Chapter 33 – Aftermath

[A/N: Double chapter. And with that we are done for this weekend. Enjoy!]

[2012 – August]

Reappearing in the studio in Brussels, we had made our home, the first thing I heard was Wanda's and Silver's worried shouts.

"Pietro!! Oh my god! How did this happen?!"

"Father! Father, are you alright?!"

I couldn't really hold that against them, as not only was most of my skin scorched black and my flesh burnt to my bones, my entire left leg had practically been reduced to ashes under the initial impact of the first and biggest lightning strike that had hit me.

"Grhk!", groaning in pain, as my flesh took on a blue glow and the damage to my physical body was rapidly regenerated. It took only less than a dozen seconds for my wounds to heal completely, and I was as good as new, taking several deep breaths afterwards to sooth the phantom pain still assaulting my senses.

That was exactly the reason why Extremis had been my first choice, when it came to physical enhancement drugs. The regenerative healing factor was simply too valuable.

"I am alright.", I stated with a grating tone in my voice, feeling utterly parched.

"Alright?! You didn't look alright at all!", Wanda cried out in worry.

Silver meanwhile had run and grabbed me a bottle of water, that she now passed to me with a look of intense worry and fright on her face.

"Calm down, my love. I am fine now, am I not?", I said in a gentle and soothing tone, causing Wanda to take a few deep breaths to calm down her anxiety.

Standing up on shaky legs, I grabbed Silver by her sides and lifted her up. Carrying her to the couch, while Wanda followed behind closely, her eyes scanning for any wounds that may have been left unhealed, before she conjured me some new clothes.

Seating myself on my favorite piece of furniture, I took the bottle of water from Silver's small hands.

"Thank you, sweety.", I said giving her a kiss on the forehead, as she pushed herself deeper into my embrace.

Drinking the whole bottle in one go, I finally felt human again.

Thor's lightning bolts were truly no joke. Though with a bit of training with the Space Stone and I was sure that I could simply block his attacks with a barrier made out of space itself.

Still, right now, I really didn't want to think about that and simply rested for a moment, with Silver on my chest and Wanda on my side.

I knew we would have to move from our current home and I had already arranged something for this scenario, but I truly felt like I deserved a few minutes of rest.

Not only had we managed to get both the Mind and Space Stone, but I also fought Thor and cut off one of his arms. An arm that I had teleported with me, so he won't be able to reattach it again.

Afterall, I had promised him that he would have to pay a price for his arrogance, and while I could have cut off his head instead of his arm, I really didn't want to deal with Odin at this point. Especially since I had no idea about that old man's strength.

I knew Thor at his peak was stronger than Odin, but he was also a lot dumber than the Allfather, and a fight was never only about brute strength alone.

Still, these were thoughts for another time, as right now I simply wanted to enjoy this quiet moment with my loved ones.

…

[2012 – September]

It has been a month since our little heist to get the two Infinity Stones.

We had moved to a small cabin in the countryside of Sokovia only a few hours, after my fight with Thor.

And while this wouldn't have kept SHIELD or the Avengers from finding us, cutting off Thor's arm had been a great show of force.

That along with all the documents about HYDRA and Aldrich Killian I had sent Fury and Stark, they were more than willing to stop their search for me for the time being. Realising that they had much bigger problems than me taking the Tesseract and the Scepter.

For that reason, I had also taken Silver on a small tour to New Jersey, for some intel gathering and extermination purposes, which meant that Armin Zola was a thing of the past now.

Thor, on the other hand, had gone back to Asgard with Loki in tow, even though I suspected that he did do so, only on Odin's order.

The Allfather may not be able to find me and my family with his magic, thanks to my Concealment Shroud, but in my fight with Thor, he had probably seen enough to know the danger I posed to his heir.

Wishing to avoid more serious consequences than Thor just losing his arm in a fight against me, he probably sacrificed some more of his vitality to bring back his sons to Asgard. And I suspected Thor wouldn't be back anytime soon.

Without the Space Stone i.e. Tesseract, they could forget about rebuilding the Bifrost for the forseeable future, which also meant that the Nine Realms would continue to be shrouded in chaos and war.

And while I didn't like the Asgardian King and Crown Prince at all, I knew I would have to do something about that eventually.

Letting innocent people die from the Marauders raids and attacks just wasn't something I wanted to be responsible for, though for now I didn't plan to intervene.

This period of quiet had allowed me to train in peace for the last month. I had already gained a basic mastery over most of the Space Stone's abilities, especially teleportation, spatial rend and telekinesis.

The only ability I knew the stone provided me with that I haven't tried out yet was creating a singularity.

Something that dangerous was better not tested in an environment, where a failure to control such a power, would result in a possible destruction of the planet and billions of dead people.

Well, at least not until my control over the different abilities was good enough, so I could stop worrying about losing control.

Infinity Stones weren't to be handled carelessly afterall.

Wanda had also finally tried out connecting with the Mind Stone. And after doing so, she had noticed, that the scepter was connected to another hidden mental presence.

A connection she had broken on my urging, which lead to the orb in the scepter taking on a yellow glow, instead of its blue and black one.

And as if she was destined to wield the Mind Stone, Wanda had managed to form a connection with the stone near instantly after breaking the other connection, causing the stone to take on a red hue.

She had also transfigured the magical metal of the scepter to change its shape. The two blades had turned into spirals that circled the now red/yellow-glowing orb, while the whole scepter had stretched into a long staff and taken on a matt-bronze colour.

It now looked a lot more like a staff than some useless scepter.

The staff, more accurately the Mind Stone, mostly just helped amplify Wanda's magic power and functioned as a focal point for her magic. Especially her Mind Magic seemed to have improved over this short time.

It also helped her concentration immensely, which accelerated her training by a lot, causing her to unearth her potential faster in the long run.

At the moment I sat in front of the cabin, leaning at the wall behind my back. Wanda sat between my legs, her own back resting on my chest, while my right hand laid over her belly. Stroking her gently, while she had her eyes closed and just enjoyed the warm autumn sun and my ministrations.

Our cabin was located at the edge of some woods with no other people nearby, gifting us with some much needed peace and quiet.

Silver was running around the grassfields nearby, with her new best friend.

I could feel her clearly with the spatial sensing abilities the Space Stone had given me.

If my mental capacity was great enough I could sense the whole universe easily enough, though that was a pipe dream for now. But I had a rough picture about everything in a 20 kilometers radius around myself.

Silver's new friend was a little bear cub that had lost its mother. We had found it two weeks ago, when we had decided to take a hike through the forest.

Wanda had used her newly enhanced Mind Magic to empower the cub's mental capabilities, so it could vaguely understand us.

It had been more of an experiment, but Silver had adopted the cub faster than I could have said 'bear stew'.

As the cub represented no danger to any of us and we wanted Silver to have a companion and playmate, Wanda and I had allowed her to keep the cub. Since then they had romped around the surrounding fields and forest together.

Though we did take the small cub to a vet and have it treated against worms and fleas, as there simply was no wild animal that didn't have parasites or lice.

Silver's exuberant joy had been well worth the effort with the cub.

"How is your training with the Mind Stone going?", I asked Wanda with a quiet whisper, while placing a soft kiss next to her ear.

Cuddling deeper into my embrace, Wanda answered equally quiet.

"Very good. My Teleportation Magic has gotten a lot more fluid. Not like your teleportation, but still a lot faster and easier than a few weeks ago. Generally all my magic has become somewhat more natural to cast."

A month prior Wanda's Teleportation Magic had taken a few seconds of preparation, along with great focus on her part, to cast. It was good news that she had become more fluid in that type of magic, as it was her greatest tool to escape threats, she couldn't hope to win against for now.

"Yours?", she asked, as she half-turned her face and placed some soft kisses on the crook of my neck.

"Hmm... Same. Everyday I make more progress, especially with my Spatial Telekinesis. I think in a few weeks, we will be ready to depart.", I replied with my eyes closed and humming in enjoyment at her gentle kisses.

"So, we could probably take a few hours off from training, couldn't we?", Wanda asked, as she slowly turned around completely in my embrace and kissed her way up to my ear, whispering words of temptation.

In a flash of blue smoke, we both vanished and reappeared on our bed inside the cabin with Wanda beneath me.

Her gentle laughter at my enthusiasm, turned into soft moans rapidly enough, after I ripped open her sundress and closed my lips around the peak of her left breast, my hand gently massaging the other.

…

As Silver returned to the cabin with the baby bear in tow, she could hear the already familiar noises of her parent's lovemaking.

Stopping dead in her tracks, she turned around towards the curious looking cub, which bumped into her leg with its small moist muzzle, as she had turned too fast for it to react, and said: "We better go play in the forest for awhile. Mommy and Daddy are busy with adult-stuff right now."

Saying so she strutted off into the woods, a tumbling cub hot on her heels.