warning: lots of violence, torture and a small moment of s*lf h*rn
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CHAPTER FOUR
the consequences
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THERE WAS NO way that Diana was ready for this fight, her hangover was brought down to a slight headache and her arms and legs were still sweaty and sore, she could feel a sheen of sweat stick her undershirt to her back, though she was grateful for how breathable it was. She tried to ignore the symptoms of her bad decisions and the nerves that jittered her body. Diana had never fought a robot before yesterday and she didn't fare too well last time.

She had to get over it because now that the Maximoff twins are working with him, things were much worse. Diana knew they weren't good news. The first red flag is that she thinks the both of them are hot as hell. She's come to learn that if she's attracted to someone like that, she's probably going to have to fight for her life like the last two times. She was not equipped for super speed.

The nerves got worse when the quinjet landed and Tony and Thor were already flying out, Steve, with his super-soldier speed, was following closely behind. Diana looked to Clint and Natasha with a sigh, they seemed to have understood as the three of them begrudgingly ran for the beached ship on the coast.

They soon caught up with the other half of the team, Diana's irritated lungs heaved by the time she was there, she really needed to get back into shape. By the time she caught her breath, Tony had finished putting a hole in the wall with one of his lasers.

The thud of the metal hitting the floor of the ship was drowned out by the chaos inside that seemed to sound like explosions to Diana's ear, her small headache expanding into a larger and much worse pain. She had to push through it though as she followed Clint and Natasha inside who trailed after the rest of the team.

Clint had found a way to perch himself up at a high point to keep an eye and an arrow on Ultron. Diana quietly snorted at the idea of a medieval-style sniper as she kept close to Natasha. She wasn't prepared but she had to at least act like it, if she showed any hint of vulnerability she knew it would be targeted.

Diana scanned her surroundings every five seconds, mapping, looking, making sure that there was no hostile person in the vicinity. She wouldn't be caught, never again. She tightened the grip on her spear, not ready for what was waiting for her.

She could hear Ultron before she saw him, but she wasn't sure she was prepared for what she saw. A ten-foot-tall robot made out of the strongest material he could find, and it looks like he was looking in Sokovia because behind him were the twins. Wanda's dark hair was pulled back into a tight, high ponytail, showing off the look of menacing anger on her slim features.

Diana wasn't sure if she wanted to kiss the girl or piss her pants in fear, but she really didn't want to run around in a soaking suit when fighting robots. She glanced over at Pietro, his eyes were locked on her, Diana didn't like that. She tried to hide her shaking but she knew that it was a failed attempt because the smirk that lit up on Pietro's face had sent a chill of goosebumps down her back, making her shudder.

"Ahh, Junior." Tony spoke up, announcing their appearance on the ship, she could hear the guns trained onto them, some cocked and ready to fire from the chorus of clicks that could be heard in the deathly silence, "You're gonna break your old man's heart."

"If I have to." Ultron played along with the banter, Diana zeroed in her focus on the robot. Normal AI's wouldn't divert from their programmed objective unless they are told to multitask like JARVIS.

If Ultron is as smart as Diana thinks he is, then there are possible clones of him somewhere else in the shop, possibly getting more vibranium.

Diana couldn't let that happen but if she disappeared, Grey-Speedy would find her and he would do it faster than she would have time to even through a punch, so the option wasn't viable. Right now, she had to play along with the stalling game.

"We don't have to break anything." Thor to settle the situation with an authoritarian tone, but that would be like putting out a fire with gasoline, this was going to end badly for her.

"Clearly you've never made an omelet." Ultron deadpanned a look to Thor. Diana wondered how he was able to make himself so expressive.

"He beat me by one second," Tony added on, glancing over at Thor as he did. Diana could feel Steve roll his eyes, she could hear the lecture he had planned for Tony now.

"Ah, this is funny, Mr. Stark." Pietro spoke up, finally taking his attention off Diana, but when one twin comes off, another hops on, the stare was so intense, Diana could practically feel it on her skin, dissecting her, reminding her just how weak she is to the hands of the twins, "It's what, comfortable? Like old times?"

"This was never my life," Tony muttered, Diana could feel the pain of his guilt, it emanated even through the suit now,

"You two can still walk away from this." Steve tried speaking to them, warning them, but it wouldn't work, not with the twins.

"Oh, we will." Wanda's pouty lip as she mocked Steve's sympathetic tone was overrun by her glare.

"I know you've suffered-"

Steve was interrupted by a groan from Ultron, he shook his head in disdain and gestured his hand at Cap.

"Captain America." He spat with disgust, "God's righteous man, pretending you could live without a war. I can't physically throw up in my mouth, but..."

"If you believe in peace, then let us keep it." Thor tried, the avenger's methods of de-escalation were abysmal, and it was going to turn into a fight soon.

Diana was on edge at this point, she had no idea how to fight either one of the twins. Pietro could kill her in a second and Wanda could help make that second even shorter. There was no way she could beat them together.

"I think you're confusing peace with quiet," Ultron argued. Thor gave Diana an annoyed side-eye at the robot's words, she couldn't blame him.

"Yuh-huh." Tony scoffed, "What's the Vibranium for?"

"I'm glad you asked that, because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan-"

When Ultron interrupted himself to attack Tony, Diana stumbled back, looking over on her right to see a black arms dealer with a gun aim at her. It was like a pull in her gut told her what to do with the spear but she aimed it at the man and watched as her yellow energy crackled over the weapon and blasted at the man. It blasted in a similar fashion to the Chitauri blast, making Diana gasp at the realization.

After that it was like she fell back into place, she turned her head again, this time, aiming at a robot and managing to blast its head off this time. The Ultron body continued to fly at her due to the momentum and Diana sidestepped out of the way.  She dodged a blast from another robot and sent one right back, not hesitating before it bit her in the butt.

This went on for some time, it even got to the point where Diana was seeking people out to blast, if they had a gun pointed at her, or if they were a robot, then she was sending her yellow energy blast at them or she was grabbing them and turning them into rocks. Ultron wasn't human, so if Diana was able to even get the slightest touch on the robot, then it could be turned into a rock for her to put in her pocket.

She jogged up a set of stairs and turned a corner when she saw a streak of blue and a red haze set over her eyes.

Everything went dark, Diana couldn't tell if she was still on the ship or if the twins killed her and she was just dead now. Then, it felt as if her arms were being strapped down and a blinding white light shined in her face. She had to be dead, that was the only logical explanation as to what she was seeing.

Only Tom and Celeste Renfrey appeared and their surroundings became more clear, she was back in the HYDRA bunker in Sokovia, and her parents were in the white lab coats like the scientists wore. Diana tried moving only to see that she was strapped down to a chair, it had a bit of a recline but that only put more strain on her arms as they stretched out. Her breath and heart rate was quicker as she struggled to move.

This was one of Wanda's mind games. Diana tried every method she thought up in the book to end the vision but none of them worked. She was still strapped to the chair and now her parents wielded blades, their sickening smiles spread across their sadistic faces as they drew near.

"Get the fuck away from me," Diana yelled out, she tried blasting at them with her restrained hands but it only went right through them, "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!"

They didn't stop as they began to rip away the stomach of her shirt. She shook her head, her eyes tearing up as she muttered "No" over and over again.

"Please don't," Diana begged and a third person appeared in her peripheral, Baron Strucker stood by a closed door, a dripping chest and blood-splattered face that wore a sick smile of its own, "please."

Her attention was torn away from the Baron as the feeling of her stomach being sliced open spread across her body. She let out a shrill scream of pain as she was forced to watch, even if she shut her eyes, the vision was there, she turned her head and somehow her body followed along with the chair and her parents.

Just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, Tom grabbed a pair of pliers and pulled the skin apart giving room for Celeste to begin to reach inside. If Diana's scream was loud before, she was sure she broke the sound barrier with the one she let out after. The pain was excruciating as the woman she called her mother dug around, sorting through her insides.

Diana squirmed and pulled against the restraints but nothing worked until a glimpse of Clint Barton in her face with a weirdly shaped arrow managed to intervene and soon, Diana's convulsing body shocked the mind play out of her head and knocked her out.

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DIANA WOKE UP on the soft cushioning of a bed, but it wasn't her own, normally she could hear the faint sounds of New York traffic from her room and could smell the lavender spray that seems to stick her area, she didn't have that either. Her head screamed in pain as the sunlight washed onto her face. She let out a weak grain as her scratchy sore throat cried for her to be silent. She squinted her eyes to see that she was in a child's bedroom.

"Hi!" A little girl's voice squeaked, making Diana snap awake fully as she sat up and looked for the source for her voice. The little girl was holding out Diana's burner phone that was buzzing, "it's been ringing since you got here."

Diana gently took the phone, her mind not processing her surroundings fully, yet she still answered the phone, only one family has this number for emergencies so she was instantly answering.

"Hello?" Diana answered, making the girl smile before running out of the room.

"Oh my god, Diana, you're okay!" Tonya's voice filled Diana's head as it entered through her head, "I saw what happened with the hulk on the news and I was just praying that you weren't in the building."

Diana furrowed her eyebrows even more as she shook her head.

"Tonya, what?" She asked looking around to see if the girl had a clock in her room, but unfortunately, she did not.

"The Hulk? He and Tony destroyed that building after the Hulk attacked that city?" Tonya answered, now just as confused as Diana, "that's not the point, I'm getting off-topic, I hate to tell you this right now because-"

Tonya stopped, her voice had been shaky and cracking before but Dianas thought it was because she was scared of what apparently happened after Diana got knocked out. Now, it seems that she may have been crying for a different reason.

"Diana," Tonya let out a sniffle, making Diana clutch the blankets that fell when she sat up, "Mama J passed away just a few hours ago."

And just like that, Diana's shitty day got infinitely worse. Her heart stopped and her stomach twisted into a thousand knots. Her jaw clenched so tight, she thought her teeth would break. Her fists tightened around the blanket and the phone that was each into their respective grip. Her muscles ached from the intensity of strain on her hands.

"Diana?" Tonya spoke into the silence.

"Is this real?" Diana chocked out, looking down at her arm, she released the blanket, and with her free hand, she began to pinch at any skin she saw, pinching so hard that her fingernails left bloody little crescents that were sure to show up as brushes in a couple of hours, "this can't be real."

Her blurry vision cleared itself as she blinked, her tears falling away down her cheeks, her nose already becoming stuffy and heated.

"It's real," Tonya sniffled out, "will you be able to come home soon? To help plan the funeral?"

Diana's heart wrenched at Tonya's words as she looked up at the roof, hoping that she would wake up from this nightmare soon.

"I will as soon as possible," Diana choked out, "there's just an Avengers thing that I have to take care of before I can come home," -Diana looked to the doorway to see Natasha's concerned face staring her down- "I promise I'll take care of it and I'll be there soon."

"Okay," Tonya spoke softly, "I have to go, the coroners here to pick her up, I'll see you soon, Di."

"Okay, love you," Diana's tone was almost a whisper, "bye."

Diana snapped the phone shut. She ripped off the blanket from her body and was up on her feet in a flash. She barely acknowledged Natasha when she stormed out of the room and found her way to the stairs, the front door just a few feet away from the bottom of the steps. Diana had to constantly wipe her eyes with one hand while using the railing for support with the other.

Judith was dead. She was gone. Diana couldn't save her. She didn't even get to say goodbye.

She didn't acknowledge the pregnant woman on the porch or Clint who was next to her, and she certainly didn't acknowledge Steve or Tony as she stormed past them either, she couldn't hold back the sobs but she was able to muffle them. Tony called out for her to come back but she only spun on her heel and glared at him furiously.

She didn't want to walk back to him but her shaking body did it anyway.

"What's wrong?" Tony asked, the two men were apparently chopping wood, though from the piles it seems that Steve was better suited for the job.

"What's wrong?" Diana chuckled a humorless laugh, her shaking hands jabbing at his chest roughly, "I'll tell you what's wrong, Judith's dead, my mother is dead, and instead of gathering some resources to help her get better, you decided to make a robot that wants to kill us ALL! THAT'S WHAT'S WRONG!"

Tony was stunned into silence, which was a rare commodity.

"THANK YOU SO FUCKING MUCH, TONY STARK!" She screamed, jabbing her finger into his chest one more time before spinning around and storming off to the edge of the woods.

She wouldn't go too far in considering she had never been there before, but she needed to blow off steam before she knocked that whole farmhouse down. Diana looked down at her phone once again, Tonya's words repeating in her head so fast that it began to start ringing in her ears and mind and before she knew it, her scratchy and sore throat let out another scream, a yellow blast of energy emanating from her whole body, plowing into the trees and plants around her either withering or just flattened in the wake of her abilities.

She was an Avenger. And she couldn't save her fucking mother.

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2.8k words

guess whose back, back again?

it's me, i'm back,,, i think. i got bored while working and found time to write this over a period of shifts so yeah :)

can we talk about how roughly diana is going through it? homegirl just can't catch a break :( but! it'll all make sense with time!!

diana: blasting bad guys and being badass

wanda:

wanda really said FUCK avengers rights and she would do it again too.

i don't think I'll be 100% back just yet but i might publish a lil more in the meantime when i'm not working (i'm currently seeking a better paying job and i'm so excited!)

So yeah, here this is!!

thank you so much for reading!

-greta