Work Text:
It probably said something that the two biggest gatherings of Avengers in the last few years were at a funeral, and now a prison.
Granted, it was a prison inside the Avengers’ Earth compound outside New York. Granted still, it was really the entire top floor of the compound, cleared completely out with just an hour’s notice.
Granted still and still, it wasn’t a real prison cell, but a whole floor divided into two halves by a retractable wall. And granted still and still and still again, the two prisoners were basically starting their sentence with a house party reunion.
For the next few hours – or however long they could be there until actual prison guards and security arrived – old and new Avengers, and assorted allies, had gathered to welcome two once and hopefully future Avengers home, before their two-year house arrest officially began.
It probably said something that it took a house arrest plea deal for Wanda Maximoff to see so many of them again, for the first time since Tony Stark’s funeral. It said something else that the once and future Vision – a.k.a. White Vision, a.k.a. Billy and Tommy’s father, a.k.a. Mr. Maximoff – finally got to see them for the first time since dying the first and second time in Wakanda.
There were more familiar faces she’d last seen a very short time ago. Like her sons, her masked up friend Peter Parker/Spider-Man, and her less superpowerful but still powerful recent allies Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis.
And there were others she’d last seen mere weeks ago. Like the Sorcerer Supreme who only just recently got off the hook for not warning Wanda about the return of White Vision, the New York Hex, Agatha and Evanora Harkness, a nuclear bomb, and a house arrest. All because, according to a very recent letter, he had to preserve a timeline where the Maximoffs all got to come home.
Still, that letter also admitted he knew he had some kind of reckoning coming. And now that he was here to receive it…
Wanda was merciful enough – and begrudgingly thankful enough – to punch his aura hard enough that it only took three minutes to get back in his body. Once he clawed his way back, his above-it-all mask was restored, declaring to Wanda that they were finally and completely even.
Wanda put on her best above-it-all professional mask to agree, shaking his hand and pretending to ignore the smallest, softest little upturn in the corner of her former landlord’s mouth.
With that out of the way, Wanda could finally focus on reunions much longer in the making. Reunions Strange helped delay by making sure many of them didn’t happen in a Hexxed New York. Reunions Wanda delayed even further by not coming to them in her darkest, pre and post Westview Hex and multiverse shattering moments.
But now that she’d had time to really stop and think again, there were two reunions she regretted putting off the most.
And yet in the opening moments of this gathering…Clint and Laura Barton had stayed in back of the crowd.
*************************************************
Peter took Wanda’s mind off her most troubled thoughts, as he always did.
In this case, by chattering about all the mental methods he used to keep this surprise out of his head while around Wanda earlier today. Wanda assured him it worked and she was completely surprised – leaving out how she actually uncovered the surprise 15 seconds early.
But any guilt over the lie was squashed by knowing how wide Peter was smiling underneath his mask – something she didn’t need powers to sense.
The not so secret smile grew when the twins found him and brought him over to their dad, as Vision was reintroducing and introducing himself to the other guests and his once and possibly future teammates.
Yet the eldest Bartons were still keeping their distance.
With Peter now occupied, Wanda needed another source of comfort to distract her. Or failing that, the prospect of a reunion that made her slightly less nervous.
Like one with Monica Rambeau, for instance.
*******************************************************
Wanda felt like an outsider when she saw Monica with her old Westview teammates Jimmy and Darcy. The three of them already looked fully in sync and completely comfortable with being together again. But there was no real reason why they shouldn’t.
The ease of their conversation immediately faded, once they saw who was watching them. Once Monica approached Wanda for the first time since letting her go from Westview.
“Are you okay?” Wanda asked a split second before Monica did. “The whole world knows how I’ve been since Westview now. But what about…I mean, if it’s okay for me to ask…”
“I’m doing…better,” Monica answered without minding one bit. “I found some closure in…only slightly less insane ways than you did. And with my own batch of…old and new family. But…I’m getting there now. Same as you, I hope.”
“You didn’t stop hoping, did you?” Wanda accepted. “Well, don’t worry. I think…I’m finally getting there too. Even with a few more hiccups still left.”
“As long as they don’t have a S.W.O.R.D. logo, they should be manageable,” Monica huffed.
“Hey, we took most of the hit this time. Which I can throw in the FBI’s faces for about a few more months, tops,” Jimmy reminded.
“If that’s why this is happening…you really didn’t have to,” Wanda had to get out.
“Yeah, I did. You needed to see the rest of your family before they locked this place up. And from what I hear, they all really wanted to see you.”
Wanda let that warm her up from the inside. Especially after she let Darcy know that Evanora’s former puppet Hilda got Wanda’s old sitcoms tapes as planned, in hopefully the next step of her recovery. Especially when Wanda, Jimmy and Darcy resumed their own rapport forged out of a Hex, which made Monica feel like the outsider for a bit.
But once Wanda stepped back to let Monica keep catching up with Jimmy and Darcy…she looked back and saw Clint and Laura put themselves even further away from catching up with her.
*******************************************************
Wanda’s next means of distraction was to catch up with another divisive former Avenger, and his new partner.
Wanda knew, and was eventually either brave or foolish enough to admit out loud, that Sam’s post Blip actions brought him a new kind of infamy in certain circles. Albeit for far more hateful, far more tragic and far less deserving reasons than Wanda’s post Blip actions and her post Blip identity.
Yet Wanda was still either brave or foolish enough to express her envy at how much better Sam handled it. How he didn’t need two Hexxes to even begin to win over enough people to drown out the backlash. How he found a formerly brainwashed partner of his own to do it with as well.
Most of all, she expressed her envy when it came to him and Karli Morgenthau. How he tried everything to get through to her and understand her before she was brought down. How he still took up for what she was fighting for, in spite of how she’d twisted it.
It was the kind of understanding she’d really come to wish more people in such positions besides him – and Monica – could have had. Even when people like Karli made it especially difficult, whether they meant to push it so far or not.
Without hesitation, Sam assured he would have done the same for anyone else, if he’d only gotten the chance – and apologized for not doing enough to get that chance with her before New York.
For his part, Bucky shared he knew a really good therapist, who’d already agreed to put herself on Wanda’s visitors list.
Once Wanda started feeling better that it wasn’t too late to know Captain America and the White Wolf a little better this time around after all…it took the sting out of not yet getting to know the Bartons a little better again too.
If only for a little while.
***************************************************
The wound really opened up when Wanda saw the Barton kids again.
Lila, Cooper and Nathaniel Pietro were already fast friends with Billy and Tommy. Of course they would be. If they could have bonded with a once and future terrorist like they did over her year of visits to the farm, they’d surely take in her children as their new little brothers already.
And even after eight years – only three of which they were alive for – they still hugged the same too. Even Nathaniel Pietro with his bigger and slightly less chubby arms.
After dealing with Scott Lang’s various, increasingly nutty questions about what she could do with her powers, Cooper and Nathaniel Pietro’s questions were far easier to answer and manage. For her part, Lila did a Hope van Dyne level job of butting in before they got too out of hand.
Even through all that, however, the Barton parents didn’t bother to check in on them. Whether that meant they still trusted Wanda around them, or it meant…something else, Wanda was still too nervous to find out.
But then Hawkeye’s successor introduced herself.
**********************************************************
Kate Bishop was exactly the kind of young, female replacement Wanda imagined Clint would find, if she’d ever considered such a thing before. There was no doubt about that.
When the phrase ‘surrogate daughter’ passed through Wanda’s mind, she managed to let it pass without…too many emotions attached to it.
“I’m sorry if I’m going on too much,” Kate stopped herself eventually, long after Wanda realized she was certainly more chatty than her predecessor. “I guess I’m trying to even things out. Since you just met me, or heard of me or whatever, but I already know so much about you.”
“Everyone likes to think they do. For one reason or another,” Wanda said, without trying to lump Kate in with the rest on purpose. Depending on what her sources were.
“Yeah, but I didn’t get my intel from most of them. I got it from Clint. And especially Laura.”
Now those sources were…they were… “They told you about me?”
“Whenever you came up, they couldn’t stop talking.”
But apparently they could. At least while Wanda was near them.
If Kate was still going on, it didn’t register to Wanda. Not when she got the message of Clint and Laura staying in the corner of the ‘cell’, still as far away from Wanda as they could muster.
They could talk Wanda up and down with a new hero, but they couldn’t face…a former one.
And truthfully…why would they want to?
**********************************************************
Wanda had one eventually blessed year, between mourning Pietro and before Lagos. One year where she got to begin to fall in love, be part of something that hadn’t been torn apart by civil war and genocide yet…and see something she hadn’t seen since her parents died.
A real family.
They were all too brief glimpses in an all too brief time period. But those glimpses, those visits to the Barton farm, and those first sights of a fully united, loving family since that horrible sitcom night…
Those first sights of a mother and father loving their children…including the new one with the special middle name…
And having enough left over for a visitor who would have gladly torn that family apart once, without even knowing it.
And who still did it anyway.
Wanda did it when she let Clint take her from her first house arrest. When she let him take her into an airport. Into the Raft. Into his own house arrest. She let that happen to him.
That was how she’d repaid him for everything. And then, just when she’d made herself stop thinking about it, so she could focus on herself and her own love…
She killed that love. And in the failure that still followed…she played a part in killing Clint’s entire family too. In killing everything that died inside him for the next five years as well. And in getting it back, Natasha apparently had to die too.
Yet he was still the only one to take time to comfort Wanda at Tony’s funeral. Probably because the rest of it hadn’t fully sunken in yet.
If it hadn’t then, it certainly did when Westview, the multiverse of madness and New York happened. That was for sure. And if it sunk in for him, it certainly had for Laura as well.
And now neither of them could bring themselves to face her in here.
They were probably only here because it would look suspicious if they weren’t. Or the kids still wanted to see her and they forced them to drive them here. Or they wanted to meet Billy and Tommy and see if they had fit parents.
Because of Wanda’s mistakes, they would barely have parents for the next two years. So that answered it right there, didn’t it…
And yet after all that…
Wanda had gotten a virtual slap on the wrist in her sentence today. Whether she’d fully earned it or not. In that context and in so many others, one more slap on the wrist was a bit too much.
Maybe forcing Clint and Laura to scold her, when they were clearly trying to keep it in for as long as they still had to be here…maybe that further proved how unworthy Wanda was of such mercy.
But there were some painful, brutal, fully earned punishments even Wanda Maximoff couldn’t worm her way out of.
******************************************************
“You’re ashamed of me.”
Wanda got right to the self-evident point when she got to the corner, blocking off Clint and Laura from hiding from her anymore.
“You don’t have to keep it in anymore. The kids are busy with my boys, I won’t tell Vision anything, and you don’t want to hold stuff like this in for another two years. So just tell me now. I promise I’ve heard worse, so you don’t have to spare me.”
She didn’t mention how it’d likely hurt more coming from them. For reasons that seemed so foolish now. Reasons born from lifetimes ago before…
But if Wanda could do them just this one favor, it might make thinking about it all in solitude for the next two years slightly bearable.
“Is that what you want to hear, Wanda?” was how she heard Laura’s voice for the first time in over seven years. Without anything close to the warmth from those years past, of course.
“Laura, maybe we need another minute,” was how she heard Clint’s voice for the first time in close to a year.
“Maybe you do.”
So there it was. Laura would go first. Get the big blows out of the way early.
“So what do you want me to say? How on top of everything else we dealt with after coming back, we had to hear about…WandaVision too? You want me to say how devastated and…disappointed I was, we were, whenever we heard your name come up after that?”
It wasn’t a question of want.
“You want us to tell you we were ashamed? Disgusted we let someone like you near our children? Relieved when it looked like you’d never come back? Scared when we saw you on TV in New York? Do you really need to hear that?!”
It wasn’t a question of need.
“Okay. Then all I ask is…you also listen to how…utterly ashamed we were to think any of that too. And ashamed of so many other things.”
Now the questions were building up.
“I am ashamed we listened to that Strange person, when he talked us out of going to New York then. I don’t care what he or his fancy multiverse textbooks and spells say. You and the city wouldn’t have been doomed if you’d gotten to hear one kind word from us! Or if Clint or Kate got to shoot even one arrow at that…quote unquote family you put up with!”
“I already doomed you once by not being there for you,” Clint now spoke up. “After everything that happened when I didn’t stick around after the funeral…or check on you before you found Vision’s body and let that Hayward guy keep his eyes arrow free…how much more damage could I do fighting with you here? Really?”
“Wait…”
“Maybe then we’d have had enough of a heads up for your testimony,” Laura jumped back in. “Maybe then it would have hurt a little less…to hear how much you wanted to die. But I kind of doubt it.”
Wanda’s speech disappeared even further, as she now had to recall all the speeches she gave about her last day in the New York Hex. Mainly, the ones about how Evanora made her see death as her only way out to redeem herself and save the city. Until Vision’s speeches showed her different.
“Do you know how many times Laura almost booked a flight to New York during your testimony? Guess how many times I had to cancel her ticket order, and then double it,” Clint barely cleared up. “Not because I didn’t want her to see you. But because I probably saved at least a half dozen lives by stopping her.”
“Guess how many times I had to tell him he was exaggerating,” Laura shot back. “I told him, I only wanted to see if you could bring that Evanora back to life. Like you did with Vision in Westview. Then after I choked the life back out of her a couple times, or ten, that would have been more than enough.”
“Laura…” Wanda was notably far more shocked at her bloodlust than her husband was.
“Well, I couldn’t well choke that poor woman she was possessing, could I? Maybe if you had…maybe if so much before that was different…”
Wanda somewhat expected Laura to be emotional in front of her. But emotional with rage and shame at her, not…this…
“Do you think we stayed back here because we felt ashamed of you?” Clint drove home further. “It’s because we told ourselves we were ready to see you…but when we finally did, with you and new Vision and your kids, after all that damned mess…we weren’t ready at all.”
“It shouldn’t have taken all that for that to happen. And not in a top floor prison either,” Laura added.
“We both played a part in making that happen. Not as big as others, but still. We thought we’d be more prepared to face it before you found us, but…for that and for the rest, we are so sorry, Wanda…I’m so sorry…”
****************************************************
“No…” was all Wanda could say or think. It was the only thing that made sense to her at the time.
“Laura, I…I got Clint in the Raft. He was retired, and he got arrested because of me…why are you apologizing to me?”
“Because I should have told him to bring you home.” Laura said without missing a beat. “I thought it was so obvious, it didn’t need to be said. But I had a good two years to get that misunderstanding cleared up.”
“Home? But…Clint just got me out to repay his debt. For Pietro. And to fight those super soldiers that were already dead.”
“And you wound up fighting the Avengers instead. None of which were at my house that morning, mind you. The Secretary of Defense’s stormtroopers for the next several weeks, on the other hand…”
“They were there because he came out of retirement, for me! I thought you tried to stop him!”
“It was her idea,” Clint confessed. “Well, I already had it. But she was the first one to say it out loud.”
“And I thought we had the same idea over what came next,” Laura jabbed again. “If we’d have cleared that up before he left…you’d have been safe at the farm instead of shock collared in some undersea torture chamber. But then maybe you wouldn’t have gotten together with Vision, and then who knows…”
“You wanted me to stay with you?” Wanda still couldn’t get her head around.
“Of course I did.”
“So did I. Or I would have if I’d bothered to think about it. Both times,” Clint vowed. “She didn’t say it before the airport, but I didn’t think of it after the funeral, so we’re even.”
“But…” Wanda still couldn’t let herself believe it. “You just got them back…and if I had stopped Thanos, you wouldn’t have lost them…or Natasha. On top of everything else you were going through…recovering from…I couldn’t remind you of that. Everything was bad enough without ruining one of the only good things that happened…”
“You wouldn’t have. And nothing that happened before that was your fault either,” Clint promised.
“I don’t think any of us were thinking much beyond ourselves when it ended. But I should have. If you’d been home with us for just a few days before Westview, before that trip to S.W.O.R.D…even if I hadn’t been there like I should have, maybe just maybe…”
“Everything happened the way it was supposed to happen,” Wanda conceded.
“Even when what happens is total garbage?” Laura challenged.
“It was garbage when it happened to Clint, to us…and it damn well was for you too. Hell, you should be in a home in some other suburb right now, living out house arrest with your family, like Clint got! Not here in some glorified attic, separated from your kids once this reunion is over!”
********************************************************
Separated from the kids…
Wanda looked over at Billy and Tommy, still playing and showing off for the Barton kids and another little girl. Still right within sight of Wanda and Vision…but in a few more hours…
As much as she’d thought the reality of the next two years had sunk in by now, it really hadn’t. The reality of both Billy and Tommy’s parents being locked away up here, while they had to live with strangers on the floors below. Unable to see their parents more than once a week for the next two years.
And that was the best possible outcome Wanda could have gotten.
Accepting it, even compared to what she could and perhaps should have gotten instead…without Vision volunteering to be there with her…all because of her own mistakes…
Hearing it spoken so plainly, by another mother, a fellow mother…though a mother completely unlike Wanda...let alone Evanora or Agatha…
“You wouldn’t have let that happen,” she started struggling to get out. “You never would have lost Lila, or Cooper, or Nathaniel…like I lost Billy and Tommy. Twice. You stayed together the whole time, and now I’m gonna lose…I let myself lose my babies again…”
Wanda wanted to run over to Billy and Tommy and never let them go, even once foolishly unpowerful security guards tried to make her let go. But she stayed frozen in her tracks.
Wanda wanted to find Vision and have him take her out of here. But they couldn’t go anywhere. Besides, the last time she felt quite like this was when Agatha was controlling him…making him calm her down just to bring her down even more later on…
But she was the one foolish enough to believe that Vision. Then New York happened, then the Hex happened, then Evanora happened, then Agatha died to show her up, then she got put away here and away from her boys…further showing just how unfit she was even with chance after chance after chance…
How could two years away from them change that now? How could anything…anyone…how could she, how could she…
“Wanda…Wanda!”
***************************************************
The voice told her to breathe. The voice told her it was here, and it wasn’t going anywhere. The voice told her to tell it what she could see, feel, smell, hear…
By then, her sight was clear enough again to see the voice’s owner. “Clint?”
“Hey, kiddo. Welcome back.”
Wanda could see a little more now. Could see that she hadn’t really gone anywhere. She was still in Vision’s half of the floor they were sharing as a prison cell. So were all their guests, only now instead of enjoying each other’s company, they were standing back and looking worried…about her…
Everyone except Clint, and Laura…and Vision.
“Wanda, I’m sorry I didn’t do more,” Vision spoke. “Mr. Barton assured me since he’d been on the other side of a panic attack so many times, he knew exactly what to do. I hope that trust proved valid.”
“Panic…” Wanda started, before needing to catch her breath again. Clint remained kneeling beside her, but didn’t make a move this time, trusting she could steady herself now. His trust was eventually validated.
“But I…I was doing so well…” Wanda went into denial. “I haven’t spiraled like that since…that night in New York. And today was such a good day…the sentencing, giving Hilda my DVDs…seeing all of you again….and I still…I’m sorry…”
“Don’t ever apologize for that. Trust me, it happens even on the best days,” Clint admitted. “You hear your wife refuse to accept enough apologies, eventually that sinks in too.”
Wanda looked over to see Laura kneeling down alongside Clint, equally unwilling to accept any apologies.
“With all that going on…maybe I couldn’t have looked after you after the Blip. Maybe it would have been too much for Laura too. But we should have tried to find out and make sure. I should have tried. And I’m real sorry we didn’t,” Clint insisted.
“But none of us were really, truly there for each other like we should have been back then. Right before, during or after Thanos. But us older Avengers, and the newer ones…we’re gonna make sure it’s way different when you and Vision come back.”
“Come back?” Wanda fixed on.
“I’ve been assured over and over, by my old friends and some new ones, that we are still considered Avengers. Both of us,” Vision shared.
“That means they’re all gonna pick up the slack, keep Billy and Tommy safe and educated, and keep your spots open when you come back downstairs in two years. Right?” Laura asked in a no-nonsense mom voice where only one answer would be acceptable. Even if it was one they all already had.
“Are you sure?” Wanda had to ask. “You’d do that for…us?”
“Heck, you should see the escape plans some of them drew up in case you got sent to the Raft!” Scott now informed her. “Some of them were real good! Granted, some were just beginners luck that an expert totally could have improved on. No matter what so called flaws the other beginners pointed out! But still good!”
That was just silly enough for Wanda to exhale in relief, and to start getting back on her feet. Clint and Laura followed suit, as Vision now saw it was safer to approach his wife again.
“Wanda, every one of these people…the ones who fought by our side in Sokovia, Wakanda, Westview and New York…are ready to fight by our side again. And to be there for us in every other way until then. In fact, many of them just want to do what you already have. Take another chance to do better than they have before. To do better by you.”
“Wanda, there’s no one here who’s ashamed of you,” Laura had to clear up one more time. “You're not someone to be ashamed of. You are a miracle. And there’s nothing more beautiful than a miracle like you. Who’s clawed back from the darkest depths time and time again, to be a parent, a hero…someone with so, so much good still inside them…trust me, seeing that’s kinda my thing.”
“You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble by trusting her now. Trust me,” Clint added from experience.
“To Wanda!” Peter called out from the crowd.
“If that’s how we’re wrapping this up…to Mrs. Maximoff, then,” Dr. Strange echoed.
“To all the Maximoffs, big and little!” Darcy added, as the smaller Maximoffs emerged to be with their parents while they still could.
“To you, Mom…” Billy shared more quietly, but just as heartfelt. This helped break Wanda down almost completely, until Laura came to finish the job.
“Welcome home, sweetheart…” Laura whispered, as the only mother figure Wanda had known for over a decade scooped her fellow mother into her arms. Holding her and soothing her as if she was still the child she was when they first met.
Yet the child who was now the most powerful woman living on Earth didn’t mind feeling so small and cared for again. She never had been.
“Welcome home, kid,” Clint added once Laura let go of her. “You got off your ass and then some. That’s why you still are and always will be an Avenger.”
“Thank you…good talk,” Wanda got out, letting Clint hold her for a lot less long than Laura, but with a grip no less strong and accepting.
By then, the crowd around them had finished cheering Wanda, and was largely going back to their small talk before her attack struck. Once Clint let go of her, Vision let her cuddle into him, now feeling safe and worthy enough to accept his firm, unconditional and unyielding love again.
She basked in that, and in the afterglow of the Bartons’ love, until someone tugged on her pants. Someone with a small hand but a good grip, and with a glass of water in her other hand.
“Do you want some water, Mrs. Maximoff?” asked the little girl Wanda saw playing with the twins and the Barton kids. One that kind of looked a little more familiar than that, if she thought back further…
“Thank you…Morgan, was it?” Wanda finally remembered. One more person from the funeral whose own loss didn’t really register with her at the time. To say nothing of her oncoming mother.
“Good girl, Morgan. I think we can find Mrs. Maximoff a little more space next, can’t we?” Pepper Potts offered.
********************************************************
Once the gathering was fully settled down again, Wanda and Pepper found a different corner of the ‘cell’ to talk in, as Morgan returned to playing with the older but still young kids.
It didn’t take long for Wanda to see Pepper was right behind the Bartons as someone she should have talked to more. After the funeral, at the bare minimum.
“It’s like Clint said,” Pepper started when Wanda brought that up. “We weren’t already there for each other like that. Let’s be honest, the Avengers were a great team when it counted…and maybe long after it really counted. But they weren’t always much of a family. Not unless all else had failed first.”
“That’s how way too much that counted slipped through the cracks before. So it makes sense that’s what happened right after the Blip too. Like it did with you and Vision. If I’d seen past…everything else for just a second to check on what they did with him, before you found him…”
“We couldn’t see past our own pain. I didn’t, Clint didn’t…if I don’t hold it against him, I can’t hold it against you. Maybe even me…” Wanda had to let herself consider, now that she could think straight again.
“I know it’s not…the worst thing someone with the Stark name has done to you. Add that to the list of things I could have kept a closer eye on. I’m sorry,” Pepper sighed.
“Don’t worry. The Starks are no longer the family who’s hurt me the most,” Wanda assured.
“Right. And two of them hurt you, not one,” Pepper counted. “But now that the Harknesses are gone, you’ve got a lot more families on your side now. And you’re part of a lot more of them too.”
“A lot more people need that kind of support than I do…” Wanda lamented. “I guess...there’ll always be days where I don’t think I deserve it…”
“And yet here you are. You lost one family, you barely had another one before it fell apart…and now look. You have your own family, the Bartons clearly see you as one of your own, you have Dr. Strange’s sorcerer coven…and I’m surprised Peter hasn’t made paperwork to have May officially adopt you. Come to think of it, I should double check that…”
Wanda giggled at the thought before she got too carried away with it.
“And when you get off this floor, the Avengers will be the family they should have been the first time too. They’ll get a head start with your boys, and then have enough left over for you too,” Pepper promised in a voice where only one outcome would be acceptable.
“I think I already figured that out…” Wanda remembered. “Or I had a pretty good idea before I…spiraled out again. But they shouldn’t have to go to so much trouble to remind me…”
“With all the time you spent losing families and loved ones…I think a little extra time and effort from these ones is the least you’ve earned. None of them seem to mind anyway.”
Wanda looked around at the boys and their audience of young and old, Vision looking every bit like one of the gang again – maybe even moreso than the first time – and others waving at her and smiling when she didn’t look away from them fast enough.
“They don’t, do they…” Wanda took another step towards finally letting it sink in.
***************************************************
When it was at last time to treat the area like a prison, the non-prisoners still took their sweet time filing out and saying goodbye to the Maximoffs.
Wanda received one last big hug from Peter and the younger Bartons, briefer but meaningful embraces from Sam and Monica, strong handshakes with even more expressive eye contact from Pepper, Jimmy, Bucky and Strange, awkward but playful shoulder taps from Darcy and Scott, and admiration laced goodbyes from Kate, Kamala Khan and Cassie Lang – even after Scott let his discovery of her old Wanda Halloween costumes slip out.
When just the older Bartons were left, they pulled Wanda into another shared hug, one less desperate but no less filled with love than the last one. Especially as Laura whispered how deeply, ridiculously proud she was of her, and as Clint kept silent but gave her the kind of secure, safe side embrace she hadn’t felt since the funeral.
The kind of embrace only one other father had given her before.
Wanda watched the Bartons leave, as Vision and the twins went by her side in their place. Any minute now, this floor would be on lockdown. The kids would be taken down to their rooms below and not see their parents for several days. And Wanda would go to her side of the floor and not be held by Vision for longer than that.
Yet as Wanda felt her intense need to stay in this moment for just a little while longer first, she didn’t feel as scared or hopeless as she otherwise might have been.
“We’re going to be okay, Wanda,” Vision reminded just in case. “Your family’s not too far away. None of them are.”
“Our family,” Wanda corrected as she saw just how true it was. And would hopefully remember that for most of the next two years.
Yet at this moment, even as a painful separation from her blood family lay moments away…Wanda never felt so surrounded by family as she did right now.