Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The story so far goes like this.

(This is what the universe weaves to stop it from fraying apart.)

A woman and her brother live in Sokovia. They live with their parents, and they are happy.

(A woman falls to catastrophic grief for the second time in a matter of months.)

The woman gets pregnant, and gives birth to twin girls named Taylor and Stella.

(Her magic reaches out, and plucks two girls already falling through the seams of the multiverse, and weaves them into this reality.)

Sokovia falls to war. The children are evacuated to the countryside. The adults stay. The woman’s parents die. She and her brother are taken by HYDRA and later the Avengers. Sokovia is devastated. Her brother dies. She finds her way to America.

(This is more or less unchanged.)

The children, shaken by the grief of being taken away from their family and seeing their home destroyed, have their X genes activated while in the hills of Eastern Europe. Taylor Maximoff, serious and thoughtful, has hers come in quietly, and was able to hide her abilities for the most part, and at times even use them for money. She grows in power as she learns to use and control it, building on a foundation of the stories of her long lost grandfather. Magnetism ran in the family.

(Taylor Hebert, ruthless and pragmatic, was a hero and monster in equal measure, controlling cities and battlefields with swarms of insects. In her short life, she killed city destroying monsters, omnicidal gods, and her own childhood heroes. She had accepted death when she was pushed into the empty by a tool shaped like a person. She is angry to have her memories overwritten, her past taken from her.)

Stella, energetic and hopeful, has her powers come in loud and powerful, great waves of energy the color of blood but with the properties of lightning, and she lacks the ability to control them. The people, scared and afraid, attempt to remove the curse they believe was placed on her. The scared and confused child at their mercy panics, and, for the second time, has an ability appear during a time of stress. Her spark ignites, and she planeshifts out. The villagers believe she ran away in the chaos. They will never be corrected. Her sister sees her disappear in front of her. She will not see her sibling for years.

(Stella does not have a last name and does not have an origin. She remembered very little of what occurred before she arrived on Innistrad as a little girl. She would find places she was comfortable, and people she would call friends, but has never found a home or a family. She embraces the new memories whole heartedly, seeing them as simply her past finally revealed to her.)

Taylor scrapes together money for herself and control over her mutation, and searches for her sister, only growing more determined as the months pass. Stella jumps from world to world, learning and growing, and finding her way into the college of Lorehold and the Golgari Swarm. She would find her way back to Earth, and they would reunite in Prague. It was here they saw their mother again through a television screen.

Taylor was angry at her for abandoning her children for a better life.

(Taylor is angry at her for destroying Taylor’s past and replacing it with another life full of all the pain and loneliness and none of the catharsis.)

Stella was happy to see her alive, and at the chance for their family to be whole again.

(Stella is happy to have a family and a home at all, and is willing to overlook how it formed.)

They find their way to New York before the blip.

(No one knows how this occurs. The timeline can only change so much.)

No one is surprised when two poor mutants from district X are months late reporting their return from non-existence

(It would be months before anyone realizes they didn’t exist before the blip either.)

Chapter Text

“Ma’am, are you alright? Can you hear me?”

Stella was the first to wake up at the nurse’s prodding, rising with a groan and a splitting headache from the cot she was resting in.

“Oh good, that means your hearing is fine, and you don’t seem injured. We can run some tests when both of you are awake. Can you give me your name?”

Stella looked up at the nurse, a forty-something woman with brown hair and a tired expression. “Stella. My name is Stella.”

“Got a last name, Stella?”

She opened her mouth to say no, but that wasn’t right, was it? God, this migraine made it hard to think.

“... Maximoff, Stella Maximoff. What happened? Where am I?”

“Metro-General Hospital, in New York City. You were brought in with another girl by a good samaritan when you both came back from the blip. Do you have any form of ID on you?”

She almost recognized that city, but her brain was fighting her whenever she tried to remember anything. She looked herself over, and checked inside the pockets of her jacket and her jeans, but found nothing.

“No. Is that going to be a problem?”

“It’s fine. You aren’t the first to reappear without ID. How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Stella responded, rubbing her eyes, as her headache eased and she was able to think more clearly. “You said something about another girl? And tests?”

“Yea, do you recognize her?” The nurse asked, pointing with her pen behind Stella. She turned her head and saw a girl with curly brown hair and familiar features. The memories came faster.

“Yea, that’s my sister, Taylor. My twin. Is she alright?”

“More beat up than you, but nothing that worse than some bruising. I think she fell on her arm when she reappeared. As for the tests, if you want we can take some blood and make sure both of you are alright, but if you don’t we can just print out some temporary IDs.”

“Can I wait until she’s awake before we make a decision?” Stella responds, feeling apprehensive. Something about testing made her skin crawl. Hazy images of needles and labs flashed in her mind.

“Absolutely. I’ll start putting together those IDs. If you need anything there is a button by the door to call me back.” With that, the nurse walked out of the room.

Stella got up off the cot and began looking around. The room was simple, with clean white walls. There was a row of drawers on the wall opposite the simple beds she and her sister were laying in, with a black countertop and a sink. Stella got herself some water to get rid of the last of her headache and walked over to the window between the two cots. She looked out at the unfamiliar skyline, ran a hand through her hair, and tried to gain her bearings.

First, she felt for the mana around her and looks for some connections she can forge to power her spells. Unfortunately, in a clean and sterile place of knowledge, she only finds blue mana, less than useless to Stella. She sees no plains nor swamps or mountains through the window and will have to get out into the city to look for anything less generic as a mana source. For now, she is stuck with just her mutant abilities.

Next, she flexed her electrokinesis. Stella feels the electricity flow through the building, from the lights in her room to the breaker down the hall to the wiring connecting it to the electrical grid. She feels the drywall and brick that separates her from the open sky, that she could push through with a little effort, and the electrical outlet that would be significantly easier. She sees through the walls, watching the other people in the hospital, their bodies lit up with steady electrical pulses.

Lastly, she tried to feel out what memories are unfamiliar. Stella had lived most of her life without any memory of her life before her ignition and arrival on Innistrad when she was a child, so the sudden recollections of a sister and a mother were, while welcome, obviously new. The fact that she was able to say that with such confidence calmed Stella significantly.

She knew what it was like to have her head messed with by a being with ill intentions. (Images of animals transforming into horrible monstrosities, allies at each other’s throats, and the deaths of friends flashed through her mind. Emrakul was fun for no one.) Malicious influence was far less obvious, at least at first. It was still a mystery, but one that could be solved in time, and it was unlikely Taylor was involved.

Stella had mysteries to solve, and problems to deal with, but nothing that required panic. She took a deep breath and enjoyed the view. Then she turned around, content to wait for the nurse to return, and for Taylor to wake up. She was met with metal shards, torn from the netting holding up the beds.

“What is going on? Why do I know who you are?” her sister demanded, her eyes glowing red.

Stella looked at Taylor, sitting up from her cot, cradling her injured arm. “Do your eyes always glow when you use your powers?”

Taylor scowled and the metal shards inch closer to her eyes. The sink and mirror across the room shook and begin to bend from the force.

“Why do you think I know any more than you do? I’m confused too.” Stella answered as she attempts to move away from the blades.

“You sounded confident about it with the nurse.”

“Were you awake the whole time? Do twins always wake up at the same time?” Stella tilted her head in contemplation before seeing the shards moving closer again. “Look I don’t know how I got here, or why I am here. I have new memories that say you are my sister and my last name is Maximoff, so I’m rolling with it until something says I shouldn’t.”

That seemed to shake Taylor enough that the metal began to retreat, as she spat out, “Something messed with our heads! Of course we shouldn’t trust it!”

“I know a guy who gets amnesia every time he goes somewhere new. Unearthing memories isn’t that weird.” Stella responded as she sits back down on her cot, across from Taylor as her sister puts the metal shards down.

“I am two years younger, my hair is the wrong color, and cannot remember my father’s name. Something is wrong.” Taylor stated bluntly. Her features remained set in a scowl, but Stella seemed to no longer be the focus of her anger.

“Fair enough. That said, I would like to get out of this hospital as quickly as possible, and making the nurse think we’re crazy is not going to help with that,” Stella looked at the hospital gown her sister is in, and then looked at her own. “I would also like actual clothes.”

“Are clothes really at the top of your priorities?”

“It looks cold outside!”

Taylor looked very disappointed in her. Stella just smiled.

Chapter Text

In shock and disbelief, Taylor Hebert Maximoff stared at the laminated ID in her hands. Had she not been grappling with the new reality she lived in, she would have been amused at how easy it was to get proof of identity in this new world, but she could only stare at what she was now.

Her hair, a memory of a beloved mother that was gone too soon, was now the wrong color, wrong texture, wrong everything. Her face looked uncanny, as if someone had taken her features and put them through photoshop. She was two inches shorter, with her limbs less gangly and lither, and her athletic build was suddenly more graceful. Taylor was two years younger than when she closed her eyes.

Stella had done most of the talking with the hospital staff. Taylor wasn’t sure what to make of the stranger her new sister. She seemed too laid back. She told her she was just as confused as Taylor, if anything Stella was more confused. She didn’t even know where New York City was. Yet she seemed far more comfortable with the new surroundings, more unaffected by the change in environment. Taylor questioned if Stella even cared about the inconsistencies of their new memories.

Eventually, the nurse finished with Stella, and they walked out into the December air. Taylor tucked her hands into her new grey hoodie as the wind chill cut through the loose jeans they had found in the charity bin.

“The front desk gave me a map and a pamphlet for a homeless shelter, so I figure that is probably a good place to head for the night,” Stella offered, as she unfolded the map. “I think it’s…um…”

“Do you want me to navigate?” Taylor asked, thankful for something to do, rather than continue to be trapped in her thoughts.

“Please.”

As Stella handed over the map and the pamphlet, she began messing with her new clothes.

“Ugh, robber soles. I wonder if I can find steel-toed boots somewhere for cheap, Stella pondered aloud. Her accent was uncanny to Taylor’s ear, at once familiar to her, an aspect of her home in Sokovia, and a reminder that her mind was no longer her own. She was very grateful that her voice retained its Northeast character.

“That would require money,” Taylor responded, turning to her sister. As she looked at the map, she reached out to her swarm and was grateful to feel them respond, as if waiting for her. The familiar senses of her bugs showed her the urban landscape of New York, the reintroduction of the alien senses almost too much for her brain to process. “What’s wrong with rubber soles, anyway?”

“I mean they’re fine. It’s just whenever I want to jump up top of a building to look around or go through a wall, I’d rather not leave half my shoe behind. I get a bit of leeway when I go electric, but that does not extend to things that are nonconductive.”

Taylor looked over at the shorter girl as they began walking east, “Go electric? Really?”

“If you have a better term for dematerializing into pure electricity I would be happy to hear it.” Stella laughed as she fiddled with her jacket and her ponytail of auburn hair. “Speaking of which, what about you. I got to see the metal up close and personal, but you got anything else?”

“The metal is new. Well, I have memories of it but…god this is confusing.” Taylor shook her head as her irritation at the situation reemerged. “I control bugs. It's great for surveillance, less so for combat. The metal is better for that, but I will need to get used to it before I ever use it in a fight. Assuming we wind up in any.”

“Ha. We will. Trouble tends to find me. I doubt you’re any different.”

Taylor wasn’t sure if it was wise giving a virtual stranger this much information about her abilities, but it wasn’t like she was able to hide them completely, after the incident in the hospital. Stella seemed intent on sticking with her, and she wasn’t wrong about trouble finding Taylor, so it was likely good to have an idea of one another’s capabilities. Worst case scenario, Taylor knew as much about Stella as vice versa, and Stella did not strike Taylor as a strategist.

- / - / - / - / -

It was a few minutes before they came to the door of the homeless shelter. It took up the lower two floors of an old brownstone building. As she and her sister walked through the door, a machine similar to a metal detector began going off. Taylor turned quizzically toward her sister, but before she could ask anything a stern-looking man walked up to them.

“Apologies, but you won’t be able to stay here for the night.” He said while attempting to usher them toward the door.

Taylor turned her head back to him with a sinking feeling, and asked, “Is there a reason for that?”

He grimaced. “We don’t allow mutants here.”

Taylor simply stared at him, while Stella pushed past her and demanded a reason.

The man began to look around for backup, as Stella got into his space. “Management thought it was a safety risk.” He stammered out. “Can you please leave now? You are making a scene.”

Taylor put a hand on her sister’s shoulder before she could respond, and glared at the man over Stella’s shoulder. “Well, then could you tell us where someone who will take us is? Or is housing homeless orphans a ‘safety risk’ everywhere in this city?”

He quickly gave them directions to the ‘X District’ as he called it, as he all but pushed them out the door.

Stella slumped down as the anger fell out of her frame. She looked at Taylor with a resigned half-smile. “Guess we have more walking to do. Hell of welcome, huh.”

Taylor begrudgingly agreed, and they turned south as the night began in New York.