The Avengers sat clustered around the side of the conference room table like it was the Last Supper. Opposite them, the wide screen centred on the wall showed the vaguely-annoyed expression of Matthew Ellis, 45th President of the United States. “How did you think this was all going to go over in DC?” he asked pointedly.

  Steve, Tony, Nat, Bruce and Clint were centred, the original team forming the core, with Pietro, Bucky and Sam relegated to the edges. There theoretically weren’t ranks in the Avengers—while they all had their specialties and areas of expertise, no one was technically ‘in charge’, and everyone’s opinions theoretically held equal weight. But in an important conversation like this, it always felt natural for Steve to lead.

  “I figured I could take a pretty good guess, sir,” he responded. “But I held out hope that I could be pleasantly surprised.”

  “Well, there was nothing pleasant about it for me. Especially since the man who wears our flag on his chest didn’t even bother to so much as give me a heads-up. I had to see it on the evening news like everyone else.”

  Tony was relaxed, leaning back casually in his chair. He smiled faintly. “Gamma-gate. Rolls off the tongue nicely, doesn’t it? Lovely little bit of alliteration.”

  The President ignored the comment. “How did you even find out about it? What led you to Sterns?”

  “We have sources that would prefer to remain anonymous,” Clint answered.

  There was an unspoken implication here, one that no one wanted to tackle head-on: The Avengers weren’t entirely sure that Ross hadn’t been acting with the President’s authorisation. Even if Ellis knew nothing about the man’s political ambitions and abuses of the system, it was hard to rule out that he might have known about and approved Sterns’ imprisonment. Sterns himself wasn’t sure—Ross had always implied and acted as though the President knew, but there were apparently mitigating factors that ‘dropped the probability down below 70 per cent’. There was still a good chance, but not a certain one.

  Either way, it wouldn’t change how they were going to handle this in the broad sense—a political war with the President was a vastly different prospect than taking on Ross—but it meant they’d need to be circumspect about what information they shared with him.

  Ellis grimaced. “You’re putting me in an extremely difficult position, here.”

  “With all due respect, Mr President,” Steve said. “The Avengers are in the business of doing what’s right, not what’s easy.”

  Tony gestured with a hand. “Let’s just cut to the chase, here. Ross is flailing, trying to use this to ram the Enhanced Anti-Terrorism Bill through so he can leverage its provisions against us. We were cooperating—hell, we’re the ones that approached you to help with the drafting—but after this? The Bill’s dead in the water.”

  “The Avengers might have broad support,” the President said with a slight negative shake of his head. “But the Bill’s popular with voters, too. People want oversight.”

  “The Bill was popular with voters,” Steve countered. “I think if we made it very clear to the public that, if the Bill is passed, it would impede the Avengers from taking action in instances like this, people would start to ask some pointed questions about what else your administration might be hiding.”

  There was a threat there—a relatively mild one, but a threat nonetheless. Nat wondered what Wanda would be thinking if she were sitting here, watching this. Steve had been rather vocally unhappy about the blowup and threats Wanda had traded with Ross, yet here he was, edging toward the same sort of thing with the President. Of course, Steve and Ellis wouldn’t devolve into an actual shouting match the way Wanda and Ross had, but the implications and undertones were still essentially the same, if a little more restrained.

  Ellis gave Steve a flat look. “I think it’d be better for everyone if the Avengers continued to keep political matters at arm’s length. You’re playing a dangerous game here, Steve.”

  “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”

  Nat recognised the quote. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. From one of Jefferson’s letters to James Madison. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

  “You think you’re being cute, quoting Jefferson at me?” The President’s tone was terse.

  “No, sir,” Steve said easily. “Just trying to make it clear where we stand on this issue.”

  “If I tell them to pull the Bill, or if it passes and I veto it, the media’s going to have a field day. It’ll make the country look weak. Everyone’s going to be asking if my administration is accountable to the people of the United States of America, or to the Avengers.”

  “I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, Mr President,” Tony said, almost lazily, “but if it wasn’t for the Avengers, you, personally, would be dead three times over by now.”

  “What Tony’s trying to say,” Nat hurriedly cut in, shooting the billionaire a warning look, “is that New York is still here because we stopped the nuclear strike the World Security Council authorised. Working independently is how we were able to stop Project Insight and expose HYDRA. We need to be able to self-determine. It’s in everyone’s best interests, not just ours.”

  Steve nodded in agreement. “The US Government is run by people with agendas, and agendas change. The Avengers are bigger than that. We don’t work for any one country. We fight for Earth.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Ellis said, his lips drawn together in a moue of annoyance, “the United States of America is Earth. And if the US Government can’t trust the Avengers anymore…”

  And there was the counterthreat, if only implied. Nat opened her mouth to respond, but Tony beat her to it. “You can trust us to be the Avengers. Sir.”

  “We won’t shirk accountability,” Steve was quick to clarify. “We’re already in the process of drafting up an independent charter—for the Avengers, by the Avengers. A set of operating principles. We’ll still work with the government, but we’ll do it on our terms. In fact, we’d like to ask your support in taking it to the UN.”

  “You said it yourself, Mr President,” Nat added. “The Avengers have broad popular support. A nice photo-op of you shaking hands with Captain America over the charter will be just as good for your approval ratings as EATA would have been. Past that, we’ve generally tried to keep out of politics, but for something like this… how would you feel if the Avengers were offering an official endorsement for your re?election?”

  Ellis was silent for a few seconds—still looking annoyed, but clearly thinking it through. Their plan of attack was working. With Sterns’ outline helping to guide them, they’d pretty successfully turned this from a question of accountability into one of how badly Ellis wanted to be a two-term president, and what aspect of this scandal he wanted to define his legacy.

  Eventually, the President sighed. “Fine. But I want to see the charter first. And I’ll be the one to announce and sign it. I need to be seen to be doing something, here. I’ll get my speech writers to come up with something about the Bill not being sufficient… the Avengers needing independence to operate, accountability meaning accountability for everyone, including politicians… ugh.”

  “The President taking a strong stance against corruption in government should be well-received by the general public,” Natasha said. “We can have our media team work with yours to help with the specifics. We can make it a joint statement, present a united front. ‘The Avengers stand with President Ellis, for stability and accountability.’” Ellis was nodding along as she spoke.

  “And Ross?” Steve asked.

  “Yeah. Ross is out, obviously.”

  “Out?” Steve set his jaw, ready to argue.

  Nat knew exactly what he was thinking, and she also knew that this wasn’t something that they’d be able to push for. “Thank you, Mr President,” she cut him off before he could say anything else. “We’d prefer a referral to the Department of Justice and a formal investigation, but…”

  “Absolutely not,” he said, raising a hand in a firm gesture. “I need this to stop, not have it drag out even further. Referring actions my own Secretary of State took in his official capacity for investigation? It’d be a circus. There’d be articles of impeachment before the House by the end of the week. I might as well just resign from office.”

  Steve shot Natasha an unimpressed look, but his expression softened somewhat and he gave a shallow nod. “We understand, sir. This is a compromise on both sides.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I say it doesn’t really feel like it, Captain Rogers,” Ellis responded tersely. “You’re really bending me over a barrel, here.”

  “We’re all just trying to do what’s right, sir. We appreciate your support.”

  “Don’t make me regret this,” Ellis warned, his voice low and flat. The call ended.

  Around the table, a few people allowed themselves the faintest smiles, but Nat didn’t join them. She was already thinking ahead. They’d won this pretty handily—with Sterns’ help—but a win in politics often just put a new target on your back. Ellis had folded, but he wasn’t happy about it. The Avengers’ endorsement would help soothe the sting, but more work would still need to be done to shore up their relationship with him. It shouldn’t be too difficult to navigate, but they’d need to be careful about how things proceeded from here. The absolute last thing they needed was for the President to consider them an enemy.

  Beyond that, there was the wider Sterns problem. They couldn’t cut him loose yet—not until things were officially resolved, at least—and he was proving to be extremely useful, in more ways than one. But Wanda’s concerns about the man worried her. And all of this, when the Eternals could drop in and potentially attack them at any moment?

  Well, no one ever said being an Avenger was easy.

  --

  Finding the other Eternals with the Mind Stone had been a bust. I’d done a sweep, but there hadn’t been any tugs at my perception like there had been for Thena and Gilgamesh, nothing pulling me in the right direction. My best guess was that Druig and Phastos were already with the other Eternals, all safely under whatever anti-detection protections the technopath was capable of crafting.

  It was annoying, but not totally unexpected. We really were just going to have to wait for them to come to us, unless someone else came up with some other brilliant plan. I couldn’t think of anything, at least—there just didn’t seem like there was much else we could do except be vigilant, sit tight and hope they came in wanting to talk, not fight.

  Villain or not, Sterns still felt like a problem. I could definitely sympathise with what had happened to him—I had my own traumas about being locked up, after all—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t worried about what his presence could mean. Half-remembered comic lore aside, Sterns had already undermined me several times during our first conversation, and I really didn’t like the idea of him fact checking me when I was talking around my metaknowledge. How much could Sterns’ power plausibly infer from fragments of information? God, what would happen if Tony asked him about Talokan or something? And extrapolating incorrect conclusions from incomplete or partially-incorrect information could be just as dangerous. I really didn’t want to rock the boat too much while we were dealing with the Eternals, though—it might be something I just had to deal with for now.

  In the meantime, I’d gotten the sense that Gilgamesh had wanted some space to have a private conversation with Thena, so Carol and I had left them to it in a spare room in the compound’s guest quarters. Honestly, it was nice to get a little bit of distance from the two of them for a little bit, after the last few days. Then again, ‘distance’ was difficult to get when whatever connection the goddess had forged between us ran so deeply. I honestly still wasn’t sure how I felt about Thena. When it came down to it, everything that was happening was happening because of her training methods, and while she had acknowledged that she had pushed things too far, she still wasn’t feeling overly remorseful about it.

  As Carol and I stepped back out onto the path running towards the river, I glanced up briefly before turning to her with a giant grin plastered across my face. “Oh! Check this out!”

  I kept facing her, watching her reaction as I focused my magic and let it carry me into the sky, floating backwards as I lifted up and away.

  Carol made a small noise of surprise, then kicked off the ground to join me in the air. “You fly now?”

  “I fly now!” I confirmed happily, red energy flaring briefly in my hands as I did a tight somersault on the spot. “Thena helped me realise a fundamental flaw in the way I was using my magic. Once I worked out what I was doing wrong, it helped with a whole bunch of things.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I drew more magic out and gestured, beckoning Carol toward me with a crooked finger and a pulse of telekinetic energy. Being a moron, I of course completely messed up how much force I put into it—the basic, ingrained expectation in my mind was that she’d resist or push back against it, so I was utterly unprepared for her to just trust what I was doing and let it carry her upward.

  She slammed into me and I let out an undignified squawk of surprise as we tumbled in midair, my bruised body protesting the impact. I almost dropped out of the sky, limbs flailing, but Carol reacted quickly, her arms going around me as she flipped us right side up. She was laughing. “You idiot—what are you doing?”

  “Having you catch me in your big, strong arms, obviously,” I said, resting the side of my head against her shoulder for a moment before poking out my tongue and freeing myself from her grasp. I shot up and further away, Carol following close behind.

  As we passed maybe a hundred feet or so over the compound’s central building, I suddenly reversed direction, letting my magic carry me backwards until Carol was above me, the two of us hovering horizontally in midair.

  She raised an eyebrow at me, still smiling. “You’re a dork.”

  I reached up and tugged at her arm. She indulged me again, letting me spin her around until her back was facing me. I turned as well and focused, telling my magic to tweak what was ‘up’ for myself until we were back-to-back, leaning up against each other as we continued to float in midair, her facing up into the late afternoon sky while I looked down at the greenery of the compound’s grounds.

  I threaded the fingers of my left hand into hers and squeezed gently.

  “Okay, this is pretty cool,” Carol said quietly. “I haven’t flown like this with anyone else before.” She paused and I felt her shift slightly—cocking her head to the side?—then she shrugged. “Well, I mean, jetpacks, obviously, but that’s not like this.”

  “Flying is definitely cool,” I agreed. There was a moment of comfortable silence, then I sighed. “Thank you for coming back to Earth, by the way. Outside of what’s happening with the Eternals, it’s really nice to have you around. I’d apologise for everything always being terrible every time you visit, but that’s literally why you come, so… How’s space?”

  “Space is… busy. It’s always busy. There’s always just so much going on. It can be hard to keep track. Took care of a group of pirates just before I followed the Guardians’ trail to the Genesis Cascade. Ex-Kree Starforce. I knew some of them. Hala’s been at war with itself since I destroyed the Supreme Intelligence. I wanted to set them free from it, but sometimes I feel like I just made things worse.”

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself for that. It sucks for the Kree people, but you did the right thing. The Supreme Intelligence had to go.”

  “Yeah. I guess. And at least they’re mostly too busy fighting each other to go after anyone else. The collapse of the empire’s taken a lot of pressure off a lot of other people.”

  An errant thought occurred to me. “Oh. Speaking of, what happened with the Skrulls? Did you find them a new homeworld?”

  “It’s complicated.” There was a moment of hesitation in her voice. “There’s a colony on Tarnax IV now—the Skrulls moved in after the Kree abandoned it. The leader there, Dro’ge, styles himself emperor. Not all of them are on board with his vision. Talos and his clan are still on Earth.”

  “Huh.” I blinked. The Skrulls were still on Earth, two decades later? That was interesting, but also a little concerning. I knew that there’d been a series called Secret Invasion coming—based on a comics storyline where Skrulls replaced key heroes—but I wasn’t sure how something like that might work here considering that MCU Skrulls were the good guys. I filed that away for future reference. Maybe I should try to meet Talos at some point. At the very least, a shapeshifter could be useful to know.

  “What else… There was Disradi—I’m not sure on the specifics of how it happened, but an old nega-bomb left over from the Kree-Shi’ar war detonated. Imploded half the planet. I helped some refugees, did a bit of recovery work. I heard some whispers that Thanos invaded another world a few weeks ago, too, but I haven’t had time to look into the specifics. And on top of everything, trying to track down the Guardians of the Galaxy has been a massive pain in my ass. They aren’t an easy crew to pin down. Oh!” I felt her straighten up a bit. “I have some things for you back at the Hoopty. Translator implants and cybernetic eyes, as requested.”

  “Oh, awesome! Thanks for doing that, I really appreciate it.”

  “You owe me one.”

  “I owe you a bunch. So do a lot of other people, sounds like. You’ve really been doing a lot, haven’t you? Remember to take a break and slow down a bit sometimes. You don’t always need to be doing everything for everyone. Take some time for yourself every now and then.”

  “I do. I mean, I’m doing it right now, aren’t I?” Carol leaned back against me a little harder, and I heard the smile in her voice. “You said it’s terrible every time I visit Earth, but, honestly? It’s nice to be home. It’s nice to be able to take some time out to see Maria and Monica. It’s even,” she said, a teasing edge entering her tone, “nice to see you.”

  I smiled and we drifted quietly through the sky. After a minute or two of comfortable silence, broken only by the sound of the wind, I wiggled my butt against her. “So…”

  “…Are you wondering what it’d be like to have sex while flying?”

  Honestly, ever since I’d checked out the physical benefits of Thena’s training in the mirror, a small but extremely insistent little voice in the back of my mind had more or less been continually reminding me that I’d just spent the last two and a half days being beaten up by a sexy warrior goddess with clear domme overtones and had had no opportunity for relief the entire time.

  “I might be,” I hedged innocently. “Why? Are you wondering what it’d be like to have sex while flying?”

  “I might be.”

  I rolled to the side, keeping us steady with a quick pulse of power as I flipped us both over so we were nose-to-nose. “Well, I’m glad we’re on the same page,” I murmured, taking a moment to gaze into her eyes.

  Carol clicked her tongue, one corner of her mouth quirking up as she shook her head. “It’s a shame we’re so visible up here.”

  “We are, aren’t we? Anyone could look up and see us,” I said, my voice low. I bit my lip. “I mean, that’s not a dealbreaker for me, but…”

  “With all the political stuff going on, the compound is definitely being watched,” she reminded me gently. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were cameras and satellites pointed right at us.”

  “Ah. Right.”

  …Still not an actual dealbreaker for me, but obviously one for her.

  Part of me wanted to continue this and see if Carol would be up for a quick romp in a more private location while we waited for the others to be done with their Very Important Meeting, but there was something else I wanted to do first that had been nagging at me a little bit. I floated away from her slightly. “Later, maybe?”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  “In the meantime, would it be okay if we ducked away from the compound for, like, five minutes? I just want to check in with Yelena.” Natasha had already told me she’d messaged her sister to let her know they’d found me and I was safe, but I still wanted to see her. She would absolutely never admit it to me in a million years, but she’d probably been just as worried as everyone else.

  Carol raised an eyebrow. “I did say I’d make sure you didn’t disappear.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’ll be really quick, promise. Portal in, portal out.”

  “…Okay. I don’t see why not.”

  “Thanks.”

  Retrieving my sling ring from my pocket, I focused for a moment before spinning up a portal, threads of red energy coming together to form a gateway directly below us, wooden floorboards visible on the other side. The two of us dropped though, landing lightly in the middle of Natasha’s apartment, just between the kitchen and the living room.

  “Ta-da!” I announced, throwing my hands up dramatically in the air. “I’m back! Did you—” I stopped mid-sentence, taken a little off-guard by the sight that greeted me.

  Yelena and another woman had been sitting on the couch, the two of them jumping to their feet the moment Carol and I had arrived.

  “Wanda! Идиот! What are you doing?” She’d started moving toward me, but had stopped mid-stride, her eyes widening fractionally as they swept up and down, taking in my appearance. After an instant, she shook her head and stepped in to hug me. “You look like shit. What happened to your hair?”

  “What happened to your face?” I countered, a little defensively, though I was a little distracted looking past her at the rest of the living room. “And the TV?”

  Yelena was sporting a nasty-looking shiner—she didn’t look as rough as me, but she’d definitely been in a fight recently. The TV behind her had been smashed, a thick mess of cracks spread across its screen. A small collection of empty beer bottles was clustered on the coffee table.

  The Asian woman who’d been on the couch with Yelena was looking at us a little awkwardly. When Carol and I had dropped in, she’d immediately leaped into a tense stance, like she’d been expecting a fight, but now it looked like she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She was dressed in a simple, light grey tracksuit, and it took me a moment to place her face—the sheathed, white-and-gold katana leaning against one wall helped jog my memory.

  My eyes flicked from her to the room’s third occupant, who hadn’t moved from where she was sitting. The woman was leaning back languidly in the armchair at the far end of the room, utterly at her ease, feet tucked up under herself as she watched us with a small smile. Her dark hair was pulled back in a loose knot, and she was dressed in a sleeveless black outfit, a deep crimson undershirt peeking out and bunching at the top like a turtleneck. I tensed a little when I recognised her, as well.

  Yelena started to pull away, but I held onto her despite my distraction. Awkwardly, she turned slightly to look back at the lounge room, her lips pressed together a little self-consciously. “Yeah, I know, I know. I haven’t had time to clean up yet. Don’t tell Nat about the TV. I’ll replace it. And, uh, these are my friends.”

  I blinked and looked at her in utter bewilderment. The apartment being trashed was one thing, but… “Your what?”

  “I told you I had other friends!” she retorted, a little defensively.

  “Your friends are Colleen Wing and Elektra?”

  My flabber was utterly ghasted. I didn’t even know where to begin—first Sterns, now this? What the hell had been happening?

  Colleen straightened when I said her name, obviously a little surprised that I knew who she was, but her posture remained guarded. Elektra didn’t react at all.

  “What about your friend?” Yelena matched my incredulous tone, trying—and failing once again—to shrug out of my grip as she gestured toward Carol. “Who is this?”

  That short-circuited me a little bit, knocking me out of my surprise. “Have you… never met Carol before? I’m sure…” I glanced at the woman beside me and she shook her head. “Oh. Really?” I looked back at Yelena. “Really?”

  “Oh, this is the Marvel captain?” Yelena gave her a little wave. “Nice to meet you. I’m Yelena.”

  “Nice to finally meet you, too,” Carol said with a small smile and nod.

  Yelena made one more attempt to extricate herself from my arms, then looked at me flatly. “Can you let me go?”

  “It’s really good to see you, Yelena,” I told her, reluctantly releasing my grip. “I’m sorry if I made you worry. I missed you.”

  She stepped back, rolling her eyes, then paused for a moment and looked at me. “It’s okay,” she said, then sighed. “I missed you, too.”

  I’d only been gone a few days. Yelena outright admitting that she’d missed me, rather than aloofly pretending she was too cool to care? That felt like a victory to me. I grinned and did a little fist pump. “Yeah?” I asked excitedly.

  She recoiled. “That was a weird reaction.”

  “Sorry,” I said, clasping my hands together in front of me and trying not to vibrate, still beaming at her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just… say it again?”

  “I’m not saying it again, and you’re being really weird about it.” Yelena took another step back and half-turned, looking back at her two ‘friends’. “Uh, so, you obviously already know Colleen and Elektra,” she said, then gestured toward me. “This is Wanda. And Carol—she’s from space.”

  “I’m from Boston,” Carol corrected, a little awkwardly. “I just spend a lot of time in space.”

  Colleen took an uncertain step forward. There was a weird tension in the way she was looking at me that I wasn’t really sure how to interpret. She was shorter than I was, and lean, though her tracksuit mostly concealed her figure. Her long, dark hair had been tied back in a loose ponytail.

  “Wanda.” There was a beat of silence. “I…” she started to speak again, but trailed off.

  “Hi?” I said. She seemed so awkward for some reason. I glanced at Yelena—she looked a little uncertain, too, but also seemed to be expecting something more from Colleen.

  After the uncomfortable silence stretched for a few more moments, Elektra stood up from her armchair and lazily sashayed over to join us. “Well, this is utterly dreadful,” she commented. “I kind of wish you did still want to kill her. It’d be less painful to watch.”

  Colleen rounded on her, then glanced back at me, eyes wide. “I, er, she doesn’t… I don’t…”

  Yelena held up a hand. “It’s a long story. Not important.”

  “It is important,” Colleen said, then took a deep breath and gave me a small, stiff bow. “But it’s not something we need to get into right now.”

  “Ooookay,” I said, puzzled.

  “There is, however, something I would like to get into, if it’s alright with you,” Elektra said, moving up beside Colleen and bumping her firmly with her hip. The other woman stumbled a little, not expecting it, then glared at her again. Elektra shot her a quick smile, eyes flashing in amusement, then stepped forward, right into my personal space, tipping her chin slightly so she could look me directly in the eye. “I must admit, I find myself a little vexed by the way you’ve been interfering with my Matthew.”

  “I, uh…” I felt a slight heat rise in my cheeks.

  Goddamn, the way she said that name, with her accent, did things to me. And she was standing very close all of a sudden. And… and… just look at her! She was flawless—high cheekbones, sharp jawline, those eyes, that attitude—no wonder Matt was so utterly whipped by her whenever she showed up. Her eyes turned calculating as I failed to respond, the corner of her lips quirking upward again. Ugh, she’d definitely noticed, that wasn’t great… What was…? Oh, god, she smelled so good, too—warm spice and dark resin, a little leather…

  Carol nudged me in the side, snapping me out of it. “You going to say something or just stare?” she asked quietly, a hint of amusement in her tone.

  I cleared my throat, breaking eye contact as I flushed a deep crimson. “Matt’s a big boy; he can take care of himself,” I said, trying very hard not to stammer. “You’re a bad influence on him.”

  “A bad influence?” Elektra asked, a hint of mock offense in her tone. “You’ve got me all wrong. Perhaps if you got to know me…”

  Uh oh.

  “I, uh, already know you well enough.”

  “So I’ve heard. But you could always get to know me better, no?”

  No. Bad idea. Danger. This was Elektra. It didn’t matter how hot she was. I already had two much better, much more reliably mentally stable girlfriends—one standing right next to me, who was capable of being very assertive and probably able to form much more coherent thoughts than I was at this exact moment.

  I turned my head slightly, my voice quiet as I sought an urgent save from Carol before I made a series of poor decisions. “I need an adult,” I said helplessly.

  As I did, Elektra leaned forward, just the tiniest bit—just enough that a faint hint of warmth from her breath tickled my ear. “I am an adult,” she murmured, her voice low and husky. Oh god. She couldn’t have actually gotten that reference, right? That had to be a coincidence.

  “Aaaand that’s enough of that,” Yelena said. She put her hands together and slid them between us, then moved them gently apart to push each of us back a little bit, which I gladly and hurriedly did. “Ugh. I don’t know which one of you is worse. I need to invest in a little spray bottle.”

  “She’s worse, trust me,” I said darkly.

  Elektra let out a small laugh at that, eyes crinkling merrily in amusement.

  “Okay, sure,” Yelena said, rolling her eyes. “But I still need you to be a little less ‘Wanda’ right now.”

  I straightened up, eyes lingering on Elektra for a moment before I looked away again, throwing my hands up in mock outrage. “Who could possibly want that?”

  There was the buzz of a phone receiving a message, and I glanced over at Carol as she fished it out of her pocket. My initial reaction was surprise—Carol had a phone?—but then again, it made sense that she’d probably picked it up so she could keep in contact with Maria and such while she was on Earth. Even if that weren’t the case, if she didn’t have one of her own, the Avengers probably would have lent it to her for ease of communication. “Meeting’s over,” she said as she looked at the message on the screen. “We should head back.”

  My mouth felt dry. “Okay. Yeah,” I said, glancing apologetically at Yelena. “Sorry, there’s still a bit of a situation. We need to be on hand in case something happens.”

  “Can we help?” she asked, exchanging a quick look with her ‘friends’.

  I shook my head, trying not to look directly at Elektra again. “Appreciate the offer, but I don’t think so. We’ll catch up again soon.” Focusing my magic to spin up another portal, I turned to Carol. “Let’s go.”

  really going to make the whole Thena-napping bit drag. The pacing of that part of the story was already a little bit all over the place between needing to spend so much time with the Avengers and Eternals, and adding yet another several-chapter long digression was just not going to work.

  complete waste of my time and effort, but I'm not sure I'll actually get around to finishing the whole thing. That's just the way these things go, I suppose—the perils of writing this sort of long-form, serialised fiction.