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Daylight still fades through the windows of the Sanctum Sanctorum, splashing iridescent bars through the Anomaly Rue window. 'Tis a place not many practitioners ever see unless they come to seek the Sorcerer Supreme, or one of the very few residents who maintain any sort of affiliation with a room in the place. The Mistress of the Sanctum receives a fond welcome from the ephemeral wards, wispy strands of magic ruffling her hair and teasing up her hands to offer a report to their master. One who shall, without question, dislike what primary notes he tastes on her.
Death. Fate. Revolution. Disturbed.
Disquiet hurries her along through the foyer and down one of the forever-changing hallways. Familiarity with a building that disturbingly seems alive at times carries her past the wood-panelled walls and elegant doorways leading into chambers full of wonders, horrors, and mysteries. One she turns into, her palm raised undoing the bindings preserving the interior. A careful balance of light and dark linger within a spartan chamber informed by the sensibilities of a Japanese teahouse, a Thai pavilion, Tibetan prayer rooms, and a dose of German asceticism of the roughly nineteenth century. She walks in and collects from a locked, lacquered cabinet the tools she needs: silver bowl, mirror, chalk, herbs. Bowl ends up set aside on the floor with the mirror. The chalk proves iridescent and draws across the floorboards inside an inlaid circle of silver very well: she stoops to draw the runes and sigils necessary to enclose her energy, an act taking a few minutes.
Once performed, the matter of calling water and moonlight becomes far easier. She draws a series of delicate mudras with her fingers, an eloquent, wordless dance to centre the divination. In some ways, it's terribly hard: all the haystacks of the cosmos to search for a vibranium needle. In some ways, it's terribly easy: she has the blood in a vial to point her in the right direction.
*
There's a figure in the dark, barely visible. This is the deepest of all his hides, buried in a maintenance room off abandoned subway line. For he has the map of all the depths as well as the heights….and in this age before widespread camera surveillance, it might very well be like sounding the darkest parts of the seas. It won't take too very long before that search expands to even here….but for now, the safest place in the Five Boroughs. The only light is the flame of a minuscule candle lantern, smaller than a soda can. It ripples over the contours of that arm, gleams on the sweat on his forehead, and catches in red-rimmed eyes. Other than that, he's only shadows….but he's shaking, trembling like a leaf in the aftermath. There's nothing of the cold and collected Soldier. Bucky, at least some of Bucky, has come out of the icy dream to be confronted with the reality of the fiery nightmare.
*
Water lies flat in the silver basin. Here where sun and moon never shine, its purity can be assured as the finest medium necessary. "All waters are one water" is a truth of Slavic myth and, doubly, witchcraft. The lifeblood of the planet follows through the closed system of liquid percolating through living beings and the great oceans, fed by rivers and clouds. The sympathy there connects blood to man as surely as sewer to Antarctic ice cap. Wanda has practiced this art for a very long time, though nothing ever prepares her for what magic entitles her to see.
She does not call yet on the mirror, staring into the reflective liquid caught in a hemisphere under her. A candle burns in the murky darkness and she takes in what she can of the architecture to help place basic facts: human, North American, concrete and steel. Keeping that pretty mouth shut, the witch concentrates to hold the magic fast. Scrying at its subtlest requires perfect focus, nothing to give away her presence except a minute fissure that wanders around Bucky. Another mystic might stand a chance. But then, given she's at the heart of Earth's most fortified magic sanctum, maybe not. Bucky's appearance sends her eyebrows arching sharply above eyes full of stars and golden light.
*
Not a magic bone in his body. Though there's a moment where he stiffens, as if at some noise. He lifts the lantern, and then turns it, darkening the general soft glow to a beam directed away from the reinforced door that's the only exit - it's clearly some utilitarian space he's stashed himself in. There's an array of gear along a concrete ledge that serves as a shelf - rations, a first aid kit, weapons, a bedroll. There's a paper, god knows where he got it, with that headline splashed across the cover….and the picture of him in his uniform, from so long ago, smiling fearlessly into the camera. It's printed beside the current sketch of how he's imagined to look.
*
A fresh newspaper screaming the news of the World's Fair being bombed is the same as those hawked all over Greenwich Village. A few of them probably end up in the mailbox of the Sanctum itself, 177A Bleecker picking up the Times, the Bugle, the Bulletin, and several others not even published in this reality. No doubt a couple issues pile up opened in the Loft, waiting for a Sorcerer already locking down the boundaries of the dimensions. But not even the Doctor knows everything and he must needs know this. Hence, his right hand in action.
She bites down on her lip hard enough to draw blood. Her own floods copper, catching on teeth and tongue, choking out the taste of chamomile and lavender from a tea. Face: is there joy or anger or horror? One of the fits witnessed behind glass so many times from SHIELD footage? Her own gaze?
And is the /green/ one with him?
*
He's apparently alone. And his expression is empty….but it's that thousand yard stare. Not Winter's impassive mask, where only the gleam of the pale eyes betrays the neverending calculations - sightlines, weaknesses, all the calculi of skilled and dispassionate violence. As if he were one of the victims in earnest, and not the planner and perpetrator. He looks, truth be told, shocky.
*
Pain might be felt in another soul but the brunette allows herself no measure of that. Tempered by her own hellish catalyst from birth to the present day, she is taught to display no remorse, express no sentiments except in these walls and that means not necessarily knowing -how-. Wanda leans forward and watches the scene, plucking up the mirror and dipping it into the water ever so carefully to freeze the scene on the reflecting glass.
*
The portrait of someone already damned by public opinion, amnesia, and the shards of his own conscience. That's the thing that's wearing at him - the burden the Room has left on him. To recall every death he's caused with that crystal clarity. The image of Steve's throat transformed into crimson mist is his own….but the napalm? Some contrary part of him insists it's none of his, that this was somehow a terrible coincidence…..but how can he be sure?
*
The torment laid out before her is crystallized on silvered glass. She pulls out the mirror dripping wet from the bowl and puts it upon the floor, stretching her arm down from her floating position. Harmonic resonance of the spell and the divining bowl will freeze the image and allow Strange to review it at his liberty, as long as no unexpected bullet takes her through the layers of defense. Improbable but not impossible, and her enemies are many.
The harder part of the art is flipping the perception, pushing her senses through to open the Sight and see his aura. That brush of who Bucky's soul is, right now, the very expression of him. She doesn't want to do it, the reluctance painted in the force and effort taxing her energy.
*
It's all that swirling darkness sparked with ember red, a drop of ink in water already muddied. But there's no stillness, no sense satisfaction both cerebral and visceral. What assassin is not at least somewhat proud of having pulled off such a hit? He's afraid and sickened….and there's a leaden overlay of despair. A temptation to pick up the pistol on the ledge, well within hands' reach, and use it on himself. Physically, he's got his face in his hands, though there's no one to conceal himself from.
*
"Bastard." The word slips through parted lips. It comes in German rather than English, her native accent cutting sharply through the distance. "What is this? Who is this?" Her fingers curl and reflexively open, painting swirls of faded colour around her wrists and along the air. The stalk within her carefully chalked circle has all the elements of a caged cat. Answers she cannot supply.
*
At this point, he'd welcome the pain of a memory wipe. What point in having the remains of a conscience, if all you can do is wound yourself with in the aftermath? The Soldier knows neither guilt nor remorse…but the man before her's clearly stricken with something akin to it.
*
The choice for the matter cannot be resolved as is. Wanda closes her hands at her sides, shoulders tight. She cannot know the full scope of the imminent damage about to fall on their collective heads, but standing in the fire is what she was born for. A fire of revolution birthed her, tempered her, and released her along with her twin brother onto the world. From Poznan to Tibet, violent upheaval is her birthright and how else would she be standing a few yards from Steve Rogers when he fell? Appropriate, given she wasn't there for Kennedy.
The sweep of her foot breaks the chalked circle. The invocation is the simplest of them all: "Trishul, I found him alive. Come home."
A relic at her throat conveys the words through space without limit, the mystic halo turning the bleeding violet-red of a doubled aura. And now? It's time for preparations.
*