The City of Shadows
"Wanda!" shouted Pietro, about to run toward his sister and Owen, both of them wrapped in a massive red dome that spun furiously, preventing anyone from getting close.
Pietro dashed at full speed, but the moment he touched the barrier, he was violently repelled, hurled dozens of meters away.
Steve rushed out of the base, frowning; he had abandoned his mission the instant he felt the disturbance as soon as he stepped outside. Alarms blared everywhere, shaken by the brutal surge of energy being released.
"What happened?" Steve asked, approaching Nicolás.
"Looks like Owen found the power source he needed… but I have no idea what this means," Nicolás replied, shaking his head while sending a message from his phone.
The scarlet aura suddenly intensified, spinning with even greater violence, until it halted abruptly. In the blink of an eye, it was swallowed into a flash so blinding that everyone had to raise their arms to shield their faces.
When the light faded, Wanda and Owen were gone.
…
Owen endured an indescribable pain, tearing through every fiber of his body again and again, as if infinite time itself was ripping him apart. Each heartbeat was pure torture.
Until, all at once, a searing warmth enveloped him, healing the invisible wounds and smothering the agony. A gentle breeze caressed him, as if returning him to the world.
He opened his eyes with overwhelming exhaustion. His mind was drained, yet his body… his body had never felt this strong. Not even the super soldier serum had given him this sensation of limitless energy coursing through his veins.
He blinked slowly, and the first thing he saw was Wanda in front of him. Before he could say a word, she lost her strength and collapsed. Owen caught her carefully, checking that she had merely fallen asleep. Strangely so.
Then he looked around and realized they were no longer in the base. He was standing in a dark alley, littered with trash. On both sides rose old brick buildings, so tall they seemed to devour the sky.
He raised his gaze and muttered, incredulous:
"Gargoyles?"
The sky was covered with dark clouds, mist crawled along the streets, and a light drizzle began to fall.
Owen adjusted Wanda in his arms and stepped out of the alley with a serious expression. The world didn't quite look like the past—not entirely. Cars drove by, people ran for shelter from the rain, but there was something in the atmosphere… something far too familiar.
Crossing another alley, he saw it: a man dressed as a bat was beating three thugs with brutal force. Blood splattered, and the crunch of broken bones mingled with their screams.
"Oh, shit…" Owen muttered.
The bat heard him and turned his head. Their eyes met for an instant. Owen diverted his gaze with indifference and kept walking, Wanda in his arms, as if he hadn't seen anything at all.
"Hmm…" Wanda began to stir, opening her eyes in confusion. Realizing the position she was in, her cheeks turned scarlet at once.
"Instructor? Ah… please, put me down," she asked nervously, utterly embarrassed.
Owen let out a sigh and set her on her feet. He watched her for a moment, making sure she was fine, while she adjusted her clothes and looked away to hide her shame.
"Where are we?" she asked, eyeing the strange buildings around them.
"You don't want to know," Owen replied dryly. But then he frowned, lifted his gaze to the sky, and scanned the surroundings with full alert. On a rooftop, he spotted the bat still watching him. Owen ignored him as if he didn't exist, staying focused on something else—something more.
"Please let it be like in our universe… don't let those guys show up," he muttered to himself, gritting his teeth. He knew that if any of them manifested, there was nothing he could do.
He waited a few tense seconds. Nothing happened. Wanda watched him in puzzlement.
"Fuuu…" Owen exhaled in relief. Then he turned to her.
Wanda shivered at the intensity of his gaze. He leaned toward her, cupped her cheeks in his hands… and pinched them mercilessly.
"Owww! Why?" Wanda protested, her face deformed by the pull.
—
High above on the building, the bat watched them closely. At first, he thought the man had kidnapped the young woman by the way she behaved, but he soon realized they knew each other. What intrigued him most was how easily that stranger had detected him, as well as the tension in his stance: he wasn't on guard against him, but against something invisible.
The bat launched a small drone from his belt, which flew like an insect toward the unknown man.
Owen stopped immediately, extended his hand with superhuman reflexes, and caught the device midair, crushing it effortlessly.
For the first time, the bat heard words that described him in a way no one had ever dared:
"Let's just go. That weakling in a costume, obsessed with spying on people from the shadows… he's way too close for my liking."
Owen cast a mocking glance in the direction of the nocturnal vigilante and calmly kept walking with Wanda, who couldn't fully grasp what she had just heard.
…
Owen walked in silence through what was undoubtedly a city he only knew by name. He had never been a fan of this universe, but he was informed enough to know what kind of dimensional problems could arise if anyone detected Wanda's chaos magic.
Maybe they had been lucky. Maybe they hadn't been detected yet… or, with even more luck, maybe those things didn't even exist here.
He glanced sideways at Wanda. She followed a few steps behind, observing their surroundings with a mix of confusion and nervousness. The persistent rain welcomed them until they reached an old hotel, with a gray façade and lights that flickered with an annoying buzz, as if the very building was tired of existing.
Owen moved without hesitation toward the entrance, and Wanda followed silently. They discovered that the money they carried was valid, though the greasy smile of the clerk at the reception only deepened Wanda's discomfort. She lowered her gaze, blushing, her lips pressed tight in embarrassment.
Inside the room, with two separate beds and a damp atmosphere that smelled of dust and stale tobacco, Owen dropped onto one of them, raising a hand to his forehead.
"Sit down already. There are things I need to explain… and worse, things I need to figure out. And you don't understand anything either, do you?" he said, with annoyance but also firmness.
Wanda sat on the other bed, silently.
"First things first: how's your power?" Owen asked, fixing his gaze on her. After a brief pause, he added: "And more importantly… why are you acting so strange?"
Wanda shivered at those words. Her back stiffened, and instead of answering, she turned her gaze to the window, avoiding his eyes.
Owen watched her with the cold patience of a man used to seeing more than people wanted to show. He narrowed his eyes.
"I see… it happened during the magic transfer. A direct connection was formed." His words sounded more like a diagnosis than a guess. Then he tilted his head slightly, serious: "You saw something."
Wanda's silence spoke louder than any reply. Her breathing quickened, and in her eyes there was a gleam of discomfort. She knew her instructor had always been able to extract the truth from both her and Pietro.
Owen sighed. "My defenses didn't work. You were connected to me. You saw everything, didn't you? My memories."
Wanda pressed her lips together and gave the faintest nod, her face flushed with embarrassment.
"I still don't understand how you do that…" she murmured, defeated, unable to hold his gaze.
"Well, at least it saves me the trouble of explaining where we are," Owen replied, shrugging, as if he didn't care about being exposed.
"Gotham," Wanda said softly, confirming what she had seen in his mind. Her tone trembled between certainty and disbelief. "Not just your life here… also your past life. You knew I would become the Scarlet Witch. That's why you took me to the Avengers' base… though I'm grateful that thanks to that, you saved Pietro."
Owen looked at her calmly, but his words were harsher. "No. Pietro's not safe yet. Without us there to stop it, the robot attack could turn out much worse."
"And that's how they would create Vision…" Wanda added, lowering her gaze, a hint of sadness dimming her voice. She fell silent for a few seconds before forcing herself to smile, as if trying to change the atmosphere. "So, what do we do? I don't know how all this happened. I know I could be more powerful… but even in your memories, the 'how' isn't there."
The smile she tried to show was strained, a disguise that failed to hide the storm of emotions consuming her.
"Well… I suppose the first thing is to understand why we're here. After all, your magic always responds to your deepest desires," Owen said, his gaze serious, almost inquisitive, as if he were trying to read Wanda's very soul.