Chapter 2: Glass and Ozone
The water in the deep marble tub was milky and warm, scented with jasmine and something else—a hint of bergamot, maybe, or magic. Lisa floated in it, boneless, her head resting against the tile edge. Her body felt like a dishcloth wrung out and left to dry. Wanda sat on a stool beside the tub, sleeves rolled up, her auburn hair tied in a loose knot. The Scarlet Witch, washing the sweat and sex from a pop star.
Her hands were gentle. A soft cloth passed over Lisa’s shoulder, down her arm. The tenderness was a shock. It felt more intimate than anything that had happened against the window or on the counter. That had been a collision. This was an examination.
Wanda’s fingers trailed over the faint, darkening marks on Lisa’s hips. Her touch was feather-light, but Lisa flinched.
“Does it hurt?” Wanda asked, her voice low, stripped of its commanding edge.
“No,” Lisa whispered. “They’re just… there.”
“I left them.” Wanda didn’t say it with pride, or apology. It was a statement of fact, tinged with a quiet fascination. “I broke you open.” She rinsed the cloth, wringing it out. The warm water trickled over Lisa’s collarbone. “Now let me put you back together.”
She moved the cloth over Lisa’s stomach, down the flat plane, circling her navel. Lisa’s breath hitched. Her eyes, half-closed, watched Wanda’s face. The woman was a study in concentration, her green eyes fixed on her task as if it were a sacred ritual. The humming in the air was back, but it was different—a low, soothing frequency that vibrated in the water, seeping into Lisa’s muscles, loosening the last knots of tension.
“Why?” The word left Lisa’s mouth before she could stop it.
Wanda didn’t look up. “Why what?”
“This.” Lisa gestured weakly, a slosh of water. “The… aftercare. You could have vanished. Again.”
“I could have.” Wanda’s hand stilled on Lisa’s thigh. “I considered it.” She finally met Lisa’s gaze. The sorrow was back, bottomless and tired. “But you called to me. Not with your mind. With your… aftermath. The silence after the storm in you. It’s loud to someone who listens for broken things.”
Lisa looked away, at the steam rising in curls. “I’m not broken.”
“Aren’t you?” Wanda’s voice was terribly soft. “The brightest stars often are. Fusing themselves apart to shine.” She resumed washing, the cloth moving between Lisa’s legs now, a clinical, thorough touch that made Lisa’s stomach clench. It wasn’t arousing. It was possessive in a new way. It said, I know every part of this. I own the damage and the repair.
Lisa let her head fall back, exposing her throat. She felt stripped cleaner than the water could ever achieve. “What are you?”
Wanda was silent for a long moment. The only sound was the drip of the tap and the distant hum of Seoul. “Lonely,” she said finally. The word hung in the steam. “And powerful. It’s a terrible combination. It makes you do terrible, beautiful things.”
She lifted Lisa’s hand from the water, inspecting the short, practical nails. She washed each finger with meticulous care. “You should be afraid of me.”
“I am,” Lisa admitted, watching her. “It just… doesn’t seem to matter.”
A ghost of a smile touched Wanda’s lips. “That’s the most dangerous part.”
When the water began to cool, Wanda stood. She didn’t reach for a towel. With a faint crimson shimmer in the air, the water slid from Lisa’s skin like a second shedding, leaving her perfectly dry and warm. She was lifted, not by telekinesis but by Wanda’s actual arms, slipping under her knees and back. Wanda carried her into the bedroom as if she weighed nothing. Lisa, the world-class dancer used to being lifted by powerful male backups, had never felt so utterly cradled.
She was laid on the cool, high-thread-count sheets. The room was dark, only the city’s glow painting faint stripes across the bed. Wanda stood beside it, looking down at her. The distance felt infinite.
“You should sleep,” Wanda said.
“You’ll be gone when I wake up.” It wasn’t a question.
“Probably.”
A spike of something—panic, defiance—shot through Lisa’s exhaustion. “No.”
Wanda tilted her head.
Lisa pushed herself up on her elbows. The sheet pooled at her waist. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to fuck me into another dimension and then tuck me in and disappear. That’s not how this works.”
“How does this work, Lisa?” Wanda’s voice held a genuine curiosity, edged with warning.
“I don’t know!” Lisa’s voice cracked. “But you’re here now. And I’m not asleep.”
The air tightened. The compassionate caretaker vanished, replaced by the woman whose gaze could fracture reality. The shift was instantaneous, thrilling. “What do you want, then?” Wanda’s tone dropped, becoming the one that made Lisa’s core clench. “More pain? More pleasure? They’re the same coin to you right now, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” Lisa hissed. She threw the sheet off completely, lying bare on the bed. “You saw what’s inside me. That hungry thing. You pulled it out. It’s yours now. So deal with it.”
Wanda’s eyes bled to crimson. She didn’t move, but the pressure returned—not on Lisa’s body, but on the room itself. The lights in the hotel bathroom flickered and died. The digital clock by the bed went dark. The only illumination was the bloody glow in Wanda’s eyes and the sodium-vapor streetlight from outside.
“On your knees,” Wanda said. The command was soft, absolute.
Lisa scrambled, turning over, rising to her knees at the edge of the mattress. The sheets were cool under her shins. She faced the dark room, her back to Wanda. Her heart hammered a frantic tattoo against her ribs. This was different. She couldn’t see her. She could only feel the atmosphere thickening behind her, charged with a static that raised the hair on her arms and nape.
She heard the rustle of fabric. The slip dress pooling on the floor. Then, nothing.
A touch, not of flesh, but of pure, telekinetic force, smoothed down the curve of her spine. It was a lover’s caress made out of invisible energy. It dipped into the small of her back. Lisa shuddered, a moan escaping her.
“You want me to deal with it?” Wanda’s voice came from directly behind her ear, though Lisa knew she was still across the room. The magic carried it. “You want my ownership?”
“Yes,” Lisa breathed, pushing her ass back into the empty air, a wanton, begging gesture.
The telekinetic touch became a grip, spreading her cheeks apart. Cool air hit her most private place. She was exposed, held open, completely vulnerable to the dark room and the witch’s gaze.
“Such a pretty, hungry little hole,” Wanda murmured, and this time her voice was everywhere, inside Lisa’s skull. “Gaping for me. Empty again so soon.”
Lisa whimpered, her face burning with shameful arousal. She was right—the tenderness had been a lie, or a pause. This was the truth. This debasing, magical inspection.
“Please, Wanda.”
“Please what? Name it. Be crude. Be the filthy thing I know you are.”
“Fuck my ass,” Lisa gasped, the words tearing from her, raw and true. “I want to feel it there. I want you to ruin me there.”
A beat of stunned silence. Then a low, shuddering breath that seemed to come from the walls themselves. “You are full of surprises.”
The pressure at her entrance was different. Smaller, somehow more precise. The head of Wanda’s conjuration pressed against her tight ring of muscle, slick with something that wasn’t quite lube—it was warm and tingling, a magical ease. The touch was inexorable.
“Breathe out,” Wanda instructed, her real voice now close, her body finally pressing against Lisa’s back, skin to skin.
Lisa exhaled, and Wanda pushed in.
The burn was blinding, a white-hot spear of pure sensation. Lisa screamed into the mattress, her fists clutching the sheets. It was an invasion more profound than anything before. It felt like being turned inside out. Wanda didn’t stop. She fed the impossible length into Lisa with a slow, relentless patience, her body molded to Lisa’s back, her breath hot on Lisa’s shoulder.
“Oh, god… oh, fuck…” Lisa chanted, tears leaking from her eyes. The pain was astronomical, a solid line of fire. But beneath it, blooming like a poisonous flower, was a pleasure so deep it seemed to originate in her soul. She was filled beyond capacity, stretched to a breathtaking limit.
Wanda was still, fully sheathed, letting Lisa adjust. Her hands came around, one cupping Lisa’s breast, thumb rubbing a frantic circle on her nipple, the other sliding down her stomach, through her slickness, to find her clit. “This is what you wanted,” she whispered, her voice strained with her own restraint. “To be truly ruined. To be taken in a way no one else can.”
She began to move. The drag was exquisite, horrible perfection. Each withdrawal was a tease of emptiness, each thrust a revelation of brutal fullness. Wanda’s fingers worked her clit in time, a counterpoint to the deep, claiming rhythm. Lisa was being played, a live instrument strung impossibly tight.
The pleasure built from that deep, violated place, coiling around the pain until they were indistinguishable. Her cries lost language, becoming animal grunts and sobs. Wanda’s pace increased, her own composure shattering. Her hips slapped against Lisa’s bruised flesh, the sound obscenely loud in the silent, dark room.
“Come,” Wanda snarled, her magic flaring, not just in her conjuration but in the air, in her fingers on Lisa’s clit, a cosmic charge that supercharged every nerve ending.
Lisa detonated. Her orgasm was a silent, seizing cataclysm, a total systemic failure. Her vision whited out. Her body clamped down viscously on the length pounding into her, milking it, and she felt, distantly, the hot rush of Wanda’s release flooding her deepest channel, a claiming so absolute it felt like a brand.
They collapsed together onto the soaked sheets, a tangled heap of limbs and shaky breaths. The magical appendace was gone. The crimson light in Wanda’s eyes had faded, leaving her looking pale, hollowed out. She curled around Lisa, her front to Lisa’s back, an arm thrown possessively over her waist. The silence was absolute.
Lisa drifted on a sea of endorphins and shock. The throbbing in her backside was a persistent, brutal reminder. She felt more than ruined. She felt rewritten.
Just as consciousness began to fray into sleep, Wanda’s voice came, so quiet it might have been
She felt rewritten.
Just as consciousness began to fray into sleep, Wanda’s voice came, so quiet it might have been part of the dark itself. “I have nightmares. They’re not dreams. They’re echoes. And they’re loud.” Her arm tightened around Lisa’s waist. “If I… if the power reacts, you must wake me. Shout my name.”
Lisa, half-gone, nestled back into the solid warmth of her. “What happens if I don’t?”
A long pause. The city lights painted a passing car’s glow across the ceiling. “Things break,” Wanda said.
Sleep took them like that, a question hanging in the air, with Lisa’s body serving as both anchor and potential casualty.
The next morning, they slept.
True, deep, unmolested sleep. Lisa’s face was buried in the softness of Wanda’s breasts, one arm slung across her stomach. Wanda’s arm was a firm band around Lisa’s small waist, holding her close even in unconsciousness. The sheets were a mess, smelling of sex and sweat and their shared heat. A stripe of pale Seoul sunlight cut across the bed, illuminating dust motes and the rise and fall of their breathing.
A low, persistent buzzing shattered the quiet.
Wanda’s eyes snapped open. For a second, disorientation—then the warm weight on her chest, the tickle of black hair against her chin. Lisa. Still asleep. Her face was softened, all the fierce stage confidence and desperate hunger smoothed away. She looked young. Peaceful.
The buzzing continued. Wanda’s phone, on the floor, screen lighting up with a stark, official caller ID: Steve Rogers.
Her body went rigid. The Avengers Tower. Duty. The world of chaos and collateral damage she’d briefly walled out with hotel-room darkness and this woman’s searing innocence. A cold knot formed in her gut. She should move. She should answer.
But Lisa shifted, nuzzling deeper into the valley between her breasts, a soft sigh escaping her. Her lips were parted. The morning light gilded the sweep of her eyelashes against her cheeks. She looked… soft. Cute. Untouched by the storm Wanda carried inside.
Wanda couldn’t dare to disturb her.
The buzzing stopped. A moment later, a text notification chimed. Wanda didn’t need to look. She knew what it said. Status check. Return for briefing. We need to talk.
She ignored it. She let her head fall back against the pillow, her nose in Lisa’s hair. It smelled like hotel shampoo and her. Wanda closed her eyes, absorbing the silence. Not just auditory silence, but the silence inside her own mind.
For the first time in a length of time she couldn’t quantify, the mental noise had stopped. The searing grief of Westview, the phantom ache where Vision’s consciousness used to brush hers, the screaming emptiness where Tommy and Billy’s laughter should have been—it was all still there, but muffled. Dulled beneath the tangible reality of Lisa’s weight, the rhythm of her breath, the simple animal warmth of another body trusting hers enough to sleep so deeply.
This was peace. A stolen, fragile, probably immoral peace. But peace.
Her fingers traced a slow, absent pattern on the smooth skin of Lisa’s hip, over the bruises she’d placed there. Lisa didn’t flinch. She slept on. And Wanda realized, with a clarity that was almost painful, one more staggering thing.
Lisa wasn’t afraid of her.
Not really. Not in any way that mattered. She had been startled, overwhelmed, dominated—but the core of her, that bright, curious energy, had never cowered. She’d met power with a challenge. She’d taken the Scarlet Witch, the woman who broke a sorcerer’s mind and rewrote a town, into her body without a shred of metaphysical terror. She’d asked for more. She’d demanded to be ruined.
Wanda, the most powerful Avenger, had done just that. And here the ruin slept, serene on her chest, as if Wanda were just a woman. The contradiction was so vast it made Wanda’s throat tighten.
Lisa stirred again. Her eyes fluttered open, hazy with sleep. She blinked up, meeting Wanda’s gaze. No fear. Just a slow, dawning recognition, followed by a smile that was small, private, and slightly smug.
“Morning,” Lisa mumbled, her voice rough with sleep.
“Morning,” Wanda replied, her own voice softer than she intended.
Lisa’s hand slid up from Wanda’s stomach to cup her breast, her thumb stroking the nipple idly through the thin sheet. A casual, possessive intimacy that sent a jolt straight to Wanda’s core. “Your phone was buzzing.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“No.”
Lisa’s smile widened a fraction. She pushed herself up, wincing slightly as the soreness from the night before made itself known. She straddled Wanda’s hips, looking down at her, the sheet pooling around her waist. The morning light painted her in gold. “Good.” She leaned down, her lips a breath from Wanda’s. “Fuck the world today. It’s my turn.”
Lisa’s kiss was slow. A deliberate, exploring press of lips that held none of the frantic hunger from the night before. It was a claim. Wanda yielded to it, her hands coming up to frame Lisa’s face, her thumbs stroking the high arches of her cheekbones. When they parted, Lisa’s eyes were dark, focused.
“My turn,” Lisa repeated, her voice low. She shifted her weight, grinding down against Wanda’s hipbone. The friction was sweet, ordinary. Human. “No magic. No telekinesis. Just you. Just me.”
Wanda’s breath caught. That was a far more daunting proposition. “Lisa…”
“Shhh.” Lisa placed a finger over Wanda’s lips. “You wanted to put me back together. Let me do the same for you.” She leaned down again, kissing the corner of Wanda’s mouth, her jaw, the fluttery pulse at her throat. “I want to hear you.”
Wanda let her head fall back, a surrender. Her defenses, those towering walls of power and grief, felt porous under this sustained, gentle assault. Lisa’s mouth moved lower, tasting the skin over her collarbone, the slope of her breast. She took a nipple into her mouth, sucking lightly, then laving it with her tongue. A soft sigh escaped Wanda, her fingers tangling in Lisa’s black hair.
“Like that?” Lisa murmured against her skin.
“Yes.” The word was a whisper, torn from a place long neglected.
Lisa worshipped her with a dancer’s deliberate grace. Her hands mapped Wanda’s body—the slender curve of her waist, the subtle swell of her hips, the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. She kissed every rib, traced the line of her sternum with her tongue. It was an archeology of flesh, a slow excavation of the woman beneath the myth. Wanda trembled. This careful attention was more intimate than any violent claiming. It exposed her.
When Lisa’s mouth finally found the auburn curls between her legs, Wanda gasped. The touch was feather-light, a barely-there brush of lips. Lisa didn’t dive in. She teased. She nuzzled, breathing in Wanda’s scent, her own arousal a sharp, perfumed note in the morning air. She kissed the inside of one thigh, then the other, her fingers gently spreading Wanda open.
“You’re so pretty here,” Lisa whispered, her breath hot. “All flushed and wet for me.”
Wanda moaned, the sound raw and unguarded. It was exactly what Lisa wanted to hear. She rewarded her by dipping her head, her tongue laying a slow, flat stripe from bottom to top. Wanda’s hips jerked off the mattress. “Fuck, Lisa.”
“Mmm.” Lisa hummed against her, the vibration making Wanda cry out. She took her time, building the sensation with a maddening patience Wanda had never possessed. She licked into her, deep and slow, then circled her clit with a focused, relentless pressure. Her fingers joined, sliding inside with an easy glide, curling perfectly.
Wanda was unspooling. The tight coil of power within her, usually a focused weapon or a screaming void, was unraveling into pure, sparkling sensation. She was molten. Each stroke of Lisa’s tongue, each curl of her fingers, pulled another ragged sound from her throat—broken moans, gasped curses, a pleading whimper that shocked her own ears.
“More,” Wanda begged, her magic flickering in the air like static, making the sheets cling to their skin. “Please, don’t stop.”
Lisa redoubled her efforts, her pace still controlled but deeper, wetter, more insistent. She drank Wanda in, her free hand gripping Wanda’s hip, holding her in place as she trembled. The building pressure was exquisite, a slow cresting wave rather than a sudden crash. Wanda could feel every incremental rise, every pulse of her own blood, every deft movement of Lisa’s mouth.
“I’m going to come,” Wanda warned, her voice strangled.
Lisa’s only answer was to suck her clit hard, her fingers pumping fast.
Wanda broke. Her orgasm washed through her in deep, wracking pulses, a quiet cataclysm that left her gasping, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Lisa worked her through it, gentling her touch until Wanda was twitching and oversensitive. She finally lifted her head, her chin glistening. She crawled back up Wanda’s body, kissing her stomach, her breasts, her throat, before finally claiming her mouth, letting Wanda taste herself.
They kissed for a long time, slow and deep. Wanda felt boneless, cleansed. The screaming in her mind was a distant echo.
Lisa pulled back just enough to speak, her lips brushing Wanda’s. “I needed to hear that,” she said softly. “Your voice. Not the Witch’s. Yours.”
Wanda hugged her close, burying her face in Lisa’s neck. She felt fragile. Real. The phone on the floor began to buzz again. Steve. The world. Duty.
The sound was an intrusion, a cold splash of reality. Wanda stiffened. Lisa felt it. She didn’t let go.
“You have to answer it,” Lisa stated, her voice quiet with resignation. It wasn’t a question.
Wanda nodded against her skin. “I do.”
“Then answer it.” Lisa finally released her, rolling onto her back. She stared at the ceiling, the morning light painting her in stark relief. “But remember the sound. Remember this.”
Wanda pushed herself up. She felt hollowed out and strangely light. She picked up the phone, the buzzing now a physical vibration in her palm. She looked at the caller ID, then back at Lisa, who watched her with an unreadable expression.
She swiped to answer. “Steve.”
His voice, calm and steady, filled her ear. “Wanda. We’ve got a situation. A low-level reality incursion in Manila. Stephen’s tied up in Kamar-Taj. We need you on the quinjet in an hour.”
“I’ll be there.” Her voice was her own again. The Scarlet Witch’s. Flat. Certain.
She ended the call. The silence in the room was absolute. Lisa hadn’t moved. Wanda stood, her body feeling both new and achingly familiar. She gathered her clothes from the floor. She dressed in silence, each piece—the slip, the coat—feeling like armor being donned.
When she was finished, she turned to the bed. Lisa was still watching her. Wanda walked over, cupping her face one last time. She leaned down and kissed her, pouring every ounce of that morning’s peace, every muffled scream, into it.
“The next time you perform,” Wanda whispered against her lips, “dance for me.”
Then she straightened. A shimmer of crimson light enveloped her form, chaotic and beautiful. Lisa blinked, and the space where Wanda had stood was empty. Only the scent of ozone and roses remained, and the profound, aching silence she left in her wake.
Lisa lay there for a long time, listening to the absent echo of her own heartbeat. Outside, the city geared up for another day. Inside, the sheets still held their warmth. She brought her fingers to her lips, then slowly, deliberately, trailed them down between her legs, finding the wet evidence of Wanda’s pleasure mingled with her own.
She smiled, a private, fierce thing.