Chapter Text
The multiverse is real. And it is vast. Vast enough that when it comes apart, there are millions of different scenarios for it, even then.
In one such scenario, it is preceded by a young boy with spider-powers getting hurdled through multiple versions of his life. But in this case, he escapes back to his own world and stays there, before ever encountering the witch who nearly breaks all worlds – or the wizard who then leads the way to put them back together.
Yet let us now go into a scenario where the boy isn’t so lucky.
Or perhaps is.
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Let us now imagine a world where Peter Parker is about to escape the multiverse, but doesn’t quite get there before it starts falling apart. A world where Dr. Stephen Strange finds the boy before the first cracks in the multiverse destroy him, and has no choice but to bring him along in order to stop Wanda Maximoff from forging more.
In this world, like most others, Wanda cripples reality from using a dark, all powerful book to try and get back what may or may not be her real children. In this world, like most others, it also unleashes evil forces and nightmare beings eager to take advantage of a shattered, blended universe.
In this world, like most others, it is the Sorcerer Supreme who has to stop her from making it worse. And in the vast majority of worlds, her refusal to give up the search for her children makes everything worse. Makes her a threat to be stopped. Pushes her over the edge after years of a pre-ordained path designed to make her far too dangerous to heal in a healthy way, recover from endless pain, or be anything but a quasi-villain at best.
But for once, let us live in a world where such outcomes aren’t pre-ordained, supposedly necessary and definitely lazy.
Let us live in a world where the battles between the Sorcerer Supreme and the Scarlet Witch tap out at just one. Thanks in large part to taking place in a world where there is a third party.
A third party who knows exactly what it means to face loss and tragedy, far earlier than he had any right to. Who was convinced it was all his fault, and that it meant he couldn’t let anything else he could stop happen again. Who took on the burden of the whole world around him, thought he found someone that could help him lift it – and then lost him just as tragically as he lost the last loved one.
And when he didn’t know the right way to handle it, it led to total disaster, a ruined name and a world he didn’t think he could stand being in anymore. Until he got to see all the other worlds – and all the other Peters – that gave him hope to try again.
In most worlds, he went back there and started again. In this one, however, he wound up caught in the middle of the two most powerful beings on Earth doing battle.
In this one, however, it was stopped without magic. Or any other narrative twist that kept these two beings fighting again and again. Or any other lazier narrative that kept the witch as an obsessed, Darkhold controlled being ready to let endless worlds die, just so two children she created could live again.
As it so happened, this was a different world. Where for all the magic Dr. Strange used to take the Scarlet Witch down, Peter Parker had far different magic that actually did the job.
The magic of words. Or rather, the magic of words from someone who understood her.
Years of struggling with loss, an unclear amount of time in the multiverse, and minutes of flinching as Dr. Strange described Wanda’s recent actions – with the Darkhold and Westview – as proof she was nothing but a threat to existence, strengthened that power in Peter.
Gave him enough of it to approach Wanda, knowing she could wipe him out with a thought even without the Darkhold’s influence. Yet instead of blasting her or accusing her like some wizards, he merely came to talk to her.
Instead, he told her how much he understood what she actually wanted to do – and that he knows there are worlds where he would have done it too. That was enough to make Wanda stop and vaguely remember the last time someone told her they might have done what she did to get back a loved one too.
With that little opening, Peter then went a step further. He told her that for all he lost, his time in the multiverse reminded him of all he still had – of everyone he still had. Something he unfortunately forgot during his last moments in a home world that otherwise hated him.
Then he told her how sorry he was that she didn’t have that. Not in a mocking way, but in a truly empathetic way.
That gave both Wanda and Dr. Strange pause. And convinced the sorcerer to actually Peter continue, instead of going through with his plan to capture a distracted Wanda while he had the chance.
When he did, Peter kept going, in recounting how everyone was probably too consumed with their own needs and losses after the Blip to be there for Wanda, or even think about her – himself included. Maybe if she had the support Peter still had and took for granted after all his losses, none of this – and none of Westview – would have happened.
So he said again that he was sorry she didn’t. And that he was sorry she lost Vision and her children. Something no one had actually told her before – at least not after she left the funeral for a hero that was actually mourned.
After Peter told her, her red eyes started flickering back to a regular color. Dr. Strange knew this was an even more perfect time to seize her – yet now didn’t trust himself to take this situation out of the young ward’s hands.
So he let Peter continue, as he said that although he wasn’t a Darkhold or some other voice in her head, he’d like to see if he could do any better than they have in getting her kids back. After all, she and a bunch of other powerful women helped him on a battlefield before – so now it’s only fair he do the same.
“I….” Wanda spoke in her most normal tone of voice since they found her. As her head began to clear, it actually let her look clearly at the masked hero in front of her…and remember where she’d seen him before. “I know you…”
“Well, not really,” Peter admitted, remembering she’d only noticed him twice in battle before – and threw cars at him the first time. But there’s no reason it shouldn’t be different this time.
“But let’s go ahead and change that,” he offered before removing his mask and offering his hand. “Hi, I’m Peter Parker.”
The slightest little sound of amusement – but not a mocking one – escaped Wanda’s lips, before her eyes flickered from red to green even faster. And the green was starting to show up more frequently.
“I…” Wanda started and stopped again, until her arm started extending. Seemingly in spite of itself. Peter kept his arm right where it was instead of pulling Wanda’s, fearing he’d do more harm than good in forcing her along.
As Peter’s words and the words of a much darker voice swirled around Wanda’s head, somehow she once again remembered the last time someone claimed to understand her pain…the only flesh and blood being who had tried to do so for years. Until just now…
The last time someone tried, she was led away by someone with far worse intentions. But if Wanda had listened to Monica for a few seconds longer, instead of letting a supposedly helpful neighbor take her away instead…so much would have been different. So much wouldn’t have happened then, to say nothing of whatever was happening now.
Then, she didn’t take the hand of someone who actually wanted to help her. Someone who should have known better than to help her, but still wanted to.
What if she took such a hand this time? What more could happen if she did?
That, not the uglier words and visions of the Darkhold, overpowered her as she finally took Peter’s hand.
“I’m…” she struggled to declare before remembering. “I’m Wanda….”
The red in Wanda’s eyes disappeared for good, at least for this moment. A moment long enough for the sorcerer to finally join back in. Not to seize Wanda, but to seize the book in her possession that had now lost its power over her.
But the loss of that power brought with it new knowledge. New to Wanda, anyway. Peter’s kinder words may have brought her back, yet harsher ones from the sorcerer kept her there.
They were far less harsh than the ones he said earlier. But it wasn’t the tone that brought her to her knees as much as the cold hard facts he shared of what she had let happen. And what she had unleashed upon a now fragile reality.
As familiar as it was for Wanda to realize she shattered whole worlds in her mistakes and pain, it was hardly any easier to let it sink in. Especially since this was likely the last time – because she and every being in every world would be destroyed from her mistakes and pain this time.
She would succeed where Vision’s first killer had failed.
“Miss Maximoff, you have unleased a multiverse of madness upon us all,” Dr. Strange made even more clear, before taking a slightly easier tone now that he had the chance to.
“However…you may also be the one that can help me repair it. If I don’t have to force you to do it, it would go a lot faster. And go a long way to help you repair more than just universes.”
“And?” Peter interjected. “There’s something else I guess I kinda promised her too…” The sorcerer recalled that promise, and brought himself the patience to make a modified one of his own.
“Miss Maximoff, what you did in hopes of getting back children you made with chaos magic…children who may not even be alive in some other world, like you think…it shouldn’t be rewarded,” he reminded her. “But…it would seem we both owe a debt to Mr. Parker now. And I can guess how he would like to call it in.”
“Therefore, if you help us fix the universe…then if there’s any way to give you back your children, without the use of dark magic...I promise I will find it for you. But for right now, the safety of every other completely real life and world has to come first.”
Instead of being grateful for being given yet another chance, Wanda muttered “I can’t fix it…I can never fix anything…”
“All right then. Come with us and we’ll put that theory to a final test,” the sorcerer took a more direct approach. “Unless you have some better way to spend your last days in reality.”
There were so many better ways. But none of them were available to Wanda now. None she deserved even if they were.
She should have known. But she never had before. Not in all those other times she got something she never deserved, caused untold suffering with it and/or destroyed it, barely repaired the damage and then started the cycle all over again having learned nothing
Having been spared to keep learning nothing, and being allowed to destroy more and more lives because of it. And now every life would end soon because of it.
But the cycle demanded she barely fix what she broke first. Then get let off the hook for it, before destroying the world with the next gift she didn’t deserve.
Or maybe since everything and everyone was in danger this time, it would be big enough to end the cycle. And end her.
Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing.
Which made it easier to believe the Darkhold made her hear her children, just to make all this happen. Made it easier to believe they weren’t really alive after all.
Made it easier to believe there was no reason fixing the universe was something she needed to survive.
So in that case…if the end would – should – be the same, what did it really matter if she succeeded or not? Who was left that really needed to be saved?
So she might as well tell the wizard there was no point in testing any theory. Especially one that was never meant to be disproven by her.
Tell him that and tell the…
The kid. The spider-kid. Stark’s spider-kid, now that she remembered a little better. The same spider-kid that woke her up to the latest nightmare she caused.
But did it by telling her things she’d never heard before. Not from someone other than Vision, her children, her former family, and maybe one or two Avengers. Maybe if there had been more than that at any other time, like the spider actually wished there had been…and seemed to mean it…
No. Too much had been done to wish for something that was never meant to be. Not for her. This was the final bit of proof that it wasn’t meant for her.
Not like It was for…
Though it wouldn’t be anymore if the universe ended.
Yes, there was that….
“I owe….Peter…a debt,” Wanda came to realize at the same time she said it. “I’ll test the theory for him. Not for you,” she addressed Strange at the same time she realized what she’d committed herself to.
Clean up her own mess one more time after all. Maybe with any luck, the last time. Whether it would be the last time because she really wouldn’t make another mess again later…or because she wouldn’t be able to make one again…she almost didn’t care if it was either one anymore.
As long as it wasn’t the last time because she’d fully committed to the darkness. She’d committed to it enough to nearly end all worlds today. And if they still had any hopes of being fixed, it wasn’t because of her.
It was because of him.
For that, the very least she could do was make sure at least one world was left for him to go back to. She could do that one last small, good thing before…whatever else happened to her later.
She couldn’t remember the last time she wanted to do that much – or little – for someone else other than Vision. Or any family she once had.
It gave her a little jolt of a feeling other than pain, grief, loss, guilt or hatred for what she was…for the first time since she couldn’t remember. Certainly the first time in a long time such a feeling had been caused by someone other than Vision. Or any family she once had.
Maybe not a feeling of love. Or obsession, or anything else that made her unleash so much evil these last few months. But it was…something rarer. Something…more soothing. Especially when she saw Peter smile at her without a trace of fear, hate, scolding resentment for her crimes or anything else that told her she was a monster.
She didn’t see any of that from the wizard right now. But as she said, she wasn’t still here for him.
“Okay…if one person’s what it takes for you to save trillions, I guess we’ll all have to take it,” Strange conceded, with far less enthusiasm than that from his first partner.
“Great! So where are we taking it?”