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𝙉𝙊𝙏 𝘼𝙉𝙊𝙏𝙃𝙀𝙍 𝙏𝙀𝙀𝙉 𝙈𝙊𝙑𝙄𝙀.

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐘-𝐓𝐖𝐎: What's the Ultimatum?

𝐔𝐏𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐍𝐘 ─ 𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

𝟏𝟗 𝐉𝐔𝐍𝐄 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟔

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☆

               When Wanda Maximoff hadn't shown up for their sparring session that morning at the Avengers Facility, Lizzie got worried—because neither girl ever missed their sessions with one another. With everyone else? They had a habit for truancy sometimes, but never with each other. Lizzie and Wanda were opposites in a lot of ways being that one had super-human abilities and not a lot of "spy" or hand-to-hand combat training, and the other had every bit of that but was lacking when it came to working in a setting with an enhanced individual. But it was also just nice. Quiet. Lizzie's mind always worked in over-drive, but not when she was training. Wanda enjoyed the peace around Lizzie, and Lizzie enjoyed spending time with someone that was learning just like her. They trusted each other. 

In the last few weeks, the dynamic between them changed. Wanda was hesitant to use her abilities around anyone, much less Lizzie, whose mind was running circles around the deteriorating health of her aunt, her finals, the growing political debate of the Avengers, and her softball games. But they still showed up, even distracted, and they put in the work as best as they could. So when Wanda's absence was noticed on that Thursday afternoon, Lizzie didn't hesitate to take a trip upstairs to visit her bedroom. 

The door was open and the TV going, and Wanda tilted her head ever so slightly which told Lizzie she knew someone was there to visit her. She walked it without saying a word, heading directly to the bed and flopping down on it, laying down with her feet still flat on the ground. Neither of them talked for a short moment as they both quietly listened to the news report about the incident that happened at Lagos. It was everywhere. Even Midtown's morning reports were quick to jump on the bandwagon, having the student body take polls along with the rest of the world on if the Avengers should be held accountable for their actions. 

"I need to catch up on Bewitched," was all that Lizzie said, rubbing her eyes together in exhaustion and sitting back up, leaning her head on Wanda's shoulder as she did so. "I was going to watch it on the bus ride to Washington for our game this weekend, but it's more fun when you're there to explain everything." 

Wanda's lips pursed together as she stared at the TV. "You don't have to do this." 

"I know I don't have to," she acknowledged, lifting her head slightly to look at Wanda. "But I want to, so I am. So we can either talk about it, I can leave, sit here and stare at this TV in silence, or put on Bewitched. My class partner and I already practiced our speech for Padmé tomorrow at lunch this afternoon...so I have all night."

Wanda had been trying to find her footing at the Avenger Facility ever since Ultron happened, and a lot of that footing was stumbling and weaving in and out of rooms like a ghost for the first few months. She'd lost her twin, and no one faulted her on the pain that she experienced from that loss.  Then, she opened up to a few people. Slowly but surely—people like Vision and Clint—but there was still grief in her heart that could never be fixed. Lizzie may not understand that grief, and never will, but what she could do was give Wanda options. One thing she refused to do was push her or make her grovel in her own misery. Lizzie knew what that did to people.

"Do you blame me?" Lizzie was stunted by that question. Wanda turned to her. "I need to know what you think." 

"You can find those answers out for yourself," she replied, knowingly. 

"I want to hear it." 

Lizzie inhaled deeply and looked over at the TV again, the destruction of Lagos playing over and over again with the visual of Wanda in clear vision from the news stations recording of it. Steve and Rumlow were there, the latter unrecognizable to most but Lizzie would never forget him. Finding out that he was alive and had survived the gunshot wound did not comfort her. There was a dark part of her, deep down, that had wished him death. Even if it was by her own hands. She turned away quickly, grimacing at the bad memories, looking down at her hands. The callouses and cuts on her fingers were laughable at that point. 

"I've been trained by undercover HYDRA agents, SHIELD agents, and Avengers in the last three years, Wanda...and the one thing that I learned from all of that is that nothing is ever black and white. There's a grey area, always," she explained, glancing up to meet Wanda's eyes. "I wasn't there. I see what the world is showing, and the news fixes things so that there's always a bad guy...do I think you're the bad guy? No. Do I think that the Avengers are bad? No...and I can't say what I would have done in that situation—but I do know that you can't hold all of those people's deaths on your heart forever. You reacted, and you tried to defuse it as best as you could. If you hadn't been there, the situation would have gone down the same. Maybe even worse. Every single one of those lives mattered. So does yours, and you can't listen to a one-sided opinion and not hear the rest."

Wanda dropped her head, looking at her own hands now. A glimmer of red was cast from her fingertips. "They're afraid of me." 

"Are you afraid of yourself?" 

The question fell on thin air.

"Yes," the older girl admitted. "And I don't know how not to be." 

"I wish I could give you better advice, but..." she sighed and grabbed a hold of Wanda's hand. The scarlet reflecting in both of their hands for a brief second before Wanda quickly stopped it. "I'm scared of my own mind sometimes—scared of the versions of me it creates and the things that run through it...but at some point, you have to look at the people who know you. Not the one-sided. Everyone believes that I'm strong, and happy, and...I am, but sometimes those other versions of myself win. I'm not afraid of you, Wanda. I step into that training room every day and never have I been afraid of you. You've wanted to help people. That is what I see. It doesn't change the way you see yourself, but...you have a home here. You're safe—and you always have a place. People will always be afraid of what they don't understand. You can't control that, but you can control your own fear."  

Lizzie wasn't a therapist, and sometimes, she word-vomited and it sounded like a sad Hallmark quote, but she tried where she could. Wanda's eyes were watering, the two keeping eye contact for a few moments in Lizzie's effort to show the older girl that all her words were true. She didn't care if Wanda took a peak into her mind because she would see the same thing. Just when Lizzie was about to say something else, the conversation was momentarily broken when Lizzie's cell phone went off in her pocket. Wanda sat up straighter and sniffled, glancing over at the TV once more. Lizzie quickly pulled her phone out, having been obsessively checking it for the last few weeks with updates on Aunt Peggy. But it was C.T. instead, with one missed text from Peter about their presentation tomorrow. Wanda noticed the names.

"Are you two—" 

Lizzie dropped her phone, setting it on silent. "Me and Peter? No, just stressing about this presentation tomorrow." 

"Not him," Wanda corrected knowingly, giving her a side eye. 

"C.T.?" and to Wanda's hum, Lizzie's frown dropped lower and she put her phone back in her pocket. "Not happening. There's too much there. She broke my trust." 

"Did you love her?" 

The question came out of nowhere. Lizzie cleared her throat and stood up, rubbing her eyebrow awkwardly and glancing out the long horizontal windows in Wanda's bedroom. She was surprised to see no one out in the field, considering usually Sam was training around this time when she and Wanda were. He'd been in a crotchety mood ever since Carson left to an "undisclosed" location to help Sharon with the CIA—which, with Lizzie's prying, found out that the girls were in Berlin working alongside a man named Everett Ross. She had her ways. However, her methods of distraction were not enough to pull Wanda away from the hanging question because she was still staring at Lizzie, expectantly. 

"Maybe," was all Lizzie replied, then she glanced at the bedroom door. "I'm going to go make some popcorn and we can put on Bewitched. I'll lie and tell Steve we trained. You beat my ass because my body is broken from softball. I tried out the swingy-things that Natasha showed us and perfected them. Really put in the work today. Proud of us. Do you want Kettlecorn or Butter?" 

"Surprise me." 

"Like that's possible." 

Lizzie always already halfway out the door and on her way to the kitchen when she blew out the exhale of air in her chest, rolling her lips in the process and trying to get away from the weighed feeling on her shoulders. No pun intended since it was close to being duct-taped up if she kept having to cut the ball from center to home (softball things!). She resisted the urge to pull out her phone and check the text message from C.T., knowing damn well that if she did Taylor would rip her head off the next time they talked to each other—which would probably be later that night when they cried over their finals. 

Ignoring the gut feeling of upset, she grabbed a random bag of popcorn and decided to surprise both of them. The minutes waiting for it to pop got to her, and she let out a curse in defeat under her breathe and pulled her phone back out. When she opened up the message, Lizzie couldn't help from pursing her lips. It was a picture of them with the rest of the team from conditioning last year when they were just best friends casually flirting, but even the picture showed it. C.T. was on Lizzie's back with her hair in the braids she always made Lizzie do for her. She was kissing Lizzie's cheek, and the smiles on both of their faces reflected along with the rest of the team. Underneath the picture was a text from C.T. saying 'Miss this. FT me when you can.'

Then the timer on the microwave beeped loudly, startling Lizzie out of her inspection of the picture. She quickly shoved her phone back in her pocket without responding and went to get the popcorn out, letting out a hiss and huff when the side she grabbed was hot and watched it accidentally fly halfway across the counter near the sink. Well. She worked to quickly grab a bowl and put it inside, jogging her way back to Wanda's room to escape the thoughts in her head. Fuck C.T. always getting into her head when she didn't need it. To her surprise, someone else's voice was heard in her friend's room before she got close to the threshold. 

"—Rumlow said 'Bucky' and all of a sudden I was a sixteen-year-old kid again in Brooklyn. He brought up MJ and...I got distracted...and people died," Steve's voice stopped all of a sudden, his neck craning up ever so slightly when he heard the familiar footsteps of Lizzie suddenly stop just out of sight from Wanda's door. "It's on me." 

Lizzie's free hand tightened into fists without her noticing, a blank expression settling on her face when she put together the words that had just come out of Steve's mouth. He had gotten distracted—because of Bucky, because of her—and all of a sudden Clint's words from three years ago came reeling back in her mind. I'd never want you as my partner because I'd be too busy worrying about you. It's about more than just you out there. 

Wanda was heard next. "It's on both of us. "

"This job...we try to save as many people as we can. Sometimes that doesn't mean everybody, but if we can't find a way to live with that then...next time, maybe nobody gets saved." 

Lizzie paused when she felt someone come up behind her suddenly and her free arm went out,  only for it to go directly through something and nearly collide with the wall behind her. Thankfully, that same person she was about to send a heavy blow to quickly grabbed her wrist and stopped the momentum. Immediately she was met with the weighted stare of Vision. Lizzie frowned immediately, her eyes narrowing. He immediately replicated her stare, the two of them stuck there for a moment staring at each other before they silently turned back around to face the room. 

Both of them stopped when they saw Steve standing there staring at them with raised eyebrows.  He made eye contact with Lizzie first for a split second, then looked to Vision to give him a nod in Wanda's direction. Lizzie handed him the bowl of popcorn without looking and Vision left silently, quite literally through the wall, leaving Lizzie and Steve to an uncomfortable silence. He obviously knew she'd heard the conversation, and she knew he knew, so now they would just wait for the first person to talk. 

Steve decided to start with a heavy sigh. "MJ—" 

"What did he say?" she asked, getting straight to the point. Her arms crossed over her chest when she noticed Steve's frown grow and him look past her shoulder, like he was considering a quick get-away. "Steve. What did Rumlow say about me?" 

"Lizzie, I don't want to talk about this right now—" 

He tried to walk in the opposite direction, but Lizzie was quicker. Quicker than the super-soldier was trying to get away at human pace, at least. Her running shoes hit the floor when she skidded to a halt in front of him, going out to grab a hold of his upper arm so that he would stop. Well, more for show, considering if he wanted to keep going, he'd absolutely keep dragging her whether she liked it or not. Thankfully, that wasn't the case, and he stopped in place just a few feet from the elevator with a frown and eyes set on the doors. 

"'Apparently he heard you were hurt and got a bit distracted. It's okay, kiddo. You'll see him again soon. Your sister too,'" Lizzie recited the words that had been stuck on her tongue for years, staring at Steve's side profile while they spilled out of her mouth. He turned to her in confusion. "When Rumlow took me as his hostage, that's what he told me. I thought you were dead. I thought Sharon was dead. I thought it was my fault, and at that point, I didn't care about anything. You want to know what keeps me up at night about that day? It's not shooting him, Steve. Not just seeing Carson hurt or falling out a hundred-story window. Not the fight with Monroe or my shoulder, not even seeing Bucky...like that...it was thinking that I was the reason you two were dead. Those words have kept me up every single night for the last three years. Repeating. Over and over again."

Steve's expression softened on Lizzie, noticing the distance in her eyes as she explained herself to him. She never talked about that day. Not to Steve, not to Sharon, and the absolute bare minimum to her therapist. She let the memories live in her darkest nights and moved on the next day. He knew that she'd thought Sharon was dead, but he assumed it was just from the events that happened that day. No one knew anyone's status. They were all in the dark until the very end, Steve included, when he saw Bucky holding the tags that had been around Lizzie's neck hours before. 

"Do you remember how I said Bucky remembered me?" Steve began, his shoulders dropping low as he glanced down at his hands, rubbing them together. "He mentioned the dog tags—that Bucky was asking about 'who that girl was'...that—" he stopped, his jaw tensing and hands tightening into fists. Lizzie waited. "He said that you should've gone for the head because now you have a target on your back...'you better watch that kid of yours. She'll be gone just like your pal, Bucky.'"

Lizzie didn't have any visible reaction to the statement, but Steve did. His words got heavier as they came out, reciting those lines so easily just like Lizzie had. She hated knowing that it was because they repeated in his mind on the daily just like they did with her. Finally looking up at the fifteen-year-old, his blue eyes met her brown ones, the reminder of Peggy hitting him once again as he looked into them. Now it was almost a joke to him, that he hadn't put together just how similar Lizzie was to her great aunt. 

"I need you to make a promise with me."

Steve stared down at her in confusion. "What?" 

"Promise me, and I'll tell you the conditions after you do." 

"MJ, I'm not..." when he noticed the look on her face, he stopped midsentence. "Alright. I promise." 

"You can't let me be a weakness for you... not in the field and not outside of it," she started quickly, knowing that she had to get the words in before he could interrupt her. Like expected, he tried to, but she shook her head and raised a hand. "No—I'm serious, okay? I just...I need you to listen to me, just for one second...regardless of what I choose to do...regardless of whatever this becomes—" she gestured to the facility around them "—people know to use me to get to you after what happened in DC. They know, Steve, and that's not going to change...unless you change it. Because that nightmare Rumlow put in my head? It's you dying because of me. So if you want to protect me...if you want me to be safe...keep yourself safe. Keep that nightmare from happening. Because I can't go through that again. I can't survive another scare like that." 

Steve clearly didn't enjoy the ultimatum he was being given by her. "It's not that easy." 

"I know that. You know I haven't passed any of the training exercises when someone I care about is mentioned. Nat gets on me all the time for it...but I'm not out there. You're the one who walks out the door. I'm the one who has to worry about you walking back in it. I'm safe right here, but you're the one who isn't out there. Remember that."

One thing that had always been clear between Lizzie and Steve from the very beginning of their odd friendship was understanding. They understood one another, so clearly, and that never faded over time. Lizzie could see on Steve's face that he understood her, and he understood why she was asking him to promise such a difficult thing. Sometimes, he hated how mature she had grown in the last few years, but he had to remind himself that it was because she cared. Steve never had anyone to come home to before. Now he had a family. That came with compromises. There was a brief pause in the conversation, and just when she expected him to refuse her promise, he slowly and reluctantly nodded with anguish clear on his face. 

"Okay. I promise that I'll try." 

Lizzie wrapped her arms around Steve immediately after the promise left his mouth. She fell into his grasp like she was thirteen again and the world hadn't shown her the depth of pain and trauma just yet. Steve picked her up off the ground like he used to, and for a moment, they were just MJ and Steve. The moment was lost between them when Steve's phone went off and both of them pulled away as he carefully set her back on the ground, allowing him to look at the notification. The change of expression on his face told Lizzie that something was clearly wrong. 

"What is it?" she asked, just to see both Wanda and Vision retreat out of her bedroom from down the hallway. 

"General Ross is meeting with us to talk about the Sokovia Accords." 

Lizzie frowned. "Talk or tell?"

"I guess we'll see," he said, and then he looked up at her. "You can't be—" 

"I'll be in the training room. Need to try out the new stuff Nat got...oh, don't give me that look. Calm down, Gramps. I'll stay away from the pointy objects."

He knew she wouldn't. 

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Lizzie returned to the training room just in time for the panic attack to hit her all at once. The one she'd been pretending hadn't been building up for the last few weeks. The feeling hit her like a freight training the moment she stepped into the bright room, every window open to show the onset of emotions she was about to go through...but Lizzie had a routine. She had the routine down now. She'd spent enough nights calming herself down from a panic attack because she didn't want anyone to worry about her. She knew what to do now. 

So she slid herself down the closest wall she could find, ignoring the way her entire body was trembling as the terror struck down to her gut. At first, she would throw up every time. Curling her knees into her chest and sticking her head down helped for the first few minutes, so she did that. What it didn't take away was the gasps of breath that she struggled to take—the feeling that she was going to have a heart attack, that her lungs were going to stop on her—but she tried. She talked herself out of it when her mind tried not to and when words couldn't. 

And fifteen minutes later, when the tears were drying to her face, and the stitch in her sides had relaxed ever so slightly, Lizzie brought her head up to rest on the wall and stare at the ceiling. Then she marked it down in her mental checklist. This was the fifth one she'd had that month. The twentieth one of the year. But it was only fifteen minutes—even if it felt like an hour, the clock didn't lie. She'd gotten her timing down. The worst one was over forty-five minutes. 

She sniffled, rubbing her hands along her face and quickly digging into the pockets of her leggings for her phone. Her headphones were wrapped around it already and waiting to be used. She didn't hesitate to stick them in her ears, her music playing immediately and putting her outside of her own head. Lizzie didn't notice the notifications that had lit up her phone in the last half hour. Group messages from her teammates as they prepared for playoffs that weekend. A FaceTime from C.T.. The text from Peter Parker. Five missed calls from Sharon. Six mixed calls from her mom. Three from her dad. Seventeen text messages total from her family. She didn't see any of that at first. 

But then her music stopped when a call came through her phone, Sharon's name coming up, and Lizzie could no longer contain the urge she had to throw up. She was racing to the closest trashcan approximately seven seconds into the call when her older sisters only words were:

 "Lizzie. She's gone." 

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"These accords can protect lives. Innocent lives, Steve. The lives of people who didn't get the choice. You're telling me that if it had been Lizzie in that building in Lagos, you wouldn't want measures in place so nothing like that happened again?" 

Steve's jaw clenched tightly at his redheaded-friend's mentioning of his sore subject. He had to remember the conversation he'd just had with her and managed to reply through his clenched teeth. "I think I'd get her out of the building before any government security measure. At least I care about these people, Natasha. You really think they do?" 

"That's the problem, O'Captain My Captain," Tony was the one to reply to Steve, leaning forward with raised eyebrows to rebuttal his question. "Why are so many people dead because of our mistakes?"

The argument had been reaching its highest point between the Avengers after the meeting with General Ross about the Sokovia Accords. The beginning of a divide between two different beliefs on what was the best thing for the world and people's safety. Tony and Steve at the head-front of it, with the others following in suit with varying opinions. All of that was cut into a dead silence when they heard the sound of shoes coming up the steps. The conversation was hulled as they all knew the only other visitor of the facility right now was Lizzie. No one wanted her involved in the conversation, but at the end of the day, she was already a part of it when Natasha brought her up...but then the fifteen-year-old came into view. Steve was up and out of his seat in seconds. 

"Lizzie—"

Lizzie Carter's face was red and swollen, tears stained on her cheeks and new ones welling up the moment that she made eye contact with Steve. He was the only one she had her attention on. Everyone else was at a loss for words. Her shoulders were hung heavily, one hand clutching her stomach as another round of sobs threatened to overcome her at the mere sight of the man—but within seconds of looking at each other, Steve understood—and God, how he wished he hadn't. He didn't say a single word, no one did, but when Lizzie saw Steve make quick strides over to her, the tears spilled past their breaking point as his arms wrapped around her tighter than ever.

And along with it came the grief Lizzie had been terrified of for so long. 

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Author's Note: 

A pretty heavy chapter with an ending I hated writing, but only the beginning to many as we get into the main point of Civil War. With all of what you know about Lizzie and what has been said in this chapter, how do you think Lizzie will react to the split with the Avengers? Whose side do you think she will take? Do you think she'll have a side or a place in the airport battle? Let me know what your predictions are for the future and if you're right, I'll dedicate a chapter to you! 

As always, let me know what you thought about this chapter. All my love.