Pepper dreams like there is something large inside her mind twisting and pulling and scratching to get out.

She’s standing naked on a hill above a sepia toned battlefield, waiting, while below her men die with her name on their tongues. The sword she holds is fitted for her hand, and when she tilts it into the light she can see the shape of someone else behind her – brilliant eyes and red smile and vague, almost human outline. War whispers through dream logic that all this is hers, she just has to

remember

“It isn’t that easy,” Pepper says, and wakes with the taste of blood on her lip and an ache between her thighs.