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aparticularbandit · 1 year ago

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Instigation: Chapter One

Summary: Steve sends Wanda to seek out an old witch he once knew, and eventually, Wanda brings said old witch back to meet her family.

Wanda Maximoff/Agatha Harkness

Chapter Rating: T. Fic Rating: T.

AO3

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Mid-May, 2015.

Wanda stands outside the New York Sanctum.

It’s an impressive building. Huge. Gorgeous glass with a shape that might as well be mystical etched into it in shining gold. The top is a dome, which is even more impressive given its age. It literally gleams in the sunlight, which is odd, given how many pass it by without even stopping to look. But, then, they’re probably used to it. They see it every day. If she lived here, maybe she would be used to it, too.

But Wanda doesn’t live here. Even now, she only lives on the outskirts of town, and live is an interesting word. She has no American citizenship, nothing to say she deserves to be here, nothing to say she can stay if the government—

The government isn’t going to send her away because the Avengers, that superpowered super team, has decided to keep her here. With them. It’s the same as before: she becomes immune to government interference because a more powerful political opponent takes her under her wing. Never mind that these Avengers are apparently good. She’d thought the same of Hydra.

It’s easy to believe when she wants to believe.

Wanda stands outside the New York Sanctum with a slip of paper in her hands, looks down at the address on the paper, reads it for what feels like the millionth time, looks back up at the Sanctum, squints, and then walks past the Sanctum to the apartment complex next door. It’s shabby. Old. Probably as old as the Sanctum itself, if not older, and probably more expensive to live in, even with what are likely horrible apartments. She knows a thing or two about those; when they could afford it, she and Pietro lived in plenty.

“You have got to be joking,” Wanda murmurs in her thick accent. She glances down at the address one more time – and, yes, there’s an apartment number on there, so it’s definitely the apartment complex Steve meant and not the much bigger and more impressive Sanctum.

“When I was a boy,” Steve had said, “there was a woman with power similar to yours who lived here. We didn’t see her very often; Mom told me to have nothing to do with her. But every now and again, when she was desperate enough—”

“Sounds like an old fairytale,” Wanda had cut him off. “I don’t need a cottage witch. I don’t do magic.”

But Steve insisted Wanda at least go check the place out. Seventy years might be a long time, but she could still be alive. She’d be in her nineties, but with her power, he was certain she’d still be around. Or maybe a new “witch” lived there, someone who took on that woman’s place in society. Vision looked up the apartment and the records of ownership, finding that whoever lived there in the forties still lived there now. Wanda chalked that up to rent control and an apartment that got passed down to a son or daughter or gifted to a family friend, and for a while, she adamantly refused to check things out.

Eventually, though, Wanda grew so tired of Steve’s insistence that she agreed to go. Nat even offered to join her, although Steve’s stories reminded her of so much folklore that it made her uncomfortable, but she told her there was no point. She wasn’t going to find anyone there and didn’t want anyone else to waste their time going with her. Now, though, standing in front of the apartment complex, she decided there was one good thing about being here: if she struck out at the apartment, she could always check out the Sanctum next door.

Not that she believes her powers have anything to do with magic.

Wanda walks into the apartment, only to find that it smells of dust and mildew, and walks along the very, very long hallway to a door waiting at the very end, one situated on the side that looks out on the Sanctum. She checks the number, checks her paper again, and then steels her face before climbing three floors of stairs, all the way to the top of the building. It doesn’t matter how high up she gets, the Sanctum next door is still taller, and what’s worse is that the smoke that she hadn’t smelled on the first floor seeps into the air on the second and grows stronger with each floor.

Dirty, dank, and disgusting. Just like the apartments she’d lived in with Pietro. But that doesn’t make this smell like home.

On the top floor, at the apartment that holds the same space as the one she’d checked previously, Wanda reads the number, reads her paper again, and sighs. It matches. Well, then, this is her stop. She steps forward and knocks on the door twice, not as loud as she could, but not too soft either.

“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any!” comes calling from within.

“I’m not selling anything,” Wanda says, cheeks flushing quickly with frustration. “A friend of mine sent me to see an….” She checks the paper again, trying to read Steve’s not so tidy scrawl. “Agatha Harkness?”

There’s some shuffling inside the apartment before the door cracks open. “Who wants to know?”

Wanda stares at the woman standing in the doorframe. “Um.”

See, Wanda wouldn’t have really cared too terribly much about the woman’s appearance in and of itself. She’s attractive, sure, and there’s something about how wild her dark hair is that makes Wanda want to tangle her fingers in it, to pull her to her, and, in an attempt to tame it, make it excessively worse. But she can ignore that, she can ignore the woman’s pale skin, she can even ignore the light smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, but what she can’t ignore is that the woman is dressed in a t-shirt that barely makes its way down to her bare thighs because she isn’t wearing any pants.

“Hey, hon.” The woman’s voice breaks through Wanda’s thoughts. “My eyes are up here.”

Wanda jumps. “Sorry, sorry.” She runs her fingers through her hair and draws her eyes back up, trying not to linger on the woman’s body any longer than she already has, but then she meets her eyes, thinking that will make things easier, and has to stop again. “Um.”

It honestly is not at all fair, how this woman looks and how she should be wearing more clothes. This is not her fault.

The woman smirks. “You’re not so bad yourself, toots.” She breaks eye contact with Wanda, lets her eyes wander the way Wanda’s already have, and deepens that smug look. “You wanted something?”

“You’re Agatha Harkness?” Wanda splutters out, refusing to believe it. Agatha Harkness was an adult when Steve was a child; she’s got to be ninety or a hundred or something like that. There’s no way this woman – this very attractive woman – is any older than her mid-thirties. She’s got to be a new resident. Or a hot daughter or grand-daughter or some sort of extended relative. This can’t be—

“Who wants to know?” the woman asks, eyes dropping to the paper now held tight in Wanda’s hand like a lifeline. “You said something about a friend, hon?”

“Uh, right, yes, right.” Wanda’s accent grows thicker as she grows more flustered, and she mutters in Sokovian under her breath with the assumption that the other woman can’t understand her. “Steve. Steve Rogers. He said his mother used to visit a witch here when he was a child.” She can’t help but roll her eyes. “He did not call her a witch, but she sounds like a fairytale to me.”

The woman listens to her words and gives a little nod. “Steve Rogers,” she echoes. “You mean that hunk they’re calling Captain America? Isn’t he a hundred years old?”

Wanda’s gaze shifts away from the woman. “Eighties. He’s in his eighties.” She bites her lower lip. “I told him she wouldn’t be here anymore, but he was so insistent that she could help me.”

“You got tired of his nagging, hon. Don’t try to shortchange it.”

“I got tired of his nagging,” Wanda admits. She glances up. “But you don’t look to be her, so—”

“Help you with what, doll?” the woman interrupts. She gives Wanda another onceover, and her smirk returns. “Don’t tell me you mean this attraction between us.”

Anyone else, and Wanda would grow so frustrated that she would have left without another word. But this woman….

She’s attractive, and Wanda can’t help it. She wants to show off.

“With this,” she says, lifting her hand and letting her power out. It turns the paper she’d been holding to ash, and as she turns her hand, letting the power thread through her fingertips, she lets the ash dump out onto the floor. For all that the complex smells horribly of smoke, her addition doesn’t hold the same scent. Then she brings her hand up, that scarlet power still snaking around her fingers. “He thought his old witch would be able to help with this.”

The woman’s eyes focus on the power, and its light reflects scarlet in her pupils. Surrounded by her bright blue irises, it seems like there’s a thin ring of deep purple between them. “What’s your name, hon?”

“Wanda,” she says, drawing her power back and letting her hand drop. “Wanda Maximoff.”

The woman takes Wanda’s hand in hers and squeezes. “Agnes Harker.” Then she tugs on Wanda’s hand and pulls her into the apartment, shutting the door behind her. “And I can teach you everything you need to know.”

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