SCARLET, SONJA, SPIRAL, SILVER: Prologue

New York City. The calm before the storm.

Steve Rogers walked through the impeccably-kept halls of Avengers Mansion, sparing a thought for Jarvis’s underappreciated stewardship of the place. He wore a simple set of jeans and a plain white tee, the kind of cheap but sturdy clothing that was becoming a rarity this far from his own time, with his patch-elbowed jacket slung over his shoulder, drawing pad under his arm, and his trusty pencil in his hand. 

Often times he would wear his Captain America uniform in the Mansion, considering himself on watch, but Clint had recently made an impassioned argument for the importance of taking some time away from the costume. Well, ‘impassioned argument’ on one hand, ‘insult’ on the other. But he did truly care. After all, Clint was right. Steve felt free now that he was literally shorn of his responsibilities, with no greater care at the moment than finding something pleasing to sketch with this oasis of free time.

He found inspiration quickly enough. He’d often considered Avengers Mansion the center of everything that was heroic and noble in human nature, and as if by some sympathetic vibration, it seemed to attract all that was good and pure to its halls. Wanda Maximoff sat on a couch in the Mansion’s gaming room. She had recently changed her costume to honor her Roma heritage and it couldn’t have been more becoming without being indecent. 

Her headdress provided a measure of order in the midst of her wild shoulder-length curls, ringlets of softly perfect brown hair that cascaded down to her back, where its flow was continued by the red cape she wore. Its vibrant, sensual languor was mirrored by the skirt she wore—though it was hardly modest how its beaded girdle held it in front of Wanda and behind her, but hid little if any of her hips, and the strong legs that continued on with creamy poise to her sandals. They were as bedecked with gypsy baubles as her earrings and elbow-length gloves… while in a final, prideful touch, a low-cut bustier showed off both the flat belly that her pregnancy had long since been erased from and the majestic breasts that showed off her dusky skin to aplomb. Steve could sympathize with her brother Quicksilver’s desire to shelter her. Her glossy hair, fine features, and wide, expressive eyes already made her a temptation that any man would yearn to yield to, but when she showed off her voluptuous body, it made her truly irresistible.

It made it hard not to think a little less of the Vision. Steve knew the synthezoid wasn’t exactly human, but he’d always considered ‘Vizh’ a man, at least. But ever since his destruction and reconstruction, Vision apparently considered himself a new being—one with no obligation to his ‘widow’. Small wonder Wanda looked heartbroken. She’d always had a childlike innocence, an enthralling softness that, despite her appealing physicality, made her wrong for Steve as a partner. He was attracted to her, certainly, but he recognized that he himself was an old soul, and she was a youth in every sense of the word. Too young to be lost in troubled thought, as she seemed to be now. And yet, in that melancholy, her innate beauty and goodness remained intact. Shining through like the sun through a dark cloud.

Sitting down in a nearby armchair, unnoticed by Wanda, Steve began to draw her in her unknowing, yet totally fitting pose. He tried to capture something of her pristine nose, delicate chin and jawline, her wide mouth with moist, flawless lips showing the pink of a flower that had just bloomed—all with nothing more than white canvas and leaden gray. It was impossible, of course, but Steve had never minded lost causes. 

His mind wandering in the curious slack of focus and control, he found himself thinking how paradoxically fitting it was that she was Magneto’s daughter. Despite the man’s vile deeds and often violent nature, there was a core of nobility to him… and that, at least, he had passed down to his offspring, letting it find its fullest expression without the darkness of the past being able to hold it back. She had inherited something of his looks—it was most obvious in her bright, clever eyes—but tempered by the beauty of her mother, a gypsy wildness that made her too strong to succumb to her demons.

“Oh, Steve!” Wanda gasped suddenly, turning toward him. “I didn’t notice you.”

“I’m the one who should apologize. I was trying not to be noticed.” Steve smiled ruefully. The page would be left forever unfinished—one of those lost causes he so frequently found himself on the wrong, or right, side of—but he thought it captured some of her beauty, both in appearance and in character. He turned the sketchpad to face Wanda, showing her his work. “Unguarded moments seem to be at a premium here. I suppose I just wanted a reminder.”

Wanda looked at his drawing with her own grim smile. “It’s lovely.” She managed a small laugh. “As self-serving as that compliment would seem to be.”

Steve could see her heart wasn’t in the smalltalk. “What’s wrong? You’re usually quiet, but right now you seem downright sullen.”

“Just thinking about… rivalries. It’s odd, isn’t it? We Avengers are a team, yet we all seem to have enemies we consider a territory of sorts. You and Baron Zemo. Iron Man and Justin Hammer. It’s like they’re our personal responsibilities—or our own private demons. We handle them on our own, unless they form some sort of team. Then we’re comfortable ganging up on them.”

Steve smiled disarmingly and moved to the couch beside Wanda. “I suppose the downside of a group as capable as this one is that we all have some amount of pride. We are only human, after all. Even the gods among us.”

“Or the mutants,” Wanda said, with some of her old wryness back. “I’m in a bit of a precarious spot, Steve. I have matters to attend to that are my own domain. But I need help to take care of them.”

Steve grinned. “When do we leave?”

Wanda shook her head. “If only it were that simple… I need some very specific help. A trickster.”

Steve pretended affront to amuse her, wearing an exaggerated pout. “I’ve been known to be pretty tricky in my time.”

Wanda gained a foothold on an airy smile. “I’ve no doubt; tell me, how well do you know Spider-Man?”

Steve scanned his memory, even though his impression of Peter Parker quickly leapt to mind. “Not as well as I’d like. He’s good company. A little… ‘Hawkeye’ at times, but a true hero. The Avengers are poorer without his membership, but he does so much on his own that I’m afraid being part of a team would only hold him back.”

There were things he left unsaid. In a way, Peter reminded him of Wanda. Both were children at heart, but where Wanda was innocent, Peter was all too cynical. A callow youth with no small amount of adolescent rebellion, the childish joy he took in being a hero and helping others weighted down by being forced to mature before his time. He had as much in common with Steve himself, bruised and battered from skin to soul, as he did with Wanda’s purity. But Steve wondered if that wasn’t his old-fashioned chauvinism talking. Sweet, innocent Wanda had certainly been through more than her fair share of calamity. It took real strength to come through and be the ingénue that she was.

Wanda’s lips quirked. “Yes, I can see it in your eyes… he can be trusted. I have to ask something of you, Cap. You’re a founding member. Only you can access the most restricted files on the Avengers. He’s a reserve member. I need his name and address.”

Steve grimaced. There was, in actuality, no hidden database containing the Avengers’ secret identities. That’d be far too much of a security risk. But the founders, in a rare moment of autocracy, had insisted on learning the private information of each new recruit, committing it to memory alone. The only contact information on file was the serial number of each individual’s Avengers ID, which were impossible to track, as Tony Stark had taken the liberty of printing out several hundred and distributing them to safely anonymous locations. Anyone trying to hunt down Avengers that way would net themselves more rats and stray dogs than superheroes.

“Wanda,” Steve said, “I know as a former member of the Brotherhood of Mutants, you never had the opportunity for a secret identity, but to many of us, it’s the difference between life and death. I can’t break that trust on a whim.”

“This is no whim!” Wanda insisted. “It’s a matter of life and death. If ever you’ve trusted me, Steve, trust me now. I need Spider-Man!”

***

“I need Spider-Man,” Mary Jane moaned, and as desperate as Wanda sounded halfway across the city, her voice was even more urgent.

Mary Jane still wore the costume she’d spent all night acting in. Now, thanks to filming schedule fun, sleep deprivation, and bad weather finally delaying the shoot, she planned to spend the whole day in bed. If that sounded conservative for the former party girl, it should be noted that she wouldn’t be alone.

The ‘cheerleader’ sat on the edge of Peter’s desk. Her bright red skirt was up around her tawny waist, while her panties lay forgotten on the floor, alongside the apple she’d picked up on the way home to present to her ‘teacher.’ Her white sweater had migrated to having a hold on only her left arm. Peter hadn’t bothered to remove her bra, only undoing it and sliding the cups aside to reveal her sweet, pert breasts.

“I hope you’re enjoying our lesson, teach,” Mary Jane panted, barely able to keep her voice when she had to moan and sigh with each thrust Peter made inside of her. “You’ll want to pay close attention—there’ll be a pop quiz when we’re done!”

Peter smiled. “I thought this was the pop quiz,” he said. Then, when Mary Jane opened her mouth to retort, he thrust into her hard. MJ almost screamed. With what little concentration he could afford on anything that wasn’t his wife, Peter marveled at it: he’d been an Avenger, on the Fantastic Four, gone to space, but nothing took his breath away like Mary Jane Watson.

“Fuuck!” Mary Jane recovered. “Bastard.”

“Sorry. I have a lot of mixed feelings about cheerleaders.”

“I’m glad we’ve—ha! Yes!—finally found a way for you… Nhhh! To go to therapy!”

Mary Jane felt like a virgin again, being opened for the first time by Peter’s enormous cock—though with hardly any of the pain that unfortunate deflowering had entailed. In fact, Peter was racing along the same path he’d taken an hour ago, when she’d first arrived home, before they’d taken a well-deserved nap together. Now her lust was in a war of attrition with her tiredness, one gloriously swapping places with the other over and over again. 

She was awake again and knowing their sex would be far too hot for the cocoon of covers and comforters they actually slept in, she’d moved the action to elsewhere in the apartment, where Peter was working on one of his experiments. It’d been easy enough to convince him to put aside the chemicals and instead focus on a procedure he was already a master at.

And she was most definitely not giving this costume back to wardrobe when the shoot was over.

Leaning close to Peter, Mary Jane whispered in his ear: “At our next practice, I’m not going to wear any panties. I hope you watch, teacher. When we do somersaults, you can see how much I’ve been thinking about you…”

Groaning, Peter pulled her away from the desk before they spilled any of the chemicals. Sometimes, when he made MJ come hard enough, she passed out. Said it was the best sleep she ever had.

It was time to put her to bed. 

“Rah! Rah! Rah!” MJ cheered as he dropped them onto their bed, intent on driving the headboard a little further into the wall. She knew after that, it’d just be a short nap before she was ready for more. She wondered if Peter ever felt undersexed, having to wait for her to wake up so he could fuck her back into unconsciousness: the world’s most exciting sleep aid. She had limits, but with this ‘exercise’ going on virtually every night of their marriage, couldn’t it be that Peter got stronger and stronger?

If he developed anymore stamina, Mary Jane would have to get herself a stunt double.