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xp_logsIn England, Amanda and Wanda drop in on Stephen Strange, up to his ears in artifacts and while conversation happens between the old flames, Amanda makes a startling discovery.
The museum was and yet wasn't exactly as Wanda had left it last time. Not much had changed, or ever changed, at the Harkness owned gallery but this time, there was no police tape, mutilated bodies or injured cousins anywhere to be found. She found herself rather relieved. It was hard to shake the soft edges of nightmares, though, as she and Amanda paced side by side through the halls. Though Terrance Ward had been manipulated to the point of his mind breaking, Wanda could not easily forget being chased through the halls of a place that she had once thought sacrosanct.
And now she was back, hopefully for the last time, to oversee the last remaining details of everything that they'd discovered two years ago. A bitter taste in her mouth reminded her that Agatha's little ... collection ... had only recently just surfaced. Stephen's work might have been a monumental task but it was important that they understand what they now had access to. And what they now had to guard.
"Did Stephen sound excited about this to you?" Wanda asked, watching the last of the day's guests exit the museum proper as they approached Agatha's main offices.
"I'm just glad he wasn't on webcam so I didn't have to see him dancing with glee," came her assistant's wry response. "Mind you, if I'd been stuck inventorying a whole collection of occult items for the past couple of years, I'd be excited about finishing too. Let's hope he didn't find any more nasty surprises, at least."
"I am crossing all digits for just that outcome." The door swung open at the slightest of touches and then she was taking a deep breath, pushing back countless memories of being in this room with her former mentor. If Wanda hadn't been nursing lingering anger and hurt, it would have almost been too much. But she ruthlessly purged those thoughts from her mind as they entered, knowing they'd only be a distraction. "Stephen?" she called.
Agatha's main office was a comfortable looking study that looked like a thousand other British studies across the country. With the exception of the eclectic memorabilia that cluttered the room, anyway. It was clear from the skulls on the bookshelves where Wanda's own taste in decorating had come from but now she looked at them with a new, more suspicious eye. Hopefully nothing in sight in the office had been magic, dark or otherwise.
She nodded at the door to the side - it would lead to a fairly spacious conference room and from the rustling noises in there, it was either a bad burglar or Stephen coming to greet them.
"Wanda? Is that you?" It was indeed Stephen Strange, looking strangely at ease. Perhaps because he was, for once, in his element. "And Amanda. So good of you to come so quickly. You would not believe some of the items I've found..." He turned back towards the conference table, which was strewn with all sorts of objects, books, boxes and jars, ready to apparently list each one and give them its detailed history.
Wanda stared. "I believe I need a drink," she said, a bit faintly, as she separated from Amanda, each of them walking around opposite sides of the table. Her fingers itched to touch, to examine - because as much as these objects represented a sort of betrayal for her, they also represented a rich of magic and artifacts. Of history that had laid hidden but only just for years. She shook her head and tucked her hands behind her back. She knew better. Now, anyway. "I'm going to kill that woman." Wanda only half meant it at the moment but she frowned suddenly.
"I see that the Professor isn't here to greet us."
Strange looked embarrassed. "Ah, no," he replied. From where she was turning over amulets, Amanda snorted. "I am afraid Professor Harkness has been rather scarce. I made several requests that she join me, to answer a number of questions I had about various items, but she declined." He frowned slightly. "She even poured a vase of water down on me when I attempted to make contact with her at her home."
A noise that was part laugh, part frustrated cry and part something else escaped Wanda and she covered her face with a hand. It was funny how unfunny this entire situation was. Lowering her hand, she peeked at Stephen and tried to give him a reassuring smile. "Take heart in that it is not just you," she told him softly, trying to keep the hurt from her voice.
As angry as she had been, as she still was, Wanda felt as if she were floundering in regards to Agatha. They'd been close, once, before these secrets came between them and she had no idea how to close that gap.
With effort, Wanda shook herself and moved towards the table. "What kind of special objects did you manage to unearth anyway, darling?" she said, voice far too light and airy to be really how she felt. "Seems we have enough baubles to fill, well, a museum."
Strange gave her a sympathetic smile, seeing right through the attempt but letting her get away with it all the same. "Everything that had a particular significance is here," he replied. There were some items of concern - dangerous, in the wrong hands - that I've locked away already. Nothing so dangerous as the Devourer, the ring you described as being worn by the cult leader - but best kept out of harm's way." He moved to pick up a sealed clay jar. "This item, for example..."
Amanda listened with half an ear as she picked over the various bits and pieces on the table. Not that what Strange was saying wasn't important, but there was a written report as well and he did have a tendency to, well, go on. A box of books caught her eye and she pulled it over so she could take a better look.
It was soothing in a way to listen to Stephen's explanations. A way to avoid thinking about why they were in the room with these artifacts to begin with. She teasingly agreed to hold the clay jar only after he had, with a blush, promised it had nothing to do with fertility. The jar was nondescript enough to look at but there was a gentle pulsing that tingled her fingers, a promise of power that had seeped away with the years.
"All this history, all this power, and she kept it hidden - but why?" Wanda shook her head. "Agatha studied chaos theory and her field gave her the opportunity to locate these items but she has no ability for magic. It makes no sense."
Strange gave her a helpless sort of shrug as he took the jar back. "That, I'm afraid, I can't answer. You've known Professor Harkness far longer than I have - is there anything in your history that might indicate why she might develop a personal interest in magic?"
Wanda made a frustrated noise as she shoved her hands deep in her pockets. "Certainly nothing of extreme importance since I have come to know her," she said softly. "She has always had unusual contacts, sometimes unsavoury, but considering the years she spent digging up artifacts, normal ones, it is not unusual. And if it was something before my time, she has never mentioned it. And her late husband, Arthur, never mentioned it, either." Some warm affection drifted back into her tone at the mention of Arthur; she missed the old man more and more these days.
Amanda looked up at the change in tone, her expression softening a little, before she looked back to the box of books. Mostly basic grimoires, but as she pulled one tome out, something fluttered out. A photograph - Amanda picked it up and looked at it curiously, before going completely still.
"Boss lady. Doc. You might want to have a look at this."
Curious, Wanda did so. She reached across the table and accepted the picture while the back was still turned towards her. "Agatha, Arthur, Nicholas," she murmured, eyebrows going up slightly. The date was smudged but it was unimportant - she'd known that the Harkness' had had a child but he'd rarely been spoken about. Something about a falling out - Arthur had been quietly hurt, Agatha furious.
When she glanced up and met Amanda's eyes, she felt a frisson of alarm and she quickly flipped the photograph over.
The family stood together at some dig site. They were all younger but Wanda didn't look at the easy smile on Arthur's face or the way that younger Agatha clasped hands easily with her husband. She stared at the young man next to them, hands in his pockets, as he stared with a small smile at the camera. It was almost as if he were looking out of the picture at her. Those eyes, that smile - the last time she'd seen him, he'd been taking her hand and forcing her to stab Amanda in the shoulder.
Murderer. Cult leader. Agatha's son.
The lights in the room suddenly hissed and exploded, sending shards of glass raining down on the room as a wash of red exploded outward from Wanda's hands.
In the wake of their discovery, an enraged Wanda goes to see Agatha Harkness, only to discover something worse.
Between the two of them, Amanda and Strange had barely been able to stop Wanda leveling the place in her anger at the discovery that Agatha must have known who was the cult leader the entire time. She hadn't given them much of a choice about following her to Agatha's nearby home; outside of knocking her out, there was very little that would have stopped Wanda from her sudden desire to demand answers, real ones, from her old mentor.
She stalked across the front lawn at a clip that wasn't quite a run but had lost any resemblance to a walk some time ago. The knowledge of where Arthur had always kept the spare key was still there but Wanda had no desire to waste time in finding it. The idea of eroding the door to so much mulch made her deliriously happy.
Wanda took the few steps up to the front stoop all in one go, reaching out a hand to the heavy oak door ...
And then she stopped, simply as that, fingers hovering right above the dark wood. "Shit," she said, the first word she'd said since the lights had gone out. "The door's open." Just a sliver, enough to see that the door had not been closed all the way. In all her years of knowing Agatha, she'd never seen her leave the door like that.
There was a clap and Amanda's shielding spell popped up around them, its colours dark and roiling with anger. "Stay behind me," she instructed Strange - she knew there was no holding Wanda back. "Could be there's someone waiting for us."
"But... Yes. If I must." Strange blinked at the girl who he had a tendency to remember as a confused sixteen year old with badly dyed hair and control issues. She'd grown into a self-assured young woman, the brittle rebelliousness smoothed into something stronger. "Wanda? Are you sure you should go in?"
She glanced over her shoulder at him but she knew her smile was nothing if not frightening. "God help anyone who is not supposed to be in this house," Wanda said flatly. With Amanda's shields firmly around them, she gently nudged the door open and let it swing open before she took a step forward. In her state it was hard to read what her powers were saying - there was certainly no indication that anyone was in the house but there was no way for her to know if someone was shielding themselves.
The cult followed the god of chaos after all.
They entered the hallway and Wanda squinted, trying to let her eyes adjust. There were no lights on and the only light came from outside. Nothing seemed to be out of order or disturbed but her instincts were screaming at her and she swallowed the sour feeling in her mouth. "The study," she said softly. Without fail, Agatha would have always been in her study at that time of day and it was the best place to start looking.
A soft click summoned Amanda's werelight - with a flick of her fingers she sent the small ball of light towards the door Wanda had indicated. George worked as bait almost as well as he did as a light source. When nothing happened, Amanda nodded to Wanda and the two of them approached the door. "On three," Amanda mouthed, standing ready to burst in on the count. "One, two..."
Three.
The lack of reaction to George had already geared them to the discovery that either no one was in the room or someone was very, very patient and hadn't bought the trap. Between George floating around like some sort of bizarre lightning bug and the red glow Wanda was generating, it looked like it was going to be the first option. Frowning, she started to move forward but paused when glass crackled under foot.
She lifted it slightly and spotted a broken picture frame and immediately reached over to slap at the light switch on the other side of the wall. It took her a moment to make it work - Arthur had always bemoaned the electrical in the house - and the switch itself felt strange, like ...
The room was suddenly flooded with harsh light from the overhead fixture and Wanda flinched away from it for a moment, blinking away the black spots that were floating in front of her as Amanda suddenly cursed.
She didn't see what Amanda saw for a moment because she was too busy staring at her bloodied fingers as they pulled away from the light switch. Wanda went ... numb as she turned her head back to the room proper and everything stopped being real for a moment.
The destroyed room with its overturned chairs, ripped books and shattered glass. The pool of blood next to Agatha's favourite reading chair; the hand prints and streaks of blood that showed someone had put up a fight. The curved, gleaming black of the watchful eye on every single unbroken picture. None of that was real because if it was real. If it was real, then Agatha ...
Behind them, Strange hissed, a harsh intake of breath. "By the Hoary Hoards of Hoggoth," he murmured, looking around the room in horror. Almost of its own accord, his hand reached for Wanda's shoulder. "Wanda. We can find her. A location spell..."
"Won't work," came Amanda's voice, almost reluctant. "You know who took her, Doc. You know they'll have shielding against pretty much anything we try."
"Then we do things the hard way." Wanda's voice shook just slightly as she struggled to accept this new development. She went to wipe her fingers off on her jeans, flinched, and left them as they were.
The museum was and yet wasn't exactly as Wanda had left it last time. Not much had changed, or ever changed, at the Harkness owned gallery but this time, there was no police tape, mutilated bodies or injured cousins anywhere to be found. She found herself rather relieved. It was hard to shake the soft edges of nightmares, though, as she and Amanda paced side by side through the halls. Though Terrance Ward had been manipulated to the point of his mind breaking, Wanda could not easily forget being chased through the halls of a place that she had once thought sacrosanct.
And now she was back, hopefully for the last time, to oversee the last remaining details of everything that they'd discovered two years ago. A bitter taste in her mouth reminded her that Agatha's little ... collection ... had only recently just surfaced. Stephen's work might have been a monumental task but it was important that they understand what they now had access to. And what they now had to guard.
"Did Stephen sound excited about this to you?" Wanda asked, watching the last of the day's guests exit the museum proper as they approached Agatha's main offices.
"I'm just glad he wasn't on webcam so I didn't have to see him dancing with glee," came her assistant's wry response. "Mind you, if I'd been stuck inventorying a whole collection of occult items for the past couple of years, I'd be excited about finishing too. Let's hope he didn't find any more nasty surprises, at least."
"I am crossing all digits for just that outcome." The door swung open at the slightest of touches and then she was taking a deep breath, pushing back countless memories of being in this room with her former mentor. If Wanda hadn't been nursing lingering anger and hurt, it would have almost been too much. But she ruthlessly purged those thoughts from her mind as they entered, knowing they'd only be a distraction. "Stephen?" she called.
Agatha's main office was a comfortable looking study that looked like a thousand other British studies across the country. With the exception of the eclectic memorabilia that cluttered the room, anyway. It was clear from the skulls on the bookshelves where Wanda's own taste in decorating had come from but now she looked at them with a new, more suspicious eye. Hopefully nothing in sight in the office had been magic, dark or otherwise.
She nodded at the door to the side - it would lead to a fairly spacious conference room and from the rustling noises in there, it was either a bad burglar or Stephen coming to greet them.
"Wanda? Is that you?" It was indeed Stephen Strange, looking strangely at ease. Perhaps because he was, for once, in his element. "And Amanda. So good of you to come so quickly. You would not believe some of the items I've found..." He turned back towards the conference table, which was strewn with all sorts of objects, books, boxes and jars, ready to apparently list each one and give them its detailed history.
Wanda stared. "I believe I need a drink," she said, a bit faintly, as she separated from Amanda, each of them walking around opposite sides of the table. Her fingers itched to touch, to examine - because as much as these objects represented a sort of betrayal for her, they also represented a rich of magic and artifacts. Of history that had laid hidden but only just for years. She shook her head and tucked her hands behind her back. She knew better. Now, anyway. "I'm going to kill that woman." Wanda only half meant it at the moment but she frowned suddenly.
"I see that the Professor isn't here to greet us."
Strange looked embarrassed. "Ah, no," he replied. From where she was turning over amulets, Amanda snorted. "I am afraid Professor Harkness has been rather scarce. I made several requests that she join me, to answer a number of questions I had about various items, but she declined." He frowned slightly. "She even poured a vase of water down on me when I attempted to make contact with her at her home."
A noise that was part laugh, part frustrated cry and part something else escaped Wanda and she covered her face with a hand. It was funny how unfunny this entire situation was. Lowering her hand, she peeked at Stephen and tried to give him a reassuring smile. "Take heart in that it is not just you," she told him softly, trying to keep the hurt from her voice.
As angry as she had been, as she still was, Wanda felt as if she were floundering in regards to Agatha. They'd been close, once, before these secrets came between them and she had no idea how to close that gap.
With effort, Wanda shook herself and moved towards the table. "What kind of special objects did you manage to unearth anyway, darling?" she said, voice far too light and airy to be really how she felt. "Seems we have enough baubles to fill, well, a museum."
Strange gave her a sympathetic smile, seeing right through the attempt but letting her get away with it all the same. "Everything that had a particular significance is here," he replied. There were some items of concern - dangerous, in the wrong hands - that I've locked away already. Nothing so dangerous as the Devourer, the ring you described as being worn by the cult leader - but best kept out of harm's way." He moved to pick up a sealed clay jar. "This item, for example..."
Amanda listened with half an ear as she picked over the various bits and pieces on the table. Not that what Strange was saying wasn't important, but there was a written report as well and he did have a tendency to, well, go on. A box of books caught her eye and she pulled it over so she could take a better look.
It was soothing in a way to listen to Stephen's explanations. A way to avoid thinking about why they were in the room with these artifacts to begin with. She teasingly agreed to hold the clay jar only after he had, with a blush, promised it had nothing to do with fertility. The jar was nondescript enough to look at but there was a gentle pulsing that tingled her fingers, a promise of power that had seeped away with the years.
"All this history, all this power, and she kept it hidden - but why?" Wanda shook her head. "Agatha studied chaos theory and her field gave her the opportunity to locate these items but she has no ability for magic. It makes no sense."
Strange gave her a helpless sort of shrug as he took the jar back. "That, I'm afraid, I can't answer. You've known Professor Harkness far longer than I have - is there anything in your history that might indicate why she might develop a personal interest in magic?"
Wanda made a frustrated noise as she shoved her hands deep in her pockets. "Certainly nothing of extreme importance since I have come to know her," she said softly. "She has always had unusual contacts, sometimes unsavoury, but considering the years she spent digging up artifacts, normal ones, it is not unusual. And if it was something before my time, she has never mentioned it. And her late husband, Arthur, never mentioned it, either." Some warm affection drifted back into her tone at the mention of Arthur; she missed the old man more and more these days.
Amanda looked up at the change in tone, her expression softening a little, before she looked back to the box of books. Mostly basic grimoires, but as she pulled one tome out, something fluttered out. A photograph - Amanda picked it up and looked at it curiously, before going completely still.
"Boss lady. Doc. You might want to have a look at this."
Curious, Wanda did so. She reached across the table and accepted the picture while the back was still turned towards her. "Agatha, Arthur, Nicholas," she murmured, eyebrows going up slightly. The date was smudged but it was unimportant - she'd known that the Harkness' had had a child but he'd rarely been spoken about. Something about a falling out - Arthur had been quietly hurt, Agatha furious.
When she glanced up and met Amanda's eyes, she felt a frisson of alarm and she quickly flipped the photograph over.
The family stood together at some dig site. They were all younger but Wanda didn't look at the easy smile on Arthur's face or the way that younger Agatha clasped hands easily with her husband. She stared at the young man next to them, hands in his pockets, as he stared with a small smile at the camera. It was almost as if he were looking out of the picture at her. Those eyes, that smile - the last time she'd seen him, he'd been taking her hand and forcing her to stab Amanda in the shoulder.
Murderer. Cult leader. Agatha's son.
The lights in the room suddenly hissed and exploded, sending shards of glass raining down on the room as a wash of red exploded outward from Wanda's hands.
In the wake of their discovery, an enraged Wanda goes to see Agatha Harkness, only to discover something worse.
Between the two of them, Amanda and Strange had barely been able to stop Wanda leveling the place in her anger at the discovery that Agatha must have known who was the cult leader the entire time. She hadn't given them much of a choice about following her to Agatha's nearby home; outside of knocking her out, there was very little that would have stopped Wanda from her sudden desire to demand answers, real ones, from her old mentor.
She stalked across the front lawn at a clip that wasn't quite a run but had lost any resemblance to a walk some time ago. The knowledge of where Arthur had always kept the spare key was still there but Wanda had no desire to waste time in finding it. The idea of eroding the door to so much mulch made her deliriously happy.
Wanda took the few steps up to the front stoop all in one go, reaching out a hand to the heavy oak door ...
And then she stopped, simply as that, fingers hovering right above the dark wood. "Shit," she said, the first word she'd said since the lights had gone out. "The door's open." Just a sliver, enough to see that the door had not been closed all the way. In all her years of knowing Agatha, she'd never seen her leave the door like that.
There was a clap and Amanda's shielding spell popped up around them, its colours dark and roiling with anger. "Stay behind me," she instructed Strange - she knew there was no holding Wanda back. "Could be there's someone waiting for us."
"But... Yes. If I must." Strange blinked at the girl who he had a tendency to remember as a confused sixteen year old with badly dyed hair and control issues. She'd grown into a self-assured young woman, the brittle rebelliousness smoothed into something stronger. "Wanda? Are you sure you should go in?"
She glanced over her shoulder at him but she knew her smile was nothing if not frightening. "God help anyone who is not supposed to be in this house," Wanda said flatly. With Amanda's shields firmly around them, she gently nudged the door open and let it swing open before she took a step forward. In her state it was hard to read what her powers were saying - there was certainly no indication that anyone was in the house but there was no way for her to know if someone was shielding themselves.
The cult followed the god of chaos after all.
They entered the hallway and Wanda squinted, trying to let her eyes adjust. There were no lights on and the only light came from outside. Nothing seemed to be out of order or disturbed but her instincts were screaming at her and she swallowed the sour feeling in her mouth. "The study," she said softly. Without fail, Agatha would have always been in her study at that time of day and it was the best place to start looking.
A soft click summoned Amanda's werelight - with a flick of her fingers she sent the small ball of light towards the door Wanda had indicated. George worked as bait almost as well as he did as a light source. When nothing happened, Amanda nodded to Wanda and the two of them approached the door. "On three," Amanda mouthed, standing ready to burst in on the count. "One, two..."
Three.
The lack of reaction to George had already geared them to the discovery that either no one was in the room or someone was very, very patient and hadn't bought the trap. Between George floating around like some sort of bizarre lightning bug and the red glow Wanda was generating, it looked like it was going to be the first option. Frowning, she started to move forward but paused when glass crackled under foot.
She lifted it slightly and spotted a broken picture frame and immediately reached over to slap at the light switch on the other side of the wall. It took her a moment to make it work - Arthur had always bemoaned the electrical in the house - and the switch itself felt strange, like ...
The room was suddenly flooded with harsh light from the overhead fixture and Wanda flinched away from it for a moment, blinking away the black spots that were floating in front of her as Amanda suddenly cursed.
She didn't see what Amanda saw for a moment because she was too busy staring at her bloodied fingers as they pulled away from the light switch. Wanda went ... numb as she turned her head back to the room proper and everything stopped being real for a moment.
The destroyed room with its overturned chairs, ripped books and shattered glass. The pool of blood next to Agatha's favourite reading chair; the hand prints and streaks of blood that showed someone had put up a fight. The curved, gleaming black of the watchful eye on every single unbroken picture. None of that was real because if it was real. If it was real, then Agatha ...
Behind them, Strange hissed, a harsh intake of breath. "By the Hoary Hoards of Hoggoth," he murmured, looking around the room in horror. Almost of its own accord, his hand reached for Wanda's shoulder. "Wanda. We can find her. A location spell..."
"Won't work," came Amanda's voice, almost reluctant. "You know who took her, Doc. You know they'll have shielding against pretty much anything we try."
"Then we do things the hard way." Wanda's voice shook just slightly as she struggled to accept this new development. She went to wipe her fingers off on her jeans, flinched, and left them as they were.
