The air was thick with the aftermath of the mission. Dust hung like static. Machinery hissed as it cooled, steam curling around broken metal. Wanda pressed her hand to the side of her temple, recovering from the mental exertion. The relic — the thing SHIELD had flagged as dangerous but "undefined" — still pulsed faintly where it had exploded.

And in the middle of the room, standing barefoot on cracked tiles, was a child.

Small. Still. Hair tangled. Eyes too old for her face.

The child looked up — right at Wanda.

She froze.

There was something wrong with this picture. Something wrong, but familiar.

Wanda took a slow step forward. “Who are you?” she asked, voice low and even.

The girl flinched slightly at the tone — then blinked confused.

Wanda’s breath caught.

“Wait,” Sam said behind her. “Is that—?” He stopped. Because it was.

You.

But not you now. You had been twenty-five yesterday. Confident. Quiet. Holding a hundred secrets behind your eyes. Wanda had always sensed something about you — something layered and locked — but she never pushed.

Now, you were two years old. But the look in your eyes hadn’t changed.

---

Back at the tower, the others circled like confused birds. Bruce ran scans. Strange muttered about magical anomalies. No one had answers.

But Wanda couldn’t stop looking at you.

Because she had seen you before.

Not at the Tower. Not on the team.

In HYDRA.

Before she and Pietro escaped. Before she became Wanda. Back when she was still just a girl with rage blooming in her chest and the mind stone searing images into her skull. Back then, they kept her in a room down the hall from others — other subjects. Most came and went. Broken. Removed. Forgotten.

But one child — one small girl with quiet, unblinking eyes — had stayed longer than the others. She never screamed. She never begged.

Wanda remembered staring through the glass one night, trying to communicate through the fog of their cages. The girl had tilted her head. Reached out. Not with her hand — but with something else.

Telepathy? Emotion? Energy?

Wanda remembered feeling that girl’s pain like it was her own.

And then, one day, the girl was gone.

Now, she can't stop to look at you and remember that.