Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Time. Space. Reality. It's more than a linear path. It's a prism of endless possibility, where a single choice can branch out into infinite realities, creating alternate worlds from the ones you know. I am the Watcher. I am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and ponder the question... "What if?"”

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“Hi…I’m Peter Parker.”

Wanda Maximoff barely registered those words at first. Just as she barely heard them the first time Peter Parker said them.

But this time he wasn’t saying them in the middle of a battlefield. And this time he was actually saying them to Wanda six feet in front of him, not to someone else while Wanda was hundreds of feet away and closing in. This time he was saying them in a much quieter field, while the sun was setting on purpose, with no one else living or dead around them.

Yet Wanda still barely heard him. Which said as much as anything about how little she registered anything but her own pain right now.

An obvious side effect of spending hours at a wake for one hero, while the hero she was truly mourning – the only one of two who hadn’t been brought back to life with her days ago – had already been mourned five years ago.

Once Clint had left her side, nothing and no one else but that unfair pain had come near her since. Nothing until…

“Oh, sorry, you probably just know my made-up name. I’m Spider-Man.” That Wanda did know. Even if she barely had the capacity to dwell on it.

On someone she only knew from…throwing cars at in Germany. And from saying two words to him before her and other women she barely knew forged an entire coordinated assault together at Thanos. Other than that, his two names and a vague callback were all she knew about him.

Yet here he was, reintroducing himself and then sitting down beside her. Here he was…looking only barely older than Pietro, now that she saw him without his mask on and actually took time to look at him.

Here he was, hours after the wake for his…mentor? Boss? Adopted father? Some other relationship that explained him crying over Stark’s dead body? In any case, he’d been mourning Stark all day and now that the sun was setting on his service, he’d come to her.

Even if Wanda could think of something other than Vis right now, she couldn’t fathom this. Whatever leftover brain power she had, she probably spent it halfway remembering that last “Hi…I’m Peter Parker.” So if this kid thought she had any focus left for…whatever he was doing here, then…

“I just wanted to say thank you. I mean, for the help you and those other ladies gave me and Ms Danvers, sure. I already thanked them one at a time, so that’s taken care of now. But I…really wanted to thank you for the stuff before that. When you almost saved us all.”

…okay, he had her attention now. Mainly because he was making so little sense. But still.

“I’ve been asking around about what else happened last week…and what happened on Earth back then. So first, I know if Thanos hadn’t cheated by firing his spaceship at you, you probably would have killed him. You could have ended the whole thing long before Mr. Stark…”

So he was blaming her for Stark’s death because she couldn’t kill Thanos first. This was more familiar territory, at least.

“I mean, that’s NOT your fault, at all!” And now he was being confusing again.

“I mean is, if things were fair, you would have been the big hero! There and five years ago! You would have saved me, May, everyone from being blipped if Thanos didn’t cheat then too! He had to cheat twice to beat you! Here and after you…”

Although the kid didn’t seem like the type to pipe down, he did right then and there. For a few seconds, until he sounded much more somber and serious. Almost unnaturally so, compared to his energy before.

“I know what you…had to do back then. I know killing your…boyfriend? Husband? Fiancee? The people I asked didn’t know all those details, so I don’t either. But anyway…I know that’s something you don’t thank someone for. But it would have…it should have saved the world. And you should have saved it when you got back too.”

“So…I thought you should hear someone thank you for it. If I’m not the first, I’m sorry for assuming. But actually…that’s kind of what I was going the long way towards here. I’m also sorry for…something a lot worse.”

This had gone the long way from something…halfway moving, to something confusing all over again.

“I was on Thanos’ planet, before he came to Wakanda. We could have stopped him before he got near Mr. Vision. But we didn’t. I mean, we almost did but…and then Mr. Dr. Strange said something about an endgame…but that’s not important!”

“The point is, we were Vision’s last line of defense in space. But we all failed. All the things we…I could do, and we failed. So the bad things that happened because of it…like you having to…I’m really, really sorry, Miss…Mrs? Maximoff…”

“It’s not your fault.”

The boy…Peter…had said many many many things. Some he clearly rehearsed, some that just came out of him. In contrast, Wanda had barely said anything since coming back.

In that time, the thing she said and meant with the most conviction were her words to Vis’s killer. As for the words she said to Clint today…she was mainly trying to convince herself more than him, and had probably failed.

But those four mere words she’d just said to Peter…she hadn’t said anything with such conviction, such certainty – and without any raw hatred – since telling Vis “I just feel you.”

Even without knowing much of anything that happened off Earth five years ago, at least until five minutes ago…she knew for an instinctive fact that none of it, whether it set up Vis’s death or not, was this boy’s fault.

She could barely understand why it felt so certain. But of all the things she barely understood or accepted since coming back, this felt the most right. If only by comparison. But it didn’t make it feel any less true.

Before she could examine it further, which would inevitably lead down another depressing rabbit hole, she deflected by adding, “And it’s Wanda. Wanda Maximoff.”

“Okay...hey, Wanda Maximoff, then.”

Wanda hadn’t smiled in five years. Even if she’d survived the snap, she probably still wouldn’t have smiled in five years. Her reaction now wasn’t even a smile. But for the first time since the Children of Thanos landed, she wore something that was remotely close.

“Okay, so…I can leave now if you want. Or I can stay and not say anything. It can be done! You don’t have to ask anyone else about that, you can trust me!”

While he was certainly lying in this case…trusting him still sounded reasonable.

So Wanda patted the ground next to her and Peter took the hint to sit down. He did seem like he was struggling to keep quiet during the first minute, but he stopped fidgeting the more he looked out at the setting sun – and at her every few seconds.

“It’s been a lot...” he finally broke his quiet streak, whether it was a long one for him or not. Either way, he didn’t sound as eager to talk now. Getting this out was clearly more out of a heart aching necessity.

“Thanks for letting me…settle down and get away for a bit,” he said without a trace of sarcasm, self-deprecating irony or any other insincerity. He was actually thanking her, although she didn’t do much of anything that counted – then and now.

“And I’m sorry again. For Vision. And everything else.”

Everyone had come here today to give apologies about Stark’s loss. Maybe only a few of them brought up Natasha. Just a select few besides the Bartons bothered to bring up Vis, to her or anyone she was in earshot of. After all, as a long forgotten hero who didn’t come back and didn’t save the galaxy, why bother to remember him now?

Or remember one of the few who still did?

Now out of the very few exceptions, there was…Peter. Someone mourning Stark as hard as anyone…but who still remembered he wasn’t the only one still mourning someone. To the point of feeling far too much for her and him, when he didn’t have to.

Almost no one else did. No one else was alive to. So why did he?

A better person might have said that a lot more clearly. Told him it wasn’t his place or problem to care, on top of everything else he had to grieve and care for. It was pretty much the reason why Wanda wouldn’t burden Clint any further after today, or any other Avenger, whether they offered or remembered her or not.

Yet at this moment…Wanda didn’t feel like being better.

“Me too…” was all she told Peter instead, letting him stay and keep concerning himself with someone he didn’t know. Letting herself pretend for a few more minutes that this was still a world where someone could have compassion for her, just…because.

As if the only one who could do that for her wasn’t long gone and forgotten.

So Wanda pretended a few minutes more. And a few more. And when the sun set and Peter still kept sitting by her, without a word but with all the silent companionship he could muster…she let herself pretend some more.

Until staying in a world of make believe didn’t sound so crazy.

***********************************************

“In one world you know, and sadly in countless more you don’t, no one was there for Wanda Maximoff in the first days and weeks after Tony Stark’s funeral…and escalating disasters followed. But in this one stubborn reality, an equally stubborn boy named Peter Parker was allowed to offer his condolences, his hyper verbal and occasionally non-verbal support, and his shoulder to lean on.”

“Whether it was just sitting quietly together, if only because sitting alone was too unbearable. Or sharing details they weren’t strong enough to share with anyone who knew them better…”

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“I felt everything. I begged Mr. Stark, anyone, not to let me go. I kept saying I didn’t want to go, but by the end of it…I was ready to go, just so it would stop…”

“…I didn’t feel a thing. I couldn’t. When he was gone again, I knew I’d never feel anything again. I was…relieved when it happened. I’m still relieved. I mean, how could I have made it through five years, when I don’t know how I’ll get through five weeks right now?”

“…I know it’s awful if I say I almost envy that. I mean, feeling nothing when it happened, not the other stuff. But…”

“I know. Maybe part of me should envy you for still feeling anything then. For not wanting to go. I know that might sound awful to you.”

“…not as much as you’d think.”

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“Or whether, when old sitcoms were too painful to watch…old movies from the early 2010s filled the void for a time instead.”

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“…wait, how is the wand Harry’s again? Even Vis could barely clear it up when I watched this with him!”

“Yeah…this whole story loses something once you know wizards don’t really use wands!”

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“But as rare as this divergence was, it didn’t become truly unique until a few weeks later. In most universes, when the body of her lost love was kept from her, Wanda went alone to find it herself. Yet in a world where she wasn’t entirely alone in those first few weeks after the Blip…she wasn’t alone then either.”

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“If you’re going to this S.W.O.R.D. place…maybe I could come with you? For backup? Maybe I could help carry him out when we get him, if you need to rest your powers by then? After we definitely get him back?”

***********************************************

“And as it turned out…he came far more prepared than that.”

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On the surface, bringing in Spider-Man as backup at S.W.O.R.D. really made no difference.

For one, Wanda could still take out anything and anyone by herself if needed. For another, she was still too distraught in seeing Vision’s remains to do that. For one more thing, while Tyler Hayward’s own backup knew it had no chance against Wanda, it was more prepared against the likes of Spider-Man – even if a few of the less prepared ones took a nasty fall first.

In any case, the only difference his presence made was that S.W.O.R.D. had an extra captive. Peter obviously wasn’t too pleased about being surrounded and cornered, especially when he saw what they were guarding.

He didn’t anticipate that horrible sight before coming in here. Obviously Wanda didn’t either, and that was especially painful to see right now.

On the surface, Peter being here didn’t and wouldn’t change any of that. As far as anyone else knew….

“I just want to bury him. That’s all I want…” Wanda pleaded, though no one who wasn’t wearing a mask was moved in the slightest.

“Are you sure?” Director Hayward asked to an audience of one.

“Not everyone has the kind of power that could bring their soulmate back online. Forgive me. Back to life…”

“No, I can't do that. It's…that's not why I'm here.”

“Okay…”

Peter had intended to stay quiet once everything had settled down. It would be better that way in the end. But this couldn’t go unanswered – for a number of reasons.

“Incepting! He’s incepting, you’re incepting!” Peter cried out, reminding everyone he was still here. “God, it’s an old movie now and I still barely understand it! But this part I get, trust me!”

“What are you babbling about?” Hayward moved towards his other still alive captive in this area.

“Why would you say Wanda has power to bring Vision back, if you didn’t want her to bring him back?” Peter questioned. “And why would you say that if anything else you tried could work? Nothing has, has it? So you want to make her hurt enough to bring him back to life, make it look like it was her idea, then take him away from her again! Boom, incepting!”

As usual when it came to that now old movie, explaining anything related to it made someone gobsmacked. But Hayward was slack jawed beyond not understanding a movie premise…for a few moments, anyway.

“Well…if she loves him enough…” he recovered far too quick for comfort.

“Vision never wanted to be brought back,” Wanda recovered too quick for many people’s comfort herself. “I love him enough not to…”

“Then that’s too bad. Because I cannot allow you to take three-billion dollars' worth of vibranium just to put it in the ground. So unless you can switch him back on…you have to say goodbye to him here.”

“He’s all that I have…and he never wanted this…”

“Well, that’s just it, Wanda. He isn’t yours. And what he wanted doesn’t matter. Because he was never a ‘him’ to begin with. The best you can do for him is bring him back, so he can do what he was actually supposed to do. Save the world better than he could with you in it.”

As good as Peter knew this actually was in the bigger picture, none of that mattered compared to the smaller – but far more important – picture of Wanda’s devastation. And a lingering bit of hope that he could see in her eyes, between the budding tears. And the added guilt in between that, for daring to hope like this.

Nevertheless, she crashed her way down to the room below them, as Hayward instructed his people to fall back. Fortunately, he also let Peter get close enough to get a much better view.

They watched with far different reasons to hope – and then with far different reasons of disappointment – as nothing happened when Wanda touched Vision’s detached head.

“I can’t feel you…I can’t feel you…”

“Well, there it is,” Hayward then said much louder and with much less compassion. “It’s time for you both to go. Alone.”

Peter knew it was probably better to stay quiet. But once he’d heard Wanda’s all too quiet pleas, he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave quietly now.

“You can’t do this to him. Or her. Either of them,” Peter spoke with a fury he’d never even felt towards Thanos. Or the Vulture. Or anyone since Ben….

“Oh, I can’t? Of course you’d think that,” Hayward had the nerve to look like the wronged one. “You, her and the rest of them who left…who failed us…you still have the luxury of optimism. You have no idea what it was like! What it took to keep the lights on!”

“So if it’s my duty to bring back our best weapon left to keep those lights on, no matter what it was deluded enough to want before, then I will do it! Regardless of what its…terrorist side piece who tore the Avengers apart, and THEN didn’t kill it when it could have made a difference, might feel about it! Or Tony Stark’s failed pet project, for that matter!”

“At least I’m not a coward…” Peter let out, biting back other words few would believe he knew yet. “But if you keep talking about him, and HER, like that, then maybe you’re braver or just dumber than –”

“Spider-Man…”

Wanda was still conscious enough not to say his real name in front of unsafe company. That, and being just loud enough to get heard in time, was all she had any energy for. Everything else in her was shut down, as Peter then plainly saw enough to calm down and shut up for.

“Let’s just go…”

*********************************************

Once Peter and Wanda had left S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, Peter was calm enough to see the bigger picture again. Namely, that this had worked out even better – and worse – than he’d been prepared for.

And he had been more prepared than Wanda could know until now.

After hearing about how S.W.O.R.D. was refusing to turn Vision over, Peter prepared himself, just in case Wanda couldn’t get him back herself. But he hadn’t prepared to get him back in a fight.

Setting up the cell phone layered inside his suit to record the entire conversation with Hayward, on the other hand…

A phone that now had video evidence of Vision’s remains, Hayward confessing his entire plan, berating Wanda into trying to help him, and every other infuriating thing he did and said in the last few minutes.

Peter didn’t come in here expecting or hoping for all that. In fact, his original hope was to show he’d just recorded the evidence, then blackmail him to turn Vision over then and there. But after all that, going straight to uploading the entire file, exposing Hayward then and there, and turning the public and the Avengers on him until he gave Vision back would work much better. Now with time and much less anger to deal with, Peter was getting downright excited.

He didn’t tell Wanda about any of this, in case she wouldn’t let him do it. And to make sure she had plausible deniability. And because he still thought she’d get Vision back herself and make any videos pointless. And because he didn’t think anything or anyone would be THAT incriminating in there.

Yet since they clearly were, Peter now couldn’t wait to tell Wanda and instantly cheer her up. Until he actually looked at her.

Peter got into Wanda’s car and she promptly drove off, though it barely looked like she remembered anyone else was inside. It barely looked like she was present at all. She just kept driving straight ahead without a word, giving Peter no chance to speak up and tell her what he had.

So Peter stayed quiet as well, waiting for Wanda to say or do anything that showed she was still on planet Earth. Maybe with her powers, her spirit was actually in another universe by now. But she was still clearly in no condition to answer Peter’s questions, or see any video of his, either way.

Even when they entered a small run-down town called Westview, Peter kept to himself and waited.

When Wanda parked in front of an empty plot of land, Peter just watched. When she left the car and still didn’t acknowledge Peter was with him, he got out to watch closer. When she stood in the middle of the space and pulled out a piece of paper, Peter just stood behind her and leaned for a better look.

When he read the words “To grow old in. V.” along with Wanda, Peter had to bite his lip to stay quiet. Blinking away the little tear drops in his eyes took slightly less effort.

The tears in Wanda’s eyes as she collapsed to her knees weren’t so little. Neither were her budding cries.

And Peter knew he couldn’t stay quiet, or invisible in Wanda’s eyes, anymore.

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“In countless worlds, Wanda Maximoff was all alone in this moment. So alone and lost that the Westview anomaly, and all the horrors that came after, were unavoidable from that point on.”

“But right here and now, Wanda was allowed to feel more than endless nothingness, vast loneliness, and a lost hope of ever being loved again. For one moment in between all that, this Wanda, in all this universe’s last-minute mercy, was allowed to feel something else too.”

“The embrace of a future friend.”

*************************************************

She felt nothing. Nothing but emptiness. And something…else screaming to get let out.

And just before it did, she felt…another something else. Something that wasn’t tearing her insides apart. Something…she could feel on the outside.

Then when she blinked her tearful eyes somewhat clear, she could kind of see it too.

“What’s this….?” Wanda barely had the voice to croak out.

“It’s a hug, Wanda. I’m hugging you.”

For the first time since seeing Vision’s remains, Wanda felt like she was still in her own body. If only a little bit. It was enough to see that her body was on its knees, her arms were clenched together holding herself and Vis’s deed – and another pair of arms had stretched out enough to hold her anyway.

Arms encased in a spider suit. A suit that now had an unmasked head above it. A very young head that had been lying on her shoulder, but was now facing her and pressing their foreheads together.

Through Wanda’s still blurry vision, she could see eyes even bigger than hers, with a few tears of their own hanging off. Below them was a mouth saying words she was just now starting to hear clearly.

“Look at me. I know it’s not enough. I know I’m not enough. But I’m here and it’s gonna be okay. I’m staying right here and it’s gonna be okay….”

“Peter….”

Once Wanda showed she still knew him, Peter went quiet and just focused on hugging her. Under normal circumstances, he would have asked first and asked if he was holding on too tight, or moving his hands up and down too much. But until she objected, he would keep going this way and hope for the best.

“I….”

Wanda thought she could use more words, but she just couldn’t. Not…in all this. Not when he was…not when she’d….

“I haven’t…” The rest of her words stayed stuck in her throat.

Words like how she hadn’t been hugged like this since Vision. Words like how almost no one other than her family and Vision had ever hugged her. Except for side hugs from Clint and a few full on hugs from Laura, almost no one except for Vision had ever even tried to hug her…at least not for the sake of just hugging her…since her dead family.

There was practically no one left alive in the world right now who would ever want to hug Wanda like this. Who would ever want to touch her in any way that showed her she was loved, cared for or even wanted. What happened at S.W.O.R.D. was surely the final bit of proof that this would never change, and could never change again.

Until….

For a few brief moments in Peter’s arms, Wanda felt something she never thought she’d feel again. Accepted. Safe.

Loved.

No. Not that. Never that again.

This was an exceptionally loving young boy hugging her, but a young boy nonetheless. A boy who would surely do this for just about anyone. In that, she was still nothing special. Had never been to anyone except…

“I can’t feel you…”

Then the emptiness…and the rest of it…came right back. And kept coming. To the point where Peter started to feel it too.

“Wanda…what’s going on?” Peter had to ask over the growing noise all around Wanda. And now all around him too.

All around him too…

Before she felt Peter hug her, she would have let this consume her completely. She wouldn’t have cared a single bit what happened to her – or anything and anyone else around her. Even now, she didn’t care enough to stop…whatever was going to happen from happening.

She couldn’t hold it back anymore and she didn’t want to. Never wanted to. She just needed it to be over…

But unlike before, she knew well enough to get far away first. From anyone around her before she gave out.

Fom one person around her above all.

“GO!!”

Wanda broke free from Peter’s embrace. Broke free to such an extent that he flew back about 15 feet. Yet he was sitting up again by the time Wanda had flown halfway up into the sky.

He was on his feet again by the time the sky – and Wanda – turned completely red.

***************************************************

It sounded like something exploded. It looked like someone – like Wanda – exploded. That couldn’t be right. Was any of this?

All Peter knew was that the entire sky turned so bright red, he had to put his mask back on. If only for some kind of protection. The fact other people were coming out to watch, unlike when he took his mask off so Wanda could see him before, was a secondary concern.

They all saw a red sky as far as their eyes could see. Later, reports indicated that such a sky could be seen for up to 10 miles. Later, other mechanical eyes in the sky would indicate that clouds and birds nearby started acting like they were glitching. Every so often, it even looked like they were turning black and white.

Yet at this moment, all Peter’s eyes wanted to see was Wanda. But it was a struggle.

He briefly thought he could see her in the giant red ball of light right above him. When she started to look more visible, it almost looked like her outfits – and her colors – were changing every few seconds. Then with another blinding blast of red, and what sounded like an inhuman – or perhaps all too human – wail accompanying it, the ball of light around Wanda covered her again.

When it finally disappeared, what appeared in its place…only looked like Wanda in theory. But it wasn’t any kind of Wanda Peter had seen before. Maybe it wasn’t one that anyone who actually knew her would have ever seen either,

This kind was covered in what looked like a dark reddish armor, a matching headpiece and gloves, and matching glowing eyes to boot.

She stayed suspended in the air, the sky thundering and still covering the town – but covering the town right above it, not on it. Yet when her eyes turned back to normal, the reddish hue slowly began to lighten. And the woman in red began to drop back to Earth as well.

By the time Wanda landed on her feet in front of Peter, bits and pieces of blue sky started peeking through again. By the time Wanda saw Peter and actually recognized him, before recognizing herself next, the sky was divided into two colors. By the time she looked down and saw what she had become, the blue was starting to win out again.

By the time she looked around at her growing audience, at the land that would have been her home, and then at Peter again, the sky looked how it had always been. Even if others weren’t so lucky.

Peter struggled to get at least get one word out, even Wanda’s name. Wanda struggled to get one word out, even Peter’s name. Soon, too much time had gone by and too much noise was coming from the crowd to keep trying.

Wanda rushed back to the car, with Peter following whether she was aware or not. She turned on the car manually and drove it away manually, not looking back at Peter in the passenger seat or at the crowd fading behind them. Not using anything other than the skills she already had before reaching Westview.

Anything else…

When they were five miles away – the halfway point of the former red sky – and on a deserted enough piece of road, Wanda parked on the side and got out for some air. Making sure to walk instead of fly, float or whatever else.

She stared at her new gloves, used them to take off her new headpiece so she could stare at it, then let a little bit of magic leave her fingertips. Before, using this little energy would have made the tendrils a few inches long before dissipating. But now, they jumped out of her hand and made it halfway up the sky before fading out.

She barely heard words coming out of Peter. Before she could make them out completely, she just answered, “I don’t know! I don’t know what this is! I don’t know what happened! I don’t know what I did, what I could have done…”

What she could have done – would have done – if she wasn’t up in the air when it happened…

It was bad enough destroying a building of people. Destroying a whole town of them…or whatever that would have done to them….

What it would have done to Peter…

“I don’t understand this…power,” Wanda concluded. “And…I don’t want to.”

She didn’t understand how she transformed out of her new…costume and back to her old clothes. She’d let that slide too.

“On top of everything else…I can’t do…whatever this is right now. It’s too much. So let’s just forget about it. This much I can forget about…” she told herself. “It’s not important right now. And it’s not going to be. It can’t be. So just forget about it…”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Did he really just…well, okay then.

There were no answers Wanda could get, or wanted to get, about what that was back there. But there was something else she needed answers for that she could get now – if Peter knew what was good for him.

Though he clearly didn’t.

“And what about your good ideas? What were you thinking…hugging me?! When I was…do you know what I could have done to you if I hadn’t…”

“If you don’t, then how would I know?”

“Exactly! Why would you do that?!”

“You clearly needed it! More than any of us knew, apparently!”

“Well, why did you give it to me? Why do you even care? You don’t know me and I’m not…I’m…I don’t know what I am! But I killed the only person who will ever love me again, and I could have killed you! That ought to be enough! So why are you even here?!”

“Because you’re not the only one who killed someone they love!” Peter didn’t mean to blurt out. But when he did, everything around Wanda got all too silent for the first time since…that laboratory. Save for some far too upsetting heavy breathing from Peter.

“You didn’t kill Stark…” Wanda assumed – badly.

“I don’t mean Tony! I mean Ben!”

Peter took off his mask for the second time this afternoon, and for the second time didn’t care if there were any other onlookers. In this case, there wouldn’t be for another few miles. But none of that would have mattered either way.

“My Uncle Ben…we got in a huge fight. Then I let a robber go free…and he killed him. I didn’t pull the trigger and I didn’t blast his brain with magic…but I might as well have.”

Peter looked as though he would sit or collapse down to the ground, but managed to get back in the car first. Wanda could only stand next to the passenger door and take in the sheer anger and misery from someone…who didn’t seem capable of such things until now.

“I never talked about it with Mr. Stark. He probably knew anyway. I never even told Ned the whole story. When May found out I was Spider-Man, I had to tell her and…I mean, on top of her finding out about that and this, I thought she’d never…”

Peter stopped himself, choking up in a way Wanda had only seen on him when Stark died. Now that she actually knew him, however, this hurt so much more to see.

“The next thing I knew, May was on her knees with me. She was holding me. Telling me to breathe. She told me…look at me. I know it’s not enough. I know I’m not enough. But I’m here and it’s gonna be okay. I’m staying right here and it’s gonna be okay….”

Wanda caught her throat closing up in recognition. Whether for that reason or for a need to catch his own breath, Peter paused and sorted out his next words carefully.

“You’re right. I don’t know you. Even though we lost people, it doesn’t mean I know you. But I know I wouldn’t have survived losing…so many people…without the people I have left. Even now without Mr. Stark, I still have May and Ned. You don’t have a May or Ned. I can’t be a May or Ned! But if I can be anything close for someone who’s lost more than I did…who I could have been like in her shoes, even at her worst…then why shouldn’t I?”

“And I hugged you because…when May hugged me that day, and all those days after Ben’s funeral…it reminded me I still had one person left who cared. I know that’s not some magic fix it, I know that! But having even one person in your corner is still better than none! And that’s something to go on! I mean, you had Vision to go on after your brother, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know…if I’m being stupid, or naïve, or butting in where I really shouldn’t…you can drive me home and I’ll leave you alone from now on.”

Peter was a boy of many words, no matter what kind of words there were. And as usual, Wanda was someone with either not enough words, or not enough good ones.

A mere “thank you” or “I’m sorry” wouldn’t be enough here. Merely saying no one other than a loved one, or a teammate out of necessity, had ever put so much thought into being there for her…that still didn’t seem big enough. And only saying she didn’t know what she would done – at S.W.O.R.D. or in Westview – if he hadn’t been here today was only the half of it.

“You….you are amazing, Peter,” she attempted anyway. “And…I don’t want to be alone. I’m going to end up alone no matter what, I know that now. I’ve always known. But…I can’t be alone all the time, can I?”

“You shouldn’t have to be,” Peter said with full conviction. Wanda wasn’t magically fixed enough to buy it that much. Yet it sounded easier to consider believing with him there.

“I am so grateful you’re here with me. I’m sorry if I sounded like I wasn’t,” Wanda confessed.

“It’s okay. Heck, if you’re saying this before I even…” Peter trailed off, only to light up nearly as much as the sky had, even without magic. Non-human magic, anyway.

“I guess now I have room to tell you. And you said you didn’t want to think about…whatever that was back there. What if I told you I had something real good to distract you?” Before Wanda could consent to hearing the answer, Peter pulled it out of his suit and brought up its recorded contents.

“Like our ticket to getting Vision back.”

There had been many unprecedented, unparalleled magical sights around Peter on this day. Yet whenever he thought about this day in the future, one magic sight that he’d never seen before would dwarf all the others. It did from the first second he saw it after playing that video.

His first sight of a real, full Wanda Maximoff smile.

****************************************************

If the Westview anomaly had happened over a major city, or a state other than New Jersey, it would have had no competition for the front pages and top blogs. Since it didn’t, it was a major break for Peter and Wanda in more ways than one.

As a result, there was nothing to challenge the headlines of Spider-Man’s video from S.W.O.R.D. headquarters. When the proof of Vision’s desecration came online and went viral, and when Stark Industries and the other surviving Avengers added their outcries along with the Internet masses, few other stories gained traction that day or for many others to come.

One of Peter’s classmates did her part to get the outraged word out online. In fact, Wanda heard all about how this Michelle girl spammed S.W.O.R.D’s Twitter page with hashtags – whatever that meant – took part in protests near school, and talked about how awesome both Vision and Wanda were with passion Peter didn’t know she had.

It seemed there were a lot of things he hadn’t noticed about her until recently – at least the way Peter described it. She almost felt…playful in pointing that out to him, especially as he looked more and more embarrassed about it. She’d certainly never been that bold in riling up Vis before…or anyone since…

Whatever the case was, it was the closest thing to fun Wanda felt in this whole ordeal. Until the mission was finally accomplished.

Funny enough, it wasn’t an online mob or an Avenger, but an on leave S.W.O.R.D. agent named Rambeau who broke the whole thing open. With the help of a Dr. Lewis, she apparently did some digging and found proof of a whole operation called Project Cataract, confirming in great detail Hayward’s illegal plans to use Vision. Once that admissible bit of evidence was handed to an FBI Agent Woo, Hayward was brought in right as Vision was brought out.

With Vision secured, plans were made for a proper and more honorary funeral right away. Perhaps a bit too right away.

Now that Vision had been freed and his wishes had been honored at last…it was actually time for Wanda to say goodbye to him forever. There were no other distractions, or distracting people, left to delay the inevitable final parting any longer. From then on in, a lifetime of near total loneliness would officially begin.

There was little Peter could do to soften that blow. Or the other Avengers and comrades who had now been spurred into action to check in on her more. While her support system was greater than it had been a month ago, it would never be anything close to enough. And there was nowhere and nothing in this world that could be.

So on the night before the funeral…Wanda dreamed of a better one.

*********************************************************

“Even in places where the Westview anomaly never happened, at least in the way most experienced it…it is still an event that is sadly constant throughout the multiverse. Whether its audience is great…or small enough for just one viewer.”

********************************************************

♪ Oh ♪

♪ A newlywed couple just moved to town ♪

♪ A regular husband and wife ♪

♪ Who left the big city to find a quiet life ♪

♪ WandaVision! ♪

****************************************************************

“What would have happened across the real Westview, if not for Peter Parker’s interference, now was only happening in a fake one. One playing entirely in the dreams of Wanda’s increasingly, mysteriously, all-powerful head. Right down to the Hex Vision…and all those to come later.”

“It was a show that couldn’t hurt anyone…except herself.”

*****************************************************

“My wife and her flying saucers.”

“My husband and his indestructible head.”

“Aren't we a fine pair?”

*****************************************************

“Especially when she found her way in.”

“Director Hayward tried to distract from his crimes, with tales and wild theories of the Westview skies that day. While it didn’t work, the blast did attract enough dangerous attention by then. And when the source of that attention found the source of the blast, then found out what was going through her mind…she had all the opportunity she needed.”

********************************************************

“Oh! Hello, dear! I'm Agnes, your neighbor to the right. My right, not yours. Forgive me for not stopping by sooner to welcome you to the block. My mother-in-law was in town, so I wasn't!”

*******************************************************

“Once she invited herself into Wanda’s dreamscape, she cast a spell to keep it going. To keep Wanda in a deep sleep as long as the show aired. To trap her in a dream world she barely wanted to leave as it was.”

“And until Agatha Harkness got what she came for…she would make sure Wanda never woke up.”

Chapter Text

“Hi! Um…I’m Peter Parker!”

Peter didn’t mean to sound like he’d forgotten his name. He just needed a second to adjust. After all, when he went to Wanda’s temporary apartment to check on her before Vision’s funeral today, he didn’t expect someone else would beat him to her door.

Since it was someone he didn’t know – and someone who probably didn’t know him – Peter Parker was the only name he could use around her. But if she questioned why nobody Peter Parker wanted to visit an Avenger before her loved one’s funeral, it might get trickier…

And that was before he even recognized her.

“Oh! You’re Monica Rambeau! I mean, Agent Rambeau! I mean…is it Director-elect Rambeau now? Or do they elect directors at S.W.O.R.D.? I mean, if they elected Hayward, then I don’t know how – ”

“Hey, Peter Parker,” Monica Director Rambeau interrupted with a gentle, if not somewhat familiar, wry tone. “Ms. Rambeau is fine. It won’t officially be director for another few days, so until then…”

“Right, cool, “Peter somewhat recovered. “So…what are you doing here, Ms. Rambeau?”

“I wanted to see Wanda Maximoff before the funeral. Before everyone crowds her and piles on about her loss today…before they mean well in helping her, but kind of suffocate her too…I wanted to share my condolences in private first. Maybe help ease her into a day like this. I don’t know if it’ll really help her, but…it’s the least I could do to try. Considering everything.”

“Oh…” Peter trailed off, recognizing even more in Ms. Rambeau than he cared to face. Today wasn’t about his own feelings and knowledge of loss, after all. “Well, you did the most you could in freeing Vision for her. Your least shouldn’t be too shabby, either.”

“Thanks. I know that’s why I’m here right now, but…” Ms. Rambeau left hanging, reminding Peter he needed a cover story.

“Right! I, um…well, you’re right! Wanda’s friends wanted to check on her early. But they didn’t know if she was up for it yet, so they sent me. I’m just an ex Stark Industries intern who doesn’t know her, so if she’s not ready, better I take the hit for it than them! Right?”

In truth, Peter came on his own to check on her early. But fully explaining why he would care enough to do that was out. So the others would have to be thrown under the bus on this one.

Either way, Ms. Rambeau didn’t look like she bought it. She already didn’t look like someone who’d buy into one of Peter’s least well improvised cover stories in a while. But whether she did or not, she brushed past it and said, “Well, I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you if I have to,” before knocking the door.

Nothing happened after her first series of knocks. Or her second or third. Or Peter’s first and second. Or their third combined knock.

If Peter was alone and didn’t have to keep a shaky cover right now, he could just barge in there at full power. As it was, he still had to pretend he couldn’t. And be extra relieved he was wearing long sleeves to cover up his very upraised hairs right now.

But Ms. Rambeau didn’t need spider-like powers to get the door open. Just a lockpick would do.

Once she got them in, Peter still had to make himself follow her normally, without getting into any battle position. If they got in there and saw a battle was necessary, it would be a different story and real headache. But that buck would have to be passed to future Peter.

Yet present Peter got to breathe easier and stand down for real when he saw Wanda’s open bedroom door. Where Wanda was still sleeping and not under attack.

“Okay, she’s just sleeping in, that’s all!” Peter sighed out. “We shouldn’t wake her up and start today earlier than she has to, right?”

“Probably not. But we’re already here,” Ms. Rambeau acknowledged.

“All right…I’ll take the hit like I said, okay?” Peter stepped forward, knocking on Wanda’s bedroom door. Then knocking on the outside wall. Then the inside wall. Then the nearest drawer. Then on the floor next to her bed.

Not one of those noises made her move an inch.

“Don’t touch her!” Peter warned as Ms. Rambeau walked towards her. “You don’t wake someone sleeping like that by touching her! Not if you don’t have really good reflexes!” At the least, since it was Peter’s pre Spider-Man reflexes that barely helped him dodge May when he poked her awake that one time, he could expand on that more with a stranger if necessary.

Yet the stranger didn’t listen anyway, reaching out to tap Wanda on the shoulder. However, Wanda didn’t slap her away in her sleep, or nearly deck her while coming out of a really intense dream.

Wanda didn’t touch Monica Rambeau or shove her. But the second Monica touched her, she collapsed anyway. Collapsed into a sleep just as deep as Wanda’s.

It took a few minutes, and a few times where Peter had to stop himself from touching either of them, for him to realize this was way over his head.

“Oh boy…ok, what?!”

***************************************************

Peter called more than a few people over to come in Wanda’s room. Stephen Strange just came in through a portal on his own a short time later.

After showing the bare minimum of gratitude for Peter and the others not touching Wanda or Monica, he stood in front of them and put himself into some kind of trance too. Instead of sleeping while standing up, it looked more like what he was doing on Titan.

Was he seeing Wanda’s future to see if she’d ever wake up? Or how to wake him up? Since he saw 14 billion alternate futures in a few seconds, it was a little weird this was taking him a lot longer. In fact, it took about 90 minutes before he finally ‘woke up’ again.

“Some kind of magic is keeping her asleep. But I can’t see what,” he started explaining. “I can’t see anything inside her head. Or Ms. Rambeau’s. And I tried every trick in half of Wong’s books. She’s not letting me in.”

“We don’t know it’s her doing this,” Peter reminded.

“It may be too late to be that naive, Mr. Parker,” Strange informed. “I was willing to wait until after the funeral to talk to her. I was wiling to wait until I did more research into your little…field trip to Westview. But between that research and now this…”

Whatever was between that in Strange’s eyes had to be put aside. At least after Monica’s eyes shot open for the first time in hours.

By the time they stayed open for more than a second, at least a half-dozen people were around her trying to give her room. Or as much as they could while inside this small bedroom. Regardless, through all of it, the one who was renting this bedroom still hadn’t moved an inch.

In this world, anyway.

“Wanda…it’s all Wanda…” Monica muttered before her eyes closed again. It looked like more of a normal passed out sleep than a magical one, though. Which was barely reassuring.

“And now we add that too…”

****************************************

“It’s really a sitcom?” Dr. Lewis asked for the fifth time.

“Trust me, the theory is sound,” Monica assured, sitting on the living room couch and looking more…energetic than most anyone else would be in her shoes right now.

“I was a…supporting character. That’s the most generous way to describe it. For at least two episodes, each in a different decade. Wanda and some kind of living Vision were the stars. I didn’t know who I was except for…Geraldine…until Wanda gave birth.”

“She did what?” Clint reacted. “Well Vision…a five-year pregnancy you died at the start of is one way to avoid a shotgun wedding.”

“I didn’t know he could…cause pregnancies for any length!” Laura reminded. “Did any of the Starks? Or the Banners?”

“Maybe we should set that discussion aside. Before we have to take the kid out of the room,” Sam offered.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you for making sure I didn’t have to try,” Aunt May expressed.

“Take the kid out…” Strange chose that part to repeat for some reason, before turning back to Monica. “And you’re sure this…sitcom was set in Westview?”

“A much better looking version. If not far too retro. All the other...supporting cast seemed to be based on the real people in Westview. There’s only one or two I can’t place when I think about it…”

“And she kicked you out when you mentioned her real past?” Strange perhaps unwisely brushed past the last part.

“And when she saw the S.W.O.R.D. logo on my wardrobe. Whatever this is…she thinks it’s real. She thinks Vision is still alive, and now she has brand new living twins in her head too. I don’t know how her dreams are…that detailed or deep, but…”

“It’s not a dream. Not entirely. It’s what would have happened in Westview if you took the kid out,” Strange officially theorized, before gesturing to Peter.

“Oh, you mean Spider-Man? I don’t know if anyone knows him well enough to call him a kid…” Peter tried to keep appearances up for Monica.

“We’re kind of beyond keeping secrets at this point. At least to someone who only exposes the bad ones,” Sam laid down.

“Okay…a teen intern is Spider-Man. If there was ever a day to find that out…” Monica took in.

“Trust me, you got to ease into it better than others,” May assured.

“In that intern’s blatant disregard for his own safety….” Strange got back to the original topic.

“His…warm hugs, I guess I have to call it…kept her from doing to the real Westview what she’s doing to her dream one. Now she’s trapped herself in a dream that could have been an actual living nightmare to a whole town. If any of us touch her now, she’ll just pull us in and give us a…guest role in this dreamscape too. Where we won’t remember enough of ourselves to try and talk her awake.”

“But she kicked me out when she thought I was a threat. When she thought Geraldine was part of S.W.O.R.D.,” Monica put together. “What if some dream version of S.W.O.R.D., or Hayward, winds up coming after her in there? And what if any…subconscious war in there spreads out here?”

When no one had an answer – none they wanted to say out loud and make more real, anyway – Monica got back up.

“Whoh whoh, why does it look like you’re going back in there?” Darcy called just before she stepped foot in Wanda’s room.

“Wanda’s show may be fake. But it’s like any other real show. It can’t stay good for her forever. And when it comes apart, one way or another…she needs an ally,” Monica pressed tightly, enough that a select few truly got the message.

“I need to get back there and show her that, before it’s even close to too late.”

“And how’s Monica Rambeau gonna do that when she isn’t Monica Rambeau in there?” Clint noted.

“I feel…more equipped to remember Monica in there now. I don’t know how…I don’t know a lot of…” she trailed off, before making herself block out everything that didn’t matter at the moment to get through. A practice she had all but mastered by now.

“I remembered once, I’ll do it again. And if Wanda remembers me, she’ll just send me back here and we’ll think of something else. Either way, I need to do this for her.”

“Well…at least come back with a synopsis of the latest episode! For clues and stuff!” Darcy covered up quick at the end.

“Ms. Rambeau, you cannot take this on lightly,” Strange warned. “This incident may be far bigger than an…extended nap.”

“Then if you’re right, you can brag when I get back,” Monica promised, deliberately ignoring there were no guaranteed ways of getting back. But that didn’t stop her from touching Wanda’s shoulder and slumping back into her dream hex anyway.

Fortunately, it only took a half-hour for her to spring back awake. In fact, she shot up to her feet before nearly falling back down again.

“Okay, give her room!” Darcy took command, clearing the way for her to trudge back to the couch. Once she caught her breath, she could hear Darcy ask, “All right, tell us whatever you can when you’re ready. Clues, plotlines, cute 80s kid antics, anything you remember.”

“There…there’s a dream S.W.O.R.D and Hayward in there. They’re trying to break into Westview…but she stopped them,” Monica recapped. “She warned them to stay away…she warned me too. She might be holding dream Westview hostage on purpose, but she doesn’t know it’s a dream…and I had no room to start telling her.”

“On purpose?” Peter zeroed in. “She thinks she’s really controlling them…and she’s doing it anyway?”

“It doesn’t mean she would have if it was real,” May was quick to assure.

“We may not have the luxury to tell ourselves that much longer,” Strange was far less calming.

“Doesn’t mean you need that big a head start writing her off,” Clint shot back.

“Compared to other kinds of ‘writing off’ over the last five years, I’m being more than judicious. Perhaps to the detriment of all of us, at that.”

“It’s not his ‘writing off’ you might need to worry about in a minute,” Laura spoke up in a way only one other person in this room knew she was capable of using.

It would have kept going on, until all manner of speech was shut down once Monica fainted – without needing to touch Wanda first.

******************************************************

Before long, almost everyone was out of the apartment to monitor Monica. And more than a few extra doctors were being brought in, once the first few couldn’t comprehend their initial diagnosis.

Only Peter remained inside the apartment, specifically inside Wanda’s room. He stood over Wanda’s still body, barely understanding – or perhaps wanting to understand – what she could possibly be doing in there. And who she thought she was doing it to. Or for.

He barely registered Strange portaling back by his side. Barely felt prepared to hear whatever ugly thing he had to say next about Wanda. But he knew by now that wouldn’t stop Strange from speaking up anyway.

“You need to understand, kid. Maybe this’ll be a lot easier for them if I convince you first.”

“You want to turn me against Wanda, so I’ll help them turn on her too? Haven’t enough people done that already?”

“It’s not about turning against her. I promise you, I didn’t want to do anything to her today but talk. But even if she wakes up, there’s not much she can say to deny it now.”

“Deny what?”

“There is a book of the damned. A missing book of the damned, no less. But in it, we know that it fortells a being more powerful than me. Than any Sorcerer Supreme who came before me. Even the last one. That being is destined to destroy the world. That being has magic inside her that was never taught, has no coven, and all those near her eventually die from knowing her.”

“That being is a master of Chaos magic. The exact same magic that spread over Westview weeks ago. The exact same magic that can put someone in this kind of deep sleep, knowingly or not. The same kind that can spontaneously create anything…even the dead, or the newly living…in here and in dreams. I know because I researched it endlessly these last weeks, while the rest of you were busy trying to bury a synthezoid that’s playing sitcom house right now!”

“Trust me, I wish it didn’t look this bad, even more than you do. But if she is what I fear she is…then this goes beyond anything this universe, any universe, could handle. And if it gets any worse…we may need to start asking ourselves something. As harsh as it might sound.”

“If this makes her the Scarlet Witch…would it be more merciful for her, and safer for all of us…if she never woke up?”

***********************************************

By now, most of Wanda’s other visitors had returned inside. By then, they heard the tail end of Strange’s theory. By then, a few of them were already drafting up snap, snippy reactions to it.

Peter on the other hand, was even stiller than Wanda right now. Outside and probably on the inside as well. Yet his mouth was the first to move.

“I don’t know,” he said in as tight and clipped a voice as anyone had ever heard from him. Even May.

“I’ll ask her.”

***********************************************

“Peter! What do you mean you’ll ask her?” May sprang inside the room first.

“I’m going in there. And I’m gonna wake her up,” he said, not taking the time or effort to sooth her for once.

“After Rambeau, she may not let anyone in now!” Strange predicted. “Even if she does, she’ll just kick you out, if you’re lucky!”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know her! Maybe I don’t either, but you only read about her! And it might not even be her! At least I know her a bit because I talked to her, unlike you and most people! And I’ll do it again!”

“If you’re wrong, she could spiral completely out of control!”

“Then what should I do? Make sure she has to kill the love of her life, by letting his real murderer go free first? Make sure billions die and their hero…my hero…STAYS dead too?! We did that already and now we’re all here! So maybe we should try something else first this time!”

This was all clearly long overdue to come out. And perhaps not even halfway about Wanda either. Peter was the last to calm down and let that wash over him, before forcing himself to block out everything that didn’t matter at the moment to get through. A practice he had all but mastered by now.

“Look, as much as Ms. Rambeau did to get Vision back, she doesn’t know her. Or you. And until lately, everyone else here, and everyone else she knew, was too busy with their own stuff to be there for her. Except me.”

“Ms. Rambeau said she needed an ally. But she really needs a friend. And I’m the closest thing she’s had to one since the funeral. So if there’s anyone alive that has a shot at getting through to her…it’s me.”

Peter turned his back on those he’d tried to shame and kind of succeeded at, warming himself up for whatever journey was ahead. If it could be warmed up for.

“Give me a few episodes worth of time in there. If we’re both not awake by then, Mr. Strange can be the last resort.”

“Peter, wait!” May ordered. “Her mind, that place, it did something to Monica! They’re not sure what yet, but it altered…something inside her.”

“Oh. Well, I’m altered enough as it is. I should be fine,” Peter waved off.

“I think there’s only so much altering I can let happen under my nose!”

“May, I know its risky! But I have to –”

“Save her? Because you couldn’t save…the others?”

“May…” Peter deflated before rising slightly back up. “I have to try. I need…now especially, I need…she needs someone there for her. Alive, here and now. If it can be me, or if I can get her to someone who could be…I have to try.”

“I know,” May had to remember. “Of course you do, you…it’s just harder seeing it live for the first time than I thought. Five years blipped and a few months alive doesn’t prepare you as much as you’d hoped. But…”

May narrowly stopped herself from kissing his face in front of the wizard and the heroes. Embarrassing him with a mere iron grip of a hug would have to be a compromise.

“You don’t stay any longer than a very special two-part episode! Then you come right back, somehow! Both of you!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Peter knew better than to argue.

“Parker?” Strange dared to speak again when May let go. “Good luck. I do mean that.”

“Thanks, sir,” Peter knew better than to keep arguing.

“Peter?” Clint addressed him by his first name for the first time. “Bring her home. Her real home.”

“I will, Clint. Ah, Mr. Clint! Sir,” Peter stumbled, but figured it was better to stumble over words here than…in there. Whatever there was.

Yet with a gentle touch of Wanda’s wrist, it was his next destination. Hopefully not his or Wanda’s final one.

***************************************************

Flying through the purple barrier around dream Westview left something to be desired. The crash landing on the fields outside town wasn’t a best-case scenario either. Still, any crash landing one could walk away from would do, in the real world and other ones.

Like Ms. Rambeau said, this fake one looked a lot better than the real one he saw a few weeks ago. Hopefully Wanda didn’t remodel it enough that Vision’s plot of land was somewhere else now.

Indeed, in the spot of town that was an empty lot in the real world, a beautiful home – if not one that would look out of place in the 2020s – was standing here. And if that was there, its real owner and its…ghost one? Had to be too.

“Wanda?” Peter called out as he walked closer to the house. When he got close enough, he saw that someone was now sitting in a chair on its lawn. “Wanda!” Peter let himself hope for a second as he ran towards the woman.

Who quickly revealed herself as bearing no resemblance to Wanda.

“Well, hi there, Mr pre-tween thing!” the brunette and not ginger haired woman, with purple spotted 80s clothing on instead of anything red or scarlet, greeted Peter.

“If you’re looking for Wanda, she’s doing a scene without a laugh track at the moment. Probably why she didn’t sense you coming, or give you a character. Not like the other special guest star.”

“Wait, you know this is a TV…”

Peter instantly forgot about that new mystery, once he got a look through the house’s front window. Which seemed to show its two residents…floating in the living room and not looking like a happy sitcom couple.

For multiple reasons, someone needed to get their attention before this went further. Had to get her attention. But just as Peter started to call Wanda’s name, he found he couldn’t say anything beyond “Wa”

He couldn’t make any other sounds either. Or move any other body parts besides his mouth.

His eyes did move just far enough to see the 80s woman in the lawn chair get up, then move her index finger up.

It probably meant something that Peter started floating up at the same time.

“I know a lot of things. But not enough,” Peter heard the woman’s voice, without her moving her lips. “Clearly I don’t have much more time left to find out the rest.”

“You’re magic too?” Peter found his own inner voice able to say, if not his outer one. “Did you do this to Wanda?!” his inner voice used more outer force.

“Oh, don’t let her off the hook that easy. This is all her baby! Right down to the rapidly aging babies!” the woman said out loud again. “I just made it easier for her to keep the show going. And all I need is a little information, and maybe a few things after that, then I’ll be on my way.”

“In fact, if you really insist on helping her…I have the perfect character for you to play.”

*************************************************

Once the other magic lady started twirling her finger around, Peter felt outside of himself.

He could still see through his eyes, and could hear himself call out for help that wasn’t coming. Yet that voice was only inside his own head. Everything else…wasn’t Peter’s anymore.

He started walking towards the house, but Peter wasn’t the one making him walk. He raised his hand to knock on the door, but Peter wasn’t the one making it go up. He was nothing but a passenger in his own body, only conscious enough to watch in his head, but do nothing with anything else.

If this was how the imaginary people in Westview lived because of Wanda…if this was how the imaginary Vision was living because of Wanda…how they would have lived if it wasn’t for…

But it wasn’t Wanda doing this. At least not to him. And if Wanda wasn’t the only magical lady in here…if she didn’t know she wasn’t the only one…

He had to tell her. Once the door opened and Wanda emerged in a much better and more motherly 80s style, Peter tried desperately to tell her.

“Wanda! It’s me, Peter! None of this is real! But I think a real evil magic lady is here! Please wake me up and I’ll wake you up! I know you’ll hate it and I’m so sorry, but we have to go! Please come back with me before she –”

None of those words were said out loud. None of those words could be heard anywhere but inside Peter’s head. None of those words were said by Peter’s outer voice.

Instead, Peter heard himself say far different words, with a far different accent, to Wanda.

“Long lost bro get to squeeze his stinking sister or what?”

“…Pietro?”

“She cast me as Pietro?!”

Wanda wrapped her arms around the boy who wasn’t Pietro. The boy who couldn’t even feel Wanda’s embrace. The boy who only just now saw Vision alive – at least a version of Vision alive – for the first time since Germany. Yet he looked as concerned, worried and disappointed on the outside as the boy playing “Pietro” did on the inside.

“Who’s the popsicle?” Peter was forced to say by a mind other than his own. Before he somehow heard end credits music playing in the background, even if the…happy? Couple didn’t.

Before he then saw two 10-year-old boys – far too old to be Wanda’s 10-year-old boys in reality – come downstairs. Yet Wanda embraced them as if they were her 10-year-old boys anyway, before turning to her house guest as if he was her brother.

“Billy, Tommy…this is your Uncle Pietro.”

“What…the…”

PLEASE STAND BY

Chapter Text

Playing Pietro Maximoff made Peter…so dizzy.

The most obvious reason went without saying. But what else was there to do but say things inside his own head now – while someone else was renting it?

It was one thing that the evil magic lady – Agnes, or so he overheard Wanda call her before she actually called her a lifesaver, yeah right…anyway, it was one thing that she made Peter run like a speedster to sell the act. If it wasn’t for his actual powers, his legs probably would have fallen off by now – and then where would the Agnes lady be?

Great, almost making him wish he didn’t have legs was the second thing now. As if they didn’t feel dead already.

Okay, so now the third thing was he totally couldn’t enjoy being around Wanda’s kids. Sure, the script or whatever this was – whether Wanda or Agnes was writing it – had them goofing around, making trouble and bonding. But the goofing and bonding and trouble would have been so much more fun if it was real.

If they were real?

No, that wasn’t part of it. If they were in the waking world and Peter could have made up his own goofing bonding trouble with Billy and Tommy…even if they still weren’t real, Peter knew he would have loved it. And them.

He’d never had brothers. Let alone nephews. God, being a real uncle, even to made up kids…it would have been wonderful.

Under any other circumstance but this. Especially when in this circumstance, the shenanigans they got into seemed more…obnoxious and in your face than fun. In a real old 90s way.

The same could be said of his teasing of ‘bro-in-law’ Vision. That was thing four.

Monica made it sound like Wanda and Vision were a picture-perfect couple in the early episodes. But it seemed Peter got written in right after the picture broke. They weren’t float-arguing like they seemed to be when Peter first arrived, yet all their talks/dialogue together since he was moved in seemed…forced. Less lovey dovey and more snarky. And not in that obnoxious 90s way.

Vision, at the least, seemed less content to pretend everything was TV friendly. But as long as the real Peter couldn’t reach out to him, and as long as Agnes still had him spouting lame one-liners to Vision instead, he had no way of knowing what Vision knew. Or what this Vision even was.

Like with Billy and Tommy, Peter longed to really talk to Vision, regardless of his reality. He never got around to talking with the real one on the way to Germany, so speaking with any version would have been exciting. And after hearing all of Wanda’s stories about him, he might have been able to tease him in a genuinely fun way.

Then again, with the…silver dye job he’d been given, he had no right to tease anyone for anything. That was thing five, but it felt like a two or three kind of crisis.

But thing one was still the superspeed. That was clear when he was made to chase the twins around the house on Halloween. Maybe the one benefit of being a disembodied voice inside his head, was that he didn’t have a digestive system to throw up in it.

“Oh! Somebody better be broken, bleeding or on fire!” Oh, thank God for the voice of the sixth thing.

Which was…coming down in a disturbingly familiar costume. If not far more comic-y.

In the real world, Wanda hadn’t appeared in her new red battle costume since she was in real Westview. At least while the real Peter was around. She insisted back then that she couldn’t deal with it – though if Dr. Strange had his way, that wouldn’t hold much longer when she woke up.

Either way, her dream TV version had drudged it back up anyway. And made it look like something hand drawn from the 70s. Even though she’d set this episode in either the 90s or the very early 2000s. Which was probably the best thing to be confused about here.

She called herself a Sokovian fortune teller. Not the Scarlet Witch or whatever Dr. Strange thought she was. Maybe pointing that out would work in her favor when they woke up.

After a few more lame one-liners, Peter/Pietro brought up past Halloween costumes – and then he and everyone else froze solid and looked at nothing for a good 10 seconds. On any other day, that might seem weird.

“That’s not exactly how I remember it,” Wanda said when they all snapped out of it.

“You must have suppressed the trauma.”

Peter cringed more than usual to hear his own voice say such things. Though if Wanda was questioning stuff like that, maybe something was telling her this wasn’t right? And maybe something was telling her the rest of it wasn’t right too?

And why the hell was Agnes risking that by making him say stuff like that anyway? What was she trying to pull here? What was all this supposed to be for?

And now why was she making him pick his…oh boy, he needed to wash his hands for at least a half-hour when he woke up. Because that would happen.

After Vision came down in a cool wrestling costume Peter was forced to mock, another round of awkwardly flirty WandaVision dialogue, and an awkward disappearance from Vision under the guise of ‘undercover’ neighborhood watch work, it was time for the trick-or-treat part of this Halloween episode.

So of course, even that was creepy and wrong too.

If Peter had brothers, sisters or any other little kids in his family, Halloween would have been the greatest night of the year every year. If there was a real Halloween later this year and…other things were different than they were now, he really should visit Mr. Stark’s little girl for Halloween. And on a bunch of other days.

Even here, Halloween would have been great with Billy and Tommy. If these pranks and the freaking speedster running weren’t exhausting whatever brains of his own he had left.

In any case, those leftover brains were being hurt by Wanda anyway. And not in the way these fake neighbors were being hurt by her. If it really was her. After all, she hadn’t confessed yet, so there was still room to hope.

Right now, she was trying to get confessions and information out of Pietro Peter instead. But Agnes was feeding him lines to sidestep every one of them.

“Hey, I know I look different,” she made him jump ahead to say. “I mean, if I found Shangri-La, I wouldn’t wanna be reminded of the past either.”

“I don’t wanna do that to her either!” Peter let his voice echo into his personal void. “So why are you? Where are you making me go with this?”

But Agnes wasn’t anywhere near this scene to answer him, in any realm. The only thing that came out of it was another exhausting run/prank/candy theft, Wanda learning Vision wasn’t on neighborhood watch duty after all, and then being asked if she wanted “something changed.”

Well, she did at least change the kids enough to make them and fake Peter/Pietro give the candy back. After another few minutes of standing around doing nothing, until everyone snapped back into action. So…small progress.

“I can’t believe what a bad influence you are,” Wanda snapped at Peter, giving the real one cause for a standing ovation. If he had had the body parts to stand up.

"Who beefed in your borscht? I'm just trying to do my part, okay? Come to town unexpectedly, create tension with the brother-in-law, stir up trouble with the rugrats, and ultimately give you grief. I mean, that's what you wanted, isn't it?"

“No!” Peter futilely yelled at himself again. “It’s what your neighbor wanted! Incepting! Wanda, its literal incepting!” If that now old movie term worked once, maybe it could cross realms or whatever mindscape Peter was in to work again.

“What happened to your accent?” was all Wanda got out of hearing fake Pietro/Peter’s outside voice only.

“What happened to yours?”

“Hey, you don’t ask about a woman’s real accent! But if a woman’s asking through a man, then maybe…” Peter got tripped up briefly. “No, you don’t get to use those loopholes now!”

“Details are fuzzy, man,” Peter said out loud, still unaffected by any voice that sounded like his own. “I got shot like a chump on the street for no reason at all. The next thing I know, I heard you calling me. I knew you needed me.”

“She doesn’t need me…” real Peter said before catching himself. “I mean, you being me! Maybe she doesn’t need need me me, but…she needs to know I’m here. We’re here! The still alive people that care about her!”

“Wanda, please, we’re right out there and we want you back! Listen to me, not me!”

But if there was any chance Wanda still wanted to face reality – or at least look deep enough to know that fake Pietro/Peter wasn’t even a real part of her fake reality – it was dashed anew the second Tommy Maximoff dashed like his real uncle.

So with that distraction pacifying Wanda, whether it was her doing or someone else’s, the real Peter could only watch the episode get dragged out more.

**************************************************

At least Agnes and Wanda seemed to have put their pens down, as no one was talking for the time being. It would be more reassuring if Wanda wasn’t clearly putting on a fake smile instead of talking.

Whether she thought there were cameras to play up to or not, she was playing up to something. Anything that would buy she looked like just another content soccer mom with a real brother.

Maybe to those imaginary cameras, or her other supposed co-stars, she looked happy and right at home. Maybe it was just one last ditch attempt to convince herself she was really with Pietro – and nothing else around her was wrong at all.

Maybe the idiot jerk Peter was playing got to her with that borscht stuff. Making her think she was too much of a stick in the mud. Asking too many questions. Being too dramatic for a sitcom.

Too suspicious, too cautious, too sad. Too filled with trauma, too scared, too whiny, too much of a bummer. Too much like…real life Wanda. So maybe she was playing up sitcom Wanda again, just for jerk sitcom Pietro in case he was real. Playing up happy, fake Wanda so no one would get annoyed dealing with real Wanda. Including Wanda.

But Peter didn’t want to talk to some fake happy smiley Wanda. He wanted to talk to the real one. He had from the very start.

Right now, he wished he could see the Wanda who might be depressed, and not “fun” in the conventional sense…but who let Peter keep visiting her without once turning him away, every time he felt too overwhelmed to bother May, Ned or anyone else with his thoughts. Or nightmares.

He wanted to talk to the Wanda who might not have had snappy one-liners or comedy of any kind to offer…but who still made him feel safe and seen with silent understanding in those first few rough weeks.

He didn’t want to see a Wanda whose happiness was as artificial as the world around her. He wanted to see a happy Wanda – but one like the one who called him amazing and meant it with her whole heart. Like the one who was just coming out of her shell enough to make up those totally bogus comments about him liking MJ.

The one who probably had a lot more shells underneath that. Which had nothing to do with magic or prophecies or apocalypses. Maybe after the funeral with enough time, she could feel safe enough to show them – on her own time in a real place.

Did she remind enough people of what was lost – and what didn’t come back – that they didn’t want to stick around her? Even the other Avengers before the last few weeks?

Well, none of it scared Peter. Not hardly as much as the smiling, pretend Wanda right now. Who for whatever reason, wasn’t herself. And herself was the only Wanda Peter wished he could see right now – no matter how far away from sitcom level she was.

Now if only this fake sitcom Peter/Pietro could keep shutting up long enough for the real one to find a way back.

But of course, that guy and his evil writer just couldn’t shut up for long.

****************************************************

“You've handled the ethical considerations of this scenario as best you could. Families and couples stay together, most personalities aren't far off from what's underneath, people got better jobs, better haircuts, for sure.”

“You don't think it's wrong?”

Oh…oh hell. That was a confession, wasn’t it?

Oh Wanda…

Ok. Ok. After all that talk Peter spouted in the void about wanting to see the real Wanda, know the real Wanda…here she was. A real Wanda that could take away a whole town’s free will in dreams. Who might…maybe would…have done it in real life too. Who wasn’t really doing it now.

But as far she knew, this was reality. As far as she knew, she was taking away their free will. And that knowledge still wasn’t making her want to stop. Even if it was to keep an imaginary family…she was still controlling and altering families she thought were real.

Is that why Agnes was using fake Pietro/Peter? To get her to admit that? And what did she care anyway?

“It's a big leap from giving people nightmares and shooting red wiggly-woos out of your hands. How'd you even do all this?”

She wasn’t doing it! This Agnes person had to know that, unless Wanda made her forget when she got here. Otherwise, she had to know Wanda wasn’t really doing this for real. So why pretend with her that she was?

What did she need to know that would make her put Wanda and Peter through all this to know it?

“Hey, I'm not some stranger and I'm not your husband. You can talk to me.”

Peter hoped for so many reasons that Wanda wouldn’t answer. Few of them had to do with any secrets she might share.

“I don't know how I did it. I...” Fake Pietro/Peter – and probably his puppeteer – stayed still and waited for Wanda to go on. Only the one still locked inside him could barely keep looking at her.

“I only remember feeling completely alone. Empty. I just... Endless nothingness.”

“Oh, Wanda…”

Was that enough to excuse all the fears, concerns and ugly truths about what Wanda thought she was doing? Maybe not.

But whatever her reasons or excuses, however good or bad enough…they did not deserve to be forced out like this. To someone like this. To someone like…Peter Parker as Pietro Maximoff.

To someone who…clearly wasn’t Peter or fake Pietro right now. At least judging by the way Wanda was backing away and gasping.

Through fake Peter/Pietro’s eyesight, the real Peter saw a fake pale hand being raised up. He felt a sensation in his mouth again. More like a coppery, bloody taste.

“She changed me to DEAD fake Pietro?!”

What the hell was that supposed to get out of her? If it wasn’t Agnes doing that, was it Wanda? All because of what Agnes just put her through?!

“All right, that’s it! WANDA!!”

Anyone who was capable of hearing Peter would have cringed at his volume. Wanda didn’t flinch one bit. She still looked lost for any number of reasons, yet not enough to pick up a screaming voice in her fake brother’s brain.

Still, the voice had to keep trying. Had to do something other than just keep listening.

“Wanda, look in my mind, please! You get all the permission you need, just come in here and listen to me, not Pietro! He’s not real, none of this is real! Except maybe one really nosy neighbor, but you can take her! Maybe you don’t think you can do a lot of things right now, but you can! We just have to be who we really are again!”

“You know who I really am. And…I know a lot of things about you. Maybe some new things that might scare me. But not enough to make me walk away! Please…just see me and let me try and see you. I thought we were doing that already anyway.”

“Look, if you want to stay here and talk for a while, we can. If you don’t, that’s fine too. Just please help me out of here, I know you can…and then we can work out the rest. I promise I won’t think you’re evil, and I won’t let her or Strange or anyone else call you that either!”

“Please…I’m asking you not as fake douche brother Pietro. But your real…hoping to be real…friend, Peter. Please…”

Wanda looked at him. And Agnes wasn’t making him say some dick punchline to lighten the mood. He was still quiet and Wanda was looking at him and…maybe really looking at him.

Peter didn’t know if he was loud enough at the end for Wanda to hear his thoughts. Maybe volume didn’t matter. If it didn’t, then maybe…

Wanda was really looking at him. Almost like she was seeing through him. Seeing through what the world and almost everyone else saw and assumed about him, to see what was really hidden deep down and not look away.

It was an increasingly familiar look to Peter. And he was so glad he was starting to see it again now.

“Piet…”

Wanda didn’t finish the name. She looked like she was disgusted with the taste halfway through. Yet she took another nibble.

“P…” A little better without the iet.

“Pet…” So much better, come on….

“…Peter….?”

“MOM!”

And just like that, with four more moms, a new power from Billy and words that Vision was in trouble…the window closed shut.

Especially when fake Pietro returned for one last awful punchline.

“Hey, don't sweat it, sis. It's not like your dead husband can die twice!”

“Shut up, Peter! I mean, Pietro! I mean –”

Very fortunately and unfortunately, Wanda didn’t stumble in her reaction – blasting her officially disowned fake brother into a fake graveyard.

“Yes, take that, me! I mean…OW!!”

Wait. That ow wasn’t echoing in his mind prison. That ow was really starting to ouch too.

Wait…he could feel everything now. Pain and all. He could move to rub the pain all by himself now. He could move everything on his own again.

Reintroducing Peter Parker as himself. And as for the one who re-recast him…

“Wanda!” Peter groaned out. “Wand..”

But Wanda couldn’t hear him. Once again, they weren’t in the same realms. Only this time it wasn’t on his part.

Whatever Wanda was looking at and sensing, it was enough to turn her eyes red. Scarlet red. Enough to make the red barriers around the town brighter…and wider.

Yet the red eyes burned in Peter’s mind, before his eyes could only see black.

******************************************************

The next thing Peter saw was a real eyesore. More than a few of them, really.

At least he could get up on his own power to back away from them. Only to bump into a few more. This whole room looked like something Flash would give an arm and a leg for – if he could get Winter Soldier arms and legs as a bonus.

But this wasn’t Flash’s room. Peter looked around and found an envelope addressed to the apparent owner, named…

“Oh, you have GOT to be kidding!” Maybe that was as good a thing to say as any. As if there was anything good to say to that.

Still, if this was Agnes’s doing, she had to actually be kidding. And if it was Agnes, she could actually respond to him and confirm it herself. Confirm a lot of things while she was at it. Yet the one time Peter actually semi-hoped to hear another voice in his head, it didn’t come.

Instead, the real commotion came from outside.

Peter went over to the room’s nearest window, barely able to look out and see the noise’s source. And then to barely believe it.

It would have been one thing if it was one of the Maximoffs, or even Agnes. Instead, it was their former sitcom sidekick.

Now back in dream Westview and sporting…a super suit, energy beams around her body, and blue eyes as she landed on Wanda’s lawn?

How long had Peter been out? How did time even work here, anyway? Either way, whatever happened to him couldn’t be as…detailed as whatever happened to…

“Do it, then!” Peter could somewhat hear the new and…improved? Ms. Rambeau say to a charging Wanda. “Take me out.” Thankfully, it didn’t look like Wanda was listening.

“See, that’s where you and Hayward differ. All versions of him. And its how you differ from all those versions of you people THINK you are! Don’t be like them! Don’t let this make you the villain! Here or back there!”

Peter had to use every ounce of hearing power to make out Wanda’s response. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t.

“Maybe I already am.”

All right, now that was it.

“Wanda! Ms. Rambeau!” Peter finally started banging at the window to get their attention. When that didn’t work, he got really desperate. “Monica!”

Fine. Busting down the window should be much louder anyway.

Or it would if Peter could move an inch to smash it.

“Uh uh. Can’t have you stealing my cue, cutie,” the voice of Agnes rang in Peter’s frozen head, right before the rest of her came outside.

Agnes’s voice drowned out whatever Monica was saying, but Peter could still see enough. Enough to see that maybe, just maybe, Wanda was starting to hear enough to snap out of it. Until Agnes’s cue came.

As Agnes led Wanda away, Peter was allowed to hear Monica call out, “Wanda, you have to wake up. None of this is real! But you have –”

“No! Don’t make me hurt you.”

“Well, that was the worst spoiler alert ever, wasn’t it?”

Somehow, Agnes was still speaking in Peter’s mind while leading Wanda into her house. The same house it appeared Peter was in, no less. And yet as close as he now was to Wanda, he was still too far away to move a muscle towards her.

“It’s time she learned a lot of things. But her little nap…let’s just keep that detail on her broken brain’s cutting room floor, shall we?” Peter couldn’t object with his outside voice, so he had to let the other one yell for him again.

“Who are you? What do you want with her?”

“You know, Wanda should really be the first to know. Now, I’ve got a costume change and a juicy 11:00 number to get through first! And in the meantime, you have a new roommate to pick up.”

None of Peter’s vocal cords could object now. Once again, nothing Peter could do was under his own power. Once again, he was a mere spectator while his poor legs went 200 miles per hour faster than they were supposed to.

This time they carried him against his will towards the back of the house. More disturbingly, towards Monica.

“Snoopers gonna snoop.”

*************************************************

“Peter Parker, I will tell your aunt on you if you don’t get us out!”

“Don’t waste your breath, babe. No one can hear you in here,” Peter cringed at his awful dialogue for the hundredth time – then resisted the urge to throw up in his head for the 50’th time when he supersped to block Monica from the door.

“Okay…okay, there’s gotta be something here. If this is supposed to be TV, there should be something the villain left behind in plain sight to move the plot along,” Monica said, her knowledge quite impressive if not prophetic yet. “What is this place, anyway?”

“This is my man-cave,” Peter was forced to explain. “A place to chill-ax, you know, while the missus is stirring up trouble.”

On top of everything else, he was married here to that…he wanted to say person? If MJ – that is to say, anyone! – ever found out…

Speaking of horrible secrets, Monica appeared to find a very incriminating electric bill. “She cast you as…Ralph Bohner?”

“Heh…” Peter chuckled in preparation of his worst indignity yet

“Come on, don’t make me say it!”

“Bo…bo…”

Wait…she wasn’t making him say it?

“Bon…”

Wait…Peter wished he wasn’t saying something awful, and he was actually fighting it? “Bo…”

Oh God, he wasn’t saying it! Either Agnes was taking mercy because she’d already won, or…hell, at this exact point, it almost didn’t matter if it wasn’t anything else! Except it still did.

“B…” Peter was still holding back that one b word. Yet there was another that he could say.

“B…blast. Blast me,” he got out to Monica. If Wanda’s blast woke him up for a minute, maybe this would work for two. Long enough to get Monica out, anyway.

“Blast you? What…” Monica was slow to understand. However, what she didn’t get with words, she seemed to get by looking at Peter’s neck.

Come to think of it, now that Peter could feel some of his body again, his neck felt even weirder by comparison…

“Blast…” Peter got out before he felt the dark pit of despair bubble up his throat again. “Heh, bone-”

Oh, thank God he was shot right there.

He was somewhat less thankful when he started to feel that pain. Then far more thankful when he felt everything else.

“Goodbye, Ralph?” Monica asked carefully.

“Hey, Peter Parker…!” Peter finally got to cheer, the nightmare of his acting career apparently over.

“Okay, whatever character I’m with now, he’d better tell me what’s really going on.”

“It’s Agnes!” Peter spat out. “Wanda’s neighbor! She put her to sleep and she made me the biggest douche in the universe! I don’t know what she’s doing now, but at least it’s making her too busy to play me!”

“And if she’s too busy because she’s fighting Wanda?”

“Well, that’s an ugly asterisk, then,” Peter sighed before remembering another possible taint. “Whatever she wants…she wants Wanda to keep thinking this is real so she can get it!”

“Then that’s our play,” Monica vowed. “We wake Wanda up in here, and then she’ll wake us all up out there. That is…if knowing she’s in a dream will make her want to wake up…” On that, Peter wasn’t sure she could reassure her.

“But if there’s anyone who has a shot…it’s Peter Parker as himself.”

On that, Peter felt slightly more reassured, especially when she stood aside to let Monica blast the man-cave open this time.

“With special guest star Monica Rambeau as…um…oh, heck, we’ll workshop a name at Wanda’s real house!” While those lines weren’t as scripted as the ones he’d been force fed lately, Peter was eternally grateful for the freedom to improvise them.

He’d save the good lines for someone who was hopefully ready to hear them.

Chapter Text

“Use your power and free them now! Or maybe that power belongs in the hands of someone who can!”

Wanda tried to block it out, but knew she would fail. Just like when Agatha showed her hexing Westview. Just like when she saw exactly what she’d done to all her victims. If she could do all that, what possible good could her power do? At least in her hands?

“Because heroes don’t torture people.”

“And you know all about torture!”

Of course Wanda knew…wait a minute. That didn’t sound like one of the townspeople.

“Don’t you, Agnes? Trust me, I know!”

Wanda was finally able to look at someone other than Agatha, or the people she’d tortured. Only to find one of those who’d most tortured her.

“Well well, the fake dead brother wants another crossover!” Agatha said somewhat quickly. “Okay, I guess we can wait while you kill him with your own hands this time. Without letting him say an accent free word.”

Once again, Agatha was making too much sense for Wanda to block out, as much as she wished she wasn’t. But with everything she’d learned/remembered, everything that was still ahead and every terrible thing she’d already done…taking out that imposter Pietro for good might not look so unforgivable by comparison.

Heroes don’t kill people, either. And since she’d already killed long before this, what was one more going to do now?

“Wait, Wanda, don’t do it!” the fake called out, yet didn’t move while Wanda marched towards him and her hands charged up. “Don’t let her incept you!”

“Incepting! He’s incepting, you’re incepting!”

Something in that word…the echoes of that weird, nonsense word…made Wanda stop a few feet in front of the imposter. “What did you say?”

“Incepting? Incepting!” the bastardized Pietro actually cheered the second time. “You heard me say it before! When Hayward tried it after we found Vision! But it didn’t work! And I showed the whole world what he did to him and you!”

“Hayward…” Wanda wanted to assume the actor was working for Hayward, like she told…Geraldine. But if she wasn’t lying that he wasn’t with him, then why would he bring him up? Why would he act like…

“How do you know I found Vision there? I went alone! Are you a spy for someone other than S.W.O.R.D.? Is that who told you to play…?” Wanda barely had enough self-control to not say his name.

“No one told me to play Pietro but Agnes. And I would have turned her down if she didn’t control me! You’re not the one who brainwashed anyone here for real! She is!”

“Okay, now we’ve heard enough from the one-hit blunder.”

Agatha further reintroduced herself by sending a purple fireball of magic at her former puppet. Wanda was too confused to react, and once again too bombarded by images of what Agatha showed her when she attacked S.W.O.R.D.

Only now, those images had someone in a red suit flickering in and out.

Wanda shook off those images, if only for a moment, to see Agatha’s magic about to hit the…Fietro. Before she could decide whether to stop it or not, someone jumped in front to make the decision for her.

Someone who seemed to make her body transparent right as the magic blast hit her. It looked like it was…phasing through her, then flickered out in an instant right after it passed through her. All before it could touch Agatha’s original target.

“Oh, wow! Monica, you can do that too?” the performer exclaimed. Not with the obnoxious eagerness of the Halloween Pietro, but with a joy like that of a child. Maybe not a small child…maybe not even a regular child.

“I don’t know,” the woman the kid now called Monica said. “I don’t know if this is a real power…but it doesn’t matter, does it?” She looked over at Wanda and smiled warmly. “I can have any powers I want here…because this is a dream.”

She looked up at Agatha and turned her smile into a more wicked smirk. “You didn’t think about that, did you?”

“Um…”

Monica lifted herself into the air, firing her own photon blasts at Agatha and keeping her busy while Peter led Wanda away from the town square. All Wanda was capable of doing was following him, as nothing else except her legs was functioning right now.

“What is this…” Wanda eventually let her mouth and vocal cords move. “What do you want from me…I’m…”

“You’re Wanda Maximoff,” the boy told her. “Even if people call you something else later. You’re still just Wanda to me. And before you went to sleep, I was starting to think, or hope, I was just Peter Parker to you.”

“…Peter…?”

“But you know what? This is a dream! I can be anything I want in here! That actually makes this a lot easier! So if this is more familiar to you…”

Suddenly, the boy appeared to be changing clothes, without moving an inch. Something in red, blue and…iron was starting to cover him. Thankfully she wasn’t looking at fake Pietro’s clothes anymore, but what was she looking at now?

Whatever it was, it had the logo of a…spider at the center. And now the boy had a mask on too.

“This is what I wore when we faced Hayward together. When we went to the real Westview together. When I hugged you before you became…I guess it’s the Scarlet Witch.”

“How do you know that name?” Wanda rasped out. “Who are you? What are you?!”

“You…you are amazing, Peter.”

“Amazing…?”

“Yes!” he cheered like a child again. Only in a way that sounded more endearing now for some reason. “I’ve heard the term Amazing Spider-Man before. But you’re one of the only people who looked at me like…Peter Parker was the amazing one. At least without the mask.”

The young man removed his mask and showed his face again. A face Wanda had believed to be Pietro’s face, and it was so wrong. But looking at it now…

Suddenly she saw that same face looking at her in a car, holding up a phone showing…Vision’s body in Hayward’s lab. She then saw a flash of that same face lighting up when he posted that video online. And again, when he read her an article saying Vision was being released.

But he was never released from S.W.O.R.D. They made him into that white abomination just now. So why was Wanda thinking about…a funeral?

The same reason she saw and heard flashes of herself going to sleep. Dreading the next day and all others once Vision was in the ground.

The same reason she saw and heard flashes of news reports, with Geraldine…Monica…being credited as the one who got Hayward arrested. Even though he was outside waiting to attack them now. Or was he…?

The same reason she saw and heard more flashes of that boy’s face. The face she saw and mistook for her brother. The face she only looked really close at before Halloween ended…and swore she heard something…

“Please…I’m asking you not as fake douche brother Pietro. But your real…hoping to be real…friend, Peter. Please…”

“Peter…” Wanda said for the second time today. But probably not the second time ever. And then another name flashed next to it. “Peter Parker…not Pietro…Peter…”

“Yes!” cheered the boy Peter. The boy Peter Parker. Peter Parker…Spider-Man. From Germany, Thanos, S.W.O.R.D…

A hug….

“Peter?” Wanda asked with an actual hint of recognition. “Peter!” she repeated with a greater certainty of recognition. “Peter?!” she suddenly huffed in a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere burst of anger, disbelief and…protectiveness at him being here, of all places.

But he was here. And she thought he was…and when it was clear he wasn’t, she did… “Peter….” She gasped in sudden sorrow as she looked at his body – which she’d struck with magic just last night.

“You didn’t hurt me!” Peter was quick to assure her. “Trust me, that me had it coming! And I am so sorry all those rotten, ‘cool’ words of his were said in my voice! I didn’t mean any of them! It was Agnes all along!”

Something about him using that phrase, on top of everything else happening now, made Wanda laugh. It might have been her first real one since the last time Peter made her laugh.

“Of course it wasn’t you…” Wanda realized, seeing just how ridiculous it was that he could ever be…that person on purpose.

“And this wasn’t you,” Peter further proved it, pointing to where Wanda struck him. “Not all of you. Not the you that should matter.”

“Peter…” Wanda started out sounding touched, before sounding completely lost. Just like with every other feeling and memory she had right now. “What’s happening?”

It wasn’t Peter that answered her first, but a loud blast of magic nearby which just missed a flying Monica. Yet she landed back on the ground to reach Peter and Wanda.

“I think we should hurry this along a bit!” Monica urged, not even waiting to ask Wanda before grabbing her hands. Once she had them, she pressed them against her forehead.

Wanda wasn’t consciously trying to look through her mind. She wasn’t consciously doing much of anything now. Maybe in more ways than one. She didn’t know who or what she was, or what any of this was anymore.

But when she touched Monica’s head, it opened up instantly and let her know everything about who she was. Especially who she was in the last few days to Wanda, despite having never met her.

Especially who’d she lost before that.

“Your mother…” Wanda gasped as Monica let her hands go. “She’s the one you lost…”

“She meant as much to me as Vision meant to you. And I didn’t get to mourn her or say goodbye. Not like I should have. So when I saw that kid’s video, and saw my own agency…my mother’s replacement…was keeping you from mourning Vision and saying goodbye…I had to finish him off somehow.”

“I wanted to talk to you about all of it. Before the funeral. Maybe it would have made it easier for both of us. But then…”

“…you found me asleep,” Wanda started to see at last. “Both of you. Then you came in and I…threw you out when you tried to get through to me. Then I did it again. Is…is that why you have…?”

“Powers? Some of them, I think,” Monica guessed. “I guess it was gonna happen one way or another.”

But it happened in this way. With Wanda experimenting on her and altering her. At least Wanda gave consent when they did it to her, however coerced and manipulated it was. But after all Monica did for her and Vision, Wanda just…

“I’m so sorry, Monica…”

“Oh, you’re apologizing to her? What about me? What about the rest of us you hurt?”

For the first time since Peter and Monica arrived, Wanda noticed the people of Westview again. Dottie, or rather Sarah, had come in to remind her of her crimes again. But…

“But I didn’t hurt you…did I?”

The flashes struck her faster than ever. Peter’s hug. Wanda’s takeoff after that hug. The red sky that covered Westview but didn’t strike it. The late nights Wanda spent watching interviews with the Westview citizens she could have struck.

Enough interviews and Internet research that she could make them all up in her head at will. After some recasting.

“Wanda?”

“Mom?”

Vision. Billy. Tommy. They were here now too. The one she spent the most time…making up in her head at will. Yet it was one thing to barely accept making that up, as Agatha forced her to do. It was quite another if she’d still let her think everything else she did was real.

If it wasn’t, then letting her…family watch this wouldn’t be so bad.

Wanda turned to Dottie/Sarah and struck her with a red surge of magic. But she didn’t collapse to the ground. She didn’t die or even fall unconscious. She didn’t have any visible injuries to speak of.

Because she was completely gone. Turned into ether as if she never existed. Because in here, she didn’t.

“She’s not real,” Wanda started to accept. “They’re not real. Nothing here is real. No one here is real. Except Peter, Monica…and you. And you made me think I’d really…”

At that, Wanda was completely done letting her hide. “AGATHA!!”

“Well, hooray for you, then!” Agatha applauded, floating up in the sky long after she’d been busted, but coming back down to her audience anyway.

“Who needs complexity and a third dimension, when you can use the ‘It’s all a dream!” excuse to wave it away? Never mind you would have done every bit of this in the real world, mind control sitcoms and all, if not for your human boy toy over there! Never mind that he knows it too! Or that the rest of them out there will know what you really are now too.”

Peter growled, using the dream web shooters from his dream Spider-Man suit to shoot at Agatha. Yet with a finger point, Agatha turned the webs into confetti, raining it down over them as she kept up her pretend celebration.

“But okay! I wanted to ease you into doing the right thing for once, and this is the thanks I get! Fine! Plan B it is!”

Agatha rose back into the sky, reciting a different Latin chant than the ones to ‘wake up’ the people of Westview. “Now you’ll see…” she taunted in English.

Wanda couldn’t see anything but Agatha and her own blinding anger at her. Until she then started seeing the sky flicker on and off. Then the buildings.

And then she saw…the ceiling of her own bedroom in the real world

Then the sky in Westview. Then the clouds glitching. Then Peter and Monica coming in and out of trances. Then her real ceiling again.

“She’s waking us up!” Wanda heard Monica when she returned to her dreamworld. Returned just in time to see Vision…dream Vision…collapse to the ground. To see Billy and Tommy rush to his side.

And then to see all three of them glitch in and out of existence.

“Mom! Mom, help us!”

“Now do you see?!” Agatha cackled. “You created all of this! The evil stuff and the family stuff! All I did was keep you sleeping long enough to make them too! But now they’re all tied to this twisted dreamscape! And now they’ll cease to exist the minute I let you wake up!”

“Wanda…” Vision forced out as he struggled to keep existing.

“Yes, Wanda!” Agatha latched on. “Go on, tell me to wake you up, so you can kill your husband yet again! And your kids for the first time! Then live in a world where Vis is in the ground, the boys never existed, and you’ll never have a real family to kill again.”

“Save your family, or wake up and face reality. But if you’re who you really are, it’s a real no brainer, isn’t it?” Agatha taunted, as Wanda couldn’t tear herself from watching her dream family fall apart.

“STOP THIS!!”

“Yep, just what I thought,” Agatha gloated, immediately stabilizing her spell and the rest of dream Westview, including the dream Maximoffs. As a result, Wanda was deeper in sleep than ever, and so were Peter and Monica.

“That one’s on the house! You want me to keep you under? Keep them alive? Then it’s gonna cost you.”

Rather than negotiate prices, Wanda roared and flew up to blast Agatha, who didn’t land too far. Once she got up, she acted quick when she saw Peter, Monica and the other Maximoffs get ready to face her.

“Uh, uh! The B-list cast gets B-list enemies!” With a few more finger flicks, Agatha made it so that the dream version of S.W.O.R.D. and the military, along with the dream White Vision, were charging into the town square.

Wanda knew it was meant to keep everyone else busy, or keep her too distracted. But with everything she needed and wanted to do to Agatha, maybe it was for the best if no one else was around her.

“Boys, Monica. Handle the dream military. I’ll be right back.”

Trusting she wasn’t lying on purpose, Wanda chased after her own final enemy. Left to themselves, the boys crowded around Vision while Peter and Monica put themselves in front.

“Mom never prepared us for this!” Billy realized, before Vision corrected him.

“But you were born for it.”

With that, all the various side fights were on.

While Vision went solo against White Vision, Billy and Tommy ran circles around the soldiers, and Peter shot his unlimited dream web shooters at anyone else near them. For a while, it looked like they could brush past this quickly and get themselves back to the real action.

Until Peter tingled hard enough to see the dream Hayward point a gun at the dream kids.

“They die in a dream, they die for real! Worst part of incepting!” Peter panicked, especially when it looked like Monica wasn’t close enough to make any bullets disappear.

So he took aim, begged the dream Gods – including those who weren’t Wanda – and fired his shooters right at Hayward’s wrists. Hitting the target on time, right on time, to make him fire wide of the kids.

“You naïve little brat!” dream Hayward said as snottily as the real one would have. So that made this even more overdue.

Without Agatha to turn his webs into confetti, they stuck right on Hayward’s mouth. Then his eyes. Then when he stumbled back into his truck, a few more were shot on his hands so they stuck to his dashboard.

“Enjoy dream jail!” Peter taunted. At least he was there in person to taunt him when he got busted this time.

“Uncle Pietro, that was awesome!” Tommy only got half right.

“Call me Uncle Peter.”

Before much longer, Vision returned and was the only Vision in the vicinity now. Monica finished photoning the soldiers and agents into dream oblivion, leaving all the side threats subdued.

Albeit not fast enough to get to the real one. Who was now frozen on a rooftop, nonetheless. But so was Wanda.

************************************************

“Harbinger of chaos…so it is foretold,” Agatha’s undead mother and her undead coven kept repeating in this…dream within a dream.

But the nightmare they foretold felt far too real to Wanda. Especially when she felt the outline of a crown on her head. The kind she’d already worn recently.

“Power isn’t your problem. It’s knowledge,” Agatha rubbed in from her stake. “Eventually, you know you’ll do every horrible thing you did in here out there, and worse. You really want to go back there, knowing you’re destined to kill them all? Without any family as your reward?”

“So it is foretold…”

The real Westview anomaly, the dream one, now this…it was all starting to add up too well.

“But I can stop it for you. Give me your power, and I’ll make my sleep spell permanent. I’ll touch up your hostage dream world before I go, and you and your family and all the people of Westview can live in peace. Everyone in the real world will live in peace with you gone. And you’ll never have to visit any gravesites or funeral homes.”

“No one will have to feel any pain because of you ever again. Not even you.”

It could work.

No funeral. No real Vision dead and out of reach forever. No world without her children. No world that wouldn’t be destroyed or mind controlled by her. No more loss or pain, because she could stay in a world without loss or pain. And that world which hurt her without mercy could never touch her again.

It could be just her now. Just Vision and her family. Compared to the alternative, what did anything else matter? Their real existence, the world out there, a world of controlled neighbors who weren’t really alive…they didn’t matter. They didn’t have to.

It could all finally be over and there’d be no downside. None that Wanda would ever have to live with. And all she had to do was give up power that did nothing but harm her, and all those who ever knew her.

What could make any of that a bad thing? If anything could, what did it matter? Who would possibly be worse off in a world, a universe, where Wanda Maximoff stayed here?

“And since I owe you one? I’ll let the kid and the new flying chick stay here too. No extra charge!”

…damnit.

There were very few people left in any world who were worth turning that offer down. She picked most of them.

Most anyone else wouldn’t be a dealbreaker. Most anyone but them. Her.

And especially him.

By the time Wanda blasted the ghosts of her coven away, Agatha somewhat realized she had overplayed her hand. Badly.

Yet by then, the aftermath was pretty much foretold. Right down to the magic sky fights, Wanda’s pleas for Agatha to take her power, Agatha taking it and breaking any promise of a deal, and then seeing Wanda taking her accidental rune lessons to heart.

With her runes cast and the trap set, Wanda made a transformation she’d already made before. This time, it was on purpose. This time, she didn’t want to block it out. This time, she knew she couldn’t – prophecies and much more be damned.

“Oh God…” Agatha gasped, seeing the Scarlet Witch instead of just hearing about her for the first time. “You don’t know what you’ve done…”

In truth, she didn’t. In so many ways she knew now, or would know later. But despite not knowing consciously how any of this worked, Wanda set herself and a powerless Agatha down, then approached her as if she knew what was about to happen.

Somehow, she must have. Because when she grasped Agatha’s head, only to see a completely different Agatha somewhere else, she wasn’t fazed or confused in the slightest.

Something deep inside must have prepared her for this. Must have told her she’d only been facing a piece of Agatha in her mind, while the real one was commanding her in the real world. Now somehow, despite still being in her own dream, Wanda could cross the realms and see real Agatha right in front of her, sitting in a circle with an open book beside her.

Real Agatha reached for that book while the rest of her was frozen in place. But Wanda moved her hand off Agatha’s head faster, guiding the book to fly into her possession – then pulling back and dropping the book off into her dream world.

With barely any comprehension or way out, Agatha stayed in place as Wanda held her head. She announced she would put her in the role she created in Wanda’s world – only she would be playing it in the real one now.

After all, she kept insisting she would do it in reality anyway. Doing it just once to an enemy should fill that quota for good. Not that Agatha believed she would stop at one.

Wanda would have to believe for everyone. However hard it might become.

“Wait! You have no idea what you’ve unleashed!” Agatha bargained, albeit without being specific enough to make a real case. “You’re gonna need me.”

“If I do…now I know where to find you.”

Wanda took a last look at the cabin Agatha was in, then focused on making her disappear. Only Agnes would be living in that cabin now. Too far gone in so many ways to threaten her again. Lost in another character forever, because of her.

The dream had become reality. And Wanda would live with it. At least that was the plan.

Once it was over, Wanda let go of Agnes, her entire body now back in dream Westview. But dream Agatha/Agnes wasn’t there anymore. Yet when her boys, her husband and her two friends rushed over, she stopped pretending to miss her.

Nonetheless, curious Peter had to ask, “Where did Agatha go? What did you do to her?”

“Nothing that won’t work out there like it did here,” Wanda admitted, making Peter feel uneasy for a moment. No matter how much Agatha deserved it. For all the evil villain stuff and bad writing.

Wanda’s unease was clearly longer, given the reappearance of the dream people of Westview. Who looked as lost and angry at her as they would have been if this, and they, were reality.

“They’re not real. Neither is what you did to them,” Monica reminded.

“It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have made it real,” Wanda said, forcefully enough to cut off any objections from Peter. Or Monica. “And what I did to you was real…”

“I’ll manage it. Trust me, I’ve rolled with weirder punches.”

“You don’t hate me?” Wanda struggled to accept.

“In your shoes, I would have done a lot of the same things. And I’ll tell the wizard that, and more, when we get back.” When we get back…

“Can we get back now?” Peter double checked.

“I broke her spell. I control when I wake up now,” Wanda had to face.

“And so our dream home becomes a fixer upper,” Vision interjected. “But I know you’ll make this right.”

“Just not for us,” Wanda took the first very small step in accepting. The next came when she was able to face Peter and Monica. “Tell them I’ll wake up in a few minutes.”

After lining them up, and barely being able to endure Peter’s awkward, formal goodbye to Vision – to say nothing of his goodbye hugs to Billy and Tommy – Wanda took a deep breath and prepared to wake them up. As a warm-up for the hardest waking up to come.

Before she could carry it out, Peter noted a big black book on the ground where Agatha used to be. “Wait a minute, what’s –”

But there was no answer. There was no more Westview either, at least as far as Peter and Monica could see. They were no longer outside, but inside lying next to Wanda’s real bed, their hands no longer frozen to her body or her dream reality.

Their long extended nap was over. Soon, Wanda’s would be too. Soon a lot of things for her would be over.

Peter tried not to fear that the possibility she’d think it was worth waking up for…was hoping against hope.

*************************************************

“So long, darling…”

His last words kept echoing through Wanda once he was gone. Kept echoing once dream Westview now looked like rest Westview. Once her dream home and all the dreams inside it were gone forever, leaving her alone in an empty plot again.

Alone except for Agatha’s book.

Figuring she might as well see if she could take it with her – that, if nothing else far more precious – Wanda picked it up and prepared to do what she now had the power to do again. If not entirely the willpower to do.

Wake up to her real, barren home.

Wanda listened to Vision’s last words one more time, if far from the last time ever. But as she held onto the Darkhold, another echo started to get through.

“Mom!”

That couldn’t be right. They didn’t have any last words like that before they disappeared. That was one of the only merciful things about this. Remembering real dream Vision’s last words on a loop forever was one thing she’d be living with forever. But making up pleas from her dream children was quite another.

It had to be.

And with that latest reminder that her dream life was officially over, Wanda blinked her eyes and found herself back in her waking nightmare.

Except she was now in her new costume instead of her bed clothes. And she had the Darkhold in her arms after all. And her room now had a lot more people in it than just her.

She knew Peter and Monica would be there. Monica’s vow to give a wizard some words warned her Strange would be there, resting suspicious face and all. But they were only part of the crowd.

“We know, we know, you had the most peculiar dream,” Clint spoke, before gesturing to Peter and Monica. “And he was there, and she was there, and I was on the cutting room floor somehow…”

Despite having no reason to laugh, as per usual when Clint tried to be funny, Wanda let a half sob-laugh out anyway. As it all started to hit her yet again, Laura came over and looked ready to catch her once she fell. Yet Wanda sat upright for the moment, overwhelmed by her volume of guests, so she wouldn’t be overwhelmed by everything else for a few seconds.

“You’re all here…” she exclaimed, feeling something warm inside – far sooner than she ever figured – despite her family being gone. But it disappeared promptly when she asked, “How long have you been here?” and no one answered her.

“How long have I been here?” she asked with far more familiar dread. When the more soft-hearted visitors wouldn’t say, she let herself turn to someone who’d at least be brutally honest.

“No more than a full day,” Strange said directly.

“So that means…” Wanda started to realize, before she found a potential loophole. “But you postponed it? Since I wasn’t there, and you didn’t go either? Right?”

“Oh, honey…” Such words in such a tone from Laura could inspire the deepest, warmest feelings of love. Or the greatest dread over what she was trying to put off saying as long as possible. Wanda felt nothing but the latter now.

“None of us thought about the funeral until it was too late. So none of us thought to delay it until…”

“I’m sorry, Wanda,” Sam picked up for her. “From what I heard, Vis was already buried a few hours ago.”

She’d missed it. She’d missed saying goodbye to the real Vision, because she’d trapped herself and let herself stay trapped with a fake one. Now they were all gone.

All of them were gone. Forever.

“And you missed it?” Wanda tried briefly to be mad that they’d missed laying Vision to rest too. All because of her. But she had no case to judge them.

Last night, she would have given anything not to wake up and go to that funeral. It appears that’s exactly what she did. Now that it had happened, however…she would have given anything to wake up when she was supposed to.

But it was too late. She would never see any form of Vision again. There were no resurrected or mind Vis’s available in this world. None she could get away with making, anyway. She couldn’t make him…or even make…

They were all completely gone. And all she’d thought to bring back instead was…

“Mom! Mom, help us!”

Wanda heard them again. Heard them although they were gone. Although they never existed in reality. But she heard them. She’d heard them even clearer once she tightened her grip on the book.

A book with pages devoted just to her. Or who she would become.

If she was or was about to be this powerful, then just how deep did that power go? Deep enough that they could be…?

Vis was based on a real person. Billy and Tommy weren’t. Did that mean because she created them out of nothing, because she was…this witch, then such creations couldn’t just disappear into nothingness? That maybe they went somewhere else other than the recesses of her mind? And if her mind was connected to such awesome power…maybe it could reach back out to it?

Maybe there could be some way. Some chance she didn’t have to stay alone.

“Mom, help us!”

Oh God, where had she sent them to? Where did it say how to get them back?

“Where did you get that?”

That last question wasn’t in Wanda’s head. It was far more masculine, judgmental and had a far different kind of fear underneath. So of course it came out of Strange.

“Agatha. Agatha Harkness,” Wanda said just as tightly. “I assume you know of her.”

“Parker was very animated in filling in some blanks,” Strange surely undersold. “What else do you know?”

“I know about the Scarlet Witch. I know this book says even more about her.” If not more about anyone else. Or how to reach them.

“And that’s exactly why you need to give it to me. Now.”

“Mom!”

“No. What if this book has answers? About me? About how…to understand what I can do?”

“You’ve already found enough answers, it would seem,” Strange eyed over her new attire with all too condescending suspicion.

“You have crossed, or nearly crossed, some very dangerous lines in your nostalgic slumber. Right now, the last thing you need is temptation to blur any more. At the very least, finding and keeping this book away from you, Ms. Harkness or any other force may somewhat balance what happened today.”

“Mom, please!”

“But I need –”

“Your needs are not an excuse to endanger us all! I’d hoped your show had tacked on that basic grade school moral at the last second.”

“Strange, I got those words for you locked and loaded now!” Along with charging photon powers that apparently carried over from Wanda’s dreams too. Once Strange saw that from Monica, he seemed to settle down.

“Okay, fair enough. Being less rational and calm about this will get us nowhere,” he conceded, right as Wanda’s grip on the Darkhold loosened enough for him to get his hands on it.

“The last thing I want is your life to be damned worse than it already has. And it will be if you indulge in this book. Whatever good intentions you have will be corrupted, along with the rest of you. So the best thing here is for me, and my order, to make sure no one suffers such a fate from this book again. Not you, not Agatha or her victims, or anyone.”

“I promise you, we will find answers another way. A better way. Until then, I will back off and give you as much time to heal as I can. But the minute you do…we need to have some important talks. Does that sound fair to you?”

None of it did. None of it had ever been fair. But none of it had ever been avoidable. And neither was this.

So out of sheer defeat, Wanda loosened her grip on the Darkhold and let Strange take it. Take it and the final echoing “Mom!”’s away from her.

“For what it might be worth now…I truly am sorry.”

Wanda couldn’t tell if Strange truly meant it, was just trying to save face, or just didn’t want to activate a ticking time bomb. Like most people around her even before all this.

And this was the world she’d chosen to come back to.

*************************************************

Strange did guide everyone else out of her room to let her decompress. Some stayed in her living room in case she came back out, some left in short order. Only Peter dared to make his way back in.

When he knocked on her door and no answer came, he opened up anyway, in case she’d fallen back asleep again. Her back was turned, so she’d have to be sleeping sitting up if that was it. He stood around instead of getting closer to check, at a loss for anything else he could or should do.

“He’s gone,” Peter strained to hear. “He’s gone because of me. He was buried alone because of me.”

“That’s not…”

“I told the one I made up ‘we’ll say hello again.’ But that’s never going to happen, is it?” Wanda’s volume went up ever slightly and bitterly. “At least in the dream, the one Hayward made survived. I don’t even have that here.”

“And I was never a mother here…” she said ever more tearfully.

“But you were a great mom in there. Even through my jerk alter ego, I saw that,” Peter tried to help, but was far from sure he had.

“I thought for a second I had a chance in here…but now it’s gone,” Wanda ignored all else. “Everyone is gone. I’m destined to destroy everything that’s left. And I came back to be feared and alone all over again.”

“None of that’s true!”

“It is. That’s what I killed my family for. Again. I could have stayed asleep forever and not hurt anyone, real or not. But I didn’t.”

Peter didn’t know if Wanda deliberately ignored the imaginary Westview people she would have hurt then. And the real Agatha she did hurt. Either way, he was uneasy enough about where this might go.

Then that unease was multiplied. “Because you were there.”

“What?” Peter stumbled as Wanda fully turned to face him.

“You and Monica. If you two weren’t there, I might have taken Agatha's deal. If you weren’t there…” If Peter wasn’t there, maybe.

If it was just Monica in her head, Wanda might have still refused to keep her there forever. But even with all she did out there for her, and all she went through in there because of her, Wanda couldn’t say for sure she’d have woken up to save her. Just her.

Peter, on the other hand…

“What were you even doing there?” Wanda raised her voice, as all the ugly implications started hitting her. “Monica got in by accident the first time. You went in on purpose! Why would you do that?!”

“To help you, why else?”

“And look what happened to you! What she did to you…what I did…all that, because you knew me! For only a month! And look what it got you! What it got me!”

“Wait a minute, what are you getting at here?” Peter’s concern started spiraling, albeit not as badly as Wanda’s.

“If this happened now, what’s gonna happen if you stay when I…?” Wanda let herself imagine the worst. Apparently there was still a worst she hadn’t pulled off yet. And she just couldn’t.

Just this once, someone – just this one someone – had to survive her.

“You can’t be here anymore,” Wanda decided. “You need to get as far away from me as you can. While I’m still strong enough to let you.”

“Wait, what? No! Pushing me away isn’t being strong!” Peter insisted, strongly enough to cover up his fear and dread. Hopefully.

Which was still marginally better than Wanda’s attempts to hide it.

“And blind, stupid faith isn’t being heroic. Just naïve. And a child,” Wanda became desperate enough to go for the low blow now. If only to end this. “You have to be smart now, and go.”

“Well, that’s not your decision to make!”

People who’ve lost so much, still somehow keep finding people, and then get faced with losing them too, can lash out real bad in sheer pain and desperation. If it has a chance to save them from that one last loss which could finally break them. Or at least shield them for a few extra seconds from the pain of facing it.

That’s one extra thing a mystical woman and a young boy hero, each with tattered, constantly abandoned souls, can have in common.

From that common shared pain, built from their budding argument and a very trying, faith threatening day for both of them, this came out of the young boy hero next.

“You don’t get to control what I do! Like I’m one of your Westview extras! Agatha already did that to me! But I guess after you did it to her, you haven’t had enough yet, like the book said! Have you?!”

Instantly, Peter knew how horrible he’d been. Instantly, he knew being controlled by Agatha – and knowing Wanda was capable of the same and more – had done too great a number on him. Instantly, he knew he’d taken it out on Wanda in a cruel fashion.

He just didn’t know instantly enough.

But Wanda instantly knew Peter would never be like this in his right mind. Which was the exact problem. He couldn’t be in a right mind if he was still around her.

So while Peter scrambled to figure how to take it back, Wanda doubled down.

“I need you to leave…” she croaked out. “Tell them to leave too.”

“Wanda, please, I’m sor-”

“GET OUT!!”

All Wanda did was show glowing red eyes. It still made Peter back up and look scared of her for the first time. He immediately looked ashamed of it, but it didn’t matter.

Give it a few more months, and she would have strangled him with her mind in a scene like this. Like she did to the dream Westview population. Give it another few, and…

No. It would end here and that would not happen to him. She would never let anything happen to him again. In particular, endangering him by just being near him.

Whether Peter realized this final gift she’d given him or not, he was backing away anyway. “I’m sorry…” he had the gall to say before leaving her room and closing the door.

And Wanda nearly had the gall to not let him leave. To plead with him not to leave, and wish for forgiveness he’d give all too easily. But she lost that right with him too.

She collapsed to her knees like she did weeks earlier in reality, and an hour earlier in her dreams. This time, however, she stopped herself from unleashing the full destructive power of her grief. And like the second time, there was no one around to hug her and give her just one moment of healing.

And there couldn’t be again. So it was foretold.

So it was time to go.

********************************************************

Everyone else left in Wanda’s apartment knew they’d stuck around long enough, even before hearing her last angry cry. If only to give her space before they tried to reach out again tomorrow, they started to leave.

Only Peter and Dr. Strange were left inside the building before long. If only to block out what happened a little while longer, and if only to succeed in at least one apology tonight, he settled for facing Strange.

“Look, I’m not sorry for getting mad at you about Wanda. Or about what I thought when you took her book. But I shouldn’t have blamed you for Vision. Or Mr. Stark. That’s a whole other issue. And I guess I can’t block it out forever,” Peter sighed as that reality faced him again.

“I know if there was any other way…” he kept pushing forward, just so something might go right.

“I understand. Believe me, I understand too well,” Strange said, much softer than Peter had ever heard from him. “There’s just a time and a place to dwell on such things.”

“You looked through all kinds of futures to find a better one first. I just thought I could help make one or find one for Wanda too,” Peter clung to the hope there was one, even now. For her sake and his own.

“I guess for now…all we can do is hope you did.”

*****************************************************

“This is a rare universe where Wanda was allowed to receive real comfort and support right after the Blip. Yet even so, she was driven to isolate herself in self-imposed exile anyway.

“There are many wonders in the multiverse. But a wonder where Wanda could heal enough to avoid the horrors of the Scarlet Witch…is just too inconceivable for it to consider. At least up to this point of the story.”

“There were some small mercies. Because she cloaked her cabin, she was off Dr. Strange’s radar. Because she wasn’t on the run from the law, she could travel more freely to find magical texts and knowledge that wasn’t from the Darkhold. Over time, her new power grew even without its dark influence…though the pleas she’d heard from that book never stopped echoing.”

“As for Vision’s gravesite? His widow still hadn’t set foot on it.”

“She had slightly better luck not dwelling on everyone else she’d left behind. Even Peter, after a time. If not completely.”

“Over time, Peter had to learn not to dwell on her too. When he finally accepted how much he dwelled over a snarky, mostly closed off girl his own age, it got a little easier. If not completely.”

“And so, events in Europe that summer played out exactly how you remember it. And events in a cabin on the far edge of the world played out largely the same way.”

“Until, like millions around the world…that cabin’s owner stumbled onto an exclusive report from the Daily Bugle.”

****************************************************

“Spider-Man’s real name…is Peter Parker!”

“WHAT THE FU-“

Chapter Text

“PETER PARKER!”

Just minutes ago, hearing his full name bellowed out loud in Times Square shattered his life. This time, hearing it wasn’t so seismic.

Or maybe it was, in a different way.

Because it was said in the center of his very own apartment. By someone who wasn’t there a second ago. By someone he hadn’t seen in months.

“…Wanda?”

*******************************************

Wanda wasn’t thinking straight. Maybe that wasn’t a new thing when it came to Peter. But everything else was new now.

It had been, since Wanda’s brisk walk through the streets of Madripoor on a scroll finding mission stopped when she glanced at an outdoor TV. One displaying the image of Spider-Man. With a text below accusing him of murder.

The alleged murder victim was some sort of new interdimensional hero named Mysterio. As much as Wanda cut herself off from the hero world and most others lately, she was sure she’d sense such a dimensional rift by now.

Either way, the second his dying words started by accusing Spider-Man of murdering him with Stark drones, Wanda knew this was no hero. And knew he was probably lucky to be dead before Wanda heard of him.

With his very last words, she was sure of it.

“Spider-Man’s real name…is Peter Parker!”

“WHAT THE FU-”

By sheer luck, the magic she emitted only knocked a dozen fellow onlookers off their feet. By sheer luck, she poofed herself back into her cabin in a second, before any other damage out of shock and anger was done.

It was kind of by sheer luck she’d even found the spells and knowledge to poof herself hundreds and thousands of miles away at a time. Even without a sling ring, the Darkhold or any visits to Kamar-Taj. But that luck would really pay off in another few minutes.

First, for the first time since she found the cabin, Wanda made a television appear inside it. For the first time, she didn’t stop herself from finding out what was happening in the world she’d left behind.

A world that now knew about Peter while she’d been gone. A world now believing Peter was a villain while she’d been gone.

All while she’d been gone.

Wanda didn’t think straight once that hit her. There were only three things in her head right now. The strongest teleportation spell she could muster. Peter’s home address. And getting to Peter.

Remembering the address was tricky, since she’d never been in his apartment before. But not being there for him had been the whole problem.

She had to be there now, despite being way too late. Maybe that was the surest sign she was still an Avenger after all. Yet that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to her now but seeing Peter.

“PETER PARKER!!”

Until she actually saw him.

********************************************

Right then, her brain chose to work again and remember she hadn’t seen him in months. Right then, she remembered she yelled at him and kicked him out the last time she saw him. Yet at one of the scariest moments of his life, here she was on top of everything else, with no warning. Even though she’d failed him then and especially now.

To the point where she didn’t break in before he had pants on.

Peter only realized that after saying her name – then promptly panicked, stumbled around and finally ran into his room without another word to her. That seemed about right. If anything about seeing him like that was right.

“You’re…you’re her. You’re Wanda.” Who finally realized even with Peter gone, she wasn’t alone in his home.

“You saw my boyfriend in his boxers and I’m not even mad! The only woman alive who could pull that off, and she’s here now!”

“You’re Michelle. I mean, MJ!” Wanda corrected, now fully recognizing her. “Wait, did you say your…” she went further back, putting enough together to start smiling.

“I knew he liked you! I guess if you’re here now, he told you a lot more than that!” Wanda realized, glad there was something to smile about now. Although it probably made her more out of place here.

“He told you about me? Oh my God, if this was on any other day it’d be the coolest day ever! Any other day!” Wanda savored what may have been her first fangirl encounter, until the other fairly young woman in the apartment came forward.

“I guess I’m officially meeting all of Peter’s lady friends today.”

It wasn’t the first time Wanda had been in the same apartment as May Parker. But it was the first time she had room to introduce herself. The last time, she surely overheard her yelling at her nephew instead.

“Ms. Parker…” Wanda had superpowers, yet she felt utterly powerless under May’s gaze. Until she brought herself to see she wasn’t burning figurative lasers at her.

“I think you can call me May, Wanda. You’ve been through enough with my boy for that much.”

“Not lately…” Wanda had to look away in shame again. Only to find Peter, now thankfully sporting pants, back in the room for additional shame.

“So why are you here now?” Peter still looked exhausted, but more weary and suspicious towards her than scared. Maybe that was the best she could hope for.

“Should we ask them that first?” Wanda finally noticed the last person in the room – one of Stark’s friends, she vaguely remembered. But he was the first of them to notice the helicopters around the apartment building.

“Peter?” MJ was the first to point out the news reports, explaining why the helicopters were there. And finally letting May and Stark’s friend know what was going on too.

“I mean, maybe it’s not such a big deal…” Peter tried and failed to wave off.

“Tell us everything,” Wanda urged, though only three of the five people here were in the dark. “Then we’ll know for sure.”

***************************************************

Knowledge didn’t bring Wanda much comfort at all. Hearing Peter was once again hurt by a villain who used fake reality against him – but with tech this time – was not comforting. Officially knowing it could have all been different, if she’d heard about any of this before today…

If she’d let herself hear about it. If she hadn’t made crystal clear she didn’t want to hear anything from him again. All in the name of protecting him.

Yet if she’d been on the grid at all, Nick Fury would have called her in way before Peter. Then she would have exposed this Beck bitch in seconds. Even if she hadn’t and he framed her instead, better her than…

Certainly, better her getting slandered by this Jameson blowhard than him.

“I’m not surprised it’s him,” May said, once Peter went to his room to try and sleep, Happy and MJ had gone home, and Wanda flipped through all the channels airing Jameson’s rants. In leu of figuring out where to go or what to do now.

“When they arrested Hayward, this guy was his biggest defender. Made a real name for himself saying he had every right to mutilate your husband. Now here he is, saying they have every right to attack my Peter. Next logical step of asshattery, I guess.” That was the nicest way to say it while Peter was remotely in earshot.

Though Wanda had already done a good job staying away from his ears, and the rest of him, since she heard the whole story. Most of it was because May, MJ and Hogan did much of the work assuring him it’d be okay. Which kept him too busy to be alone with Wanda.

That wasn’t the reason they did it. Probably. But the thought of talking alone with him here, and now, after everything then and now…Wanda wasn’t as ready as she thought, or failed to think, when she barged in here. Surely Peter was nowhere near ready for it either, especially now.

Yet of course, even now, he didn’t kick her out. It appeared May wouldn’t do it for him while she had the chance now either. So far. As if Wanda really had a right to still be here.

“Ms. Parker? May?” Wanda self-corrected, before going back to searching for the right way to tell her she should go.

“He was never angry at you. Not around me when he talked about you. And he talked about you a lot.” May jumped in. “Even right before the trip, he wished he could have talked to you about it. And about MJ. He said you’d have been so insufferable about it, but even that would have been worth it.”

“Well…he’s not wrong. About the first part,” Wanda admitted, briefly daydreaming about how insufferable she could have been. And had a right to be, since she figured it out first without even seeing them together.

“The larger point is, he never held…that day against you. Never,” May left no wiggle room in her tone. “And he had more of a right to do that than you. So if he didn’t…”

“He saved me. Twice. And I thanked him by yelling at him for trying,” Wanda summed up. “That’s the worst thing about this. All of this.”

“Peter is a hero. Spider-Man’s just a part of it. But Peter’s the real hero. Anyone who’s spent two seconds around him would see that!”

“The fact you know that is exactly why he missed you,” May interrupted, which almost made Wanda’s heart ache too much to go on. But going on was the better alternative right now.

“The whole world knows Peter now, and it’s still too stupid and brainwashed to get it! I knew it, and I was stupid and brainwashed enough to kick him out! How is that fair?”

“It isn’t,” was all May could say.

“He risked himself for me once, and I couldn’t handle it,” Wanda sighed. “I knew him for a month, and I couldn’t handle that…responsibility.” Once she knew where to go from there, she zeroed in on May. “So how the hell do you do it?”

“When I first saw him without the mask? I’ll bet he told you it wasn’t easy. I’ll bet he undersold it too,” May chuckled, now able to laugh at those first few hard days.

“But it’s easy for the same reason it’s hard. It’s Peter. Of course it’s hard to handle him in so much danger, because it’s Peter. But there’s nothing else he could be, except someone who runs towards that danger. Because it’s Peter.”

“What kind of parent would I be to stop him from being exactly who he is? From being a hero?”

“And there’s where I’m not you,” Wanda took from that. “I tried to stop him from running towards that danger for me again. If the danger was gone, if I was gone, then…”

“That didn’t stop him from wanting to do that for you. Not in the slightest. Even if he can’t say it yet,” May promised.

“I get it. He knows the right way to help someone. I don’t. I never have,” Wanda sighed. “I’ve never helped anyone…not anyone who wasn’t family…the way he would help someone.”

“You have saved people other than family before, right?”

“Not all of them. Or most of them.”

“But you helped Peter. In a way I couldn’t after the Blip. I saw it in the way he fought so hard to save you back,” May reminded. “Seeing that helped me get off my ass after the Blip too! It got me to start my own little hero work at F.E.A.S.T.! So by helping him, you kind of helped me too.”

“So even if it’s just one person at first, it doesn’t matter. Because when you think about it…when you help someone, you help everyone.”

Even seconds after kicking Peter out and swearing to stay away from him, Wanda knew she would miss him. She tried blocking it out with solitary life and magical research, but it only worked so much. She knew when the bottom eventually fell out – though she never thought it’d happen like this – the full impact of how much she missed him would crush her.

Now it had. Not from seeing Peter, but from seeing where Peter got…everything that made him Peter from.

Yet instead of being crushed, for once Wanda felt more resolved.

“I am going to help him. And you. For real this time,” Wanda vowed. “Whatever it takes.”

*************************************************

Nevertheless, “whatever it takes” didn’t involve talking to Peter. Not yet.

Instead, Wanda talked to MJ. Then met Ned – and gladly endured 10 minutes of him asking about what she could do, without a smidge of fear. MJ was strict in making sure it was just 10 minutes, especially since she’d limited herself to 15 already.

It was safe to say Wanda adored them both already. But that wasn’t entirely why she talked to them. Or Ned’s ex Betty, or Hogan.

Once she got a truthful picture of what really happened from the other witnesses, she went on to do her own investigating. While Beck was an unstable lunatic, he couldn’t have pulled off looking like a hero alone. And he couldn’t have uploaded that fake video after he died.

Many people had to help him. At least one of them destroyed Peter by uploading that video. And Wanda would find them all and make them tell the truth. However she had to break them.

But just like she couldn’t face Peter yet, Wanda couldn’t make herself face the other Avengers either. Since they weren’t exactly rushing to clear Peter’s name either, for whatever reason, she figured they didn’t need to get in the way now. Besides, she didn’t have time to waste with any more awkward reunions – especially Peter’s time.

She did look into reaching out to Monica, but they said she’d been off world for months. Strangely, they said the same about Fury and Maria Hill. But that can of worms could be set aside.

Soon she gathered a list of former disgruntled Stark employees, who became disgruntled around the same time and era as Beck did. With that to go on, she reached out to Monica’s FBI contact, Agent Woo.

Though he was clearly too by the book to sanction Wanda’s…extra methods, he did agree if she brought him proof and people that cleared Peter, he would admit it as evidence.

And so, when multiple ex Stark employees rushed into his office days later, confessing to helping a man named Quentin Beck become Mysterio, Agent Woo only asked the questions he needed or wanted the answers to. When one of them gave him the original, unaltered copy of the video clip claiming Spider-Man killed “Mysterio,” he didn’t dig as deep about his change of heart as he could have.

The spare details he did hear sounded like they would haunt enough of his dreams for a while.

As such, only Quentin Beck’s team would know the full story of how Wanda used true, horrifying illusion power to trap them until they agreed to confess. She was very explicit that they save the most specific details of their story for how they helped frame Peter. Nothing less would allow them to see any reality but the one Wanda made around them again.

By skirting that line just enough, the confessions and evidence that cleared Peter’s name and exposed Beck were admissible. By that definition, Peter was free and clear, and Mysterio was a legally recognized fraud. All thanks to efforts from Wanda that were officially designated as “extra assistance.”

Leaving aside how Peter had already been cleared hours earlier.

**************************************************

“None of the charges were going to stick as it was. Ms. Maximoff’s efforts just made it more…official.”

Wanda still wasn’t sure if this Matt Murdock was complimenting or criticizing her. But as she sat with the Parkers and Hogan, she decided to cling to the good news.

“Peter’s legal troubles would have been over either way. But her…investigative efforts did get Stark Industries off the hook for the missing drones. And it ends the investigation into Mr. Hogan.”

“Investigation? Did I need a lawyer? Do I need a lawyer?” Happy stumbled despite the good news. “I could still say under the advice of counsel I refuse to…incriminate me, right?”

“Now we’ll never have to know,” Murdock smiled politely. “At the least, the world does know now that Beck was a fraud. However Ms. Maximoff unearthed it, I don’t think any of us here can judge the methods. Not as much as the end results.”

May and a slightly more relaxed Happy certainly looked like they agreed. Wanda took an extra moment to see if Peter felt the same.

“Thanks, Wanda,” Peter said quietly with a small smile, if perhaps not as big as Wanda hoped. Still, the slightest bit of happiness directed at her would do for now. “So aside from the identity stuff, it’s really over?”

“Unfortunately, there’s still the court of public opinion,” Murdock brought the mood down.

“How is that possible? You said it yourself, the world knows Beck was evil now,” May repeated.

“That doesn’t mean it believes it. Not entirely.”

“A lot of time, effort and reputations were put into hailing Beck as a hero, and denouncing Peter. So a lot of those responsible…probably at least 35 percent of them…won’t be willing to admit they were wrong. Even to themselves. And those with a microphone like Jameson’s will make sure of it. Especially by tying Ms. Maximoff to it now.”

“I proved Peter was innocent and I’m still the villain?” Wanda found it harder to believe than she expected.

“You and him are walking reminders that they worshipped a fraud. That may be enough excuse for them to keep lying to themselves. And everyone else. And since we ‘teach the controversy’ now, the mere appearance of it may do more damage than any real facts can fix. Even facts backed by the law.”

“Nowadays they’ll believe anything…” Peter recited in a lost whisper. Wanda, May and Happy didn’t feel like being louder now either.

“Mysterio forever!” a louder voice echoed outside, before a brick flew inside – and was somehow caught by Peter’s blind attorney in mid-flight.

“How did you just do that?” Peter asked, in a more awed quiet whisper than the last one.

“I’m a really good lawyer.”

Wanda had no words as she quietly stared at him. Though apparently, she wasn’t brushing his mind quietly enough.

“If you’re trying to cut down on nightmares, Ms. Maximoff, I’d go no further in here.”

In this case, Wanda followed legal advice to the letter.

***********************************************

Unfortunately, Matt’s other advice was just as dead on.

Things weren’t as bad as they could have been if Beck wasn’t exposed. Or if Peter wasn’t fully cleared of his death and the Europe attacks. Or if Westview had really happened and had discredited anything Wanda might have done to clear Peter.

However, things weren’t better by a wide enough margin.

As Matt warned, uncovering Beck came too late to make everyone stop believing in him. They were a greater minority now, but it was a very loud one. Under the rhetoric of Jameson, other fringe movements like ‘Myster-anon’ and others who insisted the evidence was a giant lie – yet didn’t question the ‘evidence’ against Peter – it wasn’t going away quietly.

More people believed Peter was an innocent hero than they otherwise would have. Yet it came too late to completely remove all suspicion around him. As such, because not everyone could separate the loud lies and the loud truths, they all blended together to make those in the middle more sick of it – if not Peter – than anything else.

Since Wanda wasn’t on any terrorist watch lists, her newfound association with Peter didn’t completely damn him or her. Yet Jameson did his level best to try, denouncing her for framing a real hero in the name of a menace, just as she did with Hayward. Given that Wanda had barely been seen with the menace since then, it proved she knew how evil he really was.

Countless deranged attacks like that were thrown at the walls. Enough of them stuck for at least a quarter of the public to buy. Which was enough for a chunk of the other 75 percent to steer clear of the whole thing.

Including more than a few colleges.

**************************************************

“Expect disappointment and you will never get disappointed.”

Peter respected why MJ would think that, yet he could never bring himself to fully agree. Although maybe this was the cost of it. Not just MIT, but everything – everything not MJ related, of course – since coming back.

Or maybe just since the day of Vision’s funeral. But that was another issue for some other day. Like with most days lately. Though this one had become particularly tough.

Peter barely registered Ned patting his back, as he lost himself in guilt over destroying Ned’s future. In his obliviousness, he was about to look up at the walls and the outdated decorations – until Ned’s voice made him turn his head.

“Miss Witch!”

Maybe less his voice than his words. And who he was directing them to. “Wait, did we settle on Miss Witch or Maximoff?”

“It was more like Wanda,” said Miss Witch herself. Who was really, in fact, heading in just as Ned was heading out. But she stopped when she saw Peter – specifically the way he was sitting and what he had in his hands.

“MIT rejection?” She sighed.

“Yes!” Ned cheered completely out of nowhere. “You heard me say it in my head, didn’t you? Maybe Nana was right! I mean, now that I’m gonna need college backup plans, might as well test them out, right?”

“I didn’t need to hear it. Even if I did,” Wanda let him down. “But…keep trying anyway, okay? I’ve got this.”

Though Wanda barely knew what Ned was talking about, better to keep his mind on it so he’d be on his way. This she had to do alone. And while it seemed she’d once again gotten to Peter too late, she was finally ready not to let it stop her.

“Do you mind going for a walk?” she asked Peter. “There’s somewhere I need to be, and I wanted to get there early. I could use the company.”

“You can teleport halfway around the world now, and you’re still walking?” Peter asked not unkindly.

“All the more reason not to be lazy,” Wanda answered, in leu of saying anything about legs and her family history with them. Not a good topic in front of a former forced speedster.

“I don’t know if I’d be good company now.”

“That’s not possible. Come on, at least indulge me until we get there.”

Peter was at least able to do that, though he stayed quiet the whole way. Even as he endured the various glares – positive and otherwise – from onlookers seeing two superheroes/suspected villains walking together.

Even when another “Mysterio forever!” nut was about to throw a drink at him, and Wanda made it explode in his face without moving a muscle or looking back.

For that brief period, Peter just stayed silent in impressed awe at Wanda again. At the least, it took him back to brief better times for just a moment. That moment ended when Peter started to recognize their route. “Where are we going?” he bothered to ask when it was probably too late.

“Somewhere I’ve been helping at every once in a while.”

The exact same somewhere May had been working at more than once in a while.

******************************************

“Why didn’t May tell me you were volunteering at F.E.A.S.T.?”

“I asked her not to. But I wasn’t just keeping it from you. I thought doing something here, under the radar from everyone…would help ease me back into civilization first.”

Wanda did look pretty at ease coming in here. And talking to a few other regulars, who apparently knew how to keep a secret too. Her shift today wasn’t for another half-hour and May wasn’t in yet either, so she had time to sit with Peter in the cafeteria and start explaining in words.

“Besides, sometimes talking with strangers is easier than facing someone you know. Even when you really need to.”

Peter knew that all too well. Wanda knew that he did too. Hell, that was kind of the crux of their entire time together, until they weren’t strangers anymore. Though now they kind of were again.

Yet Wanda chose today, of all days, to start fixing it in person.

Proving the truth about Beck kind of counted, but she didn’t do that with him or even tell him first. Working with May seemed to be a similar gesture, but again, it wasn’t worth telling him about until later. Or maybe it was too scary for her to do until now, in case it went wrong.

Peter wished he didn’t know so well what that was like. But he guessed, even now, he knew a bunch of things she knew all too well too.

“Wanda, I know what you’re gonna say. Or I can guess. You’re gonna apologize, I’m gonna apologize right over you, and we’ll go back and forth taking blame for a few rounds until we call it a draw,” Peter saw into the future quite well, without needing magic.

“As much as we gotta do that, maybe today isn’t the best day. I mean, what’s one more day putting it off, right?” he reasoned.

“I just officially ruined MJ and Ned’s college chances, because I know them. I did exactly what you were afraid of doing to me. Ruin someone’s life by knowing them. There’s nothing else I can do today, even making up with you, that’ll make up for that.”

Wanda’s silence seemed to back up Peter’s theory. Maybe after all these months away from people, she didn’t know how to get their spirits up. She’d probably say she never knew how to do that anyway. But Peter knew enough to know that wasn’t –

“You’re wrong, Peter. There is nothing you can’t do.”

Well, there was something he didn’t know about.

“I’ve been back here a while, and I still can’t reach out to the others. Not yet. I still can’t visit…his grave. I don’t know if or when I will. I still hear…them…more than I should…” Wanda stopped before she let herself think on that any longer. For once.

“I don’t know if I’m doing well yet. But I’m so much better than I would have been if I didn’t know you. You did that for me. Not just by waking me up, or saving me from destroying a town. Just by being there at all. By being you. And now I at least have a chance…”

“You…changed my fate, Peter. Not Spider-Man. You. Someone who could do that for me can do anything for MJ and Ned. And anyone else lucky to know him.”

Wow. Wanda wasn’t as rusty at comfort as Peter thought. And she wasn’t nearly as bad at it as anyone else would think. But how many people did she have to show that to anyway?

If Peter really was one of the few, if any, she was willing to show it to again…if this meant she wasn’t gonna leave again…

“That’s why I was so scared, and angry, when we woke up. You did all that for me…and all I did for you was get your mind messed with. Then I leave and someone else does it to you anyway.”

“Beck didn’t do it like Agatha. And you’re not like any of them,” Peter returned to the old habit of defending her pretty quick.

“I still can’t say that for sure. But after all this, I can’t stay away anymore. Part of me still thinks I should. I guess I’m too selfish to keep listening. As usual.”

Peter’s silence seemed to back up Wanda’s theory. Maybe after all these months away from her, he didn’t know how to get her spirits up anymore. But Wanda knew enough to know he wouldn’t at least try, unless –

“I’m selfish too, you know.”

Well, there was something she didn’t expect to hear.

“Beck’s fans think I’m the devil. You and May and my friends think I’m perfect. But I’m not any of those things,” Peter admitted.

“I started hanging out with you because I wanted to help you. But that wasn’t the whole reason. May and Ned were Blipped too and they helped me too, but…they couldn’t understand what it was like. About that and losing Mr. Stark.”

“Even the other heroes that came back…they couldn’t understand it either. Mr. Barton lost Ms. Romanov, but he got his family back. Mr. Star-Lord has another version of his girlfriend out there now. Mr. Thor lost his brother, but he usually comes back anyway. Even the old Mr. Rogers came back to Mr. Wilson and Mr. Barnes for a while!”

“You and me…we lost stuff we’re not getting back. And the only heroes we were really that close to were the ones we lost. So when I came to talk to you and kept coming back…it wasn’t just because you were lonely. It’s because I was lonely.”

“And I think a big part of me…mainly cared that being around you made me feel less alone. Even if it wasn’t the same for you. So I can be just as selfish as anyone. Even you.”

“It was the same for me. So much so,” was all Wanda could tackle right now.

“I got all that from you and more. It just didn’t make sense you could get that much from me. It still doesn’t. I mean, you kind of confirmed it. All I did was make you feel like you lost less by comparison.”

“That wasn’t what I meant!” Peter objected. “And if that was all, I wouldn’t have kept coming! It’s like…you’re like…you’re like MJ!”

“How so?” Wanda asked very carefully, since this could go more than a few ways sideways.

“Not like MJ like that! In a different way! You guys have a lot more in common than being…attractive to people. Which has nothing to do with value!” Peter remembered just in time.

“You’ve lost a lot of people, right? And you don’t like getting close to more people you could lose, right?”

“That’s a simple way of putting it…”

“I know, but bare with me. You don’t love people or care about them easily. You can’t afford to. I understood that going in, believe me. But that day in the real Westview…I saw you flip the switch with me.”

“Don’t get me wrong, you were always nice to me and listened to me before. But you weren’t…affectionate about it. You might have liked me, but you mainly tolerated me then. I get it, you don’t get along easy with people who aren’t family, and that’s okay! That makes it more special!”

“Makes what special?”

“You don’t love people easy. But the minute you do…you love them with your whole heart. With everything you have. You’ve lost so much, there’s no reason you should ever love anyone that much again! But you do, every time! You did it with Pietro after your parents, with Vision after Pietro…and ever since real Westview, I saw you do it with me.”

Peter brushed aside the awkward phrasing at the end, at least since no one was listening in on him and getting the wrong idea. For once. If only because Jameson hadn’t gotten hidden cameras in here yet. Hopefully. But even if he did, Wanda had to hear this first.

“Do you have any idea how…inspiring that is? To be around someone who has no reason to care about anyone, but still cares about you? And not even for being a superhero! Just regular old me! I wasn’t wearing the mask when you looked at me that way!”

“You didn’t have to…” Wanda briefly confirmed, while blinking back tears.

“It’s like that with MJ. She doesn’t care about most people too. But for some reason, she thinks I’m special enough to be the exception. She put herself back out there, when she has so many good reasons not to, to still care about me. Like you did for me. And when I realized that might be possible…I realized you might have been onto something about me liking her too.”

“Right when I couldn’t tease you about it. Smart,” Wanda half-jokingly credited.

“See, there you go! No one thinks you’re a teasing person! You’re so many things you don’t let anyone see anymore! But you let me! And when you started doing that, it made me feel…special. In a different but just as cool way as my powers do.”

“It’s been really hard for me since the dream. But it would have been so much worse if I didn’t have that time with you. All of it. That’s what you did for me. Maybe it makes me selfish too, but it’s how I feel!”

“I know the feeling.”

“And when you took it away, I got scared. And angry. And I lashed out. And I really am so sorry,” Peter had to officially say. “I was scared from what Agatha did to me, and about how you could do it too. But that’s stupid.”

“Because the way you care about me, even when it scares you to care that much…it made me feel safe. I know you thought I’d be safer without you, but I always felt safe with you. Because I know…or I knew…as long as I was with you, you’d look out for me with everything you had. And you’re still doing it now.”

“That might be the problem,” Wanda had to stop Peter’s momentum, as much as she didn’t want to.

“When I love someone and lose them, I hurt. Myself and everyone near me. I don’t know if I can care about someone, let alone lose them, in a healthy way. And with what I can do now, what I’m destined to do…what I did when I only thought I’d hurt you if you stayed…” she trailed off.

“Well, I don’t buy…some of that,” Peter hedged. “But the rest? I wanted to see if it was wrong, or right, for myself. I still do.”

And there it was. What Peter wanted to say, but couldn’t in time, that night before Wanda kicked him out. What he wanted to say when she came back, but there was too much else going on to fit it in. What he probably should have said when Wanda brought down Beck’s team, but got too caught up in the collateral damage to remember.

But there were finally no more excuses, or fears posing as excuses, now.

“That’s really why I was angry when you were gone. Because I thought we were on the way to being friends,” he confessed. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t reach out like this when you got back. If I didn’t, you couldn’t tell me that way was still closed. Maybe I was paranoid, but –”

“You weren’t alone,” Wanda admitted. “In being paranoid. Or that other stuff. It took me this long, and it probably had to. But…”

Wanda reached out and offered her hand. “Hi. I’m known best as the Scarlet Witch. A lot of people hate and fear that. But only a few know and like me best as Wanda Maximoff. You look like someone who could do that too.”

“Hi…I’m known best as Spider-Man,” Peter caught on. “A lot of loud, crazy people hate and fear that. But only a few know and like me best as Peter Parker. You look like someone who could do that too.”

“Hi, Peter…” Wanda smiled as he took her hand, shaking it before just holding it.

“Hi, Wanda.”

*********************************************

It wasn’t accurate to say it was just that easy. Considering how long they waited to get this far again, it couldn’t be. And after holding each other’s hand as long as they did, it was fairly awkward until they found another topic of conversation.

But when Wanda started talking about all the places she’d been and the magical texts she’d read, the awkwardness subsided. When Peter admitted he’d only stopped having nightmares about fake Pietro a few weeks before the Europe trip – then only stopped having nightmares about Beck’s illusions a few weeks ago – the guilt was high on both sides. But not enough to make them turn away from each other.

There were no lulls, stumbles or rust by the end of the half-hour. They may not have been as in sync as they were starting to be before Wanda’s dream. Yet they could clearly see the way towards it again.

Always easier with another pair of eyes watching with you.

“Are you sure you’re good here?” Peter asked as Wanda got up to start her shift. “May’s not working you too hard? No one bothering you? Recognizing you?”

“Not on her best days, no and no,” Wanda listed. “I keep waiting for Strange to stop by here, though. But if he hasn’t by now, he’s either lost interest or got lost in another dimension. I know I should hope it’s the first one, but…maybe I’m not that better yet.”

Strange…

Oh God. Of course…

“Well, there’s limits to even your magic, I’m sure!” Peter suddenly got louder, once he realized what he could do and how he really had to go do it now. Preferably before Wanda heard him thinking about it and things got real awkward again, for much more serious reasons than before.

“Okay, I’ll let you get to it then! Good luck!” Peter said quickly, then figured he needed to save face and cut off suspicion before he left. So he did the first thing that came to mind.

Which for some reason, was turn back and hug Wanda.

“I did miss you…” he let himself admit for real. But then he jumped back as if she was scalding him.

“Oh, shoot it, I should have asked before I touched you! Consent’s important, I know that, I do! Please don’t tell MJ!”

That was a very dodgy way to end things and leave. But he’d just apologize again next time he saw her. Compared to the apologies he had on deck before this conversation, the one for the next one would be a breeze.

And maybe so much else would be different by then too.

Either way, the thoughts of that carried him out of F.E.A.S.T., while Wanda was indeed confused and suspicious by that weird final turn. Yet she wasn’t suspicious of what Peter feared she’d be suspicious about, which was a win. Or seemed to be.

Though he did miss out on Wanda smiling to herself and muttering, “God, I missed you too…”

********************************************

Peter told himself since Strange was still a touchy subject for Wanda, it was better not to let her know he was going to see him.

He told himself since magic was a possible option to fix this now, it was better to put that burden on a relative stranger like Strange than Wanda.

Plus since something finally went right in reconciling with Wanda, he needed to keep the hot streak going while he could and get this done now. To that end, it would be faster, easier and less awkward to do this and face him on his own.

On his own. Without anyone else to act as a buffer for their ideas. Without anyone else to ask about specifics to any spells.

Without anyone else who could have told Peter to be more specific, before the spell was cast.

************************************************

“Could you just stop talking?!”

“Oh God, Wanda! Please, please don’t let her forget me too!”

***********************************************

“Did it work?”

“No, you changed my spell seven times!”

“Six times.”

************************************************

“Hello, Peter.”

************************************************

“You’re not Peter Parker.”

“I am so confused right now!”

“Osborn?”

**************************************************

“Be careful what you wish for, Parker.”

“Who’s more foolish, the wisher or the one who granted the wishing without proper instructions?”

“Is this really the time to botch paraphrasing a movie he made you see six times?”

“Fine. It was only twice, but I’ll give you the other parts.”

“Strange – ah, sir? Wanda?”

“Let me out of here!”

“Can one of you please explain to me what’s going on?”

Chapter Text

Wanda had figured if Beck was really from another universe, she would have felt him crossing over. Somehow. Maybe if she didn’t, she wasn’t as powerful or connected to the cosmos as she thought. Yet.

So it was quite a rude awakening, if hopefully only rude, when she felt…everything breaking all around her. She didn’t see it, since the other people inside F.E.A.S.T. were going about their business, like nothing was cracking apart.

At least until Wanda fell to the floor.

Fortunately, May arrived at work right on time to find Wanda and rush over to her. Unfortunately, even her protective grip and soothing words in getting her back up – skills that truly ran in the family – couldn’t sooth her enough to block out what she had to do.

Who she had to see.

“Strange…I need to find Strange.”

He had to have felt it too. He had to know what it was. Maybe he had to be the one who caused it. Either way, he was the only person Wanda knew who could give her answers. And he certainly loved giving answers one needed but didn’t really want to hear.

So Wanda had to find him. Had to push aside everything that happened the last time they met. Had to make herself forget the closer she’d be to Strange, the closer she might be to wherever the Darkhold was.

And every word, noise or cry for help contained within.

****************************************

Wanda didn’t find the Darkhold, or any reminders of it, when she found Strange.

She didn’t find Strange inside a…wintery Sanctum entrance. But she did find him down in one of his basements. With a giant lizard.

And most insane of all, with a story about the multiverse, a spell gone wrong, and Peter.

“Oh Peter, what did you do?” Wanda whispered, then asked much louder to Strange, “What did you do?”

“I told him not to change the spell, that’s what I did.”

“After you cast it! I’m the chaos witch, and even I know to spell out spells like that completely! Before you cast it!” Wanda exclaimed. “Especially a spell like…”

And then the true insanity of it all – the true heartbreaking, enraging insanity – hit her.

“You almost made me forget him…” she muttered, volume increasing with every word after. “If I didn’t remember he was Spider-Man…what else would I have forgotten about him?! What if that made me forget…all the moments that made us friends?!”

“I JUST got him back! And I could have lost him all over again without knowing it! Because of YOU!”

“It wasn’t my idea! None of it was! And if he wanted some magic solution, why didn’t he just go to you first? Or maybe you didn’t get that far in your grand apology tour yet!”

The point about Peter not going to Wanda first, was the ONLY thing in that answer which didn’t make her want to tear Strange apart. That and he might need to stay alive long enough to fix the multiverse. But mostly the first thing.

And then Strange got bailed out of death row a little while longer, when he sensed Peter and brought him back here. With a…guy wearing metal octopus arms.

Who else in the animal kingdom did this spell bring over?

Reluctantly, Wanda kept leaving Strange alive long enough to explain it wasn’t animals. Or metal animal hybrids. Just people from other universes who knew Peter was Spider-Man. And obviously not people who took it very well.

“The multiverse is real?”

“It looks like this time it is,” Wanda tried to sound reassuring. No lies about multiverse monsters this time. No illusions or mind control this time. And no more attempted brainwashing this time, hopefully.

Once Strange quote unquote “upgraded” Peter’s suit with magic – and demonstrated on him how to imprison multiverse villains, with a second to spare before Wanda did some demonstrating of her own – he waved him off on his new mission.

“I know this is my mess, and I swear to you that I’ll fix it. But I’m gonna need some help.”

“Don’t worry, Ms. Maximoff already called dibs on that. I could hear it in her head from here.”

“Good, you can listen when you try,” Wanda said out loud, smiling aside at Peter and getting a brief smile in return.

“Actually, sir, I didn’t just mean Wanda.”

************************************************

As serious as this situation was to the fabric of reality and to Peter, at least it was now peppered with moments like MJ snarking Strange with some magic words of her own.

And then moments like MJ’s next set of magic words at Peter making him visibly blush. Even in a dark laundry room multiverse prison dungeon. Ned might be the one thinking he had magic, but even if he did, all these multiverse villains would probably need to thank their Gods it wasn’t MJ.

But it wasn’t MJ they’d be facing, hopefully. So Wanda finally had to take the one they would be facing aside.

“Are you really okay right now?” she asked Peter. Of course Peter would nod yes either way, but it was still worth triple checking. “If this is too much…if Strange was too much.”

“Don’t just blame him, okay? I messed up here. Like I told you, I’m not perfect,” Peter got a little defensive in not defending himself. “Maybe I should have just asked you when I figured out the magic angle. But I thought I could do it without putting it on you.”

“And now it’s just one fifth on me. So it 80 percent worked,” Wanda tried to kid as best she knew how.

“It would have worked. But I couldn’t let MJ forget. Or Ned, May, Happy…or you,” Peter included. Despite being included in a group who Peter broke the multiverse for, Wanda smiled as warmly as one could in such a scenario.

“And now here you are working with Mr. Strange after all.”

“I’m not helping Strange, I’m helping you. And them. I think that’s pretty good company so far.” And it was.

Technically, Wanda was definitely the adult in the room. So she had to do things like keep Ned from breaking anything, or letting anything scurry out of the fridge. She also had to get things that were too high up for MJ to reach, which was a little more fun. Especially when one of those things was Strange’s hair dye.

Even so, keeping the kids from wrecking the place wasn’t a chore. Helping them research wasn’t a chore either. In fact, Wanda couldn’t remember the last time working with a group of people during a crisis was…this close to fun.

Even in the midst of constantly bantering Avengers before the war, Wanda was never really a part of it. Between grieving and putting all the power of putting her back together on Vision, she was never really a full part of the gang in their mix of research/joke time. Maybe a few times when Steve and Sam were leading it, and when Clint stopped by for visits that didn’t involve prison breaks.

Being part of a team that wasn’t her family, was never something Wanda got to master. Whether she couldn’t make herself do it, or wasn’t allowed.

Yet by virtue of being actual close friends together, who wanted Wanda around for value beyond her powers and help, Peter, MJ and Ned made her belong more smoothly in 20 minutes than most of the Avengers had in two years.

It was almost enough to stop wondering what other Sanctum dungeons there were. And what – or maybe somehow who too – was being held in them. Most of the time.

It did get easier to forget, once Ned found out where Peter’s flying green monster might be. Even when the octopus man claimed he was already dead.

One more reason Peter needed someone fighting with him who’d already faced the undead. And had kids with them.

**************************************************

Spider-Man and Scarlet Witch fought each other, somewhat, in Germany. Then fought together, somewhat, against Thanos. And then against Agatha, somewhat, in a dream.

But this was the first time the two were out in the real world together, about to fight side-by-side alone together. Leaving aside MJ and Ned watching from a literal webcam on Peter’s suit.

It was still a landmark moment. If not an increasingly creepy one as they walked through the woods, nothing and no one making a sound. Not even the increasingly creepy power lines.

Wanda wasn’t feeling anything magical or multiversal, and Peter wasn’t feeling anything tingly. At least not until some kind of rhythmic hum, and strobes of light in the corner of their eyes, got their attention enough to turn around.

At…whatever they were seeing floating among the power lines.

“Are you seeing this?” Wanda tried to ask from the side of her mouth.

“Yeah. You?” Peter directed at the screen on his chest. They saw it too. And they all soon noticed this creature was blue, not a green so-called elf. Plus he didn’t seem to hear Peter amidst his…charging up.

But Peter blasting his new magic webs got his attention. Ideally, it would have webbed him up too instead of just going right through him.

Maybe a bigger blast would at least get him down. Yet when Wanda tested that out, it failed even more miserably.

At least she made the magic fade out before it struck another tree, and went through any portals near MJ and Ned. Everything else was not so lucky.

Especially when the electric man – probably a man, barring more concrete evidence – revved up and shot far more effective blasts of his own.

At the least, Wanda could combat these more solid strikes. She rose up and shot her magic at his lightning bolts, deflecting as many as she could before they could hit Peter. And a few she deflected before they got her.

Yet the electric man was shooting so many bolts at both of them, Wanda couldn’t get them all. Not before Peter went down and took out his little TV with them.

Wanda rushed to cover him, preparing to send up a shield as another blast came right at them. But she wasn’t fast enough.

Not for the electricity. But for the shield of…sand that sprouted up first. And then started talking. Mainly by saying Peter’s name. And his own.

“What do you mean you’re not my Peter?! What the hell is going on?” the sand face calling itself Flint Marko asked.

“Long story!”

“And who’s the lady in the crown? Did you move on from that MJ girl already?

“Even longer story!” was all Wanda could think of saying to that.

“Can you help us stop this guy, then we’ll have story time?” Peter asked, to which the sand being agreed. “Okay, you and Wanda try to surround him, and I’ll pull the plug!”

At first, Wanda went back to blasting and deflecting the lightning bolts before they hit the sand guy. However, she realized he needed to be contained much bigger than that. At least long enough for Peter’s plug pulling.

So she floated above the battle and did a little charging up of her own. Enough to send out a new Hex to cover them.

It wouldn’t control their minds, or even break off the electric person’s connection to the power lines. But if she could keep him away from Peter in this Hex bubble long enough, and if the sand male could hold him off long enough before he tried to break out, it might give Peter all the time he needed.

At last, the time came when Peter webbed and crashed the electric towers, signaling Wanda to lift the mini-Hex and get out of the way. She dodged her way out of the carnage right as it started to tumble down – and right as the electric being had his power supply cut off.

Wanda rushed over to a now mask-less Peter, while the sand individual reformed besides them into a normal sized man. Though he briefly lost a hand due to a high five, he was still easier to take in now.

What was now left of the electric man, on the other hand…

“Another universe?” the now human looking man – human all over, it would seem – worked out. “That’s what I was feeling. The power…it’s different. I like it.”

Wanda now felt lucky none of her magic really hit him, or got absorbed by him. Peter tried to fill in more blanks for him, but Wanda was busier trying not to look at him than hear him.

The only naked man she’d ever seen was Vision, and she was still trying to salvage that as best she could.

“Y’all gonna stand here and act like I ain’t butt-ass naked?” Wanda heard him unfortunately point out. Even more unfortunately, she felt him looking when he added, “Maybe it’s not all bad.”

Thankfully, she found a power station uniform to transport onto his body, even without looking at it. Peter then thankfully got the rest of him out of sight, leaving the far more helpful sand man behind to get upset. It wasn’t the best way to repay him, but it was at least easier to handle with another magic web.

With that mini-trauma swept away, Peter was able to call MJ and confirm the new inmates in their prison. Which even with more people crowded in, had to be more orderly than this place now.

“I’m just gonna stay here for a bit, and try to fix some of this damage so they don’t blame it on me again,” Peter caught up. But not fast enough to stop Wanda from beating him to the punch.

With a playfully sheepish grin once Peter noticed, Wanda started lifting the towers back up with a few little hand flicks. “Or maybe it won’t be a bit bit,” Peter corrected, grinning the words “show off” without needing to say it with his head or mouth.

Wanda’s grin got bigger as Peter properly thanked MJ before hanging up. He ducked under her knowing look, like usual. But with no real point in being embarrassed about his affections anymore, even near a know-it-all witch, this time he had to laugh it off. One that was promptly echoed by Wanda.

“Okay, okay…hey I’m not cleaning this whole place up!” Wanda joshed. “You don’t want to look like a really bad liar to MJ, right?”

“I think the ship has sailed there.”

Nevertheless, Peter used his own magic to clean up the places Wanda couldn’t, or deliberately wouldn’t, sweep up herself. She even made a little extra mess or two so Peter wouldn’t slack off completely, but he grinned literally and bore it.

Truth be told, this was kind of perfect. Two more multiverse people captured, no damage they couldn’t clean up, MJ and Ned helping and being part of his hero life without getting too close to it, and Wanda fighting by his side. And even making the cleanup part of the job a little bit close to fun.

It was kind of perfect for Wanda too – leaving aside seeing yet another man without pants on since she came back. Her magic wasn’t entirely effective but didn’t make things worse, Peter was banged up but still okay, no one else was around for collateral damage, and they were actually succeeding in cleaning up what they broke.

That and the company brought more smiles to Wanda’s face during this battle scene than any other as an Avenger. Hell, maybe these were the first smiles she had on during battle since Pietro’s last words to her.

It was almost fitting that they came around the former fake Pietro. Maybe in more ways than one.

Maybe, just maybe, this didn’t have to be a one-time freak occurrence, before the traumatic battles resumed.

Maybe just maybe, Peter thought, having it all as Peter and Spider-Man wasn’t as impossible to envision as it had been since Europe.

Maybe just maybe, as Peter and Wanda smiled as contently as they could while putting power wires back together with magic, other improbable things could fit back together too.

***********************************************

Enter Norman Osborn.

Though it was Peter and Wanda who really made a loud entrance into F.E.A.S.T after May’s call. Only to freeze in their tracks at Norman Osborn’s unfortunate story.

Yet when May took them aside and suggested he and even the others needed help, it froze them further.

“No May this…this isn’t my problem.”

“Peter, not your problem?” May left no nonsense in her tone.

“There are kind of much bigger problems right now,” Wanda defended, immediately hating how much she sounded like Strange. Fortunately, May’s questioning glare was turned back on Peter when he spoke again.

“Their chance of getting help is way better back where they came from. Sending them home. That’s the best thing that we can do for them,” Peter said much better than Wanda could.

“For them? Or for yourself?” May cut his logic down without blinking.

“Look around you, this is what we do. We help people. You help people. Especially people with…other selves that scare the world, and themselves. And who just want their real selves to be seen and helped, so they can be who they really want to be again.”

Peter had no words. Wanda should have had a lot of words, now that she felt like the co-subject of this conversation. But none came as May lowered the boom. “Aside from not getting waylaid in his head, what makes him any more different to you than Wanda was?”

There was no answer. None Wanda could see that would be a good answer. Both in favor of or against May’s position.

All Peter could scrap up is, “This is what’s best for them. Trust me.” Regardless of how convincing it was, or wasn’t, to the three people in this little circle.

Nonetheless, May drove them all back to the Sanctum, dropping off Norman as if he was going to school and not a wizard’s dungeon. Before Peter and Wanda could get out and escort him in, May had some final words.

“Hey. He trusts you. And so do I.” Then some extra final words for Wanda. “Both of you.”

Peter said it made him feel special to be cared for by someone like Wanda. As much as she still struggled to fully believe that, she did understand the feeling. Not just from being cared about by him, but by May too.

By someone who could have told her with good reason to stay away from Peter, but didn’t. By someone who trusted her to be part of her own hero efforts. By someone who saw an all-powerful, possibly apocalyptic being, and still trusted her to have her beloved nephew’s back. In battle and apparently in other hard choices too.

Wanda didn’t know for sure which way she’d go in this issue. If there really was an issue to be had here. Yet May trusted her to be there with him, and for him, in whatever way he went. The kind of trust that she only ever received from her family and Vision. At least until meeting this family.

It was not something she would take lightly now. Not with Peter and not with May either.

She gave her a soft smile that she hoped conveyed her thankfulness, and how seriously she would take whatever came next. For Peter’s sake, in ways that went beyond keeping him alive and fixing the cosmos.

Wanda left the truck after Peter did, hoping this could be wrapped up soon. In a way they could both face May with when they got back.

**********************************************

It was gonna be over soon. And not in a way Wanda was getting too comfortable living with.

But she stayed quiet as the “villains” revealed they were about to die before they got sent here. She bit her tongue when Strange returned, though her reward was seeing the relic that would send them back to their deaths.

Peter wasn’t so quiet at the prospect of being an executioner. “Strange, we can’t send them back. Not yet.”

“Parker…it’s their fate.”

Wanda found herself truly paralyzed now. No relic was sending her back anywhere, yet she felt like she was back in Agatha’s coven all the same. The last time she was among people, of a sort, who declared that a so-called villain’s dark, deadly, tragic fate was foretold and unchanging.

“In the grand calculus of the universe, their sacrifice means infinitely more than their lives.”

In the grand calculus of the universe, according to other sources, Wanda becoming a monster she didn’t want to be was more important than the life she actually wished to live. Her fate was sealed, regardless of what she wanted, as much as theirs was declared to be.

“So it is foretold…”

Wanda’s breathing got heavier, but not quiet enough to knock Strange off course. MJ, Ned and even Peter didn’t seem to notice either, lost in their own doubt. Hopefully.

“I’m sorry, kid. If they die, they die.”

How dare he.

So certain of what someone had to be and could never be. So convinced no one had the power to be anything but the worst they were ‘destined’ to be. Which justified writing them off completely, for the ‘universe.’

Which justified taking more than just someone’s life away.

Wanda couldn’t look at him right now. If she didn’t find something or someone else, she’d…

But as usual since she’d known Peter, he was right there when she needed him to be.

Instead of judgment and certainty, Peter radiated doubt and deeper thought. Instead of dismissing someone because of who they’d been and were supposedly always going to be, Peter looked closer. Instead of seeing someone as a lost cause, just because someone more powerful and arrogant deemed them to be, Peter saw something else they couldn’t be bothered to see.

“PETER!”

Wanda heard Norman call out for help. Technically, she could do that for him right now. But it wasn’t, or shouldn’t be, her call.

The second Peter’s eyes glanced toward her, she knew what that call was going to be. And she knew exactly the telepathic words to let him hear in return.

Do it.

**************************************************

“Don’t!”

Too late. He did. Webbed Strange’s relic and then sent him into Flint’s cell. He did that. And Wanda was gonna give him all the time to get away with it.

MJ and Ned blocked the way out as best they could. But if anyone had a real chance, it wasn’t them.

“This is why I never had kids,” Strange muttered before walking through Flint’s cell. Then going no further.

Wanda knew she could only freeze him and lift him off his feet for a limited time. If those few moments were all Peter needed to get clear, she would stretch them out as long as possible.

“Wanda…you cannot let this happen…” Strange squirmed.

“YOU don’t tell me what I cannot do.”

Wanda dug in to keep Strange in place, and was slightly encouraged when he didn’t seem to be struggling. Most of him wasn’t, except for his hand. The one with his sling ring on it.

The one opening up a portal right behind her.

Once Wanda sensed it, it threw off her focus enough to let the rest of Strange go. By the time she reacted, Strange had already sent her through the portal and closed it, stranding her on what looked to be a mountain on the other side of the world.

Wanda growled, brushed the snow off her costume and stood back up. If she acted quick enough, all Strange would get out of this was a one-minute head start.

About a minute later, Wanda had indeed poofed herself back to the other side of the world. Specifically, right outside the Sanctum, where Strange had indeed cheated to beat Wanda there.

She rushed towards him before really sensing what was going on. Before seeing Spider-Man was in Strange’s grasp, and Peter was floating around outside of it.

Despite that distraction, Strange lifted his other hand up to strike Wanda. Her body stayed in place, but Wanda herself didn’t.

Both Spider-Man and Scarlet Witch were stuck in front of Strange. Yet both Peter and Wanda weren’t there inside of them.

“Am I dead?” Peter gasped, then saw Wanda just as…floaty as he was. “Oh God, are you dead?!”

“Neither one of you are dead. You’re just separated from your physical forms.” Which should have made getting the relic easier for Strange. And yet, Spider-Man’s arm was moving and keeping it away from him, without Peter physically guiding it.

“How are you doing that?”

“I’m with him on this one, how are you doing that?” Wanda gaped. Peter had no idea, yet this was no time to let that stop him.

“You should not be able to do that…” Strange groaned, which didn’t help him get the box any better.

“Well, if he can do it…”

Wanda didn’t know how she was making her arm stretch out to block Strange’s, or if it really was her doing it. It only mattered that it was getting done.

Both she and Peter kept it up somehow as they swam back to their bodies. Once Wanda returned to hers, she took full control of her arm back, giving it enough of an extra surge to send Strange flying back through the Sanctum doors.

“That might be one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me, but don’t ever do that again,” Peter called out as he settled into his body again and Strange charged back outside. Unfortunately, Wanda knew Peter’s request would go nowhere.

So they had to go.

Their flight through the city was soon joined by Strange’s cape. So Wanda stayed behind Peter to try and give him cover, sending a few blasts that the cape dodged expertly. When it got close enough, Wanda tried to fight it hand to hand – or hand to talon – to slow it down, but it had some almost Natasha like moves in blocking her and pushing her away.

By the time she came back, the cape had Peter in a headlock, throwing him towards the nearest building. Wanda flew over to get to him, only for the both of them to crash through what felt like glass.

The next thing they saw was…the entire city opening up below them.

Peter free fell through whatever they were in now, and Wanda flew after him as they literally went through all of a…fractured New York. Then fell on top of a flying train in the sky, because that might as well happen now.

“What is this place?” Peter asked as he finally got to stand up. On top of a flying train. This gave Wanda a little time to stop, land beside him and actually see where they were.

“The texts didn’t do the…trippyness justice. This is the Mirror Dimension,” she recognized.

“Where I’m in control.”

Strange’s return brought about another bit of city folding, and now flying over mountains for some reason.

“You’re just incepting, it’s not that impressive!” Wanda shot back, drawing on one of the few things she got straight about that movie when she finally saw it.

“That’s not the incepting part, but we’ll go over that in our dimension!” Peter contained his glee over her seeing that movie for the right time and place.

“Your endless movie jokes aside, Parker, don’t you get it? In the multiverse, there are an infinite number of people who know Peter Parker is Spider-Man! And if that spell gets loose, they’re all coming here!”

“He can save them and keep it safe at the same time! He’s earned that chance!” Wanda argued.

“It’s their fate,” Strange said as if fates were so final, again. “You and him can’t change that any more than you can change who they are. Who anyone really is in the end.”

Wanda struggled not to say the angriest responses she could. Until Peter outdid any possible response. “But what if we could?”

Peter was still wearing his mask, so Wanda didn’t know if his real eyes were looking at him. Yet she could feel he wasn’t just talking to Strange now.

“What if we could change their fate?”

It probably wasn’t the time or place, if this really could be called a place. Still, Wanda didn’t bother to hide her grateful smile. She didn’t much want to. And if she was feeling Peter smile under that mask correctly, neither did he.

Despite that little distraction, the stakes and this recent vow made Wanda shoot right back into battle mode, just as Strange got back into his own. Which was foolish even by his standards, since there was no way Wanda would let herself be on the losing side now.

Still, he was putting up more of a fight than she preferred. First with a cage of trains, then sending Peter through a portal loop Wanda couldn’t close, then the cape getting the box back. Yet Wanda interrupted the exchange by sending her magic in all directions – enough to break the mirrors apart and send everything and everyone flying in chaos.

It wasn’t ideal, but it bought some time. And made Strange upset enough to send another portal to the edge of the world Wanda’s way.

If she fell through and it closed up, she didn’t have a spell to get back to this dimension. So it couldn’t close up.

Before it did, Wanda sent a ball of magic that stuck to the open portal hole, keeping it from slamming shut. It took all her effort to keep it open and try to squeeze through without hurting herself. At least on the more important first part, it was working.

With a final flourish and a few shocks to the system, Wanda got through the portal and her own magic seal before it gave out. She flew through the scores of floating rocks and buildings to find Peter and Strange, looking and listening for any clues.

As it turned out, seeing Strange stuck to a bunch of webs inside a spiral of rocks was a pretty big clue. Peter hanging upside down between Strange and a portal back to the dungeon was the next big hint.

“What did you do?” Wanda whistled in awe.

“A+ geometry, as usual,” Peter earned the right to brag. And to take Strange’s ring too.

“Don’t do this…”

“I’m sorry, sir. But I have to try.”

Wanda brought over one of the floating rocks for Peter to stand up on. So he’d be more comfortable hearing her part of this new battle plan.

“I’ll stay here. Keep an eye on him. If he gets out of that, I can still buy you all the extra time I can.”

“Wait, I’m leaving you in here too?”

“Just until you’re finished. You’ve got this. I know you do.”

Wanda had never told a bigger truth, or shown as much faith, to a non-family member until this moment. Not an official one, anyway.

If she wasn’t completely sure she felt him smiling under the mask before, she was dead on now. “Now go!”

Once Peter leapt through the portal, it closed with no resistance from Wanda this time. Leaving just two residents of the Mirror Dimension left.

“Wanda, you have no idea what’s about to happen!”

“But I know what’s happening now. Until he saves them all? You and me are going nowhere.”

**********************************************

“Unfortunately, no one in either dimension knew what was coming next. But even if someone else had been there when it happened…it matters not to such fixed points in time.”

************************************************

“Norman was right! He got it from you! That pathetic! Sickness! You and that little witch bitch too!”

“You tried to fix me. Now I’m gonna fix you. And for now? I guess little old Maybelle will do as a warm-up.”

*************************************************

“With great power…must come great responsibility.”

************************************************

“Will you look at me, May, please? May…May, what are you doing, May, will you just wake up and talk to me? Please….”

************************************************

“Find Peter Parker…”

************************************************

“Maybe she didn’t die for nothing, Peter.”

Chapter Text

“Peter Parker…”

If Strange was trying the novel approach of getting on Wanda’s good side, saying Peter’s name like that wasn’t the right foot to start with. Leaving aside how both his feet were webbed up.

“You really just went and put our world on the chopping block. For Peter Parker.”

“You put the memory of every mind in our world, including my own, on the chopping block. For Peter Parker,” Wanda reminded.

“That was different. That wouldn’t have done…all this if it worked. And if you were that confident in his little rehab plan, you’d be out there with him.”

“I’m here because I am. He doesn’t need magic to save people. So I’m fine using it as his last line of defense from you.”

“And here you are. The only one of us right now who can leave this dimension at will. And you left yourself in here, as my way out.”

“I thought you were all logic. Not blind leaps of faith. Misguided faith’s the best thing to call it.”

“Is it? These webs will wear off eventually. And when I’m free, you will teleport us both out of here. So I can finally end this madness.”

“Not until Peter is finished.”

“And did it ever occur to you that this, your own blind leap of faith in a kid, might be how the Scarlet Witch finishes the world?!”

The most blind faith Wanda had in this whole thing is that Strange wouldn’t go there. If only because he wouldn’t like where it went any more than she would. Yet it appeared blind faith hadn’t worked so far after all.

“How would you know that?” Wanda clenched herself. “Without reading…”

“I didn’t read it. But I don’t need to. Everyone knows there are no specifics in…your prophecy,” Strange said with slightly more delicacy than usual. “There’s enough wiggle room, it might turn out you only empower someone else to destroy the world. Maybe someone who doesn’t try to, but does anyway.”

“If you care for him so much, do you want to risk him living with that? If he lives through it? Because whether the villains turn on him or the multiverse breaks apart, he’ll have little chance at surviving either way! And that will be on you too!”

“I’m sorry if I believe in him more than that…” Wanda said with barely any apology.

“Belief isn’t enough here. Trust me,” Strange dared to phrase, and at least wasn’t mocked for the notion of her trusting him. That was something to go on.

But when Wanda kept quiet and didn’t seem willing to engage anymore, Strange got either desperate or overconfident.

“What if I let you read it?”

“…what?”

“Get me free, teleport me to Parker and end this once and for all. And then we can talk about you reading the Darkhold. That’s what you’ve wanted since you came back, isn’t it? Do this for all of us, and I can do this for you.”

Wanda didn’t know where to possibly begin. The angriest ways seemed best for starters. If only to delay the rest.

“You made it clear. You thought me reading it would end the world. And now you’d let me have it?”

“We’re already in a world shattering crisis, thanks to you and him! Let’s solve this one now, so we can live to solve the next one!”

“You’d break your own rules to save us now…so you can attack me for breaking them later,” Wanda found her righteous fury.

“Right now this isn’t about that.”

“I say it should be. And since I’m the only one that can get you out, what I say goes right now.”

“You, you, you…I’m talking about all of us, all our worlds! Your wants, whims, moods, selfish desires are not worth their destruction! Don’t you understand that by now?!”

“Who are you to THINK you can understand me?! Who have you EVER been?!”

“IT’S NOT ABOUT ME! IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU!”

At that point, they were so heated that Wanda should have burned Strange to the ground. Or the middle of the sky in a trippy dimension.

Maybe she would have. If she didn’t see something different in Strange as he yelled at her. Beyond the usual know-it-all insufferableness and certainty of her evil. This time his anger looked and sounded more…human.

Especially when it drained out of him right after yelling. It almost made him look and feel trapped, in a way that had little to do with web restraints.

“After all it took before I understood that…before she made me understand…I can’t let myself forget it. Not for you. Or him. Or trillions more. If so much wasn’t at stake, it’d be so easy, and such a relief, to forget. But that’s not how it is. I know that better than anyone.”

There was probably way too much to unpack there. There was hopefully enough time to try – it probably meant Peter’s plan was working if there was. Nonetheless, Wanda could only sort through enough to lock on one topic. “Her?”

“The Ancient One. The Sorcerer Supreme before me. She made me care about more than myself. In a way even…Christine…couldn’t. As much as she tried until I made her give up. And it took a lot for her to do that. Almost as much as it took for me to see…”

“No one person, not even me, is worth more than everyone else. You live by the exact opposite code. You’d let worlds burn for the likes of Vision, your family, and Peter. Or just to keep them. I never cared about anyone else quite that much, even me...although I can’t speak for every one of me.”

“In any case…that’s a line I can’t let myself cross. Or let others cross instead. Not you, not Parker. Or else what did she save me for? What did I fail to save her for? And what did I let half the universe die for five years for?”

If there was too much to unpack before, it was a pileup bigger than all the mountains around them combined now.

“You must be truly desperate to admit that to me,” was all Wanda could muster. Though she didn’t say it as unkindly as she might have five minutes ago.

“Maybe I am.”

*********************************************

“I knew where you were. The whole time. While you were away and while you were back here,” was how Strange chose to break the ice after hours of silence.

“With all the magic you used to conceal your cabin, did you really think it went unnoticed? That you went unnoticed? Especially with everything you…acquired around the world?”

“Then why not confront me?” Wanda asked a question she knew Strange was getting around to answering.

“I made you a promise. I would give you the time you needed to heal. We both know you haven’t finished healing yet. But I said we’d have some long talks the minute you did. Not before.”

“Granted. With everything you’ve picked up and learned, without using any…Darkhold adjacent texts…you’ve gotten closer than I expected. Then when you came back to clear Parker, and then helped his aunt, I was starting to think that was close enough. Then you came and yelled at me at the worst time, and…here we are.”

“I think it’s more accurate to say I called you out,” Wanda defended, though there was less heat to it than there would have been hours ago. “And I didn’t do all that to get your approval. Don’t take credit for my path because you think you let me walk it.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” Strange calmed. And Wanda felt a little closer to thinking about believing him.

********************************************

“I did try everything there was. To find a way where you didn’t have to kill Vision,” Strange broke the silence and the introspection next.

“14 billion possibilities. To them, it looked like it took seconds to see them all. But it didn’t. For me it took…so much longer. Even longer than dying over and over from Dormammu. Only this time I watched trillions die over and over again too. No matter what I tried….”

“In the 500 million times I got off Titan, and got to Vision before you had to kill him, I still failed. In the 900 million where I tricked Thanos and gave him a fake Time Stone, they all failed. Then when I finally found one scenario where we won…I had to endure 9 trillion failures to see that was the only one.”

“I had to fail you in literally every way possible, before I gave you the burden of killing Vision. I failed Parker in every way possible, before I had to let him die. And then have him come back in time to see his hero die. After all that? Five years of death, and a final battle before I could even begin to process it…didn’t sound so bad.”

“I don’t know if it’s any more horrible than what you lived with. And what it drove you to. What it could have, and could still, drive you to. But…after all that, it’s a wonder I still have anything left to try and keep you, everyone, from such horrible fates again.”

“Things like…cast a spell so someone who’s suffered enough might get a break, for once. Yet for all that, here we are now.”

Wanda could have sniped he still didn’t understand, because he chose a future where he came out on top. She could have bit back if it was that important to him to help Peter, it made his inability to fully explain the spell even worse. She could have said a lot of snarky things that would have felt better for her than…anything more complicated right now.

But she stayed quiet. Then when she couldn’t anymore, she was finally less snarky and just honest. Following the example she was recently given.

*******************************************

“It was my boys. I heard them in the Darkhold. I know I made them up in my head. But if there was…one little chance I sent them somewhere other than my mind when I woke up…I thought it might show me.”

“I figured it was either them or Vision,” Strange said, not calling her insane or world-ruining for believing it. Maybe that showed how far things had come just through simple talking.

“But you have to understand. And I think you already do. Using the Darkhold to bring them to life, would be too risky for everyone’s life. If there was a way to make such things happen, without breaking the fabric of reality…I would have offered to help you.”

“Like you did earlier?”

“I think we both know that was a desperate bluff. And like I said…I think you knew from the start you couldn’t do it. If you didn’t, you would have taken the book from me that day, or broken in to take it later. We both know as much as I’d have tried, I couldn’t have stopped you.”

“But I think part of you held back, because you already knew you shouldn’t do it. Or maybe you didn’t want to hear me confirm it. Whatever the combination is, some part of you had to know it wouldn’t work. And would cost too much in trying.”

Wanda should have objected to him mansplaining her thoughts and feelings for her. But that was one thing. It was quite another to be right.

If she really thought, deep in her soul, the boys could be brought back with the Darkhold, nothing would have stopped her from getting it months ago. Even the end of all worlds. If everything else would have ended, but the boys and her family would still be back, that would have been one thing.

To do it all for nothing…as if that was all that mattered. As if there wouldn’t be anything else left for her if she’d failed.

But there kind of was now.

Except…that was really all there was for her. And that was the same old problem.

**************************************

“Peter was right,” Wanda eventually muttered, before narrowing it down. “We…I…put all my hopes and dreams in one person. Or one family. My parents. Pietro. Vis. My boys. Now Peter. But whenever they left…I had nothing else.”

“I need…more. I need more than just my children. Or just my husband. Or just my…my friend,” she described, although none of those terms sounded like enough to do it justice. Again, maybe that was part of the problem.

“I want what Peter has. A full family. Even after losing his own. He has MJ, Ned, May, maybe even Hogan. If God forbid, he lost any of them, he’d still have so much love and family left! I never had that. Since my parents…it’s only been one person in my life at a time. Till I lost them too,” she recounted.

“You had Vision and the Avengers. After your brother,” Strange tried to sound reassuring.

“Did I? Vis did all the heavy lifting for me. Steve, Sam, Natasha and the Bartons did all they could. When I let them. But I never let them get as close to me as Vis was. Maybe that’s why I’d have been all alone after he died…and Westview would have happened for real…if not for Peter.”

“So then you thought it’d be better to push him away first. Before he, and his future loss, got that important to you. And destructive,” Strange picked up for her again. “Yet it didn’t work for long.”

“I don’t want to keep being that close to people. But I clearly need them. Maybe the universe needs me to need them. But…if I really can’t have my boys, and I can’t put my whole mental health on Peter, then…I need more.”

“The select few people you love are what you really fight for. More than the collective good. I’m the other extreme,” Strange saw now. “And you’re right. You should have more loved ones to fall back on than just one. Almost no one should more than you.”

“But if Peter’s plan doesn’t work, it’ll create a whole new chaotic world. One where neither of us can get what we really need. And it’s a lot to put on shoulders that already carry too much weight. Isn’t sparing him worth him blaming us for it?”

“I thought it was before. And I was wrong.” Wanda stated, seeming to put them right back at square one. “But…it doesn’t mean part of it wasn’t right.”

That was a better time for Strange’s web restraints to finally break than it would have been five seconds ago. Let alone five hours ago.

Now, when Strange was completely free, he didn’t just charge at Wanda and force her to take them back. And Wanda didn’t give him new magical restraints to keep him prisoner. They just hovered in the messy space of the Mirror Dimension, circling each other but not battling each other.

Not having the fire or the motivation to only battle each other anymore.

“And what right part rings truer to you now, Wanda?” Strange put it in her hands. She had no answer, and he still didn’t quite know what his would be if hers was a bad one. Not the way he would have claimed to know hours ago.

Yet, in a kind of universal cop-out, they didn’t need to settle their standoff to get out. An open portal appeared to do it for them. At least it did for a second until it suddenly disappeared.

Then another appeared and promptly disappeared. Judging by this erratic display, it probably wouldn’t be the last one.

“Apparently math and magic don’t mix all the time,” Strange noted, hovering in wait for the next portal attempt.

“Strange, wait!” Wanda flew in front of him, but not in battle mode.

“Just hold back for one minute! Let me go out there first and see what’s happening. If it’s not working and it’s too much for him…I’ll send them back myself. Maybe he’ll take it better if I do it,” she tried to tell herself.

Whether she convinced Strange more than herself, they would have to find out quick, as another portal was forged for the moment. “Please…trust me, if not him, to do this.”

Both would have been improbable requests to even consider 12 hours ago. Maybe with all that time to cool off…and all those teeth to pull before opening up…there was now some wiggle room to be had here. Some other things, and people, to consider. For just a little while.

“Tell Parker to keep it open. For one minute only.”

****************************************

“Hold it open…Ned?!”

Between Ned holding Strange’s sling ring, and being at what looked like the new Steve branded State of Liberty, there was a lot to baffle Wanda already.

Wanda needed some direct clarity. Thankfully, MJ was right there in the nick of time.

“MJ! Be brutally honest, it’s your best feature! Did it work?”

She looked back at the railing below them and sighed – in what mostly, hopefully sounded like relief. “I don’t think you need my word for it.”

Wanda looked down and saw Peter standing in front of a green mist. One that cleared to reveal…yet another naked man for her to stumble onto. But this time, it might not be so bad.

“Dr. Connors? Welcome back, sir.”

He did it. Or was doing it. Of course he was. Even after hours of her faith being chipped away, it was never wise to doubt Peter Parker.

“Well, I’ll be damned…” And maybe someone else was starting to get it too. Strange even seemed to give Ned a less than annoyed grunt, after seeing he made the now gone portal.

Wanda was a bit more open in her praise, and a bit more eager to steal some credit now. “I told you to keep at it,” she called back as she patted his shoulder and followed Strange after Peter.

By then, Peter had looked up to see who was coming. It then hit him just as it hit MJ too. The same question they had to put aside right now, and had to hope they wouldn’t need to answer until this was completely over.

How were they gonna tell Wanda about May?

*********************************************

Wanda couldn’t comprehend it. All the wacky things she’d seen in the Mirror Dimension, and this was what broke her.

She could only point at Peter Parker 1, Peter Parker 2 and Peter Parker 3 one at a time, as they tried to explain themselves to Strange. Who was at least using real words right now. And slightly warmer ones than he would have hours ago.

“Look, I am really impressed that you’ve managed to give them all a second chance, kid. But this has to end. Now.”

“You did get them all, right?” Wanda had to focus on something besides what was in front of her. “Where’s –”

“CAN THE SPIDER-MAN COME OUT TO PLAY?!”

That answered her question. Except it really didn’t.

She wanted to know where Norman was. But all that was flying in and firing at them was the Goblin. Who missed them, but snatched Strange’s box away.

Dr. Octavius used his metal arms to grab his glider before he got away. Once Wanda saw that, she saw an opportunity.

“Hold him there!” she ordered before flying up. “Maybe I can get Norman back. For just long enough.”

“Wanda, don’t!” she heard Peter yell, but ignored him. Pushing aside how unusually harsh he sounded in that moment. And how Norman – the Goblin – seemed to stop struggling when Wanda floated in front of him.

“Well, well. The other moral crusader!” the being wearing Norman’s body hissed, with an unsettling toothy grin. “But that doesn’t suit you like it did her, does it?”

“At least you won’t go down as easy as she did.”

What…

“What are you…” Wanda started, her hands raising up nonetheless.

She intended to go inside Norman’s brain, unearth him from the Goblin, and get him back in control long enough to be cured. Yet she was now starting to lose focus as she worked out what – and who – he could be talking about.

But the Goblin decided to use more than words to clear it up.

He leaned his head directly onto Wanda’s palms, so she could connect and see for herself. He poured every image he had of taking May down – then of watching legitimate TV reporters confirm her death – so the witch could see what she missed for herself.

She saw it all too well.

“May….” Wanda’s voice shook the second her hands were freed, her body struggling not to tremble in mid-air. Hoping it wasn’t, couldn’t be true.

Unfortunately, she looked down at Peter. In that one moment of seeing him, she knew. Even Strange worked it out too, his own face crumbling for a mere second. And that was really it.

“Peter…” Wanda halfway sobbed. “May…” she almost completely sobbed.

Her sorrowful shudders then began to shift into angry, world destroying ones.

But not fast enough.

Not fast enough to see the Goblin’s free hand pulling out a knife. One intended to first attack her heart.

“Wanda!”

“WANDA, NO!”

The less loud Strange acted faster than Peter, sending an Eldritch whip out that struck the Gobin’s outstretched arm before he could pierce Wanda’s heart.

But not fast enough.

Instead of deflecting his strike completely, it only made him sink the knife into Wanda’s right shoulder.

Though it wasn’t her heart, it still hurt terribly. Though it was a mere knife wound through an all-powerful witch, it was one through a distracted, already heartbroken and already vengeful witch.

It hurt so much for so many reasons. Regardless, it put Wanda out of commission as she started falling and the Goblin started breaking free.

Then all manner of chaos struck, even without the chaos witch around.

************************************************

Before Peter could begin to get his head on straight, he was hanging off the Goblin’s glider, his bomb had destroyed the runes and set the spell free, Peter Three and Strange’s cape had thankfully saved MJ and Ned, and Wanda was still gone.

Probably not gone like…but if there was even a chance….

Peter’s head got screwed back on right. Or at least back on to one specific purpose.

One that started with hitting the glider until it opened up to reveal another bomb. One he would use to bring this thing down. Bring him down enough that maybe he wouldn’t get back –

Suddenly, the glider felt shakier. And heavier. Peter turned his head to see he wasn’t the only one hanging off it anymore.

With the one non-wounded arm she had left, Wanda had grabbed her way onto this little ride. Had somehow flown below them until she went up and caught on.

“Peter,” Wanda groaned, before he could begin to ask questions. Begin to insist she go before she gets hurt worse. Begin to plead she just go, unlike…

“I’ve got this.”

*********************************************

Even with Wanda’s shoulder bleeding, her arm was still strong enough – and Peter was distracted enough – to push Peter and make him let go of the glider.

He would land on his feet somewhere, eventually, and she’d make amends later. After she killed the Goblin.

She decided it on her way over here. She had but two goals on her mind now.

He’s mine.

Which was maybe 75 percent because of May. And 25 percent, and climbing fast with time, because of the second goal.

So he won’t be Peter’s.

She took a page from Max Dillon, of all the naked or near naked people she’d seen lately. She charged her body with magic like it was electricity, hanging on tight with her good arm and enduring the pain shooting through her other arm.

It was painful for her, but it would be worse for him when the magic shorted out his glider. And charged through him just as quickly and unmercifully.

The glider’s rider and extra passenger each howled in pain, and lit up the sky – more than it already was – with magic coursing through them. But with such power, eventually the glider indeed had to go down.

And spin out of control enough to throw the extra passenger clear off.

Clear off and about to crash land out cold. Before she could see if the rider fared worse. As he needed to.

Before anyone else could do better.

************************************************

He was still alive.

He crash landed onto Cap’s fake shield after getting magic-cuted by Wanda. But he had to be alive. Peter was owed that much.

After seeing MJ and Ned safe below the statue, and seeing the other Peters headed for Wanda, Peter-One headed towards the shield.

So he couldn’t head for anyone else ever again.

*************************************************

“Poor Peter. Too weak to send me home to die?”

“No. I just want to kill you myself.”

“Atta boy…”

*********************************************

“I’m seeing double…four Peters!”

If only eyesight was the worst pain going through Wanda right now. But it wasn’t to be. Especially when the older one said, “He’s still alive.”

“I tried to kill him before he…you…” Wanda gasped out, fittingly unable to finish.

“I’ve got to get over there,” the older one announced, signaling the younger but not considerably younger one to stay back. “It needs to be me.”

He left before anyone could debate him, or ask to clear anything up. Nonetheless, the only Peter near Wanda right now snapped into action to help her up.

“Okay, up and at em abracadabra! Is that something witches say over here? I don’t have a baseline in my world to go on,” the new Peter rambled, in a different yet still Peter-like fashion than the Peter Wanda knew.

Yet he quieted right up as they went down, trying to get a look at what was happening far away. And who was winning there. Who was or wasn’t dying. And by whose hand.

By the time they got close enough to see, however, they saw the one who was dying – or at least down for the count – wasn’t the Goblin.

“She was there because of you!”

That was it. Even if Wanda lost the arm in the effort, she was flying there and ripping his head off. Whether her Peter wanted to watch or not.

“Wait, wait, wait!” the other still standing Peter narrowly made Wanda hear. And make her see what he’d just found littered on the ground. “Just give me one last literal Hail Mary!”

Resisting every urge her battered body could still muster, Wanda gave him that. He let him fling Norman’s cure all the way out to her Peter. Who caught it and shoved it right into his neck. Even if it wasn’t a knife.

It still killed the Goblin all the same. Leaving only Norman left.

When Wanda ran onto the shield with the other Peter, she caught a glimpse of Norman sitting alone, his face falling into his hands. Now awake and aware enough to see what he let the monster inside him do. And who he had shattered in the process.

Wanda still felt like killing him anyway. Still thought for a moment it might be a mercy to him. Yet she kept her arms to herself – and not just because she could barely move one of them.

If she was like May, it would have been because she remembered it wasn’t Norman. It would have been because Wanda knew what it was like to do monstrous things, including murder, and hate herself for it forever. If she’d been May, she would have compassion and understanding almost no one else could right now.

She would feel all that tomorrow, surely. But for today, she was only Wanda. And Wanda mainly left Norman be, so the guilt would kill him worse than she could.

Besides, if she felt that way, then someone else was feeling it so much worse. Would be far worse right now, if he’d done what he came here to do.

But he wasn’t, though not just because of him. Because of…him and him.

“Thank you,” she said to the older double – and Wanda’s double in Goblin stab wounds, she supposed.

“Not a problem. Not one that’ll leave worse scars than usual. For either of us,” he gestured, though Wanda figured hers would be more visible for a while.

To the other one, she echoed, “And you too. For being there when I couldn’t…”

When she couldn’t be. In these last few minutes. In all those horrible minutes beforehand. Minutes where if she’d been there instead of…not even guarding Strange by the end…then…

“It’s okay,” the middle child Peter said, with a distinct, sad, surprising – but reassuring and resilient – understanding that was all Peter. “Maybe now it can start being okay soon.”

Wanda wished she could ask every question piling in her head now. To both Peters. Yet the third one was still top priority.

If she could face looking at him. Or see him without seeing what the Goblin made her see. Or see him without waiting for him to yell that she should have been there.

However, just when she could bare to start facing her Peter, the one on the ground reminded them of another oncoming disaster.

“Are there…people in the sky?”

**********************************************

When Peter and Wanda joined Strange on the statue torch, they were told in no uncertain terms they were too late. “They’re starting to come through! And I can’t stop them!”

“Maybe not on your own,” Wanda corrected, preparing to send some containment magic of her own. Until she remembered she could only lift one arm up to do it.

“Even at full strength, you and me aren’t enough! Not now!” Strange declared, before shooting down Peter’s original spell idea quick.

“We’re too late for that too! They’re here! They’re here because of you!”

Hours earlier, Wanda would have attacked Strange for a line like that. Even if it was halfway right. Either way, though, now it didn’t matter. Now the bottom had fell out.

And then it dropped to the center of the galaxy.

“What if everyone forgot who I was?”

**************************************************

It all went by in a blur. It had to. Because if Peter took a second to pause, he couldn’t make himself say – let alone do – any of this. But he had to.

Now he understood. Now he truly knew what it was to be Strange on Titan that day. Now it was his turn to see, “There was no other way.”

Only now, his entire life was about to be those horrible seconds before dying. And it had to happen. Forever.

But it had to happen.

“You’d better go and say your goodbyes. You don’t have long.”

“Thank you, sir,” Peter said without collapsing. That was as good a start as any.

“Call me Stephen.” Only for Peter to feel like collapsing now anyway. Already. The fact he was still upright was his one victory right now.

“Thank you, Stephen.”

“Yeah, still feels weird.”

Peter was no rookie in putting on smiles to make people think he was okay. This would be his fakest one yet. But it was a good practice one before he had to give one to Ned…and MJ…and –

Oh God. He forgot. Out of sheer self-preservation just to get through this part, he forgot who else was right here.

“Wanda?”

When he could finally remember and look at her, he saw…almost nothing for it.

Her face was totally blank. Not like it would have been while casting a spell. Not like it normally was while trying to keep something inside. Not like it normally would be before she broke down, overcome by some high emotion.

It almost looked like she’d been astral projected again. Like her soul was gone from her body, except it wasn’t floating outside this time.

“Wanda?”

When she finally appeared conscious of where she was, it wasn’t any more reassuring. When her face finally showed something human again, it wasn’t anything that filled Peter or Strange with relief.

When she spoke, she said only one word, in a tone she hadn’t used since the end of episode 2 in her dream show. A word and tone that would not, for anything, be disobeyed.

“No.”

Chapter Text

MJ and Ned had been standing around alone for a while. Surely their Peter should have come for them by now. Surely the sky should be in one piece by now. Surely they should get moving before they have time to process falling to their near-deaths.

In leu of all that, someone finally joined them. But it wasn’t anyone named Peter.

Ordinarily, Wanda would be the next best thing, even with the wounded shoulder. However, her bloodless face bothered them more.

Not scared them more. MJ would lay out anyone who assumed a powerful woman was scary, even before meeting them. Ned knew that all too well and couldn’t handle another near-death experience this early morning. So they weren’t scared.

But they were growing concerned.

“Wanda?”

“Miss Wanda witch? Ma’am?”

Wanda at least acknowledged they were here too. But then she went right to ordering them.

“Get behind me. Now.”

The kids looked up in the sky, assuming some other Goblin type monster got here and was coming for them. Because why not at this point. Yet aside from the paper thin sky and the thousands of people floating in the cracks, nothing else seemed like a problem.

Nevertheless, it looked like Wanda was shielding them anyway.

She was making some sort of mini-Hex box to protect them in. Trap was probably a more fitting word, but likely best not to say out loud. Then again, their words surely couldn’t hurt her more than her shoulder right now.

Maybe the pain was keeping her from making this Hex any bigger. Whatever it was, it stopped growing once it was just big enough for Wanda, MJ and Ned to stay in.

MJ didn’t feel like playing a 50s housewife, even less than usual. And Ned didn’t feel any Peter-tingle like magic tingle of danger, though maybe he wasn’t advanced enough yet for it anyway. So if none of that was happening and nothing was raining bombs, electricity or sand on them, then what was this thing supposed to be doing?

It didn’t stop Peter from coming in, which was either a relief or a really bad sign. He spent more time checking on MJ’s head wounds than explaining it either way, though. Yet that was about to look like a merciful delay.

“You’re gonna forget who I am.”

But it wasn’t MJ or Ned who reacted first.

“I said NO!”

************************************************

“Wanda? Wanda, if you can hear me, I need to hear EXACTLY what you think you’re doing! Now!”

Wanda willingly opened her mind up establish a link with Strange. However, she spoke her answer out loud for all to hear.

“I am protecting MJ, Ned and myself from that spell! We WILL remember Peter as long as we stay in here! You just tell me it’ll still work on everyone else!”

“I can’t tell you that! The spell needs everyone to forget him!”

“Everyone not protected by my magic! If it can destroy the world, it can shield three people from the effects of saving it! Now can it work?!”

“There’s no guarantee! There’s barely even a probability! Not like there is if you just – ”

“Can…it…work?!”

“…it’s possible. But it’s only a slim chance, at best.”

“We owe him that chance!”

After everything, that was one thing they couldn’t fight about anymore.

“…all right. A chance.”

Wanda exhaled from her gritted teeth. With Strange quiet and the others now likely up to speed, only the pain in her shoulder could distract her from keeping this Hex up now.

“Wanda…”

“Say goodbye to the Peters. Before they go.” Wanda blocked out Peter’s attempted distraction, which worked out well enough for him to leave the Hex. Hopefully that little success would get the ball rolling.

Yet MJ, of all people, expressed doubt that the most powerful woman in the universe could get this done. “Can you really do this? Now?” she asked while looking at her shoulder, instead of her far less shaky eyes.

“I’m going to.”

The soon to be one and only Peter here returned in another minute, going through the Hex walls in a way that less visible force would not. Not if Wanda had done this right.

As they all looked up at the sky, seeing it clear even with the red roof over their heads now, it slowly started to look promising.

Strange’s spell appeared to be taking effect. The sky was starting to repair itself. The anonymous hordes who were being punished for knowing hundreds of Peter Parkers, may well now be in the middle of their reprieve.

Everyone may well be spared soon.

This time Wanda’s Hex would save a mind, not destroy it. Her magic would contribute to saving a world – a collective one and several personal ones – instead of ending it.

This much, she could still save for Peter. For MJ and Ned. And for herself.

It was going to work. Despite the pain, all her research and knowledge still made her powerful enough to endure it. This was where she validated all those months of being on her own, finding magic that wasn’t shrouded in darkness and false promises, and proving she was a savior and not a destroyer once and for all.

Peter would have the rest of his family left. Wanda would remain part of it. Jameson’s latest rants would be the only truly terrible consequence of these last few minutes to stand. And maybe Hogan forgetting, but Wanda could fix that in no time later.

Then they would ALL mourn May and honor her together.

This was why Wanda was here. This was what her and Peter’s connection had all led to. That one choice of Peter coming to her at the funeral was meant not just to save her, but to save him right here. Now the favor would be returned.

Now, at long last, Wanda would be the hero Peter claimed she was. The hero Vision and their kids never got to see her become. Now, at long last, the Scarlet Witch would be something good.

Now…

The roof flickered.

********************************************

The cracks in the sky closed up a bit more.

Just as Wanda’s Hex roof flickered again.

********************************************

In a sudden surge, Wanda raised her arms up. Or rather, raised one arm up and another nearly all the way up.

The pain from that other arm was ever more excruciating. Nevertheless, with the magic surging from both arms, the Hex barriers were strengthened again.

Then the cracks in the sky opened up again.

***********************************************

Wanda saw it. She said nothing about it. Would say nothing until it was done. And it wasn’t done.

She poured more power into the Hex roof and walls. Kept her groans as quiet as she could. Yet a few went up in volume.

The Hex flickered a little more, as the sky started to heal itself again. When Wanda clenched her teeth and entire body to strengthen the walls, the sky was freshly wounded again.

Wanda said nothing. There was nothing to say. Nothing to discuss. Until it was done.

Not everyone saw it that way.

************************************************

“Wanda, it’s not enough! The spell can’t work unless EVERYONE forgets! And the longer you interfere with it, the weaker it becomes! You have to take your Hex down!”

“No…I can do it…” Wanda broke her silence, hoping she wouldn’t have to again. Hoping for so many things. But immediately, hope faced another defeat.

“Even at full strength, you couldn’t. You’re only hurting yourself right now. Stop, before it’s not just you who hurts.”

“I can do this!”

“I wish you could. I truly do. You have to believe me. But please, believe me more when I say for all of us…and him…you have to stand down.”

“…you can’t ask me to do this again…”

“But in this case, he won’t be dead. And you won’t have killed him. You’d save him AND everyone this time.”

“You call THIS saving him?! We can’t just let him…”

“Wanda?”

“What?!”

It was one thing to fight for Peter, and another to debate his fate as if he wasn’t already there. Then yell at him when he finally made himself known.

That hit Wanda pretty quick, yet she had little time to brush it off before the next blow hit.

“It’s not gonna work. Is it?” Peter asked more quietly, yet struck Wanda more loudly, than any of Strange’s dire warnings.

“I just need more time…if he’ll just give me more time…” Wanda tried to bargain.

“I think he’s done enough. We all have,” Peter said as if he’d accepted this so easy. How could he? “It’s…it’s gotta be done.”

“No!” Wanda took another stab at denial. “I’m here now, it’ll be okay! I’m here now! I won’t abandon…”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Peter saw through immediately. “She would have died with or without you there. There’s…no way around it for people like me. Trust me, I know now.”

“But you can’t lose them too…” Wanda croaked. “You can’t lose…I can’t…”

In her struggles to keep going, the Hex weakened just a little further. In her desperation, Wanda blasted more of her rapidly inadequate power into the roof. She screamed louder as a result, only mostly because of her shoulder.

“I can’t forget you, Pietro!”

That’s all it took. All of Strange’s pleas didn’t do it, and Peter’s weren’t getting off to a good start either. But that one little slip of the tongue finally gave Wanda pause.

Pause enough to see just how desperate this had made her. Enough to see just how deeply Peter had put herself into her heart – only moments before she’d be forced to forget it.

And in that little opening, the words “It’s not about you,” reared their head in her head again.

If Peter had acknowledged the last word in her plea, he didn’t say anything about it. Honestly, they both knew he couldn’t. Not if there was any way left to endure this.

So Peter tucked it away. Tucked it with everything else he’d have to cling to all by himself, when things got too hard. And didn’t stop.

For the next little while, anyway.

“You won’t,” he made himself pretend that was the only thing worth addressing. It had to be, or he wouldn’t get through this.

“I’m gonna come and find you. All of you. And I’ll explain everything! I’ll make you all remember me, and it’ll be like it never happened. Okay?”

…that actually made a lot of sense.

They might forget Peter, but he wouldn’t forget them. He’d still know enough to make them remember the next time he saw them. And there’d be so many questions, holes and nonsensical half-memories from this spell, they’d have no choice but to buy his explanations.

Plus the minute he cleared things up with someone who could go in people’s minds, she’d make sure he didn’t need to explain.

This was nothing that couldn’t be cleared up in one conversation, maybe two. Hell, the second the spell worked, all Peter had to do was ask Wanda to look in his mind then and there. Then she’d remember, make MJ and Ned remember next, and they could all go home.

So this little freakout made no sense, really. Wanda just got so freaked out, she didn’t think it through. Wouldn’t be the first time she made a Hex when that happened. Technically, it wouldn’t even be the second time she tried.

It really wasn’t necessary now, though. It was almost kind of embarrassing now. There was no reason, when she stopped and thought about it, to assume the worst like that. What did she think would happen?

“So you don’t have to keep hurting yourself. Okay?”

….

That’s all it took.

That and one glance to her bleeding shoulder.

That told Wanda exactly why she had freaked out. And why she was right to.

***********************************************

He won’t make us remember.

*********************************************

He probably didn’t know it yet. He probably wasn’t lying right now. By now, Wanda knew how bad a liar Peter was when it was something really important.

He was telling the truth now, as far as he knew. In his mind, he had every intention of making MJ, Ned and herself remember him later. At least right now.

But Wanda knew better.

If Strange could blindly assume someone else’s deepest thoughts, and still get a lot of them right, Wanda could too. Only it wasn’t a blind assumption.

She knew Peter. She knew if there was the slightest thing he could do to make someone else stop hurting, he’d do it. The slightest thing to spare someone from pain, now and in the future. Even if he suffered for it, at least no one else would.

Wanda tried to be like that when she pushed him away. She just wasn’t as tactful or good at it. But Peter spent at least half his life mastering it. And it would all build up to this.

The minute he felt a shred of guilt about making MJ and Ned a part of his whole life. The minute he thought about the peaceful life they could have without him.

The minute he thought it was best Wanda didn’t remember someone she lost this time. And that she wouldn’t blame herself for May, if she wasn’t around the walking reminder of her.

The minute he saw all of this – and he would see it at some point soon – Wanda knew what would happen then.

Wanda knew. She knew before Peter did – hell, she knew before she even knew she knew. She knew why she’d gone this far to stop herself, MJ and Ned from forgetting him, even for a second.

Because once they did, Peter would never let them remember again.

He didn’t know it. Wanda didn’t need to look in his mind, or look in the future, to know it. But Wanda subconsciously knew then, and most certainly consciously knew now.

That self-sacrificing, protective to a fault, guilt-ridden…Goddamn hero...would gladly give up his girlfriend, best friend and newest friend knowing him at all, if he thought they’d be remotely safe. And that’s exactly what he was going to tell himself they would be. If not now, then at some point before he tried to make them remember.

And then it would all be over.

Wanda knew. She knew right then, and she especially knew right now. The minute she took this Hex down and forgot, she would never see Peter again.

Maybe Spider-Man at some big battle. But she would never see Peter Parker again.

Neither would MJ or Ned.

Maybe nobody ever would again.

**************************************************

She had to say something. Hell, all she had to do was hint once that he might not find them. Then MJ would take it from there and set him straight.

“Come on, it’s okay.” Yet Peter kept talking instead.

“You’ll heal, then I’ll heal, and we’ll laugh about this later.” No they wouldn’t…

“Until then, I’ll remember everything for the both of us.” Forever. You thoughtful, thoughtless moron…

Come on, just say something. Then MJ will have far more creative comments, and he’ll think twice about never seeing her again.

“Like how I couldn’t have done any of this, if I didn’t know you had my back. Because Wanda Maximoff is my friend. And she is a hero.”

That should have torn it. Should have made Wanda yell herself hoarse, until she got an absolute guarantee he was coming back. Should have made her let the world come apart, rather than live in one where Peter would have to bear it alone and forgotten.

Should have at least warned MJ and Ned, for sure.

And yet…

The last thing she ever did for Peter, would not – could not – be proving him wrong about the last things he’d ever say to her.

So her arms came down. Only the physical pain inside her felt any relief.

All that was left now was a goodbye.

If her last words to Peter wouldn’t be a warning, or a plea not to leave them, then they had to be something…anything…that could do justice to what he’d done for her. But if such words did exist, there wasn’t enough time to put them together.

There never would be. In so many cruel ways.

“It shouldn’t be you…” was the only thing that truly did justice to all this.

“But it is.”

Of course that came to him so easily. Or he just made it look like it did. Just to spare her from being sad over him. For the last time.

So Wanda did something for the first and last time. Something Peter only did twice – once he was comfortable letting MJ know about. As if that would matter anymore soon.

Peter had hugged her twice, yet Wanda never hugged back. Let alone gave him one of her own. There was supposed to be so much more time for that. Instead, only Peter would remember the only hug Wanda ever gave him.

Soon, only he would have to live with how Wanda’s hug couldn’t magically save the day like Peter’s did. Soon, only Peter would remember how Wanda grit her teeth, bit down on the pain of hugging him with only one good arm, and tried not to let any tears fall on his shoulders.

Soon, only he would remember hearing the Hex start to collapse, while Wanda poured whatever strength she had left into holding him. As if she could make it linger so hard, he would change his mind and track her down, even after he decided she was better off not remembering him.

But inevitably, he wouldn’t.

She remembered it anew, just as she had to let him go forever, and strain whatever she had left into restoring the Hex one more time. Her subsequent scream was only partly because of her arm.

“Wanda…I am tremendously sorry I helped end it this way. I am. But you can’t let it end worse. Please…”

“Stephen…2 minutes.”

“What?”

“Just let me give him 2 minutes to say goodbye…”

“….2 minutes. That’s all I can give any of you.”

*********************************************

2 minutes, then.

2 minutes of staying still, keeping the Hex up while Strange’s spell had it on the ropes.

2 minutes to fight like hell to keep it up, just so Peter and Ned could do their handshake routine one final time.

2 minutes to try and endure Peter and MJ’s last goodbye.

“I promise I will fix this.”

And to bite her tongue so hard not to call him a liar. Or a future liar.

Maybe if she actually understood that damn incepting movie, she’d know how to keep him from becoming a liar and make it look like his idea. But she was always a step behind his really nerdy stuff.

Now she always would be.

“I really hate magic,” she heard MJ say, with so much more emotion than she’d ever heard from her. As if this wasn’t unsettling enough. Or would be for just 60 more seconds.

“Present company excluded,” she did say aside to Wanda.

God, without Peter to connect them, Wanda would probably never see MJ again either. She likely had a better chance of seeing Ned, once he started rivaling Strange’s magic. But these four together…the closest knit group Wanda had ever saved the world with…would not unite again.

Yeah, she hated magic too right now.

Hated it when she heard MJ tell Peter she loved him, and she couldn’t squeal in joy about it. Hated it when Peter held back from saying she loved MJ too, because he still thought he would let himself say it later.

Hated it so much when she couldn’t see their final kiss.

All Wanda could see – all she could bear to see – was the Hex barely holding together. Only holding together because it was her final gift to Peter. A gift that had to be returned right about now.

She let herself see Peter when he walked over to her. Blinked through the last round of tears she would never remember crying soon.

“Peter…” she said with any love and affection for the final time. Tried to pour so much into it, he at least wouldn’t forget. No matter how much he tried to later. Either way, she’d never know.

In some twisted way, she took comfort in how he didn’t seem put together to even utter one word. As if he would let his own sorrow and what he truly wanted matter enough to fix it later.

Unfortunately, the lesson both Wanda and Strange took so long to learn, came so much easier to a kid in such less time.

As such, Wanda would only hear two final words from Peter Parker. At least while she knew she cared for Peter Parker, and was cared for so much in return.

Enough that Peter only needed to think his final words for her to understand.

Do it.

And she did.

***********************************************

The mini-Hex was gone in seconds. The sky closed up for good in another minute. Every Peter Parker that wasn’t supposed to be here left about 30 seconds before that. Along with everyone from another world that knew them.

For the rest that stayed behind, the full effects of the spell took hold a short time later.

For one of them, it took hold of her just before she thought one last word.

Goodbye…

A few weeks later

This time, there was a kid alongside Happy Hogan at May Parker’s grave. But it made no difference.

As usual, Wanda stayed far enough away that no adult or kid would notice her. Only the sling around her arm made her look extra suspicious.

As usual, she looked upon May’s gravestone from a distance, barely understanding why.

She only knew her for a short time. She barely understood why she came to her in the first place, or why she felt so compelled to volunteer for her. There was a lot that didn’t make sense since she came back to this part of the world.

There was one thing she understood above all else. As she always did. She got near someone, and then they died. As always. And as always, there was no one left that wanted to be around her, once the one person she had left was gone.

As always, she was all alone again. With no one left alive in the world who remembered her, or remembered her well.

None she would find in this world, anyway.

********************************************************

“Wanda was right about Peter not coming back. Yet in all the despair she felt in her final moments knowing him, she still underestimated what forgetting him would do to her.”

“Without anyone she remembered helping her in these last difficult months, she fell into a familiar depression. Without anyone alive in this world she remembered caring for in these last months, she began to lose any attachment to it, again.”

“And without fully remembering events that made her accept she'd never find her children…she convinced herself Strange was lying to her in the Mirror Dimension. Regardless of why on earth they were ever there.”

“And in that relapse, someone...something…lay in wait to take advantage of her.”

“Something that was brought out of the multiverse, as soon as Peter pleaded not to let Wanda forget he was Spider-Man. Something that knew Peter was Spider-Man, because it already knew everything about every world. Something that had never even fought Peter, but knew all about the Scarlet Witch.”

“Something that watched her. Shielded itself so well with dark power, no one even knew it was there. Waited for Wanda to forget she loved people other than her family. Returned to where it came after the final spell was cast. Then when the multiverse inevitably cracked again, it returned to get into Wanda’s head. To whisper words she was no longer in any condition to ignore.”

“Words that described how she could get her children back. How there was nothing and no one else left for her in this world. How all she needed to never be alone again, was to get the Darkhold back. Then use it for a few more things.”

“Once she did, Wanda would be a mother again. Regardless of who had to suffer for getting in her way. Even if they were people she knew.”

“But as far as she knew now…there were no real people left who had, or ever would again, care about her.”

**************************************************

“You break the rules and become the hero. I do it and I become the enemy.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

Chapter Text

“Hi…I’m Peter Parker.”

There was that voice again.

There was only one voice Wanda had accepted in her head lately. The one that told her she could get her kids back. The only that told her to welcome Strange to her cabin home, pretend to help him, and then get the Darkhold back from him.

The one that told her once she attacked Kamar-Taj, and then a group called the Illuminati, she would be powerful enough to reach her lost children. It was the only voice that had ever been here for her after Vision kept dying, and after she was forced to wake from a world where they had children.

Forced against her will so much, she didn’t remember how they woke her up. But it wouldn’t matter anymore. As long as she kept listening to that voice, and the voices of the Darkhold, all those who opposed her having a family and not being alone anymore couldn’t stop her.

And yet the more she read and studied, the more she attacked and the more her power grew…the more that other voice kept popping in her head too.

“Hi…I’m Peter Parker.”

It was like something in the back of her mind was stuck, yet wiggling around at the same time. The more power she unlocked, the more it felt like something else struggled to be unlocked too. For some reason, it started to scratch at her the more she fought Strange as well.

Which was why it had to be scratched out. Anything that didn’t help her get Billy and Tommy back was too distracting. Once they were safe in her arms again and she had the power to get them out, this would go away for good. Every distraction would go away for good.

Nothing else mattered. There was nothing left that could matter for her. For there was nothing and no one Wanda had left, or would ever have left, unless her children were hers again.

“Hi…I’m Peter Parker.”

Nothing and no one….

**************************************************

The voice told her the only things that could comfort her now.

It apologized for being too late. For not seeing that her kids had been taken and brainwashed by another Wanda in another world. For the fact they were terrified of her when she tried to fix them. For the fact that there was now finally nothing left to stay alive for.

So no one else should have anything left either.

Whether she would have started with burning this Wanda’s suburban home to the ground – regardless of who was still it – would never be answered. Because once she tried to charge up her power just in case, it didn’t work.

She saw the runes flashing around the living room before she saw the other Wanda. She was frozen in place before she could charge at her. She screamed to be let go and for other Wanda to stop torturing her with what she’d never have – what no one else should have if she couldn’t.

“IT’S NOT ABOUT ME! IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU!”

Strange’s voice intruded in her head. It wasn’t even anything he said in their recent fights, but from that time in the Mirror Dimension. Where he lied about there being no way to get her sons…or maybe he didn’t.

No. She was just too late, like the one who’d actually been helping her said. Strange was lying because…

If she could remember everything from that showdown…like how or why it started…she was sure she’d know.

“You’ve got this. I know you do.”

Now what was that?! When did she say that, and to who? Why did any of this have to matter? Nothing mattered except having her family back, and now that she couldn’t…why did she have to still be here? Why did any of them?

Couldn’t it just be over already? Couldn’t everyone…couldn’t she…just die already if there’s nothing left?

In her Scarlet Witch costume, Wanda collapsed to her knees in front of a Wanda wearing a sweater and sweatpants. Yet she felt more powerless than she could remember – literally – while the soccer mom version towered over her with true power.

And an increasingly soft look on her face. For someone whose kids were just terrorized by…someone who should have been their mother.

“What happened to you?” the other Wanda asked, reaching her hand out to touch her cheek before getting an answer.

“This is probably insane. But if anyone could understand you might need this…and if anyone knows how much this actually works…”

Instead of casting out or physically torturing the doppelganger who tried to take her sons, this Wanda did something that someone did for her at her lowest point. She hugged her.

“It’s a hug, Wanda. I’m hugging you.”

***************************************************

She saw him now.

The owner of that voice. Hearing it again, only with new words this time, made her see a flash of him.

He was in some kind of spandex suit that had everything but a mask. He somehow looked even younger than he sounded. Yet for some reason, Wanda could picture him hugging her, in the middle of a deserted plot of land. Giving her warmth and comfort she didn’t have once since she was unsnapped, except from her family in her dreams.

A dream she never should have woken up from. How she ever could was beyond her. Right down to having no idea how or why she did.

“But you’re one of the only people who looked at me like…Peter Parker was the amazing one. At least without the mask.”

What…when did that happen in Westview?

“And since I owe you one? I’ll let the kid and the new flying chick stay here too. No extra charge!”

When did Agatha say that to her? And why was it right before she became the Scarlet Witch for the first time?

“I can’t be alone all the time, can I?”

“You shouldn’t have to be.”

…why was she the Scarlet Witch then? Why was she in a car with that boy? Why was…why did this have to be so…?

Wanda opened her eyes, hoping against hope that seeing the Wanda with everything she wanted would be less painful than those flashes. Not wanting to risk it, she looked away from her and focused on the pictures in her living room instead. Pictures of the kids and…

And…

“What is that?!”

It wasn’t really a what she was asking about. It was, technically, since it was a picture. But it was the who inside of that picture – the who with this other Wanda – that shook her to whatever was left inside her.

Especially since she’d only ever seen this who in her flashes.

Ever.

The other Wanda went to pick up the picture, smiling at it like it meant something. Like the boy Wanda imagined in her head was actually in that frame, smiling side by side with this other Wanda as if he existed. As if he meant something.

“You should know. This is Peter. Peter Parker.

*************************************************

“Hi...I’m Peter Parker.”

“Spider-Man’s name…is Peter Parker!”

“PETER PARKER!!”

“You really just went and put our world on the chopping block. For Peter Parker.”

*************************************************

“Don’t you have him in your world?

***********************************************

“You’re gonna forget who I am.”

“I said NO!”

***********************************************

“He’s like my little brother. Are you from a world where Pietro lived? Is that why you don’t know Peter?”

***********************************************

“I can’t forget you, Pietro!”

***********************************************

“Say his name…” Wanda hissed. “How do you know his…”

“How do you know him?”

When there was no answer, the other Wanda kneeled back in front of her. She took advantage of her inability to move away, and to stand to look at her and her picture. She put her hands on her double’s head and started seeing the same flashes she did.

**********************************************

“I’m gonna come and find you. All of you. And I’ll explain everything! I’ll make you all remember me, and it’ll be like it never happened. Okay?”

“It shouldn’t be you…”

“But it is…”

“Peter…”

Do it.

***********************************************

“…what happened to you?”

Somehow, she asked this even softer than last time. Somehow, she sounded more understanding than last time. Even when Wanda didn’t understand a damn thing.

Let alone what she had felt when she saw those flashes. And the boy in them.

All she knew was they were feelings she hadn’t felt since she came back to life. Not in reality, anyway. Feelings of…warmth. Belonging. Unconditional love and support. Not being all alone.

Nothing she could remember feeling since Vision and the kids.

That’s why she was here, to get it and them back. That’s why there was no point sparing this world and all worlds, if there was nothing left worth keeping them intact for. No one.

...right?

“…there’s something locked up tight in here,” the other Wanda continued to look through her head while she was spiraling. “But not that tight. Maybe if I can…”

But she never got the chance.

The runes inside the house kept others from using magic and breaking in. But they didn’t protect against threats that burrowed underneath the house and crashed in through the floor.

Certainly not in time to protect the house’s owner from getting thrown out of the way. Or to protect the owner’s doppelganger from being dragged back down underneath the house, and back to where she needed to be.

Before she could remember any further.

**************************************************

The being in control of Wanda thought everything was settled now.

It was always going to be a gamble, letting her see the other versions of her kids and learning they were never hers. But after she burned her every last bridge – and so much more – at Kamar-Taj and at the Illuminati, seeing she wouldn’t get her family back was always going to break her enough to end all worlds. And then bring about a new ruler of the ashes.

The last step just took a little longer than expected. That other Wanda was never supposed to be that powerful. Or so understanding. Then again, all the Wandas that had a Parker around were far too aggravating for their own good.

That’s why it had been best to just watch and wait, after being sent to the Scarlet Witch’s world. That’s why it was best to let Parker and Strange tamper with her mind, then let her become lonely enough to listen. Listen enough to take the Darkhold, take out all those who would stop her from using it, and then take out all the rest in all worlds when she was finally broken.

Now she was finally there. Granted, some extra memory erasing and cleaning up had to be done before she was ready again. Yet now it was done. Now everything would be done.

The mountains of Wundagore would serve as the final place of reckoning. The Nexus point where Wanda would recite the Darkhold’s most powerful spells, and spread their dark magic across the multiverse to destroy all its corners. By then, she would have unlocked so much dark power, nothing and no one could stop her.

Indeed, when she began casting, she unlocked the ultimate power. A force that no being in any world had ever been powerful enough to wield. And now it would be used to destroy everything it touched.

In fact, it made her so overwhelmingly powerful…

…all spells cast upon her were broken.

********************************************

Nothing was, or ever had been, more powerful than Wanda in that moment. Including memory spells.

Yet it wasn’t the spells that broke her. What they unlocked after they were broken did.

She didn’t just remember bits and pieces of it, like before. Now everything, and everyone, came rushing back to her in moments. Especially…

“Hi…I’m Peter Parker.”

“Oh, sorry, you probably just know my made-up name. I’m Spider-Man.”

“And it’s Wanda. Wanda Maximoff.”

“Okay...hey, Wanda Maximoff, then.”

The visits to her apartment. The trip together to S.W.O.R.D. His hugs. His video. Vision’s body. Every part of the Westview dream. The real reason she went away after she woke up. The real reason she came back. May. MJ. Ned. Strange. Understanding Strange in the Mirror Dimension. The Goblin. The failed Hex.

“Wanda Maximoff is my friend.”

Everything. It was all there again. He was all there again.

“Peter Parker…”

Wanda knew Peter Parker. Wanda cared for Peter Parker. As much as he cared for her. And he cared so much, she knew he would rather keep himself away from her forever than ever risk hurting her. As she tried and failed to do for him.

She knew it. She knew him. She knew what it was like to be defended by him. What it was like to have his friends, his family, value her as well. Even in the short time they’d all had together, she’d rarely felt more like part of a family – not in reality, anyway – since she was 10 years old.

And she’d forgotten it all. Until now. Now she knew…almost everything.

What she still wasn’t sure of…she knew where to go to find it.

She turned to the being whose voice came to her as a friend. The last friend she had and would ever have left. But when she charged at that ‘friend’ and went into that ‘friend’s mind, she saw how horrifyingly wrong she was. Had been made to be.

“You!” she roared. “You knew…you knew what I forgot. You knew I forgot him! And you used it…used me…to…”

And the rest came back to her. All she’d done. Hurt. Scared to death. And now threatened to destroy.

“You are what you were always meant to be. And now you will finish it. There is nothing left but to finish it all.”

“Now, more than ever, after what you’ve done…with my help or not…what else is there left for you to be?”

*********************************************

She was the being that betrayed Strange’s trust. Almost killed him, and the girl he now had by his side, so many times...

She was also the one who found understanding with him in the Mirror Dimension, after all their sniping at each other. And now she had the full context as to why. And why he at least gave her a chance to save Peter from the spell.

And for that matter…now she had the full context of why he held back in all those recent fights. He knew, he had to know she was under control and duress. Even if he didn’t remember everything either. And he still tried to reach her more than hurt her.

But she still hurt him. She was the being who hurt so many on the path here…

She was also the one who stopped herself from hurting the people of Westview for real. Because she had Peter…but also because when he brought her back to her right mind, she got herself away in time. Just as she did in the dream Westview too – only not as quickly.

She was still the being who hurt and maimed those at Kamar-Taj, and the Illuminati. And was now moments away from ending everyone else.

She was also the one who isolated herself for fear of hurting one young boy. Then researched every magical item she could to become powerful another way. Then came back to use that power, not to destroy – but to frighten tech lackeys into clearing that boy’s name.

She was still the being who didn’t stay by his side long enough to save his aunt.

She was also the one who that same aunt trusted with her nephew’s life. Who let her help people in small, but significant and harmless ways she never had before, until she was ready to rejoin society in full. Which she finally felt ready to do, until that spell.

Finally felt ready to be part of a family, even if it wasn’t her own. Finally felt that although family was forever, it didn’t have to be everything. With Peter, May, MJ and Ned…and then maybe with Clint, Sam, Laura, everyone else she couldn’t bring herself to face again then…

…and didn’t exactly know how she could face now. If there were still a universe after today.

But the being who lied to her made her think there was no universe for her. Not without Billy, Tommy, or anyone she actually remembered. Surely, objectively, there shouldn’t be any universe for her after what she’d done now, and unleashed now.

And yet…

Now that she remembered exactly what – who – was worth saving about it again. What she still wanted from it again. What she wanted to see again, and what she thought she might be ready to be again. Before the Peter sized hole in herself was cut out…

“What else can I be?”

“Wanda Maximoff is my friend. And she is a hero.”

“While I live…”

“Because when you think about it…when you help someone, you help everyone.”

“He trusts you. So do I. Both of you.”

“What if we could change their fate?”

“And until I die…”

“As long as I was with you, you’d look out for me with everything you had. And you’re still doing it now.”

“You don’t have to keep hurting yourself. Okay?”

“I promise I will fix this.”

“Hi…I’m Peter Parker…”

“Peter…”

Do it.

“…I am an Avenger.”

*************************************************

Wanda only had to fight her puppeteer for about 30 seconds on her own. It took a little long – or maybe he was just late enough – but Strange found his way into the battle.

Their now shared enemy soon knocked them both off the mountain. When they flew back up, they had time to fully realize they were on the same side again.

“Strange…” Wanda started, but in no way could finish. Now that everything she’d done to him and those around him was inescapable.

“You’re free. It saves me some extra work doing it myself. So we have that to build momentum,” Strange actually credited her, instead of yelling at her. Before the guilt made her drown too much, at the worst time to waste time on it, he pressed on.

“We can talk about it all later. And we will. But right now, for many reasons, I’d rather have you on my side than fight with you. The rest I can’t forget forever…but I can help you make right.”

“Then help me start by destroying him. And that damned book.”

“Gladly.”

******************************************

As powerful as Wanda still was without Darkhold magic, and as formidable as Strange was too, their enemy still put up a fairly even fight.

Until that girl Strange had been protecting showed up – apparently against his wishes – and tipped the scales.

With her ability to go through universes, the chase she lured them on through the multiverse finally wore their foe out, until they threw him back onto the mountain they came from. Dejected and defeated.

Until he got his hands back on the Darkhold. And then literally disappeared inside it.

From inside the dark pages and the source of its Hellish power, the Hellish being could bring about the downfall of all reality then and there, even without Wanda. It settled for pouring out untold demons and monsters from the Darkhold to distract its trio of foes, as it gathered enough destructive magic to cast out across all words.

When there were no more distractions, however, there was one truth Wanda couldn’t ignore anymore.

As she saw the Darkhold on the ground, and saw the black energy pouring out from its open pages, she couldn’t block out how it got to this point any longer.

“They’re here! They’re here because of you!”

Or the only way everyone…else, would survive the end point.

“I did this,” Strange barely heard Wanda say after the last demon went down. “So I’m ending it.”

“Do you mind expanding on that?” the girl, America, heard her clearer.

“Let me show you.”

“Whoh whoh, show us what?” Strange jumped in, right as she saw Wanda walk towards the black pit of energy that the Darkhold, and its occupant, was spewing out.

“I go in there, I destroy him and the Darkhold in one shot.”

“And destroy yourself too!”

“Yes. But everyone else will live.”

For all she told herself about wanting to be part of the world again, it wouldn’t be possible without a world. She thought it was worth sacrificing to be with a few people before. Maybe it was worth saving for them instead.

Besides, who was she kidding, really?

“After what I’ve done, here and…everywhere else in my life…there’s only a few people who wouldn’t cheer to see me gone.”

“And one of them is in front of you!”

“You don’t have to lie, Stephen. You were right. One person isn’t worth them all. Especially a person like me.”

“And she is a hero.”

“And…how else am I gonna be the hero…someone out there might still think I am?”

******************************************************

Wanda didn’t want to die. Not as much as she did a little while ago. However, now that she remembered the failed Hex to spare Peter, she remembered its harshest lesson too. A lesson she kept having to learn over and over as it was.

Sometimes nothing could be done to spare someone. Even the good ones. So what right did she have to fare any better?

Peter didn’t want to do it either. But he did. To keep him alive, the people that once loved him alive, the still living people that once cared for Wanda alive, and everyone else alive too…Wanda had to do this now.

Dying a heroic death after living a mostly evil life. There was an inevitability in that being the best case scenario. The only one that made sense now. Better than the nonsense of still getting handed chance after undeserved chance, until she finally did end the world.

So there it was. Restored memories made her think, for one brief moment, there could ever be another way for her. But the same old lessons she’d been taught to never forget all her life – and not just with her own failures – stepped in one more time. One last time.

She wasn’t even sad at this point. Maybe not as relieved as she was when she Blipped. It was just…it was just her turn. Finally her turn.

The monster in there made her a monster for the last time, by convincing her there was nothing left for her out there. He was right. But that would be what sealed their doom only, not anyone else’s.

“Goodbye…” she said out loud to someone this time, as she floated off to the dark cloud and her final resting place. At least until she blew it and everyone inside it into nothingness.

With only one person left behind who would truly mourn her. Who didn’t even know she remembered he existed.

Maybe she could at least tell America to find him and tell him personally. If she’d been through so many universes, there had to be one she’d heard of where Peter Parker was Spider-Man. Maybe that’d be enough for her to find him in a world that forgot him.

Maybe a stranger would handle telling him a lot better than…anyone else could, if they had the chance. But never will.

“America?” Wanda turned in mid-air to start asking. “Please find-”

Wanda didn’t think about how such a request would sound to Strange. She didn’t have time to remember that Strange still didn’t remember Peter. She didn’t think perhaps unblocking Strange’s memories of Peter would be a better farewell gift to him.

She didn’t think about Strange at all.

Which is how she didn’t feel his Eldritch whip wrapping around her leg until it was too late.

*************************************************

“Whatever that request was, you can do it yourself!”

“What the hell?!”

“You’re not dying and taking him with you! He’s going out alone! And we’re ALL going to outlive him!”

Strange started trying to pull her down to the ground, yet Wanda wrangled her way out. He slowed her down a few more times with sling ring magic, but it only slowed her and didn’t stop her. It only got them both close enough to the Darkhold vortex, it started to suck them down itself.

Strange wrapped another whip around both of Wanda’s legs. Yet all it did was put her in the middle of a metaphysical tug of war.

“Stop it, Strange! You have to let me go!”

“That’s not going to happen. Not this time.”

“You sure?” America called out. “Unless you got a better idea, it sounds like you’re wrecking our best one!”

“Thank you!” Wanda actually thanked America for advocating her death. Whether it was because she saw it was the best way, or hadn’t let it go that she tried to kill her, she wouldn’t question.

“We are not letting you die! I am not letting you die!”

“Why not?” America asked for Wanda.

“Because I wouldn’t if it was you!”

That…was truly unexpected, if nothing else. If he planned it that way, it wasn’t the worst plan. If it was for any other reason…

“I’ve let trillions die for a greater good. I thought I would let trillions more die if I had that choice again. But…not if the trillions were just…you. And if there’s one person I wouldn’t sacrifice after all, even for whole worlds…maybe there should be more.”

Wow. What the hell had Wanda missed between them while trying to kill them? Not that there would be time to ask…

“You…you hypocrite!” was the best insult Wanda could muster to make him let go.

“That’s the nicest insult you’ve ever given me. If we’ve made that much progress, just think what else we can do!”

“What you can’t do is let everyone die for me!”

“Who says they will?”

“There must be 14 trillion future examples you can look up!”

“Even if 14 trillion versions of us failed? They aren’t you or me, right now. And if we’re the ones who try? I bet we can both win and live too.”

“I thought it wasn’t about me! Or you!”

“It isn’t! It’s about not accepting that there is no other way anymore! Maybe it’s time we MAKE another way!”

“I am done letting other people die or suffer, temporarily or not, because I was too scared to fail! Or too arrogant to think I knew the only way to win! No one else is dying for that! Not her, and not you!”

“After what I’ve done, you think I’m worth THAT?!”

“Yes! It’s better than believing death is the only path to redemption, or being a hero! Because it isn’t, Wanda! I have failed you so many times, but letting you believe THAT would be my ultimate blunder!”

“But I have to – ”

“Stop thinking about what you think you HAVE to do! What do you WANT to do?! Put everything else aside! Tell me, honestly, if it was only up to you, what would you want right now?!”

“I want to live!!”

Immediately after saying that, and realizing she didn’t just blurt something out to make Strange stop talking, Wanda realized it was true.

“But I want to make things right…” she deflated when the momentum broke and reality set in yet again.

“And you can do that and live at the same time. You’re the most powerful being in existence, Wanda. I don’t believe there’s anything you can’t do. Including making things right WITHOUT dying.”

“You’re wrong, Peter. There is nothing you can’t do.”

“So you want redemption? Don’t take the copout shortcut of death. Do what you’ve done after every horrible loss in your life. Get up off your ass and try again. If it fails, we can kill ourselves and him them…but at least we’ll have tried to live first.”

God…what the hell had Wanda missed from Strange when she wasn’t fighting him?

“Let’s let that be the first option instead of death for once! If anyone can make it work, it’s the most arrogant and the most powerful sorcerers of all time! Let’s stop just watching the future, or assuming the future, and just tell it –”

“No more.”

Wanda had slipped from Strange’s whip, while he was too busy monologuing to keep a tight grip. So between that and Wanda floating forward to look down at the Darkhold’s vortex – and at the face staring up at her from it – his newfound confidence took a hit.

Until she spoke again.

“No more destruction to this world. Or any world. No more hurting people out of grief. No more pushing away those who stand by me. No more of a life with nothing but pain. For me and who I love.”

“And right now? No. More. You.”

*****************************************************

She blasted the Darkhold without going in. She stood her ground until Strange flew over to join the attack. When they had to move, she went up to the sky and cast the most powerful spells she could, to erase the Darkhold’s magic in all the worlds it had invaded. By the time she finished, it had given Strange all the time he needed to weaken the monstrous evil below.

By the time they were both finished, the foe was angry enough to jump right out of the Darkhold. And get right in range for America to transport herself, and it, out of this universe.

Giving Wanda and Strange enough time to take the Darkhold, fly up to the edge of the atmosphere and toss the book into space. Being generous, Strange let Wanda do the honors of shooting the most powerful blast she could at the cursed bane of her existence – and savor it blowing up in the stars.

In return, when America returned to this universe with the enemy, Wanda was kind enough to let Strange deliver the death blow.

Once they’d all decided to live, there was no other outcome.

*****************************************************

“So what now? Do I turn myself in to your wizards, or the Illuminati?”

“Neither,” Strange corrected Wanda once the relief of victory died out.

“I need to smooth things over with both. And there’s a lot of rebuilding to do with both. But after this…I think if you lay low for a while, and I make some generous enough offers...I can get them to accept some leniencies on you.”

Yet another chance given that was only barely earned at the end, if that. But this time, it would be the last one. Wanda would make sure it was, even if they didn’t.

And there was only one way it had to start.

“Even if you can’t, can you just give me a little time? At least enough for me to…pay a visit somewhere.”

*******************************************

It took Wanda longer than she’d have liked to find that somewhere. She knew it’d be hard to find someone no one knew existed. Really, she was madder at herself for not working out the clues faster. Between that and not working out the holes in her memory faster…

There’d be time to dwell on that later. Probably more than enough time during this visit. Assuming she got the right name, apartment building and apartment number, she would know soon enough.

She knocked on the door, trying not to dwell on how she was likely the first person in six months to do this. To hope to talk to Peter Parker.

A hope put right on the line when the door opened.

Chapter Text

It was already clear this was one of those nights. Where Peter wasn’t sure if he couldn’t sleep, or just couldn’t bear to sleep. With each passing day, there were more nights where it was the latter.

So when he heard a knock, he was both too relieved to have a distraction, and too exhausted to bear the noise as well as he should.

“I thought he wasn’t gonna do these midnight rent runs anymore. At least after the third time I had it for him,” Peter grumbled, warming up to saying it out loud once he opened the door. Maybe he wouldn’t say that word for word, but he could use his grogginess as an excuse if called out.

It’s not like any of his other excuses for being grouchy would make sense. To him or anyone in the world.

Nevertheless, Peter suppressed himself – though his fake smile was getting closer to non-existent at this point – and opened up to face the impatient man at his door.

“Look, you know I’m good for it by now. Can’t you wake me at 4 am like a normal land…”

It wasn’t his landlord. It wasn’t a man. It was someone foreign, but someone with a far less consistent accent. Or maybe that was different since…

Nope. No. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen, she’s not even there. He’d just finally cracked, that’s all. He’d snap out of it once he slammed the door and she went away.

He gave the apparition 10 seconds to fade out. But once he opened the door again, he saw it wasn’t enough.

The spirit reached for the door, grazing his fingers before he could close it. It stopped him from crushing her fingers inside the door, at the minimum. Which shouldn’t have been a concern if her fingers weren’t solid or real.

Both of which they felt like when they touched him.

Then if Peter’s mind hadn’t gone so far to imagine the feel of human contact…

And if, IF, things weren’t so crazy that ghosts who could touch things were real, on top of everything else…

Then it was really Wan…

Then it was something way worse.

With Wanda’s fingers in the clear, Peter slammed the door and locked it as well as these cheap locks could lock. He felt in the clear for just over a second, until remembering who he was dealing with.

“Right, she can just poof in here! Locks mean nothing to her!” he groaned at his rusty memory, perhaps too loudly.

“I’m not going to break in,” he heard her say. Heard her voice for the first time in six months. The accent was still mostly gone, but if it still came back when she was more emotional, then how could he stand it if she…

No. He had to stand it. He stood it this far when she wasn’t here, he could stand it and her now. He had to. Because she couldn’t be here. Even if just seeing him didn’t break the spell, it was too risky.

Too risky for so many more reasons beyond that.

But there’s no other way. There’s no other way. There was no other way. There is no other way…

“Look Ms…Scarlet Witch, is it?” he played dumb, then decided to play even dumber.

“I don’t know who you think I am, but you can’t come in! I watch the Daily Bugle, I know your tricks! I know the truth! All those supplements made me wise to you!” Okay, that was either way too dumb or not dumb enough.

If Peter didn’t know Wanda could hear his thoughts, he would beg in his mind for her to go away, so this wouldn’t be any harder. Because it wasn’t any less necessary. Spell rules or not.

“Look, please…I can’t help with whatever you want. I have…GED homework.” He almost stopped himself from rehashing an old excuse, until he officially didn’t have a better one.

“You can’t be here…you don’t want to be here, trust me. And I don’t want…”

He couldn’t want. He wouldn’t. This was hard enough without…

“Please, just go…”

“Peter?”

*****************************************

….

That shattered him.

He didn’t think Wanda might have just taken a lucky guess. He didn’t think to correct her and say his name was Ben. Like he told everyone else it was ever since that one visit to…them.

He didn’t think to say whoever she thought it was, she had the wrong Peter. He didn’t think.

He couldn’t think. Not when he heard her say that name.

“What did you say?” he didn’t think enough to stop himself.

“Peter,” the voice behind the door said, like it was so easy. Easy to remember. Easy to say like that.

Say like she cared. Say it to him like she cared about him. Like there was someone who did.

Like no one had in six months.

Peter didn’t think. Not when he opened the door. It took everything he had just to talk without his voice cracking.

“Who do you think I am?”

“Peter Parker.”

He nearly collapsed. Not out of fear and panic that she might just know. Might just endanger the spell. Might just sign her own death warrant for knowing him. Like they would have if he’d been foolish enough to…

Like May did.

And yet when Peter heard Wanda say that name, he didn’t almost collapse and start backing up out of fear. Not of the spell being broken, anyway.

To hear that name said like that…said at all, for one thing, but said just like that…like she’d always said it until…

“…say it again…” he barely said. “Just like that…”

“Peter Parker,” she even said with that same smile now, as the door closed behind her all by itself.

“Who is that to you?”

“Peter Parker is my friend. And he’s a hero. More than he’ll ever…”

Now Wanda looked like the one struggling to go on. By instinct, even a long dormant one since that night – or perhaps since that day at the coffee shop – Peter wanted to go over to her. But he couldn’t.

Because…well, because…

“Peter Parker is a hero.”

….

Six months of holding back. Six months of living in a world that didn’t know him. Six months mourning her alone, without anyone he could possibly tell about it. Six months of clinging, for his very life, to the fact that there could never be any other way.

All it took was one person. One person to say those words. To mean them. One person just to say the name Peter Parker as if it meant something in this world. As if it could still be loved in this world. And to have that one person be…

That, just one time, was enough.

Enough for Peter to use what little power he had left to run into Wanda’s arms.

Enough that six months’ worth of pain and agony was sobbed out into her arms.

And wouldn’t stop coming out.

*******************************************

The first time Peter hugged Wanda, it was to stop a horrifying breakdown. The second was probably just to distract her, so she wouldn’t suspect he was going to see Strange. The first and only time Wanda hugged him was to say goodbye.

And now this.

Would there ever be a time where they didn’t need a crisis or a mental breakdown to hug each other? Or for reasons other than there was no one else around to do it? No one else who cared?

But it didn’t matter. Because there would be someday. If only because Wanda was never abandoning him again. For any reason.

No matter how tight his grip was now, and no matter how he stained her suit as he cried into it. She wasn’t letting go.

Not too long ago, these hands and these arms were poised to commit universal genocide. Even before that, almost no one would accuse Wanda of being warm and comforting – especially Wanda. Not outside of a dream, and not with flesh and blood born people.

Yet she held and sheltered a sobbing Peter with such unseasonable warmth, it was if she’d mastered it for years.

She gently guided him to sit with her beside his bed, without letting go. She didn’t say anything as Peter kept clinging to her, unwilling to break this up with words if he wouldn’t.

She held this utterly broken, utterly remarkable man in her arms, and didn’t let go out of guilt, her own intense sadness, or her unworthiness. She didn’t chastise herself that someone who almost ended all life had no right to comfort an innocent, in any way. She didn’t spiral that she was no good, let alone had no right, to do this for him.

She only held him, and soothed him as best she could, like it was the most natural thing in the world for her. Because with Peter, it was.

And nothing would make her forget it again.

*******************************************

Peter cried himself to sleep, so Wanda let herself sleep as well. They were still sitting next to and leaning against a bed, with their arms around each other – hardly the most comfortable possible position to sleep in around here. Assuming that bed of his was really more comfortable than it looked.

Regardless, Wanda drifted off into her dreams. Remarkably, they weren’t filled with nightmares of what she’d done, so they didn’t wake her up in a cold sweat. Rather, it was Peter’s mumbles that woke her up much more peacefully.

Until she could make those mumbles out.

“If I don’t let go, I don’t gotta wake up…I don’t let go, I don’t gotta wake up…I don’t let go, she won’t go…”

Wanda only opened her eyes enough to look down and see Peter’s were still closed. His head was lying on her shoulder, and he thankfully wasn’t drooling on it. But what was coming out of his mouth was far more sickening to her.

She might have been spared from nightmares tonight, yet she was the only one spared here.

She didn’t want to assume Peter was hugging her in his dreams too. It was far more likely he dreamed of hugging May, or MJ – and was willing himself not to wake up so he could do it a little while longer. Before they left him alone again.

“If I don’t let go, I won’t wake up yet and she won’t go…”

Wanda could have woken Peter up and showed him she was here for real. That when he woke up from now on, he wouldn’t be alone. But if he was hugging a dream May or MJ and she stopped him, he’d probably be more upset than relieved at her.

So she kept doing what she had all night, going into this morning.

She held him and shielded him from the waking world, stayed quiet instead of speaking words that wouldn’t be enough, and let the sensations of being needed, wanted and missed by a real person lull her into a rare moment of peace. As she was hopefully doing for him.

Either way, they each fell back into the longest, and least nightmarish, sleep any of them had in six months. If not much longer.

*********************************************

Peter woke up feeling something lumpy against him. Nothing new, really. Except it was something lumpy by his side, not underneath him.

He blinked his eyes slightly open, only to be blinded by something…red.

No. Not something.

For the first time in hours, Peter let go of Wanda. He only started to realize that once Wanda stirred and opened her eyes as well. Eyes that looked almost…real. And if they were real, then…

“I’m real, Peter,” he heard her say. “It wasn’t a dream.”

One touch of her hand against his, and the rest suddenly came back to him. The first time he assumed wrong that he dreamed and hallucinated her, the breakdown in her arms…the first peaceful sleep he had while dreaming May was still alive in months…

It was real. Wanda was real. And she remembered him.

Instead of sobbing uncontrollably again, Peter just backed up and got on his feet in shock. Now that he had a clear head to start thinking again, he could see the still lingering holes in this story.

“…how?” was the only word that made sense to ask. But with that one word, it was now Wanda’s turn to feel uneasy and uncertain.

Because telling him how meant telling him everything.

Yet she couldn’t come back to him and make things better –for either of them – with lies.

“Promise you’ll…at least try? Try not to think less of me?”

“You’re here. How could I?”

*******************************************

Wanda spent the next two hours – maybe closer to two-and-a-half – recapping events that would make anyone else dismiss her as a monster. Even those who clung to the opposite for so long, but surely had to stop being stubborn now.

“Oh my God…you were Dr. Osborn.”

From Peter, that was the most damning thing he could say. But it’s not like –

“No! I don’t mean it like that! You are not the Goblin!” Peter commanded her to listen. So forcefully that any comments about how Wanda nearly outdid Goblin’s body count by trillions stuck in her throat.

“Something in his mind made him…something else. It made him do stuff he wouldn’t do if his mind was right. I mean, I hope he isn’t doing that stuff now in his world. I need to believe he isn’t,” Peter briefly got sidetracked.

“But your mind wasn’t right either! If it worked like it should have, you wouldn’t have done any of that! That…thing that used you and took advantage of you? He was your Goblin.”

“But he didn’t control me,” Wanda corrected. “Osborn wasn’t there when the Goblin…did what he did. I was there. It wasn’t another personality that did those things. It was me. I did that to the sorcerers, Strange…the other Billy and Tommy…”

“Okay, but then the other Wanda got through to you. Then he took control of you, Goblin style, cause he knew what you’d do if he didn’t! Which is what you did when you remembered! You stopped him! Because you were Wanda again! And a Wanda Maximoff with all her memories, and all her right mind, is still a hero!”

“So like I said…how could I think less of you?”

It couldn’t be that simple. It couldn’t be waved away that easy. But as usual, Peter made it sound so easy to be kinder and more forgiving to herself.

“Especially when…oh…oh geez…oh, fu—”

Peter covered his mouth in time, but the damage was done. Once more, he could make someone be easier on herself, but himself was another matter entirely. This time, it would not stand.

“Peter, no. If I’m not fully responsible for it, then neither are you.”

“All I had to do was look for you…talk to you…and you wouldn’t have been responsible, in any part, for anything! He warped you into doing it because you didn’t remember everything! Because I didn’t find you! Because…I lied to you.”

“You didn’t lie.”

“How could you know that?!”

“Because I knew you were never going to tell me. Or them. I knew that day! You didn’t lie to me because I know you weren’t lying then! You didn’t betray me because I knew you’d change your mind, to protect them! And me! I knew all that would happen, and I let it happen, so don’t put it on you!”

“You…you saw all that coming, and you didn’t talk me out of it?” Peter asked, more confused than angry. “Why?”

“Because at the time, you and I thought it had to be done. Because…Wanda Maximoff is a hero. At least when it comes to you. I mean, remembering that in time saved every world…”

Peter paced the floor in leu of hugging her again, still trying to take it all in. Wanda let him, understanding better than anyone how insane this all was. Too insane to handle and bear alone.

And now…they didn’t have to.

“So now that I remember…they can too.”

But instead of looking confused, relieved or grateful, Peter snapped back towards her with a look she’d only seen once. At least in front of her, since she didn’t see his fight with Goblin up close.

A look of anger.

“No.”

*******************************************

It didn’t matter that Wanda remembered now. It wasn’t up to Peter whether she did or not, it seemed.

But it was still up to him about whether MJ and Ned could remember. And that still couldn’t happen. They didn’t have Nexus superpowers, or whatever it was, to protect them from what else would happen if they remembered. So they couldn’t remember.

Otherwise everything was for nothing. And that could not happen. For his sanity, that could not happen.

But Wanda wouldn’t listen. She kept insisting they could be protected. She kept insisting that Peter didn’t have to protect them alone.

“Yeah, well I protected May alone, didn’t I? And I protected MJ and Ned, until they almost fell to their deaths! So what do I do next time you’re gone in another dimension, huh?! You tell me!”

People can lose so much, they cling to the only idea they have to spare them from losing any more – even bad ideas. When that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, and that crippling fear returns, they can lash out real bad in sheer pain and desperation. If it has a chance to save them from that one last loss which could finally break them.

If they think they still have that chance, they’ll use any means to keep it. Even cruelly worded ones.

“You let me do this, remember?! So you don’t get to tell me how to live with it!”

“But you don’t have to. There is another way. There is always another way. You wouldn’t believe who just taught me that if I told you, but it’s true!”

“I don’t need another way. They’re fine. They’re alive. I’m alive. I’m fine.”

“Those are two very different things. And one isn’t more important than the other.”

“It only matters that they’re true. And it is. My GED’s on track. The money I’m saving up from Jameson is gonna pay off eventually. Spider-Man’s cleaning up the streets with no distractions. So it’s fine.”

“…tell me the middle part again. Now.”

When Peter told him about his day job at the Daily Bugle, it was Wanda’s turn to be angry. And then it was Peter’s turn to go from angry to furious.

“You worked for a multiverse demon to end the world! I work for my own worst enemy left! We both lost the right to badmouth someone else’s work choices! But if you forgot that, maybe I should too!”

People at the end of their rope, who don’t think they can or should start climbing their way out, can be very cruel. Crueler than they ever would be in better times. Sometimes that can drive them to end universes. Other times it makes them angry enough to take on people who can end universes.

Angry to hold things against them that they promised not to, just minutes earlier. Crippling, untreated fear and trauma can make it go that deep.

When such anger has been suppressed for months, and there’s no one that can ever know about it or help manage it, it doesn’t come out in a healthy way.

Peter and Wanda had only been angry at each other once. Yet back then, Peter’s anger faded away in seconds, and Wanda kept hers only long enough to push him away. But after these last six months, that Peter and that Wanda didn’t exist anymore.

Six months of solitude, self-punishment, and mourning and anger buried deep down just so Peter could keep standing. All of it was coming out, now that it finally had an outlet. There would be no instant apology, attempts to keep the peace or understand someone else better. Without wearing a mask, that Peter hadn’t been around for a good while – partly because of the woman taking his anger now.

And then pushing it right back out.

Six months of the worst waves of loneliness yet, broken memories, a sinister voice offering Wanda a family and a way out, and countless crimes committed against the fabric of reality. All the leftover anger and newly fresh anger from that time was coming out, now that it finally had an outlet. There would be no holding back for fear of losing Peter all over again – especially if he insisted on being and staying lost.

If this had gone on any longer, Wanda might have needed to cast a Hex around the apartment, so she couldn’t wreck it in frustration. But it was all still standing, including Peter’s police scanner.

Which put out an APB just in time for Peter to change his clothes in moments. Not one moment too soon.

“Peter!”

“Peter’s gone. Peter Parker doesn’t exist, and he can’t ever exist. For anyone. If you can’t accept losing him, go destroy a universe or force people to be on TV again. Just keep me out of it.”

The one formerly known as Peter Parker was indeed different now. But the one still calling herself Wanda Maximoff was too.

Because when she calmed down after Peter fled the apartment, she didn’t fall into guilt or grief. She didn’t lament that she corrupted or changed Peter, and she didn’t think he’d be better off if she was gone, or she never met him.

She did what she didn’t do the last time they fought. She stayed.

She stayed even when Peter didn’t come back, long after he’d stopped that crime. She stayed when the day turned to night. She stayed and meditated, resisting the urge to go looking for him. She stuck to her guns of waiting for him to come to her.

Even when she started hearing snippets of the voices and inner thoughts throughout New York during her meditation…and even when she heard a very familiar inner voice scream into the void of his head…she stayed.

She stayed when Peter finally returned late into the night. She stayed instead of actually talking to him, since he wasn’t ready or willing to talk to her either. She stayed in the corner of the room, meditating and waiting him out, until it would have been far too weird to stay in here any longer.

She poofed herself onto the roof to sleep through the night, leaving Peter to sleep and deal with his nightmares all alone again. But the next morning, she came back.

She knocked on the door, assured him she bought breakfast at a place 10 miles away from MJ’s workplace, and at least won Peter over enough to accept the food. They still ate it and drank their respective coffee in silence, with Wanda even biting her tongue about the old signed coffee cup on Peter’s table.

It still wasn’t ideal. But Wanda was still staying.

The time for thinking she and others were better off without her was finally over. The time where Peter thought no one needed or should want Peter Parker anymore…well, she would chip away at that time for as long as it took. And then longer.

“I’m not like you, Wanda.”

Okay. After that fight, there were a few ugly places he could go from there. But whatever one it was, Wanda wouldn’t budge.

“I’m not strong enough.”

She still wasn’t budging. But she was more confused than she’d prepared for.

“I guess now you remember the first reason I looked up to you. You kept getting up and finding someone. Even if it was only one person. And when you let someone new in anyway, you loved them with everything. Including me. So I know if he didn’t get in your head, you would have found and loved someone new. Or got powerful enough to remember on your own.”

“I couldn’t be you. I couldn’t get up and find someone, new or old, again. Not again. After that, and everything else…I’m not…s-strong enough. Not like you. Not anymore. So I know if I woke them up too, and then they died because I did…that would be it.”

Wanda didn’t ask what “it” meant. She didn’t want to know, but she did already. So much more than she could stand sharing. So much more than she could stand hearing Peter share.

“So please, don’t ask me to…I’m just not ready. And if I’m never ready, that has to be my choice. I know I’m taking away their choice too, I know! There’s no way I don’t by now! But I’m not…”

“I promise, Peter. I won’t make you see them,” Wanda conceded. If she couldn’t do everything she could for him, she could do that little bit.

“Does that mean you don’t want to see me too?” While she did swear to herself she’d never leave him, she should know just how much he would fight her on it.

“I guess it’s out of my hands now, isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t. If you really can’t have me here…you can tell me and I’ll go. I won’t yell. Just tell me the truth. If I still make you feel safe, you can tell me anything.”

Wanda was most likely bluffing about leaving. Yet she felt she could afford to, because she was so sure he wouldn’t tell her to go. If this was going to go anywhere, it had to start with trusting him, like she did before. Trusting him to make the right choice.

“I…I told you. I’m not strong enough. If I was, I’d tell you to go. But I can’t. I can’t go another round yelling things at you I don’t mean…things I don’t want to mean…”

“Asking someone to stay doesn’t make you weak. It makes you what you’ve been since I truly met you. The strongest Avenger alive. So much more than me.”

“That’s not possible. Wanda…I…”

“Apology accepted. If you’ll accept mine.”

“I…”

Peter couldn’t speak words out loud anymore. For the first time in six months, he settled for words in his mind only one person would hear.

“I really missed you…”

“And I you. My little…”

Even in her head, Wanda couldn’t muster enough strength to finish. Not that she didn’t mean it. But between the truth of it and the last time she let something like that slip, it was still too much. Two days removed from almost ending universes, it was still too much.

Yet after she carried the load of comforting him, Peter did feel strong enough to comfort Wanda. If only enough to hold her hand, while more silent tears than two nights ago ran down his face. But that little sign of strength meant everything.

She picked him up, and he picked her up too. She gave him just as much strength by being there for him as he did for her. That was how they had been since the beginning.

It’s how they should have been these last months. It’s how they still could be again. No matter how much one of them told themselves they could still live without it – until now.

“Can you stay for long?” Peter asked.

“I’m sure my apartment’s rental agreement expired by now. And I can always poof to the roof before your landlord spots me and asks for rent.”

“Okay, you are teaching me that trick, cover to cover.”

“Deal.” That much would be easy. Other more important things, maybe less so. At the moment.

“I won’t go near MJ or Ned. Or make you see them,” Wanda repeated. “But I still think, even though we lost family…that doesn’t mean we can never have one again. It doesn’t mean we can never deserve or earn one…or reach out to one right in front of us…again.”

“And not just a family of two.”

**********************************************

Peter didn’t follow up on that. By then, Wanda didn’t need him to.

They established a routine in those days. When Peter went out on patrol or to GED courses, Wanda house sat for him in between meditating, and relearning magic spells that didn’t come from the Darkhold. By the time he got back, she had dinner already ordered and ready, or just heated it up herself when he was out real late – which didn’t taste as weird as it should have.

Wanda slept on the roof when it was Peter’s bedtime, and by the end of the week, Peter even came up to watch the stars with her before going to bed. It was the first time he was up on a roof watching the sky with anyone in a while. Though it wasn’t the same for so many reasons, the companionship was as much of a long lost friend as…his long lost friend.

Not long after, Peter finally brought himself to tell Wanda exactly what she missed in the Mirror Dimension. All of it. Not only was it the first time he told her, it was the first time he’d told anyone since that night. With no one to tell, and no way to retell it without falling apart beyond repair…

Or so he thought.

He even got up under his own power when they went to May’s grave the next day. In fact, since Wanda had never been there this close up, and had never gone while knowing everything about why May mattered that much, he wound up helping her up more.

When they got back home, Peter admitted there were still days he wished he’d killed the Goblin, not cured him. And yet, there were other days he wished that somehow, someway, Norman Osborn was doing okay. Something Wanda could never imagine wishing for her enemies – the dead and the two still living.

One of which was in prison, the other likely still in a 50s TV housewife prison Wanda made. The only one she made in reality. Until recently, it was the most lasting damage she gladly did to someone since Ultron.

There were probably some important dots to connect there.

This was why compassion for monsters was so annoying. And only for the superhuman like Peter.

Case in point – if Peter didn’t think less of Wanda for being under a demonic creature’s influence, he admitted he couldn’t hold Norman as responsible now either. To which Wanda apologized half-kiddingly. And Peter accepted only half-kiddingly.

Wanda let herself share a little more about her latest sins, influenced or not, as well. She even made herself talk about the other Billy and Tommy, and the other Wanda – and how there really was no way she’d ever be a mother like her again. If she ever had been a mother like her.

Of course, Peter listened with understanding and as much absolution as he could give. Yet while Wanda could always rely on that from him, she still made herself remember it wasn’t enough.

At least not just from him.

Like after Tony’s funeral, extended time with each other after significant trauma had done some good. Far better than being alone, or keeping it inside for the sake of others and their own survival instinct, would have been. But they couldn’t only rely on each other.

If there was any chance Peter would ever share himself, his entire self, with the world again, he couldn’t just share it with Wanda alone. Yet in that case, Wanda had to set the example.

She had to do what she didn’t have the strength to do after Vis died. What she couldn’t bring herself to do after Westview and after turning Peter away. What she wasn’t equipped to do after the memory spell.

She had to open herself up to people who weren’t Peter again. To do that, there were a few things she had to do that she couldn’t do in Peter’s apartment. Things she couldn’t put off anymore anywhere.

*********************************************

“I did it! I did it!”

Peter barely remembered to hold off that cheer until he closed the door. Lest the landlord finally figure out there was someone living rent-free in his apartment that he could cheer to. And he’d probably be annoyed with him soon enough anyway.

“I quit the Bugle!” Peter put aside to cheer to Wanda anyway. “I told Jameson right to his face! I even held back just enough that I wouldn’t go viral! But I don’t have to hold back around him or see him anymore! Not unmasked, anyway! Hopefully!”

“That’s great! Right?” Wanda cheered as loud as Peter, before taking a second to think about it.

“Well, not when it comes to money or keeping this place, probably!” Peter still sounded exuberant again. “But…it was easier to accept working for him a few weeks ago than it was now.”

“Then that is great,” Wanda decided. “I’m glad I stuck around long enough to hear it.”

“Wait, stuck around?”

“I can easily stay here, without your landlord finding and charging me, forever. But I really shouldn’t. We both know that.”

“So…you’re leaving?”

“Not leaving leaving. There’s some things I need to do first. Things long overdue. Once I do, I’ll come back. Then we’ll both figure out where we go from there. Even if we don’t…there’s no scenario left where I don’t come back.”

“You really think we went through them all already?”

“All the ones that could stop me now.”

Peter laughed, and could afford to since he knew it wasn’t really a joke. And could maybe afford to trust again, if only a little, that someone would come back to him.

“Wanda, I…I don’t know what to say. Nothing I could say could…”

“I only did what you did for me. Many times over. Now it’s time I got off my ass and tried again out there.”

“Like you said, there’s nothing that should stop you now. Not even you. Or stubborn, unemployed, soon to be homeless Ben Parker too.”

“I’m not worried about Ben Parker. Especially if he runs into this other guy I know. Peter Parker. He…let’s just say I know exactly where I’d be if it wasn’t for him.”

“I think he knows someone like that too. And he’s so grateful he knows her again.”

There would indeed come a day where Peter would hug Wanda, and vice versa, without either of them doing it out of sadness, misery, desperation or distraction. Like they were just two regular friends – closer to family, really – giving a normal, every day greeting or a temporary goodbye.

That day was today.

When it was over, Peter stood back and in the clear. “I’ll be seeing you, Peter Parker,” Wanda said, standing by herself for the time being.

“I can’t wait, Wanda Maximoff.”

He knew damn well he could. But this time, it would be bearable. Yet once Wanda disappeared, Peter was all alone again.

Living alone in an apartment he probably couldn’t afford for much longer. Unemployed in New York, armed with only a pending GED and a resume with absolutely no recommendations. Still completely convinced there were two people in this city he absolutely could not, would not see again. Fighting as a masked vigilante that 30 percent of the public still hated, out of stubbornness and spite at this point.

He was still a young man pretending to be someone else, by day and by night. Still only known for the last six months, if he was known at all, as Ben Parker.

But at this moment, Ben Parker had never felt better. Or less alone.

Chapter Text

I AM

That, even more than the name Vision Maximoff, was what struck Wanda when she finally read Vision’s headstone.

Since she’d been so checked out by the end of funeral preparations, she left details like names and words on Vision’s grave to the others. By process of elimination, since everyone else at Vision’s birth was either dead or gone, it had to be Clint who chose those two words.

Those two perfect words.

“I’m not Ultron. I am not Jarvis. I am…I am.”

Leaving aside how Wanda herself said she saw nothing but annihilation in Vision two seconds later. Leaving aside how his first two words to her, “Look again,” can and had been interpreted into something deeper…something with more longing…many times over the years.

Take all that out and “I am” was really the first time Vision showed himself as something more. The first time most of the humans near him could conceive him as something more, even if they still needed reassurances. That was the first kernel of the Vision they cared for – or loved – and then mourned. Or would have mourned.

Wanda went to such dangerous lengths not to have to come here when he was laid to rest. She buried herself in knowledge, self-protection and worrying about Peter so she wouldn’t have to come here later. When Peter was forgotten, her boys were all that was left to cling to – for one reason or another – while their father was still buried to Wanda in more ways than one.

She had run the gamut of heroism and monstrous villainy since Vision was put here. Yet the one thing she could not do until now was come here. It took her doing all that and becoming all this to get her here.

The woman now standing on Vision’s grave, was so much more different than the one who would have stood on it the day it was filled. She didn’t want to begin to guess how much, or how little, Vision would recognize her now. But maybe she had to.

She wasn’t what Vision was, or what the other Avengers were. She wasn’t what destiny and the Darkhold intended. She wasn’t as good as Peter, as devoted to a bigger cause as Strange, as power hungry as Agatha, as lost in rage as Ultron, or as lustful for destruction as the Scarlet Witch the Darkhold promised. She was…

She was.

And now at last, in all that she was, she could be a woman longing to talk to the man she loved again.

“Hello, Vis…”

She fell to her knees in front of the headstone, leaned her forehead on the top, kissed and said “I love you…” in every language she could say it.

“I have so much to tell you…” she whispered to English. “So much you’d be ashamed of me for. So much you’d be proud of me for. So much I…never thought I could do without you. The bad…and especially the good.”

“But…maybe this story really starts with a boy. Like most stories they think is worth telling. In this rare case, they’d be right.”

“His name…his real name…is Peter Parker.”

********************************************

“Wanda sought closure from her past, when he finally saw her husband again. But she had no idea about the future she’d given birth to as well.”

“She did know she finally couldn’t go forward, truly forward, until she came here. She had more than a few important tasks lined up after she did. But in this moment of bittersweet sorrow, she had no idea just how successful her missions would become. For herself and many more.”

“One of those missions took her right back to a place she’d almost destroyed. Yet this time, she came to repair. In a way.”

********************************************

“I’d ask how you could possibly get in here. But that would be truly pointless, wouldn’t it?” Strange resigned himself to the sight of Wanda in his study at Kamar-Taj.

“You do know I’m still smoothing things over from your last…visit here. Between that, settling into the Illuminati and training America? Let’s just say I only have so much time and energy to spare. So I hope you put some thought into this.”

“Then please think this through for me. Why did you stop me from sacrificing myself?” Wanda laid the groundwork.

“I think I spelled it out pretty thoroughly. More than I probably should have got away with.”

“You were tired of accepting sacrifice to save the universe. But why? It couldn’t have just been because of me. Or America, Stark, or the Blip. It was something else, wasn’t it? Something else you couldn’t name or describe…but something deep down, something buried, that told you enough was enough.”

“Out of everything you let happen for a greater good…something else told you you’ve done it too many times already. And that I was the last straw…at least the last one you could remember. Wasn’t it?”

“That…isn’t the craziest thing I’ve heard lately…” Strange conceded that much.

“Then maybe this won’t be either,” Wanda hoped as she came closer to him.

“I have no right to ask this of you. But if you really believe there’s something else…something forgotten…that made you want to stop letting one person suffer for everyone else…I think I can uncover it for you. I understand if you don’t want me in there. But I’m not asking for me.”

Strange understandably took his time thinking about it. Maybe more time than Wanda had earned, as far as he knew.

“…all right. I will choose to trust you.”

That was truly the hard part. Once Wanda was granted access to his head, the rest was quite easy. For a spell that affected the entire world, breaking it inside one person was really basic – whether that spoke more about her or Strange’s spellcasting.

Either way, she’d gladly take it. Pending Strange stumbling around as he grasped all his forgotten memories again. And all those who starred alongside him in them.

“Parker…” Strange muttered as Wanda gladly took it in. “Peter…Parker. The spell…then the other spell…oh.”

Yep, Wanda had clearly unlocked them all.

“This fills so many gaps…” Strange gasped in recognition. “With me, the multiverse cracks…and…and you,” he gasped harder as he remembered she was there. Remembered so much more about her that made sense now.

“He got to you because you couldn’t remember. Because I made you forget. And then…”

Wanda had considered Strange to be more machine than man, much more than Vis ever was, when they fully met. Back when he made her give up the Darkhold – the last potential means of getting her family back – right after she lost them by waking up from Westview. Despite time proving him incredibly right, Wanda could never shake that first impression, even when they were on the same side.

Until this moment.

“Wanda…I am so sorry,” he apologized and looked every bit like he meant it. So there was nothing Wanda could say, except what she longed to be told herself for her mistakes.

“I forgive you.”

She let Stephen absorb her absolution, until she had to make sure of something else. “It doesn’t mean you have to forgive me too.”

“Let’s agree to disagree. For once.”

“Well, if you insist…there is something else you can do for me.” Wanda then pulled out a piece of paper containing the real reason she was here.

“Go see him, Stephen,” Wanda instructed, once he read and absorbed his next destination.

“And my advice? Don’t go alone.”

************************************************

“Ste - Stephen? I mean, Strange? I mean, Dr. Stephen Strange? I mean – ”

“My God, if I could forget that rambling, it must have been the most powerful spell of all time,” Strange greeted as he stepped into Peter’s apartment and closed the portal behind him. Both of them.

“And yet, I’m somehow still relieved it wasn’t powerful enough…Parker.”

“You…you know me? But, but…oh…Wanda made you remember?”

“You know any other freaky red witches?” America checked. “But I guess if I knew you did then, I wouldn’t know now, right? Is that how it worked?”

“I…who are you?” Peter asked her before getting closer.

“And…wow, where did you get that coat?”

********************************************

“While Peter reunited with Stephen Strange and united with America Chavez, Wanda had another reunion of her own. With someone else who’d gotten a new name and job title since the last time they’d met.”

**********************************************

“Cap,” Wanda addressed Sam once he landed.

“Wanda…” Sam started with surprise and ended with warmth in the same word. He then looked her own new costume over after she was done looking over his. “I guess we both got some upgrades lately.”

“Not by choice at first. For either of us,” Wanda linked. “But you seem to be settling in now.”

“I’m getting there.”

“But you didn’t do it alone, right? I mean…aside from Bucky. Right?”

“Do you mean other service people? Other Avengers? Family? Or…”

“Yes,” Wanda stopped right there while she still could. While she could gather herself to take this next hard step.

“I need help, Sam. The things I’ve done, the things I lost…I can’t just unload them on one young man anymore. Do you still know people…professional people…who could listen to me? And who wouldn’t…send me away when I tell them everything?”

Although Wanda wasn’t wholly forthcoming – one of the first things she’d have to work on, probably – Sam didn’t question it. He just smiled in a certain way, and made her feel protected in a certain way, that Wanda had only associated with his predecessor before.

“There’s a few I’ve been waiting to send your way.”

******************************************************

“There were some awkward steps early on, when Wanda apologized to her new therapist for almost killing her with everyone else weeks ago.”

“Nonetheless, time and some very strict NDA’s made Wanda feel safe enough to keep talking to her. About that, and many other things she could only talk about with two people in the last several years. And some she couldn’t even share with them.”

“Once they had a weekly schedule worked out, it gave Wanda the last bit of courage she needed for her next call.”

****************************************************

“Hello? Clint?”

“Wanda? Oh my God, I...he’s out right now, but I can – ”

“No, it’s okay…I, I wanted to hear you too, Laura.”

“It’s been so long…if you’re reaching out now, how bad is it?”

“No, it’s not like that. Not anymore, I think…I hope. But…if it’s all right, could I…could I come see you? Both of you? You can send the kids away if it’s too –”

“We all miss you, Wanda. And we’d all be tickled pink…or red, I guess you prefer now…to see you again.”

“So much so that…maybe I could bring someone else? You don’t know him, in more ways than one. But he’d never tell anyone where you are! He’s bigger on secrets than you guys, trust me!”

“If you trust him, we have no choice but to see for ourselves, don’t we?”

“Thank you…I guess I’ll see you soon.”

“Oh wait, if it’s before tomorrow, then – ” But that was as far as Laura got before the dial tone interrupted her.

********************************************

“Shortly thereafter, Wanda kept her promise and returned to Peter. By then, he had plenty of stories to tell about Stephen and America. Particularly when America took him through the multiverse and let him catch up with his Spider-brothers. And promised if he needed to go back and see people that weren’t Spider-men, no matter how difficult it might be, she’d be there.”

“Wanda did insist she didn’t send Strange to make a case for restoring MJ and Ned’s memories. She did tell Peter that sharing his secret with another hero, who could protect themselves and who barely knew he was Spider-Man the first time, might be a small step forward.”

“Especially if it meant he could come with her for extra moral support.”

************************************************

Once the coast was clear and she was sure no one, not even a stray farm animal, was watching either of them, Wanda knocked on Clint’s front door. This time, when she made contact expecting to get Clint, he was there.

“Wanda…” Clint said with that same shock turned relief Sam had, even though he knew she was coming. “Ah, come here…well, I guess I can’t say kid anymore, so…”

Wanda hugged him before he thought up any alternatives. Once she saw Laura, she got over to her before she could get her first “sweetheart” out. In the meantime, fourth wheel Peter slipped his way inside and shut the door.

“I have so much to tell you…” Wanda started telling the Bartons. “But let’s start with something simple. I promised myself I’d never let anyone go in Clint’s mind again. Especially me. So you’ll have to take our word on this one.”

“When you put it like that, how can we refuse?” Clint urged her along, noticing Wanda’s other companion right as she brought him closer.

“This is my friend, Peter Parker. But he’s much better known as someone else.”

As he’d been instructed, Peter took that cue and pulled out his mask, slipping it on his head to start convincing the Bartons. To make sure it sunk in, he leaped up and stuck his hand to the roof, hanging off it to complete the introduction.

“Holy ssssss….spider! Man! Man, you’re Spider-Man, man!”

An introduction that had an unforeseen audience member. A young female one.

“Okay, I wasn’t gone that long. So that’s not Lila, right?” Wanda tried doing the math.

“Trust me, Lila wishes it was the other way around,” Clint only barely cleared up.

“Right, this is what I didn’t clear up before you hung up,” Laura was a bit more helpful. “Wanda…other super kid…this is our other visiting house guest, Kate.”

“His name’s Spider-Man, not kid. Though I guess now…that’s either false advertising or the most genius branding yet,” Kate conceded as Peter fell back onto his feet. Only to promptly almost jump out of them again.

“What is this about spiders? If you’re implying I didn’t kill them all last visit, you’d better be ready to...”

Whatever the newly arrived blonde girl was going to say next, she finished it in another language when she saw the crowd in the living room. A language so close to a long dead one, it made Wanda mutter her next words in it. Ones the blonde girl understood perfectly, which almost surprised her as much as Wanda.

“And that would be our other visiting guest, Yelena,” Laura filled in. “So…now that role call’s over, should we sit at attention?”

**********************************************

“Wanda hoped that Clint, Laura and their family could ease her and Peter into remembering what a family felt like. What Kate Bishop and Yelena Belova did for them went beyond that.”

“As two local New York heroes who lost loved ones, and tried to pick up heroic mantles afterwards, Peter and Kate became thick as thieves in almost no time. In fact, when they returned to New York, Peter got to feel like the experienced hero with wisdom to pass down, for once. Of course, it didn’t mean they weren’t equal agents of chaos in their team-ups.”

“Just as important, when Kate officially became Bishop Securities’ new CEO, she had broad hiring power. Enough to hire a new college student named Ben Parker for part-time work at the R&D department. And if Spider-Man was seen near Bishop Securities during his patrols afterwards? Thankfully no one connected too many dots.”

“The connective dots were even greater between Wanda and Yelena. Two foreign born girls who lost their innocence too quickly, lost their siblings too soon, had the deepest red on their ledgers, and were lost on how to even start scrubbing it. Nonetheless, when Yelena found another Avenger who knew her sister, and when Wanda found another woman who’d survived her own crucible, it felt a little less daunting.”

“Even and especially without words, each of them drew extra strength from the other. And though Wanda wouldn’t dare pitch therapy to Yelena, some of its tricks helped to guide her through more than a few of her rough patches.”

“But while Peter and Kate, Wanda and Yelena, and of course Kate and Yelena seemed like more fitting matches on paper…it was still Peter and Wanda who were the closest knit duo of all. Even as more contenders kept coming in.”

“Peter and Wanda didn’t realize, until it was too late, just how many new heroes they would come to know. And how many would draw inspiration from them. America, Kate and Yelena were just the start. For then came Cassie, Kamala, Riri and Elijah to name a few. Then came the return of older heroes like Carol and Monica, for good measure. And from Peter’s college, eventually Miles and Gwen.”

“And eventually, from the first battleground of the Multiversal Wars…an orphaned Billy and Tommy Maximoff.”

“But well before that, the roster of new and old heroes had already grown so much. Peter mainly stuck to his own local battles, while Wanda was soon brought in to monitor multiversal threats with Strange. And other more surprising allies to come.”

“Yet in between, though they weren’t official Avengers anymore, Spider-Man and Scarlet Witch were an unofficial beacon to the newest generation. And they to them in return.”

“In fact, they made Peter feel like a part of a new, wider family, who could have his back for anything. So much so…he couldn’t ignore anymore that it was still missing two people. That everything good in his life was still two people short of being complete.”

“And so, almost a year after the memory spell was cast…Peter finally gave his permission to wake two people up from it.”

**************************************************

When the coast was clear and they were the only ones seen in this secluded corner of the MIT campus, Wanda began the process.

By now this was old hat for Wanda, though she hadn’t done this in a while. But restoring memories for Strange, Sam, the Bartons and all the others had meant nothing. Not compared to this, and not after how long overdue it was.

Her hands briefly trembled against MJ’s head, as the nerves and the stakes of this started weighing on her. After all it took this last year for Peter to approve this, let alone what it took for MJ and Ned to agree to this today, it almost made sense for Wanda to screw up now.

Like it would have made sense for her to imprison Westview for real. Or destroy the multiverse. Yet because she had someone there, or the restored memories of someone there, it didn’t happen.

Now, when it was finally time to make them completely even, failure would not happen here. And after a few more mental untanglements, it wouldn’t.

Wanda did hold her breath when the process was done, and MJ just gasped and nearly fell over for the first several moments. Peter was still too frozen to do anything, while Ned was still too confused. So Wanda stood in the line of fire for whatever MJ would do next.

She’d imagined so many different reactions from MJ in this moment. Joy at Peter, indifference barely disguising joy at Peter, sheer anger at Peter, sheer anger followed by joy at Peter, every other combination of those things and a few more…

“Wanda!”

But she never guessed MJ’s first act would be to hug Wanda. Though anyone would have considered that a long shot.

“Hi to you too…” Wanda trailed off, befuddled but very lightly hugging back.

“I had to get this out of the way,” MJ whispered. “Cause once I start hugging, kissing and strangling the life out of him, I’m gonna forget you’re here for a while. Is that cool?”

“The coolest.”

“Thanks. Missed ya,” MJ said sincerely. But Wanda knew she was saving up her words – happy and furious ones – for him.

Once Wanda let go and let MJ head over to Peter, she almost felt out of place listening in. After all that time hoping for this, she should have been glued to the action. Yet this reunion, in all its love and other heated emotions, was not about her.

So instead of eavesdropping, she distracted herself with the other out of place spectator. Until she restored his memories and made him remember his true place in this after all.

“Wanda!” Ned was too overwhelmed to be more formal. Or say many more words once he remembered everyone else. “Oh God, I, uh…”

“Go. She’s about done shaking him around by now.”

“Save some for me!” Ned blew past Wanda, leaving her all alone. But in this example, she wouldn’t let Peter convince her she shouldn’t be alone. Not when he finally wasn’t alone anymore.

No matter how many people had picked him up this last year, including Wanda, at least some part of him had been lonely until this very moment. A moment that should be just for them.

Wanda disappeared from the reunited trio, and just went aimlessly through the city – both on foot and in the air – to pass the time until Peter was free again. In those travels, she found herself flying above Midtown before sunset.

Where three other people were somewhere above ground as well.

Wanda didn’t fly away in time before Peter, MJ and Ned looked up from the school roof and spotted her. They waved her over until Wanda figured she should at least come down and apologize for interrupting.

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to get in the way,” she started.

“Then stop trying not to try and come over here,” MJ beckoned. Peter and Ned came over and pulled her over to their spot, trusting she wouldn’t just poof away. With more of a grip on things, she might have.

But when Wanda was plopped down on Peter’s left, before MJ sat back down to her right and Ned moved next to her, any fight left her. With Peter’s next words, it would never come back.

“There. Finally. Now my family is here.”

Wanda basked in unimaginable warmth and power that had nothing to do with magic for a minute. The next minute, she stopped to wonder if Peter meant his whole family was here now, though they weren’t planning to restore Hogan’s memory until tomorrow.

Even leaving him aside…it still meant only his living family was here now. Which the others seemed to start taking in before she did.

“To May…” MJ spoke up. With her memories back, she could only now start to mourn her too. If she didn’t lay into Peter about that before, she would soon. But for now, her and Ned stayed more somber than upset.

“To May…” Ned echoed.

Peter stayed quiet, mourning and remembering May with more than one person for the first time since…the last time him, MJ and Ned were on this roof. This time, however, only Wanda was with them too instead of his other/brother selves.

No inspirational speeches, magical boxes or villain cures were in the mix now either. He just got to stay seated, with MJ holding his hand on one side, Wanda holding the other, and Ned not going anywhere as they watched the sun set.

Wanda took another look at the boy who, long ago, wouldn’t let her watch the sun set alone after losing her great love. Who wouldn’t let her mourn and remember alone that day, or in the days that followed. No one even needed to tell him what tragedies, calamity and apocalypses she might have caused if he didn’t – assuming he’d even believe she would either way.

At long last, Wanda looked to him and finally felt even. As if he would care if they were either way.

At long last, she could look out at a world still standing, and say she was still standing and meant it too.

At long last, she could say confidentially she was still standing. With her family.

Just as her little brother, in all but name, could finally believe with his big sister in all but name too.

***********************************************

“Of course, that’s just one possibility. Surrounded by a sea of far darker ones.”

“It is easy to credit the fates, destiny, or something crueler, when such outcomes seem so rare. It is certainly easier to criticize from certain positions than it is in others. All manner of malice, intentional or otherwise, can make certain people feel like the punching bag of universes. Whether they are chosen by a spider or a damned prophecy.”

“But as overwhelming as those perceptions can be, it doesn’t take overwhelming force to change them. Sometimes it just takes one small act of thinking differently. Then another. And then another.”

“Sometimes it just takes simple human compassion, to give people simple human comfort when they need it most. Sometimes it just takes remembering them, whether worldly or otherworldly forces stand in the way. And sometimes when you help someone, it helps more people than you can imagine too.”

“Sometimes to think differently about someone, to reach out to someone and to change someone’s fate…including one’s own…it doesn’t take superhuman abilities. All it may take is being willing to answer one simple question.”

“…what if?”

**********************************************

Before embarking on a future she couldn’t imagine now, Wanda gave one more goodbye – but not a final goodbye – to the past she could finally bear to endure again.

She kissed Vision’s stone one more time, whispered a few prayers in Sokovian and Hebrew, and was ready to stand once more.

Though she wasn’t standing alone. Or even crying the loudest right now.

“Oh, sorry! I always cry at funeral stuff! Not as much as at my own wedding! But if you saw Ralph, you’d get why it was pretty close!”

Wanda turned to the woman who still believed she was Agnes. Who as far as she knew, had never met Wanda or any version of Vision. Who as far as she knew, had been brought here because she won a contest for a vacation, with double the length of hijinks she’d have at home.

But Wanda knew better. Probably didn’t know completely better, considering what she was about to do. Yet in spite of everything…maybe now, the best way to leave any trace villainy behind, was to cure more than just herself of villainy. And not with a villain-adjacent, mind-altering shortcut.

Which first meant taking away her alter ego, and letting Agnes be who she really was again. And with one tap to her forehead, her clothing and hairstyle morphed right back into that of Agatha Harkness. Moments later, her mind caught up to it as well.

When it did, she gathered her marbles enough to notice Wanda, now changed back into her own regular costume. “You…you’re…”

“I am what you said I am. I am the Scarlet Witch. In all her power. And the world is still standing anyway. So if you still want my magic…that’s not going to happen,” Wanda warned, glowing bright enough to eliminate all doubt.

“Okay…so what then? You woke me up to gloat? To brag?”

“No.”

Wanda powered down, changing back into her day clothes instead of meeting Agatha’s taunts. Instead of doing anything the Darkhold predicted – and she predicted in her darkest moments – she would do.

Now with so much more on her side, at last, Wanda looked ahead at Agatha.

Looked at her without knowing the future. Without foreseeing visits to Agatha’s cabin, learning magical tricks not from the Darkhold, or from the Kamar-Taj wizards she’d burned too many bridges with. Ensuring Agatha behaved, by at least giving her some proximity to power she’d never be powerful enough to steal.

Bringing her along when Strange encountered beings called Sylvie, Mobius, and one that even called himself Loki – then first heard the name Kang. Forging a multiversal team to protect and fight alongside the Earth team/family Wanda adopted. To say nothing of the twins she would adopt later.

Wanda saw none of this when she looked at Agatha. Saw none of her formerly impossible future ahead. At this point, all she saw was the last standing symbol of her miserable, traumatized past.

And she smiled at it.

“To change our fates.”

THE END