That voice and that statement is silken-soft; very nearly almost a threat, as Wanda plants her hands on the desk and leans further into his space. Posturing territorialism. Stephen keeps himself rigid and motionless like a statue, chin tipped upward, his blue-green eyes meeting hers steadily as his mouth thins.
And she doesn’t even have to utter that last possibility aloud, because he’s already thinking it. (Despite everything, they do think very alike, and he’s quick on the ball; that had been the whole trouble, as that apple-orchard dissolved around them into hellish red flame.)
So Stephen’s mulling over that possibility, meeting her eye, and he says: “Did you know, they have these things here called mage circles. Towers of magic-users guarded by templars, their swords and shields ready to put down an unruly mage like a rabid dog, because they know the threat they pose. They can cut them off from magic entirely. It’s a kind of lobotomy, as I understand it. An atrocity and a crime and an abuse of power, in my opinion, but that doesn’t change the fact it must get the job done.”
Flat voice, steady. Silken-soft and very nearly almost a threat.
But he doesn’t have much interest in continuing to rattle their sabers at each other, and he fucking hates the Rite of Tranquility; doesn’t actually want to invoke it and call down that particular hammer onto his once-friend, no matter what she’s done. So he hesitates. Sitting on the precipice of a decision — a very important one, all truth told, since Tony Stark is just a few storeys away, and he’d once put this very woman under house arrest, too.
“So. It all depends. Are you a threat to this world or the people in it? Are you going to be trying to find a way to tear open another rift, to jump back across universes and get back to your children?”
no subject
And she doesn’t even have to utter that last possibility aloud, because he’s already thinking it. (Despite everything, they do think very alike, and he’s quick on the ball; that had been the whole trouble, as that apple-orchard dissolved around them into hellish red flame.)
So Stephen’s mulling over that possibility, meeting her eye, and he says: “Did you know, they have these things here called mage circles. Towers of magic-users guarded by templars, their swords and shields ready to put down an unruly mage like a rabid dog, because they know the threat they pose. They can cut them off from magic entirely. It’s a kind of lobotomy, as I understand it. An atrocity and a crime and an abuse of power, in my opinion, but that doesn’t change the fact it must get the job done.”
Flat voice, steady. Silken-soft and very nearly almost a threat.
But he doesn’t have much interest in continuing to rattle their sabers at each other, and he fucking hates the Rite of Tranquility; doesn’t actually want to invoke it and call down that particular hammer onto his once-friend, no matter what she’s done. So he hesitates. Sitting on the precipice of a decision — a very important one, all truth told, since Tony Stark is just a few storeys away, and he’d once put this very woman under house arrest, too.
“So. It all depends. Are you a threat to this world or the people in it? Are you going to be trying to find a way to tear open another rift, to jump back across universes and get back to your children?”