Chapter Text
“You three, go,” Annabeth said. “I need to stay with the others. Call me if you need help.”
Wanda was standing where the ridge jutted upward to form a jagged, rocky hilltop. Her twin spheres of power glowed red on either side of her body as she watched Percy, Steve, and Zemo approach from afar. The haze between them shifted, taking Wanda’s silhouette in and out of view, but never fully dimming her scarlet light.
In a brief moment when the cloud cleared, Percy realized they’d been pushed back further along the ridge than he thought. He could see the sweeping incline of Mount Washington behind Wanda, and its summit couldn’t be more than a mile away. The ground here was even rockier than the clearing they’d landed the airship on, with sizes ranging from gravelly pebbles to suitcase-sized boulders.
When Percy, Steve, and Zemo finally reached the base of the cliff, Steve held his arm out. The other two stopped, allowing him to step forward to address Wanda first.
“This has to stop,” Steve called out. The clouds seemed to catch and dampen his words, but he tilted his chin up toward her with no sign of faltering. “You’re better than this, Wanda. You’re better than him .”
Wanda didn’t move, only kept glaring down at him with her palms still aglow. Steve took another step forward.
“I know what happened to Vision,” he said. His brows lowered, but he didn’t look away from her. There was no time for patient persuasion this time, only the truth.
“He’s gone, Wanda.”
Wanda’s hands curled into fists, briefly extinguishing her red light. But it appeared a moment later, then glowed even brighter as she used her power to blast upward. Percy and Zemo each took a step forward until they were even with Steve. Wanda landed with one knee bent several yards in front of them, then slowly rose to her full height. Her eyes were clouded, but her gaze was piercing.
“I’m not here to listen to you,” she growled.
“You have to, Wanda,” Steve insisted. “I can’t let you be twisted by this false hope any longer.”
She ignored him, eyes narrowing on Zemo instead.
“You again.”
“Me again,” Zemo said in a low voice. “It is not too late to break free from his grasp, Miss Maximoff. End this, now.”
“Funny,” she said. “That’s exactly what I came here to do.”
Just as Steve had been direct with the truth, this time Wanda wasn’t wasting breath either. She pushed her palms forward, sending out a blast of energy that engulfed all three of them. Steve and Percy absorbed the blow with their shields, and Zemo rolled out of the way and behind them. He slid his hand into his coat, and when it reappeared there were small blades tucked in between each of his fingers.
As soon as Wanda released her blast, Steve and Percy pulled apart, and Zemo stepped between them. He started firing knives through the gap, and his aim was as true as Clint’s bow and arrow. Wanda dodged the blades thrown at her shoulder and chest, but one lodged just above her knee. She cried out in pain, but she yanked the knife free from her leg and leapt toward them.
Steve met her, taking on her downward strike with his shield. Percy circled to the side and slashed out with his sword, but Wanda moved just in time. A flick of her power flung him backward, and he found himself once again scrambling for footing on the loose rocks.
Zemo and Steve were tag teaming her now, trading blows and fighting her as close as her red power would allow. The two of them hurled Steve’s shield back and forth as Percy had seen them do on the battlefield, like they were playing the world’s deadliest game of ultimate frisbee.
Wanda was playing defense, but she didn’t play fair. The next time the shield hurled toward her, she caught it in the tendrils of her power, whirled in a circle, and blasted it back at Steve like a missile. He threw up his arms to catch it, but the momentum was too great. The shield slammed him backward, and he landed hard against the rocks.
Percy darted forward to fill the opening, then lunged for Wanda’s lower calf. This time she didn’t see him, and a cry escaped from her lungs as the bronze blade sliced the fabric of her clothes. Zemo kneed her in the gut while she was still doubled over, and she stumbled back, gasping.
Percy and Zemo started toward her again, but then Wanda glared up at them with a murderous look in her eyes. She turned her palms toward the ground, and her spheres burned as red light began to spread and cover the earth. Rocks lifted into the air, each one enveloped by a scarlet glow that mirrored the one blazing in Wanda’s eyes. The stones slowly rotated toward Percy and Zemo, the sharpest ends pointed ahead.
“Get behind me!” Percy shouted. Zemo leapt to crouch behind him just as Wanda let loose a shout and released her arsenal of rocks. Percy’s shield shuddered in his grip when the volley of projectiles thudded against it. Though it deflected most of the attack, there were some rocks that broke against the vibranium-bronze surface and pelted the unshielded parts of Percy’s body. Fresh bruises throbbed beneath his armor almost immediately. But right now, bruises were the least of Percy’s concerns, because Wanda was already readying her next launch.
But then Steve came from behind Percy and Zemo, leaping over their crouching forms like he was clearing a hurdle. With one more bound, Steve held his shield in front of him and slammed straight into Wanda before she had time to aim her levitating stones. She staggered backward and fell hard, palms scraping against the uneven ground as rocks rained around her.
Percy and Zemo climbed to their feet, and Steve stepped toward Wanda. She was slow to rise, and a hand clutched at the back of her head. When she removed her palm to look at it, her fingers were red from more than her crimson power.
Steve lowered his shield.
“Please,” he said in a low voice, breathing hard. “Please, will you just listen to me?”
“I have listened,” Wanda hissed. She wiped her hand across her shirt, leaving a streak of red across her torso. “And all I’ve heard are lies.”
“No. This is the truth, and you need to hear it,” Steve said. “We thought Kronos’s spirit was still within Vision. We thought there might have been a way to separate the two, if we had more time. But we were wrong.”
“Of course you were,” Wanda said. “Kronos left Vision’s body because he was injured. But he’s keeping Vision somewhere safe, and once he gets his power back, he’ll heal him and return him to me.”
Hearing the twisted version of the truth that Wanda believed in made Steve’s expression tight with grief. But the greater grief, the greater betrayal, would be keeping her from the truth.
“I’m sorry, Wanda, but that’s not what happened,” he said. “We think that Kronos bonded to Vision’s mind stone, and that stone survived tartarus. But the rest of Vision…he didn’t. He’s not going to come back.”
Wanda blinked. “No, that’s not possible.”
Steve’s gaze fell to the ground. His lips thinned, his feet steadied, and then he looked up to meet her eyes directly.
“Then why is the mind stone fused with Tony’s arc reactor?”
Wanda’s eyes paled suddenly. Percy watched as the realization surfaced and then settled, understanding moving across her face like an eclipse breaking free from shadow. The fog that had been clouding her gaze wavered. She took a staggering step back and stared again at the drying blood on her hands, almost as if it was the only thing keeping her tethered.
“All that he has told you is true,” Zemo said softly from beside Percy. “And I am so sorry.”
Wanda stared up at them, disbelief and hurt warring fiercely in her eyes.
Steve stretched out his hand, reaching toward her once again.
“Come home to us,” he whispered. “Please.”
Wanda stared at him. Suddenly her breath became ragged, and her eyes began to spark with red light.
“Steve,” Percy warned. But the captain continued to stand there, arm outstretched even as the pain began to churn into fury. She was being torn apart by rage and grief, and it channeled furiously into the growing spheres on her palms.
“Steve, get back now!” Zemo shouted.
Steve stood his ground, but it was too late. All of Wanda’s wrath swelled up into one massive ball of crimson light, and with a tortured scream she released it toward Steve. The flash was blinding, and Percy shielded his eyes as the shockwave flung him backward. He landed hard on his side, the heat from Wanda’s power still stinging his skin.
When he opened his eyes and rolled back toward the explosion, he saw someone crouching over a motionless form on the ground. Wanda had collapsed to her knees before them, her eyes eerily blank as she stared down at her hands.
Percy pushed himself to his feet and scrambled over. The man on the ground was still blinking slowly, but his face had gone sheet white, and the front of his chest was marred irreversibly.
Percy’s legs crumpled without warning. He kneeled over the dying man’s body, not quite believing what he was seeing.
“Zemo,” he whispered numbly. “What did you do?”
Steve was there beside him, staring down at the fading Zemo with an unreadable expression.
“He saved me,” Steve said. His eyes widened. “You saved me.”
Zemo blinked slowly, sleepily up at him. His voice was hoarse and almost too quiet to hear.
“I’m just returning a favor.”
The reality of what was happening struck Percy as the color continued to drain from Zemo’s face. He glared at Wanda, too shocked and scared to stop an accusation from bursting out.
“You’re killing him,” Percy said. “Why did you do that?”
Wanda’s head snapped up. Percy saw her eyes slide down to Zemo’s nearly lifeless body, then back up to him. Her eyes were perfectly clear now, no more fog tinting their perception.
“ Bez veˈdeɪ̆ doˈkude ˈjit͡ʃiʃ. ”
The words escaped Zemo’s lips in the ghost of a whisper, and Wanda went pale as the tuneless song drifted toward her. Zemo’s head turned slowly to the side until their gazes met.
“The sunlight shines on you even here, Miss Maximoff.”
As Zemo’s eyelids slid closed, Steve gripped his elbow hard.
“Fight it,” he said. “Don’t leave us.”
Zemo opened his eyes again, and they focused slowly on Steve. A small smile flicked onto his lips.
“I am ready to be with my Carl again.”
That smile was still there as his final breath released from his lungs, and it remained even after Helmut Zemo was gone.