And indeed, the Red Son's eyes suddenly flared with a dark golden light, the area around him humming with deadly power.

"Then why are you smiling?" Belova asked suspiciously.

"Because that psychic block was just to keep him out of the way while Thor tore through your team," Natasha said. "The Iron Man knockoff is down and out, Omega Red is probably still healing and being dealt with by Steve and Clint, Loki's got your darkforce manipulator, in case you were wondering where she went – so you aren't teleporting out of here – and Thor's busy turning your fembot cyborg into scrap."

"But he has them back now," Belova said, smirking. "And you have no one to protect you." She looked around. "You did not mention the Hulk, or Stark. Perhaps I shall make them watch as I destroy you, or as he destroys you. Or perhaps I'll make them do it. Either way, Natasha, the Red Son will be my instrument of your destruction."

"Good luck with that," Natasha said calmly. "I think that he won't be destroying anything any time soon."

Belova frowned, then barked out a couple of orders in Russian. The Red Son did not comply. Instead, he was locked in place, power flaring around him, sweat pouring down his forehead, as a telepathic battle raged.

"When you succeeded in taking away his mind, you effectively crippled his telepathic abilities," Natasha said. "Your 'Red Son' still has all the power in the world, and against someone with no or rudimentary telepathic abilities, that means he can roll right over them. But when you bring the most skilled telepath in the Nine Realms into play…"

Belova's eyes widened.

"… He's in trouble," Natasha finished, then set herself. "So. Since it's just the two of us, how about a round two?"

Belova glared at her, icy blue eyes burning with cold fury.

OoOoO

Now

"You beat her."

"Obviously. She wasn't drugged up, like last time, but she was frustrated to begin with and didn't have the strength the drugs gave her. Additionally, she hadn't changed her style that much, despite having had ample time to do so. It didn't take long."

"And Professor Xavier subdued the Red Son. With Cerebro?"

"No. He had an uplink in case it was needed, but using it came with the risk of overwhelming an already fragile mind. As a result, Xavier preferred to use skill rather than raw power to beat the Red Son. Since he didn't have any will of his own and Professor Xavier was familiar with the psychic combat techniques he'd been taught – though precisely how he was familiar with them he hasn't said – it didn't take all that long."

"All the Winter Guard members were apprehended."

"All that were there, yes."

"Oh yes. Alexei Shostakov. The Red Guardian. The supposedly dead Red Guardian."

"A clone. As we found out, the Red Room could easily clone people, through use of Essex's technology, and a derivative of the serum in Carol's blood ensured stability."

"It must have been quite a shock."

"You could say that."

"Also a logical tactical choice – no one would be expecting a dead man. But the Avengers were."

"We were expecting an infiltrator, yes. Even Lukin wouldn't simply send the entire Winter Guard to kill me, not just to make a point. A sniper could do that. Two tried. James and Clint disposed of them."

"For the sake of clarification, James is…?"

"James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes."

"Okay. So, the Winter Guard were sent for another reason. A Trojan Horse?"

"An attempt at one."

"They weren't counting on you to break their control on the Red Son."

"Not exactly. We weren't counting on what we found out."

OoOoO

Then

"So," Steve said. "This is the Raft."

"SHIELD's newest top security prison," Fury said. "I'll admit, we took a few cues from Azkaban, though without the Dementors, of course."

"Of course," Steve echoed, as he looked down from the observation room. In the centre of the room, the Red Son was strapped into a restraining chair, and covered in so many clamps, bindings, cuffs, inhibitors that only his eyes were clearly visible. As cold and dangerous as an icy green sea, they focused on some point in the middle distance, flicking to track any movement they picked up.

All of the Avengers, though they had done their best not to show it, had been watching him, looking for even the slightest sign that Harry was in there somewhere.

So far, the evidence was next to non-existent.

"Who else is in here, anyway?" Tony asked, looking to change the subject.

"Couldn't you just hack in and get that answer, Mister Stark?" Fury asked pointedly.

"I could, but that would take too long."

Fury eyed him. "Strictly because it could be relevant, aside from the Winter Guard and Sabretooth, this facility currently houses Count Nefaria, still in that wine bottle Loki stuck him in, Emil Blonsky, otherwise known as the Abomination, Doctor Samuel Sterns, who has taken to calling himself 'the Leader', Carl 'Crusher' Creel, otherwise known as the Absorbing Man, and Cain Marko, otherwise known as…"

"The Juggernaut," Bruce said quietly.

"We also have cells prepared for Arnim Zola, Baron Zemo, Lucius Malfoy, and Magneto," Fury said. "In the latter case, just in case he decides that playing nice no longer suits his agenda."

"And for me," Bruce said. "At my own request." He nodded down at Harry. "In case something like this ever happens to me."

Tony's expression had darkened and he was clearly about to cut loose with something scathing aimed at Fury, when the door to the room below opened and Loki walked in, pushing the wheelchair of Professor Xavier.

The Red Son did not recognise them, not as Harry would, merely watching them with cold, hard eyes. Even when the gag was removed, he did not speak, merely continuing to watch them.

"Hello, Harry," Professor Xavier said. "I am Professor Xavier. The man with me is Prince Loki, your uncle. You may not recognise us at the moment, but this is because of damage done to your mind. We can help you rectify this. Is there anything you would like to say?"

The response was in curt Russian. The Red Son's expression did not change, not even when Loki waved a hand, and unconsciousness began to claim him.

"What was that?" Tony asked.

"He stated that he was the operative designated 'Red Son'," Thor said shortly. "And then a number."

"Name, rank and serial number," Steve said. "More or less."

"Except that they have stolen his name, his rank, and given him this number," Thor growled.

"It's the same formula that I was supposed to spout during my Winter Soldier days," Bucky remarked.

"We'll get through to him, Thor," Steve said.

"I am beginning the examination," Professor Xavier said, pitching his voice to carry to the intercom. The Red Son was completely unconscious.

"Acknowledged, Professor," Fury said. "Go to work."

"Get settled in," Bucky said, looking to Thor. "This is going to take a while."

The examination dragged on for several hours.

Finally, it ended, with both Loki and Professor Xavier looking tired and grim.

"Well?" Thor demanded.

The two men exchanged a look.

"Thor," Loki said. "I am sorry. But…"

"What?" Thor demanded. "What are you sorry for?"

"It seems that the Red Room decided that Harry's mind was too much trouble to simply warp and manipulate," Xavier said heavily. "Beyond six relative months ago; two weeks, in normal time, I can only find echoes of memories. Harry's personality, his inner self, has not simply been buried, Thor. It has vanished."

The expression change on the faces of the Avengers was near instant. Some faces, like Tony's and Clint's, went dark with anger. Bruce closed his eyes, veins throbbing green. Bucky and Natasha both went blank. Steve's face went pale.

And Thor…

"You mean," he said, in a very distant voice. "My son is… gone?"

"His mind has vanished," Loki said. "Normally, I would say erased. But considering Harry's power, what we know of the future, and the involvement of Harry's mother, I would say that the fact that the world has not been devoured either by a collapsing paradox or an enraged Phoenix would suggest something else: when he could bear the pain and psychic assaults no more, his mind fled. The Red Room did not care, and programmed the empty shell."

Tony's eyebrows shot up. "That can happen?"

"It can," Professor Xavier said. "Sometimes, when put under great strain, even an ordinary mind can flee to the depths, hiding in the subconscious. A telepath, especially one of Harry's power, could flee much further."

"Then where would he have gone?" Thor demanded impatiently.

"Somewhere he feels safe," Xavier sighed. "That is all I can say for certain."

There were a number of traded looks. "What candidates are we looking at?" Steve asked eventually.

"Hogwarts," Loki said. "Asgard. He could even have found his way to the Dreaming – Dream is his uncle after all, after a fashion through Lily, and he believes greatly in obligation and duty. He would give a fleeing nephew sanctuary. Or…" He trailed off, going pale. "He couldn't. No, that's impossible. Well, impossible for anyone who isn't him, I suppose…"

"Loki," Thor said in the growl of a man who is on his last nerve, and it is fraying.

"You recall when Doctor Strange opened a doorway for Lily in London?" Loki said.

"Yeah," Natasha said, remembering as the others did a crack in reality out of which poured blazing white light. "You said that it led to somewhere called 'the White Hot Room'."

"Otherwise known as 'the Heart of the Phoenix'," Loki said. "It is the sanctum of Destruction, of the Phoenix. Lily's home." He sighed slightly. "And while Harry is in many respects a young man and proven as such, he is still a boy in many others. What young boy in pain and fear, so much so that he has literally been driven out of his mind, would not wish to flee to his mother?"

"Except that if he had, his mom would have fried every single one of those Russian sons of bitches about five seconds after he turned up on her psychic doorstep," Tony pointed out, then looked up. "Oh, and if you're planning something like that, can you give us a heads up? I'd like the chance to make some popcorn first. Thanks."

"This is not a joke, Tony," Thor growled.

"Who's joking?" Tony asked, tone completely serious. "You want to kill every last one of those Red Room scum for what they've done to Harry. I was kidnapped, I know the look; I saw it sometimes on Happy, Rhodey and Pepper, usually after a bad nightmare and when they thought I wasn't looking. And I will help you. I will dedicate every last cent, every last scrap of armour, every last bit of brilliance that I have to help you do it, because your kid is my friend, one of not all that many, Pepper loves him to bits, and he's one of my daughter's fucking godfathers. He's protected my family, and since I can't return the favour, I can do the next best damn thing – avenge him. Avenge what was done to him, and burn those motherfuckers and all their creepy minions to the fucking ground. If that means sitting back and watching while his mom does it, fine. I'll happily do that. I'd just like the chance to get some popcorn and enjoy it as they get what's coming to them."

Everyone was silent for a long moment.

"Thank you, Tony," Thor said eventually. "This will not be forgotten."

Once, Tony would have shrugged and played it off. Now, eyes fierce and hard, he nodded.

"Heartwarming as this may be, none of the suggested locations are anywhere nearby, save for Hogwarts, and that's relative," Fury broke in. "However, considering that Dumbledore noticed when JARVIS briefly took up residence in Hogwarts when Zola attacked him, and that I somehow doubt that Odin or Frigga would miss their grandson's disembodied and doubtless freaking the fuck out spirit wandering Asgard, I think we can rule both of those out."

"Agreed," Steve said. "But they're still worth checking. I'll call Albus. He's been Harry's headmaster for three years – even if Harry's mind isn't in Hogwarts, he might have some idea of where to look. Thor, head to Asgard to check it out. While you're there, get Jean. She found him before, she's one of our best bets for doing it again. Loki, check out the mystical options. I know that you've said that Dream and the like are higher up the mystical totem pole than you are –"

"Just a tiny bit, yes," Loki said dryly.

"I also know that if there's anyone in the universe who can do it and do it fast, it's you," Steve said. "An old friend of mine likes to say that he's the best there is at what he does, even if it's not very nice. That phrase applies to you too." He turned to Xavier. "Professor, I know you're not part of my team, and you've already done a lot tonight, but…"

"The Cerebro remote uplink is in my car," Xavier said.

"Thank you," Steve said simply.

Suddenly, there was a loud explosion.

"What was that?" Bruce asked, worried.

"Natasha's Creepy Wannabe, the Queen of Emo, Dracula with Tentacles, and the Russian murderbot are loose," Tony said.

"Actually, she's Indian, Tony," Bruce said. "And a cyborg."

"Whatever."

The room the Red Son was in went dark. When the emergency lights turned on again, the Red Son was gone.

"The Darkforce teleporter," Loki said grimly. "The Red Room have their weapon back."

Fury glanced at his watch. "And a whole ten minutes later than I expected," he said mildly. "They're slipping."

OoOoO

Now

"So, it was all a plan."

"Obviously."

"They thought that you were trapping them, when in fact they were trapping you, but really, you'd built in a further trap."

"That makes it sound unnecessarily complicated. The short version is this: we outsmarted them."

"Though you didn't anticipate Harry's mind not being present."

"No. We didn't. That was… an unexpected complication."

"So, what happened next?"

"They did exactly what we expected them to do. We leaked them some bait. They took it."

OoOoO

Then

"Colonel Shostakov, right on time," Belova said, smiling faintly as her cell collapsed. "We are all here? Good. And Creed?"

"I felt that he could be useful," Shostakov said. "And it was the work of a moment to release him."

Creed smiled, or more accurately, bared his fangs. "Miss me, frail?" he asked.

Belova's lip curled. "Not likely," she said. "Now, we have work to do before we leave."

"Like what?" Shostakov asked.

"The Avengers as a collective are immovable," Belova said, as she led the Winter Guard into the depths of the deserted prison. "Every time they seem set to topple, they right themselves, and become twice as hard to shift as they were before. So… what do you do when you wish to move an immovable object?" Her smile widened as they descended to the very depths of the prison, to a stasis chamber, containing a vast, even gigantic, man, with buzzcut red hair, a face like granite, and muscles like beer barrels. "You unleash an unstoppable force, of course."

OoOoO

Now

"You expected them to unleash the Juggernaut?"

"Of course. The realistic options were him, Blonsky, or Nefaria. Blonksy and Nefaria have their own, uncertain agendas, and Blonsky is particularly mercurial. The Juggernaut, by contrast, is consistent. He can be relied upon to be himself, to do what he is inclined to do. He would make sense as a target. Additionally, of the three of them, he is, to be blunt, the stupidest, and most vulnerable to telepathy," Natasha said. "Powerful and dangerous enough to be attractive to the Red Room as a distraction, while also remaining relatively easy to contain with Xavier on site."

"It was still a big risk. You couldn't be certain of what the Winter Guard would do next. Belova, after all, is infamously unpredictable."

"Actually, since we'd had Xavier implant suggestions into their minds while they were unconscious and in transit to the Raft, we knew exactly what they would do next. And we'd prepared for it. Conveniently, it fit her pattern of behaviour: it's not enough for her to know she's good, she has to prove that she's the best. In other words, a simple escape from SHIELD's highest security prison wasn't enough. If she could regain lost assets, right under the Avengers' metaphorical noses…"

"She took them to the Institute."

"Yes."

"I know that a number of the students at the Institute are powerful, and so are their teachers, but at night, against trained agents and sadists like the Winter Guard? Only Wolverine has experience of that kind of work."

"That's why we'd already evacuated the Institute. And we left someone to house-sit."

OoOoO

Then

"This is a mistake, Belova," Shostakov said grimly, as they advanced on the sprawling manor house. "Bukharin was stripped of his armour, you are still injured, and who knows what has happened to the Red Son." He glanced back at the young man. "And who is he, anyway?"

"As General Lukin told you, Colonel," Belova said, inwardly reflecting that unfortunately, while Essex had succeeded in bringing back Shostakov with all his memories, restored from some kind of back-up, he had brought back his conscience as well. The same conscience that had, in her view, led to his original body's death at the hands of Director Fury. "He is a Russian youth, one born with great power, and eager to serve the state. Regrettably, recently his mind was damaged in an accident, meaning that now he has trouble making decisions for himself outside of proscribed mission parameters. We guide him and assist him in serving his country, much as you do."

Shostakov looked a little sceptical. A problem, Belova thought, but one for later.

"And our mission now?" he asked. "I was informed that I was to extract you once you had acquired what knowledge you needed."

"And you succeeded admirably, Colonel," Belova said. "We achieved what we needed to within that prison."

"Unleashing the Juggernaut, a monster, on the world?" Shostakov demanded. "That was what we were supposed to achieve?"

"Yes," Belova snapped. "It was. The Avengers will contain the situation, but it will occupy their full attention, as it will of the master of this school, Charles Xavier, who has imposed his will on several volunteers that the Avengers captured from our Academy. We are here to free them, and perhaps others as well, from his will, with the power of the Red Son. As for my health, I will be fine. As for Bukharin, he could yet be useful disabling and repurposing various of this mansion's defensive measures, along with the Sentinel. Now, be quiet!"

Shostakov subsided unhappily.

Belova nodded, satisfied, then turned to Bukharin and the Sentinel. "Situation report," she said curtly.

"Defenses deactivated," the Sentinel said, syntax as blank and robotic as her expression. "All registered lifeforms are in an unconscious state."

"And if they wake up, this Mansion… oh, it has some of the most marvellous technology," Bukharin said. "I recognise Stark's work, Banner's, and a few others, all creating a wondrous synthesis –"

"Yes, yes," Belova said impatiently. "I get the idea. Red Son, link us up."

The telepathic connection snapped into place.

Bukharin, Belova continued mentally, without missing a beat. Stay out here, monitor the situation, warn us if anything changes. Sentinel, guard him.

I obey, the Sentinel replied. Interestingly, her mental voice had a bit more personality than her physical one. Another potential problem for later.

Shostakov, Petrovna, Red Son, Creed, with me, Belova said. And Creed… unless you encounter a fully awakened Wolverine, you are to behave, is that understood? Or you will be explaining to Doctor Essex why you did not.

Creed growled soundlessly. I was running ops like this when your great-grandpa was a twinkle in his papa's eye, Belova, he said. You do your part, I'll do mine.

Good, Belova said. Alarms are disabled?

Yes.

Good. Open the doors.

The doors opened silently, revealing a hallway drenched in shadow.

Agent Belova, Petrovna said, tone uneasy. Something is not right. Something about the shadows. Some of them are not right.

She is right, Shostakov said. I could not tell you what it is, but something is wrong. He cocked his head sharply. Listen. On the edge of hearing.

Belova did. While she derided Shostakov for his soft heart, the man – or clone – was no fool and as a super soldier, he had very sharp ears.

At first, she heard nothing. Then, when she really, properly strained herself, she heard a low, dangerous hum.

Red Son, she began.

Don't bother, Creed said darkly, sniffing the air. It won't do any good. I know that sound. And that smell, too. We've been played.

Who? Belova demanded, unnerved by the touch of grim fear in his voice. How?

Before he could answer, Bukharin broke in, panicked.

Agent Belova! All the life-signs have vanished, like… like they were never there!

Suddenly, the doors slammed shut behind them, and a cold feeling settled in the pit of her stomach as the humming grew louder.

"I am afraid that if you are looking for my friend old friend Charles, his colleagues and his students, you are going to be extremely disappointed," a cold, cultured voice said suddenly, apparently emanating from every metallic fixture in the room, from the very walls themselves. "I, on the other hand, have been very much hoping that you would pay a visit."

Then, a large patch of shadows at the start of a corridor was sloughed away, revealing a tall figure, eyes glowing a deadly, electrical blue.

"Good evening. My name is Magneto," he said. "You kidnapped my daughter. You kidnapped my daughter's godson. You tortured them both. You have twisted the latter into your weapon," he said. The glow in his eyes blazed brighter, in concert with the soft, cold rage infusing every syllable. "I would like to discuss this."

At that last word, defensive emplacements all over the lawn and within the house, previously deactivated, emerged.

"And once we are done, if you are very lucky… I might actually allow some of you to live."

OoOoO

Now

"And did he?"

"Yes, though Harry excepted, he only did so because he thought that Thor would want a piece of them too."

"How public spirited of him."

"When it comes to revenge, Magneto believes that sharing is caring."

"So I see. What about Harry?"

"We didn't expect him – or rather, the Red Son – to be there. However, the back-up, just in case, was for Magneto to subdue him."

"That didn't work out so well."

"No. No, it didn't."

OoOoO

Then

The Winter Guard were scattered across the lawn of the Xavier Institute for Gifted Children.

Bukharin, his pulped remains slowly dribbling out of the crumpled ruins of the armour he'd summoned about himself.

Rossovich, flayed with his own tentacles, spikes formed from the metal that had been torn from hem pinning him to the ground.

Shapandar, the Sentinel, on her knees, sobbing, as the emotional inhibitors that had cut off her free will and prevented her from realising what she had been turned into had been destroyed.

Creed, bound in place by metal railings, much like the one that Bucky had stabbed him with, railings that pierced his body and bound his arms and legs in place, his body closely resembling a pounded hamburger as it healed.

Shostakov, dangling from powerlines that held him by each limb, suspended in mid-air.

Petrovna, fumbling around, helpless after being blinded by a carefully calibrated twist of the signals from her optic nerves to her brain.

Belova, unconscious, her hands and feet engulfed in metal that had flowed into shape around them, holding them at angles that would not be possible without broken and dislocated bones, ripped muscles and torn sinews.

The pride of the Red Room, defeated, crippled, and bound. All in less than two minutes.

This was not surprising. After all, they were merely men and women, however armed, however enhanced. What they had faced was nothing less than a force of nature.

So it was fitting that the only one still standing, still fighting, was one who could contend with Magneto on even footing. For the Red Son was a force of nature in his own right.

This time, unlike his last battle as Harry, the roles were reversed. This time, the Red Son was going in for the kill, while his older, more skilled, and more powerful opponent attempted to avoid direct confrontation and instead outflank him.

Of course, unlike last time, he was not facing a fellow psychic, and attacking telepathically was not an option, thanks to the helmet. Harry might have thought of getting in close and forcing telepathic contact through skin contact, but the Red Son didn't. Instead, he unleashed a series of by the numbers attacks: telekinetic blasts, the transformation of objects into bullets, manipulating the earth, surrounding plants, trees and other objects to trap his opponent, and the manipulation of ambient defence systems to attack from all angles.

Each of these attacks would have left many opponents dead, or at least, severely incapacitated. Even some of the Avengers would have been in trouble.

But Magneto was not.

Blasts were blunted and bullets batted away, while the earth and greenery reached up in vain as he rose above them, and the control of wires and ambient weaponry was decided by the greater will – and while the Red Son had no real will of his own, if there was one thing that Magneto did not lack, it was willpower.

"Give up, boy," Magneto said, tone inexorable as his advance, though not without some strain. While he dealt with head on attacks easily enough, and telepathic attacks were blunted by his helmet, he had to work to make sure that the helmet was not telekinetically flicked off, while also blunting a hundred telekinetic attacks to his veins, brains and other innards every single minute.

And what made it all the more difficult was that he was trying to contain this situation without doing the boy too much harm – he was a victim in this, as Magneto's own daughter had been, something that made the blood boil in his veins. Those responsible would scream his name as they died, if they did not scream the names of Thor, Loki, and Wanda instead, those others who were owed vengeance.

The boy stared at him, expression blank. Then, in curt but flawless Russian accented English, he said, "I cannot. I am the Red Son, formulated for the purpose of defeating Russia's enemies. By opposing our mission, wounding and killing my comrades, you have made yourself an enemy of Russia, Erik Magnus Lensherr. And for the honour of my comrades, my country, and my general, I will ensure that you are defeated."

Magneto's eyes narrowed. "You may try, boy," he said. "But the only reason you still stand is because of my forbearance."

The boy, the Red Son, simply stared at him. Then, he blurred, and only Magneto's instinctive shielding prevented the punch from taking his head off, as an instinctive wave of omnidirectional power sent through the earth prevented a follow-up.

"So, they have taught you to enhance your speed, and your strength," Magneto said, rubbing the blood from his mouth. "Impressive. But my son is far faster than you are, and without the advantage of surprise, that trick won't work a second time." He stood up straight and stared the Red Son down. "I would tell you the truth of what you are. I would tell you how you have been lied to, and used, by the masters you proclaim such loyalty to. But I have seen situations like this before. It would do no good. My only recourse is to subdue you."

"You may try."

"Oh, my dear boy… I will do far more than try," Magneto said, as the basketball opened up behind him, and something huge rose out of it with a building, thrumming roar that set every loose granule of dust and earth vibrating into the air. "And once I am done, I will likely owe Charles a new jet."

The Red Son set himself.

OoOoO

Less than a minute later, a man-sized object same sailing down to land in the middle of Bayville's thankfully deserted main train station, smashing through the glass roof and putting a significant crater in the concourse.

Just as the figure, a young man with dark hair that had a strange streak of white in it, struggled to his feet, he immediately had to throw up his arms as an empty passenger train reared up like a striking snake, and struck like an avalanche with a horrifying shriek of screaming metal.

The train drove him back a good seventy feet, pressing hard against a dark, red laced golden bubble of telekinetic energy, before that bubble surged outwards and forwards, power condensed behind a razor's edge, slicing the train's carriages in half, before ultimately batting them to one side.

Then, the young man soared up into the air, through the hole in the glass that he'd left. And as he passed through the hole, the rest of the roof fractured and shattered into deadly shards, shards that followed him like a sparkling, silvery cloud, lit up by the flames below and the starlight above.

With a gestured, he directed the cloud into two pincers, which swung out wide, then converged on his opponent, an older man in black and grey white edged clothing. The older man, unperturbed by this assault, raised two clouds of metal shards, condensing them close, into a net, almost, then slamming them into the glass, pounding it to sand, which whistled harmlessly past him.

Then, gesturing, his two clouds of metal debris roaring towards his younger opponent, who swatted them away ably enough, but as he did, a skip summoned from far below slammed into his back, stunning him. That opening was enough to send bands of metal to bind his hands, ankles, and eyes, through which was transmitted a savage electric charge, one that would have felled most men and women of any age.

But the young man he was facing was not most. His physiology, growing stronger and stronger by the day, could take far more than most could even survive, while his Red Room conditioning meant that even if he felt pain, it was categorised as an operational irrelevance unless it signalled critical damage.

So instead, he accelerated forward towards his enemy, who reordered the cloud of metal into a series of hammers that pounded away at the young man, driving him lower, and lower, and lower… until a vast fist, the size of a passenger plane, moulded from the station, roared skyward, clamping shut around the Red Son. Golden red-streaked power flared from within it, but all that did was cause the fist, now glowing a deadly electric blue, to hold even tighter.

Then, the counter-blow came, in a huge, twisting column of water struck at Magneto, as if the river was being fed through a fire-hose. That broke the giant hand's grip, allowing the Red Son to soar free, battered, bloodied, but not broken, and to reach up with much of his remaining strength. At first, nothing seemed to happen. Then, a passenger plane found itself hijacked and dragged down, transformed into a giant, 575 ton metallic bullet full of explosive fuel and screaming civilians travelling at hundreds of miles per hour, aimed straight at Magneto.

But as Magneto had underestimated the Red Son, so had the Red Son underestimated Magneto, who reached out and, stopping it with a roar of effort.

"No," he said, as the shocked, terrified, and relieved pilots stared at him through the cockpit windows. "I will not allow you to further stain the body you have stolen with innocent blood." As easily as breathing, he reached out to the cockpit radio. "Gentlemen, I apologise for this brief interruption. My opponent clearly never learned any manners. Allow me to send you back on your way." With that, he shot upwards, enveloping the plane in a magnetic field and taking it with him.

But as he did, the Red Son followed, power glowing around his fists, soaring up the outside of the jet.

"All right, you little bastard," Magneto muttered. "If that's how you want it." Then, now sure that the plane had regained flying speed, he levelled it off, and summoned iron particles from the earth and sky, forming them around him in battle armour that would have honoured a medieval knight. Then, as the winds roared past him, sending his cape billowing out behind him, magnetically clamping his feet to the skin of the jet he let the Red Son come.

This was going to get messy.

OoOoO

Now

"So, that would be why we're in the process of replacing a bisected, crumpled train, and most of Bayville's train station, and dealing with hysterical reports from an A380 full of passengers that God and the Devil were fighting in the skies over Bayville."

"I'm sure that Magneto will be pleased by the comparison."

"Which one?"

"Either. Both."

"He started to take it too far, though, didn't he?"

"He didn't have much choice. The Red Son was programmed not to stop, not to give in, not to submit, ever, outside of certain programmed circumstances – when playing Trojan Horse, for instance. And someone that powerful can be very hard to stop if they don't respond to normal things like pain, even for Magneto."

"And the Red Room didn't care."

"No. No, they didn't."

OoOoO

Then

Anyone who looked up into the skies over Bayville that night would have seen many strange things: flashes of blue and golden-red light that lit up the clouds like Chinese lanterns. Lightning that was only occasionally followed by thunder. And a hint of the Aurora Borealis, many hundreds of miles to the south of where it should be.

And to a select few within relatively close range, all of these strange sights and many, many more, were sometimes accompanied by a sound, a sound only heard by those who really strained their ears: a clash, as of metal striking metal, like the knights of old locked in battle.

Then, all of this was dwarfed as every light in the city abruptly went out. Those still up muttered in confusion and switched their lights off and on. But soon, it became clear that the lights were not the problem. Because streamers of light were reaching up from the ground and down from up in the sky, converging on a dimly visible figure.

It was often argued, by those who witnessed – or claimed to have witnessed – these events, as to what exactly happened next.

Did the figure around whom the light converged raise a hand? Did he – or was it a she? – point at their opponent? Did they wait, perhaps saying something, a final warning to bow down or be destroyed?

No one knew.

Then, a fearsomely bright burst of energy, a beam so bright it was almost a physical object, lashed out like a spear and hammered into something unclear, something humanoid.

And when the spots of light faded from the witnesses eyes, it seemed that everything was gone, and the battle was done.

But some claimed to have seen something else, after the burst of light: a figure, falling, trailing sparks of dying golden light like a comet, while their opponent followed – whether to minister to their wounds or to ensure that they were fatal, no one knew.

No one, that was, but for Magneto himself, who slowly descended to land beside the smoking, scorched and blinded Red Son, who'd left a considerable crater, ten feet across and six deep, where he'd landed. He was a horror to behold.

His combat gear had been largely burned, blasted or ripped from his body, and almost all visible flesh discoloured in ugly scorched reds, bruised purples and browns, pus yellows, and burnt blacks. His hair was scoured clean off, even his eyebrows, leaving behind only very faint stubble and a smell of scorched keratin. His right hand, instinctively curling into a fist, was horrendously damaged, the result of even enhanced flesh repeatedly impacting reinforced steel, like a bloody bag full of cracked nuts, fingers, some broken, ending in cracked and torn nails, where those nails were not ripped away entirely. But the left hand, the left arm was far worse, the majority of it being a blackened ruin, where one of his own fireblasts had been contained, lashing back at him, and leaving only a few parts still intact, those defined by patches of angry red amidst the blackness and weeping pus. The trail of horror crawled up the left side of his face, a puckered, angry red, and covered his left eye, which looked to have been boiled in its socket. It was all the evidence, were any needed, that this fight had been absolutely savage.

Magneto himself was not unscathed. He had his own bruises, his own cracked bones, to attend to when he had the time. But they were far fewer in number, and compared to his opponent, he was almost fresh, while the other was a nigh broken ruin. Anyone else would have simply folded, have given up, accepted that they could do no more.

Yet still the Red Son was not done, having blunted the worst of the blast with his telekinesis, and he stumbled to his feet, though carefully – some of the pain he felt, while mostly ignored, signified torn tendons and ligaments, ripped muscles and damaged joints, meaning that care must be taken. But that care diminished as he forced his telekinesis to help him stand, providing an unbroken framework of pure thought, and began casting about for Magneto. He could not use the eyes of another – Magneto had ensured that by making sure that he had landed in a scrap yard – so he had to rely on his own senses, even though his ears were most probably ringing profoundly from impact, if not already half deafened from the roar of jet turbines.

"Don't do this, boy," Magneto said quietly. "You've lost. Accept it."

"Never," the Red Son spat, sounding almost like Harry for the first time, and lurching towards Magneto.

Who sighed and raised a hand. "So be it," he said. "I had not wished to do this, for it comes with terrible risks, risks of permanent damage. But frankly, the risk is far less than what you would inflict on you4self, and others, given the chance. I am sorry."

Then, he clenched his hand into a fist.

The Red Son froze. It was clear from his expression that he wanted nothing more than to surge forwards, but his very body had betrayed him.

"What is the nervous system?" Magneto asked. "It is a network, one through which countless electrical impulses are fired, following commands from the brain, the body's command centre and supercomputer. What is blood? A vehicle, for oxygen, which is carried by blood cells which in turn require a protein called haemoglobin. To make haemoglobin, they require iron. 'Iron enough to make a nail', as the old rhyme has it. That is true, more or less, and your blood, for whatever reason, has enough metal in it to make several nails. Which means, my boy, that I can stop both the signals from your brain from reaching your muscles, and I can stop the blood in your veins from, frankly, going anywhere. Were it not for the quite serious risk of seizures, strokes, heart attacks, and other forms of unpleasantness, I would do this more often. Once upon a time, I did."

Then, suddenly, he grunted, and his eyes flared electric blue with newly expended power. "Hmm. Internalised telekinesis," he said. "I thought that was what was boosting your strength earlier. Clever trick. But you have already lost the contest of power, boy. And as for a contest of wills, that is one that you will lose before it even begins. While you have no will of your own, will is something that I have never lacked – and while I did not write the book on willpower, I most certainly fought the man who did." He brought his clenched fist down slowly, forcing the Red Son to his knees. "And that is what this has culminated in. You have fought far harder than any I have faced in many years, far harder than your masters deserved. But this battle is done. And your theft of this child's body is over."

And the Red Son just stared at him with his one remaining eye. For he had been programmed never to give in, never to surrender. And though neither of them knew it, this fight was not over yet.

OoOoO

Now

"I would have thought that that would quite definitively end the fight."

"So we all thought."

A silence.

"From the sounds of things, Magneto was quite brutal."

"If anything, he wasn't brutal enough."

"That's…"

"Cold? I know. But necessary. He wasn't, we weren't, dealing with Harry. We were dealing with a Red Room weapon. Worse, we were dealing with something that wasn't even human – normally, the Red Room programming overlaid and partially incorporated the subject's previous memories. For one thing, it helped in infiltration. But the Red Son was a blank slate. There was little or no humanity in him, meaning that it was more like dealing with a robot, one with uncompromising fundamental programming. If it had decided that it couldn't defeat or escape Magneto by conventional means, it might have decided to flatten Bayville and its surroundings, killing hundreds of thousands in their sleep. I understand why Magneto did not want to use his full strength, but that decision came with risks."

"Very well. In the meantime, the Avengers were fighting the Juggernaut."

"We were."

"Anything to add about that?"

"Not much. We fought. We won. Marko isn't really bright enough to do anything unusual."

"Still, for the sake of completeness…"

"Fine."

OoOoO

Then

When Thor had come to Earth as an Avenger, he had been both astonished and delighted that, in the Hulk, Midgard had produced a being that could equal his physical might. When a new champion of Cytorrak had arisen, he had been similarly delighted; for while he no longer fought simply for the joy of combat, he was not so much a fool as to deny the thrill of a challenge, to deny that he enjoyed the chance to, for once, not have to hold back.

Right now, however, that challenge meant that he was being delayed from finding and retrieving his son's body, so as his son's mind could be found and restored to it. And to make matters worse, as soon as Marko had sensed his step-brother's touch in his mind, he'd immediately gone mad with rage and tried to find and kill said brother. Since Xavier was in the prison complex with him, he had not had to go far. And because of that, the Hulk could hardly be unleashed; if nothing else, he would be needed if one of the other prisoners got loose. Meanwhile, the rest of the Avengers were occupied evacuating non-combatants or ready to prevent a prisoner escape.

Which meant that Thor now had to not simply beat the Juggernaut into submission, but restrain him, which was an entirely different and very difficult proposition. Especially since he currently lacked Mjolnir.

"What's wrong, Blondie?" the Juggernaut taunted, as he bore down on Thor. "Had to take your toy back to the toy store?"

"I have no need of Mjolnir to defeat the likes of you," Thor growled, managing to divert the Juggernaut's forward and downward momentum to one side, before countering with a brutal uppercut to his descending jaw. The blow would have levelled the prison complex if delivered to its foundation, and much else besides. As it was, all it made the Juggernaut do was spit blood and chuckle.

"Is that your best shot?" he sneered.

"Not even close, monster," Thor snarled.

"Too bad," the Juggernaut said, still sneering. "Because this is one of mine."

With that, he wound up for a punch that would have sent Thor to the Moon – and possibly through it.

But when it struck, the Asgardian was not there. Instead, he'd swerved out of the way, then, while the Juggernaut was off-balance, moved in with a series of short, brutal and efficient strikes to the Juggernaut's mid-section, bending him over and sending him stumbling away.

"Heh," Marko said, satisfied. "That's more like it. I don't know why that freaky-deaky lady with the metal thumb let me out, but…" He chuckled. "If I get a chance to beat on the people who put me in here, and little Charlie too, then I'm not gonna complain."

Thor's reply was a savage snarl, striking Marko in the face so had that magically enhanced bone cracked under his fist, as the bones in his knuckles cracked in sympathy. He didn't notice. He didn't care. All that mattered to him was that this creature was standing between him and his chances of helping his son. Something had snapped deep within, and now, two weeks of frustration and grief and barely repressed helpless rage coalesced into a single point of something dark, red and incandescent, that manifested in white-hot lightning crackling around his fists. And just before his vision clouded over, he heard himself roar, "The only beating, monster, that will be received today… IS BY YOU!"

OoOoO

Now

"So, Thor lost his temper."

"He had reason."

"I'm aware of that. Still, the results cracked the foundations of the prison, were heard two hundred miles away, and set off seismometers across the Eastern Seaboard. Ultimately, it took the Hulk to restrain Thor, and both Loki and Xavier to calm him down – after they got done with putting the Juggernaut to sleep again, not that he really needed much help with that."

"I'm not one to endorse an emotional reaction like that. It was unhelpful at best and doubled up the problem. But with what had happened to Harry, what Thor had just discovered, and my own experiences of the Red Room and what they do to people, I am honestly surprised it didn't happen sooner."

"That much is true. There's a reason Thor's not taking part in these interviews yet, one quite apart from the fact that even his father couldn't pry him away from Harry's side at the moment." Some papers were shuffled. "Okay, thank you, Natasha."

"Not a problem. You want to speak to Maddie again."

"Yes, I do."

"Parts of it, she might not be able to describe in detail."

"I'll get as much as I can."

The door opened. The door closed. The door opened again.

"Agent Coulson."

"Miss Grey. How are you feeling?"

"I… I am well, I suppose."

"Good. Now, I'm going to ask you to relive what is quite probably a very difficult memory –"

"I know which one you mean, Agent Coulson. I am ready."

"Good. If you need to break off at any time, feel free to do so."

"Thank you, I will."

OoOoO

Then

Maddie had not been idle this last couple of weeks. The first few days had been spent granting Jono physical form, then teaching him how to maintain, and the basics of manipulating it. This part he was less eager to learn about.

"I'd rather master what I've got in front of me, luv, if you follow what I mean," he'd said. "For one thing, thanks to you, I can actually speak physically for the first time in for-bloody-ever, for which, luv, I am eternally in your debt."

Which also explained why he was still around, despite Maddie's offer to acquire transport for him wherever he wished to go.

"I've still got plenty to learn," he said, when she asked him about it. "And if I do wind up collapsing back into a ball of floating orange mist, I'd rather do it around someone who can put Humpty-Dumpty back together again, rather than in public, where I might cause a bit of a scene." He raised a hand, which was currently grey. "Also, luv, I'm still working on the finer points of my appearance. I'd rather not wander out of here resembling a bloody Care-Bear, thank you very much." His expression softened. "Also, luv, I owe you. And while I might not be capable of turning reality upside down when I'm in a snit, or close enough to reality as makes little difference if you're at ground zero, at the very least I can offer you someone to talk to."

"I'm not sure if I want to talk," Maddie had said. "I'm not sure if I would know where to start."

"Well, that's your choice, luv," Jono said calmly. "But I'm sticking around, for the time being. Being on your own is no fun at all."

Maddie suspected that there was more to it than what he was saying, but since she didn't consider him a threat to her and she was trying to stick to the 'don't enter the minds of people you don't have to without asking' thing, she wasn't picking up any indications. Besides, his state as living psychic energy made him peculiarly both easier and more difficult to read – easier when she actually tried, harder to pick up anything passive.

And she had had a greater priority: figuring out how to get back to the Red Room base and getting the golden feather back, then returning it and what it contained to their proper places.

The former was manageable, if not easy – while she had never been taught how to tear through the walls between various dimensions, let alone how to identify which one to aim for, she had observed how to operate the technology at Doctor Essex's laboratories that made it possible.

The latter, however, was more problematic. She could get to the Red Room base and was fairly confident that she could take it and everyone within it out by herself – an assertion made with such calm confidence that it had made Jono's jaw hang loose. Literally, in fact: it fell off before he hurriedly reshaped it. She could even find the feather quite easily, if it was there. However, the problem lay in three parts:

First, finding Doctor Essex, since there was no guarantee that he'd be present. As she explained to Jono, Doctor Essex had a tendency to vanish periodically and turn up in some very unexpected places. He could quite easily be off doing research. However, she calculated that it was most likely that he would not be far from the Red Son, as he wished to study in detail the physiological development of the young man in question

Second, Doctor Essex was still suspicious of her, suspicious enough to send her away even when the prospect of the Avengers and their righteous wrath loomed, a prospect that loomed larger with every atrocity the Red Son committed on the Red Room's behalf. If she turned up, he would know it, and he would be prepared, with control phrases and who knew what else. Unless she was very fast and quite lucky, he'd be able to get at least one out, and then it was all over.

Third, finding and subduing the Red Son. Despite the number of missions she could comfortably attribute to him, he'd been given sufficient cloaking technology that she mostly had to do so by looking at the negatives (where there should be a psychic spike associated with a psychic of a certain calibre using their powers to a noticeable degree and there wasn't), which was largely guesswork, and by picking out those incidents where the sheer amount of power used had exceeded the ability of the cloaking technology to mask his presence. This took time, and by the time she could pin him down, he'd already gone. Indeed, with the time differential, he was sometimes already on another mission.

No, finding him would not be easy. Not unless he was forced into a lengthy fight where he had to use significant amounts of power and she could catch him in the act, so to speak. One advantage of attacking the Red Room base to get the feather back was that it might draw him to her – he was the logical choice of asset to go up against her, if only because he was the only one (in his former incarnation as Harry) to have done so and given a good account of himself.

Subduing the Red Son, though, was not a prospect that worried her. The kind of programming that they'd put in place might have begun developing its own personality, but she doubted it. It was still relatively early days, it hadn't had anything to define itself against thanks to Harry's actual mind having left the building, and she was certain that it was being kept on a very tight leash.

Going by her analysis of the strikes and examination of the sites via Astral Projection – while she was hardly a trained assassin in the style of the Black Widows or the Winter Soldier, she could read the operations of a combat psychic like a book – the Red Son functioned as little more than a literal living weapon: he had enough brains to take orders, and that was about it.

This meant that what she would be facing would, essentially, be a psychic robot that was less powerful and less experienced than she was by some margin. What had made Harry a difficult opponent was his ingenuity, his adaptability, the wild card of his magic (and while she couldn't rule that out, she hadn't seen any real evidence of its usage), his intelligence, and above all, his willpower. In stripping him of his mind and will, the Red Room (though, technically, she had done it, they'd intended to do much the same) had also stripped him of any real chance of matching her in psychic combat.

Of course, he would occupy her attention, so if she was attacked by Doctor Essex and/or Red Room assets in the midst of overpowering the Red Son, then things could get difficult. That was why Jono was coming along, despite her insistences that it could be dangerous.

"Luv, I'm basically a bloody ghost, who's had his chest blasted open, his neck and back snapped like dry spaghetti, and been stuck in a fucking jar," he said. "I'm not one to tempt fate, but I would honestly like to see them try to come up with something worse to do to me." He folded his arms. "Besides. You can operate through me – point me in the right direction, tell me what I need to grab, and you won't even have to get near that Essex bloke."

Maddie had to concede the logic of this. "Very well," she said. "Then we had best move quickly. Every moment we wait, there is a greater chance that Doctor Essex will discover the truth about what I did."

So they did.

"This machine, then, it opens doors into that weird bloody dimension they were keeping us in?" Jono asked, examining the machine in question. It looked very much like a circular gate, approximately 7 metres across, and Maddie typed in commands on a strange symbolic keyboard.

"It opens doors to specific locations in the spirit world with suitable receiving stations," Maddie confirmed, as the gate suddenly flashed with blue light, a horizontal burst of almost watery energy shooting outwards, before stabilising into a puddle like disc.

"Fuck me," Jono said, startled.

"Maybe later," Maddie said dryly. When Jono's eyes popped, she smiled faintly. "You are not the only one capable of sexual humour."

"So I see," Jono said, voice slightly strangled – an interesting feat, considering that his throat was, like the rest of him, a psychic construct, and his need for air was not so much a pressing need as a bad habit. "You're a quick learner."

"Indeed. You can take your eyes off my rear now."

"Right," Jono said, eyes guiltily darting away. "Sorry, luv."

"Thank you. While I can understand how it would attract your attention, with your known heterosexuality, the fact that Remy informs me that it is perfectly formed, an assertion supported by attention previously garnered from the majority of heterosexual and bisexual men, and lesbian and bisexual women, I would prefer if you did not stare. With your known energy projection abilities and the instability of your psi-form, it is entirely plausible that you could end up staring so hard that you end up staring so hard that 'you burn a hole in them'," Maddie added mildly. "I would rather you didn't do that. I like these trousers."

"I… you're screwing with me again, aren't you, luv?"

Maddie smiled faintly. "Perhaps."

This light interlude was brief, however. Because that's when things took a turn for the unexpected.

OoOoO

Now

"Unexpected. In what sense?"

"We expected to arrive in Doctor Essex's laboratory in the Nevernever, specifically the one merged with a Red Room base. We expected to face armed and dangerous enemies. We did not expect to arrive in a strange land where we saw one man kill another, then the dead man greeted us and, on our asking where we were, he and his brother informed us that we were most certainly not in the Nevernever. Or at least, not in the part of it we had expected. If anything, they said, the Nevernever was a small part of the realm we had now entered."

"So, very unexpected."

"Yes."

"What was this realm called?"

"It had many names, apparently. But the part we were specifically in was known by one above all: The Heart of the Dreaming. And its master had diverted us there. He was expecting us, the dead man said."

"Who was he?"

"Dream. Dream of the Endless."

OoOoO

Then

"Okay," Jono said, in a low, uneasy voice as the passed through gates made of what looked like ivory. "I'll say it right now, luv. This place is weird.

"It is," Maddie conceded, glancing around, expression grim. It wasn't anything overt, but there was something off about their surroundings. Something not quite right.

"Right. So, why aren't we just turning back around, saying, 'sorry, wrong number', and redialling?"

"For a number of reasons. First, the dead man, the one who called himself Abel, said that his master had diverted us here. From that it can be inferred both that he intended us to be here and that he is a being of truly vast power. While we cannot tarry, we also cannot afford to offend such a being," Maddie said. "Second, while Doctor Essex did not encourage my study of mystical beings, I know that ones of such power do not intervene in mortal affairs lightly. It could be worth our while, if the lord of this place seeks to aid us."

"You think he will?" Jono asked sceptically.

"Perhaps. Or he could seek redress for the damage I and Harry wrought upon the Nevernever in our battle, though I do not think so. While the shockwaves spread far and wide, structural damage was localised and temporary," Maddie said. She paused. "And as for the third reason… while Doctor Essex did not encourage my study of mystical beings, he encouraged my study of certain realms, like the Astral Plane. This place feels alike to that realm, very much so – the Astral Plane is a realm of dream and nightmares, after all. The Nevernever is a similarly malleable realm."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that if what I suspect is true, even if we redialled and it did not lead back to here, we would still be travelling through this being's realm."

Jono slowly absorbed the implications. "… Bloody hell."

"You say that a lot."

"Only when it's justified, luv. And it has been, recently. A lot."

Maddie considered this. "I suppose that is so," she conceded, then paused as an astonishingly tall and reedy man in old fashioned formal clothing with pince-nez glasses perched on a long, pointed nose opened the double doors in front of them.

"Lady Grey, Master Starsmore," he said. "I am Lucien. My lord bids you welcome to the Palace of Dreams."

"We accept your lord's welcome," Maddie said formally, while frowning slightly at the name given to her. "Though, we…"

"Have a matter of great urgency to attend to," Lucien finished. "I know. That is the purpose for which my lord had you diverted. He and his sisters wish to speak to you of it. If you would follow me?"

Exchanging a look, Maddie and Jono followed the tall man through the ornate black and white double doors. This was, they both noticed, the general theme of the palace, save for where older stonework intruded, and patchwork wooden walls, corridors and tapestries intruded, as if they'd been stuffed in almost as an afterthought. Yet despite that, it retained a certain elegance, as if this hotch-potch design had been the intention all along – like modern art, but not quite so pretentious.

After a walk that was both very long and very short, and sometimes took them along walls and up ceilings, they emerged through another set of double doors, opened by beings that looked almost, but not quite, human, into a throne-room.

At the end of the room was a dais, on which was a throne seemingly carved of white bone. On it sat a tall man, almost as tall as Lucien himself, with a raven sitting on his shoulder. He was, to Maddie and Jono's eyes, pale as snow and had black hair, the messiness of which put even Harry's at its most unruly to shame. With his height, skin tone, build and hair, he could actually have passed comfortably for an uncle of Harry's.

Yet he did not seem scruffy (as Harry frequently did), and unprepared (which Harry sometimes did), or even uneasy (which Harry occasionally did), for all that, with a fine black robe seemingly sewn from the essence of midnight, with flickering flames along the bottom, flames that reflected the starlight that glimmered in his black eyes, and his bearing was, even to Maddie and Jono who were not familiar with the ways of royalty, unmistakably that of a King.

Surrounding him were three women.

One, behind him, her pose one of relaxed insouciance as she rested her folded arms on the back of the man's throne and looked over it, shared his monochromatic colour scheme. She was as pale as he was, her clothing as dark, though not nearly as formal – instead of a robe, she favoured a strappy tank top, against which lay a silvery ankh, and a pair of black jeans. Her hair was similarly messy, though apparently artfully so, and she had a black tattoo like a tear running down from one eye, one that accentuated a kind smile.

At first, she looked young, but on closer inspection, a better description would be ageless. At one glance, she could be a fresh-faced 20 year old. At another, she could be a 40 year old who had aged well. In any case, it was easy to believe that she and the man were siblings, even aside from their physical likeness – for though she wasn't formal and regal, anyone with eyes sharp enough to see could tell that this was a woman of Power. Power and Authority, both well deserving of the capital letters, and both very much present, no matter how lightly they were worn.

One, on his left, was definitely young, a girl of maybe thirteen or fourteen at the very most. She had a serene demeanour, distant, as if her attention was focused elsewhere, but those pale eyes were also unsettlingly knowing, as if they could see right through you. Dressed as she was in an astounding variety of colours, with hair that flickered from a basis of dirty blonde to every colour imaginable, and some that weren't, she immediately stood out. Yet dressed as she was rags and tags and perhaps the remnants of a velvet gown, with a circlet of wire-threaded corks around her head, there was still a hint of that same regality about her. A beggar queen, perhaps, but a queen nevertheless.

And finally, on the right, there was a woman who at once looked the most and least human of the lot. She was not tall, nor imposing, seeming to be a woman in the prime of life. She was dressed fairly simply in a long, floaty white dress, tied at the waist with a girdle that flickered and danced like golden flame, shaded at the wrists with golden embroidery that looked almost like rising sparks, and a simple golden bird, as if someone had taken every bird ever to live and stripped them down to their very essence, then emblazoned it upon her chest. She had long red hair which that caught the light like the sparks of a fire, skin roughly the same shade as Maddie's, features similar enough that she would find them familiar, and eyes that until recently Maddie have only seen by looking in the mirror.

She looked the most human of the lot of them, easily capable of passing as an older sister or a younger aunt to Maddie herself. The expressions of worry, pain, and impotent fury that chased each other across her face, that curdled in her eyes, were very human indeed. And yet… in those eyes was something else, too. In those eyes smouldered a fire fit to consume stars, black holes, and galaxies whole. In those eyes burned the rage that only a mother whose child has been wronged could know.

It was a frightening combination, and it would have made almost anyone else take at least an instinctive half-step away, as Jono did now. But Maddie was not almost anyone else. She saw the fire, she saw the danger, but she saw something else. Something calling to her, singing a siren song that was familiar beyond words.

Even if it had not, though, Maddie would have noticed that power. She would have noticed all of their Power, Power unlike any she had ever known, power that made her own look like the tiniest spark of light in an infinite abyss of shadow and darkness. Even so, the others masked their otherworld power, their authority, behind human guises, or recognisably human-like formality. This one, by contrast, was so angry that she did not feel the need or the inclination to hide.

But there was one thing they missed, for neither Maddie nor Jono were immediately trained in, or focused on mystical patterns, recurring motifs. Not even when, at the very heart of the Dreaming, they were at their most important. For this was one of the oldest ones of all:

Maiden.

Mother.

And… the Other One.

They might reasonably have asked what the significance of such an arrangement was, especially under such circumstances. To which the equally reasonable, if maddeningly vague, reply would have been that under no circumstances could they possibly matter more.

"Lady Madelyn Grey, Master Jonothon Starsmore," Lucien said, bowing to the dais and its inhabitants. "I have the singular honour of introducing you to my Lord Morpheus, who is Dream, is the King of the Riddle Realms, the Prince of Stories, the Monarch of the Sleeping Marches, and the Sandman, with his raven, Matthew. I also have the honour to introduce you to my lord's sisters: Lady Teleute, who is Death, the Queen of the Sunset Lands, the Bringer of Rest Eternal –"

"But you can call me Didi," the ageless woman said cheerfully.

Lucien coughed, as if faintly annoyed, then continued. "To Lady Luna, who is Delirium, the Queen of Could-Bes, the Dauphine of Delight, the Lady of the Shifting Lands, and the Monarch of the Could-Have-Beens and the Never-Weres."

"It's lovely to meet you," Luna said, with a kind, somewhat misty smile.

"And finally to Lady Lily, who is Destruction, the Queen of the White City, the Lady of Light and Life, the Princess of the Burning Lands, the Keeper of Creation's Heart, the Bringer of Renewal, and the Phoenix," Lucien finished.

"And the mother of Harry James Thorson, born Harry James Potter," Lily said, stepping down the dais, though not without a cursory glance to Dream, who nodded ever so slightly. Her gaze turned to Maddie, bestowing a smile on her that felt like a warm hug, a snuggly blanket, and a hot chocolate on a chilly day all at once. "As well as the first cousin once removed of you, sweetheart." She then looked at the both of them. "I will make this very quick and very simple: I want to help my son. My adopted family, his adopted family, want to help him too. And so do the two of you. What say we all help each other, hmm?"

OoOoO

Now

There was a stunned silence.

"Agent Coulson?"

"Yes? Sorry. I was just a little…"

"Shocked."

"Yes."

"You are familiar with the entities I have described?"

"I've met two of them. The other two, I didn't know of."

"I see."

"Please, carry on."

OoOoO

Then

Both Jono and Maddie just stared at Lily for a long moment.

"H-h-how can we help you, ma'am?" Jono eventually managed, stuttering. He faltered under the combined gazes of the occupants of the room. "I mean, if you're this bloody powerful, 'scuse my French, then…"

"We are bound by Rules," the King on the throne, Dream, said, the enunciation of the capital letter being clear despite his strange voice. "Which circumscribe our intervention."

"Roughly translated, we're not allowed to step in," Death (call-me-Didi) said.

"Even though we want to," the being called Luna said in a soft, almost ethereal voice. "We're not people, you see? We're personifications."

"… I'm not seein' the difference, m'm," Jono said.

"The very basic version is that we're what happens when the fundamentals of existence get given human faces," Death said helpfully. "Human to you, anyway. You're thinking that we're like gods – not quite. We're another order of being entirely. Gods are more human than we are. They bend a bit to their function, and the stronger they are, the more they're not allowed to do. But they're still fundamentally living beings. We're a bit different. We can choose to do things, most of the time, but we can't go against what we're meant to do."

"How does that prevent you from intervening?" Maddie asked, frowning.

"The Rules are very clear on the subject of offspring," Dream said, shooting Lily what seemed to be a pointed look. "Especially when they have already been bent."

Lily ignored him. "We need you to do for us what we can't," she said bluntly. "We can help you do it, but that's as far as we can go." She looked profoundly unhappy about this.

"Then what do you propose to do to help?" Maddie asked.

"You have to ask," Luna said.

"Like in stories?" Maddie said sharply, and got an approving smile.

"Exactly," she said.

"And why would it work on storybook logic?" Jono asked, now too puzzled to be intimidated.

"Because this is where stories are born, of course," Luna said, as if this was the most natural thing in the world. "And gods," she added, as an absent after-thought. "Or at least, their godhood."

"Right," Jono said. "Of course. We need…" He scratched his jaw. "What do we need, Mads luv?"

"Don't call me that," Maddie said absently. She was thinking. "We need time," she said, after a moment. "Time to consider."

"Time in my realm is relative. Mere picoseconds have passed since you entered it."

Maddie inclined her head in thanks, then bowed her head in thought for some time. Then, she looked up. "First, I need to know what kind of triggers Doctor Essex installed in my mind. Then, I need them removed."

"Easily enough done," Lily said, stepping forward. "Just stand still and relax. This won't be comfortable, but it won't be made easier by tenseness, either."

Maddie nodded and closed her eyes as Lily laid one hand on her shoulder to steady her, then gently pushed her head down and pressed what appeared to be a gentle kiss on her forehead.

Maddie stayed still for a long moment, then suddenly began to cough and retch.

"Maddie?" Jono asked, alarmed, going to her side as she doubled over, Lily soothing her and holding her up. "What's happening to her?" he demanded.

"She is purging the implanted suggestions."

"Yeah, and why is Maddie practically coughing her guts up?" Jono snapped, forgetting for a moment that he was talking to a being that was infinitely more powerful than he was.

"This is a realm where the immaterial is material," Dream replied in cryptic tones.

"Not real stuff becomes real stuff," the raven chimed in, scratchy voice helpful.

Before Jono could demand a more detailed explanation, Maddie promptly vomited up what looked like a ball of wiry black steel wool, a spider's web of cold artifice, with hooks attached to the ends – which is why the ball was followed by blood as well as phlegm, and it twisted and writhed on the floor as if alive. From what was visible of Maddie's drawn expression, she was staring at it with utter hatred.

"Better out than in," Luna said, with a certain sympathy.

"… Oh," Jono said, going a little green. "Right. Yeah, definitely," he added, before weakly joining Lily in patting Maddie on the back. "There, there luv."

Maddie shot him a look that conveyed both gratitude for support and irritation at an obvious platitude, before her upper body convulsed again. This time, the ball was larger, causing her throat and cheeks to bulge as it travelled up her throat, almost choking her before she desperately hacked it up.

The last one was smaller again, thinner, but far more reluctant to leave, digging in to her mouth with barbs, and all the coughing and hacking in the world wouldn't make it leave. So Maddie responded by reaching in, and, apparently careless of the damage it might do to her mouth, ripping it out by main force, a spray of blood following it.

The final ball landed with a splat, mingling with the others, shifting and changing, then gathered itself to leap at Maddie. Who stopped it cold with a glare and an effort of will. Then, eyes burning with rage through tears of pain and effort, she stood up straight, raising the dark, twisting ball with her.

She stared at it for a second.

Then, with a sharp gesture and a flare of blue power, she blasted it into nothingness, then wiped her mouth, then her eyes, on a towel that Lucien silently provided.

"Well done," Lily said, tone gentle and encouraging. "Very, very well done."

"Too bloody right," Jono said fervently. "Nicely done, luv."

"Thank you," Maddie said, voice a little scratchy. "Now, we need a map to Harry's true self."

"Lucien," Dream said.

Lucien bowed his head and vanished out the doors.

"Traditionally in stories, things come in threes," Luna observed in her misty voice.

As hints went, this was not especially subtle and Maddie and Jono shared a look.

"It's your party, luv," Jono said after a moment. "I'm just along for the ride. Your call."

Maddie frowned, then nodded. "Very well," she said. "Then I have a question. Doctor Essex has told me my whole life that I am his creation and that I have no purpose beyond serving his interests. I have always accepted this, for I had no reason to do anything else. The psychic conditioning likely assisted in this, but I doubt it was necessary. I had no idea that I could be anything else. Remy, then Harry, helped me realise otherwise. This would suggest that I was not created, or at least, not as I had been led to believe, an experiment created by Doctor Essex that yielded unexpected power. Yet I have also encountered another like me, called Jean, whose powers at least equal my own. She and Harry assumed that I was a clone, and this would seem a logical assumption. Yet I am the same age as she is and have spent most of my life in areas of normal or near normal time. While Doctor Essex has studied her family and Harry's for many generations, from the memory Harry showed me of this discussion, by inference I concluded that he was not expecting the levels of power I displayed."

She paused. "The question of 'Who am I?' is one that I can resolve myself. 'What am I?' is another one that I can also resolve myself. A key to both, however, is encapsulated in my question: Where did I come from?"

The four beings exchanged looks.

"She should know," Luna said.

"She will know, soon enough," Death replied.

"It will help her settle her mind, which she will need for what is to come," Lily said.

"Or unsettle it further, which could be disastrous," Dream countered.

"Scuse my manners, my lord and ladies, but the lady asked you a question," Jono said. "Doesn't she deserve an answer?"

"She does," Luna said mildly.

"Everyone deserves answers," Lily sighed.

"But not everyone may receive them," Dream said. "Especially since this is a question with many answers, and many more implications."

Death coughed, and the other three, including Dream, whose domain this was, turned to look at her. "We can't give you the complete answer yet," she said. "You'll find that one out on your own. But we can say this: you're flesh of Jean Grey's flesh, blood of her blood, and bone of her bone. And you are your own person, with your own destiny, free to make your own choices."

Maddie frowned, then nodded. "Very well," she said. "Thank you."

Dream suddenly looked up, then spoke quietly to the raven, which bobbed its head and flew off. "Your escort has arrived," he said.

"And who would they be?" Jono asked, faintly suspicious.

"The Queens of Faerie have resented the intrusion into their territory by a mortal organisation, one that has antagonised Asgard, a power that both of them are careful to remain on good terms with," Dream said. "And the disruption to their realms that the resultant battles of have caused. They feel that they are owed retribution, and owe Asgard their assistance in retrieving its heir, whose body and spirit have been imprisoned in their realms."

"Roughly translated, they want revenge," Lily said bluntly. "And to dress it up in something politically suitable in the process."

"Hrrm."

Lily arched an eyebrow at Dream, as if daring him to disagree. He did not, and the double door swung open, to admit two men.

They were a study in contrasts.

One was of average height, verging on short, though he was built with the muscle of a swordsman, as befitting the blade at his hip, and held himself with a calm self-assurance that made one believe that his lack of height wouldn't matter one bit. His hair was white as corn silk, neatly managed, and fell to his shoulders.

The other was tall, astonishingly so, in fact, with close cut messy dark hair, appearing at first glance to be built like a particularly skinny and angular scarecrow, something emphasised by the long rune carved quarter-staff in his hand and the black duster that swept his ankles. He looked nervous.

One of Dream's other retainers bowed before his master and, in lieu of Lucien, said, "Lord Dream, Lady Death, Lady Destruction and Lady Delirium, I present to you Sir Fix, the Summer Knight, and Wizard Dresden of the White Council, Apprentice to the Sorceress Supreme-In-Waiting, and the Winter Emissary."

"Champions of the Queens of Faerie, be welcome in my home," Dream said formally.

Sir Fix bowed. "Thank you, Lord Morpheus," he said. "It is our honour."

"Right," Dresden remarked a little hastily. "Definitely our honour." His gaze swept the room, never meeting anyone's gaze for more than a second – and twitching slightly when Lily gave him a familiar smile and a wave – before stopping very suddenly on Maddie, his expression turning to a puzzled frown, before his eyes widened a fraction later with understanding.

"Sir Fix, Wizard Dresden, these two are Lady Madelyn Grey and Master Jonothon Starsmore. It is they who you have been bidden to escort and assist by your Queens," Dream said.

Sir Fix bowed again, this time to Maddie and Jono. He bowed less deeply, but with no less sincerity. "We will be happy to aid in any way we can, my lord, my ladies," he said.

Dresden's expression hardened, determined, and Maddie could now see why he had been chosen. He did not have Sir Fix's calm confidence, but nevertheless… there was a hardness, a determination that made bedrock look like marshmallows. And as she saw that, she noticed how those long bones carried longer muscles, muscles that were only made to look thin by a matter of proportion, and that he carried his staff, a scarred and nicked weapon that had clearly seen extensive combat, with utter assurance.

"There's a kid out there who needs to be brought home," he said, and the runes on the staff flared with power. Maddie took note. While judging magical power was not something she was expert in, she could tell that this man was most certainly not short of it. "We'll help you do it. By any means necessary."

"Well spoken," Dream said. "I will also provide you with a guide." He waved a hand and a male figure, tall, though not even close to as tall as Dresden, stepped out of the shadows as if he had been one with them. He was hooded, his face indistinct, and around him was a subtle thrum of power. "While the maps are clear enough, the routes are complex and can betray even the wary. He knows these lands and begged for the privilege. He will aid you in any way he can."

"Yes," Lily said, eyeing him. "You will, won't you?"

The figure gave her a low bow and said nothing.

It was at this point that Lucien re-entered the room, carrying a large rolled up scroll.

"Thank you, Lucien," Dream said, standing up and descending the dais to take the scroll, laying it on a table that had not been there before, and was very much there now. "This is the route you will need to take…"

OoOoO

Now

"So, they didn't tell you."

"No. Their reasoning was logical, but…"

"You resent not being informed."

"Yes. It's illogical."

"It's human."

"I suppose."

"But they did provide you with maps."

"And safe passage through Dream's realm, escort through the relevant portions of the Nevernever, and a guide." A pause. "Dream also stated that as 'a being of thought and imagining', Jono was very much like a being of Dream's realm and thus welcome to return some day."

"I see. Didn't you earlier suggest that they; the Nevernever and Dream's realm, were one and the same?"

"The dream spirit called Abel suggested that that was the case. I believe it likely, but I received no independent confirmation."

"Understandable. What happened next?"

"The journey was uneventful and swift, thanks to our escort, who knew the lay of the land. When we arrived at the Red Room base, Doctor Essex's laboratory, however…"

OoOoO

Then

"Well," Jono remarked. "This could be a bit difficult."

The Red Room base had not merely been repaired and restored. No, it had been expanded, to something more closely comparable in size to Camp Bastion, looking considerably more permanent and even more heavily armed.

"Not really," Maddie said. "The only one aside from Doctor Essex with the authority to stop me is General Lukin, and even then, that authority is tenuous. He can stop me, but he cannot strictly command me. He, and others, will simply assume that I have been ordered back. If they question me, I will simply say that you are my prisoner." She shot a glance at him. "Try to look appropriately depressed."

"We're walking right back into the bloody place where I spent over a year as a guinea pig, had my spine and neck snapped, and probably houses the people responsible for both, which is considerably bigger and badder than it was before," Jono said. "I'm not going to have to try, luv."

"I am sorry."

Jono shrugged. "It needs to be done, luv," he said. "Besides – wonder boy risked himself to spring me and the others. Least I can do is return the favour."

Maddie inclined her head, then turned to the escorts. "You have discharged your obligation and done so well," she said formally. "While your help would be welcome, you need remain here no longer. You may return to your respective mistresses and master with our thanks."

"Mab is no mistress of mine," Dresden said flatly. "I'm a temp worker, nothing more. And I'm not doing this for her or for any obligations she might owe." He looked down at the base. "The way I understand, there's a kid's spirit trapped down there, in the hands of one of the closest things to pure evil I've come across in a while, while a bunch of washed-up Cold War era assholes are using his body as a damn puppet, after he got screwed over for doing the right thing." His hands tightened around his staff and his eyes narrowed dangerously. "And that kid is my girlfriend's godson. She loves him to bits and all this is tearing her heart to pieces. Personally, I like him too. Am I letting all that pass? Am I hell." He turned to Maddie, wearing an expression that would have made any self-respecting demon think twice. "Whatever you've got planned next, I'm in."

Sir Fix flashed her a quick smile. "Leave? And miss this party? Not likely," he said, then sobered. "If you have no further use of me, my lady, then I will retire rather than hinder your mission. But if I may still be of use, then I will gladly lend you my sword and my strength."

Maddie dipped her head. "Thank you," she said quietly, then turned to the last.

He was a moderately tall man, hooded and cloaked, his face mostly concealed. What his hood did not conceal, however, was the thrum of power around him. This man, or being, had been chosen by the Dream King as their escort for reasons other than his unerring command of the terrain and the route.

"And you, sir? You need not feel the need to remain if you do not wish to do so, as helpful as that would be?"

In reply, there was a soft chuckle, and for the first time, he spoke.

"A kind offer," he said, and pulled down his hood with a triumphant flourish. "But one I must decline." At first, Maddie did not recognise him. Then, she did, and she took half a step back in instinctive fear.

"Maddie, luv?" Jono asked worriedly, as Sir Fix and Dresden's eyes both widened in astonishment, the later swearing in surprise.

Maddie just stared fixedly at their guide. He had dark hair and was pale, more so than was natural thanks to visible tiredness and stress that carved new lines on his face, lines that were, with the white wings of hair at his temples, the only visible indications of ageing. A goatee beard encircled a mouth spread in a gleeful, wicked smile, and rested beneath blue eyes that sparkled with anticipation. He looked like little more than a well-to-do businessman in the midst of a prank, or perhaps a fancy dress party. But appearances were deceptive. For though he would never say as such, this was possibly the one man that Doctor Essex truly feared.

"Good afternoon, Miss Grey, Mister Starsmore," he said. "While your companions are familiar with me, at least in a professional capacity, I feel I should introduce myself. I am Doctor Stephen Strange, Earth's Sorcerer Supreme. And it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Chapter Text

Now

"So, Strange finally got involved."

"Yes. I presume you expected him to act a great deal earlier."

"We did. Usually, this was the sort of situation that he nips in the bud. However, Essex could evade magical tracking, and even Strange's temporally based foresight. We're still not sure how."

"The former is technologically related. The latter… I do not know."

"Okay. Anyway, he was your guide through the Nevernever. Did he explain his presence? For that matter, while Sir Fix's is fairly obvious, did Dresden?"

"Yes, to the both."

OoOoO

Then

"Who the bloody hell are you?" Jono asked suspiciously, hands glowing dangerously.

"I think I just answered that question," Strange said dryly. "What am I, I think, is what you meant. That is a question with many answers, but first and foremost, I am a friend. And I am here to help." His gaze shifted to Maddie and became much, much sadder. "If only because it is my fault that Miss Grey here suffered for so long at the hands of Nathaniel Essex."

"You know him?" Maddie asked, then shook her head. "Of course you do. He knew to fear you."

"Many who don't know me personally know to fear me," Strange said, in a matter-of-fact tone that said that this was a statement of fact, not a boast. "And are very wise to do so." His expression hardened. "But yes, I know him, he knows me, and he knows very well to fear me. I have been trying to find him, thwart his various schemes, and preferably, stick his miserable head – his real miserable head – on a rusty pike for a very long time. Which since he is immune to all of my conventional and unconventional tracking methods, and has the sense to keep his head down most of the time, is an absolute bastard." His gaze shifted to the base. "But I've come close, once or twice, I've come close. I've come very close."

"You used us and the aid we were given to get close to him," Maddie deduced.

"Not quite," Strange said. "That would imply that I deceived Death, Dream, Destruction and Delirium – or as you better know the latter, Lily and Luna. That is something that even I could not hope to do. And no, much as I would enjoy it, I am not here simply to kill Essex. Instead, I am here to help you find Harry's mind, contained as it is in what you so charmingly think is simply a phoenix feather."

"Then what is it?" Maddie asked sharply.

"Something that you will discover, soon enough," Strange said, regarding the fortress. "For now, it is serving as a kind of sanctum – in this case, a sort of psychic womb, which is apt, considering its connection to his mother. He is in a semi-conscious state, in that he is loosely aware, but mostly asleep. Returning to his body will be a shock, far more than you originally intended, I think. His control, his defences, within and without, will be weakened. You must be prepared for the consequences of that."

Maddie looked away and nodded.

"It was a good plan," Strange said, gently. "And under other circumstances, it might have worked beautifully. At its core, it still can."

"How do you know about it?" Jono asked suspiciously.

"Normally, I know things," Strange said. "It is what I do. Here, however, it was mostly a matter of deduction, aided by the fact that I know things."

"Do you ever give a straight answer?"

"No," Dresden said. "He doesn't." He was eyeing Strange with a dark, wary scowl, one that said very clearly that he both disapproved of what Strange had been up to, and that Strange as he was at the moment gave him a profound case of the creeps. Maddie could see why – she did not know Strange as a person, what he was normally like, but it wasn't hard to see that at the moment at least, this was not a man overly burdened with sanity.

"Young man, if you knew the kind of things I did, you would not be inclined to give straight answers," Strange said curtly. "Nor would you be able to get a full night of sleep ever again." He turned to Maddie. "I have much to explain, and little or no time in which to do it. Normally, I would have been able to prepare circumstances so that I would have the time to explain what I needed to, but your former master's involvement and his immunity to my knowledge gathering talents means that everything is in flux. In language suitable to the Nevernever, I shall put it like this: A very long time ago, I failed in an obligation. As a result, I owe you a grave debt. I wish to discharge at least part of that debt by assisting you in the restoration of Harry Thorson. I swear by my power and all that I hold dear that if you accept my assistance, I will do everything in my power to help you."

Maddie considered this. "Doctor Essex fears you," she said. "From what I can tell, you speak the truth. If you were capable of deceiving such beings as we spoke to earlier, then you would not need to even have this discussion. If you had wished to harm us, you could have done so many times already, and led us astray." She looked at Sir Fix and Dresden. "Is his word good?"

"Doctor Strange is renowned for never speaking a lie," Sir Fix said, tone measured. "And his reputation is good. However, I must admit, I have not had many dealings with him." He turned to Dresden. "Harry?"

Dresden eyed Strange, then nodded. "Yeah," he said. "You can trust him to tell the truth, even if he usually twists it into knots. And by the sounds of things, he's on the level about this."

Maddie nodded, then turned to Strange. "I accept your offer. Though be warned: if you breach it, the penalty to your magic will be the least of your worries."

Strange bowed his head. "Time is of the essence," he said.

And so the three made their way towards the camp.

True to expectations, they didn't encounter any trouble – the gate guards were Red Room old hands, and were familiar with Maddie, meaning that they let her and Jono in without batting a eyelid. Strange was allowed in to, though this had more to do with the fact that he was nowhere to be seen, detectable only by Maddie's abilities – and she had the feeling that was only because he desired that it was so. Her presence was apparently self-evident; she was Doctor Essex's Hound, and she was returning with fresh prey. They did not need to know anything more, and did not wish to, either.

Some of the younger, more excitable soldiers catcalled her, but that stopped as soon as the first one who did it collapsed, bleeding from every visible orifice. After that, they figured out who she was and shut up very quickly indeed.

Bloody hell, luv. A bit much? Jono thought at her.

It is how they operate here. If you have power, you do not tolerate insolence from those beneath you. If they do not know to respect you, they are taught the error of their ways, came the crisp reply. Besides, it looks worse than it is.

She is right, Strange said. The common language of the Red Room is not Russian. It is power.

Walk around looking like you want to rip someone's throat out and that you can do it, and not many people are going to want to mess with you, Dresden remarked. Predators react well to that kind of body language. And everyone around here is either a predator or…

Dead, Fix finished. Or dead.

Right.

Indeed, Strange said. Turn left here.

Why?

There was the psychic impression of a smile. Didn't I mention? I can detect the feather, no matter how many layers of technological shielding it is under. It is, once you know what to look for, not the kind of power you can easily miss.

Maddie frowned inwardly, debating whether to trust him. For a wandless magical practitioner, breaching an oath sworn on their power reduced that power significantly and permanently. However, someone like Strange might consider it worth the risk.

She felt a touch on her hand, and Strange's mental presence. Miss Grey, he said, voice gentler, sadder, and frankly, saner than it had been before. I am many things; among them, a manipulator, a murderer, perhaps even something of a monster. I have walked too many dark paths for too long to be anything else. But the one thing I am not and will never be is a liar.

And with that, his mental defences, near-perfect even at a close look, melted away, allowing Maddie to sense the sincerity behind them. She delved a little further, to ensure that this wasn't simply a clever fake, but it wasn't. It had none of the tell-tale signs. And frankly, she felt that if he could deceive her so thoroughly, then she was likely doomed no matter what she did. Additionally, he'd taken a massive risk opening his mind to her. If he was capable of such deception, then, frankly, there were far easier ways for him to do so. Logic dictated that he was being sincere, if only to undermine Doctor Essex and make him easier prey.

She nodded inwardly and forged onwards, skirting the command centre. Even from a distance, however, the air of tightly controlled panic was palpable to Maddie, who paused for half a step as she felt words bubbling on the top of the thoughts.

What's happening? Jono asked. He sensed it too, but he couldn't pick out details.

The Winter Guard has been defeated, Strange said grimly. At least one of their members is dead. At Magneto's hands.

Winter Guard? Sir Fix asked, puzzled.

The Red Room's strongest, collected into a team, Maddie said. With the exception of the Beast.

He's not on it? There's a surprise, Jono remarked.

He is stupid and has little concept of discipline, Maddie said. Despite his power, he would likely be a liability. Additionally, he is primarily under Doctor Essex's jurisdiction. He will likely be around here somewhere.

His abilities? Sir Fix asked briskly.

Significant superhuman strength, durability, and a healing factor, Maddie replied. His weakpoints are his eyes, joints and other soft tissues.

Yeah, and don't let him in grabbing distance either, Jono said darkly. Eyes, eh? Good to know, luv. Good to know.

Don't go looking for him, Maddie said sharply. While he cannot kill you, he can disrupt your form, which will waste time.

Wasn't planning to, luv. But if it comes to a fight, it's good to know what to go for, Jono said.

She is right, we cannot dally, Strange said, a note of urgency in his voice. We must move quickly. The Red Son is programmed never to surrender, and he is fighting someone that he could never hope to defeat.

You mean, Maddie began, then her footsteps quickened as it sunk in. Not to a run – they couldn't afford that. But she sorely wished that they could.

OoOoO

Lukin grimaced as the visual feed from the Red Son's remaining eyeball, transmitted via nanite cameras, crackled and showed little but red as blood began to cloud the eye. The vital signs were decreasing too, and would soon be well into the territory of unconsciousness.

"So, the Red Son's limitations are exposed," he said. "A pity." He turned to Essex. "When can you have a replacement ready?"

"Several already are," Essex said mildly. "And this fight is not over yet. I recall that you worried about the lack of physical enhancement in the Red Son comparative to his non-physical powers?"

"Yes," Lukin said. "You said that you would attend to it. And a fat lot of good that has done!" He sighed. "Nothing for it, then," he said, and reached for a red button marked 'Remote Detonation'.

If he could not have the Red Son, then no one could.

Essex smiled. It was the sort of smile usually seen either in boardrooms or on sharks.

"I would not be so hasty, either in judgement or action," he said. "It has done nothing because it has not been activated yet." He turned to his computer and began typing away. "It is in a passive state, absorbing data about the Red Son's opponent – in this case, Magneto – so that if it is activated, it will already have countermeasures prepared."

"What form does this enhancement take?" Lukin asked, curious despite himself.

"In my studies, I have come across many unusual things," Essex said. "Viruses, serums, ideas, and technologies, left behind by all kinds of visitors to Earth. This one, which I have adapted to my own purposes, is particularly ancient, dating back to Atlantis itself: it was an attempt at technology so sophisticated that it could mimic life itself, to copy, to replicate it. The Asuras project, the ancients called it. And while I normally consider such things a poor copy, I found it interesting - it was not quite organic, yet it was more than simple technology, being more like a combination of the two - something techno-organic, if you will. So I altered it and renamed it." He typed in a final command, then pressed enter.

On the screen, red letters flashed.

Project Transmode Activated.

OoOoO

Now

"Okay, thank you Maddie. I think you can take a break there. Can you send in Mister Dresden? I'd like some background on his involvement, and Sir Fix's."

"Very well."

The door closed. The door opened.

"Hello, Harry."

"Hey, Coulson."

A silence.

"You want me to talk about Mab, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Do you really need to know?"

"It would be helpful."

"That's a no, then."

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"But…"

"Mab doesn't appear openly on Earth often. She plays her cards exceptionally close to her chest."

"She's the freaking Winter Queen, what do you expect?"

"Exactly. She's a very powerful player, and every little bit of information could be vital."

A sigh. "Fine."

OoOoO

Then

I sat in Avengers Mansion and sighed. Another time, I might have appreciated the fact that I was in the rather fancy headquarters of Earth's Mightiest Heroes (patent pending). I might even have been awed, though my capacity for awe had been significantly diminished since I'd visited Asgard. Once you'd been to a shindig to celebrate the universe not ending in the palace of the Norse Gods, it's kind of hard to be impressed by any mortal habitation, no matter how fancy.

Then again, this was where Captain America lived. Which was, you know, something to take in. Especially since while he'd been a good sport about the fact that the second time I'd met him, I actually had kind of melted into a puddle. The first time had been in the middle of the world ending, so I was kind of distracted.

These last couple of weeks, I'd been distracted too. I'm rated as one of the better magical trackers out there – SHIELD puts me in the top five in the world, which I think is a little generous. For one thing, the guys and girls who're really good at it rarely advertise. Then again, I've learned to customise my tracking spells to deal with technology and the sort of stuff that SHIELD deals with. I'm not sure how well some of the older and more experienced Wizards would do in my shoes – with age may come power and wisdom, but it also comes with getting set in your ways.

But none of that rep seemed to matter, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find what I was looking for. A kid. Specifically, Wanda's kid – or rather, her godson, but since her mom was dead and he thought the world of her, the way she did of him, he was basically her kid. I'd tried all the tricks I knew, I'd called in as many favours as I dared, and a few that I normally wouldn't have done, and picked Bob's insubstantial brains time and time again. Putting my meagre expertise together with Wanda's, Loki's, and Albus Dumbledore's, in a series of discussions that confirmed to me just how very little I actually knew, I'd managed to expand and refine my tracking spells more than ever before. Nothing.

I'd even called the Council; specifically, my old mentor, Ebenezar McCoy. While he might not be able to customise the tracking spell, I'd hoped that either he or the Council, who I knew had had dealings with the Red Room before, might have some insight into circumventing their defensive measures, beyond the original plan of working through Mjolnir. Still nothing.

And the reason, by the way, that we weren't simply relying on Mjolnir which Thor, in a moment of exceptionally quick thinking, had thrown after the vanishing Red Room base (yes, their base moves. It would be cool if what they used it for wasn't so horrifying) as a beacon. Unfortunately, the base had moved to somewhere called 'the Shifting Zones', meaning that a clear fix was nigh impossible, and whatever we picked up would only be useful if we could use it in conjunction with something else.

Then, all of a sudden, I'd got a hit, a few days in, after I went out on a limb and took one of the ways to Eastern Europe. Using some of my own techniques and one or two Wanda had taught me, I managed to triangulate it and call it in. By the time Loki got there, however, he'd gone.

It was a positive hit, he'd been there. But he wasn't any more. And our tracking spells got more and more hits like that as the days went by – hits that showed he was there, but by the time we rolled out, he was gone. Then, about three days after that, the hits vanished, as someone on the Red Room's end figured out that we were successfully tracking him and found out how to block us out. That was when the 'Forever Red' and red star graffiti started popping up en masse. They were taunting us, saying that we'd never get him back.

And so it was back to square one.

Captain America, being the Man With A Plan (if no longer quite as star-spangled), had brainstormed with the Avengers a new plan, based on a new approach – make the Red Room, and the Red Son as they were calling the poor kid, come to them.

That plan had actually worked – the Winter Guard, the Red Room's hit squad, had been trapped, and the Avengers apparently had the kid in custody.

I should have felt relieved.

Instead, I just felt tired. Tired and afflicted by just a hint of dread. Because my gut, rightly or wrongly, was telling me that this wasn't over just yet.

"A knut for your thoughts, Mister Dresden?"

I looked up, and repressed an instinctive twitch. Albus Dumbledore was looking down at me. He was Harry Thorson's headmaster at Hogwarts, one of the big wanded academies in Europe, and he had an air of benevolent and grandfatherly eccentricity about him. However, it did not do to forget that behind the strange dress sense, twinkling blue eyes and affable demeanour was quite possibly the most powerful wanded wizard on Earth. He'd taken the most powerful Wanded Warlock in the world, a fully fledged Dark Lord called Grindelwald with a full blown magical empire behind him, in a straight fight. Everything I heard, mainly rumours and stuff from Bob, put him on par with a member of the Senior Council for raw power. Going by what I'd seen the last couple of weeks, and things Bob had mentioned, he more than had the smarts and finesse to back it up.

This in itself did not scare me too much. Make me aware that I was dealing with a big gun, sure, but I was also hanging around Wanda, who had even more raw power, and Loki, who was the actual Norse God of Magic, both of whom had badass reputations of their own. And, frankly, he seemed like a nice enough guy. But with his overall wizard classic look, air of power and piercing blue eyes, plus an understandably grim mood, he also reminded me unsettlingly of the Merlin of the Council, a man with whom I did not have a good history. It was enough to make me a little uneasy around him.

That said, his question made me blink.

"A what?"

Dumbledore smiled slightly. "Wizarding money," he said. "British wizarding money, to be specific. Perhaps I should have said a penny. Or maybe a cent."

I snorted. "Just mulling over how useless I'm feeling," I said.

Dumbledore sighed and sat down next to me, in one of the Mansion's ludicrously plush armchairs. "That is a feeling that I have become very familiar with in recent days," he said. "And it is one I have dealt with before." He gave me a sidelong look. "I am afraid that it does not get any easier."

"Good," I said, after a moment. "It shouldn't."

Those blue eyes regarded me for a long moment, and for a moment, I thought I saw a gleam of approval. "Indeed," he said. "But you have done your part, Mister Dresden, all that could be expected of you and more."

"I don't know if I have," I said. "I mean, I have other contacts. Ones…"

"Ones that you have not called upon because you are afraid to do so," Dumbledore said calmly. "I know."

I blinked. "You do?" I asked, unable to hide my surprise.

Dumbledore smiled thinly. "I have lived for a very long time, young man," he said. "And in that time, I have passed through some very dark places. One does not get into, or out of, such places without making some very dangerous acquaintances. And sometimes, one has to fight fire with fire, darkness with darkness." He looked off into the distance. "Many years ago, I faced Gellert Grindelwald in a duel. He was my contemporary and we had known each other quite well as young men. As a result, I knew very well that he had been my equal, perhaps even slightly my superior – though I fancy that I was a shade more skilful. If there was a contest for the title of most powerful wanded practitioner, I do not think that I am being immodest when I say that we were the two stand-out candidates of our generation. And that was before he began to make dark compacts, serious ones. Oh, he'd dabbled in the dark forces as a young man, but that was nothing to what came next. He was brilliant, exceptionally powerful, and a visionary with a desire to transform the world into what he genuinely believed to be a better place. He saw the world, the darkness, and the things and groups that shaped mankind's destiny from the shadows, and he hated it. He demanded to know why they must hide away, why they must horde their gifts like misers, and not share them with the world. In his world, the strong and the wise, those with the power and the learning to understand the dark places of the world, could help mankind shape a new destiny."

"That doesn't sound so bad," I remarked. "On the face of it."

Dumbledore smiled thinly. "So many thought," he said. "And, once upon a time, I was one of them, even though Gellert was fairly clear that the core of his vision, his solution to the problems that blinded and bedevilled humanity, was to provide a firm, guiding hand. But in truth, Gellert was never content with mere guidance. His ambitions were greater."

"To rule," I said quietly.

"Exactly," Dumbledore said. "So, recognising that the old world would not give up without a fight, he began to gather an army. They were the ambitious, the directionless, the desperate, and the idealistic. They were both the cream of the magical world, of both magical worlds, and the scum. All who were willing to serve, to give themselves over to Grindelwald's ideology, were welcome. And in return, they would have a great destiny laid out before them. They were a scattered lot at first, flouting the Statute of Secrecy here and there. Terrorists, in a word. A threat, and a serious one, but only a glimpse of what was to come. For he knew that that was not enough. He needed allies, not merely in the mystical world, but in the mundane one too. So he turned to a man called Johann Schmidt, who is better known to posterity as…

"The Red Skull," I said, wondering where this was going. I didn't voice this thought, but Dumbledore seemed to catch it anyway.

"Yes. And I assure you, this is not merely the ramble of an old man," he said. "Grindelwald recognised that even allies such as HYDRA, and through them, the Nazi regime – Himmler, in particular, was obsessed with magic."

"And Hitler?" I asked.

"Interested enough, though mostly for practical and propaganda uses rather than for its own sake," Dumbledore remarked. "Grindelwald considered them to be useful idiots, for the most part, providing cannon fodder on an as needed basis. Except for Schmidt. He knew that while the Red Skull wielded the Tesseract, even if he tapped only a fraction of its infinite potential, he was not someone who could be taken lightly. Even without it, he was someone to be reckoned with. But it was the Tesseract that really made him dangerous: as Arnim Zola, one of Schmidt's chief scientists and most vile underlings remarked when he was captured towards the end of the war, with the Tesseract, the sanity of Schmidt's plans was immaterial: whatever they were, he could pull them off. This was a philosophy that Grindelwald, in part, shared. He felt the need to gain power, more power, so he could shape the destiny of the world unimpeded. So he made dark compacts with just about any greater being that offered him power: Dormammu, Mephisto, Trigon, the Fallen… his only discrimination was against beings that actively wished to erase the world, such as Chthon." He sighed. "I even think that he might have summoned the Phoenix, had he known but how."

"The Phoenix," I said. "As in, Harry's mom?"

Dumbledore smiled a slight, sad smile, and I abruptly remembered that this man had known Harry's mom, taught her, seen her grow from child to young woman, picking her out to be part of a hideously outnumbered and outmatched volunteer force against a Warlock who'd have been a continental scale monster if he'd ever felt like it. She might not have been as close as an apprentice or a daughter, but he'd known, trusted and cared for her, casting what, to hear Wanda tell it, was one of the strongest and most complex wards in wanded magic on her safehouse to keep her, her husband (latterly Thor, not that anyone knew it), and their infant son safe. And it had failed, because the lynchpin of that ward had been someone who'd turned out to be a traitor.

Then, with that failure new to him, he'd taken the miraculously surviving infant from the rubble of his family home and given him to what he sincerely believed was the boy's only surviving family, creating yet more powerful enchantments to protect him, and setting trusted people to watch over him. Yet once again, while the spellwork had worked just fine, the human factor had not – the family had abused the boy horribly, in a way that I knew from personal experience would leave scars far deeper than the physical, and the trusted people had not raised the alarm because of another person trusted by all those around them, who was secretly working their own dark agenda.

In this case, this agenda had been to study and manipulate the boy, to keep him isolated and helpless, and to fake kindness, the sort of kindness that an abused child could not help but respond to and trust, while all the while treating him like an experiment in a petri dish. And that wasn't even getting into the other things that that dark presence, the one variously called Milbury, Essex, or very aptly, Sinister, had got up – stealing children from their cradles came to mind and whenever it did, it made me want to start breaking things.

Anyway, finally, that boy had come to Dumbledore's school, and all his attempts to protect the kid came to nothing, partly through misfortune, partly through very human mistakes, and partly through the sheer cussedness of a stubborn kid who just refused to stay out of trouble and not stick his nose into whatever mystery was going, no matter how far out of his depth it took him.

And yes, before you say it, I had noticed the parallels.

Anyhow, I could see what Dumbledore meant by being used to that helpless feeling. It's not easy for anyone to feel helpless. It's a terrifying feeling, of being adrift, like being in quicksand, with nothing solid to cling onto, as everything seems to spiral out of control. It follows you around, a sick feeling deep in your stomach that you just can't shake, joining the associated feelings of fear, shame and pure misery and mixing itself up into a vile cocktail that permeates and paralyses your entire being. It's why psychologists recommend finding something simple, something even like brushing your teeth, to do. Something that you can control, to help you centre and balance yourself. To make a start. It's also why, if someone wants to control you, they could make a worse start than by making you think that you can't control yourself. For wizards, though, it's worse – when you're used to being able to make the fundamental forces of the universe sit up and beg, it's hard to deal with the fact that there's something you can't do, someone you can't help, no matter how hard you try.

"Yes," Dumbledore said. "Though she was not back then. And it is a very good thing that he did not. The best case scenario would be that she would simply incinerate him for his impudence. The worst case scenario, if Grindelwald had actually managed to sequester a portion of Her power… you were at London, over the summer."

"Yeah," I said.

"You met Lily."

"Briefly, but yeah," I said. "I mean, she was mostly talking to Wanda, Thor, and her kid." I shivered. "I felt how strong she was, if that's what you're getting at."

"In part," Dumbledore said. "What you felt, and saw, however, was the Phoenix at Her most controlled. Power, yes, but disciplined, and wielded with a level head. I have seen Her in other situations. Before and after Lily's time, when she was enraged almost beyond control, and even then, acting in honest and justifiable outrage. The differences were marked. Coming into contact with Grindelwald as he was then… any fragment of her power would either have destroyed him, or been corrupted, horribly corrupted. And then, it consume him. Then, it would consume Earth, the Nevernever, the Nine Realms, and every other realm connected to Earth that it could reach. Unless stopped, it would devour them all."

I shivered again. Compared to ordinary mortals, even to a lot of magically talented people, including ones on the Council, my nominal peers, I've got bucket loads of power. My power gives me a lot of options and makes me look like a pretty big player. Not for the first time in recent months, however, I was being very firmly reminded that compared to some beings swanning around the universe, I was nothing more than a speck of dust, if that.

"Anyway," Dumbledore said. "Grindelwald had power and, at first at least, I have no doubt that he intended to ultimately use it against its progenitors, in the guise of aiding one of his benefactors against the others, playing them each off against each other. But such power is evil, through and through, and evil is not a toy. It is to be handled carefully, if at all. It corrupted him, and what remained of his good intentions. He carved out an empire of blood and terror, bringing the likes of the Thule Society – the real one, not merely the talking shop for fools and dabblers – into his service, even commanding the loyalty of Heinrich Kemmler, a wandless necromancer of horrific power. To soften up his enemies, he allowed vampires, spirits, and demons to run wild. I even think that he dallied with Selene Gallio for a time, though she would never suffer to be anyone's second. The campaign in Russia, when the White Council and the Ministries of the East launched one of their first major counterattacks from Archangel, was particularly brutal."

He sighed. "Of course, with all the mundane and non-magical horrors spread across the Eastern front, it hardly stood out. But, slowly and surely, then faster and faster, his empire was rolled back from all sides. His armies shrank. His allies fell or fled. And his power waned. All this was largely thanks to the aid of Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme. Finally, the two faced each other in Berlin. The duel was epic, lasting for days, and it flattened most of the city that was still standing. Most in Berlin who didn't know better simply thought it was a staggered series of bombing raids, and it might as well have been. In the end, Grindelwald was crippled, with nothing more than his natural gifts and artefacts he could naturally have gained in the physical world. He was still vastly powerful, but he was mortal, no longer godlike in his might. And when I asked why Strange had not destroyed him entirely, he told me 'he is a problem that you helped create. It is only fitting that you end it.'"

"That's kind of harsh," I said, a little taken aback.

"But true," Dumbledore said. "Gellert and I were not merely familiar with each other as young men, we were dear friends. Alike in power, brilliance and ambition, we saw in each other a kindred spirit, and ultimately encouraged each other's worst impulses. Well, I like to think that I attenuated some of his, if only because he felt the need to mask some of his already considerable darkness so as not to scare me off, but feeble as it was, I think it counted for little on the balance sheet. In the end, I turned away from the dark paths that Gellert had already begun to set out on. He did not. I could have stopped him, at least confronted him, in the years before his ascension to power. But I did not. In truth, I was afraid to do so. He represented a period in my life that was one of deepest shame, that still is. I aided his growth, both by encouragement and support, then by refusing to step in when I had the chance, when I was one of the few people alive who could have hoped to do so in a straight fight. He was a weed that I had allowed to grow out of control, which now strangled everything around it and shrouded everything else in darkness. Strange was right: Grindelwald was my responsibility. And while he had been stripped of his unnatural power, he was far from helpless – every bit my match for raw strength, and a true Dark Lord, learned in the dark arts from teachers demonic and mortal, the latter so vile that the two were practically interchangeable. To defeat him, I needed to familiarise myself with powers of similarly dark hues, to learn how to face them, match them, and wield them without being changed the way that Gellert had." He closed his eyes. "And I did. God forgive me, but I did. I mastered magics so vile that they did not have names, so unnatural that their use made the world scream, and so terrible that the mere sight of them could strike the unprepared dead from horror. To my own horror, but not surprise, I had an aptitude for such sorceries. I had already learned a degree of familiarity with them by facing the horrors that Grindelwald and his allies had produced throughout the war. This was just like colouring in a picture, the outline of which I already knew. Finally, I confronted Grindelwald and, after a duel that has become rather famous over the years, and I defeated him." He looked me in the eyes for a half-instant less than the precise length of time needed to initiate a Soulgaze. "And I used darkness to do it."

I was silent for a long moment. "Are you saying that I should have just grown a pair and called my shadier contacts and had done with it?" I asked eventually. "Because as morals go, that's kind of a shitty one."

"No," Dumbledore said. "Part of the point was that I, among others, have many more shady contacts than even you have managed to accrue in your short yet highly eventful life. Wanda and Loki certainly do. Of course, we may not have some of the contacts that you do, but nevertheless, we are hardly lacking – and I understand your logic. You feel that your darker contacts would hear things that your lighter ones would not. The Fallen pay close attention to the sins of mankind, after all. Another part, that I did not get to, was that wielding such powers is not something to be done lightly; unless done with great care, caution and preparation, it can transform even the best of intentions into something horrific. After all, the Red Room was formed, in large part, to confront the likes of Grindelwald and HYDRA when they threatened Russia. Now, they are spoken of in the same breath, as things alike in their evil. In trying to do good, you might have only made matters that much worse."

I grimaced at that. What Dumbledore was saying tallied closely with everything I'd ever heard about black magic, which was an especial threat to wandless practitioners – my old mentor, Ebenezar McCoy, was part of the Senior Council, the oldest and strongest wizards on the White Council. He was also the Blackstaff, the White Council's black ops guy, and he had to use a special staff to ride the backlash of the black magic, to prevent it from driving him nuts.

"And yet another part, Mister Dresden," Dumbledore continued, his expression far too knowing. "Is that even if you manage to prevent it from changing you, it will always exact a price."

I eyed him for a moment. "What price to did it exact from you?"

Dumbledore smiled a sad smile. "Now that, I am afraid, would be telling," he said.

"I'd pay it, you know," I said, after a moment. "To get the kid out of there."

"I am sure you would," Dumbledore said. "As would anyone else in this building. As Harry himself is paying the price for trying to save someone else who has lived a life shrouded in darkness through no fault of their own."

I grunted. "Looks like she wasn't all that grateful," I said.

"Oh, I would not be so sure about that," Dumbledore remarked.

I gave him a sharp look. "What do you mean?"

"One of the things that the Avengers, and Professor Xavier, have discovered on capturing the Red Son is that there is no trace of Harry's mind within him," Dumbledore said. "Which suggests that it is elsewhere. Now, logic dictates that if Harry's mind, powerful as it is, terrified, confused and in pain as it would be, had fled to the physical or spirit realms, it would have been noticed."

"I suppose so," I admitted. I've been around some awfully powerful people, and I'd been around the kid when he was really flexing his psychic muscles. The kind of raw power that he generated both made my hair stand on end and made me think that he wouldn't be out of place among their number. Sure, he might not be on a par with the Mabs and Titanias of this world (not yet, anyway), or even the strongest members of the Senior Council (I wasn't sure about that one, but Ebenezar had set off Krakatoa back in the day. For all I knew, though, that could merely be a matter of knowing how to apply power). But the fact was that he was extremely strong.

Hell, when he'd got into a fight with someone even stronger than he was, when according to Wanda he was trying to avoid an outright contest of power, he'd rearranged the reality of a reasonably sized chunk of the Nevernever and laid me out flat from 7,000 kilometres away, along with most of the other practitioners on the planet, as a freaking side-effect.

While I wasn't exactly an expert on the spiritual and ghostly side of things, by Wizardly standards at least, that kind of power running wild would be very, very hard to miss. Especially to some of the most powerful practitioners and gods in the world, who had contacts everywhere you looked.

"Logic also suggests that such power would be hard to contain without express cooperation," Dumbledore said. "And the process of forcing it into containment would also, most probably, have been noticed."

I winced. I'd been laid out with a migraine when the kid was playing matador, trying to make enough noise to be heard, but quick enough on his feet to avoid being pinned down. If he had his back up against the wall and was forced into a straight fight, then the results wouldn't be as long lasting, but they would be that much harder to miss.

"And while the Red Room might not care, I also do not believe that the creature behind much of this, the one that calls itself Essex, would allow such a wild card factor," Dumbledore said. "At the very least, Harry's mind at liberty could find or attract the attention the Avengers or any of the many parties that would wish to curry favour with his family by aiding him, and aid in the retrieval of his body. So. Logic dictates…"

"That he had help," I finished slowly. "Someone hid him. Someone powerful enough and good enough to pull a fast one right under the nose of a powerful telepath. Someone who wouldn't want to reveal themselves. Someone who's either still hiding him, or trying to get his mind back to where it belongs."

"Which is an excellent note on which to begin negotiations," a cool, melodious woman's voice said from behind me.

A normal man might be intrigued, curious, if perhaps a little wary to hear such a proclamation, wondering where this lead would, heh, lead. Maybe, he might even be quietly pleased to hear a voice like that, which, to be frank, was kind of easy on the ears.

But I knew that voice. I knew who it belonged to.

So instead, my spine fused as all of it crawled up into a hunched little ball of terror up near my skull, while the rest of my organs attempted to a below stairs evacuation.

I turned around slowly, and bowed carefully. Once, I might have considered insouciance – and normally, I still would, if only to cover my anxiety – but Wanda had drummed into me that a little of at least the forms of respect could go a long way with beings like this one. Considering that she'd once made me stab a letter opener through the flesh between two of my fingers out of sheer spite, I could see the advantages of this. Plus, if there was one being that I'd met that I did not want angry with me, it was this one.

The woman before was tall, as tall as I was, and objectively perfect. Every curve and plane seemed to have been calculated to meet some kind of Da Vincian concept of mathematical perfection and symmetry, one only emphasised by her clothes, of the finest cut and of materials that had never been sullied by the mortal world. Her hair was the white of cornsilk in the moonlight, her skin paler than milk and twice as smooth. Hers was a beauty that made artists and sculptors weep, for they knew that mortal artistry could never truly capture such beauty. Even the finest photography would lack a certain something. Hers was a beauty that had men made with desire, with desperate, worshipful fervour, worshipping her as a goddess.

It terrified me. In part, it was because of her beauty, which seemed almost too perfect, too flawless, and therefore made ancient human instincts, sharpened by tens of millennia surviving such creatures, stand up and scream. And in part, it was because of her eyes. A wise man once said that the eyes were always what gave it away, and they did here. The rest of her could, just about, be the body of an improbably gorgeous woman. But it was the eyes that revealed her inhuman nature. They were slitted, like those of a cat and carried the associated malevolent amusement. Oh, and they changed colour in time with her jewellery – though it was probably the other way around.

"Queen Mab," I said carefully. "This is an… unexpected pleasure."

"Queen Mab," Dumbledore echoed, voice resonant, calm and authoritative, though tinged with respect. He bowed, to an inch-perfect degree – showing respect, but not subservience.

"Wizard Dumbledore," Mab said, inclining her head a fraction in acknowledgement, before giving me a look that could only be described as malevolent amusement. It spoke volumes of the relative respect she had for us – that is, she accorded Dumbledore respect. Me, she regarded the way a cat does a favourite mouse.

"So, uh," I said. "Why are you here?"

Her smile widened. I saw teeth. My spine continued its attempts to exit through the skin of my back. "To offer you the chance to be conducted into the presence of the spirit of the stolen Prince, Wizard mine," she murmured.

"Wizard mine, I think you'll find, Queen Mab," another cool feminine voice said. This one, by contrast, was a relief to hear. I half turned to see Wanda striding in, expression calm but hard, followed by a couple of others.

First, Pepper Potts, whose expression of wary curiosity was laid over a number of new worry lines and visible exhaustion, and froze with her baby daughter in her arms. While I severely doubted that she was familiar with who Mab was, her instincts were clearly working just fine.

Second, Jane Foster, whose eyes had widened with recognition – she clearly did recognise Mab, perhaps from some Asgardian court function – and had half stepped between her, Pepper, and the baby. I'd already had a fairly high general opinion of her, having heard what she'd come up with the New Bifrost project, but now my personal estimation of her rocketed upwards. She had no superpowers whatsoever and was physically fragile even by the standards of mortalkind, yet, knowing exactly who Mab was, she instinctively stepped between a mother and baby and the Wicked Queen to end all Wicked Queens. That took serious courage, the sort I admired the hell out of.

Mab turned her gaze on Wanda, and her expression changed to cool appraisal of a near peer – which, as the Sorceress Supreme-In-Waiting, Wanda was. "Lady Maximoff," she said. "Greetings."

Wanda inclined her head. "Greetings," she echoed, as Mab responded with a shallower inclination of her own. There was… well, I definitely wouldn't say liking between them, but there was a certain familiarity and mutual professional respect. They knew each other, though where and when from exactly, I had no idea.

This formality completed, Mab's smile returned, thin and sharp. "I had heard you had taken him as an apprentice." It sharpened further. "And in other fashions. Yet he owes me two favours still outstanding. He is mine until then."

"His obligation is one of two individual favours," Wanda said calmly, arms folded beneath her breasts. "Not one of continuous service. Additionally, according to the account he gave me of your bargain, the favours in which he repays you are of his own choice. He is not obligated to do as you ask." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Therefore, the description of him as 'yours', with the implication of vassalage, strikes me as inaccurate. If I understand the situation correctly."

Mab's eyes flashed, sharp as icicles and as ominous as the crack of packed snow preceding an avalanche, and no wonder: Wanda had just contradicted her, in public. That took either epic courage or epic stupidity. In this case, though, I suspected that it was calculated. Wanda was playing a power game, over the disposition of yours truly, letting Mab know that while she accepted that I owed Mab a debt, I was her apprentice and she would not allow that to be used to contest her claim over me or accept Mab playing games with me.

And yes, I did feel a bit like a piece of meat.

Technically speaking, both of them were right: Mab's hold on me was restricted to two favours. However, while I owed her those favours, I was in her power to a significant degree – normally, the Queens of Faerie can't do things like compel a mortal to stab themselves with a letter opener, or even kill a mortal directly, but if that mortal is a sucker who owes them a debt, then all bets are off. Additionally, she clearly intended for the hold to become more permanent, going by her offer of the position of Winter Knight to me and the fact that she'd bought my debt off the Leanansidhe, my faerie godmother (yes, I have one, and the reality is not in the slightest bit as fun or family friendly as Disney make it look), in the first place, something she did to balance the scales after Lea's personal power had taken a considerable hike.

"However," Wanda added. "I can see how the definition might be considered applicable." She inclined her head in a bow. "We are grateful for your presence, Queen Mab. As you well know, we are embroiled in a most difficult matter– our task, the retrieval of my godson, is not one that we can complete alone, not even with all the knowledge and power of Asgard. Your aid would be invaluable, and we would be most grateful to hear your offer."

Mab's eyes had narrowed slightly, but some of the tension left the room. Wanda had done the sensible thing and followed up the power games with a hefty concession to Mab's pride. I'm not sure if it would be enough in the long run – in my experience, the Sidhe held grudges like nobody's business – but it certainly took the edge off things. Still, though, I was worried. Wanda was incredibly powerful, and as Sorceress Supreme-in-Waiting, she had a certain authority in supernatural politics, particularly where any apprentices of hers (like yours truly) were considered.

Additionally, what she'd done could be construed as simply a case of protecting what was hers from a poacher – though Mab's claim technically preceded hers – and making the boundaries clear in a relatively non-threatening fashion; the sort of thing that the Winter Sidhe respected, if not liked. No predator likes coming off second best, after all.

Wanda's powers were vast and still growing, her knowledge likewise. She had a formidable support structure in the form of the Sorcerer Supreme, who was quite possibly the most dangerous man I'd ever met, her utterly terrifying father, Magneto, whose powers meant that he was basically the worst nightmares of the Fae incarnate (and actually, seeing him in that light made me like him a whole lot more), and a bond to a Prince of Asgard in direct line to the throne, as well as a close friendship with the Prince's father, Asgard's current Crown Prince.

But Mab was freaking Mab. I'd Seen her once, her and Titania. They'd been gathering their power, getting ready to throw down, and the sight had been both beautiful and utterly terrifying. Hell, it had nearly driven me insane. And it had given me a very clear appreciation of just how terrifyingly powerful Mab was. At a guess, I'd say that she wasn't as strong as Odin, but she was stronger than Thor and Loki, which put her a good way above Wanda in the power stakes. And her power wasn't even the beginning of what made her dangerous.

"When the mortal interlopers of the Red Room and the Pale Doctor entered Wyldfae territory, they were careful not to threaten either my borders or those of Titania," Mab said. "And since the territory was under dispute, neither of us wished to intervene." Her eyes flashed again, with a mixture of anger at such insolence and admiration at such cunning. And it was cunning – I'd been involved the last time Summer and Winter had gone to war, and I knew that it was most definitely not something that, for all their perennial rivalry and shadow-boxing, they did lightly. Last time, it had taken the mantle of the Summer Knight going missing via the machinations of the insane Summer Lady to spark it. "However, they then kidnapped the young Prince and their actions triggered a grave disruption through Faerie, causing a destabilisation political, physical, and metaphysical to both Summer and Winter."

In short: it's one thing to turn a blind eye to a few mortals squatting on disputed territory while they limit their actions to other mortals, but it's another thing entirely when they start trashing your back garden and make you look like you're aiding and abetting the kidnap of a Prince of Asgard. Then, I realised that I'd said this aloud, to approving looks from Wanda and Dumbledore, one of comprehension from Pepper, one of thoughtfulness from Jane, and one of worrying appraisal from Mab.

"Quite," she agreed. "They have retreated to the far edge of our combined realms, just beyond our borders, to an isle in the Shifting Lands."

Wanda and Dumbledore's eyes both widened.

"I'm guessing that it's not a simple case of opening a Way into the Nevernever and following the signs," I said.

"Going through Faerie would be taking the long way around," Wanda said, expression grim. "And finding something specific there…" She shook her head. "They are so named for good reason. The Red Room must be on the very edge, or they'd have been lost to linear time already."

"Indeed," Mab murmured. "Fortunately, there is one with a map, and one who has procured a guide, one whose realm they border. Morpheus."

"I'm guessing not like the Matrix," Pepper remarked, tone nervous but dry.

"Morpheus in this context refers to Dream of the Endless," Wanda said, though not without a touch of amusement.

"Who is being guided, if I may ask?" Dumbledore asked politely.

"He did not see fit to say," Mab said. "He additionally offered, as a courtesy, the opportunity for myself and Titania to send a representative to escort those being guided to the Red Room's stronghold, whereupon they would retrieve the essence of the stolen Prince and allow the opportunity for such vengeance on hubristic mortals as has not been seen in a millennium."

I shivered slightly. While I had no love for the Red Room and felt that everyone involved in the sort of things that they were deserved to die, divine vengeance often took forms that could be hard to stomach, even if the Norse myths weren't totally accurate.

Then, I shivered again as it sunk in. "And you want me to be your representative," I said.

Mab smiled at me. "Titania has sent her Knight. I can hardly do less," she said.

"Oh hell no," I said, on reflex.

She arched an eyebrow. "You refuse so quickly? Even if it means that you forfeit the chance to ensure the retrieval of the son of your lover's heart? Even if it means that you allow the continued suffering of Lloyd Slate?"

And just like that, she was behind me, speaking into my ear. "And believe me, Wizard, he suffers for your refusal," she said. "Suffers as no mortal has in many, many years." I heard the smile that followed. "I believe that he will be some of my finest work."

I hesitated. On the one hand, I was not immune to the temptations of the power that came with being the Winter Knight. I could say that I had a crappy childhood, etcetera, and I did. But facts are, I'm no more immune, and probably quite a lot less, to temptation than the next guy, even though I damn well should be. Unlike most, I knew very well where it could lead.

And then there was Lloyd Slate, who Mab was doubtless having fun testing out every torture method and implement she could come up with, as she had for the last couple of years. He'd killed someone who could have become a very good friend of mine. He'd also been a violent, drug addicted rapist and murderer – though I was unsure whether that was the mantle at work, or just who he'd been. I'd have lost no sleep killing the man in a fight. But what Mab was almost certainly doing to him turned my stomach.

Plus, more importantly than any simple temptation of power or riches, both of which the Winter Knight would have in abundance, or putting some poor bastard out of his well-deserved misery, there was something more fundamental at work. I don't like seeing innocent people, especially not kids, get hurt. And if there's any conceivable way I can, I make sure that it doesn't happen. Not on my watch. And Harry, for all his power, was a kid. A kid who, as it happened, I saw a lot of myself in.

With that in mind, did I have the right to refuse the mantle?

There was silence in the room. Then, it was broken.

"Queen Mab," Pepper said carefully, cradling her sleeping daughter. "I beg your pardon for interrupting, but you said that this Morpheus required a representative from you. Does he explicitly require your Knight?"

"As one court moves, the other must perforce move with it," Mab said.

I narrowed my eyes as my brain clicked back into gear at that non-answer. "So, no, he doesn't," I said. I gave her an accusing look, while noting that I owed Pepper a beer. A lot of beers, actually. "You were using the situation to try to goose me into becoming your Knight."

"Were you my Knight, your ability to complete the quest would be greatly enhanced," Mab said, calm and not in the least bit repentant.

"No thanks," I said. "I'll serve as your Emissary in this matter, repaying another favour I owe you."

"And why should I not consider this another favour that you owe me?" Mab asked, eyebrow arched.

I folded my arms. "Because either you need me to do it, or you want me to do it," I said. "Because you didn't go elsewhere as soon as we cottoned on to your game, and I severely doubt that I'm the only mortal who owes you and who you could lean on." I smiled suddenly and added, realising that I was about to antagonise her in exactly the way I'd worried about Wanda doing and not caring one bit, "And if Odin were to hear that you were wasting time using information on his grandson's location for your own ends rather than acting in good faith, I don't think he'd be too pleased. His son definitely wouldn't be, being that he's the kid's dad. And he's the next King of Asgard, likely to have the job for a few thousand years. How long do you think he'll hold a grudge for? Because I've met the guy, and from what I can tell, it could be a while."

Mab's eyes flashed with rage, and the room went cold, very cold, for a moment. Then, after a very long moment, she smiled. It was deeply unsettling. "You learn swiftly, my Emissary," she murmured. "Very well. Another favour shall be discharged."

I nodded, trying to conceal the fact that my spine was once again trying to make a bid for freedom, and turned to Wanda. "I'm gonna bring him back," I said. "I promise."

She looked me in the eye and I saw nothing but trust there. "I believe you," she said. "If you need help on the way out, call me."

"Will do," I said, then nodded at the others, and turned back to Mab. "Okay. Let's go."

OoOoO

Now

"You actually threatened Mab?"

"I prefer to think of it as reminding her that she's not the only one who can twist words. I mean, it probably wasn't smart, but if I let her push me around, then…"

"Understood." A rustle of papers. "That was a little longer than expected."

"You asked for detail."

"I did."

"You're regretting it now."

"No."

"Not even a little?"

"It and Natasha's upcoming testimony have provided/will provide a long break for Miss Grey, which considering what is coming next, I think that she may well need."

"That's not a real answer."

"It's the one you're getting. Can you send in Natasha now, please?"

"Sure, Agent C."

"Don't call me that."

"I'll stop calling you that when you prove that you don't have a neuraliser."

"You can't prove a negative. Also, if I had a neuraliser, I'd have used it."

"Uh-huh. Sure. I believe you."

"Dresden."

"Fine, fine, I'm going."

The door opened, closed, then opened and closed again.

"Coulson."

"Natasha."

"You know what I want to discuss now."

"Yes."

OoOoO

Then

Magneto watched as the Red Son's neck suddenly snapped up, his body seemingly dragging itself up from the neck down. Before he could do anything, however, metal objects soared through the air, towards the Red Son, slamming into him and swiftly encasing him in a smooth, seamless cocoon of titanium, aluminium, copper, tungsten and steel, carrying a dull, silvery copper tinged sheen.

"What on Earth…" Magneto murmured, then tested the cocoon with his powers. Non-responsive – no, responsive, but in a fashion that suggested that we were responding against his powers, as if specifically calibrated to his powers. That would only be possible if…

"Clever humans," he said quietly. "So that is why I could sense all that metal in his veins: nanotechnology. Passive, dormant, until now."

The cocoon suddenly flexed inwards, seeming to mould itself like latex to the form within, before condensing further inwards, seeming to flow into the Red Son's pores, vanishing. Except on his left side. There, the dead, burnt flesh had been sloughed away, replaced with pink, new skin. And where entire limbs had been rendered non-functional, they were replaced: where a burnt, ruined left arm had been, now there was a gleaming metallic one, almost like that of the Winter Soldier, but more… organic. While the Winter Soldier's current arm was a superb facsimile of a real, human arm, and his previous one had been a similarly remarkable copy, to the right eye, that is exactly what they were: copies. This arm, by contrast, looked more natural. It was no mere copy. It was as if the technology had taken on a life of its own.

Even though he couldn't directly exert his powers on it, Magneto could feel its presence throughout the Red Son's body. He could feel it in the tendrils that branched throughout his left side, anchoring the arm. He could feel it in more tendrils that reached up through his neck to the space that had previously held the boiled ruin of his left eye, now replaced by a cybernetic counterpart of breathtaking sophistication. And he could feel it in the millions upon millions of nanobots that set to work throughout the rest of the Red Son's body, repairing it, reinforcing it, and… remaking it.

More than that, though. While robotics were not his primary field, Magneto was familiar enough with the principles to recognise this for what it was. And even if he had not, the cold, calculating intelligence in the cybernetic eye gave it away.

These nanobots wasn't merely some latent enhancement, even if they had been intended as such – and had the Red Room, had Sinister, Nosferatu as those in the camps had once called him, unleashed something that even they could not control? Or did it simply do their bidding? Either way, they were something more than just robots.

They were alive.

They were alive. They were a parasite. And like all parasites, they were eating their host alive.

And with that realisation, the tiredness that had been settling on him like a leaded blanket, the pain from his broken bones, bruised flesh and torn muscles was swept away by a rising tide of his oldest ally, his gift and his curse. His rage. And he embraced it, for with it came something that he would need in abundance.

Power.

"I know you for what you are, parasite," he spat, as every piece of metal in the scrapyard, the remains of hundreds of cars and motorbikes, of thousands of appliances and machines, of countless tens of thousands of tons of discarded metal, began to drift into the air, as lightning danced in the skies above, darting between clouds illuminated by the vast auroras of a geomagnetic storm, and the foundations of the city, the very earth itself, began to shudder. "Incubating within something greater than yourself, preparing, waiting for your moment. You think yourself clever, that you have made yourself safe from me, hiding beyond your little magnetic field, the inverse of my own."

He smiled grimly.

"You are very much mistaken."

The Red Son's metal arm rotated once, then its hand clenched into a fist as power charged up within it.

Then, in a blurred instant, battle was joined.

OoOoO

Wanda stood in the Avengers Mansion, staring at the empty piece of air where a gate to the Nevernever had been only a moment before.

"He will be fine, Wanda," Dumbledore said. "They both will be."

"I wish I could be as sure as you are, Albus," Wanda said with a sigh. "Mab is a dangerous being to deal with, especially in such a situation. But that is not what bothers me."

"You're annoyed at being left out and feeling helpless," Pepper said, rearranging Ada in her arms. "Believe me," she continued, with a wry expression. "I may not have superpowers, but I know the feeling."

"Makes three of us," Jane said. "Why aren't you on one of the away teams, anyway?"

"Albus and I are the ace card," Wanda said. "If something unexpected happens, the Red Room put someone new into the field, send out a diversionary attack, or change their tactics, we're the counter."

"And you're here to protect us in case the Red Room try to attack the house," Pepper said.

Wanda inclined her head, then it snapped up again as an aurora formed in the darkening skies out the window. "Something's gone wrong," she said, her blood running cold.

Jane followed her gaze, frowned, then her eyes widened as she put it together. "Your dad," she said. "His powers…"

"Cause auroras," Wanda said. "But only when he's really stretching himself. And he wouldn't need to do that, not against –" Her expression grew pained.

"Against the Red Son," Dumbledore said quietly. "Another factor has entered the equation." He looked her in the eye. "Go. If anything else arises, I will deal with it."

Wanda nodded tightly, then left the room at a run, which soon became a sprint, preparing the spell to take off as soon as she got outside.

She was going to save her godson, whatever it took. And if she had to go through her father to do it, then by god, she'd do that too.

OoOoO

Magneto paused for breath, and grimaced as his broken ribs registered their displeasure. This had been by far the most gruelling part of the fight so far, not so much because of the Red Son's increased armaments and nanotechnology based protection from direct interference with his body – they weren't that much increased, just presented a different kind of problem – but because only one of them cared about collateral damage. And the other, if anything, exploited that care ruthlessly.

No one had died, yet.

But it was only a matter of time.

"Then I must end this," he said quietly. "May god forgive me. Because if this fails, Wanda most certainly will not. And for that matter, neither will I."

His hands blazed with crackling electromagnetic power as he raised them, spreading them out wide. The metal of the scrap froze in mid-air, hanging in perfect silence, disrupted only by the occasional spark of a static charge. Then, slowly, it began to spin around the Red Son, faster and faster, until it seemed like a solid metal column, reaching up like a vast spear, aimed at heavens.

The whirling column flexed suddenly, first in a wave part way up, then in a sudden, concerted blast of power that sent a long dead Volkswagen Bug flying out of the column. But any hole made was covered over in an instant, and the column of whirling metal began to rise into the air, faster and faster. As it did, it began to tumble over and over Within a minute, it was a hundred feet in the air. Within two, it was a mile up. Within three, it was ten miles up and counting.

Finally, it reached its chosen location, and abruptly sealed itself.

"Steel and copper," Magneto murmured to himself, in the small field of trapped oxygen around him. The power within him burned like fire, sparked and twisting like electricity, like a living thing desperate to be let loose. "Now, all we need is electricity…"

And with that, he unleashed some of the power he'd bottled up, letting it flow out in the atmosphere, a vast electromagnetic charge.

He was no Thor. He could not make the weather bow to him as the Thunder God did, making it obey his every whim with perfect precision, to shape and guide it like an artist, a sculptor.

But he knew what he could do, and what actions obtained which results.

And very quickly, a vast storm, a geomagnetic supercell, if such a thing were possible, taller than mountains, wider than lakes, and a roiling pit of potential power.

That power nearly swamped him, drowning him in its vastness and majesty, seeking like the power within him to be set free and to run wild. For a moment, he struggled to control the sheer power he had stirred up. For a moment, it seemed like it would slip away, all while the Red Son and its infection of living metal probed at his hold on the metal it was trapped in, both a tube designed to be a vast electromagnet and a kind of crude inverse Cerebro, reflecting and dispersing psychic powers. There were ways to escape such a thing, of course – it was hardly a sophisticated prison, riddled with weakpoints and held together by Magneto's will – but they took more energy and far more imagination than the robotic mind (or minds) of the Red Room's chief enforcer could muster.

Still, given a chance, well… who knew what its nanotechnology could do? Perhaps infect metal and reshape it as it did flesh? If it could do that, if it did do that, he'd be in trouble. He was acutely aware that while he still had power to spare, his body was tiring.

But he was Magneto. His will would not bend, and he would never relent.

And soon, the power had built sufficiently.

With a deep breath, he released some of his control.

And lightning poured down on him in a torrent, in a flood, a blazing white cascade of power that swirled around him, drawn by the electromagnetic field that he was generating for that very purpose. Drawn and absorbed.

Then, it was ended. And for a moment, he was lost in the power, lost in the screaming song, the crackle and roar, the purity of the power that burned within him. But it was only a moment. Then, with power he knew that he could not contain for more than a few seconds, he turned on the tube. Which was gone. In his moment of lost control, the Red Son had broken free.

A pity. But no matter. With a thought, a spear of copper wrapped steel slammed through the left arm of shifting metal, which instantly began trying to shift around it, to shake it loose.

"No," Magneto said, in a voice raw with power and anger. "No, you shall not escape that easily." He gathered the power within him, power that had he but known it made him glow like an avenging angel. "You picked the wrong target, and the wrong enemy." He stretched out an arm like a sword. "Pay the price."

Power lashed out across the space between them in a solid white bar. Any mortal eyes would have been burnt to blindness on seeing it. One cybernetic eye barely had time to widen.

Thunder so vast that it shattered windows for miles around cracked and rolled.

And then there was silence, as two figures fell from heaven, one burning with dimming white light, and the other with fading red-gold.

And one shimmering a deep crimson red soaring up to meet them.

OoOoO

Now

"So, that's why a large chunk of New York and New Jersey lost their unshielded electronics."

"Looks like it."

"Cables actually melted and fused."

"So I hear."

"Auroras were seen in Kansas."

"As you would expect from a geomagnetic storm of that scale."

"Magneto never does anything by halves, does he?"

"According to him, it was the only way he could be sure of simultaneously at least stunning, if not destroying the artificial lifeform and neutralising the Red Son."

"How could he be sure that he wouldn't roast Harry's body in the process?"

"He said that he couldn't. However, since the alternative was risking the continued consumption and conversion of his body by the Transmode Virus, possibly to the point of no return, he had to take drastic action. And considering his knowledge of Harry's future time travelling, as well as Harry's track record of surviving things that should kill him, his natural ability to channel and manipulate vast amounts of energy, and when that failed, resurrection, he deemed it to be the lesser evil and estimated the odds of Harry's body surviving it the fall to be good."

"How did Thor and Wanda take that?"

"Not very well, though the extent of Magneto's injuries from the previous battle and the fact that he nearly killed himself in the process, plus how virulent the surviving sample of the Transmode Virus turned out to be, rather blunted any real anger." A pause. "Also, they were mostly busy being angry at other people."

"Understood. How did it end?"

OoOoO

Then

Wanda slowly came into land on the Institute's lawn, noting the state of the Winter Guard, then dismissing them when she saw that they bore no threat, and could either wait for help or were far beyond it. Once that was ascertained, she gently lowered her father and her godson's body to the ground with a faint squelch. For the first time, she looked at them closely, casting absent minded spells to bring light and shelter them from the rain.

Even to a woman who had been largely inured to horrific sights by the age of twenty and who was now more than twice that, they did not make pleasant viewing. Her father was burned, badly burned, all his hair scoured off, and burnt blood marked his cheeks, while more, fresh blood dribbled from nose, ears, eyes and mouth. Harry's hair – the Red Son's hair, rather – was similarly missing in action and… she shook her head, slowly, then faster and faster, in denial and anger. His left arm was gone, replaced with a metallic copy, currently inert. And that was not all that was gone, no, that was not all. His eye, oh gods, his left eye, that was gone too, replaced with another currently inert cybernetic replacement.

A quick scan down his body proved that almost a quarter of his body had been turned to metal, almost like Piotr, one of Charles old friends, the one who went by Colossus – and if she remembered correctly, he too had once been enslaved by the Red Room. Here, they seemed to have applied that power and transmuted Harry's skin, his flesh and bone, to metal. But unlike with Piotr, she saw no sign that it would change back.

She fell to her knees by the exhausted, burned and beaten version of her usually indomitable father, and the mangled, tormented and transformed version of her godson, whose external remodelling now matched the internal.

"Oh Lily, oh Harry… forgive me," she whispered. "I've failed you so badly, at every turn. It's all my fault."

"No. If anything, the fault is mine."

She whipped around to see the tired and strained looking face of her old master, mentor and surrogate father, Doctor Strange.

"So, now you choose to show yourself," she spat. "You –"

"Not now, Wanda," Strange said. "Feel free to castigate me as much as you like later on; I will deserve it. But right now, your godson's body is still in danger." He waved a hand, and just like that, the four of them were in the Xavier Institute's infirmary, her father and Harry on two of the beds. "And I will need your help to save it."

Wanda frowned, but ruthlessly quashed the rising tide of howling fury within her, and said, voice clipped, "What must I do?"

"Your godson is infected with something called the Transmode Virus, a creation of Essex's from an Atlantean design," Strange said, tone grim. "Foolishness compounding foolishness. There are no words that can adequately describe how dangerous it is capable of being. In far too many futures, it has devoured the world whole, or infected the stars and spread from there. It is adaptable, resilient, and cleverer than it seems. Your father recognised it for what it was, and successfully stunned it with a truly monstrous electromagnetic pulse. However, there are still countless millions of nanites within Harry's body, and it only takes one survivor to start the process over again. I can find them, but only you can destroy them."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Wanda asked, briskly pulling her wet hair back and tying it up in a pony tail, out of the way. "Walk me through it."

Strange nodded, then began to murmur an incantation, overlaying one basic spell with several others. "The trouble with this virus is that once it has a foothold," he murmured in a distant voice. "The body doesn't recognise it as an intruder. Meaning that it is very hard to pick out. But if you know how it operates, if you triangulate and happen to be very, very clever… you can do this." He flicked his hands upwards, and suddenly, a three dimensional translucent holographic image of Harry appeared, the blood visible in his veins. And, doubted around his body were little metallic specks.

"They're concentrated away from his arm," Wanda murmured.

"That's already done, they don't need to worry about that," Strange said. "Now," he added. "You need to hit them all, at once, with as strong a disruptive charge as you can."

"Magic or probability manipulation?"

"Both," Strange said. "With this, there is no sense in half measures."

Wanda hesitated. She knew that this was only Harry's empty body, a vessel vacated by Harry's essence, filled first by a cold, murderous personality that did its masters bidding and little else, then these machines, but…

"Wanda," Strange said in a voice of steel. "I taught you early not to trust to appearances. Have you forgotten that lesson?"

Wanda turned to snap at him, but as she did, suddenly, Harry's body seemed to start coughing and hacking. Instinctively, she leaned forward – then just as instinctively reared back as something dark and metallic shot up out his mouth towards her. Strange caught it with a blast of magic, but a small blob landed on Wanda and then…

Wanda had been possessed before. She'd fought invaders both spiritual and physical that had sought to claim her body for their own. She had lived much of her life in fear that Chthon would succeed in doing so, having prepared her as his vessel.

But she had never felt anything like this. The metal immediately sank into her flesh and began to replicate, attacking flesh and bone with ferocious hunger, seeking to gain access to her nerves and thereby travel along them to her brain, and then take control of it.

A normal person would have panicked, and fallen prey to the Transmode Virus.

Wanda was not by any definition normal.

Instead of panicking, she let out a snarl of pain and summoned up chaotic magical energy and directed it into the afflicted arm. Her body, familiar with chaos energy from near birth, was comfortable with it – in truth, sometimes to comfortable for Wanda's ease of mind. The Virus, however, was not, and Wanda almost fancied that she could hear a tinny scream of agony inside her mind as the part within was torn apart on sub-molecular level by the chaotic energies. With a pained twist of her hand and a grunt, she released the remaining energy in a flare of scarlet energy, purging the dust that was all that remained of the Virus.

Strange, meanwhile, was watching with unblinking focus as a spell shredded the ball of metallic virus on a sub-atomic scale, watching while it was reduced to apparent nothingness. He was pale, sweating, and blood ran from his nose. He didn't seem to notice it as he finally turned to Wanda.

"Now you see what we face," he said flatly. "Now, perhaps, you understand?"

Wanda didn't reply until she'd gone to Harry's side, summoning up more chaos magic, and channelled it into him, watching as the nanites within vanished under the onrushing tide of chaos magic. When the very last was gone, something confirmed by a minute nod from Strange, she turned to him.

"You're a fine one to talk," she said bitterly. "Normally, you wouldn't let anything like this anywhere near the wild – you'd have found it, destroyed it, and obliterated its creators and would-be users, erasing all trace of it, before it was even close to release, if you hadn't already diverted one small factor in the past to prevent it from ever coming to be. Normally, this giant cluster-fuck is the sort of thing you'd nip in the bud."

"I couldn't," Strange said.

"Because it was part of your plan?" Wanda demanded furiously, gearing up for another rant. Then, she stopped as her rational mind cut in. "No," she said slowly. "This isn't your plan at all. You've been making mistakes. You've been missing your timing, when normally you never miss. Why?"

Strange sighed. "A full explanation must wait," he said. "Suffice it to say that this, this giant cluster-fuck of horror and chaos, with things like that." He waved at the Red Son's metal arm. "Things like that getting loose, it's what happens when, at a particularly sensitive spot in time, I'm left flying blind."

"You've lost your Foresight?" Wanda asked, residual anger cut away by shock and no little horror.

"No," Strange said. "It's still there. Nathaniel Essex, also known as Nathan Milbury and Sinister, the last being particularly apt, and the one behind so much of this, is the problem. He's immune to it. Not through any cleverness of his own, I might say, though he has cleverness to spare." He closed his eyes. "I have involved myself where I could, but it has been guesswork at best. Some guesses have turned out better than others."

"Like what?"

"Young Mister LeBeau did not find Essex by chance," Strange said. "In doing so, he found a cure for his condition and wound up in a position to influence Madelyn Grey for the better. I cannot overstate how vital that is."

"Why?" Wanda asked, frowning.

"Because if it was not done, she would have continued down dark paths under Essex's control, developing her own personality, but being influenced by the darkness of the Red Room and the monsters within it," Strange said. "When she inevitably found out about the truth of her origins, well. In the best case scenario, the death toll cracked seven figures before she was destroyed, though in most it cracked at least nine. In the worst case… everything burned. Everything burned and when Thanos came to Earth to claim the remaining Infinity Stones, he found them floating in a vast expanse of cosmic nothingness and the ashes of the World Tree, with only one realm surviving: Muspelheim, with the Dark Phoenix for a Queen. And after that? Well. It's a straight race between those creatures like Chthon which are locked up by bindings on this Earth and its associated realms, and Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet, as to which would end the universe first."

There was a long silence, in which Strange took the opportunity to see to Magneto. Wanda let him, absorbing the implications.

"The world always ended, then?" Wanda asked, eventually. "If you had not intervened, in all of those timelines, it would have fallen apart?"

"Or been wracked by horror," Strange said. "And almost all. Some timelines turned out fine. I could have guided the timeline down one of those paths, I suppose. It would have been a great deal easier, requiring minimal adjustment. But rarely did it end well for Miss Grey. And…" He paused. "It would have been cowardly. Her fate is my fault, a product of my failure, or at least, the intervention of one of my enemies. She is just a pawn, a pawn of a pawn, when she deserves so much better than the miserable fate the vast majority of realities would dole out to her." He was silent for a moment. "And she deserves better than what my mistakes and failures have condemned her to. She deserves the chance to make her own fate, and if it costs me a little sleep and peace of mind – what little I have left – to give it to her, then so be it."

"So," Wanda said eventually. "That's why you've been missing for so long, and why you look so…"

"Awful?" Strange asked lightly. "Partly. The fact that there's two of me active at one point in the time stream, without shielding, doesn't help." He snorted. "And I'm getting old, I suppose. Old and tired." He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them, and when he did, they were bright and full of manic energy. "But I'm on the home stretch now," he said. "And something is coming up that I am very much looking forward to… though admittedly with some tricky bits."

"I was going to say stressed," Wanda said.

"That too," Strange said. "I'll be off; back a couple of hours, and sideways. Oh, and before I go…" He pulled a rock out of his pocket. "A portkey. Activated by certain energy events rather than time, since my predictive senses have not quite been up to spec."

Wanda took it. "To where?" she asked.

"To where you will be needed," Strange said.

Wanda rolled her eyes. "Your proclivity for enigmatic pronouncements is undiminished, I see," she said.

Strange grinned the wicked little smile that usually was never shifted from his face. "Yes, well… I've been reliably informed that I have a reputation to keep up," he said. "And I would hate to start disappointing people." Then, he vanished.

"He always has to have the last word," Wanda muttered, then bounced the rock in her hand, wincing as the still healing wounds within her hand protested. "And where do you lead, I wonder? And when?"

OoOoO

Now

"That was illuminating. I take it that you have this directly from Wanda."

"Yes."

"Who won't be pried from her godson's side for anything short of an apocalypse."

"Even then, it'd be fifty-fifty."

"Quite." A rustle of papers. "The Transmode Virus. How much of a threat does it pose?"

"Potentially? Omega Level. Practically? The data on it has been destroyed. Unless there's a copy somewhere, I'd say that it's off the board, for the time being."

"Okay, I'll pass that on. Can you send Miss Grey in, please?"

"Of course."

The door opened and closed twice.

"Agent Coulson."

"Maddie. I hope you got some rest."

"I did, thank you."

A pause.

"I realise that what comes next could be quite difficult for you to talk about. If you want to delay it further…"

"No, thank you, Agent Coulson. I will finish this today."

"Good. Start whenever you're ready."

A deep breath.

"Very well."

OoOoO

Then

Soon, Maddie and the rest reached the core of the base, the heart of the lion's den. Personally, Maddie considered this to be an insufficient metaphor: Essex's laboratories, around which the facility was built, were far more dangerous than the den of any lion. Consequently, she was on edge, every nerve thrumming, every hair raised, every sense straining for the first warning of danger.

And yet, despite her nerves, they proceeded into the depths of the base, following Strange's directions, without being stopped or challenged, or even scared by a close call. In a matter of minutes, they reached the laboratory in which the feather was contained.

Allow me, Strange murmured, and Maddie felt a tingling of subtle power. The door opened, as smoothly and easily as if Doctor Essex had opened it himself.

Dresden vocalised all of their thoughts when he remarked grimly, This is too easy.

Where's your sense of positivity, Harry? Sir Fix asked, tone outwardly amused, but underscored by caution. He was no fool, Maddie had known that from the moment she'd seen him. Sometimes things just go right.

In your world, maybe. Not when I'm around, Dresden retorted.

Maddie ignored them and, cautiously, reached out to the feather, calling it to her. It zoomed into her hand, like a part of her returning to the whole. She examined it carefully, physically and mentally, and let out a breath she didn't know that she'd been holding to find that Harry's mind was still in there, still semi-dormant. At her touch and investigation, it stirred sleepily.

There was another flicker of resonant power, one that flickered as Harry's mind stirred, and on impulse, Maddie reached out to it. A stick, a wooden stick – no, a wand – zoomed into her hand. She slipped it into a pocket, and then paid it little to no mind.

"You are right. It was too easy," a cold, calm voice said from behind them.

All of them whirled, to see Doctor Essex standing in the doorway, in his true form. And though only Maddie and Jono were visible to the naked eye, it did not take a brilliant mind to realise that he had detected Dresden and Sir Fix too.

He was not alone, either – standing on one side of him was a tall figure with dark hair, one that looked almost familiar, save for having sickly pale skin that was criss-crossed with scars, which Maddie recognised instantly as the signs of a flawed clone. Flawed, but most likely still powerful, considering his confidence.

He turned to Maddie. "So," he said, without emotion. "Your programming has broken down again. There would appear to be some critical flaw in your make-up."

"It's called free will, jackass," Dresden growled, the runes on his staff igniting with furious silvery power. The veils hiding him and Sir Fix had vanished. Strange, however, was still invisible – and going by the fact that Maddie could not sense him unless he wished to be sensed, he might not be present at all. His eyes narrowed. "And I thought Wanda dissolved you."

"Rumours of my death are doubtless greatly exaggerated," Essex said coolly.

"Doctor Nathaniel Essex," Sir Fix said, in tones of authority, drawing his sword. "I am Sir Fix, Knight and Champion of the Summer Court. You stand accused of trespass on lands under the rule of the Summer Queen, and many other crimes committed thereupon. Surrender now and face trial for your crimes, or your life shall be forfeit."

"'Thereupon'. Good word. Well placed," Dresden remarked.

"Thank you," Sir Fix said primly. "What is your answer, Doctor Essex?"

Essex ignored him, and focused on Maddie. "'Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die'," he said.

Nothing happened.

"Uh… has this just turned into an impromptu poetry slam?" Dresden asked. "Because I'm a few beers short where I should be if it is."

And Maddie smiled as her heart suddenly soared as she realised what it had been. It had been a trigger phrase, a command, designed to make her revert to past programming.

But that programming was gone, the Lady Lily had removed it.

And that meant… she was free.

Tears pricked at her eyes as an irresistible smile spread across her face.

"Madelyn," Essex said. "You will subdue these interlopers and return the feather to me."

"No."

It was one word. One, small, brief word, but it echoed like a thunderclap.

And Essex went even paler than ever, were it even possible, now being the pale of a cadaver. "This is not possible," he whispered. "You are mine, my servant and my weapon."

Unbidden to Maddie's lips came a phrase, one from a poem that Remy had quietly shared with her.

"'If I'm design'd yon lordling's slave, By Nature's law design'd, Why was an independent wish, E'er planted in my mind?'" she retorted.

Dresden barked out a laugh. "Robbie Burns, right?" he said.

"I believe so," Maddie said, a little startled.

"How do you know it?" Sir Fix asked, surprised.

"He's Scottish, so was my mentor. The two were drinking buddies back in the day."

Maddie felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned to Jono, who smiled at her. "Nicely done, luv," he said. "Now, what say you show this creepy old bastard what you really think of him? You know, before he snaps out of shock."

Maddie turned back to Essex, and hesitated. Then, she noticed that he was staring at her, red eyes wide in utter disbelief. And… there was something else there too. Fear.

He was afraid.

He was afraid of her.

She hadn't known that was possible, and what hesitation she had left was swept away. "I am no longer your experiment, your weapon, or your slave," she said. "I and I alone am the Mistress of my fate, the Captain of my soul. You have no power over me, Doctor Essex. Not any more."

Essex's eyes widened, then narrowed. "We shall see," he said, voice quiet, low, and thrumming with rage. It was the first time she had heard him speak like that in a very long time, and an involuntary spasm of fear ran through her. "Subject Zero," he said. "Take them."

The tall man beside him blurred into motion, faster than the eye could follow. Indeed, Maddie only knew that he'd moved by piecing it together afterwards. First, came a powerful blast of wind, and deafening boom, the sort which she later realised was caused by someone or something breaking the sound barrier, which flung her to the floor, making her land painfully on her rear. Second, the man, Subject Zero, re-appeared halfway between her and Essex, frozen in mid-step, the air seeming to congeal around him.

"What the hell…" Dresden began, getting to his feet again, helping Jono up.

"Anyone seen anything like this before?" Jono asked, voice subdued.

"I haven't," Sir Fix said.

"I have," Dresden said, after a moment of examining it and glancing around, before darting a meaningful look at the feather in Maddie's hand. She shook her head, catching his train of thought.

"It's not him," she said, inwardly wondering how Harry was capable of stopping time.

"This is time magic," Essex murmured, then, if possible, went whiter than ever as the implications sunk in. As he did, a tall figure with glowing white eyes and a wide, almost inhuman, smile of gleeful and triumphant malice glided out from the shadows behind him, shadows which swelled up like dark wings, looming over Essex like a tidal wave.

"Hello, Nathaniel," Doctor Strange purred. "Long time no see."

OoOoO

Now

"Sounds like Strange was having fun."

"It did seem like he was enjoying it."

"That was very brave of you, by the way. I can't say that I know it from personal experience, but it isn't easy to stand up to someone like that. Those with personal experience were impressed – Dresden in particular was in a very similar place at roughly the same age as you are now. He thought you handled it very well."

Maddie went pink. "So he said."

"And Subject Zero… that was what Essex called the clone?"

"Yes, it was."

A rustle of paper, and the scratch of a pen.

"Is it relevant?"

"For classification purposes, yes."

"I see. Shall I continue?"

"Please do."

OoOoO

Then

Essex backed away from Strange, who stalked forward, tall, lean, paleness and skeletal grin contrasting against the dark shadows that he was swathed in, like a classical representation of the Grim Reaper.

"I think that we are due a little chat, Nathaniel," he said, with a kind of dark glee. "Doctor to Doctor."

"Impossible," Essex whispered, in tones that bordered madness. "Impossible. Impossible."

"And yet it is happening," Strange said, his own tones treading a thin line of sanity, as a feverish light animated exhausted eyes. "You've been hidden from me for centuries, Nathaniel. Your technology has blunted my finest spells, while a protection on you prevented me from finding you, by spell or by foresight, allowing you to slip through my fingers time and time again. You credited your own cleverness, but that was a mistake, a mistake born of arrogance, for you were only ever a piece; a senior piece, but a piece nevertheless, in a war far greater than you could ever imagine. No matter. I am not sure whether I detect the hand of The First One in this, or that of The Conqueror, but it is no matter: they cannot protect you. Your part in this is over." His hands flexed, and power gathered within them. "Nathaniel Essex… you are mine now."

"No," Maddie said. "He can wait. There are more important things to be getting on with."

She arched an eyebrow as Strange slowly rotated to look at her, shoving down an upsurge of fear. She could feel Strange's power radiating off him, more magical power than she'd felt from any besides the Endless and from Mjolnir. And she could feel a desperation that bordered on madness, too, bubbling on top of his mind, a desperation to set things right. And for some reason, it spiked whenever he looked at her.

As it was, he looked at her for a long moment, then closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. Then, with absolutely no warning, he lashed out, slicing off the top of Essex's skull, tearing off the bone to get at the brain. A small flash of power sliced it free of the brainstem, as long, clever fingers pried the red gem loose from his forehead, before both were dropped into a waiting glass jar that hovered in mid-air, before dropping it in a pocket that was much larger than it would appear as the corpse slumped to one side. It hadn't even had the time to look surprised.

"I think," Jono said faintly. "That, energy being or not, I'm going to be sick."

"Right there with you," Dresden said.

"There's going to be quite a long list of people wanting to know why you killed him before they could, Strange," Sir Fix said grimly. "My Queen among them."

"Titania is not even close to the top of the list of those with a claim on Essex's hide," Strange said flatly. "If she wants an explanation, she can make an appointment. Besides, he'll be up and about in a few minutes. He transfers copies of his mind between clone bodies. He's more of a hive mind than an individual, these days. It's how he can appear in multiple places at once, and that gem is how he does it. I took his brain and the gem to ensure that, if all else fails, I will have access to the psychic network and the means to hunt his various copies down." His gaze settled on Maddie, that unsettling gleam in her eyes. "And true vengeance, my dear, shall be yours."

Maddie stared at Essex's bloody corpse. On one level, she hated him, for enslaving her for so long, for making her believe that she was nothing more than a weapon. On the other hand… it's what he had created her for. Hadn't he?

She shook her head, dismissing the query. It could wait. She had something to take care of.

"There is something else that I need to retrieve," she said, clipping the chain of the golden feather around her neck. "Doctor Strange, if you could convey us to the courtyard?" She looked around at the others. "And be prepared. What I plan to do will attract attention. A lot of it." She hesitated. "You do not have join me. I am sure that Doctor Strange could convey you out separately."

"I'm seeing this one through, luv," Jono said. "Besides. My body's basically dead already and I'm made out of energy. What are they going to do to me?"

"Disperse your essence and sunder it to the far reaches of this dimension? Capture it once more and lock you up for decades?"

"I was being rhetorical, luv."

"Ah."

"I told Wanda that I was going to see that her kid was brought back," Dresden said. "I'm not ducking out now."

"I am sure that it would be entirely improper of me not to ensure that this quest is completed," Sir Fix said, tone and expression light, but eyes firm and steadfast.

"He means yes," Dresden said, then paused and eyed Subject Zero. The amount of congealed air around it seemed noticeably diminished. "Did that thing just twitch?"

"The courtyard it is," Strange said mildly, snapping his fingers. And just like that, they were in the courtyard. And surrounded.

Dresden once again encapsulated all of their feelings.

"Oh crap."

OoOoO

Now

"You didn't know the truth, at the time."

"No, I didn't."

"You were still less angry than I'd have thought."

"It hadn't sunk in yet. And I had other things to worry about. Essex taught me to control my emotions, to make practical, detached decisions. While he was evil, those lessons were helpful, under such circumstances."

"Until they weren't."

"Until they weren't, yes."

OoOoO

Then

"Well, well, well," Lukin's voice, cold and arrogant said, projecting around the courtyard, as if from a hundred speakers. With the multitude of suits of armour, all as heavily armed as the War Machine armour and twice as large, ringed around the courtyard, on the ground and in the sky, it was entirely possible that they were. "Look at what the bitch dragged in: a fool with a sword, the lapdog of a Romani whore, and a glorified ghost."

Dresden growled, taking a half-step forward. While Lukin was speaking in Russian, his contemptuous tone was impossible to mistake.

"Do not try to fight me, Lukin," Maddie said flatly. "I give you this warning and this one alone. Leave us be, and we will leave in peace."

"So you believe," Lukin said, voice more normal, as he strode forward, clad in some sort of strange armour with a red sheen, with a white star in the centre of the chest. It looked like the Dynamo armours, but sleeker, more powerful. Even allowing for the armour, he looked taller, stronger, and younger, something shown best in his face, visible thanks to a retracted face-plate. Beside him was the looming presence of the Beast, piggy eyes cruel and itching for the excuse to do violence. There was a strange headband around his skull, and Maddie knew instantly that it was designed to protect his mind. Each and every one of the armours had similar protection. "Your power is vast, bitch. But even with your new talent for teleportation, you cannot win this fight."

It was at this point that Maddie noticed that Strange had disappeared.

Lukin snorted. "I am not a fool. I knew that Essex would turn on me eventually, as soon as I was no longer desired me as an ally, and that he would use you against me, perhaps even the Red Son too. I just did not imagine that you would turn on him." He waved a hand. "Whatever. I prepared for that day. We are all protected against your telepathy. As for your telekinesis…" He smiled cruelly. "For all your power, I think that even you will grow tired before we run out weapons. You are trapped."

"He's monologuing, isn't he?" Dresden said.

"I think it's a villainous requirement," Sir Fix remarked.

"Among the B-Listers, sure. The A-Listers, no. They're smart enough to save the monologuing for the post-victory bash."

Sir Fix bobbed his head in agreement.

"What's he saying, anyway?" Dresden asked.

"Don't look at me, mate," Jono said. "I don't speak Russian, and their minds are shielded."

"He is proclaiming our doom, his own cleverness, and using a lot of unoriginal insults," Maddie said dismissively, then switched back to Russian. "And when I asked you to leave us be, it was not a plea, or a bluff. It was a warning. I do not have time to waste."

"Brave words, little girl," Lukin said. "They will be your last. Fire!"

Maddie had defences ready, but even so, the sudden roar of fire, of energy blasts, bullets, missiles, made her buckle for a moment, raging away like a tide of fire and metal against a bubble that was about fifteen feet wide and ten high.

"That… is impressive," Sir Fix said, wide-eyed.

"Too bloody right it is," Jono said. "How long can you keep this up for, luv?"

"Long enough for me to open a Way," Dresden said, then jumped into a battle stance as a deep bellow cut through the roar of weapons fire. The Beast had needed no further encouragement, and, shedding stray bullets, missiles and blasts, and was now slamming clenched fists against the energy bubble, concentric rings of blue light flaring at each blow. Each blow made Maddie wince.

Dresden glanced at her, then pointed his staff and swept it downwards sharply, snapping, "Aparturum!"

A glowing hole in reality opened… to reveal large sea-scape, dotted with icebergs.

"Uh… crap."

"Okay, so stepping back through isn't an option, and the teleporting Doctor Frankenstein has fucked off," Jono said. "Now what?"

Maddie was not usually one to dwell on things like straight lines, but she had to admit – if she had, that would have been a good one. She reached up and touched the feather. "Wish me luck," she whispered, then reached down. Her hand wrapped around a leather wrapped handle.

Two minds met.

A decision was made.

And the world vanished in a flash of lightning like the burning of a star and a crash of thunder like the breaking of worlds.

OoOoO

A dimension and several thousand miles away, Thor looked up sharply from the vigil he had taken up by the bedside of what had once been his son, the steady flow of tears, self-recrimination and despair.

Slowly, he stood, as if listening for a sound that no one else could hear, ignoring the puzzled questions of others. And for some reason beyond reason, hope stirred in his breast.

OoOoO

The first crack of thunder had drowned out all other sounds, knocking even the most heavily armoured on their backsides.

The first flash of lightning had blinded even the finest optics.

And the ensuing electromagnetic pulse had fried every non-hardened piece of electronics within half a mile.

If the universe had a soundtrack, this was the point where it would have shifted to a rousing rendition of 'Thunderstruck' by AC/DC. Alas, it didn't.

As the dust cleared, everyone with still functional eyes stared at the epicentre of the disturbance: Maddie.

Who stared in utter astonishment at the hammer in her hands, a hammer which sang with power and triumph, blue-white lightning crackling around its head. Her clothes had been transformed, from black trousers, grey shirt, and black coat, to armour similar to Thor's: a closefitting breastplate of metal coloured the green of an aurora, with six rondules of gleaming gold, gold mail down her arms, and vambraces that same shade of green. The trousers were black, ending in boots of a deep red that were edged in gold, while the same cape of rich red billowed out behind her.

There was a stunned silence, which was inevitably broken.

"… bloo-dee Hell."

Jono had made sure to draw out all the syllables, in a sort of awed drawl.

It was followed by a gleeful cackle from Dresden. "That's right, suckers," he gloated. "It's Hammer Time!"

Sir Fix groaned. "Really, Harry?"

Maddie ignored them, staring at the hammer. Then, her expression firmed – just as the Beast got to its feet and drew back a fist, before freezing. The point of a sword aimed at one eye and a smouldering blasting rod, the tip glowing like at an acetylene torch, aimed at the other would have that effect.

"I'd not make a move, if I were you," Sir Fix said in the perfectly pleasant tone of a man willing to visit gratuitous violence on someone else's person if it became necessary, and, moreover, of a man very well informed on how to do it.

"That goes for all of you," Dresden said, projecting his voice from the diaphragm. Since he was the best part of seven feet tall, that meant a lot of projection and a lot of voice. "I don't know how many of you bozos speak English, but this young lady just picked up the hammer of the God of Thunder. Which, for the time being, makes her the Goddess of Thunder. She, and the rest of us, just want to go. Anyone object to that?"

There was silence, then an incoherent growl from Lukin, who was struggling to his feet. "You think that you can just leave?" he spat, in perfectly fluent English, tearing off the helmet of his currently non-functional armour. It had been hardened against EMP's… just not ones of such scale, at such close range.

"Sure," Dresden said, levelling the blasting rod at him, cracking it like a whip and barking, "Laqueus!"

A rope of silver power as thick as two fingers snapped out from the tip, sending a snapping crack across the courtyard, before reaching out and whipping itself three times around Lukin's exposed throat. "Forzare," Dresden growled, beckoning with one hand as Lukin's hands went in a panic to the rope, and yanking with the other. A wave of force like a speeding car slammed into Lukin's back, which, combined with the tug, sent him tumbling along the ground towards the group. And when he looked up, it was into a group of very unsympathetic faces.

The armoured soldiers, still trying to manoeuvre in their slowly rebooting suits, stirred.

"No one move," Dresden barked. "Or he gets it." He tightened the energy whip for emphasis.

At that moment, sensing an opportunity, the Beast moved suddenly, taking a long cut across his cheek, then going for what he deemed to be the weakest member of the group: Jono.

"Hello Beastie," Jono said, as several hundred pounds of snarling mutant lashed out at him with a blow that would have turned concrete to dust. And smirked as the fist passed straight through him, smirk widening as the Beast's fist suddenly went slack. "Yeah, I'm not stuck in my body any more. I'm a being of pure psychic energy. Which, I've got to say, mate, has benefits, as a couple of weeks with the lovely lady with the hammer has demonstrated. Like the fact that if I left something pass through me, or pass through something, ghost style, psychic shielding or no psychic shielding, it gets a bit messed up. Like your right hand."

"Still got another hand," the Beast growled.

"Yeah, yeah," Jono said. "Lights out, big man." Then, he struck out, jabbing with his right hand, which promptly passed straight through the Beast's lower jaw, going up into his brain. The Beast's eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he went down like a falling tree. "Well," Jono remarked, after a moment. "That was more anticlimactic than I expected."

"These things often are," Dresden said wisely.

"Says the bloke strangling a psychotic Russian general in battle armour, with a magic energy whip," Jono retorted. "Get the right hat and you're like Indiana Jones meets the Matrix."

Any further response was cut off as Maddie seemed to snap out of a trance and began to swing Mjolnir round and round in circles, until very quickly, it was a grey blur surrounded by crackling lightning.

"Uh, what are you doing, luv?"

"Making a gateway."

"I tried that," Dresden said. "All that's on the other side of where we're standing is ice and icy water."

Maddie shrugged. "The hammer has different opinions," she said, then suddenly swung the spinning hammer in front of her. Lightning shot out in a furious crackling ring, burning a hole in reality, opening a gateway to what looked like a hospital, one with several people in it.

"… Well, far be it from me to argue with a magic hammer," Dresden said, as the other two stared, jaws hanging loose. "Fix? Come on, you see gates like this all the time."

"Not like this," Sir Fix said. "Point to point gates, specifically made? That's… that's serious power, Harry. It's the sort of thing I'd expect from Titania."

"And I think that the hammer of the god of thunder, whose people built the freaking Bifrost, probably has that kind of power," Dresden said. "Somehow. Now get your ass through that gate before the laws of physics start paying attention to us again."

Both Sir Fix and Jono stepped through.

"You go," Maddie said to Dresden, who hesitated. "I will follow."

Dresden met her gaze for a moment, then, as soon as she felt a tug between them – the phenomenon known as a 'Soulgaze' presumably – he nodded, clapped her on the shoulder and said, "See you on the flip side, kid." Then, he dropped the whip, causing Lukin to let out a desperate gasp of breath, and kicked him away with a single stomping blow, sending him sprawling. "He's all yours, boys," he said, as he did so, before turning away and stalking through the hole in reality.

It would have been much more impressive, Maddie thought, if he hadn't winced immediately afterwards, and favoured his right foot as he stepped through. She watched him go, then turned to Lukin, expression hard. This man had done unspeakable things to countless numbers of people, second only to Doctor Essex in that regard. And one of them had been Harry, her cousin of sorts, she supposed – she wouldn't know exactly what relation applied until she knew what DNA Essex had created her from. Nevertheless, he was family, and it was tempting to exercise her displeasure right here and now. The hammer, belonging to Harry's father, was certainly tempted. She could feel its mind humming with eagerness to strike.

But no. Not now. She had other things to take care of.

"Here me, Lukin," she said, in cold, flawless Russian. "As I told Doctor Essex; I am not his servant, weapon or slave. I do not belong to him. And Harry does not belong to you. I never erased his mind – I hid it. And now, I am going to restore it. I am going to take him from you. He will never before your weapon, or your slave, ever again. Your power is broken, old man. And if no one else does, I will ensure that it stays that way." She raised the hammer once, calling to the skies. And the skies answered, with a vast column of lightning that smashed into Essex's core laboratory. Specifically, the part that contained the machines that moved the labs, and at least part of the base, through the Nevernever. "For now, you have nowhere to run."

She turned away.

"You think yourself so clever," Lukin spat. "So righteous. So noble. But you are none of those things! You are just a thing! A hunting hound, a prize bitch, bred from nothingness by your master, trained to perform and do as you were made to do! And that is all that you will ever be. You think this is some great defiance, some assertion of your freedom? You are deluded. You are not a person, you have no freedom! All this is, all that you think you have gained, it is just an error in your programming! You are nothing! Do you hear me?! Nothing! While I, I am so much more! I am more than human, I am Russia! I am the Motherland incarnate! I am more than you will ever be, and your tricks and powers mean nothing!"

Maddie turned back to him. He was almost frothing with rage and madness, his eyes wild, his face still red from ligature marks from the spell. Slowly, she strode over to him, knocking him over with a thought and a clatter as he hit the ground. She knelt down beside him. Then, she calmly placed Mjolnir on his chest. The armour cracked beneath its weight.

"Perhaps," she said, releasing her grip on the hammer. "But I am Worthy. And you are not."

Then, she stood, picking up the hammer and stepping through the gate without a backward glance.

Chapter Text

Now

"An impressive display."

"Thank you."

"What was it like, to wield Mjolnir?"

"I… I don't know. I don't think I have the words to describe it."

"Try."

"It was… transcendent, I suppose. I just felt so alive, so not merely more powerful within and without, but... connected, I suppose. I could feel, really feel, the skies, and I just knew that they would respond to my wishes. And I could feel the thunder, flowing in my veins, the energy like lightning, I…" A pause. "I'm sorry, Agent Coulson. It's really very hard to describe."

"Well, I'd imagine that a brief bout of godhood would be."

"Quite."

"I hear it made a rather good impression."

"Indeed it did."

A pause.

"Okay, Maddie, we'll break there for the moment. Could you send Harry Dresden in again, please?"

"Of course."

The door opened and closed twice.

"Hey Coulson. Where are you up to?"

"The Institute. Specifically, after you stepped through the gate provided by Maddie and Mjolnir."

"Just before things got messy."

"Yes."

"Okay. Here we go…"

OoOoO

Then

I stepped into the Xavier Institute, noting the instant change in air quality, from cold, brisk sea-breeze full of static charged dust and a mixture of cordite and burnt air, to the clear, disinfectant tinged sterility of hospitals everywhere. As soon as I did, I raised my hands and tried to look non-threatening. So would you if all the Avengers, Bucky Barnes (a.k.a. the fucking Winter Soldier), Wanda, Professor Xavier, and an admittedly groggy and exhausted looking Magneto were staring at you, keyed up and ready for a fight.

"It's me," I said. "Harry Dresden."

Wanda met my gaze for a long moment, then nodded. "It's him," she said. We'd shared a Soulgaze. It's the sort of thing that only happens once, and you can't repeat. If you look someone that you've Gazed in the eyes and a Soulgaze starts up, it means that someone else is piloting their body.

Fix followed my example, freezing, then slowly and carefully sheathed his sword, before bowing neatly to Thor and Loki. "Milords," he said politely.

Jono was a bit less formal. "Um. Hello, ladies and gents?"

Thor grunted, and relaxed slightly, while Loki inclined his head. "Sir Fix," he said quietly. "Wanda explained your and Master Dresden's mission. You have my nephew's essence?"

I shared a glance with Fix, then was saved from having to answer by Jono's arrival. He too froze.

"Am I seeing things, or is that the kid we've got in the Infirmary back at the Mansion?" Tony asked, after a moment.

"If you are, I'm seeing them too," Natasha remarked.

"That's not particularly reassuring."

"He's not human, I can say that," Clint said, and everyone tensed up again.

"No," Xavier said, rolling forward. "I believe that this is Mister Starsmore's astral form incarnate."

"Say what?"

"His mind has taken physical form, independent of the rest of his body," Loki explained.

"You've got my carcass on ice, then?" Jono said, a little uneasily. "Good to know."

"My son's mind," Thor said flatly. His eyes were red. He'd been crying. And he wasn't the only one, either – I could see tears drying on Wanda's cheeks too. I'm not the most sensitive of Wizards, both in terms of super senses and interpersonal skills, but I could almost feel a steady sense of grief being transmuted into anger, like the sort of storm front that starts small, then turns into a hurricane that tears up half the Caribbean. "Where is it? In the hands of Mjolnir's new wielder?"

"Well… yes," I said. "She'll be coming through right about…"

Maddie stepped through, the lightning gate sealing itself behind her.

"Now," I finished, with no small relief.

There was a silence as everyone stared at her. She made for a startling sight – she was identical to Jean Grey, but for a shorter haircut, a set of facial tattoos that lent her a somewhat savage look, underscored by the fact that she was a bit thinner than her twin. More to the point, though, to the knowledge of everyone who wasn't part of our little trip through Dream's realm and the Nevernever (and presumably Harry), she'd been an unrepentant bad guy for most of her life – or at least, she'd been corrupted so early that she hadn't ever known that it was wrong, and by a powerful telepath, no less. In other words, the idea that Harry might turn her, even with a prophecy, a letter from the future, the testimony of Remy LeBeau – the Black Widow's mole inside the Red Room and Maddie's boyfriend of sorts, both of which told me that he had balls of solid Vibranium – and Harry's knack for getting under people's skin, had been treated with a certain understandable scepticism.

Yet here she was, holding Mjolnir, a weapon enchanted by Allfather Odin himself, which only permitted itself to be wielded by the Worthy, having very clearly used its power with its consent. Short of her striding in with freaking Excalibur in hand (unlikely, since if what Wanda said was true, I knew the guy who owned it), I couldn't think of a much more convincing way for Maddie to demonstrate her bona fides as a good guy.

The Avengers weren't an easily shocked group, and after all they'd seen, that was hardly surprising. Wanda, Barnes, Magneto and Xavier, likewise. But here they were, all staring at a rather nervous looking teenage girl who now no longer looked powerful and authoritative but, truth be told, a bit nervous and uncomfortable with the scrutiny. I actually took this to be an encouraging sign, a demonstration that even that Essex creep hadn't managed to erase her ability to feel the kind of acute, toe-curling embarrassment that is part and parcel of being a teenager.

She paused, hesitated, then opened her free hand. In it was the feather.

"Loki?" Captain America asked. I still got a slight thrill out of being in a room with him. Blame it on too many comics as a kid.

Loki slipped over, with the kind of smooth grace that reminded me that for all he looked it, he was very much not human. I got a slight thrill out of being in a room with him, too, but not of the good kind. I knew that he was a good guy these days, that he really regretted what he'd done, to the point of (according to Wanda) ensuring that a big section of the new 'Unnatural History Museum' covered what he'd done, that it wasn't all whitewashed over, and he'd put his life on the line for the world several times. Besides, I was hardly a stellar person myself. But it was hard to forget that he had killed a lot of people. Up close, it was also very hard to ignore the fact that his aura of magical energy was stronger than pretty much any I'd ever come across, brief encounters with Odin and nigh-omnipotent cosmic entities like the Endless notwithstanding, and the fact that if he felt like it, he could put a hand through my chest the way I would put mine through wet cardboard.

So maybe it wasn't fair, but it was instinctive – I was afraid of him.

He took the feather and examined it for a few moments, raising an eyebrow at the way it had begun to glow. "Professor," he said. "I would like your opinion."

Xavier rolled his chair over and lightly touched the feather, pulling his fingers back as they got burned slightly, before giving it a long look, probing it with his powers. "It's him," he said, after a moment. "All of him." He turned to Maddie, a kind and genuinely impressed smile spreading across his face. "I must confess, I am not sure how you did it, but what you have done is absolutely remarkable."

Maddie went pink. It did a lot to make her look like the kid she really was.

A kid who didn't know the truth about herself, a nasty part of me interjected. A truth that could destroy her.

Then, she started, and turned to Thor, holding out Mjolnir. "I believe that this is yours," she said. "Thank you for allowing me to borrow it."

Thor had been giving her a measuring look, weeks of anger, pain and grief swept away in favour of a mixture of desperate hope and cautious calculation. Now, he outright stared at her for a moment, before slowly taking the hammer by the handle. As he did, the armour melted away from Maddie, as if it had never been.

"You are welcome," he said, in a low rumble. "I am glad that it was in good hands."

Maddie's eyes widened, and her mouth opened slightly. Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes. Wordlessly, she bobbed her head.

I'm not an expert on interpersonal sensitivity. But I have my moments. And it might just be a guess, but I figured that it was one thing to have a magic hammer say that you were a good person, and quite another to have the hammer's owner, a superhero who just so happened to be the dad of the kid you'd been trying to save, confirm it. Especially for Maddie, who'd been told all her life that she was nothing but a living weapon, nothing but a hunting dog, something less than human that was only fit to come when called and do as it was told, to whom doing the right thing had – until very recently – been a very abstract concept.

Then, as soon as she'd got her tongue working again, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a wand just short of a foot long, the one she'd swiped in the lab. I assumed that it was Harry's. "I think that this belongs to your son," she said, handing it to Thor.

Thor blinked, then took it. "I had thought it lost with him," he said, examining it. "You have my thanks, Madelyn."

"I will call Hank," Xavier said. "I think that before we restore Harry's mind, we should do our best to repair his body."

"That will not be necessary," Thor said shortly. "He will be taken to Asgard. We can care for him there."

"Though we thank you for the offer, and for everything else you have done," Loki added smoothly.

Thor grunted in acknowledgment, and apparent apology, his mind clearly elsewhere as his eyes stayed rooted to his son's body.

And after I finally got a good look at the kid, I couldn't blame him in the slightest for being distracted, angry, and generally a bit short with those around him. Hell, he wasn't even my kid and I could feel all those emotions welling up in me like a raging forest fire as I looked down at him. It was not a pretty sight.

He'd been stripped down to a set of practical looking boxers, revealing a physique of lean, hard muscle. There wasn't an ounce of unnecessary fat on him, and if anything, he was missing more than a few ounces of necessary fat too. His skin, white to begin with, was the pale of the kind of fish that spent most of their lives in the cold and dark of an ocean trench. His hair had been scoured away; that, along with naturally pronounced cheekbones, and the somewhat rangy, scrawny look common to all young things that hadn't finished growing yet, lent him a raw, gaunt look, like a young falcon.

While I knew intellectually that it technically wasn't Harry, just a bunch of Red Room programmed directives with a code name, it was damn hard to remember it when looking at the kid. He looked exhausted, and not just from what had no doubt been a battle royale with Magneto, but from who knew how many missions, how much training, and programming. Huge bags were visible under his eyes, even through a spectacular black eye, and his face was one that looked horribly strained, even in unconsciousness. Speaking of the most terrifying man I'd ever met, he was now sitting up, watching proceedings with clear, sharp eyes, despite his own injuries and exhaustion.

But the exhaustion, the obvious fact that the Red Room had run their weapon into the ground, even the sheer horror of a sweet, kind kid who only wanted to help being twisted into something like that, was not the worst of it. The worst of it ran all down his left side.

His left arm was gone. Just… gone. It had been replaced by one that was an outwardly perfect, and I mean perfect, replica, but for three small differences. It was made of metal. The fingers were tipped with razor sharp claws, perfect for opening up throats, veins and arteries. And it had a large hole punched through the bicep, driven through where the bone should have been. The edges were burnt black.

And that was not all that had been replaced. Tendrils of metal ran deep into the left hand side of his chest cavity, on the front, and from what little I could glimpse, the back. A large chunk of the left shoulder was gone too, and through the papery thinness of his skin, I could see metallic tendrils reaching up through his neck, up the side of his face, connecting to an area of slowly paling pink flesh, around the eye socket. His left eye was gone. Completely. It was like the eyeball had been scooped out of its socket to make room for something out of the Terminator.

And that was still not it. Further tendrils reached down his left side, disappearing under his boxers, before replacing it with plating it in that same metal,

Actually, scratch that, the whole thing looked like Terminator meets The Thing.

Wanda had come over to my side as I stared and wordlessly, I slipped an arm around her as she settled into my side.

"What the hell," I whispered.

"Nanotech," Stark said, in short, clipped tones. He was quite literally shaking with suppressed anger. "Some kind of fucked up nanotech virus that uses organic material as raw material to replicate. It's designed to eat the host alive from the inside out."

I shuddered. I'd come across some horrible things in my time, things too awful for words… but this was bad.

"And it's both incredibly resilient and phenomenally aggressive," Wanda said quietly. "My father hit it with a massive electromagnetic pulse – you can see the hole – and there were still enough active nanites that within fifteen minutes, a group briefly succeeded in infecting me." She raised a bandaged right wrist. "I destroyed them, and the ones in Harry's body. But…" She shook her head. "It's my fault," she whispered, in a raw, hoarse voice. "I should have held on tighter."

"He wouldn't have thanked you for it," I said.

I then realised that everyone's eyes were on me.

"You think he would want this?" Thor asked, voice low and biting, like a sudden icy breeze before a hailstorm. "To be captured. To be tortured. To be forced from his own body as it was transformed into the vessel of a monster's will."

That kind of tone would be dangerous from an ordinary guy built like Thor – about six foot three, with broad shoulders and muscles built for power, with the stance of someone who could handle themselves, knows how to handle the bulky mallet in their hands, and, moreover, is really, really pissed off. While I had a few inches in height on him and I'm no shrinking violet, even if he'd been an ordinary mortal I wouldn't have picked that fight. And he wasn't an ordinary mortal. He was the Crown Prince of Asgard, the Norse God of Thunder, who could pound moons to dust and drown continents in Biblical scale rainstorms.

So, for once, I thought very carefully before I said anything.

"No," I said. "But I think that if it were any of us in his position, and we wanted to go into somewhere like the Red Room to try and talk someone we cared about out of it, and someone stopped us from doing it… then I don't think that any of us would thank the person who stopped us."

There was a dangerous silence, as Thor's eyes bored into me like diamond drills, Wanda took a protective half-step in front of me, and I began calculating the odds of my surviving the next five minutes.

"He's right," Captain America said, breaking the silence. "I've been in a similar position, when I was first at the front, back in the War. I was told that Bucky and most of his regiment were out of reach, behind enemy lines, in HYDRA's hands. HYDRA would have killed to get their hands on me – or at least, the Serum in my veins. In fact, they did. They'd most probably have locked me up and done much the same as what the Red Room did to Harry. What they were doing to Bucky."

"And what the Red Room did to me," Barnes said quietly.

Captain America – Steve. He'd said that I should call him Steve – grimaced and nodded. "I know that I wouldn't have thanked anyone who stopped me," he said. "Even if, logically, I should have been stopped. In the end, I got lucky; very, very lucky. For one thing, the HYDRA facility was far enough behind enemy lines that they weren't expecting an attack, or ready for a fight. The Red Room were." He met Thor's gaze, and, remarkably, held it without flinching. "Of course he wouldn't want what's happened to him. We both know that isn't what Dresden meant. What he meant, and what he was right about, was that Harry wouldn't have thanked us for stopping him, if we'd managed to."

Thor glowered at him for a long moment, then glanced at his brother. A moment of silent communication passed between them, and he sighed, suddenly looking every bit as exhausted as his son. Even with front row seats to a lot of it, I couldn't imagine what he'd been going through these last couple of weeks.

"I am sorry, Wizard Dresden," he said. "I had no right to snap at you like that, especially not after you have risked life and limb to retrieve my son's mind."

"S'okay," I said. "You had reason."

Thor nodded gratefully. "I know my son well enough to know that he would consider the end result a happy one," he said, after a long moment, looking at Maddie, who had looked incredibly uncomfortable, and no wonder. He stood. "You were the one who saved his mind from corruption, even… destruction. You will ever have the thanks and welcome of Asgard for that."

"I… it was my pleasure?" Maddie said, a little uncertain. It wasn't exactly surprising. Interesting fact about Thor: he might not be the most polished socialiser in the various pantheons of Earth, but he's very good at turning on the charm. It's the kind of thing that makes guys like me consider changing the way we do things.

"Though as Harry's blood kin, you would have that welcome anyway," Loki added dryly. "Would you like to accompany us to Asgard? There are one or two matters that I would like to discuss. I presume that Essex detected something amiss, which is why he sent you away, and you had to return to the base the hard way."

At Maddie's astonished look and Jono's impressed whistle, he smiled thinly. "It was simple enough to deduce: Essex is a capable telepath and the feather radiates psychic power. Even not knowing what it was, he would consider it an intriguing curiosity. Additionally, I think that he would want to ensure that Madelyn was far away from anything that might make her start thinking beyond his programming, especially if she did something to at least partially arouse his suspicion. Also, Harry's body has aged around six months. Yours, Miss Grey, has not. That states very clearly that the two of you were not in the same rate of temporal flow."

Fun fact about Loki: the guy's not just absurdly powerful, he's terrifyingly smart.

"I…" Maddie began. "Yes. I would like that very much."

Loki nodded, then turned to Fix. "Sir Fix, you and your Queen have the thanks of Asgard for what you have done today. This will not be forgotten," he said. "If you wish, I can return you to the Summer Court, or to your home. This offer is made freely and without obligation."

Fix bowed his head. "The thanks of Asgard are welcomed," he said formally. "And I would beg leave to report to my Queen, if it does not inconvenience you."

Loki nodded, then swiftly sketched the arch of a door in mid-air, his hand trailing green-gold light. The sides of the arch extended downwards, forming a doorway which opened onto what looked like a pleasant summer's day in the English countryside, with crickets chirping and birds singing. It was a formidable demonstration of casual power: as Fix had noted, specific point to point gates through the Nevernever were a real rarity, the province of the likes of Mab and Titania (which, incidentally, spoke volumes of how terrifyingly powerful Jean Grey was, since according to the Avengers, she'd turned around and ripped a hole in reality to the Red Room base when Harry and Maddie had got into it, and still had plenty left in the tank). I was still wary. The Summer Court tends to look all sweetness and light at first glance, and they do tend to be the nicer court – I get on very well with Fix, and with Lily, the Summer Lady. However, they can also be really freaking scary. After all, this is the group that can square off against Winter, full of all manner of horrifying creatures and ruled by one of the most terrifying beings in the universe, on even footing.

Fix gave him one last bow as the Knight of Summer, then clapped me on the shoulder, a gesture I mirrored. "Good to see you, Harry," he said.

"And you, man," I said. "Hopefully it'll be under better circumstances next time."

Fix's gaze travelled back to the bed, and he sobered, likely also remembering the first time we'd met. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I hope so."

Then, giving me a last nod, Maddie and Jono as well, he stepped through and the gate shut behind him.

Loki then gave me a speculative look. "Now, Wizard Dresden," he said. "I think we would all like to know something very important."

"And that would be?" I asked.

"You and Sir Fix escorted Miss Grey and Mister Starsmore," Loki said. "Along the roads of the Dream King. But neither of you knows those roads. Few beings of any kind do, and even fewer of those still live. Who was your guide, Master Dresden, and where are they now?"

I grimaced. "It was Doctor Strange," I said. "We only found out it was him when we arrived at the base and Maddie gave us the option to turn back."

That darkened the mood.

Wanda grimaced. "It makes sense," she said. "If anyone knows those roads, it's Stephen. And he did say that he had something he was looking forward to coming up…" She gave me a serious, worried look. "What did he do?"

"He…" I paused. "He guided us through the base. Maddie pretended that Jono was her prisoner and no one bothered her. Strange hid me and Fix under a world class veil, and no one noticed us either. Then, we got the feather, and the kid's wand, and Essex found us. And then…"

I shuddered, remembering what Strange had done. I'm no stranger to bloodshed and violence. I've seen some absolutely horrendous things in my time. But the sight of Strange, eyes alight with something very much like madness, advancing on Essex... I didn't feel sorry for Essex, especially since Strange had said that he'd be up and about in a new body sometime soon. But the sight of Strange like that had scared the crap out of me.

"Strange killed him. Or at least, he killed that body, then ripped out his brain and that weird red gem on his forehead to use it to track his other bodies." I shook my head. "He did not look sane. If you want my professional opinion, I'd say that he'd cracked. He was fixated on getting Essex and making him suffer."

"He wanted to make it right," Maddie said quietly, drawing the attention of the entire room. "He had made a mistake of some kind and he was desperate to make it right. He said that 'true vengeance' would be mine, on Doctor Essex, as if he knew something about me that I didn't."

"With Strange, that's a safe assumption," Clint said darkly.

"And I believe that we know what he was referring to," Xavier said quietly. "Miss Grey. You have probably been wondering why we have been calling you that."

"I have," Maddie said frowning. "The name I was assigned by Doctor Essex was Madelyn Pryor."

"And the name you were given at birth was different," Xavier said gently. "It was –"

At that point, however, he was cut off. Because that was when everything went sideways.

Loki swore suddenly, dropping the feather, which was now burning in earnest, the golden chain connected to it melting away like ice under a flamethrower. Instead of falling to the floor, however, it was now floating in mid-air, glowing brighter and brighter.

"Brother?" Thor said, worried.

"The feather, it… oh no," Loki said, eyes widening.

The plan, it seemed, had been to take Harry to Asgard, and either restore his arm and eye, or replace them with prosthetics/an eye patch that wasn't made out of some insane nanotech virus. After that, his memories of his time as the Red Son would be removed, since no one needed that kind of horror floating around in their brain, especially when it had all happened when their body was freaking hijacked.

It didn't last, because Harry's mind, or the thing it was in, had different ideas. It hovered in mid-air for a few moments, then suddenly shot towards Harry's body, slamming into it with explosive force. Not two seconds later, his human eye shot open and he catapulted upright, flailing and sucking in a deep, desperate gasp of air, like a drowning man reaching the surface. His gaze darted around, expression confused, even panicked, and he began to frantically pat himself down, as if to make sure that he was all there. In the process, the claws on his left hand scored light gashes on his torso and snapped it away with a cry of pain and surprise, one that grew louder as Thor caught it and him.

"It is all right, Harry," he said, his tone the one that Ebenezar had used to soothe startled horses on the farm and, though we never talked about it, me when I'd had nightmares in the early part of my apprenticeship.

Harry stared at him for a moment, as if assuring himself that he was there, then let out a heart-rending wail of confusion and pain and flung himself into his father's arms, clinging onto him with a ferocity that would have made a limpet envious. His fingers, claws and all, dug into Thor's back. But if it hurt him, he gave no sign of it, holding his son as close and as tight as he dared, tears flowing down his cheeks in earnest.

My first mentor, Justin Du Morne, had been my foster-father. He had also been the source of most of my nightmares up until my early twenties – those that hadn't featured me being executed by the White Council, anyway. This was because he'd been a horrifyingly manipulative, murderous and utterly psychotic Warlock who brainwashed Elaine, my foster-sister/girlfriend (and tell me that that dynamic isn't messed up), my first love and first everything, into being his enforcer. He'd tried to do the same to me, before siccing an assassin demon on me. I ended up facing him in a duel to the death, one that I won. My favoured weapon, then as now, was fire, and fire does not kill cleanly. I burned Du Morne alive – and believed that I'd killed Elaine too – while the only home I'd ever known burned with him. The roar of the flames had been drowned out by his screams. In other words, it's the sort of thing that would give you trouble sleeping at night.

I knew that my namesake had already seen far more than his fair share of horror, more than I had at his age. He'd also been an orphan for a lot of his young life, an experience I'd shared, and while I had had the fortune not to be raised by verbally and psychologically abusive relatives who kept me in a freaking cupboard (and somehow, it did not surprise me in the least that parents that awful had their own son turn into a Grade-A psychopath), I knew well enough that that left its own psychological scars and nightmare fodder behind.

I couldn't even begin to imagine what kind of wounds had been gouged into his psyche now. I couldn't even begin to comprehend what kind of horrors he now had parading in front of his mind's eye, memories of the Red Room using him as a weapon to carve out a neo-Soviet empire, memories of who knew how much death and destruction, of madness and murder.

But he could. I could see it in his expression, which slowly changed from one of mixed confusion, pain, and desperate need to one of comprehension and absolute horror, one barely attenuated by Wanda slipping onto the bed next to him and slipping her arms around him. It was almost like he didn't know she was there, like he didn't even know his father was there, going by the way his eye just stared into the middle distance, fixed on things that only he could see. I didn't know exactly what those memories were doing to him. But if I wanted to, I could find out. I could open my Sight and watch as each memory sliced open a new wound on his spiritual self. A part of me cringed, my imagination painting a clear picture of what it might look like – he wouldn't be the first person I'd seen spiritually mutilated. The method was different to most spiritual attacks I'd encountered, in that it was sort of accidental. Then again, going by Maddie's account of events, the Red Room had tortured him, physically, psychically and psychologically, for at least two days straight before she'd stepped in, so there wouldn't be any shortage of wounds to begin.

But… maybe if I looked, I could get some insight, something that might help. Recovery from a heavy grade psychic mauling can take years, and that for people with decades of life experience under their belts. For a fourteen year old kid, one already especially sensitive to psychic assaults by dint of being what he was and having been victim to several over his young life, it could take longer. A human lifetime, maybe.

And then there was the feather. Right now, it had acted completely on its own, restoring Harry's mind to his body – which I had imagined would be a fairly delicate operation. It could have been Harry's mind waking up within it and deciding to take matters into his own hands, but something told me that it wasn't. More to the point, I'd been wondering about how his mind had fitted in a feather, even of a powerfully magical creature like a phoenix. Namely, I had no idea how it was even freaking possible.

I mean, my assistant, Bob, is a spirit of intellect – basically, a mind without a body. He lives in a skull, sure, but it's an incredibly well enchanted vessel, specifically designed to hold a spirit of his power. And while Bob was incredibly knowledgeable, something that probably translated to considerable power – certainly, the demented little perv had absolutely no trouble causing mayhem whenever he managed to haggle me into giving him free rein out on the town – I'm not sure how he stacked up against a demigod psychic.

At the very least, the kid's mind would take something similar to store it in, and as far as I could tell, a phoenix feather wouldn't cut it. Which meant that what Strange had said about it being something else entirely was a) true, b) possibly very relevant. After all, it had been in Essex's hands for six months, in one of his labs. He was a psychic himself, and a strong one, if not quite in the same weight class as Xavier, much less Maddie, and scarily clever. Who knew what he might have done to it. Hell, who knew what he might have done to Harry.

I owed it to the kid to find out.

So I took a few steps to one side in order to get a clear line of sight, took a deep breath and opened my Sight.

In retrospect, that was a mistake.

When I looked at the kid through my Sight, I saw a small figure, lean to the point of looking cadaverous, with bone, strained, ropy muscle, and deep wounds, some of which were already festering, others of which were being sliced open right before my eyes, standing out like beacons. His skin was pulled tight over his body, giving his fingers the appearance of claws; his eyes were sunken, darting and wary, the bones of his face standing out in sharp relief, leaving him with the general aura of a feral cat: twitchy, malnourished, and wary of the next blow.

His skin was as pale as pack ice, except for where the metal intruded. Any doubts I might have had about how pervasive it was and the malice behind it were dispelled: his left arm, hell, the bulk of his left side, from top to toe, were swathed in a metallic blackness that, even having been nuked by both Magneto and Wanda, exuded sullen malice. The only exception was the eye, which gleamed like frozen steel, and part of the shoulder, on which was inscribed a blood-red five pointed star. It had devoured and replaced his left arm entirely, and before it was stopped, it had extended thick, dark tendrils into his chest cavity, spreading outwards, upwards and downwards, with thinner tendrils branching off, probing and investigating the rest of his body.

And that wasn't it. I could see magic running through him in veins, intertwined with strands of a pale golden energy that could only be psychic power. Both ran close to the metallic corruption of the nanotech infection, both being twisted when they got near, almost shying away from it.

And then, there were two other things. One, I couldn't see very clearly; whenever I tried to get a look at it, all I saw was a flickering gleam of light, then it vanished. The other, by contrast, gave me no such problems.

At first glance, I thought it was a confluence of the magical and psychic energy that ran through him, like an unusually located chakra point – everyone has them, those with supernatural power in particular, in much the same way that the Earth has ley line confluences and water pools in lakes. Then, I realised that the kid had the full complement. This was something else, something that looked like a flame. One clear giveaway that it was something odd was the fact that it was pulsing, like a little heartbeat. A little heartbeat that wasn't so little any more, because it was growing, and growing fast, in time with a significant change in Harry's aura, from miserable, hurting, and simply wanting to hide from the pain somewhere safe, to something much more dangerous: rage.

Those feral cat eyes sharpened, hardening, as I felt a growing swell of power, like something huge slowly unfurling, something that set the whole world around it trembling.

I couldn't look away, even knowing that it might burn my eyes out, that it might drive me insane, and believe me, I tried. It was like witnessing the fires of creation igniting once more. And while the Sight is described as being the Second Sight, the True Sight, or the Third Eye – generally things that relate only to seeing, it embraces the other senses as well, which was why I could hear the sound of a furnace lighting, and smell wood smoke radiating off the kid.

Then, the kid looked up at me and, like under Paris, I found myself forcibly slammed back into my body and, as it happened, off my feet. If it weren't for Loki, I'd have fallen flat on my ass.

"Harry!" Wanda said, concerned – for both Harrys in the room, it would seem, which saved time.

Loki dropped down beside me, taking my chin in a firm, but not harsh grasp, examining me for a few moments.

"He was using the Sight," he said. "It backfired."

"That much I had grasped," Wanda said, a touch frostily.

"Was trying to help," I managed, with a grimace, words slurring. Being forced back into normal perception was not fun. "See if Essex had done anything to him not obvious. Non-invasive."

"Clearly, he disagreed," Loki remarked, eyeing his nephew with the careful gaze of someone who thinks that they've just stumbled on a nuclear bomb.

Everyone turned to look at Harry.

"Harry," Wanda said quietly. "What did you see?"

I screwed up my face, trying to focus and remember. "Life," I said eventually. "Fire." I paused. "Familiar."

There was a moment of silence.

Then, the kid wriggled out of his father and Wanda's grasp. They both made abortive motions towards him. He stopped them with a glare.

"They made me into a monster," he said, in a voice that was quiet in the same way that the first winds before a tornado are quiet. My spine turned to ice.

"No, Harry," Thor said anxiously. "You are not –"

"They did."

It was a single statement, delivered flat and without emphasis, but nevertheless cut Thor off in mid-word.

Harry looked up. His eyes were dead, dead but for something that smouldered inside them, something dark that was growing by the second. His gaze swept the room, before settling on Maddie. "What happened?" he asked, voice flat and chillingly cold.

Maddie flinched, then drew herself up. "Doctor Essex noticed the significance of the feather pendant," she said. "He desired to study it and sent me away, to a laboratory in the real world, while time passed at a greatly increased rate where you were. Circumstances being what they were, I could not confront him without being struck down and revealing that you were hidden – Doctor Essex taught me all I know. While he did not discern your presence within the pendant, I am confident that if he knew that you were there, he could have harmed you." She looked away in shame. "I had hoped to restore you the instant that we had a free moment. I overestimated Doctor Essex's trust in me and you suffered for it. The fault is mine."

Harry mulled this over for a moment. "No," he said. "I don't blame you. You tried. You were the one who retrieved me. Eventually."

He stood up, expression terrifying, and even though my Sight was no longer open and I've never been accused of being a particularly sensitive practitioner, I could feel the waves of rage and power rolling off him. Something was going to have to give, and soon.

And it did. Harry's voice shifted, becoming something resonant with the crackling of flames as he examined his metal arm.

"The Red Room wanted to make a monster," he said distantly, every syllable ominous and screaming of danger. "I'd like to congratulate them. They succeeded." As that chilling pronouncement echoed around the room.

"Harry," Thor said. "Please, calm yourself. We will deal with this. We will ensure the Red Room receive what they deserve."

"You will?" Harry said, tone contemptuous and sceptical in equal measure. "You?" He sneered. "You had six months, or however much time passed in the real world." He looked around at them. "I'm guessing weeks, at least. You had time, you even had Mjolnir on the other end, you had the Red Room using me as a weapon, and what did you manage? Nothing." He waved an angry hand. "How long did it take you to come up with the inspired plan to lure us, me and the Winter Guard, out? If Lukin wasn't a fucking moron and Belova wasn't insane, it would never have worked." 

His expression twisted into a bitter snarl. 

"The Avengers. Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Wanda Maximoff, the Sorceress Supreme in Waiting. Charles Xavier, the most skilled telepath in the world. Magneto, the man who makes everyone with half a brain wet themselves. The Winter Soldier, who makes even people without brains wet themselves. And all of the above have the All-Seeing Heimdall to call on. No problem's too big for them, right? Don't make me fucking laugh!"

I looked around the room, rather grateful at having been overlooked. The expressions were near uniformly stricken, ashamed, and angry at themselves. The only exceptions were Loki and Magneto, who both looked at Harry with a kind of sad recognition, as if they knew the dark, furious rage bubbling away inside him intimately, if not quite the power behind it.

"No," Harry snapped. "If there's one thing I've learned, whenever I get into trouble, family or no family, it's up to me to get myself out again. If you want something done properly, do it yourself."

There was a moment while everyone processed this.

"Harry," Steve said quietly. "I get the urge to charge in. I do, I really do. And if you don't believe me, take a look in my mind."

That cut off Harry's disdainful snort just as he'd been about to make it, replacing it with a frown, but a grudgingly attentive one. "So what if you do?" he asked sourly. "Then you should know better than to get in my way."

"The last time you charged into a Red Room base, it ended badly," Steve said bluntly. "Ditto the time you charged into a fight before that: you let your anger do the thinking and it got you killed."

That got him looks that could have killed from both Thor and Wanda, but he ignored them in favour of looking Harry right in the eye.

"One of those times, you were on top of your game. The other, like now, you were exhausted and you'd just been in a serious fight," Steve said. "And the Red Room wound up trussing you up like a chicken. If you want to beat them, you have to fight smarter."

"He's right," Natasha said. "The Red Room know how to handle rage."

"And they know how to handle people who have slipped their leashes," Bucky said quietly.

Harry… smiled coldly. Or to be more accurate, he bared his teeth. "You're wrong about that, Steve," he said. "As usual, you're ignoring what's right in front of you."

I didn't know precisely what that was referring to, but I knew a low blow when I heard it. The kid was hurting, and lashing out with spiteful barbs that were landing with the kind of precision that only someone who knew their targets very well could manage.

Steve, though, didn't even blink. "Enlighten us, then," he said. "Why do you think that, the way you are, exhausted and with a hostile piece of machinery grafted to your body to an unknown extent after your body went twelve rounds first with Xavier, then with Magneto, that you can take on the massed forces of the Red Room? Who, it should be remembered, have had months and months to study your current capabilities and, through Doctor Essex, have pretty much your entire lifetime to draw upon in terms of knowledge. We haven't even had time to purge any triggers, any psychic time bombs, they may have implanted, much less understand how exactly your mind interacts with the programming and memories of the Red Son."

Harry bared more of his teeth, and a shimmering field of heat began to surround him, burning away everything it touched, growing stronger, turning from simple heat into flames.

"Because all that time, Steve, all the time they were holding me, I was afraid. I was holding back, because I was afraid of what I could do. But that's not me any more. I'm not the person, the boy that you knew," he said, voice rising as the flames turned golden, brightening with every second. "Because I've seen where mercy and holding back get me, and that's not happening ever again."

"Then who are you?" Loki asked.

There was a sudden flash of light, followed moments later by a rolling thump of air, a powerful concussion made all the more so by being contained in the infirmary as Harry threw his head back, flung his arms out wide and exploded into a fountain of golden-white flame roaring upwards and outwards, which vaporised the bed he'd been placed on with an almighty scream of mingled agony and ecstasy, rising into one of triumph.

Then, before the displaced and burnt air had had a chance to even begin settling, the fountains faded, falling away and revealing a humanoid figure. Harry, or what had until recently been Harry, looked like a Greek statue carved from unbearably hot dark golden-red flames, with only one arm, and one eye that burnt white hot like the sun.

Then, something burnt, molten and metallic was spat out from the flames. It was hard to tell what it was at first, but closer inspection suggested it might just once have been a cybernetic infection spreading down the left hand side of a tall teenage boy's body, with a cyborg eye to go with it that now closely resembled a roast chestnut that had been left in the fire for too long. As I looked up from the ruins of the infection, the statuesque burning figure developed another eye, one that burned just as brightly as the other, and after a moment, another arm, one that grew slowly at first, but quicker and quicker, until it mirrored the other one.

"Who am I?" that voice said, sounding mocking and even less human than before. "You're a clever man, uncle. Why don't you figure that out for yourself?"

With that, he shot straight up through the Mansion like a rocket, effortlessly smashing his way out, before soaring up into the night sky, trailing a defiant, bone-rattling and utterly inhuman scream of triumph as he did.

And that was when everything went wrong.

OoOoO

Now

"Everything went wrong?"

"More or less, yeah. The kid went nova on us – and to be fair, he had good reason. He was freaking fourteen, and he'd had his mind violated in one the most horrific ways possible. If it wasn't for that cousin of his, Maddie, it would have been one hell of a lot worse."

"I don't think that anyone would deny any of those things. I also don't think that anyone would deny that, good reason or not, the discharge of that kind of power can have horrific consequences."

A grunt of acknowledgement. "If you want the rest of the story, you're going to have to ask someone else. That's as far as I saw."

"I imagined as much. Thank you for your time." Papers were shuffled. "Please send in Miss Grey."

"Sure."

The door opened and closed twice.

"Good evening, Maddie."

"Agent Coulson. You wish me to discuss…"

"Yes. If you feel up to it."

"I…"

A long moment of silence.

"I won't push. If you need more time…"

"No. I'll discuss it now."

"Thank you."

OoOoO

Then

There was a long moment of silence. Then, Loki said two words in a very calm, distant and clear tone.

"Oh fuck."

Steve looked grim. "Thor, can Mjolnir reopen a portal it made?"

Thor paused, about to take off and follow Harry. "Surely, Steve –"

"It's Harry. He might be being powered by his Phoenix fragment, but it's still him," Steve said. "I recognise the sound of someone lashing out. It's too personal for it to be anything else. And he made it very clear where he was going. If the Phoenix fragment within him is even half as powerful as I think it is, your odds of catching him are not good, your odds of stopping him even worse. If we get to the Red Room first, we can deal with them and maybe cut him off before he loses it completely."

"Steve is right, brother," Loki said quietly.

"That he is," Magneto said, then added at Wanda's glower. "I cannot claim to know the boy well, but I know the tone well enough. He is on the brink of madness, and with good reason. Knowing the Red Room, the kinds of things they made him do, the kinds of things haunting his mind, are utterly unimaginable."

Bucky and Natasha shared a look. "I think we could imagine them," Natasha said flatly, gaining a tip of the head in acknowledgement from Magneto.

"Which is why the two of you will be with me," Steve said. "Thor? Yes or no?"

Thor grimaced. "Very well," he said. "I will try."

"I believe I can assist," Wanda said.

"I might be able to help," Dresden added, poling himself to his feet.

"No, I'll need you this side," Wanda said. "In case anything tries to come through the portal."

"Magneto, you can stay here for much the same reason – at the very least, you're vulnerable and Harry'll identify you as a threat," Steve said. He turned to the rest of the room. "Clint, Loki, go to SHIELD and get a clear view of the situation. Once that's done, Loki, prepare whatever protocols you've come up with for this kind of situation, and Clint, keep us informed of what you see, I don't want any surprises. Bruce, you stay here. We need your scientific and medical expertise more than we need the risk of Essex getting desperate and hijacking the Hulk."

"It would be his most likely tactic," Maddie contributed. "Serving as a distraction while he made his escape and/or moved valuable data."

"Great," Bruce muttered. "Okay."

"Tony, get your armour on and follow us in," Steve continued.

Tony went over to a cupboard and pulled out what looked like a slimmer, more compact version of his original briefcase armour. Instead of being a folded up and necessarily thinner version of his armour, however, this version was made out of boots, gauntlets, and helmet, while the rest was a collection of hexagonal pieces that aligned over an underarmour that was worn at all times, forming the armour in approximately fifteen seconds.

"Way ahead of you, Cap," he said, in Iron Man's modulated voice.

"Great," Steve said. "As soon as you're in, don't pick fights. Head for the computers and get us as much information on what we're likely to be dealing with, and what's been done to Harry, as you can."

"I can help with some of that," Maddie said, and all the Avengers jumped as the knowledge suddenly appeared in their brains.

"Hey!" Clint snapped. "Ask, next time!"

Maddie flinched. "Sorry, I, I didn't…" She trailed off, looking downcast.

"It is polite, luv," Jono said, then gave Clint a reproachful look. "She did just want to help."

"And that is most commendable," Xavier said gently. "Though a sudden impulse to help can do as much damage as an impulse to harm, especially if those you wish to telepathically assist have had bad experiences in the past."

"We're grateful for the assistance, Miss," Steve said. "But as has been said, you should ask next time." He turned to Loki and Clint and nodded. The two vanished.

Maddie nodded, still downcast.

Xavier rolled forward. "And I think that I should have a little chat with Madelyn," he said.

Maddie frowned. "I can be of use," she said. "I know the layout of the base, the forms of opponent you will face."

"All of which you downloaded into our brains, red," Tony pointed out.

"And I am the only one among you to best both Harry and Doctor Essex in psychic combat," Maddie retorted, folding her arms, as Thor and Wanda began opening the portal.

"That was under very different circumstances, Madelyn," Xavier said, as he began rolling away. Maddie, reluctantly, began to follow him, Jono trailing behind her. "Which I will explain to you. It is one of many things that you must understand, and, I fear, you have very little time in which to do it. As for Harry as he is now, it is not simply defeat through force of arms that we must seek. He has seen far too much violence in recent weeks – months, from his perspective – to be overly fazed by that, even if it were possible without horrendous collateral damage."

Maddie cast a glance over her shoulder at the Avengers, many of whom were piling through the newly opened lightning portal. A small part of her felt a pang, but she squashed it firmly. Mjolnir had never been hers. She had wielded it because, for that moment, she had been Worthy and in need. Still, she felt that she could help.

"The Avengers will be more than fine," Xavier said, and Maddie barely supressed a jump. She knew that the man was a powerful telepath: the most powerful that she'd ever encountered, save for herself, her mirror image, and Harry. And in the latter case, on raw power alone, Xavier wasn't that far behind. Moreover, from what sense she could get of his power, his experience, finesse and skill more than made up for it – he'd ghosted straight through her defences without her even realising it. Appearances and kindly mien aside, this was an incredibly dangerous man.

Xavier chuckled slightly. "I did not read your mind," he said. "I did not need to. A lifetime or so of teaching young people has given me a certain insight into their minds." He looked up at Maddie, expression saddening. "Even into those who have suffered at the hands of the Red Room. You are not the first I have known, even aside from Natasha and Sergeant Barnes, who has been through horrors at their hands. For that, I am so very sorry."

Maddie frowned for a moment, then light dawned. "Oh," she said. "You were expressing sympathy." She hesitated. "Thank you?"

"Right you are, luv," Jono said kindly.

Xavier nodded. "That is considered the socially appropriate response," he said. "Though I was also expressing sorrow that I had not managed to intervene, to track you down and free you from Doctor Essex's grasp, when of all people, I should have had the means to do so."

"Doctor Essex disguised my psychic presence," Maddie said. "And taught me how to do so myself."

Xavier nodded. "Even still," he sighed. "Anyway. Madelyn –"

"Maddie, please, Professor Xavier," Maddie said.

"Maddie, then. You were wondering about why I and others called you 'Miss Grey'," Xavier said.

"I was," Maddie said, frowning. "You said something about it being my birth name."

"I did," Xavier said, rolling his chair into a computer room, and typing away at the keyboard. "Tell me, what did Essex tell you of how you came to be?"

"He told me that I was a creation of his, disparate strands of DNA from multiple subjects melded into one, and I was gestated in an artificial womb," Maddie said, frowning. "He told me that I was engineered for set of specific purposes: to be a case study in the development of psychic powers, to track mutants and other beings for him, and to protect him, demonstrating his displeasure to those who opposed him."

Xavier sighed sadly. "I had suspected as much," he said bitterly. "Dehumanisation is a common tactic among such groups, primarily because it is so very effective, even when it is not reinforced by telepathic conditioning. That you have managed to break free of it speaks great volumes of your strength of character."

"Remy helped," Maddie said. "As did Harry." She frowned. "Where is Remy, anyway?"

"Even still, they could only show you the way," Xavier said. "You had the exceptionally difficult task of following through. As for Mister LeBeau, he is currently working with some of SHIELD's best debriefing teams and their Russia experts to unearth every little bit of useful information that he managed to acquire. He accepted it, very grudgingly, in return for a promise from Director Fury that he would be allowed on the strike team to attack the Red Room and be given a chance to try and get through to you." He smiled faintly. "I think he will be both very pleased at your freedom and somewhat annoyed that Fury will now no longer have to follow through on his part of the agreement, meaning that he has spent much of the last two weeks cooped up with analysts of all varieties for – from his point of view, nothing."

"Surely such information would be vital in crippling the Red Room," Maddie said. "And at least inconveniencing Doctor Essex."

"I am sure that that will give him some satisfaction," Xavier agreed. "But the impression I got from young Remy was that his chief priority was freeing you from Essex's grasp. Any other achievement without that would, to him, be hollow at best." He glanced at her. "Perhaps it is just the intuition of an old man, but I think that he is very fond of you. Certainly, it was your predicament that inspired him to become SHIELD's informant within the Red Room and Essex's organisation. All with the goal of freeing you."

"Oh," Maddie said, a little surprised. She had known that Remy was fond of her, but even so, this was… startling.

Xavier gave her a knowing smile, then sighed. "And now on to less pleasant matters," he said. "Maddie, as may be apparent to you now, Essex lied about your origins. Every bit of what he told you was a lie." He turned back to the computer, bringing up a series of files. Including two birth certificates, and a death certificate. "Your birth name was Rachel Anne Grey," he said. "Daughter of John and Elaine Grey, twin sister of Jean Elaine Grey, younger sister of Sara, Julia, Roger and Liam Grey. You were stolen from your crib in hospital the night you were born by the man you know as Doctor Nathaniel Essex. He has earned a number of grimmer aliases over the last century or more. My friend Erik, Magneto as you may know him, could tell you stories of 'Nosferatu', an unnaturally pale man who haunted death camps like Auschwitz, who was obsessed with taking blood, particularly from children. Others call him 'the Pale Man'."

"We called him 'Sinister'," Jono remarked.

"An apt name," Xavier said quietly. "In any case, Maddie, he stole you and replaced you with the corpse of a recently dead newborn girl. He would have taken your twin sister, Jean, as well, were it not for the intervention of Doctor Strange. Despite Strange's best efforts, however, Essex escaped with you and for some unknown reason, not even Loki can track him. Jean was unscathed, and was raised in a loving family, as you both should have been, her life untroubled until the death of a friend when she was six years old traumatised her into activating them, nearly killing her in the process."

He gave Maddie a very sad, compassionate look. "I am sorry, Maddie. I am so, so sorry. Because of the failures of men like myself and Doctor Strange, Doctor Essex has been able to make your life one of darkness and horror when it should only ever have been one of light and joy. I was able to teach Jean, to guide her in mastering her powers. You, by contrast, had a much harsher teacher, one who had free rein to experiment on you as he wished, as he managed to arrange with Harry, studying and tormenting him in much the same way."

Maddie just stared at him. Then, mutely, she shook her head, first slowly, then faster and faster in frantic denial. This could not be. This was not possible. Her entire life, dark as it may have been in contrast to the likes of Jean, who she recognised as kin of sorts (sister? What did that even mean to ordinary girls, let alone to one like her, two like them?), but it had not been… it had not been a lie. Had it?

But when she looked in Xavier's eyes, she saw only the truth, and when she reached out to his mind, which he allowed her to enter freely, she saw the truth again, underlined by memories of watching a security video that corroborated his story.

It was true.

Her legs folded underneath her like a house of cards, and only Jono's quick reflexes prevented from collapsing entirely.

"A bit much to hit her with all at once, Prof," she heard Jono say, anger in his voice, as if from far away.

"She had to know, Mister Starsmore," Xavier said quietly. "She deserved to know."

"Yeah, but having it thrown at her like, 'oh, sorry I couldn't help you out as a kid. Why did you need help? Because you were kidnapped as a baby by a mind-raping psychopath and everything you've ever known is a fucking lie, that's why,'" Jono snapped. "Doesn't that strike you as a bit much? Why does she need to know it all right now, anyway?"

"You are not wrong, Mister Starsmore," Xavier said. "And she needs to know it because there is a psychic connection between her, Harry and Jean, a very old one. In truth, I have no idea how old. For all I know, it could have come into existence before Jean and Maddie were born, and have extended to include Harry when his mind showed the first stirrings of consciousness in the womb. All I know for certain is this: it runs deep."

"So?"

"So, Mister Starsmore, Harry is currently out of his mind with rage and pain, wielding a fragment of what is quite possibly the most volatile form of power in the universe, one that magnifies feelings and is magnified by them in turn, one intended for that very reason only ever to be wielded by one of pure intent and discipline, and that fragment is growing. Which means that sooner rather than later, it will spill over into Maddie and Jean's minds, flowing through their connection, a tidal wave of power and emotion, the kind of power that comes with knowledge," Xavier said, voice hard and intense. "At the very least, Harry's first stop will be to rip Essex's mind apart, and rest assured that the knowledge of Maddie's origins will be near the top of his priority list. Hard as it may be, it is better for her to find it out now, in relatively controlled circumstances, rather than in the midst of a tsunami of astonishingly volatile power and emotion, neatly erasing any chances of her controlling either that power or that emotion, with unimaginable consequences to the rest of the world!"

There was a moment of silence as Jono considered this.

"Okay, fine, I get your point," he said grudgingly.

"And you don't like it. I know, I do not like it either," Xavier said heavily. "Miss Grey, Maddie. Or would you prefer Rachel? I am sorry, sorry to put all this on you now. And I am even more sorry for what I must ask you to do now."

There was a long silence.

"Rachel… doesn't feel like me," Maddie said eventually, pulling herself back to the present. She could mull over this later – or, as Remy had once put it 'freak out'. It felt an apt term to describe her feelings at the moment, as well as being utterly insufficient. "Not yet. Maddie is a name I chose. Or the diminutive I chose, at least. I will use it for the time being." She focused on Xavier. "What must I do?"

OoOoO

Now

"You adjusted… remarkably quickly."

"I think that it would be more accurate to say that I postponed my emotional collapse."

"Still: it was impressive."

"Doctor Essex had little tolerance for allowing emotions to cloud one's judgement. I learnt early on how to sideline them where necessary."

"Duly noted. Still, Mister Starsmore had a point. It was a lot to ask anyone to compartmentalise."

"I managed it."

"So you did. What was Xavier's plan?"

"In brief: I knew how to control my emotions. Harry was completely out of control. The two of us – the three of us, rather, including Jean – had a deep psychic connection. Xavier hoped that by engaging with Harry, we could share out the power of the Phoenix fragment before it burned completely out of control. Then, he hoped that between my rational logic and Jean's compassion, we would be able to calm Harry down."

"Not force him down?"

"I wondered that as well. However, as Xavier explained, and was aptly demonstrated, all being attacked did was make Harry angrier and the fragment burn brighter. It is like trying to blow out a fire with copious amounts of fuel: all that would achieve is to feed the fire."

"A counterproductive strategy."

"Quite."

"Omnia vincit amor, then."

"I'm sorry?"

"It's Latin. 'Love conquers all.'"

"Ah. Yes, more or less."

"And Doctor Strange was thinking along the same lines."

"… Yes. I believe that he was."

"Yes. Thank you for your account, Maddie. I'll need to speak to you one more time, but first, could you send in Loki, please?"

"Of course, Agent Coulson."

The door opened, closed, then opened and closed again a few moments later.

"Hello, Philip."

"Loki. How is he?"

"As well as can be expected."

"Which means, if I may ask?"

A sigh. "I honestly don't know. He has not been broken, but… it was close. He will carry the scars of this for a long time."

"I'm sorry. Please pass on my best wishes."

"I will. Now, what did you want to discuss?"

"A number of things, but in the main, your part after Harry left the Institute."

"Ah. I see why. Very well. It went something like this…"

OoOoO

Now

SHIELD satellites followed the golden-red comet as it streaked up through the clouds, into the upper atmosphere, then into space, going from below ground to the edge of space in less than ten seconds. They continued to follow it as it twisted, flight path curving as it skimmed along the edge of the atmosphere, sling-shotting around the planet, before bending into a shallow trajectory and re-entering the atmosphere at Mach 30 and accelerating, leaving a vast white-hot plasma trail behind him, aiming at central Russia.

"Jesus," Fury breathed.

"And this is just the beginning," Loki said grimly, before his gaze snapped up. "Camera thirteen, magnify full-spectrum, front and centre," he snapped.

"Do it," Fury growled, and the techs obligingly expanded the feed from camera thirteen to the entirety of the Triskelion's main screen, scanning through the entire EM spectrum.

"Sir, we have the President on the phone. He's demanding to know what's going on. Actually, sir, so is about half the Western hemisphere."

"They can wait," Fury snapped. "Loki, what the hell am I supposed to be looking at?"

"Wait for it… now," Loki said, and right on cue, a giant rip the size of a skyscraper appeared in lurid colours on the screen – that part which wasn't blotted out by the vast power rolling off Harry, who'd torn it open in the first place.

"And that is what exactly?" Fury asked.

"Think of it as the largest Way to the Nevernever that you are ever likely to see," Loki said grimly.

"The Red Room base," Fury breathed, then turned to the room. "Mark that portal, where it is and where it goes, now!"

The room, which had been stunned into silence, exploded into motion.

Then, something almost as bright as Harry shot out of the portal and slammed into him.

"What the hell was that?" Fury demanded, as the live feed vanished.

"Impossible," Loki breathed.

"Loki?"

"Run the footage backwards, slowly," Loki snapped. The SHIELD techs, a number of whom remembered Loki's insanity days very vividly, and all of whom had seen what he was capable of since, hastened to obey. Loki watched with eagle eyes as the footage was slowly rewound. "Stop. Take us back into normal view."

The footage stopped on a blurred glimpse of an indistinct figure. It had long, shaggy dark hair and deathly pale skin, criss-crossed by old, hideous scars. And its eyes gleamed blue as they unleashed a stream of energy so bright it was almost white. It looked disturbing. Unnatural. Somehow... bizarre.

Loki's eyes narrowed.

"What the fuck..." Fury said, though he was not stunned enough to miss the way that Loki seemed to relax a little, relieved. "Loki, care to explain?"

"Unless I am very much mistaken," Loki said, anger clearly mounting behind his iron control. "It is a clone, a twisted clone, an abomination!"

"Of who?" Fury asked.

"Of someone long dead," Loki said, eyes dancing with rage. "Who deserves far better than to have his flesh and blood perverted into a puppet."

"What is it a clone of, and what can it do?" Fury asked.

"A Kryptonian."

Fury twitched. Loki did not miss the twitch and smiled thinly. "You're familiar with the species, I take it?" he asked.

"I've read some of the Mar-Vell Files," Fury said. This was both true and not even close to the full answer, something Loki knew very well, but he didn't push the point. "Which answers the second question well enough." He brought up the comms. "This is Fury. Power up Damocles One."

"Yes," Loki said. "A high blood Kryptonian under a 'yellow' sun... such a being is a wonder or a nightmare. Gods alone only know what a clone created by something of Sinister's ilk could do."

"Damocles can bring it down," Fury said. He looked at Loki. "You don't seem all that worried for your nephew, under the circumstances. Mar-Vell's not one for exaggeration, yet according to those files of his, a full grown Kryptonian was an Omega Level threat that could trade punches with Thor. Harry's strong, especially right now, but he is still no Thor."

"A full grown high blood Kryptonian, yes," Loki agreed. "Not all were so powerful. Most were, under a 'yellow' sun close to an average citizen of Asgard."

"You still don't seem that worried," Fury said.

"Oh, I am very worried. But not for Harry; at least, not for his physical well-being. His mental well-being is another matter entirely; you see, Harry is not simply Harry any more," Loki said. "Normally, if he kept his head and used his telepathy effectively, he would be able to stop this creature easily enough - I doubt that it really has much of a mind. Even so, I would fear for him. A high blood Kryptonian at the height of their powers, even a twisted copy, is a foe that even I would not be eager to face. I would worry that with a single blow, Harry's bones would be pounded to dust, that with a single glance, he would be turned to ash, that with a single puff of breath he would be turned to a frozen statue. Now, my worries are different."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

Loki gave him a long look. "He has embraced the Phoenix within him, Nicholas, a fragment of Life and Fire incarnate, one necessarily defined by volatility and passion, whose powers are specifically only ever granted to those who can control them, to wield them with wisdom and compassion. Harry has embraced it with rage, pain, and a desire for revenge in his heart. That darkness feeds the fragment, and the fragment feeds the darkness, and in doing so, both grow. When you saw Lily this summer, Nicholas, you saw the benevolent, controlled Phoenix, the light Phoenix. Now? The fragment is a small one, as compared to a true host, let alone the Phoenix incarnate. Harry is a mere fledgling."

"A 'mere fledgling' that just took a punch from something that launched him face-first into the damn Moon and got right back up again," Fury said, jerking his head at the screens.

"Yes, Nicholas," Loki said. "That is my point."

Fury went to grab him by the shoulder and shake something other than cryptic bullshit out of him, and found that his hand passed straight it.

"I'm not with you, Nicholas, not physically," Loki said. "I have other things to attend to, a possibility to prepare myself for." His expression was haunted. "I had hoped I would never had to do this. I still have some hope I will not have to. But I will do it if I must... and if I do, I will never forgive myself for it."

Fury froze. "You know how to take that power away," he said quietly. "The Phoenix."

Loki laughed a short, bitter laugh. "Were it that simple," he said. "But for want of a better way to put: yes. There are ways. Ways only attainable by someone of my power or greater still. Which makes it doubly my responsibility to use them if I must." He looked away. "You see, Nicholas, what left Earth was a mere fledgling. It was still Harry. I fear that what returns will be something very different. Something powerful. And something much, much..."

Suddenly, the screens lit up as all the satellites that could be co-opted and focused on the Moon to track the fight were blinded by something colossal, as a firebird the size of a mountain composed of dark orange-red fire spread its wings and screamed a soundless challenge into the void.

Then, it reared back, focusing on a barely visible pale speck that floated before it, stunned and limp. The firebird struck, collapsing around the speck and consuming it entirely. Then, from the resultant ball of impossible flame condensed into something small, a creature of blood-red and burning gold that streaked towards Earth at speeds that made what had passed before look like nothing, and quickly went beyond what the satellites could track.

"... Darker."

OoOoO

Now

"So, the Red Room were aware of the danger."

"The main base was, yes. Harry was only targeting that one, and had not been to anywhere near all of them as either himself or the Red Son, so did not know of many of the others."

"But you do."

"I have been doing my research, yes."

"Very diligently, I hear."

"I do what I must."

"So I understand. That wasn't the only counter-measure they launched, though, was it?"

"No. They had not quite understood that they were dealing with a being of fire incarnate, and even the fires of enhanced nuclear warheads were barely even going to register as irritations. They only had time to launch a dozen, four of which impacted, and the rest of which my brother had to deal with."

"In rather impressive fashion, I hear. At least three were thrown into the sun, and another three destroyed outright."

"He had a lot of anger to work out."

"That is very true." Papers are shuffled. "Okay, Loki, that's enough for now. My best to Harry. Can you send in Jean, please?"

"Of course, Philip. I will pass on your good wishes."

The door opened and closed twice.

"Agent Coulson."

"Miss Grey."

"What do you want to know? Beyond that which you've been interrogating my sister about for the last several hours and more, I mean."

"I haven't been interrogating your sister so much as giving her the chance to give her account, with occasional prompting from myself. For the most part, however, she hasn't needed it and her account has been very helpful. I can promise you that I have not kept her in here for a moment longer than she seemed comfortable with, nor pushed her for more than she wished to share."

"Hmm."

"That is a very sceptical 'hmm', Miss Grey."

"And there's plenty of reason for it to be, Agent Coulson. The Avengers trust you, and I respect that. However, I don't know you, and I'm not in the habit of raiding minds to find out what someone is like. Equally, both the twin sister I did not know I had until a few weeks ago, and the younger cousin – who I should make clear is like a little brother to me – I was made to forget until a few months ago, have suffered horribly at the hands of a person allied with a group that I believe is SHIELD's approximate opposite number, and in Harry's case, at the hands of that group themselves."

"That would be a fair description. What is your point, Miss Grey?"

"My point is that SHIELD was infected by HYDRA for over half a century and no one noticed. Even if HYDRA have been kicked out, the fact that HYDRA Agents, working to HYDRA's agenda, right in plain sight, could fit right in at SHIELD does not fill me with confidence. And like I said, I don't know you. I didn't really know the SHIELD that was, and I don't know SHIELD as it is now. I'm sure that there are plenty of good people at SHIELD, and from what I hear, you're one of them – my attitude to SHIELD is not about you or any single SHIELD Agent."

"But?"

"But at the moment, I'm not sure what you, as in SHIELD, being opposite numbers to the Red Room means. Is it 'total opposites', like night and day, or black and white? Or is it 'mirror images', when you can only tell the difference if you look really closely? I don't know. I don't know you or the organisation that you represent, which means that even if it weren't for what's been done to my family, I can't really trust you. So let me just make this clear, Agent Coulson. If SHIELD turns out to be the mirror image kind of opposite number, if they try to hurt my family, then I can and will bring SHIELD and whoever's behind them down around your ears. You hear me?"

"Loud and clear, Miss Grey." The recording device clicks, turning off. "And off the record, Miss Grey… if I thought that SHIELD had become no different to the Red Room or HYDRA and you were gearing up to destroy it, I would help you do it."

A double-take. "You really mean that?"

"I have quite literally given my life to SHIELD, Miss Grey. I am loyal without question to what it represents: a shield, protecting the weak from the strong. If it becomes like the Red Room or HYDRA, then it becomes a hammer, beating the weak down. In which case, Miss Grey, it isn't SHIELD any more and it is instead the sort of thing that I've worked my entire life to destroy. Under which circumstance, I would act accordingly."

A pause.

"So yes, I really mean that."

Another click. The recording device is back on.

"Now, as for what I want to know, your sister's account had covered up to Harry regaining his mind and transforming. Loki's account covered the immediate post transformation period. Which, I believe, is where you come back into the narrative."

"Yes. I sensed it from Asgard. And then…"

"Then, Doctor Strange appeared."

"Yes. He did."

OoOoO

Then

"Okay," Carol said, as she stared at Jean, who had floated into the air, eyes glowing amber-red. "Something's up with Harry."

"The question," Uhtred finished. "Is what."

"And in the vein of other exceptionally obvious observations, there is little or nothing that we can do about it," Jean-Paul sighed.

"This is different," Diana said, frowning. "I can feel… oh. Oh dear."

There was a moment of silence.

"Okay, what does that mean?" Carol asked.

"I can feel another power, of sorts, around Jean," Diana said slowly. "One that I last felt several months ago. Around Harry's mother."

There was another moment of silence.

"Oh fuck," Carol said flatly.

Jean-Paul was muttering a stream of French swear-words, while Uhtred looked confused.

"Is it not a good thing that Harry's mother is getting involved?"

"It would be if it was his mother," another voice said. "Who knows the Power she wields intimately, understanding its nature as the near literal definition of volatility, affecting and being affected by strong emotions, and therefore understands the importance of keeping a cool head – as all would-be wielders of that power must, because of its unstable nature. Unfortunately, it is not. Instead, it is a fragment of that Power that is growing by the second, fuelled by the emotions of its wielder. That wielder, Harry, is an adolescent who is unprepared physically, mentally and emotionally to contain such devastating Power. A Power, if corrupted, that could consume him utterly, as well as all around him. Considering the trauma he has just undergone, being hit in the face by six months worth of memories of Red Room programming, training, and being forced to abuse his powers in the most horrific of ways, I think that that corruption is well underway."

All four of those who could whirled to the speaker. He was tall, with dark hair that was feathered white at the temples, a neat goatee beard, and he had the gaunt look of a man who exhaustion, stress and lack of rest or food had turned from slim to cadaverous. He was Doctor Stephen Strange, Earth's Sorcerer Supreme, and to say that he looked like a man clinging on to sanity by the tips of his fingers would be generous indeed. Compared to his usual expression of calm and absolute control, tinged with the smile of someone who is In On The Joke (Because He Wrote It), it was utterly jarring.

Carol recovered first, folding her arms and glaring, opening her mouth to unleash a tirade.

"We don't have time," Strange said, cutting her off. "All I will say is that I had no part in what happened to Harry. I suspected that something was going to happen, but due to a number of factors that I have no time to explain, the best I could do was try and mitigate the disaster, whilst flying absolutely blind." He sighed. "This has been less than successful."

"And you expect us to believe that you now know exactly how to navigate through what is happening to Harry?" Diana asked, eyebrow arched.

"Or that you have his best interests at heart," Uhtred growled. "Can we even trust your word?"

In the blink of an eye, Strange was nose to nose with the young Asgardian, bearing down on him with eyes that were solid white with power and expression contorted with near madness as the shadows deepened around them, twisting and taking on strange shapes independent of whatever cast them.

"Child," he said softly. "Knowing that you spoke out of frustration, not unreasonable suspicion and the impetuosity of youth I will forgive you say this once. But mark my words: the road of my life is scattered across eras and ages, with tomorrows coming before yesterdays, could-bes and never-weres being regular stops on my route, and my days being arranged like crazy-paving. I have sacrificed much to walk that road, things that you could not even imagine. What I have given up to see what I have seen, and know what I know, I could not describe, suffice to say that I have reached the point where I hardly recognise the man I see in the mirror. One of the very, very few constants in my life, one of the few things that I have allowed myself to cling onto, is my word. It is all I have left. Once given, it is never broken. Is that understood?"

Uhtred went white and nodded fast.

"Good," Strange said, head snapping back, apparently sane and business-like once more. "Now, Harry is well on the way to being on par with a fully fledged host of the Phoenix. He is still but a fledgling, but his power is growing. Unless we stop it, he will ultimately become the Dark Phoenix."

"And that would be bad?" Carol ventured. "But, you know, manageable, since it's only a fragment of Harry's mom's power –"

"One of the last times the Dark Phoenix appeared was approximately a million years ago," Strange said flatly, striding over to Jean, grabbing her by the ankle and yanking sharply. Jean let out a brief gasp, her eyes snapping back to normal and landed with a thump. "Whereupon the host destroyed a galaxy. The host in question is still imprisoned, because destroying him was impossible." He met Carol's gaze, expression frighteningly cold. "It is by no stretch of the imagination 'manageable'."

Carol gulped. "Okay," she said carefully. "Message received."

"But Harry is not this Dark Phoenix yet," Jean-Paul said. "And I presume that we have time, since you are talking."

"I have stopped time around us," Strange said. "But no, he is not the Dark Phoenix yet. He is not even a pale shadow of a fully fledged host; the fragment given to him was small indeed, intended as a defence mechanism of last resort. Enough to level a small country, maybe, at most. As with all things Phoenix, however, it embodies life and fire, and like both those things, will grow beyond its purpose if given the chance and the fuel. And Harry has decided to say, essentially, 'fuck it, I'm done with holding back. Enough bad things had happened to me, it's time for bad things to happen to people'. A philosophy I can understand, even potentially applaud, except for the fact that his rage and pain is empowering and corrupting a fragment of the most definitively volatile cosmic power in the universe and steadily transforming him into a cosmic scale monster."

"Then what can we do?" Diana asked.

"Anything that needs be done, we will do it," Uhtred said.

"We're not hurting him, if that's what you're suggesting," Jean said, speaking up for the first time.

"Can he even be hurt?" Jean-Paul asked, in a tone of genuine enquiry.

"He's not even a shadow of the Dark Phoenix yet, so, yes, for the time being," Strange said. "There are ways, spells, even weapons, all of which can be used against one such as him."

"Well, if you want to use them against him, you'll have to go through me," Jean said, before shooting a hard look at Carol and saying, pre-emptively. "And no, I don't accept that it might be necessary. Harry's suffered enough in his life, faced enough violence, that more isn't going to help. In fact, if he faces it from us, it'll drive him into darkness faster than just about anything I can imagine."

"Mmm," Carol said. "I agree with you, actually."

"You do?"

"Yeah. And so does he," Carol said, eyeing Strange. "Creepy and nuts he might be, but he's not stupid. If he was looking for heavyweights to take down some kind of dark Harry, he wouldn't be here – you'd never hurt Harry, not without major persuasion by which point it would probably be too late, and the rest of us don't qualify. He's not here to round up the A-Team. He's here for something else."

"You are both entirely correct," Strange said. "Harry has been consumed by hate. And there is only one force in the universe that can destroy hate: love. It was love that brought the Phoenix to Lily Potter's side all those years ago, love that made the Phoenix merge with her and choose to protect her son, and it is only love that can save him now." He looked around at them. "Friends and family, by blood and by bond. It is down to you, and those others I am bringing, to remind him that there is more to the world than hate, pain, and despair. Simply put, you need to remind him that he is loved."

OoOoO

Now

"I take it that this wasn't as easy as it sounded."

"Not even close, no."

"But your instincts were right."

"I'm not looking for a medal, Agent Coulson."

"I'm not looking to give you one, Miss Grey. I'm just noting that based on this and other evidence, you have good instincts. Don't knock it and don't be tempted to ignore them – instinct like that is something that you can't teach."

"I'll bear that in mind."

"Please do. Now, what happened next?"

OoOoO

Then

The Agents of the Red Room milled around in panic, and few were more panicked than Lukin. First, the Red Son had fought a losing battle against Magneto, even after being enhanced by one of Essex's cybernetics projects. Then, something had wiped out all communications with him and therefore, all Lukin's control. All attempts to restore the connection had come to nothing.

Then, Essex's bitch had returned, this time with a mind of her own and friends, including Doctor Strange, the Meddler Supreme, and had revealed that she was a traitor all along, that she had never erased the Red Son's original mind, but stored it. Stored it in some artefact that Essex had kept, in fact, and which she had stolen, then, to add insult to unbelievable injury, she had claimed Mjolnir, used it to escape, but not before first Dresden, then she – she, who was nothing more than a bitch fit hunt and whimper and the feet of her master and nothing more – had humiliated him.

After that, Essex had vanished to make preparations for an assault, and Lukin had followed his example. So when something had shot up from North America, like a small cruise missile, and somehow torn a hole through to their base, which was supposed to be impossible this deep into the Nevernever (then again, the bitch had managed it the other way with Mjolnir), one of Essex's frankensteinian creations was there to stop him. For a few minutes, it had even looked as if it had worked, with only the tear in reality to worry about, and even that was not a problem, as Essex's machines set to work sewing it up. But as soon as they were almost complete, something like a meteor shot through the gap, hitting the bedrock beneath the plateau they were on hard enough to set the entire complex shaking, crumbling the weaker buildings.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, the whole thing lurched.

At first, Lukin thought it was just the building he was in, or the complex, but a quick look outside revealed that it was the entire plateau, which was surrounded by a vast dome of what seemed to be rolling dark golden-red flame, tinged with black and white at the edges. And it was rising. Then, when he estimated that they were several thousand feet off the ground, the ball of flame collapsed in on them. However, instead of granting them a quick but brutal death, it transported them elsewhere.

"Where," he began, then stopped as he saw a pile of earth from a construction projecting melting away into ectoplasm. "The real world," he muttered. "How," he demanded, voice rising and cracking. "How? How is this possible?! WHO WOULD DARE?!"

Belova, who had similarly looked confused, shot him a contemptuous look, then said, "Why don't you ask Essex? He usually knows these things."

"If he is not behind them," Lukin said, entertaining the possibility that this was just one of Essex's machines at work.

"It is not," Essex said, having appeared from nowhere and read Lukin's mind. His tone was strange – the fact that he had a tone was strange in itself, but it was more than that. There was puzzlement, irritation at the puzzlement, and… fear. "I have nothing to do with this.

I beg to differ.

Lukin's head snapped around as he crouched, going for his sidearm, before he recognised that the voice was telepathic. But it was not that of any telepath he'd heard before. This voice, dripping with bitter hate, sounded like the roar of a forest fire, and like it had the power to match.

You ALL have something to do with this. ALL of you are guilty. ALL of you must face judgement.

"I will be judged by no man," Lukin snarled. "Show yourself."

The voice laughed like the crackle of flames on a midwinter's night. I am no man. You thought I was, or that I was something close. You thought that I was something you could tame, that you could control. But all along, I LET you do it. I LET you mess with my mind and body, because I was afraid – not of you, but of me. I was afraid of cutting loose and being what I REALLY am. Well, guess what? I'm not afraid any more.

"Did you not hear me?" Lukin demanded. "SHOW YOURSELF!"

Very well.

The clouds around them began to rotate, flames and flickers of light and power peeling off from them, gathering into a swirling column that whirled faster and faster, burning brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter, until suddenly it vanished with a thunderclap. And in its place was the thing that had once been Harry Thorson, stood on high as if the air itself supported him. He looked like a god, or a demon; certainly, he no longer looked even remotely human.

His clothing at least, was not unfamiliar; close fitting and covering everything below the neck, it shaded from the colour of dried blood to a red so dark that it was almost black. This merged with boots and the gloves, which extended up to the knees and the elbows respectively, and both of which were coloured in the light-swallowing darkness of a black hole. On his torso, meanwhile, was emblazoned a simplified bird, one distilled to its very essence that blazed like the heart of a star, or like a crack in the world to some other, brighter and more terrible realm.

The rest, however, was changed.

His features were stretched, longer, more fey, almost hawk-like, and his skin, at first sight, appeared moon-pale, dim in comparison to the sun-bright inferno. At second, it was lit from within by the same blazing fire that could be seen in the emblem on his chest.

His eyes had been replaced by pits of that same white flame, which spilled from the corners like an unholy parody of tears. His nostrils and mouth, the latter contorted in a rage-filled snarl, were also portals onto that same seething conflagration.

The overall impression was that the physical form of Harry Thorson was merely a vessel, a thin shell akin to a Chinese Lantern. Before, it had been the vessel of the will of the Red Room, of the Red Son program. Now, it was abundantly clear that the Red Son was gone. And it had been replaced by something much, much worse.

"Red Son," Lukin said, with a rush of relief, tempered with caution. "You have – "

The voice struck out like a lash, slamming Lukin to the floor with a roar that tore at the minds of everyone present.

THAT IS NOT MY NAME!

This roar was mirrored by a dark golden-red inferno that erupted around the floating base, consuming clouds in an instant, condensing into the form of a bird of prey the size of a mountain carved from dark fire, with white-hot eyes just like Harry's, one that loomed behind its master like a brewing thunderstorm, its form swirling and shifting like a firestorm.

"Harry Thorson, then," Essex said, intervening and examining the being with obvious interest. "This new development in your powers is fascinating… psychic energy made solid, astral projections manifest on the physical plane, perhaps through mystically generated fire –"

You have no idea of who and what I am, the being that had once been Harry Thorson said coldly. But I see you, Nathaniel Essex. I see ALL of you! I KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!

The fires around the base pulsed and flared in time with his psychic voice rising, chewing away the outermost chunks before control was reasserted.

This is not a discussion. You are considering negotiation – there will be none. No, this is a statement. You tormented me. You broke me. You USED me. A dark, cruel smile stretched across his face. It is only fair that I return the favour.

Lukin, meanwhile, had scrabbled in his pockets, looking for the weapon he had prepared for such an eventuality with Essex.

Even Asgard, he fancied, would not be able to face such might, meaning that it could no longer strangle their resources. And if it proved beyond reach, then the rest of the world had what was needed. Russia could take her share, and then Asgard could decide if it wanted to destroy the world to gain vengeance.

Even the gods would tremble at such might, he was sure. Even this one, whatever he had become, would fall. The first Red Son was a prototype, after all. And prototypes are destined to be replaced. Replaced, improved, and increased.

His plan had not been like that of HYDRA, to simply have one or two weapons to strike terror into his enemies. For a petty little terrorist organisation, that would be sufficient, no doubt. But the Red Room, the Motherland, was more.

He had never just wanted a Red Son. He could have managed that, he was sure, without Essex.

No, he had needed the man, the thing, for reasons other than that. For the Red Son had just been the start.

He found the button. He pressed the button, and hissed the word.

"Arise."

And they did, first by the dozen, then by the hundred, from their storage tubes within the new buildings, emerging naked but strong. Many would have been instantly recognisable; some as former prisoners of the Red Room, others as members of the Winter Guard, and others still as the Red Room's enemies. Some were clones of the Winter Soldier, some of the old Black Widow, and some, even, of Captain America himself.

How? Well, it was hardly as if they'd left a shortage of blood strewn across various battlefields over the years, and even with a little blood to hand, Essex could work wonders. Work wonders and, of course, create nightmares.

But most prominent among them were clones of two of their greatest weapons: Essex's bitch and the Red Son, younger brothers and sisters of the originals. And not merely copies, but improvements: each had a body at least fit for a super soldier, if not greater by quite some way, thanks to alterations via the genetic editing of a master of the art. Each had power that was at least equal to their progenitors. And each had been programmed solely for war.

The Red Son had been mighty, and had apparently become even more so.

But even he could not defeat the Red Army.

And so Lukin felt justified in laughing a mocking, triumphant laugh as he stood up. "You should never have returned, boy," he said, his confidence driven by the very human look of shock and horror. "Not unless it was to grovel for forgiveness for your failures."

Do you have any idea what you have done? His enemy demanded, voice furious and panicked, gaze sweeping the Red Army, the giant firebird growing and engulfing more and more of the base. One or two screams, high, terrified, and instantly cut off, were heard in the distance as some, slower than others, did not evade them in time. This much power… it could tear the Astral Plane apart!

"And if necessary, it will," Lukin said casually. "If you do not want it to, then I advise you surrender. If you are lucky, I may even allow you to keep your mind. Once Doctor Essex has discovered how you have done this, and what you have become."

Why? The being asked. Why would you risk this? He rounded on Lukin Do you even understand what you're doing? There was a pause, then a contemptuous snort like the bellows of a furnace. You don't know. You have no idea, do you? And you don't even care. The world could burn, but so long as you had the power you craved, you would be happy, wouldn't you? Because that is what all this has been about. You. You and your ego.

The flames grew darker and more intense, but this time, the wings of the firebird didn't consume parts of the base. Instead, they drew back, spreading up and back, as if the colossal firebird was preparing to dive.

And the being chuckled cruelly, as flames began to swirl around it, drawing it back into its vast creation, until the two were one, its burning voice echoing from all around.

You both wanted power. But you miscalculated. Both of you did. You were playing with fire and you never realised… I am not the boy you thought that you knew, that you could control. What am I, you ask?

The base began to fall, dropping towards the earth like a giant stone.

"Red Army," Lukin cried, clinging onto the ground. "Stop this!"

For a moment, they did. Several hundred sets of eyes began to glow a pale red. The base stabilised, then began to rise.

Lukin sneered, secure now – their first directive was to protect him, their leader. Each individual clone of the Red Sons alone was the equal or near-equal of the original Red Son, and their potential was far greater – their strength would only grow with exertion. He knew the extents and limits of the Red Son's powers, his strengths and weaknesses, and had an army of his brothers, his betters, at his back.

He could not lose.

Following their programming, several hundred sets of burning eyes snapped upwards, identifying the threat. The new Red Army was throwing down the gauntlet.

And their challenge was answered, the words following them down as burning wings flared out wide enough to engulf mountains.

I AM LIFE.

I AM FIRE.

NOW, AND FOREVER…

I.

AM.

PHOENIX!

OoOoO

Several hundred miles away, in the middle of the great Eurasian steppe, a shepherd boy looked up as something bright flashed in the far distance, the earth shaking beneath his feet a few moments after. This would have been puzzling enough, had not his sheep dog sat up on its haunches and, for no visible reason, howled in fear.

That howl carried down towards a nearby village, where many were already asleep. But their peace was not disturbed, for they had no peace to disturb, tossing and turning. For it was not only animals that noticed. As dogs howled, cats shrieked, and horses attempted to break free of their traces, everything that slept, and everything that could dream, did dream of fire. And all of them dreamed of fire: unrelenting and all-consuming.

Even if it did not know why, the whole world shivered in fear, as if something had walked over its collective grave.

For the Dark Phoenix had risen. And judgement day had come.

OoOoO

The ground was hard-packed, hissing with steam, swathed by vast clouds of mist.

"Okay, where the hell are we?" Carol asked. "Some kind of volcanic island?"

"No," Strange said. "This would be Lake Ladoga. Or rather, an island within it, that has been quite literally inverted." He gestured around without looking up. "If you look around, you should see water beginning to pour into the crater."

"Harry did this," Jean said. It wasn't a question. "I can feel him. He's close and, god, his mind… it's like it's burning."

"Yes," Strange said, voice hard. "His mind, like the rest of him, is burning from the inside out."

"This is the sort of action taken to prove a point," Uhtred said. "Meaning…"

"Meaning that he has started killing," Jean-Paul said grimly.

"Oh no," Strange said, eyes fixed on the very base of the crater where, through the mist, something could be seen burning. "He hasn't chosen to start killing. Not yet."

"What do you mean?" Carol asked.

"I mean that the Phoenix, normally, is closer to a force of nature than anything else," Strange said. "In the normal course of things, if She targeted the Red Room at all, she would burn them to nothingness and be on her way. However, her hosts function as a guiding conscience. This de facto host is a victim of utterly obscene horrors perpetrated by the Red Room and its personnel." He gave them a grim smile. "Kill them? He isn't going to let them get off anywhere near that lightly."

"Then we have to stop him," Jean said, determined. "That's why you brought us here, isn't it?"

"You and others," Strange said, snapping his fingers, and suddenly, they were at the heart of the crater, where carbon had been fused to diamond and sand to glass, then both had been melted and spread into a dully glittering floor the size of a carpark. Burning, reflected and multiplied by the diamond, the glass, and the droplets of water in the mist, was the burning figure of Harry himself.

Except he no longer looked like Harry. He no longer even looked like the agent of destruction, the human vessel of an ancient and wrathful power, a deity of the ancient world. Instead, he was now a figure perfectly carved from fire and shadow, with only white hot eyes standing out from the darkness.

On their knees before him were the serried ranks of Red Room personnel, stripped of hair, of clothes, and of dignity. Essex was bound in bands of flame, off to one side, as was Belova. And Lukin himself, the only one still in uniform (a calculated insult in of itself) was right in front of Harry, bound to the ground by a white hot chain that wrapped around his throat and around his wrists. There was a faint sizzling noise emanating from him, as well as a disquieting smell of bacon. Were it not for the fact that Lukin's mouth had been melted shut, Jean was sure that he would be screaming.

The Red Army was gone. So was the base that had housed it, and the machines that had created. Both were gone as if they had never been, as was only to be expected: they were mortals. And he was the Phoenix – or near enough, anyway.

As they watched, he extended the index and middle fingers of his right hand like a gun and pressed them to Lukin's forehead.

"Harry?" Jean said carefully.

The reply licked out like a tongue of flame, enough to make one jump and flinch even when there was no malice behind it – for if nothing else, there was enough rage and malice overflowing from being directed at others to go around.

You should not be here, the Dark Phoenix said, before looking up sharply, first at them, then around through the mist. Jean and the others followed his gaze, and saw other groups emerging through the mist, followed by rivulets of lake water.

Many, Jean knew on sight. Others she recognised by the feel of their minds. And there were many of them.

Thor, empathetic pain at his son's misery, and frustration at his inability to alleviate it and protect his child, etched onto his face.

Loki, torment at seeing his nephew take the first steps on the path that had led to his own ruin clear in his eyes.

Wanda, misery at the depths of what she deemed to be her failure and her beloved godson's resultant suffering showing in her expression and the grey hairs at her temples.

Maddie, horrified, unsure of what she could do to help, but desperate to do it.

And they were just some of the most obvious. Others, so many others were there: Sirius, Pepper, Jane, Remus, Steve, Tony, Bruce, Natasha, Darcy, Clint, Odin, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Frigga, Sean, Betsy, Bucky… the list went on and on and on, to include many who Jean did not recognise.

All had one thing in common.

They were people who cared for Harry. Many even loved him. And all felt compassion for him now.

The Dark Phoenix looked around, hesitating, as if confused, before focusing on Strange. What are you doing? He demanded.

This time, Jean noticed, there was a crack in the voice, a glimpse of something human underneath the fire and burning wrath.

"I am doing what I have always tried, and often failed, to do," Strange said. "I am trying to help you, Harry."

You failed before. You'll fail again. Now take them away and fuck off. He glared balefully down at the terrified Lukin. This man made me execute people. I'm about to return the favour.

"And then," Jean began.

'How will I be better than him?' Harry mocked. Is that what you were going to say? Try something more original, Jean.

And that confirmed it. It was Harry, Jean was sure of it now. For all the breathtaking cosmic power he was wielding, power that she somehow knew, power that resonated with her, power that she understood, it was still him underneath (for one thing, she doubted that even a human contaminated fragment of a cosmic being would have such a knack for sarcasm). A half-glance at Maddie, her sister, her twin sister and mirror image, whose life had taken such a different path to her own, told her that the other girl had seen it too.

And they weren't the only ones. After all, here were the people who knew Harry best in the world, with the exception of two, who were conspicuous by their absence. Why Ron had not been brought was easy enough to discern: a hot-blooded boy who had lost his father to the Winter Soldier, a living weapon created by the Red Room, was unlikely to stop his best friend from taking revenge on a Red Room general who had turned him into something much the same. Indeed, his presence would be actively counter-productive. The Twins had likely been excluded for similar reasons. Why Hermione had not been brought, however, was a much more difficult question to answer, an answer known only by Doctor Strange. But it was not the question of the moment.

"No," Jean said steadily. "That's not what I was saying."

"What she was saying," Maddie said, taking up the speech, slowly and in the tones of someone under a dawning revelation themselves. "Is that if you executed him, like this, when he was helpless, stripped of all his weapons… you would just be doing what he made you do. You would be following his pattern. His path."

No, Harry said. I won't. He'd lowered his finger-gun before, but now raised it again, sighting down it. And you know what? Even if doing this was following his path… I don't really care.

"That's how it starts," Loki said. "That is how it always starts. Not caring. When you stop caring, things that you would once have deemed unacceptable, unthinkable, become plausible. Indeed, they become attractive – they are so much easier, after all. You stop treating people as if they are people, and start treating them as if they are things, to be used and discarded as needed, or as desired. And a dark part of you, one that feeds off your rage, your pain, and your darkness, one that enjoys the suffering you deal out… it grows larger and larger, until it eclipses whatever is left of your better nature. And then, nephew, what is left is a version of you that you hardly recognise, that you would once have reviled: a monster." He let that sink in. "That is what I once was. Is that what you want to be, nephew?"

"He is right," Thor said. "Harry… our blood runs hot. The rage of the Warrior's Madness is the curse of our family."

And you think that I have gone mad? Harry demanded, voice cracking at the end, the flames vanishing from it for a moment and, just for a quarter instant, his eyes turned from unearthly blank white to agonised emerald green. Then, his face contorted with rage and flames returned in full force, flaring out like a beacon, burning a hundred yards of mist to nothingness, shaking the ground for miles around, fires reaching out with the echoing scream of the Phoenix. You judge me? YOU?! YOU were the one who went mad after you and mum were killed and nearly destroyed the planet! YOU went so mad that you had to have your memory wiped for over a decade! And even just now, YOU went into 'the Warrior's Madness' when fighting the Juggernaut, just because you were frustrated! HOW DARE YOU JUDGE ME!

Each word struck deep, like arrows made of molten metal, aimed with pinpoint precision where they would hurt the most.

Thor, however, had grown up with Loki for a brother and knew such barbs for what they were.

"Yes," he said simply. "I did. Everything you say is true. I could make excuses for it – the Warrior's Madness may well run stronger in me than in others of our bloodline. But I will not. For even if it does run stronger in me than in others, then I should be more aware of its perils, and more in control of myself." He strode over to his son, unflinching even as he stepped right up to him, where the heat scorched even the skin of a god who had walked on stars, took him by the shoulder, and looked him in the eye. "I do not think that you have gone mad, for all that you have all the reason in the Nine Realms to do so: your first memory is of a madman attempting to murder you, after striking down your parents, and lodging a piece of darkness not your own within you. Since those who would have raised you and loved you could not, because of interfering laws or fear for your life, childhood was one of misery and servitude, with one of the creatures you have bound snuffing out any hope of a more joyful life. Your first taste of freedom from that misery was marred by the servants of that madman, and the madman himself, attempting to slay you and almost succeeding. Then, you had to contend with demons that attacked your very mind, a mind already wounded and naturally far more sensitive to such darkness than others, as well as far less able to defend itself. You found a father who should have found you years before, one who has failed time and time again in the first obligation of a father: to protect and to guide. Yet for all the darkness you have been forced to suffer through, you have remained a shining light. Though in age you are still a boy, in deeds you are a grown man, and a great one. I understand a man's desire for vengeance, vengeance deserved for the great wrongs you have suffered, and you more than have the right. But if I can offer one piece of advice, from someone who has been consumed by madness, who once courted madness in battle, it is this: do not act on your pain and your rage. If vengeance is what you desire when your cooler head prevails, then so be it."

Why are you telling me this? Harry asked quietly, and if his voice crackled with fire, it was now a banked fire. He paused, then added, Dad.

Thor smiled sadly. "Because I love you, my son," he said. "More than I can possibly say." He pressed his forehead against Harry's. "Look. Do not simply take my word for it. Look."

And Harry did. Jean could feel it, and she could see it as he staggered away, visibly reeling.

"Look in my mind too," Wanda said, stepping forward.

Harry's expression hardened, closing off again. Why? He sniped. I know what I'll see: regret that you didn't hold me tighter.

"Harry!" Thor snapped.

"No, Thor," Wanda said steadily, cutting the scolding off. "He's right. That's exactly what he'd see. But that's only the start." She met Harry's gaze. "I know madness. I have seen someone I love, my father, succumb to it. I have walked the edge of succumbing to it myself. I haven't been a very good godmother, partly thanks to circumstance, and mostly thanks to my own failures and cowardice. This is fact. But if there's one thing I can offer you, it's perspective on this; on having power, intoxicating power, power that's running wild, and just wanting to unleash it on everyone and everything that's hurting you. If you want to know how that ends up making you feel, where that winds up taking you, then take a look inside my head. I've got plenty for you to see." She closed her eyes. "And you're right, by the way. I have regretted from the night your mother died that I did not hold you tighter, no matter what Stephen and Albus said, no matter that logically speaking, they were right and you were never have survived and that was something I already knew. I wish that I had held you in my arms and never let go, protecting you from all the world. I wished it then and I wish it now. But I can't do that. I've tried, and I can't. All I can do is offer you is my support, come what may, the benefit of my experience, so your path and choices aren't shaped by the likes of them, and… a godmother's my love, if you will have it."

"That is why I brought them, Harry," Strange said. "That is why I brought them all. To offer you an alternative to the darker feelings running through, the ones you've embraced. To help heal you."

I don't need healing, Harry snapped. I destroyed that virus. I grew back my fucking arm and my fucking eye. Like I said. I don't need healing. He folded his arms and glared. Or help.

"In body, no," Strange said calmly. "In mind, yes."

So, I'm mad then, Harry said, sounding bitter. A danger to everyone and everything around me. Why bother trying to talk the madman down? Why not just banish me somewhere I can't hurt anybody?

At this point, the normal course of events would have been for someone to bring up the example of Loki – perhaps even Loki himself – or to gently say that he's not mad and they want to help him avoid becoming so. Something wise would be said, something inspirational and stirring to the soul.

This was not the normal course of events and what was said was, instead, firm and to the point.

"Oh my god, you total fucking drama queen."

There was a moment of stunned silence, then everyone turned to look at Carol, who was glaring at Harry, short blonde hair mussed around her head like the halo of a particularly hacked off angel, blue eyes flashing like lightning in a sea-storm, and expression set to the kind of pissed off that one can only muster for people who are loved very dearly and are being complete fucking idiots. She put folded her arms, ignoring the others, and focusing solely on Harry, who seemed to be absolutely gobsmacked. He wasn't the only one.

"Are we seriously doing this again?" she demanded. "And no, I'm not talking about you being angry, going all fiery and bringing this bastards to their knees, because let's face it, after all they've put you through, they deserve it and more."

Which I was just about to give them before you interrupted, Harry said, sounding irritated, flames building again, but also somewhat peeved.

"No, what you were doing was going on a fucking soliloquy about how of course everyone thinks that you're nuts and dangerous and you're going through this shit alone because no one understands," Carol snapped. "And as for before that, what you were doing was exactly what Maddie and Jean said it was – you were being exactly what they fucking wanted you to be. Worse, you were turning yourself – willingly, I repeat, willingly – into exactly what you have been trying not to become ever since I've known you."

What if this is what I am?

Carol gave him a long look. "Then I'd like to start speaking to Harry, please, because this isn't him," she said. "Harry is my best friend. Harry is the one person who I'd trust through anything and everything. Harry is someone who always gets involved when there's trouble and never backs down from a fight, even when he's out of his league, because he's far too fucking stupid to give in. Harry is so many things, but above all, he's way more than a… a… thing that only knows how to lash out because it's hurting and it's angry, and because it wants to make other people hurt too, like all the worst bits of the Hulk stuck in one person. Because that's what this is. You're hurting, and god, I am sorry for that. I can't even begin to know how much, even with a back door into your brain. You're angry, and hell, you have got so much reason. But you're not the only one who's reason. Not me; I got off lightly. Worst I've ever had to deal with is a near death experience or two, a load of creeps hitting on me, and a suck-ass dad. Plus, you know, being kidnapped. But I got out pretty much untouched, largely thanks to you." She shook her head. "Look around. Really look. You've locked yourself down, locked away all that rage and pain, and I get why, I really do. But you're not alone. Let everyone else show you that the love you and that they fucking understand, because off the top of my head, Clint, Bucky and Apparently Not Evil Jean – you prefer Maddie, right?"

Maddie blinked and nodded.

"Right, Clint, Bucky and Maddie, they've been in your exact fucking shoes," Carol said. "Natasha's probably been in them too. Loki's gone nuts in the past, your dad clearly knows what he's talking about, Bruce might just know something about it too, Wanda's definitely gone through some major shit, and you and I both know that Tony didn't get that fucking nightlight in his chest because he felt like it one day. And that's just the fucking start."

How?

"Open up, I guess," Carol said, after a moment. "I'm not gonna lie, I'm mostly running dry on speeches at this point." She eyed him. "So if you were hoping for something along the lines of 'Harry, you've got so much to live for', 'like what', 'like this', then a kiss… you're gonna to be real disappointed."

As a being seemingly carved of living flame, it shouldn't have been possible for Harry to blush.

Somehow, he managed it.

Then, he hesitated, and Jean and Maddie both saw their moment.

"I'll help," they said, in perfect unison, stepping through the intervening space to Harry's side. Any ordinary humans, or mutants, would have been burnt to ash in an instant. But instead, the heat around Harry was to them a welcoming warmth, recognising its kin.

Harry shook his head sharply. No, he said. If… if. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Green replaced white. If I open up, all the phoenix fire… it's too much. I can't hold it. I have to go, somewhere I can –

"Actually," Strange said. "You have to do nothing of the sort." And with that, he withdrew the golden phoenix feather from his pocket. Maddie jumped, and patted down her pockets. Strange had swiped it. "This, as you may have guessed, is no ordinary phoenix feather, though it may as well have been for the last couple of millennia. It stored Harry's mind and soul. And it can very easily do the same with Phoenix fire." He smiled faintly as both Odin and Loki gave him very long looks. "Why do you think it found its way to you in the first place?"

Harry hesitated again and Jean reached out, taking the feather, summoning it to her and, with Maddie's help, moving in perfect synchrony, held it out to him. Harry paused, then, slowly, bowed his head, letting them slip it over his head.

There is a bright flash, a note of phoenix song, one somehow purer and less atavistic than what had gone before, and then it was over. Except, of course, for a couple of minor considerations.

Harry, restored to his normal self, hair and air, buried his head in Jean and Maddie's shoulders and wept silently.

"Are you going to tell him, or am I?" Thor asked Wanda quietly.

"Tell him what?" Steve asked, frowning.

"He's naked," Wanda said damply, wiping away tears, pulling off her coat and heading over. "I'll do it."

"Speaking of naked people," Clint said, voice hard. "We've got a lot of them."

The Red Room personnel were now no longer bound in place. However, they were unarmed, almost all naked, and surrounded by a lot of very powerful and angry people.

Loki, however, solved the problem by murmuring a few spells. "I have shunted them into a few SHIELD cells at the Triskelion for the time being," he said. "They will keep." His gaze shifted to the remaining three: Belova, Lukin, and Essex, who looked respectively like she wanted to tear out the throat of whichever fool was nearest, like he was about to descend into gibbering denial, and like he'd accepted whatever fate was his due with sublime indifference.

"As will these three," he said, waving a hand. All three vanished. "Though they will be in cells of my own design, elsewhere. SHIELD can have them when we are done." His gaze shifted to Maddie and Harry, the latter of whom had gone pink and was wearing Wanda's coat, and both of whom Jean seemed to be attempting to physically merge with she was hugging them so tightly. "For one thing, I believe that certain among us will have words to say to them, even if tonight's events have pushed them down the list of priorities for the time being."

"Frankly, they are further down my priority list too, brother," Thor said, watching his son as everyone else who had been called to Harry's side went over to show their affection, the mist settled, and the waters started to roll back in, in earnest. It did not take a father or a genius to see that Harry, though he was smiling wanly now, had been marked deeply by his experiences, in ways that would take a long time to heal. "Were it not for the worry of any lingering threat, and the need to know what exactly they did so as to help heal Harry, I would be happy to throw them to rot."

Loki arched an eyebrow. "I would have thought that you would want to slowly grind the bones of both Essex and Lukin, if not all three, into dust," he said. "Among other sundry torments."

Thunder cracked overhead and Thor gave his brother a hard look. "Do not mistake my control for calm, brother," he said. "It is nothing of the kind."

Loki inclined his head. "So I thought," he said. "Just checking."

"Yes, well, that checking can wait until we're somewhere a little drier," Steve said pointedly.

"Of course," Thor said, then paused as Odin gave him a wry look from over by Harry, and chuckled as the scenery rearranged itself into the halls of Asgard. "It is already in hand."

He paused, a sudden foreboding coming over him. "Though I do have to wonder… where is Doctor Strange?"

OoOoO

Now

"Strange vanished, then?"

"For a few days, yes. I don't know him well enough to know why, though."

"I think I can hazard a guess or two. Thank you, Miss Grey. Your testimony has been very helpful."

"You're welcome, Agent Coulson. Though, not that I'm complaining, isn't there a fair bit more to cover? The aftermath, I mean. Won't SHIELD want to discuss that?"

"That, Miss Grey, can wait for another day."

Chapter Text

The aftermath of the Red Son incident was prolonged to say the least.

The geopolitical ramifications were profound. With the vanishing of the Red Son, the deaths or captures of the Winter Guard, and the captures of Lukin and Essex, the Red Room had lost its key weapon, its iron fist, its ambitious leader, and its most capable scientist. Since they no longer had a psychic powerful enough to compete with Xavier, Betsy, or indeed the other psychics and psychically inclined magical practitioners who went to work to undo the damage the Red Son had done, leaders who had suddenly pivoted to Russia just as suddenly pivoted back.

And, with the sheer number of those manipulated, and the events of the last few years making people far more willing to accept the possibility of supernatural intervention, they were all more than happy to point fingers at Russia and scream that they had been enslaved, and that God's judgement had been rendered upon the Russians for their hubris. Certainly, the circumstances made it plausible (it helped that it really had been the judgement of god, if not precisely the one they were thinking of), and even aside from genuine and justified outrage, it was politically desirable too: screaming that they had been forced to Russia's agenda neatly rallied their populaces behind them (for even those who were sceptical of mind control were not nearly so sceptical of Russia being behind recent goings on), gave them the political weight to sideline pro-Russian factions - and in countries where pro-Russian factions were in power, they soon found themselves being critically undermined – and support required to do pretty much exactly as they wished for a short while.

Immediately, though, those countries that had been coerced into following Lukin's line sharply and ostentatiously reversed course and almost all the actions that they'd undertaken while under that coercion. Additionally, ethnic Russians bore the brunt of swift and vicious purges of the political, military and business worlds, deportations by the hundred, and other sanctions. Some countries even symbolically revoked the status of Russian as a national language, sending a very clear message: 'you are not welcome here'.

Latveria, meanwhile, emerged as an island of stability in an ocean of uncertainty, with its ruler having been entirely untouched by the encroaching spider-webs of the Red Room's influence. This was not to say that they hadn't tried, but their attempts had been swatted away. When they had resorted to assassins, their remains were returned in neatly labelled match boxes.

The pattern continued with their fall: any attempts by anti-Russian or pro-Russian factions, or others seeking to exploit the chaos, to export the hysteria into Latveria were, as before, met with short shrift and ruthless retribution. Victor von Doom tolerated refugees from the upheaval, welcoming those who desired to leave the entire mess behind. Those who tried to bring it with them, however, found themselves on the receiving end of Doom's wrath.

The message was clear: Doom, and Doom alone, ruled in Latveria.

Within Russia itself, meanwhile, a semblance of the truth began to emerge: a faction of the intelligence and military old guard had staged a coup with insidious superpowered support, assassinating the President and most of those close to him. The composition of that faction was something of a mystery to those outside looking in, though most of the surviving members of Russia's elite knew about the Red Room and had some idea of its membership and political backers.

The truth of the matter, however, was largely immaterial: with vast power and wealth at stake and opportunity beckoning, while the US, China, and the EU were all making distinctly angry and concerned noises about the events of the last couple of weeks, which had impinged on all of their borders, every group within Russia that was jockeying for power happily tarred the others with the brush of Red Room conspirators, or at least, collaborators.

The only silver lining, for a long suffering, understandably confused, and profoundly unnerved Russian population was that food and various forms of mineral wealth began to return to Russia. Mines that had produced only dust now produced coal and iron ore once more, pipelines that had produced only sand flowed with oil, and most importantly of all, harvests that had withered in the fields were now restored, as bountiful as they ever were – perhaps even more so.

The Red Room, meanwhile, was down, but most definitely not out. Unlike HYDRA, removing one head did not bring the entire beast crashing down (a fact that was considered deeply ironic, in light of the latter's famous boast). While it had lost the bulk of its superhuman resources, with the technology at its disposal and wide distribution through not only Russia, but its surrounding nations, it was well placed to bounce back.

After all, the name of the Red Room still commanded fear and respect, especially since the destruction of its primary base and imprisonment of its leadership had not been half so public as that of HYDRA. Even SHIELD revealing that they had Lukin in custody did not dent it too much: the Red Room had always thrived on secrecy, leaving it unclear to all but a very few who was actually in charge. It was easy enough for the senior members of the other Red Room bases to confer and choose a new leader, one who could help the Red Room vanish back into the shadows and bide its time, returning to the old ways. For all Lukin's pretensions of being a puppeteer, it was deemed, his madness had driven him to overreach abominably. In turn, that had fuelled a premature rise to power that had mirrored HYDRA's only months before, and like HYDRA's, could not possibly be sustained in the medium or long term.

Unfortunately for them, however, within days the new leader had died, in a manner that seemed perfectly natural, if unfortunate. The cause of death was a knife through the eyeball, but for a spy, this was considered a fairly natural death. It was a business that made enemies, after all, and right now, the Red Room had very, very many enemies.

A psychic examination of the corpse, however, found something very ominous: nothing. All psychic remnants that would normally be left behind, traces of knowledge, of memory that might indicate the culprit, had been destroyed. Other deaths swiftly followed, along with perfectly calculated acts of sabotage. They went down in the news as a gas leak here, a house-fire there, and where particularly egregious, a bombing or two, attributed to one dissident group or another. They did not even approach the front-page, of course, because of all the upheaval going on. Who cared about a few accidents, even some terrorism, when half the world was in uproar?

But to those who knew how to identify the patterns, a very disquieting conclusion could be drawn.

They were being hunted.

Further careful examination proved that they were being hunted by multiple people, who were working from information ripped from the minds, if not the souls, of their victims, as well as any recordings physical or digital that they might have, having started from low down in the Red Room ranks, then swiftly worked their way up. Now, having reached the apex, they were working their way down again, slaughtering every single Red Room member they could find using their stolen knowledge.

And that knowledge was considerable: one did not survive to become one of the Red Room's most senior Commanders without accruing as much knowledge about one's colleagues, rivals, juniors and seniors – it was a way of life, a method of survival. And now it was being used as a trail of bread-crumbs by some of the most accomplished spies and assassins in the Nine Realms. The irony did not escape the few survivors.

And so Midgard, churned into a fury of turmoil by storms of thought, of ideals, and ambition, was now slowly settling down again into a new equilibrium. What that equilibrium would be, and how smooth (or rough) the path to it might yet be – certainly, it wasn't going to be a smooth return to the previous status quo (itself a thoroughly uncertain thing thanks to HYDRA's reign of terror). But the worst, it seemed, was over.

Of course, it never does to trust to what seems. It can all too easily conceal what is.

OoOoO

With other things, it is uncertain what they seem to be, and it is even more uncertain what they actually are. With that in mind, it is hard to imagine where trust could possibly fit into that equation.

And yet, in the case of Doctor Stephen Strange, it could sometimes seem like there was no other choice.

"How does he?" Odin asked, looking down at Midgard's Sorcerer Supreme. It was an unusual sight – all the times he had encountered Strange, the other man had looked strong, confident, and healthy, completely in control of himself and the situation he was in.

Now, lying on a bed, surrounded by a shimmering field of restorative magic and dressed in a practical smock, he looked very different. Once lean, he was now almost skeletally thin, bones pressing tightly against his skin. His long, clever fingers now looked more like boney claws. His eyes were set deep in dark, heavily bagged sockets. Around them, wrinkles were normally hardly apparent - or if they were, like the white feathering at his temples, they were indicators of age as a sign of wisdom gained than as a burden and sign of diminishment. Now, they had deepened and grown longer than before through exhaustion and stress, like cracks on a window's glass.

He looked tired, Odin thought. Tired, and very, very old.

Very few people knew truly how old Doctor Strange was. The popular guess was around five hundred, it being assumed that since he had surfaced as the Sorcerer Supreme in the 17th century and looked to be in early middle age, he had been in his early prime as a practitioner. This was considered impressive indeed, and a great age for a mortal Wandless practitioner.

Odin himself wasn't certain, but a few incidents here and there had made him suspect that Strange's linear age was rather closer to that of his sons, that they had been born around the same time. And a part of him, deep down, thought that Strange might just be older than he was – while the man's life was hardly a linear one, the fact was that Odin's own memories of Strange stretched back to his childhood. Being a time traveller of such power and skill meant that one could hardly be sure, with the only true certainty being that he was ancient. Before, he carried that age lightly, seeming full of ageless energy and ambition. Now, though, he simply seemed… old.

"He is improving," Frigga answered. She had taken this case on personally, partly in acknowledgement of Strange's stature and his services to the crown of Asgard – which, Odin inwardly thought, were probably matched or exceeded by his manipulation of that crown. Far exceeded, if some of his suspicions were even close to correct. "As far as I can tell, he has not slept in weeks, perhaps months, not eaten save for token meals to keep himself intact, and drank only sufficient for the same and to keep his lips wet to speak words of power. He has driven himself through drugs, potions, spells that sapped his very lifeforce, and, frankly, an all-consuming mania. He almost killed himself."

"Truly?" Odin asked.

"Were he any other mortal man, even one enhanced like Captain Rogers or those of his blood, he would be dead," Frigga said bluntly. She glanced at Strange. "Of course, I think that it has been a very long time since Stephen Strange has been truly mortal."

Odin flicked an eyebrow. He knew his wife's tone. She had not said that merely to be poetic. It was well-known that the Sorcerers and Sorceresses Supreme of Midgard, and their heirs apparent, had an even further enhanced lifespan than most mortal practitioners. It was a trade-off for their usually horrifying mortality rate: many Sorcerers Supreme didn't even see a decade in the office, and many apprentices didn't see half that long. Strange and his predecessor, Yao the Ancient One, had been exceptions to that particular rule. No, there was something more here, which wasn't exactly surprising. Magical practitioners were often a little strange, mortal practitioners in particular, and they got stranger the more powerful they got.

There had always been something odd about Strange, however, odder than even the usual run of Sorcerers Supreme – and it wasn't just his attitude. It could be his far greater powers of prophecy and precognition than any Seer Odin had ever encountered. It could be his abandonment of the usual passive defence of the boundaries of Midgard in favour of a strategy of manipulation of events to suit him on a level that Odin felt he was only just beginning to recognise. Or it could be both, tied to a far deeper secret about him.

"His body is infused with temporal energy," Frigga said. "Not merely that which I would expect from a time traveller, even one like him. It is as if it flows through him; like he is a part of it, and it is a part of him."

Odin nodded slowly. He did not feel the need to confirm this: he trusted his wife's skills with sorcery implicitly. Indeed, for all his power, in many ways she was by far the more skilled practitioner of the mystic arts, especially when it came to healing. "That would explain much," he said. "Though it also raises the question of how such a connection came to be."

"That I cannot say," Frigga said. Her expression turned wry. "I would suggest you ask him when he awakes, but somehow I have no doubt that while his answer would be true, it would also not be in the least bit helpful."

"I am certain that you are right," Odin remarked. "When will he wake?"

"As soon as I am certain that he will not collapse as soon as he tries to light a candle," Frigga said. "He drove himself far beyond his natural limits, physically and mentally."

"That would explain the near unanimous reports of his changeable moods and apparent mania," Odin said. "Which leaves a question."

"If Strange is as one with time," Frigga said, picking up on his train of thought. "And that Essex creature managed to hide himself from Strange's Sight, apparently by another's art… by whose art is that?"

"A question he must answer," Odin said. "One among many."

OoOoO

Mortal affairs were in turmoil. In the meantime, it would seem to mortal eyes, perhaps cast heavenwards in hope of inspiration or salvation, or plain envy, that affairs divine were as calm and untouched by events as the very stars in the sky.

Those mortal eyes would be very much wrong about that.

To put it simply, the events of the last few months had caught a number of pantheons off-guard.

With the exception of Asgard, and a select few others, the pantheons of Earth had continued to largely abide by a millennium old command by the Celestials to stop meddling with the Earth and its inhabitants – at least, on an appreciable scale. This had not been too much of a burden, since the majority of the pantheons of Earth mostly saw Earth as a source of entertainment. Even many Asgardians, one of the more pro-human pantheons, saw Earth – Midgard – as something of a holiday home inhabited by a number of interesting magical beasts and demons, with the presence of a fragile but gutsy little species like humanity mostly being an intriguing curiosity.

Many of the others had retreated long ago to their own planes, either irate at being displaced in mortal affections by other deities, or simply disinterested in mortal affairs. The Avalonians, for instance, had thrown their hands up in disgust after their wars with Asgard and the Frost Giants and had retreated to their own realm, save for a brief resurgence when Albion came under the stewardship of Merlin and the Once and Future King. As for the ones still interested, they grumbled, like children denied a toy, but knew better than to cross the Celestials.

In any case, they soon found other amusements on other planes of existence; other monsters to fight, other divinities to squabble with, and in general, other things to do. Some occasionally visited, and the more sensible Skyfathers and Earthmothers had the sense to ensure that the names of the pantheons were still spoken on Earth in one form or another, to ensure that they could return to Earth and wield much of their power if it became necessary. In general, however, Earth slid out of sight and out of mind.

The Chitauri invasion had occasioned mild interest, but had mostly been seen as an internal Asgardian matter that had spilled over onto Earth and been swiftly dealt with. Besides, they were hardly the first aliens to visit. The older gods and goddesses remembered the visits by the Kree many thousands of years ago, leading to the creation of the variation on human mutants known as the Inhumans, and the variant on baseline humanity known as the Jaffa, as well as a more recent visit, barely half a century earlier. The latter had also involved a powerful Kryptonian, one of another species which periodically visited Earth, apparently intrigued by humankind, an interest they shared with their friends and allies, Asgard. Few of the pantheons knew exactly why, and even fewer cared. And while Asgard had broadly put an intergalactic interdict on aliens interfering with Earth – the latest Kree incursion had led to Asgard demanding, and receiving, the heads of those behind it – there had been others, too, even further back. In other words, it was not something to garner much interest.

The involvement of the Tesseract, by contrast, had jolted a number from their dormancy… but even then, it had been quickly squirrelled away in the vaults of Asgard.

One or two paid attention to the emergence of a new Avatar of Cytorrak in the form of the Juggernaut, but since said Avatar spent most of his time in stasis, that attention quickly lapsed. It wasn't like he was doing anything interesting, after all.

A few, a very few, noticed the spike in humans developing powers, powers not merely sufficient to match the lesser gods, but to equal the might of the Greater Gods themselves. This was considered interesting, but even still, interesting in the way that a biologist might regard mutations in a petri dish of previously unprepossessing bacteria.

Then, the Darkhold had been opened in full, pouring forth its horror and unleashing Chthon, the darkest and most terrible of the Elder Gods, whose emergence had barely been repulsed by Odin, Allfather of Asgard, his sons, an Asgardian army, and, perhaps, a few mortals. Intriguingly, Odin's half-mortal grandson, one of the first true demigods to be born in an age, had been at the heart of it. And most unusually, one of the Endless had involved themselves. Specifically, Destruction, better known as the Phoenix, who had apparently acted through the young Prince to banish Chthon and set all to rights.

Oh, the Asgardian balladeers and skalds would have one believe that the boy had overthrown the Elder god in a duel of wills, then he had been gifted the power of the Phoenix to set all to rights by himself, and it would certainly explain the somewhat patched up job that had been done. But still, most scoffed and considered it unlikely. The entire universe had been at stake, after all. Why put the fate of everything in the hands of a child, a child that was little more than a mortal?

In any case, Chthon had been swiftly banished (not a moment too soon, in fact), his summoner – an exiled Light Elf necromancer from the Norse Realms - either destroyed and left to drift through the darkness of space, and his mortal servants and acolytes, an organisation called HYDRA, had been destroyed. Nevertheless, combined with the actions of the mortal Dark Lord Grindelwald over half a century before, who had bargained with many of great and terrible creatures for power and received it, requiring the full might of the Sorcerer Supreme to set things to rights, there was a growing unease that humankind was starting to toy with things that it should not, in ways that for many, many millennia, it had not.

As last time, it was having Asgardian assistance, if more tempered than before. And, as the older gods and goddesses muttered darkly, it did not do to forget what had happened the last time humanity had got ideas far beyond its station or capacity. Even after nearly 20,000 years, the metaphysical scars of the fall of the Atlantean Empire were, in some respects, as fresh as ever. Even worse, one of its direct successors, the current undersea Empire of Atlantis, was getting involved in the affairs of the surface once more.

Even still, as some divinities shifted uneasily and shared glances – for a long time now, most of two millennia, the only pantheons that had really shown an overt long term interest in the Earth as a whole were the Asgardians, the White God, his Son and their Fallen Adversary, and the Vedic Trimurti. Then there were the Fae, of course, though they weren't really a pantheon. In truth, no one was sure what they were; possibly they were children of Gaia. Possibly they were strange forms of humans. Or possibly, others muttered darkly, they were another Celestial experiment. And in any case, even they had mostly retreated, after ensuring through mortal works that they would not be forgotten. Others had had interests, to be sure, but mostly of a more temporary and localised kind, and almost none had exercised such interests after the Celestials had intervened.

Now, they were reconsidering that decision. While they did not care much about what happened on Earth, per se, they cared very much about what happened to Earth, for reasons of self-preservation if nothing else. If the Earth kept on turning, that was all well and good. If it suddenly did not, well… none of the pantheons was honestly sure what would happen to those realms tied to it, but they knew that it would not be good.

Besides, the Earth served as a convenient stopper on a number of bottles that it would really be best not to open: Chthon was by far the worst, but by no means was he alone. The Olympians had all sorts of monstrosities squirrelled away in their underworld, and as other pantheons muttered darkly, the Asgardians had something locked away at the bottom of that World Tree of theirs, even if they weren't particularly forthcoming about what exactly it was. And those were just the beginning.

So when first shockwaves had been sent through the Astral Plane by a psychic brawl unlike any the world had seen in millennia without – and this was important – explicitly divine power behind it, that had roused those few, divine or demonic, that were still dormant from their torpor and fixed their gazes firmly on Earth. That would have been enough grounds to call a meeting of Council of Skyfathers, to get a grip on just what was going on.

Then came the Dark Phoenix. Whereupon, to put it in the simplest terms possible, the Gods and Goddesses (and Devils, Demons and other assorted entities of that ilk) of Earth completely and utterly lost their shit.

OoOoO

Harry was, at first, blissfully unaware of all this. Though perhaps 'blissfully' was not the best way to put it. The first weeks of his recovery had been difficult, to put it extremely mildly.

PTSD was rare in Asgard – surprisingly so, considering the lives that the gods of Asgard led. Professor Xavier had suggested, in discussion with Frigga, that it was an evolved reflex, with the hypervigilance typical of trauma victims being retained, while other potentially endangering results like flashbacks being dispensed with. While this might seem a mostly theoretical discussion only partly relevant to Harry's suffering and thus his treatment, it was actually very relevant: Harry was half human and half Asgardian, and herein lay the rub. Was he to be treated as a human would be, or as an Asgardian would be?

There were other factors complicating the situation. For one thing, Harry would not be the first kidnapping, abuse, or torture victim to send their mind elsewhere in a strategy of escapism. He would be one of the first, however, for whom that was not a metaphor, and who had had help from another in doing so. As a result, his rather sharp return to his body had led to him being swamped by memories that his mind had tried to integrate, that were from his usual physical point of view, but had also recognised as very definitely not his.

This had somewhat derailed the original plan to erase the memories the Red Son persona had accumulated, as well as removing the Transmode transformed parts of Harry's anatomy. While it was argued that erasing them would still be the best thing for Harry's state of mind, this was hit with three issues.

First, Harry had had his mind meddled with far too much recently, and was therefore unlikely to respond well to even the most well-intentioned mental contact, let alone entrance, that he did not initiate. To be precise, he would lash out and close himself off, which, in the former case would, aside from anything else, cause one hell of a mess. While Odin was resigned to large portions of the royal palace being blown up from time to time, he didn't exactly seek it out. For this reason, Harry was being housed in quarters altered to deflect and disperse psychic energy. And it was entirely clear that while Harry had loosened up somewhat, he did not want to let anyone in at the moment, literally or figuratively.

Second, even if those memories were erased, Harry was exactly the sort of person who, even knowing the horrors they might contain, would determinedly seek out what was in them, simply to know. And, possibly, for emotionally masochistic reasons – while he knew perfectly well that he hadn't been the one in charge for what the Red Son had done, he still felt responsible. After all, he had willingly surrendered his body, even if it had only been intended as a temporary measure, a gambit that under other circumstances, might have worked beautifully – and after being tortured physically and mentally, starved and denied sleep, while resisting constant psychic attack and the urge to unleash the Phoenix, even a grown adult with intensive training for such a situation could reasonably be expected to slip up. As it was, though, he had surrendered his body and the results had been several dozen deaths by the Red Son's hand, most of two hundred horrific direct mental violations and a great deal more indirect ones, and the grand scale political destabilisation of half a continent.

For someone who believed firmly in responsibility and not misusing one's abilities, this had hit him hard, as soon as he had emerged from his Phoenix powered mania and stopped blaming everyone and everything else. This was not to say that it was all his fault and everyone else hastened to assure him of this: while he had chosen to put himself in the situation where it could happen, he had not made the Red Room and Essex try and enslave him, he had not made them program and use the Red Son as they had, and he had not acted to derail Maddie's plan, either.

The implication, therefore, was that he had been helpless, which was both largely true and something that Harry liked even less. If he was responsible, then that at least implied some control of the situation. This scenario, however, denied him even a thin semblance of control of any kind.

Third, though it was not openly discussed, the possibility was considered that these memories could actually be useful to Harry. While it was knowledge gained through absolutely horrific means, it was knowledge nevertheless, knowledge that could prevent a recurrence of such events – though as was also pointed out, while Harry had not intended to become a brainwashed living weapon, the Red Room had only been capable of making him one because first he had placed himself back into their hands for reasons of his own, and second because he had willingly surrendered his body, though with the intention of immediately taking it back.

In any case, the examples of Natasha, Bucky, Maddie and, surprisingly, Tony, were considered. Natasha and Maddie had been twisted from infancy into living weapons before breaking free, and while this had left them broken in ways that were blatantly obvious in Maddie's case and usually extremely well hidden in Natasha's, it had also left them as extremely dangerous people, the sort who were not easily captured, ensnared, or forced to another's will.

Bucky and Tony, meanwhile, had been similarly tormented and twisted, though to wildly varying extents (on the one hand, Bucky didn't have shrapnel constantly seeking to pierce his heart and have a large chunk of his chest removed to fit one of the greatest leaps in energy technology in human history. On the other, Tony still had all of his original limbs and had not had his mind repeatedly rewritten). In one case, it had resulted in the deadliest assassin ever to grace Midgard, and in the other, it had resulted in two of the greatest pieces of technology ever to grace it, both of which could be reasonably said to have changed the course of history, and one of the world's greatest heroes.

The strongest steel is forged in fire, after all. However, as the observant might point out, too hot a fire would make the steel melt and render it useless. The point, however, was that however they were acquired, these skills and this knowledge that Harry now had were an undoubted asset, and could play a very important part in ensuring that nothing like this ever happened again.

Of course, those skills came attached to a lot of horrific memories that weren't rightly Harry's to bear. However, his typically martyrdom prone response was that one way or another, he had made it possible for them to be made, so the burden was his to bear. He and Carol had promptly had a spectacular shouting match over the justice/pigheaded stupidity of this, after which she had refused to speak to him for several days. When they were found curled up together fully clothed, Carol playing the protective big spoon and giving Frigga of all people the most baleful glare imaginable when it seemed like Harry was about to be disturbed (Frigga, long accustomed to baleful glares from her sons, her patients, and her usually soon to be deceased enemies, paid it absolutely no mind whatsoever, beyond filing it away under 'Reasons That My Grandson Is Probably Going To Marry A Midgardian'), it was assumed that they'd reconciled.

One advantage Harry had over most was that a key part of recovering from such trauma was surrounding oneself with a support system of loved ones. And, as Doctor Strange had demonstrated, Harry was very much loved by far more people than he had ever imagined (his self-esteem was, while improving, still a work in progress). Thor, Frigga, Wanda, Sirius, Jane, Jean, Carol, Diana, Uhtred, Jean-Paul… all of them would have needed surgical intervention to be detached from his side, as would have been Ron and Hermione, if they had been present. And they were far from his only visitors.

Loki had spent many of the first days by his bedside, before vanishing to Earth, a relocation followed by the suspiciously un-suspicious deaths of a breathtaking number of Red Room Agents, senior management, and relevant associates.

Odin had likewise spent much of his time by his grandson's side in the early days, expression grim and pensive. At an immediate glance, he seemed to be mulling over the cruelty of his grandson's fate and his relative impotence to do anything about it. The thoughts of Odin Allfather, however, ran deeper than that. But that was another matter.

Albus Dumbledore was another visitor whose thoughts ran deeply, but for the most part, they were full of bitter regret. While he had to return to make ready his school for another year, one rendered especially busy by the coming of the Triwizard Tournament, he returned when he could to see how Harry was progressing. Sometimes Minerva McGonagall came with him, but since she was the Deputy Headmistress, she was required to preside at Hogwarts in his absence.

Pepper, Darcy, Clint, Natasha, Tony, Steve and Bruce spent as much time with him as they could, in between his being nigh smothered with affection by the rest of his friends and family, plotting horrifying vengeance upon the Red Room above and beyond Loki's grand scale murder spree, which was being aided and abetted by Bucky, Natasha, Clint, and Tony, the latter of whom was putting his near unsurpassed skills as a hacker to wage electronic warfare on suitable targets. He was not alone in this: SHIELD's pet hacker, Skye, had joined him in wreaking havoc, along with her hacking protégé, a mysterious and talented young hacker known only as 'Oracle'.

Betsy Braddock, Sean Cassidy and Warren all visited too, the former partly in a professional capacity – she was, after all, a highly accomplished psychic, and of all the psychics in the world, she was arguably most familiar with the functioning of Harry's mind (at least, when it was healthy). And never mind the fact that her boss, Director Wisdom, would likely want to know everything he could about just what the hell was going on.

Fury appeared too; briefly, because as someone who actually knew what the hell had gone on, he was in great demand, and even aside from that, there was a lot of work for him to do with the world being turned upside down and the incarceration and questioning of Lukin, Essex and Belova. But he appeared, to watch over Harry while he slept.

Maddie hovered somewhat awkwardly, in between counselling sessions with Professor Xavier, debriefing sessions both formal and informal with Agent Coulson and Loki, among others, not sure of her place despite the encouraging words of others. A desperate hug from a desperate Harry had confirmed it, though. But the fact was, she needed healing as much as Harry did – more, in a great many respects. Functional though she was, she was still gravely wounded psychically and psychologically. While her psychic skills were vast, her psychic ethics were still a work in progress, and needless to say, the ruthless psychological abuse that Essex had subjected her to in an attempt to prevent her will to resist from ever manifesting was in grave need of treatment.

So Harry was not alone, even if he was prone to isolating himself – a tendency which drove his insistence that Ron and Hermione not see him like this. After a great deal of discussion, it was decided that acquiescing to Harry's wishes on this occasion would be good for the cause of world peace, no matter how many misgivings might be had about it.

Another advantage he had was that he was not afflicted by nightmares, something arranged by Dream, in a display of his increasingly functional, if frequently erratic, sense of compassion, one that had developed after his own captivity by those who wished to use him for their own ends. He also had a spectacularly vindictive streak, and Loki spared more than one of those Red Room Agents he found simply because they were already trapped in their worst nightmares, cavalcades of horror arranged by the ultimate progenitor of all such things, and he could hardly imagine a more fitting punishment.

No, Harry's rest, unlike that of most trauma victims, was not disturbed. Instead, it was more peaceful than it had ever been.

However, in the waking hours, the memories tormented him, as would only be expected, and the matter of what to do with them was still up for debate. The idea of, instead of erasing them, erasing only the ones where foul deeds were performed and retaining the training ones and monster slaying ones was entertained. After all, there were plenty of those. Like all predators, the Red Room had not tolerated rivals, and had predictably sent in its shiny new weapon to make an impression. The psychic training by Essex would be replaced by training from Xavier and Betsy, the former of whom knew each and every one of the techniques that Essex had used and trained the Red Son in, explaining that they were native to a very old, very reclusive, very secretive, and frankly, downright strange clan of psychics called the Askani. He had encountered them as a young man on his travels, before he had gone forth to learn from others.

They had trained him willingly enough, even eagerly, but disagreements arose: over the Askani's inward looking dismissal of humanity, their sole focus on psychic mutations, and their disquieting obsession with acquiring his DNA to refresh their bloodlines, primarily. These had led to his departure. The idea of Essex as a rogue Askani Adept had been floated, but dismissed – for one thing, the Askani were rather mystical in their outlook, while Essex was scientifically minded to the point of it being pathological. For another, from what Harry had heard Essex say – or more accurately, what Harry had told Maddie that Essex had said, because Harry was not in the most talkative of moods – he had spent much of his youth searching for evidence of any kind of superhuman abilities, suggesting a mundane background. Instead, it was suspected that he had either hoodwinked the Askani, or kidnapped and tortured one into revealing their secrets. Either was entirely in keeping with his character.

The physical training, meanwhile, would be replaced by training from Bucky and Natasha, who were both thoroughly familiar with the kind of techniques that the Red Room taught. The same skills would be imparted, in other words, but with kinder teachers, and far happier memories to go with them.

However, this was still considered a grievous violation of Harry's mind, and to pull it off, they'd have to alter far more than just the memories of that six months, which was unconscionable.

Instead, Clint, who had also been through a similar situation and had been one of those helping Harry through it with quiet words of encouragement and experience, had been the one to suggest a middle ground. In this scenario, they would leave the memories as they were, but teach Harry to wall them off, to be accessed as and when they were necessary – the muscle memory would remain.

To reduce the circumstances under which accessing them would be necessary, Harry could then be trained in the psychic arts by either Maddie or Xavier, who were extremely familiar with the techniques involved, and in physical combat and spycraft by Bucky and/or Natasha. This would mean that as and when he had to call on those skills, he wouldn't necessarily be flung into a traumatic flashback.

This was put to Harry, who accepted it. It wasn't a perfect solution. To be frank, there was no perfect solution. But it was the best that they could manage under the circumstances.

But, of course, there were others who intended to have their say.

The Council Elite had been called. And the subject of their discussion went without saying.

OoOoO

Thor looked up as he noticed a presence in the corner of his eye. As he had every time for the last week and a half, his hand instinctively strayed to Mjolnir's hilt, before stopping when he recognised the presence as not being a threat.

"Father," he said quietly, not wanting to wake Harry – though he suspected that no matter how quietly he pitched his voice, his son would still hear it. Even with the intervention of Dream preventing nightmares from tormenting him, these days Harry tended to sleep lightly.

"Thor," his father said, then jerked his chin slightly, indicating that he wished to speak with Thor in private. Thor grimaced, glancing down at his son, then stood up carefully. Thankfully, Harry slept on. As quickly as he dared, he followed his father into the hall.

"What is it, father?" he asked.

"The Council Elite has been summoned," Odin said. "For the third time in a millennium, and the second time in a year."

Thor gaped. "I…"

"It is not unexpected," Odin said grimly. "As with the Celestials and Chthon, the Dark Phoenix is a threat to all the pantheons."

"Harry is not –"

"Harry by himself is not a threat," Odin said sharply, cutting his son off. "By himself, he is still a boy. A brave boy, an unusually powerful boy, but still a boy. As the Dark Phoenix, however, he would be a threat to Midgard and every single realm connected to it – worse, he would spell their doom. You know this as well as I."

"He will not," Thor ground out. "Father, you cannot –"

"I cannot what, my son?" Odin asked, in a dangerously mild tone. Once, it would have stopped Thor in his tracks and set him on his guard, warning him that he was on thin ice. Now, though, he squared his jaw and glared at his father.

"You know damn well what," he growled.

Their gazes locked for several long, dangerous moments, then Odin snorted. "You are the very image of your mother," he said. "Though I dare say that she would say that you were the very image of me, were she here."

Thor blinked, confused. "Father?"

"I have no intention of allowing my fellow Skyfathers from laying a finger on my grandson," Odin said. "However, I am not so foolish as to be blind to their concerns, concerns that are well grounded."

Thor frowned.

"And before you deny it, Thor, consider it rationally," Odin said. "You are his father and I know how hard that can make it to see ugly truths, but you must. Harry by himself, in combat with another who is psychically gifted as he is, even more so in fact, made the Astral Plane convulse. The mere overspill of that fight reshaped the Nevernever, and had much of Midgard on its knees at the psychic disruption. Many of my brothers and sisters have slept through much of this last millennium, but if Chthon did not awaken them, that most certainly did. His power is deeply unusual in one of his age, and that by itself would attract notice, as it already has done. He set the world on its ear as a simple side-effect of a simple plan to garner the attention of you, your brother and the others of your warrior band on Midgard."

"It needed two of them to cause such disruption," Thor said. "And that is not what is going to be under discussion: I highly doubt that many of the pantheons will care much for a psychic disruption on Midgard."

"In the normal run of things, you would be correct," Odin said. "However, when they discuss the Dark Phoenix, they will discuss its host and his potential for darkness and chaos. His track record will not speak in his favour."

"His track record… father, he rejected the God of Chaos! He undid his works!"

"I know," Odin sighed. "However, gods are as vulnerable to fear as mortals are – more so, even, for it is not something which they are accustomed to. Consequently, they do not like it. Some of them have already worked themselves up into a frenzy over it."

Thor's jaw muscles bunched and he gripped Mjolnir. "If they wish to come for my son, then I will give them something to fear," he said dangerously.

"They may well do," Odin said bluntly. "Which is why I need you and your brother to remain in Asgard, with you as regent, and prepare for war." He looked grim. "You may also need to prepare to take up the Odinforce."

Thor's eyes widened. "Father?" he said, unable to believe his ears. While he knew that his father was hardly a perfect being, from his infancy he had held a steadfast belief in Odin's invincibility, weaned on tales of his incredible deeds and indomitable might. Age had only strengthened him, like matured oak, and losing an eye had only sharpened the sight of the other. Of course, intellectually he knew very well that there were beings, Powers, who were beyond his father, but the thought that his father might be defeated…

"It is true that I am the most powerful of Midgard's Skyfathers," Odin said bluntly. "Only the true Elders could overmatch me in single combat, and unless I am much mistaken, only one of those is among the active pantheons – and the White God has not sought direct combat with another pantheon for many years, since I was your age."

"He is an Elder God?" Thor asked, startled out of his confusion.

"Possibly," Odin said. "In truth, I have never been certain of what he was, and he is not one to discuss such matters." He waved this away. "My point is this: while I am the most powerful in single combat, if their fear overcomes them…"

"They may attack you en masse," Thor said, nodding. "But surely they will not kill you?"

"They may kill me or bind me," Odin said, and smiled briefly, sadly, recognising the subtext. "I am not immortal, Thor. Nor am I invincible."

"Could have fooled me," Thor muttered.

The reply came with the snap of a whip. "You are no fool, Thor, and there is no time for you to act like one," Odin said harshly.

Thor narrowed his eyes, but nodded curtly. "I am sorry, father," he said.

Odin nodded with a sigh. "If I pass, the Odinforce will come to you as the Thorforce. If I am captured, I will relinquish it and it will come to you anyway."

Thor closed his eyes briefly, and nodded. "Very well, father," he said.

Odin sighed. "There is much I have still to tell you, to teach you, about the power of the Kings of Asgard, much that it is more vital for you to know now than ever. Where that power comes from, how it came to be, why we have it… I should have told you years ago." He looked Thor in the eye. "If I do not return from the Council Elite, then speak to your mother. She has access to the records you will need to study; of Frey, the First King, of Lady Sunniva, and of Prospero Slytherin and his wand, Laevateinn."

Thor narrowed his eyes. "All of these I was told stories of as a boy," he said. "What greater significance do they have? What connects them?"

For a moment, Odin's eye flickered, revealing a bone deep weariness. "You will know when you read them," he said in the end.

Thor frowned, then nodded. "Are you going alone?"

"Not likely, gol – Thor."

"Where the boss goes, we go. Except to bed, obviously. Some things, even we don't want to see."

Thor rolled his eyes skywards as Huginn and Muninn appeared on his shoulders, apparently out of nowhere. "Of course you two are involved," he muttered. "Father, do you really wish for these two to be your companions?"

"They have served me honourably and well for years beyond counting," Odin said. "As they will serve you, if I do not return. Do not disdain them – for all their… quirks, they are valuable advisers."

Thor grimaced. "Very well," he said, then glanced at the ravens perched on his shoulders. "Do not get used to this."

"Don't worry," Huginn said, before fluttering over to Odin's shoulder.

"We ain't planning to," Muninn added, before following his brother.

"Thank the heavens for small mercies," Thor said flatly.

"Yeah, right. And Thor?" Huginn said.

"Yes?"

"The kid… he's a tough one. He'll turn out fine."

"Just tell 'im we said hello, would ya?" Muninn added.

Thor eyed him, then nodded, before returning his gaze to his father. They shared a warrior's arm clasp, a nod, and then Odin turned to go, striding away down the corridor, while Thor stared after him, drinking in what might well be his last sight of his father. As he reached the end, though, Odin stopped.

"Thor?"

"Yes, father?"

"You are young for this responsibility," Odin said. "Younger than I was. Younger than I would wish you to be."

"Yes, father," Thor said, keeping the sigh out of his voice. He too felt that he was young, too young to be King – though the part of him that answered to James Potter jeered that at 1500 years old, he could hardly be called 'too young' for anything.

"But you are also wiser than I was," Odin continued. "Wiser, more thoughtful… and a better man, too." He looked over his shoulder. "You and your brother are not the men, the gods, I had hoped you would be – you are far more than I ever dared hope for. You are ready, my son."

"I don't feel ready," Thor admitted.

Odin chuckled. "Good. I would be worried if you did," he said wryly.

And then he was gone.

OoOoO

Thor soon found himself striding to the heart of the palace, and not a minute later, Loki fell in beside him. For a moment, they walked in silence.

"So, father spoke to you, then?" Loki said. "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, that sort of thing?"

"I'm not sure how much hope was involved," Thor muttered. "He seems sure that it will come to the worst."

"Under the circumstances, I am hardly surprised," Loki said bluntly. "Father is strong, but…"

"Even the strongest warrior can fall to a surprise blow," Thor said. "I know." He stopped a servant. "Please find the Lady Sif, ask her to assemble the best commanders in the capital and its environs, then have them meet me in the War Room."

The servant bobbed a bow, replied in the respectful affirmative, and left.

"What is your plan, brother?" Loki asked. "We cannot resist even half the Council Elite, let alone all of them, even if you have the Odinforce – or Thorforce, as it would be."

"I know," Thor said. "Which is why I will instruct Sif to construct our defences to delay and divert."

"An unusual strategy," Loki remarked. "More like one of mine."

Thor smiled wryly. "Yes, well," he said. "Learn from the best and all that."

"All this flattery, brother, I'm almost blushing," Loki said, amused, before his smile faded. "You wish me to take part in constructing the illusions?"

"I wish you and mother to lead it," Thor said. "But I also wish you to disguise Harry, to conceal him and his power on Earth if it comes to it, in the care of Wanda or Professor Xavier. Preferably well before."

"Brother?" Loki asked, frowning.

"If he sees Asgard on the brink of being overrun, or even our people in battle to defend him, you know what he will feel he must do," Thor said.

"That I do," Loki sighed. "Your point is well made." He cocked an eyebrow. "I was hoping for a better plan, however. A more positive one."

"I have one," Thor said. "String Strange up by his ankles and shake him until the answers fall out."

"… Well, it has the virtue of simplicity, I'll say that."

Thor gave him a grim smile. "So glad you approve, brother," he said. "My reasoning is this: Strange has been blinded in his hunt for Essex, but only in that regard. His Sight otherwise functions as well as ever, and we are integral to his schemes, especially Harry. Even aside from that, a fight between pantheons is hardly conducive to his aims."

Loki considered this, then nodded. "I can see your point," he admitted. "You think he will have a plan."

"I don't think, I know," Thor said. "He will have a plan, one that he will doubtless have spent centuries devising, because he is Doctor Strange, and that is what Doctor Strange does." He folded his arms. "And I fully intend to take advantage of it."

Loki smiled, though there was not much humour in it. "Why brother," he said. "You really are beginning to sound like me."

OoOoO

Strange was not the only one with plans, however, as Harry was finding at that very moment.

When he opened his eyes, he knew immediately that these weren't his real eyes, as such. They were metaphorical eyes, and like real eyes, opening them signalled his becoming aware of his surroundings. What those surroundings were, though, was a bit of a puzzler. He knew that he wasn't conscious, which presumably meant that this was some sort of dream… but he remembered being told about how Morpheus, Dream (apparently an uncle of sorts, through his mother's merging with the Phoenix, though to be frank, Harry had not been in a state where he'd been inclined to care much and, in any case, had stopped trying to keep track of the minutiae of his family tree several cousins ago) was meant to be protecting that side of things. It would certainly explain why he hadn't been having any nightmares – at least, not while he was asleep.

This wasn't a flashback of any kind, though, he thought, on his guard, as he swept his 'gaze' around his surroundings. They seemed to be composed of soft, pale grey mist. But if he looked closely… then, he paused, made an impatient noise. This, whatever it was, was all in his head, and he was a telepath. So he focused, and frowned again. There was no one.

He snorted faintly. Alone. He was used to that feeling.

"Feelings can be deceptive, you know."

Harry whirled and struck without thinking, unleashing a howling column of coruscating golden-red fire on the speaker.

"Like that one," the same voice said, tone dry.

Harry whirled again to see a man standing not ten feet away from him. He was a little under average height, had the kind of dark olive-brown complexion common in the Middle East, kind brown eyes, and curly black hair. He looked to be in his mid thirties, was wearing a pair of battered workman's jeans, a non-descript t-shirt, and didn't seem to have been in the slightest bit ruffled by a blast of psychic power that would have either lobotomised a full capacity Wembley or reduced it to rubble. He raised a pair of calloused, scarred hands and smiled.

"We're never as alone as we think we are," he continued. "Also, I come in peace." His lips quirked. "I'd rather you didn't try to make me leave in pieces." The smile turned to an expression of earnest appeal. "Would you please hear me out?"

Harry's eyes narrowed, and he settled into a wary defensive stance, and nodded. If nothing else, it would give him time to think of another method of dealing with this intruder. Also, there was a sense of niggling doubt – bad guys rarely made puns.

"Thank you," the man said, in tones of warm pleasure and genuine gratitude.

"Who are you?" Harry asked warily, not letting his guard down entirely. "How are you in my mind? And why can't I sense you?"

"Call me Joshua," the man said cheerfully. "And technically, we're not in your mind. Or even in Morpheus' realm, technically. We're… Between, you might say."

Harry could hear the capital letter.

"As for the last bit, I didn't want you getting jumpy and lashing out," Joshua continued.

"… And you thought that sneaking up on me was a good idea?"

Joshua grimaced. "Okay, so maybe that wasn't my best idea," he admitted, then rubbed his jaw. "You carry quite the psychic wallop, by the way. I actually felt that." His tone, Harry noted, was more one of mild, rueful surprise than actual pain. "I cloaked my presence. It's a bit overwhelming, especially for a psychic as strong, and as young, as you. And that's not even getting started on your psychic trauma. The scars on your psyche, on your body, on your soul…" He gave Harry a sad, compassionate look as he shook his head. "You've been through so much."

Harry eyed him suspiciously. "Who are you?" he repeated. "No, actually, what are you? And what do you want?"

"I want to help you, as sceptical as you might be of that," Joshua said. "And with good reason, sadly. As for why, the answer to your other question might make you a little less sceptical. It's not exactly a simple answer, though. It's a bit complicated."

"Uncomplicate it," Harry said flatly. "Or fuck off and stop wasting my time."

"Time that I am sure you were spending so constructively," Joshua said dryly. "Very well. Technically, I ascended to full godhood some time ago. Originally, I was – and technically, based on at least two dictionary definitions, I still am – a being very much like you: half mortal, half god. A demigod, you might say."

Harry eyed him sceptically. "And why should I believe you?"

Joshua rolled his eyes. "Humans," he sighed. There was considerably more fond exasperation and mild frustration than Harry had thought could be expressed in one word. "Well, humans and the human raised, I suppose would be a better way of putting it," he amended. "You're all so sceptical these days." He sighed again. "Then again, I suppose that you of all people have reason to be paranoid. Though, like the last person to appeal to your trust, I am family. If a little more distantly, anyway." He exhaled through his nose – or at least, through the psychic construct of his nose, since this wasn't technically real and, Harry realised, they weren't technically breathing. "Fine. Brace yourself, little cousin."

Harry didn't remember much of what happened next; just a blinding flash of light that somehow seemed to permeate every single sense in this space where senses were nominal at best, a sense of overwhelming warmth, compassion and power, and… and… and…

"Jesus fucking Christ!"

OoOoO

Elsewhere, in a place between worlds constructed for the occasion from raw firmament, matters were rather more tense.

"I will not stand aside," Odin said flatly. The dispute had been raging for some time, with many points raised and dismissed by both sides, but now it had come down to its most fundamental points.

"Be reasonable, Allfather," Mbombo said, voice rich and pleading. "You know as well as we the powers of the Phoenix, the danger it presents in the wrong hands, the hands of a half mortal child…" He trailed off as Odin's eye flashed with anger.

"In the hands of my grandson, Storm-Lord, God-Father," Odin said, voice said flat, but carrying a dangerous growl around the edges. "Who has proven in the past that he can well handle vast and corrupting powers with a deftness and a wisdom that would honour any of us here."

"A grandson, wise Allseer, who is young," Izanagi said coolly. "Young and already suffering greatly from the curse of your house, as he has suffered greatly in many other respects. The power of the Phoenix is a burden that is only fit to be shouldered by those who are wise in the ways of the world, understanding their place in it and what they must do to maintain the cosmic order. It is not one fit for the shoulders of a child, even an extraordinary one such as your grandson – and I think that none of us would deny that his achievements have been extraordinary. But he is still a child. One, we believe, who has discovered the limits of his capacity for control. There is no shame in that."

There was a murmur of agreement, like a rumbling of a stirring volcano.

"Fine words, Father of the Kami," Odin said, voice hardening even further, hard control concealing a dangerous fury. "Except that all your words of sympathy and kindness only serve as a disguise, a thin disguise, for your true intent. For all that you honour my grandson, you would see him bound or destroyed!"

"Have you an alternative, cousin?" Zeus asked impatiently. "Some way to control the fires of the Phoenix before they hollow him out and animate him as the agent of our destruction? Before he embraces them and his destiny as our destroyer."

"Do not try to play the seer, cousin," Odin said coldly. "It does not suit you."

"No, I am not the seer," Zeus said, squaring up to Odin, the air crackling with the sort of power that prefaced phrases like 'let there be light'. At close examination, it was easy to tell that they were cousins. After all, they looked very much alike. Both were tall and strong, both were powerfully built and richly bearded, their features unmistakably mirroring each other. The only obvious differences were relatively minor: in apparent age; where Odin seemed old like an oak tree that had only hardened with maturity, driving its roots deeper, and Zeus seemed to be in his prime, full of energy, vitality and power; in colouring, with Zeus being dark where Odin was fair; and in battle scars, which Odin bore proudly, and Zeus bore not at all. The last could lead to one of two conclusions: either that Zeus was too vain to allow such scars to be seen… or that he was so strong that he had never taken any at all.

"You claim that skill. So tell me, Odin Allfather, what do you see in our futures? Fire? Death?" His eyes narrowed. "Or perhaps you hope that when the Dark Phoenix erupts from the shell of your grandson, he will spare Asgard, your home, and Earth, your plaything, and instead destroy all of us! And then you will be able to enact you will without any fear of our reprisal!"

That garnered whispers of worry and shouts of outrage, both at the accusation itself and at the possibility that it might be true.

"Mind your words, cousin," Odin said, eye narrowed. "If you speak so again, then I will provide an answer that you will not like."

"Like the answer that my wife found under your roof?" Zeus demanded, incensed. "When she spoke harmless words to your grandson and your sons decided to threaten her life! When your grandson, who you claim is so capable of controlling the Phoenix, released her to attack my wife's mind! Your family holds us in contempt, holds us all in contempt, to attack under guest-right!"

That caused a stir, one that only slowly settled down.

"Your account," Odin said. "And likely your wife's, considering that it is her you would have heard it from, misses several things. First, your wife was not permanently harmed." He looked around the amphitheatre. "You are all familiar with the might of the Phoenix. After all, that has been the subject of much of our discussion, has it not? So do you not think that if my grandson had directed the Phoenix to attack Queen Hera in earnest, she would have been unable to relay her tale to her husband? Do you not think that she would have been naught but ash?" His gaze returned to Zeus. "And I dare say that your wife did not tell you why my sons bridled, why the Phoenix – a fragment of whose power was placed in my son to protect him, mark you, and which only arises when he is threatened – stirred within him, at her words. I shall tell you. She threatened and insulted my grandson; behind deniable words, of course, ones that she could twist if confronted into a mere harmless discussion of possibilities. Some of you may be familiar with Queen Hera's hatred of demigods. For those who are not, I shall simply say this: what was a fury directed at those sired by her husband on other women, mortals, nymphs, even other goddesses, has now grown to encompass them all. Where she passes, demigods pass too, to the realms of death. My sons are no fools and they know this well, for one of their cousins, their friends, is Hercules, the Lion of Olympus, whose mortal life was often a tale of woe thanks to Hera's malice! And they have even more reason to be wary, for right now, Asgard plays host to another demigod, a demigoddess! She is Diana Herculeis, Princess of Themyscira, daughter of Hercules and Hippolyta, the latter one of the Amazons, the once mortal Valkyries of Olympus, and for her parentage she would have died at Hera's will in her infancy out of sheer spite!"

He turned on Zeus, closing with him. "Diana's adoption, her fostering, in Asgard was arranged in part by Loki, my younger son, who knew well the circumstances and the urgency of it. Do you think that either he or Thor would tolerate even the most oblique of threats from Hera, which, I remind you, were made under guest-right, in contempt of Asgard's hospitality? And do you think the Phoenix, resting within my grandson to protect him at his mother's behest, would tolerate them either? Indeed, it is testament to my grandson's restraint that Queen Hera lived to complain of what she received, which was little more than words of warning and a forcible revelation of how petty her actions and motivations have truly been, and far less than what she richly deserved!"

Zeus went purple with rage. He couldn't exactly dispute what Odin had said, since it was all true and he well knew it. However, he was also not exactly pleased to have his wife so excoriated, and his inability (or disinterest) to restrain her murderous impulses so blatantly revealed in front of his peers.

"Enough," Ra said, the falcon headed god standing and garnering the instant attention of all those present. The Heliopolitan pantheon was one of the oldest pantheons, and it had undergone something of a resurgence these last couple of centuries, thanks to the vast dissemination of the names and deeds of their members across the mortal world. As a result, their very names were instantly familiar throughout much of both West and East and they were therefore able, if they so chose, to act on the mortal plane with few restraints. With both of those things came power, and thus respect.

"We are not here," he said. "To discuss the conduct of Olympus' Queen, nor of Asgard's senior Princes. We are here to discuss the matter of the Dark Phoenix." His unblinking gaze shifted to Odin. "And its host."

"Ra speaks truly," Quetzalcoatl said. Unlike most of the gods, he had not chosen to appear in human form, instead choosing his favoured shape as a vast feathered serpent. The others suspected that he was making a point, though exactly what that point was wasn't exactly clear. Despite looking like he could swallow a dragon whole, however, his voice was calm, clipped and frankly, human. That being said, only the chronically deaf wouldn't be able to hear him. "Odin. You love the boy, for he is your blood. We do not deny his bravery, nor his previous deeds, including the banishment of Chthon."

That got a few whispers. Chthon was not a name that the gods liked mentioning.

"But like all gods, his story is one of reflection, of mirrors. As he has played the role of healer, of saviour, he can just as easily play the role of destroyer," Quetzalcoatl said. "And while if one of us so ran amok, our cousins could reason with us, restrain us before all was lost… I believe that you know better than most that the Dark Phoenix cannot be reasoned with. Restrained, perhaps, but only if it was caught early. And by the time it was caught, it would be too late. What worked this time will not work again. You will not catch the Dark Phoenix before he devours the mortal world, and if he does that with Phoenix fire, he will also devour every binding enchantment that keeps the likes of Chthon and the creatures of the Outside at bay."

"The Dark Phoenix is capable of such things, Wind-Lord," Odin agreed. "But it is not a certainty that my grandson will be come the Dark Phoenix again. The power he wielded he chose to divest, to infuse in an artefact now buried deep in Asgard's vaults. Only embers of that fire remain within him now."

"Embers are more than enough to start a fire, Allfather," Izanagi replied.

"Especially when they're fed by the kind of fury that the Lords of Asgard can muster," the Dagda remarked darkly. "The kind of fury that the boy has a particular knack for."

"You ain't short of it yourself, fat-ass," Muninn piped up.

Odin gripped his spear and closed his eye briefly. "Muninn," he said.

"He's got a point though," Huginn remarked. "I mean, yeah, the Dark Phoenix is bigger and badder than all of you. Hell, if it was never stopped, it would be bigger and badder than the lot of you put together. And it destroys everything, because it's the dark side of the Phoenix and it's chronically pissed off. But you're forgetting something." He gestured with a wing at Quetzalcoatl. "Fangs up there is right when he says that the Phoenix could eat all those fancy bindings you lot have got on all the big bads, to keep 'em from coming round uninvited. But there's something you've forgotten: all of you can do that too."

He hopped off Odin's shoulder, shifting to a humanoid form in mid-air, joined immediately by his brother.

"You say that if one of you goes crackers, you can restrain them before its too late," Huginn continued. "Bullshit. Chthon was on Midgard, Earth, a few months ago. He'd been making little cameos for a while, too, and the Darkhold was loose, so it wasn't like it was anything new. When he and the boss," he said, nodding at Odin. "Threw down, under normal circumstances, the Earth woulda been gone, destroyed, kaput."

"An ex-Earth," Muninn added helpfully. "Joined the choir invisible, ya know?"

"Right," Huginn said, eyeing his brother. "Point is… where the fuck were you? Only a few other gods were on Earth, like Hanuman, and they were off sortin' stuff out elsewhere. Chthon was every bit as bad as a baby Dark Phoenix, and getting worse by the second. And speaking of baby Dark Phoenixes, his majesty's right and embers can turn into a fire. But it takes a little while for the Dark Phoenix to get warmed up. Maybe not that long in the grand scheme of things, but long enough, and that's when he's more pissed and hurtin' than he's ever been. All of youse?" He snapped his fingers. "You could destroy the Earth like that. Well, most of youse could. A few of ya are out of shape and not well enough known on the mortal plane to start really flexin' ya cosmic muscles, but you get the idea."

There was a moment of silence. Then Ra spoke, sounding faintly puzzled.

"I think I understood about half of that."

"What they were trying to say was that if anything, any one of you is more of a threat to Earth than Harry Thorson is," a new voice said.

Everyone looked around sharply. And it was then that they'd noticed that their surroundings had changed. No longer were they in an amphitheatre of raw firmament, but instead, standing on a flat plane on a rock shaped like a vast diamond, one nestled in the midst of a vast starry night. Ahead of them was a set of stairs leading up to a rough-hewn chair, on which a tall figure sat with one leg resting on another in attitude of perfect insouciance. He was unhealthily, almost skeletally, thin, and with his colourful rune inscribed blue tunic and flowing red cloak, he resembled little more than a rather flamboyant scarecrow.

But there were a couple of things to take into account.

First, his eyes, intelligent blue eyes set deep in sunken sockets, above hollow cheeks, that gleamed with a manic energy that approached madness like sapphires set in a skull.

Second, what he held in his upturned right hand, long, clever and deceptively strong fingers clamped around it like a vice. It was a stone, no, a cube, one that burned even brighter than his eyes, and with an even more ominous blue light. It was the Tesseract.

When the assembled Skyfathers looked up at him, he smiled a smile with a few too many teeth for comfort, stretching his already tight skin even tauter across his skull.

"Skyfathers, Earthmothers, gods and goddesses," he said. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Doctor Strange." The smile turned mocking as he stood and bowed with a flourish. "And I bid you welcome to this quaint little hideaway of mine, a home away from home tucked between dimensions: the Rock of Eternity." The smile widened. "I hope you enjoy your stay."

Chapter Text

"Well," Jesus sighed, faintly amused. "You're mostly right. However, I didn't have a middle name, and if I did, it would not be 'fucking'. Aside from anything else, fucking really wasn't on my to-do list back then."

Harry just stared at him, jaw hanging loose. Jesus arched an eyebrow. "What? Were you expecting robes and quotes from scripture?" he asked dryly. "Or perhaps a closer resemblance to the works of the Italian masters – which, while superb pieces of art, seem to be of the firm belief that I was about six feet tall, white, and with enviably manageable hair. Not so much."

"The Dursleys always told me that I was going to hell," Harry said faintly, a vague non-sequitur being the best that he could manage.

"Yes, they gave you a rather skewed version of my word," Jesus said mildly. "Not the most skewed I've ever heard – honestly, there's no species like humanity for twisting words, in ways that truly beggar the imagination. That said, unless they buck up their act, I think that's rather more likely to be their destination, than yours, and well-deserved, too."

When Harry looked mildly surprised, he elaborated.

"While I believe that redemption is possible for everyone, and earnestly desire it, you have to want it. And, of course, to accept that you did wrong and are thus in need of redemption to begin with." He clapped his hands, rubbing them together. "Which brings us right back to you. Do you accept that you should not have embraced the Phoenix fragment within you for the purposes of vengeance and mass destruction, possibly mass slaughter, regardless of the consequences?"

Harry just stared at him.

"I'm not saying that you shouldn't have wanted it – or at least, I'm not condemning you for wanting," Jesus said kindly. "We cannot choose what temptations bedevil us, after all. We can only choose what we do with them. And before your mind was evacuated, you were doing a magnificent job of resisting that temptation. Afterwards, well."

Harry still stared at him, so he took a different tack.

"As long was we're alive and incarnate, we walk in both worlds, being neither one thing nor the other," Jesus said. "Your father's people have always been closer to mortal kind than most deities – they live and die in a way that most other gods do not. There's good reason for that, though I'm not the one to explain it. But even so, you are caught between the two, just as I was, and every other demigod has been. It is our burden, but it is also our gift, for it allows us to understand both the heavens and the Earth. That is why I was sent down in the first place, actually, not just to be a Messiah."

"I don't really want to be a messiah," Harry said quietly.

"It's not something you choose, I'm afraid," Jesus said sympathetically. "You can either face up to it and accept that that is how people are going to see you; without letting it go to your head, mind you. Or you can run from it. But believe me, little cousin, that never works in the long run." He smiled slightly. "Besides – I think we both know that you're not the type to run."

"It would probably save me a lot of trouble if I was, though," Harry said sourly.

"Well, that is very true," Jesus acknowledged. "Up to a point."

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"In the short term, yes, it would save you a great deal of grief," Jesus said. "In the long term, not so much."

Harry grimaced. "Why are you talking to me, anyway?" he said. "Don't you have more important things to do?"

"No," Jesus said bluntly. "I don't."

Harry stared at him uncomprehendingly, then nodded. "Of course. The Phoenix," he said.

"Your mother, wonderful woman that she is, and the protection she has laid on you are only incidentally relevant," Jesus said gently. "That is to say, all the supernatural aspects of your background are immaterial, because I do not, and will never, have anything better to do than talking to and helping a young person in pain." He leaned forward and gently prodded Harry, to emphasise his point. "You."

A moment later, Harry felt a sudden shift in the space around them, and Jesus looked up suddenly, frowning, as if he was being told something he didn't like. Or to be more precise, Harry thought with a sudden burst of inspiration, it was the exact expression that Ron got when Hermione was nagging him.

"I will admit that there are other things I need to discuss with you," Jesus said. "Which, in my view, are part and parcel of helping you." He rolled his eyes upwards. "Some of our relatives think differently."

"We're being watched?" Harry asked, startled and worried, now on his guard. Now that he looked, he could feel other presences, swirling around on the edge of perception. All of them were powerful, and at least one was vaguely familiar.

"We are," Jesus said, not sounding especially pleased by this. "Currently, the Council Elite of Skyfathers is discussing you. Many of them see you as a threat to be dealt with."

"Dealt with?" Harry asked, hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

"I and a select few others," Jesus continued. "Feel otherwise. We feel that you need help, rather than to be treated as a kind of unexploded bomb. We recognise the sight of someone struggling for their soul, and would rather not shut the door in your face. Most of my fellows want to get your measure, rather than rely on fear magnified tales at second or third hand."

"And why are you, specifically, speaking to me?" Harry asked suspiciously.

"The others felt that, owing to your cultural background, I would be the deity you would be most familiar with outside of Asgard, with the exceptions of Hercules and Athena," Jesus said. "And while the latter is among our number, they also thought that you would be less inclined to see me as a threat. I, for my part, asked to speak to you because I honestly want to help you." He looked upwards and added pointedly, "which I will do in my own way, in my own time, thank you very much."

There was another shift, but the presences receded slightly.

"Now," Jesus said. "You will, at this point, be tempted to start going it alone. Your instinct has always been to shrink away from others, especially those you care for, when you fear that you might hurt them by accident. This is laudable, but a mistake. Friends and family are our greatest strength, their love a greater and more elusive power than any that can be mustered by means natural or supernatural."

"You sound like Professor Dumbledore," Harry said.

"I am not surprised. He is a wise man," Jesus said. "One who took a long and difficult path to gain that wisdom, one that often veered into darkness. Yet he managed to find his way out again, as I am confident that you will." He gestured to Harry. "Walk with me."

"Where?" Harry asked. The landscape was uniformly bland.

"Hmm," Jesus said. "Good point."

And just like that, they were in Kings Cross Station, albeit entirely empty, and far cleaner than Harry had ever seen it.

"Appropriate, I think," Jesus remarked. "After all, you are at a crossroads in your life. What train you take is entirely your choice, one that will affect the rest of your life."

"No pressure, then," Harry muttered.

Jesus flickered a smile at him, then spoke in a reflective tone.

"Friends and family… they are more important than anything. I had family, parents who loved me dearly and raised me well, and siblings – well, half-siblings, technically. A cousin or two as well. As for friends… I had disciples, who would do anything for me, moments of doubt and fear notwithstanding. But they also put me on a pedestal." He smiled wryly. "Admittedly, declaring that I was the Son of God was probably the main reason for that. The various miracles didn't help, and in many ways it was necessary to my mission, cementing my moral authority. However, it was also extremely lonely. By definition, it means that you are isolated. And mark my words, no matter what you say or do, there will always be people, too many people, willing to put you on a pedestal. At the same time, there will be just as many willing to tear you down, whether it is because they think you are unworthy of being on a pedestal in the first place, because they feel that you have not lived up to what they believe you should be, or simply just because. And sometimes, they are several of those things at once."

"Why?" Harry asked. "I mean, I'm familiar with the idea," he added, thinking back to his second year at Hogwarts.

"You would be," Jesus remarked in knowing tones.

"But… why?"

Jesus sighed. "Because it is part of their nature," he said. "They are the point where infernal malice meets heavenly grace and accordingly, they spend much of their lives walking an uneasy line between the two. More to the point, on one level or another, they know it. They are aware of their flaws and imperfections, and often, they either embrace them or strive hard to surpass them – ascetics, for instance, mortify the flesh, hoping to pass beyond the temptations and limitations of their physical forms, and become something purer. They also regard those that they believe to be less flawed, in body or spirit, with reverence, with envy, and even with fear. Whatever the reaction, this leads to the view that such people are outside ordinary human society. Thus, pedestals."

"That… is a much more cynical view than I'd have expected from you," Harry said, somewhat surprised.

Jesus chuckled. "I am aware of the flaws in human nature," he said. "I was born as a human, lived as a human, specifically to understand them. To understand their failings, and to recognise their grace in spite, or even because, of them. After all, what meaning does virtue have if it is not contrasted with villainy? You may as well ask what is light without darkness." He smiled. "Besides – it has hardly as if mortals have the monopoly on flaws and failings. In many ways, gods, demigods, so-called higher beings of one form or another… we are humans writ large. We make so much noise about seeing far more of the universe than humanity, of understanding far more, of being wiser and greater." His smile faded, to be replaced by something more pensive. "But in truth, I wonder if we are not merely more powerful and correspondingly more arrogant. If we are not, in fact, just as flawed as the mortals we stand above – worse, indeed, not having the humility to admit it. Is there grace in our failings, I wonder?"

"Well, the fact you're even thinking about it, helps," Harry ventured.

"Ah, but I was human," Jesus said, raising a finger in the manner of one making a point. "Does that mean that I have a greater perspective on the flaws of the divine and its similarities to humanity, or does it mean that I am limited by a perspective still rooted in my human origins?"

"I don't know," Harry said honestly, a little puzzled.

"'Admitting one's ignorance is the beginning of wisdom'," Jesus said. "Socrates said that. Solomon said something very similar – 'rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.'" He paused. "Of course, he didn't phrase it exactly like that, and wrote it in Hebrew, but the Hebrew would meaningless to you – you speak English. And the King James does have rather lovely prose. Dodgy translations, at times, but lovely prose." He waved a hand. "Nevertheless, he was known for his wisdom, and was known for it partly because he acknowledged his own ignorance and sought wisdom in the first place."

"So, you're saying that I'm wise because I admit that I don't know?" Harry asked, thinking that this conversation had taken a turn for the utterly surreal.

"Yes," Jesus said simply. "And that is precisely why I, and a select few others who are also of my mind, are not worried about you, the way that many of the others are."

"Um. What?"

"In your willingness to admit your own ignorance, you reveal your capacity to question your own previous actions and convictions," Jesus said calmly. "In essence: you do not take your rightness, and righteousness, for granted."

"Still not getting it," Harry said.

Jesus smiled gently. "You are willing to change your mind," he said. "In my experience, the most dangerous people are those who will not change their mind, no matter what, either through pride, or stubbornness, or simple denial. You are proud, but not haughty. You are determined, yes, but not intransigent. And in these last few years, you have come to accept a great many things. Your expressed desire not to be a messiah speaks to far more than the obvious – as with your decision to reject Chthon's temptations, you do not want to shape the world in your image, or to tear it apart and leave a blank canvas for your own creation. Simply put, you do not believe that you know best. "

"So, I'm not about to go insane and destroy the world?" Harry asked dourly. "Good to know."

"I thought it might be a relief to hear," Jesus said dryly. "However, I wasn't quite finished. There is one thing that could drive you to the point of no return, that could blind you in a way that pride, stubbornness, or a messiah complex won't."

"And what's that?" Harry snapped, irritated.

Jesus arched an eyebrow, then said, tone wry but gentle. "Anger," he said.

Harry flushed a little.

"Anger is a natural condition for the young," Jesus said. "All those hormones, all that pent-up energy, all that frustration at being treated like a child when you consider yourself to be an adult or near enough, all that impatience at having to follow someone else's rules, and all that cast-iron certainty that so many of those around you are idiots, that you could do it all better if only you were given the chance… the latter in particular is a belief that, like cast-iron, is inflexible and tends to shatter when subject to the stresses of pressure and reality. And that is just the case for an ordinary, mortal teenager in the peaceful, wealthy parts of the industrialised world. While you also grew up in those parts, your experiences in these past few years have given you a greater maturity. But they have also given you a great many more reasons to be angry."

He met Harry's gaze, expression serious, and Harry found that he couldn't look away.

"And why shouldn't you be? Your entire life has been a catalogue of expectations and suffering based on things that you had no control over. You did not ask to be born a wizard, much less to Asgard's Crown Prince in mortal form, and a young woman who happened to possess within her DNA the potential for power capable of shaking worlds. You did not ask them to bequeath you their gifts. You did not ask to be marked out as a potential threat to a vicious dark lord by a prophecy, then sealed as such by his actions and malice. You did not ask to survive your parents' murder through your mother's deal with one of the Endless. You did not ask for that the man who indirectly arranged that deal, Stephen Strange, to choose you as his champion against the coming darkness, with all the suffering that entails. You did not ask for your father to go mad as a result of what had happened to him, or for your grandfather to erase his memory and forbid attention being drawn to you for fear of Asgard's enemies hunting you down and your father's memories returning before he was ready, his insanity with it."

Harry tried to look away, but he couldn't, as the calm litany went on.

"You did not ask to attract the attention of Nathaniel Essex, a man whose brilliance is only exceeded by his hubristic belief that the world and all its wonders are for him to use as he wills, who developed such an interest in you that he risked exposure, isolating you from all those who would have raised you with love and care, just to study you unimpeded. You did not ask to be targeted by Voldemort time and time again, with even the mere memory of him as a boy using the very darkest of arts and the body of an innocent to try and kill you, to take revenge for something you didn't even do. You did not even ask to have the gift of Parseltongue, unwittingly bequeathed to you by Voldemort's actions, which alienated you from your peers and made you an object of suspicion for far too long. You did not ask for Dementors to find you a particularly sweet meal, to target you in particular for torment. You did not ask to be a demigod, to develop vast powers that isolate you even further from humanity than you already feared. You did not ask for Lucius Malfoy, HYDRA, Gravemoss, and many yet to reveal themselves, to fear your potential and attempt to strike you down before you achieved your full potential. You did not ask for the Red Room, and others yet to reveal themselves, to try and enslave you, using your power for their own ends, for the Red Room to torture you in the process, for your body to be used as an engine of destruction. You did not ask for it. You did not ask for any of it."

There was silence.

"Even so, you have had to endure all that suffering and pain. You have had to shoulder the curse of the Warrior's Madness, a blight on your House since the founding of Yggdrasil and the price for its great power. And the fact that you have had no choice in any of this – which is why I have not discussed those things that you have had a choice in – makes your anger with what has happened, with the whole world, that bit more toxic, that bit more furious… and that bit more likely to grow into something that will corrupt you, transform you, and consume you, burning away everything that was ever good in you. And all that will be left is a hollow shell, a thing filled by rage and by hatred, one that only knows how to destroy."

"I know," Harry said bitterly, after a long moment. "I didn't ask for that, either. And I tried it and I didn't like it."

"You chose it," Jesus retorted, calm and inexorable. "You were tormented by inconceivable psychic stress, by days of physical and mental torture compounded by six months of memories of your body being violated in some of the most horrific ways possible, of it being used as a weapon to perform the most terrible of deeds. Memories, mark you, that your returning mind instinctively incorporated as if they were your own, despite the fact that they very much weren't. The conflict nearly split your mind in two. Were that not enough, your body was still devastated from being sent into battle against one of the most formidable beings to walk the Earth, and from being nearly consumed by a mechanical intelligence of cold malevolence and endless hunger. You were blinded by pain, but most of all, by rage. In that moment, you could not have reasonably been expected to make a rational choice. But."

"But what?" Harry asked, glowering.

"But you still made a choice. You chose to embrace the Phoenix fragment within you, despite knowing that as a defence mechanism, its instinctive response would be to lash out and destroy threats to you, having suppressed it while under the Red Room's torture for that very reason. You did not have any way of knowing how it or you would respond to merging, how the emotion amplifying factor of the Phoenix fragment would combine with the fact that the fragment is fed by emotion, no way of knowing that it would first lash out at everything that ever hurt you, then, as all semblance of rational thought burned away, lashing out at everything it could reach," Jesus said. His tone was calm, gentle, and non-judgemental, but the words still struck. "But what matters is that no matter the circumstances, no matter your ignorance, in your anger you instinctively chose to embrace it."

"I let it go, too," Harry said quietly.

"And you deserve great credit for that," Jesus said calmly. "As you chose to take up that particular sword, you also chose to put it down again. But as we both know, you did not do it alone. This is right and proper, for the love and support of our loved ones is the truest and most precious of gifts. You walked to the edge of the cliff, and it was with their help that you did not fall. But it was only with their help that you did not fall. And even that joint success, of your loved ones and of your own strength of will, was only made possible by a case of impeccable timing."

He looked Harry in the eye. "Make no mistake, little cousin: you were caught as a fledgling Phoenix, one mostly grown, but only mostly. If you had not been caught as early as you were, then even if Strange had plucked all your loved ones from all of time and space, had joined your minds to theirs, they would not have been able to talk you down, because you would be the Dark Phoenix in full. There would not be enough of you left to hear to their words, and what remnants there were would not care even if they could. Your choice, no matter the circumstances it was made in, would have doomed you, and most probably the rest of us with you."

"So what?" Harry asked bitterly. "What's the message?"

"So don't go fooling yourself with the belief that the Dark Phoenix is like the Hulk, something that you can unleash when you are in trouble to defeat or destroy your enemies, before regaining control and locking it away again once its task is done – I know you are considering it, and no wonder," Jesus said evenly. "It is quite the tempting prospect, after all: to be able to unleash a power that makes even your own current powers like nothing as and when you need it. With your current power, you can play with molecules and minds on the other side of the planet. As Dark Phoenix, you can play with reality itself. With that kind of power, you could burn away every bit of evil in this world, leaving only goodness behind. All the good people who died before their time, your mother among them, you could bring them back. You could make it so that they would never have to die at all." He leaned forward, expression far too knowing. "And above all… with that kind of power, no one could hurt you ever again."

Harry looked away and Jesus leaned back.

"But the Hulk is a part of Doctor Banner, a good and kind man. His power can be guided, harnessed," he said. "The Dark Phoenix is not. It is a force of nature corrupted by mortal darkness. Accordingly, it has no conscience, no mercy, and no restraint. It cannot be harnessed and it cannot be controlled. If you become the Dark Phoenix again, you will not be forming a symbiosis as Banner has with the Hulk, or as your mother has with the Phoenix. You will be using your mind, your soul, and everything you are as tinder for a bonfire that will destroy your enemies, yes, but then your friends and your family too. And after that, all that will remain is a hollow shell, a mockery of what you once were, one that unless it is stopped, will destroy everything else because destruction is all it knows."

A chill ran down Harry's spine.

"I don't understand," he said. "One moment, you say that you're not worried about me becoming the Dark Phoenix. The next, you're telling me that I'm tempted, that I might do it just to not be hurt." He eyed Jesus. "Speaking of, isn't that your opposite number's department? Temptation, I mean."

Jesus smiled gently. "It is," he said. "But I know temptation. Do you honestly think that I have never been tempted? I was, frequently. One or two of the incidents were quite famous – one involved a desert. I was offered everything from simple material comfort to the chance to change the way I undertook my mission. Instead of going out and giving people the choice to choose goodness, I could go out, stand on high with all the world kneeling before me, and use my power to make them better, to destroy evil and to enforce good." The smile turned wry. "I was definitely tempted to skip the part with the cross."

His smile saddened. "Many others, of course, never made it into scripture. So yes. I understand temptation. I understand your struggle. I understand resenting being feared and hunted for things that you cannot control, the ingratitude of mankind, and being tempted just to wave a hand and make all of your problems go away. You are not the first demigod to face those problems, nor was I, nor even was your cousin Hercules. More than a few humans could understand the temptation too, your friend Doctor Banner, your godmother Ms Maximoff, and your headmaster, Albus." He paused. "Speaking of demigods, actually, I should introduce you to Rama some time. You'd get along. And Adam, who really is my opposite number, being the Anti-Christ. He knows a little about being expected to destroy the world." Harry just stared at him. "Yes," Jesus mused. "I think you'd definitely get on. Possibly a little too well, actually."

He shook his head. "In any case, let me tell you, Phoenix or no Phoenix, when one of us decides to say 'fuck you all, there is no right, there is no wrong, there are no rules for me', it is not pretty." He looked Harry in the eye. "One thing I also came to understand, one thing that most of us come to understand, and one thing I think you already know but may not yet quite understand… is that embracing your rage; in your case becoming the Dark Phoenix… it is the easy way out. It will not do you good, it will not bring you peace, and it comes at a price that is not worth paying."

He stood up. "By any reasonable measure, you deserve rest. You deserve peace. But sooner or later, I am afraid, you will be tested again. You will face pain, and loss, and many, many things that will make you so very angry. You will face temptation, some obvious and open, and some subtle and sly, which will rock you to your very core. And you will encounter the full burdens of walking in both worlds that you face, being pulled this way and that by competing heritages that will feel like they are tearing you apart from within," he said. "Under that circumstance, it would seem logical to worry, to fear that you would one day succumb to your rage and go down the path of the no return. Many of our brethren do. Right now, they are having a meeting, debating the threat you represent. After all, the power you have at your fingertips is one that is beyond even the Skyfathers and Earthmothers power to destroy, and only with the greatest of guile and sacrifice can it even be contained."

"But you don't," Harry said. "You and whoever these other gods you said agreed with you. Who are they, anyway?" He scowled. "Or can't you tell me?"

"I can, and with the greatest goodwill," Jesus said easily. "Your grandfather, of course. Others of my fellows include Ganesha, Athena, Anansi, Guan-Yin, Hestia, Vishnu, Brighid, Hades, the Zoryas, Isis, Osiris, Thoth, Laozi, Anahita, Amaterasu, and Mother Summer."

Harry blinked in surprise. That was rather more than he'd been expecting.

"More believe in you than you might think," Jesus said, seeing his expression. "Even among beings who are not disposed to believe in anything but themselves. That was not a full list, either."

"So I'm so special that gods believe in me?" Harry said, eyebrow raised. "Wonderful. I'll add it to the pile of unrealistic expectations people have of me."

"Well, I must admit that more than a few are playing the odds based on your personality," Jesus said mildly. "Others believe that you are most likely to become the Dark Phoenix, but they should try and forestall it, because there is no other practical option. But I do. I think that the expectation is very realistic."

"Why?" Harry asked.

"Because I believe that you can accept your anger, to control it and not to let it control you. Because I believe that you can accept your pain and your loss, and use them as a spur to be kind, not to lash out. Because I believe that when it comes down to it, when you are given the choice to choose what is right or what is easy, to choose to maintain hope or to give in to despair, to choose love or hate…" Jesus said. "I believe that you will control your anger. I believe that you will decide to be kind. And above all, I believe you can change your mind. I believe that, this time and always, you will choose love."

"What if you're wrong?" Harry asked, as Jesus turned to go. "What if I… what if I make the wrong choice? What if this was for nothing?"

The other demigod turned back with a half-smile. "Then at the very least, little cousin, I will know that in this time and this place, I chose to do something right."

OoOoO

"Strange," Ra said slowly. "What have you done?"

"Well, I've been doing quite a lot recently, your featheriness," Strange said, with a dangerous sort of manic cheer. "Which is more than can be said for you."

His gaze swept the lot of them, dark amusement draining from his face. "No, for the most part, you've spent the last thousand years sleeping, squabbling amongst yourselves, or reliving past glories. No wonder so few of you raised an objection to the Celestials' injunction not to interfere in the development of Earth a millennium ago - it hardly represented any great change in your behaviour," he said, tone cold and cutting. "For a millennium and a half before that, few of you paid more than cursory attention to Earth and its inhabitants, and perhaps that was for the best, because when you did pay attention, for the most part, it was anything but constructive."

He waved a dismissive hand. "Yes, yes, you slew this monster, you sired that hero, and sprinkled those artefacts across the mortal world... but often the monster was your fault to begin with, in many cases the mother of the hero was hardly in any position to consent and siring a hero was more of a convenient by-product than a matter of intent, and the artefacts caused as much harm as they did good, especially since their wielders rarely had a clue what to do with them."

He regarded them all with an unimpressed expression.

"In summation," he said. "Rarely did you ever actually leave the Earth a better place than when you found it. And when you did, it was usually by accident." He stood up. "Now you are concerned about the Earth? Now you care about what happens to it? Now you will get involved in defending it? Why? Well, let's be honest. For the most of you – with honourable exceptions, who know who they are – what motivates this is not a desire to protect the Earth, it is a desire to protect yourselves. And therefore, in your fear and your arrogance, you have blundered into a situation which you do not understand the least part of, and propose a 'solution' that hardly deserves the word, since if you actually engaged your miserable excuses for brains, you would realise that it would actually make things worse and trigger the apocalypse you are all so damn afraid of!"

He looked around at them, expression cold. "So let me make my response completely and utterly crystal clear: How dare you, after spending millennia sitting on your cosmic arses doing nothing, step in now and claim that you know best? You have absolutely no concept of what is in motion, and even less of why! You know nothing!" He swept them all with his gaze. "Thanos. Is. Coming."

Those gods who'd had been about to speak froze. This did not go unnoticed.

"Oh yes, you know that name, don't you?" Strange said with grim amusement. "You've heard the whispers on the star-ways. The stories of gods and demons alike that have challenged him, that he has destroyed, each becoming just one more corpse on the trail of blood and death that he has carved through the ages. He is coming. He is coming to Earth, because that is where the remaining Infinity Stones are, all he needs to achieve true omnipotence and succeed in his true aim: destroying everything that is, that was, and ever could be."

"And if the Dark Phoenix runs free, if your predictions are true, Honoured Sorcerer, then all Thanos will need to do is claim the stones from the ashes of Earth," the Yellow Emperor -remarked mildly. "If we do not resolve this matter satisfactorily, then we will be doing Thanos' work for him."

"You are right, your majesty," Strange said, inclining his head. "On both counts. However, let's think this through, shall we?" He smiled thinly. "I realise that the concept of thinking might be alien to a few of you, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of it. Don't worry, it'll stop hurting shortly."

Zeus stepped forward, jaw jutting out.

"Be careful, cousin," Vishnu said in a carrying undertone, as he placed a restraining hand on Zeus' shoulder. "Strange is mad and he is holding an Infinity Stone, one I believe he knows very well how to use. Provoking him would not be wise."

"He's right," Odin said, despite knowing that Zeus wouldn't listen. "Strange is not a man you wish to threaten."

Zeus shook him off and shot a contemptuous look at both Vishnu and Odin. "Unlike the two of you, I have no fear of an arrogant, insane mortal and his cheap tricks," he snarled, before turning on Strange. "You go too far, mortal," he growled. "Remember your place. Before I remind you of it."

Strange's response was lightning fast and came entirely without warning. In a split second, he was on his feet, had raised the Tesseract and spat several words in a language that made reality scream and even gods clutch at their ears. In an instant, pale crystals of frozen time erupted from the floor and engulfed the Olympian, freezing him in place, trapping him like an insect in amber.

"Well, I can hardly say that that was unexpected," Odin said, into the shocked silence, one that swallowed his words.

"Total sucker rule violation," Huginn agreed.

Vishnu simply sighed a long suffering sigh.

Then all went silent as Strange began to descend the stairs from his throne-like chair, footsteps echoing through the endless night, striding into the very midst of the assembled gods. And though many of them towered far above him, more than a few shrank away as he advanced, finally coming to a stop in the middle of the group.

"I am the Sorcerer Supreme," he said, in a low, deadly voice that concealed a barely controlled and mounting rage. "I am the Evergreen Man, the Lord of Time, and I know my place perfectly well. I fight beings like you every single day. I have guarded reality against them for centuries, and for the most part, I have done it alone. For centuries I have stood, and I stand here still, now with an Infinity Stone in my hand. Do you really think that you, any of you, is a match for me?" He spun to take in them all, the Tesseract burning blue-white in his right hand as he did, eyes blazing with rage and something close to madness. "So how dare you? How dare any of you? How dare any of you raise your voices to me!"

The Rock of Eternity shook as he spoke, and more than one god took a half step back, suddenly becoming profoundly aware that they were on thin ice, and what was more, it was creaking.

The silence was now deafening, and Strange smiled coldly.

"I trust that you are all aware of a certain prison in the New World, buried deep under a certain lake, wherein countless horrors and dark gods are imprisoned, so many that their mere presence, limited as it is by their bindings, generates one of the most powerful dark ley lines in the Western Hemisphere?" he said, voice suddenly conversational again. "Yes, I see that from your expressions you are. Some of you may even have seen it up close, in which case, you will recognise the crystal in which Lord Zeus is bound."

Several dozen divine eyes turned to Zeus. More than a few of them showed dawning recognition.

"This is, of course, is not quite the same," Strange remarked. "The crystals of what is variously called the Deeper Well, the Crystal Cave, and Demonreach, are trans-temporal prisons and reinforced by the prison itself, and the fact that it's built on a foundation of one of the largest ley line convergences in the mortal world. As a convenient side-effect, it is itself now the source of what is quite possibly the largest dark ley line in the Western Hemisphere, meaning that if one has the skill to manage dark energy without being corrupted by it, it's really rather useful."

He turned, slowly, looking each and every one in the eye. "Additionally, that prison was built by myself and Merlin. I know exactly how to replicate it, and better, for my mastery of time magic exceeds even his, and in case you hadn't noticed, I am holding an Infinity Stone and I know how to use it. Plus, we based that prison on Agamotto's notes on the construction of this old thing in the Book of the Vishanti."

He tapped an outcrop of the Rock to make it very clear that that was he meant, letting the implications hang in the air, and smiled. "Yes," he said. "We're standing on what is quite possibly the ultimate prison."

"Are you getting it now?" he asked, after he was sure that it had sunk in. "Prince Harry Thorson's manifestation of the Phoenix is part of my plan to protect Earth and the universe at large. If you behave, I will inform you of some of the particulars of this plan. And you will not interfere with it for two reasons: First, if you succeeded, then as his learned majesty said, the Dark Phoenix will run free and all of you, and the Earth, will die, because none of you have a prayer of stopping it - or at least, those of you who would have even the slightest chance don't have the faintest idea how. And you will have done Thanos' work for him, and we will all be doomed. Second, you would not succeed. You would instead be bound here, your power leaking out in much the same way, to be tapped by yours truly."

He resumed his place on the throne-like chair. "In short: you will assist in my plans, and you will do so either by actively helping or by staying out of my way. If you attempt to impede me, then the ultimate prison will get a few more inmates, at which point, you will still assist in my plans – by serving as a gigantic fucking battery. Any questions?"

There was silence.

"No, I thought not. Now. Let's discuss what's going to happen next, shall we?"

OoOoO

In the end, the compromise was simple. Harry would learn how to manage the Phoenix within him, and, of course, his temper, while also getting no small degree of mental healing.

When the subject of mental healing came up, Harry consented to the plan of locking away the memories of the Red Son. He also consented to being trained in the same skills so that when he had to use them, he wouldn't have a flashback. It was at this point that everyone, including Harry himself, noticed that he was looking and feeling somewhat better. Not his old self, by any means, but better.

The reason for this was quickly found – those memories had already been locked away, and many of the mental wounds had been dulled, as if they had had years to heal rather than a mere couple of weeks. It didn't take much imagination to work out who was behind it.

"It is the Son's work," Frigga said, effortlessly capitalising the word to leave in no doubt who she meant.

This led to Harry revealing that he did, in fact, have something of a friend in Jesus and expand on the little chat that they'd had. In turn, this led to a case of the usual Avengers style bickering over matters theological, and whether or not Thor and Loki had, in fact, been a bad influence on him or vice versa, with much teasing of the quietly devout Steve.

All in all, life seemed to looking up.

OoOoO

And that turn-up for the books was not restricted to Harry.

Maddie had spent much of the last couple of weeks hovering nervously, unsure of where she stood – though the Avengers, and by extension those of Asgard, extended her unblinking trust after the fact that she had successfully proven Worthy to wield Mjolnir, and Jean, her twin sister (twin sister! She'd never even imagined that there could be anyone like her in the world, the very idea of family had been abstract to her), had been around so often that it was almost like the nigh mirror image that she resembled. And Professor Xavier had helped too, and…

"Everyone's just been so kind," she wailed, bewildered, overwhelmed and on the verge of tears, to Jono who was now inhabiting a cloned version of his original body, on the grounds that while his ability to make his astral form solid was an astonishing one, and it gave him access to a vast breadth of powers that he had only just begun to tap, it also left him excruciatingly vulnerable. Plus, as he noted, it was refreshing to be able to touch things without having to focus on them.

"I know, luv," he said, patting her back for lack of inspiration on what else to do, casting a helpless look at the other person with them: Gambit.

Who, naturally, rose to the occasion.

"And it ain't nothin' less than y' deserve," he said firmly.

"I don't feel like I deserve it," Maddie said, then added, after a moment. "And…"

"Y' ain't used to it," Gambit said quietly. "Because Essex didn' show y' a bit of kindness. Th' way 'e had y' brainwashed, 'e didn' think that 'e needed t' even pretend to care."

Maddie nodded, a little damply. "You did," she said.

"Yeah, well, about that…" Gambit said, looking guilty.

"I know why you did it at first," Maddie said. "I realised relatively quickly."

"Y'… y' did?" Gambit asked, startled.

"I am an Omega class telepath, we spent a lot of time in very close proximity, and while your body is distracting, it is not that distracting," Maddie said dryly.

Gambit stared at her wide-eyed for a moment, before sharing a look with Jono, who'd started choking with laughter, then smiled wryly. "I shoulda guessed," he said. "Why didn' y' say? Or tell Essex?"

Maddie chewed her lip. "Because it was nice," she said, after a moment. "To have someone act like they cared about me."

"Oh cherie," Gambit said sadly. "Ah'm sorry. I really am."

"I know," Maddie said. "You were afraid. You wanted a way out. And it wasn't long after that that you actually did care. Looking back, I see now that you spent months risking everything to try and get me free of Doctor Essex. It is largely thanks to you that I found the courage to make the right choice." She looked down. "You and Harry. My cousin. My…"

"Family," Jono said, filling in the gap as she trailed off, then glanced around. "Where is he, anyway?"

Maddie nodded. "He's still recovering," she said.

"How is he?" Jono asked, then realised that he might have trodden on some awkward territory.

"Getting better," Maddie said.

There was an awkward silence.

"An' speakin' of family," Gambit said bracingly. "I hear that your momma and poppa are comin' to see y' later."

"They don't know about me yet," Maddie corrected him, a little subdued. "Professor Xavier and Mrs Carter are going to explain it to them."

"She was the woman with the fancy laser gun, wasn't she?" Jono said, and Gambit nodded.

"Très belle, et très dangereux," he remarked, in tones of respect. "Like her granddaughter."

"Too bloody right, mate," Jono said, then turned to Maddie. "So, you're meeting your parents today. That's good, isn't it?"

Maddie looked non-committal and nervous.

Specifically, she was nervous of how they'd react once they knew what she'd done, what she'd spent her life doing, being, a weapon for Doctor Essex. Especially when they compared her to Jean – and it was logical for them to do so. After all, they were twins, with the same looks, the same build, the same powers; a perfect case study of nature versus nurture. In one, it had produced someone warm, gentle and unthinkingly kind, someone who had embraced her, Maddie, without blinking, despite knowing very well what she had done and what she was. In Maddie's eyes, Jean was an angel in human form, a standard that she could never possibly live up to, and when her parents saw how the two compared –

"Hey," Gambit said, doing a fair imitation of telepathy. "Stop comparin' y'self to Jean."

"But I'm her twin," Maddie said. "The flawed copy."

"Bullshit," Gambit and Jono said in perfect unison.

"Y' ain't her flawed copy any more than I'm Chief o' the New Orleans Police," Gambit said. "You're you an' she's her. Yeah, y' may have damn near the same genetics, because y' are twins, but y' have different minds, different souls. I'd bet good money that if y' were raised together, you'd turn out different, because y' two different people, not one in two bodies. She was raised t' do good, taught by one o' the most downright decent men I've ever met. Y' were raised an' taught by the biggest damn asshole that I've ever known, an' believe me, cherie, I've known some real big assholes, an' y' know what? Despite all he did t' y', tried t' do t' y', y' turned out a right proper hero. Y' lifted Thor's hammer! I did a bit o' asking, an' the only other people who ever managed t' lift that thing are Thor, his daddy, a girl called Diana who's meant t' be real damn lovely an' brave, an' Captain fuckin' America. Y' in the company o' heroes, an' it's because y' deserve t' be there. An' from what I hear, y' saved y' baby cousin's mind, if not his damn life, with what y' did."

"It went wrong, though," Maddie said quietly.

"And when it did, luv, you went right back in to fix it," Jono retorted. "Even though you had no way of knowing that your friendly neighbourhood cosmic whatsit was going to remove the trigger words in your brain, or that we were going to get help from a bunch of cosmic whatsits, a couple of major league hero types, and the Scary Bugger Supreme."

"Sorcerer Supreme," Maddie corrected, her lips twitching slightly.

"I stand by my choice of words," Jono said. "And even before that, you saved me from life as little more than a floating brain in a jar, taught me how to be a real boy again, gave me the basics on my powers."

"They're right, you know."

All three of them jumped. They had been so caught up in their discussion that they hadn't noticed Jean listening. It might seem puzzling that a skilled psychic tracker like Maddie could miss someone with a presence like Jean's, but the simple fact was that without a certain re-calibration, psychics had trouble sensing Jean in the same way that people in Trafalgar Square had trouble seeing England.

"You've done some amazing things," Jean continued. "You've been braver than I could ever imagine being, faced down things more terrifying than I could even comprehend. You've been through hell and you turned out a hero." She slipped into the seat next to Maddie and slipped an arm around her twin. "And I'm not perfect, Maddie. I make mistakes. I do things I regret. I've misused my powers in the past – and yes, I get angry." Her expression saddened. "You misused your powers because that's how you were taught to use them, what you were taught was right. When I misused mine, I knew better. My family was visiting Harry's, and that cousin of his, Dudley –"

"Him that calls himself the Beast these days," Jono interjected, for Maddie's comprehension, then frowned vaguely. "I wonder what happened to him…"

"Right," Jean said. "Well, he had no powers. He was just an ordinary, mean little boy, who was beating up Harry with his friends. I got angry and I lashed out. Luckily, I didn't do any permanent damage." Her expression turned troubled. "I don't think." She shook her head. "My point is, I could have put him in a coma, even killed him. I misused my powers when I knew better, because I got angry. So you see? I'm not perfect. And it wasn't just when I was a kid, either." She grinned. "I think that Captain America's ears are still ringing from when I yelled at him, poor man."

Maddie laughed softly, then, cautiously, laid her head on her sister's shoulder. She was beginning to be a little more comfortable with casual physical contact, though was a little nervous of initiating it – like all abused children, she feared rejection.

She would not face it from Jean, however, whose maternal streak was all-encompassing, especially when it came to family. She therefore gave her twin a comforting squeeze, sending a reassuring psychic pulse of warmth and affection to her sister. Then, she looked up at Jono and Gambit with an expression that said one thing more clearly than any words, verbal or psychic ever could: 'thank you'.

Both nodded, in Gambit's case, the nod turning into a neat bow, before quietly leaving the sisters to it.

"You're sure they won't hate me?" Maddie asked eventually.

"I'm certain," Jean said.

Maddie nodded, head rubbing against her sister's shoulder. "Okay," she said. "When are they coming?"

"They're already here," Jean said, and Maddie tensed. "They're downstairs, talking to the Professor and Mrs Carter."

Maddie nodded again, sitting up, the hair on one side fluffing up. "I'd better go downstairs, then," she said.

"Not before your hair gets a good brushing you won't," Jean said, amused.

Maddie went pink. "Of course."

OoOoO

Others, meanwhile, were engaged in more business-like matters.

Loki, for instance, had been hunting the Red Room across Eastern Europe and Asia, and had chased most of the survivors down into India. Where, as it turned out, they had promptly linked up with the Indian government, which had been an ally of the old Soviet Union, largely with geopolitical motives on both sides. In this case, the motive of the Indian government was to extract as much of the Red Room's exceedingly useful and often ill-gotten knowledge and technology as possible.

While the likes of Thor would have cared little for this and wrought spine-chilling vengeance on the Red Room wherever they hid, Loki took a more subtle approach. Namely, by taking tea with the Indian Prime Minister.

"Now, Mister Prime Minister, I should first say that I do not intend to intimidate you in any way," Loki said. "While fear can be a useful tool, it is a temporary one. Additionally, I realise that you are not afraid of me. Or at least, not sufficiently to change your course. This I understand, indeed, applaud." This was punctuated with a graceful inclination of the head. "However, there is something you should take into account. You are a devotee of Shakti, I believe?"

"I am," the Indian Prime Minister said. "I presume that this has a degree of relevance."

Loki nodded. "The entity that you know as Shakti is not a goddess. She is an aspect of something much older, and much more powerful. She is one of the Seven Eldest, the beings known as the Endless," he said. "If you do not believe my claim, then I will happily swear it by my blood and power – and as your mystics could tell you, those oaths are closely binding indeed."

"For now, let us continue as if what you say is true," came the measured reply.

"Very well," Loki said. "In that capacity, she has other names. One is Destruction - specifically, in the name of rebirth. Another is the Phoenix. And this is very important, you see, because of one crucial fact. She is Harry's mother. Or to be precise, Harry's mother was a mortal witch, but she managed to invoke the Phoenix, with the secret assistance of the Sorcerer Supreme. In exchange for protecting Harry from Voldemort's wrath, on her death, she merged with the Phoenix. In that capacity, she has acted to protect Harry in the past. It was that protection that brought him back from the dead, something you may have heard rumours of it. It was that power which he used to wreak vengeance on the Red Room, who tortured and tormented him for many months in a deep, dark region of the Spirit World. As you might imagine, she is not best pleased with them. Nor would she be best pleased with those who harbour them."

"Is this meant to be a threat?" the Prime Minister asked steadily, voice carrying barely a tremor.

"Hardly," Loki said. "It is a warning." He leaned forward. "No, Prime Minister, I am not interested in threats. Instead, I have a proposal to our mutual advantage."

"Please elaborate."

"But of course. In our function as Avengers, myself and my brother provide mortal powers and mortal laws with a certain respect, for we are guests on this world," Loki said. "But my nephew was taken. Tortured. By men and women whose superiors, inferiors, and colleagues, have fled far and wide. Many of those who have not suffered unfortunate accidents have chosen your nation, because of old alliances that they still trust to. We are not acting as Avengers now, because they declared war on Asgard. You cannot protect them from us, and you would be well advised not try. However. I, at least, am not quite so blinded by rage as to simply come in and start slaughtering my enemies, extracting my nephew's blood price, without offering a more sensible option."

"And what would that option be?" the Indian Prime Minister asked carefully.

"You are an intelligent man, and you have surely deduced that to harbour the Red Room means the chance to share in the spoils of their knowledge, of their technology, and far more so than in previous cooperative efforts, for they are desperate. Such an advantage is priceless: the Red Room are renowned technologists, among very many other things," Loki said. "They have historically matched SHIELD, the USA - though the extent to which one can be separated from the other is debatable - and HYDRA alike, and unlike SHIELD, with which your nation has an... interesting history, any technology derived from them could be used solely for your nation's benefit."

He sipped at his tea. "In essence, in allowing myself, my brother, and perhaps a few chosen associates, free rein - or, to be perfectly frank, not getting in our way - you feel that you risk such knowledge being lost. I, for one, am hardly so crude. I suggest instead that you use your position of relative trust to claim the knowledge and technology the Red Room have to offer - whether you use deception or force is entirely up to you. Then, you step aside, and we will do what needs to be done. While I concede that you would make a loss in long term technological gain, I think that it will be a comparatively small one."

Putting down his cup, he smiled. "You see, the Russians are cowed, for now, and their political establishment is in chaos," he said. "The remains of the Red Room are in disarray thanks to many of its more senior officers taking... early retirement, shall we say. Funding is likely to be limited, as is innovation. On the other hand, with the knowledge of the Red Room to build on, I am sure that your own scientists will be able to do remarkable things. In addition, your assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated. For one thing, I do believe that a very considerable proportion of your people depend on agriculture, and well: my brother does control the weather. I am sure that he would be happy to return your favour. I am equally sure that the Phoenix, Shakti, would be rather pleased too."

The Indian Prime Minister mulled over this. "This seems to be acceptable," he said. "Though I am sure that your knowledge of the locations of my guests, some of which they have not seen fit to share with us, could prove helpful."

Loki inclined his head. "It will be on your desk in hours, Prime Minister," he said. "Oh, and I feel that you should be aware that at least two of your citizens were formerly Red Room prisoners. One, a young man called Nagraj, Nagraj Shah, managed to make his escape. A police officer, meanwhile, Officer Karima Shapandar, was not quite so fortunate, but is now receiving the best mortal medical care. I believe that this is particularly worth mentioning because we have been looking to expand the Avengers – after all, for all our skills and powers, we seven cannot be everywhere – and the two of them have been identified as very promising candidates."

"I know of the young man you speak of," the Indian Prime Minister said carefully.

Loki nodded. "Leaving aside the manifold advantages of an Avengers branch in your own country, an autonomous one, the utility of which has been demonstrated by Britain's Excalibur team," he said smoothly. "It seems rather unfair and impractical for so many of the emergent superhumans to congregate in the West. Perhaps a suitable first mission, for one or both, would be to direct them to strike against the Red Room that so tormented them?" He paused. "And, of course, keeping busy, taking revenge on those who deserve it, might drive certain thoughts out of Officer Shapandar's time. Such as inquiries of how, after her accident, she wound up in the hands of the Red Room to begin with."

The Indian Prime Minister's eyes narrowed, and Loki smiled slightly. "I will bear that in mind," he said.

"Superb," Loki said, standing and shaking the man's hand. "As ever, Prime Minister, it is a pleasure doing business with you."

"And you, Prince Loki," the Indian Prime Minister replied, not saying that, as ever, when doing business with Loki, he felt the urge to check that he still had all ten fingers afterwards.

OoOoO

All, it seemed, was proceeding swimmingly, and Harry's recovery was continuing apace. While Asgard did not have many therapists, there were a few who specialised in mental healing, combined with Dream's prevention of nightmares, Jesus' sly bout of mental healing, and the support of family and friends, a few regular sessions helped enormously.

While his sense of humour tended to be quite dark and there were periods when he retreated into himself under a cloud of emotional darkness, and he was generally grimmer and considerably more jumpy than before (as Uhtred had found out when he once caught Harry unawares, at the cost of three cracked ribs. Predictably, he shrugged off Harry's horrified apologies and was fine within hours).

In the meantime, Maddie need not have worried about her parents (though inevitably would have done anyway) who, as soon as they laid eyes on her, burst into tears and hugged her. Then, her mother, still tearful, insisted on thanking and hugging a very surprised Gambit and an even more surprised Jono, and Jean for good measure. She would likely have hugged and thanked Harry, but he was still in Asgard at the time.

Meanwhile, the Phoenix power within the feather remained quiescent, despite Odin's close examination of it.

And so did the other pantheons – though one got the general impression that many of them were sulking, in between fear of Strange.

All in all, everything seemed to have taken a turn for the better. And soon, towards the end of September, serious discussions were being had about Harry's return to Hogwarts.

OoOoO

When that subject was brought up, however, the answer was not one to their liking.

"Not a bloody chance," Wisdom said bluntly, without looking up from his papers. Thor and Sirius had chosen to address this matter, and had done so by arranging a meeting with Wisdom – Thor because he was Harry's father, and Sirius both because he was Harry's godfather and because even Wisdom couldn't fob off his older brother forever.

"What?" Sirius asked, beating Thor to the punch.

"You heard me," Wisdom said. "Now unless you have something else to discuss, kindly get out of my office."

"Director Wisdom," Thor began, tone one of strained patience.

"No," Wisdom said, still not looking up. "I could live just fine with the boy when he was capable of blowing up castles, or small towns, if he lost control. When he was just a particularly powerful psychic wizard, with a few incipient demigod genes. Even that protection of his would have been fine if it had just stayed as exactly that: a protection. But now, it's a great deal more than that. Now, if he loses control, it's goodbye to the country, if not the planet. Now, if he has a nasty flashback or something, we're looking at the second coming of the Red Son. No fucking thank you."

"Come off it, Reg," Sirius said. "You must –"

"I must what?" Wisdom asked dangerously, lowering the papers and glaring at Sirius. "Also, as I have told you in the past, Sirius, I don't go by that name any more."

A spasm of pain passed across Sirius' face for a half instant, then his expression hardened. "You answer to it quickly enough," he snapped. "When it's me or that disgusting house elf."

"Kreacher gets a pass because he's old and he can barely live with me going by another name in public. The idea of me giving up the name of Regulus Black completely would probably kill him," Wisdom growled. "You, on the other hand, are trying the last of my patience." He shook his head sharply. "I must nothing, Sirius. There are only two people above me in my chain of command, and you aren't either of them." He turned to Thor. "And neither are you, Thor." His expression softened a little. "Look, I haven't got anything against the boy. I'm sorry about what happened to him, I really am. I've been on the wrong end of torture and mental invasions and…" He sighed. "I know a thing or two about what the Red Room are like. I joined MI13 in the last few years before they were taken out the first time, and I had more than a few run-ins with them. The sort of things they do, the sort of things I saw, I wouldn't wish them on anyone." He paused. "Well, actually, there's a few people I'd wish them on." He shook his head. "A few people, yeah. But an innocent lad, a boy who just wants to do some good in the world? He's the last person who deserves it."

"Then you know that –"

"None of it was his fault?" Wisdom asked. "More or less. He made the call to evacuate his body, left it for the Red Room to use, but it was with a plan in mind, after days of torture, and, frankly, a lot of older and better trained people I know would have made the same call for worse reasons under the circumstances. Besides, having the memories of what they made his body do is more than punishment enough, deserved or otherwise. But."

"But what?" Thor asked flatly.

"But you bloody well know what," Wisdom said, without rancour. "My job is to attend to the defence of the realm against supernatural threats. Your son might not mean to be one, but he's potentially the worst I've run across. Not through malice, but through sheer power and lack of control. I won't pretend to know even a fraction of the lore around the Phoenix, but I know enough to know that it's the kind of power not meant to be held for long, much less by an angry, traumatised child." He sat back. "I can't stop you from taking him to New York, or somewhere else on Earth. But equally, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't do my damn best to prevent him from staying on Earth, and with what I could tell people, my opposite numbers around the world would probably listen."

"This is bullshit," Sirius said furiously. "Harry's got as much right to attend Hogwarts as anyone – more, since he was bloody well killed defending the damn place!"

"No, Sirius, this is reality," Wisdom snapped, getting to his feet. "It might be better for the boy's feelings to go back to Hogwarts, but I am not going to put one boy's feelings ahead of the sixty odd million people who I am sworn to protect!"

"Is it now?" Sirius demanded heatedly, also rising.

"Yes," Wisdom snapped. "It is." He turned to Thor, who had also risen, ready to separate the two brothers, and some of the heat left his tone. "Keep him at home, Thor. In Asgard, with the rest of his people. Teach him about control there, until, like you and Loki, he can keep his powers in check."

"He can, Director," Thor said. "And he has forsaken almost all the power of the Phoenix. He poured it into Laevateinn."

"Liva-what?" Wisdom asked, bemused.

"Laevateinn," Thor said. "It is an ancient artefact, one closely tied to the Phoenix. Once it was a wand. Now… now, it is masquerading as a simple phoenix feather, as it has since I was a small child. It contains the power Harry summoned up. Harry does not have the power to unleash the Dark Phoenix, even if he wished to."

Wisdom folded his arms. "But he's still got some," he said shrewdly. "You said almost all. And unless I'm missing something, that kind of power grows if given fuel."

Thor inclined his head. "Embers," he said. "Little more than the protection he was given to begin with."

"And if he loses it, we're back to square one," Wisdom retorted.

"He only 'lost it' after being tortured for days and having six months of memories of his body used as a fucking puppet for torture and murder," Sirius said. "I'd say that's pretty good reason."

"And it is also something that will not happen again," Thor said.

"You can't promise that," Wisdom said.

"I can reason it," Thor said simply. "Harry has been kidnapped successfully twice. The first time was by the Disir, ancient creatures aided by the arts of the Darkhold, which is now locked away once more. And he was in Asgard anyway, so it would make no difference where he was if the situation repeated itself. The second time was by the Red Room, who in Essex had someone with unparalleled knowledge of Harry, and in Maddie had a psychic more powerful than Harry himself, who caught Harry off-guard. Even then, as you said yourself, he only left his body vacant by choice. He could have unleashed the Phoenix any time he wished while he was being tortured, yet he held out for days." He met Wisdom's gaze. "HYDRA also tried to take him when they were at the height of their power and they failed. The Red Room are being reduced – by the time they rise again, if they ever do, something I think unlikely, Harry will be a grown man. You will know better than I how few organisations, mortal or supernatural, are capable of mustering the kind of power that the Red Room and HYDRA had." He gave Wisdom a pointed raised eyebrow.

"If we're counting SHIELD as puppeted by HYDRA in the equation of HYDRA's power, and the Darkhold too, and effectively Russia and the old Eastern bloc under the Red Room, brief as that was… no mortal organisation," Wisdom said reluctantly. "The American and Chinese militaries, maybe – what they lack in superhuman firepower, they make up for in numbers, resources, and highly sophisticated conventional firepower. SHIELD, if it ever regains its old power, would be up there. And probably Atlantis, if they're even half as powerful as I think they are." He drummed his fingers. "As for supernatural, practically speaking, the big guns are the Fae Courts, the Vampire Courts, and the White Council. The ICW's got power on paper, but not something it can really back."

"And how many of those would have an interest in kidnapping and torturing my son as the Red Room did?" Thor asked, keeping his tone even, despite a brief wobble over the word 'torturing'.

"I'm pretty sure that Weapon X would like to know what makes him tick," Wisdom said. "And they're getting the band back together." He sighed. "But they're not stupid. Because –"

"Because they'll have seen what happens to those who try to harm him," Thor said quietly. "The Vampire Courts do not desire more enemies, and they know to fear my kind." His forehead creased in a frown. "Dracula hates the Phoenix, it is true." He gave Wisdom a shrewd look. "But from what I know, he will also not set foot in Britain. There is another vampire here, I am told. A powerful one, that keeps others out, tolerating only a few transitory White Court vampires that flee as soon as it bestirs itself to demonstrate its displeasure if they out-stay their welcome."

"Since when?" Sirius asked, eyebrow raised.

"A couple of decades ago," Wisdom said curtly. "We call him the Welshman, most of the time. He lives in Cardiff, keeps himself to himself, and usually feeds off the spares from blood banks and any monsters daft enough to chance their arm in South Wales. I think he has some sort of arrangement with Strange, though exactly what it is, I have no idea." He shrugged. "He's powerful enough that Dracula doesn't like to come calling – the two had a meeting which didn't end well for either. Voldemort also tended to avoid that part of the country, after one of his giants got eaten."

Sirius let out a low whistle.

"Anyway," Wisdom said. "Why does Dracula hate the Phoenix?"

Thor explained Dumbledore's tale of his encounter with the Grey Court and the Clan Akkaba and the Phoenix in Vienna at the end of the 19th century.

Wisdom nodded slowly. "That explains it," he said. "But still. Drac can put two and two together, and if the boy's on Earth, he'll make a play at some point. Maybe not on British soil, but he will. And if that leads to the Phoenix…"

"I can face that glorified corpse," Thor said. "I have done it before, and if needs be, I will do it again, and again, and as many times as is need."

Wisdom eyed him, then nodded curtly. "I'm sure you will," he said. "But that leads us to the elephant in the room: gods, goddesses, demons and devils. Where do they factor in?"

"The pantheons of Earth have decided to take a live and let live attitude to Harry," Thor said, with a certain grim satisfaction.

Wisdom raised a sceptical eyebrow. "And they don't fear the Phoenix at all?" he said.

"Not as much as they fear Doctor Strange," Thor said. "Who explained to them that it was his will that Harry possessed some measure of the Phoenix's power, as part of his plans to prepare the Earth to face Thanos."

"Yes, he mentioned the fella in question," Wisdom said darkly. "I suppose that makes sense. But how the hell did he scare them into submission? He's not that strong."

"He's not," Sirius said. "The Tesseract is."

Wisdom stared at them. "You… gave Strange the Tesseract?"

"Lent it to him," Thor corrected. "And frankly, Director, going by past experience, if Strange wishes, he can steal just about whatever he pleases."

"True enough," Wisdom muttered. "And the demons and devils?"

"Have no wish to invite a war with Asgard or arouse the wrath of the Phoenix," Thor said. "I cannot pretend that there will be none that covet the power of the Phoenix, even the embers that Harry possesses still. But they will be wary of trying to claim them. They know that Harry technically invited Chthon into himself this last summer, then banished him. They know that he set reality to rights shortly after." He paused. "And every single other pantheon will come down on them like an avalanche if they even suspect them of making the attempt, for fear of the Dark Phoenix."

"You make some compelling points," Wisdom said. "Though I'll have to look into them myself. And have your oath on them. Right now, though, even if all you say pans out… I'm not quite convinced. Why should I take this gamble?"

Thor smiled thinly. "Because you are a man who likes to have all things under his eye," he said. "Because if Harry transforms into the Dark Phoenix once more, then his being in Asgard will not protect Midgard, Earth, for long. Because if Harry attends Hogwarts once more, you will have a chance to determine Harry's future, rather than simply stand powerless at the sidelines." He leaned forward. "And because Voldemort has returned, with more power than ever before, including the ability to control the mind of all who bear the Dark Mark. Harry is the one with the prophesied power to destroy him, once and for all."

Wisdom's eyes narrowed dangerously. "To be clear," he said, in a slow, soft, deadly voice that set both Thor and Sirius on their guard. "Are you suggesting that I would put a personal motive, in this case, my own fear of what Voldemort may or may not do to me, may use my Dark Mark to do, ahead of my duty to Queen and Country?"

"No," Thor said evenly. "I know your kind well enough, Peter Wisdom, Regulus Black, whatever you seek to call yourself. You skulk in the darkness, doing dark and foul deeds and shrug them off, playing the part of one without principle. But in truth, you are a man of honour, one with one principle that you hold dear, so dear that you are willing to sacrifice all others to preserve it. With you, it is loyalty to your country; its protection is your utmost priority." He sat back. "Do you not think that your country would be threatened by Voldemort, even before he became what he is now? Do you not think that his ability to bypass whatever mental defences you have would be a threat, when in your mind, you hold all the secrets of the defence of Britain? Do you not want the one person destined to destroy Voldemort once and for all in Britain?"

Wisdom eyed Thor, then his lips twisted into a wry smile. "You're smarter than you look," he said mildly. "Then again, you always were." The smile turned into a smirk. "Which is more than can be said for Sirius, anyway."

"Oi," Sirius said, if somewhat half-heartedly.

Thor smiled faintly. "Do we have an accord, then, Director?"

Wisdom considered, rubbing his jaw. "Ah what the hell, I was planning to have a few of my lot at Hogwarts for the Triwizard anyway," he said, nodding. "Keep an eye on proceedings."

"And demonstrate to Fudge and the Headteachers of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, as well as any other international observers, who the real power in these Isles is," Thor said shrewdly.

Wisdom let out a bark of laughter, sounding very much like his brother. "That too," he said casually, before his expression hardened. "Full disclosure, though. I'm not just going to have my lot sit around and keep an eye on the boy, or play therapist. I'm willing to hope for the best, to play the odds, because as you point out, I don't have many other options. Even if I was willing to put a bullet through the boy's head, it wouldn't work." He paused as Sirius growled threateningly and the arms of Thor's chair creaked as his fingers dug into them, arching an eyebrow. "What? You're surprised I considered it? It wouldn't be my first choice, and like I said – I have nothing against the boy. But make no mistake, if I had no other option, I'd do it in a heartbeat and take the nightmares and divine torture vengeance as they came."

The muscles in Thor's jaw bunched. "I'm not," he said. "Surprised."

"But you're still pissed off to hear it," Wisdom said matter-of-factly, nodding as if this was exactly what he expected. "Understandable."

"I am," Sirius said quietly, then snorted. "I thought that I was supposed to be the mad one. Yet after twelve years in Azkaban, I'm practically a fucking vision of sanity compared to you."

"I'm not mad, Sirius," Wisdom said. "Just pragmatic."

"Well pragmatic or not, brother or not, lay a finger on Harry and I'll tear your throat out with my teeth," Sirius said, voice utterly serious.

Wisdom nodded. "I'm not planning to," he said, standing up. "There's no point. All it would do is make matters worse, wake the Phoenix up, and probably ring the bells for Armageddon. No fucking thank you. Only reason I mentioned it is because I feel that it's worth establishing exactly where we stand. I am not letting your boy go back to Hogwarts because I've got a sudden case of the warm fuzzies, nor will I be sitting idle while he wanders around with a ticking time-bomb inside him. I'm doing this because, assuming that everything pans out as you've said it will, you've convinced me that in the grand scheme of things, this is the best choice for Britain. Am I clear?"

Thor and Sirius stood. "You are," Thor said coldly.

"Good," Wisdom said. "Now kindly get the hell out of my office, I have an appointment." He paused. "Oh, and speaking of therapists, though, I can offer you a few good ones. I know that Xavier's the best, but I'd imagine that he has his hands full at the moment."

Thor stopped, seemed to struggle with his emotions, then strode out, saying nothing. Sirius, for his part, just stared at his brother, as if wondering what the hell had gone wrong, before following his best friend out.

The worries of other mortal power brokers, however, were not so easily assuaged, as Harry Dresden soon found out.

OoOoO

Usually, when I get a call from the White Council, I expect it. Why? Because the shit has hit, or is about to hit, the fan in the most spectacular way possible and they either deem it so spectacular that they can't reasonably leave their unwanted problem child out, or they blame me for it and want me to set about clearing it up. Or tie me to my staff and use me as a mop to clean it up with.

Since my teacher-girlfriend's godson had been kidnapped and engaged in a psychic duel in the Nevernever with someone who was his peer, hell, his superior in age, power, and skill, and caused global scale headaches (or, in the case of yours truly, migraines and black-outs while blood ran from various orifices. It scaled based on psychic sensitivity, apparently, which left Bob wondering why it had affected me at all), setting the spirit world on its ear, I'd expect it for that alone.

But that was not it.

After that, he had manufactured his escape, but decided to follow his psychic opponent – a cousin of his, stolen at birth and shaped into a living weapon by one of the most evil bastards I've ever run across – into a collapsing spirit portal to try and continue persuading her to come with him. Then, being exhausted and caught off-guard, he'd been recaptured, tortured and his mortal form had been turned into a living weapon while his mind went to live in a magic feather, courtesy of said cousin who made a righteous choice after managing to muster up some free will, before their plan to restore him to his body as soon as the Red Room's collective backs were turned went horribly wrong. The results had been the assassination of the Russian President, the general upending the geopolitical map of the mortal and supernatural worlds, a fist fight between Thor and the Juggernaut that caused tremors up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and a brutal duel between the so-called Red Son and Magneto over upstate New York, with side effects registering half way across the country. That, by itself, would also have garnered a Council phone call.

But that was still not it. Said godson had, when restored to his body and found that half of it had been turned into something like The Thing meets The Terminator, as well as getting six compressed months of unspeakable horror and black ops mission forced on him, quite understandably gone absolutely apeshit. As a result, he'd transformed into a humanoid abomination whose emergence was heralded by global scale nightmares, and while (or so I was reliably informed) merely warming up, had left permanent craters on the Moon, shrugged off multiple nuclear missiles, ripped a mountain sized hole into the Nevernever several thousand feet in the air, permanently rearranged the geography of mortal and spirit world alike, and been well on the way to becoming a nigh unstoppable cosmic abomination before he'd been talked down.

Look, the Council may have their heads halfway up their asses most of the time, but there was no way in hell that they were going to miss all that.

Especially not since I had a personal relationship with Wanda. While she hadn't exactly broadcast that I was her Apprentice, let alone boyfriend, us very publicly fighting together against the Mabdhara and N'Garai in Chicago a few months back, then at the Battle of London a couple of months later, with some serious and public making out after the first fight, certain inferences could be drawn. And Wanda was well known to be Harry Thorson's godmother.

I was a little surprised that it was Ebenezar, though.

"Hoss," he growled down the phone, after giving the relevant pass-phrase and getting the right one back; standard precautions when fighting a war against the Red Court. That wasn't him trying to be intimidating, by the way. He just generally growled everything.

"Sir," I said, a little frostily. Not so long ago, I'd found out that he was the Blackstaff, the White Council's hitman, their own equivalent of the Winter Soldier, who did the dirty jobs behind the scenes and broke the Laws of Magic that they so sanctimoniously upheld with impunity. Considering that he was my mentor, the man who had taught me that magic, the force of life itself, should be used only for good, that being a wizard was not even mainly about what you could do, but what you should do, whose standard I had held myself to for all my adult life, who had taught me all about that while lying through his teeth all the while, I was a little sore about that.

Sometimes, I wondered if the way I thought about Ebenezar was like how Wanda thought about her mentor, Doctor Strange. I doubted it. While I was angry at Ebenezar, I didn't hate him. Wanda, on the other hand… well, I'm not sure if she truly hated Strange, but sometimes, it got close. Certainly, there was a lot more bad blood between them than there was between me and Ebenezar.

I was not on the best terms with him at the moment, anyway. On the other hand, he was just about the only Wizard on the Council that I was on speaking terms with at all.

"What do you want?" I asked.

I said speaking terms, not good terms. Some wounds don't heal that fast.

"I'm in town. How about a catch-up drink," he said. "Accorded Neutral Territory."

Even if his tone hadn't made it clear, the last three words had. This was not simply my old mentor wanting to catch up and shoot the breeze over a few bottles of Mac's heavenly beer, and bridge a wide rift in the process. This was business.

"Fifteen minutes," I said, then hung up.

It didn't take that long to get to Mac's, less than the fifteen minutes I said it would, but even so, Ebenezar was already there, sitting at a table with two bottles of Mac's pale.

He looked much the same as he had the last time I'd seen him, the same as he always had. Short and stocky and largely bald, with glasses on his nose, he looked like what he was to most of the world – an old Ozark farmer who'd walked all his life and kept his muscles in his old age. Of course, I doubted that many of his mundane acquaintances imagined that he was one of the seven oldest and most powerful wandless wizards in the world, and capable of doing things like setting off volcanoes, triggering earthquakes, and ripping satellites and meteors from the sky.

His oak staff rested beside him, and, despite our estrangement and the seriousness of the occasion, he gave me a quick smile and indicated the chair opposite him. I took it, not smiling. I think I managed a grimace of sorts, but it probably looked forced as hell. He was polite enough not to comment on it.

"Sir," I said, in acknowledgement. "Thanks for the beer."

"Least I could do, hoss," he said.

I nodded. "Somehow I doubt you came halfway across the world to buy me a beer," I said. "Why are you really here, sir?"

He winced a little at that, but I wasn't in the mood for awkward small talk.

"I'll be plain, then," he said. "Some damn strange things have been happening the last couple of weeks."

I snorted. That was the understatement of the century. Ebenezar caught my dark amusement and smiled wryly.

"Damn strange," he repeated. "And dangerous. The Council's put together a decent timeline of events, but it's missing a few pieces. Some quite important ones, as it happens. And we think that you know what they are and where they fit, or if you don't, you can find out."

"If the Council wants me to investigate something that they could find out for themselves by ringing up Avengers Mansion and asking nicely, then I have a two day minimum," I said.

Ebenezar sighed. "Hoss," he said, and he sounded genuinely tired, enough that I felt a twinge of guilt for the snark. "Don't fight me, boy. I'm not your enemy."

"Despite the fact that you once had standing orders to kill me if I put a toe out of line," I said, and regretted it the moment I said it.

"Orders I ignored," the old man said after a moment, voice steady. "We've had this discussion already, Hoss. It's not about me and you and what's gone between us, it's not even about the Council. It's about the fate of the world. First, we've got everyone with a lick of talent in the precognition department screaming random gibberish prophecies and everyone else with the mother of all migraines as part of the spirit world gets turned upside down. Second, Russia seems suddenly set to reconstruct its old empire in a couple of weeks, and every supernatural power in their orbit is either destroyed or brought to heel by a bunch people are calling the Winter Guard, led by a madwoman calling herself the Black Widow, and spearheaded by something with enough power to singlehandedly obliterate four Red Court Dukes and Duchesses, five Counts and Countesses, and two Barons, their retinues and whatever demons they could rustle up. And backing that Winter Guard is a name that we thought long buried: the Red Room. Third, everyone sleeping has nightmares about the world ending in flames, a massive portal to the Nevernever appears in midair over Russia, then later a giant fireball appears in the sky and flashfries one of their larger lakes, and the Moon's left with a new crater – again."

He leaned forward, expression serious. "The Fae aren't saying anything, but they're buzzing around like bees who's hive's just been kicked, in ways that they last did when the Summer Lady went mad. The vampires are in disarray, which is good for us, but also not a good sign, since they have even less idea of what's going on than we do. The wanded lot are screaming about new witch-hunts, and more than a few on the Council agree with them," he said. "And as for calling Avengers Mansion, there hasn't been a word. As far as we know, most of the Avengers aren't even there, and the ones who are won't talk to anyone."

"What about SHIELD?" I asked.

"Fury gave us an edited version that was undoubtedly full of shite," Ebenezar said. "No more dancing around this, boy. We need to know what's happening, and you're the only Council Wizard with contacts on the Avengers and around them."

I thought of about a million snarky retorts, but most of them were about as imaginative and mature as 'oh, now you need me', or 'oh, now you want me to be open and honest', so I resisted the temptation.

"What do you know already?" I asked, and as Ebenezar scowled, I raised a hand. "I'm not asking just to be difficult. It saves time not having to explain things twice." The kid's expression when he'd come back to himself after his mind had been restored ahead of schedule and he'd all the hell the Red Room had used his body to do dumped on him at once swam into the front of my mind, and I was dimly aware that my good hand clenched tight around the bottle of beer, my knuckles whitening as I looked away from Ebenezar. "And there's things I'd rather not discuss. Things that aren't for me to talk about, if I can avoid doing so."

"The Merlin won't like that," Ebenezar said, but in a tone that suggested that he could live with it just fine.

"The Merlin is a crusty old asshole whose heart withered and died from lack of use centuries ago," I growled. "He can go fuck himself."

Ebenezar grunted, but didn't say anything. He certainly didn't disagree. Then, he crisply laid out the Council's version of events. It wasn't too far off what had actually happened, actually.

They'd guessed at Magneto's involvement, for one, though that wasn't too hard to figure out. Aside from missing the details that the Red Son was Harry, that the almighty psychic at the Red Room's disposal was Maddie (they thought that that psychic and the Red Son were one and the same) or her role in events, they didn't know about Essex, and that he'd been most of the way to being a fully fledged version of the creature known as the Dark Phoenix, of course.

"And this isn't the first time that something like this has happened," he said eventually. "Dreams of everything burning, massive psychic disruption, grand scale destruction… its happened before. The dreams were confined to the supernaturally gifted, and the destruction was much more precise and localised, but it has the same stamp. The same power is behind it, even if it has a different wielder, I can smell it."

"When?" I asked, curious, and privately thinking that Phoenix fire probably smelled like wood smoke. Or, you know, burning.

"1897," Ebenezar said. "Emanating from Vienna. A group called the Akkaba, a clan of superhumans of sorts… not Scions, Changelings, Cursed, or practitioners. Not inherently magical at all. A few had some power, but that wasn't what powered their gifts." He shrugged. "Just a group of people born with abilities, which came from who knew where. Back in the day, they used to be called Wonders by some. Or freaks of nature, I suppose."

"Mutants," I said.

Ebenezar nodded. "Almost certainly," he said. "This was back before genetics, of course, and before the X-Gene was discovered by your friend Charles Xavier, so we can't be certain – they claimed descent from some kind of obscure Egyptian god, one they called 'the First One', but mutants is probably what they were."

I blinked a little in surprise as I took this in. Mutation ran in families, that much I could tell; Wanda was a mutant as well as a practitioner, like her father, and her half-siblings had both inherited the X-Gene too, while a whole bunch of Harry's maternal cousins had the X-Gene too. But I also thought of mutants as a very recent phenomenon, dating back to the 20th century at the earliest.

Clearly I'd been wrong about that. But still, entire clans of mutants…

Ebenezar caught my expression and smiled wryly. "Caught me by surprise too, when I heard about it," he said. "I thought that there had to be some magical explanation, but there wasn't. There's probably been a few more mutants encountered by the Council than we ever realised – psychics in particular are close enough to magical that it can be hard to tell them apart at first glance." He shook his head. "Even still, Xavier could probably tell you how rare they are, and before modern times, they didn't tend to gather. The Akkaba were one of the very few exceptions. There's rumours of others, one in the Himalayas, but there's only one other that we know of, a bunch that call themselves the Askani."

"Psychics," I said, and Ebenezar looked up at me sharply.

"You've met them?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Professor Xavier was trained by them."

Ebenezar grunted. "Makes sense," he said. "A psychic as strong as him, they'd have found very interesting." His brow creased in a frown. "Though I am rather surprised that they let him go."

"I somehow doubt that they had much choice in the matter," I said. Charles Xavier was a pacifist, first and foremost. However, this did not mean that he was a pushover - he'd treated my pyrophobia after a particularly creative Black Court minion, a Renfield, roasted my left hand through my then heat permeable shield with a homemade flamethrower, and a few other issues besides.

In the process, I got a real feel not just for how strong he was, but how deft. I'm a powerful Wizard; on a good day, I'm in the top 50 in the world for raw power (stamina and precision are still works in progress), I'm absurdly stubborn, and I've had enough experience at resisting mental intrusion that it takes more than your average psychic predator to get one over me. Xavier, though, could have crushed my mind the way I would crush an egg, defences or no defences. And while I hadn't seen him in a fight, the thousands upon thousands of demon corpses found within a couple of dozen miles of Bayville without a mark on them told their own story.

In other words, pacifist or no pacifist, Xavier could play hardball. And if he had his wits about him, I really doubt that even a clan of middle-weight psychics could do anything to stop him coming and going as he pleased.

Ebenezar nodded an acknowledgement, then waved a hand, dismissing this line of discussion. "The Askani are strange, but mostly harmless," he said. "They're probably just about powerful enough to get representation under the Accords if they really wanted, but they're not interested. They keep their bloodlines going, stay on the lookout for new psychics to recruit and add some new blood, and keep their heads down."

"What about the Laws?" I asked. "Do they apply to them?"

Ebenezar grimaced. "So long as they don't step on our toes, we don't step on theirs," he said.

I nodded. "So the Akkaba," I said. "What do they have to do with anything?"

"They'd annoyed Dracula," Ebenezar said flatly. "And he wanted to make an example of them. All the oldest and most powerful members of the Grey Court were in Vienna, ready to take down the survivors of the Akkaba at their leisure. Then Albus Dumbledore stuck his nose in, tried to help out the Akkaba. According to him, they rejected him, said that they had something up their sleeve, and tried to kill him for good measure."

"They were going to try and summon something to deal with their vampire problem," I said, following the train of thought.

"They succeeded," Ebenezar said. "That night, we had burning dreams, sensed a massive psychic disruption, and the first Wardens on the scene found a nasty mess: every vampire in Vienna, not just Grey Court, was burned to ash, and all the Akkaba that had been part of the ritual went the same way. The only survivors were Dracula, who got out in time, a couple of the Akkaba who hadn't been involved, and Dumbledore."

"Why not ask him about it?" I asked.

"Took us a while to figure out he was there," Ebenezar said. "Whatever they summoned burned hot enough to scour away any real traces we had to work with, and truth be told, we were mostly trying to figure what the hell they'd summoned and where the hell it had gone. Eventually, we realised that whatever it was, it had gone home. We didn't even think to look for someone who'd been around for the ritual and who'd survived, not for years. When we finally found out he'd been there, he'd had years to get his story straight. He said that he'd interrupted the ritual, summoning a demon of some sort, one he didn't recognise. He tried to banish it anyway, and succeeded, but not before it performed the task it had been summoned for and destroyed its summoners while he was banishing it."

"And you didn't buy that," I said.

Ebenezar snorted. "You're the investigator hoss, but I know bullshit when I hear it," he said. He shook his head. "He was wanded, the darling of the magical worlds, and it wasn't a current investigation, so the Council had to drop it. In any case, Kemmler was becoming a problem around then, so we had bigger problems to worry about." He leaned forward. "I've said my share, hoss. Now it's your turn."

I grunted and nodded acknowledgement, then paused before I began. "Out of curiosity," I asked. "And I do want to know, sir, really. You know that the kid was heavily involved. So why come to me rather than Albus Dumbledore or one of his staff? Someone who knows Thor, who taught him when he was mortal, and teaches his kid, I mean."

Ebenezar looked sour. "The staff aren't saying a thing," he said. "Not even that Snape fella, and he's usually not short of something to say about Thor and his boy, usually bad." He scowled. "Dumbledore, meanwhile, is even less open than he used to be," he added.

I raised an eyebrow, and Ebenezar's scowled deepened.

"He sent a letter, too," he said.

"'Dear Arthur.

As I am regrettably detained by prior engagements, this missive will have to serve as my answer. As Headmaster of Hogwarts School, I am, of course, privileged to have a certain insight into the private lives of my students and my parents. However, I must regrettably remind you that I am also obliged to respect their privacy and keep their confidences.

If I come across a matter that I deem to fall under your purview, then I will, of course, immediately inform you, as I did on my appointment of my new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, whose skills lie on the border between my skills and your own. Until that time, unfortunately I have little else to inform you of. If you wish for me to provide you with the contact details for Mister Odinson, then I would be delighted to put you in touch.

Regards,

Albus."

The scowl cracked slightly, revealing a hint of amusement.

"'P.S. I almost forgot. There was, in fact, something rather important that I wished to tell you: I have finally found the recipe for the eel pie that you so enjoyed last time you visited. The hint of garlic is, I believe, the secret. You will find it attached. Enjoy!'"

I nearly spat out a mouthful of beer. As it was, I managed to swallow it before I committed the grievous sin of wasting the ambrosia that is Mac's beer, then burst into appreciative laughter. It was quite possibly the politest and funniest way of telling someone to fuck off that I'd ever heard. The fact that the recipient was the Merlin, a man so conscious of his own dignity that I could well imagine him worriedly standing in front of a mirror before a meeting in his Gandalf lite robes and saying, 'Does my butt like fat in this?', made it that much better.

Ebenezar's own lips were twitching and he let out a reluctant chuckle.

"I'm guessing the Merlin didn't like that," I said, once I'd calmed down.

"I thought he was about to have a stroke," Ebenezar agreed, smiling slightly. "Especially since the letter read itself. Aloud." His lips twitched again. "And started listing ingredients for eel pie."

I might have let out a small giggle. Then, I sobered up. Ebenezar was here to talk about what had happened, which inevitably meant discussing the Dark Phoenix.

"That's why we're talking to you, Hoss," Ebenezar said. "No one else who knows anything will talk."

I sighed. "Fine," I said. "But not here. And I'll only talk to the Senior Council – if I see Morgan anywhere near this, I'm not saying a thing. Also, I don't want him anywhere near the kid."

"Hoss," Ebenezar said warningly. "The Merlin won't like that."

I folded my arms and glared back. "And I can't find the words to tell you how little I care, sir," I said.

Ebenezar sighed. "I know," he said, with strained patience. "My point, boy, is that while he'll probably agree with limiting it to the Senior Council, he won't respond well to being ordered around by a buck-shee young wizard. Especially not you."

I glowered at him, then grimaced, letting some of my anger and truculence fall away. "Fine," I said. "Recommend it to him. Put it however you have to so that it turns out that way, because believe you me, sir, if this information gets into the wrong hands, he'll have a lot more to worry about than me."

Ebenezar eyed me. He was one of the few people who could look me in the eye without worrying about a Soulgaze, and knew me better than almost anyone. He could read what my eyes were saying. He nodded slowly. "I'll bear that in mind, hoss," he said, then gave me a pointed look. "Speaking of mutants and your associations with the Avengers… what are you up to with Wanda Maximoff?"

I opened my mouth, then hesitated, thinking before I spoke – I know. Shocking, isn't it? Had to happen sometime, though, I suppose.

"Is that Ebenezar asking," I asked carefully. "Or Wizard McCoy?"

"Oh hoss," Ebenezar sighed. "What have you got yourself into now?" He shook his head. "That woman is dangerous."

"So am I," I said. "So are you. So's just about any wizard worth their salt, and plenty of people without a lick of magic."

"Neither of us is damn near to a walking, talking violation of the Seventh Law," Ebenezar said.

"No, you're just a walking, talking violation of all of them," I snapped.

Ebenezar went red with anger. I met his gaze unflinchingly, and for a moment, the air was heavy with pulsing, dangerous power. The rest of Mac's clientele, all of whom recognised me, and most of whom recognised a heavyweight wizard in Ebenezar, began to scuttle towards the door. Mac himself was already halfway towards us, and arrived in moments, raising an eyebrow.

"Problem?" he asked.

Mac is a man of few syllables.

There was another dangerous moment, then Ebenezar sighed. "No, no," he said. "Another two beers?"

Mac looked from him to me, and back again, before nodding and going to get some more beer.

"This little meet-up isn't going quite as I hoped," Ebenezar said eventually, staring at his beer. It was clear that he didn't mean the intelligence gathering part of it.

"Nor me," I said after a moment, contemplating my own bottle. Then a smile tugged at my lips. "We've had worse, though."

Ebenezar let out a rough bark of laughter. "Aye, laddie, haven't we just," he said, and as if on cue, the two of us relaxed, the tension draining away. "I suppose I had that one coming," he remarked after another few moments.

I said nothing.

"You and her…" he began.

"We're seeing each other," I said, then added, as Ebenezar nodded resignedly. "And I'm her apprentice."

Ebenezar choked on nothing, and stared at me wide-eyed.

"No, I'm not joking," I said. "Apparently, Strange was feeling a bit mortal a few months ago and decided that Wanda should take an apprentice." I shrugged. "Apparently, I was at the top of the short list. Dating was kind of an after-thought." I folded my arms. "And before you say anything, I know about her history with Chthon, and I've met her dad. Twice."

Ebenezar's eyes didn't look like they could go any wider, but they certainly gave it a good go.

"Hoss," he said, in a strangled voice.

"Magneto's not that bad once you get to know him," I said, shrugging. "Terrifying, sure, but friendly enough."

Ebenezar sighed again. He'd been doing that a lot today – though not without reason, I had to admit. "Hoss," he said tiredly. "You don't know what you've done."

I looked puzzled.

"Doctor Strange picked you out for a reason," Ebenezar said. "And it wasn't just about your skills. Yes, you're the most powerful and talented wandless practitioner of your generation. Yes, you've got a combat record that puts Wardens with centuries under their belt in the shade. But you aren't the only talented and powerful young wizard out there with some combat experience. There are plenty of Wanded and Wandless practitioners out there – not all of the latter on the Council, either – who would fit the bill."

"Then why?" I asked, eyebrow raised.

"Part of it, I'd imagine, is that you're far more familiar than most with the temptations of dark magic," Ebenezar said. He shook his head. "I won't say you're not qualified, because you are, you more than are. But there's more to it than that."

"Like what?" I asked.

"There's bad blood between Strange and the Council," Ebenezar said.

"The thing with Wanda?" I asked. "I already know about that."

"No. That's not even close to the start of it. This bit of bad blood that goes back a long time, long before either you or Ms Maximoff was born." He snorted. "Hell, it was around even before I was born."

"Why?" I asked, genuinely puzzled.

"Strange isn't a team player," Ebenezar said. "He never has been."

"Gee," I said. "What a shocker. What a crime."

"Don't be childish," Ebenezar said quietly, and I felt a hot flush of shame and embarrassment. "All Wizards have their secrets. But Strange has more than any I've known or heard of, and he got them by violating the Sixth Law time and time again – it's one of the things he's famous for." He grunted. "Now, granted, that one's a Law not so much because it's intrinsically dark magic, but because the side-effects if someone screws up while time travelling can be more horrific than any of the other Laws. Except for the Seventh, of course. Not many see much of that." He gave a thin smile. "Though you've probably seen as much of that as any Wizard on the Council."

I nodded. Chthon, aside from being an Elder God and a gigantic back of dicks, was what was called an Outsider – that is to say, he was from outside this universe, living in the space between realities. He wasn't native to it, technically speaking, having been banished long ago by his siblings, but he'd adjusted well enough. And as he'd demonstrated, a mere fragment of his power acting through someone was like a weight on thin ice – as it pressed harder and harder against our reality, pushing through, more and more cracks appeared. Eventually, it would break through entirely and all that ice would shatter into fragments. In the meantime, it could duel the most powerful of Earth's Skyfathers to a draw, set reality to randomise, and cause the steady collapse of all known borders of time and space. If he'd been on Earth much longer before he was banished, then everything that was, had been, or could be, just… wouldn't. It would all be gone.

"The Sorcerer Supreme has a certain latitude with the Laws, as do their apprentices," Ebenezar said. "The latter in particular has been a problem in the past – some of history's worst Warlocks are ex-Apprentices gone to the bad. But Strange takes it to a whole new level. He meddles with history and, nearly as bad, he meddles with not just our world, but the mortal one as well. You probably think that the White Council doesn't step in during mortal political disputes because it doesn't care."

"The thought had crossed my mind," I remarked.

"Well, it's not true," Ebenezar said forcefully. "I can see why you would: your mother thought the same thing."

"She did?" I asked, surprised.

"Oh yes," Ebenezar said, and smiled slightly. "You're so much like her, hoss. She liked to point out the loopholes, the grey areas in the Laws, the way that Wizards could abuse mortals without breaking the Laws and the Council wouldn't lift a finger." The smile widened. "Believe me, boy, the Merlin and his faction find you irritating, but it's nothing to how infuriating they found your mother." His smile faded. "Then, she started dabbling in black magic. Took up with the likes of Raith."

"What, and you think that one leads to the other?" I demanded. "Question the Council and the status quo and go bad?"

"No," Ebenezar said. "God knows the Council needs questioning – in private, mind. Keeps 'em honest, or as honest as they'll get. But if you want to overturn the status quo in the Council, and you can't do it from inside…"

"Then you're going to turn to the Council's enemies," I said quietly. It made sense.

"Your mother was a brilliant woman," Ebenezar said. "Brilliant, passionate, and infuriating and infuriated in equal measure. She wanted the Laws of Magic to focus on justice. I can understand the point. But where does it stop? You overturn a dictator, fine. There are a lot of Wizards on the Council who remember what the United States did to the Natives, what the European powers did to Africa, Asia, and South America, what Japan did to much of Asia, and countless other atrocities. Don't they deserve justice? Don't you think that a lot of people might object to the US for its past crimes and current foolishness? What would you do if the White Council turned against the US? Would you stand with it?"

"Well, no," I said, blinking. "I mean, I'm American. All my friends, all my stuff, they're here."

"Exactly," Ebenezar said bluntly. "What do you think that leads to?"

"Civil war," I said quietly. "The Council falls apart."

"Or?" Ebenezar asked, prompting me. "How would the Council bring all these nations to heel?"

"By seeking power," I said promptly, like I was a student again.

Ebenezar nodded. "The Laws stand as written because they do one thing above all," he said. "Restrict power. The Wanded Statute of Secrecy, and other laws, they do the same thing. More complex of course, because there's a lot more of 'em than there are Council members, and they have their own nations. But the point is the same: while a practitioner can do harm if they get creative with their magic, there's only so much harm they can do without breaking the Laws." He looked grim. "And Strange blows that all to pieces."

"How?" I asked. "I mean, I know he's been involved with the Avengers – a lot – and Wanda mentioned that he's been involved with SHIELD, but…"

"The Sorcerer Supreme is meant to be the guardian of reality, stopping those things that would slip through the gaps. They deal with the greater Demon-Lords; the dark Gods; the worst Warlocks, the Dark Lords and Ladies; and most of all, the Outsiders," Ebenezar said. "That's what they're given their powers for."

"They're meant to be all defence," I said, catching on. "Strange is different, he thinks that the best defence is a good offence."

Ebenezar nodded. "I've never seen any evidence that says that he neglects his protective duties," he said, a little grudgingly. "The same way that when it comes to things done, for the most part I've only heard good about Wanda Maximoff. She deals with the sort of things that need dealing with, and she's picked up on more than a few burgeoning talents, pointed them the Council's way. In her case, the main worries are about what she could do, what her father has shown himself capable of."

"I've seen him fight. Believe me, sir, I don't need any persuading that he's dangerous," I said, interrupting.

"It's not just his powers, hoss," Ebenezar said, but left it at that. "Worse, though, is what she could be. With her connection to Chthon – one she didn't ask for or deserve, I know – she's an ever present risk for use as his avatar on this plane. As it is, her powers can set reality on its ear without any help from him."

"Maybe that's why Strange took her in," I suggested. "To teach her how to defend herself and deal with it."

Ebenezar inclined his head. "Maybe," he said. "Probably, even – turn a potential threat into a great asset, that's Strange all over." He shook his head. "My point, hoss, is that Strange has powers that the Sorcerer Supreme was never meant to have, uses them and the ones that he is meant to have in ways that they were never meant to, meddling freely in the world on an unthinkably vast scale. He's collected more power than any one man was ever meant to have and he only managed that by steering clear of the Council, most all organisations of practitioners, anyone who might have stopped him." He looked at me. "And that's why you have no idea what you've gotten yourself into, boy. The Council will see you as Strange's pawn, will worry about what he intends for you, whether he's going to use you as a weapon against the Council – he's never made any bones about his dislike for it."

"Well, I'm not planning to be a weapon, if that helps," I ventured.

"I believe you," Ebenezar said simply. "But many won't. And even if they do, they'll say that that doesn't matter, that Strange arranges matters so neatly that you'll do what he plans without even knowing that you're doing it."

"I…" I began, then stopped and grimaced. I'd met Strange. I'd seen him at work. I had no way of knowing if those fears were wrong or not. Then something struck me. "If he's capable of manipulating someone like me that much, isn't he capable of manipulating the entire Council the same way?" I asked.

"That's the part they wouldn't like to consider," Ebenezar said. "Though they'd probably say that there's too many of them to manipulate all together."

I rolled my eyes at that and Ebenezar nodded.

"It's bullshit," he said bluntly. "But it helps them sleep at night." He leaned forward. "Now listen to me. When you go up in front of the Senior Council and tell them that you're Maximoff's new Apprentice, and tell them what you saw, what you know… bear what I've told you in mind, Hoss. Fear can make people do some damn fool things."

"Like serve me up on a platter for the Reds?" I suggested sourly.

"Aye," Ebenezar said. "Very much like."

I sighed. "Well if they're going to panic about me being Wanda's apprentice, I don't even want to think about how they're going to react to what I've got to tell them," I said.

And I didn't. I'd been wary of it before. Now, I was positively dreading it.

OoOoO

As it was, when that debrief final took place in one of the White Council's older and stonier meeting rooms at the headquarters under Edinburgh, the Senior Council took my explanation of events in stony silence.

"So," LaFortier said – in English. All the Senior Council spoke it, and it was begrudgingly agreed that it would save time if Ebenezar didn't have to translate for me. "Tell me, Wizard Dresden. Why did you not think to involve the Council in the search for the boy?"

"I brought up the subject early on," I said. "Loki said that he'd prefer not bringing someone else in, and Wanda concurred. Since the two of them and Albus Dumbledore were already involved, plus Charles Xavier, and all the resources Asgard could bring to bear, I figured that they had their bases covered."

"Do you know why he would not have wished for Council involvement, Wizard Dresden?" the Merlin asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe they thought that a Warden might get a little excited and have an accident with their sword." I looked him in the eye, breaking contact just as a Soulgaze was about to begin. "I can't imagine where he'd have got that idea. I mean, it's not like a Warden would ever do anything like trying to goad someone who they'd rather have dead than alive into a fight so that they could claim self-defence… now would they?"

The Merlin was completely expressionless, but I could see a slight tightening of the muscles in his jaw. A couple of years ago, shortly after I'd started the war between the Council and the Red Court (short version, a Red Court noble with a grudge tried to kill me at a party, half-turned my girlfriend, and did it all in such a way as to mean that it didn't break the letter of supernatural law. I got angry and burnt her house down with her inside it), he'd tried a couple of methods of serving me up on a platter for the Reds, dead or alive, after they'd made that a condition of ceasing hostilities.

As it turned out, that was only because they didn't think they were quite ready for a war yet, but either way, the last of the Merlin's attempts had been to send Morgan, a senior Warden and my former parole officer, with whom I had enjoyed a long and fruitful mutual hatred, to provoke me into attacking him. Since Morgan is a great deal older, more experienced, and more or less as powerful as I am, if not more so, and I was angry and not thinking straight, he'd have killed me in pretty short order if I hadn't seen through it.

Suffice it to say, the Merlin didn't like being reminded of that.

"Yeah, if I had to guess, for some unaccountable reason, I don't think that any of them really thought that the White Council would be fair to a kid in a bad situation," I continued, mock-thoughtful. "Funny thing, that."

"Your point is made, Wizard Dresden," Ebenezar said, tone bland. But his expression carried a hint of warning: don't push it. "Do you have any closing remarks, before the Senior Council discusses this?"

I glanced up at the Merlin. The muscle in his jaw was twitching in earnest. "I do," I said. "All the things that went on proved a couple of things. First, if you go after Harry Thorson, you'll be pissing off the Avengers, Wanda Maximoff, SHIELD, Albus Dumbledore, Charles Xavier, Magneto, Asgard, Strange, and at least four of the Endless. And probably both Queens of Faerie, too, since they got invested in taking him back from the Red Room."

"That," Ancient Mai pointed out, with the swiftness of a bug collector impaling a new specimen. "Was before he embraced the power one of those Endless gave to him, which, if you inform us correctly, was only ever intended for protection, not to be used. The motivation of the Queens was most likely to be seen to be doing something after a Prince of Asgard was held and tortured on territory that both claim."

Ancient Mai is a very small and very old Chinese lady, whose hair is done up in a bun with jade combs, and looks like a Court extra from a movie set in Imperial China. She also scares the living daylights out of me.

"Which still leaves a lot of very powerful people," Wizard Liberty, a tall, regal looking black woman said. As far as I could grasp, she, Listens-To-Wind, and Ebenezar formed one faction of the Senior Council, while the Merlin, Ancient Mai, and LaFortier formed another. The Gatekeeper made up the seventh vote. He was the odd one out. A mysterious wizard who was tall enough to look down on me – and I can look down on some guys in the NBA – he had a metal false eye, a hood that usually covered his face, and an attendance record even worse than mine. This was because, according to Wanda, his job was very demanding – the Outer Gates, the borders of reality that I had previously thought merely metaphorical were, in fact, real physical objects, on the very far edges of the spirit world.

This meant that his main job was fighting Outsiders, things like Chthon (though, mercifully, orders of magnitude weaker), acting as a border guard against the horrors of the Outside. Wanda knew him quite well as a result, since their jobs overlapped a lot of the time; for the most part, she and Strange dealt with those things lucky or strong enough to slip through the cracks elsewhere.

He was present today, and true to form, hadn't spoken yet. Neither had Listens-To-Wind, mind you, but he mostly seemed attentive and ready to speak. The Gatekeeper, on the other hand, was unreadable, mostly because his face was cast in shadow by his hood.

"Wizard Liberty is right, Ancient Mai," Listens-To-Wind said. "We're already fighting a war, and we can't afford more enemies; enemies, might I remind you, who include among their number important allies against the vampires. If we try and push this, then we'll be in the same position that we were over Wanda Maximoff thirty years ago, but far worse. There'll be all the people who were lined up against us last time, and a good deal more besides."

"If the boy turns the planet to ash, then enemies will be the least of our worries," LaFortier retorted. "The Wanded communities will stand with us on this, as will the Queens of Faerie, and I believe that a number of Fury's superiors at SHIELD will be willing to overrule him. Even the vampires could be persuaded to make common cause with us on this, considering what happened to a vampire court the last time this Phoenix entity ran loose."

"Stand with you doing what?" I asked, and all of them turned to me, expressions mildly surprised, or somewhat affronted, that I had spoken up.

"Informing Asgard that we recommend Prince Harry Thorson stay in Asgard to recover from his experiences," Ancient Mai said.

"For how long?" I asked. "I'm asking because they'll ask me."

Ancient Mai's lips thinned. "Indefinitely," she said.

I snorted.

"Does something amuse you, Wizard Dresden?" the Merlin asked, voice icy cold.

"Nothing," I said. "Except the fact that that little recommendation has got to be backed up by a threat that you'll do something if they don't do what you ask, right? But what are you going to do? The only things you can do are things that'll make you more enemies; the ones you just admitted that you don't need. Also, keeping him in Asgard is a flawed strategy for three reasons."

"And what would those be?" the Merlin asked, voice cold and silken. I couldn't restrain a shiver as a cold feeling ran down my spine, and shook myself, before raising three fingers.

"First," I said, ticking off one finger. "Being on Earth, his friends down here, they keep him grounded." I ticked off a second. "Second," I said. "The power of the Phoenix is stored in an artefact that's in Asgard's most secure vaults, under their capitol. All you'll be doing is ensuring that he's right on top of it, night and day." I ticked off the last finger. "Third, I don't think you get the kind of power I'm talking about. There is no minimum safe distance. The last time a Phoenix host went rogue, it ate an entire galaxy. Here or in Asgard, if he goes Dark Phoenix again, then we are still screwed, and the first we'll know about it is when we're turning to ash. And can I make a point?"

"You have already made several, Wizard Dresden," LaFortier said, glaring down at me coldly, beady eyes staring out of deep sockets. "Each more insolent than the last."

"But not necessarily wrong, for all the tone of their delivery," Listens-To-Wind said mildly. "Wizard Dresden is the only Wizard of the Council who can claim to know Harry Thorson, or have a close association with the Avengers. While his attitude towards the Council could do with some improvement, his thoughts are well worth listening to."

LaFortier sneered, and was about to riposte, doubtless with something ridiculing my intelligence and/or judgement, when something unusual happened.

The Gatekeeper spoke.

"There have been two attempts to bind the Endless on Earth in recent history," he said. "In 1897, it was Destruction, the Phoenix, which was summoned. She destroyed those who summoned her, sparing only the host she was summoned into. Dream, Morpheus, was summoned in 1913. He spent much of the 20th century in captivity, and on his escape, trapped the son of his summoner, his jailer for much of that time, in a curse of eternal waking, never quite breaking free of his nightmares. Both were summoned with rituals derived from the Darkhold. Both responded ruthlessly to attempts to bind and control them, attempts which ultimately failed." He looked around at his colleagues. "There may well be magics that can successfully bind one of the Endless, to exorcise their power – if Wizard Dresden is correct, then all that remains within the boy are those embers that were intended for his protection in the first place. But does any among us know those magics? No. Of course not. And as for attempting to destroy him outright…" His gaze swung to me, both eyes, dark human and pale metal, glittering.

"That doesn't work," I chipped in. "He's been hit by the Killing Curse, attacked by a full grown dark wizard, bitten by a basilisk, stabbed through the heart, possessed by an Elder God, had half his body blasted off by Magneto, been hit by a gigantic lightning bolt by Magneto, infected by some kind of nanotech virus… the moment it looks like he's in critical condition, the Phoenix steps in, one way or another. Sometimes, it's by sending a phoenix – the bird – to cry on the wound or something like that. And sometimes, it's by possessing him and obliterating everything that even looks like threatening him. Which is leaving aside the fact that even when he wasn't in charge, his body was capable of going ten rounds with Magneto, and when he was in charge, he took on a psychic who was older, more powerful, and one hell of a lot more skilled than he was, and kept her at arms length for long enough for the Avengers to home in on the disruption. And a couple of months ago, I personally witnessed him kick Chthon out of his head. He had help that time, sure, but still: he takes a licking and he keeps on ticking."

"What are you saying, Wizard Dresden?" The Merlin asked.

"I'm saying, honoured Merlin," I said. "That you could take him. But it wouldn't be easy, and when you did, even if he didn't reach for the Phoenix on his own, because he's a kid and panicking, She'd step in all by Herself, because She's his freaking mom. Best case scenario, you've got Asgard and a whole bunch of other powerful people mad at you. Less bad scenario, you recreate the exact problem you're trying to avoid. Worst case scenario, you've got one of the Endless mad and out to make your life hell because you hurt her little boy. So leave him be. Let the freaking sleeping dragon lie. And don't conveniently forget to mention some monster gearing up to go after him if you hear about it in the hope that they'll take each other out or something like that." I paused, and though I hated to do it, decided to throw them a bone. "And if you do that, well… the kid's crazy powerful now, and he's only getting stronger. The Phoenix doesn't like vampires, we know that much, he's really freaking good with fire, and according to Thor, vampire hunting is considered a fun day out in Asgard – in short, I'm pretty sure that the kid isn't going to be a fan of the vamps. One way or another, if you, if we, leave him be now, let him get his head straight, then we might have a really powerful ally against the vampires a few years down the line."

"An impassioned argument, Wizard Dresden," LaFortier said. "But if I may ask one question before the Senior Council votes on the matter of Harry Thorson… would you not say that your testimony is potentially biased?"

"Biased how?" I asked.

"Harry Thorson's godmother is Wanda Maximoff, correct?" LaFortier said.

"Yeah," I said. "So what?"

"You are in a relationship with her, are you not?"

"Point of order," Liberty said. "Wizard Dresden's private life is not relevant to this discussion."

"Point of order," Ancient Mai said emotionlessly. "Since he is the Council's only witness to events, and apparently its sole source of advice, it is potentially relevant."

I ground my teeth. "Yes, I am," I said.

"What form does that relationship take?" LaFortier asked.

"We go on dates. We have fun. And in between romantic nights at home in-front of the fire, she teaches me magic as her apprentice," I snapped. None of the Senior Council looked surprised, which told me that Ebenezar had decided that it was best to tell them before I… did something like this, I suppose. "And my testimony in the kid's favour isn't based or conditional on us dating or her teaching. It's based on common sense and common decency, you should try them sometime."

LaFortier went white with anger, compounding his resemblance to a recently reanimated corpse.

"Wizard Dresden," the Merlin said, voice warning. I grudgingly accept your point, it said. But I don't like you and if you get smart with me one more time, I will make your life a misery. "You have been invited to speak in front of this Council, not given a license to exercise your capacity for insolence. Wizard LaFortier's line of questioning was relevant and your reply was out of order. You will apologise."

I ground my teeth again, but at a slight nod from Ebenezar, I gritted out an apology.

"And," I added. "I swear by my power that everything I have said is, to the best of my knowledge, true." I glowered at LaFortier, who glared back. Of the Merlin's faction on the Council, he'd always liked me the least, apparently being convinced that I was a threat to the Council. Being apprenticed to/dating the daughter of Magneto and heir apparent to Doctor Strange, two of the men who the Council liked least – and in the case of Strange, outright feared – had probably only confirmed that suspicion in his eyes. "Is that sufficient?"

"It is," the Merlin said firmly. "Thank you, Wizard Dresden. I believe that Captain Luccio would like your assessment of the threat posed by the newest forms of mortal weaponry, which you have unique experience with."

Taking this blatant dismissal for what it was, I left the room, hoping that the Council wouldn't do anything stupid.

OoOoO

As it was, I needn't have worried.

I underwent two hours of extensive debriefing by Captain Luccio, a leathery Italian woman with iron grey hair, the sinewy build of a blacksmith, and enough scars from centuries of heavy combat experience against the Council's many enemies to prove that she'd earned her rank in battle and make me disposed to respect her.

That respect grew somewhat, as she proved that unlike most of the Council, she was living in this century, not the last, or even the one before that, asking me the sort of brisk, no-nonsense questions I'd expect from someone like Coulson or another senior SHIELD Agent. As we spoke, she made copious notes in what looked like a form of shorthand.

After she was done, she stood up and nodded to me, the sort of nod that one would accord a junior but respected colleague, which left me staring in shock for a second before I returned it. The attitude I had come to expect from Senior Wardens was less 'respected colleague', more 'ticking time-bomb'.

"Thank you, Wizard Dresden, that was very helpful," she said, English fluent and inflected with her native Italian. "Intelligence reports from the Venatori or SHIELD are all very well, but they are no substitute for a seasoned combat Wizard's experience on how they respond to magic."

"'Seasoned combat wizard'?" I asked, eyebrow raised.

She smiled wryly. "Dresden, you have seen more combat than many wizards a century older than you, and more than a few of my Wardens," she said. "If you did not have such a poor relationship with the Council as whole, then I would offer you a job. You are more than qualified."

"Uh, no offence, but hell no!" I said. "I'd rather," I began, then paused. The following words, 'french-kiss a Red Court vampire' probably wouldn't go down well with the Captain of the Wardens. I coughed. "I mean, I don't think it would work."

Luccio looked amused at my unconvincing verbal gear-shift and nodded. "I happen to agree with you," she said. "You have had bad experiences in the past, and they have soured you. But we are not your enemy, Dresden."

I glanced back towards the meeting room. "Please explain that to LaFortier," I said. "And Ancient Mai. And the Merlin. And above all, freaking Morgan."

"They think you are dangerous," Luccio said. "And that much is true. They believe that you are a threat to the Council, but I do not."

"You… don't?" I said, surprised. "I was under the impression that all the senior Wardens thought I was the next best thing to Darth Vader."

"Many do," Luccio said. "Even most. But not all." Her lips twitched. "And the younger Wardens and many of the other Wizards of your generation think that you are… cool."

Oh, that's all I needed, to be idolised by a bunch of baby Wardens. "Great," I said aloud. "Morgan probably thinks that I'm corrupting the youth."

"Quite likely," Luccio agreed. "And don't rule us out yet, Dresden. There may yet be a career for you as a Warden. I know that you have made a career fighting dark creatures. As a Warden, you would have the chance to hone your skills and work with others to do so more efficiently."

I stared at the brisk, tough, and frankly, likeable woman, who'd treated me with more decency than anyone on the Council other than Ebenezar and his cronies. Then, my imagination superimposed the image that had haunted my nightmares throughout my early adulthood, one that still occasionally came back to haunt me in the early hours of the morning: an implacable shadowy grey-cloaked figure wielding an ice-bright razor-sharp sword, coming for my head.

I closed my eyes briefly and fought down an instinctive shiver. "Some bad experiences," I said. "Stick with you."

Luccio met my gaze, looking at me in a way that seemed uncomfortably like she was able to see right through me, then nodded slowly. "I understand," she said.

I nodded. "And you may do good things, Captain, but you do bad ones too," I said. "You kill children. Maybe they're Warlocks, maybe they're beyond the point of no return, maybe it's a necessary evil… but they're still children. And necessary or not, it's still an evil."

"You think that Morgan enjoys what he does?" Luccio asked, tone quiet but intense. "That I enjoyed it, when I was in his place?"

I looked back at her, and got many things – one of them a sense that this woman could quite comfortably kick my ass. "I could believe that Morgan did," I said. "You? I don't know you, Captain. That said, you don't seem like the type."

"But Morgan does," Luccio said.

"He spent half a decade following me around, waiting for the slightest excuse to cut my head off," I said flatly. "He dragged me out of a burning house, yeah, but considering how he's behaved since, I'm almost inclined to think that was only because he wants the pleasure of killing me himself. So yeah, I can believe it." I met her gaze briefly. "And even if you didn't enjoy it, Captain, even if you hated every moment of it, you still did it. I can't be a part of something like that."

"Do you think that the Avengers do not do similar things?" she asked, in tones of genuine inquiry.

"Murder people?" I asked. "I'm sure a few of them do. But do they kill kids? No. Hell no. That's a line, Captain, and it's one that even the Winter Soldier didn't cross. And it's not one that I'm going to cross, either."

Luccio stared at me hard for a long time, then nodded. "You are sincere in your convictions," she said. "I can respect that. But beware, Dresden: the more you get drawn into the orbit of the likes of Stephen Strange, Loki, and the Black Widow, the more you will find yourself questioning where those lines are, and which ones you are willing to cross." She stood up. "Thank you again for your assessments: with the taste of the Red Court in particular for mortal weaponry, this information can mean the difference between life and death for many Wizards."

I'm not often short of words, but this time was one of them, so instead, I just returned her nod, a little deeper. Thankfully, not a moment later, a trainee Warden knocked on the door and announced that the Senior Council would like to speak to me, having made their decision: they were, grudgingly, going with a strategy of live and let live.

Though frankly, after the conversation I'd just had, it didn't leave me as relieved as it should. After all, while I'd saved one kid who'd been in a bad place from having the sharp sword of the White Council's justice coming after him, he'd been well-enough protected anyway. And there were plenty of others without that protection who wouldn't be half so lucky.

OoOoO

Harry, meanwhile, was blissfully unaware of this and was talking a walk. Not alone, mind you. This was partly because Jesus' words about valuing friends and not pushing them away rang in his ears, and partly because various friends and family wouldn't let him go anywhere alone.

While Carol, who'd previously been limpet like in her attachment to him, had been nigh literally dragged away to go back to school (Harry, for his part, was having the relevant homework sent to him and being tutored by his father, uncle, and godmother, to ensure that as and when he did go back to Hogwarts, he wasn't behind), she had ensured that Uhtred took her place.

While less snuggling was involved, Uhtred was taking that directive and his oath as Harry's Sworn Sword incredibly seriously, having felt that he had failed Harry by not being there – this in spite of the fact that Harry had irritably pointed out, then briefly demonstrated by making him fall asleep for five minutes, before forcibly waking him up, he wouldn't have been able to do much against Essex, let alone Maddie. Uhtred had set his jaw and prepared to argue until Diana defused the situation.

"Harry, Uhtred is your friend. He cares about you. Additionally, he has a sworn duty to you, whether you like it or not," she said. "Uhtred, Harry is not a child and needs space to breathe. Additionally, he is correct – against a powerful mortal psychic, you would not have been much help even if you had been there, and would likely have suffered in much the same way that he did. And you could not have known that there would have been danger, for even those far older and wiser than you did not foresee what would happen. Now, I would much prefer it if the two of you behaved as young adults, rather than snapping wolves."

Freki and Geri, now present once more, looked up, letting out slightly offended whines.

"My apologies," Diana said, addressing them. "You two are, of course, far better behaved."

Both wolves, mollified, settled down. While they followed Harry around now that he was in Asgard again, much of their attention was occupied by the fact that, after an incident with a couple of the bitches in the royal hunting pack, they now had cubs/puppies (the terminology was still up for debate). Whatever they were referred to as, the meanderings of these small, adorable bundles of fluff provided their fathers with much to keep an eye out for, and much raising of spirits for everyone else – especially as they had been quickly toilet trained.

Harry chuckled as one of the puppies nosed at his ankles, looking up at him with hopeful expression that telegraphed a desire for treats and/or attention, and gave it a scratch behind the ears. The puppies were coming to an age where they would be old enough to find owners of their own. One boisterous little male had adopted Uhtred, while a graceful young female had seemed to similarly attach herself to Diana – though most of them seemed inclined to attach themselves to Diana.

Harry, meanwhile, didn't especially feel inclined to own a dog, or even a wolf-dog – he already had an owl, Hedwig, who had fussed over him after he'd got home, and then spent the next couple of weeks hopefully presenting him with dead mice in an attempt to speed up his recovery. The puppies seemed to notice this, so didn't really latch onto him.

One, however, had been taken home by Carol – not for her. She already had a rather grumpy cat called Chewie. No, it was for her uncle.

OoOoO

"Well," O'Neill said slowly, staring at the large fluffy thing bouncing around his feet. He was standing on his own two feet again, having begrudgingly decided to have the Serum in his DNA activated. This didn't change much, other than remove a few lines and add a little muscle, but the differences went far beyond skin-deep. "I have always wanted a dog."

"I know, right?" Carol said, smiling winningly. "And aren't I such a good niece for getting you one?"

"It's not Christmas or my birthday," O'Neill said, tone unchanged. "It's not even Thanksgiving."

"Make that amazing niece."

"Uh-huh. Now, where did this puppy come from?" O'Neill said.

Carol looked shifty.

"And how old is it?"

Carol looked even shiftier.

"Carol Susan Jane Danvers..."

"Agh, not the full name," Carol said, making a face. "He's eight weeks old."

O'Neill stared at the puppy. It was up to his knees. "Eight weeks."

"Yup."

"What kind of dog are we talking here?"

"I'm not sure if this is exactly a breed," Carol said. "But it's half Asgardian hunting hound, half..." She coughed. "Wolf."

"Wolf."

"Either Freki or Geri," Carol said. "They're Odin's wolves, and one night, they and a few of the female dogs got a little frisky."

O'Neill gave her a flat look. "Half wolf. Half Asgardian wolf," he said.

"Yeah."

"How am I going to play fetch with something like that?" O'Neill asked. "Uproot a tree and get a tank to drag it along behind?"

"On the plus side, you'll never have to worry about intruders again."

"Yes, Carol, because it would eat them."

"He wouldn't," Carol said. "Well. Not whole, anyway."

O'Neill sighed. "Look, Carol," he began.

"They're really loyal, and Freki and Geri, they're total softies," Carol said hurriedly. "He won't be any trouble and like you said, you've always wanted a dog."

"Carol, if he runs off, I will be dragged along behind like the cans on a wedding car," O'Neill said. "I try to take a stick from him, he pulls back, I lose an arm. I do not want to be the cans on a wedding car. I do not want to lose an arm."

"That's why I brought this," Carol said, producing a collar, grabbing the puppy. "Its magic," she continued, trying to put the collar on the squirming fuzzball. "Really neat magic: it restricts his strength unless you're in danger."

"I've seen Freki and Geri, you've shown me pictures," O'Neill said. "Superpowers or no superpowers, they could still swallow most dogs whole."

"Well, you can teach him not to," Carol said.

"I... oh, look, give it here," O'Neill said, taking the puppy with a grunt of effort and grabbing it by the scruff of the neck. "Behave," he said sternly. The puppy stopped, if only because it was staring, fascinated, at him. "Collar," O'Neill said, without looking away. Carol handed it over, and, puppy under arm, he attached the collar. The puppy let out a happy bark.

"So, you want to keep him?" Carol asked.

"I'm thinking about it."

"He's bonded with you," Carol said in a sing song voice. "Look at the look on his cute little face."

"I've seen that look on your cute little face, it never stopped me telling you that you couldn't have more ice cream," O'Neill said, but he wasn't looking at her.

Carol smirked and played her trump card. "That hot Major you've been working with, Major Carter. I hear that she likes dogs," she said.

"She does?" O'Neill asked, surprised, then glowered at his smirking niece. "Fine," he said. "I'll take him. If you stop looking so smug."

"I'm just happy for you, uncle Jack," Carol said, the picture of innocence.

"And I'm the Queen of Sheba," O'Neill muttered, and looked the dog over. "Part wolf, huh?"

"Yup."

"That dog, in Call of the Wild... Buck. He was part wolf, right?"

"I think so," Carol said suspiciously, then her eyes widened. "Oh, you're not thinking..."

O'Neill grinned. "Bucky it is."

"Grandpa Steve is going to have a fit, you know that."

"The look on his face will be worth all the Christmas presents I never got," O'Neill said. "Now, I think I'd better go get a leash. And stop it with the smugness."