Chapter Text
The orchards are always quiet. Not so much as a breeze rustles the leaves of the apple trees.
Wanda Maximoff uses her physical body to tend them while her astral self studies the Darkhold. Its pages are filled with spells, incantations, instructions—the power to do things she’s never imagined, to travel to places she didn’t know existed. In it, she finds more than just knowledge—she finds possibilities. She finds a glimmer of something like hope. Something to push back the yawning chasm of emptiness inside her.
She’s made too many mistakes, and those are all that matter to the world. She tried to be a hero. Tried to be part of a team. Tried to save the universe. Gave more than anyone should ever have to. None of it mattered in the end. The world only remembered her mistakes. The bad things she’d done. The people she’d hurt.
And the team fell apart. They told her they were her family, but when she most needed them, none of the Avengers were anywhere to be found. Her loss meant nothing to them. No one stood by her in the aftermath. They let SWORD take Vision, treat him like a weapon to be dismantled, an object instead of a person who'd sacrificed his life for them. They didn’t care. She was alone. Her true family was dead, and she had no other.
It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need the people who claimed she was family and then discarded her. Relying on anyone else for help was a fool’s errand. Wanda has only herself.
Herself and her power. Her magic.
The Darkhold.
That’s all she needs.
Wanda doesn’t so much read the Darkhold as she absorbs it. She sinks inside it, drawing its knowledge into the nerve endings of her power, letting them mingle, magic sparking through her body, electric and sharp.
The Book of the Damned whispers to her in the night. Even when she puts it down for a moment, rejoins with her physical self, she senses it within her, like an ache at the base of her skull. A familiar pain. It’s grown over time—she thinks—so slowly she’s not entirely sure. Maybe it’s the same as the day she first opened the book. Maybe she’s imagining its growing presence in her mind.
What do you want? Monica asks, an echo in her memory.
I have what I want. And no one will ever take it from me again.
Something twists like a knife inside her. She had it. Then she lost it. Again. The cost was too great. Wanda didn’t want to see the truth of that. She fought not to see it, mind twisting and bending to convince herself she wasn’t hurting anyone.
Monica Rambeau tried to tell her. Vision, the one she created, he confronted her about it. When she wouldn’t listen to them, Agatha Harkness forced her to see it.
So she gave up everything. Again. She lost them.
The Darkhold murmurs to her. It shows her the power she could hold. That she does hold. You can fix this, it tells her. You can save them. You can have them back. You deserve it.
But when she closes the book and comes up for air, surfaces back into the real world, the silence of it presses in on her. She’s alone. She’s been alone for months. Has it been more than a year? Wanda’s not sure. The passage of time hasn’t been worth her notice.
A tiny thread of doubt curls within her. Agatha’s voice, taunting her. It’s your destiny to destroy the world.
Sometimes she thinks she should close the Darkhold. Put it away. Lock it up somewhere no one will ever find it. Or maybe she should destroy it. The book is dangerous. Wanda can sense that, sense its power. She feels it settling over her skin like a thin sheen of oil.
But it’s all she has.
And she’s stronger than the Darkhold.
Her power is immense. She feels it, curling and warm beneath her skin, humming in every cell. It’s always been there, but now Wanda is acutely aware of it. It no longer feels like this wild thing she struggles to understand. She holds it easily. Molds it into whatever she needs. It’s hers to command.
With the knowledge of the Darkhold at her fingertips, she is no longer lacking in anything. Wanda allows herself the slightest murmur of hope. That one day maybe she won’t have to be alone anymore.
Her eyes close, and she can see them. Vision and Pietro. Her parents. Tommy and Billy. It hurts, but she breathes slowly, lets the pain of their loss seep into her. She doesn’t run from it. She lets it fuel her.
She’ll see them again. She’ll find a way.
The Darkhold will show her.
~ ~ ~
America Chavez pressed herself against the cold gray brick of a pizza shop, desperately trying not to breathe. Her lungs screamed for air, a wisp of a breath curling like white smoke in front of her before it vanished. She’d been running for too long to feel the chill, but tiny ice crystals had formed on her eyelashes. Flattening herself into the shadows between a dumpster and a pile of old packing crates, she willed her heart to stop pounding so loudly.
Something huge and foul shuffled against the pavement. America froze, teeth clenched. She was so sick of this.
After several excruciating seconds, she heard the thing chuffing away, out of the alley, its footsteps deceptively slow. This latest monster must not have much of a sense of smell. Either that or the dumpster had obscured the scent of her sweat and blood. America experimentally ran her tongue over her lip, and yep, there it was. A swollen, copper ridge where she’d bitten right through when the damn creature had thrown her into a wall. She’d thrown a good solid punch into its stomach region, and it hadn’t liked that very much.
America didn’t trust the monster’s retreat. She waited and waited, so long her stomach started to growl.
Ugh. She hadn’t even had time to grab a meal in this universe before the monster had found her this time. They were tracking her somehow. And they were getting better at it.
Carefully, she stepped away from her hiding spot. The screams of sirens and car horns, music and people shouting, laughing, talking, drifted toward her, close and undisturbed by any supernatural horrors. America moved cautiously, every sense on high alert, fists curled and ready, but nothing came at her, not even when she slipped out onto the sidewalk and ambled to the front door of the pizza place.
She hadn’t gotten to look around this universe much yet, but she’d already figured out that the alphabet here was completely different from the one she’d learned. Everyone spoke English in this version of Jersey City, but with an unfamiliar accent and nearly unintelligible slang.
Catching sight of her reflection in the window, America grimaced. She looked like she’d been hit by a truck—except a truck would have been better. It wouldn’t have chased her halfway through the city. She loitered for a few minutes, smoothing her hair and trying to rub some of the dirt off her rumpled clothes, watching a group of four people go inside and order. She didn’t see them hand over any payment, which was a relief. America hated universes where the food wasn’t free. That was rare, but you never knew.
She went inside, ordered an entire pizza for herself—they were square here—and slouched at a table in a corner farthest from the entrance, eating as quickly as she could. Some guy with lavender-tinted skin gave her one too many glances, so America slowed it down a bit. Her stomach growled audibly. When she was done, she made her way to the bathroom, locking herself in and taking stock of herself in the mirror.
Not great. She’d tried to fix her hair, but it had been a few days since she’d had access to a shower. Gross. The hair was really the least of her problems. She wanted a bath, a change of clothes, and a nice warm bed where she could sleep for a week.
For a long moment, America stared at the mirror, hardly moving. Now that she’d ditched the monster for a bit and had a meal, her thoughts began to catch up to her.
She was in a lot of trouble.
The first monster had caught her off guard. It was a hulking thing that looked like it was made of oozing black tar. No face, just empty pits for eyes. As big around as a tree trunk, with heavy, stumpy arms and legs that moved faster than a person could blink when the thing was really going. America had never seen anything like it before, and she’d seen a lot of weird shit.
The universe she’d been living in didn’t have anything that looked like it, natural or unnatural, organic or robotic. That version of Earth tended to attract some weird creatures from time to time, but they usually came from space. This thing had just sprung up out of the ground when America was walking through the park to get home.
It had been the first of many. She was up to seven now. It had been almost a month. At least, America thought it had. Hard to keep track of time when you were blasting through universes at random, terrified for your life.
She’d gotten four days to acclimate to the new universe before a second monster showed up. It chased her up the spire of a skyscraper and knocked her over the balcony. America supposed she should be glad it had. It had terrified her powers into working, opening up a portal to the in-between space and smashing her through universes like a cannonball. If cannonballs could scream and curse.
After the third one found her, America had to admit she was being chased. Hunted.
These things were after her.
At first, she thought they were trying to kill her. But the fourth one cornered her in the lobby of an office building covered in vines, landing a punch to the side of her head that made her black out. When America woke, it had hoisted her over its shoulder and was halfway down the block. No one bothered it because in this universe, the entire tristate area appeared to have been abandoned long ago, trees and vines and moss growing over the crumbling, empty buildings. If it had wanted her dead, it had definitely had plenty of time to make that happen while she was unconscious.
America had launched herself off the thing so fast it hadn’t even turned around by the time she landed on the ground. She felt a crackling warmth over her skin, her powers activating, letting her move inhumanly fast, giving the punches she threw the force of a speeding truck. But the creature never got close. Terror seized her after such a close call, a star-shaped portal cracking open, and she was gone.
She’d been running from them ever since. And America wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep going.
Blinking in the mirror, taking in her own exhausted, dazed expression, she knew she needed to do something.
She did her best to clean up in the sink, stripping off her clothes and scrubbing the worst of the blood and dirt out of them. America hurried, not wanting to be trapped in here if someone started banging on the door, demanding to use the restroom. No time to rinse her hair. And she was tired. She needed to find somewhere to sleep, and preferably not a park bench again.
She missed her own bed.
Her eyes brimmed quite suddenly with tears, and America sniffed hard, wiping them away with the back of her hand before they could spill over. No crying. Not now. She schooled her expression into her best determined stare. I’ve got this.
Back in the restaurant, her table had already been cleared of its empty dishes.
“Thanks for coming!” the person at the counter said cheerfully, and America managed a faint smile in return before escaping onto the sidewalk. She headed for the noise of downtown, the voices and the honking horns. Being near people was safest, as long as she could find a place to take a nap where she wouldn’t be disturbed. Some universes, this was easy, but in others, letting your guard down in public was a bad idea. America didn’t know what kind of place this one was yet.
Her feet trudged along the sidewalk. She started to shiver, tugging her jean jacket tighter around her. Sleeping outside was going to suck.
A slight breeze curled around her, the streetlights darkening. The noise of the city faded away too fast, a blanket of quiet settling over her. America’s exhaustion vanished.
Dark clouds moved over the street, roiling, unnatural. She spun, ready to flee, but the clouds were behind her too, and above, some even seeping up from a storm drain in the curb. America’s fists shot up in front of her, guarding her face, and she spun in a circle, breathing too fast, searching for the source, the threat.
“America Chavez.” The voice that spoke was deep and a little echoey, as if the charcoal clouds themselves were speaking. “There’s no need for this. I only want to talk.”
“Who are you?” America demanded. She tried to sound brave, but the words came out shrill and thin. The voice of a scared child.
“I want to help you.” The thick clouds boiled around her, so close now, but they’d stopped, giving her a thin margin of space.
Like hell, America thought. She waited, heart thudding.
The dark clouds parted, and a figure stepped through. Not another one of those monsters, but a human, or something close enough. And America realized with a start that she recognized this man.
She swallowed and made herself speak. “Dr. Strange.”