Nick Fury had been the one to bring you in. He said it was because he could see your potential, but you knew it was so he could keep an eye on you. He'd also have Earth's Mightiest Heroes to help out. That man trusted no one.

Of course, why blame him? You didn't trust yourself. Your powers were destructive. You hated them. People have died simply because they touched you at the wrong time. 'A danger to society' is what your family called you before throwing you out.

Not long after, Fury found you. He already knew everything about you somehow, so he offered you a home. Well, more like a slightly more comfortable prison cell.

It's not like you actually lived and slept in a cell, but you never felt like this place could be a home with how you were treated.

Obviously Fury informed the team about you, what you had done and what you could do. They were all terrified of you. They tried to be polite from a distance, but no one dared get close to you, let alone offered to help you.

That's how it was for a week. Then, like you'd heard from the others, a quinjet came in and a group of Avengers returned from their two-week long mission. You didn't know who was on it, no one really stayed around you long enough to share.

Wanda walked off the jet, exhausted from the long mission and ready to take a proper shower. After her debrief on the mission, she ignored everyone else and walked to her room. On the way, she nearly ran into one girl.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," the girl immediately said after jumping back ten feet. Okay, maybe not ten feet, but she flew back.

Wanda gave her a look of confusion, realizing she didn't know the girl, but before the introduction could be started, the girl was gone. Wanda knew it was weird, and she'd get on it right after a good shower.

And a good nap.

After those things had been accomplished, Wanda found Steve, who hadn't been on the mission, so he'd have answers.

"Who's the new girl?" she asked.

There was no need for clarification. "Fury found her. Brought her in, but we still don't know if it was for protection, to give her a place to live, or to keep an eye on her."

That had Wanda raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean 'keep an eye on her'?"

Steve sighed. "Her powers... they're dangerous. She's hurt a lot of people. We don't... we don't know what to do with her," he admitted.

Wanda sighed and closed her eyes, reigning in the anger she was quickly being consumed with. "So what, no one talks to her? Helps her? Trains her?" Wanda asked, her questions being fired one after another.

Her eyes were close to burning holes into Steve's guilty face. "I know, I know, but... Wanda, people have died after just touching her. Sorry for being a bit wary."

She let her gaze relax from scathing to determined. "That ends now."

You were in your room/cell, laying in the middle of the floor. You'd burned the sheets on the bed when you tried to sleep there your first night. The floor was cooler, and kept the simmering heat under your skin at bay.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. You sat up quickly. No one has ever knocked on your door before. No one ever came over here.

"Hello?" you called out, unsure of how to go about this.

The door opened slowly and in popped Wanda Maximoff. You had nearly touched her in the hallway and were beating yourself up over possibly hurting an Avenger. Seeing her in here, you expected her to get mad at you for what you did.

Instead, she came in, closed the door, and sat on the floor across from you after giving your bed a quick glance.

"I want to help you."

Your eyes went wide. "You... want to help me? And you'd actually help?"

Wanda nodded. "Steve told me everyone has been scared of you and... I understand that. What it feels like to have everyone be scared of you and what you can do. So that's why I want to help you be able to control your powers."

There were tears in your eyes that had started to drip down your cheeks. You couldn't speak at first, so you just nodded. However, you found your words when Wanda tried to reach out and touch your hand.

"No! I- I'll hurt you. I've hurt so many people. How- how can you help me? You can't even touch me or be near me without risking the possibility of getting hurt," you were borderline hysterical at this point.

Wanda retracted her hand but wasn't mad. She wanted to know more. "Tell me what it feels like. Tell me what you know."

You took a couple deep breaths, although you still shook some, and looked down to your hands. "It- it feels like I'm on fire under my skin. There's this heat that never goes away and singes almost anything I touch. People I touch get burned so badly. They- they melt just by brushing past me. And when I get too emotional it's like this... this explosion of heat and flames that takes everything out around me."

As you spoke, you never looked away from your hands. You watched as they started to glow a familiar fiery orange. What you were doing hit you and you gasped, realizing you might explode now.

"Deep breaths and look at me. Match my breathing," Wanda said, getting your attention.

The two of you locked eyes and she helped you calm back down and escape the orange glow. Even after the glow was gone, Wanda kept breathing with you to the point you stopped feeling so... hot.

"There. It worked." You were confused until you followed her gaze to the hand she had in yours. You looked back up at her, astonished. "We can do this. It might take time, but we can. Trust me."

For months the two of you trained together. You started outside, just because Wanda wanted you to let go for a moment and not worry about destroying the Avengers Compound. That first week was the right way to go, as Wanda learned so much about you and your powers.

You couldn't control them well, just enough to keep them at bay most of the time so you weren't burning things down left and right. When you let yourself go, it was hard to reign it all back in.

Wanda wasn't worried, however. She knew that all you needed was someone to believe in you like the Avengers believed in her.

It was a hard process, mostly because of your fears. Wanda told you over and over again that, if she were in the line of fire, she'd use her powers to protect herself. You didn't need to worry about hurting her.

After two months of training daily for hours on end, Wanda was seeing progress. Then, after another three, she knew you were ready to go out on the field. Even you felt ready, though you were more scared than Wanda was.

Wanda begged every day for you to get the chance to go on a mission. She talked to Tony, Steve, and even Fury himself but every single man was too reluctant. They hadn't seen your progress yet. You were too busy training with her to walk around the compound, showing off your new found control.

One day, seven months after the day Wanda said she'd help you, Tony finally cracked.

"Fine. (Y/n) can come on this mission. We're gonna need all hands on deck for this one- we're raiding a facility that seems to be following in Hydra's footsteps. They've been conducting a lot of human experiments on unwilling participants. Luckily, they haven't been successful yet, but that means they're killing a lot of innocent people."

Wanda came to tell you the good news.

"You mean I finally get to put these powers to good use?" you asked, genuinely excited. Sure, you were nervous as well, but you were ready to show what you could do.

Wanda nodded. "But, you can't go in with your hands a-blazing because you still have a team who's going to be out there. We've been working on a lot of hand-to-hand combat, so work as much as you can with that."

You nodded, your spirit not dampened. Hand-to-hand meant you could touch people without horrendously burning them instantly. This was still a good step forward.

When everyone boarded the quinjet, they even all noticed how you no longer had this hundred degree aura that used to make it hard to be around you for long periods of time.

"Okay (Y/n), you can do this, okay? Stay with me and we can do this together. I'll be right there the entire time. So will the rest of the team. We all have each other's backs."

You nodded along to Wanda's words, letting them psych you up for the mission. You had a team, and the team had you. This would be great.

Until it wasn't. Turns out, not all of the intel was right. Some of the participants weren't human, and were much more resilient to the experiments. Which meant they were alive and very ready to fight.

It was a lot at once. You nearly felt too overwhelmed until you remembered what you and Wanda had been working so hard on these last few months. Just like Wanda suggested, you did mostly hand-to-hand combat. You were taking aliens down left and right.

For a moment, you had a long enough break to look around the battlefield. That was when you finally saw the struggle. The Avengers could hold their own, but these aliens were vicious and angry. They were fighting harder than any of the Avengers had seen.

You knew this was it. This was your moment. The moment to prove you could use your powers for good. The moment to prove that Wanda had put her time and effort into the right person.

You closed your eyes and felt the hot, raw energy beneath your skin. With a simple thought, born out of your will and not your fear, that energy came bubbling to the surface.

Wanda looked over at you to see how you were doing just in time to see you close your eyes. When you were suddenly glowing much brighter, she knew what was happening.

"Everyone get down!" she called into the comms, not wanting an Avenger to misstep into the crossfire.

They were confused, but they did as Wanda said, just as you opened your eyes and let out the breath you were holding.

Fire danced from your fingers and heat exploded from your body. It all poured out of you, lighting up the night sky, all the aliens on the ground, and the facility they had come out of. It all burned to the ground.

The Avengers were shocked and in awe of what they were seeing. The girl in front of them was completely different than the one who came to them all that time ago.

They all looked to the person responsible. Wanda was smiling proudly. She knew you had it in you, all you needed was someone to believe in you.

When you opened your eyes, the air was briefly full of ash and smoke, until Wanda used her powers to ball it all up and send it into the atmosphere.

No one spoke for a second. Then, "Nice job, team. Let's go home." Steve led the group back to the quinjet, which had been safely parked away from the battlefield and therefore the flames.

Wanda came to your side and you leaned on her. "Did I do a good job?" you asked, tired from using as much of your powers as you did after fighting for a while before that.

She nodded and you smiled. "You did great, (Y/n). Now we just have to work on your stamina." The two of you laughed as you boarded the jet.

Once the door was shut and everyone in the sky, Steve turned to you. "Thank you, (Y/n). You saved all of us back there. We- I'm sorry for not giving you the chance when you first got here. There's no excuse."

You shook your head. "No, you had a good excuse. I understand. I'm just glad I've learned enough to no longer be a safety hazard."

After Steve, everyone else thanked you and apologized. You could've used the apologies a long time ago, sure, but the thought certainly counts.

Steve even let Fury know about how you did on the mission, how you saved their lives from a fight that was getting a bleaker outcome by the second. He also congratulated you on a job well done.

When everyone was back at the facility, you pulled Wanda aside and into a bear hug.

"Thank you for taking a chance on me."

~Fin~

A/n: Here's another one! I found this prompt on Instagram way back in like 2018 and finally moved it to my Avengers Imagines ideas list, which meant it finally had the chance to be used. I'm pretty sure the person who created this prompt was using Phoenix from X-Men as the inspiration, but I haven't seen a single X-Men movie so I don't really know.

Anyway, I'm having the hardest time trying to figure out what to do for my very last imagine. I want it to be really good, which already puts me under a decent amount of pressure, and I have no idea what I want it to be about. I'll keep digging through my ideas to figure it out, but otherwise I got nothing.

With that, I'll see you all next week!!!!!!!!!!!